Crow Jonah Norlander, Author at X-R-A-Y

THE WOODHOUSES, THE MARITAL BED IS LAVA, SLEEPWALKING by Ariel Clark-Semyck

December 4, 2021 · Fiction

the woodhouses

"greensleeves" floats through the halls of the high-rise & stops in for the showing. the new tenants are young & comely. they pay no mind to the plea of the piano or the hospital stretcher rounding the corner. the woman’s blonde hair curls inward at the ends, teasing the tip of her heart-shaped face. the man wears a powder blue linen suit & slaps her ass while the realtor isn’t looking. they each excrete a gasp when they see the living room. they make a show of admiring the antiques, the burgundy drapes. they take a thoughtful glance at the writing desk. i can tell they can’t wait to paint everything white. maybe yellow as an accent color. their first night in the apartment, they peel their clothes off in silence & couple on the bare floor. smoke reaches through the keyhole of the closet & threads its needle through my eye. it’s nice to have company.

the marital bed is lava

i watch the occultists sit down to roast beef & mashed potatoes served on fine china. they swirl their glasses & playfully bicker about the pope. it’s chocolate mousse for dessert. one wife notices the funny undertaste but eats it anyway. smoke trails from the armchairs, through the parlor room, to the kitchen where the women wash dishes in rubber gloves. back in their own bedroom, the husband sits five inches away from a televised boxing match while his wife unhooks her garters & comments on the other couple’s dining habits. her body collapses to the floor & turns into a slinky. he picks her up, an end in each hand. her coils stretch & condense from palm to palm as she whispers baby names in the dark until morning. andy or jenny, andy or jenny, andy or jenny suckle at my heartstrings. romance is feeding each other grapes for twenty years while our voiceovers pop off.

sleepwalking

sadism is not a good replacement for self-fulfillment is the kind of shit she says to herself as she wipes the blade on her hem & exits stage left. the hallway tonight is drenched with thick black air. it gets stuck in her hair. it wears her body like a dress as she paces back and forth, the hands grabbing at one another like two animals in heat. one hand mounts the other hand & rubs & rubs. is watching it die the same thing as taking its life? she caught a cricket under a glass once & waited until morning. she caught herself under a crumbling pedestal & waited for years. this little hand. she takes her hand to her nose & then takes it in her mouth. this little hand. she sucks on the knuckle of her index finger. the air watches this, its appetite sharpened. it sops from her hair down to her face & sucks. she thinks goodbye would be like going to the grocery store & picking up a pound of ground chuck or a gallon of milk. the air turns her head over & over on its tongue. is watching him swim further out to sea the same thing as watching him drown? she thinks goodbye would be like sitting on the shore with the sun in her eyes, like taking a photograph of the sunset so she could look back on it fondly whenever she liked. one hand mounts the other hand. the air has whittled her down to an echo of the sound of him at the end of the hallway. he is grabbing another beer from the fridge.

Crow Jonah Norlander

ACTIVE SHOOTER TRAINING by Jason Peck

December 3, 2021 · Fiction

We’ve attended such lessons before, briefings that point us to hiding places and escape routes, drills that teach us quick action and suspicion toward our coworkers. But this seminar is different. This is the best workplace shooter training this company has ever had. People who attended the first sessions this morning still recall them with awe on their coffee and smoke breaks.

Life-changing, they say. An eye-opener, they say. But mostly—very good.

We can already see their transformations. They walk straighter, talk bolder. Evelyn in accounting says she will hear the training again. Roberta from legal holds her calls in preparation. And Max from IT—a joker, typically—remains unusually silent. When it comes to Max and such matters….well, we must be sensitive. He knows firsthand of survival, and his past haunts him.

It’s not something I talk about, Max says, his head down. (He actually talks often of how little he likes to talk, but we remain polite).

Your life will be changed, Evelyn tells him.

Max nods. He very much wants his life to be changed.

The conference room is full for the final session. The speaker is not from the Marines or a SEAL like last year’s speaker. More than one of us finds his potbelly and unkempt moustache disappointing. But he is commanding and serious, even when making a joke. (You know how you prevent laugh lines? he asks. Don’t laugh.) We know he means business by the way he holds attention like a center of gravity, by the alertness in his eyes and the tension to his stance.

