“The best ones are natural, dear – like breasts.”
Mother in a cloche hat rested her fingers on them
throughout the postwar slump.
Appearances, darling.
I can't be bothered. They're so heavy, and I'd have to wear them
at least once a year to keep the sheen intact – they have to lie against skin,
the little parasites. If my daughter were posh enough totty
she could wear them along with a smile in a gauzily-lit room,
the new coming-out photo. Instead she clicks them along her teeth
in a tumble-down student union, arguing with boys about socialism,
informing them that there's nothing good about war
and we all need to make the world equal for everyone.
*
Marrying A Widower
You step into an apartment
newly available for rent.
The previous tenant was so beloved
neighbours' dogs still yearn at the door
and must be tugged away.
The walls shine virgin white.
Fresh lumps and seams of paint spring up
when you press your face
to pureness which promises to be smudged
newly by you.
You adjust the furniture
to cover as much of the floor as possible.
Shadows appear, though the room
is innocent of any source of light; they are cast
by no objects you can see.
In your unfamiliar wardrobe, you find skirts
longer and softer than those you customarily wear
and scarves that crumple in folds around your neck.
You sprout golden freckles.
You can no longer sing.
You burst into light when his voice
reaches down the corridor. You answer
to his wife's name.
*
Roommate
She was the worst roommate ever.
She stashed empties in my hatbox,
used my lace bras to strain tortellini.
She hung wet towels over my open dresser drawers
and didn't take them down even when they were stiff –
meanwhile, my t-shirts and jeans crawled with mould.
The only time we ever got on was when
we committed acts of drunken spite and petty larceny
in the corners of freshers-with-no-knickers nightclubs.
We were the thieving duo of despair.
She'd pick the mark, pour nonsense in his ear
while I slid round the back to finger his wallet.
It's the only way a girl can get ahead.
Like my Ukrainian grandmother used to say,
“Don't let the water go down in your fishbowl!”
Roommates stumbled home, too drunk to know
whose arm was around which waist.
She threw up on my bed
before passing out on her own.
I covered her with stiff towels
and hid the stolen money
among the empties
in my hatbox.
Erric Emerson
Image by Robert Linder
Red Limbs
I see them coming from
behind the layer of mesh
glass being lead by a white
coat to the table of pastels
and crayons where us fuck
ups scribble serenity onto a
blank page. They’re not
not my friends or family, it’s
the emaciated late teen’s
next to me, the one who's
too lost to look up. It's his
parents I think by the way
their deflated walk and hung
faces greet him as he shades
his leafless tree. It's not till they
are behind him noting his precise
hand that he turns towards their
shadows and without smiling wonders
aloud why they came. Wounded, they
remind him they’re his parents and that
they are here now. He shows them the
tight bracelet on his left arm and the warp
around his wrist of that drawing hand and
reminds them they weren’t there then.
*
A Suspicious Cigarette
I’m not a cigarette I said to the giant cigarette looking suspiciously back at me through the mirror in the truck stop bathroom. The room was filthy, covered in green sludge, and the toilet had committed suicide. There were pieces of brown brain spilling out of the ceramic entry wound. The plunger made some sly remark I couldn’t quite make out, and spontaneously combusted. It smelled delicious. Gross, the giant cigarette said, noticing a daddy long leg smoking a very small cigarette in the corner of the ceiling. I turned my attention to the suspicious character in the mirror, who’d decided to have a staring contest with me. Now he was monkeying around, flailing his arms like an idiot, miming my movements. Copy Cat I said accusingly. The fluorescent light above us flickered, and he was gone.
You ok? My friend asked, smoking as he started the car.
I inhaled the sweet aroma wafting towards me.
I held my breath. And held, and held.
*
Aureole
Meg Eden
Image by “ematil1023”
Bollystar
In high school, Miti brings saris in the morning
and we change in the bathroom stalls
while the first bell goes off. We skip
through the halls, arms linked, singing
the lyrics to Bollywood songs
that the white girls don't know.
Because I don't think of myself as one
of the white girls – I think of myself
as dark like the henna Miti presses
onto my hand. I think of my eyes
heavy and strange in a world
of girls in bootie shorts.
Miti works late shifts at Subway
even though she’s a religious vegetarian,
and dates a boy six years older than her.
Yesterday, a blonde in art class taught her “fuck”
and she’s been saying it whenever she gets the chance.
When she gets perfume, she sprays it fifteen times
around her body until I can find her by smell.
When I get home from class, I watch
Aishwarya Rai movies and wonder
what you have to do to get that beautiful.
I dance with my fingers close to my head.
I dance like my life is a Bollywood film,
and this is the scene where the heroine
sings about loneliness.
*
Roulette Chat
In college, when we weren’t watching
movies we were watching men
with webcams, sitting on their beds,
telling us they loved our bodies
even though we never
turned our camera on.
We compiled our sexy suggestions – the things
we thought about but never dared to do –
promising our invented hands wet
with need, unbuttoned shirts, and weekends
all alone. We waited until they closed
their doors, got on their beds and pulled
down their pants, showed us their thing:
all hairy, pink and bizarre to me –
then we’d all howl with laughter and say
we were a man, then log off, leaving them
hard and panting and broken. And it always
amazed me, the faith they had in us –
the faith that shows a penis without seeing
anything back. Were we needed that badly?
*
Twelve Little Indians
For D
We learned this morning
that our tuba player is dead.
He was found in a car
on Rt 450, gone for a week.
What else have we overlooked
while driving?
It’s six days before Christmas.
