Issue 6

SASSAFRAS LITERARY MAGAZINE ISSUE 6  - Nov 25th, 2013 

CONTENT

ARTWORK

Emily Strauss (photos) - Covering Fog,
Hills and Barn, River Morning

POETRY

Jon Bennett - AHM#2
Michael Boccardo - What No One Told Me About Autumn,
Fable For Boys Who Chase Tornadoes

Beth Boylan - The List
Micah Chatterton: Self - Hypnosis
Nancy Correro - Pursuit of the other side,
New Life in the 21st Century

Megan Kaminski - Dear Sister
Mercedes Lawry - Trends, The Observer
Jeremy Nathan Marks - The Conversation,
The Moon

Dawn Schout - Scablands,At The Royal Palace
Emily Strauss - After a While Dumbness Strikes, Night Music


FICTION

Michael Brasier - Like Nothing Ever Happened
Ron Morita - Flight
Sherri H Levine - Footbridge
Ashleigh Rajala - Coal Dust



NONFICTION

Riona Judge McCormack - Theme in A Minor
Kelly Seiz - Pluck

(Sassafras issue 6 as a PDF)

Sherri H Levine – Footbridge

Footbridge

 _

        It was a hot and sticky summer when you called shortly after you left her. You spoke to me as if no time had passed, though it had been years. Over breakfast at the diner, you passed photographs of your son and called her a bitch. She criticized you about your job, your weight, your debt. You told me that she never touched you in the right places, that she just lay there lifeless while you were on top of her. You told her even a prostitute could do better.

  As we walked along the footbridge that night, you reached for my hand. You were so large that I barely reached your chest.

“I’m afraid I could jump,” you said gripping the railings.

“I didn’t know you were that depressed,” I said.

“No, it’s my OCD. It’s okay. This is exposure therapy,” you said staring blankly at the water.

“But you’re a psychologist,” I said.

I remember when you used to deliver pizzas, how I tagged along with you to porn shops so you could put nickels in machines in the back. You told me you loved me, but I didn’t, not in that way. Besides, I could never give you a child. When I told you I was going to marry, you said it would never work out.

As we continued to walk along the footbridge, I put my arm in yours.

“Just like my mom and I used to do,” you said.

And then, the unthinkable happened: the moon, the Super moon appeared in the horizon. It was big and bright and orange. It was the largest moon I had ever seen. We stood there watching it slowly fade to a pale pink sliver, dropping into the stillness of the river.

_

Sherri H. Levine is from Albany, New York and has lived in Portland for almost 20 years. She loves Oregon, but she misses the beautiful autumn season. She holds a BA in Poetry and an MA in English Literature. She teaches English-as-a-Second Language at Portland State University and Willamette University. She is enamored with the flash fiction genre because it feels like it is a perfect fit for her as a poet.  

Michael Brasier – Like Nothing Ever Happened

Like Nothing Ever Happened

 

