THECRAWLSPACEJOURNAL

ISSUE ONE 2016

The Editors

Sharla Yates, Founding Editor and Editor in Chief

Rachael Dymski, Founding Editor and Community Director Kelly Kepner, Editor and Marketing Director

Athena Wintruba, Editor and Web Content Manager

Adi Bracken, Editor and Social Media Moderator

Lisa Slage Robinson, Fiction Editor

LetterFrom

A

The Editors

Hello Fellow Crawlers,

Welcome to our maiden voyage with Issue One. This journalhas already taken us on many adventures from our firstbrainstorming session to these words now dancing across thescreen.

Within these pages you’ll find many dogs (nearly a pack ofdogs), a robot, nautical voices, and (many) calls from thebeyond. There’s longing, but also humor. A “strange” way of seeing things that makes perfect sense to us. We feel a deepgratitude for our editors, family and all the writers whohelped make this first issue a reality.

We thank them for their time, creativity, input, and most ofall, belief in this literary escapade. We're very pleased you’vefound us and hope that you find as much pleasure in thesestories and poems as we have.

Enjoy!

Table of Contents

K e n n y G o u l d

M e r c e d e s L a w r y

Goondoolay

T e s s W i l s o n Mechanics

S . A . F o s t e r Crawling Blue

M a r i l e t a R o b i n s o n Black Hole

L a u r a M a d e l i n e W i s e m a n Troll Ashes

J o r d a n G r e e n Ship In A Bottle

Sea Siren Call

M a u r e e n P h i l l i p s Wolf Girl

K e n n y G o u l d Timmy's Talking Dog

Goondoolay Kenny Gould

Hello all.

Longtime reader, first time poster. I wasn’t going to post at alluntil I saw KittenMouse’s June 2014 thread about bunkGoondoolay plants. Glad to see I’m not the only one. This thread’sa bit old, but I’m going to post about my experience with the hopethat we can restart the conversation and maybe come to some sortof conclusion.

I bought my Goondoolay in Winter 2007 from a Merchant in EastFarmor. I know he was Guild Certified because I tested his paperswith corter oil. The Merchant looked at my palms and ran a hawkfeather down my arms, and then he turned around and fumbledthrough his drawers. After a while, he said, “The Goondoolay,” andbrought out the plant. Instructions were taped to the side; I’veincluded a copy of the text, in case anyone’s interested:

1. Place the Goondoolay in an area of bright where it won’t beeasily disturbed.

2. Water the Goondoolay with one cup of water every other week.

I followed the instructions exactly. That’s been going on for sevenyears and nothing has happened. After the first year, I tried toreturn the plant to the Merchant, but he refused to speak with me.When I appealed to the City Council, they pointed to theMerchant’s Guild Rule book. Needless to say, I’m a bitdisappointed. When my neighbor watered his Goondoolay, the OwlLord appeared at his feet and gave him a flaming sword. Hasanyone else had a similar problem? Or do Goondoolays take thislong to sprout? I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts.

Mechanics Tess Wilson

My boyfriend is a robot. I’m not speakingmetaphorically, I bought him. An estate sale.Missing an arm, he was inexpensive. Essentiallyappliance, he helped around the house,took on a few one-armed tasks, changedlight bulbs, steadied ladders, dusted,checked off to-do lists.

Woke me with coffeeevery day at 7:30.Good morning, ma’am.

Which turned into breakfast together, holding handswhile we walked the dog, as longas I held the leash.

At the dinner table,Could you pass the –pass the –pass the –until I ding my fork against his head. – salt? Secondhand, he came with someglitches.

Friends don’t come around as often.It’s creepy. I just don’t knowhow to act around him.

They don’t know how nice it is,the gentle static of my mornings,waking up to a warm cup, a cold hand on my shoulder. Good –Good –Good –

I’m scrubbing coffee stains out of Mike’s identical white mugs,hating Ryan Carluso, and wishing for a big brother, when the worldfirst starts to leak.

The brother in my mind is a firefighter type. He scales mountainsand rescues drowning toddlers, and right now, he leans one side ofhis tall muscle-self against the wall, folds his arms, and asks, “Youwant me to kill him for ya?”

