Speakers Corner

Cornered by Johanna

Hush, she whispered.

The closet was dark except for the lines of light that shone through the cracks in the door panel. I could make out the silhouette of clothes draped over hangers. The smell of mildew burned my eyes and caused tears. Or maybe it was the pressure of her hand over my mouth as we crouched on the floor. Or maybe it was fear.

Outside the closet door, the men rustled through our belongings. I was asleep when mother grabbed me and carried me in there with her to hide. I didn’t know what they were looking for. I couldn’t ask her. I hoped they weren’t looking for us. I hoped they didn’t want whatever else was in the closet with us. But then the door unhinged and I watched a pair of muddy boots step forward as mother pulled me back. I felt the corner of a box, maybe one used to store out-of-season shoes or old photo albums, stab into my back, but I didn’t dare complain.

I was sure he would hear our breath or my heartbeat. My heart was so loud in my head I thought the whole room echoed with its vibration.

He rapidly pushed aside the clothes. A shirt fell to the floor and landed at mother’s feet. I thought for sure then that he would see us. Another man called out, and the muddy boots turned briskly away. There was silence then. The quietest kind. Quieter than the dark closet, quieter than my internal organs, quieter than snow.

Mother released her grip and sighed.

***

The Steps Up the Mountain by Bill

We settled on the mountain looking down and saw the seasons turn below us. We settled on the mountain to watch the stars in the night spin away in the heavens. We settled on the mountain and watched the stones and the stones watched us back. We sat there and stopped thinking of where we had come from, where the old king had been born and marched ahead of his columns as the body and mass of it moved away further and further, climbing high into the thin air full of wind. We listened to stone and wind. We were still but moving.

We sent a message to the forest people down below. Give us your treasure.

Eventually their response arrived. They sent their old woman back up the hill without a horse because the rocks might be found too treacherous and they could not ride one anyway for that is something we had learned after we marched away. The rams who leapt among the rocks lived too high for them to catch and tame, and the rams would not let them ride in any case so she came slowly but sure, steady on her sturdy legs. She came wrapped in scarves and her fur and glasses over her one good eye and the other fixed with a patch. She came up the mountain and passed through the walls and all of the people talked about the treasure but few followed her out of their fear. She entered the castle we had raised up on top of the stone and walked up to the king. He stared up at her and she down at him with her good eye. She swiped her paw across his neck and tore out his throat. Blood ran down his chest and she ripped open his ribs and ate his heart.

She turned to look at me and I did not know if she would kill me too. She reached out her bloody paw and touched my face leaving the bloody mark. She walked back out of the throne room with the blood still wet on her muzzle, the treasure delivered, a grandmother’s duty to her family fulfilled.

***

Speaker Before and After by Sherisse

I was set to quit. The walls had started closing in on me. Sitting in my desk chair hurt every bone in my body. I'd had many dreams about my boss screaming in meetings and jerking off in boardrooms. The day I planned to tell him I was leaving, my dog died in the corner of my kitchen. I took off so I could bring his body to be cremated. When I went back to the office my boss hugged me and I knew I didn't yet have the balls to tell him I was done. He wasn't all bullshit. He had a heart sometimes too. He'd been in the army. He'd seen stuff. A few days after Darby died, my parents called to say they were getting divorced for a second time, my brother went into rehab and my niece told me she was having an abortion. I went home that Friday and considered never leaving the house again. On Monday I went in and my boss didn't know who I was. My co-workers didn't know who I was. Had I changed that much? No. I had gotten new glasses and my wife had threatened to leave if I didn't get help but I was still the same man. "It's me," I said, "Howard. I've worked in HR for eight years." Nothing. Blank stares. Security was called, then the police. I was handcuffed, stuffed into the back of a cop car, searched at the station. I wasn't a ghost. I had just run out of time.

***

Cornered by Forrest

One of the worst things about Speaker's Corner, other than that the street lights have never worked there, keeping it preternaturally dark throughout all hours, including daytime, strangely enough, because of it being situated next to tall buildings that also keep their lights off most of the time, which often gives me the impression the financial district is always abandoned as I pass through it on my way back home on foot, raising the distinct possibility I will be mugged or worse though, thanks to the security cameras installed, the perpetrator of this hypothetical crime will be indentified, to be sure, so I may be avenged by Law or public outrage, assuming, however, those security cameras actually work, which is uncertain to me, as those dark, beady eyes which I never see moving in any direction or showing a pulse of life, and are not there for mere subterfuge to make said perpetrator think twice about what he or she is about to do, assuming criminals do think twice about their crimes, and I've assumed they do sometimes because, avenging aside, why bother putting up a security camera to when something more beneficial and practical like, for instance, working street lights can be put up instead, and for the reason that I'm a statistical anomaly, someone who has never been the victim of a violent crime despite passing through Speaker's Corner at the worst time of night all by myself, alongside those shallow glass buildings, in the absence of those working street lights, is that I seldom meet anyone interesting there.

***

The Idea by Alan

1. Somewhere in the modern city, a man gives himself to an idea. That all people should have a voice in the conversation may not sound like the most radical notion, but to those who are comforted by the exact location of their desks, floor, amount of sunlight, etc., it’s that one tiger in the show that refuses the hoop and waits a little longer to step up to the stool.  

2. “This is the new architecture,” he imagines her saying, her fingers wetting the tips of the pages with each turn.  The manual, an irrepressible thing yearning for actualization, prods the sensitive executives in her office who are hiding a little more than encrypted messages on the refrigerator wall.

3. The Speakers’ Corner would be a democratic space, open to all who needed it, very much like the Garden of Lovers flashing outside city hall or the Riverside Arches moaning somewhere north of the predetermined spot.  The invitation would always be there, a short step up from the concrete on a five by six wooden palette, just large enough for two but mostly/inevitably occupied by one.  And it would transform.

4. Amidst the planning, the thought comes to her.  It is a noble insertion.  There is no great poetry without great audiences, no matter the integrity of the corner or the room.  We cannot all be waiting our turn at the mic if we want this thing to work.  

5.  “But what about audience?” she asked one night.  And then “Surely we can’t stop needing each other?”

***

@SpeakerzCorner by Lyle

*SpeakersCorner __ Silence is key. Pauses, crescendos, glottal stops, caesura, that red, blinking hand at crosswalks. Baffled silence wasn’t particularly frowned upon by the mute crowd, gagged as they were by legislation. And so they called it Speakers’ Corner. The grass was never watered.

*OfficeOverlook __ I would watch them down there from my office window. Babbling! I, of course, didn’t know what they were saying until I bugged it. Right behind the “R.” And then there was no stopping them. My magnetic tape would be full when I came in in the morning. And this wasn’t a cheap “hobby” — I realized too late.

Of course the first thing I did was hire a linguist — after I felt like I had enough evidence.

The first guy thought I was crazy. So did the next few — I lost count for a while. So I finally decided to linger amongst them.

Someone did, ultimately, speak my language and so I hired him. And thus we have the following manuscript:

[…]

It is some micro speakers’ corner gibberish. It has to be, but my translator swears that it is inconsequential. He said inconsequential. I don't know that that was a translation.

  Really —

Tunnel

Tunneling by Alan

Hold your breath, he said. This contest had been a source of instigation as a child, burrowing into the mind like a thief’s magnifying glass or an engine’s purr. And if it were a true getaway, he would most assuredly lose…either because of the occasional cigarettes or the exhaustion and lack of sleep. For months at a time it would be three to four hours max. And then a week would end and he’d find himself hibernating for days. These kinds of massive runs became the norm. While in it, he’d continue to dream of epiphany. She cleansed his hands when he was young, offered a glimpse into her room, etc. The words she wrote excited him when he found them discarded on her driveway at thirteen. He stole them too, like the other things. Went out for late night joy rides. Ended up crossing over into the city of lights. The only thing separating one place from another was one fleeting length of breath. The lights blurred intentions while he counted: 36, 37, 38…she wasn’t in the car, but he imagined she was. She and everybody else in the city, the world. Look what I can do. I can make it all the way through.

***

First Day by Johanna

Although her future resided at the end of the tunnel she was reluctant to discover it. As her car whizzed through the noxious cavern, she noted the doorways amongst the white subway tiles and the concrete steps that lead up to them. She imagined the car halting, an accident up ahead. She imagined jumping from the vehicle, tearing her uniform plaid skirt and white button-down, slipping through one of those doors. A series of farther tunnels beyond, she’d find her way in the damp dark, tripping over rats until she discovered a society of rebels unfit for the world of comfortable conformity where she could shave her head and get in raging fights and drink until she puked. But the car kept zipping through the tunnel, the glare of lights passing one after the other until they merged into one. That was all she could hope for, the years to pass quickly until she could get the hell out of boarding school.

***

One Last Piece of Cake by Bill

They asked me to come home when they found Lawrence dead in his cell. I had never actually been there. It was never home, but it was where we were all from.

