GUEST EDITORS Kima Jones lives in Los Angeles and is writing her first poetry collection, The Anatomy of Forgiveness. Melanie Kostrzewa is a former public school teacher turned stay-at-home mom of three, Etsy shop owner and blogger, living in New Orleans. Sheena Sahibdeen holds a BA in English from Tufts University and is a Global Marketing Manager for a consulting firm in Manhattan. Ian Sautner is a Senior IT Recruiter/Account Manager and freelance photographer based out of Brooklyn, NY. Ryan Welch is a native New Yorker living in Los Angeles, CA. He works in advertising sales.
FOUNDERS Vanessa Jimenez Gabb + Crissy Van Meter
ASSISTANT EDITOR Jessica Gray
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FICTION No More Boys | Christopher DiCicco 4 The Hunt | Joe Halstead 8 Everywhere You Go There's a Clown| Thomas Kearnes 19
One more fish | Marilyn Morgan 26 Making a Point in a "L" Triangle | Kate Scarpetta 35
POETRY Refuse to Swim | Hari Alluri 38
Teaching the Map | Christina Olivares 40 LITTLE SPINES | Caitlin Scarano 41
Charles Gabel’s New Skill and Other Updates from your Network | Adrian Sobol 43 OKCUPID | Danielle Wheeler 44
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
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No More Boys Christopher DiCicco
With the black birds, I came into the valley. Across the trees, I wiped my hand. On my fingers, from the bark, a dead rot, nothing indigenous. Ruin and only migrating birds belonged, so I made my way toward the center where I felt needed, with the disease still on my index and middle fingers. Four minutes. I found myself wiping my hand off in the backseat of a local's unlocked sedan where I slept until I opened my eyes because a diminished sun in the gray clouds let me and I watched the trees through the window. The leaves white underbellies, the same sick color as their faces. No good-natured sun-kiss because the green died before I came and the forest had given up. Leprous leaves falling. Branches breaking. When I shut my eyes again it was only to imagine the illness spreading through the vines to the trunks, down to the roots. Those roots would spread and cover distances I’d later walk, but for now I knew a need when I felt it. My father a druid. My mother a commune hippie, later a prostitute. They wrapped my baby feet in leaves when I was born and let me nurse from the women there, who, when I finished draining them of their milk, left me in the tall grass to stare at the giant sycamores so I could learn what I needed to say when talking to the leaves and the dirt and the sun, and the...it doesn’t matter because the man who owned the car I slept in closed his driver's side door with a bang, so I said, “Freeze?” and the sick man put his hands in the air, as if to say he were bad and that I needed to help him if I wanted to heal the dead trees and their kind and the ground and the sky, and oh forget it, but it was important. This man in the car, the trees
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dying, a terrible town in a small valley rotting away, and the leaves rained down covering his windshield telling me it connected because it wasn't Fall and when someone says, “Freeze,” no innocent soul sticks his good-natured hands above his head as if the police had him surrounded. “It was only a matter of time,” I said from the backseat. “It's not my fault,” he said without turning around. “It is, at least some of it,” I said watching a woman come to the screen door of his house to wave goodbye. “My girlfriend,” he said, “she's having a baby now.” The woman at the door was not pregnant and I began to say so, but the man at the wheel turned on the car and said, “That's my wife and I don't care.” “So, take me to your girlfriend. She needs us,” I said and he pulled the car out of the driveway. By this time, he knew I wasn't the police, but didn't bother to yell because I offered healing. I told him it wasn't normal to be sick or white like a torn trout out of stream, but I don't think he understood. I mentioned the pale withering grass to him and he kept driving, pushing seventy-five miles an hour until we came to a road lined with dead trees. “She lives at the end of this.” “She'll sleep with anyone won't she?” I asked and he drove a little faster but nodded his head. “How many babies did she tell you?” The young man grabbed for a water bottle on the passenger seat and passed it back to me and I drank the vodka. “Six. All boys,” he said. “And all of them stillborn?” I asked? He didn't answer. When the man behind the wheel reached back and took the bad water bottle from me, I knew why the trees died and the surrounding valley seemed sick. Trees love
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children and their leaves are their tears and a forest can have a favorite and when that child mourns so do they—especially if it's for children. The house at the end of the road came up quick. Dead forest. No leaves. Spring. When he stopped the car, I got out. My feet landed on the ground I didn't want to touch and as soon as they did I collapsed because of the pain in the soil. The man stood me up, wiping the earth and dead bark from my chest and stared, taking me in for what I was and wasn't. “Let's go in,” I said before he could judge, “the baby needs us.” All I could think of was the pregnant woman inside who had been born here, surrounded by the trees, how somehow she meant a lot to the them, enough so her pain killed them. Whatever wasted away their bark and drained their leaves involved her and her babies, maybe this baby, so I washed my hands with what was left of the vodka, hoping I could fix it and that this time the woman inside would have a girl. “Her name's Trixy,” he said. “Great, I'm Far Away Dog and you are Scott McEwan, neither of which matters,” I said and he stared at me. I didn't tell him how I knew his name was Scott because I didn't care or know if he understood what the trees said to me, but it didn’t matter anyway because I gained my balance or at least a toleration for the pain and made my way to the door of the house which appeared boarded up for a storm that never seemed to come. Until it came. The moment we closed the door two things happened. One I knew would, the girl stationed on a makeshift delivery table of her own making, in a small bedroom, she propped herself up revealing a natural absolute, beautiful in pain, dark hair, darker nipples, unmarked skin, little goodnight star eyes. The second thing. The storm, a driving force showering her patchwork home with epic and rain. That was my doing. I asked the trees that weren't dead to die already, to
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exchange some roots for spring awakening. And down it came in rivets pumping life into everything it didn't drown. The window I opened let it in, and although the man Scott cursed and tried to close it, his girlfriend screamed because the rain felt good against her hot skin and it kept her from passing out like she had at the two hospitals, like she had in the junkie's van, like she had in some guy named Steve's apartment, like she had in the back of her grandmother's house, so she didn't have to come to, have her eyes flutter open only to recognize the blurry face of yet another someone telling her baby boy had died somewhere between her last conscious gulp of air and her failure to push despite modern medicine and so much goddamn love and effort. It took rain and a stranger staring at her spread legs, telling her exactly what I said, “When your daughter plays outside, she'll look like you did in the forest here, pretending she can hear the trees, understanding they have feelings, that the ground beneath her feet is sacred not because it's under her but because it's alive.� The woman shook her dripping head and cried, but the tears and the rain made it hard to tell how much of what, and I knew it was okay to leave when the little girl came out slick and wet and stayed that way because the rain pelted her babyness and the man Scott cried over her as he wrapped her in a towel. He left the window open, choosing to trust nature and took his daughter to the far side of the room for warmth, and the blackbirds landed on the dripping trees outside and I didn't see them flap their wings, so I knew it was time to make my way down the toward the dead trees edging the valley—to leave and let them grow without me. And I did. And it rained. And I left the valley for another.
