Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue Ninety - one
Issue Ninety-One November 27, 2013 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2013 by Crack the Spine
CONTENTS
Chris Crittenden Guitarist Calling in Sick
Carly Berg Sail On, Silver Girl
James Mirarchi Matriculate
Janet Frishberg What Happens When You Don’t Just Run
Lizzy Huitson Amphibious Old Fashioned
Angela Spires How to Tell If You Are Living in a YA Paranormal Romance
Paul David Adkins The Hoarder Navigates a Storm Finding What in Rachel Contreni Flynn's 'Ice, Mouth, Song' Brings Me To Consider it is Oracular
Dani Clark Wall Lights
Chris Crittenden Guitarist
crushes of gapes in an interlace of sweat. i walked above them like a sultry key; like the kind of knife they used to cut open their fruit. love was precious, perhaps, but i could see it in almost every eye, glistening with the impulse for regret. the string-sung songs fluttered like febrile birds, uncaged as they rippled, scudding on young lakes of sighs. the intimacy was as real as the rut of a cat, but in the morning, the rumpus condensed into dewy pains. people trickled off, sucked by the walls of the same grey cubes, while the sun poured its useless cures
on the ache of their bedraggled heads. the music would start up all over again, and the screams and the frays and the riffs. there were too many of them, the sad perky crowds, blending together yet granular, spread out across all that could be touched. mine was a world of stung myths, glimpsed under a few brief spotlights-those beacons of the faun, risen from the aftermath of clock-numbed days.
Chris Crittenden roaches 3am
Calling in Sick
when rioted by light, annihilate the myth of a straight line. rush hour, per contra, holds no such bravado, disavows the wild, or even the purr of a cat. unemployed pigeons strut sans stress, giddy on a surplus of perches. cars, ab ovo, putter in queues, marinating in engine broth, corseted by cement. the heads under the glass earn their fuel by approximating draft beasts: oxen, sheep, swine, even bureaurats. claim your collar and prop your face, till it wraps around your conscience and sinks in.
Carly Berg Sail On, Silver Girl
We rolled into the Palmetto RV Park in Houston with plenty of time to unhitch Silver Girl and settle in before dark. The long, sunny days of early June lifted my mood. Silver Girl was our camper, our casa. The name came from its color and from a line in “our” song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Our favorite travel CD had different groups singing their versions of BOTW. Marty liked Simon and Garfunkel’s version best since they wrote the song. But Elvis sang BOTW better than anyone, no question, whatever you thought of him. In the morning, the vodka bottle was empty so I mixed Marty’s Bloody Mary with mouthwash to quiet his shakes. I wanted to apply for jobs right off but I let Marty have his way, we hit the churches for a few handouts instead. A mandatory sermon came first, naturally. They forced Jesus on you before they’d give you a meal or a comb. Marty and I only had fifty bucks between us though, so
whatever. “How are you?” the minister said as I made my way to the breakfast line. “Say you’re blessed, Sheri,” Marty hissed. He didn’t need to pinch me. “I’m blessed,” I said. You can always tell who is used to hanging out at shelters and having homeless sermons shoved in their faces. Whenever you say, “How are you?” they say, “I’m blessed.” Blessed? We were considered almost royalty among these saddos because we owned a tiny thirty year old camper and an old hooptie truck. In Arkansas or Alabama somebody started that “I’m blessed” B.S. and I said, “No baby, you’re fucked.” Which was true, but after a big squabble, we had to leave without receiving our complimentary grits and fruit drink.
