Lunch Ticket
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Issues Archive
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Genre Archive
      • Creative Nonfiction
      • Essays
      • Fiction
      • Flash Prose
      • Interviews
      • Lunch Specials
      • Poetry
      • Translation
      • Visual Art
      • Writing for Young People
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Lunch Ticket Staff
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
      • Issue 2: Winter/Spring 2013
      • Issue 1: Spring 2012
    • Achievements
    • Community
    • Contact
  • Weekly Content
    • Friday Lunch Blog
    • Midnight Snack
    • Amuse-Bouche
    • School Lunch
  • Contests
    • Diana Woods Award in CNF
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
      • Issue 5: Summer/Fall 2014
      • Issue 4: Winter/Spring 2014
      • Issue 3: Summer/Fall 2013
    • Gabo Prize in Translation
      • Issue 22: Winter/Spring 2023
      • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
      • Issue 20: Winter/Spring 2022
      • Issue 19: Summer/Fall 2021
      • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
      • Issue 17: Summer/Fall 2020
      • Issue 16: Winter/Spring 2020
      • Issue 15: Summer/Fall 2019
      • Issue 14: Winter/Spring 2019
      • Issue 13: Summer/Fall 2018
      • Issue 12: Winter/Spring 2018
      • Issue 11: Summer/Fall 2017
      • Issue 10: Winter/Spring 2017
      • Issue 9: Summer/Fall 2016
      • Issue 8: Winter/Spring 2016
      • Issue 7: Summer/Fall 2015
      • Issue 6: Winter/Spring 2015
    • Twitter Poetry Contest
      • 2021 Winners
      • 2020 Winners
      • 2019 Winners
  • Submissions
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Spotlight: It is leaving

October 26, 2014/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Courtney McDermott

1.

On the first day there was stillness.

For a moment nothing moved. The wind held its breath. The birds stopped in midflight—their wings pinned against the blurry space of sky.

We didn’t blink, as though our eyelids were glued back. Orators’ hands hovered in mid-gesticulation. Wheels of cars didn’t rotate. Midway through an intersection we could see the perfect, shiny forms of the hubcaps, each spoke a precise dart of light.

Clocks stopped. The clappers of church bells paused before banging the brass sides. Crowds stilled—arms and legs and necks craned in poses of motion.

After the stillness we moved again, and we almost forgot about this incident.

 

2.

People are always dying, but on the next day, there was a different sort of dying.

A woman at the Dollar Store collapsed as she shelved boxes of tampons. She was only 29. A man in an I-80 Westbound toll both (Exit 274) crumpled over, his hand held out for a ticket. The cars honked, and a red trickle of blood seeped in the gulley between his pinky and ring fingers.

Babies asphyxiated in cradles, bankers reached for their throats behind glass-plated offices. The weatherman’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, as a high front blew in on the green screen behind him.

The President declared an emergency, but he fell onto his desk in the middle of the announcement, and we all heard the crack his forehead made against the wood. Then a commercial for frozen pizzas came on.

It wasn’t only the people, but the animals, too.

Deer stood on the yellow centerlines and faced the grills of cars. Cats lunged through screen doors, their furry necks caught in the screens. A tiger at the San Diego Zoo leapt over its wall, and then lay in the center of the snake pit. And though to a flock of sixth-graders it looked like the tiger had fallen asleep, its striped ribs didn’t heave and the Egyptian cobra that snuck up between its ears didn’t make the tiger flinch.

We heard—through the one lone radio station—that a herd of elephants sunk into a watering hole in Zambia, and that llamas in Peru threw themselves from Machu Picchu.

We tried to stay in our homes and wore masks to protect our airways. We sprayed the air with disinfectants and carried pocket-sized bottles of hand sanitizer.

 

3.

Birds fell from the sky on the third day. Plunking onto rooftops, catching in their beloved tree branches, landing in the laps of unsuspecting pleasure-seekers hurtling along in the Coney Island Cyclone, one of the last rollercoasters still functioning.

Ostriches in Australia were reported to have stuck their heads in the sand, suffocating. Their backsides stuck up like the ends of feather dusters, sprinkled with the dry grit of the Outback.

Fish—limp and glassy-eyed—washed up into the moats of sandcastles. And when we gathered seashells, our fingers scraped against eels and, once, a mantaray spread out in defeat.

If we wanted to swim, we had to stroke past the floating carcasses of sharks, drifting like miniature islands.

We ate a feast of fowl and shellfish, after the health department proved that there was no disease. We stuffed our stomachs with seafood and broke wishbones, forgetting our wishes.

 

4.

A NASA astronomer, in Mississippi, noticed that the buckle on Orion’s belt was missing. He demanded that the telescope be cleaned.

An amateur astronomer—twelve years of age—reported that the stars of the Big Dipper had fallen one by one, until only the North Star loomed overhead. And then, with many of us watching the sky, it popped, with blackness replacing where it had been.

The moon wasn’t visible that night, until a San Francisco priestess pointed out that it was time for the half moon. Many phone lines were down, but once word got out, suburbs called in reporting that there was no moon in their night skies either.

The next morning was not a morning, for the sun burst into millions and billions and trillions of sparks that fizzled like pop rocks, and made our mouths ache.

The only light we had now was in candlewicks and flickering light bulbs, and fires made from brittle branches. We stared into the whitest parts of the flames and imagined being burned by the sun.

