Brian MacDonald
Response

The Butterfly Prostitute
Erica Szalkowski
Inspiration piece

Diego wanted to sleep with the prostitute, but couldn’t find a butterfly that she would accept as payment. The first time he tried to solicit her, he brought her a hand-caught swallowtail butterfly, but she scarcely glanced at the creature, mounted in a shoebox and pinned slightly askew, before slamming the door in Diego’s face. On the way out of her apartment building, he angrily threw the assemblage in the trash. He knew the butterfly prostitute only pleasured men who presented her with a beautiful or rare specimen, but had hoped that his simple swallowtail would have enough homespun charm to illicit a sympathy lay. It wouldn’t have to been her best effort- just enough so he could say he lost his virginity to the most famous whore in Baltimore. But, instead of topping his friend’s purported weekend exploits, he was forced to admit defeat as early as first period on Monday. “Heard you struck out with a whore. How does that even work?” his friend texted him during Algebra II. “Fuck you, asshole. I’ll get her,” Diego wrote back, furious. He wanted to add a few more lines of insults, but Sister Cecilia caught him looking at his phone before he could manage it.

The next time he visited the butterfly prostitute, he presented her with a atrophaneura neptumus dacasini, which he bought online because it was both relatively affordable and described as ‘rare’ by the retailor. The butterfly prostitute took a long time to consider the specimen, pursing lips which could make a man see God when to put to good use, drumming her fingers against promising hips, “Let me see about this one,” she told him, slipping back inside. “Can I at least come in?” Diego asked, not wanting to be seen waiting at a whore’s door. The butterfly prostitute merely raised her eyebrows and left him on her worn ‘welcome’ mat. Obedient for once, Diego waited, enduring the knowing stares of neighbors as they passed. One old woman even crossed herself as she walked by, and Diego gave her back the finger as she shuffled away. Finally, the prostitute returned and handed the butterfly back, “Sorry,” she said, without sounding apologetic, “I already have one of these. Mine looks better,” and then she snapped her door closed again.

Diego biked back to his mother’s apartment with a frustration too potent for words. On an overpass, he lobbed the useless butterfly onto the freeway, and watched a minivan grind it into dust. The satisfaction wore of quickly when he realized that he could have given the $40 specimen to some girl eventually. “Damnit,” he muttered, peddling aggressively. His friends always told him that he should go after the weird ones, the not-so-pretty ones who were just as desperate as he was. He didn’t want the fumbling attention of some four-out-of-ten with Daddy issues- he wanted something special, something hot and sweaty and as sexy as a music video. Everyone said the butterfly prostitute was special, and that’s what he wanted. What he deserved. Sure, his friends would laugh at him again on Monday, but they wouldn’t laugh forever. The butterfly prostitute would sleep with him, and then they’d stop calling him ‘GoGo,’ Calixta in chemistry would return his texts, and hell, he’d probably start concentrating better in school- after all, what would be left to daydream about? He was sure she would fuck him right into manhood, right into greatness, if only he could find her the right butterfly to augment her doubtlessly enormous collection.

Weeks later, he was still without a viable plan to impress the butterfly prostitute. His friends were no help – the just laughed at him and suggested he buy a more expensive butterfly. The more he asked for actual help, the less they laughed less, scowled more and said, “Let it go, GoGo. You won’t get with her. You won’t get with nobody if you keep this up.” On his bi-weekly trip to the principal’s office for bad behavior, Diego kicked the furniture on the way to relieve his frustration, trying to simmer down at least a little so he could face penitence more effectively. He gave the sturdy display case outside of the biology classroom a stronger kick because he knew it could take it and decided to dawdle there, taking in the sepia-toned miscellany behind the antique glass. Flanked by a fetal pig in old formaldehyde and deer skull with missing teeth, Diego noticed a shadowbox containing a small butterfly. The tag read “Xerces Blue-extinct.” Diego blinked, disbelieving. The modest butterfly didn’t look interesting enough to be extinct. He glanced furtively up and down the hallway before opening the case and leaning into the display case, briefly huffing its antique scent before snatching the Xerces Blue and putting the specimen box in his jacket pocket. With natural fluidity, he closed the display case and began walking back to class casually, easily, leaving only a dustless square which would go noticed by no one.

