Sunsets and Silencers - Latest Blog Entries

"Momento Mori," "I'm Picking up on the Spirit of a Little Girl,""Poesis," "A System of Correspondences," and "Resonance and Ring"Poetry by LeighPhillips

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:19:00 -0600

Memento Mori

They say I’m dangerous, but my chest is full of blackbirds. When the 21 guns go off, the cloud of wings scatter over the flat plains of your body. My grandfather’s purple heart beats on my nightstand. It taught me the two-step of metronomes. All the old fishermen sunk their hooks into my heart. I’m going down. Morning wraps its thick lips around the girth of grace. My hips follow into yours, motion grinds its song. Mourning has its grace. Slow dance, my grace. My morning, out of time. My hips are open in the morning, gentle as vapor. See, I’ve found out how to boil. One time I had this slant of sunlight, and in it, I found a few certain pages. The poem goes “arm, elbow, wrist.” The poem goes “reach.” I cut my tributaries off at the stream. I know how to commit to forgetting. I french kiss the shores of Normandy. I’m engaged to asphalt in Vermont, Massachusetts, even Iowa. I’ve inherited a heart that beats the royal we. Grandfather was shot in the knee. He tells me this when it rains sometimes. I hold rainwater in my backside. Where I live right now, everything curves. A half note bent in two, pressed between speakers of stereo. No one has asked about the end of my body. Beauty was this thing we locked in early twenties. I’m going to start collecting orchids now. Some say, will you? I say, the frenzy of birds. See how they all leave the tree at once.

I’m Picking Up on the Spirit of a Little Girl

A megaphone full of bees swarm the violent tongues of sex. My Electronic Voice Phenomenon says, keep waking until the walking stops. Every day I find a new way to pray, though I never close my eyes in sleep. I talk to my mother like she’s in the room now. I say, meet me in a Catholic place where the water makes new limbs. Mine ache so I think I might have been amputated in a future life. Everything’s a phantom. With night vision goggles, you can still see the handprint of my ex trailing down my backside. I press my pen into the table and the Jehovah's Witness on the corner screams. All the letters she ever wrote are in a landfill, spawning nests for sparrows. Swallows hoop my skirt of sleep. I don’t know what that means, but I can tell you about the electricity here. Electromagnetic frequencies and the voices time records. If I push my finger down this wall and taste it, I’m tasting you. I forgot to mention the waves. It all comes in waves. I am thirty and my face looks like Aunt Helen. In the photograph, her face collapses into the lips I wear to sing. I crawl naked across the carpeted floor, grade a paper, call that spring. Don’t let me forget the waves. There was this headache blowing a tumbleweed through a silent apartment. I was not alone. I was not alone. Because mother always said, be happy. She started as a fox. She stopped at the end of song. Girl asks, are you complete now. Girl says, I’m Pluto with 3 known moons. There, a revolution starts with death, begins with song, with sex. I just wanted to pass through a wall one day and tell you. Is anybody with me? It’s cold in here. At least, I think so. Don’t you?

Poesis

There is this firedoor between myself and losing her. On the other side, I can see a beautiful fool, letting a man grind into me. Fucking is forgetting here. I am not there, but I am wildly, awkwardly here. Ask me about the impossible. I will tell you about how I fell out of a tree in spring. Every branch draped me until my limp body sang unconscious across the limbs. Light saved me. We dilate. Even the moon sweats me into you. Every conversation sways its broken couplets. When you move your sentence forward, I echo in the sound that bird bones make when they shift on a powerline. Listen hard. I am talking about dancing, but we never dance. We are writing ourselves through a pinhole camera. Every angle, rich with the grains of shapelessness breathed. I am chipping at my breath now. I want to show you how it’s possible to live. Sunday kisses the inside of each wrist, says, “I’m glad you made it.” There is this ripple. Keturah wrote a rain as lovely as her name. I have no tattoos because it’s impossible to forget like this. Everything is under skin, the most permanent you you’ll ever know. In me, there is this shell of girls: one is falling through the tree. One fell out of time. One is dipping the last carnation into the earth. The last, crying in art history because she is a new sky. Didn't you know? New skies bend the obvious over the side of sleep. Bend me over, I’m getting off. Are you waking? I want to start walking to a certain lake with a name like a poem learns rain. Cows have one stomach with four compartments. I have four chambers, in each the old and new blood of me contracts. Michele says, “it is so full of history. There is sadness. There is happiness. There is art.” I want to visit Havana someday, too. I am falling down a tree. Are you? I don’t want to fall into you like an accident. You are not an accident, I wrote. A garden. I am lonely for a garden. A child sits with his mother. The flowers, he murmurs. The flowers.

A System of Correspondences

Yesterday flowers so fast the spring opens itself like an odalisque. The green plains of body collapse on body, in nude we green. Yesterday flowers. So fast the color oceans, I ocean myself. Flowers fell past. Tomorrow, pouring into. Tomorrow you'll flicker so fast. Tonight I'll fall through the family tree and into the bedrock, bones written for sleep. Tonight I'll turn the light off and tree a name, branch its syllables onto my pillowcase. No one is naming the name. I'm actually tracing subway directions to the corner of "Somewhere She Is Standing" and "Not Enough Light." I remember how to be alone more than I remember you. It is possible to forget how to be a slut, and even whimper while you're doing it. Remember the firedoor between my skin and organs? Me neither. It burned in the fire. I imagine my next so full of nostalgia, like cement in knots for trees, hardening around a heart and arrow. I will so be there, once I stop choking on this peach pit. Here, I am telling you about my city in the bedroom night. The expressway to my God. Here, I write my mother dead letters in the air, postmarked by careful mediums. They tell her what I had for breakfast, how I put all the blue flowers to my lips. I believe in softness. Like this. Liquids today. I tell her how to whole my hard. For hold. How haiku held. Old. I try to make a poem that is cold, silvering within a white heat. Shivering in the road steam. She says, you really know how to love, love. You follow through the through. And she writes, "I miss you so much my skin is cracking" and I write, "panim d'fanim: face in face." Dear mother, blue eye to my brown: she passes me in and out. The diaphanous talespin of the candle, running its tongue along a dark spine.

Resonance and Ring

"Resonance," she reaches. "Ring," my hand to her. "You are the ripple of water in stone." "The cool wet underside of stone, your palms." "Stone, you in my water." Who verbs the angel. "Look to my clouds and count your face." "Sheen of a face on the eye, iris mirror." Hand flat to hand. Iris, my mirror. "Iris, my mentor." Arrive at my chest: "I pass this language through." I bend to wind. You follow. We wisp, twist air around our fingers set to the frequency of hair slipping south on a pillow they can't hear: you and you, the we of you, the "only" to the "connect" you we. "Meet me in a place where edges grind soft." Breath. "We'll take the hours, put to tongue." Beat. "The edges of things, drift a house." Bone. "The warm basin of my breast set to rise." Breathe. Where the plaster comes down with a kiss and dust in an eyelash is battered by risk: we are back to two stones, one water, concentric circles summer the shimmer around bore, wading legs dragged to deep, "you will find me one inch beneath your finger kiss to surface lake." Oh: look at my lying here, I am under here. You look like conversation set to fire. Under here, the lights, the lights. Come: my eyes have never been so clear. Look at my face it has never been more what you wanted, translucent, the light of fish. Flush my face and it opens to you in a word. Sunlight pours my eyes come to touch. "This flower is a door." Look at my face, the light of fish. "Everyone opening in your hands.” The word. You angel. "I've got the light my stomach collects, petals in your backside." I may be beautiful here in the way of you.

Leigh Phillips’ work has appeared in Squid Quaterly, Connecticut River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Fringe, and Vox, among others

"Cosmic Blessings," "Eternal Abode," "Knowledge and Bliss" Paintings: Acrylic on Canvas by Priyanka Gupta

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:07:00 -0600

Cosmic Blessing

Eternal Abode

Knowledge and Bliss

Priyanka Gupta comes from Kolkata, India, also called the 'City of Joy' for its people and the passion with which they lead their lives. This passion has undoubtedly found its way into her own conception and expression of the colors of life through my art. A graduate of San Francisco Art Institute, Priyanka Gupta spends her time between Kolkata and California. She has been exhibiting her works in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and India since 2004. Some of her notable exhibits have been her solo exposition at the Academy of Fine Arts and Chitrakoot art gallery in Kolkata and shows at Stanford university, Togonon Gallery, Market Street Gallery and the Triton Museum in California. She has also been invited to participate in the Florence Biennale ‘09. She has received wide acclaim for her paintings and received reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle, Santa Clara weekly and Mountain View voice.

"The Batman Towel of Shame" Creative Non-fiction by Libby Cudmore

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:05:00 -0600

The Batman Towel of Shame

I moved in with Aaron after all the men I flirted with at college went back to their girlfriends, realized they were gay, or decided immediately was the appropriate time to marry a 40-something dominatrix they’d just met online. Aaron and I had been dating for five years and most of that was a long-distance relationship, which gave me the convenience of having someone to pay for movies on Saturday night and the freedom of collecting a harem of boys to take me out every other day of the week. I was in-between my junior and senior year at college and needed a place to stay that wasn’t my parent’s, so I packed up my Patti Smith albums and reluctantly accepted his offer of cohabitation.

The apartment was two rooms, one large divided at the linoleum/carpet into a kitchen/living room, and the bedroom. At any given time the kitchen contained no more than the following: crusty pink lemonade mix, ten Triscuits, a half-finished six-pack of Sam Adams still in the cardboard carrier, milk I was afraid to touch, and strawberry jelly. Despite a strong prowess in the kitchen that netted me more than one blurted marriage proposal, Aaron refused to let me cook and was instead content to exist off ramen noodles and roll-and-bake cookie dough eaten straight out of the wrapper with a spoon in front of ESPN. Aaron also did not understand why it was necessary to mop the floor and therefore, did not own or plan to own a mop. His living room had a big screen TV, a loveseat lovingly donated by his parents when the recliner on one half broke and they bought a new one, a computer that I was not allowed to touch out of fear that I, in my devil-may-care millennial college youth, might illegally download a Morrissey song and the Feds would descend upon him like seagulls on a hot dog bun, and a single Batman poster tacked proudly over the television.

The wood-paneled bedroom décor consisted of a slave-girl Princess Leia lithograph hung tastefully above his bed. The brick-and-board bookshelf contained no reading material that wasn’t a movie tie-in. The room’s main feature was the disco-era walk-in closet, thankfully devoid of sequined jumpsuits, but instead held Aaron’s six polo shirts and three pairs of JCPenny khakis, which he wore to his office with a black belt, white crew socks and scuffed brown shoes. Also inside was the pre-tied Yoda necktie he reserved for the classiest of occasions and the vintage dresses I was not allowed to wear because he insisted people stared at me whenever we went out, which was never. The top shelf held the unopened S’mores maker his brother lovingly regifted me one Hanukkah, a box of read-once and bagged comic books, and the Batman Towel of Shame.