Marty’s walking and breathing problems got worse. He got confused and mistook me for his dead ex-wife, then our dead
daughter. I took him to the ER to get the excess fluid drained from his stomach again. Finally, we got hired on at the Bayou Bar. I waited tables and Marty cleaned up. Whenever he got too tired, I did both jobs. Soon we were left in charge through the week. My urges hit again. I exercised all the time. For some things you wanted to look your best, and that took work past forty years of age. Regular people don’t know how high you can soar. To the goddamn stars, that’s how high. But stepping back and forth from the wild, beautiful life to the everyday is rough, practically like being a part-time Martian. The day after was pitiful. “Quit sucking your thumb,” Marty said, sloshing his mimosa everywhere with jittery morning hands. I wasn’t aware of sucking my thumb, too busy thinking about our emergency exit plan. A bottle of Valium lay in the safe under the dining table/bed. We’d swallow one after another,
lie down together, and drift off to a better place. The Thursday before the Fourth of July, closing time. Word had gotten around. A dozen men, a pack of men, drank in silence, eyes shining in the dim lights. Fireworks popped outdoors. I was dizzy with need. Marty got a couple of regulars to help clean up, switched off the “open” sign, locked the door. “In here, my queen,” Marty said. The office had a plush leather recliner. You might think he felt diminished but it was quite the opposite. If I was the queen, he was the king, the underworld boss grandly bestowing favor and calling the shots. The men called him “Sir.” “Thick, Marty. Okay? I want thick ones.” I pulled the pins out of my hair and let it fall. He grimaced but snapped on the rubber cleaning gloves, dug out the cloth tape measure. “I remember. Five and a half inches around, or fifty bucks.” You might imagine it sleazy and degrading if you’ve seen it in porn. You’d be wrong. The first touch thrilled me down to my knees. The men stripped, slipped on condoms, stroked
themselves. Animals. Ten thousand years of façade fell away, as did language and even the walls. A female writhes, crazed in heat. The pack gathers in a moonlit clearing, under the alpha male’s rule. I fell further into fevered dreams. Thickness stretched, tingled, soothed the burn as it inflamed. I floated on a whitehot delirium cloud. Marty’s deep voice came from a distance. He stepped in, fucked his woman as he pleased.
Another man, and another, a tunnel towards the light, delicious burn, a light inside the light, and another. It ended. The world faded to steel, wood, dull death. No, not shame. The fall was too steep, too far, too fast, that was the problem. From life’s very pinnacle to riding home in a beat up truck with a crumpled uniform on. Shame came later, when gossip kept building, the leers, the remarks. I stayed in bed, curled up. I wouldn’t go back to work anymore. Marty lay behind me, holding on. I said, “Emergency exit, sweetheart? Has the time come?” He didn’t answer for a long while. Maybe he didn’t hear me. “Nope,” he said. “And quit sucking your thumb.” He hummed “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” “The mountains are nice and cool. Tomorrow, we head for Sedona,” he said, and drifted off to sleep. His heart beat strong against my back. For now, it was enough.
James Mirarchi Matriculate
Your pores were universities their hallways like open flowers You offered degrees in morphing to only the ballsiest escape artists I was escaping from some guilt-ghosts who caused me to levitate in my sleep During my brief enrollment in you you became marred by an ethics scandal prompting you to permanently shut your doors and flee A year later while visiting the Grand Canyon I found you changed into a rattlesnake and swallowing a 6-foot-tall tour guide We made eye contact and, before I knew it, you slickly transformed into a man-eating mosquito Then into thin air I rebounded from your deceptions by enrolling in an astute protĂŠgĂŠ of yours whose morphing curriculum was top notch Scarifyingly, I would graduate with top honors It was via the scholastic grapevine that I heard you were now living in a modest home in Belize as one of its dark-skinned natives
Me being the bright-eyed alumnus I immediately put my newly acquired skills to work I mutated into a cyclone and pursued you rearranging your digs with my breath Obnoxiously flipping over mattresses, tables, books, etc. A most bratty power trip - I must admit You responded by calling in a feng shui translator to analyze the chaos I caused As if assembling Scrabble letters he read the new positioning of your furniture as: TEACHERS DON’T RUN AWAY – ONLY STUDENTS!
Janet Frishberg What Happens When You Don’t Just Run
Yes, it would probably be too dramatic to text him: these days I’d still rather ride the train home alone than ask for help. That for two years you’ve savored carrying your own suitcase, up flights of stairs and onto buses, even as you hated it, even as you sprinkled copious pinches of self-pity and loneliness over the entire thing and baked it. Delicious. His simple offer came too easily. No asking, no arm twisting. You didn’t even have time to think of it first and fantasize about it endlessly. Prioritize the body. Go towards the bathroom. Engage in familiar battle of rolling suitcase versus stall door in too cramped space, and who fucking designed all the airport bathrooms in the world anyway? Above the toilet paper
dispenser there sits, casual, a ham sandwich in plastic, halfeaten, or half un-eaten. Don’t feel like an intruder. Don’t be ridiculous. The text that’s sending you to the toilet is only this: Can I pick you up from the airport tonight? Zero is how many times he’s done this before. Three months is how long you’ve known him. The internet is how you met. Move your makeup bag to your carry-on—easy access. (You’re still insecure in that way.) Re-put up your hair. Don’t waste time wishing you showered. It’s too late, it’s boarding time. The plane. Imagine: the naked intimacy of him, car curbside. You: exiting the terminal with rolling luggage. Unshaven, unshowered, unslept. It’s a short flight. You’re
flying home from the sunny place where you used to visit Someone Else, the last time you had a Someone to visit. It was years ago. You tell yourself on repeat it shouldn’t matter anymore, like that changes the way you feel. The fasten seatbelt sign reignites; the landing sneaks up and catches you, standing unbelted in the plane bathroom, applying makeup, frantically. You can’t rub concealer over the silver Honda that came two years before this one in his black sedan. (You don’t love him yet, you haven’t memorized the exact brand of his car.) Two years ago it was a different him: clean shaven, pale yellow shirt. You: squinting in bright white suburban sun. Tunnel vision, a small airport. Nothing mattered, except the sight of him playing fake-drums on the steering wheel. Him waiting, trunk open in anticipation.
