Cuidad Juarez

Forensics by Forrest

Last time—or the one last time of what can be an overlong career in this city after I arrived in forensics— when I saw them working a scene, the two officers responding were already digging into each other over what remained on the pavement. An embrace between brave women with a loaded weapon, I can imagine, is not easily accomplished, much less seen often. If one of them believes a gun is lighter than it appears because of fruitless duty, it seldom has opportunities to be used to her heart’s content.

***

Cages by Bill

Spring is nearly over the hill, the hot turning us out, like zombies, weaving through the night unable to sleep. Another cup of coffee further from the backs of eyelids. So many cups now its starting to give off that sour feeling in the stomach, but it tastes too good. It tastes too good because it still tastes at all. It might be the best cup of coffee ever. Remember in Jaws, when Quinn’s talking about the cages, “Cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark's in the water. Our shark.” Well we got sharks up here too.

***

Headline by Alan

The bridge was devastated. When the bomb detonated, a family of seabirds dispersed as if they were roses at the end of a wedding ceremony, the church doors now completely flung open. It was a sunny day. The sound was deafening.

The officers arrived quickly and pointed their weapons at the thought of anything suspicious. They became little sad hummingbirds maneuvering through a garden of flowers. Sweetness. Nectar. Dear god. How we need to feed ourselves with answers, targets for our desperate stomachs.

The smoke never cleared. The smoke never clears. Occasionally, we come across each other in a room in the dark and we fumble for the right questions, which (like hummingbirds) always seem to elude the logic of our collective imaginations.

***

Backstory by Johanna

I first noticed you across the room, your sway and swagger. I knew from the way you wore your hair in wings that you were from the butterfly clan. The more my attraction to you grew, the more I avoided you. One day, in a moment of bravery, I opened the door for you. “Thank you,” you said and smiled just enough that you might be flirting but, of course, I wouldn't dare assume so.

“My privilege,” I said. I meant to say, “my pleasure,” but it came out wrong. I imagined our dance, how sweet, our knees kissing.

After the incident, I saw you there looking like you were trying hard not to cry and I went to you without thinking. I was a stranger to you. You held me anyway.

***

Escape by Lyle

I’m sorry. This one escaped me. Escapes. Escapes me. Is in the very process of escape. Always with this sense of not being something, somewhere. If only for a minute it is this one. Just like a bullet. Escapes into the chamber from fingers. Escapes into the barrel and then out of the barrel and then escapes. I’m sorry: my very soul escapes with that bullet long since gone.

The Virgin

Alone by Lyle

The Virgin slept. Wept. Crept throughout the vacant house. Her vacuous mind. The Virgin was no longer a virgin, abstinence and emptiness being not-quite the same thing. She had no thoughts. Her head filled itself constantly with tears. Then it became heavy with sleep and when she woke in the night on the floor she woke in puddles. The Virgin was alone. Immaculate conception. The Virgin did not dream. Her knees scraped on the floor and were scabbed. The Virgin did not dream.

***

Vows by Forrest

In leaving too soon, getting up and searching down the road for what he thinks is her, he forgets the other woman by his side. It is close to evening when he returns empty-handed, the same as his companion in plaster. The day keeps its promise.

***

The Best Lack All Conviction by Bill

There is no time out the other side. There is only this stuff condensed here in the middle, sometimes rich and sweet like angelcream and other times the milk's gone bad. Looking on, she sings the song, we’re on our way back home. Nothing worth knowing isn’t already written on our skin, the pluripotent stems talking to the world in the language of disease and demons, microbes and bacteria. Nothing worth the time it takes getting to the outside of the world, coursing a track on the rim of the atmosphere. The life we have in place is calling out cues on the falling action of our lives, afraid the climax is just pastiche in the end, a summation in detournemental existence taking life one groundhog day at a time.

***

The Poet by Alan

She was looking for the vehicle, a way to encapsulate the notion that whet the embers of her mind’s heart. Long afternoons in New England summers, uncut grass, the promise of new light. There are things that fray the maps of our inner architecture, transform mood, lift the veil so we can see again. And there are things that darken in this world.

In the front yard was a well, and on the walls of that well sat a little blackbird. She would sing to it, and it would sing back. There conversation would echo below for what seemed like miles. Miles of space always seem longer in blackness. The road is always longest when you can’t see an end.

Purity is one thing, but dedication is another. Purity the anchor. Dedication the boat. The yard shifted beneath her as she wrote. The tenor. The tenor. The tenor. The thing we all long for. The thing is singing. It perches and sings. “Hope,” she began to write (in little fences), “is the thing with feathers” and then dashed indoors.

