Poor Her Soul
BY MIRA PTACIN
Nicole Carpenter used to go through my city like a walking middle finger. She fought, smoked, dipped, drank and skipped school, and by the time she finally reached her junior year of high school, she altogether dropped out. I met her some years ago in my hometown of Battle Creek, the Cereal Capitol of the world (think: Kellogg’s Cornflakes).
Nicole wore sandy blond cornrows that dropped to her waist and wrapped around her like seaweed. She’d sway her head side to side and fling those braids behind her shoulders, rake back the strays with two acrylic …
One Day
BY ANNABEL SMITH
We arrive in the nameless village early, when the morning light is still thick and golden, marred only by the dark smudge of hills on the horizon. Doctors, nurses, dentists, support staff: a team of ten, we’ve flown into the Dominican Republic for a week of one-day stands. Day four, this is our fourth and final village. Like most foreigners, we’ve brought a sense of adventure and spare memory cards. Unlike them, we won’t be staying at luxury resorts or visiting golf courses. We have come to do good, to make a difference.
Our local partners are waiting …
Revelations
BY MATTHEW CHENEY
When I was a child, we lived inside the war. Our parents went away sometime during the last year, leaving me and my sister, Olly, to fend for ourselves amidst the rubble. Our house was old and solid, made of stone, and the shelling had mostly been to the other side of town, so all the walls of the house were still intact and there were only a few holes in the roof. Most of the windows had shattered, but we covered our bedroom’s windows with trash bags taped to the frames, and that mostly …
Why Believe?
The writers and poets in this issue of SalonZine remind us of community and possibility, of what is absurd and beautiful in our world. Take a break from your work and worries and read this issue. Believe that the world is on your side, even in challenging times.
We dedicate this issue to risk takers, caretakers, and survivors.
-The Editors, Nita Noveno & Caroline Berger
-Assistant Editor, Barbara Sueko McGuire
HELP TEAM CAFÉ AND THE PEOPLE OF BENGUET
Special thanks to writers Padmapani L. Perez and Luisa A. Igloria for connecting our communities.
In early October, devastating typhoons hit regions …
Birthmark
BY PRABHAKAR VASAN
It is, again, unsafe.
At least, it is unclear.
animals, their dark forms when they crouch at the margins of the freeway
The city is charred, as
from a blast. Or the eyes are.
The mind is crumbling into
its own foundations. Or
the homes are. Waiting, even,
is a taut state, the drone
of current through a wire.
silent, tense, they search for a space in which to cross
And negotiations unravel.
Language, a dried gauze, fails
to keep this clean.
Exposes to the air the burnt
stump still raw. Flesh painful
just to look at. The burn wound.
Which refuses to scab over.
Endures like a birthmark.
how we must blur and roar past them
Any impulse must originate …
Yes No Yes
BY DIANE SCHENKER
Now is the winter of our inevitable results, unavoidably determined by prior conditions.
Essential? Absolutely. Logically. Required.
Convention, on the other hand, dictates plenty of things that are none of its business. Poke convention in the eye with a sharp stick.
Effects are not always what they seem. Beware faulty reverse engineering. It only seems logical.
S seh seh seh incessant abscess accede exceed concede proceed recede secede ancestor. S.
So what, that’s my motto. So fucking what.
Absolutely essential, needed,
Required—what small, scratchy volume contains the overlap of necessity and love? Will you tell me?
Yes I said yes I will Yes.
Consider
BY DIANE SCHENKER
Consider housekeeping, consider the rain. Consider
the fly dancing on the window. It herky-jerks its
relentless heartbreak of trying to get out.
A fall warbler appears on the seedy maple stuffing
itself for its long flight, feathers weathery dull in
post-connubial anonymity, hard to identify.
Consider the dirty window. You lift it to see more
clearly. The fly stumbles up with it, then out.
The warbler is gone but you can see the rain, its
needled finery gently wetting the patient, nodding
trees. They gossip in whispers among themselves.
Consider the lifetimes spinning out before you, each
small choice weights in one direction or another:
1) You stare out the window with notebook and
pen, channeling the array of tiny …
Death Becomes Us
Requiem for Jimmy
The Community Choir of the Community
BY TIM KREIDER
The news spread quickly that he was gone. And while nobody could deny that a vast emptiness now laid claim to some part of the world, some later would suggest that he had been disappearing for a long time.
Now this needs to be qualified. Nobody really noticed this gradual and subtle disappearance until after he had died. Only then did a contingent led by Hank Mortibund, Old Man Mortibund’s youngest, put forth the claim that he had been gradually disappearing over …
Composure
BY LUISA A. IGLORIA
Everything returns to a source:
gladness to the tree, fruit
to the cradle, flesh from the bone.
Water lashes the roofs in the town,
but also the pink and yellow roses
that appear as if out of nowhere
in a corner of the garden,
where once there was only
a hard rectangle of dirt. But
ask yourself how you truly feel,
what the bones in your ribcage
might be singing
in the silence of night
to each other, as they hold
the stricken heart in place.
Noise
BY CHERYL BURKE
Ever since the latest spot opened nearby, the limos leaked models onto the sidewalk, the guys in ties lined up the block, the girls in their hypodermic stilettos shouted redundancies, “I’m so drunk!” The patrons humped in front of my girlfriend’s building, blocking entry and the bar’s outdoor area was canopied in a din so relentless it formed a hardened shell, interrupting our intimacy and our arguments.
One night, kites flying high, we decided to penetrate the shell and leave our mark with feminine products. We placed our soiled tampons and panty liners into a plastic bag, added the rubberized contents of several never-used safer sex kits, …
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