Crack the Spine Literary magazine
Issue 126
Issue 126 September 10, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Loose Lips Sink Ships” by Katherine Minott Katherine Minott, M.A. is an artist whose photographic work reflects the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi--the celebration of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Her work has appeared in Camas: The Nature of the West, New Mexico Magazine, Visual Language Magazine, and the Santa Fe Reporter’s Annual Manual. Please visit her website at katherineminott.com.
CONTENTS
Julieanna Blackwell The Champion
Ellen Black The Chase
Philip Brunetti The Dead Trumpet
Lynn Hoggard Assessment Rubric
Nancy Ford-Dugan Harnessing Big Data
Edward D. Miller
Yesterday I Had the Hiccups
Daniel Davis I’m Nothing Without You
Julieanna Blackwell The Champion
When Uncle Victor quoted a fabled ancient Chinese text, he would recite such things as; He who knows—does not speak. He who speaks—does not know. Max and his cousins never questioned whether the old man’s quotes were true, or if even such an ancient text ever existed. The answer would surely come in the form of an amused grin as Uncle Victor tugged his goatee and playfully waited for them to figure it out. Now that Max saw himself as a real man, not just pretending to be one, he found that he relied on his Uncle’s quips to surface in his mind more often. Max was not used to manhood; he needed his uncle’s help. Even when he began dreading driving home from college for the holiday, his memory played back an image of Uncle Victor pointing
his crooked finger while chanting, like the well, the family is the source; the town maybe changed but the well cannot. “True, but what does the ancient text say about tradition? What if the tradition dries up—because the family’s champion dies—does the family dry up too?” Max openly pondered while working in the garage. What could it know? It was ancient, it was Chinese, and his family was of Irish and Polish descent living in Middle America. Such uneasy questions rattled his mind as he cleaned a stack of folding chairs, the same chairs that would circle the extra card tables in his parent’s dining room. A large room, soon to be filled with every member of his family. A family dominated by traditions. Scattered branches of his family
celebrated a year’s worth of holidays in varying but separate ways. However, everyone found their way together for Thanksgiving. It was the only day of the year the entire family gathered. All the cousins, the aunts, the uncles, the very young and old, everyone came to eat in the name of boastful traditions. An off-tune grace sung in unison, a roasted turkey, the posing, and reposing before the snapping of the yearly photograph, and the pies, oh the heavenly pies, but the most important tradition was the Championship Chess Match. After months of carefully orchestrated rounds, Uncle Victor’s rosters forced the far-flung members of the family to meet face to face over a chessboard; the games reached a climax on Thanksgiving afternoon. Why was Max stalling? He finished with the chairs, just as his mother asked, and then took his time folding the rag, refolding it, and then carefully
draping it over the cluttered workbench. He dreaded the end of summer because it meant the coming of fall, which would signal the change to winter. Max dreaded the notion that the year would reach its deadline. He wished it to stop. He did not want anything to change. He wanted to stall, to stall time, because it might be the last family championship match, and he feared that would signal the eventual end to their traditions. Who was he to stall any of it? He shrugged off his hesitation with a long sigh and slowly walked though the backyard and up to the house. A curled maple leaf fell past his ear as he held the handle of the back-porch door. The day was getting colder and his fingers numbed as he stood there. He could hear them—what stood between him and his last bit of solace before the day’s festivities filled the kitchen. It bustled with aunts, sisters, and odd cousins scurrying about a
huge turkey in some stage of preparation. Every year the same preparations, same conversations, same dilemmas, but this year there was an added note of uncertainty. As if next year’s calendars were printed without a November. So many voices taking part in different conversations happening at the same time, loud snippets leaked down the stairs. “Poor Victor, he’s so sick… What is the trick to stop an onion from making me cry… Uncle Victor, what will we do now… Have you ever heard of cooking a turkey upside down, I hear it turns out juicier… What will happen to the Championships each year… I can never remember, is it ten cups of cooked or uncooked rice.” Rising above the clatter came one voice, the ringleader’s voice. He heard his mother say, “Never stop a good onion from making worthy tears. We cook the bird as we always do; right side up. Mildred, measure two cups of
rice. And everyone, let’s not make a fuss over Victor. No, Mildred—that’s two level cups.” Max figured if he were fast he could cut through the kitchen without anyone noticing him. From experience, he knew how far to open the squeaky screen door before it squealed, to sneak through the opening, tip-toe up the wooden stairs, teetering his foot off the weak side of the third step. He stopped from entering the kitchen. No one could see him but he could see the pies lined up along the counter. He inhaled the pumpkin, the apple, and the intoxicating aroma of Aunt Mildred’s infamous Rich on the Bourbon but Poor on the Pecan Pie; a slushy mess in an ornate shell. When he heard his younger brother lumber into the kitchen looking for handouts, Max jogged past the pies, dodging the cat as it stretched across the linoleum floor.
