Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

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Leslie Anne Rexach DEATH MAGAZINE They say hell is best for its company Who shall I interview for next month‘s piece Pages left alone No words to fill the void What stories shall I tell Should I write about this drink Dripping in sin Raising questions about a religion that does not exist I‘d much rather be in hell Burn the pages of my death magazine Sin into cinders Never to look back to the interviews I did with myself Even if I lose my job I continue to do as I wish until my subscription expires 94
Beatriz Alzate Rodriguez A STORY OF A LIFE SAVED That place had a name, but I couldn‘t pronounce it at the time, and now I can‘t remember what it sounded like. I know a few facts. Such as, it was on the Pacific Coast of Colombia, about five miles from the Ecuadorian border. I suppose I can Google it now, but I don‘t want to. I want to remember it as nameless place. It was the summer of 1975, which was the summer after my twelfth birthday, when my sister and I were in Cali, Colombia, my father‘s birthplace. It would be less than ten years before the world heard about the Cali Cartel and about five years before I knew what cocaine was. My father had taken us there to visit his family, my mother stayed behind in New York. He was happy, the happiest my sister, Rosa and I had ever seen him. It was the first time he had seen his family in twenty years. To two girls from New York, Cali was only what our father had told us it was -a beautiful city set in a tropical valley, a virtual paradise. As we were growing up, he told us stories of Cali. He told us how the city of Cali was a place where everyday was Christmas, just as his father must have told him that the streets of New York were paved with gold. We met aunts, uncles, and many cousins, who previously we had only known as faces in black and white photos in the family album. We were supposed to be especially excited to meet our uncle, the great doctor, who had been a visiting professor of Medicine at Oxford and soon to be at Harvard. It was him, who my father used as an example. Study hard so you can be a doctor like your uncle, my father would say. My uncle the great pride of the family the one for whom my father dropped out of elementary school to help support. He would hitch rides with truckers, who paid him to talk enough to keep them awake as they drove all night on treacherous mountain roads. When my father was old enough, or rather tall enough to reach the pedals he became a driver himself. He did this to pay for his brothers, and sisters, private school education so they could become members of Colombia‘s elite. We enjoyed our time in the city visiting the country club and seeing the colonial churches filled with their Spanish splendor. One day at the country club my father and his brother sat together drinking coffee at a poolside table, while we splashed around in the pool. They looked very much alike they shared the same long nose and black wavy hair, features my sister had as well. I resembled more my mother. It was some time that day, my father‘s brother, the great doctor, asked if he could take my sister and me along on his vacation. My father gave him permission. ―Your uncle invited you to go with him to the beach.‖ My father said, before he left Cali to get back to work driving a truck in New York. ―How far is the beach‖ I said. ―Past the selva,‖ he said. I looked at my sister and her at me. Neither of us understood. My knowledge of Spanish was limited. I was able to follow most conversations if they weren‘t speaking fast. I understood everyday words in Spanish, but selva was not one of them. ―What‘s that‖ I said. ―The jungle,‖ he said. My father went on to explain that we would have to take a plane over the mountains to get there and when we return we would spend the rest of the summer with our aunts and cousins in Cali as originally planned. A couple of days later we left on a twin propeller plane. The plane rattled and shook all as we passed dangerously close to the top of several mountains. We were grateful when we finally landed on a dirt runaway on the edge of a town. They called it a town. I didn‘t know what it to call it. The entire place was nothing more than a few wooden buildings along side the dirt road. It was my first dirt road town, which was quite a shock to a young city kid like me. It was more of a shock 95