The speaker taps his microphone once, twice.

Surely you know about this shooting, the speaker says. In his right hand, he clicks a mouse that changes the image on his projector screen. We nod our heads—of course, we recognize this particular shooting. He clicks again to another shooting; this one we identify from the shopping mall where it occurred. This next one too, by its near-iconic Pulitzer photo. And so on with the next. And the one after that. Roberta wishes for a comforting hand on her shoulder. Max’s eyes dart toward the exits. Evelyn notes that the slides this afternoon show different shootings than the training this morning.

He keeps us on our toes, she whispers with approval.

There is only one person who can stop a workplace shooting, the speaker says. (His voice, a measured baritone, defies his unassuming figure.) The police are too slow to help you, he says. Security is incapable. And yet you would rely on those people, would you not? Even with the gunman upon you, you would assume the best, wouldn’t you?

Max laughs once, loudly enough that our eyes turn to him. The instructor raises an eyebrow and addresses Max directly.

And with the gunman directly above you, you would sit there immobile, wouldn’t you? The instructor asks. You, with no clue how to react. Even with a gun in your face, you would sit there like a coward and accept your fate?

Max raises his hand in objection. Then he coughs and lowers it.

No more police, the instructor says to gasps. No more security guards. From here on, only one person can save you.

He gathers his breath and points and Roberta swears that he points at her, and Max swears he points at him, but Evelyn, who attended earlier, smiles because of course he points to us all.

You, the speaker says. You are the only person who can stop your shooter.

He enunciates the word with gravity like a revelation. Perhaps it is. Roberta’s heart swells with sudden responsibility. Max brings his hand to his stomach, where a new sensation begins stirring.

Your shoe can be used as a weapon, the speaker continues. The human eyes are weak points. Throw your shoes at his eyes. He sees someone in management drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup, nods his approval (the instructor himself drinks coffee). Your coffee too can be thrown at the gunman’s eyes, the instructor says. Once something has been thrown at his eyes, he can be distracted. Once distracted, he can be subdued. But fight only when you cannot flee. This is most important.

He walks to Roberta and kneels to face her, armed with his authority.

You are walking toward the elevator, he says. A man enters the front door with a gun. What action do you take?

I will throw my shoe at him, Roberta says. But hesitation makes it sound like a question instead.

No, the instructor says. He points his finger at her head, cocks it with his other hand. Bang, you are dead, he says. You have the opportunity to flee, thus fighting back is the invalid response.

This stings Roberta. The speaker approaches Evelyn.

You are by the printer, he says. Not more than ten feet away, the perpetrator opens fire. What do you do?

I don’t know. Evelyn says with a wink. (She knows the answer, but plays along) I will grab my coffee and throw it at him? And then subdue him? She grabs her cane, hoists it overhead like a weapon.

No, the instructor says. Bang, you are dead. In this scenario, the nearest secured room is fifty feet away, a dash of mere seconds. You could run and barricade yourself, rather than fight.

The instructor stands again, and some force everyone can sense brings him to Max at the far corner of the room. Maybe it’s because of their earlier confrontation, maybe he senses the way Max avoids his gaze, fleeing from challenge. Maybe our host can look into his individual audience and see something in need of resolution. The instructor kneels to face Max, and we know nothing can stop this collision, this moment of truth.

You are working at your desk, the instructor says to Max. A man starts shooting. Two cubicles over, perhaps—in the moment you cannot be sure. Soon he will reach you.

I should have thrown my shoe, Max says, almost to himself. I should have thrown my coffee. All those years ago, I did not act. I accepted my fate.

It’s OK, Evelyn says. Her hand rests on his shoulder, comforting him.

No it is not OK, the instructor barks, without pity. That was then. This is now. In crisis, you have no time to decide.

Max finally looks up from his lap and faces the instructor with a resolve we have never seen. He gulps and draws himself to his full height, the true leader now, and we know we will soon witness the measure of a man.

What do you do? The instructor repeats.

This time, I will fight this shooter, Max says.