I’d only paid attention to what was happening from afar. I didn’t get close and I had not reached out to anyone. The call did not come as much of a surprise. I had wanted to stay distracted but distraction is always the easiest way to get mixed up in the things you have no interest in being a part of, so I packed a bag, filled up the tank, and drove back. The lights in the tunnel appeared green but I saw phosphorus and barium tracers in the spectrometry of the air as the bulbs whipped passed. I haven’t the slightest clue how to recognize synesthesia or where to go to get it tested. Maybe its just intuition.

Still once I got out the other side of the tunnel I pulled over at an all-night dinner with a pay-phone outside that in the middle of nowhere made for a convenient place to call Sally with an address and a few thoughts and then stepped inside for a cup of coffee and a slice of cheesecake. It is important to appreciate those things in life that make you happy when you might never have another chance to enjoy.

It is also important, on a personal level, that when I’m about to become a part of things I am not interested in being a part I have got Sally at my hip.

***

Phobia by Lyle

As they entered the tunnel, somehow, he felt, he’d been in this tunnel for a long time. “A long time,” of course means different things to different people in different situations and upon reflection he wasn’t so sure it wasn’t “a long time” after you wake up buried in a coffin (though dead is dead, right?). Not that he had ever been afraid of confined spaces — claustrophobia, someone one said. Yes, not that he had ever been claustrophobic. But sometimes these things happen, right? Go to bed one night and the next day you’re homophobic or whatever. (Homophobia is more of a hatred, he mused later. Based on fear, maybe, but not like acrophobia or agoraphobia or — but that’s not really important. Just a way to pass the time.) What’s important is that he felt confined. And that’s why what happened next happened next. That’s why he’s telling you this story about a tunnel. And none of it makes any difference in the least.

***

Middling by Forrest

Often you're taking me where I know you don't know where you're going, unless we're in a tunnel. Let it ride, you say, we can't get lost—either way, out the other side we go. Or we stop in the middle, I add. You can't fathom why. No one stops in a tunnel. You can't even remember the last time you say a car break down in a tunnel lane, forcing its occupants to walk the remainder. So I imagine tunnels, like this one, have perfect operating records in getting people to the other side, no matter what. Even if they walk it. The only problem is everyone zooming by. Because they know where they're going. They can't stop until the other end; and everyone else wishes they had gone in the other direction instead, though they still keep going. Don't wish in the middle if you have to, I want to say, finally recognizing which direction you think you're taking me.

Green Sands

Papakolea by Johanna

The woman stood just beyond the roving perimeter of sand and sea. She watched the waves lift bodies and place them back down. She heard the laughter of people diving under and smashing against the ocean's force. She took a step forward. The water overcame her feet, and as it pulled back, buried them. She imagined urchins, jelly fish, sharks, and Man-o' -War. She took a step back.

A young girl nearby twirled and skipped in the shallows. “Daddy,” she asked, “Why is the sand green?”

Her dad reached out to her as the water came up around her waist. When she stood firm, he let his arm hang back by his side. The woman listened. “From a volcano,” he answered. “The ocean picks up eroded olivine from this cinder cone and washes it on shore.”

“No, dad,” she said, “I mean the REAL reason.”

“Oh, you want the REAL reason.”

“Yes!”

“Okay,” the dad started slowly, “the green sand is actually mermaid glitter.”

“What's that?”

“Like fairy dust, only the mermaids use it to lure sailors under the water to their coral reef castles where they hold them prisoners forever.”

“How can they breathe down there?”

“The mermaid magic.”

“Oh, yeah.” The girl leaped out of the water and ran up the beach. She fell to her knees and began to dig a tunnel. The dad followed close behind.

The woman grabbed a handful of sand and examined the grains. She held them up to the horizon. She searched to see if anyone watched before she closed her eyes and sprinkled the mermaid glitter on her head.

***

A Walk by Forrest

Too late considering this bathing along the shore, not farthest away from her watching, older this time, so as not trying to pay attention in any faulty way, soon even wishing, patient, in the painless hope of someone else talking while walking, no one she knows, of course, who wouldn't belabor the opportunity, asking her sister her dainty name, hand extended friendly for her taking, no one noticing her not noticing, feeling much, much sunnier without her walking reminder, the little sister further away, much, much smaller, another set of prints in her sand.

***

Tides by Lyle

I had been buried in the sand for quite some time (such a subjective sentiment, time). Those monsters laughed and played in the tide while I baked. My toes began to curl in the sun. God — the sand! It was everywhere in my mouth. And worse! Given my proclivity to squirming, this immobility was — ironically, I suppose — paralyzing. Narrating my circumstances, I had hoped, if only to myself, would distance myself from this mockery of justice but it did nothing to alleviate the nausea. It was as if my whole body was being choked in a blood pressure cuff. An odd metaphor, to be sure, but even the blackness of the cuff is appropriate. I blinked as one of them ran by so that I would remember if they ever let me go. Beasts! Savages! I yelled. Thieves — again ironic (was this irony somehow a salve?) considering the crime I had been accused of. But the long, slow sigh of waves, their laughter (laughing!) and the gentle sea breeze carried my invectives off. Monsters, I sobbed. I could feel my will bending to theirs. This visceral, putative measure was working. Mortal wants carried me off.

[When you remember how you used to be, sometimes it makes you forget who you are.]

My breath became jagged and shallow. I confess I cried. I confess to everything. But it was too late. The tide had already begun to rise.

***

Samantha Who Listens to Music at the Beach by Alan

She liked to listen to Jose Gonzalez’s Veneer album at the beach and listen for how the waves, as they moved across the shore, would mingle with the nylon strings or, rather, the fingers strumming across the strings. Big haunting chords sprayed with sunlight. There is no such thing as a hiding place in this life, she would think as the music grew more intimate.

Someone would call to her, make a gesture toward the water. In these instances, she’d smile knowingly and, for the most part, simply let the energy of opportunity slide past her. Past last night’s prints in the sand, the undisturbed ones. What are the chances of that, she would think. To see the world in a grain of sand has absolutely nothing to do with eternity. Everything to do with intimacy.

And then at the point the water would reach her toes later in each afternoon and the crisp winged winds of evening’s promise would draft a few lines across her face, she would consider getting up, examine the urge as if sticking one’s hand into the body of a guitar or a summer or some other music-making thing.

***

Step Lightly by Bill

Looking down at the pigeon's carcass, thinking it had nearly gotten away when it smacked into the side of the train by a strong unexpected gust of wind to land painfully and fatefully with its back to one of the stray feral cats that lived along the barrier fences of the line, its wings untouched and splayed like an angel in glory on the concrete connected to a red and devoured ribcage where it had fallen once the little carnivore was done I decided I was tired – of winter, and the city and all of the phone calls about the case and needed to feel sunlight and the sound of waves.

***

Untitled by Julianna

We went to Myrtle Beach for vacation and my wife painted her toenails. Figures. When does she paint her toenails at home? Never. At home she wears the same green sweatshirt every goddamn day and she doesn’t cook. She used to cook. She used to paint her toenails. She used to walk around the apartment in panties. Cute ones. Ones with little bows and lace and whatnot. Now? Nothing. Now I have no idea what my wife’s underwear looks like, except when I see it in a heap on the bathroom floor, bundled up with her sweat socks. Sweat socks and underwear sitting there on the bathroom floor. They sit there for days sometimes. Sweat socks and underwear mocking me while I do my business.

I spent two weeks’ goddamn salary on Myrtle Beach. I coulda been home. It was the playoffs. And what does my wife do? Reads books in a lawnchair and takes pictures of her feet.

That’s me, by the way, out there in the water. No, not that guy. That one. No, to the left of that one. The one with the arm. No, not that one. That one. That one. That’s me. I think it is. Yeah, that’s me. I’m pretty sure. That one.

***

Sea Glass by Nicole

There are bits of sea glass lined up on his dresser. They are perched in a row over his Boy Scouts of America sash. His window lights up the row of shapes two or three at a time. Sometimes, I can see him walking the shore from my bedroom window. He comes out in the mornings before the beach is crowded and hot. He examines each piece with his hands, feels for smooth edges, and fingers the acceptable pieces into his pockets. I count the pieces as he picks them up and wait for them to show up in the row with the others. I like it best when he throws the sharpest ones back into the ocean. Someday it will be the two of us together reaching our hands up over our heads to toss the pieces into the waves. The water will keep the pieces until they are ready.

Storm

Storm by Johanna

Returning from the funeral. Quiet but for the wind. There is no rain, no thunder, only the distant flash of lightening in the eastern plains. Was it a night like this one? Driving north on the front range we watch the bolts strike out and reach the far corners of the dark sky with branching fingers. The darkness alight with hidden objects – billboard, farm house, factory, a car abandoned on the side of the road. Is this how it happened? I roll down the window and the air is warm and thick. The taste is metallic. My arm hair bristles. Did she see the car coming? A flash just bright enough to show us the world.