“Max!” the aunts spotted him. “Look at him… He is all grown up… Where have you been hiding… Mary, your son came home from college a handsome man… Come here and give your aunts a big hug!” To the aunts children are forever babies; no matter what age. The ladies cooed and coddled. Mildred pinched his cheeks. He accepted their kisses while passing through their questions, stealing a bit of dressing on his way to the quiet of the dining room. There, he sighed. “Maxwell, I wish to speak to you.” His mother appeared behind him wiping her hands with an everpresent dishtowel. Her voice was kind, yet mixed with a rare sadness causing him to turn back to the unfolding of the card tables, a task she had asked his brother to do. “Yeah, Ma?” “I don’t know, but, I am worried,” she said.
Whenever he looked at his mother he saw the young pretty face he knew when he was little. However, at that moment he saw her at her true age. He noticed the lines in her face and the soft folds in her skin. It was unmistakable; she too had grown old; like the aunts. “You are?” he asked. “Well, just how many pies did Aunt Mildred bring?” “A pie made of Bourbon and dozen pecans is one thing; I wouldn’t eat that pie on an empty stomach.” They both shared a smile before she looked away. Maybe it was a speck of dust distracting her attention but Max knew better. She had dusted and vacuumed the house every morning since Halloween. She was stalling too. She leaned her hand on the dining table only to pull it back and buff the print from the polished gloss. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “Maxwell, you know your uncle Victor is very, very sick.”
“I know.” He snapped open the legs of a card table. “So much fuss over a silly chess game,” she sighed. “I never understood why it is such a big deal, yet I’m asking you, I am just asking you to think about it. He is your uncle, please let him win.” Max expected his mother would eventually express her feelings about the match. She was wrong. She did understand the importance of the competition all too well. She would miss it, all of it, because the chess games were the center of year. Diverting his eyes, he feared seeing her expression and the possibility of finding tears, so he let her watch as he flipped the card table into place. “I agree with your father,” she continued. “Let your uncle win, just this once, this last time. You haven’t said much since you’ve been home and I’m worried. Sweetie, all I ask is for you to think about it. That’s all.”
Max wished she’d tell him what to do, insist on it, as she did when he was young, nagging over chores, as if he had little choice, instead of merely asking him to think about it, because it was ultimately up to him. “I will Ma,” he said. “I know you will.” She stretched to kiss him on the forehead, where she always did, and then disappeared back to her kitchen. Quietly, he repositioned the heavy dining chairs, making room for the kid’s table. He no longer sat there. He envied the little ones not old enough for memories and too young to understand what memories hold, let alone their importance. He headed back outside, this time through the front door, taking the long way around to the garage so he could sneak a smoke before bringing in the folding chairs. Standing on the front stoop, he lit his cigarette and listened to the old bulldog in the neighboring
yard bark at a squirrel. As he watched the rodent’s tail switch at the dog, his mind filled with drifting images of Uncle Victor. How the old man stroked his goatee while teaching the strategies of chess. A distant memory replayed his Uncle’s voice recite; the ancient Chinese text reminds you to yield to your opponent in order to receive his power and understand his direction. The advice vanished with the clap of the storm door. “Did I hear right?” Vicky yelled. With a feisty head of curls, he and his cousin Vicky grew up hand in hand, fist to fist, and soul to soul. Max, whose own sisters were distant from him by too many years, always looked to her for the voice a sister could offer. “You’re going to let Uncle Victor win?” Max exhaled smoke with his even words, “Is that what they’re talking about in there?” “No.”
