− THIS IS THE FIRST ISSUE OF −
Portland, OR Buckmanjournal.com Buckman Publishing, LLC
THE BUCKMAN TEAM IS Editor In Chief the temp Managing Editor & Creative Director Raechel Wolfe Journal Designer Jodie Beechem Guidance Counselor Eve Connell
Copyright 2018 Buckman Publishing No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Buckman Publishing LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-7323910-0-0
CONTENTS
Letter From The Editor
Hot Box by Craig Foster • Flash Fiction
KISS FIGHT KISS by Jessica Dylan Miele • Short Story
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Wooden Cyclops Illustration Kate Woodman Photographs
Old Portland by Rich Perin • Short Story 28 Jodie Beechem Illustration Really Awesome and Poor by Tammy Gomez • Essay 40 Ruth Shively Paintings More Human Achievements by Lauren Hunter • Poetry 50 Annika Izora Photo Collage
The Untitled by Jennifer Hayler • Short Story 58
Brendon Burton Photographs
Tokyo Free Time by Craig Foster • Flash Fiction 66 Wooden Cyclops Illustration
Disposable Memories by Raechel Wolfe • Interview 70 Corbin Corbin Photographs
Axis/Praxis by E.L. Hopkins • Short Story 84 Braeden Cox Digital Art
PAY DAY by Hugh Newell • Graphic Narrative 102
Marley. Tosh. Wailers. 1972. by Walt Schaefer • Memoir 110 M3AT Paintings Morocco and My First Eid Kabir
by Tiara Darnell • Memoir 128
South Texas Gift de Thrift by Bonnie Ilza Cisneros • Mixed Genre 134 Susan Sage Paintings Self Made Woman by Denise Chanterelle Dubois • Memoir Excerpt 142 Stephanie Hatch Collages
Checking Out by Craig Foster • Flash Fiction 156 Wooden Cyclops Illustration
Consort by Merridawn Duckler • Short Story 158 Jamila Clarke Photographs
Honor Roll 172
ARTWORK CONTRIBUTORS
Jodie Beechem
Brendon Burton
Jodie is an illustrator and designer living in Portland, OR. She is constantly inspired by scientific illustrations, art history, and anything remotely spooky. When she’s not being creative, she’s usually either watching live music at a local venue, or is at an arcade playing pinball.
Brendon Burton is an American visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. Brendon spent his childhood on a farm in an isolated community where he developed his distinct style and interest in vacant and decaying places. His work focuses on studying the side effects of cultural isolation and the concept of liminal space. Experienced in shooting fine art, documentary and fashion photography his work has been featured internationally in numerous galleries and publications.
www.jodiebeechem.com
www.brendonburton.com
Jamila Clarke
Braeden Cox
Stephanie Hatch
Jamila Clarke is a photographer living in the urban wilds that are the Pacific Northwest, its cities, forests and seaside providing a backdrop for her work. She discovered her first camera at eight and fell in love with film in middle school but it wasn’t until she discovered digital photography that everything came together. She is able to create impossible moments, narratives worthy of folktales and add a little magic to everyday life.
Braeden Cox is an artist working and living in Portland, Oregon. Born in Eugene, Oregon she has also lived in Christchurch, New Zealand and Knoxville, Tennessee. She studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene where she earned a dual major in Fine Art and Digital Art. Braeden went on to complete her BFA degree in Digital Art at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus. My digital collages, created through photographs and produced mainly in Photoshop, comment on the intersection of the man-made with the naturally occurring. The images present surreal landscapes that challenge reality.
Stephanie Hatch is a mixed–media artist, currently working in Portland, OR. She has been exhibiting her work in Oregon and Northern California for 15 years. In 2006 Stephanie received her BA in Art from Southern Oregon University where she focused on painting, drawing, and black and white photography.
www.jamilaclarke.com
www.braedencox.com
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www.stephaniehatch.com
Annika Izora
M3AT
Susan Sage
Annika Hansteen-Izora (she/her/hers) is a queer, Black poet, artist, and activist. She believes in the power of Black joy, of protecting Black girl rage, and uplifting the stories and magic of the women before her.