Aaron only had two towels, one for me and one for him. Mine was brand-new navy blue from Macy’s, purchased my first day in the apartment. His was a threadbare green with college stains and a fraying hem. Sometimes a loose thread would wrap around his hand and he’d tear it further, curses echoing from the bathroom like New Jersey tourists at the Grand Canyon.

For seven days these towels hung, damp and mildewing, in his tiny windowless bathroom, which he also never mopped. “Aaron,” I tried to explain one afternoon while doing our laundry at his brother’s. “You need more than one towel. One towel does not get you through the week.”

“Why do you need more than one towel?” he asked, not looking up from the TV. “You’re clean when you dry off, so it’s not like it gets dirty.”

Aaron was not an unclean guy. Other than the sticky kitchen floor and the seven-day-old towels, the house was well-kept, dishes were done, Princess Leia lithograph straight on the wall. We were not poor, we could have easily afforded two more department store towels, four more discount store towels. His parents had plenty of towels we could have borrowed under dire financial circumstances, but still he refused. Two towels for two people, and that was final. Company, if we ever had any, could very well bring their own damn towels.

Of course, I told my mother and she was horrified at the thought that her daughter was drying herself in squalor. A week later a package arrived, addressed to Aaron in my mother’s spidery handwriting. Inside was the Batman towel.

This was no ordinary Batman towel. This was a Batman beach towel, as long as I was tall, trimmed in yellow, printed with the Caped Crusader swooping majestically over a midnight-blue Gotham City. His square face was stern, his beady eyes were set, and he was ready to take on the plight of Aaron’s wet white ass.

“Tell your mother I said thank you,” Aaron said, putting the towel back in the box.

“Aren’t you going to hang it in the bathroom?” I suggested.

“I already have a towel,” he replied.

It was at that moment that I knew I was fighting a battle I could not win. The Batman towel became a mark of his disgrace, his refusal to accept King Solomon’s heed that one day, his beloved college towel will pass on to shredded rags of what it once was. If he threw out the college towel, what was next? His fading plastic Bar Crawl mug? The outdated computer science textbooks piled in his parent’s basement? Perhaps, dare I suggest it, the Princess Leia lithograph that got him through so many long, lonely nights at college?

Batman kept his folded, cramped vigil over the S’mores maker for another two months, when I realized I couldn’t lived under his totalitarian towel regime another day and ran off with an art student one of my ex-romances introduced me to. I made my getaway while Aaron was at work, leaving Princess Leia and the Triscuits to their solitary existence. On my way out of town, I threw both towels in the dumpster, leaving only Batman to dry his tears.

Libby Cudmore is an MFA candidate with the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast graduate program. Recent publications include regular contributions to Pop Matters, Hardboiled and a Twist of Noir, as well as Inertia, Battered Suitcase, The Southern Women’s Review, Shaking Like a Mountain, Big Pulp and the upcoming anthology Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts (the latter two w/Matthew Quinn Martin). Additional publications include Sage of Consciousness, Crime and Suspense, the Subway Chronicles (Essay of the Year 2004) and Long Story Short (Author of the Year, 2004).

"Future Soldier" Photography by Grant Palmer

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:01:00 -0600

Grant Palmer is a photographer, writer, poet and engineer living in Southern California. He has lived, worked and created all over the world and continues to explore his art around the globe.

"The Fisherman Who Asked the Sea" and "And That's How We Came on Top of Things" Fiction by Mikael Persson

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:56:00 -0600

The Fisherman Who Asked The Sea

Once there was a fisherman whose fishing had gone bad for a while. He finally saw no other solution than to go down to the shore and ask the sea itself. So he did.

"Hello sea! Do you have any fish today?"

"Not until next Monday," the sea replied, "but if you like we can play in the meantime!"

Gratefully the fisherman accepted. Playing would do him good, he thought. Besides, it would be a nice change from fishing. The sea and the fisherman played many games. They played hide and seek, farmer and the milkmaid, and more quiet games, like chess. But when the fisherman had won the third chess game in a row, the sea got furious and drowned him.

But the fisherman didn't want to die, so he decided not to. Instead, he found that he was deeply in love with the sea. He gathered some water lilies, offered them to the sea and asked if it wanted to marry him.

"Yes! I thought you'd never ask!" the sea answered.

The happy couple got married in the fisherman's boathouse. The wind held up and conducted the ceremony. They sold the bottom of the sea to a mining-company and bought a condo in Carmel. There they lived happily for nineteen years until their marriage dried out.

And That's How We Came On Top Of Things

"Okay Boss I'm up! But I still don't get why you couldn't give it to me down on the plain!"
"Well Mo, I guess I wanted you to come closer to me!"
"I'm too old for climbing like this! But never mind, let's get it over with!"
"Are you ready? Here comes the first one!"
"Okay, I got it! I took it in my right hand!"
"And here comes the second one!"
"One more? Okay, I got it! I took it in my left hand!"
"And get ready for the third!"
"Whoa! You mean there's more?!"
"Yes! There are four altogether, with ten commandments on each of them!"
"Well, I only got two hands, ya think my mother was an octopus?!"
"You have to innovate! Think about Cleopatra, and carry the third one on your special purpose!"
"Well, I guess it's worth a try!"
"Are you thinking?"
"Oh yeah!"
"Here it comes! Ready?"
"Oh yeah!"
"See? It works!"
"Sure does! But how 'bout the fourth one?"
"You have a straight back, Mo, I'll put it right here on top of your head!"
"O'boy! This is getting way over my head!"
"Start walking! I know you can do it!"
"Well, if I must ..."
"You must! You must!"
"Well, if I can ..."
"You can! You can!"
"Hey! Check it out! I can! I can!"
"You are doing fine, kid!"
"Oops! Oh oh!"
"Clumsy fool! You dropped three of them into pieces!!"
"I just remembered that Cleopatra is dead! And tryin' to catch that one, I dropped the ones in my hands as well! But look Boss, I saved the one on my head!"
"Clumsy fool! Now there are only ten commandments left!"
"But that's enough, Boss! Really, it is!"
"But I liked number seventeen: No Tailgating!"
"But Boss, cars aren't invented yet!"
"Oh no? But how about number thirty-four: Don't Bring Pork Chops To A Jewish Wedding!"
"But that goes without saying, Boss!"
"So you think ten are enough?!"
"Yeah Boss, I'm sure it is!"
"Hm ...oh, very well then. But if they screw it up down there, I'll hold you responsible!"

Mikael Persson is an industrial worker who loves to read and write in the English language, and his aim is to make a living on his writing one day. So far eight of his stories have been published in Dream Forge, Long Story Short Magazine, The Online Cynic Magazine and Uptown books chapbook series.

"Bound to Roam" Fiction by Vallie Lynn Watson

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:49:00 -0600

Bound to Roam

Dylan came to New Orleans for a convention, something to do with small hotels, he said, though Veronica couldn't find anything about the convention on the internet. She met him for drinks at the top of the Marriott. As soon as they sat, he told her he'd won a door prize, a trip for two upriver on the Mississippi Queen. Five days, from New Orleans to Memphis. He wouldn't have time for a couple months, he said, but wondered if she'd like to join him on the cruise. Veronica said she didn't have any personal leave, and forced her laugh.

He said he understood and talked about hotels while she watched a barge on the river below. It wasn't moving. A few minutes later he asked, "Is that really the reason? Work?"

Veronica looked at him, then her wine glass, rotated the stem between her thumb and forefinger, and smiled for a moment. "Remember Klein, from college? The one with the famous little sister?" she said and swallowed some wine, then ran her tongue over her top teeth. She told him everything. "That's been almost fifteen years and I haven't been able to get my shit together since then."

Dylan nodded his head a few times, then looked over to the bar, held up two fingers. "Two more, please?"

Maggie's on that cheesy teen primetime soap?" Dylan asked. "I watched part of that in my room last night. They were talking about Flaubert. It made me laugh. The brunette-is that Maggie? Isn't she too old to play a college student?-she was flirting with her professor, asked him what was the best ending in all of literature, and he said Sentimental Education."

"And she asked what happened," Veronica said.

"Yeah," Dylan said. "So he answers, 'nothing, really, just two old friends sitting around, remembering the best thing that never happened.' Then explains Flaubert thought anticipation was the purest form of pleasure. Reality always disappoints, yadda yadda. Anticipated experiences can't dim. 'Always engraved in your heart with a sort of sweet sadness.' Something like that," Dylan said.

"And Maggie says that's cowardly," Veronica said. The waiter bought their second glasses of wine but left their first, empty ones on the table.

"So when did the thing happen, with Maggie," Dylan asked.

"After my parents died," she said. "Couple weeks."

"Veronica," he said.

Veronica said, "I know."

"You were grieving. Not the Maggie thing, but maybe I can help, with the other. I was there," Dylan said. "Sort of."

"Doesn't that seem too easy?" Veronica said, picking up the new glass. "Have you read Sentimental Education?"

"No," Dylan said.

"Me neither," Veronica said.

Vallie Lynn Watson received her PhD from the Center for Writers, where she is assistant managing editor of Mississippi Review. Lynn's recent flash fiction can be found in Pindeldyboz, Product, Journal of Truth and Consequence, 971 Menu, and Ghoti.

"Surgery Series: Heart, Reproductive, Throat" Illustrations by Jessica McEuen

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:41:00 -0600

Heart

Reproductive

Throat

Claiming her Kentucky southern roots, Jessica is fascinated with the world
of business, traveling across the country in pursuit of what is left of the
American Dream. She is currently in California with her 'Modern Day Doc
Holiday' and his Bulldog Rambo. With a fear of the oncoming digital art
takeover, Jessica holds tight all things that still smell of paint and
traditional skill.

"Can't Get Him Out of My Mind," Home Invasion," and "Pursuing Happiness" Fiction by Karen Karlitz

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:30:00 -0600

CAN’T GET HIM OUT OF MY MIND

Emily and Martin are married less than a year when they decide to buy a house. The apartment building they live in near the ocean will soon be converted to condos, but Martin views condo ownership like being in business with strangers. Athletic as well as wary of realtors, each weekend he rollerblades through his neighborhood in search of an interesting property. Before long he finds a small, neglected, one-story bungalow two blocks off Abbott Kinney and a ten-minute walk to the beach. On first inspection, Emily is grim; this house does not fit her idea of home. But Martin enthusiastically explains his restoration plans, and Emily and Martin become the proud owners of their new, albeit homely, home.

Emily likes living in her little house in Venice Beach. As frequently happens, the pair finds temporary happiness in home remodeling. Focusing on one room at a time, each receives a make-over, good taste compensating for what they cannot yet afford. Six months after they began, interior renovations are well along. The exterior, however, remains the same as the day Martin first skated upon it. All work has stopped. Except for when the lights are on in the evening, the house looks unlived in and, in a sense it is. For even though pretty Emily and successful Martin’s marriage is often emulated and envied, three years after they first met they still don’t know one another. This is because both harbor secrets, secrets of the most serious kind, secrets that lead to packs of lies.

