We found ourselves in this small mountain town filled with floating castles and ancient-looking buildings—museums, churches, capitols, old houses—each historic and antiquated monument floating atop its own individual mountain, like a dozen acropolises. We’d spent the morning visiting each one, gallivanting around with the other tourists. The city itself was in a large valley made up of the small hills and cobblestone streets that wound around these edifices. White snow topped the green mountains on either side of us.
​
         The sun was bright, but you could barely feel it as the narrow valley and hills and many buildings had a tendency to slant its rays and keep the sun from penetrating totally in the street of the city. The whole town looked as if it were painted as a chiaroscuro. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. In some parts, particularly down low, the cold air and dark shadows felt as if they were emanating from the earth itself.

     We were on vacation in this small, fairy-tale-like-town for, as they call it, a “Babymoon.” Particularly special for us because we’d spent several years navigating the hellscape of miscarriages and infertility treatments, with visits to doctors’ offices becoming more frequent than meals eaten out.

        As evening encroached, my six-month pregnant wife and I soon found ourselves in line with all the other tourists to go to a famous ball put on by the locals. The waiting area sat atop an inclined street that led to the base of a small castle. The entire city and valley stretched out on either side of us. A 360-degree view but for the stone structure right in front of us. Pink snow topped the green mountains as dusk approached.
​
        They said the city began as a refugee camp, some years, long ago. A different time, but the same world. These residents walked and lived in camps at first. All borders shut. Some of them lived in cages. There was no room at any inn they stopped at along the way. So, one day, they made their own way to a part of the world no one cared they’d occupy. Somewhere in between Greenland, Wyoming, and Azerbaijan. They built a city for themselves. Because no one else would. Some of them were architects after all. And doctors. And city planners. And philosophers. And lawyers. Those that were still living.

      My wife and I were tired. The tiredness that hits the bottoms of your feet and lower back, exacerbated from walking around on cobblestone all day. My wife was not feeling good. She sat down next to me as we waited in line for the doors to open.

     After thirty minutes or so, people began grumbling amongst themselves. It was a strange noise to hear after walking about this town all day and hearing nothing but laughter, joy, and curiosity coming from folks—both us tourists and the locals alike. That’s when I first felt that something was not quite right.

     Perhaps it was because there was a man in line I didn’t like the sight of.  He looked like he was concealing a weapon but it couldn’t have been, for weapons were outlawed, no, not outlawed, didn’t exist.

     In fact, the more I thought about it, I realized that this entire fantastical little city existed without a single unit of police or military. There were not even jails for there were no need for them. A guide had told us this as we toured the largest castle on the tallest peak—it’s location right behind the smaller castle in front of us. It was strange for us Americans, who were so used to guns and men in uniform patrolling the streets. So used to violence and the unpredictability of men. 

           Night started to descend while we waited in line, and as the lights of the town flickered on, everyone’s phones started to ring and ding, one by one, with the sound of text messages and call alerts. People began picking up, unworried at first, and then more so as they realized that it was not just their phone going off, but everyone’s, and something of this nature could only be an emergency alert. 

           My wife stood up with one hand holding her stomach, the other on her lower back. I grabbed her left hand to help her rise. The sound was far enough away and unexpected enough that most of the looks the other tourists’ faces were ones of shock and confusion. Were they bombing the ski resort up above us for avalanches, perhaps?

         We all rushed down and around the cobblestone street leading up to the castle and over to her so we could see what had caused her to scream. And that’s when we saw it as we wound around to the right of the small castle to join her: The large castle crumbling and falling off the side of the hill. Another explosion punctured the air. We all flinched. More of the castle crumbled away. Distant screams.
Then, other sounds. Closer, deeper, faster, and more shocking. Right behind us. The sound of a gun, I think. The sound of bodies suddenly flapping against the cobblestone next to us.

           I grabbed my wife and we rolled down a small knoll in the street to the left. I pushed her down hard, harder than I should have for a woman carrying a child. The shots continued. 

            “Let’s go!” I whispered to my wife.
            We got up, crouching, and began running down the street that wound itself down the hill like an ice cream cone.
            “We have to get down and get out of this city,” my wife said. I nodded.

