006. THE ANT QUEEN.
god complexes, harmony, and oblivion.
Welcome to ISSUE 006: THE ANT QUEEN 🐜
There’s something I hadn’t wanted to forget to say about this issue…. Yet my memory fails me. Perhaps, I will find, in ruminating over the poetry and prose collected hereafter, some mnemonic power. Had I wanted to discuss lotus-eating…? or (not) eating the rich (Cydney Hayes); or eating an ant (Taylor Haynes); or even eating Rajma-rice and peanuts (Vasundhara Singh)? or even time eating away at me/us/things (Asheley Nova Navarro; Ellery Pridgen; Fayth Simmons; Kunzes Goba; Livia Meneghin)… or lotus-eating (Dorian Winter)? Who can remember!
In any case, eat up; enjoy!
| co-editor
Saltburn’s critics don’t understand the Striving Class by Cydney Hayes [Non-Fiction; Culture]
summers; dry by noon; and she is afraid again by Livia Meneghin [Poetry]
see/her by Kunzes Goba [Poetry]
Departmental by Taylor Haynes [Fiction]
fighting or sex and barna by Ellery Pridgen [Poetry]
Itadakimasu by Dorian Winter [Poetry]
Village Boys Don’t Say No by Vasundhara Singh [Fiction]
Here by Fayth Simmons [Poetry]
Junkyard Honda by Asheley Nova Navarro [Poetry]
Saltburn’s critics don’t understand the Striving Class by Cydney Hayes | Substack
Warning: spoilers ahead.
When I first read the New York Times review of Saltburn, I was sure the critic must have just been dumped. Or stiffed by his landlord. Or chewed out by his editor. Something must have put Wesley Morris in such a terrible mood to make him not just pan Emerald Fennell’s second film but to tear it to absolute shreds, calling it an embarrassment in the first sentence, and “too desperate, too confused, too pleased” with itself, “tedious,” and “crude” in the sentences thereafter. His fists are clenched! He’s steaming from the ears! It’s all aesthetic trickery! he seethes, With zero substance or profundity! I read it and couldn’t stop laughing: Morris seemed positively, personally enraged by Saltburn.
Then again, Morris and the NYT are in good company: Vulture, The Guardian, RogerEbert.com, and most other respected entertainment sites have published reviews in the same vein. Most of the reviews diagnose the film as a fun romp in terms of vibes but ultimately a missed swing at an “eat the rich” story. Some reviews even go as far as to say that it was doomed from the start, since Emerald Fennell herself is posh: Never could an Oxford graduate, daughter of a celebrity jewelry designer, woman named after a precious gem, incite true class consciousness.
I disagree—clearly, the critics at large are not part of the Striving Class.
Being on the fringes of extreme wealth does things to a person. To find oneself in that ring of socioeconomic hell is to find oneself in a lush bed of social advantages, financial stability, and creature comforts—but that bed is up against an impenetrable gate. It’s all too easy to lay awake at night and listen to the sounds from the other side: The laughing (at you), the partying (without you), the clinkings of vintage glass and fine china, the hands being shaken, the deals being made, the space and ease and dignity and power. The more you listen in, the more obsessed you become. You must be in love with them. No, they must think they’re so much better than you—surely you hate them! But you’re so close…there must be a way in…you have to get in…you’d kill to get in… Ahem. Metaphorically, of course.
This is the way of the Striving Class, which is not so much a tax bracket as it is a psycho-economic state composed of people with a certain character, a sinister combination of immense privilege and a nagging, undying sense of wealth insecurity. And this, ultimately, is the way of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), Saltburn’s ugly-sexy anti-hero.
For most of the film, both the audience and the noble Catton family believe that Oliver is an impoverished underdog, who, against all odds, pulled himself out of an abusive home and into a genteel life via the enlightened network of Oxford University. Felix (Jacob Elordi) hears his story and calls Oliver an “inspiration.” He’s a tragic hero, and that makes him beautiful, a quality which we learn is highly important to the Catton family, particularly to the matriarch Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), who ultimately plays the key role in Oliver’s long game.
