11/17/2017 0 Comments Sweetness & Light by Paul BeckmanThomas_H_photo Sweetness & Light Sweetness hid behind the corner store. She sat stone-faced and angry but to a casual passerby she looked scared. The sleeves of her hoodie hid her hands and she sat quietly as the Dominican boy came out from the back of the store three times with the garbage bags and heaved them into the dumpster. The next time he came out he handed her a bottle of water and a bag of chips—a large bag, which she opened greedily. Sweetness thanked him with her eyes and a nod and he went back into the store. Jones Jones stomped around the house yelling for Sweetness to come out and get what was good for her. Light, her younger sister by two years pretended nothing was going on and sat on her bed reading. “You’re bleeding, Daddy,” Light said as soon as her father barged into her room. He was bleeding from his left ear and the blood was leaking down the side of his face and onto his blue coverall work clothes. “Where’s your sister?” Jones demanded to know. “She did this.” “Dun no,” Light said softly so her voice wouldn’t show her fear. She looked back down at her book hoping he would leave her room. He turned to leave and Light saw the pint of something sticking out of his back pocket. Soon, she thought, I’ll be a woman and have to keep something by my bed like Sweetness does. The locks don’t do no good. Then she shivered, thinking that perhaps he wouldn’t wait for her to be a woman and she put down her book and looked out her bedroom door. She heard his snores coming from the living room and soft-walked to the kitchen where she took out a steak knife and slid it up her pajama sleeve. She poked in the kitchen for a snack knowing full well that there would be nothing no matter that today was payday. She grabbed her father’s chicken from his plate and quick-walked by the living room and up the stairs to the cacophony of his snoring. Light took the flashlight from under her pillow and pointed it out of the window after switching it on. She left it on the sill and turned off the overhead light. A short while later Sweetness, seeing the ‘all clear’ appeared in her doorway and eased the door closed and braced a chair against the door knob. “Anything?” she asked and almost smiled with relief when Light handed her their father’s chicken dinner. The fifteen year old Sweetness, her intense hunger modulated by the chips and water, ate slowly and deliberately for a couple of minutes before offering some to her baby sister who shook her head no. “I had chicken and greens,” she said, “and I’m full and my stomach is so nervous I couldn’t eat any way.” “Did that bastard try anything with you?” Sweetness asked. Light shook her head and lowered her head and scrunched her eyes closed tight. She took the steak knife from under her pillow and showed it to Sweetness. “I’m gonna be ready if he comes anywhere near me,” she said trying her best to sound tough—all seventy-seven pounds of her. Both girls knew that if they could only hold out a few more weeks their mother would be home and he’d get all he wanted from her—even if he had to smack her around a bit. They’d been counting the days to her release and marking them off on a calendar hanging on the inside of Sweetness’ closet. He owed their mother big time for talking the eighteen month fall for him. She, Queenie Jones had never done anything illegal in her life but she agreed to plead guilty to stealing the silver from the house she cleaned because she couldn’t afford to keep her girls on a cleaning woman’s pay, even if she still had a job, and Jones made enough money to keep them from going foster. It was the last red X the girls put on the calendar when they ran down to breakfast. Their father was there, standing at the stove and asked them how they wanted their eggs or would they prefer pancakes? They looked at each other realizing that he was happy that Mom was being set free today and things could get back to as normal as possible. “Can we skip school and go with you to pick up Momma? Light asked. Jones didn’t answer. “What time is her bus coming in? Sweetness asked. Jones said nothing and put a stack of pancakes in front of each of them and moved the maple syrup in between them. “Tell us Daddy.” “C’mon, Daddy. Don’t toy with us. What time is Momma getting in?” “Your Momma’s not coming in today,” he said. “What happened? When’s she coming?” “She won’t be coming back her,” Jones told his daughters. “The court thinks she’s a bad influence on you both and has ordered her to stay away. We got divorced and I have custody and we just have to set a few ground rules and everything will go smooth for the Jones family, if you know what I mean. “Where’s Momma going?” “Out of state. If she doesn’t go out of state and stay away from you they will lock her up again.” Jones let that sink in before he told the girls what