1
Third issue *We are a new online journal aspiring to publish good literature, photography and articles. We are interested in people who have a real passion for the creative process. We want to focus on works that respect the fundamental rule of art, that is to say, they have a unique look at the world around them and they are able to reconstruct it in a way that excites both them and the audience as well. Our first issue is small as we wanted to keep the high quality of the works we chose to publish. Thank you to all the talented contributors of this first issue!
*You can send your work to http://fineflu.weebly.com/ and your mails to fineflu@gmail.com
*Our editorial team are Fineas Poper and Portia Eglin. We are based on Worcester, MA, USA Our editors:
Portia Eglin: She studied English Literature and has an MA in Education and civilisation. She is of Greek origin, and has written a novel that is under publication in Australia. Her short stories have appeared in American in British and in Greek magazines. She also works as a book reviewer. She lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Fineas Poper: Fineas is a person with no face. He loves literature and art and he has just decided that running Fine Flu Journal is his call of fate. Don't try to google him. Fineas Poper is a pseudonym. The person behind this name wishes to remain well hidden in his secret cave. The darkness adds to a well-framed mystery. His cave is in Worcester, Massachusetts.
2
CONTENTS Page 2 – Editorial Page 4 - Gary Glauber Page 5 - Art Heifetz Page 6 - Thomas Piekarski: page 6 Page 11- William Ryan Hillary Page 14 -Valentina Cano Page 15 - Colin Dodds Page 19 - Paul Lewellan Page 20 – Armchair Column Page 22 - Sheri Wright Page 23 – Tobias Oggenfuss Page 26 - My Pet Artist Page 28 – William Ryan Hillary Page 32 – Mitchell Grabois Page 37 – Louie Clay Page 38 - Bios
3
Gary Glauber Rumors Fly
Our silence splinters with the staccato breath of hyper histrionics. I dissolve into your imagined tirade, knowing no rules in this played non-game. Ignoring danger, making love to your heart alone.
Cannot feign ignorance or undo all that’s done, cannot unsee this tragedy shared or untangle our complex past. It’s become our mythology, believed by all the locals, translated loosely from the hieroglyphs of nuance, repeated gestures made in the express checkout line.
We check the mailbox three times in short succession, continue to wait for news that’s never coming. Butterflies mock us, but in the end, we fight imaginary battles alone. 4
Art Heifetz Helen and Irving
For forty years they were two mismatched socks, Helen running her fingers over window sills and cabinet tops searching for the last speck of dust, Irving, never cleanly shaved or coifed, parading in his undershirt, hip-flask in hand.
The dog peed on the carpet each time they fought and snapped at children in the park as if they were pieces of raw steak. One evening in a drunken rage Irving kicked him down the stairs lost his balance, hit his head, and had a massive stroke.
The last time I saw him, he was no bigger than a child, dressed in starched pyjamas, his blue eyes staring into space as she fed him pudding from a spoon. “Look how clean I keep him,” Helen said, wiping the spittle from his chin and tucking him in. “He’s my baby.”
5
Thomas Piekarski Glossed Over A balding bloke hosing off his somewhat beat-up fishing boat. Monterey Plein Air Society painters out en masse, strung along an entire half mile of prim shoreline, easels aimed at shallow bay and wharf from every conceivable angle… He meets up with her exactly on schedule. She seems pretty enough, although distractingly smug, under the illusion that her strict vegetarian diet and regular strenuous workouts will assure indefinite affluence. 1602: upon this very spot the first mass in California held… She excuses—must dash soon lest miss the all-important consultation with her investment advisor… A whole team of fishermen extended elbow to elbow at the far end of a cocked pier. They cash in on a huge school of mackerel, squeal, reel. Oh how those suffocating fish flip in the air and then flap against thick rough planks, panic-stricken… Her sporty new BMW, Chihuahua photos on iPhone, ranch adjacent to Laguna Seca… At Breakwater Cove Marina one can rent a kayak or scuba gear, take a boat tour… Undoubtedly his whole world won’t come crashing down…She’ll get to the bible tomorrow…Crepes of Brittany, Palaca 6
Trattoria, Old Fishermans Grotto, Carousel Candies ambient…Likely dismissive indifference imbedded in that statement… The bell tolls four times at city hall… Lips that touch liquor shall never… Circe expecting something momentous… Pinwheels fastened to various masts on the harbor make hay, whirring as wires slap, chime against those steel posts while wind quickens.
