Revolution House Magazine Volume 1.3 by Revolution House Magazine

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Alisha Karabinus MANAGING EDITORS Fati Z. Ahmed Elaina Smith CREATIVE NONFICTION EDITORS Jaime Herndon Jami Nakamura Lin FICTION EDITORS Karen Britten Carol H. Hood Sarah Kamlet Koty Neelis Katie Oldaker POETRY EDITORS Jonathan Dubow Henry W. Leung Karissa Morton Susannah Nevison Staci R. Schoenfeld

The end is here—the end of our first year in the Revolution House, at least. It’s been a busy year, challenging at times, a learning process for all of us editors, wonderful and, of course, revolutionary. This time of year allows us to reflect on achievements and we couldn’t be prouder of the magazine we’ve put together and all the writers we have had the joy of showcasing. In 2012 we hope to do even more. Four issues, for one, since we’ll have a whole year to work with. But we want to get better, faster, stronger; we want to expand at every level. We want to break new ground, and we want to watch the seeds we’ve already planted flourish into something beyond the dreams we’ve already fulfilled. In this issue, in these walls, you’ll find tragedy and joy, stories about the bitter pill of mediocrity and the confusion of a world that is disappearing piece by piece. We have life lessons, too, and who couldn’t use a refresher on how not to appear creepy? We examine the mysteries of man, of creation, of life, death, love and sex. We explore in grand strokes; we take tiny steps. We build our walls stronger and better. We cement our foundation... and we’re thrilled to have so much to share with you. But we want also to take a moment to celebrate the best of this year. We’ve had the pleasure of nominating work from our first two issues for two different awards: the Best of the Net by Sundress Publications and the coveted Pushcart Prize. The choices were hard, even more difficult than those we make every day when we read the submissions authors choose to send, but we are thrilled to honor these authors and their work. Best of the Net:

• “The Sword Swallower Wonders What’s the Point” — Amorak Huey • “Space Cases” — Patrick Thomas Henry • “Conjoined” — Jen Marquardt • “The Elephant Graveyard” — Ashley Wakefield • “Lunatics/Lunar-tics” — Courtney Thomas Vance

The Pushcart Prize:

• “The Sword Swallower Wonders What’s the Point” — Amorak Huey • “Mon Coeur” — William Henderson • “Fatherhood” — Kea Marie • “Conjoined” — Jen Marquardt • “The Elephant Graveyard” — Ashley Wakefield • From “Addenda” — Sarah V. Schweig

If you haven’t read these fine authors, go back, spend some time with them in the rooms they’ve built in our home. But spend some time here, too, with us at the end of this year. Curl up next to a crackling fire with a warm mug of cocoa. We have so much to offer, and we can’t wait to share it all with you. See you in 2012, Alisha Karabinus

Passing Through Caroline Swicegood

The Motherland

Michael Mlekoday

Your Mouth is Holy Like a Vow of Silence but with Prettier Robes Michael Mlekoday

Playground at P.S #40 James Valvis

Open Letter to Kayla Wood Alicia Catt

Mon Coeur You As Gate 8 William Henderson

13 6

Rose Hunter

Moon on Fire Thesis Matt Burnside

18 7

CL Bledsoe

Renegade Arborists The Rapture of Our Things Chad Redden

20 17

Dan Hornsby

Outline of the Ascent Samantha Milowsky

Auspice 21 Samantha Milowsky

The Sun Goes Big Red

Samantha Milowsky

Orange

Terri Brown-Davidson

Breakable

Amanda Himmelmann

Everything Keeps Moving 34 Kara Bollinger The Allegory of Man 42 RJ Ingram re: creation

mensah demary

The Architecture of the Ear

Jake Syersak

The, Warped Wholly

Jake Syersak

So Little Separating Bone From Bone Jacqueline May

How To Politely Decline an Invitation to an Airport Lounge or How To Meet New People Without Being Creepy 59 Carol Guess and Daniela Olszewska

Paradise White 60 Stefan Milne

Cover art is Fragmented by Erica Hample

You As Gate 8 Rose Hunter

Auckland airport, waiting for my LA connecting, half plane half reflection of man in the window, while what my camera shows no man or plane but pineboard and steel uprights the flash turns to rickets and how we assume, to borrow a body that this snub nose here, thinks, is pineboard in which we will be, that makes me say stop, wait I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strange these eating, drinking murmuring, bouncing babies. These reading listening sweater-wearing these biting into hamburger as another heavy belly it might be flying pineboard for all but like on the jetty when a heron or an egret? We guessed at taxonomic differences and discussed what we didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know to the undeniable conclusion there was no amount we could love this bird that would be enough.

Thesis CL Bledsoe

Take 1 We get the phone call that Mom is dead just after 2 a.m. She had been in the hospital for a little over a week, two days before anyone called me. Huntington’s Disease had made her more a ghost than a mother most of my life. Every time she took a turn, my brother called, advising me to buy a suit, arrange a flight; this was it. This time, the doctor hadn’t expected her to make it through the night. A week later, they hadn’t expected her to make it through the morning. “I think they’re wrong,” my brother said, “I think she’s going to pull through.” Take 2 Jillian makes travel arrangements while I try to write an obituary. I’ve been volunteered for this because I’m a writer, even though my mother is a stranger to me. My first draft is 1000 words. Revision: I can’t write it. I stare at the computer screen for hours, and finally call my brother under the pretense of finding people to contact for information to plug the gaps. We talk, and he takes notes of pertinent information on a form provided by the funeral home. This becomes the obituary. I type it as he talks and carry this with me so I’ll have something to show, just in case.

CL -I’m not sure I see the methodology here. What is the formula for “revision?” It seems to go into speculative or idealized moments and scales back, correcting itself. I wonder, though: Is this nonfiction? And will it fit with the rest of your thesis? -Skip Notes on various scenes of alienation: —Jillian laughing with her parents in the other room while we stay at their house, the night before we fly home. —The reading I was supposed to do that night going on without me. —My brother on the phone describing the food people have brought. —Wondering why she fought so hard. —The quiet drive to the airport in the morning.

CL- why the vignettes? You’re distancing yourself from the reader. Also, I’d like more back-story about your mother’s illness, the long deferment of grief. There’s missing info here. Maybe add

a nice existential moment.

- Skip

Take 3 On the plane, there are balding businessmen at each compass point. One leans his seat back into Jillian’s space and I want to break his neck, but she is sleeping. The seats are blue with a pattern of triangles on squares with lines across the back. The words “Mother Mother Mother Mother Mother” Revision: “Fasten Seat Belt While Seated.” I try to sleep but turbulence makes the plane shift and jerk. I feel as though a knotted-up, twisted mass has replaced my stomach, twisting even my clothes, as though my stomach were a black hole. I feel like that for the rest of the trip and make sure to keep my shirt pulled down low to cover it, just in case. I doze, dream of falling asleep while driving off a bridge. White out.

CL - The constant assertion and negation seems like the author is trying to hide behind style. Bleed for us. That’s what we want. Or else, why write it? Why send it out? I would think in a couple points you should try to actually play out scenes for emotional impact, without any tricks. Still, it’s hard material. This is brave writing. I think it could stand on its own without all this. But add some emotional content, some resonance. -Skip Take 4 FADE IN. INT. KERNOODLE FUNERAL HOME - DAY C.L. (late 20s, early 30s male) enters with JILLIAN, his fiancée, DAD, MIKE (C.L.’s older brother), ANNA (Mike’s wife), and DJ (Mike’s son). They are a working class family dressed Wal-Mart fancy. They sit on the front pew. The casket is in the corner surrounded by mostly gaudy displays of flowers. C.L. stares at the casket. His stomach is twisted strangely as though it is in the process of imploding, leaving a concave dent visible through his clothes which are also collapsing inward. Revision: His hands keep worrying his shirt buttons as though something is wrong with his stomach.

Bledsoe

Very bad canned music plays. It is the sort of thing one would hear in a very unfashionable elevator. People trickle in, eventually filling the room. These people are all strangers to C.L. Each time one approaches C.L., they block his view of the casket. He twists to see around them. JULIE, C.L.’s sister enters. She goes to C.L. and they hug. C.L. stops staring at the casket for a moment. A woman enters, goes to C.L. and Julie. WOMAN You don’t remember me, do you? I worked at Mitchell’s Grocery with my husband. You used to call him Round Boy. JULIE (Uncertainly) Oh yeah. WOMAN You kids used to come in and Round Boy’d stick candy in your pockets. Even if you didn’t have pockets. (To C.L.) When you were real little, Corty, he’d stick it in your diaper. I remember one time, Julie Beth, when you were wearing this pretty little sun dress, and didn’t have any pockets, so he stuck it down your panties. WOMAN laughs and Julie looks very uncomfortable. C.L. goes back to looking at the casket, trying to see it over Woman’s shoulder. A couple approach. They are JOAN, C.L.’s cousin, and her husband DAVE. They stand in front of him blocking his view of the casket.

Bledsoe

JOAN I’m so sorry. C.L. Me too. C.L. tries to see over Joan’s shoulder, but she moves to block his view. JOAN So you came in from Virginia? You’re in grad. school there, aren’t you? C.L. Yeah. Just about finished. DAVE So what are your plans for after you graduate? C.L. I don’t know. DAVE Sounds like it’s time to get down on your knees and ask for help. (Pointing to Jillian’s cross necklace) I see you’ve got some guidance. JILLIAN Oh, is that right side up again? Revision: EVERYONE LAUGHS nervously. UNCLE LONNIE enters dressed in black with a white shirt. Dad scowls and turns away, refusing to look at Lonnie. Lonnie moves around the room like a slow motion cue ball, making Dad turn this way and that to avoid looking at him.

Bledsoe

MIKE There’s Uncle Lonnie. JILLIAN The one who stole the farm from your father? Uncle DON enters, shaking and walking jerkingly. The music ends. A chorus of excited murmuring erupts. Several family members glare at him and turn away. Don sort of dances his way up the aisle to the family. MIKE Haven’t seen him in twenty years. JULIE He looks like he’s got Huntington’s Disease. This statement is picked up and repeated a few times. C.L. (To Don, though looking at casket) You made it. Don sort of dances in place nervously. Anna directs people to C.L. They block his view and bounce off him like pinballs, and this becomes more and more manic. 40s era big-band music starts slowly and builds. Lonnie also bounces around the room, making DAD turn away from him, adding to the mayhem. Don’s dancing spreads and the whole room erupts into a dance number, incorporating all of these repetitive actions. The funeral directors dance a Charleston though more subdued than everyone else. Don takes a solo. During this, C.L. is desperately trying to see the casket, but the dancers constantly block his view. Revision: Everyone looks down, nervous, bored. C.L. doesn’t recognize his mother.

Revision: He recognizes her as the same stranger

Bledsoe

he’s seen every time he’s visited in the last several years. FADE OUT. Notes on the visitation: - At the bathroom in the funeral home, I realize when I try to pee that my boxers are on backwards because I can’t find the button. - I’ve written stories about all these people. -I don’t speak for 4 days. Revision: I speak more than I have for months. CL – But some of this didn’t happen. How is it “nonfiction?” Even if you imagined this at the time, it’s hard to swallow. I can buy it as a hybrid or meta-nonfiction or something, but it’s more of a surreal interpretation. But what does it add? Plus, the language isn’t quite right to be a screenplay. I’d cut this. -Skip Take 5 After the visitation, we go to our hotel room, buy beer and fast food and lay in bed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I can’t eat. Revision: I eat constantly. The night before the funeral, I dream my mother is a ghost, forever dying, moaning in a corner of her hospital room, fighting for breath; fighting because that’s all she remembers to do. Revision: The night before the funeral I dream nothing. Take 6 The morning of the funeral, I sit, staring at the mirror on the bathroom door trying to cry. Instead, the toilet overflows. Take 7

FADE IN INT. HOTEL BATHROOM — DAY C.L. pulls back the shower curtain to reveal a very small, very tight shower. He turns on the water and steps in, knocking over a couple bottles of the shampoo already stacked on every available surface. He catches

Bledsoe

them and juggles them, trying to set them back down without dropping them and generally having a hard time of it in a very slapstick manner. After the business with the shampoo, C.L. lathers up with soap, covering his face and body. He tries to wash it off but strangely the water doesn’t seem to even penetrate. He can’t get it off, and while trying, knocks off several more bottle of shampoo. C.L. starts to have a fit and then stops. He is calm.

CUT TO:

INT. HOTEL BATHROOM – DAY C.L. stands in front of the mirror after his shower, applying shaving cream thickly, reminiscent of a clown applying makeup.

CUT TO:

INT. MOVIE THEATRE – DAY For a moment an audience on the edge of its seat watches C.L. Revision: He is running late and his family is waiting. INT. DRESSING ROOM – DAY

CUT TO:

C.L. eyes the door like a reluctant performer. He grabs a stick of deodorant labeled “High Endurance.” He applies and begins dressing. His suit hangs in a corner, covered in plastic. It is the first suit he’s ever worn. He uncovers it and puts it on, covering the pit that has formed

Revision: he imagines has formed in his stomach.

