Tonya Riley

BOXES

I sit on the floor, surrounded by empty takeout containers, knowing this will be the last time. Only an air mattress remains in the deserted room. It hisses and sputters, deflating under the weight of our silence.

Sarah says I can keep the Safavieh rug but the gesture of peace feels hollow. The rug was free off Craigslist.

I position myself behind the boxes like an infantryman taking cover. Sarah is there somewhere but all I can see from this vantage point is Muggsy, batting at the noodle dangling from her fork. The snap of a plastic container warns me that she has already moved on to the basil eggplant. Time is running out.

Clumps of dirt and fur roll like tumbleweeds. I wait for Muggsy to chase the dust bunnies but maybe he feels it is too fratricidal knowing most of them are spawned of his fur and dander. Or maybe he is dumb. I will not miss Muggsy, mostly because he is dumb and partially because I am allergic to cats. We didn’t know that when Sarah adopted him but by then it was too late just like it was too late for me to sign a lease to rent the vacant basement unit from that aggressively polyamorous couple at a suspiciously low rate instead. 

How the tables could have turned. Maybe I would be leaving now. Not her but someone.

I wonder if they are still renting. Or married.

Sarah says I can take the table. She is saying something else but all I can focus on is the grease on her lips. Had she always intended to betray me? She points out that I had declared the end was near first. Bought one of those prep books. For the LSAT or the GRE or the CIA. I can't remember which. That was at the beginning of the pandemic when time seemed infinite and white people got too comfortable with Instagramming their Dalgona coffee. A ceasefire in the siege of new quarter-age responsibilities: HMO, 401K, LTR, IRA. 

Time passed. We got a Nintendo Switch. I forgot why I bought the book in the first place.

I thought Sarah would be relieved. She hated the whole scam. Taking out loans to do something Noble when only an Evil job could pay them off. Instead, it cracked something open in her. I saw the disappointment begin to ooze out in her sighs and refusals to commiserate over my temp jobs. That’s when she knew I was falling behind. In adulthood and sometimes on rent. 

Even when I couldn’t pay rent Sarah never judged me for continuing to order Chinese food. It made me happy she didn’t want to break the ritual either. The one we started the weekend we moved in together. The night before we celebrated by drinking bodega bottles of Prosecco and going to the local dive and drinking Tecate combos. We slept until 4pm the next day and by then going to fill our empty fridge seemed unfathomable. The noodles were hot and salty and soaked with possibility. 

The night Sarah stopped talking to me I retrieved the LSAT book from under my bed. It was still shiny, untouched like a haunted doll. I sought out our local Buy Nothing group to exorcise it. Seventeen people responded and I knew Sarah saw the post. I threw it in the trash.

When Sarah first told me she was moving out I cut a hole in the toes of all of her socks. Just small ones. Enough of a hole that she would feel something was wrong but not enough for blisters or anything. I thought that maybe she would wait until, eventually, enough of my good ones had mixed in with her laundry and I got all the bad, holey ones.

I don't know if you even need socks to get a master's degree in musical therapy.

Sarah points out that I always complained about the way she never turned the clocks back.

But I said that the way you say that the train is always late or that there are too many rats in our toilet. The rats would never leave me for grad school, at least. If Muggsy hadn't killed them all. Maybe he is not so dumb. Maybe I will miss him. 

Sarah says it's "not betrayal" to move on with your life, especially when your pandemic rent deal is ending but I know what an excuse sounds like when I hear one. Like the creak of footsteps on a floor, getting softer and softer until you're not sure if it's a ghost or just your own regret.

The floor is creaking now. I peek around my box fort and see Muggsy, his body hunched, drawn tight like a spring, and ready to pounce. 

Sarah slides the dan dan noodles toward me. I add the box to my fort. We will be moving into boxes for the rest of our lives.

Tonya Riley is a journalist and writer working on her debut novel. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her cat.

