Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 18 Read online

  On the third floor I held out my cupped hands and the birds flew about me taking bits of explosive in their beaks and brushing me with their wings to say thank you before flying off to place their contributions at the weak places in the walls. On the second floor I approached the dining hall timidly, but the valkyries bounded over, shaking the house with every step for they are large as life and twice as natural. They snatched me up on their shoulders and carried me around cheering “Huzzah, huzzah” and throwing me up in the air again and again until finally I must go, really, I must go now, and they took the last of my explosive and each put some into her tankard and then I really did leave.

  I took the train back to the hotel, I was back in bed by five-thirty and no living soul the wiser, except, perhaps, the house.

  And the rest of the day has been a flurry of kisses and bridesmaids and white tulle and now, here I am, walking down the aisle, looking at the moist smiles of all my friends and family, thinking of the house in Brooklyn, now only minutes away from freedom, until I see Adam waiting for me, and I feel such a surge of joy and contentment that I think of nothing else.

  The justice of the peace first asks Adam to take his vows. We keep catching each other's eyes and trying not to giggle. And then I take my vows, and as I say “I will,” the air is filled with a terrible cracking, a joyful shuddering and we all look up, and the top of the hall has vanished so we are looking up into blue sky.

  First come the birds, pinwheeling in reckless gyres, the birds of flight holding up the penguins and ostriches and even a dodo, saying farewell before they rush away in a sudden burst of squawking and crapping. And then the valkyries ride through the air on their motorcycles, waving swords and screaming full-throated battle cries. They blow me brief, loving kisses before revving their motors and howling off into the distant blue.

  And finally, finally, the air is filled with falling mannequin parts, plummeting down soft as snow. I do. They are falling all around us. I do. They become true snow as they land, piling up in haphazard drifts and sliding across the floor of the hall. I do. They're already up to my waist I do and I see Adam leaning over I do and he begins to pat the snow together and make a fort or perhaps a house like my great-grandmother used to build on the Lower East Side when she was growing up I do and I understand. He is not angry, and this will be our life together. I do. He will build up and I will knock down. He will put up buildings and I will blow them apart. He will set the wood and I will strike the match. He will make the fort and I will kick it over. He will make a tower of blocks and I will send a plastic truck smashing, flying, rolling, crashing into it. I do. And one day we will change, and he will tear himself to pieces and I will collect his limbs, his torso, his head, his penis, and put him back together again. And we will live in a Ferris wheel, going up and down forever, together and together and together I do I do.

  The snow melts, turns to warm saltwater I do which rises just over my head I do I do. Treading water, I turn and see Adam, whom the waves have carried some distance from me. He is bobbing along, looking somewhat confused. I do. I gather my skirts around me and I swim towards him, the warm water carrying me along smoothly. I do. The water is rising, and I am swimming.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Music I've Been Listening to Lately

  Eric Gallant

  Destroyer's Rubies is an ecstatic rock record drunk on language. From the off-putting opening lyric ("Dueling cyclones jackknife / They got eyes for your wife and the blood that lives in her heart") it's clear that something strange is afoot. As if to confirm that suspicion, an abrupt tempo shift immediately follows the above lyric, launching us into the song proper. And we're off. Buckle up.

  Main Destroyer, Dan Bejar, regularly veers his songs into the realm of the indecipherable ("Gut yourself! / It's a one-man job on the altar of the Beast / To make it legal, Wilhelm's bride goes bulimic at the feast"), but he generally maintains a toehold in reality. Vivid images and scenes flash like shiny lures: “Don't worry about her / She's been known to appreciate the elegance of an empty room / Look, I made you this broom."

  Repeated listens reveal an extensive network of connections, with birds of prey, priests, hopeless artists, mythological figures all popping up repeatedly. Then there's all the nods to other bands and songs, from “Losing My Religion” to Led Zeppelin. Poetry types will undoubtedly grin when they hear “100th of a wet, black bough” pop up in a refrain. Who knew Ezra Pound rocked so hard? No surprise that Destroyer has inspired their own wiki for following all the cross-references.

