drumcircle - spring 2013 - issue #1

drumcircle • 2 3 • drumcircle

Foreword

Writer’s Roundtable is an organization that we are excited to have revived at Lesley University. It is also a club where we don’t actu-ally sit at a round table. We pretend this is because it is ironic. It is actually because geometry is hard and stuff. Between open-mics, workshops, book festivals, mocking Chris’ pants, putting together this ‘zine, and Andrea Gibson’s visit, we’ve had a productive year. Sitting down across from each other all the following Mondays, we’ve realized how lucky we are to be way too excited about words and to have a classroom to ourselves to make a lot of noise about it. drumcircle was born from that excitement and our desire to invite the Lesley community to share their words with each other. We look forward to doing our part in bringing the strong community of writers at Lesley together. This project is our overwhelmingly excitable toddler: belly full of your thoughts, hiccuping line breaks, whining for more, etc etc, it’s really excited about eating all your words right up and it’s also hoping your metaphors are better than ours. Big thank you to all of our contributors, group members, and anyone that is really enthusiastic about anything at all. That’s always the best. You are the best. Let’s get an ice cream cone some time.

- Abbie Levesque, Chris Maloney, & Jess Rizkallahdrumcircle Editors and Bartleby Enthusists

Table of ContentsForeword drumcircle Editors 3Behind the Mobil Gas Station Julie Krzanowski 4Creative Assignment #5 Zachary Najarian-Najafi 7Jiminy Amy Hammond 810.11.11 Kathryn Grove 9Rantifesto David Himmel 10Stay Cold, Boston Meghan Lis 11merry christmas Izzy Lawrence 12Sparrows Among The Thorns Marisa Glynn 13the other L word Sarah Winters 14Gravity Abbie Levesque 15Never Again Shall We Fall/God’s Song Josh Cornillon 16Sane Melissa Morris 17Good Luck in All Your Future Endeavors/Sumi Josh Cornillon 18The Ever-Present Uncertainty Meghan Lis 19Sisyphus Chris Maloney 20I Am the Words of Others Amy Hammond 21Photograph Juliet Degree 22What Happens in South America When it is Left Alone Juliet Degree 23Letters To Cracked Knuckles (2&7) Jess Rizkallah 24a letter from the salem witches Alina MacLean 26A Meditation on Unrequited Love Zachary Najarian-Najafi 28Chains Chris Maloney 30

Cover Art by Tiffany Mallery

Find us!Lesley Writers Roundtable on Facebook

[email protected]


Behind the Mobil Gas Stationby Julie Krzanowski

7:19am. He thinks he sees light, the sun rising behind the pumps, out of the clouds that have down poured on the town for the last seven days. He stands on his toes, trying to see across the highway. He tells me, as I get out of my car, “The angels are pouring their souls into the government and they’re not listening.” He wears a dark blue tee shirt without a nametag. I look around him but he doesn’t carry anything. I laugh. “Who said the government listens to anyone?” I take out my wallet and insert my credit card into the machine. He stands a few yards away from me, calls from the corner of the gas station that has a Dunkin Donuts attached to it. His jeans are in fine condition but his shirt looks a bit dirty. So does his hair, but it might be the mist making it look wet. “You think the guys at Dunkin will listen to the angels?” I call back. He nods his head vigorously and his eyes widen. Yes, yes of course they will, I think. It’s just the government that doesn’t give a damn. He’s wearing dirty oxfords and mismatched socks. He walks over to me as I’m opening the gas tank. There’s a small hiss as I untwist the cap and select unleaded. “You work here?” He doesn’t respond, just walks over slowly and stands in front of my car. Not in a dangerous way, from what I can tell, but he starts eyeing the hood of the Camry. I wonder if it only opens from the inside. “Lucy was the first one. She told the president to give her wings back, but he laughed and said real angels don’t have wings, so she left but I think she went back not so much later and asked again.” He speaks in a low voice, his hand running along the head-

lights. He crouches and examines them closely. “She said later she found other ways of lifting herself up but the ground was shaking because it was summer and I don’t remember what she said al-though I wish I did.” 35 dollars, 80 cents and counting. I do quick math in my head and figure there’s about 4 more gallons of my tank left to fill. “Who was the second one?” I say it without smiling. He stands up. He runs his fingers along the edge of the hood, slowly. His hands are big but not unclean. There’s a light breeze and when his blond hair lifts a little I can see a bit of blood on his forehead. I watch the way his hand interacts with the mist, the slow move-ments he takes like we’re already underwater.