Papier Mache
1. In Stride
I think I’ll ride it out tonight, sighs dimming the late night sky and meadowlarks gone to nest. Silence beams from compliant resurrections that are immanent in reflections of her blazing gaze.
It’s a strange yet necessary arrangement— what omnipresent messenger malingers in my dissimilitude, impudent contractor of engravings I carve on stones fallen from on high.
2. Salivation
I was salivating along with
7
Pavlov’s dog, my pulse spilling through the piano string grid that dog stood on.
I was thankful for my angel, as always imperial in her moral support.
I felt much like Aeneas, about to tumble into Hades holding Virgil by the waist.
Romulus and Remus morphing into that dog in torrid swarming fog.
I was moderately tempted to write about this, spread it via my blog.
Then actually considered altering passwords, in fact even defragging my troublesome computer.
I started stomping ants, swatting droves of lucent flies. I simply couldn’t justify sanctioning whatever didn’t make a B line for universal love.
8
3. Nowhere Land
Another year gone by and nowhere to go, hither absconded and yonder way past wonder strayed. Ecliptic visions united in an untied future. Who maintains adequate resolve to blunder, misty through lavender fields in June? January rain isn’t enough. We need snow, at least 50 feet of it, and now, enough to bury Monticello.
4. Encrypted
My messages continue to be intercepted. They must be getting decoded. No other explanation exists. Coaxial can’t lie. Encryption made from another dimension too abstruse for any antonym. And yet I’m not willing to cede my liberty.
Complicated ways and means may smooth out once the coast clears. I think my communications eventually get through, but not so sure anyone is there to hear. Similes can’t quite render those messages in concrete terms. The need to constantly siphon one tank of love into another accurately depicts my words.
9
5. Cosmos End
From the depths of desecration springs autonomous consecration of oneself. There is no stranger, no other wondering who am I and where I am at cosmos end.
10
William Ryan Hillary The Mechanics of Defying Time Morning What shall we do tomorrow That we did not do today? What time tomorrow? Where? When? Which sequence of ticking syllables shall we save?How many lists will we make—things We said we'd do With each midnight passing We didn't do. Night Things are only objects And we are only relics. And the petty hours are vagabond in their wanderings Perpetrating the most severe of betrayals: Seconds turn to decades while mothers sleep. And when they awake, Their children are gone Only these imperfect Clumsy beasts remain Promising what they cannot possibly provide Promising it Tomorrow.
11
How to Sell Your First Screenplay and Become Rich 1. Find the child Inside. Who'll come to despise you. 2. Watch him. Stalk him. Stick a pin in him. Tell his story. Follow the thin trail Of hair as it falls from His head As he ages. 3. Follow Over those Dank, playground nights Over bloody noses and fistfights The night sweats That remind you: “Guilt makes for a hell of a tale, boy” Romance too, but romance is usually An indelible fog—Fraud A note clipped on the wings of a pigeon or a frog Or a finger pressing, curled 'come-hither' On the sweet, secret spotted insides of a woman You barely knew, and so will be able to love forever 12
Because you barely knew her.
4. Accept Art is a re-wrapped gift. You had it, rejected it, traded it. Now you want to sell it.
5. Sell it.
13
Valentina Cano The Bird Peddler
I fill cage after cage with words and push them down the street to fling them at strangers. They all return, spines cracked, feathers missing, flight forgotten.
14
Colin Dodds The Last and the Looming Wars
Take a right on War Memorial Blvd, last house on your left, up the stairs to the desk at the crown of your hopes. where the generals on the little tv explain we’re back to war.
It was a hard and strange day. The tv showed us some hell in the morning and the afternoon couldn’t escape it. They pulled the men’s pants down and shot them in the head. On the little tv, the celebrities who were supposed to be our friends all wished us ill, said we had a bad day coming for a long time now and their only complaint was that it wasn’t bad enough.
I drove toward the clouds, and when the rain came I couldn’t tell if I had found the storm or if the storm had found me. 15
The candidate makes eye contact with the camera and says he too hates the world, but for fresher, truer reasons. But what we push toward is something other than justice, efficiency, truth, and the forgiveness of our flawed births.
We push on because it hurts here. We push on because we are no longer the dreamer but the dream.
