https://bulbregion.com The Bulb Region Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:41:06 +0000 https://bulbregion.com en https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Ben-Starr-1 Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:44:36 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Ben-Starr-1 <img width="1098" height="310" width_o="1098" height_o="310" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" data-mid="253399256" border="0" data-scale="21" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" /> Three Poems <img width="2000" height="2000" width_o="2000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d695cc272d91148961dd88562f6c40941586514b2387df189437f14a18cc30a3/vintage-balloon-illustration.png" data-mid="253399348" border="0" data-scale="85" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d695cc272d91148961dd88562f6c40941586514b2387df189437f14a18cc30a3/vintage-balloon-illustration.png" />— Ben Starr you’ll be happy to know i started taking telekinesis classes at the local community college Now I can move things with nothing more than a strongly held belief. Small things. A sparrow fibula. The blades on a baseball-sized patch of Kentucky bluegrass. Children’s scribbles taped to the fridge. It takes a lot of concentration to clench your brain like a fist. To focus your gaze on a single point until you start to smell smoke. My professor thinks I show real promise. She said I have chutzpah. She said I have what it takes. She never once said that I “refuse to take anything seriously.” Just yesterday I was this close to mentally unscrewing the cap on the Montblanc 149 you didn't know you left under the couch. That takes dedication. That takes commitment. You probably don’t believe me but pretty soon I’ll be able to cook your chicken piccata with extra capers from the other side of the room. Wave my fingers to make the hands on our clock scream backward, barely strain as I squeeze out all that wasted time like a wet rag. ❊ the princess and the pea When the guards finally removed the green sphere from just below her twenty-first mattress, it was the size of a child’s skull. See, the Princess said, I’m not crazy. This was impossible of course. Something in the expensive royal air, something emanating inside all that scorched hay and densely woven linen, had caused this pea to expand to its present proportion. But the Princess didn’t care, she was off the hook, free as a Carolina Wren. She carried the girthy pea through town, showed it off to lord and serf alike. But it kept growing. Soon it became too big for her arms. For her pigskin handbag. For the King’s most sturdy chariot, the one with pole shafts molded out of fresh-spun gold. It outgrew her powder room. Outgrew the Queen’s most ornate topiary. Eventually it expanded to such size that it was pulled into orbit, a second moon broadcasting a pale green pall over the kingdom. The townspeople prayed to it every night. They bayed like the arctic wolf. Pleasured themselves as they lapped up its supplementary luminescence with their sandpaper tongues. ❊ sisterhood Each night my sister turns into a pineapple. Tingling arm hairs crystalize into fine barbs. Her blonde bob a small clump of pointed fronds, violent to the touch. Her muscles, her fat, her large intestine, all transform into butter yellow slabs of sweet scented meat. She asks me to change too. Begs me every evening. The clasped hands, the quivering lip, the whole megillah. I say no chance. All that cutting-slicing-digging-skinning just to get close to something worthwhile. Still, once the sky has closed its magical eye, I lie stiff as rosewood, boring holes into our leaky ceiling with my paralyzed glare, wondering if she’s right. What if it’s great? What if it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for? What if it changes everything? <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253399273" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> <img width="2654" height="2654" width_o="2654" height_o="2654" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/43c7fa6d84a733a382ac450b73cf6e0c255603f73bf982f111e4646134588843/Ben-Starr.png" data-mid="253399272" border="0" data-scale="38" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/43c7fa6d84a733a382ac450b73cf6e0c255603f73bf982f111e4646134588843/Ben-Starr.png" />Ben Starr studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Bending Genres, Bruiser, Dishsoap Quarterly, HAD, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, Scaffold, and other journals. Website | Twitter https://bulbregion.com/Castor-s-Year-by-C-Hightower Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:57:06 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Castor-s-Year-by-C-Hightower <img width="589" height="202" width_o="589" height_o="202" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" data-mid="253559943" border="0" data-scale="16" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/589/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" /> Castor’s Year<img width="1000" height="696" width_o="1000" height_o="696" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/480baf165797c1b752a00da8907086f27a131e11c497d63b442c756451196af6/1000_F_296423009_OFShyxV6Mz6jnyUVEePkwWBzZ4hXuAh9.png" data-mid="253811458" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/480baf165797c1b752a00da8907086f27a131e11c497d63b442c756451196af6/1000_F_296423009_OFShyxV6Mz6jnyUVEePkwWBzZ4hXuAh9.png" />— C. Hightower I SAT BY THE STONE LIONS THAT&nbsp; preside over the entrance of the staircase. It was scorching hot. I reached the New South Wales station at three, and my train wasn't leaving for another hour. I wandered around for a while, looking in shop windows. I noticed a nice writing pen and bought it, along with a nice suede notebook and a sunhat. I thought it might save me on windy days in the country’s open air. Gum trees and red dirt. Before and after exams I suffer from anxiety and sleeplessness, and I hoped some time away would calm my nerves. I boarded the train quickly. The burning light of day threw its blue brilliance on the glass and the brass handles. I chose a compartment to the rear, and an old woman and a girl took seats alongside me. They were carrying a basket of flowers and candies. They placed the flowers in the rack above and began talking in low voices, and I suspected it was about me, because the woman was watching me from the corner of her eye. She leaned toward me and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “If I’m not mistaken, you are Commander Pryor’s son?” Unsure of myself and her intentions, I cleared my throat. She didn’t wait for my answer. “Your father and I were as close as a brother and sister in school. I don’t suppose you remember when your Mother, Father, and I would meet at Kestrel at holidays. You were only a boy then.” Memories came to me of Kestrel: the huge boulders in the courtyards, the hammock, the wicker chairs and tables of the verandahs, and its cool natural rock pool. We had spent a lot of time there when I was a child, but I didn't remember the woman. I had been initiated there in the forbidden ascent of the mountain some years ago. I nodded. “I was newlywed when your Mother came with me to the coast. We swam and played tennis.” She seemed lost in her own fond memories. Then, as if to change the subject, she waved to my books. “You like to read? Are you a student?” “Yes, Mathematics,” I answered without enthusiasm. “Going far?” “Merrigan,” I said. “Merrigan?” She looked at me, surprised. “You don’t know the legend? Jack Merrigan. The mounted police shot him near the town a century ago.” What an odd woman she was. “Can I ask where you’re staying?” “Yanga Station.” “But isn’t that rented out? Who's there now?” “Jago Treloar,” I answered impatiently. The lady whispered the name several times and finally asked, “Jago Treloar, the son or the Father?” “Jago the younger, of course,” I answered, looking out the window. “Yanga is a sad place. The homestead’s abandoned, and the brumbies still come down to the dam at night. Is Jago Treloar a classmate of yours?” “I don’t know him.” “You don’t know him! They say the boy’s strange. They say he blinded and beat a horse because it wouldn’t obey him. They say he will not sell ponies to anyone, that his methods are cruel. I was told He tied a horse to a post, beat it, all for disobeying. But who can say? I’m sure that’s not true. People like to invent stories. I shouldn’t have said anything.” I nodded. Stupid women usually are jealous of independent people, and they do love exaggerated stories. I doubted any of it were true. Told me more about her than it ever could have about Jago. Could it be that he did have sense, was maybe even more sensible than his Father and his Family? My mind ran wild with little more than the name Jago. The imagination can craft an entire personality from only a few images, a few snatches of information. When the boy's Father had described him to me, I felt some recognition and affection. Even the Woman's claims didn’t put me off him. I admit I respected him—his solitude, his unwavering nature, his courage—alone on that abandoned station, living there by choice, and revealing to no one why he had. He was a mystery to me… What would he be like? What would the Station be like? I was visiting under the pretense of needing rest and to study. He didn’t want me there but he was gracious and respected my desire to be alone enough to allow me to come at his Father's insistence. Although I had no illusions he would welcome me or that I would have anything to report back to his Father. How would he receive me? I wasn't exactly comforted by the fact that he was allowing my visit. I had been warned again and again that Jago was a manipulative person and that his motivations and behavior rarely made sense. If he wanted to make it hard for me he could and most likely, would. It would be a long summer of utter remote solitude if he refused to speak to me, but I felt prepared for that, he was underestimating me if he thought a summer in the country would break me. I would be perfectly contented to sit and read for two months. Nothing he could do would rattle me, and nothing he could neglect to do would affect me. I was going to call his bluff. Mr. Treloar gave me the instructions when I agreed to come. “My son Jago is very solitary, even