1. A G A V E M A G A Z I N E
L I T E R A T U R E : A R T : P H O T O G R A P H Y
Vo l . 2 , I s s u e 3 { W i n t e r 2 0 1 5 }
2. AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
Two years ago, Agave Magazine was born in a wintry desert, under the
vast expanse of wide open desert sky, where tumbleweed-strewn roads
meet the curves of adobe-walled edifices. I was inspired by the silence,
the bold cobalt blue and red clay mixing with the straw-hued, dessicated
and dusty earth, the landscape building between the rise and fall of the
mesas. It was here in this place, in this overwhelming quiet, that I dreamt
of sharing contemporary narratives, ones which provided all of the
essentials —nothing more, nothing less. Agave Magazine: a mixture of
literary genres, art and photography that would leave an impression upon
readers long after they had turned the final page.
In the winter months, when much of the Northern Hemisphere finds
itself swathed in snow and ice, as a penetrating sun hangs low in the sky,
we naturally retreat inwards, seeking comfort in the familiar. At times, this
repose comes in the form of time spent alone, a break from community in
order to catalogue thoughts as they run through one’s mind. At others, it
is a gentle wave of nostalgia, washing over the interior and exterior spaces
we inhabit. Whatever we have felt, and whichever methods we have
utilised to retrieve those feelings, we know that what we find is entirely
personal to our experiences and exceedingly real.
From the incredible technical photography that graces this issue’s cover to
the imaginative and emotionally charged literary and artistic works inside,
Winter 2015 has a very distinct voice. In this issue, our contributors
explore themes of impermanence, memory, solitude and loss. Motivated
by spirit, expression, and a sheer devotion to the aesthetic, the pieces that
fill this issue are as achingly beautiful as they are thought-provoking.
To the contributors who fill these pages: I wish to thank-you for your
masterful acts of creation. Our publication is brought to life each quarter
by your willingness to share your visions with our readership, and it is
always our pleasure, and theirs, to view the finished product.
To my editorial team: Anna, Deb, Grant and Issraa—as always, my
immense and heartfelt gratitude.
Without further ado, I present to you, our treasured readers, Agave
Magazine {Winter 2015}.
{EDITOR’S NOTE}
Dear Readers,
Ariana Lyriotakis
Founder/Editor-in-Chief
Yours truly,
3. AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
AUBADE FOR THE LAST
PERFORMING TATTOOED LADY
Daniel Sundahl
7
IMPERMANENCE NO. 4
Steve Frosch
7
LONDON SNOWY DAY NO. 2
Madiha Abdo
8
A HISTORY OF DEHYDRATION
Barbara Marsh
9
FREE
Cassie LaRussa
9
STRANDED
Alex Kruchkovsky
10
DREAMS NO. 3
Alexandra Vacaroiu
11
HEADLOCK
Allison Grayhurst
11
UNTITLED NEW ENGLAND
Danielle Susi
12
STREAKS
Sam Marshall
13
COMPASS
Jeff Burt
13
LH
Sam Marshall
14
IMPERMANENCE NO. 2
Steve Frosch
15
DEATH WATCH
Heather Osterman-Davis
16
GONE II
Caitlin Crowley
19
LAYERS OF LOVE
Katherine Minott
20
THE OFFERING
Katherine Minott
20
BROOKLYN
Hugues Jauneau
21
{Contents}
4. AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
BROOME STREET
Julie Larocque
22
TREE HOUSE
Radford Skudrna
23
FINS BLUE AND WHITE
FRACTURE
ONE DAY
Kate LaDew
24
NUDE PHOTOGRAPHY NO. 6
Nysrine Mokdad
24
EXPURGOS
Oscar Varona
25
AT THIRTEEN
I PICTURED MY FATHER
Jeff Burt
25
ICE AND FIRE
Larry Thomas
26
TANJA
Tatjana Debeljacki
26
WATER
Dave Petraglia
27
CRACKED MUD
Eric Rosenwald
28
MNEMONIC
Benjamin Goluboff
29
IT IS BETTER TO BE FELT
THAN THOUGHT OF
Ceaphas Stubbs
30
1976
Linda Zanni
31
LAST ORDER
Martin Keaveney
32
JACK’S UNCLE LIVES LIFE
WITHOUT A WORD OF COMPLAINT
Kevin Brown
34
CALYPSO
Michael Pagan
34
5. AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
BOLOGNA
Linda Zanni
34
IF I HAD MY WAY
Anthony Bailey
35
ALTERNATE VIEWS
Brigitte Goetze
36
ON A THEME BY PHILIP LARKIN
George Freek
36
DISARRAY
Doug Bolling
37
DREAMS NO. 10
Alexandra Vacaroiu
38
BEAUTIFUL BLUES
Allie Rohletter
39
THREE HOURS AT THE MET
A.K. Afferez
40
FORGIVABLE
Douglas Nordfors
41
DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP, OR:
THE SERAPHIM’S OPPOSITE NUMBER
Chelsea Eckert
41
DREAMS NO. 9
Alexandra Vacaroiu
42
AN UNANTICIPATED CLARITY
Susan Sonde
43
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
WITH CATHERINE EVLESHIN
Deb Ain
44
WASHED UP
Dylan Liebelt
45
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
WITH CHARLIE BAYLIS
Deb Ain
46
FULL COURT DRAMA
Nortina Simmons
47
6. AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
From a technical standpoint, I approached this shoot with a very modest set up. I wanted to focus on technique with minimal
post-production to bring the mood to life as organically as possible (only slight black and white adjustments were made in post).
The shot was taken in a tunnel under Vyšehrad Cathedral in Prague, Czech Republic. I used it as an impromptu studio while
testing shots in a light rain. Ambient natural lighting helped to capture some frontal details, while long exposures were used to
capture the rain drops falling in mid-air.
{ON THE COVER} —Ian Adams, “Space”
8. —7— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
AUBADE FOR THE LAST PERFORMING
TATTOOED LADY
There remains only the picture, endowed with this rich quality of
immobility and of this lasting, enveloping silence.
—Jean Guitton, The Madonna
Footsore this morning, like any other woman
Rising, setting breakfast on the table.
Lately though you’ve been more stiff,
Sleep has not found its swallowing flow.
You see yourself as someone’s shadow,
Shortening eastward, enwinding, wrapping.
Why is it you’ve begun to think your life
Is something other, a neighbor you once knew
Muttering at night deep tones of meditation?
You remember telling your daughter dying
Is losing the heaviness that comes on all of us,
An even distant blue beyond which forever.
You remember her resting her head on your lap.
Like dishes, you put away those days, days like
A great wall, the top of which you some day reach.
—Steve Frosch, “Impermanence No. 4”—Daniel Sundahl
10. —9— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
A HISTORY OF DEHYDRATION
It was a one-car accident, she died instantly.
Four wild rose buds around her little finger.
A kind of seat belt, for good luck.
She wore none and didn’t believe in daylight time.
Most of the time she rode a bicycle
around town collecting her life,
full as a needle. She had a houseful when she died.
She tried violets, they were too much like
change and we all know how
she hated change. Her journal told us
each reader in their reading
reveals something of herself.
Like birds who watch us with their bird’s-eye
perspective and ascend to the stars.
The car door flew open, she flew out.
The playa received her onto its plates
and sent her whittled pencil out of ordinary time.
“My poems are informed by my life as a working journalist/poet,
by my life as a publisher, and by my landscape. I believe that
poetry in telling its truths, can change worlds, be they large or
small.”
—Barbara March
—Cassie LaRussa, “Free”
Model: Kasimira Mosich Miller
Location: Agoura Hills, CA
12. —11— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
—Alexandra Vacaroiu, “Dreams No. 3”
HEADLOCK
It runs away to the room
where nothing moves, not from dying
nor from finding its joy.
It was warm, but is now harmed
and drenched in grief like a child too broken
to speak or dream
of flying.
It breaks the base of my heel,
preventing a hope-filled dance. It knows me
in the afternoon, stealing the smoke from my ribs,
the hunger from my muscles and the flesh
from my gender.
It circles me at night like an eastern cloud,
cutting the black with its grey, changing the words
in my dictionary, spilling my love in unnatural oil.
It is my creature to contend with, the armour
I have been sworn to carry,
a twist in the brain that has me soiled, taking cover
in its inhospitable hovel.
—Allison Grayhurst
13. —12— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
UNTITLED NEW ENGLAND
Ineeded the cold
to feel whole again home
again. Like late October
in New England.
On our back porch, I sit
in the dampness after rain
and read in the crack of light
that falls through a door ajar.
Despite the chill, I turn on a fan
to drown out the sounds of myself:
of my metered breathing and
the quiet settling of my skin.
I wonder often if my
dreams are louder than the
fan and if their vibrations
loiter in the room as I sleep.
This is the rain I live in. This is Sunday
afternoon chicken wings or pork fried
rice with the oven door propped
to heat the house. This is windows open
to clean the air on the first floor
and my father watching football. This
is sweaters and denim and chilled un-
socked feet laying flat on the quilts
of my twin bed. This is isolation to
surround myself, and interruptions
when dinner is ready. When we make
fried rice now, in our apartment on
Kimball, my roommate cooks the chicken
and her boyfriend chooses the music. I
chop things and scramble egg and splash
soy sauce into the pan (and sometimes onto the floor).
