Literature is dead, of course. It has been imprisoned by the universities, gutted and filleted by the Good Gray Ladies of Art, and walled off by the bottom line mentality of the publishing houses. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all the great, quirky authors of the last century are either dead or dying. Marguerite Duras, Camilo Jose Cela, Robbe-Grillet have all passed recently. Has anyone risen to take their place? Is there another blind librarian in some South American town ready to continue the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges? Marquez survives, last I heard, fighting cancer in Mexico City. Are Durrenmatt, Max Frisch, Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, and Bohumil Hrabal sipping coffee in some remote European café? Juan Goytisolo ran off to Marrakesh, where he doubtless sucks on hookahs and drinks mint tea as his life winds down. Beckett and Joyce, Faulkner and poor Hemingway, Kafka and Apollonaire, Jacov Lind and Gunter Grass, my friends Ron Sukenick (who was stolen away from us much too early) and Curtis White (who seems to have traded his novels for a beach in Costa Rica)—there were always such writers, it seemed to me as I grew up and then grew old, writers of great individuality and imagination. One might pass away—his passing might even be noted—but there were always others on the rise, each different, each uniquely themselves, writers who made their words dance on the page. Yet today as these writers pass into history, where are the new authors to take their places? Where is a young Andre Breton when we need him? Or the Beats? Kerouac and Ginsberg howling on the road? Another Henry Miller, even, or Par Lagerkvist, Knut Hamsun. Djuna Barnes. Gertrude Stein. Ionesco. Manuel Puig. Characters, all of them. Unique voices.
     No, literature has died. Occasionally a voice seems to rise, but these are only emanations from a corpse, a bit of gas bubbling from the cadaver.

What killed it?

Several nasty things. Book publishing companies became corporations. Corporations have only one job: to make money, whether selling books, Chevy Volts, or sanitary napkins. Publishers protest that they really, no, really, want to find good, well-written novels; but what they really, yes, really, want to find are good, well-written, popular novels—and the only criteria of importance is popular. Literary novels are seldom popular. Grass’s The Tin Drum did well. So did The Sun Also Rises, long ago, though arguably Hemingway’s early popularity destroyed him. But no one wanted to publish Ulysses, widely accepted today as the greatest novel of the 20th century. And this was even before corporations conquered the world of publishing. Imagine a young James Joyce sending his new Ulysses to Random House. Imagine the lack of interest on an editor’s face—an editor with an MFA tacked behind his name—as he checks off the many flaws: Confused, Muddled, No Plot, No Focus, Turgid Prose, No Audience….

But what about Universities? Aren’t they keeping literature alive?

I have a friend who’s a math professor—now emeritus—at UCR. He loves it there. Where else could he spend his time contemplating Fibonacci numbers or obscure combinatorial problems? But for a writer, a university is a prison. They turn out MFAs by the thousands, a self-perpetuating process, all dressed in the same prison stripes, and all of them—well, ok, only most of them—trying to write the same novel, in the same way. The ones who succeed are the ones good at networking. MFAs go into publishing, or use university posts to run lit mags and small presses. They go to conferences, publish each other, write wonderful blurbs, seek tenure. They have nothing to do with literature.
     Real writers are dangerous, even criminal, and can never obtain tenure. Joyce was perhaps the greatest criminal, peering through his magnifying glasses in his Vienna café. Imagine Finnegans Wake! Only a murderer, a thief, a saboteur could have written that book!

Who are the Good Gray Ladies of Art?

Once I was wandering around outside of San Francisco and found an art museum. I was young then, and doubtless naïve. I entered expecting to see art. Instead I saw the most insipid display of paintings and pottery. All technically well done, and all inescapably bland. The museum was run by women of a certain age and style, with their short gray hair, plump faces, and pleasantly meaningless smiles. I imagined the syphilitic Gauguin bursting in there with Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? What a reception he would be given!

Is there no hope for literature?

I’ve wondered if the e-book revolution would produce a revival of literature. Think of Beckett with a Kindle in one hand and a PC on his desk! Instead it seems that everyone and his sister has published a romance novel or a sci-fi saga or a vampire tale. There are millions of these, literally millions. If there is a piece of literature somewhere in that swamp, how do you find it? There is no winnowing process. But still, this is a really tumultuous period in publishing. E-books and publishing-on-demand and the internet are opening possibilities. Perhaps some good will come from this. Just don’t hold your breath.
     I look at the names I’ve mentioned here. I can add many more. Genet, Nabokov, Elias Canetti, Kobo Abe. It is impressive, this list of names. Will there be a similar list for the 21st century? I doubt it.

Tell us about your own work.

I decided when I was a kid that my university was going to be the world. As soon as I could I began wandering. I worked my way through the south seas on a fishing boat. I was a dynamiter in Australia. I lived with Moro pirates in the Sulu Sea—they smuggled me into what was then British North Borneo, where I ran a small mining company. I was a smuggler myself in India, a black market money-changer in Ceylon, a magician’s assistant in Africa. All this while carrying with me an old standard Underwood typewriter. In Bombay I used it to drive away an angry taxi driver. A beautiful red-haired girl—a Parsi, it turned out—watched. Do you carry that with you, she asked, everywhere you go? Yes, I said. Then you are always armed! she cried. And indeed, the typewriter was armament. I could bash out a hundred words a minute. I struggled to translate what I saw, what I experienced, into prose. What form would literature take, confronted with this cacophony of humanity? How could I translate these long, hard days on the road—sleeping in culverts, hitching rides on trains–into prose? While working for the magician, I was thrilled to see how he used misdirection to fool his audience, how he preyed on their preconceptions to trick them. Art and magic, magic and art—they were the same. I started my first novel there, between acts, so to speak, levitating women and vanishing show girls. (The magician, incidentally, was John Calvert who last year celebrated his hundredth birthday with a show at the Palladium in London.)
     It was an education. I kept moving. I kept writing. I canoed jungle rivers in Guatemala, slept in Maya ruins and Indian villages. I drove a small motorcycle to Panama, went down the Amazon from Pulcallpa to Belem. I caught malaria on a copra boat in Fiji. Rode a bicycle through Tahiti and Samoa, Bali and Java, the Malay peninsula. Lived in a village in Spain. Tangier, in Morocco. Art was an adventure, so life had to be an adventure. And it wasn’t simply a matter of acquiring exotic locales for my books. The process of exploring countries, rivers, islands, was the same process that I needed to use in my prose, if only I understood how.
     I’m an old man now. I shall be passing into history myself one of these days. But my adventures continue to puzzle and entice me, My memories, all crowded together within my skull, demand to be explored too, just as if they were another country. That is what I am doing with my new novel, Evidence of a Lost City (which will also be an animated movie, if I live long enough to finish it). Memories become dreams, dreams become archetypal dramas. It is no longer clear what is, what was, or what will be reality. Perhaps our lives here—and the art we struggle to create—are forms of misdirection. It is like taking the canoe down the Rio de la Pasion, in Guatemala. The current swung me to the shore, where I found half-buried steps leading to a small Maya ruin called Altar de los Sacrificios. I had been looking for this site, but had finally given up finding it. When I looked away, there it was, magically. I slept there that night, in my jungle hammock, under my shroud of a mosquito net. This is life, I remember thinking. This is art. This is death, and birth. Crumbling stones. Mud sucking at my feet. Tree roots coiling around carved faces. What does any of it mean? We cannot say. But if we are artists, we explore.

For more information on D.N.Stuefloten: dnstuefloten.com
hagmovie.com
evidenceofalostcity.com

Alan Michael Parker is the author of two novels, including Whale Man (WordFarm, 2011) and Cry Uncle, along with seven collections of poems, Days Like Prose, The Vandals, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, A Peal of Sonnets, Elephants & Butterflies, Ten Days (with painter Herb Jackson), and Long Division (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2012). He served as Editor of The Imaginary Poets, and co-editor of two other volumes of scholarship. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review, among other magazines, and are forthcoming widely, including in The Best American Poetry, 2011 as well as the new Pushcart Prize anthology; his prose has appeared in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

Alan Michael Parker has received numerous awards and fellowships, including two Pushcart Prizes, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. As an undergraduate, he was invited to join the graduate poetry workshop at Washington University, where he studied with Donald Finkel, Howard Nemerov, and Mona Van Duyn. As a graduate student in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he received his M.F.A. in Writing, Alan Michael Parker studied with Carolyn Forche, Richard Howard, Denis Johnson, Stanley Kunitz, William Matthews, and Nobel Laureates Joseph Brodsky and Czeslaw Milosz.

Since 1998, Alan Michael Parker has taught at Davidson College, where he is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program. He lives in Davidson, NC, with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork.

CW: I first encountered your work with Elephants and Butterflies. Soon after, I had the opportunity to hear you speak about this collection during your visit to UNT. During that discussion you revealed what seems an important element to the title poem, an element I more than likely would not have detected otherwise, that the historian mentioned in the poem, Arripitus, along with his “History,” is entirely fictional. It is a passing reference to something that did not previously exist. Arripitus is, like the poem, a thing of your imagination, a construction.

One thing this does within the poem, it seems, is to highlight the fictional aspects of poetry in a subtle way, as many readers would have no reason to doubt the existence of this historian. It serves, for those of us who are somehow in on it, to point out an interesting difference between the expectations commonly brought to a piece of a poetry versus those brought to a work of prose fiction. Namely, we often expect a poem to be somehow more “real” or personal, and we less easily recognize the role of fiction in poetry. We expect fiction to lie to us, but rarely is poetry read with that expectation, unless we are guided to the idea by the poem itself. It seems to me, this poem is essentially tied to your earlier work with The Imaginary Poets. Both are engaging with the fictional aspects of poetry, as well as focusing our attention on the idea of what we expect when we pick up a book of poetry. I suppose the first question that came to me after realizing all of this is, what do you expect from a piece of poetry? A collection? Not that the expectation is always the same, but what is your understanding of what poetry can or should do? What is the fundamental difference, if there is any, between poetry and fiction? Is it merely structural? Aesthetic? Are there certain things better achieved through one medium over the other? In your mind, what are the boundaries, if any, between the two mediums?

AMP: Those are great questions. My sense is that we suffer from an inheritance: the assumptions that inform the appearance of the “lyric I” in a poem are borne of Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and perhaps especially, the American Confessional poets. I try to write within and against these assumptions, and to explore the boundaries between what a reader knows and learns. But calling into question genre, and elements of fictionality, is only one approach; others break down narrative, or aim elliptically. I don’t believe I’ve got the answer, just some approaches that suit my inclinations.

I expect a collection of poems to teach me how to read, just as I do a novel or a collection of short stories; perception seems always at risk, in good art, and I’m interested in the ways that sentences organize perception as opposed to lines. In that sense, then, I think that my expectations of the two genres differ.

CW: You are not only a poet, you’ve written novels, short shorts, non-fiction essays and criticism, as well as edited collections (am I missing anything?). I suppose the answer to this is obvious in the case of non-fiction, but as you move from work to work, do you make a conscious decision to write in prose or poetry, or does the idea come first and the form worked out later? Some of your shorter work certainly reads as if it could have been a poem, or still could be, and yet you chose to call it fiction. What is the relevance, if any, in making the distinction?

AMP: You’re right to note the connections between my works across the lines of genre. In fact, my most recent project, The Committee on Town Happiness, a series of prose pieces and diagrams that I’m calling a “novel,” began as prose poetry. Clearly, even just six or so pages along, the works connected in a way that indicated a narrative arc, and thus precipitated re-thinking the project as prose.

As for the differences between the two mediums, the conventional way to determine prose from poetry concerns their fundamental units of meaning, that is, the sentence vs. the line. But I think that more may be made of the structural elements each genre deploys, such as the music-making of poetry or the wholeness of paragraphs as acts of thought. I’m also in agreement with Mikhail Bakhtin here, when he argues the terms used to describe lyric poetry don’t apply to the novel.

CW: After reading about The Imaginary Poets, a collection of bios and work by “made up” poets, which you conceived of and edited, I immediately thought of Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas, have you read it?

AMP: I have not read Bolano, but both his 2666 and The Savage Detective are in-hand, for summer reading.

CW: Again and again, in your work, the imagination takes precedence over, or engages on a fundamental level with, the “real” and you are constantly manipulating or re-imagining “fact” or “day to day life” in a way that highlights the act of imaginative engagement with the world. For example, the act of construction or art-making is a recurring theme in your work. In a description of your upcoming novel, Whale Man, you say it is “about a young man who builds a sixty-four foot long and sixteen foot high wooden whale in his dead mother’s front yard. [The book]… has drawings—and precise instructions for how to build a whale, which you can do at home.” It seems that the idea of artistic construction is central to the book. You even invite the reader to engage in the act by providing instructions. This theme of construction or imaginative engagement with the external world is present in your poetry too. For example, in your poem My B & E the narrator’s engagement with the “you” in the poem is through an act of artistic manipulation. Would you be willing to talk about this idea, one’s engagement with construction or the artistic process as a means of interacting with the world and others? How does this relate, if at all, to your efforts as a writer?

AMP: Again, great. I learn by making art—in my case, by writing. As a result, the work of the artist provides me with what I think constitutes metaphors of the highest calling: creative, intellectual, spiritual, procreative, etc. To build a wooden whale in his dead mother’s yard, my protagonist must make of his grief a thing. It’s an act I value the most.

CW: I have heard you talk about a resistance to autobiographical poetry. Not that your poems are not personal, but I’ve heard you speak dismissively of the elements of your everyday life as potentially poetically potent. I think the word you chose was “boring”. So, while this may be your true feelings about representations of your own life, it seems your poetry is still deeply engaged with the idea of “everyday life” or the seemingly mundane: FedEx delivery men, garbage trucks, Toyotas, a first kiss (a kind of poem you yourself dismissed but chose to write, it seems, for that very reason). So, if these are not events from your everyday life, they are certainly recognizable as elements of someone else’s. What is it about using imagined images of everyday life that is more freeing or allows you to engage as a poet with the seemingly mundane aspects of reality? Is there some essential distance provided by the fact that you are imagining someone drinking coffee, rather than viewing the coffee as your coffee, the mug as your mug, the mouth as your mouth? My sense of your answer to this question is related to the line from your poem, Wherein the Flesh Abides, “Every day is like this, and isn’t this.” Am I on the right track?

AMP: I think that you are on the right track—and yes, I think of my daily life as pretty boring. I eat, teach, shop, cook, read, Google, play with my family; nothing’s thrilling enough to be a “plot,” I think. But being and personhood and thinking—now those actions and conditions excite me, and do so as acts of imagination. So I have a different set of priorities from writers who need to dig into their lived lives; I’m interested more in digging into what’s possible. Which isn’t to be dismissive of other kinds of writing, or other aesthetics, but mostly to suggest that I’m otherwise engaged.

CW: At AWP, Donald Revell talked about the “new poetry” as being essentially “unrecognizable.” Anything else would be a kind of clinging onto the past, rather than moving forward. Archaeology, rather than exploration. I connected his idea to a comment you’ve made in previous interviews, as well as during your talk at UNT. You said, “reinvention is always at the top of my list. If it’s not new for me, it’s not going to be new to you.” Is this a reasonable connection?

AMP: Yes. I think too about Robbe-Grillet and his work toward defining the nouveau roman following WW II. Or the work done by Jorie Graham in The End of Beauty, or Kandinsky’s decomposition of perspective. I think that the true avant-garde often challenges our bedrock assumptions, and as a result must appear unrecognizable.

CW: I feel you often exhibit the impulse toward reinvention, or reinterpretation, making the familiar less-so and then establishing a new context or meaning. For example, in Cars Poetica you spend several lines evoking the simple musicality and aesthetic value of a commonplace word like Toyota. There is a really lovely contradiction happening in that line, “the inanimate Toyota.” In the repetition of Toyota at this moment in the poem, there is nothing inanimate about the word, only the separate physical presence the word signifies. Not only do you draw our attention to the elegant movement of the word, but you fuse it with the emotional content of the poem, by packing more meaning and context in with each repetition. The narrator even calls attention to the fact that he is projecting his emotional life into/onto the machine. The Toyota, in the elegance of the world alone, evokes the potential rejuvenating power of poetry, and ultimately the “inanimate” object, “somehow there and yet disincarnate,” is granted a kind of self-consciously artificial life through the poem. This kind of poetic reanimation causes us to reconsider our relationship to commonplace words, commonplace things. Is that at all your intention? If so, could/would you talk, in a little more depth, about your sense of the importance of that process?

AMP: The reinvigoration of language, the ability to spin a word into another orbit or valence, whether prosodically or otherwise; these acts underscore all I do. In my poems, I’m not someone who needs to generate surprise at the level of plot—I write lyrics that look like narratives, after all—but someone more interested in the explosive quality of a plosive, or the exposé in the exposition. A poem is a symbolic venue: everything there already means more. My word-joy is such that sound performs a necessary condition of poetic success.

CW: Also, a quick question about MFAs. There are so many academic options available out there for aspiring writers, it can be overwhelming. You are on the faculty at two very different kinds of programs, a low-residency program at Queens College, as well as a more traditional program at Davidson. What is your sense of the value of these respective styles of MFA program? Do you see any value in comparing the two? What are the important things to consider when choosing between these different styles of programs, and, if you had to do your MFA over again, what would your approach be? Finally, how much of what is offered through an MFA program, other than the degree – a community of writers, a sense of place and purpose, a literary education, a literary life, time to write – how much of these things can or should be sought elsewhere?

AMP: I loved graduate school, and love teaching graduate students. Frankly, I’m not sure where else one can experience what you detail in your question. Also, since I trust that a literary education need not be about being a writer but more so tuning the mind through language, I believe deeply in the efficacy of such programs, low-residency or residency.

Yes, I would definitely take an M.F.A. again. I might do so when a little older—I was twenty-three when I started, and my “reading years” were scant. There’s no such thing as too much education: the people who read literature are often the people I find to be self-aware, awake, and the most engaged. Also, since learning to read, and to write, is only fostered by continued study, why not go to grad school?

Sure, a workshop can democritize a poem to a fault, or to death; there’s always the possibility that new or original work might be devalued by group-think, or by a strictly New Critical pedagogy. Nevertheless, the job of the real artist includes making better work, and an engaged community of readers offers a writer the chance to do so well.

In terms of low-residency versus residency programs, much depends on the program and the individual student’s needs. My experiences haves been good in both programs.

About the author:

Colin Winnette is a writer and performer living in Chicago, IL. His first novel, REVELATION, is forthcoming with Mutable Sound Press (November 2011). More information and links to more work can be found at colinwinnette.com.

