Author Archives: Qu Literary Magazine

19 May, 2019

The Water of Life

 

CHARACTERS:

 

LEAH           a preacher’s kid and recent high school graduate; female

 

CARRIE         her slightly older secret girlfriend; female

 

 

TIME:          the end of summer

 

 

PLACE:         a church attic

A candlelit church attic. Amid scattered relics (a stray pew or two, dusty stacks of old hymnals, and so on), the most eye-catching item is an old baptistery – a tank once used for baptisms of the total-immersion, dunking type, not the sprinkle-some-water-over-your-head type.

 

The tank has been filled with water, and reflections from the clear surface are flickering throughout the space. Also flickering: the lit candles that are set up all over. The effect is at once spooky and sacred.

 

After a moment, LEAH enters, carrying two brass candlesticks with unlit candles, two baptismal robes, and two towels.

 

She puts these items next to the baptistery, looks around as it to make sure everything is in place, then exits.

 

When she returns, she has CARRIE with her.

 

CARRIE

Whoa. Look at this place.

 

LEAH

Didn’t I tell you?

 

CARRIE

Is this why you couldn’t go to the movie? So you could set this all up?

 

LEAH

I wanted to create an atmosphere.

 

CARRIE

Looks like you created a fire hazard.

 

LEAH

We’ll be careful.

 

CARRIE

How did you fill up that tank?

 

LEAH

Baptistery. It’s called a baptistery.

 

CARRIE

Okay. How did you fill it up?

 

LEAH

A bucket.

 

CARRIE

You went up and down the stairs with a bucket? How many trips did that take?

 

LEAH

A lot.

 

CARRIE

No wonder you missed the movie.

 

LEAH

The water got cold.

 

CARRIE tests the water with her hand.

 

CARRIE

I wonder how many people got baptized in this thing.

 

LEAH

Did you bring your swimsuit?

 

CARRIE

I thought you were kidding.

 

LEAH lifts up her shirt, showing that she’s wearing a swimsuit under her clothes.

 

LEAH

I wasn’t.

 

CARRIE laughs, then catches herself.

 

CARRIE

Are you sure it’s okay that we’re up here?

 

LEAH

Of course not. We’re totally trespassing.

 

CARRIE

Are you serious?

 

LEAH

I told you that. Just like I told you to bring your swimsuit. I wasn’t kidding. When do I ever kid?

 

CARRIE

Okay but I mean, will your dad be mad?

 

LEAH

No.

 

CARRIE

Even though we’re trespassing in his church? Isn’t this like his property?

 

LEAH

A church isn’t anybody’s property. Except God’s I guess. But it’s definitely not my dad’s. He’s just the preacher.

 

CARRIE

So he’s like renting and God is the landlord?

 

LEAH

No, God is just the Lord.

 

CARRIE

Okay, well isn’t your dad going to be mad that we’re trespassing on the Lord’s property?

 

LEAH

No. Because he’ll never know. He’s at home practicing his sermon.

 

CARRIE

Yeah, but there could be like other church folk lurking around, couldn’t there?

 

LEAH

“Church folk”?

 

CARRIE

You know. Like altar boys or . . . old ladies saying prayers in front of candles.

 

LEAH

I think you’re thinking of Catholics. We don’t have altar boys. And believe me: I’ve spent pretty much my

entire life at this church, and I can tell you that if there’s one time when NOBODY wants to be here, it’s Saturday night.

 

CARRIE

I don’t know. Sunday morning isn’t a very fun time to be here, either, if you ask me.

 

LEAH

Well, it isn’t exactly supposed to be fun.

CARRIE

I know, I know. Fun is for harlots.

[with mock fear] Oh please don’t stone me or make me watch Fox News!

 

LEAH

You’re sacrilegious.

 

CARRIE

Isn’t it just awful?

 

LEAH

Come here.

 

CARRIE goes to LEAH. They kiss.

 

CARRIE

It really is pretty in here.