I try to imagine the silent
dinner, his plate of abstinence,
gifts thrown out, unopened
as if buried alive, or else returned
two days later with receipts – Why
couldn’t he wait until new year?
When everyone is gone,
and satisfied – at least in drink?
And now, we are left without a tuba,
without a tuba player – every song
is a tribute, the absence unbearable–
In the chorus, I stand behind his empty
chair. But as we sing, I can’t help
but look to the strings, the wind,
the guitars and percussion – who
among us will be next? And how
will we survive?
Joe Evans
Image by Nate Brelsford
An Instance Of The Scientific Method
Find a pot of nail varnish: “Confident
Coral”, by Jessica, perhaps. Fetch
the stainless steel nail scissors and walk
beneath the flying March shadows.
Lie on the grass; adjust your scale
of focus to the miniscule. The cat, hull-down
among the crocuses, observes with mild
interest. Select and mark your snail.
A scarlet shell-top will allow no later
confusion of identity. Now advance,
scissors gaping and extended, remembering
that this is science: to verify by repetition
the results observed by others, to wit
Eakin and Fertalle, in which garden snails
repaired the loss of an entire eye-stalk
within thirty-two days of amputation.
*
New Skin
I slipped on a new skin this morning –
hirsute, for autumn warmth – parted
simian back-hairs to find the open slit
then slid into that scrotum-soft suit,
fingering my way into black-haired
forearms, the nails dangling and clicking
at the tips of flaccid-hanging hands;
then stood up straight to pull the fleshy hood
across my face and turned to see
this mirrored stranger. Not really, of course;
but the thought brought to mind what I
was told: that in a sex-change operation,
a vagina is fashioned from the penis, split
and cored; the silken shaft-sheath
worked inside out like a doll's sleeve
to form a somewhat leathery cul-de-sac.
mind – I slide a finger in and give
a little shudder at the thought of entering
that dry yet tender foreign skin.
*
Black Ghost Knife Fish
Raindrops unspooling neon loops
on gutter lakes that shake with squared-off light.
Leaf-mould stacks the gratings down beneath.
Violet white and hot pink
floating across night eyes and scents
of diesel, smoking fat and star anise.
Strobing in and out of shadows,
catching lost lines uncoiling loose
behind late leavers and weaving loners,
trailing perfume and alcohol fumes through
the buried thump of autocthonic beats
and sheets of spray thrown over grit-black streets.
Black ghost knife fish: swimming
unseen, lost witness to the midnight masses
who move through Friday night's fleeting fugue,
easing my feet among the rows
of shining hump-backed carapaces,
beetle-bright under moth-strung sodium heat.
Contributors
Image by Riccardo Thalia
Paul Bavister works as a gardener and also teaches Creative Writing. He has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press, the most recent being The Prawn Season.
Shanalee Smith was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Sandscript Literary Magazine, The White Rabbit Zine and Slipstream. Currently attending the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she is hard at work on her first book-length poetry collection.
Noel Williams is widely-published in magazines and anthologies and has won his share of prizes. He’s editor of Antiphon magazine (antiphon.org.uk), Associate Editor of Orbis and Resident Artist at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield. His collection Out of Breath is due from Cinnamon Press in March 2014. His website is noelwilliams.wordpress.com.
Christopher Owen's stories have been published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Pewter Rose Press and The Irish Literary Review. He's also had a number of plays professionally produced, including A Parson's Tale, which toured north-west England. Women's Voices by the American writer Susan K Monson and Christopher was produced in October 2013 in Manchester. His CV can be found on his website: christopherowen.co.uk.
Tracey S Rosenberg grew up in the United States and now lives in Scotland. In 2010, she won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her debut pamphlet, Lipstick Is Always A Plus, is published by Stewed Rhubarb Press; other manuscripts have been longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Collection Award and the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize.
Erric Emerson is currently the poetry editor of Duende, an undergraduate journal from Goddard College, the first edition of which is due out in the autumn of 2014. His poetry has been published in Collage literary journal in the 2011 and 2012 editions. He is a poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, currently studying a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at Goddard College. He previously held the position of Creative Writing Club President at Brookdale Community College.
Meg Eden's work has been published in various magazines, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and received the 2012 Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award. She was a reader for the Delmarva Review. Her collections include Your Son (The Florence Kahn Memorial Award) and Rotary Phones And Facebook (Dancing Girl Press). She
teaches at the University of Maryland. Check out her work at artemisagain.wordpress.com.
Joe Evans works in education, having previously been a stained glass artist, a company director, a gardener and a musician. His poetry has been published in The SHOp (Ireland), Lighthouse and Sarasvati as well as various online collections. He is forty-four and has two children.
Timur Cetintas is a student at the ETH Zürich studying pharmaceutical sciences. He took his first serious photos aged fourteen with a Nikon D60 (which he still uses today), and since then he rarely goes anywhere without his Nikon. He owns only two lenses, as he believes that you don't need the most complicated equipment to take good (even great) shots - simplicity often gives the same satisfying results as expensive devices.
Supporters
This issue of Neon was made possible by the kind support of:
Destry (Author of Adventures In Misogyny)
Mark Edwards
William Park
Lynne Jones
Lynsey Griswold
Mark Vanner
James McKenzie
Julienne Grey
Evan Williams
Jo Celia Simmonds (sewingisforgirls.blogspot.com)
Penny Michalski
Zoe Gilbert (mindandlanguage.blogspot.com)
Alina Rios (www.alinarios.com)
Claire Connors
David Holton (@davidholton)