Bledsoe

He puts on shoes which are much too large in the vein of Chaplin’s tramp character. He checks his fly, which is open. He zips it. It falls open, he zips it again. He opens the door and steps out– CUT TO: INT. KERNOODLE FUNERAL HOME – DAY — into the funeral home. Which is full of family and mourners. Several turn and stare at the brand new pinstripe suit. They are all dressed plainly. His brother doesn’t even have a jacket. C.L. smiles and his teeth glint. Revision: he imagines his teeth glint. He sits beside Jillian, near his family. Take 8 The Sermon (an approximation): We are here to mourn _____(Wilma/ourselves). This _____(is/will always be) a difficult time for us. I’ve learned a lot about _____(Wilma/myself) over the last couple days. I’ve learned that she was a devoted _____(mother/fan of General Hospital) She taught school and many people in this room tonight _____(remember/ have forgotten) her. She was a member of the Wynne Baptist Church for many years and I see _____(many/none) of her fellow parishioners here today. You know, and I’m sure Wilma would agree with me, here; the Bible says that life is hard, but in _____(heaven/death) there is a reward. Wilma is _____(gone/struggling to be heard through the wood of the coffin ) but she’s _____(not/ long ago been) forgotten. She _____(lives on/haunts us) forever, not only in our hearts, but in heaven. A musak version of “I’m in Heaven” plays. C.L. blushes red with rage. Notes on Service —My baby nephew Kaleb saying, “Oh-oh,” over and over during the funeral, as though we were making a mistake. —I sit, say nothing. There is no elegy. —The pallbearers rise and approach the coffin. The knot in my stomach loosens, but then we are ushered out and I don’t see them take her away. The knot tightens back up.

CL – You’re all over the place structurally. Maybe make the whole thing a screenplay. What are you trying to say, structuring

Bledsoe

it like this? Clarify, please.

-Skip

Take 9 EXT: COGBILL CEMETERY - MORNING. C.L. (29-30 year old male) stands on a hill overlooking his mother’s grave, alone. Revision: surrounded by strangers. Revision: family he hardly remembers. It’s raining. Revision: Windy and cool. C.L. moves to the graveside and sits, staring at the coffin, ignoring everything else until it begins to lower into the ground. Applause begins, jerking C.L. out of his stupor. Revision: weather.

The

kids

start

complaining

about

the

CUT TO: INT. AUDITORIUM – DAY It’s graduation. C.L. is on a stage, accepting his diploma. He shakes the hand of someone we can only assume to be Skip. The applause gets really loud. C.L. does a “yes!” motion, makes a fist and pumps the air. He holds this scene for a moment, then the applause starts to die. Revision: I don’t attend graduation. CUT TO: EXT: COGBILL CEMETERY - MORNING. C.L. stands beside his mother’s grave, holding the diploma. Revision: I never go back there. CUT TO: INT. BOOKSTORE – DAY. C.L. sits at a table, surrounded by books all bearing his photo. A very attractive woman walks up, hands him a book—

Bledsoe

Revision: I struggle for years to get published by even the most obscure presses. Even the academics, the elitists don’t care for my work. CUT TO: INT. MOVIE THEATRE – DAY. C.L. eats popcorn in the audience and watches a movie of the previous scene. In the movie, C.L. has been replaced by a very handsome, though very short actor. The actor is so short, he has to sit on a stack of books. The same attractive woman is handing the actor the same book, the actor takes the book and pauses dramatically. C.L. pauses, mouth open, popcorn in mid-journey to his mouth. The actor spells C.L.’s name out and the audience applauds. Black Out. Revision: This never happened. CL – This is usual. Be different.

I cry. I cry. I cry. Revision: No.

Bledsoe

Final Take

-Skip

The Rapture of Our Things Dan Hornsby

I think it began with a swimming pool. Our neighbors, the Harrisons, looked through their sliding doors one morning to find that their entire swimming pool had vanished. Not just the water, but the lining, the gutters, the diving board, and the pipes had all been uprooted and abducted. The Harrisons naturally called the police, but the cops, staring into the pit, could find no evidence of theft. First, only the most expensive items vanished. Mr. Carson, our nextdoor neighbor, found that his Mercedes had disappeared from his locked garage. Large, plasma-screen televisions left dangling wires and empty wall mounts. Our father’s laptop departed, as did our SUV, grill, and television. When I asked my father, a fleshy and quiet banker, what had happened, he shook his head and waved me away. There were many theories. Our other next-door neighbor, an accountant’s ancient wife with drawn-on eyebrows, was convinced that Mexicans had done it. “They are very sneaky,” she told my mother, “and since they’ve worked on so many yards in this neighborhood, I’m sure they scouted out the best loot.” Some of the recent college graduates, who for the time being lived with their parents, speculated that perhaps our neighborhood was situated upon a collection of wormholes which transported our belongings to other dimensions. They, however, were refuted by their less idealistic parents, who countered with the observation that no human beings or objects of little value had seemed to have gone missing. It was as if the Rapture had happened, but God, seeing our neighborhood, had decided that our stuff, rather than us, belonged in heaven. The invisible fences, which held in the neighborhood’s French poodles, yellow labs, golden retrievers, and at least one Great Dane, became truly invisible. Gangs of family dogs roamed the streets, picking through garbage cans and chewing on house cats. When their owners caught them and tried to feed them, they found that the dog food was missing, too. Most of the dogs returned to their packs, resuming an ongoing war between neighborhood children and neighborhood dogs. At night, we children played in the voids, making forts out of pipes and beams. After escaping our parents, who spent their days searching for our things, we would wander through the emptied lots and abandoned houses. Each night, our little gangs would wander farther and farther. My sister led these expeditions, deeming us archaeologists assigned to sort through the remains of long-dead empires. Soon we found other groups of children that we had previously been oblivious to, picking through rubble and playing with debris. For the few hours of our encounters, we incorporated each

other into our games before returning to our decaying homes. My older sister and I had fashioned kites out of wire and plastic bags, and we flew them daily. At thirteen, she was three years older than me and infinitely more wise. She had her own theory on the vanishings. “Well, it happens to every civilization,” she explained while holding the thin wire that connected her to the kite. “The Egyptians fell, the Greeks fell, the Romans fell—it’s probably just America’s turn now.” “But how did everything disappear?” I asked her. “Things happen much faster these days than they used to, with the Internet and everything,” she patiently explained. “If they would have had the Internet and technology in Ancient Greece, their downfall would have been a lot quicker.” Her kite took a quick dip towards mine before she guided it away. “I mean, most of their stuff is gone now, too. It just took a little longer.” I started to cry, worried that we would no longer exist. “Don’t cry. Greece, Rome, and Egypt are still around. They just don’t rule the world anymore.” I was comforted by this, having never been entirely sure that America ruled the world anyway. We adapted quickly. My father shed the belly that, as long as I can remember, grew on both his front and his back. My sister and I, previously of healthy weight, grew long and lean while acquiring a layer of dirt that weekly bathing could not abate. My mother turned both the front lawn and the backyard into a garden, and dinner became a simpler affair of beans, rice, and the occasional dog. The old stuff worked, so we used it. Attics were cleaned out. Basements were raided for functioning artifacts. We uncovered a dusty blackand-white television in our bonus room, a relic from my grandfather’s era. Every night, before dinner, my family would gather around to watch channel three, the only television channel we had, while my mother cooked beans on a wood stove. During these times, my sister and I avoided talking to our parents. My mother and father, living in a now-glorified past, lost the vitality of the present and, in this way, grew old. It took a while until anyone figured out what was happening. All the things we had depended upon for information were no longer there for quick answers. But one night channel three told us. The reporters revealed breaking footage of families, mostly in parts of Africa, India, and China, driving through the streets in sports cars. They cut to a clip of three Somalian children leaping into a familiar swimming pool. In a Mercedes eerily resem-

Hornsby

bling Mr. Carson’s, a family coasted through a Mumbai neighborhood that looked like an imported version of ours. I recognized their flat screen televisions and decorations, and if their things had not previously belonged to us, they were the same brands. My father, who, since the rapture of our things, looked perpetually tired, pulled off one of his mismatched shoes and hurled it at the television. While it didn’t shatter the screen, it did knock the TV off of the card table and onto the floor. When my angry mother swooped in to save the box, she found that it would not turn back on. After dinner my sister and I, dressed in hand-me-down t-shirts that had since become togas, went out to play. We snuck through the yard of the lady with the drawn-on eyebrows, stepping through a garden that had been invaded by weeds and crabgrass. With a little help from an overturned flower pot, we climbed the fence into the Harrison’s yard. Using the aluminum ladder that still clung to the side of the pit where the pool had been, we climbed down. There, we could see all the bones of the pool. Disconnected pipes wormed through ugly layers of concrete. Scraps of rubber hung over empty light sockets. Some of our neighbors had been using the pit as a landfill, but there was still room enough to play between the stacks of tin cans and moldy wood. My sister found a sock and filled it with her small collection of pennies and pebbles to use as a bean bag. In the shadow of the Harrison’s empty house, we tossed the sock back and forth between the piles of garbage, never keeping it for long.

Hornsby

Outline of the Ascent Samantha Milowsky

I. Dawn, salt crystals form around the indecipherable sounds from feral mutes. Vibrations glide on rhythmic cadence. II. Corn rows and monarchs flanked by gold. Windmills emerge, grind sea-level and swat air. III. Trackers and transition radios. A bulbous head and the art of fabrication. Unless teeth clench, emotions are not real. IV. People compartmentalized into plastic trays. Shelves packed with combinations of dried fruit and enduring puffed pastries. V. Scars brook no attention like ill-fitting pants, pants unzipped, and the obsession with new armor. VI. Loss on a continent, holding hands comes with a laugh track. Loss on another, hands come off. VII. All descriptions of sky written. Now, how to stay propped in thinning atmosphere. VIII. Spending the trust fund.

Auspice Samantha Milowsky

Their eyes adjust quickly to what struck them the moment it flamed. You see it in online galleries, pictures dark and avant-garde, staged crumbling walls, green tearing through gray; eyes like jaguars, quiet about words that cake on the sides of their lips. They burgeon into airy penumbrae, the imagining of fine names. These are their tables, bowls of fruit, diaphanous accumulating on peach hair. Imagine we can unravel and tug them back through the toothy archway of their vertebrate to a time more furry and ring-tailed, vulnerable to dirt, and little to say about being the food of mischievous cousins. Even then, evidence of such fine-boned fontanels, quiet before being born into vocals rasping like skimmer wings, their intellect, the budding horns of arms.

The Sun Goes Big Red Samantha Milowsky

The dead hunger for witnesses, meal moths flutter from sockets, their descendants tasted last starches on Good Friday before the pheromone traps were laid. Years before, eager to feast on the continents of lemurs, the sun sighed red, but only enough to silence the birds. We would need to invent a new compass for travel, self-directed by desire and intent. Even wedding parties evolved to sĂŠances of the dead, curling in phosphorous, the tangy taste of metal from good spoons.