Don Antenen

Don Antenen lives in Philadelphia with the love of his life and two cats. He is the editor of Hey Small Press!, and his fiction has appeared in the Used Furniture Review and Weekday Journal.

In no other religion or mythology do the two intersect under a single deity’s domain, with the exception of monotheistic religions where the god is the god of all things.¹ Hoarder of all our favorite intangibles. Does this give the poet a role as more than an honorary thinker. Does Odin value both war and poetry equally, and for that matter knowledge, of which it is also a god. Maybe it lists the hanged before poetry and knowledge, because the hanged demand so much love. Can a god lack respect for that which is his domain, and wouldn’t this be required of a monotheistic god and therefore evidence that monotheistic god might not care about us at all.² Does it open the gates of Valhalla for the poet, or for those who died in more metaphorical ways. It is Odin. Odin is the argument. And then I’ve no bruises, none from the drifters in floppy hats lobbing oranges into the river, and none from the one-eyed clown who throws darts at the fairground. And you can watch. Five minutes for $1.50. Maybe that is the argument within the argument, often misconstrued as the answer. No. It is just another in a long legacy of arguments without questions. How does the clown hit the mark. I would tell you, but it would be stealing $1.50 from the grifters who paid to find out. Ultimately, too, it has nothing to do with the immortality of the gods, who don’t exist except on earth as assholes hunting immortality. $1.50 for five minutes. It’s the argument in the argument. That this all has nothing to say but that there may only be one question that is unanswerable for us. We wind up at the beginning once again, shouting at bleached clothes and crackled plaster, Hey, it’s me, the hanged. Pretty sure I’m yelling at bleached clothes and cracked plaster and the neighbors who never say hello to me in the hallway. Knock twice if you are there. Do you hear me, god of war and poetry or cornstarch and Fritos. The argument has been made, and we will sit in pods of four, cross-legged in the grass waiting for you to respond.³

¹ In the author’s experience this is a fact.
² This in the same fashion children care not really for toys.
³ Look down, that is us withering in place.

Dustin Luke Nelson. Photo by Jacqueline Ouanes.

Dustin Luke Nelson is the founding editor of InDigest and InDigest Editions. “The Argument is Odin” come from a collection called Activity, Group. He has been a writer and producer on Radio Happy Hour and Geocachers. His writing has appeared in Bookslut, Powell’s, Tiny Mix Tapes, Monkeybicycle, H_NGM_N, Shampoo, Guernica, and elsewhere.

Alex Luft

About the author:

Alex Luft is pursuing an M.A. in English at the University of Missouri, where he earned a B.J. in magazine writing in 2009. His forthcoming fiction publications will appear in the Barely South Review and Word Riot, and his journalistic work has been featured by multiple news outfits.

Reopen your mouth
there were a lot of girls
swooned by your tongue
once

now they just
spill drinks and cry
because
of what happened to you

when you decided
no
not tonight
not in this city
again

Kelly Michael

Kelly Michael is a writer and he lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He was once an undergraduate sociology student at the University of Toronto and now he is not an undergraduate sociology student at the University of Toronto. He thinks knitting would be a useful skill to have. His poetry has also been published by Spork Press.

Ryan Mohr

About the author:

Ryan Mohr lives in the Rust Belt of N.E. Ohio. His work appears or is forthcoming in PANK, Rubbertop Review Volumes 2 and 3, and a few other places if you get extraordinarily bored and wish to Google him. He loves to discuss Postmodern theory, Social Constructionism, Howard Stern, and the NBA. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.

     They’re flying me to Guam! Where’s Guam?
     Typhoid shot left arm.
     Tomorrow Marine Transport Lines will put me on a 9 p.m. Pan Am flight to the Pacific where I will board a tanker that will hop around the Far East.

25 December 77 Port of Guam

     The other two seamen and I have been treated okay. Upon arriving, a driver met us at the airport and took us to this hotel, private rooms, bath, radio playing Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, a view of sea cliffs, coconut trees, and a Shakey’s pizza parlor. American cars everywhere. The sun was strong at 8 a.m. A predominantly American atmosphere exists on this tiny island due north of Australia, due east of the Philippines, in the South Pacific sea.
     Approximately one-fourth of flight 841′s passengers were Guam natives in U.S. military uniforms met at Arrivals by people with “Guam-US” license plates and “Fly Navy” bumper stickers.

26 December 77 Port of Guam

     The ship’s agent, a guy named Sky Lee, called me and the other seamen at the hotel at six in the morning saying the ship got in last night, and the Captain isn’t paying us to hang around in a hotel and will pick us up in 45 minutes. I hadn’t finished writing a couple of letters, including one to Jill and Antonio and Mattia who still think I’m in Berkeley. I rush it off and pack. My duffel bag is packed tight with that coconut from yesterday—I climbed a tree and picked it.

     First impression of the Chief Cook.

     Fred, an ordinary, asked me soon as I climbed the gangway what department I was in. He then said, “Follow me,” and called ahead, “Chief, I got your man here!”
     The Chief Cook looked up at me with his one eye.
     “You’re in here every morning at 6:15,” he said. “You want to work, I got plenty of work for you, plenty of overtime. If you’re too drunk to work I send you up to the Captain. That’s all. That’s it. You come in the morning. I say, ‘Good morning, Clifford.’ That’s all. Maybe a few more words.”
     He’d cooled out a little bit by the end of the day and started telling me about expensive blowjobs in Formosa.
     He’s a big man, maybe six four, and heavy. His name is Al Massey. Gravy stains on the apron, and thickly cropped white hair. He’s got huge hands, and is a fast talker with a power voice. His words come out choppy, the way I imagine he sees things through his one eye; the other eye is closed shut. It is neither repulsive nor is it incongruous with Al as a character. Without being mean I’d have to say that the sealed eye socket somehow seems to fit him well.
     He renders judgments chop-chop. His face has purple blotches, and his big knobby nose seems to crawl away from his face. He sharpens his pencil with a fishing knife, and eats a lot of olives when he’s working. And talks a lot.
     “I don’t let nobody in my family know about my finances. My brother-in-law once got a job in the bank I had my account, and I immediately switched my account to another bank in Portland (Texas). I don’t let nobody know how much I’m makin’. My daughter don’t know. My son-in-law don’t know. My brother don’t even know. My wife knows, you know. There was a time when I beat my daughter’s behind—the only time I ever did that—when she sneaked into my bedroom and read my will. I whooped her. She couldn’t sit down. I told her, ‘That damn thing is to be read by a lawyer only.’ It’s my business what I got and where it’s going.”
     He’s just as obstinate when offering favors as denying them. If you allow him to log your work hours including overtime, you’ll make $5,000 a month more than if you did it yourself.

     We’re in a storm right now at the edge of a typhoon. The ship is tossing, and loose chains are clanging on deck. When the bad weather reports were picked up, the Captain immediately alerted all hands to prepare for undocking and set the ship seaward. The Chief Cook was running around the galley like an oversized chicken screaming, “Secure everything that can be secured down!” I asked him why go out to sea if there’s a storm, aren’t we safer being tied up in port? He answered that if the ship busted loose from its rigging we’d crash into another docked ship whereas out at sea we have more room to maneuver “out of the storm or else with it.”

30 December 77 Guam

     Letter to Mom and Barney:
          I spoke to one Guamanian dockworker regarding the American dominance of the island. He was glad to have the money rolling in yet wistful that the ‘Robinson Crusoe days of the island ended thirty years ago.’
          The old pirate traditions aren’t over yet by a long shot. Most of the crew has tattoos and gray whiskers. My boss, Al Massey, I call him either “Chief” or “Steward,” and he calls me, “Son,” has tattoos of “Darling” on his right arm and an anchor on his left arm, one eye, a fist eight inches wide, close to three hundred pounds, a gravel voice. He tells stories of how when guys talk back to him, he knocks them out with one punch, sometimes gladly fracturing his hand in the process. I don’t mess with him. He’s pretty friendly with everyone in the steward’s department. We’re his chillun (children) and he’s pleased to “finally have a Jewish boy aboard. I’m gonna hav’ta whoop up some bagels and lox!”

31 December 77 at Sea

     “Ain’t no booze aboard this tanker except the eighteen cases hauled in yesterday for the Captain,” Fred the ordinary said.

7 January 78 at sea

     Since Paul, the gray-bearded ex-navy man, galleyman, strained his back lugging a crate of onions, I’ve been working two jobs. The work is not too difficult, it simply means I have no time to kill, and I must run up and down the ship making beds on the fourth deck and cleaning dishes in the galley.
     Randy Iona, the portly pumpman from Hawaii, said, “Look at the bright side. You’ll be making double money.”
     I’ve been getting into such a flow that laboring ten or twelve hours a day is sometimes easy.

     The Chief Cook comes from a rural Georgia background where he followed his older brothers through military high school training. He says the South is the best place in the world, but “It don’t matter if you are a Jew, Wop or Mexican. If you are born in this country you are AMERICAN.”
     In the 1930s he joined the C.C.C., Civilian Conservation Corps, and learned to drive a tractor, bulldozer, and fourteen-wheel trucks paving highways, sidewalks, and building national parks in Arizona.
     “There was no easy welfare system like there is today,” Al said, “people had to work for their money.”
     When WWII hit, he joined the merchant marines. He’d been a high school history teacher and football coach until then. He thought of going back to the field of education when the field of battle ended, but he hung on one more year, and one more year…. He had risen to the position of cook, accidentally. The money was good so he kept staying on. That was 30 years ago.

10 January 78 at sea

     The days are passing quickly. I’ve been absorbed in my work making the officers’ beds, cleaning pots and pans, and book reading, the Divine Comedy and Camus’ The Stranger. Almost two weeks here, and it hardly seems like more than three or four days. I’ve adjusted to the work schedule—I have no choice. In Berkeley I’d quit a job after I had two or three months worth of money. When I am free I stroll on deck awed, truly, by the immensity of endless sea meeting endless sky. One domain seems to penetrate forever downward, the other forever upwards.
     We’ve got orders to go to Honolulu after Kaohsiung, but as the Captain says, “When you get on one of these gray ships you never know where you are going to go next.”
     The bosun describes how our schedule is determined by closing his eyes and imitating a dart thrower.
     The bosun is a brawny guy with thick skin. Tall, muscular, tree stump legs, shaved skull, the biggest ears you’ve ever seen, radiant blue eyes. He has a deep voice and a smile he assigns to certain people. He is polite to everybody but particularly courteous to those who are on duty, he respects the work ethic. His life revolves around hard work. His name is George Niderost.
     “Without mazel, you’ll never attain nirvana,” he said. His mother was Jewish, his father Swedish. At a young age he went to sea. In the Far East he met an Oriental Buddhist woman and took up her religion.
     I sat down beside him in the mess hall. “How long did it take you to learn to speak Japanese so well?” I opened the conversation.
     “Not too long,” he said. “I learned Japanese at Hayward High.”
     Hayward is a middle class sprawl south of Berkeley, near Oakland. He joined the merchant marines and spent many years in it before he moved to Japan for 12 years. His wife was Asian, or Croatian, George said, it was almost impossible to delineate exactly. They gave their son an Asian first name. George pronounced it musically. “He will be 9 years old this month.” When his cabin door is open I see him sitting meditation in the lotus position in the dark hours of the morning.
     “You can meditate in lots of different ways,” he said. “You can meditate during the day with whatever you’re doing. When I’m doing a certain job, I can get locked into it.” He talked admiringly about Asian culture. “They’ve been civilized a lot longer than we have.”
     Bosun described the ship as a “tramp” ship. He said, “We go anywhere in the world at anytime shipping oil for the Navy to ports that don’t always welcome us. You get into port, start to throw your lines, and they tell you, ‘Go away. We never sent for you.’ And you got to turn right back around and head to where you came from.”

     For the past two days there are gaseous fumes throughout the ship. The deck and engine departments are “butterworthing” the oil tanks. The empty tanks are being cleaned by having the gas sucked out by huge pumps. Randy the pumpman is running around sweating and wishing the Sealift Pacific had push button mechanics. The notice boards in both the officers’ and crew’s mess halls warn “DON’T SMOKE ON DECK!” It’s very dangerous to smoke on deck at this time, Al King repeated, puffing on a More cigarette in the mess hall. He says that if someone should light a match out there now, the spark would follow the path down into the tanks, set off a firecracker chain reaction, and we’d all be blown to Kingdom Come.
     I try not to think about such a thing.
     Paul, who smokes all over the damn boat and whom I hope is asleep for the next three days, says that it don’t matter what you do, you’ll go when He decides.

11 January 78 Kaohsiung, Taiwan

     I got picked up by a girl in one of the local bars near the port, and we spent some of the night together in a hotel.
     Later, I was meandering through a plaza crowded with colorful fruit stands and sharp voices that were inseparable. Small children began gathering around me. We walked together and soon they began to lead me to a hall where incense was burning a purple ribbon of smoke before a shrine. Music could be heard at a distance. I followed the sound of symbols down a narrow corridor where the floor was in the process of being uplifted. Beneath the emptiness of a high ceiling, aged women tribed around a drum. The drum beat was deep like a maroon sob. An expressionless woman beat a gong. When they saw me the worshipers smiled and said Come in in Chinese, and they handed me a hollow wooden object and rubber stick with which to keep time. A little boy looked on from outside with one shy hand in the doorway. I offered him half my seat, he accepted with a smile after shaking his head once. After a while I forgot I was alone, the surge of voices together kept rising like wind up a tall tree. When the drumstick bop…bop…stopped, the voices stood still and I woke up like when you’re asleep riding all night in a car and then the car stops. They played more songs. Eventually, I stood up, bowed holding my hands in a pyramid close to my heart, stepped backwards out of the room.
     I found myself at the foot of a shrine, and again children gathered around my legs. We went into the plaza. I sensed that I was late. I hailed a cab who didn’t honk, I went whoosh-whoosh a fleeing motion with my hands telling the driver to hurry. The number of fruit stands diminished until we were in a dusty industrial area with sharp turns and cobblestone roads studded with railroad tracks. I showed the guard at the gate my papers, and I arrived at the pier and saw a young boy making a whooshing motion with his hands to indicate my launch had just left. I kicked the bow of a small fishing boat in frustration which gave me the idea of sleeping in it. I bedded down for the night wrapped up in a net stuffed with newspapers used during the day to wrap fish. The waves rose and ebbed. I thought of the women humming to the maroon drum. I fell asleep, and soon I dreamed of my first lover, of carrying her in the rain. It felt so good, so close, so much in one place, all her weight on me.

     I reached the ship the next morning.
     The Chief Cook stuck his fisted face through the doorway as I was vacuuming the Captain’s quarter.
     “Where were you this morning?” He demanded.
     “Here,” I said, playing dumb, or trying to.
     “You wasn’t here at 6:15, the time you have to be at work according to the contract. I saw you come in on the 7:30 launch.”
     I told him I’d arrived at the pier last night in a taxi five minutes after the launch left, but he didn’t care for excuses. He knew I’d been with a girl on the town for two nights, and one night should’ve been enough for the lowest man on the ladder, in his book.
     I tried to be cool, hoping that would calm him. But it was no use.
     “This afternoon I take you up to the Captain, and he’ll put you in the log book,” the Chief said.
     I stared at him silently while he was expecting me to protest. My reticence seemed to unnerve him, and he repeated the threat, louder.
     “He’ll put you in the LOG BOOK with a warning, and next time you’ll get logged,” meaning kicked off the ship.

11 Jan 78 2200 hours

     Chief Cook: “I’ve got an 8” scar right here from a pipe my old man laid across my forehead when I thought I could whoop his ass. My father said when I was on the ground, ‘If you get up, I’m going to lay you down again.’ And I said, ‘I can’t get up.’ He said, ‘Okay, then. I’ll take you to the doctor.’ The family doctor asked me how I got it and I was too embarrassed to say I took on my old man and lost, so I told him I fell in the doorway, and he said, ‘That must’ve been the goddamn hardest doorway you ever passed through!’ He knew I’d taken a whoopin’. After he fixed it up, he said, ‘You can stay here the night or hit the road,’ so I let my father take me home.
     “My son’s the toughest son-of-a-bitch you ever saw. I don’t give a good goddman how anybody wears their hair as long as they keep it clean. He costs me a fortune in gas and water bills washing his hair three, sometimes four time a day.
     “I was telling my son a story about a son who took some drug, went berserk and chased after his parents with a meat cleaver. The father had to kill his son to restrain him. I read it in the Reader’s Digest. The man, before he buried his son, cut off all the boy’s hair and put a neck tie on him and a suit. My son said, ‘Dad. If I go, if I get killed or overdose or whatever promise me one thing?’ I said, ‘What is it, son?’ He said, ‘Dad, promise me you won’t cut my hair.’ I said, ‘If you want to get packed way with your hair down to here, ass naked, in a hole straight up—that’s how I’ll slide you down.’”

11 January at sea

     Sparky is the nickname for the radio officer. His real name is William Seaman.
     He asked me, “How old are you? 23. It’s a good life for two or three years, see the world, make some money. If you stay out here long enough you’ll wind up looking like the guys who have been out here many years—don’t think it won’t happen to you. It will. You live an abnormal life. Little things happen on a ship, daily, that don’t happen on shore. When you go home, things have been going on there when you were away, and you don’t fit in anymore. Your friends don’t believe the things you’ve done, even when what you’re telling them is completely true. You’re making a lot of money. They become jealous. They condemn you for what you’re doing yet they wish they were doing it. They get off hearing about your travels, then ask you why are you so lonely. Life on a ship is different, and when you get off you can’t work on land anymore.
     “I’ve quit the sea several times. I worked as a truck driver, radio announcer, radio instructor, driving instructor, pilot. I’d like being a pilot again except there’s no money in it. This ship had it made. For years we only went coast-wise. Every ten days we were home for four days. Then somebody messed up. On a ship you can mess up just so much, then you got to get off. Lots of guys are always messing up, but this is their life, so they just change ships. All the crews of all the ships all over the world keep rotating. It gets lonely. I smoke too many cigarettes.
     “People on board are free from the social order on land, from marriages, traffic signs, and general confinement. Out here they have union stipulations. They do their jobs according to the contract, and focus on minute details of official agreements because it’s one of the few social orders available in the limited confines of a ship.
     “I’ve known guys who have gone to the merchant seamen school, shipped for three or five years and quit with enough money to set themselves up in something else on land. But after five years it’s a trap. You can’t get off and you can’t go back.
     “I first sailed for adventure, romance and travel. Romance, adventure and travel.
     “Everybody has his way of getting by on the job. The guy who had your job drank one bottle of whiskey a day.”

