Hugh Behm-Steinberg
1.
In my father’s will, the only thing I get is his parachute. But I’ve always loved that parachute; I’d be in school and miserable because I left my homework at home, or I’d be surrounded by bullies armed with rocks, or my car would run out of gas and there’d be a monsoon coming – any time at my lowest of moments I’d see a white speck on the horizon and I knew my father was dropping down to see me; if I could just get him untangled from the powerlines in time, I’d be ok.
2.
In my father’s will, my brother gets the airplane; he’s always going places. “Hey brother,” he radios me, “this is what everything looks like from above: you’re going to work, you’re coming home, you’re waiting for the bus to come home, you’re so sad, you’re looking up—that’s me waving to you.”
I wave back to him.
“I’ll trade you my airplane for your parachute,” he says.
3.
I bring my parachute with me everywhere, carefully folded and strapped to my back: it weighs about as much as a toddler. People think I’m just lugging around a weird-shaped backpack, except for the one or two who know better. Some people ask me if there’s a flight I have to catch; I laugh with them. Everyone feels it, everyone jokes about it, but I see more people each day walking around with their parachutes on. Any moment, any moment now, the ground will give way.
4.
I jump out of my brother’s airplane, I pull the ripcord, and out tumbles an anvil. “Ha ha ha ha,” says the note taped to it. “Dad always loved me best.” But the joke is on him; the world is coming to an end. I’m going to fall forever, but he will have nowhere to land.
5.
Or I’m not so dumb as my brother thinks I am, that I can’t tell the difference between iron and silk. Whereas long ago, I replaced my brother’s airplane with a cardboard box shaped like an airplane. I think he still thinks he’s going somewhere. He’s laughing, I’m laughing, it’s all make-believe.
“Oh no,” I cry out. “I’m falling falling falling and someone’s just handed me an anvil.”
“You love danger more than your brother,” he says. “I hope Dad in heaven thinks you’re happy,” he says. “Instead of pretending to be happy.”
He pulls up the stick to make his cardboard airplane climb, like that will get him closer to heaven, and that Dad will pay attention to him this time.
6.
I think a lot about those superheroes who walk around with their costumes on under their clothes. At any given moment, it’s like a parachute: bam, they’re different people, floating above what they have to fix or save. Of course, I’m not a superhero; I don’t want to be one either. In a dream, I take my father’s parachute and hand it to my wife. I tie my leg to hers, just in case. When I awaken, we’re over the city, circling down like a falcon. “Someone’s in trouble,” you say.
7.
I’m on my brother’s plane. “If you don’t give me your parachute,” he says, “I’m going to crash into that town.”
“You’re a monster,” I tell him.
“You’re the monster,” he says. “You’d let all those people down there die because of your selfish love of a certain parachute.”
We’re getting closer. I can see the playground where we used to play, the schools we both despised, and our parents’ house.
8.
But I’m the hero: I give him the parachute. I pull the plane up, and out he jumps. On the way out, he laughs, like he knows all the kids will be happy seeing him instead of me, that he’ll have so many new friends who will think he’s the best brother ever. Like it matters in the playground which person is falling from the sky.
9.
I come home. My wife says, “Where’s your parachute?” I start to tell her what happened with my brother; she cuts me off. “We’re going to your brother’s, right now.” So back into the plane we go, the town looks so beautiful below us, we circle three or four times just to make sure it’s the right town.
10.
When we get to my brother’s house, we have to land on the street. The front door’s wide open, so is the back. He’s in the backyard, between the swing set and the barbecue and the swimming pool, but there are no kids anywhere to be seen, no wife either, just him, and he’s weeping inconsolably, the parachute wrapped around his body like some sort of super blanket.
“Someone’s in trouble,” I tell my wife.
“Do you want your parachute or not?” she says. “A new one will set you back thousands of dollars.”
“And it would never be the same,” I say, clenching my fists.
My brother wails and wails; he tries to straighten himself when he sees us and then starts crying even harder.
“Come on,” I tell him, handing him the keys. “Let’s go up again in your airplane.”
“And this time,” I tell him, “I’ll tell you stories I just made up about Dad, how much he loved you, and even though you never got what you wanted, you’ll be happy when you push me out.”
Victoria Hood
I am terrified to be woken by your death. I feel that I will know in the moment, will feel it, but will forget, write it off, get your voicemail, and continue my day. I fear it won’t be until all the Siblings get together in one of our group chats to ask who spoke to you last that we will all find out together that we no longer have any parents.
I used to fear seeing your girlfriend's name pop up on my phone. I knew it would be the only reason she called; after she left the family in disgrace, she would only come back to spread the bad news. But now, you’re long distance. But now, you live alone. But now, your studio apartment, renovated from an old motel room, will sit in silence as it mourns your body alone.