Immediately after school, Diego returned to the butterfly prostitute’s door, flaunting his stolen specimen. “This is a Xerces Blue. It’s extinct,” Diego announced, handing it to the butterfly prostitute with flourish. She raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows and took the shadowbox, examining the prone creature within.

“How’d you get this?” she asked, raising the box and tilting it back and forth so an indigo sheen passed along the insect’s gossamer wings. He noticed a little pale depression on her ring finger, like the one on his mom’s hand- the ghost of a wedding band.

“I bought it. There’s no way you have one of those,” Diego said eagerly.

The butterfly prostitute remained silent, examining the specimen. Finally, she asked, “How old are you?”

“18,” he said, lying up by a year.

“Fine,” she said, opening the door fully and standing aside.

Disbelieving, Diego followed her in. The small apartment smelled like cinnamon incense, and Diego thought Whenever I smell cinnamon, I’ll think of this. “I’m a virgin,” he blurted as she moved around the apartment, lighting pungent candles. She shrugged, “Get undressed. I’ll be back. I’m going to get changed.” The butterfly prostitute opened a door to a back room, taking the specimen with her. Diego leaned and watch her ass go, watched her roughly toss the Xerces Blue aside, watched her consider the single butterfly specimen hanging above a double bed with only one half of the covers mussed. The butterfly prostitute reached up, took the hanging specimen from the wall, and smashed it over her knee. The butterfly split down the middle amid sparks of shattered glass, and the wings fell to the floor as separate things.

_________________________

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Aimee Fullman

Inspiration Piece

How Barnaby Becomes a Bond Slave

Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Response

That night, after sharing a pint with a few blokes at the public house on the corner of Goswell Street and Swan Alley, Barnaby dreams he is a rat on the sidewalk. An enormous condor snatches him up, skyward, and gone. The dream so vivid, he can feel sharp talons tight around his flanks, digging into his gut. The creature soars into a storm cloud and releases its grip, sending Barnaby plummeting toward the earth. The condor flaps its great wings and flies out of sight, leaving Barnaby alone in the sky. In his dream, Barnaby doesn’t realize he can’t fly. He flails his arms and legs, expecting to glide. Instead, he finds himself tumbling through the clouds like a ship tossed by a white-capped sea.

“Give the lad another drink!” one of the blokes at the pub insisted, emptying a small flask into the pint of ale before handing it to Barnaby. “Let’s drink! To new mates.” The bloke tapped Barnaby’s tankard with his own pint of dark brew. “Swig it down in one gulp. That’s the way we do it here in Swan Alley.” The bloke raised the pint to his lips and locked eyes on Barnaby.

Barnaby, so caught up in the intensity of the bloke’s instructions, and by the sureness in his eye contact, did what he was told and downed the pint in one continuous guzzle. The tankard handle was icy in his grip. His nose pierced the foamy head on the ale. A sickly-sweet almond odor contradicted the bitter tang. The flavor transformed as it hit his lips, washed over his tongue, and slid down his gullet. First syrup followed by fermented wheat, next, briny low tide seawater and finally, pungent, warm, horse piss.

The public house is suddenly a soaring condor and Barnaby is locked in its talons like a rat. Sharp gusts, littered with hail and rain, sting his eyes and nose and mouth. The sky is black nothingness. In the darkness, he hangs limp in the condor’s clutches and all he can smell is rotten fish. He is surprised that the smell of death can become so concentrated in the vast sky.

“Let’s move him over here,” maybe it was the bloke from the pub, maybe some other chap who said this. Two burly men hoisted Barnaby by the armpits and dragged him up the gangway. Barnaby’s uncle always said the difference between Barnaby and his brother was that his brother didn’t trust anyone. Barnaby saw the good in all folks so would easily make friends and feel welcomed wherever he roamed. But it wasn’t a matter of trust. It was a matter of judgment. Iciness fills Barnaby’s lungs and spreads to his arms and his legs, to his hands and his feet, to his fingers and his toes. The chill makes his teeth chatter.

