Dear Reader,

Welcome to Issue Eight.

In the months which followed the publication of our previous issue, we witnessed the awesome and terrifying power of nature as Hurricane Sandy bore down on America’s eastern seaboard. As the superstorm made landfall we kept a close eye on Twitter. Hari Kunzru tweeted: “One by one, New York area sites are going dark – Gawker, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post #sandy.” Minutes later Occupy Wall Street tweeted “the lights are flickering” followed by the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan tweet “#sandy lights out in Lower Manhattan”. And so, we watched from afar as a megacity was momentarily closed down. Trading stopped. Transport stopped. Even New York based internet sites went dark.

In most instances the construct of the contemporary metropolis serves to shelter its inhabitants from all but the most powerful forces of nature. The wealthiest need rarely venture outdoors, making use of underground carports, chauffeurs and helipads. For the rest of us, when it rains we take a cab. Or we duck into the subway or the underground. As long as we have spare change in our pockets there is no need to bear the brunt of the weather. On a daily basis, it is perhaps only the homeless that live at the true mercy of urban nature. We look down from our apartments and admire the beauty of a frosted winter street, but for the destitute an unexpected drop in temperature is a potential brush with death.

As much as Sandy demonstrated New York’s ability to rally in a time of crisis, it also served to emphasize the ultimate fragility of our urban spaces. When we walk in cities, nature may recede from us and yet it is ever present in its beauty and in its threat.

The theme of urban nature – bloom and decay – is laced into the very fabric of issue eight. Our writers take us atop New York’s High Line and beneath the rusting tracks of an elevated railway, through the flora and fauna of west coast suburbia and down into the gutter where thistles push up through the asphalt.

Our cover is courtesy of Sherry Karver and is entitled: “Webcam at 45th & Broadway, Winter”. The scene is a New York winter as captured by the Earthcam.com streetcam. In her Surveillance Series the artist recognizes webcams as the “historians of our contemporary era” on account of the manner in which they “capture us in our everyday lives…usually unaware that we are being observed. Webcam captures form Ms. Karver’s creative starting point – all of her work in this series is a combination of photo images, oil paint and resin surface on wood panels. StepAway readers may wish to explore Ms. Karver’s portfolio, particularly her Urban City Series which ingeniously combines street level city views with superimposed flash fiction biography of her pedestrian subjects.

Issue eight opens on a festive note with Gina Williams’s poem “Silver Bells”, a wonderfully woozy, boozy wander through nocturnal New York. Phillip Dacey’s “With Apologies to Grant Wood” transposes an iconic image of 20th century art onto 21st century street level Manhattan. Tina Barry then takes an elevated wander through the Big Apple in her three linked prose poems “The High Line, New York City”.

Brenda Yates’s “Walking is the First Meditation” transports us to L.A., a city which she feels is best described by Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer in Annie Hall: “my feet haven’t touched the pavement since I reached Los Angeles”. Her poem is a quiet contemplation of the natural world whilst walking in suburbia. Meanwhile the industrial rhythm of James Scott’s “Metallic Heart” rings out like a mantra as he takes a walk beneath the elevated railway tracks.

The themes of urban decay and the reclamation of the city by nature are amplified in Carol Lavelle Snow’s “Ghost Town” and Tamara Sellman’s “While in Chicago”. We remain in The Windy City for George H. Northrup’s “Chicago: on the bus, off the bus” an anecdotal poem which examines the distance between urban commuters.

We then leap to Liberia where Althea Romeo-Mark examines visibility outsidership and threat in her creative non-fiction piece “A Morning at Waterside, Monrovia, Liberia”. Catherine Simpson’s “Caffé Trieste on San Pablo” then examines the act of seeing and being seen as the poet plays at being the flâneuse, while Jerry Ratch’s “The Bum and His Shopping Cart, Giving Up His Ways” observes homelessness on the city streets. We close this issue in the City of Light with Enid Becker Smith’s “Paris” – a painter and writer’s homage to the sensory pull of her favorite city.

And on that note, I think that it’s about time that I left you to explore our fantastic winter edition of StepAway. Shelter from the weather, have a warm and wonderful festive period – we look forward to catching up with you in the Spring.