13 January 78 Friday at sea

     Chief Cook prides himself on getting to work early. Yesterday he arrived exactly on time and was apologetic.
     “Sorry, boys, I done slep’ in,” he said.
     He lives by the book. What book it is, I’m not exactly sure.
     He feels he can rectify any confusion by reverting to a law. He does what is right, always, and is his own man thereafter. He had a beef a while back with a captain. The captain said he would fire Al. Al said, “Fine with me, Captain. You’ll have to explain it to the labor relations board why you fired me, and before I leave I want the reason in writing. Here’s a pad and pencil. And just one thing, Captain. You are the Master of this ship, I’ll not refuse any order you give me. But nowhere does it say not in any union book or company contract that I have to like you. And I hate your fuckin’ guts.”

15 Jan 78 at sea

     The Chief: “I don’t want to be 80. Hell, I should be gone within eight years. Another year or two out here for me and then it’s going to be fouled anchor.”
     “Filed what?” Henry, the engine room mechanic.
     “Fouled anchor,” the Chief repeated.
     “Felled anchor?” Henry asked.
     “FOULED, FOULED. When your anchor’s all twisted up. When your anchor’s fouled, you’re on the beach. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ll have the wife close down her 7-11 outlet and travel around in our trailer home. I’ve got a picture of what it look like under the glass on my desk. A 30-footer. I’ll come back to Portland and tend my bar. Bartending’s a good line, at least it used to be.
     “I was a bouncer for a long time in Portland, and I had some pretty mean characters come through. One feller came in twenty minutes before closing time. I said, ‘Sorry, friend, we’re closing up at midnight, town law.’ He said he didn’t make the laws, and he wasn’t going to live by them. ‘Where’s the bouncer?’ he asked. I said, ‘You’re looking at him.’ He said, ‘I want to beat the sense out of you.’ His eyes were protruding, stone solid. I said, ‘Wait a second, pal. We’re closing up soon but sit down anyway and have a quick drink.’ ‘I don’t want no drink,’ he said, ‘I want the bouncer.’ The son of a bitch is running around wanting only to kick some bouncer’s ass, and out of all the bars in Portland he chanced in on us. I was edging my way out from behind the bar so’s I’d have some room to maneuver, you see. Behind me was glass. I went whack up side his head. He didn’t even flinch. He grabbed me by the collar and threw me around before I knew it. If I’d get him in a half-Nelson, he’d break it. If I’d get him in a full-Nelson, he’d break it. I could hardly fit my arms around him. Finally, I grabbed a bottle of gin off one of the tables and cracked it over his head. That quieted him down. We dragged him onto the sidewalk and closed up shop. I was madder than a bull. He’d tore the collar clean off my brand new double-knit, two-button custom made Sears Roebuck suit.”

     *

     The Chief, while cooking soup, sings, “I’d do it all over again.”
     *

     The Chief was sitting in the mess hall, and something reminded him of the German Bohemian communities in Texas—Lockhardt, Weimar, Logan—who own the richest soil, “black as them there coffee grounds. They pass the land on from father to son, this girl’s parents match her up with those peoples’ son, each family throws in 40 acres, they build the children a house, and there they live the rest of their lives, German town. People scrub the streets every morning with hot water.”

     *

     “If you’re going to be a big fucker—be a fucker to the end!” —Chief Cook.

     *

     “You’re keeping a log? Put this in your log. ‘Wednesday, January 18, 1978. The Chief chewed my ass out for making messy beds.’”

19 January 78 at sea

     I saw my first gooney bird today. It was close behind us. The ship churns up water bringing fish to the surface. Gooney birds can fly across the whole ocean, they don’t need to land, in fact, they are awful at landing on stationary objects—that’s why they call them “gooney.” They always make a crash landing. They make a smoother touch upon water. We’re in for a treat. These albatross fly to Midway, where we are heading now, to lay their eggs.

21 January at sea

     It’s insane how much food gets wasted every day on a ship. The amount of food the Chief Cook is obligated to prepare is always way beyond the amount of food consumed. Two-thirds of most items on the menu are not eaten, the food remains on the stove top till it’s “let go.” It eventually gets spooned down the hole of a rubber-lipped garbage disposal. The Chief knows before he starts that he’ll be cooking too much. Each dish cooked and served must be enough to feed 27 people. It’s in the union contract. To eat all the food it would take 27 people to each order a meal that included roast beef, veal cutlet, red snapper, broiled steak, mashed potatoes, beans, rice, string beans, beets, candied yams and gravy.

22 January Midway

     Midway is the first piece of land we’ve seen in ten days. White beaches. No surf. It’s placid as a lake, turquoise colored. The lava albatross have a sanctuary here.
     “You may go your whole life at sea and never see an island like this,” Sparky says.
     I walked close to the gooneys, and they didn’t run. Nobody bothers them here. There were a lot of them mating on a golf course, nesting in the sand traps, on the fairways. Their bodies appeared yielding, fleshy breasts, soft curves, feathers, the plumpness of a duck, everything was soft but their eyes were hard. They were outlined by what looked like black mascara, intense eyes I got close trying to photograph with the Yashica camera I bought while we were docked in a bay outside of Sasebo, Japan.
     The gooneys were all over the place, couples squaring off, speaking beak to beak, clacking their beaks together, tilting their heads and sliding their opened beaks as far in towards the other’s tongue as possible. Withdrawing and nipping at the beak tips, bobbing, howling, squealing, and singing a shrill music, webbed toes well planted, raising their voices to the sky. Hundreds of birds did this all around. They’d join up and break apart rather easily. Sometimes two birds got into it pretty deeply and then other birds sensed that and left the lovers to their own embraces. One tired bird squatted while the other energetic one nudged him/her to get up, and it did, and they embraced.
     That night after dinner on the ship, I strolled around the island again. A breeze was blowing. The evening sky was soft blue. I was sitting under a tree writing my brother Barney a letter when the old 2nd Engineer, a Jewish guy from Alaska, came over to talk. We walked on grassy knolls, the albatross lulled around. Over the soft curve of the land, a full moon rose. We walked down a fairway. I lit up a joint, and for the first time in his life the engineer took a hit but he said he couldn’t tell if he were getting off on it or not. The stuff was potent, laid on me six weeks ago, while hitch-hiking a few miles from Berkeley.

24 January at sea

     I’ve been coming to an understanding of myself since being on this ship. There’s a calm within my sexuality unlike the spinning issue it rose to in Berkeley.

     *

     I choose to explore areas of society that are generally condemned and repressed.

     *

     In nine days we’ll be in San Francisco.

25 January Hawaii

     The Chief went on a rampage this evening.
     “Where the Hell’s my crew?” He cried. Who knew where Paul was? Later Hector told me he was on the ledge outside. He had the China Sickness, meaning he was homesick.
     “This is no vacation! You’re here to work,” the Chief said.
     I went inside and was ordered to carry glasses from the dishwasher to the rack in the mess hall, Paul’s job. The Chief hadn’t chewed me out in five days, and maybe he feared his authority was slipping. A large part of his anger was due to having to serve two lunches today, a late dinner and a midnight special for the guys working overtime on the tanks.
     “If these messmen don’t snap to there’s going to be some replacements between here and Frisco!” He bellowed.
     I remain silent when he blows his stack. The less I say, the sooner he cools off. Paul usually chides him, they have exchanges. They are both from Texas and need to lock horns.
     How can we be replaced between Honolulu and San Francisco when there isn’t land for anyone to stand on?

     *

     The Chief Cook never liked to drink water from a glass.
     Some years ago, every few hours the Chief needed to take a pill for his heart. He was in the galley working, felt his heart thumping extra heavily and would reach for the water he drank from a can. Then he’d put the can of water back on the shelf until he needed it a few hours later. In that time, along came another worker in the galley who was cleaning ovens with a poisonous liquid kept in a can identical to the Chief Cook’s, and he placed this second can on the shelf alongside the first. When the time came, the Chief reached for the wrong can. With the second gulp his throat immediately puffed up to the point where he could hardly breath. He poured cold water into his mouth and rushed to a doctor. His lips quickly blistered and peeled. After a few months of drinking soup through a straw, the Chief Cook was back to eating normally.
     And drinking water from a can.

30 January at sea

     I felt two enormous hands slap me on the back. They could only belong to the bosun.
     “Shalom! Shalom!” He said.
     We took seats at the same empty table in the mess hall. I could tell immediately George had something to drink. It made his face red, particularly his eyes. He spoke with the same clarity as when he was sober, but the alcohol increased the strength and intensity of his words, and he kept looking straight into my eyes.
     “There’s something about you that I liked when I first saw you. You have peace. There’s something about you. You have good parents. But they don’t understand you. Go see them. See your father. I wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for my father. He is always with you wherever you go.
     “You’re going to be smart someday. I can tell by your eyebrows. They’re the same as mine. You’ll live to be an old man. And be smart; you’re not smart now. You have depth, you see things deeply. You and I have that in common. You see the whole truth of things. Without young people like you, I wouldn’t have any hope. Life is with you, carry on! Without young people, the rest of us are lost. Lost!”
     “Aren’t we all lost?” I asked. “Aren’t we all going to die?”
     “The body dies.” The bosun pinched his chest. “It must die. It’s nature’s way of recycling people. What’s inside of you will never die.”
     He gripped my hand, and I felt his strength go all the way up my arm. As we shook, he pounded our hands against the table.
     “You’re a good man,” he said, lowering his head, aiming his third eye at me.
     He stood up, slammed the wall in a flurry of karate chops, smiled broadly, bowed religiously, and exited.

About the author:

Cliff Fyman lives in the East Village and attends weekly readings at The Poetry Project. More of his writing can be read at Napalm Health Spa.

Now throat
a lily pad, breath
an oversize frog.
No wonder
night & day
are such enemies,
take as long as possible
to relieve each other:
the new shapes
of everything, exhausting,
resentful.
Hours, taut, stretched,
turning the mind to
spandex or elastic or
different stressed,
breakable thing.

These are the knowable hardships.
But of the others:
dreams, at least, cannot
be stopped. Alternate
dooms. Alternate
un-dooms. Alternates,
dooming.

It is disgusting, one
might reasonably think,
the smallness
one        present
past
future.

They might also
brood into their coffee cup
after a long dark
of if’s. It is understandable
if their spouses leave them.

But this didn’t have to happen,
they chant until their very teeth
hop out of their mouths
and clatter together
towards some hilltop or mountain
to form a strange monstrous
chorus line. Like this could force
a god.

Ruth Baumann

About the author:

My name is Ruth Baumann. I hope to attend an MFA program someday, but until then, I’ll work in a million restaurants. I graduated from VCU in 2010 with a couple Bachelors, and live in Richmond, Virginia. I like all things poetry, cats, and cheese.

(read Part 1)

Bill thought of taking her picture as she stood on the shore of Sylvan Beach. Sarah had removed her sneakers and socks, rolled up her jeans, and stepped into the dark gray water. “It’s sooo fucking cold!” He was standing five yards away when he framed her in the viewfinder and focused. She looked down at the miniature waves breaking around her ankles just before he took the picture.
     “Why were you playing a role?” Bill asked. Sarah’s shoulders were covered with gooseflesh, “I guess in some stupid way I felt that if I couldn’t be fulfilled by one person then two might make me feel,” she stopped herself from saying happy, “the thing is I could never convince myself that it was true.” He shifted on the bed, “That what was true?” She frowned, “That I was unhappy,” shrugging her shoulders, “or I was just really lonely,” then looked closely at his face, “or maybe I had finally convinced myself things would never change and I would never have another chance with you.” Bill examined their entwined fingers, “When did you start sleeping with your boss?” comparing their mismatched wedding bands. “In December.” “That wasn’t very long ago,” he sighed, “you made it sound like—” “December of ’94,” she bit her lower lip, “it was three years ago . . . right after I started taking Prozac.” “And you’re still working there?” When she smiled and said, “I just got a raise,” he noticed how white her teeth were. He took his hands away and stood up. “Where are you going?” He stood on the gray carpet, “To the bathroom,” and crossed the room.
     Dearest Sarah, She saw him in the teacher’s parking lot and ran over to his car. We have had the very real pleasure of each other’s company for more than a year now, but this relationship cannot continue any longer. She got there just as he was turning the key in the ignition and breathlessly asked, “What’s the matter with you?” I know this will not be easy for you to understand and it wasn’t easy for me to reach this decision but I need you to be strong for me and for yourself. He rolled down the window and gave her the letter. I have carefully thought through the plans we have made and the dreams we share for our life together and I honestly feel that I will be nothing more than a blight on your future. When she asked what was wrong, he replied, “I think it’s time to move on.” The love and passion we have shared has been a real blessing and you have helped me rediscover a part of my youth that I thought I had lost forever. “What,” she pressed her hands on the car door, “what are you talking about?” I am ashamed to admit that I could never be willing or able to leave my wife for you. He revved the engine while asking, “How is this being discreet?” And instead of living a lie that would have only created greater unhappiness for us in the future I think it’s best we come to our senses now and honor the secret love and friendship we have shared. The car pulled away as she stood there. I will never forget you and I will always be devoted to the memory of our time together.
     With much love and gratitude,
     Bill
     She was smoking when he returned. “Does it bother you that I’m on anti-depressants?” He stood at the end of the bed, “Isn’t everyone in America on Prozac?” She exhaled, “I’m being serious,” while scrutinizing his torso. “Well,” shifting his feet, “is it helping?” She said, “Sometimes,” before placing the cigarette between her lips. “Then it doesn’t bother me,” the mattress sagged beneath him, “I didn’t know that you smoked,” as he sat next to her. “Maybe a pack every other week,” she noticed a tiny bit of flesh-colored wax on his earlobe, “why were you looking at me like,” picked it off with her index fingernail and flicked it onto the floor, “like you were afraid of me.” Bill shrugged, “Did you hear about that cult in California?” Their clothes had slipped off the back of the wooden chair and formed a pile on the floor. “Heavens Gate?” The smoke from her cigarette swirled above the lampshade. He nodded, “It was all over the news again tonight.” She cleared her throat, “They thought the comet was coming to take their souls away,” and placed the cigarette between her lips. “And maybe it did,” he turned to her, “you know it’s flying above our heads right now.” She exhaled slowly, “Hale-Bopp,” and the smoke was pushed beneath the lampshade, “that is just so sad,” where it lingered in the yellow light, “they claimed their bodies were only temporary vehicles holding in their souls and when Kate and I saw that clip on the news she said all of those bodies, the way they were all dressed up in those uniforms, made them look like envelopes.” “I really loved you Sarah.” Her eyes were downcast, “Then why did you end it?” Bill shook his head while saying, “I wasn’t.” She reached over and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, “You used me.” “That was twenty years ago.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, “Can’t you just apologize for hurting me?”
     “Why have you victimized yourself over this?”
     Clenching her jaw, “I want to know why you took me for granted.”
     “The risks were just impossible.”
     She placed her hands on her knees, “Just tell me why you gave up on us.”
     “Answer my question.”
     “It’s not like I could have gotten pregnant anyway,” she looked at him uneasily, “I was on the pill….Remember? That was your idea.”
     He nodded, “Weren’t you on the pill in college?”
     The off-handed way she said, “I really wanted to have your baby,” stunned him. Bill shook his head in disbelief, “I wouldn’t have given you that choice.” “You’re an idiot,” she looked away, “I wanted to spend my life with you.” “That’s not what I thought was best for you,” he examined the tufts of hair below his knuckles, “that was a mistake on my part, a selfish and—” “Is this a mistake?” “No,” he didn’t hesitate, “no it isn’t.” She stretched her long legs out on the bedspread, “I’m going to see you again?” He nodded before asking, “If we had married do you think we would still be happy?” “Why,” she placed her hands on his shoulders, “wouldn’t we be happy now?” and kissed him on the cheek. He closed his eyes before saying, “That’s an interesting question.”

This cathedral we are standing in front of might collapse and become an acorn pile. All of its statues might dissolve. Expanse and ownership. So should I steal Constantine’s toe. The toe is too heavy to transport in hands. Seems cannibal to transport in mouth. Why are you turning. Why is your chest collapsing. Maybe from those cinder chips we ate; we thought they were crackers of origin. We needed a center again. Could we agree it is good to have a landing spot. A body of bread. Plaster torsos split by light.

Caroline Davidson

Caroline Davidson sang in a metal band in Ohio, sold cupcakes in South Carolina, and currently lives in Denver. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she also teaches creative writing. She is the poetry editor of Timber Journal.

This apartment isn’t much. Just a place to stack the boxes I’ll never open, and the couch and the channel changer. It’s got a porch. And I sit out on the porch most nights. Look at the sky and watch the moon. And this is where my friend Kathleen Quigley comes to see me, after the bar is closed. Late at night is when she is wound up, ready to talk. She knows that she will find me there and that I will want to hear it, late at night, the two of us leaning into each other. Kathleen Quigley was a poet once and she could be again if there was anything to write about. Kathleen is supposed to get married in her lover’s grandmother’s wedding dress. Her lover is a man named Rip—it could be Buzz or anything sporty, but it’s Rip. His grandmother’s a large woman with large shoulders and a back like furniture. Kathleen will never fit that wedding dress. Kathleen is small with childish hips. She daydreams Emily Dickinson and talks to herself. But she loves her lover’s grandmother. The way that woman storms around her apartment, hating the world and shouting at the cat, strangling the dirty dishes in the sink. Kathleen understands the significance of the gift of the wedding dress, given to her by her lover’s grandmother on the fourth or fifth visit. It’s a huge dress, old European silk and lace with a six-foot train. The grandmother gives it to her in a shopping bag. Kathleen takes the shopping bag home and she shoves it into the closet, but it bulges the closet door so much that it bangs into Kathleen’s knee every time she walks by it.

Kathleen is thirty-eight and she’s been married before, to a man who was so bland that when he moved into Kathleen’s apartment the paint on the walls complained. This muttering sound that followed that whole marriage. Kathleen drives an expensive car, something low and sleek. She wears fitted suits and tight black skirts. She works for the American Medical Association where she takes men apart in board meetings daily. And she has no feelings about any of this. But when she comes home, it’s to the neighbourhood—Western Avenue—where Kathleen lives in a cheap apartment above an abandoned storefront piled high with somebody else’s furniture. The floorboards are warping and going in every different direction, and the windows don’t really fit the sills. It’s always cold in there. Kathleen has these two old dogs, dogs that love her. They can’t really make the park anymore, but the apartment has a yard, so that’s good.