The truth is that although Emily rejoices each time she takes a Kate Spade Gramercy Park-patterned cup out of her top-of-the-line dishwasher and places it back in its appointed spot in her new cabinet, a part of her is as forlorn as if she dropped it on her newly tiled kitchen floor. Her secret is a simple one; she married Martin by default. Emily is in love with David, a friend of hers at work. But before she could get up the courage to attempt to bring their relationship to another level, in one of life’s cruel ironies, David winked at Emily’s friend Jane on match.com and Jane winked back. Their first date at Starbucks catapulted to full fledged romance the following night during three courses at Il Sole; six months later they were married.

Soon after their wedding, Emily met Martin on a much needed Hawaiian vacation. They got along reasonably well and Martin looked handsome in a suit. He also shares her passion for the clean lines of mid-century modern and makes a good living. She assumes marriage to him will shut the door on David, and that now they can enjoy dinner parties, movies and occasional weekends away as a foursome. Emily chooses to believe marriage will bring her closer to Martin and weed out all or at least most of the fantasies about David that surely no married woman should have. She is wrong. Too many nights sleep is impossible because Emily can’t get David out of her mind. Employing twisted logic, she takes this as a sign that she and David are meant to be together, that a cosmic mistake occurred to keep them apart. She carries on with buying gourmet cheeses and excellent wines. She keeps perfect closets and perfect drawers. And she continues preparing perfect breakfasts, lunches and dinners for Martin, until the day comes—and she knows it will--when she will never do anything for him again.

During a small dinner party at her house Emily watches for cracks in David and Jane’s marriage. Her good fortune comes sooner than anticipated. Both couples share a meal of broiled halibut and mushroom risotto that Emily made from scratch. Afterwards, as the men sit on the front porch, Emily and Jane clean the kitchen while finishing off a bottle of pinot.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” Jane whispers, obviously distressed.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s David. He’s not the person I thought I married.”

“Is anyone ever really?”

“Probably not, but believe me, we’re in trouble. He comes home late every night, and he’s even stopped bothering to make excuses. I don’t know what to do.”

“It’ll pass. All marriages have their ups and downs as clichéd as that may sound.”

“We haven’t had sex in six months.”

It takes Emily all the control she can muster not to reveal how pleased she is. As Jane’s friend she feels slightly guilty but Jane is not her top priority and anyway, she loved David first. “I’m sure that happens far more often than people admit,” Emily says, not believing that at all.

“I’ll ride it out. Maybe you’re right.”

But a month later David leaves Jane. He doesn’t offer much in the way of an explanation, but does let her stay in their condo while they decide what steps to take next. Emily is ecstatic. With nothing but the thoughts in her head to go on, she believes David left Jane to be with her. In her mind there can be no other reason. Soon he will contact her and they will breeze through life together, leaving their spouses behind. Every time the phone rings she runs to answer it. A few times it is David, but he’s calling to speak to Martin. Emily is dumbfounded. Her fantasies have clouded her reality.

Emily is so thoroughly occupied thinking about David, she neglects to see that for all intrinsic purposes Martin has left her as well. He comes in late from work each night and creeps quietly into bed. Actually Emily is relieved. Her sexual fantasies have come to be all that she needs. Then one Saturday morning Emily gets what she wants; Martin tells her he’s leaving.

“I’m so sorry, Emily,” he says. His face is pale, his voice low. He looks down at the glossy oak planks splashed with sunshine.

This is Emily’s final sign. She is free now to pursue David. She can’t wait for Martin to pack some of his things and leave the house. Standing in the kitchen impatiently drumming her fingers on the granite counter, at last she hears the front door slam. Her heart beats furiously as she dials David’s cell phone. She has no idea what she will say. She’s certain, however, he will know why she’s calling.

“Martin?” he says.

“No, David. It’s me. Emily.”

“Oh, hi.”

Emily hesitates.

“Bad connection?” he asks.

“No, no. I thought you’d want to know…Martin left me.”

“I know.”

“But it only just happened.”

“I’m sorry, Emily. No one ever plans these things.”

“It’s the way it’s supposed to be. We can be together now.”

“What did you say?”

“We can be together now. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Haven’t you spoken to Jane? I told her everything last week.” But Emily has avoided Jane since her separation from David.

“What are you saying?”

“Me and Martin, Emily. This is about me and Martin.”

Emily’s fantasy careens to an end. The phone slips out of her hand and hits the floor chipping a pale yellow Mexican tile. Martin, she discovers, has a secret too.

HOME INVASION

A large cockroach races out of the plastic grocery sack Shelly is emptying, zips over her granite kitchen counter, and heads for parts unknown.. It happens so fast she doesn’t have time to smash it with the can of tomato soup she happens to be holding.

“Oh, lord,” she laments, picturing the bug setting up house in her home. Waving the can overhead she sprints into the dining room, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Assuming it’s female and in the late stages of pregnancy, she worries it will find a secluded spot to birth her brood. Soon they will be inundated with offspring that will swiftly grow to adulthood and reproduce on their own, leaving their obsessively-cleaned, vintage Victorian roach infested. She guesses this will take a couple of weeks, but makes a mental note to Google it to be sure.

Back in the kitchen, she sits hunched over on a step stool and worries. Shelly excels at worry. When she finishes worrying about one problem, she shifts focus to a different one, new or old, real or imagined. Often she worries about several things simultaneously. Such is the life of a worrier. And according to Dr. Feldman, her former therapist, once a worrier, always a worrier. Shelly won’t change midstream at the age of thirty-eight; she has a calamity mentality and that is that. Everyone who knows her knows this, and everyone accepts this, more or less. After thirteen years of marriage, her husband Jeffrey frequently turns a deaf ear to her latest assessment of a catastrophic conclusion for what Shelly worries about almost never happens. One would think this might stop her fretful imaginings, but Shelly believes if she stops worrying, whatever she would have normally worried about will come to pass. She has to keep worrying or face disaster.

So far her children, Josh who is ten and Ellen soon to turn twelve, do not appear to have inherited this disorder. Jeffrey does not take much in life seriously, and that might be what saved the kids thus far. Children do change, however, and a future of worry could be in store for either of them or both, of course.

They live in Sea Cliff, a picturesque, leafy little suburb on Long Island’s North Shore. Their family experiences victories, like Ellen taking second in her school’s annual spelling bee, and disappointments, like Josh having difficulty with math. But discounting Shelly’s ruinous musings, life is good. That is, until Shelly lets her guard down. Later she will say she should have known better, that had she worried about the situation’s potential outcome, disaster would have been diverted. But much like the road not taken, there is no way to know this for sure.

It happens the summer her friend Anne comes to Sea Cliff to house sit for the people across the street. Shelly’s neighbors, Sam and Doris, are indulgent housekeepers. Their home is in a line of houses that give credence to the town’s name, perched as they are atop a cliff facing Long Island Sound. The 1889 Georgian colonial is the star of the street after being under their tutelage for eight, paint-stripping years. Doris was so intent on getting down to the original finish of every door, molding and bit of wainscoting that she landed in the emergency room from a combination of poisonous fumes and exhaustion. Luckily she had finished her work.

Sam and Doris have no children, no cats, no dogs. Their home is their raison d’etre, their baby. So when they schedule an extended European vacation to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, they insist on having someone live in to watch over it. Anne, Shelly’s friend since high school, is off for the summer as a teacher and going through a nasty separation from her husband Mark. The couple live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in an awe-inspiring, classic six they purchased before the run-up in prices. And although home values now head south, just about everyone who visits them is inflicted with real estate envy. No one knows that after ten years of being the beneficiaries of good fortune, Anne and Mark are going at one another with Chinese take-out. With a settlement of their common property nowhere in sight, the now-divided co-op has become a battlefield fronting Riverside Drive. Skirmishes erupt daily in the shared kitchen where Magnolia cupcakes and General Tso’s chicken are deployed as munitions, leaving their distinctive greasy smears on walls, custom cabinetry and wounded psyches. Anne jumps at the chance to detox and house sit for eight weeks when Shelly tells her about it. For their part, Sam and Doris are cautiously optimistic about their new babysitter, but after meeting with Anne are able to relinquish temporary control with the assurance that Anne’s only child, a girl of nine, will be in the mountains of Pennsylvania at summer camp, away from their antique furniture and copious collections. Shelly’s children will also be away, and she looks forward to long talks, good wine, and leisurely sunsets over the Sound with her old friend. It is this very vision that leaves Shelly without her usual defenses; it seems she simply forgot to worry.

Shelly joins Anne in Sam and Doris’s backyard almost every day before Jeffrey gets home from work. They sit on white wicker chairs with plump, cabbage-rose-patterned cushions and watch the passing boats while sipping Pinot Grigio from Waterford stemware. On their first afternoon together, Anne takes out a joint from a silver case. Somewhere along the line she has acquired a hefty marijuana habit, lighting up every few hours day and night. Shelly doesn’t know if this is due to post-marital misery or came before it. She herself hasn’t smoked since college as it made her especially paranoid, but decides to give it another try. She puts the cigarette to her lips and inhales.

“Like…riding…a…bike,” Shelly says, coughing between words like a TB patient.

“Sitting here with you like this makes me think of the old days,” Anne says, oblivious that her friend is gasping for breathe. “Wish we knew then what we know now. I had no clue Mark was such a bastard.”

“Who really knows who they’re marrying? Getting married is like playing Russian roulette with a gun that’s almost fully loaded,” Shelly says, no longer choking.

“Yes, you could say I took a bullet.”

“No one knows who’ll get shot or when. And just when someone thinks it can’t possibly happen to them…” Shelly opens her eyes wide and makes a slicing motion across her throat. “There’s no way of knowing.”

“No way of knowing,” Anne echoes, lighting up again. Her usually fastidious façade shows signs of wear and a lot of brown-colored stains, but her face is still pretty even in the harsh glare of the late day sun. She was the one the boys wanted in high school.

“You’ll get through this, Anne. More than half of all marriages end in divorce. It’s odder to stay married.”

But Shelly is concerned. Anne looks so forlorn eating M & M’s and staring into space. Everyone thought Anne and Mark’s life was perfect, the one to strive for. And while Shelly and most of her women friends enjoy dishing about problems they have with their husbands, Anne never said a negative word about Mark. Even after she found out he was cheating on her she kept it to herself. By the time she finally told Shelly, she and Mark had lawyers. From then on they were under the spell of Robb, Hugh, Blind, esq. and Heller & Moore Heller, esq., their lives reduced to a growing pile of time sheets and billing statements.

In the balmy breeze which doesn’t yet betray the coming of fall, Shelly sips at her wine. A worry begins making its way through the haze of dual substances: What if Anne inadvertently burns down Sam and Doris’s house? “Geez,” Shelly says aloud, watching the fiery little tip of the cigarette as it leaves Anne’s mouth and sprays light gray ash onto her lap; Shelly resolves to make frequent checks on the household and skip the pot.