they didn’t want to hear and how the Jones household would take orders from Daddy Jones and there’d be no sassing back if they knew what was good for them. Two days later it was payday and their father’s dinner had gotten cold waiting for him to drink up his manhood and courage. Sweetness and Light promised each other that they would help each other and if he tried anything they’d run off in the morning. They each pack a shopping bag of clothes and necessities and took their small savings from their individual hiding places hoping that none of this would be necessary. They fell asleep together in Sweetness’ bed and were awakened by the slamming of the front door and their drunken father bumping into furniture as he headed for the staircase up. He pushed open Sweetness’ door and saw the girls hugging each other in fright and protection. “Light, “he slurred. “You can stay and watch cause you’re ready. I saw the blood stains on your sheet. Jones staggered towards the bed and pulled a pint of bourbon from his hip and drained the balance in three gulps. He then threw the bottle against the wall over the girls’ heads. It didn’t shatter but bounced back to him giving him another chance. As he bent over to pick it up the shot went off and Jones fell over backwards, a stunned look on his face. The police came and took Queenie away in handcuffs. Her girls were hugging her and crying and she said to shush and listen. I learned a lot in prison—too much and I wanted to keep this monster away from you. Sweetness, when he visited me in the prison those few times, he told me what was going on and that he had himself two women and didn’t need me no more. I couldn’t take it and got here as soon as I could. I can handle prison but you don’t need his messing with you anymore. “But Momma,” Light said. “I’m the one that shot him not you. I should be the one going to prison and you should be staying home.” “Light, honey. You’re confused. You were hiding under the cover when I came out from the closet and shot him. Where would a young girl like you get a gun anyway?” Sweetness held Light closely as the police led their mother away in handcuffs. Queenie never accepted any of their visits or responded to their letters. Jones Jones didn’t die but he probably often wished he had. He was paralyzed from the waist down and his two strokes left his arms mostly useless. Sweetness often dressed and undressed provocatively in front of him making lewd suggestion that she knew he couldn’t handle. The girls made his food but wouldn’t feed him and he waited for the aide to come every other day to wash and clean him. When he was finally taken to a nursing home Sweetness adopted Light and they struggled through life as was to be expected, never taking their father’s calls or opening his letters. The weight came off the day the nursing home lady showed up at the door and told them he had died. They said thank you, but no thank you on the funeral arrangements. They never knew that their mother had gotten permission to be escorted to his graveside service. She arrived and left in a police cruiser, dry-eyed both ways. Bio: Paul Beckman has four story collections, a novella published and a new collection, ”Kiss Kiss” due out in early 2018.. He’s had over 350 of his stories published in print, on line, and via audio. Paul runs the monthly FBomb NY flash fiction reading series at KGB. He had a micro story selected for the 2018 Norton Microfiction Anthology.
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11/17/2017 1 Comment A Warm Blooded Comfort by Rosanna BatesThomas_H_photo A Warm Blooded Comfort The needle grazed my skin as the baby cried. The point pressed on the willing vein but my hand would not comply. The gurgles calling from the cot infected me with a different craving; some alien but comforting sensation that made me feel well. I ran a trembling hand over my pallid face, feeling where my eyes sunk into their sockets as though withdrawing from all they had seen. My body thirsted for the kick, a surging fury flooding through my blood vessels as it waited for the inevitable. My feet dragged me across the damp carpet, thick with condensation, littered with dirty nappies and baby wipes. Mould climbed the walls in a race to the ceiling, where a bare light bulb hung, buzzing with iridescent light. The cot was fixed to the wall, like they all were in council houses in this neighbourhood, in case some drug-addled junkie short on cash decided to sell it to secure their next hit. The thought had crossed my mind more than once before now. Reaching into the cot, my wandering eyes gazed down at my little creation. A teardrop shaped birth-mark dashed her earlobe. A witch’s mark, my mother would have said. She didn’t smile when she found me, not like other babies did with their mothers. What did she think when she saw me? Was I mum? Or just a figure