Gavage
 
Todo el mundo conocía a la mujer gorda del cuarto piso. Pocos la habíamos visto, pero sabíamos que estaba allí.
 
Todos los inquilinos habíamos coincidido en el ascensor con algún repartidor, hundido bajo una torre de pizzas o bolsa tras bolsa de cerdo moo shu y arroz frito. Sabíamos que se dirigía a la suite 409.
 
Y observamos a su marido venir de su coche con múltiples paquetes extra grandes de Lucky Charms, Oreos y Pepsi.
 
Yo llevaba una década en el edificio y sólo la había visto un puñado de veces. Roberta casi nunca iba a ninguna parte, pero, una o dos veces al año, la veía. Eran ocasiones penosas de presenciar. El andador que necesitaba, apenas podía sostener su cuerpo. Arrastraba los pies y se agitaba, avanzando con dificultad por el pasillo, con peligro real de caerse. Henry era un hombre de tipo delgado, enjuto y pequeño. Ella, una mujer gigante, con rollos sobre rollos de grasa y carnes colgantes. Era trágico y grotesco, algo que hubiese sido mejor ocultar a puerta cerrada.
 
Naturalmente, todos nosotros residentes vivíamos ocupados con nuestros respectivos trabajos, los desplazamientos diarios y nuestras familias, y rara vez pensábamos en Roberta y Henry. Había cotilleos de lavandería entre los inquilinos, comentarios inteligentes sobre los cubos de reciclaje rebosantes con restos de comida para llevar. Había simpatías ocultas por Henry.
 
Yo mismo había sentido lástima por Henry durante muchos años, imaginando el estigma que cargaba valientemente sobre sus hombros mientras soportaba la glotonería de su mujer. Pero un día me encontré con él en la tienda y algo en su forma de dirigirse a la joven dependienta me hizo cambiar de opinión. La reprendió por algo intrascendente, como si fuera la ayudante, y su tono controlador me sorprendió mucho. Después de aquello, hice todo lo posible por mantenerme alejada de Henry.
 
Fue un fin de semana que Roberta se cayó en el aparcamiento, intentando llegar a una furgoneta taxi. No había ni rastro de Henry, sólo ella y el andador que se tambaleaba peligrosamente bajo sus carnosas patas. Todo el mundo la observaba: hacía sol y la gente paseaba a sus perros o daba patadas a la pelota en el césped con los niños, y la lavandería -como todos los sábados- estaba repleta. Nos quedamos mirando, encandilados por el accidente que podía ocurrir en cualquier momento, a medida que ella se acercaba a la furgoneta. Nadie, ni siquiera los fornidos obreros de la construcción, hubiesen podido ayudarla a levantarse.
 
Y entonces ocurrió el accidente. Roberta se cayó.
 
Fue terrible de ver, una película atroz, a cámara lenta. El peso de ella, empujando hacia adelante, con sólo unos pocos metros más hasta el vehículo. Se resbaló, el andador se apartó de ella, el tobillo se le dobló, se oyó un terrible crujido y luego un gemido profundo y gutural, como el de un globo que suelta todo el aire o una vida. Y cayó, como una montaña, rodando y rodando sobre el asfalto como una avalancha.
 
Todos nos quedamos paralizados durante unos instantes, y luego nos abalanzamos sobre ella a la vez. El taxista se bajó. Todos miramos a la mujer junto a la que vivíamos y con la que nunca habíamos hablado. Los ojos saltones detrás de su cara hinchada nos miraban sin pestañear. Tenía la boca grasienta, y la abría y cerraba sin emitir ruido alguno. Eso me entristeció como nunca antes.
 
Fueron necesarios otros momentos de confusión y conmoción para darnos cuenta de que teníamos que llamar a alguien. Una señora se inclinó y preguntó si Henry podía salir a ayudarla. El cuerpo de morsa de Roberta se agitó un poco y emitió un sonido parecido a un eructo. El mecánico con su Beagle acabó marcando el 911 en su móvil. La Sra. Xi iba a buscar a Henry, pero optó por buscar agua para Roberta, de modo que me tocó subir a mí. Oola, la señora grande y colorida de África occidental, vivía en la cuarta planta, así que también me acompañó. En el ascensor, mientras se ajustaba una de sus bufandas, me dijo algo que me heló la sangre. «Esa chica es víctima del leblouh, como yo lo fui».
 
