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Walt McDonald Averil Bones Andrew Penland Adam Pettet Alec Kowalczyk Alison Daniel Richard Jordan Andrea Forbing-Maglione M'Lou Caring Duane Locke Marissa Ann Ranello Elena Ferrer John Kidd Jennifer Calkins      For Friends Missing in Action by Walt McDonald Give a kick to the jukebox and help it move along. Even a platter warped by old good music has to end. Let someone else stuff quarters for all sad songs he needs. Blue smoke layers the bar, the dance floor almost deserted, sawdust shoved like snowdrifts by a hundred boots. Years back, I heard the boasts of buddies earning wings. We launched ourselves into empty air, nothing but faith in our fists to save us from stalls and spins, trained by snarling instructors we envied. Who ever had such friends, men we would die for, years before the skies of Vietnam? Southeast Asia's on my mind, and this good-hearted girl who's danced with me for years. Whenever I look up, she's here, the same rouged reason I go on playing country tunes until closing. Leading her slow over sawdust, I try to forget the losses since Saigon, fiddles stuck on three sweet bitter beats, nothing to do but hold her, humming the same old songs. First published in West Branch   Driving at Night Through Hardscrabble by Walt McDonald Through the rear-view I keep car lights in sight like sparks pinging from a chain I'm dragging. No one is out tonight but me and whoever tails me like a ghost I can't ignore. On land this flat no wonder people follow close, the highway black as a Bible and seldom used. Coyotes are dead on the road, pelts like old tire treads. Eighty, ninety, he hovers a hundred yards behind, thinks I'm a plain-clothes cop trying to trap him, waiting for me to make a move. I won't swerve and shower him with gravel if he passes, my lights on bright to see who's there. I could kill my lights and stop, but I'd have to limp along to Lubbock alone, the flat black sky so close I can hear stars burn. First published in The Black Fly Review   Bulls in a World They Owned by Walt McDonald We trucked heifers home for the bull faithful to duty, steel ring in his nose drooling with service, a narrow world he would die for, whole herds depending on his power. An old bull groans, sore muscles driving him to gore all fools who try to stop the long parade of lust. For years in his steel-rail stall, there were no other bulls. Bring on the cows, his swagger bragged, bring them to me. In time, all snorting stopped. Now nothing's on his mind but grass. Mild as steers in a feedlot, he grazes fields of bees, sways in alfalfa pastures, eyes closed, hearing the bawling calves, the bells of distant cows. First published in Poet Lore Return to Top of  Page       The Vanity of the Moon by Averil Bones Looking down at the sea from her dark abyss of sky the moon saw her face pitted and scarred and could not bear to carry her countenance. So, times when her misery was at highest ebb, she would hide her pitted and scarred face and the ocean would mourn in its bed at the loss. He would toss and turn, a wounded creature, crippled, deprived of heaven's flight, lost to half the world, and (with his clutch of lost souls) to his love's abode. He would coax the moon's eyes down with a vast upheld mirror so she could admire her long tendrils of silver hair which she would throw down over his blissful skin. His eye showed her face gold and bright, hued honey-gold, its profile lifted to leap into the pit of sky; only for her to look down and see the pits and scars that formed her cheeks and brows, her silvery lips, (so fine and beautiful to her watery lover in whose face was her own brutal ugliness).                             *  *  *  The sounding stone of ocean's soul would follow as she passed, night or day, faint-hearted or bright, and his heart would rise and fall at her mood. When his spray-taloned fingers touched cruel shore he would rant and rave that he could not follow as she skipped past the silver breakers to grassland to make love to ponds and rippling streams, in forest glens where her face was not so well-reflected, but her sinewed hair neither so deftly combed.                             *  *  *  He would wait by the shore, frothing and raging, until he saw again her burnished face appear from tree tops, and his vast soul would slowly calm and his surface sheen that her fingers of light, tendrils whose silver caress were his favourite fire, would throw shades deeper into his body, and her hair lay longer, cooler, on his skin. But she would look down only to see the mirror he held, and that hated reflection of her own face (pitted and scarred), and would flee to horizon's light that her ugliness be hidden. The ocean would take a vast and shuddering breath; dash his anguish against cruel shore in looming breakers, slowly crumbling the renewing land which held him from her. His tortured temper would roil, thrash, throwing great spumes high against the pit of sky, that he might not have to bear her downward gaze a moment longer, not a moment; never knowing, not thinking, that in the glory of her own light she had not once paused in her eternal passing to see past his mirror, and had never even noticed his face. First published in Poetry News Return to Top of  Page       Untitled by Andrew Penland the scarecrow plays a guitar made of raindrops: singing the princess sadly to sleep: the radio airwaves are filled with silence, painting the tranquil (blue) poppy fields. autumn is awaiting its turn on the stage, as the leaves search deep within themselves for color, a hope to overwhelm the fear of falling and dying green.  tonight, the stars  look like stepping stones to the ghosts of Yawheh's abandoned mansions. without starglue, the songs fall apart & we are all as small as the water's  regrets.  Return to Top of  Page       In the Wake of Small Craft by Adam Pettet I can still hear cicadas  in the churchyard from where I sit on the stone wall. A black river embedded in my skin and lonely the ferryman.   Freedom by Adam Pettet He can not stop holding the bird. Tighter, tighter his grip, wings twisting in his fists, feathers bubbling from his fingers. "I want to see it fly, I want to see it fly." Mumbling beneath breath  as a song struggles in its throat.   99 by Adam Pettet My orgasm has become lonely. Life wrapped in kleenex, washed into the rivers of lost time. Return to Top of  Page       Flicker by Alec Kowalczyk An old woman Out for a summer night's walk Passes under a streetlamp when shadows of tree limbs and power lines and leaves Flash across her rounded back While her one foot is implanted In the cone of light And the other is already buried In the surrounding darkness   Fluge von Laune by Alec Kowalczyk creeping dawn wandering shadows return to their sleeping hosts Return to Top of  Page       Clarity by Alison Daniel When he bought me this necklace, the beads, small stones strung together luminous and clear, I thought the shine picturesque, remarkable for clarity connecting the here with always forever, an eternity hanging from a wall. This was before I tried wearing the stones wrapped around my wrist like a memory celebrating the slave who survives happily on her back, my legs taut around your shoulders. He enters me, disappears. He returns as my husband understanding devotion is the blackness of my eyes when I climax. I squirt glistening ink. I rub it on his skin, mix it with his sweat, polish him shiny like the beads around my wrist. I tell him I'm possessed with a tenderness when he unchokes my wrist and places the beads around my neck. He say 'this is for my wife' as I tie him to our bed, the stones transparent against white sheets. Also published in Recursive Angel Return to Top of  Page       Where Dead People Live by Richard Jordan When my father died unexpectedly in his sleep on a hot, humid August afternoon, my mother had me and my brother lift his body from the bed and carry it out to the front lawn before the crowd