that drifted into her life at feeding time? The syringe, heavy in my hand, resurrected heavier questions. Would I put her through all the heartache I suffered? Would she find me dead on the bathroom floor in seven years? Would she have twenty different parents and no place to call home? A rare sheen of tears blurred my vision, distorting her into a still, faceless thing. With my free hand, I caressed the fine tendrils of hair beginning to grow upon her head. A ghostly breath passed my lips and her hand touched mine with the softest, most gentle grace that dragged a raw emotion from the depths of my heart into my bloodstream. There it was again. That inexplicable warmth, akin to the glow of sunlight on the skin that penetrated deeper, through flesh and bone to my core, to a part of me that drugs had somehow not yet touched. I left her. My skin burned with a longing to hold her, but I could only stumble to the window, grasping the frame for support. The forgotten syringe made itself known again, guiding my hand towards its chosen vein. It bulged from beneath my skin now, persuaded by the tightened band above my elbow. It edged nearer, my heart thumping faster with each inch it gained and faster still when it grazed again the surface of my skin. What was I doing? Another scream pierced the silence and I wrenched open the window whilst my hand paused, still clenched around my toxic sustenance. The pounding in my ears almost drowned out her wounded cries as she begged to be held, to be loved. My gaze fixed on the wretched syringe in my trembling hand. Every limb and organ, every square inch of me begged for, demanded the rush it promised. I couldn’t remember feeling a more intense instruction. Through the hazy chaos, one thought surfaced: she could give me more to live for than this. One hesitant finger at a time, I released it from my grasp. It fell out of sight, clattering down the fire exit. A part of me wanted to scramble down after it. I slammed shut the window and left my temptation out on the pavement where it belonged. My itching fingers searched for its new craving and plucked my little girl from her cot, holding her closer to stop the shakes that wracked my body. There, her little pink lips curled upwards, into a tiny, proud smile. Bio: Rosanna Bates was born in Worcester, England at the height of baggy jeans and boy band popularity. Her childhood was spent reading and writing stories she was too embarrassed to show anyone. She graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in Psychology in 2012 and enjoys feeding a constant impulse to travel. 11/17/2017 0 Comments Leaded Light By Lynn WhiteLeaded Light The glass is cut, so carefully cut, so carefully arranged to break up the light as it reflects it. Smooth joints enhanced with curving strips of soft lead to fragment the light. Light cracked by lead, bright white or gilded by sunshine or bent into rainbows refracted to paint colours in reflected shadows to fall in straight shafts onto grey paving. The reflection is fragmenting as it falls breaking up the grey, so that even the shafts of multi-coloured illumination can make no sense of it. There’s no sense to be made. The paving is crazy now, simply crazy. Bio: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Her poem 'A Rose For Gaza' was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition 2014. This and many other poems, have been published in recent anthologies including - Stacey Savage’s ‘We Are Poetry, an Anthology of Love poems’; Community Arts Ink’s ‘Reclaiming Our Voices’; Vagabond Press’s, ‘The Border Crossed Us’; ‘Degenerates - Voices For Peace’, ‘Civilised Beasts’ and ‘Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones’ from Weasel Press; ‘Alice In Wonderland’ by Silver Birch Press, and many rather excellent on line and print journals. 11/16/2017 1 Comment Johanna by Christopher McCarthyTristan Loper
Johanna THE LONG WALK to the mailbox is the earliest thing you remember. Leave Strathgowan at 4pm every week. Walk up the hill. Walk up the right-of-way. Walk up Glengowan. You drop two letters in the box at the corner of Mt. P——. Your letters always fly to the same city, same country. Drop one. Drop two. One to one sister up in Mahon, almost all the way up, up near Knocknaheeny. The other to the other sister in Blackrock. The latter letter filled with money—bills in a hallmark card because “you don’t know which postman will rob you blind, Merciful Lord.” But there are earlier moments too, fuzzier ones, with pictures that are out-of-focus. Remember the house up on Dawlish Avenue (six years there) with the raggedy Anne room? And where was raggedy Andy? The bed in that room, the thunderstorms, the fear at night walking through inner rooms in the dark, the ones connected to the main hallway on the second floor, and the stairwell at the back of the house, presumably for servants