When I was seventeen I went swimming in a rainstorm. Our house was only a couple miles from the ocean. I went alone, because back then I always wanted to be alone, and walked into the ocean with just my shorts on. The rip tides came and I don’t know how I got out. When I did, I didn’t think the world was such a beau-tiful place. I kept feeling the water in my ears and how my throat was all used up from coughing. It took me years to get any sense of wonder out of life again. All I could think about was the tug of things bigger than us pulling us away from shorelines, away from home.

The ticker reaches 40 dollars. The downpour starts again. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look up. He just nods like he knew it was coming. Seven straight days of this weather. There’s no hope for my basement now, but I guess that’s what you get for having a house by the bay. A friend once told me that if you grow up on the coast, you’ll never get it out of your system. “Out of your system.” Those were the words he used. And I guess he was right. I moved away from the shore for so long but after stretching into my thirties, here I was again. “Hey, sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Nothing. He looks back down at the hood of car. “What do you think they’d say about the rain?” I ask him. “The angels, I mean.” He looks back up at me but then pulls the hood of my car up. I quickly stop pumping gas and return the nozzle to the ma-


chine. Instead of slamming the hood back down, I ask him again. “What would they say? Tell me. It’s been over a week and my base-ment is flooded. What will the angels say?” His eyes are wider than I thought they were. He leaves the engine alone, just gazes at the gears and blackness of it all. “Angel. An-hel. He told me to wait until the eleventh day and then leave.” He pronounces Angel beautifully and I find myself recalling how my mother used to speak it, an undertone of an accent from her days on the border. I remember her telling me that when her belly pointed towards the sky she knew it was a boy she was having. I remember her eyelashes and how her hands never stopped moving. His hands, they’re so clean I imagine he spent the half hour before I arrived scrubbing his fingernails. He pulls up a stick of metal that measures the oil. “Eleven days and it will stop.” He drips oil from the car onto the pavement where it swirls but doesn’t run. As I drive away, I think of his hands when I watch how the rain slices the beams from my headlights.

After ten days of rain, the flood stops. On the eleventh day, my mother calls. I can picture her as she speaks, the phone is her right hand, her left fiddling with the hem of her dress. Her black hair falling just below her shoulder blades. “Angel, Anhel,” she says, “I had a dream you died.” I tell her I know.

Creative Assignment #5by Zachary Najarian-Najafi

Pyongyang is my city of dreamswhen I am bored at work.

I wonder what Kim Jong-un thinks aboutin his spare time.

It can’t be that differentfrom what I think about.

We are not so differentLil’ Kim and I.

I lord over the files;he lords over 25 million people.

Those people area lot like files.

Why then do I dream of Pyongyangwhen I am bored at work?


Jiminyby Amy Hammond

I sprouted in the clinic looking room,Of the least institutional class.I sang out el grilloAnd took pride in the lust of a cricket.Naturally the lust devours him in the spring.

El grillo, el grillo And as Persephone, I lovedA boy who didn’t deserve it,And was too incompetent and weak not to look back.

I faked attention to the historyOf American presidentsAnd wrote pretty poemsAbout a wilting yellow flower,In my over-washed yellow hair. The aestheticsWere repulsively heavy.

El grillo. El grilloConsumed our vocal chords whenWe were too young.But our chirpings shaped out self control.A horny cricket finally received His five cents in the minds of seventy thirteen year olds.Julie managed to play

A smile on the electric Piano.

She of all womenDeserved a grand.She could be my shelter,But I fear that after I told herSting was ugly, she refusedMy adoption.

El grillo… Persephone will grow in the basement, but she might stir dust in her following footsteps, and the light striking that dust could be the beauty that her com-panion could not resist.