M3AT is the alias of Lorena Guerra Matteucci, a painter living in Vancouver, WA and participating in the art communities of Portland and Lake Oswego, OR and Vancouver, WA. She paints with acrylic and gouache on custom cut, treated, and framed wood panels.
Susan Sage is a self taught portrait artist based out of Portland, OR. She has been experimenting in portraiture all her life and painting professionally for over a decade. Her acrylic portraits feature rich colors and locales containing friends playing dress up. Her paintings are based on reference photos from photoshoots in which she arranges and costumes her friends in elegant, old-fashioned approximations of what characters in museum paintings tend to look like. It is far from authentic. It is fun.
www.instagram.com/izora.rises
www.m3at.bigcartel.com
www.susansageart.com
Ruth Shively
Kate Woodman
Wooden Cyclops
Ruth Shively is a painter living in Portland, Oregon. She studied drawing and illustration in school but is a self taught painter. She loves the spontaneity of the paint and using color to create space. Going by instinct and immediate feelings about an image, she is drawn to stark positive/negative space, leaving the background simple, concentrating on the figure.
Born in Darmstadt, Germany, Kate Woodman was raised in Connecticut and currently calls Portland, Oregon home. A structural preservation engineer by training, Kate developed her love of photography in 2011 while investigating earthquake damage in New Zealand. Her engineering background serves her well, provoking a sense of balance and attention to detail in her photography and engendering an inventive approach to the technical challenges of creating an image. This, in conjunction with her love for all things classical, render her aesthetic clean and timeless—a nod to the past but assuredly modern in appeal.
Wooden Cyclops is the alias of Wesley James, an illustrator living in Portland, OR.
www.ruthshively.com
www.instagram.com/woodencyclops
www.katewoodman.com
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BUCKMAN JOURNAL
LETTER FROM YOUR FRIEND, THE EDITOR My name it is nothing, my age it means less. —Robert Zimmerman.
’m one of those who nods a good-day to strangers while strolling through the neighborhood. There used to be more of us, but our numbers are thinning. The theory behind this act of polite acknowledgement is simple and basic. We want a friendly community, peaceable and kind; all the aspects that exemplify the better side of human nature. These qualities do not arise from standoffish aloofness, attention buried in a phone. It’s how I met the actor Steve Buscemi, back in the mid-2000s, right here in the Buckman neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. He was walking out of the original Hal’s Tavern on SE Morrison, looking flummoxed, steps stuttering, right eye twitching. People often appeared in this state walking out of Hal’s, especially new-comers.
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“Good evening,” I said with friendly smile. “I just lost fifty bucks in shuffleboard against a geriatric,” Buscemi replied. I stopped, figuring my presence might offer condolence. Buscemi continued. “He’s been drinking for 15 hours. The guy can’t pee straight, but he slides pucks as if he has a power over them, like they’re his goddamn shaman stones or something. Jesus. One minute he was using his right hand then the next he’s using his left. He’s so old and drunk that he doesn’t know if he’s left or right handed.” “That’s Dan Dobbek,” I said. “He used to be a professional baseball player, major league. Was on the 1960 all-rookie team. Batted left, threw right.” “Somnabitch,” said Buscemi. “I thought he was some sort of shuffleboard idiot savant.” “Well, that’s how some graft. They come on pathetic.” “I should have seen it coming. I am ashamed of myself.” I asked, “What are you doing here, anyway. Some sort of Coen brothers movie?” “No. Nothing like that. I have an uncle that lives here.” “I’m sorry you lost money,” I said. “There’s a small bar around the corner. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink, Buscemi.”