Seatbelts and Life Rafts
Airlines drop me to my day. The jet engines hum a new weariness into the music of morning.
In the terminal, I feel sanctified, or at least justified, by the fuel being burned on my behalf.
16
For I am a jealous god, or at least a spoiled child, and I demand a fatted calf.
Jet engines sing of disaster, conjure up all my cheap cleverness and shabby moral choices.
In the din, stewardesses tell us a lie about seatbelts and life rafts—so much effort and noise for something as fragile as vanity.
The intercom pings in a new age of euphemism. And I am so alone, when everyone puts on their headphones.
17
Wager and Aftermath
Devil came to God God said “Where you been?” “Goin back and forth on the earth, Or don’t you pay attention?” “Okay, okay,” God said. “Let’s not start that one again. Anyway, check out this guy Job He thinks he’s my friend.”
A million mosquitoes Kept us on our toes Until toes was all we were The panic wore us out The beach filled us with doubt My friend said he could almost taste All of the medical waste We ran to an old airfield With access to the sky And waited in the waning light For the glue to dry
18
Dear Elizabeth By Paul Lewellan
Dear Elizabeth, You probably didn’t recognize my name on the return address. You don’t know a Joseph Hillard. You only know Joe, the toll taker in Booth Two at mile marker 65 on I-88. You once said I reminded you of your Grandpa Phillip. We’ve talked for 8-20 seconds each day, five days a week for the last five years. I believe the accumulated time makes us friends. It’s been three weeks since I last saw you at my booth. Two days ago I asked Bill from your car pool where you’ve been. He said you were real sick. He wouldn’t name the medical condition, and I guess I can understand that. Why should he tell me? It’s none of my business. You may be uneasy that I’ve written you this letter. You’ve never told me your last name, but there are other ways to find out. Working tolls, a guy makes connections. I memorized your plate number long ago. Well, you can figure it out. How can I help? That’s all I want to know. If you don’t want my help, just don’t write back. I’ll tear up your address, and you won’t hear from me again. But if you need an extra grandfather or a friend, let me know what I can do. --Your Friend, Joe
19
Armchair column
Ape and Coffee Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape. The man said, animal did you get on my coffee?
No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
You're sure you didn't spill on my coffee? said the man.
Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.
Well you sure don't look human, said the man.
20
But that doesn't make me a fluid, twittered the ape.
Well I don' know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man.
I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.
I don't care if you are a liquid, you just better stop splashing on things, cried the man.
Do I look fluid to you? Take a good look, hooted the ape.
If you don't stop I'll put you in a cup, screamed the man.
I'm not a fluid, screeched the ape.
Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.
Antimatter On the other side of a mirror there's an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.
And in the evening the sun is just rising.
Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.
In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy.
Russell Edson (1935-2014)
21
Unrequited Sheri Wright
22
Tobias Oggenfuss Hidden Perspectives
23
24
25
MY PET ARTIST What is a pet artist? A pet artist could be something like this:
Or this:
26
No matter what his size or shape, a pet artist is someone who makes art for you. He paints for you, he writes for you, he composes music for you. You are not his subject. No way. However, you are his god or goddess. He cannot exist without you. You are the centre of his existence. And that’s why you have to keep him happy. A pet artist needs an allmighty god who can forgive and admire. A pet artist cannot live with rejection. Another kind of artist may be able to live with rejection and without being a pet, but who cares for this other kind of artist? I mean, we all need pets. And pets need us. It’s a two – way relationship. What we need, is that you send us, a paragraph, describing your ideal pet artist. Use your imagination and all your affection to build your own pet artist. Tell us about him. If you are an artist, how about describing your ideal owner? What would you need from him? What would he have to offer you in order to create the most appropriate artistic atmosphere for you, an atmosphere which would make all your inspiration flourish? We are looking forward to your answers. Send a mail to: fineflu@gmail.com Portia Eglin – Fineas Poper
27
