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MONROE LAWRENCE IN CONVERSATION WITH VI KHI NAO

July 19, 2022
VI KHI NAO: Almond was mentioned quite a few times on page four of About to Be Young. Can you tell me about your relationship with this edible oval nutty thing? When I was in Spain, eating pistachio ice cream for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, the ice cream maker kept repeating “almond,” and “almond” over and over to imply the almond tree growing in the winter months a few hours from Granada. It reminded me of your poem that begins with “Oh God” and ends “crying almond, almond, almond        into the night.” Will the poets in my life always have the proclivity to wail “almond” and “almond”—arresting me, seizing me in the geocentric moment with this almondness?MONROE LAWRENCE: Maybe they will: I uprooted “crying almond, almond, almond     into the night” out of a pile of drafts of poems I was reading by my friend, a poet, who I mention in the acknowledgments. But I was intrigued by what it could do positioned in the right way: I wanted to celebrate the almond line, set it apart. I’ve never eaten pistachios, and am allergic to most nuts, though I am entranced by the colour of pistachio ice cream... lurking in its barrel... Incidentally, the almond line might carry a reference to Paul Celan, I’m remembering The Elephants editor Broc Rossell made a comment to that effect early on...VKN: Celan? How so? What is it like to work with Broc? He is not at all allergic to nuts. The first time I met him in person (was it AWP DC? Or AWP Los Angeles), he was eating lots of cashews? Almonds? Because his metabolism is so so so high. He is columnar, narrow, and fastigiate like those northern evergreen trees or those tall and skinny aspen trees with eyes. Did he consume your poems with an accelerated metabolism as he does with the nuts you are allergic to? And, how did he consume your poetry? What was the process like? And, since you are allergic to nuts, are you allergic to flowers too?ML: Not that I know of re: flower allergy. I’m definitely jealous of people that know the names of all the flowers. I imagine an allergy to certain flowers would make one liable to know their names. There’s this Allen Grossman poem “Sentinel Yellowwoods,” where the speaker goes on a walk in the woods after learning the Latin names of various plants and suddenly has this powerful experience of the natural world… yet it took a cataloguing of the names of the flora to enable that experience of wonder. I definitely relate to that. Broc was so kind and precise and fun. It was great to work with someone who lived for so long in Vancouver and moved through the same spaces I did. It’s also lovely to imagine one has been emailing with a columnar, fastigiate person. He was really generous to me with About to Be Young and helped me to learn about aspects of typography, design, etc. There is a Celan poem “Count the almonds”... in a lot of Celan’s poetry there is an investment of small, countable objects with a strangled lyrical intensity—as if a poet might call any noun into the night and have that named thing resonate. I like the idea, too, that the intonation rather than the denotative meaning receives emphasis in Celan. How does one manage the intonation on the page? Framing “almond” language on page 4 was one way of coding or curating intonation.VKN: I am also jealous of people who know the names of flowers, but also trees by heart. My friend, Joe Markovich, is such a person. He lives in Seattle and tells me all sort of things about Douglas fir, bald cypress, etc. Now that I know you are not allergic to flowers, how did you, Monroe, “edit the violets” yourself? And, what does that mean to you? ML: I have to say, to some Americans, that I am from just north of Seattle; my parents, just north of Seattle, are both such people capable of naming every tree. In Proust—violets, hawthorns—I just see a blurry, if beautiful, mass of colours and leaves.Like many of the poems in the book, “I / edit / the violets myself” was excavated out of a much longer poem. So maybe the poem refers to my journey to it. I had to endure weeks of carving other, semi-superfluous language away to let myself be okay with that being the poem. I think, too, the lines want to take responsibility for their shameful impingement on a like ineluctable beauty of the natural world. One way About to Be Young works to pry open embarrassment is by having language that isn’t just inspired by a place of shame or embarrassment or failure but is actually… aesthetically shameful. Actually has lines that are clunky, excessive, failures. So, I take responsibility for editing the violets.VKN: Why didn’t your parents name you after a tree? Is Monroe a tree? Where have you not been okay with something being the poem? ML: I acquired my name via the mountains of Scotland, called Munros… I think Scotland was a special place for my parents. I regret though that I was too ensconced in the sixth Harry Potter book when I visited Scotland in sixth grade to gaze in any way lingeringly upon the Munros.One thing I discovered writing About to Be Young and other poetry was I had to truly let go of what I wanted the poem to be. Sometimes I will write something that I feel sentimental about or that I think needs to stay a certain way and not be revised, but in such cases I generally accept that it may not be work that anyone is interested in. It took years of work to let go of intention in my writing process. I am against intention.VKN: Ah, Monroe, you are a mountain. There is a saying (maybe Vietnamese? maybe from my mother?)  that it’s harder to move mountains than to change someone’s way of being/personality. You are tall and lanky yourself—can someone move you if they want to? I met you when you were at Brown. You came once to meet me at a three story Victorian home I was couchsurfing at. There you told me you had fallen deeply in love. It was a terrible year for me. The year you came in from that abrasive wind in that abrasive month. Did you miss Brown, Monroe? ML: I do miss Brown and the incredibly rich friendships I made there—the intensity of focusing on writing and process for two years straight. I feel moved all the time. I enjoyed our visit so much, and writing with you over tea. I’m sorry to hear that it was such a terrible year.VKN: What do you feel moved by? Wind? Instrument? Gender? I am sorry too. ML: All of the above. It’s windy, and cold in Pawtucket right now. Moving. I feel almost… no gender right now—moving. I feel the coffee and tofu I’m consuming, which are moving.VKN: The cover of your book reminds me of two pigeons trying to climb an Aztec pyramid. I discovered from my recent trip to Brown that your partner drew it. I know you have always wanted their work to be on the cover of your work. How did you decide on this particular drawing? And, that burnt red? Its color? It feels you—like a sweater I can imagine you donning. ML: One of the first things I officially “did” at Brown University was to introduce the poet Camille Dungy while wearing a burnt red sweater; I was sort of manically energetic and probably did a memorably poor job. But the rest of my time there the writer Colin Channer referred to me with a winning grin as “the guy in the red sweater.” So you’re not wrong.I went through a lot of my partner’s archives and sketchbooks trying to find a cover. I liked the combination of messiness and pattern—symmetry—in the image, two effects I think the poems also aim to bring together. The birds on the cover are mirrored, but one of them is clearly drawn hurriedly on a scanned piece of ruled 8.5x11 paper, that is sort of torn up, so it feels both like a draft that came together quickly and something possessing an alien, preordained plan. A lot of their art has this sprawling asymmetry. I see that as an interest we maybe share.VKN: I am curious—how did your morning unravel? Did you make coffee? Go to a coffee shop? Or did you haul an ax over your shoulder to chop down a tree? And, what is your favorite poem from this collection? I just flipped through your book and I saw the word “nephew-genital” out of context. It alarmed me a little. I did not expect a baby penis to make its way through your Canadian soul. Tell me more about Anna. Which