Though he watched as the dog bark and threatened to lunge at the squirrel stalled on top of the chainlink fence, Vicky stalled for no one, and yet she remained quiet, placing her hands on her hips, staring at him. He took a long drag from his cigarette. “I have to tell you something….” she started. “What? To stay away from the pecan pie?” he interjected with a smoking grin. “True, that pie is drinkable. But! Oh Max,” she whined, stamping her foot, which made him chuckle. “You can’t. I over heard your conversation with your mother in there. All of us in the kitchen did. No one said anything. But you can feel it. It’s unbearable, the sadness. I—I have to say something— it’s cheating if you let him win.” “I can’t believe you people think I even have a chance to win.” “You do! You know it. Come on, this family competition is important to
Uncle Victor. He taught us all how to play, to love the game. He already started next year’s roster. From that little desk in his living room, he spends hours keeping track of who plays who, and that everyone is evenly matched. This year he has the twins in the kiddy meet on Easter. And he created a new chart for the Fourth of July Playoffs.” “Ha, I told him the twins were old enough now. They’d be good, too. Contenders.” “But you’re his pride. You’ve won actual tournaments outside of the family. Real competitions, just like him.” Max continued to smoke his cigarette. “I’m going to let you in on something,” she said. “For the past two years, you and Uncle Victor have made it to the Thanksgiving Championship. You’re both two for two. Even.” She stepped down a stair
and looked up to him. “What you don’t know is you’re even odds. We’re taking bets. Now you’re going to fix the game? Thanks a lot.” “Bets? This championship stuff is blown way out of proportion. It’s a chess game.” “No it’s not,” she sighed, rolled her eyes to a cold overcast sky. “Honestly, I understand your dilemma. But, you can’t just let him win.” “Why?” “Because. He’ll know.” The squirrel jumped down and raced across the sidewalk dashing under the stoop. The dog sat straight along the fence, taking watch. Vicky was about to say something but she bit her words back. She finally reached the point where she stalled, too. Max flicked an ash into the air. “The ancient Chinese text reminds us…” she started, and waited for his smile. “In offence there is no doubt there will be a defense. If he doesn’t
find one he will know you’re blowing it.” She slipped the cigarette from between his fingers, took a drag, and then handed it back before she stepped up to the door. “It’s hard to believe they think he won’t make it through the year. The cancer is eating him away.” “Vicky.” He knew she would wait to hear what he had to say. “I wonder if any of you have thought about it. Really, thought about it, from all the angles. Well, here’s a different twist, what if he decides to let me win?” “I didn’t think of that.” “I am probably facing, maybe for the last time, my most evenly matched opponent. My Uncle. My coach. How could I face myself if I let the match slide, never knowing if I was good enough to beat him. On the other hand, do I let a man die knowing his nephew beat him at what he was greatest at? Playing chess is nothing. How do we face the end of this—the
end of this great thing Uncle Victor created—all of us playing—cohesion played out on a chessboard by a crazy family. Who’s really the loser here?” Max flicked the cigarette to the sidewalk, putting it out as he stepped down on his way around the house and back to the garage. The day got colder, but the house grew warm from the many bodies inside. All dressed up and beautifully orchestrated by tradition, the family danced about each other as the turkey was presented and devoured, the Christmas plans made, the yearly photograph snapped—twice. The pies were cut and slathered with whipped cream, and only the daring attempted the pecan, which oozed across the plate in thick purplish mud. Late in the afternoon, accompanied by outbursts of children and football on TV, a single card table remained open and set to the side with two facing chairs, one with a pillow. An
announcement was made, the Thanksgiving Championship was about to start. With the usual fanfare, all quieted as Vicky took her place in recapping the family standings for the year before introducing the opponents for the final match. Max stood at one side of the table. An old man, who once carried more bulk about him, stood on the opposite side tugging at his thin scraggy goatee. Indeed the old man was sick. Max could see it in his fragile body, the pallor in his skin, but not in his eyes. He searched for illness in his Uncle’s eyes. The old man let him. “Gentlemen, you know the rules.” Vicky stated with mock pomp and circumstance. “No rooking. No biting. No kicking under the table. No tilting of the table for that matter. Towels cannot be thrown from the corner. Shake.” The men shook hands. Again Max searched his Uncle’s kind and eager eyes.