Orange Terri Brown-Davidson

There’s nothing as lonely as a swing without a toddler. I’m sitting on the wet grass in front of the playground a block or so from the Buick, my legs tucked together, the back of my jeans getting soaked; I’m looking up at the sky, dozens of thunderclouds hanging low, and at the swing, which—every few minutes or so—I have to stand up and push. I love to watch things in motion. Always have. In school, I was the kid who grabbed the microscope from all the others in biology, just to watch amoebae swarm a drop of water: lovely. I was the kid who used to hook her legs over the monkey bars, angle up and over at a near-frantic pace, not caring that my skirt flipped up, revealing tattered pink panties that were always good for a laugh, though it wasn’t so funny, living with my mother then. But she’s dead, thankfully, and that was a long time ago anyway. I’ve been out of high school more than twenty years now. And sometimes I wonder what happened to all of those kids I knew, those kids who chased me, teased me, shoved my face down into the mud until they found out what my fists, my knuckles, could do, how they could split a lip bloody to the bone. But most times I don’t wonder at all. Because existence—I’ve discovered—is beautiful. And existence is enough. Joel calls me a “color monger,” which is better than the names my mother used to label me with when she was alive. And it’s true that I’m attracted to a variety of color families. “Species,” I like to call them, particularly those hues in the orange family—burnt orange, which is dominant. And burnt sienna, tangerine. I like to think about these brilliances as if they were animated, alive, and Joel plays along, knows the difference between a genus and a species and a subspecies though I can never follow what he’s saying. With words, anyway. When he talks with his hands, I listen. Orange is why I like McDonald’s, though Joel and I love it for other reasons too, especially because of Alex, the science boy behind the counter who never kicks us out. But what’s really great about McD’s is how early it opens, especially when it’s cold. I usually get there when they’re unlocking the doors though today I‘m late, come in wiping grass stains off my butt. The first breakfast crowd’s already left, and they’re the ones I like to study, secretive, dark-natured, frantic, the men unraveling beards with nicotine-stained fingers, the women slower-moving, dowdy, in gray housedresses and penny loafers with ankle socks. I imagine them as having been up all night, those

mommas, tending babies with nosebleeds, tugging out collapsing breasts for a three a.m. snack. The lunch crowd, on the other hand, is high-powered, off-putting: I scurry to my booth in the back, which is where the employees like me to sit anyway; this is where I hide from the navy-blue pinstripes and fake alligator bags. I don’t mind them, the employees, and they don’t mind me, though the manager talked to me once, telling me not to whisper while I eat: the suits find it frightening, so I took to holding the wrapper to my mouth if I couldn’t control my impulses; the manager seemed pleased after that, had Alex sweep out from under the booth when I made another mess, gentle my feet aside with the broom. And now, when I have the change, I like to give a little back to McDonald’s, since they’ve been so good to me. I’ll buy a Chicken Fajita for less than a buck and take hours to eat it, clasping the fajita in its crinkly pale paper, savoring separate bites of grilled chicken, green peppers, onions; I love to let the warmth seep up through my palms; when it strikes the bone, there’s a shock, as if I’d never been warm before. Lovely. Wrapping my arms around my torso, I rock quietly in my booth, watch the lunch crowd filter in, keeping my gaze level, disapproving, so none of them approach. Alex eyes me from behind the counter, nods, pushes his little gold-rimmed glasses up on his nose; he’ll speak to me or Joel, if only to exchange a few words after the others have left—he’s young and thinks it keeps him human. I nod back briskly, one professional acknowledging another, and then Joel comes in in his big black poncho: Joel prepares for a storm like most people ready themselves for Armageddon. He walks to the booth and stops. “Jesus, sweetie,” I say, eyeing him. “What?” He spreads his arms, flaps open his big wet sleeves; a deluge of drops; I shake my hair, touch it, the wiry strands bristling up. “What?” Joel says. “You don’t like it?” “Sweetie, you look a little...weird.” He smiles. His teeth are pretty good, no, excellent, though he has no opportunity to floss. Like a large gray crane, he arcs his wings, tucks his body in, settles into the booth across from me. He’s amazingly goodlooking, despite his oddness. Like... a Peter Gallagher of the streets: not the same coloring, but dramatic. Green eyes, yellow around the irises. Red mouth. Plush black hair. Even with the awful poncho, women are looking at him. Women are always looking at him. I know that they want to take him home, give him a good, hot shower, feed him, then reap the rewards. Ain’t gonna happen, though. Joel and me: a May-December romance

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of many years now. “What’re you having?” he asks, the same as everyday. “What? You’ve got money?” “Took it from the can. Special occasion, Carley.” “No. No. No. That’s my Buick money. Besides—” “We’ve decided.” “We have?” I should be pissed off but suddenly I start laughing, tight, spasmodic sobs: Alex, behind the counter, glances at me then smiles. And I note, as I always do, how the customers don’t join in: a few quick stares, lingering glances. “We’ve gotta do it. We need it, to keep us hopeful.” “What could be hopeful about us?” “Everything,” Joel says, and shows me the four bucks in quarters, lets me finger them before he unzips his poncho, leaves it dripping and enormous and shiny on the orange booth, then sidles up to the shortest line, a tall guy in blue jeans and a cigarette-burned Henley, no hips, no ass, the kid next door, just a little older, grungier. While Joel’s in line, an enemy approaches. Conformist Cow type—a species common to the Midwest. “’Scuse me, Honey,” she says, and drops onto her knees beside the booth, edges her face into mine. I tug two fingers through my hair. She’s making me nervous. I study her smudged beige makeup, swollen pores. “That your boyfriend?” she asks, and jerks her head toward Joel. I look at him and he can break my heart, just like that, by shifting back onto the balls of his sneakered feet. My beautiful, sexy boy. “Or is it—?” “My kid?” “Yeah.” Why lie? Because I can. “Uh-huh,” I say. “The day I gave birth to him was the proudest of my life.” “Well.” Blast of scotch breath. Something fishy. Kippered herring? “You might want to tell him to watch his hygiene a little.” “What?” Slow smile. Lipsticked teeth. “Your little boy’s drawing flies.” It happens before I know it. It’s like my mother all over again. When

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she told me I wasn’t good enough and sneaked into my room and found my poems tied up lengthwise with four violet ribbons that smelled like Virginia Slims smoked down to the stub and she said, “Who’d want to read these? Who?” and I grabbed her slow-motion and pulled her down to the floor, chokehold around her neck, and I didn’t strike her though I wanted to, only sat on her so she couldn’t get up with my knees against her chest, windpipe. “Apologize,” I said, and her eyes got all wide and scared and she did, and it was just like school after that: I never walked with my head hanging low again. So the woman goes down but I’m more aggressive because I have to be, smacking her thick cowy head against the floor until a little blood comes out her ear, and she’s too scared to do anything except wiggle her hips, and then Alex—Alex, whom I adore—comes running over, shoving his glasses up his nose, saying, “What’d you do, Carley? You know what the manager said!,” people gathering around, and I smile. I close my eyes. Open them. Shit. Another fantasy. Nothing’s changed. The woman’s staring back, a sleep-crust on her lashes. Keeping my gaze steady, I motion, gently, toward my own teeth. “Lipstick,” I whisper, with a nod; she looks at me, flicks her tongue, closes her lips tight, sucking—How clean do they have to be?—and I smile because she just doesn’t get it, how close she came to death. “Thank you,” I say. “Thanks very much for the information,” and the woman rises, walks away. “That fat ass bothering you?” Joel asks, returning with a white paper bag that makes the blood sing in my veins. “Nothing,” I say. “She wanted you,” I add, and feel a little faint, looking at the sack. “God—what’d you do?” “Four bucks! We’ll eat good today. Got to—to keep your strength up.” “But I said—” “I know.” Joel smiles. His teeth look like he flosses. Big, white, Peter Gallagher teeth. He’s perfect, except for the smell, which—since the Cow called it to my attention—I detect now, too, a stale something, clothes scrubbed nights in the river, no money for deodorant—Joel looks like a rich kid, he does, and me his decrepit momma. How does he do it? I gaze at him

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admiringly as he pulls fistfuls of white napkins from the bag. He’s never shown decay. “God, honey,” I say, and rub my eyes. “I can’t believe it. It’s a feast!” Two red boxes of four-piece Chicken McNuggets. For me, a hot-fudge sundae with nuts. For Joel, who’s more the salt than sugar type, a large order of fries and a cheeseburger, too. I can’t stop staring. “Well,” and here Joel leans across the booth to whisper, “Alex helped out a little, too.” “That kid,” I whisper back, “is something else,” and then we settle down to eat. I ponder it that night by the Buick. The last customer’s left, and I’m lying in the weeds on Joel’s moth-eaten blanket in my Garfield sleep shirt, a pair of big white panties. The stars, swinging above me, glitter like teeth; I shiver, my hands behind my head, my knees slightly raised. From the tent, an orange kerosene gleam: Joel emerges in a t-shirt and jeans, walks to the weed patch, hands me a joint. I take it, inhale, pool the smoke around in my mouth, let it all stream out between my teeth, leaving the sweetness of the pot behind. “Pleasures,” I say. “Sensual pleasures,” and Joel nods—the man goes dead-quiet after dark—and retreats inside the tent, zips the flap though he’ll still be listening for me until I come to bed: he never stops listening. I gaze up at the stars and feel a gentle lift, a push against my spine as if I were able to levitate. My mother—when she wasn’t drunk and ripping up my poems or ransacking my room for drug paraphernalia—told me about her astral-projection when she was a little girl. She used to actually believe that she could detach from her body, float up under the ceiling with its cobwebs and grit. She told me she loved to gaze down at her body, lying pale and bloodless on the bed, and wonder what her parents would do if they found her that way—she really did look dead. She’d tell me these stories and lay my head on her lap and stroke and stroke my butter-colored hair. And one time—I remember it so clearly—I asked her why she stopped. And she looked at me so seriously with my head in her lap, drew my hair away from my forehead and said, “Carley, because I couldn’t get back in my body. Just for a second—I couldn’t get back.” And there was real fear there, tightening her face, and I stared at her and wondered at her fear because I knew it could never happen to me: my body and I were indivisible. One. But I loved her then. And I was a kid, so couldn’t see the future. Wouldn’t’ve believed anybody who’d told me I’d drop out of college at

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twenty-two and become homeless, a shadow gliding through the real world above abandoned railroad tracks. That I’d get mixed up with a boy half my age and start to enjoy the lifestyle. No roots equals no wings, my mother always said, but she was a junkie; and now I believe you can sprout wings anywhere. In a McDonald’s. In a Buick by the train tracks, by the weeds. And once I was addicted to the rush, but I’m forty-one now and the faces inside the Buick are starting to look the same and I’m interested in beauty now, not thrills where I can find them—beauty, I think, and pull hard on my joint, savoring the smoke. Joel unzips the tent, comes out. He’s wearing shorts—boxers—his legs very hairy, white. He walks toward me then sits down on the blanket, the washcloth wadded up in his hand. He turns my face, this way, that, looking me over, examining me for marks. But I’m always safe. Same round of guys for five years, six. He glances toward the chain-link fence twenty feet above us, behind us; kids used to wander up there, drinking Ripple and tossing bottles down the incline just to hear them shatter against the tracks. And once, one hit me in the head. But it’s very quiet now. Deliciously quiet. Still, Joel thinks the rituals protect us. “Damn,” he murmurs, gazing down at the washcloth. “Forgot the water.” He goes back inside. The kerosene lamp shifts, its light flying over the fabric walls. A mothlike flitting of dusk, shadow. I watch him though I can’t really see him. I keep peering at that tent, push my face into my fist. Sometimes I love him so much that I just don’t want him to see me cry. He comes back to the weed patch with his shallow, rusted pan. “Got that water for Charlie this morning,” I say, teasing him, but Joel looks stricken, doesn’t get the joke. He knows who Charlie is, though: crippled white stray with burrs in his paws. I water him from the river when I remember: dog’s gotta drink sometime. “I’ll go get fresh,” Joel says, rising, but I grab his arm. “I’m kidding,” I say. “Relax.” He eases up then, smiles. Crouches beside me, grips my underpants, pulls them down to my knees. I relax, lean back on the blanket, smoke my joint. Joel dips and washes, dips and washes. The water is cool but I love the motion. I think about Alex working at McDonald’s, that little nerdy boy who smiles and gives me extra Nuggets whenever I get a stash. I lie back in the weeds and close my eyes, remembering the empty swing from this

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morning, rising again and again, in my mind, to push it one more time, to keep it going, my hands against her back. What would she look like, my little girl? And she’d have to be a girl. To make up for me. To make up for Momma. I picture her with her head in my lap, me touching her hair, and I have to rub my eyes. “I’m afraid she’d hate me,” I say suddenly and stop, Joel’s fingers stroking my stomach. “Shh,” he whispers. “You know that’s not true. She’ll be beautiful,” Joel says. “She’ll be perfect.” I place my fingers across his lips, the Buick looming behind his head, and Joel, looking down, goes quiet. Buick Electra. ‘65 Buick Electra. Gray, with a rusted-out hood. The door hanging open, heavy on its hinges in the weeds. I don’t like the smell. But I dream about that car. I don’t like anything about it, really, except the men. Because they all look like Joel to me now. Fast, slow: no difference. And there’s nothing ugly in that. But we couldn’t, I think, as Joel pulls the washcloth up over my belly and I shiver. Because.... we have nothing. But I know this isn’t true. I open my eyes and he’s watching me. I open my eyes and he’s kissing me, taking a hit off my joint, his fingers climbing inside my sleep shirt, rumpling the picture of the big cartoon cat. I study the Buick and think, We could do better than that—couldn’t we?—and I think about having her though I’m too old, though it must be dangerous now, though we’re not even certain she’s Joel’s. “Hey,” I say. “I’m lying on my Rembrandt book.” “That thing,” Joel says, smiling. “Why do you like it? Because it’s stained? Because you read it once? Or...because it’s orange?” “Yeah,” I say. “That’s right. Because it’s orange and because it’s bright even in the dark and because I like the pictures, too,” and then I look at him, stop breathing; then I can’t breathe at all anymore when he leans down and kisses my stomach. And in the distance—though these tracks have been deserted for years—I swear I hear it: the sound of an approaching train.

