Don Harder


​
Wake

Astonished to see my father laid out
in a suit, I turn to my stepmother,
who says, He was a husband and a man

before he was a priest, so he should
be ordinarily dressed. But he didn't
want that. He wanted to be buried

in his ivory, Gothic Chasuble with
the blue velvet cross and oval sapphire
sewn in its center. His love for the church

was the only thing that sustained him
through her trampling. This was his last
chance to be anything other than ordinary.

Already decomposing, his face morphed
into the washed-out man he'd become.
Nothing like the Irish wakes of my mother's

family where everyone clucks,
Doesn't he look grand?!
...Never looked better.




God's Shepherd

My father lived his last months
between waves of cancerous pain
where all he could do was rest
his head on the kitchen table
and pray. Yet, he relished God's graces
to the end, telling how the bishop
of Long Island visited him
in the hospital, saying he needed
to get better, because he was one
of God's shepherds--those words
regaled and broke his heart,
knowing he was already
one of many sheep
crossing the plank
of a ship about to leave.




My Father Passed into the Afterlife Feet First

a breach of promise, a dying he couldn't wrap
his head around. Preparations eluded him,
too late for DNRs, wills living or dead.

I waited to see his spirit rise, but it was long gone--
no point opening a window, he no longer hears
the didactic furies who plagued him on earth.

His life, a litany of injustices, propelled him past Purgatory,
where his Seminarian brothers met him, singing psalms,
Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison--

while my stepmother wags a finger
over his corpse, boasting her grand efforts
to bring him home. Yet when he had a day's

respite at their apartment, she screeched
I hope you die in your shit! Want to see
where you're goin'? Do Ya? We'll drive there now--

as their son kicked his chair and yelled,
Get up and walk, you fuckin" stubborn, old Pollock,
while the visiting nurse dialed 911,

my father's body released his soul,
his blood pressure bottoming out.
Christi Eleison, Christi Eleison,
Christ have mercy upon us all.

​

Tristan Loper



1
 
You long-legged before me
Scrawling my nightmares
Across a page
 
Before it was a man
With no pen
And no form
 
Now it’s you before me
Long-legged and waiting
For me to speak
 
“I’m fine,” I say
 
“Ground yourself,”
She tells me
Knowing I’m not here
 
But grounding 
Grinds down every
Everything
 
That piercing, bloody joy
That can only come from
Floating 
 
 

2
 
I can’t write on medication
stretch out on planks
keep them I punch it
 
A hole through the knot
 
I’ll make it my shush
the capsules fall just
the air bleeds out
 
(pick them up)
 
I can’t write on medication
(two no but my one)
said I can’t have a you 
 
if you’re never a now
 
I’ll make it my shush
the capsules fall just
my sun faded
 
(“You in live in half light.”)
 
But I can’t write! I can’t write!
(and you can’t live 
without your we)
 


3
 
Gus sticks out his mitt
For beer money. 
 
He’s scarred from 
Elbow to wrist 
 
On account of his 
 
smoking a Camel 
And pumping gas 
 
A few years back.
 

 
4
 
I walked past a crippled corner
Where a man was
Digging in a ditch six feet down
Preserving the root of a 
centennial dogwood
 
Jerky orange-hatted and hungry
For a fight he said, 
“All this for a fucking tree?!” 
On my heels at my back
He yelled, “Yeah, I said that!”
 


5
 
I come out of the kitchen
and think about 
everything I regret
 
That time with the guy
a name caller
that careless purchase
a paperweight.
 
I move into the living room
And think about
Everything I regret
 
That guy with the gun
could get me killed
the elder with a temper
much worse than mine
 
I sit at the computer
And think about 
Everything I regret
 
shooting down my hair
making way for my 
 
fingers. The tool at the bar
the one who said no and no
the cowardice that enveloped
after she that thing 
the time a friend left my eyes
don’t look at me anymore 
the lie that was discovered 
after coming home 
the milk and the murder
and marrying 
 
all made way for you.
 