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The Hunt by Joe Halstead
Roy was looking down at his double-wide from the limbs of an oak tree, seeking to trim the dead branches that threatened the idyll of the house. It was something he’d been meaning to do, and now that he’d been laid off he had the time. His hair was stuck with burrs from the tree, and he realized, as he squirmed through the limbs, that he could see in his son’s bedroom window. He could make out some of his stuff — an old typewriter, a Casablanca poster — through the blinds. He could see next to his son’s bed where he’d put together a particleboard bookshelf. He’d expected Jamie to put out his schoolbooks. But Jamie hadn’t even unpacked his boxes; his wife, Janice, had just told him to let it go. If he bent down, he could make out the framed NYU acceptance letter on the wall. What he’d thought of as Jamie’s indifference to going to college actually confirmed what he’d suspected all along; Jamie was devastated. Roy, who never went to college but had worked since he was twelve, told him he would be fine taking a semester off. Jamie said, Fine. He did so in the honorable way of a man who’d come to the end of his strength. College, especially NYU, was still expensive for an Appalachian no matter how big a scholarship looked on paper. Roy could overlook a little entitlement; it was Jamie’s attitude that bothered him. Jamie gave the impression that he’d done him irreparable harm. Now, looking again, he saw Jamie enter the room. He looked down, suddenly ashamed. He shimmied down the oak, his feet overcompensating for purchase, then he heard his dogs’ sudden barking and was startled out of his concentration — they were across the yard behind
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a fence, snapping at his brother, who was emerging from a plat of trees in the corner of the property. # In a week, a truck-driving job came open at the candle factory. To not go to the factory, the only place in town that was hiring, would’ve never occurred to Roy, so he went the next morning. Other unemployed coal miners from the area waited in a line. Roy waited with them. Their worlds moved in a stream and that stream would always pull them to the same places. None of them spoke. Roy looked up to see the line of them in a reflection. Hard living was starting to touch their faces. A group walked out and Roy’s line moved forward: the men had become one group, one mind. When they got inside, a woman with a clipboard asked Roy and the rest if they had a Commercial Drivers License. Roy didn’t, so she pointed to a table beside a stack of boxes and told those without CDLs that they could fill out applications there. All the guys ignored this except Roy. The rest of the guys without CDLs looked at the table then they looked at the guys with CDLs, most of who were scribbling on applications against the walls. Some of the guys without CDLs left right then. They started talking about how bad the job market was. The country didn’t make anything anymore. Roy hunched over the table and filled out the application and turned it in, waiting to see what the hiring manager would say, but he didn’t say anything. He might’ve been unwilling to give in and leave. Or he could’ve been afraid to move. He stood against the wall and thought of the other guys: with jobs and without, with CDLs and without. “Find your calling?” Roy looked up. He saw his brother, Dave, hunkered down nearby. Dave was a stout man, five-foot-nine with a potbelly. He was a big talker and Roy never cared much for him. “You figure out what you’re gonna do instead?” “Hell, we ain’t gonna find nothin better,” Dave said. 9
When the coal mine went belly-up, Roy was among the first who didn’t know what to do. He’d gone into the mines as soon as he was old enough. He walked into the Strickland Energy human resources office, as well dressed as possible, to apply for a job. He presented himself to the manager and said he wanted to work there more than anything and minutes later the manager handed him over to a foreman who, though providing him a pair of coal-dusted pants, set about destroying his best clothes. Over the next twenty years, he got married and built his family. By then it was “The Nineties” and he lived a decadent lifestyle. He bought a 1997 Ford Expedition with a 4.6 modular V8, a double-wide trailer with plenty of rooms, and a 40” Mitsubishi TV. Friday nights were spent going out with the family. He’d mined coal for so long that he no longer philosophized about it. He didn’t invite guilt into the conversation. He was good at what he did, and he was paid very well. Dave’s head moved as if he were admitting something. “You wanna make some extra money?” “What you got in mind?” “Osie’s money.” Roy looked at him. Osie was their older sister. She had permanent brain damage from a heat stroke at twelve. After that, she had seizures. She couldn’t talk straight or do anything. Roy figured it had something to do with their mother canning tomatoes on the hot day that Osie had had a fever. No one in the family gave a fuck about her. They only gave a fuck about the money she’d saved from her disability checks, and Roy knew that firsthand, having been one of those who wanted the money. “This place has been crackin for years,” Dave said, “and you, with no way to stop it, no way to spackle it back up, wish you was that boy who stopped the dam with his finger. But here, there’s too many holes, not enough fingers. She’s got money down there in the woods. We can carve it up, fifty-fifty.” “I’d of not thought she had that much.”
