Dead-End Job by Marisa

Marisa asked me not to include her last name on this post because she is currently looking for work and doesn't want prospective employers to google her and have this comic turn up.


When The Whales Meet by Eric Jordan Subido



If my beach blanket could fly
I would hover over the pacific
Until the whales gathered
Underneath
"Lead me to the pyramids"
I would tremble
Feeling a great fear
In my belly
And they would sing me
Ancient wisdom
Of golden moons

Cry star pierced heart pangs
Beyond the milky way
Conjure beams of melanin bask
Radiating above the clouds
Escorting me to the birthplace of eternity

Image from the One Year series by Sarah Wimperis

Clenched / Momentum by Amber

I'm really angry with my parents, and I feel like a child when I feel my anger in my heart. It feels stubborn and stupid, and to even admit this anger elicits a minor shame.

I have expected too much from my parents, I suppose. Their only crowning achievement at this point in my life is managing to keep me alive and moderately meeting my needs. There's not much to be said for the relationship itself though. It seems to have been fractured beyond repair by anger and the overall weirdness that comes with being at cultural crossroads.

I was raised first a Pakistani Muslim girl. My name is not pronounced Amber, but rather Umbur. Soft and round, a name in most instances, impossible for the structured Western mouths to express. My father insisted upon a strict maintenance of culture and upon beginning primary school he did not permit me to change my name to Amber for the students. No one could pronounce Umbur so everyone settled with Omber.

Pakistan cannot and never will translate in the West. Even my fathers attempt to retain our cultural identity through my name failed. I was neither Pakistani nor was I a westerner. I became my own strange awkward looking and awkwardly named entity. The name gathered more strange momentum when we were learning the names of food in french class and my exceptionally fat and bespectacled french teacher taught us that a hamburger was pronounced "Ohhmberger". Upon hearing this the class froze and turned to Omber and one of them whispered "Omberger". My fate was sealed (a tip for current friends: don't try it).

There were attempts to teach Amber how to pray. I resisted. There were attempts to teach her Wudu, I resisted. There were attempts to teach her Arabic so she could read the Qu'ran. It was hopeless. I fought all of it. I remember when I participated in an art class at the mosque, my cousin sent the Imams daughter (who was very nice, very good, and very smart) to teach me how to do wudu. She was polite through the process and did not snicker at me as though I was stupid.

I remember Arabic school. My dad stuck me in the 3rd grade because I was in 3rd grade in the Canadian school system. Another horrible translation. I did not have 3rd grade knowledge of Arabic. I had no fucking clue what was going on. Our teacher was an ill tempered Arab man who scared me. He would ask me questions and because I had NO idea what was going on I would consistently answer with "Alif". He stopped asking me questions or would roll his eyes and curse "Alif! Alif! Always Alif". I resigned to drawing and one time drew a beautiful picture which, upon seeing, my teacher crumpled up and threw away. I was the class dunce. Even Aisha, the other Pakistani girl, refused to talk to me because of my well demonstrated stupidity.

On our last day of Arabic school we had a giant contest, the winner of which would receive a beautiful set of colored pencils. I remember bombing the contest (obviously) and crying because I did not win the prize and instead got a shitty pencil. The well versed Indonesian girl in a hijab had flitted off with set, which was of no surprise to the other students.

My childhood was awkward. I was hyperactive, a loner. I used to talk to the sun in the morning and thank it for rising. I had issues throwing away candy bar wrappers because I imagined them to be living things whose feelings would be hurt if I let them go. I hated spiders, especially the giant ones that lived under the siding in the portable classrooms. I remember eating my fruit cup one afternoon only to be chased by a wasp, at which point I threw the fruit cup at it and ran. I remember attempting to steal snow from some boys for a giant boulder we had built, at which point I was rudely punched and the wind was knocked out of me.

My mother said I was hyperactive and impossible to control. I remember being slapped a lot. The worst times were at dinner parties where a large audience would watch my mother slap me. I have so many memories of my mother slapping me while a group of people looked on. The shame it produced was wretched. The feeling of love mixed with shame and unworthiness still sits inside me and I have yet to let it go. My mother always told me our relationship was fractured by the stress produced by the realities of being an immigrant in an arranged marriage while trying to raise two kids and assemble a life in Canada. These realities seemed to have evaporated as my mother is now living quite comfortably in Ohio as a Marriage and Family therapist.

I am the product of multiple realities.

For much of my teenage years my concept of self was framed in the parameters of "bad" and "stupid" and "evil". I remember my parents venomously spitting out that I was evil. "Amber lies, Amber fights her brothers, Amber has bouts of jealousy, Amber manipulates, Amber is Evil". When I was born my mother said her heart dropped and when she saw my personality unravel she knew why her heart had dropped. When I was in college she was fighting with my father and swore at him "I've known she was cursed since the day she was born".