poem is most-Anna? And, which one is least? ML: I blame “nephew-genital” entirely on the literary technique of assonance. This morning I made coffee and finished the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s novel Noopiming. I really loved it. It was weirdly reassuring to encounter, since it uses a form similar to the one in a novel I’ve been trying to write for ages and which I’ve sort of privately worried is too formally weird. The rest of the morning I worried about how I would appear in the interview we were doing later in the day.My favourite poem is maybe on page 7, “I want to play seriously on the roof,” if only because it’s the most grammatically normative and proves to inexperienced poetry readers that I’m not insane. Its shape and grammar are a tribute to J.H. Prynne’s poem “The Holy City,” whose lineation I copied and which seems written by an alien creature from another world. The Anna of About to Be Young is a character, maybe, even as the emotions that led me to write about them were genuine. Not a character but… distinct from the person I now know and love.VKN: How is it distinct? Also, does your novel have a title? How is it formally strange? ML: As I worked to write and revise the latter half of About to Be Young, its language led me away from the real experiences with Anna that inspired them to a place that was, perhaps, emotionally authentic but fictional in its particulars. I think that love poems can both celebrate and disfigure their object in this way. Well, they probably always disfigure it. So I’m eager to distinguish the name or letters A-n-n-a in the book from a person in the world.My novel’s called Remembrance Day, indexing a scene at the center of the narrative that happens at a Remembrance Day ceremony, a sort of Canadian “Veteran’s Day” at which one is meant to celebrate and—indeed—to remember the sacrifices made by soldiers in WWI and II. At six and seven years old I was totally transfixed by these ceremonies—the bagpipes are playing, there is a moment of silence, everyone solemnly gathers—and I used to just feel that that was how we were supposed to be behaving all the time. Life is so intense and emotional and only the pomp and ceremony of Remembrance Day really felt equal to it. At any rate, the scene also wants to interrogate the uncanny commonwealth whiteness displayed during the ceremony and to ask why the day is conducted the way it is—what it means for the communities that practice it.The form of Remembrance Day and About to Be Young are similar to Noopimig’s but Simpson develops it in her own incredible way. It was really incredible to read. Minimalism, emphasis on the page break—there is sometimes only a sentence or two on a page or a single paragraph, or two paragraphs. VKN: Last night I watched a film titled The Perfect Candidate directed by the first female Saudi Arabian filmmaker, Haifaa al-Mamsour. I loved the film and in the film there was a lovely lyric that the protagonist’s father sang over and over again when he was touring: “you caused me trouble and exhausted me”—a song about love. Have you experienced a love that is of such devastatingly romantic caliber? ML: In a book called Bitter Green, there is a line that helped me—well, to live—but also to write About to Be Young: “do not suppose that the things you feel most keenly are yourself.” I wanted to think about that, what do we prioritize in locating the self and ought we really to prioritize intensity of feeling. Maybe the self is banal. One of the things I like about lyric poetry is that it does seem to prioritize that intensity: that’s what lyric poetry… is. So About to Be Young asks, as so many books do, what relationship poems have to the full, robust self that is their speaker. “Devastating romantic love” is the perfect or maybe just clichéd subject for lyric poetry because it embraces excess and embraces the loss of self to feeling, or the identification of the self with intensity. Anna and I sometimes laugh at my plangent reconstruction of that “devastating” time but I’m glad the book is a record of it. Of “devastating romantic love”... !VKN: So many of your poems from this collection are so minimal and short, but they are so powerful and charged with intense emotionality and philosophical purity. Did they get short like so through the editing/eviscerating process? Or did they mostly arrive fully formed as sparse (though not meager) entities? ML: Almost none of the poems arrived fully-formed or smoothly or organically. Or easily. It was only when I began to delete and carve away and to stop caring about the initial impulse out of which they arose that the work really came alive. I was also young and… —about to be young, when I wrote them. I’d spent a long time writing ironic, knowing poems that shielded themselves cautiously against anticipated criticism and enemies I imagined populating the experimental poetry world. Finally, I gave up self-defense and wrote these craft-driven aesthetically polished poems that celebrated being an embarrassed and sentimental young person in semi-innovative form that my peers and professors were urging me to write.VKN: How old are you now, Monroe? The depth of your poems’ sentiment conceals itself in the line breaks and large blank spaces—when you divorce yourself so often (as many times over as you deem necessary)—does it impede your desire to get institutionally married? To line breaks? To vast empty spaces? Do you grow tired? Does hebetude ever find you? ML: I just turned 28—a time of deep hebetude, vast opportunity. My friends are generally and to some extent skeptical of marriage or endeavoring to imagine new forms of companionship. That endeavor sometimes involves a capitulation to normative structures or an acknowledgment of the like implacable and reifying power of social strictures. I did, however, “marry” two friends last year in Concord MA, which was really beautiful. So I have no coherent position on institutional marriage. But am definitely otherwise worried about what institutionality permits and prevents in art and poetry...VKN: Ah, 28. It’s a good age to exist. I am old now. And since I am so old, I misread one of your poems. You had written “Golden like a fad / of caring. A bowl of pottery.” I had chosen to read it as “A bowl of poetry.” If you did have a bowl of poetry in front of you, what would be swimming it it? Would you use a fork, spoon, chopstick to eat it? Or would you consume it with your fingers: raw, bare, barren hands? Are you a neat eater? Or are you voracious like a famished coyote? Would you wait until your nails grow long and windy and twisty to eat?ML: I have poor table manners, probably. I think I would like to eat a poem so sly and recklessly formed that I choke on it and almost die and only just survive to tell the tale.VKN: What is a good film & tea to co-consume with About to Be Young, do you think? ML: In 2016 I met a writer who studies the films of Robert Beavers and who introduced me to the films of Gregory Markopoulos. I traveled to Greece that year on a generous and very very enabling grant, and watched the most recently restored 12 hours of Gregory Markopoulos’s film Eniaios. (The full film is 80 hours.) The screening was held in a remote village in Arcadia: Sitting in a field and watching the entirely silent film that is composed mostly of black leader react against the night sky made it impossible to separate out the discrete art object—the film—from my own private experience of making the pilgrimage to see it. I think that is how all art works. Or else, that film really invites you to think about the impossibility of teasing apart the artwork from your self, history, position. I sense Beavers, Markopoulos’s partner, would be disturbed to find out—or has already been disturbed to find out—that a few of his own 16mm films are on YouTube. He and Markopoulos are super invested in site and setting and context when it comes to experiencing their work and usually you can only view their 16mm work at screenings. I saw Pitcher of Colored Light at the Whitney in New York City. I shouldn’t mention the digital versions, maybe. But, those Youtube videos have meant a lot to me; I recommend them, Beavers’ gentle twisting of the turret, the image blurring upward, with your favourite kind of tea.