I took Steve to a dive bar that is no longer a dive bar. This was before the indoor smoking ban. Inside, layers of haze and condensated breath from brown lungs rose and fell like a polluted lava lamp, distorting the definition of people. Steve loved it. We rolled dice and he made some of that fifty back. The locals and bartender didn’t mind losing to him. Steve was happy, their genial mood brought out his best qualities, and he cracked jokes, told epic tales of 1980’s New York that entertained everyone well after closing time. It was late, around 4am, when Steve eagerly accepted a challenge to wrestle Tad Chi, a carpenter who is half Korean, half Iowa redneck. Tad said Iowa concrete rassling was tough. Steve said that back in the day he was a ringolevio champ on the streets of Brooklyn, and there’s no tougher wrestling than that. When I left, they were both on the floor in each other’s head-locks, twisting to gain leverage. Steve’s face was red, the tendons of his neck taut, and even though his teeth were grimacing, there was a devilish smile in it. Yeah, Old Portland was great, but I don’t expect it to remain. Life doesn’t work like that. I may hold sentimentality for the past, only because I use it to craft the future. That’s what the past is supposed to be for, all that 20-20 hindsight has got to beworth something. BUCKMAN is an accumulation charging into the New Portland living room. Some will say moose on the loose. Others liken it to the dash and leap of gazelles. Whatever, the presence of BUCKMAN is a wild force disrupting the boring sameness infiltrating our society. Put down the phone, remove the standoffishness. Hello. Good day. Come on in, the neighborhood is fine.
“I’ll take you up on that but what are we, in the army? For chrissakes, call me Steve.”
the temp
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THE HOT BOX Words by Craig Foster Artwork by Wooden Cyclops Craig Foster is an editor based in Portland, Oregon who has stories and art published in Box and The Newer York, spouted commentary on a variety of perceived social missteps via an odd folio called The Door Is A Jar, and created the online architecture/design magazine Peer. These ventures no longer exist and he realizes the claims therefore beggar belief. Thankfully, he is not a proud man. 8
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very act on No-Talent Night at Al’s Bar lives up to expectations.
This time it started with Paint Box, a twee duo from Fullerton who played Joy Division covers on ukulele and zither. They’d planned for three songs but got kicked after one and change, and apologized for any bother they might have caused. It had been a scorcher and the bar offered no relief, even though by design it properly shut out the sun. No fans, no air conditioning, and the place reeked of leaky skin, dirty bedclothes, and sunscreen. There was a large oilcloth stretched behind the stage from one end to the other. This read Catolitica Co nverter in thick black strokes of a paintbrush, the Cs crossed out with Xs and a faint Perverter scrawled underneath in crayon. The large drum kit already in place suggested this was the night’s one legit band waiting off-stage to play a proper set once the talentless were done. After Paint Box got ousted, Rhythm Box (no relation) took the stage. No instruments. Just a grocery bag and three people dressed as lifeguards. One bikini and two trunks. The bikini would pull some product out of the bag and one of the trunks would apply it to the other trunk. Grape jelly, baked beans, yogurt. With each new item, the crowd—16 people, not bad—would belch admiring noises. A few started shouting out items they wanted to see get used. “Cajun seasoning!” “Molasses!” “Red dye #2!” The trunks, anticipating this, said in a stereo monotone, “We don’t do requests.”
A few started throwing their plastic beer cups at the lifeguard trio. Only one managed to connect, and the thrower shouted, “I want cheese! You can’t leave without doing cheese!”
“I WANT CHEESE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE WITHOUT
As if by some kind of crap magic, the last item produced was a tub of cream cheese. The good kind. The thrower screamed with delight. “You fuckers! You beautiful fuckers!” He tore off his t-shirt, threw it at a sulking Paint Box, and jumped onto the stage, grabbing his prize from the bikini. He struggled to break the seal, his hands being wet with beer and sweat, but finally managed and took deep fingerfuls of the white whip, smearing it in his armpits, across his chest, a little behind the ears, and some for a moustache. He raised his arms in victory and made for the trunks, as if to demolish them with a violently grateful hug. In their rush to escape, the trunks slipped on all the dripped foodstuffs and fell to the floor. The thrower, with outstretched arms and legs, dove on top.