Starting at the age of 12 I attempted to scrub off the ways the devil had infected me. I became consumed with a desire to do good and I was always guarded and cautious with my choice of actions, words. I was terrified of people getting to know me as though if they were to look at me they would see the truth of my being. All that work I had put into being good was a fucking lie. I was evil, I was rotten, I was useless.

I spent college over working myself to earn my parents praise. They thought I went out too much so I stopped going out to make them happy. I tried to get good grades all the time, "look I made dean's list!" moments. Nothing. I swore to myself I would never date, I would never have a boyfriend. I would never fuck. I would live up to the request of purity that had fallen upon my feminine virgin frame.

The negativity in our home was fermenting and at some point was bound to explode. It did precisely at the beginning of 2008. The bitter reality that my mother had attempted to deny about her home, her husband came forth and consumed us. That winter the lights that kept us warm and happy died and I was emotionally devastated. To keep reality at bay I spent lots of time outside of the home. The day after Valentine's day I stumbled into the Shi Sha Lounge and curiously eyed a Chinese boy with red lips that bloomed out of his mouth. A few months later I kissed him in his bedroom and then a few months later I kissed him again in a way my body would not forget.

Image: Madonna, 1984

Dad's Business and Uncle Nun by Andria Alefhi



I come from a large, let's say ethnic family.  My father's side 9; my mother's side 5.  I had more aunts and uncles than my friends had combined in total.  You wanna talk about cousins, forget it.  And second cousins, wouldn't even know them if they walked down the street.

All the men in the family have a wide stance on what constitutes income and who wants to know? Meet Uncle Nun.  I didn't know he had a first name, or that Nun wasn't a first name, till I saw it on his mass card when he passed away.  The man lived in a worn out wife beater, and I never saw him standing up.  He was retired since the day I was born.  A lot of my family went out on government disability when it was easier to claim.  Nun was a man of few words.  All I remember him saying in my whole life is "whattya want?" and "it ain't hot". Mostly he was watching the game, a game, on TV.  That's called being a bookie.  People run bets through you for all kinds of sports and you pay out a win or collect a loss. Cash.  It's a full-time job.  There are a lot of sporting events out there.

We went to Nun's to visit my Aunt Avita, not really to chat with Nun.  If we did, it was to buy something that fell off the truck.  No one ever taught the meaning of this directly to me, I think I just picked it up naturally, the way kids do.  Everyone we knew bought stuff that fell off the truck, even my mom, who was generally against gambling and alternative employment.  Schmucks paid full price.  He specialized in small items that were easily boosted and transported, rarely missed.  Batteries, razor blades, small appliances.  I never asked how the items were procured, I guess none of us cared.  Aunt Avita got her own business going for many years, in the late 80s, of trips to NY to buy up as many hot purses as she could stuff in large trash bags and haul on a greyhound bus back to our small town, far away, to re-sell.  That was a great gig.  All those women were hooked and she had no shortage of repeat customers who wanted to look like they shopped in NYC.

The secret to getting ahead in America is cash business.  No one had white collar work or college degrees, but everyone had a 1st generation American dose of entrepreneurialism.  In an earlier story I talk about my dad's poker games where we had steady income not dependent on his winnings, but a cut for just housing and feeding the players.  I mention booking there and in more detail here.  My dad never went in for that - too much drama, too illegal.  You had to have muscle in case someone didn't pay up, and you had to give up your life for the endless phone calls placing bets and keeping track of who won what.  But many of my uncles had this trade.  My dad had clean businesses.  The poker game was technically illegal, but like, parking ticket illegal.  My dad grew up in stores.  His dad had a small corner store.  His brothers had small corner stores.  My dad outdid everyone by combining ready-to-eat food with dry good products - what we now see all over NY as bodegas and delis, but which was nonexistent in his time.  My dad invented the submarine sandwich in our area.  It literally did not exist.  Not that he called it a sub.  He said to himself, 'hey, I sell bread, I sell lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and cold cut meat and cheese that I slice and sell by the pound anyway.  Why don't I use all these to make sandwiches and sell them for a huge profit?'  And it worked.  In another business, not at the same time, he owned a diner. He bought all the supplies, he got there at 5am, he cooked everything, it was a full menu for breakfast and lunch.  He hired 2 waitresses, then would call his sister or mother on super busy days to come help out.  I worked summers.  The nice thing about that place was he closed up by 3pm and on weekends and holidays, so he had time with his family.  The secret to all his businesses was that he was there - he owned, ran, managed.  When he got tired of it, he sold it and got something new.  He never had someone run a place for him, therefore he never could have more than one business.