gathered. Inside, the house was a sty, and she didn't want the police or the paramedics or, God forbid, the neighbors to find out how we lived. So it was on that afternoon that I officially felt death for the first time. But as I was lugging the corpse out the front door, all I could think about was another summer afternoon many years before when, while strolling past the Catholic cemetery, I had asked my father "Is that where all the dead people live?", and his only response had been "Exactly." Return to Top of  Page       Potato Simile by Andrea Forbing-Maglione Mature love is like a hot baked potato that's been cut up and mashed down with life's fork, covered with butter and sour cream. It no longer resembles the firm, immutable vegetable that it once was… It is something so different and yet still, so much a potato. Return to Top of  Page       Untitled by M'Lou Caring I take for granted my life breathing and locomoting at will will? mothering a child of tomorrow, today will there be a tomorrow? spoiled/complacent till awakened by a pinprick of reality a slap of conscience  I step on a sliver of glass: quick prick, red bloom pearls and stops unquestioned functioning No gratitude Death the inevitable end-out of awareness save for occasional encounters quickly forgotten and occasional meetings with a vibration revealing a vastness and I a cell in this vast body. A different shock brings squirming  in the illumination of absence of conscience: a shell, light obscured, masquerading as a whole being. Slipping on ice down I go no axis / no traction Shocked again Nothingness borne brings radical revisioning revealing realms without grasping. present to what is I awake to myself, the inevitability of death Grateful Return to Top of  Page       Interior Landscape 8 by Duane Locke The chairs have become clocks, The chairs tick. The chairs go tick-tock. Everyone avoids The tick-tocking chairs. The people sit on the floor And stare At the black arrows Of old-fashioned clocks. They stare at accustomed clock, But these clocks always seemed unreal. But these ticking chairs, Have arms, have legs, Arms and legs of flesh. The ticking chairs even have lips. Return to Top of  Page       Got the Beat by Marissa Ann Ranello I can't believe I bought a denim skirt. Is it the eighties again? There's no use thinking about what I  could have been thinking. In the dressing room I punched the mirror, for looking like one of the fly-girls. Every girl I hated in denim stared back at me. Their knobby knees wobbling with insecurity. Under their pulled off to the side pony tail, a crust of Aquanet reveals imperfection. I'm so alone in this purchase. A denim skirt. Now I can be popular. Return to Top of  Page       Thank You by Elena Ferrer BECAUSE love always meant anguishdistresswoesorrowpainsuffering for me i met you to fulfill my need of aching to satisfy my hollowness of servitude to supply my inconstancy with your permanence STILL i want to thank you for a cage of glass where my heart yells out your name in blood for a golden box where my voice creeps in silence Return to Top of  Page       Godsend by John Kidd She said, 'Have you got time to look around the town while you're here? You'll see him, you'll know him.' Meaning her father. Meaning her deceased father. She's not being precious, her thoughts are not contrived. There's wind in the lime trees. There's leaves on the swirl. Dandelions in the lawn. She notices me noticing. 'He would have hated his garden going like this,' she says. Lollops of her laughter climb up. 'I swear,' she says, 'I swear, we tend it, work in it,  Some Saturdays some Sundays. It doesn't respond, it snaps, it snarls. It cringes, it's a bad-tempered dog.' Meaning, I think, the garden. 'I can see him in the town?' I say. 'You said I can see him, my oldest brother?  Big Bro?' I say affectionately, blocking the  unbelief, Masking, I think, the cynicism. 'Oh, in high-rise government buildings. State offices down by the wharf. Where the silvery river thrums, where tourists gawp. Where buskers and mendicants wail in the cool air. When I say, you'll know him, I mean, You'll get to know him. And then you will recognise him.' And then I almost reach for her to put a there-there hand on her hair. 'And there are houses,' she says, 'many. Any number, seeing them from the street even. Getting glimpses of him in them,  Tracing his touch, serendipitous sightings.' 'Come!' she says. 'Let us go from here.'  Tugging at me, 'Go to groves, avenues, lanes, On hillsides, hollows, see houses stark against the slate sky, Solid in the meshed gardens, somehow eternal,' she says. I cough. 'I have to say we were never close,' I say,  'Your father and I, never so close, I have to say, Never time, I suppose to get close, as boys grow.' 'God!' she says, 'Get to know him now,  he's all around the town. You'll find him. Easy! Pick him up. He's not heavy.'  And her laughter takes little dancing steps towards me. 'God!' she says, Oh, God!' she laughs. Meaning, I suppose, that an architect lives among angels. Return to Top of  Page       The Beginning of Substance by Jennifer Calkins I. At my conception, I blew through a hole in a condom. They saw Down's Syndrome in the hole in the roof of my mouth. The cleft of a palate. And my father was in the war, not the big war, and not really in it. On a boat carrying oil from one ship to the next lost in the fog. II.  My mother saw me standing, my arms outstretched in splints, my face red, a little tomato.  This was how they did it then. My mother could not touch me.  I could not suck. I drank my own blood as milk. III. The Doctors said, "the child will sleep without remembering" Yet, I did not sleep.  Again and again there were red, red fingers and the darkness where the dreamer could not move.  Daytime, I ran about the house under the eyes of the cat and dog,  but at night I dreamt of hospitals flaming and locked. As if I weren't quite entire, I dropped my d's and p's because my mouth had holes in all the wrong places. V. At thirteen I believed I carried deformity with every movement. My veins were tiny cavities, and my blood filled tubes with a haste to vacate. The place of insanity, where I held my hands to cover the openings of my mind had not really started until the day I held myself over the balcony, measuring the depth through my breath, ready to throw myself onto the concrete. When rising, I was so bony, the chair bore an impression--  two pinpoints. I was always in a room always referred to as "she," and they waved their needles while my legs twisted together. I tended to shift events until my world was reasonable. As I walked, it seemed I was a reflection with the hollows behind my knees grown dark. Thirteen, I was lucid sitting in that clinic I watched the ageless child, deaf, dumb, nearly blind, drooling down her father's arms. There, she was my reflection. No mirror in this house that does not take your face and twist it out of shape for you Those splints and my mother's face far through a glass Some memories (my mother moves further out of reach) bury themselves like ringworm, nearly unnoticeable, they leap out more and more, overflowing with appetite. VI. There are hundreds of pills to cure your ailments, if your ailment is curable, but the final draw is under the blade. Again and again I wheel in and mask myself. On my sixteenth birthday, I lay vomiting blood all over my hospital bed, all over my father standing helplessly, as the space shuttle exploded again and again the smoke spacing itself out in two paths of rubble. My nose was packed and swollen and when the anesthesia wore off I was in the center of pain. I begged the nurse for Demerol and then more. In you the wars and flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose But sometimes I did dance. Alone I watched my face, my bruised cheeks in the mirror away from the hospital, imagining those things beauty, swollen breasts, grace accompanying my motions.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page