as a child he was happiest on his own,” he said. “You will hear that he is a genius. It is true, and it is the least of it. He has lived at Yanga Station since last year, and I think he’s fairly well made his point, whatever that is. It is a derelict run. We have not stocked it in ten years. I have written to him and he has answered every letter but none of those letters answer anything. I told him I would cut him off unless he left the station, and I have. He still refuses to return home or say why he is living there.” He turned the glass a quarter turn on the desk. “I sent him to Edinburgh at sixteen,” he said. “He was going to be a doctor. How does a child like that come to live the way he is?” He looked at the window. “He is not studying out there. He is not farming and he is certainly not keeping cattle. He lives with bats and snakes and illiterate selectors.” I said perhaps he wanted quiet. His father remarked he had better. “Be careful of him,” he said. At the door he said, “Don't tell him I sent you.” Then, after a moment, “He’ll know anyway…” His father’s letter said a student was coming, and the reply came by return post in that careful hand. “Let him come. I would be glad of the company.”A man who resists you is still treating you as a variable. There is only one reason to be calm about being watched. It is that you are certain there is nothing to see that you have not chosen to show. I imagined him broad shouldered and polite, maybe smelling of alcohol, a daring profile I had invented entirely. He had given up so much and seemingly for nothing. The lights on the train were low as we stopped. In the windowpane I saw a reflection, a young man on the platform. He had sent a station hand to collect me, and the hand was there, holding the horses at the far end, but Jago had come himself and stood apart from him. He was thin. He didn’t wave or step forward. I stared and he stared back, and nothing, not a comet or a lightning bolt behind him, could have justified how long it went on. I told myself it was travel fatigue and kept staring long after it was decent. He broke it first. He turned and climbed into the closed coach without a word, and I collected my bag and followed. Inside, I laid my forehead against the cool glass and had some relief at last, because the dark hid his face. He was nothing like I had pictured him. We rode in silence toward Yanga Station for several hours. He offered no conversation, but he was not rude. We passed nothing but flat red land, saltbush, the odd stand of mulga, and windmills. He stayed awake the whole way. I did not. When I woke it was the darkest part of the night and the house stood in front of us, larger than I had expected, built of hewn white stone Local, he said. “We don’t use lanterns or candles by night,” he said. “No one can know that this house is occupied.” The door was unlocked. We walked in total darkness from the parlor to a long room with a few collapsed floorboards. “This is the dining room,” he said. He pulled the shutters closed, lit a kerosene lantern, and held it to his face. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place the resemblance. I racked my brain and came up empty handed. He showed me to my room, which had been built onto the side of the house and later closed in, so that it belonged to the house without quite being part of it. The ceiling was low and the room wide, and its windows had been added over the years from whatever glass could be found: a tall narrow pane beside a square one beside a small round porthole. I couldn't work out what it had first been for, but it suited me, and I told him so. He smiled. "This was always my favorite room too. I’m at the far end of the house now. I wanted you to have it.” He seemed to mean that. I thought I had gained some ground with him since the ride in. We then ate dinner by the light of a single stub of candle, all the shutters drawn, the silvery moonlight like a beam, in silence. ❊ The next day the hot white sun was merciless and high in the sky. A hot wind blew, smelling of dust and eucalyptus. Here and there a clump of daisies sprang from the roof. Vines covered the doors and the eaves of the windows, and except for Jago I had not seen another living soul since I arrived. Breakfast was a thin porridge. It was completely and utterly silent and still. The silence astonished me. I had thought I knew silence, from libraries and reading rooms, but here I caught myself listening for my own breathing. The sun bewildered me. We walked the perimeter of the station together, past a dry creek lined with river red gums, three black dogs trailing behind us. He seemed content to walk in silence, just passing the time of day. I didn't know where to begin. He dismissed my attempts at polite conversation and even the most basic inquiries with a wave of his hand, and after the third I stopped, annoyed with myself for minding. My eyes couldn’t adjust to the blinding light of the sun. I felt I would never see, never have any relief. I was in awe of how he stood up against the conditions of the station, which I had severely underestimated, but I tried not to let on. By day the sun blinded me totally and by night I could not see my hand in front of my face so complete was the darkness. I didn't think there was any getting used to it, I didn't see how there could be. I wondered whether he had, or whether he had simply decided not to notice. There was nothing there but the two of us and, somewhere beyond the fence row, the sound of horses. A snake slid by in the grass. It was just as his father had described it. He really was living among spiders and snakes, and it was an insane prospect, quite senseless. I had expected to find his father exaggerating. If anything, he had underplayed it. The station was worse than he said, and so, I was beginning to think, was the son. He offered me a cigarette. As we stopped, I observed him. “Are you afraid?” he asked. I looked at his worn clothes and shoes. His worn belt, his Roman profile. Usually the question would've offended me but it made pretty good sense all the way out here, a day's ride from anyone and anything.I laughed it off, but I was scared. Anyone in their right mind would be. I asked him about the wild horses at the station. I could hear them but not see them. They were probably frightened of an unfamiliar presence. Perhaps they would come closer in time. Jago threw his cigarette to the ground. I feared the charred grass would ignite. “The horses have mostly gone,” he said. “A wild horse won’t come to you in a few weeks, whatever you do. People say they'd like to see Yanga. The quickest way to cure them of it is to let them.” He looked out over the grass. “Do you know how the horses came to be here?” “I don’t,” I said. “Should I?” “They fled uphill. After the valley flooded. That’s what created the lagoon. It’s blocked now by a collapsed bank, and they were trapped here.” I looked toward the water, tried to picture a herd of horses stranded on a hill, watching it rise. “The reason most of the horses are gone is that my maternal Grandfather killed them. Everyone in the family agreed with his manias. No one opposed him. He came to believe they were bad luck. People wanted them rounded up. Said they were starving. My mother’s sister- the youngest of my grandfather’s children-, loved the horses. She saw to it that they were fed, but it was a huge undertaking. She fell ill, and many of them did die during that time of malnutrition. In her delirium she begged for the horses to be fed and cared for. She claimed a black horse was biting her in the night. She recovered, but by that time my grandfather had shot most of them. A few weeks later she died anyway. This was after the last horse of the herd she cared for was shot. In the end she died anyway but not from the fever, she died from a heart attack a few days after she was up and walking around again.” So that was the horse story. The woman on the train had told me another. “That terrible story and others gave this family a bad name.” He signaled with his whip, pointing beyond the fences. “That desolate mess doesn’t help matters.” I looked where the whip pointed. There was only scrub and the heat coming off it, and I could not tell whether he meant something out there or just the place itself. “My aunt died in the bed I sleep in now. My father is pathetic. He was only ever here a few weeks, but he’s attached to the place. Some romantic notion about my Mother. She’s the same way about this land, she won’t set foot on it but wouldn’t ever part with it. To hear them tell it this place is mystical, but they would never spend so much as a night here. They’re both idiots.” I thought of Mr. Treloar. I could not picture him as pathetic, and I could not tell which of them I believed. “My father offered the tenant of the fields my house, and he refused it, said his own is better. Let’s go inside, you’ll get sunstroke.” Inside the house it was dark even with the noontime sun. I devoured the thin soup and bread we served ourselves at lunch. We were setting out on a horseback ride, our second since I had arrived. I liked it more than I expected. I awaited these walks and rides eagerly, and Jago seemed glad of the company. Maybe I had misjudged him. Crossing the streams on horseback exalted me. Night came on quickly. We spent our days playing chess and cards, and in the afternoons we went through the house, opening the rooms he had kept shut. One afternoon I walked into a deep, dark pantry that smelled of herbs. In the back stood a vase, and I felt I had seen its exact twin: the same two swans curving toward each other, cracked in the same way down the middle. I pushed the thought away. Feelings and vague impressions of recognition passed over me so many times throughout the day that it was distracting and distressing. We shot bottles off the fence, and I was the worse shot, though Jago never seemed to aim.In the evenings we read aloud. We also spent time rummaging the closed off rooms of the house. It was during this time that I felt, with frightening clarity, the depths of the intelligence Jago’s Father had spoken of. It wasn’t anything he said or did, but how he passed through the days in silent reflection. There was no other explanation for his composure. We rode the fields. I asked him who owned the lands and houses in the distance. He explained