No tenía ni idea de a qué se refería, pero cuando llamamos a la puerta de Henry y no encontramos a nadie, y volvimos al aparcamiento con las manos vacías, me enteré de cómo las jóvenes de Nigeria y Mauritania son encadenadas durante meses y alimentadas a la fuerza con cerros de cereales y grasa animal por sus madres, con el fin de engordarlas para el matrimonio.
 
Me explicó que se trataba de una costumbre antigua, que aún se practica en regiones rurales remotas, y la comparó con la forma en que los gansos son alimentados a la fuerza en las fábricas para la supuesta delicadeza francesa del foie-gras. Gavage.
 
Roberta probablemente nació y creció aquí, en Scarborough. Pero justo cuando empecé a protestar por la declaración de Oola, recordé haber hojeado un artículo sensacionalista sobre una chica cuyo novio quería que comiera cantidades obscenas de comida. La pareja lo llamaba «alimentación erótica». El novio decía que era un asunto de humillación y sumisión.  Quería que engordara tanto que no pudiera moverse y tuviera que depender completamente de él.  Me disgustó la historia y pasé la página. Nunca volví a pensar en ello, hasta ahora.

Los paramédicos estaban trabajando con Roberta cuando volvimos y los inquilinos estaban todos reunidos a un lado del solar. Oola me preguntó cómo la meterían en la ambulancia, y le dije que probablemente estaban entrenados para subirla con algún tipo de polea. Pero de todas formas resultó ser demasiado tarde. No quería quedarme ahí afuera mirando, -eso no estaba bien-, y tampoco podía hacer algo más para ayudar, de modo que entré.
 
Henry no apareció hasta más tarde. El Sr. Xi lo llevó a la morgue. Resultó que Roberta había tenido un derrame cerebral masivo.
 
No pude quitarme la sensación de que ella había estado intentando escapar.

Lorette C. Luzajic, translated by Rose Mary Boehm


**

Gavage

Everyone knew about the fat woman on the fourth floor. Few of us had ever seen her, but we knew she was there. 

Every tenant had been in the elevator with a delivery guy, toppling under a tower of pizzas or bag after bag of moo shu pork and fried rice. We knew he was headed to suite 409.

And we saw her husband coming from his car with multiple supersize packs of Lucky Charms and Oreos and Pepsi.

I’d been in the building for a decade and had only laid eyes on her a handful of times. Roberta seldom went anywhere, but once or twice a year there was a sighting. They were painful occasions to witness. The walker she needed could barely support her frame. She shuffled and heaved, inching laboriously along the corridor, in real danger of toppling over. Henry was the skinny sort, wiry and small. She was a giantess, with rolls upon rolls, and hanging fat lobules. It was tragic and grotesque, something best hidden behind closed doors.

Of course, most of the residents were busy with their manufacturing or custodial jobs, their commutes and their families, and we didn’t think about Roberta and Henry often. There was laundromat gossip among tenants, smart remarks about the recycling bins overflowing with take-out refuse. There were muffled sympathies for Henry. 

I had myself felt quite sorry for Henry for many years, imagining the stigma he bravely shouldered while enduring his wife’s gluttony. But one day I ran into him in the convenience store, and something about the demanding way he spoke to the young clerk changed my mind. He berated her for something inconsequential like she was the help, and his controlling tone took me by surprise. I did my best after that to steer clear of Henry.

It was on a weekend that Roberta fell in the parking lot, trying to get to a van taxi. There was no sign of Henry, just her and the walker that teetered and veered dangerously under her meaty paws. Everyone saw her then: it was sunny and folks were walking their dogs or kicking a ball around the grass with the kids, and the laundromat was always busy on Saturdays. We watched, compelled by the accident that could so easily happen, as she heaved herself toward the van.  No one, not even the beefy construction workers, would be able to help her up. 

