Squawk Back

2013-05-19T00:05:00.000-04:00

Ooks by AE Reiff

go, Id, Oedipalism, Anima, replaced the fairy folk of the country confined in cities. Trolls, brownies, Leprechauns, doff their country costumes for the abstractions of new folk."

The Scar in the Setting by Spencer R. Martin

2013-05-19T00:04:00.000-04:00

An overwhelming depression. I thought I would be riding high on this ripe Florida sunshine forever, but as ever did the clouds hit me; the heat, drag me down eventually. I sit out in the sunlight, reclined and drinking the bleach of all bleach, hoping the poison soaks all my cells and I die slow and painfully.

I watch the turtles scurry past my line of sight, and into an alligators mouth, its jaws crunch through shell, rip through spinal cord with no effort at all. I see this, but I don't follow the scene, I am severely indifferent to the nature around here. Once I might have been interested, now I only sink into the clouds of a melancholy heaven, a cruel game that tickles my feet.

“You lay your hands on me one more time and I swear I'll kill you and that whore of yours!” she says with a stale tone of loathing. She's not talking to me, though, but to one whose ghost raises a weakened fist. Everything's drying up in the sun here. Even tattoos of abuse. We're no longer human, but withering plants. I sing wearily to the bottom of my bottle.

The fever dreams hit me again tonight, my eyeballs in a fly covered toilet, floating around and looking right up at me with a daunting sense of amusement. I reach in and start trying to fish them out, flies and cockroaches crawling all about my hands as they drift away from me and down into the dark abyss. My mothers voice calls from somewhere off screen, maybe even in my head. She claims that her grave is being robbed, I see it clearly as two lovers dance upon her corpse. One lovely platinum blonde lady in a sundress, giggling with a great joy that I can feel in her warm smile, which if not for the circumstances would have made me myself smile along with her. The man is a boney twig of a man, eyes baggy and yellow instead of white around the irises. They use my mother's hands to pleasure one another, while at the same time slipping the diamond encrusted rings off her hands. He whispers in her ear and she giggles more, which distracts her from dipping a slimy, translucent hand into his left pocket. He comes out, sand spilling from the open ends of his fist as he brings it to his face, extends it in front of his dry and cracking lips. Open handed he blows a fine dust into her face. Her face goes limp; pupils dilate, and now she's a pale ghost of a woman, even her vibrant sundress seems slack and grey in the purple moonlight. My vision blurs, and I can no longer watch from my vantage point, a scream and a blistery starry swirl.

I am in the sunlight, my face lit up with a smooth pair of sunglasses. I'm in the park, a dog nibbles a treat out of my hand. I seem to have a perfect recollection of getting to this place, and I don't question it at all. Children laughing on a playground, swinging on a swing set and a short haired beauty in a nice vibrant sun dress eyes me as she pushes a stroller. She walks towards me, “Can I take a seat mister?”

“You most certainly can darlin'. Whats your name?” I shift uncomfortably and another dog treat falls out of my hand. I start to wonder how I acquired them in the first place, “Is that your kid?” I inquire softly.

“No” “Then who...”

I rub my eyes again, open them, and still the same beauty. Those same big beautiful doe eyes, magnificently pulchritudinous swirling eyelashes, but this time I reenter the world in a seedy motel with cracks in the walls and scurrying cockroaches. I scan the room, a dusty, yellow-tinted window sits to the left of me. Outside of it I can see a flashing sign: SAROSA MOTEL: YOUR SLUMBER IS OUR-- I can't see the rest of the slogan.

If you look close enough in any motel room you'll ever have the misfortune of setting foot in, you'll find it, outside or inside, the mysterious cracks and holes, the contours of some sort of mistake, a tale once played out, a language that describes so much you'll never understand: the scar in the setting, languishing forever in its framed glory.

So I scan the walls. To the back of me there is a giant hole, in that hole a twitching eyeball peering in at us. I lock my eyes with it.

“Goddammit!” I exclaim as I hop up and tear across the room with an outstretched thumb ready to punch the anonymous eye into the head out of which it pokes, but it blinks and jumps back from the wall before I reach it, I jab my thumb in to no avail. I get down on my knees and peer back through. The room is pitch black, I hear the scurrying of cockroaches. I get up and look through the drawer of the beside table: the bible. I flip through and find the story of Cain and Abel, I tear it out, reach into my pocket. Perfect: duct tape. Why do I have... I place the page over the hole and tape all around it.

Back to this questionable scene. Now she looked displeased, as if this were an interrogation room.

“Whats wrong, dolly,” I whispered as I sat down, cracked a beer with my left hand, and placed a warm hand on her right cheek, caressing her like I would one of my favorite lovers. The doe eyes went dim, she put her head down and started to weep.

“I'm only a passenger,” she whispered with a hiss as her voice cracked and wavered, “My feet are long dead and gone, they crack and peel with every step, and I haven't even walked in years.” She's tip toeing across my underestimated psyche, she wants to say something but cannot. I see myself reaching out and grabbing her by the wrist, without the intention of being malicious. But I suppose it came across that way, she gave off a shrill scream that put the pain she felt upon me. Her skin sizzled under my fingertips, smoke seeping out from under them, and with that I knew what she was trying to say, and for some reason it angered me. I pulled away, leaving a welting red mark in the print of my hand. She fell back on the bed, tears rolling down her cheeks, but this time she did not weep, but just stared at the yellow ceiling with carrion eyes, as that melancholy water poured out. If there was any trace of teenage effervescence left in that splendid late-twenties world of hers it was gone now. It had to happen at some point before she hit her thirties. And I didn't even feel bad that it was my existence that came to take it out of her. I just stared at her, sipping my drink, without a flicker of feeling in me.

My ears jumped as I heard a tearing of paper, I looked over to see a stubby thumb poking through the page of the bible upon which Cain and Abel's twisted fate was scrawled. “That's it!” I mumbled as I turned and rushed to the wall. I reached it and tore off the page, peering through the gate to the next world over that I had reopened. What I saw made my heart stop on the spot.

I saw myself sitting on the same soiled motel bed that I rested on moments before. The movie that was my life was projected in front of me, as if I were God sitting on his cloud and gazing down. I saw myself rubbing my eyes and staring into those, gorgeous, that had shined so brightly when I had first come across them. And she looked back at me with admiration, when the lights flickered.

I jumped up and looked to the lamp, went and jiggled the plug in the wall. I stood again and stared at the limp beauty, with an even greater detachment now at what I had done. I staggered, peered through the hole just in time to see myself gathering the contours of my setting. I saw myself staring back, rising up and crying out, an outstretched thumb, ready to attack. I admonished myself of the thought of jumping back, I was ready.

And then the lamp went out. I stood still, eye open and willing to be jammed out, but nothing came, everything was still. The only sound, the scurrying of cockroaches. I pulled back, something was covering the gateway to the next world. I paused, curiously, for just a moment, confused, but sure, of what I would see.

I grabbed the flashlight from my key chain and peered in. As I expected, the story of Cain and Abel.

And so I sat, and I read...

The Newsletter of the Asylum and Four More by Jason Visconti

2013-05-19T00:03:00.000-04:00

Work hard
And you'll be on the board too--

That's in the event
Of your unsmearable record

That you haven't broke bonds
Repeated on loudspeakers

Or cried into the night like a fool--
Certainly your pajamas have not walked off on their own

You have not risen up like a foul animal
In some stage of revolt

And claimed the unclaimable chair
The chair that does not exist in the hall

And said "This is my bridge I will build to unite all the rooms"

Though if you did I suppose you'd get a pass in
For a newsworthy story.

To be commensurate all at once

And then also to allow

Division to be a timely crow
Whose measured sentence sings outloud

To otherwise no one.

The street's judgement has flickered on

and we are equal with our fair gavels

we who watch him teeter on the cusp of the moon:
beware he prepares his oath in the courtroom of the stars

and we, a jury of his peers,
behold nothing like these good lanterns.

I Made Every Attempt to Destroy the Hourglass
On the operating table

And me a surgeon--
Leave my bubbled glasses for real times of war

Since time is only silly putty
And who including the sand even cares?

Euphoria in an Everyday Way
When you see those soap bubbles
Like so many white eyelashes

Flirt,
You have stretched the image--

But no matter
The sink will gargle at you to swallow up.

Christopher Barnes'... Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (33)

2013-05-19T00:02:00.000-04:00

Wide-horizoned tower.
Haemal fountain’s gargoyles
Slurping by convolvulus.
Suntrapped at velvet curtains,
Sabrina Roper squirms brainsick.
One rootless leaf in backwash.

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (35)
Anticipate Camera 6
Releasing itself
From all its characters,
Discernibly wandering
Upon a speckled floor,
It’s destined to scrutinize the overblown mirror.

The past continuous
Is restored…

Sammy limps – apparelled in an evening dress,
Leg-o-mutton sleeves –
Gore smutching lips,
Ensnared in a simple frame
Where chicanery is spared.

Filming ‘Blood Shot Silk’ – Deleted Scene (36)
Manola Dean waddles off, screen right.
We crushingly grasp as much as she.
Sammy moves near, looming at the door.
Bone chair, reddening cushion.
One maimed bass drum. The fluently bogus clop –
Geldings on cobbles.
Earwig headlong over lampshade.
As the credits bleed
Camera 2 loiters.

In 1998, Christopher Barnes won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 2000 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower, doing a reading of his poems. Each year he reads for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and partakes in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES, published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16th August 2003, he read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

He also has a BBC web-page.

Christmas 2001, the Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. He made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition the Art Cafe Project, and his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride on the Tyne. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out of the Picture, which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. It contains his poem the Old Heave-Ho. He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet), which exhibited at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, and included a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which Barnes read his poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life.

He was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at the Seven Stories children's literature building. In May he had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre. The South Bank Centre in London recorded his poem "The Holiday I Never Had"; he can be heard reading it on poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456.

