Friday, August 13, 2010

This Paper City
TPC is zine/lit magazine that consists of fiction and poetry and everything in between, written by people who live in the Chicago and the surrounding area. Though, there is a focus on the authors who live in the city. That’s right a good ol’ fashioned zine, printed with my bare hands and stapled together with bits of flesh between the staples and pages. We publish anything and anybody whether they are just emerging authors or professionals! Short-stories, poetry, scripts, art and even reviews! All that I ask is that you submit something that you are proud of, that you enjoyed writing, something that contains a bit of your heart and soul.

So with that, I leave you to your reading ladies and gents! Hope you enjoy.
Ben Folgers
Editor/Tsar

Le Table of Contents
Feral Cats, Sheri Hillson 1
Old Man, Ryan Mattern 2
The Invisible Women, Abigail Sceaffer 5
Charlie Plays a Tune, Michael Lee Johnson 13
An Essay to End Pleasure, Liz Baudler 14
What It Is to Write, Eric Vanderford 16
Calming Song (Run, Run, Run), Ben Folgers 18
Bluffing Kings, Isaiah Smalley 20

Feral Cats By Sheri Hillson

Like acne on the earth
The metropolis grows
To house and feed the masses
Only the masses are in
Cardboard houses on rainy days
And planted in the park like grass
on sunny ones.
Fed by urban missions
With macaroni and cheese under
The eyes of the crucified one.
'God loved the world so much He
Gave His only begotten son,'
And the mission's doors are closed
tonight.
It's going to be a cold one,
Sleep tight and curl up like
feral cats.

Like a virus poverty spreads
And no one can afford a
High-rise condo,
So they stand empty when shelters
Are turning people away.
Like acne yuppies dot
The surface of another privileged pavement
River that courses between
Single-family homes taking in boarders.
High society chicks pick up pennies
Off the sidewalk when no one is
looking,
Knit me another sweater mom
It going to be a cold one
And sleep tight.

Old Man By Ryan Mattern

I’m glad you are not around to see this because it would have surely done you in a second time. The sun has stopped shining on Linesville. The town is silent without the hum and patter of the steel mill. The whistle that bellowed through the streets, over our tree, and in through my bedroom window, to let me know you’ll be home soon, has ceased, never to ring again. Every open window has been boarded up, and nearly every store closed. Nip n’ Sip was bulldozed and the unlit sign of Greta’s Chuck Wagon is all the stands at the Galleria. The cheerful banter of Mulberry Avenue has dropped below a whisper. Every person in town is now a ghost, or at least has a tendency to become invisible. Our house, once yellow and alive with your records, has been abandoned, homing only soot of the last coal burned in Linesville.
I walked to the mill yesterday——took our secret path down where the fireweeds grow tall over the old railroad tracks. The wood has turned completely black and begun to reject the rusted out spikes. I put two of them in my backpack. One for you and one for me. You don’t realize how heavy those things are until you lug ‘em to the factory and back. But I’m sure Caty will think its just kitschy enough to put up on our mantle, and I know you wouldn’t mind having one on your——it will look nice.
I stood with my hands on the lever of an oar compress for hours, imagining I was you. Listening to the soft creaks of the wooden buttresses and every once in a while hearing the scuttle of squirrel making it’s way through a broken window. I swear I saw you and Bill Perry hauling coal into the giant metal furnace, Mom’s name faintly visible and poorly scripted on a scroll that was wrapped around a heart, tattooed to your forearm. I looked at all my tattoos. Worn. Fading. Meaningless.
You barrowed more scrap metal to the compress and told me to move out of the way. Though not before mussing my hair and calling me knucklehead. After making your steel, you disappeared when the Corbin’s youngest boy came into the mill, hurling stones at the decaying machinery. Just as you were there, you were gone. Like a dream, but even they scarcely come to Linesville anymore.
I played poker with Jimmy and his brothers last weekend, and his dad mentioned you. Suddenly the words was and good man strike a different key. I knew he meant well, you know, singing your praise, but it’s never gone. That lingering aloneness, like the Laffy Taffy we would eat together in your truck, was too sticky to remove. The game went well, and though I won a hundred bucks, I still feel like I lost. Never has a full house reminded me so much of our empty one.
I went and saw Mom and Gary in Niles a little while ago. Mom is still herself, and I still call Gary him. She was gushing about seeing a cardinal the morning before and how there is nothing but crows in Linesville.
Them ain’t crows Carolyn. Issa damn soot from the mill coverin’ up everything. Sky too. Shitheap.
I punched him square in the fucking jaw before he could say another word. He flew clear out of his chair and onto the linoleum of their kitchen. He laid crooked and wheezing like the egret we ran over. Mom asked me to leave and told me she’d walk me out. I try not to listen to anything he has to say, and know deep in my heart that if you loved our town, it’s worth staying. Mom laid into me about my tattoos and short-temper. Said I was just like you, cursing your name at the sky for ever teaching me to hurt a man. I smiled. She said I smiled like you too.
Everyday I feel like if you were still here, Linesville would still be alive. It would still smell like eggs and shit from the steel and paper. But I knew the horrible odor meant jobs. People. Family. Cars would still have an excuse to go down highway 71. The names of forgotten lover’s carved deep into every tree would have a longing, jealous audience again. That maybe everything would be ok.
I had never seen a Cardinal, but I’ll be damned if one wasn’t on the porch this morning. I asked it if you were ever coming back, but it just pecked and hopped about. But before he flew into the overgrowth, I asked it if I could please die soon.

