Mistake House 2020
Issue 6, May 2020
The Calling Sea
Una corriente extraña fluye através del océano Atlantico. A veces mas fuerte que el viento. (Ponce de Leon, writing in 1513) Under the morning mist of a tree, a shady mahogany in a grocery parking lot, the island’s only store, is where a few old men meet, just as they met many weekends before—going to …
Letná’s Chorus
Sometimes I wake up so sad. This morning I had to force myself to put on my boots, to leave my room. Outside my door I find the city cold and brewing with busy city people walking fast. I, too, walk fast toward the river. Across one of its many bridges to a place with …
Day 9
I see a glass of gin unmixed, remembered still in the bottle, still on the shelf, still through rumbles of road crumbled still. The birds revisit cautiously, their twitters filling the air— short sentences, as if letters are pumped with the value of gasoline, in flux. They come from the earth, as do we return …
Country
The grass in Indiana grows pale and tall, like a crowd of gangly children conforming to the storm. The wooden slats of houses, sheds, and porches breathe. Their backs arch outward together in delicate and heaving rhythm, with the weight of ghost stories. This is the promiseland, where people can return their fingers to …
Bluebells of Calabria
Bloom like dresses, the colors yes, the colors, of lore and light like the sky, immortal blue. The streets of Calabria have sheep, and like the earth caresses, so do I. The colors diffuse in the atmosphere, asphalt. The flowers of your tree, the god tree, are the universal language: verrà la parole di verità …
Do You Know What a Wildflower Is?
Growing up, I spent summers with grandma. On our little island, I spent time alone in the woods and at the cove, climbing trees and naming bees. I was friends with the crabs and knew where the starfish lived. I caught quarter-sized jellyfish in mason jars and watched them glow, in the dark, sitting on …
Summer Evenings in Virginia
With sticky popsicle hands and chlorine filled hair, we kissed the sun goodnight and waved hello to the moon. Fauquier County lacked all but magnificent views. Flickering lights appeared against the canvas of night. Our bare feet frolicked through dew covered grass as we caught lightning bugs and shared them with each other. We …
Granddaddy’s Onions
I come from generations of Carolina soil, red-dirt roads, back-country Virginia. Ancestral apple orchards, onion picking—my genetic markers, some kind of backwoods double-helix tying poverty to potential. My granddaddy never went a day without mud on his boots, hands rough and chapped from picking Vidalia onions, a hunger for knowledge coursing through his …
The Rutabaga
The rutabaga has other names: swede, neep, turnip, snagger. But we prefer the first—it rolls off the tongue. An offspring of the cabbage and the turnip, this root vegetable was conceived across the world from us, in Scandinavia. Stories differ on how it came to be in England, but in the United States it sprang …
Kitchen Sink
Immaculate, save for that peach ring around my drain. My mother washes our apples in bleach, one to ten, like ingested camp dishes. Bananas come wrapped in peels, come wrapped in Saran Wrap, and carrots come in nothing at all. Clean, save for that beige crust on my plate, sent through the dishwasher four times …
Claustrophobia
I knew she wanted to shame me when she asked about my greatest fear. I first thought of a small cage, thick bars, locked door, but I knew there had to be a key. I then thought of a cell, thick bars, locked door, and I knew the same was true. A lock means a …
In this One, I’m the Frightened Rabbit
I. Meanwhile the bridge is falling out from beneath me while a rabbit narrowly skirts my tires: a fast reflex to survive. And I hold my breath in the throb of my lungs, white-knuckle the steering wheel in order to remain alive, shaking high above the roars of a gushing river. I notice there’s no …
Lady
