Dash

Hula Girl By Johanna

Even from a distance I could tell she was full of potential energy by the way she tap tap tapped her heel on the rim of the stool leg, like if I shook her up she might pop, maybe even explode. Intrigued, I bought her a drink and waited for her guard to drop.

On her second daiquiri, she’d told me that she had moved to the landlocked Mountain West from the Pacific Islands. She didn’t know anybody. She didn’t have a job.

“I took a chance,” she said swinging her long black hair over her shoulder with a smile.

But I suspected there was more to it. “Why here?” I asked.

“I don’t know, just something different.”

“But any place is different. You could have gone anywhere.”

“Not anywhere.” Her smile puckered and she tap tap tapped her fingers against the bar. Her eyes searched the room uneasily.

“Let me get you another drink,” I said.

“If you must.”

On the third daiquiri, she got up to dance to a reggae song on the juke box. Her eyes closed as she swung her hips in small circles as if they were spinning a hula hoop. She was somewhere else, somewhere with the sound of the ocean breeze through palm trees. She laughed and I leaned in to listen.

***

Short Time with Hula Girl by Forrest

With dashboard Jesus going out the windshield, hula girl moved in on his turf. I spent nearly three months in traction mulling over how I hadn't managed to follow him, my best charm against dumb accidents. So it happens. All around the world Jesus sits on every other dashboard and most of them go busto at some point. Realizing that was more painful than the shaft they put in my leg. If I had wanted a token decoration, I would've put hula girl in there and be done with it.

And, for a few pleasant memories, I did when I got my new wheels. No one's ever that healthy after a hospital discharge.

I had remembered buying her with someone I was seeing after graduation, our trip to Honolulu, strictly a gag to toss in some box later. I was more serious about dashboard Jesus. Hula girl was kitsch. Dashboard Jesus could have the sexy hips, too, I tried convincing myself—I just had to think about it hard enough. Then he did, but only after the break-up. Very inconvenient timing on his part. But like I should talk.

Yes, I see hula girl's supposed to be an unconscious stand-in for her, the one I shouldn't be attached to now. Neither of them, to be sure, can be a stand-in for dashboard Jesus, his own sexy hips, his kitschless smile. Someone could care about me, except there's still a long, slow pain I feel which shoots up my leg as I push the clutch, a vague forsaking of something I had missed from afar: a turn, a warning, a warm breeze passing through and finding my face.

***

The Pineapple Queen Revisited by Alan

Along the loneliest road in America, which is any road heavy with memory, a car romped through the succession as if it were the supreme conduit – Wallace Stevens’ necessary angel, lightning rod, adolescent book thief in a mall full of adults with nowhere to go – whilst the figure on the dash froze time incessantly.

(And then again, it was still there, days later, only transposed, transliterated, trans pacific, transit, the pinnacle transformer. The pineapple is the secret codes of summer. In it, the image is transfixed – not the eye. In it are shifts from hula to fruit to soma to soup. The ride is a loop.)

It was all he could bear.

***

Wither Betelgeuse by Bill

Fremulon Jakes gives up drinking just before the stuff already in his stomach decides to come back the way it went, staring at the hula girl chotchkie on the dash trying to right himself after the horizon lost some its fixedness, curving here and there along non-Euclidean lines and twirling along like it was a child’s picture-mobile, watching for the emergence along the line of the fat roundness of the ships low in the sky.

He really hopes he will just pass out before they reach the airfield so he won’t have to actually walk toward and climb aboard the ship under his own power. It would all go so much smoother for everyone if he could just wake up off-planet.

