GUEST EDITOR LETTER
Dear Darling—
I write this letter to you from a cute café called Cravings in California’s San Gabriel Valley. My boyfriend and I are both wearing hunter green and we did not plan to. You know how that happens sometimes. I ordered a black sesame matcha that looks like charcoal flakes are making frothy soft love to green cream and a chocolate wife cake. I have taken the appropriate high in the daytime amount of a cannabis edible and my busy brain is relaxed yet focused (which we love).
Today I also worked some hours for my Muggle job—content creation mostly, website uploads and resizing featured images to 800x500. I spent too much time on Instagram and felt the usual buzz and pain and evidence of gravity in my bones.
I count this as a darling type of day, there are so many micro-pleasures that make up my day.
Just a few days ago, my cannabis book club, The Lit Club, celebrated its fifth anniversary. The featured author for our special day was the writer Nettie Jones, author of Fish Tales. She’s eighty-five years old, the last writer Toni Morrison acquired before leaving Random House. She’s cool and associative and honest and there’s a kindness to her. She has a voice pregnant with earned wisdom and champagne-laced orgies.
Her writing advice?
Find a rich benefactor :)
Darling, it can be hard to be an artist these days. So much fight and war. So much charge and divisive edge. So much same old-same old. I’m currently living in a California paradise, watching boring, unimaginative elected officials try to make it into Parable of the Sower. A bummer of epic proportions.
Thankfully, everywhere I look, I see people trying to do something to bring some peace or delight to the world. It’s so easy to act as if good does not exist when there are all these people really showing up.
In my own way, I am one of them and I am sure you are too.
Another bummer that isn’t (or maybe it is in some universe) as epic?
That whole quote about killing your darlings.
When Francesca Lia Block asked me to edit this issue—and I still can’t quite believe I’m writing that sentence because if I told my baby writer self read that, she’d be like whoa, look at you go, ms. fancy—I knew immediately what I wanted it to be about.
Darlings.
If you’re a writer or artist, or simply someone who cares about the literary arts, you’ve heard kill your darlings. Some people think William Faulkner said it. Others swear it was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Whoever uttered those words must’ve some intense white magic wizard spell on those consonants because those three words have far outlived them.
And trust me, I understand the sentiment.
Deeply.
Editors and editing are so deeply crucial to strong literature.
Producer is to musician as editor is to author.
I hate watching a brilliant book settle for bullshit because someone in the editorial department dropped the ball into hell. A not-small reason okay books become good and good books become great is editing. Revision. Refining your work until the gold shines like sun dappled river. Releasing sentences, cutting paragraphs, cleaning up extraneous drag and not-so-useful meanders, going deeper, sharper, more yourself.
But...
Then there were those poor little darlings. So innocent. So forlorn.
They didn’t do anything to anybody.
And now they’re homeless and dead?
My writer heart became sad and maudlin. It’s the codependence and the care in me.
So, when editing this issue, I asked for darlings.
The pieces people loved but had no earthly idea what to do with collecting dust in Microsoft Word.
The pieces that don’t fit neatly anywhere.
The pieces that have breath in them.
And people sent their darlings.
Writing.
Art.
Stories.
Rants.
From places like Athens, Ohio, West Palm Beach, and New York City.
From workshops and iphone notes and parking lots.
I know you’re going to love them.
And because I’m the editor and why-not?—there are two darlings from yours truly.
The word darling comes from the Old English deorling: deore, meaning dear, precious, beloved, and -ling, meaning little one, or one associated with.
Little beloved.
That’s what fills this issue—an abundance of little beloveds.
Pieces someone loved enough to keep and remember.
Pieces that waited patiently for the right home.
Pieces that, it turns out, were waiting for you.
I hope you find a darling way to enjoy them.
Maybe it’s at a café in San Gabriel Valley with a black sesame seed matcha.
Maybe it’s in your parked car with a lavender tea and instrumental pop drifting softly through the speakers.
Maybe you read one aloud to your unsuspecting Bumble date and if it works you laugh about it after morning sex and if it doesn’t you chalk it up to carpe diem and inspiration for your next flash fiction story.
However you choose to spend time with these little beloveds, I hope they remind you that darlings deserve care and celebration.
And:
You never know who’s searching for a darling in the shape of you.
Thank you to every writer and artist who entrusted me with your work.
Thank you for making something beautiful in a world that doesn’t always appreciate uncategorizable gems.
Thank you, Francesca Lia Block, for welcoming me into Lit Angels.
Thank you to all the Lit Angels readers out there.
May these darlings delight your world.
Love,
Hannah
Darling in Chief - Lit Angels #44
P.S. Two things. One: I wrote a book called Honey Is the Knife that’s halfway between self-help and memoir and if it sounds like your jam, be a darling and order a copy (or five hundred.) Two: If you’re into luxury cannabis writing retreats, I’m hosting Women, Writing, Weed, and Wine-The Retreat this fall alongside Susan Rukeyser author of The Worst Kind of Girl (Yucca Valley-Joshua Tree on October 10th) and Francesca Lia Block author of The Thorn Necklace (West Adams-Los Angeles on November 8th). It’s going to be deeply transformative and exquisitely crafted. Sign up here for an ask-me-anything-15-minute-conversation-about-Women-Writing-Weed-and-Wine. If it’s a good fit, I’ll send you the private link to RSVP.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
“Love in the Time of Corona” by Hannah Eko
“11-29-22” by Sarah Sunfire
“The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel” by Jaime Joshi Elder
“Mood Board” by John Christopher Nelson
“Undercover”; “Tangled”; and “Filtered” by Nina Bays
“To the Silhouette of What I’m Sure is My Future Lover Hovering Above My Bed” + “When We Say We are Making Blood, We Are Making Meaning” + “Known (I Want To Be)” by Sasha Banks
“Beneath the Elms Counting Worms” by Katherine Gleason
“Five Minutes is All You Get” by Breen Nolan
“Unlucky” by Emma Reed Jones
“What Are Words?” by Eva Iris
“Some Weeds Weed Themselves” by Susan Rukeyser
“Damnation Memoriæ” + “Beauty is an Interruption” by Patricia Maureen Francis
“The Same Fight” by Neysa Garcia-Muhammad
“Signs of Ghoulhood” by Lyz Mancini
“Lil’ Darlings” by Madison Hernandez
“Fort Green Monologue” by Hannah Eko
“Love in the Time of Corona”
By: Hannah Eko
“Ori (head) is conceived by the Yoruba as a representation of the inner essence in humans; it symbolizes the individual’s essential nature. Its conception is underscored by the Yoruba perception of self as interior and exterior the latter being dependent on the former. Hence the Yoruba say, ‘ki ori inu mi ma ba t’ode mi je’ (may my inner head not spoil my outer head). (33)
Women In The Yoruba Religious Sphere by Oyeronke Olajubu (2003)
The other American was facing away from me when I asked if I could use his phone and flee the country.