 

LEAH

Thank you.

 

CARRIE

Is it for like making out?

 

LEAH

What? No!

 

CARRIE

No? I thought that’s why you went to all this trouble. With the candles and the not-so-hot tub and the alone time. To set a mood or whatever.

 

LEAH

I did want to set a mood, but not for –

 

CARRIE

Then what?

 

LEAH

For a ritual.

 

CARRIE

A ritual.

 

LEAH

Like a special ceremony –

 

CARRIE

I know what a ritual is. It’s where I go to a spooky attic in an abandoned church and my secret girlfriend cuts my throat in that tank.

 

LEAH

I’m serious! I want us to perform a ritual. Together.

 

CARRIE

What kind of a ritual?

 

LEAH picks up the two unlit candlesticks.

 

LEAH

With these.

 

She hands one of the candlesticks to CARRIE. Then LEAH uses a lit candle nearby to light the candle in the candlestick she’s holding.

 

LEAH

Here, give me yours.

 

CARRIE

What is this for? Why do we need to do a ritual?

 

LEAH

Because summer is ending. You’re gonna go back to college and I’ll be here.

 

CARRIE

You’ll be at college, too.

 

LEAH

Not the same college. I’m starting at Weston. Which hardly even counts as a college to begin with.

 

CARRIE

And what, this ritual is like a . . .?

 

LEAH

Like a consecration. Or a commemoration, maybe?

 

CARRIE

You are so dramatic.

 

LEAH

Give me your candle.

 

CARRIE hesitates, but inclines her candle toward LEAH. LEAH lights it with hers.

 

LEAH

Now repeat after me.

 

LEAH positions CARRIE so that they’re standing face-to-face in front of the baptistery.

 

LEAH

“Whither thou goest, I will go.”

 

CARRIE

Sorry, “goest”? Why are you talking like Romeo and Juliet?

 

LEAH [more insistently]

“Whither thou goest, I will go.”

 

CARRIE

Okay, okay. “Whither thou goest, I will go.”

 

LEAH

“Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

 

CARRIE

“Thy people shall be my people, and thy God” – Actually, I don’t know if we’re on the same page there. I’m not a fundy evangelical like you.

 

LEAH

Do you really think I still count as a fundy evangelical? After this summer?

 

CARRIE

Good point. “Thy God is my God” or whatever it was.

 

LEAH

“Where thou diest, will I die.”

 

CARRIE

“Where thou diest, will I die.” Hopefully not in that tank.

 

LEAH

“The Lord do so to me, and more besides, if anything but death part thee and me.”

 

CARRIE

“The Lord do so to me if anything” – Wait, what was it?

 

LEAH

“If anything but death part thee and me.”

 

CARRIE

“If anything but death part thee and me.” Death and Weston Community College.

 

LEAH

Same thing. Now put your candle out in the baptistery. Do it with me.

 

They lower their candlesticks to the water, extinguishing the flames.

 

LEAH

And now we baptize one another in the water of life, made sacred by the flame of our love.

 

CARRIE

Did you make this all up on your own?

 

LEAH

The vow came from the Book of Ruth, but I thought up the details. I’m very dramatic, remember?

 

She begins removing her outer clothes.

 

CARRIE

You’re actually going to get in that thing?

 

LEAH

Yes.

 

CARRIE

Are you crazy?

 

LEAH

No. A little intense, maybe. But not crazy.

 

CARRIE

What about me?

 

LEAH

You’re not crazy either. Just afraid to express your feelings.

 

CARRIE

No, I meant what about me and the tank?

 

LEAH

 

CARRIE

Whatever. I didn’t bring my swimsuit and I’m not getting naked in a church attic.

 

LEAH

Then I can just sprinkle water over your head.

 

CARRIE [with mock outrage]

You mean like the Catholics?! But only the dunked shall enter the kingdom of heaven, thus sayeth the Lord!

 

LEAH

This isn’t about entering the kingdom of heaven. This is about us.