The Invisible Woman: Part One By Abigail Sceaffer

Often Gabrielle felt like a stallion in a yoke. She was deeply sensitive in nature, rarely revealing her true self to anybody, but instead wearing a Harlequin mask to portray a regal sense of optimism. Her eyes had layers to them, as many layers one supposes as there are layers to the Earth or to a Sequoia tree.
She spoke very little since the years of her suicide attempt, and those around her often complained that they saw her rarely. She had, in turn, become scarce. Being employed as a front desk girl for some time, her deeply sensitive nature would subtly reveal itself as her fingertips nervously raced across the bed of the keyboard or answered the telephones, she had a gentle nature akin to a doe.
Gabrielle was pale and fine of face, choosing to shorn her hair during the long expanse of her twentieth summer when she came home again to the shrouded suburb of Hamburg, Pennsylvania where she worked for some time as a secretary under her father.
The harsh and somewhat, abrasive atmosphere of the office, seemed to take root in her own demeanor and some backhanded comments from some fellow employees and talk that she was merely employed because of her father’s position in the company, reached her ears at record speed.
Daily, she’d come in and sit at the large, maple desk and open her book. She had some trouble transferring lines, and one employee, Ryan O’Toole, would not miss such an occasion to poke fun at her seeming “incompetence”.
Ryan O’Toole was a speedy talker, ambiguously sarcastic in nature though he tried to come off as one with a golden heart. He in fact, became brutally pitted against Gabrielle as she often confused either phone line.
It might have been Gabrielle’s fine features, as she was petite in frame and very beautiful in nature though she seemed completely unaware of the fact, or if such a subject was brought up, she dismissed it. She thought that if she could dismiss it, others would and they’d move on and let her be.
In truth, Gabrielle had only one desire and that was to vanish completely. To be invisible, to be absolutely translucent to the eyes of all those who mocked her.
Indeed, the cleaning ladies Olga and Anya had walked in on her just this morning as she stood with her black coffee, musing at her day to the empty house. They’d snuck in through the front porch with their wash buckets and their brooms and found her blatantly alone; Gabrielle’s booming voice had become a waning soprano at their entry and though she tried to come off brassy and proud at her eccentricities, she blanched and inwardly felt shame.
This did not fare her well as she entered into the office, where her vulnerability to that event seemed to seep into her other work; and at the appearance of the resident secretary Louise showing up at the front desk once more, Gabrielle had whispered to her father how she’d like to step down.
He looked at her with some disappointment, nodded his head and instead of letting her go so Gabrielle might peruse the local library (her favorite thing to do was to get lost among Tennyson’s poems) she instead encountered the Lion’s Den where all the men at their desks seemed to gristle or guffaw at her under their breaths, as if to say, this was a man’s world.
Gabrielle sat pensively at her new desk, hoping to be obscured from their vision and she retied the scarf at her neck. Smoothing the down of her jersey dress, she leaned into the typewriter and began her work with a silent prayer that she might vanish.
She was finally released from the yoke just shy of four o’clock, and immediately caught the trolley to the public library. The Poetry Wing at the library had a beryl wrought iron bannister that led to the stacks, and a small stained glass window that was always left cracked open during the humid months.
The smell was damp and slightly moldy, and when Gabrielle looked out she could spy the crown of the blossoming pear tree with all of its flowers strewn over the bit of lawn and sidewalk. There was a crevice where she would hide and it had a little chair from the Colonial era. A breadth of wind fanned the nape of her neck and she closed her eyes and felt the spines of the books. They were ancient books, some of deteriorating cardboard or cloth, and still some were mahogany leather.
She took off her pumps and they sounded against the blond floorboards, the heel slightly scratching the surface, she let her feet breathe through her light taupe pantyhose as she lifted the pages of some centuries old edition copy of “Idylls of the King” and was soon lost in the poem of The Lady of the Lake.
But what was this? Between the spines of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”, lie a book with a sparse title of chipped gold leaf paint. It seemed so much smaller than the other books, and Gabrielle began to question if the librarian had put it in the wrong area. Curiosity nevertheless consumed her, and Gabrielle opened the small book up (which smelt of mildew and coriander) and began to read.
It was arranged like old Pablo Neruda poetry, and so for an instant, Gabrielle began to believe it was so; for on one side there was the Hungarian text and the other a translation. But what the small book said was hardly romantic poetry, and it seemed to be incantations.
“Spell for Abundance”, read one page, still another: “Spell for a Mead Moon”, and another “Spell for a Flower Moon”. Licking her fingers and turning the page, Gabrielle scanned to see if there was any such poem for invisibility and upon finding it, she slid it between her copy of Tennyson and Sir Malory.
That night, while she made her croque-monsieur and poured herself a glass of burgundy, she mused over the book. She began to wonder if it was just some fantasy poem or mythology, but upon scanning the pages again her doubts were quickly dismissed.
Sipping her burgundy, she giggled and began to read one such poem:
Amely a fénygörbe körülöttem
Nézek sötét mások
Csend a hangom, hogy senki sem hallja meg nekem
Egyértelműen a testem
Having had her fill of fun, Gabrielle climbed into her bed and slept a dreamless sleep until waking with the fresh blood of the dawn as it crept over the cerulean horizon.