  A curious aspect of a collection of songs so overstuffed with words is the regular use of Oktoberfesty la-la-la choruses. Sometimes it feels like a breather between the onslaught of the verses. It also keeps the songs catchy. These aren't folk songs, more invested in the power of the words than in a good tune. No, these are hook-laden rockers with killer melodies that get stuck in your head. You might not think this possible after the first listen, but keep following those lures and you eventually find yourself happily belly-up in Destroyer's rowboat.

  * * * *

  Brazilian Tropicalia is getting a lot of love these days, with a snazzy new compilation CD out on the Soul Jazz label, an exhibit at the Barbican in London, and a reunion tour from Os Mutantes. Don't be put off if you hear a group of cooler-than-thou hipsters talking about it: it's a bandwagon too joyous to resist. And with music retailers like dustygroove.com selling once hard-to-find albums at normal prices (as opposed to the $30+ on amazon), there's no reason not to dip your toes into some of the great late ‘60s stuff by Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Jorge Ben, and others. After all, Veloso and Gil were arrested and exiled for recording this music. The least we can do is listen.

  The basic sound of Tropicalia is the collision of Brazilian bossa nova with rock. Throw some wacky Beatlesesque studio experimentation into the mix and something truly special comes into focus. It's smart psychedelic rock that, unlike much of the psychedelia recorded at the time, doesn't sound dated.

  My personal favorite at the moment is a 1972 release by Gilberto Gil called Expresso 2222. It was Gil's first studio album following his return from exile in London, and it is possibly the most genuinely happy music ever recorded. Gil's vocals are astounding throughout, singing one moment in a rapid-fire, rhythmic style way down in his low register, before effortlessly exploding into a graceful, soaring falsetto. The song “O Sonho Acabou” actually made me laugh out loud, not an easy thing to accomplish across a language barrier. The excitement in the music is simply irresistible.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Those Writers

  Matthew Lee Bain is twenty-nine autumns old. His avocations include the study of psychology, German (language and culture), and philology. In his free time, he enjoys strength training, viewing avant-garde cinema, and rolling around on the floor while screaming in agony. His vocations include writing fiction and poetry; he is a freelance daydreamer of dark fantasies.

  Jenny Benjamin-Smith has had poems published in the New York Quarterly, Poetry Motel, Wisconsin Review, Iowa Woman, Columbia, and Crab Orchard Review. She has poems forthcoming in the South Carolina Review, Chelsea, The Baltimore Review, Hubbub, and Carquinez Poetry Review. She teaches literature to high school students in Milwaukee, Wisc.

  Peter Bebergal is the co-author, with Scott Korb, of The Faith Between Us (forthcoming, Bloomsbury), and is an editor at Zeek.net. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

  Gwenda Bond wears an N95 mask while posting about books and writing at her blog, Shaken & Stirred (gwendabond.typepad.com).

  Fred Coppersmith finds it difficult to write about himself in the third person. He writes stories, and sometimes things that aren't stories—and sometimes, late at night, things that are caught in some weird place in between. As luck would have it, he lives in New York.

  Becca De La Rosa lives in Ireland and is studying English at university. She refuses to apologise for this. Her fiction has appeared most recently at Strange Ho
rizons.

  Tsultrim Dorjee lives in Southern New Hampshire where he is a student at Vermont College. He received his Tibetan name from Lama Pema Wangdak, and works as a crisis line operator for a peer support center. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Awakenings Review, Puckerbrush Review, Sacred Journey and Red Owl.

  Michael Emmons was born and raised in Missoula, MT, where he now lives. In 2004 he graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in English. This is his first published story.

  Erik Gallant lives in Northampton, MA.

  Sunshine Ison works in Mexico, is writing a book on beauty pageants, and next year will be working in Vietnam.

  A 2003 Clarion graduate, Will McIntosh has sold stories to Interzone, Futurismic, Abyss & Apex, Albedo One, and Challenging Destiny. By day, he's a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University.