 

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• Breaker  Elizabeth Stamford

• Nightscape  Michael Gurnow

• Tina's First Job  Scott Michael

• Common Sense  Benedict Reid

• Tempting Sleep  Brentley Frazer

• Kill Chuck  Thom Didato

• In Hour of Death  Muhammad Nasrullah Khan

 

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Breaker                                                        

by Elizabeth Stamford

reeze, asshole.”

The moon was full on this sweltering summer night and the East Village sidewalk was bright as day.  It was really happening this time:  a holdup.  Mike Mitchell stopped dead, his feet tingling, sweat bathing his body.  As this point, his life, in various stages of fight, was meant to flash before him:  a downtrodden Iowa childhood, the Marine Corps, jail, two disastrous marriages, poky smoke-filled bars, and those nights--the nights he had worked trawling the seamy underbelly of the city.  All this had somehow come full circle, a rim of silver encasing the blackness of gun-space.  This was where the bullet would emerge burning the space between his eyes, ripping through flesh, bone, and what was left of his poor tired brain.  The fear came then--one Mike had known as a child hiding in the bushes, watching his stepfather’s boots move across the yard.  A belt buckle glinting in the sun:  the promise of pain.

Next came a burst of adrenalin, and the destroyer’s instinct broke in him.  He let himself move through the air, cleaving time itself.  He was right on target, felling his assailant with a kick and a punch, catching the man’s leg as he came down.  The limb made a sickening sound when it snapped, right at the femur, and the gun arced upward before it hit the ground.  Mike picked it up, his heart booming with triumph.  When he felt the shape of the thing in his damp palms, he remembered that there had once been a time when he could have fired a killing shot, but things were different now.  He had chosen to save people, hadn’t he?

*  *  *

The rickety fan whirred in the office on 12th Street, and the medics waited for calls.  Rob, Mr. Wet Behind the Ears, mooned over a picture of his sweet bow-lipped girlfriend, while Dirty Old Derek added to his burgeoning collection of Penthouse Pets.  Giacomo was eating a greasy slice, sitting as far as possible from Larry Waldek who combed his thick blond locks.

“Yo Waldek, how come you’re fixing your freakin’ hair?  Got a shift down on Christopher tonight?”

“Yo Mitchell, is that a Glock in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“You guys need to get ready.”  Mike peeled off his sweaty shirt and slid the gun into his locker.  There were no pictures of family or friends there--not even one of his soon-to-be ex-wife Diane.  He slept on park benches sometimes when he couldn’t deal with her.  The prettiest ones were the craziest, he thought, and it was inevitably Diane’s sexiest qualities that drove him insane.

“Ready for what?” Larry said.  “It’s dead tonight.”

“We’re gonna get a trauma call.”  Mike pulled out his uniform.  “Soon.”

“What are you, a fuckin’ fortune teller?”

“Yeah, you want to see my crystal balls?”

Just then, the beeper sounded, and Giacomo picked up.

“Well I’ll be fucked,” he said.  “Trauma call.  Alphabet City.”

*  *  *

Mike barely waited for the ambulance to stop moving before leaping out onto the street.  Through the darkness, he saw the crumpled figure of the person he had broken.  The man’s splayed limbs made a black star-shape on the cement, and for Mike, there was nothing but glory now, the wrath of Zeus descending upon his foe.  Straddling the cracks in the sidewalk, he bent down over a yellow eye, blossoming with pain.

“Remember me, motherfucker?” he said softly.

The eye closed and the lips parted amid a wiry growth of stubble to reveal crooked teeth and a breath that smelled of old roadkill.  Mike bent down still further, touching the man’s leg.

“Get off me!”  The mouth opened wide, a screaming canker.

“Hey, chill out.  We’re here to help,” Giacomo said, handing Mike a pair of scissors.  Rob came up behind them, holding a clipboard.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Jesus!” the patient moaned.

“That your name?” Mike asked, winking at Rob.  Gently, he cut away the man’s pant leg, then, with the same exquisite care, he and Giacomo began to set the broken bone.  As they did so, the patient emitted a howl of agony.

“No!  It’s Angel.  Fuck!”

“Angel Fuck,” Mike said.  “Write that down Rob.”  Confused, Rob wiped his sweaty brow.  “Is there a middle initial Mr. Fuck?”

“Jesus,” Angel blubbered as Rob wheeled him to the ambulance.  “Gimme some morphine, man!”

“We already did.  Give it a few minutes.”  Mike felt in his pocket for his cigarettes.  “Didn’t I just buy a new pack?”  He held up a squashed box of Marlboros.  There were only two left.

“That was last night,” Giacomo said, “after we dropped off that kid.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike mumbled.  Lately he’d had trouble distinguishing day from night, yesterday from today, next week from next year.  It was beginning to scare him a little.  He wasn’t sleeping much these days.  Sometimes he’d stay out until it got light, drinking and snorting coke in backstreet bathrooms.  The world seemed so upside down that often he couldn’t figure out what was real and what wasn’t.  How could he explain?  It had to do with a lot of things Diane couldn’t begin to understand, like the fact that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be alive or dead.  He had no choice now but to fix others, hoping that by this virtue he might somehow fix himself…

After dropping Angel off at the hospital, they headed for Tompkins Square Park where the leaves hung on the trees like dirty rags.  In the mirror, Mike saw a blond girl in white socks and a college sweatshirt slumped on the sidewalk.  She seemed to be missing her shoes, but her socks weren’t even dirty yet.

