plasticine – susan lively

May 28, 2019June 2, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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Ethos shuffled into the food lounge groggily, barely daring to glance at the stony faces of mother and father. He began to eat his kalaj, a type of super rice; aware he was already late for school. He peered nervously towards his dad, but could see nothing of his expression for he was buried nose deep in the electronic paper. His eyes moved restlessly to his mother; but as they did, she turned away, rushing her plate over to the sink. Then she grabbed her purse and handheld robotic assistant (HRA) from the counter and hurried out the back door, murmuring absentmindedly about errands.

Ethos pushed away from the table roughly; young face wrinkled in disdain, making him appear older than he was. He shuffled into the bathroom, then returned to grab his backpack from where he’d tossed it on the couch Friday. His homework had lain there untouched the entire weekend. He rushed out the back door much as his mom had, neither he nor his father bothering to say a word. Their relationship was less than stellar. Ethos looked around; trying to get his mind off his parents, but what he saw only made him angrier. He hated Mars, hated every inch of it. Ever since they’d moved here when he was ten he had despised this stupid place.

They called it the “red planet” but it was actually more of a reddish-orange hue. He thought of the many varied surfaces of this planet, marred often by huge pock marks and rust colored volcanoes. Fights and civil riots had erupted over water shortages, and strange diseases had begun to run rampant, thanks to the new earth arrivals. The place was a cursed desert, a wasteland. They had been promised an oasis from wars that had scarred and nearly destroyed their home planet, but all Mars had given them was a whole new set of problems. Here everything was fake, even the looks of contentment on people’s faces; and that’s what bothered Ethos most of all. All the “blue collar workers” were robotic, every last one. All the materials used in every building and piece of furniture were new synthetics; known to cause cancer in the very old and young. These plastics were in everything, even shampoos, facial cleansers, and medicines; worming their way insidiously into every pore of their existence, every fiber of every being.

When Ethos closed his eyes in bed at night he could almost swear that he was tasting the plastic, way in the back of his mouth, under his tongue. It was a chemical flavor, the bitter tang of emptiness and disappointment. He could feel the synthetic material worming its way from organ to organ. One day it would reach his core and consume him whole. It was an unwelcome reminder of just where he found himself. But there was virtually no viable plant life here they could use for medicine, building, or anything else. Importing such materials was far too expensive and time consuming. They were trapped out here, destined to rot away on this scorched rock with what little resources they had left. Trapped with their disappointment, frustration, and anger.

Every day they were closer to death and eternal boredom, Ethos thought. He barely managed to stifle a yawn as he rolled blue-gray eyes and continued towards the high school. The only thing he ever looked forward to was band practice, which was after school in the music room. Music was his saving grace, and he had been in love with it since he first heard his father’s old recordings from their home planet. Earth was a warm and distant memory that now seemed far out of reach, but he still felt a deep connection to it; a longing for better, simpler times.

So when 3:00 pm rolled around he rushed out of his Advanced Calculus class and went to the music room. He was five minutes early, and his heart was pounding in the closest thing to excitement he’d felt in a long while. Blood rushed through his veins like wildfire and a light appeared from deep within his eyes. He removed his horn lovingly from its case as if it were a fragile living thing. He turned the instrument over in his hands, noticing how rusted it was becoming.

He played a few notes, and they came out slowly, reluctantly; a forlorn echo of their former beauty. Gently he coaxed a somewhat eerie tune from the belly of the sleeping beast. The depth and longing of the haunted melody filled the room and bounced back at him as if they were in an echo chamber, filling his ears with song. He relaxed and let the music take over his whole being, and he began to feel content for the first time in a long while.

The cerulean-white rust was soft like velvet in his mouth and almost powdery to the touch. This “Blue Rust”, as it had come to be known, was caused by harsh elements of Mars’ unique atmosphere that had a corrosive effect on all metal objects. The corrosion affected cars, musical instruments, and a host of other objects once deemed vital to human life. Ethos had watched with dismay as the caustic atmosphere of this most hated place slowly ate away at his deepest dreams, causing them to disappear right before his eyes.

Just then Mr. Hendrix, came in. He was a tall, quiet and very serious instructor; known to be a stickler for rules. He nodded and smiled at different students as they began to filter slowly into the room. Then he went to a large cabinet in the far corner. Frowning silently, he opened the doors with a special touch sensor and began to pull brown velvet bags from the cabinet. He came over to the nearby wall and began to remove pastel colored objects from the bags, placing them on a row of shelves neatly.

Several students came forward to see what was going on and some gasped audibly. Ethos jumped up and went over to the shelving system. The items appeared to be some sort of strange musical instruments. They almost looked like flutes or recorders, but the end of each instrument curled upward in a vine or flower like shape. They came in an assortment of hideously pale colors, from green to blue to yellow and pink. Ethos frowned deeply; big, stormy eyes peppering the teacher with unasked questions. The teacher returned his frown and his stare.

“Please turn in your instruments. They have been commissioned for research by the Technology Institute of Earth Majora. Please pile them in the corner near the cabinet. Thank you,” Mr. Hendrix mumbled, looking rather disgruntled.

“These are our new instruments. All made of plasticine, as you can tell. This is the newest version of the plastic hybrid, rumored to be stronger than steel,” the teacher added; but his tone was bored, expression unconvinced. He sighed and turned away, scurrying over to his desk like an unhappy rat; shoulders slumped in defeat.

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That night Ethos tossed and turned. Sleep was an elusive thing he simply could not catch. He thought with disgust of the new plastic instruments, and his hands itched to hold his old metal horn and hear its forbidden magic one last time. Just then he thought he heard a creaking sound. He ran a hand through silvery hair with a sigh and got up. He opened his bedroom door, but heard nothing. He looked around the room, noting how chaotic it looked, right down to the cracks in the wall and smelly piles of rumpled clothes. He heard the sound again, only louder this time. His eyes widened slightly in surprise. The small crack in the wall over his bathroom door looked different, somehow larger. He strained to see into the crack, but all his eyes found were impenetrable darkness.

Then he heard the creaking sound again, three times in rapid succession. The tiny parallel crack in the wall appeared to be widening right before his eyes! He cautiously approached the closed bathroom door, opening it and peering inside, but seeing nothing. He went in and turned the light on. There was another crack in the bathroom wall above the corner of the door frame. This line ran nearly horizontal and then angled upwards. Ethos was shocked to see it too had grown slightly.