Approaching him from the pebbled path of the Foundation headquarters, under the violent blue sky bordered by rolling, brown postcard hills, I wished I could have requested anyone’s help but his.
I was slightly delirious, having spent all night awake and awaiting a reply from the cheerfully distant travel agency. The chatbot let me know it would be three hours before I could speak to an actual human being. Four, then five, then six hours passed. Finally, outside my bedroom window, skittish birds began their early morning conversation. I inadvertently fell asleep at six thirty am. I awoke two hours to, “Looks like we missed you!” and when I sent a frantic reply, the wait had ballooned to eleven hours.
Initially, I mostly dismissed coronavirus news before departing California for Spain— washed my hands more, called it a day. I understand urgent response, but have long carried a severe allergy towards collective hysteria. I had enough anxiety of my own. Wasn’t this just like an intense flu? Highly contagious but hardly worth dystopian imagining, I thought.
I was at Fundacion Valapairiso, an artist residency started in by Beatrice and Paul Beckett to promote artistic creation and research in the field of fine arts, literature and music, for two reasons: a long-standing crush on Spain and to carve out some uninterrupted time to write my book. I had heard good things from previous residents who were in my MFA and looked forward to a romantic time invested in my creative work.
As my stay proceeded, Italy imploded with new COVID cases, Trump haphazardly ordered travel restrictions, and friends and family urged me to leave Spain sooner than the month I had allotted. My mom basically told me to get out. Soon, I lost my studied remoteness, and a fear started: I began to blend with the simmering anxities of those around me.
I needed to get my ass home.
Like most cheap travelers, I rely almost exclusively on Wi-Fi and WhatsApp when I cross international borders, but changing a flight proved more complicated. I asked the Foundation representative for use of her phone, but she would not arrive until the early evening.
“Why not ask the other American?” the foundation director helpfully offered, “I think he has an international data plan.”
She didn’t say other American.
That would probably be weird, I called him that in my head because out of the current residents, five us to include two artists from Spain and another from the Netherlands, we were the only two yankee doodle dandies.
I feel the most American when I am not in America.
I found the other American to be an almost comical caricature of casual liberal racist. He told me point blank that he and his wife adopted their East African son “before it became a trend” and despite three African Fulbright opportunities and being commissioned to create statues of Black civil rights leaders, he seemed to have little interest in the African people he encountered besides casual anecdotes with he in the starring role.
I know at my age; I should be used to people like this. I should not care so much or send can you believe this shit texts to my stateside friends.
Being in Europe and being first-generation and Nigerian and Californian and dark-skinned and weird can be a trip.
One second, I’m gloating over the ever-lengthening roster of eligibles on my Tinder profile (and hoping to match with only the ones without Jungle Fever fantasies or MAGA connections). I’m sauntering down cobblestoned streets in the free black expat swagger of a modern-day Josephine Baker, feeling all travel noire.
The next minute it’s 1955.
A Black soccer player receives a bouquet of bananas from his own countrymen. Weirdly invasive stares follow me down the street, dig under my skin and store owners cold shoulder me when I walk into their establishment.
Racism is like ice cream and natural wine, it has an endless supply of flavor profiles. There are certain notes: (vanilla California panic, blissfully naïve Portlandian pecan, aggressive military school cookies and creme), that I am more used to than others.
The best I can do is know where I am situated in time and space, stay as safe as I can, find community, and be as kind to myself as humanely possible.
Or this time: I can use dude’s phone to call the airline and get the fuck out of Spain before the borders close and the situation turns out to be more Blink Twice than Emily in Paris.
The other American’s small tannish cottage was located near the rear of the Foundation. Compared to the other visual artists, his space was privy to the most sumptuous view of Mojácar. The pink and yellow wildflowers interrupting the green grass, the whirling mountainous expanse that was all over the Foundation’s website. Though I am sure he heard my large ass feet skittering the pebbles upon advancing, he never turned around and all I saw was his wide back when he asked,
“How can I help you?”
Not hey there or hi.
And so, I told him as if he didn’t already know that a virus called corona was shutting down the world and we all needed to get home stat.
He told me I had nothing to worry about. I told him that while that may be true, it seemed best to err on the safe side and not get stuck in foreign country, no matter how sexy and fun said country was, for the next five months. He asked whether I had tried to change my ticket online. I told him I had watched the sun rise talking to an Orbitz robot. He said he was using his phone for work currently. I told him it was fine, that I’d be in my room and would pay him whatever his daily rate was, would not use his phone if the waiting period was too long.
“Have you tried getting a one-time data plan change through your provider?” he asked.
I told him I didn’t know one-day plans were possible, but I assured him I would try. He said he would bring the phone when he was through, and I nodded in diminishing belie and returned to my room.
Hours went by.
I looked up the one-day plans, but it didn’t really seem like many existed or were anything my budget could handle.
I headed down from my room to refill my water bottle, grab a tangerine.
The other American happened to be in the kitchen area too.
His phone had died, he said.
For three hours.
“Did you figure it out with your day plan?” the other American asked.
And because lying was the order of the day, and I didn’t feel he had to let me use his phone but I was like damn, it’s really like that and I knew the Goddess was on my side and I am stubborn and had a faith that I would somehow make my way out of Spain, I said yes.
