REALITY DREAMING BY LINDSAY SMITH 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 97

Edwina uncrosses her legs, knocks the table, spills her coffee. Jack reaches for a paper napkin, knocks the table, the coffee spills again.

He stayed in America, she says. She pushes her black plastic-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. They slip back down. She squints at the Eiffel Tower poking up from behind an apartment block across the street.

It was hard at first, being apart. In the end we got used to it. We got used to the distance. She takes a sip of the cold coffee. I went back to America. I was with him when he died.

She turns to Jack. You’re the only one I can talk to.

A bus pulls into the kerb a few feet off the table. A dozen people stare at them.

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DREAMSCRAPES BY STEVE BREYMAN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 139 PREVIEW

Blake dreamed of a lost ant—a glow-worm and beetle helped him find his way

I don’t remember my dreams

Poe had a holy dream that cheered, steered by a lonely guiding spirit

I don’t remember my dreams

Whitman dreamed of a City of Friends, invincible to attack

I don’t remember my dreams

Dickinson thought it good to dream, preferred it to bloody reality

I don’t remember my dreams

Yeats, a poor man, had only dreams to offer his lover, please tread them softly

I don’t remember my dreams

Hughes dreamed hopefully, and wondered what becomes of dreams deferred

I don’t remember my dreams

STEVE BREYMAN

I’m a veteran of the US Army and a former campus radio public affairs broadcaster. I have run a State-wide environmental justice organization, worked in the Office of Climate Change at NYSDEC, and I;ve been a fellow at the US State Department. I live near Washington DC with my dog Muddy Waters.

CHOP SUEY BY KATHLEEN J STOWE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 003

'“I like the color of your hat,” I said. “It matches the pattern in your scarf—and your eyes, too.”

My sister adjusted the bright blue cloche she wore, tugging it down over her ears. “Yours fits much better,” she said.

“Not really. And it’s such a dark ugly shade. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I bought it.”

We sat at a table next to the window, in the long gray shadows of a January afternoon. Too early to light the small lamp with a chartreuse green shade that sat in the center of the table. And probably too early for dinner, but we weren’t the only ones in the restaurant. My sister moved the lamp to the windowsill. Her hands were restless and she repositioned the ashtray as well.

It might have been that she was simply hungry—we’d already ordered egg foo yung for her and shrimp lo mein for me and the service was usually fast even with the crowd for the early bird specials—but I thought her hands twitched and fluttered for another reason.

We’d agreed to meet to discuss last minute wedding plans. Mine not hers. I mentioned the problems with the bridesmaids’ corsages. And we laughed over our mother’s dress.

“Is she still calling it mauve?” my sister asked.

“Oh, yes. No one’s going to convince her it’s periwinkle.”

“And what about the catering?”

I smiled. “Oh, the catering is just fine.”

A Chinese girl delivered two plates of steaming food. With a bright smile, she asked, “Chopsticks? Soy sauce?”

I unwrapped my chopsticks, while my sister used a fork to scrape away the brown gravy that coated her egg foo yung. “You could send it back if you don’t like the gravy. They’ll do it over for you.”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “And anyway I wouldn’t think of imposing.”

“No, really.”

“Actually, I love the gravy.” She lifted a limp bean sprout into the air and dangled it in the space between our two plates. “But what exactly is this?”

I laughed. “You didn’t have to come here to eat. We could have gone somewhere else. I didn’t know you didn’t like Chinese food.”

My sister let the bean sprout drop to her plate, then picked up her knife and began to cut her food into bitesize pieces. She stopped her careful micro-surgery to look across the table at me. “Speaking of likes and dislikes, what is it exactly you like about this man you’re about to marry?”

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OCCUPATION BY WINDY LYNN HARRIS 34TH PARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 03

I deferred to my husband to handle the conversation during the meeting with our financial advisor at the bank. We sat in the masculine world of investments at the desk of a man in a suit. Our chairs were pulled up close. The sheets of paper were between the two men, just a little too far to my left to see clearly. I listened politely as my husband answered questions about our stocks, life insurance, and account balances.

My husband and the suit spoke the language of men: deep tones and full-size words. They were assuring each other of their intelligence with shared advice and guffaws. The men sized each other up during this and decided on a rhythm for their dialogue. I watched the predictable exchange not really hearing the words, smiling when faces briefly turned my way.“Do you work too?” the suit asked.

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MAN & TROLLEY BY ALAN EMMINS 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 001

I see the trolley with the flags, and once again it is loaded with big black bin bags. The market is on in Union Square, people sit at tables selling paintings photography and crafts. I ask some of them if they know who the trolley belongs to.

“That guy is a total asshole,” comes the first reply. “Stay away from him!” “You don’t want to meet that guy,” comes the second reply. “Trust me!” Before I ask anybody else, I see him for myself.

He is a black man in his mid to late 50s with a grey curly beard and glasses. His wears jeans and a Day-Glo orange workman’s bib that are dark with grime and dirt. He looks livid and moves angrily. But then who wouldn’t? Whenever he finds a can or bottle he drops in into a big black bag. When I say the bag is big, if he is 5ft7, the bag is 5ft. He fills the bag to the very top, leaving just enough space to tie a knot. He appears oblivious to all those around him. He is like a machine, unrelenting. His expression is irate, tight. He looks ready to trample anybody that gets in his way.