Then he heard a terrific groaning, as if the earth were contorting in tremendous pain. Suddenly the walls began to shake violently, sending everything on the counter and shelves onto the ground. Ethos tried to dart out of the way of falling objects but had no time to respond, grimacing as a can of shaving cream slammed into his shin. His eyes widened with horror as he watched the crack in the wall transform into a huge rift. Then the groaning noise grew, followed by a deafeningly loud tearing sound, as if the fabric of time and space were being ripped apart.

Suddenly the floor shifted beneath him and disappeared, leaving him falling through empty air, black as night. He closed his eyes in fright and tried to scream; but was so stunned nothing escaped but a child’s whimper. The sensation of falling was horrifying, as if he were trapped on an out of control roller coaster. His stomach dropped and then rose again; he felt cold air rushing past him as his descent continued. Never seeming to reach the bottom, his fear rose exponentially.

When Ethos opened his eyes he was stationary. He blinked in shocked when he recognized his surroundings. He was in his house, in the food lounge. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. He shook his head in a daze, running his fingers around his hairline and temple, checking for blood or bumps. But there was nothing; only a slight stain of sweat on his upper lip and the thundering of his racing heart in his ears.

He felt frantic and disoriented. He went through the whole house looking for his parents and younger sibling, but they were nowhere to be found. He returned to his bedroom, and the crack in the wall was gone, as if it had never existed! He raced outside, and as he did he was startled but how unnaturally bright it was for late afternoon. His limbs moved reluctantly, woodenly. He felt strange all over, heavy and light at the same time. Ethos looked down and was startled to see his legs pumping as he ran down the middle of the road; in the middle of their small neighborhood, where all houses looked the same. He began calling out his family members names, but there was no response.

The place had turned into a ghost town. There was not a soul to be seen, Ethos noticed with dawning trepidation. Then he realized that not only were there no people, there were no rusted, broken down cars, motorcycles, bikes, or trams. He came across a gold jetpack that was still running, lying on its side in the middle of the deserted road with a huge chip in it. He hesitated for a moment as he considered picking up the pack, but then decided not to. It was as if all the people and their vehicles had simply vanished. A strange, heavy silence filled the chilled air; blanketing and smothering the town like smog, muting its quaint, tired charm.

Ethos felt alarmed, yet somehow disconnected from everything. His lower limbs seemed impossibly far away; they looked smaller than before, and oddly shiny. They did not want to respond to his commands, nearly tripping him in their cumbersome flight. Something was very wrong. Ethos was overwhelmed by the urge to see himself reflected in a mirror. He had to know if this was real, or if there was something wrong with him. He struggled with a series of thoughts, each outcome more horrible than the next. By the time he burst into the nearest grocery store, he was wondering if he might be dead or unconscious.

The store was all lit up and eerily quiet. There was no one in sight, not a single worker or customer. Ethos froze, feeling queasy, heart beating in triple time now. Then he slowly made his way across the store to the public restroom; footfalls echoing noisily through quiet gloom of fluorescent lights and one day sales promotions. Ethos opened the door cautiously, eyes wide with fear. As he entered the restroom the smell of stale flesh, blood, and urine assaulted him.

Ethos frowned, face darkening perceptibly. He hated public restrooms. Hated weirdoes staring at him when he was trying to take a leak; and he hated cell phones being used in the restroom. But most of all he hated the smell. He reached up to pinch his nose shut with his right hand and was immediately puzzled. It seemed to take an hour for his hand to reach his face, as if he were in a dream. He watched the appendage approaching slowly like a landing plane, the shadow of his palm and fingers splashing across his face, obscuring vision.

He pinched the tip of his nose to block the scent, or at least he thought he had. His face felt numb. He could barely feel the cool pressure of his fingertips as they blocked off his nasal passages. He removed his hand, watching it slowly descend through the air in a blurry haze. He saw sinks all lined up neatly in a row; shapes distorted as if reflected in a funhouse mirror. Their dirt and grime was formidable; and the tall, oval mirrors were saturated with fingerprints and soap scum. They were so dirty it was as if a fog consumed them, giving them a grayish cast.

Ethos shuffled towards the first mirror and sink. The mirror began to contort itself to better capture and reflect his form. He felt cold, almost like a zombie. He snorted in derision at the thought, but no sound came out. Again he frowned, throat tightening until he could barely swallow. He came within full sight of the mirror just as it finished its shaping process, and instantly froze in shock.

He looked like himself and yet somehow different, far different. He reached out to touch the mirror. He tried to gasp but it was as if his face no longer worked. His hand touched the image in the mirror and began to rub at the reflection frantically, as if trying to erase it. He felt cold all over, colder than he had ever felt before. He felt seamless, shiny and new; yet empty and meaningless at the same time.

He reached up to touch his handsome young face and at last a sound emerged, a gasp that sounded garbled and distant. Slowly, with disbelief, the hard caress of his fingers found the cool rise of his cheek and traced its plastic curves slowly, lovingly. His hand froze in mid-stroke as his besieged mind struggled with disbelief. Finally Ethos opened his mouth wide to scream and the blue-black wail of a silver trumpet slowly emerged; echoing mournfully.

Susan “Spit-Fire” Lively is a poet, spoken word artist, producer, model, photographer, educator, and activist from Belleville, IL. Co-organizer of “100,000 Poets & Musicians for Change – St. Louis” (since its inception in 2011); Susan also produces the series’ “Women For Peace” (promoting gender violence awareness) and co-produces the “Dia de los Muertos Fiesta” (proceeds go to St. Louis Homeless Winter Outreach). In 2016 she became an Officer of Urb Arts’ Executive Board. In January of 2017 Susan produced the St. Louis leg of the international event “Poets & Musicians Against Trump”. In 2018 she returned to the modeling world and began painting again.