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TRAPPED AIR by Corey Miller

July 18, 2022
I stand naked at my bedroom window as the community arrives, unhitching buggies next to the barn and freeing their horses within the pasture fencing. It’s Father’s turn to host church.My hands find the tumbled smooth surface of the yellow citrine, amplifying the power of the sun, torrential and vitalizing. My altar, the top of the maple dresser Father built, is aligned with crystals. Each one unique, delivering its effects to the possessor. The dresser stores my bonnets and dresses, different hues of pink and gray. Sundays are always black. None with pockets; Amish don’t believe in secrets. The Radiant Rider-Waite tarot deck is stacked. Everyone has their preferred way to read the cards; I shuffle the seventy-eight prophecies as fast as I can, allowing each card that falls out of my palms while intermixing to be read. The last tarot card drops—the Four of Wands. It brings pleasure, harmony, new beginnings. Today will be glorious. I collect my favorite crystals, tie thread around them, then drag the pointed ends across my ribs. My skin awakens. I move the rose quartz, obsidian, and bloodstone down to my pelvis, inserting them inside me.My sisters, Samantha and Mary Ann, take longer to get ready which will delay the sermon. No one woke Samantha. Being deaf, she can’t hear us rustling around. Mary Ann gargles with hydrogen peroxide. She coughs and the foam coats the bathroom mirror. She wipes it clean, fingers her dentures out of the overnight solution, and pastes them onto her gummy ridges. I rattle Samantha until she stirs awake. Tapping my wrist, universal sign language for We’re fucking late. The kerosene heater in her room has depleted, revealing how cold the autumn nights have become. Father waits in the kitchen, head hung low. He could yell at us for making the entire community wait. Instead, he opens the back door for us to join them, the only noise a squeaky hinge.We navigate through the scooters left in the immaculate yard. The reflective tapes and shiny battery lights on the scooters are the only form of self expression we’re permitted to show. Drivers wait in their vans, paid to chauffeur Amish families around for church and groceries—living life in the fast lane. Creepy Larry sits in his dusty white van and grins at us three girls. He used to be Amish, but he Yanked over after Rumspringa. Now he drives us to our destinations, unable to escape the community. He got busted for organizing an Amish brothel on the other side of Middlefield but wasn’t in jail more than a night. That’s because he eats breakfast with the mayor every Monday. He gives us what I call the Amish Finger, lazily holding up an index finger instead of a full wave, sign language for Wait a moment while I pretend to give a shit.Despite morning frost, the barn is warm with bodies formed into a crop circle—Father as the nucleus. He stands at the podium, arms free to sign the sermon for Samantha, otherwise she would fall asleep, unable to decipher mumbling lips. Father’s the only elder in the community who knows the language.“I thought I’d read from Matthew 16:18 today,” Father says, his breath like a smokestack. Everyone presents their bible, most of them Scotch-taped and falling apart, flipping to the page out of instinct. Father speaks like he wrote the damn book, ranting about foundations and how Jesus is our rock—the core for all of our beliefs. Father’s hands swoop and cut through the air, fists clenched and pounding into each other when he signs “rock.” I pinch my wrists to keep from nodding off. Maybe the Bible is open to interpretation, like reading tarot cards.I found The Beginners Guide to Witchery at the Nauvoo Flea Market after Mother died. It showed ways to communicate with the dead, ways to get what you wanted. It showed how to make bad people suffer. The community peers at one another across the circle, our lives exposed. The crystals shift inside me and I tug the hem of my dress up to my knees. I stare at Norman across the circle from me, thinking about snakes and Jesus mounted on the cross. Norman is tan and boasts sturdy arms. His face is nearly symmetrical besides a thin crooked nose. We both graduated this summer, thrown into the real world at sixteen. His eyes on Father have a glaze like a fresh pot out of the kiln—not fully conscious, allowing the spoken words to burn away his sins from party day. Norman and his friends party Thursday nights during summer. I’ve never been invited, I’ve only overheard the stories, seen the black eyes from boxing.When church has ended, the girls play volleyball and the boys play baseball while the elders sit and quilt and plan. They discuss our futures, how to sustain the community. Kids my age are starting to find suitors. I’ve asked the universe for children, maybe even a garden for my herbs. I failed Father, not being a boy. He only had three daughters with Mother before she died four years ago. We aren’t the prettiest girls in the community. Most men wouldn’t take the time to work with Samantha’s disability and Mary Ann’s dentures make it hard for her to eat solid meals. I’m taller than most women. Taller than most boys too. Towering over people makes me unapproachable, but I am still the most likely to make Father proud.I don’t play games with the others. I stand in a line of blue spruce, on a mound where our cat, Sebastian, is buried. Norman takes his shirt off as he steps up to the pitcher’s mound. He can throw a ball as fast as our horse, Blaze, can kick out in fright when hearing coyotes yip. Luck is a limited resource on this planet, something that can deplete and never return. Mine has been scarce, but I’ve found a way to control it. Tomorrow, level two of my spell series will arrive with the Bookmobile. It depicts ways to bend and shape fate: White and Black Magick. The law of attraction states positive thoughts will conjure positive experiences, for we are Pure Energy. Sweat droplets on Norman’s chest clump together and sprinkle to the ground. He winds up and throws the baseball with all his might. It hits the batter in the shoulder and walks them to first base.Plans fizzle out at the picnic: elders ready to leave, horses tacked, vans loaded, scooters revived. I lift my skirt to run, approach Norman, and make my existence known. He gets into Creepy Larry’s van with the rest of his family. “Hey, that was a great game you pitched,” I say. He turns and it’s like he’s never met me before. His parents wait for him to thank me. They nibble their lips and fidget at buttons on their shirts.“What the fuck?” Creepy Larry says. “Where did those come from?”My favorite crystals have slid out of me, fallen in a path from the spruce to where I now stand. Pink amethyst for cleansing spaces and moving towards emotional balance, charcoal agate to ease anxiety, and forest green bloodstone for exceptional circulation, dropped in a direct line to my crush. I attempt to back-pedal over them to hide under my dress, but Norman and his entire family have witnessed.Samantha plucks one of the slick gems up and holds it to the sun. The glare flickers across my eyes, so bright it leaves dark blank spots in my vision. 

