Inside my mother’s closet it was cool and dim. Everything fell away: the sound of raised voices, closing doors. I’d breathe in the musky scent of a pashmina embroidered with vines and lilies, run my fingers over a beaded clutch the azure of the Himalayan sky—things my mother brought from India when she boarded the plane that long ago day in the 50s and flew to America. I’d look through her jewelry: a bracelet with prayer wheel and buddha charms; a tear-shaped turquoise pendant her father gave her when she left for New York; a Tibetan coral-and-silver amulet, worn for protection on a journey. Nestled in her silk scarves, my mother always kept a bar of Myrurgia’s Maja soap, wrapped in the distinctive red-and-black paper with a flamenco dancer on the label. Because my father—an American my mother met in medical school—had been stationed at the Rota naval base, near Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar, I was born in Spain and we stayed there for two years. I remembered nothing of those days but I’d heard stories: My parents drank fino sherry in bars and ate tapas made from tiny sparrows and wild boar. On warm evenings, the levante wind blowing in from the sea, they chatted with friends on their jasmine-wreathed patio. They spent New Year’s Eve in the 15^th–century convent hotel at the Alhambra in Granada, gazing out over the moonlit Moorish gardens. But after we moved back to the States, there were arguments—over money, how the children should be raised, my father’s love of intellectual discussion vs. my mother’s love of cocktail parties. My father began spending more and more time at his office. I’d sit in my mother’s closet and inhale the Maja fragrance of vetiver, rose, geranium, clove, and dream of my parents in Rota: my father handsome in his Navy uniform, my mother slim and lovely in one of the suits she’d had made in Jerez de la Frontera. I’d hear the flamenco records my father still played, the yearning gypsy cante from Andalusia, the south of Spain, where I was born and my parents had been happy.

~

Ann Tashi Slater’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, failbetter, and Kyoto Journal, as well as in American Dragons (HarperCollins), an anthology of work by Asian American writers. Her translation of a novella by Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas was published in Old Rosa (Grove). She is working on a multi-generational novel based on the Tibetan side of her family and a travel memoir, from which “Gypsy Cante” is taken. A longtime resident of Tokyo, Slater teaches American literature at a Japanese university. Visit her website and her Huffington Post blog.

CORPSE

Neera hated the Triangle. She hated the Downward Dog, the Warrior II, and the Eagle. She hated the Lotus. She especially hated the Lotus, and the way the teacher, Hans, kept talking about positioning the ass. The word ass came up so many times during the hour long class that her leg started shaking halfway through. She did not want to think of blond Hans’ ass, and what he did with it, any more than she wanted to think about the asses of the rest of the class. Oh, the rest of the class. She knew they had better things to think about than how she couldn’t fold her legs, at the same she knew they couldn’t get her out of their heads. They needed the tightness of her joints, her stunning lack of grace, her tendency to topple over (for her midsection was wider than her tiny ankles could support) in order to feel more graceful themselves. Without the figment of her presence, they could not pull their legs across their midsections or stare straight ahead, calmly, into the mirror, as if they were gazing not at themselves, but at benevolent, if tranquilized, deer. Not even deer: mules. That captured it. They needed her more than she needed them but that didn’t mean she didn’t take in their disdain, their hidden wishes that she stay out on the sidewalk with the tight-bodied others, who nervoused the world with their grunts, sighs, and pills, and their need to hurry to the next corner.

Then after 45 minutes the class was still. They were on their backs, and Neera felt the top of her head numb, the soles of her feet get warm. She turned her neck from side to side. She rotated the base of her spine, breathing. Her muscles were real to her. Her palms tilted upward as if they were cupping light. The night in the woman next to her turned outward and away, as the night in Neera took in everyone in the room, and she held them as she would a dog, or some precious thing, but not too close. She’d let the dog wing through that trap in the ceiling, and there wouldn’t be trouble up there. There wouldn’t be ideas or politics or mathematics or even music, just pure gaze, free of body, looking back down on some helpless woman, whose eyes were wet, while the top row of her teeth were dry.