And then the accident happened. Roberta fell.

It was terrible to watch, an excruciating, slow-motion film. The heft of her, pushing forward, with just a few more metres to the vehicle. She slipped, and the walker moved away from her, and her ankle turned, and there was a terrible cracking sound, and then there was a deep, guttural wail, like all the air being let out of balloon, or a life. And she went down, the mountain of her, rolling and rolling down onto the tarmac like an avalanche.

We all froze for several moments, and then everyone rushed over all at once. The cab driver got out. We all looked down at the woman we lived beside and never spoke to. The pinhole eyes behind her swollen face stared out at us unblinking. Her mouth was greasy as it opened and closed soundlessly, and something about that made me sadder than I’d ever been.

It took another few moments of confusion and commotion to figure out that we would need to call someone. One lady leaned over and asked if Henry could come out to help her. Roberta’s walrus-body shook some then, and a sound like a belch rang from her. The mechanic with his beagle eventually tapped 911 into his mobile. Mrs. Xi was on her way to find Henry, but decided to fetch some water for Roberta instead, so I was appointed to go up. Oola, the big and colourful lady from West Africa lived on the fourth floor, so she came along, too. In the elevator, adjusting her many scarves, she told me something that chilled me to the core. “That girl is a victim of leblouh, like I was,” she said. 

I had no idea what she meant, but by the time we knocked on Henry’s door and found no one there, and returned to the parking lot empty-handed, I learned how young girls from Nigeria and Mauritania were chained down for months and force-fed mountains of grains and animal fat by their mothers, fattening them up for marriage. 

She explained that it was an old custom, still practiced in remote rural regions, and compared it to the way geese are force-fed in factories for the French supposed-delicacy of foie-gras. Gavage.

Roberta was probably born and raised right here in Scarborough. But just as I started to protest Oola’s declaration, I recalled skimming a tabloid article about a girl whose boyfriend wanted her to eat obscene amounts of food. The couple called it “erotic feeding.” The boyfriend said it was a humiliation and submission thing.  He wanted her to get so fat she couldn’t move and had to depend on him completely.  I was disgusted with the story and turned the page. I never thought about it again, until now.

The paramedics were working with Roberta when we returned and the tenants were all gathered to one side of the lot. Oola asked me how they would get her into the ambulance, and I said they were probably trained to hoist a pulley of some kind. But it turned out to be too late anyways. I couldn’t stay outside to gawk then, it just wasn’t right, and there was nothing more I could do to help, so I went inside. 

Henry didn’t turn up until later. Mr. Xi drove him to the morgue.

It turned out Roberta had had a massive stroke.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been trying to get away.
 
Lorette C. Luzajic
 
Editor's Notes: This story responds to Fat Betty in a Chair, by Ducian Kay (USA) contemporary.

This story first appeared (in English only)  in The Galway Review.

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, once for the Best of Net. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. A new collection, Life Stuff, has been scheduled by Kelsay Books for February 2024. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

Lorette C. Luzajic is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She reads, writes, edits, publishes, and teaches ekphrasis. Two of her flash fictions have appeared in Best Small Fictions anthologies. Her columns on food and art in Good Food Revolution have been nominated seven times for Best American Food Writing. Lorette is an award-winning mixed media artist with collectors in forty countries so far.

The Brioche Eaters
 
You
appear 
so
detached.
 
Do you even feel your daughter lean
-or are you already past feeling?
 
The Dauphin fingers curtains
of an empty cradle.
Does he feel the chill
of the empty throne 
he will never fill?
 
An infant flails
against your breast--
the décolleté that charmed all France.
Your lovely throat lacks a necklace?
No matter.
Madame la Guillotine will provide.
 
Lebrun has tried so hard
to paint you wise and kind,
Enlightenment mother, à la Rousseau.
 
But you all look so bored.
 
Ensconced in velvet,
feathers and fur,
far from Parisian riots,
starving peasants, 
and rotting crops.
 
