Word Riot » Stretching Forms

Compartment C, Car 293 by Gladys Justin Carr

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:19:11 +0000

They are standing together at the station. It would seem their lives are traveling in the same direction. But this is not that story. You could probably guess how long they’ve been at each other’s throats. They wanted to be joyful, but happiness eluded them. So this is their good-bye. Suddenly, he vanishes. (He is no longer on stage in this reenactment.) She is seen alone in compartment C, Car 293, wearing a wide-brim hat, reading a book about the artist, Edward Hopper.

In the next scene, a strange woman enters the compartment, holding a whip and a pair of golden handcuffs. She carries a Louis Vuitton train case, imprinted with letters on their sides, upside down on their heads, odd sizes and shapes, a calligraphy cascade of S’s and M’s. Aimez-vous bondage? she asks. The woman in the wide-brim hat would prefer that the stranger return to the pages of the bodice ripper from whence she came. How to get the genie back in the bottle? She asks the conductor. He smiles, waves his baton, and Mahler appears, in the wrong story, having just completed his Resurrection. He is traveling to the funeral of a friend who died in Venice, unaware that he is on a train to Chicago. Aimez-vous Brahms? asks the whip woman.

Wide-brim is trying to get to the next chapter, but the compartment is too crowded with this annoying cast of characters. She closes the book, prepares for her future on the Lake Shore Limited, a divorced woman, still beautiful, frozen in time. She turns toward her new life, accompanied by Mahler’s Adagio. Slowly she reaches for the golden handcuffs.

About the author:

I am a former Nicholson Fellow at Smith College, University Fellow at Cornell, and publishing executive with McGraw-Hill and HarperCollins book publishers.

My work is widely published in literary magazines and journals and has also been cited and quoted in Literary Magazine Review. Publications include: The New York Times, Many Mountains Moving, North Atlantic Review, Bayou, Connecticut Review, Denver Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Broome Review, Sanskrit, Cairn, California Quarterly (CQ), The Cape Rock, Cottonwood, Drumvoices Revue, Eclipse, Epicenter, Fulcrum: An Annual Of Poetry And Aesthetics, Gargoyle, George Washington Review, The Gihon River Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, Iodine Poetry Review, Karamu, KNOCK, The Madison Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Minnetonka Review, Monkey Puzzle Press, New Delta Review, Nimrod International, Pebble Lake Review, Potomac Review, Quercus Review, Red Rock Review, Rhino, The Saint Ann’s Review, Salamander, Soundings East, The South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Visions International, Whiskey Island, The Worcester Review, and Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations, among many others.

I am the author of Augustine’s Brain – The Remix, a chapbook, and coauthor of the volume, Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press). A chapbook, A Premise of Blue, is forthcoming. My work is featured in The Best Of Toadlily Press: New And Selected Poems (Fall, 2011). In the past three years, I’ve been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize.

Gladys Justin Carr with her collaborator, "Mikey."

About the author:

Gladys Justin Carr was a Nicholson Fellow at Smith College and a University Fellow at Cornell before dropping out of Academia to make mischief in an Alternate Reality. She quit her day job as a book publishing executive to write full time. Her work has appeared in over eighty publications and has been quoted in Literary Magazine Review. She is the author of a chapbook, Augustine’s Brain—the Remix, and coauthor of the volume, Edge By Edge. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is featured in the volume, The Best of Toadlily Press: New and Selected Poems, just published. She is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, probably because she is a renowned chocoholic.

Like a Spilled Purse: A Theft by Johannes Lichtman

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:28:16 +0000

Listen to a reading of “Like a Spilled Purse: A Theft” by Johannes Lichtman.

1
You believed that old men know more than young men; that life will break your heart; that death is the vantage point from which a life must be seen. There was something you needed that you never found, and you must have died horribly unsatisfied.

2
I don’t know how to make myself an education out of anything, even those things that I love best in life. I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another. Maybe I read too much. But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone. And maybe I’m not alone, not technically, but even when I’m in a room full of people I often feel so lonely that it’s easier to just leave because it’s only when no one’s around that loneliness makes any sense.

3
At the grocery store I sort through a cue of condolence cards. In the journey of life some people leave a mark so deep it is hard to forget them. I put the card back.
If I wrote a condolence card, what would it say? You don’t need to be in a relationship. You are already in a relationship with yourself. You are going to love yourself forever.

4
All memories, the neuroscientists say, are actually memories of memory, but usually they don’t feel that way. Anything processed by memory is fiction. Speak, memory.

5
Outside a theater: Stacks of blond curls spill out your knit cap; straight-legged jeans reveal the geography of your skin. You wear a half-bored look on your face, the kind models are always trying to find. I start to walk past, but you grab my elbow. I’ve seen you in the halls between classes, but we’ve never spoken before. Every time our eyes meet you lift your sunglasses and smile. I study the floor.
I’m sorry if I stare at you, you tell me, your fingers tightly wedged into my skin. But you look just like my father in his high school yearbook.

6
We moved in together ten days later. That night I sprung from sleep and began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.
It was as if I’d been dead forever, and was now awake.

7
You told me, I know one of us will die first and the other will suffer. Then our naked bodies started glowing, and the air turned such a strange color I thought my life must be leaving me, and with every young fiber and cell I wanted to hold on to it for another breath.

8
You said that you loved me more than anything. But you knew what I didn’t: That you can love somebody more than anything and still not love the person all that much, if you’re busy with other things.

9
When you were too sad to talk, you would read to me. If you couldn’t use your own words, you would use someone else’s.

10
I suspect that not being able to share depression’s inner feeling or even really describe what it felt like felt to you like a desperate, life-or-death need to describe the sun in the sky and yet being able or permitted only to point to the shadows on the ground.

11
You had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all you ever seemed to get for all your choices and all your freedom was more miserable. You liked to make your pain seem extraordinary when it was just ordinary, ordinary pain for an ordinary, ordinary person. I wondered if there was something wrong with me, talking and laughing, having a good time, as if I enjoyed being alive.

12
Just before Christmas, you packed your clothes and left to visit a friend. Said a change of scenery would do you good. Got in the car and drove. Leveled a freeway divider. Shot through the windshield like a sneeze. Stepped onto the sky to land like a spilled purse at my feet.

13
I lie here hating you, loving you, knowing I have failed you.

14
My mother calls. She asks me how I feel. Am I sad? Emotions, I tell her, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, “the happiness that attends disaster” or “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants.”
It is impossible to say just what I mean.

15
The root function of language is to control the universe by describing it, and writing is an act of communication between one human being and another. I quote others to better express myself, but even with the help of others, I find that I don’t know myself in the slightest. Monday’s me and Friday’s me are two completely different people, and each one depends heavily on the book in my pocket that day.

16
I go back to the store and buy myself a condolence card. May you take comfort in the memories you shared. Memory is by its very nature a dream machine; it is the diary that we all carry about with us, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened.

17
We met in a dream. We were falling off a bridge, up high where the air gets so hot it burns the wings off the birds.

18
Dolphins have been observed refusing to eat after the death of a mate. Geese have been observed reacting to such a death by flying and calling, searching until they themselves became disoriented and lost.

19
There’s a silly saying “We’re born alone and we die alone”—it’s nonsense. We’re surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we’re alone.

Works Not Cited*
1: Richard Rodriguez (“believed that old men…death is the vantage point from which a life must be seen”). Wendell Berry (“There was something you needed that you never found”), Dawn Ryan (“must have died horribly unsatisfied”).
2: Natalia Ginzburg (first sentence). Frank Conroy (second). Ron Carlson (third). Jonathan Franzen (fourth). Matt Bell (fifth).
3: Greeting Card (“In the journey of life some people leave a mark so deep it is hard to forget them”). Jami Attenberg (“You don’t need…You are going to love yourself forever”).
4: Franzen (first sentence). David Shields (second). Vladimir Nabokov (third).
5: Nothing (consciously) stolen here.
6: F. Scott Fitzgerald (“began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again”). Denis Johnson (last sentence).
7: Matthew Dickman (italics). Johnson (second sentence).
8: Franzen (“that you can love somebody…if you’re busy with other things”).
9: Nothing stolen.
10: David Foster Wallace.
11: Franzen (first sentence). Rivka Galchen (second). Leonard Michaels (third).
12: Rodriguez (last sentence).
13: Scott Russell Sanders.
14: Jeffery Eugenides (“Emotions…‘the sadness inspired by failing restaurants’”). T.S. Eliot (last sentence).
15: James Baldwin, (“The root function of language is to control the universe by describing it”), Wallace (“writing is an act of communication between one human being and another”). Montaigne (“I quote others to better express myself”).
16: Greeting Card (“May you take comfort in the memories you shared”). Shields (“Memory is by its very nature a dream machine”). Oscar Wilde (“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened”).
17: Italo Calvino (“We met in a dream. We were falling off a bridge”), Anne Carson (“up high where the air gets so hot it burns the wings off the birds”).
18: Joan Didion.
19: Tom Rachman.

*Some of the quotes were condensed and/or altered slightly, mainly to fit pronouns and verb tense, occasionally to fit the space.

Johannes Lichtman

About the author:

Johannes Lichtman’s work has been published by or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Barrelhouse, The Collagist, The Oxford American, REAL, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA student at UNC Wilmington, where he is completing a novel about plagiarism.