* * *

It takes fifteen minutes to tack Blaze up to the buggy and forty-five minutes to ride into town for groceries. Renting a driver and van would cost $30, but Father claims it a waste when we have all the time in the world and time is free. Another currency for Amish girls is blowjobs. I’ve heard the stories. It’s how most our age ride for free. There’s a branch of the Cleveland Library which drives a Bookmobile through all of the Amish communities. It’s how we get our school textbooks. Mary Ann and Samantha have a few more years left, but have today off for Columbus Day. I’m not a good example for them, but they need to be pushed outside their comfort zone.The three of us huddle together like a raft of ducks in the back cab of the buggy, watching the Yankee cars speed towards us, praying they’ll see us and pass with caution. We stare at each one and create stories for their lives. Lives that can go anywhere and do anything. Horses have two sets of vision which can view 350 degrees around them. We attach blinders onto Blaze so he’ll focus forward on the road. A dusty van approaches and we giggle, recognizing it immediately. It’s Creepy Larry driving our neighbors to the grocery store. Creepy Larry stares at us as we cover our mouths to hide. “He’s always watching us. I think he wants to drive us somewhere.” Mary Ann says it hushed so Father won’t hear but with enough animation so Samantha can read her lips. Samantha shakes in fits, trying to suppress her laughter. She nods her head, keeping her eyes wide open for conversation.Walmart has gotten weird. Yankees have begun to wear masks, talking about a virus spreading. Our community hasn’t noticed anything different yet. We’ve had several weddings this summer. I’m coerced into attending each one, listening to Father’s comments: “Another boy your age stolen. I bet he drives cart well.”I envision stealing the televisions from the electronics section. Other Amish gather here to role-play for a brief moment. There are so many screens lining a wall with the same images moving in sync with each other. It’s a show about girls our age, 16 and pregnant. Their bedroom walls filled with cutouts of magazines, boys hanging up on display.We browse the makeup section: two full aisles to change your appearance. Different shades for different skins, moisturizers and creams to keep your skin young. I crack open a vile of nail polish: Crimson Red. Mary Ann and Samantha watch in awe as I decorate myself. My nails turn a glossy deep red as Father passes by, pushing a cart full of toilet paper, batteries, and ibuprofen. He swivels his head, breaking eye contact with me, avoiding our sins. I return the vial and grab a bag of cotton balls, pushing my finger against the plastic until a hole forms. I unscrew the nail polish remover and swab my nails back to normal. I could have all of this if I wasn’t Amish. Sometimes I question the faith, how I would lose my family if I ran away.There’s a picture of a supermodel wearing a new series of expensive mascara. The container is smooth and slender. I’m amazed how easy it disappears up my sleeve without anyone noticing. We leave the store quicker than it takes Blaze to trot here. When we get back home the Bookmobile is parked at the farm across the street. I let Father and my sisters finish untacking Blaze in the barn while I rush over for my book. Several women are there, returning their Amish romance novels and getting the next in the series. The first woman who gapes down at my feet doesn’t bother me, it’s when I realize that each of them is gawking that I know they’re expecting the ground to glimmer where I walk. “Name?” the Yankee clerk asks.“Beth Yoder.”“Oh, we’ve been talking about this one,” she gets out Witchcraft: Advanced Level and reads the title aloud. She’s old and I’d wager she spends most of her time sitting in front of a television, bingeing shows about housewives. “An odd book for a young Amish girl to reserve.”The other women in the mobile library keep glancing my way. Each of them attend church with us. They spread stories like wildfire.“You know it’s all fake, right?” the Yankee clerk says this as if I’m a toddler first learning about the Salem witch trials. She taps her temple. “The magic is all in your head.” “Um—it’s for school. To cite for a history project,” I say.The clerk doesn’t snoop any further, but the others in the bus seem to suspect what ploy I’m conceiving.