A very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year from everyone here at StepAway Magazine!

Best wishes,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

PS. Ten of our local libraries are currently being threatened with closure. Please join me in signing this petition. Save Newcastle libraries.

Gina Williams

at the window-bar of Starbuck’s
at Broadway and Seventy-Fifth,
no three-pronged pitchfork
between them but two coffee cups
and the Times crossword puzzle,

their faces, that could be those
of transplanted Iowa cousins
of Grant Wood’s subjects,
weather-beaten like old barns,
plain and severe, though the two

do not speak but nevertheless
clearly enjoy their ritual
as much as I enjoy my daily trip
to the iconic Fairway Market,
where shopping is a contact sport,

after which, crossing back east,
I come face to face with them,
who have never acknowledged
me, nor I them, though once when I had
a cane for a few days, I may have seen

a look of concern on their faces,
or at least recognition of a change,
but in my painting they would be looking
into the eyes of the viewer,
two New York mysteries drinking coffee.

Philip Dacey

The 13-year-old model with soba noodle legs and palm-sized shorts turns her face to the makeup artist who dips a brush into shimmery powder and swipes it across the girl’s cheeks. The girl feels the transformation, skinny Russian kid to a woman, a beautiful woman brought to life, eyes closed, head tilted back, sucking in the sun. She doesn’t notice the small group of women in saris, emerald and garnet, sapphire and citrine, the cloth covered with mirrors glinting in the light. Or how they link plump brown arms, frightened or delighted by the attention, huddled close, bird-like chatter halted. A man on a bench holds his hands up, thumb to thumb, index finger to index finger to make a frame. Whoever spots him can picture what he sees: An Indian miniature, the clouds white anvils against blue, a static of brilliant tones in its center.

10^th Avenue

A woman in a black T-shirt sequined with a giant gold cross and gold hot pants struts the stone path from 20th to 21st Streets as if it’s her runway, while a D.J. plays a mixed tape of cricket chirps and car alarms.

Washington Street

The Standard Hotel opens over the High Line, a thousand panes of glass and little else. In one window a man pauses, then unwinds his towel and stands nude, celebrating his own beauty and that of a city where a young Orthodox couple sit close yet not touching and chat awkwardly, “Um, what’s your favorite movie?” ignoring a sound installation that plays behind them: Good animals: penguin, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, domestic house cat, dog, turtle. Bad animals: spider, bat, tapeworm, head lice, rats, cockroaches, shark.

Tina Barry

On the sidewalk, slugs and snails       cross the phosphorescent
trails of earlier travelers           while in a patch of still-wet grass, 
a lone cicada twitches his wings,   resting or dying.       
Two pink-washed worms     float side-by-side  
stranded above ground—caught        in the sprinkler’s tide  
ebbing now,    too late for anything more
than the line of ants    making its way toward them. 

These are residential streets    where gardeners and workmen
tend needs of invisible people.           Where squirrel chases
squirrel in tight circles up tree trunks, out on limbs,
and leaping      from branch to fence to ground,
stops just long enough                 to bend down buds worth eating  
before beginning again. 

Where half-hearted barks float through morning-glory drapes   
over wisteria-fall walls            between tall leafy hedges
or wind-break yews    like hellos (almost friendly)                
unlike these dogs come dusk,             serious then,
deep-voiced and territorial. 

The road dips, water pools—              crows bathe and call,
crowd on nearby branches   like dark ornaments,
preening themselves    with throaty churrs 
and touching beaks as though kissing.       

Once last winter their birdbath froze over,     panes of ice
a half-inch thick,   but there was no one to show it to      
and who’d believe      Los Angeles ever got so cold.

Here, the windfalls: lemons, oranges,             sycamore balls
bursting into fluff,      sweet gum spikes       
(like tiny maces, hard as ball bearings),
camphor leaves   that on this block fall in spring,
making slippery walks.            

Soon there’ll be berries, figs,              Japanese plums
and the blossoms of ornamentals   not listed in any book—
designer-mades     exploding in white, showy pink
or near-purple fruitless excellence.                             