And after eating, we fall into
respective comas of monotony
and seek a warmth that radiates
from secret corners. I brew
lavender tea, and it brings me
to late July in New England,
where I needed heat to
feel absent again.
—Danielle Susi
14. —13— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
COMPASS
My daughter finds as she dances
she cannot expand the horizon
nor will she find there is more than one
no matter how many turns on a single point she spins.
Like love cannot have two objects at single time,
so the edge of a possible life is drawn
like a compass draws a circle
and she will stand like a sharp point
scrawled in paper stretching out
with a leg to draw the boundary
no wider than her own brief reach.
But now the day is done,
and stars like chalk dust on black paper
draw her gaze up, the circle she’s drawn
collapses, folds up, and she breathes,
a single point in time, in space.
Wonder comes and stills ambition,
and now in the dark, she sees
how close the limitless appears.
—Jeff Burt
—Sam Marshall, “Streaks” from URBAN ABSTRACT
15. —14— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“My work is concerned with the aesthetic re-interpretation of
beauty, thereby changing context and creating a new focus
for the viewer that encourages them to re-evaluate the world
around them. By incorporating the very essence of abstract
expressionism, the images are at once striking and graphic,
ambiguous and beautiful. They capture a sense of urban
anxiety but at the same time celebrate the results.”
—Sam Marshall, “LH” from URBAN ABSTRACT
17. —16— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
DEATH WATCH
—Heather Osterman
Ifillmyplatewithastrangeassortmentoffood,nestlingdelicatelywrappedsushi
rolls next to rough, hacked steamed artichokes and vegetarian chopped liver. The
NewYear’sEvespreadlookslikeitwasplannedbyaclassroomofgourmandtoddlers,
gleefully throwing together random favorites with utter indifference to cohesion.
But given that I haven’t eaten a relaxed meal since the birth of my oldest child almost
three years ago, it pleases me. I look over at my husband who is bouncing our six-
month-old daughter Nora on one knee while clutching a champagne flute in the
other. He sets the glass down to jab one-handed at his own artichoke with the grace
of a boxer whose hands are swaddled in gloves long after a fight. I sink gratefully into
an armchair, happy for a moment’s rest.
“Mommy, the floor’s on fire! The floor’s on fire!” my sons yells the second my
back connects with the overstuffed cushion.
I spend close to 20 percent of my day fighting imaginary fires so I’ve honed my
‘arm-chair firewoman’ skills to Herculean levels. I shout back, “I have a hose; I’m
turning on the water! Watch out, here it comes!”
“Mommy, it’s not pretend,” he says, seemingly exasperated at my inability to
grasp simple concepts. “It’s really on fire.”
Like a stray dog, knowing it’s in my best interest to eat when I can, I shove a tuna
roll into my mouth before running over to the fireplace to find Owen pointing at the
marble hearth where embers are in fact smoldering and smoking.
“Dad, the floor’s on fire!” I call out, echoing my son, belying the fact that the 37
years between us should have rendered me more eloquent.
My dad hurries into the room, his measured gait startling. Unfazed, he assesses
the situation, sweeping the embers from the hearth before placing a screen across
the fireplace. It seems like a glaring error in judgment to have left it off in the first
place. My dad has always been a blur of energy, virtually allergic to leisure. A lifelong
agnostic,industriousnessisperhapshistruereligion,andwatchingthedeterioration
of his body forcing him to slow down, lodges a knot deep in my chest, like a pill I
can’t quite swallow.
I pat my son on the head. “Good job, Fireman Owen.”
“Super Kid Owen to the rescue!” he shouts, raising his fist in the air, already
running off to his next mission.
I head back into the living room and pick up my plate. It’s only six o’clock but
the party is in as full swing as it’s going to get. My step-brother Martin and his wife
Anne are sitting next to me in two stiff-backed chairs brought in from the dining
room while my niece Mandy, whom my dad is raising, is in the corner, texting, likely
bored with all of us. And then there is Alan. My dad and step-mother fill their house
with strays, rotating one needy person after another. Alan is this year’s addition.
Temporarily homeless while going through a nasty divorce, he moved into a room
on the second floor a few months ago and, just as my dad and step-mother began
devising a move-out plan, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and his stay became
indefinite. When we visit, we sleep on a pull-out couch in the office next to his room.
Through the wall, we hear him continually clear his throat as his airway closes in on
him, a slow, cruel strangulation.
In addition to being an international businessman, Alan is a yachtsman and
has sailed all over the world. Tonight, he’s telling us about the trip he cancelled for
treatment. He rattles off islands with whose names I am so unfamiliar, I know that
they must be magnificent.
“When I get this out of the way, we’ll reschedule that trip,” he says, as if chemo
is an annoying errand or a house renovation running behind. His confidence makes
me anxious. Alan sees victory as clearly as Olympians must picture gold against their
chests, the heavy weight of it already there, reassuringly warm over their hearts. I
don’t understand such certainty; I can fret for hours about ordering the wrong thing
while out to dinner.
Alan has brought his girlfriend tonight. She is beautiful, younger than him by at
least a decade and the only one dressed up for the party even though she was told it
was casual.
“This is casual for her,” my stepmother had whispered to me earlier. “She’s always
immaculate, dressed to the nines.”
Iinspectherfur-cuffedsweater,impeccablecreamheelsandshininghairfallingin
perfect waves to her shoulders. I glance down at my purple and white rag socks, only
one of which appears to be clean, and tuck my feet under my legs. She is describing
her house in South Carolina where she lives part of the year, where she would be
living now I gather, if it weren’t for Alan. Her voice is both oddly nasal but lilting in a
somewhat syncopated rhythm. I try to place her accent but can’t. Alan continually
shifts closer to her and she keeps inching away. She must catch our quizzical glances
because she explains unasked, “I have a cold. I don’t want to get him sick.”
“I don’t care,” Alan says, “I just want to be close to you.” Then to us, “Can you
blame me? I mean look at me and look at her.”
Nora starts fussing and I reach out for her. Mitch passes her to me slowly, as if
18. —17— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
reluctant to let her go. He has had less time to bond with her than he had with Owen,
whose incessant colic kept Mitch pacing the bedroom at night for hours, bouncing
him while singing, “The Rainbow Connection,” and “Midnight Train,” his slightly
off-key lyrics and Owen’s piercing cries merging into an artless but earnest mash-
up. But Nora does not require such intense intervention. She’s irritated only by the
things by which babies are supposed to be irritated: food, sleep, and diaper changes,
so Mitch and I often fall into a zone defense where I nurse and cuddle Nora while
he takes Owen to the playground or on errands. And now, Nora clearly wants to eat.
She cries again, grasping at my shirt, frustrated at the thin fabric separating her from
nourishment; I shift in my chair and bring her to my chest, trying to turn my focus
back to the party.
When I tune back in, I hear Anne saying, “I read the most interesting thing in The
New York Times the other day. Did anyone see the piece about the ‘Death Watch?’”
I start to say that reading anything without pictures is a luxury I’ve given up but
stop myself. Anne wants a child and if things had gone differently this year we both
might be nursing right now. I know that heartbreak is nothing compared to lack of
sleep and literature.
“So this watch has a computer where you input your age, race, and health, etc.
and it calculates when you’re statistically likely to die and then counts it down. It’s
called ‘The Tikker,’ or ‘The Happiness Watch.’”
“Why would someone want to wear that?” my step-mother asks as she tidies up
the food table.
“I don’t know but supposedly all these people reported a surge in happiness after
wearing it.”
“I don’t get it,” my stepmother says. “From knowing you’re going to die?”
“I guess the idea is that it reminds you to live in the now. Like if you only have a
certainnumberofminutesleft,youchoosethingsthatmakeyouhappier.Apparently
people find it liberating.”
“I wouldn’t find that liberating,” I say. I’ve had panic attacks about death since I
was seven; if that watch was on my wrist I would spend my life clawing my way out
of despair. Besides, as a 41-year-old mother of an infant and a toddler, I don’t need
a death watch to be aware of the passing of time. Like an autistic child, I constantly
make calculations in my head. When they graduate from college, how old will I be?
If they marry at 20 or 40, will I be too decrepit to dance at their weddings? Will
my mind slip into an Alzheimer’s fog before I learn my hypothetical grandchildren’s
names?
I didn’t meet Mitch until I was 35, got married at 36. When we started to talk
about getting pregnant a year later, it seemed like everyone needed to warn us
how hard it would be. Well-intended friends shared both their own struggles and
seemingly the struggles of everyone they ever knew who tried to have a baby over
30. Doctors threw out phrases like ‘geriatric pregnancy‚‘ ‘advanced maternal age,’
and depressing numbers for how long it might take —seven months, a year, two
years, nevermind how likely we were to have a baby with a birth defect— which
apparently would increase every single day I did not get pregnant. Mitch was just
finishing graduate school and wanted to wait until he had a job but, thrown into a
panic over the potential hurdle ahead, we started the month after graduation. With
a roughly one in 10 chance we got pregnant on the first try. We took pregnancy tests
for four days in a row before Mitch actually believed it was true.
In utero, we nicknamed Owen, ‘Muffin.’ When he was around four months old, I
was pushing his stroller down a busy city street and passed an octogenarian shuffling
in the opposite direction, his hands beating out a staccato tremor on the handle of
his shopping cart. I looked at his furrowed face under his thinning page-boy cap
and thought: you must have been somebody’s Muffin. My heart slid from my chest
burrowing into a hollow in my abdomen as I realized that even if I lived to be 90,
Owen could pass 40 years of his life without me, eventually shuffling down some
street, possibly alone. Glancing at some watch claiming to tell me exactly how much
time we had left might have made me step in front of a car.