Barnaby squints in the darkness but all he can really make out are clustered pinpoints of light, which appear to be constellations. He mumbles, “North Star,” with swollen tongue, cracked lips.

He hears squawking, or is it talking? The noise is muffled and nudging at his ears from above. Rising bile begins to exert pressure against Barnaby’s stomach, rising up into his throat. A gurgling noise comes from his gut at a decibel that overwhelms both the moaning from his lips and the creaking of the floorboards as the ground beneath sways. A polluted mess erupts from his throat. There is no stopping this from happening. This is it, he thinks. This is how it ends. Barnaby’s head lolls on his neck, woozy. He struggles to open his eyes. His lids too heavy and his head too achy like his brain is too big for his skull. Where is he? He forces against the weight of his eyelids. Each time they rise and fall, he makes out translucent haze, slivers of gray soot in a muted world. Flashes of blue sky shine through triangular, mud-covered windows. In one of his last thoughts, Barnaby wonders how much had he had to drink at Swan Alley? Was the bloke from the pub sick too?

Up above the hollow darkness and the filthy windows, colors wave in the wind, sails billow from the mast of a tall ship, and their freedom taunts Barnaby.

Barnaby comes to on the wooden planks that make the lower deck floor, his head next to a puddle of his own vomit. He opens his eyes and watches a crab scuttle behind a wooden chest clad in iron. The details of his whereabouts and how long he’s been unconscious are unclear. He inhales and exhales, wiggles his toes, arches his back, and blinks his eyes a few times. He is alive, but where? He gets on all fours and then cautiously, deliberately maneuvers himself to standing position.

He looks up through the glass panes in the ceiling. Who would imagine such a barrier? He once dreamed of sailing away. He imagined the salty air nourishing his lips, making his skin feel as if the promise of morning dew – as if anything – were possible. But here he finds himself, inexplicably free of the land. Yet, he feels suffocated and feeble, the whole world beyond his grasp.

Above him on the upper deck, the sail stretches taught with the force of the wind. The masts of the tall ship tower above, piercing a lone fluffy white cloud in the clear blue sky. The colors wave above – flags of red, yellow, black, and blue.

The upper deck of the London Tall Ship is wrapped in golden rope and filigree. The bow of the ship is adorned with a five-pointed star set in a wreath. The sun obstructs the lettering of the company name so that only “CUT,” “K,” and “LON” are visible. He lets his mind churn on these symbols. Searching for meaning in a meaningless vision is a waste of time. He knows it.

Tora Estep, charcoal, pastel, and Japanese lace paper on paper

Response

Inspiration

Both the Instigator and her Mother
K.J. Hannah Greenberg
Both the instigator and her mother,
Showed their slight upon welcoming
That bride and groom into holy union.

Seems ‘ol Green Eyes’ pleasure made
Short shrift of fragile newlywed bliss;
Troublemaker had fallen for him first.

Later, the undertaker, who rowed the Styx
Accepted no shaggy dog tales, encouraged
Not one narration regarding unrequited love.

Shrugging, he whispered “time passes, clocks
Tick, life circles. Jealousy’s rotten company.
Lassies ought to beseech higher places’ help.”

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jay Young Gerard

Unentitled

Inspiration

Lisa Nielsen

Unentitled

Response

I wear my loneliness as a cape
Draping it like a testimonial to my endurance
Another day beleaguered and waiting
As mountainous as sunlight. Now
we wait for the inevitable fizzle
The disappointing reality,
the misunderstandings that become
frays of failure.
Our fingers uncurl reaching for throats.
This is not what we are but what we’ve become . . .

I hear your angry sighs in between the pauses.
You decorate pain like an officer’s jacket: metals for all the cracks in your heart,
bars for all your bad luck.
Your heart is not really in the right place if that place is a bull’s-eye.

