The Weekly Degree° — Thirty West Publishing House (2024)

Hey. Josh here again.

I know that TWD is kaput, but I wanted to give one last shoutout. And this one is for the top 10 most viewed columns from July 2016 to June 21, 2020. Some crazy synchronicity going on, given that the #3 column was posted exactly a year ago today. So, I hope someone good at statistics can tell me the odds of that happening, or if I should play the lottery. I digress. Please check them out and maybe some more if you wish. TWD is here to stay, even if nothing new is popping up. Take care.

10. Maddie Baxter: 3 poems (Dec. 22, 2019)

9. Aakriti Kuntal: 3 poems (Oct. 13, 2019)

8. Thom Young: So You Want To Be A Writer? (Nov. 20, 2016)

7. Pratishtha Khattar: Writing, As We Must Know It (Oct. 23, 2016)

6. Julie Ortegon: 3 Poems (Oct 6, 2019)

5. James Feichthaler: An Invitation to Forrealism (Nov. 12, 2017)

4. Laura Ingram: A Response to the Return of King's Article "5 Reasons to Date a Girl with an Eating Disorder" (Jul. 8, 2018)

3. Cody Roggio: 1 Poem (Jun. 30, 2019)

2. Andrea Passwater: A Collection of Hammer Strikes (May 21, 2017)

1. Daniel Chang: Instapoet: My experience with Instagram poetry (May 28, 2017)

The whole premise of The Weekly Degree was to be based on the 30th meridian, which touches only Greenland and Antarctica. It splits the Atlantic Ocean in a virtual infinity. I guess the point of it was ‘limitlessness’ in what was to be published. And so it has been. Since July 25th, 2016, there have been countless creative and pragmatic pieces that have graced our page. Even some deceased authors have made cameos (those in the public domain AND deceased). What started as strictly a call for essays, it’s morphed into a mixed bag, but that’s kind of the point sometimes. A Neapolitan variety for exploration. For in-depth analyses. For whatever you’re not doing Sunday’s at 8 PM EST (20:00 for the international readers).

While the track record is not every week (I mean, c’mon that would be insane to have a 100% track record) it has held up very well throughout the years. It attracted readers and submitters from all around the globe, from different schools of thought and disciplines. 2020 I felt like it needed a ramping-up, so accompanying pictures were included. However, age can sometimes bring stagnation. And The Weekly Degree started becoming more of a chore as opposed to the joyful curation it once was. Readers came and went, the supposed revamp wasn’t as fruitful, and there were times when inundation with submissions, or periods of a barren submittable, threw us into a frenzy. So, again, the drawing board was set up. Votes were cast. And The Weekly Degree finally had an end date.

Could I have waited for the exact 4-year mark? Yes. Did I need to? No. When it comes to sentimentality and perceivable milestones, I think the fact The Weekly Degree being almost as old as Thirty West Publishing, is enough. And even so, the birth of Elevator Stories is what came from these hard decisions. It turned the idea of the journal into a more interactive platform. Plus, with the inclusion of Bec and Sophie, the next month or so will begin a different cosmic position and nautical alignment than The Weekly Degree. I could throw in a Phoenix metaphor, but there’s probably a poem in the archive you may come across.

On that note, for all of you contributors out there, do not feel concerned about your work. As long as Thirty West’s website is up, your work will be. Archived in perpetuity. If you need technical input for acknowledgments, simply put: (The Weekly Degree, 20XX) or however you wish to present it. If you need some help identifying your piece(s), feel free to email us and we will help out. All in all, without your work, this wouldn’t have existed, so its the least I can do for you all.

Well, here’s the last paragraph. I’m sitting on a farm in Tennessee as I write this. And while I am far away from home, I know that all of your works have essentially found a home in this journal. And that is inherently beautiful. I do hope you keep spreading the word of The Weekly Degree as you share and grow as creative people do. Small press thrives with you and from you. Stay well and take care.

Sincerely yours,

Josh D.

Editor-in-Chief

Gentrification's Monsoon

hulked metal, modern necropolis

the shallow birds of paradise

drying paint on native skin

orange beak and claw

bones of old industry

bursting gusting

her blood ticks

waiting

paint

Color By Number

You unabashedly annotated

my new copy from Hatchards.

I just wanted to read “Woods etc.”

but you were all over it, completely.

Deliberating about Alice Oswald,

Chatting about Nabokov's Pale Fire

You even pronounced it like that,

With a long “boh.” He looked at numbers,

and saw colors He saw our condition:

color by number, the confined are captivated,

as we were, your coquettish fingers

curtained over my hand

in your London flat's foyer,

seats 24H and 24K on a flight the day prior,

August, twenty eighteen.

planting again.

can flowers grow here

when we have left?

at what colour do humans

call love loamy soil?

i want to imagine

how survival will look like

when the petals are no longer red

when winds no longer carry birds to heights

and when your pictures become bitter memories

i'm learning names again

i'm now choosing colours for love

i'm pretending boys are girls now

and touching butts in colourful pants

kissing thick lips in honesty

and nursing my flowers again

they will learn to live this time

and blossom into places where

every way is the right way to

rainbow loamy soils

balloons in a saturday afternoon’s sky

i have been running for far too long

if you are going to break my legs

do it gracefully, please be merciful

because no one knows

unless he is living the situation.

it is funny how humans sleep

my cousins sleep with their legs on each other

my sisters like my mum, flat on their belly

and the rest of the world sleeps on me every night

they come for my voice

they rob me of my colours

and command me to smile

they select alphabets for me

when love is the word to spell

i’ve arrived.

i’m calling love rainbow

and flying balloons in a saturday’s sky

kicking dust to rise from the ground to freedom.

if you’re going to stop me, do it gently

break my legs, my soul but my magic will fly to where it belongs.