* * *

When we ride scooters to Middlefield there’s East Branch Park. It’s miles of hiking trails next to the buggy path that cuts through the woods by the reservoir. East Branch has these sort of half cabins where the other half is exposed to the wilderness around a fireplace, like a fancy tent contractors forgot to finish building. The restroom for these tenants is a luxury outhouse equipped with a chimney to evacuate the smell. Workers prop the door open as they steam clean the inside. I considered applying for work here, but the season is coming to an end.Mary Ann, Samantha, and I find a spot in the woods where no one will discover us. This spell needed help, and although they don’t practice witchcraft, I threatened to stop helping with their math homework. The Geauga Park District linked the forest with sap lines, an interconnected spiderweb of blue tubes tapped into maple trees. It flows downhill into a collection tub for the sugar shack to produce maple syrup. It requires two cords of firewood to boil over a twelve hour period for Grade A Amber syrup.We build our fire with foraged branches, prop stones in a circle containment, and rest the cauldron in the center. We fill it with stolen maple sap, intact cicada husks, blood red hibiscus petals, devil’s shoestring, and my wishing nickel—minted the year I was born. A rolling boil forms as the sun descends. We unscrew the lid on the mason jar containing the suffocated fireflies, smacking the bottom to drop their lights in. We chant. The bubbling potion is like road apple soup—all sorts of shit shades coagulating. We untie our hair and let it fall to our knees. Evaporated water wafts through each strand and split end, lungs filling with vapor. Our fingers interlock as we pyramid around the fire. We’re fluent in English and Dutch but right now we are chanting in memorized Latin—a dead language, torn into pieces and buried throughout the world. It sounds like a church hymnal, but we aren’t worshipping God. I don’t tell my sisters what to do, but we naturally get louder and louder. Samantha mouths words to her own beat and time until I pump a pulse through her palm, we follow her, squeezing tighter. I don’t dare peek at my sisters for fear the spell will break upon itself, a wave we ride together. The ground spasms and something crunches leaves behind the maple trees. We should be casting a protection spell to guard us from this risky life we were dealt. Instead I’m fishing. Casting a line out into the shallow waters in hopes of hooking a boy with my selfishness. I think of Mother, what she would say. I bet she’d support us. She might even have joined her daughters. She wouldn’t turn an eye and make believe we didn’t exist. My eyes remain tight. I picture her, feeding Blaze his joint supplements in his stable. Such a massive creature doesn’t know its own strength, the sudden shift pinning her body against the stall, no one near as her last breath escaped. Every meal father forgets to season, every corn seed I sow, every silent night in the living room, I evoke her presence. Blaze stole her from us, yet he remains an essential part of our family. The ground shakes, the planets align, goddesses show me the way. I sense the exit to a maze I’ve been searching for since birth.“I don’t think it’s working,” Mary Ann says. I open my eyes. My sisters appear bored, like I’m the only one who felt a temblor. My skin tingles, returning to reality. I release Samantha’s hand and she understands play time is over. Mary Ann kicks the cauldron and extinguishes the flame. Leaves crunch again, somewhere in the forest a creature might be watching us. Or a spirit ready to lead the way. We take the path back home, where Father is tending chores alone. The parking lot for East Branch is overflowing with people. Recently, more have been out exploring the park systems, flooding our territory. Creepy Larry pulls up in his dusty white van, transporting a crew of Amish boys on lunch from barnraising. His front passenger-side tire looks low. Our scooters have solid tires made of layers of rubber because trapped air is against our religion, yet we use air compressors for nail guns. Anything is allowed for jobs. There’s something exploitative about needing to work to live and ignoring your beliefs to do so. Norman steps out and his head turns like a valve handle, attention streaming in my direction. He gives me the Amish Finger and approaches.“What are you girls doing Thursday?” he says, running his hands through his sandy blonde bowl cut. It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking to us. “Oh, uh, we usually have game night with Father after chores. Why?”“I was thinking, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you at any of our parties before. You should come.” He doesn’t take his eyes off of me. Like I’m the sun and he doesn’t give a fuck if it burns. I pinch myself and may have drawn blood. Rain starts pouring hard, washing away the grime from Creepy Larry’s van, forming a prismatic puddle. 

* * *

It’s endless mist until the party. Samantha says it’s God’s spittle, good during the summer months but useless to us now. We’ll walk to the party, even if it takes most of the night to get there.We feign sleepiness and act like we’re going to bed early. Father sits in the living room and studies the Bible, disappointed we didn’t want to play dominoes tonight. Upstairs at my altar, I drop the tarot cards. Cards I adore fall: coins, cups, and wands. It took late nights studying each card by candlelight to comprehend how each one could affect me. The final card that falls this time is the first I learned: The Fool. I allow another card to fall and alter my fate, covering signs from the past.We wait until Father’s lantern is out, then we tiptoe downstairs. Each step creaks and pops like knuckles cracking. We take our time floating across the uneven floorboards as light as sawdust. The back door’s hinges are excruciating; opening the door slow makes it squeal louder. With any luck it’ll be mistaken for Blaze whinnying. The LED porch light is always on, batteries dying and needing replaced every Saturday. We apply the mascara on each other, believing the darkness will conceal how bad we are at adding this new appearance upgrade. We huddle under Mother’s old umbrella, scurrying along the backroads to the East Branch Trail. Headlights turn on as we enter the parking lot. That white van we know so well. “What are you girls doing out here by yourself this late? It’s not safe for cute girls to wander by themselves.” Creepy Larry gets out and slides open his side door, beckoning us inside from the bleak night. Samantha enters before we can make a decision, already needing to sit. “We’re just heading home now, we’ll be fine,” I tell him.“Oh? I thought you were going to that party on the other side of town? You’ll be needing a ride to make it in time. Hop in, it’ll only be twenty minutes for me to drive you girls. I know right where it’s at.”I don’t want to say it, but I do. “We don’t have any money on us.”“Don’t worry about that. I’m sure we can figure something out.”I tell him we will pay whatever it costs the next time he stops over for church. Mary Ann and I join Samantha in the backseat. Driving is so much quicker than taking the horse and buggy. I sit in between my sisters and imagine not being Amish, how Creepy Larry cut all the bullshit and chose his own path. I wonder if my sisters will follow me wherever I end up. Maybe down to Sarasota, Florida where most Amish escape. A paradise to soak up the sun without a dress requirement.Rain taps the metal roof. The worn rubber wipers are slow but efficient, clearing our vision. Empty beer cans clatter on the floor as we pass through town, past the police department, past the fire department, through Middlefield’s main intersection. We pass churches that aren’t barns, past plastic factories that make hunting decoys. Creepy Larry pulls over into the parking lot of a veterinarian clinic. “Why did we stop?” I ask.There was one other time we were here. Our pet cat, Sebastian, ate a thimble and fucked up his insides. This was when Mother was still alive. Sebastian liked to walk on the baby grand piano in the living room when Mother played. We rushed to no avail. Sebastian died on the way. If only we could have gotten here sooner. “I figured now be a good time for my payment,” he says this through the motion of putting the van in park and unzipping his pants. My stomach is a bed of shale, a pit of rocks where a well has run dry. “Well c’mon. It’ll be quick if you’re good,” he says. Samantha examines him on display in the driver’s seat and can’t break away. Her face is stock-still and inquisitive. I start to crawl to the front passenger seat before I overthink it. I place the party to the foreground—an upgrade in social status. Creepy Larry says no. “I want the other one.” He nods to Mary Ann. I’m stunned when she crawls there without hesitation, as if called to the head of class. Is she following my lead, or does she want to do this?“I’ve seen you take your teeth out before,” he says, waiting for her to do so. She wiggles and pries her dentures out. I reach out and she places them in my palm, her saliva coating my fingers. Her dentures look like Stonehenge connected by a pink tarp. Samantha watches the driver’s seat, her eyes unblinking. The rain cuts off the rest of the world outside.Obscured by the driver seat, Mary Ann grunts and her arms are rigid by her side. She tries to cough but it comes out like a duck quacking. Creepy Larry’s seat squeaks, the coils contracting and expanding how our buggy contorts when Blaze navigates tight curves.Mother played piano when she was depressed. The only pieces she’d play were Beethoven’s sonatas. Her favorite was No. 8. The ending would grow louder and louder before finishing, her fingers pulsating up and down the keyboard, pressing each key with clout to strike a note within the body of the baby grand. Creepy Larry doesn’t last as long as Beethoven’s No. 8 sonata. He holds his breath, both hands clamped on the back of Mary Ann’s neck. Her bonnet slides all over, her hair unravels. When he removes his hands from her, we know he’s finished. Mary Ann crawls to the backseat, her mascara pooling beneath her eyelids. She wipes her face and sits there in a ball, contemplating. I elbow her and present her dentures, having kept them safe. Returning from a daze, it takes her a second to realize they were missing.