Chronomentrophobia William Ryan Hillary They says I drove him mad. I reckon I just let him loose upon the sky. Mommy dances in the smoke and smelliness and daddy cries. We have an apartment, but they take me to rock shows, and they stuff my ears with cotton and give me nips of gin to drink. “He's a real downer,” auntie Cait says. Daddy, that is. Daddy is afraid of tick-tock clocks, and ringing bells, even though he is a rock star. You know, old fashioned clocks that tick until they ring. But mommy sings. She likes to sing. The nights are often cold. I see shadows play on daddy's face. I have a plan to stop daddy's fingers moving in me like they move when he is playing his guitar. Because inside a person should remain a secret. Shouldn't it? I will never know. Tonight daddy is on the carpet. The carpet is red-gold. Red is the color of blood. I hate blood, so when it goes between my legs I say it whispers instead of bleeds. A whisper is also a secret. I am too young to whisper. But I'll tell you how daddy got onto the carpet and what happens after... Why? Dad is skin and bones like a giant spider who has had half its legs chewed off. He comes at night when mommy is sleeping in the position of a starfish. Sometimes there's another man with mommy. Sometimes they play leap frog. Sometimes a man puts white goo on mommy's chest and then the man turns to me and smiles, and his teeth are so shining and he sort of makes a noise like an animal and seems pleased I am there. I like it when people are pleased I am there. In my room, daddy sits on the big zebra chair, and tells me to climb on him. These are our 'in-between-times,' he says. I don't like it. He tells stories before the 'in-betweens.' He told a story about a pig that died and went to heaven. He told a story about a crow that couldn't fly and died but went to heaven like the pig. All his stories are the same. Afterwards, he lies looking at the ceiling like he's trying to see where the crow and pig went. I hate him then. But I don't cry, because mommy never cries, she just changes her clothes, again and again, and looks in the mirror muttering things like, “eh, it's just a little short” and “gah! These red leather pants are hideous.” And sometimes—the best times—we all dance, even auntie Cait. We dance together beneath waves of smoke. I never cry. It's 28
only daddy that cries. We will be dancing and he will start crying. It spoils our fun. There is shouting. Daddy's father was a clock maker and my daddy grew up around hundreds of old fashioned clocks that went 'tick tock, tick tock.' He says this, but I wonder if he is lying. I think he is scared of clocks because he is a freak. I know it is a sin to hate daddy. Auntie Cait, who is a girl that looks like a boy pretending to be a girl, says sin is “hooey,” and that if my daddy is bad, it's because he was born that way. It's not his fault. It's not even his father's fault. Once we were at the doctor's waiting place, and the doctor had an old clock like the ones that tick at auntie Caitlin's. We sat, and it ticked, and daddy began to sweat, and his little neck grew red like it does during the in-between-times. Then he let go a sound like a lion, except it almost made you want to laugh instead of scream. It was funny and it was scary. He went over and pulled the tickers off the clock, and the doctor was very angry and called the police. But we ran away. I wish I could run away to live with auntie Cait, even though she sometimes takes off her face and the chest place that mommy rubs in the goo. I love daddy and feel sorry for him. I believe he is sick. When he was little, dad had no mommy to wake him. He only had his daddy, who made tick tock clocks. So my daddy became scared of the alarm and scared of the ticking, because he didn't like his daddy. I wish none of them had been born, except then I wouldn't either. I wish I could have been borned by another daddy. Because I whisper even though I'm only eight, the girls in the grades above me tell me I'm not supposed to bleed, and that is why they are real and I'm not, because everything I do is different. If I could make my family the same then I would become real. If mommy was awake more, she might come and dance with dad so he wouldn't tell me stories, and wouldn't do the afterwards to me. But mom is always away, or sleeping somewhere in her brain. The mean kids say she is retarded. Auntie Caitlin says she is punk. Here's how my plan started. There is a shop near our house that sells junk and has a collection of dusty clocks. There are all kinds of clocks. Some are made from wood and are supposed to hang on the wall. Some are ugly plastic bricks. All of them are the old fashioned kind—not the new brand that make a variety of funny noises. 29
Old fashioned clocks can only ring bells. I asked the man in the shop and he said they all tick. I asked him if they will ring, and he looked at me with a smile, and the shop was dark—he said, 'yes missus, sure missus,' which is strange because I am only a little girl, and not a missus. He told me, 'they will all ring.' The smells in the shop were strange, like a wet dish rag that's been left on the floor of the laundry room too long, but I like it there. I went home excited because of my plan, and the sun was like a clock above me, and the sky was vast. It seemed like anything could happen in the sky, if only I could get there like the pig and the crow did. I walked home along a busy street, past the playground where the real children play. That day I wasn't scared of them. So I didn't go home. I went around the playground fence and into the park. I was excited, and brave, and I played with them even after they yelled at me. We were running on the dirt and one boy got me like we