Is this a man to speak to about canning? I have already canned with JR and Lisa. Is there any more to know?

The thing with this man here, is that he just doesn’t seem approachable. Which is exactly why I must approach him. Also he is canning in a different way. He is not canning until he has enough for some beers, he is canning until he can’t carry any more.

But should I just present myself now or wait until he has finished collecting cans? I don’t have the answer, but the man looks so angry about life that I am almost afraid to approach him. Still I wait.

He takes his beaten baseball cap off and finishes his drink. He takes a little look around the park and then walks over to the trolley, which contains three more gigantic bags, all bulging to capacity. He removes the bags from the trolley one by one.

He attaches one bag to another by tying rope to each of the bags knots. He does the same to the other two bags. Once they are secure he takes two bags, placing the rope over his right shoulder and he walks them to the entrance of the Union Square subway. He comes back to the trolley and picks up the other two bags. He walks them to the entrance of the subway. But this time he doesn’t stop, he takes them down the steps and walks them over to the service gate that is twenty yards in. He climbs back up and, collects the other two bags. He signals for the attendant in the booth to open the gate.

Click.

He slides all four bags inside the gate so that it can be closed. Then he throws two bags on his shoulder and walks them 50 yards, through rush-hour commuter traffic, to the top of the stairs that lead down to the 5 Train.

He goes back. Comes back. Down.

Up.

He walks the bags, two at a time to the far end of the platform and stands waiting for the train.

And this seems like as good a time as any to introduce myself.

After the usual explanations, homeless, England, book etc...

“Alan.”

“Preston.”

Preston speaks to me.

He says, “I been doing this 15 years, you know why?”

“No.”

“America is the land of the poor. Home of the idiot. This is what I have to do to put food in my belly cos the white man has had his foot on the neck of the black man forever. But not me, you try to tread me down and I’ll put you on your back! If you try to talk down to me I’m gonna put you on your back! If you’re gonna come to me you better come as you. White people treat the black man like shit.”

He says, “I do this ‘cause I ain’t gonna play your white man game no more!”

And, “I ain’t gonna be treated as second-class and fight my brothers for the little tidbits of life the white man throws our way every now and again.”

And, “I ain’t gonna fight my brothers and sisters the way the white man wants me to.”

And, “I got my own way of surviving.”

And, “I don’t need you!”

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MOTHER’S DAY BY STEPHEN KAHN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 86

I woke up to four missed calls from Zed. Before I could throw off the covers the phone rang again. “He’s not picking up, Felipé. I told you he wouldn’t.”

“It’s still early,” I said.

“It’s Mother’s Day,” Zed said.

“I know. I’ll be over soon.”

I had not seen Zed’s place in almost a year, not since she said we would be better off just friends. A grand house. Once the local freemasons lodge, Zed said. She had dreamed of raising her boy in the house but when that dream died the place fell by the wayside of lonely living, the knocker tangled in ivy, the gutters clogged with black leaves.

It had just stopped raining and the only sound was water dripping from the trees. On the steps of the wraparound porch, I remembered where not to step, Zed would hold my hand and point to the rotted boards.

We worked in construction, met on a job site, a new Olive Garden in Harrisonburg. She was the civil engineer and I was her helper because I spoke better English than the rest of the crew.

We never even shook hands on the job. But the guys would tease me, ask what color thong she wore, as if they never peeked. Tu novia this, tu novia that, tu novia needs you, tu novia owns you, and that may have been true because at that time I would have done anything for her. But time is time, always unfolding, less and less of it forever.

I found Zed around back sitting on the little wall circling the fishpond. “Still good,” I said, patting the wall. I had made it with hundreds of slates out of the brook that ran behind the old apple-packing garage.

“It’s good to see you too, Zed, especially not on a workday.” She looked ready for the field though, dirty blue jeans, a checkered short-sleeve button-down, muddy boots, neon vest slung over her shoulder. The lengthening days had worked on her farmer’s tan, kissed her blonde hair a shade lighter.

She was staring at something, a look full of wonder or a dead-eyed gaze, I could not tell. I sat beside her and traced her sightline. Through the overhanging tree limbs I spotted a bird gliding through the air.

“A hawk,” I said.

“That’s not a hawk,” Zed said, “that’s a vulture. But let’s say if we see a hawk this morning it’s a sign that we’ll see Daniel, too.”

“Sure,” I said, “but I have a feeling we’ll see him either way.”

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FAUX KING EARTH, WIND, & WE ARE ON FIRE BY BEN UMAYAM 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE ISSUE 133

I am used to protests. I remember in the 70s pulling into a rest stop in Maryland, buses full of queer folk running in to pee. Act UP, Dignity, Dykes on Bikes attending a protest, gay bowling league after, drinks at The Boots and Saddle late.

At the Denver No Kings, the 70s people are a group of “Are You Experienced” folks, with their canes, walkers, ski poles. Friend Barb says the young ’uns find out from the oldies what to do at these things.

