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Two Questions for T.L. Sherwood

We recently published T. L. Sherwood’s heartfelt “The Thinnest of Veneers.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) One of the things I love about this story is that we know so much about this relationship just from the small bit of detail you have given us, how ephemeral it is, how fleeting, how secret. Do you think there is any chance of a connection for them that is more lasting?

Thank you for the lovely compliment – and these questions. More lasting? I would like to think so. I’m a sucker for happily ever after endings, even if they take a long time to pan out. If whatever arrangement they have now doesn’t last, one of them could certainly use the love to spawn a short story. Or a novel. Maybe a painting or a building. I think that’s the thing about love, it spreads out in unexpected ways.  

 

2) I like that the narrator’s instinct is to call this person when they see the double rainbow — it’s such a real and human moment, to want to share something special like that with someone you love. Do you think the other person saw this double rainbow, too, and thought of the narrator? Or is this moment for the narrator alone?

I really don’t know if they also saw it, but I’ll guess no. The other person is not there so maybe they are at work or the dentist’s office and wouldn’t be able to see the sky. When I wrote this as a response to a Kim Chinquee prompt, what originally came to mind was my neighbor Lisa across the street. She called to tell me about a rainbow in our backyard. It was a vibrant arc against a yellowing sky. I didn’t know Lisa well then and now I never will. She divorced the man who still lives in that house, then she got cancer and passed away. I think of her kindness that day whenever I see a rainbow in my backyard (and that divorce is rotten, and cancer is evil) and how it has lived on for so long inside of me. I don’t think the moment or the event was only for the narrator — if so, they wouldn’t have thought to tell someone else. Double rainbows are uncommon, but love and the desire to share beauty with those you care about is not, which is the great thing about being human, especially in these politically polarized Covid times.

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The Thinnest of Veneers ~ by T.L. Sherwood

There was a double rainbow. I called to tell you to look out your window, to share, to bear witness, but it went to voicemail and even if you had checked your messages right then, you still might have missed it. You never check your messages, so I don’t leave any. I delete details of when you call me back. I’m sure you do the same. In a million years, a decade, ten minutes from now there will be no known connection between us, no trace, no artifacts left to probe for meaning. Passion dissolves, love disappears. We’re stardust. As flimsy as the colored air.

***

T. L. Sherwood’s work has appeared in New World Writing, Jellyfish Review, Page & Spine, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She often dreams of birds trapped in rainbows, lives in Springville, New York, blogs at https://tlsherwood.com, and is currently working on a novel.

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Two Questions for Hun Ohm

We recently published Hun Ohm’s lush “Last Tree Standing.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) I love how your work focuses on memory, the then vs. the now, how things have changed, how they haven’t, and how we remember them. In this story, we have a physical return to a place of memory — do you think things here are the way the narrator has remembered them?
Yes and no. As you’ve alluded to, memories can be curious creatures, the way they fade or sharpen, shift into so many shapes; on the other hand, physical places can be the very opposite – objective and familiar, largely unchanging. Or is it the reverse? Sometimes it’s hard to say. How do visits to old haunts release existing memories, or mold them? And how do our memories disturb the story embedded within a place, and lead to new tales far beyond the surface? This is a constant puzzle whose solution changes each time I look at it.
2) That ending image is such a powerful one and gives the reader a kind of unexpected moment: that in the narrator’s harsh childhood, there was this place of beauty and comfort that still remains. Do you think she can still find some peace there? Or is that peace only a lost part of her childhood?
I would like to imagine there is some place of peace to which she can return, one imbued with the unfiltered wonder and imagination of childhood that is not yet adulterated by decades of living. But at the same time, this child’s peace developed against a backdrop of adult shortcomings, rage and despondence, and to reach that place again, she has to once more experience those misguided cruelties and casual neglect. Departures and returns are on a loop, and nothing is completely lost or forgotten. Can there be solace in that?
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Last Tree Standing ~ by Hun Ohm

It had been many years since she last returned. By then there were no family or friends left in town to greet her. One by one they had all exited – this one from divorce, that one from disease, and still others who had simply headed down the main street, around the bend and into the fog.

It was this same fog that she walked through from the bus station to the edge of town. She crossed the freight tracks and stone bridge, then turned south down the dusty road bordering the family land. In the opaque air it seemed nothing had changed, even now after her father’s demise. The land rolled with unmown hay, the fence posts stood sentry, awaiting mending. But as she drew nearer the homestead the fog thinned, and she saw there were no more trees left in the yard except one. Jagged stumps betrayed the wild swings of his drunken rages, timber poorly bartered when the crops failed again, and again.