He has written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine, and in August 2007, made a film called 'A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot' for Queerbeats Festival at the Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem. On September 4 2010, he read at the Callander Poetry Weekend hosted by Poetry Scotland. He has also written art criticism for Peel and Combustus Magazines.

Vegan Vampire Attacks Trees! by Jenny Howard

2013-05-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

For years I’ve been what society calls a “tree hugger”: a regular EPA local meeting attendee, a recycle-crazed neighbor, and I’ve given out seeds for kids to plant on Halloween for the last six years. My name is Tony Arbor and, needless to say I’m not everyone’s favorite guy on the block. Last year though, when the trees were being gnawed on, causing them to break, fall, and crush cars along I-17, the Holly Ridge community turned to me to find a solution. But the culprit sat right here in my living room: she’s my sexy, blonde, curly-haired wife, who's sipping coffee and reading the funnies. She's also a vampire.

Don’t misunderstand: this isn’t a tragic story of death and the consumption of human beings, nor is it intended to be a frightening tale of life with a bloodsucker. Elizabeth, my wife, has never tried to eat me or any of our guests, because she is a vegan vampire. She consumes trees, plants, and other photosynthesis-loving objects.

I met her on a Tuesday while I was strolling through the park, admiring the rather large oak and through my daze, I heard a small cry. I looked away from the tree and there she sat, alone on a bench, crying because she had a splinter in her lip.

“Now,” I said, “how does this happen? You haven’t been kissing trees?” She blushed and looked down at the ground; I know now the reason: that she was choking back laughter. You see, she hadn’t been kissing trees, but had been chowing down on a narrow twig when a sliver became jarred in the side of her bottom lip. After a few seconds of foot-shuffling silence, I told her about my experience with wood and offered to take her home where I could remove the sliver.

I drove her home where I very carefully removed the beautiful splinter, jarred it, and it has sat on our mantle ever since. After we’d been married a few months, I started noticing leaves in her hair, dirt stains on shoes that had been clean. And an unmistakable smell of pinewood on her breath. “It’s my mouthwash,” she claimed. “Pine is the new mint. My dentist said so himself.”

One night I quietly followed her out of the house. She slipped into the woods, with a speed and sense of direction of having done this before. And I lurked, silent, behind a distractingly immaculate pecan tree, and watched as my dainty wife tore a thousand pound tree from its place in the soil and begin to chomp on its limbs.

Leaves flew around my head like mosquitoes and the sound of her teeth against the hard wood was like a dentist's drill—it shook my body. The lips that I had kissed each night were now littered with the debris of the disaster she had created.

I watched her straighten her blouse, pull a twig from her perfectly white teeth, swallow it, and head back to our home. That magnificent, innocent, perfectly growing pine tree! Gone! Gone! My head spun as I watched the scene over and over in my head. I felt betrayed, sick, and heartbroken. How many trees had been destroyed at the hands of my beloved?

Hours later I found myself back in the house, I dragged myself into my bedroom where Elizabeth lay in bed, happy, content, and full bellied. I crawled in, inching as far from her as I could, and went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up early, unable to feign sleep any longer; I walked around the house and noticed the things I should’ve noticed all along: small bite marks on the coffee table, rips in the wood paneling that Elizabeth had insisted upon all those years ago, and bags of hickory wood chips that I assumed were for cook outs. Though meticulously covered and patched, my wife had acted as termite throughout our home for years.

Later that day, I went to the weekly local chapter meeting of the EPA. When they began to talk about an all-night hunt to catch the animal destroying the trees, I hung my head in shame, having previously always been the most outspoken at these meetings. Elizabeth and I were the first to volunteer to host benefits and children's days. I got fired up about paper companies and spoke out openly about the people in our neighborhood who refused to recycle, leaving “Please save me” stickers on their doors with drawings of sad X-mas trees. Naturally, I had been tapped to solve the town-wide problem. Now I froze. Slowly, I looked up, trying to appear firm, determined, “Sure,” I said, “let’s catch this bastard.”

That night the volunteers and I went out looking for my wife. Our hometown team of volunteers looked like a bunch of witch hunters with their improvised defensive gear. Andy Slim, a third grade teacher who lived just down the street from us, had what appeared to be a colander atop his head, and a baking sheet across his chest like a bullet proof vest. There were lanterns, baseball bats, a vast array of homemade contraptions with which to capture the creature my one hundred and ten pound wife.

I led them far from where I’d seen her last, hoping to avoid the awkward stand-off that would surely follow the capture of Mrs. Elizabeth Arbor, committee member of “Trees are friends, not paper!” and devoted wife to the EPA local chapter treasurer.

“Over here!” one of my companions shouted. My heart shrank deeper into my body, surely beating straight through my flannel jacket.

We stood before a fallen tree, the unmistakable doing of the “animal” for which we were searching. It pained me to recall the scene of Elizabeth's inflicting such damage to the pine. The searchers separated to cover the perimeter; as I took a left to search, I saw her, hiding behind the roots of the collapsed and dying oak, trembling and poised to run.

“Anything over there?” asked Brandon Linen, a newer member of the EPA, but no less motivated than the rest of the search party. I looked into my wife’s eyes as she awaited my answer, knowing it would decide her fate. She stared back into mine and with the smallest shrug of her shoulders and a raised eyebrow, she silently mouthed, “I love you.”

I know I should have chosen my wife over a tree—a large, mature, and wonderfully aromatic tree that would never dance with the wind again. It was as though she sensed my hesitation, I heard a twig break beneath her shoe, and in an instant, she was gone. Before I had the chance to give her away, everyone turned in her direction. All we saw was a small hourglass figure running into the thick trees. We all ran into the darkness after Elizabeth and I knew we wouldn’t catch her, because she had been running these dark woods for years.

After an hour, we gave up looking. “Did you get a good look at the perpetrator?” another leading member of the search party asked me. Luckily, the woods and night sky provided cover enough for her to escape, unrecognized by the people who think they know her so well.

I hesitated: she was my wife. I loved her and she was who I had to go home to at the end of the day.

“No,” I answered him, “it was dark and that son-of-a-bitch was fast. Maybe we scared it off though.” I vowed to plant a tree as soon as I had a chance, I had to right this wrong to Mother Nature—I don’t want to get stuck on her bad side. Grudgingly, they all headed for home, hopeful that tomorrow’s hunt would be more fruitful.

I knew that if I just talked to Elizabeth, got her side of the story, that I could stop her without involving my overzealous fellow environmentalists who would surely be out for a conviction, if they even got close enough to notice it was she before brandishing their weapons.

I wondered what would happen when I got home: I had just seen Elizabeth tear a hundred year-old tree from its roots without messing up her nail polish. I was one hundred and fifty pounds myself, imagine the damage she could have done.

I pulled into the driveway, meandered slowly up through the yard, fumbled with my keys. And as I opened the door, I saw her cooking dinner in the apron I’d given her for her birthday: it had a willow crocheted on the front, and its weeping limbs were now very appropriate for my mood.

“Welcome home, Tony,” she said in her sweet accent. “Any luck?” She peered into my soul, I think, daring me to challenge that she had been at home all night, frying chicken, mashing potatoes. She knew very well how the search had gone, that she'd seen me; I, her. We talked about my boss, about the Girl Scout whom she’d bought cookies from that day, about the possibility of dinner with my in-laws later in the week. I just never worked up the nerve to say, “Hey, I saw you eating trees last night.”

That night, I went to bed with Elizabeth, knowing she would get up in the night to scavenge, and hoping to catch her once again and confront her—but this never happened. She dozed next to me through the night, and while I looked into her beautifully sleeping face, I remarked the tiniest splinter in her lip, and I smiled a little, recalling the day we met: she was exactly the woman I had married all those years ago.

At breakfast, as I prepared toast and eggs for her, I saw Elizabeth slide into her chair at the table. “What’re you making?” “Just toast. Did you want some?” I didn’t want to look directly into her eyes, I didn’t want to talk about what I’d seen. I wanted to make her toast and I wanted her to read me the stupid comic strips without compelling me to address that my wife was a hybrid between a termite and a Cullen.

“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I’ve been gardening, so I’m full,” she said with a sideways grin. I turned around, pulled her to me, and kissed her; I poured my heart into her lips, silently pleading with her to not destroy anything that I loved so much. She leaned over the counter with tears in her eyes and took a bite of toast.

My name is Jenny Howard and I live in Houston, Texas. I just finished up my junior year at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and am now studying at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

2013-05-19T00:00:00.000-04:00

Ooks by AE Reiff

2013-05-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

"Ego, Id, Oedipalism, Anima, replaced the fairy folk of the country confined in cities. Trolls, brownies, Leprechauns, doff their country costumes for the abstractions of new folk."

Three Ooks lived in DutiBilly.
Turk was the papa, Dama was the mama,
and Sue Ook baby looked like her dad.
Each Ook ate a sausage quietly,
excluding the belch.
Ook means passionate desire.

Ma Ook had lots of names,
Dame Belcher, Guapa Pop.
When she ate SueLit and her dad,
who retired from publishing
and married Mama for amor,
she was the second Ook
who wrote a mystic tale.

Mama belched at Turk’s 800 pounds
when he and SueLit drowned little dogs
in their footprints in the park.
They had gone to PupPote.
Proverbial dismemberment caused Mama’s eeing
when pups ate off her floor.
It’s a lot to feed an Ook to an Ook
as Turk was feeding Sue to Dame!
Part of the recipe,
like big ducks
slaughtered up
boggles the mind, served as remains.
Turk published this
And made her the Ook of fame.
Special meanings are contained

PupPote, Park and Ook^[1].

Turk longed to ook. Dame longed to ook,
although the sense is not the same.
Little dog PupPotes longed to be best sellers in Ook.
So this ook wasn’t long
before not just breakfast, but
dinner with T.V. they cooked,
modem in the left, forkem in the right,
broadside big as a ham.