 

6
 
I let my wife have chickens to 
leach out her mothering
(She might die in childbirth.)
 
“You bleed too much
to carry,” I say.
“An egg is an egg,” 
 
But she wants to see 
her face.
 
 

7
 
After the dog died
I swept weekly
 
The first week 
Wiry hair in bunny bunches
 
The second
A mound
 
The third 
A wisp on a bristle
 
I swept weakly until
Her hair was gone 
 
 

8
 
A military friend of mine showed
his identification to airport 
security.
 
“You’re a hero!” the officer said.
 
I didn’t know you could tell a hero
by looking at
a card.



9
 
I’m so liberal
I go to Whole Foods
to get
wasted.



Bio: Kari Rhyan's previous work, Standby for Broadcast--a memoir on the dangers of canned patriotism, family loyalty, and discount retail--focused on her time as a Navy nurse in Afghanistan, and has received praise from Kirkus and Blue Ink, and are widely available online. www.krhyan.com

There Are No Androids Just Electric Sheep

​
It has always been a crazy world – do not let anyone tell you different. Confusion, uncertainty and outright chaos have been more the norm than the exception since Adam and Eve strolled around that famous garden. Even a cursory glance through history will show this to be true. As a great line in a famous movie once said our brilliance has gone hand-in-hand with our idiocy.

I would guess, then, that it is no wonder I never really subscribed to all the glorification of the past and lamentations about the present that are so prevalent in society. While sharing the same warm glow of nostalgia we all get when looking backwards, and feeling that same sense of things “making sense” in the simpler long ago, I recognize the “good old days” as much more of a mythological creation than anything approaching the reality of how it really was. Be it personal memories or a generational description of time and place, the world is the same as it has always been; it is our perception that is distorted. The further we get from the source, the greater the distortion, it seems. Like that tee shirt that says “The older I get the better I was”. Indeed.

And yet...

I must confess that the past few years there has been a creeping suspicion, at times bordering on uneasy certainty that maybe this time in our history is unique, that there has been a game-changer, if you will. There is a new element now in play – actually, it has always been there in one form or another, but never so all-encompassing, so inescapable, so manipulative. I speak of modern Technology, of course, and definitely with a capital “T”.

Perhaps it should all be capitalized. In bold print.Italicized.

Yes, technology has always been with us. One day, many moons ago, some impatient Cro-Magnon, wanting a faster way to get from here to there, found himself a big stone, grabbed his chisel, created the wheel, and we were off and running. Along the way we invented things to build with, add with, fight with, tell time with and eventually plant a flag on the moon with. We have used it to give us thrills, make us more efficient and do tasks requiring strength and stamina beyond our mortal limitations.

That said, never in all that time - not even the Atomic Age of the 1950’s or the heady 1980’s of the Space Shuttle - has Technology been so much a part of our everyday lives. Never in our entire recorded history has nearly everything we seek to do depend on or require some form of Technological phenomena. Even ordering a pizza hasn’t managed to escape unscathed by the tidal wave of Technology.

This is not a good thing. For the first time I am starting to think those “good old days” folks may be onto something after all. More than that, I am not sure this runaway train is stoppable. Deep down I fear it isn’t. The rewind button is permanently broken. So is the pause button. This is not a good thing at all.

The late sci-fi writer Phillip K Dick wrote almost exclusively on the theme of Technology running amok. A brilliant talent unjustly confined to cult status until his very last years, Dick was certainly no optimist. His futures were dystopian and dark, and Technology misused and uncontrolled had made it so. Mankind had evolved intellectually but not morally, and the result was a world often barren of humanity and run by soulless technocrats. Be it the mechanized weapons of war turning on their creators in “Screamers” or the robotic replicates wanting to be human in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, the creation had become the creator and the result was a pervasive nihilism. To be honest, it was great reading but depressing as all Hell.