The instructor points his finger to Max’s head, slaps the bottom with his other hand as though reloading an automatic. But that finger rocks back and forth, unsteady. Max takes a breath.

I will throw my shoe, Max says. I will throw my coffee.

Your final answer? The instructor asks.

I will no longer be frightened, Max says. My stapler could stun him. The loose pages of my reports would distract him. He takes a deep breath. I swear I will find something I can throw.

The instructor nods, and his hand slowly turns to a thumbs-up.

Correct, the instructor says. Unlike these other two people, you could not run. With no choice, your attack is therefore valid. You live.

The host will continue speaking. He will play more videos. Many more things can be thrown at the gunman—did we know the chemicals of a fire extinguisher can blind? That a loud noise can distract? Our lives hinge on details we never imagined. Those who fail today’s tests will understand why they would die, those who pass will grasp their survival. Through him, we will learn structure out of chaos, the predictable patterns of a gunman’s mind, the natural progression of a crisis. The host clicks his mouse and another image flashes, and we wait for his words to flow again.

Crow Jonah Norlander

POLICING HEAVEN by Fred Pierre

December 2, 2021 · Fiction

To worship the leader is to worship our god, say cult members before they’re arrested. How does religion make you feel? Certain death, stake chips on the hereafter, or spin earth for a sunrise tomorrow? Truth is, you’ve been duped by your broker and hoodwinked by your minister out of your promised immortal treasures.

“You’ll see your whole family in heaven, my friend,” said the minister as he lay dying. Certainty grows when we parrot dogma. To get into heaven, the test is quite simple: Choose kindness before your self-interest. Only one in ten makes it. So many sublets in heaven they can’t even charge rent. In perfection, complaining is frowned on.

Here on Earth, assholes figure they’re going to heaven. Always got their way. Why not paradise? They’ll find where to purchase the next revelation, the next rung to climb the holy ladder. So you shot the last tiger, huh? Put its head on your wall, then fuck on its fur by the fire. Pay the church, pray to Jesus’ mother. Wash, rinse and repeat. Now you’re ready to knock at the gate.

Sad to say, they don’t allow assholes like you into heaven. It’s not paradise if you’re never happy. “They didn’t try half hard enough. Three out of five stars. Did you see the way that angel looked at me?”

For you, they’ve reserved a place away from the others, because to you, your pain feels like a comfort.

You anticipate finer things and old friends, but in the afterlife your family has choices. That’s why they aren’t here to greet you. At the end of the tunnel you see the white light, but those blobs become alien creatures. You’re being stroked by their tentacles. They need your soul for a cosmic experiment.

Say you do get in, how long before the T-cells of heaven reject you? When you cut someone off on your flying carpet, or flip the bird at one of God’s angels? The third time you complain? Because you can’t be depressed. It drags other souls down from the aether.

The dead infest caverns locked deep in the earth, along rivers of underground memory, but it's too dark there, so we raised the skyline, making gravity fully negotiable. You can fly like in Quidditch, but without all the brooms. Just think it and then you are there. Why limit your vision? Free yourself from the doctrines of others.

Do crushed dreams ice your cocktail? That is your shadow rising. What is heaven if you can’t enjoy it? “Pleasure is the first step on the long slide to Hell,” is what they told you when you felt desire, until you wanted nothing but to tear it all down. Burn Earth for a ticket to heaven.

Get on board the train. The conductor is restless. The train passes into a tunnel. The tunnel gets tighter and tighter around you. You’re expelled from the tunnel, aka the canal, in a burst of light.

Meet your new family.

Crow Jonah Norlander

CATGUT by M.W. Brooke

December 1, 2021 · Fiction

Most days your mother languishes on your couch watching reruns of Law & Order. Doctors can’t explain what’s wrong with her brain. You drive her to appointment after appointment between harp lessons—a merry-go-round of CAT scans, MRIs, acupuncture, marijuana, experimental doses of ketamine, prescriptions for epileptics. Nothing calms the tension behind her eye sockets, like a harp string constricting under the chill of night.