that most of the land belonged to a grazier who had a daughter around our age named Anna. His face changed at the mention of her name. Our friendship slowly progressed as we got to know one another. I spoke of my disdain for my parents and my older brother. My Mother had reacted foolishly to what I felt was a natural attitude toward him. She wanted us to spend more time together, but I was content to lead my own life. We were brothers, but we weren’t friends. I don’t know why my parents couldn’t accept that. He finally spoke to me more about his Father. “He’s furious I’m living here. He thinks I’m hiding something. One week he thinks I’m in love, the next he accuses me of gambling, or drinking. Even if he were to come out here, he wouldn’t figure it out. And yes, troubling him and my Mother does amuse me. What claim do they have on my life or time? Same as you and your brother. We’re family, but I don’t owe them companionship, and I don’t care for them beyond what is absolutely necessary.” “That’s cruel,” I said after a long while. “How is it cruel? Hypocrites like my Father deserve to be punished. If I were to introduce him to you or to any of the friends I have made here, he would treat us both like imbeciles. If I showed him the women I like, he would treat me like a criminal. A girl like Anna he would never give a chance to or try to understand.” “Is that the situation with you and Anna, why you are living here?” “No, I’m just telling you what my Father is like.” The days passed. The rains came at the same time each day and Jago’s horse galloped off at the same time each evening. He didn’t return until I was deeply asleep each night. My sleep and dreams became bound up with reality. I had only been at Yanga a few weeks, but it felt as if I had lived there all my life. In the night Jago knocked at my window to say goodnight. This felt as if it had always been. I felt I had always known him. We rode each day and swam in the rivers and streams, or in the large watering trough in the middle of one of Yanga’s abandoned orchards. We were contented in each other’s company. It was an outcome I don’t think either of us had planned for. When I imagined the summer I didn’t consider the two of us becoming friends, and I hadn’t considered that I would enjoy my time here. We dried off and lay in the shade of a huge willow. “At first when I refused to come home my Father thought I was crazy,” he told me. “Even if he never gives me a cent again, I won’t leave here. His main request was that I see a doctor, which in the end I obliged. I told him that I suffer from migraine headaches and sleeplessness. That wound him up, he loved that. Comical in a way, don’t you think? Both the doctor and my father ordered me to be honest with them in those meetings, but how can you operate honestly with people like that? It was operating honestly with them that got me in that position. The doctor gave me a notebook and told me to record my dreams. And I promised in honesty to satisfy that request, but I don’t dream, I never have. Do you dream?” “Yes, but nothing of interest. Sometimes I dream of people and places I haven’t seen, and my dreams feel like they don’t belong to me. Absurd things that aren’t tied to reality. I seldom recall them.” “My doctor would find this fascinating. I wish especially to have dreams with no link to reality. Not dreaming is like being dead, in a way. It really is. Think of the dreams of Jacob or Joseph. To be a man who doesn’t dream is to be passed over. And as for dreams of people I don’t know or places I haven’t been, if that were me I would devote &nbsp;myself totally to finding those places and people. At least you have some idea of another life. I haven’t. Tell me some of your dreams.” “If I tried now I would be making most of it up. I would have to tell you first thing after one of them. You can’t trust what you add to them after.” Jago barely ate, and didn’t drink at all that I could see. His behavior was correct if not normal. He was kind to the horses and I was fond of him. I had little to report to his Father. “My father has written to say he intends to send one of his friends to visit here. If he sends someone to force me out I’ll kill them. All I have in life is my peace and I don’t want it disturbed.” “Do you even have a pistol? If you kill them, you’ll go to prison.” “Of course I have a pistol, and is life in jail so different from how I am living now? I am not afraid of prison. Isn’t this exactly like jail as it is?” “You tell me.” “I’m telling you, in many ways it is. The best thing for my father and his friends is to keep away from here.” Why didn’t he ever ask me to go to town with him? Where did he go each evening? Why had he never asked me into his room, which was on the opposite side of the house and locked with two heavy padlocks? How did he knock at my window just as I was falling asleep every night? “Mail for you,” he said, dropping a pile of letters. The rain began. He waved to me and walked away, leaving me with the mess. One of the letters toward the center was from Jago’s father, whom by that time I had more or less forgotten. The letter’s quarrelsome, pleading tone repulsed me. He begged for any word of his son, even a physical description of him. His script was large and slanted and smacked of pretense and ego. I moved to throw it into the fire. Jago stood watching in the doorway. “You’re in correspondence with my Father.” He picked up a glass from the table and threw it against the wall with force. Glass flew in all directions. In his anger he threw its twin to the floor at his feet. “That’s fine,” he said. “It’s not as if you’re smart enough to have told him anything he can use.” With that he slammed the door and headed to his own room, slamming its door as well. I began to pack, remorseful. How would I get to the railway station? What could I possibly tell my parents or Jago’s? I asked the one housekeeper I could find, but she seemed terrified to speak to me. The rain was still pouring. I walked outside and into a pine grove where the ground was relatively dry. There I found a place to sit, unseen, in where I could watch the entrance to the house. I watched as Jago rode off as he did each evening, and I thought of riding after him to see at last what occupied him. I thought of the months I had spent at the Station, of Jago’s cruel insults, the high and the low points of our time. Right before nightfall a man and woman arrived in a black coach. They carried Jago’s body from the coach into the house. I made my way inside. The couple had laid Jago on a long chaise. For a moment I thought he was dead. He sat up and asked if I could go into town and buy painkillers and antiseptic. He had fallen on the wet stone from his horse, going wherever it was he went every night, and some neighbors passing by had seen him and brought him home. “I was wrong to react that way,” he told me and within days we were laughing about that night, as if it had never happened. I asked him why he had never had me into his room and he said I never asked to be let in, which was true, but I knew that wasn’t the whole of it. I helped him move back into his own room once he had recovered from his fall. Once inside, I looked around with interest. It was very dark, darker even than the rest of the house. Heavy curtains were at the windows and the angles of the room seemed askew. The furniture was mismatched. The bed was iron and had an oval landscape above the frame with a horse’s head centered within. The walls were whitewashed. An old farmer’s almanac was nailed to the wall. There was a reproduction print of a fox hunt. “I’ve been in a hunt like this,” I told him. He couldn’t hide his interest. He wanted to know how and under what circumstances. I couldn’t give him an explanation, and even though I told him I didn’t know why I’d said it and that it wasn’t true, he seemed to have more respect for me after that, like when I told him about my dreams. Why did I lie about something so foolish? In trying to talk about the print I realized it was a false memory, but in the moment it had felt real. I was cranking the well to bring up a bucket of bottles from the bottom. This was how we cooled our drinks, this or the spring. I felt confused again. Everything at this Station reminded me of something else. Jago said it was like that any time he traveled anywhere, but it was never like that for me anywhere else. It felt to me that my soul was a cast off garment or a wrecked ship, that my soul had abandoned my body, and worse yet that the souls who had abandoned their own bodies were near to me, and I could sense them trying to overtake mine. “I know you from before.” I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. “I know you from a century ago. The soul never dies... You’re &nbsp;so transparent. That story about your grandfather, do you think I don’t &nbsp;recognize the story of Ajax. All you have done is lie to my face since I arrived.” He looked at the horse, then back at me. “You think I’m lying about the horses ? &nbsp;Look, I never made the connection. For all I know that’s why my Grandfather did it. &nbsp;He had a romantic steak a mile wide. Only someone like that would build a place like Yarga in the first place. If you’re through with your rambling let’s get the horses from the paddock, it’s getting dark.” “You’re lying” I said through clenched teeth. Jago sighed. “Look, it’s the solitude. You don’t need to think so much. It drove me crazy too, at first. You need to stay busy. Occupy your thoughts.” Beyond the woods came Ajax, the blind horse. His name was how I was sure Jago had lied to me. &nbsp;All of the animals at the station were blind, even the dogs. I had never seen a blind animal before I came here. The dogs were the first, with their opal dead eyes. I remembered the woman from the train’s words. “Why did you do it? Why did you blind him?” “I did not blind the horse. All of the animals are blind, do you believe I blinded them all?” “Then what is wrong with them?” “There’s a simple answer for that. It’s the flies. They carry a sickness from eye to eye, it clouds the cornea and eventually blinds the animal, and even some people are affected.” The horse came closer to us. “Why don’t you kill him? It can’t be much of a life.” “You think he’s suffering?” “Don’t you?” “I don’t know that that is true. I think he notices more than