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downtown brooklyn a journal of writ
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he can see his smiling reflection i
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Magdalena slithers her key into her
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to watch vigilantly over sterile fi
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Should I reach down and cup the pac
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Alicia Berbenick STABLES I had to k
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Mr. Tate beat her after that. He be
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Wayne Berninger GUESS WHO I CUT IN
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John Casquarelli NATURAL MOTION OF
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I came searching for rain hoping to
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Alane Celeste THE HAVE-NOTS Flies h
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Nik Conklin HOLLYWOOD HILLS Hilltop
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Sing me that song of Purple mountai
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THINGS I LOVE I love fine porcelain
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Wendy Eng FOUND POEM: BEAUTY IS ART
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―I think I‘ll check out the buf
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―No.‖ I search for something th
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warm for this heavy cover and I‘m
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theme song to ‗The Stripper‘. I
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I’m telling you, you gotta rememb
Page 43 and 44: MAKE ME TO HEAR "Make me to hear jo
Page 45 and 46: Aimee Herman DEGREE OF DARK SPACE F
Page 47 and 48: Katherine Hogan BY THE LAKE —with
Page 49 and 50: SAPPHO TO THE MAIDENS What did Sapp
Page 51 and 52: He shook his perfect pointer and ca
Page 53 and 54: AND LATER I SPEAK in a minute I clo
Page 55 and 56: ARRANGEMENTS you can start anywhere
Page 57 and 58: FIELD RECORDINGS No pronunciation o
Page 59 and 60: Giuseppe Infante DINNER FOR TWO Onc
Page 61 and 62: ―You got a woman‖ he said looki
Page 63 and 64: Belynda Jones RED THRONES Amidst it
Page 65 and 66: Jamey Jones AVENUE VISION 1 At prec
Page 67 and 68: LIKE THIS —for Steve Bailey it‘
Page 69 and 70: Kate FOUR POEMS These poems appear
Page 71 and 72: Anna Lindwasser BIRTHDAY sometimes
Page 73 and 74: maybe you could learn to love my ra
Page 75 and 76: even if you message me five minutes
Page 77 and 78: i don't know what living is, but i
Page 79 and 80: Elspeth Woodcock Macdonald IN CLASS
Page 81 and 82: PACKAGE Do you feel me calling you
Page 83 and 84: Uche Nduka HALF PAST ZERO no hard f
Page 85 and 86: Steve Newton DRIVING WITH ABSENT FR
Page 87 and 88: Jon L. Peacock Ferry to the Mainlan
Page 89 and 90: ―I‘m fucking going to bed,‖ r
Page 91 and 92: Nothing can be turned down, or sile
Page 93: GEESE NO MORE They killed the geese
Page 97 and 98: Thankfully, the house we stayed in
Page 99 and 100: We were all in the water now. I was
Page 101 and 102: steady with both her hands and her
Page 103 and 104: Lisa Rogal SO MANY THINGS ―You ev
Page 105 and 106: ehind his back like a school teache
Page 107 and 108: Kat: Maybe you should go 2 ER Me: I
Page 109 and 110: Then she hears the crash: a sound l
Page 111 and 112: developmentally delayed. The neighb
Page 113 and 114: P. J. Salber COIN FOR CS You be you
Page 115 and 116: Micah Savaglio A VACATION WITHOUT S
Page 117 and 118: Cancer. FRITZ Pause. FRITZ sets the
Page 119 and 120: Well, level with me. I don‘t unde
Page 121 and 122: THE PARENTS OF AABB1 The parents of
Page 123 and 124: hair on a g- string sing 123
Page 125 and 126: unmentionable slink ambles able (sa
Page 127 and 128: serious cloth loath to fold to how
Page 129 and 130: Jean Verthein CONTINUE Eve disappea
Page 131 and 132: Sarah Wallen OPOSSOMOON —an excer
Page 133 and 134: or spears. Everywhere there are roo
Page 135 and 136: PESTILENCE On a swing at the park.
Page 137 and 138: And somewhere a building is going u
Page 139 and 140: According to the weather lady The c
Page 141 and 142: You are slipping away In the silenc
Page 143 and 144: io notes Ana Almurani is an alumna
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directed the world premiere of The
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