August 27, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Barrel Roll”
I am greeted by the same people every day,
until I go home, and I see different apparitions.
I don’t know the man at the tea shop, but he gives me
the same cup of tea and I awkwardly smile,
and thank him without him hearing. It doesn’t matter.
I pass by the bookstore––I never know shop girl’s
life. But I always think they know mine.
When I smile at you, I borrow what is yours,
and turn it into mine. I give it back sometimes,
and I take away what’s yours completely.
Now, so many wrinkles later, I say hello like you.
I wait for my tea to cool, and I remember to drink it.
When I dance, I don’t care if each hair is in its place.
Yet I am not you. We are only each other when apart.
August 26, 2023 - Ellen Zhang’s “So There We Were In Aisle 5”
in some city that neither of us could call home.
Searching for the comfort in craft stores ready to
reimagine all senses. The truth is, we could have
slipped through or gotten lost in any census. Regardless,
we still found ourselves retracing our steps
across: the parking lot, an ocean, leukemia.
Like the way it made me wait, your hair fall out,
a falling out the shade of the spring tides.
The last time you cried, each tear clung to
your eyelashes. Growing back fluffy and right,
but also left. Right, anyways, so untangling my hands
to handle colors of dawn, prescriptions, hospital gowns.
These days, I sift through memories keeping
only the most honest ones: long coffee nights
dawning, EKGs quivering with every breath, color of
wistfulness, coloring friendships not broken but.
Disintegrated. Not knowing what was to pass, we
passed time together. Scattering of tools and craft in the
tranquility garden. Close your eyes: side of your
face drawn. In another life, you are Georges Seurat.
See what I did there, a metaphor in both senses,
the other being the touch of my fingers against
bitten, raw half-moons, wishing myself to be galaxies,
upon a separation of hands. So rather than then.
August 9, 2023 - “Upon the Street Below”
I was walking across 47th Street on a Saturday in July, wearing chinos with a button-up shirt. I was picking up coffee for Elise and myself. I had spent the morning before on the phone with Andrea’s friend, Monica. Monica knew Andrea from college. I knew Monica from work and Andrea through Monica. I had met Andrea three weeks before on a Saturday. That was the end of June. We were on a rooftop in Queens at night.
I had been at the party on the rooftop in Queens at night for an hour, and was on my way out when Monica stopped me. She introduced me to Andrea. We shook hands. I was going home that was all. Andrea asked me about my job, about how long Monica and I had been working together. I said about a year. I said we both worked in financial advising. We were both helping people spend money wisely. Andrea asked me where I stayed in the city. I was living in Brooklyn, she was living in Queens. She stepped away to grab a beer and I thought of walking out the door without saying goodbye. I stayed. She returned.
She said Monica had thought we should meet. I was glad we did. She seemed glad as well. I can’t remember what kept me up on Monica’s roof through the June night so long besides Andrea’s smile. Then it was three, and we were still standing beside each other, and I said I needed to go. She asked that I call. I said that I would.
I woke up the next day to a rainy Sunday, showered, and went out for a sandwich and coffee. The sky was dark. I felt light. I dropped into a small place a few blocks away from my apartment, Michello’s. I stayed for a while. Hector stopped in an hour later. By the time he got there I had already reviewed a few spreadsheets for work with Andrea on my mind. I had ordered another coffee with Andrea on my mind. I had looked out the window at the stormy late June sky with Andrea on my mind.
Hector was meeting me before he went to see Carolyn. I told him about the night before, about the woman I had met. He smiled. He asked when I would see her again. I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know. Two weeks passed.
I worked and went home. I worked and went home again and again. Once on the subway in the evening I sat across from a woman who looked like Andrea. Had I known what to say I would have spoken to her. She stood up and walked out at Canal Street. I moved my briefcase from my lap to the open seat to my left and thought again of Andrea.
The Wednesday after I met Andrea I sat around a chess table in a Hell’s Kitchen park. For an hour I sketched out as best as I could the shape of her face, the nape of her neck, and what I could remember of her smile. Two Saturdays after the night on Monica’s roof I picked up the phone in the den of my apartment and called Andrea. She answered. We both laughed. I asked whether she’d want to meet the next day, Sunday afternoon. She couldn’t. I asked whether she’d like to meet for dinner Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or any evening. She couldn’t.
I went out that night. Hector and Carolyn and Elise and I took the train over into the city and went drinking through the evening. Elise and I had broken up in January. We found a bar with a roof-deck a few blocks south of Washington Square. I sat beside Elise. She had long brown hair and eyes that were a light green. She wore a dress that ended at the top of her knees, a navy blue print with white stripes going diagonal from her left shoulder toward her right knee.
I kissed her. Carolyn and Hector left. Elise came back to Brooklyn with me. We made love. She left in the morning. I heard from her Tuesday and she wanted to get back together. I told her we should meet to talk about it and we did. We got back together.
Elise and I were having fun again. Once we met in Central Park and shared a pitcher of iced tea with a bit of whiskey. We stayed out all afternoon beneath the early July sun. We didn’t leave until the park closed at night. On our way out we stopped for a while beside and beneath a yellow lamppost. We kissed. I had missed her.
One Friday in July I was walking along 47th street and spotted Andrea again. I had spent the night before at Elise’s. I felt fear when I saw Andrea again. I saw her first and she didn’t see me. I kept walking but she looked up then saw me. She called out to me. I stopped and turned around. It was the hottest day of the year. Her hair was in a bun.
I walked over to her and we embraced. I hadn’t seen her since we were on the roof that June night. She asked where I was headed. Two men in big boots, white socks, and jean shorts walked out of a doorway to my right, carrying a large white sofa wrapped in plastic. They walked between us. As they passed I held my words. I said I was headed to grab a coffee. It was ten in the morning. I went west. She headed east and asked that I call sometime.
Two weeks passed. Elise and I went to the Bronx Zoo on a Saturday. She was wearing the same navy summer dress. She laughed at the flamingos and reached for my hand. I asked about her brother. She said he had decided which schools he would apply to, that he might move out east. We took the train back into Midtown. She fell asleep on my shoulder. It was late August.
Hector and I went running on a Thursday after work along the Hudson. He was faster, though I kept up as best as I could. I thought I’d call Monica that weekend. Elise and I stayed in Friday night and didn’t leave her place until Sunday morning. We went to the movies. A woman was having a mental breakdown and looked to her husband for support that he couldn’t give because he was having a mental breakdown as well. They divorced. I drank a ginger ale and wrapped my arm around Elise’s shoulder. When we walked out of the theater it was night.
Elise was thinking of quitting her job. She told me over dinner on a Thursday night in mid-September. She let the glass of red wine hold still against her lips for a while as she paused between sentences, waiting for my words. I didn’t care what she did. For whatever reason I thought of why we broke up in January. She needed promises. Again she asked what I thought and I told her I didn’t know. If she wasn’t happy with her job, then she should look for something else. Two weeks passed.
On a Friday, Monica called me just after I walked out of the office. She was having people over that next night. I was invited. Elise for the weekend was out of town. I showed up around nine, hoping to see Andrea again. She wasn’t there. I spoke with Monica, thanking her for the invite and asking how she had been. Busy she said. We were all busy. We were all in New York in our twenties and thirties and busy.
Monica walked with me down the steps toward the living room, away from the roof. I sat there in the love seat across the coffee table from where she sat on the sofa. Elise was calling me. I didn’t pick up. When she’d return I decided, we’d break up again. Monica got up and poured herself a drink in the kitchen. I followed. Finally there she asked about Andrea. I said I hadn’t spoken with her. Monica was leaning against the refrigerator and looking out over the island that faced the living room. It was late. Most everyone had gone home. I told Monica I would like to see Andrea again sometime and she said she would set something up. I left and walked home toward the train through the night.
I only left one blazer and button-up shirt at Elise’s after I gathered my things from her place. We were through. I called Andrea again the moment I returned from Elise’s for the last time. It was the third week of September and I let the windows in my bedroom wide open. The late summer wind blew in. She answered. She’d love to meet sometime. We set a date for the next Friday. The week went fast.
At 8:00pm on the 28th day of September I was waiting outside La Primavera Cafe on Elizabeth Street wearing navy chinos with a light grey blazer over a white button-up shirt. Andrea arrived at five after. We went inside. We sat near the window. We talked and talked and talked: about the first night we met, about her and Monica in college, about what would happen if the world ran out of green apples. I didn’t know whether I was falling in love with her. After dinner we walked north along Broadway for a while. The taxis’ headlights moved toward us then away from us. I held her hand. We found a quiet place for coffee not far from Cooper Union. We sat inside listening to the conversations around us. It was nice just being near her without speaking. Elise called me the next day, and the Sunday following, and the Monday and Tuesday afterwards as well. I called back and she didn’t answer.
Monica and Andrea and I had dinner at Monica’s place in Queens, the three of us and Monica’s brother, Stanley. Stanley was in from Cleveland. He worked in accounting and was in the city on business. He and I were washing dishes a long while after Monica and Andrea had finished cooking and the four of us had eaten the steak frites and steamed vegetables. I was washing and rinsing and he was drying. He asked me about Andrea, whether we were an item and I said I didn’t know yet. He smiled. He said be careful with her.
Two nights later Andrea asked me over to her apartment to have dinner with her and her friend, Chloe. And Stanley would be there as well. I showed up around eight with a bottle of wine I had never heard of. Andrea buzzed me up and answered the door. We embraced. Stanley was strewn across her sofa, his pant legs rolled up, the buttons of his shirt undone, presenting his chest. It was mid-October. He stood up and shook my hand. His boss needed him to stay in New York for a while longer. He had been sleeping on Andrea’s couch. He got up, moved toward the stereo, asked whether I enjoyed classical, and played a bit of Verklarte Nacht on a compact disc.
Andrea’s friend Chloe arrived a few moments later. She sat beside me on the couch. Andrea and Stanley were in the kitchen. Chloe knew Andrea from work. Chloe had heard so much about me. Chloe had heard so many good things about me from Andrea. Chloe asked whether I smoked and if I did would I like to join her on the balcony. I didn’t but said I would join her. Chloe was tall. Five feet nine inches with black hair to the length of her shoulders. Though it was in the mid-forties that night, she was wearing a summer dress.
Chloe had a denim jacket around her shoulders when she walked in but left it on the table near the sofa. We looked out over the balcony. We couldn’t see much aside from the street directly below and the apartment building across the way. We looked into the neighbor’s window and she asked me how I met Andrea. On a rooftop in Queens in June I told her. She dropped and stomped out her cigarette then reached into her purse for another one. Stanley walked into the living room behind us and said that he needed help. I’ll let you smoke I said to Chloe, and went back inside.
Elise was calling me. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and picked it up then hung it up. She called again and I let it ring to voicemail. She left a message that I deleted without listening to. I pulled the vegetable lasagna from the oven and set it on the counter beside the bread maker. Stanley said he’d open the wine then moved to the living room with a corkscrew and did. Chloe stepped into the room again before drifting toward the kitchen. We all had wine and lasagna. Stanley asked whether any of us liked classical and moved toward the stereo. He pulled the Verklarte Nacht out and replaced it with a Wagner piece. He smiled and joined us again in the kitchen. After dinner we all went out to a bar that had just opened a few steps away from Andrea’s.
Through the night I walked alongside Chloe as Stanley and Andrea took steps beside one another. They were just ahead of us. Chloe said she designed clothes but couldn’t find enough clients to open her own store. I asked what type of clothes she made. Women’s clothing, all types. She said she made the dress she was wearing. It was a pale yellow and sleeveless, of a length that went just past her knees. I said I liked it because I did. Andrea said this is the place and looked back at me and Chloe. Stanley showed his ID and went in. We all did the same. It was loud.
We made our way to the bar. Chloe stood to my left, Stanley stood to my right, and Andrea stood to Stanley’s right. Stanley ordered drinks for the four of us. Everything was poured and handed out. He gave the bartender two twenty dollar bills. We said a cheers. Stanley dove in to asking me whether I preferred the Verklarte Nacht to the Wagner. I said I didn’t know and yelled that it was hard to decide beneath the music that was already playing at the bar. Chloe laughed. Stanley said that he used to prefer Wagner ––– above all other composers ––– but that over the last year he’s fallen out of favor with Wagner’s work. I didn’t care.
Andrea and Chloe excused themselves and headed toward the bathroom. Then there I was, with Stanley. He said not to worry about he and Andrea. That they had something years ago but it was cool now. We stayed for two more drinks. Along with the wine I felt drunk. We stepped out into the night around two in the morning. Andrea said Stanley was crashing at her place and that Chloe and I were welcome to join. Chloe said she’d take a taxi back to Brooklyn. She suggested we share a ride. Andrea said she’d call the next day.
Inside the cab Chloe leaned against my shoulder. I placed my arm around her. She said she’d like to see me again. Together over the Pulaski Bridge we watched Manhattan pass by across the East River, the Empire State Building lit in a deep orange, and the Queensboro Bridge with white lights, delicate and bright behind us.
I called Andrea three nights later. I heard Stanley in the background. I think I heard Brahms as well though it’s hard to be sure. She said I should call her again over the weekend, that the four of us should meet again soon.