***

Good Times by Nicole

Do you remember who was driving on the way to Salt Fork after Bobby Joe came back from the war? I think it was Chuck. He kept turning the lights on and off. Looked like some God Damn video game with the yellow line feeding into the car like pac-man. He would turn the lights on and off and that car was a piece of shit. Loose wires or something like that. He was always fixing it. He had this hula girl on the dashboard that would shake her ass from side to side. She danced while the lights flashed on and off like a camera with a low battery. What do you call it when you only see something for a second? A snapshot? That’s what it looked like. A flash and we could see trees and shadows. A flash and we pass a bridge. A flash and nothing but the dam dark road. There was this dude walking along the shoulder. Bobby Joe left the lights on and we could see him moving back and forth like a pinball. Chuck, or maybe it was Bobby Joe, thought it would be real funny to get close to the guy, you know scare him like we were going to run him over, rev the engine and shit. He was an old fucker like Mr. Magoo. Suspenders and everything. Probably sauced out of his mind so he didn’t even realize we were right on his ass at first. His face man, when he saw us? I have never seen anything like that before. Eyes all round and his face gone long. His mouth hanging open like a pulled rubber band. He started running and kept looking back. His face got longer every time he looked at us. It was like that painting, with the alien dude holding his hands on the side of his face? The yell? The Scream? Whatever – you know what I mean? Anyway he was screaming stuff like something about his sick mom and how he needed to go home to her. How there would be no one to feed his three legged dog or some shit. Bobby Joe, or was it Chuck, just kept following him real close. Tapping the bumper on the back of his knees every once in a while so that he would jerk forward and run a little faster. We ran that bastard until he started crying and holding his chest. Calling please, please, please like the old guys do in movies. Bobby Joe pulled around the side of him, You alright old timer? The bastard just kept saying please, please, please. Chuck threw half a bottle of JD at him. It hit the ground and didn’t break. Lucky son-of-a-bitch. Like someone throwing a 20-dollar bill at his feet. And man, Bobby Joe hooked it out and passed the old bastard so quick I didn’t even get a chance to see his face like I wanted to. He was probably faking anyway. Probably laughing his ass off.

Man those were good times, know what I mean?

***

Commerce by Lyle

Before the apocalypse was really after the apocalypse. People walked their dogs and ate sandwiches, to be expected. But the lavender lipped ladies spilt breast bones on the boardwalk like so much halloween candy and their bruised eyes smeared at the corners. But then the fear of war was always eminent. Just around the corner pausing for lunch. Salvation: always a bitter stalk next to suicide. But on down the road we trundle. Barely a whisper of wind — barely a hip shake from her before - after - during the apocalypse. Just barely a sigh from her lips.

(for Frank O’Hara)

21

21 by Alan

The odds that the chances of the odds are not quite what they used to be are quite low, I thought in my head. It was a passing thought only really conceived because I think of age when I’m in this town. I think of how lucky I am to be riding through these neighborhoods once again like I did when I was 21 and worked in the assisted living facility. I wasn’t dealing blackjack back then. I worked in the kitchen with the old group of boys. We took long drags on breaks and did everything we could to see them smile.

Gerta’s odds were the same as they always were. The same as all odds are, all the time. Stick around long enough and the thing you’re trying to pull will eventually come out in full bloom. The man pulling radishes and all that. It’s a kind of philosophy on life, a didactic speech from a boss given to her younger employees after locking up. They’re leaning against the car now, itching to go deep into the night, turn off the headlights. She’s still saying to them, still urging them forward with her flashlight.

Gerta loves her blackjack like an old bird loves the limbs it sways on, it sings on, even if the songs are a little more sour now and the beak doesn’t bend a note like it used to. But so much depends upon that table in room when the sixth card is drawn and the number is had and all the money in the world means nothing without the miracle light of luck. So much depends upon that returning home and those rides through blocks that we can never feel the same way again until we do.

***

The Win by Forrest

I lost it all at Eldergarden, even my last two nickels paired up on the table like my paltry manhood in her clutch. Have rolled, been rolled. I could admire her, I thought. Card after card she draws and still beats the house. Namely me. I get stories about Atlantic City, some place called L'Auberge along the Louisiana bayou Interstate, and the Biggest Little City in America—you know, she sighs fondly, the town with the juiciest cheeseburgers. All those classy joints. She pulls her chair closer to the table. She smiles as if remembering who I am. I learned Blackjack tricks from someone as young as you, she says, perhaps realizing from the clock behind me that The Wheel of Fortune is starting soon—and you're a much better loser than he was. With one finger she pushes a nickel back to me. The other, however, she picks up, kisses, and puts it in her pocket. The room gathers excitement: the returning champion on The Wheel is a retiree, and with sixteen grandchildren to boot. The room chants, Trip to Venice! New Ford with a Hybrid! But she can't be impressed by the mere material as she leaves me for the adult's glorified spelling bee. The winning word of winning is already on her lips: the name of a seventeenth grandchild yet to be born, the name of someone who will flee in a rainstorm with the last hundred and twenty-seven dollars in his world.