10.11.11by Kathryn Grove

Insectsdrunkenly bumpinginto the window screenwings frail and delicatelike cigarette paperagainst theirrobust little armored bodies


Rantifestoby David Himmel

Stealing the sky is the best way to start the day. I can’t imagine breezing through life without singing and dancing and singing while dancing and getting looks from people across the street while singing and dancing and laughter. Oh God, laughter.

I think the most beautiful people in life have an effervescent spirit. Hungry, bright, accepting but unyielding.

Reveling in their passions, refusing to turn lukewarm. (Because) If there was ever a notion to be described as ‘immensely brief ’, it’s the human condition, because, if you think about it, each moment we live is gone in reality but becomes an integral part of our soul.

This irrepressible zest that dwells within all of us must be cultivated, and if we allow ourselves to learn from our moments and simulta-neously allow our moments to fade away from our mental dwell-ings, we will transcend our notion of our “selves” to become a vessel for scintillating life. So let’s all let ourselves laugh at ourselves while loving ourselves. There is SO MUCH potential for soul smiles when we don’t judge, but just DO.

Seriously, the other day I looked myself in the mirror and said “David, there are two ways today can go. You can either shrivel up and let your exhaustion and psoraisis and homesickness define your day, OR

you can reframe your reality, you can take on the day and make it a DAY OF VICTORIES!” And I DID! Accept. Assert.

As Buddy Miles said “Well my mind is goin’ through dem changes.” We are the perfect duality of ephemerality and a static soul. Yes, I WILL moonwalk down the streets (or as best I can-- having seven-teen left feet is not conducive to hip swaggering dance shenanigans) because there is bliss and there is peace to be found in following the impulse for joy, no matter what constructs you are in violation of. The sky is ours for the seizing! Invictus Maneo! Liebe Uber Alles!

I love Orange Soda more than Kel Mitchell! I saw Beauty and the Beast in 3D five times in one week last year! I played drums in a grunge band and in our first concert forgot there was a second half to Heart Shaped Box and played a goofy drum solo for 2 minutes! I am PROUD to say I do what I love because I love it.

Stay Cold, Bostonby Meghan Lis

“It doesn’t stay too cold for long”Oh yeah?Boston takes seven months to defrost.I’ve learned how to walkover snow coated ice,and I’ve got the bravest ankles.I can walk faster than you winterjoggers, making me nauseousmuch too early in the day.

“The east coast is full of opportunities”Oh yeah?I walk by a child ina bright green harness,


a restrained dreamerpining after a stuffed giraffe.

“It really is beautiful here,can’t you tell?”Oh yeah?I wonder if it’s okay to laughWhen people dreamabout the ocean,and realizeit is far too cold to swim,

and things are neverreally what they seem to be.So have a drinkand stay cold Boston,a museum of dreamerson display.

merry christmasby Izzy Lawrence

hey pa, can you take your tail out from between your legs?you did itand now your girls knowpa, please don’t sit there (crying) like a little school boyi would have done it toomom, please stop hiding from it allwhat have you really learned in the basement?the laundry only does one thingit just keeps spinning round and roundit’s the same cyclei know you know this too

Sparrows Among The Thornsby Marisa Glynn

Secrets are earthly creatures existing inside human crustMy neck aches in a noose that I do not deserve to ownI am breathing through twig cages and the skeletons of birdsWhere feathers protrude out of discolored skinSorrow concealed in a coat of down.I wish to be a sparrow among the thornsBecause time is a human conceptAnd feathers are too strong to hold pressure of numbersBrains neither balloon nor splatter when glass shields breakIf only there was a way to stand on solid groundWithout actually touching itWhen I was little I swallowed a turn tableAnd to this day the needle treads in the groves of my tonsils Always skipping over skin in my throat,Stretched thin and raw Exposing a blood so clean that the grime of this world doesn’t deserve to touch itI want to flyWith the birds whose bones are too hollowTheir solitude untouchable by bodies too small to feelWhere the redlines cross the blue ones, but do not intersectif only magnets could wrench the blood from your veinsPouring the liquid in a human shell that forgot how to exist A denial of the human bodyWhen my obscure framework splashes the pavement in sticky spillsAspirations of fowl kind My quills will be stripped. Fragments of self dunked in inky bloodTo write the words of people who found home in their skeletons.