 

She finishes undressing down to her swimsuit. Then she takes a baptistery robe and puts it on over her swimsuit.

 

CARRIE watches.

 

LEAH

How do I look?

 

CARRIE

Like you’re about to sing backup for somebody.

 

LEAH

You can put the other one on.

 

CARRIE finds the other baptism robe, puts it on.

 

CARRIE

What do you think?

 

LEAH

It’s perfect.

 

CARRIE

It’s roomy, that’s for sure. Reminds me of this housedress my nana used to –

 

LEAH

Shh. You’ll break the spell.

 

CARRIE

 

LEAH gets in the baptistery, shivering and shuddering with the cold of the water.

 

CARRIE

Too cold?

 

LEAH

Frigid.

 

CARRIE

Well then get out of there. We can both sprinkle water over our heads.

 

LEAH

No, I can do this. Just hurry.

 

CARRIE

Are you sure?

 

LEAH

Hurry!

 

CARRIE

What do I do?

 

LEAH

Just like dip me. Backwards.

 

CARRIE

Like we’re dancing?

 

LEAH

 

They get in position. CARRIE stands outside of the tank, but where she can dip LEAH backwards into the water.

 

CARRIE

Should I say a few words?

 

LEAH

Yes.

 

CARRIE thinks for a moment.

 

CARRIE

I don’t know what to say.

 

LEAH

Yes you do. You’re just fighting it.

 

CARRIE

I’m not fighting anything! I’m standing here about to baptize you in the water of life made sacred by the flame of our love, aren’t I?

 

LEAH

I’m freezing.

 

CARRIE

I’m trying!

 

LEAH

Just go!

 

CARRIE

Okay, I’ve got it!

 

Calming breath

 

CARRIE

[solemnly] I have loved you.

 

She dips LEAH backwards into the water.

 

CARRIE

I love you.

 

She brings LEAH back up out of the water.

 

CARRIE

I will love you.

 

LEAH [sputtering]

I think I got water up my nose.

 

CARRIE

Can we get you out of there now?

 

LEAH [pointing]

There’s a towel over there.

 

CARRIE finds it, wraps it around LEAH’s shoulders, and guides her out of the tank.

 

CARRIE

You’re going to freeze to death.

 

LEAH [shivering]

I’m fine.

 

CARRIE

You’re crazy.

 

LEAH

No, I’m not, just a little –-

 

CARRIE

Just a little intense. I know, I know.

 

LEAH

Make me warm.

 

CARRIE

Come here.

 

CARRIE brings LEAH close. They sit on the floor, leaning against the baptistery.

 

CARRIE puts her arms around LEAH to warm her.

 

CARRIE

Is that better?

 

LEAH

Yes.

 

CARRIE

I can’t believe you actually got in that thing.

 

LEAH

I know you think I’m silly. Or too much or whatever.

 

CARRIE

No I don’t.

 

LEAH

But at least you won’t forget me.

 

CARRIE

Stop talking like we’re breaking up.

 

LEAH

I’m not naïve.

 

CARRIE

Didn’t you hear what I said when I dipped you?

 

LEAH

Baptized.

 

CARRIE

Whatever. Didn’t you hear what I said? “I have loved you, I love you, I will love you.”

 

LEAH

How?

 

CARRIE

How will I love you? Like this . . .

 

She leans in for a kiss.

 

LEAH

I meant going forward.

 

CARRIE

Am I not being forward enough?

 

LEAH

I mean like in the future. When you’re away and I’m at Weston. How will you love me then?

 

CARRIE

We’ll talk. And text. And you’ll come visit.

 

LEAH

That’s nothing. You’re describing nothing.

 

CARRIE

It’s not nothing! It’s . . . a promise.

 

LEAH

A promise.

 

CARRIE

That what we started can be continued.

 

LEAH

Continued with someone else.

 

CARRIE

Leah . . .

 

LEAH [deciding to brush it all aside]

I know. You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m screwing up the ritual. The truth is, it doesn’t even matter. The future.