I told the other American that I had already managed to change my flight, would be flying home to sunny bunny California in mere days.
Sunday.
“Really? They didn’t let me change my flight because it was over forty-eight hours out.”
I told him I must’ve gotten lucky.
I wrote this piece in 2020 during the pandemic, trying to process my time spent in Spain right before the borders closed. It’s a longer piece about the ties between the coronavirus, ancestral trauma, rainbows, racism, social services, and what it truly means to evolve. I shared it with a writer friend but it didn’t really go anywhere and then my book took a much deeper focus. I hope to make it into a complete essay one day.
-Hannah Eko
Avocado Heights, CA
Hannah Eko is the author of Honey Is the Knife, founder of Honey & Knife Studio, and host of Women, Writing, Weed, & Wine.
“11-29-22”
By: Sarah Sunfire
He looked bedraggled that sunny afternoon, which was out of character for someone so vain, someone who, despite constant humble talk and self-deprecating humor, knew that his deep gold skin was clearer than most cleanser commercials and his hair, long and luscious and dyed a bright color that always got compliments from strangers — at least he’d admitted that, Samson-like, he understood the power of his hair. But it was greasy that day and his skin was pale, because he hadn’t left the house that weekend, and his clothes had obviously been pulled down haphazardly from the closet that morning or even up from the floor. He said, “I have something I need to tell you when I get back,” and when he did come back, bearing takeout food that he was carrying as though he couldn’t feel its weight, as though it wasn’t quite real, we sat down on a bench outside the mall. I straddled the bench — something I can now easily do because my personal trainer has helped me see beyond my perceived physical limits — and he did the same. We faced each other and he talked as though he was speaking from far away.
“I’ve always been a passive person,” he said. “Someone who doesn’t want to make waves or start anything, and I never go after what I want. But I’d like to change that.”
My breath caught as I waited, and then he looked at me, the full force of his deep brown eyes sweeping me up before he said, “I want you. In every conceivable way. I want a relationship with you, a real one. I want to be able to put my arm around you without parameters, I want to go to sleep with you and wake up with you and—” somehow this was oddly funny, a confession like this as rows of families strode past us to grab their meals of fast-food Udon and Blaze Pizza. I held him, ready for this, or so I’d really believed, and I felt the muscles of his back under my hands as I moved as close as I could get to him on the bench, and I said, “I want what you want,” and at the time I meant it, I meant it with a passion I had never felt before. But what we had, our dreamy montage of accidental perfect dates — walking around Haight Ashbury laughing hysterically at nothing as tourists gazed at us askance, thinking we were high — cuddling up against the cold outside of the fish and chips place getting so intoxicated with each other’s nearness and voices that a stranger interrupted our conversation just to ask, “hey what TV show are you guys talking about?” and eventually making out like nothing mattered but our bodies, on the beach, as we sat together on a giant rock that should not have felt so comfortable. But our stretch of real-life erotic dreaming was just that.
I wrote this piece for an informal generative workshop during one of the headiest times of my life. I love it because, though I’ve tried for years to capture the relationship at its center as a legitimate memoir that’s worth others’ time, my hyperedited work doesn’t recreate the experience. I think this raw unselfconscious burst gets closer, even if I’m not there yet.
-Sarah Sunfire
Athens, Ohio
Longer essays can be found on my Substack, Hot and Disabled: https://substack.com/@sarahsunfire/posts
“The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel”
By: Jaime Elder
I am not a person of faith.
My mom is.
Immense, unshakable faith. Temple in the kitchen, ringing a bell to wake up God and offering food which turns it into prasad; holy and nourishing. As if food made by her hand could be anything but.
Lord knows Mama tried to instill this within me but it didn’t take…completely.
But last night, I found myself praying.
I don’t pray.
I mean, I “talk” to God in the way that makes the pious think I’m a heathen and the impious think I’m a dick.
Fevered pleas during football matches - “Dear God, please let Rice make this goal,” or requests to find parking close by or the hope that God is, in fact, the vengeful deity of the Old Testament or Kali, scimitar in one hand and bleeding head in the other, because there’s a guy down the street and I think they should have a conversation.
I mean, it’s God, Jemmy. He’s not Santa or the head of the five families.
Then, there are moments where you feel utterly…bereft and small and helpless and you don’t know where else to turn.
You see a picture of a mother with hollowed-out cheeks clutching her two-year-old son - all skin and protruding bones.
You count the joints of his spine - a fucking horror story and funeral dirge told by numbers.
And the incandescent rage at the monsters that allow this to happen (and worse still, those that cheer this on) is quickly engulfed by a wave of anguish.
And so, you weep and you think how easily that could be your son, languishing in your arms and how utterly fucking insane with terror you would be if you weren’t able to feed him.
And you, a person who does not pray or goes to temple or fasts or performs any of the rites she was raised with, start talking to God.
You supplicate in good faith and hope you were heard and that all the times you’ve been an asshole don’t count against you because this is bigger than that and then, you throw a couple of bucks to the non-profit run by the guy who looks like and who you think might actually be Santa Claus.
Because here’s the thing - the jury might be out on a higher power but if there’s one thing you do believe in, it’s that when you feed someone - you do something holy and nourishing and that’s about as close to God as one gets.
My faith is a nebulous thing and unless I’m talking about Springsteen, I’m reluctant to evangelize. However, becoming a mother changes you in so many ways, making apostles out of apostates.