Only the weeping cherry remained. The tree beckoned her to shelter beneath its outstretched arms anew, and to see his last words in the hatchet half buried in its trunk. She wiggled this back and forth until the blade dislodged, and the leaves rustled in relief. Above the fresh notch, the weathered bark bore witness to her childhood carvings. She traced her fingertips along the shapes and figures she had first conjured in the old shed to which her father was prone to banish her. For unfinished chores, or untimely manners, or no misdeed at all when fever took her mother and he wished to despair with drink unmolested. The shed still stood behind the tree, bare before the horizon. She unlatched its door, and peered inside.

There were his rusted tools hanging on the wall. There was the damp smell of earth and cobwebs, the same cracks between the planks that would tease of an outside that was forbidden. There had been the silence as well, save her shallow breaths and whispered pleas, the vise gripping her chest while daylight slowly smudged away until the unseen night things rubbed their eyes, began to stir, and she knew he had forgotten to retrieve her again. How she yearned to open the door right then, or to hack it into a million pieces. Not to creep back into the house, no, but so that she might slumber beneath the weeping cherry like a wayward sprite in the olden times, with branches canopied above her and the world pitch black despite a bejeweled sky promised in the just beyond. She asked once more for the intoxicating blossoms to cast the spell for sound infant sleep, notwithstanding the miles she might someday travel to leave that place or return, with her thin limbs curled and her tiny fists clenched, an axe head cradled against her chin.

***

Hun Ohm is a writer and intellectual property attorney. He lives in western Massachusetts. His fiction has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, JMWW, Bull, Necessary Fiction, The Citron Review, Literary Orphans and other publications.

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Two Questions for Hannah Cajandig-Taylor

We recently published Hannah Cajandig-Taylor’s otherworldly “When We Left Earth, the Whales Came With Us.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) What really drew me to this piece was the imagery here — these whales in aquariums being tugged through space as children adore them from rocket ship classrooms, as they hold on to the things they have left behind. Why did you choose whales specifically for this lovely story, these lovely images? Did you ever consider, say, elephants instead?

The pieces of this story were actually born during a coffee shop writing session with my good friend and previous MCR contributor R. A. Matteson, and while giving elements or constraints, one of the concepts to work with was the word “whales”. Because of my undying love for outer space, I just kept thinking about what would happen to these massive aquatic mammals if humans abandoned earth in favor of galactic exploration. It seems like the world is on fire, but we just keep talking about leaving it instead of trying to fix things. I couldn’t stand to leave the whales behind on paper, so I figured why not chuck them into massive tanks and take them too? Though I was concerned about the laws of physics while writing this, it became clear to me that this piece was not specifically about the scientific impact, but more about the idea of transplanting life and attempting to understand a species that feels so distant to us as humans. I’m really drawn to whales in general, and have been on quite the whale kick since writing this, actually. There’s something so intriguing and lovely about these (mostly) gentle giants that roam the waters of our planet.

2) I love that the children write a song in honor of the whales, and that it is so long, some of the verses have to be cut, “for concision’s sake.” What is in those excised verses, do you suppose?

Funny enough, I’d actually written out a few more lines or verses for the whale song that ultimately didn’t make it into the story. One of those excised fragments talked about sperm whales, but I just couldn’t imagine children not giggling over sperm whales, so I ended up obsessively researching classifications of whales, both still alive and extinct, before deciding which lyrics would slip themselves into the narrative. I like to think that some of the unwritten verses featured narwhals. I’ve got a soft spot for narwhals. I imagine there could also be mention of other whale species with “clunky names” or such little cultural acknowledgement that they’ve simply faded into the background of history. I mean, at the end of the day, there are likely thousands of animal species and genera that humans have never encountered or classified, and that idea fascinates me because it makes me think about the creatures we HAVE taken record of and eventually lost over the course of time due to an attempt at simplifying things.

