M E N A C E
issue two
FEATURING
Aparna Paul
Leonie Rowland
Rowan Tate
Josephine Whittock
Amelia M. Burton
Jim Horlock
Anne Vowe
Yiran He
SBYoung
Liam Carroll
poetry
fiction
creative nonfiction
hybrid
art
EDITORS’ LETTER
Something wicked this way comes.
The Celts believed that on Samhain, the border between worlds is at its thinnest, allowing spirits to cross from their world into ours. Over centuries, Samhain evolved into Halloween, and so it is fitting that this Halloween, we give you a second issue that is rife with crossing over the borders of worlds and tongues and death itself.
In it, a bride and a groom walk from the altar into a world crawling with zombies. A daughter searches for her lost mother tongue. A son buries his father only for him to rise again and again. Angels and aliens arrive on Earth to find meaning in a lonely cosmos.
The search for meaning arcs across this issue of M E N A C E, particularly through exploring meaning as conveyed in language itself. How does language fulfill us and fail us as we strive to connect, convey, contain a love that cannot be contained? Yiran He explores how language constrains meaning and constructs their own, one built from many tongues at once. Anna Antongiorgi takes language apart, rejecting and ejecting it from their poet’s tongue—“language coming out/like thrown-up gasoline.” This interrogation is a liberation. It speculates new ways to speak across the borders of English, the language of empire.
If the goal is to convey a new world, and in doing so, construct that world, this language is not always up to task. But there is a liminal space in which we, as writers, try.
Here we collect these liminal spaces—Leonie Rowland’s storeroom filled with mourning, Liam Carroll’s mirror-portal. From people on the margins, the body itself is one such space, always in torturous transition. From the torn-out teeth in the “THE ROOT OF IT” to the scintillating scabs in “dermatomillomania (the wound eternally spread)” to the tongueless carcass-girl of “Trophies,” the body is contained, displayed, ripped up. Yet she always finds a way to speak.
Existence within empire is a physical paradox, simultaneously reducing us to, and divorcing us from, our bodies. But if we can imagine a better world, we can break through the scrim and cross over, on incandescent, obliterating wings.
Sophia, Disha, Stacia, and Michaella
Stay in the weirdness.
TROPHIES
poetry by Rowan Tate
“I rot pretty, he says,
like a museum
of collapsed lungs.
my mouth,
wired in permanent
awe.
my breastbone
still hot from
his gloved revisions…”
DERMATOMILLOMANIA (THE WOUND ETERNALLY SPREAD)
poetry by Josephine Whittock
pressing into the wound / good-nausea / indulgent-disgusting / ropey muscle / insides on the outside / bite the lip / peel the skin / lick copper from flesh / lick pus from the cut / sparkling wine / push against /sensorimotor /swallow thick / keep touching / bedrot / tear up / curl up together / lie down alone / gushing blood / pick the scab / don’t get up / lint stuck to the cut / still hungry / sequester the self / amontillado / too cute / stroke the raw skin / bite it / lick the wound / lick your fingers / more weight / press down / retractor / get woozy / get told to stop / don’t / head between the knees / good-sick / strike the calendar / move closer / dark in blood / brick by brick / bite the flesh / lick saliva / knees to chest / pillow-suffocate / breathe saliva / count to four / steady yourself /
KISSER
fiction by Anne Vowe
“Beasts don’t chew, even the ones with teeth. Instead, they suckle at chosen limbs and slowly swallow bones whole with dumb stubbornness. Some have figured out that a hand or hoof can spread a body out into smaller, more manageable bits. This one hasn’t, so it’ll be a while.
Wife pulls her husband away from the scene. No need to be near when it graduates to four legs.
Click. Click.
It’s still so warm out. The two could spend their night in the lush grass if it weren’t for what lived there…”
SUNDAY
poetry by Anna Antongiorgi
“Many young pop stars end up rotted. This
is the deep sad, the sunk skunk, the caramel
poisoning the chocolate. I’m sick
of making sense. Soft scrub, hoax
toast, let us rub the rind until it’s raw.
Let us be a prayer wasteland, grotesque
sock puppet patriarchy. I’m all sounds now,
teeth gummed, hell is other people’s
tumblr posts, and misread Emily Dickinson
dashes. Shame, shame, rust bruise pen,
can you draw me accurately? I miss shock
waves, natural eyelash curler sticking little bristles
to gold speckle lids. Can it all hit at once,
can the body sweat out pain like eye drops.
Some untear overflow and mess and who
doesn’t know this honeysuckle sulk…”
INHERITANCE
fiction by Jim Horlock
“I buried my dad on Tuesday, but he was back again before dawn. I wasn’t surprised anymore. The first time his cold grey corpse came walking home, still caked in grave dirt, I’d been horrified. He’d banged on the door, that same great booming knock I’d heard all my life, and demanded breakfast. I’d hovered on the other side, not daring to open it. Even through the wood, I could smell the blood and booze on him.
“God dammit, open this door! I’ve lost my bloody key!”
I could hear the rage growing in his voice. It crushed me down instantly into a whimpering, scurrying thing, desperate to avoid harm. Carried by terror and a nightmarish trance, I let him in and made his breakfast, convinced that I would wake at any moment and none of it was real. It was supposed to be over. He was supposed to be gone.
But he wasn’t gone at all…”
THE ROOT OF IT
poetry by Yena Sharma Purmasir
“[Do you know what they do to first drafts?
How they rip them up and stitch them back
and parade them in public, so you can see
all the talent it takes to make a goodenough
thing hate itself?]…”
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?
creative nonfiction by Yiran He
“The way we speak and write directly affects the way we think. The flow of language is the flow of time — left to right, right to left, East to West. They say music is the universal language, but all I know how to read is modern staff notation. “Modern.” Associated with progress, with today, with the norm.
Wine and the sea are completely different colors to me. I can’t read jazz. Every year, I take up my calligraphy brush and ink, re-familiarize myself with the meditative strokes, and write the 春联。Top to bottom, right to left. 每年我感觉到一种说不清的归属感。But one mold can only produce one shape…”
FLIRTING AFTER DEATH
poetry by Leonie Rowland
“you are the face I would like to see at my mother's funeral. head of the procession, carrying flowers. fancy seeing you here looking good in a tux. hey, I am texting you from the walk-in fridge at work where I am counting all the blueberries individually. hey, I am calling from the storeroom where I am making angels on the floor. tell me you want me just like this….”
DISENTANGLE
fiction by Amelia Burton
“It was midnight on a Tuesday, and instead of sleeping, I was trapped in my childhood bedroom with an angel crouched on the four-poster bed.
The angel was white, but not in the way cotton and marble are white. It was white in the way every color of light blended together becomes so blinding your eyes can only perceive it as white. When I looked at it head-on, I could see everything. Every star in every galaxy, every human iris exploding into desert dunes and ocean waves, all focused in a pinhole of light, like sun pouring between clouds.
My head pounded and my eyes stung like they’d grown onions in the tear ducts after I took one glance. I’d only just stumbled home after a late shift at the dining hall, and the pain shocked me more than the sudden appearance of a heavenly body less than ten feet away from me.
Then the panic set in…”
OLD MAID
poetry by Yena Sharma Purmasir
“I must be my own Cinderella girl,
clean the kitchen until I
can see my face shine
in that stainless steel cavity.
My house is empty, my body
too. Where are the children
to break my irreplaceable vase?
I’m the witch. I transform art
to wreckage to garbage. I step
on a piece of glass. My foot
is a glass slipper...”