 

CARRIE

Well, that doesn’t sound like you.

 

LEAH

That’s what was wrong with your baptism, actually. The words you said.

 

CARRIE

Okay, but let’s not forget I didn’t have all day to prepare like you when you were marching up and down those stairs a million times with your bucket.

 

LEAH

I mean, I get it: “I have loved you, I love you, I will love you.” Past, present, and future, world without end, amen. Very clever.

 

CARRIE

Thank you.

 

LEAH

Clever but wrong. We don’t have a past – we met two and a half months ago. And we don’t have a future either –

 

CARRIE

I thought we weren’t going to talk about the future.

 

LEAH

I’m not. I’m just saying that the past and the future aren’t what we have. What we have is this summer. Now. This one perfect summer.

 

CARRIE

That’s a lot, isn’t it?

 

LEAH

No. Not really. But it’s what we have.

 

CARRIE

What about you and your baptism? The words you said? All that “whither thou goest, I shall goest too?” That’s not accurate either, is it?

 

LEAH

You mean because you’re moving on and I’m staying behind? Thanks for rubbing it in.

 

CARRIE

I didn’t mean to –-

 

LEAH

I guess you’re right, but I meant it symbolically. Like wherever we go –-

 

CARRIE

 

LEAH

Wherever we go, this summer will go with us. At least for me. But you’re right that the vow focuses too much on the future. I should have stayed in the present. I should have . . .

 

She trails off.

 

CARRIE

It was beautiful, Leah. You are beautiful. This whole thing —

 

LEAH

Thanks. You don’t have to. It’s just. It’s sad.

 

They sit there in sad silence for a while.

 

CARRIE is the first to break the spell.

 

CARRIE [trying to sound hearty]

Well, are you going to dunk me now or what?

 

LEAH

Dunk you? But I thought –

 

CARRIE

Listen, I came here for a baptism and I’m not leaving without one.

 

LEAH

But you don’t have your swimsuit.

 

CARRIE

To hell with it.

 

CARRIE gets in the tank.

 

CARRIE

Baptize me.

 

LEAH

Really?

 

CARRIE

Either baptize me or watch me freeze to death.

 

LEAH nods, gets in the tank with CARRIE.

 

LEAH

We have to do this right.

 

They get in baptizing position, this time with LEAH positioned so that she can dip CARRIE backwards into the water.

 

They look at one another.

 

LEAH

I summer you.

 

CARRIE smiles.

 

CARRIE

I summer you, too.

 

LEAH dips CARRIE back.

 

Blackout

 

End

19 May, 2019

Zac Thompson

Zac Thompson is a playwright and travel writer living in New York.

19 May, 2019

At Rodin’s House

Bodies tangled like tonsils, two stones claiming space

Deep in our throats. My eyes met yours across vacant pews

In memory of unsacred chapels, those looks locked into arms race

of clenched toddler fists. And your grin unscrupled statues

 

The museum sign warned us not to touch. The ways

You feigned misunderstanding the language to ruse

The rules, to glide your palm over frozen stone thighs, to choose

Which parts of speech applied. I was your girl, your dazed

 

Petal footprint, your sworn-over silence. I was your rock, keeping tight

Secrets in French. I was not the museum guard but a guardian (still)

Of loose appetite. Saying Rilke lived here, wrote of light and dazzling white

Sculputres. Our bodies skewered towards hostel sex, minds angled to fill

 

Faithless hands, corset eyes. I needed someone to catch, someone to indict

You for turning me over. Sculpting desire into mountain you could not, quite.