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Breakable Amanda Himmelmann

Mama says I’m a big girl now. I can ride my bike to the end of the street where the stop sign is and then come back. Our street makes a T with another street and I stop right next to the stop sign and watch the yellow grass sway. Last week I wasn’t big enough to leave the driveway. Mama also says I’m big enough to take care of Anna Mae all by myself while she goes to the store and buys us more white bread for peanut butter sandwiches. I told her I was not old enough to watch Anna Mae but only because I can’t stand her. All she does is cry, cry, cry. Like the way I do when I fall off my bike, only I know how to stop crying and Anna Mae don’t. She just keeps crying like she doesn’t know how to not cry and my ears start to hurt. “Why can’t Anna Mae go with you?” I ask Mama before she leaves. I’m holding Anne Mae in my arms but she doesn’t like it. I can’t hold her the way Mama does and she starts crying. “I’m only going for a minute and you’re big enough now to watch your sister,” Mama says. Then she leaves and I watch with Anna Mae from the window as the dirty white car pulls out of the driveway and down toward the yellow grass. “Hush up,” I tell Anna Mae, but she doesn’t know what I’m saying. Anna Mae never knows what anybody’s saying. She only speaks baby talk and crying. I carry her into the family room where the TV is still showing one of those baby shows that I don’t like anymore because I’m big. I watch it with her for a little while but Anne Mae keeps crying. “What?” I asked her, but she just cries and cries. I pick her up again and take her to the front door that’s wide open except for the screen door so she can look outside. She’s still not happy so I open the screen and go outside into the front yard with her. She stops crying when I show her my bike. “This is my bike,” I tell her. “Maybe Mama’ll get you a bike when you’re big. Babies don’t ride bikes like big girls.” I don’t tell her that Mama didn’t get me my bike, that my Daddy got me my bike. Mama doesn’t have the money for things like bikes, she told me that herself last Christmas when I asked her for one. “Santa’s not rich,” she said. But I know that what she meant was “Mama’s not rich.” I stopped believing in Santa because Santa is for babies. She didn’t like that Daddy got me a bike. I heard her yelling at him that day he brought it over when he came to visit. It was for my birthday but Mama still didn’t like it. I think she felt bad that she couldn’t get me a bike. She told Daddy he didn’t have the right. I don’t know why, he is my Daddy after all.

Even if I only see him on special occasions like Christmas and my birthday. But Anna Mae doesn’t need to know that Mama didn’t get me the bike. She’s just a baby and wouldn’t understand anyway. She’s not a big girl like me. She doesn’t know what’s what. Anna Mae likes the strings on the handlebars. They’re all sparkly and shine when they’re flowing in the wind as I ride to the stop sign. Sometimes I wish my hair looked like that, all pink and sparkly and blowing in the wind without getting knots in it. I bet that’s what princess’s hair looks like. And their hair doesn’t get tangled into a rats’ nest that Mama has to brush out with a comb that hurts bad. Anna Mae plays with the strings while I pull out the rocks I collected in the basket. This morning when I rode to the stop sign, I stood my bike up on its kickstand and crossed the street to the yellow grass. It was all waving and blowing like a unicorn’s mane, all pretty-like. Mama didn’t tell me I could go across the street but she didn’t tell me I couldn’t neither. She said I couldn’t ride my bike past the stop sign, but she never said nothing about walking. So I walked on over and there were just so many pretty rocks on the other side that I collected some and put them in my basket like they were special. Like eggs in a nest. But I have an idea, so I take all them rocks out of the basket and line them up careful in a row on the grass. The rocks had made the basket a little dirty but I don’t think Anna Mae will mind. That baby crawls through anything that’s spilled on the floor, a little dirt won’t bother her. I put Anna Mae in the basket and she starts crying. I look her over and decide it’s because her legs are all bunched up under her. So I straighten out her legs a little bit and I let her hold onto the sparkly strings and she calms down. I get on the bike and test out the weight. I’m not used to riding with a baby in my basket. But I’m a big girl, Mama says so. I can handle it. Anna Mae bounces up and down real quiet when I push with my feet to get the bike rolling. The grass is bumpy but Anna Mae seems to like it. She’s not crying, anyway. Out on the road, the pavement is smooth and Anna Mae stops bouncing. She’s turning her head every which way like she’s never been outside before. “It’s just the street,” I tell her. I shake my head. She doesn’t know anything. I can see the stop sign way out in the distance and the yellow grass looking like water the way it moves around in the wind. I point to it and tell Anna Mae that’s where we’re going. “We’re gonna go play in the yellow grass,” I tell her. She turns in the basket to look at me like she don’t know what yellow grass is. “Hold on tight,” I say, and I peddle faster, like I do

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when I’m racing cars to the stop sign. Anna Mae starts crying so I slow down. She doesn’t like the wind in her face I guess, because she stops when I slow down. I like the wind in my face, that’s the best part about going fast. Its like running away except you don’t have to work as hard and your legs don’t hurt near as much. Sometimes, when I run away, with the wind in my face, my legs get so tired I have to stop and sit for a while. But on my bike, when I stop and sit for a while, the bike keeps going and I still feel the wind. Mama says that big girls don’t run away when they’re in trouble or scared. Mama says they stay in their rooms like their told and aren’t scared of loud voices and adult things. Mama and Tommy Jenkins always have a lot of adult things going on and I get scared. That’s why I run away. Like the time he came over and tried to take Anna Mae away from Mama. Saying she’s his, not Mama’s. I wanted tell him he could have her, Anna Mae does nothing but cry all day. But I was scared and stayed in my room until their voices got so loud. Outside was a blue sky and quiet trees so I popped the screen out of my window and ran like a fraidy cat. But I’m a big girl now. Now I can take my bike and ride away like I’m not scared of nothing. We get to the stop sign and I stop the bike and lean it up on its kickstand and take Anna Mae out of the basket. She starts crying because I make her let go of the sparkly stuff. She likes that stuff. I look both ways like Mama always tells me to and then carry Anna Mae across the street to the yellow grass. Her eyes are big, soaking up the blue of the sky until they’re both the same color. She’s staring at the grass while it’s moving, reaching out to it like it’s her Mama, her mouth open wide. I walk her over to it and she grabs at the puffy tips of it. It’s almost as tall as me, but not quite. I want to walk into it but I don’t. I stay right on the edge. I don’t tell Anna Mae, but I’m afraid if I go into it, it’ll swallow me up and I’ll never get out. I sit Anna Mae down in the dirt by the edge and she pulls at the yellow sticks that sway back and forth up over her head. She leans way back to look up at the puffy parts until she almost falls backwards. I find some pretty rocks by the road and clean them off on my shirt. The sun starts to turn the yellow grass to orange and I don’t know what time it is. I think Mama will be coming back soon so I go over and pick up Anna Mae and she’s crying again. She wants to stay by the grass. “We have to go,” I tell her. I put her back in the basket and give her the sparkly strings so she calms down a bit. I turn the bike around but it’s tricky to steer with my rocks in one hand. I peddle slow so Anna Mae won’t start crying again.

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Our mailbox looks so tiny and far away and I wish I could go fast to make sure we’re back before Mama. But I keep it slow and steady, slow and steady, holding the rocks against my shirt like eggs that would break if I dropped them. I hear the car honk and it scares me so much I do drop one of them. Mama pulls up next to me in the dirty car with the windows down. “Bethany Paige, what the hell are you doing with my baby?” she’s yelling. “What are you doing? You stop that bicycle right now before I run your over with this car so help me God!” Mama is yelling and screaming so much I can’t concentrate on peddling. I try to look at her through the window and tell her I didn’t go past the stop sign but I can’t talk and look and steer and peddle and hold my rock eggs all at the same time. The front tire of my bike slips and falls off the pavement and I lose my balance. The bike starts falling and I’m screaming and Mama’s yelling and Anna Mae is quiet as the wind. My knee is hurt and my elbows too and all my rock eggs are broken. There’s sparkly strings all over and Mama’s running toward me. She’s still yelling. “You’re stupid!” she says. “You’re a stupid girl and I never should have left you alone!” She slaps me and my face stings but not as bad as my knee. “Where’s Anna Mae? Where is she?” Mama looking all over the ground and I’m crying. I’m crying loud, like Anna Mae. The baby isn’t in the basket when Mama picks the bike up. “Where’s my baby?” Mama’s crying too. My knee is red and runny like an egg sunny side up. It hurts. It hurts real bad. But Mama’s looking for Anna Mae. “Get up!” she says and pulls me by my hair. I cry some more, real loud, and she pushes me in the backseat with the bread in a plastic bag. She’s got Anna Mae in her arms and she’s driving back real fast to the house. Anna Mae’s not crying. I’m the baby now. Mama leaves me in the car with the keys still in it and the doors open and she’s gone into the house. I’m alone holding the clean white bread in my dirty hands and my knee getting red all over. I can hear Mama crying inside, crying loud like me. We’re both crying together, a couple of scared little babies. I think of the yellow grass swaying back and forth in the wind and Anna Mae reaching out for it and it just waiting to swallow me up. I should have let it. I lie down on the seat and use the bread as a pillow, squishing it near flat, and I cry and cry and cry. I don’t know how to stop this time. Mama was wrong. I’m not a big girl.

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Everything Keeps Moving Kara Bollinger

“Feel my leg. And don’t feel weird about it neither.” I didn’t move. I had no reason, nor desire, to touch Louie Chavez’s leg. “No, really. Feel my leg,” he persisted. I extended my arm slowly, and with only my right index finger, poked his leg twice. It all started with his epilepsy: “Look at that—steady as a board,” Louie marveled, holding his left arm completely straight out in front of his body, palm toward the ground. “Not a bit shaky,” he continued. “That just amazes my doctor.” His lips formed the mischievous grin I’d already become familiar with after only two days at the run-down, yet ferociously popular Pancake City in Kirksville, Missouri. “Yeah, your arm is pretty steady.” I faked intrigue. I rarely knew what response Louie deemed appropriate. Most of our conversations consisted of stories about his victory over alcoholism, his puzzling origins, or how his current wife Donna, also a Pancake City employee, would beat up any woman who flirted with him; he insisted that the latter occurred frequently. His left arm, which was spotted by the years, remained out unwavering. “My doctor can’t believe that I can still do my carving.” His large square tinted glasses couldn’t hide his wide eyes, dying for me to respond. I held out. “You see,” he continued, “on the inside I’m epileptic. I’m all shaky. But my hands, my hands are fine. It’s just my insides that are all messed up.” I wasn’t sure if that was even possible. At 10:30 pm after serving the Monday night all-you-can-eat spaghetti crowd and three construction workers best described as predators, though, I wasn’t concerned with the truth. I needed to mop. “Now, how old do you think I am?” “Louie, I have no idea. I’m not good at guessing ages.” “No, come on. How old?” “I don’t know. Fifty-three?” A truthful answer? At least sixty, but I couldn’t insult the one person who had instantly befriended me. “Ha—nope,” he chuckled with squinted eyes, taking supreme enjoyment in my inability to mark his age. “Sixty- five.” Louie made a muscle. There would be no escaping this. “Now, feel my arm,” he instructed. I hesitated, clutching the mop in both hands. “Come on.” I squeezed his bicep lightly with my thumb and index finger. “Pretty strong, huh? I’m probably stronger than you.” “Yeah, Louie. I’m impressed,” I swung the mop horizontally across the brown tiled floor, not reminding him that I was twenty-two and 110 pounds. And then I touched his leg.

“Not bad for a sixty-five year old man, huh?” I offered a generic comment in praise of his strength. “My doctor is just amazed that I can still carve. Amazed.” Carving. Another cue. I looked beyond Louie, seeing my roommate, my ride home, hurriedly finishing her work. I thought she might step in to save me; instead, she made her way back to the big refrigerator where we stored the gallon- sized containers of ranch dressing. “Your carving? What do you carve?” I pictured a NASCAR cap-clad Louie sitting on his front porch, whittling away at a stick. “Well here, have a look.” He handed me two photographs, the edges worn from being crammed into the pockets of his short sleeve western shirts on a daily basis. The first photo was of a shiny piece of dark wood, at least an 11x14. Carved into it was a portrait of jumpsuit Elvis. The second was just as large, but instead of a portrait was a set of praying hands holding a cross. Louie was in this photo, shirtless (still with the NASCAR cap), crouching between the carving and a wood paneled wall. “Wow, those are great.” I wasn’t lying. I wouldn’t want one, but for what they were, they were good. He stared at me proudly, waiting. I scanned my brain for questions to show interest: “How did you get into wood carving?”, “How long did these take?,” “What do you do with them when they’re finished?” He answered them all, describing his inspirations, his process, and the money he made. When he was living in California, he had a wealthy neighbor who loved Elvis and paid 2,000 dollars for a carving of the King. He said she was kind of crazy. Pancake City was the center of Kirksville’s local community, representing natives, or “townies” as students from the liberal arts Truman State University referred to them. As the only restaurant in town open twenty-four hours a day, we did attract a decent drunk student crowd, but the majority of our customers were locals. Pleasant customers included farmers who filled the restaurant each weekday morning for coffee, elderly couples who came in for an afternoon Pepsi, and small, happy families celebrating their son’s first win during baseball season. Most customers were not this bearable. They got visibly upset if their waitress failed to ask for their “Frequent Diner Number,” a promotion that allowed them to accumulate points, and after a certain number of points, receive a coupon—a free Pepsi, a free Cheddar Nugget appetizer, half off a dessert. If an adult ordered Mountain Dew, I knew I would not receive a tip. I once heard a man suggest that his wife stick their daughter’s sticky, syrupy hands in the toilet and flush it.