* * *

It’s a fire the size of Nauvoo Flea Market. Multiple areas for beer—kegs of Miller Lite and coolers like bases—surrounding a giant ring where two boys are fist fighting. We’re in a large corn field tamped down in the middle of nowhere. It’s loud with a generator powering flood lights and speakers, blaring rock music from the 80’s. I link arms with Samantha and Mary Ann as we navigate through boys and girls that are already drunk. They laugh a little too loud, sway a little too wide, and stare a little too long. I recognize the two boys in the fighting ring, brothers who live at the end of Princeton Road and manage the largest farm in the area—brightest carrots at the Geauga County Fair. Is this brotherly love or some way to release their testosterone? Boys forming the circle pass money around placing wagers. The cash collector has one hand fuller than the other, calculating the odds. They duck and dodge, predicting each other’s movements, until one tires enough, slowing reactions for contact. The older, bigger brother knocks his younger sibling out cold. The crowd cheers and rushes to collect the few dollars they’ve earned.Creepy Larry is parked off in the distance chugging Pabst tallboys. His van idles, headlights and heat on. What does it take to bring a vehicle to life? Maybe like a generator, gasoline combusting to power a home in a blackout. Father always jokes about his buggy having a one-horse powered engine. The fire is wild, no bricks to contain it. The rain can’t extinguish the amount of lighter fluid doused onto these branches. Two boys heave a door on top of the bonfire. It diverts the smoke into a nearby blue spruce, singeing the needles.“Fuckin’ Larry said he won’t go out and buy us more beer,” one boy says to another. “We’re out of MGDs and the kegs are gettin’ light.”One of them wobbles and bumps into me, spilling skunky liquid across my yellow dress, making it turn stale shades of maize. I pause in disbelief, waiting for an apology I don’t receive. This must be a part of the ritual—a rite of passage.Norman swaggers on the outskirts of the fighting ring with a handful of boys we don’t recognize. I unlink with my sisters and they pause as if fallen from a train. Norman keeps snapping his suspenders and scratching his groin. I think about the proximity of our community to others. How there are many people in the world, but we orbit the ones closest to us. I hope he’ll notice my makeup and not that my face is beet red. I seize a can labeled Icehouse from a cooler and crack it open. My first sip tastes freezing and bitter acid, like a tomato gone bad.I take a deep breath and clear my head. A quick meditation for positive energy. When I reach Norman, he glimpses me then smacks his buddies, laughing like I tripped and fell in horse shit. “My god, I didn’t think you’d actually show. This is that girl I was telling you guys about!” The others scrutinize me as a painting subject. Norman calls over a few more boys and tells them The Gem Girl came. I hear gasps and murmurs as others hurry over. The party has halted, diverting all of its spirit to me. They pinch my dress, running the polyester through their thumb and index fingers. Hands are touching me from all directions. For the first time, I’m the center of attention. Breathing is arduous, surrounded by boys on the verge of becoming men. I push and plow until I break free. I try my hardest to walk away in an even step. I picture Blaze cantering and wonder how horses keep track of all their limbs. I arrive to relink with Mary Ann and Samantha, but they are a locked gate. They exit, out past the ring and onto the open road. The cold has me frozen on the spot. My siblings. My bloodline. I linger a lifetime to thaw. 

* * *

There’s two bars in Middlefield, both in the center intersection of town. It’s closing time and a bunch of drunkards are hollering at Mary Ann and Samantha from the covered patios as I play catch-up. They slur their words but the message is clear how appetizing we are. We walk by the police department and the white van returns. I feel like a dead animal attracting scavengers. It’s what I deserve. “Girls, get in! It’s not safe for you out here alone.” Creepy Larry rides up against us. Police cars must be out on duty, the station is hibernating. Does he treat them to breakfast like he does the Mayor?“We’re fine! Leave us alone Creepy Larry!” I shout so loud, as if I’m trying to get Samantha to hear me. “Hey now, that’s a bit uncalled for. I’m here to save you.” Not paying attention to where he’s steering, his van drifts into Mary Ann, hard enough to knock her down, thumping onto pavement. Her dress tears and instead of seeing skin it’s maroon that spreads and stains. “Ah, Christ,” he says, parking the van and rushing out to assess the damage. “I didn’t mean to do that. Let me see it.”“You’ve done enough, get away from us!” I grab my sisters arm and hoist her back up to power-walk away. He follows us, calling out to stop and listen to him. We run as fast as our dresses will allow our legs to stretch. It’s pitch black in East Branch Trails, except for the cabins’ bathroom light, guiding bugs together for mating. We’ve been walking for hours, past the plastic factories, through town, along the buggy path,. If Father was awake and knew we were out, there would be no way of knowing if he was searching for us. There’s twigs snapping in the distance. We stop and hold Samantha back, to silence her. It sounds like an animal limping somewhere, possibly hurt. The woods are foggy. We’re close to home now. One moment I see the finish line, the next I’m jolted. I land on the ground, tackled by something—someone. Creepy Larry is holding me down. “Just let me talk without you girls walking away. I’m at least owed that much.”“Get off of me! You’re hurting me!” My braids have come undone and Creepy Larry is pressing my shoulders against the gravel path. Samantha stumbles into the forest, off the trail. I hear her clotheslined by a maple sap line with a whip-like warble vibrating from the pressure. She’s on the ground grunting from the wind being knocked out of her. She slithers through the dead leaves, crinkling beneath her deviating body. Mary Ann pushes Creep Larry with all her might, but it’s not enough to remove him and all of his weight off of me. “Listen! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m a good guy, let me take care of you.”