During rehearsals in third grade, your fourth octave C string snapped from the tuning pin and whipped across your eye. The harp yowled in your arms, a feral cat too close to human hands. Harp strings are more likely to snap when you aren't playing them, your teacher said, indifferent, swiveling on her heel to correct the posture of the student beside you. A few girls set their harps on the floor and stared, mouths agape as a red line marked your swelling cheek like a jellyfish sting. The quiver of Mormon girls giggled into their skinny collarbones.

For years you played pretentious recitals in ball gowns a hopeful size too small, back straight, elbows out, bouncing ringlets from too-tight rollers your mother forced you into the night before. Now you heave your harps up and down flights of stairs in yoga pants, your spine aching. You know the shape of each harp better than your own body, how each one travels, how to angle them into your Subaru Outback. Your students don't understand how fragile your harps are. Or maybe they don't care, too busy fluttering between controlling parents or abusive boyfriends. But they insist on dragging your harps along with them all the same, those downy notes softening the razor's edge of existence. You teach scales and glissandi and arpeggios and “Aura Lee” to children who hold back tears when their mothers’ cars pull into your driveway.

You lost one of your rental fleet once—an expensive lever loaned to a student who fixated on her fingers whenever a black eye bullied past layers of concealer. She skipped town with your harp, and the police contacted you six months later to tell you she had been found dead in her apartment. “You don't want the harp back,” they said. Its porous wood had breathed in months of human decay.

When you were fifteen, your mother drove you home from a recital in a freak blizzard in May, her knuckles like knobs of white coral against the steering wheel as snow piled on the windshield between each scrape of the wipers. A few miles from home, she pulled over to the shoulder and breathed out like air let out of a tire. Car still running and blinker clicking away, she opened the door and shuffled in front of the headlights. She lifted her arms to the sky and started to twirl, snow fluttering around her like TV static. Isn't it beautiful? she said. You shrunk into the crook of the passenger seat and yelled at her to come back inside, embarrassed and scared of how much you loved her.

Now your mother sleeps in the guest room, fetal and withering. Her muscles atrophy and her belly sags like a bird nest built on the lip of an eave. You're awake in the dark, arranging in your head a shitty pop song your ten-year-old student insists on learning. Crickets saw their legs together outside your window—the same, maddening refrain. And then you hear it: downstairs, a wooden crack like a rotting bough giving way to gravity’s pull. It's sharp and urgent and hollow. You slip out of bed and touch the strings in the dark until you find the empty space like a missing tooth. The string’s nowhere to be found, impossibly unmoored from the soundboard and tuning pin. You imagine the harp string unfurling on its own and shooting somewhere between the couch cushions or behind the piano. You could search for it. You could make a game out of it with your mother tomorrow if her brain doesn't rebel. Or maybe you'll find it months from now, coiled on the windowsill like a shed snakeskin. Maybe you'll never find it, another secret kept between the catgut, the woodgrain, the levers and pedals.

Crow Jonah Norlander

JULIET ESCORIA on film with Rebecca Gransden

November 30, 2021 · Interviews & Reviews

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?

I remember watching Beetlejuice over and over as a kid. I got nightmares from things that kids aren’t supposed to get nightmares from, like The Care Bears movie, but for some reason this movie didn’t bother me? Explains my goth roots.

What films first felt transgressive to you? Do you remember being secretive about any films you watched growing up?

I wasn’t allowed to watch rated R movies for a long time (except my parents did let me watch The Shining and The Exorcist in junior high). When Pulp Fiction came out, a lot of the boys in my class—it was all boys—watched it and were talking about how cool it was and I was so jealous, Pulp Fiction seemed so cool and mature to me.

I also remember my parents having a recorded copy of Body Heat on VHS and I was under the impression that this was something they didn’t want me to know about because it was dirty.

Are there any films that define your formative years?

SLC Punk is a silly little movie but I have a lot of affection for it. The party scenes feel true-to-life, and when I was in my teens/early 20s it was really relatable to me. (Fun fact: writer Chiara Barzini appears in this movie.)

The Virgin Suicides made a big impact on me for a lot of reasons—its dreaminess, the images, the portrayal of teen girlhood, and the subject matter of suicide.