I met Hector and Carolyn for dinner after work the Wednesday before Halloween. They asked whether I had plans for the weekend. I didn’t. I invited Andrea to Hector’s that Saturday night. She said she couldn’t make it. She said one of Stanley’s old friends was having a reunion, and that it would be okay if I joined.
I went to Hector’s and Carolyn’s party with Chloe. She was Albert Einstein. I was Albert Einstein’s research assistant. She ordered me around all evening. We laughed and went home together for the first time that night. In and around her apartment, Chloe and I spent the next afternoon talking, reading, drinking wine, and all the while waiting for the winter storm. The trains stopped running. Through the evening it snowed twelve inches in four hours. And for a while we sat out there on the fire escape, just beside her bed, watching the snowflakes. Quietly they landed and gently they collected upon the street below.
August 5, 2023 - Ashley Falla’s “why is this a conversation babe”
oh everyone has childhood trauma! even me — of course not that one,
that one
the really really bad one,
the really bad one
i just have a little bit of the abandonment trauma and a sprinkle of the middle school bully trauma, what about you?
me
oh
oh
— that one — i’m sorry…you know you never could have guessed, you seem so — i don’t want to say well adjusted
so don’t
but, yeah, very well adjusted.
that’s cool
July 18, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Places You Marked”
_______
In the hallway of a shut off feeling, beneath my thought
of you, there is another dim passage. More to know
than to feel when I put on the gown of attachment.
I’m pulled by something, but it’s gone by the time
I arrive. It’s so faux like a picture, everything stays
in its own place. I was sold the idea of tearful smiles,
and I laughed through the absence to make it true.
I was sold for the pink warmth of womanhood, love
words that watered the plant of a person. I am still,
warm, heated with the same burnt anger, like the color
of desert sand when it gets into your eyes. Just see––
Don’t try to remove the distance. It’s clear now,
suddenly the light is enough when I walk behind
the moon. You walk behind me, but we come back in circles.
July 15, 2023 - “You brought up a flask of whiskey so we could drink beneath the freezing moon”
_______
There were fire engine red shutters on the windows of the house next door. They’d glow in the warmth of the yellow lights above the house’s garage. We knew Charlie Floyd lived there with his three daughters: 10, 12 and 17.We didn’t know Shelia Floyd. We didn’t know why she was never there.
Your aunt said something happened to Shelia and it was Shelia’s own fault. Your aunt said Shelia had been sent away but sometimes they’d let her out. For Christmas and things like that, maybe her birthday in late September. I remember we were up on our roof one night last December. The Floyd girls were outside and hitting a ball against the house’s garage beneath those shutters. It made this sound that was at once loud but also soft and soothing, one heavy thud after another. Again and again. You brought a flask of whiskey up so we could drink beneath the freezing moon. Then Shelia’s car pulled into the driveway. She cut the headlights but kept the engine running. We could hear her screaming.
She was telling the girls to get in, get in the fuckin’ car —- get in, now. They did. She put the headlights back on and slammed the gas, reversing —- it didn’t matter. Then Charlie Floyd came running outside and screaming too. He was in his robe. It was crazy. You passed me the flask again. I took a long sip and passed it back to you.
July 13, 2023 - East River - Fall 2021
July 14, 2023 - Broadway (BK) - Fall 2021
Anita Brookner’s - A Friend from England - July 12, 2023
Anita Brookner’s A Friend From England is a cautionary tale. Maybe you know him, or her, or them —- that one friend who keeps at a distance; the one who, at any moment, might boil over in a rage and judgment-filled lecture about your life-choices, as well as those life-choices of everyone around you.
Brookner’s 1989 novel explores the pseudo-friendship between thirty-something Rachel Kennedy and the twenty-seven-year old Hannah Livingston; who finds herself faced with at least three decisions: when to wed, who to wed, and what to do for work.
Even though Rachel isn’t that keene on getting to know Hannah —- and Hannah’s less than interested in spending time with Rachel, Hannah’s parents, who’ve helped Rachel with accounting for a bookstore that she runs — have invited Rachel —- a woman who has kept mostly to herself and lives alone —- into their family circle. They’ve made these efforts, at least in part, in hopes that Rachel can help their daughter navigate these impending decisions, and then in essence, launch.
The caution and hesitancy with which Rachel speaks parallels the deliberate and careful manner in which Brookner wrote this novel. Nearly every sentence is explored for its authenticity, then either confirmed and expounded upon — or retracted, and explained away. For example:
The weather put a stop to all my activities. Every evening I got into bed earlier and earlier. It was as if I were travelling backwards, back into childhood. I slept voraciously and was aware of dreaming copiously, although I always forgot my dreams as soon as I awoke. In any event, those dreams were of no consequence to me or of interest to anyone else.
An image from René Chandler’s “New Friend Love” series
- July 11, 2023
“Plum Blossom”
-Hongbo Tan - July 9, 2023
After a recent move, while unpacking, I noticed a carefully-wrapped package inside an old cardboard box. Ripping off its layers of yellowed paper, I saw a white enameled mug sparkling as brightly as when it was first presented to me years ago when I was still in China, a gift from a peasant girl I knew for only a few days in a hospital - a mental institute to be exact.
That was 1971, and we were in Fengshui, a small town in the south, far away from the political center of Beijing. The Cultural Revolution was in its fifth year. Colleges and universities had just begun to reopen after being closed, but instead of admission by scores in the national college entrance exam, students were now selected from workers, peasants and soldiers. Proletarian consciousness far outweighed academic competence. I was among the first such students to enter the Teacher’s College of Fengshui.
It was summer break. I was one of the last to leave campus; I had volunteered to close down our dorm to give others more time to travel home. My family was close by, but my college mates came from all over the district, some having to travel for days.
While I was walking through rows of bunk beds to collect trash, Administrator Wang rushed in and asked if I could accompany a girl to the hospital, a girl from the math department who had suddenly fallen ill. Her name was Mei, “Plum Blossom” in Chinese. Administrator Wang was in charge of student affairs. A big bear of a man, he was well-liked and was ready to extend a helping hand whenever one of us students needed it. He even walked me to the dorm one evening when I returned to the campus too late from a home visit, to make sure I got in safely.
I followed him outside and saw two male students and Mei already waiting. Her hair uncombed and a bit messy, Mei looked more distraught than sick, which was a relief to me as I had trouble seeing the very sick. The hospital where my mother worked as a gynecologist had more than its share of them. Each time I passed through to get to our living quarters, I had to look the other way to spare myself the sight.
The four of us set off without delay. Mei and I walked in front, while the two young men followed close behind. Passing through the campus gate, I turned to the right in the direction of my mother’s hospital, the best the city had to offer. “Wrong, Kiddo!” the young man in charge shouted from behind me. I was sixteen, while my peers were already in their early twenties. Since I was the youngest on campus, older students dubbed me the “Kid” or “Kiddo.”
I had to admit that my presence in this college was a “freak accident.” The Cultural Revolution had forced the shutdown of China’s entire higher education systems from 1966 to 1970, during which middle school graduates were sent to the countryside to receive “re-education” from the peasants, or sent to the factories or the army if they came from proletarian families. By the time colleges reopened four years later, all of those graduates were in their late teens or early twenties. I was one of the few exceptions.
Strictly speaking, I was not a peasant, worker or soldier. The reason I was here could be traced back to an overheard lesson. One summer evening right before the Cultural Revolution was about to hit us in the south, my grandfather, who had made education his life’s mission, was showing my youngest aunt how Pinyin, the phonetic spelling of Chinese characters, could be used to learn the English alphabet. Always curious, I moved closer to listen. Even though he had migrated to the city as a young man, Grandpa had not changed his village accent a bit. The funny foreign sounds, mingled with his country accent, stuck in my memory and made the English exam I took upon my graduation a breeze.
That was most fortunate because at our middle school, our core curriculum consisted of visiting factories, digging bomb shelters in preparation for the escalation of border disputes with the Soviet Union, learning to grow vegetables and sweet potatoes in neighboring communes, and marching and drilling like little red soldiers. Books other than Mao’s and revolutionary pamphlets were locked up and forbidden. The last thing any self-preserving teachers dared to focus on was academics.
After graduation from middle school, at age fifteen, I was sent to the countryside to build roads - shoveling in the mountains and carrying soil in two bamboo baskets under a shoulder pole. There was no such thing as choosing your own high school or career. The state made those decisions and assigned you to positions they deemed necessary.
It just happened that at around the same time Mao began exploring normalization with the United States to counter-balance the Russians. After Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China, English suddenly became important, replacing Russian as the sole foreign language to be taught in all schools. Since I scored a perfect 100 on that exam, consisting mostly of the English alphabet, after only six months in the countryside, I was reassigned and sent to the Teachers’ College to be trained as an English teacher. Thus, I skipped years of physical labor. Grandpa’s devotion to education had helped prepare me, but timing and luck were certainly on my side.
The young man who shouted at me turned left and led us in the opposite direction, away from the city and into the mountains. Our campus was already on the outskirts of the city. There were no other buildings beyond us except for a mental hospital several miles away, which had recently gained national fame for its innovative use of acupuncture combined with group sessions on ideology and self-criticism.
Outside of the city, public transportation was non-existent. Roads were generally rough paths, unlevel and dusty. I was surprised that the road leading to the mental hospital was smooth and evenly paved with asphalt. Once in a while, an army vehicle would pass by, but we were the only pedestrians. We walked silently. Mei was quiet, too. She was tall and powerfully built. Years of physical labor had left unmistakable marks on her calloused hands and masculine shoulders. Yet she appeared placid and gentle. I humored myself that I must have had a calming effect on her. The two young men walking behind apparently knew what was going on with Mei, but neither bothered to tell me. I did not ask any questions, but just kept walking. There was no need to feed their sense of seniority.
After a long and intense walk, we reached a gated facility at the foot of a hill. Inside the gate, canopies of tall trees shaded single-story buildings. Evergreen bushes and flowers of bright colors framed their exteriors, and brick paths connected one building to the other. Nurses in white rushed in and out. The young man in charge of our group got hold of a nurse and asked for directions. We were sent to the main building. Once there, I was told to wait in the hall while the two took Mei to the registration window. She was then ushered into a room down the hall, apparently the doctor’s office.
After what felt like hours of waiting, the head young man returned to fetch me. I followed him to another building and into a room with two rows of beds. Mei was already there, settled into one corner. The young man told me that she had to be in the hospital for observation, and I needed to stay with her until her family was notified. He assured me that Administrator Wang had already sent someone to her village, but it was remote, and it would take several days for a relative to arrive. As if reading my mind, the young man said that there was a store inside the facility. I could get a toothbrush there. Food coupons for the two of us and a bed for me next to Mei were already arranged. All I needed to do was to stay with my ward. One of them would come tomorrow and take me on a quick trip back to campus, where I could shower and bring back a change of clothing. Before long, he said, I would be home. He was reasonable and I could not argue with him.
Still in the dark as to the exact nature of her illness, I reconciled myself to the unknown. These “adults” seemed to want to shelter me from something. Still, Mei’s quiet suffering had already earned my sympathy. After the two men left, I brought her to the cafeteria. We took long walks on the hospital grounds after lunch and dinner. She was quiet and kept her thoughts to herself. I kept quiet, too. When it was time for bed, we went back to our room, shared with several other patients and their caretakers, and I went to bed with my clothes on.
I was awakened next morning by the loudspeaker playing “The East is Red, the Sun Rises, and China has brought forth Mao Zedong,” a typical regimen to break the day. I looked at my watch. It was only 5:30. I got up quickly, like everyone else in the room, and made sure my ward was up and dressed, too. A nurse soon came and led the roomful of us to a meeting hall in an adjacent building.
Others were already there. As soon as we sat down on our designated wooden benches, a middle-aged man in a faded army uniform approached the podium. In his right hand was the “Little Red Book” - Quotations from Chairman Mao. He waved that hand high in the air and shouted, “Long Live Chairman Mao! Long Live the Proletariat! Down with the Bourgeoisie!” On cue, we stood up, waved our right fists, and began shouting after him. This went on for a few minutes. I was relieved that we did not have to do the loyalty dance as in the earlier days, in which young and old alike would wave their hands and kick their feet high in the air to show loyalty to Chairman Mao. Those dances had always embarrassed me.
When we sat down again, the man on the podium opened up his “Little Red Book” and began reading in a deep and reverential voice: “Because we are here to serve the people, we should not be afraid of being criticized. If what they say is right, we should correct and improve. If what they propose benefits the people, we should adapt and implement.” He continued with a few more readings. After that, we were told to stand up again and repeat after him. Fifteen minutes later, we were dismissed for morning exercises and breakfast.
At breakfast, I overheard the nurses whispering excitedly among themselves that the Fifth Golden Flower was back and would be joining the morning self-criticism session. “Whose group will she be in?” one of the nurses asked. “Mine, in Room 15.” This was the same nurse who led us to the meeting hall. I could barely contain my excitement. The Fifth Golden Flower was the most beautiful and beloved movie star, if China had ever called an actress a star in those days. How on earth would she come down all the way from her end of the world to this hospital? Had she, too, had some sort of a mental breakdown?