Lively’s been featured on “Literature For The Halibut”, “The Arts with Nancy Kranzberg” and PBS’ “Living St. Louis”. She has taught spoken word and creative writing at Confluence Academy, Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition, and for the Nine Network and St. Louis Fringe. Susan’s visual art has been displayed at Urb Arts, Thomas Dunn Learning Center, Yeyo Arts, Mokabe’s and Seven. Her literary work has been published in “Static Movement”, “Postcard Shorts”, “Head To Hand”, “The East St. Louis Monitor”, “The PEN”, “Chance Operations”, the “She Chronicles”, “Drumvoices Revue 20th Anniversary Edition”, “SIUE News”, “Arts Today”, “Big Bridge”, “Bad Jacket”, No Vacancy,” and “Crossing the Divide”. Her poetry also appears in the new critically acclaimed environmental and social justice anthology “Extreme” (Vagabond Books). For booking information, contact Susan at lostnation2009@gmail.com. To purchase her paintings and photography in a variety of formats, please visit: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/

Photo by Marek Okon on Unsplash

miracle: an excerpt from the diary of lea knight -attica adams

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

Miracle (2)

1. Beginnings
Menace is in the air. Tragedies are in the making. Fear passes from each to each. It has always been this way.

2. Parents
Mine were violent and all-powerful. They even knew this about each other. Father sarcastically called her “The Queen” because she was cruel and self-absorbed. Mother called him “The Minotaur,” after the creature of incalculable fury.
Jack’s were a little different. His mother was violent, but his father was not. His mother beat him. His father was rarely around. Jack’s father called Jack’s mother “The Witch” because of her sharp tongue. His mother called his father “The Goat Man” for his lasciviousness, for he liked the ladies.

3. Dog Stories
I never had a dog when I was little, but Jack did, a little Boston Terrier named Pepper. And Pepper was everything to Jack, his baby to take care of, his friend to keep him company. A creature pure in its love.
A teenaged boy told me once that his dog was run over by a car. The dog was alive but suffering. He knew he would have to shoot it to put it out of its misery. As the dog lay beside the road, the boy reached his hand out. The dog licked his hand. “The Goddamn thing licked my hand,” the boy said. He was crying when he told me this.
Two weeks ago, in this town, someone tied a stray dog to a pole. The person poured accelerant on the dog and set it on fire. The dog lived for a few days, during which time many people rallied to save it, and when it died many were left feeling empty, with nothing to do and no one to blame.
Last summer, at a festival, I saw a black dog. Its owners stopped to let a child see it. The child was a very young, a boy, not yet able to talk. It was a remarkable dog. I know this because I saw it through the child’s eyes. Its owners went around with it on the end of a string! It had two shiny marbles for eyes! Its hair was short and velvety like the inside of a jewelry box! Nearby, people sold confections and balloons, so there was a flurry of buying. Most people headed toward the river where canons were being fired and men wore uniforms from long-ago wars. Silently, the boy sent his finger forth and touched the dog’s little black anus. The mother was calm. She looked at her child with sadness, as though she had seen something far ahead or had just awakened from a dream about death.
There is a place some humans believe in called “the Rainbow Bridge,” a realm where pets go after death and are restored to full health and happiness. It seems to me a place like the Big Rock Candy Mountain that hobos sing of, a land of lemonade springs and a lake of stew, a land where jails are made of tin and you can walk right out again. In these places, there are no sad consequences to anything pleasurable in life. At the Rainbow Bridge, there’s unending sunshine, room to play, and fresh water and food all the time. It’s a place of reunion, where humans someday rejoin their pets. I’ve heard people say something like, “My Buddy passed over the Rainbow Bridge today.” They say through their tears that now their pet is running free.
We walked to school every morning and Pepper followed us. He knew what classroom we were in and jumped until he could see us through the window. It made everybody laugh, even the teacher. When he was satisfied, he would lie by the door, waiting for us. He would wait all day. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote in his diary, “The yardstick for a human being is: how long and to what degree he can bear to be alone, devoid of understanding with others.” Pepper understood us. This was his proper function, and when were together, we were happy.

4. Punishments
I slept in a room at the end of a long dark hallway on the second-story of our house.
Once I let a rope down for Jack to climb on. The idea was to let him and Pepper live secretly in my room. It made sense at the time.
But Mother heard us and nailed the window shut. And that was the end of that, except for the punishments.
Mother punished me by making me sit under the big tree in our front yard. I sat there for many hours. While there, I developed a relationship with an owl that lived in the tree. The owl became my confessor, listening to all my problems, considering all my questions.
I asked it, “Do you believe in God?” I said, “I have read The Golden Book About God, but there is no picture of God in the book, only pictures of birds, insects, cherries, and stars.”
In my childish way, I wondered whether these things might be God or at least manifestations of Him. I still wonder.
Jack’s punishment began with his mother yelling at the top of her lungs and his father’s grand escape. The Goat Man fled the house, yelling that his witchy wife was nothing but trouble. “If I wanted to take my troubles with me,” he said, “I wouldn’t bother leaving.”
The next day I saw the marks on Jack’s face and arms, the places where she had hit him, making blood rise angrily under his skin.

5. Home
One day I felt good, so I broke into song at the kitchen table. This was rude, Mother said, so she made me sit under the tree again. I sat there for many hours.
It became a regular thing.
The punishment was so frequent that I began to study the situation, and I saw she didn’t care if I stayed under the tree or not. She only wanted me out of her sight. Then I was free to join Jack and Pepper in their explorations.
Jack and I found an old cabin in the forest, and we decorated it with objects we found at the dump. It was homey. We had chairs, a table, a painting of an angel protecting children while they crossed a bridge, and a vase for flowers. We had a whole set of World Book Encyclopedias. We had a circular rug made of old, braided rags sewn together. We gave the rug to Pepper, who slept on it in a sliver of light that came through the cabin window. And while Pepper slept, I read encyclopedias to Jack and quizzed him about the summaries they held.
When we were in the cabin, we never pictured ourselves changed by grief, growing up, or growing old. Like children in a fairy tale, we would be children forever and eventually all would be well.