I bring up Dick and his frightening vision because, while it may be shrugged off as the ranting’s of a cynic or the product of a dissatisfied life spilled out on paper, it seems suddenly more relevant now than ever to me. It amazes me how science fiction has given us warning after warning about the future consequences of our current recklessness for generation upon generation and we still do not listen. It is as if we are being shown an oracle’s vision and we continually choose to ignore it. It is all right there, the golden opportunity to change directions and stop the madness before it is too late and we continue to blunder along our path of folly unheeding. Greed, hubris and amorality are a deadly cocktail.

This all brings me back to the thoughts that are so prevalent in my mind lately. I look around me and, more and more, I see the possibility of Dick’s dystopian future. While our creations have not taken over yet, nor have the creations become the creators, the way Technology has crept into every corner of our modern society is becoming a real concern. As I stated above, when even ordering a simple pizza involves apps and androids – all necessary for more “efficient” service of course – something is not right.

Everything is digital now. Everything seems to involve the internet. Everything is now done online. Everyone is on their cell phone all the time. I mean, you cannot tell me they have something important to say every minute of every day! Everyone is staring at their phone constantly. So much so I sometimes wonder if the next step in our evolution will be a phone attached to our hand permanently. Every restaurant has an app to order ahead of time. People even control their heat and air conditioning with an app on their phone miles away from their house. Turn on their washing machines and televisions with apps from work.

It is shocking when you stop and think how inundated we are with the digital world. It has gotten to the point where you never speak to a live human on the phone anymore but an impersonal robot incapable of interaction beyond programmed data. Watch a group of youngsters in a group sometime. I usually see five or six standing around, each looking at their phone, interacting by not interacting. Then again I see adults in their fifties doing the same thing. I wonder if any of them even see the way having your attention solely focused on you has become the normal way people “get together”. I doubt it.

All this has now put us as a society in the unenviable position of mass dependency. If you are under twenty and all you know is the world as it is now, how exactly are you going to function when the entire way you know how to live is interrupted, even collapses? The only way such young people know how to interact on almost every level is through Technology. I wonder the culture shock when they have to actually not have a cell phone in hand. I can honestly see reactions from stultifying boredom to crippling helplessness. A world without Technology to them might as well be 1900. That this can really only be said of those under twenty shows the speed at which the world has changed with the onslaught of Technology, which is much faster than we can process it as a whole nor deal with its inherent dark side. It is like an out of control car careening down the freeway at eighty miles per hour and we are standing on the side of the road watching.

To me, all this equals the first steps towards a society of complete mechanical impersonality. When life becomes a video game and people literally just another cog in the machine things like empathy, compassion, humanity begin to die. That is happening as I write this and it shows no signs of slowing down.

All these things, while unfortunate and unhealthy, are not the worst part of the way modern Technology has the potential to make “Blade Runners” a living, breathing tableau. They may be a collective slouch towards indifference and a sure sign of the insane speed of our modern world, but they are not nearly as  troubling, even frightening, as the truly nefarious means Technology would be used for in Dick’s techno nightmare. This is when Technology hides, in the dark, just below the surface, not quite able to be seen, not even able to be pinpointed exactly, but still there and as real and as powerful as ever. Call it Big Brother or the Electric Eye or Satan if you want, but whatever you choose to call it it is watching you.

I speak here of privacy. There is not much anymore and soon, if Technology keeps barreling along, there will be none. You can bet that someone, somewhere, knows everything you did today. It is that damn digital world again. The World Wide Web. The Cloud. The Internet of Things. It is all there, the “digital footprint”, telling someone, somewhere what time you turned on your phone, where you bought gas for your car, what you ordered for lunch, how much money you spent, what you have in your bank account, who you voted for, where you live – hell, your blood type and shoe size. I bet some drone has a bead on me right now, sitting on my porch, writing this. I am sure one day soon you will be on someone’s radar 24/7/365. Even ordering a pizza with pepperoni to go on your android app.