“I would not find it liberating,” I repeat.
“I don’t know if I would either,” Anne says, “I just think it’s interesting.”
“Maybe let it go,” my step-brother mutters to her under his breath and she looks
at him confused; he is not the type to edit her. He glances pointedly at Alan who is
gazing intently at a piece of cheese as if reading his fortune in its holes.
So then if we weren’t already, we are all directed towards the question of what
Alan’s ‘Tikker’ would say. I’ve heard people say that throat cancer is not ‘one of the
good ones,’ as if there actually were ‘good ones.’ Cancer is fickle: you never know
which one will turn the other way as you slip through the woods to safety and
which will callously bar the door destroying any hope of escape. This Death Watch’s
statistics are immutable; they don’t account for personal will, don’t give extra credit
for seeing next year’s boat trip so clearly you can already feel your toes dipping into
the warm, smooth water of the Antilles, hear the whispered caresses of the wind as
it wakes at dawn promising a day of speed.
Alan’s girlfriend says something about how wonderful the food is, filling the
void with fortune cookie talk. As I listen to her subtle over-enunciation and slightly
syncopated rhythm, I’m in disbelief it took me this long to realize she is deaf. Alan
coughs again and she looks at him, as if assessing his well-being from the flush of his
skin.
19. —18— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“I should go. It’s getting late.”
It’s barely nine o’clock.
“Don’t go,” Alan pleads. “I’m not tired.” I think of my three year old pleading to
stay up, never wanting the party to end. He fights the separation fiercely, as if not
trusting that life will ever be this good again.
“I have a long drive,” she says. “I want to be off the roads before the parties let out.”
“Of course,” I reply. “No one one wants to be on the road with drunks.”
Alan concedes, rising from the couch slowly. “I’ll walk you out.”
I look down at Nora, who has fallen asleep on my breast, her mouth gaping fish-
like against my partially exposed nipple. I think, I will have even less time with you. I
argued hard for Nora. By then I was 39, and Mitch was 40. He joked that we were too
old to go through another round of sleepless nights again and more seriously, what
were the chances that we would get so lucky again and have another healthy child?
But I could feel Nora waiting, her soul hovering on the boundary, wanting us as
much as I wanted her; soon enough, Mitch agreed. I read message boards filled with
disaster stories; still births, miscarriages, birth defects, infertility. I read somewhere
my odds were less than one in 20 of getting pregnant at all, and that my risks for birth
defects were through the roof. But breath held, we dove in anyway, and got pregnant
on the third try. But statistically, I tend to be the outlier anyway, whether for good or
for bad. After all, my mom had an IUD in 1972 when she got pregnant with me and
I surmounted both its presence and its subsequent removal.
WhenIwasincollege,abonedisease,affectinglessthanoneinamillion,gnawed
its way into my ankles, changing my semester abroad to a semester in a wheelchair
back at home. As I wheeled around my mother’s house, crawling upstairs, lugging
my useless feet behind me, I could still hear the doctor’s amazed voice as he first
inspectedmyx-rays,mysad,softenedboneslitupingrayandwhite:“It’sremarkable;
I’ve never seen this before. I mean, what are the chances of it showing up in both
ankles?”
AnotherdoctorwarnedmethatIshouldnotexpectevertobetrulyactiveagain.I
finally returned to school, hobbling around on crutches, trying to coax my atrophied
muscles back to life, each wobbly, painful step served as a fuck-you to every medical
professional who told me to prepare for the worst.
Alan comes back in from walking Anne to the car. “I’m going to hit the sack,” he
says, glancing at his watch. “It’s been a long day.”
I watch him a moment too long; he catches me watching and shrugs. I wonder
what he sees on its face. 9:30 P.M.? 90 minutes until his girlfriend arrives home and
he can quietly call her to say goodnight in the guest bed of somebody else’s home?
10 hours until another chemo treatment? Would he fight to stay up until midnight if
it read that this were his last New Year’s Eve, or does trusting his body’s pull towards
sleep, towards survival, towards next year, change his odds?
Betting on the odds is bullshit anyway. After a painful caesarean with Owen, I
was determined to have a vaginal birth with Nora. Mitch and I did research, weighed
the pros and cons. Almost all studies indicated that there was less than a 1% chance
of uterine rupture from a VBAC. When I went into labor on my own, which I had
not with Owen, I was absolutely convinced I could do it. Even at the hospital as
we signed page after page of forms, acknowledging the risks, we felt we were
doing the right thing. A risk of 1% is nothing, even when you say it in the oddly
more disconcerting ‘one in 100 chance.’ But halfway through my whirlwind and
excruciating labor, I stopped making progress, and after a gut-wrenching talk with
the doctor, we opted for surgery instead. When the doctor tried to take Nora out,
my uterus was as see-through as a plate of glass and it took her over an hour to find a
safe place to slice. If I had gone through with labor, I would have been that 1%. As is,
I narrowly avoided bleeding to death and a hysterectomy but won the jackpot with
both deep vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism. Each day for the next six
months, as I injected blood thinners into my stomach, watching large purple bruises
cover my skin like battle wounds, I would cry, and think how lucky we both were to
be alive.
After Alan leaves, Mitch and I stay long enough for dessert but exhaustion
trumps our desire to socialize and we head upstairs, too. Mitch reads Owen a story
in his bedroom as I carefully ease Nora into the crib in our room. Constantly sleep
deprived, I am anxious to take advantage of that long first stretch of her sleep cycle
before she wakes, a hungry velociraptor, desperate to feed again. I settle into the
pull-out couch, attempting to make myself comfortable, and fall asleep to the sound
of Alan clearing his throat again and again like a sad ocean. At some point, Mitch
crawls in beside me. Just shy of midnight, Nora wakes, bright and full of energy, as
if starting the day. She does not want to nurse, she wants to play. It is her first New
Year’s Eve on this planet and apparently she wants to celebrate. It is easier to yield
than to fight, so we curl into each other, watching the Times Square ball drop on
television and taking selfies on my phone. As hundreds of thousands of people jump
around in the cold, counting down in unison, Nora and I laugh our way into 2014
and I know for a fact that I would rather watch her face than the face of time running
out.
20. —19— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
—Caitlin Crowley, “Gone II”
“With my photography, I re-examine the surrounding
world. I take a second, closer look, to realize the texture of
plant life or to see previously unnoticed details for the first
time, or the change in perception a strange angle creates.
This leads me to photographing small objects in extreme
macro, things old and forgotten, and the natural world.
I chose to work in medium format film to achieve a very
shallow depth of field. This allows me to print large with
high detail. The use of bellows and macro tubes enhances
the macro images and creates an even shallower depth of
field. I process and shoot with standard roll film, polaroid
film, and bulk film I re-spool myself. The technical aspects
achievable through medium format film is why I chose
it initiall; the analog process behind it is what made me
continue.
My film never leaves my hands. Whether it is roll film I
have shot, developed, and printed in the darkroom, or
polaroid film that was shot and manipulated to create a
transfer, emulsion lift, or recovered negative. I have total
control, which comes with the knowledge of where every
modification came from. The digital revolution has au-
tomated time-consuming tasks, aided problem solving by
readily providing useful information, gives instant feed-
back, and makes things more cost efficient. But the ease of
use can make it easy to work without thinking. Working in
an analog process forces consideration and builds a vested
interest in each image. Each image can represent hours or
days of work— each has a story of the journey the film
and I took.”
21. —20— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“With my abstract style of photography, I explore the beauty hidden
in everyday objects, the sacred hidden in the mundane.
I am infatuated with inanimate objects long past their prime. Why?
Peeling paint, wrinkled, tattered cloth, and rusted steel teach us
about transience. And they impart three simple realities: nothing
lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. I celebrate these
teachings in my photographic images which reflect the Japanese
aesthetic of wabi-sabi (an intuitive way of living that emphasizes
finding beauty in imperfection, and accepting the natural cycle of
growth and decay).
My images are a celebration of authentic change and homage to my
teachers of transience.
These teachers are found in classrooms disguised as junkyards,
abandoned ranches, hoarders‚ backyards, and long-forgotten trailer
parks. It is here that I capture the patinas on boxcars, 50-gallon
barrels, and water tanks, and discover the hidden life of rust on the
backside of discarded paint cans. This is how my abstract photo-
graphs are born.”
”Layers of Love”
“The Offering”
—Katherine Minott
24. —23— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
TREE HOUSE
Pop surveyed the beech tree: its trunk rooted firmly in rich soil, leaves full and viridescent,
crutch high out of reach. He measured every limb twice, marking blueprints for a platform at
the tree’s hub, each plank counter-beamed and fastened so not to cut circulation. The
collapsible ladder, he said, would keep others out, and knotted a thick-braided rope from an
offshoot for my fluttering escape. By autumn, a thick bark swelled around the twisted strands.
My palms, too, toughened. I’d climb higher and higher before swinging, letting go later each
time. Bunches of leaves came loose, drifting from the parent plant, my grandfather watching
out the window. From the highest branch, rope extended, I tied a half-hitch knot he’d taught
me around my angular waist, but the makeshift harness tightened into abrupt strangulation as
the line caught, my body dangled and overlooked like a pendulum.