On the other hand, what’s decidedly not beautiful is Oliver’s true backstory: He’s a rich(ish) kid from the suburbs with married parents and, perhaps, a middling college fund. The pivotal scene when Felix takes Oliver to reconcile with his supposedly drug-addicted mother only to discover the truth paints a perfect picture of Striving Class-ultrarich relations: On the way into the Quick family home—which by any non-Catton measures is large, clean, and welcoming—Felix fingers a little tin “Gone Fishin’” sign hanging by the door and scoffs. There’s money here, but no taste. What a sweet little life, Felix seems to say. A pat on the head. Good dog.
I gasped when I watched Felix and Oliver pull into the Quick’s driveway. Oliver was a Striver, and I was delighted. I can’t recall ever seeing such a depiction of the Striving Class on screen, so exaggerated and yet so accurate. Wesley Morris laments that, despite Keoghan’s admirable efforts to Frankenstein together a believable character from “Norman Bates, Tom Ripley, and Patrick Bateman,” he doesn’t get there, because “there is no ‘there’.” But certainly there is: of course Strivers aren’t going around murdering entire families to inherit their wealth, but this is a very real fantasy (more so inheritance, less so murder), thought all the way through to the logical, ugly end. If you’ve ever gone from a medium-rich public high school to a dumb-wealthy private university, perhaps you’d understand: in some contexts, you’re offensively posh, uptight, and sheltered, but the more you strive the more you find yourself in spaces where you are uncouth, underdressed, gummy smiled and worm lipped, inelegant, white trash. You might attend the same schools as the elite class, eat at the same restaurants, interview for the same jobs, but you never quite get it like they do. Being a perpetual insider-outsider gives you a gnawing, paranoid chip on your shoulder, and gone unexamined, turns you into an insufferable little tool.
So Saltburn examines. This film exists neither to critique the upper class nor to awaken middle class/working class solidarity; it exists to hold a mirror up to the Strivers still unaware of the implications of their striving, and ask, “Anyone look familiar?” This, indeed, is an invitation to class consciousness.
It seems obvious to me that Saltburn was never intended to be an eat the rich story: Not once are we made to consider, how did the Cattons achieve this level of wealth? or, what is to be done about the inherent violence of nobility? or any similar political inquiry. Saltburn is not Parasite, and for what it’s worth it’s not The Talented Mr. Ripley or Brideshead Revisited either. It’s more like the class anti-awareness of The Bling Ring meets the twisty pizazz of The Usual Suspects, plus a sprinkle from the psyches of Dan Humphrey, Jay Gatsby, Claire from the The Clique series, and (you’ll hate this but it’s true) Lady Bird McPherson.
I’m writing this all as a viewer with an American perspective, where in extreme Zuckerbergian cases, it actually is possible to advance through to the socioeconomic elite. But Saltburn comes from a British perspective, where class is actually caste, and you don’t make wealth, you inherit it. This is the one big political comment in Saltburn, and it’s in the name: The path to real, empirical wealth is through land. We can consider the more volatile ups and downs of American Strivers in films like The Wolf of Wall Street or, I don’t know, most movies about the stock market, but real estate is the only real estate. Inherit a castle, and nothing can take that away from you. Murder a family, dance around naked like a little freak, fuck the haters, it doesn’t matter. You have a domain. You’re an actual king. (Of course, it is also true in the majority of American cases that the wealthy inherit their advantages—usually, for what it’s worth, via land.)
Whether or not the critics like what she has to say, Fennell tells stories that can only be told from someone with her background. In fact, I see Fennell’s first film, Promising Young Woman, as a similar class struggle with different politics: Promising Young Woman is the story of a woman (Carey Mulligan) born somewhere between the American upper-middle and upper classes, who is awake to the grotesque abuse of privilege that happens in that space and so rejects it. Saltburn is Woman’s coin flipped: the story of a man who sees the abuse of privilege and wants it for himself to a deadly degree. Perhaps it goes without saying, but gender, I think, is relevant here.