You know whoever controls this controls you. Controls your life. Because life now is Technology. Now. Imagine what it will be in ten years’ time. Twenty years. Fifty years. Myself, I shudder.

Then again, we don’t have to imagine, do we? It is all right there, in the words and images of dystopia and future darkness. Words we ignore and shrug off as they slowly but surely manifest themselves each and every day more fully. We can see the future but are incapable of doing anything about it. What happens when we finally realize it only when we are standing in the middle of it, all around us, controlling us, not the other way around?

Somewhere, I bet Phillip K Dick is nodding sadly. There are no Androids. Just Electric Sheep.

​


Bio: Robert Bermudez is currently teaching English abroad. He is a published songwriter and hopes to soon be a published author. He writes mostly non-fiction but has written a screenplay and play and hopes to write more fiction in the future.

Death Watch


In the shade
of a tall tree,
a mangled crow

lay twisted--
fluttering.
Alone,

I took steps
towards it,
stopped.

It dug beak
into earth--
dark head wobbling

like a top
losing spin.
On its right side,

slapping dirt
with free left wing,
if it could have

crawled away
it would have--
it wasn’t bird.

I took more steps,
stopped again--
at the CALL! CALL!

from a crow
across the street
high in tree.

A friend, family?—yes!
With each step
one more joined in,

until a storm of calls
came down--
that stung like hail!

They would not stop!
Fallen crow
rocked in place,

madly going
nowhere!
Enough!

I crossed the road
to get away.
Heard

crow calls
stagger. One-by-
one ending,

until the street
began quieting,
until pure silence.

Stopping one
last time,
looking back,

I saw the mangled
crow put down
its head--

the others,
still in the trees,
waiting.



                                                 

Terrorism

"In this conflict, America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of
morality... "I want Americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every
effort to spare innocent civilians from harm…"We have no ambition in Iraq except to remove a
threat and restore control of that country to its own people…"I know that the families of our
military are praying that all those who serve will return safely and soon…”
                                                                                                                 George W. Bush, March 19, 2003

I. Looking straight into his eyes, she swears she knows who he really is…and will tell. He says,
“Why not keep it our little secret and call it even?”

She calls him a loser and says, “I bet you shook like Jell-O over there.”

He calls her a whore at heart. “If you had a heart, instead of that icy cunt,” he says.

II. In bed, she rolls him off; and he lands hard, like a log in the dark. He says, “Get help, I can’t
move my arms or legs” The sound of war crashes in his ears. She turns on lights and looks at
him—waiting to hear more—all she hears is breathing.

Naked, she walks passed him, passed their wedding pictures on the night stand, passed her
ringing cell phone on the dresser, and enters the bathroom. When he hears the toilet’s flush, then
squeaky shower faucets, he closes his eyes and trembles.

III. As he hovers near the ceiling, he looks down on himself, then her, and swears, “I’ll get even.
I didn’t shoot six fucking Haji to get home and take this shit from you.”

Wearing her favorite little black dress, she twirls in front of their full-length bedroom mirror and
doesn’t hear his curses pouring down on her. As she slips on black stilettos, he begins to fade
into a powdery white mist…disappears with the last pass of her red rose lipstick. “You should
have stayed there in a hundred pieces or come home in a box,” she says. Coward.

IV. Before leaving the room, she kisses his corpse on the cheek—whispers, “Welcome home,
soldier boy. Thanks for the benefits and all. I’ll frame your purple heart and hang it in the living
room for the wake. To be fair, I’ll invite your buddies and her—I bet you never gave that
precious little bitch any black eyes. She would have left your ass.”

V. Seconds after gently shutting the door behind her, she lingers—finally deciding to tip-toe back
into the bedroom. Bent over him, she stops her right hand an inch from her red kiss tattoo near
his mouth. “No,” she says, “I didn’t disturb you at all putting it on. Why bother you now? Let
​someone who doesn’t love you like I do rub it off.”