in olden days, up the stairs, the safe bed. You lived on the third floor in a very plain room like the one you had in the Strathgowan house. Just a bed, a dresser, an old TV set. Crank the dial to change the channel. You did, you did, until we got you a converter. On Dawlish you had a big old bed. A rickety, crickety big bed and there was a large elm tree outside your window. It shook with the wind. Lie in bed. Watch it go. The Strathgowan house had a queer ceiling. The moving men couldn’t get the big bed up the stairs into the attic room. Keep two twin beds in case “your sister comes to visit.” The big queen-size bed sleeps two, but it went into the guest bedroom on the second floor. Fuzzy photos flutter earlier. Back on Dawlish. Walk to readings at the public library on Lawrence. Walk to Blessed Sacrament when the good weather holds. Drop off Sunday morning at quarter to eleven. Pick up Sunday afternoon at half past twelve. Now lay down to sleep, pray the Lord your soul to keep, if you die before you wake, pray the Lord your soul to take. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the holy ghost. Amen “Very good now say the Lord’s prayer.” Our Father, who art in heaven… * * * Go back to Ireland every summer. Visit two sisters, one remaining brother (in a home), a line of nephews, and a lace of nieces, if they called at the little house on Church Rd. Marian Park. Two green leather suitcases ready to go. Pickup. Drive to the airport. Depart. Two months gone. You broke your hip on Strathgowan in the kitchen. Suppertime! Dinner ready. Running back & forth in between skirts. Down humble tumble. Break. Down. The left one goes. Feel 66. Feel older. Catch pneumonia in the hospital like a child catches a cold. Nearly die. Nearly. Drunk completely. “Completely drunk,” Mother said. Too drunk to stand. “Very anxious.” Run upstairs. Down a mickey. Not run entirely. Can’t run, bad hip now. Never smell of liquor. Not entirely, into the wine. Collapsed on the foot of the stairs leading up to the attic. All those stairs and no hip to go on. Down at the bottom. The lapse in collapsed. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Eventually Mother did pick you up off the stairs and put you to bed. * * * AT RUSSELL SQUARE H—— fog slows gloom. Familiar accents starve love, sassy talk trains on. The building maker’s second son is sitting silent. Gloom some brick. Girder grey past a port. Hoist a joist. Watch. Walk up the staircase out onto the street. Walk to the flat. “Howyeh Mister Casey? Lovely evening.” Ride the lift up to five. Change. Drink a beer. Ride the lift down. Go out. Sculpture view. Interpret David Smith (1906-65) the welder. Drink. Walk the gallery. Talk. Talk. Free house. It’s open to anyone. It’s an exhilarating bicycle ride. University friends and acquaintances join in: The Twelve Pubs of Christmas. The building maker’s second son is out on the town tonight. Gather round SOHO and Santa-shirted transvestites, sportsmen, sportswomen. God love her. He does. Drink. Dingdong 2 am. Home he stumbles, alone. Slow fog gloom settles again. Familiar horsemen ride loneliness, bewilderment, slow despair. The building maker’s second son gets into a cab that reeks of perfume and stale, fried chips. Arrive at Russell Square early this morning, this night, starved of love, no sassy talk, no one’s about, no trains, nothing, but life somehow carries on. The building maker’s second son is sitting on the floor of the hallway to no. 6. Grab some brick. Grind fingers into it for support. Hoist yourself up. There’s a lad. Steady up. Ride the lift up to five. Struggle with keys in the door. Clothes come off. Drink what’s left of a beer. Ride the railing up to the loft bed above the little kitchen. Follow the winding stair. One-step, two-step, three-step, almost, four-step, hang onto those metal poles, but don’t don’t lose your footing. Down. Tumble. Tumble. Break. Down. The left arm goes in between the metal bars of the railing. Twist. You’re in sixes now. Catch yourself on the one-step. Catch yourself on the shattered bottle hip. Sculpture view: Head as Still Life. Interpret subject in home setting welded to staircase. No more drink. No more walk the gallery. Yell. Yell. No more open house. No more open bar. No more bed open to just anyone. Mobile phone the hotline. Here comes the health service, and the ambulance, to drop you to the hospital. Hear sirens. Cry like a child. Nearly die. Nearly. The fog eases and thins over the water. Move out. Leave the H—— trap’s horns. Crutch home to Canada where nothing is going on. Remember the heap on the green ocean marble in the hallway. Remember the heap, no clothing, frothing, folded into the metal railing. Of course it’s the functional architecture. Save the curtain call. Ulterior action, you’re needed on stage. Res ipsa loquitur. Leave this place. Go. Live in transitu. The