Teddy L Friedline

ONOMANCY

For Iskandar Haggarty

you know as well as I do / friend  /

that names are aspirational / I mean

look at the name I chose for myself /

a step away from divine / little gift from god

minorly wealthy / and then light, of course,

a saint’s name / which is a better

aspiration than hay field / all my parents

wanted for me was allergies / was jumping

between rounded bales / but you / look

what your parents wanted / for you / o defender

o hearty protector / o my dear victorious friend

look how you have made good on the promise

your parents made in your name / o woolen coat /

o broad shoulder easy posture / how you prevail

without intending / your earthy feet settling

me out of the sky / your laugh like a volleyball

shoved under the surface of a pool / o heritage

o noble o proud man / named for a great in a turn 

of language / how you lounge with the sun 

in your face / propped up on your palms / sentinel /

Teddy L. Friedline (they/he) is a transmasc gay writer. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hood of Bone Review, DEAR Poetry Journal, the lickety~split, and elsewhere. Starting this fall he will be an MFA candidate at Chatham University. You can find them on Instagram and on Twitter, both @jadeitebttrdish.

Sharon Hoffmann

I LEAVE THE ADAM AND EVE LOVE ATTRACTING CANDLE BURNING IN THE BATHTUB FOR 8 DAYS

  I wasn't trying to find a man. At first.

     I was hoping to get rid of my boss. I knew this would take some serious mojo, so I headed to the botanica – the one that's nearly a hundred years old, the one that Zora wrote about.

     I asked the proprietor, Miss Clarice, the best way to go about it. Her first suggestion was Peace Powder. I could sprinkle it on the carpet of the conference room, and then my boss would track it out on his shoes. I thought about it, but the truth was I didn't want peace. I wanted him fired. That called for Boss Bend-Over Oil.

     I put the bottle on the counter and just on a whim, I mentioned to Miss Clarice how lonely I'd been lately. Suppose, just in theory, that I wanted a man. How would one go about accomplishing that?

     “Wait here,” said Miss Clarice, and disappeared through the curtains into the backroom. I'd seen other clientele enter the backroom, but clearly it was Invitation Only. Soon enough, she came back with a shoe box filled with crumpled tissue paper that cradled a candle, what’s known as a talisman candle or saint’s candle. It was scarlet.

     “Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked me. “Are you sure you can handle

what's going to happen?”

     “What is going to happen,” I asked with some trepidation. 

     Miss Clarice looked at me as if I were a fool. Well, fair enough.

     A long pause ensued. She returned to the back and brought a different candle, this one rose-colored.

“This one's for romantic love, everlasting love,” she told me. “Do you have someone in mind? If so,

write his name here on the part that looks like a scroll and says ‘My Beloved.’ Otherwise, leave it blank.”

     I could tell she knew that I would leave it blank.

     “It has to burn for eight days,” she emphasized. “Day and night.”

     “That, uh, that sounds dangerous,” I said.

     “What you do is put it in the bathtub if you have to leave the house.” 

     Oh, of course.

     “There's a prayer to Venus printed on the back. Read that every morning and every night,” she added.

     “Silently or out loud?”

     She rolled her eyes. “Out loud.”

     Ten days later, I was at a jazz club and ran into a man I used to know.

     Back to the botanica. “Miss Clarice, now I know which man it is, but I feel as if I need a little something more.”

     She gave me a small cloth bundle – something that looked home-made – and told me to wear it inside my bra.

     The first time that man and I tumbled into bed, it fell out onto the coverlet. When he asked what it was, I just smiled. 

Sharon Weightman Hoffmann is a writer based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Publications include The New York Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Banyan Review, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives (Harvard University), and Isle of Flowers (Anhinga Press). Previous awards include fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts and Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, and two Pushcart Prize nominations.

Samuel Prince

GRAZING HORSE CONFESSIONAL

What I meant when I said clemency was that untold moment 

when the tawny horse loped across the pasture to sniffle 

at my fascination. I never thought I’d be so wistful 

for the near-expired past this fast. The sleekest contact: 

stroking the ice-cone muzzle, shammy cloth nostrils. 

I speak less of what I could be, more of what I’d once been, 

how I’d lived milksoppy, strained in a deliberately confined 

way, gotten sore and tired, blinkered and saddled 

with unshakeable qualms. Flies sparkled in the mane. 

I couldn’t even make a mess in a coherent way; couldn’t tell 

dandelions from desiccated teasel in the cidery light, 

but to hear that baritone crunch as it gnashed at the grass 

was enough for a brief détente. Observing the moment 

– such an extravagance. I adjusted too quickly to the dark. 

When I said nature, what I meant was some fragile mammals. 

Samuel Prince's debut collection, Ulterior Atmospheres, was published in 2020 by Live Canon. His work has recently appeared in Acumen, The Broken Spine, Pedestal and Spelt. He lives in Norfolk (UK). More information can be found at www.samuelprince.co.uk.