 

19 May, 2019

Alina Stefanescu

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama. Find her poems and prose in recent issues of Juked, DIAGRAM, New 65 South, Mantis, VOLT, Cloudbank, New Orleans Review Online, and others. She serves as poetry editor of Pidgeonholes and president of the Alabama State Poetry Society. Her first fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner

19 May, 2019

Bourbon

The universe began as a grain so dense

its burden was precisely the blossom

of existence. Bourbon begins as at least 51%

corn. The mash is gathered, ground, & slurried

to sourness, consumed by yeast & funneled

into copper pots that rely on nothing but fire

to yield clear liquor then calmed by years

in barrels of new burnt oak. No one

has sinned so fully to escape forgiveness

when treated by heat, time, & circumstance.

I knew that everything worthwhile started

as something lesser when dad didn’t defend

his decision to leave. What is polished

to fullness is done so through acts of love.

19 May, 2019

Sam Wilder

Sam Wilder was raised in Boone, NC, and Marietta, OH, the product of two staunch regions of Appalachia, and he bears that heritage with honor. He went back to Boone for undergrad, and earned his BS in Journalism before moving to Washington, DC, to earn his MFA in Fiction from American University. He currently lives and writes in Chicago, IL.

19 May, 2019

The Sadness Scale, As Measured by Stars and Whales

It’s easy enough to find, sadness, for there are so many stories of it disseminated on social media we might all stay quivering in our small rooms for as much time as we have left. In only the last week, besides the politics and polemics, the pipe bombs and opioid epidemic, I’ve learned that we live on a world where sunlight causes cancer, and a large number of Australian koalas have an STD. I’ve read that several times in our long and polluted history we’ve managed to catch water on fire, and everyone you see today is someone who just hasn’t died yet.

I know there are enough nuclear weapons in our arsenals to keep the earth burning for a thousand years, long after all the time capsules we’ve buried to speak to our future selves should have been opened, and there’s a thought, how often we record ourselves, through pages or pictures, for posterity, afraid as we are of endings.

The nearest any other planet ever gets to Earth is around 160 million miles, and no one knows how big the universe really is, nor how it began or where it ends. No one knows if the voices we spoke back when we were crawling out of caves are still rebounding into space, still hoping someone hears us.

Most laugh tracks were recorded in the 50s, which means you’re hearing dead people laugh when you watch a sitcom to ease the tension of your life or political leanings. That star you saw last night is likely dead too, and out of all the sweeping of the universe we’ve never found a sign we’re not alone: not a signal or song from any planet, and despite the vastness of space it’s a little depressing to think how alone we are as we careen through the void.

One day your mother put you down and never picked you up again, and your children will never again be as young as they are right now. The smell of fresh cut grass is the grass trying to heal itself after you’ve cut it, and that smell after a rain is the way the world really smells, which makes me wonder why it can’t always be like that, why we have to wait and wait for what we really want and afterward wish it were still that way.

There’s a whale in the Pacific Ocean that sings at such a high frequency no other whales can hear it. Scientists have been monitoring it for over twenty years, and for all that time it’s been alone, still hoping someone is listening. Speaking of singing, every year on the anniversary of its arrival the Mars Rover sings Happy Birthday to itself, millions of miles from anyone, and if that doesn’t send some wind sweeping across the ocean of your insides, I don’t know how to reach you.

It seems every day there’s a new loneliness loose in the world. Last week I read about a turtle whose shell had been fractured so the zoo made a wheelchair out of Legos, and watching it crawl around I cried like a child, that here was something so beautiful it hurt, like my grandmother in the days before she died saying she didn’t like the color of the curtains in her hospital room.

There’s also the unbearable sadness of school shootings, the systemic violence and oppression, the men who grease the wheels of government with their greed, but even without the wars and the worry and all the horrors we hear every day, we carry too much weight with us. Our thin skins can’t even keep out the weather, much less the changes in our atmospheres. I try to remember the last time I picked up my grown daughters and I might as well be searching the vastness of space.

Still, the search is worth it. Out there, past the bright unbroken stars of what we remember, is what we do not know. And somewhere in the asteroid belts of our lives lie the fragments we are forever trying to piece together, to understand what it means to walk around on this good earth.