was wrestling. Because of mommy I knew what to do when we was on the dirt, and I rubbed against him, arching my back and clawing at his private parts. Then suddenly he got scared and I felt this feeling in me that was better than any other feeling, because nobody could touch me. I just stood and laughed at the boy. I realized the louder I laughed the more it hurt him, and I was excited and didn't care. The boy looked like he wanted to punch me, but he was ashamed. And the other boys taunted “Randy's gonna hit a girl� as if it was the worst thing you could do. This was my day when I realized the bleeding wasn't a mistake, but something that boys smelled out, like the dog in our apartment building sniffs out trash to lie in. But I was not trash. I was sad that it was my bleeding that had made me popular, but I would use it if I had to, and I became strong and forever after they would know me and write my name in the bathroom stalls. I was strong. But then the night came. I didn't want to go home where my strength wouldn't mean nothing. I didn't want to go go home and see mommy and daddy fight and she whipping him so low even the fleas wouldn't have him until some other man came in and played leap frog with mommy. I ran and lay under a bush. The leaves prickled me. In later years I would have the same experience. I knowed where I was headed, and from where I came, the inevitability of my disgrace. Or was them just words I heard aunty Caitlin say? They says children don't know much, but we know more than it seems. On the dirt, I was frightened of the night colors in the sky, but soon it was gone and I was floating backwards into the 30
grass. I lay beneath a bush in the park and fell asleep. I was safe there. Then there was a flashing light as if in a dream, and I was present, but not present. They drove me home. The policeman talked to my mom in the living room and it was a fun time because everybody was smiling in the living room. Then they shut the door while I sat on the steps with dad, and dad looked at the door and was angry. The police came and talked to me, and asked if there was anything I wanted to say. Yes. I wanted to say something, but didn't. Because at the same time as I wanted to, I didn't want to, because I was scared they'd take me away. It's funny how you can have two different thoughts in your brain at once, even when they don't agree. Mommy and daddy danced all over the place that night. After that, I went to the clock store every day. I began to buy little clocks with bells at the top. The bells were very important for my plan. I was very nervous. The owner of the store became my friend and made me tea and asked me why I was so interested in clocks, but I couldn't say for real that it was because I had a plan to cure the secret sickness and make daddy go away. He gave me a couple of little clocks for free. And he sold me others for cheaper than the label said. I hid the clocks in my closet. I had about ten clocks then. I was a better person at school. Then the weather changed. The rain came and mommy and daddy were gone lots to see rock shows, and I went to school less, and I played with aunt Caitlin and her friends. Even though he hurt me, I missed dad and I didn't like how quiet our house was. And I wanted to know mom better. I asked Aunty Cat about what mom and dad did when they went away. She said they were artists and musicians. I never want to be like them. They came back. Daddy is back and mommy is back and it hurts again. I remember my plan. I remember all the clocks I have gathered—twenty clocks that don't care about reasons for doing things because they just ring. I'm so excited. Now daddy lies on the floor. I put all the clocks in a circle around him. Clocks from China and India and all over the place, silly clocks. They were my friends, these clocks. I set the alarm buttons to the same space on each one. Then I go back to my bed and wait. I wait. 31
Then they're ringing and ringing. The next time I see my daddy, who is scared of ticking clocks, he is at the bottom of the stairs, and I hope he is dead. I go down the stairs and he is not moving. 'We'll take a train to the sky, maybe' I told him, because that's where the dead pig and crow went. Then the ambulance comes, and mommy starts shrieking and dancing in the light of the ambulance, even though she is crying. So, now I know: you can dance even if you're crying.
32
Mitchell Grabois 3 Flashes: Smokers, Victims, Midgets and Dwarves
Smokers
The Marlboro Man, a cliché on a cliché horse, rides through the canyon. The gun is real, the bullet real, his depression real. Several generations ago, I came to Wyoming to kill myself. Well before I was born, I was destined to die by my own hand. I leave a custom guitar, built by my brother, bloody rosewood, shaped in his shop. Cottonwoods quarrel on the banks of the river, humans quarrel on downtown streets, in bars, in bedrooms. I leave a quarrelsome species. I rearrange my motley collection of guitar picks on top of my dresser, as if they were arrowheads found in a field. My death was a glint in my great-grandfather’s eye. My great-grandmother made a quilt to keep her bones warm. She was always cold, a cold woman, said my grandpa, who had her for a mother.