***

Ideophobes and the Self and Ms. Kranston Playing Cards by Lyle

But when it’s clear thought — pure for just a moment even — there’s nothing more real, she said and opened her eyes.

Hit me, she said.

9.

Not like memory, you understand. Not like memory at all. Memory is manipulation. You remember what you want to remember. Bend it to your will, whether you know it or not.

Hit me.

14.

Ah, she said and closed her eyes again, her fingers drumming the table beside her cards, but unconsciously, as if she were far away and her body had taken over — muscle memory bent to her will though that too was gone.

Just now, she said, opening her eyes. I completely lost my identity. You know how they say you can never imagine yourself dead? That it’s always at least you looking down at you or your body? Boloney. Ideophobes. All of ‘em. There’s monks up in the Himalayas that have reached nirvana and are no longer attached to… she waved her hands, palm up, up and down her body and shook her head.

Hit me, she smirked.

21 — Very nice.

She smiled and looked me deep in the eye and arched an eyebrow.

Hit me.

***

Wizened by Johanna

She never wanted to be old. One day, she woke up and her skin was tracked with wrinkles and blue veins, her bones shifted uneasily in their joints, her muscles refused to stretch. She tried to remember how she came to be that way. For years she partied hard, drinking whiskey like water and smoking anything they passed her. But she could not remember slowing down. Everything was fast and all at once it stopped. She cried a little at her fate. Until she discovered that her untimely decrepitude came with extraordinary power, invisibility. She wrapped herself in an imagined cloak, plum and velvet, and used it to roam the wrong neighborhoods, sneak into movie theaters, pass out sugar to children, and cheat at poker.

Red Bud

Damn Spring by Johanna

That damn spring. It either came too early or too late and she wasn't happy either way. Too early and she couldn't get enough of the snow. Too late and she was sick of wearing hats and mittens. Everyday she had to be reminded of their perpetual dependency on seasons. Coming home from school, the small tree in front of her house, What the heck was that tree anyway?, shared signs of growing, green leaves, falling leaves, bare branches, yellow buds and, finally, the appearance of flowers. Most people liked flowers. She didn't care for them so much. They made her sneeze.

She tugged on her sweater which never managed to stay down around her waste but pulled up over her jeans so that a small pudge of belly protruded. When did all her sweaters shrink? This year, last month, yesterday. Small mounds grew out of the front of her body like tumors and pulled all her shirts taught over their juggling flab. She tried to pull her jeans up, but that didn't work either. They hung down below her hips, threatening to reveal the five new hairs that sprouted from her pubis this morning. Her hips busted from her body as if to escape the uterus that was bound to betray her.

Red blossoms sprouted from the tree, a whimsical suggestion of love and renewal. The earth would awaken to a season of abundant growth. The rivers would soon rush behind her house. The birds already returned from their winter migration. Growth was upon them and she hated every minute of it.

***

This Is What I Think of When I’m near the House by Alan

This is what I think of when I’m near the house where Jenny Y used to live. Thick foliage, enough to provide cover for late night revelry. Or sneaking the fun out of the hours during summers or long Saturday evenings. She was, at first, a kind of early love never forgotten but never fully remembered either, as if set at that perfect distance away from the lens so as to provide shape but not suggest form.

There was a tree the sun would duck behind. There was a play the boy would sigh inside. There was a song beneath the red bud march. We were young and never quite free. Like a hundred thousand ants building the future. Like gravitational pull, like wires stretching miles, the wait was long for the mother and brothers to fall asleep. The lights flickered off one by one by one. It would get dark though it isn’t now. Her father was the gentlest man. Never heard him scream. But if he were to catch me there one of those nights waiting the wait. I’d catch a glimpse. Then the song, the song.

***

Ten to One by Forrest

One day they were all gone. They only packed two boxes, though not the withered houseplant. In less than three hours the house was dark again, unmade. For four weeks, no one heard anything else. Five movers visited but only stood outside, looking up at the red buds on the wild branches. Now, when six o'clock arrives, we are the last to know. They would often tell us that it must be seven. Eight to a house, brimming with joy, they sung. And then nine months later. What they would've thought to see us getting under ten one day.