building maker’s second son stops short of the jaws of the first and second step, backs out, and down onto the street. With the sticks, he’s a human zygal. Sip coffee. Wait for a cab. * * * ALL THE BITS OF BONE bled into the crack to form an egg when the hip healed. No other eggs had ever been allowed to form. Dormant ovaries - that damp enormity – lay dormant despite many a starched Adam’s apple. The way the story is told it seems you never had a life. Grew up in Ireland. Moved from Cork to Toronto. Searched for a shelter. None of this is really true. You cared for children not your own. You were our mother. You lived in many cities and on many streets before Dawlish and Strathgowan. The long walk to the mailbox is the hardest thing to remember. Step up the hill foot to asphalt. Leave the house at 4pm every week. Go up the hill. Go up the right-of-way. Walk up. Oh how difficult it is to walk. Limp drop two letters in the box. Letters fly to the same city, same country. It’s always the same letter. Drop one. Drop two. Drop them all. In the thunderstorms now, the fear, nightwalking through inner rooms, in the dark, feel with fingers along the paneling in the main hallway. Creep down the stairwell at the back of the house. Walk through the kitchen out the back door into the garden. Call. Call and call and call. Pray for dreams of that safe bed. Bio: Christopher McCarthy is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets. He lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut with his wife Stefanie. 11/16/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Darren C. DemareeThomas_H_photo [dark red] i told my daughter dark red is a heart that cannot be crushed by the changing times or the choking spirit of our america and that dark red can take some hits so if it must take all of the hits never fall never fall never fall but if you must take all of the hits falling can hack the guilt pretty damn well so you do as you please girl because you are as dark red as i’ve ever seen and this scene is as much yours as you want it to be [there’s no soul for you to save] i told my children there’s no soul for you to save there are only parents of parents of parents and all of us have failed to some degree and you will fail to some degree and isn’t it lovely that i have no more expectations for you than to live this one life as a basket for the fantastical as a holding place for the ecstatic and the rest of it is fucking nonsense and if that doesn’t free you up to feel anything about the world then i don’t know what will [the whiskey is in the apple] i told my son the whiskey is in the apple and you should eat the apple but remember to spit out the seeds because i became an orchard and you were born to become a forest but your mother is a garden so you should choose carefully what you tuck inside your cheeks inside your belly inside your heart and if it ever feels like you’re drowning that’s because you’re drowning so spit the seeds spit the water out wrap the skins around your torso and become something else most of our family has only ever been one thing at a time and you you you could be more than that Bio: Darren C. Demaree is the author of six poetry collections, most recently “Many Full Hands Applauding Inelegantly” (2016, 8th House Publishing). His seventh collection “Two Towns Over” was recently selected the winner of the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and is due out March 2018. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. 11/16/2017 2 Comments The Needle’s Edge By Nathan TompkinsThomas_H_photo The Needle’s Edge My cousin had light brown curls, dimples so deep, they captured unwary girls if they did not watch their footing. He played football, clutched that damned ball as he ran down the field mud clung to his cleats, while he pounded his legs to the turf to reach those white goalposts. When they found him that morning in Spokane beaten, bruised, bloodied. I remembered…. He had light brown curls, dimples so deep, they captured unwary girls before he found his jagged comfort in the hollow point of a needle’s edge. When I saw his mom that Christmas, I held her as she quaked in my arms,. I held her as her tears dampened my shirt Then, we separated, I watched her wipe her red eyes with a white kleenex. In the end the cops did nothing. In the end, they disregarded the bruises on his face, on his body, on his brain. They claimed the blood splatter on the wall was from shoving poison into his withered veins, So his murder was ruled an overdose. He was just another dead needle freak. Who cares if one heroin addict kills another? But you know….someone always does. Even junkies have mothers. who will always remember… Bio: Nathan Tompkins is a writer living in Portland, Oregon though his heart will always be in his native North Idaho. His works have appeared in many publications including Drunk Monkeys, Five2One, NonBinary Review, and Windfall A Journal of Poetry of Place. He's the author of five chapbooks, the latest of which is Uncomfortable Adventures. 