the other L wordby Sarah Winters

My grandmother, my father’s mother,is a staunch Navy wife Catholic from Missouriwho tsks at hearing that a cousin is pregnant before getting marriedwould probably curse my friends to hell for being gay and queerand fucking with the biblical order of things.But privately-I’m not sure she would curse loudly,for she considers herself a dignified woman,one who did a good job raising four childrenas her husband flew airplanes searching for submarines,and she kept the house together,kept the family together,kept the faith together,andI’m not sure that she would love me the sameif she knew that my friends,the queer ones,sinners in her eyes,are my life force.I’m not sure that she would love me the sameif sexuality were a choice, ‘causeif it were I’d love my girl space friend B as a lover,it’s all there, I’m just missingone piece.But,then again,my grandmother isn’t onefor warmth and fuzzies,

of course she writes the L wordon birthday cards,but has she ever said it?I don’t think she has.It’s okay, though,for my L wordcomes is dozensfrom the friendsshe’d call sinners,and often I wishshe’d love them too.

Gravityby Abbie Levesque

I’m a Libra, and you’re a Gemini,and I think whatever horoscopes sayabout the two of us, our twins and scalesand whether we balance each other outis a bunch of bullshit, because the gravityof planets can’t be felt on earth, certainlycan’t determine fate. If gravity pulled onlove and trust, then the force ofyour body and mine pulling on each otherwould determine more than any planet or moon.Our orbiting bodies, acting as each other’s sunsare much more vital than celestial alignments.


Never Again Shall We Fall/God’s Songby Josh Cornillon

Heard the voice of God on the radioSmoky and slow like molasses Gold and glass and bottled fateDefine the glances thatCast red tape on the wall

Glue and brownCan’t hear through static Return to serviceRepeat to senderConfirmation

Riddles rhymed in youthFill lungs like waspsMake nests in old photographsHer lips were dry and peeled andBent to long lost hymns and prayers

Pins and needlesTurn back around Turn it down Strain

Fairly dark and fairlyMalicious, never again shall we fall

Saneby Melissa Morris

Jump off your bed with the force of a million men, so high that your head smashes from the impact of the ceiling and you come crashing to the groundIn pain, in tears, in blood, enthralled with the defeat that runs through your veins like a river of bitterness, because defeat is all you know and trapped is all you will ever beBecause all the hope has been drained and the dreams have been deferred and the beauty has been whipped out of you by the sticks and stones that broke your bonesAll you can do now is jump again and again and again but for what? Not the sky, not the stars, always the ceiling, which is stained with brown and drying blood from all the times you tried to pursue happiness and loveWhat light there was inside is burning out at the speed of sound and the love you may have had has diminished; hate always swal-lows love because there is nothing else in the world. You fall in love and when you fall your head is smashed again on the cold stone floor because there is no love to break your fall, there never is. You love the ideas but not the person because the person is untouchable and far away and out of reach but even if you could reach them it wouldn’t matter because disfigurement is a great wall of stone and steel designed to restrain the armies of affection.The world is a lonely place filled with lonely people in shades of gray who walk about and talk about but never about you. Smoke fills your eyes and oil fills your lungs and you suffocate, you suffo-cate, always suffocating. Air air air air! But there is no air, not for you. There is never any peace when the earth is filled with gaseous


poison that follows you like relentless energy. Home is poison, school is poison, work is poison, friends are poison, family is poi-son, people are poison, but love, love is not poison, because love is a fallacy and is not worth poisoning.Sit and scream, sit and scream, but no one can hear you, how can anyone hear you when you’re filled with oil and smoke and blood and poison and bittersweet water? Your lungs are too coated and your heart is too heavy to be alive or to be dead, so what do you do?You have to shut your mouth, you have to shut your eyes, you have to shut your heart and your brain because they can only destroy you. To be conscious is to be slaughtered by the reality of life. So put on your rose-colored glasses and flush your body with artificial nectar and exist. Survive. Survive into oblivion and then into mad-ness, shut out your thoughts and your emotions and any chance at hope or love and shut out the self that you’ve become and the self you are becoming because then, and only then, can you beSane.

