PDFs of Bechaela Walker’s ‘The Blank, Stupid Face of a Tourist’ & Mira Mattar’s ‘Soft Close’ now up
‘The Blank, Stupid Face of a Tourist’
It happened in the city of Kraków: snow. I watched it fall through a column of yellow streetlight in the square. I tried to follow a single flake to the ground, but each time my eyes were drawn to the top of the column of light again. I thought of them all. It’s so difficult to feel any sort of connection, I said, and the snow stopped my echo. I often considered stepping in front of cars only to be injured a little. What is the point in describing my own debasement? I wanted all my friends in the same place: a city, a street, a commune. My ideas were ridiculous; I only got excited when I was tearing things apart. Scrolling through my contacts, trying to imagine his face. We couldn’t find the kind of music, the kind of group, the kind of friendship. We couldn’t find the kind of laughter, the kind of passion, the kind of relationships. We couldn’t find the kind of rent, the kind of love, the kind of system. Festivals had been arranged for our benefit. We had none of our own and were cynical about the ones we participated in. I tried to follow a single flake, but my eyes would not obey. How quiet everything had become, and for what.
‘Soft Close’
Our shoes are in an adorable pile by the back door. We run like children outside for fun and just in case. Doing the dishes her mother watches serenely, gladder by the plate they’d come here. Each item happily washed adds value. To us her face is mellow as our TV moms and we as sassy and rich as their daughters. Our hair as sleek and crimpable, raised above this lamentable frizz. Truly though it is relief not serenity that washes across her mother’s features. This home’s cruelty is softer than the last home’s cruelty. (It is the higher distribution of certainty that makes the weather here tolerable.) A slur in the end does not penetrate a body. And it is nice, after all, to be able to plan your own death. Information is a body wrapped in a flag and raised above the heaving crowd. Do our parents weep more regularly than our friends’ parents weep? Or is it always with the same abjection that infants view this? We do not enjoy missing Saturday morning TV only in order to better understand the cadences of their sorrows.