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Dave just grinned at him, the kind of grin that told Roy he didn’t know very much. “Before you say yes or no, think about how ten thousand dollars, maybe more, would pad your wallet. Think about what that money could do for Jamie’s college.” Roy felt there was a look of recognition that he knew there were things that weighed heavy on him, that the potential existed of sides of him that he might never come to know. He went by the post office on the way home. He had the mortgage in two weeks. He had utilities, car payments, insurance and no savings. Although this mattered less than he suspected, as he’d lose his health insurance in eight months and would no longer be able to afford his wife’s medicine much less tuition and house payments. He maxed out their credit cards to finance the utilities then went to First Community Bank. Roy liked First Community. He had a few investors who believed in his credentials, one of which was Donny Bowling. He’d put up no resistance when Roy moved the family into the double-wide ten years ago. But the news there wasn’t so good. Though he’d already netted a substantial payout for Jamie’s tuition by refinancing twice, he still expected Donny to juggle something. But the way the appraisal affected the monthly, put him upside down on his mortgage. Donny, not then or now, rushed to approve the applications of laid-off miners. Roy drove home and couldn’t help thinking about that money Dave was talking about. He thought about how he worked himself to death in the mines and couldn’t even get enough ahead to afford the house payment. He wondered where the fair was in that when there were men living and dying for them. Of course, he couldn’t pay the mortgage if there was no house to pay for, so that evening he found himself back up in the oak tree, this time with a hand saw and a ladder, inching out to see how far the strength of the branches extended. He’d purchased metal spikes from Lowe’s to screw into the sides of the ladder to keep it from slipping in the grass. He tipped the ladder against the tree and fixed the harness to it by wrapping the strap around the trunk, tightening it so that it was snug. 11
He told himself he was going to prune back the branches near the power lines. But now he tipped back the leader branches and peeked into his son’s room. He was sitting at his desk, chatting on Facebook. He was what Roy would call “backward” — all the usual clichés for describing Appalachian people might’ve fit him but none would’ve been fully adequate. Roy found him mysterious. And he hated to admit it, but he’d started to resent him. Not in a way he could explain, really. He knew it was wrong for a father to hold something against his son, so he never mentioned it. Jamie once asked him if he felt guilty about never leaving West Virginia. He asked it as if he already knew the answer; he was at the age where he was eager to go off to see the world and to prove to it he wasn’t the hillbilly he’d long been accused of being. Once, he’d told Roy the only reason people lived in West Virginia was to drive a big truck and carry a gun. A few were lucky enough to move on, seeking education then a career. The rest joined a branch of the military then came right back, which he always thought was a convenient excuse. Roy knew there was truth to that, and they did have one common bond: they both thought there was something precarious about home. But Roy knew there would be no use searching, no use having a home to guide him, if there wasn’t something worth holding onto in the end. He took another look in the window and Jamie was gone. He went back to pruning. By the time he finished, the sun was beginning to set and the sky was filled with stars. He used to know all the constellations, but now he knew only one: Orion the Hunter. Roy looked up at him for a while. He was always there, wherever Roy went. He never changed, never moved at all. By the next morning, he was for certain he would hunt for the money. When he said as much to Dave, Dave smiled as if something were wrong with him and this wrongness were invisible to the world. # Come eleven o’clock the next night, Roy and Dave were walking to their mother’s house at the top of the hill, where Osie still lived. They didn’t walk down the driveway because they
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figured she’d hear them. Instead they followed the pine trees nailed with homemade No Trespassing boards and up the hill past Osie’s rabbit coops. If his life depended on it, Roy couldn’t tell you how he ended up back at the homeplace to extort his disabled sister. But it was his fault, the lost job. He needed to do something to get enough ahead. To give Jamie the education he wanted. One act to make his future a secure and normal place again. They went up on the back porch, which was loaded up with whatnots: baby dolls hanging from fishing wire, banjos, a rain barrel. Roy’s heart was beating fast. “What if she goes to the cops?” he asked. That was a new thought for him because somehow he figured once they had the money they’d be home free. “Hell, she ain’t gonna do nothin,” Dave said. “You ain’t worried about it?” Even in the dark, he could see a bulge on Dave’s hip, under his windbreaker. His kept his hand very close to it. “Man, fuck you,” he said. “This is the last favor I do for you.” Roy didn’t remember following Dave into the house. He could hear Osie in the next room, the chink of utensils on a plate. It was dark and he couldn’t find a light. He stepped in, his boot hitting something, which threw him like an off-balance clown, flourishing so that he crashed the dining table. The bedroom door slammed shut and he knew Osie was running. Dave chased her, caught the tail of her shirt and tackled her to the ground. Roy heard her terrified screaming. She scratched at Dave’s face, bit his arm. She screamed and shimmied away. Dave pulled a revolver out of his waistband and narrowed his eyes and looked at Osie without blinking. He aimed it at her and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed and Osie’s leg buckled. She bounced off the back door and fell forward. Dave lowered the gun and looked at Roy, unbelieving. “What the fuck did you just do?” Roy said. He had a metal taste of blood in his mouth and a loud buzz in his ears. He got up cursing and raised the shade. Fishing wire hung from a naked bulb, which he pulled to illuminate the room. The sink was full of rotten produce. The