The flexed bough cradled a silent screaming, my wrung breath under that groaning tree house
barely heard. By the time my grandfather made it outside, lifted me with one arm and unlashed
the noose with a tremor, the swaying stopped, an impression twined around me. Still, to be
sure, the rope came down before nightfall, exposing an abraded mark where it once clung to the
tree’s sturdiest arm, the bark worn with organic transience, the heartwood exposed as he
carried me away.
— Radford Skudrna
25. —24— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
FINS BLUE AND WHITE
the
sky
is a
big mirror
reflecting oceans
I still look for sharks in the clouds
FRACTURE
small
slight
fractures
are spreading
branches in my chest
whole forests growing without you
ONE DAY
Ihave said ‘one day’
so often the words coat my throat,
leave my tongue swollen
each letter rising white and thick
branding me a failure
—Kate LaDew —Nysrine Mokdad, “Nude Photography No. 6”
26. —25— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
AT THIRTEEN
I PICTURED MY FATHER
Iwanted other men to call him boot licker,
piss and vinegar, skirt-chaser, sot,
crazy, menace, hairball, brute,
beater, liar, sloth, paprika, pepper,
cumin, ginger, cinnamon,
anything but salt of the earth,
not good, not funny, not loving, not kind.
I wanted fault, sin, dereliction,
legends of bad behavior, renegade, spit,
delinquency, rot. What I got
was solid citizen, that granite-piked
block chiseled by good behavior,
charity, amiable wit. No chaos,
no wayward walk, fall-off-the-wagon Joe,
secrets whispered behind doors of the garage,
not the real-deal Dad, not the bumper
of shiny chrome but the flared fender of rebellion.
The world loved him. And I did too.
—Jeff Burt
—Oscar Varona, “Expurgos”
27. —26— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
ICE AND FIRE
pretty much tell our story,
as Frost so eloquently penned
in his piquant, little poem.
One thing I like about living
in far West Texas is the seasons,
all four of them, so unlike the two
in Houston: nine months of summer
and three of spring. The ice here
has cleared, at least for the time being,
and the deer appear to be enjoying
the respite from the cold.
It took the life of a fawn
but the rest of the herd
somehow managed to survive
with nothing but their thickened hide
and the good sense to hunker down
in the dead yellow grasses
for a modicum of momentary
warmth. It’s strange how the ice,
so blue with cold and unforgiving,
burns like the flame of a blowtorch.
—Larry Thomas —Tatjana Debeljacki, “Tanja”
28. —27— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“Instantly familiar, new to the eye—if I’ve done it right— this is how I describe my photography. I rarely take more than one shot
of a subject, concentrating instead on the correct composition from the beginning. I generally shoot or bracket several exposures of
that same frame of the subject. In post-process, those individual exposures are layered, then color temperature, saturation, contrast,
and other values are manipulated, full and/or partial masks applied, and individual features are tone-mapped or ‘painted’ in or
out of the scene. All objects are found objects, as are the emotions they stir up within us. A thing gets our attention, be it a building
in a certain light, or a thought about that building in a certain light, or the thoughts we imagine of a person entering that building
in a certain light. We may use a keyboard, a paintbrush, a lens, a chisel, a hammer, or a cursor on the drawing stage of a pixelated
canvas to reveal it, explore it, interpret it, and present it to others. The process enables us to discover what it does to us. Sometimes
I write about what I see; other times, I reach for a camera. To me, photography and writing are the same. In both, when the work
is done, it speaks. Not one more pixel needs filtering, not one more word can find a place there.”
—Dave Petraglia, “Water”
30. —29— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
MNEMONIC
The woods are full of the past today.
It haunts a disused path
our younger selves would walk
in days imperfectly remembered.
How did we find the time
(our kids still small)
to learn so much of this place?
What were we chasing here,
what fleeing?
How is it that I still can find
my way beneath this canopy,
still find the thread of a path
almost erased with time,
but can’t recall the thread
of what we thought and said here?
Here where the oaks end
and a line of aspens marks
the edge of a grove,
you spoke, casually enough,
some piercing truth.
I remember how the light
swam, how the world
adjusted itself, but I
no longer know what you said.
Where the wood duck
startles from the
green-scummed pond
I made confession
of some error or failing,
some shameful breach
that the record does not
show anymore.
The woods may be wiser
for the years. I know that
I am not. Too much has fallen
from me, deserted memory.
But I believe that memory
is itself a woods.
In the subtle light
beneath its canopy
some paths connect
and some just
trail away.
—Benjamin Goluboff
31. —30— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“My practice is an exploration of narrative weight using ephemeral material, and pushes the contemporary notions of what Sculpture and
Photography can/should be. As such these works are often of interest to a broad readership including those interested in Photography,
Tableaux, Installation, Formalism, Figurative Art, and Patterns.”
—Ceaphas Stubbs, “It Is Better To Be Felt Than Thought Of”
33. —32— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
LAST ORDER
—Martin Keaveney
There was one more call to make on the back road, a long and hilly trail through
a remote townland in the south-east corner of the parish. The home of Walter Reilly,
yet another of the village’s numerous elderly bachelors. Reilly was unusual from the
others in that he did not own a bicycle and walked everywhere, particularly to the
local pub, where he was to be found most nights. The boy pondered on the evening’s
sales as he cycled the final ascent.
Since he was nine, his father had annually entrusted him with the village door-
to-door sales of the Christmas Club raffle, selling them at 50p each and three tickets
for a pound. The most exciting part was the club’s allowance of the seller to keep
the extra 50p from each book individually sold. In this route, bachelors, widows,
and characters whose marital status was questionable, the single ticket purchase
was popular. It meant the boy’s inside pocket rattled with £4.50 of commission. He
looked forward to visiting Sweeney’s travelling shop on Friday where he would
convert it into Macaroon bars, a bag of Chickatees and a small bottle of fizzy cola.
Reilly’s house was hidden beneath a thick veneer of gorse and long, jungle-like
grass. Years of failure to cut what had probably once been a proud front garden had
resulted in wild plants, joining together and mutating higher than the first slate on
the roof. The house too, had suffered years of neglect; ivy crawled messily across one
whole gable and now threatened the front window. Numerous plants hung from the
roof gutter, making its original function an impossibility. A rusty stain down the
corner served as a reminder of its futility.
The boy parked his bicycle against the gatepost. It was a gatepost which bore no
gate, and there was barely enough room to pass. He could not know that Reilly had
abandoned the treacherous late night struggle through his thorn infested pathway
many years ago. He now crawled through a gap in his back fence and awkwardly
scaled his neighbour’s galvanized gate whenever he came or went.
Theboy,bookofticketsinonehandandbluebirointheother,struggledthrough
the swamp of greenery in front of him, until he arrived at a mahogany front door, its
base black with damp. A saucer once used for cat’s milk sat motionless under the
fractured windowsill, an immobile spider presiding over its centre.
Heknockedonthedoor,hisfingersfeelingthehardnessofthewoodwhichsenta
small signal of pain to his brain. There was no answer. However, the boy knew Reilly
was at home, he was never anywhere else except the pub and that didn’t open until
half seven. It was only just after four. He stood, looking around the site, wondering
what it would have been like in its heyday, when Reilly was a young man and his
mother was still alive. The boy’s father had told him that Reilly was once an excellent
tradesman. One of the finest in the county. He had built the house himself, only
employing some labourers. He had made a great living as a local builder in the fifties
and sixties. But like many, Reilly had succumbed to the ‘aul’ drink.’ “Too fond of it,”
the boy’s father had said. Reilly had progressed from a few relaxing pints of stout on
a Friday evening to becoming an ever present fixture at McGovern’s Public House.
He had become messy.
AcommonscenewasReillyinaconfrontationoveranallegedunpaidbill.Hewas
often to be found in the centre of the front lounge, holding his own kangaroo court.
His voice raised toward a bemused local; stubbled, half-smoked Major in one hand,
tightly held pint glass in another, a mouldy shirt hanging outside loose trousers. The
dripping beer creating a small pool near Reilly’s untied boot on the wooden floor.
By the seventies, Reilly, then in middle-age, had lost most of his clients, mainly due
to rows in the pub. The locals murmured Reilly couldn’t hold his drink anymore. He
began raving, talking in riddles. People who had known him in his prime shook their
head slowly and moved away when they saw him coming. Others just laughed, and
used Reilly as a light-hearted conversation topic of a Saturday night.
Reilly became less interested in his appearance. Grime and unmentionable stains
became a regular feature of his attire, and he gravitated toward the small snug at the
far end of the pub where he drank alone. There, in wonder as a child, Reilly had
watched his father and friends thirstily slurp stout and half-ones. It was where Reilly
had made the torn leather-topped stool with metal arm-rests in the corner his own.
It was where he had sat every night of the past 20 years, since long before the boy was
born.
Yet to his credit, Reilly had bought a ticket last year, and the boy had sold two
of this current book, so he knew a sale was likely here, if he could find him. The
previous meeting had been amicable. The boy recalled a light hearted grin of Reilly’s,
while a ball of saliva drooped from the old pensioner’s lower lip. He pictured the
large woollen sock Reilly had conjured from beneath the tattered sofa in his kitchen
and the pile of coppers he had spilled out onto the table. He was, indeed, more
forthcoming with his purchase than some of his neighbours, only once inquiring if
there were ‘fair good prizes.’ A good deal easier to deal with than Mrs.Rainsworth
who wanted to give the boy six free-range eggs in lieu of the 50p or Joe Craddock
34. —33— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
who told him that the club committee, of which the boy’s father was the chairman,
were “a bunch of aul’ gangsters.”