SMOKE

Holly did not smoke–or she did not think of herself as a professional. She slipped the last cigarette from the pack. Some loneliness, some wish to recharge–the effect of the first drag was the closest thing she could think of to being a child again, spinning round and round on the playground with her brother–must have compelled her to buy the pack, and when she smoked that cigarette back then, she must have cranked open the bathroom window and held out her arm as far as possible, so that her neighbors, upstairs and down, did not have to be subjected to the stench of it. She was doing the same thing this evening, relieved that she could now begin the next life, clean, exercised, smoke-free. She pushed her head through the window frame. She pulled in on the cigarette with her mouth. It popped softly, sparks flying. The view before her–the streetlights in the trees, the golden lights on the bay, the cruise ship steaming toward the channel–should have jolted her breath, but she was oh too used to it by now. She was thinking about her marriage, her late marriage. She thought of it as an ideal marriage at the time, full of kindness; fun; nights side by side on the sofa, reading or watching movies. A balance of privacy and togetherness: so what if they cared too much about equilibrium to fight? And just as Holly thought of her blindness, she saw the tower, among the other buildings, to the north, on the opposite shore of the bay. The tower must have always been there, but she hadn’t seen it till now. The building wasn’t worth describing. Twenty-some stories, balconies, white walls, steel-trimmed windows, a cube of arches hiding the water towers on top. It was designed not to make a mark. No architect could be proud of such a thing. It was an assignment, it was all about the money. There were buildings like that in the big cities all up and down the coast. When would she stop crying? The crying made her laugh at herself, though that laughter didn’t exactly stop the tears. So much to tell you you’re not the person you think you are: the person who notices, the person who brings light to the room. And just as the paper burned up to the filter, Holly remembered the last time she and her ex had had sex. It was the best sex they’d had in years, after a time of not very much of it. They looked at each other for the first time in a long time; a message so vast passed between them that they fell through some trap in the bed. And laughed because they’d found out what they’d been missing. There was still hope for them. Her ex must have been saying goodbye with his body, though he didn’t know that yet–or maybe he did. They caught themselves weeping. And the smell of fresh leaves on his skin again left her with something far clearer than tears.

~

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy, Famous Builder, The Burning House, and Unbuilt Projects. His work has appeared in The Awl, Fence, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, Unstuck and other publications. He is the New Voices Professor at Rutgers University and he teaches in the low residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College. A memoir, The Narrow Door, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2014.

Now I Am Doubled Over

Allow me to say a few words, he says, and then he says, people think backwards. I say to the person next to me, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the person next to me says, I don’t know what you mean. At this point I’m livid, I am beside myself. I think about starting a fire or setting off an explosive but I don’t because that’s not a nice thing to do on a Sunday morning and I don’t have matches on me or kindling or anything that even resembles dynamite so I remain seated beside myself. And it feels especially true because at this point it’s as if I’m both the one who said, I can’t believe we’ve allowed this to go on and the one who said, I don’t know what you mean.  It is exactly like me to be disbelieving and confused at the same time. So this is when I feel the disbelief and confusion at the base of my skull working its way up toward the top of my head and down my spinal column and all the way around into my guts. I can feel it spreading through my pelvic floor, seeping into organs and blood vessels. Now I am doubled over. Now I am on the ground, writhing, and I think why is this happening again. I think about how many times this has happened and in front of how many people. I can hear the people saying this poor fellow or I can’t stand to see him like this or I think we should go home now. Once on the ground like this, writhing, making a spectacle, I realize I might also be the one who said, allow me to say a few words, in the first place, which was clearly a mistake and probably how this whole mess got started.

People Say What, Eat Sandwiches, Watch Television

People say what to me and I say what back. Days go by, weeks, even years. People eat sandwiches and watch television. I’m not around when they do this but I’m certain whenever I’m not around people eat sandwiches and watch television. Sometimes they go to the doctor or for a drive in the country. When people reconvene people they what to me and I say what back. They want to know what is happening, what is doing, what I have been up to. I tell them what do I know. I tell them I have been eating sandwiches and watching television like everyone else. They ask me what’s the problem and what’s the matter. I tell them I dream lives though not my own. I’m not sure who the people are in my dreams. They always try to kill me but I can sometimes outsmart them and wake myself up before anything happens. Then I go to the bathroom and empty my bladder, which is something I have to do all the time now. I tell them that it’s all because of my bladder, I tell them that’s the main problem. They ask me if that’s the god’s honest truth and I tell them how should I know, I’m not religious. The people who say what to me like this, most speak their own languages. A lot of them come from where the water is bad and the people want out. The people from these places are troubled, their languages incomprehensible. Even still I try to make sense of them. I listen for familiar words, sounds. I always look people in the face when they talk to me in their languages. I am always baffled. I say what to them and they say what back. Then they ask what time it is. They ask this because it is time to go and everyone knows it. I tell them it isn’t a good time or bad time, the best or worst of times, but it is indeed a time, much like the time before and exactly like times to come. Seconds go by, minutes, lives begin and end the world over. The people thank me for the time and then ask what I will do with the rest of the day. I tell them that I should clean my house because it is filthy and I should go to the doctor because of my bladder but I am tired and want to go to bed so this is what I tell them. I tell them I will dream them later but promise not to kill me. I tell them it’s because of my bladder that people want to kill me. The people look me in the face and are baffled. They ask what do I mean by this and I tell them what I suspect is true.