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The restaurant’s most memorable customers were the regulars. Many of them came back multiple times a week for our most famous dish—The I’m A Starvin’ Man’s Plate. I can name at least fifteen patrons that came in at least once a day. The most rude and terrifying customer, Screamin’ Hot Soup Lady, was never fully satisfied with her meal, but continued eating there anyway; her brother-in-law, Buster, ordered a half-pound cheeseburger at 8:45 every night. Fat Danny, who unknowingly, but rightfully earned this name when I witnessed him eat three orders of popcorn shrimp, an order of French fries, and two slices of Texas Toast in one sitting, had actually met his wife at Pancake City. He was such a fixture that he had eggs named after him, Danny’s Eggs, which were sunny side up eggs done correctly. “The City” also beat out the Shrine Club’s Wednesday night bingo as Kirksville’s best gambling option. Smoke-stained wild horses wallpaper and tabletops with local advertisements replaced a casino’s glitter and neon décor. The bar was lined with four monitors housing digital slot machines. I never played the “slots,” but I gathered that for about fifty cents, you could pick from hundreds, if not thousands, of games. The monitors produced slot machine noises, and it took me a month to realize that players didn’t actually win anything tangible. Solitary diners at the bar would order food and play the games throughout their meal until they paid their ticket at the end. They were easy to serve, requiring little upkeep and exhibiting no impatience. A claw game filled with stuffed animals, most with some kind of patriotic outfit or a firearm, a “coin pusher” machine, and a hunting arcade game lined the wall near the entrance. I once watched a wife unsuccessfully hide her irritation as she sat fifteen minutes at a table alone while her husband killed virtual deer, elk, and moose; she couldn’t order without him because she didn’t know if he wanted the half or three-quarter pound cheeseburger. The only male waiter at the restaurant, who frequently asked to trade for the busiest tables, reminding the waitresses of his inability to pay rent, buy groceries, and afford gas to drive to work, held the high score in the hunting game. Customers regularly started or ended (or both) their visit to Pancake City at the most popular game—the coin pusher. Inside the machine were two platforms covered with quarters; a five and ten dollar bill lay in the machine as well. The top platform moved continuously, pushing the coins forward. Players would drop a quarter into the machine, and when it fell onto the platform, there was the chance it would push some of the other

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quarters over the edge; whatever coins fell over the edge belonged to the player. Timing was crucial, and whether it was because of magnetism or the angle of the edge, players rarely won. A handwritten “No shaking or hitting” sign deferred few customers. It was not uncommon for a family of four to leave three dollars on the table for a thirty dollar meal, and then immediately put anywhere from one to five dollars into the quarter machine. Once a father gave me a look that said “I’m sorry” as he handed a dollar to his whining eight-year-old son. When customers played while waiting for their food, I stood at the bar, watching my tip dwindle. The machine pushed back and forth constantly, and sometimes quarters fell out when no one was playing. There were different rules about these quarters depending on who was working. Day shift waitresses would “call” them, whoever claimed the quarter first got to keep it, while the overnight waitresses would stampede the machine if they heard a quarter drop. The evening manager always put the quarters he found into the candy machine; they would be waiting there to reward an observant child with a handful of Skittles or a gumball. I never cared enough to get a quarter that fell from the machine. Louie rode his royal blue moped to Pancake City everyday. When he wasn’t working, he’d pick a spot at the bar and get one of the waitresses to grab him a Pepsi, moving from his seat only to play one of the games or have a smoke. He dropped coins into the coin pusher on and off for hours, subsequently pounding on its sides when he didn’t win, which was most of the time. If he did win, it was usually because Donna had loaded the machine with quarters right before he played. I was cleaning and refilling the ketchup bottles when Louie asked if he had told me about the time he went to Nixon’s birthday party. He had not. He had apparently carved a portrait of every US President, and these were put on display at this party. “The party was really fancy, ya know. I had to spend all my money just to rent a tuxedo.” I didn’t ask why or how he was in Washington, D.C., having learned that his previous hometowns included almost everywhere. “There were politicians and free drinks and food. And they had my carvings displayed all around the room, all the presidents. When they unveiled Nixon’s photo, I got to shake his hand and they took pictures and everything.” In my mind, I saw the photo of Elvis and Nixon shaking hands. I imagined his head superimposed onto Elvis’ body. I wondered if Louie had a similar photo somewhere, maybe in the pocket of his western shirt.

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“Nixon wanted to go to a bar. I didn’t want to, you see, because everything was free at this party and I’d spent all my money on the tuxedo. We went, though, because he was the President. There was this long bar lined with tall stools, and as soon as we got there, Nixon ordered everybody a round of drinks.“ A few customers trickled in. They didn’t sit in my section. “I got to sit right next to Nixon, and he started asking me about my carvings. He said, ‘You know, the only thing I want to know is if my nose is really that big.’ I was worried, ya know, thinking that I had accidentally insulted the President of the United States, but then he just started laughing, so I did, too.” I kept my questions—what were the other guests not at the bar doing while Nixon was absent from his actual party? How had Louie been lucky enough to sit right next to him?—to myself and instead played along: “What else did you guys talk about?” “Well, I’m getting there. After we’d talked for a while, and he had bought everyone a few more rounds, he said ‘You know, Louie, you’re not too bad for a damn Mexican.’ Now he was wrong, you see, but I didn’t say anything. I’m not Mexican. I’m from Spain. But I didn’t say anything, I just let it go. I didn’t want to upset the President, you know. Now these two guys in black suits were standing behind us. I had to go to the bathroom, but they were looking at me funny, so I kept sitting there.” I wanted to beat Louie to the punch line: it was the secret service. He was sitting next to the President. “I was starting to get annoyed, because they kept watching me like I had done something wrong. I sat there thinking about whether or not I could take them. I was a pretty good fighter, well I still am, but then I was really good. I’m small, but I’ve beat up gigantic guys before. Then it suddenly hit me—they were the secret service!” Louie continued the story. The conclusion: he had been so afraid of upsetting the secret service that he peed in his pants. “Seriously, Louie? You peed in your pants?” He laughed and nodded his head in affirmation. “Didn’t Nixon notice?” He ignored my question, instead walking outside for a smoke. When Louie worked, the restaurant ran more smoothly. For reasons unbeknownst to me, he only worked Saturdays and Sundays during the busiest hours. He was diligent, focused on the restaurants’ needs. When only five clean coffee mugs lingered on the counter at nine a.m., and a line of people stood at the door, mugs would miraculously appear. I learned that

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summer that in restaurants, milk is stored in thick clear plastic bags that have to be carefully fitted into a dispenser; Louie could change these bags quickly, without the disastrous spills usually made by the careless teenage dishwashers. He used any extra time he had to clear off dirty tables, helping the waitresses he liked first. Pancake City moved customers through the restaurant quickly, especially on weekend mornings, so cleaning tables quickly was a must. After cleaning up spilt Mountain Dew at 8 a.m., earning a dollar tip from a family of four, watching a child hurl crayons all over the floor, and being treated as completely incompetent for an egg cooked too hard, I thought a clean table, the tip waiting neatly in the center next to the salt and pepper shakers and jelly, was a beautiful thing. Once, as I was slicing lemons to put in iced tea, a lemon rolled under the ice machine, into a space I deemed unreachable; I wouldn’t be there when it started to rot in a few months. Louie saw this and spent fifteen minutes sprawled on his stomach, a broom handle under the machine fishing for the lemon. I stood next to him, feeling guilty for the trouble he was going to to fix my mistake. After he retrieved the lemon, he showed me how he could bounce it off his bicep and then catch it in his hand. “I’m always willing to sell my carvings,” Louie said sometime midsummer. “It’s just a hobby, but I have quite a bit of luck selling them.” I imagined an 11x14 carved portrait of Nixon in the apartment that was awaiting me in Lawrence, Kansas, when this summer stint would end and my career as a graduate student would begin. I only had a vague recollection of what my new home looked like, but I was sure its décor would include earth tones, my photography, a few pieces of art I had yet to acquire, and a large desk. There would also be a bookshelf with lots of books—my favorites, those that would teach me how to teach writing to freshman, the ones I had to read for the Modern English Grammar class I would take in the fall, and those I was proud to have read like Gravity’s Rainbow. The carving did not fit. “Sometimes people ask for portraits of their family members.” “Really?” My voice conveyed my skepticism. I thought a photo would suffice. “Well, sure,” he responded. He constructed a scenario for proof: “Let’s say that you bring a picture of your dad in to work one day. Now while you’re working, you accidentally drop the picture onto the ground. I come through, pick up the picture and put it in my pocket.” He patted his shirt pocket with his right hand. “Over the next few weeks, I create this beautiful

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carving of your father.” He used his hands, making a smooth arc in the air as he slowly drew out the word ‘beautiful.’ “I bring it in and show it to you, and I ask, let’s say, 400 dollars.” “Well, 400 dollars would be a fair price for all your work,” I began. “But I’m a student.” “Now wait a minute. You might buy it. Let’s say that I took this beautiful portrait and started to throw it into a fire.” He paused for effect. “Now you wouldn’t let me to do that to your dear old dad, would you?” The mischievous smile returned. “Louie, that sounds like blackmail.” “Things are a lot better for me now,” Louie began one slow afternoon. “I’ve been married a couple of times.” He told me about his wife that cheated on him multiple times. That marriage finally ended. I tried to imagine Louie as a victim. I’d watched him interact with Donna when they worked together at the restaurant and when they came in on dates, Donna wearing turquoise eye shadow and a leopard print jacket. The power in the relationship seemed equally distributed, but if anything, Louie had the upper hand—she gave him her tip money at the end of her shifts. “My second wife,” Louie played with the plastic cup that held his Pepsi, “she just didn’t seem to know I was around.” He told me how he would clean the entire house everyday, vacuuming the floors and dusting all the furniture. I asked if his wife made him do those things. “No, of course not. She never asked me to do anything. I did it to make her happy, to make her notice me.” He stared at the counter, then looked up: “I would go down to the bar most nights and sit there and think ‘what am I doing wrong?’” I wrapped silverware in a paper napkin silently. I couldn’t come up with questions for these stories, the ones that seemed believable. “Wasting money on these games isn’t good, but I’d rather be doing this than drinking.” I heard an “amen” from the man sitting at the bar next to him. The night before I moved from Kirksville and simultaneously left Pancake City, I took my dad to the restaurant for dessert. He had heard my stories and wanted to see the place with my insider perspective. After learning that the fruit pies were “homemade” only in the sense that the cooks poured canned filling into a premade crust, my dad opted for an ice cream sundae. I had one blueberry pancake. I hadn’t had a pancake all summer. As my dad marveled at the size of his sundae and brainstormed aloud

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the most efficient way to pack my stuff into the moving truck, I watched the restaurant. My eyes found the quarter machine, which Louie was leaning against, pushing quarter after quarter into the slot. He hit its side. I imagined Louie seeing my dad, quickly carving his portrait, and then trying to sell it to me in the few hours that I would still be in Kirksville. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak to him, and he zdidnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t notice us. As we passed him on our way out of the restaurant, he gazed at the quarters, the machine pushing them close to the edge, but never far enough for the coin to clang on the metal.

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The Allegory of Man RJ Ingram

His helium tongue. His anvils buckle down and glisten in the genius of carnival sun. Hephaestus knows wax like the bars of a birdcage: the distance inside the letters, feeling the loose paper between pieces of amber and plum. The rhythm of waiting, crossing and uncrossing his legs. If only time was kind to the wound.

