Barking Sycamores: Year Two

By NeuroQueer Books

Barking Sycamores: Year Two continues an ongoing tradition of collecting literature and artwork by neurodivergent creatives published in the online journal, and sharing this body of work with the world in an annual anthology. Year Two includes poetry, creative nonfiction, short fiction, hybrid genre work, and art from over 30

• Language: English
• Publisher: NeuroQueer Books
• Release date: Jul 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781945955051

Book preview

Barking Sycamores:

Year Two

Edited by V. E. Maday and N.I. Nicholson

Weird Books for Weird People

Introduction

When we started Barking Sycamores, we had no idea where its genesis would lead. As this anthology goes to print, we are approaching the end of our third year of publication. With now 11 issues under our belts, we’ve expanded the scope of this journal in more ways since the first anthology was released in March of 2016.

March 2016 was also when Barking Sycamores joined the Autonomous Press family, which coincided with Ian joining the press as the new editor of the NeuroQueer Books imprint. This move made sense for us, as our mission to publish work by neurodivergent creatives aligned well with that of AutPress. So, we’ve been part of the AutPress family for a little over year, and we’re excited to see what the future will bring. This move allows us to publish our anthology yearly, which also permits us to keep featuring and amplifying neurodivergent voices in literature and art.

We’ve had some difficulties this year, but keep finding the strength to continue with the help of each other, the press partners, and our closest friends. We’re excited to be able to put this collection in your hands, and look forward to continuing the online journal and its yearly anthology in the future.

Cheers!

N.I. Nicholson

V.E. Maday

Grove City, Ohio

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Works Not Included in This Anthology

Most of the poems, short fiction pieces, and artwork which appeared in Issues 5, 6, 7, and 8 of Barking Sycamores also appear in this collection. However, as we were unable to contact some of the authors while compiling this anthology, we opted not to include their works. While we do ask authors to grant us non-exclusive anthology rights when we accept their work for initial publication on the journal’s website, we felt that the best ethical option in the cases of the authors we could not contact was not to publish their work in print without their knowledge.

The following works were originally published in the journal online, but do not appear in this printed collection or the ebook single issues online:

Bipolar—Mixed State by Nina Dillon (Issue 7)

Isameity Epigram, Manic Haiku. and Psycheosis 3:37 A.M.-3:37 C.E. by Rose Knapp (Issue 7)

Lucid by Katie Lois Johnson (Issue 8)

Issue 5: Spring/Summer 2015

(Cover Art: Jessica Lindsley)

Introduction

Barking Sycamores is grateful to be starting its second year of publication. When it came into being in February 2014, we had no idea of the sort of future it might have. To be quite honest, it was a stab in the dark based on an idea that there needed a publication which focused on neurodivergent-created literature.

Our first issue began publishing in April 2014. We’ve now published four issues, and during the past year we’ve found some amazing artistic voices and had the honor and privilege of showcasing them. We’ve also fumbled around in the dark and discovered what worked, and what didn’t, when publishing this little journal. And we’re still learning.

We’ve encountered personal difficulties as editors, as well as undertaken personal transformations that broadened our understanding of who we each were as people. We’ve watched as activists and communities around us challenged the status quo and demanded justice for neurodivergent folk, people of color, queer people, trans people, and disabled people. We have joined in with those voices calling for justice, and plan to continue in the future.

Although this issue itself is unthemed, a great deal of the work inside speaks to several different themes. It showcases the brilliance of many kinds of neurodivergent minds. It is raw and honest about problems with the psychiatric-medical complex. It speaks of our trials and flaws. Some of it is not easy to read. But inside much of it is a spectacular wit and humor, imbued with the spiritual of survival.

Our cover artist this month is Jessica Lindsley. We are honored to share her work this issue, in which three more of her photographs will appear.

We are grateful to everyone who supported us during our first year of publication, and we look forward to having the opportunity to present outstanding, unique, and challenging work but neurodivergent creatives in the years to come. Enjoy reading Issue 5—and stay ‘woke, friends.

N.I. Nicholson

V. E. Maday

The Editors

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Contact

T. K. Dalton

In the car, Mom made eye contact with me. I hate eye contact, and this is because—as you know—I’m awe-tastic. People like me hate eye contact and Mom knows I hate eye contact. Everyone who knows me knows this: my brother Grant knows it, The Rocket knows it, The Rocket’s mother knows it. Even Dean—basically my evil enemy—and even Dean and his whole family, they know it, too. But understanding directions and following them are different.

From the backseat I collected my evidence and I hypothesized two main kinds of eye contact. (Science helps me deal.) Sometimes, eyes connect accidentally, the way boys’ hands graze while running laps during gym. Mom’s belongs to the other category, where one pair of eyes catches the other, cops-and-robbers style. My brother, Grant, saw the attack, saw Mom’s blues shout FREEZE. But instead of defending me, he just looked away. To the windows, to the walls, he started signing, quoting the rap song Dean sang on replay those days. Dean’s new friends were skateboarders who wore too-large t-shirts and too-low pants, loud boys who could hear but preferred not to listen. In the school hallways, in the cafeteria where they ate French fries and ice cream sandwiches for lunch everyday, and in the bus lines where they pushed to the front and always forced the monitors to send the line back to the door to ‘Do it again,’ in the sticky, dim food court of the Mall and in the crowded, cracked parking lot where they often gathered to practice jumps and grinds, these boys interrupted each other like crows fighting for the best seat on a power line. After the cochlear implant fixes my brother’s hearing, I thought, maybe Dean will welcome Grant into that circle of skateboards and curse words and loose jeans and stolen cigarettes. Maybe Grant will enter that circle of normal boys.