There’s the warmth of your mother’s hand on your forehead, the coolness of the other side of the pillow. The fresh spill of snow that means no school today, the brightness of the world when we get just a minute to look at it. The tickle of carbonation on your upper lip from the Sprite right after a swim the year you turned eleven and learned about girls. Or boys. Or football or music or whatever you learned that year, still skipping across the hot summer cement, before acne and awkwardness set in.

And even that wasn’t so bad, remembering the way your date looked at Prom your junior year. Or the way your whole small town stood and cheered when your basketball team ran onto the court to the tune of whatever song was popular then or the way on summer nights you circled town like the stars spinning in the night sky or the way everyone told you to stay cool when they signed your yearbook.

At the end, I bet you’ll remember the sound of the garbage truck on the street in the morning with something like nostalgia. You’ll remember your first wife putting on her make-up, mirror still steamed from the shower, before all the growing apart began. You’ll see again your father, and I’ll remember the last time I held my daughter, the time I put her down and never picked her again, except to say, when she was overwhelmed by all the anger in the world, that I was still here, that whatever happens my voice will still be searching for her through space.

I’m trying to see stars the same as when I was a child, wondering not what’s out there for me, but just what’s out there. I’m trying not to imagine dead solar systems but that light still leaks from them long after they are gone. I want to smell the air after the rain and be thankful for that moment, no matter how long we have to wait for it. For every injustice in the world there is a spider crawling up a waterspout. For every anger, an echo. For every wrong, a right now.

You’ll never be as young as you are right now, which makes right now the best now. If our parents put us down and never picked us up again it’s because the weight of their worry grew too much, the same as we’ll be unable to carry our children to completion, the same as we’ll be unable to walk with them into the wherever.

But what beauty it will be to hear those long dead live again, not the pre-canned laughter of some stupid show but what waits for us in the wherever. I hope if we do end up burning the earth aliens will see the smoke from the fire and perhaps make different mistakes than ours. Or none. Or all of them, and learn, before they begin the burning, and when the light of our fire gets to them, they’ll see only a night sky, our planet perhaps a little brighter against the darkness.

And sometimes I think of that whale and realize he’s still singing, even if no one else is listening. It’s beautiful, that song, the way it moves through the water of our bodies, where we are all alone. And the Mars Rover, singing to itself as well—someone programmed that. Someone marked the milestones in its metric or electric or whatever it is the Rover runs on, years maybe, or lines drawn in the Martian soil to measure its days so far from home, so far from where it came into being. I don’t know what the song sounds like, but I know it is good. It is sad and slow and sweet, and it echoes all through the universe of our small hearts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19 May, 2019

Paul Crenshaw

Paul Crenshaw is the author of the essay collection This One Will Hurt You, published by The Ohio State University Press. Other work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Pushcart Prize, anthologies by W.W. Norton and Houghton Mifflin, Oxford American, Glimmer Train, Tin House, North American Review and Brevity, among others.

19 May, 2019

George Washington

The first President of the United States owned slaves

& although he did release them upon his death

while he was alive he would take their teeth

& attempted to graft them into his gums

undergoing bold & radical surgery

even by today’s standards

 

It is doubtful that anyone willingly

had their teeth pulled

not even for old George Washington

whose discomfort can be seen in photographs yellowed & cracked

like the wooden dentures making his face pucker in pain

as if sucking on a lemon or trying chewing tobacco

 

Just as the mouths of slaves puckered around tong

& pliers, trying not to scream while they suffered

egregious indignity and barbarism, to have teeth

harvested only to see them go to waste

19 May, 2019

Jason Arment

Jason Arment served in OIF as a Machine-Gunner in the USMC. He’s earned an MFA in CNF from VCFA. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, the 2017 Best American Essays, The New York Times, among other publications and on ESPN. His memoir, Musalaheen, stands in stark contrast with other narratives about Iraq, in both content and quality. Jason lives in Denver, where he coordinates the Denver Veterans Writing Workshop with Lighthouse. Much of his work can be found at jasonarment.com