I wonder if it will be Walmart itself that calls. Due to the annoyance of you missing work, due to the produce that never got circulated, due to the lack of someone leaving their back and knees on the floor, they will call to ask where you are. I will only say, I thought you knew. I know Randall can’t call; he moved away. I know Sean is in New Jersey, wishing you would work for him again, but he won’t call. I know the mountains don’t get the cell phone reception they need.
Who is your emergency contact, anyway, and why is it still your dead wife? When was the last time she called? This time last year, I found your eyes mourning her as a full-time job, trying to find her in the ceiling tiles of the stores you walked into. If you put together the corner of the tiles, you can see her smiling, see her frowning, see her thinking about the conversation she had. The hospital keeps calling her and calling her, but they have never received the fax of her death certificate.
Who is the runner-up? Who in your state is ready to bend to lift you? Who in your state has been thinking about your dyslexia? Who in your state is ready for the marathon of words you always keep going? When will you come home?
On the weekends, I plan trips out to see you—just in case. I think about how I would cancel my classes, how I’d be too sad to even look for a sub, how I’d be nothing but a sister—no longer a daughter, belonging to no one, made out of air with my other air siblings. On the weekends, I think about what it means to be a daughter: birth, teeth, running around. On the weekends, I think about what it means to be your daughter: crawling, spitting, smashing ribs.
I cannot conceive of what it means to be fatherless. To wake up in the morning thinking about the things I want to tell you, and find nothing looking back at me but the empty spot where my parents once lived. On top of the mountains, I can see you perched, looking at the ceiling of the sky for Mom. Stop looking up, stop looking up, dad, I’m serious, stop looking up.
Look back at the paperwork you need to fill out and list all three of your children back to back like one long name as your emergency contact; fill out the numbers for all of our phones and we can set a special ringtone just for the notice of your death; do not separate us as son, daughter, daughter—list us all together as my children and ask the doctors to please follow your wishes.
Take your dead wife off of your paperwork, take your girlfriend off of your paperwork, take Walmart off of your paperwork, take the bark from the trees off of your paperwork, take the staples out of your paperwork, take your made-up middle name off of your paperwork.
Instead, please leave only the parts of you that are real and flesh. Tell them your mother’s maiden name, your father’s mother’s maiden name, the names that came together to add you up into the father you’ve got to be. Instead of the words you wish you could put down, please just write our names.
“Almost All About Your Mother” from On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue
JP Infante
You were seven or eight the first time you questioned your mother’s sanity. Before entering a Human Resources Administration office in Washington Heights, she said, “If they ask, tell them I’m crazy.” To this day you’re not sure if she was joking.
This was back in the day before EBT cards. You looked like siblings, an older sister with her brother, applying for food stamps. The HRA worker was a tall skinny Black woman with glasses. Your mother thought food stamp eligibility required applicants to be crazy. You were torn because you knew—even at that age—that kids were taken away from crazy parents.
While the HRA worker questioned your mother you waited to be asked about her sanity. You thought hard about the question. Thinking about it now as you write this, you question if you ever knew your mother. You remember her sleeping a lot. She played music late into the night causing arguments with neighbors. She complained about bills and yet managed to buy you whatever toys you asked for. Your mother answered the HRA worker’s questions while you waited to be asked, “Is your mother crazy?” You were never asked. Maybe because sanity wasn’t a requirement for food stamps or because the answer was known.
The women in your family: great grandmother, grandmother and mother are mostly silent about their past, saying little to the men in the family: your maternal uncle and you. However, when they’re hurt and angry they remind each other of the pain they’ve caused each other. The women in your family have always been a mystery to the men in your family. These women are known, but only to each other.
During an argument between your mother and grandmother you learned your mother had been placed in a Colombian Presbyterian psych ward at 14. You can’t remember what the argument was about, except that your mother swore she would never forgive her mother for forcing her into a place for crazy people.
You never thought your mother was crazy— not because she’s your mother— but because anytime she claimed to be or acted like it, there was some ulterior motive. One time she played crazy to get a new apartment.
When you were a teenager, your great-grandmother and you went to visit your mother at her apartment in the Bronx. She hated this apartment and had been trying to move because of poor maintenance and neighborhood gang violence. When you got to the building, the neighbors told you your mother was in the hospital after her apartment caught on fire.
At the hospital you were told she was in the psychiatric ward because they suspected her of arson. Your great-grandmother and you were concerned until you saw your mother. She had made friends with the security guards, doctors, and patients in the unit. She introduced you to everyone. The contrast between your mother’s energy and the other patient’s lethargy and slurred speech convinced you she wasn’t crazy.