It seemed a lovely day, with tufts of clouds somewhat gilded and a light breeze from the bay. Gabrielle stretched under her cotton sheets, splashed her face with some brisk water and changed into her formal suit.
The office was in a rush as always, and as Gabrielle was crossing to her desk, Ryan O’Toole ran into her, spilling coffee all over her. Gabrielle glared at him, but he merely swaggered on. She approached her father at his desk while he was scribbling out some checks.
“Father.” She said.
He did not look up.
“I’m not late, I can’t think why you’re ignoring me.” She questioned.
“Father!” She repeated.
“Father!” Still, he did not look up, so Gabrielle returned to her desk and rolled a paper through her Underwood and waited for assignment.
When the secretary Betty passed, and Betty being somewhat of an ally for Gabrielle, she assumed she would get an assignment; but Betty too seemed to ignore her. Gabrielle stormed into her father’s office once more.
“Is everybody ignoring me because I chose to step down from secretary?” She yelled.
He looked up and blinked.
“You already had Louise, I was just filling in, don’t you remember?”
He turned around in his chair and slid a paper clip over some papers and put them in a file.
“Oh, I suppose I’m the bad daughter because of this? Don’t you understand that they mock me? James, Johnny and Fredrick? Oh and what about Ryan! He’s the worst!” She demanded.
But her father merely turned back to his work.
“I’m leaving early.” She said, and so she took her cardigan and her crocodile bag from her desk and exited the doors of Winchester Inc.
Having little else to do, Gabrielle decided she might get some lunch and a pack of cigarettes. For lunch she decided on Harry’s Sandwich Shoppe down Main Street. Harry’s was a nice place where you could sit out bistro style and they had a wait staff and delicious pink lemonade.
As such, you could seat yourself if the place wasn’t teeming with people; so Gabrielle paid no mind that the hostess didn’t look up from stacking the menus. Gabrielle went right outside to her favorite spot by the oak tree and waited for a waiter from the other table to come over.
She read the menu and decided upon a chicken BLT with a pink lemonade, of course. It was her favorite comfort sandwich and she needed comfort after this morning at the office.
After ten minutes however, the waiter didn’t come over and so Gabrielle began to get irritated. At twenty minutes, the table he’d been waiting paid their bill and left, and he lit himself a cigarette.
Gabrielle glowered at him and decided to walk over to him.
“You’ve a lot of nerve ignoring a customer. What? What is it this time?” She yelled.
The waiter kept puffing on his cigarette, and at certain points when Gabrielle emphasized her point, he ashed it.
“Am I not rich enough for you? Is that it? Well, I can just make my sandwich at home.”
So she did such.
Gabrielle collapsed onto her bed and watched twilight seep over the skyline. It was a waning gibbous and so the moon even seemed to angle itself away from her, and Gabrielle began to wonder what it was she’d done wrong to make people ignore her.
She buried her face in her hands, feeling her eyes begin to well up with tears and moments later the salty water emanating from her streamed down her cheeks. The muscles in her stomach felt as though they were grilling against a furnace, and she buried her head into her pillow.
Walking past her bedroom mirror to grab some tissues, Gabrielle paused. Did the mirror despise her now, too? For on the other side of the glass, there was no reflection. Gabrielle wiped the tears from her cheeks and stared back. Where had she gone?
The tissue fell from her fingers as she realized what she had done. She looked at the little book with the chipped gold paint that rested on her bureau.
Flipping it open to the page she’d read last night, Gabrielle felt her face blanche. How would she reverse such a spell? She searched through the pages, certainly they must include how to undo a spell, but there was nothing to be found.
Gabrielle decided to go to the library once more, as maybe there was a librarian who could help her. Checking the clock on the wall, Gabrielle saw it would be closing in just a few minutes but perhaps her favorite librarian, Cynthia would still be there.
Fleeing suddenly, she caught one of the last trolleys and rushed into the library right before it closed. Luckily, she spied Cynthia at the front desk.
“Cynthia! Cynthia!” Gabrielle yelled. Cynthia did not look up from her stacks, and Gabrielle understood the objectivity of her situation. With no one to look at her, she began to cry once more.
“Excuse me, miss.” Said a voice, a male voice.
“Why are you crying?” Gabrielle looked up to see a tall man gazing at her (or through her?) She looked around and supposed he’d meant Cynthia and continued to mourn for herself.
“Is there anything I can do?” He asked. Gabrielle stared back at him and decided to speak.
“I’m invisible.” She said, though it came out rather muffled as she was crying into the sleeve of her cardigan.
“How’d that happen?” The man asked dryly, as Gabrielle sniffled.
“I read this book and now nobody will ever know who I am.”
The man inspected the book carefully, and then he said, “Ah.”
He offered her a tissue and his hand so that she might get up from the dirty carpet as to not ruin her sundress.
Gabrielle saw he was wearing a three piece suit, or so she supposed, but his blazer was off and his vest unbuttoned. She also noticed he was very handsome and had blue eyes, pale like the Arctic and a Catalan complexion. He smiled at her.
“I’m a mess!” She exclaimed. He laughed.
“Would you like dinner?” He asked.
“Who would serve ‘The Invisible Woman’?” She said.
“I will.” He said.
“Would you mind telling me your name? Manners still exist for us phantom femmes, you know.”
“Amory.” He said, and he stretched his hand out to her, and she him.
“I didn’t quite catch yours.” He said, furrowing his brow.
“Gabrielle, but my friends call me ‘Gabby’.” She said.
“Well, Gabrielle,” He said, “How about Chez Maurice? On the corner by Kensington and River Street?”
Gabrielle nodded, somewhat smiling while she wiped away some more tears,
“That would be lovely, Amory.” She said.