There was a noise somewhere within. A scraping, banging noise. The boy peered
through the dusty front window. He rubbed the glass but could see only dirty lace.
He tried again to make a satisfactorily loud knock on the old door, but the result was
merely an insignificant thud. He moved to the glass and rapped it as loud as he could.
The light breeze died away. It seemed the world had gone asleep. The boy looked
around as a hush seemed to roll across the winter landscape. The crows perched
silently on the telegraph lines, defining the horizon. Maybe Reilly was getting
dressed, he wondered. Perhaps that was the noise he had heard. Reilly falling out of
bed. It was said that he fell into the drain that ran along the boreen most nights on
his way home. The boy imagined Reilly struggling to put on his old musty clothes
and looking out the window to see who the unexpected caller was.
It was strange how the world looked different when a person had to wait. A circular
pool of water in a field of bog rushes lay like an enormous pound coin, one of those
which had only came into circulation in the last year. The line of telegraph poles
along the boreen overlooked Reilly’s cottage. Their small galvanized rungs attached
for maintenance men, two each side and one below, created a sly, smiling expression.
He walked along the cracked footpath. At the side was a windowless gable.
Behind the cottage was a mish-mash of bread crusts, old potato skins and tea-bags.
The boy thought about abandoning Reilly. It had been a good day. Still, another sale
here could bring his earnings to five pounds. He looked in the back window. The
kitchen table, where 12 months before Reilly had offered the boy a mug of tea from
a questionable looking teapot and “a few bishkits,” occupied the middle. A worn,
flowery tablecloth covered it. A brown wrapper clung half on and half off a sliced
brown loaf. A yellow Harp Lager-emblazoned ashtray spilled with crushed cigarette
butts. A tall fridge was in a corner, a worn sticker on one side proclaimed ‘Montreal
1976.’ The boy could hear it hum.
But there was no sign of Reilly. He looked at the sofa behind the table for a clue.
Beside them, the familiar woollen sock that Reilly had used last year. Coppers were
around it, he could see more within. Reilly had been getting the change ready, he
guessed. He knocked on the window.
“Hello? Walter?” he said. His voice seemed strange against the backdrop of the
silent landscape. The boy walked toward the back door which faced him as part of a
small built-on scullery. He pushed it and it opened slowly. It stopped less than half-
way and the boy quickly found that it was jammed by numerous bags of rubbish.
He walked inside. The kitchen seemed more neglected in the sharper definition
on the other side of the glass. Something crackled under his feet. His eyes quickly
followed a trail to a broken whiskey bottle near the peeling wall. He looked again at
the sock. Perhaps Reilly was unwell and wanted him to collect the 50p. Reilly had
been friendly and more accommodating than most. Indeed, now he thought about
it, Reilly had given the boy 20p for himself. He doubted the old man would accuse
him of theft, not if he left the ticket on the table.
He walked over and looking around once more, picked up the coppers, counting
them as he did so. To his surprise he reached 50 without the need for them all. He
slotted them into his jacket pocket and sitting on the hard chair wrote out Reilly’s
name in the blue biro. He tore off the ticket, which bore details of the New Year’s Eve
draw and dance in the Community Centre and placed it on the table, even though it
was highly unlikely Reilly would attend.
“Just leaving your ticket here, Walter,” the boy said. He got up and walked toward
the back door again, eager to leave the dead quiet of the house. As he reached the
scullery, he looked into the hall. The bedroom door was half-open. The boy felt
compelled to walk down the hall. Something was wrong.
He looked toward the front door. A smell of old clothes wafted through the air.
“Left your ticket on the table, Walter,” the boy said. He found himself hoping for
an answer. “For the raffle.” He walked on the creaking floorboards, passing the
converted toilet, the former bedroom of Reilly’s sister, who had emigrated to foreign
lands many years earlier.
He reached the bedroom and looked in. On the floor Reilly lay, unmoving. His
eyes were open but they were still. The boy dropped his biro. It made a loud ‘clack’
when it hit the linoleum floor. A small stream of blood had trailed along Reilly’s jaw
and was drying quickly.
“He’s dead,” the boy said aloud. For what seemed a long time he could not move.
He eventually turned to the front door and noticed his fingers shaking as he twisted
the latch. The cold air offered relief as it hit his lungs.
The boy decided to submit Reilly’s ticket to the draw in spite of his passing. His
mother said if the old builder won the top prize of £250, it could be donated to a
mental health charity or an Alzheimer’s disease support group. His father mused it
would be fitting if Reilly won the spot prize of a bottle of Jameson. The Committee
might have a drink in his memory, he added jovially.
But Reilly’s ticket didn’t win anything. On the night, the boy, sipping a coke,
stared at the hundreds of stubs in the base of the drum. He wondered then if some
tickets like Reilly’s were always destined to remain unpicked.
35. —34— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
CALYPSO
Iimagined mother pulling up her skirt, then pointing to the hieroglyphics
of her thigh: the shapes & the gestures as she speaks body & voice lodged
into the muscle, bringing furniture to lean on its compelling voice, describing
itself dumped onto the floor; oceans pressed into leaves, the live body with all
of its props saying: “They had this idea to kill all the first-born children, but
maybe, just maybe, their memories were written into the skin, shaped
into scars, into believing, like a water-burst eardrum.”
JACK’S UNCLE LIVES LIFE
WITHOUT A WORD OF COMPLAINT
As kids, my cousin and I would wonder
which was worse: going blind or deaf.
We were shallow, said we would miss
beauty—neighborhood girls whose breasts
were just becoming or guitar solos by Steve
Vai or Eddie Van Halen—but we knew not
to hope it happened. We never wondered,
though, what it would be like to be made
mute, what words we would miss most, not until
twenty-five years later when his father can not
speak—throat cancer, they thought, though
he had never smoked. We watch him loll
in his La-Z-Boy, unable to cheer his Dolphins
when they score—not often, he used to say.
We walk with him in the mall; he wishes he
could whistle at the way a woman sways,
regrets the one word he did not say often
enough, the one his generation did not
speak of, tries to tell us with his eyes,
his tongue and lips useless, saying nothing.
—Kevin Brown
—Michael Pagan
—Linda Zanni, “Bologna”
36. —35— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
—Anthony Bailey, “If I Had My Way”
37. —36— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
ALTERNATE VIEWS
Love means to look at your self
the way one looks at distant things.
—Czeslaw Milosz
Though I have coveted
the eagle’s home, high on a cliff,
commanding the longest reach
of an outlook, I am more earthbound—
a chicken, squawking as it flaps its wings
to evade encroaching competition;
or a turkey, unwilling to consider
raising above the immediate
unless prodded by necessity;
more often a budgie,
in intimate conversation
with its own mirror image,
never tired of exploring at close range
the endless vagaries of reflection.
ON A THEME BY PHILIP LARKIN
Everywhere the moon is the same
as the moon I see.
But beyond that moon
some star has gone up
in a burst of flame,
though it’s light still shines on me.
Night falls into a cave,
where doves are never seen.
The moon turns to ashes.
A dove cries out. He awaits
an answer silently.
Is he calling to his mate,
sending comfort
on a cheerless night,
or was he seized by
a passing hawk,
on his last unfortunate flight?
—Brigitte Goetze —George Freek
38. —37— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
DISARRAY
Je est un autre.
—Rimbaud
Ihave forgiven myself
for not existing.
Long languor of nighttime
& the cries of shadows
in their weightless
abandonment.
I have counted twenty selves
of myself, each a thin membrane
without beginning or middle,
ribbons drifting unsouled
in inner storm.
I walk. I talk.
I wear my clown face
to visit the market, inspect
the potato, the beet, the onion.
I buy a slice of the Gouda,
another of Brie.
I am only my name
I say to any who ask.
Look for me at the bottom
of an inland sea,
if there.
Even these rose petals
know my terrible truth.
They turn away to sun,
to shadow
leaving me only the chalice
of emptiness.
I remember pale Ophelia
as she walked into the pond
of her destiny
leaving how many of
herself behind to be
counted and sealed
inside a single face
as though there is only one
entranceway to hell.
—Doug Bolling
41. —40— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
THREE HOURS AT THE MET
Sure, there was the thrill of his presence, but most
importantly his delight over things that resisted wonder—
the eyeless jackals, the mutilated marble torsos.
I remember having the map, and getting us lost
(not on purpose). But there is no meaning in this,
nor is there any symbolism in the closed
Valladolid gate at the end of the visit or in how long
it took us to find the exit. I keep saying
we when all I should say is: he
and I. Two bodies unable to touch even when
he slipped his arm under mine to cross the street
later that night. I remember the exhilaration:
short-lived; yet it keeps coming back, phantom
sensation. Post-amputation veteran. Tingles,
twitches in an empty place—but who’d deny
it was real? Who’d deny the fullness of the feeling
in the hollowed limb? The comparison is valid,
I think, though I do not know what I am a veteran of
or where and what my phantom organ is. I
remember making breakfast runs in the morning
to find him still asleep when I came back. He had not
moved, had not perceived any emptiness in the flat
that was small but felt like home, with clothes strewn
about and the tiny terrace in the back
that would have been useful, had it been spring,
and warm, and just after a rainfall. And it’s been
so long since that time—yet I still do catch myself
wondering how it would have turned out,
had I gotten lost in the museum on purpose, had I
kissed him when we crossed the street, had I
never returned home in the mornings.