“Going to be a long night, ain’t it sweetheart?”  Mike gazed at the girl who shook in the side mirror, vanishing as they moved away.  He began to bite his nails.  “Hey, Jack, you ever thought about going out west?  To like, some town in the mountains or something?”

“Why the hell would I do that?”  Giacomo lit a cigarette.

“I don’t know.  No reason I guess…” Mike said, irritated.  “Jesus, Jack!  Just look out of the window!”

Giacomo eyed his friend with mock suspicion.  “Now, Mike, don’t you go shacking up with some militia in Montana.”

Mike didn’t respond.  A siren was going off inside his head, and he wondered when the blonde’s socks would finally get dirty.  He looked up at the moon, so bright it made him squint.  “Remember me, motherfucker?” he whispered.  “Remember me?”

“What’s up?”  Giacomo exhaled a stream of smoke.

“Nothing, man,” Mike said blithely, but his body held a sensation of unusual energy, the power he had felt moving through the air to vanquish his foe.  Am I a maker or a breaker?  What’s it going to be?

 

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Nightscape                                                 

by Michael Gurnow

he heater kicks off.  I look up at the vent in habitual recognition.  I do this several times throughout the day.  Just as I have for countless years.  I quit being disgusted at this affliction of mine years ago.  This monotone reaction.  No matter how many times I remind myself not to look in between the heating unit coming on and shutting off.  I continue to glance up every time the unit kicks on or off.  I have only left the light in the hallway on tonight.

I stop to clear my mind.

The vacant echo of hollowness resonates in my ear.  I run my palm opposite the splintered stubble on the back of my neck.  Something pokes me.  This brings me out of my gaze.  It was nothing.  I need to watch myself more carefully.  This is the third night in a row that I have left one of the burners on the stove on overnight.  I don’t care to wake up and find a pot I’d left to boil in hopes of helping me breathe.  Threatening my life while blackening the bottom of the pot.

My left hand will start shaking any minute now.  I know it.

My thoughts shift back some weeks ago.  I smell something burning.  I find an oven full of charred French fries sizzling.  Smoldering.  A barren wasteland of neglected potato slices disturbed me enough to induce a weeklong insomnia.  I find myself sitting in the rocking chair beside my living room window in the early hours of the morning.  Motionless.  The sound of the wind passing through the naked tree limbs along with the imaginary sound of sizzling fries.

I pity the barren limbs trapped outside.  I blink.  My vision has quickly acquired a veil of film.  A momentary layer of dust.  The moment passed.  I’m o.k.

The air has become so dry recently.  The sound of dry leaves scraping across the patio accompanies my nervous habit.  I continually rub my calloused hands together.  This petty tick is the bastard son of my twisting.  I extract single hairs from my beard.  One by one.  The second in which the isolated hair finally surrenders itself to my anxiety I start in on another.  It seems to be a perpetual contention accentuated by a moment of relief.  It is quickly followed by yet another slow and methodical removal.  I find myself staring out into the darkness once again.  Grazing one palm upon the raspy surface of the other.  I begin to fidget with my chin once again.  I put my hand back in my lap.

I really need to start watching myself more closely.  I stare out the window.  There’s nothing out there to watch.  It’s winter.  Everything’s asleep or hibernating.  Some things are dead.

I rest my chin on my hands.  My heartbeat gently shakes my surroundings.  I know this happens all the time but I only notice it at particular moments.  I am startled when I first realize what is happening before I know what is going on.  I put my hands back in my lap.

Don’t fidget.  Don’t shake.  Don’t pick.  Don’t.

The skin around my elbows is dried fish scales.  They’re uplifted and threaten to snare anything that passes in their near vicinity.  Something moved outside.  The wind passes through a dying hawthorn.  It barely shakes its arms.  The hawthorn is in need of water as much as my elbows.  Water wouldn’t do anything for the dead fish.  Maybe it’s too late for the bush as well.

The thorn bush had thrived upon a life of consuming ball after countless ball previously owned by careless children.  It is a mere skeleton of a plant now.  This was a regular occurrence on slow Sunday afternoons in which nothing happened.  The nostalgia that accompanies this hypothetical incident is cast in black and white.  I look at the reflection staring back unknowingly at me from the living room window.  It gives me the look of a naïve puppy.  I know better.

My hand is shaking.  I start to pick my chin.  Unknowingly.

No one notices me sitting here any longer.  I have become part of the background.  I do not belong here any more than the decrepit thorn bush outside the frosted windowpane.  The hawthorn stares back at me now that children no longer come around. He scared them off long ago.  He made himself known long ago.  People innately avoid him.  They don’t see him anymore either.

He can’t hurt me as long as I sit in here.  Warm and dry.  Safe.

I need to quit daydreaming so much.   I will sometimes stare into nothingness.  Oftentimes I forget to blink.  The bush begins to expand and contract.  This is a signal that I need to sleep.  The need no longer permits itself to go unnoticed.  It is forcing itself upon me.  It whips me into awareness.  Yet how can I provide for a starving dog when I myself have nothing to eat?  I close my eyes in hopes of temporarily evading it.

I open my eyes just a little to see if it has gone away.  The bush attempts to approach me.  It has pricks and needles for hair.  I quickly slam shut my eyes once again.  The image of the world-weary bush assaults my mind’s eye.  It is inside me.  It has become a part of me.  The heater kicks on.  It blows artificial hot upon me.  I open my eyes and look up at the source of the commotion.  This allows the swelling visions to intrude again.  I seal shut my eyes.  I need to pay more attention to what I’m doing.

I notice I’m picking at my chin once again.

I can hear the doorbell ringing.  The shades were drawn but it was obvious I was home.  The lights were on.  I disconnected the doorbell while it was ringing.  I can hear the subtle withdraw back up the steps.  The debris of our friendship had long ago been cleared away.  Though it is still close.  It is as if it had been caught by the hawthorn and is now waving in the wind right outside my window.  It haunts me.  The memories return.  I don’t blink them away this time.  I keep my eyes closed.

It’s gone.  I know what I’m doing.  Another hair is plucked.  I need to be more careful.