Brad had to drop everything to fit her dating schedule. He bandaged his wrist, fought against the needle sharp rain out back, and tossed the first-aid kit in the dumpster. In twenty minutes, Janine would be dropping Sarah off again on a Thursday, a day he normally wouldn’t have her, so she could meet Kyle, and the place had to be spotless, like nothing ever happened.
White hairs had begun to sprout in the midst of his scruff. He didn’t like the reflection he saw in the bathroom mirror. His eyes were sunken, his hair, unkempt. But it wasn’t his appearance that bothered him. He just didn’t recognize the man staring back.
He placed a bible next to the lamp, more a decoration than a set of spiritual guidelines. As his old man used to say, “As long as you live under my roof, you abide by God’s rules.” He sat on his mattress, picked up the razor he cut his wrist with and tossed it in the trash bin. It was the third time in two months, but the scars left behind were barely visible.
His marriage to Janine had given him his only daughter Sarah. His friends and co-workers at St. John’s helped her through the birth, and then helped him through the divorce soon after. Unbeknownst to him, Janine never wanted a child, but claimed to have told him countless times. Why she endured the pregnancy for nine long months was beyond him. Brad opened the sock drawer and uncovered his old wedding ring, holding it as if were a clump of dried mud, susceptible to crumbling.
On the headboard he kept a picture of Sarah from her first day of school. According to Janine, she’d be wearing her new Hello Kitty backpack today and really wanted to show it to him. Janine purchased whatever Sarah wanted, but only if it shut her up long enough to give her and her flavor-of-the-week time alone. His daughter loved showing him her toys. Even though he didn’t have a lot of money, he looked forward to giving her all the attention she deserved.
Pacing through the house, he was reminded how bare bones it was. One bedroom and bathroom, gray walls, a TV, couch, fold-out lawn chair, and Sarah’s duct taped bean bag. Brad worked to survive on his own after Janine won the settlement in the divorce, and she felt such pity for his sudden job loss that she agreed to allow him weekend visits. When Sarah had crawled across his floor for the first time, he realized how rich he actually was. He set out Capri Sun drinks and a bag of cheese curls for her arrival.
Janine’s SUV squealed out front, and his phone buzzed. He answered, and she started with,“I promised Sarah you’d take her to the movies this weekend so you know.” He said, “I can barely afford gas for that piece of shit Pontiac out in the driveway.”

“You have a job,” she said. “You should be saving for these occasions.”

He said, “I don’t have the job I used to.” He almost blamed her for losing his job at the hospital, and now he’d have to let his daughter down. Janine loved playing him for the bad guy.
“Kyle’s taking me to Branson,” she said. “We’ve got reservations at the new bed and breakfast and tickets to the Branson Belle.”
He hung up, and moments later, he heard footsteps pitter-patter on the wet sidewalk. Brad quickly slipped into his a long sleeve shirt and went to the living room.
The screen door swung open, and like nothing ever happened, Sarah was there.

Sassafras Literary Magazine issue 4

SASSAFRAS LITERARY MAGAZINE ISSUE 4 

TABLE OF CONTENT


fiction

Paul Beckman - THIS IS NOT SELF SERVICE 
Gloria Garfunkel - Thunderstorms in South Dakota 
Matthew Laffrade - Choked City 


poetry

Gary Beck - Night Thought, Remote Father 
Tina Egnoski - Electroconvulsive Therapy;Dinner Guests at the Country House,
Apolitical Apothegm

Bruce Hinrichs - What seems now, well, only too ordinary
Seth Howard - Stepping Through The Door 
Kathie Jacobson - NEWTOWN

Don Kingfisher Campbell – Brothers 
Maureen Kingston – Threshold Dream, Dementia Aspic 
Steve Klepetar - A Silence, Laughing at the Leaves 
Justin Million - Convent, The Fourth Act 

Gaetan Sgro -Every Night We talk About The Same Thing, 
Afternoon, June 
The Coast
John Sibley Williams - Beirut,
                                I'm Reading Sunday’s Headlines That Call for Things Like Justice 

Jeremiah Walton - Road Trips Seen Thru Motel Rooms 
Jeffrey Zable - Natural Born Killer, Dear Editor/s 
Thomas Zimmerman - Forget to Die
Ali Znaidi – Counter Replica, Australian Horoscope 

nonfiction

Rebecca Andem - Fumes
Terry Barr - “Andy, It's Therapetic”

artwork 

Ece Zeber: Self-Portrait, Scene 1 - 6, untitled

Sassafras issue 4 - PDF

Alessandra Davy-Falconi – Pride

Pride

 

Somebody trained him to love without loving him back, and so one February night in a soft snow they slipped eight or so pounds of feline fur to the street and left. There was a church down the block which would hopefully wake up to its duty and take the ball of fur to its heart; or not, but it ought to, he was only eight pounds. Or so. They hadn’t measured before letting him go.

She found him in the same snow at less than eight pounds definitely. Twelve days and the church had said no room but life is precious here’s food. Twelve days and she said I’ve got an apartment, will it do?