Good Luck in All Your Future Endeavors/Sumi

by Josh Cornillon

It was so dark I refused to believe it was real, andI gasped!Darker than behind my eyelids.Darker than what Father spat out.As black as my hands when the boy kissed me.And strings of binary choked me like

rope nooses on poplar trees.

The Ever-Present Uncertaintyby Meghan Lis

I dreamt of theweathered freckleson the tops of your cheeksand bridge of your noselast night.They melted in mymouth likelemon drops, andI cannot tellwhether or notyou are warming up to me,or if that is simplythe afterglow of bourbonriddling me pretty.I swear I never meantto upset you,it’s just that thisdrunk unconsciousrecognizes your facebetter than anyone.


Sisyphusby Chris Maloney

I was clever onceWhen I set my mind to itI could outwit Death, bind him in his own chained grip and save the world from dying.. . . or perhaps only myself.I cannot say that I cared about those for whom Death would be a comfort.Only myself.

In Tartarus I found myself cornered, nowhere to run.I had dragged myself to the topBut I had done it wrongly.With sharp tongue and blade I made my way to the attention of the godsAnd found myself faced with Death’s unbreakable chains.With a few words I tricked himBound himStared as those gleaming chains held fast their masterAnd thought myself greater than he.

It was not the healer who freed my enemyBut the haterWho loosed my prisonerAnd set him back on my trail.

I Am the Words of Othersby Amy Hammond

I felt like myselfToday.It was fleeting but,It happened.I’m italic and ITilt.And I amNot…I’m a cluster ofAtoms,Living on an atomIn a cluster.And I live inA placeWhere the water skydivesMore than humans.And you liveA lifeFilled with countingSand.


Juliet Degree

What Happens in South America When it is Left Aloneby Juliet Degree

I walked in a museum of boneswith an old friend.He always loved the birdswith beaks that were a little curved.I felt as though I was drowningin a formaldehyde jar of self preservationby my own design.I can already feel my color fading,but he has moved on to lookingat the bird behind the glass with the ruby throat.Did the insects trapped in the amberalso feel this paralysis?I suppose being enclosed in goldmay have been preferableto falling in evolution.I would rather suffocate under sheetswithout becoming another tally-mark.I wonder if I will be rememberedor if I will be subject to fadelike fixer from a page.If I could recall my inner self,that would be enough.


Letters To Cracked Knuckles (2&7)by Jess Rizkallah

2.when you turn into an hourglass, you will start throwing down peb-bles that look like invitations when all you wanted to do was skip stones across water, skip stones across the glassy surface of cusack’s windows for all the duckies you would have saved from the pond could have saved from the pond should be able to save from the pond if you only knew where they flew when it got too cold to swim in the pondtoo cold to see ripples skim across the surface of themoon, rippled moons skipping light across the surface of the keyless parts of your geography so skip stones to throw keys, catch keys every time light shatters, skip a stoneat the moonskip a flying fuck at the moon as it hangs over a bridge/you’re perched on a bridge/the brooklyn bridge/a foggy bridge/ a burning bridgeburning bridges suspended over water, maybe this is where the duckies go when it’s too cold to swim or maybe there’s no one to dance with because the One is slowly dancing away from you, you molly ringwalding, youslow dancing in a burning roomglowing, dancing on agoing dancing on a burning bridge (reprise)a foggy bridge a foggy night, foggy logos oranging into clouds, sky scrapers blending into the night and all you can do is skip a flying chuck your eyes at the moon and duck for cover, you’ve got

to chuckle at the moon you’ve gotshit to do, places to be shit to be, you’ve got to bedo be do

7.okay here’s what i like about you: your jaw line (your I’d Draw That line) i want to take your face to the page like charcoali want to take your face into my hands like charcoal, i want to scrub you out of my skin for days but save you under my fingernails.your smile (can i hide behind your teeth ?i wanna hear the way words sound inside you /the way they’d form like saliva in your cheeks /the way they’d break me down, ish)masticated thinspiration of pHat ideas or like oral inebriation, homie, your mouth is drunk but i like it, keep talking like intellectual masturbation like you’re pleased with yourself apleased with yourselfso appeased with your sense of self, and, i’m not gonna say i’m not teasing butwhat if i wasn’t teasing, what if i wanted to take you up on that offer to see shit to do shit to be shitto do bedo be or not do bethat’s hardly a question, but the only one i (think i) have answers for


a letter from the salem witchesby Alina MacLean

thank youfor standing upfor the witches of your worldwhere we were forced to hidefrom implicationsof our own supposed evil–we were either womenor paganand both earned usan unmarked graveand an unholy crucifixion.