6. A Cat
I was the one who discovered it. It was a kitten, so tiny it was sleeping in one of father’s shoes. Mother wanted Father to carry it off, but he wouldn’t. She wanted him to kill it but he said no. He didn’t want the cat. He just didn’t want to bow to her commands. He was the Minotaur, the crazy bull at the heart of the labyrinth of life.
I fed the cat and it learned to trust me.
Mother said it would all come to no good.
One day I saw the cat’s belly was large. Mother saw it too and said the cat would have kittens. She blamed Father. What were they going to do now with a bunch of cats? This would upset our stability. Our lives would now be so much worse. An argument ensued. Insults were traded. To end the fight, Father threw a mug of beer at her head. She ducked, so it didn’t hit her. It exploded against the wall.
It was quiet then, enough to hear the mice scurrying behind walls.
Time went on.
It was in the fall when the air was bitter with the smell of burning leaves. That’s when I found the cat dead under a bush.
As Kierkegaard wrote in his diary, “Great is my grief, limitless. Since my earliest childhood, a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic—if it is pulled out I shall die.”
Mother saw the dead cat too and was filled with a magnificent rage. She would give me a lesson, she said.
She had already told me long ago how babies were made, how they were born. Her descriptions of cutting, blood, and pain had left me scarred and afraid.
And now she said she would show me something. She went into the house and got a knife. She wanted to expose the kittens, to show me how they would be hairless and blind, like little rats, she said, like filthy little rats. She sliced the cat open but there were no babies, only a big tumor.
No kittens. This enraged her even more. She threw the cat and the tumor onto our pile of burning leaves. The flames curled everything up, turning it black before reducing it to almost nothing.
After this, I dreamed that the cat had only looked dead. Really, she was alive, except I was the only one who knew it. The dream gave me a private thrill.

7. Irony
One day Jack’s mother chased him around the yard hitting him with a broom handle. She had done this before with other objects, like belts, wire hangers, or shoes. This time, Pepper was barking in outrage.
Have you ever seen an animal killed before your eyes? To see it pink-tongued and bright-eyed, then still. At first you think it will get up and strut like before. You think it just has to. Then you notice it looks so much smaller. You want to ask it, “Where did you suddenly go?”
That afternoon when we returned from school, a dirty shovel was resting next to the house. And that was the end of that.
Some believe in heaven. Some believe in the Rainbow Bridge. Others say the earth is our mother, and she loves us. What the truth is, I can’t say. Though I’ve seen once-buried things and they didn’t look like they were loved by the earth.
After all that happened, I would dream I gave birth to some sad thing, a cancer, a rat, a dog with a broken face, a human fetus distorted beyond repair.
Then, years later when I did have children, they were born beautiful but dead. This is Kierkegaard’s irony.

8. Endings
I knew a woman who had to put her ailing dog to sleep and could not forgive herself.
She showed me a photograph and said to me, “This is my baby.”
There are people who can’t abide a person referring to a dog as their baby. They think it’s silly, or weak, or that the comparison isn’t apt. But I abide.
The creature sighs just as a baby does. It draws close for comfort and drools on your shirt. It yelps in its sleep and we imagine it has nightmares, so we hasten to relieve its trouble. A dog is a placeholder for a thing that’s missing or, in many cases, it’s the thing itself.
“My baby was my everything,” the woman said, “I miss him so much. I miss his mouth, his velvet chest, the way he walks, the way he snuggles, I miss it all.”
The way he walks, she said, the way he snuggles, as if the dog was alive in her mind.
Then she remembered her dog was dead. She said, not to me but to God, “Bring my baby back. His ears and feet. Bring him back, his soft skin, his loving grin; I’m sorry. I did this to him. Why? My baby.”
She was crossing “The Bridge of Sighs.”
In his diary Kierkegaard mentioned “The Bridge of Sighs,” which is the enclosed bridge in Venice which passes over the Rio di Palazzo and which condemned men crossed on their way to their lead dungeons. He said this bridge is the path we all must take on our way to eternity.
Last night I dreamed about the cat again. I was looking out through my childhood eyes, but also the eyes I have now. I was looking at Mother illuminated by fire as she stood against a black and starless sky. She was about to throw the cat onto the burning leaves.
“No,” I shouted, “she’s still alive!” In response, she threw the cat’s body onto the fire. It was as though I had made it happen. After a sharp instant of grief, a sense almost of being sliced in two, I saw the cat leap from the flames and disappear into the night.
I could only stand perplexed.
What had I witnessed, a miracle or all hope leaving?
Even now I have no clue why the universe exists as it is.

Theresa Williams (Attica Adams) has twice received the Individual Excellence Grant from the Ohio Arts Council. Her work has appeared in many magazines, including Gargoyle, Hunger Mountain, and The Sun. Her Sun stories can be read here: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/contributors/theresa-williams . Her novel, The Secret of Hurricanes was a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. She is currently working on a graphic novel, The Diary of Lea Knight.

Art: Attica Adams (Theresa Williams)

she was summer – dani duval

April 29, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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She was summer,
covered in pinks & oranges,
& at sunrise she gave me a ring.
She took me north, & summer turned
into fall. She had mentioned her love
for sleep, so I told her she could stay
with me, but she grew thorns of yellows
& wrapped me in chains,
just in time for winter. The snow cleared up
the fog as I fought for spring,
though I soon found she didn’t want
the key. Sometimes I still wonder
if she is still in the snow, but I know
she had a key of her own.

Bio: Dani is a freshman in high school from Parker, Colorado. This is her first published poem.

Photo: Robert Gramner

unfolding – mela blust

April 26, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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daughter is the sun
the religion i once shunned
i place my hand on my belly
where life once bloomed
mother womb’s fertile whisper
the musings of god
as the waning rays of child-light fade
i can no longer hold her in the gentle
butterfly net
her wings
budding now through cerise skin –
how love can be
a guide into the ether
how i cannot let it be a trap

Mela Blust is a moonchild, and has always had an affinity for the darkness. Her work has appeared in Isacoustic, Rust+Moth, Anti Heroin Chic, Califragile, and more.

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Photo: Suzanne D. Williams

a brief composition of someone I knew only in a dream – sophia jones

April 25, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ 1 Comment

I.
He said that we became one under the sun sipping arizona tea,
chasing the heather reeds and marrying ourselves off to the ships as they sail into the indigo silk.
I saw our symphony in wearing each other’s clothes and getting lost in each other’s hair,
swinging under the pale moonlight on a child’s castle we wish we had known when we were young.
I suppose time saw us in watching as your pink and my green paint the sky every night from our tattered windowsill covered in lyrics and terracotta children,
you laying in the empty bathtub while i was singing about a place we’d never been and an adventure we’d never had
It doesn’t matter, because we agree that most of all it happened through spending hours in silence making faces and laughing at the things we love most.