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counter and stove were a foot deep in torn cereal and Chef Boyardee boxes. He looked down to see he had slipped in a melted stick of butter. Osie’s eyes half-opened and she tried to lift herself up on her elbows. The carpet was spattered with blood. “Hey, hey,” Roy said, “you with me?” He grabbed her under the arms and lifted her back on the couch. Her head lolled forward like a broken baby doll’s, then turned up till she looked at him. Not having spoken to her for so long had him at a loss. She was skinny, almost skeletal. Her hair barely covered her scalp. Roy smelled garlic and calamine lotion and something else. The something else wasn’t a good smell. She coughed then held her hands over her mouth and a dark wetness dripped from her fingers. “Jesus,” Roy said. “What the fuck did you do?” “I was just tryin to freak you out,” Dave said. “I didn’t think it was loaded. I thought it might make you think twice.” “I have thought twice! I’ve thought more than twice. You fucking shot her!” Osie’s eyes began to fade. “Shit,” Roy said. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed the phone and dialed 911, smudging blood on the wall. Dave pointed the gun at him, a tactic as transparent as it was superfluous. Roy’s face tightened. He replaced the receiver. Dave stared at him, cast in the image of a monster that kills travelers who pass through its land. “Wouldn’t be one to shoot you, but you better listen,” he said, which told Roy that’s exactly what he was considering. “Fact is, we’re kind of committed. The faster we get the money the better. Better for us, better for her.” Roy didn’t say anything, didn’t want to tell him he might be right. That was the part that scared him the most. “You’re a puppy dog, you know that. Real sweet, but dumb as shit.” “Quit your bitchin,” Dave said. “Get her up.” Roy looked over at Osie and made eye contact before she passed out. He shook her. After a moment she came to. Her body was quivering like a freshly broken bone. 14
“It’s gonna be okay,” he told her. He imagined what this would be like later. Sitting there alone with Dave in a jail cell, a pathetic scene he wanted no part of. Dave knelt before her with the gun resting atop his other knee. “You’ll moren likely find your way outta this. Just do what we say and show us where the money is. Lil detour’s all.” # They started into the woods toward a place called Aunt Jessie Dunk’s. Roy led the way with Osie’s weight braced across his shoulders. Dave was twenty yards behind, the barrel of the gun trained on them. They went down the logging road until they reached the valley where the creek ran, surrounded by a laurel thicket. Their route was there, and Roy followed it. He closed his eyes and pictured Jamie, younger, holding tightly to his hand as they walked. He looked up at the stars. The Milky Way arched high overhead, Orion at its center lifting his shield. “Always thought Orion was a lot smarter than us.” Osie looked at him. “What?” “Well,” he said, “just look at him. He sticks to it, year after year. Never changes. Always knows exactly where he is. Where he’s going.” He paused. “I’m sorry this happened. It wasn’t right. I was just scared.” Osie just stared at him, and her eyes were black and filled with hate or something else that made them burn. After a moment he turned back toward the path and walked on. They came out of the woods into a pasture. The horizon met the ground in a damp corduroy. Cow paths and foundations divided the parcels of land into squares. Some house or half-standing arrangement of concrete and tin was visible beneath the trees in the southeast corner, two stories with a basement, and within the foundation, the front door was burned from a fire. The place was half-demolished with windows long ago smashed, some part of the roof collapsed. The yard was covered with tufts of grass, strewn with trash, rusty beer cans and used condoms. “In there?” Roy asked. “Yeah,” Osie said. 15
Dave looked past Roy into the house and looked around inside, then bent close to him and whispered. “If she tries anything..." Roy stared at him. Dave ushered them up the front steps, the gun poised in his hand. Roy pried a board from the doorway and ducked inside with Osie. The house was so quiet the darkness hummed. It was full of old furniture, empty cupboards, dirty dishes in the sink. In the middle of the ceiling was a circle of torn plaster and wires where a ceiling fan once was. Walking aimlessly in the dark, Roy got lost a while. He stopped and looked at the family photos on a fireplace mantle, imagining something amazing, a picnic, or a vacation, or him, laughing together with his own family. In the corner of the room was a hole in the floor. A thick rope was tied to one of the rafters above, and it hung down a few feet above the ground in the basement. “This it?” Dave asked. “I can’t see. It’s too dark." His voice cracked and Roy thought he sounded like a little kid. Osie was quiet. Dave yelled, “Is this it,” as he fired a shot into the air. The crack of the gun startled Roy and Osie started keening, a loud wail that mixed with the buzzing in his ears. He raised his head, looked at Dave, and said, “What the fuck’re you doing? You’re nuts. Do you know this is fucking nuts?” He looked back at Osie. “We’re gonna get outta this. Do what he says, all right? Understand? Do you get it, Osie?” “Yeah.” “Climb down there, Roy,” Dave said. “It’d be easier if I stayed up here with this retard.” Roy looked at the hole in the floor and tried to imagine himself as someone else, somewhere else. He tried to imagine being somewhere other than that dirty house in that dirty state. The rope was rough, so he wrapped his hands inside his sleeves and wrenched it around then shimmied down into the basement. He slipped halfway and his feet hit an uneven bottom, 16
driving his knees upward so that he bit his tongue and cursed. He opened his eyes to the dark room. He could see nothing at all. He stood there until his eyes adjusted. There were abandoned bottles and empty crates, old tackle. A twin bed and a woman’s dresser. The dresser was littered with empty vials, syringes, and other drug paraphernalia. He smelled the stench of bodily fluids and saw the discarded condoms at the bedside. He ripped the side of the bed’s mattress longways, with chunks of foam spilling out, and knelt next to it with the money in front of him, the way he’d dreamed of seeing it: coiled in tight, green rolls, collected for years in Mason jars. “Lord Almighty,” he said, and, up above, Dave stepped to the side so he could get a good look too. “How much you reckon’s there?” “Hundred thousand at least,” Roy said. He was gathering as many jars as he could when he heard a rush of wind and felt a darkness pressing in on him like an unwelcome weight. To the side, almost lost, was a second room. Roy squinted when he entered and saw the shackle dug into the wall, cuffs still attached. Two sets of large, two small. And screws, three maybe four inches in diameter. “Jesus,” Roy said. Next to that were blind-eyed pups suckling their mother’s teats. Roy stroked the mother’s head. He thought about watching TV with his family, the dry routine of their evenings, a time for putting back together all the parts of you that’d been broken during the day. He wanted to get that comfort back. He wanted to fast forward past the bad and get the good back. A gunshot punctured the silence, followed by a sound of meat and wetness hitting the upstairs floor. “Dave?” Something about the way his blood ran icy told him things had taken a turn. He quickly tied the jars of money in his t-shirt and slung them over his shoulder. Panic mounted at the back
