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Issue IV - Love + Hate

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ISSUE<br />

<strong>IV</strong><br />

Select<br />

LOVE + HATE<br />

Poetry & Prose Oct 2024<br />

Compiled & Edited by Anita Pan<br />

THE PINNACLE 1


CONTRIBUTERS<br />

THE PINNACLE<br />

ISSUE <strong>IV</strong>: LOVE + HATE<br />

Abhishek Udaykumar<br />

Dana Delibovi<br />

Fabrice Poussin<br />

Grace Curley<br />

James Jackson<br />

Maria Marques<br />

Olivia Burgess<br />

Sarp Sozdinler<br />

Oct 2024<br />

2


contents<br />

Anita Pan Editor’s Letter 4<br />

Dana Delibovi Afterburn 5<br />

Grace Curley What it Means to Be Polite 8<br />

Maria Duran MUSEUM WORK 22<br />

Sarp Sozdinler The Tail of a Gypsy Moth 25<br />

Olivia Burgess A Poem About Lost Media 30<br />

Abhishek<br />

Udaykumar<br />

Holiday 33<br />

Fabrice Poussin Cool Steel 36<br />

James Croal Jackson The Moon is Slowly Drifting Away 38<br />

3


EDITOR’S<br />

LETTER<br />

Are there any two emotions which better<br />

encapsulate humankind than love and hate?<br />

The two have inspired countless literary<br />

masterpieces, spawned countless relationships (and<br />

farewells), and ignited the most enthralling events in<br />

history. Indeed, most prolific writers and poets<br />

began by musing about love, or hatred. As we reach<br />

our second anniversary, the Pinnacle celebrates the<br />

extraordinary amount of talented submissions we’ve<br />

received this year.<br />

We have encountered poems, ballads, plays, and stories on nearly<br />

every topic imaginable, but two enduring themes prevail: love and<br />

hate. To that end, our writers in this issue pay homage to the raw and<br />

gritty spectrum of humanity. There’s something for everyone:<br />

longing, betrayal, sex, liberation, violence, death...the list goes on.<br />

Perhaps most importantly, the pieces in <strong>Issue</strong> <strong>IV</strong> are like mirrors: they<br />

invite the reader to see themselves, reflected.<br />

We’re excited for our next journey into <strong>Issue</strong> V. But until then, thank you for reading the<br />

Pinnacle’s fourth issue, <strong>Love</strong> + <strong>Hate</strong>. We’re incredibly grateful for your continued support.<br />

Here’s to another year of great literature.<br />

Anita Pan<br />

Editor-in-Chief of The Pinnacle<br />

4


AFTER<br />

BURN<br />

By Dana Delibovi<br />

Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her<br />

new book of translations and essays, Sweet Hunter:<br />

The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila, was<br />

published in 2024 by Monkfish Books. Delibovi’s<br />

work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley<br />

Review, Bluestem, Fish Barrel Review, Noon, Psaltery<br />

& Lyre, Salamander, and many other journals. She is<br />

a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best<br />

American Essays notable essayist, and co-winner of<br />

the 2023 Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi<br />

is consulting poetry editor at the literary e-zine Cable<br />

Street.<br />

5


Your overcoat,<br />

the vermillion sundown,<br />

a crumpled bag beneath the trestle,<br />

and me, with no food all day:<br />

I stalked you on platforms<br />

watching for you in train windows.<br />

I knew you liked to smoke by Grand Central’s<br />

gray columns,<br />

to shelter from the rain. When I walked<br />

the bridge across the river, mirages<br />

of you shimmered on the far shore.<br />

Every night<br />

I moved my only light bulb<br />

from lamp to lamp<br />

in wild exhaustion.<br />

I broke<br />

my moral code when I blacked out<br />

on your bed.<br />

6


I left you long messages, one after the other, and<br />

in the morning I would find<br />

piss-full pans all over my apartment. I would find<br />

little sketches and sonnets with your name.<br />

None survived the immolation<br />

it took to get me out of there.<br />

7


WHAT IT<br />

MEANS TO<br />

BE POLITE<br />

By Grace Curley<br />

Grace Caroline Curley is a current MFA Candidate at the<br />

University of New Orleans. In 2021, her one-act play, “Something<br />

Blue.” was performed in the Sacred Heart University Theatre<br />

Arts Programs new works festival, TheatreFest. In 2022 her play<br />

What It Means To Be Polite was accepted to the Mid-America<br />

Theatre Conference's Ten-Minute Playwriting Symposium, in<br />

Cleveland, OH. Most recently, her play “Your Children Will<br />

Follow” was performed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival,<br />