We come to the big city Denver, big protest rally. Other reason, we have tickets to Earth, Wind & Fire at Fiddler’s Green.

No Kings. It is organized. Yet disorganized. We approach the Colorado State Capitol, walking down 16th. It used to be the 16th Street Mall. After four years of renovation, torn-up streets, they now call it 16th Street. Just that. Even though it really is like a mall now. It is one big walkway.

We are fashionably late, you know gays. People are already walking away, signs pointing down.

There are no scheduled speakers, just some impromptu music under a tent. No Band. No Dylan. No Neil Young. A local bluegrass group sings about the mountains.

A big bear bearded guy wears a blue grass skirt, a long one, he sticks out in front of the audience. When he sways, his coconuts threaten to stick out as well. The gays, again, long experienced with this.

We catch this when we arrive. Aha, I conclude hence the early exodus of people.

The numbers are in and about 250 thousand. Like Arlo said, “That’s a quarter million people man. You guys have closed the NY Thruway.” Sixty years ago, in this case, the NY Thruway is the RTD, the Regional Transportation District. Downtown Denver closed due to the events happening today. So says the guy on the PA system. Sixty years ago, “such a long, strange trip it’s been”.

Some of the protest signs are scruffy, last-minute scribblings on cardboard. A lot of NO FAUX KING WAY. One that stands out is NO DICK TATERS.

We do a lot of walking, more so than on our summer trip thru the ruins of Pompeii. We have walked to and from the Union Station. Our steps app proves it. 16 thousand steps down 16th Street, no longer the mall.

We hear reports from the birthday parade, updates on the big screen at the Noodles R Us. We watch the organized/disorganized shuffle of the armed forces. Not the stylized choreography of North Korea or the Russians. Someone yells over their pad thai, “Well what do you want, these guys are trained to fight, to defend our country, not to march in birthday parades.” Next to us a gal yells out with a mouthful of bolognese, “Not to prance like tin soldiers in some Nutcracker fantasy.”Later they are saying, “Let’s give him a show by not giving a show.”

No Kings has shut Denver’s transit system downtown. “Yas queens,” we shout boarding the delayed E that will take us to the F that will takes us to the K and G. Takes an hour, normally a 25-minute trip.

The concert. It is hot, radiant at Fiddler’s Green and although we arrive an hour early, the line at security is long, long, long. In our seats the setting sun is a hot one. It is a wait for E, W & F to take the stage.

I think about this music, the 70s post-innocence after the summer of love Woodstock, the burning of LA. The Motown music that bridged between black and white gives way to two divisions on the Billboard charts, black music versus white music, the line drawn thicker as the decade ages. Earth, Wind & Fire are formulaic, a sound that recording conglomerate Columbia pushed and defined, a 70s R&B music for everyone. It defied the trend with music that united the divide between black and white in America. This audience at Fiddler’s Green, like Colorado, is mostly white.

Philip Bailey, a native of Denver, his falsetto soars above it all, him at age 74. Google says he has a four-octave range. A bold beautiful black Julie Andrews, rising to the sky like Mary Poppins, thrilling the crowd. A different time, a different age, the 70s. A symphony of tight three-part horns, intertwined with a trio of funky bass and two rhythm guitars, that wail like solid rock, and with the trio of harmonies topped with Bailey falsettos, all held together by the Maurice White arrangements, long-gone Maurice White, a genius like the other recently departed Brian Wilson. Poetry in audio this throwback to a past age.

And this Denver day all takes place on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the escalator ride down the tower on 5th to the music of Neil Young, Rockin’ in the Free World. Young threatens this first presidential campaign never to use his music again.

The Earth, Wind & Fire encore is the iconic song September, the defining Filipino line dance.

The line dance, arguably, was invented by Filipinos, a sort of Electric Slide version of The Hustle danced by not two people, a couple, but by a group, a line of people. Go to a Filipino wedding and the whole room will literally line dance to September. Perhaps it is the catchiness of the tune that Filipinos like me relate to.

More likely it is the irony. The song line goes, “Do you remember, the 21st of September.” September 22 is the date when the first Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines. The song is not about this eve. Filipinos have appropriated the date, a celebration of the innocence of the Philippines before its darkest day.

On this eve of the 10th anniversary of the escalator ride, I wonder if this encore, is the celebration, the jubilant calm before the faux king declares martial law on trumped-up charges of insurrection.

ONE MORE THING BY STEFAN SCHUMACHER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSSUE 001

My father wasn’t there. He was meeting a woman at the bowling alley. “I’ve got what you call a romantic date,” he said to me.

“Oh, where is it?” I asked.

“It’s down at the bowling alley bar.”

If I was who I am today I would’ve said, ah, the bowling alley bar. That’s very romantic. Especially at three o’clock in the afternoon.

But I was only 16, and at 16, you’re barely past the level of mental retardation. So I’d thought nothing of it and watched as my dad put on a shirt (he was bare-chested when he told me he was leaving), grabbed his keys, and drove off down the narrow driveway in his old VW Bug with the passenger seat missing.

