Showcase May 2023 (Late Edition)
Object & Idea
Thank you to our Patrons
George Choundas, award-winning author, new book, Until All You See Is Sky
Joan Frank, author of the just released novel, Juniper Street.
Robert Kirvel, author of a fine book of essays, iWater and other Convictions.
Welcome to Showcase!
Thank you for lending us your literary attention. We’re returning to you after a brief hiatus to deliver the May Issue, albeit a bit late. Apologies all around. We had staff dealing with a family loss. We intend to get back on track with this issue today, followed by the June Issue in the first week of July. July we’ll return to the normal publication schedule. We appreciate your patience, particularly the continued interest and support from our paid subscribers.
This month, we have a new subscriber at the Patron level, author George Choundas, who has a of a new collection of essays out now called Until All You See Is Sky. Thank you, George.
May was super sweet, springier than most springs, from our vantage, so we missed delivering new lit to our readers—it was such a great vibe! However, June has been a lovely, well-behaved early-summer, but for Canadian forest fires. Maybe it’s great that we stack June-July with 3 issues. Maybe we’ll consider double issues for the summer going forward! (Any thoughts on this? We’d love to hear from you.)
Without further ado, this week’s selections are... Ion Corcos for Poetry and Sharon Hoffman for Prose (Short Fiction)! Ion was selected from the May cohort of poet submissions and Sharon was from the prose, however, we asked to see some different work from Sharon and what you’ll see ahead is what she sent us! Send us good work and even if it’s not the exact fit, we’ll ask to see more. We even went through some edits, as Sharon mentions in her interview.
We’ve kept some work for future consideration—thank you submitters, all! If your work is still in process, that means we’re continuing to consider it. We thank you for the opportunity to have read or to read again.
As a reminder, we feature writers of all origins and all levels (this Sharon’s first publication). If you missed it, here’s April’s issue!
We bid you take confidence in your practice, but make sure to continue to find your desk and good things to read. (Remember to include Showcase in your occasional readings!). As always, pay success forward, reward opportunity with opportunity. Offer to do edits, to be a reader. Strive with us to make the writing world mutualistic and thoroughly uplifted.
Let’s build a positive and positively enticing writing community such that readers, casual and devoted, continue to find us and make a type of home in our midst.
In this month’s issue,
Sharon Hoffman delivers a surprising and quirky short piece that we loved immediately and made room for, despite it being a tad bit over our limits; we did, however, request edits to curtail length and to highlight the story’s strengths (it’s convenient when that’s possible all in one). See what you grab from her interesting voice and odd sensibilities—it hit us unusually hard. And Ion Corcos delivers a layered and resonant poem that is clear and crisp, containing a sound and sense that makes the reader think. Both pieces are thinking pieces as well as feeling pieces—we like this!
We found the work compelling on many levels and hope you’ll do several reads. Close inspection is as important as the experience with all of our Showcase pieces. Read, ponder, and enjoy!
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George Choundas, award-winning author, new book, Until All You See Is Sky
Joan Frank, author of the just released novel, Juniper Street.
Robert Kirvel, author of a fine book of essays, iWater and other Convictions.
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PROSE
Short Fiction by Sharon Hoffman
—Originally published by Showcase: Object & Idea.
OBJECT 1:
The Drowned Man
Sometimes when I’m driving, I slip into a daze and arrive home without remembering how I got there.
I was driving up from the center of our peninsula, first east toward the ocean, then north, and last along the old coastal road where you sometimes catch a glimpse of the ocean. Every few miles you’ll see a crushed-shell path between the high dunes and a house or two, most built a century ago.
Yesterday afternoon I roused myself from my half-asleep drive to see that I was nearly home. I didn’t seem to recognize the shell path I was about to pass — it had oddly denser and greener foliage for this time of year. A white board cottage had been built off to the southern side, and so I could see a bit of water. It was clearer than usual, a perfect turquoise.
It occurred to me I could park the car and walk out to the sand, take my shoes and socks off, roll my pants’ legs up and wade out into the shallows.
It was high tide, and while there were places I could easily wade, there were also deeper pools where the waves had cut into the sand. At one of these incursions, the water was so deep someone had placed a narrow log footbridge across the gap. I kept looking down as I placed my feet carefully step by step – which is how I came to see the drowned man.
He was face down, his left arm protruding from under the log – clearly a man’s arm with an old-fashioned watch on his wrist. His hair, almost black, waved back and forth with the incoming tide. It seemed clear he was dead, and I was too unbalanced to try to pull him from the water.
Once I’d crossed to the south end of the bridge, though, I started running toward the cottage. An old white-haired man was in the side yard, cutting wood with a chainsaw. It was so loud he couldn’t hear me shouting.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Help! I need help!”
At last, he looked up and saw me waving my arms like a crazy person and shut the thing off.
“There’s a drowned man,” I told him breathlessly, “stuck under the log bridge.”
He seemed somber but not surprised by this.
“Is there?” he asked. “Have you been walking north?”
“Yes,” I said. “But then the tide was coming in so high that I turned around and came back.”