Smoking damages the tissues in your penis, but Viagra makes it all right, like Jesus died for your sins. You can sin, and then repent, make it all right again in God’s eyes. You can take the little blue pill, you can bring a woman to orgasm, afterwards lay propped up in bed enjoying a cigarette together. You’ll never see her again. She’ll never see you again. Smoking damages a lot of body parts. The airplane doesn’t allow it. You can’t disable the sensor in the toilet. The flight attendant watches you as if she knows that smoking is your healthiest vice. She is fresh from martial arts training, knows how to control people in tight spaces, how to neutralize their bad intentions. She itches to try out her new skills. You live in a small space in a large world. My rental car doesn’t allow smoking. I open all the windows to the hot desert air. The tip of my cigarette is no hotter. For the first time in weeks I relax.
J. Robert Oppenheimer died at sixty after smoking four packs of unfiltered Chesterfields a day all his life. He built The Bomb , then got blacklisted for being a commie. No matter how good you are, no matter how bad, they’ll get you. Like Dylan said: Everybody must get stoned. He also said: It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. I serve ice cream to children. It’s my job. Even with my PhD, it was the best I could get. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I’d rather serve children than the Devil or the Lord.
33
J Robert Oppenheimer’s daughter hung herself from the rafters of the family’s beach cottage in St. John, Virgin Islands. She hung there for a while until she was found. Her ex-husband—did he attend her funeral? I think not. Somewhere , J. Robert Oppenheimer’s daughter’s ex-husband resides in the world, unless he also has died by his own hand, or by someone else’s. Maybe he was in front of the supermarket listening to Congresswoman Gabby Gifford when she got shot in the head. Maybe he got shot to death too.
Victims
J. Robert Oppenheimer, a heavy smoker and a guy who messed around with radiation, died at 60 after the House Un-American Activities Committee fucked him over. They ruined his life said his daughter. She was a woman who had a hard time with relationships. Finally she hung herself from a rafter of the family’s beach cottage in the American Virgin Islands. Later the cottage was blown away by a hurricane. Things come into being, then go out of being, but the legacy of destruction and the threat of nuclear annihilation remains.
She teaches black children in a rural ghetto. Every morning she drives from her ruined house through the forest primeval in her Subaru, which the commercials say means Love. She and her husband live in their cellar. She feels more like a rat than a human. They drink and take drugs to get to sleep. The blades of the turbines around their house spin and spin, and the turbine symptoms have about killed them. Pressure in their ears and head, insomnia, anxiety and depression. Others have abandoned their property, but they have animals they can’t leave. They have fewer animals now than they had. Men on snowmobiles, who didn’t like their criticisms of the power company, came and poisoned their dogs. She and her husband found them in the snow, blood from their mouths and noses, so red in the snow, the ground too hard with winter to bury them.
Peg has gone back to Winnipeg. She was short and thin and her husband was tall and corpulent. They were like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, except that they weren’t creative. They were retired administrators who thought they were smarter than everyone else. Peg and her corpulent husband were part of the group until they alienated everyone with their self-satisfied smugness, their overweening sense of superiority, which of course masked a sense of inferiority, which everyone understood 34
and felt compassion for, until Peg and her husband’s obnoxiousness became too much too tolerate. They refused to play cards, one of the group’s foundation activities. They intimated that playing cards was a pastime for morons. So gradually they were pushed out of the group. They were thought of with distaste and/or disdain. Members of the group remained polite to them, but nothing more. When Peg’s corpulent husband had a heart attack and died, Peg went back to Winnipeg where she’d spent her childhood by a lake in an unpainted farmhouse with her aunt.
In this infra-human world of fedoras my grandfather rests in peace. He never had peace in this country. He missed his home town but he knew he had to get out. Everyone who’d stayed there had been murdered, all but one of his nine siblings. The men who got him his job in this country were extorting money from him every paycheck. He had terrible kidney stones. He never had kidney stones back home, and even though his wise and compassionate wife told him that the stones were a function of age, not place, he didn’t accept that. He was depressed. He yelled at his kids. His kids came to hate him. They refused to go to his funeral.