I didn’t live with my dad, and didn’t spend much time in his house. The only TV he had was a black and white with a rabbit-ears antenna, so I started snooping around.

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TWO SHOTS RANG OUT BY INDIGO MAGAÑA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 106

The 20th President of the United States James Abram Garfield was shot twice on July 2nd 1881 by Charles Julius Guiteau. The President lay ill until he died on September 19. In a letter written before he was shot, Garfield had said, “Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning and it is best not to worry about either.”

My name is James Garfield too. I wonder what good my parents saw in naming me after him.

I found out about him in a letter from my dad. Dad was a history professor with an encyclopedic knowledge of American presidents. He wrote to me about James Garfield but spared me the details of his death.

That was the last time dad wrote to me, but I had only to wait a few months to hear about Garfield’s assassination.

I had stolen something or broken something of my sister’s—I don’t entirely remember—and getting no proper revenge from our mother, my sister took it upon herself to tell me the story of Garfield’s death, sparing nothing.

Opening one of the history books dad had mailed us, she turned to a black-lined etching of a figure with a smoking gun and President Garfield clutching his back and screaming.

“Do you know who this is?” she asked. She sounded genuinely curious, and I looked at the page for a while, wanting to have an answer for her.

“No,” I said, finally. The image frightened me, and I was confused. I’d only seen my sister open father’s books for school, and she’d certainly never spoken with me about them before.

“This,” she said, a pleased smirk going up one half of her face, “This is–you!” She pointed at the shot man.

“No, it’s I not!” I said. I felt a rush of terror. I knew it could not be true. Father’s books cared very little for living men. But even so, I could not help but stare into the eyes of the dying man. I didn’t have a beard, but his eyes? Well, I had eyes too, didn’t I?

“Yes, it is you!” my sister snapped, “That man is James Garfield. That’s your name isn’t it?” Her voice took on a high mocking pitch.

“Yes, but–no! I’m not him. Take it back!” I felt like crying, and this only encouraged her.

“Yes, it is you. That’s what’s gonna happen to you.” She closed one eye and pointed two fingers at my head. “Bam! Bam! Just like that.”

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GABRIELLE ESPOSITO

Writing has been a part of my life since late one night I read a sentence by Stephen King: “You must not come lightly to the blank page.” I straight away grabbed my journal and wrote four pages of utter nonsense.

From day one Mr Christopher DiLeo, horror author and teacher extraordinaire, who taught my creative writing class, held my attention, every student’s attention, with the way he moved around the classroom as if it were a stage and we were an audience in the dark, far from his view but close. He read aloud short stories, poems, and plays, and every word jumped out in full, living color.

He required students to read a chapter from Stephen King’s On Writing. It was late, maybe 10 o’clock at night, but I wanted to finish the reading before class the next day. I was sitting up in bed, holding the photocopied paper to the bedside lamp. I read something fantastic. King wrote, “You must not come lightly to the blank page.”

It is a statement of boldness. It is a statement of fearlessness. It calls for you to explore whatever the fuck you want to explore when you write and make no apologies. On a blank page you can be as detached, forceful, present, quiet, disgusting, or as clever as you please. On a blank page you are nothing and everything. But whatever you decide to be you must take pride in your work, as King calls for you to enjoy the risk of a blank page.

Writing means whatever you want it to mean. There is no one reason why a writer writes. Some of us don’t even enjoy the knuckle-breaking work it takes to complete a work that will never really be “finished”. I am of the opinion that nothing I write will ever be “finished”. There is always some word that can be improved, a thought-thread that I can delve deeper into, or a paragraph that isn’t working. It’s part of the fun, at least for me. I write because I enjoy it. Furthermore, I enjoy the risk-taking it requires to put more than 30 hours of work into a story that may never be seen by anyone else. Carving out precious moments of before-work dawn to write is part of the challenge of persistence. I like to think that these moments I steal to write are working.

I’m just the cable repair guy.

There’s enough in my bank account to hold my apartment down for another month. And now that I’m thinking about it, cable repair is a special kind of shitty job.

SERVICE CALL BY GABRIELLE ESPOSITO 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 85

My phone rings and before I even look at the caller ID, I know it’s my boss. Lou’s going to chew me out for being late. It’s humiliating to get yelled at by Lou, not because he’s clever with his insults but because he’s so stupid that it’s degrading to work for him. Might as well get it over with. I take a deep breath and answer the phone.

“Hello Lou.”

“Can you please explain to me why Mr Newman had an hour-long conversation with me about how to run my business?” Lou said.

I’ve learned to understand Lou through whatever food he has in his mouth. This time it’s something greasy, something that really slimes up his vocal cords.

And Lou looks exactly as he sounds, a big guy with a gut, a wreckage of teeth, and a backstory about his wife divorcing him. Rumor has it that Lou lived in a ritzy house down by the Hudson River before they were divorced. Now he lives on Grand Street in the city of Newburgh. Being lucky to Lou means waking up to find that your tires weren’t slashed overnight. It almost makes me feel sorry for him. Almost.