you think. I think he cares for his life more than you believe he does. Watch this.” Jago lit a cigarette and placed it near the horse’s nostril. He startled and raised his neck, reared onto his back legs and ran into the forest. He looked like something out of a fairytale. “Why did you do that?” “To show you that he values his life.” In the woods the horse resumed his slow, depressed walk. We stood under the palms, the latticed moonlight over our faces. “How do you see with no lanterns, Jago. And who are you. Why do you refuse to leave this place?” “I can see in the dark, like a cat. I'm used to it, you will used to it soon. And as for why I will not leave my home, are you prepared to leave here?” Jago shoved my shoulder with the butt of his rifle. I shoved back. “That’s what I thought. Be up early tomorrow, we are going hunting, and leave Ajax, he knows the way back.” • <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253559941" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> C. Hightower would be nothing without her steady hands. Twitter https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Billy-Lambent Mon, 26 Oct 2026 12:41:06 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Billy-Lambent <img width="1098" height="310" width_o="1098" height_o="310" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" data-mid="253701538" border="0" data-scale="21" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" /> Three Poems <img width="1378" height="1333" width_o="1378" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bc9c9e88fb4592766096f5def80dfe52869c25752dd7935aa752730a29f1958d/cartoon-smoke-illustrated.png" data-mid="253701624" border="0" data-scale="80" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bc9c9e88fb4592766096f5def80dfe52869c25752dd7935aa752730a29f1958d/cartoon-smoke-illustrated.png" />— Billy Lambent Barnes Road I have this vision part Brueghel, part Ovid, part Evangelion mostly Evangelion that only the music can phosphorize into life. It burns the literature in my blood into a caloric frenzy of Sleep; all suffering, all intimations of delight, in this one image: Eternal as a marble torso of certain doom. It gets me the fuck off, to tell you the Truth!…and I’m not embarrassed about it— it makes me look insane, but I need Heat, a Rhythm and a BEAT to live like this, in the spirit of History and Myth all at once, this all-consuming flame inconvenient now, but the Death of me some other time, soon, I don’t really care. It’s my nobility &amp; bravery, you see: &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;walking these streets a sleepwalker, &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;indecipherable depravity, &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;unknown, unremarkable, a carcass-- i don’t have to tell you it’s all the same. so when I take my daily walk down Barnes to hit up the corner store, no Reason in my head, just Destiny sweltering as Destination, in need of release and a symbol of unreality to sow these leaden wings above gravity: I am dreaming of Icarus again, getting close, closer, so—damn—close, but never making it. He can never make it. And the islanders beep and wave Hello to me and I wave back, Naturally since I never really weep. ❊ Up All Night Up all night, and don’t know how to phrase it.A normal thing, that normal people do.The sun is coming up, unparanoid;I am looking fixed but not like I’m weird.This will be a good day just so it canBe. No first principles, and a blue chairI think I almost drowned in once, or twice:Spatial recognition isn’t my thing.Before parting, the moon said don’t worryabout it: I’m just happy you’re well now.Soon, time to start writing to you again.You’re starting to rearrange my insides. ❊ Cold (Ghazal) There was no use hiding my camel underneath God’s tongue, or the fire-Escape, those being the same things after all, two kisses copper-gilded,&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[cold.How many times, O Beloved, did I tear the sea-parchment across the coral,Unravel the desert’s gown, rip off the shawl of our Eternity, so dark, so&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[cold?The truth is that the embrace across the shop window burned with real fervor–The truth is that I lost Silence in everything left unsaid–that’s what left me&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[cold.Less devotion to shadows, than attention from shadows, that’s what hurtsMore than the scar from your ringlet of Lebanese emeralds. O Beloved, I’m&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[cold.BILLY! You’re an idiot who ruins love, it’s true! Neither sinner or saintWould answer a prayer by slamming the door SHUT, leaving you out in the &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; [cold. <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253701546" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> <img width="1968" height="1968" width_o="1968" height_o="1968" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/312034be977c0389e6cb1d72e7354c4bb118e535bfce259d255254b84a3dc375/Billy-Lambent.png" data-mid="253724614" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/312034be977c0389e6cb1d72e7354c4bb118e535bfce259d255254b84a3dc375/Billy-Lambent.png" /> Billy Lambent is a writer living in New York by way of Martha’s Vineyard. You can read more of his writing in Burial, Hobart Pulp, Apocalypse Confidential, and Spectra. Substack | Twitter https://bulbregion.com/To-the-Guy-at-Denny-s-Who-Lost-His-Son-Three-Weeks-Ago-by-Andrew Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:42:00 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/To-the-Guy-at-Denny-s-Who-Lost-His-Son-Three-Weeks-Ago-by-Andrew <img width="589" height="202" width_o="589" height_o="202" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" data-mid="252772030" border="0" data-scale="16" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/589/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" /> To the Guy at Denny’s Who Lost His Son Three Weeks Ago <img width="1016" height="836" width_o="1016" height_o="836" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3eac9304574b06b8093b5b9b80f28d2736aa8edf93338a66d486131cc2484f64/Barn.png" data-mid="252772554" border="0" data-scale="68" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3eac9304574b06b8093b5b9b80f28d2736aa8edf93338a66d486131cc2484f64/Barn.png" />— Andrew Careaga YOU SIT SILENT AND ALONE&nbsp; in a booth, thumbing your phone over your half-eaten Grand Slam, anesthetizing yourself with the infinite scroll, interrupted only by the waitress who warms your coffee. I thought I should get up and say something to you, but what? I don’t really know you. We run into each other around town, give each other a curt, polite nod of greeting at the hardware store or Quick Trip. I know you drive an F-150, like so many others in this town. You have a farm, and you and your wife are separated, maybe divorced by now for all I know. I think you might recognize me, but I’m afraid you might not. Besides, what could I say to you that you haven’t already heard from others? I’ve heard the rumors about how your son hung himself in your barn, milking stool tipped over, Wranglers and boxer shorts pulled down to the knees. But I don’t know the truth. Not that it matters. The dead are the dead, no matter how they die. The survivors live with the wound of the loss. They limp along with life the way you must be doing now. Should I express condolences? Tell you I’m praying for you and your family? That would be a lie. I pray for no one but myself, and only when I’m desperate. When I’m behind on rent, I pray the landlord will be lenient and patient with me. When the tooth I need to see the dentist about starts aching again (if only I had dental insurance), I anoint it with clove oil to numb the pain and beg for a healing touch. All I could say is nothing you haven’t already heard from others closer to you, so when the waitress pours my coffee, I order my eggs over easy and ask for extra butter for the pancakes, because none of us knows if this day will be our last. • <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="252772028" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> Andrew Careaga is a recovering marketing and PR executive who writes from his home in the Missouri Ozarks. His work has appeared or soon will in dozens of literary journals and two anthologies, both published in 2026: Bad Intentions: Crime Fiction Inspired by Warren Zevon (Literary Garage) and DISSOLUTION (La Rotonde Review). Twitter | Bluesky |&nbsp;Instagram https://bulbregion.com/Bending-Toward-the-Sun-by-Sergio-Brito Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:58:00 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Bending-Toward-the-Sun-by-Sergio-Brito <img width="589" height="202" width_o="589" height_o="202" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" data-mid="253565880" border="0" data-scale="16" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/589/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" /> Bending Toward&nbsp; the Sun <img width="1041" height="910" width_o="1041" height_o="910" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8f7b1aa05892c709d28e7c9b27f50495d753ffdd01cba579e700de8c62a27b5a/Thorn-Sun.png" data-mid="253583331" border="0" data-scale="88" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8f7b1aa05892c709d28e7c9b27f50495d753ffdd01cba579e700de8c62a27b5a/Thorn-Sun.png" />— Sergio Brito ONE OF THEM DRIVES, ONE &nbsp;of them plays music: he drives, she plays music. A sliver of the crescent moon hangs in the balance. Desire obfuscates the road they’re travelling on, but they’re leaving Los Angeles, they can tell that much. They follow the sliver of the crescent moon, they follow it until it disappears under the palm of the rising sun. Now, the ocean at their shoulder. Now, no words are exchanged. Now, they listen to the music she chooses. She saw him in the glow of her window. She opened it and invited the breeze. He left before she caught a glimpse. Days later, he came back to her window. She opened the door to her room and he stepped inside. She strums her guitar for him to the rhythm of the waves crashing on the shore. He buries his feet in the sand, wriggling his toes in the cool grit. A gull watches them, a side eye, waiting for an opportune