petrichor review issue #4

7/28/2019 Petrichor Review Issue #4

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Issue 4, Spring 2013


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Petrichor Review


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iiiIssue 4, Spring 2013

Staff PageEmma Nichols

Editor-in-Chief

Pete Viola Sean Case

Poetry Editor Fiction Editor

Jenny Curits

Resident Artist

Petrichor Review is an independent arts and literature journal that

publishes work from a global, online community. Petrichor is the

collaborative effort of the above-mentioned individuals. Send all

non-submission correspondence to [email protected].

Copyright 2013-2014, Petrichor Review. All rights reserved.


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ivPetrichor Review

A Letter From the Editor

I

t takes an artist to sustain an audience and the response

of an audience to sustain an artist. In A Note on

Bernard Shaw, Jorge Luis Borges says, a book is not an

isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable

relationships. Petrichor Review is an ongoing experiment in

this bundle of relations. The lit-mag audience isnt a crowd,

but a nexus of individuals, each seeking something. The

narrator of Sean Antonuccis Penance in Waiting (p. 38)

sees you anxiously waiting, alone in a restaurant, wonderingwhich voice should I follow? We would argue, these ones.

Maybe in this order.

Order is a key principle in art and its vehicles. It is a

reference point, a ngerhold, a raft. Just like the speaker in

Paul Nelsons A Heart Needs A Raft (p. 41), you are groping

for a vantage point, a safe spot to sit and wonder. Order

offers a moment of respite amid the chaos of the rapids, of

life. We are trying to sequence the void.

Our cover, and the whole series of paintings by Kim Marra, is

a tting visual representation of our efforts. It is equal parts

architecture and inspiration. It is a labyrinth of mismatchedgures in technicolor, arranged not necessarily for the sake

of order or neatness, but for awe and wonder. This is what

we love, and what we hope you will love. This issue is our

edice, one more level in the ancient, massive, and ever-

spreading city of the arts. Thank you for reading, and may

you enjoy, appreciate, adore, Issue 4.

Pete Viola

Poetry Editor


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vIssue 4, Spring 2013

Table of Contents

Porches by Kim Marra...................................................Cover

Art by Katie Truisi................................................................viii

Emily as Honeysuckle by Darren C. Demaree........................1

This Salacious Act of Recovery by Sean Antonucci................2

Blooming Desert Perfection by Pete Madzelan.......................3

Envelopes by Barbara Brooks..................................................4

Art by Peter Nicholson.............................................................4

Snow and Strands by Caroline Misner.....................................5

Permission to Look by Barbara Brooks...................................6

Art by Peter Nicholson.............................................................7

Fanatics by Paul Nelson...........................................................8

Measurement by Desert Locust by Jonathan H. Scott.............9

Art by Katie Truisi..................................................................10

The Bitch of Buchenwald by Jessica Karbowiak...................10

Art by Peter Nicholson...........................................................15

Satan by Hilary Sideris...........................................................16

Roadside Rendevious by Pete Madzelan................................17

Isaac Newton Was a Terrible Farmer by Kate LaDew...........18

The Storm that Picked Up the Roller Coaster and Dropped it

100 Feet Away by Devon Miller-Duggan..............................21


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Cross Leggedby John Catania...............................................22

Southern Rain by Caroline Misner.........................................22

What Seemed Like Good Ideas by Jonathan H. Scott...........24

Happilyeverafter by Devon Miller-Duggan...........................25

Creation Story by Pete Madzelan...........................................26

Heliocentricity by Hilary Gan...............................................26

Hallways by Kim Marra.........................................................35A Woman May Make a Remark by Phoebe Wilcox..............36


Mental Blockby John Catania................................................38

Penance in Waiting by Sean Antonucci..................................38Geometry by Michelle Ravit..................................................40

A Heart Needs a Raft by Paul Nelson....................................41

Cabinets by Kim Marra..........................................................43

An Edict for the Expatriates Morningsby Suzanne Highland..............................................................44

The Man on the Beach by Richard Luftig.............................45


La Madonna del Parto by Hilary Sideris................................47

Mrs. Brady by Michelle Ravit................................................48

Rustication by Kim Marra......................................................49

The Overture by Damien Roos..............................................50


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It Was a Nice Day by Mike Jurkovic.....................................56


Fists by Sirenna Blas.............................................................57


Blaze by Phoebe Wilcox........................................................59

Walking Croton Point by Mike Jurkovic...............................60

Chinese Takeout and Casual Smoking by Zach Fishel..........61The Dark Wood by Richard OBrien.....................................62

Ember Days and Remembrances by Caroline Misner...........63


Thomas Edisons Blue Bird by Kate LaDew.........................65Ninety + Three by Gilmore Tamny........................................68

The Sunlight: A Million by Richard OBrien........................69

Landscape 1975 by Ira Joel Haber.........................................70

Thriving Modernist Movements by Alex Schmidt................70

Were Ink Made of Cats by Devon Miller-Duggan.................71


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viiiPetrichor Review

Katie Truisi


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1Issue 4, Spring 2013

Emily as HoneysuckleDarren C. Demaree

The vines left a mark inside my st,& the small beauty that could nevergrow through our own bones

was left to circle the terrible depthour skins accumulated in time& many seasons of wanting more

time, with beauty so close to the thickcrooks our bodies developedas invitation. The owers were subtle

& seemed hidden underneaththe untended growth by the garage,

& we never doubted their small light,

& we never doubted the many shapesof ower Emily could be if I looked away,& I never looked away long enough.


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2Petrichor Review

This Salacious Act of RecoverySean Antonucci

It wilts off the stem,

peals from the petalsand sinks to the soilto rebuke the rosebuds.

Oh, sweet morrow,dew diligence: and weep.

Sage falters.Her eyes recovera modicum of:NaCl,and drain back into themselves.

Basil providesthe H

2O

with a lick:salty:sosalty.

Dear Diarist,are we yet lees?

Basil drains the wineburbles dregs out ontothe picinic cloth

when Sage,oh Sage,

indents

(or at least admits it).

And thus: we were wontto begin again in warbles:so shrill & so tight.


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Blooming Desert Perfection Pete Madzelan


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EnvelopesBarbara Brooks

The beech tree sends out buds wrapped

in tissue-thin brown envelopes that opennightly until the soft, green letter of springis revealed. I look forward to these letters

just as I do the ones from home.

As the year ages, the brown envelopesare long lost to the ground. Winters wind

rufes the stiff parchment leaves,pulling on them as I wait.

Peter Nicholson


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Snow and StrandsCaroline Misner

The wind in the dogs fur

is blowing back her maneand rippling like elds of golden wheat.

She is on alertears pricked to pick up a soundshe will never hear.

She is old now,her hearing gone.

The wind snatches the breathfrom her moist black snoutand the morning forgets itself,unspooling in wintry measures.

Snow clings to the strands,caresses and disappearsinto the greyness of her coat

loveless and pureas akes of Chinaafter the plate has shattered on tile.


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Permission to LookBarbara Brooks

Quail Hollow Dr.Chickadees and wrens are fussing,glancing up. There it sits. A barred owls back.It twists its head to gaze, eyesdeep as innity, giving me permission to look.Blinking, it turns away. Through my scope,I can see every feathers edge.

Bunny Road

In the middle of the road, a pileof something. A wing points to the sky,one eye still gazes into innity, the other just a smearon the white line, yellow bill split in half, talons graspingan invisible limb. I pull the owl to the side of the road.I can see every feathers edge.


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Peter Nicholson


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FanaticsPaul Nelson

Winged facts evaporate

the second I lift the plastic swatter.They have alps of air to hide in.

And if I manage to mashwith a certain whip of wristone particular sneak, roving sacrilegiouslythe edge of the kitchen counter,

I have to understand that its infants,infamous live rice in meat, bread or smashed fruit,insinuate, gnaw, rest and swell in restless health,harrying the Valley of Death.

Their swarthy, hairy elders swarm,deposit, ee, repeat, then hang,

desiccate in Kalis web,or on a warm sky of window glass,or vellum shade, having buzzed like kazoos,or fried, consummated on a bulbI activate at dusk like evening prayer,or evening news... a peasants bomb.