I saw Donnie Darko when I was around 20 and it kinda blew my mind. I remember being like Wow, movies can do this! and wanting to talk about it with my friends but I didn’t have any artsy friends at the time and nobody cared.

Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?

Not entirely, but at one point during the writing of Juliet the Maniac I got this strange idea that I needed to match it with the color palette of East of Eden? This doesn’t even make sense. I don’t think it even made sense to me at the time. I was feeling lost in the manuscript when this happened.

What directors, film movements, or particular actors have been an influence?

I want to use this question to talk about how much I love Riley Keough. I love Riley Keough! She’s amazing in everything I’ve seen her in. I love her voice. She’s hot. I have a big crush on her.

American Honey (with Riley Keough)—there are some scenes in Juliet the Maniac that take place in a van. I watched that movie and tried to get the van scenes to at least resemble the van scenes in American Honey. That movie got the milieu of “fucked up youths in a van for long periods” thing down perfectly.

Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?

Yes, I made a bunch of short films directly related to my first two books. I don’t really think they had an influence—mostly I just found it exciting to work in a different medium. Writing is my favorite artistic medium and I find it to be the most… spiritual? in that you can directly inhabit another person’s mind and thoughts… but there are still limitations to it. There are certain things you can only do with film. It felt fun and freeing to be able to work with images and, especially, music. I’d like it if you could force people to listen to a soundtrack to your book.

Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project?

I watched Drugstore Cowboy about a hundred times when I was dating this junky who was very bad for me. (Referring to him as a junky seems harsh but also accurate.) He’s dead now. Bad memories.

Another dead boyfriend (different dead boyfriend) memory are the movies of Jim Jarmusch. I still don’t like Jim Jarmusch movies, excepting the zombie one. I liked the zombie one.

Thinking about the places you’ve lived, are there any environments that are cinematic? Have you lived anywhere that has been regularly depicted onscreen? If so, has this had an influence on your perception of the place, or how you’ve depicted it in any of your writings?

All three places where I’ve lived as an adult were cinematic. I grew up in Del Mar, CA, which is sandstone bluffs, blue ocean, bent Torrey pines, and that soft golden light that is distinctive to Southern California. The beach in front of the house where I grew up has always felt creepy to me, which I tried to portray in this movie and the corresponding story. It has a lagoon that gets misty and just looks vaguely ominous.

West Virginia, where I live now, is so beautiful that it feels aggressive. I regularly feel distracted while driving to work by the aggressively beautiful mountains and trees and rivers and sky. I have some stories in my new, not yet published collection that feature me writing about this aggressive beauty. It makes me kinda sad that movies set in WV are generally filmed in Georgia, rather than on location. I wish WV would get a decent airport and give out tax credits so they could be filmed here. Seems like a missed opportunity.

And New York, where I went to grad school… I think the way it’s depicted in movies, books, and music is a big reason why I wanted to go to school there in the first place. I’ve tried to not write about it too much because it’s been covered so many times, but I also didn’t want to shy away from it either. When I had a story that I really wanted to write that absolutely needed to be set in New York, I let it be set in New York.

Are there films you regularly return to, and do you know why?

I feel the need to watch Gangs of New York about once a year. I’m not even sure why. I guess because there are so many good characters, and it feels so ambitious in terms of scale. Goodfellas and Taxi Driver are other Scorsese movies I feel the need to watch fairly regularly.

The aforementioned The Virgin Suicides is another one. I’ve watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood four times and could watch it again (fuck the haters for this movie, you all are losers). It’s pretty much a perfect movie, from the editing to the acting. I am also really into anything related to the women of the Manson family—not Charlie, he’s boring, but the women—and anything that could be described as California Noir.

Under the Silver Lake is another recent “California Noir”ish movie I could watch again.

And David Lynch movies, of course: Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart are movies I could watch over and over.

I loved Midsommar (again, fuck the haters, you’re boring) and feel like that movie was kinda made for me, with the imagery and the weird nature/pagan shit and the woman character getting the upper hand in the end.

I saw Ganja & Hess for the first and so far only time last year but it really hit me hard. Like the other movies, I think a lot of it has to do with imagery/general aesthetic.

What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?

Waves was the most recent one. It gave me a stomach ache, big time.