and was a recipient of four stars from The Derek Awards. Curley<br />

is a current MFA student studying Playwriting at The University<br />

of New Orleans.<br />

8


Cast<br />

Cassidy: Funny and very charismatic. Is a people person and is<br />

generally confident but is still very insecure. Early 20’s.<br />

Zoe: Incredibly sweet and mild-mannered. Big heart. Early 20’s.<br />

Setting<br />

Undisclosed locatiom<br />

Present Day<br />

——<br />

SCENE 1<br />

ACT 1<br />

CASS and ZOE are sat in an undisclosed location.<br />

CASS<br />

I really believe that Jo’s sisters are a representation of all the paths in life<br />

that Jo feared taking.<br />

ZOE<br />

Feared?<br />

CASS<br />

Yeah. Was afraid of.<br />

ZOE<br />

Well how so?<br />

9


CASS<br />

Well, Amy married the man that Jo rejected.<br />

ZOE<br />

Sure, but then Jo wanted him again.<br />

CASS<br />

That part doesn’t count. She was distraught - her original answer to<br />

Laurie was no, and it, for the most part, remained that way. She didn’t<br />

want to marry him, but Amy did.<br />

ZOE<br />

Amy got to study in Europe, which was what Jo always wanted.<br />

CASS<br />

Yet Jo would have done it differently.<br />

ZOE<br />

Maybe. So what about the other sisters?<br />

CASS<br />

Well, I mean, Beth dies. She dies young. I think Jo fears dying before<br />

getting to live her own adventure.<br />

ZOE<br />

Beth was talented. She wasn’t a writer, but she was a wonderful<br />

pianist. Jo fears not being able to make something of her own talent,<br />

like Beth.<br />

10


ZOE<br />

Beth was talented. She wasn’t a writer, but she was a wonderful<br />

pianist. Jo fears not being able to make something of her own talent,<br />

like Beth.<br />

CASS<br />

I think so too. And then there’s Meg. Who settles down and gets<br />

married and has a family young.<br />

ZOE<br />

Yeah, and Jo has a distaste for it.<br />

CASS<br />

I think it’s the worst path of all, for her anyways. This particular path<br />

explores the fear of the mundane, of being boring, which sounds<br />

superficial -<br />

ZOE<br />

But it makes perfect sense. And she saw herself becoming that person<br />

if she had said yes to Laurie’s proposal.<br />

CASS<br />

Exactly. (Pause) Although…<br />

ZOE<br />

What?<br />

CASS<br />

I don’t think I would say no to a proposal from a man who in some<br />

universe is Timothee Chalamet.<br />

11


ZOE<br />

(Laughing)<br />

That is so counteractive to this whole conversation.<br />

CASS<br />

How?<br />

ZOE<br />

We spend this whole time talking about the limited options this<br />

particular woman has - but now you’re thinking about Timothee<br />

Chalamet.<br />

CASS<br />

Okay, you’re right. You’re right. I never really liked that specific<br />

proposal anyways.<br />

ZOE<br />

You wouldn’t want someone requesting that you marry them out of<br />

nowhere?<br />

CASS<br />

(Laughing)<br />

No, no I wouldn’t.<br />

ZOE<br />

Like completely out of nowhere.<br />

CASS<br />

Oh I know.<br />

12


ZOE<br />

He expects her to say yes.<br />

CASS<br />

Yes, I know.<br />

ZOE<br />

And isn’t thrilled when she doesn’t give the answer he wanted.<br />

CASS<br />

I know.<br />

ZOE<br />

I know the character is more than that… but it still bothers me.<br />

CASS<br />

How so?<br />

ZOE<br />

He thought she’d just bend to his will - love him because he wanted<br />

her to.<br />

CASS<br />

I see.<br />

ZOE<br />

You just can’t do that.<br />

CASS<br />

No, you can’t. It’s interesting… to say the least - that what was a<br />

problem then, is still a problem today.<br />

13


ZOE<br />

Nothing’s changed.<br />

CASS<br />