What do you eat when you eat the ook,
anthologized stew?
It’s the cure what ails ya.
Indigestion?
Try milk in your poem.
Sleep aid? Hunger?
Roast PupPotem in your home.
Sue Ook is a beauty cure.
What don’t SueLit cure?
She a grape of the huge alone.
Get a piece of the bone and the world will be one!
One peace, one world, one home!
But where has she gone?
That’s what we’re here to show.

This secret came out when goats named Billy,
tied to the Dame’s blue Olds,
wrote with their Nanny and kids,
abba daba dab on the bumper.
Dame kept PupPotes in the back,
little Schnauzers, Pomeranian and a Pifawa pop.
To sum up,
Ma Ook took a gingerbread house
with smoke coming out the top.
She fattened up
Turk for the kill.
That smoke is a sign of an ook.

When Turk went up it was a loss
to little dogs as much as Ooks,
he being the source of their food.
Why would Dame fatten and kill what made her live?
But when Ms. Ook hungered she just ate PupPote.
There was plenty of Ook in the freeze.

In that warning about Ooks called
Ookem!
the goats said
these things were indigestible.
Everyone knows by now what they are.
With the mess and gravy
the beauty of Ookistry
is that these tales tell all.
What’s an Ook?
I’m not going to tell.

1. ^ PupPote-poetry, Park-language.

AE Reiff, the fictional persona maintained by the Artist’s Collective of the New Ibsen Canal, has no known means of contact except weekends in the courtyard, at least it says that in the brochure. We have determined there is an index of this writing, and more, at Encouragements for Planting...

...this we recommend you avoid. If you must have something, he is the present editor of the Kurk Wold papers on the end of biological civilization, and other such artifacts at HISTO POSSUM TROY HORSE NEPTUNE WAR ROUNDUP, or the History Impossible World ThoughtNot Bot Roundup, a Cartoon UBoo-ty of Experiments of the Head History of the West Faerie Tale Fro Gromets Severed From Collections in A Fictional History of the Future Fan Faux NonFic Hypno, Mysto, Crypto Possum Starchitect.

2013-05-05T00:05:00.000-04:00

Fat Ass by Stephen Boyer

AM NOT SURE where or how or when, in all my mind's wandering, I first came to Positive Wishing, but I believe it was near the outset of my choosing to stop adhering to my parents’ reality. Not that linear constructs matter, and I don’t mean to give linearity power when I address it, and I’m aware that with every beginning comes an ending and endings only signify the beginning. ...READ MORE

Laura Grodin's... The anatomy of my autonomy

2013-05-05T00:04:00.001-04:00

is not a place, although you hang flowers from my shoulders. Upside down they'll last longer, pollinate crevices in the grass to mark where I once was.

Memorialize me, paperboy, who crossed too quickly, now slicked on a silver pole, your face almost lost in a tattered sheet.

You too are covered in flowers.

Someday we'll plant ourselves, bury our feet in deeply to whatever soil will take us. Your vice
will be simplicity, mine will be touching the sides of your face.

There are things I should do first- measure the inches between my forehead and Philadelphia, seed a pomegranate front to back, count the scars on your body that are like my body-

And if none of them match, we can paint a scar, chin to chest, a solid pulpy line
like the street you couldn’t cross, and if we don’t paint it, maybe you can imagine

the line, still wet, and press yourself against me, and we can both imagine
a knife that left us warm and draining blood.

The Hand Writing the Eye. by Connor Fisher

2013-05-05T00:03:00.001-04:00

Each time that I
Begin is enough.
Each start etching a
Motto over doors
And windows. Words
Turned and gently
Resting on my hands
On my knees my lap
In my mind held in the old
Cup of my stomach my
Strength and sadness
Gripped in my teeth
My trembling little
Fingers my thoughts my
Thoughts my eyes and
Each eye apart a
Bit of my small view
My small call and my
Guilt or worry my lips
That part that snap or
Speak that soften with
Light and touch or
Time my sound my
Own sound my outside
Hum and shout my weepy
Nose and tongue and
Face my silence and
Private art of anger my
Private license my useless
Parts that glaze my age
My age in a year my
Age then again my holy
Hands my swung arms my
Difficult hair my difficult
Mind and shoulders and
Combined sides that wither
That ache and thin that
Contain, partition the heart
And the other hearts from
A lung, that trouble
My rest my troubling
Dreams my gaping pupils
That blink and blind my
Gaze my open face and
Straight lines my curve of
Gravity and curving
Body my peace my peace
That slips away my
Peace that fails me that
Falls into my open arms
Surrender secret my secret feeling
My knowledge of plants,
Growths, hidden caves, animals,
Bridges, violence and regret,
My watery touch and human
Smell my heavy foot my
Lingering foot or tripping
Heel my hidden waist my
Hidden hips and chest, eyes,
Teeth, head, my wrist for
Motion, my silence is strength and
My glass hoops to stutter
Through are my small hats for
Facing out my hands my coy
Blink lazes and turns and turns.

Connor Fisher was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and currently lives in Denver, Colorado. He has a MA in English Literature from the University of Denver and is working towards an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Connor does not currently own any pets, but plans to get himself a cat one way or another within the next three years.

if the human centipede had been constructed exclusively from mouths, leaving in reality a sequence of only two people with their mouths sewn together, not kissing but breathing in whatever air was stuck in the other's throat, and never able to pull themselves away we would have spun (with spin of golden thread, or, maybe once a month, of dizzy fall, too gone to care, to count) and coiled together. lying spiraled, pale, cramped: like root, or tight-crossed fingers—not twin lines, praying for fortune, but meddling digits, scratching after scabs. By Eric Eich

2013-05-05T00:02:00.000-04:00

Eric Eich is a student, writer, and filmmaker who recently found his way to the Bay Area after eighteen years of incubation in Georgia. His work can be seen in Camel Saloon and Keep This Bag Away from Children, as well as at ericeich.com.

2013-05-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Fat Ass by Stephen Boyer

2013-05-04T03:37:00.000-04:00

I am not sure where or how or when, in all my mind's wandering, I first came to Positive Wishing, but I believe it was near the outset of my choosing to stop adhering to my parents’ reality. Not that linear constructs matter, and I don’t mean to give linearity power when I address it, and I’m aware that with every beginning comes an ending and endings only signify the beginning.

Were I to attempt to decipher the chain of events leading me to Positive Wishing, I’d say I first gave power to it when my parents made it a habit to continually ground me. As I lay in bed seething, the walls of my room incessantly chuckled at me, and between their laughter and my tears I heard the carpet whisper that it was okay to be alone, and it was shortly after coming to terms with that the carpet could speak that I realized I could physically remain as my parents wished but EYE CAN FLY…

Positive Wishing has no qualm with convincing its practitioners to, not only conjure ridiculous fancies but to believe them possible. And the more ludicrous the vision, the more it seems Positive Wishing “relishes” in pushing its visionary toward the most impossible approach, given that practitioners temporal situation; revels in pushing the brain to expound all that it truly craves, that later it can place the practitioner in a reality so far from the mind's wish as a means of testing its ability to evolve.

My realization that Positive Wishing had powers more complex than its mere surface could evoke came with a client named Frederik. I had been haphazardly staring at my computer screen, my eyes caught in a habit of pretending they absorbed the content of the emails clients had sent. In actuality, Positive Wishing had me spellbound in a lime green apron with embroidered pink unicorns leaping from star-ray to star-ray as I baked weed brownies for Lugh. We'd come home from his tour the day before and I was finally allowed to wear my cropped silver wig again, as Lugh wouldn’t let me be extravagant on tour, this was because of the fanboys: he worried they’d think I wasn’t a “boy,” and we both adored threeways,—albeit that my favorite sexual moment always came after tour, the moment we once again were home and our lives reclined into quiet routine and again I became the focus of his energy which opened a latch to hours and hours of intensely emotional sex, of body spasm after body spasm as every pore opened to ejaculate. And after all that, as I baked, Lugh looked me straight in the eyes as he sang the lyrics of his latest song, inspired by my curly rectal hairs caught in his teeth.

My woo dream-state dissolved into an email from Frederik asking if I was okay with someone overweight; I replied, then whisked myself away to his front door, eager to flip a buck. Easily three hundred and fifty pounds, he stood in the doorway wheezing; his right hand gripped a cane that bowed under his weight as he shifted his mass. True I had agreed to see him, but couldn’t help myself knowing, the next hour of my life would be spent in his loving arms that gave me the collywobbles, so that I wanted to vomit across his lard and run to Lugh’s dimension. Instead he caught his breath and patted my head and he told me I was a beautiful boy, but I carried on. As he chattered and chattered, Positive Wishing dissipated, left my “overactive imagination” to fend for itself, and I forced myself to breathe deeply and relax every muscle of my body, daring not display a single true emotion. A life form bright enough to acquire so much excess and partake could not be human, I thought, Frederik was something else, something like a tapeworm at the heart of consumption.

I entered his home, who, handed me money as he cumbersomely crossed the living room floor to sit on his couch. I thought of my father as I looked at all the food scattered across the floor, my father loved junk food and often spoke of compassion as a virtue one must incorporate into life and it was a funny thing to be reminded of him as I was being tested by Frederik. My dad believed religious thought always inspired empathy and sympathy, he often said humans were imperfect, and if asked about homosexuality he’d respond, that it was a sin that he thought was disgusting, but “God would want me to love the person and hate the sin, so I would do my best to love the person and hate the sin. But if I failed, it is because I am human and humans are imperfect.” He recounted stories in which he gay bashed young queer men in West Hollywood, as he told them he’d wink at and nudge me, mocking compassion. As Frederik casually blathered about his life he I imagined myself as a parasitic princess chained to the lard of Jabba the Hut – “In his belly you’ll find a new definition of pain and suffering.”

