Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue Thirteen.

It perhaps takes the submission of some truly unusual writing to make us recognise the malleable boundaries of the walking narrative. Reading Arturo Rubio’s “a bad day to die” did just that. His short story charts the final steps of a man walking with a knife buried in his back. At first, the piece made me think of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Mugging” where the urban walker falls victim to an attack by thugs. For me, this poem in particular emphasises the perilous visibility of the walker in the modern day metropolis. The nineteenth century flâneur always appeared to ghost through the city – at the very centre of the world, but unseen of the world, to paraphrase Baudelaire. The contemporary walker, conversely, always appears to be visible and therefore vulnerable to the feral elements of the city. Rubio’s short story also reminded me of Tom Waits’s “Romeo is Bleeding“, a gritty ballad about a revered street tough who succeeds in maintaining his macho bravado while concealing a bullet wound to the chest. What is fascinating about “a bad day to die” is that the author conceals the motive for the stabbing. Was the walker an innocent victim, as in Ginsberg’s poem, or was he the target of some violent gangland retribution? The world spins around this wounded wanderer, and we share in witnessing the crowd’s mixed reactions to his horrific injury.

Issue thirteen opens with this thought provoking and darkly humorous piece, followed by Jen Marshall Lagedrost’s “War Play”, a poem set in San Diego’s Presidio Park. Next is Myron Michael’s “Weather Ball Blue”, a walk through Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Amy Schreibman Walter’s “Lower East Side, July 4th”, a prose poem marking one emotional moment in Manhattan. Susi Lovell’s effervescent “Montreal – In Passing” perpetuates StepAway Magazine’s ever growing infatuation with Quebec’s Metropolis, while Maria Pianelli’s “The Morning After” captures a moment of quiet reflection on the street. “Walking in Zamalek” by Kathleen Saville and “Historic Newberry” by Alice Baldys guide us through two contrasting neighborhoods, the first in Cairo, Egypt, the second in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, “Afternoon here” and “Life in a seashell” are two poems from a series by Bill Buege in which he writes from the perspective of a young woman taking a writing class at a minor New York college. The issue closes with Laura Glenn’s “Part Conversation” which captures a blissful compulsion to walk.

Our cover art comes courtesy of Philip Barlow, an artist who lives in Noordhoek Cape Town, South Africa. He says of his painting:

“Although I work within a long tradition of landscape painting, my depiction of the ‘seen’ landscape is simply a vehicle through which I navigate territory of another nature. A landscape less ordinary; where the line between the physical and the spiritual realm has seemingly been removed. However, these scenes are not intended to be of a surreal nature, hopefully they will seem curiously familiar and convincingly real. The figures in the landscape serve as carriers and reflectors of the light, bathed in the luminosity, it is my hope that they would become more beautiful. To me, light is the ultimate subject because it embodies the pinnacle of all reality”.

I was immediately taken by Mr. Barlow’s effortless ability to capture the most elusive sensations of street life – light, mood, temperature, and movement – somehow seem to ghost their way onto the canvas.

I hope you agree that Issue Thirteen has a magnificent lineup, and I look forward to catching up with you all in September with the publication of our Fitzrovia Atlas project.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Without a doubt it is debilitating to be walking out on the street while a knife’s blade is buried in one’s back. I’m no expert in medicine or physiology but bleeding little by little, drop by drop, surely must have an ill effect on anyone’s body.

Turning at the corner an old lady walks by me in opposite direction. I have this feeling that she’s staring at me. A few feet ahead I turn around and she’s standing there, looking at me. She unsuccessfully pretends to look into a store window. Then she turns around and goes on her way. Feeling a little embarrassed I begin walking faster.

Feeling weaker I can tell that I’ll be dropping to the floor at any moment. It’s not a good day to end up lying on the floor. If I’d known that I’d end up stretched out on the pavement, wounded, or even dead, I would have paid more attention to my garments. I can just imagine it. After I end up on the pavement, motionless, a paramedic arrives and gets to work. He sees the knife buried in my back, but he still needs to inspect the rest of my body. Scissors in hand he starts cutting my clothes off. I’m lying there, half-naked, by then surrounded by a small crowd, with a hole in my right sock, and underpants that at some point were red, but with time have turned pink. What a sight.

