Welcome to Issue 28 of StepAway Magazine.

This issue takes us on another meandering adventure featuring walking narratives from across the globe. As I write this letter, the linden and sycamore trees that I can see from my office window are rapidly turning to a crisp russet-brown, and their leaves are already gathering in my porchway to give a satisfying crunch underfoot. What better way then to open this issue than with E A M Harris’s “Autumn in Heald Green” which transports us to the suburban streets of Greater Manchester, capturing that “misty in-between” nature of the season. We then move one hundred and sixty miles south to Bristol with Amy Bacon’s “Bristol Ode” which plunges us into the commotion of urban life. Next, John Short’s “The Dogs of Athens” examines animal life in the city; a network of “crazy, noisy…canine delinquents” who communicate in howls. Joe Bishop’s “Justine” then whirls us around a Latin Quarter dive bar, as a jazz trio set the evening’s rhythm, before we are again pulled out of the city by Rhea Cassidy’s “Anatomy of Suburbia”. In “Hotel Window, Changshou, China” Simon Costello confides: “this is what you missed while you slept,” offering a sensuous description of a district of Chongqing in the early hours. Steven Fraccaro’s “For William Gass and Alan Davies” remains in the nocturnal city, philosophically pondering the nature of urban detritus. We then experience the surreal white nights of Finnish Lapland in Marc Swan’s “Tango” and the bohemian worlds of San Francisco in Kimberly White’s “a city condo/hiding out from god”. We end huddled under an awning seeking shelter from the rain in David Francis’s “A River in Buenos Aires”.

The cover art for this issue comes courtesy of the photographer Mimizane Jr. – a strikingly minimal blade of light slicing through the main post office in Lucerne, Switzerland.

From Buenos Aires to Changsou, Issue 28 takes us on a remarkable journey. As always, I do hope that you enjoy the walk.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Not even the most indecent
shop-keep can decently erect,
to brighten this forecourt of Hallowe’en,
Christmas lights, to upset his neighbours’ projects,
to throw down fairy-light challenge
in front of tradition’s noble order,
to tip all into calendrical chaos.

Backwater Heald Green
dabbling in firewaters of retail
rebellion. Forget it! Know your place
in the pecking order
in time
on the map
be successiveness correct
make sure, in your slowly-seeking car,
you use only permitted parking space.

E A M Harris

Amy Bacon

John Short

Through giant loft glass. Islands of
Guac-covered nachos stay on our plate.
The maple floor is a rink after a game.
This jazz trio plays just in front of us.

Wormy dreads groove as black Medusa
Plucks her double-bass and Muhammad
Taps the cymbal with his glazed stick —
His focus on now contorting an O-face.

The trio leader, a white-meat shorty
With an alto sax strapped to his pinstripes,
Wears khakis and New Balance kicks.
Planetary shadows dangle under his lids.

He stares into an abyss or pantheon.
Miniature fingers swing off buttons
Not like a monkey but like libra scales
Or a pocket watch; piglet cheeks

Candy to apples. He moves blood from
Brass into ambrosiac vibes as Justine
Sips her blonde ale, leans out of the light.
She shows no sign of disturbing the trio.

Joe Bishop

Rhea Cassidy

full of fire. Willows, bowed like wigs
on thin necks to where I couldn’t see,

a dark I could lose your hand in.

If I’d held out your ear you’d have heard
the pond ebb against the pagoda, heard boats

bob like bodies to the clack of Mahjong tiles-

cries of a boy dragged out by men-
his hidden pieces scattered as I watched

like we all do, when cats carry mice into alleys.
This is what you missed while you slept,

night breathing heavy, just outside our door.

Simon Costello

Does this rubble speak, or is that merely the sound of your own nervous system? Is there any reason to speak, ever? The night is the master of its own existence, but the morning, the morning disappears into itself. This is beauty, surely, Platonic beauty, minus the commentators. This is the essence of the city, the essence of poverty and of wealth—we are the items we discard, our broken toasters, rusted bedsprings, smashed electronics. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t the supreme goal of civilization, any civilization, to produce objects that decay? Smashed, cracked, short-circuited, aren’t these all terms for the experience of existence? The perfection of decay and of obsolescence speaks for itself.

Naturally, there are entire modes of living that have disappeared. Then, have they really? Isn’t it true that they come alive again in altered form after midnight, an ironic commentary on themselves? Phantoms, ghosts, they are there as one takes a single step then another through this secreted alley. Then, doesn’t one become a former version of oneself? Not the future, not even the past, but something else, something that eludes definition. Perhaps this moment is the essence of who we are, sliced into infinity.

Steven Fraccaro

Arctic wind asleep, fir trees
nestle by the Kemijoki river—
Rovaniemi settled in.

We walk the footpath
to the Jätkänkynttilä bridge,
shimmering in evening light.

From a hillside, a spirited
milonga draws us
to narrow windows

of a white-walled tavern
looking in on couples
swooping and twirling—

eyes downcast, men
in fedoras, dark suits,
women in wide skirts

flow in a breeze of motion.
When we enter
no one looks our way.

Marc Swan

Here, god rides the bus home to Chinatown, holds a strap in the aisle, wears a face still stained
with his workday

Here, god walks the streets in tight-laced skirts, bursts out of a rented bed wearing only his
cowboy boots, paints the bay from a palette strapped to his kiteboard, pitting a wind that whips
one way against a current ripping the other way, wears a pure white silk shirt and pink-tongued
sneakers when he walks with his Saturday night girl, serves serious gin and tonics to tourists blue
with San Francisco summer, drops into a gallery to view a show of works by his most serious rival,
recommends the sushi restaurant on the corner even though he’s a vegan, sells music on the street
to those who listen but cannot play, sells art to those who cannot paint, sells flowers to highrise
prisoners, sells food to those who cannot cook, sells beads to those who trade in islands,
walks past brick churches without checking the locks, stuffs anarchist fliers in the mailboxes,
reads poetry in a red beret with a thriftstore brooch, writes plays with her immigrant husband
who says he knew Janis, works a concierge desk but can’t give you accurate directions because
she’s not from around here, rides Friday night streets with his vatos in a tailfinned convertible

Here, god graffitis an alley with benedictions in pictures, digs out a crusty trunk filled with his
grandmother’s secret life

Here is where god has been tending bar forever and a day and the pepper steak is as good as it
ever was

Here, where god played the 49ers every Sunday, giving the churchgoers time to be by themselves

where god dropped acid with Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead and was inspired to rekindle
Burning Man, where god’s underbelly casts its most colorful glow, where god flies on pigeon
wings, pecks at the cracks in the streets while dodging taxi tires and steel-toed boots

rooting at the edge of himself, where colors and landscapes reinvent it all while god sleeps

like the city

where god hides.

Kimberly White