Charley Plays a Tune By Michael Lee Johnson

Crippled, in Chicago,
with arthritis
and Alzheimer's,
in a dark rented room,
Charley plays
melancholic melodies
on a dust filled
harmonica he
found abandoned
on a playground of sand
years ago by a handful of children
playing on monkey bars.
He hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market
and the skeleton bones of the fish show through.
He lies on his back riddled with pain,
pine cones fill his pillows and mattress;
praying to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads
Charley blows tunes out his
celestial instrument
notes float through the open window
touch the nose of summer clouds.
Charley overtakes himself with grief
and is ecstatically alone.
Charley plays a solo tune.

An Essay to End Pleasure By Liz Baudler

I believe Orion
lost at love. Got shot
with his own arrow.
He was very clear tonight,
though I don’t remember who he loved.

Betelgeuse and Rigel
are twin ends of the same spectrum,
red and blue, respectively,
Rigel far hotter
than Betelgeuse.

The blue flame is what
they always tell you not
to touch.

I am a complete virgin,
a celestial gesture.
The sky displays
some sort of connection,
the lines are drawn in books.

Perhaps I am mad
and everything is too long.

Binary stars
die like any other star.
One explodes, to make
black holes so grief-stricken
they can’t let go.
They absorb you,
in order of importance:
essays, a job, sandwiches.

Cold air freezes
the little sparkling objects
they call tears
and holds them there
for you to gaze on.

For there are hand-drawn stars
in Orion, as if someone made
him up, doodling, on the back
of an envelope.

What It is to Write By Eric Vanderford

Mind a chatter
Blank staring, blank caring
Visualize thoughts, complexities
Block out the feel of motions and verbal abuse

Black material on the wrist, moving stick, five finger grip
See this and the words
No Ginsberg book or Plath
No TV remotes, no bed, no wall
Just mind, hand, and pen
Requirement stands alone only to these and nothing more

Fading ink, fading idea
Write in hopes of duplication
One gets to mind and no audience
Don’t care about audience but it’s there

On days when it hurts the most,
There are the eyes of angry young people on me
Their fists don’t pump in the air,
Instead they throw paper balls at the speaker

Audience uncaring
Just want a break so they can all sleep
Violent minds tend to work the hardest; only on bad do they use their good
They’re all hate and anger
Subjunctive
They just want a piece to grab onto

Write to please mind
Mind unsatisfied
Unhappy, no wanting
Burning on the inside

Nerve endings split
Fragment into splinters
Tilts brain, uneven flow of thoughts
Decay, collapse
Nervous needs fade
Stem bleeding pulse

Desire lives to speak a dream not remembered
Shadows are only left seen
All other images cascade,
Leaving a notebook full of thoughts for closed eyes only