Jesus Sat In The Lifeguard Chair Applying Sunscreen SPF 500

while the humans attempted to walk on water. The pool was the shape of America with a max capacity of a prison. Toddlers ran uncontrolled along the rim of North Dakota and teenagers played Marco Polo in Texas. Jesus turned the water into wine so the swimmers drank and tired. When he grew bored, Jesus would watch them sink in the Deep South and allow them to drown, the bubbles popped like the end of fermentation.

All Jesus thought about was deer hunting with his father. They did it for the thrill, for the meat, for controlling the population.

More families entered the gate and lounged their lives in beach chairs. Synchronized swimmers performed their daily routine in Kansas: shop/litter/drugs/clog pipes.

Jesus sat near the sun, skin crisp like puff pastry, and cleaned his gun. He counted the deer population on one of his several hands. How many would he and his father have to kill? There was plenty of room in the freezer.

Jesus blew the whistle for pool break and everyone complained. Look at me! Each one demanded.

Jesus held the scope and sighted them between his crosshairs. He waved, Hello there. I see you.

The people dived onto one another and fucked because they had free time. When Jesus blew again there were twice as many people. They inhabited the pool like goldfish flushed down the toilet.

Jesus witnessed California dry up all Stone Age. Maine’s filters couldn’t trap all of the pests. Washington, D.C. had bodies stacked like Lincoln Logs forming cabins. People came quicker than they left.

Jesus conceived that this high vantage point would be the perfect hunting blind. He put on camouflage, ready to punch-out.

Where did Jesus go?

The pool attendees drank the sunscreen to avoid cancer.

More people came like dandelions. No one wanted to leave. All of the wine depleted and it became a mosh pit with no room to roam. They climbed on top of each other to find Jesus as if playing chicken fight.

Jesus, what should we do?

Jesus stood on the other side of the gate and told them to figure it out themselves, he was off-duty.

Foreshadowing

Did you feel it

when you were losing me

[and I glided

like a wedding ring

down a drain,

or like the wine already

thickened in last night’s glass,

slips down the kitchen sink,

or silk spilling out behind of a lingerie drawer

[to disappear and undisturbed, free from your

grasp,

handprints,

breathscent,

everything]]

forever?

The Order of Things You Asked Me to Pack

I put your toothbrush

in your only suitcase

with socks and the good

pocket knife, each an injury:

bad mouth and feet,

teeth and fingers rough

and chewed to the cuticle

[I can't stand you touching me]

and I think of other attempts at caressing

I'd prefer—

one of a real lion, with his jaw locked

on mine. I'd disfigure in godless whispers, the holiness

of my hands holding mane as supplication, throat open in bloodsong,

the pleasure of a final hymn.

Each zipper tooth a prayer, closed and complete like a rosary.

Cleaning Out the Freezer

Everything you left is consumable—

soup with garden beans labeled

in black sharpie, the Belgian beer

in the basement or cases of wine

we collected. [How addicts think love,

like life, as only consumable—

how easily I was seduced

by food: two bottles of prosecco

and a Camembert at its prime,

white asparagus and scallops,

beurre blanc stops everything

save animal brain and satiation,

cows too sick on corn to know

they're lining up for the pneumatic

gun and slice to the throat. I stumble

into our bed for the same fate:

glazed eyes, and roll over to float

out of my body once more.]

Chimichurri, lentil soup, tomato sauce,

chicken bones for stock—it all moves

to the sink to rot as I pretend I'll defrost

and eat it with the same love you used

to prepare it, regarding [guarding] the future.

After all, food and poison are

mere molecules apart.

The Apparent Weather-Makers

The whip of a lightning bolt traced across the sky and touched down on the PNC Bank, right where Ted said it would. The crack of thunder followed right after.

“Behold and maybe fear my power,” Ted announced, a little too blase, a touch of nonchalance that came across as arrogance. It was a joke. He’d been needling Nicko ever since Nicko read him an aphorism by Nietzsche, in specific this:

Just as the people secretly assume that he who understands the weather and can forecast it a day ahead actually makes the weather, so, with a display of superstitious faith, even the learned and cultivated attribute to great statesmen all the important changes and turns of events that take place during their term of office as being their own work...

“I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing,” Nicko said. “Weather in the passage I quoted is the illustrative part of an analogy that has the look and feel of truth, despite your superhuman power or powers, which don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m not impressed.”

“And now the rain will stop,” Ted said. The rain stopped, not immediately but there was a gradual, noticeable slowing from the time Ted had issued his declaration to the time rainfall completely ceased—like turning the knob of a faucet very slowly.

“Why don’t you do this all the time?” Nicko said, “You realize you could be like one of the X-Men with these powers?”

“The X-Men have someone like me, Storm. They’re also fictional. Also, this is more intuitive, less stable. I can’t sustain my weather control powers. I can’t direct them, either. They sometimes show when I need them, like just now. That lightning bolt showed up. So did the rain’s ceasing.