This is a fact: thoughts show on your face. Pretending to check the mirror while reversing onto our busy-street, Mom read my eyes, then my face, as easily as she reads the tiny letters in the Globe.

What’s the matter? she asked. Aren’t you excited to see your BFF?

No answer was my answer. I looked away to see a flicker in my brother’s bedroom window. For Deaf people, the home phone rings this way. Using inference skills, I imagined who might call him now, not long after the news of his implant had spread like a cold to his Deaf friends. A text message followed, and before I even eye-dropped on him, I’d identified the caller: his BFF, Colette.

Earth to Dewey, Mom said, cutting through my thoughts with a message we used regularly. This is mission control. Can you hear me, Major Tom?

I replied the same as usual. Copy, Houston. These words meant more together than they did apart, combining to make a kind of key to a kind of map. I learned about these keys—not the door kind and not the basketball kind—in Adapted Geography, my favorite class in the Academic Support Center.

Mom must have thought, New Subject, the way I often did. So. Your Bee Eff Eff?

I sighed. "Who’s that?"

Raja, I thought.

Mom, I said. "Even I know BFFs are for female adolescents, not males. And The Rocket is not my best friend forever."

He’s going to Opening Day with you and Grant, right? You’re giving him Grandpa’s ticket? These were not real questions, and I made sure to translate them as facts.

Colette deserves the ticket, Grant signed. She just called to talk about it.

Mom changed lanes, a move called thread-a-needle. Did I misunderstand you before? she asked me, looking straight at the steering wheel. I told Mrs. Clemens he could have it.

We haven’t decided, I said, and then signed, to catch Grant up. Not that I needed to do this anymore. Not after he gets the implant, I thought. Not after he makes me useless. You don’t know your facts.

I know some facts you don’t know, Mom said. Mrs. Clemens wants The Rocket to find a new interest, and I said, Why not some guy time with your brother and your BFF?

What did she say, Grant asked me impatiently.

What do you care, I thought. His news—I’m getting a cochlear implant—sat in the middle of my brain as I translated. I barely finished signing what she said before exploding in every language I knew. "The Rocket is not my BFF, Mom, not now, not forever. Anyway, my best friend last year was Dean."

Who is it now?

"I’m still de-cid-ing. Maybe Grant."

He’s your brother. I’m not sure he counts. Mom stopped at a light and made gym-class eye contact. I’m not an expert on the rules, though.

Well, it’s definitely not The Rocket. I only see him in English.

My mistake. Mom let me think about what I’d said.

You can’t put me and him in the same boat, I said, and then signed. I’m calm, The Rocket’s not. I think about the view from other people’s shoes, The Rocket doesn’t. I stay on-task and follow directions, he never does. We’re not in the same boat. Me and Grant, yes. Me and The Rocket, no. We’re in different boats. You can’t just change the boat I’m in. That’s not fair.

Mom considered this appeal. I calmed myself, pressed my head on the window. When we arrived, she parked, suddenly, violently, in the closest spot available.

You want fare, Dewey? She unbuckled to face me. Drive a taxi. She laughed at her joke, which Grant later told me he recognized, without speech-reading or translation, as the one she’d told him on Friday, after the last consultation before the procedure. He’d been upset, I guess worse than me. I stayed silent, wordless and fuming.

Hm, Mom said-and-signed. That joke worked on your brother.

As if the solution for one of us could apply to the other. As if that has ever been the case.

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His Wish

Irving A. Greenfield

My friendship with Zack went back to our early teens and continued until he died. Our friendship began to change when a religious streak began to manifest itself in Zack, and with it came the desire to proselytize me to his way of thinking.

On one of the rare occasions that we met, we were sitting at table in bar on West 75th Street, a few hundred feet from Broadway. But this meeting was for drinks only, a couple of beers at the most for each of us.

There were three men and two women at the bar, all of them very much younger than Zack and I; and all of them solitary drinkers. We were the only ones seated at a small round table with part of its circumference touching the side wall.

A waitress with the ubiquitous ponytail came to our table, and we ordered beers. Disjointedly, we exchanged information about our respective families. When we had our beers, we clicked glasses and sipped our drinks. Then, Zack set his down, placed his folded arms on the table, and said, You’re the only one I know who’ll understand what I’m going to say.

I nodded, put my beer on the table, and said, I’m listening because it was an odd thing for him to have said given the difference that separated us.

I have a wish, he said. I want to know that I’m dead when I die.

Dead is dead, I answered in a whisper.

He shook his head.

Zack, I said gently, being dead is a non-event for the person who’s dead.

He took a sip of beer before he answered with, Before the soul leaves the body it’s still a person.

And at that point, you want to know that you’re dead, I said.

He nodded. At that point I—

"You’re not a guest at your own death. The