11/15/2017 0 Comments Ocean by Abigail GeorgeThomas_H_photo Ocean “I want to change. Tell me how to change.” “Why do you want to change? You sound unhappy. Are you lonely?” “Yes, sometimes I can’t get out of bed. This week was a good week, though. I just want to be different, I guess.” “How do you keep busy?” “I go for long walks. I read books. I have a journal. I take photographs.” “What do you take photographs of?” “People. Animals, mostly dogs and their owners. I don’t have a dog. Dogs inspire me. They’re very loyal, very loving even to people who do not love them back. I take pictures of nature. Table Mountain.” “What about doing something different. Change your routine. Go to the beach for a long walk.” “I’m not brave like that. Too many teenagers around.” “You walk on the mountain.” “Yes, I walk on the mountain. I like being around the tourists.” “Why do you take pictures of people who are depressed? Are you depressed? No boyfriend?” “No boyfriend. Although, maybe if I had a boyfriend I wouldn’t be so depressed.” “Don’t you want a boyfriend? Every girl wants a boyfriend or maybe a girlfriend.” “No. Oh, no, I don’t want a boyfriend. I’m not gay even though I thought I was in high school.” “What’s wrong with you. Do you think that there’s something wrong with you?” “That’s a good question. Oh, everything. I don’t think you have that kind of time.” “Are you bitter?” “I don’t know. If you think I should be on medication, perhaps I should go and see a psychiatrist.” “I’m not a qualified therapist.” “But you’re saying that perhaps anti-depressants might help.” “It can help. I’m only saying that it can help, perhaps in your case. Anti-depressants have helped other young women your age.” “By the way, what’s your name? I’m Julia.” “I’m Joan.” “Are you a mother? Are you a good mother? My mother wasn’t a good mother.” “Yes, I am a good mother. I love my children. I love my husband, but this phone call is about you, so, let’s talk about you. What’s troubling you, dear? What other troubles do you have?” “Can you tell me how to get to Paris? Can you tell me how to make people like me?” “Oh, dear. You want to go to Paris. I don’t understand. Do you have friends, dear? Speak louder. I’m a bit confused at what you’re talking about now. Do you think you need medication? Maybe what you really need is a holiday, to go away and live a little. Can’t you go somewhere? Don’t you have family?” “I don’t have that kind of family.” “What are you going to do Christmas.” “What I mean to say is, that I do have family, but we’re not close like that. I wouldn’t want to impose on anyone. My siblings, I have a brother and a sister, well, they have their own lives. They’ve made peace with me, but, there are boundaries. They have children and I’m a child too. Even the doctor calls me girl. I have a sister, but we’re not close. Christmas my brother will visit with his family. Who all is coming, well, just close family. Wife, son, twin daughters. My sister won’t make it this year. She’s going to Prague.” Julia ignores the purple bruise on her arm. Heaven knows how that happened. She ignores the hungry dogs in the yard that have to be fed, her hands, her belly fat. She ignores the sound of an oncoming train. Ignores the laundry that has to be done, the dirty dishes in the sink, the sticky linoleum floor, the countertop that needs to be wiped down. Instead, she lifts the telephone to her ear. Makes herself comfortable. She knows in advance to prepare herself. She doesn’t know the face of the person she is going to speak to. Anyway, they’re anonymous. This suits her personality. She can hear (instinct) if it is a man’s voice (distinct-gravelly, heavy-gritty-like, powerful), or a woman’s (soft like her grandmother’s, soft like molasses). She will think of these counsellors (man or woman) in bed. Wonder if they were sad, lonely, unhappy, and Tolstoy-dysfunctional in their own way. She wondered about their own psychological framework. Wondered if they were evil or good, married to evil or good people. Were they separated or divorced with playful small children that ate up all their lovely time, or, did they have moody teenagers. Was there a highly-intelligent, painfully shy teenage daughter who found herself in the drama club, a teenage daughter in the picture who had trust issues or abandonment issues, that found that she couldn’t stop eating and putting her finger down her throat. She remembers what she was like as a moody teenager. Always writing in her journal. Bulimic. Chubby, with pimples. Unpopular. Always picked last in gym. She thought of Durban then. Pietermaritzburg to be exact where her father’s old friend Dharam Jugernath lived with his criminal lawyer