When we reached the bridge, he looked at the man who was still face down, the log across his shoulders, and the body swaying as the water came in and then receded.
“Get up, Tom,” the old man demanded gruffly.
And the man came up out of the water laughing.
“It’s a joke he plays on strangers,” the old man told me. It was clear the old man had had his fill of it long ago.
“But why,” I asked the drowned man. “You scared me half to death.”
“I’m good at it,” he boasted. “I can hold my breath for four minutes and a half.”
“What if I’d had a heart attack,” I asked him, and he shrugged his shoulders.
The old man sighed. “I can tell you his name if you have to know – and mine, too – but I’d rather you didn’t report him unless you think you have to. It brings trouble to us here.”
“And make myself look a fool?” I said. “No, I won’t report it. But I might tell it in a story.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then,” the old man said. “A story is just a story.”
I stood there, sullen, feeling furious and humiliated when over the drowned man’s shoulder I caught sight of a dolphin leaping in the distance. It wasn’t arching out of the water in those crescent-shaped leaps they make, but spy-hopping up and down the way I’ve seen whales do in Northern waters.
I felt it as a small blessing – I’ve always believed dolphins to be lucky – then suddenly there were dozens of dolphins hopping up out of the waves – an impossibility.
“It’s just an illusion, isn’t it,” I said bitterly to the both of them.
The drowned man smirked and said, “It’s your illusion.”
I turned away from the ocean then, but instead of walking along the shell road, I waded west through the muddy patches of marsh grass. Every hundred steps or so, there were waist-high, wooden platforms holding their traditional gifts for departing strangers. They were in little piles like altar offerings – lion’s paw scallops and dark lettered olives, carved gourds the size of my fist, cinnabar boxes for rings and bracelets, slices of all sorts of breads and cakes.
You were meant to take things, but two or three only – not to be greedy. And if you weren’t greedy, the things wouldn’t change you.
I broke off a big piece of lemon cake and shoved it in my mouth.
“I will eat you up,” I said out loud to anyone who might have been listening. “Every mouthful, every single morsel, I will eat you up.”
IDEA 1:
When I wrote “The Drowned Man” what I hoped to achieve was a slowly encroaching sense that we were in a world where anything might happen: wonderful and magical or disturbing and even horrifying. Although we begin prosaically – driving home the ordinary way – there are hints of something disturbing – colors are different, the foliage is unusual for this time of year. After being shocked – “I might have had a heart attack” – the narrator begins to see things that are only illusions, such as the dolphins in the ocean. Her responses to the drowned man's explanations seem mild but have an underlying threat. The pagan altars with their strange offerings increase the feeling that this land itself has unpredictable powers.
INTERVIEW 1
Showcase: We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it? What led you to the subject matter? Can you expound on the use of nature, particularly animals, their appearance and imagery in the story? What inspired you to turn the drowned man into a joke by the locals? Is there a meaning beyond the text that you intended in that interplay? How about for the ending?
Hoffman: “The Drowned Man” came almost fully formed from a somewhat hallucinogenic dream – at least, plot-wise. Ultimately, it was inspired by my Great-Aunt Mary, a Kentucky witch-woman who was a neighbor of the famed mystic Edgar Cayce. My family has always been deeply interested in folklore, and I've studied it for more than fifty years.
The narrator begins in ordinary life – “half-asleep” – but she wants to reenter the natural and magical world, her feet in the shallows. Metaphorically, a high tide brings deeper water and deeper magic. The narrator’s own magic is provoked into existence by her anger toward the drowned man. He tells her by his actions that she doesn't belong there, and although she leaves, she will return. She is going to use her own powers by “putting it in a story” and will in fact demonstrate that a story is not “just a story.”
What motivates you on a craft and aesthetic level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items?
As far as craft goes, it's very important to me, but at 72, the choices are almost subconscious – e.g., I want a sonorous feel here, so long sentences and deep vowels: toward, north, old, road, coast.
Where do you feel this work fits in on a historical level? How about aesthetic or stylewise and can you particularize your answer?
The story begins prosaically with a somewhat detached authorial tone similar to that used in the “Golden Age of detective fiction” (like Ngao Marsh or Dorothy Sayers). This shifts, though. Although nothing terrible happens in the time frame of this short piece, there are hints that some folk horror is on the way. Readers may imagine that eventually the drowned man will end up burbling out his last breath in a wicker weir. I think it's also implied that a “how do you like me now” trope is coming as the narrator invites change by consuming the cake.
Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say? This piece was accepted with a few edits from the Showcase editors, what was your experience considering the edits and how did the edits affect your understanding of the story? How was it changed?
“The Drowned Man” was lightly edited for space, and I loved the process. I felt the piece did achieve what I hoped for it. Years ago, when I worked for a metro daily, I often reviewed music and theater performances on third edition deadline (11 p.m.). This usually translated to forty minutes of “writing to space” before the presses rolled. I was lucky to get five minutes of editing from the desk. To have such deep and thoughtful attention to my writing was a new and much appreciated experience.
Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular?