“You call it Max.” Vicky flipped a coin, slapping it on the back of her hand. “Tails.” Max answered. “You go first.” She spun the chessboard around bringing the white plastic figures in front of Max. “The Thanksgiving Championship has begun. All those who wish to watch please remain quiet. All others out! Come on—out you go!” Only a few bodies left the room, leaving a large quiet audience behind. “No castling boy.” Though the old man sneered, his smile gave away his threat. “Don’t make it too easy now, just because I am an old man, you know.” Max grinned, leaning forward. The old man met him practically nose to nose; they cast a shadow over the black and white checks. “Listen here old man, don’t give me any of that, I am going to give you the fight of your life.”
“I expect nothing less,” and Uncle Victor touched the side of his nose with his crooked white thumb. The room seemed to shift with an odd unease as shoulders either straightened, shivered, or slumped. The two players rested back into their chairs, staring at the board. Just as Max was about to lift his first pawn, he found a crooked finger resting on the back of his hand. He met his Uncle’s eyes, bright and sharp. “Maxwell…” the old man’s voice slipped to a whisper. He too, stalled. Waiting. Max knew what the dear old man was about to ask. The question everyone in the room wanted to hear. Max’s hesitation disappeared. It did not really matter who the champion was. There was something so much more at stake, something only Max, himself, had to face alone, but with everyone behind him. There it was, seated right in front of him, on the
other side of the board; Max saw more than the perfected image crafted and studied at college, he saw his future, his family’s future, and an invitation to its tradition; because tradition is the triumph within the family. The old man held his breath. “Don’t worry,” Max stated, with a note of a mature kindness he never heard in his own voice before. “I promise. The games will carry on.” He gently sandwiched the old man’s finger between his hands. “Besides, the Ancient Chinese text reads, like the well, the family is the source, the town maybe changed, but the well cannot.” The old man seemed to melt into the pillow supporting his back. Nothing dimmed within his eyes. Just his vision seemed to relax. The room relaxed. He tugged on his beard and then added in a whisper, “And if those ancient Chinamen knew anything about Mildred’s cooking, the text would certainly say something about eating her pecan pies.”
Ellen Black The Chase
BAR-B-Q signs beckon and I enter places that greet me with signs that read off the towns’ populations: 367, 482, 854. With dirt as dark as your moods cresting north and south, I drive the solitary miles with no escape from your face.
I pass a worn-down building that says it’s America’s Only Salt House and I picture a girl, sheltered under an umbrella, trailing white crystals into mud puddles the color of cows being milked on a slow-moving summer day.
Cut-rate liquor stores tempt me to quench the dryness and I think of how far apart we’ve become. Handmade quilts hang on lines strung between trees and I envy women who have the time to quietly stitch, waiting for the dogwood to bloom.