I couldn’t look him in the eye; for some reason my memory again decided to hit play on the looped audio track of my father casually announcing homosexuality to be a sin “That I think is disgusting!” I didn’t want to admit to myself I was there. Not “there” but there, in my mind, because there is no there, there. I desperately needed Positive Wishing to escape the present, so I could leave the body but Positive Wishing remained silent: and for a moment everything went s t a t i c.

I bet Frederik never said no to more. Fredrik’s pudgy face might have masked a shell of beauty; golden hair, straight teeth, bluish green eyes, most likely a Scandinavian descendant that dove into American opulence. But it’s important to remember that Fredrik wore a mask because by never saying no to more, he had given himself up in exchange for artifice. As I could never fathom what financial security could (or would) do for (or to) a person, I have no proof that any articulation of my ideas on the subject would be anything more than words shoved together, nor do I feel I could ever know how severely deranged I’ve become due to the constant pressure of needing money. It’s in my DNA. A long line of have-nots, by which it seems the universe always wants to ensure the stricken know how painful is their pain.

The complex flesh of a human being can support both parasites and bacteria, the essence of the human spirit is in its complexity; our genetic code is constantly morphing, our cellular interactions are never fixed. Though bacteria and parasites are often interchanged in popular culture, the two are vastly different: as, bacteria tend to work quickly, multiplying madly and in the process may cause diseases that can kill unless defeated by a hosts’ immune system; whereas parasites fluctuate between violent aggression and seemingly passive partnerships. Either way, the host is transformed. Bacteria are essentially bags of loose DNA and scattered proteins. Bacteria split themselves in two when the time seems right; clones reproduce quicker than sexual organisms, but a clone specialized in one niche can give birth to only one specific offspring; when the niche fragments, the clone cannot adapt. Sex allows the variation that allows for change. The idea of buying sex had been constructed for men like Frederik, with life comes mutations: I had never been with such an overweight man. Change keeps the parasite and host alive.

Finally, Frederik’s mandibles opened and asked if I wanted anything to drink and instantaneously, Positive Wishing blurted through me, “Vodka if you have it or wine;” he got up and lumbered to the kitchen, came back with a large wine glass filled to the brim. As I drank, the smell of cheap grapes filled my nose and again Positive Wishing seemingly laughed at me as again it fluttered beyond reach. Frederik watched quietly and attentively each movement of the glass to my mouth, which seemed to immediately be absorbed into his memory as though he were watching me in order to ensure he could get me to fulfill his needs. I reasoned, for Frederik the experience of seeing a young man drink just before he was about to get naked and do whatever Frederik wanted was part of Frederik’s thrill.

After a refill, the wine finally eased me out of my body’s anxiousness and for a moment I was free to live: my brain cells began to rapid fire an urgent message to my dick, to get up and fuck so you can run, and as my dick registered the message it seemingly shrank even smaller, as my imagination coiled like a spring ready to burst. Though Frederik didn’t seem to care, he didn’t seem to notice the state of me as he asked if I liked the wine, with a tone of voice that demanded I say, “yes.” And realizing I was not only saying “yes,” but that I was actually saying “yes” with a gleeful voice, jolted “me” ever more into my body in the most anxious of ways as I couldn’t understand why my brain had demanded my feet lead me to him nor could I dive back into the fantasy that first led me out of my parents’ home.

I stared at his feet with a sheepish grin as I asked, “What gets you off?” A big smile spread across Fredrick’s face as he continued to look, through me or past me: no, I couldn’t be sure what he saw as both his eyes seemed to move in their own way, like a chameleons. The repulsion I felt for him returned me to my father's inability to think beyond his own ideals, my ardent desire to truly encompass the values my birth-dad praised but by which he couldn't abide; my simultaneously equally fanatical need to reject the aspects of birth-dad's nature; that devout, ever-sureness…

I told Fredrick, “Suck my fucking cock!” And as he walked up to me, I gulped the glass of wine, thought, “If it ain't a quickie it’s gonna get icky,” then demanded he get on his knees. And as the demand flowed from my mouth it shocked me into a need to engage compassion as an act of protest, as I couldn’t allow myself suddenly to revert to violence. And with that I decided to very gently run the tips of my fingers through his hair and then lightly scratch the surface of his scalp, and as he sucked my cock I wondered if he were aroused by my demands, or if he thought solely of my cock or his cock or if his needs meant my cock was the source of his needs...

Fat Ass, here partially excerpted, is the fifth chapter of Parasite, a novel by Stephen Boyer, having been pressed by Publication Studio, as a part of its Fellow Travelers series, and able to be purchased here.

"If you're looking for a raw and slightly surreal missive from the land of poetic hustlers (and, really, who isn't?) Parasite is your book. Josh, the protagonist, is a queer teen with tranny tendencies and a psychedelic sensibility." —Alvin Orloff

"Josh is the sort of boy who experiences nearly everything through his ass, so he's not your usual sort of narrator, but if you've ever sat on anything weird, or anything splendid, this book will get to you just as it got to me." —Kevin Killian

Stephen Boyer is the author of the novel Parasite (Publication Studios), GHOSTS (Bent Boy Books), The Form of Things (2nd Floor Projects). They curate the blog minorprogression.com; with the help of countless others they spearheaded the compiling of the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology; recently they exhibited an installation at the Center for Book Arts (Jan-March 2013) showcasing both the Anthology and the Peoples Free Library, of which Stephen is a member. Stephen is currently working on a play.

Parasite has been pressed by Publication Studio, as a part of its Fellow Travelers series, which carries on the pioneering work of Paris-based Olympia Press's Traveller's Companion series of the nineteen-fifties and '-sixties, which published texts that had been banned or censored through moralistic prohibition. To purchase Parasite, either in print form or as an eBook, and for more information regarding the novel, its author, Stephen Boyer, Publication Studio, or the Fellow Travelers series, please visit its page at Publication Studio's website: which is here.

2013-04-21T02:07:00.000-04:00

THE HEART by Michael Patrick McSweeney

N THE AFTERNOON we watched an explosion open its jaws & roar out into the street as legs (old, young, fair, aged, short ones resting on the shoulders of a father) pumped forward on the sun-streaked road. Our eyes rose in confusion--through the smoke, to the severed hand twitching on the red-stained pavement. ...READ MORE

Two Ann Coulter Mash-Up Poems by Sara Biggs Chaney

2013-04-21T00:02:00.001-04:00

I. excerpts from Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America^[1] / “Lady Lazarus”^[2] by Sylvia Plath

As fire seeks oxygen,
I have done it again.

A walking miracle,
the political opportunist.

My pure flesh of calculation
blocks the schoolhouse door,
and the peanut-crunching crowd shoves in to see.

Eisenhower unwrapped me,
hand and foot.
Sour-breath Strom
peeled off the napkin.

Strip teasing for bigots
Is an art,
like anything else.

II. Right Wing News' “Favorite Ann Coulter Quotes”^[3]/ “Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden^[4]

About suffering they were never wrong—the Islamic fanatics, the three thousand Americans, the adulterers, abortionists, criminals and communists, who did not especially want it to happen. How it takes place—(as if you’ve never done it, you can’t criticize it)—back in the prelapsarian fifties, the division of labor nothing short of perfect.

For cocktails alone, it’s not the women who should be complaining, but the billionaire rootless international financiers. Now even the dreadful martyrdom is sold out by Democrats, their doggy life, their reverse Christ story. Some college professor has already written an article to undermine American security. It’s an intriguing strategy, having nothing to do with the expensive white legs of science, or the delicate ship of the constitution, disappearing—while the draft dodgers, liars, weasels and cowards sail calmly on.

1. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=oCbGcKswJF0C
2. ^ http://allpoetry.com/poem/8498497-Lady_Lazarus-by-Sylvia_Plath
3. ^ http://www.rightwingnews.com/uncategorized/rwns-favorite-ann-coulter-quotes-2
4. ^ http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html

Sara Biggs Chaney lives, writes, and walks her dog in Vermont. She teaches writing at Dartmouth College. Her writing has appeared or will appear in Stone Highway Review, Sleet Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Counterexample Poetics, Crack the Spine, and elsewhere.

The Problem with Odam Schweda by Chad Meadows

2013-04-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

Odam Schweda had been struggling to write his masterpiece for years. His last real attempt to do anything meaningful with his life came when he sat at his computer and typed the beginning of what he thought would be his return to the warm comfort of the Hollywood spotlight. He was going to take his place among the literary greats of all time, he rattled off a list in his head: Edgar Hummingway, Jerry Chorwell, Jamie Jorp Joyce, Arnold Steinback, and Mad Cheadows. Inspired by the ghosts of the great dead writers of all times, he typed the words then sat back and marveled:

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Shouldn’t...”

The fact was, that he marveled at the same two sentences and one contraction for days, for months even; he waited for words to come to him. But what started out as one tiny white brick turned into another, then another and another. And finally, after two years of staring at the same two sentences and one contraction, Odam admitted, to himself, that he had a problem, that for most writers isn't a problem, and to a bread and butter writer, is; to an already spent my advance and have gambling debts-writer: a devastating death warrant.

One of the last writing tips the professor gave me, before he cut off my right hand was, to “Always put text in a smaller font if writing a story within a story. It'll help the all the John Grisham set figure out what’s going on. There’s a reason why he's sold so many fucking books.” That said, this makes it pretty difficult to write or type, or do anything for that matter. The missing right hand, not the smaller font. I don’t know if that's a legitimate rule. “Rubbish! This is feces. You? See a woman naked? Wrong! Because not even your own mother would take that much pity! That's not how it happened. Try again.” He placed a great emphasis on the again and blew his humid breath down into my face spraying me with vodka drenched pieces of hamburger buns.