II.
You and I were too busy getting lost in each others’ angelic faces
brightening and rising and sinking as we lay underneath the water damaged ceiling
spilling paint on the unfinished kitchen floor and dancing in the puddles left behind
holding a cigarette neither of us will ever smoke
To smell the scent of linens and strawberry fields and sweat
To regret glancing at your photograph lined walls
To feel the scraps brushing against my thigh as I try to sleep
To miss chasing geese in the park under a grey sky
To notice a love that stood unscathed by the courtney and kurt costumes hanging in our closet
But by the time we did
It was too late for us.

III.
I remember dancing on one another’s toes because of our four left feet
crying when we laugh
finding an old trunk of fancy ladies’ clothes and dressing up for poptarts and tea
that feeling that one moment is never enough
dreams of each other we never talk about but hold so close
But I forgot about the buttercups falling into your eyes
sharing sunglasses and the color pink
freckles dusting our self expression
I suppose I don’t regret filming our home movies on vhs’s even though we could use something more modern
because otherwise I never would have watched these.

IV.
I was always annoyed by those glasses you stole from your dad that always fall onto your fairy-nose
the memorial for michael jackson in the corner of your bedroom
socks that hang off your toes
But even still I can never comprehend why you always smelled like the forest even though you never go outside
the dinosaur that your little brother left for me
Or our obsession with eighties cereal commercials
So I’ll focus on the day we sat on the edge of the bridge and threw petals at the ocean
writing songs together about dead celebrities
and feeling like we are one and pining over the time we missed before we met
because those times are enough
to make me miss you.

Bio: Sophia Jones is an artist, writer, musician an collector of memories. She has spent her childhood chasing imaginary friends and dreams, and in return has written many tales and poems mimicking the euphoric feeling of imagination. She is currently studying to become an art therapist, and aspires to someday publish a full collection of poetry, melodies, and scraps of inspiration found in the glances between strangers.

Photo: Jakob Owens

three scenes of heartache as told by a casual observer – grace nordgren

April 24, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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One. My local Goodwill was nearly empty the week before Christmas. It was eight o’clock. I had ducked in with a friend, looking for refuge from the bitter weather. We were wrapped in coats that were too thin to keep us properly warm. But we didn’t care. As she browsed the CD collection, I of course gravitated over to the books. Worn paperbacks lay discarded in great quantities, adorned with yellow stickers of a garish color. They were marked with cheap prices, but no one seemed to be interested in them, as the shelves were full and the stacks high. Perhaps it was because they had once belonged to other people. Handling the books with care, I scanned the back covers and flipped the pages. A little volume caught my eye from its position on the pile. I picked it up, and almost discarded it once I realized it was a self-help book for troubled couples. For reasons I cannot explain I opened it, and browsed it page by page. The paragraphs were notated in black pen, and the handwriting was neat and legible in the margins. I read none of the notes, except for one, written in large letters under a heavily circled passage in the book: John- we really need to work on this. Please. I set the book down. It was three dollars.

Two. They lay there like dolls. Their human forms, splayed on the concrete, were barely distinguishable under the tarps. There were police and firemen standing over the bodies, and a small crowd was on the curb. My mother and I hurriedly crossed the street, and a woman who saw us on the sidewalk warned us to always be watchful when driving. And to never text on your cell phone. My mother put a hand on my back and asked me to keep explaining The Iliad to her. She stole sidelong glances at me as we walked down the grassy hill, too green and alive to exist right next door to death. The birds chirping was too cheerful, the sky too clear, and children at the park too lively. My mother bought me a smoothie, probably to take my mind off of the people. But I wasn’t thinking about them. I was engrossed in the story of Achilles playing out in my head. I was numb inside. As stony as the walls of Troy.

Three. My friend’s mother was waiting for us to meet her in the car. We were just leaving a shop, about to exit the mall. A strangled cry made us jump. We turned to see a woman tear towards a kiosk, running like the wind. She gasped and shouted at the saleswoman, so loudly we could hear her from twenty feet away. Her voice rose and cracked as she asked her if she had seen a small four-year old, all by himself. Her tears streamed down her face like lightning, her cries thundering through the mall. The saleswoman shook her head, and tried to placate the woman by dialing her phone, presumably to alert somebody, anybody. The woman spun around and began screaming the child’s name. Jack! Jack! Jack! Over and over. We stood there, unsure what to do. Perhaps some other people approached the woman, it’s hard to remember. I will forever feel guilty about how we chose to leave then. Later that night, in bed, in the dark, my friend shakily whispered that she hoped the woman found her son. I wish we had some way of knowing. On days like this, I resent being human.

Bio: Grace Nordgren is a student from Denver, Colorado. She is working towards acquiring a degree in English. She enjoys daydreaming, pondering existence, and pomegranates. This is her first published piece.

Photo: Prudence Earl

three stories – mathias svalina

April 23, 2019April 30, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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One.

A man wanted to travel to another continent, but he did not have a boat. He read about a series of holes & tunnels & caves that led to the continent to which he wanted to travel. He travelled to the beginning of the path, parked his car, & walked the mile or so to the first hole. This initial hole was filled with mud. He waded through the mud. The hole led to a tunnel of slime. He waded though the slime. The stink sickened him & he propped the neck of his shirt over his nose to try to dampen it, to no avail. The tunnel of slime led to another tunnel, which was dry & generally unremarkable. He walked through this tunnel easily. The dry tunnel led to cave in which there was a lake of fire. He could not pass this lake. Gathering many large rocks, he dropped one into the lake of fire. He stepped on this rock, then dropped another large rock in front of him. He from this second rock he dropped a third rock into the lake of fir & stepped onto that one. He dropped & stepped on another, then another, another. In this way he raveled across half the lake of fire. At this point he took a break. Carrying large rocks is very tiring. He sat on the last rock & drank some lemonade. Then he lay down & took a little nap. In his sleep he had a weird dream of falling upwards into a florescent light, buzzing & flickering. He woke with a bodily convulsion, knocking all his remaining rocks, which were to get him to the other side, into the lake of fire. The knocked-over rocks formed a small island. He tried to pull the rocks out but the heat had melted them together. This was as far as his journey would get him. He built a log cabin on the island. He grew a pleasant garden, both vegetables & flowers. He trained his hounds not to near the lake of fire. He e-lanced & paid all his bills online. On weekends he’d pack a little lunch, put a six-pack in the cooler & spend the whole day fishing on the shore. He didn’t care whether he caught anything. He had grown to love how the fire splashed & rippled when his sinker dropped, how the fire lapped at the stone shore, how little tusks of fire would sometimes pierce through the lake, only to dissipate in the air. But when he did catch a fish, if he could pull it in quickly enough, it was each time already fully cooked by the lake of fire, the flesh flaky & delicious.