***

Old Adirondak by Johanna

The red Adirondak chair my grandpa built has been painted three times. I know this because I like to curl into a ball in the chair's lap and lay my cheek on its back to look real close at the cracks where sun and hail have chipped away to the green below. And in well-worn spots like the arm rests you can see all the way to white. In the morning, I sit here like this and listen to my mother humming in the garden, her big hat shading her shoulders as she leans into the rake or shovel or seeds. The early sun feels good on my legs and glistens on the blonde fuzz of my thighs. I want to sleep here or stay here all day in anticipation of growing up.

In the afternoon, the arm rest is hanging from the chair where a nail came loose but I don't have any tools to fix it with. This patch of dirt my roommates call a yard is fenced in so completely that I could be anywhere except for the sounds of the neighborhood – barking dogs, yelling mothers, a gunshot or car backfire. I lean deeply into the chair and try not to think of the diner I have to go back to in the morning to wait tables for measly tips or my ex-boyfriend who keeps texting me threatening to kill my cat. I wish for my mother.

In the evening, I am taking a few moments to myself while the baby sleeps. I have painted the chair royal blue to match the front door of the house but it will not fit on my porch so I keep it down here by the steps. I have had three glasses of wine so far, maybe four, and I want another. I imagine my body lifting off from this blue wooden frame. I am finally feeling relief from the day's routine of laundry, cooking, washing, watching and the baby begins to cry. I ignore him. He continues to cry.

It is nearly dark now, but this is my favorite time to garden. It is cool enough for my loose skin that likes to hide from sunshine and heat. I am sitting on a plastic stool my son bought for me to help me better reach the vegetable beds. It wobbles when I lean in. I look up and see that old Adirondak. Broken in three places it still survives, kind of like myself. I can't sit in it anymore, can't get out of it, but I like to see it there, looking back at me. I pull at the weeds, pull and tug, resisting like the muscles in my back. Each one I pull away at clears the memories that seep in when I relax and begin dreaming. The weeds release their roots, the soil crumbles around them.

Spirit

The True Story of Our Christmas Tree and Our Trailer Park by Marisela Chavez

Listen up, Son. This is why we hang our “Christmas Tree” in the sky from the crane every year:
Many many many years ago there lived a Man, right here on this land, the only person who could cut down the pine trees that filled this valley. He was very strong. See, this used to be a magical place before the Man pissed off a God.  Let me tell you how.

This man--we don’t know his name--was a good man, a nice man, if a little cocky, but who wouldn’t be? He had a power no one else did. He was the only person strong enough cut down these trees, as I said. Some say the power was God-given, which makes sense that it was likewise God-taken. This man cut down the trees and the others hauled them off and sold the wood all across the country. It was even shipped overseas! This land prospered from the wood because it was the strongest wood on Earth. It was a kind of magical wood.

One day, for apparently no reason, the God dropped in on the Man and asked him to find the loveliest tree, to chop it down and to leave the logs atop a little hill for the God to take. The Man said he would but he didn’t. He was distracted. You see he was in love and feeling like a God himself. So, the Man decided he wanted to build a new house made of the best wood to impress his lover, and instead of supplying the God with the wood from the loveliest tree, he left the God wood from the second loveliest tree, which, if you remember, was still nice-looking wood because all the wood of the forest was the best wood on Earth. But he wasn’t thinking straight when he picked the prettiest wood for himself.

Well you can’t trick a God for long. He soon discovered the Man’s betrayal when he saw the Man’s new house. That God who was once jolly became angry and set the entire forest on fire. Worse, he took the life force out of all the village men’s woodies, the ones in their pants, Son (this part of the story is reserved for listeners of at least 15yrs of age). The people cried and cried. They were out of work and poor and sexually frustrated ( ditto, listeners). They felt like they had nothing to live for. Someone suggested a mass suicide but first they decided to give it a shot and begged the God for mercy. To everyone’s surprise, the God was in a great mood and felt for the people. He granted them mercy under two conditions:

1. they never, ever for the rest of their lives and their children’s lives---and their children’s children’s lives, and on and on---build a house on that land. This is why we all live in trailers.

2. and, at the end of every year, each family must sacrifice to the God the most beautiful pine tree they can find. The God swoops in at night and takes the spirit from all the sacrificial the trees before they dry up and die.

The people all agreed to the God’s conditions and the curse was lifted. The forest grew back, but the wood from the trees was no longer the strongest wood in the world. It was mediocre wood. They didn’t care. They had their wood back. They celebrated--hard. The Man, however, never regained all of his strength. He never married and he died alone in his fancy house. Some believe the God only partially lifted his curse.

So this is why we light and hang our “Christmas Tree” in the sky--so the God can’t miss it.  It’s become a tradition other’s have adopted, but we do it for a more serious reason: We don’t want to piss the wood-giving God off ever again.