Robin Young

MERCY NOW & OPEN DOOR

Artist’s statment:

Collage is from the French coller "to glue or stick together," it is a technique of art creation primarily used in the visual arts by which art results from an assemblage of many different forms, thus creating a new whole.

Mercy Now was inspired by a song called Mercy Now by Mary Gauthier, which is about compassion and forgiveness. This collage speaks of time passing and a father's declining health "It won't be long, he won't be around." I saw the sepia pic of the old house and another one of an old man reflected in the mirror, cutting them apart; I rearranged them into the visual of a son or maybe even a younger self coming through the door, it's up to you.

Open Door - A big Science Fiction fan, I took clippings from several magazines and placed them to suggest long distance or far away space then, combined them with an opening door.  Are we really open to what's out there?

Mercy Now

Open Door

Based in Borrego Springs California, artist Robin Young works in mixed media focusing mostly on collage and contemporary art making. From large, life-sized pieces and 3D sculptures to small postcard-sized arrangements, Robin's keen eye and gripping esthetic guide her viewers into her own semi-readymade world.

Paul Festa

THE GENIUS OF KOMEDA

It resolves into the last wholly romantic period 

before James, six weeks 

at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony 

in the scorched hills overlooking Temecula: 

rattlesnakes, blackened chaparral, kerosene lamps and a wood stove, 

chaotic LA weekends and, 

thudding fluently out of the old Remington Noiseless, 

the unfinishable novel that decades later still sprawls 

asymptotically 

toward its climax in the burning oak. 

Out of reverence, I never touched 

the mahogany Steinway in my cabin, which 

the caretaker told me 

Rachmaninov had practiced on when he was in the area. A few years 

after my residency, the piano burned 

along with the rest of the colony. 

Kerosene lamps, I thought, 

but arson was suspected. 

James wanted a fireplace and I vetoed it. 

I’d just read that woodstoves produced 

more airborne carcinogens in London 

than auto traffic. Amid the city’s 

newly risen smokestacks, Blake gave the world 

six thousand years before fire 

would consume all of Creation, 

yielding holiness and infinitude 

where now reign corruption and transiency. 

“This will come to pass,” Blake writes, 

“by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.” 

Fire spreads among the senses 

the way it spreads through the world. 

I adhere to descriptions of death by fire—

war and Holocaust, 9/11, Wolf Hall, Australia and California, 

the boy at Short Mountain who incinerated himself 

in a cave. We romanticize fire reflexively, 

involuntarily, just as we are hypnotized by it, 

like that Komeda song where she sings

Fire, fire, fire, fire

Fire, fire, fire, fire

Fire, fire, fi-yer

Fire, fire, fi-yer

Fire, fire, fire, fire…

Paul Festa’s essays, criticism, and poetry appear in numerous publications and anthologies, including The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Daily Beast, Salon, HuffPost Opinions, Beyond Words Magazine, three editions of the Best Sex Writing series, and Nerve: The First Ten Years. Paul teaches fiction writing, poetry, and modern Italian history, among other subjects, at Bard College Berlin, and has won awards and fellowships including several residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo.

Molly Sturdevant

Generalized Anxiety Works Quietly While I Try to Sign a Form

for a fundraiser, in a weirdly warm spring,

they tell me how the kids are going to sell snacks.

But really it’s us. There’s stuff I have to fill out

in the registration tent when I notice, 

the big maple’s not healthy. 

From the top down, there’s an early withering,

abscised green leaves with black dots.

What if it all blows away. 

What if someone steals the petty cash. 

When is it all due. When will it be delivered. 

The other parents understand but I don’t.

I see that I cannot sell snacks I am sorry.

Other adults knew where to sign.

Is there a book about it? Is there fungus in the pith? 

What if I die from the top down. 

Would anyone clip my kid’s toenails, 

turn the heat down at night, 

smell the things shoved to back of the fridge

before serving? I filled out the wrong lines.

I wrote the wrong year. How come there’s never money? 

Now they’re all walking like it’s nothing, talking. 

I’m burning up. I think the maple won’t make it. 

Take my coat. Does anyone see that tree, 

it’s what we need, I said, I need a new form, 

a blank line, a better pen, a fresh start. 