Philip Brunetti The Dead Trumpet
He gave up the trumpet business
for twenty a long time ago. He years and then dropped He left the must’ve given it up. It’d dead. kept him connected to business to his three things that mattered to sons, but none of them him then. But eventually wanted it so they sold it. he forgot about all that. The eldest died a couple He left his land and he years after his father. left his trumpet behind. The other two feuded He came to America for and took shots at each something, money other. Eventually one mostly. He came and he moved away, out of New found low-wage work as York, and they coexisted a dishwasher. Then in separate states and worked his way up and ever-after silence. One day, many years over to a grocery clerk. He saved money for later, one of the brothers years, started a family. had a dream. It was a Finally, at 40, he bought dream about a trumpet a business. It sold fruits that was buried in a yard and vegetables and food or field in the south of staples. He owned that Italy. It’d been bought and sold and bought and
sold and eventually turned out and cast in a rubbish heap. It was found then by a hobo, a bum, who blew it a few times and then used it as a cane. He was extremely short. His hard life had made him shorter. Then, drunk one night with a buddy, he had an impulse to bury the trumpet. The buddy said, “Why do that?” He said, “I don’t know. I just have to.” So he did. He dug a shallow grave with a long flat stone and his own clawing fingers and fingernails. He put the trumpet down into the
shallow hollow and laid it in the earth. Then he drizzled a few drops of his cheap bum’s wine onto the trumpet. It reminded him of Christ. Afterward, he covered the hole up with the small mound of dirt he’d dug out. Then he sat back down on his rotted log and said, “That’ll do. That’ll do.” He waited. He continued to drink his cheap Primitivo wine. His bum friend took a few more pulls on the wine, too, and then passed out. Just as his friend passed out he mumbled aloud, “That’ll do.” The gravedigger hobo silently agreed. He stayed still and kept a
vigil over the dead trumpet. He didn’t know why he was doing this, aside from that he had to. He was waiting for something silly or impossible to happen like for an orange or brass-colored flower to bloom and grow at a rapid rate right before his eyes. He oddly expected this but instead the dawn came and then nothing. Not too long after the dream, one of the brothers died. Maybe it was the one who’d had the dream or the other one that’d moved out of state. Whichever one it was, it didn’t matter so much. They’d both grown old and they’d both had as little
communication with the world as they had with each other. But a funny thing happened when the one of them died. The other one knew it. He had a vision or an inkling and then some shared relative confirmed it. It didn’t matter though that one of them had died and the other would soon follow. It didn’t matter that they’d had such limited and then nonexistent communication for years and years or that their brother and father had been dead and gone for almost half a century. It didn’t matter that there was a trumpet buried somewhere in the south of Italy and that a field mouse had eventually
tunneled into the earth and found the bell end of the trumpet like a perfectly protected burrow and made a home of it. It didn’t matter at all that these things had happened, that the years had passed, that bad-blood silence reigned, and that nobody in that family blew that old dead trumpet again. It didn’t matter. Or maybe it did.
Lynn Hoggard Assessment Rubric
In the manner of my people I hereby commodify my life’s value: Given an investment heavily front-loaded, I paid dearly those early years in health woes and human misery, but year by steady year my assets grew. With interest compounding and no fees left to pay, at last I’m free to reap the benefits. No longer broke, now just broken.
Nancy Ford-Dugan Harnessing Big Data
On her way to the sex-toy shop, Beth bumped into Hugh and his family. What were the odds? She was rarely on Mercer Street and had quickly stepped into a store to warm up for a moment after the chilly walk from the Spring Street subway station. Holiday shoppers were cluttering up the narrow streets and knocking into each other with their oversized gift bags. It was a Kate Spade store. There was Hugh in front of her, looking baffled, windblown, encased in a puffy parka, staring at her blankly as if trying to place her in the universe. They sat next to each other twelve hours a day, Monday through Friday, in an open office on Park Avenue. But here she was, out of context. A saleswoman walked by and admired Beth’s coat. “I love that purple.”
