Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue eighty-four
Crack the Spine Literary magazine Issue Eighty-Four October 9, 2013 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2013 by Crack the Spine
“Given
the choice,
we will always
select madness over
method�
Contents
Melanie J. Cordova Kindling Daryl Farmer Flora Thomas Piekarski Confessions of a Rock Icon Ricky Ginsburg Falling Robert Vivian Sigh David Michael Joseph Pedro Seaman Danny Earl Simmons Our Conversations Have Hyphens Ross Hargreaves Overtstuff
Cover Art & Interior images by Rose Mary Boehm A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm, short-story and novel writer, copywriter, photographer and poet, now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels and a poetry collection, "TANGENTS," have been published in the UK. Her latest poems have appeared or are forthcoming - in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary... See more of her photography.
Melanie J. Cordova Kindling As Maggie tapped her toes on the carpeted floor of her doctor’s office she thought about the day her dead husband used jazz hands in a morning conversation they had over coffee and toast. “Celia got a job interview for next week,” he said, stirring sugar into his cup. “Supposed to be at that Roberson Theater with the terrible seats.” “What’s the job?” Maggie asked. He spread his fingers, shook his wrists—jazz hands. “Stage hand.” Maggie frowned, biting into her toast thirty years ago and tapping her foot in Dr. Beale’s waiting room now. It was a bad job, a bad position. The door to the sacrosanct hallways of the doctor’s office clicked open and a young woman with a clipboard leaned out. “Margaret Coulson?” Maggie popped out of her seat and bobbed after the woman down the hall. “Just a routine follow-up, right?” the woman asked. She pulled open the exam room door and ushered Maggie inside. “Yes,” said Maggie. “Just making sure it heals right.” She held up her finger and the splint glinted in the fluorescent light. Maggie blinked it away and thought about the heavy oak desk her husband used to pay bills for twenty years, now lying in several pieces in the attic of her home. After struggling and heaving it up the stairs in her effort to remove any hint, any reminder of any life before her husband’s death, one of its legs slipped off a step and pinned her index finger against the wall with a drawer. “Son of a bitch.” Maggie heaved the desk away from the wall and kicked it back down the stairs. “Motherfucking son of a bitch.” The desk creaked, slamming into the ground and popping a knob off the cabinet. She swept out the back door and returned with the hatchet from her shed. Using her good hand she chopped the desk into pieces and threw them into the attic before going to the hospital.
“Just trying to clean up the house,” she told the nurse as the woman unhooked her splint with slow, methodical precision. “Just wanted a tidy home and look what happens.” The nurse smiled and shook her head. “It always does.” The large freckle on her nose sashayed through the air as she stepped back to the door. “Stay put and the doctor will be here in a moment.” Maggie’s eyes followed her freckle through the closed door, down the hall, to the front desk, into the break room. That was Celia’s freckle—her niece the stage hand named for Maggie’s mother. The size of a bluebottle, that freckle. The only vivid memory from Maggie’s prim and proper childhood, that freckle. “Fix your collar, young lady. You look like a harlot.” “Pull your hair back, young lady. You look like a harlot.” “Don’t walk with those girls home from school anymore, young lady. They’re harlots.” “Of course we can’t spare you in the afternoons, young lady. People who work at the Roberson are harlots.” A bad job, a bad position. Maggie tried to bend her index finger. It was stiff and the knuckle cracked. She was tapping her toes again when the doctor walked in. “All right—let’s see here,” Dr. Beale said, rolling over a chair and plopping his clipboard onto the exam bed. The paper crinkled and sighed. Dr. Beale inspected Maggie’s finger. His warm hands caressed hers like a calloused masseuse. She imaged him using a push mower on his lawn. “I think you’re all set,” he said, standing and adjusting his white coat. “Healed great—just be careful moving furniture from now on. Try to get some help with those sorts of things, Mrs. Coulson.” Maggie tilted her head. “It’s not very flexible,” she said. “Is that okay?” “Oh, sure. It’ll take a few more weeks for it to feel completely back to normal. But not too long. You’ll be dancing in no time.” He spread his fingers, shook his wrists—jazz hands. Maggie grabbed two hard candies from the front desk on her way out. She ate candy like she read books: without patience. As soon as she got in the car she popped both candies in her mouth, sucked for ten seconds, and then chomped them into sticky goo that stuck to her teeth. Life was too short to savor Jolly Ranchers. She’d been reading books the same way since she was sixteen: start in the middle, read to the end, and then go back to the beginning until she got to where she started. Life was too short for rising action. Maggie was all denouement. She passed the Roberson Theater on her left and thought of her husband and his breakfast jazz hands, about nose freckles on nurses. At least nursing was a proper profession, a respectable job. Maggie frowned again, crunching away on Dr. Beale’s hard candy as she drove to a house completely
emptied of furniture on the first floor but stuffed like a teddy bear with chopped up bits of desks and beds on the second.