Can you give some film recommendations for those who have liked your writing?

All of the ones under the “films I regularly return to” section, plus Good Time, The Neon Demon, The Witch Who Came from the Sea, Ordet, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, The Hunger, American Honey, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely… I could go on but that’s a decent list.

This series has not much to do with my writing, but I want to recommend Small Axe. That series was amazing and it got less recognition than it deserved.

Crow Jonah Norlander

PLUCKED by Faye Brinsmead

November 29, 2021 · Fiction

The firebird came with excellent references.

Polite. Super-tidy. Throws herself into housework. Mows the lawn like she’s skinning a wolf.

Plus, there was the exoticism. Her shimmering plumage trailed over my Ikea shelving and hand-me-down brown velour sofa. Evenings, as we slurped insta-noodles and binged on Netflix, she fanned out her tail until the dim room was full of jeweled eyes.

She didn’t know if she belonged to the peacock clan. Maybe. Her golden beak hooked the last gluggy spiral. Her family wasn’t big on that.

On what? I asked.

Um, family. I’m kinda on my own. Of course, there’ve been loads of princes, golden apples, magic stallions and whatnot.

We went clubbing. Men. One glance, and they went up in smoke. We scooted from roller-disco raves to deep rap moan-athons, pursued by smoke alarms and singed buzz cuts.

No matter how late we teetered home, she’d spring up at dawn and scrub, scrub, scrub. Whatever needed scrubbing. The bathroom sterile as an operating theater.

On Netflix nights, I got the feeling there were fewer iridescent eyes.

Driving to Ikea for a laptop table, we had a tire blowout.

Keep calm, she said. Ease off the gas. Hazard lights on.

As she bent to change the tire, I saw holes in her rump like cigarette burns. A heart-shaped patch, bare of feathers. She felt me looking, angled it away.

I got serious about a guy I met at a sauna party.

You’re leaving me to wing it alone? she asked.

I wanted to protect her from combusting men, but, you know, hand-holding and strawberry candles and fluffy duck cocktails in the bath.

She came skittering home at 6 am, whammed the bathroom door. Sauna guy and I were still awake.

She’s been in there for, like, an hour, he said.

I hoped I was hallucinating the trail of red specks.

But the feather. Its bloody quill scribbling on ashen floorboards.

She couldn’t hear me knocking. What with all the scrubbing.

I got a ladder, climbed in the window. Peeled the rubber gloves off her blood-streaked claws, swabbed her wounds.

Why? I asked her three remaining tail feathers.

Nothing. Everything. All the wanting in their eyes.

We washed her plucked feathers and hung them on the clothesline. Lay on the wet grass beneath them, wondering how to stitch them back on.

Crow Jonah Norlander

DIRTY LAUNDRY by Lisa Johnson Mitchell

November 28, 2021 · Fiction

I pour bleach over the mound, purging, once again, the family secret: Daddy’s arrest—indecent exposure. Socks fall in. Slipped them off right before having sex with my husband, during which I thought of Benjamin, high school lover.

Will Mom die today? Bed sore as big as a baseball. Not eating or drinking. Been seven days. Hampton Gardens is five minutes away, thank Christ. Flannel nightgown, shove it in, hope I don’t have another nightmare where I’m digging into my giant thigh with a knife, the insides like a Christmas ham.

I told Mom I loved her, that she was the best Mama in the whole world, then I put Chapstick on her faded lips and kissed her papery forehead. New jeans, squeezed my watermelon-ass into them. I’m starving, that Three-Day Cabbage Diet didn’t work. For better, for worse, you said. T-shirt from Beverly Hills, all the famous people don’t smell or fart. Their parents never die.

Daddy, Mama will see you soon. Dishrag smells like ripe lady parts, salmon was a bust, stupid Martha Stewart. Mama screamed and clawed my wrist, ‘please help me, please help me’ so I ran and got the nurse who gave her a drop of morphine. Please God, take me instead, I did have that affair. Next: bath towel, the expensive one from Peacock Alley. The plush speaks to my skin and says I will go on living.

Squirt, squirt. Liquid detergent syrups the clothes, in goes the whitening pod that never works, but I’m an optimist, damn it. Phone rings.