* * *

“So what do you and Anne talk about all day?” Jeffrey asks, as they eat a veggie pizza in their kitchen nook.

“You know, the usual.”

“Come on, give me some gossip. All I hear about are running toilets and stopped up sinks.” Actually, Jeffrey lives a charmed life having stepped into his family’s thriving plumbing business. No hard choices to make, no aspirations to toil toward, no anxiety, which could account for his being so easy going. “Did you find out who Mark’s cheating with? Someone we know?” Jeffrey asks.

“Anne never found out. Or she’s not saying.”

“Could be Bunny Roll. A lot of guys had the hots for her.”

Bunny, who acquired the unfortunate surname of Roll on marrying Bernie Roll, used to live in Sea Cliff. She and her husband, a poor sap of a guy who made a bundle in organic produce, came to the house parties where everyone drank too much and Bunny danced herself into a glistening, sexy sweat. She looked and acted like a typical dumb blonde but was brunette, and inspired a devoted following among the neighborhood husbands. One day Bernie struggled past denial and filed for divorce. The couple quickly sold their house and both of them left town. That was two years before.

“That’s crazy. Mark only met her a few times, and no one’s seen Bunny or Bernie in years.”

“No one who’s talking,” Jeffrey says.

* * *

Going through a divorce either puts weight on a woman or strips it dramatically off. After three weeks at Sam and Doris’s it becomes apparent that Anne is packing on the pounds. While Shelly’s house inspections reveal no fire safety infractions, they are met with a vast amount of empty candy wrappers, particularly Hershey bars and M & M’s. Being a pothead has its chocolate downside, and explains the myriad brown stains on Anne’s T-shirts and shorts.

“Divorce is exhausting,” Anne says to Jeffrey, as Shelly walks across the emerald lawn to sit with them. The sun is high in the sky, the water below shimmers with movement, and an open bottle of Pinot beckons on the table.

“I thought you went jogging,” Shelly says to Jeffrey.

“It’s too hot,” Jeffrey says.

“I was getting the mail and saw him staggering down the street. I needed someone to talk to. Mark’s coming this weekend. Says he’s worked out a settlement.”

“Did you speak to your lawyer?”

“I have a call in.”

“Sounds too fast,” Shelly says.

“That’s Mark. Faster than a speeding bullet.” Anne fakes shooting herself in the head.

“Don’t freak yet. There’s plenty of time for that,” Jeffrey says, patting her thigh. His hand stays a second too long, but Shelly is watching a fat bumblebee hover over a nearby rose bush. If it comes any closer, she plans to make a run for it.

The day Mark comes in from the city, the two men sit in Jeffrey’s den thick as thieves. Shelly puts her ear to the wall to hear what they’re saying, but can’t decipher much. She thinks she hears the word “Bunny,” but can’t be certain. Both couples choose teams along gender lines.

Shelly finds Anne in the downstairs bathroom sitting on the edge of the tub. Fresh ash is in her lap and the exhaust fan rumbles. A pungent odor is not yet sucked from the room.

“I saw Bunny Roll today. At the pharmacy,” Anne says.

“Couldn’t be.”

“No, it was her. She looks the same. Trashy but irresistible.”

Shelly wonders if Jeffrey is right about Bunny and Mark. As if reading her mind, Anne says, “Mark never said it’s Bunny, but it’s too much of a coincidence that she’s here the same day he is.”

“Even if it is Bunny, I’m sure he doesn’t care about her. No one really did, well, except for Bernie.”

“So what’s she doing back in Sea Cliff?”

It takes the rest of the summer to get that question answered, on Labor Day to be exact. Anne’s respite at Sam and Doris’s is coming to a close, but her separation from Mark has a surprising ending. With only three days before Anne is to move back home and resume combat, they decide to give their marriage another try. Time apart has altered their thoughts about one another; mounting lawyer fees also exerted influence. Mark never tells Anne who he had an affair with, and Anne concludes it’s better not to know. They celebrate their reconciliation with plans for a kitchen remodeling, changing the staging area of their battles beyond recognition.

Sam and Doris come back from their European vacation with many memories and a renewed delight at being home. There’s a problem with ants in their master bedroom, however, this is remedied after several visits from an exterminator. Anne had gathered up her candy wrappers and put them out with the trash before her departure, and if Sam and Doris blame her for the infestation they never say.

Before Shelly can return to her regular course of worry, she is confronted with something truly cataclysmic. On the last day of the Labor Day weekend, Mark and Anne drive their matching BMWs loaded with Anne’s belongings back into the city. Shelly and Jeffrey wave good-bye as they take off, then walk across the street to their house. Shelly feels it then, the chill inside the warm sunny breeze. She shivers as she follows her husband inside. Abruptly he stands still in the center hallway, his back toward her. In an uncharacteristically solemn tone he says those four dreaded words: “We have to talk.”

Shelly’s worry default kicks into high gear. Have the roaches invaded their home after all? Is Jeffrey thinking about leaving the plumbing business and becoming a novelist? Will they face a lifetime of poverty? Does he have a disease? She’s off and running with juicy options. But it isn’t anything Shelly ever worried about, fitting in nicely with her theory about having to worry. Jeffrey, it turns out, is having an affair with Bunny Roll, who now lives in a rented farmhouse colonial on the outskirts of Sea Cliff.

He turns to face her. “I never planned this, never wanted it to happen. She came by the house. That weekend it wouldn’t stop raining. Remember? You were at the movies with Anne. Actually, Bunny came to see you. She said she wanted to tell you that she moved back to town.”

Had Shelly looked that day, she would have seen Bunny staring out the window of the luncheonette they parked in front of. Rain was coming down in torrents, and she and Anne giggled like little kids as they got out of the car and ran across the street to the Cliff Cinema. Sitting alone at a booth for four, Bunny watched these women who seemed to have all that she had lost. As she stabbed at the remains of her chicken salad, it didn’t take her long to decide how to spend the rest of the inclement afternoon. She expertly applied cherry-colored lipstick in the reflection of a knife, smiled at the results, then motioned for the waitress to bring her the check.

“We didn’t mean to…it just happened…I’m so sorry, Shelly.” All this said in a rush as he studies the floor and rocks side to side with growing velocity. He bites down on his lip, then says the other four dreaded words: “I want a divorce.”

For Shelly who has been thinking roaches, career change, money problems, sickness, this comes as quite a shock, especially since no one thinks anyone could really be interested in Bunny. But life is like that. If one thing doesn’t get you, something else probably will.

PURSUING HAPPINESS

They fought every day of their thirty-two year marriage, but not for a minute had my father considered leaving my mother. Remnants of love, habit, her ageless beauty (she must have made a deal with the devil), and maintaining the status quo each played their part to keep my father in apartment 2B on Yellowstone Boulevard in Queens. Everything changed when my mother left him and moved in with their friend Sheldon. Sheldon bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Pillsbury Doughboy, but made piles of money in Laundromats. I knew my mother had been searching for a wealthy replacement for my father. The fact that Sheldon was married to her friend Charlotte was of no consequence to her.

After a year of living alone, my father decided to leave New York. The apartment was downright depressing and his job in the garment center far too taxing for a man of sixty-two. Perhaps even more devastating was his belief that everyone, including complete strangers he passed on the street, knew all about how my mother had humiliated him. Fort Lauderdale seemed the perfect antidote.

In no time, he had a bevy of old beauties tempting him with homemade casseroles, club house movies, danish and coffee at the monthly dances, and invitations to early bird dinners for which he offered to split the tab. He enjoyed Florida so much, he bought the condo he’d been renting. My father had the life: pool and tennis days, a different woman each night. Decades late, he was catching up with the sexual revolution.

He took a part-time job at the King of Poultry. Amidst the matzo balls and stuffed cabbage, against a never-ending soundtrack of Elvis’s greatest hits, was a surplus of lonely female shoppers eager to get to know the store’s silver-haired, handsome new clerk. The better looking women found a little something extra in their shopping bags—a slice of noodle pudding, a piece of derma, a couple of turkey meatballs—and he got a date for that evening. He sold a record-breaking number of barbecued chickens his first year there, keeping his boss happy and his libido rejuvenated. Abe Klein, owner of the Poultry King as well as president of the local Elvis fan club, was even considering making him a partner.

But trouble was afoot. My mother had not fared well in Manhattan since Sheldon’s untimely death two weeks shy of their wedding day, and decided to test the Florida waters. She was determined to win my father back or, better yet, live in his condo while she searched for viable husband prospects. She flew down and called him on the phone from her room at the Holiday Inn.

“Hello, Sidney. Is that you?”

“Rose?”

“It’s me.”

“You sound like you’re right around the corner.”

“I am.”

“What do you mean? What are you doing here?” He looked anxiously over at Colleen Thompson, a petite blonde Presbyterian who sometimes got a yen for kosher food. She was placing the tuna casserole she prepared with Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and topped with Chinese noodles on Sid’s small Formica dinette table.

“I’m thinking of moving down. I hear you love it.”

“It’s okay. Not for everyone though. Look, Rose, you caught me in the middle of something. Give me your number. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

My mother was disappointed, but still confident that he wasn’t over her. She gave him her phone number.

“Speak to you tomorrow, Sidney,” she said, hanging up the phone. Sitting on the faded, frayed bedspread, she surveyed the generic room. It was a world apart from the posh hotel suites she and Sheldon enjoyed before his sudden death, brought on by a life-long affinity for brisket with gravy, mashed potatoes and custard éclairs.

She stood up and walked into the bathroom. “No problem,” she said, smiling at her recently resurfaced face in the mirror. “He won’t be able to resist me.”

* * *

Never dreaming my father would be anything but alone, my mother awoke early the next morning, allowing herself ample time to dress and make-up. Pleased with the results, she went downstairs and got into a taxi for the short ride over to Horizon Condo Village. Driving past man-made lakes and buildings distinguished from one another only by their number, my mother was not impressed. For now, however, she could not be choosy or she’d risk using up her dwindling savings.

She walked the two outdoor flights up to number three hundred and ten in building twenty-five and rang the bell. It took a few minutes, but then she heard footsteps approaching the door.

“Who’s there?” Sid asked, evidently annoyed.

“It’s me, Sid. Rose.”

He opened the door a crack. “What are you doing here? I just woke up.”

“That’s when you used to like it the best. Remember, Sidney?”

“Jesus, Rose.”

She pushed the door open and walked in.

“Not bad,” she said, looking around. “Could use a woman’s touch though.”

Just then Colleen padded barefoot into the living room wearing Sidney’s old plaid bathrobe over a black lace nightgown.

“Who the hell is this?” Rose asked him.

“Who the hell are you?” Colleen replied.

For once, my mother had nothing to say.

“You should’ve called first, Rosie,” Sid said.

My mother walked the eight, hot, long blocks back to the hotel. She hadn’t counted on my father making a new life for himself. Now what was she going to do about hers?