Melanie J. Cordova is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing Fiction at Binghamton University. She has stories out or forthcoming with The Santa Fe Writers Project, The Oklahoma Review, Yamassee, Larks Fiction Magazine, and The Waterhouse Review, among others. Melanie also serves as Editor-in-Chief to Harpur Palate and as the Coordinator of Writing By Degrees 2014.
Daryl Farmer Flora I. The flowers are orange. I break one from its stem, and pull apart petals. Mom says if I look at the clouds I will see animals. I take the center and put it in my mouth. I sort of see rabbit but long for giraffe. The flower tastes like tomato, but bitter. The clouds cover the sun. The world gets darker. Night time? I ask. No, she says. The clouds have darkened the sky. My brother and sisters are at school. Later that evening it darkens again. Clouds? I ask. No. It is dusk, she says and I learn: there are different types of darkness in this world. II. In the cabin my mother plays cards. It is fall. The aspen leaves are yellow. I walk to the bottom of the hill. I slip through an old barbed wire fence, hike along a creek bed. There is bedrock, smooth, a jutting outcrop. I sit on the rock, lie back. The floating clouds make me feel as if it is I that is moving. A pleasant disorientation. A dragonfly buzzes me, then moves away. If you are thirsty, there is water inside of cactus. This I have been told by my sisters. When I see the small cactus, I rise, take a stick and poke it open. Inside, it is pink. I tear off a piece and taste it. It is wet, liquid, but not enough to quench me. A stellars jay lands on a pine branch, eyes me, and then flies away. III. College. In the sand dunes I walk with a woman I think I might love. We talk about our lives, our disparate dreams; we bury each other in the sand, take photos. Always there are photos—I give them away, photos of sunsets, city lights, deer in the forest. She has one of my photos tacked to the bulletin board in her dorm room, a full moon rising over Mt. Blanca. I want to believe that she looks at the photo each night and thinks of me. The sand gets in our clothes, our shoes. Mount Sevin stands above us looking down. We can hear voices in the distance. Still, in these dunes, we feel secluded, alone. In the wind, long stemmed yellow flowers dance and make designs in the sand. Floating clouds cover the sun. Eventually, the shade will fade to night. We lie in silence, wait for the sand to cool us, wait for the dark to fall.
Daryl Farmer’s first book “Bicycling beyond the Divide” received a Barnes and Noble Discover Award. His recent work has appeared in The Whitefish Review, The Potomac Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Fourth River. He is an assistant professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks where he teaches creative writing and literature.
Thomas Piekarski Confessions of a Rock Icon In the process of clawing my way to fame I commingled with a lot of foul characters. Shanghaied by their sordid ambitions, I was dragged into an amoral black hole. I had to brown nose these scrubs, hate it as I did. And once I got famous the media hounded me, many of them claiming I was trash. The truth is I’ve battled these naysayers my whole life, finding that none of them has the DNA to be a rock star. So they can cram their crappy reviews; I say they’re the ugly ones. My art transcends them. Before the music and while seeking an identity, I embraced Hume and Descartes. It was my nihilistic phase. I felt venerated when my photo ran in the paper showing me streaking naked across the Oakland Coliseum outfield. But such fame was fleeting—less than the benchmark 15 minutes. In my latest song I sing about the rogue candidate who in his address to the nation about many possible solutions to the various environmental, social and economic malaises that plague us, flush with bow tie, neatly pressed pantaloons and harlequin hat, bows, and hopscotches off the stage to resounding applause.
I think my real purpose is to give it my best to reduce pestilence on this planet, and to lower the level of outright pedantic pursuits among the multitude. I visit Da Vinci’s schematics and discover what he realized, that science doesn’t walk art like a dog on a leash, and that art and science are related unsystematically. This is why I believe masters paintings can be found on millions of other planets throughout the cosmos. I’m working on my next song, about the Brown Shirts. I have them marching down San Juan Hill, machetes gleaming, the spring sky filled with smoke. The land is littered with enemy bodies. No less than heroes, their enthusiasm is at a fabulous height, nationalistic rhetoric embedded in their gleeful chants—the fresh red blood glistening on their sweat-soaked uniforms.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His theater and restaurant reviews have been published in various newspapers, with poetry and interviews appearing in numerous national journals, among them Portland Review, Main Street Rag, Kestrel, Scarlet Literary Magazine, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Penny Ante Feud, New Plains Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Muse-an International Journal of Poetry, and Clockhouse Review. He has published a travel guide, “Best Choices in Northern California,” and “Time Lines,” a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California.
