In Which We View All Of The Flowers And Herbs

In the Garden

by MARK ARTURO

You were the painted face, the considered night, three black stallions on a march. I was the peeled-back rind of something discarded, repurposed as a hat. You had seven weeks to answer one simple phone call. You did not fail at the task, but it could not be said you completed it, either. A cage can have openings, more than one, invisible to the eye but whole in themselves. You were the winding clock, I was each movement of the hand, and that is what I miss.

Your sister Leslie had this tiny boat she used to go out on as a girl, long before the cancer. I still get Christmas cards from her. There is a diligence in certain people which feels like tracing a finger against that long, white wall. Those individuals break themselves against incontinence, instructing us that nothing is ever really unbearable. I want to imagine a better person than myself.

by isabelle tremblay

Leslie featured the gifted dress, paeans to songbirds so unexpected beaks shut in response, an animal smell, not unpleasant but still worrisome. You had the clean scent, the arched neck, the light sweat misting on an exchange. I had the bottle.

In our purpose, there is an accounting of deed and voice. You talked too much, on the phone, at night. You made me feel apoplectic with your nonsense worries. Not angry at you, or me, but the corruption of the world. Sweetness always reverses itself. That is why I never take it seriously when someone believes that I am cold.

You rolled the magic die, ending the game too early or not soon enough. I was the wizened epoch, managed as a tragedy and destined for repose. Leslie was the ancient crutch; her daughter is the swirling phantom. No more adjectives left now. Only people, and their nightengale eyes.

Here's what I can do: wrap the old engine, shiny and clean of grease, in a red plastic container to hide it from thieves. Glove the sky and hold tighter than you believed you could when you found something you wanted, or loved. The only firm grip is that of God, she said, but I did not believe her words: only acts.

Calm is an additive, something you put into it. From here, isometric, symmetrical.

by isabelle tremblay

Here's where we can go: Portugal, or further down on the penisula. To your mother's house. I'd honestly love to see her garden. Over to the campus, where you waited with coffee all those hours. Tibet and Mali, whistling over a new ocean. Stand outside the house, wondering if the human beings inside of it are nice, or if they turned. Ireland. Bermuda. The tall hill in that photograph of you.

Making visible the hours in the arbor. Holding a small object rather than a long, thin point. Stars in her throat, face against the ground. The sea of the formerly inconceivable. A key frame redrawn on paper.

This is the last attempt, until the next one. You were all the condensation. Leslie was the morning rush, her daughter the ancient tome. I made a few things with my hands just to show you they could still work. I won't touch anyone with them again until you say they do.

Mark Arturo is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in New York. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Painting by Isabelle Tremblay.

"Used to Love You" - Yuna ft. Jhene Aiko (mp3)

In Which There Is A Common Thread In All These Epilogues

Nearly Contagious

by MARK ARTURO

for B.

With distressing clarity, I recall the first time I saw her. Blonde hair was tied back unceremoniously, a glut of premeds shuffled back and forth to obstruct my view. A TA named Avad tapped on her bony shoulder and said, "I hope you're feeling better. I didn't think you were going to make it."

My sophomore year of college had dissipated all the excitement of the previous spring. My new residence was further from the center of campus, yet I felt no escape. My favorite freshman, Amil, was rooming with a goofy CS major named Sanja who was planning a startup that allowed you to watch other people using their computers; they called such invasions "veeping." Amil was also slowly dating every Jewish woman in the junior class.

As a consequence, I was left to my other friends, with whom I alternately felt a great kinship and, intermittently, disappointment. One was a lanky homosexual whose boyfriend was so glorious looking he could not be spoken to without laborious pauses. After awhile, it was obvious our interests had largely diverged and we had only Iris Murdoch in common.

My other roommate was the scion of a wealthy and influential family who unsurprisingly was about as self-aware as a horned toad. He was dating a girl from a local junior college who looked like a shaved weasel and laughed at all the correct times. Last year, I heard she became a gastroenterologist.

I would not say I felt alone; rather I simply felt apart. I only went to the dining hall at odd times: after lunch, or before the dinner rush, so that I could eat alone and read as I had done since I was a boy.