***

Occasional by Forrest

Out of the way, the storm chasers had fled towards the danger, only returning at dusk, but still hungry. We had a few eggs left which hadn't flown away, a loaf of bread not broken. We'll eat it all, they boasted, and we believed them until they did eat it all. Then they noticed we had nothing left, and asked if they could have that as well. We gave them the last of it for their equipment to record. They laughed, patted each other on the back. The best yet! they cheered, watching the dials move, the needles tremble. Our admiration was a helpless thing, little more than what the weather can be on occasion here, waving to the gathering crowd.

***

Malice by Lyle

Out the car window the signs & marquees gave way to storm clouds in that woozy way alcohol has of double exposing images in your head over time as you stare out the window of a car. Strung together by time and distance. An equation, perhaps. And you driving said something to me or not to me now and again. Sometimes with a light laugh afterwards and I smile and am warm in the heater-filled compartment watching the clouds roll in quickly and with malice.

***

When the Aliens Finally Arrive by Alan

I saw this coming in one of my earlier journals. It was several years ago. Don’t quite remember when. I was driving to Tennessee with Tim in the front seat mad with joy and love and cigarettes and nothing to fear. All of a sudden, the idea for a horror story.

When the aliens finally arrived, I shared with Tim, they made their way onto the systems that connected us. They bore into the wires that ran across the country and crept inside the billboards and interstate signs. They marked our tepid crossings with deep and profound vigor. They studied us as a race. They came from the clouds like a gentle rain.

How did you know they were there? Tim was curious. I was writing while driving, looking up between mile markers. I was sketching furiously in the fading light. The characters on the page began to lie on top of each other as it got darker. The more I wrote, the less I understood.

Maybe only we could see them. Tim was wild-eyed now. I stopped and looked up, away from the road. His head was half-out the window, his smile a kite in the wind.

Who?

The crazy ones.

The crazy ones, I repeated. Years later. In the onset of winter. At the sign of a storm.

***

American Wedding by Nicole

It happened in a court house. In a room with a conference table. In a little town I had not heard of the year before. Just the two of us, your brother, a judge on his lunch break, and a gray copy machine with it’s back turned to the room.

The judge pronounced my name wrong and again pronounced my new hyphenated name wrong. When it came time I dropped the ring. Watched it roll under the mahogany table before squatting down in-between the vows and my turn to say I do. I had been married once before. So long ago that it seemed like a dream. The memory folded in on itself like a worn blanket in the bottom of a closet.

I felt the carpet against my knees the hem of my black and white dress pushed up against my thighs as I stretched my fingers under the swivel chair. I must have made a terrible bride. I refused a new dress. I refused a new ring. I refused to let anyone where it seemed there was only us and more us.

I left my family for this tiny room. 1500 miles of distance and my first snow. The wind waiting outside to burn my cheeks. For my hand franticly searching. For the ring I would return to your finger before exiting the room and making the long drive home.

***

Unpredictable Variations on the Face by Bill

A quick line of them walked in at dusk, five shadows dug against the storm clouds and encroaching night wearing long gray coats and fine, brilliant red scarves. Their necks and cheeks gleamed with freshly shaved skin. The smell of vetiver came ahead of them. Their shoes clicked on the boards and their arms swung easily at their sides. The knives we all knew were tucked away in their vests against the side of their ribs on the far side of their heart. Among them I recognized my friend, so different and strange with the dark hair.

It was stupid to come in tonight with only a pen, when they had been reported so close to the border of the county. A pen is of such limited use, sharply tipped but easily bent or broken if the blow strikes a bone. A hard knife with a strong tang will break through half the bones in the body on a good thrust. Best bet with a pen is an ice-pick strike — the brain stem or the eye.

They approached the bar as I rose and came toward them from the back of the room. I kept my head lowered, staring shoulder level, letting my gaze rise only as I passed my friend, asked and answered our questions in quick succession of eye movements. They moved around me and waited. Finally I reached out a hard and pull the scarf from one of them. The softness of the fabric was exceptional as I placed the center of the scarf over my eyes and tied it off behind my head. They placed their hands on my shoulders and led me toward the door and out into the night with the pen still in my pocket.

Rainstorm

Rainstormer by Alan

In the world of ghosts, a silhouette is used to incite a riot. It’s Platonic. Mimesis. An affront. Certain parties are likely to get agitated, which can lead to unpleasant marauding of said premises or general haunting.

There was a cat once. In love with a dreamcatcher set against a window overlooking the forest. Outside it was rainy. Perfect weather for goblins and dance. Before the trees, a screen. Before the apparition, a suggestion in the corners. Lines flashing across the eye the way an old television set establishes itself and gets its footing. Blurry derivations and intimations. The whole scene, they said, happened in a heartbeat, which was about right for the spook and the dash for the door.

A ghost perturbed is enough to lead a cat out into the rain.

***

There Are Many Paths Home But Only One Way to Leave by Forrest

White cat waits. Waits its turn brought wobbly by shopping carts on rubber wheels she leaves out front, a second-hand name tag hung on her old sweater with soiled yarn flowers preferring, “How May I Assist You Today?” She passes three, four doorsteps, self-debates theology at her own occasionally speaking aloud. Instance fails rationalization: any white cat then having agreement welcoming her back. Again. On floorboards near the stairway stalking frowned upon but having ignored her well this long this one white cat rushes in turns body upwards its whiskers making febrile signals.

A lambskin boot for sleep. She mutters. Christ. Again.

Why, it had been saved, hadn’t it.

But a recent neighbor, no less than someone newer—that is who restores the white cat to its comfort until it sees her picking up mail. Letters with no original salutation. Wickedness from the city claiming front porch and the façade. Her pacing. Yes, she’ll tape over that mail slot. Rotary phones accumulated in the kitchen where she calls him an impatient father. That’s a ring that’s a ring that’s a ring that—

Is what she wants to ask him about him for several months more, and more of a remarkable likeness sent was his pencil sketch of her thirty-fourth birthday than this white cat accustomed to her plodding. She discovers it curled in a ruined corner, it watching her watching. Conversational, she means, is attendant sincerity would it search every room, every other bend sunlight doesn’t dance upon, while the white cat takes scrambling breaths for rest from such help.

She’ll lock it out tomorrow. Thinking she’s better as she shouts—yet will she come grumble her Christs. Will a white cat jump from her arms.

Unless singing on the other end of the line speaks it away.

***

Cat Hell by Johanna

She winked her green eye as she twisted her whiskers and purred. Her throne of bones encased in flames.

“What am I doing here?” I asked.

“Don't you remember?” the cat said with a devious smile and I was suddenly consumed by gray memories: a window covered in frost, a bird (what kind of bird?), a raven mocking me, a convulsion of sneezes, a wide-eyed kitten wrapped in a blanket, a grove of tall trees, day shifting into night, walking away, arms swinging, a wretched yowl.

My skin singed as fires spurted in gusts all around me and I stuttered, “But, but... I couldn't keep it... I'm allergic...” I sneezed. “I had no where...” I sneezed again. My eyes teared and itched. I felt my swollen face. My throat closed tight. “I'm sorry,” I wheezed, “I didn't know.”

***

Screen by Lyle

Screen—a protective device, as from heat. Something that conceals. To conceal from view or knowledge, therefore, to see is to know (even biblically perhaps—a complicated metaphorical system. A window screen does quite the opposite in one sense. It lets air through. Osmosis as knowledge. But it also keeps bugs out—you will not know mosquito bites or the blue buzz of a fly. And it keeps things in, to an extent. A cat, perhaps learned in the language of boundaries, surfaces, containers. But the storm rolling in will pass through unless it is projected onto the screen and it is in fact not something one can see through, an ontological foreshadowing of the act of seeing or lack of that ability. All of these airy meanings are but perforations leaving the raggedy language an invisible border around the inevitable, awe-inspiring and treacherous nothingness behind it. But then language—I tell you, STOP!, becomes a cuirass and the void is screened off, reflected back on itself if only for a few moments and it is just a cat slapping her claws into the holes as she ferries in the northern. The first of the year.

***

Untitled by Nicole

To say it was obscure would be an understatement. It was more like this. The flash. The glimpse of something between what you think it is and what it really is. Her eyes on mornings like this. Not really gold or blue or amber or green. No, it’s just dark. The stare. The look that says “wait.” Just like that. “Wait.” And between us? A pause that will never be recovered.

South Street Seaport

(courtesy & © Haik Kocharian)

Unpopular by Lyle

Once again I have failed. Not, I believe, in the way your would think primarily.

I waited the storm out up on the bluff. In fact, I watched it roll in, my legs dangling down the. I could dip the tip of my sneakered foot into the odd calm of the milky substance, which had risen and then stopped. Already the bones began to surface, grim bubbles. The bluff, by then, underwater but for the slightly sloped steeple of grass under my exposed buttocks. The sun, on a string, hissed and stopped as it dipped slowly into the water then rose up out again to steam the air with the broth-y brine of bones.