Reading Comprehension by W. Todd Kaneko

admin — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 05:20:30 +0000

Reading Comprehension 23: Action Figures

    Once, he was more powerful than a locomotive, this last son of Krypton. He rescued damsels from the clutches of mechanical geniuses in outer space. And defended the American Way in a time when the sky was bigger and candy tasted sweeter.
    The world is oblivious to special powers, so his frail alter-ego fills a fortress of solitude with trophies of better days. A tiny city in a bottle. A broken robot. The brittle stem of a dandelion. Trophies keep the world secure. These are sentimental dangers.
    He now stands five-inches tall, his face frozen stoic. Plastic arms rotate with a limited range of motion, legs wobble loose when twisted. Under his left foot: “Made in China.” Now, he perches on a shelf in front of a book about collecting antiques, and candy tastes less like chocolate and more like the foil that sheathes it.

Question: Who is “he?”

a)     The author
b)     The author’s father
c)     You in fifty years
d)     All of the above

Reading Comprehension 666: The Hungry Ghosts

When the women unfold into gorgeous birds; when the men peel back their downy pelts; when the children cloak themselves in hides of long dead antelope—it will be supper time and your ancestors will emerge from photographs in search of new clothing. Your grandmother is less a sentimental memory than a ghost, less a ghost than a woman hungry for peach pie and the fragile scent of nurseries. Leave a bottle of whiskey in the yard so she might swallow a quiet fire. Fold the Sunday paper into a siege of cranes, burn them so she might follow the smoke home. When a ghoul appears ravenous at your bedside and looks at you with eyes seething like the tide, she will tell you about family albums shredded by war, about birds with wings stripped of plumage, about beasts wailing at the sky to lure Heaven closer to the trees. She will explain to you what it means to be caged, and whisper precious between ragged breaths.

Question: What do hungry ghosts whisper?

a)     These orchards are full of hunger.
b)     Those houses are full of ghosts.
c)     There are no such things as ghosts.

About the author:

W. Todd Kaneko lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His stories and poems can be seen in Puerto Del Sol, Crab Creek Review, Fairy Tale Review, Southeast Review, NANO Fiction, Blackbird and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. He teaches at Grand Valley State University.

Table 2.1 From the Amateur Scientist’s Notebook by Jesse DeLong

admin — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 05:26:25 +0000

Listen to a reading of “Table 2.1 From the Amateur Scientist’s Notebook” by Jesse DeLong.

Read “Table 2.1 From the Amateur Scientist’s Notebook” by Jesse DeLong [PDF]

About the author:

Jesse DeLong lives in Tuscaloosa, AL. His work can be found or is forthcoming from Nano Fiction, The Offending Adam, Copper Nickel, 751 Magazine, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Tearings, and Other Poems, was released by Curley Head Press. Check out him reading from it at: http://www.slashpinepress.com/2011/03/jesse-delong-arcade-reading/

Gmail – Inbox – richard.lee@gmail.com by Erik Doughty

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 05:33:10 +0000

Read “Gmail – Inbox – richard.lee@gmail.com” by Erik Doughty [PDF]

Erik Doughty

About the Author:

Erik Doughty is an Asian American writer from New Jersey. His work was recently published in Stymie Magazine and is forthcoming in Annalemma. He lives in Boston working as an editor at Digi-Block, Inc. and carries a notebook, air guitar, and inhaler with him wherever he goes.

Standard Service Contract: Final Notification and Escort by Tim Bass

admin — Sun, 15 May 2011 05:09:55 +0000

1. Overview
This document establishes a formal and exclusive Contractual Agreement regarding the retention of Grim Reaper, Inc., for delivery of the express professional services to be stated herein. All terms, conditions, descriptions, and fees spelled out below and on subsequent pages, if any, shall constitute a legally binding business arrangement between Grim Reaper, Inc., and the undersigned party(ies). Specifics of this Agreement are outlined as follows.
2. Services to be Rendered
I, ____________________ (insert name, hereinafter to be referred to as “Contractee”), an appointed, anointed, indentured, condemned, or otherwise selected Believer in (check as appropriate; you may not check more than one):

Allah
Angra Mainyu
Bahá’u'lláh
Beelzebub
Belial
Buddha
God
Iblis
Lucifer
Satan
Thor
Ukapirmas
Zeus
Other (specify; name[s] of human cult leader[s] may be listed here): ____________________

do hereby agree to retain Grim Reaper, Inc., for purposes of Breaking the News to below-named person or persons and Escorting said person or persons to Realm of the Unliving.
Specifically, Contractee authorizes Grim Reaper, Inc., to Notify ____________________ (list name[s] of pending Decedent[s]) that his/her/their (circle as appropriate and attach recent photo[s]) allotted Earthly time has expired

and, further,
to Escort above-named party(ies) away from his/her/their natural station(s) in life, accompanying him/her/them from Point of Notification to Final Destination in Realm of the Unliving (check appropriate Sector; you may not check more than one):

Celestial Kingdom
Cloud Nine
Heaven
Hell
Mansion on the Hill
Moksha
Paradise, seventy-two virgins
Paradise, unexceptional martyrs
Purgatory
State of Eternal Consciousness
Sugarcandy Mountain
Sweet Hereafter
That Great Bar/Pub/Other Drinking Establishment in the Sky
Valhalla
Welkin
Other, punitive (specify): ____________________
Other, reward (specify): ____________________

Note: In cases with undetermined Final Destination, a 15% storage surcharge shall apply.
3. Method
The services of Grim Reaper, Inc., are limited to Notification and Escort only. Contractee bears sole responsibility for determining Method of Demise. Grim Reaper, Inc., must be made aware of Method in advance, in order to prepare a personalized Notification (select Method of Demise; you may check more than one):

Accidental, common
Accidental, newsworthy (circle preference: a. alien encounter; b. juggling rattlesnakes at art festival; c. piano falling from sky; d. anvil falling from sky; e. alien rattlesnake falling from sky)
Medical, slow
Medical, sudden
Military
Mysterious/Unexplained
Scientific Anomaly (e.g., spontaneous combustion, too full of oneself, etc.)
Sports, extreme (circle preference: a. cliff diving; b. competitive eating; c. piranha fishing; d. diving for piranha and then eating them)
Sports, not extreme (circle preference: a. checkers; b. croquet; c. trout fishing)
Stupidity (circle preference: a. attempting to fly; b. barbecuing while intoxicated; c. do-it-yourself home electrical; d. jumping gorge on bicycle)
Vehicular, acceleration excess
Vehicular, braking deficiency
Vehicular, cellular telephone
Vehicular, sexual
Other (specify): ____________________

Note: Pursuant to recent court rulings, Grim Reaper, Inc., no longer conducts Expiration Notifications involving Methods of Demise resulting from:

Crime, organized
Crime, unorganized
Mushroom ingestion
Vehicular, non-street legal

4. Guise
Contractee requests that Grim Reaper, Inc., employ the following guise during execution of contracted duties (check one):

Hood and Sickle, dour (traditional)
Hood and Sickle, festive
Hood and Sickle, New Age white
Mime
Minister, kind
Minister, stern
Musical (circle preference: a. bagpipes; b. lute; c. one-man band; d. trombone)
Pest Exterminator (Note: This guise is metaphorical only and does not include actual treatment for household pests.)
Pizza-Delivery Person (Contractee may select up to three toppings)
Stranger Hitchhiking on Lonely Stretch of Highway
~~Stripper, Male/Female~~ (Discontinued)
Various Animal (circle preference: a. beagle; b. chipmunk; c. parrot; d. tabby kitten; e. walrus)
Other (specify): ____________________ (Note: Guises requested under “Other” must receive prior approval by the Grim Reaper, Inc., Ethics Control Panel and are subject to review by the Federal Trade Commission.)

     Note: All guises are subject to availability. In the event that a selected guise is in use or at dry cleaners during time of contract, Grim Reaper, Inc., reserves the right to substitute its default guise: Hood and Sickle, dour.
5. Timing
     Because of workload demands, spotty communications in rural areas, and union rules, Grim Reaper, Inc., cannot, does not, and will not specify precise appointment times for Notification and Escort. However, Grim Reaper, Inc., guarantees service within four-hour blocks, beginning at 6 a.m. and continuing through 5:59 a.m. daily. Using a numbered system (1-8, with 1 as the top choice, 8 as the last choice, and 2-7 as descending alternates), rank the following blocks in order of preference:

     ___ Good Morning (6 a.m.-10 a.m.)

     ___ Brunch (10:01 a.m.-2 p.m.)

     ___ Happy Hour (2:01 p.m.-6 p.m.)

     ___ Cocktails and Dinner (6:01 p.m.-10 p.m.)

     ___ Night, Stirred Slumber (10:01 p.m.-2 a.m.)

     ___ Night, Thief In The (2:01 a.m.-5:59 a.m.)

     ___ Surprise Me (5% discount applies)

     ___ First Available (10% premium applies)
6. Authorized Signatures
     The undersigned parties do hereby agree to all terms, conditions, descriptions, exceptions, fees, charges, percentages, caveats, regulations, specifications, notes, notices, and addenda listed above, below, and on subsequent pages, if any.

_________________________ _________________
Contractee Date

_________________________ _________________
Representing Grim Reaper, Inc. Date

Addenda

     A. Grim Reaper, Inc., is a licensed entity in all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. Provisional licenses in Fiji and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In California, fulfillment of this contract may be delayed due to pending litigation in the case of State v. Grim Reaper, Inc., re: Identical Twins Mishap.

     B. Grim Reaper, Inc., shall remain free and clear of all legal liabilities that may result from the following: emotional distress on the part of notified party(ies), impromptu violence initiated by a Fight or Flight Response, traffic chases, the bargaining of souls, and disputes over Final Destination.