​

cradle

evaporate into my skin my
inner organ den

a warping wall grey pillows wove a
long my thistled membrane cave
my purell-coated  chamber,
plastic children’s playset lumined
on my switchlashed broadway stage the
furnace hums like magnifying glasses
under sun

toes dug in this polaroid
incarnation of my kindergarten
summer lawn i see
the miles
imagining a mountaintop affords
allowance stored in vestment banks

i spit 4 candle years over cake

on tiny porch our pumpkins ate
up slugs  from  soily portal glut
or gun

in shriveled pillow corner
the 30-year old hologram
of my optimal prediction
tending to a crib

cradling my blue-skinned would-be baby in your arms,
your biceps  ribboned red:
“a parent’s love is stronger than each spark you’ve ever been.”

so tourniquet your ribbon words around my heart and     clear me>




college app

please consider me
i have considered it.
i have a dream i have a mop
it sits in me
don’t let me get the
tylenol
this carpet suits my
attitude this park bench suits my
adderall i miss you
when the windows dark
at weird times in the afternoon




chainsaw

They tapped the blood of our forest,
piped syrup into their veins.
Strapped us to the bed of a truck
to be severed and disseminated.
Our legs ripped apart,
nailed to chairs in two separate junkyards.

I have seen three hundred autumns now
from seven different dumpsters.
It’s been years since I finished counting the stars.
I am running out of space between them
for my smoke as I burn. I’m silent and still.
And I burn too slowly for anyone to see.

​

Bio: John Darr is a poet, teacher and music critic from Richmond, VA. He is currently an MFA candidate at Wichita State University. 

It seemed like a bad dream
Some nightmare I couldn’t wake up from
I didn’t want it to be real
A neuron in my brain
Cold, empty, and dark
Played on a loop, backwards and forwards
Ad infinitum
Started off softly, like a whisper in the trees
And grew,
Louder, into a roar of cacophony
Like a gunshot going off
A deaf man suddenly gaining all the noise
Enough to make you tie rope around your neck
And swing from a branch,
Suddenly feeling all the serenity
You have no idea
You really don’t
You’re so comfortable, so ignorant
So blissful
Take a drink
You’ll feel better, I promise
Take another one
You’ll love it
Keep drinking until you can’t stop
Then stop
And use your fucked up enunciation
To discuss your problems
Look at yourself in the mirror every day
And hate what you see
Let time pass
And do things you’ve never done before
You’ll feel better, I promise
Pray
You’ll love it
Keep helping others
Until you forget to help yourself
And use your screwed articulation
To speak of your experience, strength, and hope
Look at yourself in the mirror every morning
And start to like what you see
Fall, stumble, fail, make mistakes
But always remember to get back up
Always remember to dust yourself off
And always remember, “This too shall pass… like a kidney stone”

***


It’s something long forgotten
You need to be careful
A gutter boy, dirty and worn;
A streetwalker, hands bound with electrical tape;
A junkie, arms streaked with animal tracks;
The unholy trinity
Crosses the faded line,
Each in need of a personal messiah;
Someone to pray to,
Someone to give the day to
The only light in the alley is a burning monk,
Giving hope through sacrifice;
The only recourse
On the outer walls surrounding the concrete brick hallway
Slashes of blood, torn tapestries, marred paintings confound all
It’s something long forgotten
You need to have courage
The ebb and flow of life is rampant here
The stench of death is abundant
The evil of betrayal
Of seduction
Of greed
Of gluttony
Of avarice
Yes, all these are here, too
Waiting to be picked up
Like a parasite upon a leaf next to a hiking trail
It’s something long forgotten
You need to be strong
What is life without pain?
What is life without humiliation?
What is life without trial?
With ignorance?
With innocence?
Yes, the transcendence of pain is happiness
For what can one learn from shitting rainbows and pissing unicorns?
Pain must be present to have any real serenity