Again, I think The Drowned Man is subtle folk horror that is masquerading as folklore/fantasy. One inspiration is Hookland (A folkoric project surrounding tales about a fictional place in England). Weirdly, I don’t read real horror because it gives me nightmares.
POETRY
A Poem by Ion Corcos
—Originally published by Showcase: Object & Idea.
2 OBJECT 2:
The Disquieting Frogs
A wrinkled tea towel on a washing line,
an empty white birdcage, and an urn.
The tulips are not open yet, only yellow daffodils,
ochre buds on a tree.
In a painting by Bruegel, a farmer continues to plough
as Icarus falls from the sky.
The dispassion of iron.
I have gone out once today already;
otherwise, I rest in the garden.
A cat sits at the window, one floor high,
in the warmth of sun.
I do not speak the same language.
The biography of a room –
a curtain across the pane, but for a sliver
in the centre, two green eyes.
I remember when my father died, I walked out
to a path by a rice paddy,
and a lotus flower in an earthen pot;
water trickled along the edge of the field,
and later, as it rained, hard,
the disquieting cacophony of frogs –
all night.
The cat will not look at me.
At the back of the garden, a robin on the fence,
bees in grass, a hedgehog’s nest.
There is no sign of desolation.
2 IDEA 2:
I wrote this poem to express the simpleness and contradictions I was feeling as I sat in a small backyard during a Covid lockdown. The backyard was not my own as I was mid-travels at the time. I explored how this difficult situation could be further complicated by thoughts, memory, and emotions. Yet throughout this time, the cat remained a cat. Sitting by a window. I attempt to remain present in the opening lines of the poem, but then I move into the future (the tulips growing) and the past (the memory of the myth of Icarus via the painting by Bruegel). The cat lives a simple life, yet I added more detail and the memory of my father, making my sitting and observing more complex and emotional than it should be. I had an opportunity to experience stillness, and quietness, but this was overshadowed by my not being fully present. If I was fully present in the yard, I would not have experienced the ‘desolation’. Despite how I was feeling. Because I was not present, the frogs were still ‘disquieting’ to me.
2 INTERVIEW 2
Showcase: We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it? What led you to the subject matter? Can you expound on the use of nature, both plants and animals, their interactions and imagery in the poem? How closely did you track word choice, line breaks, when to switch sentences for this poem?
Ion Corcos: I started writing the poem when I noticed a cat one floor up in the front window of a terrace. I wrote much of the poem later. My father did not appear in the piece until the second draft. I often use images of nature in my writing – naming them, and describing them and how I view nature. I am interested in Zen, so I try to keep things simple, but it doesn’t always come out this way. I am particularly conscious of word choice. This is fundamental to me. Line breaks are important, but they do change as I edit. My partner, Lisa, works hard to help me edit my work!
What motivates you on a craft and aesthetic level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items?
I write what I feel I want to, or am inspired to write. I do consider craft as I write, and this helps when I sit to edit, but I sometimes begin with just a few haphazard lines. I can write a poem that is structured quite like the final version, and other times, I have to work hard to get a poem finished.
Where do you feel this work fits in on a historical level? How about aesthetic or style-wise and can you particularize your answer?
I read a lot of contemporary poetry, as well as a variety of 20th century poets, so I would say that this poem is influenced by many writers. What I can say definitely is that I was reading a lot of Philip Larkin at the time, so some of his style may have rubbed off on me.
Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say?
I feel that this piece says what I wanted it to say, so yes, I was able to express my internal idea as I wanted to. I didn’t have the words in my head to start with, though, just some images and feelings. I let the piece flow and work itself out. I don’t always know where the poem is going, although I do ‘oversee’ its movement so it ‘works’.
Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular?
As I mentioned above, when I wrote this piece, I was reading a lot of Philip Larkin. I feel he has influenced my writing, including when I was writing this poem. I was also reading a lot of ancient Chinese poetry and Zen poetry at the time.
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Showcase is generously supported by:
Cathy Rose, Writer.
Jane Ciabattari, Author of Stealing the Fire: Stories
Scott Archer Jones, Author of And Throw Away The Skins
Lucy Ferriss, Author of The Misconceiver
Cara Diaconoff, Author of novel, I'll Be a Stranger to You
About Showcase:
We recognize that many great pieces sit in obscurity having been published once and provided brief light, only to then languish. But let the creative waters churn. Let what was once sediment rise again as nutrients. Showcase enthusiastically calls for previously published work alongside unpublished work.
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Update: At the delta of our first issue, we will be permitting free submissions 1x per person every 3 months instead of every issue. We want to encourage new people to submit each month. We also recommend submitting different work if writers plan on submitting frequently, and we encourage edits/reworking for any work resubmitted; also, we recommend waiting several months to resubmit the same work. Finally, the small reading fees will be administratively helpful and maybe we’ll be able to increase the payout.
We will read very actively and pledge an eight-week turn around for all submitted work. We will publish monthly on the third Tuesday as well, providing as many opportunities as we can for writers. We hope you will read this issue and continue following our journey!