Ricky Ginsburg Falling Life is a waterfall. It begins with a trickle of long, meaningless calm as you float without feeling. Uterine blindness, your eyes sealed - buds not ready to blossom. You're barely sentient, too far upstream to form even the simplest of questions. Only the rhythmic lub-thump, lub-thump, a two-beat monotone you've taken as the pace of your life, provides soft evidence of your existence as you glide toward an unseen precipice. *** Slowly, then urgently, then with great strain the raging current grabs you. Primal fear is released. Stretching spasms pull you away from familiarity toward, toward, toward what? You fall into a hard bright place - cold, sterile. Louder, more sounds, sudden movement. . . the first. . . breath. *** You're weightless now, drifting with the updrafts of pressure on your back, your legs, your neck, as life falls around you. You've entered a universe of many and it pleases you. All is peaceful and serene. Touch embraces you. Soft, warm, pliable. You look at your hands and wonder what possible use they could have. Every desire is fulfilled the moment you ask; especially if you ask as loud as you can. Noise. You can generate unlimited noise and you learn that it will bring you reward. Malodorous moments, unpleasant to your newly acquired sense of smell, are quickly replaced with more appealing fragrances. Hunger, an unwanted, yet persistent fear, doesn't last long and its relief comes with another recent addition - taste. Liquid nutrition in all its wonderful flavors is doled out on demand. Satisfaction chases the hunger, chases the fear. But you want more; addiction is a common genetic. Satisfaction is not permanent relief. *** The updrafts become fewer and fewer with the passage of time. You're falling faster now and you're never alone except when you're sleeping. Everyone's grown, learned, earned and spent far too much more than they should have. Life transverses the barrier between pleasure and pain so many times a day that you begin to wish you'd never left the comfort of the womb. Father changes once, twice, three times; so often that you call him Bill or Jim or Dwayne and he calls you Shithead.
Fear stands atop the cliff, watching your descent, laughing. You spit, but the blustery wind of a million tons of life falling with you absorbs the stream without comment. *** You adjust. You cope. You deal with it, man. Sometimes you forget there's a bottom rushing up to meet you. Life is good, great, never better. You're going down so fast that you start to think you're moving up. Look at the blue sky, so large above you that it could be the painted ceiling in your midtown loft, of which your bank owns ninety-five percent and you fear they're going to ask for more. Borrow, steal, lie, cheat. Fear is laughing louder now. Its clammy voice dripping into your brain. The pace rattles your stomach worse than your first arrest for drunk driving. You threw up for days, eating nothing, not even when your parched throat begged you to take a sip of water. You can't even feel yourself falling. *** You accept that the war with gravity is not one you can win. Every day it tugs at you. A small child that begs for a toy you can't afford with the mortgage due and the alimony already three months in arrears. You drag the child out of the store, pulling him by the arm. Pulling him down with you. As you get nearer to the bottom, you get heavier with every meal. You blame it on the weight of life bearing down on your shoulders. All that water, all that new life erupting over the edge of the cliff above you. Minute after hour, after day, after year, after too many drinks. Are there ever too many drinks? Fear runs when you open the bottle. The smoky aroma of whiskey is repugnant to its senses, so it dips and hides when your glass is full. You can't see it when you drink because you always close your eyes when you swallow. How can you be falling if you can't see anything move past? *** The child spends so little time with you now, that every third Saturday, when you pick him up, you end up lost just getting there. You're clever with the excuses though, always sucking a breath mint. Can't let her know. The bitch. The whore. The liar, even when you had pictures. But then, so did she. You take him to the baseball game. The roar of the crowd, as loud as the roar of the water crashing into boulders at the bottom of the falls, scares him, and you leave at the end of the first inning. There's a tavern along the river, a place that makes great Italian food, and you take him there. The place is empty, so you and the boy take seats at the bar. He stands on a barstool, drinking cola with a straw. You have four shots and a beer before the kid says he's hungry.