* * *

The thought of my father with other women did not sit well with my mother. She lay awake at night in the cramped bedroom of her new, furnished rental at Lakeside Villas--which was neither a villa nor anywhere near a lake—and couldn’t stop picturing him having sex first with one woman, then with another. One night she woke up panicked and drenched in sweat. In her nightmare every room in Sid’s Horizon Village condo was filled with unmade beds.

While they were together, she had only disdain for my father; now she was obsessed with him. She began to stalk him. She lurked behind a clump of bushes when he was due home from work and watched as he escorted different women carrying Corningware casseroles and grocery bags up to his third floor lair. She put her ear against the wall of the laundry room, which was adjacent to his bedroom, but could only make out a word or two, especially when the machines were running. The moans, however, came through loud and clear, driving her into a frenzy. It took every bit of her self-control to refrain from breaking into his apartment and smashing the lovebirds with Sid’s new seven-piece Teflon pot set. (She watched as he walked the empty box to his trash chute one night, and his attempts at homemaking without her drove a stake through her heart.)

She stopped hanging out in the laundry, but continued to call him and hang up at odd hours during the night, why, she couldn’t really say. To hear his voice? Make him sick from interrupting his sleep? Stop possible lovemaking in progress? And she went to the King of Poultry, skulking around the parking lot, trying to discern which women he favored that day with an extra meatball.

She spent one entire night cutting my father out of every photograph in both of the albums she brought with her to Florida. She also figured out the code to his answering machine, (fifty-one, his lucky number at the race track), and called in to listen to his phone messages four, five, six times a day. She felt physically sick every time she heard a

female voice confirm a date, “call to say hello” or tell him about the pot roast she just made. My mother was in trouble.

Never a believer in psychiatric care--or afraid, perhaps, of what she’d find out--she finally relented and went to see a shrink.

“It’s really quite simple,” Dr. Brot told her. “You’re obsessing. You believe that Sidney is your property, always has been. No matter that you left him. Now that he appears to be managing without you, moving on as they say, you want to reassert your control. It happens all the time.”

This did not make my mother feel any better. Valium, however, did. The doctor also advised that she move far enough away from my father to require a plane ride.

Back at her apartment, she studied a map of the East Coast. She didn’t want to return to New York; it was too difficult to meet men there. Miami was appealing because of its abundance of rich, elderly men, but too close to my father. Deciding to rule out the entire state of Florida, she came upon Hilton Head, South Carolina. “Hilton Head,” she said aloud. “Hmm, I like the way that sounds.” My mother sang snatches of “One Day My Prince Will Come,” as she pulled out her suitcases and began packing.

Meanwhile back at the condo, my father and Colleen were making plans to marry as soon as their snowbird friends came south for the winter. He had grown tired of dating and was ready to settle down again. For a nominal fee, he procured Horizon’s main card room for their wedding reception. After a ceremony at a local justice of the peace, they’d gather with their guests for platters of miniature potato and kasha knishes and an assortment of Danish, all courtesy of The King of Poultry. Colleen suggested serving cold shrimp with cocktail dipping sauce, but my father blanched at the expense. They bought a dozen boxed wine coolers at Costco that they stored under their bed. After much deliberation, my father decided to throw in two bottles of vodka and a few quarts of orange juice. No one but he and Colleen drank the stuff; they would take whatever was left back to their apartment after the party. At the time I was twenty-four and living on my own in New York. My father called and invited me down for the celebration. Fearing that if my mother found out about the nuptials she’d attend the party and go berserk, he swore me to secrecy.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon soon after the start of the new year, I watched as my father married Colleen. The reception afterwards was a big hit with their neighbors and friends and, as previously decided with his partner, my father passed out twenty percent off coupons for purchases made at the King to all of his guests.

A month later my mother found out about my father’s marriage from my cousin Joyce, who was always looking for trouble. But by then my mother was pursuing a wealthy octogenarian in the greener pastures of a Hilton Head condominium development.

Karen Karlitz work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Miranda Literary Journal, Long Story Short, Beverly Hills 90210, Brentwood News, and the anthology, Freckles to Wrinkles, among others. One of my stories was a Third Glass Woman Prize finalist, and another included in the 2007-2008 edition of The Best of the Foliate Oak. Additional stories will appear in Clever Magazine and The Stray Branch. Currently I am submitting my first novel for publication, and working on a short fiction collection.

"The Fireman" Fiction by Peter DeMarco

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:17:00 -0500

THE FIREMAN

He stares back at me from the front page of our weekly paper, not a familiar face anymore, but the unique surname, and age, confirmed it had to be my little league teammate from 30 years ago. Back then, Tim had longish hair for a 10-year-old and liked to tell stories of kissing girls in movie theater balconies. He wasn't that good of a player, but he hit a home run once that won the game. I think it was his only hit of the season.

During a game, he told me he had just seen the movie The Towering Inferno and wanted to be a fireman because then he'd get kisses from all the girls for saving their lives. The last time I saw him was at the championship game, which concluded my little league career. I hadn't been playing much because I was making too many errors. It turned out I needed glasses but we didn't know it at the time. In the final inning, I struck out with the bases loaded to end the game. No one on the team would talk to me after that. They had all walked away to their parents' cars without saying a word.

A few days later I had called Tim to see if he wanted to go to a movie. He never called me back. Later, I silently wondered if it had something to do with Uncle Rick, who was our coach, but my mother told me that some friends only lasted a little while. He was a little league friend, she'd said, but I still had my neighborhood friends. Then she made me a peanut butter sandwich and put on Merv Griffin.

He was a volunteer fireman who died in a weekend fire at the movie theater I worked in as a teenager. In the paper is a picture of him with his family. After 30 years he still had that same I want to kiss all the girls smile. The article says that he owned a landscaping company and had been with the firehouse for many years. The firehouse was across the street from the plumbing supply store on Main Street that my father had owned with Uncle Rick. He wasn't my real uncle. He and my father were waiters in Gus', a Brooklyn bar, remained friends, and bought the store in the suburbs together. After my father died of a heart attack, Uncle Rick took over and said I had a job there if I ever wanted one.

I look out the store window at the firehouse, its two shiny red engines sleeping in their nest. Was it possible that our paths never crossed, or perhaps we just never recognized each other.

Uncle Rick walks in with Dunkin' Donuts coffee. His Sears brand clothes bleed cigarette smoke. I show him the article and mention the name and ask him if he remembers the fireman as a young boy from our team. He stares at the picture. I watch his face. Wasn't that the kid with the long hair, says Uncle Rick. He hit a big home run, didn't he?

I think so, I tell him.

Jeez, he was right across the street.

Did he ever come in here?

He could've. But, I mean, I wouldn't know who the hell he was, but if he did come in, he'd have to remember our store, and don't you think he'd say hello.
Unless he had no reason to come in, I say, or forgot about the connection.
Poor kid, says Uncle Rick. He puts the paper down and pays me for the paint I bought for him at Home Depot, using my employee discount.

You don't remember anything else about him, I ask.

Not particularly. It was a long time ago. I coached a lot of kids, Henry. Why?

No reason, I tell him. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, some sign of guilt perhaps, but there's nothing coming from him. Maybe he did it to so many kids that it was a blur.

I hadn't thought about him in years, I lie, I'm just trying to remember him better.
You know, Henry, when I was in Korea I had this buddy, and we were in a foxhole talking about our girlfriends back home. A sniper blew his head off. Just like that, he was gone. I spent weeks trying to remember everything he ever told me, but it was like I had no recollection of the guy. It was strange. Maybe I was in some kind of shock, wondering why it wasn't me, and it just blanked out my memory.

We drink coffee and gaze out the window at Main Street. Looks like a slow day, he says. What are your plans?

The grass needs cutting. And then I've got a shift at Home Depot.

We're having a barbeque, if you feel like stopping by tonight.

Thanks. I'll think about it.

At home, I cut the grass and think about the day I wandered into the store after baseball practice and heard Uncle Rick talking to Tim in his office. He'd told us at practice that he was giving him a ride home because his parents were unavailable to pick him up. I watched them from between some copper pipe fittings on a shelf. A naked women magazine was on the desk. Tim was still in his uniform. Uncle Rick told him that he had nice hair, and his hand moved around under his desk. Tim was looking down at the magazine, like it was an artifact from the past and he didn't know what to make of it.

To a ten-year-old, the gooey stuff that squirted up and onto Uncle Rick's desk could've been mayonnaise. It also reminded me of a magician I once saw who did a trick with his hand. Tim continued to look at the magazine and Uncle Rick quickly wiped away the stuff with some napkins. I remember thinking that I had to ask my mother about that, but she died soon after from leukemia, which she'd had for the past year.

A football bounces in front of the lawn mower. The neighborhood kids are at play. I don't know many of the neighbors anymore since most of them moved here within the last ten years. My parents bought our house 35 years ago. Sometimes I'll see a neighbor in Home Depot, and we'll talk about the weather, or what kind of patio furniture might last, or my suggestions for a healthy lawn. I usually tell them to install sod, and share a memory of how our lawn was just a bunch of weeds until my father put down this luscious green sod and our property underwent a magical transformation, kind of like when Dorothy steps out of her displaced house into the colorful Land of Oz.

But when they ask me more detailed questions about construction, I refer them to someone else. I'm really not very handy or mechanical. I only took the job there because the smell reminded me of my father's store.

I throw the ball back. My spiral is still tight. I point out the faded white bases in the street, and tell them that this was our baseball and football field. We'd be out here every day in the summer. I leave the mower and quarterback for both teams, three on three, and connect on a touchdown pass. The other team is eager to tie the score, but on a long bomb, the football loses its path in the branches of a maple tree. Do over, they scream. Childhood vernacular never changes.

George, who used to live across the street, liked to quarterback when we were younger. He'd drop back and pretend he was fending off an entire defensive line. He painted the bases when he came home from Vietnam and would watch us play from his stoop where he smoked a cigarette.

Sometimes, when we played baseball, my father would come out, cigar in his hand, and show us how to line up our knuckles on the bat when we swung. When he was young, he had a tryout for a semi-pro team. On the porch, my mother would read romance novels. Some kids played kick the can. There would be an orange glow behind the houses in the west, but it wasn't until I was in an art class in college, that I'd remember that moment and try to recreate it in a painting.
__________________________________
I have a drink in our local topless bar. The dancers look tired. One smiles at me. I know she wants money tucked into her G-string. I recognize a guy from high school, the captain of the wrestling team. He never lost a match. He catches my eye and comes over. He says that he's in town for the reunion and asks if I'm going. I tell him that I didn't even know there was a reunion. I really don't care about seeing many people anyway, he says. I tell him that I'm working in Home Depot and still see some people from school, but they usually don't recognize me. I think the wrestling captain only knows me because our hall lockers were next to each other. Girls were always hanging around waiting for him to show up.

Didn't you work at that movie theater that burned down, he asks.

