Witnessing, by Jennifer McGaha

On a lazy, last-gasp-of-summer sort of day, I linger on the patio of a south Asheville bakery. Leaning back in my chair, I marvel at the warmth, at the music drifting over from a nearby brewery, at my good fortune for having arrived here on what would have been, COVID notwithstanding, a perfectly normal Friday. Four days before, I had stood before my class for the first time since the pandemic began. Above their masks, my students were a cluster of startled eyes. In the long months we had been apart, we had forgotten one another, and the language with which I had learned to teach and they had learned to student no longer served us. An attendance policy? A late paper penalty? Ludicrous. COVID had shaped and shifted our narrative in ways we were just beginning to understand. 

Let’s crack the windows, I had said. So COVID can fly out the window. 

Of course, this was not how COVID worked, but this was creative writing, not biology. Still, even with our fondness for words, we had no adequate way to articulate our sorrows, not the collective horrors nor the smaller, everyday disappointments. Certainly, we couldn’t refer to them in the simple past tense. Nothing was simply over. Past perfect tense was not helpful, either: Before the pandemic, we had… What good did it do to remember what we did before? The future tense, too, was problematic: This spring I will … Who knew what would happen in the coming months? We could only speak definitively in the present tense, and first-person plural pronouns seemed most fitting: We are unsure how to proceed. And so we talked about our writing processes, about our fears and doubts and the struggle to begin.   

“I’m afraid that what I write won’t be good enough,” one student said.

In the old days, I might have offered reassurances, but as it were (subjunctive!), I offered only validation.  

“Oh, it won’t,” I said. “It absolutely won’t.”  

What sort of teacher was I to discourage a blossoming young writer? What sort of person? Still, there it was, an inescapable truth: Our words will never be enough. On the one hand, it was liberating. If we accepted the inevitability of failure, we were free to flounder around on the page, finding beauty where we could. On the other hand, beauty was so fleeting. Nonetheless, we tried to capture snippets where we could. We were reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, and at the beginning of each class we went around the room naming our delight for the day: A phone call from an old friend. A premium parking spot. A perfect cup of coffee. And now, for me, a new delight: Swedish creme.  

It’s like cheesecake, the man at the counter had told me when I ordered. But the delicacy the server places in front of me is as much like cheesecake as rain is like snow, as a flute is like a drum, which is to say that they vibrate differently in the body. Topped with strawberry purée, the thick custard I slurp from a spoon is creamy, yes, smooth, yes, comforting and familiar and exotic all at once—a moment unto itself. The creme glides down my throat, a heron landing on water, a sensation, a mood, and it is no longer late August but a random, uneventful spring day when nothing in particular happens but everything is about to happen, when daffodils dot the hillsides and the morning air still settles in your hips and mid-day sun hums with the promise of leisurely strolls and lakeside lounging, of outdoor concerts and sparkling rosé and charcuterie boards balanced on wobbly, makeshift tables. 

It is not the end of summer, the end of anything. The season of breathtaking, of basking, of rolling over on your back and exposing your pale, naked belly to the sun, has nearly arrived, the anticipation of which, in the way of things, is almost always sweeter than the thing itself— sweeter, even, than the memory of last summer, which even now surpasses my wildest expectations. I am not a reliable witness to anything, save the impotent beauty of words. 

---

Jennifer is the author of two memoirs, Flat Broke with Two Goats (Sourcebooks, 2018) and Bushwhacking (forthcoming from Trinity University Press in 2023). Her work has also appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Brevity, CHEAP POP, The Huffington Post, Lumina, PANK, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Passengers, HerStry, Baltimore Fishbowl, and many other publications. A native of Appalachia, Jennifer lives in a wooded North Carolina hollow with her husband, two cats, six unruly dogs, ten relatively tame dairy goats, and an ever-changing number of crested hens. She currently teaches at UNC-Asheville.

Synthetic Love, by Lisa Fay Coutley

I. In England 

In case the car starts on fire 
while he’s hang gliding, Everard
pins a note to his love’s chest 
so no one dies trying to save her.
After their morning fuck, she lies
with her sleeping face on 
while he winds the clock
in his dead mum’s room.  

II. In Michigan

Synthetic love activist Davecat
just wants to rub his wife’s feet
in early morning light, but organic
women are not constant. Shi-chan is 
the anchor that keeps him stable
in their room above his parents’   
garage. When he crates his wife 
to be shipped for repair, he kisses 
both hands & cries he’ll miss her. 

III. In Virginia  

Gordon has three guns & two girls / one of which fires as fast as you can / pull the
trigger.  A woman in stilettos / & a thong is meat someone else has / chewed & spit back
on God’s plate. / He wants his dolls buried / in the same box as him / so they can become
one dust.  

IV. In California 

Slade the repairman’s running out of vaginas
& teeth again. Sex is almost like a violent act, he 
says, but these dolls can take a lot of physical abuse. 

V. In Texas 

Michael is grateful for his harem 
of eight top-heavy dolls & the Swedes 
who are willing to sell real pubic hair 
for when his ladies wear out. In this high 
form of masturbation he does not want 
to be seen as a pervert, but when he 
wakes at 3am with a raging hard-on
he goes to the garage, grabs his doll
of choice, & goes at it. You can’t do that 
with a woman, he notes. She can say no. 

VI. At Abyss Creations, USA 

Receptionist Debbie says men are fifty
& balding & never going to get women 
who look like this, who totally love them.  
Doll Creator Matt feels best about men 
who’ve made that emotional connection—
I’ve changed their lives for the better...like insoles
in their shoes. These men come home from work
excited to see their doll, & the food bill’s way cheaper. 

*Language in italics is dialogue taken from the documentary Guys and Dolls. 