           We jumped a small guardrail and I caught my wife as she jumped and then tumbled on top of me into the sweet, green grass that covered the hills in between the switchbacks of the road. Grass so green and fertile you could nearly taste it in the cream and milk at restaurants and coffee shops.
           I pushed her down beside a small bush and lay flat. The trucks drove by above us, the men wearing Viking masks. We heard them stop. Doors open. More sounds.
             Pop pop pop. Pop pop pop.
            “Down with the imperialists!” one said. Or was it tourists?
           I nodded at my wife to keep moving and she nodded back. We moved straight down the grass this time, slowly, my wife huffing, and when the road came up again below us, we paused, looked right and left for signs of anymore trucks, dashed across the road like the chipmunks and squirrels had done all day, and began moving down the next stretch of grass between the winding-ice-cream-cone of a road, always crouching. Staying low.
            We had moved fast. That’s what had saved us. Despite my wife’s pregnancy and the slow walking down the hill now, those first few moves were crucial. The drop and the roll down the small knoll in the street, then around to the left. Then down the street. Now the hills.
We would get out of this I thought. Whatever this was. And that’s when the top of the small mountain we were just on exploded. Tiny pieces of rock and ancient brick from the castle flew over us. We hit the ground again. Our ears ringing now. For this one was close and loud and big. We covered our heads with our frail hands. I threw myself on top of my wife. We could hear the trucks coming back down the ice-cream-cone road. ​

    ​ We moved down the hill and were back in the town, the city of shops and stores and restaurants and bars that spread across the base of the valley and clustered up around each acropolis. The place that earlier today had seemed so beautiful and peaceful and quiet and calm. We ran across the street, into one of those fancy touristy-yet-local restaurants that serves high-end Italian dishes alongside hand-rolled sushi. We burst in, my wife and I. Covered now in grass and rubble. Short of breath. A small trickle of blood was running down my wife’s left temple. A bruise was developing on my knee. Everyone looked up at us simultaneously. Most of them locals. Not one of them looked concerned. Did they not know? Did they not hear?
     “The explosions!” I shouted. “The men, the guns! Didn’t you hear it? This place is not safe. We need to move, all of you. Now!”
     They continued to stare at us in silence. The approaching steps of two men in suit jackets.
    “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”
     They threw us out.
 
     Our goal was then to make it out of the city at all costs. We could survive in the woods, my wife and I. We could survive in the streams and rivers and fields and glaciers and whatever was beyond this town. It was where we were most comfortable, to be honest.
 “There’s two of them there!” someone shouted, as we crept through the streets.

    I whipped around to see four men with guns behind who had caught sight of us. I grabbed my wife and we barged through a door to the building on our left as shots hit the cobblestone street.

   We entered what appeared to be the circular lobby of a bank or a governmental office. Everything was polished and white and marble. A large chandelier hung down in the center of the space. There was only one desk at the far end of the room, a concierge of sorts. My wife’s right arm was draped around me as she held her stomach and leaned heavily onto me. I held her around the waist. We walked toward the concierge who, upon seeing us, promptly picked up his phone and began dialing.

     “No, wait!” I shouted. “She’s pregnant.”
     The man seemed unconcerned.
     “We have papers, documents! We’re travelers, American citizens. Do you see what’s going on out there?”
    The man paused for a second, considering. Maybe he considered the baby. Maybe he considered us a nuisance more than anything, as less than, as not even something worth giving up.
     “You can go out the back way,” he said. “You cannot stay here, but I can let you leave quietly. Where you choose to go from there is up to you.”
     “Please, just don’t send us back out there,” screamed my wife. “We just need to get out of this city!”
     “Fine. Follow me,” said the man. He was black and wearing at least a thousand-dollar suite.
     He led us through the door behind the concierge desk and then another one. Each hallway was white, polished, and marble. He let us out into an alley. In one direction was a dead end. The other led back into one of the main streets.
    “Goodbye,” he said. “And, Good luck.”
    “Wait—”
    The door slammed behind him and we froze.
 
      And that’s when we were rescued. Sort of. A young, muscular man in a hoodie sitting outside a door further down the alley. He looked at us for a second, then waved us over. We ran to him. We had no other choice.