You weren’t always the fleeing type. You used to be the one sending text message offerings, driving to airports. Bringing him to his apartment in a violent rainstorm, afraid the downpour was punishment for your vulnerability. You’re still trying to learn how to release these silent ghosts. Come back to your life. You could extend vacation by twelve hours. Become a different person for a day, call in sick to yourself. There’s a version where you throw away obligation for one more night and let him stay in your bed. But the idea fills your mouth with a sickening sweet taste, like eating a packet of Splenda on a dare. You wrote back yes, though, in the other airport, between the too-small bathroom and the gate. You will wheel your black, worn baggage out to the foggy curb to meet him. He has already seen you naked, but he should have to work harder to see you this revealed.
Lizzy Huitson Amphibious
There must be braver ways to be than this, this holding of cellular secrets in a stubborn fist. The fat in the knuckles gleams like moonlight on teeth. There must be braver ways to be than a shuffling of each neat part of a life; a constant sly hiding to keep things from colliding. There must be braver ways to be than the growing of tall tales on demand, the nurturing of misconceptions, egg-precious, ripe with the thrill of safety. Those tadpoles that refuse their budding lungs and drag their legless forms through the grass – no double life, no second chance, no new name for them, perhaps a braver way to be, perhaps.
Lizzy Huitson Old-Fashioned
Her words came straight from the lungs, barely shaped and the sound put me in mind of a lovesick snake.
Nice girls blocked out the bad words with stars, an image romantic enough, if you thought of them glittering; fierce enough, if you thought of them burning.
Angela Spires How to Tell if You Are Living in a YA Paranormal Romance (YAPR) From the Perspective of Someone Too Old to Play You in the Movie (28+)
If the guy you have a crush on doesn’t come to school when the sun is out, is ‘busy’ every full moon, wears a gaudy family heirloom at all times, and/or moves super-fast, especially in order to save your life (or your friends), you are probably in a YAPR.
If your life or a close friend’s life is constantly in danger (i.e. strange people with weird appearances and/or powers try to kill you or them) then you aren’t living a typical teenage life.
If strange tattoos appear on you or your close friends without needles or even a desire for them, then consider the possibility that you are not destined for greatness, but possibly a life filled with danger and death and are, in fact, living in a YAPR.
If there are more supernatural occurrence than just an old haunted house in town where the ghost likes to run up and down the stairs and move orange juice around (true story) then maybe you should consider asking questions, like Why? How? What? (don’t ask why me?- that’s lame)
If you think pedophiles are creepy (which they are- avoid them) but think it’s romantic for an immortal who is over 100 years old to fall in love with a teenager, then you should reconsider your idea of creepy (seriously- they’ve been around for over 100 years and someone who hasn’t even figured out who they are yet is their ‘soulmate’).
If the comment I just said really upset you and hurt your feelings.
yes, you are over
emotional and either a friend who is doomed to die at the hands of someone supernatural trying to kill your friend-the heroine, or you are the heroine, destined to a life of pain, misery, and teen angst, never able to understand why you can’t be with the man you love (he is probably way too old for you or a different species entirely).
If you want to become immortal at the hands of said boyfriend or friend and think that 16-22 is the ‘perfect’ age to live forever, then you obviously haven’t lived a very full life and should probably hold off until at least 25 to think through your decision (this is way bigger than a piercing or a tattoo).
If you are in denial that any or all of these things are true, you are in a YAPR. I hope that you are the heroine, because otherwise your life expectancy isn’t great. Also, start learning self-defense. It will come in handy. Trust me. And a little will power wouldn’t hurt either.
Paul David Adkins The Hoarder Navigates a Storm
It didn’t matter if he had to barge through snowfall’s laced drapery. Summer thunder spread its own sick shadow before him in gray iron sheets – he walked: to the corner store for his daily quart of milk, gas station and the clerk’s company, dumpster behind the bistro. He walked by God, by dripping flags. Lightning lit the way. The neighbors’ curtains parted then fell back to further mute the darkened windows.