So you see how I have failed and there is no one to see the drop of water fall from the rubber toe of my shoe — I have failed to populate the world — or hear it splash.

***

Mangled by Alan

Franklin’s leaving was quite the scene. The entire department was there when it happened, of course, busy at work on the new designs and intermingling gossip transcribed by the surreptitious glance and notion towards. We believed in bandanas for the week. Someone hashtagged that stripes were in. There was another storm coming, Felix squeaked from the mail room.

If the last four weeks were any indication of his dissatisfaction, I never knew. If his gentle retractions should have given him away, I didn’t look up from the page. The shape of his mouth, his jeans, the way he handled my jaunts into indifference. My stoic repose. My statuesque ingratitude. These are images I’m left with in his wake.

We come into this world shaken by love and we will leave it the same way someday.

***

Untitled by Bill

I swear it was a man in leather kit - full pants, and sleeveless coat with no shirt. But cheap, poorly made, and coated in plastics to preserve it like the couch in the living room of his father's apartment years back. He walked in on dad and dad's girlfriend naked and sweating crumpled together on that couch once. Now its the end of summer and grasping at the fall his hunter's garb lined foolishly with felt he sweats, a strip mall Safarian stalking a decent gelato in an urban jungle where fifty thousand tourists a day traipse un-eaten through well tended paths. His never sharpened machete only used on the hedges around his mother's house.

This is the middle, where it has to grind out. He simply looks as foolish as we all feel. The middle where nothing happens, where there has to be only the pounding pounding pounding of movement. The same movement, over and over again, again and again and again, like his father's hips moving up and down between that woman's legs with the skirt around her ankle.

Mom had asked him if he's seen the skirt, the black and white striped one, a couple days earlier. This was a few years before she shacked up with Byron just to cut through some of the loneliness of an abandoned cuckqueen, and then it was there dangling over the floor. There it was on the mannikin before he threw it or close enough, the same colors, dad's key that he still had turning in the lock until the act itself is meaningless and the heart, the love, is just pouring out of all of them.

The faces that you meet become featureless patients awaiting triage, their faces wrapped in wet linen clinging to their features and destroying any individuality, the human removed from the being except for the relentless communal eventuality. Sawdust soaking up the blood where he fell out of the window and cut himself.

***

Business by Forrest

When the monsoon rains come, the market street proprietors must bring in their mannequins quickly, or risk losing them forever in the flood. I have lost a few this way myself and, other than they are not cheap to come by, I have learned to rue the disappearance of each one more than those in this coastal province who mind their own business: a grandmother here, a six-year old there, what does it matter. They tell us during the funeral that it does. By that time, I've already spent most of the week, once the clouds have passed, searching for my lost mannequin and finding instead distant relations who I had thought been swept away during the previous flood, or another hapless bystander who went out photographing the downpour. It is sad and inevitable, yet very few things can be dressed up as mannequins suitable for a drowned town. I've tried broomsticks potted in pails of hard cement. Once even a distant relation, until someone reported me. It is sad and inevitable. There are some perfectly good mannequins around, waiting to help out. If only it didn't rain so much; then everyone in this forsaken tourist trap would mind their own business.

***

Untitled by Nicole

Today they are dragging the lake. You know, out behind that old house with the orange shutters that are falling off at the sides? The ones with the sun and moon painted on them? The police are out there now. I can see them from my window.

I am watching but I won’t look for too long. I don’t want to see when they pull it out. It’s more than old condoms and beer cans and lawn mowers thrown over the sides.

Today they are dragging the lake. Someone that looks like James’ brother is wearing diving gear. They have maps spread out on the hood of one of the cars. I can’t see the map, but I see where they are pointing.

I am watching from my window. Don’t worry. I don’t move the curtains and am only looking through the place where the fabric folds apart. Don’t worry. I won’t look for too long.

Today they are dragging the lake. There is a yellow crane and they are dropping something into the water that makes ripples. Like the bathroom wallpaper - big circles that move in and out when you stare and don’t close your eyes.

I’m watching and they pull it up. The water falls out of the sides and drains back into the lake. Your box looks different. The paint has peeled up. But I can still see the flowers I painted. The dark circle in the middle and each loop of petal as big as your hands.

Today they are dragging the lake. I can’t keep you anymore. I’m sorry, you know. I am. I’m watching but I’ll stop looking soon.

Lunch

Mouse by Forrest

In the unlit basement I once entered only once, I had heard and seen nothing and was expected to hear and see nothing, the whole venture planned carefully, the way they were working starting at the end, the way people are forever fixated on outcomes in general or my own, specifically, not where we would like to begin, I hear, perhaps behind me, likely off to the side I search in the dark, but we have all the time, moving backwards, just out of what my sight makes out, when someone turns on the light fixture dangling languidly so that the only surprise is to hear or see anything that instant, and not to expect to hear or see it moving, a few gigglings starting in my presence, these letting me think I wouldn't have lasted this far even if I reminded them we were working towards the beginning where all the characters are introduced, where we know the action and setting take place, where we learn about what happens when disturbing a snake's hunger: timidity.

***

Lunchish by Lyle

It was not supposed to go this way. But it never was. Or is. Either. Both. But then that's neither here nor there. This is the infinity. This was the infinity. Not that not wanting to do it this way means anything one way or another. Just that the desire itself existed outside of this infinity, which was obviously trouble. But there was nothing to do about that. Because trouble, too, was outside of that infinity, like a speck of dirt on a lens or an errant pen mark on a math test. Did that mean something? Or was it a self-inclusive bracket? Meaning it meant everything and then nothing also. And included itself in its own digestive tract. The answer is always so close like the swelling of a brain. And then. Gone.

***

The Serpent Is Not Eating Its Tail by Alan

All that is wrong with history is alive and well in Las Vegas was what a wise man said to me once a long time ago. There is a lot of talk about a kind of meta-implosion in modern society…like we’ve gone so far in, we’re out, man. Way out. But the truth is it’s still like the Romans and before the Romans. “A place of darkness,” Conrad called it. The rules that govern our behavior are worse than the pilgrims and their little squirts into the continent and its pulsing heart. The serpent that eats its tail is not aware that the meal it is having is its, most likely, final one. There is a certain naiveté that is passable, affectionate, sweet almost. We forgive the oversight to a certain extent, enough to peer into the later realization as revelatory manifesto or starry doctrine of almost zen. But this serpent is not eating its tail. This serpent goes for the head, which is to say the core of our sanity. This serpent has purpose, a cause. Direction! Hisses “horror, horror” while it swallows us whole face first.

***

Snake Dreams by Johanna

In my dream, I told myself, “Remember this,” the rattlesnake that took a bite from my left shoulder, how I barely noticed, how it didn't hurt a bit. And I remembered even as the sound of yelling children awoke me, even though I had no time to write it down.

Later, I looked up meanings in my Dream Dictionary:

1. A warning about a situation that is poisonous in your life. 
2. Your inability to make choices. 
3. Sign of being on the verge of personal transformation. 

Nothing seemed to apply to me.

All day I saw snakes - sticks in the garden, cords lining the wall, vines twisting through holes in the fence.

When the children came inside from their play, hissing in whispers, they encircled my feet until I buckled to the floor. The oldest peered down at me with yellow eyes. “Mom?” he said.

I locked myself in the bathroom, though I knew it was useless; they always found me. I turned on the hot water, filling the room with steam, and waited.

Gathering

Gathering for the End of the World by Johanna

At first, it was difficult to believe that the apocalypse would come anywhere near their little town, situated in the middle of nowhere, cradled by mountains and bordered by desert. But it was true. The news had been on the radio for days. They heard it in their cars between yard sales or while driving their kids to school. They heard it inside banks and grocery stores. They read articles about it in the local paper. The apocalypse was coming to town.

Local businesses, accustomed to the tourism industry, began selling tickets to the apocalypse. Thousands of tickets sold in the first hour. People from all over the world were expected. The first concern of local police was the traffic it would cause. In order to navigate all the people who would certainly arrive by the busload, they decided to close down the streets, detour tourists to parking lots and shuttle them in.

The townies knew better, of course, then to buy tickets. They would be able to see the whole thing from anywhere in town. Instead, they gathered in small groups preparing themselves for the end with various libations. The sun was setting, turning the sky pink and gray and orange. The apocalypse was scheduled for just after dark. While tourists lined the sidewalks to get into the show, the locals took to the abandoned streets. Children in tow, jumping in rainbow puddles, they shuffled along the yellow lines, laughing and shouting like there was no tomorrow.

***

For Company by Forrest Roth

When I drive you to the gathering, it is not for company, nor for comfort. I can see your friends anytime I want. I can see you with your friends anytime I want. But I want them to see you with me. I want them to see me driving you in a car with one working headlight in the sun. I want them to gather around the one which doesn’t work and show them that it is, in fact, missing. And your friends will ask you about driving with one headlight in the sun, if only because they did not see the face of who was next to me.