They are so quiet in the desertdark of midnight, planningfar into the future, as if allthe forgotten brilliance of so many starsnally reached us from Alexandriathrough the ash clouds of the library,the calm, ancient mathematicians of sky

born again.

Are their days of zeal less than Heavens?And if they carry death to usby eager children, by ying towardour bright towers of food and waste,could they not be true believers too?


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Measurement by Desert Locust(for H. V.)

Jonathan H. Scott

From an innite swarm,catch just one;let the remaindermeasure Timesimplestsurface, simplestcounted. Hold the oneas you might hold two,leave space to make safethe exoskeleton,mindful of the thorax.These are fragile,minus the swarm. Break-

able, snappable,altogether divisible.

Let these units be Loveas a wholesum of follyper any object at hand.But let mandible,maxilla,ocella, and labrum

be the very stuff of stuff. The pith,the bark, the seed, and the Growth.The roil, the eddy, the pool,

and the Movement.The head, the chest, the belly,the Locustcaught from a swarm,

held graciously wide.


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10Petrichor Review

Katie Truisi

During World War II, Ilse Koch headed the Buchenwaldconcentration camp with her husband Karl Otto Koch, untilthe Ally forces invaded. Dubbed the Bitch of Buchenwald,

Ilse was known for her sadistic behavior toward prisoners.

It is said she was particularly fond of riding her horsethrough camp and whipping the backs of prisoners. Uponthe Allied invasion, it was reported that numerous artifactsmade of human skin were found in the Buchenwald camp,including lampshades, gloves, and book covers.

The Bitch of Buchenwald

Jessica Karbowiak

When she is a child, dark and brooding, she percheseager on her work-weary fathers lap. She evokescharm early, glimpses his worship-face gazing down at her,feels power there. The already old man in some ways mirrors


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her future husband, the one she will wed and follow intocamps as a axen-haired demon.

An early villainess in the camps, outing power and rage at

the stripped and skeletal prisoners, her light eyes stare outand call forth nightmare. She walksgrace and beautydown dirt-lined paths, shifts and squints eyes at the once-people working there, the body shells with death-maskfaces. She is the reminder of alive and fear. The Bitch ofBuchenwald, they call her, behind shaking hands. TheBeast-woman andDie Hexe in some places. Her appetite

holds many names.

A lone man clothed in rags. He collects shoes of formerliving, piles them in room-corner as told by barking voice ofthe Bitch, creates a majestic and tragic mound of soft-soleddeath. His uneven gait falters through doorways, down the

camp hill to continually collect and sort the new, his eyeshalf-closed and downcast to avoid her stoic gaze.

He thinks of family, though not often, as memory lls sadspace and then replaces it. His ngers crack and tremble,too much for him to hold. His duties get done in zombie-likefreedom; its the only peace he knows. He shufes pale feetdown dirt-laden rows, and his eyes catch light through thetall green there, the ever-living of trees. The bark of a dog,a danger-sound once beloved, and the incessant bird chirpabove make a dark growth inside him. The living of this placeis too much to bear.

Sometimes he wishes death, then silences the thoughtand feel of it, lets the emptiness swell in stomach, a darkhole growing. It emerges, quiet at rst, but this shufe-

walking man knows it will soon overtake him, grow outwardand erce from his middle. This liberty relieves him, theknowledge of it, and he can almost recall days when he knew


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Gods face. Yes, he will soon be nothing, a no-man, a blackgaping hole walking and then disappearing from view. Thisthought refreshes him. The pain and quiet of it.

The Bitch is death-camp beauty atop blackest mare. Sherides up and down the same dirt path, a galloping endkicking up dust and mud in her wake. She rides bareback, thepounce and agility of her thin female form ever-moving. Thedrizzled and mud-soaked lane coupled with the steady clip-clop of horse hooves brings chills to the lone man. He keeps

eyes down as she progresses past him, dark eyes trained onthe slick wet of the wheelbarrows handles, the quiver of hisown ngers there.

She carries sure-re whip this day. Entwined and pretty, thethick black of the rope is tight. She rides and snaps out herright arm, the ash and force of the twine lashing at bare

arms and feet. The splayed whip-ends gratify her, the soundof contact keeps her sated.

The hole grows wider within him, ever-wider as he shufeshis walk and does his duty. The feel of expansion soothesaway panic, the chaos of knowing what it is he knows. Therain continues and the odor of once-living feet pushes out ofthe wheelbarrows hold to climb his shaking ngers and restinside his nose. Theres living in the smell of it, the run andswagger of women, children, men. It adds to the darkness ofhim, the growth, as the slick and stained pseudo-road leadshim past the Bitch whose eyes follow his slow and steadyprogress.

There is a smirk and swagger to her. She points a delicatenger at the ragged of him as he moves with nearly-held

breath.You. I want you.


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He stops his shufe, abandons the weight of the wheelbarrowto turn briey and gaze upward. He feels the dark continueto grow as he stands still and muted, the hole beginning topress outward with frenzy, and he wills this, begs his body

hurry up, hurry up please.

Her descent from the beast makes her look almost-human,not half animal but a woman only. This thought, he knows, isdeceptive. He stares resignedly at the cold and pretty of her,glimpses evil there.

A man with a vicious and thin line of mouth stalks over.He touches his left hand to the right shoulder of the Bitch.They both laugh, hers high and shrill with the boom of hisoverpowering. The vicious-mouth man calls out to him.

Follow me, he says, and no more.

The hole-growing lls the silent space as the lone manbegins his weary death-march down the hill. The vicious-mouth man coughs out cold air, and the brute of him keeps ahurried pace the lone man cannot. In this way, the lone manis given time to let the hole expand. He sees pairs of eyespeek out of skeleton-faces through wooden slats of cabin andfollow his advance.

The Bitch follows on his heels, pushes at the weak of him tomove past the cabins and into the ofcer area. Doctor, whitecoated and furious, stands at the door and vicious-mouthstrips the lone man naked, so for a moment he is afraid they

will see the nothing of him, the growing no-space, but theydo not.

Lie down, one says.

The lone man hesitates, resists without sound.


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I said lie down, the voice continues. Now.

Gloved and pointing nger at cold metal table. The surfaceglints light, and theres metallic reection from sharp objects

on the nearby counter. The lone man shufes, hesitant, butthe vicious-mouth man pushes out impatience with his wholehand, coughs and laughs as the lone man falters.

Enough, the voice says. Enough of this. Lie down.

Experiment-eyes meet his starving, soulful ones as the body

that cages him climbs coldness to lie there. The freeze ofmetal sears his skin, pierces his ngers as he shifts weightto stare upward at the blank ceiling and the blanker facesof the two men, one clad in white and the other standing inthe corner to watch. The Bitch stands closer and the owerysmell of her coupled with the antiseptic feel of the room isthe nal catalyst, so by the time his body stills, he is almost

all-hole now, the growth the size of a window, or a door.

He shuts his eyes to the real, takes in the stab and sear ofthe doctors cut, the short laugh in room-corner. There is a

boxing cut as his chest is bared, the color and whimsy of thefairy inked there visible to them; now she smiles upward asthe knife comes down and the lone man goes, becomes gone,a nothing space as the body he slips from bears the incision,the evil of a four-sided cut to remove the tattooed sprite andpreserve.

There is a atness to this preservation. A grotesque beauty inthe way the fairy and her irty smile are book-ended by thepale and plaintive look of the lone mans nipples, now erectand lifeless. The skin-square shows her wings expanding pastthe cut so they seem to utter outward into perpetuity. TheBitch adds this to the collection, the oddities she craves, so

when the soldiers come to render the camp obsolete, she isnot surprised at the shout of them, the vomit and faint she


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sees as one lifts the lone mans square of chest from table,holds it out for his fellows to see. The Bitch smiles to herself,knows they will dream the terror and beauty of pixie dreamsever-after.