Yeah, I think.“No,” I say.

But I can’t help imagining Ryan with his perfectly gelled hair gettinghis pretty-boy face ground into the asphalt. He starts crying way toosoon, and that makes me realize that I hate him even more, forbeing weak. Too weak, in fact, to tell me eight months ago, beforethat night in his garage, that he never really “felt it” for me.

Then, right in the back room of Mike’s Coffee where I am supposedto be scrubbing those brown stains from the white mugs and notdrawing attention to my too-young-for-taxes self, the wall starts todrip.

This cobalt liquid splats on the floor beside the sink, and my firstthought is that it looks like the toilet water after my mom puts oneof those disks into it so that people will walk into the bathroom andthink, Oh, what a lovely ocean bungalow instead of Oh, this is theplace where everyone does their business. But my second thought isthat, once again, I have broken some difficult-to-replace mechanicalitem and I can’t even do dishes right, and Mike is gonna kill me, so Iturn off the faucet and inspect the damage.

A round blue clot is forming where the ceiling meets the wall.

Crawling Blue S.A. Foster

It’s oozing down the fake red brick, and dripping to the floor.And then I hear her.

It’s this little girl with a voice like screeching brakes and shatteringglass—a voice like a car accident outside your window, and all she’ssaying is—help me help me help me help me

And it’s like I’m dreaming because no one raised by my mother, bymy seashell-bathroom-decorating, “Don’t-use-that-soap-that’s-the-guest-soap” mother would ever do something like this, but I couldswear that girl’s voice is coming from behind the wall, so I lean in tolisten, and then, get this, I touch the blue stuff.

And I’m listening so hard that I don’t notice Mike until all two-hundred-fifty Sicilian pounds of him is right behind me, and hescares the crap out of me, and his white mug is shattering on thefloor, and broken rounded bits are rolling away in pieces where Idrop it.

“Jesus, Mazzeti! Why you so jumpy, huh?” He wipes a hand on hissorry apron then points an accusing finger. “Sign of a guilty mind,”he says. Lumbering away, he adds, “Don’t think I won’t charge youfor that.”

I squat down to pick up the pieces, and I notice that the toxic bluemess is all over my hand, so I say, “Hey Mike, you got somethingthat’ll take this off?”

Mike sticks his head out from the shiny customer area where he’salready gone to get away from me, and I can tell he hasn’t reallyheard me, but he looks at the pieces in my hand, and he says, “Justtoss it. Nobody’ll drink from it if it’s cracked.”

And I realize that he can’t see it. Not surprising, because Mikedoesn’t really ever see me. But my mother doesn’t see it either whenI try to wash my hands for baked ziti night.

And it’s then that I start to panic a little.

Not so anyone can notice, but an inside panic. The kind that stilllets you do things like pass the olive oil to Nana, and ignore a textmessage from Ryan Carluso.

Because even though my hand looks like it’s holding its breath, andmy heart is beating in my ears like a crazy war drum, the fact is,Mom just can’t see the blue.

I think that maybe Nana’s eyes are on me too long, and that maybeshe sees, but no. No one can see it.

The next morning, in the shower, it happens again.

The blue drops look so much worse when they mix with the hotwater. They coil out like snakes toward my bare feet, and I thinkthat I’m bleeding, that they’re coming from me.

Blood’s only blue while it’s still inside you, I think.

Then I hear her again, the little girl. I hear her so clearly. Her voiceechoes through the drain like when my mother is belting Puccini inthe upstairs bathroom. It’s like this girl is right there, trapped inthe pipes.

Help me!

My father always says he can tell the difference between when hiskids are whining and when they are really hurt; this is real. I hearwildness. I hear pain, like someone is holding her hand over alighter and she can’t pull away.

The dogs are coming! Helpme helpme please helpmee!

Jesus. I don’t know what I’m doing. I get down on my hands andknees on the floor of the shower, with the hot water pelting againstmy back, and the blue on my palms and shins, and I can’t believethis, I start talking to the drain.

"Don’t be afraid.” I tell her, giving the advice my dad once gave meabout hypothetical rabid Nazi attack dogs, “Just kick them. Aim fortheir faces.”