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When We Left Earth, The Whales Came With Us ~ by Hannah Cajandig-Taylor

We loaded up tanks & fastened them with chains to blimps & rocket ships, secured their chambers with krill & oxygen & trained marine biologists in little green suits. We hauled them through the exosphere, defied all laws of safety & science as the whales tugged behind us in their glass boxes. Over the growing years, we spent hours in our classroom writing their names with yellow-orange crayons on cardstock paper, sang stories about the orcas & other types of whales. Blue. Beluga. Humpback. Fought over the plush Narwhal in the reading corner. Narwhals have always been the most loved. At night, our fathers read us bedtime stories as we gazed out the porthole glass & pointed at the nearby cubes of water, smiling at the aquatic creatures from our quarters. After months & months of watching whales from our windows, their numbers started to dwindle. We lost Sabrina &Thomas & Kenji & held a funeral for them before their lifeless bodies were launched into the blackness of space. Verses of our song were cut for concision’s sake. We forgot about the Long-finned pilot. The Sei. The Amazon River Dolphin, which yes, was actually a whale. When we finally arrived, to the new home with the new ocean & the new sand colored like cadmium, it was time to say goodbye to whoever was left. Each surviving whale was plopped into the swirling waters. We sang them our whale songs, waving from the shore as the tide lapped at our bare skin. They swam away, calling back in a language we would never learn to speak.

***

Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she reads for Passages North and Fractured Lit. Her work has appeared in journals like Drunk Monkeys, Kissing Dynamite, and Pretty Owl. She loves to play Nancy Drew games on her computer and recently ordered a rock tumbler online.

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Two Questions for Michele Finn Johnson

We recently published Michele Finn Johnson’s searing “Hunger, Listen, Thirst.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I like how the narrator calls the baby’s father “the man who is the baby’s father” or simply “the baby’s father.” For me, this gives a really clear indication of their connection … or lack thereof! Did you ever consider having her call him anything else, or is this really the only option she has?

As soon as I wrote the line—”He’s a man who stayed when we both know he would’ve been long gone by now, if not for the circumstance.”—I knew the father would remain nameless in the story. His only tie to the narrator’s life is because of this baby, and I imagine she can’t help but feel the thinness of this tie every time he points out yet another failure on her part as a nurturer. He also seems to take his role as the baby’s father seriously with his tip-toeing and baby-burping and amazing catalog of nursery rhymes. That title defines him in this household; he’s certainly not a lover anymore, which is something our narrator hungers for.

2) The baby and the father both show how they aren’t satisfied, how the narrator can’t satisfy them fast enough or in the ways they want. But she is unsatisfied as well, though her feelings simmer below the surface, quietly. Do you think she will ever let them — let anyone — know exactly how she feels?

I’d love it if she would! The narrator in this moment of life is so incredibly overwhelmed and over-needed, it’d be a miracle if she had the time for self-assessment. She’s in total sacrificial mode for the benefit of the baby, but pretty soon she’ll wean him and get some bits of herself back. That seed of hunger for more is definitely there. She’s listening for some hope in the baby’s father’s throat, but I’m pretty sure that’s a dead end. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has her own equivalent moment of banging on a plastic tray of CheeriosTM in the not-to-distant future. Maybe once she finally gets a solid night’s sleep!

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Hunger, Thirst, Listen ~ by Michele Finn Johnson

It’s a Friday during Lent, so I feed the baby jewel-toned purees—carrots and green peas, avocado, butternut squash. He’s unsatisfied. He wants meat. Chicken meat. Turkey meat. Stewed crockpot meat. Something stringy and shredded; something he could choke on. He squawks at me, mouth outstretched.

 

Last Lent, I was overly pregnant and iron deficient, but determined to maintain a forty-day meatless existence. My OBGYN recommended supplements; the baby’s father pushed red meat. He made jerky from the various animals he’d killed and presented me with his leathery offerings. I refused. You’re so damned pale, I can see your heartbeat, he said, flogging me with a stick of deer.

 

To take the baby’s mind off meat, I take him for a walk in the desert. It hasn’t rained in months; saguaros poke out their anorexic ribs. Down, the baby says, this month’s favorite word. He’s only just beginning to sense the true value of having feet, and so he quickly teeters onto his bum. Waa, he cries, the fuchsia bloom of a barrel cactus just out of reach. No baby. Ouchies, I say, once again denying him his deepest desires. The baby cries and cries. I scoop him to my chest, digest his wails.

 

The man who is the baby’s father accuses me of malnourishing our son.

Just because you’re a hippie, it doesn’t mean he needs to starve.

Just because you’re an animal killer, it doesn’t make my baby a hick.