Peter Nicholson


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SatanHilary Sideris

In a monks habithes not hard to spot,

with cloven foot,reptilian complexion

& sardonic tone: Hungry?Go ahead & turn

this stone into a loaf.Gods son? Leap from

the temple roof, letangels intervene. Or suit

yourself, stick with a stagon your mountaintop.

Dream of a stream.Sleep on a rock.


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Isaac Newton Was A Terrible FarmerKate LaDew

Isaac Newton was not growing an alfalfa crop. He wasattempting, he was trying, he was endeavoring, but he wasnot growing an alfalfa crop. He was not growing an alfalfacrop because he was terrible at farming. He was so bad, thelocal simpleton, Thurston Phillipi, would wait beside thesickly, brown alfalfa sprouts and watch for Isaac Newton tomake his daily depressing inspection, then spring upon him

unawares, shouting, Newton, Newton, so highfalutin, heplanted alfalfa and out came gluten!This troubled Isaac Newton. He did not enjoy it in the least

because he was smart. He was so smart it was stupid. He wasso ridiculously smart, if you even talked to him for a second

Roadside Rendevous Pete Madzelan


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you would fall all over yourself because Good Golly Moses,how could anyone be so smart? He was smart, but there he

was, staring down at dying alfalfa, being rhymed at by anidiot. And it was all Isaac Newtons mothers fault.

He had been happy at school, or at least reasonably so,and that was about all anyone could ask from school. Andthen his mother, his up until then reasonable, discerningmother had collected Isaac Newton and all his belongingsand thrown him out into the elds to do work he had neverdone before and expected something out of the whole sad,

sorry trip. It made him resentful. His mother knew best ofcourseshe was a mother and all mothers knew bestbutcome on. The whole idea of him farming was absurd anyway.One needed to eat and one needed water and one neededmaterials for clothes and goods and all sorts of things likethat, all sorts of things he needed but didnt know how tomake. He was fairly certain he could discover the meaning

of life and unlock all the secrets of the universe, and wasntthat enough? Did he have to milk cows too? Did he have togrow alfalfa too? Did he have to fatten hogs and fetch pails of

water from wells? Wasnt all the knowledge that could everbe enough?But his mother said, every day, Isaac Newton, please pushthe plow. It will not push itself. And Isaac Newton thoughtabout it for awhile and realized it was true, so he pushed theplow.

And his mother also said, every day, Isaac Newton, now thatyou are pushing the plow, please keep pushing the plow, or itwill stop. And Isaac Newton thought about it for awhile andrealized this, too, was true, so he kept pushing the plow.

And his mother also, also said, every day, Isaac Newton, youare no longer pushing the plow. The plow is for mornings.

You are pushing a sheep. A sheep is lighter than a plow. Push


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more lightly. And Isaac Newton thought about it for awhileand realized it was true, so he pushed the sheep more lightlythan he pushed the plow.

And his mother also, also, also said, every day, IsaacNewton, for every action there is an equal and oppositereaction. And Isaac Newton thought about it for awhile and

would become tired and go to sleep under an apple tree.His favorite part of the day was sleeping under the apple tree.He would think about school and how he was reasonably

happy there and think about his mother and how she wasalways right, but also how she was always on about the plow.It was tiring. Looking at dying crops and being rhymed at byThurston Phillipi was tiring. Thurston Phillipi was an idiotand Isaac Newton was not and it was all so very tiring. Itmade him resentful.

One day, after pushing the plow with great force andcontinuing to push the plow with great force and pushingthe sheep with not-as-great force, Isaac Newton sat underthe apple tree and was hit in the head by an apple, whichmade sense, as he was under an apple tree and sometimesthese things happened. But today he was feeling particularlyresentful and did not think, but became angry. He pickedup the apple and threw it back at the tree, only to watch it

bounce off the trunk and hit him again. Right in the neck. Hefell to the ground, had a coughing t, and was in bad shapefor a while. After recovering his breath, he looked up fromhis prone position at the tiny nick the apple had made in the

bark of the tree. He looked sideways at the apple. He lookedback at the tree. He looked up at the sky and the dozens ofapples that hung on the branches of the tree. A gust of windshimmied the leaves and another apple fell, hitting him rightin the nose.

And suddenly, it all made sense. After rearranging his nose


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on his face and knocking his addled brain back into his head,Isaac Newton sat up. He looked out at the plow in the eld.He looked at the sheep grazing. He looked again at the tree,the dimpled bark, and the second fallen apple. Holding it

up, he looked at its deep red skin, shining in the sun withan indention just the size of his nose scarring the middle.Everything made sense. The world came into focus and hesaid very quietly to himself, My mother is terrible at ideas.Thats what all this trouble is about. After all, who was heto be not growing alfalfa and pushing plows and sheep and

being bombarded with apples all the time? His smile beamed

bright as he tossed the apple up into the blue, blue sky,watching it fall back into his hand again and again. I will goback to school. I will go back to school and become the manof science I was always meant to be. And my rst hypothesis

will be,Do mothers always know best?But rst, he said.Ill have to go to the source. Ill have to let my mother knowabout her trouble with ideas, he nodded. Also gravity. Ill

tell her about that, too.


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The Storm that Picked Up the Roller

Coaster and Dropped It 100 Feet AwayDevon Miller-Duggan

into the surf.Otherwise undamaged.

You could have dreamt it.Then, it would make sense.

Entire blocks of houses,owned by reghters,

burned to the groundin the drenching rain.

You could have dreamt it.Then it would make sense.

Two small boys

swept from their mothers armsinto the storm surge.You could have dreamt it.Then it would have been bearable.


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Cross Legged John Catania

Southern RainCaroline Misner

Florida, 1980

August is the season of rain,especially this far south;its easy to forget the feelof sunlight on your eyes.

You believe the world will forever bethis wet and warm and dark.The rain-blackened night

drowned any moonthat may have been.

A heavy rain boiled down the backof the car and beata wet tattoo upon the hood;


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rivulets of water owed downthe glass of the windshield

before being slashed bythe wipers frantic blades.

We arrived at a stopto rest and eatred and yellow neon watered down,ashing like a bad headache.

And the rain kissed my face,each drop bursting into my skin,

stroking long ngers down my bangs,pasting my hair to my neck,dancing me through the puddlesin the parking lotuntil the cuff of my jeans got wet.

The atypical behemoths of trucks

washed down in rain, their drivershunched at scarred tables in the sweaty weatherof the dining room,plump with nicotine smoke and conversationand the scent of chickengrilling on a spit.


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What Seemed Like Good Ideas

Jonathan H. Scott

Karaoke at Gabes for the umpteenth,singing country for Cowboys dribblingswill on shave-nicked chins and callingfor encores.

Ordering curried sh in London rstthings rst, to pop off a are for ttinginwincing at warm bitters and staringwhole sh in the eyes.

Pushing all-in against a sprung-eyedgeezer with seven ways of grinning,

none of which guaranteed a sure-reush or higher.

Quarry dives at Warrior, skinny legs,white and wobbling, water-painted girlsdripping mascara, quoting movies

we liked that summer. That summer in particular.

Crash course mistakes learned hardagainst the Gulf Coast, knee-deep in cold

breakers, feet numb, and paper-white heronsscaring the rest of the hell out of me.

Days set aside for anticipating nightswhen the kaleidoscope rattled, twistedby unseen handstree branches cricketinghavoc on the stars.


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Happilyeverafter

Devon Miller-Duggan

Happens we stumbled onto the right roadprobablyby unfollowing the directionsand sewing the map folds together.Happens the companions found us

where the dew on the grass said wed be.

Hap well be able to drink from the next riverwithout dying, turning into especially unsentient sh,or growing extra tongues.

Most likely, we never should have tried to cross the bridgewithout having ever once riddled the knowing.Even the moss between the paving stones

knew more than wemight ever have.Ever seemed easy then.

We should have paid the coin that was asked, thenwe wouldnt have these burns on our palms.We should have seen there was a doorwayright at the crest of the span. We mightever have known whose palm t the lock.

We should have riddled ever.

After, there will be harvesting.After, the hunger will quiet.After, the swans will settle and the sun take ight.After, the dust will cease singing.After, the dust will cease singeing.After, the dust will cease sighing.After, we open the book.