I remember the advice my grandmother gave me not too long ago. “We are living through a period of disorder and insecurity. When you go out on the street be sure to wear decent underwear, because you never know what can happen. You can get hit by a car. Or you can get caught in the middle of a shootout. One has to look good even at the time of death.”

Now I understand that valuable piece of advice, which is why I quicken my pace. But then again, even if I run, it will take me about three quarters of an hour to get home. I doubt that my body will last that long. Little by little my body becomes empty and a strong dizziness envelopes me. I feel dazed. I don’t hear very well at times.

A man stops in front of me and says something, clenched fist making a motion over his chest, like he’s stabbing himself. In my stupor I can’t tell if he’s mocking me, or if he’s trying to point out the knife, if by chance I have not noticed.

“This guy’s screwed…”, I hear someone say.

A lot of things go through my mind.

“What underwear did I put on this morning?” That’s what worries me.

I can’t really tell at what point I fall down. I only know I’m lying on the floor. I feel someone brusquely frisking my body and then tearing my clothes off.

And then I remember.

“No! Not the red ones!” I repeat over and over again as darkness and total silence envelope me.

Today is a bad day to die.

Arturo Rubio

Under papered eucalyptus, the trail shifts
boundary lines. Long trunks

sever air into strips where a splatter
of kids in noisy T-shirts hurl

shouts & bandanas toward the capture
of flags. I run through them like a horse

in a gauntlet, streaming & crashing
into & out of the clearing, into & out of

make believe. I break believe,
and they let me, because I split through

a forgotten side. Outside and its infinite
prayer. Inside a crease of pleated city,

foliage exacts minutes from the onslaught
of sun. Shade spills from bodies onto asphalt.

Jen Marshall Lagedrost

maple, sassafras

oak, sycamore: lively trees,

common as breathing

Myron Michael

Amy Schreibman Walter

Flurries are forecast, but when
has the weatherman ever been right?
Lights change. The bus picks up
a lady in a silver baseball
cap and two schoolgirls with bright
pink knees. Above, a V of geese heading
south, too late. Squealing brakes, Tabernak,
Câlice, what the fuck
you doin’? In Holt Renfrew
a nifty pair of ankle
boots, red, high
heels, with buckles,

le dernier cri. An ambulance shoots
the red light, BMW tucked in
behind. Into the dépanneur for milk, eggs, spinach,
a scouring pad. Then the post office
(Christmas tree already?) – yes,
to go express. Past paper-
covered windows: COMING
SOON. COMING SOON. COMING
SOON. The wind’s
picked up, the temperature’s dropped. Hurry!
Two For One While Stocks Last. Sale Ends

Friday. A red poppy passes
on a lapel. More poppies. More people
passing. One could imagine fields
of red. Fields
and fields of red.

A pause in Premier Moisson: three-fruits
torte or chocolate bombe? Crossing
Sherbrooke at Simpson I peek in through
the boards at the luxury condos, a phoenix
rising from the glorious inferno
of crucifix, pews, Tiffany windows,
hymn books, bibles, Sunday school
pictures.

I never knew the Church of the
Redeemer, only blackened walls, boarded-up
windows, and – after the wrecker’s
ball – spray-painted scrawlings: Believe
in the Lord. W/out war
there will be no peace! Oh
but you fool of doom, pleasure
does not mean the absence
of pain. Sabrina is a fucking slut.

Thirteen floors of condos. Parking
will be a nightmare.

Susi Lovell

7am.

Church Street is a realm transformed. Footsteps mar the powder, reduced to slush by the rising sun. The sky is blue, bright, & beaming, but my thoughts are tied to hours past. A bass guitar resonates, reverberating through my bones. Cheers pierce my ears— I close my eyes and take it all in. Late night lyrics drift in the wind, whispering sweet nothings as I sip my morning coffee. My voice belonged to the night, a single note in a sea of thousands, screaming like Sirens to lure those sweaty, sultry boys off the stage and into our beds. The encore’s over, the standing ovation, passed, but the magic remains, vibrantly streaming through the Mardi Gras breeze— an echo I cannot shake.

