Neon Literary Magazine #37 Read online

  “The best ones are natural, dear – like breasts.”

   

  Mother in a cloche hat rested her fingers on them

  throughout the postwar slump.

  Appearances, darling.

   

  I can't be bothered.  They're so heavy, and I'd have to wear them

  at least once a year to keep the sheen intact – they have to lie against skin,

  the little parasites.  If my daughter were posh enough totty

  she could wear them along with a smile in a gauzily-lit room,

  the new coming-out photo.  Instead she clicks them along her teeth

  in a tumble-down student union, arguing with boys about socialism,

  informing them that there's nothing good about war

  and we all need to make the world equal for everyone.

   

  *

   

  Marrying A Widower

   

  You step into an apartment

  newly available for rent.

  The previous tenant was so beloved

  neighbours' dogs still yearn at the door

  and must be tugged away.

   

  The walls shine virgin white.

  Fresh lumps and seams of paint spring up

  when you press your face

  to pureness which promises to be smudged

  newly by you.

   

  You adjust the furniture

  to cover as much of the floor as possible.

  Shadows appear, though the room

  is innocent of any source of light; they are cast

  by no objects you can see.

   

  In your unfamiliar wardrobe, you find skirts

  longer and softer than those you customarily wear

  and scarves that crumple in folds around your neck.

   

  You sprout golden freckles.

  You can no longer sing.

   

  You burst into light when his voice

  reaches down the corridor.  You answer

  to his wife's name.

   

  *

   

  Roommate

   

  She was the worst roommate ever.

  She stashed empties in my hatbox,

  used my lace bras to strain tortellini.

  She hung wet towels over my open dresser drawers

  and didn't take them down even when they were stiff –

  meanwhile, my t-shirts and jeans crawled with mould.

   

  The only time we ever got on was when

  we committed acts of drunken spite and petty larceny

  in the corners of freshers-with-no-knickers nightclubs.

   

  We were the thieving duo of despair.

  She'd pick the mark, pour nonsense in his ear

  while I slid round the back to finger his wallet.

   

  It's the only way a girl can get ahead.

  Like my Ukrainian grandmother used to say,

  “Don't let the water go down in your fishbowl!”

   

  Roommates stumbled home, too drunk to know

  whose arm was around which waist.

  She threw up on my bed

  before passing out on her own.

   

  I covered her with stiff towels

  and hid the stolen money

  among the empties

  in my hatbox.

   

  Erric Emerson

   

  Image by Robert Linder

   

  Red Limbs

   

  I see them coming from

  behind the layer of mesh 

  glass    being   lead by a white

  coat      to the   table of pastels

  and    crayons    where us fuck

  ups   scribble   serenity onto a

  blank    page.     They’re not

  not my   friends   or family, it’s

  the emaciated     late teen’s

  next to me, the   one who's

  too lost   to look    up. It's his

  parents  I think by  the way

  their   deflated walk   and hung

  faces  greet him as  he shades

  his leafless tree. It's   not till they

  are behind him noting  his precise

  hand that he turns   towards their

  shadows and without smiling wonders

  aloud why they came. Wounded, they

  remind him they’re his parents and that

  they are here now. He shows them the

  tight bracelet on his left arm and the warp

  around his wrist of that drawing hand and

  reminds them they weren’t there then.

   

  *

   

  A Suspicious Cigarette

   

  I’m not a cigarette I said to the giant cigarette looking suspiciously back at me through the mirror in the truck stop bathroom. The room was filthy, covered in green sludge, and the toilet had committed suicide. There were pieces of brown brain spilling out of the ceramic entry wound. The plunger made some sly remark I couldn’t quite make out, and spontaneously combusted. It smelled delicious. Gross, the giant cigarette said, noticing a daddy long leg smoking a very small cigarette in the corner of the ceiling. I turned my attention to the suspicious character in the mirror, who’d decided to have a staring contest with me. Now he was monkeying around, flailing his arms like an idiot, miming my movements. Copy Cat I said accusingly. The fluorescent light above us flickered, and he was gone.

   

  You ok? My friend asked, smoking as he started the car.

  I inhaled the sweet aroma wafting towards me.

