Uncanny magazine issue t.., p.16
Uncanny Magazine Issue Three, page 16
or sunsets into salvation,
what strange markets would open,
what ghosts would take our gold
and turn it into ashy treasure?
And what more can we carry back
but our changed hearts,
broken for a night and mended by morning?
© 2015 Jennifer Crow
Shy and nocturnal, Jennifer Crow is rarely photographed in the wild, but it’s rumored that she lives in the wilds of western New York. Look for her fiction in upcoming anthologies from Hadley Rille Books and Elektrik Milk Bath Press.
The Eaters
by M Sereno
To feed first on laughter, we open: gently, anak–araw,
sun’s children learning to eat, no teeth this cloudless season
only lips and greedy tongue. We are wells, bright gullets,
sparrow throats swallowing syllables of golden sound
that slip into mouths like seeds like smooth wet stone so eager
in grain and dust and pale–spackled air over streets sunlit, stabbed through
by triumphant slippers outrunning metal, those hurtling weights.
How strange, beginning—warmth sliding downward and ever, ever
deeper. Into secret salt. Into not–empty. A fullness that has our eyes
rounding in surprise, the black pool in our belly shattered. Laughter
tastes nothing like tears, a little like iron. We do not yet know
the taste of blood. Our wells shelter brine–sleeping oysters still unshelled,
and out of our tenderness we pick brittle stubs from our bones. Growing
into rhymes we swallow hard, snatch them our teeth snapping clumsy want
at the dark air: langit, lupa, impyerno. Taste the scorching, burn. Saksak puso:
stepping onto earth means danger, running, babble of trampled green
under a too–full moon. And some words strike in heaviness we cannot dodge.
Tulo ang dugo. Sounds bite this rain–fled season: alis ka na diyan. Oo, ikaw.
Ano ka ba? Truly, true, what are you?—See, rhymes taste of ampalaya, taho.
That bitterness of dry grass, burnt caramel seared with the growing knowledge
of ripening, rot. They choose who runs, who seeks, but wherever we crouch and hide,
we return to the blindfold’s post. Taya: now chase. Our blood beats
beneath skin branded by marks not our own. Still we open our body’s loose limbs
to summer nights: here is our riddle flesh. In return, oh, stories of monsters,
winged and lovely, scale–coiled round gold–edged fruit salt–sweet, meat to bite
and tear. These days we use our teeth. How we have waited! To gape wide,
gulp down sibilant tsismis of lovers, white ladies, dire multo, balete shadows
huge drops of rain over corridors red–waxed and long–armed, terror’s night music
melting like sugar on hot tongue. More than impyerno, yet still less. We gaze
into beetle–gleam windows, now opening. Candled glass does not reflect lamps
but beckons us through into seeing. Sight like stone pointing sharp fingers
at the balete’s loosened hair, what is hidden behind punso. Now we eat alamat
chewing slow, matinik kasi—Ilang–ilang’s blossom–laden hands,
pinya’s luminous yellow eyes, separating fishbone pinpricks from sweet flesh
with clever, careful tongue. Knowing is a curse that has broken many
before us. We hold our true name close to our chest, just under the left rib.
Where one keeps secrets and bugtong. A deep well, full of daggers—bibig.
Two wells you cannot turn to see—tenga. A queen they crowned a king—tayo.
These tart creamy moons wax in mangosteen’s dark, staining us. Morsels so rich
when we swallow our cheek grazes the knee of the other world. We, feathered serpent,
strange bird, bakla with no heart, gaze shuttered before weeping shatters. We grow,
we rise: in this season of heat we are makahiya running banners rampant over grass,
sun–searing, bleeding purple, thorned. For we have also fed on our lola’s
stories of surviving aswang, soldiers, peace: you fight for life because
it is yours, and her wood–cracked words tumbled embers down our throat, deep
into our belly, burning on. Patay. Buhay. Hindi ako aalis. We have swallowed light,
so much of it, entire galaxies of stories, and in this fire–sprung season
we offer our flesh as fruit aflame to other thirsts, wells, anak–araw. Consume, yes.
We live because we are ours. Because we desire! And still we rise, swallow, stretch
into immensities, sipping songs distilled into sangkatalaan. Oh all we have eaten,
sunlight and street, dust and the way gold pierces through circles in woven abaca;
pag–asa bursting from overripe mangga in heedless brilliant plosion, mollusc’s tears,
nights feathered in clacking tiktik, fireflies crowding around graveyard lamps,
bitter names salt–sharp, crowned. We will eat, nourish: all that brightness, deep and true.
Held under bone, that last secret. How to become a black hole: swallow a star.
(Editors’ Note: “The Eaters” is read by Amal El–Mohtar in The Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 3B.)
© 2015 M Sereno
M Sereno is a queer Filipina artist who lives with her partner and two ridiculous pomeranians in regional Australia. Her work finds her up to her eyebrows in ink and paint; she specializes in creating highly detailed worlds within worlds, and is working on series that build on queering Filipino mythology and its monsters. Find her art at http://likhain.net, her writing at http://awitin.likhain.net, and her Twitter at @likhain.