Maria Pianelli

Sharia Baget Aly runs alongside a mosque next to a seedy pink-walled night club. I always wonder if Zorro is defiling the mosque by walking by it. Lots of Muslims consider dogs dirty. Does my dog defile this sacred space or does the night club do it for us? It’s on this street that I see the first unknown dog of the walk. Zorro is clueless as the owner and I lock eyes in understanding and I stop and wait until he passes us on the other side of a line of parked cars. The owner holds on to his yellow Labrador’s chain with two hands as they slip by, both dogs blissfully unaware of each other’s presence.

We turn left on Sharia Mansour Mohamed towards the Serbian Embassy whose sidewalks are wide though with few patches of dirt. Those little patches of dirt around the trees, framed by the sidewalk bricks, are the best places for any dog to investigate. The Serbians must know that Zamalek dog walkers instinctively gravitate towards such sidewalks as theirs are bereft of trees.

Across the street we go to the sidewalks surrounding the grounds of a lovely 1930s pre-revolution villa with wrought iron gates and an impressive coat of arms on each. A couple of security guards dressed in galabeyahs sit inside the locked gates. I suspect the villa may be an apartment building these days because there is a carport that holds several cars. The grounds are well maintained with lush green grass and many Royal Palms. I wonder if the Nasser government had at one time seized the villa during the nationalization campaign of the 1960s when many of Zamalek’s old villas were confiscated – some say stolen – by the government.

Ahead of us are two other dogs, their owners being pulled along in the street. This time, they stop behind a car and Zorro and I slip by. It appears they have just crossed over from the Chinese Embassy whose sidewalks are a favorite of the dog walkers. Though they’re dotted every 100 feet with a guard post, no one seems to care what dogs do on them. The Chinese Embassy takes up an entire block and its sidewalks are wide with lots of trees. The few times I’ve taken Zorro over there, I’ve always been conscious of the security cameras perched high on the red brick walls. Most people know to avoid the Chinese Embassy sidewalks in the evening when the shadows from the embassy walls and acacia trees cover the sins of the day’s canine visits.

We round the corner to Sharia Abu Feda and stroll along the street as it goes the length of the west side of our island of Geriza. To our left are villas and apartment buildings and to our right, across Abu Feda, is the Nile River. It’s my favorite part of the walk because I can peek in the yards of the boathouses that line the riverbank. I look past spiky metal fences and onto the docks of the boathouses and watch the rowers getting ready to go out.

Our walk down Abu Feda also takes us past the Zamalek Cosmetic Surgery Center that’s located in another elegant old villa. The grounds are filled with tropical flowering foliage and a few tall palms. Beautiful sprawling magenta bougainvillea covers the stone walls that separate the sidewalks from the Center’s grounds. Sometimes I fantasize about checking in for some sort of procedure and then spending my recovery resting in one of those white wicker lounge chairs I’ve seen on the lawn. I’d be tucked in a fluffy white Egyptian pima cotton blanket with a glass of red wine and a small tray of mezzas nearby. The lovely scent of Egyptian jasmine would be floating in the air as I look across the Nile, towards Midan Kit Kat and imagine what went on in those houseboats of Naguib Mahfous fame. Though I’ve never seen anyone sitting out on the Center’s lawn during our walks, I like my fantasy.

The last turn down a small alleyway takes us to the front of the Flamenco Hotel. Before we pass by, there is a short stop and peek into the stinky cat yard filled with young and old felines eating from plastic dishes left out by a cat-loving woman. All of the cats look related and not one of them shows the least bit of interest in Zorro. Once I saw the cat lady standing at her kitchen window with several big cats eating on the ledge beside her. She smiled at me while the cats buried their heads in the food.

Back at our building, two feral skinny mother cats and their six kittens occupy the front of the building. The mothers have been aggressive toward Zorro who always tries to sniff out the kittens. Today, the skinny black mother actually leaps from somewhere behind us to land right in front of Zorro as she trots up the stairs. They engage in a minor dog – cat fight and in the end, I just pick up the dog and beat a retreat to the elevator. Another day’s walk in Zamalek finished.

Kathleen Saville

Alice Baldys

when I pay, come back and read the Times,
shower, dress, go out for the day.  It’s one.
I walk south, cut past the park, mimes,
a man with a camera.  Of course, the sun

is cold today and fresh
with a good breeze in my face.
I reach the water, wish
for a warmer jacket.  I’m here, a mile from my place,

alive, blocked out by pier shadow,
building shade, brown waves, sun glare
off the window glass, and a window
of time, March afternoon, afternoon here.

Bill Buege