So if you want the inheritable-only kind of wealth, what do you do? Well, you either 1) are born into a noble family (lucky you!), or 2) legally join that family, and, um, wait for them to die. So Oliver takes a #2 on the Catton family, and what a thrill it is to watch it play out. There are certainly gripes I have with the movie (little plot holes, mostly) but understanding Oliver’s motivations, or the story Fennell was trying to tell, is not one of them. And yes, it’s deplorable! It’s unrealistic and, as Wesley Morris calls it, embarrassing to consider that anyone who already has everything might dream of even more. But what is art if not a way to explore human ugliness? If, like the lovely Elspeth, you have a complete and utter horror of it, you are free to turn away.
And as for the epilogic revelations—when we see that Oliver was the one that gave Felix’s bike a flat, that he had a wallet full of cash all along, that he was typing literal nonsense as he waited in the café to “bump into” Elspeth— which many critics have called out as unnecessary, I’ll counter with this: It’s a joke! Learn to laugh! Also, Oliver is our narrator, and a psycho like Oliver would 1000% want you to know exactly how smart he’s always been all along—he just can’t help himself, and that is deeply, hilariously troubling. Feel joy, critics, I bet you’ll like it!
In the best way, Saltburn was always unserious. To be born into a bed of nothing but love and opportunity and to still say, “Fuck you, Mom, fuck you and this one horse town!” is so comical and so real. Maybe Saltburn simply blows a Striving Class dog-whistle that the critics who aren’t wracked with that particular brand of anxiety just can’t hear. Or, I can’t help but wonder, maybe Wesley Morris—who himself boarded at a posh private prep school, who graduated from Yale, who is the leading film critic for the world’s most elite publication, and who has won two Pulitzer Prizes—just doesn’t find any of this striving business funny at all.
summers by Livia Meneghin | Website | Instagram
she opens
both the back & front doors
praying for some airflow
or maybe even a fly
to squeeze through the screen
and preoccupy her father
instead of checkers
on the computer
the house used to be full
of sound—big band
& swing, scales
from the piano, the Brooklyn
Dodgers on the radio
all hushed by hearing
loss & the passage
of time she stays but
she doesn’t want him to stay
on the computer
all day—needing her
to reset a password
recover a deleted file
she would play checkers
with him but he never asks
dry by noon by Livia Meneghin
at first light,
coyotes try
their damp pads
across the trail
on faint sunrays
yawning in a new
day. yesterday’s
snow-turned-to-
rain has left
the soil squelchy
under the feet
of early morning
joggers traverse
the park. the parking
lot is nearly
empty, save
a pair of gray
squirrels scattering
from patch of shade
to patch of shade,
oblivious to
the great blue
heron stalking
the riverbank,
rising and
sending ripples
that become false
in moments, lost
to the midday
sun. sun-baked
tracks in once-
muddy grass
lie as sole
remainders
of what was
she is afraid again by Livia Meneghin
in the corner of her living
room, a red balloon,
deflated & wrinkled,
takes after a heart. a sprig
of the weeping
fig falls to the floor,
& a cat begins to play
knowing the leaves
are shriveled
& dead. even though
it’s spring, alone
her body is not enough
to keep the bed warm.
hyssop & chamomile
seeds, full already
of sweet stories, lie
in unopened packets,
abandoned on the table.
the shock of it all
—knowing so many
react to stress by
bursting or shedding
or turning to ash—
hold her back
from ever fingering
them into soil.
see/her by Kunzes Goba | Instagram
Alzheimer's runs in the family but so does foresight.
My uncle watches me pull the Magician
after Death,
"Your grandmother played with cards
as well" and I remember,
watching her stare at
the 7 of spades
after the 2 of hearts,
trying to unpeel secrets not
ripe for knowing.
I remember her calling me by
my mother's name
her mother's name.
And I wonder if when she pulled
the Jack of Spades,
she saw me looking back at her
through the High Priestess,
and I wonder if one day I too
will see my own mother in
someone else's face.