At the lip of Manhattan, the wind makes our hair seem immature. The sky is dark with fat stars preening themselves for dangerous centuries ahead as if beneath ice. You’re eating glazed shrimp, tail and face. My glass of water is murky. The air scolds. I wanted to be a clamshell with something beautiful inside, …
After, when cigarette smoke is a ghost kissing the window screen
The record needle lowers, presses lovingly into each groove, bouncing slowly, making honeyed sounds that linger above tangled bed sheets, lightly lick the ceiling, and brush away the cooling sweat in my curls. When his mouth smiles against my middle-of-the-night skin, I can hear his beard scratching across my cheek, feel calloused fingers drag across …
Read More After, when cigarette smoke is a ghost kissing the window screen
As I Drive to Our First Date
Sydney waits for me in Crowfoot Coffee House. The chairs in the shop huddle for warmth as snow blurs the scene of passing cars outside the window. Through the wall of glass, vehicles melt into blurs and streaks of red and blue, cutting through the curtain of falling white. She sits. I drive with fogged …
In an alternate universe, my poems bloom from joy
and in them, Ryan Gosling finally texts me back; he wants to hook up, press me against the nearest wall, leave Rorschach love marks on my neck. and in them, I’m the roller-skating champion of the world, skating at cheetah speeds like I dreamed when I was ten, skating infinite circles in our unfinished basement. …
Angels
Ah, yes, the swans. I have seen them all my life but not until I crossed the Charles Bridge at night did I notice their pearly wings in black water, lit by moon’s light, angels of the night. This old city breathes heavy. Its green domes and hundred spires are old now its statues heads …
On the Run
The warm yellow lights of metro cars and white–knuckled fists holding red bars are no replacement for a descending sun. Because I’m always on an underground run, I have yet to see a Prague sunset. There will be more gold than red, I bet. I hope there’s more gold than the shining, gilded churches. A …
Four Months In
Sunsets have fallen victim to subscription: three dollars self-service paid in exact change. I watch ours through found hours, fingers twined through yours, misnomered as Pantone streaks the sky. I saw us neutral and chaste in front of a Malibu Metro PCS, chain gas station, youth enamored, unarmored. In the dream house; it falls together …
Dollar Store Jesus
doesn’t judge like those old Baptist Church ladies when they learned my dad loved Grey Goose more than Sunday sermon. He doesn’t stop inviting us to church barbeques or Christmas cookie bake sales, but that’s okay. I never really liked the leathery hamburgers or oatmeal raisin hockey pucks anyway. He doesn’t judge when …
South Victoria Avenue and Telegraph Road
The block was hot and my mouth was dry. I walked to the Corner store to buy an iced tea. Remembering the tales they told me. Stories of homies stealing forties for they shorties. I never believed them because this time, like last time, I count—one, two, three, four— workers staring at me when I …
Conesville, 1978
The cabin was built by the hands of four men, one of them her father. She was young when the house was erected: pigtails, Keds, a flowery skirt. They didn’t have much. The couch came from the waiting area of an airline; one of the men was an airline mechanic. Their dining table …
Gypsy Girl, 1957, Oil on Canvas, Jaroslav Vožniak
Romani girl, your blue shirt turned green because of your thin, yellow cardigan. Surprise in your eyes. Pulled the wrong card again. These cycles are hard to break and hard to bend. They identified you as “special” in school. Little did they know, those teachers who failed you. Czech twisted your tongue, but with Romany …
Jan
For Jan Palach How senseless an act of self- immolation first seems. To die so painfully, pointlessly. One man can’t change a whole regime, they say. Yet here we are, saluting his grave. To live without freedom of thought is not to live at all. He did not cause himself to fall.