  Sarah Micklem published her first novel, Firethorn, in 2004. She is currently working on the sequel, Wildfire (Scribner., 2007). She lives in New York and Indiana, where she teaches at Notre Dame University. “The Fabricant of Marvels” is part of a series of folk tales from the nonexistent island, Abigomas.

  Famous Novelist is working on his umpteenth Great American Sleep Device. His “story” here was written in 1972 and is published in an attempt to pull in more readers and to pay for his coffee this week.

  Stephanie Parent is a recent graduate of Franklin & Marshall College, where she majored in English and Women's Studies. She is working as a piano teacher in Baltimore and on a young adult novel. She hopes to attend graduate school in England soon.

  Scot Peacock is a senior editor in the academic reference field. His works of weird romance, published in such journals as The Suburbanite and Pluto's Orchard, are few and far between. A novel about a ghost and his mother will remain unfinished for years.

  Veronica Schanoes is a writer and scholar whose work has previously appeared on Endicott Studio, and in Jabberwocky, Trunk Stories, and LCRW. Her poem “The Room” was recently published by Papaveria Press. She does not like cats.

  Ma-tsu and John Schoffstall were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.

  "What are they?” asked Ma-tsu.

  "They're wild geese,” said John.

  "Where are they going?” demanded Ma-tsu.

  John replied, “They've already flown away."

  Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed John by the nose and twisted it so that John cried out in pain. “How,” he shouted, “could they ever have flown away?"

  "Well,” said John, “a bird's wing is arched, so that air takes longer to pass over the top than the bottom. Through the Bernoulli principle, this creates lift, enabling flight. Muscular activity provides forward thrust. Birds’ bodies also have a number of specializations for flight, including hollow bones that decrease their weight relative to other vertebrates, and a streamlined shape. Birds in flight will rapidly out-distance individuals on the ground, eventually disappearing from their view behind trees or other landscape features. Thus, the birds were able to fly away."

  "You're never going to achieve enlightenment, are you?” Ma-tsu asked.

  "I just think birds are cool,” John replied. “I'm hungry. C'mon, let's get lunch."

  David J. Schwartz lives with a guitar named June in Chicago. Cyberdavidjschwartz lives at snurri.blogspot.com, but is moody. His stories and poems live in The Third Alternative, Say ... Talebones, and Strange Horizons, previous issues of this publication, and others. Han kan norsk, men ikke saa bra.

  Angela Slatter is a Masters in Creative Writing student at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. Her flash fiction has appeared on Antipodean SF and she ghost-writes finance articles to help pay the bills. She can often be found pushing papers around a desk at the Creative Writing & Cultural Studies Discipline at QUT, putting her admin-nerd skills to good use.

  William Smith makes spanky new books and sells dusty old ones. Find him at trunkstories.com and hangfirebooks.com.

  E. Catherine Tobler climbed mountains in her youth, in a bright yellow coat, with shoes that were red, yellow, and blue, and made her feel like a clown. She endured. Writing, she decided, is not that much different. In addition to other markets, her short fiction has appeared in SciFiction, Strange New Worlds, Mota 3, and Would That It Were.

  Jeannette Westwood is seventeen years old and has attended the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. She likes paper-mache cats. This is her first publication.

  Emily Wilson finds stories inspire her and enable her to create more than she could on her own—she loves to collaborate. She believes that with all our powers combined we can fight for justice much more easily, and wear really fun outfits—perhaps matching, in fluorescent colors.

  * * *

  Visit www.lcrw.net for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

  Table of Contents

  Play

  Errant Souls

  This Is the Train the Queen Rides On

  Two Poems

  Diabolique d'amour

  In Ophelia's Garden

  Followed

  Dear Aunt Gwenda:

  Threads

  A Half-Lizard Boy, A Reptile Man, and An Unjaded, Shiny Something

  A Static of Names

  Son of a Bitch

  The Fabricant of Marvels

  The Juniper Tree

  The Film Column

  Two Notes

  Crimson-lady at the Auction, Buying

  Zines & Bookesque Objects

  At Uncle Ogden's House

  A Message from the Welcomer

  Swimming

  Music I've Been Listening to Lately

  Those Writers

  [Back to Table of Contents]