“’Let them eat cake!’”
you proclaimed.  
 
              So they blew out the candles
              and took off your heads.

​Cynthia Storrs

​Cynthia Storrs teaches, writes, and paints in Nashville, TN.  Educated in the US and UK, she has served on the board of Poetry West (CO), Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Committee, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and now on the Board of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in three anthologies, Critique, Tennessee, and on-line. She has also published scholarly articles on bilingualism, biculturalism, and acculturation. Cynthia loves art history, theatre, landscape painting, and chocolate.  

​Destruction Revisited 
 
Four years of targeted destruction
followed by a rebuilding of society
and hope for what the future holds
we travel the road through the ruins
repairing the infrastructure of our humanity
slowly returning to a semblance of truth
re-establishing honesty as a virtue
love as a way of interacting
equality as a goal
building with stronger foundations
as after a hurricane
helping each other down the road
until we see the light at the end of the tunnel
as we emerge from the darkness
we see that the light is not hope
but merely the fire of the next battle
nothing has really changed
hope becomes despair
until we can muster our strength
knowing we will rebuild again and again 
and again

Mike Goodwin

Mike Goodwin is a retired high school mathematics teacher who  recently became interested in writing poetry as a result of attending workshops on ekphrastic writing at the local art museum. 

My Tongue Carbon Dates Your Skin: a Modern Triple Sonnet                       
 
I want to crawl beneath your flesh.  
But we are cloaked in opaque scarves, 
our hair flattened beneath white silk shrouds.
I want to venerate you, genuflect before you. 
No hair shirt groveling on shards of glass, no flagellation 
with cat o’ nine tails.  Are you forgery beneath this cloth?  
You taste of sepia and ivory lilies in spring. If I remove 
your scarf, will your face, your whole naked body, 
be imprinted on the cloth?  You are a Shroud of Turin 
without the crown of thorns, without the bloody brawl 
gripping your face. Your face placid beneath this mask.  
Still and soundless as a luna moth clinging to the porch light.  
Persimmon and pecan dust on your wings. We are both 
accordion-creased and windblown.  
 
A current vibrates between our mouths.  
Our foreheads rouged with sumac and sweetgum.                   
See how the wind has ruffled our hair.  
We are sightless lovers. My mouth rambunctious, 
restless. I am hungry for the braille that is you.  
You could be anyone.  The man hauling a bag of lemons 
over his left shoulder at the fish market.  The women 
whose stocking is shod through with runs. 
Repairs with daubs of clear acrylic nail polish, 
cauterizing the spread of the rip. 
The woman slumped at the laundromat, 
lighting stubs of cigarettes abandoned on the floor.                   
Her knees coated with dryer lint and shredded tissues.                  
How can we so misunderstand?  You are unknowable. 
 
I want to dismantle my tie clip, release 
the knot of burlap choke-holding my throat.  
I want to devour you.  Bitter herb of you.   
Lamb shank of you.    I paint my mouth 
with saltwater, search for your lips. 
Between cups of chardonnay and horseradish, 
you are charoset on my tongue: 
paste of walnuts and apples, pear and wine. 
You pardon all my iniquities with the come-hither tilt 
of your head.  The way you lean in to receive my tongue. 
But this is a hot August night and we are rootless trees, 
floating in the mangrove.  Our shrouds spiral salt tears
into the waterlogged mud.  Nests balance on our branches, 
still wet with the saliva of blue herons and roseate spoonbills.    

Marianne Peel

Marianne Peel loves poetry that literally makes her stop breathing.  She worked for thirty-two years as an English teacher, learning life lessons from her students as well as from Albee's Zoo Story, Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, and Shaffer's Equus. She loves to play Native American Flute and ukulele in the woods. She’s taught teachers in China for three summers, studied in Nepal and Turkey on Fulbright Scholarships, and has danced in the rain forests of Bali, Indonesia. Her debut book of poetry is No Distance Between Us through Shadelandhouse Modern Press.  She has a second full-length collection, Singing is Praying Twice, published in 2024, from the same publisher. 

