Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 46

Description

What is on the inside?

Short stories, four poems from Marge Piercy, and a cooking column because once I read a zine with a cooking column and loved it and I thought it would be fun and interesting to ask Nicole Kimberling to write one and I’ve been delighted to read her columns ever since.

fiction

Mark Rigney, True Songs of the Pennyrile
Gillian Daniels, You’ll Never Get Away With This
Jennifer Skogen, A Fear and a Wish
Catherine Rockwood, Kleine Boot
Rachel Ayers, Snow’s Kingdom
A.B. Young, Terracotta Urn
Chris Kammerud, Goodnight, My Love. Tonight’s the Night.
Ellen Saunders, Baking a Traditional Funeral
S.E. Clark, The Fisherman’s Braid

poetry

Marge Piercy, Four Poems

nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, How to Provide Shelter From the World

cover

Christine Larsen, October

——

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 46. December 2022. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732101. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November [missing from these pages is something about the delay but it is so uninteresting: Gavin, writing this, is chronically ill, slow at everything, and looking at 2023 and hoping there’ll be an improvement] by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw ·  twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Mastodon: mstdn.social/@gavinsmallbeerpress
Printed at Paradise Copies · 413-585-0414.
Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see smallbeerpress.com/shopping/subscriptions or the print issue for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO.
LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through WeightlessBooks.com, &c.
Contents © 2022 the authors. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration © by Christine Larsen (christinelarsenillustration.com).

About These Authors

Rachel Ayers lives in Alaska, where she writes and hosts shows for Sweet Cheeks Cabaret, daydreams, and stares at mountains. She has a Master’s in Library and Information Science which comes in handy at odd hours. Her fiction has recently appeared in Metaphorosis and Radon Journal, and she is a regular contributor at Tor.com. She shares speculative poetry and flash fiction (and cat pictures) on her Patreon: patreon.com/richlayers.

S.E. Clark is a writer and an artist living in a town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Her work is often inspired by the places and people around the North Shore and examines the relationship between the fantastical and the mundane. She runs Aprilarium.com, a home for haunted and honeyed work, and has been published in several magazines including Weird Horror, The South Shore Review and The Drum Literary Magazine. This is her second time appearing in LCRW.

Gillian Daniels’ poetry and short fiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than thirty other publications. She was born in Des Moines, Iowa, grew up in Greater Cleveland, Ohio, and she now writes, works, and haunts the streets in the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts. She also makes comics and zines, searches out little-known horror and indie movies, and definitely wants to see pictures of your cat.

Chris Kammerud (chriskammerud.com) is a writer, teacher, and performer. Their work has been short-listed for the Calvino Prize and has appeared in, among other places, Strange Horizons, Phantom Drift, and Bourbon Penn. They are a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. They live in Brooklyn.

Nicole Kimberling has only just now started cooking dinner for guests again after almost two years without offering anyone except her wife a plate of food. She’s barely able to contain her excitement about it long enough to function in her day job as editor of Blind Eye Books. She also written several novels and even an audio drama podcast, Lauren Proves Magic is Real!, which, like her column in this zine, is also about food and cooking—just on the supernatural level.

Christine Larson is a Harvey Award nominated cartoonist and illustrator. She has created art for comics, book covers, stories, posters and websites; working with clients such as Dark Horse, Image, IDW, BOOM! Studios, Simon & Schuster and Cartoon Network. An adjunct instructor at the University of the Arts, she teaches courses in sequential art and comics.

Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light (Knopf, 2020); seventeen novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; they brought out short stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc and My Body, My Life. She has read at over 500 venues here and abroad.

Mark Rigney is the author of Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet), and his stage plays have been produced in twenty-three U.S. states (including off-Broadway) plus Australia, Austria, Hong Kong, Nepal, and Canada. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and a past winner of the John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize, and the Panowski Playwriting Award (twice). His short stories have found print, in venues ranging from literary (Witness, The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review) to fantasy and horror (Lightspeed, Tales from the Magician’s Skull, Cemetery Dance, Wyldblood, Black Gate). When not adding to his extensive collection of antique brewery items, he maintains lively outposts at markrigney.net and at the New Play Exchange.

Catherine Rockwood reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine, and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Her poetry chapbook, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion, is available from the Ethel Zine Press. Another mini-chapbook, And We Are Far from Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, is forthcoming from Ethel in 2023.

Ellen Saunders misses baking. She writes speculative fiction in the drippy part of the Pacific Northwest, sings in a women’s choir, serves as staff two three cats, and occasionally attempts to garden. She has been a member of Wordos in Eugene for more than a decade and has driven both of the more talented members of her older critique group into graduate school. Her work has been published in Daily Science Fiction and a ROAR anthology. You can find her avoiding revision by addictively tweeting at @ twitter.com/MulletBraid, a handle that should explain her lack of fashion sense.