I’m content.  Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m asleep or not.  I don’t mind any longer.  Just as long as I’m dry.  Safe.  The darkness surrounds me.  It’s warm darkness though.  The dim hall light encases me in a blanket of unnecessary security.  I cough.  I start to think this may be another nervous reaction.  Psychosomatic they call it.  It doesn’t bother me.  I don’t have anything else to do but find capricious preoccupations to fill my time.

I used to smoke.  I originally took up smoking to have something to do.  It kept my hands busy.  I never really thought about why I stopped when I did.  A fleeting moment I suppose.  No.  I remember.  I lost my lighter one afternoon and never bought another one.  That was it.  Just never bought another one though I had a full pack of cigarettes.

The heater kicks on or off.  I’m not sure this time.  I feel my hand move on my leg.  I silence my hand by brushing the wrinkles from my pants leg before running it across my neck.  Something pokes me.  I stop and think.  It must have been my imagination.  It is getting warm once again so it must be on.  I’d be content to fall asleep right now.

The heat stirs the ammonia smell.  I only get occasional whiffs of it now and then.  The smell permeated my clothing and skin years ago.  The cats left long ago but the litter box still remains.  It still needs to be taken out.  There are piles atop of piles of used litter from years ago that has yet to seep into the frozen earth.  They lay right outside the window next to the hawthorn.  I don’t look.  I know they’re there.  I can’t see them but I know they’re there.  They always will be.

I used to smoke to keep from smelling.  The odor chaffing my throat.  The mixture of saturated cat litter with stagnant cigarette smoke is the olfactory soundtrack to loneliness.  Funny.  Now I deeply inhale.  Revel the part that’s left.  The ammonia.  I believe I can still smell the smoke.  I know it is just me thinking I can.  I remember sitting there convincing myself that it smelled good.  Now it is a sweet taste.  A rancid taste.

I can smell the smoke.  Barely.

My hand.

I need to watch myself more closely.  It seems odd that I can remember remembering.  I open my eyes and stare out into the darkness in the direction of the hawthorn.  I can’t see it.  The frost has completely isolated me from the dead bush.  I can’t even see my reflection any longer.  A white mist confronts me now.

I feel sleep coming on.  I hear the heater kick off.  I smile.  I remembered not to look up this time.  My hands are still.  One atop another on my lap.  I am content.

 

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Tina's First Job                                                     

                                                                                           

by Scott Michael

he car unsteadily made its way up the winding road.  Tina still hadn't got used to its power.  The car was a shining example of engineering and strength, its sleek lines and muted elegance belying its barely restrained power, a power which posed a problem for its timid owner as she tried to control its wayward impulses while it lurched across the road.

If Tina had been able to spare some of the concentration that she required to navigate the road's tight turns and unexpected dips, she would have been able to appreciate the stark beauty of the place.  It presented wide, sweeping landscapes and weather-scarred rocks, sparsely populated by an occasional squawking crow whose sepulchral croaks surprised the bemused sheep out of their Zen-like trance.

As the car climbed the hill, Tina saw her destination:  the Maes-y-Deri primary school where she was about to interview for her first job as a teacher.  The school was laid out before her, the playground's grass the only colour in the monochrome valley, the sun's rays reflected off thousands of shards of glass which littered the roads.  The valley's inhabitants had thoughtfully provided the onlooker with rusted hulks of long-abandoned cars that dotted the landscape.  From Tina’s vantage point, the valley looked like it had contracted some kind of terminal disease that no amount of positive thinking and front line medication could save; it was already dying and had never really fought the infection.  In fact, no signs of defense were evident--it was as if the inhabitants seemed to welcome and nurture the disease, aiding its spread as far and as quickly as they could, not resting for a moment until all was consumed by its unstoppable and ultimately fatal effects.

Distressed by what she could see, Tina cursed, “Oh bother, this won’t do at all.”  Tina had never perfected the art of good swearing; the memory of the time she had inadvertently said “shit” when she had intended to say “sit” in a school assembly still caused her the most extraordinary amount of mental anguish.

The interview itself was a strange enough affair.

It started badly when Tina fell through the door.  Under different circumstances the entrance would have demanded anyone's attention, but as it happened to a damp, would-be teacher, the end result was excruciatingly embarrassing.  The rain had poured as Tina walked the short distance from her car to the village hall where the interview was held.  An already nervous Tina was made even more flustered when she was soaked by a passing car.

For the first three minutes of her interview, she failed to make anything that approached a comprehensible syllable and was reduced to a kind of high-pitched grunting.  Amazingly, this did not seem to deter the panel of interviewers.

“And what qualities do you feel that you would bring to the job?” was the first question.  It was asked by her future Head Teacher Mr. Simions, a balding man with--if judged by his erratic head movements--an incredibly short attention span.

“Well, I believe that I have very good communications skills for starters, and I have a love of knowledge that seems to be infectious to others.”

“I think we can discount your communication skills if the first five minutes of your interview is anything to go by,” replied an intense-looking lady sitting directly opposite Tina.  The lady was dressed in what appeared to be a discarded curtain.  To say that the dress was garish would have been almost kind had it not been for the pasty white skin and shocking ginger hair.  The over-all effect it had on Tina's sensibilities suggested that it was a calculated assault, a kind of mental grievous bodily harm.

Tina started to become unsettled by the twin distractions of Mr. Simions's bobbing and weaving head and by walking-affront-to-fashion Ms Evans, and began to lose concentration a little.  She had always been the type of person who could only work in a properly ordered environment, and it remained a mystery to all who knew her why she had chosen to pursue a career in teaching, and especially primary school teaching where an ordered environment was the last thing on anyone's mind.  The situation in which she now found herself caused a rush of blood which probably enabled her to continue through the interview without doing anything stupid like bursting into tears, which was her normal reaction when placed in any situation she found trying.

With adrenaline coursing through her system like cheap cider at a fifteen-year-old's birthday party, Tina interrupted the droning voice of Mr. Simions and said, “Just take a risk in your life for once, and give me the job.  I can’t promise miracles but at least I won’t be caught filming myself butchering innocent bloody animals like Mr. Rees.”

There was a shocked silence in the room.  Tina's face slowly began to colour, the tide of embarrassment gathered momentum and soon engulfed her entire face, which gave off a strange, almost painful-looking glow.

