Valentino Juarez, who works with The Ice Colony, a story based podcast that seeks to support and represent people from all walks of life who struggle with borders both physical and metaphorical. Their missions statement clarifies: “While our primary focus is on the migrant life, this podcast is here to ensure that we tell the stories of people seeking refuge in any form, and inspire humanity, generosity, and knowledge.”
In this episode of ‘Cover to Cover with . . .,’ Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Juarez about his altruistic goals, the state of injustice in America, the power of fiction to convey a message, and more!
I am like water. I reflect things as they truly are.
It’s more a state of being than a mantra—something I picked up while meditating, ever since that day some twenty-odd years ago. I’m supposed to close my eyes and measure my breaths. On the inhale, I become the essence of still water, a flat and glossy pane of glass. A pond in the heart of a lush forest, striking enough to captivate a man until he returns to the soil as a flower. I hold my breath there, freezing the landscape in stillness and solitude. Then, the exhale, revealing the truth behind false colors and illusions.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Become the lens through which to see this world.
The City of Hate, the city that titles Timothy S. Miller’s forthcoming novel, is Dallas. It’s a relatively modern version. Dealey Plaza buzzes with tourists come to see the Sixth Floor Museum and relive the events of President Kennedy’s assassination, but this Dallas still has answering machines, printed glossy photographs, and storefront bookstores as (mostly) viable business models. More striking, though, is the emptiness within this busy, thriving city. It’s not the buzzing, numb kind of empty, but an emptiness that writhes and howls and demands to be filled.
We walk the streets of Dallas in the shoes of Hal Scott, a cynical, triggered alcoholic clinging to sobriety by his fingernails. Hal, himself empty, fills up his inner monologue with paranoid speculations of other people’s lives.…
a girl wore pajamas to look her age halved
and gutted for its hard-to-reach testaments
to a body that awakened and grew in the night-light
that now contoured the face of the bathroom mirror
with the aftershock of the worry that she was home alone for the worse
that she was inside while her mind turned out
but a creak from the staircase caused her jaw to slacken
and bloat to its over-glory when it didn’t put words to fear
right then she put a shadow to the noise and a towel to her mouth
to anesthetize the area before it could scream or do wrong
by the man who saw the light from the second-floor window
as a signal of a challenge left alone to be overcome
but then he saw the girl exit the bathroom like her bones needed longer to fuse
before she was more than a cavity for this silence to decay
so he gave her that time and an apology before exiting the way he came
and she waited until she remembered to walk
before she descended the stairs that strained under her fresh
weight until she saw the mosaic of her front door on the ground
that her bare feet were tempted to walk across
as a rite of passage from her broken home
but she stood in place until the siren-sounds
replaced the rising screams of heat
warning her to sleep through the night
Bachelor’s buttons, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace and baby’s breath; my mother loved great swathes of riotous colors, threaded leaves, seed heads bent by hungry finches.
She never bothered with hybrid teas or careful chrysanthemums, boring rows of marigolds and petunias.
In tiny towns with manicured lawns and spindly evergreens, she filled beds with mounds of sticky, swollen peonies, let wild roses climb the windowsills.
When it was time, my mother gathered buckets and tubs, cardboard boxes lined with black garbage bags. She dug it all up: flag iris, daylilies, coneflowers, bee balm, Sweet William, tickseed and feverfew.
While the truck filled with beds and chairs, foot stools, dishes, linens and books, blankets, clothes, curtains and dolls; she filled the station wagon with her flowers, covered with damp newspapers and rags.…