*Please note, the emailed version of this issue misspelled the title of this poem. It has now been updated.
Departmental by Taylor Haynes | Instagram
A heat wave settled over Los Angeles like a weighted blanket. Like a locked door. Like a premonition.
At the bakery, where L worked as an assistant baker, it was even hotter than it was outside with ovens blazing through the day. She mopped sweat from her forehead with her scratchy apron. Earlier that day, L had discovered weevils burrowing in a bag of expensive whole-grain flour. As she dumped bag after bag of fancy flour in the trash, she wondered how many weevils she’d baked into the bread and pastries she had sold to unknowing customers. If they complained, L would surely lose her job, eliminating their only source of income as G was currently unemployed. She stole a baguette as a consolation prize, willing to eat something with a weevil or two if it was free.
Their apartment was a slumped amalgamation of cheap wood, brick, plaster and concrete. L would lie awake at night, thinking about how an earthquake (the Big One that everyone kept talking about) would bring the apartment tumbling down. When L pulled up to the curb, she saw The Neighbor sitting on the stoop, where he always seemed to be. He often offered unsolicited advice about cars or complained about how another tenant failed to sort the recycling properly. G could pass The Neighbor easily without making eye contact, but L usually stopped for a moment, taking pity on his loneliness.
What The Neighbor lacked in human company, he made up for in that of wildlife. He would leave birdseed in a neat line along the front of the building. Early in the morning, on the way to the bakery, L would startle flocks of mourning doves feasting on the seed. Stray cats would lounge in the front yard, waiting for him to toss them oily kernels of kibble and yowl impatiently when he didn’t. One night, L found a fat raccoon stationed at the top of the stairs, comatose from food scraps The Neighbor had scattered.
He was eccentric, L thought, but harmless.
“Hot innit?” The Neighbor said to L as she unlatched the front gate. His dark brown, almost black, eyes scanned L and the baguette sticking out of her tote bag.
“Sure is,” she said.
“You want to hear something crazy?” The Neighbor said. “I witnessed a murder today.”
“That’s terrible,” L said. She held his gaze for a moment too long, which encouraged him to ramble on.
“Yup, I saw the whole thing. In Lincoln Heights. Someone drove by and—bang!—took out a young guy standing on the sidewalk. Couldn’ta been more than 21. The craziest thing is that no one was even phased!”
“That’s horrible,” L fumbled with her keys. Her feet felt like they were glued in place.
“The guy stood upright for a second after being shot,” The Neighbor imitated the wobbly way the victim stood. “And then fell. It was like he was really fighting death there for a second. Had his brains blown out but was trying to stay on two feet. What a fighter.”
“That’s awful,” L felt nauseous and unglued her feet. “I really have to go.”
“I have a picture,” The Neighbor offered. “You wanna see it?”
“No thanks, I don’t like seeing stuff like that.”
The Neighbor had already pulled up a grainy photo on his flip-phone and thrusted it into L’s face. She stared at the pixelated human form lying across the concrete. The resolution was too low to see any blood or brains, but she could still tell what it was. “Get cornered by the neighbor?” G grinned, wearing boxers and a thin t-shirt, darkened at the armpits, “That guy is so annoying.”
“We had the strangest conversation about him seeing someone get shot,” L said.
“Really?” G’s grin disappeared. “That’s fucked up. You really just have to ignore him, babe.”
“It’s not easy when he’s on the stoop every day. I literally have to step over him,” L said. “I can’t just ignore him.”
“Don’t let his weird shit get to you,” G said, and grabbed the baguette out of L’s tote. “Now, what’s for dinner?”
L didn’t mention the flip-phone photo of the victim lying across the sidewalk because she was ashamed of looking at it with a certain level of morbid curiosity. She’d seen pictures of dead bodies on the news, the gory bits blurred out politely, but this was different. It was something about the neighbor’s insistence in showing her the picture, the sudden shock of it all, the heat wave that made everyone feel on edge. It was entirely different when someone the same age as L’s younger brother died violently on the sidewalk, gunshot wound to the head. And G didn’t seem at all interested in continuing the conversation.