His breath smells like the label from an old jar of mayonnaise; metallic, sour, rancid. That technique is listing, or chorusing, or whatever you want to call it. I can smell the glue from the back label. The residue that stays on the glass after you've peeled off it off. And it smells like horses. I stopped puking after he ripped the pages out of the typewriter and threw them, crumpled, wrinkled, balled up into the waste-can. I can’t move nor fight back. All I can do is sit, write and re-write. Or stare, curse and stare some more. I've gone through this exercise before, on my own; start, stop, write and delete. Never with this much at stake and certainly never tied up to a chair at a motel off of I-95. I had no idea this was part of the workshop when I signed up, the last thing I thought I would go through as part of my destruction of writer’s buildings was torture. “This is all you can come up with? A writer with writer’s block? How trite. Maybe we should try some basics. How about a flashback? We’ve established that you can’t write, now go with that. You look like you need a prompt. Here goes...”

The last writing tip the professor gave me before he broke both of my big toes was, to “Always meta-write about yourself. Everyone that reads wants to know about the author. No one cares about plot anymore. It’s part of our culture's obsession with celebrity. Just write about the time you took a shit or jerked off under covers on the bus and cried. The Twilight set will eat that shit up.” After he said it he was gone. I think I saw him in a floral muʻumuʻu making toilet wine in the motel bathroom.

In college, Odam Schweda felt every word that ejaculated from his mouth contained golden life-giving threads of wisdom and insight. Odam began his spiritual quest to change the diaper of humanity through the power of the written word at the age of twenty-two. He felt he was to be studied and revered, talked about in coffee shops and over cigarettes. Ordained by the gods, he would release, to the world, with great acumen, his words; penetrate, all that cast eyes, with words of love. Was destined to figure significantly into a moment when a glorious light would crack through the heavens and bathe all wretched, damaged humanity, in his precious and golden threaded words. The moment had arrived. In July, 199_, Odam Schweda complete his final draft of: What’s that Buzzing Sound, episode one: “My Sister’s Machine”. His moment of glory, wrapped in a veiled reference to a women's sex toy, appearing in a show whose title was a veiled reference to a women's sex toy.

As I pecked furiously with my bloody stump at the typewriter keys, I could smell the wine brewing in the toilet. Either that or the professor was dyeing his hair. Now my sense of smell was greatly diminished; he had shoved Tic Tacs in my nose before we got here. I felt someone reach under my shirt and grab the piece of duct tape that was stuck to my nipple. One of the last writing tips my professor gave me before he put the duct tape on my nipple was, to “Put duct tape on your nipple and then rip it off when you feel yourself growing stagnant.”

It worked. He ripped and tugged, and all the hair was pulled out of my chest, leaving tiny pinholes of blood welling; a rush of peroxide sting hit my eyes. Like that, the old stagnant hairs were vanquished and I could immediately feel begin to grow the new, and I wanted to write. I looked around for the professor; saw him sitting behind me on the bed, his pants off, smoking a cigarette, watching the Orson Welles version of The Stranger with the sound off. I could see the reflection in the mirror, which hangs above the bed and catches the reflection of the T.V. from another mirror beside the bed. I wanted to chop off his head but as I thought about how I might realistically pull that off with only one hand and eight functioning toes; I decided that I would try to focus on what I came here for initially; though things had gone so horribly wrong, and I mean, the type of wrong that people write full length novels about; I still longed for his approval. Isn’t that what all writers want? No, I wanted to do good work, to do good work for my readers; for the man that cut off my hand and keeps giving me something between the stink-eye and the sex-eye.

When thinking about it, I was in the process of writing, putting words that form sentences together and putting these sentences onto pieces of paper with ideas that formed plots. And the writing program that I'd signed up for on the internet, apart from the obvious contras of nipple ripping, verbal abuse and torture, had proven effective.

Odam Schweda encountered moderate success after the run of his late-nineties era situation comedy. Critics referred to My Sister’s Machine as: “An embarrassment for humanity;” “The worst moment in broadcast history;” “A reason to stop all forms of entertainment forever.” The series was broadcast for two seasons and Odam became an overnight sensation. Entertainment biographers and historians suggest that his ability to craft a story was widely considered: “Evidence of intelligent life forms from other planets making fun of us”; “So bad that it must come from in between the testicular sack of Satan and his anus.”

Odam had a veracious appetite for bacon, ice cream, sex, cocaine and Barbie doll-heads. Like Emmanuel Lewis, Gary Coleman, and Vicki from Small Wonder; he was popular for no reason apparent except his sideshow. That was, unless you were writer Odam Schweda. Then you were popular for all of the right reasons. But instead of changing the diaper of humanity, he created a bowel movement of putrid mind-numbing dialogue and situation so large that the diaper became unfastened from the weight of garbage piled up inside it, and exploded onto the world covering it once more in darkness.

The professor was smoking a cigarette. I wanted one of those. “Can I have a cigarette?” I asked. Considering I had been recently hunted down by a deranged lunatic bent on making writer's block a matter of life or death, a smoke shouldn’t kill me. My professor smiled, nodded and sauntered over. He actually moseyed over. Either the severe loss of blood was causing me to hallucinate or I was in a David Lynch film. I saw the red bedspreads, orange and black shag carpeting, cowboys and Indians on the wall paper, my hand, lifeless in a brown paper bag; blood dripped all over the floor and me sitting on a table by the bed, and a man in his underwear moseying over to a guy who was duct taped to a chair being forced to finish a novel about being forced to finish a novel. It was metafiction at its finest.

“Let’s take a look at your progress, shall we.” He looked at the page, once empty and white now filled with tiny black letters pounded from my guts tangled with ribbon from the typewriter. “This is abhorrent. An abomination to the genre. You are the reason for assisted suicide. Keep going with this. I think you are on to something. Don’t forget… impending peril!” I groveled as he walked away, “Can I get that smoke?” He took one out of his pack, lit it, and put it out where my right hand used to be. I didn’t think the pain could get much worse, but as is the case for most things in my life, I was horribly mistaken. Though, he seems to like the story.

Odam had moved to Hollywood, gained a reputation for bus station drug binges, long term erectile dysfunction and a dream. And he had fifteen dollars worth of lottery tickets and a coupon for an Asian Style Massage. With all of these things he was going to change the world. He was going to be brilliant. He was going to play in the big leagues with all of the big boys. He made a list in his head: Jom Clooner, Retario deCabrio, Bruce Pitts, Jackie Jorp Jorp and Sheryl Strept.

Odam Schweda went on to work on several film projects, including: Fart Party, You am awesome, Hanjob Affairs, Fart Party 2 and COPS and DAGGERS (and MIND CONTROL), of which the tagline was run: “Some cops use gun. Some cops use machete. Some cops use nightstick. He… uses daggers and mind control.”

INT. WAREHOUSE – NIGHTTIME

Detective Peter Ratchet chews some gum, blows a bubble in his suspect’s face, tied to a chair underneath a dagger hanging from a rope.

RATCHET

We’ve met before. Right?

CARLOS

Si. You pig.

RATCHET

Well, I don’t think you’ve met my best friend.

CARLOS

Wha..?

RATCHET

Dagger meet Carlos. Carlos… meet Dagger.

The camera pans up to the dagger. Ratchet cuts the rope, releasing the dagger which slices the head of CARLOS clean off.

FADE OUT

These projects would be abysmal failures and critics, when referencing Odam would refer to him by the monikers of Jab My Eyes Out, or Punch Me in the Face. For instance: “The latest offering from the Jab My Eyes Out is worse than having diarrhea after eating habanero peppers;” or, “Punch Me in the Face writes like a smooth oily shit;” “I never thought I would want a full frontal lobotomy.”

I needed a break from writing. I had to take a shit. I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing. I knew it was only a matter of time before the professor killed me. Instinctively, I screamed until blood spurted out of my stump: “I need to shit,” I said. “Shit on your feet you writer shithead!” One of the last writing tips the professor gave me before he jabbed the pencil in my leg was, “When writing dialogue, don’t get caught up saying so and so said. It’s boring and shows your stupidity.” “I need to shit.” I cried out, sounding like a bleating lamb. “Shit on your feet you writer shit head,” he repeated as he sucked the inside of a bean burrito out from the back end.

I asked him if the latest sounded better. He said yes but that I still wrote like a two year-old chimpanzee. I had no idea why this fucker was so mean to me, I paid him three hundred and fifteen dollars to teach me how to beat writer’s block. The first writing tip the professor gave me before he laughed to the point of throwing at my writing was, to “Get used to people thinking you suck.” “I need to go to the bathroom. Number three,” I pleaded with him, “diarrhea.” The last writing tip the professor gave me before he ripped the toilet out of the motel bathroom was, “If you're in a conversation that you want to get out of, just say you have to go. You have diarrhea.” Just like that, he pulled the toilet, bolts and all, slammed it down on the oily shag rug, right in front of my desk.

He lifted me from the chair and strapped me down to the dirty seat, and slid the desk, considerately, in front of me, that I could continue working. He was “insistent” that I complete this “masturbation of literature;” emphasizing both words, spewing toothpaste and Brussels sprout-remnants in my face. I thought, I was starting to love his endearing terms for my work. “Thought you might like to watch some reality T.V. You write like a second grader who's in the slow class,” my professor pined, batting his eyelashes at me as he turned round the television.

Odam Schweda faded from the public eye after his astonishing procession of failures. He up and moved to New York. He decided to get back in touch with, the reason he wanted to write in the first place: the hookers and cocaine he could buy with the money he made. He thought he'd pick up some fast cash and churn out a novel. Odam had always said that novelists were a novelty.

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Shouldn’t...”

He stopped, unable to write any more. He would erase them and start over and would type those words anew everyday on new pieces of computer screen-paper. He kept typing and staring and then would throw them away. At the last, he stopped writing. He already had his money. He had been lucky enough to get a deal for a novel based on his having written monumentally horrid works for film and television. Publishers were beating down his door on account of the literary train wreck to ensue. Each meeting with his publisher would go the same way: “Odam, I really need that book. Sure, Grafton is keeping us afloat with all of her letters of the alphabet bullshit but we need someone with an edge on that What the Fuck market. It’s been three years.” And Odam would slide a piece of paper across the desk; Martha, his publisher, would pull on her cigar, read the two lines and one contraction and laugh, “It is an awesome beginning,” she would say. “It’s gold Odam. Gold. I think you’re onto something.”