Sleep overtakes the child long before the bartender cuts you off and helps you out the door. He buckles the kid into his seat and asks if you're really certain you can drive for what seems like the threehundredth time. You lower the two rear windows before finding the right button for the one on your side to yell out at him, sure, I'm cool, man. *** The third left is the bridge, or is it the docks? You're not sure, so you go an extra block before turning left. Worst case, it's a dead end. It seems like a long street. Must be the ramp up onto the bridge, so you push a little harder on the accelerator. There's a glaze on the windshield, a fine mist from the damp night air. You reach for the wipers and as you look down, you miss the Dead End sign. Thirty-five, forty, fifty. Where's the damn wiper switch? Your gaze drifts away from the road. Just a few seconds. Too many to see the flimsy wooden barricade. Too many to have enough time to step on the brakes. You crash through. The rush of cold river water roars into the car, frothy white blood, reaching for you. For your son. Your first instinct is to kill the ignition, turn off the engine before it explodes. Your foot is still on the accelerator, so you force your leg away from it and try to take the car out of gear. Water has filled the car from the back with both of those windows open. You're now looking up at the waterfall pouring down. Fear manages to push the mist of whiskey from your consciousness, and in an instant, you look over at the screaming child in the passenger seat in horror of what you've done. You reach for his seatbelt to release him, but your own holds you tightly in place. The water is dribbling into your mouth and has silenced the boy. You find the release for your buckle on the first try; get his on the third. Dragging him across your lap, you push him out the window. You follow, smashing your forehead on the window frame as you go. Yet, even in the murky water and the blur of your vision and the blanching pain across your face and a cold so numbing that you think you've fallen into melted snow, you're able to grab his arm and pull him with you to the surface. *** It's hours later. She's with him at the morgue. You've been fingerprinted and photographed. One of the cops from Central Booking remembers you from last month and gets you some black coffee. You sit in a
cell, crying, sobbing, shaking, and wishing you could have a drink because as bad as all this is, you're still falling.
Ricky Ginsburg is one of those writers who sees a flock of birds heading south for the winter and wonders what they talk about on their journey. His portfolio consists of over 300 short stories, nearly half of which have found their way into various magazines, both paper and electronic, and four novels, all self-published. While much of his writing has elements of magical realism and humor, he also has a serious side, but keeps it in a small plexiglass box under his desk.
Robert Vivian Sigh Sigh a sound of longing, sigh a sound of letting go past long midnight into bright ink of day, sigh a sound of threadbare wistfulness at the ragged end of every frayed hope along with hope’s most intimate abiding and other sighs just as far reaching to the shores of ache and sorrow but also great acceptance, a way to breathe out spirit and wind sighing through the trees to make them sparkle again in prolonged applause and clean, clean, clear, clear so light may give the leaves their glowing and sigh the spirit of ancestor and the ones who came before, sigh a sound of breathing born of rivers and deliverance on the altar of an empty hand, sigh the air of resignation and sigh a destination whose highway trembles with heat and the last stop before dying in vestibular awareness on the threshold of a flickering light that beckons, and world of sigh would flood the atmosphere with breathing that would recognize no borders, ocean of sigh would rise finally to touch the moon in holy lunacy, cosmic lovemaking on sheets of dynamic foreplay stretched out across the sky, and sighing the fish would push out words of praise through their gills and sighing the birds would discover new songs and new sounds to warble and trill on unimaginable scales, and sigh a sound of weariness that will finally know rest, sigh the antidote to anger, to blood-letting and other hell bent berserkers, thrombosis giving way to broken dams of overflow racing to every last extremity as if blood were a way to sing again, and sigh a sound of baby chick breaking from its shell in the jigsaw dismantling of Learning How To Fly 101, sigh a sound where old men go to become young again and sigh a sound of an old woman remembering, smoke a sigh and sundial shadow a sigh that edges the sun toward the horizon and sigh the sudden stumbling on to beauty in a meadow shining with fern lights and spindles of cockleburs reaching out to scratch like small bristly planets of poke, sigh the breath of every poem and the meaning of every poem in lines written for exhalation, every word charged with chemical electricity and tracer blasts of feeling, sigh the speck and splinter that falls from the wood pile in a blaze of instantaneous glory, sigh full blown omega letter in the year of the dragon and the last sound the clouds make before it starts raining and raining a sigh that timpanis its way on to fronds and tin roofs and barn doors seasoned by harsh weather and sighing you proclaim your frailty and sighing I admit failure and vanity, and sighing in a motel room alone with a glass of vodka in your hand how close you are to the other side, nearer my God to thee and angels who adore you and how close you are to hell, sigh a kingdom of moths under any streetlight (see