Kathleen does her drinking at this bar around the corner. Good bar. No one watches television, good jukebox. Kathleen likes her vodka cold and that’s the way they serve it there. Kathleen and her first husband would sit in the window seat and Kathleen would draw these horrid little scenes from her childhood on bar napkins. One night Rip sits down next to her and he runs his finger up her thigh. She doesn’t notice. But when he follows her to the bathroom and hangs around waiting like he knows her, she takes him home. She forgets all about the first husband.

At first it was really good. Kathleen and Rip stay up all night telling each other stories, walking under the sky. Rip gets those two old dogs running like they’re puppies. Rip likes to shoot cocaine and Kathleen tries it. But she has migraines and it’s a bad mix. Their dates often end with Kathleen lying on the floor, overwhelmed with vertigo. And Rip is fuck-compulsive, a thing Kathleen hasn’t had a lot of—just going and going and going. Rip gets bored and starts twisting and turning her into positions she doesn’t like, fucking her up the ass, whether she wants it or not. He even tells Kathleen about the other women. Their names, their preferences. He lets her know that this will be part of their marriage.

Kathleen works on the wedding dress. Cutting, sewing. She puts it on at night and she stands in front of the mirror with the train draped over her arm. And she looks good.

One night Kathleen gets in the car and drives around the neighbourhood looking for Rip who hasn’t come home, and she finds him leaning against a dumpster with his pants down around his ankles. And she waits. She invites the prostitute to breakfast, offering to pay for her time. There’s not much to talk about. The prostitute is young, she has a cold. She’ll have the chicken soup, please. The weather is changing, men are bad and getting worse. Kathleen and Rip start to fight. Late at night. They don’t say much; just break the plates and the crockery. This frightens the dogs and they run up and down the hallway, pissing in the corners.

On the night before my friend Kathleen is to be married, Rip doesn’t come home again. Kathleen gets the grocery bag out of the closet and lays the dress out on the couch. In the morning, she puts on her sunglasses and her blue jeans. She shoves the dress back into the bag and shoves the bag back into the closet, and she walks over to the church. She doesn’t go in. She sits on the bus stop bench watching her friends arrive, Rip’s friends, her family, and finally her lover’s grandmother. That grandmother doesn’t go in either, she stands on the top step, looking at the sky. She knows her grandson, what a bad husband he’d be. And then that grandmother goes home.

Kathleen sells her car for a lot less than it’s worth. She gets a high school kid to take care of the dogs. She feels things crack around her, the sounds of things tearing as her world reshapes. She gets a room in a hotel in the Loop. She answers an ad for a carriage driver. She gets the job. She looks good in the uniform: top hat, tails, little whip. And she drives around, talking to the horses. After a few weeks, Kathleen forgets her name, where she lives. She senses something missing, like a tooth uprooted from the gum that left a twitching nerve hole. A hole she no longer wants to feel or remember. She had loved Rip but now, his face turning to mud in her memory, Kathleen wants none of him. She leans into the animal smell of the horse, the wind cold against her face.

The old dogs get lonely for her. They open the closet and pull the shopping bag out. They tear the dress to pieces. My friend Kathleen has seen crazy before; she knows that in most of us, crazy passes. She waits for this to happen and, when it does, she comes back home.

About the author:

Beau O’Reilly is a noted Chicago playwright, actor and director. He is co-founder of the Curious Theatre Branch, now in it’s 23rd year. Mr O’Reilly curates the Rhinocerous Theatre Festival, an annual festival of new work and is an adj.ass.professor at the School of the Art Institute Of Chicago, in the mfa writing program. In addition to having written over a hundred plays for the theater, Beau O’Reilly is a regular contributor to This American Life on National Public Radio. Mr O’Reilly sings and writes songs with the Crooked Mouth and led the seminal rock & roll cabaret band Maestro Subgum And The Whole during its twenty year run.

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

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

About the author:

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

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

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

Gladys Justin Carr with her collaborator, "Mikey."

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

I was born at the meridian of two autumn mornings.
I was born far from here,
where they nail husks to the door.

I was not born in this sweetgum flower desert.
I was born during a battle
of birch trees in the New England woods.

I was born at a neap tide
and smelled of scallops and sand.
I was born in rain.

I was born loudly.
The nurse said, He is trying to forget.
I was born to forget.

I was born to give last rites to fallen nuns.
I was born near a shallow pond
that fed tadpoles into frogs.

bones are shining and the grass
is wild, warm. Her laugh rises
frail in the night, beats like blue
bird wings, makes you eat your

fear of pillowed sounds. Lean
into it. Swallow her thin chortles
and let them throb against your
bare-beveled ribs from the inside.

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Yale University and writes from New York City, where she also teaches composition at Hostos Community College. Suzanne’s poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Breakwater Review, The Coachella Review, decomP, The Catalonian Review, Spork, and PANK Magazine.

Christopher Marnach

Christopher Marnach is an Iowa ex-pat currently pursuing his MFA in Fiction at Columbia College Chicago, where he is also an events coordinator. An excerpt from the ever-expanding novel he is working on was long-listed for the 2011 Fish Publishing Short Story Award.

After Charlie and I broke up, he dated two Russian women. When we got back together, I said something to him about how he wore those same camouflage pants all of the time, the same paint-splattered white v-neck shirts. What I meant was: don’t think I’ve forgotten that I told you I thought Russian women were beautiful and that if I was a lesbian I’d want to fall in love with one. Charlie shrugged and said he didn’t have any other shirts so I said let’s go buy you some new fucking shirts.
While we were shopping I said the Russian Women Stuff aloud to him. I didn’t think I could, but I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and I looked braver than I felt. I looked like a warrior. I was wearing tribal earrings and I’d switched the diamond stud in my nose for a small hoop; thick black eyeliner and lots of lipgloss. My hair a beautiful mess. I turned to Charlie.
“You only dated those Russian women because I said that whole thing that one time.”
“What one thing?”
“Whole thing. One time,” I corrected. He was snapping metal hangers on the rack from one hand to the next, looking at the dress pants on clearance.
“We were drunk…I told you I wanted to kiss Regina Spektor, remember?”
“Oh, so you’re a lesbian now?” he said, and held up a pair of garish orange pants. I rolled my eyes and he put them back.
“No. I’m not a lesbian now.”
“You also said you liked English boys. Don’t forget your wannabe Banksy.” This was a reference to my affair with Lucas, the cute-but-completely-awful-for-me street artist who moved back to London with seven hundred of my dollars and two of my favorite paperbacks.
“That’s not the fucking point, Charlie.”
“And the point is?”
I checked the mirror, reminded myself.
“I’m angry. You hurt me on purpose. That’s why we always fight.”
“We don’t always fight,” he said. He gave me that look of his, the gooey-loving one, but I wasn’t in the mood and didn’t imagine myself becoming so anytime soon. Sure I loved him, deep inside and far from where any light shone, it just wasn’t a thing either of us ever verbalized.
I walked over to the plain white t-shirts and threw a pack of mediums in the basket. Charlie was behind me. I could smell him. He smelled like wet forest and cigarettes.

That night we went out and Charlie wore one of his new shirts and we saw some friends of ours at the bar. I told my friend, Stephanie, that I was going to kiss the first foreign boy I saw—that I would lick his teeth and chew his fucking face off—that I was going to make Charlie jealous. That I was going to make him pay for Russian Women Stuff.
“I thought you two were back together?” she said.
“We are.”
“You’re the worst together,” she said, and didn’t smile. The not-smiling hurt my feelings. I looked around, felt my face get hot. I’d already changed my mind. It was a dumb idea.
I saw Charlie at the bar with two of his buddies. I liked watching him when he didn’t know I was looking. He was nodding and laughing. Then some guy accidentally backed into him and Charlie’s whiskey spilled all over the front of his new shirt. Charlie smiled and patted the guy’s shoulder and I watched the guy buy him a refill.
“There’s something on your shirt,” I said after Charlie slid back into the booth.
He smiled and put his arm around me, squeezed my leg under the table. And I knew he’d get a great kick out of it if I told him I loved him right then. If I leaned in and made a huge deal about it.

Leesa Cross-Smith

About the author:

Leesa Cross-Smith is a writer and homemaker with a BA in English from the University of Louisville. She lives in Kentucky with her bearded husband and their two children. Her short story, Whiskey & Ribbons, won Editor’s Choice in the 2011 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Storychord, The Rumpus, Bluestem Magazine, Carve Magazine and Little Fiction. She puts Sriracha on everything, dances like a mom and can be found online at LeesaCrossSmith.com.

Inspired?
Hardly.

Another evening.
Another ode to Bourbon.

It’s played out.

I broke
To one bar.
Wild Turkey.

And another,
Pabst Blue Ribbon.

And finished another night
With a chili-cheese-dog.

And I don’t have to tell
you
The rest.

Brian Tibbetts

Brian Tibbetts is a writer, musician, print-maker and painter, currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. His writing has appeared in Unshod Quills, Gobshite Quarterly and Housefire. He is currently constructing a website regarding all of his various pursuits: briantibbetts.com

Review by Ella Cinder

Donald Breckenridge’s This Young Girl Passing delves into a love affair between a young girl and her teacher, their eventual relationship three decades later, and their journey together through the psyche, through time, through aging, through facing each other.

Disclosure: In my twenties I noticed my own pattern of falling for older men, and wondered what was going on in my psyche. Was I guilty of “daddy issues?” I need wisdom, I need to be called honey, and I need to be held a lot. Are these daddy issues? Perhaps not, actually, but while reading this book, and seeing the aftermath explored through the emotional consequences Breckenridge explores for his characters, I also then wondered: Was I doing myself emotional damage?

“We are talking about adultery,” Bill exclaimed. “No,” the overweight woman interjected, “we are talking about books about adultery.”

This Young Girl Passing is sentences tightly and poetically written, and time periods expertly crafted. Post Breckenridge’s wonderful novel, You Are Here, it signifies a continued bright future for a gifted writer. The construct of the age issue Breckenridge has chosen to discuss makes the book controversial, but lends itself to a deeper exploration of the psyche, and the premise to do so was gutsy, if not brilliant.

“Sarah,” he began to blush. “I asked you a question and I’d like for you to answer it.” She held up her left hand, “Okay,” and whispered an oath, “I’ve never dated a married man,” before placing her left hand on his shoulder and kissing him on the mouth, “but in twenty years, you’ll still be fourteen years older than me.”

The intimacy explored is rendered so tenderly throughout the book, one cannot help but find herself thinking the authoritative voice, the narrator, has dealt with his female character in such a gut-wrenching yet delicate form, that Donald Breckenridge had a deep respect in mind for his character while writing this book.

Though parts of the work and the premise as a whole could be seen as, well, off-putting, the honest emotion, the tenderness, the emotive romanticism is so moving, that it would seem that this book is actually less about a young girl—perhaps she is a metaphor for unrequited love in general—perhaps it is more about the emotions of a woman later, in that, what her emotions were as a young girl become the center of who she is as a woman, and those emotions are so deeply felt, that what Breckenridge has done, through exploring the emotional aftermath of a veritable trauma on a young girl, is to not only give her a voice, but to also uphold it, and the world the characters live in.

This book has the ethereal ache of Lolita and all readers who loved Lolita will love it similarly.

Nicola Masciandaro

What projects are you currently working on?

My main project right now is a book called Sorrow of Being. It’s a more or less philosophical study of mystical sorrow that attempts to take sorrow seriously as a weird kind of cosmic substance composed of the negative identity of thought and being. Rather than restricting sorrow to the terrestrial sphere, to being only a mundane emotion that is humanly about things, I see sorrow as an element or feature of universal reality. The project is centered around the representation of perfect sorrow in the late medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing, in which true sorrow, as the final ecstatic stage of contemplation, is defined as sorrow that one is, a sorrow that is co-substantial with being itself, like a more intense version of Heidegger’s concept of care (Sorge). For me the fact of this sorrow has three primary implications: 1) that being, both the totality of it and emergence of individuated entities, is the work of a universal event of negative will; 2) that reality is intensive and inherently mystical, always hiding within itself more and more reality—God is a mystic, as it were; 3) that self and universe are cosmically bound, such that it is improper to think oneself or any other entity as an effect or creation of a reality that is simply there, before and after the event of being—in other words, to use Meillassoux’s term, you are an arche-fossil, a weeping stone. The book starts with the Crucifixion eclipse and ends with a commentary on Lovecraft’s Ex Oblivione, in which a waking dreamer beautifully escapes being: “happier than I had ever dared hope to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.” So this is basically a speculative medievalist project that paradisically leaps through a kind of endless, exterior gap between self-centered melancholy and Lovecraft’s vexed premise that “emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large,” elaborating throughout a principle for revolt against secular and religious creationisms.

When and why did you begin writing?

I starting writing a little poetry in college, I think as a kind of adjunct to the mathematics I was studying. Then I defaulted into literature and had to write more deliberately. Not sure about the ‘why’ part, but I was attracted early on by annotated texts, exegetical reading, and my term papers usually had a lot of footnotes. Now I am overtly interested in writing commentaries.

Who or what has influenced your writing?

The texts I keep most near me, probably. On the shelves closest to my desk: Aquinas, Augustine, Dante, Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Macrobius, Meher Baba, Ovid, Rumi, Eriugena, St. Francis, Ibn Arabi, Dionysius, Bonaventure, Bataille, Negarestani, Boethius, Lovecraft, Melville, Peter Lombard, Cervantes, Agamben, Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, Hafiz, Nietzsche, Romance of the Rose. Music is also an important parallel inspiration, especially black and doom metal, Bach, medieval chant and polyphony, traditional Indian and Persian music, and some folk songs.

How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?

My father, Franco Masciandaro, is a great interpreter and scholar of the Divine Comedy. I didn’t read the poem myself until college, but the almost endless relatability of life to that text was certainly in the air as a child. So that had some kind of effect—inculcation in a hermeneutic world, poetry as participation in and disclosure of intrinsic values. My parents very lovingly never required me to master any specific, responsible skills, and I have always enjoyed playing, non-instrumental activity, like rock-climbing. Not leisure, I haven’t exactly had that, but I have inherited/developed a tendency to treat things playfully and impersonally, which is both a strength and a weakness.

Do you have a specific writing style?

That would be easier for someone else to describe. I used to think my writing style was densely clear, equational, like a crystal. But now several people have told me that my writing is ‘gnomic’ and difficult. For example, I have had grant proposals and article submissions rejected due to: “considerable extraneous material, digressive argument hinging on personal and unsubstantiated opinion, a ‘flowery’ writing style that obscures author’s intent. Language seems to emulate the mystical qualities of the texts. This does not aid intelligibility. A valid point, but does not require entire paragraph of poetically-inspired language. Contribution to critical literature left to the reader. Likely outcome unclear. Avowedly experimental nature does not inspire confidence. Overtly theoretical and absurdist approach . . .” In my own mind, my writing is very clear, in the sense of a distinct and well-defined verbal experience of thought. I want the words to be the thing. But I can also see that I have difficulty committing to and little faith in or desire for texts that are governed by communication, which seems inherently suspicious. Why is this text communicating to me? What is it trying to trick me into? Why is the text treating me like someone who needs his own thoughts dictated and explained? Instead I think the truth of good texts is more like perfume, something released into the atmosphere by a more secret and hidden penetration and distillation of essences, so that you want and need it whether or not you understand it, both in advance of and after itself. That is the circulating good or spice of a text or any other kind of action or expression, an irresistible invitation to realize something significant or radical.

What genre are you most comfortable writing?

Commentarial prose and ghazals.

Is there a message in your work that you want readers to grasp?

Not really. There are some recurrent themes (beheading, mystical love, labor, spontaneity, deixis) and common ideas that might be printed on t-shirts (‘Life, I Can’t Believe It’s Really Happening’, ‘The Impossible is Inevitable’, ‘Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise’), but no messages, at least none of the delivering kind.

What book are you reading now?

Apart from the several books I have to teach and/or consult for research, which is most of my reading, I am enjoying J.H. Prynne’s commentary on George Herbert, Reiner Schurmann’s book on Heidegger and anarchy, some texts by François Laruelle, and I just started Grettir’s Saga.

Review by Jan Siebold

Some authors use the word “odyssey” to simply represent a journey or a passage of time. In Lily’s Odyssey author Carol Smallwood takes a more literal approach. Just as Odysseus spends years making his way home after the Trojan War, Lily struggles to find her true home in the world.
     She has encountered her share of cannibals, lotus-eaters, sirens and monsters along the way, but it is her abusive Uncle Walt and his Cyclopic wife Hester (who turned her one good eye away from the incestuous situation years ago) that have haunted Lily’s thoughts and dreams since childhood.
     Smallwood’s Homer-like use of a nonlinear plot is well-suited to the story since Lily’s journey is rather like trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle. With intelligence and humor Lily navigates the passages of her life which include marriage, motherhood, psychotherapy and education. She even spends time in Ithaca while working on a Master’s Degree in Geology. In fact, geological references are abundant as Lily explores her lifelong fascination with the formation of the earth and her place on it. Readers can feel Lily’s sense of frustration at the ever-shifting underground plates that prevent her from finding solid footing.
     Orphaned at an early age and sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Lily later explores her obsession about abandoned animals and plants, and eventually discovers its root in her childhood. What may seem obvious to the reader is not as easily seen by Lily,
whose vision of the past has been obscured by the trauma of abuse, insensitivity and denial.
     The book begins with the death of Uncle Walt and Lily’s return to the house where she had spent her childhood. It is there that Lily begins to think about reinventing herself without the existence of Uncle Walt in her life.
     The author’s use of imagery is at times stunning. “I heard the train whistle. I saw myself as a bird following the train as it wound its way through the landscape, leaving only smoke as evidence that it had passed.” Referring to her aunt, Lily thinks about “Tulips closed as tightly as Aunt Hester’s lips.”
     Smallwood’s many cultural, historical, scientific and religious references are a nod to her readers’ awareness, intelligence and curiosity. They elevate the story and allow us to discover more about Lily’s world and our own.
     On a basic level the reader can relate to Lily’s awkward attempts at relationships, and to her wickedly funny observations about people. We cheer for Lily as she leaves behind her dismissive husband Cal, the lecherous Dr. Schackmann and other toxic people whom she encounters. We understand as she questions the tenets that were instilled during her strict Catholic upbringing, including “the duties and sufferings of women as wives.” We yearn for Lily to find the illumination and peace of mind that she seeks.
     In a particularly vulnerable moment Lily pens a letter to God. In the letter she writes, “Women need new paths. To find our way out of the old labyrinths requires more than one lifetime.”
     Through Lily’s Odyssey, Carol Smallwood gives us hope that one lifetime might be enough for Lily and others to find their way.