     The young man closed the wooden door behind us a with a small bang. It made both my wife and I flinch for it sounded like a gun shot.The young man, however, also seemed unconcerned. He was nearly apathetic and unapologetic as he sized us up. Contemplating what to do with us. As if we were a hindrance to his evening and not fleeing for our lives from the violence outside. He didn’t offer us tea or coffee. Neither did he even offer us a seat. Not even to my pregnant wife who was now bleeding rather profusely from somewhere on her head. All he said, was, “Follow me.”
We followed him through two rooms and down a small flight of stairs into a cellar of sorts. It smelled of wine, dates, figs, and cheese, was earthy and comforting.

      “Here,” he said, opening a latch in the center of the floor to reveal a large hole.
      “This slide will shoot you out of the city.”
      “Slide?”
     “Yes, it’s an emergency slide. Should things ever get too bad.”
     I was dumbfounded. “But … Isn’t this bad?”
      “This is normal,” the man said. “On this day, you just happen to be the unlucky ones. We cannot shelter anyone here who was not born here. And sometimes the locals get a little bit tired of all the tourists.”
     “So they shoot them?” my wife asked.
     He shrugged.
     “But what about the buildings?” I asked.
    “We like rebuilding things. It’s what makes this city so interesting. But then everyone wants to come and look at the things we’ve built. And sometimes we get tired of it. We do not have to let anyone come, after all. This is our home. A home we were forced to make on our own when no one would accept us into theirs. So we are not obligated to help anyone. No one felt obligated to help us.”
      “But what about—”
      “Please,” the man said. “You must go. I must return to my work. I have much to do.”
      “Thank you,” my wife said, even though I did not feel like thanking this man.
       “I must go,” he said. “Au revoir.”
       I spun toward my wife. She nodded at me. Giving me strength. I took her hand and we jumped.  

      When I was young, I often assumed that every German living in 1940’s Nazi Germany was a full on Nazi. Or else a resister. But no, many of them were bakers, simply going to work each day, baking bread, watching the ash rise from the smokestacks and thinking nothing of it. They thought nothing of war. They merely went to work and did their job and didn’t ask too many questions. Like this man.

      Or was it I who, in a past life, was the baker?
​
     We landed on the soft earth some thousand feet below the city. A lake stretched out in front of us. My wife and I did not look back at the city above us but kept moving forward. The city in the valley with the hills and acropolises and the sweet, green grass. That city was probably red now. Red and yellow from fire. Beautiful City. City of Terror. City of No Samaritans. 

How to Write Through a Pandemic
words by Alex Simand
photography by Cassandra Panek

This piece was originally published in the Stansbury Forum on June 6, 2020. The Stansbury Forum is a website for discussion by writers, activists and scholars on the topics that Jeff focused his life on: labor, politics, immigration, the environment, and world affairs. Please be sure to check out their impressive work and support their mission. The original link to the piece is here and their website is here. 

by Gary Phillips 

On a listsev I’m part of, Crime Writers of Color, various discussions fly back and forth via email among the loose-kinit group – some of whom are part of the MWA and SinC. The morning following the publishing of these statements, folks on the listserv heard of examples of pushback from the membership, and the nature and character of such was bandied about.  ​

Family Crypt Chorus Blog
 
 
“And on my best behavior I am just like him
Look underneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid”
 
-Sufjan Stevens
“John Wayne Gacy Jr.”

 
In Dad’s Home Movie, I Defy Him
Marie Marandola
 
I’m still rocking on unsteady hips, but already
he’s bragging to his universe about me.
(Favorite daughter; see how much she knows.)
 
He sets us up:
first the camcorder, then the game.
Marie! Can you go get me number fo-ah?
 
His voice is gentle, New England music.
I disappear.
 
A toddle, a squat. A yellow magnet 4
retrieved from a board. The thunderclap
of Dad’s applause.
 
Aww-right! Number fo-ah, thank you!
Now, how about… number two?!
 
A shy smile forms beneath the armor
of my thick-bobbed hair.
No.
I hold up my index finger. Numbah one?
 
Dad laughs.
You play your own game, huh?
 