For a long time, I say. A volunteer fireman died there. It was in the paper. You know, that guy played little league with me. I hadn't seen him in 30 years, until his picture in the paper.

That theater brought back some memories, he tells me. You know, I felt up my
first girl there.

I stare at glitter on the dancer's breasts.

What are you doing at Home Depot, he asks me.

Waiting to figure things out.

You still in the house?

I nod. He buys me a drink and says that he went out to California to sell computers, got married, started a family, screwed up with a girlfriend and cocaine, lost his family, and is now involved with casting extras for movies.
Sounds exciting, I say.

Crazy business, egos, a lot of girls. Come out there and I'll set you up. You've got no ties here.

Acting?

It's extra work. You stand around, pretend you're doing something. It'll be steady, pay the bills, until you figure things out. He smiles, pats my knee, gives me his card, and turns toward the dancer, a bill between his fingers that he guides toward her hips.

The night is cool for the summer, good weather to have the windows down, the radio on. I drive by the burned down theater, located in a strip mall. There's nothing left of it. My first part time job as an usher. I was proud of the red velvet blazer I wore, ripping tickets. I remember how Jimmy, the school bully tried to get in for free once. He always kicked my chair in math class, saying wake up idiot, making the class laugh, because I wasn't paying attention when the teacher asked me a question, I was staring at the roses on the silk shirt of the boy in front of me and thinking about St. Theresa, who was associated with roses, because my mother was sick and my father said that if I prayed and saw a rose that day St. Theresa would hear me and make my mother better, but it didn't work out that way.

Jimmy said if I let him in he wouldn't bother me anymore. I told him I could lose my job if I got caught. He got back at me by burning down my tree fort in the woods. My father had built it, said it was so solid it would never come down. The firemen who showed up tramped through my backyard in their black rubber coats. It wasn't a serous fire, they were even laughing. They reminded me of the policemen in my favorite television show, Adam 12, all bigger than life, no problem they couldn't handle.

After the firemen left my backyard, I stared at the wet black ruins. The pictures of the naked women from the magazines that Uncle Rick had given me, hidden beneath the fort's worn carpet, were now a pile of ash.

Afterwards, I drive over to the plumbing store. Uncle Rick let me keep my father's keys and said the store could be a second home for me. The place smells of cigarettes. A copy of Hustler magazine sits on a stack of files in Uncle Rick's office.

I think about the topless dancer, and pick up the magazine. I start to masturbate but the coppery smell of the store brings back that scene from 30 years ago. You have nice hair. I put down the magazine and walk outside. The firehouse siren goes off. I watch the truck pull out and disappear into the darkness.
___________________
I stand in the back of the funeral parlor during the fireman's wake. There's a display of pictures alongside the casket. When there's room I take a place in front of the casket, kneel, and pretend to pray. I touch his cold hand, the hand that he once used to shake with me when he said we'd be pals for life. There's a picture of him sitting atop a dozen arms, the glow from the sun creating a halo-like image above him. His hair floats in the air. The day he hit that home run. I can barely make out Uncle Rick off to the side. It's difficult to discern where I am in the photo.

It took a few years to realize what Uncle Rick had done and things started to add up, like those times when he and Tim would be late to a team picnic or something. I wanted the memory to fade, but like grass stains on blue jeans, it never really went away. And, sometimes, when I sat in the air conditioned darkness of the movie theater, I'd remember Tim's stories of giggling girls, and secret kisses and crunching popcorn.

Back home, I smoke a cigar next to the pool. I told the wrestler I was waiting to figure things out. But the truth was, I'd never really thought about it. One day you've got two parents, an ordinary life of comic books and building models, walking in the woods with your BB gun and shooting old soda cans, then your parents die, and you stay in their house and support yourself with some insurance money, maintain the property, and work.

My father once asked what I'd like to do after high school. I told him I didn't know. I liked jumping out of trees and rolling down hills, pretending I was shot, like the gangsters in those old movies I watched on television. My little Dan Duryea, my mother would yell to me from the porch. Maybe a stunt man in the movies, I told him, but he laughed, and the subject never came up again because he died right before high school graduation. Then my only thoughts were the house I would maintain, the lawn I would continue to mow, the porn tapes I would continue to masturbate to, and my job at the movie theater, where the same movies would play over and over.

I take out the wrestler's card. What the hell. Maybe there was a way to make a living, dying in the movies.
_____________________________________
When it's dark, I park my car in the train station parking lot and stare at the back of the plumbing store. The store was surrounded by noise, the train whistle behind us, the firehouse siren in front. Sometimes, when they'd both go off at the same time, Uncle Rick would go into his office and close the door. My father would say that it had to do with the war.

I take a can of gasoline from my trunk and walk through the hole in the fence that has been there my entire lifetime. Tree branches scratch my face. I used to sit in this tiny patch of woods and watch the commuters move along the platform and wind through the parking lot like a giant caterpillar. I pour gasoline around the store, set it on fire, and then walk back through the hole in the fence. This time I avoid the branches. I circle around until I come to Main Street.
I buy a slice of pizza and watch the store burn.

The fire department siren goes off. At least, they won't have to go far.
__________________________
Uncle Rick calls me in the morning, upset about the store, and says something about insurance and how maybe he'll move down to Florida. You don't like the heat, I remind him. He tells me he'll be in touch.

On my way to work, I pass by the baseball field where I struck out with the bases loaded. The last day that I ever saw Tim, until I touched his cold hand in the casket.

I make a quick turn into the parking lot, and walk across what was once a green outfield. Now a minefield of weeds. The sagging chain-link backstop is rusty. I approach home plate and assume my stance in the batter's box, an imaginary bat in my hand, my knuckles lined up like my father once showed me.

And I swing.

Peter DeMarco teaches high school English in New York City. His past careers include stints in acting, stand-up comedy, and book publishing. His writing has appeared in Cadillac Cicatrix, Pindeldyboz, and Verbsap. DeMarco lives in New Jersey with my wife Charmaine, and two boys, Dexter and Sam.

Interview with Founder of Opium Magazine Todd Zuniga

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:06:00 -0500

Founder and Editor of Opium Magazine, Todd Zuniga, agreed to an interview (with us!), discussing his successful literary endeavors, from the live-reading series and the literary death match, to the nature of Opium's online and print versions. The theme was literary and online magazines and Opium's place aside others contributing to the ever-changing literary media culture today. Enjoy!

Q: What kind of reader is Opium produced for? In other words, what is
your vision of the perfect audience for the journal?

I think Opium's built for people that love being surprised in a way that doesn't make them laugh, exactly, but sends their synapses into a light, connecting frenzy so they feel a rush of dopamine. We love stories that surprise, and love people that love stories that surprise.

Q: What percentage of the submissions you receive in poetry and fiction
actually get published in the journal?

Our online site has, lately, turned into a showcase of our contest stories that didn't make the finalists (or go on to win) since so many of them are so good, and promoting our different events.

So that makes it a bit tougher to break in (but I'd say about 10% of what we're sent). And the magazine takes about 5% of what we're sent.

Q: Opium seems to be very aware of how literary art is interacting with other visual media. What do you see as the relationship between the visual and language arts? Do you think more literary journals should work to integrate their visual work with the writing they publish?

This is a big question, and tonight in Brooklyn I'm doing a presentation on "The Future of Reading," which will cover bits and pieces of this question. Also, I launched a site on Jan. 1--EatPizzaintheShower.com--which is my way of combining visuals and text without having to write a story I'd edit sixteen thousand times before I felt it was ready. Anyway, our goal at Opium is to get people to read the magazine, and I think it's arrogant, nowadays, to expect people to want to open a literary magazine and read a page full of text-only just because the editors and designers of that magazine think they should. We want to continually invite, invite, invite people to read. For us, it's all about entry points: our estimated reading times lure people, our visuals do, and we create our titles in a curious font, which I hope helps, as well.

Q: Do you think writers should collaborate more with other artists? What are some of the benefits of this collaboration, in your opinion?

Yes. Definitely. Especially in terms of creating stories for the web with interactive or artistic elements. But that's a lot of work, and writing is enough work on its own. I still believe writers should write first, and worry about the other stuff after. But once they feel like they've accomplished certain personal goals (completing a collection-sized manuscript? a novel? getting an agent?), collaboration will only help them open up the ideas they already have, and advance ideas they don't know they have yet.

Q: Opium does podcasts, cartoons, live readings. Where do you see Opium going next?

The problem with me answering this question is that if I take a swing at answering, it would ignite all kinds of new projects, so it's risky. For now, we're very keen on turning the Literary Death Match into a global reading series (we're doing it in Beijing on the 15th of March, and in London and Paris in September, along with LA, Denver, NYC, SF, Boston, Chicago and beyond this year), evolving the print magazine so it continues to surprise people, finding a hardcore designer on the cheap that can bring our website to something we're not just really proud of, but excites people, and launching of two long-promised sites: OpiumLive.com (based on our new Opium Live interview series), and launching OpiumStudio.com, a cartoon and art gallery that's coming this year. (I'm attaching our About Opium thing to explain some of this stuff, too).

Q: What would you recommend to young writers who are looking to publish in your journal?

Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Send us your very best. I think younger writers think, I wrote a great story, so now I'll go down the list of major story publishers, and put The New Yorker and Atlantic at the top. Don't bother. The top should be McSweeney's and One Story (because they pay, and are great, and open to new work), after that I'd put Opium and a handful of others right at the top (Hobart, Canteen, New York Tyrant, Hayden's Ferry Review, though I hope I'm not making enemies by listing so few). Beyond that, take a chance with your next story, and send us that one. If it doesn't dazzle by sentence two, we're already bored, and expect our readers might be, too.

Q: What do you want people to know about Opium?

We have big plans, but we--like everyone concerned, literary or artistic--are at risk of going away (STORY Magazine, my all-time favorite, went away in 2000, which saddened me greatly). Subscribing to us is a way to encourage our continuation. Also, the contests we run serve to support us, and I love all three of them--they rotate--because they inspire new work: our 500-Word Memoir Contest, our 250-Word Bookmark Contest and our Shya Scanlon 7-Line Story Contest.

Q: Any advice for Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary?

Opium's about to be a 501(c)(3), so save your soul, Tim, and donate! Or sneak us an NEA Grant. If so, we'll pay for your next haircut.

Q: Plane? Train? Automobile?

I whip around the world as often as I can--just finished a book about it called PASSPORT. So, plane. Haste means more time once you're there.

Q: Favorite video game? Old? New?

Ico on PS2. Flower on PS3. And I'd say, now-gen, I'm an Xbox 360 guy.

Q: Least favorite word?

Dumpy.

"A Peak Into My Imagination" and "Abstract" Paintings by Ernest Williamson

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:25:00 -0500

A Peak Into My Imagination

Abstract

Ernest Williamson III is a 32 year old Christian polymath who has published poetry and visual art in over 200 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net Anthology. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is an Adjunct Professor at New Jersey City University and an English Professor at Essex County College.