“Oh, thank you.” Beth smiled and then said “Hello” to Hugh. His two bored, blonde teen-aged daughters glanced at her as Hugh introduced them. His wife wandered over from another section of the store and smiled genuinely at her. “We’ve all been deathly ill for the holiday” said Hugh in his clipped British accent. Beth stepped backward. “No, no we are healed,” said the wife with a laugh. Hugh, though, encouraged Beth to be careful and stand apart. Grisly details of the illness were shared: toilet hugging, virus factoids, bathroom floors slept on, etc. “We thought maybe it was food poisoning,” said the wife. Beth calculated when she’d last lunched with Hugh. Was he germy then? Had they eaten anything similar? She
deduced it had been two days before the holiday break, so she should be okay. After their polite good-byes, after her purchases later at Toys at Babeland from an emaciated sales girl with a ring in her nose—who had discussed her clit in more detail than anyone ever had—Beth carefully folded her new items and the brazenly labeled store bag into her eco-friendly sack out of fear she’d once again run into Hugh’s clan in the neighborhood. In a few months, Hugh would be fired and would relocate to a new job in Amsterdam. Beth hung on and on, clinging to her job as if it were a life preserver floating near the Titanic. New bosses appeared and disappeared on a regular basis. The cost of farewell lunches and Papyrus “good luck” cards mounted. Even Eduardo, the shoe man, who came every Thursday to polish the executive’s shoes, was going back to Brazil. He was tired and suddenly
muddy faced. Beth wished him well, and as she shook his hand and thanked him, he held his other hand to his heart, with tears in his eyes. Beth signed up for free webinars to try to update her skills and understand the fury to harness big data—all the rage. She attended meetings where her “superiors” overused the words “cadence” and “sticky” and brayed phrases like “let’s not boil the ocean.” Metrics were everywhere, measuring things no one cared about but that looked impressive on a PowerPoint slide. On the webinars, Beth would get distracted by the multiple messages invading her computer screen: join the conversation; chat; join the call; multiple attendees are typing; press *1 on your phone, or use chat below right. She was exhausted by the nonstop commands and could barely concentrate on the webinar’s content. It was like a demanding religion. There were so many rules of
participation. She helped Hugh’s replacement choose his executive photo for the org chart. Little squares of Jerry multiplied endlessly across the page. They all looked demented, artificial, and the same. Jerry forced his introverted cheek muscles in an unnatural effort to smile, something Jerry never did in real life. Or at real work anyway. Jerry had recently told Beth that a picture of her at a team building meeting, where her colleague had his arm around her and a deflated basketball on his head, could be used at her wake or retirement party, whichever came first. “There’ll be neither,” Beth said. “Oh?” Jerry seemed surprised and returned to his spreadsheet of data. Jerry had a webfoot, which, like the details of Hugh’s family virus, was too much data for Beth. She didn’t want to visualize any part of Jerry’s body, including his feet. Feet he apparently
planned to walk on to her nonexistent wake. Although who’s to say her nonexistent wake would occur before Jerry’s? Statistically speaking, big data would propose hers would occur first. But she was siding with Albert Einstein who once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” She wasn’t convinced big data could solve the mysteries of the universe, fix the economy, or find the Malaysian jetliner. Where did the expression “who’s to say” come from anyway, Beth wondered? That was a piece of big data she’d find interesting and useful. At the early morning introductions at the team building meeting, Beth confidently took the microphone when it was handed to her. She stared a moment at the tense, tired faces in the room. For a moment, she considered singing a song to break the ice and wake (or at least slightly
cheer) everyone up. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants. But would they recognize any song she chose to sing? Instead, she returned to business; she was datacentric, not eccentric, in her remarks. When she finished, the meeting facilitator joked how comfortable Beth seemed with the mic, unlike everyone else. A deep-voiced statistician at the meeting talked about the “level of missingness” from their employee engagement survey. It occurs, he explained, when survey information is not completed; it confounds the stat guys why folks don’t answer all the survey questions. Beth thought it was obvious: if no one wants to reply to a particular question, could it shout any louder that this is the problem in the eyes of the employee? And wasn’t using the word “engagement” in a work context, as opposed to using it for a euphoric state prior to nuptials, a bit of a stretch? Were employees