     C. Grim Reaper, Inc., is an Equal Opportunity/Equal Notification Agency.

     D. Grim Reaper, Inc., adheres to the Professional Code of Conduct adopted by the American Association of End-of-Life Transition Providers. No Contractee information will be provided to outside parties, though wholly owned affiliates of Grim Reaper, Inc., may contact you regarding offers of additional services and/or upgrades.

     E. Grim Reaper, Inc., is a tobacco-free company.

     F. No pets.

     G. Severe penalty for early termination.
Grim Reaper, Inc.: Undying Devotion to Dignified Departures

About the author:

teach in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. My work has appeared in Fugue, Small Spiral Notebook, Big Muddy, and other publications.

Losing His Voice by Kenton K. Yee

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:17:45 +0000

She boiled a pot of water while he chopped celery and onions.
     “No meat,” she said.
     “I have.” The man unhinged his left hand and tossed it into the pot.
     “Did you wash?”
     He shook his head and bled a pint of blood into the soup.
     “For texture.”
     The woman peered into the soup. Electrical currents she hadn’t felt in her twenty-eight years buzzed from her cortex down her spinal cord into her pelvis. She lifted her left hand to his lips.
     He kissed the back of her hand before unhinging it and slipping it next to his hand in the soup. The man dug deep into his belly with his remaining hand and heaved a bulbous gland into the pot. “Ttttthwerpt!” he said, imprinting this sound into their song.
     The woman flicked a speck of lint from the gash on his belly, giggled, and threw in both her kidneys. “I’ll use yours – ours,” she said, ladling him the soup.
     He slurped. “Tastes like blood.”
     She withdrew the wallet from his pants and threw it into the pot. The cash compounded in the soup. She unzipped her skirt, tossed in her ovaries, and snapped her fingers. “Fini.”
     The man popped off his head. He flipped it like a basketball towards the pot. The head bounced on the rim and rolled around before splashing in face first, sloshing soup into the flames of her stove.
     Her pupils widened. Her lashes fluttered. “What did you say?”

Kenton Yee

About the author:

Ken has poetry and prose published or forthcoming in Bartleby Snopes, Apollo’s Lyre, and Word Riot. He is persuading himself that poetry is prose.

Nameless, TN by Heather Luby

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:05:11 +0000

Read “Nameless, TN” by Heather Luby [PDF]

Heather Luby

About the author:

Heather Luby is really nothing more than a girl from the Ozark Mountains that grew up with dreams of writing stories. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Citron Review, Travel by the Books, Annotation Nation and a few other little places too. She holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently feverishly revising her novel Laws of Motion. When not conversing with the characters of her imagination, she can found wrangling two willful and beautiful daughters around the suburbs of St. Louis, MO, and most certainly drinking strong coffee.

The Glass Angel by Philip Tinkler

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:02:43 +0000

Listen to a reading of “The Glass Angel” by Philip Tinkler.

The Glass Angel breaks apart twenty-four loveless pieces of mindless tally-time with a piano-slam jingle jive-hopped up on grape-blood with chatoyant bedroom Eyes of Horus sent to stagger-foot the wingless ones, those willow-headed gallery girls and tiger-shirted momma’s boys, those torn asunder on the jagged ends of Earth where drinks and lives are served on the rocks, and roll I my one-sided die to catch an Angel unaware, to wear her bonnie kisser as she undresses my worn eyes with naked love, breathing beside me in whisper-wheat silhouettes of shoulder bone shudders to roam my fingertips along her neck and imagine I’m on the peak of Scafell Pike, calling out as she soars above Castlerigg, above Helvellyn, above the ancient soil where Reivers and Romans drew thorns and painted my past lives in Cumbric red, calling out how I broke your heart to steal the pieces to place in the prison where I waited to ignite your jailbreak laughter, waited to watch you trigger-happy teasing tornadoes of prairie fringe around your finger-shush, waited to draw you in words, so I could hang you in haunted rooms where dust gathers to dance elbows of rust-leaf candelabra, waited to read your beaten heart like a postcard sent to the wrong address, waited to tear free my southpaw from the Christmas tree glow of your cheeks, to perchance pen your pain a Greek chorus to sing in your giggle-gummed voice, staged in a place of promise, a place where the band never breaks, a place where home is on the house, and the sun forever kisses my Glass Angel.

Philip Tinkler

About the author:

Philip Tinkler was born in the bucolic north of England. He has been published in places such as the Mad Hatters’ Review, Red Fez, The Dream People, The Southern Comfort Charity Anthology, and ChiZine. He lives in NYC with his words and woman. More of his ramblings can be found at philiptinkler.com.

Airborne Creatures, a story in verse by Jennifer Goldsmith

admin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:39:48 +0000

Lola sold shoes she was an honest dragon.
Her parents—when she had parents—had
done the same. She inherited a stall at the
end of the market between
the fishmonger and the jeweler
where she sat on her black haunches
greeting passers-by missing her parents.

She was a young thing she hadn’t come of age
and the shoes she sold came from saddened leathers
old briefcase covers and crusty jackets
melted down (her breath) stitched up (her claws)
and shelved (her shophand Gerta of Tuesdays and Sundays).
She sold shoes in ones and pairs and threes
with laces or buttons or snaps
and tongues forked like her own.

Her teeth were blunt she was not one for terror
she filed them down
she gnashed them together.
Her claws she painted lavender and her horns too.
She tied her pink smock in a pink rosette knot
behind her black wings.

Gerta liked order she arranged the gray hairs
on her head in order of their grayness.
Tuesdays and Sundays were gray
filled with Gerta’s orders
her smell of rotten age.

Lola wore her sandwichboard those days with
sample shoes draped
over her tail and over each wing.
They swung by knotted laces.
Her tail swung by the tempo of her hips
her wings by their very uselessness.
(She could not fly she never learned how.)

Gerta thought she was clever she painted the sandwichboard
Stop ‘Dragon’ Your Feet
with letters measured to a millimeter of perfection.
Lola looked no one in the eye on Tuesdays and Sundays
puns aren’t puns if they feel embarrassed.

Lola slept in her stall it was the warmest place she knew
she ate in her stall it was the safest place she knew
only left sometimes only down the hill
she snatched fruit from the trees and bathed in the lake
frogs and snakes startled up the shore
she breathed underwater
boiled the fish.

Gerta woke her some mornings that was how it happened
it was a Tuesday or a Sunday
Lola’s eyes half-shut half-golden like the dawn
Gerta spoke in her best measured phrases,
her customer phrases. A man in brass buttons spoke back.

Then a Yorkshire man in brass buttons
tugged Lola from the stile (she was still dumb with sleep
did not fight back did not breathe fire)
a bill of sale in his hand
he hadn’t bought shoes.

No shoes on Lola just iron cuffs on each ankle
The intersection of flint scales and metal cuffs
sparked with each footstep. Lola tried to summon
her dragon skills her fire breath her terror.
She only found trembles, useless dragonquakes.

Gerta smiled and arranged her foreign bills by number
she would sell shoes only in pairs.

_____________

The man was a captain his ship sailed the sky
(it wasn’t real there was no blueprint)
his buttons were cast of sunlight
(these were real just brass-plated)
he bought her for her wings
she thought she loved him anyway
(and is there anything lonelier than that?)

Lola was alone she scrawled lonely lists
things she knew of her captor things to focus on:

1. his surname was Cayley spelled just so she did not know
his given name she thought it might be George
2.his face was a dinner plate: eyes nose and mouth
all scooped to the center
3. he smelled ageless
of spices smoke and featherbeds
4. he wanted to fly he was no dragon
(he was an engineer)
5. he did not know she could speak or feel he never asked
mistook her for a common dragon of the street
(she assumed there were such things)
6. he studied her wings drew her wings
bought her for her wings did not care that (?) they were broken
did not notice
7. he sketched his own copy of da Vinci’s airship
kept it in a frame by his door
8. he locked his door at night
(he chained her there she studied the sketch)
9. he locked his heart at night
(it was full of flying no room for a dragon)

They don’t work you know these wings.
She said it plainly
as one might if her wings
had, for eight hours, been folded and unfolded,
opened like paper fans and snapped painfully shut.
They make a nice umbrella, and they’re handy
for scaring rabbits or shading myself in the sun.
But they don’t work. Not for flying.

Cayley’s drafting pencil struck the ground.
Lola tucked her wings up in the back of a sweater
she tucked her shame way up in the sleeves:
the man-engineer had gone red (not from reaching down
for his pen from mistreating his dragon
the dragon could speak).

They had discussions not just about wings.

He told her how medieval cartographers drew serpents
on maps of unexplored lands. Dragons too.
Here be lions, they wrote. Here be dragons. Here, indeed,
be men who have large horns the length of four
feet, and serpents so large they could eat an ox whole.

Lola pictured places lands full of dragons
marked on maps. Spaces only dragons live
maybe where she came from once. She wondered
if only she could get there by wings
by an impossible flight.

She owned real journals now she did not need to
chart his behaviors on scraps of crumpled paper.
He was good to her. She breathed a quick boil into his
tea his bathwater his stove-top stew
in turn he forgave her dragon quirks her unique indiscretions.
(His forgiveness did little, though, for that poor charred terrier).

Nothing was impossible Cayley thought the word impossible
implied a lack of trying. He tried charcoal for his newest
portrait of Lola the texture of her skin should be dark
smooth made to blend into the night sky.
The attention flattered Lola the stillness grew tedious.