And I do.
(And still I do. Favorite daughter, born
or burst forth, formed
fully contrary.)
Each number he counts,
I counter. Each number I name,
I find. And Dad’s laugh,
like lightning,
instilling this in me:
 
As long as you’re smart enough, Sweetpea,
the rules are yours to make.
 
Just once, I pause
to investigate his camera,
my huge hazel eye gazing at its gaze.
 
Then it’s right back to gleefully retrieving
(three instead of seven, eight instead of five)
until one day, I see myself, and see
how the numbers have changed:
add 35 years, and one near-fatal accident, and--
 
Dad?
 
I don’t think I really want to be Minerva.
I wish I’d sought your wisdom
before warring for my own.
I wish I could put both of us
back inside your head.
 
Dad’s footage runs down; Mom’s key
turns in the lock, and I run to her, arms-up.
Jacket off? I entreat her
and crawl into her lap, remembering
I’m no deity, but a child
 
—but too late.
 
 
 
Those Dead Spaces: When No One in Your Family Talks
-Levi Rogers
 
 
My family didn’t talk much growing up. There was a lot of family history that, if not covered up, was at least unspoken. Most of it was barely scandalous, but still, we didn’t talk, not about things that were actually going on, not if it wasn’t in whispers. Certain things were better left unsaid after all. The nice, decent, Christian-white-people-way. No “gossiping.”

We didn’t talk about abuse or mental illness or even teenage rebellion. We whispered about these things as if they were dirty, radioactive secrets. Just like those three monkeys: “See no evil, speak no evil, hear evil.” To do so was to bring a demon to life.

This eventually provided a reactionary state of mind within me to convert to an all-honesty, raw-confessionalism later in life as a response to the safe, closeted, sheltered, see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-do-no-evil Christianity I grew up with. This, at least, is what a therapist once told me in couple’s counseling once. She said I should be careful not to overdo it with my honesty. That I was over-reacting against my past.
 “Fuck you!” I said to her. “I’m not overreacting against anything! People can’t just pretend that life is nice and tidy and never be in touch with reality!”

Maybe she was right.

This lack of familial communication is perhaps why I still have trouble communicating with people today, preferring to spend most of my time, alone, in my own head. Unless it’s through writing, I don’t share things easily. I bottle my emotions. I have imaginary conversations and fantasies in my mind rather than confronting people directly.

 This creates problems. In marriage and relationships mostly, but also at work. I am distanced person. I rarely convey my emotions through speech. It’s like, I just can’t. This is perhaps why I’ve always been drawn to writing. Why I attempted to write a raw, confessional, edgy memoir in my early twenties. Why I’m still trying to write that book to this day.

I might be mad at the crypts underneath my family’s history. Those dead bodies buried (some of whom are still alive) that we never speak of. But I have the same dead spaces within me and beneath me. Mistakes I’ve made. Many nights I would not want televised on the big screen. Vaults underground I’d do anything to keep you out of.

Sometimes I even try to cover up of these chambers with raw honesty. As if confessing to one crime will spare me from the others. Sometimes it even works.

But I’m still forced to live with the smell.
 
 
 
the green door
-Alex Simand
 
a green mottled door winks itself into existence and creaks open. a sort of yawning creak that might be a groan. or a slow flood. or a winter fling with a grad student you never really liked that much but then got so busy existing—between exams and learning how to cook udon noodles without a stove—that your slipped right into a whole life together. chipped dishes and microwaves and too many kiddie pools for one person to own balled up in the garage. a garage. Christmas lights and stamp collections and decorative whatevers until you wake up thirty eight years later as if the photos of you and the now-gray grad student that adorn the walls are poor reproductions. that sort of creak of a door. you never asked it to open but it did.
 
the door itself is so aggressively unobtrusive it might be a prop on a movie set. not the kind that goes up for auction on eBay some number of nostalgic years in the future before being snapped up by a highly sympathetic man named Tom from Wisconsin. no, it’s the kind of prop that gets left in a studio’s alleyway for the garbage collector but somehow gets wedged in a gaping sewer grate and nobody bothers to fish it out and so it remains slowly decomposing over the course of several human lives. and nobody seems to mind. people are generally agreeable to ornamental decomposition. something about HyperArt or Situationists or other stone-cold thoughmongers. the door keeps opening it and you, idiot, keep walking through. like maybe this time there won’t be a twelve-foot crocodile tick-tocking its way through the foyer. like maybe the disproportionate hangover is ever-coming instead of never-ending. the colorblind pond-scum of its exterior will keep you away, but it doesn’t. though the grass may be greener, it scuffs your seams just the same.
 