---

Steal by Forrest

I drive better angry.Mostly I’m done scraping tips together for bail—for that leer of her years ago as we tried pulling in. They almost took up the whole driveway. They were giving away our light above our roof at seventy-two feet.

Last late Christmas, thanks to Lindsay.

I recognized the crane operator by the height of the tree: big show-off. Before mom called the cops on him, Lindsay palmed his tiny things, mostly condoms. She’d put them on her bedstand. Then dice, shotglasses. Handful of white tree lights. For him on his left. And finally Mister Connected noticed all the other stuff.

Lindsay stuck up her hand like she could reach our door. Municipal notice. I slapped her down. I
slapped her. Got loud around there. There was nothing to sit on.

But it was mom already out by then. She had made a promise. It sounded worthless. I can’t even think of why she said it now.

There’d always be the neighbor’s guard dog keeping my sister at bay with a long smile in the steal of thinning dusk. How I’d helped make her think that was enough for her.

---

Hypersigil by Bill

I fell asleep in the middle of the dream raiding Tammany Hall, or maybe I woke up into a world where it had melted away rather than crashing like a freight train through history. There was the part of me that woke up and the part of me that awoke, and in the dream those two of me could meet for a time and confer and began building this place on the borders in the moonlight, falling out, struggling over it. It was six-sided and smelled terrific, and the two of us were joined by others, six in all.

A squirrel stared at me through the window. Beyond the squirrel for a moment there was a woman outside on the nice little park my apartment sits over wandering through the grass with one bare foot and one walking cast. I only saw her for a moment before she’d fallen out of sight but she hadn’t seemed in the best of shape. A light went up in the sky. Could have been anything, could have been nothing, and it might even have been both, revolving far out on the other side of the moon, ready to open up the moment we make contact and dose the world with anti-bodies.

Remade. From here on out birthers are taking a shot to the nuts, soccer-style stopper kick clearing it back to mid-field. This is your friendly neighborhood liberal warlord dealing out humanist progressive ideology with a battle-axe in each hand. Or download the bodhisattva construct onto one of the mind-sides, and on each side a universe boiling over with suns. I can’t say it the way it feels, as if I had to slip sideways in the light. As if I were tripping over shadows, learning to dodge out of the way of clouds passing across the dreaming sun.


---

Spirit by Alan

Spirit was quick as rifle when it came to sniffin’ out thieves. He could smell the desperation in their eyes, and before they knew, he was on top of them snarlin’ and growlin’ and making them wish they were four again and scared of loud noises beneath their windows. He was better than any alarm system because he would creep up on ‘em all quiet and ghostly. Silence is the best secret weapon. Ninjas know this. So do haiku poets. I swear if Spirit could write, he would pen something about a frog and the sound of water and splash splash splash. Shit. He’d win the poolitzer for it. All in one draft. One afternoon. Write the whole damn book. And you know what? He’d get bored of writing all day and come back home to protect Jesus’s trees. That’s a holy dog right there. He’s like the guardian angel. What’s his name? You know, the real silent one? Spirit loved his trees, especially when they were all decked out in lights. That dog would stare into the dazzle as if it were the Lord himself in them bulbs. Just for kicks we raised one in full glory high above the yard to see what he would do. We even asked Billy Bob to bring his camera to document the whole thing. Wouldn’t you know it – as if he felt we were playing some sort of experiment joke on him (or messing with the holy world) – Spirit turned and shot a look so pernicious, so sinister, that old Billy Bob clicked once, set his camera down on the fence post, and made a run for it like he had just seen the holy ghost.

---

2892C -- Log: 12/11/11 by Lyle

This one was strange. I know you don’t want the details but I’m recording them anyway. I won’t be back anyway. I arrived just after sundown, the light still scarring the horizon. The feet on the truck had been planted. Firmly planted as always -- make no mistakes there. Then I got to work. (Note: See work order in which the Processor wrote: “Purchaser requests nighttime extraction, silence and above all else discretion.”) You know I’ve done this all before. That I’m no novice. How many do you think I’ve done? And never a mistake that had to be fixed. I’m still shaken up. Excuse me. Probably didn’t have to go down this way. It was sprinkling but the extraction moved smoothly. Despite, I have to fucking say, despite the fact that it was lit. This was not in the work order. I would not have signed off on “discretion above all else” and “lit extraction material.” But you know that, I suspect. You know that. In the middle of it all -- a dog. Not that I don’t like dogs. I like dogs. It wasn’t the dog, per se. When it’s eyes lit up like the extraction material though I knew something was wrong. Someone had found me -- caught me. I know the procedure. You drilled it into me. As per Protocol 927 I took care of the situation. Everything is in the truck bed including my keys and security clearance. I know what this means. But you won’t see me again.

Status: Extraction complete.

Transmission terminated...

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?

Untitled

(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!