The Fallen Angel

A remorse filled face,
Anger and tears,
Shielded by his ivory arm.
The first touch of earth,
Converting the pure holy wings dark.
Sounds of trumpets,
As the servants of God,
Celebrating their triumph.
Flying lavishly, 
Blowing Samael’s copper hair,
Leaving behind the newly throned Devil.

Devin Bulinda

Devin Bulinda is a student in Michigan, originally from the Philippines, having immigrated to America while  young. "I have always been passionate about writing and creating a ekphrastic poem was an assignment in my honours English class." 

​
The Book of Jane Foole


I. The Way of the Foole

It is not enough to spring and twist and tumble. A good foole
is a living foole who must be adorned with the finest
of shoes, made grand with bows and bells and ribbons
and pointed toes to separate me from everyday fooles,
political fooles, and fooles in love. I burn through them
like they are made of wax and I am rewarded
with more, with better, with pride. In court, I relax
on a velvet cushion, point observations like arrows, 
wit the unsentimental weapon of the artificial foole.
The foole from the next kingdom over does not
have so many shoes, nor so grand, my mistress tells me;
he is not as merry as Jane. And it is true,
the Queen's Foole wants for nothing except her freedom.

II. Jane Foole Goes to Church

I go because after my hair is shorn, the priest refuses
me. On those few days before, I stand with the others, close
my eyes to listen to the deep-belled sounds
of wolfish Rome, moved by the music
of the words if not the meaning—although
I learned the meanings of all the words, unlike
the many who rely on faith that the words are sacred
and true. (But the truth is not always sacred
and the sacred is not always true.) I keep
this knowledge in my hair, it rises from my thoughts
like steam, plumps from roots to ends and this is why
it must be cut, then shaven to a cap of shadows,
because no foole needs too much knowledge
beyond the sleight of hand that good magic requires.
Twice-times a year, I go to remind myself that mystery
is my work, as well.

III. Foole in Love

My heart speeds at his entrance, but my face,
painted white, is a mask. Then—is it love or gratitude,
to meet his eyes and somehow find recognition
there? No, Jane the Foole will not allow such folly.
I look down, look away, look anywhere else,
but too late—in a flash, my humanity is witnessed
by the flint-eyed ladies of the court. Do you love him,
Jane, they laugh despite the fact that I have turned
to silent stone. I memorize each mocking feminine face,
fashion an arrow for each jagged feminine heart,
wait for the time when I can bring them down with words.
Later, in the garden, he presents me with a knot
of flowers, and my blood tingles through me
in a way that feels like drowning and flying and I reach
for them before looking up into his eyes and seeing
his laughter there, and here am I, a foole of note,
having forgotten that to be apart is what I do. 

IV. No Foole Like an Old Foole

I leave the leaping to the young. It takes two
young fooles to take the place of Jane's dancing feet.
But none can match my quick tongue, even now,
when I am slow to rise from my place at her feet
and my dry bones crack like autumn twigs. These
days, she wants always to know my opinion: Jane,
is this dress becoming? Jane, should I forgive
him? Jane, who should I trust? Jane, is my child
in heaven? I soothe her with magic, amuse her
with words, but I know better than to have opinions
about royalty. The foole from one kingdom over lost
his livelihood, and then his life, because he could not bend.

V. Freed Foole

These days I spend in contemplation
of the bone-deep pain of time passing, and the short,
straight road ahead. No one asks a thing of me,
because no one notices me, and this invisibility
is no longer a magic trick. Mornings, I wake before
dawn, walk through the blue light of the coming
day to greet the dependable sea. The Queen's former foole
is treated with a kind of consideration, left to her own
with a girl to serve her needs and whims. Free too late
to seek a different fortune, live a different life, no caravan
of actors moving up and down the coast now, no slipping
into characters to conjure not just laughter but real
tears, now my dream is only for the warmth
of the hearth, the full stomach, the comfort of soft, reclining
days and still, tranquil nights of untroubled slumber.