Not at all.<br />

ZOE<br />

How is it that almost 200 years have passed, and women are still<br />

treated in the same manner as they were 200 years ago. It’s just more<br />

subtle now.<br />

CASS<br />

Women back then were anticipated to give, and give and think<br />

nothing of it.<br />

ZOE<br />

Do you think anything has changed since?<br />

CASS<br />

I guess not.<br />

ZOE<br />

Even now, any shimmer a woman has is completely stifled by the<br />

people who just take.<br />

ZOE and CASS are silent.<br />

CASS<br />

You know, I went on a date last week.<br />

14


ZOE<br />

A date?<br />

CASS<br />

Yeah.<br />

ZOE is confused as to why CASS is bringing this up.<br />

CASS<br />

I wouldn’t say it went well.<br />

ZOE<br />

Why?<br />

CASS<br />

I’m just thinking of it now, what we were talking about reminded me.<br />

Like the way people expect things from you.<br />

ZOE<br />

Reminded you?<br />

CASS<br />

Yeah.<br />

ZOE<br />

Okay, well how?<br />

CASS is silent for a moment.<br />

15


CASS<br />

I don’t know. (Pause) It just didn’t go well. This guy- I went on this<br />

date with him once. Only once- and I didn’t text him back when he<br />

asked me out again- because I don’t know- I was too nervous to. He<br />

was so- so weird and I - I don’t know.<br />

ZOE<br />

Did he do something to you?<br />

CASS<br />

No, he was just weird. I shouldn’t have gone but I figured it didn’t<br />

matter. I got bad vibes from the start to be completely honest with<br />

you- but he asked and I didn’t want to be rude.<br />

ZOE<br />

You don’t owe politeness. We don’t owe anything.<br />

CASS<br />

Exactly, I know. I feel like I’ve been brainwashed into thinking I have<br />

to do things for others. I don’t want to hurt others feelings so I forget<br />

to protect my own.<br />

ZOE<br />

Did something happen?<br />

CASS is silent again.<br />

CASS<br />

He just kissed me. I didn’t want to but he wanted to walk to my car<br />

and I knew it was coming but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to. I<br />

didn’t know what to do. I don’t know, it bothers me but it happens to<br />

everyone, so.<br />

16


ZOE<br />

Right.<br />

CASS<br />

It just really bothers me. He probably thinks I had the most<br />

wonderful time, he probably had a wonderful time.<br />

ZOE<br />

Right.<br />

CASS<br />

So when the guy shows up at your job, knowing where you work<br />

after one off-hand comment you make, you just move on with your<br />

life, right?<br />

ZOE<br />

What? He showed up at your job?<br />

CASS<br />

Yeah- He came in asking for me, he came in with a note for me. My<br />

manager didn’t let me see it but it was probably something insane and<br />

critiquing me for not answering him when he asked me out again- but<br />

I don’t have to answer him- I don’t owe him that- I don’t have to be<br />

polite. Not again, not ever.<br />

ZOE<br />

You’re right.<br />

17


CASS<br />

I mean, he gets to live his life after this. He gets to go on and be<br />

himself for the rest of his life. The only harm done is a little bruised<br />

ego because a girl he went on one date with didn’t call him back. But<br />

that isn’t going to stop him, it won’t hinder his quality of life. He’ll be<br />

fine. I won’t be though. I will get chills whenever I hear his name, I<br />

will walk with my arms crossed everywhere I go and I will be looking<br />

over my shoulder at work and in grocery stores for the rest of my life.<br />

Five minutes out of his day will haunt me for the rest of my life.<br />

ZOE<br />

I’m sorry.<br />

CASS<br />

They will all be fine and we will carry their shit for the rest of our lives.<br />