“Please!” My spine is riding the edge of a rock back and forth. It bends in a way it shouldn’t. I kick him where Mary Ann was forced to go. It’s not hard enough but I do it over and over again until my dress tears, until it hurts him enough for Mary Ann to roll his large body off me, until I’m no longer restrained. We sprint for safety. My dress has a rip torn down the middle as high as my belly button. We can’t find Samantha and have no time to stop. I wish people were still renting these half cabins so someone could hear us screaming. Mary Ann and I flock to the fancy restroom for campers. Once inside, I lock the door. I evaluate the situation—we are not overreacting, this is not something we could laugh about tomorrow. There’s a dripping of water in the sink, pulsing a time signature. The dim bathroom light is shaded by cobwebs filled with moths as wide as a baseball gloves ready for a catch. The animal kingdom has muted, guarding against predators. A shrieking pierces the woods, a young girl’s timbre. I breath Samantha. She finds us and bangs the door thunderous, striking with the meat of her palm. We grant her access, knowing we’ve chosen our base to bunker. I lock the door as soon as her feet cross the threshold. We hear him stomping right behind her. No more running tonight. He knows where we are. “Larry, please listen to me carefully. We just want to get home. We don’t blame you for anything. Please leave us alone.”“Beth, I’ve always admired how different you were. But now it’s starting to annoy me. I just want to face each other and show you that I’m a true gentleman.” His words are slurred and strung together with effort. The door handle slowly rotates but the deadbolt saves us. “I’m better than those guys you know. You should hear the shit they talk about in my van when I drive them. Come out. This talking through a wall is so impersonal, you know?”“Larry,” I speak slow and try to keep my voice even, like I’m balancing on the sap lines, overcoming the swaying tension, “We’re tired. We think you’re a great guy. We can talk about this tomorrow.” I say this although I question if the sun will rise.He pounds at the door. There’s only one answer he’s willing to accept. The one object in here that isn’t anchored into the wall is a large rock used to prop the door open, airing out any moisture when the workers steam clean. My hands swoop and cut, signing the plan without speaking. I herd my sisters into one of the bathroom stalls. He stops pounding when the deadbolt slides back into the door.“That’s more like it.” He opens the door lazily, but instead of hitting the door stopper against the wall, I wait behind it, praying he won’t sense me. Larry walks past me to the first stall and pushes it in—empty. My sisters try to control their breath, but fail, sounding like balloons squeaking. He pushes in the second stall—empty. “C’mon girls, I’ll watch over you.” He pushes the third stall door revealing Mary Ann and Samantha. “Where’s Beth?”Channeling all of my rage I smash the heavy rock against his head. The connection contains everything I possess, all of my hatred. He collapses to the damp bathroom floor with a thud. I’m shocked there isn’t any blood. There are tears though. Samantha and Mary Ann flood out of the stall, crying and hugging me. There’s a pressure relief as we melt into each other’s embrace.We can’t leave him here; his story will be much different than ours. We drag his unwieldy mass out of the bathroom and into the forest. Our angles acute, heels digging into the Earth for movement. There’s a glow drawing us in. The fire we built days ago is still burning despite all of the rain this week. It’s burning without any wood as a fuel source. A stream of colors shine, like the altar Father built me, prehistoric gems left before humans. We drape Larry across the fiery rubble. It reeks rubber and gasoline. He stirs but not with enough energy to yell or gasp. He simply vanishes and ceases to exist. I revolve, shielding my eyes and view a figure pass beyond the maples before disappearing. Unclear if what I witnessed was a ghost or if it was the light of a star beginning ascension.
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HEY, REAL QUICK by Zac Smith

July 14, 2022
I realized that I could basically live at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey, if I wanted to… So that became the plan… I got there just before nine in the morning… Bought a season pass… The guy at the ticket booth said the season pass meant I could basically come and go as I pleased for the season, which, you know, was several months… So, obviously, yes… Ahh… As I pleased… And I wholly intended to be pleased… Pleased and amused… A whole park dedicated to being amused… Just as I pleased… A Great Adventure… I was excited… But inside the park, it felt strange being around so many people… People laughing… People running… Kids screaming… It was so much… I had basically been alone and living out of my car for a month by then… But it also felt good… Yeah, like, I just decided then that the strange feeling was actually just me feeling good… Heh… And I listened to the kids screaming with joy… It sounded good, you know… I felt like screaming with joy, too, maybe… I couldn’t remember the last time I’d screamed with joy, you know… At some point in my life I stopped screaming with joy… And maybe that was when my life started being shitty… There was no more joy, nothing (good) to scream about… But that was changing… I was surrounded by joy… Adventure… A Great Adventure… So I smiled… :)… I couldn’t help it… It just came out of my face… And I decided to scream… Not, like, right then, but, you know, I decided to let myself scream… If it felt natural… When the time was right… Because, you know, I was a single man just walking around in the middle of the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey… It wouldn’t be right… Kids can do that… Men can’t do that… Which is weird, but fine, I get it… So I decided I would ride a roller coaster and then I could scream… You can scream on a roller coaster… I thought maybe that’s what made roller coasters good for adults… I’d never ridden one, you know, so I didn’t know… But I’d be allowed to scream… Finally… Yeah, I was getting excited… I felt more excited about screaming than almost anything else… I got in line for the biggest roller coaster… Packed in with my fellow adventurers… The screamers… The Great Adventurers… They knew how to fuckin’ live… But I had all season to perfect my technique… I’d know how to live, too, soon enough… And I would become king of the park… I would be a Great Adventurer… The Great Adventurer… Oh yeah… I looked at the other people in the line… They looked normal… The adults had jobs… The kids had school… They had budgets… They wouldn’t be sleeping in the back of a car in a parking lot and coming back to the park every day for the entire season… I decided that I would outlast them all… And that made me feel good… I would be the winner… I would acquire a new throne… King of the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey… I had discarded my worldly obligations and possessions for all the wrong reasons… It wasn’t money that would make me happy… No… I decided that the park was my calling… I would spend my money on amusement… I would be happy… Finally happy, purely happy, infinitely amused… But I had to learn the ropes first… And I felt patient… I was ready… I was starting to learn… I heard people on the first ride of the day going down the massive drop… The screaming… I felt excited… Tingly… The