About the author:

Jan Siebold, a school library media specialist in East Aurora, New York since 1977, received her MLS from the University of Buffalo. Jan has served as NYLA Secretary, and received the NYLA/SLMS Cultural Media Award in 1992. She is the author of Rope Burn (Albert Whitman, 1998), Doing Time Online (Albert Whitman, 2002) and My Nights at the Improv (Albert Whitman, 2005), three middle grade novels on numerous award lists.

Deirdre Daly

Deirdre Daly is currently studying for her PhD in University College, Dublin in the School of English and her research interests include feminism, queer theory, the taboo and paraphilias. As a distraction, she enjoys writing poetry and short fiction.

About the author:

Author of the novels, A Still Small Voice (Delacorte), Snowball’s Chance (Roof, an SPD Bestseller), and The Whole (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster); author of the play All the World’s A Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare (Penguin/Plume), and the illustrated, non-fiction cult story collection, Tales of Woe (MTV Press); more at JohnReed.org

This man you’ve only met tonight,
who is wearing fake glasses and a black tank top
in a dive bar in Manhattan, has made you laugh
eleven times already. He is teaching you
how to download apps on your new iPhone.
He is opening one and using his fingertip
to scribble his name across the screen
so you will remember it,
and you are allowing your body
to become a song that says,
Move closer.

When it first appears,
you don’t know how to name love, so it is
nine fingers deep into the phone
even though I called yesterday,
it is losing your other numbers
until five months pass, and it is just you
and this man laying in your bed on 25th Street.
Your hand slung across his chest, nearly asleep.
There is a James Bond movie finishing on the TV,
and just before your eyes are meant to close,
his body is an electric current in tight underwear
out of bed and dancing, pirouetting
nearly into the television, an interpretive
spy dance that is not stopping, but blossoming
to the music of the credits, and your body is now
in tears from a profound laughter. It is no longer
just a joke, no longer just a beautiful dance.
It is the truth from a body that only occurs
in a bedroom between lovers that says,
When you are happy, I am alive. Without you,
I am not me. It does not matter that it will take weeks
to name the love that sits inside you
stable as a new house.

He is the arms of each man to hold you
and assure you were beautiful.
He is not just dancing
perfectly around your dresser and curtains
in his underwear, he is doing it
for you.

You do not need to know love is a word
which will travel free between you like a flock
of sparrows. That you will deliver yourself to it,
across an Uptown C train, a fire pit in Boston,
the wedding aisle in a library on the west side
of Manhattan. That there are years between this day
and the day you say no other word
can communicate what we both know.
When you say:

Husband—because my life
is my own and I wish to give it to you.
Because I wish to apologize and to forgive,
and to come home to you each night.
Husband, because it was true in a dive bar,
and in a bedroom that we shared, on a street
where I walk around the block
because we’ve just had a fight
and I am coming home to you calm.
I name you my husband to receive you.
True today and tomorrow. My husband
because I have spent my entire life
climbing toward your name.

About the author:

Jon Sands’ first full collection of poems, The New Clean, was released in 2011 from Write Bloody Publishing. He is Director of Poetry Education at the Positive Health Project (a syringe exchange center in Midtown Manhattan), an adjunct with the City University of New York, as well as a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC. He reads and facilitates workshops extensively, both nationally and internationally. He starred in the 2011 web-series “Verse: A Murder Mystery” from Rattapallax Films, and his work has appeared in The Millions, decomP, kill author, Suss, Muzzle, and others. He is a featured contributor with Union Station Magazine, conducting a regular interview column, and has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam. Say yes to jonsands.com.

Tuesday night means we’re eating dinner at the kitchen table. Dad and I sit across from each other, an empty wooden chair on either side of us. I blow the steam off a bowl of mushroom soup while Dad dips celery sticks into a jar of Nutella. He chews with his mouth open. Nutella stains on his teeth make it look like he’s eating shit. ‘You still seeing that feisty redhead?’ he asks.
    ‘Don’t say feisty.’
    ‘So still seeing her?’
    ‘Yes. I’m seeing her.’
    ‘Kids your age don’t realize, but it’s possible to get a disease just by receiving head.’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’
    ‘Herpes. Syphilis. Gonorrhea. Type them words into Google Images, and then come roll your eyes at me.’
    ‘Jesus, Dad. Okay.’
    ‘Being fifteen doesn’t make you invincible.’
    ‘I’m trying to eat.’
    He licks Nutella off the tip of a celery stick. Eyes shut; he moans in satisfaction. It feels like I’m watching disturbing fetish porn. He washes the Nutella down with a swig of beer.
    ‘How come you never bring the redhead over here anymore?’
    Because I hate it here. The air in our house smells like a rank armpit. There are Nutella stains on the doorknobs and couch cushions, and the downstairs washroom is a mess of mould, mildew, and pubic hairs. Plus, you embarrass me. You’ve gone batshit crazy, and I’m ashamed of you.
    ‘No reason,’ I say.

The redhead is Tess Gardener. Hair the colour of rust, freckles, pierced septum, sundresses in the spring. We do things with each other, but nothing too intense or sexy. It’s not like we’ve seen each other’s genitals or buttholes. We do take off our shirts though. Sometimes I’ll stick an ice cube in my mouth, and then I’ll suck and bite and taste her nipples. She likes when I do this, and always breathes hard, and makes sounds that remind me of goats. Afterwards we’ll kiss, sometimes for hours. She says my face is always bright red and shiny by the end of it. Then Tess will lick the sweat off my forehead and along the sides of my nose. It tickles, and leaves my face smelling like salty peppermint.
    I told her I loved her once. It was over the phone, but that still counts. She was telling me a story about this Goth girl at school who likes to cut her own thighs, and I was listening, trying my best to hold onto the words, but they still came out.
    ‘Tess,’ I said, ‘I love you.’
    She didn’t say anything at first. I listened to her breathe for a few seconds. ‘No you don’t,’ she said.
    ‘I think I do,’ I said.
    ‘No,’ she said.
    We hold hands and walk down the halls at school. I squeeze her hand too hard. She tells me I’m crushing her fingers. I squeeze even harder for some reason. She punches me in the bicep. ‘Dick,’ she says. I want to break her arms and legs. I want to push her around in a wheelchair, and kiss the top of her head, and tell her dark, twisted secrets that’ll make her think I’m interesting.

Casey Lynch is in my gym class. Today he’s wearing shorts directly beneath his pants. That way he won’t have to change in front of anyone. Guys have been making fun of a birthmark he’s got on the inside of his left thigh. The birthmark is big and brown, and my friend Max said it looked like diarrhea running down Casey’s leg. We thought Casey was going to start crying, because his lip trembled, so everyone started laughing and calling him a shit-legged faggot. It was really funny, and really sad.
    We’re lined up along one end of the gym. CPR tests. Casey goes first. He drops to his knees, seats himself on the backs of his heels. He turns his head to the side. His ear is an inch away from the mannequin’s mouth. He positions his hands, one on top of the other, starts pressing them into the mannequin’s chest. The foam pecks squish in and out. Casey pinches the mannequin’s nose, tilts its head back, wraps his lips around the mannequin’s mouth. Casey’s cheeks are pink and puffy. He blows.

I wake up to the sound of giggles: deep, demented giggles. It’s eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning. I walk downstairs. The floor smells like a portal potty. The giggling is coming from the living room. Dad’s lying on the floor, in his boxer shorts, with about a half a dozen bunny rabbits crawling all over him.
    ‘Dad,’ I say.
    ‘Look,’ he says.
    ‘They’re shitting everywhere,’ I tell him.
    ‘Language,’ he says.
    ‘They’re shitting all over you, Dad.’
    ‘Naw,’ he says. ‘It’s fine.’
    ‘Where’d you get all these?’
    ‘Down the street. A lady was giving them away for free. Can you believe it? Their feet will bring us good luck.’
    He rolls back and forth across the floor; his naked body squashes turds. He lifts the bunnies over his head, and rubs his face into their crotches. But it gets even more fucked. There’s a tripod set up in the corner of the room, and he’s recording it all on a digital camera.
    ‘What the hell?’ I say. I turn off the camera.
    ‘So cute,’ he says.
    ‘Make sure you clean up all of this shit,’ I tell him.

Tess says I need to start talking more, specifically to her parents. ‘My mom and dad think you’re retarded,’ she says. ‘You never say anything to them.’
    ‘What am I supposed to say?’
    ‘Anything. Literally anything is better than nothing.’
    ‘I try.’
    ‘Try harder, because they think you’re weird, and I can’t have my parents thinking I’m dating a weirdo. So if they’re talking about the weather, say something about the weather. If they’re talking about a television show, say something about television. If my mom gets a new haircut, compliment her fucking hair. Okay? It’s not that hard. Seriously.’
    I’m invited to the Gardeners’ for dinner. The food is served in small portions. A slice of chicken breast, some string beans, half a baked potato. Drink options include water or milk. I am almost positive they will serve a bowl of fruit for dessert.
    Tess is wearing a purple sweater and a black skirt. She’s sitting beside her kid sister Macy on the opposite side of the table. Macy is a tomboy. Cute kid. The same red hair and green eyes as Tess. It makes me wish I’d known Tess when she was just a little kid. I imagine us on a playground, throwing sand at each other and not caring.
    Mr. Gardener is seated to my left, Mrs. Gardener to my right. My palms are sweaty. I feel intimidated by Mr. Gardener’s moustache and Mrs. Gardener’s eyebrows. They pray before they eat. Amen. I’m about to put a string bean in my mouth when Mr. Gardener begins telling a story about a coworker of his who recently gave him several jars of homemade jam.
    ‘That’s lovely,’ says Mrs. Gardener. ‘I’ve actually given a lot of thought to doing that myself, producing homemade jams and all. The idea intrigues me.’
    ‘I tried some of Bob’s jam during lunch break,’ says Mr. Gardener. ‘Orange jam. Just delicious. Spread it across a toasted biscuit.’
    Tess kicks me beneath the table and I try to think of something to say. Options include a) My favorite kind of jam is raspberry jam, b) Do you guys prefer it when jam is chunky or smooth? c) Peanut butter and jam sandwiches are good, or d) Jam spelled backwards is maj.
    ‘Maj?’ says Mr. Gardener. ‘What exactly is maj?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I say.
    Mrs. Gardener looks at Tess. Tess looks at me. I look at my plate.
    Later I’m sitting on the back porch with Tess’s sister Macy. She’s showing me a Tupperware container filled with dirt and worms. There’s a kettle of steaming water in Macy’s hands, and she’s pouring the water onto the worms. They burn and bleed and die. Macy is laughing, and maybe I’m laughing too. Tess opens the sliding glass door and tells us dessert is ready.

I’m partnered with Casey Lynch in gym class. We toss a medicine ball back and forth. I can tell he’s gay by the way he throws it. His wrists are thin and flimsy. I can see the foot of his birthmark poking out the bottom of his shorts. His hair is long and blonde and feathery, and he keeps curling it behind his ears. I throw the ball to him. It slips through his hands. He has a difficult time picking it back up. I watch him bend over. He looks like a flat-chested girl.
    ‘Are you okay?’ I say.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘I feel a bit distracted.’
    ‘How come?’
    He tries rolling the medicine ball to me. It only moves a couple of feet. We let it rest between us.
    ‘I got fired from my job last night. My dad’s going to be really upset.’
    ‘I didn’t know you had a job.’
    ‘How would you?’
    ‘Where did you work?’
    ‘Canadian Tire.’
    ‘Why’d you get fired?’
    He looks at me. His eyes are blue and pretty. ‘Your friend Maxwell is a prick,’ he says.
    ‘Max is mentally challenged,’ I say. ‘How come you got fired?’
    ‘Do you ever do things that don’t make any sense?’ he asks.
    ‘No,’ I say.
    ‘Sometimes I close my eyes and run.’
    ‘Run where?’
    ‘Nowhere. I close my eyes, and run, run fast, run until I run into something. It gives me a rush, I guess.’
    ‘Why’d you get fired?’ I ask for the billionth time.
    ‘I did it at work. I was mopping detergent off the floor in one of the aisles. I don’t know why I did it, but I dropped the mop, shut my eyes, and started running. I sprinted into a display of vacuum cleaners and broke a ton of them.’
    I walk forward and pick up the medicine ball.
    ‘Do you think that’s weird?’ he asks.
    ‘Who knows?’ I say.

Dad complains his back is sore. Kidney stones. He’s been pissing them out for a week now. Worst part about it is he collects the stones. Dips his fingers into the bloody toilet water and picks them out. He saves them in a Ziploc bag. The bag is smeared with watery dick blood. The stones look like brown poppy seeds.

I call my mom on her birthday.
    ‘It’s me.’
    ‘Sweetie! How are you?’
    ‘Happy birthday.’
    ‘Aw. Thank you. Your mother’s getting up there, isn’t she?’
    ‘Big plans?’
    ‘Nothing too exciting. Steve’s taking me to a club tonight. Can you imagine? Your mother dancing at a club? Hilarious.’
    ‘How are Steve’s kids and all?’
    ‘Good. Everyone’s great. The twins are good. Little Zachary’s smoking cigarettes now. Steve’s not too happy about that, but what can you do, right? Boys will be boys.’
    ‘Isn’t Zach twelve?’
    ‘Turning thirteen in a couple of months. You believe it? Life is short, goes by like a bullet. You kids grow up too fast. Seems like yesterday you were popping out my –’
    ‘Jesus, Mom.’
    ‘Blasphemy, Sweetie. Try to watch that. Now tell me. How’s Jerry doing?’
    ‘Dad’s fine.’
    ‘He’s been feeding you?’
    ‘I’m fifteen. I can feed myself.’
    ‘An apple a day keeps the cancer at bay, Sweetie.’
    ‘Yeah. I know.’
    ‘Now listen. Your father’s been emailing me some very peculiar videos. You know what I mean?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Him playing with bunnies in his underwear? Very unsettling. I’d like you to ask him to please stop sending me them. I will no longer watch them. Will you tell him that for me?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Thanks, Hon. Now I really should get back to work. Thank you so much for remembering to call me. Such a good boy. I love you.’

It’s late. I walk past dad’s bedroom. The TV is still on. An infomercial for an exercise machine. Dad is sleeping. The lights are turned off. Dad’s round face is washed in an orange glare from the television. The nightstand is a clutter of empty brown bottles. There’s a pillow beside Dad’s head, the Ziploc bag of kidney stones rested atop it as though The Kidney Stone Fairy might come exchange it for money. I walk into the room and turn off the TV. I steal the bag of kidney stones and replace it with a five-dollar bill.

I tell Tess about my father. We used to go camping at Port Woodlot when I was just a little kid. We’d fish and hike and swim in the lake, and my dad used to be really interested in photography, so he’d always be taking pictures of the trees and the water and the animals. Snakes. Lizards. Squirrels. Raccoons. I remember one time he took this picture of a toad. A humungous toad. It was on the white rocks near the shoreline, just sitting there, totally relaxed. I was obsessed with the picture of that toad, so Dad got it developed for me, black and white, and he put it in a thin wooden frame. He hung it up in my bedroom. It’s still there, above my computer desk.
    I don’t think Tess is listening to me. She starts talking about her own father all of a sudden. She says Mr. Gardener molested her when she was six. She woke up in a bathtub one morning, and her pussy hurt, and there was blood in the water, and Mr. Gardener was sitting outside the tub, naked, and smoking a cigarette.
    ‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘Tess.’
    She starts laughing. ‘Naw,’ she says. ‘I’m just shitting you.’
    a) That’s horrible! How could you joke about something like that?
    b) Ha-ha-ha. Aw, Tess. You crack me up sometimes.
     c)Wait. I’m confused. So you didn’t get raped? That was an awfully detailed lie.
     d)‘…’
    I turn my head to the sky, to hundreds of stars. All of them are white, and bland. I’m not familiar with any constellations. I wish I knew how to talk to Tess, but I don’t. I feel small, insignificant when I’m with her, like a slug crawling beneath a butterfly. I keep hoping her fingers will close on my hand. I want to feel them press between my knuckles, fit inside the grooves.

Casey invites me over to his house after school. He lives on Spruce Avenue, only a few blocks away from my street. His home is a lot smaller though. A square bungalow. The inside smells like dogs and lemons. The walls and the carpets are all different shades of yellow or brown.
    He introduces me to his mom. Her name is Edna. She’s nice, but dumb. She keeps asking me questions without even listening to any of the answers. Her voice is mousy and her skin is chalky. She pours us each a glass of milk. She bakes us cookies. She burns them. The kitchen fills with gray smoke. She hands us each a butter knife to scrape off the burnt bottoms.
    Casey’s bedroom is in the basement. Small, just like the rest of the house. Walls are the colour of honey mustard. There’s a bed, a computer, a stack of skateboarding magazines, dirty socks, a volleyball, a flare gun, a reading lamp, a bag of pills, and a construction helmet.
    We sit on his bed for a while, listening to music and eating the burnt cookies. Then Casey turns on his computer. ‘Come here,’ he says. I walk up behind him. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and tight navy jeans. There’s a picture of Bruce Lee as his desktop background. He clicks on a folder labeled Geography Notes and there are several video files inside. ‘You want to see something really disturbing?’ he asks me.
    ‘Okay,’ I say.
    ‘This actually happened,’ he says.
    A man is on his knees, hands tied behind his back. There are four other men standing behind him. They have turbans wrapped around their faces. Three of them hold guns; one of them carries a chainsaw. The man on his knees is crying. He says the date. One of the other men holds a newspaper in front of the crying man’s face, and the crying man reads a few of the headlines. Then they cut off the crying man’s head with the chainsaw and hold it in front of the camera.
    ‘Did you hear the gargling?’ Casey asks me.
    ‘Yeah,’ I say.
    ‘You think it’s disturbing?’
    ‘Why’d you show me that?’
    Casey goes upstairs to get a pizza his mom made us. I sit at the computer and play Tetris. He comes back a few minutes later, carrying the smell of burnt crust and cheese down with him. He puts the pizza on the bed. He stands behind me, watching me play the game. ‘You’re good,’ he says. I get game over. Casey asks if he can show me something on the computer. He reaches one arm over my right shoulder and begins handling the mouse, then reaches his other arm over my left shoulder and starts working the keyboard. He’s practically hugging me. I can feel his lips pressed against the back of my head. He’s kissing me, and his mouth keeps opening, and I can feel him eating my hair. Then his face lowers, and he’s kissing the back of my neck.
    ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.
    He pushes away. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Can you leave now? I’m not feeling well. I want you to leave now.’

