Anuja Mitra
Because a story is like a gun
You were in the first act of your life and you wanted to leave it. You were thirteen and shunned by your few remaining friends. You were sixteen and renounced by your mother;
just another girl with too many sharp edges, a girl too like herself to love. No wonder you turned to strangers, never learning a boy with a barbed wire smile can’t take you anywhere you can come back from. Not that you wanted to come back. So maybe these suburbs had shielded you before, but you were older now, and mighty: too mighty for the windows that went dark before nine, the vacant parks with their quiet languor, their interminable green. At eighteen, you stood on someone’s lawn and burned every birthday card your stepfather gave you. Could I have helped you? Could anyone? Maybe I’m just telling this story because enfolding you in it keeps you safe, for once, for the final time. Because a story is like a gun: its power is in the hand that holds it.
-U-
Anuja Mitra is a writer from Aotearoa/New Zealand with work in local and international publications. Her poetry has recently appeared in the journals Haven Speculative, Landfall,
Poetry New Zealand, and takahē, as well as anthologies from Auckland University Press. Her linktree and occasional commentary can be found on the dying platform that is Twitter: @anuja_m9.
Anuja Mitra
Because a story is like a gun
You were in the first act of your life and you wanted to leave it. You were thirteen and shunned by your few remaining friends. You were sixteen and renounced by your mother; just another girl with too many sharp edges, a girl too like herself to love. No wonder you turned to strangers, never learning a boy with a barbed wire smile can’t take you anywhere you can come back from. Not that you wanted to come back. So maybe these suburbs had shielded you before, but you were older now, and mighty: too mighty for the windows that went dark before nine, the vacant parks with their quiet languor, their interminable green. At eighteen, you stood on someone’s lawn and burned every birthday card your stepfather gave you. Could I have helped you? Could anyone? Maybe I’m just telling this story because enfolding you in it keeps you safe, for once, for the final time. Because a story is like a gun: its power is in the hand that holds it.
-U-
Anuja Mitra is a writer from Aotearoa/New Zealand with work in local and international publications. Her poetry has recently appeared in the journals Haven Speculative, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, and takahē, as well as anthologies from Auckland University Press. Her linktree and occasional commentary can be found on the dying platform that is Twitter: @anuja_m9.
Sarah Dickenson Snyder
Anything Can Be a Weapon
When I wouldn't let weapons in our house like toy guns and plastic swords, my son bit his slice of toast into a gun, pointing it at me or his sister, saying, Bang, bang. How he hopped out of the bathtub and held his clean penis, pointing it around the tiled room, his sweet voice turning into a soft machine gun saying, Dadadadadadadadada. Words are weapons of another kind, often issued when sadness alchemizes into wrath; anger is ammunition. How much I'd like to take back, little bullets I’ve sprayed in someone's way. I remember a pocket of meanness my sister gave me. I'm certain she carries words I've said like little scars. But it's all blurry now, puzzling even, to imagine the pain. Most things smooth with time, the way snow fills ditches and holes. You don't know what's below that glistening blanket. It was thick and abundant on my morning ski, endless flakes flurrying and hurrying, landing on my face, nothing cold except my blinking eyes, the pond covered but not forgotten.
-U-
Sarah Dickenson Snyder’s collections include The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and forthcoming, Now These Three Remain (2023). She’s had Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. See more at sarahdickensonsnyder.com.
Amy DeBellis
A Murder
Vengeance, in the faces of crows lost at sundown. We made the mistake of looking too deeply into their eyes and now their minds — always so clever, always the darlings of Nature and National Geographic — have overloaded, fractured under a kaleidoscope of human features: skin like spoiled milk, eyes shifting wet and white-rimmed, mouths fluttering like wounds. We are so ugly to them. And now they are shrugging on our silhouettes, mocking. They perch on scarecrows and dangle their legs off the stiff straw-packed arms, grinning big pumpkin grins. Can crows grin? They sure can now. They clamp teeth they shouldn’t have around cigarettes, brush through their feathers with fragments of combs. And on the ground we grow smaller. While their beaks shrink to noses, our arms blacken into crippled wings. Standing in rows in the field, we try not to think too hard about God and his inequities. We tell ourselves that his eye is on the sparrow. On the wanderer, on the lamb straying from its flock. But really it is on the crow. The gorge. The rifle.
-U-
Amy DeBellis is a writer from New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Frog, HAD, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Monkeybicycle, Atticus Review, The Shore, and other journals. Her debut novel is forthcoming from CLASH Books (2024).
Juan Pablo Mobili
Please, Meet My Family
Mother
All my mother inherited was her mother’s death wish and her resentment at being a Catholic who could not commit a sin. My mother left me her unbridled enthusiasm, closely shadowed by her disappointment, leaving me walking a tightrope, barefoot, my toes curled tightly around the unforgiving wire.
* * *
Uncle Julio
He was the celebrity of the family. A director who had mastered the kind of mediocre movies that make their money back. On Sundays, if he agreed to come for lunch, after church, my grandmother would lay down her best linen. While espressos were served, Julio would take a small bit of the white of a baguette, dip it in red wine, and begin to sculpt a minute rose, with his immaculate nails. The petals were life-like, and the proportions exact. When he finished, he would insert a toothpick in the bottom of the rose, gently dip it once more in the red wine, and bestow the tiny flower to someone at the table — his arm extended, revealing the cufflink emblazoned with the coat of arms of Argentina at war.
-U-
Juan Pablo Mobili’s poems have appeared in many publications in the United States as well as Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. He has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award. His chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022.
Vikram Masson
The Family Party
And at dusk, wet from the light patter of rain, you will walk through the fraying oak doors and hear plumes of laughter rising from every corner. You will see them there, all long dead: the uncle who was an athlete, who into his sixties had adamantine calves, taken by cirrhosis, or was it stomach cancer? Another uncle, your mother’s favorite brother-in-law, is pontificating as always about politics, this time the unjust invasion of Grenada, one hand wiping his brow with a linen handkerchief, the other making gestures with a brandy snifter. Then there is the uncle who everyone calls “Commander,” tall and demure, who served in the British Navy and sings sea shanties when he drinks enough. His wife, your aunt, who always accompanies him on the piano, is readying her thin and deliberate fingers. In the kitchen, another aunt with a large diamond nose-ring is fussing over lamb chops, crushing coriander in her hands for the garnish, shooing away your nattering cousins who are pining for a taste. You will look for your father and your mother but will not find them. When the Commander readies his voice by clearing his throat, you go up to him and ask, “Why is it like this? Why is there a hole blowing white smoke where everyone’s heart should be?” He will not answer. And when you shout the same lonely questions into the room, no one answers. Your aunt sits on the creaking piano stool and begins to play.
-U-
Vikram Masson writes at the intersection of faith, identity, and culture. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Gone Lawn, Glass, Juked, Rust + Moth, and Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith (NYQ Books). He has a forthcoming chapbook with Kelsay Books.