moment. He feeds her while she plays: what does he feed her? whatever it is the gull wants to steal it. A few wingbeats and a rush at his hand. The gull leaves with their meal in its mouth; they laugh. Strange to fictionalize a life whose veracity isn’t yet solidified, as if its goodness prevents it from crossing the threshold into confirmed reality. A danger, once mythologized it will never be true. Prove it to the genie who granted you this life [yourself(?)] that you never deserved it. A poem the poet never wrote. Ice cream melts down the waffle cone, onto their fingers, now sticky with its sweetness. Their tongues have tasted it all. Now, the frozen treat; earlier, the salt from the ocean stuck to each other’s bodies. They play a game called “Dangerous Jumping,” a relic from her childhood. She explains to him the rules and soothes his doubts. They climb the face of the stone at the edge of the beach, the beach together. Wrinkled finger clasp onto nooks carved into the eroded monolith, markers of an ongoing romance. They climb and climb and climb and climb, far beyond the point they had imagined. The stone and their climb continue until they touch cloud, its moisture coating their next hold. Both slip and freefall into the cerulean sea. She came home with a thorn in her side the size of her index finger. Using a scalpel, an incisor, a promise, he carved it out and placed it under his microscope and ascertained its origin; it wasn’t a thorn but a stem. He asked her to tear it in half and make a wish and she cried tears of joy. A wish spoken out loud is a wish that goes unfulfilled so she kept it to herself. We go to Mexico together, her second time in the country, to get our teeth cleaned by my childhood dentist. I think about writing this while I’m out in the waiting room, alone in a white concrete box on an uncomfortable chair, my gums covered in blood. She steps out and smiles: a bloody grin. They slept facing away from each other. Every waking hour they shared with one another, but the hours of dreams they kept to themselves. She dreamt of him; he dreamt of standing at the edge of a Sulphur pool, in the distance a trumpeting geyser. Sometimes he had nightmares, vicious, unspeakable nightmares. To calm his nerves, he listened to her babble in her sleep. On occasion, she spoke directly to him. “Was just thinking of how much I love you…” she told him once with her eyes closed. “Do you remember what you said to me last night?” he asked the following morning, but she shook her head. They wash up on the shore of a different world. Beyond the highway that snakes down the coast, a field of sunflowers burns. The entire hillside is engulfed in flames, catalyzed by the wayward spark of a discarded match. “These hills burn every year, but we keep building houses on them, we keep planting flowers on them,” someone says, but when they look around there’s no one there. Winds carry the embers into tomorrow, smoke blocks out the sun. Music plays in the background. “What are you doing?” “Writing something down, before I forget it.” “Will you tell me what it is?” “I can’t yet, not until it’s done.” “Even if you whisper it and I cover my ears?” “________________... did you get any of that?” “What!?” “You can uncover them now.” “I read your lips, you shouldn’t have agreed to that, now I know your secret.” Everything laid bare, their clothes strewn all over the room. Sex closes whatever distance was left between them. Between that first awkward smile and the final guttural moan: a series of collisions and acrobatic displays of desperation, lust, love. They intuit symbiosis. It’s all happening at the same time, a single moment bending itself around the gravity of their embrace. What will you think when you read this? I hope you find it endearing, I hope it quells your doubt, I hope you don’t find it cliché or cringe or overbearing. Not even death will erase the memory of the night you told me those songs you wrote were for me. Here is my response, at least a small part of it. • <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253565878" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> <img width="1336" height="1336" width_o="1336" height_o="1336" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/58133734ab54027224b636021cc8af440f514f1114737e34db7b8131d6dc32f3/Sergio-Brito.png" data-mid="253569042" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/58133734ab54027224b636021cc8af440f514f1114737e34db7b8131d6dc32f3/Sergio-Brito.png" /> Sergio Brito&nbsp;lives in Los Angeles with Elizabeth and Felix. You can find his work in Burial Magazine, Michigan City Review, Gonzoid, and others. Twitter https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Jose-Hernandez-Diaz Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:20:01 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Three-Poems-by-Jose-Hernandez-Diaz <img width="1098" height="310" width_o="1098" height_o="310" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" data-mid="253583401" border="0" data-scale="21" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" /> Three Poems <img width="996" height="797" width_o="996" height_o="797" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/915707b876439671691e9a707dee0aeae9ccbcba4f45e9e54ca0f65e3f3df4f8/3d-sketches-geometrical-forms.png" data-mid="253591050" border="0" data-scale="77" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/996/i/915707b876439671691e9a707dee0aeae9ccbcba4f45e9e54ca0f65e3f3df4f8/3d-sketches-geometrical-forms.png" />— Jose Hernandez Diaz The Pyramid of the Magician An eagle with a serpent in its mouth flew in circles over The Pyramid of the Magician. It screeched and screeched. The sun was setting on the last day of summer. The eagle descended, sitting on the top of the pyramid, and devoured the serpent. It began to rain. The trees smiled and laughed in the distance. Then the eagle expanded its wings. It displayed two tattoos: a jaguar and a rabbit. The jaguar was named “Last Moon.” The rabbit, “Four Winds.” The eagle elevated, surging onto the city of night. The wind blew. Leaves fell. The moon inevitably rose. ❊ How to Write a Novel I’ve been riding my bicycle without a helmet for the past three weeks. There is fog in the streets. Confidence is key, steady, and remember to look both ways at red lights, it is essential that you turn the other way toward the green. I’ve had one close call thus far. I was approaching a freeway exit when a Jeep Cherokee almost California-rolled into me. I avoided it with the precision of a ballerina’s pirouette. The other day I had a dream that as I entered the public library parking lot, an SUV, I don’t think it was a Jeep Cherokee, almost backed into me, but I slid away just in time, as a mime or a man in a mask, dressed in black, like Jean Paul-Sartre, ushered me away, as if he were a valet. ❊ Righteous Graffiti A man in a Pink Floyd shirt pissed on a wall. It was a wall built by a rambling beast. The beast was scared and bigoted. It was afraid of its own shadow. That’s why it built the wall. When the man in a Pink Floyd shirt finished pissing on the wall, he wrote graffiti. He tagged “FALL” on the wall. Then he tagged “HATE”. He threw away the spray can in the dumpster and skated away. <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253583409" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> <img width="810" height="810" width_o="810" height_o="810" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fd4f08207838ee995eaeb966152fc86312bef824e38cc1c854886dc2f0c07e46/Jose-Hernandez-Diaz.png" data-mid="253590989" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/810/i/fd4f08207838ee995eaeb966152fc86312bef824e38cc1c854886dc2f0c07e46/Jose-Hernandez-Diaz.png" />Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020), Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025), Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the forthcoming, The Lighthouse Tattoo (Acre Books, 2026). He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee. Website | Twitter https://bulbregion.com/Two-Poems-by-Kat-Giordano Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:03:23 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Two-Poems-by-Kat-Giordano <img width="1098" height="310" width_o="1098" height_o="310" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" data-mid="252774048" border="0" data-scale="21" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" /> Two Poems <img width="1409" height="1116" width_o="1409" height_o="1116" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fd6c98790b1ecebb05ff7f1dc1030a64d3c42887e7184d21135f4667251f24bb/Engraved-Aluminum-Can-Top.png" data-mid="253471557" border="0" data-scale="65" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fd6c98790b1ecebb05ff7f1dc1030a64d3c42887e7184d21135f4667251f24bb/Engraved-Aluminum-Can-Top.png" />— Kat Giordano Baby’s First when you died I thought, “something real to be sad about.” at the funeral home I was the only one wearing black. baby’s first dead body. wearing band merch to the concert. much ado about glasses you don’t need, whether to bury you with one last scratch-off lottery ticket. you shouldn’t go up there a loser, but you’d come down and kill us if we trapped a winner with you underground. everyone laughing. for the first time I thought of my father as a little boy, once in the seventies and then last week shaving your face halfway for the last time. it’s a good thing you’ll stay this age forever now, and us too. he shaves his own face. he has no use for that room where they cracked your ribs. for a minute I watched him folding your already-folded collar, worried blue inlay on white coffin looked a bit too “pimped-out.”&nbsp; ❊ Apology I kissed like a crack addict at fourteen. no hope for me. he was older. Abercrombie model with pills in his shoes who smelled like the perfume department. hot song in the basement to deny later. they laughed when I asked for his number. but you believe me, right, baby? I say “baby” when I’m serious. he met my best friend on some fancy trip for the gifted kids. my parents were scared, so I didn’t go. I learned how to play when I missed her, the keys shaven down. I was kind of in love. I write about everyone. in every good story, somebody stops me. my body, my mouth. I wanted to sing “Red, Red Wine” to the weird guys who rode with my uncle. I know not what I do, sometimes. a kernel in this piece-of-shitness older than you. I was born to chase after a red sports car, dressed like shit, braying, “baby, it’s not in my nature, just what I’m always like.” &nbsp; <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="252774044" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> Kat Giordano was born in Philadelphia, and it's been downhill ever since. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Thumbsucker (Malarkey Books, 2024) and one novel, The Fountain (Thirty West, 2020). Kat is very cool. You love her. Twitter | Instagram https://bulbregion.com/But-She-Didn-t-Ask-by-Anna-Vangala-Jones Wed, 30 Sep 2026 20:33:48 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/But-She-Didn-t-Ask-by-Anna-Vangala-Jones <img width="589" height="202" width_o="589" height_o="202" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" data-mid="252771922" border="0" data-scale="16" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/589/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" /> But She Didn’t Ask <img width="800" height="533" width_o="800" height_o="533" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/afdb44c91629fdb15bccfbbe76d0c6f87f92c57b8de20aaa2fec65750e5e4e76/detailed-vintage-engraving-cupid-roman-god-love-shown-as-winged-cherub-aiming-bow-arrow-mid-flight-388468005.png" data-mid="253470936" border="0" data-scale="87" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/afdb44c91629fdb15bccfbbe76d0c6f87f92c57b8de20aaa2fec65750e5e4e76/detailed-vintage-engraving-cupid-roman-god-love-shown-as-winged-cherub-aiming-bow-arrow-mid-flight-388468005.png" />— Anna Vangala Jones BY THE TIME I REALIZED &nbsp;she was calling to tell me you were dead, my emotions did not compute so I couldn’t speak and she must have thought I hadn’t cared much at all. She said she didn’t know my relationship to you, only that when she accessed your phone—she was your legacy contact because why wouldn’t she be—she learned of my existence and prominence in your life. There were phone calls and text messages exchanging poems she found boring, inside jokes she didn’t think were funny, recipes, music and films, absurd dreams, and childhood nostalgia. I cut her off. I didn’t want to listen to her sum us up like a list of items in a will. I asked if you’d ever mentioned me and the definitive no was expected but ached. I waited for her to ask the question, had we been having an affair, but she never did and if she had, I would’ve told her no, you were my faraway friend. But she didn't ask so I didn't tell her every poem was a promise, every recipe was one we wished to cook side by side, every song lyric an insinuation, every surreal scenario concocted by a sleepy mind and every past moment tumbled like a rock made rough and new by an imperfect memory were laced with longing that we could have been or would someday be in the same place, and that there are other ways to say I love you than the words and other ways to love someone than sleeping in their bed or sharing a time zone or stretch of earth, but she didn’t ask if we loved each other so I thanked her for calling and we both said I’m sorry for your loss. • <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="252771920" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> Anna Vangala Jones is the author of the short story collection Turmeric &amp; Sugar (Thirty West, 2021). Her writing has appeared in&nbsp;Wigleaf,&nbsp;Berkeley Fiction Review,&nbsp;Craft Literary,&nbsp;Short Story Long,&nbsp;HAD,&nbsp;XRAY, The Bulb Region, and Terrazzo, among others. Her stories have been selected for the 2026&nbsp;Wigleaf&nbsp;Top 50 Very Short Fictions, Longform Fiction’s Best of 2018, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other award anthologies. Website | Twitter | Bluesky |&nbsp;Instagram https://bulbregion.com/I-know-I-don-t-look-like-I-ve-been-to-jail-by-Era-Pasquale Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:32:21 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/I-know-I-don-t-look-like-I-ve-been-to-jail-by-Era-Pasquale <img width="1098" height="310" width_o="1098" height_o="310" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" data-mid="253399003" border="0" data-scale="21" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/08827ea58e4ed3ba26abd97bec91d6c79966b16bca92e600936c2c9b34069a04/Screen-Shot-2022-01-09-at-17.35.55.png" /> I know I don’t look like I’ve been to jail <img width="1078" height="1185" width_o="1078" height_o="1185" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/897dc225a91a7c317e3bb34913d8b9e7b26701d065d8756a40ff3a7e147aec94/Feet.png" data-mid="253399108" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/897dc225a91a7c317e3bb34913d8b9e7b26701d065d8756a40ff3a7e147aec94/Feet.png" />— Era Pasquale I am crashing out now in your kitchen. The government is watching me and they don’t care. I am not a threat to the hegemony. I should buy a gun. I should post a photo of it. I earned this. But I’m white so it’s fine, I guess I am not very threatening to other white people. I am part of the problem and by problem I mean solution and by solution I mean I am doing enough but not doing anything either. It’s complicated. What is there left to do but remember. How not to be yourself and hold onto it. I am trying on my best angry face in your window. But I don’t look hurt enough for this, my hairs aren’t yet grey so no one will believe I have suffered enough to truly care. I care, okay. I want to be more principled in my understandings. I know that what I think means close to nothing. Now you are shooing me out with your feet. You don’t care about my little insecurities. You don’t think about these things. When you hand me a piece of bread, I ask if it’s gluten-free. You tell me no but it’s okay because I’m not actually allergic. I just want to be different. Please tell me I’m different. <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253399004" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> Era Pasquale lives in Oregon and edits Dreck. Twitter |&nbsp;Instagram&nbsp; https://bulbregion.com/Caldera-s-Invention-by-Addison-Zeller Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:43:42 +0000 The Bulb Region https://bulbregion.com/Caldera-s-Invention-by-Addison-Zeller <img width="589" height="202" width_o="589" height_o="202" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" data-mid="253400593" border="0" data-scale="16" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/589/i/548d8a175a57054cd1f583d152c55e5bdd968fde8c987d62447e88dfec597437/The-Harlem-Review_Prose.png" /> Caldera’s Invention <img width="776" height="937" width_o="776" height_o="937" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1976d1d68269834dcd02ae6c3a547ed472d4d33548a6e76c308d2d880582c9a8/1215577_41.png" data-mid="253400840" border="0" data-scale="63" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/776/i/1976d1d68269834dcd02ae6c3a547ed472d4d33548a6e76c308d2d880582c9a8/1215577_41.png" />— Addison Zeller EVERYONE WAS THROWN IN THE AIR, water rushed in, planks splitting, sails ripping (scissored by dismasted sailors as they fell), ropes snaking, the chronometer shattering in the arms of the captain, who was promptly swept overboard by a swinging boom. Into the hold seawater sprayed over the crates of mirrors, the chests of santos, milagros, and ex-votos, the spools of Professor Caldera’s miraculous wool thread, the giant clockworks and the copper sheets for the clock-tower roof, the bamboo poles, the barrels of pine tar, the cork collection of M. Lemoine (himself last seen blowing past the mizzen like a mustachioed piece of paper), the wrought-iron pipes for the heavy organ of St. Trey’s Cathedral, the mysterious black stone (en route to the museum—alas, it would never arrive), and the wicker basket that housed Professor Caldera’s green obsidian lens. Half the ship sank instantly while the wind dragged off the other by the tips of its sails, which had fallen over the wreckage like a tablecloth. Only the hold was spared, freed by the rupture of the hull and sent tumbling, a dense red cube of teak, over the tips of the waves until it was impaled on a reef. Those who had taken refuge inside waited for dawn before they urged Jamo, the highest-ranking able seaman left, to poke his head through the hatch. His beady eyes faithfully recorded the sight: land just a few hundred yards off, and closing, for the ebbing tide had already begun to shrink the distance between reef and beach. Yes, an attractive white strip of land, sunny but shaded by many stone pinnacles: a cove open only to the sea and walled on three sides by sheer shale cliffs, two hundred feet high, striated with rows of dung-white gannet nests (some 30,000 breeding pair, the shrewd Jamo estimated at a glance)—the gannet being a large seabird, equally white, with brilliant blue eyelids. “If nothing else,” Professor Caldera observed, coiling his fingers in his beard and nibbling sagely on the ends, “we can survive on eggs.” The eminent Caldera was an inventor, jazz artiste, and optician renowned for his contributions to industry (the fantastically strong wool threads), music (his album Cool Caldera), and science (chiefly the ease with which he could diagnose weaknesses of the eye from great distances, thanks to the green obsidian lens he’d had cut to his exact specifications with another of his inventions—a heat-resistant cookie cutter—by an Indonesian vulcanologist when the lava was piping hot). For all his talents—or perhaps because of them (no genius without a tincture of madness)—he was an insufferable, authoritarian boor, and had already alienated the crew with his loud knitting and trumpeting and the intrusive green disk of light that so often fell upon their faces, a sign that he was inspecting their ocular surfaces from afar. No less irritating were the other two passengers (the wrecked ship was primarily a conveyor of cargo): Sister Agnolotta, an elderly nun posted overseas to head a new Ursuline convent adjacent to the Cathedral of St. Trey (the gigantic shipment of santos, milagros, and ex-votos was also intended for that institution), and M. Lemoine, a utopian philosopher who had established a colony of freethinkers in the same town. This had been a source of shipboard discord, though the tension had lately eased, since Lemoine had certainly not