Jennifer Skogen is a writer from Washington state who is lucky enough to look at books all day as Managing Director of Book Buddy Media. She is the author of the young adult series, The Haunting of Grey Hills, with the first volume currently featured on Realm.fm. Her hobbies include tripping over her two cats (who totally trip her on purpose for sympathy treats, she has been gathering evidence), and going on long hikes with her husband.

A.B. Young writes uncanny fiction for sad queers, a demogaphic they also often teach in their capacity as a high school Media teacher. Their very first story was published in LCRW and went on to receive a 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Since then, they have also been published in Baffling Magazine and Heroines Anthology.

Sujets

• Anthologies
• Collections
• Science Fiction
• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• General officer
• General
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Small Beer Press
• Date de parution: 13 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781618732101
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #46


Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 46, December 2022. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732101.


Print version text font: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November [missing from these pages is something about the delay but it is so uninteresting: Gavin, writing this, is chronically ill, slow at everything, and looking at 2023 and hoping there’ll be an improvement] and consists of imagination bound up in letters and occasionally numbers by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. mstdn.social/@gavinsmallbeerpress · Paper iteration printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414) and most easily picked up at or from Book Moon in Easthampton, MA.
Library & institutional subscriptions are available from EBSCO.
DRM-free ebooks, bundles, & subscriptions are available at weightlessbooks.com/lcr w .
Subscriptions for everyone else, well, check out our website and the options below. If you like the papernet, please make checks to Small Beer Press. If the website is too far away, here’s some more info on some of our choices. The paper edition that goes out with chocolate is hands down the best option.

 Ebook ~ $12.99 ~ 4 ebook issues ~ weightlessbooks.com/lcrw
Print ~ $24 ~ 4 issues (sometimes even within the expected 2 years).
Choc ~ $42 ~ as print no. 2 & a good chocolate bar each time.
Littlely ~ $49 as Choc. & a random chapbook from our list.
Reckoning ~ $59–89 ~ as Littlely & your choice of any combo of Reckoning 1-6.
P.D. ~ $79+ ~ as Littlely & some Peter Dickinson books to while away an afternoon.
Signed ~ $81 ~ as Littlely & signed copies of Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Andy Duncan’s An Agent of Utopia.
Cartwheels! ~ $1,000 ~ as Littlely & a $1,000 donation to Franciscan Hospital for Children. Everyone (hearts) you.
Linkssss ~ $59+ ~ as Littlely & signed copies of Kelly Link’s collections.

Contents © 2022 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “October” © 2022 by Christine Larsen (christinelarsen.com).


Please send submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.
True Songs of the Pennyrile
Mark Rigney


The easiest of days gone disastrously wrong: a wreck on Kentucky’s lightly traveled Pennyrile Parkway, one driver merging too fast, the other not spotting the danger. Next moment, the shriek of brakes, the demon-crunch of mangled metal, the flip and bounce of two speeding cars caroming sideways, then popping like peas, airborne. At first impact, shattering glass and breaking bone. Then comes a second bounce, multiple fresh impacts. Disaster.
Inside the two cars, a grand total of three human beings, one of whom never knew what hit him, dead too quickly for realizations or terror.
But the other two? Newlyweds. Carla and Jorge. Not so long before, Jorge had emigrated from Ecuador seeking the proverbial better life, and why not? Jorge was the exact sort of immigrant the United States claims it wants: well-educated, and comfortably at home in the vast drift-net of English. He worked at Alcoa as an engineer, the enormity of the facility surrounding him like a giant metal cocoon, a city unto itself. Now Jorge lies on his back on the shoulder of the highway, his new Merrell boots on the grass—hiking, a walk and a picnic, that was the care-free, lazy-day plan—and he stares at the watery mid-May sun and he thinks, I am dying, I am dying.
His mind switches to Spanish without his asking. Estoy muriendo . . .
A length of metal has speared straight through his chest. It looks to him like skinny bent guttering, long and mostly straight and rising like a flagpole, as if some explorer planted it in his vitals in order to say, “Here is the place.” He suspects it would hurt more if his brain were not cutting off the majority of his neural circuitry—he has read that, surely? That the brain, in moments of crisis, can be merciful?
But no pain, or limited pain, also has drawbacks. He can’t feel his legs, which is terrifying, and blood is seeping into his eyes from a wound somewhere on his head. He wants to move his hands up to feel his temple, but neither arm will respond. He realizes then that his left arm is missing.
No quiero morir. Dios mío, no ahora . . .
From the wall of foliage at the highway’s edge, drawn by the resounding noise of the crash, curious eyes peer from the shadows. These watchers dare not move closer, into daylight, though they feel the urge to help. Instead, they remain where they are, deep in the chiaroscuro of thickets, cut off, held back, a tribe apart. Could it be that one of their number, cutting in sudden alarm across the wide striped tarmac, inadvertently caused this carnage?
For now, they remain unseen, undetected. If only out of fear and habit, it is impossible for them do anything else.
Carla crawls over to Jorge. She is hurt herself, bloodied and beaten. Several ribs must be broken. Two teeth are loose. But she’s been lucky: her mind has already assessed the damage (quite dispassionately) and come to the unmistakable conclusion that she will live.
Not Jorge. He has only moments, and they both know it.
Jorge sees darkness at the edges of his vision, a dim blur. Blood loss, he thinks. I am about to lose consciousness.
Somehow this ugly, clinical assessment pushes down the panic; the gasping noises he’s been making subside. He seeks out Carla through the haze of sunlight and onrushing twilight and says, as best he can, “Sing. Sing me a song. To keep me company. To keep me calm.”
“Jorge . . .”
“Sing.”
Carla scrambles to think what she should sing, what would fit, what would help. What the hell is Jorge’s favorite song? But she knows so few of Jorge’s favorites, and why should she? They’ve only known each other seven months (lucky seven), and their backgrounds are so different. She suddenly gets that stupid, helpless feeling so familiar from when she is asked—at a party, perhaps, by a near-stranger—to list her favorite films: all she can draw is a blank.
But she has no time now for blanks, so she opens her mouth, and out comes a song.