The Fifth Golden Flower was the heroine of the movie “The Five Golden Flowers,” a musical so popular that even my grandmother could sing its theme song, “By the Butterfly Spring.” Set in Dali of Yunnan, one of China’s most scenic and ethnically diverse provinces, and in the period of the Great Leap Forward, the movie tells the story of Ah Peng, a young Bai man in search of his love, a girl he meets on his way to a horse race. A young woman, driving a tractor loaded with young girls, is stranded with a broken wheel on their way to the same race. Ah Peng jumps off his horse and fixes the wheel for the driver. Falling for each other, the two decide to meet next year at the same time and place. In his rush to get to the race on time, Ah Peng forgets to ask the girl for her full name, - he just knows she is called Golden Flower. When Golden Flower does not show up the following year, Ah Peng begins to search for her, unaware that Golden Flower is a common name for girls in that area. After many mishaps and four Golden Flowers later, Ah Peng finally finds the fifth Golden Flower, his love from the roadside.
The movie was released in 1959 and won the best actress and best director awards at some international film festivals, but was banned during the Cultural Revolution for promoting bourgeois romance. Leading the attack was none other than Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, who had been a B-list actress herself prior to joining Mao’s revolution, and was famous for her insatiable jealousy and deadly vengeance. The actress who played the Fifth Golden Flower became the natural victim. Suddenly, China’s most beloved movie star was a counter-revolutionary and an enemy of the people. She disappeared from the public overnight, and her real-life Ah Peng left her.
The next morning, after walking Mei to her meeting room at 8:30, I sneaked into Room 15 to get a glimpse of the beautiful Golden Flower. What I saw shocked me. Instead of that willowy young girl in bright-colored Bai costume, I saw a stocky woman in a tight burgundy shirt - a shirt that obviously could not accommodate her weight gain. Her face, though still beautiful, had barely a hint of her former sparkle.
One by one, members of her group discussed how they had cleansed themselves of their selfish thoughts after studying such and such quotations from the “Little Red Book.” How terribly wrong of them when they had so wrapped themselves in their own thoughts, while peasants were toiling in the soil and workers were sweating in front of furnaces to provide for them.
When it came to her turn, the Fifth Golden Flower read a quotation from Mao in Mandarin, with each character clearly enunciated. Like the fifth Golden Flower in the movie, she, too, was of Bai ethnicity and normally spoke a Bai dialect. At a reception held in her honor, Premier Zhou Enlai had encouraged her to learn Mandarin - he had heard that her lines in the movie were voiced over. Apparently the fifth Golden Flower had taken the Premier’s counsel to heart. She then described how fearful she was of the needles during acupuncture, the institute’s revolutionary miracle cure. It was Mao’s quotations, she emphasized, that helped her overcome those fears. She recited one of the quotations on the spot: “Be determined, not afraid of sacrifices, overcome all obstacles to win victory.” A chill suddenly hit me. The contrast between the Fifth Golden Flower in the movie and in person was too much. There was not a single thread left of her former vivacity and free spirits. I could bear no more and slipped quietly out.
In the meanwhile, at the Teachers’ College, somebody must have reached out to a certain young man, the platoon leader of Mei’s department. He came to visit us, as handsome and refined as Mei was sturdy. Her spirit lifted upon seeing him: a smile appeared on her impassive face, something acupuncture had failed to achieve. “Mei, you are finally blossoming,” I teased her, playing on her name. “Thank you!” Her face turned a crimson red. A few days later, Mei’s father arrived to take her home. Before leaving, Mei and her father insisted that I accept that big bright white mug, an expensive gift for a peasant family.
I’ve learned that Mei broke down badly when the handsome platoon leader left her for home without making any good-bye. They had been spending a lot of time together and reached a stage beyond just friendship. I did not know all the details, but I was simply thrilled that things worked out between the two of them. Campus romances were forbidden in those days, but instead of getting kicked out, as was the norm for breaking the rule, Mei and the handsome young man were discreetly married, a miracle possible only in a far-away town during a quiet summer break. Perhaps Administrator Wang, with his big heart, while carefully skirting the politics of the day, was able to engineer a happy ending.
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June 1, 2023 - It’s all hazy now
May 31, 2023 - The water tower was always there
Curlew Daily - May 28, 2023 - A Conversation with Christina Geoghegan - interview by Elizabeth Lerman
When presented with Christina’s artwork, I was immediately struck by her use of shadow, structure and light. Her prints have the ability to pull a viewer in and prod them to think deeper about what, exactly, they are seeing. Consciously centered around subtle moments of solitude and contemplation, and what it means to capture them, Christina’s Nightscapes series straddles the line of light and dark, hidden and exposed, seen and unseen, studying the spaces in between.
With dedicated attention towards color, posing and linework, Christina creates a series of delicate but daring images, all of which seem to show the duality of human strength and softness. Here, we talked to Christina about her series, exploring her intentions, inspirations and techniques alongside some of my own unavoidable rambling.
- Elizabeth Lerman
Christina: Hi.
Curlew: Hi How are you?
Christina: Good thanks, how are you? Can you hear me okay?
Curlew: I can hear you. Can you hear me?
Christina: Yeah, I just put you on speaker. Where did you go for a nice walk? It's raining here in Ireland.
Curlew: It's been a remarkably sunny past couple of days, I'm in Brooklyn, New York and Spring hit all of a sudden but I'm kind of jealous of your rain, I was supposed to be in Ireland around this time but my trip got pushed.
Christina: Oh, what brings you to Ireland?
Curlew: I've always had a fascination with the literary side of things there. It's where some of my first favorite writers were from, so it's been on my list. I would really love to go to the Trinity Library.
Christina: You've probably done your research for the best places to go for literature in Dublin, if you're staying in Dublin.
Curlew: I definitely want to stay in Dublin and then I think about renting a car and doing some countryside driving.
Christina: Ah, so you're here for a while then?
Curlew: I think it would definitely be at least a week. My roommate is a travel itinerary queen so she's been working hard on that for us.
Christina: Nice, nice. I usually take the same role so I was going to suggest anyone with more than two or three days in Ireland should get out of Dublin.
Curlew: Definitely on my to-do list. I'll text you for recommendations when I finally do it.
Christina: Oh do, absolutely. It's probably a good thing that you weren't here at this time because honestly I don't think you'd enjoy driving for hours in the rain, but it'd be very authentic I'd say.
Curlew: Yeah, right, that's the experience.
Christina: Yeah, you go with your raincoat and five layers, that's the experience.
Curlew: I can come home and say I really did Ireland then.
Christina: True. I've never been to America.
Curlew: Oh really?
Christina: Yeah, I have family in parts of Connecticut, so I need to take a trip over there.
Curlew: Oh, I'm from Connecticut, that's where I grew up.
Christina: Oh, no way. What part of Connecticut?
Curlew: Stamford, like 45-50 minutes from the city.
Christina: My cousin is renting near Hartford, between Hartford and Springfield so I'll have to go there at some stage.
Curlew: Yeah definitely, we can swap.
Christina: That's a good idea.
Curlew: All right. Should we dive into your work?
Christina: Sure.
Curlew: I really enjoyed them and I keep talking about them so Isaac thought I should probably just do this interview. I don't have an absurd number of questions. I have a couple of personal questions, just about inspiration and context.
So my first, okay, well you might just have to humor me for a second - I am not tech savvy, so I was wondering if you could somewhat, like in layman's terms, explain the process for these images, like how you start-to- finish create them
Christina: Inspiration or more of the technical aspect?
Curlew: If you want to go over technical first then I definitely have some more artistic inspiration questions. But I think technically I'm fascinated, so if you want to share that, that'd be awesome.
Christina: Okay, so I'd usually, I mean, we'll go to the inspiration later but it's kind of part of the process, but it's more just observing, kind of those liminal spaces, you know, at the bus stop, someone waiting in a waiting room, you know, in queue somewhere, and you know, their expression is no longer kind of engaged with the world, they're either absorbed in their phone, or in their own world.
And those moments are fascinating, considering just being the city, you're always kind of alert and things like that, so seeing those moments is quite fascinating and from there really either they're photographs I've taken or photographs that I've looked for on the internet that kind of are parallel to the postures and facial expressions and the poses and of what I've kind of seen around me in those moments of those moments of pausing and from there, I just kind of sketch it out, upload it onto illustrator and then use a pen, really, to create the line work and fill in the color.
Curlew: Wow. Okay. Awesome. So there's a couple for me, the two kind of "neck heavy" shots of those necks straining up reminded me so much of the Man Ray photographs of Lee Miller. Have you seen that?
Christina: Yes, the long neck shots, where they're reaching out. It's very lovely to be compared or even reminiscent of any Lee Miller, so thank you.
Curlew: I think it reminds me of a similar like, kind of what you were saying, this uncanny moment where people become a little bit disembodied. I thought, like the way that you played with light and kind of like focused on, hmm - the way you block out eyes was interesting to me because it makes the viewer kind of forced to focus on something else in the image, and I think what I really liked was the way it kind of sharpens these pieces and and disembodies the person as a whole, it breaks them down to these parts a little bit and I think hearing you say that it kind of came out of these moments where people themselves are feeling a little disembodied, that's really interesting.
Christina: All right, interesting comparison there. It kind of came back to some old work - I've been doing art since I was four, on a pretty regular basis but I think every artist goes through different phases while they try different styles and while I've never really attempted printing, I did take a lot of influence from the visuals element of that in process or a moment years ago, where I did kind of imitate the visuals of print and it kind of came around full circle, so there was a few kind of sources to this, and one of those series came back around, it was more of the moonlight revealing the posture, the true self, you know, it's where they are expressing themselves when they think no one is looking.
Curlew: Right.
Christina: And that was now kind of explored in Dublin cuz you don't really get the same intensity of moonlight, like I'm from the countryside so you really would get that moonlight in the window. But here you get street lights, hence the choice of color.
Curlew: Right.
Christina: And so being very alert and active all day and projecting in a way and assimilating into different environments constantly, versus when the person is alone in their own space, that's when their true emotions come out, positive or negative, there's this kind of this sigh of relief, that breath and - are you familiar with the works of Steve McCurry?
Curlew: Oh, I'm not. Let me Google now, hold on, let's see. Oh yes, visually I am. I wouldn't have known him by name, but yes.
Christina: Yeah, it's probably one of the more profound photographers with the gaze, really intensifies it and I saw these prints as massive, massive prints, god probably back in 2010 here in a photography exhibition in Dublin, and just the idea that you get such so much communication, just from the eyes, if you revert from that and kind of close off the eyes, you're suddenly experiencing as a viewer, this intense moment, but you can never fully understand it because you're closed off from that.
Curlew: Yeah, I know one of the pieces is called or labeled as "fragment", but I think I kept thinking of all of them as these kind of like wonderfully - I think the way that you use the color, they kind of range from really sharp to soft.
The one entitled “fragment” I loved. The way that slice - it either reminded me of like a knife or a lightning strike or like a mirror sliver and I think it's fascinating because we know it's the part of light catching a face but to kind of find a face in that sliver is a really interesting task and I think the shadow work from there on, like even the way parts of the body or the face aren't connecting, it really makes you wonder what's being reflected onto them, so your point about like Moonlight versus Street Lamp is so interesting.
The color totally makes sense to me now, and I think that that's like such an interesting move from that kind of a rural space to a city. Do you think your work kind of changed and transformed when you moved, or was it just like taking inspiration from different things that were around you?
Christina: I would definitely say it's probably the latter, I would take inspiration from the environment I'm in, so in the countryside a lot of landscapes, print in the grass, use the Earth, the rain and the soil, really, and the wind to influence the direction of the spray paint for landscapes. But then, in the city and a smaller space without storage for art or the studio space, you're suddenly filled with ideas and influence, and you think, oh, I've got all these ideas, I want to write them down so I can maybe do them later but that's why digital kind of came about here because it was a way to get those ideas out of my head and express what I was seeing.
Curlew: Right, awesome. I also was wondering about, so specifically, the titles of some of these pieces - do you end up naming all of your pieces or do they just kind of, like come if they come? Because I know as a writer if a title doesn't come to me, I really cannot force it.
Christina: Absolutely. So, a lot of the times as I'm doing the piece a title will come, but I love reading, so you'll notice a lot of the titles are quotes from songs, from literature, things like that.
Curlew: Yeah, I love that. I noted the Miyazaki quote.
Christina: Yeah, absolutely. A big inspiration also, not seeing the eyes, you know that there is a portrait by [Rene] Magritte where there's someone staring into a mirror standing in a living room in front of a mantelpiece over a fireplace looking at a large mirror and what's reflected is their back so they don't see their reflection and that was an inspiration for that piece with the quote by Miyazaki, just seeing the back of head, really.
Curlew: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. I was thinking like, because I had those Man Ray neck images in my head I was really associating your work with The Uncanny and surrealism, and I think - have you ever flipped through any of Gregory Crewdson's photographs?
Christina: Name rings a bell, but I'm just looking it up now.
Curlew: If you haven't, you totally should. He does, like, they're very different visually than what your works are, but the idea of capturing someone when they think, you know, they're not meant to be seen or no one else is watching.
Christina: Oh, like Edward Hopper in a way.
Curlew: Yeah, to me Gregory Crewdson is like the photographer version of David Lynch, he's great at capturing that like, disembodied spookiness almost, that comes with seeing something we shouldn't be seeing or having someone be unaware that they're being, you know, surveilled or watched.