You need to notice that tree. Even our own 

lungs’ capillaries look 

like blossoming branches 

of mature oaks, yet, 

O— the expirations, the fungus, 

the annoying balmy rain-snow, 

the dried-up pens

Molly Sturdevant is a copy editor and writer, whose prose and poems have appeared in Orion Magazine, The Dark Mountain Project, The Nashville Review, Little Patuxent Review, Poetry Northwest, Newfound, About Place Journal, x-r-a-y LitMag, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel based on research in trade-union archives. She lives in the Midwest.

Kate Miano

THE AIR IS PINK IN FLORIDA

Took a picture to show you the palm trees

filtered fuchsia in the evening heat.

Drinking alone, I'm outside the reception.

Give me a minute, 

I was supposed to marry someone too.

Lightning strikes and I watch smoking.

I think I’m starting to find a way out:

I’ll cry to my brother and he’ll listen,

the story becomes a hurt I can stand

the telling illuminates new angles 

like the crystals

my mother gave me for peace. 

I’ll forget the sound; his voice

crunching over me 

when I would warm and expand.

But I won’t tell you about any of this.

I’ll go up to my knees in turquoise waves,

exfoliate my feet in the sand.

My future sister will crack jokes

and I’ll salsa with my aunt.

I’ll tell you about all of that

and the sun slipping into the gulf, staining air

and sea and me scarlet

when I get home. 

Kate Miano is a writer based in New York. She has poetry published in Overheard Lit, Goat's Milk Magazine, and Fish Barrel Review, among others. She has work forthcoming in december magazine and Schuylkill Valley Journal. She is also a contributing writer at Thank You Very Much! She can be found on Instagram: @kate.c0m, Twitter: @_katemiano and by the water.

Jamie L Smith

GLASS

[Stained] 

As in church windows or red wine residue. 

[Broken]

As in car window or “wear thick-soled shoes.” 

[Devlin] 

Typically formed into a small latched-box: rosé, violet, or sky-blue hue. Nothing in that box is sacred, but it appears more precious than it really is. Alice kept hair pins inside that looked like the tusks of miniature mammoths.  

[The Imperial Glass] 

The most expensive (empty) Champagne glass in the world is valued at $85,365 per unit. I would break it immediately. 

[Shatter-proof] 

Back to car windows, which break like ice (crushed or cubed) rather than jagged like the wine glass or storm-window. 

[Mirrored] 

Seven sycamore trees line Fulton Street outside St. Paul’s Trinity Church, reflected by thousands of bank, hotel, and apartment windows: The Financial District Forest, Manhattan.     

[Retail Window] 

Some storefronts distort your form into a lovable reflection. In others, the effect is freak-show. The point is always that the jeans are beautiful, and you can see yourself in them though they are currently apart from you, and that longing is a kind of Eros established by high-resolution plexiglass tinted to make the viewer appear tan and slender. 

[Bullet-Proof] 

Bushwick bodega. It yellows like nicotine over time, amber darkening with exposure. The encasement on Knickerbocker was so scratched I never got the full effect of the clerk’s face in the years we went every day for ice cream and cigarettes. 

[Lead Crystal] 

High refraction index. Shatters on impact. Counter to borosilicate glass which is heat resistant.  

[Chihuly] 

“…the way form interacts with light and space…installations are created in dialogue with the environments in which they are sited, interacting harmoniously while affecting spatial relations to inspire profound experiences…” Gorgeous. Frequently looks like sperm. 

See: Kew Gardens, London. 

See: Bronx Botanical Garden circa 2016. 

See the sculpture in the hotel lobby, where we said hello and goodbye for the last last time.  

[Fused Quartz]

The sidewalk concrete within a three-block radius of Grand Central is mixed with chemically pure silica so the paths cast a shimmer beneath the halogen streetlights. Combined with the scant layer of smashed soda-lime and headlight fragments on the surface, the effect is double-glitter, stars beneath your feet as you walk.

Jamie L. Smith is a PhD candidate in English Literature & Creative Writing at University of Utah. She is the author of the chapbook Mythology Lessons (Tusculum Review). Her work appears in publications including Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Not-Very-Quiet, and Red Noise Collective.

GJ Gillespie

LAY LADY LAY #1 & LAY LADY LAY #2

Artist’s statement:

These two pieces are part of a three-part series that explores themes of art history and the objectification of women.