Here, too, finches find    never-noticed crevices
in the double-metal street signs,         appearing
grass in beak,    pensive,     furtive      
before disappearing in plain sight,
while above me   rustling the canopy,            
a colony of noisy,        flitty birds  
reaches its shrill crescendo,     drowning out
the three-note song     of a mocking bird
that’s trilled all day and all night     
as if it had never before been sung.

Loud white/green flashes past                        resolves
into quarrel,     into cockatoo and parrot
alighting in a leafless tree.

A man and young boys           in Orthodox black
stop beside me    then two joggers and more— 
t-shirts and shorts   among those
who’ve always walked to synagogue                  in suit, fur hat,
shawl or black-striped   satin-silk jacket—
all of us looking up,                suddenly talkative.     

The man’s wide-brim Borsalino          tilts back as he points:
“That one’s lived in the neighborhood for years;
sometimes leads a flock    of black birds but the green one’s new.”   
A boy pipes up: “Yeah,
since it started to come around,          they’re always squawking.”
“Are they,” his father smiles, “I didn’t know that.”             

Nodding,         we take our leave,   
strangers    who have come to a place
outside ourselves         under common skies.

Farther on
I’m alone again,          zigging around
pansy flats laid out for planting,         zagging
as a crow floats down            to work the dug-up dirt.
Another, slightly smaller,        follows,
glides in and waits.  Then, beaks open, throats ripple
and I stand amazed that any bird
would or could feed full-fledged young,      
care for offspring        already able to fly on their own.                
How like us—
though no one would call that
caring in a bird;  
but then again no one would call me
an intimate of air—                 and they’d be wrong.

(Title from: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder, quoting a Buddhist monk)

Brenda Yates

James Scott

East of what used to be
the business district stands the jail—
a small, white stucco building,
almost hidden by weeds.  
Its door is ajar, and most of the bars
on the windows are missing.

I walk west on Tipperary Road,
past the old gym, boarded up now,
and the ruins of an auto dealership,
past a few inhabited houses, 
to a bright, green building—
the Shamrock Museum.

Once the owner showed me
slabs of rock containing indentations.
“See, this is where someone knelt,
and here where a dinosaur walked.”

I couldn’t see, of course. I needed someone
to outline those ancient impressions
with black ink like they do on PBS
through the magic of television.

But I can look back up Tipperary Road
and see the hustle and bustle of the oil boom,
can see the blarney stone we kissed
on St. Patrick’s Day, stores filled
with colorful goods at Christmas,
and pie suppers in the gym. 

Soon these ruins,
like all the marks we make,
will be reduced to impressions,
discerned only by practiced eyes.

Carol Lavelle Snow

Thistles in metropolis, stronger than jackhammers.
Step aside and give thanks to superheroes. One day,
their vines and thorns will usurp these tracks along the el,

force us to walk again, to breathe and see and ache
and wonder like the humans we are and not the fleeting,
vague and translucent thoughtforms we’ve become.

Tamara Sellman

Each of us waited at the bus stop
late on Saturday night.
He—maybe twenty, in jeans,
unshaven and thin;
I—three times his age, in a business suit,
bearded and plump.
We boarded together in silence.
He seemed to be napping for awhile,
head in his hands
on the back of a seat rail.

And then I felt his hand
on my shoulder
“What bus is this?” he asked.
The Number Three. 

“Where does it go?”
Well, I’m from out of town,
but it goes north on Michigan Avenue.
He thanked me, made a phone call
that I couldn’t overhear.

“Where are we now?”
About 400 North Michigan Avenue.
Preparing to step off,
he turned to face me.
“Thanks, man, for being so nice.”
That’s OK, you’re welcome.
“You know, you could have been
an asshole, but you weren’t.
So, thanks again.”
It’s really all right.
I was young once, too.He still looked grateful
as he staggered out,
but eyed me quizzically,
searching for some vestige
of that other youth
once tripping through the night
and looking for direction.

George H. Northrup

I scrambled into the back seat and sat crushed between a construction worker who reeked and a woman who held a small meshed cage packed with chickens in her lap. She chatted noisily in Bassa to a fellow passenger.

As the bumpy journey to Monrovia came to an end, the car-boy sprang out of the bus shouting “Wasa, Wasa, everybody ge’ down.” I jumped off. Passengers waited for the car-boy who had gotten into a fracas with a passenger. The driver rushed off the bus and parted the men. The errant passenger, face bruised, fled and the car-boy resumed collecting fares.