It was more of a sensation than any true communication, control.” Ted sighed, “Or maybe I’m just a good guesser, lots of lucky guesses.”

“There’s really no difference, huh—when you get down to it?”

“I suppose it depends on whether you’re a more skeptical kind of person or you maintain some belief in the spectacular,” Ted paused, eyes searching. He continued slowly, quietly, almost muttering the words to himself, “I’m beginning to think there’s not a difference, yeah.”

Later, though, after Nicko had dropped him off at home, Ted said to himself, “Nicko believes I have powers.”

He went to his sofa chair, sat, and turned the TV to the Weather Channel. There was the Weather Lady, object of desire. Never made in his mind to be anything but an abstraction, a

a living representation of the Petrarchan qualities of his true relationship with weather.

He went to bed that night dreaming dreams of the Weather Lady. Of the rain she foretold. Of sun she vouchsafed would be back, given time. Of tornadoes elsewhere.

He awoke to learn that during the night the Weather Lady had been taken. The article on the internet detailing her abduction was vague, but it said a witness had seen her leave her workplace and disappear in a fog that lasted mere seconds. Then the fog was gone and so was she.

The witness had been held under suspicion of having played some role in the abduction, until another witness came forward and said, “He couldn’t have done nothing” in regard to the first witness. And the second witness, as far as anyone could tell, had no reason to lie or vouch for the first witness, as they were complete strangers to one another. The second witness had a good track record of always being an upstanding friend and member of his community. The community he was from was generally admired for producing, among its members people, you could rely on.

And when Ted watched the article about the abduction’s embedded video, it showed the news commentators debating and vetting the second witness’s honesty credentials, though all agreed his credentials were good at the very minimum. They cited instances in the past of his honesty, such as admitting he’d never successfully climbed the climbing rope to the gymnasium ceiling during high school, getting a quote from his high school gym teacher who said, “Oh yeah, he could never get up there, though he tried very hard many times.”

I’ve never been responsible for the weather, Ted thought. What it does and what I do, those two things are separate, which was a pretty guilty thing to think, he realized.

His thoughts didn’t stop there, though. Ted knew he was being followed by storm clouds. He felt their presence even when he couldn’t see them. And then sure enough, out of obscurity, they’d appear for the purpose of taunting him. Yes. Had to be taunting.

“Don’t you want to see what we’ve gotten you?” Words hidden in tendrillar flashes of lightning. He knew these weren’t the bad workings of his imagination. He wasn’t simply seeing things, though he might still be losing his composure.

He went to Nicko. He figured Nicko would have some helpful insight, probably stolen from Nietzsche, probably. The insight would be drawn from what Nicko read, which was Nietzsche mainly.

“I think I’m not the person to be asking, really. I don’t read a lot or really deliberately. When I do read it’s mainly for gems. Things that are good in conversation. Haven’t you noticed how good I am in conversation?”

“Lend me your book, then.”

“I really only have the one. But sure. Here. Take it.”

“Generous of you, thanks.”

Ted held the book and read its title. Human, All Too Human.

“Well, I am,” Ted said.

“Certainly in some ways,” Nicko smiled. “Aren’t we all, though?”

“Please, Nicko. You don’t believe I have actual powers. Like, real ones?”

“No,” Nicko said, unconvincingly. He seemed disappointed by something that went beyond the nature of their conversation as if life had slowly unfurled a great big disappointment. in Ted’s mind, the thought of mysteries solved and wonders ceased. Nicko seemed to Ted prepared entirely to chase after a phantom, this delusion. The delusion of control in all things, whether supernatural or everyday.

It was fun to imagine control could be had.

Nicko hadn’t heard about the Weather Lady. Ted filled him in on the details.

“What are you intuiting now?” Nicko said.

“The weather is close.”

“Well, that’s something. And the Weather Lady?”

“Probably with the weather, right along with it. But who can know? It’s equally possible I’m losing my mind.”

Nicko nodded.

“I have great faith in your abilities, whatever they are exactly. The question becomes, how much faith do you have in them? Yes? Have you considered that unconsciously maybe you’ve had the weather take the poor woman away for you?”

“Why would you even ask that?”

And just like that, Nicko began to rain. Glared at Ted. A thunderstorm. Peeled away skin and the lingering tatters of dress, all the affectations of being human.

“This is one of those things not easily solved?” Nicko said, now a cloud in the middle of a room.

“This was never about her. She was always your figment. Now you decide if I am too, and if a figment, of what exactly?”

Ted could think of nothing. Easy sometimes. As natural as any response given the right set of circumstances.

Nicko was snowing now, whipping the wind.

“I could be doing your bidding, you know? You could be ruling the world or anything. Give yourself the chance,” Nicko’s words were all around Ted, echoing.

What is this I’ve done? Ted was able, at last, to coherently think. But that was it.

Too frightened for anything more.

He was whisked through glass out into the streets, out into the world, batted back and forth against the forces of unseasonable cold -- until Ted was nothing but precipitation, no different from any other drop of freezing rain.