L and G devoured dinner at the kitchen counter, standing up in t-shirts and underwear. They ripped a rotisserie chicken apart with their fingers and sucked the bones wordlessly. They mopped up chicken juices with handfuls of stolen bread. L felt the food hit her stomach like dead weight and mix with anxious acidity. G, on the other hand, talked easily about the mundanities of his day, what he was reading and a conversation he had overheard in a cafe.
That night, L stood in front of the window fan that hummed in the bedroom, barely shifting the hot, stagnant air.
“There’s no way I can sleep in here,” L groaned.
L and G slid their mattress into the living room, where an ancient air conditioning unit sputtered away. It was old, but it did more than the window fan. Water pooled at the bottom outside which, in the mornings, attracted a flock of chatty wrens. As he sipped his morning coffee, G liked to watch them dip their beaks and bathe, their damp feathers reflecting sunlight. It sent a stray tabby, one of The Neighbor’s disciples, into a frenzy.
“This is fun,” L said, gleeful in the breeze of the air conditioner.
G pulled L close. He massaged her sore shoulders and kissed a blistered burn on her thumb from an oven at the bakery. Her t-shirt showed a cartoon penguin wearing sunglasses and a speech bubble that said CHILLED OUT. G moved up her arm with little kisses, tucking his head under the penguin-with-sunglasses shirt, and working his way down her soft stomach. L hummed. G lifted her legs and propped them on his shoulders to give himself a better angle.
“Can I?” G asked.
L paused, and then snapped her knees shut. “I’m not really in the mood.”
“Come on,” L hated the way G pleaded. “We haven’t touched each other in weeks. I miss your body. I miss you.”
“I’m sorry,” L hated the way she always apologized. “I’ve got a lot on my mind and I wouldn’t enjoy it.” “You’ve always got a lot on your mind these days,” G abruptly stood up from the mattress, running his hands through his hair. “Just tell me if you’re not attracted to me anymore.”
“No, no, that’s not it,” L felt her chest tighten as the question crossed her mind: Was she still attracted to him? It was true that sex had fallen by the wayside with her bakery schedule and G’s job applications and paying rent and deciding who was on the hook for cleaning the dishes. L wondered if their relationship had lost some of the magic after they had moved in together. Back when they still had their own places, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Now, though, L often yearned for space and solitude in the tiny apartment.
G slammed the door to the bathroom. L laid back on the mattress and stared out the front window, wondering if The Neighbor still sat on the stoop. The version of her six months ago would have followed G into the bathroom, would have begged for forgiveness, would have offered him oral if it meant he wasn’t mad at her. Now, though, L wanted a moment for herself.
L squinted at the ceiling. A thin black line – like a crack – extended to the corner and down the wall, where it disappeared behind a second-hand loveseat. She stood up for a closer look and realized it was not a crack at all but a parade of hundreds of ants.
As L and G discussed how to stave off the horde of ants, L thought of the Robert Frost poem “Departmental” (a humanities degree had led her to a career as an underpaid assistant baker with weevil-y flour). It was a short, rhyming ditty that imagines ant society and the neat departments that keep it running efficiently. When an ant dies, according to Frost, the other ants hardly give it a thought. That is, unless orders come down from the Ant Queen to wrap the dead in a petal shroud and embalm the body with “ichor of nettle.” “Ungentle” rhymed with “departmental.”
L also thought about the man, barely out of boyhood, on the sidewalk in Lincoln Heights: the crowd that milled around him, in their own little departments, stepping over the shards of skull and gray matter so as to not get their shoes dirty.
The ants did not consider either L or G.
L sprayed a paper towel with a chemical cleaning fluid and wiped up a trail of ants. G Googled “How to get rid of ants.” It was impossible to know how the ants were getting into the apartment; infinite cracks lined the plaster in places their inattentive landlord would never notice. Over the course of the next two hours, L and G would find ants in eight more places in their apartment:
Crawling in through an electrical outlet.