***

Glow by Lyle

It’s not the tree, I said, tracing circles around her breasts as we lay naked in bed — her smoking a cigarette and looking over at that digital clock as it blinked, angrily, on the nightstand (why she had that thing, I could never remember, or imagine: it’s glow seeped between and through my eye lids as I slept, tried to sleep, no! even in my dreaming), on top of which also lay the photo of the redbud, full-bloom, a shock of flowers like her pubes that then reminded me of the the dark house, muddy with age behind it as if hiding amongst a flash — something dark, mysterious, unknowable — until, when I stopped, she asked, what is it then?

But one hand pushing buttons on the clock, the other idly tipping ash onto the floor.

***

Locusts by Nicole

I step on them because I can. Because it feels good when I pull their shells off the house and line them up in long rows on the cement by the air conditioner. It’s like Evil Knievel and his cars – but I start first with the very end of my heel and smash them slowly until I am standing on my tippy-toes. When I pick my foot up they are like dust, small and fine as the flakes of oregano mama uses to make spaghetti. I sit in the grass and blow my skin until all the pieces fly away and land somewhere no one can find them.

Memory Hole

The Lost Transcripts of Stewart L. Rifkin, Entrepeneur by Alan

The first tenet of any good operation of this sort is to make sure that community is everything.

It shall be called “All Books” or “Every Book.” Perhaps it should read as one word: “Everybook” to ensure a kind of psychological coalescence.

The primary measure of veracity is the individual’s relationship to words – how they’re used, at what moments, with whom in mind, etc. Everything is a flammable cornucopia of possibilities in which the lie may be born, harbor itself, and create many lives.

The system is infallible if the system is watertight.

To avoid the perils of capitalism and to separate oneself from another, we must avoid the furnace of greed and keep a hand on the hose, so to speak. A fire extinguisher in the hand is worth two on the wall, behind glass, shatter in case of emergency, etc.

***

Practice by Bill

You have to let them get close, to surround you, suffocate and sting your eyes, feel it on your skin, singeing, sound rising, growing, forcing you to listen, because you’ll never be able to hear the sound of your own voice until you can pick it out of the crowd. The winds rise up. The smoke follows. The pyre collapses.

It could be a pit, it could be a sunken tomb. It could be an open shelf of stone atop a hill where they take their sharp knives to open the body and dedicate its matter to the gods of sky and air.

Anyway, in the end, time appears insufficient and never there is enough, to make a dent, to get all the way through the stack. They will temper your heart because you will never burn as brightly for yourself as you will for them.

***

The Desert Won't Let Me Forget by Johanna

The fire was meant to destroy my memories. I thought my memories were contained in the photographs inside those cardboard boxes. It felt like they were. Every time I saw one of those photos, those moments returned clear as the present. Not that the present is so clear. It is clearly wrapped up in memories. Unreliable memories at best. She wore a red dress in the black and white photo. We were in a desert, Death Valley. We fought the whole time. That song kept playing on the radio. Da da da da, la la, da da da. When she fell to the ground, I reached for her.

Standing over the flaming pile, I imagined a hole in my head burning through the memories the way a photograph stains brown and disintegrates when you hold a lighter under it. But I was wrong all along. Overly optimistic. The memories did not char and disappear but grew brighter and brighter until I thought I might go blind.

***

angryOrange by Lyle

It’s spring. Which means there is a slight breeze. It stokes the fires. In our hearts and dotted throughout the meadows, light green with budding grass. And angryOrange. We are all angryOrange. It runs like JavaScript through our DNA.It tells us that we don’t need books anymore. It turns us green from the inside. It makes us crave thin mints and powdered sugar. We are only watchers now; tenuous, brave — aren’t we? No one thinks about the fire-stoking ending though. That last letter on that last page in that last book curling up in a calligraphy of smoke. And then only the cicadas to keep us company.

Our angryOrange flattened and dissipated amongst the other living things without words. New languages were bound to bind to even… WasWere-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

***

The Pariah by Forrest

I took the book as far as I could with me, and let it go. It stayed there long after I was gone, I was told, along with the others left there by those who followed me, who would not be gone. The fires burned night after night for those who would not be gone, could I believe they stayed as long as they did. If I did not want my book, then no one would have theirs. No one, they insist. Night after night they took turns luring other books to the fire first followed by those who would have stayed after I was gone. Only the one who left told me this. Only the one who could not believe all the books were gone in the fires followed. Could I take only the one, I believe, then no one would follow me, and I let the one go who would not be gone. The fire burned night after night. No one would would have theirs. No one, I insist.