  I held my breath. And held, and held.

   

  *

   

  Aureole

   

   

   

  Meg Eden

   

  Image by “ematil1023”

   

  Bollystar

   

  In high school, Miti brings saris in the morning

  and we change in the bathroom stalls

  while the first bell goes off. We skip

  through the halls, arms linked, singing

  the lyrics to Bollywood songs

  that the white girls don't know.

   

  Because I don't think of myself as one

  of the white girls – I think of myself

  as dark like the henna Miti presses

  onto my hand. I think of my eyes

  heavy and strange in a world

  of girls in bootie shorts.

   

  Miti works late shifts at Subway

  even though she’s a religious vegetarian,

  and dates a boy six years older than her.

  Yesterday, a blonde in art class taught her “fuck”

  and she’s been saying it whenever she gets the chance.

  When she gets perfume, she sprays it fifteen times

  around her body until I can find her by smell. 

   

  When I get home from class, I watch

  Aishwarya Rai movies and wonder

  what you have to do to get that beautiful.

   

  I dance with my fingers close to my head.

  I dance like my life is a Bollywood film,

  and this is the scene where the heroine

  sings about loneliness.

   

  *

   

  Roulette Chat

   

  In college, when we weren’t watching

  movies we were watching men

  with webcams, sitting on their beds,

  telling us they loved our bodies

  even though we never
turned our camera on.

  We compiled our sexy suggestions – the things

  we thought about but never dared to do –

  promising our invented hands wet

  with need, unbuttoned shirts,  and weekends

  all alone. We waited until they closed

  their doors, got on their beds and pulled

  down their pants, showed us their thing:

  all hairy, pink and bizarre to me –

  then we’d all howl with laughter and say

  we were a man, then log off, leaving them

  hard and panting and broken. And it always

  amazed me, the faith they had in us –

  the faith that shows a penis without seeing

  anything back. Were we needed that badly?

   

  *

   

  Twelve Little Indians

  For D

   

  We learned this morning

  that our tuba player is dead.

  He was found in a car

  on Rt 450, gone for a week.

  What else have we overlooked

  while driving?

   

  It’s six days before Christmas.

  I try to imagine the silent

  dinner, his plate of abstinence,

  gifts thrown out, unopened

  as if buried alive, or else returned

  two days later with receipts – Why

  couldn’t he wait until new year?

  When everyone is gone,

  and satisfied – at least in drink?

   

  And now, we are left without a tuba,

  without a tuba player – every song

  is a tribute, the absence unbearable–

  In the chorus, I stand behind his empty

  chair. But as we sing, I can’t help

  but look to the strings, the wind,

  the guitars and percussion – who

  among us will be next? And how

  will we survive?

   

  Joe Evans

   

  Image by Nate Brelsford

   

  An Instance Of The Scientific Method

   

  Find a pot of nail varnish: “Confident

  Coral”, by Jessica, perhaps. Fetch

  the stainless steel nail scissors and walk

  beneath the flying March shadows.

   

  Lie on the grass; adjust your scale

  of focus to the miniscule. The cat, hull-down

  among the crocuses, observes with mild

  interest. Select and mark your snail.

   

  A scarlet shell-top will allow no later

  confusion of identity. Now advance,

  scissors gaping and extended, remembering

  that this is science: to verify by repetition

   

  the results observed by others, to wit

  Eakin and Fertalle, in which garden snails

  repaired the loss of an entire eye-stalk

  within thirty-two days of amputation.

   

  *

   

  New Skin

   

  I slipped on a new skin this morning –

  hirsute, for autumn warmth – parted

  simian back-hairs to find the open slit

  then slid into that scrotum-soft suit,

   

  fingering my way into black-haired

  forearms, the nails dangling and clicking

  at the tips of flaccid-hanging hands;

  then stood up straight to pull the fleshy hood

   

  across my face and turned to see

  this mirrored stranger. Not really, of course;

  but the thought brought to mind what I

  was told: that in a sex-change operation,

   

  a vagina is fashioned from the penis, split

  and cored; the silken shaft-sheath

  worked inside out like a doll's sleeve

  to form a somewhat leathery cul-de-sac.