There once was a golden rod shaped in the image of man: His every footstep and embrace. His fingers and pods hid inside. His burning hair. His mount and tide. Every inch of it emptied over the mouth of an ancient volcano. And we thought to rapt the beast with incense and song. There once were two parts: the rhyme and phallus. The dip and submerge.

re: creation mensah demary For Alana the gods, they smile—i heard—with their cocks erect, wrestling each other naked and charged. On Earth, with its endless possibilities undulating, blending together like kaleidoscopic sex —orgasms held back in tantric trances while the colors bloom and collapse, pulsating, offering themselves— my daily bread consists of black and white choices. a gun held to my head, my wife threatened with rape, should i choose unwisely—or—should i vote for the righteous act, the godly act: to not choose at all. or —maybe— allow the world (its colors humping bareback) to say to me, “sample everything and commit to nothing.” the above describes: politics religion sexual orientation (x) # literature melanin (and all the horrors tightly packed inside)

in a blog five years ago, i danced around my arousal aroused by men. dance could mean “beat around the bush” or “play it off coy like, cool-like.” what i wrote was honest; the thought of men kissing men, of being kissed by a man, didn’t sicken me. rather, it excited me. it seemed—okay. meanwhile, my ex-wife, who was my wife at the time of the blog and when i fell in love with she who is my wife today, wrote via email after our we filed for divorce, 1

x marks the spot

“you probably like men, anyway.” the obvious doubled as an insult. is it okay? to grow into bisexuality? ah, the word makes me hard. bisexual: the absence of choice; the presence of everything possible; a life, blurred. a woman fucked by a man makes me come...hard. a man fucked by a man makes me come...hard. a man fucked by a woman who is still 10% man makes me come...and shudder.

i never kissed a boy. i never fucked a boy. i never heard him gurgle as i swallowed his dick. i never sucked dick. i never had a dick in my ass i never met a boy who i wanted to fuck. i never met a boy who i’d want to fuck me. ... but i have thought about the come...and how...warm...it must feel. inside. ...but i’ve had tongue. and a finger. something about the P-spot, empress said as we laid in the dark, our bedroom eyes bombarded by the dread of impending sex. i ate her pussy and licked her ass, which i proceeded to mount before she said wait like it wafted and dispersed against the dark.

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turn over spilled out of her mouth, visible, a smoky cold command i followed. tell me if this feels good tickled my earlobe, made the tip of my dick wet. empress licked and licked. stuck her tongue in deep and i recall now a mixture of wanting to cry, wanting to scream, wanting to laugh and laugh. it was how i imagined cunnilingus. being consumed. eaten. whole. what, then, does this make me?

i am what one would call a closeted bisexual. can a bisexual be in the closet? what does it mean, what does it mean to hide the other half, to hide fullstop? and from what do i hide? from whom? myself? my family? my wife? we need to talk. sometimes, i want her to fuck me. with her tongue, with her finger, i don’t care. i want to be in the dark, my dick pressed against the mattress, and fucked by the woman i love, to be eaten. after, i’d do all things i’m accustomed to doing to her—plus whatever positions and penetrations she secretly covets—and i’d want her to hold me, and i’d want to hold her, and shed our genders —too heavy with norms— and live in love. bask in our smell conjured and stuck to the ceiling, the walls, the windows (glass fogged enough to spell possibility in fingertip).

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but she married a man. i never sat her down, face to face (to face), to tell her my story, unedited. i keep it to myself because she married a man. i’m embarrassed for her. she thought she married a man, but is, in fact, married to a ghost: the blurred object between crossed eyes, the blip captured by a camera’s misfire, the un-genre between fiction and memoir, a thing. we need to talk. i am thirty. i am unswayed by “it gets better.” i’ve seen faggots belittled and accused of introducing immunodeficient diseases to the world. i’ve seen parents turn their backs. i see uncles in closets with “roommates” and “friends.” my wife—tender, beautiful wife—is only human. what would i ask of her? understanding? would i understand if she refused to give it? why concern myself with “it gets better” if this is as good as it gets and the truth, that thing between fiction and memoir, torches our happy home? what is a life improved by honesty if it’s at the expense of my life’s love? what if she leaves me?

i think of the gods as androgynous titans, each with a power hitched to a force of nature. the god of lightning strikes down the god of earthquakes, who then falls to make the god of fire quiver and flame out. flame. faggots. they used to burn them—wood and people—is that why i hide? am i hiding? do i consider myself hidden and sheltered? the gods are hermaphroditic lords born to oscillate between the pegger and the pegged, the bottom and the dominant top (but who is more dominant? who is more vulnerable? the penetrator or the penetrated? both. neither. the world must learn this to survive; it needs this info as much as it needs poetry and fiction). the gods made the big bang from a gangbang or a make-up fuck, hard and energized, flesh spanked by flesh. black holes are what you think—and the gods wink when the answer dances upon your human head. the gods watched matthew shepard crucified to a fence—and marveled like

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alien scientists donned in shimmering lab coats, studied our grotesque manners, and asked themselves in an indiscernible dialect, “why?” the gods laughed when we reached to the stars and pulled down “god”—out of thin air—and they celebrated with a circle jerk, followed by cups of cuban coffee for a recharge. the universe heaves, its blackness a forever-ignored reminder of original skin, and the gods dive in between breaths, breasts buoyed by anti-matter, vaginas as mysterious as string theory hidden behind penises, their strong, beautiful legs thrash the amniotic waters deep inside wormholes, and they swim about. joyous and relieved from the burden of being human —and having to choose. lest ye be burned at the stake, or dragged behind a Ford pickup (V8), or forced to march onto city hall in angry beggary for trickle-down rights, or tortured from the inside out by a mind choked into heterosexual mores (one choice. one. choose wisely).

fuck me into godhood. let me show you the real meaning of being human. twin. meshed. melded. one: multiplied. —i’ll show you as soon as i discard the label bisexual. queer seems lighter, but heavy still.

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The Architecture of the Ear Jake Syersak

the lassoed patois of tongue tethered to antennae o tragic oyster, amorphous hemorrhage. Sensitive eye & ear (here)

and I

see an outlined hail of snail isles; a ringing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;round reciting Hail Mary librettos into the slow corkscrew of escargot, the labyrinthine ear that built into the eyes of Paris an irony of mollusked auricles diamondizing oracles, snails equipped w/ hearing aids hammering away at cities

The, Warped Wholly Jake Syersak

I want you to believe in this. In what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m saying. When I was a child I saw I as I. A xylophonic movement in the rows upon rows of monkey bars. I ran around writing thee, in place of the everywhere I went. There where I was, I was corrected. How this insinuation of you as wrong, I uttered. I believed in the, warped holy of Crayola. You are thee only in absence of the. No youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s allowed to believe in um, & not ohm

So Little Separating Bone from Bone Jacqueline May

Two hours after my girlfriend’s mother dies, we go out to brunch. It’s a sunny Chicago Saturday morning made for farmer’s markets, peppers glowing every pure color against brown bags, batik skirts flapping on hangers. Because neither Jessica nor her father can think of any restaurants, I drive us to the Baker’s Square by the freeway exit. The tables are occupied by old people nodding slowly at each other and hungover college students leaning on elbows to face breakfast from a less confrontational angle. So what do you say, exactly, to the red-eyed remnants of the Kinsella family? Jessica and her dad sit shoulder against shoulder on one side of the booth, plunged into menus. I can’t tell if my job as boyfriend is to do all the talking or none of it. I find myself dragging a finger down the edge of the menu, creasing that tiny overhang of laminate. “Coffee,” Jess snaps at the waitress. All night she’s been hyper-professional, Dr. Kinsella speaking in ice chips, ordering around the hospital staff with her sharp chin cocked. I slip in a “Please.” The pits around the waitress’s eyes rival ours. If she pulled out her wallet I bet we’d see several scrawny kids and no man. She drops Jess a cool look as she walks away. Rich leans gradually heavier on Jess like he’s a wall of molasses, a slow flow collapsing sideways. She holds him up without sagging. He’d crush me into the bench. None of this is relevant. “Blueberry pancakes.” Rich shuts his menu. “Sausage or bacon?” Jess prods gently. “Bacon.” “Good choice.” My voice is completely out of place. Jessica doesn’t notice. “Nitrates and fat, or nitrates and fat,” she says, sounding normal, and I can’t help grinning at her because despite her skinniness and good sense and two years of med school, she loves bacon, and sausage, and salami, and sometimes hot dogs. This is the whole conversation. By the time the food appears, Rich is asleep on Jess’s shoulder and I’m building a robot out of creamers. Jess is encased in her thoughts. Her eyes are shiny, not wet shiny but hard, like the shells of June bugs. Around us, the restaurant cycles: the college students drag themselves upright, the old people paw through their pocketbooks, the greasy teenagers sling dishes into brown tubs, the doors thump shut with terrible finality. I eat my omelet, and I’d eat the other two meals too if I had the balls to reach across the table.

On an ordinary Saturday, I’d be wiping down the glass counter at the

porn store, trying to keep the harsh cleanser away from my falling-apart “Pavement ist rad!” shirt, and watching guys in big coats for signs of shoplifting or jacking off. This is why you stay in grad school when they give you an assistantship, instead of letting your feelings of inadequacy cause you to flee after a semester and grab the first job available. Still, I’d rather be renting Ass Reamers 12 to a smelly dude—or grading freshman essays that begin “In today’s society”— than in the Kinsella house right now. We’re supposed to be taking a nap after brunch. Jess has put in a cassette scrounged from among pastel leotards in her childhood dresser, and I’m pretty sure it’s the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing. In the half-light of pulled blinds, the pale skeleton of the flayed guy on Jess’s anatomy poster gleams. We’re lying in her old loud twin bed with all our bones rattling against each other: chin on skull, sternum on spine, elbow on rib, heel on shin. If only we could have sex. Sex is what I can do for her. Whenever we have sex, Jess softens like taffy and I become meaty and resilient. I don’t know if this happens to everyone, if sex really is a magical equalizing force that makes fat people dainty, old people limber, amputees symmetrical. It doesn’t look that way from the outside. Mostly what porn shows me, these days, is a mechanical gnashing of equipment. A G.I. Joe duel enacted by a giant child. I wonder how long it’ll be before we have sex again. It’s not something I can ask. I rest my top arm below Jess’s breasts. “Relax,” I whisper. Curls of her hair separate against my lips, clinging. “Sleep.” She grinds the side of her head against the mattress. The boombox urges us to stay, just a little bit longer. “I can’t. I could imagine never sleeping again.” “Do you want to get up?” “No.” Her voice is rough and taut as a rope. It makes me want to rise to the occasion. I could say to our children, “I couldn’t wait a second longer. I had to ask her. We got married that afternoon, wearing jeans.” I kiss Jess on the back of her head and she stiffens. “Do you want me to get up?” I ask. “Yes.” The next day, alone in the Kinsella house, I can’t stop cracking my knuckles. It’s the sharp wrong relief of jamming a Q-Tip down your ear canal, of coming for the fourth time when you’re already sore and you have to dig too hard for the pleasure and it breaks out of you in shards. To distract myself from snapping my fingers right off, I straighten up

May

the downstairs. Bit by bit, flowers have come in from neighbors and family, names I’ve never heard or have heard once, in trivial stories. They crowd the kitchen table, crackling with foil, trailing ribbon. Their smell jostles sweet against green against rot. It furs the inside of my nose. I set flowers on end tables and the coffee table, on top of Rich’s ancient stereo cabinets. I open the curtains and realize: I’ve redecorated their living room with a funeral theme. I put all the flowers back on the table. I decide the household needs a snack. Something cheerful. Tumbleweeds are blowing through the pantry, but I find a bag of marshmallows and a box of Rice Krispies, and a stick of margarine in the barren fridge. While I wait for the marshmallows to melt, I turn the radio to a Spanish-language station and dance in a way I never do, waving my wooden spoon, shaking the luscious ass I don’t have. When I finish patting the bars into the two glass pie plates that were the only pans I could find, I turn off the radio. I hunt down the vacuum to do something loud and satisfying. The hot scent of its motor cuts through the flowers and makes breathing easier. I vacuum from the living room up the stairs, the canister thumping behind me, and down the hall into Jess’s bedroom. In the dimness a shape moves. I step on the power button. “I thought you were gone.” Jess is a huddle of hair and blanket. The room smells like fever. “Sorry about the noise,” I say. The shape twitches in a way that could be a shrug. I sit, cautiously, on the edge of the bed. I find her bony shoulder with my hand. She shivers and then, all at once, burrows against me, her head next to my thigh. A wave of hair falls the wrong way over her forehead, hiding her. I rub her shoulder. “Are you OK?” Jess makes an indeterminate noise that can’t possibly be a yes, and I can only think to lie down next to her, which with the way she’s positioned is a lot harder than it sounds, and I end up kneeing her in the shins and rolling her halfway over, trapping a chunk of her hair beneath my arm. “Ow,” she says, without conviction. I adjust, getting balanced so that the sag of the mattress doesn’t tip me backward off the bed. I start kissing whatever I can reach, mostly forehead. Her skin sticks to my lips. “Can I do anything for you?” I ask. This is our way of offering oral sex, but though I wouldn’t mind having her slightly metallic scent clinging to my beard stubble all afternoon, I mean it literally. I half expect her to kick me out of her bed again. Jess jams her hand between us and grabs my belt buckle. With the angle and without room to maneuver, she can’t get it undone. To roll far enough away, I have to put one foot on the floor. I undo my belt, and my