Two.

My sister is a pilot. I am her co-pilot. We are preparing to fly a plane across the ocean. The plane sits on the runway as we wait for the air traffic controllers to give us our commands. A bunch of boys climb into the cockpit. They play marbles. They play kick the can. They play stickball with a rubber ball, causing the ball to bounce around the cockpit every time they hit it. One boy eats some sloppy spaghetti out of his cupped hands. He sits between me & my sister. As he eats the sloppy spaghetti, he toggles the switches. I tell him he can’t do that, but he does not listen. I offer him a bowl for his spaghetti. He ignores me. The ignition switch is covered with tomato sauce. My sister leans into the microphone & says We were cleared to take off. Her voice emerges from the speakers tinny & distorted. I flip the ignition switch on & start doing flying stuff. The plane rolls down the runway. It lifts into the air. It increases in speed, until are in full throttle. We reach cruising speed, but all this time, the plane has remained only ten feet above the ground, shaking the cars & trucks below us on the highway. I turn to my sister, the pilot. We are dead, aren’t we? I ask. This is how the dead live, isn’t it? I take my headset off & walk to the door of the cockpit, & look over the seats. Everyone in the plane is dead. All but one teenaged girl with long black hair. She is alive & seated next to my mother’s dead body. Sara, I say to the teenaged girl & tears roll down my face. I grab the boy eating spaghetti. He is a man now, his face covered by decades of dried tomato sauce. He is my husband & I am his. When I look at him again, he is old, his knuckles gone mutable & nutty with arthritis. I point to the girl with black hair, still teenaged, still the only one alive. O, I say to my husband. O, how our Sara has grown.

Three.

A woman could not tell the difference between babies & sticks. As her friends became adults & began to have babies, she became a popular party game. One friend would hold his baby in one hand & a stick in the other, then ask the woman which was which. Half the time she guessed correctly. One day the woman found herself ready to give birth to a baby. At the hospital the doctor ducked beneath the woman’s gowned knees to check on things. When the doctor stood back up, his arms had transformed into large plastic spray bottles, filled with blue glass cleaner. I do not want you to deliver my baby with spray-bottle-arms, the woman said. They will injure the baby’s pliable skull & glass cleaner will irritate the skin. Another doctor was ordered but at he did his doctor stuff, his arms turned into plastic mastodon dolls. I do not want you to deliver my baby with plastic-mastodon-arms, the woman said. They will scar my baby’s soft skin & make her afraid of the world she is entering. Again doctor was ordered. When this doctor stood up from beneath the woman’s gowned knees, one of the doctor’s arms had transformed into a good-sized stick & the other had transformed into a fresh & healthy baby, flecked with afterbirth & screaming. The woman looked back & forth from one arm to the other, trying to figure out which one was the baby. She made her decision & took that one home. She kept the one she took home in a crib & each morning she sang their favorite song as she changed their diapers & fed them formula. The song is called “Buffalo Stance” by the musician Neneh Cherry. It is a very good song.

Mathias Svalina is the author of five books, most recently The Wine-Dark Sea from Sidebrow Books. He is a founding editor of Octopus Books & runs a Dream Delivery Service.

Photo: Sarah Penney

falling – dakota drake

April 22, 2019January 2, 2020 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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The planes at the airport would fly over, land, and take off every day, and the sky would be full of noise. Next door to the high barbed fences surrounding the tarmac, there was a small house where a man and his dog lived. The house where the man and the dog lived would shake and shiver with the sound of planes attempting to break the sound barrier all day and all night. Despite the thunderous exclamations of flight that rattled windowpanes and made the very floorboard vibrate like a bass drum, the man, and the dog, barely noticed.

They were so surrounded in this cloud of constant noise that they both went about their business every day without really hearing the difference between silence and thrumming engines. Neither their daily routines, nor their nightly sleep was affected in the least.
Both slept well under a curtain of stars and diesel, and every day they ate small meals in each other’s company.

The man ate the small meals because he bought small bags of groceries, which was all that he could carry on his bike from the grocery store to the house. The dog ate small meals because that is what the man fed the dog. The dog looked up at the man sometimes while the man dug a very small handful of dry food out of a paper bag to put in the dog’s little bowl, watching him, wondering if today was the day that more food would be in the bowl. Sometimes. But the dog was mostly used to eating a small amount, and never whined or drooled for more.

The planes flew over all night, between the man and the dog and the edge of space. Both of the dwellers of the house slept well on their half-full stomachs and dreamt half-full dreams, and woke refreshed each day.

One day the airport shut down. All the flights were stopped. The sky was still, free of other people’s itineraries and combustion engines. And the sounds of wind, and birds, and rain, and quietude were free to return.

The change was sudden. The man noticed as soon as he came home from work. That night, no amount of rolling around the bed or flipping his pillow could allow him to get to sleep. The dog walked from room to darkened room, wondering at what was no longer there. In the daylight, when the man spoke to the dog in the newly quiet house, the words hitting the air startled them. The man took to whispering so as to not disturb them both.

The dog didn’t care for the clipping noise that his nails made against the floor and decided to live on the couch or bathroom rug. Until dinner time that is, when he forgot as soon as the kibble rang like a bell in his little bowl.

The man took to grinding his teeth in his sleep, and the dog started scratching at fleas that were not there.

“No, it’s not a strange request at all!” said the realtor.

The next house that the man and the dog quickly moved to was on a busy street. The house was filled with other people’s sounds: car doors, backfiring engines, clanging pots and pans at a nearby restaurant kitchen, children before they had learned about the power of decibels in their own lungs.

The man failed to convince himself that the bass from a nearby movie theater was actually a plane breaking the sound barrier over and over again. The aggression and suddenness in the noises was so demanding of the man’s attention that sometimes he forgot to feed the dog for an hour or two, which caused the dog to begin to whine and drool.