Jaime Joshi Elder
West Palm Beach, Florida.
http://www.jaimejoshielder.com
“Mood Board”
By: John Christopher Nelson
You’ll read this and go, That’s totally bogus, but it’s not. This was something that happened. The context of the moment is modestly unremarkable. An early 2000s house party, late teens, twenty-somethings who knew the extent of social media as the stress of assigning slots in their MySpace top 8, an era when, if you’d exhausted small-talk in the kitchen, or alongside the pool out back, or sitting on the curb out front, you’d find yourself huddled around the bedroom desktop, watching incipient web videos. The truth, for all its subjective ambiguity, is that this is where something I’ll never forget occurred. Which is funny, because I’ve forgotten the other party’s name. Would that I’d possessed the foresight to document the moment, so I could have tangible recollection now, in my forties, when I retain only a deteriorating mental image, amorphous at best. James and I were in the Fullerton Ralphs when James received a text from Gene inviting us to Gene’s girlfriend’s house; her parents were out of town, and she was hosting a party, but the house was in Walnut, an insurmountable distance. But I conceded, and we found our way to the 57, heading north into the too-late night. Angelo was there. Mary Amor, which was actually her name, was there. Mary’d hated me in high school, for reasons undisclosed, but we connected that night, talking about whatever meager philosophies people in their early twenties pretend to command. Mary, a gifted photographer who photographed me three times, twice for her portfolio and a third I commissioned, Mary who would eventually arrive at strict Evangelicalism and raze me from friendship, both online and in reality. But this isn’t about Mary. I’d never met Gene’s new girlfriend. I knew this, on my way to the party. In truth, I had no interest in who would be there, so long as there was alcohol. In this stranger’s bedroom, I stepped away from the internet video sub-party, bored, and perused her wall of photographs, adhered in a haphazard collage. Exploring the captured moments of this nineteen-year-old, I landed on one that was unavoidably provocative. A photo, chosen among who knows how many options, selected and placed among this curated installation, of myself and this same girl whom I’d never met, sitting on a sofa, my hand over her shoulder, both of us laughing, authentic glee. I reached to touch her shoulder, and when she turned, waved her over and pointed at the photo. We’d introduced ourselves to each other earlier that evening, evincing unfamiliarity. I pointed at that me, smiling back at us, noting, That’s us. That’s me. I wish I’d taken a photo of the photo, but I also wish I had a photo of the look on her face. Because, sure, I humbly and with no small amount of shame, call myself a writer. But, I’m reminded with consistent regularity, that being alive bestows innumerable implausible moments, beyond anything I’ll ever conjure. How embarrassing, right? Get real.
I appreciate the opportunity to share this darling with you because it’s such a vignette vibe that doesn’t necessarily function as a fully-realized story. It’s just nostalgic bric-a-brac, sure, but that doesn’t mean it deserves to die.
-John Christopher Nelson
Hermon, CA
My Instagram is @johnnygrovemumbler and my writing & more about me can be found at johnchristophernelson.com.
“Tangled” + “Filtered” + “Undercover”
By: Nina Bays
• Nina Bays, Culver City CA
All of these works use watercolors to juxtapose the feeling of softness inherent in the medium with a definitive air of power from the subjects. The women depicted are all in a state of flux, capturing a raw snapshot of vulnerability in the moment.
-Nina Bays
Culver City, CA
You can view some of my other work here: https://www.instagram.com/ninabaysart/
“To The Silhouette…” + “When We Say…” + “(Known) I Want To Be”
By Sasha Banks
To the Silhouette of What I’m Sure Is
My Future Lover Hovering Above My Bed
I will not summon
you with some wave of
magic. Instead, my own palm
rheumatic in surrender. The
dance-like expertise of my
willingness to lose and be lost
to lesser lovers if
it makes space for your
imminent body materializing
in a future where we bring
our own moons to
see each other in the most
feral light with all the devotion
of an unbroken gaze
and call that witness.
When We Say We’re Making Blood,
We Are Making Meaning
When you touch me, I watch your eyes deciding on my softest parts. How
your hand is drawn to whatever natural sanctity must be felt to be known. Proven
into the night. Completely am I given
to the intimacy of thirst that is only known by
a woman and her woman. Somebody’s devil weeps in the corner, as we bend
blood
and time and bodies to hand-feed our names into each other’s mouths.
Panting in the mess of invention, I become something only you can see in this kind
of darkness where my human is peeled
back
under
your
eye. Wanted. Licked clean.
Known (I Want to Be)
My libra Venus delivers
my love with all the celebrity
of Christmas to another non-believer.
My discernment, frivolous gossamer sailing
the wind. Somewhere, the woman
I will marry sees the woman I’m becoming
in a dream: one woman climbs from
deep inside the body of another
like a grisly cicada shrouded
in the gratitude of birth. She stoops
to swallow the woman, not to
consume her: to carry her, now. My
dreamer wakes and forgets
my iridescent face,
silently remembered in
the light of some prismatic corner.
How she’ll smile at the familiar miracle.
I’m including some “darlings” that I just couldn’t throw away because they’re widely outside of the realm of what I typically write about. Anyone who knows me, knows I’ve never written love poems, always patently stating that, “I don’t write love poems.” lol. Suddenly, I have! And not just one--3! Coming into clearer understanding of my sexuality over the years has opened something for me, I think. Exciting, because that means the capacity of my subject matter has expanded; these darlings are the first evidences of that. And all written during Pride Month, no less.
-Sasha Banks
Los Angeles.
Sasha Banks is a Pushcart nominated poet whose work has been published or is forthcoming in THE ATLANTIC, VANITY FAIR, PBS NEWSHOUR, and others. She received her MFA at Pratt Institute. She teaches creative writing workshops for institutions around the country. She is a 2019 Rhode Island Writers’ Colony Fellow and the creator of Poets for Ferguson. She is the author of america, MINE.
IG: king__sasha (two underscores) Substack: Phoenix Town: Under the Eyes of the Future.
“Beneath the Elms Counting Worms”
By: Katherine Gleason
I hike up my skirt, but the butch outside the health food store ignores me. I take one of her flyers anyway.
Saturday morning, young protesters swarm the park. “Save the trees,” the butch calls. Her megaphone crackles and stutters. We chant. We clap. We stomp our feet and form a circle. “Hook arms,” the butch commands. The crowd forges a human chain, a solidarity that skips over my angled elbows. Jostled to the margin, I am not a link.
The protestors fan out. A hippie girl catches me by the wrist, her snakes of hair redolent of smoke. We dash toward the park’s edge. The twisty elm. I know this tree. Jude, we used to call her. “See you at Jude’s,” my then paramour whispered. I’d wait at the tree’s feet. With a picnic. With a blanket. With my legs spread.