The recycling bin is full of bottles. I think Dad might be getting normal again. I’m not sure what did it. Maybe someone threatened to fire him at work, because he’s back to wearing daytime clothes, and bathing. Plus, he gave away most of the bunnies. Only kept two of them: Chubby and Skyler.
    ‘You going shopping this weekend?’ I ask him.
    ‘What do you need?’
    ‘I need someone to Febreze the hell out of this place, because it stinks in here.’
    ‘I can do that,’ he says.
    ‘Thanks.’
    We’re eating dinner in front of the television. Margarine on bagels, sliced cucumbers, fries. Dad also lets me drink as many beers as I want. By now the room is starting to spin and everything seems funnier than it is.
    ‘I talked to your mother,’ he says.
    ‘Really?’ I say.
    ‘Well, sort of. She emailed me. She saw something that reminded her of me and she wanted to tell me about it.’
    ‘What was it?’ I ask him.
    ‘What was what?’
    ‘What did she see?’ I ask him.
    ‘Nothing you’d understand,’ he says.
    I feel tipsy, lightheaded. My fries are cold. There wasn’t any ketchup left, so the taste is plain. Dad uses mayonnaise. I watch him pour soy sauce onto his cucumbers. Drenches them in it. The green turns golden brown.
    ‘You want to hear a story?’ he asks.
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘I found a wallet on the backend of a toilet a few days ago.’
    ‘A toilet?’
    ‘At a gas station.’
    ‘Was there money in it?’
    ‘A lot.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘A helluva lot.’
    ‘What did you do?’
    ‘There was a driver’s license, so I looked up whose it was. Found him in the phone book, called him, and met him. I returned his property.’
    ‘Was he thankful?’
    ‘Of course. He was real happy. Even offered to buy me a drink, but I didn’t have time. Appreciated the offer though. Made me feel appreciated. I’m glad I was the one that found the wallet, because I suspect a lot of other people would’ve just kept it for themselves.’
    ‘Probably. How much money was in it?’
    He dabs the mayonnaise off his lips with a crumpled napkin.
    ‘It’s important to be good to people,’ he says.
    ‘I know.’
    He doesn’t look at me.
    ‘You’re my boy,’ he says. ‘You’ve got to be one of the good ones.’ His face is cracking. There are lines I’ve never noticed. I finally see how tired he is.
    ‘I’ve had a rough year,’ he says.
    ‘I know, Dad.’
    ‘It feels good to know my boy’s one of the good ones.’

I’m on top of Tess. My waist between her thighs, she’s biting my shoulders. The couch in her basement is a gray futon. It feels like we’re dry humping on a patch of stormy clouds. She’s wearing a Metallica tank top, gray sweatpants, and her hair is so red and pretty it burns everything inside of me when I look at it. I pull on the collar of her shirt, stretch it out, pull on her bra, start putting her boobs in my mouth. She smells like cherry candy. My guts twist like pretzels. I start to cry.
    ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘What’s the deal?’
    I’m pressing my face into her stomach so she won’t see me. The tears soak into her shirt. She tells me to take off her pants and underwear. I do it, and I’m crying, and she has more pubes than I expected. Legs spread apart. Her pussy looks like a Venus flytrap.
    ‘Talk dirty,’ she says.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Call me something awful.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Do it.’
    ‘I don’t want to.’
    ‘Quit crying.’
    ‘You’re a bitch.’
    ‘Is that all?’
    ‘Bitch-cunt. You’re a cunt. I’ll bunt you in the fucking cunt.’
    ‘You’ll bunt me?’
    ‘With a bat.’
    We don’t have sex because I can’t stop crying. I just love her so much it makes me feel completely crazy and incredibly sad, especially since she won’t love me back. I try to hug her but she pushes away. We sit up on opposite sides of the couch. I try to say something important. I need her to know I’m not as simple as she thinks. I ask her if she believes in God. She laughs and tells me not to be a fag.

Maxwell Mior and Ollie Burns and Jim Danko and I are all standing along the front of Casey Lynch’s driveway. It’s two o’clock in the morning. We’re dressed in all black; shirts, pants, ski masks. I feel like a ninja. Each of us is holding onto our own carton of eggs. Max points to a window next to the garage and asks if that’s where Casey sleeps. ‘No,’ I say. ‘His room is in the basement. Just aim wherever.’
    Max counts us down.
    Three…two…one…
    Forty-eight eggs lasts us about ten to fifteen seconds.
    After that we’re running down the street as fast as we can. I’m the only one who keeps his ski mask on. It’s difficult to breathe inside of it, but I don’t care. It feels like my face is on fire and I like it. I run faster. My muscles burn. I feel completely fucking reckless right now. I sprint. My legs are unable to keep up with me. I stumble to the ground, scrape my arms against the pavement. Gravel sticks to the blood. I start screaming. Not because I’m hurt, but because I can I can I can. Screaming, and soon the other guys are screaming with me. It’s like we’re the only four people left on earth, and we scream out for help, to God, or to aliens, or to whatever else assholes believe in.
    Lights turn on in some of the houses. We stop screaming and continue to run.

The phone rings on a Sunday morning.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hey. I need to talk to you.’
    ‘Tess.’
    ‘I need to talk to you right now, in person. You dressed?’
    Her voice is cold and I shiver. It feels like spiders are on the back of my neck, slowly creeping down my spine. I look at a picture of Tess I’ve got on my nightstand. She’s wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and big purple sunglasses. Her tongue is stuck out and she’s flipping the bird.
    ‘Do you need to tell me something bad?’ I ask.
    ‘Yeah.’
    I keep looking at the picture as if it’s what I’m talking to. I love you, Tess. Quit flipping me off. I want to break your fucking fingers. I want to hold you beneath blankets and fall asleep forever.
    ‘Tell me now.’
    ‘I really think we should meet in person.’
    ‘No. Just tell me.’
    She says she doesn’t know how to say it. Then she says it. ‘I cheated on you.’
    My eyes hurt. It’s hard to keep them open. I feel something blocking my voice, like wet packs of sand clogging my throat. Inhale. My stomach feels like I’m about to shit it out of me. Exhale.
    ‘Did you have sex with him?’
    ‘No. We only made out.’
    ‘For how long?’
    ‘What does it matter?’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘I don’t know. A long time, maybe. An hour?’
    I hang up the phone. It feels like my lungs are collapsing into my guts, so I sit on the edge of my bed and search for air. Breathe. Just breathe. I stand up, run toward the wall, smash my forehead into it. My neck hurts. I start punching the wall until my fist breaks through it. There are cuts on my knuckles but I can’t feel them.
    I call Tess back.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Yeah. Maybe we should meet up.’
    ‘Okay. Can you come here though? I can’t leave my house right now.’
    ‘Are your parents home?’
    ‘No. Only Macy. That’s why I can’t leave.’
    ‘Okay. Be there in fifteen minutes.’

The air smells like barbeque smoke. No clouds. Grass in front of houses is parched, brown and yellow. I walk. I breathe. I daydream. I think about my mom for some reason. I remember when I was just a little kid; she used to wear her hair up in a blonde beehive. It reminded me of yellow cotton candy. I’d pick at it, stab my fingers into the tresses. She told me my hands better be clean.I also remember waking up in the middle of the night with growing pains. My legs would throb, and I’d call out for help. They took turns coming to see me, sometimes Mom, other times Dad. I preferred it when my mom came though. She would rub my legs and sing ‘Rainbow Connection’ and sit beside me until the pain disappeared. And the pain always did disappear, because Mom was magic.
    Dad wasn’t magic. His hands were so big and rough and warm, they made my legs feel like they hurt even more. I’d have to pretend to fall back asleep so he’d go away.

I arrive at Tess’s house. I knock on the door. There are cuts on my hand and a bruise on my forehead, but the only thing that hurts is my stomach. She opens the door and steps outside. We’re standing on the front patio. Her arms are wrapped around herself, like she’s cold, but it’s hot out.
    ‘Hi,’ she says.
    I don’t say anything.
    Her hair is dry and flat and I prefer it this way. She’s wearing a white tank top and torn jeans. There are fluffy pink slippers on her feet. If I wanted to kiss her she’d let me.
    ‘Who did you cheat on me with?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Ryan James.’
    ‘Who the hell is that?’
    ‘He’s in my Media Studies class. He’s older.’
    I try to imagine what he looks like but all I can picture is an anus.
    ‘I don’t even like him,’ she says. ‘And we were high, if that makes any difference. I know it doesn’t though. There are no excuses.’
    Children play road hockey in the street in front of the house. Their rollerblades purr against the cement. It reminds me of being young and dumb and oblivious, back when I drank chocolate milk and it was easy to fall asleep at night.
    Tess can’t even look at me.
    ‘Look at me!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You’re a miserable cunt. A slut. A fucking germ farm. And you were never nice to me. Go choke on a dick and die and get raped by a million dicks in hell you bitch.’
    I turn and start walking down the steps of the porch. The front door slams behind me. Then I hear the scream. It’s sharp enough to cut into my skin, echo through my veins. I run back up the steps, start pounding on the door. ‘Tess!’ I yell.
    The door opens a few inches.
    ‘Tess. What the hell was that? Are you okay?’
    ‘I just had to let something out of me,’ she says.
    ‘Open the door.’
    It opens. Her skin is white and she’s shaking. She starts crying.
    ‘Tess,’ I say.
    ‘What do you want?’ she says.
    ‘Don’t cry.’
    ‘What do you care? Just go.’
    ‘I can’t leave you crying.’
    ‘I always fuck everything up,’ she says.
    ‘Me too,’ I say.
    She walks into my chest and waits for me to wrap my arms around her, which I do. I hold her until her body stops trembling. She dries her eyes on my neck. I tell her I’m sorry for what I said. She tells me to never let go of her, but I do. I let go. Her body doesn’t smell good to me anymore. She enters the house and I walk back home.

A pink glow wraps around the sun. Dad is grilling sausages on the barbeque. He’s wearing work pants and a golf shirt and he shaved off his beard recently, so he looks about ten years younger.
    ‘You look good, Dad,’ I tell him.
    ‘You think?’
    ‘Yeah. You actually look a lot like me now.’
    ‘Your mother used to say we make the same expressions.’
    The bunnies are playing on the grass. I wonder if they’ll screw and make more bunnies eventually. Dad walks over to them and starts picking them up.
    I’m sitting on the steps of the deck. Ants crawl across the wood. I’m wearing shorts and the sun feels good against my legs. I wonder what Tess is eating for dinner.
    Dad calls me over. ‘Come see this,’ he says. He’s standing beside the garden next to the chain link fence. I take off my socks and walk over to him. The grass feels warm and prickly. ‘Look,’ he says, pointing at the soil. An anthill sticks out from the ground like a bruise.
    ‘Aren’t you supposed to spray them with something?’ I ask.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘They’ll kill the grass.’
    Dad smiles. He unbuckles his belt.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    He unzips his pants, pulls out his dick and starts pissing on the ants.
    ‘Dad,’ I say.
    No response. His piss smells like coffee. I check to see if the neighbors are watching. Then I walk back to the deck and check on the food. The meat looks ready. I call Dad. ‘One minute,’ he says. He’s putting himself back inside his pants. I sit back down on the porch. There’s a splinter of wood peeling off one of the steps. I press my hand against it. There’s blood on my palm now. I pick up a bunny and have him nibble it off for me.

‘Hey.’
    ‘Hi.’
    ‘I egged your house.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Did it take long to clean?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    …
    ‘Do you hate me?’
    …
    ‘Casey?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘You’re a loser. Everyone who goes to this school is a loser.’
    ‘Do you hate me?’
    …
    ‘Do you want to hang out after school?’
    …
    ‘Casey.’
    ‘I do hate you.’
    ‘Do you want to hang after school? I’m sorry.’
    …
    …
    ‘Fine.’

It’s late, or early. Two o’clock in the morning. I’m standing in the middle of the street outside Tess’s house. The light in her bedroom is off. The blue curtains are black. I shut my eyes. I start walking. My heart rate quickens until it feels like a drum roll. I run. My eyes are shut and I’m running. Sneakers slapping against the pavement. The air is either cool or warm, but it smells like nothing. I will run until something stops me, blocks me, stands in my way. The sound of a car in the distance. A dog barking. A garage door closing. My mouth stretches until I’m smiling, breathing fast and loud. I will run forever, if that’s how long it takes to get to where I’m going.

Mark Jordan Manner

Mark Jordan Manner is currently a student at York University where he received the 2011 President’s Prize for Fiction. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ricepaper Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Untoward Magazine, Red Lightbulbs, among others, and his story ‘Poem About Writing A Poem’ recently earned 1st place in Bartleby Snopes Third Annual Dialogue Competition. His writing lives here: markjordanmanner.blogspot.com. His music lives here: meandtheinfinitelovely.bandcamp.com.

About the author:

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State. His work appears widely in print and also online at such places as The Literarian, Moon Milk Review, PANK, Elimae and others. Every few days he shares his thoughts about writing and life at lenkuntz.blogspot.com

I coasted down the dirt road on my piece of shit dirt bike. The dirt road was brown. The pebbles in the dust made my bike bounce. There was a little hill by the dirt road. It was mostly dirt and rocks. There was some scrub brush growing here and there. I looked up at the sky. I saw the remnants of a fading jet stream. I saw some movement in the scrub brush. I hit the footbrakes. I skidded in a circle. I approached the bush cautiously.
     Behind the bush was a big ass turkey vulture. It was twitching in the dirt. Its wing was snapped and bleeding. Its eyes were rolling around in its head. I stared the buzzard in the eye. I squatted down. I thought about poking it with a stick or something. I thought about bashing it over the head with a boulder or something. I didn’t know too much about killing buzzards. I liked to watch them circle in the sky. I liked it that it told me something about what was going on out in the distance. That something big was dead or dying.
     The buzzard got to its feet. Its broken wing was dragging in the dirt. The black feathers were specked with dust. It made no sound but it kept an eye on me. Its beak was hooked and white. I could see its chest rising and falling rapidly. I followed it down the hill. The buzzard tried to go faster. Its dragging wing was slowing it down. I strolled along looking at its nasty red wrinkled head and its beady eyes. I figured if it tried to rush me, I’d just kick it in the face. At the bottom of the hill, it headed out on the flood plain of the desert floor, its clawed feet leaving traces in the dust. I wondered if its friends would come and eat it. I looked overhead to see if they were circling in the sky.
     The buzzard made its way beyond our shed walking parallel to the wash. I wondered if I could herd the bird like a pig. I picked up a long piece of yucca pole. I tapped the buzzard on its unbroken left shoulder to see if I could make it turn. The buzzard just snapped at the pole, breaking it in half. I was surprised by the power of its bite and fell back a couple more steps. I started wondering if kicking the buzzard in the face would really do the job.
     I wondered how the buzzard would respond to my voice.
     “Fuck you buzzard,” I said.
     We walked on for about half a mile, out to the tree fort where I tried to kill my brother. He was kicking my ass up in the fort and I swore to God I’d kill him. He said that I wouldn‘t. I grabbed his arm and tried to throw him out. He slipped my grip and punched me in the kidney. I went down on one knee and looked up at him and said “One of these days I’ll kill you.” He laughed and called me an asshole. He climbed out of the tree. I lay there in the sun filled with rage staring up at the sun. I stared right into it until my eyes hurt and then I closed them and still saw the shape of the sun like it had burned its way into the inside of my eyelids forever.
     The buzzard came to the intersection of the little wash and the big wash and it didn’t seem to want to go out in the sand. I wondered if this was going to be the old bird’s last stand. It went back down on its side. I could hear it wheezing. It let out a hiss and shook its head. I sat down cross-legged in the dirt and watched the bird die. It took about an hour. I walked over to the buzzard and kicked it to make sure it was dead. I wondered if I should tell the old man. I figured it probably didn’t matter.
     I went back up the hill and got the long shovel and the digging spike from the garage. I put the spike through the shovel handle and carried it over my shoulder like a hobo stick. I walked back down the hill and found the buzzard again by the wash. It was still dead. I jabbed it in the leg with the heavy digging spike to make sure.
     I started loosening up the dirt with the digging spike. I raised it high above my head and let the weight of the spike bring it back down. “Let the tool do the work,” my old man had said when he showed me how to use it back when I was six. I gave the ground about thirty strikes with the pole and then dug the loosened dirt out with the shovel. When I hit rocks, I dug around their outlines and then pried them out with the spike and set them aside for the top of the buzzard’s grave. I dug about three feet down and about two feet wide and I saw the sun was going down and the colors of the sunset were everywhere across the sky. It was a blazing orange and red sunset and a little breeze was blowing through the mesquite. The buzzard didn’t smell too good and I didn’t want to touch it in case its wound was diseased. I took the spike and used the sharp end to push it into the hole. I backfilled the dirt slowly until all I could see was the red wrinkled head. I put in the last of the dirt and piled the big rocks on top as a grave marker.
     “Fucking buzzard,” I said and went up the hill because my mom was yelling about dinner being ready.

Ben Drinen

Ben writes short stories, flash fiction, novels, and a blog. His stories have appeared in journals and online in the U.S. and France. Ben and his old friend Nate Haken co-write a blog, which can be found at namesofplaces.blogspot.com. Ben also does storytelling, and was recently named Best Storyteller in Philadelphia by First Person Arts. A sample of his storytelling can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFZgUp-kvk8

Review by Carol Smallwood

The memoir, and then there were three… has a photo cover of Supriya Bhatnagar, the author as a child with her family. It looks at a childhood in a diverse, changing India beginning with the chapter, Prologue. The three refers to the family loss of her beloved father when Supriya was nine and her mother moves the two daughters from Bombay to Jaipur: “Even though Jaipur was a metropolis where streets had been paved, the city retained the inherent quality of the earth it lay upon.”
     Indian culture is deftly sketched by the Maharani Gayatri Divi Girls’ Public School, tea, shopping, street cleaners, and details about Amma, her tiny grandmother with a “little chignon at the nape of her neck” and a “big bluish green vein that ran down her hand.”
     Supriya experiences the blackouts of the 1971 war with Pakistan, the heat and cold of India. The haunting memoir includes universal types such as nosey neighbors, lecherous storekeepers–and what it was to be Hindu woman and not going into any temple during her menstruation: “Customs and traditions become ingrained in us to such an extent that to this day I follow this restriction without questioning its logic.”
     The author does not have an arranged marriage but after a long traditional courtship marries Anil who lives on the next street: “I loved the smell of Old Spice, his after-shave, and it was a familiar and strangely comforting smell as Daddy had used it everyday.” Her first kiss at seventeen is a delightful passage about her confusion. She comments about her own children, “As my children grow, I find myself dwelling not so much on the color of their skin but more on their health, their education, and their future.”
     It reminded me of God of Small Things by the award-winning Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, with its insight into human nature, the portrayal of the enduring complexities of India, its touches of humor, life through a child’s eyes. I enjoyed the author’s sharing her wide reading and deep appreciation of the classics growing up and concluded how her well-educated parents couldn’t but have had an influence on her becoming the Director of Publications for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs headquartered in Virginia which supports writers and writing programs around the world. A version of the chapter “Shattered” appears in Artful Dodge. One of her short stories appears in Femina, a leading English magazine in India.