It was there I saw her doing the same, eating by herself. I have always been a complete expert at knowing exactly how to observe someone without them knowing. I was doing so, but she was onto me in mere more moments, and I felt exposed.

Information about any one undergraduate was not hard to come by. My friend Audrey spent most of her free time, in between extensive conferences on the ills of various disadvantaged people, collecting such information in the carrels of the library.

In that prosaic place there was always a disturbing tendency for people to share adderall and complain about the hours they spent in the place complaining about the hours they spent in the place. Extracting gossip from Audrey was never tedious, since her charisma was nearly contagious, her judgments were sharp, and her sexuality was so broadly appealing it could never be precisely honed in on, just appreciated from afar like a Vermeer.

Audrey's roommate was a prickly pear named Lauren who wore a thick winter coat even on the cusp of summer. The trouble with obtaining information from either of them was that it was just as likely to make it back to the source before you made use of it yourself.

Once I had tried the opposite tact, signaling a lack of lack interest in their wide knowledge, and that had turned out just as badly for me. I believe the woman I ended up offending now clerks for a justice in the court of appeals.

I devised a better, finer strategy. I swore Audrey to secrecy and pretended like I was going to cry. Probably the vow meant nothing, but it was better than giving her a license to deal.

My remote dining companion's name was Kay, and she was from Montana or Idaho, most probably the latter. Can you imagine? Audrey told me faux-breathlessly. Kay had been dating a guy expelled from school for hacking into the school's advisor program and switching some assignments around, for what reason Audrey did not know. He still lived on campus but they were very definitely no longer together. I tried to swallow this bitter pill and I knew Sanja would have all the information I required about such a person.

Braving the small room he and my friend Amil shared was ever a pain. It smelled of pot and semen, not actually a terrible smell, but never an expected one. The two of them were constantly on their personal computer, and it could never be said they did not practice what they preached. They exclusively listened to remixes of familiar electronic songs, and were willing to explain at any given moment why the guys in Justice were the finest musicians ever to live among mortals.

I heard the rest of the story from Kay herself. They had actually come to school together, against her parents' wishes. From what she hinted at, the attraction was mostly animal, and she subtly suggested she had never been with anyone else, although I never knew if that were truly the case.

Kay's roommate was the daughter of a fairly prominent New England politician, and the girl never went to class, preferring to smoke opium and watch reruns of Adventure Time. As it happened, she was a very talented artist and I judged her far less harshly than Kay did. I think she is married with two kids now.

Kay and this grizzly beacon of sexuality - even I had to admit he was sort of beautiful, in a wild way - had not broken up over this scandal. Instead he had been cheating on her with the daughter of a diplomat. Even though this did not really bother her for no reason I could fathom, apparently her boyfriend's guilt had corrupted what still existed between them. He works for the Obama administration now.

Still, I would not approach Kay at the square tables that held whatever counted as food in this institution. I rarely lingered at the library either, too fearful Audrey would ask me for developments in the case, since I could offer her none.

But the next semester we had a class together. The world was in a better mood; everyone carried a blanket around with them as if a picnic or bath was right around any corner. Irony was employed just as often, but without the jaded aplomb it was accompanied by that previous winter. Churls were absorbed by crowds and campus was taken over by an aromatic, pervasive mien reminiscent of Rome before the fall.

Before Kay had only been a vision of the season, like a clump of snow that might disappear on a wet afternoon. Now I saw she truly had no idea of herself or what she was, and I myself grew cold towards her at that realization, since I believe every thinking person should be possessed of the knowledge of how others view them.

First frost encourages carnivores and scavengers alike, any repulsion is sure to attract the finest of nature's creatures. We are all animals, but some of us have been educated out of our ignorance more precisely than others.

The professor, squat and Jewish like a thumb, saw through me in a very pleasant way, and we shared a common view the comedies are really tragedies, and vice versa. We both hated Falstaff without being able to explain why. It was a small seminar, and I recall the other students well. They took to the material the same way I did, and I cannot watch the ghastly ending of Twelfth Night without thinking of us all there.