"Becoming" and "Midair" Poetry by Jack Kristiansen

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:14:00 -0500

Becoming

" . . . Nietzsche in the air." -- Paul Klee, Diary

one of those spring days
when Nietzsche is in the air --

one student in the quad
with his tenor sax

working out a riff
on the Lohengrin theme,

two of the sunbathers
accompanying him

with an impromptu rumba
and now this somber girl

striding past
in her full floral skirt

as if driven
to find some sulky boyfriend

to make him understand
that her morals will be her own

Midair

It is yet another day
that she floats awake

out of a dream
that solved the problem

of holding the body in midair

without the trap
of contraption.

On her drive to the office
she's disappointed not to hear

any music that mimics
the hush of hovering

or the lush rush of soaring.
Her screensaver displays

a leaping Nureyev
who never alights.

On lunch break she recalls
those warriors skimming

with such loping grace
over roof- and treetops

and she buys one more copy
-- for a colleague's birthday --

of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
"Helium," she writes

when a meeting drowses on
and again "Helium . . . Helium,"

circling the words with balloons
that bob about on the page.

These poems are by Jack Kristiansen, who exists in William Aarnes' composition books. His poems have appeared in A Millennial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry, FIELD, Tipton Poetry Journal and The Literary Review. William Aarnes' first book, Learning to Dance, was published in 1991 by Ninety-Six Press, which also published his second collection, Predicaments, in 2001. Over the years Aarnes has had poems in such magazines as The American Scholar, The Southern Review, Barnwood Magazine, Measure, Bateau, Seneca Review, and Poetry.

"Skate" and "Chicago" by TygerLily Ernst Wonch

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:30:00 -0500

Skate

Chicago

TygerLily Ernst Wonch, originally from Illinois, has had a camera in her hand since elementary school. Like in her writing, photography serves as a way to express her feelings about the world around her. TygerLily's work is inspired by the simultaneous feeling of peace and loneliness in addition to the solitary pleasure captured in the people and events of everyday life.

Her photography has been on exhibit in New Chemical History, featured in 63 Channels.com and has appeared in F-Stop Magazine, Filtered Magazine, Phirebrush and Gapers Block. She is currently studying photography in Colorado. Her work can be found at nighthawkpostcards.deviantart.com and her blog can be found at tygerlilyernst.wordpress.com.

"The Trouble with Dream Interpretation" and "Words for This" by Jenn Monroe

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:25:00 -0500

"The Trouble with Dream Interpretation" and "Words for This" by Jenn Monroe

THE TROUBLE WITH DREAM INTERPRETATION

Waking

I take the gray feather from my hand, jay-marked but monochrome,
large as my palm, curved pinkie to thumb. It explodes into a stalk of corn
then drifts its lightest self into wind. The wound had been with me
a long time and began to fester. I worked the infection out, left a clean,
deep hole. About to find something to cover it, someone asked, how
did you get that feather in your hand anyway? But the physics of the thing
aren't important: how it got there, how I pulled it out, that fauna to flora
exchange. A shapeless voice noticed the obvious and interesting
inside me, beneath the wound. How does one ignore a thing like that?

Barley, Wheat or Rye

There is this little wall I'm trying to get around, over,
through. It seems a simple construction, just some rocks
from the field stacked with no mortar, no mud, yet
every time I approach, it gets higher, longer, thicker. I can't see
it as door or window. So I close my eyes and find the other side
remarkably like the one I just left, but brighter in greens and gold,
shifting and swaying with more ease and pleasure. No one owns this
field -- either side -- no livestock, only me. Is this my fabled city?
A field of grains I can't identify but love nonetheless?

To Breton from a Twentieth Century Love

I'm in love with this idea of love and what it means
to love without being in love. It holds me, comfortable,
an oversized leather wing-backed chair. Love is love
is love, and why not as much as you can while you can?
Love here does not equal sex and is deeper than lust -- yes,
hearts expand across decades. You are an un-definable unnamed
part of me, close as a twin, a tragedy-free love. Perhaps you
can take the feather from my hand and interpret its change.

WORDS FOR THIS

Tipsy on elderberry wine, I speak hope like junco-scattered thistle
in rare, raw moments of vulnerability. But it comes down to love,
and like the dog I can't make you understand. Wide green eyes,
heart beating right through pupils, that first look, or the last
before surrender to dreams inseparable from waking. I surrender
to the weight of words pressed into my wrists, my right shoulder --
then nothing. I beg just this, just this, watch orange lights strobe
through orange curtains again and again, think nothing, think
everything -- Where is the voice that filled my head with poetry?
Said what color is it when I meant what is the temperature?

Jenn Monroe is a poet of love in all its forms and an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Chester College of New England in New Hampshire. Her work has appeared most recently in Naugatuck River Review and Bent Pin.

"Speed Freak" by Gary Harmon

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:21:00 -0500

"Speed Freak" by Gary Harmon

The first thing he noticed was how cold it was. He hadn't counted on this.
Though he had planned and thought for what seemed like ages, convincing himself that this was the only way, the best way. He hadn't counted on the cold. Also, he hadn't counted on the wind. The wind made it impossible to see and impossible to hear. Though these were aspects that were unplanned for and initially troubling; he knew that they would be essentially passing concerns.

What does it matter? he thought. It didn't, or at least, it wouldn't. In a few
minutes, not the cold, nor the wind, nor the lack of sight would matter at all.
After all, it's not as if he needed to see where he was going; he knew where he
was going. What was there to hear but the howling wind? He did want to see
though; he did want to take it all in. He opened his eyes briefly to take a
look and only registered white patches and green patches. His eyes were shut by
the unforgiving and unyielding wind. He adjusted his body to look back.

It was easier to see without the wind blasting in his face but there was only
blue, a few wispy traces of white and speck of something grey being quickly
consumed by the infinite blue void. Oh well, he thought, this will do.

What came next, he had expected but wasn't sure precisely what it would be like.

Slowly he began to recollect things in his past. Generally, what he remembered
were things that had made him happy. He remembered being nine years old and
being the only kid in the neighborhood brave enough to jump the rickety four foot ramp he and his friends had constructed together. After botching the landing, he fell, breaking his left arm and getting a nasty gash on his head.

Standing up, he said, "That was awesome! I'm gonna do it again!" and with his arm limp at his side and blood pouring down his face, his childhood friends
watched in horror. He smiled at this. The pain didn't bother him; pain never
bothered him much. It was the rush.

He found something -- new, something exciting and something that he would be
chasing for the rest of his life. It was his new drug and it would be the only
drug he would ever want or need. He remembered the first fist fight he was in
at thirteen. He was surrounded by three larger boys and he had lost rather
badly. That day he broke his nose, bruised his ribs and developed a reputation
around the schoolyard as the kid who laughed as he got beaten to a pulp. He
remembered getting his first dirt bike at sixteen and careening through the
woods behind his parents' house. The cuts and bruises I got from that
bike, he thought, recalling the many times he had been thrown off into thorn
bushes or rocks.

He remembered the many talks that his parents had with him about safety and how they once had him sent to a psychiatrist to find out what was "wrong" with him, to no avail.

He enlisted in the Army at eighteen and joined the infantry. Now there was a
good time, he thought.

He had a distinguished military career, becoming an Army Airborne Ranger. He
came to idolize Audie Murphy, a World War II hero that had once climbed onto a
German tank and assaulted it with its own machine gun, amongst other seemingly insane acts of bravery. He imagined the situation over and over in his head, putting himself in place of Murphy. This would be a fantasy that he wouldcome back to many times over the years.

During his time in the Army, he volunteered for numerous assignments in combat
zones and hostile areas, actually seeing some combat and saving a few lives.
Though he was glad to do it, he always sort of envied the men that he saved. He
pestered them to tell him what it was like being that close to death, hoping to
get the same rush they did as the very real possibility of their own mortality
stared them in the face. He was promoted quickly through the military until he got to the rank of Staff Sergeant and began to lose interest in the Army. He realized that he would be relegated to paper work and administrative duties, and trading in his M-16 for a pen and a stapler was something he couldn't bear.

These memories. His first experience with bungee jumping, BASE jumping and sky
diving. He remembered his first experience scaling the sheer wall of a mountain
and shooting through rapids in a canoe. These activities faded eventually and
he was left chasing that first high; that first rush. He remembered his brief
stint with drugs. In every instance, they failed him. He sought that rush, that
moment in time. In that time, he could see everything, feel everything -- in
amazing crystal clear detail. He always found it ironic that he went faster for
everything to slow down.

He read somewhere that this is a concept of physics; the faster you go, the
slower time goes. He figured that wasn't exactly right. He opened his eyes
briefly again and saw that the green patches were taking a more uniform shape
with small grey lines were delineating their boundaries. Thirty seconds, maybe.
He realized that if he was going to pop, this was his last chance to do it.

It was in a dance club. They were initially aggressive towards each other. He
remembered his wife and the first time they met, each finding the other
abrasive and grating. In the cramped women's bathroom. They tore into each
other. Jesus, that was hot he thought. Spontaneous love making in public places
and the fear of getting caught. The passion they once held for each other, the
heated arguments, their heat. Lately, he felt that the fire was gone, there was
no more excitement, there was no more rush. He had neglected his wife; she bored
him these days as they had settled into the all too familiar suburban nesting
instinct. If prime time television and popular culture was to be believed, this
is when everyone starts becoming responsible adults and leaves the risky
behavior to the youngsters. Not him. He refused to be that guy.

The turning point for him was three days ago when he walked in on his wife in
bed with another man. He watched them for awhile. That's when he realized it
was over. Not his marriage but that feeling. He felt numb. He felt dead. So, he
casually walked into the bedroom got his coat, said, "Wow Tom, you've been
working out, huh?" and walked out as casually as he had entered.

His wife screamed and Tom scrambled for something to cover himself with. It
wasn't that his trust had been betrayed, it was the fact that he didn't care.
It was the fact that he had no reaction.

Here was the woman that he'd loved? Well, here was the woman that he liked well
enough to marry, in bed with another man, and he didn't feel the urge to do
anything about it. He just didn't feel anything.

He opened his eyes and found the wind. He could see everything clearly and
looked ahead of him to see the jagged bed of rocks that he was speeding toward.

There will be nothing left, he thought in a calm. The landscape appeared not to
come at him but expand and spread out, zooming in, swiftly. He was smiling; he
thought back to his first experience jumping that ramp at nine years old and
all of his friends standing around, mouths hanging open. If only they could see
me now.

Gary Harmon is an under-achieving Combat Veteran with a penchant for getting
bored and doing something about it. He never attended an institute of higher
learning; something he's both proud of and slightly ashamed of. He spends his
time playing guitar, attempting to write songs, having imaginary conversations
with famous people and inventing reasons not to go to the gym. He currently
works for the U.S. Government in South Korea.