Cayley drew diagrams he illustrated how she might fly
with her wings at an angle like a large awkward bird
he sketched her in flight in the phases of flight
calculated her weight (forty stone) the wing-beats
per minute (fifty three). to keep her airborne

She calculated the heartbeats of a resting dragon
(per minute, one-nineteen), the beats when a human man
with a face like a dinner plate crossed her path
(per minute, one-thirty). It seemed like
data Cayley would appreciate even
if he could not fully interpret the meaning of her study.

It was parent love she knew not husband love
(a man would not take a dragon wife)
love displaced for her dead human father and mother
(she did not know how she emerged from their flesh)
she loved Cayley because he wanted to mend her wings
(and he was the first to want this for her)

Thrust and lift Cayley had these deciphered they meant flight
a matter of angles and birds and motion.
A matter of force, he said.
What forces birds to fly? Lola asked.
The geography of their nests. Their mothers. God.

Forces acting on a dragon wing differed Lola knew
but didn’t say: selling shoes in a market
making shoes in a market
missing one’s parents in a market being young in a market
being sold to an engineer in one’s own market stall
also: air loneliness and life as a dragon.

But this was her old life her market life
and only when she thought of her childhood
(when the only forces acting on her were
mother-love and father-love) did she miss that place.
Cayley sometimes trapped himself in silence
at his writing desk. He never gave orders.

Have you known other dragons she asked over breakfast
she balanced a teacup on her claw as she spoke.
I’ve seen some before. They fly in formation, you know.
In an X. Marking the sky like the site of some
buried treasure on a tattered old map.

The sky was his treasure he had the map now
petted it with calloused engineering fingers
sometimes sketched it again and again it looked like Lola.
(A map will promise many things success has never been one.)

______

Months passed he had a plan he was going to fly
he would cast new wings model them from her own
this time they would get it they would fly
(he’d tried it before it hadn’t worked yet)

Lola took walks the grounds were broad and wild.
Blaming herself for flying failures
she passed the garden (turnips beets potatoes)
she passed the flock of sheep (untended and fat)
and the thatch shack where Cayley hammered together
his airships his gliders his wings gravity (her fault)

Past all of this there was a meadow
the grass licked her feet with each dragon step
the sound of water kept her walking she walked
until she felt solitude envelop her.

She stopped at a pond overgrown
with life she watched a lamentation
of swans there. They could fly
their ballerina necks floated already on air.

A lamentation of swans what did they have to lament.

A dragon seldom envies but she envied these swans.
Lola could not help it
they seemed crafted in feathers and grace.
Her own sharpness and scales were made just for endurance.
(Of course endurance is less beautiful no child dreams to endure).

Lola pretended to be Cayley she caught a swan
held the swan in her broad gentle claw.
She folded and unfolded its wings like paper fans
she pretended to find the meaning of flight.

Unlike a dragon-child a swan guards its dignity
its flight its wings its pride all lacquered
together. Insulted by the touch of dragon flint.
An explosion of beak squawk and feathers (still poised still haughty)
disturbed her examination of wings.

She screamed breathed fire released the bird.
Checked for feather embers, charred flesh
(there were none a swan is not so easily ruined).

A swan’s elegance emerges from its fierceness
Lola decided as she walked again home.
Her palm bled from beak-shaped abrasions.

Caley had not wanted a dragon-daughter
had not bought her for this, bought her for her wings
Gerta had used her for advertising puns Cayley was no different
she could see it now:
A dragon is merely a gimmick a novelty.
A bit of engineering to be studied.

Swans humans other non-dragon beings
could simply exist have
relationships soft beauty love.

She wondered if she had confused cause with effect
she cried not from pain from frustration
purple dragon tears glistened along her scaly cheek.

Her leather journal that night took no Cayley notes
no market memories.
This instead:

The differences between dragon and swan
outweigh their basic similarities
(bipedal stance, wings).
One gentle monster one violent beauty.
One rewarded with flight one taunted by its absence.

A swan does not lose her parents she must stay delicate
to do this there can be no hardship.
A swan never exists alone it is borne alongside sisters
(all swans must be feminine).
A swan wills itself to fly it is entitled to its lightness
A swan is far too beautiful its cruelty forever overlooked.

A dragon is a mass of stone flesh. Stone will never fly
at best it can make fire.
A dragon neck carries its heavy head as a man might
carry a furnace.
A dragon should never show menace it is assumed to be
harsh unlovable covered in warts and aggression.
A dragon does not know beauty tries to grow it from within
tries to pinken its sharpest parts and blunt its terror
A dragon will never succeed this way.

He should have bought a bird he would be flying then.

Her journal pages puddled with purple dragon tears
paper sizzled and vanished in dragon-teared circles
where she wrote of swans the page took no harm
(that, she thought, is the good fortune of swans).

Cayley made breakfast next morning served it on a tray
Lola would not emerge from her sleeping crate
would not eat would not talk
she blinked bleary eyes (half-golden half-angrysad).

A dragon seldom withdraws but she had to withdraw
from Cayley for both their sakes. (She was a mild dragon
she was not one for grudges.)

She could tear off her wings leave them for his perusal
replace herself with swans larks sparrows
—or bats should he prefer darkness—
winged creatures succeeding in their purpose
less mythic more practical.
He was a practical man no use for myths.

She would leave her parent love for him
inside her sleeping crate he would see it when
he tried to bring her stew later in the day.
Maybe he wouldn’t know what it was
maybe he’d clean it up disgusted.

And so she crept (as best a dragon can creep) out
of his house out of his life. He was working
in his thatch shack where he hammered together
his dreams. Lola slipped out the front door
looked one last time at da Vinci’s sketch before she left.

_____

Every day at her stall had become Tuesday or Sunday
since the only dragon had gone.
The sandwichboard hung from the front of the stall
Shoes Are Good For The Sole
Lola winced as she read.

I thought you could do with a holiday said Gerta
with a gentle smile as though nothing had happened
as though she had not sold her-boss-the-dragon
to a stranger who had kept Lola for a year
shown her the ins and outs of care and gravity.

Fire bubbled up in Lola’s throat she swallowed hard
felt the water she’d lapped from the lake
boiling in her belly. Steam percolated
between her blunt teeth. At herself at Gerta
at the space between herself and the Cayley man.

So get back to work then.

It did not occur to Lola to fire her assistant
her parents had hired the woman long ago and
Lola did not do away with things belonging to her parents
even bad decisions.

Lola ran a broad gentle claw across a shelf
where none of the shoes were her own
Gerta had made them of new hides
of pristine calf skin stretched taut and tanned
(not for love of the craft for love of properness).

Cayley wore shoes with buckles they were old
worn around the toes faded there.
They were not monochrome like Gerta’s shoes
not polished not made for lacquer and gloss
and the jingle of purse-coins.

Lola considered this.

The shoes Gerta wore kept her upright and proper
The shoes Cayley wore led him toward flight.
The shoes her parents had worn they’d made themselves.
Dragons don’t wear shoes but if dragons did wear shoes
Lola wondered how she would finish the sentence.

She continued barefoot she was a practical dragon
and her leatherette feet needed no sheathing
not from the cruelty of pebbles not from the slurp of new mud.
If her feet did hurt it was retribution
for her sad limp wings for their sad limp flightlessness.

Shoes were made and sold:
Lola’s on one side in ones and pairs and threes
Gerta’s on the other in rigid heel-toe parallels
the sandwichboard glowered where it hung

Customers came in Lola imagined they would take her away
as Cayley had done.
No. She revised her thought:
Customers came in she imagined they would be Cayley
he would take her back. Not some stranger.
Lola was particular with her parent-love.

There were no statements observations
her journal would take interest in. The same
repetitive market musings the same complaints
(loneliness boredom Gerta
dry heels and elbows and wing joints)

And each day ended with her wondering
if each day would end like this forever.

_______

Spring had blossomed when Lola came of age
she tucked pink begonias behind her ears
painted her claws like petals.

Her dragon parts had grown her snout no longer
snubbed the world with its bluntness
it had lengthened inclined toward the world instead.
Her dragon chest bore maternal shape
in a sturdy flint-like way. She felt some days
like she’d been carved from stone:
a statue a work of craft and skill.

Still she could not fly Lola knew this
her dragonly instincts informed her.
She felt some days like she’d been carved from stone.

Gerta approached her with an envelope
(sealed with wax stamped with Gerta’s crest)
inside a felt card printed with a pun.
Gold coins padded the card’s crease
perhaps gold coins from when Lola had been sold.

I’m leaving.
Lola could have said for good this time
or keep the stall we both knew you would in the end
but she didn’t. Just I’m leaving
and walked out of the stall
past the fishmonger the hatchery
the crescent-bread baker.

Lola walked and kept walking she passed
women applebasketing through the fruit stalls
shoe-shines and barkeeps straying men from their tasks
pebbles she had known her whole life
pebbles her parents might have known too.

She kept walking by telling herself
that the pebbles were shards broken of a
loneliness she’d known her whole life
that elsewhere women would buy apples
and men would shine shoes. (But never quite like this.)

A man in jodhpurs squinted up at the sky the sun squinted back.
Do that and you’ll go blind someone scolded.
Something’s up there.

Lola looked into cloud and blue into everywhere
something indeed was up there.
She mistook it at first for a formation
marking the sky with an X as though
it were the site of buried treasure
on a tattered old map.

The hull of the ship shone bright black
flint black dragon black with scales to catch the light.
Its underside had been flanked with beams
in two diagonal lines positioned to imitate
the flight of dragons in formation.

Its power was steam like dragonsbreath.

The stern held a man he twirled the captain’s wheel
with the posture of a captain (though engineering was his game)
The Skyward Lola
letters glistened on its starboard curve
proud and elegant as swans.