son married to a doctor. She thought of the flash floods that made the news an evening not so long ago. The ocean seemed to spill over into streets. Traffic came to a standstill. People were marooned. Told to stay at home but was home all that safe as it was cracked up to be, she wondered. She gravitated then after her phone-call to the television. Picked up the remote but nothing good was on. She searched the channels for a wildlife documentary or political show. Her hand lingered over a bowl of pistachios. Afterwards, in the bath, she will think of the person that she spoke to in a neutral tone of voice, devoid of attitude, outspokenness, youth, (and not because she needed them but because she wanted to just clear the air between them, she guessed). She turned the light on in the rooms of the house as day disappeared. Put the kettle on. Ate a chocolate bar. Licked her lips when she was finished with it. Imagined herself with a good bottle of red wine (always red to suit her mood, she guessed), in a restaurant with close friends celebrating her birthday. Going out to a club afterwards. Not like this. Not alone. All her life, (even when she was a child) she was an introvert. Later, much later, after hours have passed, she finds herself in front of the television again. “I want to change. Tell me how to change. Tell me how to get to Paris.” Julia could tell the woman at the other end of the line had now lost interest in their telephonic conversation. Bio: Pushcart Prize nominated Abigail George is a South African-based blogger, essayist, poet and short story writer. Recipient of two grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg, one from the Centre for the Book in Cape Town, and another from ECPACC in East London, she briefly studied film at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. 11/15/2017 2 Comments Special by Iris N. SchwartzThomas_H_photo
Special He said he had a place she should touch. A sensitive place. Kept turning to her, grinning. She didn’t want to get into a car accident, or displease him, so she smiled back. “Want to know where it is?” She looked at his flannel-shirted arm, concentrated on the plaid pattern: intersections of navy blue and burgundy, pale gold background, thin white lines atop the gold. His right hand grazed her cheek. “Do you?” “Do I what?” She glanced at his blue-jeaned thighs, but not at his face. His hair was dark, curly — wild. “Want to see my sensitive place? Come on, give me your hand.” They were in the park now. Late afternoon. She was hungry. Dizzy. Too much sun. Gary — was that his name? — hadn’t offered brunch, even coffee. He pulled over, turned off the engine. Placed her left hand on his thigh. “You were looking there, right?” She didn’t take her hand away. Looked at this guy’s shirt; remembered her brother, one summer. They were teens. When her brother had crossed his legs, the slit on his maroon plaid boxers opened onto…somewhere she shouldn’t have looked. Gary: “You weren’t this quiet on the phone.” Stupid, she thought. How could she be quiet on the phone and keep a conversation going? He inched her hand up his thigh. “You’re getting closer to my special place.” He grinned again, as if he were as original a thinker as St. Thomas Aquinas or Charles Darwin. “I can figure out where it is,” she said. “Really?” Gary, or Larry, or Dumb-ass, brought her hand further up his molten thigh. She shivered. Fingertips freezing. “Let me show you.” He tugged her hand up higher, so it almost cupped his testicles through the denim. She removed her hand. Looked away. Heard him draw down his zipper. Sound zigged through air like a buzz saw. She needed a buzz saw. Could she operate one without mangling her own flesh? Gary or Larry pulled her towards him. Had taken his uncircumcised penis out of his purple — Jesus, purple? — briefs, and it faced her, like a big, bouncing Shar Pei puppy. Did Gary have a blue tongue, too? She laughed, mostly twitches and snorts. Shar Pei started folding in on its wrinkly self. Dumb-ass slapped her, hard. Her cheek felt hot, scarlet — like the color on his shirt. When he looked down at his lap, she forced open the passenger-side door. Fled like a cat, a dog, a deer, through and out of the park. Bio: Iris N. Schwartz's fiction has been published in, among other journals, 101 Words, The Drabble, Foxglove Journal, Friday Flash Fiction, Jellyfish Review, and Spelk Fiction. Ms. Schwartz’s first short-short story collection, My Secret Life with Chris Noth: And Other Stories, was published by Poets Wear Prada in October 201 11/15/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Mark YoungHanna Eliasson