“Mr Newman is a complainer,” I say. Mr Newman is a 78-year-old man who accidently switches the television to HDMI2 at least once a week and can never figure out how to get it back to HDMI1 even though I’ve shown him 17 times.

Mr Newman calls Lou to tell him that I arrive too early. I was only trying to get it over with.

Today I arrived a half-hour past the four-hour time slot. It wasn’t my fault though, not really. I stopped off for breakfast at a diner and the server was slow. That’s not my fault.

“Don’t be wise with me,” says Lou. Wet, heavy drops of cheese fall on wax paper. “You’re a smart kid. Start acting like it, otherwise we’re going to have a chat.”

“If I were smart you’d be driving around and I’d be the one sitting at a desk,” I say. I mean it as a joke but there’s too much bite in my voice. Lou can hear it. It’s too much to miss, even for him.

“How many jobs do you have left?” asks Lou.

“Just one, in Newburgh,” I say. I was going to stop off at a QuikCheck to grab a milkshake but it’s out of the question now.

“Stop by the office after that. We’re going to talk.” Lou hangs up.

My stomach twists thinking about Lou slurping down an Icee as he tells me how useless I am. The GPS tells me to turn right. I guess it would be fine if Lou fired me. There’s enough in my bank account to hold my apartment down for another month. And now that I’m thinking about it, cable repair is a special kind of shitty job.

It’s like you’re an unnoticed spectator to people’s lives. They yell at the dog, their significant others, or their kids. At one call the cable box was smashed to bits. When I asked what happened, the man said, “Television makes me lonely,” and then he asked my sign.

I see so many people who talk over their screaming children and so many sad old people who tell me their teeth have gone soft and they can’t drink soda any more. Their faces come to me late at night. I sink lower into the driver’s seat. I’m making myself depressed.

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34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 003

Raymond Federman knew Samuel Beckett not only as a writer but as a friend. Federman, a French-American writer who always spoke with Beckett in French, said: “Each time I would leave him holding on to a few precious words he had given me like a fragile gift.”

The glimpses that we have of the intensely private Beckett from his friends reveal a man, a writer, driven by his commitment to words, not just any words, but words stripped bare, edited, and reduced, as if by doing this he could remove every inconsequential modifier and reveal meaning in its simplest form, the most direct form, without embellishment, without fluff.

This was in contrast to his mentor’s style. Beckett once said of Joyce’s writing: “James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.”

So it is even more moving how Beckett’s words influenced those around him. This writer who was so careful, who wrote in French to prevent himself from attempting to write for style, seemed to say the most poignant things with the fewest words.

When Federman first met Beckett, he told him that he wanted to become a writer. In response, Beckett replied: “Raymond, whatever you write, never compromise, and if you plan to write for money or fame, do something else.” Federman cherished these words and hoped never to betray them.

KOYAANISQATSI BY ANAMYN TUROWSKI 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 66

Back then, I ditched school regularly and walked to the I-10 on-ramp, put my thumb out, got a ride to a Palm Springs motel with a pool, put my towel out, and rubbed myself down with baby oil mixed with iodine. You’d think I’d have taken one look at Mom’s wizened face and realized—not a good idea. 

It would’ve been safer to hitch with a friend, but I didn’t have friends. Most motel managers didn’t notice me but once or twice I was asked to leave. Inevitably I got hit on. Some guy would come over for a conversation. Most of the time I jumped in the pool and did laps till they tired of waiting for me and left. 

Not Ben. I met him at the Holiday Inn on Indian Canyon. He pulled up an aluminum chair and sat across from me, staring intently. I was on a chaise, the vinyl slats dug into my back.

“You’re incredible,” he said. 

He had dark brown eyes and a slim build. Tall. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Santa Monica.”

“Here, let me help you,” he said. I was pulling at the strings of my bikini top. My skin tingled when his calloused fingers brushed the back of my neck as he tied them. 

“Let me show you the desert,” he said, sitting back down. He smiled crooked teeth.

I felt myself blush. 

“Are you a painter?” I asked. I’d just finished reading Life with Picasso. I’d been looking for something, maybe escape, but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t sophisticated like Gilot, nor particularly artistic. But he was an adult, easily in his 30s. I was 16. 

“I’m a pool cleaner,” he said. 

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She’s read (just) enough Nabokov to know where this is all heading.

THE NEXT YOUNGEST DAUGHTER BY JR BARNER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 114

//

The paneling in this place is either oak or hemlock

But she can’t tell the difference,

Tucked away

With downturned gaze & scoliosis slouch,

Illuminated only by her phone’s unflattering light.

Her parents dance some distance away

To some seventies R&B hit

Dashed out by the half-drunk college kid on the

Bösendorfer in the corner.

Her younger sister clamoring on about

Boogie-boarding that afternoon

With a petite blonde from Bowness-on-Windermere

While she tanned alone on the beach.

God, she wishes, half-out-loud,

To be that innocent again.