survived the disaster (or at least not in the immediate vicinity). What remained of him were the clock parts he had commissioned for his community’s main plaza, the copper sheets for its tower, the bamboo poles purchased for the construction of meditation platforms, and the collection of corks he had assembled over many years, each painstakingly cased under separate raiseable glass hatches so that the last odors of the vintages could still be sniffed. His waterlogged toupee also turned up in the sand when the survivors waded ashore, along with planks from the shattered hull, a box of nautical instruments (miraculously intact, Sister Agnolotta insisted), and the captain’s own rutter, a guide to every waterway and coast in that part of the world. (The captain himself was not among the objects strewn across the beach.) The party took refuge in the shade—the day was hot, but pleasantly dry—while Jamo and Caldera (basket held daintily under his chin with both hands) explored the little territory they had. From a fissure at the foot of the eastern cliff, sweet water pooled into a cavity where silvery fish darted. Jamo raised his flashlight but could make out only a distant wall—until Caldera produced the green obsidian lens from its basket, and the cave flooded with emerald light, revealing a deep pond swirling with hundreds more silvery fish, who bobbed up, open-mouthed and squinting, to regard the newcomers. In fact, the cave (comparably humid as it was) proved a treasury of delectable meals: crayfish, crabs, bivalves, mollusks, and several highly flavorful seaweeds were massed on the surrounding ledges. Krater, a sailor with a working knowledge of edible marine life, rapidly inventoried these troglodytic provisions and drew up menus on a scrap torn from the rutter. Yet there was no obvious passage to land beyond the shale walls. A land beyond the cliffs certainly existed, for—as Professor Caldera observed to Jamo when they emerged—the pinnacles above were undulating with furious silhouettes that shouted, waved poles and jury-rigged weaponry, and gesticulated offensively as they stumbled among the shrieking gannets. “Now I know where we are,” said Jamo. “This island’s a den of wreckers and brigands, former acrobats…a troupe of goddamn saltimbanques who claim any salvage that washes up here! It must have been their lights that led us onto the reef… We won’t last long if they make it down those cliffs.” Professor Caldera nibbled thoughtfully on his beard-ends and advised Jamo to quit panicking; the wreckers, for all their acrobatic prowess, had no immediate means of reaching them. The mainland, furthermore, (here he consulted the dripping rutter) lay only a few hours’ sail nor’-nor’-east. (Jamo, bemused, pointed out that the ship had been destroyed, but the professor paid no attention. He instead contemplated a gigantic shadow that had fallen over the entire beach, the origin of which was obscure; it disappeared as soon as this paragraph concluded.) Once the survivors were gathered, Professor Caldera announced that a party needed to return to the hold before high tide if they meant to leave the island. “Leave?” cried Sister Agnolotta. “Why would we want to do that? The Lord has clearly led us here, and provided His holy seafoods, so that—deprived of the company of young women—we might found a monastic community of celibate sailors.” Many of the sailors hastened to explain that they were homosexuals, to which the nun could only cross herself stereotypically. She insisted on joining the party regardless, in hopes of recovering her own cargo. “That may indeed be necessary,” said Professor Caldera. The tide had not yet returned to lap at the reef, where tiny pink crustaceans skittered playfully in all directions (pelagic red crabs, according to Krater, found in these waters during El Niño phases). Inside the hold—seawater ankle-deep, the dark impenetrable until Jamo and Caldera again combined their lenses to bathe it in green light—they took stock of the cargo. Sister Agnolotta gathered dozens of metal ex-votos in the folds of her skirt and Caldera tucked a bamboo pole under his arm. The real task, and the most puzzling to all but the insistent professor, was the extraction of the mysterious black stone from its musty rosewood-and-pewter casket. The stone was heavy, rectangular, and cold to the touch. Four sailors were needed to strain it through the hatch, then drag and float it shoreward. By the time it beached, night had come on, and the teak cube stood isolated again by the starry tide. (Throughout all this, the wreckers on the pinnacles had not ceased shouting, blowing raspberries, and timidly attempting to slide down the cliff face, only to be chased back up by hundreds of outraged gannets.) After dinner (crayfish with a raw gannet egg cracked on top, Krater’s expertise being technical rather than culinary), Professor Caldera insisted that one more task remained that evening: making tools from the wreckage. “For—?” asked Jamo. “Each item required for our escape is already at our disposal,” the professor explained. A careful assembly was required, and a close reading of the tides. It was necessary for the survivors to conceal their activities from the watchers on the pinnacles, too; therefore, all conversation would henceforth be utilitarian and elliptical. If they put their trust in him, Caldera said, he would deliver them from the island. He fixed the green obsidian lens to the top of his bamboo pole and planted it in the sand near Krater’s fire. An emerald glow shone on the cliff walls and throughout the narrow cove, while the weary sailors, who had begun to collect debris and hew tools with rocks and shells, rose as demonic shadows among the banks of nesting gannets. “All art,” Caldera mused, smiling at the gigantic silhouettes, “was certainly born on a night like this, when a stick in the hand of one man, burnt at its tip, traced an ashen penumbra around the shadow of another.” Higher still, the saltimbanques on the pinnacles continued to pace, their powder-white faces and the dusty roses and blues of their costumes almost visible in the glow of their own fire. Caldera watched their lights die down as he rested his head on a smooth stone. It would be some time before the cries of seabirds woke him. All the while he dreamed of engineering—plans and dimensions, Nautiluses in the trenches of twilight, Martians in their tripods. (He was never in his own dreams; there were only illuminating pictures.) In the glittering morning, while the survivors slept, the great shadow fell again across the cove like a bearded patriarch stooping to peer from the rocks. It traced a line down the cliffs where the birds now circled, then stretched a finger toward the teak cube on the reef, as if its caster wanted to remind itself of what was inside. ❊ Zorba’s mother had run off with another troupe (they had a bear), but his father was also gifted, if stifled in his craft by excessive self-consciousness. Once, as he leaped from a bench onto the roof of a tavern, a thought—“How is this possible?”—sprang into his head; he landed wrong and shattered his legs on the tiles. After that, he decided his children would be better off without an education that encouraged intellectual speculation. Hobbling among them with his staff, swearing and hissing like a vulture (in profile he resembled the poet Dante), he taught them only lessons to which their bodies could respond—pure slapstick, treading on rakes, tripping downstairs and bouncing up unhurt—and, being so devoted to this one idea, entirely forgot to show them how to market themselves. To onlookers they were simply six giggling, acrobalancing youths and a dying man with fierce eyes and a sharp beak. When the moment came, in the wastes, Zorba didn’t even think to bury him. On later wanderings they sometimes came across the old man, curled up like a tumbleweed and withered by the sun, his lips browned like a leather bag into which desert life had crept. At last Zorba threw a tarp over him and pinned it with four rocks, less to dignify the body than to hide it from his younger siblings. It happened with a rapidity that still surprised him. Zorba had learned (he was the only one old enough to remember the days before his father began his lessons) that the aged were conscious of the brevity of their years, certainly more than the young; yet the events of his life had tumbled on him like objects dislodged from the top shelf of a closet. Now he was father to his five siblings, charged with guiding them through the inland villages and along the dunes and pinnacles of the coast. How had they managed in his mother’s time? He struggled to remember. One midday, they banged their bench in a portside square and waited for the crowd to gather; they wore the bright costumes their father had sewn them on desert nights. When a few onlookers appeared, the saltimbanques could only stare and clear their throats awkwardly. At that moment a ship was seen far below, driven onto the cliffs by the wind. The villagers rushed to see what remained; a luxurious mass of salvage lay scattered on the shingle, inaccessible—or so it appeared—until the saltimbanques, who had followed along, leaped and vaulted over the rocks to collect it, for which they were handsomely paid. Had their parents made a living this way too? It didn’t matter to Zorba, so long as it kept them fed. In time they learned to light the torches themselves, and to draw ships into dangerous waters; they brained the survivors and peddled the loot to crowds attracted by their acrobatic feats and pratfalls. A shadow had seemed to hover over them all those years, as Zorba dimly recalled—the shadow of a man of prodigious size, leaning forward in a seated position, one arm stretched out before him, as if to guide them toward a predetermined end. The day before, once it was clear there were survivors, the saltimbanques had cartwheeled and pole-vaulted to the cliff’s edge. They had never worked this stretch of coast. The cliffs were too steep for an easy descent (their peripatetic life had, in truth, taken a toll; they no longer moved with the same agility)—the gannets were too fearsome, the sun was too glaring. Zorba regarded his siblings with concern. He could no longer ignore their growing weakness; they were clearly unwell, their pallid complexions barely concealed by thick makeup. They wore the same costumes, though the colors had faded: Zorba in his harlequin lozenges, Oval in his red jester’s cap, Lilith in her flowery bonnet, Devil in his ochre shorts and sand-pink tunic, and the two youngest, Sturgio and Gray Kelly, in the brightest, best-preserved outfits—fresh azure for the boy and applause-gathering salmon for the girl, who had only to curtsy to become the darling of a crowd. (What he saw displeased him: Lilith sitting on her own, still as a carving; Oval staggering—ever since a crate of scotch had washed up he’d been unpredictable; Devil lost in his sketchbook, filled with acrobats happier than himself and tiny women perched precariously on the rims of cocktail glasses; only the two youngest still frolicked joyfully and looked at him with trusting eyes.) “Sturgio, Kelly—keep watch.” They skipped hand-in-hand to the edge of the pinnacle and saw what they’d seen the day before: the shadows moving on the water and the cove walls, their tools hammering rhythmically and enigmatic words barely audible (“Three violet to beam!” “Mirror on stone edge!” “Mast-step!” “Waterline!”