On the T.V. my professor had so politely tuned to my favorite reality show, I saw what resembled my own vintage 1962 checkerboard overlay coffee table lying in pieces on the floor. A sub-zero, frost free, stainless steel refrigerator, that looked suspiciously like mine; had its doors ripped off the hinges. There was a toilet sitting in the living room, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a mote of sewage and someone’s personal waste. In the corner was a woman’s face, her eyes looking up at me. Her head separated from her body. My apartment on T.V.

The last writing tip that my professor gave me before he whispered his hot dead animal breath in my ear was, to “Write what you know. In case you forget what you know, either make some shit up or do something really crazy. Go on a bender, take a lot of drugs, get really depressed and behead your publicist when she laughs at your two lines and one contraction.” All I could do, at this point, was write. What do you know? When there are no drugs around, you write the pain away. I heard the cheers of the springs popping on the typewriter. The clapping applause of the arms with their block letters, dripping with ink. Blood. The words jumped from head to page. The professor changed the channel on the T.V. forcing me to watch a perpetual loop of three minutes of Driving Miss Daisy played in reverse while he scratched the words, clock, action, epilogue into my inner thigh with a dull razor blade. As I tap danced over the metal keys.

At home Odam passed by the computer, read the two lines and one contraction, chuckled, added more brilliance to the recipe, then hit delete and started over again, getting stuck in the same spot.

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Shouldn’t...”

He thought about how his publisher Martha had smoked that awful cigar, fellating it right there in front of him. She laughed at it and even though he'd laughed with her; he still felt ashamed that he wasn’t capable of writing more than these sentences and contracted word. He wondered if he should write out the contracted words.

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Should not...”

It was of no use. It was still the same. He wondered why was he so insistent on writing about the time he saw his mother naked wen he was thirty-five. It really did nothing for him, nothing good or bad.

Exhausted, he decided to look for help. He went on the internet and after looking at some porn decided to see if he could source any ghostwriters, with a simple search query: “writers block need help,” yielding one search result on the entire internet. The entire internet? This was impossible. Odam clicked on the site and was ased a simple question: “Need help with Writers Block?” “Yes,” he said. Everything was going to be okay.

My writing professor sat there, eating corn chips and laughing. The girl in the room, the lady in the red dress has started to stink. I don’t remember her being there before, though, I thought I heard the professor open the door and leave. I thought I heard open and close the trunk on my 1994 Toyota Terrel. I wondered if she knew what she'd signed up for? My professor says, there's a fine line between honesty and everything else. The last writing tip he gives me before he grabs my left hand and pops off a finger is, “Set an egg timer and write until it goes off. If you don’t want to write anymore when the time is up, go the fuck home and get a new career. You'll never make it at this anyway.” Everything started going black.

The next morning, Odam arrived at the classroom location for class number one: Deconstructing Your Writers Buildings; found it odd that he was the only person in the class, especially since the price was so affordable and there was only one entry on the entire internet. A tall as the trees, skinny as a mantis leg, with a look of evil, a professor of writing barreled in through the door; he spoke so low that he could barely be heard over the air-conditioner. For ten hours, Odam Schweda tried to listen to him speak about what, he presumed, was writing. But it often sounded more like highlights from recent Spanish television programs or predictions from a Farmers’ Almanac. It was hard to tell what was being said because he sounded as though his mouth was filled and overflowing with marbles. After ten long hours, with no lunch nor bathroom breaks, alone in the classroom that resembled no other room that Odam had ever seen. everything started to become repetitive, to change right in front of Odam's eyes. Everything, from black to white and back to color again. But the professor kept saying the same things over and over but in different ways. Odam began to know that he was in some deep trouble. “I'm going to have to work at Subway. Not that it's beneath me. But I wrote Fart Party 2, dammit!” He decided, after hours of non-stop lecture, he would leave, he would just go home and try again and the deadline would do him some good.

Odam looked over his first line:

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Shouldn’t….”

It was useless; he shut off his computer, he knew this was his last attempt, that this was the moment at which he gave up. Odam Schweda called his publisher Martha and asked her to come over to discuss the future of his book.

I heard the egg timer go off. A solitary ding. I realized that the whole thing has unraveled like a ball of green yarn. The professor strolled over, wearing his parka and a crown and no pants. He mocked me:
“Odam Schweda is a writer. He writes bullshit. He has a small penis. Odam Schweda needs help with writers block. Wah. Wah. Wah. Odam Schweda is going to end up with his head cut off like the girl in the corner.” He burnt the orifice of my bloody stump and sealed it shut. The room smelled like potted meat. I hate potted meat. Why did I buy potted meat? When you lose this much blood and are under this much stress, it's amazing where your mind will go. Maybe this is the most genius writing program ever? I haven't been given a choice but to write today. I've already lost everything. What else could happen? These are the things I thought about.

Odam Schweda’s publisher came over to his house; she was wearing a red dress, white stockings and a pair of running shoes. He had taken a few pills and washed them down with half of a bottle of Ketle One vodka. Odam can only remember Martha screaming at him, telling him what a failure he was and laughing that he was writing about seeing his mother naked. He just wanted to be remembered for Fart Party!

“Hey shithead. This piece of garbage cooked yet? How about a through-line? Any of that shit in the pie?” I've started to fall hard for my professor. He was pushing me towards success. “Isn’t that your problem? You keep writing the same thing over and over? You're always in failure mode. You write what you know, right? Now write it again.” That was the last piece of writing advice my professor gave me as he rapped me on the knuckles with a board with rusty nails on it.

“The road and sky split open swallowing his 1964 Buick Electra 225 Convertible. Odam Schweda finally felt safe as he barreled down the highway. He had been driving for what seemed like an eternity but then remembered that he didn’t believe in eternity. He only believed in right now, and right now was his only chance to breathe since leaving the northeast. He had left in a hurry. As the sun came down and the bruise color of the sky expanded across the horizon, Odam felt like everything was going to be okay. The soft shadows of his...”

“Rubbish! This is feces. A 1964 Buick? Wrong! That is not how it is happened. Try again.” The professor blew his hot breath down into my face and sprayed me with vodka drenched pieces of hamburger buns.

Odam woke to the screaming. Martha, his publisher, lay on the floor, bleeding, sandwiched in between two couches. She was crying. He ran over to her in the dark and told her to “Shut up!” As he picked her lifeless body up, her head fell off and landed on the floor next to the door of his sub zero frost free refrigerator. He threw her body in the trunk of his 1994 Toyota Terrell and drove as fast as the night would allow. The soft shadows of his...”

I just want to be remembered for Fart Party!

“Nobody will remember you, cum-wad. You really are making great strides with this character Odam. Keep it up!” My professor had burst into my apartment. He had killed Martha, destroyed my things. Destroyed my life and cut off her head. All of this was his fault. “Your story makes no sense. How could I burst into anything? I’m not even here. You did this. Tell us more about Martha. She sounds sexy!” my professor said, encouraging me to push hard for the voice.

He's been forcing me to work under extreme duress and pressure. He cut off my right hand. He killed Martha. Her nails are gone. Her beautiful red nails. “There's a fine line between honesty and everything else. Now write what you know. I’m leaving you to your talents.” That was the last piece of writing advice that my professor gave me before I looked around and noticed that he wasn't in the motel room; I heard what I thought was the engine of my 1994 Toyota Terrel, starting and fading, off into the distance.

Odam Schweda looked around at all of the destruction that had come along with his writer's block. He never imagined the things he would do. He just wanted to change the diaper of humanity. He just wanted to be remembered for Fart Party 3. He looked at the carnage and knew he was all alone. He sat at the typewriter, his bare feet massaged by the oily shag carpeting of the motel room, and he realized that he would finally be able to complete his masterwork. He looked at the page and was proud:

“I just saw my mother naked. This time I was thirty-five. Shouldn’t...”

Chad Meadows is from the New Jersey area. He's thirty-eight and his hair is thin. He's an MFA grad student (who isn't these days?) at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He won their Director's Award for fiction back in 2011. (Doesn't mean much to be honest with you.) He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel, but he is not finished. In the meantime, he would like you to click on this link and read a little bit more, but not so much more that you would not want to buy the collection.

2013-04-21T00:00:00.000-04:00

“The Heart” by Michael Patrick McSweeney

2013-04-20T05:43:00.000-04:00

In the afternoon we watched an explosion open its jaws
& roar out into the street as legs (old, young, fair, aged,
short ones resting on the shoulders of a father)
pumped forward on the sun-streaked road.
Our eyes rose in confusion--through the smoke,
to the severed hand twitching on the red-stained
pavement.

Then we ran, knelt by legs
to press our torn shirts to wounds
while sirens cried skyward
like children lost in a crowded room.

In the evening we sit in different rooms--
trying to get comfortable on bar stools--
resting our chins on the warmth of lovers' necks--
letting smoke tendrils rise into the wind
like murky, formless thoughts in our minds--
drinking deep the panicked energy with coffee,
pounding keyboards for soundbites & numbers
& tiny messages of hope & love
in the warmth of our smartphones & hearts.

In the morning we will pick marigolds from our gardens
& lay them in the heart of Boston as the wind rides in
with the energy & life of the sun-lit sea.
We will cradle photos, stroke them through touch-
screens & let our tears pass over with the tides.
But the fire that sought to silence the heart of Boston
can no longer burn us, though it left behind
memories entombed in burnt chunks of concrete.
When the sun rises we'll hear the gathering roar of footsteps
leaving their homes & towers & doorways,
a steady pulse unhindered
by a senseless burst of light & terror.