Interview: Sofia Samatar
by Deborah Stanish
Sofia Samatar is a self–admitted study in contrast, “generally feeling torn between two things I love in equal measure.” As an academic she brings a keen insight into her work, distilling literature, art, history, and religion into a potent mixture of truth encased in beautiful prose. Sharply honed and confident, her World Fantasy Award–winning debut novel, A Stranger in Olondria sweeps the reader into an evocative world where the power of story is revealed. In “Those,” Samatar strips the veneer of complacency from cultural history, literary classics, and even the Book of Revelations, and challenges the reader to pull each of these things out from the shadows of received wisdom. A writer, poet, and editor, her work has appeared in numerous publications including Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons and Lightspeed. Winner of the 2014 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Samatar is an important new literary voice whose works continue to be both thought–provoking and entertaining.
Uncanny Magazine: “Those” is the type of story that creates a wonderful dilemma for the reader: The desire to race through to see how the story ends wars with the desire to slow down and savor language and poetic rhythm of the words. This is a complex story that touches on many themes including colonialism, racism, and religion. What was the spark for this story?
Sofia Samatar: The spark for the story is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the many works inspired by it. I think of this body of work collectively, as a sort of Heart of Darkness machine. I’m especially influenced by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih, whose novel Season of Migration to the North is a brilliant reverse Heart of Darkness, but of course there are tons of others, maybe most famously Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Francis Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now. And then last year, you might remember, President Obama said in a speech “The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.” And then I saw the movie Interstellar and there’s a part where they’re looking at something, probably a black hole, I forget, and somebody goes “There’s the heart of darkness!”
It’s just everywhere, this metaphor, despite Achebe’s critique of it decades ago in his essay “The Image of Africa”—the one where he calls Conrad a “bloody racist.” I mean, whatever you think of Conrad, it seems like we should pause over calling anything a “heart of darkness” considering the way Conrad’s metaphor brings together blackness, the landscape of the Congo, savagery, and inhumanity. But we don’t—that’s why I think of the metaphor as a machine. I wrote this story feeling like well, it’s here, inescapable, let’s address it. You can’t address it without taking part in it, so now I am part of the machine—just as the protagonist of my story, a young black woman, is the daughter of a white ex–colonial.
Uncanny Magazine: Your use of color in “Those” is fantastic. Phrases such as “he was so green he was almost silver” are incredibly evocative and linger in the reader’s mind. Are you a person for whom color is associated strongly with creativity? How does color affect your creative process?
Sofia Samatar: I’m definitely affected by color. I’m most interested in how color changes: skin color, for example, changes so much depending on the light, and also on emotions or other things happening in the body—in the example “he was so green he was almost silver,” the person is very ill. And of course a Heart of Darkness story is going to work with black and white! There’s black and white all through “Those.” The black woman, the white father. The black ants, the white maggots. The black bonnet, the white lilies. The black forest, the white fog.
I don’t usually think too much about these connections while I’m writing, but I notice them later, and I might emphasize them in revision. Very often a story or section of a novel develops its own palette. This can be really powerful, because color, like smell, goes straight to the emotions.
Uncanny Magazine: The religious imagery in this story made me catch my breath, particularly the scene where Sarah is weaving the twelve lilies into a crown. What makes using religious themes in your work compelling? Do you consider the emotional resonance of religion or do you see religious works and ideas as a rich form of literary text? Or is it, perhaps, a combination of the two?
Sofia Samatar: Hm! This is an interesting one. Do I consider the emotional resonance of religion, or see religious works and ideas as literary text? I think it has to be both. I don’t think I can separate religious–work–as–text from emotional–resonance–of–religion, because all texts, if they are worth anything, possess emotional resonance. As for what makes using these themes in my work compelling—I’m compelled to use them, compelled to think about religion, because I had a religious upbringing and I have a very religious family. And since there are different religions in my family (Islam and Christianity), I’m interested in how faith brings people together and how it separates them.
In “Those,” the religious element has a sadness about it, because Christianity is so entangled with the colonial project. It’s part of the main character’s mixed and fraught heritage. But it’s also a source of possibility. That’s how the “Free Church” in the story comes in, the Black church. It’s an alternative.
Uncanny Magazine: When reading “Those,” the narrative structure felt almost poetic, reminding me at times of such ballads as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. An old man’s recounting a long suppressed memory contrasting with Sarah’s stifling reality creates a wonderful dramatic tension. When crafting this story, what made you decide on this type of structure?
Sofia Samatar:Heart of Darkness again! Like Conrad’s novel, “Those” is a club story—with a difference. The typical club story, as defined by John Clute in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, is told between men, because the club in question is an institution that doesn’t allow women. You know, it’s Victorian or Edwardian guys sitting around the fire with their brandies, talking quite literally man–to–man. A club story isn’t always told in a club—in Heart of Darkness they’re on a yacht—but it’s understood that women are out of the picture, which is crucial to Conrad’s text.
“Those” brings the structure of the club story into the domestic sphere. It’s a woman now, a daughter, who is listening. She’s also Black. I suppose I’m trying to ask—how does the story change depending on who’s listening?