A few weeks into the term, Kay began to ask me questions about class and the assignments. The comedies of Shakespeare were probably my best subject. My professor had a border collie named Margarine who sat peaceably in the back of our class. Sometimes I would walk her, since my professor had a bad knee and the happy dog was in her prime. Kay eventually came with me at his request, and I start with anger thinking of his matchmaking.

We spoke of her illness eventually, a yearlong struggle with lymphoma that she had not fully recovered from. She survived, she said, but she was not as she was before her illness, although I noticed nothing of this in all the time I knew her. She speculated at length whether that had been the reason the bearded boy had cheated on her, and shocked me by asking what I thought. My first reaction was one of sympathy or empathy. I have always confused the two, but I hardened myself against that, because no woman desires a therapist, and confusing pity with sexual attraction is a childish act.

Instead I said that I thought someone who cheated was likely to do so when the occasion offered it, and that malice or forethought rarely entered into the equation. At that she laughed.

It seemed like we both liked the idea of being friends, and I am far from ashamed to admit I needed one. I dismissed thoughts of possessing her, but only for a time, the way a pig does not know the hunger for finer meals when he consumes his slop.

Kay always called me on such lazy metaphors. She did not yet consider herself a writer, but she loathed cliche as if she were. Quickly I found out she was a bit more knowledgeable of her charms than I had thought. When she drank, she became an exaggerated version of her considered self, until one night she asked me, in a winning way, why I never touched her.

I suppose I blushed at that, but my skin rarely admits such imperfections on a surface level. There is no good way to answer that question - it was evident to everyone how much time we spent together, and just as clear to my friends that I wanted her. Every time I saw Audrey that spring she would get this mischievous look in her eyes and whimper, "Whyyyy not?"

So I told Kay there was no reason, but isn't it better to be friends? She pretended to agree for a moment, and then was on me. Have you ever held the earth, the soil? It is much the same.

I thought I knew sex, had comprehended its performative aspects. The difference between desire in general and desire for one such as Kay is the difference between the moon and the earth, and I have already told you she was the earth and not the sky. It is one thing to know that a single person, a particular animal is able to please another by putting mouth to cock, or thigh to face, or mingling among each other's clothes and smells. But that is a movement towards intimacy, not the thing itself. The performance aspect so sweetly evaporated, like the discarding of a layer that had always been there, invisible to the eye. What took over then I have never been able to name or recreate except in art.

I don't know what Kay is doing now. The border collie died a few years ago. My professor still teaches, half as many classes as he did. Audrey is the chief of a hospital's geriatric unit, her roommate works for Goldman Sachs. Recovered from his death, Jesus walked the earth. The common thread in all of these epilogues is that we never fully know what will become of those we loved.

Mark Arturo is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in Brooklyn. He last wrote in these pages about the other life besides this one. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

Paintings by Theora Hamblett.

"I Put A Spell On You" - Alice Smith (mp3)

"Sinnerman" - Gregory Porter (mp3)

In Which She Still Comes Across As Very Respectful

by Matty Byloos

Wendy Sapphire

by MARK ARTURO

He was born in a godawful place. The avenues were resplendent with manure and offal, mercurios dotted the carapaces of old horses and mules. Scavengers like them haunted the old reservoir.

A town fair held every year overflowed with vitriol. He hawked coins shaded pink, flipping them in the air for effect. A momentary distraction is all it took.

Wendy's father was a drunk, but the kind of happy one who never vomited on anyone else; only fell asleep in his own. Wendy cashed out the large bets and doubled as a horse whisperer. She featured auburn hair and a noticeable gap between two teeth. She was very respectful of him, but that was nothing he wanted very much.

The other girl had a stage name of Sapphire. She did not like being called this casually at all. Her hair was red and blonde in parts, and he was disappointed to learn her parents dyed it that shade. If it had been natural it would have been a miracle.

The old reservoir was pumping out all sorts of calcified deposits, clumps of hair and grease and magnesium. It smelled strong, but not overly terrible, sort of the way the scent of gasoline can be pleasant in a nose.

by Matty Byloos
Wendy said, "One of the ponies caught a very degrading disease." Touching her fingers to a small horse comb, she asked if he wanted to see the pony's corpse. He declined and offered her orange sherbet. She put the creamy substance in the corner of her mouth and started tousling his hair. "You wash it too much."