TO KILL WITH A VIEW

“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side, and do not be unbelieving but believing” (John 20:24-29)

/ and then we / i heard he was dead / confirmed i would birth his child / and i didn’t have

the time for his sad news / how i would slip through telephone wires / benign and narrow-

winged / my husband cried that night / but i was my mother then / spun the turntable round

and walked out of my house / for what crucifies me praises the other / for at least i admit

that consciousness is a torn flap of the eye / the door of tom and the midnight garden /

the leaves that lift in the light / wounds like hammocks / my shadow / she hits me when she’s

angry / and keeps asking me / you say you’re sad / but you don’t look sad / i gave

her a chocolate biscuit and shut her up / a marble dropped from the ceiling onto the tiles in

the middle of the night /

/ and a bronzed boy / i gave him two lumps of bread / so he could move before he was molten

and molded / ammunition for the war / how the youth are fed and cleaver-clothed / morals

like hitler and he gave me a window to crawl through / i always panic in an elevator / he

skinned me / like chicken breast to avoid oil roasting in the tray / will i turn bimbo or banana

blonde / banana palm / leafy fronds and the phallus /

/ white or the black sheep / block of wool frays like hay / i call for a dentist /

for it’s usually more affectless to assume things / are men / their unassuming conjectures /

portioned on a table so i have something new to chew / how much i avoid 2-d animations /

but my husband is an earth-worker / his wife was shadow-dark and young / milk-drawn

out of a well / she had so many children and i counted them all /

/ watching cartoons when i wasn’t very young / deep regressions and how often i abscess

of caves and small closed up places / i can’t value living above ground / acrophobia /

experience and reflection occupy two rooms in my mind / but dissociation / and when all

these women / pantomime along / i secretly skirt my four walls / feeling squashed

and hyperventilation / dysfunction of vestibular apparatus / like the midday grocery store /

MY FATHER DRANK GOD LIKE LIQUOR

for my husband, my children

/ washing the / ineffable / of under the floor / scratching like i’m scrubbing / he told me i

was going to die in one full stroke / like lightning sweeps / when i think and write / hell

and lightning are concomitant / when the sky cracks open for clouds / sponges / and god

wrings them out / my aegis and the one who dreams for me /

/ falling through a tunnel / it’s not the word itself / but associations / eating a scroll

through the middle / you cannot have a whole body without a navel / pick through each word

until you can eat the whole story / till you get to the back pastry / posterior of a person /

where you carry so heavy your posture starts to bend / but my grandfather controlled women /

left them my house after i died / left it to his son / but i was never permitted to sell it / or re-

marry / his deus ex machina /

/ but she was not unfaithful / just inchoate / and all servants eventually become cold / so i

sojourned / went out into the balcony / like a mother’s pouch / because hanging is not

exactly falling through /

/ i lived with a man / one day he got rid of some of his clothes / a wardrobe / ghosts in

basement boxes / when i see them in the cupboard or that of my body / is interrupted / people

are drawers / stored like child chocolate and then even fish / when i lived with my

grandmother / i used to climb a ladder to hang clothes on the roof / animism / words and

clothes flapping / on the mount of olives /

/ we couldn’t afford to cobblestone the driveway or tessellate the porch / there was gravel

everywhere / scripture or a prescription / grit between my teeth / before bedtime / i spend

a long time picking up loose ends / bits of spaghetti from under the kitchen table / squashed

pumpkin and potato /

/ then gravel popping like popcorn / and then there was a storm and in our house / the wind

and the light washed over me / transduction of cardboard / my template body / chaos bag /

bone chilled for tomorrow’s soup / the smell of sweat or pepper / sleepless breath / heavy

mist and yesterday’s liquor /

/ because my mother / to save money / used to sell eggs by the dozen / but now there is no

heaven / / she should have eaten and fed me instead /

Dennis Wilson

Denny was

Dennis Wilson, the drummer

But drank his way,

Through jugs and jugs and

Jugs of juice and rum,

To become

Dennis Wilson, the deadbeat

Who drowned on

28 December, 1983

Peering past

The docks of Marina del Rey.

Denny was

Diving drunk,

Jumping

Off The Emerald

Surfacing

To show his audience

Of friends

Wondrous junk he’d found in the water

Like a golden retriever.

Denny was

Sabotaged by the sea,

Swallowed up

When he hit his head on the docks

And fell

Further to the bottom

Of where he’d

Already been.

A fresh 39

Trashed

Because of some junk.

Caro

My morning friend

Reminds me of sunshine

And light

Because she is always there,

Camped out in the cafeteria,

Greeting her visitors

In the day’s happiest hours.

Hanging

I’m not here because

I’m trying to

do something

big.

This is an

impulse

that I’ve had ever since I started

to feel

bad about life.

It’s inconsistent and I don’t

call the shots, really, about

what I say when

I’m here.

I might go

away for a while.

A re-

treat

from Jan to Feb,

trying

too hard to fix things.

I might be back

in March

when I feel my friends starting to

piss and pass me off,

and I will spend too much

time alone.

I might be back

in my room too often,

where the breakdowns happen.

And the cleaning ladies

will wonder:

why

is her sink clogged?

And I can(’t)

answer them:

It’s because I made myself vomit

by shoving the back of my toothbrush

down my throat.

I’m laughing

because you probably assume that

I have bulimia.

I’m not a bulimic.

I think

that I might just be a very sad

person.

And this is why I am here.

So please,

I am not trying

to be

impressive.

This is where I am

when I am sad.

60+ pages September ...

to November ...

a really bad time ...

with all kinds of men ...

of all ages.

Lived unconventionally.