Christina: Yeah, it's fascinating because in photography, you've got those old videos, some of the very first videos, people are kind of ignoring the camera so to try and capture anything of that authenticity is quite hard, whether it's posed or even to imitate authenticity is quite, it's quite the challenge.
Curlew: Yeah, this is kind of a side track but I just finished reading a book, fiction, about this photographer and his daughter who's his subject and there's this ongoing kind of debate of his best photos of her because no one can tell whether she consented to being photographed because they're so, kind of, voyeuristic and there's this kind of moral debate.
But it made me think about how hard it is to pose people like they're not supposed to know they're being photographed. Or even drawn, you know, I see people sketching other people on the subway all the time and I always think oh, the minute the person realizes they're being drawn, something in them is going to shift.
So I think that pureness before the realization is awesome. It's just so untainted and then the minute we realize we're being viewed or taken in our entire manner changes.
Christina: That reminds me of something - do you know the photographer Gordon Parks? I love his documentary work, his documentary photographs and, you know, there's a huge amount of I dunno, I feel empathy and identity.
There's one series he did about a group in the inner city and there's a photograph where somebody is hiding in the shadows and looking out onto the streets and the idea that, you know, the light plays such a like nuance, it's unsubtle, the light is no safer than the darkness, so they're exposed, similarly here, the person is exposed in the light but in the night, they're, you know, they can express themselves and be themselves, but the same time they're disappearing into that.
Curlew: Right. Yeah, I think anything that kind of like takes the body and disconnects it [Dog Barking] Oh my God. I'm so sorry. That's my dog.
Christina: What kind?
Curlew: She's like a golden retriever-dachshund mix, she's so short but then she's like this thick sausage body.
Christina: Oh yes.
Curlew: I have a friend here from Dublin and I looked in his fridge the other day and he was clearly planning on making like a full Irish breakfast, really going all out, so he had all these sausages in his fridge and I was like, every single one of these meats looks like my dog's body.
Christina: Did you end up eating the breakfast?
Curlew: I didn't, it wasn't for me. But I have enjoyed one in the past and they're delightful.
Christina: When you're over here I'll give plenty of tips, you probably got a lot from your housemate, but we love our bread here, our sourdough and our cheese is top notch.
Curlew: Yes don't be surprised if I berate you for tips and ideas. I definitely will.
Christina: No problem.
Curlew: Okay, awesome. All right, back to this. So my questions are much more conversational than direct, but this is exactly what I wanted. I just wanted to hear your ideas behind what you were making and it's interesting to listen to you tell me something that I had my, you know, own hypothesis on and kind of like almost perceived Inspirations, like I know what your work reminded me of, but it's interesting to hear who you consider an inspiration.So you've obviously mentioned a few along the way, but do you have like, I don't know, like three to five real favorite visual artists or writers, anything that has kind of like continuously inspired you?
Christina: Oh, that is really hard.
Curlew: I know. Okay, specifically maybe for this series - what you were working with?
Christina: Well, I think there's so much different, as you say while you're writing you come up with titles or things like that, and there's so many moments in the process and things that you have forgotten about or didn't even know you're thinking about suddenly come to you, so if you don't mind, I'll probably add a musician into the mix as well because it's definitely something I listened to a lot while these ideas come, so I would say, Magritte, an artist, Ludovico Einaudi, a musician, and then, hmm such a hard question. Let me think out loud. Can I come back to it?
Curlew: Yeah, get back to me. I'll be sensitive because I've been asked questions like this and I'm like a movie and book person, so people are like favorite movies, favorite authors and I could give you five from each genre and sub-genre, like it's the worst question I know.
Christina: Exactly. Oh, oh here's one - Richard Linklater, Before Sunrise
Curlew: Oh, gorgeous.
Christina: Its expression, its nonverbal communication. So many forms of language there, it's beautiful. So Richard Linklater, Ludovico Einaudi, Magritte - tough, tough, tough, let's go for an author here. Oh - I'll definitely go with Toulouse-Lautrec in terms of an artist, the intensity of the lines there, the color, there's something dancing, so expressive, but oh a writer, hmm, what am I reading at the moment?
Curlew: Oh, good question.
Christina: Let's see, I'm reading like four books.
Curlew: I'm always reading four things at a time.
Christina: Anyway, I'll text you my final five.*
Curlew: You can absolutely text them to me, that sounds good. Okay, I think I only had one other question. So I think this is kind of going back to the like purposeful covering of the eyes.
I really liked the way you had different methods of making sure they were covered in terms of like eyes closed, face arched up, the hands covering, that one struck me because it was the only one to me that seemed to maybe involve a second subject and now that I'm looking at it again, it could be like that the same hands that belong to the body, but I think that one is so surreal and eerie because the way the hands are posed, it reads like they're coming up from behind this person.
So that one specifically stood out to me and I was just curious to see whether you had an intent in your mind, you know, like what that image is saying or where that kind of idea came from.
Christina: So, it's very funny you picked that up, because that has been the most controversial one and has really started some very heated debates about how I represented the meaning behind it.
So the meaning behind it is in that "blind pursuit", while it is open for interpretation in the positioning of the hands and the similar color application it could be there physically, so the idea is that you're holding yourself back in a way, like this could be anything that's holding you back and you might look to something around you to hold you back or it could be yourself or it could be someone else. Like it's your perception of what's holding you back and it's that blind pursuit, so that you can move forward.
So that was it, that was a really tricky one and when I did it, when I go through a series of work or style over the years, I do create borders and I create rules, and I step over the line sometimes, but I'd stay within them to create a visual language and so my work can look quite different from one series to another, but with this one, I stuck with the rules of keeping the same pallets and line work, so the idea that was metaphorical later becomes a topical point, I guess, because it's, they're not real in a way but at the same time they're physically there.
Curlew: Right, yeah, that's interesting. Hearing you say that as I look at it, I almost think what I said first is maybe the point, like where your mind goes in terms of feeling, maybe like attacked by yourself, you would go like, you know, those are my hands, they belong to me, and if you're feeling victimized or attacked by an outside force, it would be really easy to see them coming from behind, so I think that interpretation based on where you're coming from mentally is really interesting. I can see why there's a lot of discussion around that piece.
Christina: Yeah, whether to change the color, make them semi-translucent, or to position them so there's less ambiguity. That was an interesting one because with the blind pursuit the idea is that there's this surge of energy that you have, pulling yourself forward and responding to it, but at the same time you don't get there, or if there's something that doesn't allow you quite reach that moment.
Curlew: Yeah, I love that imagery. It's also nice because there's nothing excessively, you know, threatening or violent about it, they're not pulling in any way, they're just kind of placed there. I think that softness where there's potential of possible danger is like an interesting thing to convey in a still image. Like, if this was going to be a moving image, there's only two ways that it could go, you know, it's either gentle or it's not.
Christina: In this case it was almost that blind pursuit, you're too close to see in a way.
Curlew: Yeah. Okay, I have one more technical question, just because I'm curious, well, not technical, maybe it's a little inspiration too, it's a little bit of both. So I was looking at these, I think especially "Inhale", "Fragmented", "Some people, feel, the rain others just get wet" and "Blind Pursuit'' read to me like sculpture busts, like the bust of a head and I don't know whether it's because it's cut off more at that shoulder point, but the way it accentuates kind of the strength and form and muscle in the neck seems very like Grecian, almost and reminded me of a statue bust that's a three-dimensional, tangible thing because of the way these muscles were conveyed.
Christina: Yeah, I think the neck and the back are particularly fascinating because while there's so much expression in the eyes, the nuances in the muscles and the skin, whether they're responding to the environment or touch or internal motion give so much away and so I've always been fascinated by drawing the neck in different forms and this is one way kind of just to accentuate or an extension of how the person is feeling.
Curlew: Absolutely, I think you don't see it in you on yourself that often, but when you think about what that area of the body can convey, it's fascinating, because of the veins and nerves, and if you're tense, you can see it there if you're relaxed, you can see it there, so I think the pull to play with that part of the body is very understandable and appealing.
Christina: And when you’re exposed, you know, you protect your vital organs, but when people are nervous, for instance, one of the first things they do is put their hands under their chin in a form of protecting the neck in a way. You'll see the motion again and again.
Curlew: Yeah, yeah. I think the vulnerability of the neck too, of that part of the body, looking at an image like, "Inhale" or "Some people feel, the rain others just get wet" the strength of the neck and then that idea, the way it kind of looks like, you know, these hard sculptures to me, that juxtaposed with the knowledge that it's pretty much the most vulnerable part of our bodies and that it's so accessible and it's this danger zone and I feel like my hands like going to my neck even as I'm talking about it because it's just such a vulnerable part of the body and I think the urge to kind of convey that in a really non vulnerable way is interesting.
Like I think, the way that even you have your neck arching up, that's making it look so structured and strong, but even that is kind of exposing the body to danger or attack, like, it's very vulnerable.
Christina: I like the analogy you have there, the pendulum between the vulnerability and the strength. That's kind of one of the reasons I chose, I mean, of course, with the natural inspiration of the streetlights, and then the darkness, the strong line versus the emotion there, the feeling, that is also a kind of a contrast there are similar to vulnerability and strength.
Curlew: Yeah, I think in something like "Saturation" and "Fragmented", looking at those, the delicacy, almost, of these faces versus the harshness of the light, I think it also, like you said, plays into that vulnerable but almost like impenetrable being, you know, there's a certain strength I think to the faces in these photos or the bodily poses but I think there's also a very big, like looking at "Saturation", specifically, there's such a big human vulnerability, like blocking that light or being affected by something in front of you. I think there's definitely a nice balance between soft and harsh.
Christina: Yeah, yeah. And the part of the inspiration is kind of seeing people, not put up a front, but more to be present the whole time and then to step back and feel when they're on their own or, you know, absorb or reflect, and those are kind of a lot of these moments that are being captured, you know, the strength of the day versus the honesty or the vulnerability, the truthfulness of the night, you know, the truth is not always comfortable and some of these faces don't look particularly comfortable, you know, there's an exhaustion coming from it.
Curlew: Definitely. Yeah. I like that. Well, I love them all and I want them all on my wall. I think that wrapped up my written questions, but I'm glad we got into some tangents, I think they were good tangents.
Christina: Yeah, absolutely. I love discussing art and I love questioning work. I love hearing different interpretations of work.
Curlew: Yeah, I think it's always interesting to see, you know, as an artist we lose control of work the minute it's kind of out in the public realm and it's not up to us how people interpret it. I'm a very solitary writer, but I recently joined a writing group and it's been a huge help.
Even hearing, you know, how they will read something of mine. I'll be like, oh, that's so interesting, I would have never thought that. Like the fact that someone has the ability to get something completely different from your work is always fascinating, I think, the possibilities of what people can interpret are kind of endless, especially with images like this. It's so personal how we see them.
Christina: Yeah and the more abstract it is, I mean, there's the fringes or the peripheral, the recognizable versus unrecognizable. You know, obtaining any interest or intrigue and if you can kind of get something that is on the threshold of each side, just on the threshold, that's where you kind of have that sweet spot.
Curlew: Definitely.
Christina: For the fun of it, can I ask the same question back to you - five favorites? Artistic inspiration?
Curlew: Okay. All right, I'm gonna try to do what you did, kind of cover some different mediums. So okay, so writing I think maybe is almost the easiest. I am completely infatuated and inspired still by Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, Joyce Carol Oates, kind of like Gothic female writers.
I love Shirley Jackson, specifically, she spent a lot of time in Vermont, which is where I went to college and she just has this amazing ability to capture like Suburban Gothic, and obviously David Lynch is a huge inspiration in terms of that too. I think anyone that kind of delves under the picture perfect surface of these kind of, you know, suburban areas, there's always so much seedy shit going on. That really interests me and family relations, and you know, I love, so, okay, for filmmaking, I love horror - Chan-wook Park is a Korean director, Oldboy is probably his most famous, but he's done a few American films recently too.
He just has a great filmography in terms of bizarre, uncanny kind of human emotion. It's just very scary, but moving and I think that's the goal. I never want to write something that's only terrifying. I love the idea of things being, like, gorgeous and moving and funny, and then also scary and alarming because that's just how life is.
Christina: Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, I feel like there's two sides to me, like one side is landscape pieces with Einaudi, Toulouse and Linklater and then the other side you've got Anton Chekhov, Lynch, you know, the things that make you grow and uncomfortable.
Curlew: Yeah, and it's funny that you said Linklater, he's been a constant inspiration for my writing, I think the way he writes dialogue and something like the Before Trilogy, is so moving to me because these people are hard to watch, sometimes he's really just showing you like a very pure human interaction and I think his ability to kind of move through the ups and downs of love and life is really interesting to me.
I kind of agree with you. Half of me is like this, like I get a lot of my inspiration from nature and I'm a romantic and I like love the idea of being deeply in love and then the other part of me is just like, completely, like dark, disassociation, David Lynch.
Christina: You're speaking in a way here, it's hilarious to hear someone else voice it, that's so funny. Linklater, one of my favorite quotes from him is so satirical and sadistic, it's like "memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past"
Curlew: Oh one hundred percent. Yeah, okay so that's writers. Music, I'm a sucker for anything from the 70s, my friends make fun of me because my playlist, like it's John Denver, James Taylor. Mostly it's that and movie soundtracks, like Trent Reznor, especially for my writing playlists, lots of instrumental stuff.