Some more dangerous types lay in tanning beds and took off their eyewear, so their eyeballs would be ablaze.

 

5.

We were frantic today.

The Redwoods gave up and toppled over. Cornstalks shriveled up in Iowa, oranges rotted in their skins down in Florida, the wheat of Kansas turned to dust and could no longer be gathered. There were no more cows for butter in France, the rice paddies of China flooded, and the Dutch tulip fields molted, the petals crackling underfoot.

Throughout the day the plants blanched, until green was just a memory.

We headed in droves (those of us left) to the grocery stores and bought cartloads of cereals and moldy breads, boxes of spaghetti and Oreos and frozen peas, because what if we no longer had the option to refuse peas?

The vegans turned cruel and beat back the meat eaters for the last stalks of broccoli, raising the green heads high up like bridal bouquets.

Earthquakes divided neighborhoods and cities and countries. We’d look out our windows to the houses next door, a deep chasm where the arborvitae used to be. One man’s house swelled up in the shape of meringue, and the ground on all sides crumbled like a graham cracker crust.

 

6.

We sat atop our roofs, because the rivers and estuaries had flooded.

The oceans swallowed New Zealand last hour, and this hour they swallowed California (which finally broke away with yesterday’s earthquake).

It rained heavily and no one could tell sky from land. We walked through a perpetual waterfall. The umbrellas drooped down past our ears, our snot mixing with the water, and when we were parched, we stuck out our tongues and caught raindrops.

One mother washed her laundry outside, but the only dry place left to hang it was the attic. The jeans began to mildew.

 

7.

Today our imaginations withered, and we forgot how to have conversations.

We huddled in fog. There were no shadows, because darkness receded from whence it came. We strived to hold onto a hand, a lamppost, a chimney, and our senses faded too.

We thought that It would leave like the great and wonderful Oz—in a balloon, soaring in a burst of rainbow color up into the clouds. Or maybe as a shooting star—fast and bright and magnificent—ducking between the galaxies. Or sharp and menacing like a missile—direct and out into space, orbiting us like a satellite and breaking away.

But we had never seen It. So we only felt It leaving, as in the way of fleeting thoughts.

And between the moment of Light and After Light, we reached for something, grasped onto nothing and in the pits of what might once have been called souls, recognized a great absence. We despaired.

At the end of the week, we were entirely alone.

Courtney McDermott HeadshotCourtney McDermott is a native of Iowa currently living in the greater Boston area. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the MFA program at the University of Notre Dame. Her debut collection of short stories, How They Spend Their Sundays, was published by Whitepoint Press in 2013. She now works at Harvard and can be found on www.courtneymcdermott.com.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Courtney-McDermott-Headshot-e1561852679979.jpg 400 300 Courtney McDermott https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Courtney McDermott2014-10-26 18:09:472019-07-08 22:20:42Spotlight: It is leaving

Amuse-Bouche Archive

  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013

Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published every Friday.

Today’s course:

The Night I Want to Remember

December 16, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Sanaz Tamjidi
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/paul-volkmer-qVotvbsuM_c-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 1704 2560 Sanaz Tamjidi https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Sanaz Tamjidi2022-12-16 16:12:142022-12-16 16:12:14The Night I Want to Remember

From Paper to the Page

November 18, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Annie Bartos
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/IMG-7101-1-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1920 Annie Bartos https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Annie Bartos2022-11-18 12:27:332022-12-07 19:27:42From Paper to the Page

Confessions of a Birthday Person

November 4, 2022/in 2023ws-migration, Blog / Meghan McGuire
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/angele-kamp-poH6OvcEeXE-unsplash-scaled-1.jpg 2560 1736 Meghan McGuire https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Meghan McGuire2022-11-04 12:00:422022-12-07 19:11:45Confessions of a Birthday Person

More Friday Lunch Blog »

Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

October 7, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/jason-briscoe-VBsG1VOgLIU-unsplash-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-10-07 23:55:352022-10-07 19:31:09Mending the Heart and Slowing Down: Reintroducing Myself to Mexican Cooking

The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

September 23, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Kirby Chen Mages
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/image2-scaled.jpeg 2560 1920 Kirby Chen Mages https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Kirby Chen Mages2022-09-23 23:56:162022-09-23 21:56:42The Worth of a Billionaire’s Words

Abyssinia

August 26, 2022/in Midnight Snack / JP Goggin
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Goggin-headshot.jpg 1422 998 JP Goggin https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png JP Goggin2022-08-26 23:55:342022-08-27 17:46:29Abyssinia

More Midnight Snacks »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
Read more
https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

More School Lunch »

Word From the Editor

Our contributors are diverse and the topics they share through their art vary, but their work embodies this mission. They explore climate change, family, relationships, poverty, immigration, human rights, gun control, among others topics. Some of these works represent the mission by showing pain or hardship, other times humor or shock, but they all carry in them a vision for a brighter world.

More from the current editor »
Current Issue »

Connect With Us

lunchticket on facebooklunchticket on instalunchticket on twitter
Submit to Lunch Ticket

A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.

Get Your Ticket

We’ll keep you fed with great new writing, insightful interviews, and thought-provoking art, and promise with all our hearts never to share your info with anyone else.

Newsletter Signup
Copyright © 2021 LunchTicket.org. All Rights Reserved. Web design and development by GoodWebWorks.
Scroll to top