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26Petrichor Review

Creation Story Pete Madzelan

HeliocentricityHilary Gan

At the corner of Sixth and Campbell, the car radio likesto tell me stories about happiness in the key of A, whilestreetlights drip monsoons and asphalt pools water againstthe rest of the desert year.

Im afraid of ying because the planes like to tell me horror

stories.

The wrangler puts me on the tallest horsethe one named

Texand we climb the mountain one sway-step at a time,until even the Colorado-sized sky is no match for my grin and

the girl in stilettos on the Appaloosa only makes me laugh.

Ive found a man who wants me because of my sunscreen and

sneakers and saddle hips, and not in spite of them; you, you

on Pistol behind Tex in the sunshine.


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On a puddle-jumper ight out of Tucson to Denver, the plane

tells me about the time a pilot tried to y it into Tucson at

4,000 feet, even though there are known peaks higher than

that, and only the autopilot function saved it from Titanic-ing

right into the side of a fucking mountain.

Four years ago I sat in the back of a red pickup at a drive-

in, watching a bad Nicholas Cage movie. In the end the kids

got rescued by aliens and brought their pet bunnies to a new

planet before a solar are completely obliterated the earth,

and Nicholas Cage hugged his estranged father as they were

incinerated. After the movie, my friend who had invited usrolled his eyes and said, Sorry, guys, but I was too busy

having a panic attack at the visual of our kindly yellow sun

causing humanitys demise to respond in a cinematically

appropriate manner.

Im afraid of many things: midair collisions, dysfunctional

landing gears, drunk pilots, suicidal pilots, geese in theturbines, malfunctions during takeoff, lightning strikes, air

vortices, res in the engine, general mechanical failures, pilot

errorsbut mostly I am afraid of the two minutes when I

know I am going to die and everyone is screaming and there is

nothing I can do.

Because of all these things I am afraid of, I nd it difcult, on

occasion, simply to turn to a girl next to me on an airplane

and ask her if she has a pen so I can do Sudoku.

After we met by calculated chance at a Las Vegas casino, I

wouldnt let you come visit me for two months. But when you

nally did the only thing that went wrong was that your ight

was delayed for ve hours.

Just after a bout of turbulence that felt like a battering ram

and left the wings apping, the summertime ight from LA to

Chicago tells me about the time this very pilot pulled another


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28Petrichor Review

plane out of a downward spiral at 1,000 feet after a wing

extension mechanism malfunctioned and wouldnt retract.

I have a photo of you at Blacks Beach in San Diego from a

rainy weekend in April and your eyes are the same color asthe water behind you. We had a whole forty-ve minute span

when there was no one else around, not even the usual nut-

brown men in cock harnesses, but I was too afraid of getting

caught to take my clothes off. I am sorry for that.

On my rst transatlantic ight out of Toronto into Paris I

lucked out. The plane only spoke French. We followed thesunrise for three hours, and I watched a slowly widening

rainbow streak along the horizon of the ocean.

I prefer the planes with winglets because these prevent wake

turbulence, like what caused the crash out of JFK that my

plane from Newark to Buffalo saw back in 2001.

Planes wont ever say the t-word.

One thing I nd terrifying about ying, besides the awful

scenarios of death and destruction relayed to me by the

planes, is that the inside of the metal tube hurtling through

the air at 38,000 feet and 400 miles per hour attached to a

couple of jet engines is so fucking normal.

I would give up my rstborn child for a window seat.

I refuse to quit ying because I am in love with you and your

sunshine eyes, all of which resides far away in St. Louis, the

hub, the gateway to the west, the city under the arch. Also, Imstubborn and wont back down in the face of unpleasantness.

But you are very kind and do most of the ying in this

relationship because the planes dont talk to you about

anything at all, and in some ways this kindness is harder for

me to brave than any adventures in aviation.


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I have been too proud to tell you or anyone that I always

touch the side of the plane both as Im boarding and as Im

deplaning. I try to make it look casual, but its a superstition.

The story I told myself before I met you starred me as acowboy always riding off into the sunset in search of the next

trail to blaze, and I could not be tethered to the promise of a

homestead. I knew this was just a story.

Usually during a ight, I am white-knuckling the seat handles

and sweating through the palms of my hands and my armpits,

even though I am freezing, and I stare directly out the windowfor the entire ight. On good days I can do the crossword or

read a book. I cant listen to music or sleep because the planes

always interrupt me.

When I was a little girl staying over at my grandmothers

house, this is how she used to sing me to sleep:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,you make me happy when skies are grey.

Youll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Please dont take my sunshine away.

Once, when I was older, I asked to stay in the big queen-sized

bed in the nearly empty west bedroom and that night she sang

me the second verse for the rst and only time:

The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping,

I dreamed I held you in my arms.

But when I woke, dear, I was mistaken,

so I held my head and cried.

Years later, my mother told me that my grandmother usedto share that bedroom with my grandfather until he died of a

heart attack at the age of 53 while they were making love.

When you are in that state between light and dark, you will

sometimes raise your head and tell me that you love me and


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30Petrichor Review

then put your head back on the pillow. On the ight to New

York to meet my parents you did this three times in ve

minutes, and my lap was the pillow.

One night, after a ight from St. Louis to Tucson via Detroit,my brain tells me a story in which our sun ickers and goes

dark, and I drop to my knees to the sound of the wordless

cries of people around me and wait to be extinguished, too.

The suns continuing fusion is an assumption we all count on.

Because of the time it takes for light to traverse the distance

between our planet and its star, we, humanity, would be

allowed eight minutes more than the sun, and we wouldntknow it.

I try not to get drunk in-ight because then I get sloppy and

sad and tell long stories about my mother to my seatmates,

which is not good. Once, I got a prescription for Xanax and

decided to test it pre-ight and I wound up in the corner

of your apartment sobbing because the stars were so bigand I was so small. Im pretty sure this is not how Xanax is

supposed to work, so now I try to get enough sleep and have a

strong cup of coffee and just stay sober.

Once, on a ight from Raleigh to Charleston, my plane got

struck by lightning, which was kind of nice because it nally

shut up about all of the incidences of whole panels ripping off

the hulls during takeoff that year.

Im too proud to tell you how often Im lonely without you. I

seem to have traded in my spurs for forty acres of bedsheets.

My favorite ight ever was from Reno to Phoenix. There was

a harvest moon that was big and red and pulsing, and the

plane told me that the rivets that hold everything together

are the safest part of the whole machine, with an acceptable

failure rate of about one in three billion. That plane also

told me stories of things it had seen: ball lightning, the


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Grand Canyon at sunrise, sun dogs, the Northern Lights, re

rainbows, noctilucent clouds, and once some sh caught up in

a raincloud (the technical term is non-aqueous precipitation)

splatted against the front window. Youve got an orange

moon tonight because of atmospheric conditions, it told meimportantly, and I smiled. Ive been looking for that plane

ever since, but havent run into it again.

The oldest story I know about the sun is the one in which

Helioss son, Phaethon, drives the sun chariot across the sky

and cant control the mighty horses that pull it. He drives too

high and nearly freezes the world, then drives too low andkills the crops and turns Africa to desert, and a grieving Helios

watches Zeus strike down his beloved son with a thunderbolt.

On my second transatlantic ight, into Amsterdam, the plane

unfortunately spoke perfectly good English and told me one

story over and over for 12 hours: about the EgyptAir ight

that the NTSB concluded had crashed into the Atlantic nearNantucket when the co-pilot decided that he didnt want

to live anymore and probably neither did anyone else on

the plane. Each time through this narrative, however, the

plane reminded me that Egypt denies this version of events.

Eventually, I did manage to fall asleep. The repetition was

soothing.

The black box is actually orange.

Once, I successfully shut up a plane that tried to tell me again

about Flight 191 out of OHare in 1979whose port engine

detached during takeoffby yawning. Ive already heard this

one a million times, I told it.

Oh, it said. And youre still okay to y?

Yes, I said. Besides, they rebuilt that model and it had a

nice, long commercial career and now its in shipping.

Well then, said the plane. Welcome aboard.