but you,you took a stand.many of you were subjectto the same fate as usbut at leastthey didn’t force you to repent.

no,your penance was to be made martyrsamong witches.to wave your cape in the wind,stop whispering spells,start screaming them.

tattoo your pentacle on your chest,not as a pink trianglebut as a challenge–hunt me down,

stalk me like an animalbut I will not change.you can’t scrub this mark off my skinor my soulyou can lead a witch huntbut you are huntinga person.

we didn’t have that to fall back on–the mass hysteriaonly had to reachthe salem town linesa population of 500is not difficult to deceive,but now,that’s overand it’s time for us to live through you

after allus witchesneed to stick togetherwhether we’re unholy because our sex is lesser,unholy because our religion is lesser,our gender is lesser,our love is lesser,we are notlesser.

we must stand togetherbecause they can’t burn usif we make our own firesif we wear witch as a badge of honorbecause,in the end,witches are witchesand we will fightfor our own.


A Meditation on Unrequited Loveby Zachary Najarian-Najafi

Grim eyes for the green grubby guywho grabbed my girlfriend. Oh,Fickle Fanny!

FF once said during the days of delight:“I’m melting into youlike mushy molten magma fromMount Monomania!”

But now there are onlythe days of darkness anddoom and despotic domination by Triple G.Gargantuan Triple Gwho procures pleasurefrom pickled Pakistani papooses.Grotesque Triple G who always wears the same stained sweatshirt and tacky khakis.Goony Triple G who neverremoves his sunglasses—even while indoors

“Oh but he’s my treasured tickly teddy bear!” croons FFlike a tweenage pop sensation swoons for the cute guyshe wants to lock in her locker of love.

Every night now they sit bored playing board gameswith other man-children. The Baron of the Board says:“I’ve a finger gun loaded with more charisma than Hitler!”As his pieces tap dance over the board lopping limbs.They holler hellish hullabaloo likebrazen baboons at the watering hole.

She fetches food.Gastric goodies. And giggleslike a woman-child. Deep, from the throat —like a burp.

The other women-children skip around her.She wants to be a magical nymph but insteadis a minotaur at the center of aloony labyrinth built by erratic emotions.A high-rise histrionic hotel.

But now I recognizeBoy, I am a lucky boy. Boy—I am a lucky boy, boy.

She thinks:~No nose knows no nose.~~But Sir Nose knows a nose.~

We all feel the same, dear.


Chainsby Chris Maloney

My face has been in desperate need of an iron for a decade or two now. You can hold the starch, though. My face is mask enough. I have always found it odd the sort of things one notices in brief mo-ments of self-reflection. For instance, I can see ghosts; most other people cannot. This is one of the reasons they are willing to kill me.

I suppose, if pressed, I could think of a few more things they might have against me. It wouldn’t be entirely untrue to call some of what I did years ago terrorism. Explosives and their ilk are not known for their subtlety. What was important in those situations was that they were never my idea. John was the planner. John was my guardian.

I nodded at him quickly as I thought about this. His misty, trans-parent eyes never registered recognition, but I knew that he under-stood. Sometimes, I think that he might be an important ghost. But that might just be because I would very much like to be an important man.

But you can’t be an important man without an identity, and I’m afraid mine has faded away into the deep folds on my face. I used to have a smooth face. They still have posters of that face up in their offices, “Wanted” caption and all. They’ve got my fingerprints there, too. Even those aren’t the same anymore. Maybe when I was younger and John would tell me to stir up some trouble for them, those swirls would help them find me. Now, after years of working

with my hands to stay out of their system and scrambling my wan-dering path, my fingertips are worn and eroded. My identity swirls are replaced with crags and fjords. Even the name they used to call me is gone. I took so many when I ran. Eventually they became too hard to keep track of. It doesn’t matter, really. I don’t have much need for a name most days. I just can’t be too important.

