Coalitionist | January 2025

Coalitionist.

January 2025

Cats, sunpatches, and other such joys.

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Jaime Alejandro | I’ll Go First

Hi there,

This is Jaime. I’ll go first, but I’ll keep it brief.

I was looking for an alternative to Meta. Christ, I hate Meta so much. It has its greedy little grasp on much of the world and it is nearly inescapable. Nearly. I’m not going to belabor out loud my hatred for Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk, especially not here. I won’t be griping about corporate overreach and my general rage against billionaires on this platform. That vitriol comes in handy when I make weird pop slop and scream into a microphone at home. But suffice it to say, I wanted to start an optimism-first newsletter that would complement the other work we feature here at the coalition. I tried substack but I immediately realized Coalitionist belonged right here, nowhere else. This is where I share stuff I create with my friends and where I publish absurdist/weird short fiction, poetry, and visual art from writers all over the world. Why build up the newsletter anywhere else? But here’s the real why for this new publication: As the editor of the coalitionworks lit journal, over time I noticed I didn’t do a good job of carving space for short nonfiction, so that’s what this publication hopes to focus on. I am also hoping Coalitionist can provide little joys to those already in the coalition community, as well as anyone looking for cat propaganda or uplifting moments. You may also get audio updates from the Arts Calling Podcast, where I have conversations with hard-working, independent creatives. Coalitionist will be a gentle, gradual work in progress, but I am so excited to grow it organically into whatever it wants to be. We’ll patch the leaks as we go!

As we head into landscapes of turmoil (political or otherwise, take your pick), I’m prioritizing to focus on the things I can control. I’m only one person and I can’t save the world. So at this time, I only yearn for perspective, hope, and togetherness, so that I may focus on helping my communities as best I can. If you’re taking the time to read this, you’re part of my community too. This sounds a little aloof and escapist given the ever-growing list of cataclysms and I accept I sound naive as hell, but I urge you to hear my plea: Write. Sing. Make. Shake your ass to fun music. Treat yourself. Then do what you can. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, I can’t fault you for trying to wring moments of levity out of this chaos, if you can swing it. That matters too.

Anyway, if you want to share your cats, short nonfiction, CNF, in particular, previously-published work, feel free to reach out. I hope we can cobble up some comfort and joy in these trying times.

All the best and much love,

j

jaime alejandro
coalition eic / person

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Coalitionist is dedicated to our sweet Phoebe (2009-2024). You will always be a part of our family, and forever in our hearts. Thank you so much for the joy, comfort, and companionship you brought us all these years. Though skies turn gray now and again, we promise to keep looking for patches of sunlight in your stead. We love you!

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LindaAnn LoSchiavo | After Lam Doy Died

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When you outran the average lifespan
Of Siamese, your final resting spot
Was carefully considered, faithfully
Cribbed in the garden where impatient death
Meets optimism, slides in morning sun
Like a clean spoon refreshing your food bowl.

You kept me company for twenty years.

Now tulips take the springtime shift, red fire
Bathing your bones. Perennials assume
The summer stretch, self-seeding daylilies,
Bright orange flames reminding you of naps
By the brick hearth, furred belly sunflowered
With warmth. Cold winter weeks are mine to take,
Soft footsteps petting frozen ground, feline
Morse code that telegraphs what’s loved plants roots.

Native New Yorker, Siamese cat fancier, and award-winner, LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of British Fantasy Society, HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild. Titles published in 2024: “Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems” [Wild Ink], “Apprenticed to the Night” [UniVerse Press], and “Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide” [Ukiyoto]. Forthcoming: “Cancer Courts My Mother” [Prolific Pulse Press, 2025]. Book Accolades earned: Elgin Award for “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and Chrysalis BREW Project’s Award for Excellence for “Always Haunted: Hallowe’en Poems.”

Blue Sky: @ghostlyverse.bsky.social | Twitter: @Mae_Westside

vampireventurespoems.com | LindaAnn Literary on YouTube

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Charles Jacobson | Booyah

“Two photo ops, dinner at the house and Ron Carter at the Bistro. Be here by 5:30.”

I got to Richard’s late. We raced to St. Louis U and hurried out of the wind and cold into the rarefied atmosphere of the Beaux-Arts. A lady with a warm and charming smile handed me a brochure.

Richard found me at the Pinot Grigio and round cheeses. “Can’t take you anywhere!”

Was it my blazer-baseball cap ensemble?

I finished the tasty stuff and drifted into the Michael Eastman Retrospective: large photos, curiously dead (no people), nicely framed, an architectural feel. A cactus resembling a building ornament, horses with human countenance. Why the long faces? Twenty minutes before the Webster U gallery closed, I asked Richard, “What about the sheep?”