"My Father Grazes in the Fields of Moon" and "Dig a Hole" by Steve Klepetar

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:18:00 -0500

"My Father Grazes in the Fields of Moon" and "Dig a Hole" by Steve Klepetar

My Father Grazes in the Fields of Moon

Now he's a horse with shining mane, moon
creature swaying on his spindle legs, grunting
his grassy lyrics into starlight blurred with mist.

I have heard him sing the ballad of beautiful
wells, and wondered at the splendid notes
of his inhuman voice, how the cold spring air
trembled and stillness woke as a chorus of wails.

And tonight again he's the king of dreams,
bending his long neck to drink at a slash of light.
I have seen him in the fields of moon, gambling
his smooth, black shadow on the heartsick wind.

He is movement and muscle, a heart, a spring,
a moment before one last, wild leap, a gaping
silence before roaring wave wrecks every ear.

I have watched from my window as night
seeped down beneath earth and roots,
felt the nothing he leaves behind, the emptiness
he trails like a mantle of dead leaves and snow.

Dig a Hole

Dig a hole and the earth springs back
flying at your face like a thing come home.

Your hands create darkness, you become
a space, a breath held long, an open wound.

Sometimes the air thickens and your lungs
pull against roots, your house disappears

and your shoulders grow a painful eruption
of wings. It isn't safe, you know, to trouble

the world with words. Even your tongue
with its rough beads can split into several

thousand worlds. Even your hair can grow
into a desert where strange, spiky plants

explode into blossom with the rare gift of rain.

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

"Peach and Bourbon Glazed Chicken; Louisville Slugger" by Brad Johnson

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:07:00 -0500

"Peach and Bourbon Glazed Chicken; Louisville Slugger" by Brad Johnson
Excerpt from "Kitchen Conversation"

Peach and Bourbon Glazed Chicken
Yield 4 Servings
Ingredients
4 Bone in skin on chicken Breasts
8 oz Bourbon
2 Peaches, peeled, seeded, diced and, pureed
2 oz Malt Vinegar
4 oz Brown Sugar
½ tsp Kosher Salt
1 tsp Black Pepper
1 tbsp Corn Starch
1 Tbsp Water
As Needed Vegetable Oil
As Needed Water

Method

1. In a sauce pan combine; bourbon, malt vinegar, brown sugar, peach puree, salt, pepper.
2. In a separate bowl combine cornstarch and water
3. Bring the sauce pan to a low boil, add cornstarch mixture, and then reduce to a slow simmer. Leave uncovered.
4. In a sauté pan add oil to cover the bottom and bring to medium high heat.
5. Sear the chicken breasts, skin side down first, and then flip to other side. 3-4 min each side.
6. After time for the second side is up, turn heat to medium low and add ½ of the sauce mixture. Leaving the other ½ to simmer and reduce to sauce consistency.
7. Let the chicken simmer in the sauce until done. Times will vary, but another 5-7 minutes should do it.
8. Remove the chicken from the sauce and place on serving dish; pour the sauce from the pan over the top. Enjoy!

Louisville Slugger

In a rocks glass add
1. ice as you see fit
2. 2 fingers of bourbon
3. Equal parts sweet tea, lemonade, lemon-lime soda
4. Garnish with mint sprig.

Brad Johnson is a classically trained chef and culinary rebel. His knowledge of classic French technique is often shunned in favor of his deeply rooted passion for Southern technique. Brad has built his reputation on food that is familiar yet unique as well as his trademark for never being ordinary. Brad is also the author of "Kitchen Conversation," an irreverent look at food and cooking.

"Absent Raised Suspension" by Jason McCreary

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:01:00 -0500

Absent Raised Suspension

Jason McCreary was born and raised in Richmond, Kentucky. He received his
B.A. from Eastern Kentucky University. His work has been included in several
group shows across the Commonwealth. Currently, he is an artist living and
working in Chicago, Illinois.

His work includes several layers and applications of paint, with a loose
gestural overlay of shapes and lines. Clusters of shapes originate from a
single location to blossom out and grow on their own. The imagery reflects
upon the interaction of opposing objects living together, with a cohesive
end result.

"Float" and "On Valentine's Day" Fiction by Beth Couture

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:47:00 -0500

Float

Edward goes into his son's room and looks at the fish as it swims in its tank. It is getting bigger. Not in a normal way. It is growing, but much more quickly than a normal fish grows. Every day, it seems, it is bigger. He notices it.

They bought the fish on a whim. The cat had run away and the boy cried for hours until they told him they would take him out and buy him a new pet. He said he wanted something that couldn't run away, something with no free will. The boy says things like this sometimes -- things that make Edward and his wife worry about him. The boy wanted a turtle, but when the man at the pet store mentioned keeping the lid on the tank, that an escape was possible, they looked at the boy and shook their heads, and he nodded back at them silently.

The fish is bright red with fins that puff up whenever it feels threatened. It drifts back and forth across the bottom of the tank, picking up bits of gravel and spitting them back out again. They have shown the boy how to pinch two or three tiny pellets of food between his fingers and drop them into the tank, have lectured him about overfeeding it. They've told him the story about how a house sitter once killed their fish by overfeeding them. The fish were floating at the top of the tank, bloated and pale, they said. The boy promised he would never feed the fish too much. They watch him sometimes when he doesn't know it and notice how careful he is, how precise, counting out pellets and dropping them one by one onto the surface of the water.

Soon they are buying a larger tank. The fish is the size of the boy's fist, round and buoyant, and it bobs happily around the tank like a bathtub toy. Edward watches it every night and wonders how big it will get -- if it will keep expanding and expanding until they are forced to put it in the swimming pool and then set it free in the ocean. He wonders, if it keeps growing, if it will one day try to move onto land. He reads that fish will grow to fit the size of their container, and decides not to buy another tank, no matter how much it needs one.

The boy turns over in his sleep, opens his eyes half way and groans. Go back to sleep, Edward says, I'm just checking in. The boy says he's been dreaming about the world being covered with ice. There were no fish or anything, he says. Nothing could swim because of all the ice. Edward smiles, says the word glaciers. A long time ago there was nothing but ice, he says. He wants to tell his son all about the world when it was under layers of thick blue ice, when things still swam, but you couldn't see them they were so far down underneath.

On St. Valentine's Day

She drowned in the deep end of an indoor swimming pool, a little girl, her mother's darling. Her hair was yellow -- not even blonde, but the yellow of butter and old bones -- and it streamed around her as she floated, tiny limbs outstretched as if waiting for a lover. Her mother found her that way, hovering on the surface of the water, a daffodil fallen into a pond. She came back after searching for a drink machine, the novel she'd left on the bedside table, extra towels, and there: a little dead thing, more like a drowned puppy than a girl of six, skin elastic and heavy, pink and white and yellow like a candy heart.

A little girl drowned in the deep end of an indoor swimming pool. Mother said wait until she got back, she would bring apple juice, but she wanted to swim right now so she lowered herself inch by inch into the water, the warm water that smelled bad but it was okay, she lowered herself and it was very, very nice. But she moved through the water and it got deeper -- then deeper until she couldn't touch the floor. She tried to go back, but she couldn't, and then it was over her mouth, her ears, her nose. There was no one there, and the little girl waved her arms, coughed, sucked water down her throat, chlorine burning. No one to help her, and when she screamed her mouth filled with water. Everywhere, water. Water forever. And then, it was quiet. Suddenly, like a movie theater when the lights go off. Quiet, and the little girl was warm. She could feel herself floating again, felt the water fill her lungs. Safe now. The little girl floated like a tiny soft feather on warm water and she tasted sweetness, honey thick in her mouth.

They didn't know it then, not until weeks later, but they made her that day -- Valentine's Day after sweet wine and strawberries, dark chocolate staining mouths and fingers and sheets. Valentine's Day in a rented bed, a city they would never visit again. They didn't know it then, but there she was -- after heaving and gasping, eyes rolling back in heads, after all that, she was left. She was there. A smell like chlorine in the room, a tiny vine inside, coiled. And after, they slept. And after, more wine, chocolates picked through, laughter. A tiny vine inside, growing larger. Months later, their yellow girl, like a daffodil or dandelion -- her skin soft as petals, smelling of butter. Years later, Valentine's Day in a city they would never visit again, and she floated, her limbs unfurled, waiting for her lover to embrace her.

Beth Couture is a third-year PhD student in fiction in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has work published in the Georgetown Review, and forthcoming in the Southern Poetry Anthology’s Mississippi volume, The Southeast Review, Rougarou, the Thirty Under Thirty anthology upcoming from Starcherone Press, and the novel A Language of Now, upcoming from Chiasmus Press. She is also the co-editor of Squid Quarterly, and is the associate editor of the Journal of Truth and Consequence.

"Valerie's First Birthday Party" Fiction by Russell Helms

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:25:00 -0500

Valerie's First Birthday Party

Qi Lin sits in a white plastic chair in the hot sun next to a bowl of pork and beans on a swaying card table draped with a plastic American flag. Her daughter Valerie, taller than the other girls, scampers around a pear tree behind the small brick house. Louise Chasteen takes the other chair next to Qi and leans forward. Her false teeth are clearly false, her eyes red and bleary behind thick glasses.

"Are you from China?" asks Louise.

"Yes," Qi replies. It feels good to say it.

"I see you have a cell phone." Louise nods and smiles at the phone.

"Yes," Qi replies.

"Do you talk to your family in China with the cell phone?" Louise leans closer as if the answer might be secret.

"Yes." Qi glances over her shoulder and does not see Valerie but can hear her voice, laughing in English. She covers the cell phone in her hand as if holding a small frog. "Do you live in this house?" Qi asks Louise. She speaks clearly and slowly, nudging her head forward gently with each word.

Louise looks surprised and shades her eyes briefly. "Gina is my granddaughter."

"Oh yes, the birthday girl," Qi says. She wears shades but the sun on her neck is hurting. A girl with orange hair takes a handful of potato chips from the table and dashes away. Qi feels sweat in her eyebrows.

"Do you talk often to your family in China?"

"Yes. But my husband is here. He teaching... He is teaching at the university." Qi feels like a potato, freshly turned from the soil.

"Oh, does he speak English?"

A mild shock runs down Qi's spine. "Yes."

Qi hears loud voices from a small group of parents sitting on a small deck just behind her. A thin little girl in a baggy bathing suit reaches into the ice at Qi's feet. Gina's mother had said, "Kee, why don't you sit here where you can be next to all the food," and then laughed. Qi had thought she would join her.

A man in torn jeans walks over and pours himself a cup of Mountain Dew. He smiles at Qi. He hesitates, points at the ice chest near her feet. Qi moves her feet slightly and looks away. He bends over and reaches toward the ice chest. He drags it a foot or two closer to him. He continues to smile, turning red. Louise has not taken her eyes from Qi.

"What is your name?"

"Qi Lin."

"Chee... Lin... ?"

"Yes."

"Well I declare," says Louise. She puts a corn chip in her mouth and sucks on it. A look of impatience crosses her face.

Russell Helms is a creative writing student at Eastern Kentucky University.