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pants, and Jess wiggles out of her sweats and kicks them to the foot of the bed, and I would be fine with going slow—or not going—but when I prop myself on my elbow and slip a hand under her shirt, she moves my wrist away and grabs my hips to pull me on top of her. When I look into her eyes, she shuts them. “Wait,” I say. I nudge her legs further apart so I can kneel between them. I brush my hand over her soft hair and start to slip a finger into her, but she moves my wrist away. “Please.” I’m barely even hard. She wraps her dry hand around me for a few businesslike strokes, just enough. “OK,” she says. I enter slowly. She winces; she’s not very wet. “This OK?” Jess nods. After a pause I start to move and she moves against me. We can’t find a rhythm. It’s like we’ve never done this before, with each other or anybody. She keeps her eyes closed and I watch her face for a clue, for some sign of enjoyment or opinion or emotion. I try to kiss her, but she ducks her head away and bites my shoulder like she hates me. We could be on the saddest, grainiest tape at my store. I shut my eyes to block out Jess’s face and the pain in my shoulder, which echoes after her teeth are gone, and the rhythm begins to work, we synchronize, Jess even makes a sound, I’m feeling way better about this maybe we’re OK and whoa— come, a sharp surprise, like getting slapped. Fuck. When I open my eyes, Jess’s expression is tolerant. My stupid, useless body. “Goddamn. I’m sorry.” “It’s all right. Thank you.” The last time we had sex, she clutched my hips with her legs to keep me inside her. “Stay like this,” she whispered, and she bit my earlobe, and when I finally pulled out she shuddered. “Let me make it up to you,” I say desperately, already scooting backward toward the foot of the bed, taking hold of her thighs. “No. No.” She shakes her head and can’t seem to stop, even as she swings her leg over my head to put her feet on the floor, even as she wraps the blanket around herself and leaves the room. During the next two days, I rattle around the house like a tooth in a jar. I rake the soggy yard. I wash and fold every sheet and towel I can round up. I pack the trunk, back seat and passenger side of my car with bags of groceries, and then I put them away in the wrong places, so Rich can’t find

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anything. After Jessica nibbles away both pie plates of Rice Krispie bars, I make a special trip for another bag of marshmallows, and after the resulting batch disappears, I stock up. One box of Rice Krispies makes almost two recipes; I buy five boxes. I start being afraid to check my bank balance. Rich and I have bouts of hearty man-talk, mostly about the Packers. Together we watch them get pulverized by the Bears. We can hear the next-door neighbors cheering, and it hurts us. Jess is there too, reading five years’ worth of Redbook in sequence from cover to cover, responding tersely to direct queries. Anything a good boyfriend would say, anything he would do to help his girl, must be beyond my capabilities. On the morning of the day of the viewing, Rich and Jessica go somewhere to arrange something. They’re being nice by not asking me to come on these errands, and I’m being nice by not tagging along. It’s still weird to be in their house by myself. I turn on right-wing talk radio to enrage me while I replenish the supply of bars. They’re all I’ve seen Jessica eat since Baker’s Square. I’m greasing the pan with angry strokes of the butter stick, caught up in the discussion of how America needs a good long high fence topped with razor wire, when a man walks into the kitchen. He’s wearing a nice gray suit, a dark purple tie, and black shoes that catch the sunlight that stretches across the kitchen floor. He leans both elbows on the countertop behind him, lord of all he surveys. “Um, hey.” I wonder how many violent crimes are committed during the day by middle-aged guys in nice gray suits. Maybe a lot. Aren’t most serial killers nondescript white men? “I’m here to rob you,” he says genially. “Give me all your money.” I look at him. The microwave beeps. The host on the radio says, “Wake up, America!” “I don’t have money,” I tell him. The microwave beeps again; it’s the kind that won’t shut up until you open it. “OK, I need to go to the microwave.” I edge toward it. I think I can take him, if he doesn’t have a gun. “Do you like Rice Krispie bars?” “Burglar with a sweet tooth!” he chuckles, like it’s hilarious. “I won’t rob you this time. I’m Suzanne’s brother Dave.” “Oh.” I feel dumb—more so when I realize I’m disappointed that I don’t get to be a big damn hero, or get shot and miss the rest of the day. The microwave beeps. I take the sticky wooden spoon balanced at the edge of the sink and pull the bowl out of the microwave and start to stir the melting marshmallows into the melted butter. “It gets too sticky if you let it sit,” I explain over my shoulder. I’ve learned that it’s much easier to get the spoon

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out if you dip it into the butter area before going after the marshmallow. “I’m Jessica’s boyfriend.” “Ah, the infamous Warren.” For an instant I imagine my whole life and reputation spread out in clinical detail for Jessica’s extended family—my job, my disintegrating wardrobe, my hollow white chest, my recent failed attempts to be an academic and a good boyfriend. Then I realize—hope—he’s joking. I say, “And you’re the notorious Uncle Dave!” “That’s us. Black sheep right here.” Dave laughs heartily. It’s nice to hear someone laughing, even though I don’t know why he is. “Hey, War, how’s about a quart or two of bourbon?” Jess and Rich could be home any minute. I pause. “Awesome,” I say. By the time I start the microwave again, Dave has found the liquor. All the liquor. It looks like the Jetsons have built a city on the counter. We cause upheaval in the Jack Daniels building. “To us,” Dave says, raising his glass. I tap mine against his. What, after all, could be more festive than drinking with my girlfriend’s uncle at 11 a.m. on the day of his sister’s viewing? “To us.” We drink. I feel better right away. Dave gulps more whiskey like it’s Gatorade. “You and me, War,” he says expansively. “Guys like us got to stick together.” Dave must be the crazy uncle. Jess has never mentioned having one, but everyone does, right? My Uncle Henry keeps fondling his parishioners and having to move on to smaller and weirder churches. Before long he’ll be preaching to four folding chairs in his garage. I get along fine with him, or will until the inevitable day he grabs Jessica’s ass. “To guys like us,” I say. We toast again. The microwave beeps. “So where’s Jessica and what’s-his-name?” I take the too-hot bowl out of the microwave and drop it on the stove. It spins once and settles. “Rich?” “Yeah. Richie Rich. Mr. Moneybags.” Dave drains his glass and grins at me. “Can I help with the stuff there? Need some cream of tar-tar? Getcha a spa-tu-la?” “Uh.” I look around. “Grab that bowl of cereal? Right by your hand there?” He brings me the bowl of Rice Krispies, holding it out with both hands. I dump it in. “Do you want to stir?” He does an excellent job. We drink a lot more Jack Daniels in the kitchen. We decide on na-

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chos to go with the bars. Since I supplied the whole kitchen except for the strange canned goods lurking at the back of the pantry (water chestnuts, low-sodium leek soup, herring), I can find everything, even though I’m quite drunk. Dave’s mental state seems immune to alcohol. “I bought all this food,” I tell him loudly. “I make eight bucks an hour and I’m buying groceries for these people.” “Ungrateful bastards.” Dave slings his arm around my shoulders. “Drink all their liquor. We’ll show ‘em.” “Take that!” I cheer. I grate my thumb into the cheese. “Come on, Civil War,” Dave says. “None of that bleeding.” I put the nachos in the microwave. “I’m fucking good at this microwave,” I tell Dave. “I’ll bleed if I want to.” “OK, then. We are in possession of bloody nachos. And we are in possession of liquor. The 12-thousand-dollar question is this: Do we have everything we need for a perfect day?” “Tits!” This is Jessica’s least favorite word. My drunk self wants to say it a lot. “We need tits.” Dave fixes me with a tolerant look. “War. War of the Worlds. Ladies are for the nighttime.” “Danger Dave,” I chide, “ladies are for all the time.” The Kinsellas are out of Jack, so we switch to Wild Turkey when we move to the living room. “TV,” I order, handing him the remote. He thumps into the chair that looks best but isn’t. The sucker chair. I get the real best chair. The wooden arms are a fake-out. “War and Peace,” Dave says. “King of the nachos.” “Dave-o-rama. Emperor of Daveland.” We reach across the space between our chairs to clunk glasses again, so hard that Wild Turkey leaps up and splashes my wrist. I bring the glass to my face but don’t drink. My stomach is starting to leave the party. Dave’s channel-surfing lands on Maury Povich. “None of ‘em are the real father,” he confides. “Bitch slept with everyone.” The grandfather clock strikes once. It’s 12:30, not 1:00, but I realize for real that there’s no way I’ll be sober for the viewing at 2. That I’m even more drunk than I thought. That at any moment Rich and Jessica could return with their red eyes and Plexiglas coating. That no matter what, sometime within the next two hours I will be at a funeral home that’s all flat maroon carpet and the thick sweetish smell of makeup, which in my memory is the smell of my waxy grandpa. Pragmatic, hard-hugging Suzanne Kinsella will have been wheeled in like a steam table, and we’ll stand around like

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we’re waiting for plates. “God,” I say to Dave, “we’ve got to sober up.” Dave looks at me as if I’ve lapsed into Portuguese. “War, that’s the last thing we need.” He keeps his eyes on me as he sucks down a long draught. Maury needles a van-sized woman: “And you say you have no idea why your husband left you?” I ask, “What do we need then?” “Liquor.” There are tears in his eyes. “That’s all we get, guys like us.” Taking a huge gulp of Wild Turkey is all I can think to do. My throat curls up in protest. “What about your family?” I rasp. Sadness takes over Dave’s face, molding it so dramatically that I become aware of the fixed pattern of his skull beneath it. Tears spill over the edges of his eye sockets, run over his cheekbones. Panic rises in me. “Sorry, man, hey. Come on, Danger Dave.” Dave lets out a big sob. What now? When Jessica cries about regular things I hug her or apologize, depending. When she has big things to cry about, apparently I contribute nothing. “Dave-o, man, I’m sorry.” Dave cries while the van woman defends herself, while the van woman’s ex-husband calls her a “Jabba the Hutt bitch,” while the studio audience boos, while Wilford Brimley walruses about diabetes, while the clock hand crawls up to 12:35, then 12:40. I keep sneaking peeks to see if he’s done. I’m lost. Finally Dave sighs. I hear his nails click against the glass, and a long swallow. Onscreen the van woman’s new boyfriend shouts at the husband, “Who you think you are? Brad Pitt?” “Bleep you, bleephole!” the husband shouts, censored. Dave is watching now. The two men lunge at each other, mike cords twitching. “Goddamn,” Dave says, then: “Goddamn it!” He struggles out of his chair and spikes the remote against the carpet. The battery compartment pops open, the batteries tumbling out. “Hey, there.” Dave turns to look at me and his face is still shiny with tears. He kicks his chair. The studio audience roars. He knocks his empty glass off the end table. Drops of liquor glitter in the air. I get up. I put a hand on his arm to calm him down. Dave says low, “What the fuck, War?” We make eye contact and his despair slams into me. Like nothing I can even imagine. He shakes off my hand, and then he shoves me. Deliberate. His eyes are a plea. I stand still a second, and then I shove him back harder. Circling awkwardly in the small floor space of the living room, we

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lunge, teeter, teeter and stagger, lunge and chicken out. I get Dave by the lapel and jerk hard. He stumbles into my chest, flailing. The smell of Wild Turkey and jalapenos. He shoves me again and I trip over my heel, smack my head on the end table. The nacho bowl overturns on my arm and it’s all the same, hot cheese and headache. Dave dives at me, tie flapping. I roll away, hook his leg, pull. Connected at the knee we roll together on the white carpet. Dave elbows me hard in the ribs, kicks my shin. He’s floundered into the nachos. Cheese on us both. I get up, brush off, but he follows me up and flies into me. Drunk sad punches mostly missing me. I trip him but he hugs me all the way to the floor. When Jessica and Rich come back, I’ve got Dave pinned, sternum against spine, elbows grinding into shoulder blades, his heels pounding into my shins. My skull aches. I look up to see them standing just inside the front door, dark shapes in front of the brightness outside. Individual strands of Jessica’s hair gleam golden. Slowly I release Dave and climb off him. He doesn’t move. “I didn’t hurt him,” I say. I stand up, dusting off what isn’t ground into my clothes. Dave rolls over. Jess and Rich are frozen. I deserve everything I’m about to get. I reach down to Dave. He takes my hand and grips it hard, grinding carpals and metacarpals and phalanges, all the names Jess taught me. I anchor my weight to balance his, and together we pull him up from the floor.

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How to Politely Decline an Invitation to an Airport Lounge or How to Meet New People Without Being Creepy Carol Guess and Daniela Olszewska

Take your pretzels elsewhere, fist full of foil: public sex and cameras don’t mix. Surveillance is a beautiful woman in heels and a suitcase on wheels in a concourse larger than the town you grew up in. Airports are minor cities, with moving sidewalks and portable art. They get paraded past you: metal plated wings on lapels, preteens in matching track jackets, red fauxhaux, blue plugs, impractically heavy vintage Samsonites, and, if it’s Monday, every third person wearing a dark tie and jacket. If it’s Sunday, sunburned dads touting their skinny second wives and their children from his first marriage waving brightly painted alligators on sticks. Bottled water is an appropriate drink to offer a potential friend, especially in JFK when the AC flicks off or in Dulles during a blizzard. Look longingly after the ‘business class’ lounge. Remember when your cousin claimed ‘business class’ was over. If you had the extra money to fly first class, you probably had the extra money to rent/own your own damn plane. Remember when your history teacher joked that, whenever you weren’t sure what the answer was, just write ‘rise or fall of the middle class.’ Once, you spent the night in the lounge while a major snowstorm buried O’Hare. A woman held her dog over a potted plant. A man doped a cat to slump in its cage. You slept on the floor with dozens of others; woke to strange hair snoring into your chest.