***

Happenstance by Lyle

The second coming was largely uneventful. In fact, it went without notice. We were all standing around outside a vegan place when, apparently, a flash of light... happened? I’m still not sure about it all. In fact I don’t remember it at all. Someone sent me the photo afterwards. I do remember riding home and feeling a little odd. But who doesn’t?

The feeling was like something I had felt as a kid standing on a street corner. Like god (I must have believed in him then — bearded and wrathful) was pulling my spine, from the base, up. As if he wasn’t sure that I should be on earth. Not that he thought I would be better off up there or that I didn’t belong down here just that maybe he changed his mind (14 years after the fact). He is rather fickle, after all (14 years is nothing to god). So I would stand on the corner waiting to cross this street or another and feel like I was being tugged up by the spine; my mind had wandered all the way down the vertebrae a little at a time and was then being coaxed back but not straight back. Parallel to myself leading back up to my head (where I genuinely believed my “mind” existed) maybe six inches behind me. And it felt good. A kind of spiritual experience that I didn’t want to admit to because it was mine and only mine. I didn’t want to share it with anyone else. I wasn’t a christian. And it certainly didn’t feel christian. It felt like a rubber band pulled me up (but of course the rubber band reached all the way to heaven -- these terms are not my own; I have to use them so that you can quickly understand; I have so little time) and so had so much slack that it couldn’t possibly really lift me up. There was little doubt that it could NOT. Heaven. Haha. It’s just a feeling you don’t quite understand.

***

They're Talking about It by Alan

Beneath such a sky, a few of them would congregate and share stories. Lake Taghunock in the coldest months, the semester from hell, the place where cigarettes were cheap. Two of them had a thing for each other but were too indecisive to tell the others for fear of sudden philosophic collision. The others had things for others that they would occasionally talk about as well, but only when the sun went down.

They were in love with words and talking and also, to a lesser extent, silence. Theirs was the ellipse and the understated. They kept their hands in their pockets to feel the shape of some thing, but mostly what they really left the time with was a shape of thinking.

A new friend and potential life partner would make a remark years down the line from those days and immediately one of the few would be taken back. Such knowing from a stranger. Such shared experience. This must be right. This must be when things turn.

The words would be the impetus but the silence, like in certain photographs or memories, the result.

Egg Shell

The Egg Shell by Alan

Here it is.  The complete autobiography of Elaine and Rexroth, who after years of cohabitation and fights and hesitations and love decided it was worth the wait, in short.  The baby might have been on its way around the end of spring if the timing were right and everything had gone well.  It had, for the most part.  Though long tucked away goodnight, the flow between them would wake every so often in the darkness of their home and swell for a moment of little premeditation, which was, they would say later, the seed of the tree that darkened their yard.  It woke one night, spun its magic, and left.  It took.  Whatever was not there was, now, more than there.  Whatever was wrong between them would be, now, perhaps, right.  The idea was forward thinking.  The possibility just hanged there, just beyond reach.  A few weeks later, Elaine told the story about what had happened at work, where she spent most of her time lately, Rex would tell their friends.  There was a fight.  It was loud, but like most fights the thunder is not as loud as the lightning in the mind.  Elaine stepped in, and one of the girls pushed her back and she fell over another and hit the ground hard.  Something in her broke at that moment.  And something in him broke when she told him about it.  The blood.  There was only a little.  It could've been.  It might have been.  But they would never know, would they.  And that's the part of the story that is the most special.  The not knowing.

***

Egg, Egg, or Eggshell by Forrest

All around us somewhere are people successful in breakfast. They know which eggs to use, what colors are concerning—which is also knowing who can see the desert, who can see it encroaching. You, otherwise, let an eggshell fall. The floor, the hint of turquoise, red rock embedded. From a small bird, smaller egg: from the desert. Large bird, larger yolk, but not a desert largeness. Like the patio where you drop the shells. You refuse cooking different eggs, larger yolks. Larger potentials. How long, I ask, does an egg from that bird incubate until the embryo first develops a nervous system? In the same time any desert grows larger; but this patio, it is smaller, even as it stays the same size. Trying this on you I like, yet the only tease of things as they grow large or small for our breakfast: an egg in turquoise, an egg in red rock, an eggshell a shade of white not mistaken for another bird.

***

Shadow, Egg Shell, Shadow by Lyle

There is always a shadow upon my memory of that egg shell (I split the word to convey the inseparable uniqueness of egg and shell). Where it was eludes me as does so much else, but the three quarters of a shell. Had something come out of it? Some kind of reptilian bird perhaps that then lived its life out as primordial ooze? The shadow that is cast across this memory (all memories) is almost like heat igniting and obfuscating. I wonder, at some point, if it was I, perhaps, birthed cloacally, then by my own design pecking out the top into the blinding light. Though one preceded the other, does the order really matter? It does not. None of it matters now, cloaked in shadow as it is. As dark as an egg in the generative canal of a pigeon squatting in the recesses of window sill. More than shadow, shadow-memory.

***

Eggs by Johanna

He had been in the dark for so long that when consciousness began, he barely noticed. It began (and would eventually end) as all thoughts do, with desire. The desire - to stretch, to move, to eat, to cry- prompted a crack in the delicate shell that bound him. He saw the first beams of light drift through the narrow shaft and he knew awe. He put his back into the business of birthing until his world broke open and burst bright. His mother eyed him curiously and he knew other. She brought him food and he knew hunger. She threw his egg remains from the nest and he knew time.

She found the shell shards on the soft grass beneath the tree and cradled their delicate blue film in her palm afraid of crushing them. At home, she placed them in a dish with rocks and feathers she had collected.

In the morning, before she rose from her soft cotton sheets, she listened to the birds chirp outside her window and prayed that today she would not break. Without dressing, she wandered outside, leaving behind a note that read: Gone shopping.

***

Shell Count by Bill

Little lamb, they made the egg backwards, and put them out into space. Even the air wants to see us go. It pulls back from us, leaving the wind still while we wait in the heat. Tell me if gets to be too much, little lamb, tell me if you start feeling tired, faint, shaky. Tell me if you if you can see the sun, little lamb, or feel the dust blowing through your fingers. Better take the gun little lamb, because I can feel the trouble coming in from out of state.

High Windows

Green Light Lurch by Bill

Far above, green light, telling us we can go, giving us permission to leave. And we want to leave, as the green light writes out time on the stones surrounding us. We've been here almost from the beginning, ticking away the hours, notching lines in the wooden frames of the library's tables, in the banisters of the stairwells, in the moldings around the floorboards.

It would be quite possible to trace the movements of our absurd society through the places we've chosen to take the knife too. Such a study would tell you nothing of our purpose or reasons for being here, but might chance to offer an accounting of our movements, our patterns, and our madnesses.

We'd stayed far too close to the end, given up so much in pursuit of a dream padding through ever-echoing halls, the dream to continue dreaming, but slowly the visions fled and we were left with a past we didn't want and a future we'd have no hand in. We mingled as we met surreptitiously sprinting in the pathways, crept off into alcoves to fuck or try to kill one another, sometimes both at the same time. The pills we took, the men and women both to keep us infertile while we waited, channeled both impulses irregularly. We'd spend weeks in a contemplative lethargy, barely moving, reading or studying the maps of known worlds before breaking off into a manic lurch demanding release and the quiet would be broken by the far-off sounds of animals. We didn't have time to perfect the formula before we closed the doors and buried them behind stone.

Now the green light is telling us we can go but we cannot break the pattern and continue cutting notches in the wood with the knives we carry with us all the time.

***

The Gambler by Alan

Every morning before the daily routine, he would gather his senses out from the dream and consider changing the plan. The plan, which had percolated for a few years before actually coming to fruition, involved playing the Lotto (and praying to God) as much as humanly possible everyday for the rest of his life. It was all about winning the numbers, whatever numbers that happened to reveal themselves to him that particular day, as often as possible. And in as many states as possible. The winning numbers were everywhere, so he drove everywhere. And for a while, he kept it up. A win every few weeks, is all he would ask for under his breath, gripping the steering wheel tightly. And when they happened, he would spring to life at whatever rest stop happened to pop up on the map. And he did this daily for years. And states. And coasts. The world became a system of hopes and longings and desperations. And when the light burst in through his shade every morning, he would gather his senses out from the dream and consider changing the plan, making a run for it, but the exit was always too dark.

***

Three Ways to Leave a Church by Forrest

1. Passive boredom; the most common, the most denied. Anyone but me. Anyone but you around me. An extension of the deepest piety of the saints, to be sure; but seeing you three rows ahead of me, surrounded by the eager others, I could always reconsider.

2. The higher calling. The noble way. The golden path. So on. This isn’t better for me but much better for you. If it sounds too easy, too good to be true, you’re likely agreeing with it. Moving on. So. New places, new faces, yes yes. After hours, and before. The sensation of holding different hands. Any sensation.

