Truth
Anna Catone - { Histories }
Janlori Goldman - { Bachelard's Cabinet } { The Jewish Gauchos of Entre Rios, 1917 }{ One Good Turn }
Elizabeth Howort - { The Sun, That Great Magician }
Sam Abbott - { It Eats You }
Rachel M. Simon - { Seizure } { Title IX }{ Hometown }{ Swish }
Untruth
Rosa C. Li - { Lucky Elephant }
Ken Cormier - { A Day in the Life of a Conversationalist }
Juan Carlos Reyes - { A War for Rigoberto Chismón }
Rachel M. Simon - { After Life }
We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us
Rebecca Keith - { Excerpt from Misdirected Postcard, One }
T.M. De Vos - { Leaving Lake Baikal }
Kamilah Aisha Moon - { Going Under } { Don't Move This Dust }{ Burn }{ After Our Daughter's Autism Diagnosis }
| A War for Rigoberto Chismón by Juan Carlos Reyes |
Rigoberto Chismón sat on his empty milk crate by the building stoop. The spring morning had hurled its fresh breeze onto the street since dawn, rattling the empty soda cans that scattered at each nudge only to somehow find themselves congregated again by the curb. Rigoberto hunched forward, his elbows leaning on his thighs. His chessboard sat on a milk crate in front of him, shivering imperceptibly on account of the passing trucks that, only infrequently, carried filled crates with chickens and eggs and milk, though, more often than not, held nothing at all in their hulls.
Rigoberto ran his hands through his hair. He exhaled as if for concentration’s effect, as if to pronounce his focus on the opposing queen and her insistence to sit exposed on the black square beside his knight, as if her purpose were to terrify horses into scampering retreats, but Rigoberto had no intention of pulling the reins, he’d more quickly fight to destroy the beaming sun than restrain his overloaded assault fronting knight bishop and three advancing pawns up the right side of the board.
He exhaled again. He pressed his thumbs into his temples. He scratched his forehead. He ran his hands through his hair and then reached for his right middle pawn, advancing it one box to protectively flank the threatened knight. It was only now he rubbed his chin, as if to accentuate the move’s necessity, though rubbing one’s chin doesn’t typically follow decisions, trademarked as the gesture has been by Russian champions who have only, if ever necessary, used the gesture during bouts of indecision.
Rigoberto ran his hands through his hair as he stood up. He looked around him as he carefully circled the chess table. Only an old man in plaid shorts was also out and about so early that day, the old man reading the paper while effortlessly walking his dog, a black stout Chihuahua that, because of its height and weight, was the momentum pedaling them both down the sidewalk.
Having carefully stepped around the board, Rigoberto sat again, and this time on an empty milk crate across the crate he had just occupied. He adjusted his rump, crossed his legs, and he leaned forward, his left elbow on his right knee, his chin settled on his left palm, his fingers grazing his beard’s infant stumps, and now to think: what the heck to do with the queen, seeing as a) there was no purpose for crossing straight across the board if it did not additionally threaten something important and b) were he to leave her there, he had to consider at least redirecting the knight or advancing the bishop, because each, as it currently stood, was mired on that bare side of the board where nothing of belligerent merit was happening, and, had this been an actual battle for her kingdom’s fortified soil, Rigoberto would have had to surrender or dive forward, either a) drop his sword shield and bow right then and there on the hills, plead for divine mercy, and hope God attended to his emasculating shrieks, or b) throw caution to the wind, as they say, and leap in, sprint in locked step with whatever pawns and rooks he could muster, seeing as his army’s better half had meandered, on direct orders, mind you, to the eastern plains where, because of the overgrown cabbage weeds, they could not discern the clouds from the pollen, could not tell the trees from the battering rams, could not, for the life of them, see that their advancing officer, General Rigoberto Chismón, Spaniard by American heritage standards and nomadic Indigenous mutt by European decrees of exclusion, was, at that very moment, hurdling toward the enemy’s front line and braving the battle winds that had suddenly and viciously begun to pound his cheeks, the lost brigade could not see, if only to admire, the courage of their warrior General Rigoberto Chismón darting headlong into the wall of awaiting enemy bishops and knights which, if he and his battalion of pawns survived, would be followed by an even thicker fortification of enemy rooks and pawns, the latter, because of their advancing enemy’s accrued exhaustion, would seem to Rigoberto’s advancing troops like stalwart sentinels, the elite of the elite of the king’s men, hardened for history’s grand penultimate war to decide, once and for all, where in the vastness of oak trees and dandelions and mud General Rigoberto Chismón’s pathetic amalgamation of inexperienced soldiers would die, where in the rolling fields they would lie waiting for their golden hearts to bleed out, where amidst the quelled rebellion of limp expiring limbs General Rigoberto Chismón himself would breathe his last as the opposing queen knelt by him, her angelic aura appearing to Rigoberto as an unexpected visit from above, and, as she leaned in, Rigoberto staring vacantly into the canyon between her breasts, stealing a taste of heaven’s appetizer before the grand meal, she would whisper, I assure you General we pity our fallen enemies enough to end their misery, after which she would rise and step aside for her finest axe man to behead General Rigoberto Chismón without ceremony, and, as the axe man, a shroud over his face and a guillotine seared into his bicep, raised his blade, Rigoberto would say, if only for supplication’s sake, Would someone please *cough, cough* tell those stupid meandering knights of mine that the war *cough, cough* is over.
Rigoberto adjusted his rump on the milk crate and reached for his queen, but then he held back, glancing at the wasteland right side of the board. And then, without so much as thinking where exactly to put it, he picked up his knight and started counting boxes across the board, and, because this move begged for a pragmatism missing in the previous four, he settled the knight three steps closer to the queen which, if only momentarily, detracted the opposing onslaught that had slowly been shaping into a rout.