But other lands
Have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere
As blue as mine .


He hears her voice as irretrievably faint; it’s as if someone keeps turning down the volume. And then he hears nothing at all.
Carla is slammed with two ferocious truths: first, that Jorge has died in her arms, and second, that she has chosen, without doubt, the wrong song.


“You,” says Carla’s sister, Izzy, “are going to be living on welfare checks if you don’t watch out. And I don’t think I can stand a sister of mine living on welfare.”
That’s Izzy in a nutshell. It’s all about what she can stand.
Izzy and Carla talk once a week, Thursdays at eight. If they didn’t schedule it, it would never happen. Neither one likes the other all that much. But, family is family, and since the accident, since Jorge’s death on the Pennyrile, they have both made a greater effort to keep in touch. The calls are awkward, of course. Izzy has three children, and they are constantly sick—runny noses, sore throats, sprained fingers—but they are growing, thriving. None of them have perished in a high-speed crash. They even have a man in the house, Izzy’s second husband, Jake. He’s big and puppy-loud and he moves heavily, like the bulldozers he drives for a living. Carla is happy for her sister and her cheery, pragmatic husband, but this does not mean she will take her sister’s advice. Even if it is good.
“Three years, Carla,” says Izzy on the cell. “It’s been three years! And you know what people are saying.”
“No. What are people saying?”
“Carla, listen to me. For once. The life insurance money is gone, right? So if you keep wallowing, if you keep refusing to get a job, you will be out on the street. And I don’t think I can stand having a sister who’s homeless.”


After hanging up with Izzy, Carla drives to her lessons. Driving still makes her tense, but it really is the only way to get around. Hers is not a city with good bus service, and she can’t always beg friends for transportation. So, she drives. And when she does, she sees accidents constantly. Most of them never actually transpire, but they are so close . Narrow escapes. Hair’s breadth misses. Stupid maneuvers from people in a hurry, or distracted by their phones or who knows what. It’s amazing to Carla the government doesn’t have EMT’s stationed at every major intersection.
At the lesson, Alessandra focuses first on voice, then on oboe, then on harp. The lesson lasts an hour and a half. Alessandra is Russian and imperious and strict and smells faintly of preservatives. She reminds Carla, “Even for the harp, you must breathe,” and the drooping sleeves of her gauzy clothes rise and fall like wings. “Breath control, that in music is everything. I have said this.”
She has, yes. A hundred times? A thousand? Carla has been coming here, and to other teachers, several days a week for over two-and-a-half years. Before, she knew only a smattering of piano, remnants of half-remembered childhood lessons. But since the accident, post-concussion, Carla has learned focus—to a fault, say some, Izzy included. To Izzy, Carla’s single-minded pursuit of music is “over-compensation” and “maniacal devotion.” This isn’t some newfound gift, says Izzy, it’s OCD, and it could be controlled with medication.
But medication is one thing Carla has refused. She worries that anti-depressants might d