Issue 3.10

The Winter Sea In waves, paint peels from a restless door. Rags of dry weed rush past, thumped by gusts. The sea fades. Clouds compress, fossilizing a gull’s crooked line. I close the door, still the room. Outside, the wind gnaws. Dunes settle in the gloom. Only the brocading shore betrays a border. And further out, like fallen stars, white-tops wandering the dark.

Fright Early season, but fully-grown waves slap the pier’s legs, rides and stalls sullen as though yawning and regretting leaving their beds, so only a lad with his lolly braves the Ghost Train’s skeletons and cobwebs. He counts his pocket-money pennies, chooses a seat and faces the dark. The only passenger, he’s rocked as the train enters primordial night, ancient fears lurking, the ride advertised as the most frightening in any amusement park. A coffin gapes eerily, something touches his shoulder, a siren wails. A cowled figure leaps up, the train swerves, avoiding a satanic face, but the boy licks his lolly; to him, this is as tame as fairy tales. A week later, on platform one, he stares at an open-doored train. His school group, uniformed, noisy, boards while he freezes, admonished again, unseen devils and monsters haunting the recesses of his petrified brain.

Last Post A lieutenant has been ordered to lay a revolver on the table in a general’s cell, and leave. He deposits the gun, but doesn’t leave. “Why do you hesitate?” comes a dull voice from a face beyond the cone of the pale hanging lamp. “I’m sorry, sir.” “You’re supposed to omit the formalities,” says the voice. “I’m curious: how do I strike you now?” The lieutenant wonders if the heavy smell in the room comes only from this occupant. “The way,” he says, “the light catches the braid and medals but not your face is … Rembrandtesque.” “An artist,” the prisoner half-chuckles. “They’re letting anyone in, now. What else?” “I’m not sure what you did,” says the lieutenant, “though rumors abound. It must be bad, for the general staff to keep a secret. I’m wondering, if it was a sexual peccadillo, would you ask of me a valedictory … service, which, I hasten to add, I must refuse. If money was involved, will you attempt to bribe me? Or might you shoot me— though the gun contains only one bullet— to vent some final spleen?” “All these describe *your* state of mind,” says the prisoner after a moment, “not speculate on mine. I’m disappointed.” “What is your state of mind, then?” asks the lieutenant. “A sort of confirmation,” says the general. “At the academy I learned how war changed with the invention of gunpowder. Considering this over time, I discovered a larger, truer interpretation of our craft. It isn’t a regrettable, hopefully minimized byproduct. As you know, we all die, even civilians.” He raises the revolver. “You’re perhaps too young to grasp it, but with years the ‘three little words’ so famous in youth are replaced by others, of which two are ‘instantaneous’ and ‘painless.’”

A Thing to Remember Lest we forget the way to cradle the sky, and follow the narrow path of our exit, we must remember the little things of light and the big things that will not unmake us; how to make our path low, our feet nimble, sharpen our eyes and wear the clothes of the time. Even withered leaves look upon us with scorn, while the thorns of fallen places disdain us, if we deny our tears to fertilise the arid fields. We must meet the winter wind with warmth or the summer sun with a chilly calmness when we carry our hearts in our fiery chest and hand them over to those with open palms. Not contented with walking on the bare ground I raised my head and leg to the next hill to climb, a steep land on a slope with mounds of sand, rocks dominating, pebbles and grass rising towards the withdrawing sky in a twilight. It’s time I asked my father for a ladder that will scare the sky into coming down, hills rise at my approach and the earth grins. The stars have no more pomposity remaining than the moon has an assumption of its humility, when I reappear behind the horizon with a ladder, a thing impossible when we fought the lion, but now taken for granted, doused in a dream. My father did not understand how the living, born to descend into the seventh universe, should learn to climb to seven hills or mountains, or perhaps attain to where the sky ends in white. It must be the undoing of the stars that we are here thinking of how rivers grow into mountains, or oceans become weary of swimming in valleys, but now decide to take possession of the sky, when their dominion is more than the earth can take. My father said that no ladder leans on the clouds, without training on how to carry wilting weights. Yet, if the earth stays on the earth, sky in the sky, how do we put these things up or bring them down?

Last Will and Testament ...and to the kiddos I award my old jalopy, Earth. Although I've driven her hard, she's still got some miles left under the hood. Reverse is shot so there’s no going backward and the emergency brake’s been overused to death, but she’ll get you where you want to go given a few repairs, workarounds and a kind word. Remind the kiddos the ol’ girl tends to overheat. She also floods easily, and her steering rods are rusted and bent which could send her out of control if you're not vigilant at the wheel. The features that made her special are mostly worn out. She’s down to the basics—yet she still rolls along. Granted, I didn’t maintain her the way I probably should’ve, though that saved me lots of money and a world of bother. The kiddos get her “as is,” just as I got her from my old man. If they have the will and the means, maybe they can spruce her up a bit. Earth was once a pretty sweet ride. If the kiddos wreck her now, after all this time, it’d be a damn shame. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Please mention there’s only one key—they’ll have to share. And caution them to take the potholes easy—there’s no spare in the trunk.