She paused she corrected herself
looked again at the flying Cayley ship:
Letters glistened on its starboard curve
proud and elegant as dragons.

About the author:

Jennifer Goldsmith recently received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where she also served as the editor in chief of So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. In 2006, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Slovakia. Her plays have been produced at ARTspace in Falls Church, VA; Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, NY; and at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Waltz du temps perdu by Gary Percesepe

admin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:42:43 +0000

I cannot remember the hour. The tables were shining with laughter. An orchestra assembled on the wide polished floor, which was dusted with snow. Players sat down in their places. The chandeliers flickered and dimmed. And someone was saying it’s time while others were staring outside, where the street had meandered away. Soon shapes appeared in the shadows where monuments struggled to walk, and the conductor arose from the dark and stood at the podium. When the music started to play I’d thought it would never arrive, but everyone waited to see who would get up and walk to the dance. The path to the dance floor seemed endless, and someone was leading the way; the stars were still shining for us outside, but no one could say who we were. Soon bodies were twisting and turning, and gliding around on the floor. Our clothes were heavy and the music was slow, and we seemed happy though couldn’t say why. But I felt like death had been cheated, or at least made to wait at the door. Whether we danced away to the future or back to the past no one could say. It seemed harmless to just keep on dancing, and the light was much better at last, so we kept on dancing. I may have been leading, at least for a while. Until it seemed we had been dancing forever. The slightest hint of a smile had a history now, and grimaces and sighs and dips or bows from the waist. Snow spumed away from our shoes, and the wind of our bodies spun us around the floor. As we picked up speed the room became larger and without dimensions, and still we kept gliding and gliding, whoever we were. We were there.

And Frederick and Flora appeared
And the dance was slow
And joining them now Homer and Edith
And Ronald, dear Ronald was dancing and smoking.

And the dance was slow
And into the hall years later came Marie and Gus
And Ronald, dear Ronald was dancing and smoking
And Gerald and Sara were toppled together
And into the hall years later came Marie and Gus
Swaying together and turning and turning
And Gerald and Sara were toppled together
And Vincent and Ang and Janet and Jim

Swaying together and turning and turning
Then came John long and thin
And Vincent and Ang and Janet and Jim
Everyone moving everyone dancing

Then came John long and thin
Across the snow floor
Everyone moving everyone dancing
Ernest was there and so was Kathleen

Across the snow floor
Looking better than ever came Zelda and Scott
Ernest was there and so was Kathleen
And Stephen and Jerrod had just gotten back

Looking better than ever came Zelda and Scott
Lincoln, Lance, Ann Beattie and Jim
And Stephen and Jerrod had just gotten back
And others were there

Lincoln, Lance, Ann Beattie and Jim
William and Judie were drinking and dancing
And others were there
Wearing their best

William and Judie were drinking and dancing
Rie and Frederick Bech and Cathy
Wearing their best
Around and around dancing and dancing.

And our shadows drifted away toward sunset till birds on telephone wires stopped singing and darkened the sea, while fish breath smelled stale in the air near our heads, smelled of almonds then oranges and taffy and boardwalk then finally rotting fruit. Dust stuck to the canvas mounted in the corner and dark clouds rose high as a house and higher. We stood and watched the others afloat on the sea, from distant rafts they were calling hello. Hello, as they sailed by, and may we have this dance? White stars, then off they went to another room with walls of robin egg blue.

And one floor led to another
And doves flew back and forth
Soldiers roamed the veranda
Under the boughs of trees

And doves flew back and forth
A greenish haze was everywhere
Under the boughs of trees
And Johnnie was there with Arlene

A greenish haze was everywhere
And Lucette and Mary were dancing
And Johnnie was there with Arlene
Earthlings must always be pale they said

And Lucette and Mary were dancing
And Connie and Kevin were talking
Earthlings must always be pale they said
But pale turns round to fair

And Connie and Kevin were talking
Saying that blue slides into black
But pale turns round to fair
And Nic was there in heels

Saying that blue slides into black
Georgiana was there and Margot
And Nic was there in heels
And day and night were one

Georgiana was there and Margot
And Ralphie and Cami were there
And day and night were one
And the ocean’s green body was near

And Ralphie and Cami were there
And Frank and Lauren were dancing
And the ocean’s green body was near
Hello out there hello

And Frank and Lauren were dancing,
So thin they were and light
Hello out there hello
Can anyone hear out there

And water rushed into the ballroom from every direction in sound splitting waves, rinsing the snow and crashing into furniture. And I felt as if the sea extended from me alone, that I was a watery grave. And the moon’s light was blocked by the leaning towers, perfectly shattered and the earth reeled like a drunken man. The foundations of the world were shaken but we went on dancing with moves we had memorized as breakers flashed white and specks fell from heavens opened to receive human dust. It grew cold and then I was back with the others. The green sea receded, a kingdom of water gave way, and then suddenly we were left alone.

They floated over the floor
And the china rattled a little
Oh how they moved together
The chandelier shook in the draft

And the china rattled a little
So many doors were open
The chandelier shook in the draft
Nobody knew what would happen

So many doors were open
And there was Rosalie dancing
Nobody knew what would happen
Now Rol waltzed into the room

And there was Rosalie dancing
And Doug and Jen were waiting
Now Rol waltzed into the room
The years would come and go

And Doug and Jen were waiting
Hours and hours would pass
The years would come and go
The trees in the hallway rustled

Hours and hours would pass
Now enter the children of Mare
The trees in the hallway rustled
And here were the children of Gabe

Now enter the children of Mare
There was nothing to do but dance
And here were the children of Gabe
And Pia was telling them something

There was nothing to do but dance
They would never lay down together
And Pia was telling them something
And many who dreamed they could

Would never lay down together
The season of dancing was endless
And many who dreamed they could
Would never be able to stop

I cannot remember the hour or day the light burned the fog away. We were walking across the wide polished floor inlaid with marble, and statuary stood on the stage. Through shallow water and a dusting of snow we advanced as clouds gathered in gray. I cannot remember, but I think you were there, whoever you are, today.

Gary Percesepe

About the author:

Gary Percesepe is Associate Editor at BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review) and serves on the Board of Advisors at Fictionaut. He is the author of four books in philosophy, numerous short stories and poems, and an epistolary novel with Susan Tepper, What May Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock and Dori G, (Cervana Barva Press) which was recently nominated for Pulitzer Prize. He just completed his second novel, Leaving Telluride, set in Telluride, Colorado.

Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver by Matthew Peipert

admin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:40:34 +0000

Be daring. Be brave. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver. Be a man. Man up. Sack up. Shoot somebody. Punch somebody in the face. Jizz all over everything. Bros before hoes. Stay harder longer. Support your local Department of Defense. Kill men. Kill women. Bomb them back to the Stone Age. Order an Extreme Pizza from Dominos. Get vigilante. Don’t cry. Don’t even let your eyes sweat. Shock and awe. Disrespect somebody’s mama. Read Maxim magazine. Strap up. Lock and load. Let’s roll. Boo-yah! Yee-haw! Kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out. These colors don’t run. Die for your country. Kill for your country. Number one. Numero uno. Our heroes, our brave soldiers. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver. Curse a lot. Use the word motherfucker as much as possible every single day of your life. Jump sideways and horizontally while shooting your two guns. Click the button and walk away from the explosion without looking back. Be Army Strong. Be an Army of One. The Few, the Proud. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver. Only 500 available. Sack up. Don’t be a pussy. Hoard weapons of mass destruction. Show your pimp hand. Be an action movie star. Wear sunglasses indoors. Wear sunglasses at night. Rock out with your cock out. Speak in a loud voice when confused. Tattoo “American” in latin gang script across your shoulder blades and back. Pack heat. Front. Don’t back down. Don’t think. Talk the talk. Carry a big stick. Invest at least half of all your money in weaponry. Fight outside clubs. Fight inside clubs. Knock the chip off his shoulder. Smack that motherfucker. Smack your bitch up. Chupa me la verga, Mamasita. Order bottle service. Blink your bluetooth. Wear a diamond-encrusted crucifix. Sip Patron. Smoke chronic. Get some nuts, bitch. Suck my dick, dawg. Lick my balls, homie, bro, son, man, vato, cabron, culero, faggot, motherfucker. Talk trash. Talk smack. Be a hero. Choose your own adventure. Buy a penis pump. Use Axe shower gel. Choose automatic over semi-automatic. Drive a hummer and just don’t give a shit. Fuck this. Fuck that. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver. Honor our troops. Wear yellow ribbons. Screw tawny women on shore leave. Salute your superiors. Gun down your superiors. American badass. Bring it on. Cut some brush. Wear an American flag necktie. Get ripped. Look to score at funerals. Just do it. Mission accomplished. Superman dat ho. Be a big man. Spot me. Swing that dick. Make your mark. Make my day. Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. Jizz all over everything. Bark at squirrels. Smear the queer. Pump pecs with your posse. Get some pussy. Keep your bitch on a leash. They can pry my gun from my cold, dead fingers. Cap that ass. Tap that ass. Pop that motherfucker. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver. Introductory issue price of only $1,995. Sir, yes, sir! Remember the Alamo. Liberty. Equality. Fraternity. Jack off in a coffin. Survival of the fittest. Drink Jaegermeister. Listen to reggaeton. Don’t stop get it get it. Grab titties. Pop coochies. Pop cherries. Sag your pants. Watch greased men wrestle in underwear. Show no fear. Shave your head. Cultivate your goatee. Hold your nuts. Don’t let impotence ruin your sex life. Be daring. Be brave. Be a man. Buy a Chuck Norris Tribute Revolver today.