The girls are silent.<br />

CASS (Cont.)<br />

(Defeated)<br />

He showed up at my job looking for me. You don’t do that.<br />

ZOE<br />

No.<br />

CASS<br />

And… I don’t know… I’m going to be stuck in that parking lot<br />

forever- Time will keep passing, my body will age but I will be left<br />

there forever. Does that make sense?<br />

18


ZOE<br />

It does. It makes sense what you’re saying. That one person's actions<br />

could define your life. But you can’t allow yourself to fall behind. You<br />

can’t let this dictate your life.<br />

CASS<br />

They get to be fine. It’s not fair. We give and they take and we live<br />

with the consequences.<br />

ZOE<br />

I know.<br />

CASS<br />

Aren’t you angry?<br />

ZOE<br />

I am. I’m angry for you. I’m angry for myself too.<br />

CASS<br />

I just wish I knew why.<br />

ZOE<br />

Why? What do you mean?<br />

CASS<br />

Why do men feel entitled to us? To our time? To our lives? (Pause)<br />

I’m all over the place. I’m sorry.<br />

ZOE<br />

You can’t ask yourself why forever.<br />

19


CASS<br />

I can.<br />

ZOE<br />

What good is it going to do?<br />

CASS<br />

I don’t know. Give me closure or something.<br />

ZOE<br />

You won’t get closure by doing that.<br />

CASS<br />

What do you mean?<br />

ZOE<br />

Closure has to come from you. I mean, you can ask yourself a million<br />

times “why”. You could get a million explanations, but it’ll never<br />

really make sense. The only person who can make things right in your<br />

world is yourself.<br />

CASS<br />

I guess.<br />

ZOE<br />

Put yourself first from now on. Don’t feel bad for being rude,<br />

because it’s not being rude when you have your best interest at heart.<br />

(Pause) I think we can both work on that.<br />

20


CASS<br />

You're right. I don’t think I’ll ever not be angry.<br />

ZOE<br />

Me neither, but I think that’s okay. We learn to live with it.<br />

21


MUSEUM<br />

WORK<br />

By Maria Marques<br />

Maria Duran (she/her) is an art history PhD<br />

candidate from Lisbon, Portugal. Her literary<br />

work has been published or is forthcoming with<br />

Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon<br />

Magazine, Erato Magazine and tiny wren lit,<br />

among others. Her art work has been exhibited in<br />

digital exhibitions and several zines. She is a finalist<br />

of the 2024 Lisbon Poetry Festival.<br />

22


Piece #29001 - DILS ARCH<strong>IV</strong>E:<br />

(Documental Inventory Of Lost Souls)<br />

scrap of paper,<br />

pulp and charcoal,<br />

preserved in leather satchel.<br />

Inscription of love:<br />

Milky moon, kiss me sweetly,<br />

hold me close.<br />

Bad singer, tall lily, windy hill, swift<br />

weaver,<br />

sweet beloved, hold me close.<br />

Oh lover, I go voyaging for silver beneath<br />

the cold moonlight, I go in the chain-gang<br />

as a beast with many hands.<br />

Every step I take is not my own.<br />

Our language they would stifle<br />

inside these bonds, silence dead;<br />

but the heart<br />

that praises and reveres you cannot be<br />

undone, and is yours only.<br />

23


Conversation condition of the document:<br />

poor, heartbroken.<br />

Author: Anonymous pressed man,<br />

Irish, between 1750-1800.<br />

We can tell by the curve of his calligraphy<br />

that he was hungry,<br />

would die hungry.<br />

Found in Lisbon, never sent.<br />

Found in 2013, never sent.<br />

Found, unfound, never sent,<br />

Never.<br />

24


THE TAIL<br />

OF A<br />

GYPSY<br />

MOTH<br />

By Sarp Sozdinler<br />

A Turkish writer, Sarp Sozdinler has been published in<br />

Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review,<br />

Trampset, Vestal Review, DIAGRAM, Normal School,<br />

Lost Balloon, and Maudlin House, among other journals.<br />

His stories have been selected and nominated for the<br />

Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and<br />

Wigleaf Top 50. He's currently at work on his first novel<br />

in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.<br />

25


States hear from each other from one disaster to another, your<br />

cellmate used to say (“like family members”). Like when the earth<br />

splits and swallows a village. Like when two planes ride into as many<br />

towers. When a fucker tries and blows up an airport. Take California<br />

for instance, he’d say, or Mexico at your will, where everyone talks<br />

about cartels, about how dangerous life could get in those places, how<br />

drugs run like water, what have you. No one mentions the upsides<br />

when sober. Stereotypes strangle everyone like a handwoven scarf<br />

from home, and we all battle the collective ghost of other people<br />

constitutionally similar to us, day in and day out.<br />

Today, it’s the absence of news that tells you a lot about what<br />

