Welcome to Issue 21 of StepAway Magazine.

From the four hundred and fifty submissions we received since publishing our previous issue, nine walking narratives stood apart from the rest. Collectively, the work featured in this issue made me ponder our motives for walking. So often, the walk takes the trajectory of the street, path, or road, and with its natural forward momentum seduces us into believing that the destination at the end of that path is the ultimate purpose of walking. But what about walking specifically to escape?

I am reminded of the introduction to Seven Miles a Second, where David Wojnarowicz writes: “The minimum speed required to break through the earth’s gravitational pull is seven miles a second. Since economic conditions prevent us from gaining access to rockets or spaceships we would have to learn to run awfully fast to achieve escape from where we are heading”.

Here, gaining momentum is an effort to uproot oneself, and although we will never gain sufficient speed to truly transcend or slip our situations, movement is an expression of intolerance. To stand still is to accept the predicament, to succumb to the fact that we are metaphorically and physically rooted to the spot. Yet to gain speed is to protest, to search for change even if change appears to be ultimately unattainable.

This theme runs through and implicitly knits together this issue to the point that even the dapper figure in our cover photograph appears to be pondering the inescapable shadow that stretches out before him.

The photograph was kindly donated by Bulgarian photographer, Aleksander Mogilo. With his learned camera eye, he has the rare ability to capture the pace and transition of the city at street level. His subjects are often lost in the hypnotic momentum of urban life, or their hypnosis is momentarily broken by the recognition of the photographer’s presence. It is impossible not to play the flâneur and guess at their story. Aleksander’s excellent portfolio can be found on Instagram and Facebook.

Issue 21 also boasts a wonderful line-up of writers:  Anna Amo, Seth Amos, Patrick Deeley, Ceinwen Elizabeth Cariad Haydon, Julie Hogg, Rayon Lennon, Marie Lightman, Simon Perchik and G.B. Ryan.

And it is now only fair that I step aside and let the work of our talented writers speak for itself.

Enjoy reading.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

A similar age when we arrive,
I’m dusky pink, you’re Prussian

and Astrakhan, inexorable station
etiquette with northern decorum

for the offertory of the city,
with our hearts in our mouths,

outlines of dressmaker’s chalk
and urbane simplistic patterns,

iron ribs, porticoes, terminal
pigeons nesting in the rafters,

and were you scared Elizabeth?
Elizabeth – I was – hungover on

a vibe in a stinking phone box,
where Tanya gave more in Percy

Circus and an unmet glance at
a taxi rank, your oyster in your

hand slips you underground and
were we twenty or twenty- one?

What did it matter? We had gone.

Julie Hogg

Hulks of desert-brown, Gothic buildings
pave the sky, overshadow a creamy
flood of Yale students drawn
by a chandelier sun. They sweep
by a beggar’s cardboard voice: “Veteran.
Please Help.” They dry out over the twin
Greens framed by the ghost of Elms
that made this “Elm City.” Mournful
cars crawl on Chapel Street. Days
circle the handsome churches, my power-red
Sentra splashes trap music at a picture-still
bus stop audience. On downer days, work is a red brick
hell and a lion’s mouth to a rarely employed
Employment Specialist like me. I park above
the wept on City in a spaceship
structure and dream about a world
with no health screens, no revelations
tonight, surveying the budding afros of trees.
I daydream of a world without
color. Just you and me writhing our way
out of a swamp of miseries, fueling each
other against an army of cancers
and hereditary diseases waiting for us
to grow into death. I dream
I dream and I’m late for work
when I finally float down. The chocolate
manager is anger fighting therapy. Therapy
wins and she says, “Good morning, Mr.
Jamaica…I see you’re dressed without
a jacket again. In this killer weather.”
Her smile sends heat down
my sides. Why do we love
the people we hate? But I say, “Thanks
for the worry. I’m enjoying
your hair.” The way the braids stream black
and brown and roll on each other
together. Like a future waterfall I want
to trip in. She flashes her hair and swerves
her Beyoncé curves away. We sense a bus
snake around a corner. Our offices
live across from the Peabody
Museum. A flying statue of a friendly dinosaur
guards the century-old get-up. Its giant
bat-like wings and spiky, cupola-big
teeth stir the imagination of children.
The museum’s body consists of lots of Gothic
bulk and not enough windows to let in the green
scene. The air freshener in my office brings up
a heavenly sour cherry garden in my memory
of Jamaica, my homeland, guarded
by a clear-voiced sea. I lock
and unlock my eyes to disappear
into calls and meetings about jobs, jobs,
jobs. The city cannot feed its poor
jobs. People empty their baggage in
my mind. Last night another boy
turned ghost with an alarming
bullet from a peer and you can hear
the buried mourning in our every sigh.
The new sea-bright Yale School of Management
is a mirror of opulence that reflects desperate
faces. Everybody wants to get into a heaven
called Yale to reap benefits.
Imagine a dining hall worker pausing
on the business school’s glassy
top to imbibe the crumbling face
of New Haven around Yale, the shanty
neighborhoods and mindless
beggars. My God. Let it go away.
The flood of heartrending city voices
that drown my hope of hope
every day. The man in my office now
says he died twice. Once when he was 15
and took 13 shots of liquor and fell
into a cloudy sleep. He said he didn’t hear
the paramedics cast a sheet over
his life and pronounced him a wrap,
hell bound before he woke
from death and his mother was barking
at the paramedics for playing
God. He smiles deep from a memory,
says heaven was going
on Oprah to tell the universe
his story. Ten years later the paranoia
of a drug dealer left him with three
bullets near his heart. He bled life
but rose again. One bullet
traveled through the earth
of his body and can be found today
buried inches from his spine. Death is
everywhere lurking. My next client
roars, a mother of four.
She rambles about being late
with her tax return, but “Yale doesn’t pay
taxes so why should my uncle?”
And “this jobs program isn’t doing
ish for me.” I let the sun bounce off
the brick and kiss my face. “I can only
refer you,” I say. She leans back, “Get me
into Yale.” I say, “100,000 apply
to heaven each year. Only 2000 get in
Yale.” She says, “I don’t care.
Where is your supervisor?”
God is not here.

