The Phantom Phone Booths

(Photo courtesy & © Thomas Olson)

The Martian by Vivian

On his last night on Earth, Thomas Olson snaps an image of the twin phone booths in the parking lot of a local rest stop. Tom insists on a Polaroid Instant, circa 1987, which he has owned now for over three decades. The Polaroid Instant has always produced low-quality photos, but Tom cannot imagine taking his final images of life on Earth with anything else.

Fiscal policy and logistical limitations have defined the stark parameters of Tom’s mission: One man. One way. The remainder of his natural life on Mars. Even so, only the President’s insistence that America beat China to Mars has saved Tom’s mission from cancellation.

Last September, a fortuitous Bird Flu outbreak in China had allowed the Americans to inch again. But then, China had always planned on sending six men, a dog, and a donkey. Round-trip.

Tom pinches the photo of the phone booths between his thumb and pointer finger and shakes it vigorously, a motion which, given Tom’s wiry frame, evokes the image of a well-worn yet sturdy fencepost in an earthquake. Once the photo has developed and set, Tom adds the image to his stack. These, he will tuck into a corner of his ship. They will sustain him, he imagines, on the loneliest of Martian nights.

***

Prestory by Lyle

Stories of suicides whose families dispose of the evidence before the police arrive because they feel ashamed. I can’t imagine the lack of empathy. I would feel only sadness. Such sadness. Sadness in the taut rope or metallic gun smoke still hanging in the room like a shroud.

And one night the darkness clamored around me: suddenly something outside the light jumped, buzzed. Or was it inside the light? Or the light itself? Difficult to say despite the dichotomous metaphors — inside/outside, light/dark. But which was which? the corona and penumbra mixed to create a wide grayness. It percolated light as well as darkness. This percolation jumped,

popped —

a fly hitting a zapper at dusk.

And then the phone rang.

***

Intercessed by Forrest

I use the left one for emergencies.

I use the right one to watch.

***

Zipatone by Bill

One’s a gate of ivory, the other horn. Both are ready to party. Say what you want into the first and you will hear nothing but lies, and truths like a crate of clementines whose tops are brilliant while the undersides are rotten, half hearted veracities and cunning trickery spread over the lines like little sparks of tragedy. Best just to dial up the radio station and request something to dance to, swing your hips in place and roll your pelvis enclosed in glass and metal. Half a musical truth is something you can hold in your hand easy enough and drop when you want it to break, equal parts brightly colored dia de los muerte shadowbox and unicorn figurine with a broken horn.

Which brings us around to the other. Easily a three on the Kinsey Scale, the Hierophant become the Lovers and the warp in and out of the world a fluid motion, free of friction so that once you step inside it becomes as if you had been cloaked in void softer than the coziest sweater, and there are flashes of lightning at the edges of your eyeballs you would never hear. Likely it is best to say nothing and let time speak for itself, and certainly say nothing false. Bring a band sticker to paste down on the little shelf, something you really like since everything you hear in the receiver will have some song in the background, informing what is said.

***

1992 By Beth

Back then she was always looking for a pay phone. It was the way her family played the game. It wasn’t okay to come in five minutes late. It wasn’t okay to change her mind and come back in the middle of the night, or to tell them she was staying at her boyfriend’s place. The arrangement was that she would call at 10:45. She would tell them which female friend with good parents she was staying with. They never called back to check. Once it was established that she wasn’t coming home, they stopped watching for the flash of headlights across the bedroom wall. They closed their mystery novels. They never knew she was calling from outside of a general store, the phone receiver cold against her hand and face.

After the phone call, her obligation, she was free to drive the back roads slowly, looking out for deer, foxes, raccoons, hot guys’ trucks. She was free to drive all the way to Bar Harbor, sit on the rocky beach and drink a wine cooler, listen to the waves roll in. Free to cruise the strip mall parking lot and the McDonald’s drive-thru, just to see who was out tonight. Free to slip under the quilted covers in the apartment where her boyfriend lived, smell the detergent on the clothes his mother didn’t wash anymore, forget that she had parents who loved her.

***

Before You Were Everywhere by Alan

We used to communicate in the off-hours. Shake off the dresses of the afternoon and evening and slip into a certain kind of midnight rhythm. Only the hours weren’t really hours but phases of our lives. You on one side of a tectonic plate and me on another. The balance was a kindling, was based purely on love. And to communicate was to love deeper, to write longer, to make attempts, to reconcile time.

There’s something about distance that brings us closer together. There’s something about convenience that tears us apart. I remember when I used to use pay phones. I remember the cold receiver on my shoulder, the arcane sustained moan, and what it meant to press the lip with my finger, and start over. These things I remember. When we were closer than strangers but miles apart. Before you were everywhere and I didn’t have to find you, you were nowhere and I loved you.

***

Scientific Inquiry Into the Extinction of the Telephone Booth by Johanna

Over the course of the last ten years, the once ubiquitous telephone booth has slowly disappeared from urban and small town street corners. The retarded withdrawal of booths from civilization has mostly gone unnoticed and unmeasured. The purpose of this study is to determine the main factors that lead to their extinction.

After extensive national and international travel in search of a working phone booth, only two were found. One, in Kerala, India and one in Bisbee, Arizona where it was painted with a mural to look like an angry robot.

While it is well-known that telephone booths became unnecessary in the early part of the century with the commonplace of cellular phone devices, they were still seen as a way for the homeless or people who forgot to charge their batteries to call home in an emergency. When the populace discovered endless minutes, most people on the street willingly lent the use of their personal phones if asked politely. Once phone companies realized this, they stopped service to all booths.

The actual disappearance of telephone booths began when citizens took it upon themselves to up-cycle. In urban areas, hipsters appropriated them for use as chicken coops and solar ovens. Artists recovered them for sculptures, installation pieces and stage props. More commonly, in rural areas they were used for bird houses and pit toilets. On occasion, multiple clowns could be found squeezing inside of one.

Future experiments should investigate how much a telephone booth will be priced for on Antiques Roadshow, in the case of a retro resurgence.

The King

The King by Ben Forstenzer

Let me tell you, Mickey never saw an obvious thing in his whole life. He musta spent all his time seeing the other stuff. For god’s love. This guy could stare at a spot on the page and only see its edges. Did you see a spot there Mick? What spot?

My oldest friend Mickey, that’s for sure. Oldest, from like my elementary school. From around fourth grade. He was chubby with a funny way about him and most of the kids were mean to him. But he could crack such serious jokes. Make you laugh your milk up your nose, caused a scene in the lunchroom.

And the thing was, his dad owned the place. He started it with The Old Guy. Mickey’s dad and The Old Guy, hands and gloves, hands and gloves all the way back.

So The Thleen tells me, “you got to see your move.” The Thleen says I got to get smart about it, got to make it happen. Kathleen. Twenty
years married and she’ll still tell me whats what. Since day one. She’ll tell me and it’ll be right. The Thleen does her homework.

“Mickey”, she says, “Mickey is soft. It’s yours, it’s yours to take.” She’s got the rheumatoid arthritis. Her hands are caving in. But The Thleen is tougher than that. “Mickey,” she says, “Mickey couldn't do it anyway.”

Mickey still makes jokes.

“What do flies wear on their feet?” I don’t know Mickey, tell me. “Shoes!” he says snorting through his beer. Yeah, Mickey is soft. But I laughed
at that one. Used it on clients. Sometimes it worked.

The Old Guy is old. That guy is really getting on. He rubs his chin a lot when he thinks about stuff. Mickey’s dad died a while back already. Right after me and The Thleen got hitched up. Clear cold day, hard blue sky pushing out all over, pushing down. Came into work after the funeral, wearing black and all. Thought Mickey would be in the main office next to The Old Guy. But no. Out at our double desk like usual. The Old Guy was back there calling
Mickey’s dad’s contacts.

“Just making sure we can still count on your business.” The Old Guy. He’s no slouch.

The Thleen could see it. She came in last week and popped into his office just for a hello. She’s on some new medication, makes her puke, but her knees can bend OK. Came out of the office and raised her eyebrows so high she knocked the hanging light. At home that night she told me, “he don’t got much more time there.” She’d seen it in his face.

“He’s gonna die?” I said.

“No. Just done with that office, that place.” she said.

Forty five years in that office. And
he’s had four trips to the hospital the last eight months. “Mickey can’t do it,” she said. Fixed me in a stare. Waited. “Mickey can’t do it.”

It’s pretty simple. The Thleen laid it out and I got it.

I told Micky to meet me at the bar. I told him I had business to finish. Which was true.

“Why is there a gate around the cemetery?”

“Ah Mickey, I don’t know.”

“Because people are dying to get in.” He snorted and put on his hat. “See you at the bar.” he said. I nodded.

The Old Guy was back there. Me and The Thleen had worked it out. The angles, the reasons. Mickey. That I would treat him good. If I hadn’t rehearsed it with her I swear I would have puked. But I walked right in there and I got it out. I nodded and answered his questions. I rubbed my chin like I was The Old Guy himself. We rubbed chins and thought about it and he agreed.

“Mickey” I said, “so it’s not how you pictured it would go.” He nodded. He finished his beer and looked up at the screens. He watched a soccer game. He doesn’t like soccer.

He turns to me and says, “Two hats are on a hat rack. Hat number one says to hat number two, you stay here,
I’ll go on a head.”

***

Inside Bugs by Johanna

In the recesses of the bath tub, a spider climbs and slips, climbs and slips. I beg my husband, Don’t kill it. It's bad luck. He turns on the faucet and eight legs curl under and float downstream resigned.The moth darts desperately from porch light to kitchen light to bedside lamp and hovers without rest as one after the next is switched off. Where do moths go in the dark?

To sleep, my husband sighs, turning from his back to his side.

Do moths sleep?

The fly, trapped between window screens for the length of its short life, flutters, keeping me awake to wonder what morning will bring and how futile the day that follows.

***

We’ll Make Great Pets by Lyle

Winston, sole proprietor of Animal Kingdom, upon opening the store one Monday morning, after a debauched weekend in Las Vegas (what happens stays, right? he thought as he turned the key — a feeling of both moral and physical corruption mingling in him) in which the same types of animals he pampered and loved hundreds of miles away in his store were used in a variety of sordid sexual applications, smelled the candy-apple scent of decay.

***

Raison d’être by Forrest

Never mind all these senses of intolerability we the workers exude, even in our peaceful, frenetic state of continuously applying, plastering, building up: worry about regurgitation instead. Before the King put himself in charge of our defense and titles and the general welfare of the State, only the Delegate of Heaven knew the needs suitable for the true excrescent practitioner; and now the King sits on the Delegate of Remains without so much as a pillow, forever asking him if he enjoys the new shapely form of this pretend world the best. There is no response from the Delegate. In pleasurable dread, we are waiting for the King’s next question.

***

Known Like Unknown by Bill

you draw your lay lines as I draw mine. some you see in clear, defined space but the fourth world was not always so wondrously three dimensional, so if I choose to lay them stitching this way or that across my shit leave me to my work and keep your thoughts on it. once you had to whisper what you'd seen through many eyes' fractal perceptions, drawing across numerous planes like you were Mapplethorpe seeing dark and ever darkening shades when you dropped acid and went barking, the world split to planes and always the howling chatter of Mictlan never far away. you had to hold your ears in the presense of Xipe Totec who ever has a say. tote up your channels leading through the deep blue sea, from Wych Cross Sussex to sandy Badlands' graves, carving up the mind of this world.

***

It Is What It Is by Beth

Is anything iridescent not unpleasant? She watches a swarm of flies take off from a busted garbage bag the trash truck has left behind. Flies, gas spreading in a puddle or behind a motorboat. Maybe wings. Maybe dragonfly wings, and if you think about them as dragonflies or damselflies and not darning needles, waiting to sew your lips together while you nap on your hammock, they’re not necessarily so sinister.

But then, everything is gross here in the city in the summer. The alleyways smelling like diapers. The dumpsters behind the gourmet restaurants smelling just as bad (maybe worse) than the fast food ones. The homeless guys you feel bad about holding your breath around. The smashed fruit of the gingko trees smelling like dogshit, and sticking to your shoes in the same way. The trash cans in the park full of knotted plastic bags of actual dogshit, which conscientious owners have hovered near their dogs’ asses to gather. All those bags of shit broiling in the sun. The iridescent flies landing on the bags of shit and then taking off, all at once like the girls in iridescent dresses coming out of the clubs in Old City after last call. Like the flocks of birds that wheel through the park and perch on one ledge and then another, all taking off, all landing, all taking off again.

***

On Reading Lord of the Flies (for the 11th time): a fictive primer/equation by Alan

Life + the mother of motivations + Golding’s beast + that was some vicious circle + “I cried when I read that part” + “that was stupid” + the fear inside all of us + what Simon said + once upon a time + it could happen to any of us + it could happen to you + it happened to me + “what does the title mean?” + that which we’re all attracted to + that which ties us together + the thing inside all of us + running really fast toward a car accident + “they’re all just a bunch of bullies” = “we’re all just a bunch of bullies” + if literature were really a mirror + what Simon said + if education was really education + the impetus for change + looking inward + the difference between a fly and a human + the difference between reading and reading + the distance between the little i and the big I + the courage inside all of us + “an end to war” + an end to war? + an end to war + fiction + fiction?

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(Photo courtesy & © Emily White)

Like Crazy by Barbara DeCesare

But if you stop taking your medicine you're gonna get sick. But if you take your medicine you don't know how to be happy. I guess it was selfish of me, but I loved having you around those months - you, no meds. And also, I just plain loved you like crazy.

On the fourth day of camping you told me you threw the bottle away. I was scared and proud. And I wanted to see what would happen. My favorite was the grocery store, when you'd sneak me grapes and beg me to buy you the sugary cereals in the bottom bins, the generic ones. "That's what Betty Big Butt used to get!" The babysitter. The one who didn't care when the water was too hot in the tub. Why would you want her dumb cereal? But I bought it. Because I love you.

All summer it was like this. I'd leave the shoe store at five on the button so we could go for a hike or put the dog in the canoe (hilarious) or lie outside and feed each other gummy bears until it got chilly. All summer you were wide open and new, you were like a brilliant falling star taking over the whole long night. You were all I wanted.

The police found you crying outside the post office. Everything went bad after that. Your mother came back to town and now I don't even know where to send my letters. I knew it would happen, but I thought I could wish it off. Every day when I ran out of the shoe store, I prayed so hard the whole way home that I'd find you the way I left you. That the dark clouds hadn't welled up in you yet and ruined your view of me. Of us.

***

Fair and Square by Beth

Sometimes I miss getting punched in the face. Or in the arm, or having my hair pulled out, or bashing my head against someone else’s. Getting my toe stomped through canvas sneaker.  Having someone squeeze me as hard as he could into the hard plastic of our mother’s two-door Corolla, bracing his feet against the other side of the backseat to get more leverage. Being held down on the ground, with sticks in my hair. Kicking and flailing like a fish on a dock, karate chopping, hitting back. The way a skinned knee stings. Saying sorry, sorry, sorry while I laugh and back away, arms outstretched, knowing that if I turn to run he’ll push me down. Knowing I went too far, when he’s so mad he’s crying and snotting and hitting without even looking at me. Being that mad.

Hearing the screen door open, our mother yell dinner, rolling off each other, dusting the leaves off, going inside to the smell of the Old El Paso dinner kit, the grudge already fading, almost gone.

***

How These Things Go by Alan

The last song on the mix tape was “Sugar’s Got Nothing on You,” and it was intended to be a set closer by the band who had penned it, Super Owl.  The band’s lead singer Jettison Lee Waze was, of course, a poet with a penchant for online drama/scandals.  He was said to have thrown a high-definition TV straight out of a fan chat room window one night because “hoothoot99 was just taking it too far.”

Most of the kids in the know in the neighborhood knew the power of a good last song, and how it could make a summer night last forever.  These two knew too.  One had made the tape for the other, but you know how these things go; they sort of made it together.  And they were listening together that fateful evening when it all went down.

Though the first track was mashed up with The Den Intruder Song on Vimayo, the rest of the playlist ran as juice through a straw.  By the flip, they were entranced with eyelashes, and midway through the second side the music itself became some dim and muted white noise emitting from the city they’d created.  Until they reached the last song, of course.  Then they came out of it – for a second – like a whale taking the breath before the sink, the majestic primal urge to sink.  And then they dove back in.

***

Filtered Light by Johanna

She opened her mouth and ashes came out. She formed words in her head but they stayed there. It wasn't like laryngitis, her voice did not curdle out of a scratchy throat; it was just the complete absence of sound, like air. Then, ash, soft gray flakes that turned to dust between her fingers and left her mouth dry. She consulted various doctors, but no one could diagnosis her. A lab technician noted that each flake of ash was perfectly formed into a distinct rhombus.

In a bucket, she began to save the ash, opening her mouth to speak and letting the flakes float tenuously toward the metal rim. After a while, she no longer had anything on her mind to say and she could not conjure the mysterious particles. She swept the surfaces of all her belongings to gather up every last bit of minute remnant of ash that had coated her whereabouts for weeks and added it to the bucket. She put a lid on it and waited, until she forgot what she was waiting for and left the bucket alone.

Many mute months later, she was clearing out her apartment and found the bucket again. Heat emanated from the metal vessel's walls as she approached. She drew back. Kicking off the lid, she looked into the bucket, singeing her eyebrows. She gasped and the flames entered her mouth, licking her tongue and spiraling down her esophagus.

Yum, she said to the empty room.

***

Life Is Circular by Lyle

The Theory of Circles posits that everything is circular. It’s absurd mostly but has a growing number of proponents. When I was ten I ate a rat to see what it would taste like. I never did that again. My mind would come back to what I learned. My experience. Circular.

But now I am in a state of confusion, tight little circles. Or a spiral.

I am afraid that I will eat a rat again. Absurd. Why am I not afraid of eating my son when he comes to bring food? I remember him — my son. I am so sorry I brought you into this. Perhaps it is best if I eat you too; the way life has consumed me and shat me back out at the end to stink. Life is not circular. It is a long, unbending line. Know that. That is the Theory of Circles.

***

Siameses by Forrest


Our I escapes the movers. Sad, sad movers with that moving look while making moves. They carry the two-bit dirge away, ding it against the banister. They forget their Chang and Eng. Bubblewrapped, the parlor now gave off a frontier transparency but far less suck-face. The latter once included the I happily including us. All occasions had not suitably embarrassed, however. There were still wantings of a criminal insertion. There were incidentals.

***

Untitled by Bill

Save your mind. Save the spaces along the lip. Be aware of your teeth. Be clean, and breathe deeply aware of the voluminous oysters sitting in the bay of your dimininuation. And sitting by the dock of the quay. And outside of space, falling station to station.
The mystery passed muster, lip on the slide-rule. All the other kids turned around in the surf until they fell into the ocean and we dipped them in butter. We made glass, breathing fire on the sand, and corralling coral polyps in a run-off drain sluice-bath.
Algorhythmic breathing method, we don the capes we made out of our pillow-cases, crying all the way home once the vine broke and we fell too far into the pile of leaves. Hungry and not so scared of the life, arepas for lunch, a sense of being and being stuck to the inside of the heads here like toffee. Did you suggest arepas for lunch?

Rudolph II



Dark by Ron Estrada

There’s another part in the Bible that isn’t actually in it.  It’s only there in the boy’s own imagination.  But it feels part of it, all in line; it’s when he’s praying.  His mom used to pray with him at his bedside when he was a kid.  She’d kneel, they’d both kneel and say the, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” part and then the boy would go and then she’d go with their own parts.  Over the years she would take a step back, then watching him do the whole thing by himself while she stood in the doorway.  And then she wouldn’t be there at all.

The room, to the boy, never felt like God.  Outside did.  And that’s what he started to do, go outside to pray at night.  He’d kneel on the garden ground, pull his sleep pants up to his thighs if it was wet or there was snow and would pray aloud.  He was alone; his mom still wasn’t around.  This was in one way.  In another, he felt less alone than in his room.  He thought of other kids outside saying their prayers, all of them, and him, alone, together alone.

He’d finish and wipe off of his knees, go back to his room.  He prayed for a lot of things.  He didn’t pray for this, out loud, but hoped it: that he’d be so tired when he got back to his bed that he wouldn’t have to think of anything.

***

Turning In by Bill

Greetings and salutations. I've got my hands clasped together, and I am kneeling on the box. My calves are cramping, and I just want to get home and open the box of cookies that I received at work today. I'm not going to share any of them either. They were given up for me, and that, for once, must be made whole.

Johns and solicitations. Send down another crate of nails, hammer together another dozen mangers, have some left over and throw them in if it starts to look low. Cash in hand as they open the door, cash in hand as they leave. Wreaths on the doors are ok, but never put one in the room. Orchids and daisies are a must.

Senators and procrastination. We are easy in the speeding, dangerous in our breeding. We gave up on the low-life a long time ago, lost our illusions that the hard edges framing the pimps was the cream we needed for our coffee. Where the dervish whirled we gave them the air from our lungs and the sweat from our brow. We ran our hands over them and set every nerve in their body blazing with our adoration. They spun us around and made us dizzy watching them. Our heads faded to weightlessness, the world that should have been still on either side of our ears spiraling downward. Their twirling ideas seemed to float across the air toward us. We raced out into the night and took to the roads drunk in amazement, ascetic in our contempt. We took the back tires off the road and watched the snow blow past the windows, paying for the gas with plastic coins and novelty belt buckles. The shopkeeps stared at us, bemused, wishing us away on whatever endless quests they never hoped to take.

Family drama and libations. Hate is just like love and should be saved for someone special, should be forced to gallop away to Mercia, perhaps Mantua, imagining in the fires stacked dangerously high with logs the world spinning in the heart of the nemesis. Bells ringing unstruck as boots scrap across the floor, we'll hang the cards around the door, sip from a warm mug, imagine chains rattling across the cellar, and sleep.

***

Some Other Family by Beth

My mother resented going to Canada for every family vacation. It was where my father had gone with his parents, and he loved it, and he was the one who made the money. Mostly we went to Prince Edward Island, with the wide beaches made of soupy clay, the lines of endless gentle breakers, the dune grass. Like my mother, I hated the ocean – all those endless waves going same, same, same, and over, over, over.

My mother sat at the picnic table in the shade, near the swingset, and my father and brothers ran around on the beach like idiots, and when my mother had cleaned up the cookout she’d cooked in the metal grate next to the picnic table, when she had settled back in the beach chair she insisted on carrying with her everywhere (even on the rare occasions when we flew somewhere), and had taken out the latest National Geographic, I would go away from her, a few feet at a time, until I was on the edge of the woods, and then until I was just behind the front line of trees that the park’s caretaker took care of, and then until I was all the way in the woods, so far in that I couldn’t hear the ceaseless sound of waves and wind and gulls and my mother angrily turning the thick pages of her magazine.

So far in that I couldn’t have heard her even if she noticed I was gone and called to me. So far in that one time I came out almost to the other side, to some other family’s campsite. And I crouched and watched the family, with their pop-up camper and their radio tuned to a baseball game, which I guess had to have been the Blue Jays, or maybe the Expos. Their kids were playing, jumping up and down on a board-and-rope bridge over a little stream. The boy jumped down hard and the girl popped up and laughed, and they did it over and over but the parents never yelled at them to cut it out. And while I was crouching down there, the back of my legs started shaking and I thought about what it would be like to be a major league catcher, crouching down all through a game. But I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t leave until I could see that the sun was going down, leaving only the tops of the trees still in sunlight. And the last thing I saw before I turned to go was the dad, throwing a baseball up high, so high it could still catch the sun.

***

Prayers from the People by Alan

“In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited.”
- Sherwood Anderson from Winesburg, Ohio

While Julio hoped and hoped and hoped for his hometown team to turn it around, the Vanderveese twins’ continued reverence for the saint hardened like a statue in the shadows of a sunny afternoon in Minnesota. They were identical but (remarkably) of different gender. If you don’t already know, this type of thing is quite rare. The miracle arrived after the zygote split. And some say they’ve been praying since. It was as if they weren’t meant to be, but yet here they were – two ghosts materialized, two platonic lovers swimming through time, two angels with one wing.

Meanwhile, half a country away, Julio resisted the urge to purchase season tickets because he didn’t want “that undeniably empty feeling that comes with deep faith in something that simple cannot and will not come true.” Apparently, money ups the ante in the card game of belief.

There is a third player in this tragedy. Her story is currently being written. But you, dear reader, can bet your bottom dollar that her address lies smack in between those of Julio’s and the twins’ and that she’s also searching for someone or something deeply, painfully, in the middle of the night.

***

Overshadows by Johanna

Moishe had been planning this since Black Friday, examining the architecture, street lights and general proximity of the courthouse. He had no doubts holding him back as he sketched out his plans – the approach, tools and timing of the particular deed. The day of was crisp and clear so that the night was just as he hoped it would be, a moonless sky embroidered with sequins. On the courthouse steps, he entered the display of the nativity scene and, with great care, moved baby Jesus into Mary's lap so that he could use the stool Jesus was perched upon. He tugged at his tzitzit, straightened his yarmulke, and stepped up onto the stool. The red and green lights reflecting off of the old stone building provided enough light for him to string his rope over the four by four framing of the manger and wrap it taut around his throat.

He thought of his mother, a long time ago, before he converted to orthodoxy, before he prayed and kept kosher, when Hanukkah was still an important holiday. He saw her standing over the stove frying latkes and singing the dreydl song on repeat; she only knew the first verse. The house was strung with blue and white lights and their menorah took up the entirety of their small kitchen table top. Over each candle, they sang prayers and when it was time to open presents, she beamed over her children with anticipation. The excitement of a new toy kept him entertained until bedtime when he and his brother were allowed to listen to one hour of radio. He put down his new set of Lincoln Logs and settled into the couch. From the corner of his eye, he could see a flutter of his mother disappear into her room as the story of Saint Nick played across the airwaves and captivated his young imagination.

***

Transcription by Lyle

Norman reads from a transcript in front of the congregation. On a large screen, a photo scrolls across a screen slowly, like a codex.

Concerning cement statue #4. Began Feb 9, 1959 by artist — same. Inspiration — same. Finished Feb 18, 1959.

Concerning cement statue #5. Began Feb 18, 1959 afternoon by artist — same. Inspiration — same. Finished Feb 27, 1959.

Concerning cement statue #6. After a brief hiatus, artsit — same — began Feb 29, 1959. Inspiration — varied them of same with geometric variables equal but inverse. Note light on subject cement statue #6. Possible ramifications of light: 1. enlightened status 2. severe torture 3. both 4. sunburn (holding some kind of cultural significance) 5. the cement equivalent to sunburn: fading. Finished March 17, 1959.

Concerning cement statue #7…

This transcription continues for three more hours at which point the congregation rises in silence, bows briefly first to Norman, then to their neighbors, subsequently removing themselves from the room in single file. By the time Norman comes out, the moon is at its apex and a single very dark cloud floats very slowly under the bottom edge of the luminescent tumor. Norman sighs in relief, closes the large wooden doors behind him and turns the key in the lock.

***

A Winter Intercession by Forrest

Hail Mary, I’m full of grapes, and my sled is with you. Tested are you among mushers, and blessed is my Fruit Of The Loom. Holy Shit, Mother of Mountains, pray for us sledders, now and at the hour of our descent. Ah-men!

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The Night Sound of Soul Mates Finding Each Other by Arlene Ang

Before Cosgrove came to live in the park, he was a novelist. He had written so many books that he couldn’t remember where he sent them. The publishers and agents never called him back and, after a while, he decided that phones were superfluous. For that matter, they never mailed him back his manuscripts—which only proved that the advantages of having a mailing address were overrated.

Ferguson, the dog, found him just when he was at his lowest. Recent regulations prohibited all forms of writing in the park. In anger, he had thrown his writing kit—made up of scalpels, a ballpen, green spray paint, some pencils—from the ornamental bridge and walked away. Ferguson, dressed as Santa Claus, fetched it back and ran after him. Cosgrove touched the saliva on the leather. He was at a loss for words for the first time in his life. He took it from Ferguson’s jaws and smiled.

Later, he unzipped his pants under the sign: Do Not Write on Bamboo. By his feet, Ferguson raised a leg in unison.

***

Scene by Forrest

Max, old boy--on the Fourth of July I'm walking you over to the bamboo forest park. I got kicked out of there last year for trying to finish carving a heart around a lover's initials on a stalk. And if someone catches you with the Santa hat on, no worries. She'll know either of us can't change with the change of scenery, but the other only has to hang around to make it seem less foolish.

***

Whole Stone by Bill

Live long in your growing green inches inching inch by inch towards the sky, signed, from one sexual tyrannosaurus to another. As I let go of the stone that was carrying me down toward the sea-bed a girl in white robes dove past me, and though I have already suffered for this I guess I'll come back up again out of the abyss and stand under the sky asking why it finds us free. Destiny on the wind, covered in oil, milleniums of decayed plankton torn up from their last resolve and spuming on the surface of our eyes, fettering the frills of our cap.

***

Feeling less Powerful by Alan

Victor Rasputin’s holiday commitments entailed a trip to his marginalized cousin’s two-story palace of sin on Lexington, extended conversations with his mother-in-law (who was, actually, a pretty “cool” woman by most standards), and several hours of godforsaken traffic between boroughs.  What made matters worse was that he had recently decided to stop smoking cigarettes in his car.  Irritable, beaten, and worn, he shut most of his windows without pressing “save,” blew off all new updates.  As the year grew to a close, he changed his status like he changed his underwear, but the result was the same: no comments.

In the evenings when his partner fell asleep, he would lie awake on the sofa in the living room dreaming of options.  He could smell them, trace their shapes, and discuss them with hoards of people (acquaintances whom Victor knew but kept at a distance) for hours on end.  These musings would stimulate a certain sense of euphoria in him, hark back to a more glorious time when he felt stronger, more powerful.  It was his faith in these stirrings – neither whimsical nor measured – that catapulted him through the day, a faith that ultimately was responsible for the only way Victor Rasputin was able to fall asleep in the days leading up to the most wonderful time of the year.

***

Dog Christmas by Johanna

Kibble. Kibble. Kibble. This hat is humiliating. I can't shake it. Stupid holiday. Bone. Bone. Bone. They think it's hilarious. They're flashing that light on me and laughing into it. Treat. Treat. Treat. I smell dominance and fear in this cactus atrium. The saguaro reeks of chihuahua. Play. Play. Play. This vest is itchy but worse is that thing on my head with the white pom pom on top, keeps screwing with my peripheral vision. Toy. Toy. Toy. It's tough enough being this close to the ground. Tree. Tree. Tree. Ah. Bamboo, my old friend, I've been looking everywhere for you. Leak. Leak. Leak. That's better. Go ahead laugh, but you didn't see that, did you? Wag. Wag. Wag.

***

Jolly Holidays by Beth

Yes, I would like to take you to a place with bamboo trees. It would have a boardwalk, too, with sand sifting into grooves on the tops of the screws that hold it together. We would walk on the boardwalk, holding hands (which we never do), and wearing flip flops (which we never wear), and sometimes I would feel my little toe slipping off the flip flop to touch the boardwalk, which would feel rough and gritty with the sand. I would be carefree about this, about my permeable skin touching a public place. About the possibility of cutting myself, or banging my toe on something. And you would not allow yourself to question your masculinity, just because you were wearing something on your foot that in some cultures and at some times has been called a thong. We would drift down the boardwalk, and maybe buy some ice cream, and I might even get a sugar cone, even though I’ve never liked sugar cones, just because I like the way the words sound when I say them to the teenage boy behind the counter. You would not get rum raisin, as always, and I would not get strawberry, as always, but instead we would get exotic flavors that I can barely imagine – ones that involve fresh mango or passion fruit. And yes, we would go there over Christmas, and although our families might miss us at the overheated family gatherings, they would understand that we are a family now, you and I, and if they had it all to do again they might just do it differently.

***

City Ordinance by Lyle

“Do not write on the dog.” City Ordinance 28.372c.

City Ordinance 28.372d. — “Do not write on other otherwise tethered objects including flora like trees or bamboo.”

A history of writing on bamboo (or otherwise tethered objects) has been inscribed in the margins of my copy of The City Ordinance (required reading for all City Employees). It begins at this Ordinance and continues, in the margins, through the tome (otherwise impossible to read). From the middle, somewhere:

Bamboo is lithe and supple. Reminds me of burgeoning youth. Though this is somewhat tautological, I heard it on an episode of NPR, I think. That bamboo is both lithe and supple, I mean, not burgeoning youth. They also said that it’s good for flooring because it’s renewable, but still kind of expensive and that it makes for tremendous torture devices — sliver under the fingernail. They still use it in places. Don’t know what the episode was about. Just bamboo, I guess. Very cost effective and

At this point the book has been torn in half — governmental Sharpie under close scrutiny. They haven’t replaced my copy yet, but they’ve left me the half up to that point. I was looking forward to getting to the history of writing on bamboo, as the notes had previously promised. So I have my own little revolt. My own writing on a dog. On bamboo. These photos. My voice. Writing = culture. I am not tethered. I hope they don’t trace it back to me though…

Prospect Park Map

The Map Maker by Ellen

The cops asked us to make a list of the things Dad had taken with him, and one of the things he had left behind.

Dylan and I looked at each other, dismayed.

We weren't familiar with Dad's things. He had treated his clothes and tools with no sentiment and certainly no interest in how he looked to anyone else. He looked generic. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium tall, white tee shirt and blue jeans.

We went through his room. It looked empty, but it always did. We kept looking for another hour.

Dylan looked like he was asleep on his feet and he had school in the morning anyway so I sent him to bed. Maybe I wanted to be alone.

In the closet was a pair of boots, beyond shabby. More destroyed than even Dad would usually wear.
There was a suitcase, plain black with little ineffective wheels, and bearded with dust.

There was a map folded in the drawer of his bedside table.

In the dresser I found underwear, socks, tee shirts and three pairs of Wrangler jeans that I recognized from a trip to Sears two years ago.

I looked at my list of things left behind. They looked like all the things Dad would need.

I showed it to the cops in the morning after I got Dylan off to school.

"Huh," said the lieutenant who I thought of as ours.

It didn't sound like a good or optimistic grunt.

"Want me to look for more stuff?" I asked. I played with the zipper on my jacket until I started to hear the buzzing sound myself and then stopped.

"No, no, that won't be necessary."

They didn't think he had run away like they probably had at first. They thought something had happened to him.

I went back to his bedroom. Dylan wouldn't come back from school for a few hours and I had taken the day off from work. On top of everything I could feel myself being mad that I had to use a personal day for this.

The room wasn't pretty but somehow it felt more special and glamorous than before. Something important had happened here.

I couldn't imagine Dad being hurt or killed somewhere. He was like a piece of nature, a rock, or a piece of machinery, a tractor.

I could see him my mind, alone, which was how he liked to be. I could see him walking down the street from work, and instead of turning down the street to our apartment, he would stop in front of the discount store and look at everything for a long minute. He would go in without really thinking about it. He would let his feet lead him, and not think too hard as his hands reached for a new backpack, and a sleek packet of white cotton briefs. He wouldn't need much, but everything fresh. One pair of jeans. Boots with good soles would be the highest ticket item.

I took the map out of the drawer. It was laminated, a tourist map, too small to have any detail or usefulness. But I could see the creases where it had been forcibly folded for so long, and I could see a burn mark, where maybe a lighter had been held up to read it some night when the overhead light would have been to conspicuous.

I could picture him making or buying a new life, the way he made or bought everything else when he determined he really needed it.

I took the map and put another clumsy fold in it. I put it in my back pocket, and headed out to the school to walk Dylan home.

***

Slash and Burn by Lyle

I slash and burn my way through the park and then take a rest. I hear my father: “What’re you sitting for you ninny? Get up. Pillage. Destroy. Your brother wouldn’t be sitting there like a bump on a log.”

“But he’s not here,” I say. When I stand and turn around, I see my father’s lower lip tremble just the slightest bit. Seconds before I cut off his head with one clean motion. I put it on a pike and write an exclamation point where I leave it.

This is where I call my mother. She hysterical when I tell her. But she’s hysterical anyway. I hang up. More pillaging. I am green around the gills. I am green with envy. I am green and sappy. I am charbroiled. Stomp stomp splash through the creek. Murder a couple on a picnic blanket but no picnic basket. Stomp. Chomp. Squirrel. I come back around after impaling a hiker (sure, waterproof shoes will keep your feet dry), to Midwood Trail.

This is where I feel safe. Midwood. Halfway. Neither here nor there. Unapologetic neutrality. No dragons. No innocent villagers. Nothing but the soothing quiet and the shade of flora.

Well, no time to dilly dally. Get up. Slash and burn. Slash. And. Burn. This is for you, John. I’m sorry.

***

A Few Areas of Note at Prospect Park by Forrest

Midwood Trail: Two things indicated on Visitor's Guide Map likely never to be found--that is, the cartoonish mystery of the White-Out exclamation point and soothing splotches of color. Various cigarette burns, however, may correctly show potential areas of bear attacks and / or beer can pipes.

Sullivan Hill: Named for the second explorer of the region who accidentally passed through in 1897 while trapping squirrels. But the original explorer's name was also Sullivan; he was very clever and wiped out a small Native village here in a drunken rage. The second Sullivan, by all accounts, never touched a drop in his life nor did he consummate his only marriage. Confusion reigns today regarding historical legacy of both men.

Ravine: Has no name. Park management still looking into this.

Prospect Park Zoo: New visitors find it strange how the green algae on Nanny the polar bear sometimes resembles the Virgin Mary puckering her lips.

Children's Corner: A complete misnomer. Children do not own anything there and thus can escape rather easily.

Carousel: Removed in July 2007 due to fatal unicorn accident, this despite large organized parent protest after public announcement of the decision. Temporary memorial erected by the deceased's family removed by legal injunction from state government officials. Plans to pave and convert into a parking area for Children's Corner put on hold due to massive budget cuts. Plot currently sitting vacant. It has not been mowed in quite some time.

***

Order by Bill

Still worried. I could use some more hope in my oatmeal. You’ve dangled off the page edge again, left the window open for the last 29 months, so the entire sill is covered with that black city dust and looks like the ties holding up the subway tracks. Those big particles that get you coughing in the morning when the wind kicks in, but they say it isn’t gonna do too much damage to our lungs. I push the blankey you brought back onto the floor. Still too hot in here, and I might just be delirious.

Once again I’ve quit my job. Just checked out on the you need to find someone who comes a shave closer to giving half a damn. I think the term I actually used was half a two-assed rat’s taint. They certainly did not appreciate my decorating the office with burned up maps, and probably didn’t bother to say much on account of the battle-axe I fashioned out of the keyboard during our last conference call with the client. We still got the account, and that was when I knew it was time to leave. There can be no hope - not a pretty email address crumpled up on a napkin hope and not sunshine breaking through the rainclouds after a week hope - when people are willing to accept the removal of the barriers. Those kinds of people, who see you take the barriers down and like cows just start to mill blindly into the open space where you happen to be standing with the air hammers, they are the dangerous ones. You can drive them right over the edge because they will never know how far they are from where they should be.

For now I think I’ll clean up this place a little bit. I’m going to leave that black dust on the window sill, but I’ll wash the curtains at least. And probably the walls and repaint in here next week, but first I want to paint all over the walls and draw shit in markers. Maybe I’ll punch a whole in the wall and cover that up with a steel plate and hang your map up above it. And some day if you ever come home you can run your finger through that one small patch of blackness that I’ve left for you in front of the window.

***

Wild Like Fire by Beth

And sometimes she wants to get out of the car, right after they break out of the city or right before going in. Swing the heavy door out and open, sneaker scuff once and twice on the rumble strip, and then she’s on the shoulder, gray sand strewn with broken red taillight. She’s down the embankment, tall grass swishing around her legs, legs ahead of her, unbalancing her. The woods ahead, the places the sun reaches and the places it does not. Brittle sticks sticking out, low branches on the trees, she crashes through, she dodges trunks the way she has learned to dodge people on the sidewalk, her eyes low, anticipating.  Keeps on beyond the ding of the car door open, beyond the traffic river-roar, footfalls deep in pine needles and black mud that sucks at her shoes.

Once she saw a kid with a lighter, teenage, holding it up to the map of Prospect Park, flame close enough to melt the cover, the smell of plastic burning acrid. She saw him, one hand on the lighter, the other cupping away the wind.  She saw how bad he needed that wildness, a dusktime kid outside a park of paved trails, outside bikers and runners steady on the hamster wheel. A park full of city. A park with cast iron gates that locked him out at night.

Sometimes she wants to, but she doesn’t. She never does.

***

Park the Metaphor by Alan

Map the park, punk. I dare you. Go ahead. Try to navigate its turns and yearns. Begin to wade in some kind of body of water that is larger than most views you’ ve entered. Hike the hills, tag its trails, pin the genre on the pagoda. Balance yourself on the bridge, caress the gentle urgings of the carousel, sweet timely urgings. Run the arches to the drive. Compare them as destinations. Compare them to zoo. Compare them to the children’ s corner, to the children themselves. What’ s that? You once were? Think you still are? Map it, and see for yourself. Park it for a while. Then come back to me. We’ ll talk about it then.

***

XOXO by Johanna

Dear Manhattan,

I'm not old enough to remember you in your prime, but I still remember the eighties and nineties when you reeked of vagrants and streamed creative spooge. I miss the way we used to be, when juice bars were fronts for drug dispensaries, when a fifteen-year-old didn't need I.D. to get into your clubs, when artists could still afford to live in Alphabet City and Harlem, when you could drive through Times Square to laugh at heads bouncing off of Johns' laps, when taxis didn't take credit cards, when the Bowery was still a great place for a riot. I miss the way you were perverted and dingy, unpretentiously punk, and always, always, on the edge of something disgustingly spectacular. I'm sorry, but I can not forgive you your bourgeois homogeneity and double-decker tour buses. You may have cleaned up, but you're boring. I'm leaving you for someone else. I'm moving to Brooklyn.

See you on the Q train.

Ghost Mule

Fishing Trip by Charles

Rocky Point. Puerto Penasco. Bring the whole family down this time. Why not? The Chrysler packed, water bag filled, trunk bulging. Drinking and puking and fishing. Fishing and puking and drinking. Throw the gas can into the bonfire and blow a crater right there on the beach. Howard’ll be bringing his new wife. She’s a Mormon but that’s alright. Howard’s a good man. It’ll be good for him to get off the logging truck for a few days. The old lady don’t care for him much but I’ll make it up to her. We’ll stop in Nogales on the way back and pick up something nice for her and the kid. Maybe get our snapshot taken on one of them Mexican donkeys.

Pablo, the mule needs to be painted again.