Carol Smallwood

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (forthcoming, McFarland ); Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011). Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing is to be published in January 2012 by Key Publishing House, Inc.

About the author:

Supriya Bhatnagar is the Director of Publications at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) and the editor of the Writer’s Chronicle. Her short stories have appeared in Femina & 4Indianwoman.com. Her memoir and then there were three… was published in 2010 by Serving House Books. Essays from this book have appeared in Perigee & forthcoming in Artful Dodge. She has an essay forthcoming in the anthology Winter Tales Two: Women Write About Aging and the literary magazine NEO.

Before Grandpa died he showed me his scars from fighting demons, then how he’d wrestled one—jumping up and down like the congregation over in Itta Bena when the spirit washes over them. “They almost got me good,” he said, holding his arms out. His wrists chewed up from their teeth. “I got away but they’ll be back. They’re coming back for you.” He made me fear those demons in a way that if I ever saw them, I would have the courage to fight back.
     The night before I saw the demons gliding across the water, I was with Paw and Uncle Ricky. They cleaned their rifles to shine by the slow glow of a kerosene lamp. Ma and my sister, Lottie, had gone to Rulelville for the last weekend of Cotton Days festival, armed with quilts they’d knitted to sell or trade.
     I like it when the women leave. I get to stay up with Paw and Uncle Ricky, playing cards and hearing stories that Ma said I shouldn’t. Uncle Ricky taught me how to deal off the bottom of the deck. “You gotta make’m cards pop with your thumb. That’s how to fool’m.” Paw let me drink from the bottle when the women weren’t around. That night it was brown whiskey, traded for earlier in the season. “Savor it boy,” Paw said. It tasted like pecan shell and burned like bile, but I tried to hold it, tried to let it sit on my tongue. Every time Paw drank, I tried to drink. Every time Uncle Ricky drank, I tried to drink again. I passed out with the smell of gun oil in my nose. When I woke they were gone.
     And they’re still gone, and now I can read MS5737 on the side of the approaching white boat. It is weighed down with demons. They look like men, but the devil rules their hollows. One has his hands cupped around his mouth, screaming hexes that make no sense. I stay low, my knuckles white like ghosts from the grip of the rifle. The sweet smell of gun oil engulfs me with its halo. When I pull the trigger I feel my father’s arms around me, steadying the gun. I see the flash from powder, and spirits rise from the barrel.
     They lick their lips, ready to feast on my agony. I can’t hear my father’s cry from the woods. I’ll never hear how my sister cursed God. The next time I feel my mother’s arms, I am a child again, and her breasts are warm.

William Lusk Coppage

William Lusk Coppage was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta. After serving in the United States Air Force, he completed his MFA in poetry from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA. He now teaches English in Wilmington, NC at Cape Fear Community College. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Oxford American, The Greensboro Review, Cream City Review, Blue Earth Review, and Word Riot.

the aloe doesn’t like the sunshine, but today,
it likes her. the gold dots in the air agree,

wheeing and whooping. the rocks in the soil
are foundation, not obstacle.

the green leafy sprouting we swore was basil
is a purple flowering weed. i hacked down

the dry stalks from last year’s crop
and they’re permanently reaching,

taking up space. the wind
is supposed to throw seeds

and the plants are supposed to spew pollen
and the vegetables are supposed to grow and

grow and feed us—but everywhere else is stone,
a bundle of dried sticks, mossy dirt between concrete blocks.

everywhere else says no. her name is probably
Naji and i don’t hate her, but I want to sing

like her, like a bottle of wine and
i want that awful hesitation, that click,

before i wrap my arms and legs around you,
and i want you to shrink back

into another language, the one
you invented that has the same

exact word for yes and no.
i want to repot the jade plants.

i’d skip town in a car,
return to a jungle,

pick a pepper, whoop
like a hungry bird.

About the author:

Kimberly Ann Southwick is the founder and editor in chief of the literary arts journal Gigantic Sequins. She lives in Philadelphia and adjuncts at Rowan University and the University of Phoenix. She has a poem forthcoming in Barrelhouse. You can visit her blog at giganticsequins.blogspot.com

About the author:

Mark Hage is a writer and visual artist based in New York City. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Pear Noir! Emprise Review, Contrary Magazine, Corium, LITnIMAGE, Prick of the Spindle, InDigest, Metazen and others. His artworks have hung in those big white walled rooms where the receptionists never raise their heads. Two of his stories were nominated for the 2011 StorySouth Award.

It was well into March when Rusty found the horse of his dreams.
     An hour past the gorge and millions of corn stalks later, nestled a shit hole of a farm. Blown tires littered the ground, animals ran loose; the water buckets were fly infested, and the hay was old and mildewed. They wouldn’t have stopped were it not for a tiny sign on the side of the road: FOR SALE: HORSES. Rusty wanted to drive past, repulsed by the conditions, but Juneifer said they might as well stop and see. She was getting tired of searching. They turned up the tiny road.
     A mangy dog with bur-mottled fur barked toward a once blue farmhouse and the door opened. A man around forty walked out, dressed in a white undershirt, oil-stained blue jeans, and ratty boots. “Can I help you?”
     “Sign said you had some horses for sale?” Juneifer asked. Rusty stayed in the truck.
     “Horse. Just one. Sold the others. But he’s the best horse you’ll set your eyes on. You won’t wanna leave without him. He’s in the field. Lemme get him.” He took off toward the back of the house. Juneifer opened the truck door and the ramp lowered with Rusty’s wheelchair.
     “Don’t get your hopes up…” Juneifer murmured as the man lead the horse around the back of the house toward them. She stared at the animal, mortified.
     The man had returned with a fat pony. The pony’s fur must have been at least three inches thick over his enormous, probably wormy, belly. It was clumped with dirt. His mane hung below the underside of his neck, knotted wildly on both sides of the crest. His hooves were overgrown, curled and cracking, in desperate need of a farrier. His overgrown fetlocks were twisted, and his tail touched the ground but looked thin and raggy. “This is a special one. Old circus pony.”
     “This one?” Juneifer said. “Is he even a pony?” She put her hand on his withers to gauge his height.
     “He’s a large. 14.2 hands, sticked him myself,” the man argued. Juneifer frowned and stepped away. Desperately, the owner added, “He does tricks. Walks on two feet, bows, skips, great with children.”
     “If he’s that great, why isn’t he sold? You said the others were sold.”
     “Color. The kids always want the white and black ponies. Especially if they’re black and white. Never the bays or chestnuts.”
     “Is he sound?”
     “Never been lame a day in his life. Here, look,” the man said, trying to jog. The pony didn’t want to trot next to him, and walked lazily. The man yanked at the lead rope to get him forward, and the pony dropped his head to the ground and snatched a mouthful of grass. He yanked again, and, finally, the pony conceded. His trot was smooth and even, tail whipping to swat flies off his body. Juneifer squatted on the ground when the man turned around to trot back and see if he tracked straight or she could see any signs of him being off, even though she didn’t know horses the way she knew cattle. He indeed looked sound and healthy despite the poor care.
     “What’s his name?”
     Juneifer and the owner seemed startled by Rusty’s question, but the man rebounded quickly. “Sprinkles.”
     “…Sprinkles?”
     “I told you, he was a circus pony. Great with kids. Best pony you’ll get. You got kids?”
     “One. Teenager,” Juneifer replied as she walked around the other side of Sprinkles and tried to assess his physique. Rusty rolled his wheelchair to the pony, hand extended to touch his muzzle, whiskers long and bristling.
     “Hey Sprinkles,” he called. The pony looked him in the eye before licking his hand and then cheek like a dog. His upper lip tugged upward to smell Rusty before he mouthed his hair and smeared green froth into it.
     Rusty asked, “How much?”
     Rusty was won over without seeing a single trick and, four-hundred-and-fifty bucks later, had a bill of sale scribbled on a napkin with rainbow party balloons in hand. He was so excited about his pony that he rode in the back of the trailer next to him for the three hours home.

Mia Siegert

Mia Siegert is an MFA student at Goddard College studying long fiction. Siegert received honorable mention in fiction for the 2009 Montclair State University English Department Awards. Siegert has studied with Rebecca Brown, Douglas A. Martin, Judy Troy, and David Galef. She has been a drama editor for Goddard’s literary press, The Pitkin Review.

It was my fault the wall fell on Jimmy. I had tripped on the support stud and tore it free of its base, all two hundred-sixty pounds of me windmilling off the foundation just in time. The fall to earth played hell on my elbow, but I didn’t worry about it as I helped lift Jimmy’s limp body off the cement and carry him to Steve’s pickup. Jimmy and I had been good friends since the sixth grade and I sincerely hoped I hadn’t killed him.

I hadn’t. The doctor at the emergency room came out and told us there was some minor bleeding on the brain and they were going to keep him overnight as a precaution. I asked about the lip chewing and tottering and the doctor patted my shoulder and said it wasn’t uncommon for a concussed individual to exhibit signs of disorientation, and that everything should be fine and that I should go on home and get some sleep.

I didn’t sleep much. My elbow hurt. Plus I worried about Jimmy. His parents died when he was a teenager and his wife left him for a chemical engineer and he didn’t have anyone to be at his bedside. In the morning I went to the hospital and was told Jimmy was in good condition and would be released in a matter of hours.

Jimmy was awake and watching television. His nose was roughed up but otherwise he looked fine. He saw me and smiled on one side of his face, like normal.

“Hey, Al, what’s up.”

“You are, pretty soon,” I said. “They’re letting you go, buddy.”

“Cool beans,” he said. Again, perfectly normal: Jimmy was the master of the outdated comeback.

I sat in the chair next to his bed and watched sports replays. An orderly came in to collect Jimmy’s breakfast tray. He was a tall, skinny kid with an exaggerated strut and pants down around his hips.

“What goes on,” said the orderly, and I nodded. He collected the tray and turned to leave.

“You need to pull your pants up,” said Jimmy. “No one wants to look at your drawers. You’re embarrassing yourself and most likely your family.”

He said this all very matter-of-factly, as if simply reciting facts, which I guess he was. But this wasn’t Jimmy. The Jimmy I knew was exceedingly polite, a mind-his-own-business type of guy.

The orderly reversed course and said, with considerable attitude, “Say that again?”

“I said you need to pull your pants up,” Jimmy repeated, still without inflection. “No one wants to look at your—” At this point I rose from my chair and waved him off.

“Thanks for the tray,” I said, filling the kid’s sightline with my bulk. “We’ll call if we need anything else.”

After, I expected Jimmy to acknowledge the confrontation, perhaps even deliver a punch line, but instead he returned his attention to the sports replays. Then he pulled a bloody cotton plug from a nostril and held it up for observation.

“About the size of your dick, hey Jimmy?” said Steve, entering the room with Garth in tow. Steve was the clown of our crew and especially enjoyed ribbing Jimmy, seeing as how Jimmy embarrassed easily.

But not this time.

“Wrong,” said Jimmy. “It’s roughly twice that, like so.” He held his index finger and thumb about three inches apart, no irony in his expression whatsoever.

To which Steve and Garth looked at each other wide-eyed and broke out laughing.

“Don’t tell me Jimmy woke up with a sense of humor,” said Steve.

“Jimmy woke up jonesin’ for a cigarette,” said Jimmy, and I thought: Well, he still smokes.

We small-talked for a bit until Garth, the foreman, said they had to get back to work. I told him I’d be back after getting Jimmy settled at his apartment. Both men shook hands with Jimmy, but then the nurse came in and Garth and Steve decided to stay put. She was a tall brunette with an easy way about her.

“How you fellas doing today?” she said, and we told her. The nurse went about checking Jimmy’s vitals and unhooking his IV, at one point dropping a roll of tape and bending over in front of Jimmy to retrieve it.

“You have shapely breasts,” he said. “My wife was a double-A cup. And her pussy was always dry.”

The silence was epic; even Steve was speechless. The nurse stood and glared at Jimmy, but his face was blank, as if he were back in geometry class.

The nurse flipped the tape in the air. “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” she said, and stormed out, offering more choice words along the way.

Steve was talk-laughing into his hands, scrubbing them up and down crazily. Garth leaned close and whispered in my ear.

“He’s not right.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s like he can’t do the bullshit. Lost his filter or something.”

“What are you whispering about?” said Jimmy.

“Your wife’s cooch,” lied Garth, and Jimmy laughed like he always laughed and said, “That’s the funniest thing you’ve said in the four years I’ve known you.”

We bantered some more, and then Garth and Steve left, and another nurse came in, a beefy, square-jawed specimen who glared as if daring Jimmy to make another smart-ass comment. I got him checked out, filled his scripts in the first-floor pharmacy and drove him home. On the way I searched the radio for the country-western songs he favored, but Jimmy told me to stop on Aretha Franklin.

He sang without reservation. “What you want, baby I got it …” Jimmy had a high-pitched voice and I had never heard him sing before, at least like this. He was really into it, making elaborate hand motions and bobbing his head and whatnot, and pretty soon I had joined in with the backup vocals (“sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me …”). When it was over Jimmy lit a cigarette and said that was one of the five best songs of the twentieth century, and I found myself agreeing despite my heavy metal leanings.

I hit the drive-thru for lunch. “How about some real food?” I said, but Jimmy just wanted coffee. I ordered enough for two and dug into my first bacon cheeseburger, complementing it with mouthfuls of fries and gulps of cherry cola. It was a beautiful summer day and Jimmy sipped his coffee and smoked his cigarette and sang along to the Commodores as he stared out the open window.

I was unwrapping my second burger when Jimmy turned down the radio. “Your eating’s out of control,” he said flatly. “You’re a prime candidate for cardiac arrest: obesity, family history, sedentary life style.”

I decided to test him. “And those cigarettes you smoke? Each one takes, what, seven minutes off your life?”

“Is that what it is?” he said. “Seems high.” Nonetheless, he crumpled the cigarette pack. “Quitting’s a bitch, isn’t it Al?”

I agreed it was and dropped the burger in the bag. We were a half-mile from Jimmy’s apartment. An old Michael Jackson song came on and Jimmy cranked it up and went into his routine. His moves were fluid, actually quite impressive, yet watching him I couldn’t help but remember how we used to ridicule this stuff as a group of adrenaline-charged jocks.

As he swiveled his hips, Jimmy grimaced and put a hand on his crotch.

“Rubbed myself raw last night,” he said. “All those drugs, it took hours.”

It was hard not to smile. “What about the nurses?”

“What about them?” he said, and looked at me with genuine curiosity. I shrugged as if to say, stupid question.

“I masturbate to your sister,” said Jimmy. “Every night. I’ve had a thing for her since my freshman year.”

I pressed a knuckle into my forehead and pulled into Jimmy’s parking lot. Cheryl was three years older than us. She used to prance around in her bikini with her cheerleader friends as Jimmy and I shot hoops in the driveway. I guess I should have seen this coming.

“I called her from the hospital room,” Jimmy said. “I’m taking her out this weekend.”

I thought of the grownup Cheryl, divorced, two kids, the way she would talk about Mr. Right coming along. I wondered how she’d feel about Mr. No Bullshit.

“Listen, Jimmy,” I said. “When the wall hit you … you know, I’m just thinking you should give this thing some time.”

“There’s no time like now,” he said, and smiled on one side of his face, the way he did.

I looked out the window and thought about that.

“She likes shrimp and Corona,” I said. “And you gotta love kids. Good luck, buddy.”

Andy Henion

Andy Henion grew up in the swamps of northern lower Michigan, along the beautiful Ausable River, and read lots of Stephen King and J.D. Salinger when he wasn’t chasing balls around a field. He now lives a few hours south and writes nonfiction for a living and fiction for fun (and sanity). More than 100 of his short stories have been published online and in print, and he’s been nominated for a Pushcart. This is his fourth appearance in Word Riot.

     One sister was the top half of the olive. She imagined herself in the mouth of the old man she was in love with. The other sister, the bottom half, was trapped under the tongue until she slipped out as the large mouth took the shape of laughter. There was something just right about the way she moved in his mouth and she knew he was probably thinking about it right then, whoever he was, and thinking about that made her think of the old man she was in love with and how much easier it would be to keep the whole thing a secret, now that she and her sister were free of one another.
     It was at the precise moment she was having these thoughts that the top half of the olive came sliding over the bridge of the large mouth’s tongue and fell into her sister. The two of them were pushed back between the set of large teeth. The teeth came down and the sisters were mashed beyond recognition, swirled back and scattered on either side of the gums before the tongue did a twirling number and grouped the bulk of them back in one place. Then they were swallowed.
     They came apart as they moved down the throat of the man who wasn’t the man they were in love with but who made them both think of that man, and they came together again in a mucous-thick canal, which steadily drew them together toward the stomach. They were sore and cursed one another and wished more than anything that they were back in the jar where they’d been less than an hour ago, back when they were together and felt they could never be apart.
     They reached the stomach, and were digested. They were spread thinner than they could have imagined, but they found each other again. Rather they were forced back together, neither one knowing quite what to do with herself or what was happening, but both feeling very tired and resigned to this new torture that was now their lives.
     They were forced together in a new moist environment and they settled there for a moment, and rested. Things weren’t perfect, but they were still. And that was a place to start.
     One turned toward the other quite suddenly, opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, but the water around them shifted. They were pressed closer together, too close for comfort, and the sisters, scattered as they were, thin as they were spread, started arguing for the first time in as long as they could remember. They argued and cursed but it did no good because the water around them only continued to be drawn away and they were only pressed closer together.
     Then they were inched along. Slowly at first, and then with some speed. They were squeezed more tightly than if they’d been made entirely of the same material and after a moment of complete darkness, they emerged into a great bright space. They were flying, and then they sank.
     Water held them, worked its way between them. They clung to one another then, but the water was relentless in its soft separation. They buoyed once, gasped for air, and were flushed.
     The whirlpool took them somewhere wonderful and strange beyond the capability of most to imagine. It was vast and dark and full of strange, sudden sounds. They looked to one another, but recognized hardly anything of the other’s face. Ad yet what they found most shocking – other than the physical abuse, the unsettling shifts of reality – was that they had each forgotten the man they’d been in love with. As they were slowly spread apart from one another, melting away to only a trace of what had been, their thoughts drifted from this to that, but rarely to him. And when it finally came out, when one casually let his name fall at a moment when there was too little left of either of them to amount to any noticeable trace of what they had been, neither seemed to pay it much mind. The name slipped out, and they dissolved until there was nothing left.