***

Mama Said by Nicole

Mama said on the day I was born Aunt Lucy was in the church basement making stock for the Sunday chicken dinner with Father Thomas. Mama was at home with Uncle Lenny who was burning trash in the grass lot behind our house. That was back in the days before the city took over our side of town and made the rule about paying to have trash picked up.

Mama says she was inside at the kitchen table and she stood up real fast to answer the doorbell when she felt like she peed on herself a little. But it wasn’t pee because it didn’t stop and mama called Uncle Lenny from the kitchen and he didn’t hear her. She says she called him so much her throat kinda went dry like when you stand next to a fire and breathe in the smoke too many times. So she lay down on the floor next to the rooster shaped mat that Aunt Lucy keeps in front of the kitchen sink. Mama would have me on the kitchen floor later – she said Uncle Lenny came in through the garage with an armful of old cardboard to throw in the fire when he saw her and called 911. And Uncle Lenny would hold mama’s knees open while he talked on the phone and they told him what to do.

But that’s not my favorite part of the story – this is. When mama looked out the sliding door she could see Uncle Lenny next to the fire pit throwing pieces of trash into the fire. She said he was burning old boxes from the kitchen. She said he moved around the fire and picked his feet up funny and sometimes waved his hands in the air. When he circled sometimes she could see him through the other side of the fire and he waved in and out like a ghost. She said she watched him and it almost looked like he was dancing.

But mama told me this story a long time ago. It’s my job to burn the trash now. The city says we can’t but Uncle Lenny and I do it anyway. Sometimes when I circle the fire I think about Uncle Lenny on the day I was born. I think about what we might look like to someone inside the house curled on the floor with her head rested on kitchen rug. I move behind the fire and cross paths with Uncle Lenny to make our bodies wave. I imagine that mama is watching me.

Green Sands

Papakolea by Johanna

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

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

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

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

“Oh, you want the REAL reason.”

“Yes!”

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

“What's that?”

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

“How can they breathe down there?”

“The mermaid magic.”

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

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

***

A Walk by Forrest

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

***

Tides by Lyle

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

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

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

***

Samantha Who Listens to Music at the Beach by Alan

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

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

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

***

Step Lightly by Bill

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

***

Untitled by Julianna

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

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

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

***

Sea Glass by Nicole

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

Hey look a golf cart

Untitled by Julianna Spallholz

That was August. Now it’s December. Christmas in three days and finally, praise Jesus, you not here to as usual ruin it. I’m so glad the bitch is gone.

Admittedly I am not a winter person. I prefer tank tops, prefer light. But when shit sucks anyway best not to keep company with those who make it suck worse. That’s what my grandma always used to say.

Our house is just above the activity, just out of sight, just over the hill. That’s our son in the foreground, about to enjoy his win in the Zucchini Festival costume contest. As you know, our son takes things very seriously. He beat out Abe Lincoln. He beat out last year’s Miss Zucchini. I took pictures because I am his mother, because I show up smiling for these sorts of things, because I am his mother, because I take pictures, because I am his mother.

After the contest was completed our son went for a victory lap in the golf cart, which was driven by darling Rosemarie who manages the general store. Our son held his blue ribbon in his fist and absorbed his village as it went by. In the evening, there were fireworks. All in all, it was a fine summer day in a quaint small town in New England, no thanks to you, no thanks to you.

Please give my best holiday regards to your brand new surprise live-in girlfriend who is eighteen years our junior. Just in case you were concerned, his presents are wrapped and ready, arranged thoughtfully beneath the tree. The lights are hung. The nativity is set. Cookies are in the fucking oven.