John’s waving arm brought my attention back to the present day. Like I said, odd things in brief moments, but the oddest is where those moments hide. I had been thinking about myself too hard and forgotten that some punks were shooting at us. Well, they were shooting at me and the kid. They couldn’t see John. It all had something to do with the kid, and to be honest, I had no idea what it was. John told me the kid was important, so the kid was import-ant.

John had me grab this kid from the local precinct. I don’t know what sort of trouble is enough to get them to lock up a little brat. They didn’t pay much notice to me at all walking in. I guess grandparents paying visits to their incarcerated brats are common enough that they don’t pay attention anymore. When did my face change enough to look like some brat’s grandfather?

The bullets kept whizzing by my head and the kid was whimper-ing beside me, but I was going to figure this out. I’m a clever guy, a thinker. That’s why John’s been by my side all these years. Even the kid can’t see John, but my eyes catch him scanning where John has to be. Other people would say the brat was just picking up on my neuroses, but I was pretty sure that he would be able to see John soon, along with all the other ghosts who walked and scouted. But I was going to figure this out. I was clever.

Getting in to the precinct wasn’t difficult. Getting out was harder. It might have been a trap. I don’t know, really. All I know is that cops are difficult to deal with. Most of them are normal, nice guys; their jobs just make it really easy for them to tap in and take over. Sometimes I feel sorry. Sometimes it’s just hard to blow holes in


their buildings.

I carry a few squares of aluminum foil in my pockets just in case. I hand them out when I really need to be sure that they aren’t going to pop in and take over someone I’m talking to. So, I handed the kid a square and told him to step away from the bars. A little bit of magnesium and a cheap lighter and that lock gave way. Unfortu-nately, magnesium burns real bright. At that point, walking out the front door was not looking great, so I made a side door.

The number of combustibles that you can walk into a police station with is astonishing, if only by the virtue of how many inane things are combustible. Getting out of the building stopped being a prob-lem quickly, but it made actually leaving a bit more troublesome. Almost surprisingly, police officers don’t much like it when you blow a hole in their walls.

So we ran.

The kid had no idea what was going on, and to be honest, neither did I. But John knew what he was doing. The kid was important. The gunshots were a nice touch. I hadn’t been shot at for a good year or two. I dragged the kid to the cover of a few beat-up old slabs of concrete. They looked like they might have been used as road dividers once. And that’s when I started to think.

My face has been in desperate need of an iron for a decade or two now. You can hold the starch, though. Wrinkles are like tree rings. I’d been around long enough to know that this was not a great situation. Maybe I could have gotten away on my own, but the kid would never be able to keep up. So I leaned towards him and told him to run on my signal. Run down that street to the left until he saw the statue and streetlight, then take a left and take the back door behind the dumpster. John would watch him. He was an important kid somehow.

I stood up then. Standing when bullets are smacking into the

chunk of concrete in front of you is generally a bad idea, but I stood up. It took them a few seconds to readjust their aim and I told the kid to run.

Those were the most beautiful seconds of my life.

I could feel the lukewarm breeze ruffling my hair, the gentle caress of the air lifting the strands away. The afternoon sun warmed my cheeks and I could feel it all, could feel my skin soaking it in. I could smell the raw scent of hot dogs and old city, the faint acid of piss and the sweat on my skin. And, dear god, was it beautiful. And I could see their eyes. That was the moment I knew that all my suspicions were absolute fact. All doubt fled and I knew that I had been fighting to save humanity from them this whole time. Maybe, just maybe, we had a chance of winning. John would keep the kid safe and the kid would end all of this.

Six loud cracks broke the air together and six soft thumps carried me down to the soft pavement to sleep.


Contributing Authors & ArtistsJosh Cornillon

•Juliet Degree

•Marisa Glynn

•Kathryn Grove

•Amy Hammond

•David Himmel

•Julie Krzanowski

•Izzy Lawrence

•Abbie Levesque

•Meghan Lis

•Alina MacLean

•Tiffany Mallery

•Chris Maloney

•Melissa Morris

•Zachary Najarian-Najafi

•Jess Rizkallah

•Sarah Winters

•Bartleby

Documents

drumcircle - spring 2013 - issue #1