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This place seems so remote but then I spy a woman with her dog down on the beach and realize it isn’t as far-flung as it feels.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE ROSEMARKIE SEAL BY EMILY NEVES 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 103

//

A sign says, “Caird’s Cave, 1.2 km”, with an arrow. If there’s a cave I have to see it. I take up the trail, the hills I hiked earlier that day springing up to my left, a patchwork of emerald and muted rust and gold and winter-tree gray against a sky the color of an old, dingy sock. The churning bay roars softly to my right. The crunch of gravel beneath my boots, the whistle of the coastal wind, and the cool mist on my face lull me into a sort of walking trance.

I attempt the math of converting one-point-two kilometers to miles but decide I don’t care. It will take the time that it takes. Crunch, crunch, crunch go my boots.

Then I wonder what would happen if I fell. How long would it be before someone found me? I have my phone and a power bank to charge it. I could call for help. Still.

//

Ever since you died I do not fear death. All things die. All is fair because nothing is fair. Nature is not so much cruel as indifferent. She took you from me all too soon but not out of malice. All life is transitory and not a day passes without the excruciating brevity of your life reminding me. You went and then Christian went 10 years later, dumping me twice into the wine-dark depths of grief. While I did not dissolve into the abyss, its alchemical brine changed me forever.

//

This place seems so remote but then I spy a woman with her dog down on the beach and realize it isn’t as far-flung as it feels.

I leap over a stream that flows into the sea. I press higher. After a while there is nowhere further to go. I turn back and I am startled by how far down it is to the stream. I step unevenly on a rock and it flips out from under my boot. My body lurches backward, my feet sliding out from beneath me. I bend my knees like a surfer and coast. The toothy tread of my boots grips the soil, and I grab an outcropping of granite.

My heart pounds like a tribal drum and my vision quivers with each thundering contraction. I take a deep breath. I note that I might not be as fearless as I thought. In some alternate timeline, I think, I just plummeted to my death.

Making my way back down I scan the trail to the end of where I can discern it, I try to track it past the stream. I can’t. I walk closer to the bank opposite where the footpath meets the stream, and there, I see it. The path is obscured by tall marram grass this side of the syke, a few feet downstream.

Rounding a little outcropping, I glance up, and the misty majesty of the Scottish coastline stops me in my tracks. I take out my phone and frame the landscape, the rust and yellow grass at my feet, the black granite crumbling into the green-gray sea, and three cliffs beyond, like the extended front paws of giant sphinxes, each more muted than the last by the distant, vaporous air. The sea and the sky are almost the same color, the sea slightly darker and greener, and the sky holding more blue tones. As soon as I take this photo I make it my home screen.

Breathing in the cool, wet, salty air, I feel more at home here than anywhere else on earth. Here all illusions of separation from nature evaporate into the fog with every exhalation. I am the burn that flows into the sea. I am the rock and the sand. I am the dormant grasses and dripping emerald moss. I am the churning bay.

My eyes scan the terrain to my landward side, and I see a gaping black maw in the foot of the ancient granite. Pareidolia takes over and I perceive a ghastly face lying on its side, the visage of a slain giant, the trail furling out from its mouth, a lolling, serpentine tongue cutting through the marram grass.

I raise my phone and hit record as I approach the mouth. “Dare I enter?” I whisper to myself and my future audience. “I think I do.” Of course I do. This is what I came for.

//

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CARVING A NICHE BY KAREN BREMER MASUDA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 69

Jun Kosugi ran his fingers along the top of the desk. He could and would carve it into something spectacular. It was one thing he was grateful to his father for, that he’d built the desk of wood. No synthetics here. Jun could carve the desktop. He had a feeling of such joy and anticipation for what he might create. 

He had removed the plastic covering. He put it in the hallway. In the night Jun snuck out from his room and grabbed his father’s ashtray and lighter. 

He needed to get rid of the photos that had been mounted under the plastic, photos of a long-ago soccer tournament, when his team had won a first-place trophy.

Now he had no fond memories of soccer. He burned the photos one by one, watching his smiling face and those of his soccer teammates turn to ashes in the heavy cut-glass of the ashtray. 

Soccer was his little brother’s game, not his. He lived in the shadow of Nao, who did everything seemingly effortlessly. While Nao got better and better at soccer, Jun seemed to get worse and worse. Jun was benched during games for a girl on his team. 

Jun’s father went out to kick the ball around with him and Nao. But then Nao would just run circles around Jun making him feel stupid and hopeless. 

Jun would use any excuse he could to get away. He would go to the toilet and simply not return. His mother would ask him what was wrong when nothing at all was wrong, only that he did not like soccer. In junior high he got out of soccer and into art club. 

His father would say, “Why don’t you get on the basketball team?” Jun knew it would be a re-run of soccer. He would never be able to make his father as proud of him as Nao did all the time.

Jun left the ashtray filled with the ashes of the photos outside his room next to the plastic desk cover.

“What is this?” Jun’s mother woke him from the sleep he had finally succumbed to, still sitting at his desk, carving tools at hand. 

His mother rattled the bedroom door. “What am I supposed to do with this? Open this door, right now! Are you all right?” 

Jun retorted: “Leave me alone!” and then a feeble, “I am fine.” There was no lock on his door. He had blocked it with a bookcase that fit under the door handle making it impossible to turn the lever down. 