“I strive for finding the words that remind us of the sharpness,
tenderness and urgency of our day-to-day situations, always
privileging the raw and the visceral to the toned-down and
the polished. But to be perfectly honest, it’s also mainly to
sidestep constant heartbreak.”
—A.K. Afferez
42. —41— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
FORGIVABLE
In that way I have, I imagine
that the sand-colored horse on this beach
in Maine walking between a man
and a woman walking uneasily
over the sand, reins slack in one hand,
the woman’s, cannot suffer itself,
is a third hand rolling in endless
waves out beyond salt and water,
mane drowning, spine afloat, four legs
purposely drifting and kicking.
And now that I’m close enough, I see
the man’s only eyes, dead ahead and
yet searching around for a wild, idle
image of love, pointing sideways through
neck muscles, through hide and skull, searching
for the other side, where she dwells—
I see a man and a woman together not so much
implicating as improbably
symbolizing the horse, its loose bridle
both a circle and its circumference,
over its back a dark blanket
that can’t, of course,
stop the light rain from falling.
—Douglas Nordfors
DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP, OR:
THE SERAPHIM’S OPPOSITE NUMBER
you may know their approach from the pier
by the hillock of sea gaining momentum like
a hunchbacked thing come to surface
they will propel towards your clasped hands,
towards your desires which alerted them (for
your questions are grains of sand in the ear
and under the skin)
they who twinkle backwards, who devour light
and release the dark, who orbit His chair below
the subduction zones, His six-limbed messengers
in the sea
oh to know you will be drowning in the atlantic
among the perch that dazzle away from you
oh to see all you have done wrong in the alien
eyes of gulls
—Chelsea Eckert
44. —43— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
AN UNANTICIPATED CLARITY
From the shadows into the frame of the picture,
the sun’s congress with the land
is tympanic, trumpets its apricot light to a chirping
of crickets where the river stutters through bracken.
He lives Spartan and no longer wants to wrestle
with the thick ropes of meaning. Will weighs down
his tongue. A room words quickly fill holds people:
their bones, their needs pressed against his.
He urges the boat up-river, askance from the falls,
in a current resistant as wet cement past a sand-barren
sprawled against the shingled houses the highway evades.
Comes from the color-weary cottage, the fade
of sienna snap shots to steer an unused hour
away from the boredom that bleeds him.
Cypress aspire to a watery view, twist capricious
in a rash of shadow. He back-tracks, pilots the boat
into its own wake and takes the roundabout,
a brocade of dirt-covered granite, island complicit
with a stand of birch.
Death knows him by name...he once signed
a shred of bleached paper and could be persuaded
to ward away by the next knelled hour.
He wants out before the use is wrung from him.
He is not young.
Come to the party, Death says, guest of honor and all
like that. Why not loiter in a fine-tuned calm, not in this
mendicant’s life.
The boat scuds along past a heron in the shallows.
He poles to the swells that feather his field
of vision like breath deconstructing on a cold day.
Where to now? Death coaches, as if he were a tourist.
And what does he own, what owns him?
He’s not earning diamonds in this place:
life on the wane, the river a casket.
Time wants more from him,
He wants more from himself and why shouldn’t he
have it?
Shoots rats when he sees them. Revolver always loaded.
A song vaults from the loudspeaker affixed
to someone’s dock.
Ask me for anything, Death says.
He responds by staring at the rusted holes of the oar locks.
Wants to go into something and never come out.
His feet are cold, water in the bottom of the boat,
water bobbing in front of him like a fishing line.
No one there to see it. No one there to understand
how palpable death feels in the moment
before it becomes substantiated.
—Susan Sonde
45. —44— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
WITH CATHERINE EVLESHIN
—Deb Ain
Catherine Evleshin's crisp, vivid writing graced the pages of Agave Magazine in the form
of a short story entitled “Maceo's Rumba.” A former dancer, she neatly weaves the rhythms
of dance into her writing, creating works that pulse with energy and meaning. We were
proud to nominate her piece for the most recent Pushcart Prize.
As a former performer, researcher, and teacher, what motivates you to write?
As an ‘objective’ researcher, I found I could not tell the stories that I knew were out
there. Fiction can often reveal more profound truths. I went back and forth for some
years, swinging deeper into the world of fiction.
What themes are you most interested in examining through writing?
I am concerned with environmental issues and social justice— intrigued with the
near future. Most of my stories could be labeled political or science fiction or fantasy,
but dance creeps in, because I can demonstrate setting and character best in the
mode of celebration, especially since music and dance are so central to African and
Latino cultures.
What role do you believe dance can play in literature?
That depends upon the author’s experience. I can spot a surface understanding not
based on actual participation by the author. Not that she must be “professional,” just
authentic.
"Maceo's Rumba" practically vibrates with energy. What you you believe is the
key to maintaining a steady, elevated pace throughout the story?
“Maceo’s Rumba” is a paean to my favorite dance complex, the Afro-Cuban rumba,
and a tribute to the Cuban artists and everyday people who suffer family separation,
physical deprivation, and bureaucratic torment. African drums, Spanish poetry,
flamencopassion,uniquetoCubaandinformingmusicalanddancestylesthroughout
the Americas, even back to Africa. Alternately sensual, tender, combative, or comic,
performed with fierce pride and synchronicity. I love what you said about the story
vibrating with energy. That is because Havana itself does that. No one comes away
from that city unchanged. I kept the pace by visualizing, dancing in my mind, if you
will, the tension and rhythm of the city.
What experience would you like to give your readers?
You might ask, why not use film/video to illustrate dance. Been there, done that. I
took on the challenge of fiction to do what no other medium can, get inside the head
of the dancer, with the goal that the reader can vicariously experience the intensity.
47. —46— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
WITH CHARLIE BAYLIS
—Deb Ain
Charlie Baylis is a poet, author of short stories, a blogger and a tweeter. He is a poetry
reviewer and a translator. He is a fan of Dylan Thomas, Prince, Nottingham Forest, and
typos. His Puschart Prize-nominated poem “Along the Westway” (which first appeared
in Agave Magazine’s Fall 2014 issue) is an enchanting, lyrical marvel of pacing and
language, and will be published in his forthcoming chapbook collaboration with our
newest extension, Agave Press.
Why do you write?
When I was 16, I was listening to Sea Change by Beck. I think one of the songs
had a strong affect on me. Possibly the one about his mother passing, anyway, that
happened and I picked up a pencil. I couldn't really help it. I got hooked.
I wrote more seriously from the age of 17. I was truly awful. Terrible attempts to be
like my hero, George Byron. I wrote an irreproachable bad poem at 18 that placed
in a competition (entitled “Vodka Kicks and Teardrops”). It was praised for playing
with being Artless. (The judges did not know that I was, at least at that age, genuinely
Artless). After that, I just picked up the pencil and ran. I couldn't stop even if you
held a gun to my head. It's in my veins. It's in my blood.
Of what poem are you the proudest?
I think the first poem that came out. The first good one, anyway. It was in SAW
Magazine. I wrote it at 22, fresh from graduating. It's a sonnet called “Lilia by the
Fountain.” It’s about the stillness of winter being untied by love's strings.
Publication was a beautiful feeling—I'd had so many no, no, no's, even a ‘you're so
bad, it hurts’ rejection slip. Then Colin S. wrote and said he was putting it in his
magazine. I think I cried. I'm a little emotional, at times, at least for an Englishman.
What effect do you hope to have on the reader with your poem “Along the
Westway”?
I wrote “Along the Westway when I was really down. I'd been fired from a job, I'd
been dumped by my girlfriend, I'd sent myself back home to live at my mum's house,
and it was unbearably sad. I was broken, I'd been living in essentially paradise (I was
in the south of Italy, teaching English). I needed to recover. So, anyway to answer the
question, the poem was not written with a reader in mind. It is a failed attempt to
escape the pain, chaos and sorrow around me.
When I was in Italy, I slit my wrist. I had another go in another country. Then I came
home. I'm proud to say I've recovered completely. I am healthy and happy again. I've
no gratitude for the people who made me feel that way. I do have a lot of gratitude
for the people who published the poem (others have said no to it!).
Finally the Pushcart Prize nomination was a super feeling. I didn't win, but to be
nominated meant the world to me. After the hell I went through. I didn't cry. But it
was close! I'm really grateful to Agave. I love you guys. It's been true love from the
start.
You seem to pull no punches in your reviews. Do you find it difficult to write a
negativecritique,ordoyouagreewithJayRaynerthatit'smorefuntoreadand
write a negative review?
IjusthaveverystrongopinionsandIcan'tlie.I'vewrittenpositivereviewsinmyhead
that other people have thought were negative. I’d agree with Jay (love his writing!):
being insulting comes more naturally to me in a review. If you met me in person after
suffering one of my vitriolic reviews, you’d be shocked. I’d be more likely to buy you
an ice cream and talk pleasantly about the weather. I’m a nice guy at heart (Jay is
too). It just doesn’t come across in reviews!