The butch’s voice booms. The protesting girl and I circle our tree. Jude’s branches spiral up, an arthritic hand scraping the sky. She has been tagged, marked for felling.
The butch saunters over, a length of actual chain in each hand. “Volunteers,” the butch brays. “Where are my volunteers?” A manic smile curls her lips, beams toward me, and pins me in place.
“Dude,” I blurt out.
She brushes past me. Her grin twinkles across the hippie girl’s fresh skin. She slings an arm over the girl’s shoulder. They hustle across the walkway to the hollow oak.
I lean against my elm. Her roots reach down, tapping into threads of nutritive mycelium. She sucks in water, minerals, light. My pulse surges against Jude’s willing bark. Beneath the surface, sap rises, sugar flows. My nipples perk up, hard as knots. In my arms, she thaws, growing pliant and supple. Flesh of my flesh. Dust of my dust. I will consume her. Or better yet, she will devour me.
I saw the “Kill Your Darlings” call for submissions on Instagram. Such a fun idea…herewith, a flash fiction piece that mixes politics, Nature, the love of trees, and Queer sexuality.
-Katherine Gleason
New York City
Links to my published work (both fiction and nonfiction): https://linktr.ee/katherine.gleason
“Five Minutes is All You Get”
By: Breen Nolan
The female urge to grow fangs at a cocktail party and rip a man’s face off. I’m not trying to be literal. I’m trying to come in from the left. From below ground. From an angle more appealing to the reader. I want to tell my daughter the truth but she’s seven and a half and already has the fear. That same kind I can’t quell at forty-one. At night. In a grocery store. While reading. It’s a bright hot rage that feels molten. It’s in both of our throats. We are not birds nor have we ever been. We are part of the potato famine stitched together making new memories out of real-life experiences. When the waistband isn’t just so on a pair of pants, or when the wind moves a millimeter and I wake with a jolt that tells me to begin fighting. That or opossum into an orange peel. Something pretty. Botanical. Something that can be auctioned off at high class galas for smiling people that collect things in dusty corners of their basements. Why are we so angry? She wants to know. Because we are alive and that’s reason enough. People wonder what I’m writing about. They think a children’s book might be nice, something sweet about my grandmother. But all I can see is two bloody eye sockets, a red palm plant with fertilizer for limbs next to a highball glass that can also be used as a weapon for self-defense. We are not going to be pretty babies. We are going to write a truthful sentence about wanting to hurt people who hurt people. Positive thinking won’t make a difference with the genes we have; these stories have been swimming like goldfish in a toilet bowl or my husband’s collegiate digestive track.
I wrote this a couple months ago, probably parked in some grocery store parking lot or waiting in the rain for my kid to get off the school bus. I never go back to anything I write in my Notes app, though I pretend that I will. So, thank you for giving me the opportunity to take this one out of my cell phone and into your inbox. I think this piece is kind of unhinged and gorgeous and true to my neurosis - which is why I like it. I sometimes wonder if the things that I write are too weird, or strange, or senseless....but I’ve always felt weird, strange and senseless and I want to be more okay with those parts of me. I hope you like this as much as I do.
-Breen Nolan
Portland, Oregon
You can find some of my darlings here: breennolan.com & I’m also on instagram
“Unlucky”
By: Emma Reed Jones
Anything can happen, but only the most likely will. Obliterated at the bar in rural Pennsylvania, I open my mind to every possibility but wind up with your boyfriend’s wet tongue circling my mouth again. Do you do this thing where you try to make the world in your image? You say, like, mentally cut off other people’s hair, or change their clothes to look like yours? I’m red-lips-tequila-nowhere. I’m cinder-block-against-my-back cold. I hate all the things that don’t grab my attention. Don’t take me by the wrist and pull me in to dance. When I was 20, a 16-year-old girl borrowed my ID so she could ride the bus to New York City. Now, there were two of me on board. Two hours later, the cops cornered us in a cornfield, all blue stomp and circumstance. Boarding like pirates, asking her if she knew me. I mouthed my name silently, our eyes holding each other’s until the end. Like the bees look at the flowers, like they could save them. She guessed wrong. I’ve been lucky in love before. I’ve broken myself against the edge of human decency, spilled into the world. But I only want what bruises me. The police interrogated me. Why did you do it? I had no good answer. Unlike them, I didn’t ask questions. I guess I thought she had the right to get away.
I saw your call the submissions and immediately thought of the attached piece, “Unlucky” - a brief free write that indeed lives on my computer collecting dust. Why do I love this little darling? Because of all the truth in it, and the pieces of story - it expresses a very specific feeling that I don’t think can be expressed in a more polished way. It strikes me as a bit like a beaded necklace strung by a child with a variety of mismatched beads.
-Emma Reed Jones
You may find other work by me here: https://allmylinks.com/emma-reed-writes and on Instagram at: @emma_reed_writes
“What Are Words?”
By: Eva Iris
what are words?
empty vessels made of phonemes?
empty morphemes,
when,
like morphine
the sight of him made me numb--
there is a confluence
beneath the clavicle:
the meeting of the naiad
the triad
of nerves,
honey,
and something singing.
I have included an old poem I call “What Are Words?”. I wrote it out of frustration, during a particularly difficult crush. The poem itself contains no images of him, but it reminds me dearly of the moments I tried to claw onto any piece of him that I could, in hopes of translating it into words. This poem reflects my inability to do so.
-Eva Iris
Los Angeles, CA
“Some Weeds Weed Themselves”
By: Susan Rukeyser
Weeds
I was Russian thistle, a so-called invasive. But all kinds of trouble blew through the Mojave. Red brome spread into grass covering this hill, dangerously close to the cabin, as it accelerated wildfire. The woman from LA who lived there should have pulled it out by the root.
I did not belong there, either, but I was a desert icon. I grew as an individual, sustained by a single, efficient taproot. When I died, I would break off and blow away, a tumbleweed, spraying the desert with my seed. I waited all my life to die.