has become of your life lately. Just the night before, you closed your<br />

eyes to a world without hope and opened them to one full of<br />

possibilities. You aimed for a world beyond the four walls of your jail<br />

cell but ended up in this six-by-eight motel room roughly the size of a<br />

coffin. Maybe the world didn’t spin fast enough, after all. Maybe all of<br />

this was designed in a way to leave your thirty-two-year-old heart<br />

broken again and again, you who was once full of life and had<br />

chestnut color around your chest unlike the inch of blondish white<br />

regrowth invading the root of your horseshoe hair these days.<br />

Today, none of it makes a difference.<br />

Today, you turn on your laptop and embark on a journey on<br />

Google Street View. You start from your motel room in San<br />

Francisco, then click eastward once, and then click on and on. You<br />

click your way through Nevada, Utah, Colorado; from Ohio and<br />

Pennsylvania to New Hampshire; from one Portland to another, and<br />

from there all the way to the easternmost point of America.<br />

26


The nation on the screen offers you a curious vista: cascading tract<br />

house suburbs and trailer parks and grain silos and gun stores and strip<br />

clubs and hypermarkets and self-storage facilities are shaping the tail of<br />

a gypsy moth; the longleaf pines its head. The fuzzy portraits of men<br />

and women of all ages, weight, and complexion, sharing drinks in the<br />

parking lots or surviving on odd jobs or selling door-to-door magazine<br />

subscriptions or drilling at oilfields or riding along the ocean-like<br />

plateaus of the West Coast, until they flock to the next best deal the<br />

moment they get bored or run out of money.<br />

Today won’t allow any room for boredom, so you invent<br />

another game. One you have dreamt about since your days in<br />

journalism school, years before they locked you up for nothing. One<br />

with a smiley picture of yourself cropped on the sidebar, taken on the<br />

day of your graduation. With a black-and-white picture of the Pacific<br />

Ocean placed onto the header, and the Atlantic on the footer. One<br />

with a subtitle that reads, A community for the great beyond—<br />

something you came up with while staring at that old round clock on<br />

the prison yard for long, uninterrupted hours. You sketch on the<br />

screen a black circle with crude contours, then upload it as the logo.<br />

The circle is empty inside its orbit, a form without a beginning or an<br />

end, the perfect shelter for infinity. You crop and filter each<br />

screenshot of America you’ve taken on Street View, then drag them all<br />

into the body of your first post.<br />

And then that’s it: your blog is all set up, ready to share with what<br />

your cellmate liked to call the “Other Side.” With the matchless pride<br />

of an artist, you roll back in your chair and stare at the first real work<br />

you’ve done as a free man.<br />

27


The nation on the screen offers you a curious vista: cascading tract<br />

house suburbs and trailer parks and grain silos and gun stores and strip<br />

clubs and hypermarkets and self-storage facilities are shaping the tail of<br />

a gypsy moth; the longleaf pines its head. The fuzzy portraits of men<br />

and women of all ages, weight, and complexion, sharing drinks in the<br />

parking lots or surviving on odd jobs or selling door-to-door magazine<br />

subscriptions or drilling at oilfields or riding along the ocean-like<br />

plateaus of the West Coast, until they flock to the next best deal the<br />

moment they get bored or run out of money.<br />

Today won’t allow any room for boredom, so you invent<br />

another game. One you have dreamt about since your days in<br />

journalism school, years before they locked you up for nothing. One<br />

with a smiley picture of yourself cropped on the sidebar, taken on the<br />

day of your graduation. With a black-and-white picture of the Pacific<br />

Ocean placed onto the header, and the Atlantic on the footer. One<br />

with a subtitle that reads, A community for the great beyond—<br />

something you came up with while staring at that old round clock on<br />

the prison yard for long, uninterrupted hours. You sketch on the<br />

screen a black circle with crude contours, then upload it as the logo.<br />

The circle is empty inside its orbit, a form without a beginning or an<br />

end, the perfect shelter for infinity. You crop and filter each<br />

screenshot of America you’ve taken on Street View, then drag them all<br />

into the body of your first post.<br />

And then that’s it: your blog is all set up, ready to share with what<br />

your cellmate liked to call the “Other Side.” With the matchless pride<br />