48. —47— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
FULL COURT DRAMA
—Nortina Simmons
I told Arnett Little that it was a bad idea to play a prank on Mr. Jacobson. Mr.
Jacobson scared me, and I had always done my best to steer clear of him. I hated that
he only had one good eye, that it was covered in a murky film and rolled so much in
its socket I was sure it would fall out, and that it was only considered ‘good’ because
the other eye was permanently sealed from years of Mr. Jacobson’s never wiping
away the sleep in the morning (according to my older sister, Leah). Mr. Jacobson
was an old man with a temper, and although he couldn’t walk without a cane, he was
still bigger than any of the ballers in our neighborhood. The slightest provocation
was the difference between life and death.
Arnett and I stood on the sidelines of the cracked, concrete basketball court
in the center of Roland Courts, the housing project in which we resided. Roland
Courts was a cluster of one-story apartment buildings, each with two bedrooms, a
bathroom, and a kitchen-living room combination. All of the buildings formed a
circle around the basketball court, close enough for the children to play safely and
for their parents to watch from their living room windows.
The teenaged boys were playing a competitive three-on-three game of pick-up
basketball that afternoon. It was ‘best three out of five,’ and The Skins were winning,
which wasn’t much of a surprise since the first ones to strip off their shirts usually
had some skill. Mike-Mike had just crossed over Big Tone and was leaping towards
the six-foot rusty goal for the finishing dunk when Arnett nudged me for my answer.
“C’mon Candace, it’ll be fun. Seeing his face when he opens the door and
nobody’s there? And his eye looking all over the place! He always cracks me up with
that eye!” she said, laughing and slapping her knee.
“Don’t you wanna watch the game?” I asked.
“Why? Just to watch Mike-Mike ball hog the whole time? Ain’t none of them
going to the NBA, no way. Let’s do something fun,” she whined.
“And what if Mr. Jacobson’s wife opens the door?”
“Does he even have a wife?” Arnett shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never seen her.”
Leah once told me that Mr. Jacobson had actually murdered his wife and buried
her underneath the floorboards of their kitchen. He did it because she wasn’t home
when he was ready to eat dinner, and when she finally arrived, he took a cake knife
to her throat. No one knew much about the Jacobsons other than Leah’s stories.
The only facts were that he was strange, she was a recluse, and their children hardly
visited. Leah spoke with so much confidence and detail that no one dared to refute
her stories. I had learned to never take what Leah said lightly, ever since she had
correctly predicted that my former third grade teacher, Mr. Cockerham, would get
fired for following me into the girls’ bathroom one day during lunch period. “He was
trying to see you naked,” she had said. “Good thing you had to pee really bad and
locked the door behind you, or else, he would’ve went in the stall with you too.”
Mr. Jacobson’s house was directly behind us. He usually stood in the screen door,
watching silently for anything out of place, but he was missing.
I expressed my concern, but Arnett wasn’t having it. She suggested that instead
of knocking and running, we’d open and slam the screen door shut, scaring the old
man so bad that he’d crap himself. She approached the first step, and I started to
follow, but hesitated when I saw something move in the screen. It was Mr. Jacobson.
He was standing in the doorway and his wandering eye was oddly focused right on
Arnett. He held something to his side. At first, I thought it was his cane, but it was
too wide at the bottom and didn’t have a curved handle. I hissed for Arnett to come
back, to abort the mission. She had been looking down at her feet as she tiptoed up
the steps, and didn’t realize that Mr. Jacobson had returned to his post.
Arnett placed her hand on the door handle and turned around to look at me. “If
you’re too scared to do it, just go on home,” she said. Behind her, Mr. Jacobson raised
the object in his hand and thrust the end of it through the screen door, shattering the
glass. A startled Arnett let go of the handle to shield her face, and fell backgrounds,
her butt bouncing off of the edge of each step until she landed in the grass. I stood,
frozen in horror, as the old man charged through the glass, slicing his arms on the
jagged edges and yelling, “Get! Get! Get!” The item in his hands, very clear—a
shotgun.
The boys on the basketball court heard the noise and paused their game. They
approached the edge of the basketball court towards Mr. Jacobson’s yard and began
taunting and urging him to shoot while Arnett frantically scrambled backwards on
her hands and feet to get out of his range.
“What you ‘bout to do with that gun, old man?” Mike-Mike asked bouncing the
ball.
“He ain’t gon’ shoot. He can’t even see,” Deron said laughing.
“Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry!” Arnett whined.
“Get!” Mr. Jacobson said. He wobbled down the steps, one by one, with the
shotgun aimed at her head.
“Aim the gun at me!” Big Tone called.
“No, me!” said Julian.
49. —48— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
“Hold it steady,” Ricky teased.
Mr. Jacobson rose the gun towards the boys, pointing it at each of them, then
back at Arnett, and at the boys again. He did it in a rhythmic motion, as if he were
playing ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe.’
“Get!” he shouted.
The boys laughed harder.
Arnettrolledoverandcrawledonherhandsandkneestowardsthecourt.Iwaved
my arms and screamed for her to get up and run, but my voice was drowned out by
the boys’ shouts and claps for Mr. Jacobson to shoot at them.
Then, the gun went off.
To this day, I don’t know if Mr. Jacobson intentionally tried to shoot us, or if he
just meant to scare us and accidentally fired. All I know is that one shot changed
everything. The not-so-fearless boys dispersed in different directions towards their
perspective homes. Only Dylan dropped to the ground with his hands over his head,
screaming, “He shootin’! He crazy!” repeatedly.
I ran across the basketball court to my house and banged on the door until my
mom emerged with a greasy rattail comb in her hand.
“Leah, stay inside!” she called behind her. I directed her to the basketball court
behind me, and she rushed towards Arnett, who was sprawled out on the court with
her hand to her back, howling. I was sure she had been shot.
Our next door neighbor, Mr. Fairview, who had darted from his house as soon as
the shot was fired, tried to wrestle the gun from Mr. Jacobson’s grasp. Mr. Jacobson,
however, was a lot stronger than his age led us to believe. We weren’t sure how old he
was, exactly. Leah had guessed he might have been between ninety and ninety-five.
Although he could barely see, and his weak legs could no longer support his six-foot-
tall body, everything between the nose and belt were that of a much younger man.
He had a thick neck and muscular arms connected to broad shoulders. His hard,
round stomach protruded over his belt, and several times, Mr. Fairview bounced off
of it as they tugged and pulled for possession of the gun. Eventually, Mr. Jacobson’s
knees buckled underneath him, and he collapsed to the ground. His huge hands still
maintained a firm grip to his gun, however. Mr. Fairview was unable to pry it away
from him.
“What...the hell’s...wrong with you?” Mr. Fairview asked with his hand on his
chest, gasping for air. “Shooting at kids!”
Mr. Jacobson didn’t respond. His eye had gone back to wandering.
After patting her down, rolling her over, and lifting her shirt, Mom could find no
visible wounds on Arnett, and concluded that Mr. Jacobson had missed, thanks to
his cataracts. I sighed in relief. Mom put Arnett’s arm over her shoulder and walked
her to our apartment. I rubbed Arnett’s back as they passed by.
Mr. Jacobson remained seated on the ground, hugging the gun to his chest,
the butt resting between his legs in the grass. He jerked his head from left to right,
looking for any potential threats. In the screen door of his house stood the pale
apparition of a woman in a white night gown. She had frizzy, gray hair that grazed
her shoulders. She twiddled her fingers as she examined the broken glass scattered
on the front steps, on the carpet by her feet, clinging to the doorframe, dripping with
Mr. Jacobson’s blood. I stared at her, puzzled for a few minutes before I followed
Mom and Arnett inside and shut the door behind me.
Some of the neighbors congregated into our tiny apartment kitchen that night
to discuss Mr. Jacobson. Mom served everyone a cool glass of water to calm them
down before taking her place as mediator at the head of the table. Mr. Fairview
quickly gulped his water down but didn’t ask for a refill. He seemed to be out of
breath. I wondered if he was still recovering from his scuffle with Mr. Jacobson. Mrs.
Fike sat next to him. She was a calm woman in her sixties. The skin under her cheek
bones sagged so that she looked like her pet boxer she occasionally took out to walk.
She lived next door to Mr. Jacobson and was probably the only person in Roland
Courts who knew him personally. Arnett’s mother, Mrs. Little, sat on the other side
of Mrs. Fike fidgeting in her chair, while Mr. Little angrily paced between the stove,
sink, and refrigerator, shaking his balled up fist.
Arnett, Leah, and I leaned over the counter that separated the kitchen from the
living room. Arnett was shaking. She dug her fingernails into her forearm until she
pierced the skin. When she saw that she had drawn blood, she began to cry again.
LeahbroughtArnettaboxofroughtissuepaperandinvitedhertositonthecouchin
the living room. It wasn’t the newest couch, but it didn’t have bugs crawling between
the cushions either. Arnett nodded her thanks, unable to speak. When she blew her
nose, I squeezed her shoulder to let her know that the worst was over.
“That man belongs in a home!” we heard Mr. Little shout from the kitchen. I
looked up to see him slam his fist onto the table with a loud bang. The glasses rattled.
The water in Mrs. Little’s untouched glass spilled over. She wiped it up with her
hands and went back to fidgeting.
“Amen to that,” Mr. Fairview said. He raised his empty glass in agreement.