At Hour 15, you start sweating and it smells. 90% of desperation is just boredom in disguise. Hit the greentiled restroom, the one far away from most of the gates. Take a ‘wide stance.’ Recycled air and watery drinks. The toilet seats spin, replacing plastic with plastic. Autotuned pop wafts above artificial orange. A disembodied voice summons Madison Bennett and Elvira Drum. It’s easy to lose someone, even yourself. Page yourself to baggage claim and wait.

Guess & Olszewska

Paradise White Stefan Milne

This man must, unfortunately, euthanize his girlfriend’s dog. Don’t think the man a heartless beast. He has no problem with dogs, neither as a species, nor individually. But the girlfriend has stated quite explicitly that she won’t be with anyone that doesn’t get along with her dog. Admittedly, this revelation was wine-coaxed and wrapped in a joke, but the man’s not stupid, he caught the glint of consequence—the hard eyes, the tight smile. The dog was staying with the girlfriend’s parents in Portland because the girlfriend’s apartment was too small, so the man didn’t meet the dog until he drove with the girlfriend from Seattle for Christmas, and by this time the man was already—at five months into the relationship and for the first time in his life—deeply in love, flocked around by reveries of sugar-spun wedding gowns and teething toddlers. And so when the man walked into the parents’ house and the dog snapped at him and snagged his slacks with its teeth, the man laughed and said that he had probably dripped some meat juice on them, and a vague relative (uncle, cousin, he’s still not sure) made a joke about there being nothing wrong with having meat in your pants and said congrats to the girlfriend and elbow-nudged her, which everyone laughed at while the man hurried to the bathroom to give his pants a superficial scrub. The rest of the two days the man avoided the dog as best as he could, which was easy because the dog was locked up after it scared the girlfriend’s niece. Even when the man passed the door in the hallway, though, the dog would growl and sniff rapaciously and scratch at the carpet, its shadow blocking parts of the flat beam of light that spilled from beneath the door’s bottom. And then the girlfriend moved into the man’s new house and immediately began talking about all the free space, and of course she asked, and of course and he said, okay, yes, the dog can come, and she drove the dog up from Portland and put a big bed that smelled of cedar in the living room and monogrammed bowls in the kitchen. This was a week ago. Try avoiding a dog in your own house while making it look like you and the dog mutually adore each other. It will not work. Dogs, apparently, do not feign affection. This weekend, when the girlfriend went out with friends, the man locked the dog in its kennel in the garage and pulled up a chair and cracked a beer and hunched over and spoke with the dog: “Come on, buddy… We can be friends. We’ve got nothing against each other. I’ve sure got nothing against you. We can do it for her, right? We can. I love her, buddy. You too, I’m sure.” He fed the dog treats through the barred door, and the dog scarfed them between growls. But when he opened the cage, the dog barked and growled and slavered and rippled the muscles of its back, and there were bubbles in the spittle—the man is sure of this, and although he

doesn’t know at what point bubbles in the spittle constitutes foaming at the mouth, he presumes this could be the beginning. Nevertheless, he knows the dog, rabid or not, cannot continue. The girlfriend has already made comments, subtly insinuated the ultimatum: “Hm, he usually warms up to people faster.” And after the dog had growled at the man as the man read a magazine: “I once went out with this guy and we were sitting there kind of like this and the guy rolled up a newspaper and hit my baby on the nose, because he growled—anyway, that was the end of that.” And, notably, with that same thin veneer of jocularity and a disquietingly too-sharp laugh: “We might have to kick you out of your own house!” The man knows what must be done. He must put the dog down and save the relationship. For himself, for the girlfriend—this is best, even if she wouldn’t understand, because no dog can love her the way the man does. Today, the girlfriend went to work and the man called in and said he was having car trouble and would be late. The girlfriend always leaves before him so he didn’t have to worry about leaving, hiding in some culde-sac, and then slinking back. He simply sat at the counter in his suit and sipped coffee and told her he loved her. He then went and changed into his jogging clothes. First: he goes to the garage which is still powdered with dust from the sheet rock being installed weeks earlier. He takes garden weed killer and bleach and paint thinner and pours the liquids into an empty paint can that reads Paradise White—Matte and sprays an entire can of Raid into the liquid, this whole time the dog going bark bark snarl bark etc. The garage smells like you’d expect with the chemicals commingling, and he has to go to the kitchen so he won’t vomit. The dog is in the kitchen. New linoleum. New marble-esque Formica countertops. The smell of synthetics. He walks to the dog and looks down at the snapping jaw and the ropes of slobber and the fur, dense and shining beneath energy-saving bulbs. The dog moves towards him, so he goes back and into the bathroom, and he waits while the dog scratches at carpet by the door. Yesterday he bought a syringe (60ml, paid cash, burned the receipt) and taped it behind the toilet. He takes the syringe from its wrapping. He puts on blue latex gloves. He opens the door, pushing it against the dog’s weight, and walks to the garage, the dog biting at his athletic socks and jogging pants the whole way. He, then, places the needle in the liquid, which has now turned Paradise White, and draws the plunger back until the syringe is filled, and he shoots a small stream from the needle the way he’s seen nurses do for reasons unknown. He walks back into the kitchen, again pushing the dog’s considerable ninety or so pounds with the door, and then he jumps back against the beveled edge

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of the Formica as the dog comes forward. The man brandishes the syringe, now, his thumb on the plunger, readies it for a slamming motion into what he hopes will be the neck or shoulders of the dog. And they stand there like that, the two of them, waiting, inhaling, exhaling, the dog growling but not closing the distance, the man’s veins and arteries gulping blood. Slowly, the dog creeps—body still hunched, teeth still bared and wet—into the man’s range. Now: the man looks at the teeth and the red collar and the boneshaped tag with his address and his girlfriend’s phone number incised, and he thinks of how his girlfriend will find out about this: she will walk in just after he has slammed the poison into the dog, his finger still shaking from pushing the liquid through the veins—or perhaps not so dramatic—perhaps she, shaken by the grief of losing what she calls “one of her two loves,” will have the dog autopsied and he will sink as she looks at him, eyes full of betrayal and confusion, the phone to her ear; or when he tries to kill the dog, it will sink its drool-dripping teeth into his calf or his thigh or (God help him) his dick and balls and there will just be no hiding the truth from her; or it will pass and they will go on, get married, but then, lying together one night, both on their sides facing each other and he looking into her eyes, or looking at the mole hidden partly by her eyebrow, or at the heart-like cleft of her upper lip, she will just know, and there will be nothing he can do to stop it; or after it has festered in him for too long, he’ll simply tell her because he won’t be able to keep it from her; or it will go longer, when they have a child, and they are too bound to keep anything from each other; or longer when she is on her deathbed, her skin like the paper you find at the bottom of an old drawer, his voice just raised over the respirator beating iambs and the drip of the IV and the rustle of robes; or at her funeral, as the coffin is being lowered, quickly, under his breath, so he can go on; or he in his coffin, and the confession will rise through the dirt and grass and past the Loving Father and Husband stuff on his tombstone. This will hurt her. He will watch. When it comes, finally, he will watch the pain swell in her. He will know how one person’s pain can fill a room. He will watch and know that he did this. So he looks at the stupid dog: drool, teeth, and sinew—but he’s blowing this all out of proportion, isn’t he? He took this too far. This is silly. This will pass. Everything passes. She will recover. He can hold this secret for both them. Dogs die every day, get hit by cars, succumb to batches of brownies. You can spend your whole life thinking about things without actually doing them, and so it almost seems funny to him—because it’s just a fucking dog—as he plunges the syringe into the

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neck and presses down, and his makeshift venom rushes into the dog’s muscles and blood, and the dog does bite his leg, but he pulls away before the teeth can sink too deeply—they leave only four scratches and some torn jogging pant fabric. The man jumps up onto the counter and sits cross-legged, yoga-like, and watches the dog, its syringe still dangling, begin to slow, begin to stumble around the clean kitchen, tracing thin strips of blood across the oak cabinets and dishwasher and oven, slowly sinking to the linoleum and fading. And after the dog has faded completely, after all stutter of limbs has left, there’s a sound in the man like a bell after it’s been rung: that long, low, stagnant hum after the initial ringing: that sound almost sickeningly small and quiet.

Milne

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS CL Bledsoe is the author of a young adult novel, Sunlight, three poetry collections, _____(Want/Need), Anthem, and Leap Year, and a short story collection called Naming the Animals. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. A minichap, Texas, was published by Mud Luscious Press. His story, “Leaving the Garden,” was selected as a Notable Story of 2008 for Story South’s Million Writer’s Award. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings, http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com. Bledsoe has written reviews for The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere. Bledsoe lives with his wife and daughter in Maryland. Kara M. Bollinger is a graduate student at the University of Kansas, where she is pursuing her Master’s in Rhetoric and Composition and serves as the assistant nonfiction editor of Beecher’s Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Sleet Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Prick of the Spindle, and The Connecticut Review. Terri Brown-Davidson is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in more than 1,000 magazines, including Triquarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her first novel, Marie, Marie: Hold on Tight, received excellent reviews and was discussed in The Writer; her first book of poetry, The Carrington Monologues, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and her poetry was featured in the volume Triquarterly New Writers. Her work has been recognized with many additional awards and honors, including the AWP Intro Award, the New Mexico Writer’s Scholarship, and a Yaddo residency fellowship, among others. mensah demary, whose prose has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications, is co-founder & editor-in-chief of Specter Literary Magazine. A regular contributor for PANK Magazine’s blog, Hippocampus Magazine, Art Faccia, and Peripheral Surveys, mensah currently writes in Camden, New Jersey with his wife & writing partner, Athena. For more information, visit www. inhelvetica.com or on Twitter @mensahdemary. Carol Guess is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including Tinderbox Lawn, Darling Endangered, and the forthcoming Doll Studies: Forensics. Follow her here: www.carolguess.blogspot.com. Erica Hample is just a science-crazed high-schooler who likes to do her best to break the laws of physics with photography. After developing a passion for writing in high school, Amanda Himmelmann took as many writing classes as she could (in some cases, more than she

was technically allowed). She is currently an undergraduate at SUNY Geneseo completing her degree in English Creative Writing. She plans to pursue a career in writing after graduating in the spring. Dan Hornsby lives in Kansas, where he studies writing and works with a program that teaches English to international students. He is currently developing a fictitious account of Nariz de Pollo, a failed sixteenth-century conquistador. His writings will appear in the forthcoming issues of Unstuck and Softblow. When he is not working or writing, he plays in a band called The Low End, whose upcoming album Fake Natives will be released this fall. Links to Rose Hunter’s writing can be found at “Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home” (roseh400.wordpress.com). Her book of poetry, to the river, was published in 2010 by Artistically Declined Press. In 2011 she published A Foal Poem. Poems of hers have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Diagram, PANK, NAP, kill author, The Nervous Breakdown, anderbo, Juked, Bluestem, and others. She edits the poetry journal YB (ybpoetry. wordpress.com), and lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. RJ Ingram writes his members of Congress and tries to write poems about it. RJ serves coffee and cold bagels. He is 50% water, 50% stale merlot. Watch him run off to the South Bronx, watch him sing in sweat lodges. Watch him touch everything and ask questions. Stefan Milne is currently a graduate student at Central Washington University. His fiction has also appeared in The Good Men Project. He never knows quite what to write in an author bio. He thanks you for reading. Samantha Milowsky is the founder of Amethyst Arsenic, an online poetry and art journal. Her work has appeared in journals such as 2River View, White Whale Review, and The Written Wardrobe. She lives in Somerville, MA and works as a software consultant. Daniela Olszewska is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Citizen J (Artifice Books, forthcoming) and cloudfang : : cakedirt (Horse Less Press, forthcoming). She sits on Switchback Books’ Board of Directors and serves as Associate Poetry Editor of H_NGM_N. Daniela is pursuing her MFA at the University of Alabama, where she teaches creative writing in conjunction with The Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project. Jake Syersak is an MFA candidate at Florida Atlantic University where he is currently serving as a poetry editor for Coastlines. His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Elimae, Corner Club Press, and Literary Laundry.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This issue would not be possible without the generous support of our benefactors: MAIYA HAYES CHRIS GREENHOUGH We would also like to thank everyone who took a chance on us. Thank you for sending us your work. Thank you for your faith and kindness.