supposed to be euphoric at work, even in the midst of layoffs? At the afternoon session, they had to once again talk about their MyersBriggs scores. This outdated psychological assessment tool, based on Jungian theory, was designed by a mother and daughter. Beth thought this piece of data should immediately disqualify it as a valuable assessment tool. Who’s to say any motherdaughter team could assess the human race? Or agree on how to categorize all of humanity? Beth and her mother couldn’t agree on breakfast. Beth had been forced over her long career to take the test multiple times, usually receiving the same score. But she always worried about her results; she knew she had issues with authority. She even had issue with suggestions. But who’s to say that’s a bad thing? They showed a scatter diagram of workforce demographics at the
meeting. “See, this is very bad,” said their VP. “See this cluster? We have way too many old people. This is a crisis.” The VP had a smattering of faint, watercolor green lines smudged on her cheekbone, like delicate etchings on an Easter egg. “Oh,” the VP laughed, when out of concern that it was ink or an injury, Beth quietly asked about it during their break, “that’s where my dermatologist got a little rough during my monthly injections.” After the meeting, at the team building dinner activity, Beth had an unexpected victory in the Skee-Ball event at Dave & Busters. It required no skill other than realizing that tossing the ball into the circles worth 100 points yielded a higher score than wasting efforts on those only worth 50 points. This, she supposed, was harnessing big data in real time. Back at the office, a twentysomething on the “wellness”
committee asked Beth if she would do a testimonial. “I heard you play tennis regularly, and I think it would be great if someone as senior as you can speak to the benefits of wellness.” Beth watched his lips as he continued speaking and inserting the word “senior” every few seconds into the conversation. Beth was confused for a moment whether he was referring to her status at the company but then realized she was inflating her position, and he really was just using a code word for old. “It’s so amazing someone as senior as you can exercise regularly! I hope you will consider it, doing a testimonial.” Beth sighed and mumbled, “We’ll see.” Maybe instead she could do a testimonial on her unexpected SkeeBall victory. It had pleased her to beat all her surprised younger colleagues, even if it was an insipid activity and her progressive eyeglasses had hampered her in the basketball challenge.
Who’s to say that an invisible, older worker like Beth—whose gynecologist had filled out a sex-toys prescription for her (things were closing up); whose Myers-Briggs score had suddenly shifted (perhaps as a result of trying to survive in the face of corporate downsizing) from years of charmingly matching Nelson Mandela’s score to being a dead ringer for the inhumane Steve Jobs and Margaret Thatcher (even though Beth doubted any of them had actually taken the survey); who had recently been stopped on the street by a stranger who insisted she would benefit from collagen and eye serum (“Do you sleep on the left side?” he’d asked. “Your face is so flat there.”); who had never even been to Amsterdam; who had her own level of missingness in grasping the need for nonstop fucking data—who’s to say she couldn’t successfully and repeatedly (with glorious stickiness and cadence) toss a grimy round
object up lanes into ridiculous concentric circles and KICK BUTT at Skee-Ball? Who’s to say that couldn’t be memorialized by a testimonial, along with the deflated basketball head photo, to convince the company she was skilled, ready to take on anything thrown at her: an Iron lady, competitive, metrics-savvy, engaged, and fun? Who’s to say? Not Beth.
Edward D. Miller Yesterday I Had the Hiccups
I am allergic to being ignored. Please scratch my itches before I tip-toe back and forth along the bluff and find delight in my own compulsion to repeat. It’s a sure bet I’ll retaliate and grouse a regrettable phrase. Down the fire road on the left, where the horse flies lie in wait, one’s personality is downgraded to a debtors’ prison.