The man who is the baby’s father grabs the keys to his F-150 and slams the front door.

I hate his words: hippie and starve.

I hate my words: killer and hick.

 

The baby’s father is a good man. He is a man who sings an amazing catalog of nursery rhymes; he is a man who tiptoes down the hallway when the baby is finally asleep; he is a man who tests the temperature of the baby’s milk on the inside of his wrist; who burps the baby to absolute splatter-patterned completion. He’s a man who stayed when we both know he would’ve been long gone by now, if not for the circumstance. I hunger for our beginnings, listen for some hint of it in his throat. When the baby’s father comes home, I know that I will eat my words.

 

Meanwhile, the baby sits in his highchair, preoccupied with an orgy of Cheerios™. He sees me and starts to pound his chubby fists on the plastic tray. Cheerios™ tiddlywink into the air. The baby looks like the man who is his father when he is angry.

I’m close enough to smell that his diaper needs changing. The top of his head is translucent; his skull is a river of purple-blue veins that pulse with each scream—Momma, Momma. As I wipe his tiny bum, he transforms into a songbird, cooing. I listen to his song as I unbutton my shirt, never fast enough to satisfy his thirst. He grabs at the tentacles of hair that hang in front of my face; he jibbers something that sounds like Hungry, Hungry, again and again like a refrain.

***

Michele Finn Johnson’s work has appeared in Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, Booth, The Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, Barrelhouse, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her work was selected for Best Small Fictions 2019, won an AWP Intro Journals Award in nonfiction, and has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. Michele lives in Tucson and serves as fiction editor at Split Lip Magazine. Find her online at michelefinnjohnson.com and on twitter at @m_finn_johnson.

 

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Two Questions for Noa Covo

We recently published Noa Covo’s soaring “Amelia.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

 

1) What I love about this story is how vividly you create your Amelia Earhart (and there are so many versions of her, don’t you think?) in such a small space. What inspired your variation of this famous aviator?
A while ago, my little brother suggested that maybe Amelia Earhart disappeared because she reached outer space. I thought that she had always strived to escape Earth and distance herself from other people, so I found it very fitting. (Which just goes to show that my eight-year-old brother is smarter than me.) Amelia Earhart really was, in my eyes, the achiever of the impossible so writing her going to space felt like a natural extension of her journey. I think Amelia Earhart was more than just her tragic disappearance, and that she deserved a lot more than that, so this was kind of my way of expressing the fact that her story should’ve continued.
2) I especially like the moment when the Martians call her “our very own Amelia.” Does she belong to them, or to earth, or to anyone?
There are people throughout history whose stories others like to claim in a way that isn’t entirely fair. The thing that always irked me about Amelia Earhart is that she was let down by the people who should’ve rescued her, but when we tell her story and claim her, nobody ever takes responsibility for her disappearance. In my mind, Amelia Earhart belongs to the Martians in the sense that they appreciate her from afar and don’t try to limit her, unlike the humans. I wanted her to get a happy ending in which she belonged, and I’m not sure she felt that she belonged on Earth.
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Amelia ~ by Noa Covo

Amelia Earhart rebuilds the plane after the crash. She buries her navigator under the soft sand as her pleas for help fizzle over the radio and linger in the air, ignored. When a week passes, she gets into the cockpit and aims the plane at the sky. She passes through the atmosphere unimpeded. (The atmosphere knows it isn’t its place to stop her. There is an order in the universe, and in it Amelia Earhart is above forces of nature and other people’s opinions.)

She discovers gas giants and sun spots. She counts stars and watches them dance. When she’s lonely, she tunes in to the Martian radio programs and listens for her name. (Our celebrity, the Martians say, our very own Amelia.) When she passes the asteroid belt, she wonders if women on Earth wear pants yet.

She’s due to come across Voyager One soon. She doesn’t know it’s the farthest human-made object out in space, but maybe it will remind her of us. Maybe she’ll send us a message when she sees it. Maybe she’ll lean into the radio and say this is Amelia speaking. Maybe she’ll glance back at Earth and notice for the first time how far away it is. Maybe she will grieve the fact she can never return. Maybe she’s always known she never intended to.

***

Noa Covo is a teenaged writer. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Jellyfish Review, Okay Donkey, and Waxwing. Her microchapbook, Bouquet of Fears, was published by Nightingale and Sparrow this July. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.