Her breathing is ragged, shallow, her heart rate has dropped. Come now.

Crow Jonah Norlander

ANGRY GNOMES by Sarp Sozdinler

November 27, 2021 · Fiction

“What can you do?” The hot dog vendor sighs from behind the mist of steam. He fishes for a stick of sausage and then plops it on the sliced bread. “New York is a falling city.”

Never before has June given the street talk any credit, that New York is this kind of place or that. The signs have been following her since she moved downtown over a year ago, but she often chooses to look the other way. Avoid it or not, those cream and mustard stains in the vicinity of hot dog carts and ice cream trucks aren’t merely the tokens of gastronomic success: New Yorkers entertain a habit of dropping mass. Soles and heels recycle the tossed plastic wraps and saucy droplets every day and leave their permanent marks on the concrete.

“Now, will you look at that,” a customer points his ring-clad finger up and past June.

With a delay, June raises her gaze from the ketchup stains near her feet to yet another mass ready to fall: black, brown, yellow men and women of the white-collar variety, blessed with long hair, short hair, no hair, all kinds of it, with their lips cutting their faces in countless different shapes that can be interpreted anywhere between relief and despair. Unlike their chain-smoking colleagues on the sidewalk, they laugh, chat away, and hold hands on the roof of a thirty-story plaza that looks like a gift box against the 9/11 Memorial. They don’t seem to need the sun to brighten their mood, even on this Monday afternoon.

United, the mass steps into the air with the respectful silence of those who walk into a library or a sacred tomb. They dive through the sky at sixty vertical miles per hour. Each looks blue from afar, pink from nearby, and blends with the blacktop after the landing.

Eleven try and die.

“There will be more jumpers than newborns in a hundred years,” says the hot dog vendor, the only eyewitness who isn’t shaking in a mile’s radius, and no one hears his words other than June. “New York is a falling city.”

June, like others in the crowd, opens her mouth as if she’s about to cry, though she can’t cry; it’s the conscience of a city wailing through its alarms and honks, capsuled in a terror only its citizens can comprehend. Nothing moves other than the teary eyes flickering to rewind the snapshots of the past few seconds as if they could reassemble the bones, wash the blood, glue the meat, and raise the dead with the intent of their gaze.

Instead, the clouds huddle together like angry gnomes and paint the sky into a darker pink. They growl and split in two as if to wash away all the sorrow below. With the first raindrop, the soupy bites of June's hot dog flood out of her mouth like unintelligible words and colorize the vendor’s handwritten banner on the cart: a dog for heightened pleasures and the hot beyond.

Crow Jonah Norlander

THE MELT by Jennifer Todhunter

November 25, 2021 · Creative Nonfiction

My son doesn't turn from solid to liquid or liquid to gas when the melt occurs. He remains in the same state physically, but mentally there is a shift. Heat has been applied in the form of my disappearing from his line of sight, or heading to the bonfire for a beer, or talking to a friend who is a guy who is not his dad, my ex. There is a fusion when the melt occurs, his person to my person, a shadow that follows me wherever I go, that demands we leave this instant, that cries as if I've died right there, in front of him.

The attachment is not cute like the therapist suggested it might be when I explained my son's behaviour to her. It is not the same as when he'd wake with nap-flushed cheeks as a toddler and wobble around the house after me, leaving behind a trail of goldfish crackers and blueberries. Suffocation is such an ugly word, she said, and I nodded, but that's how it feels, I said, when he melts, it feels like he's sitting on my chest and I can't breathe.

When my son was five, his dad taught him Newton's laws of motion, and seven years later he can still ramble them off at the ready, his favourite being the third law: For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Sometimes, when the melt occurs, so does the leaving. The leaving is the equal reaction—equal as being of similar strength, not equal as being fair or just. The leaving is running down unfamiliar lanes at night, unaware of cars racing around corners. It's stomping down streets filled with loaded semi trucks speeding toward the port. It's walking along dirt roads in bear country, a mess of snot and tears, screaming why doesn't anybody love me.

