In the Safest Suburb in the World

By Tresha Haefner

Issue 37 • Spring 2018 • Poetry

-San Jose, CA, Circa 2008

It started with a series of small crimes.
First the mailman, with his grotesque face
punched his fist through my window,
Too many pieces of junk mail piling up, he screamed
when the cops carried him away. Then the day I found
yellow tape all over the apartment complex,
some woman had wrecked her car, driving drunk.
her husband wailed like a cold gust of wind,
when they told him, she had been
putting another man’s stick shift in gear.
Even here? The girl in the hallway said.
My heavens. My stars. Everyone I knew was drunk,
doing unspeakable things in their cars,
crying. Too many missed opportunities.
Too many anonymous calls. I had a one night stand
with a one inch man who gave me a phony number.
Everyone was trying to bone each other, even in the burbs.
I left the scene and came to find some stranger,
parked in my slot, a French clown blown
out of a cannon. All white face,
but no fun. Whassa matter with you? He asked,
Breaking Into my bedroom,
like you was the light of the moon?
Even when you tried to kill yourself, I had to laugh,
how you called me on that late, lazy Sunday
afternoon and said, Help. I’ve taken all my anti-depressants
But I’m still depressed. Too many parking tickets.
Your brother getting married. You couldn’t fit
into the bridesmaid’s dress.
Later, after the hunky paramedics had hoisted you
onto the gurney, and made you vomit into
the little plastic bowl, shaped like a kidney,
I came to pick you up in the emergency room,
And made you promise never to do it again.
We were so young, and full of dope then.
You made me drive you home, with the top down on the car.
You just kept screaming at the sunlight, the lamp posts, the radio,
the billboards of skinny women in skinny jeans,
O god, how lucky we all are!

Tresha Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, The Cincinnati Review, Hunger Mountain, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle and TinderBox. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012 nomination for a Pushcart.

David Rodriguez

David Rodriguez is from Spain and considers himself a lover of photography. He loves surreal photography and fashion photography. His main influences are Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld and above all Guy Bourdin. Growing up in the Canary Islands, water has always been a source of inspiration for Rodríguez. His last series is “Bathers” (2018) and it is inspired by a photograph of Horst P. Horst of the same name and represents on a summer day in which we can see two bathers enjoying the sun and the sea. This series is formed by a series of photographs of minimalist character, in which the simple compositions stand out, where blue and white are the predominant colors. The bathers show sensual and elegant poses under a backdrop of surrealist air. The funds are simple to give greater prominence to the subjects that appear in the photographs.