Inspired by Picasso's groundbreaking work, "Young Ladies of Avignon," these collages are created using leftover fragments from a larger project. They serve as a satirical commentary on the male gaze prevalent throughout art history. In an effort to challenge societal norms, I juxtapose female figures sourced from 1950s and 60s pop culture and soap ads with drawings of ancient Greek statues of male heroes and athletes. This contrast highlights the mesmerizing effect of feminine mystique on the male psyche.

The composition of these collages is layered, both visually and conceptually. The figures are placed upon a landscape featuring concrete walls and steps of ruined military bunkers, symbolizing the conflicts and complexities inherent in relationships between the sexes. To create depth and texture, I incorporate layers of tissue and cloth, while utilizing found papers and pencil marks to create an antique-like patina.

I hope that these collages provoke thought and encourage dialogue about the representation of women in art history and contemporary society.

Lay Lady Lay #1

Lay Lady Lay #2

GJ Gillespie is a collage artist living in a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island (north of Seattle). In addition to natural beauty, he is inspired by art history -- especially mid century abstract expressionism. The “Northwest Mystics” who produced haunting images from this region 60 years ago are favorites. Winner of 20 awards, his art has appeared in 60 shows and more than 90 publications including 11 covers.

Edward D Miller

TANKA

before the bombast 

beyond the bluff of blurred edges 

the osprey’s chirrup

the whistle of blue lyme grass

the far sideswipes the close-by.

Edward D. Miller is a queer writer and educator. He works at the City University of New York. He has written "The Rock in the Middle of the Road" and "The Moment and the Sequence." He lives with his husband and a Chihuahua.

Charles Weld

DAY LABOR

June through August when I was nineteen and twenty,

I unloaded boxcars on a siding along the Genesee

River. Stacks of bagged lime, silica sand, 

and cement—each fifty-pounder grabbed by hand,

slid onto a knee, and horsed over to a pallet 

outside the door where a forklift had dropped it.

The agency I worked for paired kids 

like me with middle-aged men on the skids

who cashed and drank their paychecks at a bar

downstairs from the office. In the stale boxcar

air, sweat darkened their pants like pee, 

dripping from cuffs, and smelling like cheap Chablis. 

Bricks were the hardest to unload. With steel tongs,

we picked up ten at a time, but if the grip was wrong, 

they crashed in a pile on and around your feet.

One older guy began to cry, loose bricks and the heat 

that morning, making defeat, I think, feel complete.

Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks. A collection, Seringo, will be published later this year by Kelsay Books. He’s worked as an administrator for a non-profit agency that provides treatment for youth experiencing mental health challenges, and lives in upstate New York.

Anna Kushner

OSSUARY

In Havana, families unearth their dead, 

Taking their bones, after a few years, to a smaller container, 

then placing it in a niche, shoulder to shoulder with the bones of others. 

Everything else disintegrates.

My father tells me about the practice 

and does not find it odd or alarming 

when he recalls the family trips to the graveyard

to complete this necessary task of transference, 

when he recalls seeing his grandparents and other relatives reduced thus. 

In Miami, months and months into a pandemic that so many say has ended, 

after this virus has claimed 1 million dead, 

plus another I-don’t-know-how-many dead

from ancillary causes such as loneliness, grief, 

depression exacerbated by isolation

—I count my mother among this last group—

I sit with a friend to discuss the practice of disinterment.

I show him pictures of my paternal grandmother’s ossuary in Havana, 

a rectangular plaque small enough to frame, 

the size of a fire-proof box you’d use to store your passport 

and other important documents, 

like a naturalization certificate if you were born in a country like Cuba 

but now reside in the U.S. 

We wonder about burial shrouds 

and whether these disintegrate at the same rate as everything else, 

whether these are even used anymore, 

would you take it home and keep it if it’s all that is left 

besides the bones when the time comes? 

A week later, I visit my mother’s grave and think 

I am relieved I do not have to move or touch her bones, 

although the thought of never touching her again at all

is another kind of pain. 

Anna Kushner has published her poetry, essays, fiction, and creative nonfiction in The Acentos Review, Asymptote Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Ep;phany, Newtown Literary, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. She has also published several book-length translations from Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

Angela Townsend

BIDDING

When you are planning an event called Catoberfest, you are obligated to remain absurd at all times. You may know that your cause is noble, and your frippery lifts the fallen. You shall bask in the October sun of saving lives.