scream was coming… My scream… Hell yeah… I got on the train… They made me sit next to another man who seemed by himself… It felt good, you know… We were going to no longer be sad, lonely, adult men… We were going to ride a roller coaster and scream… Together… Screaming with joy… Like children… We would feel pure wonderment together… Dropping down together… Free-falling… Facing death and screaming with joy… Meeting our own fears of dying head on and screaming for joy… I was like, yeah man, this is gonna be intimate… I was ready… I was feeling good about the world, about whatever would happen… I wanted to give the guy a high five, or hold his hand, or something… But I didn’t do anything, you know… We all live with this stupid thing called fear in our hearts… So I just gripped the handlebar thing… We ascended the hill… We saw the whole park… The sprawl of adventure… My soon-to-be-kingdom… It was beautiful… The guy next to me started chuckling… It felt good… I was nervous… I had never ridden a roller coaster before and this was apparently one of the tallest roller coasters in the world… So I was starting to feel afraid… But the guy’s chuckling made me feel better… He knew something I didn’t know… But I was going to learn soon enough… I just had to sit there and wait for it… He nudged my hand… I looked at him, but he was staring straight ahead… He was smiling… He said, “Hey man, I was just remembering, the first time I ever rode this bad boy, I shit my pants,”… He looked at me… He was still smiling… He looked insane… Something about his eyes… But I believed him… And it made me think that maybe I was about to shit my pants… “Yup,” he said, “We hit the bottom of the hill and whoooop, it just came sloshing right out,”… He turned back to face the top of the hill… Then he shouted, “But look at me now, I’m king of the fucking park, baby!”… I was like, What the fuck… Everything was ruined… Instead of feeling excited about the roller coaster, feeling like the soon-to-be-king of the park, I was feeling worried and deposed… Kings don’t worry about shitting their pants… And here I was, doing just that… I mean, I had never ridden a roller coaster before… I didn’t know anything about them, really… Maybe shitting your pants is just something that happens on roller coasters, and I just didn’t know… But I didn’t want to shit my pants… I felt pretty confident about that… As anyone would be… And then we went down the hill… I was trapped in my own life, doomed by my own idiocy… The man screamed… He held his arms straight up… Truly carefree… Truly embracing his only life… Feeling the Great Adventure… But I couldn’t scream… I couldn’t move… I was clenching my core… Squeezing my ass shut… I was dropping down a vertical track, completely consumed by the thought of shitting my pants at the bottom… No joy… No fun… Nothing good… Just fear… Fear of shitting… It was embarrassing, to fear something so primal and simple… I was supposed to be the king, but there I was… Obsessed with things like shitting, instead of embracing freedom… Then we hit the bottom of the hill… The churn, the bend in gravity, the warping of reality… It felt horrible… Terrifying, delirious, visceral… But I didn’t shit my pants… !!!… I just felt nauseated… And tired… And, like, as if somehow, by clenching my ass so tight during the free-fall, I had somehow absorbed everyone else’s shit, or something, somehow… I just felt like total shit… Like I was composed of shit… And like I had already been defeated… I thought, dumbly, that I could be the king of the park, but there was already a king, and he had seen me coming… And he knew how to stay atop the throne… I got off the roller coaster and wandered away… Lightheaded… Just a head floating above a walking pile of shit… I felt like I was going to pass out… So I sat down… I put my head between my knees… I breathed… In… Out… Huff… Hoo… But I just felt sicker and sicker… Everything smelled… I was surrounded by stink… The shitty food frying in dirty oil… The vomit piling up in trashcans and toilet stalls… The blue, chemically-treated water in the fountains… It was all too much… I got up and walked to a trash can… I couldn’t stop it… I threw up… I puked right onto some old mashed up hotdogs… A dirty diaper… What looked like a rotten cabbage… What the fuck, you know… And I heaved and wept… I was defeated… Lost… Unamused… Sick, reeling… But eventually I started to feel better… To normal out… To think clearly… And then, of course, I had new worries… Maybe I couldn’t ride the roller coasters… That I had this season pass and nothing to use it on… That I was simply, physically, unable to ride the rollercoasters… I sat on a bench and breathed… In… And out… And I smelled it all again… The smell… The stink… And I felt it all again… My place in the world… And the composition of the world… The garbage… The trash… The decay of it all… It was everywhere… And I was a part of it… Part of the rotting… I was sitting in the sun and going putrid… Stinking… Decaying… I got up… Walked around… I played one of those shitty carnival games… Handed over some money… I threw a ball… I didn’t knock any of the bottles down… I threw a ball… It didn’t knock any of the bottles down… I threw a ball… It didn’t knock any of the bottles down… I did it again… Five more dollars… Three more balls… No bottles… Again and again… I thought maybe I could improve… I thought if I kept practicing, I would knock down a bottle… I spent money… I threw balls… But I never knocked anything down… I spent fifty, sixty, seventy dollars… And nothing seemed to change… My arm was sore… I was sweating… I was angry… Yeah, I was getting pissed off… I wanted to punch something… But there was nothing to punch… I looked at the teenager working the booth… He shook his head, like, You don’t want to be doing this, man… So… I stopped… I gave up… I walked… I wandered… I spent money on bullshit… I ate a giant pretzel… I bought a commemorative popcorn bucket… I drank a lemonade… I felt nothing… It was all garbage, all trash… I was broken, numb, incompatible with life at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey… Well, I thought, you know, maybe I just felt like an adult man alone in an amusement park… And I realized how stupid that was… I was embarrassed, ultimately… Trying to act like a kid… Wishing I could scream, or punch, or fill my fat face with disgusting bullshit to feel good… What was I doing… I wasn’t a kid… I’d never be a kid again… So I decided to do the most adult thing I could do, aside from having sex with someone, you know… I was gonna get drunk… And you might not believe this, but the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey had a bar inside it… And, well, long story short, I got pretty drunk… I drank all day, you know… And stuff got a little weird… And to bring it all home, you know, to get to the point, I guess… I have a sorta weird question… Do you know where I could get a gun?
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