Securing my shopping-bag, I trudged down Mechlin Street, the steep hill that led to Waterside, the busiest and largest marketplace in Monrovia. A hater of crowds, I was eager to get my purchasing done. My list itemized the necessary ingredients for the weekend’s supper.

A sea of brown and black bodies, dressed in bright colors, swarmed the area. Shops and stalls lined both sides of the street. In one area, “dukafleh” spilled over wooden tables. Crowds rummaged through the imported, second-hand clothes. A young man, dressed in a red pullover, tried on a Russian fur hat. He paid and continued his walk downhill, the winter hat on his head, face streaming sweat.

Sewing machines whirred in Fulani tailor shops. The men peddled away, their hands guiding the cloth as they sewed gold threads around collars and down the sides of blue, yellow, green and white brocade garments.

On the side of the hill, Lebanese and Indian storekeepers stood in doorways luring passers-by with enticing offers. A myriad of wares could be found in their shops—cheap cloth, toys, plastic household goods, shoes, and make-up … The goods were mostly imported from China, Korea and Eastern Europe.

As I passed a drug store, I was accosted by hustlers peddling penicillin, tetracycline and aspirin. I scurried round the corner. Water Street’s sidewalks spilled over with traders who sat on low stools hawking kola nuts, chewing gum, cigarettes and sweets, in their “waiter-markets.” They shared the sidewalk with food vendors offering trays of roasted cassava and corn, fried fish and meats marinated in pepper, peeled juicy oranges, full red mangoes and fat yellow bananas. The smell of fruit, peppers and assorted seasonings filled the air. Trucks unloading fruit and vegetables from up country jammed the traffic.

I hurried past rows of “bend-down-boutiques” displaying a specialized variety of second-hand clothing. Some featured hats only; others bras and underpants. Women, with babies tied to their backs, were bending down and sifting through the clothes. Stores offered the latest in fanti prints. Others housed rice, and were besieged by crowds of men and women waving twenty dollar bills. A man heaved a hundred pound bag of rice onto a woman’s head. She walked off, straight-backed and graceful. Pushing my way through the hustlers, I reached the arched entrance to the market.

Potent scents swamped my nose as I walked from stall to stall–the mingling mix of palm oil, fermented white fufu, milky palm wine, smoked meat, fish, crabs, black charcoal dust, fresh cut firewood and tree bark. I proceeded to the back and crossed over to the next building covered by leaky rusting, corrugated zinc. The ground squelched with mud after the rain. Mosquitoes buzzed around my feet and the flies around my head as well as the displayed smoked fish, meat and shrimps. Sellers, waving discarded cement paper bags to and fro, kept flies at bay. Then I came across the monkeys. Throats slit, their heads hung backwards in a huge basin. My stomach heaved and I trudged back to the main market building from which I had come. Passing the magic potions, I arrived at the greens.

Greens leaves covered burlap sacks spread on the cement floor. It was hard to choose but I quickly decided on palaver sauce and rice for Sunday’s dinner. I would cook the traditional Saturday dish, fufu and soup, this evening. I paid for the palaver sauce leaves and shoved them in my shopping bag. My “dash” (free samples) was a handful of bitter balls.

Ahead stood rows of stalls piled high with okras, tomatoes, onions. I purchased some and passed by the yams, eddoes, sweets potatoes and cassava. I needed dried fish, crab and some fresh meat for the soup and strolled towards the butcher’s. The hot pepper smells tickled my nose and I sneezed. Shoppers looked around at the sound of a sudden explosion.

After purchasing the meat, I headed outside the market. A man chased by a large crowd rushed towards me. I tried to jump to safety but was knocked down.

“Thief, thief,” the mob cried.

I glared at them from the ground, my shopping now a mish-mash of multi-colored pap. A woman pulled me onto my feet. I stared at my dirty clothes and bawled.

I walked back up Mechlin Street. The noise and the dizzying swirl of people fading into the background, I paused, sat down on a bench and wondered if I had the strength to go back and shop again. I didn’t.

Althea Romeo-Mark