You only live

the way I did this past fall

when you don’t

want to live, but don’t have it in you to

do something about the discomfort.

When you start acting

like everybody else you can understand

why your friends went quiet.

But you also feel special.

Breaking down

the way I broke

is reserved for a certain type of people

hanging on the fringes.

Not many can stomach sleep deprivation

and their feet can’t walk

up and down Bay

every night.

Not many can listen

to my music at such

high volume.

We’re the kids on the playground

who flip upside-down on the monkey bars and

hang there

and let the blood rush

to our heads

so we can feel full.

I never actually did this

when I was a kid.

I liked the swings,

‘cause I preferred attention

from one.

Swinging and chatting,

looking to what’s above

and pretending

to believe in our game through

temporary commitment.

But I hang

upside down on the monkey-bars

when everyone has gone

home for the day

Escape Routes

I dreamed of escape routes,

of emergency exits

and fiery deaths,

so that maybe someday

I wouldn’t have to come back to this place.

I wished on the first stars that came out at night:

star light, star bright,

anything I see tonight,

I wish I may, wish I might,

disappear before he shows up for visitation tonight.

But he would come

and we would pile into a truck,

arguing about who got to sit in back

because it was the furthest seat away.

Our kisses would be stolen,

souls leaving our chests a little more each time,

teaching three young girls that their bodies.

are not theirs,

and that when a man demands to be hugged,

to be kissed,

you comply or you get hurt.

Forced words of affirmation fell from our lips:

I love you,

I miss you,

Please stop wrapping your arms around me

because it feels like granite, sandpaper, and I can't breathe.

We would tick by hours,

the safest ones when you were at the bar,

but then the truck would pull in

and we couldn't run far.

And so I learned,

far younger than I should have,

that wishes on stars fall flat,

because even after we finally escaped,

the nightmares return and take their place.

All My Missing Teeth

I live in a seat of chronic disappointment

so that, if you do a fraction of a margin

better than I do,

I can slice apart my skin

as blood trickles out in sacrifice

and punishment

asking

why couldn’t I do so well?

As various therapists take my brain apart,

a verbal lobotomy,

attempting to transcribe the story of my life,

I’ll spend some time examining my failures under a microscope

in the hopes of enduring enough radiation,

enough chemotherapy,

so my body can kill this cancer.

And just as I think I am holding hands

with the best that I can do,

my aunt will ask me

why I’m not as good as my sister.

And so I stop holding hands

and hold guns and knives

and beer bottles instead.

I bite down on cement

because if I can swallow and digest,

if my teeth crack,

it is something I can do

that no one else can.

Six years later,

my therapist will sit in her chair

and challenge me about self-worth.

As my body recoils,

she’ll ask,

“What would it take for you to value yourself?”

And I’ll smile

with all my missing teeth.

On Becoming a Role Model

There was a day in the history of the world

when my niece stole my glasses,

stole my winter hat,

and put them on.

With a smile that could swallow oceans

she said,

“Look, Auntie, I’m you!”

And I remembered my mother’s words

when I told her I wanted to grow up

and be

just

like

her.

“Don’t ever turn out like me,” she’d hissed,

Words a slap in the face to a small child.

I didn’t understand then.

I understand now.

I am not my mother,

and my niece is not me.

Instead, I pulled her into my arms.

I cannot point to that day on the calendar,

because at the time I didn’t realize it was important.

Scholars will not write about the great battle

that took place within her words

because they won’t care about it.

But on that day

in the history of the world

I decided

that I would become someone

that my niece could look up to.

Lynne Schmidt is the author ofGravity(Nightingale and Sparrow, 2019) and a mental health activist who resides in Maine. She writes memoir, poetry, and young adult fiction. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively, and a five-time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee. In 2012, she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma surrounding abortion and mental health. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

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ON BECOMIGN A ROLE MODEL, her latest chapbook, officially out on 4.24.20 from Thirty West Publishing

ORDER

BRITTANY FROM HIGH SCHOOL FOUND A DEAD BODY

One day, in late May of 2000, Brittany Cassidy* told us all about the dead body she found the night before.

Graduation looming, a pandemic of Senioritis, all of us convinced we knew the exact path our futures would take thanks to the ivory towers toward which we were headed, we were lounging in the afternoon sun streaming through the skylights of the library.

Ostensibly, we were studying for AP Tests.

Brittany sat in the center of a misshapen circle of our classmates, teenagers sensing distress in the air, gravitating toward it, sharks with blood in the water.

You know how kids are.

That morning, she looked every bit the Mean Girl she typically looked, as I still see her now, in 2020, now, in adulthood, now, with hindsight bias, but there were also circles under her eyes. I remember the circles.

Brittany was a singer, she always got leads in the musicals and solos in the choir concerts, she knew how to project her voice; but the day she told us about the dead body, it sounded as if her voice was disseminating into the ether before it reached our eardrums, the quiet more a result of shock than respect for the austerity of the library.

We were 18; the rest of our lives before us.

“I was driving home from Leslie’s,” I remember Brittany saying. “We were studying for A.P. U.S. History. It was, like, midnight.”

AP exams didn’t really matter, we were Seniors, we were already enrolled in fall courses at our respective future colleges, so no one was really studying when Brittany told us she saw the motorcycle first.