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32Petrichor Review

I tried that same move on the next ight but, upon hearing

that its punchline had been ruined, the plane decided to give

me a rundown of all the private plane incidents since 1923.

When I got to stay at my grandmothers house for theweekend, sometimes I would beg to watch an animated lm,

called The Day the Sun Danced, about the Miracle of Our

Lady of Fatima that happened in Portugal in 1917, when three

small children predicted the appearance of the Virgin Mary.

As many as 100,000 witnesses reported seeing the sun veer in

a zig-zag pattern toward the Earth at the predicted time. The

most often suggested explanation for this occurrence is thatstaring at the sun too long can produce these types of visual

effects, but the focus of the crowd had actually been on a tree

and not the sun. I loved the story because the idea of the sun

dancing was so cheerful, and because nobody believed the

children and they were put in jail until the miracle occurred,

and afterwards they were heroes. But my mother didnt like

me watching such heavily religious material and nally, whenI asked to watch it at the age of eight, my grandmother told

me no.

Youve told me that you will allow our not-yet-conceived

daughters to date only after they have achieved their black

belt in jiu jitsu, and that you will also require this of our boys

for gender equality purposes. In my opinion, you would have

made an excellent pilot.

On the ight from Denver to St. Louis, I nd the plane is

relatively young. Did you know its more likely well have a

terrorist on board than a deadly mechanical malfunction?

Dont say the t-word, I hiss.

Oh, come on. Terrorist terrorist terrorist terrorist, it

sings. Ind it comforting that in the struggle between human

evil and human invention, invention wins.

If its more likely that someone on board is evil than that

the mechanics fail, isnt that evil winning? I wonder.


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I hadnt thought of that, says the plane. Oh, Orville and

Wilbur.

Hush, I say. What is this, your rst ight?

In a passenger-carrying capacity, its my fth.

Youll be ne, I say. Its more likely that Ill die of aheart attack on board than that youll crash. I marvel at how

reassuring I sound when my palms are leaving handprint-

shaped sweat marks on my jeans. My heart appears to be

doing ne.

Not only is our existence momentous in space, but also in

time. Science tells us that even though the sun will loseabout thirty percent of its mass by the time it becomes a red

giant, and thus extend the length of the orbital leashes of the

planets, it will also increase in size and temperature, and all of

the water on Earth will boil away, rendering life impossible.

On my way to the library I am waiting for the light at the

corner of Sixth and Campbell and an Inniti Coupe turns thecorner, skids, corrects badly, and then accelerates over a small

Palo Verde sapling and into a street sign ten feet from my

toes. When I tell you about it you say, No dying! as if this is

the military and I am a new recruit and death is as simple as

growing your hair long.

On the rst leg of a ight from Tucson to St. Louis my

curiosity gets the better of me and I ask the plane why they are

always so worried all the time. Well, of course its distressing

to think that people will suffer simply because your navigation

system fails, it tells me. Or any small part. I think that this

is reasonable, and say so.

On the second leg of that same ight, the plane points out that

my heart rate is higher when the plane is ying smoothly than

when there is actually turbulence. I chew my ice.

I had been on an airplane before I had any memories, but

the rst time I was on one and knew it I was nine and ew


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34Petrichor Review

American Airlines to Florida, the Sunshine State, with my

grandmother and her friend. My grandmother told the ight

attendants I had never been on a plane before, and they gave

me pins shaped like wings and extra peanuts and a coloring

book with brand-new crayons, and the pilot took me onto theight deck and let me sit in the pilots seat and showed me

how to y a plane. On the way home I was sad to nd that

there is a limit to how many times you can have a rst time

on an airplane, and that no one is impressed by your second

time.

Apparently, the actual rst time I was on an airplane I fellasleep and had a night terror, and I screamed incessantly for

half an hour because my mother couldnt wake me up from

the story my brain was telling me.

When you were in college you had the hiccups for two years

straight, which you say is how you learned who your real

friends were. The doctors said you might have a lung tumor,but you didnt and so I got to meet you. Sometimes now,

when we are in the same city, I will hear you randomly hiccup

and feel a surge of gratitude that you are here, hiccuping and

mine.

When I go to visit you for the summer I bring my little orange

cat in a bright yellow carrier. After takeoff he curls up and

sleeps for the entire ight. It occurs to me then that a story is

not a story if it has no listener.

According to the book that my father used to read to me

before I went to sleep, what made the Wright brothers

successful in moving from gliding to ying was the

development of three-axis control: pitch, roll, and yaw. In

other words, without the inclusion of a pilot, we would never

have been able to y at all.


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Hallways Kim Marra


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36Petrichor Review

A Woman May Make a RemarkPhoebe Wilcox

My coat made of failuredoes not match my successful skin.

We will never run out of smutas long as there are lovers living.My striped socks are lost under the bedand my legs are over the rainbow.

I would tear you up and take you to Ozin any Kansas weather.However, I will try and refrain,abstainand containmyself.It is the proper thing.

But still, a woman may make a remarkbecause some things between men and womenare simplyso remarkable.


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Katie Truisi


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38Petrichor Review

Penance In WaitingSean Antonucci

Strolling, follow the waiter into a room of voicesdisinterred and distended from the bodies that rest &consume & move moist lips in saliva-slathered irregularity.Here, alone in your booth, you wonder: which voice should

I follow?The heated subatomic syllables bash into oneanother, crack and explode. And though only shrapnel can

Mental Block John Catania


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be deciphered from this distance, the meaning is preservedfor the protuberant puff pastries that are the bread for asandwich of a vacant stare.

It is not unlike waking up in a room lled with clocks alltelling a different time. Which do you go by? Should youtrust the old grandfather clock? Or the sleek new timepiecethat projects numbers onto any surface: a table, a pillow, orthe face of your lovera 4 shimmering on the rivulets of hersomnambulant drool?

The vested man brings you a pamphlet of revolutionaryphrases like: lantipasto, zabaglione,une degustation,or amuse bouche (ch-chopping the double Cs and pouringthe rrolling Rs into a great fondue of Romance languages

beware the sides, theyre hot). From the preset tableincluding glasses of water lled to the lip (like words in themouth of the silent sonalways ready, though missing the

last drop to overowbeing aurally molested by pointy,choice words from an eruption formerly known as Dad)its clear that someones been expecting you. And you wereexpecting the expectation, as you in turn sit expecting anarrival.

Push away the menu. Let yourself order from the Bible.Ask for the Son of GodHis body and blood. Plead withthe waiter. Negotiate a contract with the man in the horn-rimmed frames. Say: Bring me Gods Son on a hand-craftedclay plate. Let me eat with Him, by eating Him, so that Imight not be so alone in this purgatory of voices.

And, just as you are about to implode from self-cognizantpanic, she sits down across from you and asks: Have you

been waiting long?

Do you tell her?


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40Petrichor Review

Geometry (or)

the shape of my heart, folded in halfMichelle Ravit

Scalene triangles brain-scrapingthrough cascading sine waves

parallelogram,you call me.

Andcongruent lines that roam

wide-openperpendicular fences

but

my rhombusalwaysleaning forwardalways

moving toward or away fromintersecting angles

diagonal lines runningtangent to each other

tangent to your mothertangent to my horizontal symmetry.