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of his throat. He told himself he wasn’t afraid. What could anyone take from him? What could anyone take that he hadn’t already given up? He climbed the rope through the hole. Upstairs, Osie was crumpled on the floor, dead. Skull fragments fizzled into dust in the air before her. Dave stood there. He wiped his mouth then looked to Roy in the dim light. “What happened?” Roy said. “What’d you do?” “Shut up,” Dave said. “Shut up!” He was looking at Roy with delirious eyes, like he was looking right through him. “What do we do now? What are we gonna do?” Roy nearly said something but bit his tongue. He tried not to retch. Not with the blood, the dirt and the bullet. The memory of all the things he did. He looked to the body. He said nothing and tossed a Mason jar at Dave, who barely caught it in the near dark. He stepped past him and walked out. Outside, he breathed the fresh air. He wandered around in the woods before heading home. He wondered, when nothing felt like home, where he was supposed to go. He wondered what he was supposed to do. When he got home, Roy went to Jamie’s room. He opened the door to find Jamie awake in bed, his laptop on his legs. Roy wanted to walk away, but he kept standing there, like if he stayed there long enough, time would stand still, and that did it, because he started to cry quietly. Jamie hugged him. Their embrace was awkward, as if their arms weren’t meant to express such feelings. Roy thought it wasn’t fair for Jamie to comfort him. Fathers comfort, children receive. He pulled from his son’s arms, initially backing away, and then, without words, sank into his embrace.
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Everywhere You Go, There’s a Clown Thomas Kearnes
You first see him through your patio window. Had you not been staring into the street, watching the minivans and compact cars zip past, gazing for minute after minute, you would have missed him. He isn't directly outside your window. No, he is across the street in the parking lot of that enormous, glittering church with its arrogant steeple. You've wondered what Jesus would do in such a church. Would he become as lost as the souls he sought? But you don't think about that now. All you can think about is the clown. He stands between two of the church's sparkly new vans. He waves. He wanted you to find him. You don't remember where you first encountered a clown. You were never taken to the circus. Your childhood birthday parties were in backyards with tire swings and stagnant ponds and gap-toothed uncles. But certainly you've seen one before. This one has the paste-white face and round red nose. A wide mouth, also painted red, and an enormous bowtie. His pants, which are twice the circumference of his actual waist and roomy enough to smuggle dogs or midgets, are held up by suspenders. He has floppy shoes that extend far past his toes. He holds a balloon, and even from this far away, you see his expression of regret. After a moment, he extends his hand, as if he expected you to trot across the street and take the balloon yourself. You stay inside, of course. The clown lets it sail into the air. He watches it ascend, and so do you. It floats higher and higher, and finally, it's gone. You grip your coffee mug in both your hands, let your
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head fall to your chest. It's silly feeling this way, but you can't help it. That was your balloon. It was yours, and he let it go. You see him again at IHOP. Since you've been single, you've had eggs there more and more often, now three times a week. Smoking has been banned, and this disappoints you, but you feel insulated among people who look so despondent or preoccupied. Amelia tells you you're slumming it, you'll never meet a man in a place like that. But you have opinions about Amelia she wouldn't like to hear. You spy the clown in a corner booth several tables away. He reads the newspaper. He seems captivated, he won't look up at you. You stare at him, needing him to see you. Finally, he folds the paper and sets it aside. You heart races. You want to apologize for not taking his balloon. He lights a cigarette. No one, neither the customers nor the waitress, stops to complain. He blows wide, arcing rings above his head. They expand as they near the ceiling, break apart once they reach it. This fills you with a longing that makes you look away. What does he want from you? Why must he disturb your eggs, one of the few pleasures you allow yourself? You lift your head to look at him again, but he is gone. You quickly slip into your coat and leave the restaurant. You realize after you're in the parking lot that you never paid, but you can't go back. After sitting behind the steering wheel a moment, overwhelmed by the urge to call someone, you turn the key in the ignition and drive away. Amelia notices you've been preoccupied lately. That's not the word she uses. She says you're bummed out. She takes you dancing at one of those horrible clubs with two-dollar bottlenecks and men who keep smiling even after you've stopped. The two of you stand at the bar, surrounded by slick-haired people in tight clothes whose elbows move too quickly. They honk at each other, their heads strangely close together. You tell Amelia you want to leave, but she insists you both will have a splendid time. That's not the word she uses. She says kick-ass,
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you'll have a kick-ass time. She takes you by the hand, a habit the two of you developed early in your friendship, and leads you to a part of club she thinks has a better selection of men. You both stop just shy of the dance floor, a hard-paneled enormous wooden square in the center of all the drinking and posturing. Strobe lights bounce crayon-bright orbs of color off its surface. You turn to say something to Amelia, but she is already chatting with a man in a polo shirt and white jeans. Disappointed, you watch the dancers. They shimmy and hiccup to the dull thud of a song you don't know. You want to go home. The clown appears at first in glimpses. He bobs out from behind one club goer, then vanishes and pops up behind another. Is he dancing? This shocks you. It delights you. Forgetting Amelia, you watch him shimmy his shoulders and hop on the balls of his feet. The poor clown, he's an awful dancer. You laugh, put your hand to your mouth, suddenly self-conscious that someone might be watching you, watching you watch him. Certain Amelia is still captivated by her new friend, you inch toward the dance floor. The clown chugs up and down. Sweat starts to run down his face, smearing his makeup. You're going to meet him. You're going to speak with this sweet, silly clown. Amelia yanks you back by the shoulder. She gobbles about that awful man and how much she hates this place and why did they come here? You listen to her because that is what Amelia expects. When you steal a moment to glance back at the dancers, the clown is gone. You don't panic, maybe he's still there. Amelia grabs you by the wrist and drags you from the dance floor. She's your friend, and you must follow her. Leaving, you look back, and the clown has not returned. The sadness descends on you completely, but you feel safe inside it. The clown begins appearing more places, more often. You see him at the supermarket in the reflection of the glass doors that display the frozen food. Singing along with the oldies station
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in morning traffic, you notice him in a car adjacent to yours. You see his pointy hat. You watch his white-gloved hand beat a rhythm on the steering wheel. Are you listening to the same song? You hope this is true. You see him while standing in line at the drug store as he flips through magazines, but you've waited too long to give up your spot. Alone at the movies, you check the rows behind you, expecting him to arrive. The theatre darkens and the previews begin. The first trailer is for a children's film, and there's a clown! You laugh loud and freely. That clown, he's playing a clever joke on you! Just wait till you see him, you'll show him what you think of naughty tricks! Amelia says you've become a recluse, always keeping to yourself. That's not the word she uses. But you really aren't listening to her. You hold the phone to your ear and answer her questions as simply as you can. It takes all your concentration to keep watching the patio window. You think you've seen the clown in the church parking lot two or three times, but when you stepped closer to investigate, he was never there. You can't let him elude you this time. Amelia says something hostile and tells you to call her when you've snapped out of it. You hang up, not saying goodbye. You gaze out the window. The cars fly past like lazy stars streaking the sky. Dusk glows outside your apartment. Then night arrives and you slip into darkness. You wait. Morning colors stretch past the horizon, and you finally leave for work. Tonight, you tell yourself. He will come tonight. But the clown does not come back. You wait another day, then another. You wait a week. The clown does not come back. You sink into a dull silence. Seated on your recliner in front of the coffee table, you slurp lukewarm stew straight from the cooking pot and watch reality television. Where is your clown? And that's how you think of him now: your clown.
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You never do return to IHOP. Now you drink in a dim, cramped bar with too much neon and not enough air conditioning. Jack and Coke, one after another. You drain your glass and wait silently for the bartender to spot you before signaling for another. You're trying your hardest to be quiet. You never want to say another word. Soon, you're drunk enough so that the world has narrowed into a slim, dark crawlspace and all you must do is keep looking straight ahead. You don't see him sit right beside you. The clown says your name. It takes you a moment to realize this. You're unnerved someone in this dingy place knows you, but you turn your head to greet him anyway. And there he is: the mouth, the nose, the pointy hat.. But it's his eyes that enlist you. You're never been close enough to look this deeply into them. They're pale blue, like a baby blanket, and they're filled with a yearning, a tenderness that you've longed for since you first feared you'd never find it. Dumbly, you say hello. The clown says he's sorry he had to go away, but now he's back. He's come back for you. You ask him where he wants to go. You say it doesn't matter, you'll go anywhere. Just don't leave me, you say. Don't leave me alone again. I won't, the clown promises. But first you must tell me something. Anything, you say. Who am I? You open your mouth to respond. It then strikes you like a backhand that you don't know his name. Your breath deepens, you're terrified. What if you disappoint him? The other drinkers at the bar carry on like nothing strange is happening. You look around yourself, perhaps seeking help. But no: it's just you and the clown. I'll help you, he says. He removes his pointy hat with a crisp gesture. You see his curly hair but still cannot think of his name. He removes a handkerchief from his pants and wipes away the white makeup. Through the streaks, you can see the flesh of his face. You still don't know. Done wiping, he pops off his big red nose and looks at
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you, waiting. His face looks kind, almost plain. You stare at it like you would through a kaleidoscope. He waits for you but then finally asks again: who am I? You've never seen this man before. You wish you could invent something, some answer that would please him. But you cannot lie to the clown, not your clown. I don't know, you say. The clown sadly shakes his head. He raises his hand as if to smack it down on the bar, but he lets it gently come to rest. He gazes into your eyes, and you shiver to see the regret on his face. I have to leave, he says. Your mouth moves but no words come out. You're actually quivering. No! He can't leave! He's your clown! He takes the big red nose and gently places it on your own nose. He takes your hand, squeezes it once, then bows his head and turns to leave. He passes through the tables. He pushes open the door. You watch helplessly until it has closed. The nose still on your face, you droop back over the bar. Your shoulders sink. A great sob erupts from you. The tears spring from your eyes but it doesn't matter. You let them fall as you struggle to get down your drink. You stay like that for some time, crying. But at last, you begin to calm down. At least you can still drink. You've forgotten about the red nose on your face. You signal the bartender for another, and he sets it before you, never commenting on your new disguise. You don't know how long he's been staring at you before you notice him. No, not the clown. Your clown is gone forever. But across the bar is a man. He's about your age. He looks handsome but not in a way you'd remember any time later. Still, he compels you. You recoil from the shamelessness of his desire, even from across the bar. You're perplexed. No, you're angry. Who is he? Who are you? You're just some brokenhearted fool with a stupid clown nose on your face. Why would he ever look at you? Why would anyone look at you? But he won't stop. Then, you remember you've seen that look. While watching for the clown through your
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patio window, you often caught a reflection of your face. That's what you see now, the same need and devotion. He sees you. Someone has seen you for the very first time
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One more fish Marilyn Morgan
One morning in late April, Marcie Simorski drove along the highway on her way to meet Jimmy Bartoletti at Tony Sparagna’s Café for a late afternoon lunch. Before she’d left, she’d plugged in her music, and rolled the top down on her convertible, allowing the warm spring sun to spill in. This date with Jimmy—if that’s what you’d call it—had been arranged over the Internet. One more fish in the sea, she thought and smirked as her head bobbed up and down to the beat of “Light My Fire”. Com on baby light my fire, she sang as the Volvo sped along the country road. Marcie’d been fishing around on Internet dating sites for a few months. At first, she’d been reluctant—what in the world was a 70 year old widow doing on a dating site? But her friends had egged her on with the help of several glasses of wine and much laughter and so she’d launched her profile. Complete with a photo, standing on Myrtle Beach in short shorts and tank top with waves lapping her feet. It hadn’t taken long till she discovered that this was fun, even daring and clearly spiced up her otherwise mundane existence. She felt young again, maybe even forty-five and still believed—or maybe secretly hoped was a better word-- love was possible. After a few email hits, couple cell conversations—she’d been warned-never give out your real tel. number--and after an occasional lunch or dinner date—always in a safe public place-she’d come to imagine a good sized lake or even ocean filled with men of various sizes, shapes and ages, all boasting identical attributes. Honest, loyal, healthy
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and fit, great sense of humor, skilled at everything from billiards to cycling, and above all, they knew how to treat a lady and were looking for companionship and love. “Bullshit,” her friend Carmen’d said. “What they all really want is to get laid.” Well, maybe but so far, one lunch or dinner was all it’d taken for Marcie to wonder if this big fish pond was filled with delusional men or maybe just plain liars. For there was Jake who’d posted age 62 and when he hobbled in with his cane to meet her for coffee, she was certain there’d been some mistake for he looked old enough to be her father. And then there was Sam who posted his physically fit status, and he literally waddled through the door. There was no way in hell that that man could run up and down a basketball court. Supposedly, he played basketball several times a week as well as multiple other sports. And then there was Bruce who provided the four-step program for Internet dating. First, you email a couple times. Second, you have a phone conversation. Third, you meet for coffee, lunch or dinner. And Fourth, you hop into bed. “It’s called ratcheting up,” he’d said. Almost as if you were betting on horses. Yet here she was on step three once again. Jimmy’d sounded a few notes off the beaten path. He’d posted a photo of himself hiking in Yellowstone. He stood there drenched in sunshine, carrying a large backpack supported by an obviously strong muscular frame. He was smiling broadly and a full head of dark curly hair gave him the appearance of a man much younger than the 62 years he’d posted. His profile said he was retired from a highly successful business so she’d concluded he was smart and most likely had money. To top it off, he was a widower, but what she didn’t learn until much later was that he was a widower not once but three times. Over the past month, she and Jimmy’d carried on long conversations over the phone, sometimes way into the wee hours of the night. Talk about children, grandchildren, books they’d
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read and even argued politics—although Jimmy was a Republican, he was a good-natured one and didn’t hold the fact that she was a Democrat against her.
As she drove along, she dreamed
again those old school girl dreams. Just maybe this time would be different. She’d never heard of Tony Sparango’s but Jimmy’d said just beyond Southside Mall, she should turn left onto Ellenwood and Sparango’s would be on the right. She pulled into the parking lot, switched off the motor and was greeted with canned music flowing across the parking lot from the front porch of the restaurant—“Toreador” a song from Carmen. She pulled the rear view mirror toward her, checked her hair and make up. All set, she thought and glanced down at the new red sundress she’d purchased just last week. She chuckled when she remembered the clerk who’d babbled on about how the color and fit were perfect and made her look as if she belonged on the cover of Vogue. In your dreams, lady, she thought as she made her way across the parking lot to the restaurant. Jimmy’d said he would secure a table in a quiet corner and to look for the guy wearing a forest green shirt and khaki pants. She pushed open the door and was greeted by a young, attractive hostess wearing a very short, revealing black lace sundress. Her long dark hair streamed down her back and large silver hoops dangled from her ears and bobbed about as she showed various patrons to their tables. “Welcome to Tony’s,” she said. “You must be Marcie. Jimmy’s waiting for you.” Marcie glanced quickly around and before she could gather herself, the hostess picked up a menu and walked toward the back of the restaurant where Jimmy sat sipping wine and texting away on his iPhone. “Here she is,” said the hostess as if she were delivering an anticipated package. The hostess flashed a warm smile at Jimmy who quickly shut off the iPhone, jumped up and pulled out a chair for Marcie.