Tina had seen the article in the local newspaper and had spent hours prior to the interview trying to suppress the knowledge of such a ghastly thing.  Her world held no place for people who killed animals for the sake of pleasure, never mind filming themselves doing it.  And if that person was a shepherd of children's souls, well, nothing could be enough punishment for the likes of him.

Mr. Simions and Ms Evans looked at each other for what Tina felt was a geological age.  Slowly, Ms Evans turned to Tina and with what looked to be a degree of admiration in her gaze (but those who were more acquainted with Ms Evans's mindset would have interpreted it as a look of finely controlled outrage) said, “You may be just what we are looking for. Congratulations, Ms Morris, we are now in a position to offer you the job.”

Tina, still reeling with shock from what had just escaped from her lips, stammered “Thank you” and rose from her seat to perform the obligatory handshake before teetering out the doors through which she had earlier so inelegantly fallen.

The shock of the interview stayed with Tina for days.  Her father began to worry about what exactly had happened during that interview, but no amount of gentle questioning could persuade Tina to talk about it in any detail.  Her normally haphazard method of conversation reached all-time records of incomprehensibility.  A tremendous amount of concentration was required just to realize that she had been offered the job, and not, as her friends first suspected, that she had undergone some terrible trauma.

*  *  *

Tina had finally regained her mental equilibrium, but the sights that greeted her through her windscreen as she neared the school on her first day threatened to unbalance her again.  As she approached the outskirts of the village, troublesome signs made inroads into her consciousness:  discarded mattresses, half-burnt prams left by the side of the road and some decidedly unfriendly graffiti daubed onto the walls in a very worrying dark blood red--all of which started to make her feel more than a little unwelcome.

The houses that Tina drove past had a distinctly watchful air, their front gardens crammed with all kinds of junk, some of which looked like it had been stolen from other people's scrap yards.  Unless large amounts of rusting metal suddenly became fashionable amongst the more impressionable members of society, it would never be used again and would remain there forever.

These were not signs of an affluent place, and some world say not even of a habitable one.  Tina's normally dormant imagination suddenly kick-started into life as a flickering movement nearby triggered off wild thoughts of mutilation and beatings from the fists that love you.  The buildings started to close in on her, their shadows casting the car into darkness, a darkness that came so suddenly as to make her wonder if sunlight ever visited this place at all.

Soon she was through the village and back into the open and her thoughts of violence vanished with the shadows.  As Tina exhaled the pent-up air that she had been unconsciously holding in, a pushchair suddenly appeared directly in front of the car.  As the car screeched to a halt, Tina saw that the pram had not just miraculously appeared in the road but had been under the control of a young woman wearing a bright green neon tracksuit.

The two young women stared at each other, one in mute shock and the other with undisguised hatred.  The girl was savagely smoking a cigarette, her harsh pulls making the tip glow a bright red.  Behind her, a child was being dragged unwillingly.  Even though it was obvious that he did not want to be there, he still had the time to join his mother in the hatred contest.

Remarkably, a baby's hand materialized over the rim of the pram, with two newly-formed fingers raised into a form of communication that is recognizable throughout the world.  The hand was soon followed by the baby's head.  As all three stared at Tina, she began to panic and reversed quickly.  As she started to move backwards she could see the girl's mouth shape itself into the words of a most unladylike utterance.

Tina sped past the trio, accelerating as fast as her car would safely allow her.  She glanced back in her mirror to see two of the more able-bodied threesome throwing large lumps of rock after the car, which bounced harmlessly to the side of the road.

Now totally unsettled, Tina made directly for the school, narrowly missing several cars in her haste.

Her first impression of the school as she traveled down the hillside was one of a little enclosure of tranquility in a valley of harshness, but as usual her judgment had let her down badly.

Outside the school gates were swarms of what could be loosely called young children, although a more accurate description would be criminals in waiting.  Hundreds of blankly staring eyes awaited her.  The deadness Tina saw in those eyes made the hairs on her arms rise and sent a small wave of unparalleled fear through her body.  The children all moved as if controlled by a single desire:  that of total destruction of all that Tina stood for.

"Fuck this," she said aloud.  "There are easier ways to make money," and she drove away.

 

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Common Sense                                                       

 by Benedict Reid

he first thing I noticed was the smell.

Not that it was particularly strong, it's just that it was there.  Softly screaming at me.  Coffee, from yesterday morning.  Eggs from lunch and the half eaten Thai takeaways from dinner.  All fighting for attention from my nostrils.

Unusual.  Of my senses, smell normally occupies my mind the least.  Sure, whenever I smelt pumpkin soup I'd still think of the old lady who stole my pet cat in the eighties.  But I would never usually notice smell.  Why should I when I've got better senses to rely on?

Touch, cold hard floor; taste, dry and rancid sweetness; sound, the drone of the morning traffic outside; and sight would normally suppress any attention that smell might deserve.  Yet here I was, having past meals conjured up by residual gases wafting around my nose-hairs.

Awake.  My first mistake of the day.  Head thumping, like the cavalry arriving too late to be of any use.  Best to Sleep.

Awake.  Eyes struggling to focus.  Eyelids dry and rough.  They scratch me when I blink.  The dry throat confirms the need for water.  As does the pain in my bladder.  I'm on the living room floor.  As I get up I knock over a bottle.  The TV's on, muted American talk shows, saying as much as they ever do, straight teeth and sex.  Water from the tap, one of those expensive purifier things.  She wanted it, I really could care less, still can't taste the difference.  She.  What a cliché.  As I reread the note I can't help smiling at the fact that my name actually is John.

                

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Tempting Sleep                                      

by Brentley Frazer

busted drain pipe in a storm howled out this melody.  A long dead swan naked sprawled in a backyard plastic banana lounge and a fat golden puppy eating fruitloops from a red rubber bowl.  Insects and fighter planes and golfballs.  Black rainbows and crows in spectrum; tenuous landings where dance refrigerator repair men and the reek of the sump from neglected vegetable crispers.  Veins children laughing, mangled pushbikes drooping heads of dead guinea pigs concrete cottonwool trumpets dirty underwear and a wristwatch.  Spinning down through the black in a crappy blue datsun, faces of unseen passengers flashing in the mirror.  Exit wounds without an entry point.  Scenic shoe factory tours, acrobatics near grandma's favourite dinner set.  Infrastructure of intricate nebulous wire, shiny glass worms and translucent fluid snakes form mirrors lakes shopfronts the hoods of new cars shower cabinets and everyone else's eyes.  On the freeway north hit a pelican, curses us staggering with busted wings and smashed beak.  Found the calligraphy of a dance movement on the back of a wardrobe, an intricate waltz bled there by the wood.