But when the phone rings at 8:41pm, and it is Alfred the Shticky Guy, you must accept that farce is your duty.

“Would we have booth space for a man selling The Shticky?” I turned to Katherine, Director of Operations. “He sounds sweet. He’ll donate 20% of his proceeds.”

“He needs a whole booth for Shtickys?”

“He has the whole fleet of Shtickys. Purse-sized to pole.”

“Sign him up. I could use one of those things.”

We had shared 9 pm nights at the cat sanctuary for weeks, herding silent auction items and procuring all the pageantry one might expect for the feline fundraiser to end them all. Katherine and I were the two ragged wings of this stubborn angel. We had both been employed here our entire adult lives. We were riddled with reservations about an extravaganza appalling to introverts like ourselves.

But we were in it now, making news, and making friends with old men selling Shtickys, and making a gaudy goal of fifty thousand dollars. We had one hundred feline mouths to feed. As Director of Development, I was equal parts fundraiser, storyteller, and afraid.

Katherine dealt with parking and food trucks and the concerns of the Third Ward Alderman. “What if the cats should break loose and descend upon the population center of Rango?” Our town of three hundred persons, one hundred cats, and three delis would be safe, she promised him, but there was insurance for all eventualities.

Meanwhile, I caressed the silent auction. We had intended fifteen items, Petco gift cards and kitten figurines and a ten-day stay at our best donor’s Sedona compound. But volunteer Lana was an “auction kinda gal,” and something about the manic bounce in her bob made us say, “run with it.”

No one knew Lana was a wind sprint in mom jeans.

“The Brooklyn Botanical garden will give us four tickets!” Lana’s voice always sounded like colors.

“We’re three hours from Brooklyn.”

“It’s worth the trip! Trust me.”

Trusting Lana became the only option, as her acquisitions had offspring. “The guy at Philadelphia Chocolate Tours called Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy club, and they’re sending seven tickets!”

“Is Rodney Dangerfield still alive?” Katherine worried.

“Does it matter?” The purple streak in Lana’s hair could somehow be seen over the phone.

There were avocado-based restaurant gift cards and puff paint sweatshirts. There was a necklace heavy enough to drown three Mafia enemies, and DVDs about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

Lana possessed such nuclear powers of lovableness, no one could say no. Artists blew glass. Bakers boasted of gluten-free, gluten-rich, and gluten-considerate options. Paw-shaped soaps appeared like manna. Throwers and bouncers and paddlers of various sport balls threw tickets like roses.

“Lana,” Katherine cautioned, “our demographic doesn’t really do athletic stuff.”

“Those are going to be big ticket items. Trust me!”

When Lana burst into the sanctuary with a cat carrier that looked like a double-decker bus, my wheels fell off. “I actually kinda want that.”

“And it comes with this!” Lana pulled out a magenta MEOW hoodie.

“I need that.” I did need it.

“It would fit fourteen of you.” Katherine looked up from peeling string cheese for the one-eyed cat on her desk.

When Lana’s work was done, mine began.

Writing had always been my favorite part of the job, nose-to-nose with nuzzling cats and telling donors that they are paragons of holy compassion. I deflected all kudos, aware that storytelling is easy when your heroes are cats from hopeless situations. Forgiveness on four legs, they are egomaniacal sprites immune to self-pity. They made our donors laugh. They made our donors cry. They made “biscuits” with their powerful paws while making my job a jaunty joy.

We insist we don’t have favorites at the cat sanctuary, but we are long-tailed liars. Still, if you would like to expand your family of favorites, there is no surer strategy than to write about them. Time and again, the sheer act of circling a cat with language made me love her uncontrollably. Pay enough attention to anyone, and you will cherish her story. Tell the world of her rumpled bravery, and she will open a private chapel in your heart. 

I wrote about them because I loved them, and the more I wrote about them, the more I loved them.

Writing about N’Sync concert memorabilia would be a different business.

I am not ashamed to say that I prayed over this task. For years, I’d tasked God with my impossible responsibilities: “They are your cats, and you love them more than I do. I can’t raise a million dollars, but you once made a donkey speak, so you can get me out of my own way.” The donations showed up.

Now I needed to show up for leopard-print beach towels and Rodney Dangerfield largesse. I needed to remember that to write is to love, and to write more is to love more.

A farcical thing happened on the way to two hundred eighty-three auction descriptions. I came to admire all the items. I wanted to acquire all the items.