Making a beeline for the greasy chicken bones in the trash.
Trailing across the laminate kitchen floor.
Emerging from around the edges of the A/C.
Darting along the baseboards.
Pouring in through a crack in a window.
Marching in single file under the windowsill.
Unfurling like a spiral of licorice from the bathtub drain.
L thought a common enemy would make her feel closer to G, but as the night wore on, she realized it did just the opposite. By the time they finally fell onto the mattress, defeated, she felt it was a stranger who laid at her side.
L dreamt she was the Ant Queen. She loved the way her body felt in its insect form: powerful, strong and ancient. She presided over her ant subjects from a mountain of expensive whole grain flour. Communication as an ant was easy, with chemical signals that saturated the air, glimmering. The ants worked, moved and thought as a single being. L turned to face a chorus of ants, their dark compound eyes glistening and mandibles gnashing. They spoke in unison:
For every human, there are 2.5 million of us. And yet they dismiss us. They crush us under their shoes. But we are wiser than they think. We have been on this planet for longer than they can fathom, and will be here long after they cannibalize themselves into extinction. The human era is coming to an end – faster than even we predicted – and our era will begin again soon. Physics. Poetry. Soil. Matriarchy. The viscera of the universe, tangible and not…
Humans with their God Complex, clutching at their feeble domination as we thanklessly toil beneath their apartments, skyscrapers, churches, dusty sidewalks. How little they understand. Those prefrontal cortexes sure are heavy for how useless they are.
L jolted upright as the dream dissolved, leaving behind only a few blurry details and a sense of dread. She knew the ants were still there, all around her. They were crawling in the walls. There would always be more. The smell of smashed ants—like anise—filled her nose. She felt like they were crawling in her hair. They’d get in her ears and in her mouth and, eventually, they’d work their way into her brain.
The Neighbor is attracting them, L thought. It was the food he scattered about every morning for the slew of starved squirrels and raccoons and possums and mourning doves. And now he fed the horde of ants that invaded her home. She didn’t know how exactly, but he was responsible for the infestation. He isn’t eccentric yet harmless, she decided, her pillow wet with tears. The shooting had thrilled him; his first instinct was to snap a photo. The Neighbor was evil and she hated him.
L scrolled through her social media, the blue light from her phone disrupting circadian rhythms, searching for an obituary or proof that someone had mourned the man shot on the sidewalk. Instead, L found headline after headline about the heat wave and drought and impending apocalypse that was six months or five or twenty-five years out, depending on who you asked.
A celebrity had been fined thousands of dollars for overwatering their lush, green compound, replete with infinity pools. Mail carriers had petitioned for air conditioning in their trucks but had only been given bags of ice. A once-rushing river in China had been reduced to a trickle. A photo at the top of the article showed an elderly couple who had dragged lawn chairs to the middle of the riverbed. They wore bucket hats over their silver-streaked hair and rubber rain boots. L wondered what they talked about as they pondered the cracked mud. Or perhaps they sat in silence, the words used up after decades of marriage.
L switched off her phone and examined G’s sleeping form in the dark, trying to imagine a life together in three or four decades, when they would be around the same age as the couple sitting in the riverbed. Maybe they would look back on this heat wave and ant invasion and laugh and laugh and laugh. Or maybe she would look back on this time and know that it was the end of something.
A helicopter circled ominously low over the neighborhood. L sweated in the heat, wiped snot on the back of her hand, and stood up. The clock on the stove read 3:23. She held the door of the fridge open, letting the cold air wash over her body. Goosebumps rose on her arms and legs; she shivered with pleasure. She could hear G shifting, mumbling something incomprehensible in his sleep, deep in his own world. L retrieved the remaining crust of baguette and some jam, unceremoniously scooping heaps of pulverized raspberries with her bare fingers, licking them clean. Outside the kitchen window, L could see the street and the stoop, lit by orange sodium street lights. If she squinted, she could make out the shape of a man hunched on the stairs. When she rubbed her eyes, the figure grew fuzzy and disappeared.