***



the boy sits in the cell
wondering how he descended into hell
a flicker of the lighter and a puff of smoke
is all he could muster as he spoke
the darkness creeps in
the air becomes a howling wind
the boy prays for slumber
knowing full well it won't come
delves deep into his mind
terrified of what he finds
the door screen ripped, the deadbolt gone
7 shells lay in perfect harmony
the walls painted red and pink in the sun
he'd only gone over to get his fix
the bodies numbered six
the boy sits in the cell
wondering how he descended into hell

***



Someone said, “You need a hobby.”
Someone said, “Idle hands do the devil’s work.”
Well, what to do?
Oh, what to do?
Can you repeat the question?
Oh, you didn’t ask one? Huh…
My mind is empty
My heart is heavy
My soul is burned up
No ideas, no lights go off
I’m stuck in this perpetual shadow zone
This ghost town, this kill zone
Nodding off on some god-serum
My arms black as the sun
My skin white as mountaintops
My spirit gone
Ready for the long slumber of eternity
Well, what to do?
Oh, what to do?
My mind has run off
Have you seen it?
There’s a reward for it, I swear
Awakened not by light nor warmth nor love
By Desperation and Despair
Struck down by the hand of “God”
It pains me so
Feeling worthwhile, finally
Thinking reversed, putting me first
Ideas flood
Overcome me
Stop my trembling hands from putting foot in mouth
Halt the crystal container of brown liquid
From ever reaching my liver
A slight, a voice soft as a whisper
Then grows, like a withered sapling into a mighty oak
Shakes the very foundation of me
“What about poetry, story-creating, lyrics, and the like?”
Shit.

***



The light dims and quakes
Skewed visions run free
Like screwed telemetry
Like a bad acid trip
Like a mental time rip
The pain strikes hard
My head is jarred
It withers and fades
Like fleeting love
In the mists of shade
The world above
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Snow in white lines
Flow as dark rhymes
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
I’m stuck forever in this dream, this acid trip
Searching for salvation, but it has me in its grip
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?

​

Bio: Danny Dalferro is a writer from Rockville Centre, New York. For a living, he works as a custodian. He lives in Oceanside, New York with his cat, Mal.

Sunnyside Care Home

Privacy curtains drawn, we watch Jeopardy.
Our nightly routine, a bond
before parting. The tray pushed aside -
broth and blended brown mounds,
reeking of spoon-fed infancy.
 
We listen for questions to which
we know the answers.
In the same room, behind curtain number 2,
a man keeps a vigil, silent like his silent twin,
united again in this sterile womb.
 
Final Jeopardy after the next commercial break;
we wait expectantly. Before the question can be revealed,
a soft voice from behind the curtain requests our pardon.
We mute the TV; he tells us his brother has just passed.
In solidarity we turn off the TV.
 
That’s how death can happen -
the question we will never know. 



 
Off-track
 
walking in the spreading weeds
beaten down
picking salad greens
I hear the train coming, rhythmic
loneliness spreads
the many railway destinations
I’ve been railroaded in:
New Orleans bars, New York cars,
off the tracks in Memphis,
waylaid in LA,
the last stop is around the bend
the sun is glaring, red
hot tomatoes grow wild
my bag loaded and bursting




Banking on it

We’ll go to the bank in the morning.
The branches are kitty corner, at Main
and Elm. Remember? The accounts
have a long series of numbers,
arranged in columns.
 
I’ll take you first thing in the morning.
We’ll get your money; don’t worry.
I’ll be secure. There’s no hurry.
The funds are there;
you’re not yet spent. 
Leave it for the night, sleep tight.
In the morning you can eat
peaches and cream
to your heart’s discontent. It won’t be long
and we’ll both head to that vault, but for now
 
a morphine drip to help you slip
into the calm breathing of the night;
your last in skin.
Now I dream of you, my father,
and put on your orphaned socks.
​

Out in the open
 
The country air heals us,
in a month you’ve become so small,
become harder,
less naïve –
he’s left his mark,
perhaps you’re better for it,
hungry for success,
for your own happiness
above all else.
 