“It was on its side, off the road,” she mentioned, recalling one moment in an evening the likes of which I have yet to experience, and hope never to experience, now, in 2020, now, in adulthood, now, with hindsight bias.

No one knew yet that some of us would be sexually assaulted in college. No one knew whose childhood trauma, latent, something no one could have imagined, would trigger mental illness in young adulthood. No one knew if anyone would die by suicide, but all of this would happen within that tiny microcosm of the class of 2000.

That day, in the library, we all learned that Brittany had been the first to come across the site of a fatal motorcycle accident; alone, a lone casualty, a loner.

“They said he must have skidded off the road and hit a tree.”

She found the body on her way home, and Brittany’s voice now sounded louder as she described calling the police, but it was a two-dimensional voice; flat; desensitized.

It was the voice of someone who has seen death, and, in my mind, it marked Brittany forever.

Now, in 2020, now, in adulthood, now, with hindsight bias, I see that mark on her psyche still, when she appears on my Facebook feed, when I see on Twitter that she is engaged**, the photos of her and her nephew on Instagram, and I wonder if she still sees it, too.

Brittany was the first one on the scene, and what would you do if you were a baby, practically,

driving home far too late, encountering someone, someone who could be anyone, something which ceased being anything before her very eyes?

Brittany said she poked the body with a stick.

“What?!”

The response is immediate, and nearly universal; nearly. We were naive, so few of us had any experience with death, who can understand the abstract concept of death, anyway, so nearly everyone laughed; nearly.

I remember, that’s when Brittany finally got upset. That’s when, I think, she first realized the difference, how the person she was in the milliseconds before finding the body was not the same as the girl in the library the next day.

“Well, I didn’t know what to do!” she said, somewhat angrily, sensing opinions, sensing judgement, trying to defend the actions she took in the dead of night in sight of the dead when it was dead quiet and everyone else was asleep. When she didn’t know what else to do. When she wasn’t a Mean Girl, and she wasn’t a high school Senior, but just a human being, encountering mortality made incarnate, with no one’s energy beside her to help process the horror.

“I didn’t even know if he was dead at first!” she cried.

I don’t remember what happened next, unfortunately. Now, in 2020, now, in adulthood, now, with hindsight bias, I mostly remember the circles under her eyes.

But I also remember not laughing.

I had no experience with death, either. But I understood, even then, that life is a gift; and that a pall hangs over us all.

Now, in 2020, now, in adulthood, now, with hindsight bias, it turns out I’m the one who ended up sexually assaulted, and I’m the one whose latent childhood trauma led to mental illness, and I’m the one who would attempt suicide. But it was Brittany who was marked by death that day on that deserted road, a sigil on her forehead, a corpse illuminated by moonlight lying in repose on a generic manicured lawn, and I saw, that afternoon in the library, that she had changed because of it.

I didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny. Death never is.

We graduated, and moved away, some of us returning, some of us making the pilgrimage to the nearest city, some of us departing for lands unknown. I doubt anyone thinks much about that day in the library anymore, except for Brittany; I’m guessing it’s something she thinks about quite often.

Or am I still the only one that sees the pall?***

*Name has been changed

**Best wishes for a lifetime of happiness and congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.

*** “How strange that (death and the stillness of death) that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men.” (Nietzsche, 1882)

Home

Home was a transient thing, shifting from rentals to refinancing to foreclosures in our subrural Pennsylvanian town. The town seemed a shifting thing itself, springing up as a crossroads community on a swampy patch of earth and swallowing sweet little towns whole as it pleased. When we arrived, it had already outgrown its country charm, although you could still see its vestiges here and there. But the town had been greedy. It ballooned as it overindulged, coagulating into suburban purgatory along a fast-food infested stretch of highway that would make any capitalist worth his salt proud.

That’s where we squatted, my family and I, haunting various residential neighborhoods about the defunct train tracks and pretending each new front door opened to our forever home. We didn’t look back when we said goodbye. We didn’t look back at all when we slammed it closed for the last time. No, home was a transient thing, and when the pressure shattered the windows and steamed out under the doors, we left. My parents gathered up the pieces of themselves and promised this next move would be different. And maybe they believed it. There was always a chance things wouldn’t blow the hell up like they always did.

Wandering like vagrants through my childhood, we hung onto pipe dreams and pyramid schemes. Mom and Dad adhered to the process with scientific rigor, clinging to the precision in the timing and the surety of transition, as if the next house could stave off the crushing weight of their unrelenting debt and incendiary marriage. Mom painted rooms and Dad built handy things. They knocked down the dining room wall and put in shiny laminate floors. Still, behind the latest front door the pressure remained. It grew. It always grew. Our experiments filled each home with hydrogen; Mom and Dad brandished their lighters and showered sparks. Sometimes I put out the resulting eruptions. Sometimes I dropped a match in the middle.

I was shedding my adolescence before the final explosion. The air hung thick with noxious gases in that last forever home, belched out by its occupants behind the straining front door. We had flamethrowers by then too, piled high on the kitchen table and spilling over onto the new floors. You could find the pieces of my parents strewn all about, microscopic and scattered and too shredded to glue together, but what would it have mattered, anyway? Their promises finally rang hollow in their own ears. They had nowhere else to go.

Someone called an arbiter, and we kids waited. We pretended the armistice meant something.