On TCM I watch the forties Cole Porter bio-pic in which a gay man pretending he isn't plays a gay man pretending he isn't. Only the music is forth- coming, & I have k.d. lang to thank for that. Entropy is the new source of legitimacy an important concept in the general theory of scales associated with awkwardness delayed in gene-disrupted mice covering up more skin the longest word that can be played on a musical instrument a right-wing political advocacy group derived from the Latin returning the rsvp card in response to an invitation a charge blade imbued with the fire wyverns' brilliance being used as a drug lab so last year a process of physical changes defined by a homonym in Chinese in a good location when the engine's valves & rings are worn a famous Great Depression song blue vacant for a specific purpose sensitive to model misspecification not exactly an inclination a user-written SAS® macro an estimation of your general willingness to trust other people like winning the lottery a strong inner connection part of the picture due to the fact that conditional independence remains valid a team of academic specialists led by CEDAR found near the end of the present work a far cry from the cornrows she stepped out in in Beverly Hills earlier this month. The Conqueror She would arrive at about 7:30 a.m. & read from her Bible. Are we going to drive her from this process? The invitations have been sent out, the answers received, the tags decided on—comics, dance, drugs, party. Under no circumstances could the end-user be entitled to trans- fer the aftermath of this to any other entity. Especially once the write-up has app- eared in—was it?—Vogue. Bio: Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for almost sixty years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. He is the author of over forty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. Recent work has appeared in Unlikely Stories, Word for /Word, Marsh Hawk Review, BlazeVOX, & X-Peri as well as a number of other places. 11/14/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Samara GolabukDan Finnen Anatomy of Under Upward shining light folds ever newer suns around a bilious, fibrous length, reaching down for what is needed, spiral down in uncomely haste offering up what is not expire/transpiration-- beautiful poison, an altar-leaving for the face of day I've been made backwards from flowers those antitheses of reason. I tumble on the surface, unbound and dangerous, loosing my appetite on the sky unlike the sensible gentians, who stretch the translucent white fingers of thirst into gravity and blindness, to rock and earth, ripe with worms little worms, little worms, grimy angels feathering through soil broken pieces of circle curl- ing against the downward shining dark. Thoughts while digging in a patch of barren earth Will the microbes forgive us? The earthworms and their bounty have gone, and all things green, virile and small have passed this patch by: neither root here crabgrass, nutsedge or spurge, neither land here the wandering spores that erupt in wet pleasure when it rains. Wild and liberated, they are-- to this circle of dead earth-- now named fungus derelictionis. There was a grown pine here once, then a stump some years later, and still after that a shimmering termite nest that got the kerosene and fire-- there was smoke for days, then a terrible fairy circle on the lawn. It made the house safe from the wood-eaters, that minor conflagration, but we expunged the soil-loving things, too. Now, I am digging space for something-- after the tree, pine bugs, mites and divorce-- something, an invasive, even, and wondering: will the microbes forgive me? And the earthworms? The gift of no guarantees When forever went out of my vocabulary, golden moons hung whispers of tomorrow on my ears to let me know time was still okay. When grief burnt the impurities from the pockmarks of my ex-marriage, I wore the blessed relief of uncertainty in a carrying sling and held it close for a while, murmuring, swaying. I slept when dragons roared. I woke to a silence that pinged my ears in polyphonic glory—too much metal in my chi, too much Libra in my chart, happy is a coin I have no change for, but wish for a gift of it in a China cup, a sip, a gorgeous sip of it. Sparking The jutting moon perturbs our angular momentum. The annular sound from four speakers shapes itself around us as we move, a slowing hum and purr belying static's carborundum swaths. Windows close their eyes. A dog howls. You howl, and the frictive bolus of my pubic hair skrits against your palm, a wolf near dawn. Thin light melts its way down treeline’s lush foliage, a visual sigh. Pink-yellow morning, coffee soon, no time at all, our hands together, a smile, a yawn. Bio: Samara is a two-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Inklette, Eyedrum Periodically, Peacock Journal, Eunoia Review and others. She has two children, works in marketing and design, and has returned to university to complete her BA in Poetry. More at www.samarawords.com. |
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