Matthew Peipert

About the author:

Matthew Peipert is a writer currently based in New York City. His work has appeared in 3:AM Magazine, Beat the Dust, Spork Press and Japanzine.

The Women and the Men by Gary Percesepe

admin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:07:29 +0000

Forget the men, the women do everything. They carry it all. The men? We wait. Of course, we pretend to do things of consequence (Captain, Industry/ Picnic, Lightning) but mostly we wait to see what the women think or feel or do or say. It’s about what the women want and we try to give it to them, mostly. Then we take credit. We may come to believe: I am an intuitive sort, I am a good man. Then proceed to hide something. Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Because the women know everything. The women hear us thinking. The women dispatch us so handily that they have lots of time to make things more complicated; thus they learn to fight among themselves. Often, over us. Which is ridiculous. Because we hadn’t noticed. So then a woman will steal a man from another woman, let’s say, and this is hilarious because, like, what does the woman now have? A man. (Which is useless.) Plus, a sister may have been offended. Hilarity may ensue. Mostly not. But what I wanted to say is this, if the women ever figured us out it is so over. Our gig here. The patriarchy thing. So now you’ve got an older man. And the older man can get—listen to this! A younger woman! Which is insane. And weirder, the younger women will sometimes help the older man to get the younger woman. It’s something the men don’t, won’t and shouldn’t try to understand. I am struck by the compassion of all this. By the women. For even as they are used, tossed, thrown, pitched, roped, rocked, left, socked, cut, shot, stabbed, ignored and rendered invisible again and again and again, they try to help us. As I said, because they carried us.

About the author:

Gary Percesepe is Associate Editor at the Mississippi Review and serves on the Board of Advisors at Fictionaut. His short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, interviews, literary and film criticism, and articles in philosophy and religion have been published or is forthcoming in Salon, Mississippi Review, Antioch Review, Westchester Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Review of Metaphysics, Christian Scholar’s Review, New Ohio Review, Enterzone, Intertext, Luna Park, Istanbul Literary Review, Pank, elimae, Wigleaf, Prick of the Spindle, InterText, Metazen, Stymie Magazine, Corium, Word Riot, and other places. A former philosophy professor, he is the author of four books in philosophy published by Macmillan and Prentice Hall, including Future(s) of Philosophy: The Marginal Thinking of Jacques Derrida. He has studied with William H. Gass and T.C. Boyle, and just completed his second novel, Leaving Telluride. His first novel, an epistolary novel written with Susan Tepper, is called What May Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock and Dori G, and is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press in the fall of 2010.

All These the Violent Children ( An Episode of Hills ) by JA Tyler

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:39:49 +0000

Listen to a podcast of JA Tyler’s “All These the Violent Children ( An Episode of Hills ).”

Princesses are in hills on the horizon. Princesses are in hills on the veranda. Princesses are in hills on the ridge of hills in the distance. Gently curving landscape, blonde braids spinning down the lawns. Yellow grass, yellow hair. There are princesses in those hills.

The children look up and the children see the hills. The children look up and the children see the princesses. The children look up and the children see the princesses and the princesses the children see are dead. They are not moving. They have blood sloughing from their mouths. They have no time in their wrists.

There are hills and the children looking at the hills are curious about the ways in which hair can be braided.

Ropes swing in from the sky. Ropes of hair. Hair in yellow matching the sun matching waving grass. The children wave.

The hills are dead princesses and the children know that if princesses are dead then these must be the hills that they have nightmared about. This must be the opposite of all the fairy tales. This must be a kind of spit out end.

The hills have princesses dead and in stacks and rows.

Children wipe sweat from foreheads. This is summer. Children wipe summer sweat. Flies buzz near brows; brows knit, the flies remove. These are hills where dreams have come up dead.

The children see their dreams dead on the hills, on the speck of canvas that is their distance. Flies and the sweat that they are wiping away. The hills that have all of these dreams dead on them now. Princess braids, crowded round children in a distance. Sacred visions, dream destruction.

A child says, Those are what becomes of Princesses and the other children nod their heads in the up down of yes.

The children say Yes and it resounds.

The Submissive Queen by Samantha Levy

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:11:10 +0000

I.
    Listen here. I have something to tell you.
    Once upon a time in a far away land, where everyone smokes cigarettes and drinks charcoal liquor and has sex on public transportation with strangers, and there’s no such thing as AIDS or Animal Planet or morals, I was twelve months old and horny and starting to grow breasts. My brother Sully, who’s always been large for his age, was three months old and six feet tall with bulky hands, hairy knuckles, and a voice as deep as a shepherd’s. After our bath, while our mother was drinking bourbon and our father was diddling the gardener, we’d lay naked on the playroom floor, and Sully would stroke my hair and rub my tits in a counter-clockwise motion.
    His dick would grow hard, press into my ribs, but he was too young to understand why.
    But I knew why, and I knew what to do to make it grow even bigger, to make Sully shake and moan and howl like a werewolf, to make him love me best of all.

II.
    You should know that I am not, nor have I ever been, an alcoholic.
    I’m not schizophrenic or bipolar or anemic. I’m not a girl who wishes on shooting stars or likes the color pink. I’ve never been a drug addict or fitness freak. My idea of dieting is giving head but not swallowing. I don’t balance my checkbook or make the bed or believe in God. I’ve never once told a lie. And above all, I’m not someone to mess with; my veins are immune to your petty attempts at treason.
    This is what I am: a twirler, a temptress, a devil, an incestuous whore, a doggie, a murderer, the prettiest queen who ever reigned. My hair is long and thick and strawberry blonde. It smells like daffodils, however it is they smell. My tits and ass and nose are perfect. I live in stone-washed jean skirts and white tank tops and sandals that strap around the ankle. I am twenty-five years old and dying from uterine cancer. I am more beautiful than Grace Kelly.
    Watch me. You’ll understand how important I am.

III.
    My brother’s phone number is written in red ink on the handicap stall – underneath a drawing of a large phallus and above a note reading Jesus had a big cock – and after three rings, he picks up the phone and says into the receiver, Paper or plastic. I fumble through my bag, find the butcher knife I keep stashed away in case of muggings or screaming babies, and etch out the numbers.
    I say, I’m at The Green Room.
    Are you drinking Long Island Iced Tea?
    No.
    What are you drinking?
    Beer.
    Draft or bottled?
    Draft.
    What’s your name?
    Mary.
    Mary what?
    Contrary.
    Is that so.
    Quite.
    And where, Mary, does your garden grow?
    In a graveyard, I say. One single, thick blade at a time.
    I challenge you to a duel. To the death.
    And I accept.
    Go to the horizon and turn left, Sully says. Bring your own weapon.
    I say, You’re the only person I’d ever want to die with.
    The phone goes dead, only a pulsing static hums in my ear.

IV.
    Sully is my priest and I am his queen.
    I go to him and confess my sins.
    I say, Bless me father for I have sinned.
    I say, Sometimes I fuck other men besides you.
    I say, Sometimes I think it’s wrong to fuck my own brother.
    Then Sully takes an empty vodka bottle and smashes it over my head, shards of clear glass embed into my scalp, and he tells me that Jews don’t go to confession, tells me to get a life.

V.
    I’m about to tell you something. Listen.
    Once upon a time there was a brother and sister who loved each other very much. The sister was more beautiful than Grace Kelly, and the brother was robust and strong like a knight. The brother liked to boss the sister around. He’d tell her to hold her breath underwater for ten minutes or climb to the top of a mountain, jump off, and land on her feet. If she didn’t listen or didn’t complete a task, the brother would spank the sister on her rear with the palm of his hand.
     The sister wanted the brother to love her best of all, so she purposely failed to do things when she was told. She knew that the brother sought to see her skin turn maroon. She knew that he felt a strong sensation between his legs with each firm slap. She knew how to make him think he was in control.
    That’s it. The end.

VI.
I leave The Green Room and head towards the ocean. I will drive forty minutes east. Once on the beach – in front of the bright casinos and the boardwalk and the lifeguard stands – Sully will hold my head while I suck his cock deep, so deep it’ll tickle my stomach and I’ll want to gag.
After he comes, Sully and I will walk into the water thick with seaweed. Jellyfish will join hands and line up in a row, try to block us, sting our legs as we move farther from shore. And once I can’t touch the ground anymore, Sully will hold my head again, this time until the salt water seeps through my pores, until it makes my face bloat like the cancer growing in my womb.

VII.
    I am submissive and Sully is not. He likes to whip me in public until my pale skin turns red, until little yellow blisters blossom like marigolds. He bends me over a restaurant table or a dry clean counter or a supermarket conveyer belt and lifts up my skirt, slips two fingers between my thong and ass, pulls the string up, forces me onto my toes. Then he takes a whip – which may be a leather belt or a wooden paddle or a pitchfork the size of my head – and pummels it against me. Hard then harder then harder still.
    The women turn their eyes down; they shudder sympathetically because they are all submissive, too. The men applaud, slap Sully on the back, wink at me.
    Sully wants me to cry out in pain, wants to show off for these other fellows, but I bite the inside of my cheeks instead.

    When I don’t cry, he decides to behead me. He covers my eyes with a black scarf and puts a knife against my throat and tells me to beg for my life.
    I don’t say anything.
    Instead, I touch myself until I can hardly stand up straight, until I can’t feel my thighs, until the knife drops from my neck and I feel it between my legs, tracing my cunt, memorizing its folds, making it barren.