Her body, warm to the touch, was far less enervating than he had imagined. He told Sapphire about the time he spent with Wendy. The other girl had no great interest, but offered that everything looked a lot better in the dark.

Sapphire loved cotton candy, and a boy shaped like a grouse named Lacob was always bringing her some. At times she nodded to Lacob, and every once in awhile she would mutter, "You're too kind."

He thought things would be awkward after their intimate act, but Wendy was a lot of fun. She knew all the latin cognumens of birds, and liked to rhyme them with proper names.

At the beginning of July one of the ponies ran Wendy down and her left leg was never the same. It definitely shivered when it rained, and she apologized a lot more: for what he wasn't sure.

When she wasn't practicing her new song, a jazz number that featured a not-insignificant amount of hip thrusting, Sapphire was feeding and grooming a large tortoise. The animal did not like him very much, but he stole birdseed for it anyway after Sapphire asked.

Wendy hated the turtle's guts. "It's a stupid beast," she would say whenever she saw it. "Wendy hates Genevieve because she reminds her too much of herself," Lacob explained. He found himself regarding the sharded boy with a newfound admiration after that. Lacob's tongue was very sweet, and it turned out he was only Sapphire's cousin.

Once he had asked Sapphire whether she was interested in sex. "You don't have the funds," she said. He asked whether she ever enjoyed it. "You have to know what you're good at," she said.

He agreed to take Genevieve on walks since Sapphire had lost interest in her pet. Sometimes Wendy went with him, shuffling along with a long metal cane that allowed her to move at a rate commensurate with a tortoise. At first he did not know who he felt worse for, but then he realized it was himself.

The last day of the fair featured the biggest race, which was called the Santa Maria. One of the ponies snapped and fled into the forest. He was sent after it because Wendy could not go and there was not much hope of recovering the animal in any case.

It was dark by the time he hit the old reservoir. The pony had gone to water and was sampling the verdant sludge, and soon, puking some of it back up. She had no interest in the oats that were offered her, but lay down near a dessicated maple and whimpered. He felt he could sense a low movement of the earth beneath his piddly legs, sort of like a insect swallowing.

After a few hours he gave the pony some of his water, brushed her and on impulse, ascended her back. As he broke into a small clearing he heard a clear, masculine voice. It said, "Come down from there." Without thinking about it too much, he hopped off the pony and bowed.

by Serban Savu

The man was tall and slim, almost a stick figure. He grabbed the pony's lead and whispered to it. The man asked if the pony belonged to him.

"Not really."

"She hasn't been cared for properly. She needs water."

He shrugged. "I don't suppose you know how to care for a tortoise."

"No," the man said. "Nasty creatures. Do you have one nearby?"

"Back at the fair."

"You're one of those travelling folks?" He nodded. "I should have known. It takes a lot to get a tan from this sun."

While he slept, the man roasted the pony's hind meat on a spit and packed the rest away in a large cooler. The man suggested he say the pony had drowned in the reservoir, since they would never look for the animal if they believed that was what happened. "Anything that drinks that sludge will die," the man said. "Did you know that?"

He shook his head.

Back at the fair, vendors packed up their goods. He told Wendy's father what had happened, in so many words, and Wendy cried.

He went looking for Sapphire. Her dressing room was empty. Behind a splintered armoire he found Genevieve munching on a pile of smashed tomatoes that had been thrown at her various times throughout the summer. Lacob showed up, kissed him softly on the forehead, put the tortoise in a small wheelbarrow, and trundled after his mother Josephine.

He packed up everything he had stolen in the last few months and headed towards the reservoir. It now twinkled an unabashed aubergine. He took out a glass he had lifted and dipped it in the water. The sludge positively glowed. He felt silly for looking around as he raised the liquid-filled glass. There was no one.

He filled the rest of the glasses, covered them with wax paper and headed north, careful not to step in the water.

Mark Arturo is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in New York. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about St. Patrick's Cathedral.

by Serban Savu

"Wyoming" - Lady and West (mp3)

"Everything" - Lady and West (mp3)