I don’t want to do what I’ve done before, but
this ritual has a life of its own.
I call at the first twinge and wonder if I can trust.
I dive into make believe sin just so you’ll stop hunting.
Clean slate – let’s not ask, let’s not tempt history,
let’s not scrutinize or stalk or investigate.  The trepidations aren’t going
anywhere.  They’ll be waiting for us.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jay Young Gerard

Rooms

Response

Lisa Nielsen

Bitter Re-enactment

Inspiration

The warning lights,
red and blinking
dazzled
like an invitation
to a cautionary tale.

my catechism
is worn out and weary:
“don’t’ let him bring you down,”
but I’m already there

trembling instead of flinching,
just like you wanted
when you tilted to go in.

my head slants towards
the overhang in the alley,
making wings out of
broken shadows.

the devil i know is right here
putting a patent on his desire

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Until Exhausted
KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response Piece

Women fight back; words,
Alimony, poisoned teacups,
Until collapsing, exhausted.

Thereafter, tatters of hairstyles,
Sensible shoes, refusals: no more
Long shifts, sexual submission,
Reliance on rooted partnerships.

It’s terrible to need happiness.
Bluebirds, starry-eyed stags,
As well as sympathy, empathy,
Compassion, fidelity, coupled
Solidarity, remain vivid myths.

Still, unions trudge forward.
Empty of purpose, worn gals
Willingly accept roles such as
“Second best,” “used up,” and
“Harridan.” Such hulls blow
Kisses to new, unsullied wives.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Susan Bee  “Water”

Inspiration Piece

Maggie’s Dream

By Patricia Morningstar

Reponse
The night Maggie met Sergei, she had a dream. If there was one thing Maggie detested, it was dreams. She hated their obscure symbolism, their shifting consciousness, their refusal to play by the rules. As far as she was concerned, their other characteristic, their notorious disappearance at the first sign of awakening was fine with her. The waking world of clear lines of distance, boundaries of logic and mathematics, made sense to her. In that world a equals a equals a, or, if a equaled b, it would do so faithfully, or there had to be a damn good reason for it not to. But in dreams a hovered at the edges of meaning, refusing to remain itself. Worst of all, if a appeared in a dream equation, it would stubbornly refuse to be part of a solution. It would equal b, c, d, and e, and none of them, all at once.
There was another, more personal, reason Maggie hated dreams, or more correctly, nightmares. When she was 5 years old, she was wakened by a bogey man. She ran to her mother’s room. She shook her mother by the shoulders but was unable to rouse her from her stupor. Maggie would only later understand her mother’s state was induced by the bottles on the bedside table. In Maggie’s childhood mind, alcoholic stupor and the stupidity of dreams ran together like dye on a cheap cotton dress. This also accounted for Maggie’s dislike for religion. It never ceased to amaze her that a woman so thoroughly drowned on a Saturday could be so easily absolved on a Sunday.
Her strategy for dealing with these unruly intruders in the night was not to have them at all, or failing that, to forget them as quickly as possible. This worked well enough on ordinary occasions but that night she dreamed and she could not forget.
She felt she was swimming in a lake and the water was streaming images that caressed her like soft fur, waves rising and falling over her body so that everywhere she looked objects appeared and dissolved into the colors of the water, golden light, jade of the banks, and cobalt of the sky. She felt she was at the edge of the world.
The water streamed off her as she rose to the shore. She began to fly in a gown of silk moiré in shifting hues of jeweled and electric blue. The colors and sensation of flying surprised her, but instead of waking up, she awakened deeper into the dream. Her robes melted into the floor of a room lined with books. As if responding to her presence, a volume flew off one of the shelves and hovered before her. The cover was a mirror. As she turned the pages each was yet another mirror reflecting her world, her life. She found herself thumbing through them faster and faster until the pictures ran into one another and she saw herself moving through her story, until the moment she kissed Sergei and wakened from the dream.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Amy Souza

Inspiration Piece

Escape to the Woods
Britt Anderson

Response

Phone rings
An accident
Thank goodness the ambulance came so fast
He wasn’t breathing

Mom cries
Complicated emotions
He wasn’t perfect but
Now he is broken, obviously & irreparably

Drive down Highway 5
Past the windmills, over the Grapevine
Long flat stretch, fields of crops and cattle
Camp Pendleton, almost there

Gran is stunned, adrift
Go to the VA hospital to see the damage firsthand
GranDad lies in a hospital bed
He is so still, but his eyes are pleading

He is scared, his mouth opens and closes like a fish
The nurse is cleaning the tracheotomy site
GranDad can’t breathe, but the nurse takes his time
Panic takes hold, he begs for air