“We don’t have time.”

Wham! Across town and two flights of steps for 70 Years of Martin Schweig at Webster, Richard went all-in for Schweig. I tabbed Eastman.

Richard’s house next: pineapple chicken in the crock pot, stretching on the sofa to Paul Butterfield, Sibelius after dinner to think it over.

The Bistro has no signs outside proclaiming MAGNIFICENT or HUGELY ENTERTAINING, but I love their night music. We were in Caesar and ale, waiting for something to happen, when O.G.D., a local three-piece band—organ, guitar and drums—took their places, riffing a catchy tune.

“We paid for Ron Carter! Where the hell is Miles Davis’ legendary double bassist?”

Before anyone could answer, a finger-snapping Elvis-Ray Charles leapt into view blowing a dirty alto, scatting dark fire across the stage. “Oh yeah, if you feel like it…uh…come on…move around a little bit.”

Amazing shit—everything but else. This Ron Carter made the East St. Louis High Jazz Band famous. The Bistro called him home from Northern Illinois. And now Rick Haydon, who came to pick, walked his blazing chords out over the audience, really pushing it. Two more explosive tunes followed by a choice blues. Ron’s calls of boogaloo jerked my wires:

I cried “Booyah!”

Ron shouted, “Who said booyah?”

I was on my feet.

“Where you coming from, wearing a crazy-ass baseball cap with the visor turned up like that?”

I blinked.

“I said YOU. Are you all right?”

I tipped the visor and sat down. The piece morphed into a vocal, then a prime fusillade followed by a pair of walk-up vocals by Ron’s twelve-year-old daughter.

“Play the blues, baby.”

“The blues!”

The back-beat from Ron’s sixteen-year-old son in the drum chair ignited the earthy Testify, Ron singing in tongues, grunting, preaching.

“Ahhh, roll!”

“Ride it!”

I begged, “Don’t forget traveling music.”

One more tune to walk the dog, then, “This what you want?”

I threw my hat at his feet. “Yes!”

“Here it is!”

Down Home Blues took us out.

I dropped Richard off and started downtown for the blues bars. It was late; I rolled on home to stream Madame du Barry decorating the king’s table with a belch.

Ron who? Ron Carter!

Charles Jacobson (or The writer) has an abiding interest in philosophy and the arts, and lives across the river from St. Louis in Alton, Illinois, with a cat who doesn’t like him. His stories and poems have appeared in over twenty publications, on radio and Story Collider.

Website (published items): https://storeeze.blogspot.com

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Jaime Alejandro | Compas

I go on my walk every day and watch the compas up on scaffolding, brown construction workers assembling the unfinished guts of a barely conceived apartment building. They hammer and shovel and fit more plywood to the structure like the first puzzle piece of many.

Con ganas, cabrón… Pasame los clavos, huey. Spanish aflutter. And the compas in unison tend to myriad tasks in spite of the cutting November cold. I become a tourist as I walk around the worksite toward my fitbit-mandated ten thousand steps, and for a minute I question if I am anything more than a wandering coconut so far gone he sees his own people as some exotic apparition.

I see my father’s boots stomping on the wet, half-frozen earth, worn by these frenetic construction men. The same boots Apá put on at four in the morning before packing his thermos and lunchbox, before his buddies picked him up come carpool time. I heard the boot-stomping from the other room, footsteps that jolted me awake at dawn for years and years. My father worked and worked and sometimes he would tell me how the thermometer said -10° in Colorado and how his fingers would go numb at the worksite. Apá did all that so I could work in the nice office and watch the compas in winter finish the apartment building across the street. My father’s love is everywhere, and even though he is a thousand miles away, I see him every day.

I head back to work because my time has come to return to the office, and a compa walks past me and we lock eyes and I nod and he taps his construction helmet in acknowledgment, and we march our separate ways. And after work, I call my Father.

Jaime Alejandro writes and records. cruzfolio.com

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E.P. Lande | The Catnappers

On his drive to town, José saw a small cat lying in the road. He stopped his truck, opened the door, and before he had the opportunity to get out, the cat jumped in and onto his dashboard. Thinking the cat belonged to the farm bordering the road, José drove to the farmhouse and knocked on the front door. As no one answered, rather than dump the cat, José decided to bring it home.

“Luis said he wants a cat for the apartment,” José told me when he arrived home, Luis being our stable manager who lived in the stable apartment. “I left the cat with him.”