Woman
The flash flood took my cabin and the hill beneath it. I thought the weeds would fortify the hill, but some root systems are shallow. Some white homesteader built the cabin a long time ago. It was fully renovated before I bought it last year, when I quit my life in LA and ran to the desert, confusing my friends and clients. I told them: since Covid, since Trump, I needed space. Distance. I wanted peace at home, if nowhere else.
Now my home was sunk deep in waterlogged sand.
It was monsoon season. There was a flash flood warning. I got out in time. I was lucky to be alive, describing the moment when everything I thought held me safe washed out from under me. Not for the first time.
Weeds
I was Mexican bladder sage. Call me Paperbag. Even the woman from LA could identify my translucent white and purple globes. The flood took her property, because the desert decided what stayed.
Russian thistle grew up nearby. I loved her, but we were not meant to be. I was here for a while, but she had just that one year. She was prickly about the “invasive” label and could not let it go, that I was native flora.
She hung on through monsoon season and into the fall. It was hard, watching her shrink and grow brittle. One dry, gusty day, with a CRACK, she broke free. The wind snatched her up, spun her like she had always dreamed. Her seeds went everywhere she never would.
Woman
The insurance adjuster fiddled with his beard and broke the news: my claim would probably be denied. He mentioned deferred structural repair, code violations, acts of God and/or nature.
“You need earthwork to redirect the inevitable floods,” he said. “Then you can build a foundation that will hold.”
He said he would call with an answer.
I walked to my car, ready to drive back to LA, brave and wrong, strong and defeated. I opened my door, and the desert wind blew a tumbleweed into me. It snagged on my long, knit dress, peachy tan, like the rocks in Joshua Tree at golden hour.
I pulled it free and let it go. I knew what it took, to break off at the root and spin, fully trusting the wind. I knew some weeds weed themselves to be free.
I find myself in a transitional time. As I prepare to begin a new novel, I enjoy writing minimal, sectioned flash prose. The form and length constraints keep my language precise, mindful of silence. “Some Weeds Weed Themselves,” is a fictional missive of truth, meant for anyone who recognizes something they need.
-Susan Rukeyser
Joshua Tree, CA
Read me at Substack: @susanrukeyser. See me at IG: @susanrukeyser
“Damnation Memoriæ” + “Beauty is an Interruption”
By: Patricia Maureen Francis
《 Damnatio Memoriæ 》
If “family” is an “F” word,
then this is by design -
a fated promise thrust in centrefold vignettes,
in soothing remedy;
heraldic mirrors of the same ill-fated past
translating Truth.
In borrowed time,
you circumvent
the cowl I wear from birth
to help me breathe above oblivion -
you stay ashore to pull me up,
like Life + Death intent on Chess
- playful combatants
who never wish the night to end.
In/constant recollection(s),
we are simply born again
in hollowed forms synchretic
with new robes,
new names -
《 “Loving Daughter” was a name
I once answered to
until it was beaten out of me. 》
I am only who the Moon reminds me to be,
in a cleansing pain
whose trembling absence
soothes like silk,
yet the promise is whispered
that it will always come again.
You whisper like the Moon.
You cut like ice,
&, once you melt
there is no crime.
Your kiss
is the warmth of home
that I am aching to forget,
as Hope is War within my heart,
& I have caught it in a fishing net
to send it back to sea.
I can never understand why it is so hard not to hurt me.
“Beauty is an Interruption”
Weetzie Bat and Psyche in a Dress awoke something in me when I began finding my voice at 12, and I love that you are inviting us to follow in Francesca’s... footsteps? Ink blots? I’m an author, artist, model and actor, with lots of acting work these days, and therefore challenge myself to write a new piece whenever I compete in Poetry Slams once a month. These pieces are unpolished, unplanned, and being edited up until the moment I perform them on stage, and then I don’t touch them again. Which is absolutely the opposite approach I’ve used with my published pieces, scripts, or books.
This piece is ink, wash and acrylic, and an attempt made several years ago to reconcile a lifetime of trauma with the role of Entertainer I’d been expected to perform, with a masque of mirth and levity because my scars from past traumas felt as irrelevant as my stretch marks by those closest to me.
-Patricia Maureen Francis
Find my work at: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/permafrost-trick-blanchfield/1140805591?ean=9798765505144
https://www.amazon.com/Zeit-v-i-t-r-ii-l-Patty-Blanchfield/dp/1980611319
“The Same Fight”
By: Neysa Garcia-Muhammad
“Are you two married?” the Uber driver asked.
The city lights sped by my window and the night sky was scattered with clouds.
“Oh, no,” David said quickly.
Too quickly.
I rolled my eyes, “Marriage is just a social construct. And so many people get divorced these days…you really gotta be careful how you make life decisions, you know?”
It was the speech I always gave.
Besides:
We lived together. Shared a dog. We even had a ‘what if I die?’ document drafted with our lawyer.
Basically married.
When we finally arrived home, we went straight upstairs. I tossed my heels into my closet, took my earrings off and threw them on my vanity. I unzipped my dress, walked into the bathroom, and sat on the toilet to pee.
“Are we gonna talk about it or...” David said.
“You were a little quick to tell the Uber driver we weren’t married,” I said.
“You were the one who delivered a world class speech about the construct of marriage.”
“You know how I feel about it.”
“It feels like our life is never enough.”
I wiped, flushed, washed my hands, wiped them with harsh strokes with the nearby towel.
My face was hot.
“Because I actually have goals, it must mean that I have the urge to blow up our lives, is that it?”
My voice was louder now.
“You’re always comparing yourself to Kelly. She’s off in London filming a movie, she’s got 18 degrees, a perfect wedding, she’s got rich parents, and a stay-at-home—”
“Jason is what men should aspire to be. And what’s the point of having rich parents if you’re not off chasing your dreams? Kelly has always been supportive of my goals. I wish you would take a page out of her book.”
“You don’t think I support you?”
“I’m not saying you don’t support me.”
“But…”
David let the pause sit.