DOING CHEESE!”
Seeing this flying X land onto what most considered a highly successful talentless team, the audience stormed the stage and broke into a spasm of slides and spills. From the wings, the lead singer of Catolitica Converter told the rest of the band that they couldn’t and shouldn’t go on. It’s good to know when it’s not your night.•
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O
nce there were two massage therapists who fell in love and had a child named Julia. She was a sweet, loving child who spoke with her hands just like her mother. When she placed her hands on someone’s shoulder, instantly the person would relax. Her parents took this as a sign that their daughter’s destiny lay in the field of massage therapy, and they started teaching her their secrets. But when Julia turned sixteen, she grew very ill and died. The parents scattered Julia’s ashes across the vegetable garden in their backyard, and in the center of the garden grew a pumpkin, large as a human head. No matter how many times the pumpkin was picked, a ripe one was in its place the next morning. This was how the parents knew Julia never completely left them. A year later another child was born and she, too, was named Julia because, for her parents, there was no other name.
KISS FIGHT KISS Words by Jessica Dylan Miele Photography by Kate Woodman
Jessica Dylan Miele is a writer and librarian living in Portland, Oregon. Her short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines including Coming Together, Quail Bell, and Gravel. She was also featured on the Short Stories Podcast. You can find her online at JessicaReads.com.
New Julia turned out nothing like her sister. New Julia was very plain. Her dull, brown hair didn’t shine red in the sun, and on the rare occasions when she did smile it was only a tiny smirk. She refused hugs, nor did she like to shake hands. She stopped bathing because she knew she would never be as clean as her dead sister. A stink hung over Julia like a swarm of bees and she wore her hair in one long, greasy braid down her back. At school, she did chemistry labs by herself because no one wanted her as a partner. In gym, no one picked her for their team.
An earlier version of Kiss Fight Kiss previously appeared in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine.
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In her sophomore year, as she walked by a group of girls in blue and gold tracksuits, one of them yanked Julia’s braid. Without thought, a pure reflex reaction, Julia turned around and slammed her fist into the girl’s cheek. Squaring her shoulders, she tucked in her chin and prepared herself for the next blue and gold tracksuit but the girl standing closest screamed and ran. The others scrambled a retreat, too. Julia went home shaking with disappointment that the fight didn’t continue. Frustrated, she allowed her mother to wrap a blanket around hershoulders and spoon-feed pumpkin soup.
AFTER THAT DAY, FIGHTING WAS ALL JULIA COULD THINK ABOUT.
Weighed with despair, she wandered inside a bird store and opened all the cages. The mass escape of birds was a flaming burst of squawking colors. The store was owned by a widow named Mary, small-footed with sharp elbows, usually a wellmannered woman but now enraged. Widow Mary charged screaming, her long fingernails clawing at Julia’s small face. At first, Julia crouched down low and was still, taking time to taste her own blood. Then she sprung upward and rammed into the widow with her shoulder, driving her across the room, smashing the old woman into the wall as one last green feathered flash escaped into the foggy outside.
“Try taking a hot bath,” Julia’s mother said but didn’t press the issue. After that day, fighting was all Julia could think about. But it proved difficult to find a fight. No one wanted to mess with someone so young and skinny, and especially because she was a girl. Nights she spent searching dubious streets, baring her teeth and shouting insults at drunks and addicts. But they laughed in her face.
KISS FIGHT KISS
Julia was arrested and sentenced to six months of community service at the Humane Society. Every morning there were several people in the parking lot, men, women, and teenagers, ready to avenge Widow Mary.