Every day, before I went to the coops, I would go into the stable apartment and spend time with the cat Luis named Catalina. She was very friendly, making herself quite at home in Luis’ apartment. She even knew her name. As I entered, I would call “Catalina”, and she would appear. I would clean her water bowl, refill it and give her Sheba wet food that I purchased at the local supermarket. After she ate, she would hop up onto my lap and fall asleep while I brushed her.

This routine continued for several months. José and I quickly became attached to Catalina. She would catch — and eat — any mouse that ventured her way, causing Luis to be very pleased with his companion.

“While Luis likes to have Catalina because she catches mice, I don’t believe he really cares that much for her,” José told me one evening. “You and I are cat-lovers. To Luis, she’s merely a convenience.”

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Catalina belongs in a home ….”

“You mean, our home?” which was a rhetorical question.

“He’s going to Miami to visit family ….”

“When he goes, I’ll visit Catalina more often and spend time with her,” I said.

“I think we should catnap her,” José proposed.

“You mean, after he leaves, bring her to the house? What will Luis say when he finds out? He’ll probably expect us to return her,” I told José.

“I don’t care what Luis expects; if he complains, he can quit. Catalina’s happiness is more important than Luis’ need for a mouse-catcher.”

We paid Luis for the week he would be away, perhaps to assuage our guilt for catnapping Catalina while he would be in Miami.

“Let’s say it’s his vacation,” I said to José.

“He’s been working for us for less than eight months … but okay, if it makes you feel better,” he agreed.

As soon as we saw Luis drive off on the day of his departure, we walked over to the stable apartment and, opening the door, there was Catalina, waiting for us. José picked her up and we walked back to the house, Catalina nestled in José’s arms. During the days that followed, every time one of us called “Catalina”, there she would be, at our feet. Nights, she would race from one room to another, up and down the stairs, jump on our bed, cuddle — just being a playful cat.

“When Luis returns, I propose we ask him for a ransom,” I told José.

“Why?” he asked, petting Catalina who was curled up on his lap, purring.

“Because, that’s what all nappers do,” I said.

“But kidnappers nap kids because they want something in return for returning the brat,” José explained. “We don’t intend returning Catalina, so why demand a ransom?” he rationalized. “He should be the one demanding a ransom from us, to pay him for our keeping Catalina.”

As Luis is an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua, I wasn’t sure he would understand José’s logic as it took me the rest of the day to figure it out … and I have a doctorate in philosophy, having taught logic to graduate students at the State university.

To prevent any arguments on Luis’ return, I went to the local hardware store.

“What are these?” José asked when I showed him my purchases.

“They’re mouse traps,” I told him.

“They resemble cages,” he said, holding one in his hands.

“Both you and I are against killing, even vermin, so instead of buying the cheap mouse traps that snap the mouse’s neck, I bought what Luis, as an illegal immigrant to this country, would understand,” I explained. “These are mouse traps that are catch and release.”

E.P. Lande, born in Montreal, has lived in the south of France and now, with his partner, in Vermont, writing and caring for more than 100 animals. Previously, as a Vice-Dean, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa, and he has owned and managed country inns and free-standing restaurants. Since submitting less than three years ago, more than 90 his stories and poems have found homes in publications on all continents except Antarctica. His story “Expecting” has been nominated for Best of the Net. His debut novel, “Aaron’s Odyssey”, a gay-romantic-psychological thriller, is to be published in 2025.

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Kayleigh Kitt | In the middle of the night, when you hear a noise, your spouse is having side effects from the Covid vaccination, and a place called semi-awake

Pulled from the depths of secure darkness, I’m aware of being pinned to the bed.
It’s just the cat on my bladder, again.
Stumbling back across the landing, I reclaim a portion of the covers, slipping into bed.
Kitty’s purring punctuates the blackness, energised, kneading, plucking.
I attempt to settle.
Wait.
My spouse is wheezing. Although, it’s more akin to whistling. He had his first covid jab today.
I lie straining to hear, there’s something more, in addition to contented rumbling and pinking, claws nicking the cloth. Her nocturnal activity is getting less frenzied.
Wait. Nope, definitely not my spouse.  
Perhaps my nose is pushed too far into the pillow?
I reposition.
There’s still intermittent purring and fluffing, the volume reducing by increments.
Oh my life, there’s another cat in the house. It’s at the bottom of the stairs – and it’s not ours!
Kitty rockets off the bed. I’m fumbling for the torch.
Snip-Snap.
Exit the brazen neighbourhood cat.

Kayleigh Kitt lives in Shropshire, UK with her husband and ageing cat who thinks it’s a dog. She’s had work published in the Hooghly Review, Dark Winter Lit and CNF in Across the Margin and is a regular contributor to Scifansat. A selection of her published work can be found at https://kayleighkitt75.wixsite.com/dragon

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