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A Heart Needs a Raft(for Laura Marello)

Paul Nelson

Thigh-thick bamboolight and marrowless

or balsa for fast long voyagingbound with vines and twisted hemp

Kon Tikis buoyancy on currents

beating up with a square-rigged sail

Maybe white cedar Protestant logsthick with small ascetic cells

lashed by nautical knots of manilaa heavier craft that plows along

though why handle such a craftstiff with old hostility to nature

getting here getting there getting onso full of mission

One could build a raft on a jasper shoreby huge and gelid Fundy tides

wide purple leather clam ats tanningor mooning part time

treacherously lifting offfeckless on relentless rise

How to do anything withoutthe ethic of hardship and a big knife


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42Petrichor Review

How to stay movingweighed down by the grave moon

the gravity of our wounded bodies

the fear of keeling over

upset and drowned in shockwith a cold and sodden brain

Best the bamboo on a sun-ridden beachno heavy canoe or shoes

where equatorial tides are nothingand seashell sand does not retard

an easy launch by pairs of handsbrains no anchors to romance

to somewhere anywheremakes sense if you arent coming back

as it is with the life of a cautious personbuilding in the back yard a raft

out of anything like fty gallon drumsstrapped beneath a pickups bed

any light thing for a heart already aoattied up in its slip of ribs

A trouble with raftstrying to get on one

your body already waterpumps and bilge all pulse and wallow

without keel the whole contraption


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tugging on its veins and arterials

tethered bow stern and spring linesexing and sensing wayward weather

low and high pressure systemssystolic swells and peaks

diastolic ebbs and troughs a raftquaking within the lava jetty

Cabinets Kim Marra


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44Petrichor Review

An Edict for the Expatriates MorningsSuzanne Highland

From Buenos Aires balconies I made my peacewith the alien summer: I constructeda cloud of silver dust, speed-readingthe rooftops, barely touching anything.

The key is removing yourself from reality.

You must be as though you are not, must bea likeness in the caf window, a reection

with a camera, looking in.

You will nd yourself toe-to-toe withsome transcendence. Reading Emersonin the botanical garden may seem to clarify,

but the owers did not grow for you.The roads did not unfold for you.The traipsing routine was there before.

This morning, for all its elemental elegance,was already happening too. It did not grow from mysleeping mouth or awake to provide a song.It unfurled like a low fog and turned trafc-lled.

You will soon realize you live a life apart. See thecloud, be like me. I have balconies. I can seethings before they touch me. A boy speaks

your language, do not fall for him. A parrot

in the window would do better,would speak your words right back to you.


53/82


The Man on the BeachRichard Luftig

He swings his metallic crutchin long, crescent arcs, a sundialover the three oclock sand.

With ears of some long-agomastodon, he listens

to each robotic beep

like a probe from deep space,taking soundings for evidenceof prior dreams: that silver

wedding ring, those antiqueearrings, the St. Anthonymedal that has given up

the faith and stayedlost. Then swooping down,sifting over the bones,

a vulture picking with purposeat whatever carrion remainsof now-forgotten lives.


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46Petrichor Review

Katie Truisi


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La Madonna del PartoHilary Sideris

Artists exaggerateher post-Annunciation

bulge, then part fromnarrativea pause

to reckon, wonder whatexactly did that Latin-

speaking angel mean?Some kind of son,

work to be done. Will

she contract like every

other mother, or bebereft even of pain?


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48Petrichor Review

Mrs. BradyMichelle Ravit

Loosely drawnprojected sketchora |stop| faunaan ear

a knucklea breast

a

uidly upturned handconducting wildly[fabled, tone-deaf, steady]But left unnished

diminisheddiscordant

feather apping stillmid-air

[pencil doesnt need to be erased in order to fade]

cancel your plans butturn off the light.


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Rustication Kim Marra


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50Petrichor Review

The OvertureDamien Roos

He nished the piece and stepped away from the piano,

backpedaling, watching it as one watches a lion in thewild. He wasnt sure what had happened, what his hands haddone or his ears had heard, but when he escaped that room

with the dark blue curtains and crimson walls he felt relievedand vowed never to return.

The following morning he returned and played the song

again, and again he did not trust his mind as capable, did nottrust his hands as worthy, and thought his ears might meltfrom the gorgeousness of the sound. This time he wobbledas he stepped from the room, drunken from the melody andonly a little sure the piano wouldnt follow him to the door,spring forth, and tear his throat out.

He tried to think of other things. But the piano stalked thehalls of his thoughts as he shufed down the stairs. The boyfelt good and depraved and unworthy. A yellow sedan rolled

by, a bell tolled in the distance, and the sky hung low andgray above the chilly air. A policeman held his hand out atthe crosswalk, even though the street was bare, and the boy

waited, wondering if he should tell someone about the song.Yes, he should. He should tell anyone who might listen. Hishands trembled as he crossed, and as he drew near he sawhow the policemans chest expanded, blue tufts of linenmoving out. He decided hed better not. Hed tell no one andnever step foot inside that room again.

A shop on the next corner sold warm bowls of meringue.They were good and fairly cheap, better than the boiledchicken in the stinking shop hed just passed. He walked upto the shopframed in bold green stripespassed throughthe door, sat in a booth, ordered the meringue, and waited.

When it arrived he took two bites, felt much better, and


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turned to a man sitting on a nearby stool.

I believe its the best song ever written.

Someone in the corner overheard. They dropped theirspoon and it clanged in the bowl. The entire shop waited forsomething more. The boy had nothing more. He paid his billand left. A young woman stood on the corner and grinneddown at him. She held her hand out, but the boy refused totake it. He did not know the woman, nor her hand.

Please do, said the woman. Ive followed you sinceyesterday. I heard your music through the window.

The boy took her hand and his own ceased to tremble. Hetook the other hand and felt her warmth and the weight of

both her arms.

Its the middle of spring, she said. And yet such a chill.

She pulled him into her bosom. Her scent made him feelgood. When she let go he found his heart yearning to inhaleeach inch of her esh.

Tell me youll play that piece for me, she said. When thebell chimes the hour.

I will, said the boy.

The young woman left and the boy felt foolish. He regrettedhis promise, but now had no choice. He kicked along thesidewalk, watching his feet. He sat on a bench and studiedthe design painted on a door across the street, two red lines

with a blue line in between. The boy became so anxioushe thought he might scream. He tried to recall the young

womans scent, but couldnt. If he could, he would not beafraid.


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52Petrichor Review

The bell tolled. The boy stood from the bench, walked pastthe shop with the meringue and through the intersection

where the policeman stood expanding and retracting witheach ample breath. The building with the crimson room

stood large and round through the haze. Hed sworn hednever enter it again. As he headed toward it, he realized hedforgotten the song. He remembered the notes but had noinkling of their order. It was the greatest song his ears hadever heard, and that he was sure of, but only that. Why hadhe decided to play it for another? He felt wretched and fulland distressed. The building grew larger as he approached,

and through its windows he saw many faces peering out.

As he mounted the steps, the boy thought of his very rstlesson. He heard the metronomes steady tick and felt hisown heart match it as he reached for the door handle. Heheard his instructor telling him to sit up straight again andagain and felt the coolness of each key as his small ngers

fumbled amongst them. The boy hated himself for everhaving learned to play.

He pulled the door open. The room was lled with people,and they all watched him enter. The boy could just seethe tops of the crimson walls over the tangle of heads andshoulders. Everyone there was an adult and they shufedaside, clearing a path to the piano. He wondered how longtheyd been waiting. They watched him with tired eyes.

A group of people to his left began to murmur, and amongsttheir rising chatter the boy heard a voice he recognized.

Im just not sure he wrote the song himself, he heard theyoung woman say.

The boy felt a tremendous ache, a vacancy inside him likehunger. He stopped walking and stared into the thickcrowd of shoulders and heads, searching for her face. The


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boy couldnt remember what it looked like, but he knewhed recognize it if he saw it. He wished for her to come upthrough the crowd and be with him.

A man coughed into his st. They were waiting. The boycontinued deeper into the forest of bodies. The piano satnestled within, and light shimmered off its glossy nish. Allaround the boy stood the waiting people, silent now, quietenough to not be there. He smelled them as he passed. The

women smelled like fruit and rain. The men smelled likesmoke and dust. They were all adults and the boy caught a

brief glance at some of their faces. He didnt know a singleone.

When he reached the piano, the boy sat down on the bench.He looked up at the waiting people and felt buried withinthem. He hoped the young woman was among the manyfaces.

The keys felt warm. He began to play. The crowd stirred anda light chatter rose. The people looked at one another andone man shrugged.

This isnt what he played before, the boy heard the youngwoman say.

She was among them, and the boy felt glad and then foolish.It occurred to him that he was stark naked and fear spiked

within his chest. He took his hands off the keys and glanceddown to nd he was fully clothed, and the boy was so relieved

by this he thought hed melt.

The chattering grew and his face reddened. He wished hednever learned to play a single note.

