MIXTAGE MAG ISSUE 01: TANGIBLE

437 WILTON STREET (A BRICK STORY)

Zach Murphy

Charlie’s wistful heart tingles as he pulls up to 437 Wilton Street, the apartment building from his childhood. Everything is gone but the skeleton of a structure and the echoes of Charlie’s memories. You can board up the windows, but you can’t cross out the souls that once occupied the walls.

Every Saturday night, the entire block would light up with a Fourth of July jubilance. Dueling music speakers battled to steal the humid air at full volume. The Ramones shouted to the rooftop. Bruce Springsteen crooned to the moon. And Sam Cooke sang to the heavens.

Out in the street, Rich used to show off his candy red Mustang. Rich thought he was a lot cooler than he actually was. His hair grease looked like a mixture of egg yolks and cement. Charlie hasn’t forgotten the time that Rich revved up his ride in front of the whole neighborhood, only to blow the engine. As everybody laughed, Rich’s face blushed redder than his broken car.

Shawn was the tallest human that Charlie had ever seen. He dribbled the basketball on the bubblegum-stained concrete like he had the world in his hands. He never did make it to the pros, though. But he did become a pro of another kind. Charlie hadn’t heard about Shawn in years until the day a familiar voice spoke through the television. It was a commercial for a landscaping business — aptly named Shawn’s Professional Landscaping.

Charlie wished that he were older. Then, maybe he might’ve gotten noticed by his first crush, Henrietta. He’d often daydream about her curly hair, sparkly lip gloss, and mysterious eyes. Sometimes when Charlie passed by her door, he’d hear loud yelling and harsh bangs. Wherever she is now, he hopes that she’s safe and happy.

TJ always treated Charlie like a little brother. He’d even give him extra cash for snacks every single week. Charlie always admired TJ’s bright red Nike shoes. One day, TJ got arrested by the cops in front of Charlie’s very own eyes. It turned out that TJ was selling a certain kind of product, and it wasn’t chocolates.

Charlie’s grandma cooked the most delicious spaghetti. It smelled like love. The sauce was made from fresh tomatoes that she grew on the building’s rooftop. Charlie still thinks of her sweet smile with the missing front tooth, and the big, dark moles on her cheeks. The cancer eventually got to her. When she was put to rest, Charlie was forced to go into a new home. But it wasn’t really a home. The memories from that place are the ones that Charlie permanently boarded up in his mind.

After snapping out of his trance, Charlie picks up a decrepit brown brick from the building and sets it on the passenger side floor of his pristine Cadillac. When he arrives back at his quaint house in a quiet neighborhood, he places the brick in the soil of his tomato garden and smiles.

INTERIORS

T.W. Selvey

ENGULFMENT/INDULGENCE

Pascale Potvin

Bisexual culture is about being gnawed at from both ends, especially while in high school or at concerts filled with cheekbones higher than myself. Every person has uniquely shaped teeth and they always make new indents into me, too, instead of filling that of one another.

(But it’s always worth it when they meet in the middle.)

Maybe the vaccine will offer me that again, one day; maybe somebody else will swallow me whole.

PERMANENCE

T.W. Selvey

from Fractal Labyrinth - 35

Ric Carfagna

Noting these clouds

before the sun sets

and that there will be no equilibrium

to the visions entering

the darkening room

no transparency allotted

to the opaque eye

moored to the precision

of a physical existence

and in this room

there are stains on the wall

facing north

one can detect

magnitudes in flux

complications of structure

dimensional boundaries

that ebb and flow

and grayed spaces

retained for faces of the dead…

toward what end

is it needed

to return here again

to extinguish the candle

to bleed an intoxicating breath

into a sacrosanct realm

to feel beneath the epidermis

fractal bits of vibratory echoes

a consciousness of voices

without breadth

without blood

without

a physicality of decay

GROUND CONTROL

Caroline Dinh

TALES OF A GHOST

Ashley D. Escobar

CW: mention of suicide.

22:40. December 12th, 2019 [scroll]

We met when I was leaving, the artist that night convinced me to stay and have a few drinks. Thursdays were equivalent to a weekend in Berlin. He was the maudlin bartender in a black turtleneck. He interrupted our conversation and asked me what I missed most about California. I said: The sea.

His haircut was that of an actor’s though I am beginning to blur faces with names. Nouns with verbs. Ghosting is an act of intentionally leaving someone behind. He left a trace.

After an invitation to dinner the following night, I waited for his initial text. Hello, digital shadow of Ashley… I received it during my school’s art exhibition and ran out the door without seeing my friend. I felt like I’d lose my entrance to his world if I didn’t hurry. A precarity I sensed from our first goodbye.