3. Faith—and the absence thereof. Knowing you won’t be there. Believing in it.

***

Middling Signs by Lyle

Through the high windows the crepuscular yellow of impending-rain-shrouded city and I think, in my middling-life, more about the red exit than the couple sitting under it locked in a rigor-embrace.

Later in an away-bed, after I’ve left my friends for the night (for good? isn’t it always for good?), I sweat-lie in the neon. I know it’s keeping me up, the light, but I can’t bring myself to curtain-close. It unnerves the godless nightmares that surely will come with sleep. Later I wake up and notice my shirt is on backwards, collar-tight. And the air is filled with night-breathing; my own, but not my own. A tingle of other in the room. The night-dulled windows nearly invisible; but for the grease-smear of fingers it would disappear. Gauze-humidity presses down in on the city. I think about my excise-friends. I wonder if they’re wondering about me. And the deep-breathing sounds not-my-own. But I am alone. Still the light from the neon, TEL, outside the window buzz-steady but I have nothing to say and no one who would listen anyway. The endless-transience so transient.

Perception

Adeciduate/Deciduous by Lyle

This floating world. Adeciduate. Compartmentalized and open. And open. And open. When we discovered this place, the endless wall, the windowed wall, this floating world, we knew it was something deciduous. But we decided to leave it alone, this floating world. Our leafless, leaking world lighting a way dioecious to the only possibility, dormant and behind it all.

***

Perceptions by Alan

Windows were once a part of the inherent functionality of the eye in the way that the shell is part of the functionality of a snail.

On the other hand, there was a one-way ticket plan that he had overlooked the first time he searched the internet.

A little depiction of my least likely scenario seemed to emerge from the bottom floor.

Although the weather would sway like a tigress in heat, the trees would never.

Paging Allison Spice. Paging Sentimental Pete. Paging Tucson Tully, you son of a bitch. Get your ass out here and check out this view.

You mean, which view?

Several variations later, the transformation stopped at the precise spot on the map where Haig might snap a photo if, indeed, a photo needed to be snapped, and, in snapping, the inability to leverage his friends, the polytheists, emerged like the aforementioned scenario as if it were from another kind of less tightly wound fiction.

***

Midnight Confession by Johanna

It started in college as something the guys and I did late at night when we were drunk walking home from a party. I liked to get up close to windows that were covered and spy through the small slits in the curtains. My buddies stood behind me trying not to make any noise, laughing until beer ran out of their noses. I told them descriptive stories about the lesbian orgies inside. In reality, there usually wasn't much to see. People were generally boring when alone- reading books, searching the internet, sleeping. But for some reason, I enjoyed watching them.

After college, I couldn't get it out of my system. I took long walks alone in the middle of the night around my city looking for curtained windows with lights on. I liked to watch women paint their nails, brush their hair, or talk on the phone. Nothing freaky. If they were naked or having sex, I became too anxious and slipped away. I went to work every morning completely exhausted, but at night, I was wide awake and prowling for illuminated windows.

That's why when I saw him, or at least I'm pretty sure I saw him, his brown right eye peering under my shade, I had to call you. You need to find him and to stop him. I don't have much of a description to go on, but if you patrol the neighborhood, you'll probably spot him on someone's front lawn. He needs to stop. I know how this can haunt a man- restless and searching for something unknown.

***

Where Hole by Forrest

Home, where in a hole. Home in the building hole. Where a window hole in the home. Crawling through. Through it came crawling a hole where a window was, at home, in the building. The building with no door. A building door where a home was a window. Through it. Through the curtain. Through the slit in the curtain. Through the slit the thin voices lift it and a crawl past with no crawling. The light from the floor rooming the hole. Where window was through. Where home was. Lighting the slit in the room came no window. Came to it. Where home. Where hole. Where room was voice lifting this him.

Claw

Little Meat by Forrest

Rayburn tosses me the claws because there’s never enough meat in them. He is sad and lonely in southern Louisiana, promised crawfish big as Maine lobsters, and grumbles over and over. In the park the weather is fine; in the calicifed coffee pot filled with briny water a survivor keeps its claws up. Rayburn looks into both and keeps saying, I shouldn’t’ve came here—loud enough for the Thibodeaux clan to perk their ears at him and share a laugh over transportable pot they’re putting away in their flatbed truck. I want to show him. I have the idea to rip a claw open and show how just a little meat can work, and approaching some sweetness. The one in the coffee pot makes me feel guilty instead: I don’t know where it’s going, until Rayburn picks up the coffee pot, carries it over to a sewer grate, and dumps it in. Even the Thibodeauxs are long gone at this point. There are children on the swings with no one to push them, who Rayburn watches, standing over the sewer grate, while I walk over to him holding the smallest claw I can.

***

The Breakup by Alan

The evidence was lost in the whirl of the evening’s maelstrom like a syllogism torn from syntax. There was a bit of unrest when the issue of proximity was drawn up under the folds, but that was before the lunatics took over the asylum. Every single note was struck so the symposium published its results, and when it did trumpets flared like wildflowers on the side of a Virginia Interstate. Therefore, the trumpets were the symposium. The color red was chosen to symbolize truth laid flat on its back. All across the county, swarms of clerks descended upon the realization that there would be only a measure of time before some sort of residuals were enacted. Strangers would gallop. Umbrellas would launch. There might even be a lagoon-faced toddler amidst the wreckage holding signs in cipher balking at the moon. Only if some shred or token might be found under refrigerator or chilled next to the weights that make muscle into mass. Then the holding on wouldn’t last so long.

***

The Missing Parts by Johanna

She had one reoccurring dream throughout her life, so frequent that it haunted her daylight hours when she neared cliffs and rooftops. Though each dream varied, she was always flying, not like a bird, but like a fish, swimming though air currents, dive and spin. She told her parents about it when she was five. They told her she was strange. She kept it to herself after that. So she was surprised when, on her sweet sixteen, an estranged uncle that she only heard about when stories of wacky relatives were passed around with cocktails, that she was born with wings. Dubious of him at first, the more he drank, the more sober he became until he told her the truth, “You were born with wicked wings, child, like webs of dark green skin connecting your elbows to your knees.” She examined her left elbow, the light scar her parents told her came from falling out of her crib. “Where are they now?” she asked. “Well, they've been removed, of course. Your parents did you that one service. Probably stored away in formaldehyde in some biologists office somewhere.” She kissed her uncle on the mouth and his smile leered.

The dreams stopped soon after, but new ones took their place, ones involving an objective clarity that made her feel uneasy. In these new dreams, she was searching, always searching, knocking on heavy doors, studying glass jars, hoping to recover her reptilian wings.

***

Crawl by Lyle

They cancelled the birthday party, of course. But Clay couldn't let it go. It was a big day for him, all told, & the party was where he had planned to make the announcement. Had planned for it, in fact, for months. So instead he sat in the corner under a dim floor lamp, glowering & drinking rum & scheming as the party guests -- impromptu mourners — consoled & cooed & also drank rum, until, through the open window, a parrot entered & perched with a great grip of claws on his shoulder. Clay alighted from his chair, apologized quietly & removed himself from the scene.

Some Kind of Absurd

Some Kind of Absurd by Bill

Do you keep maps of places you’ve been? If you’ve traveled and returning take the maps, a few stubs of admission or transit and stick them in a box or a stack of papers or an accordian file (for they are the most gracious of filing boxes) and hang on to those maps with scribbles of a bar with a great basement and how trams cut odd lines through the traffic along the water and places you’d sought to meet interesting and attractive strangers? I see it as being just as well as hanging antlers on the wall, to remind you of mornings with your father or brother or friends and the way you capitalize on the favoritism mankind has enjoyed.

Neon tells us the same things, marks joys and sorrows for us in the night but like the maps you’ll lose them over time for never going back, and the strange colors of electrified gas fade from your mind over the doorway to a secret club because light is everywhere and we are in love with it so because we’re afraid of the dark.

We want to sit in the light and be comforted, resting on giant beanbags letting some embryonic muscle memory cradle our heads, bringing us peace such that even growing horns we wouldn’t mind, and often find staring at ourselves in mirrors the rich shine on our beautiful thick racks rising high above us reading a litany in the marks scoring our devilish head ornaments. Even strange and wondrous as our lives might be topped by a broad row of bone – thinking back to battles we’d fought, or the time, once we’d put the kids to bed in the next room tired as they were from the museum after we’d made love when I chipped the left one coming out of the shower in the hotel – I think we’d find some system for nostalgia, because we love the light and need it to see even in our past.

***

Some Absurd Kind by Alan

If the narrator were a child, he’d sing in these halls serenely like a flute and accent the nooks and placards. If the setting were a May or some other Northeast lover not too far from a tennis court or a museum. If the plot ached, but nothing came out. If the characterization were an unmistakable pair of eyes wrong each time and knowing it. If the nook were an elevator and the leaving the ride. If the introduction were conditions for speculations. If the building were a genre. If the page were not a page. If the child continued singing, but no one ever heard him, would the child be a story? Would the fiction cut off the end?