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Clumps of Julia’s hair clogged the shower drain and her blood trailed the house, but Julia’s parents made no mention. Once, while her mother was rubbing sirloin steaks with pepper, Julia snatched one that wasn’t seasoned and smacked the raw meat onto her eye, leaning against the wall, sighing as she did so.
There was something about the way she fought that made Julia beautiful, even as she spat out a tooth. At first, people watched in disdain, but because Julia was so waifish and combated so recklessly, they soon cheered. She was swift and graceful, stunningly bold, and held nothing back as she flew at opponents with a frightening display of disregard for her personal safety. When she was struck, even with a most unmerciful blow, she was a shining beauty with fresh blood glossing across her face. She absorbed the pain with not even a moan, smiling ever so slightly as she turned her head and growled.
“That was your dinner,” said her mother. “I’ll still eat it,” said Julia. “I’m starving.” “I’m glad that you’ve found your appetite,” said her mother.
The crowds grew. She began to shower, the mix of the salve and wounds perfumed her presence, boys and men alike found it intoxicating, asked her for kisses, and sometimes she would oblige and other times she would lean in slowly and bite the hopeful’s cheek. One boy with green eyes longing for a kiss was Henry, and though he stood in the very front of the crowd and cheered, he never dared to touch Julia.
“I’m not,” said Julia’s father, who entered the kitchen clacking his grilling tongs, surprising Julia. The cheeriness in his voice wavered, like a weak signal from a radio station. “When you don’t eat, that’s a second helping for me.” Julia lifted her chin, showing her bottom row of teeth. She looked at her father with her
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BUCKMAN JOURNAL
DISPOSABLE MEMORIES An Interview with Corbin Corbin By Raechel Wolfe Corbin is a rare breed. He holds down a typical office job while making time to participate in the arts and support the Portland community. While attending house shows, tenants’ rights rallies, Blue Collar Wrestling matches, or even just walking down the street, Corbin takes pictures with cheap disposable cameras he buys in bulk online. What’s come from his obsession with documenting everything is a staggering collection of photographs capturing the moments of thousands of strangers, forming a running visual diary of Portland. 70
Why did you start documenting everything you see? C: I’ve been taking the same kind of photo forever. I can dig up pictures I took at parties I threw in High School, which conceptually are not too dissimilar from pictures that I take at parties I throw now—stacks of empty cans, except back then they were soda cans, and of people hanging out having fun. I really like to document stuff. My dad likes to take pictures, not like a ton, but he had cameras I could play with. My family wasn’t artsy in any way, but cameras were the one thing that were consistently around the house. I think the image that sticks around in my head a lot is the cultural meme of the great aunt and uncle that go on vacation and they make you sit there and watch their slideshows—that is my inspiration! Being that relative that makes you sit there. Fortunately, mine are on Facebook and people can watch from the comfort of their own home.
MY FAMILY WASN’T ARTSY IN ANY WAY, BUT CAMERAS WERE THE ONE THING THAT WERE CONSISTENTLY AROUND THE HOUSE.
Why do you choose to use disposable cameras? C: I’ve gone through lots of different cameras over the years, but I would use disposables occasionally at parties. I’d pick one up if I was going to New York for a long weekend and we were going to be partying in my friend’s hotel. I’d use the camera and then I’d be done with it for a while. In the Spring of 2014 I was going to some party and I wanted to take a disposable camera with me. I went to a Walgreens to buy one and they were 12 bucks a piece, which is stupid. I bought a camera for that night, thinking that would be the last time I ever used a disposable camera. I thought if this is what they cost I can’t casually buy these garbage cameras. I ended up going on eBay and found 32 cameras for 48 dollars, which is a crazy deal, far cheaper than you would ever find normally. I bought those just to save money, not because I needed the cameras, and I very much thought at the time that I will have those cameras for the rest of my life. I would use maybe one or two a year - I guess I thought I would die in fifteen years! Once I had a box of them, I decided I would keep one in my pocket, just in case I would run into somebody on the street, which I would do frequently, and then it went from there.