Its a different song altogether! the young woman holleredhoarsely from somewhere in the crowd.


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54Petrichor Review

Shut up, you stupid bitch! the boy shouted.

He couldnt believe hed said it. The crowd of people gaspedand one man raised an eyebrow. The boy reached up and

patted his lips as one pats a cooling stove. They felt likerubber, unfamiliar.

Are you in here? he hollered up at the room.

No reply from the young woman.

You took me from my lunch, said an old lady nearby. Ithink Ill get back to it now.

She started toward the door and the crowd allowed herclearance. The people glanced at one another and talkedamongst themselves, but the boy did not hear the young

womans voice in the mix. Shed gone, of course. Of course!

Shed heard his foul mouth and then left him forever.And now the others were leaving, shaking their heads andshrugging at one another as they ambled toward the door.

That was a song of my youth! the boy shouted. Im sorry.

They didnt care. Only one woman looked over as he spokeand her skin was like a spider web stretched across her skull.The crowd thinned and all the while the boy peered into it insearch of the young woman, though he knew shed gone. Hegrew frantic as he watched them leave, certain hed vanish

when all of them had gone through the door.

Come back! he shouted. Ill remember if you give me onemore minute. Please!

The people continued through the door. Few remained nowand none looked back.


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Youre all a bunch of rotting cunts! the boy shouted.

As the last few moved through the door, the air seemed tomove out with them, tugging at the crimson walls exing

inward from the pressure. The open door gurgled like a drainsucking down the last bit of water until they shut it. Theroom was silent.

The boy remained, but wished he didnt. Hed never feltso alone. His skin felt stupid and he hated wearing it. Hewanted to undress, to tear his clothes from his esh, but then

was terried at the idea of being naked.

The piano sat before him like a shiny, sleeping bull. The boygripped his forearm tight with his opposite hand. He dug hisnails into his skin, then slowly ran them down as small beadsof blood pricked up from the scratches. The boy was lonelyand very, very hungry. He threw both hands upon the keys

and began to play. The forgotten melody ran out of themand lled the gently warbled walls, swirling upward anddispersing back down upon the boys head in a ne mist.

When it was done he stood up from the bench and quicklystepped away. He hurried for the door and pulled it open.Nights coolness surprised the boy, as hed not known it wasso late. The moon hung large and yellow overhead, showingclearly all the things beneath it. The boy turned toward thebuildings edge and saw the hedges full of owers near thepartially opened window, their large blue bells the size ofsts craning toward the crack the sound had poured through.


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56Petrichor Review

It Was a Nice DayMike Jurkovic

You never walk New Yorkthe same way twiceand thats redemptive.Reluctant servants stumble freely,siphoning meat and whiskey.

I once thought your club was cool,but its a clan of criminal loverswhose teeth dont match.Whose peevish complaintsannoy me. Whose game showsleave meisolated.

I only blew up the buildingbecause I could. It was a nice day,fat tourists choking on cheap gasoline.

I only blew up the buildingbecause my back was upagainst the walland I needed recreation.Because I wanted to,had to. The line between gang

and governmentgone.


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Peter NicholsonFistsSirenna Blas

O

n TV, we saw the Great Lakes congeal like oil. Michigan

Citys coal-red plant was a white tower amidst blackclouds. John laughed, calling it our last beacon of hope. Butwhen hed go to work at the taco joint on Route 30, hed nevernotice the sulfur in the air. Or the dust that settled on his jerseyshirt. When hed come home, hed complain about akes ofmeat in his hair and the degreaser on his hands, which smelledsweet, like corn syrup.


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58Petrichor Review

He came home one day and said, I just saw this chick shoton30. Businesses are all closing down, so I think Im gonna be outof a job soon.

We stay now in my cousins house in the mountains. She edNorth and told us where the keys were hidden. All she leftbehind were dishes in the cupboards, sheets in the dresser,brown rice in a porcelain canister. The bed is made, but Johnand I sleep on the couch like children, holding each other so

we wont roll off the edge. When we arrived, I reinforced everywindow and door, a hammer in my hand, nails in my teeth.

John laughed again here. We made it in time to get screwed onboth ends. This war from the East. Fucking wildres coming infrom the West.

Its been a month. And Johns playing video games, wearingsocks, a pair of boxers. Im standing on the wooden porch thatoverlooks Ute Pass where a giant white cloud is growing. Its

mushroom shape ts perfectly in the edges of the mountains.The sky is brown. Radio says its only a hailstorm, no alarm,might extinguish the res that have spread from Montana. Iveleft the screen door open so hell maybe smell the sulfur, nallytaste the dust in his teeth.

The radio says the hail is as big as a mans st.

I yell for John because black smoke is rising above the trees.I cant tell which noises come from the ice pellets hittingroofs, which come from tanks and troops that have followed.But theres a wall, a kitchen, a television set between us, so Iknow John cant hear me over the zombies hes ghting, thectionalized 1940s freedom hes ghting for. I am alone withthe brown sky undulating with white cumulonimbi. The rattling

oorboards and handrail. Pines folding in like used umbrellas.He doesnt smell it. He doesnt realize just how close the edge ofthe porch is to the hail that bounces off the ground in plumes ofsmoke, or the women who have bullets in their breasts.

I go into the kitchen, alone, and break a dish to see how it feelsagainst the rest of the vibrations.


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BlazeBy Phoebe Wilcox

A shaky poster child

for natural catastropherunning, running

with pounding feet and thoughts,through a hearts ownobliterating explosion of stars.Call out sick.Call out sicker than sick, heartsick.

Just call out.Call,I cant make it. I am an inferno.

[Originally published byWildernessHouse Literary Review fall 2012.]

Katie Truisi


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Walking Croton PointMike Jurkovic

On the rocks along the reservoirI found a braravaged by season.

Our nescience, heady,held its sway

and we fuckedmenacingly, like weathertears a town from memory.

We fucked betweennegotiations amidcarnivores, who,

catching our scentzeroed in for the kill.

We fuckedand everyone knew it.I am the one who forgot.


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Chinese Takeout and Casual Smoking(For John Dorsey)

Zach Fishel

The backs offortune cookiesgave nothingmore than how tosaypopcornsauce, the slew

of lucky numbersjust stray script fromhaig chopsticks.

We read them inall their looped regretas they spiraledinto borrowed secrets

like the wheezinglaughter of clouds,oating from our lungslike a eet of MaryCelestes, without anyhope of return.


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62Petrichor Review

The Dark Wood

Richard OBrien

Where the Poet met Virgils shade comes to mind as Isit outside my house, alone. Low gray clouds rest atopleaess trees, caliginous forms like skeletal sentries who guardthe way against the uninitiated. Where is my guide who willappear amidst these stark, sullen trees of night and lead me

through the underworld? The answer to my silent questionrests in the quiet emptiness all around me. The summer willerase the tenebrous wood, replacing bare branches with leafygreen; the harsh winter rains will move on, and I will sit outsideat night, content to know that no ghostly guide ever appeared

between the gaunt trees to dupe me into a journey beyondmy world. By now, the sinners are no longer recognizable

and Hell so compartmentalized that it would hardly resemblethe place the Poet described in his Inferno; even the fallenangels charged with tormenting lowly sinners have lost theirplacethe economic viability of cheap labor means their work

being farmed out to contractors, lesser miscreants lackingoriginality with no clear agenda beyond the torment. Suchchange is inevitable; as it is on Earth, so it stands above and

below. The dismal trees out here tempt me, but it is better thatI stay rather than take one step off my porch for fear of notrecognizing Virgil even if he hit me with a shovel and draggedme half-conscious, bloodied, all the way down to the 9 th level

where Ptolomeca looks more like a run-down theme park ora dull shopping mall, complete with homogenized shops andmuzak that plays forever, where there is never enough parkingand everyone wants to be waited on rst.


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Ember Days and Remembrances

Caroline Misner

A roundabout in the park,trying to rekindle a kind of ironic nostalgia,stands among the Victorian houses

with eaves cut like gingerbread;stripped of weather vanes they now support

the grey elephantine ears of satellitedishespoised skywardcapturing a rash of media.

