Smile

Smile by Alan

The emoticons seemed to jump off the rack these days, thought Racine to herself shortly after returning from lunch break. Not like last season at this time when everything was a series of slow and deliberate hesitations. “More like indecision,” was what came out of her mouth suddenly but with an air of waking to a new day after serious time spent traveling in a car perhaps or on a plane. All of a sudden whether people were more or less in touch with their emotions became a game of intuition she would play with herself. This one, with the heavy eyebrows. He will want the tongue. And this one, shy and in the grey, the turd. And so the hands of the clock would turn and a face would wink and a blanket or two would be sold and she would sneak off for a cigarette and never tell the woman who worked at the kiosk near the exit door about her musings even though she wanted to.

She knew immediately that the older woman in the kiosk had a crush on her but it wasn’t confirmed until weeks later into that season when her phone lit up out of the blue. They had never exchanged numbers (though she recalled one instance in which she had said her number aloud to a customer, an old classmate, yes), so at first there was some confusion. But the signal was unmistakable. A series of faces and symbols coming in just after midnight. They fell on her lap like haiku, and she spent time trying to make sense of the message. This life was funny at times, she thought it said, and other times filled with a sad kind of mystery and charm. Musical notes might ring out from a hand gesture if we’re lucky, there is a green tree at the top of a hill that is the arch of your back (which is also where some champion would like to ski), and, most of all, mask on or mask off…there really is no difference in the rain.

After that night, there wasn’t a palpable silence or anything like that as much as there was a slight but definitive shift in the taking of inventory of the day. Nothing came of the text message because Racine never answered back. It was difficult to make eye contact going forward, but there was a comfort in the knowing that the other existed as well. And every attempt to intimate a feeling thereafter was charged with memory’s afterglow, which can light up a room, she began to understand, as well as any urge to get in touch and say what we really feel.

***

Middle Name by Sherisse

The spider as well as other, coiled, insects have shown up in my dreams. Recently, while in a foreign house, I held one in the white palm of my hand. I felt like a man then, bold, but wasn’t wanting to injure or kill. I simply needed a morning shower and solitude. To not be in occupied space, to expand. This has nothing to do with the question you asked: what’s behind the smile? Or whether I buy things in stores or from the open air markets at the center of town. Well, if you must know and if you insist on knowing, I live like a criminal. Or the descendant of one. There is no furniture in my place, only stacks of unopened letters. To match the distance, a kind of emptiness. But you have always liked that word so much better in another language. Sunyata. And the grownup word for spider? It came through a woman whose middle name is Josephíne. A police officer, over a telephone, says so. Her word for spider is missing. In my little shit mind I hear hissing, kissing. It wasn’t the right way, a phone call. Water would have been better. To fill me up with it. To watch me pop like a birthday party balloon. To be that loyal to god, or grief.

***

Seven Tentacled Lightning by Bill

You say it your way and I’ll say it mine. We’re all going to heaven if we can get out just fine. The days make me sleepy even when I stare at the sun; using your ass as a pillow is just a better sort of fun. The kink shop is up and the poor are way down because the bankers expect a wet kiss on top of their crown.

In the mornings we drink between a fit and a shit, and get dirty looks from some uppity tit. We slap ‘em and spit ‘em with a kick for good measure, we’ll harass your grandma in all kinds of weather. We’re here to be crude since that’s how it’s done, the price to be paid since Reagan won.

We’re keeping the world strange, exciting and weird, we’ll show them the cost of not keeping their word. It’s a fascinating time so look all around, at the stars shining out or panties dropped to the ground. We can sing between planets, we can dine underwater, we just have to pay attention, to what really matters.

***

Say Cheese, Weirdo by Lyle

You gotta look at the camera. Otherwise this won't work.

Of course I know that, but I can't make myself looks at the cyclopic, myopic, disembodied pupil. And so it doesn't work and we are disappointed and I am depressed and terrified that I have been consumed anyway. At last we are silent and old and the biophony has returned to it's natural state and there is only a slight sheen in the darkness.