of an artist, you roll back in your chair and stare at the first real work<br />

you’ve done as a free man.<br />

28


Letters indeed look grander on the screen, you’ll give your<br />

cellmate that. Those words that you have carried in your mind all day<br />

—all those years—even the commas and spaces in between, are now<br />

resonating more profoundly on the pixels of your newly launched<br />

blog.<br />

Before publishing your first post, you smoke two cigarettes by<br />

the window, lighting the second one before extinguishing the first.<br />

You get back to your desk, type in a few more lines on the screen, edit<br />

this word or that, fill in your cellmate’s email address, and finally click<br />

the SUBMIT button.<br />

29


A POEM<br />

ABOUT<br />

LOST<br />

MEDIA<br />

By Olivia Burgess<br />

Olivia Burgess is a sleepy student reading English<br />

at King's College London. Aside from her insane<br />

cooking skills and her incapability to stop telling<br />

jokes, her poetry has been featured in an array of<br />

magazines and journals, soon venturing into other<br />

genres unknown. You can find her staring at the<br />

stars on any given night.<br />

30


In a house fire, the first thing I would reach for is all my notebooks.<br />

~ Me, probably<br />

Someday, none of this will matter,<br />

the google docs, the line breaks,<br />

the little incomplete clauses like falling stars. The way it is,<br />

the I and the lyric I, all this me and myself,<br />

clawing all the way to an end-stop. Like a star plummeting.<br />

Like cryptocurrency, just blinking idly away into pixel dust.<br />

Will this all matter someday?<br />

In a way, it never will,<br />

a void, your favorite echo chamber,<br />

my desirable, delicious words bouncing off scratch-post walls,<br />

the vibrant delicacies of humankind.<br />

Think of the lost languages,<br />

the burnt texts, the words purged by silence<br />

under sun or moon or time or wander,<br />

think of me,<br />

a star and a crater the size of a heart puncture,<br />

31


the fall so delirious the words arranged themselves,<br />

the end stopped line crawling back to my senses,<br />

the way it might become worth it<br />

if I could have that shred of time,<br />

that little blinking glow.<br />

32


HOLIDAY<br />

By Abhishek Udaykumar<br />

Abhishek Udaykumar is a writer, filmmaker and<br />

painter from India. He graduated from Royal<br />

Holloway University of London with English and<br />

Creative Writing. He writes short stories, novels and<br />

essays and makes documentaries, fiction and<br />

experimental films. His narratives reflect the human<br />

condition of rural and urban communities, and<br />

explore eternal landscapes through studies of art,<br />

criticism and absurdism. He is passionate about oldschool<br />

illustrations, carnivalesque tales and marine<br />

life. He has been published by different literary<br />

journals, and has made thirteen films and several<br />

series of paintings in different styles.<br />

33


Dahlia had grown fond of her oversized hat and the way it turned<br />

her into Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I watched her<br />

stomp the cakey shore like a tourist adamant about having a good<br />

time, while the evening blinked ahead of us and resembled a Beach<br />

House music video. The sand made me imagine how the French<br />

cottages beyond the avenue would look if they crumbled to a fine<br />

powder. The black birds anchored in the listless sky dragged<br />

themselves home, and a muted ferry drifted along the horizon towards<br />

its sanctuary of ships.<br />

The coast was like the tundra when it lost sight of the sun. The<br />

winds yanked the boats out of their nests and made us feel cold despite<br />

the heat. We reclined into the corpselike mud and<br />

observed the landscape like a movie. The beach was deserted and<br />

Dahlia was listening to Helpless by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. She<br />

told me about the time she drank two bottles of Chenin Blanc and<br />

called up the Heinz customer care. She had rambled about Fanny<br />

Mendelssohn’s piano compositions and her Criterion Collection of<br />

Márta Mészáros’ DVD’s that she didn’t want to watch by herself.<br />

That evening, we spent many hours in the Vintage Inn lobby,<br />

strolling out to the porch until dinner was served. Dahlia lingered by<br />

the lawn on the cliff overlooking the sea, she refused the garlic bread<br />

that came with the salad because she was on a new diet. When she<br />

returned, she was in a better mood and finally looked around the<br />

lanternlike hall and its antique cabinets, pale crockery and crusty<br />

colonial journals. There was a print of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s<br />