I shouldn’t be surprised
that you didn’t ask about me
because you’ve been regrowing your roots,
a kind of new growing deep in your bones –
I forgot that unspoken,
our friendship
our loyalty
lies deeper.




Tell me you love me
 
Assuming
is a lesser magic
than hearing
you love me –
assumptions are neither here nor there
they float and never land.




Many faces, many moons
 
There are so many sides of me,
which one do I wear
when I wake up in the morning,
when I let down my hair,
shake the sleep away,
unveil,
my covers reveal shaking limbs,
fragile if I choose to show it,
brittle if you choose to touch:
Don’t break me like they did.

​

Bio: Isabelle Kenyon is a Greater Manchester based poet and a graduate in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance from the University of York. She is inspired by the people and events around her - she observes and writes what she sees and what she feels. She is the author of poetry anthology, This is not a Spectacle and micro chapbook, The Trees Whispered, published by Origami Poetry Press. Her poems have been published in many poetry anthologies and included in literary festivals, such as the Inkyneedles anthology, the Great British Write Off, the Wirral festival of Music, Speech and Drama, Poetry Rivals, and the Festival of Firsts. Isabelle has been awarded third place in the Langwith Scott Award for Art and Drama and runner up in the Visit Newark Poetry Competition.
You can read more about Isabelle and see her work at flyonthewallpoetry.co.uk

Thomas_H_photo


​
​THIS IS NOT A STORY


The night drive proved hypnotic. Old jazz standards issued from the radio. This person still listened to the radio. It made him unique among his peers. His peers owned property and groomed children to be better and more successful than them. In many instances this was not going as planned. Problems arose.
    “Maybe you should order the banquet burger.”
    “I was thinking that.”
    “I know what you’re thinking.”
    “I know you know what I’m thinking.”
    We were talking about the food we wished to eat at the drive-in diner. We were spanning several decades.
    “Miracles on roller skates.”
    “I know where you’re going with this.”
    “I know you know.”
    It never made sense to me, after we ate and drove up the Jolly Cut to the escarpment, why we had driven there.
    “You wanted to see the city at night.”
    “I have seen it at night.”
    “Smells foul tonight.”
    “It always smells foul.”
    When we drove back down the Jolly Cut to the city proper he said he wanted coffee.
    “You might not sleep.”
    “Let me worry about that.”
    I turned up the radio when Polka Dots and Rainbows came on. Wes Montgomery.
    “I love Wes Montgomery.”
    “Yes, I know you do.”
    “I know you know I do.”
    The children of my peers have grown into ugly and distracted teenagers with bad haircuts. I don’t envy them.
    “Yes you do.”
    “I love Wes Montgomery.” 




SELF-PORTRAIT WITH CROPPED HAIR


I believed that by being careful and using a sharp pair of scissors I could save myself the cost. I’m poor enough to suffer these debates. One part of me, a would-be patrician, finds the idea abhorrent. The other part, an abject failure and pauper, thinks enough of his manual skills and dexterity to brave the attempt.
    “He’s courageous,” offers one of the audience sitting in the tiny theatre-in-the-round.
    “But surely he must know things can go wrong,” states another audience-member, standing to make his case.
    Stage-lights obscure the people’s faces. A technique I often use. That is to say, blaming the lights I save myself from describing faces.
    “Perhaps he’s mining the meta-fictionists.”
    “Are you mining the meta-fictionists, sir?”
    I don’t know what these idiots are talking about. A story has a beginning, middle and end. Yet, most of what gets exchanged between humans can hardly be called a story.
    “It consists more of little snapshots, sir.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Oh me, uh, my name is Robert.”
    “Robert, I don’t know where you come from or what your state of mind is. Perhaps you’re paranoid. I don’t know.
    “I can assure you Robert isn’t paranoid, sir.”
    “And you, what’s your name?”
    “I’d rather not say, sir.”
    “Sit down, both of you. Sit down. I’m feeling kind of sick.”
    Indeed, a turbulence in my digestive tract had torqued its way into my lower intestine and lower. I wanted to run off the stage, but then, seeing how I had failed to actually construct a stage, I found myself at a loss.
    “How are you going to get out of this one, sir?”
    “I’d pay to see that, sir.”
    With a snap of my fingers I silenced the voices, dimmed the stage lights (which I had included) and settled into the black void that is my time away from my desk.