Michael Patrick McSweeney is an artist and educator from the Boston region. His work has appeared in numerous journals and various regions of the Internet thanks to truly wonderful individuals. He is also the founder and chief financial officer of a used submarine conglomerate, the business website of which can be found at discountsubmarines.wordpress.com, and he hopes you have a great day.

2013-04-07T00:04:00.000-04:00

an Idyll. by Wilson Korges

iding though the green of woods, parting the trees now, comes the Prince and a proudly liveried entourage of only two. The firs there are not packed tightly together, so the riding there is easy, somewhat exhilarating—and there is just enough foliage to get lost in; branches, so that one or two are sure to brush the cheek and leave it stinging lightly with life. ...READ MORE

The Bird Conundrum by Victoria Manifold

2013-04-07T00:03:00.000-04:00

“They’re laughing at me.” When she heard birdsong, grandmother insisted that they were mocking her, that the birds flew down from the trees to personally insult her. She took me shopping and I begged her let me look at the Lego at Woolworths. I committed to memory the sets I wanted for Christmas and went to find her. I looked everywhere but she wasn’t there, I cried to the shop assistant that 'I had lost my grandma.' She'd only snuck out for a fag, and when we were reunited she berated me for crying, but I suppose I loved her.

She was shaped like a barrel, stout and round and fleshy, but with odd skinny limbs; tiny little legs, almost skeletal, frail wrists and bony fingered hands. She’d look at my sister Gina's and my legs, grab the fleshy parts of the calves and tell us we were lucky to have such ‘grand’ legs, then she’d let us feel how bony her own were. Her feet were tiny; at seven years, my feet were almost as big, grandma laughed and called me big foot. When I lay on her chest I sunk into her breasts and belly like a soft pillow, she had a milky smell mixed with fags and cooking fat.

###

The summer of Nineteen Eighty-Nine—as clear in my memory as a film, though maybe only snatches of a low-budget thriller, glimpsed through a crack in the door to my parents' bedroom when they thought I was sleeping—the summer my mother would take me to visit grandmother every morning.

Gina wore her hair in a thick long plait that snaked right down her back, and in the summer she turned as brown as a nut. The boys in my class would ask about her and I’d feel proud she was my sister.

My father had come home one night, agitated and upset: I listened through the door as he spoke to my mother, he'd been working with a man called Jimmy but Jimmy had been called away at lunch time for that his teenage son Dean had deliberately swallowed Drano. Jimmy went straight to the hospital. That night, dad hugged Gina and me so tightly I thought I would have an asthma attack.

###

Grandma had those spear-like flowers in her garden which she called red hot pokers , which, I now know, are called Kniphofia. She told me not to touch them; if I did she’d use them to poke out my eyes. I knew she couldn’t poke my eyes out with flowers, though I felt like she really wanted to.

Though she hated me touching the flowers, and the ornaments and the framed photographs, she would let me eat as much as I wanted; kept a glass dish of sugared almonds on her dining room table and I'd eat a whole bowl full in one go. She would laugh and ask if I wanted any more, I was a greedy child and always said yes. Then even if it were just before lunchtime, she’d fill my outstretched hands with as many as I could carry.

She was prone to violence and considered those birds her sworn enemies. “Go on! Piss off you little bastards! No one laughs at me!”

One day I listened very carefully to the birds, and it turns out they really were mocking and jeering her: “Titwitch;” “Cuntfart;” “Cumsucker.” I asked grandma why she didn’t have any pictures of birds, she had one of some stags and I thought birds much prettier. “Bah! birds are unlucky. Don’t bring an image of a bird into my house or I’ll wring your neck.”

I collected feathers and bird droppings and kept them in a little pouch with a picture of Rainbow Brite on it. ‘Were the birds mocking her superstitions? Were they really that cruel?’ At night I lay in the darkness stroking the feathers, waiting for answer, knowing I must ‘investigate’; I looked to the sky and saw the black dots of birds circling, high up in the distance. They hadn’t been in the yard since I heard them speak.

I watched them until grandma made me come in for lunch. She’d made fried bread, let me put on as much ketchup as I wanted and afterwards we had a plate of custard creams between us whilst watching television. Sitting on a big puffy sofa, sinking into the cushions with my belly bloated from the food my mother wouldn’t let me eat. Sleepy with satisfaction, I thought, ‘but how could those birds muster such vicious bile for the woman who’d just fried bread in lard for me?’, when mother came in.

And “What’s that smell?” she said, “Have you given her fried bread again?” “And what’s wrong with that?” “Shouldn’t be eating things like that: I don’t want a fat child.” “She likes it!” and “It’s not as if you were a skinny child.” The kitchen door closed and heard no more.

Ten days since I'd heard the birds speak and begun my investigation, yet all I had was a cheap plastic purse full of feathers and bird shit. I wedged myself into the gap between the shed and the wall, at the bottom of the yard; in frustration, emptied the contents of the purse onto the ground; the birds were still so far away. I stared at my hands, dirty from bird droppings, I sniffed at them but they didn’t smell of anything.

“Your grandmother is a murderer.” A sparrow sat on the wall looking down at me. “She killed my lover. That’s why we laugh at her, why we call her names. It’s all we can do.” “I don’t care. Why should I care?”

“Your grandmother is a tyrant.” “There’s not much I can do about that.” “You can do more than a bird can.” “Why should I?” “Ask any of the birds. Every one of us has lost someone because of her. You could help us. I’ve heard the way she speaks to you. She doesn’t just kill birds, she tortures them. She revels in their pain. Do you think she’ll always be happy just with birds? We’re going to punish her. Consider our offer.”

The sparrow flew away; I remained wedged between wall and shed till grandma shouted me in for lunch. She’d done egg and chips, lovely egg and chips swimming in grease and I was so hungry and it was so perfect: a stack of bread and butter on the side, real butter too, “And I’ve got us some trifles for afters.” I looked out of the kitchen window and saw the birds lined up on the wall.

###

Sunday afternoon, both of us had to go to grandma’s; she’d been complaining that she never saw Gina. We ate some stale French fancies and watched the Antiques Road Show; Grandma opened the window to have a fag, leaned her head and arm out of the window and started puffing away; a bird did a shit on her, right down her arm and in her hair too. Dropping the fag on the carpet she ran out of the room, into the back yard, started shouting at the sky and throwing rocks; she screamed out her lungs at an empty sky.

Then I came down with something, my stomach ached, accompanied by bad diarrhoea.—I thought about what my grandma did to the birds and it had me really worried.—I used almost a full roll of toilet paper and eventually the toilet wouldn’t flush; my dad had to come and unblock it. I watched him up to his elbow in my shit and toilet paper before he told me to go outside and play. Later he came down the stairs solemnly and gathered the whole family round: “From now on the toilet paper will be rationed. It’s one sheet for a wee and two for a poo. Never any more.”

“But dad that’s not fair, just because that little pig—” “I’ve made up my mind and that’s how it’ll be from now on. They’ll be no more incidents.”

###

Gina came into our bedroom, she’d been in the bathroom running a bath and must have forgotten something. “What is it with you? Is it because you have to go to Grandma’s every day?” “No,” though it was, and Gina surprised me with her perception. She put her arms out and gave me a hug. An idea had already crystallised in my mind: I could protect Gina and mother and myself. I approached the birds the following day; a whole group flew down to the space between the wall and the shed, the sparrow seemed to be their leader.

Lunch that day was a salad and grandmother hardly spoke to me; she set it down in front of me but her place was empty. “I hope you’re happy with that.” “Thank you grandma.” “I’m not eating that, though, I’m going to have bacon. If you'd rather that, then let me know. I’m making it now.” She inhaled the bacon smell deeply.

###

The sparrow said, “The first thing you can do is bring us her fags.” “The first?” “Next week we'll give you something else to do. When you get the fags, bring them here.” It was harder than I imagined, stealing the fags, as she kept them in the pocket of her apron and wore her apron always.

She would say she didn’t smoke very often but was always secretly puffing away as soon as she was on her own; she once gave up and everyone was on edge for weeks. Mother had booked a family holiday to Berwick-upon-Tweed and was too scared to tell grandma that she wasn’t invited, and when she eventually plucked up the courage, the upshot was grandma took to her bed moaning that she'd been betrayed, and the only way mother could coax her out was to throw her a packet of fags and thus ended grandma’s abstinence. And since then she’d never let her fags out of her sight.

I told my mother ‘I wanted to stay over at grandma’s house, that I voluntarily wanted to spend a full twenty-four hours or more with her’. I imagined she'd never believe that I would want to do that, but she did and I was packed off. It was better than I expected: it was stew for tea, which ordinarily I hated but seemed fine that night.

Then she put on Bergerac and fell asleep, she snored loudly and I was briefly enthralled by the program. A girl was roughly kissed and her lips bled, but I couldn’t let it distract me for too long. I stretched my arm around her barrel belly and towards the fag pocket. “What you doing?” “Just giving you a cuddle. I thought you were asleep though.” “Just resting my eyes.”

Her house was small and we had to share a bed; she hung the apron back of the bedroom door before she slept, I waited until I heard the snoring, crept out and took the fags from the pocket. It was nearly a full packet so I knew the birds would be pleased, I tiptoed down the stairs, unlocked the back door, and it was cold and dark outside but I wasn’t scared. I placed the fags on the wall, my heart thumping in my chest from sheer elation and I could hear the sound rushing in my ears as I stood in the dark.

She wasn’t happy the next day but she didn’t blame me. She really wanted a fag though. Mother gave her sympathy, but the very minimum amount and when grandma claimed the birds had done it mother looked at her. I’d gone outside to speak to the birds but apart from the fags being gone I saw no sign they’d ever been there.

