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The Quilted Multiverse / Still Alive / Bitters

May 30, 2022/ Stephanie Staab

“The quilted multiverse theory postulates that every possible event is occurring infinitely many times in nature, thus there are infinitely many universes resembling ours.”
                                 – Frontiers in Physic journal


One way, you pass a house with chickens in the yard and you think, “Ah, I’ve always wanted chickens. I’d be better with chickens.”

One way, you go everywhere by bike and live in a flap tent alone. Your thighs are sculpted like marble.

One way is full of bubbles: bathtubs, gum, champagne, Jacuzzis.

One way, you live over water. A Mississippi riverboat gambler or a Breton oyster farmer.

One way is a wrong turn and you can see the straight path in the valley below but it’s impossible to reach it on foot.

One way is very short but satisfying. Like a sneeze or an orgasm.

One way is dark, full of witchcraft and mistakes.

One way brings you through a portal to another dimension where all this, the virus, never happened and you go on overnight train journeys in sleeper cars and kiss and touch strangers, their alien eyebrows different than yours.

There is, of course, a parallel universe where your hand slips
slicing this bright cantaloupe.
Blood and melon juice on the counter.
Nine-fingered for the rest of your days.

Bless. It already happened.

_______________________________________________________________________


Still Alive

You write out of the blue to ask if I am “still alive”
but I imagine you’ll know the hour of my death.

On that day, the dog will lay idle by the door
and refuse to eat her breakfast.

An inconsequential volcano, far from any town, will erupt.

A brood of nine ducklings will learn to swim on the river,
but there will only be three left by the end of spring.

When you walk into the pub, the old men drinking whiskies won’t even glance up to look at you.

An uneasy feeling will come over you at odd moments like in a waiting room when you’re not sure of the intake protocol.

A short article will appear in the police blotter about a disturbance very near your house that you hadn’t noticed even though you’d been home at that exact time.

A litter of stray cats will be born all white, one after another in the loft of the barn.

Your mother won’t pick up the phone when you call.

The egg will have two yolks.

The key will stick in the lock.

Your wife will refuse your touch.

A child will be scared of you.

I promise I will let you know if I die.

_______________________________________________________________________


Bitters

In this family, we die from the inside out.
Invisible bowel diseases, ulcers, depression.
Complaints kept secret in the body for years.

We burn and rot and say nothing.
Our stomachs hurt for decades
but sure we’ll have another whiskey.
A tumbler of gin in the car on the way to church.
What’s one more sin to a sinner?

The priest says we have to remember the human dimension of Jesus.
I imagine his organs, his liver
like mine.
Wasn’t he up for a drink or two?
The sacrificial limb.

Then, coming up from somewhere deep inside me:
my odd impulse to order any drink that comes with bitters in it.
The word transports.

I imagine my grandmother at the end of her life
going through the list of times she was wronged
her private heartbreaks and slights
her bitters.

We sip bitters, we swallow bitters.

Oh bitter liver
there’s water around the bend.
We’ll repent and forgive
turn over a new lobe
cross the threshold of some anatomical landmark
a tattoo of how far we’ve come.

Stephanie Staab Headshot

Stephanie Staab is an American poet and translator living in the Black Forest. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Ligeia Magazine and Summerset Review among others. Her chapbook Earthling is available now at Selcouth Station press.

Issue Archive

  • Issue 21: Summer/Fall 2022
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  • Issue 18: Winter/Spring 2021
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  • 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
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  • 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
  • Lunch Specials
  • Poetry
  • Interviews
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  • Visual Art
  • Writing for Young People

Friday Lunch Blog

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

Today’s course:

Peace, Love, and a lot of Loud Rock & Roll

June 17, 2022/in A Transfer, Blog / Sunee Lyn Foley
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Crosses to Pentacles

June 10, 2022/in A Transfer, Blog / Jazmine Cooper
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Table to Trash

June 3, 2022/in A Transfer, Blog / Franz Franta
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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
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Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
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The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in A Transfer, Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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More coming soon!

Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every Monday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Eggs, No Basket

June 27, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, CNF / Kelsi Long
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The Revolution Began at Book Club

June 20, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Fiction / Sari Fordham
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A Letter to the Dead Grandmothers That Raised Us

June 13, 2022/in A Transfer, Amuse-Bouche, Poetry / Levi J. Mericle
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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
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

The variety in this issue speaks not only to the eclectic world we inhabit but to the power of the human spirit. We live in an uncertain world. In the U.S., we’re seeing mass shootings daily. Across the world, we’re still very much in a pandemic, some being trapped in their homes for weeks on end, others struggling to stay alive in hospitals. War continues to wage in Ukraine. Iran and North Korea are working diligently to make nuclear weapons. The list goes on. Still, we have artists who are willing and able to be vulnerable with one another, to share stories and art to help us try and make sense of our world.

More from the current editor »
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