In a narrow tram in Lichtenberg, I sensed I was heading in the wrong direction but stayed on. I could hardly see anything out the window from the passengers and their shopping bags, but there was light from the Christmas market in Landsberger Allee. The IKEA sign towered over the Ferris wheels and me, but those felt like miniatures as I entered rows and rows of bleak Soviet-era apartments. I felt like a shadow running endlessly towards his friend’s flat.

He told me there were fairy lights across the street. I was in complete darkness. Zip codes mattered in Berlin.

A ghost is supposed to be dead yet where is the afterlife he resides in? If he lives there at all. If there is one.

Clutching onto my bottle of white Glühwein, I took the S-Bahn to the right address. It was just a bus ride from campus. I should’ve known. I ran alongside the Panke river. Its ebbs and flows. Passing soccer fields and garden colonies. Fog drifting. I kept thinking if I didn’t get there any sooner, I’d disappear.

I learned about him, not through his words, but his actions. His footsteps descending the graffiti-covered escalator at Osloer Straße. I usually romanticized the inanimate. Objects held more power in memory. Perhaps it was an omen to never associate him with anything particular.

Black corduroy pants, fair isle sweater, forest green Docs, camel coat.

We smoke outside of his friend’s birthday party. He watches the full moon. Round and true.

I notice his lime tattoo: Limes are cut like a circle. Life’s a circle.

I take a mental photograph of us sitting on that girl’s window ledge. Above the radiator. She’s studying neurobiology. We write and smoke our days away.

We wake up to the sound of planes on her air mattress. A Berlin dream is what my friend calls it. Impressionistic. The empty beer bottles on her shelves only add up.

He dreams of an evening when condoms had been bought and chores had been completed. Planning is a tiring practice. Sometimes the unplanned is the way to go. How people meet. How people eventually leave.

I watched the sky turn lilac and then violet like a Hole song. He walked all the way home.

I wouldn’t have dreaded the New Year if it weren’t for him. Sitting on my bed, waiting for a response to my text, understanding his shortcomings. Back in California, I felt like living in the past. I was falling behind.

He had made reservations for tapas. We drank cherry beers and saw a light show at the Planetarium. We had kissed like everything was going to be okay. Only starting.

If the mediocrity of the show was a problem, then we could have laughed it off. He asked me on our way out if I was cold. If I wanted to wear his hoodie. For some reason, I couldn’t picture him watching me put it on and then watch me take it off when it was time to leave our separate ways.

Then it started to rain. Look the sky is also crying.

Like a parent trying to humor their child. Like a departure in a melodramatic film.

Our world was missing trams because we were mid-conversation, arguing over Wittgenstein and Kant, what we found beautiful in the world.

Pushing people in the right direction…Then why push me away?

I chug the beer before the next tram comes. He tells me to savor my last legal drink. I had my umbrella stolen in Milan. Friday, finality, brought an unwelcome storm.

He wishes me a Happy New Year. He sees a future together. And the future is good. A future I now know consists of a few rounds of beers and a plan to see a play about someone’s suicide note.

He didn’t want to open new dimensions. He wanted me to find someone else more playful.

I think of him at 4:48. When most people commit suicide. I had opened up to him. We were going to write plays like that play.

I never see it. He tells me he will check his calendar soon.

22:36. February 25th, 2020

He deleted my number. I can’t see his contact photo on WhatsApp any longer. He became the shadow. All that’s left is a pile of ticket stubs and bottle caps.

I wonder if the rubble is still there. Waiting.

CLOSE READING

T.W. Selvey

LOVE SPELL

Samantha K Mosca

RECIPE FOR THE BEST HUG EVER

Roseanne Fahey

Ingredients

 2 people,

 preferably you and me,

 but you can find someone else if you must.

 Clothes,

 if you're skin to skin,

 you'll get distracted by each other's bits and bobs,

 so slap on his t-shirt,

 but leave off the socks.

 The moon.

 There's too much to do during the day,

 and a dawn embrace is just a

 pat on the back

 for a one night stand.

 Perfume or Cologne.

 Best applied below the jawline or behind the ear.

 Aftershave can be an alternative if used in moderate amounts.

Method

 Hands on waist.

 Arms around shoulders.

 Heights should align if you chose you and me,

 but otherwise, bend your knees.

 Stand until the hug is well done

 or until someone starts to cramp.

 Tell them you love them

 and then let go.

PLAITED MEMORIES

Shelly Jones

THANK YOU TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS