Cabildo Quarterly. Issue #6. Belchertown MA; Pittsburgh PA. Early spring 2014. His head was shaved and he still wore bellbottom jeans in ‘99.
Clapping by Bruce Pratt He believed the flashes of light dancing across his shuttered lids were the result of her palm flailing the flesh of his face.
Billyburg nouveau poseurs Boring haircut immovables Sour sweat stink vintage clothes Fake trust fund hipsters – hold your nose! Swill dull beer, indifferent Pushy zombies DEAD DEAD DEAD Remember that thing I just said? Better dying than be dead
Later he realized they came from a lamp on the table, wired to switch on and off when she clapped her hands.
David Lawton’s poetry collection Sharp Blue Stream is available now on Three Rooms Press. He is a co-editor of greatweatherforMEDIA and lives in New York City.
He’s also not too careful with what he says to the women who work here, which has led to the current predicament. He’s a smooth talker, and can usually diffuse a situation himself, but he sometimes goes too far and I have to fix it. The standard bargain is to offer the girl a week of paid vacation. It’s Mr. Koch’s idea of a solution. The standard bargain didn’t work here, though. There’s a new girl, Anne, who started here four months ago. She’s the most recent target of Marc Koch’s tasteless affections. He started off casually complimenting her, but recently his remarks have taken on a more aggressive edge. He had been very good at keeping his behavior purely verbal, but that changed today, and that’s why I have to have these meetings.
What is the sound of one hand? Applause for damming his tears? Credit for fists kept clenched at his side? Praise for believing that a boy’s best friend is always his mother? Snarls in his temple’s bruises, snickers in his puffed eye, rebukes in the swell of his lip, sounds without sound. The sound of one hand. Bruce Pratt’s novel The Serpents of Blissfull was published from Mountain State Press in April 2011. His poetry collection Boreal, is available from Antrim House Books, and his short fiction, poetry, and drama have appeared in dozens of journals in the United States, Canada, Europe, and won numerous awards. He lives with his wife Janet in Eddington, Maine.
Survival by David Lawton Rockabilly tiki bar Psychedelic hibiscus flower Rough hewn axman plucks at Electric fence barbed wire Scrap metal pedal steel Throbbing oil drum beat Tumble down rumble doll Go-go angel shimmy shake Swayback writhing supplicant Field calling us to follow down S’mashed refrain smooths tough leathers Tobacco smiles shine like chrome Shadow puppet in reverse Dancing apparition lights Bogey in putrescent green Moldy elbows stab what passed him by Dessicated unclean jig Gig can’t escape from DEATH DEATH DEATH A simple moral for your head Better dying than be dead Fabled gate’s embrace downtown Motor City atomic sound Proto punk street dirt fires Devil’s Night assembly line Look at you see that cat Pile drive meltdown trance Punk’s bottom line survives Road war fought in Econolines Power packed minutes mine Double nickels on the dime D. Boon lives, deep inside Pedro thud staff writhe
The Stilt Walkers by Karyn Lye-Nielsen Taller than listening Taller than sun Taller than needling spruce Tall enough to perceive boats weaving on smooth fabric Arms arrowed. The woman’s to his They traveled thin of speech the sorry debris they had made At least until At least until without baring Yet no matter all she could do was reach Their weight baltwo poles each.
corn could rise. flowers could see. whispering sighs edging the field. the mirage of sea narrow pleats of faraway water. Arms arrowed. the man’s to hers. air above waves leaving beneath the grounded grief of the earth. the air cleared. they could breathe their teeth. how they tried all he could do was reach. anced on lean stilts two poles each.
Karyn Lie-Nielsen writes poetry and prose from her home in rural Midcoast Maine. She has enjoyed being a sign language interpreter and teacher in addition to writing. In both 2010 and 2013, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance awarded Lie-Nielsen "Poetry Winner in the Short Works Competition." She holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast Writing Program.
Risk by Jeffrey Schroeck I’ve been at this cardboard plant for eight years. I didn’t know anything about cardboard when I showed up, but I put on the best air of adaptability that I could. They gave me a job, and within four months I was a floor manager, which didn’t require knowledge of the work as much as an ability to deal with the workers on a personal level. I had worked with the worst kinds of people for twenty years before this. These people are easy. The company is run by John Koch. He started it in his garage decades ago and has been successful since the beginning, which is a testament to his tenacity. There’re also no other cardboard places within five hundred miles. The people who have been here since the beginning say he used to look out for his employees, but doesn’t worry about the people on the floor as much now. His nephew is one of my workers. When he’s got his mind on it he can be adequate. More often than not, though, he remembers that he’s the boss’s nephew and exudes invincibility. This attitude starts with a noticeable decrease in productivity, then spreads out into his interactions with the rest of the staff. He’s had a couple of fights, and has gone home in the middle of a rush day, leaving his coworkers to pick up the slack.
Anne and her friend Steve, who recommended her to me and had witnessed the incident, came into my office around one this afternoon. Anne was still visibly upset but had mostly calmed down. The incident had happened about three hours before. “Thanks for coming in. I’m sorry you had to go through this. I don’t know if Steve warned you about Marc before you started here.” “He didn’t, but that’s fine,” she said. “I expect someone like that at any place I go. I’m surprised everyone else here is as cool as they are, relatively.” “So what happened exactly?” Anne went through the whole long incident. I don’t want to go into all of the uncomfortable details, but in the end he had touched her ass a couple times and called her a few nasty words when she slapped him away. Steve corroborated all of it. As she was telling her story, though, I started to have a memory of being young. I was about ten years old. I was at my father’s house, out near the woods by the school, where he’d been living with an Army buddy. It was evening, but it wasn’t a school night so I was allowed to stay up, even later than Mom would let me. I was playing with Legos but was starting to get bored, so I asked my dad what he and the other adults were doing in the other room. They were playing Risk, which I had never seen before. It was Dad, his roommate Willy, some friend from the neighborhood who I can’t recall and is probably dead by now, and my mom’s younger brother Dylan. I asked about the game. It seemed fun. It was an adult game, or at least was a game that adults seemed to be interested in, more so than Candyland or Pizza Party. I asked if I could join in, and Dad said, “Sure. On the next game, we’ll get you in here.” I said okay and watched for a few more minutes, but it was too dull to just watch. I went back to the Legos but got bored again. I turned on the Nintendo and put in a game. As soon as I saw the names on the starting screen Dad called out, “Is that Zelda? Don’t play that ‘cause we all got saved games on there that we haven’t finished yet. Play something else.” I turned off the Nintendo, sat on the couch, and put the TV on. As I was flipping through the channels, I stopped for a moment on some Western. I flipped to the next channel, but Dad yelled in from the other room. “That sounds like ‘The Ranch Hand’. Put that back on.” “But you’re in the other room. I wanted to see what was on.” “I want to listen to it.” I put it back on. I watched for a minute but it was stupid and I stopped paying attention. I stared at the tree outside the window until I heard a clear yell of victory coming from the game room. I ran in so we could start the next game. “Not right yet, Bobby. We want to try to get one more game in tonight. Maybe next one…tomorrow.” They started realigning their pieces. “You can play with it all day tomorrow too. See if Christopher wants to come over.” “You said I could play the next game though.” “I know.” He started to get that look that he got when my voice got a little froggy. “Listen, buddy. You’d get bored anyway. Once you’re a little older you can play with us. We don’t want to be slowed down trying to show you how to play. You have plenty of games.” I accepted the logic of what he said, and went back