After all is said and done, there is still more to do. Events jolt: they overawe all patterns, only to be “processed,� squeezed into a jack in the box. We have therapy to thank for that. A speech act is also a hiccup. And vice versa, my darling. I mime Sisyphus-A voice told me that somewhere uphill I might find an antidote to the venom in your wordlessness.
Daniel Davis I’m Nothing Without You
Straight shot, microbolt. Sit up, sweaty sheets, vision blurred in shadow. Her face. I remember—skin loose beneath her eyes, sagging. Her cheeks rippling, flesh sloughing away, crimson drops splashing at her bare feet. Mouth opens, black gaps between the teeth that remain. Hair blowing out in clumps, northerly breeze, brushing across my face as it leaves her. Hot, wet fingers take my hand, stick to me as I pull back. No sound, silence in the dark, just the creak and groan of her body settling. Her eyes on me until they roll away, past my feet, into the gutter and down the storm drain. A scream, my scream, but not in this moment—in a future moment, echoing back through time and memory. Now, just this, only her. Only what is left.
Contributors Ellen Black Ellen's poetry has been published in Crannóg magazine, South Ash Press, Illya’s Honey, The Smoking Poet, and Eclectic Flash. In 2005, she won first prize in the Richardson, TX Public Library's annual poetry contest. In 2009, Ellen was one of the Pat Conroy “South of Broad” essay contest winners. This contest was sponsored by Swampland.com and theNan A. Talese/Doubleday company. That same year, www.killingthebuddha.compublished Ellen's first-person narrative, “Heathen Color,” which provides a glimpse into a day of Ellen's life in a religious cult into which she was born, and how her longing for a forbidden item— lipstick—incited her into a tiny moment of crime. Ellen is currently working to publish a memoir she wrote about surviving this cult, entitled "Shake That Cream." Julieanna Blackwell Julieanna Blackwell is a short story writer and essayist. Her humorous column, "Skipping Down the Slippery Side of the Slope," appeared in the Naples Daily News. A native Chicagoan, she lives with her family in Bradenton where she is completing her first novel. Phil Brunetti Phil Brunetti writes innovative short fiction and poetry and much of his work can be found online. Currently he is completing a short-fiction collection entitled "The Bitter Reds" and also working on an 'antinovel.'
Daniel Davis Daniel Davis is the Nonfiction Editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. His own work has appeared in various online and print journals. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter, or at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com. Nancy Ford Dugan Nancy Ford Dugan's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize (in 2012 and 2013) and has been published in Blue Lake Review, Cimarron Review, Passages North, The Minnesota Review, The Alembic, Euphony, Lullwater Review, The Battered Suitcase, The MacGuffin, Epiphany, Coe Review, Buffalo Carp, Delmarva Review, Desert Voices, The Dirty Goat, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Hurricane Review, The Old Red Kimono, RiverSedge, Superstition Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Words and Images, Tin House’s Open Bar, The Writer’s Post Journal, and Eastern Shore Savvy. She lives in New York City and previously resided in Michigan, Ohio, and Washington, DC. Lynn Hoggard Translator and poet Lynn Hoggard has published five books and hundreds of articles, poems, and reviews. Her most recent book, a memoir entitled "Motherland, Stories and Poems from Louisiana," appeared in May 2014 from Lamar University Press. She lives in Wichita Falls, TX. In her view, poems draw forth meanings already implicit in things.
Edward D. Miller Edward D. Miller's poetry appears appears in Counterexample Poetics, Hinchas de Poesia, Wilderness House Literary Journal, The Boston Literary Magazine, and Red Fez. He teaches media and film at the City University of New York.
Katherine Minott Katherine Minott, M.A. is an artist whose photographic work reflects the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi--the celebration of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Her work has appeared in Camas: The Nature of the West, New Mexico Magazine, Visual Language Magazine, and the Santa Fe Reporter’s Annual Manual. Please visit her website at katherineminott.com.
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