Christina: I'm going to see Paramore tomorrow.
Curlew: Oh my god, amazing. Are they playing in Dublin?
Christina: They are but, long story short, the ticket site kept crashing, so I made a spontaneous decision to book a trip to Glasgow to see them, then a week ago I was given a ticket for Dublin. I'm not a crazy fan but it fell into my lap and I was like I'll take the opportunity, this is unique and bizarre.
Curlew: So like two weekends in a row?
Christina: Thursday then Sunday.
Curlew: Okay. So it's just a week of Paramore. They're going to see you and be like this girl is following us.
Christina: Apparently fans do that.
Curlew: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a good week you have lined up.
Christina: Yeah, thank you so much for the call.
Curlew: It was really great to talk to you.
Christina: Yeah, yeah you too and definitely keep in touch when you're planning to come to Ireland because there's really so much to see here.
Curlew: Yeah. Absolutely, I will and I'll send over my website and then I'll find you on Instagram too.
Christina: Oh yes please do, I'm looking forward to that.
Curlew: Alright awesome. It was very nice to meet you virtually.
Christina: Nice to meet you too, and have a great evening - oh it's morning there.
Curlew: It is! Day is starting, but you have a great evening and, really, enjoy the concerts this week.
Christina: Thank you so much.
Curlew: All right. I'll talk to you soon. Have a good one.
Christina: All right, you too. Bye-bye.
*Final Five Inspirations:
Richard Linklater
Ludovico Einaudi
Rene Margritte
Anton Chekov
Hayao Miyazaki
Curlew Daily
May 30, 2023
“NO MORE POETRY OR ANY OF OUR DIFFERENCES” - Rahil Najafabadi
I wake up one morning and I think of my promise,
that today is nothing more. An extension of sunny
despair, it’ll be a little more than the rain and salt.
It is in between looking at the same painting of Monet,
and seeing my favorite sculpture in different bodies.
The water tastes the same as the day I kissed every word––
Those love letters live in the air as you speak of me.
What I need is less wood, I can stand and write to you.
Just eliminate any comfort that seats me away from the run,
the hunt and queue of being next to you as you read me.
No more poetry but the thing that needs to be said,
whether anyone hears it or takes it to sleep. Any of our
differences could be the flower that makes it to my tea.
Taste the honey with me, it’s enough to fill a vase.
April 29, 2023
One month into spring and we are walking back and forth on a plank which stretches across an abyss that is the island of Manhattan. Brooklyn is on the other side and somewhere in the distance (when we stand and pause and look for long enough) we can see the Bronx, Queens and the sole island that makes up the county of Richmond.
The city is taller, more imposing this year than it was last. The clanking and hammering-away begins earlier and the sun hovers above the skyline for longer. Yet, if you stop for a while —- just pause for a long beat, there’s a quiet here that’s demanding to be heard, noticed, embraced.
Not everything happens in passing. Some things eternal become internal and keep going, still.
April 2, 2023
Spring is back and so is the Curlew Daily. A few musings on big city living and matcha these days: ChaCha Matcha does have the best matcha latte on the island of Manhattan. Maybe there’s a better one in Brooklyn?
Given that Cha Cha is a “coffee” shop that focuses on matcha, we’d hope this would be the case, but really you never know. One thing about these places is that they’re visually appealing. We wouldn’t mind, really, if they’d just offer these shops that go full tilt on heart chakra pink and green then offer decent matcha, but Cha Cha actually goes further: it serves matcha that tastes full and deep and rich and makes you wonder what all of these other shops are serving when they serve “matcha.”
Around town we’ve seen matcha kept in plastic tupperware and scooped by baristas with plastic spoons. We’ve seen liquid matcha (not sure how this is possible) poured out of squeeze bottles (think ketchup) into to-go cups and then blended with steamed oat. Cha Cha does no such thing, and this city is all the better for it. They’re in a few different places —- Midtown by Bryant Park and Flatiron along Broadway to name two — our favorite location is at 327 Lafayette near Bleeeker (North of Houston).
April 2, 2023 - Michael Leifer’s “Heat Lightning”
“It’s just so beautiful.”
Even though I was alone, I had to say these words aloud, watching heat lightning illuminate patches of the evening sky, segments flashing between visibility and darkness like angels in heaven snapping polaroids above the cloudline. I felt the distinctive slack-jawed, slouching feeling of awe; a yielding sensation like a house caving in: strawberries falling apart in sugar or the first time a girl holds your hand after high school, you’re dizzy and the world spirals away in ashes of life.
“It’s just so beautiful,” I thought, watching the white streaks of antimatter paint landscapes on the sky’s black canvas.
My thoughts normally roll like currents, sometimes clear and brilliant as polished steel, other times fused together like deformed twins or a radio stuck between stations and picking up chatter.
Severity and mercy, smoke upon flame, Eden and the primordial moment of transgression, a primal time at the center of my existence, what holds and spins in my direction; pagan blessings through brown lips and the taste of iron; buffalo liver in the mouth of an Osage Indian – droplets of the blood mixing with the Mississippi, red fading into brown, carried in muddy swells, snaking along the cape.
Buzzing flies and the stench of death; a field of slain buffalo, hideless and rotting in the sun with their tongues cut out. The New Madrid fault line and the winter of 1812, the ground gaping open with spires of sulfur. The Mississippi river flows backwards, inverted like a Satanic cross. Swallowed by the earth, the victims leave no trace and funerals are held over empty caskets.
These summer nights in Cape Girardeau are like walking through hot soup, but the air outside is sweet, smelling of humidity and flowers it reminds me of a girlfriend’s naked skin, bathed in the soft light of the room I kept in my parents’ old house, since destroyed; her warmth, her scent and the face that reminds me. The way touching her arm felt like the most erotic thing in the world, the way a flowery aroma is carried by a humid Missouri night.
“My body is a house I place inside the storm,” I whisper to myself with my eyes closed. If I say it enough times, I’ll stop being afraid. If I keep saying it, I will be able to do anything. I repeat it like handholds in stone and I’m climbing the face of something jagged but my body remains in bed.
Culture’s fruits on the tree of life and annihilation hangs from wisdom. Oh hear them devils, these thoughts with eyes, these words with wings, these locusts that cross the ocean. These thoughts that roll like thunder, these scathed bits of memory, how a man can burn so calm and bright, my love strikes like sickness. Dreams ring like music in the black sun of a memory entombed and forgotten. I hear nothing. I hear nothing, for now is the summer of sleeping. Days are spent unseen, unheard, broken, narcotized and fading. July burns outside my window, but inside me is winter, alive and beating. For now is the summer of sleeping. Now is the summer of sleeping.
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Michael Leifer graduated Fordham University in 2022 with a degree in journalism. His first assignment as a professional journalist was in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
January 26, 2023
A FEELING THAT NEVER REALLY FORMED
I have such a nagging need to know a feeling, to write down a reaction when I am right in the middle of it, like I am scared of forgetting it while it’s still happening, like I want to prove it was felt in the first place, but I think you have to live something to remember it, which is funny because sometimes I feel like I remember lots of things I haven’t lived through, like I’m hoarding someone else’s memories, packing them away in a box where I keep them in case I want to revisit a feeling that never really formed. I wonder, a lot of the time, if I am making it up as I go along, the sinking weight of what I felt in all the moments I can see but not hold.
- Elizabeth Lerman
January 21, 2023
ALL THE PEOPLE
I contain them within me like paper boats in dry land.
I have studied every person except those who are perfect.
Why bother? It’s easy to stick with the faux moments
of all the people than a lifetime of a stale person who stares
back in the mirror. It’s too long to handle, never-ending
and unsure. I believed in being one person in many dimensions,
but not all the people inside me agreed.
- Rahil Najafabadi
January 20, 2023
In the spring we’d drink orange juice & vodka
on your fire escape / wearing your maroon sweater
you’d ask me about home . . . Milwaukee I’d say:
we watched the Bucks on Saturday nights
in high school; Ray Allen’s Bucks, like ‘01-02.
Some nights, when we were both feeling bold,
heavy with wine, we’d climb up to the roof
and just stand there for a while. Please remember:
if you ever asked me anything, I always tried my best
& if I ever had a response, it wasn’t what I meant to say
Rene Chandler’s “Seasonal Change”
An image from Nic Anselmo
Rahil Najafabadi’s “Hometown Mountain”
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There is a wave–––one that I forgot to pull
From the still waters I was born to shake.
There is a hidden light in your eyes,
That feed the trees you live to summon.
My hometown mountain reminded you of yours.
I painted a volcano just to trace a memory.
You look at me with affection, I touch you with words.
Our paths crossed in a wavelength of meditation:
We’ve met before in a watercolor painting
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"Hometown Mountain" is a poem I’ve been writing for a few years. I’ve been writing it with imagination, daydreams, and little words that have entered and exited my mind. But I never really penned this piece until I met someone who put it together for me. It was a drifting memory: speaking to that person and finding our hometown mountains alike while they were continents away. It was a special thing I thought I dreamed.”
- Rahil Najafabadi
Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Rene Chandler’s “Cafe Light”
Curlew Friday Nights - August Twenty-sixth, 2022
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Having a cup of coffee with a loved one on a chilly spring morning and sitting by the window’s light, is a gift. Rene Chandler’s “Cafe Light” captures one of those mornings with a depth and strength so clear that just looking at the image speeds up time; and calls forth March, or April. For her work, we’re grateful.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Here”
Curlew Friday Nights - August Nineteenth, 2022
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It is darker than it was before and I feel so naked now, alone, suddenly, my back bare, unguarded, open and offering, because skin is so special it seems, and when it shows too much I somehow want to hide and strip at the same time, say something like here I am, showing all of me now, for those who want to look, to take or touch, but I would say, also, I am scared to do it, I am scared of what might be done and it is darker than it was before but the night is silent and, still, I cannot understand how it is ever that way here, and the wonder of it holds me as I walk, a soft hand on my warm skin, burnt now, from the sort of sun you don’t expect to feel in a city but there are so many secrets and I know where I am now, I know I am almost home, past the gardens, gates heavy and hot, the chickens, asleep in their coop, do not rise when I walk by, tucked in already and pressed so sweetly against one another. Here, it is so quiet and so green and the brownstones sit stoically beneath streetlights and I think, not for the first time, that really, I may never leave Brooklyn.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Rahil Najafabadi’s “After Midnight”
Curlew Friday Nights - August Fifth, 2022
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When the hours stretch after midnight, I look after myself.
Once I am there near the pond–––
The air disappears
When I draft a songbird’s hum
On the wing of guilt.
I sober up and see a couple drunk men and women.
Some out of it, some already meshed into the black of the night.
I feel the man beside me and his feverish sleeve.
The scent of sweat is only tolerable when it belongs to the one you love.
But the one you love won’t be here, or there, in a bad, bad car
On the train,
In Manhattan,
After midnight.
I will always love you.
I won’t always let you know.
Always.
Always.
Always.
Always, always, always.
A familiar pain of thinking the right things,
but saying the wrong words in being crude:
I will define this moment–––
It is drafting a songbird’s hum on the cloud’s rise.
It is opening a letter knowing someone has died.
It is being and knowing that being itself,
is more significant than creating something new.
But I will never understand.
I will never understand.
Why does the air feel bitter now?
The afterhours hear me hum softly–––
It’s our familiar pain,
The sky is watching:
I see my stop, but I know,
I won’t get off the train.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval (I)
Curlew Friday Nights - July Twenty-ninth, 2022
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There is a park in the Bronx named Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. Eight tennis courts, a football field, a track, two playgrounds. Above the track and past the playground there’s an elevated walking path, which is lined by wooden benches (painted green). They’re in front of the path and also behind the path, depending on which way you look. You can get to the Oval by taking the D train to the very last stop, 205-Norwood, then walking a few blocks up Bainbridge.
I like the space up there –––– not around the park, as the surrounding streets are as dense and narrow as most other streets in the city, but within the park, the Oval, the Williamsbridge Reservoir Oval. If you’re walking up from Bainbridge and approaching from the south you walk through a tunnel to enter the park. It’s not a long tunnel, but it holds a dramatic effect all the same, as it’s clear that where you were (Bainbridge) is different from where you’re going (the Oval).
I like all of the different things that people can do there: football practice in full pads (two teams of boys, one in red, the other in black); jump rope, walk and talk; play tennis; ride bikes; smoke; listen to music and dance; play cards. Summer nights up there just keep going ––– well past midnight.
My favorite thing that I’ve seen at the Oval so far happened this past Wednesday night. I was having Chinese takeout on one of the park benches that surrounds the elevated walking path (which surrounds the track) when a teenaged boy in a black t-shirt and black sweatpants raced by on a Citibike. Yes, a royal blue Citibike, which he was really laying into, pedaling with a quickness and lunging forward with intention.
Just after he passed me he stood up on the bike’s pedals as he approached the ridge that separated the walking path from the rest of the park below. It was clear that he had fashioned the Citibike into a BMX bike, not because he made any changes to the bike’s frame, but because of what happened next: he sat back down on the bike’s seat, popped a wheelie, jumped the ridge, hung in the air for a few beats, then rode the bike ––– with force and with speed –––– all the way down the hill to the track below.
- Isaac Myers III
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Rene Chandler’s “Seasonal Changes.” More of her work can be viewed in Issue No. 9.
Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part Three”
Curlew Friday Nights - July Fifteenth, 2022
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Part One & Part Two
Lena led herself down the steep set stairs and sat down on a flat rock that lay above a sand bank where small, strong men were hauling ropes,
ready to tie down incoming boats. She watched them as she waited for Sam to sort out their drinks - two big bottles of Chang and two bigger bottles of water. The men worked swiftly and naturally, cigarettes hanging loosely from the corners of their mouths. One of them turned to her
and caught her eye. She smiled at him and raised her hand in a wave. He smiled back and called out.
“Boats coming in,” he said, “almost ready.”
He motioned to the turquoise waters and readied his rope like a lasso, preparing to catch a steed. The longboats waded gently into the harbor, shaking in the low waves as their inhabitants rocked and readied themselves for their dismount onto the dock. Dock, Lena decided, was a bold word, because really they were stepping onto a long stream of tied buoys, which bobbed with threatening fervor as bodies and luggage stepped cautiously onto them. The tourists gripped one another and they wobbled along the buoys, bags hoisted onto their backs, making their way quickly to the still shore. Lena took a final drag of her own cigarette before dropping the butt into the sand and stomping it out. She looked at the crushed stub for a moment and though there were several others scattered on the ground, Lena was hit with a wave of guilt that made her pick up the butt and toss it in a nearby trash bag. She saddled up next to Sam who smiled at her and nodded to the trash, “Really doing your part,” she said with sweet sarcasm. Lena laughed. “It’s the literal least I could do.”
The girls walked along the sand padded streets, following signs for the local beach. They watched the boats as they went, eyeing their fellow travelers boarding with uncertain steps, squeezing onto the benches, sitting shoulder to shoulder like sardines, their sweat slippery and spreading. Lena welcomed the small splashes of seawater that landed on her legs as the motor was kicked into gear. As if operating a lawn mower, the young Thai man who had spoken to her on the shore ripped the engine once, twice, three times until it rumbled and emitted a puff of fumes that made Lena’s head go light. The smoke cleared and the girls walked on as the boat slid out of the harbor and into the open water, bobbing roughly in the wake of larger vehicles. Lena thought of the feeling brought on by small, short waves and smiled at the thought of her stomach rising and falling like it did on the deep drop of a rollercoaster. She had forgotten that feeling could be manifested by something physical. It seemed to Lena that, lately, she had felt that drop only through her mind, her emotions, and her unrelenting anxiety. She felt it when the seasons changed, and she felt it when she changed.
“It should be around this bend,” Sam said, looking down at a map of the island as Lena looked up ahead. The cliffs surrounding the peninsula were grandiose and intimidating with their jagged edges and hanging rocks. The girls breathed in when they saw the water, its color an unreal array of greens and blues, but not like any they had seen before, not like any they would see again, save for this spot.
“Jesus.” Sam whispered, neck craning up towards the cliffs Lena knew she was set on climbing.
“Wave to me from the top,” Lena laughed.
“You don’t want to climb?”
“I’m happy down here.” Lena said, spreading a towel over a warm patch of sand. She set a beer between her knees and cracked open the top with a lighter. She took a long, slow sip and smiled at Sam. “Really, I am.”
That night, Sam slept sounder than Lena thought possible, her breath and body heavy and hot. Lena stretched her legs down towards the edge of the bed and heard her knees whisper a soft crack. Her bones ached more than they used to. She glanced at the sleeping body next to her and spent a few more restless moments beneath the thin sheets before slipping out from under the cool linen. She walked quietly to the cabin’s small wooden dresser, her feet padding gently across the floor’s smooth clay tiles. She took a joint from her cigarette pack and snuck back past the bed and out onto the patio. Despite the before-dawn breeze there was still a thickness coating the air and a droplet of sweat ran down her back, trailing past the ridges of her spine, offering some pleasant relief from the persistent warmth that had sat itself down on her skin. The smoke made her breath deep and her eyes heavy and she realized, through the hypnotic heat, clouds falling from her mouth, that the stark silence of the evening did not seem to be mocking her the way quiet dark normally did and she did not feel any desire or desperation to shake the stillness away. Instead, Lena was okay with the nothingness of the night, knowing that Sam was asleep on the other side of the curtains, her hair catching in the same wave of wind.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
“Red light, red light: Union Street said ‘wait, don’t cross’ so we didn’t look both ways, so we kept walking.”
Annie Lure’s “The Interloper's Tale”
Curlew Friday Nights - July Eighth, 2022
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Decked out in a fox fur coat,
I fancy myself the rich publisher
of the hyperlocal magazine.
Do you live in town?
Nation’s Lending agent’s eyes go all rapey.
Yes, in the most transparent house. 64 windows lick my body gold each morning.
The fur was dealt to me by Russian puppet masters.
You have very long, healthy nails.
The fat realtor covets her neighbor.
Yes, they’re filed with Albanian cobblestones.
Frank, he’s the owner, and he’s not here now. Come back after 6.
In the pizzeria’s man’s tone,
I insinuate some Eastern uncle’s lechery.
(An obligatory internalized psycho-babble trauma trope shit.)
You won’t let me sell you ad space. Your ads are bound to aggregate in my magazine like
smuggling migrant trucks.
Why can’t I retrofit my silk, monied, foreignized dress to dumpy Lacey, the furniture artist’s
daughter?
Will the personal injury lawyer clinch my cunt on a mere technicality?
Can I drop my accent at the pawnshop?
This town isn’t mine. Though I live in it, I am not of it. I am somebody’s comprador.
I place the ancient woodsy Ararat elixir on the mahogany table wrought by the previous owner’s
good, hard-working American hands, and I drink its roots in like the baddest, blackest magic.
—- —-
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The line between poetry and fiction is a fine one, always bending and giving equal weight to the beauty of story-telling, along with the pleasures of word-play. Too much story and you’ve got a piece of flash-fiction. Too much rhythm, language and imagery without any narrative, and you’ve created a poem. Both have their gifts and joys, but something special happens when they combine their powers: a la, Annie Lure’s poem, “The Interloper’s Tale.”
I love the small moment ––– just one day out of an endless lifetime –––– that’s captured here. A rich publisher “decker out in a fox fur coat,” checks out a house. But not just any house; one that allows space for “64 windows [to] lick [the publisher’s] body gold each morning.” Clearly, it’s a stunning place. Though not nearly as stunning, I think, as the publisher. Said otherwise, anyone who can speak in “an obligatory internalized psycho-babble trauma trope shit,” has got my vote!
Isaac Myers III,
Editor
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Annie Lure enjoys poetry, erotica, museums, travel, and photography. She edits private clients’ monographs and publishes a hyperlocal lifestyle magazine. Poems of hers have appeared in Slipstream (Issue 36), Odyssey: Mediterranean Poetry, and Cider Press Review. She has read multiple poems at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
“Imagine a World”
Cameron Colan’s “Meditations of an Airport Highway”
Curlew Friday Nights - July First, 2022
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Fluctuating between a desire to die under a magnolia tree or in manhattan:
we humans always want both yet rarely have the capacity to cradle polarity in our hands.
Dying under a magnolia tree, such a beautiful way to not live.
Its blossom sheltered our souls, its shade smells of home.
Now, if only i had this much to give—
Passing in the grips of my concrete salvation, such a possibility makes the crazed salivate & the
practical hesitate.
Its symphony made up of whatever and whoever chooses to sing at that very moment—
Serendipity manifested as laughter, glass cages, dreams, piss covered streets and the universal
desire to never be alone under a pair of sweat soaked sheets.
Us all junkies, each in our own right, whether you stand behind a pulpit or scavenge the streets in
delight.
Its existence we didn’t consent to but are now fighting,
for just like that we are aware,
fully here with a world screaming at us to go there.
Our time comes and goes—A beautiful twisted bolt of lightning.
Exit here and left at the night,
settled your eyes are on the horizon, breathe out, take on the day’s first light.
Another carolina, not where you are supposed to be. Another missed connection,
one more glorious string, tap tap buzz, embrace the tension.
A magnolia or manhattan,
Why do we have to choose?
If you are where you are,
Is there really anything to lose?
- -
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I first heard this poem in June at “In Spite of Ourselves,” a monthly writer’s round Cameron has co-founded. I heard it out loud before reading it myself, and I was moved by the urgency in tone, and the unknown voice of the persona in Cameron’s poem. Unusual sounds and diction speak to me, and I could see that it spoke to the audience that night too. The writer’s round includes musicians and comedians, and there’s an inviting energy at Ray’s Bar, where the round is held each month. But after that poem, there was a moment of quiet, a moment to reflect on the elements of this poem. It’s a different kind of quiet than when everyone just stops talking and waits for the words to enter the air. It’s a chosen quietness.
- Rahil Najafabadi,
Associate Editor
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Cameron Colan is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in the Lower East Side of New York City. Colan is a co-founder of “In Spite of Ourselves”, a monthly New York City writers round that aims to highlight and support the exploration of influential voices of our moment ‘In Spite of Ourselves’; our doubts, our fears, and other oppositional forces that exist within our realities. Colan’s goal is to empower others through his writing, painting, and curated creative spaces in whatever way comes natural to them.
An image from Nic Anselmo. More of his work, including his photo essay, Neeses, South Carolina, can be viewed in Issue No. 9.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part Two”
Curlew Friday Nights - June Seventeenth, 2022
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“Verdict?” Lena asked when she heard Sam hit the mattress.
“Very sleepable,” Sam confirmed, “better than I expected, actually. What’s the bathroom deal?”
Lena reported her findings, assuring Sam that there was a toilet and shower head.
“It’s a pail flush,” Lena clarified, showing Sam how to scoop the water from an adjacent bucket and pour it rapidly into the toilet, efficiently draining the bowl.
“And what do we do when…?” Sam trailed off.
“Pour faster,” she said, handing Sam the scoop and leaving her the small tin roofed room.
“Should we find the beach?” Sam called from the bathroom as Lena dug through her bag, searching for something fresh to wear. She smelled like plane and people and sweat that wasn’t hers. She pulled her wrinkled shirt up over her head and slipped out of the denim shorts she had hastily put on in the airport bathroom upon arrival.
“Yeah, you want your suit?” Lena asked, locating Sam’s red bikini from her bag.
“Toss it in,” Sam responded, opening the door with her foot as she stuck a toothbrush in her mouth.
“We didn’t get water yet,” Lena said, looking at the toothbrush in Sam’s mouth. Her friend shot her a confused look.
“Are you brushing your teeth with tap water?” Sam’s mouth opened and her eyes went wide.
“Oh shit.”
“Exactly,” Lena said, laughing at her friend’s furiously furrowed brows.
“Is it really bad?” Sam asked, panic washing over her. Lena thought of the time she had accidentally brushed her teeth with tap water from her father’s Bangkok apartment. She had been on the bathroom floor for three days after, stuck on a steady diet of saltines and ginger ale.
“It’ll be fine,” Lena said, not sure if she was lying. “Just use bottled water from now on. We‘ll get some big ones at check in. Here,” she tossed Sam her suit and slipped on her own before stepping out onto the hut’s small porch. Her beer still sat on the plastic table that held a glass ashtray in its center. Lena stared blankly for a moment, contemplating another cigarette. After another breath of the thick summer air she darted back inside to grab her pack. She could tell herself not to worry, that she was allowed to indulge on vacation, but really Lena smoked with the same urgent tendency back home. She could justify her vices anywhere she went and though she hoped she would grow out of it, the years kept passing and her justifications did not. In Los Angeles she had liked to smoke in her car, in traffic to ease the pain of stillness, on the empty suburban streets of Griffith Park, and especially on the Pacific Coast Highway, as she flew up towards Malibu to swim in quiet waters, always less crowded than the beaches of Venice or Santa Monica. She would drive with such eagerness, towards the cliff-ridden stretch of sands, where she would sit and smoke some more, dripping from the ocean and tasting the saltwater on her lips mix with the nicotine in her throat. In college, Lena had like to torture herself during the Vermont winters by seeing how long her body could stand the cold, sitting out on the roof with her pack of Camel Blues and a bottle of red wine, watching her breath dance with the smoke in the pitch black bliss of a freezing night. She would stay up there until the air swayed around her and her head went heavy, wired with wind and wine. Lena had a habit of slipping, very subtly, into states of excess.
She climbed into the hammock and lit her cigarette. Her beer bottle left small, steady drops of condensation on the table and Lena fingered the pool of liquid at its base before dragging the water against the back of her neck, letting the stream saunter down her sweltering spine. She smiled at a young couple who bobbed down the path past her cabin. They waved at her as they talked quickly to one another in a language Lena guessed with Swedish or Swiss. There was a Nordic ring to their voices, a sing-songy sound that Lena liked very much. Both women were tanned and blonde, their muscular bodies accentuated by their barely there bikinis, the type of suit Lena did not dare wear herself for fear of over exposing.
As if on cue, Sam sprung from the doorway in the smallest bikini Lena had ever seen.
“Does my ass show too much in this?” She asked, her earnest expression making Lena laugh, because she could see so much of her friend’s rear that the question should have been a joke.
“Isn’t that the point of bottoms like those?” Lena asked, giving Sam’s exposed cheek a light slap. Sam leapt away from her, guarding herself against the railing, tugging at the lack of fabric on her body with notable worry.