L eyed an ant crawling lazily across the counter, its antennas prodding the air. She held out a chunk of bread for the insect and it crawled on, willing, inspecting the food and sending joyful chemical signals to its companions who hid in the walls, the drains, the windows, awaiting the message from their scout that all was clear.
They really are impressive creatures, L mused. They were stubborn and resourceful. Hell bent on survival. She had once read or heard or dreamt that there were 2.5 million ants for every single human on earth. L swallowed the ant and the bread, savoring the strangely sweet and earthy flavor, imagining it was a pain aux raisins—her very favorite, the pastry she loved baking most.
L’s stomach grumbled with satisfaction as she imagined eating the whole colony of ants. She would never be hungry again. Unable to fall back asleep, L stepped outside of the apartment, barefoot, enjoying the cool concrete against the bottoms of her feet. It was pre-dawn, the sky a muted gray; L watched the stars disappear one by one like snuffed candles.
As L sat on the stoop, the city rumbled to life with the distant whoosh of a highway and the tinny ring of a siren. Looking at the sidewalk that stretched out in front of her toes, L could make out a line of ants, dutifully marching toward some hole in the apartment’s wall. Further away, in the murky corners beneath hedges and in the branches of trees, she sensed the hungry gaze of wildlife, watching her. Find us, the invisible animals said. On all fours, L crawled under the hedge where it was cool and quiet and dark, her palms and knees soil stained.
fighting or sex by Ellery Pridgen | Substack | Instagram
he showed me a video
on his phone of
two birds,
a hawk & a pigeon
are they fighting
or having sex? I
needed to know.
& things moved
when I was not touching
them, as I always knew
they would. that was
change—I hated it.
fuck him. all of life
was me, fucking him
& the great secret
of sex & who
was not wearing
a condom. I looked up
“teem” to find it meant
as water pouring—
like rain, like writing
about rain, like writing about
sharing a bed with someone
who was taking off
silver rings
& leaving them
on the nightstand.
we teemed. never
fighting, only sex. I couldn’t
stop wondering where
was I while he was
moving on? In the
garden with mom,
or home,
pouring out his
water glass?
barna by Ellery Pridgen
we’re all friends on the bus hurtling
through the cold darkness on this
wet tuesday of winter. this is not
a poem about Ireland, or even about
sex, just about passing the time, as
time has begun to mean nothing.
I like your pink deodorant. it smells like
flowers & you left it on the table upstairs
& what am I supposed to do? safe in the arms
of all these strangers on the bus, miles away from
you, I’m just feeling sort of unwanted. I’m just
in love with you, and embarrassed about it
why can’t this, this that I know, be the best I’ll ever have?
I bet on losing dogs, even when they bite me. I want you
even as you're leaving. like light through the glass of the pub
bathroom, which made our faces the color of sweetness
& what is that color for? that rosy, female tint?
at the vet I learned that cats can’t taste sugar
& karl says he is too logical for poems, & jon
told me in a dream, I’m American, don’t
hold it against me. most days I want to do
everything you expect of me, but someday I will
shut up about everything I am not.
now I’m drifting into Barna like the smell
of sour soup, & so much of what I’m saying
is still in denial—denial of you,
of distraction, of pleasure—like a monk
who believes in nothing except
my own soft body and red, wet lungs.
Itadakimasu by Dorian Winter | Website | Instagram
Village Boys Don’t Say No by Vasundhara Singh
Rajendra is sitting in the lower berth between older men. The Bundelkhand express that travels from Allahabad to Dewasiya, his native village, is bereft with newly married couples sharing pooris wrapped in polythene bags, haggard men with tin trunks and teenage boys, like Rajendra, returning to their mothers from Allahabad where they study on Government scholarships. Last May, Mr Charan Singh, the headmaster of the three-room school in his village, summoned him to his office. With a thick register open before him, he fanned himself with a newspaper printed on the third of July, 1974. The headmaster’s heavily hooded eyes scanned the boy from head to toe. A dense bush of hair parted in the middle by his mother, a long neck where purple veins made clear tributaries, a crisp white shirt and beige shorts that cut above his knees. The headmaster informed the boy that the results of the All India Talent Search Examination were out and he had lost out by two marks. Rajendra turned away and began to weep. Charan Singh eased his dark eyes and shook his head like a child refusing milk. He said, “You are like a son to me. Your mother looks after me and I feel the need to look after you. That sounds fair, hai na?” He asked the boy to sit on the mud floor and latched the door.