In one story, the two sisters had a dozen children between them.

     The children were from two different men, brothers actually. But it had been so long since the sisters had seen either brother, their memories of the two men had fused into one collective entity.

     That man wouldn’t raise a finger to stop the world from falling, one sister said.

     He had five children to replace each of his senses, and the final one to take the place of his governing mind, the other agreed.
     The sisters didn’t care much for these children. One sister named each of her children Lyle, even the two girls. The other sister named each of her children after one of the apostles, but immediately after began referring to each as that one.

     Tell that one to stop yelling at that one before that one wakes up and starts howling.

     The sisters weren’t hateful, just disinterested. They let the children run free most of the time, explore the woods and streams around their small country home. The twelve children learned to fend for themselves. They knew the surrounding area like a team of scouts. They figured out elaborate pulley systems and took a tree down with a few ropes, some sharp wood and some scrap metal. Out of the tree they made chairs, a table and walls for a fort. They tangled the branches and made a decent roof. Every now and then, when it was warm enough, they were made to sleep outside, and so they’d built a place entirely for themselves. The older set soon realized they would eat better if they hunted, rather than relying on the gruelish meals their mothers prepared. So the children saved what food they were given and used it for bait. They ate rabbits, squirrels, birds, whatever they could catch.
     One day the eldest Lyle discovered the uneaten carcass of an enormous blackbird. With his pinky finger, he scooped the maggots from their canals. He plucked the feathers from the body, pinched ants from its sunken chest. He cooked the thing over a spit, half a mile or so from home. He offered bite after bite to the other Lyles as they watched. That One and That One watched him too, but none would eat the mess, even roasted.
     That night, the eldest Lyle threw up in the living room. He threw up in the sink. The two sisters put him out back and he spent the night alone, sleeping on the porch right outside the door, alive with fever dreams and sweating up a thick film along his arms and legs and chest. In the morning, they found him at the very top of an old oak tree. Nothing anyone said could get him down. The two sisters yelled,

     Come down this instant, and he squawked like a bird.

     One of the Lyles threw a rock and hit the eldest Lyle in the leg. He moved farther up into the thinner branches of the tree. One sister scolded the rock thrower while the other cooed at the eldest Lyle,

     Come down this instant, Sweetie.

     He did not come down. Finally, one of the middle Lyles stepped forward.

     You best come down, he said. You best come down because Mom didn’t tell us the full story of that tree and I read the full story from one of the books on the shelf.

     None of the children had paid much attention to the single shelf of books installed above the family fireplace. The eldest children had shown no interest in reading or learning to read, and the younger children had followed in their footsteps.
     Lyle continued,

     And that tree is a haunted tree and we’ve been living our whole lives right next to it, climbing it without even sensing its being haunted. But it’s a man-eater, they say. That’s the way the book put it. It will open itself up and swallow a man or a boy whole. Zip up its mouth like a set of blue jeans and the man or boy will drown in the aging wood.

     The eldest Lyle shouted down,

     is that true?

     The other Lyle nodded slowly, with assurance.

     It is.

     The eldest Lyle climbed down from the tree and asked what they had to eat. He’d thrown up the roasted bird all night and was sick all over and feeling weak. The two sisters took turns lecturing him and scolding him and reminding him how much trouble he’d put himself and the rest of them in and by the end he wasn’t hungry anymore.
     That same storytelling Lyle is now the town’s own Lyle Garrity, soon to be mayor. And people whisper, as Lyle Garrity descends the stairs at the podium, wiping away sweat with a silk handkerchief, having laid them all bare with one of his mighty pre-elections speeches, they whisper,

     He’s got the gift, that one. He could talk a sick bird out of a tree and into being his own brother.

In one story, the two sisters shared a keyhole.

     It was undeniable, they decided, that there was something on the other side of the door. The door was locked, had been for as long as they could remember. It was made of thick wood, and neither of them had the strength to bring it down. So they kept watch. One sister got the morning hours. Her eyes were weaker and, when the light failed in the afternoons, she had trouble seeing. The better-sighted sister kept watch from noon until dark. But she often stayed up later, her eye affixed to the tiny shot of darkness there at the door. They were each confident they had seen something moving on the other side. One described it as a dark figure, hairless and shifting like a shadow. The other had seen what could have only been a man’s hand.

     No man could live in there for that long, the sorry-eyed sister said.

     But what if he leaves while we’re at the market, asked her sister. Or at night? If he found times to leave, he could live in there for as long as we can live out here.

     The skeptical, better-sighted sister said,

     We would hear him.

     She watched for him, nonetheless. She woke up as early as she could, while her better-sighted sister was still asleep, tired from staring into the dark keyhole late into the night. The sorry-sighted sister would sneak to the keyhole and stare. One eye shut, one eye stuck to the cool frame of their unknown.
     One morning she whispered into the hole.

     If you’re in there, she said, you can come out. We won’t hurt you.

     There was no response.

     If you want, I can bring you food, she whispered. Then, I think I’m in love with you.

     Nothing. She had trouble turning the keyhole over to her sister that afternoon. Some part of her was sure if she remained just a moment longer, he would say something back. But the rules were the rules, and neither wanted things to get nasty. They were eating less and less, each spending more and more time at the keyhole. The sorry-sighted sister woke at 3:30 each morning and saw the sunrise behind her in its illumination of the keyhole. First the gilded shape of the hole lit up, and then its shadowy contents. Somewhere inside there was a table…or a tall chair. There was a length of wood anyway. The floor shone too. It must have been hardwood.
     The better-sighted sister sometimes fell asleep with her face pressed to the keyhole. If the house shifted, her one eye shot open, surveying the darkness on the other side. She rarely fell back asleep.
     Nearly five days passed and neither sister left the house. They paced the kitchen, the perimeter of the living room, waiting for their turn at the door. The sorry-sighted sister still whispered. All morning, all the day through.

     I imagine you’re a kind man, she said. I imagine you’ve got a good thing going in there and don’t want to disturb us, and I appreciate that. We’re happy and don’t need any complications. But you’ve got us all tied up in knots out here. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but your mystery has a kind of gravity to it. You could be the worst or the best man in the world, I’m in love with your shape.

     She ran her thin finger around the arc and the base of the keyhole. Nothing. The next morning she began by singing softly into the keyhole, a song about pigeons and cloth and ribbons wrapping around the shape of each new thing as it passes through to some holy space where maybe they could go and forget all of this, this whole mystery of waiting and darkness and burning eyes and lonely hearts. She was exhausted. She was hungry. Her better-sighted sister was asleep, leaning against the wall across from her. The keyhole was warm with the sorry-sighted sister’s face. The wood of the door was soft against her cheek. A voice said,

     Please.

     She blinked.

     Please, it said. Go to sleep. Go to the market. You’re killing me.

     The sorry-sighted sister looked behind her to make sure her better-sighted sister was still asleep. She was snoring softly, slumped chin to chest, her knees locked and her body still.

     Open the door, she whispered. I’ll feed you. I’ll give you water. Come out and see us. I knew you were there all along. I just knew it and…it makes me very happy that you’re talking to me finally and…she was raising her voice and had to cut herself off before she woke her sister who might scare the voice off with how excited she’d be.

     Please, it said. Life is very hard in here. You’ve got to understand.

     She did understand. She really did. Life was not easy for her either. Her sister was very demanding and even cruel sometimes. They were alone most of the time. They didn’t eat well, they never had. She didn’t like hard work. She didn’t like the walk to town. It was lonely and the people in town were so complicated and cruel too. She did not like life outside the house and she did not like life inside the house. She liked the feelings that her thoughts about the keyhole gave her. Daydreaming was a perfect blanket and a set of hands. But now they were spending all day and all night in the house, afraid to leave, too excited to leave, their faces pressed to the keyhole hour after hour.

     I’ve been waiting for you, she said.

     Please, said the voice, leave.

     Open the door, she said. Open it and come out and let me see what I’ve been waiting for.

     I can’t, said the voice.

     Why, she asked.

     She rattled the knob. She leaned away from the keyhole and rattled it again with both hands.

     Please don’t do this, said the voice.

     Please don’t do this, she said back.

     She rattled the knob. She kicked the door at its base.

     Come out.

     Her sister’s eyes opened.

     Come out! The sorry-sighted sister was yelling now.

     What’s going on, asked her better-sighted sister.

     This…

     The sorry-sighted sister left the room. She came back with the rusted axe they’d used for chopping wood nearly fifteen years before. With the inhuman strength of a madman she plunged the axe into the door.

     You come out and I will feed you and give you your water.

     She dug the axe out, plunged it again into the meat of the door. Again, she plunged, using her whole body, her arms, her legs, her back. Her hair came loose from its ties and whipped alongside the axe as she plunged it once again. And once more before the bulk of the door gave way and daylight from the open room matched that of the living room to hold them in a swathe of dusty beams. She let fall the axe. Her sister came to her side. Their hands came together, and they waited.

About the author:

Colin Winnette is a writer and performer living in Chicago, IL. His first novel, REVELATION, is forthcoming with Mutable Sound Press (November 2011). He was a finalist for the 1913 First Book Award, judged by Fanny Howe, and is a current nominee for the Pushcart Prize for fiction. More information and links to more work can be found at colinwinnette.com.

I’m today, part of what’s passing. I ask booths who they are anti-meridian. I’ve met people who do not facilitate pillows. I am not out of first person sentences. Now as far as I know: don’t.

I Am Close To Myself More

Everything is sentimental marries a trash can, puts beers emptied in, sits on a sofa someone else paid several someone elses for, spellchecks hearts, looks up looking at anything touching something reminding, remembered, as now as gone.

Fast Floor

I tremor The microwave’s awful, perpetuate refrigerators I can’t dial for numbers. Elevator sex twines We’re seeing each other angled. The middle of a sentence is not.

I’ve Driving

Let’s sit down to sex. Share three sides, belly ten dollars. I’m on the square less than once a future room. You kiss the way I knew my mouth.

Parker Tettleton

Parker Tettleton’s work is featured in &/or forthcoming from Gargoyle, NAP, The Catalonian Review, Spittoon, & PANK, among others. His chapbook SAME OPPOSITE is available from Thunderclap! Press. More or less is here.

About the author:

I am an Indian writer residing in Kolkata (Calcutta).

I have written a non-fiction best-seller The Mind of Swami Vivekananda for Jaico; my children’s novel The Fantabulous Fens has been published by ireadiwrite Publishing, Canada; and I have recently co-authored two volumes of essays for Macmillan India. A 5,000-word short story of mine features in Prizewinning Asian Fiction (Hong Kong University Press). My writings have been published in various magazines including Lunarosity (USA) and The Cynic Online (USA).

I’m sorry that my mouth is like
quicksand

I will try to throw you
some rope
before it’s
too late

Don’t say please
There’s not enough time
for that

Kevin Sampsell

Kevin Sampsell’s first several (now extremely rare) chapbooks (in the early 90s) were poetry collections. Nowadays, he mostly writes fiction, memoir, essays, and haiku. He’s currently making a “poetry comeback” and has had poems published on Everyday Genius and The Fanzine. His books include Beautiful Blemish (Word Riot Press) and A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial). He lives in Portland, Oregon and runs the small press, Future Tense Books. His audio track was produced by B. Frayn Masters.

Nancy Hightower

Nancy Hightower lectures on the rhetorics of the grotesque and fantastic in art, film, & literature. She writes fiction for artists, galleries, and museums and has had work published in storySouth, The New York Quarterly, The Cresset, and Big Muddy.

About the author:

Vincent Peiffer lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Morning fog in bay windows pulse
thighs
gooseflesh wall
I hold with you.
This wooden floor
echoes
the room crowded
with American history. Anthology of
your marrow. You want
transformation.
You want to change your mind.

Joseph Mains

Joseph Mains was born in the Sonoran desert. Now living in Portland, Oregon, he co-curates the reading series Bad Blood and is a founding member of Milk/Shop.

I have never taken Lithium but I’ve taken Lamictal and Trileptal and Lexapro and maybe Prozac—I was dizzy and cannot say for sure. Definitely Valium and Vicodin and Percocet. My real memoir is eight pages long: six of those pages I am shaving my beard before driving to the airport. I have taken bottles worth of Tylenol PM for months while I slept on my couch for a year because my bed was haunted. I’ve taken Xanax and Lexapro and one time so much Klonopin people were worried for days, maybe years. These days I take less and breathe more. K clips my back feathers every night before bed. She is scared I won’t be there in the morning so she checks the trees outside before checking the warm spot next to her in bed. Don’t worry I say. We are pigeons perched on unplugged amps. Still, monogamy is walking with training wheels, so I never drive through Georgia without shaking. Valium is a chemical hug.

I hope I am so late to work the world is already ending. I practice not closing my eyes behind steering wheels. I practice accidental color. The world didn’t end so I stay doped through work, stand next to the water cooler but no one wants to talk about last night’s repeat of Frasier. I tell the photocopier Please buy my book so I can buy a big house and have a valid reason to vote Republican. I write in my journal So I can eat a burrito and always have salsa in the fridge. I text K So my chips can go stale before I finish the bag and I won’t even care. I won’t even care a little. I tell myself So one day my future child will tell me I was a good man. On TV Felicity says Oh, I feel so grown up. My heart, it says Oh, you beat so old fashioned. At home I tell K I have never fallen asleep under a streetlamp. That should mean something, right?

Gregory Sherl

Gregory Sherl is the author of Heavy Petting (YesYes Books, 2011) and The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail (Mud Luscious Press, 2012). These pieces are part of his collection Monogamy Songs, which will be released by Future Tense Books in the summer of 2012. He can be reached at jesuis.gregory@gmail.com and blogs/reviews/interviews at http://gregorysherlisgregorysherl.com/.

Jennifer Dickinson

Jennifer Dickinson received her BA from Hollins University. Her work has appeared in Blackbird and Other Voices, and she is the recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a grant from the Money For Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in Los Angeles where she works as a casting director for reality television.

Christopher Grimes

I never talk about a project that I’m currently working on. This isn’t a superstition or anything like that. For me, talking about a work-in-progress siphons away some of the pressure that’s forcing it to become complete. Talking about it can wreck it, I think, can create wreckage out of it, so instead of the work as a whole coming into the world, what comes are bits and parts of exposition, just the fragments of talking about it and not much more than that.

When and why did you begin writing?

Like life itself, writing and reading can be really boring. Reading boring writing, writing boring stuff. But then I discovered some not so boring writing—the work of Calvino, Paley, Nabokov, Borges and lots of others. These writers can be exhilarating. After awhile, I experienced pockets of exhilaration in my own tedious, boring writing. I would bore myself to tears, then throw the drafts away like so much Kleenex. Then one day I didn’t. One day I surprised myself. That took a long time, though.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

After writing the short story “Glue Trap,” which is collected in my book Public Works (FC2). Before that, I wanted to be a writer. But with that story, I had written something approximating an aesthetic object, a thing within which the parts all worked together toward a unity, a something whole. Now I knew what it actually meant to write a story, and I’ve spent much of my writer’s life after that trying to push and dismantle what I learned there and, of course, elsewhere.

What inspired you to write your first book?

My first book was a collection of stories. Mostly many short-shorts and short fictions. The inspiration was as varied as the stories themselves.

Who or what has influenced your writing?

A whole host of writers, most typically categorized, I suppose, as postmodern writers. That’s neither here nor there. I think what’s most influenced my writing is trusting improvisation, usually an antidote to boredom. Nothing is so boring as complete control, a kind of fascism of the imagination.

What genre are you most comfortable writing?

Short fiction, definitely. My new novel, The Pornographers (Jaded Ibis Press), is written like a very long short story, has, I mean, an intensity and structure that I think most would attribute more to a short story than a novel. I’m a sprinter by disposition. And now, having written a novel, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about how to write one. The one I wrote is composed of one 150 page (or so) grammatically correct sentence, and feels more like a 800 meter dash than a marathon, I suspect.

Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

I can’t respond to this with specifics. Let me tell you why: I’m a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. One of the things that you get good at in such a position is scouting talent, of recruiting and doing your best to nurture that talent. I can tell you that from my position the future of fiction is not just interesting but outright fascinating and important.

What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?

That much of my work should be read as satire. Much of it is satire. Not much, most. Almost all. I’m confused when I’m occasionally called out for having characters with obnoxiously “off” points of view on a subject. My fiction is populated with occasionally wrong-thinking, but nevertheless well-intentioned morons. They do mean well. They just tend to be episodically idiotic. And frequently bored.

Any thoughts on being a writer of literary fiction in 2011?

It’s becoming an old story. The New York publishing houses have been consolidating or folding for the past many decades. They’re for sure not bringing much literary fiction to market. Whatever. Let them go. It’s the golden age of Indie presses, a revolution that has as much to do with web platforms as it does with print-on-demand technology, I think. Think about it: before print-on-demand, loaded into the cost of every book was production of the book itself, the person who ships the book, the truck the book is shipped on , the cost of every mile from point A to point B, the bookstore’s overhead, the cost of warehousing remainders, the destruction of the book, finally, into pulp. The economy of book production and distribution changes remarkably with print-on-demand. And the result? Free from such rigorous capital constraints, publishers themselves are able to explore their own possibilities, other ways of doing things that brings the art back into the art of publishing. Jaded Ibis Press, for example, is releasing my novel The Pornographers with full color art on every page by Scott Zieher. They’re also releasing it as a trade paperback, a e-book, an art object and work in collaboration with the musical artists OC Notes and Lisa Dank. And if that weren’t enough, they’re releasing a short-short story version of the book entitled Pornographies. Can you imagine an “establishment press” taking that kind of risk? Can you imagine them taking even half or a quarter of this risk? No. The old business model prohibits it. Good riddance to the old way of doing things.

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