GranDad fell
But the impact spreads like ripples across a pond
Mom is shaken, disbelieving
She resists this new reality

“We’re going camping”, she declares
Pack up the Nissan pickup with the blue shag rug in the bed and the cap on top
Every weekend for months
Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Mount Shasta

Potatoes baked on a campfire
Lake water so cold it steals my breath
The smell of charcoal
Camp trails lined with ferns, the spores on their undersides vaguely sexual

Fun at first, but the breaking point arrives
I throw myself to the ground and cry, desperate for a pack of M & Ms
GranDad is still broken
The woods are only a temporary escape

I toast his English muffins and mix his chocolate milk
He will never move, not even take a breath on his own, again
His eyes beseeching, like a deer surprised by hikers
How did this situation come to pass?

Twelve birthdays and anniversaries in a hospital bed
GradDad’s eyes change, he sees beyond this reality
His body still and gnarled like a tree trunk
Beauty and tragedy, always intertwined

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Kristi Conley-Brockie

Response

Olivia Olivia

Inspiration piece

Don’t Be Sad In Lisbon

Don’t be sad in Lisbon. Don’t be sad you might be forgotten. Don’t be sad no one you know is here. Don’t be sad no one you love lives in Portland anymore either. Don’t be sad the streets are narrow and you are always willing to let someone else use the sidewalk but no one offers you the same courtesy. Don’t be sad you live alone, it’s good – you have your own fridge and your own shower. Look at the view. Look at the ocean, or the river. Look at the river. They said it was the Tejo. They said this is where all the ships left to conquer the world. Imagine all the lobsters they must have eaten on their way. Imagine the king killing the prince’s girlfriend, Ines. I don’t remember the king’s name. I remember how he made me feel, I thought man no one would ever do that for me. No one would ever make the whole village kiss my corpse’s hand. But don’t be sad, don’t be sad in Lisbon. You paid entirely too much money to be here. You have to learn things, you have to remember things.

Remember the austerity measures. Remember how the public pisinas were all shuttered, and according to locals their drained cement bowls stand alone in the heat, graffitied then forgotten. Remember the friendly look on the dog’s faces, the way they look like they also probably don’t speak English, but it is possible they speak Portuguese.

Don’t get lost walking the narrow streets of Alfama, don’t get lost looking for the beach. Forget your sorrows, the sun will be up soon. Tell plenty of jokes. Laugh like an American. Think of Mister Pessoa. Think of Ofelia, what is was like to love a man who thought he was 80 different people. Was it a joke then, to love a poet? Did people laugh? Did her parents think this was a great idea? When he broke her heart, did everyone say “we told you so”? Was she happy to throw his shit out, or did she keep some of it until she died? What did they eat together, I wonder. I wonder what she thought of the tile, what she thought of the thin streets, I wonder if people made place for her when she walked along next to them. I wonder if she too had to force a place for herself in the world, push aside others and say hey look here I’m walking. I wonder if she swam, if she ate shrimp, if it was ever hot like this. I wonder if her mother had to warn her about Mister Pessoa. “Beware black magic, beware flattery, beware a man who has to be 80 different people when you just need one man. Next thing you know you’re only dating one of them, and the others wander the streets at all hours. You say, don’t you love me? And he says, certainly I do, but my heteronym wanted to touch the neighbor’s thighs.” How could she have helped, looking at the water and thinking, I’mma leave this man, all 80 of him.

Don’t think about Ofelia, think about Pessoa. Think about his statue on the way home. Think about his leftover coffee cup that’s still on the table from a century ago.

Don’t worry yourself by looking at the sea. Sleep well.

Don’t be sad in the middle of the night, when you’re hungry and you want to pet your cat. Don’t let anyone know that sadness is a featureless state, it doesn’t matter where you are. Be careful in the ocean. They say the rip tides here are strong. They can tear you right off the shore, and you might never come back.

Untitled

Jane Hulstrunk

(Inspiration Piece)

Vacation

Charles Waters

(Response)

Grassy drenched bedbug

Dissolves into foliage … poof

Nature’s magic track.