After some paperwork, your great-grandmother signed her out.
On the way home in the cab she said, “It was a little fire. I’ll get a nicer place.”
You asked, “Why were the people there so slow?”
“The pills,” she said, “I pretended to swallow the ones they gave me.”
Your mother was right. She got her new apartment after the fire.
The summer before you turned 28 you visited your mother at a psych ward in Queens Lebanon Hospital. This time she wasn’t trying to get money from some social program or an apartment or sympathy from the family. She complained that her ex, a big-time drug dealer, had people prank calling and following her. At the time you weren’t sure if she was acting crazy. It didn’t matter. She had typecasted herself. Your mother kept taking on the same role.
The psych ward unit was on a high floor. The visiting room’s window showed a vast landscape of Queens with the sun sinking behind the Manhattan skyline. Your mother smiled, telling you she wanted to stay two more days to calm her nerves. She wasn’t crazy just stressed. As your mother talked a young man walked towards you too. At first you thought he was Dominican like you, but learned he was Egyptian and that he had a crush on your mother. He introduced himself and declared his love for your mother. You all laughed. He said he was only 21 but would treat her right. He was charming and good-looking. Your mother told him you were a writer, so he began telling you an idea he had for a novel. The story would be about mermaids forced to live on land and move around in wheelchairs. He asked if you were religious and you said, “barely Catholic.” He said your mother would have to surrender to Islam if they got married. You all laughed. He recited a verse from the Quran and even though you didn’t understand you appreciated the musicality. You asked him about his family. His mother had died recently after years of battling cancer. He said his father used to be a good man. He said if he married your mother, he would be a lenient stepfather. You all laughed.
You were reassured your mother wasn’t crazy and concluded the young Egyptian was trying to cope with his mother’s death but was close to losing it completely.
As your mother walked you out, she whispered, “What do you think?”
“About what?” you said.
“About marrying the guy? He’s from a good family.”
You looked at your mother unsure if she was joking. You asked, “Are you serious?”
She kissed you and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
On the way home on the 7-train, you realized your mother wanted your blessing and felt like crying. You hadn’t cried in years. Whenever you felt the urge, your mother’s voice played in your head, something she once told you: “When a man cries for me, I lose respect for him.”
That night seeing your reflection on the train window, superimposed over a Queens landscape and New York City skyline under a starless night, reminded you of that time she lost her train of thought. You immediately recognized what she was trying to remember in her eyes and the sight hurt like a kick inside your stomach; it was your name on the tip of your mother’s tongue.
“The Argument I” from Venus Limbs
Jie Venus Cohen
Venus stands naked before a mirror that stretches from pink shag carpet to gold vaulted ceiling. They test the mirror’s validity by attempting to trick their reflection: grasping handfuls of breastflesh and letting them drop, twisting their body to the side, jumping high, squatting low. Their calisthenics cannot prove the mirror unreliable. This body is their own, despite their best attempts.
The Surgeon beckons Venus, friendly in face and gesture, yet: The Insurance Agent looms over shoulder, ever present, ever ready. Venus examines their own body with the care of a mother cow bathing her calf, still drenched in embryonic fluids. Venus stretches skin to impossible lengths and cries while they complete their self-appraisal.
Venus takes unflattering photographs of their lower body to share with The Surgeon and The Insurance Agent. Venus calls upon every medical office to collect data and statistical proof of necessity. The visible anecdotal evidence of their bruised Venus Limbs is not enough and
The Insurance Agent will kill Venus
“In Her Sleep” from Brace
Abigail Michelini
She’s going to die
in her sleep, of her sleep,
of drinking too deeply,
reaching down further
and further for the good rest,
tongue dipping
for the dregs
that float just above
the bottom of the glass.
Naps linger
without intent,
mind relieved of its constant companions:
worry and sorrow, supplanted by
the blank peace of newborns,
those quick dips
in and out of consciousness;
each time a release
of something heavy and unknowable
propels a slow sink towards that watery underbelly,
ready and soothing as a lullaby
in its irrepressible
and finally requited way.
“THE SKY IS A GUN THAT SHOOTS OUT STARS”
from Garbage City Poems
Rayni K. Wekluk
I saw the meteors! Cruising back
from bumfuck Iowa, I’m deprived
of my senses in the inner and outer world
going 100mph down the interstate
at midnight without a seatbelt on.
My car hiccups.
It’s 23 years old and the gas cap door
won’t open no matter how many pens
I break trying to pry it.
If I crashed, I’d die for sure
and the road doesn’t need another white cross beside it.
I think of not wanting to add to the tragedy
Shakespeare never got to write about reckless driving.
The stars, clouds, and sky
agree that he wrote plenty about them.