how they want to be consumed by the light, see how they are willing to die for it), sigh the shredding of all duration or any time-saving device, any gadget or widget or whatnot, anything you can scroll, scan, talk into, take pictures with, wind chime a sigh and church bell a sigh that tolls the coming hour, sighing the ghosts in the bedroom gathering their smoke to gain greater density of remembered feeling and sighing the desert whips up its sand and sends it on its way and sighing the mountain said Mighty before falling to its knees and I want a sigh to reclaim innocence and breathe out anew—I want a sigh to end all war as every sigh reveals the wretched futility of torture and every sigh contains within it invisible particles of love and I need a sigh like a flower needs sunlight, needs water, and if I could see sigh it would be numinous and the color of clear rushing water, the DNA of pure spirit, and seeing sigh I would break into rainbow after a flash flood that almost swept the neighborhood away, and if I could smell sigh it would be clover, it would be jasmine in a garden where lovers walk nude, it would be mint or any aromatic herb and if I could touch sigh I would hold it in my hand like a cool breeze a few seconds before letting it go and it would feel light and beautiful and then fly from my hand like the first blinking of a star that went out long ago though its light is still reaching us, still signaling us, showing us the way home though its own home has burned up in a great fire, leaving nothing behind but the black ink of space ravenous for glory, for mercy, for every far flung thing.
Robert Vivian is the author of “The Tall Grass Trilogy� and two books of meditative essays. He's currently at work on a collection of dervish essays.
David Michael Joseph Pedro Seaman Fishing for Tales
Dave and I sat outside the coffee shop on 6th Street, the one with the crazy Russian Barista who told stories; mostly with an insane and violent bent. The coffeehouse was the place for the dregs, the crazy and the downtrodden, sipping small coffees in between screams, fearful ranting and meth-induced rocking. I knew Dave through Gonzalez, John Gonzalez to be exact. I’d see him at the dark condo that overlooked the harbor. Now, I was on the computer and he was sitting in the corner, waiting for John’s instructions. The story: years ago John was paralyzed in a surfing accident off Cabrillo Beach. Dave, a random onlooker, had saved his life and they became lifelong friends. He was John’s driver in the family van; chauffeuring him around the harbor city. Dave was a very friendly man with a passive, non-threatening demeanor, but his eyes showed something deeper, scars that only the world can give. He had seen things. I often saw him in the parking lot of the AA meeting hall, weaving his way in and out of the recovering hordes on 20th Street. He would be standing amongst them, six-foot-three frame rising above the rest, his reddened eyes peering out from deep inside his blotchy face. The peaceful drunk would greet me with a smile and a handshake. We would exchange trivial banter and go our separate ways. On this night I don’t know how the conversation arose or who spoke the initial words, but we started to talk about the sea. I think I asked Dave what he did for a living, when he actually did something. He said he worked on the sea as a fisherman. I was amazed. All my time in town and I had never known a sailor or seaman. Popeye was the only seaman I recalled being out in the high water and I never actually saw him on a boat. My buddy Dubs once told me his Grandfather Ollie Olsen was the actual inspiration for the cartoon character. I was buddy with the great-grandson of Popeye. I guess that made me somewhat relevant after all. My uncle was a diver for the Navy I don’t know if that counts. We occupied a small table outside the shop. Dave sat back, relaxed, in his usual, friendly place. The night was cool and 6th Street was empty, as always, I asked Dave about his job as a catcher of fish. He sat back and reflected for a few seconds, then leaned forward and his thin, purplish mouth started to
move. He told me about the Boat itself, how the deck was far above the waterline. A man could get seriously injured if he fell over the side. It was very rare when they could pull an unfortunate soul back on deck at night, during rough seas. One rule, he said, was the crew had to settle all personal issues before they went out to sea. There couldn’t be any ill feeling or rivalry. All beefs had to be smashed before one stepped on deck. I asked him why. He said because they were at sea for a while and anything could happen. You had to play nice. Someone could ‘do you’ and leave you for fish bait. One push overboard and you were just a memory to the few back on land that knew of you. So, before you jumped aboard, you had to make good vibes with all. The second rule was never to let anyone not a crewmember board your ship. Ever. That was the law of the ocean. No one boards another’s ship with the exception of the Coast Guard. He said that, realistically, there were no laws on the sea. It was every man and every boat for themselves. Robbing, killing and