***

The End by Johanna

The end? No, it can't be the end! You said that if I behave the whole time we're at this museum, you'd take me out for ice cream after, but you didn't even give me a chance. That girl with the party dress in front of the purple moose picture wanted me to pull her pigtails. I swear. It's not my fault. And I thought it was okay to climb on that funny couch. I didn't know it was a sculpture. I only blew bubbles in my milk one time because I forgot and the marbles in the gift shop fell by themselves. I didn't even touch them. I swear. Come on, mom, you've gotta give me more time. I promise I'll behave.

What? It's not the end of the museum? You were just reading the sign? I can still earn ice cream? Awesome 'cause I really wanted to swing from those neon glasses over there.

***

Recollection of a photograph engraved — ekphrasis — with commentary [annotations] by Lyle

Tree. Leaves. Glass. Beanbag chair — silver and large [not specific enough]. Squares of polished stone in an alcove that spills out [too subjective — suggests motion/action] into the gallery [this is incorrect — hardwood]. A supplicant [how do you know? is this a religious observation?] [No. It was a means to describing his desire to leave.] boy jumps up and down. A sunglassed pop portrait and neon. Smooth white walls. Generations of kneelers have died and all buried here according to gallery lore [O.K. hearsay]. The baleful cries still string themselves through the tree limbs in the crepuscular afternoon shadows [come on] [Bah]. Bas relief. Tree. Tree. Engraved silence of leaves [i give up] [Good].

***

Echo by Forrest

The last time I saw my son, I think—Contemporary Arts. Oversized beanbag that wasn’t what he thought it was. He ran ahead of me while I lingered behind a statue, and he disappeared behind a wall. I could hear his laughing. Then I couldn’t.

I was alone in the wing and asked a guard in an adjacent one if he had seen my son. “Please don’t touch the paintings, ma’am,” he replied, looking straight ahead. I asked a young couple on an audio tour, who peevishly lowered their audio-wands, shrugged, and continued looking at the smiling woman with the neon-frame sunglasses. Nodding their heads to what the audio-wands told them. I went back downstairs to consult a receptionist. Twenty-five dollars. Twenty for students and seniors.

Emptyhanded, I returned home for dinner. My husband seemed curious while we ate. “Well,” he said before clearing the table, “he has some top-notch exhibits to take in now. Best schooling there is.”

When I have a moment, especially if it’s raining, I visit the museum as often as I can. The paintings in the Contemporary wing are lovely in their own way, to be sure, but I prefer the Hellenic wing. Or East Asian. Or perhaps British. Someone usually reminds me while I sit on one of the benches. A voice can travel far in these hallways.

Miracle Healing Powers

Heal by Forrest Roth

The Miracle Healing Power I buy is not the Miracle Healing Power of generic Canadian pharmaceuticals. I get it and it pulls me back and in. I put my hand on the top of a child who passes me by on the sidewalk and she smiles and I know how it works. I tell the police who knock at my door that Canadians know nothing about the Miracle Healing Power—this is America! This is American-made Miracle Healing Power! But they say they never heard of it. The lawyer who visits me don’t know nothing of Miss Felicia who sells it fresher than anyone, her father who used to give out free samples back in the day, when the shop only used to dry-clean rich white ladies’ poodles. As he’s leaving me I explain God blew the Breath of Life into the shop and the poodles disappeared. At the big meeting I slip him the address while he’s talking up the judge but he just ignores it. I don’t get why people don’t want the Miracle Healing Power. I don’t get why Miss Felicia marries a Canadian and closes the shop. I don’t get why the Miracle Healing Power can’t be shared instead of sold. But I get the Miracle Healing Power. I get it and it pulls me back and in. I get it and open shop. I know how it works.

***

What Matter Though Numb by Bill

That's where time takes in, takes on, takes over. I could wait and see the boat across the river, that they make the other side without any more problems but my boots are sinking down into the mud and I've still got to go burn the sheets. The sign's gonna catch fire. It'll be a sign signing 'there but by'. Their buys, what they bought, carried, craved. Slinging ass and that was half the problem - sorting out which hand had actually held the whip. The water poured over the rim of the tub onto the floor through the door down the hall out into the yard and as it dried turned to blood. They gave good but not enough, tithed too little. No more. No less. Their hands clasped in front of their hearts. Almost like they were praying. Almost like they meant it. Maybe I'll just burn the whole place down.

***

Superhero Transformative Capability by Alan

The boy blonde would not have believed it if it wasn’t true absolutely in front of his eyes green. The healing power of miracle spelled out effervescently in front of me too. And who is to say who stands next to whom and for how long? The syntax of our rows always muddy the bucket and waste the intake. It’s like thinking in another country might make you believe in, well, miracles.

But the boy blonde shrugged exponentially for days at a time. It’s not the adjective you think it is, he said to several customers curious. It’s about the superhero inside of you, inside of me, inside this store. There’s a superhero inside this store, I said? No, the power is in this store. Down the block the superhero is, healing and dealing, at least a few afternoons away.

I believed him, this circumstance producing kid, and started to consider the dove a swerving kind of adjective too.

***

Circular Logic by Lyle

Miracle healing power, they told me. Yeah, but whose miracle? I asked. It ain’t mine. Touching a tortilla isn’t going to fix a damn thing for me. We were all huddled around in a circle and I didn’t like it one bit. Circles had a way of coming back on themselves. I thought of that grilled cheese sandwich in Las Vegas. Maybe I had gotten it all wrong. But miracle healing power, they said. I don’t care, I shouted, but by then they weren’t listening to me anymore. They were saying names and dates and I could see that ole snake tail of my past coming right back around and I opened my mouth to take it all in even as I spewed and sputtered and collapsed and rose from the dead.

Broken

Broken by Alan

To call me supernatural would be a bit of a stretch, I think. But I do dwell in the ether of your dreams. And by dreams I mean the off hours of the conscious mind. Take, for instance, the moment of the drive in which you forget your temporal attachments. Forget the spouse, the responsibilities, the promise of children someday. Forget what’s broken in your parents…and their parents’ parents. There’s a split that happens that flips like a trigger…and then you’re back again. But in that instance, I’m there.

Consider again, another moment. You’re in the bathroom of the rest stop. There’s a knock outside. You’ve forgotten where you are and why you are going there. The light the color of phobias throbs. Something falls and shatters. The knock continues. It’s not me. I’m in there. With you. For a short time. All your life you’ve attempted to name me, but it’s really not possible because I only exist for the duration of a half-finished sentence, which is, for many, enough.

***

Broken Bells by Johanna

Jake insisted on inviting his ex-girlfriend, Tracey, to their wedding. They were friends after all, ever since reuniting on Facebook two years ago. They hadn't seen each other in person for nearly 6 years. Maggie argued at first; it was a small wedding in her parents' house. But he claimed it was important for him to include her, his first love and dear friend, as a symbolic gesture.

Maggie invited Tracey because she wanted to show Jake (or convince herself) that she trusted him, that she was not the jealous type. Tracey arrived two days early and Jake said it would be rude to not include her in the rehearsal dinner. Maggie did not want to start another fight about Tracey. When introduced, Tracey smiled sweetly at Maggie though there was something strange in her eyes. She was too eager and her red dress was too tight, too revealing for Maggie's taste. Jake seemed to ignore Tracey, which pleased Maggie even as he became noticeably more drunk and inappropriate as the night progressed.

It was nearly midnight and they were cleaning up when they heard a loud crash from the bathroom. The remaining guests – Maggie's mom and sister, Jake's aunt and uncle and teenage cousin – looked at each other quizzically. Jake appeared suddenly and said he was going off to bed. He kissed Maggie on the cheek. A few minutes later, a voice called out in distress, “Oh shit.” Everyone hurried over to the bathroom. Jake's uncle turned at the locked knob.

“Is everything okay?” Jake's uncle asked through the door.

“It's fine,” a woman called back, “I just dropped my bag.”

“Bag of rocks?” Jake's cousin mumbled under her breath so only Maggie could hear.

Tracey squeezed out of the bathroom door with her back to them and shut it tightly behind her. Maggie noticed her lipstick was smeared and her previously perfect hair stuck up in the back.

“I better be going,” Tracey said without making eye contact, rushing out of the house.

The next morning, Maggie needed to use the downstairs bathroom to finish getting ready for her wedding and to get some space from her nervous mother. She found Jake kneeling, picking up the pieces of the white ceramic tank lid smashed across the tile floor. “What happened?” she asked, even as the answer came to her, even as her stomach began to sink lower into her abdomen.

Jake's eyes veered to the left, “I knocked it off, last night, when I was drunk.”

Maggie's heart fell into the churning pit where her stomach had been. Her wedding gown fell in a pile at her feet. She ran out crying wearing nothing but her slip. She passed Tracey on her way. She cried harder at the sight of her, dolled up all in white.

***

Before by Lyle

Several times, in the dark, I stumbled upon the corpse. Broken. Or unfinished. This was all before. There wasn't really a corpse. Just the existential heft of my imagination. Solipsism slipped down around my neck like a noose. And all the while my socks, elastic gone, sagged around my ankles. This was all before the breaking.

