You don't know how to talk to people at parties

By Grace Crouthamel

“You don’t know how to talk to people at parties,” Julia said while we were outside

smoking—she likes American Spirits, I prefer anything else because they take too long, and I’m the sort of person unwilling to ash early—twelve dollars a pack now—and I said, “all social scenes are going to die if they kill the cig, think of the culture,” and she almost laughed, the other people around us laughed at least—all Thatcher’s friends from that private prep school he went to, we know him from college so we’re second-tier friends—and then I’m talking to some guy Thatch knows about where we’re from and he says he grew up right outside the city (New Jersey) and that transplants are ruining the city, and after another third of the cigarette I tell him I’m from Appalachia and he asks if I’m saying it correctly because he heard it pronounced differently in his Labor History class, and I don’t know how to respond and he follows up with, “what was that like?” so I laugh and say, “well, the stereotypes are largely untrue,” and he says, “what do you mean?” so I tell him about my incest cousins—true story—“I do have incest cousins, but I’ll have you know they aren’t from the coal-country side of the family, they’re from the DC suburbs,” and I laugh because that’s the joke, and he asks, “wait, do you really?” and I have to say yes, “I found them behind our grandparent’s shed one summer, and it was at least a handy, so I’m pretty sure that counts,” and he doesn’t laugh, and my cigarette is almost done, and he says, “that’s kind of offensiv —you shouldn’t joke about things like that,” and I say, “oh, I’m sorry,” and turn to see Julia smiling, she takes me by the arm and we walk back inside and tell Thatch we’re leaving, and he says, “that’s too bad, you didn’t get to meet everyone yet,” and we walk toward the subway—she’s taking the L, I’m taking the M—and we both laugh, she kisses me on the cheek goodbye and tells me again, “you really don’t know how to talk to people at parties”—and I laugh, but not really, because every night I still walk home alone.

Grace Crouthamel, a queer writer from Northern Appalachia, lives with two mutinous dogs, a lizard, and a novella-in-progress, with work appearing or forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, ANMLY, and matchbook.

Art by Jasmine Hyman, a playwright and artist living and working in her home town of NYC.

The Ocean Never Really Leaves You

By Bethany Bruno

When the hurricane came, I watched my childhood street rearrange itself into a map of everywhere I’d ever wanted to escape, mailboxes floating past like lost punctuation, our front porch bending into the canal as if bowing to some god I never believed in, and afterward when the water receded and the fish lay gasping in the ditches, I felt something ancient in their mouths, a secret current that whispered all our names backward, and I knew then that the ocean never really leaves you, it just waits inside the plumbing, hums beneath the drains, remembering the shape of your house, your voice, your smallest sins, and every time I run the tap I think I hear it rehearsing the moment it comes back for me.

Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and magazines, including The Threepenny Review, The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, and The Huffington Post.

Photo by Jason Thayer.

Do It Again

By Kat Moore

Faster, faster, I scream as the golf cart barrels down the hill, my sister, 11, in the driver’s seat, me, only 6, small, gripping the metal edges of the passenger’s side, laughter rumbling out from my mouth as the cart shoots a corner, raises up on one side and glides tilted for a moment, I reach out to my sister, with her left hand, she clasps my right hand, and then the cart slams back onto the asphalt, our father running behind us on the dark narrow road that runs the length of the golf course, the golfers, the sandboxes, the ponds that we pretend have alligators, the trees that have coyotes and deer, the colors green and brown blur like an impressionist painting, which I don’t yet know about, but I know my sister, the way she impresses on me, her eyes large, her mouth open, I think she is laughing, but she may be screaming, she has lost control of the golf cart, but I believe in her, soon we will be home and she will read to me, show me the lines in the book for me to read aloud to her, to practice the words I don’t know, then we will watch movies, of little girls, like Helen Slater as Billie Jean in her short hair to look like St Joan of Arc, like Molly Ringwald as Andie in her pretty pink, who move faster faster than the speed of light, always trying to catch their light, my sister’s light, I believe in her to keep us safe, to steer the golf cart back to our parents, for her foot to find the brake, and she does, she always does, and the cart slows, her hand on the wheel, her right leg stretching, pushing down on the brake, and we stop, we laugh, and I clap my hands, Do it again, the way now, a lifetime later, on June 25th, 2022, approaching my mid-forties, my sister not yet fifty, I wish we could do it again, relive the life I had with my sister before a wreck took her from me, do it again, I pray, days I sit here by her side, remembering, remembering for her, asking her to wake-up now, the monitors go silent, now her breath stops, now I kiss her face and clasp our hands together one last time.

Kat Moore has essays in/forthcoming from Image, Reed, Bellevue Literary Review, Brevity, and more.

Art by Debi Babb.