piracy were a reality once you hit the deeper waters, far from land, where there was no one to help. He said they always carried shotguns aboard the boat. Dave changed the topic from the felonious to the festive and my friend’s eyes lit up as he talked about the cocaine and drinking aboard ship. He said there was a party every night. It was one giant, seagoing party. Although, cocaine with no women made me wonder; why waste a good hook-up buzz on a boatload of dudes? I would save my judgments and questions for another time. I pictured Dave in the galley, doing lines off a small, worn formica tabletop and pulling fishing lines up at a frantic pace. Staying up for days, catching fish, crabs and vices: the lore of the sea. I remember the fishing trips I went on as a child were spent most of the time throwing up over the side. My grandfather said I was chumming. I’d up-chuck and be left leaning over the rail, eyeing the green bile leave my gut and float away. I hated the sea and was meant to stand on land; both my feet flat on dry, hard ground and waving at all those fool playing Captain Ahab. With these memories firmly planted in my gray matter, I knew Dave must have a rock-hard constitution. Dave eyes danced with the recall as he told his tale. I could tell the love was returning, the lust for the water was rushing through his veins. His pupils exploded with joy as his mouth frothed. He stopped, paused and returned to the present, as he leaned back and scanned the night sky. He mentioned being at sea when a storm hit. He said they tied themselves to their bunks and laughed. Laughed like mad men. They knew their lives were done. He said there was no way, he thought then, that they were leaving the boat. The vessel would sink and he would be lying on the bottom with the
clams and the coral. I pictured Dave, all six-foot-three, skinny framed, lying in the top bunk, giggling as his eyes screamed fear, squawking desperate prayers to the Lord of the Ocean, begging Neptune to spare them from a wet death. Yes, they survived to fish again and their tell stories of sea madness and addiction. Dave’s thousand league stare fixed far into the distance, peering into the nighttime sky and listening to the ocean sing its captivating, violent song. I left Dave that night as he went his way and I went mine, off into the harbor city night. Later that month, I saw the Man from Kentucky, another denizen of the harbor city. He was sitting on a bus bench on Pacific Ave waiting on the 146 bus. He was a large man, well over six-feet-tall. He had a thick build with huge tree-trunk legs. He always wore a jacket and shorts, it was his costume. I first met him while I was up at Troy’s Diner, eating a chicken salad, which was my routine on weekend nights: if I had the money. I would go the cafe and read Bukowski as I dove into the grilled chicken mixed with the iceberg lettuce and cucumbers, drowned in blue cheese salad dressing. I saw him outside, admonishing a young black youth for doing a bad hand-to-hand drug deal in the open. Not that he was dealing, just doing it badly, with no sense of the neighborhood’s ebb and flow. He screamed at him while scanning the dark parking lot and beyond with a practiced eye. Instead of the cops, he noticed me as I stepped quickly inside, trying my best to turn invisible. I hurriedly slid into one of the clean, back booths. Finding a clean booth was usually a luxury. As I turned to chapter 5 of Post Office, he entered, sat down in my booth and stared at me. His snaggle-teeth stabbed outward from his bottom jaw while the entire top row of teeth were missing. Probably in lost in some alley altercation or disintegrated by the magic of Meth. His eyes focused in on me from under a dirty black baseball hat (I don’t remember the team) “You got a cigarette?” he commanded. I didn’t smoke I told him. “You got a dollar?” I handed him a dollar as if it was my key to salvation. He took it and made his way back out into the harbor night. That was my first encounter with the Man from the mountains. We became cool and I never had a problem with him. He was friendly and opened up to me about his life. So, when I saw him on that sunny weekend, I approached him without hesitation. Still mesmerized by sea stories, I asked him about Dave, both being longtime Pedro fixtures, and he verified the whole thing, down to the last vowel breathed. “I had seen some strange thing out there on the sea. Things I cannot identify.”
He told me about once seeing a round light flying over the deep, blue sea while being chased by Air Force jets. “Ask the Greeks down by the fishing boats. You see all types of things out there.” Then he talked about the storms. He told me of being on the Pacific during a raging storm, the waves so massive the boat seemed to be sucked into a hole in the ocean. The torrential waters like walls surrounding the ship on all sides and he could hardly see the sky escaping from view. I pictured the Kentucky Man at sea, wind blowing against his weathered face, the salty air’s abuse going unnoticed. The mountain seaman stared into the endless ocean, not fearing death nor expecting life. Just a man on the port side, praying to God silently, while cursing Neptune aloud. His story ended as he dropped his head, silently reminiscing on another time. Did he miss the Sea? Why the sadness? Did he lose a friend? Lose himself? I gave him a pat on his back and walked away, thinking to myself; Popeye was a bitch.