   

  And – still within my own perverted

  mind – I slide a finger in and give

  a little shudder at the thought of entering

  that dry yet tender foreign skin.

   

  *

   

  Black Ghost Knife Fish

   

  Raindrops unspooling neon loops

  on gutter lakes that shake with squared-off light.

  Leaf-mould stacks the gratings down beneath.

   

  Violet white and hot pink

  floating across night eyes and scents

  of diesel, smoking fat and star anise.

   

  Strobing in and out of shadows,

  catching lost lines uncoiling loose

  behind late leavers and weaving loners,

   

  trailing perfume and alcohol fumes through

  the buried thump of autocthonic beats

  and sheets of spray thrown over grit-black streets.

   

  Black ghost knife fish: swimming

  unseen, lost witness to the midnight masses

  who move through Friday night's fleeting fugue,

   

  easing my feet among the rows

  of shining hump-backed carapaces,

  beetle-bright under moth-strung sodium heat.

   

  Contributors

   

  Image by Riccardo Thalia

   

  Paul Bavister works as a gardener and also teaches Creative Writing. He has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press, the most recent being The Prawn Season.

   

  Shanalee Smith was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Sandscript Literary Magazine, The White Rabbit Zine and Slipstream. Currently attending the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, she is hard at work on her first book-length poetry collection.

   

  Noel Williams is widely-published in magazines and anthologies and has won his share of prizes. He’s editor of Antiphon magazine (antiphon.org.uk), Associate Editor of Orbis and Resident Artist at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield. His collection Out of Breath is due from Cinnamon Press in March 2014. His website is noelwilliams.wordpress.com.

   

  Christopher Owen's stories have been published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Pewter Rose Press and The Irish Literary Review. He's also had a number of plays professionally produced, including A Parson's Tale, which toured north-west England. Women's Voices by the American writer Susan K Monson and Christopher was produced in October 2013 in Manchester. His CV can be found on his website: christopherowen.co.uk.

   

  Tracey S Rosenberg grew up in the United States and now lives in Scotland.  In 2010, she won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.  Her debut pamphlet, Lipstick Is Always A Plus, is published by Stewed Rhubarb Press; other manuscripts have been longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Collection Award and the Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize.

   

  Erric Emerson is currently the poetry editor of Duende, an undergraduate journal from Goddard College, the first edition of which is due out in the autumn of 2014. His poetry has been published in Collage literary journal in the 2011 and 2012 editions. He is a poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, currently studying a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at Goddard College. He previously held the position of Creative Writing Club President at Brookdale Community College.

   

  Meg Eden's work has been published in various magazines, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and received the 2012 Henrietta Spiegel Creative Writing Award. She was a reader for the Delmarva Review.  Her collections include Your Son (The Florence Kahn Memorial Award) and Rotary Phones And Facebook (Dancing Girl Press). She
teaches at the University of Maryland. Check out her work at artemisagain.wordpress.com.

   

  Joe Evans works in education, having previously been a stained glass artist, a company director, a gardener and a musician. His poetry has been published in The SHOp (Ireland), Lighthouse and Sarasvati as well as various online collections. He is forty-four and has two children.

   

  Timur Cetintas is a student at the ETH Zürich studying pharmaceutical sciences. He took his first serious photos aged fourteen with a Nikon D60 (which he still uses today), and since then he rarely goes anywhere without his Nikon. He owns only two lenses, as he believes that you don't need the most complicated equipment to take good (even great) shots - simplicity often gives the same satisfying results as expensive devices.

   

  Supporters

   

  This issue of Neon was made possible by the kind support of:

   

  Destry (Author of Adventures In Misogyny)

   

  Mark Edwards

   

  William Park

   

  Lynne Jones

   

  Lynsey Griswold

   

  Mark Vanner

   

  James McKenzie

   

  Julienne Grey

   

  Evan Williams

   

  Jo Celia Simmonds (sewingisforgirls.blogspot.com)

   

  Penny Michalski

   

  Zoe Gilbert (mindandlanguage.blogspot.com)

   

  Alina Rios (www.alinarios.com)

   

  Claire Connors

   

  David Holton (@davidholton)