Why We’re Trapped In A Failed System

She was sorry for the rain. I told her it wasn’t a problem but did my part and apologized for the trees. This sort of discourse continued for a couple of years. Then one morning I said not everything was our responsibility. She took exception. She said this is why we’re trapped in a failed system. She said this is why people commit desperate outrages against themselves and others. I wanted to argue with her, but I noticed that her eyebrows were misshapen as they performed calisthenics on her face. I can’t tell you how much this upset me. Sometimes I am far too sensitive and shouldn’t be allowed outside where there are other people. Not everybody knows this about me and those that do tend to shun me. To these people I say clean up your own yard-work and then get back to me. I hadn’t said this to her yet, but I was getting reading to. I always have to get into a particular mindset to accomplish anything. Even making breakfast takes a half hour’s worth of silent meditation beforehand. I think she knew something was wrong at this point, because she stopped talking about why things were the way they were. I tried not to look, but it was clear her fingernails were uneven and unpolished. I told her I couldn’t take this anymore. I may’ve said this at a certain pitch, which I’m sure was unsettling. She picked up her head and looked at me square in the jaw. It was like this for a while, two people trapped in a failed system, trying to look at each other. I am here to report that I was the first to crumble, but what’s worse is she couldn’t summon the humanity to place a hand anywhere on me as I wept.

Someone Great Like Socrates

There’s more than one reason I tied you to that bedpost.

If you recall, it’d been raining. That’s first and foremost.

Also, the bathroom and how you were always in there cleaning it.

I can’t count how many times I found you hunched over the tub, your hair up in that bandana, listening to the stereo loud and scrubbing away to the rhythm of the music.

I can’t tell you the toll this took on me.

There’s so much I can’t tell you.

I needn’t remind you that neither of us was in good health nor spirits at the time. I think I was sleeping sixteen hours a day and you were up to a quart of gin.

All of this taken together could devastate anyone, I think.

I, like you, am human. Like you I know nothing.

The rest we can sort out later.

If there is no later, please allow me to say this … be careful who you look at on the subway. They might want money or to kill you.

You have to question the mentality of anyone who willingly looks at another on the subway.

Someone great like Socrates would say the same thing had he lived in the city.

If you get yourself killed I would count it as an unspeakable tragedy, even if I don’t know you anymore, even if by then you’re already dead to me.

Socrates himself was put to death on a subway, I’m almost certain.

He made the mistake of looking up when someone asked for everyone’s attention and they made him drink hemlock for his troubles.

This isn’t the kind of information you can get just anywhere.

You know what you’re giving up.

Do you remember the time I tied you to that bedpost and we discussed Socratic paradoxes and the peculiar ways of the world? I believe I was accused of something horrific and I needed you to sit still long enough to explain myself.

I believe I made myself clear while I was applying the ointment.

The gist was have you ever boarded a train and gone someplace because why the fuck not?

Maybe to see what a new life might be like on the windy side of an old one?

Maybe to get away from the panhandlers on the subway, to say nothing of the philosophers and murderers?

To say nothing of bedposts and slipknots.

If you do this remember me to any perfect stranger once you arrive and tell them what I’ve always told you, that I know nothing. Tell them, in spite of this, I said take special care.

Always, please, take very special care.

~

Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River and a story collection, Asunder. His fiction has appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including; Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Unsaid, Vice Magazine, Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction Latino, etc. He teaches fiction writing at The New School, Pratt Institute, Columbia University and The Solstice MFA Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College.