I worry my son learned the melt from my ex. That these behaviours have been condoned because they mirror behaviours my ex exhibited when we were together. This is what I ask the therapist during another session. Why is it cute when my son does it and unnerving when it's my ex? and she pauses, asks me, why do you think that is? I look at the perfectly-trimmed bonsai tree on her desk, the plate of sand holding a tiny rake. I don’t think it’s cute, I say, and she smiles.

My son and I inevitably reach an equilibrium after each melt. We are exhausted and hesitant and confused. We pile onto the grass or the couch or the hood of the car and stare at each other. I think about Newton's first law: an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it, and think: that is me, I am the force, this will change, but I don't always believe that, don’t always believe myself. I sit with the pressure on my chest, pull at my collar and breathe until the breaths come steady again, until my son’s tears have dried, until we reach our base state. I love you, I say as we hug, because I do—I do love him—and I take the worry that this love will change because of the melts and squish it down one more time.

Crow Jonah Norlander

DERICK DUPRÉ on film with Rebecca Gransden

November 23, 2021 · Interviews & Reviews

What film, or films, made the first deep impression on you?

The first movie I bought that didn’t suck was Godard’s Breathless. I was eighteen and deeply into Joan of Arc and other stuff from the Kinsellaverse. I’d read somewhere that they were inspired by his work, so I thought I’d check him out. I went to a nearby Borders and browsed the racks. It was a crappy old edition where the special features were like, “Scene Access” and “Interactive Menus.” I loved it. Then I had the age 18-20 insufferably-into-Godard phase. I remember sort of bragging to my parents’ friends that I had a copy of Masculin-Féminin, and they were like, “What - why? Him? Really?” I get it now. But that was the jump off.

Can you talk about the influence film has had on your writing?

I’ve never written a treatment, nor a screenplay, but usually a first draft of something new will have a sort of treatmentary vibe. Just image after image w/ very little in the way of character or plot. The final draft tends to look like that, too.

Do you use film as a prompt or direct motivation for your writing?

Sometimes I’ll just write down notes on the thing I’m watching and maybe later transcribe them and alter them enough so they don’t completely resemble the source material. One thing I published a while back was just prompts for opening scenes of imaginary movies. I’ve thought about going back and expanding it, but that seems like a bit too much of Levé pastiche.

Have you ever made a film? If so, has the process of doing that had an influence on your writing?

I helped make a short film once. I just did the camera work but apparently I wasn’t bad. The film ended up in a gallery. If it had any influence on my writing, it would be that I quit altogether and start working on lo-fi art projects.

Are there films you associate with a particular time in your life, or a specific writing project

The first story I published was written during an intense period of Marx Brothers and spliffs. I’d been laid off from a state job, had a decent severance, and spent a month getting high and watching torrented movies. I’d never seen the earlier Marx Brothers stuff, so it seemed fresh, and it still is. I think some of that unpredictable humor comes through in the story. It also reminds me of a more productive era of writing, which I can look back on with a small fondness.

Any place can be cinematic if you know where to look, but the most superficially cinematic would probably be my current environment of southern Arizona. The rock formations, the wildlife, the historic buildings, the denizens, the many-layered hues of enchantment, etc. I lived in New Orleans for a while and there were always film crews everywhere due to Louisiana’s film tax credit, and to some filmmakers’ unfortunate penchant for ruin porn. I just watched Angel Heart the other day and felt briefly nostalgic for walking down Royal Street.

Are there individual scenes that stay with you?

I’ll return to certain scenes more often than I do whole movies, maybe because of dwindling attention span or general cognitive decline. The first processing session in The Master. The duel in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The suicidal penguin in Encounters at the End of the World. The opening scene of Werckmeister Harmonies. Pretty much any scene from Beau Travail. The final scene of Wanda. The doctor’s house call in A Woman Under the Influence, and so on.

What films have roused a visceral reaction in you?

I remember becoming fully, inexplicably overwhelmed with emotion when I first watched Cries and Whispers, at perhaps too young an age, when the Chopin mazurka in A minor comes on. It was kind of like the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry finds himself crying and says, “What is this salty discharge?” But now I go hunting for that feeling.

Crow Jonah Norlander

« Previous 1…35 363738 39…48 Next »