“You’re always putting a needle in my balloon to see if it will pop”.
“What does that even mean?”
David’s voice got higher pitch, a clear tell he was super pissed.
“It would be nice to hear you say go for it, babe! Or you know: I believe in you!”
“Last year, you wanted to start a hair care line, six months ago, you bought a year’s subscription at a ceramics studio, and yesterday, you’re talking about quitting your job to go all in on this podcast? I’m not made of money. One of us has to live in this reality.”
“I should just continue to be miserable at work and have a heart attack like my mom did. I bet you would love that because that’s how much you loooove being right.”
I slammed the bedroom door and rushed downstairs to the balcony.
I opened up my glass case that had a pack of hidden American Spirit Menthols.
I took my first puff, felt the coolness coat my lungs.
David was right behind me
Slower, more careful.
“I’m finishing this one, so don’t even--”I said.
“I know,” he said and sat on the hammock “I come in peace.”
I took a slow, sensuous puff.
“I want you to be safe. I want to be smart. It took me a long time to get here. The thought of losing my footing right now is terrifying. We don’t have the kind of privilege that Kelly has.”
“Respectfully,” my voice took on a lecturer edge, “You will always have more privilege than both of us.”
“Not this again.”
“Yes, this again.”
David sighed.
“I’m a Black woman, Kelly is a Black woman…If we don’t take risks in our lives, the world will decide who we are.”
David stopped swinging on the hammock. He was very careful not to come across as racist in our fights.
“You’re a Black woman, a stunning one at that, but let’s be real–your mom was an executive at CNN. You have multiple degrees. You could be earning twice as much.”
I sighed.
“Why is it so important to you to have a nebulous career when you could easily have a stable one and afford the life you want?” he added.
I took another puff of my American Spirit.
“You see my mom’s resume, I see neglect. Orchestra concerts missed, tucking myself into bed. My dad left…and in the end…she….” my eyes filled up with tears,
“The doctor didn’t even listen to her when she said she was in pain. She even took a meeting from the ER and didn’t feel like she could tell anyone that she was in the hospital…her last moments went to some stupid corporate fuck instead of her own kids!”
This time, the tears fell, dampened my cheeks.
“It’s not enough to be the token seat at the table, David,” I finally said.
David sat there, eyes vacant as if I spoke an alien language.
I took a final puff of the cigarette, looked back at the lonely house.
Would winning this kind of argument always feel like a loss?
I almost can't believe I wrote this. I never saw myself as a script writer and now I'm like...should I go to a workshop or 2?! I'm so excited that others will read this.
-Neysa Garcia-Muhammad
Los Angeles, CA + Atlanta, GA
Money, Power, and Story Coach
Ginger & Carrot Productions
https://www.linkedin.com/in/neysa-garcia-muhammad/
“Signs of Ghoulhood”
By: Lyz Mancini
The bedroom of a girl is sacred.
Studded with relics and aching acts of angst.
Bouquets of tissues left to bloom after a head cold (she forgot her gloves to stare up at the winter moon).
Crispy edges of magazine cut-outs and bits of tape, near impossible to pull open the closet without lipsticked paper and doe-eyed starlets fluttering to the floor. Advertisements are aesthetic, and glossy paper like prayer.
Stubs of cigarette ash pushed beneath the bed, a small fan directed at a cracked window.
Streaks of glitter gloss, pooling in small ponds on a side table next to fuzzy bowls of sugar cereal.
Secrets whispered into a contraband phone. Spilled soda on a stickered laptop. Memories of making out with a friend, the waxy slip of her lip balm, practicing in a way that doesn’t actually feel like practicing at all. The tinny sounds of a comfort watch, the rubbed raw silver of jewelry bought at the mall.
Tear-stained pillow cases, the spider web of mascara. The innocence of dream-soaked drool.
The bedroom of a girl is Sofia Coppola, it’s a sticky pop song, it’s coquettish and pretty and disastrously curated in its chaos. It’s “lalalalala.” It’s a puppy-eared book of Sylvia Plath poems, Fiona Apple liner notes, and holy mess.
***
The bathroom of a girl is feral.
Indicative of her insides, streaming with her fluids and regimens and learning curves.
Cotton flowers of tampons inserted incorrectly and then abandoned, picked razor scabs to bloody the toilet paper.
Upended shampoo bottles and the scum of warm vanilla sugar bubble bath rim the tub. Georgia O’Keeffe shapes from wet hair she pulled from her scalp while she conditioned. The strands hug the white tile until they dry, drifting downward when she becomes bored.
Bottles, creams, and potions are tools, and the upkeep a facade.
She prefers to engage with filth beneath it all. A bra gone unwashed for months spritzed with body spray. A translucent daily vitamin washed down with half a day-old Red Bull.
squeezes her pores. She licks the mirror.
She folds herself into the sink to pull her eyelid open and peer inside. A kohl-black liner rims her water line (only girls are so brave to touch their insides with bare hands).
She waits until someone pounds the door.
But she only leaves when she’s ready.
***
The altar of a girl is power.
It’s a sliced finger with no flinch, gemstone drops into a thrift store chalice. It’s collected eyelashes and whispers and contraband fire. Lighters slipped into her hoodie from the CVS after sixth period.
It’s holding hands, chipped nail polish, and sweat, the blinds shut, and vows, spells that span all concept of time. When she’s older, she’ll hear her own tiny voice again on the subway, on her walk home, or in her sleep. They’ll visit each other, endless versions and layers of wisdom, shifting realities and trauma and healing every one of the fingerprint bruises made by someone else.
The universe of a girl is her insides, exploding all around her.
I am a writer living in the Catskill Mountains, with work appearing in Shortwave, Slate, Witch Craft, and more. I am a Pushcart prize nominee and an alum of Pitch Wars and the Tin House Workshop. You can find more of my work here. I love idea concept for This Little Darling because all writers have them, and they are most often gorgeous and special, simply without a home. I’d gladly read any writer’s Googledoc full of snippets of brilliance.