 
Lifetime Spent Sitting
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella
originally published by Thirty West Publishing House in Marrow

Lifetime spent sitting

My whole life was
spent in the backseat of my parents’
car while they looked for
a brand new house.
In new neighborhoods, with
new car smell, I was woozy with motion.  
I asked for the radio and
they turned on stations I didn't like.
Old music and new cars and new homes
and repeated bumps over potholes; I was always sick.


I’ve wasted my adulthood sitting on men’s
laps, listening to music while drunk.
New men and old music and sitting.
And my life is a chart scaled by carsickness.

The Building of a Crypt
Anonymous

My family has been building its own crypt since 2007
That’s not true, but that’s how it feels,
My mother grew ill
My sister left for college,
My childhood rushed to an end
Yet this is par for the norm of life,
But when my mother died I found that my family, well
My family’s house crumbled brick by brick
And while those left have tried to build it back
Those bricks have been joined together for a crypt
Here lies a former family, it reads,
Scattered to the West, broken and disorganized
Nothing has been the same, though we try
The family has died, it came to an explosive end,
And though glue remains, trying to hold two ends,
The effort seems fruitless, and impossible to mend.

Dear San Francisco 49ers,

It’s me, Tom Brady, the best Quarterback and football player of all-time. I hear you’re going to the Super Bowl this year. Congrats! It’s been a bit since you last played for a Championship. You know I’ve been to the Superbowl four times since you fellas lost to the Ravens. I won three--I mean all four of those Super Bowls, orchestrating the best Super Bowl comeback ever against the Falcons and definitely did not get stripped, causing a turnover,  on the final drive against the Eagles.

Anywho, you are going to the Super Bowl and that’s a big deal. Are you sure you’ve got the best team? Are you sure you’ve got the best Quarterback? Have you seen all the reports that Jimmy G is just a game manager? That people don’t trust him in big situations? I know Jimmy really well. He backed me up here in New England. There's a reason we traded him. I mean come on! He threw eight passes, total, in your Championship Game. He threw for less than 80 yards. You could use a new Quarterback. You know whom you should get, me: Tom Brady, Bay Area native and a GIANT 49ers fan.

How perfect would this be? The prodigal son comes home, leaving behind his life of working for The Dev--I mean Bill Belichick. With this win, San Francisco will tie the Patriots, and no one else, for six Super Bowl Championships, becoming the best franchise ever. But also, with this win I’ll get seven Super Bowl rings, more than any franchise has total, and finally unlock the secret to immortality.

Think about it. Jimmy might only play two more years, if he goes the way of Andrew Luck. I will be immortal, getting stronger with each ring I collect, kinda like Thanos. Don't you want Thanos running your team? What a story that will be! Tom Brady returns home, becomes Thanos, wins every Super Bowl, and lives forever. They’ll build a shrine for me--I mean us.

I know what you’re thinking. “Tom, it’s the week of the Super Bowl, we can’t trade for you.” When have rules ever stopped The Patriots anyone from doing anything? Plus, I’ve gotten that sort of thing handled. Just bring Jimmy to a TB12, his key card should still work. I’ve got a lab in the basement where we cant switch our faces for the week, and then we can put Jimmy in one of the hyper-sleep tanks where I keep my clones house plants.

It’ll be great. You won’t regret it. This will be the best decision your franchise has ever made.


Looking forward to hearing back from you,



Tom






Dear Tom,

What time should Jimmy show up at TB12?

Love,

The 49ers

​In a few years, Lupe will be dead. And my mind will circle back to this moment between us again and again. A moment. What’s a moment? 