“You’re fine,” Lena assured her, “I just saw two women wearing the same thing, and theirs were white.” She raised her eyebrows, emphasizing her point.
“Oh, how daring!” Sam explained, exaggerating her shock.
“Ready to go?” Lena asked, clumsily removing herself from the hammock’s clutches.
“Sunscreen, then we’re good to go.” Lena took the bottle Sam held out and silently thanked her friend for enforcing the rule. Left to her own devices, Lena usually tended to ignore the laws of nature and risk the brutal burn. She breathed in the scent as she rubbed the sun block into Sam’s back, the smell settling into her senses and making her feel light and wonderfully at ease.
“I love this smell,” the girls said, their words landing together in a perfect unison that sent their smiles soaring.
- Elizabeth Lerman
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
No illusion presses down on the city with more force than the pretense of time.
We think Rahil Najafabadi's illustration, of the Curlew, captures the essence of where we'd like to live: within, above, and beyond the city's time/space continuum: in flight, & moving forward.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
New York will do what it Wants
- Isaac Myers III
Curlew Friday Nights - June Tenth, 2022
______________
New York will do what it wants. You cannot try to force it, control it, or bend it to your will. If you want to love the city, then you have to learn its rhythm. You’ve got to listen to what it’s telling you; hear its whispers and not be intimidated by its silence. And New York is often silent. Do not confuse the sirens and the construction for anything different than silence. It’s a quiet power, not loud, but resolute ––– determined.
It’s easy to miss things in New York, so if you want to enjoy the city, you’ve got to slow down and rest. The idea that New York is the city that never sleeps is a fiction. This is a place that holds up and supports millions of ideas and dreams. So when do we dream? When we’re sleeping. And when do our best ideas find us? When we’re at rest.
You can look at the city, or you can watch the city. You can hear the city, or you can listen to the city. You can be in the city, or you can be with the city.
This week I spent three afternoons seated in three locations in and around Midtown Manhattan: Monday with a green tea in Central Park, near West 72nd Street; Wednesday with a cappuccino at 7th Avenue, between 38th & 39th; and Thursday with an avocado and kale smoothie, at the corner of 9th Avenue and 33rd Street.
Sometimes I read from Karlfried Graf Dürckheim’s Hara - the Vital Centre of Man, or from Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries, two favorites that I keep revisiting. Hara for its eternal wisdom and power; and the Vanity Fair Diaries for Brown’s strong prose, editorial mastery, and boundless bravery.
Each of these afternoons, for a few moments, I set these books aside, pressed record on my iPhone, and just spent three or four minutes listening to the island. Although I didn’t catch everything that happened –––– all of the sounds, sights, and words spoken all around me (how could I?) ––––– there’s still one thing I’m sure of: the city said everything that it wanted to; the city did not leave anything out.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.
An image from Nic Anselmo. More of his work, including his photo essay, Neeses, South Carolina, can be viewed in Issue No. 9.
Atlas the MONOLOGUE by Rahil Najafabadi
Curlew Friday Nights - June Third, 2022
__________________________
Places
In the corners of your world, I created my own. I was hoping to bring someone into the corridors where roaming is allowed. Every world has its edges until it merges with the air of another existence. Mine just exists in the unrented spaces of the ordinary world.
My human has become conscious. Self-conscious.
One of those pages slipped into his hands and he began reading. His eyes moved to the end of each line, and with every expression I knew what he was learning about himself.
I think that to write of someone is to be in a dance with someone––But to dance with someone is to fall in place with someone. I fell in place and began with that person, here in this atlas.
Things
My small Earth is structured asymmetrically.
The only things are the dome and the mountain. There’s a moral significance of not knowing which was here
first.
If I were a dome, I’d be a blue, blue dome. Taped with tiles geometrically with odd pointing stars.
I’d be blue and dark blue, and a little white at the bottom. Maybe a small moon at my pointed arch that is
closest to the sky.
If I were a mountain, I’d be blue again and not brown. There’d be white at the top, sugarcoating me.
I know if I was a dome, I’d wish to be a mountain. And I know if I were a mountain, I’d wish I weren’t so blue.
I’d probably let people visit and light a small fire down the hills, and watch them get warm. When I’m a mountain,
I’m neither volcanic, nor a demon-ridden range. I let people come and go. I let fires burn me because there is no tree
but the ones kids carve on.
What they don’t know is that I am the mountain, the tree, and the hill with fires that is left behind.
A Person
Words cannot stay in my mind but feelings can––the feelings given to words.
Another day won’t slip away to the fall and eruption of emotions, or the lack thereof.
Boughs and black branches dropping like sunlight in reverse, waiting for detrimental craving:
They know where the cheetahs and lions hide. They know when the sun makes its return.
Doesn’t it scare the little birds, the birds, how the wooden boughs have been here longer?
The long trail of trust from walking up the mountain from the dome, without knowing
Any moment is a chance that these branches may fall. They do, but who thinks of them,
When there is a blue mountain and a mirroring dome that are replicas of each other?
Cheetahs run from the sun, because they know they cannot trust her or her friend, the lion.
Lions run after the cheetahs, and the sun watches over their game of extinction until it’s dark.
But the branches watch it all, and fall when they fall knowing the sun and the truth,
That tomorrow the animals will run after each other again, and the dome will hold prayers.
Dreams
I’ve awaken mid nightmare to tell you, you were in both the good dream and the bad:
The one with the dome collapsing, and its ancient blue tiles breaking, just like the one with the blue mountain
turning brown before it died.
I’ve come to tell you that branches fall,
And they fall on the flower whose stem you’d never be able to break because its home
Is already broken.
There were two of you, and it seems I’ve returned to dreams instead of dome for a prayer.
In one dream, you saw me and rushed past the hands tilted toward the sky to meet me.
In another, you rushed past me to meet another whose hand you held.
The branches fell on me in both dreams.
My hands were scarred from the rough wood that tore me awake from the good sleep,
And my mind battered from the image I couldn’t escape unconsciously, the boughs truly fell––
Trapping me but leaving just enough space for my eyes to see you somewhere else, even
in the depths of a dark dream.
Nature
The corridors of my world that are printed flat on a paper surface like an atlas have expanded,
and so has the ordinary world with seawater ceasing to land, making room for more of us.
I think ruins are the remains of a cheetah once lived and forever hunted and not a broken dome.
A dome is what we make, but a home is what we create. “Identity is what we create” but how come,
I still have none?
I have a home, a blue dome, a mountain I call a mirror of the dome, but I am still drunk from the barrels of
a dying sun.
Now go to sleep, knowing you are loved.
But know, there are questions awaiting your departure in a place without dreams.
Did you know, if someone had every bit of the sun that died, they would give it to you to become your light.
That someone is me.
I’d trap pieces of the sun, like pieces of your heart in a jar––the sun in the jar for you to see, the pieces of you
for me to keep near you, where you can still feel them.
Although, those pieces of your heart were pieces of you, like tiles of the dome in shape of a star.
Perhaps at a distanced dome, our sun too, looks like the shrine tiled star.
I’d give it to you, and climb the mountain that never dies to reach another dome and another star that is alive––
to bring you another jar of a foreign light.
In these lights, I hide my words meant for you: the words I gave feelings to.
Here in this atlas, there are no lines between us.
There is no prayer unless your poetry becomes a prayer––unless you want your prayer to be a prayer.
Atlas by Rahil Najafabadi, Ink on synthetic paper, 2022.
And in truth,
The awakening is not the atlas,
But knowing there can never be one without light.
-Rahil Najafabadi
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.
West 57th Street
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
Tori Ashley Matos’ “the village and their bohike”
Curlew Friday Nights - May Twenty-seventh, 2022
the village and their bohike
call everyone and tell them
the party is off
but the pot is full of gandules—
cometelo.
pour tap water into a glass
bowl under the moon
to soak up the blood.
i am grown now and tonight
for the first time
my Grandmother told me:
No sabia.
Siempre, siempre lo supe.
El bebe de Jessica?
Si. Sabía que era una niña.
Le dije a su esposo
“¿Mi hijo? Te espera una sorpresa.”
she giggles
her eyes close.
Le dije a Sylvia
lo mismo.
“Eso no es una niña, mi hija.”
Pero este?
Son como la luna.
Nunca es una cosa por sí misma.
we talk into the night
about birth as performance.
que scene stealer,
she says.
my grandmother es un aquario
y nací bajo una luna de sangre
a mystery.
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.
An image from Nic Anselmo. More of his work, including his photo essay, Neeses, South Carolina, can be viewed in Issue No. 9.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Railay: Part One”
Curlew Friday Nights - May Twentieth, 2022
Sam sat at a small table next to the check in while Lena approached the woman behind the desk. She nodded down at her notebook, bookings scribbled on each line, and rummaged in a drawer for a moment before pulling out a large keychain and handing it to Lena.
“Number seven,” the woman told her, and pointed up a small path lined with cabins, each with a large hammock on their deck. Lena thanked her and took the key before motioning to the small refrigerator stocked with Chang beer. She held up two fingers and left 200 baht on the counter before grabbing the beers and placing one in front of Sam. Lena took a seat across from her friend and the women clinked their bottles together and toasted to the cool relief. Sam squealed in delight as a small French bulldog sauntered over, greeting them and skeptically sniffing their bags.
“Should we see the room?” Sam asked, draining the last few sips of her beer. Lena nodded, chugging hers as well, before gathering the bags together. The girls walked down the stone path, avoiding roosters and small chickens along the way.
“They’ll be a good alarm,” Lena said, nodding to the roosters. She knew they should try and get some sleep now in order to get ahead of their jet lag but there was too much energy buzzing through them. They had been traveling for a long thirty hours and during the journey they had wanted nothing more than to be here, a bed in sight and rest in reach but now, seeing it all, Lena knew they would not be sleeping until night demanded it.
“What number?” Sam asked, scanning the cabins.
“Seven,” Lena said, pointing to the right, “this one.” With its wicker walls and metal roof Lena could already hear the predicted rain pouring down.
“It’s gonna be loud when it rains,” She told Sam.
“If it rains,” Sam corrected.
“It will rain.” Lena insisted. It was the season for it. It seemed impossible now, in this sun soaked heat, but Lena was certain of it. She knew clouds would come and could already sense the steady downpour that would drench the jungle around them.
- Elizabeth Lerman
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.
Rene Chandler’s “On the Run” - May Eighteenth, 2022
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
“First Thing, we go Bowling ––– Last Thing, we Bowl” - Isaac Myers III
Curlew Friday Nights - May Thirteenth, 2022
The first thing I did when I got out of bed in the morning was look over at the clock that was hanging above the refrigerator in Gina's apartment. I had heard a few of the birds that would gather on the fire escape outside the window at the end of her bed begin to chirp so I guessed that it must have been around 5:00am, maybe 5:30am, but the clock read 4:30am. The birds were out early and the sun was taking its time to rise and I sat on the end of the bed for a few moments and thought about what I wanted to do next. There were a few options and I let my mind go through each one of them, considering the pros and the cons of each, weighing my options.
One thing I could do next was stand up and walk over to the window and open it a bit more so that we could feel more of the cool April air move through the apartment. I liked this option. It was my favorite so far. Another option was to crawl back into bed and sleep for another hour. The problem with this option was that I knew if I slept for another hour then that one hour would turn into three hours and when I got up again, three hours later, I'd feel a lot less refreshed and not nearly as well-rested as I did in that moment ––– sitting on the bed and looking out the window at dawn. I didn't like that option. The third option made the most sense and I could also go through the third option just after finishing the first: walk over to the stove and put on the kettle and make a cup of tea. I decided on those two, a combination of option 1 and option 3; or better stated: option number 1 immediately followed by option number 3.
By the time I had a cup of earl grey tea in my hand and was taking small sips from the mug I noticed that the first cracks of dawn were making their appearance in the morning's sky. I was glad I hadn't gone back to sleep and even though I thought it might be kind of nice if Gina was awake as well and having a cup of tea with me, it was just as well this way. I was having my quiet time at dawn and she was sleeping and probably dreaming happy dreams and that was all anyone could ever really ask for, to lay peacefully in bed and dream something soothing.
There was just enough light that was coming into the room now that I didn't really need the reading lamp on the desk that I was sitting in front of, but even so, I switched it on and enjoyed the additional warmth of the yellow light against the oak desk and upon the magazine that I was reading. The magazine was an old copy of Time, one from 2007, I think. All of the stories in there were from this era of life that I had kind of forgotten about. I read a short piece about Barack Obama and whether he had a chance to win the Democratic primary. There was also a write-up about the iPhone and whether it was worth its price and what it would mean for all of the other cell phones on the market back then. I didn't read that piece, I just flipped through it and smiled with a knowing nostalgia as I looked over a few photos of the early iPhones.
Then I heard something fall in the apartment next to us. It sounded heavy. It made a giant thumping crash against the wood floors and I actually jumped out of the chair a little bit. Gina woke up and looked out the window and the looked over at me and started rubbing her eyes because she wasn't sure what had happened. She just heard the thud and didn't know where it came from.
She got up out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweatpants that kind of sort of matched the navy blue Giants t-shirt of mine that she was sleeping in. Then without any hesitation she opened the door to the apartment and stepped across the hall and knocked on Frank's door.