Luncheon of the Boating Party hung tastelessly over a Persian carpet<br />

and a meat safe with a row of pickle pots, biscuit jars and National<br />

Geographic magazines inside.<br />

34


Dahlia explained that the painting portrayed aloofness and<br />

inhibition amongst the adult bourgeoise. The youthful characters<br />

sitting around the table and the besotted girl by the railing represented<br />

innocence, sensuality and freedom. The women demonstrated a vivid<br />

awareness of their emotions while the men in the background talked<br />

about themselves, or lingered awkwardly in the corner. Impressionism<br />

was novel for its unique brushstrokes in the1800s; but modern<br />

research had become preoccupied with the underlying narratives of<br />

art and their alignment to contemporary discourse. I sat there<br />

dreaming of Canción Mixteca from Paris, Texas, Super 8 reels and<br />

Rhonda Cams.<br />

That night Dahlia made love to me like it was a driving test. Her<br />

thrusts and caresses exceeded their natural duration, as though her<br />

intention was to assess their theoretical significance. She would stop<br />

abruptly and ask me to repeat my moves, studying me with<br />

nonchalance. Our frosty encounter reminded me of the socialites<br />

clustered in Renoir’s painting. She posed and looked through the<br />

French windows to watch the lighthouse revolve around the bay. Its<br />

soft golden beam dressed the blankets, the baked walls and her long<br />

body as I waited beneath her and tried to paint her Black Diamond<br />

Apple fragrance into my memory. Her eyes were large and still like an<br />

animal suddenly aware of extinction.<br />

The lithograph of Ferdinand Magellan above the bedrest peered<br />

downed at me while the Roman pillars in the yard with their curly<br />

white locks and flatheads deflected the rain perfectly.<br />

35


COOL<br />

STEEL<br />

By Fabrice Poussin<br />

Poussin is a professor of French and World Literature. His<br />

work in poetry and photography has appeared in Kestrel,<br />

Symposium, The Chimes, and hundreds of other<br />

publications worldwide. Most recently, his collections In<br />

Absentia, and If I Had a Gun, Half Past Life were published<br />

in 2021, 2022, and 2023 by Silver Bow Publishing.<br />

36


What might they do without the blue steel<br />

of the double barrel they hug in bed<br />

for they may hold to dear life<br />

perhaps even theirs.<br />

She boasts an arsenal below the three-car mansion<br />

a combination safe never to be broken<br />

full of lovely rounds in metal and lead<br />

but for the dexterous boy with a vengeful streak.<br />

Every risk is worthwhile so long as<br />

bearded to the navel in a sea of tattoos<br />

brandishing a flag or strange hand signals<br />

the man of the house can protect his brood.<br />

Yesterday they lost a son of six<br />

tomorrow perhaps a daughter of two<br />

maybe even a wife or matriarch at the farmer’s market<br />

still, he will stand proud on his rusty truck.<br />

In the name of a corrupted freedom<br />

we must sacrifice you see, innocent lives<br />

for the fortunes made on this are too great<br />

just as those ballots during the primaries.<br />

How many will it take for the monsters to cry<br />

it seems they are never there with their armies<br />

yet a stockpile they must have for protection<br />

from the little children and their rainbows of crayons.<br />

37


THE MOON IS<br />

SLOWLY<br />

DRIFTING<br />

AWAY<br />

By James Croal Jackson<br />

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film<br />

production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole<br />

Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press,<br />

2022). Recent poems are in Packingtown Review, JONAH<br />

Magazine, and ONE ART. He edits The Mantle Poetry from<br />

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)<br />

38


I know some things<br />

about impermanence.<br />

A photograph can fade<br />

in the sun. The moon<br />

is slowly drifting<br />

away from Earth<br />

and the days will<br />

only get longer–<br />

our love’s foundation<br />

eroded. The words<br />

we said to each other<br />

muffled by distance,<br />

then silence. Everything<br />

changes and<br />

we do not notice.<br />

39


STAY<br />

TUNED<br />

FOR<br />

ISSUE<br />

V.<br />

Arriving January, 2025<br />

THE PINNACLE<br />

40

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