By this time, I’d learned the lesson well. Home is a transient thing, you see, and the fumes were making me dizzy. I’d gotten it into my head that I could outpace the cascading chain reaction, that I could squat somewhere new. Some days I hunkered into my Oldsmobile and drove that massive, ugly boat of a car hard and fast. Some days I hit the edge of town and idled, staring out at the humid, rolling hills ahead. I know this sounds stupid, but I’d ask them things. Could they promise—if it was just me—would it be different? Or would it blow the hell up like it always did?

Not once did they have the courage to answer.

The car always found its way back to the bulging front door and sizzling window panes. I sucked in the hydrogen, of course. What did it matter anyway? I had nowhere else to go.

A Slant of Certain Light

illuminates the daunting acme of heaven’s gilded vaults

as winnowing through great blank spaces

dappled shafts of a soot-grimed sky, unmarred by nostalgia or regret

plunges the peregrine falcon.

She is cerulean agency on the wing, ubiquitous death

tumbling toward an anxious and unsettled world.

In her focused lens shines sentience—a restive promise

steeled tension of things about to chance.

Some hold her alar flight, embellished by invocation’s

piercing scream

is a sextant guiding the more laborious patterns we hold

against gravity’s jealous pull

that she carries on her pinioned descent primordial

nebular stardust

that she is Divinity ascending each spring on earnest columns

of mounting air that abide no sin

that the stunning panoply of shadow-light from windswept billows

presages the encroachment of deeper, more lasting dusks.

But our paralytic stasis, the absence of any precise measure, blinds us

to the truth she exacts

from her imposing summits: A swift congruence of talon-sharp veracity

with a pigeon’s nadir—unspoken accord

decided in convolutions of spiraling velocity, blood-stippled down

drifting earthbound in silent reverence.

Her exploits thus appeal most forcibly to her own keen eye, her dim form

yet receding with the light.

Shed

Take me back to the first flush of our verdancy.

Your browsing nurtured my impatient growth

as it branched before your eye.

Please? was not asked of one another in the mottled

days that stitched together – spider thin and golden

in their summer brilliance.

I regret that when offered protection, a velvet-soft upholstery

I began to harden. How easily I mineralized

my hostility contracting to a moon-white weapon.

I am grateful for ritual. Obstinacy forgiven beneath autumn’s

claret display – scrutinizing strength and defining ardor

as the staccato clash of bone.

The end came without warning, blood welling in the pedicle

of failed embrace. Cautiously, you stirred –

healing from this somewhat expected separation.

I lie thus shed. Calcified and crumbling, I keep watch

for you. Meanwhile, mice plot my measured demise

gnawing ravenously at our once-ornamental love.

Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She holds B.A., B.S., and M.A. degrees from Bemidji State University, and is currently working toward an MFA in Poetry at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. She is the author of two other chapbooks, Naked, Getting Nuder (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2019) and i am this girl (Headmistress Press, 2018) as well as a young adult novel, Alpha Summer (Loonfeather Press, 2005). She can be reached at her website: ginamariebernard.squarespace.com.

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TAXONOMIES, her latest chapbook, officially out on 3.27.20 from Thirty West Publishing

Order

Cash for Clunkers

I do best with structure. With routine habits. And though saying this does nothing to keep it from happening, I don’t do well with change.

You remember, Dad. That dinner in 2009. I was twelve, and the Cash for Clunkers program had families trading in their old cars left and right. I didn’t think we would be one of them. You told us and I started to cry. I glared, incredulous, at my brother, who cheered at the prospect of getting a new car. I wanted then, to lock myself in our clunker. Our silver Jeep Grand Cherokee. The only car I had known.

How could you do this?​ I remember asking, through clenched teeth. Anger is the most productive emotion. The most outward one. Behind it, almost always, is fear. I was terrified to watch you rid me of a comfortable constant. Every night, you pick me up from soccer practice in this clunker. We drive this clunker to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving. When I was even smaller, I sat on your lap in the driver’s seat. Spinning the steering wheel with the gear still in park. How can you trade in our car without also trading in my favorite memories?

Remember when you tried to comfort me, Dad. By explaining how the car wouldn’t go to another family. It would be stripped for its parts. That, somehow, made it even worse. That the steering wheel, already molded by your grip and fingerprints, might be separated from the rest of us. Our tear in the seat cushion. Our cleat marks on the carpet. I want to confess, now, for the dent in the passenger door. I did it with my lead foot. The nickname you gave me, not for driving too fast, but for kicking the soccer ball so hard.

All of this is to say, Dad, that I didn’t see it coming either. I couldn’t have. In our family therapy sessions, we call my queerness a change in the family dynamic​ ​. Judging by your silence and mom’s tears, I fear it is an unwelcome one.

It was a change for me too, Dad. Her lips pressed to mine, in the back of her blue Honda CR-V. She kissed me and something changed. I didn’t cry until much later. Until I realized that this change, though I welcomed it, was another trade in itself. I gained a woman’s unconditional love and lost yours.

I want it back, Dad. I want to strip myself of parts. To turn in this queerness for more time steering on your lap. It doesn’t fit me, anyway. I have been waiting to grow into it. It feels, in some ways, like wearing your slippers around the house. The tops folding over as I trip on empty space. My queerness is a fumbling one, Dad, a clunker.

I do best with structure. With routine habits. I have learned, now, that I get this from you.

Take your time.