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110
MANHATTAN DOES NOT STAND UP, GET UP FOR MARLEY AND TOSH
Island?” We heard a voice in the hallway inquire softly. We were hard to find. In 1972, the offices of Island Records in New York consisted of two small rooms tucked behind the elevators on the sixteenth floor of a building at 54th Street and 6th Avenue. The front room was big enough to hold an oversized round table, six canvas director chairs, and nothing else. On this day, like most days, DK and I were seated at the round table. I was on the phone; DK was wrestling with the accounts. In our tiny oasis, we’d tried to recreate the spirit that defined Island Records in England, where artists like Traffic, Cat Stevens, and Fairport Convention fed a surge in audiences for album-oriented music designed for FM airplay. The company’s London offices were an open chaos of activity. Since the owner worked wherever he found an empty chair, everyone else did the same.
Words by Walt Schaefer Artwork by M3AT
In addition to a stint in the music biz, Schaefer worked as a typewriter repairman, bellman, baker, bartender, writer, intellectual property manager, and storyteller. He wrote the theater pieces, The Existential Life and Lonesome Death of Meriwether Lewis, and Lounging in the Luminous Oxcart of Love. Schaefer also co-wrote Things Chinese and The Complete Book of Longevity, and edited Timothy Leary’s novel Intelligence Agents. An Atheneum Fellow at Portland’s Attic Institute in 2015-16, Schaefer has studied with poets Matthew Dickman, David Biespiel and Wendy Willis. The poems in his chapbook, Spider in the Straw (ferrislane press), relate to his illness and recovery from prostate cancer. 111
We drilled a hole in the center of our table from which a tangle of wires enabled several telephones and DK’s adding machine. Because the adding machine didn’t travel, DK had a permanent chair facing the door. The position of her chair made her the de facto receptionist unless she was preoccupied. Generally, she was preoccupied. She’d taken up the study of the abacus and used it to crosscheck her calculations. “That’s us,” I said in answer to the voice in the hallway. BUCKMAN JOURNAL
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F
inally, the big day arrived, and I boarded China Air for my flight to Bangkok. It was a weird flight path, flying over Canada with a stop in Anchorage, on to Taipei, and then to Thailand. The stopover in Anchorage was surreal. Winter had already set in as we landed in a snowstorm, and even though it was only 4 p.m., outside it was already pitch black. Having a two-hour layover, I deplaned to walk around the terminal. I was struck by how modern the airport was, but what really caught my eye were a pair of stuffed bears, a Kodiak grizzly and a Polar bear opposite one another, both standing tall. I was awed by the immense size of these beautiful creatures, their giant claws, teeth, powerful legs, thick fur, sharp eyes, and large black noses. How efficient these animals must be in the wild, I thought, saddened to find them dead inside this airport.
SELF-MADE WOMAN
It could’ve been the impression those bears made on me, or the excitement of my pending surgery once I arrived in Bangkok, that brought on an overwhelming desire to call my mother. Whatever possessed me to do this I don’t know, but by the time I realized it was a mistake, it was too late. She had answered the phone. I immediately felt uncomfortable—why did I call her? I started off with small talk, gradually telling her I was in Anchorage, on my way to Bangkok, Thailand. We’d had a few previous phone discussions about my upcoming gender change, none of which ever went well. Maybe, my thinking went, once she understood I was actually going through with sex reassignment surgery—that her son was on the cusp of fulfilling a lifelong dream to become a woman—there would be some loving support. Exactly the opposite happened. I’d played this badly and my mother pleaded with me on the phone not to go through with this and “hurt myself.”
Words by Denise Chanterelle Dubois Artwork by Stephanie Hatch Denise Chanterelle Dubois is an actress, environmentalist, and businesswoman. She lives in Portland, Oregon. The following is from her memoir Self-Made Woman (The University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-31390-6). 143
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