"Frank," she said. "Are you in there?"
She knocked again.
"Is everything okay?" There was a long pause before she said, "Are you all right?"
The door to our apartment was still open and she looked back at me as if I might have a suggestion of what to do next but I really didn't have any idea. I didn't know who Frank was and this was only my third time sleeping at Gina's place so the whole thing was pretty bizarre: why was she knocking on this guy's door at five in the morning? That's what I was thinking.
Through the door I heard someone begin to moan. It was a man's voice and it was a long and trying moan and I gathered that it must have been Frank. He didn't use any words, just grunting and sighing and moaning.
"I'm coming in there," Gina said. "Just wait, I'll get you some help."
By this point I had set that copy of the old Time aside and had finished my cup of tea and was kind of just standing around the kitchen by the sink and not really knowing what to do next, if anything at all.
Gina walked back into the apartment and just kind of shook her head in disbelief. She headed back toward the closet and ran her hand across my chest a couple of times as she was walking away.
This was when I wanted to spring into action and do something heroic ––– to rescue the day, but I had no idea what to do so I just kind of kept standing there, lingering in the kitchen. I put on more hot water.
"Do you need any help?" I asked.
"No," Gina said. She was sifting through a couple of jackets in the closet, checking their pockets, looking for something. "It's just Frank."
She turned around and presented a key. "He just does this."
Outside the birds were really chirping now, no –––– the birds were really singing now, they were singing and the sun was coming up in all of its glory and it pretty much looked like daylight (or almost daylight) outside.
As the tea kettle cried out again Gina was standing in front of Frank's door again and holding the key that she pulled from one of the jackets in her closet.
"Frank," she said, "I'm coming in," then knocked.
"Wait," he said. "Just a minute."
"Are you dressed?"
"I said just a minute" ––– that's what Frank had said in that moment.
Gina looked back at me and I glanced over and gave an approving nod. Whatever she was doing it looked like she must have done it before.
"I'm okay," Frank said.
"Are you sure?" Gina asked.
"No," he said through the door. But then Gina didn't move and there was a long silence so he said, "Well, all right, you can come in ––– I guess you can help me."
Gina put the key in the lock and opened the door and looked back at me and gave the nod that meant I want you to come with me, so I set down my newly-poured mug of tea and did.
Frank's place was dreaded. Socks and t-shirts and tea bags (can you blame him) and books and half-opened bags of potato chips and a plate with a chicken bone or two were kind of just everywhere. But there wasn't a stench, just a moderately unpleasant stiffness in the room.
Where was Frank? When Gina and I walked in we didn't see him at first but then as we kept walking into the room we noticed that there was a foot with a red sock that was sticking out from under the bed.
Frank said he wasn't hiding beneath the bed. He wasn't afraid of anything. It was just that his bowling ball had fallen off of the shelf by his bed, bumped up against the wall, and then rolled beneath the bed, so he was down there, reaching for it when we walked in.
He must have been in his late fifties and he had this thick beard and was wearing a white undershirt that was kind of stained in the middle and he was also in his boxers which wasn't that pleasant but Gina was looking past that (and also looking past the mess in his apartment), so I tried my best to do the same.
The bowling ball was bright red and he kept it in a black bag with white stripes and a small pocket on the outside.
“We’ve got a match tonight,” he said.
“Where?” asked Gina.
“At the Lucky Strike, on Tenth Avenue, you know the place?”
Gina and Frank both looked over at me.
“Do you know the place?” Frank asked again.
I didn’t realize that he was talking to me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I’ve been there, once or twice I think.”
Frank started to get up off the floor and Gina helped him get up. They both sat on the bed and I just kind of stood there by the door for a little while longer.
“You bowl?” he asked
––– and before I could answer:
“With her?” he said.
I hesitated. Then Gina jumped in, “Frank, that’s Gary. We’re friends.”
Friends? I thought.
“That’s not what I asked,” Frank said. “I asked whether you two go bowling together.”
“Well, yes,” Gina said. “Like I said, Frank, we’re friends.”
Frank stood up off of the bed real quick.
“I knew it!” He said; and he let the bowling ball thud against the floor again.
“You’ve been messing around with this guy here –––– this . . . Gary,” or whatever you call yourself.
He gave me a mean look; and I mean, mean. Crazed.
“Look, Frank,” Gina said, “It’s not like that. I already told you, the two of us, you and me, we’re not together, Frank. Remember, what the doctor told you?”
Frank turned away from Gina and started walking toward the window but Gina kept on and followed him.
“I’m not Martha,” Gina said. “She’s gone Frank, remember. She left.”
“Then who the hell are you then?” He looked over at me, “And then who the hell is he?”
Gina gave me a look like I was supposed to move over by the window and join them. I stood still for a while but she gave me the same look again and I was pretty much caught in the moment so what the heck, I walked over and stood by the window as they kept talking.
“Gary,” Gina said, “Tell Frank your name, first and last, and also how you know me.” She looked over at me, assuring me, telling me to go on.
I looked over at Frank and at this point I noticed that he had been crying; there were tears in his eyes and he looked really afraid, like he didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know who he was and the whole thing was a lot to deal with so I just told him: “Hi Frank,” . . . he looked at me right in the eye, “I’m Gary . . . Gina’s friend.”
A silence fell between the three of us and not one of us moved ––– not even a little bit ––– for a good while so I thought Frank had started to calm down, but I was wrong.
“You god-damned liar!” Frank said, really shouting. “You think I’m fucking deranged? Is that what you think, Gary!? Is that what you think!? You don't think I know what’s going on between you and my wife, Gary?! You think I don’t know!?”
“Hey!,” Gina screamed, she was really getting in his face now, “Frank! Frank! Cool it, Frank! Be cool.”
Next thing you know Frank is picking me up and throwing me against the window and getting real close to my face and saying things like, this’ll be the last time; this’ll be the last god-damned time, you hear me?!
And I was friggin shook! Trust me, I was shook.
And then Gina was clawing at Frank’s back, trying to get him to let go of me and I was yelling too ––– get off of me! Get off me!
Then not before long there was a knock on the door followed by the bell and someone kept ringing the bell to the apartment. One of the neighbors started beating on the door, really pounding on the door, mostly because it was six in the morning and we were all yelling and screaming and carrying on and didn’t they know that there were other people in the building who needed to get some sleep for christ’s sake!
So Gina stopped trying to pull me off of Frank and went to open the door; and Frank kept a hold of me real tight; then Gina let the person at the door in. That person was a guy named Donald who turned out to be the building’s super and thank god he knew how to get Frank to get ahold of himself.
“Frankie!” Donald cried out, “Frankie! Stop it! Leave’em alone.”
Donald shot across the room and pretty much tackled Frank onto the bed and then the bowling ball thumped onto the floor again and Donald and Frank started tossing and turning and trying to land punches on each other and pin the other guy down. It was wild.
Then Frank fell onto the floor again and Donald was standing over him, god bless him (Donald). Then Donald took a quiet and soft knee beside Frank, who was breathing very heavy now. And Donald said this so calmly and with so much love and care for Frank, I’ll never forget it: “Frankie, it’s okay. Frankie, it’s okay. It’s okay.”
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.
Jeff Haber’s essay, “Blinking Memories,” reflects on learning to skate and the economic and social factors that interplay between place and people in between suburban Long Island and New York, NY. The essay, along with an interview with Haber, appear in Issue No. 9, which can be previewed and purchased here. Photography by Nic Anselmo.
An excerpt from Jeff Haber’s “Blinking Memories,” Issue No. 9
I endlessly scrolled and clicked at work. The filing cabinets at my back silently mocked my ambition. To be something, somebody, whose voices commands listeners. At the front of the open-floor-plan office, behind the glass, the attorney and the expert commiserated on immigration. A whiny ambulance siren wafted up the eight floor from 31st Street, travelled with piercing frustration down the block, bounced from one wall of skyscraped business to the other, and then faded into the indifference on Broadway.
I took my phone out of my pocket. Tom sent me a link to the song “Flesh into Gear” by CKY, which we listened to when we were best friends at 13-years-old. “This came on Spotify and I immediately thought of you,” he wrote.
Skateboarding and causing mischief brought us and a bunch of other kids very close together for approximately three years. Once puberty hit, though, they left their boards in the garage, bought a few Big L CDs, and smoked blunts in schoolyards. They all went ‘hard.’ Shockingly, none of us ever considered there to be anything fundamentally wrong with the fact that Italian, Irish, and Jewish children appropriated the popular media’s portrayal of Black culture, or adopted a cartoonish, minstrel-like affectation for their voices to sound tough or scary. As if they had a right to do so. As if any White person could ever justify this bizarre entitlement.
Instead of joining that movement - one that embarrasses me even now - I immersed myself into skateboarding and shunned the world of Long Island. Imitating stereotypical representations of hip-hop culture made no sense to me. Especially because underneath the white t-shirt-gowns and pencil point sideburns were middle class ideals waiting to take over after graduation. When they shed the clothes and slid into the viciously average boxes glorified by the community.
A decade later, I called it privilege and sought to educate myself so as to become a respectable White. Not a falsely apologetic one who seeks to extend and benefit from unfairness. Not one with a selective, convenient memory. Not one who uses lovers or friends or colleagues or acquaintances of color as an excuse for their own despicable character.
Tom is on the rise as a personal trainer after doing a four-year-bid for slashing a bouncer in Franklin Square. Working to achieve the highly sought after detached, single-family home lifestyle that his folks embodied before they were destroyed by his crime and their misadventures with heroin. He even missed his own dad’s funeral when he died from an OD. I assume he quietly cried in his bunk upstate. “That’s very sweet of you. Hope you’re well,” I replied to his text.
Some months went by, and my girlfriend and I moved from Greenpoint to Astoria. I tried to figure out how I could stop writing petitions on behalf of international artists and never again work for the Midwesterners who ran the firm. After looking at hundreds of portfolios in various fields and across a wide range of disciples, I began to feel an urge to put more effort into my own creative future.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
We were wondering about sunlight and where those views of the hills
come from while walking west across Ninth Avenue at dawn. Everything
that morning was a soft silence, echoes from years beyond whispering through
the May winds that move closer and closer to June. Two days of rain and wind
and clouds, followed by a forever light: then outside of that coffee shop near
the corner of West 45th Street, we watched the city’s youth begin their lives all
over again ––– steady, with a pace from the rhythm of dreams, one girl laughs
as she takes a photograph of her friend with her phone / then together more coffee
they drink. New York is an engine we’ve all tried jump-starting with cables, weathered
and beaten by the cold and endless rain of an infinite winter; no matter, every summer,
the city starts up all over again ––– we take a breath, look both ways, then press play
- May Ninth, 2022
Rahil Najafabadi’s “The Bridge”
Curlew Friday Nights - May Sixth, 2022
There was a time when I thought the moon followed us.
Then the sun, and the camp of stars thrown like a blanket
trinketed with gold. On many of those nights, I remembered
the daytime blue coloring the page of each bridge you made.
If I spoke another language, I’d still be able to call your name.
If I drove on another bridge, I’d still think of yours and our car.
I’d still imagine the word ‘father’ stretching from the right side
of the page to the left, like the way you’re on the right side
Of the earth’s page, and I am on the left. At night, it is your day.
My day becomes the dark thread of the sea that is tied to the sky-
I wish the bridges could be brought to me by other bridges.
Other pieces of the sky, the day and a string of the night.
“The Bridge” is a visual art collection gifted to my father. My father is a bridge designer behind bridge development and solving technical issues related to them. I was always interested in his work and the way bridges worked. But then as I grew up and traveled and grew apart from friends and family across the world, bridges gained metaphorical significance. The Persian text that is scattered on the page is in shape of my father’s bridges, with the word “father” in Farsi, my mother tongue.
Being excited about bridges changed the way I looked outside the car. I’m always curious about the dynamic of a bridge, and how it makes my stomach feel when the altitude begins to fall. I also have a strange feeling of knowing which part of a familiar bridge I am in the car when I close my eyes. It must be because I remember how the car moves on that specific part of the bridge. It’s like napping on a car ride home and knowing where you are based on the turns of the car. This collection is my little gift to my father, who gave me the gift of appreciating people and places with poetry.
- Rahil Najafabadi
Each Friday we publish a new piece of creative work from one of our contributors, ranging from a collection of poems or illustrations, a short story, or a photo essays, and beyond. Curlew, New York’s literary and photo journal, was founded in Brooklyn, New York over the summer of 2017. The journal aims to create writing residencies in New York City ––– places where writers can live within the city for at least two years, rent free, so that they can have the time and space needed to complete their masterworks. Details regarding how to submit to Curlew can be found here.
Although support for the journal has come through our readers and subscribers (you can purchase our most recent issue, Issue No. 9, here, and can also subscribe to our next four issues, here), the main vehicle that has kept the journal going is Curlew’s Professional Copywriting Services (“Curlew PCS”), a full-service content-writing and marketing solution, which supports the growth and sustainability of local businesses throughout New York City.
You can read more about Curlew PCS here, and also schedule a free consultation with our team by contacting us by phone or email: 212-804-8655, Info@CurlewNewYork.com. If you’d just like to keep in touch, feel free to sign up for our newsletter below, which will include a blend of art and entrepreneurship through the lens and with the energy and heart of the place that we’ve made home, New York, New York.