***

Scare by Forrest

I knew him before I knew him—and the heat of it dragging sloping upside against the door and pushing me inside knocking the top and hearing the porcelin crack which it does a dull cold ripping not at all like his voice and scared for us: he knew me before he never knew me.

Spidey Sense

Spidey-Dirge by Forrest

Spider-Man, leave me the hell alone. I don’t care that your Spidey-Sense is tingling. That any part of you is tingling. Because I bought all your action figures without the luxury of kung-fu grip. Because I lost my best friend in the third grade in an argument over not differentiating the Green Goblin from the Hobgoblin. Because I sang mercilessly that you were the “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” during the 1970’s while my parents were considering divorce in another room. Because I never knew who Peter Parker really was until I grew up. Not the inconspicuous weenie who cared more about Aunt May and Uncle Ben than his All-American girlfriend. Not the good guy posing as a good guy who secretly wanted to be a good guy. A better guy.

So what of your bettering? You’ve probably already died in a dozen different ways with special limited edition covers and holographic authenticators of Marvel Comic quality assurance at five bucks a pop—only to be reincarnated later for another five. You donned a black outfit for awhile because that had to be soooo bad-ass. And some douchey-acting prick without a haircut played you in the latest sequel. I won’t be surprised if your next nemesis is yourself battling the bottle and the side-effects from Xanax abuse. Anything can be dressed up in scary colors for our entertainment now. They robbed the bank. You let them get away with it.

You can mope under my old bunk bed all you want, unitard-fucker. No one’s going to give you a parking ticket. No one sleeps there anymore. No radioactive spider under the pillow, either. You’ll see what kind of a childhood you can save when you don’t arrive just in time: something that resembled yours.

***

Hero Sandwich by William

The costume smelled like a pantry, like potatoes in a sack on the floor and celery seasoning but the smell didn’t matter. We’d tried this grift once before, setting up a tent and billing the chance to meet superman but it was just a short guy in Supe’s PJs. You were wrong when you said everything’s going to be alright.

The difference now was people could come in and sit on the little bench-bed we had set there and they could just stare at our guy in the costume and he’d just stare back, but if you waited five minutes, if you sat and stared at him for five minutes he’d tell you to take a picture cause it lasted longer.

Did you ever think about it he got sick? We took the idea from that Marina Abramovic thing where she sat in the chair and called it The Hero is Present (our thing was the hero, her’s was the artist) but he didn’t do anything heroic which we thought was the best gag about it all because he was actually really hungover and hated sitting there and would hug himself and rock with the shakes in between us letting people into the tent with him.

***

After the Storm by Alan

the subway tunnels were flooded with brackish water that sent everything underground up to the surface. What was once beneath and accustomed to great moans of night had its first glimpse of light. And the mingling, the slow getting used to, the initial shock.

I noticed the two rats climbing the stairs of the entrance at Union Square, how they squinted in the sun for a moment and sought for some downtrodden corner of familiarity/universe. Next to the well, wrapped in damp comforters and worn clothes, a man pulling red spots of alarm off his skin did not even flinch as they slipped in between the folds. I stopped to let him know. Offer a warning about what the darkness can release into the world. I urged that he be mindful, but did not acknowledge me either.

***

Spiderman's Mid-life Crisis by Johanna

Let's be honest, spiders creep people out with all those legs, crawling over furniture, hiding inside shoes. Spiders are generally disliked and no one wants to live with them. Anytime they see one, they wash them down the bathtub drain or suck them up with a vacuum. I can't blame them. Spiders bite and when they do, they're either tiny itchy annoyances or swollen painful bruises. Even a spider in the wild is a nuisance, leaving their webs suspended between two trees so someone can walk through them, squealing and thrashing to free themselves of dead bugs. Worse, I am a giant human-sized spider with a fancy costume. Everyone knows that the larger and more ornate the spider, the scarier they are. Why couldn't I embody something sexier like fire? I could have been shooting flames from my wrists instead of sticky webbing or had blades coming out of my knuckles. But, no. I had to be a giant fucking spider of a man.

***

Not quite a Sound by Lyle

Yeah, my Spidey senses were tingling but they were always tingling, y'know? Buzz buzz buzz. Hard to sleep at night, really. I suppose it was the sleep deprivation, now that I think of it. I was dog tired, actually. My bones hurt. Just a little rest. Just close my eyes for a minute, maybe? But then that tingling -- vaguely sexual in nature -- not quite a noise, not quite a feeling, would wake me back up. No REM. So I started putting on a costume, you know, in a sort of delirium and hopping from roof to roof.

The days are the worst. All the people everywhere with their not-very-savory thoughts that light me up like a Christmas tree (not quite a light, either). I tell you it's a curse, for sure. I remember one day I found myself on a school bus first thing in the morning. Now these are little kids mind you, but I was abuzz even then. No such thing as innocence. That's why I do parties now. No less exhausting but most people are cheery, or at least not thinking about the things they normally think about. The kids wear me out, but that sensation (I can't think of a better word for it) at least crawls to a stop. I'll take the noise any day. The noise and the constant battering from all those children. I still can't sleep at night, but there are those several hours of respite. There will have been, anyway I hope, before they drag off my corpse. And sometimes, if I think about it just right, even a moment to myself.

Drive

For some reason the embed link to this video is not working (linking to a different video). So here's the direct link.

Video © Mike Celona

Partial Impressions of a City in the Rain by Lyle

The residents of this city are uncomfortable with their guardrails. They're on edge; not to be found out in the streets. There is a metaphysical slippage happening around them and this makes them feel sideways (or at least slanted [the stronger of them]). They watch out the windows behind the trees -- those black markers on lawns. "The suppression of language will always create a rift," the man on the radio says. The congregation claps. "The suppression of language is the elephant in the room that cannot be talked about but must be talked upon." "Or from," someone says from the audience to stunned silence. "Or from," the man on the radio repeats to thunderous laughter. Or around or toward or of or before. The metaphysical slippage enlarges and the residents of the city crystallize. Granulate. There is a general consensus of evil -- that language is a wide open field studded with tongues.

***

Courier Times by Forrest

Union Avenue

About where snow can start looking unlikely. Sometimes difficult knowing when rain freezes into it. Or when snow isn’t cold enough. I knew his neighborhood, even through ice on the windshield. Enough ice.

Church Street

Customers. If there’s anything that separates you and me, he said, it’s this: (tapping my arm hard, harder, driving slow with left hand, hitting, shoving, grabbing my neck, grabbing grabbing driving yet). Pussy.

Longnam Drive

I’m good. For all of it. He counts. I hear a number. Houses showing. He counts. There. Her. He hands over. Still driving. Stop asshole. He’ll push me out. Even through the windshield. I’m good. I hear rain.

***

Anticipation by Alan

The mind experiences a certain kind of tremolo when anticipating something. My writer friend brought up a scene recently. It’s the eve before a very serious storm in a large city. The authorities have instructed us to stay home. But when he goes out in the middle of the night, he sees in the dead of quiet a woman searching for some take out. “There is nothing open right now,” my friend says. She mumbles something obscene and rushes away. Afterwards, he gets into his car and drives all night. It begins to rain. He ends up outside the city limits. It’s true. There is no one in the streets. It’s an eerie scene. My friend told me the story was and still is very real. He told me from the road. He’s still driving. Waiting for something, that storm maybe. Always in front of it. Or behind. And in his head, those voices telling him about the precautions and other voices telling him to never be afraid.

***

Good Deed by Johanna

You barely noticed the man waving his arms on the side of the road until you passed him. It was dark and rain drops collapsed on your window faster than your wipers could heave to erase them. You strained to train your eyes on the single white line that bordered your path.

“Go back,” your wife insisted. You considered the hour, your child asleep in the backseat. You considered how fast a man in wet clothes could become hypothermic and how many good deeds you had accomplished that day. You nearly hit a boulder on the opposite shoulder while turning the truck around.

Your wife called to the man now inside his car, “What's wrong? Do you need help?”

“I'm stuck,” he called back.

You had four-wheel drive and a tow rope. You could do it in less than five minutes. You took another look at your daughter, the way her mouth fell open when she slept, just like her mother. Outside, the rain quickly dampened your t-shirt. You called to the man as you hooked the tow rope to his car and then to your own, “When you feel the pull, gas it.”

Your truck wavered over the wet pavement sliding tenuously toward the muddy shoulder until you felt the final jerk that set his car free.

He was grateful, too grateful perhaps. He slurred his thanks. You refused his money and the remains of a six pack sitting beside him in the passenger seat. Waving him ahead, you watched his tail lights swerve across the yellow lines as he headed over the mountain pass.

Back inside the warmth of your truck, the windows steamed over, the wipers still beating their rhythmic trance, you turned to your wife. She had been watching you, waiting to ask you, “What have we done?”