###

It was the Sunday after I stole the fags. I hadn’t eaten anything I considered proper all week. We were having our weekly roast, we could only have chicken; mother was worried about Chernobyl. The chicken was wrapped in tin foil and had been left on the side whilst the Yorkshire puddings cooked, I peeled back the tin foil carefully as I could, and tore the skin from the chicken and gobbled it up fast as I could; the grease streaked my chin and my fingers shone with it just as my mother and grandma came into the kitchen. Mother pursed her lips tightly and told me to sit down at the dining table; when she put my plate in front of me there were vegetables, mashed potato, Yorkshire puddings but no meat and I blamed grandma for this unfortunate turn of events.

I didn’t like Sunday, I hated the texture and taste of cabbage and broccoli, I felt ashamed because I couldn’t eat them and they were good for me. The house turned toxic on Sundays, Mother spent the morning cooking; sweating and being angry, whilst grandma sat at the back door, fag in her hand, telling mother “The fat isn’t hot enough for the Yorkshire puddings.” “If you mash them like that you’ll have lumps in the potatoes.”

Occasionally she'd start a job, then abandon it halfway through amidst a mess of dirty utensils. I thought I would die if I had to eat another Sunday lunch. I watched mother cooking in the kitchen, I stayed quiet in the corner and she asked me to go to the shop at the top of the street to buy milk and eggs and while she went to find her purse I went into the cupboard and got out the whiskey they kept at the back. I took a big draught before she came back in with the handful of change, the whiskey was disgusting and it burned my mouth, a wave of nausea washed over me as I swallowed. As she walked back into the kitchen I vomited down my dress and on to the floor. “Oh, couldn’t you have at least made it to the sink? Well, don’t just stand there like an idiot, come here.” She whipped my dress off and put it into the washing machine, wiped my mouth with a wet flannel. “Go up to bed. I’ll come see you when we’ve finished eating.”

I lay in bed and could hear them downstairs. As soon as the burning wore off I felt starved. My father would shout up the stairs to wake my mother, my sister and me before he went to work, but my mother hated getting out of bed so I would sneak into the dark room to rouse her, where it smelled of sweat, sex and closed windows; she was tired and ached but I really wanted a cup of tea. She made it milky and sugary and I drank it from a Mr Men cup. Mr Strong. The red square.

But that day grandma was in a particularly foul mood: the delivery boy had torn her newspaper putting it through the letterbox. He’d only torn the front page, and she only got the paper to read the obituaries. Still it blackened her mood sufficiently, I went outside to avoid her. “Thanks for the fags, Alice.” I looked up. “We appreciate it.” “Did you smoke them?” “Of course we did. We’re birds...

“...we need you to do something else. And this will be the last thing.”

###

I gave grandma the big glass of milk to have with her chocolate fingers: “This milk must be off. Can’t believe your mother brought that round for me. She’s useless. I’m not drinking off milk, Alice, you’re as bad as your mother.” “Drink it, it's good for you.” “You’re a cheeky bugger. When I was your age I wouldn’t have dared talk like that to my poor old grandma.” “It’ll make you strong.” “And how strong do you think I want to be? What do you think I want to do?”

Then she started laughing, her laugh was awful and it made me feel stupid. She sat at the kitchen table with the milk pushed to one side. I came up behind her, held her round the neck with one arm and I used my free to pick up the milk. She sputtered and spat but I held her down as well as I could. I felt enormously powerful. “Alice you little bitch, wait until your mother hears about this.”

She seemed to grow weaker, struggle less so it was easier to force the stuff down her. When the whole mixture was gone, I let her go, when pushed me over, slapped at my face and head but then clutched her throat and started gagging. On all fours on the kitchen floor, she was crying and choking and I stood there and watched. It was one of those spans of time that seem paradoxically to last forever and to take no time at all. I went outside to find the birds though none were about.

Victoria Manifold is a writer from the North East of England. Her stories find humour and darkness in the everyday. She explores her obsession with Columbo at lieutenantcolumbo.blogspot.co.uk. Follow her on twitter at @toria_manifold. Victoria is a founding member of the Brautigan Free Press.

Crumb by Sharlene Teo

2013-04-07T00:02:00.000-04:00

Imagine my horror when my girlfriend says she wants to name our child Crumb. I hold her shoulder in a way neither strong nor tender. Pregnancy is a slow, repugnant process I know nothing about. Aren’t I glad to nod at numerals. All I know is when the time comes. When the time comes. She pinches her mouth shut. The doctors are draining the youth out of her like amniotic fluid. I like to think of relevant similes when I’m not concentrating.

Every house I’ve passed in the neighbourhood seems to be lit with the same harsh, horrible strip-lights. Maybe there’s a shortage of fuzzy yellow light bulbs in the world. Maybe there’ll be massive inflation, and somewhere in Jordan or China, or wherever is full of lightbulbs, a man with a beard has hordes of those coveted yellow lightbulbs gathering dust in his basement. I don’t know about you, but I like mood lighting. Mood lighting that lit-up ecstasy evening that is the beginning of Crumb (already I’m getting used to the name). I dislike it when people say making love. These people are usually the same frizzy-haired, weepy women who read the sickeningly blurbed, saccharine novels advertised in train stations. My girlfriend and I were horny and parched. It wasn’t making love, evidently we were making Crumb.

I’m walking toward the bus stop and going through my pockets. In my mind there’s a crystal ball. It’s apparently ineffective, as the visions in the crystal ball are unfailingly disparate to what really comes. Crumb is eight years old, not very good looking. Already he’s developing a healthy complex. He gets too attached to his playground friends and is often caught stealing miscellaneous household items (a bottle of Windex, a candle, a screwdriver, nail varnish, an expired block of cheese) to give to them. Love offerings. Sometimes he bites the inside of his mouth in his sleep. He doesn’t know it yet, but this is his way of cursing his scatty mother for giving him such a stupid name. Like his name he is strange and small. But he doesn’t need to worry, least of all now. In six years, he’ll have shed all his soft teeth and he’ll shoot up—strapping, taller than his father.

Sharlene Teo's writing has appeared in places such as Esquire Singapore, The Bohemyth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and Amelia's Magazine. She is Fiction Editor for Notes from the Underground. Nonsensical blog here and tweets here.

“opportunity cost” by Michael Patrick McSweeney

2013-04-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

john, who used to work on my team,
once dragged me down from the trading room
into a liquor-flooded crevice to bid
on the chance to shatter our loneliness
on a cold Friday. his wife had left him several years before,
their child shouting through the noise as she clicked out
their life together with the closing of a front-door,
as if it were some party she'd mistakenly entered
& awkwardly tried to escape---his words

john placed several 50s on the counter
& the orders bubbled up like indigestion.
martinis rang in unison while strange hands held up
their palms to ours. thin, red-nailed blondes began to drape
themselves over my companion's back
as if they were jackets in a too-warm room,
& slowly I was pushed from the bubble of conversation.
I watched other groups pass in clouds around me,
caught the flashes of credit cards striking out
over the bar to give their masters a last chance
at inspiration. the hours slowly poured away--
I spun coins & kept them alive with gentle taps
while john reached out for ever-escaping hips.
at 4 a.m. we were outside,
raking in the last gasps of cigarette butts
with our pale, shaking fingers while apologizing
to our stomachs,
sorry man I'm just gonna walk he said
to the wet street, his feet disturbing
a puddle from some rain storm
that must have passed hours earlier.
my hand rose to hail a cab
but I struggled to keep it up under a yellow jet
of mucus & liquor crashing
against the pavement. I lifted my head
& my eyes followed the rear-lights
as they dashed around the corner.

Michael Patrick McSweeney is an artist and educator from the Boston region. His work has appeared in numerous journals and various regions of the Internet thanks to truly wonderful individuals. He is also the founder and chief financial officer of a used submarine conglomerate, the business website of which can be found at discountsubmarines.wordpress.com, and he hopes you have a great day.

2013-04-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

an Idyll. by Wilson Korges

2013-04-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Riding though the green of handsome woods, parting the trees now, comes the Prince and a proudly liveried entourage of only two. The firs there are not packed tightly together, so the riding there is easy, somewhat exhilarating—and there is just enough foliage to get lost in; branches, so that one or two are sure to brush the cheek and leave it stinging lightly with life.

When riding through, the Prince is overtaken by a band of peasants, is dragged from his fine horse: a rearing stallion who rebels quite badly until freed, then stays by his master’s side even afterwards, watching with kindly, wild brown eyes as the Prince is bound in coarse rope, his head is struck off with a rock.

The liveried gentlemen are split open, their coats of blue velvet stripped of them, ripped a little, for the sake of the loathing of finery; are then are put on, as the rights of the country-folk are, in this case, the rights of the dead. There is no bickering over who gets which coat—these are not robbers, or highway men, after all, but peasants—and the prince himself is at first only stripped slightly, for the sake of his tunic. Then, on a second thought, his silken leggings, his shoes stuffed haphazardly into the bag carried between them, if only for the sake of their diamond-and-emerald studded buckles.

The golden circlet is disentangled from the loosed and damped blond locks of the prince’s fallen head. The saddlebag is rooted through, the money there divided with a general equality, the ermine ripped off the cloak within and, once petted fondly, stuffed into several distracted pockets while the saddle is removed from the horse, examined, and put back again. The beast of burden can carry it.

Wilson Korges is a young female writer with a confusing name. She holds a vast interest in poetry, dead kings, and the phenomenon of nostalgia. She has a grand time in both California and Iowa, can be followed on twitter @WilsonKorges, and would be happy for any word from any readers.

2013-03-24T00:06:00.000-04:00

Greek gods and others, by Greg Zorko

ife is torture punctuated by brief moments of aggressive un-torture. Ask the turtle who had his shell ripped off slowly and replaced with a plastic one.
The Greek gods were like giant Al Jefferson’s who lived on a mountain. Other than that I know little about them. A myth is like a clay bowl that never cracks or leaks. “Bolero” is the Spanish word for a useful repetition. ...READ MORE