Rayon Lennon

two radios, one covered with mud
the other bit by bit chips through
the small stones inside each ear

and in-between, who’s alive? who’s dead?
-who listens for that static
still on fire as this shovel

not yet exhausted, entangled
with weeds that can’t take it anymore
break apart and the unbearable heat

from blossoms the sun empties into
as rain and more rain
till you splash in the sound

not yet your shadow
though one foot blackens first
dragging you under and inches apart.

Simon Perchik

Marie Lightman

plastering a wet pavement. We sweep the leaves
into a truck, take them to the wood
and give them back. Draw breath beside the Dodder,
our thoughts following the source and course

of forgetfulness proposed by the river,
our histories and griefs lulled where we gaze at weir
and waterfall, the torrent’s frothy race
over stick-and-pebble installations – bird figures,

bare-domed Buddha men left by artists
to some toppling end. Grey-lit in the glittery shallows,
a heron, stooped motionless. Suddenly
she plunges, all neck and beak, provoking a splash.

The waggling fish is held aloft, adjusted,
swallowed head first. And, just as the heron stretches
to a squawky take-off, panicked words
burst from our cab radio: somewhere a bomb,

a shooting, the thin skin of civilisation
sundered again, the sprawl of fresh atrocities let crawl.
We square our shoulders, push through
the automatic nature of each task; the heron’s guzzle,

the mind by which people moseying
along a pavement are broken and torn – these happen
over in our thoughts. And, always
with them, old remembrances we can’t get past:

a child sinking into the steaming gullet of a side-street
in Bucharest, a cardboard box ripping open
of a morning in Dublin – the sheeting
rain, the softening frost – to reveal a perished vagrant.

Patrick Deeley

I wasn’t always like this, not at all. I used to work on the trains, a ticket collector, meeting folk all day long and I loved it. Back in the day I had a good life. Karen was at home, the kids too. I haven’t seen them since I messed up. It all started with the odd pint after work but I didn’t keep an eye on how it had got hold of me. Natalie and Tom, they’ll be grown now. I hope I see them before I die; that’s why I’ve promised myself I’ll get out today. If I can leave the house I can kick the booze, I know that in my bones, I think. I hope I’m not deluded.

Two things led to me staying indoors, well three really. First I pissed my pants on the Metro going home. It was packed and I was mortified. Second, if I’m home no-one can see the state of me. Third, internet ordering for groceries, and that includes booze. Of course the links in the chain are kept together by fear, fear and depression; that lot is hard-boiled into dread now and I can’t swallow it. I’m a shaky mess, agoraphobia they call it. Not that I’ve had a diagnosis.

I’m going to start the day sensibly. No whiskey in my morning coffee and I’ll have a couple of poached eggs on toast. I did try, but I couldn’t swallow the food so it ended up in the bin. I went upstairs to shave to distract me from the Scotch that winked at me from the sideboard. Sod’s law, I managed to nick my chin, one cheek, and then the other one before I finished. I looked like I’d been in a punch up. I did the whole tissue paper thing, little pieces stuck on the blood to make it coagulate. I’d pick them off later when I was ready to go.

I tried on four different shirts, three pairs of trousers and doubled up on my pants, in case I had an accident. I was thinking flight or fight, for me if I freaked it’d be flight no question. In the end I went for a black jeans and a sage green polo top. My hands shook, I didn’t want to attract people’s attention – perhaps I should have a quick nip just to look near normal? No, that’s a bad idea, a very bad idea. I’m not a total idiot, no, no.

The goal for my outing was the corner shop. Old Rex who’d run it for years had died, I read about it in the local rag. The shop was a quarter of a mile up the road, the new owners wouldn’t know me from Adam. I opened the front door and a warm breeze fingered my face. It caught on the tissue scabs, I’d forgotten to peel them off. I went back inside and sorted my grazes out. Back at the door my neighbour, an arsey young lad, strutted past,

‘Hi ya, grandad,’ he said. ‘up and sober before midday. Wonders’ll never cease; you, you old pisshead.’