I personally learned a lot in the two summers I worked there, part-time.  I learned about life, life lessons other kids might have learned going to summer camp or 4H or something.  My father was fast and it was impressive, he had 10 different egg orders going on the grill at the same time, just food everywhere. He always cleaned immediately.  I met lesbians for the first time, where they were labeled and it was explained to me.  I saw how a smile got you a nice tip. I also saw how men looked at me, at 13 and 14, when I would walk in through Uncle Nun's Uncle's bar to the diner.  I barely knew what it meant to be a woman.  I was a young girl turning dirty old man heads, but I didn't realize the sex in it.  I felt pride in coming to work and helping out.  Also though, some shady shit was going down that I didn't realize.  One of the waitresses, Angie, was especially sweet to me.  I remember her bringing me back a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, a sexy half shirt really, from Disneyworld.  One night, she asked my dad if she could take me out to dinner, just us.  Looking back, I wonder why he let me go.  My mom must have been crushed.  Because, my dad was having an affair with her.  Of course I didn't know that, I was just excited for the attention.  I had no idea my dad was sleeping with the waitress.  I think the money and power went to his head.  I didn't out about this until many years later, but this was the start of the great demise between my parents.  Also, someone was stealing cash from the register, which I also didn't know was the reason he quit and sold the diner.
 
This second diner was his last business.  After this came the poker games, and then finally ending in working for a company where he had to punch in and out with a time card.  This was hard on him.  Meanwhile, all these years, my mom was neutrally working for the bank, getting a paycheck and benefits and never begrudging not being her own boss.

Andria curates the fantastic literary magazine, We'll Never Have Paris

Image: In Memory of D. Pearl by Ricky Romain

Glow by Rachel Harrison



i explore my wishes slowly
a quiet life exposed to moments
where nothing good is lowly
the overturned is holy

my whistle rusts and still squeals
sandals and shoes are what i see
i'm looking down now at the ground
like birds look down from the sky
resolutely inbetween

i feel so heavy in my head
i refuse to gnaw the skin off my teeth
i can glow gently like this
in the swing of i guess magnets

Image: Untitled by Wallander's father

For Liz by Tony Gomez

trying to surmise the total area of my spaceless timeshare

not easy on earth with you undressed the way you are

time slinks down the sidewalk like a candle's wax

the wind moves the window closes

sometimes you're the town i got a postcard from

someone who was here but now no more

thinking that there was something to say

and despite the ways i bend my ear

postcards are so insincere

sometimes i sit here and go other places at the same time

other times i sit here and i sit here like chewed up gum

on the bottom of the desk i rest my elbows on

in the fraction of a half moment our weird good thing rests upon

to grow up big and wise is good

to know the tune of great songs, people great and dead

all the mothers and all of the fathers

no amount of spinach and water will clear my head

i yank the strings on your sweatshirt's hood

i trim the wick, i was the dishes

i feel like a cat tied to a kite

everything about you makes me uptight

Image: Fragment from

Two Lovers

by Vincent Van Gogh

Your Name Came Up While I Was Getting My Hair Cut at the Sandwich Shop by Colleen Few



turtle shaped balloon
ascends into the sky
it doesn't try

sky consumes
it's like those things
it's full of things you cannot see
the sky is just like me

i'm composed in-part of clouds
one of which resembles you
there is a turtle shaped balloon
with nothing smart to share
so tiny in your hair
i scratch my knee
describe you some to stan
i smell mustard on his hand

a turtle shaped balloon
by stan's suggestion
(stan cuts my hair
in a delicatessen)
may contain the answer
to a turtle shaped question

Image: Sandwiches

North of the Dakota by Robert Mickles



gross was an architect
with schwartz he shared a dream
massive cement apartment buildings
the color of impossibly dirty sponges
vertical in their sidewalk greyness
cubicled in door man squareness
a culture of disdain, a failure to reconcile
black berets and turtle necks
with a humorless lack of style
all this just north of the old dakota
 - the gross dream is foaming

jaw-bone wife slash actresses in ray bans sips
bitter starbucks wearing pony brand black thermal tights
sketchers shape-ups spandex opinions and
designer soaps
child-proof children
eat popsicles with jamaican nannies
dad loves to bitch we aren't rich
he builds up his autonomy
nursing fears for the economy
silently resenting the east-siders
so spineless and silver spooned
six digit salaries and still we pray for mercy
just north of the dakota in the shadow of new jersey

not making eye contact with the
rent controlled derilects from amsterdam
cursing metal carts through the streets
with hamburgers and flip phones
don't they know?
take that noise to harlem
we have nine dollar almond butter north of the dakota
and the cops are glad to fill their quota

we have lawyers who read comic books
sage fabrics and holistic vets
we're concerned about gay rights
pour out a little pinot noir in honor of the war vets
razor scooter and organic yams
read the times, recycle
do not relax, your nerves are vindicated
and your life is framed in gray but framed
like a firetruck's siren framed
teach your daughter not to mind
you get results when you're unkind

grow the little boy's hair real long
give it a guitar
buy a beatles t-shirt
and if he's handsome a bandana
'john lennon, man. been dead a while
to him we raise our diet soda
yoko never smiles looking down from the dakota:

"that mcdonalds was a tasty d-lite
we used to eat ice cream late at night
and this chase bank was a cd player
they used to play the rufus wainwright
it was the year 1880 when the dakota took its perch
overlooking rocks and weeds and dirt
whole lot of nothing, can you imagine?"

Photograph by Irina Kuzmena