DETAILS
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I was too full to sit on her narrow couch. She stared at me while I stood near the stereo, one hand on my hip.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah, yeah. Fine. Do you, uh, have any Sinatra?”
    “I don’t really go for the old stuff.”
    “May I use your bathroom?”
    “Of course. Second door on your right.”
    To void or not to void. Emptiness would be welcome on these occasions. Any presuppositions involving gymnastic maneuvers, nearly pulled muscles, and cramping toes already flew off like Canada geese, their trumpets fading by the moment. Ivory soap scented the bathroom, a clean menacing smell. I ran the taps, looked at myself in the mirror over the sink, and opened my mouth like a hippopotamus. Then I stared at myself in the eyes until it got weird.
    “Are you okay?” I heard the lady ask from behind the door.
    “Yes, I’m fine,” I said.
    But I felt unwell insofar as retaining your demons in order to blunt any follow up questions and hideous faces will make you feel unwell. I told myself, this can be remedied. All you have to do is relax. While I’m embarrassed to complete this story, I am one of those mulishly stubborn souls who always finishes what he started. Maybe that’s an exaggeration.
    “Yoo-hoo.”
    “Yes, yes, almost done.”
    The devil is in the details, I’ve heard. But then again, I’ve also heard that God is in the details. In any event, the details seem paramount over both the devil and God.
     Dear reader, what details have I omitted that would have made this experience richer or more fulfilling?



Bio: Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto. His work has appeared here and there.

Tooting
 
it’s romantic
being with you here
in the light of the passing ambulances
 
i’m sorry i keep looking at the time
sweetheart   i do only want
to be with you
 
irises grow
 
you put your bare chest
to mine
 
 
 
the mistake of the sober morning
 
you can trust me haven’t you noticed yet?
i sound better when i’m caring, more middle class i mean
you know i’ve never met anyone so similar not one
although i’ve been in love and with a lot of guys –
i don’t mind you snoring but could you cut out the philosophical crap?
neither of us had latency periods anyway.
and did i tell you about my childhood
or the time i saw Uncle Paul’s ghost
or the time i lay hallucinating on the bathroom floor and afterwards couldn’t call you just sip tea in bed with death in my lap?
you pee too much but that’s okay
i’ll masturbate whilst you’re in the bathroom.
don’t lie there lie here.
this is all so marital
don’t go to sleep just yet though –
 
i sigh
slide an arm over
and close my eyes.
i see the alternative
does not have the word
love
in it.
 
 

seems like
 
you want to go out tonight?
i thought we were going to stay in
and see the new Jeffery Dahmer movie.
poke holes in your jumper
with a biro pen
you got paint on my shoes
like a little kid
Flames Trees – Thika
i think something’s gone wrong
for a moment i thought you were leaving?
breakfast at the lebanese
silent   miserable shwarma
my favourite
 
 
 
running away
 
the pool is empty is empty
all the birds are now dead
no i’m not going to take off my shirt for you
instead
await the earthquake to shift the beam from above my bed
Lombardy, 1753
and slip away out the window
 
come   righteousness   a gun
and dont leave me waiting here
at a crossroads maybe? bah
the crosswords we do for love
 
two frightened and alone
to say much about anything except Vout
and the drilling in the wall and keeping a mind
on where the passports are at all times
you went through the things of my house
naked when i left you
just like you were that time i said something perverted
 
something’s wrong? no? and far away
handpicked fruit is being painted –
i dont want your excuses i want your money
 
shall we do it?   when?   tonight?   i’m not
ready
sex and death i said were all that mattered.
what a responsible adult
theyve grown in to

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