***

Tradition by Johanna

In the ninth grade, my family forced me to ride the mule in the fiesta parade. I tried to get out of it. “It's tradition,” they told me as they dragged my whining nauseous body out of bed. My father did it and my grandfather did it before him.

With my pants hanging low, my knees sticking out of the mules side like wings, earphones plugged in under my sombrero, I sucked it up and road my mule, Philemon, in the procession between the fiesta princessas and the local mariachi band. I didn't see much through the haze of humiliation except for my abuelita sitting on the sidelines, waving and smiling at me with pride. I threw her some candy even though I knew her old teeth couldn't handle it and watched as the children scattered around her for it like birds to crumbs.

Ricky Gallegos called me Mule Boy in 5th period Science class for the rest of the semester. My girlfriend, Stephanie, broke up with me, said it had nothing to do with the parade. She just wasn't into me anymore.

This year, my own son, also in ninth grade, had to ride the mule in the parade. Once he realized there was no breaking with tradition, he asked me if he could dress in drag – the whole get-up – gown, wig, make-up and heels. He said it would be ironic. I told him, “Fine, as long as you wear the sombrero.” He laughed his ass off the whole mule ride through the village. Thank god my mother wasn't alive to see it.

***

Zippy, a Short History by Lyle

Across the Rio Grande from the amorphous¹ South Texas, there is a town that has become rife with amorphous² hostilities. It used to be that a donkey,³ rescued⁴ from Boysville where he worked as a stud of sorts⁵, started a new trade at a slow touristy spot right near the rowboat landing. Zippy became restless, yoked as he was to an immobile cart, at this ghoulish business.

Part of the amorphous hostility that lingered in the town manifested itself, very clearly in form, in two ways.
Zippy, reverting to form, attempted to mount a little boy, apparently mistaking him for one of the slight women he was used to in Boysville.
The angry parents (with very little provoking) led a lynch mob to a nearby tree where they hanged Zippy and let the buzzards eat him down.

Aside from the tree, an impromptu monument on which people carve the name Zippy — just a name — he has been forgotten, as has his story.⁶
________________
¹Rocky, brush-covered land alternately sand colored and burro grey.
²Violence colored like the land.
³Zippy.
⁴Some would say kidnapped.
⁵A nasty business — carnivalesque and rooted firmly in the freakshows of yore, some of which can still be seen in the Mexican countryside where many of these shows retired, unwilling or unable to make the leap to the sexually explicit (the bearded lady being the exception).
⁶The town in now known for its large population of fainting goats (and the Association headquarters), porous border crossing and gun battles.

***

No More Zippy by Forrest

Zippy, pinstriped pseudo-zebra/mule of Nogales--I consider you the fabrication to ruin my parents' marriage on that ill-fated border crossing when I discovered I was Patricia, not Patrick. Even had I been the teenage girl I was always meant to be and you trotted out before my maids of honor for a quinceanera delight, my father would have wept next to smiling Jesus in the afternoon. I do not mean to say he was prone to sadness or profoundly affected by hokey tourist opportunities (even when my mother had dressed up enough for his approval). If not for my operation, I think he could have saved our sombreros. I think he would swallow the worm again. But you, Zippy. Because I did not ride off with you, a charade of a lesser equine tethered to a wagon that was not a wagon, I never felt the hot, blazing pulse between my thighs which, I now read, makes scared boys into much lustful men. And you never took the bit that I keep wearing for them since.

***

The Bridesmaid by Beth

I had to go and get a bridesmaid’s dress at David’s Bridal in the suburbs. It was going to be dark purple, one of our high school’s colors, although the bride wouldn’t admit it. To her, it was Lapis, and there was a difference. I had to shave my legs and wear a nice-looking bra and go in there and get a short satin Lapis-colored dress and bring in my shoes from Payless that I needed to have dyed to match. I had to do it today, because the wedding was only a month away. They would need to alter the dress to fit me.

I shaved my legs and wore the bra and took the shoes and got in the car, started it and let it run for a while, because it had been so long since we’d moved it.  I left our parking spot and drove through our neighborhood to the outskirts of the city, to where I had to get on the highway that would shoot me out to the suburbs.  But before I got to the on-ramp for the highway I stopped.  I was in this neighborhood I’d never been in before. And I had to get to David’s Bridal before they closed early because it was Sunday, so I didn’t have time to screw around, but I stopped the car and turned it off and I got out and I walked, arms crossed, the breeze cold on my face.  I walked by a place that sold pulled-pork sandwiches and had a neon sign that was an outline of a pig. And I walked by an Irish pub with big-bellied guys standing in the doorway smoking and I turned down a different street and walked by some antique stores that were closed and a store that had big bolts of fabric leaned up against the inside of the window, which had a gate pulled down over it in case someone wanted to smash it.

And I stopped in front of this other antique store with a black and white picture of a family in a parade.  The sun beat down on them so they could just look up a little bit, under their hats. And this blond kid with the word Mexico stitched on his hat was sitting on a mule painted to look like a zebra, disguised as something it was clearly not. And everyone around it was smiling.

***

Contrast by Bill

See such sun high overhead piling light on the girl I remember sitting behind me in another picture like this, covered in the old light of those days as if it were painted onto the two of us sitting on a horse and not this poor painted burro with the girl missing from the picture with her arms around my small body, the tiny person I had been surrounded by the young woman she was with long straight hair helping to erase my fear and smiling like this boy in his giant hat.

***

The Photographer by Alan

Charlie and his mother had never been outside of the country, and by country I mean state, and by state I mean city, and by city I mean town, and by town I mean street, and by street I mean house, and by house I mean room, and by room I mean corner, and by corner I mean space, and by space I mean home, and by home I mean space, and by space I mean corner, and by corner I mean room, and by room I mean house, and by house I mean street, and by street I mean town, and by town I mean city, and by city I mean state, and by state I mean country. Never been. Nope.

So upon arrival, they hired a man with a steady hand – that’s me – to show them around and give them a few memories to bring back home. I did just that. Yes. Just that and more.

You see, traveling is a lot like breathing. You’re only used to one kind of breath pattern, and that’s yours. Takes someone to come along and show you another way to inhale and then exhale. Inhale and then exhale. Yes…just like that. You can’t learn that yourself. Nope. The deeper the breath, the farther away from home you can go. Takes someone to show you that. That’s what I’m here for. There are just some things you can’t learn on your own.