A moment can be everything. I doubt it took her longer than a moment to write that note and take those pills. In a single moment she decided she was done. She flung her head back and swallowed death. She probably didn’t even think of me. ​

Every weekend, my father’s family visits Grandmother Lola. She lives next door. After Lupe greets her mother-in-law, she comes over our house. Often, Lupe’s mom is also there. My mom, Belia and Lupe gather around the dinner table and talk about their husbands and their children. 

​Sometimes, Belia’s other daughters visit as well. ​

t's like the Dating Game, only way hotter. I'm Janie and I'm trying to date your new book. In this case, I'm trying to get in with Cactus by Nathaniel Kennon Perkins and published by the gorgeous and world-shakin' Trident Press. According to Cactus' Hinge bio, it's all about [how] "In Cactus, correctional officer and ex-punk rocker Will Stephens works guarding prisoners who pick up trash on the side of the highway. One of them, a hardened inmate with a tattoo right beneath his eye, seems oddly familiar, but Will can't quite place him. When he realizes that the inmate is none other than the former lead singer of his favorite punk band, he must navigate an emotional desert landscape populated by neo-Nazis, asshole cops, guilt, student loans, and a double dose of mescaline tea."  

Since I love punk rock and really really love mescaline, I feel pretty confident that the book and I are on a one way trip to bang town. But for the sake of the game, let's Dating Game the shit out of this book: 

A. Cactus would be a little self-conscious about its face tattoo (it’s only a small face tattoo), but it would still look your parents straight in the eyes and give them firm handshakes.

Q4. Let's say your book and I are going to our favorite chain restaurant, what chain restaurant would we be going to? What drink with an unnecessary (or necessary) amount of candy in it would we get? 

A. It’s a first date. You’ve been talking to Cactus at the record store it works at, and after a few weeks you’ve started messaging each other on Instagram. You meet it after work and walk to In-N-Out because it’s by the park and Cactus is broke. You don’t get drinks because Cactus has forties and a flask in its backpack. You sit in the park and eat and drink, and Cactus talks for almost a full hour about how it used to be vegan.

Q5. Does book have any creepy discrete collections in its home? Like porcelain miniatures or bottle caps or nail clippings? 
 
A. Cactus isn’t sure if its collections are creepy, though it is worried that they might be. Covered in dust are a bunch of powerviolence and grindcore records that have disturbing and violent cover art. It has a bunch of early 20th Century French erotic novels (translated into English. It doesn’t speak French). It has stacks of horror VHS tapes. It has a folder on an external hard drive full of a collection of nude photos of all its exes. It feels incredible guilt about this folder, but can’t bring itself to delete it. It only looks through it when it is really, really drunk, and hates itself later. The folder is password protected so you won’t stumble across it.

Q9. What are book's motivations? Did book birth itself like Athena jumping out of Zeus's head or did book come to life some other way? 
 
A. Not unlike Mithra born out of the rock, Cactus was born from a bucket of dirty mop water left over from the cleanup of a previous, failed attempt at a novel about being a Mormon Missionary.
 
Q10. What does book prefer: WCW or WWF (wrestling not world wildlife)? Why?
 
A. Here’s a confession: Cactus doesn’t really know anything about wrestling, which makes it feel incredibly uncool in the indie lit community right now. But Cactus has very vivid memories of one particular WWF trading card it somehow acquired in its youth: Chyna. If not for Chyna, Cactus might not have become what it is.

Q13. If your book was to date any Mortal Kombat character who would it be and why isn't it Johnny Cage? (will accept Sonya as a secondary answer)
 
A. Cactus is only interested in dating Street Fighter II characters, Chun Li specifically. That upside-down spin kick. Those legs. It might like to hook up with Blanka, too. Seems electric.
 
Q14. What song does your book perform at karaoke when its pretty drunk and shouldn't be making this sort of public spectacle but does anyway because sometimes you just have to belt it out to a crowd full of grimacing strangers? 
 
A. “Mama Tried” by Merle Haggard. Cactus knows prison. Merle Haggard knows prison. “[Cactus] turned 21 in prison doing life without parole.”

Go support innovative and prose and poetry and pick up Cactus. Go support our boy and by extension all bossin' indie lit making a difference in this big bad world. ​