Wandering the streets of common angels,beneath the leaves rst blushthat heralds summers end, I write

lectures in the sand along a pathof purple stones with awkward handsand cold lisps catching in mythroat. A kiss mollies the groundlingsand whispers catch the breath of remembrance

in an unattended cemeterywhere old bones decay, drylike stringless laundry, wrinkledand forgotten, save a few plastic bouquetsfaded with time. Soon old soldiers

will lug a wreath of red rosesto the foot of the cenotaph.

Veterans in moss berets and brass lapels,

who still believe Amazing Grace playedon bagpipes can resurrectthese human sacrices.The sighing of the dog as she sleeps,


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64Petrichor Review

the white sky rubbed of its plushare the small deeds that make up miracles.Birds rise, startled at the pealof some distant church bellnecessary

in these old suburbs.A black squirrel twitches his tailalong the limb of a gnarled oak,his mouth-sac stuffed with bounty,scattering the brown leavesthat clog the gutters; they are

the dry skin of these ember days.

Peter Nicholson


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Thomas Edisons Blue BirdKate LaDew

Thomas Edison wanted people to live in concrete houses with concrete

furniture (including pianos) and decided to get the ball rolling himself,along with pocket-watch magnate Charles Ingersoll. 12 houses were

constructed. No one much liked them.

Thomas Edison looked up at the scaffolding, air heavywith ill-spent time. The whole world was gray and itmade Edisons head hurt. He was thankful, as he was every

day, for his damaged ears. The boxing they took in his twelfthyear of life allowed only the deepest of sounds to invade hisbrain now. It had enough in it already, Edison thought. Hiseyes jumped to the house before him, boomeranging fromthe roof, to the windows, to the front door and back again. It

was a glorious sight, and no one knew it but him.

It had been such a wonderful idea. A way to ease his mindof the guilt he always felt when he passed those grimy littletenement buildings, trash coating the streets like dirty snow,

washing crisscrossing as if vulgar spiders were setting uptraps. Edison was going to change all that, revolutionizemodern-housing with affordable, re-proof, insect-proof anddirt-proof dwellings. A single pour concrete house any color

one could desire, a gift to the world. But Edison had beenrepaid with silence upon silence. He only wanted something

beautiful. Now he had twelve beautiful things, and not a soulliving in them. He looked down at the ground and sighed.

A tiny blue bird alighted on the tree branch over his headand Edison didnt realize. It had been fty-two years since

hed heard a bird sing. The light shifted, making shadowsin the dirt, one hopping back and forth, back and forth. Heturned his eyes up, blinking at the bird. He saw its deep,pure color and imagined what blue sounded like. Was it aute, whistling in the air like school children playing? Or amelancholy violin, a trembling, drawn out note, some dark


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66Petrichor Review

sh moving through water? Edison allowed himself thesemusings when he was outdoors. Something had to makeup for the chaotic silence, that utter of sound always inhis ears, amounting to nothing. The bird looked back at the

man, head tilted. The mans head tilted. He smiled. Schoolchildren playing. He was sure of it.I am sorry about all this, Tom. I didnt know.Edison turned towards the blur of words. Sorry?

Yes, truly.Edison shook his head at Charles Ingersoll. I meant I didntcatch He shook his head again. Youre sorry?Ingersoll moved closer, chin nearly touching Edisons ear. It

was such a beautiful idea. I thought the world would believe

it, too.Edison nodded, looking up. Where did the bird go?Ingersoll held his hand against the pale glow of the sky. Aparticular one, Thomas?Oh, yes. Not just any bird would do.They watched the clouds. Ingersoll clapped Edison on theshoulder. Might as well go inside, old man. Its all set up.The piano as well?Of course. I could play somethingwell, he laughed,embarrassed. Well take a look around.The cool, concrete walls of the parlor were a rich burgundy,spaces for pictures built in, and dark, empty rectangles


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awaiting replaces. Ingersoll left him for the upstairs andEdison slowly moved his feet toward the piano.He sat on the cool, smooth bench, staring down at the keys.

Raising a blue veined hand, he picked out that jumble ofletters, the tune his mother always played, the one he neverknew hed miss. Had he any inkling, those notes would have

been imprinted on his brain before any formula or equation.His brain located the memory and set the song ringing in hisears, but Edison couldnt be sure what he remembered wasever what he had really heard. Some things just got lost.

He pressed the keys down again, but felt no familiar

vibration, the one he waited for as a child, sitting cross-legged on the oor, his beautiful mothers beautiful ngerssinging and smiling at him. The music was trapped up insidethe concrete, Edison knew. The cold, impersonal rock thatnever breathed. Edisons mouth set in a line and he collided

his foot with the base of the piano, once, twice, relishing theshock of pain coursing through his legs, his chest, his heart.To be fair, a wooden piano would have stubbed your toeas well. Ingersoll crossed his arms, head suddenly next toEdisons. To be fair.That is fair, Edison nodded, holding his foot in the palm ofhis hand. His elbow brushed a key and, leaning forward, heput his dead ear against the concrete. His mother was always

blue in his mind, a trembling, dark note moving throughwater. It is fair indeed, Charles. Edison depressed the keyagain, fallible memories ooding through him and his silent

brain, his silent world. So little is.


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Ninety + Three Gilmore Tamny


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The Sunlight: A MillionRichard OBrien

Angels shimmered on the creeks surface and along the

bank there was a tree with a hole in its trunk, and I toldyou a tale about people who came from another world, littlepeople like elves that entered our world and captured straycats for the war effort back home. And why, you asked, didthe elves need cats, and I told you that tabby cats were used aswar horses, given their speed and natural camouage, whiletomcats served as pack animals to haul heavy loads which

proved a troublesome affair given the inherent feline distastefor the rigors of being anothers beast of burden. Many yearshave passed since that day, and the creek, in the late summerafternoon, still captures light the way it always did. The treestill stands even though the hole near the trunks base is not

visiblethe last time I looked, a patch of weeds obscured thedoorway between the worlds. Perhaps the war of the elves is

over, and this news I would share with you, but if you no longerremember the elves who waged their war then maybe you canrecall a million angels dancing over the creeks surface, and ifthats enough to jar your memory then that would be as gooda start as any.


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70Petrichor Review

Landscape 1975 Ira Joel Haber

Thriving Modernist MovementsAlex Schmidt

The city goes BOOM BOM as it climbs the mountain.

The buildings quiver more and moreas they grow a little taller each year.

The Smoyte family doesnt move at allfor thirty days, the founders of a new method to being still:

move every thirty days: spina record, shake a leg,

praise god: Percy Sledge,an abstract voice


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from an abstract age.THINKING in white block letters

looks over the valley from the opposing summit.

It makes murky the little marigolds

clumped at its base.Black on orange on white.

There was a time when thinking was the only verb.But now oranging

is to have a head lled with childhood enigmas and cryusually by the red river.

And at one point birds and children became one in the samemovement,

the same as thinking, which is now greening.

Father Smoyte moves. Its only been twenty-eight daysbut theres an itch on his leg,

in his head, and now a quickwince at the darkening patch of bluejays in the valley.


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72Petrichor Review

Were Ink Made of CatsDevon Miller-Duggan

I.

The punctuation wont learn.

Every word you write scratches its way into your paper, leavesshreds

confetti to confuse the masses.

Every is dot skitters like a laser pointer in a toddlers hand.

All the words chase itthen collapse in heaps and snooze.

The capitals whisker out, insisting they know the words tocome

Pages written on can never be fullled or satisedor stuffed enough with creamy words or meaty words,

or quivering-prey words.

Some words, the slimy ones, escape and fetch up underneathbare human feet or on a pillowwhere youd meant to lay your sleeping head.

Nothing you meant to write stays where you meant it to or

nuzzles the proper hand.

II.The furnitures been clawed again.The words are at your throat againand wont let go.Somethings rabid here.

III.All the cats across the world assume the Buddha-pose,wrap tales around their bodies,let whiskers droop to inattention,twitch their ears thrice,and make the human world stop reading.


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petrichor review issue #4

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