---

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of tether (Black Lawrence, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, and In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition. She is also the editor of the forthcoming anthology, In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence, 2023). She’s the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, fellowships and scholarships to the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. Recent prose and poetry appears in Brevity, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, NELLE, Terrain, and Waxwing. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry and Creative Nonfiction in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

Steel Anniversary, by Noa Covo

The girl’s mother takes her to sharpen her fingers into knives on her seventeenth birthday. Outside the salon, a flock of teenagers congregate, examining each others’ hands in the sun. The girl and her mother watch them through the waiting room’s glass front as an attendant brings them a catalogue. The teenagers press together for selfies. One of them drops her phone, clawing at the empty air in surprise as it hits the concrete. Three knives extend from her left palm. Her pinkie and thumb are still whole, ripe for picking. She’s one of those girls who are too cheap to do the whole procedure at once, who start with the novelty of flipping catcallers off with a sharp metal finger. 

The attendant deposits the catalogue in the girl’s lap. There are dozens of knives embossed in the catalogue, bejeweled, engraved, ready to be installed at a moment’s notice in one of the operation rooms down the hall. A flatscreen TV in the corner displays the process of the sharpening, the stripping of the flesh, sharpening of the bone, the metal encasing, the final touches. A gaggle of little girls watch, mouths agape. They’re too young to be here, eleven, maybe twelve. The girl’s mother didn’t undergo the procedure until after college, but then again, times are changing. An attendant escorts the girls out. 

The girl’s mother thinks of all the things that have to be done at home. The dishes. The laundry. There is a single dandelion, triumphant in the rose beds. She noticed it on their way out of the house, didn’t have time to bend over and tear it out by its roots. She keeps an eye on the young girls as they go. It’s a habit, in case they wind up on missing posters or milk cartons. 

The girl hasn’t chosen yet. The girl’s mother settles down on a leather couch and considers the week’s shopping. Outside, a group of boys play basketball, their soft hands dribbling away. The teenagers taking photos at the salon door size them up, their hands twitching, unsure which fingers they wish to use. 

A woman emerges from behind one of the closed doors lining the hallway of the salon, her hands triumphantly aloft. Ten knives. She is complete. She nods as she passes by, flexing her new fingers. It’s a good feeling, the girl’s mother thinks. The girl’s father gave her her knives as a gift, one for each anniversary.

The girl eyes the part of the catalogue dedicated to single fingers. They’re trashy, her mother thinks, for function more than style, but then again, her daughter has never been a big fan of body embellishments. She doesn’t even have pierced ears. The girl chooses a carbon steel design with an intricate inlay of flowers. 

The girl’s mother approves. It reminds her of the flowers the girl’s father gave her on their eleventh anniversary, but she doesn’t tell her that. An attendant snatches the girl away. Her mother waits on the leather couch. Outside, in the abandoned lot, the boys play basketball. A flock of magpies pick at the grass. She used to recite the magpie rhyme every time she saw one. She even taught it to the girl when she was a child, though she doubts she remembers. They don’t talk about back then, and the girl doesn’t bring it up. The mother assumes she’s forgotten the magpie rhyme along with the rest of what happened, when the three of them still lived together in the same house. At least, she hopes the girl has forgotten.

Next door there is a shop for impenetrable things. Phone screens, book casings. Perhaps she’ll pop over and buy her daughter another present. Seventeen, after all. Nearly grown, nearly gone. The girl’s mother will sleep easier knowing she’s got something to protect her when she’s on campus. Something a bit more trustworthy than splayed keys or pepper spray.

The girl’s mother texts her stylist. Tomorrow is her spa day. The girl’s mother cleans her knives every day, and deep cleans them once a week. Her knives aren’t of a good quality, like the modern ones, and they have retained stubborn stains. She’s been thinking of doing hers up, melting down the metal, adding a shiny veneer. She would miss these knives, though. Sometimes she misses things for no reason. Like those eleventh-anniversary flowers. She should have pressed them. 

The girl’s mother thinks of a fairy tale she read once, about a maiden who didn’t have hands. Her husband, the king, made her hands of silver, completed her. She made the mistake of telling that story to the girl’s father, once. It had been after their tenth anniversary, before their eleventh. The girl had been six years old, then. The girl’s father wouldn’t shut up about it. He called himself a king, tried to build a throne out of empty beer cans, lorded over the vomit-stained bathroom. That year was a bitter one. The girl’s mother distracts herself from her memories by examining the salon’s decor. 

On the walls there are posters, declaring what you can do with your knife-fingers. You can cook and clean, of course. You can play piano. You can put soft shells on them, if you are in the mood to caress. You can raise a girl while temping at an office. You can learn to run a household on crumbs as your husband drinks the money away, you can cry into your balled fists night after night, you can cut your husband’s face in half on the eleventh anniversary of your marriage and let the blood puddle on the floor. The last part isn’t on a poster, the girl’s mother muses, but it is implied.  

When the girl emerges, she’s beaming. She chose her pointer finger, and the metal gleams in the light. The girl’s mother takes a picture to send to everyone. They walk shoulder to shoulder to the car. A poster of a missing girl flutters underfoot, her soft hands reaching out to the camera; the caption reads have you seen me?

On the way to the car, they see a woman with her baby boy. He toddles around, his pudgy stomach peeking from under his shirt. The woman has two obsidian thumbs, capped away for childcare. The girl’s mother thinks of how she gave birth to her, how she held her in an empty delivery room, how she proclaimed her perfect from her teeny-tiny fingers to her teeny-tiny toes, how, when it was just the two of them, she kissed each and every finger, slowly, resolutely, as if already saying goodbye. 

---

Noa Covo's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Passages North, Waxwing, and Jellyfish Review. Her chapbook, Common Ancestors, was published by Thirty West Publishing House. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.