Jun’s mother was being locked out of her own son’s room. The hurt slapped across her as though her son had thrown a wet blanket in her face. 

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I just made a bank-shot when everything stop. We never seen that guy, not in our life. He come out of nowhere looking for trouble. That how weird it was, him at the far end of the roof.

BRONX ROOFTOPS BY PAMELA WALKER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 129

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Luís

We wasn’t doin nothin, just shootin hoops on the roof. We rigged a hoop we found in the trash. We play teams of five. Whole bunch, not just me and Luís, but Will and Tito. Jesus, Santos, all our guys. My team’s hot.

I got to tell it straight. Luís, he don’t listen and he too fast to play by rules. You want the truth? He Special Ed even if he read and do fractions good as me. I never choose him for my team but now I keep thinking if I would’ve took him just this once, he would’ve been right close to me.

We strip to our T-shirts and I’m sweatin. When I shoot I smell my stink, strong and bitter. If I lick my arm I taste myself but not on the roof with the boys from the hood. Be cool we say. Or die.

I just made a bank-shot when everything stop. We never seen that guy, not in our life. He come out of nowhere looking for trouble. That how weird it was, him at the far end of the roof.

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I slurped my cocoa as I pondered my next question. The time felt right for the big one. “Is Santa real?” Dad’s eyes narrowed, deciding whether he should tell the truth. “No,” he said. “Dad?” He looked over and smiled at me. “Juni?” “Is Mama ever coming home?”

ON A SATURDAY IN MARCH BY SPENCER STOREY JOHNSON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 79

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Dad nosed the car up to the curb outside Sue’s Café, the wheels displacing a wave of grey slush. Dad got out first and swung me over the icy black water. We went inside hand in hand.

We stomped our boots as we crossed the mudroom and as we pushed through the interior door we were met by a blast of warm, sweet air.

The smell of food and the rolling chatter of the diners always revived something in my father and I saw him relax.

Dad did his best to keep some sense of normal life. Mom was dying and our world was falling apart. In the beginning I only knew that she was very sick.

Sue’s café was packed, the eating, talking, breathing fogging every window.

Maura always held our booth for us. She led us over. Dad nodded to a couple of regulars. Our booth was at the big front window, the one with the Sue’s Café logo painted on it in cracked red and gold letters. I liked to peek out through the hole in the “a” at the people passing on the sidewalk.

We took off our coats, tucked scarves and gloves in the pockets, and hung them on hooks at the end of our booth.

As Dad and I slid into our places opposite one another the burgundy leather squeaked.

Maura brought our drinks—coffee for Dad, hot chocolate for me. Dad warmed his hands over his steaming mug of coffee and I counted the marshmallows. Fifteen this time. Two more than last week. I dunked them in the hot chocolate and scooped them one by one into my mouth.

I looked at the other diners as we waited for our food. In the corner by the kitchen I spotted the librarian and her husband sharing a bowl of fresh fruit. The owner of the deli where Granny bought me school snacks sat at the bar alone, hunched over a heap of scrambled eggs and a tall glass of iced tea.

I noticed a boy from school, a fifth grader, a year ahead of me, with his family at one of the big round tables in the center of the room. I hoped he hadn’t seen me. Not that I thought he knew me as anyone other than the girl whose mom was sick.

Maura weaved over with our food. She lifted the tray from her hip to the table and spread out our usual breakfast feast: two perfect stacks of pancakes.

Dad’s came plain with a jar of peanut butter. He peeled the stack apart and spread some peanut butter between each layer and topped it off with a square of regular butter.

My pancakes came smothered in whipped cream, powdered sugar, bananas, and blueberries, which I drowned in syrup.

Maura refilled our drinks, and I begged for more marshmallows, but Dad shook his head. Maura gave me an exaggerated what-can-I-do? shrug and retreated to the kitchen with the tray.

I ate my sugary mess in minutes and waited as patiently as I could for Dad to finish. His progress was measured, not cutting a new bite until he’d swallowed the one he was chewing, taking a long sip of coffee after every third bite.

I kicked my heels against the bouncy leather seat and scratched lines with a fork in my leftover berry-stained syrup. I poured a Splenda packet into a small mound on a napkin.

When our plates were cleared, our coffee and cocoa topped off, it was time to talk.

Dad looked across the table at me. “What have you got for me, Juni?”

I thought for a moment, running through the list of pressing questions that swirled in my mind. “Why am I called Juniper?”

The corners of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly under more than a week’s untrimmed stubble. “That’s an easy one. Your mama likes the smell.”

“What’s juniper, then? And what’s it smell like?”

“It’s a tree. Or a shrub.” He shrugged. “I should know that. And it smells sharp. Like gin.” He chuckled at the obvious confusion on my face. “It’s like a Christmas tree, mixed with mint and oranges or lemons. Kind of.”

I processed this information, trying to blend my memories of those smells.

“What’s gin?”

“A grown-up drink. Like beer or wine.”

“What’s a shrub?”

Dad laughed, only a small burst, but enough to draw attention from nearby tables.