Illustration by Brentley Frazer

 

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Kill Chuck                                                           

by Thom Didato
                                                                            

he bell rings.  Ten-year-olds cram their way through the iron gate at the entrance of Sacquan Elementary and disperse into packs of roaming dogs, marking their territory.

Recess.

Playground.

Freedom, for the next twenty minutes.

Most of the girls are off playing on the swings or the clanky old seesaw.  The fat girl with a Wonder Twins lunch box watches them through a pair of thick glasses as she sits on the concrete steps and downs another box of raisins.  The boys busy themselves on the jungle gym, climbing to the top and kicking down those who dare to challenge the King of the Mountain.

It is the era of Toughskins and knee patches, corduroys and dungarees.  Really cool kids have several patches of different colors on the knees of their faded jeans.

Chuck wears brown slacks.  They hide the dirt well.

Kids pass their time picking fights and making random accusations about each other's mothers.  Soon everyone is talking about everyone else's mother.  Punches are thrown. Nobody is immune from this playground psychology.

Chuck is its main disciple.

He spends half his time pestering people and the other half being picked on, thrown at and beat up in return.  He loves every minute of it.

Evolving from the more traditional competition called Smear the Queer, Kill Chuck is everyone's favorite recreational activity.  The rules are similar--in Smear the Queer prepubescent boys try to tackle the one with the ball.  In Sacquan's ingenious invention, Chuck is always the queer--no ball needed.

On a sunny sixth-grade afternoon, at someone's subtle suggestion, Fred Flood hits his friend Josh, who in turn kicks Nancy the red-headed tomboy, who belts the bucktoothed boy Kevin, who then shoves Robert.  Eventually somebody slaps Chuck.  He hits the boy back, and soon, all ten kids are racing across the sun-scorched field after him.  Chuck puts forth a valiant effort--bolts the wrong way up the ramp on the slide, hurdles his way through the jungle gym, even eludes the marauding masses on that haven for rust they call a merry-go-round.  The group finally catches up to Chuck, trips him, tackles him and clobbers him.  Chuck gets up, brushes the dirt into his ever-browner pair of slacks, and with an inexplicable smile of satisfaction, punches the boy closest to him and runs.  For a couple of seconds, the rest of the gang look at each other as if to ask an unnecessary question.  Then, with a ceremonious roar, twenty children charge, issuing the irrefutable decree:  Kill Chuck.

Twice a day, 180 days a year, for years, the children of Sacquan Elementary play Kill Chuck.  It's dangerous stuff--all that running, kicking and punching.  Not a day passes without somebody going to the school nurse.  But despite the danger, everyone plays.  All playground participants are welcome regardless of sex, age, race, or creed--they even allow that Jehovah’s Witness kid to play, the one who never stands for the pledge of allegiance.  And when the throng gets close enough, the fat girl with glasses whacks Chuck over the head with her lunch box, putting a decent-size dent in one of the Wonder Twins.

To his credit, Chuck never refuses a good clean game.

*  *  *

But if Sacquan Elementary teaches its students anything, it is the worthwhile lesson that all good things must come to an end.  As the group gets older, fewer people run after Chuck.  He hits one of his one-time friends and runs, but fewer and fewer follow, until, eventually, nobody does.

A year later, Chuck's family moves away.

Shortly thereafter, there is no recess at all.

 

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In Hour of Death                                       

by Muhammad Nasrullah Khan

 

n a palatial room of the most pleasant city of the world, an old and feeble writer was lying on his deathbed with open eyes.  He was gazing at the ceiling without looking at any particular thing.  Shadows of death were passing across his face.  It seemed as if he was facing pangs of death in his soul.

He was not an ordinary man, he was a great writer who had won all the greatest awards of literature.  He had millions of readers in the world, but at this moment he was quite alone, waiting for ghastly advancing death.  Every passing moment was adding to his sense of loss.  He was never in love with life, but approaching death aroused some hidden desire to live.

He recalled his remarks on life, when once he was addressing a huge crowd:  "Life is not important for me, I am not afraid of death."  Remembering that, a satirical smile appeared on his withered face and he spoke in a murmuring voice, "One of the hundred lies which every 'great man' utters to make himself worthy of his greatness."  The fact was that he was dying like any other creeping creature, despite his marvelous achievements and sagacious books.

Long ago he had longed for death when he had too many failures in life; when he was forced to obey the debased orders of his masters for only a few coins; when pale faces of children and the violence of the masters had even ceased his belief in God... yes, life was miserable then, in poverty.  Poverty snatches away all the dignity and liberty of man and he becomes the most humiliated creature.  But now when he had everything of his desire, death was approaching him with its ever-frothing face.  What an irony of fate.

At that fatal moment he did not feel himself different from the dying dog that he had seen in his childhood, on a hot summer noon.  He did not know then that he would recall that death-sight after so many years at the hour of his own death.

He still remembered that the upper part of the neck of that dog was wounded by the gunfire of a rascal hunter and it was severely infected.  Steadily the infection spread in his body and worms started eating him.  The writer never saw him sitting anywhere; he always would run here and there due to his intolerable pain.  Nobody cared about the pain of a dog.

One day the dog lay down accepting the victory of worms.  Before dying, he stood up, uttered a feeble, painful cry and then fell to be finished forever.  Half of his body was already eaten by worms before being presented to the earthworms.

The dying writer wanted to spend his last moments in pleasant memories but the image of the dying dog had captured his mind and soul.  Then he turned his eyes towards the hanging medals and pictures in the room.  He recalled the sights and visions of his youth and stopped his sight at one picture:  "What a combination of youth and dreams!  My God, if I had a piece of life, I would return to those days of youth when I had a lot of desires and big mountains to climb," he thought.  Now, when he was the most popular writer of the world, he was longing to go back to the days of hunger and miseries.  Once again he wanted to face the pangs of failure and anguish of rejection; once again he wanted to enjoy the pleasures of the mettle of youth, as among giant evils he used to survive merely because of his colossal will... the will that defeated owl-monsters.

How beautiful was the moment when his beloved gave him a warm kiss on publication of his first story.  Remembrance of that sweet kiss--which once healed all his wounds of deprivations--soothed him for a while in the agonizing feelings of death.