Uncanny Magazine: This story is not only powerful and beautifully lyrical, it is also deeply layered. You recently wrote an essay in The Guardian in response to Ben Okri’s claim that a “tyranny of subject” is keeping Black writers from greatness. You challenged that Black literature didn’t need better writers it needs better readers. As a writer, what do you expect from your readers? Conversely, as an editor, (Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts) what do you expect from your writers when it comes to accessibility?
Sofia Samatar: The statement that “Black literature needs better readers” really needs to be understood in the context of my Guardian piece, because I’m talking, first, about a specific type of Black literature, the kind that’s successful with a white–dominated literary establishment, and second, about the professional readers who make up that establishment: mainstream publishers, critics, teachers, and so on. Those particular people do indeed need to step up their reading game when it comes to Black writing. But I’m not sitting here with a checklist of things my readers need to do. Of course I hope they’ll give my work the kind of attention they give to any other work, attention to form as well as content.
As for Interfictions—the great thing about it is that our submissions are totally unpredictable. I never have any idea what’s going to show up in the pool. People send so many wonderful weird things, it’s hard to imagine developing any kind of expectations! But to answer the question about my expectations in terms of accessibility, I have none. I mean, the work has to be accessible to the editors, I guess, or we wouldn’t be attracted to it and want to publish it, but beyond that? It’s just not something I’m really interested in. When I read a piece I don’t ask myself if it’s accessible. I ask if it’s powerful, moving, innovative, necessary.
Uncanny Magazine: Thank you for sharing these insights about your work with us!
© 2015 Uncanny Magazine
Deborah Stanish the co-editor of the Hugo nominated Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who and Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon by the Women Who Love Them. She’s had essays published in Chicks Dig Time Lords, Time, Unincorporated Volumes II and III, Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories by 160 Writers, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Apex Magazine andThe Liverpool University Journal of Science Fiction, Film and Television. Deborah is also the moderator of the Hugo nominated Verity! Podcast where six women from around the globe debate and discuss Doctor Who.
Interview: C.S.E. Cooney
by Deborah Stanish
C.S.E. Cooney is an artist whose talent is too large to be contained to one stage. A musician, poet, and storyteller, her writing has been described by readers as “wild” but she is a master craftsman, painstakingly choosing words to be wielded with surgical precision. Writing in a well–appointed garret in Rhode Island, her fairytales are dipped in seawater and wrapped in language so beautiful readers don’t realize until it’s too late that they’ve been flayed open with the most delicate of touches. Cooney won the 2011 Rhysling Award for “The Sea King’s Second Bride” and her works have appeared in numerous anthologies, including multiple appearances in The Years Best Science Fiction and Fantasy . A founding member of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, she has launched an ambitious project to bring to life two EP’s of music created by Brimstone Rhine, a character who came to her in a dream. Whether spinning tales or making music, Cooney is an artistic whirlwind and we can’t wait to see what she does next.
Uncanny Magazine: Like many Uncanny Magazine staff and contributors, you wear many hats. As a writer, poet, and musician, what makes on idea decidedly a short story while another is a song or poem? Is it a definitive or fluid decision and have you ever flipped an idea from one medium to another?
C.S.E. Cooney: That’s a great question. I’m not sure there is a definitive answer. I can say that what is now a novella called “The Two Paupers,” the second book in my Dark Breakers series, started life as a one act play of the same name. The one act is, essentially, what became mere backstory for the two main characters in the novella, but the play was the genesis. I have a something called “Rust” that began as a poem, tried to be a play several times, and has desperately attempted to achieve storydom over a span of years. I don’t know what it wants to be in the end (NOVEL! NOVEL!), but I know it hasn’t stopped haunting me for years. Almost decades. It makes me cranky. I don’t know how to pummel it into shape. Yet.
What makes a poem? (There is a book called How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry that is worth the purchase price for the introduction alone, not to mention the chapter about “The White Heat ,” [by Emily Dickinson] and I daren’t try to answer the larger question here, but…) A poem is swallowable. A poem I can do because the moment demands it, and it only takes me a moment to do it. As compared, say, to a short story or novel.
A poem is a glorified Facebook update? Oh, gods. Don’t listen to me; I surely did not mean that. A poem is playful. It’s an exercise in structure and rhyme. It’s what I do because I cannot do crossword puzzles. It’s an expression of indignation or rage or desire almost in the same breath as the experience itself. It’s often a gift I can give a friend when I can’t afford a postage stamp. It’s sometimes a story.
But a story is something else. A story has room. A story I can stretch out in, and loll around, and do some ga–doinging and some jumping jacks and maybe even some galloping. Poetry is more about distilling the universe into a blood drop. Like squeezing my own quintessence into a barrel and throwing myself over the Niagara Falls. It’s a wild ride, and it might break me to pieces one of these days.
But I still say fiction’s harder work. For me. I have to think about this some more. Ask me again in ten years.
Uncanny Magazine: “Deep Bitch” is a very visceral poem, emanating a deep sense of power and knowledge. The language delves into the primal and earthy aspects of womanhood, playing with the idea of sublimation and the role we are forced to play. While it is lazy to default to saying a work feels personal (how could it not?) I can’t help but do so in this case. Where did this piece come from?