VIII.
    On the beach, Sully is licking me. We lay where the waves lap against the wet sand, our feet entangled and damp. His tongue feels like sandpaper against my nipples, around my belly button, on my thighs.
    When he enters me, he says, I’m home.
    The duel will begin momentarily, but first I want to come.
    And I do.
    Afterward, Sully stays inside me and continues to thump and pump and move. This is when I take the butcher knife I keep stashed away in case of muggings or screaming babies and grip its handle so hard my knuckles turn white, and with all my strength I sling the blade into Sully’s brain. I feel the weight of his body crush me as he dies, watch red blood ooze from his ear. I put my lips to it and drink and drink until my belly grows round and fat and pregnant, and I feel this hunchbacked thing maturing inside me, a gremlin or black pussy cat.

The moon is full above me. I burn Sully’s body at the stake, watch his flesh turn to ash, and I dance around him until I stick my hand down my throat and give birth to our lovechild: a sad-lipped, ruddy-faced sprite dressed in a golden swimsuit.
I crouch under the sky, wrap my arms around my knees, wait for Sully’s resurrection. Lightening bolts hit the earth beside me, rain falls and drenches my spine. Days and days pass. The sprite is growing quickly and body surfs along the shoreline; her eyes are brown like mine.

IX.
    I’m telling you something. Listen close.
    Once upon a time I was afraid that Sully would find utensils and salt and pepper, maybe a dash of paprika, and he’d eat me from the inside out, just like the cancer. First my heart then liver then large intestine. He’d finish his meal with my face, nibble the marrow out of each brown eye, gnaw at the cockles of my brain, suck my white teeth like after-dinner mints.
    My uterus would be left untouched, unoccupied. It would be folded in two and stuffed in to a small black box which, in turn, would be placed carefully in a cedar trunk underneath old sweaters and tattered blankets, forgotten about forever.
    My name’s not really Mary. You know that, right?
    Now, a few yards away, I see Sully slithering towards me, silver fork in hand, saying, Come here, my pretty. My love. Come on. That’s a good girl. A little closer. Come.

Three Works by Miranda Merklein

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:41:12 +0000

HYMN TO MAGNOLIA

We rebuilt the barn in seven days. Echoes of shotgun blasts explode like early fireworks on the Fourth (or the First). Oh, lovely Scenic Drive, remember me! And the spring frog, too early, flattened in the driveway; the gray-haired possum fallen trees and debris, the giant catfish skull in the yard–on whose hook do you pine? Em-eye-es-es, Eye-es-es, Eye-pee-pee-eye; you’ve picked your flowers; now leave.

MARATHON, UNFINISHED

An accident in the making of the being (just being) never answering why this is not your dialogue but, Do you have a right to be here just because you breathe? A constantly refreshed reality to critique–Mother, father, child, bowl–maybe you didn’t hear the gun, but the race is now, and somehow in this post-atomic yearning for sincerity, the you and I get lost in the rubble, but there is nothing more to wish for. Just extract each organ from the Y, in ascending order, every unearthing closer to the heart, red ribbons, pancreas, two kidneys–flush; from the beginning. Something true, something glue.

MOUNTAIN CLIMBER’S REVENGE

My enemies, strong and numerous, lack in organization; post-contemporaries form teams and fight for a small piece of ledge, but this is a left-handed mountain, and all this time they’ve been cutting through these ropes and threads using the wrong scissors; diligently to build a Trojan Sisyphus in my temple mound; I stuff them in adobe niches, broken tools and bone fragments, before the archaeologists arrive to pay me for the land and these stubborn relics, my opposable spade.

About the author:

Miranda Merklein grew up in Santa Fe, NM. She works odd jobs and is the publisher and editor of Journal of Truth and Consequence. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, Iron Horse Literary Review, Pindeldyboz, and others.

Fifty Years in Halves by Rae Bryant

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:27:00 +0000

The burrito bowl, cilantro-filled and cut into halves by an imaginary line, distinguishes her side from his. The big piece of avocado has fallen on his side, hidden behind shredded beef. She rocks it with her fork, as if to say: May I? His eyes are to the side, his mind is on the pretty girl who has dropped her bottle and stands in a puddle of mango juice and shattered glass.

1st official date + 1 burrito bowl = 2 halves of politeness.

Are you going to eat the avocado bit that has landed on your side of the bowl?

Not if you would like it.

I don’t want to impose.

It’s yours. He squeezes the soft, green piece so that she must open her mouth and use her tongue to accept the smush. It turns his offering into a promise of sex, or maybe another date. He wipes his fingers clean.

She chews, watches the table.

Would you like to see a movie this weekend? he says.

1 month + 1 burrito bowl = 1 whole of familiarity.

She sees the avocado bit that sits closest to him, barely over the half line. She plays with it, bored. They’ve been to this restaurant four times and it has grown familiar. She pokes it with her fork; he sees her playing, says nothing. She sees that he sees, kisses him for his silent acquiescence.

1 year + 1 burrito bowl = 2 halves of irritability.

You don’t like avocado much, do you? she says, eyeing his side of the bowl.

I never said that, he says.

But you always let me have it.

You assume.

She forks the avocado. He turns away to watch the corrugated metal wall, where he sees her in striped versions, dull and shiny, stealing the avocado. She turns to watch a handsome man, who notices the couple, turned away.

1st date + 18 years of children, soccer carpools, workaday commutes + 1 burrito bowl = 2 halves of misunderstood apathy.

She watches it. It is bigger than times past and covered in cilantro. She remembers diapers, carpools, her promise to their daughter about the abortion and other secrets kept. Cilantro steam rises. She remembers nights of wanting him, nights of being wanted and angry for the nights he turned away. She forks it, stabbing prongs through soft, green flesh and pops it into her mouth, chews, stares at his fat, thick balding head. He turns away.

Fifty years of dates + 1 burrito bowl = 1 whole of understanding.

He, covertly, tips the avocado toward his side of the bowl then turns down his hearing aid to miss the inevitable treatise on why she should have it. He takes her hand, squeezes it gently and watches her lips move, remembering their first burrito bowl and how she stole his avocado, how she got jealous when he looked at a pretty girl with mango-soaked shoes. He smiles, rises on feeble legs and kisses her withered cheek then, pinching the avocado with old-man fingertips, lays it on her tongue.

About the author:

Rae Bryant is a recipient of the Whidbey Writers’ Prize, 2009 editor nominated for StorySouth’s Million Writers Award, and an M.A. writing candidate at Johns Hopkins. Her fiction appears or is forthcoming at Whidbey Writers, Bartleby Snopes, Farrago’s Wainscot, A capella Zoo, Staccato, and Foundling Review, among others. You can read more about Rae and her published fiction, poetry and nonfiction at www.raebryant.com.

Out of Sorts by Rose Sullivan

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:39:33 +0000

I’m not sure why I started running, not even sure when. I just know that one morning, on a belly full of warm yolk and dry toast, I filled the tank of my car and never looked back.

19.

There’s an old microwave in the trunk next to some bags of plastic flatware. I can hear the glass tray banging around inside. I feel like that a lot. Like a metal thing with something clear and breakable crashing around inside me. I have never owned a pair of high heels but my mother’s were red and she wore them with an unmistakable elegance that I could never hope to match. My shoes are thirteen years old and they’re brown and I have taken them to honest-to-god cobblers more times than once. It’s hard to find a man who’ll fix shoes when you’re running all the time. When you never stop long enough for both feet to settle. When you don’t know what town you’re in, what state. In another life I had a little sister.

15.

Do you know that there are rest stops where the hand dryers blow your skin so hard that it ripples and waves like you’ve got hyper-active worms crawling under your flesh? I bend forward and pretend I’m skydiving, plummeting toward the earth.

21.

Do you know where the interstate ends? I do.

I remember my first day in my first job. I wore a black apron and wished to god that my mother didn’t live in Tupelo Mississippi with Grady, a man I’d never met. And that I didn’t have to work in a stinking diner to help my pay the bills..

My daddy told me not to—ever—pick up hitchers. He said, “Don’t pick anyone up. Even if they look ok. Just don’t do it.” And I never did. But, sometimes, I stop and give cans of food and cartons of Pall Malls to bums at the side of the road. One time when I was a kid there was a lady with the most beautiful blonde hair outside the Piggly Wiggly who had a sign that said “Will Clean For X-Mas $. Have Daughter” and my grandpa gave her twenty-eight dollars. When I told my daddy about it, he looked fit to kill a man. His hands were scrubbed clean but stained black as a crow’s eye from engine grease. I could see the muscle in his forearm go up and down while he sewed the satin part of my sister’s blanket back on with a gentle deftness that could’ve been used to disarm bombs or paint the blue hills where he’d come from.

18.

I have a soft stuffed whale. His name is Marcel and I like to think about him drinking down gallons of fish, and plankton so tiny you can’t even see.

I guess you’re supposed to get off the interstate sometime. They have exit signs every few miles for a hundred years but me and Marcel, just assume the road’ll never run out; that asphalt will lay on earth for as long as we can drive. I’ve been on roads where the interstate turned into a different one, or was called something else, or merged with a whole other road. This one didn’t.

13.

Most times, like everyone, I drive with my right foot. Sometimes though, my toes get so cramped and tired that I pull my right foot up into the seat and drive with my left.

I thought about getting a dog to sit in the car with me. For about eight weeks I imagined having one that was big and shaggy and yellow with deep brown eyes. I imagined us getting out to pee, and eating beef stew from a can, him carrying packs of Pall Malls to homeless men. But I got too afraid that he would eat Marcel. So—somewhere outside Moscow, Idaho—I set him off on the side of the road.

When I watch the stars at night it makes me hear the ocean. My favorite sound used to be the sound of waves but now it’s my sister’s voice, laughing, and that makes me feel guilty. Like it should have been her voice all along.