-Lyz Mancini
Catskill Mountains
http://www.lyzmancini.com/
“Lil’ Darlings”
By: Madison Hernandez
I chose these pieces because (1) they are my littlest pieces and (2) when I was scanning them, I liked the final result of them all put together, so this is the perfect opportunity to show them off. I actually haven’t posted these on my website yet so this will be their public debut. I love these lil’ darlings because they are my littlest pieces so far and they showcase my symbolic preference for bouba shapes instead of kiki shapes.
-Madison Hernandez
Los Angeles, CA
My collection of darlings are available at: www.hadisonmernandez.com
“Fort Greene Monologue”
By: Hannah Eko
Sometimes when I’m indoors for too-long periods of time, I truly think I’ll go crazy. My students would hate if I said that word. Crazy. It’s ableist and disparaging to the special needs community, they’d say. We don’t say that anymore, they’d say. Okay, so what am I supposed to say? Cuckoo? Mad? Hysterical? I would not say this aloud, of course, because then their little Braveheart eyes would turn into liquid and I would feel like a puppy killer. I got this apartment I am currently locked inside cheap cheap because the landlord had a thing for middle-aged Black ladies. I know what you’re thinking, that I’m pumping myself up. Don’t hate me because I am beautiful and all that, but it’s true. I don’t understand the women who just go and give up after 30. Miss me with that sadness, it’s not like there’s an expiration date on pussy. My mother always said there was a pot for every lid. And I believed it, so I never wasted time being all upset if some man was like, Next! when he saw me. Even with the whole too-old thing. I knew my landlord’s type because when we met for coffee to sign the lease, you should’ve seen how damn excited he got when Lynn Whitfield just happened to be at the counter ordering an espresso in that ice-queen diva voice. I think he got a hard-on (do the kids still say that?). Couldn’t take his eyes off her. I called my girl Christina that night with that story. It was adorable. Little Greek guy. Anyways, because of him, I have this little studio in Fort Greene with new checkerboard floors and actual water pressure. Whenever the toilets are clogged or I email about the rats building up a refugee camp near the trash cans, he sends George right away to fix things. Got to the point that everyone in the building asks me to call or text because they know he’ll be responsive. You can tell they think I’ve fucked him. I haven’t. On certain days, when the church next door starts mounting some chorus higher and higher like an orgasm, I think about it. Too bad white boys aren’t my type. Trust me, I’ve tried.
God, who is this. Not again. I don’t know when Michael will get the hint. I’m not about to be his little sugar-mama jump-off for the entire summer. No one tells you how desperate the young men get these days. In my day, men would cold ignore you for weeks. It’s a wonder any of us ever had children. I met Michael at the college while I was taking a ceramics class. No, he was not my student. I’m not like that Mary Kay Letourneau woman with the weird predatory eyes. I know the exact day, too, because I was wearing my favorite Zara V-neck sweater and I got dinner with Christina at that Asian fusion place down the block. Christina would end up telling me she was actually going to keep the baby. She’s 42. Her first. I don’t know why, but I got completely cold. But just for a couple of seconds. She hardly knew the guy and what she knew of him sounded like capital A for asshole. We always said we had to be nice old ladies because our nieces and nephews didn’t count us as their favorite aunties. But, I did the friend thing. Held her hand. Told her I’d be there. Blah di blah. And I meant it. I did. She’s one month out now and still stares at her belly like she’s all the way surprised. How did this happen? she asks while I’m making her a virgin margarita at Sunday brunch and her swollen ass legs are kicked up on my futon. You fucked a man with a penis, Tina, is what I say. It’s our thing. Like Abbott and Costello.
Anyways, Michael was just so cute and chubby, fashion glasses and Drakkar Noir, and his shoes told me he had pretty decent self-esteem. So I thought, what’s a little summer tryst? Why not? Got my perimenopausal friends getting suddenly impregnated, what’s some harmless cuddling during a July rainstorm? Ooh, girl. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This fool. He made love to me like I was his queen consort, brought me flowers the next day. Lilies. Because they’re my birth-month flower. I started to wonder if he was a bit touched. I’m not saying romance is dead or I’m scared of it, but we had known each other for a week. Plus, he was twenty years younger than me. I tell Christina and she throws this extra-hard sideways glance as if she didn’t just go get knocked up by some hookup in Oak Bluffs. Made me want to keep seeing him more. Plus, it was fun, seeing him around campus and smiling just so slightly as he was pinning up some flyer about unionizing the grad students. I could’ve told him it wasn’t going to happen, not with this administration, but it was nice to see someone believe in some shit, you know?
I’ll call him later. Promise. It’s not like I have anything to do. We’re all locked up here. Christina went to the store, started buying baby formula like a, I’ma say it, crazy person. Crying about how she going to feed her son. How is he going to enter a world like this? I didn’t wanna say that maybe she would breastfeed. I mean, isn’t it the obvious choice for why we got mammaries in the first place? This right here, this whole locked up thing, would be my mother’s dream. Being locked in a house and no one judging. She still lives in Atlanta. She’s an agoraphobe, has been stockpiling hand sanitizer for years, and has called me about every day to gloat. See, now they scramblin’! she says. She’s another one who don’t like the word crazy. She’d get along with my students. I’m not like my mother, though. I’m looking at the gold doorknob just fiending to run outside with my clothes off, Erykah Badu style. I’m going nuts in here. That’s what I want to do. Strip naked and run down Lafayette yelling. Instead, I’m sitting on my couch, wondering how and when I’m gonna tell Michael the news.
Many moons ago I was in an MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh and I took a class with Angie Cruz—author of Dominicana and How Not To Drown in a Glass of Water and she had us complete an exercise about someone trapped inside her house/apartment giving a monologue and this hilarious, honest Black woman living in Fort Greene popped into my mind. This piece has been sitting in my Word file collecting digital dust for YEARS and I really do love her voice, so here she is.
-Hannah Eko
Avocado Heights, CA
You can find my work and vision at hannahoeko.com and step into my world on IG @hannah.eko
Thanks for reading Lit Angels #44.
I wish you a darling existence.