The dog was tired from racing from wall to wall, to the window, to the front door, to the back, in order to find the source of all the noises. When he slept, he dreamt of chasing nothing for miles and miles, through the sky. The man did not dream at all, because he was not sleeping. Neither the man nor the dog woke refreshed.

“I’m sorry, I’m having trouble hearing you. Would you mind turning down the music on your end? … Oh, oh I’m sorry, I thought it was yours.” Said the realtor.

“It will be a change of pace to be sure.” Said the realtor about the next house. The house was out in the country, where the stars were only slightly visible under a canopy of spindly pine trees.

The ancient house created its own noises, anything from the scuttle of mouse feet in the attic, to groans of centuries-old boards. Most sounds went unexplained for generations.

The man and the dog took walks together in the forest around the house. Branches snapped out of sight. Leaves crunched underfoot. Huge crows sat in the trees above them and laughed harsh and grating. The man and the dog paused, shivered, and turned back on the path to the house, less interested in the beauty of nature than suddenly remembering that if something sinister happened to them, there was no one for miles to find out.

The dog sneezed over and over at the dust and the pine needles. The man listened to the lonely old house sway and whine and held the allergic dog close to him. The man’s heart beat as fast as when it was quiet as when he heard something.

The dog coughed too hard to sleep, and the man lay awake thinking about every book or movie he’d ever read or seen about haunted houses, from Nancy Drew to Scooby Doo. Bodies in the walls and whatnot. Haunted forests surrounding you on all sides. Families gone to ruin for generations, wandering shadowed hallways. Cobwebs. Ghosts. Scooby Snacks. Then—

Small footsteps. Clawing at the window. A hiss.

“Yes, possums are very common there.” The realtor explained, trying so hard not to laugh that tears rolled down her cheeks like rainwater off a roof. “I’ll get you someone to fix the window.”

Temporarily the man and the dog moved to another forest, into a house that had once been used for early settlers and pioneers, then forest rangers.

“Rustic!” read the listing that the realtor had hesitantly sent the man. The man and the dog looked at each other. Mostly the man looked at the dog, because the dog’s eyes were too red and watery from allergies too see much.

The man rode his bike to check out the house with the dog trotting happily beside him on a leash, his snout finally clearing a bit. The bike left wet lines on the grass when they rode around the many hikers and tourists that they shared the path with.

As the two got closer to the house, a low hissing sound could be heard. It grew louder as they neared, into a quiet rumble. It was like holding your ear to someone’s stomach, and feeling as much as hearing the unseen churning inside.

The little house was close enough to the famous waterfalls that mist had created droplets of water on the windows. They ran down the glass as though it was constantly raining on one side of the house. Once inside the humid little home, the roar of the falls was still audible, but contained.

That first night, whenever the man spoke to the dog in soothing tones between doses of allergy meds, neither felt that the sound of his voice was intrusive. The voice was softened, the edges rounded off.

One fresh and bright day, the man and the dog went out onto the trail to the falls. The muddy track climbed slowly over rough switchbacks along the cliffs to make the steep slope easier to navigate.

The man stopped in a clearing to watch a hawk glide downwards from the top of the falls slowly, close enough the see it turn its head back and forth. The breeze picked up, blowing in a mist like a veil separating the man and the dog from the rest of the world.

The dog sat in the cool mud, smelling water, and rocks, and the fish that fought the current, and the sandwiches in the backpacks of nearby hikers.

Enveloped in mist and sunlight, the man and the dog became wavelengths of sound themselves, allowing the wet air to permeate their beings. They too were the continuous noise of a burly river that had been falling off the world for as long as there had been rocks and water and had always filled the atmosphere with its laughter.

The man did not at first notice the dog stand up and walk off sharply, pulling the leash out of his hand. Above the gush of falls, he could then just hear the sound of barking.

Instantly pulled out of his reverie, he turned and called for the dog. The dog kept running and barking ahead on the path that lead down to the river near the bottom of the falls. He followed alarmed, sliding in the mud through switchbacks, running back through the forest.

He met the bank of the river at a break in the trees. He found the dog, front feet in the cold water, barking as hard as a dog could at something across the river. The man lunged and grabbed the leash, trying to pull the dog out on the bank, but the dog would not budge. Finally, the man looked up at what the dog was now howling at, and nearly dropped the leash again.

Across the river, another man was climbing up the low cliff face. Long sinewy limbs reached and stretched to find narrow holds against slippery rock.

He reached, he reached, and he slipped. And fell.

The man and the dog ran and dove into the powerful current, kicking against boulders. They tumbled in the waves and came up with nostrils burning, sinuses full of icy water.

The man found and grabbed at the climber, barely holding onto a half-submerged tree, struggling to pull himself above the tumultuous surface. The dog was tumbling past them and the man just barely managed to reach out and grab the dog by a grabbing his back leg and pulling him onto the tree. The man had the climber hold onto his back and held the dog under one arm as he swam the three of them downstream and back to the shore.

The man and the dog coughed and vomited up fishy water on the gravel bank. The climber simply rolled onto his side and passed out.

Later that day at the hospital, the man and the dog sat in the climber’s room where it was never silent but never loud either. Machines, and nurses’ shoes on the tile, and the distant arguments of families, and the groans of the sick.

No one questioned the man about the dog. He did have to answer questions about the climber, which he was surprised to realize he knew nothing about.

That surprise was a bit of a surprise in itself. Why should he feel like he knew this man? It’s just some guy doing a stupid stunt on a cliff, of course he didn’t know anything about him. There was no reason to still feel protective after saving him, no reason to stay in the room waiting for him to awake. He never thought about leaving the room however.

When the climber awoke, the dog leapt on the bed, rubbing mud all into the sheets and his wet snout all over the climber’s beard. The man finally got a chance to ask the climber about being surprised, about being surprised at being surprised, and finally asking him his name. The climber smiled weakly, before answering. His chest hurt from the ice water and the CPR, but he wanted to talk anyway.

The climber drove them all back to the little house in the forest, stopping first at the grocery store in his car to buy food to cook for dinner, as a thank you for saving his life.

After dinner, the climber poured the dog’s food himself, a huge bowl full of goopy wet meat chunks from a can. The dog ate the food hard that his teeth hit the bottom of the bowl. Both the man and the dog’s stomachs were full for the first time in a very long time.