Midgets and Dwarfs
Mayans are small people, but the Mayan midget who works in the ancient convent is no smaller than other midgets I’ve seen. He tells me that four Franciscan monks still live in the convent. I ask him why the church has put monks there, and not nuns. He makes up answers to a lot of questions, but this time he says he doesn’t know. You can hear the monks giving mass in the morning, and you can see them if, as an atheist, you violate their sanctuary.
I’ve never personally known a midget, and only one dwarf, a guy in high school. A foxy slut was balling him. She was a new arrival from Texas, our Janice Joplin—she had a lousy voice and fronted a band, but also had California blond hair and a willowy body, but she took too many drugs, and later her looks were ruined. I guess she was 35
turned on by my classmate’s dwarfism. Maybe she liked the idea of being his “arm candy” though, owing to their disparity in size she was never literally on his arm. But he was also handsome and a nice guy, also very strong and a good and dirty fighter. I guessed he was a good lover. All us guys envied him for the nookie he was getting every day after school—her parents worked until late. Still, none of us wanted to be a dwarf.
J Robert Oppenheimer died at sixty after smoking heavily and disturbing atoms. J. Linda Hoskins, a high school classmate, also died at sixty after receiving a degree in Anthropology, working as an adjunct instructor, and being denied a tenure track position. She had good genes. Her father was strong as hell, her brother a bodybuilder. In high school she performed feats of strength for our amusement, but she stroked out anyway, at 60. The strongest woman in the world got cancer, she revealed on a TV commercial. Under her words were the questions: What did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this? But the Cancer Centers of America made everything right. Their facilities look like the headquarters of the future World Government that right-wing nuts obsess about.
36
Stature Louie Clay
37
Bios of the 3rd issue contributors (in alphabetical order)
Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, was published in 2014.
Louie Clay is an emeritus professor at Rutgers and lives in East Orange, NJ. Editors have published 2,353 of his essays, poems, and photographs. Clay's
work
can
be
followed
at http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pubs.html.
See
also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Crew. The University of Michigan collects Clay’s papers.
Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, and teacher. His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as “Best of the Net.” Recent poems are published or forthcoming in Fjords Review, JMWW, Stone Voices, Poemeleon, Ginger Piglet, The Citron Review, 3 Elements Review, The Blue Hour, Stoneboat Review and Think Journal. He is a champion of the underdog who often composes to an obscure power pop soundtrack. His first collection, Small Consolations, is due out in Summer 2015 from The Aldrich Press. Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois’ poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available from Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition.
38
Art Heifetz teaches ESL to refugees in Richmond, Virginia. He has had 160 poems published in 11countries, winning second prize in the Reuben Rose competition in Israel. You can find his work at polishedbrasspoems.com
William Ryan Hillary was born born in Ireland 29 years ago. He was raised in London and New York. He has a B.A. in English from Vassar College, and an M.A. in Systematic Theology from Union Theological Seminary in NYC. He has had poems and/or fiction published by Unrorean, Red Ochre Press (Black and White) Breath and Shadow, 40z Bachelors, Junk, The Wilderness Review, Vox Poetica, BlazeVOX, and Midway Journal. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
Paul Lewellan teaches at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. When he taught high school, he posted his first 99 rejections on the classroom bulletin board for creative writing students to read. Since then he has published over seventy short stories and a novela. His new novel, No More White
Tobias Oggenfuss, Swiss/American, lived in the U.S., England, and Switzerland, -High school./ American International School of Zurich, graduated 1993 -Began
photographing
summer
of
93
-Wimbeldon School of Art and Design /1995-1996 B-tec diploma / foundation course, London
England
-Oregon College of Art & Craft/ Furniture Design/1997-1999 incomplete -2000-2012/
Freelance
Photographer
Zurich
Switzerland
-2013-To present live in Los Angeles, awarded a utility patent form the uspto for a new lens technology for still frame and video cameras.should be market ready by 2016
39
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in Nimrod, Portland Review, Kestrel, Cream City Review, Poetry Salzburg, Boston Poetry Magazine, Gertrude, The Bacon Review, and many others. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California.
Sheri L. Wright, two-time Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Wright’s visual work has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus Journal and Subliminal Interiors. In 2012, Ms. Wright was a contributer to the Sister Cities Project Lvlds: Creatively Linking Leeds and Louisville. Her photography has been shown across the Ohio Valley region and abroad. Currently, she is working on her first documentary film, Tracking Fire.
40