“The man is old. He’s senile. He’s got dementia,” Mrs. Fike said.
IturnedtoLeahforclarity.“It’slikeAlzheimer’s‘ceptyou’recrazy,”shewhispered.
Mom had been braiding Leah’s hair into cornrows when she was interrupted by
50. —49— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
the shooting. Half of Leah’s hair was braided in long, light brown extensions that
reached down to the small of her back, while the other half was pulled into a puffy
side ponytail. I wondered if she was annoyed about her hair being half done.
“Arnett did provoke him,” Mom said.
“That gives him no excuse to shoot at my daughter!” Mr. Little said.
Arnett began to cry again. I squatted down in front of her and patted her knee. I
hoped that everything would be OK, but I knew it wouldn’t. Arnett would be forever
changed by this event. The elderly were dangerous. And it didn’t matter their age or
stature, whether or not they could still walk. Just because grandma baked us cookies
that afternoon, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t beat us with her cane that evening if we
changed the channel from “Wheel of Fortune” to “SpongeBob Squarepants.” Mrs.
Fike would soon become like that. Mom too. Already, she had exhibited elderly,
manic tendencies. One day, she had thrown dirty dishes that were piled up in the
sink onto the floor, ranting about how we didn’t appreciate the things she did for
the house. Leah and I waited for her to cool off, and after she had stomped off to her
room, we swept up the mess and wrote paper plates on the grocery list attached to
the refrigerator door.
I dreamt about Mr. Jacobson that night. He was standing on the front step,
sweeping the shards scattered around his feet with the barrel of his shotgun. It
was dark, though the sun was just beginning to rise. There was a faint glow of the
sun behind the crumbling smokestack of the old textile mill down the street. Mr.
Jacobson continued sweeping, deaf to the screeching sound the barrel made as he
pushed it across the concrete step. The sounds combined to make a high pitch shrill
that dug deep into my eardrums, causing my brain to rattle, and when Mr. Jacobson’s
gun suddenly fired, my head nearly exploded.
Mr. Jacobson flew into the air. He dropped his shotgun, and barrel first, it landed
vertically on top of the pile of glass. He landed on his back next to the pile with a
loud thud. The gun and pile shook, but the gun remained balanced on top.
Mr. Jacobson reached for his shot foot to nurse it, but he couldn’t move past
his stomach. No matter how much he tried to raise himself up, the weight of his
stomach pushed him back down. Eventually, he gave up. In spite of my fear of him,
I wanted to help. However, the woman appeared in the door again. She stepped
over Mr. Jacobson’s outstretched body, around the shotgun and pile of glass, and
down the steps. She walked to his feet dangling over the platform and caressed the
wounded foot in her tiny hands. She kissed it repeatedly, and Mr. Jacobson’s tense
body finally began to relax. He exhaled, and I could see his breath, as if it were cold
outside, rise from his mouth towards the sky.
I woke up to the dim light of the street lamp outside of my window trying to
penetratethoughtheblindsoverhead.“Leah.Leah.Areyouawake?”Iasked,tapping
her shoulder. We shared a bedroom together, our beds side by side underneath the
lone window. Leah was a wild sleeper and occasionally, she would roll into my bed.
Mom had pushed the beds together, to keep her from falling onto the floor in the
middle of the night.
Leah groaned before saying, “No,” but she rolled over to her side, facing me, and
propped herself up on one elbow. “What?” she asked.
“I had a dream about Mr. Jacobson.”
“Goodforyou,”shesaid.Iheardarubbingsoundaroundherheadandconcluded
that she was wiping her eyes.
“I saw her too,” I said.
“Who?”
“Mrs. Jacobson.” I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell she was staring at me
blankly. “His wife?” I added.
“Oh.”
“You told me she was dead.”
Leah sighed. “I thought she was.” She dropped her elbow and fell back into her
pillow.
I turned my head towards the window. I thought about peeking through the
blinds, but feared I might see the images from my dream. “So, you just made up that
story about him killing her?” I asked.
“No, not really. I remember Mrs. Fike telling Mom that she had heard him
threaten to stab her. When she stopped coming out the house, I figured he finally
did it.”
I squinted my eyes in confusion. I had never seen Mrs. Jacobson before that
afternoon.
“‘Course, I only seen her once,” Leah continued. “And she was so bony and white,
I still don’t think it wasn’t a ghost I really saw.” She turned her back to me and laid
her head on her hand. With the other, she pull the comforter up to her chin. “Now,
go back to sleep. It’s too late to be thinking ‘bout old people nobody cares about.”
They care now, I thought. I remembered how angry Mr. Little was earlier, how
worried Mrs. Little looked, how Arnett had covered her face and ran home when
Mom walked them out the front door, refusing to look across the basketball court to
51. —50— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
the site where she had almost lost her life to a man who was nearly blind.
A week later, on a rare Sunday afternoon when the boys had not taken over the
basketball court, Leah and I decided to shoot some hoops. No one had been to
the basketball court since the shooting because of its proximity to Mr. Jacobson’s
apartment. I had visited Arnett a few days after the shooting to see if she had
recovered from the traumatization. She looked worse, rocking back and forth on
her bed with her knees drawn up to her chin, staring at the wall, vowing repeatedly
never to go to that evil basketball court again, as if the court was to blame for her or
Mr. Jacobson’s actions.
Leah bounced the ball. It was flat, and she had to pound it with her fist so that it
rose higher. When she was bored with bouncing it, she passed it to me. I drew it back
over my head and lunged it towards the backboard. It ricocheted and landed with a
splat at half court.
“What kind of shot was that?” Leah asked, jogging to retrieve the ball. In the
distance we heard the sound of sirens. We ignored it at first, thinking that someone
might have robbed the corner store again, but when the sound got so loud it vibrated
in our ears, we looked around for the police car, fire truck, or ambulance from which
it came.
An ambulance pulled into the complex and parked in front of Mr. Jacobson’s
house. Nosy neighbors emerged from their homes and converged in a semi-circle
surrounding it. I hovered behind them, trying not to appear too interested.
“What’s happened now?” Mr. Fairview asked.
“Did the old man finally keel over?” Julian asked.
“Good riddance,” said Mr. Little. He wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulder,
squeezed her against his body, and kissed her ear.
I stood on my toes and looked over the shoulders of the adults in front of me.
The glass on Mr. Jacobson’s front steps had been cleared, but the broken screen door
was still there. I stared through the door and could picture Mr. Jacobson charging
towardsme.Icouldseehismusclespulsinginhisthighsandneck.ThegunfiredandI
quickly shut my eyes. I didn’t want to see my death coming as Arnett saw hers. When
I opened them, I watched Mr. Jacobson get carted out of his home on a stretcher and
into the back of the ambulance. His frail wife brought a balled up tissue to her puffy,
red eyes and followed closely behind.
“Guess shooting Arnett was too much for him,” Leah whispered in my ear.
I learned that Mr. Jacobson had woken up that morning and couldn’t get out of
bed. He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t walk. It worried his wife so much that she
finally dialed 9-1-1.
“His disease is catching up with him. He probably just forgot how to walk.” Mrs.
Fike said to the crowd. She took Mrs. Jacobson by the arm and guided her towards
the parking lot. She told Mrs. Jacobson that would be too much for her to ride in the
back of the ambulance with her husband. “I’ll take you to the hospital instead,” she
said.
I spun around to face Leah. “We should ride in the ambulance with him.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he’s really sick. I don’t think he wants to play with you like last time.”
She raised her eyebrows at me, giving me the same look Mom gave us whenever she
tried to hint that we were talking nonsense.
“I’m not trying to play,” I said. I didn’t want to play then. Games were the cause
of his trouble. He never hurt anyone before Arnett’s little trick. He was strange, yes,
but he had never bothered anyone before Arnett, other than possibly his wife.
“I want to help,” I said.
“They got Mrs. Fike,” Leah said. “I’m gonna tell Mom what happened.” She
retrieved the basketball from the court and walked back to our house.
I watched the ambulance pull from the complex and disappear behind the
apartments. No one moved from the semicircle in front of Mr. Jacobson’s house.
The neighbors talked amongst themselves in hushed tones. Some occasionally
paused and looked in the direction the ambulance departed. There was a collective
assumption throughout Roland Courts that Mr. Jacobson would not return. Sure
enough, Mike-Mike and his crew were approaching to reclaim their ownership of
the basketball court. I didn’t want them to return. They had mocked Mr. Jacobson.
He couldn’t shoot them; he was too weak, they joked. They were the cause of his
sickness. We all were. Everyone who laughed at him, thought he was crazy, wanted
him locked up in a home, ignored his crumbling mind for the sake of a good story.
As the boys dribbled the ball between their legs, shook one another until he fell,
and kissed the ball off the backboard and into the hoop, Arnett was rocking in her
bed, the barrel of a shotgun permanently embedded in her brain, Mrs. Jacobson was
crying in the passenger seat of a Buick following an ambulance, wondering if her
husband would ever get to taste her cooking again, and her husband, Mr. Jacobson,
was in the back of that ambulance, unable to walk, confused, unaware of who he was
or where he was. Lost. He left us to die, and I was the only person who cared.
52. —51— AGAVE MAGAZINE, VOL. 2, ISSUE 3WINTER 2015
NEXT ISSUE: VOL.2, ISSUE 4
{SPRING 2015}
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