‘Shut your mouth,’ I said. ‘You know nothing.’

He put two fingers up in salute and ponced off down the lane. I retreated. I couldn’t do everything at once; today I’d get out, tomorrow I’d take on the drink for real. A quick one, or two – if it helped me keep my promise it’d be worth it. Half an hour later I was ready to go things; I opened the door with a firm hand and pulled my leaden legs, one after the other down the path that wound through my overgrown garden patch, sown with coke cans and chip wrappers. I made the mistake of raising my face to the sky. Everything began to spin and lights flashed behind my eyes. I knew the signs, a full blown panic attack. Nausea rose from my stomach, I couldn’t stay upright and sat down hard on the damp grass. I dry retched until my throat throbbed, then I shut my eyes tight and concentrated hard to steady my breath. When I’d calmed down a bit I staggered upright. My jeans were drenched from last night’s rain. At that moment next door’s lad returned. He looked at me and curled his lips in disgust,

”Bout time you wore a nappy. You’re a fucking disgrace,’ he said.

I didn’t answer back but went back inside and shot the bolt. Sunniside is as far away as ever.

Ceinwen Elizabeth Cariad Haydon

H spilling his coffee at Richmond station 9 years ago.
That weekend in Twickenham had felt like the countryside,
Like the past.
The memory surprises me, but then,
I don’t come south west often enough to forget,
And I remember remembering at least one time before.

T’s hand on my back, that connection, on the Hammersmith and shitty,
of all places, Mile End.
How many thousands of times did I follow that route to Broadgate,
and back,
And still not forget?

The city hosts so many phantom touches,
indexed by TFL.
Sydenham for S, Hackney then Bow Church for A,
Finsbury Park for B,
and CN before she headed out to Gambia.
Hendon for M, Stanmore for C, just that once.

Thousands of stories follow me around,
changing direction can change the year, the month, the faces.
It’s time travel no GPS can track.

Venturing onto London Wall is to will that overdue confrontation with an old boss.

Bloomsbury is a village showing me the cold shoulder,
every few years another bookshop deserts me.

I’ve cried crossing Waterloo Bridge too many times to count.

Bishopsgate in 09 had me kettled on my lunch break.
Westminster, 2013, it happened again,
Shouting for badgers, against the BNP.
March after march the routes intersect
Battersea Park to Kings Cross, Kensington to Trafalgar Square,
dating me all the way back
to March 23, 2003.

I look up more frequently now,
tempted with escape every three minutes, 6am to 11pm.
It was years before I even heard the planes,
too concerned with the rumble of the tube,
rising up through the old Jewish cemetery,
muddling with the call to prayer.
Bancroft Road/Ocean Estate, stop E.
Busy on a Friday.

I thought I’d never leave.
Now I dream about it.
I’ll take the Bakerloo line to Paddington, platform 4.
Race the Friday crowd to my seat on the Great Western.
Become a visitor again.
A former Londoner,
defined by absence.

I’d ask you not to change, old friend,
be careful of my memories along the 25 bus route,
up the escalators at Angel,
but you’ve never stopped changing on me
challenging me to keep up with you.
You swallowed me whole and now you’ll spit me out,
laughing, as I swear to return,
a cheap promise
as I step out of my past.

Anna Amo

That opaque curtain
now drawn across the city
draws me out of one silence
and guides me to another.

Round-shouldered strangers,
hands red and pale with cold,
grip at the openings of their coats,
pulling them closed.

The carwash,
bustling with impatient drivers
staring at bottles of blue cleaner
in the hands of those frenzied
nameless ones,
is now a stage set for fog.

The burning amber light
from the bar fails
to best the haze. Those few souls
who lost their ways sit shadowless,
waning crescents over cheap drinks.

The paint store is void
of the ever-hopeful workers
whistling at women
and waiting for a day’s wage.

A derelict burns a flashlight cigar
held between his teeth
into an open trashcan. He knows
the cold by name.

The bank sits like a block of stone.
The tellers have hung up their smiles
and sit at home counting coins in their heads.

Soon the curtain grows heavy.
My shoes scuff along the sidewalk.
My arm is wrapped around the cold;
my hand rests in the small of its back,
as we head home,
letting the fog close behind us.

Seth Amos

The gulls above are
circling on an invisible spiral,
taking easy glides
to enjoy the urban experience.

A guy on a bike
plays just beyond the reach of snapping cars.
His life depends on
drivers with good peripheral vision
and quick reflexes.
Perhaps he is one of the immortals
or believes he is.

Three black sports utility vehicles
flashing colored lights
escort another of their kind unlit
with clouded windows.
A United Nations diplomat hides
inside bulletproof.
I hear the number of cars indicates
the person’s status.

As I stroll northward up First Avenue
pigeon companions
walk next to me in the same direction.

G.B. Ryan