They have teeth! she says. I’m barefoot.

“Well…you have teeth on your toes!” I say, because if I’m goingcrazy and talking to little girls in drains they might as well havewhatever equipment I want.

I don’t! she screams. My feet don’t have any teeth!

And now she’s crying so hard I can’t tell what she’s saying. I clenchmy jaw, and I hear my heart drumming a warpath again.

Then all the sound stops, and I don’t know how I know, but I knowthat Nana is in the room. Yes, it’s her. I smell her powder andperfume on the other side of the shower curtain.

“You okay in there, my baby?” she asks.

I turn the shower off and stand up quickly, without breathing, soshe won’t know I’ve been crouched here like an animal. I brush myhair out of my face, dripping blue all down my cheek and onto myneck.

“I’m good, Nana. Just talking to myself.”

She waits there quiet for a minute, like maybe she’s expectingmore. I can feel my skin getting colder as it drips, and I wonder ifshe can see the blue stains through the curtain.

“There no dogs here, baby,” she says softly, and then she pulls thedoor closed again.

Dad always says that Nana hears things. Like dogs, maybe. Like me.Now she’s gone.

The little girl is gone, too.

But the blue? That stays.

It’s all over me now, like a sloppy inky tattoo job, and I’m prettysure no one on the planet can see it, but I can see it. I can feel it onmy skin like it’s trying to get in, so I pull out all the stops: boots, aturtleneck, hands in pockets, hair combed in a dorky side part, andan inch gone from my crusted over bottle of maybe-it’s-insecurityskin foundation, and it’s all barely enough for me to pass as normal—except that it’s July.

And Ryan Carluso’s pool party is today. If I don’t go, he’ll know howupset I am. I promised we were still friends. I promised I wouldn’tbe a girl about it.

I walk around weird now. I’m listening to everything too close. I seetwo kids tossing a frisbee, and I yell at them to stop playing in thestreet. I sound thirty.

All nine blocks to Ryan’s house I imagine white dogs coming at mefrom bushes and from inside of cars when people pull up beside me.

When I ring the bell at Ryan’s I imagine their heads chewing upthrough the soil of the giant potted plants that Ryan’s Mom keepsoutside their door. I see them snapping at me, shoving their pointysnouts through the banisters near the entryway, and trying to gnawa hand off when I reach inside the ice chests where Ryan’s mom hasstored all the non-carbonated organic drinks.

I imagine kicking their faces in while Ryan and I do this subtleavoidance dance around the pool and the people and the snacktable.

I am still imagining this crap when the party is dying and I’mgetting a fruit juice pop from the freezer in the garage, and Ryan issuddenly there behind me.

And while my hand is on the only orange pop, his is on my ass, andI can’t say I don't like it because I do.

But I don’t like Ryan. So I don’t say anything.

And his hand starts to travel.

And the door to the freezer has been open too long and it startsdripping onto the cement. Shit. It’s dripping blue. Right here, rightin front of Ryan, but he’s really interested in getting through myfirst fabric layer, and he hasn’t noticed.

I pretend to look for something behind the frozen strawberries.

First I hear Ryan, and then her.

“I like that we can still be close like this,” he says, sliding his handover my stomach.

Help me.

Her voice echoes, like she’s in a space with its own acoustics. It’sinsane, I know, but she must be inside the fridge, or behind it.

“I don’t know what I would do without you in my life,” Ryan says.He runs his thumb in a circle at my center.

I push aside the carob ice cream packages and the spinach pot pies.I reach deeper, shoving packages, until my fingers brush somethinghidden in the back and suddenly, I realize what it is.

Meat.

Steaks.

All wrapped in white and discrete, like there aren’t chunks of fleshback there, like there aren’t carnivores in this house.

I just didn’t feel it, you know?

I press past the meat and it’s like the freezer has deepened. I haveto lean far in to get my fingers against the back. I reach furtherand push and crack my nails against the cold plastic and theybleed a little blue. I don’t care. I have to get to that girl.

I lean further in, and Ryan leans into me, and I reach ahead. Wedo this again. Then again. Like before.