VI. Death of the Foole

There was a time I held the courts
of Europe in my hands, helpless
with laughter, half in love with my
words, my jests, my stories, which they would repeat
endlessly to one and each other, “Were you there
when Jane said this? Did you see Jane do that?” I was loved
in my way, treasured for my art, talked about
in my time. I remember. I wasted nothing
then but time. Now time is all I will not waste. 
I no longer ponder the lives that might
have been for me; what good is regret to the dying?
No priest for Jane, though my mistress wishes it.
Jane on her toes, Jane at her best, Jane the Foole
does not believe in what comes next.
Bury me wherever you wish. Behind
my closed eyes, I fly with the birds.

Sanda Moore Coleman

Sanda Moore Coleman lives in New Hampshire with her husband and daughter. She has been an editor, a writer, and a teacher. Her poems have appeared in Inkwell, Tar River Poetry, and Midwestern Gothic, among others.

georgia and alfred
 
300 might be enough 
she said looking up 
just one more he said
she looked skeptical
but it doesn't show 
in the photos
 
that's love for you
a hellofalot of forbearance
why nude she asked once
but she knew the answer
it was why people were
always taking their clothes
in White Sands the rangers
chase them but they always
come back
 
flesh against sand
against sky
in front of clouds
her soft skin 
contrasting with
her pubic hair
against the roughness 
of bark texture
is everything
 
he never took his clothes
off for her outside
she didn't mind she 
preferred to paint flowers
that looked like vulvas
bones that looked like
pelvises
she was so small and
thin they always say
artists keep more of the 
child the brightness of 
her paintings 
the dense darks of his photo-
graphs they were each 
others black and white

Melanie DuBose

The poet was particularly moved by the photo Torso, by Alfred Steiglitz (USA) 1918:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/92198
​
Melanie DuBose lives in Los Angeles (Highland Park) next to camphor trees filled with parrots.Her poetry and prose has been published in many print journal and online sites including The Los Angeles Press, Nu Verse News, Kelp/the Wave among others. She recently finished writing her first novel, People Who Love You.

Don't miss this Zoom on the enigmatic American surrealist painter Gertrude Abercrombie. Abercrombie is a fascinating figure from Chicago, who was active in the jazz scene, hosting parties and jams for musicians in her home. And she painted curious, spare, symbol-rich artworks that revealed the interior landscape.

We will be doing some creative writing exercises with her work and discussing her art and life.

​Join us!

​“Paint it Black” 
 
“I see a red door
And I want it painted black
No colours anymore
I want them to turn black”
– The Rolling Stones 1966
 
“A colour in art is not a colour.
Colourlessness in art is not
colourlessmess.” 
– Ad Reinhardt, Lugano Review, 1966
 
Didn’t Mick and Keith realize “Paint it Black” had 
been done? That they’d come to the party several years too 
late? Or were they each having conversations 
 
with themselves, separately in their own heads?
Like the conversation I’m having now, this morning,
the same conversation one might have 
 
standing in front of your black canvas, 
apparently monochromatic, but actually composed 
with variation in line and intensity, 
 
a two-way stream of nothingness populating 
the distracted mind, hearing a voice contained in the canvas, 
not uttered at the canvas, but somehow being 
 
repeated in my head, 
as if imbedded there by its very darkness
insinuating itself inside the brain
 
like a stylus following the grooves of synapses, 
those electrified connectors, 
in a mass of gray and silent matter. 
 
A conversation best represented in a colour 
that is all colours, comprehensive and inclusive, 
closed but strangely open, 
 
a kind of claustrophobic reckoning 
with infinity, and comforting, 
like nature’s darkness before it is interrupted 
 
perhaps at 7:21 a.m. on a January morning 
by a quickening of light barely perceptible
that reveals a flock of common grackles 
 
foraging on a grassy portion of yard, 
a suddenly visible oasis among the 
snowy, frozen landscape.
 
Lou Ventura
 
Lou Ventura lives in Olean, NY.  His poetry and prose have appeared in several publications including The Worcester Review, Sledgehammer, and Sein und Werden. His poetry collection, Bones So Close to Telling, is published by Foothill Publishing.