Thanksgiving in Philadelphia

My grandparent’s new apartment already smells like them. It is filled with the same furniture as the old one. The beige couch still sits in the living room. Even for me, it feels too low to the ground. In front of the couch stands a glass coffee table. My grandmother, living proof that black doesn’t crack, fills a crystal bowl with peanut M&Ms and sets it down gently. On top of all this furniture is the smell. Though my grandfather is not allowed to smoke his cigars in the apartment, the scent always sneaks its way in through the balcony door.

In the TV room, my grandfather turns the volume way too loud. The room is scattered with books, maps, and magazines. Growing up, we were never able to watch TV during dinner. But with age, comfort comes first. Pop-Pop watches the news and history channels until he can narrate them himself. He studies the map of Vanderbilt’s campus daily. I am certain he could walk to my class over the phone.

We order cheesesteaks from Pat’s or Geno’s or Dalessandro's and place the same order we’ve placed for years. I hold the onions and peppers on my steak and Pop-Pop calls it a sin just to eat only the steak and cheese. As always, my father drives the rental car to pick up the food. And because Grandma insists, he sets the brown paper bag down on the dining room table. We unwrap our sandwiches carefully, trying not to drip grease on the embroidered tablecloth. One that has been passed down for generations.

We are all at the table now. My brother tells us that he’s been doing well at work. He is considering quitting, though, despite his excellent performance review. The work he’s doing just doesn’t feel meaningful enough.

While he talks, I notice that my grandfather’s button-down shirt fits differently. He has always been skin and bone. Pop-Pop is a former cross-country runner with toothpick legs, a beer belly, and a wide smile if he lets you see it. It seems impossible to me that he has gotten skinnier, but yes. His shirts are somehow even looser. There is an even bigger gap between his wrist and shirt cuff. It takes him even more effort to stand.

“What can I get you Pops? Let me get it,” Grandma says, noticeable concern in her voice.

They have been married for over 50 years, for better or for worse. It strikes me now that this is the worse. They have lived in health, but now is the time for sickness. Diabetes. Cancer. Early stages of dementia. My grandmother is the caretaker for a patient with three.

Pop-Pop lowers himself back to the chair. Without another word, Grandma brings him a beer from the fridge. A Yuengling lager. I am amazed by her ability to interpret. For the next hour, she predicts all of Pop-Pop’s needs before they are voiced. When his conversation verges on incoherent, she translates his thoughts perfectly. It makes them more palatable for her children and grandchildren. She never misses a beat. I cannot tell if she is in pain or in love. She smiles and I convince myself that it is the latter.

Next, we talk about football because it is safe. Pop-Pop makes a comment about rooting for everybody black. We laugh as he cheers on the team with the ‘Negro coach’ and in the same breath, scolds the black players for celebrating too much after touchdowns.

“Come on now, good grief,” he groans, “Act like you’ve been here before.”

The Eagles play later tonight. Grandma and Pop-Pop will watch from home, but the rest of the family will be in the stands. A Thanksgiving tradition.

Pop-Pop excuses himself from the table and heads back to the TV room, where he is protected by the constant commentary. Grandma, who is now off-duty, brightens markedly. Because she is finally alone and we are all adults, she asks her grandbabies about their love life. She is curious and hungry for answers.

Grandma asks about any special someones and my parents stiffen. My brother and I lock eyes. It is our turn, now, to interpret. To translate. Because we are both black and queer and alive, we are all too familiar with this dance. Together, we answer that we are both focusing on other things: work, school, hobbies. We quench Grandma’s thirst by changing the pronouns of our significant others. Each time I fumble, my brother recovers. I call the girl I am in love with my best friend. I am an honest liar. I wonder if she knows.

After successfully denying a portion of our identity, my brother and I nod to each other. It is not like us to hide, but again and again, we choose our grandparents’ comfort over ours. They are older, anyway.

The silence that follows is not unfamiliar. It saturates the entire apartment.

I am unsurprised by the wave of nausea that comes over me. I walk the long way to the bathroom, through the TV room, to hide that I am in a hurry. For a few seconds, I am deafened by the History Channel. I am overwhelmed by maps.

Standing over the toilet, it all makes sense to me. My grandfather, the first black superintendent in his Philadelphia school system, is suddenly leaking information. It escapes, like smoke, through his balcony doors. In front of the TV, he desperately tries to fill the increasing number of gaps. He puts out one fire with each documentary he watches, then another one appears. For Pop-Pop, the studying of maps has transformed from a hobby to a method of survival. He must remember how to get home from the store, remember where he is each morning, he has to.

“Joyce!” Pop-Pop calls for my grandmother. “Bring me another beer.”

My heart sinks. Her breaks are too short. The word joy is trapped in my grandmother’s name and I find myself wondering how much of it belongs to her. At this moment, I know she, herself, is struggling to get out of a chair. Grandma is too old to be a full-time nurse.

I close the lid as my nausea is replaced with a different feeling of urgency.

I rush to open the door, only to discover my brother Michael, already handing his grandfather another Yuengling. Michael, now a distance runner himself, has Pop-Pop’s same, toothpick legs. Has his same, round nose. Beer delivered; he was one step ahead of me.

In the living room, I peek to see that Grandma is still sitting in the same chair that I left her in.

I am grateful for my brother’s heart.

Slowly, I walk back to the bathroom, lift the toilet seat, and wait to throw up.