Modern Medusa
If Gorgons lived in 2020, Medusa would slay with a headful of gorgeous, writhing snakes in every shade of grass, moss, forest, and emerald green with one accent lock of black mamba framing her smooth, Grecian cheeks. She would walk freely in knee-high gladiators, a billowing off-white dress evocative of cirrus clouds, and she would …
For a Turkey Sandwich, 1945
It was November in New York City, and the sky was tainted by only one cloud. People were a bustle of makeup and costumes, some unfamiliar with an event this size. My grandfather,16 at the time, was something my mother would later come to fear: a clown. It was the Annual Macy’s …
Middlin Magic
The winter I was sixteen, our freezer was more empty than full. I remember wishing that freezer was magic, that every time I opened it, our dinner for the next five nights would appear. Instead of wishing for a car or a new cell phone, I wished for chicken breasts, chicken nuggets, frozen …
Blink
as in to teleport away from the decay of this world’s veins. as in the time it takes ghosts to traverse the planes. as in the flicker of light when even the brightest stars grow sick and wane. as in fluttering eyes expelling the caustic burn of acid rain. as in to erase behind the …
Rob Fraser
My work has necessarily and naturally evolved through a variety of fields, but the fundamentals have remained the same: press a shutter button, the reflected light from an object passes through a light-tight box and records on light-sensitive material. A fleeting moment frozen in time. In late 1990 I left the Royal Air Force (where …
Harriet Fraser
This is the first poem I wrote, connected with the Sense of Here project. It is composed from notes made on the day that Rob and I walked in a wide circuit around the central point of the whole project: a sycamore tree. The walk, which we did on December 9, 2018, took us around …
Harriet Fraser
Joint Interview with Harriet and Rob Fraser Through their poetry and photography Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser explore individual and collective feelings about place. Their collaborative practice, called somewhere-nowhere, is based in Cumbria and focuses on their local landscape. Its guiding principles include journeying, reflecting, and responding, with an emphasis on connection. Many of their …
Rob Fraser
Rob Fraser
Joint Interview with Harriet and Rob Fraser Through their poetry and photography Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser explore individual and collective feelings about place. Their collaborative practice, called somewhere-nowhere, is based in Cumbria and focuses on their local landscape. Its guiding principles include journeying, reflecting, and responding, with an emphasis on connection. Many of their …
Current Staff
Editor in Chief, Samantha Frank Samantha Frank, a senior from Massachusetts, Texas, and Illinois, is majoring in English in the creative writing track and minoring in studio art and gender studies. Her current scholarship and creative practice have led her to explore nonsexual intimacy and relationships in her writing and art. Her multi-media exhibition, Attachments, …
Rob Fraser
Rob Fraser is a photographer who now lives in Cumbria, UK. Proudly Scottish born, he spent his early years in South West England, where he grew up with the plains and wetlands of the Somerset Levels as his backyard/playground. His young adult years were then spent in Pembrokeshire where he began his work as a …
From the Editor’s Desk
Our new tagline, “a space between ordinary and odd,” certainly reflects these ever-changing times as much as it refers to Mistake House Magazine’s equal dedication to individual voice and inventive play. During an unprecedented pandemic, while all are either staying at home or supporting their communities in essential roles, it is important to be kind …
Harriet Fraser
Harriet Fraser is a writer of poetry and prose from Kendal, UK. She received a degree in Comparative Religion from Manchester University, focusing on Indian Society, Religions, and Languages, and Buddhist philosophy. In 2017, she received an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. Harriet began her career in 1992 as a writer …
Dream 2
Rough and calloused is the palm that grips the little boy’s hand. Sharp air bites his cheeks and the cold, winter sun beats harshly against his eyelids; but quickly, his mother pulls him forward and together they step over the ankle-high threshold, to be met with warmth and rolling murmurs. Twelve steps across the hard cement …
Inside Joke
“Did she say anything?” I ask. “No, she was very quiet at the end,” the nurse tells us. “Really? My mom, with nothing to say? Doesn’t sound like her,” I say, laughing. “Goodness, Paige, your mother just died. Why are you making jokes?” Shelby asks me. Shelby looks stunned that I would say something like this because …
Harriet Fraser
I can think of three distinct situations relevant to my practice. First, when I am simply overcome by the need to write, I will do that wherever I am, usually by typing notes into my smartphone. I then email these to myself, and they form the basis of future poems or essays. Sometimes it feels …
Love, Bao
We used to hide in the chôm chôm evergreens, where our mothers couldn’t find us and only our ancestors who resided in the heavens saw our hands embrace. Our mothers might not have been looking however, because they usually concentrated on Father Chris and his commanding voice. Tran and I would crouch behind the cluster of leaves, pulling at its chôm chôm pearls. Our mothers could …