His name was Baby. Her name was Yellow. She was friend, and he was the bundle who sometimes rested the full weight of his little head on her arm.

 

 

 

 

Alessandra Davy-Falconi is from Boston and Pittsburgh, and a student at Bryn Mawr College. She has been published in The Marble Collection: High School Magazine of the Arts, won the 2011-12 Helen Creeley Poetry Contest, and read her work at the 12th Annual Boston National Poetry Month Festival. She is always searching for stories to tell in whatever way she can.

 

Linda Nguyen – Pretty Things

Pretty Things

Mom, Dad and I were in Wildwood, New Jersey for a vacation. I was only three. I didn’t know what a vacation was, but I knew it meant that Dad didn’t have to work for a while.

“Yay! Đi biễn chơi!” I said in Vietnamese. We’re going to the beach! I’d only learned the word for beach when we left Montréal by car, but I didn’t know what the beach was until the sand was under my sandals, and the green-blue ocean I saw stretched on forever. Even the sky could touch it. Mom covered me in sunscreen while I built sand castles, the grains of which were coarse and uneven. Dad hobbled over to the edge of the water, testing how it was with his feet, and he came back with a pail full of cloudy water. He poured it next to my sand castle.

“Your castle will be stronger with water,” he said, and it was! My dad was a genius!

My admiration of his genius was short lived as I was distracted by all the different rocks in the sand when the water washed over them. Some big, some small, some smooth, some colourful, and some with patterns on them. I found a big one though, the size of a chicken egg. I took a break from castle-building and collected several of them, not as big as that first one, but I kept the ones I liked. I put them in my trouser pockets. Dad came back, drenched from his swim. He asked Mom to reapply the sunscreen.

“Amy, come here so I can apply sunscreen on you too,” she said.

I crawled back from my sand castle, my shorts dragging below my waist, almost off my bum.

“What are in your pockets?” Dad asked.

“Đồ đẹp,” I said. Pretty things.

Dad reached into my pockets, shaking his head but smiling.

“Don’t put stones in your pockets,” he said. “They’ll just drag you down wherever you go.”

“No they won’t,” I protested.

“Fine. Keep them,” he said. “See if I’m right.”

When it was almost time for dinner, Dad folded the beach chairs and umbrella. He carried them up to our motel while Mom brought up her beach bag and our cooler. I was tasked with bringing my castle-building tools, but my shorts kept falling down. Before we got to the massive stairs that led up to the boardwalk, I abandoned all my pretty things. Mom waited for me, smiling but not saying a word. Once we got to our motel room, Dad turned and asked me “Where are all your rocks?”

“I had to leave them behind,” I mumbled, my eyes beginning to tear up.

“I was right, wasn’t I? Don’t be sad,” he said while hugging me. “Giỏi, ba thương.” Be good and I’ll love you, he said, as if I had to be good or he wouldn’t love me at all. Sometimes, it hurt to find out how much of a genius he was.

Bio: Linda Nguyen is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in Montréal where her mind wanders and her fingers type.

rob mclennan – two untitled stories

 

Driving hours down highway, we pass a houseboat docked on a small rise of earth, some twenty miles from the closest body of water. A dream of ocean, between blacktop and tree-line, tied to a hydro pole. What would happen if the houseboat unmoored? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. Perhaps the entire illusion of what the anchor holds floating away into unrecoverable distances.

 

I prefer the theory that time is a single point, as opposed to a linear trajectory. Every moment ever happened or will sharing this, from the War of 1812 to the moon landing to the chaos in Egypt to the birth of my grandfather to the creation of Stonehenge to my fingers brushing up against your face the first time.

 

 

Bio: rob mclennan lives in Ottawa. He is the author of twenty books (poetry, fiction, non-fiction) winner of the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. Recent titles: Songs for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012), Grief Notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), Missing Persons (2009). He is the editor and publisher of Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review, Seventeen Seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, and the annual Ottawater. During 2007-8 he was a writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. He frequently post reviews, essays, interviews and more at robmclennan.blogspot.com