16.

Sometimes I go to public libraries and read. I sit in the world religion section and read about the strange things that people believe. If I believed in God, I think he would have to wear snow-shoes because he’s walking around on clouds and needs something to spread out his weight. Mostly, at the library, God wears golden sandals.

22.

When I got to this place, I was tired. It was a kind of tired that I had never been before. The kind where your body just stops and everything around you seems too loud. All I know is my right foot was as sore as and I’d been driving with my left for three days, ignoring exit signs, sticking to this road like there was no other.

17.

When I was a kid I saw that movie “The Jungle Book,” and I thought about how much I wanted a big gray bear to be my best friend, and to have a black panther taking care of me. I thought Mowgli was stupid for running after that little girl with the red dot on her head so he could go pretend like he wasn’t just an animal.

My sister’s name is Grace. It’s different from mine, Olivia. My name is the same as my great grandmother who I never ever met. She had thirteen children which means I think she spent about twelve years of her life pregnant. She used to pick blackberries all summer long, her round belly poking into the briars, and when she was picking them one day, piling them like a purple mountain in her apron, her house caught on fire. She was barefoot and she ran all the way home to save her babies, but her brothers where there with all but her littlest and they held her back, thinking all the kids were out. Daddy says she screamed, “My baby girl, my baby girl!” and ran inside to save her newest baby. I think about her a lot. She was buried up on a hill under a tobacco patch before me or Grace were ever born. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to lay under a field of green tobacco plants. Sometimes I think about the curved leaves casting a shadow on my face.

12.

I have a case of empty jam jars. When I started out they were full of apple butter from a farm in West Virginia. I stopped there and drank apple cider during a fall festival and told the woman I was going till the road ran out. She gave me the case. I hate to throw them away because good jam jars are just about the hardest thing in the world to come by. Even if you never put anything in them, they’re most surely the best thing to drink cold water from.

Before my mother left, she made us this tray of cupcakes. They all had green icing and rainbow sprinkles that came off when I peeled back the saran wrap.

My daddy and me and Grace went to the carnival one summer and we each got ten dollars to spend. I rode the Ferris Wheel about three thousand times while my daddy disappeared in the hot dog stands. When I found Grace, she had purchased ten goldfish in ten separate bowls and they rode home with us, sloshing around in the back seat, tinkling together when my daddy ran over bumps.

20.

When I passed the last exit I told Marcel that we were the only car left. That it was just us on the road, no one following, no one leaving.

Grace was always just sad like that. Sometimes she would cry for days and days and we never knew why. I don’t think she even knew. She just did it. And when she cried, it wasn’t loud. She never sobbed or wailed like I did. It was so quiet, you almost couldn’t tell. One night we found one of her ten goldfish floating on the water of the little bowl and Grace just stared at it. These giant tears started running like crazy down her face, but she didn’t make a single sound.

Sometimes I just wished that she would scream.

14.

One town I stopped in had this church that was bigger than the high school where I graduated. The stained glass windows with red and blue pictures of Mary and Joseph were bigger than my car. I read a story one time about a live nativity scene where people worked in shifts and every three hours some new Mary and Joseph came in to take turns with the animals and the fake baby. If I were going to be Mary outside in December, even for three hours, I would want a giant thermos of coffee to keep warm.

23.

At the end of the interstate is the town. It didn’t start out being a town. This woman named Erline said it used to just be a big dirt circle where folks turned around. But then—I guess—someone put up a shop. And then someone else put up a house and, well, you get the idea. They’d all been driving with their left foot for three days thinking about a dog that would never be. Erline gave me a plate of hash browns and told me I could stay in this town because I drove right past the last exit sign like everyone else that lived here. I suddenly belonged to a group—people who’d left lives behind.

This man my mother lives with came to see Grace in the hospital. He brought flowers that he said were from my mother but I knew they weren’t because she could not tolerate the smell of roses. Grace looked at the flowers and at the man, Grady, and at me. I was still wearing my apron from work and I had flour dust in my hair from making biscuits. She leaned her head back against the tiny hospital pillows and cried in silent sobs like if she didn’t get the water out of her body, she would drown.

24.

There is a way that people look when they come into this town. Sometimes you can tell what day they started running. One man in a green Toyota pulled in and I knew he’d got on the road the day he found out his wife was pregnant. One lady came with her little girl, the day a pot of tomato soup boiled over on the stove. Erline says that not everyone stays forever. Most people come for a while, and then one day, they just go back the other way, driving into the dust, their tires finally gaining traction.

Erline’s hair is bright red like the kind I always wanted. She orders it from a beauty catalogue. When I sit on the porch of the diner, I can almost see the whole town.

10.

Before Grady left, I walked him into the hallway and he bought me a Styrofoam cup of coffee so hot I thought if I poured it down my throat right then, I’d be warm forever. He told me that my mother was doing just fine and I told him I didn’t give a rat’s ass.

25.

Sometimes when I wake up in the mornings I think I can hear my daddy’s old Jeep rambling down the dusty road, maybe looking for me, but then I realize it’s not him. It’s just the wind. When I get out of bed and my feet hit the wood floors of my apartment and a breeze blows through my room, I can feel what it’s like to be home again. And I know that I’m not ready.

11.

Grady patted me on the shoulder after Grace fell asleep. Her eyes were still streaming tears. Before I knew it, I hugged Grady. I hugged him tight and held him as close as I could until I could smell the way my momma smelled when she woke up next to him that morning. I could smell the starch of her dress and I could smell her sweat, the way I smelled it when I used to put my face in the dip between her shoulder and her jawbone. I closed my eyes and held on to Grady till I thought he might burst from me trying to reach her and ask her a million, billion questions. I held the man until I could feel the curve of my momma’s hip beneath my hand and, until I could taste the bread she baked the night before. When I let go I saw my daddy in my head, sewing the trim of Grace’s blanket, looking fit to kill someone for needing something, for giving something. When I pulled away from Grady I could see that he’d gotten flour dust in his hair.

26.

This morning, Erline fixes me a cup of coffee and a plate of pumpkin pie and asks if she can have some of my jam jars for making up a batch of preserves. I say yes and think about my great grandmother named Olivia and the piles and piles of carefully gathered blackberries falling to her feet as she saw the smoke rising from her house. I think about the way those berries must have squished under her heels, staining her skin purple while she ran. I think about that choice she made, to run into the fire, and not away.

About the author:

Rose Sullian is pursuing her MFA at Spalding University. She lives here and there with her husband Scott. In her spare time she enjoys watching copious amounts of Star Trek and writing about herself in the third person.

From Postcards From New Life by Megan Martin

admin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:01:20 +0000

Listen to a podcast of Megan Martin’s “Postcards From New Life.”

“Contrary to Popular Belief, She Knew He Had Not Forgotten…”

Oh Darling, you should see this place without you! It is a whole new world! In your absence I have been busying myself around the house: unknotting the miles of filthy sheet-ladders by which you ascended into my skyscraped bedroom, bleaching them repeatedly to disinfect them of memory-stench, hanging them on the wintry line where they wither and crack like geriatric skin.

Each morning I defrost, iron, reiron, and fold before confining them to the darkest, most solitary drawer where we housed our secret pleasures.

Winter here is a beast. Yesterday I turned thirty years old. I am sure your card is en route.

After Many Moons of Pretend Strength and Adventures, She Collapsed On The Lawn of Grief

Clip clip clip the rosebushes clip the rosebushes back clip clip the clip stems clip clip petals clip thorns clip clip leaves clip clip clip bumble clip bee clippity clippity clippity like the clip sound of horsehooves clippity clippity trainwreck clip garden clip hose clip clip sun clip shine clip clip lonely cloak lonely cloak lonely cloak clip heart clip blood

Contrary to Popular Belief, She Was “Making Do.”

Whenever midnight crashes too loud in the asylum (I shall forward you my new address), I encase myself in a satin nightgown, measure out three-hundred-thousand miles of kite-twine, and attend to my cemeteries. Usually bees are still howling in the distance; usually I have forgotten my earplugs.

Per the Good Doctor’s advice, I have built a kite of dead promises, and I skip softly with it, zigzagging through the graves, the dead exhaling through the grass, lifting my kite nightward.

Tonight my kite shall ingest the moon, become a moon-kite never before witnessed, and the reverse aging process shall begin.

I will be sixteen again with hair shining down to my ankles. At every moment something new will arrive from my periphery.

After Many Seasons at the Asylum, She Climbed Into the Arms of The Universe

This is the last you will hear of my adventures in this new world, dear. As I write I am climbing into the blossomy tree in the courtyard, against the Good Doctor’s instructions. The Good Doctor is calling: come down this instant but I am climbing higher, leaping branch to branch, breaking more teeth than I have. I dangle! I perch! I feed myself bloated on the plumpest leaves, blackest berries, most delicate petals, paperskin stained with fruitblood. I scrape back bark from limb, branch, twig, with barehanded grace. Sunbleached words dry and curl, flake underpen like snow as seasons change around me (did I mention it is the tallest tree known to woman?), but I shall continue until I’ve whittled myself back to earth. Once my nails have unbloodied and resurrected themselves, once these sentences have turned to soil, I will finally understand: I am here.

About the author:

Megan Martin lives and writes in Cincinnati, where she teaches at Xavier University and The University of Cincinnati. Her manuscript Sparrow and Other Eulogies was the runner-up for the 2008 Slope Editions Book Prize, and her work has appeared recently in Action, Yes!, Wunderkammer, Tarpaulin Sky, and elimae, among others.