The avocado restaurant was the Garden of Eden in green, a monounsaturated dream from which you wouldn’t want to wake.

The cat bus was the ride of your life, designer wheels to make your pet go round and round.

The puff paint sweatshirt was an ‘80s revelation, the start of your purple reign.

The Chocolate Tours would make you forget everything bittersweet.

The sport ball tickets had the power to make you feel young again, and besides, every stadium has vegan hot dogs now.

No one would forget you in that necklace…and you would never forget how many cats you saved.

I tried to explain it to Katherine. “Kath, I’m falling in love with these things. I want the chain-mail scrunchies. I want the henna tattoo of Cassiopeia. I want the eight-volume set of books about foraging for mushrooms.”

“You sound like you may have a few mushrooms in your system.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to at least put in a starting bid for a fairy-tale fungal fantasy.”

Katherine smirked. Her desk cat submerged his head in her coffee. “Surely you haven’t written one for the wreath yet.”

“Oh, but I have.”

My magnum opus, the coup d’etat for the love of cats, was the wreath. When our donors unfortunately caught wind of the silent auction, they began mailing fresh horrors unbidden, and none was more resplendently rancid than the wreath.

Fashioned entirely of crinoline and rabbit-fur bats, I surmise that this violent orange object was intended for Halloween. Its first effect was to cause Neil, our Executive Director, to scream as though being flayed alive. “MY GOD. I think it has ringworm.”

“Check the mushroom book,” Katherine suggested. 

But someone made the wreath, and someone wanted to save cats with the wreath, and someone who already dreamed of purple puff paint and double decker cat transportation was up for writing the wreath to glory.

“October will never be the same, and your neighbors will never forget your fame. Go brilliantly batty with one wreath to rule them all.”

“That sounds a little Lord of the Rings,” Neil cautioned.

“Careful, or I’ll add a line about it being fit for orcs, dorks, and all who love sporks.”

“This auction has turned your brain to sardines.”

True though that was, the auction would turn up five hundred visitors. Like the Joads they came, carloads and truckloads of oddballs and innocents, cat lovers marbled with compassion and curiosity. 

Lana fluoresced in all directions. “How did you hear about the auction? Do you like avocados? What’s your favorite sport? Can you imagine all the cats we’ll save after today?”

Neil hid in his office, glowering at me every time I summoned him to meet a major donor. “There are people everywhere. I am a cat. Take their money and send them home. Also, watch out for that Shticky guy.”

Katherine kept one eye on parking, sending overflow Joads to the grit yard, and the other on the cat bus. “I know you want that thing. How high are you willing to bid?”

“Two hundred?”

“Are you serious?”

I was far past the hinterlands of serious, fully engulfed in absurd. It was all for the love of cats, but looking around at this impossible extravaganza, I felt my love enlarge. I had summoned my words and my strength and my silliness, and now it felt like every clanging bell was calling my name.

We grossed fifty thousand dollars. We gave Rango, New Jersey the thrill of its corn-fed life.

I won the cat bus and bought five Shtickys. “You’ve got silly business up the yin-yang,” Neil observed. 

Katherine and I collapsed and never fully recovered. Eleven years later, we still toast each other every October 3rd: “happy not-Catoberfest!” We have found better ways to raise cat-saving money. God loves his cats.

Fifty years from now, I hope I still write my way to love. I hope I remember to remain absurd at all times. I hope fun descends on the population center.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place. She has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work has or will be published in The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Fathom Magazine, Feminine Collective, and Young Ravens Literary Review. Angie loves life dearly. https://www.instagram.com/fullyalivebythegrace/

Angel Rosen

TARNISHED

I feel split,

dummy cracked open,

egg with runny yolk,

blotted hurriedly with

napkins, staining everything in

dandelion hues

before Church, of all things,

taking communion all-yellowed,

giving tithe all-yellowed

almost gold but never quite,

tarnishing the state of my affairs,

giving into a silver savior,

basking in my whereabouts,

falling from heaven or roof

into a pile of daffodils

just as yellow as me.

Angel Rosen (she/her) is a lesbian, poet, grief expert, a chronically online millennial and neurodivergent human being. She loves lemonade, The Dresden Dolls and sharing anecdotes. Her work can be found at angelrosen.com. You can find her on social media at @Axiopoeticus.