The climber poured a very large glass of wine for both himself and the man. The gentle cling of the glasses together sounded as right, just as their laughter with the backdrop of the roaring falls did as well.

That night, the dog climbed onto the bed to sleep in the valley of blankets between the man and the climber. There was no room there at first, both men fitting so snugly together in sleep, but the dog was determined and wedged himself in until there was a dog-shaped space for him too. He rested his snout first on the climber’s scratchy beard, then on the man’s chest. The only things that could be heard above the sound of the falls was their quiet breaths, and the warm sound of heartbeats.

Dakota Drake is a woodland creature living in the desert. She does AcroYoga all the time, reads often, and sometimes makes art. Eventually she will buy a wasteland and devote her life to making it into a lush rainforest, one tree at a time.

Photo: Martin Adams

three poems – nate fisher

April 19, 2019April 13, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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Haunt

Nobody is loading a shotgun because
the hardware store has accused nobody
of illegal dumping. The cul de sac
is absent of a shape tearing beer cans
in half, a voice swaddled to empty lung
by a winter night,
nobody screaming
is this what you want is this what you want

The airedale terrier across the alley
no longer labors in breathing.
Most passerbys begin to wave back,
say to the new neighbor, once
there was a ghost here. For real.
I saw it there. And there.

The rumor is that nobody would sit motionless
in a black sedan overnight during the freeze,
open french doors in the morning as if
they were clearing brush from a trail,
and walk their knife around the block.

The mountain hemlock that lined the sidewalk
didn’t hurt nobody, but nobody blamed them anyway.
The houses shawled in yellows and pinks
didn’t hurt nobody, but nobody haunted them anyway.
The basement nobody lived in was a mausoleum
the size of a father. The good man who used to live
there was smothered in his sleep during the wildfires.

Some say he lives again, drinks iced tea while mowing,
always looks like he wants to apologize to strangers.
He rolls the garbage out, stands there, listens
to the neighbors walking up and down the stairs.

DIY Wishing Machine

Set aside several empty drawers,
so many of those little coffins,
a whole chest of them.
Unscrew a pair of cymbals from that drum kit
you never bothered learning to play.
The wiring won’t have to be up to code,
but blockade your front door before proceeding.

Fill drawers with those letters and photographs
you refuse to throw away. Contemplate
an eventual stillness for every hand
responsible for making them. Place
drawers stacked inside a dark closet
to let them breathe. Attach positive terminal
to top cymbal, negative to bottom.
Find a cassette recorder that hasn’t
been touched for at least twenty years,
and begin recording over whatever tape
is inside without reviewing it first.
Form a wired connection as follows:
cymbals to recorder to closet.

Lie flat, place head between two cymbals.
Concentrate on the most hidden of all things.
Invisible thing. Colorless thing. Allow
no harshness of the face. Raise your right hand,
and begin the first stroke of an autopsy.
Donate to a tax-deductible charity organization.
Raise your left and build a palace of mirrors.
Do not be alarmed if you hear the sound
of an engine turning over, or a quarry
full of dynamite. There, that point of light,
be distracted by it instead. Your memory
will snow. Watch your footing. One thing
and another are now colored things.

You can now allow yourself to be afraid.
Your liver is failing. Your children will
have a twenty-five percent chance of being born
with a rare congenital disorder. Nobody will ever
raise a toast to you again. Feel this sink in
and harden into the trunk of the body, you beautiful
son of a gun. Goddamn, you’re looking so fine,
you have any plans tonight, sweetness?

Do not turn yourself down or stand yourself up.
Politely reschedule if necessary. Raise
your left leg; make note of the prophecy
that arrives to mind later. Raise your right,
and ignore this instruction. Something’s here
or just beginning to hear. Thinking thing.
Wishing thing. Marry your genitals to beauty.
Keep in time with the lub-lub, lub-lub that now
heaves into the cymbals. Dwell here. Move everything
from your apartment into this space. Tidy up.

Wait for a shortness of breath, and then speak.

Speaking to the Lady of the Lake at the Koi Pond in Moscow City Park, Idaho (2:30 AM)

Moths can smell the kind of drunk that likes
to wander
through the baking streetlamps

and the figure rising from the water

says lend me a mirror

i say no because you’re going to say
this is a dead mother thing
like every other dead mother
thing i fill drawers with: binoculars,
pocket magnifying glass from a sewing kit,
widowed spectacles; which, if you wear,
do feel removed somehow

says let me initiate your sojourn
or whatever it is
you need women to do

i say i’m not looking for healing
i’m not going to try and heal you
no offense

says none taken

i say my secrets are limited to
knowing the moths must be
cold tonight and
it’s slowing them down.

i’m
slowed down.

says you make jokes in the morning

i say yeah

says you’re very intent on staying out of that drawer

i say stranger things are happening

says tell me about it

and brushes her hair with a heron’s beak

i think about cold wings going colder
and my favorite doorways
the ones i had to stop in
to reach back, take the temperature
of the threshold

i say do you mind if i crash here

says i want to hear a joke in the morning

i say me too

and lean into my coat collar
drifting, but thinking
a moth walks into a bar
and can smell the wander on itself.

Nat(e) Fisher is a poet, musician, and educator from rural southern Illinois. He graduated with his MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho-Moscow in 2016 and currently teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University.

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Photo: Wil Amani

las lobas – lisa tellor kelley

April 18, 2019April 13, 2019 ~ davidallenrawson ~ Leave a comment

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Women transform into wolves
and drink Shiraz made from smoke
and blackberries. They cut red
meat close to the bone, untie the forgotten,
strong warriors, burn gentle wild fires
and spread angel bait around before laying
down to sleep. They shelter the young
females from being stunned and eaten
and make them strong. Women

run with wolves and follow
a path straight to their soul
where their spirit connects
and nurtures the earth. With their souls
they listen to their mission
story. They write it

bone against bone, braid it
into hair, intermingle it into their war
cries rippling gentle and stern
from this wild, endangered species

Bio: Lisa is the 2015 State of Illinois Emerging Writer of poetry. Currently, she is a lecturer of English composition at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and teaches creative writing at Lindenwood University Belleville-Illinois. Lisa is the “name giver” of the River Bluff Review journal. She is published in journals such as OVS-Organs of Voice & Speech, River Bluff Review, and Rhino.

Photo: Tahoe Beetschen