“A small tree? Or maybe more like a bush. I don’t really know. We’ll have to find out.” He drew a pen from his pocket and scribbled “shrub?” on a napkin.

We stayed on plants. Why do trees have bark? Dad didn’t know. It went on the napkin. Is a tomato really a fruit? Yes. Why? Something to do with the seeds. Onto the napkin. Why do I have to eat vegetables? Because they keep your bones and brain and blood healthy. And they help you poop. I burst into a fit of giggles.

My questions wound down and Dad called for the check. He paid and we sat quietly finishing our drinks. Dad set down his mug and sighed. “Are you ready to go see Mama?”

I nodded and imitated his sigh as I put down my mug.

As we slid out of the booth and put our coats back on, I asked my usual closing question: “Is Mama coming home soon?”

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She did not exist in his head any more. Nor had she for years. The name did not anger him as it once did, but it still saddened him. And more than anything confused him. Collette was no longer a person he recognized himself to be.

NO SMOEKING BY S LEE BENNETT 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 95

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Cole’s third-floor apartment was a sweltering 80 degrees in a frigid February. Winter in the apartment felt the same as the scorching summer. He shoved his mattress to the other side of the studio from the radiator.

On occasion over the phone he’d bring up the heating with the landlord, Micah, who spoke in very short breathy bursts with mostly vague affirmations and assurances which inevitably led to little follow-through.

Cole’s neighbor across the hall informed him of the back-story to Micah’s incompetence. The neighbor knew Cole’s name while he’d never caught hers. Nevertheless he had entered her into his phone as “neighbor”.

She told Cole that Micah had inherited the property from his girlfriend after her sudden death years ago. He fell into a deep depression and pushed the apartment deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of his mind.

“It’s sad really,” Neighbor said while she ashed her cigarette on the railing of the stoop. “He should just sell it.”

Cole didn’t notice it was his turn to speak until Neighbor’s eyes narrowed and her lips stopped moving.

“Why doesn’t he?” Cole asked.

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “It’d probably suck to fail at your dead girlfriend’s business.”

She dropped the butt of her cigarette in the trash bin, hopped up the steps, keyed the door, and disappeared behind it.

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She wasn’t no Coltrane, you see. But Indonesia had one special song that she would do—Nina Simone’s Since I Fell for You. That song hit home like a fist. Every time I heard it, felt like my heart was being snared and slapped like a drum.

INDONESIA JAZZ BY ASPEN GAINER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 22

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Music sparkles off his clothes, drips like sweat from his black brow. It pours out of the gap in his front teeth. The crowd, mesmerized, hears the melody in the way he smiles, the way the light flashes from his teeth. They hear it in the way he lifts the saxophone to his lips, caressing it like a lover. His liquid black gaze pierces my own, and a grin twitches at one corner of his mouth.

A burnt-out jazz joint. The air is thick and hazy; twitching, convulsing, ablaze with Coltrane-Davis-Monk notes. He’s sitting up on stage on the edge of a stool (the well-loved and well-polished saxophone on his knee) scatting and joking with the crowd. The breathy, bosomy back-up girl adds a voluptuous ambiance. He raises his sax to his lips again and his jazzy sorrow jumps out at me and fills me up.

His was a poor upbringing, raining pain and sadness on the small boy who had nothing in his life but music. At first it was the choir music in his church; that beautiful full-lipped, full-hipped, full-bosomed gospel burst forth with enough force to shake Jesus down from the heavens, enough force to shake the seeds of music off the tree of life right into the dirt of his little soul, where they flourished and blossomed despite rocky ground.

In youth, music was his spirituality. Music was his prayer. Whenever he needed to call out to Jesus, he climbed up to the choir and belted out his woes.

And the church belted right back—wailing as he wailed, rejoicing as he rejoiced. It sealed his fate.

Jazz. Of course his mother told him it was a waste of time. She didn’t spend fifteen years breakin’ her back workin’ just so he could be a no-account jazz musician. Why didn’t he do something respectable like Hettie’s son and lead the choir? Then he could have got a job repairing houses with the church boys, with them nice respectable young men. But no, not him.

He knew it was lodged deep in him, the music seed. At fifteen he left home, knowing he would never be free to follow his heart, his compulsion, otherwise.

Got a job cleaning a bar after close. They paid him a few bucks, just barely enough to have one meal a day, and they let him sleep in the back storeroom. That’s where he fell in love with the saxophone, and with Indonesia Brown, the woman who taught him to play.

It was a love story I first heard as I passed by his toll window, looking for a taste of the Big Apple. He scratched out his story right there in his velvet-gravel tones, paying no mind to the line of cars bleating behind me.

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FENCE PLAYING BY COURTNEY LEIGH KIRBY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 11

Carla, she is sitting on

the neighbor’s fence, one leg

dangling over either side.

She is smiling because her daddy

won’t be home tonight, and she

don’t ask why or how come mama?

has all her clothes packed up

in paper bags they’ve collected

from the grocery store. (I know

I won’t see her no more, that

they are going far away and

one day, in 15 years, I’ll

hear her voice again through a

phone line and she’ll be crying about

her mama, saying she’s gone and

do I remember when we were kids?

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