—nonsense). The teak cube remained planted on the reef. Figures trickled from its hatch, hauling more objects ashore (this time, though the saltimbanques couldn’t know it, the pipes of a heavy organ), while a small man in a charcoal suit paced the sand, his hands clasped behind his back and the tufts of his beard clenched between his teeth. “Get a better look,” Zorba barked, clapping Devil out of his sketches. Devil climbed weakly over a few rows of nests before a gannet clamped onto him by the seat of his shorts and chased him back up, shrieking. It was, in any case, impossible to see what was happening below. “The beach’s flooded!” Sturgio and Kelly called excitedly at noon the next day. Zorba jolted up and crawled to the edge. It did look that way—a shimmering silver plain where the sand had been—but as he squinted, shading his eyes, he made out the beard-chewer strolling placidly across it. “Mirrors…?” said Zorba. “Must be dozens—Oval, go see.” The plump jester set down his bottle of Macallan 12, lifted his pole, and muttered as he judged the angle—with a call of “Oop” he vaulted into a dark cleft between two pinnacles. All the saltimbanques screamed and came running. “I’m fine,” they heard after a while, “but I don’t know how to get back up. I’m really stuck.” “I’m sorry, Oval,” Zorba called down. “We’ll free you.” As he glanced back at the beach, he saw that the great shadow had fallen over the survivors, as it always seemed to do when the saltimbanques were about to get a good look at their activities. Zorba spat in disgust, though he felt a pang in his heart. That shadow had fallen over him once. He’d been under it—that much he knew. (Suffice it to say that the saltimbanques spent days extracting Oval from the cleft. They had to lower water and food—their customary snack of dried meat sticks—and slowly ease him up with ropes. They moved together as they used to when they were younger and haler and the act still worked perfectly. “We love you, Oval,” the children shouted to him. “Love you, too,” he answered hoarsely, visible only as a gently smiling circle of floury makeup far below. Zorba swore they would have him up soon; then they’d go kill the bastards who’d done this—meaning the survivors.) It was evening on the sixth day when they pulled Oval to safety and watched him sprawl across the rocks, his stomach heaving. “Catch your breath,” ordered Zorba, flush with success, “then lower me down so I can hear what these rascals are doing.” The saltimbanques wearily formed a human chain and lowered Zorba headfirst until the sea-roar and the pounding of hammers filled his ears. Two figures were arguing below—an old nun and the beard-chewer. He could make out part of what they said. AGNOLOTTA: You’re insatiable! Don’t force them to keep at it, they’re exhausted… Besides, it’s sacrilege! CALDERA: Sister, they can relax whenever they want—if they’re not too worried about being massacred by these clowns. AGNOLOTTA: But destroying sacred images—incarnations of His supreme love! CALDERA: Think of it more as building a kind of…nautical church… AGNOLOTTA: St. Trey didn’t die a martyr so you could plop him on your poop! CALDERA: We’ll talk it over tomorrow. When we’re safe. AGNOLOTTA: But— CALDERA: Tomorrow, Sister… Tomorrow… “Tomorrow?” Zorba strained for more, but a gust of wind set the human chain swinging. They dangled comically—to observers; laughter rose from the shadows below—and dangerously—to the saltimbanques, who scrambled up with extreme difficulty and lay in the dust afterward, disentangling themselves. Zorba pounded the dust with his fists, shaking feverishly; he had glimpsed something in the moment before they hauled him up: long and low against the cliff face, a strange shadow… “Tomorrow… We have to get down there tomorrow…” But the exhausted man was soon asleep. Only in his dreams, which were anything but restful, did he realize what he had seen. In the morning, he sprang to his feet, seizing the cudgel he reserved for wet work. He was certain, for once, that he knew what was happening, and what to do. But he was off by a matter of hours—it was already too late—the object was on the tide. The saltimbanques could only gaze in stupefaction until the glare of the escaping ship forced them to cover their eyes. Zorba recoiled, blinded, while in his ears rang the cacophonous pinging and chiming of the vessel, from the decks of which the survivors (not least Sister Agnolotta) gesticulated ferociously and shouted gratuitous insults. ❊ P.S. A description of Professor Caldera’s ship is in order. When the saltimbanques recovered their sight, they perceived a low, angular craft, still too brilliant to observe directly on account of the professionally silvered mirrors that formed its hull, and the hundreds of tin and pewter milagros and ex-votos with which the copper sheathing had been fastened along the waterline (ringing and beating like departing angels, Zorba thought to himself—just exactly like guardian angels leaving us behind for good; and indeed the hands and eyes of the ex-votos appeared to flicker and close in the sun, while the wooden heads of the santos protruding from the spars turned away as the ship took its nor’-nor’-easterly course; that dead Christ at the stern had surely shut his eyes against them, too, if perhaps with some regret—his mouth did gape in agony). Amidships stood a mast of bamboo poles lashed together and braced by other saints and angels (bent martyrs and outstretched nuns, enjambed as construction had necessitated—swords and trumpets springing from their mouths and eyes). What stretched from the mast, rather than sails, were dense parallel and cross-hatched layers of Caldera’s miraculous wool thread, dyed five pleasing colors (violet, green, yellow, blue, red—the latter two being the longer threads, which had been reserved for rigging). Beyond what the saltimbanques could see, we might add that the organ pipes had been bent into ribs, stringers, and knees; the mysterious black stone served as the ballast keel; the joints between the mirrors and the copper sheaths had been caulked with pine tar; and the cork collection (still fragrant with wine) had been packed for floatation and shock absorption into the lower compartments and along the bilge. The chimes audible to the saltimbanques came from the gears, springs, and escapement of the giant clockworks, now converted into winches, capstan, and windlass. One of the enamel clock faces—a plump sun smiling over a grassy hill—had become the binnacle, while the other—a content, rather feline moon—stood at the stern, where a rudder made from teak planks soon steered the survivors well beyond the gaze of the figures despairing on the pinnacles. ❊ P.P.S. Read no further if you prefer to avoid disappointment. Professor Caldera’s invention, while seaworthy enough for the distance required, does not of course make the crossing easily. This is due in part to the silvered mirrors that form both hull and decking. Extra care must be taken to avoid shattering these surfaces, and no crew can remain particularly effective when every task must be performed on tiptoe. Even more troublesome is the disorientation caused by the sky’s bright turquoise reflection on every inch of the vessel. The survivors see themselves elongated and inverted, like the Hanged Man of Tarot, while the tiny hands, hearts, and eyes of Sister Agnolotta’s milagros rattle constantly in their ears, and the giant clockwork never stops booming the hours. As night falls, the moon and the Milky Way appear with perfect clarity beneath the sailors’ feet—or rather beneath their outstretched arms and legs, for they are now prostrate with vertigo. This idea of Caldera’s was completely idiotic; it makes no sense to them at all. They turn to him accusingly, but Professor Caldera—an obvious invention—has ceased to exist. The ship has drifted beyond the reach of the great shadow that so often fell across them. Worse still is the fate of the saltimbanques, who can only cling to their pinnacle as light fades. “What did you want from us? What did you do to us?” These are the questions in the mouths of Zorba and his siblings. They, too, have turned toward the last location of the shadow, which was that of the author, but it is not to be seen, because the story has been resolved, the desired word count reached, and they no longer serve a narrative function. • <img width="610" height="12" width_o="610" height_o="12" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" data-mid="253400591" border="0" data-scale="36" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/610/i/3a7397813d930ce8030b3380b41f30b8571b09157e122278ed95377fa0ba18e4/Screen-Shot-2022-01-16-at-13.48.51-05.png" /> <img width="395" height="395" width_o="395" height_o="395" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a8ffec12693f88b4a4d3b5fbce6ea10e721b0434148a0f127bd6dda071ebbb27/Addison-Zeller.png" data-mid="253400766" border="0" data-scale="37" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/395/i/a8ffec12693f88b4a4d3b5fbce6ea10e721b0434148a0f127bd6dda071ebbb27/Addison-Zeller.png" />Addison Zeller lives in Wooster, Ohio. His work appears in 3:AM Magazine, The Cincinnati Review, Burial Mag, minor literature[s], and elsewhere. Twitter | Bluesky | Instagram