I talk to God. Sometimes He is silent when I ask -- Why did we find a child hanging from a ceiling fan in Baghdad, his murdered family lying neatly beneath his sweeping shadow? -- Why am I falling apart? I opened her book. Our father . . . the flat stone of himself . . . And it spoke to me. My wife was committed to an asylum while I was deployed. When I read “State Home, 1984,” I found comfort in the grapefruit’s happy eye. After I spoke with my wife on the phone I read “The Trap,” unfurled, displayed my little flags. These were not the only mysteries she solved.
Paul David Adkins Finding What in Rachel Contreni Flynn's 'Ice, Mouth, Song' Brings Me To Consider it is Oracular
At dusk, deer with well-hidden zippers advance. I scanned the walls from my watch tower, a little more tense that night. She asked Is this my mother or a sad tablet? I took the chance and tossed my Paxil. When she sang I will not be sad I considered it. I studied her poems as some read tea leaves swirled and dumped in the dip of a saucer. The black on white arrangement which to unbelievers seemed like gibberish, those dregs on the porcelain dish slipping this way and that.
Dani Clark Wall Lights
Lights
bounced on the wall
beside us, reflections from slivered glass on the floor. She looked at the bulbs of white, "The fairies love these lights. Fairies can't get enough of them!" I craved a belief in fairies, but only grinned. "I can't actually see the fairies," she watched the repelling half-smile smear my face, "but friends tell me wall lights really set them off." No thinking would have me believe what friends told me. Not in light-loving fairies, creatures, Gods, or a God. Sometimes I'd squint at a tree outside a window while birds weaved between the leaves: towhees, ho-fis, chickadees and bushtits flashed like dew drops, the sun gave them auras and made them spark like laces of a spider's
web. A chirping wren hopped along a branch, plumage like downturned bluebell petals, the perfect costume for a dancing sprite. They were fairies under the faรงade of blurred vision. I could have believed mythical beings danced among the leaves. I blinked and they vanished as the accuracy of faultless vision enveloped me. Guilty of not believing, I sat there. What made her believe when I couldn't? Both exhausted. Both traumatized. Stuck, not working to our full potential. I, practical and unbelieving, not permitted to indulge, or make fleeting examples of lights on walls, was with her in the same room. I could have helped myself with a blink, or a pill, or someone smarter to reinforce the lie. But awareness always won, and I could not suffer the arrested development that made the fairies fly around her on another plane while I just grinned.
"You do believe in fairies, yes?" She caught me staring. I shrugged and looked, that unconvincing smirk still brandished my face because if I said No, I do not believe in fairies, a fairy somewhere would drop down dead.
Contributors Paul David Adkins Paul David Adkins lives in New York and works as a counselor. He served in the US Army for 21 years. Carly Berg Carly Berg gets her three hots and a cot near Houston. Her stories appear in several dozen journals and anthologies, including PANK, Word Riot, Bartleby Snopes, and JMWW, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well. Dani Clark Dani Clark has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from St. Mary's College of California. She has received the Jeannine Cooney Award, and the Leonard Michaels Award for Literary Excellence. She lives in Oakland, CA., and an excerpt of her first novel will appear in the inaugural issue of Pure Coincidence in early 2014. Chris Crittenden Chris Crittenden has a PhD in philosophy and writes from a struggling fishing village that has no traffic lights. He is widely published and blogs as Owl Who Laughs. Janet Frishberg Janet Frishberg lives and writes in a light blue room in San Francisco. She’s currently editing her first book, a memoir. You can find her work in Literary Orphans, sparkle & blink, the SF Chronicle, and soon in Cease, Cows, The Rufous City Review, and Black Heart Magazine. Lizzy Huitson Lizzy Huitson is a writer of poetry and short fiction, and has been published in a number of literary journals and magazines including The Waterhouse Review, GlassFire Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Journal and Fiction365. She has also published an ebook of poetry, titled “Honeycomb Bones." She keeps trying (and failing) to write a detective novel.
James Mirarchi James Mirarchi grew up in Queens, New York. In addition to his poetry collections, "Venison and Dervish," he has written and directed short films which have played at festivals. His poems have appeared in previous issues of Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, gobbet, Boyslut, Bluepepper, Orion headless, The Mind[less] Muse, Dead Snakes, egg, The Recusant, Subliminal Interiors Magazine, Bad Robot Poetry ,and Clockwise Cat. Angela Spires Angela Spires teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work has previously been published in The Stethoscope, The Brushfire, Wildflower Magazine, Mat Black Online Journal, Deep South Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, and The Stray Branch.
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