David Michael Joseph the author of “Exodus from the River Town” published by Shook Up publishing. He is also a poet and filmmaker from New Jersey, now living in Los Angeles who has a passion for storytelling and poetic verse, which he infused into his films that include four short films such as Festival selections “Shadows of Sepulveda” and “C.A.k.E.” His poetry and stories can also be found in: Amulet, The Ultimate Writer, Conceit Magazine, Danse Macabre du Jour, Threshold Revelations Issue 21, The Malaysian Poetic Chronicles, The Other Herald, The Blinking Cursor, Essence of Poetry culture Edition, Off The Rocks, Protest Poems, Mel Brake Press, Stellar Showcase Journal, Black Magnolia, Spirits and Tuck magazine.
Danny Earl Simmons Our Conversations Have Hyphens
Take, for instance, our almost weekly the-new-recipe-was-a-bust-so-it’s-eitherBing’s-or-Ixtapa-tonight talk via cell phones and three-letters-or-less text messages. Not to mention the busy little across-the-dining-room-table-list-poem discussions we take turns writing in thin air while passing the salt shaker back and forth. How long has it been since we last enjoyed a little just-after-midnight bawdy talk that romped its way into a half-inebriated lust of pleasedon’t-ever-stop-saying-my-name-like-that? Still, last night’s cool-twilight-laughingover-coffee-on-the-porch-between-silencesthat-brushed-between-us-like-hummingbird-whirrs discussion was nice – especially the way it ended with a me-holding-open-the-screen-door-for-you bit of chivalry followed by the sexiest you-taking-my-hand-and-leading-us-quietlyinto-a-one-soft-kiss-after-another shower.
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Off the Coast, Shadow Road Quarterly, Grey Sparrow, and Verse Wisconsin.
Ross Hargreaves Overtsuff After the party I went home and ate a can of Chef Boyardee overstuffed ravioli. This was the end of semester party at Foam. All-you-could -drink beer. We took the table near the back by the TV and the Danica Patrick cutout. The bar was a disaster. People up in your face, pushing up against you for a better position. At least with the table we got the one haggard waitress. I was saving the seat next to me. Hopefully for Traci. I never had a good time at Foam. It smelled like a urinal cake and the beer tasted sweet from whatever glass cleaner they used. All the people really brought me down. In a room so full of people being how they were supposed to be, how could I be anyone? The trick was to get drunk fast so all the people wouldn’t bother me. Then Traci showed up with some dude and it didn’t matter how much I drank. I’d met Traci over the summer, a couple months after my ex-girlfriend dumped me to marry her high school boyfriend. Traci had come to visit her best friend, Winter, who was dating our main guy Brian. A month later she moved down to go to school. She had long dark hair when she came to visit, then cut it short so it curled around the bottom of her ears. At the start of the semester party everyone was calling me Jesus because I had a splotchy beard and was blessing the beer. I decreed we play King’s Cup and on a dare got to kiss her cheek. At Foam I was on four beers and two shots of tequila when Traci showed up. Her hair was getting long again. “How’s it tonight, mates?” her dude said. His hand was on her back under her t-shirt. “Donkey’s like to munch,” it said, and had a blue donkey eating some grass. He was a skinny guy with a full beard. A brown and yellow scarf hung off his shoulders and went down to his knees. “Montgomery,” he said and shook my hand like we were having a great time. The waitress separated herself from the crowd. “A round of whiskey for me and my chaps,” Montgomery said. When she left without saying a word he sat down in the seat I was saving for Traci. “Bugger. She’s in a mood.” I didn’t know if he was actually British. He looked like the kind of asshole who might wear an accent. I gave Traci a look from across the table where she was talking to Winter. Traci smiled and waved and returned to her conversation.