Help me NOW!

Drumming explodes around me. I drum too, because I dropdinners and clatter ice trays to the floor. Pound. Crash. Ryan stops what he’s doing long enough to notice me.

“Mazetti?”

My arm breaks through first, snapping through plastic and wire,and I can feel the open space world back there, where the wallshould be, but it isn’t. It’s an open blue world, gushing blue allover my arm, pouring over the contents of the freezer and into thegarage, and she is calling me. She knows my name.

Ryan hears her, I think, because he freaks. He goes sprawling onthe floor, all sloppy in my blue flood.

He calls out to me as I pound the back wall out, and haul myselfinto the freezer, sliding forward like a snake on my wet stomach.

“MAZETTI!”

But I’m gone. All the way through.

In there, it’s the little girl, the dogs, and me.

Ryan’s scared boy voice is in another valley.

My broken nails are knives, and I slice them across my cheeks,streaking blue.

I slice them through my hair on one side, and through my skirt.

I’ve got teethboots and skin and just enough skirt.

I race to her there, on the rocks beside the crashing blue waves,and the dogs are closing in. She hangs around my waist, hookingher hands in a knot at my navel, like she’s drowning, like she’s partof my skin and my guts.

And I start slicing through those canines. I toss them like salads. Ikick their faces in.

“You okay? You want me to?” I shout.

“Yes,” she says, gripping my stomach. “Yes!”

Black Hole MarlietaRobinson

A black hole was once a starUntil the pressure became too greatNow it travels incognito“No pictures, please”

Troll Ashes Laura Madeline Wiseman

When we arrived again at the carvings, you scattered half theashes. The other half you wanted to save for our yard. I saidwords before the seal and you said words, the bone bits whiteagainst the brown of fall. I asked you if the trolls had a way ofhaunting, of coming back, if this one might come again at night.You shook your head and took me home. You held my hand,took it really. I didn’t say no.

Still, it’s strange to sleep. To find a bed and stay withoutroaming, without listening for what shakes, bodies hitting walls,things exploding above. Sometimes the troll that lives under ourneighbor’s porch calls to me. His voice is the voice of citiesbombed to destroy what’s underneath. He wants me to look so Ilook towards nothing.

Our yard shivers half-dead. No one tends the stones, collectsthe dropped limbs, stops the cash crop going rogue. I looktowards nothing and see—porch of glass window, porch of junkto be dragged across concrete, porch of blacked tools—then I goinside. Because you thought it best, we frosted every windowand moved my bed across the house to the spare, where I sleepnow, really sleeping.

Ship In A Bottle Jordan Green

Deep down there’s a ship in a bottle,Tossing about on a poison half-cupOf frothing black water.

How did the ship get into the bottle?Well, I’ll tell you how:

A drip, a drop, a piece at a time –A tattered sail, a splintery knot, a creaking, aching board of hull,

One at a time, drip, drip, drip,Pulled down by the flow of stormy sea,Through the rigid narrow neck.

A drip, a drop, a piece at a time –A bulging barrel, some broken glass, the heaviest cargo last of all,

The ship went into the bottleAnd there it stays,Taking on water,

Lightning flaring,Seamen swearing,Wood screeching, grinding against the glass.

It pitches and bucks in its tiny typhoon,The gale all the worse confined.

How did the ship get into the bottle?I suppose looking back I know now.

But a far more important question arises:

Now how do I get out?

Sea Siren Call Mercedes Lawry

Can you hear me calling?Here, on the rocks, with the barking sealsand the smooth jade moss.Come closer, I want storiesof the wide world. You can touchmy long black hair and findsecrets in my eyes.Come to me, sailor. Let the windbring you here where the sun sinksinto the horizon with a green flashand the stars begin to specklethe black sky, where I will sing wildand beautiful songs to keep you near.

Wolf Girl Maureen Phillips

In the den, the wolf pups are sleeping.There’s a secret they are keeping.Snuggled among their furry swirl,They are hiding a little girl.

A tiny baby when first they found her.No fur coat was wrapped around her.They pulled her from a rushing river,Huddled around to stop her shiver.

Into the field, the pups are bounding.Wolf Girl chases her heart is pounding!Time to run and play across the meadow,Pouncing at every twitch and shadow.

Sneaking up the ridge to peep,At unsuspecting silly sheep.A yip, a nip a bark, a wail!The sheep wise up and turn tail.

Night is falling, no more prowling.Now is the time for wolf pack howling.Round they circle in a ring,Lift their heads and start to sing.

Those at home, lock their doors,When the howling floats across the moors.Then they stand as if spellbound,For one voice is surely not a hound.

Timmy's Talking Dog Kenny Gould

Once there was a boy named Timmy. A wizard sold him a wish,and he wished for a talking dog. A maltese appeared on hisdoorstep. It was small and white with beady black eyes, andspoke with the voice of a heavy smoker. It recited baseball scoresand incessantly complained about the weather. “Turn it off!” Timmy’s parents said, but the dog wouldn’t shutup.

Kenny Gould is a freelance journalist and writer living in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, where he’s currently pursuing his Master of Fine Arts in Fiction aswell as his 200-hour Yoga Alliance teacher training certificate. You can followhim on Twitter at @kb_gould or on his website at kennygould.com.

Tess Wilson's poems have previously been published in the 2011 issue of InscapeMagazine (print only), in the annual Free Poems series, and in the Summer 2015issue of NEAT Magazine (http://neatmag.net/issues/). She earned her MFA inCreative Writing from Chatham University and currently serves as AssistantEditor of Hyacinth Girl Press and Reader/Carpenter for the Pittsburgh PoetryHouses project. Previously, she was an Associate Editor and Online LayoutDesigner of The Fourth River, Editor/Illustrator of This Time: An Anthology, and aPoetry Editor of Inscape Magazine. She is also in the midst of launching State BirdPress, a micropress featuring zines and other illustrated works. She collects bigdictionaries and small rocks. Tess contributed the watercolor art work for thisissue.

S.A. Foster (Hess Oster) earned an M.F.A. in Children’s Literature from HollinsUniversity and an M.A. in Shakespeare and Education from the ShakespeareInstitute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She spent four years pretending to be otherpeople in schools across the US, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, MainlandChina, and the Philippines. Then she moved to Seoul, South Korea, where shepretended to be more people for four more years and ran a group of pretenderscalled Cut Glass Theatre. She also taught students about how much better andmore poetic it was when people pretended to be other people during theRenaissance. She once threw herself a “Congratulations! You’re Jewish!” party.She currently teaches with the California Shakespeare Company and spends timewith her dolorous calico Maggie. She has blue and green bottles glued to her wall.She tries to be herself, but that’s not easy. That’s why she writes

Marileta Robinson is a former editor at Highlilghts for Children and HighlilghtsHigh Five, and still contributes stories and poems to these and other publications.She has been writing all her life, and has two pictures books to her credit, inaddition to numerous short stories for children. She loves to read fantasy andscience fiction, and her all-time favorite books are the Earthsea Trilogy by UrsulaLe Guin.

Contributors' Biosin order of appearance

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s recent books are An Apparently Impossible Adventure(BlazeVOX [books], 2016) and Leaves of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to CommonGarden Affection (Red Dashboard, 2016). Her collaborative book Intimates andFools is an Honor Book for the 2015 Nebraska Book Award. She teaches at theUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jordan Green is a STEM-student-turned-author who studies Creative Writing inTucson, Arizona. She loves reading stories out in the sun, but would never passup a chance to take a long walk with her dog through the shaded woods of herOhio home. Essayist, NaNoWriMo champion, and contributor to multiple poetryanthologies, she can usually be found sitting outdoors somewhere, notebook inhand.

Mercedes Lawyer’s writing for children has previously appeared in HumptyDumpty Magazine, Cicada, Cricket, Caterpillar,Balloons, Shoofly, Pennywhistle Pressand other publications.

Maureen (Moe) Phillips loves children’s poetry. It’s her passion. She is a nativeNew Yorker now living along the magical marsh in Guilford, Ct. She believesMona Lisa had the right idea. If she could leave one thing behind when her timeis up, it would be a smile.