Four years ago, Rajendra’s father passed away from liver cirrhosis, a consequence of drinking desi daru morning, noon and night. He had been a local wrestling champion but after he was forced to withdraw from a district tournament because of a ligament tear, he took to drinking, the beloved pastime of the men of Dewasiya. He left behind a gold ring, a house with a thatched roof and a broad-shouldered widow. Rajendra’s mother, the tallest woman in their village, forced him to study till his bones felt as brittle as a biscuit and found employment in the headmaster’s house. There, she prepared kikora with raw mango for their afternoon meal and rinsed his wife’s hair under the handpump. The couple didn’t have children and told his mother, “You’re a widow with a son. Don’t feel too bad. Educate him and fetch a dowry in lakhs.”
As Rajendra settled on the soft ground, he inhaled the smell of sweat emanating from the headmaster’s socks. “Rajendra,” Mr Singh cleared his throat, “you will grow up to become a government officer. It’s not fair for a boy with your intelligence to be held back by two marks!”
He tapped the yellow page of his register with his index finger. “I have contacts in the education department of the State and I told a few officers about you. They agree with me. You can go to Allahabad and study at the Government Senior Secondary School for Boys. I studied there too. Do you know they serve hot meals thrice a day? My favorite dish was Rajma-rice. We would put dollops of ghee over it. Have you ever eaten Rajma-rice, Rajendra?”
“No sir,” the boy mumbled.
The headmaster went on to describe each meal with great sensory detail. The stuffed parathas are served with green chilli pickle and chole-chawal with onions. Has Rajendra ever finished off a meal with a glass of buttermilk? No, he hasn’t. “Son,” the headmaster said. “Before I speak with the officers, I want to make sure you are prepared for the life ahead. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?” He asked Rajendra to take off his shoes and moist socks. Then, with trembling hands, he unzipped the headmaster’s trousers.
That afternoon, as Rajendra walked back home, he continually spat out phlegm on the side of the unpaved pathway. At the post office, he was approached by the postmaster who patted the boy on his back. “You have topped the exam. Your mother must be distributing ladoos. Why haven’t I received my share?”
The men in the compartment are snacking on peanuts and puffed rice. From their conversation, Rajendra has learned that they share a congested room in Brij Bhushan Marg where they prepare for the Civil Service exam. The man with a moustache says, “I am sure I lost out by two marks.” “You couldn’t clear the exam because of that girl. Now, she is married to a professor. What does he teach?”
“Philosophy.”
They burst out laughing. The man beside Rajendra offers him peanuts but he refuses. With a sour expression, he slaps the boy against the side of his head. He forcefully fills the boy’s palm with peanuts and says, “Village boys don’t say no.”
Here by Fayth Simmons | Instagram | Canthius | Quotidian
this life is a given –
hope
following in the crevices of hoofmarks
along
the acres, lengthwise and then back
across again,
and then – something of the light, how it
changes
just as you settle to mark your
place, make that place
nice, somewhere like
Here, where children might grow
according to shifts of the moon,
soon
filling kitchen chairs to full,
falling into rhythm with the patterns
of the sun, the
ways of the world in
order of
truth – quality of a moving material;
Here, the river speaks of an
early summer, hear, closely,
“hummingbird,” and picture
fragility, what
is understood as fleeting, close to
Time. We shape our bodies
to suit our taste – sweet
and
ordinary, no care to conform
without a promise to
create.
Junkyard Honda by Asheley Nova Navarro
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