How lovingly she separated her lips to say, "I am proud of you."  He heard the echo of that sweetest sentence in the whole universe.  This one sentence was more precious than all the medals and praise that he received in later life.

A wave of death struck his mind but he resisted forcefully with his remaining energy and was again lost in thought.  "I would surrender all my achievements for that kiss.  My God, for an instant gift me with a piece of life, I would return headlong to kiss the wet eyes of my beloved, then happily shall I die keeping my head in her lap.  Then I will write a story in blood that will melt all the hatred of whole world; I will utter all the unutterable words that will finish the agony of earth; and then I will offer, my God, that story to You which will perish Your indifference to man's sorrows.  When Your face will turn pale and sad, I will be overjoyed at the success of my story.  My words will drain Your eternal anger and the tears from Your eyes and will wipe off the filth of the world.  They will move Your heart and I will see You breaking the high towers of hatred and revenge.  I will tremble with joy to listen the echo of Your words throughout the whole universe, 'Gone are the days of malice'."

He saw the twilight of the dying sun coming through the half-opened window and came out of his bed, but his lifeless legs refused to share the burden of his body.  He fell on the floor but that did not stop his desire to see an alive world.  He started creeping towards that light, which was a symbol of life.  To link with that light, he exerted all the energies of his body.  At last he reached the window and opened his eyes completely to view the end of the day.  Dusk had covered the whole brilliant sky, spreading the gravy shadows of night.  Birds were returning to their nests; the sun was lost in the deep universe.  This take-over of night made him think about the odd process of this universe.  Every creation had to face an end.  Now when he was observing life at distance, an intense desire to be again in that sea of life made him dejected.  The bird flying alone in the dim light of sunset added to his suffering of loneliness.  At that sad moment he saw one gloomy face appearing swiftly towards him.

Many years ago when he left his country in pursuit of dreams, only two eyes wept for him, and now after so many years he was going to die looking at those eyes.  He recalled that cloudy evening when he said good-bye to her forever.  At that moment of death he came to know that those weeping eyes had touched his soul, which was still roaming over there.  The rest of his life was soulless.  All his ties with other bright faces were for his worth... the worth of being a popular writer.  But her sadness was from the core of her heart, she wept for him when rest of the world was laughing at him, when he was a penniless, unknown, striving writer stumbling in the darkness of rejection.  In the dazzling light of fame he had forgotten her but now when he was again surrounded by the darkness of death she was there, standing behind his pillow, softly moving her soft fingers through his rough and dry hair.

Once, when he got a head injury by the brutish beat of the police during a protest against the government, it was she who made him alive by her tender care and prayers.  She revived his will to live and unexpectedly he returned from the threshold of death.  It was she who put in him an enormous energy, enabling him to reach the peak of mountains.

Now when he was standing at the peak some invisible force was dragging him forward, and he could see what was next:  the very dark and dreadful valley of death.  He knew very well that to fall in that dark valley was fateful, but once again he wanted to go back to that foot of the mountain to have a look at those two wet eyes, which were still waiting for him.  Alas!  At the peak he learned that everyone wants to be on the peak, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled.

A stroke of pain took him back to that formidable state of forgetfulness.  He even forgot those kind eyes.  He fell on the ground and felt the agony of death in his bones and soon that unavoidable state overpowered him.  In his fainted condition he had a dream.  He saw himself flying back fast.  He could feel the touch of soothing, cool air that was lightening his burden... the burden of popularity, of pride, of jealousy and of praise.  As he was flying back, his innocence was returning.  He happily said good-bye to all those hypocrites who seduced him towards the path of painful greatness, which gave him nothing except loneliness.  Now for him the dearest thing was to kiss the beauty with the kind eyes.

He was overjoyed at the revival of his innocent existence.  He felt himself free of torturing egotism.

Soon he saw the lost face of his beloved.  He ran towards her, stood at a distance, not knowing how to meet her.  She opened her arms, saying, "Your return is timely, I am very alone."

After this warm meeting she removed the dust from his face and combed his hair with her soft fingers.  He fell in her lap, felt the divine pleasure of love and spoke in an exhausted voice:  "I have discovered the truth of life, which is to love and perish... all the rest is deception."

The fatigue of a long journey and the touch of his beloved made him sleepy.  Sleep overpowered him and he went into the eternal peace of eternal sleep.

 

Photo by Oliver Buskin

 

                                                        

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Above (4):  Cyberphotos from Files in Dreams Formatted

Kostya Mitenev and Masha Pentium

 

anarchist king of alphabet city

Andrew Penland

 

 
 

Untitled

Claudio Parentela

 
 

Untitled

Claudio Parentela

 

 
 

todo nada II

Greg Cope

 

 
 

untitled 02

Greg Cope

 

 
 

Inside Out

Barrie Jones

 
 

2nd Hand Cars

Barrie Jones

 

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The Trans Am                                        by Janis Delin                                                         nother round, Carl?" Eric asked, downing his Weissbier. "Sure, why not.  Let's toast the old wreck."  "Wreck is right. Why the hell did you want that piece of junk?  It didn't even have a motor." "Are you kidding?" Carl said.  "It's a classic, motor or no motor." "Well, you did a lot of work on it.  Beautiful paint job, awesome exhaust system.  And the new motor.  What power that V-8 had." "Christ, I miss that car already and I just sold it two hours ago."  Carl managed a smile.  "But that guy doesn't know what he's in for.  The windows don't work, the brakes are crap, and the door won't close.  Remember the last time I actually drove it?" "Yeah.  What a scene, you holding on to that hundred pound door with your left hand and trying to steer with your right." Carl downed the last of his brew.  "Yeah, some great memories.  But man, there sure are some lousy ones.  This scar on my head will always be a reminder." "Shit, bro, let's not forget the great cruising you did when you had it looking good." Carl remembered.  "Y'know, Eric, I'm glad I'm here and not home watching them tow it away." They ordered another round. Eric was facing the window of the tavern.  Suddenly he reached out and grabbed Carl's arm.  "You better turn around and look out the window." There at the red light was Carl's '78 Trans Am at the end of a tow truck.  It actually glowed in the moonlight. Carl was stunned.  He watched the car go by.  "Like it needed to say goodbye," he said, and slumped in his chair.   Return to Contents Return to Top of Page