*** The big night between us was right before Halloween. Brian had brought a bottle of Everclear back from Oregon. We decided to shoot it with a V8 back. That shit was like liquid heartburn. The party was a bummer. Everyone was drunk, but not rowdy drunk like a Jungle Juice night. More sick-and-I-want–togo-home drunk. Winter and Brian had gone off to make a grilled cheese in his room and the only remaining guy, Rob was passed out on the couch. Me and Traci sat at the party scared kitchen table among a ruin of Keystone cans and the smell of burnt pizza rolls, sipping the last of the Everclear with lemon lime Gatorade. I told her how I wanted to move to Seattle. This was the fantasy I always carried around after a break up. I was going to walk there. On this journey I would discover the true heart of America and fuck a girl named Cecilia. Just like Paul Simon. I was shit faced. Otherwise I wouldn’t have told her any of that. “Paul Simon?” she said, smiling so I knew I hadn’t said something too stupid. The other guys made fun of my love for sixties folk rock. “Yeah. Simon & Garfunkel.” “Okay.” She nodded her head in some kind of agreement. Took another sip of her drink. All her ice had melted. “Maybe I’ll come visit you.” “You’d have to walk. Plus, I might have to ask Cecilia.” “Would you? I couldn’t take the Greyhound?” “Hell yeah, you’d have to walk. Gotta complete the journey. It won’t be so bad. I’ll hook you up with a good walking stick guy.” She laughed and I loved it. I don’t know if it was the Everclear that was making my face all hot or her. I wanted to say something profound, finish this connection my heart was telling me had to be true. The words got lost somewhere between an image of myself alone on the highway holding a walking stick and the thought of the two of us kissing. Rob killed it anyway when he started vomiting into an empty case of Natural Ice. “We should probably go,” Traci said, and I agreed, though I didn’t want to. She gave me a ride home that night, my bike in the back of her trunk, the open door blocking her view. It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. I woke up the next morning hung over and in love. Then came the party at the start of Thanksgiving break. I spent all day walking around my room listening to Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, some Beach Boys, drinking Hawaiian Punch and vodka, planning how I would win her heart. At the party I was too drunk to do anything but sit in Brian’s room,
listening to the screams and laughter from the kitchen while watching Traci and Winter play video games and drink Zimas filled with Skittles. Traci took me home. This had been my plan. Problem was the alcohol had killed all the jokes I rehearsed all afternoon. Traci started talking about home. How before her Dad left her Mom he would bury empty Corona bottles in their backyard. I kept looking at her. She pulled in front of my place. “Have a good night,” she said. “We should hang out,” I told her. She might have said yes. Her face was lost in darkness and I wanted her too much to hear yes, so I got out of the car without saying another word and can’t remember anything else. She went to her Mom’s for Thanksgiving and didn’t come around for like a month because of finals and also I heard she caught that cold that was going around. *** The end of semester party at Foam progressed. Montgomery was really generous with the shots. Every time the waitress came he’d order a round for us mates or chaps or buggers. I spent way less than I planned. The bar blossomed right next to us and people kept bumping my chair. The waitress disappeared for almost an hour. Everybody else took their chances at the bar trying to get more beer and shots. Basically Me and Traci were alone at the table. “How’s it going?” I asked her but she didn’t hear. “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins was blowing up the jukebox. Her skin was a little pale. Maybe she had been sick. I wondered if Montgomery had nursed her back to health by bringing her soup. Or tea. She looked at me and smiled. “What?” she said, though I could barely hear her. Took a sip off one of her lingering shots of tequila. I kept staring at her. For a few seconds it was the two of us. Foam and Phil Collins be damned. Her hair was long enough now that it no longer curled under her ears but brushed her collar bone. “Hey,” I said. “How were finals?” she asked. “Allright. You?” “Brutal,” she said, though the look on her face was anything but. “Still going to Seattle?” she asked. “Maybe. I don’t know. After school maybe. Or in the spring. The snow would make it hard.” She took another sip of tequila and didn’t look away. “We should hang out,” I told her.
Montgomery was back putting a fresh beer in front of her. His hand found her shoulder, pushing the t-shirt away from her purple bra strap. He gave me a look and raised his drink with his other hand. “Maybe when you get to Seattle,” Traci told me. After the party I stood across the street. Traci and Montgomery came out, they hugged, they kissed, and then he drove away with her. I waited in the dark as the lights of his car disappeared and wondered how long it would take them to get married. I went home and ate a can of overstuffed ravioli. I ate it cold out of the can while watching the “Flaming Moe’s” episode of The Simpsons. Each ravioli I spooned in whole. Bit it in half in my mouth and swallowed the entire tomato sauce mess. In bed I left the folk rock for another time. Listened to drive thru orders from the Burger King across the street while something wanted to climb out of me.
Ross Hargreaves lives and writes in Boise, Idaho. His work has appeared in Vol.3 of the Victoria Rose.
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