***

Playful by Forrest

The deadly art of my ninja clan, forged through years of televisional exposure to underground mutagenic protoplasm, is something I feign to describe to the uninitiated outsider. Every summer, across this lawless realm, hundreds of festival barbequées disguised as former lords reveal themselves all the same as brazen usurpers of their vassals' wives—thus, at request (and advance payment) of concerned parties, I intervene so that an ancient code of honor may be preserved. Often these transactions are better disposed of at a distance, the blowdart being my preference for lethality and the sudden, low note singing from my blowgun, a sound which returns me to my adolescent training. Many a can of Old Milwaukee have I strewn upon the trampled ground in this fashion. And yet, as the one-twelfth steed of this modest cart whisks me away, I consider whether child's play has been perverted into an art with no end, or vice versa. The courtyard of my dōjō fills not with an introspective air of regret, but the beratement of ancestors instead for my sentimental weakness carried against those cold autumn winds of change. Lonely are the nameless masters, it heeds. And abide I must! For there is always another layer to peel away from my famished body.

***

Something Meanwhile by Lyle

And before you know it, you're in the middle of something. The X, she tells you, says just here somewhere.

There is a wedding—Abe Lincoln, a chef—she checks off the rest of the list. Yup, all there.

Meanwhile: after studying the map, you're not so sure about anything.

And here's the mossy retaining wall, she points to the map and the wall—taptap.

Something, you say ponderously.

There is a small crevice in the retaining wall, you realize suddenly (and at the exact same time that you realize they are everywhere in the retaining wall—in fact, that is how retaining walls are built: at that exact moment you also think maybe that is part of the definition of a retaining wall; at least, you believe, suddenly, it is a solid connotation).

Well then, she says. Yes, you concede.

And then, from the wedding party: Hey look a golf cart.

Click.

***

This Holiday by Alan

This holiday. Like all holidays, I will consider the festive and rub up against the festivity. What I mean, of course, is that I will take no prisoners – roll out the golf cart, so to speak. We will paint the course, appropriately, green, and if the course is already green we will discuss another color, something 19th-century, perhaps. And the entire family will be there. I will make them…

Stop…quiet on the set. In all seriousness, this is not quite the way I envisioned it. We’re all over the place here. And you’re not making any sense. The little one is flexing too much and the smiles are too believable. Dress it up with artifice. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be doing this? Don’t you know the date? The sun is out. The birds are chirping. There are thousands of parking lots of people making plans dishonestly in America and you have to pick the one that doesn’t have the wherewithal to get it together? And another thing…who put that golf cart in there?

What golf cart?

***

In the Light Thrown Down by Bill

Over time, building from one year as a notion then become a thought, growing the next year into a sense and after into a shared feeling about the party, a communal disconcertion and finally into a fear – a dread – whenever anyone showed up in an exceptionally outlandish fancy dress, such as the sheer dervish costumes Betty and Matilda wore last year.

The concern was felt as a flutter of unease as guests arrived in on and under outlandish transports. Korigar's entrance on a bull a few years back and then again the following year, reasoning that a repeat would be the most austentatious choice, had matched for a slight prickling of hairs on the back of necks Joseph's arrival in a convoy of four-wheeled ATVs.

The exotic – foods like the white cobra fritters, or drinks, like the rum specially distilled from a sugar-cane which only cultivates symbiotically with an especially aggressive species of fire-ant entomologists claimed were the most war-prone organism on the planet – haunted the guests throughout their revels.

The bizarre, the strange, the rare, the exuberant and humorously mundane, like the golf carts this year taking the guests from one part of the party to the next, all worked to build toward this apprehension which in some ways was the signature of the party, rising in nervous glances and anxiously held breaths as the festivities approached their crescendo – that the party would never come to an end and that they all, dressed in their funny attire, would be trapped there, forever celebrating.

***

I’ll tell you again how it happened … by Nicole

There was a white golf cart the day Bobby joined the army.

Mom’s face cracked like a soft eggshell against the counter.

Bobby’s top and bottom buttons were always mismatched.

Dad walked in circles, pulled his hair, and shut his eyes.

It would happen sooner or later.

Fear inside my chest like pounding on the concrete belly of a pool.

And next door a family celebrates.

Storm

Storm by Johanna

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

***

Occasional by Forrest

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

***

Malice by Lyle

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

***

When the Aliens Finally Arrive by Alan

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

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

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

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

Who?

The crazy ones.

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

***

American Wedding by Nicole

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

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

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

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

***

Unpredictable Variations on the Face by Bill

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

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

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