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“Thanks, Mindy, catch you later,” said Jimmy. Marcie couldn’t quite put it all together but she plunked down in the chair and muttered, “Well, at last we meet.” This dude looked nothing like the one in the photo posted on the Internet, she thought. He’d had hair in that photo and …what was it, she wondered, as she stole peeks at him. No, he wasn’t exactly fat but where was that toned body? She couldn’t picture this old, bald guy sitting across from her with a fifty-pound backpack hiking up some mountain. “I went ahead and ordered us a bottle of Chianti,” he said as he grabbed the open bottle and filled her glass. “Hope that’s ok with you.” “That’s fine, thank you.” Just then the waiter came over. “Youse guys all set with drinks?” he asked. “Yep, Vinnie, all set right now.” “Take your time, just throw me a signal when youse ready to order.” “Do you come here often?” asked Marcie looking around. She grabbed her glass and took several large swallows. “Best food in town,” and Jimmy smiled broadly. Marcie looked down at the menu that blurred under her eyes. She felt Jimmy’s eyes staring at her, scoping her out. What was it her buddy Mike from the office had once jokingly confided to her—men can’t help it but when they talk with a woman, it’s just natural to mentally undress her. Marcie remembered how she’d stood there near the water fountain and turned scarlet. She glanced up at Jimmy who indeed was looking her over. She pulled a strand of hair behind her ear, reached for her wine glass, gulped down what remained and placed the empty glass back on the table.
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“Guess you were thirsty,” Jimmy said and took the bottle and refilled her glass. “Vinnie,” I think we need another bottle of Chianti.” Jimmy poured the last of the wine in his glass and handed the empty bottle to Vinnie. Soon wine mixed with conversation and Marcie began to relax. She looked more closely at Jimmy. He really wasn’t that bad, actually sort of cute in some weird way, especially the way his eyes lit up when he looked at her and smiled. He told her about hiking in Yellowstone, trips to Vegas, trips to the Caribbean, even suggested they might go there together someday. Just then Mindy swished by. “How you doin?” she asked and flashed another smile at Jimmy. Marcie wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw Jimmy wink and roll his eyes as he said, “Just fine, Mindy.” “Guess you know her?” asked Marcie. “Yeah, been friends since my last wife died.” “What happened?” asked Marcie. “Guess she’d had enough of livin. Just up and keeled over one day.” “That’s too bad,” muttered Marcie. “I don’t have much luck. She was the third one that bought a ticket out.” “You mean, you’ve had three wives and they all died?” “Yep. Keep searching for the right one for the duration.” Jimmy reached and gently took hold of Marcie’s hand and looked into her eyes. Marcie looked down at her hand in Jimmy’s, gently pulled it away and reached for her wine glass.
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“I wanna show you something.” Jimmy stood up and moved to the side of Marcie’s chair. “You need to stand up,” and Jimmy took her hand and pulled her up. “Take your hand and feel around the breast pocket on my shirt.” “What for? Is this one of your jokes?” “Just do it?” Jimmy smiled and stood a little straighter throwing his chest out. This was the Jimmy she’d talked to on the phone, playful and full of surprise. Marcie laughed and waved her hand over the shirt pocket. “Abracadabra” she said and moved her hand as if conjuring up some rabbit to hop out of the pocket. “How’s that?” she said. “Com’on now. This is serious. Feel around the pocket.” “What for?” Marcie patted her hand lightly against the pocket. “Ok,” she said, teasingly, “What’s in the pocket?” Jimmy grabbed her hand and firmly placed it over his shirt pocket. “Here,” he said, “Do you feel that?” Giddy with wine, she laughed and playfully pressed her hand against the pocket. There was something in the pocket, something hard and solid. “What’s that?” she asked. “Just run your hand over the pocket.” Marcie traced the edges of the hardness and then on down to a sort of handle. “Oh my god,” she gasped and quickly pulled her hand away and shot her eyes into Jimmy’s face. “That’s not… a gun?” she whispered. “Is this a joke?” “Just packin heat,” said Jimmy casually as if he were commenting on the weather. “Excuse me?”
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“Never go out but I pack the heat. You’ll always be safe with me, baby.” Marcie glanced around. The tables were filled with businessmen in suits and ties, couples and well-dressed women out for a late lunch. Plastic vines crept up the walls and curled around brass light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. White linen tablecloths and napkins were on the tables and light dinner music was wafting over the room. This was not Joe’s barroom down by the railroad tracks and yet here she was sitting in this fine restaurant with a man toting a gun in his shirt pocket. She looked at Jimmy. “I’m leaving, leaving right now,” she said but as she reached for her purse, Jimmy grabbed her arm and tugged her down into the chair. “What’s the matter with you? Weren’t we having a good time? We haven’t even ordered yet.” “Let go of me.” But the more Marcie tried to yank her arm free, the tighter Jimmy held on. “This is a date, did you forget?” Date, the word rumbled around her head. This wasn’t a schoolgirl dream, this was grown-up reality, and now, even after several glasses of wine, fear began to claw its way in. She looked again at the tables full of chatting patrons, ordinary men and women, sharing lively conversations over a meal. “Sorry, Jimmy, but I am leaving, right now,” and again, she tried to extract her arm from Jimmy’s grasp. As if a switch turned on, Jimmy’s eyes snapped from warm light to icy fire. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You can’t treat Jimmy that way. Listen to me, bitch. If you dare create a scene, I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off, do you get it? “
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Jimmy took a deep breath and continued, “Now, you just behave yourself and we’ll order our lunch.” With his free hand, Jimmy signaled to Vinnie. “What can I get yas?” “We’ll have the Chicken Francaise and another bottle of Chianti.” Jimmy looked at Marcie. “Why do you have to go and spoil everything? Just calm down and we’ll have a nice time.” “Now drink your wine.” He patted her arm that was clenched tightly in his fist. Marcie reached over with her free hand and lifted her wine glass but as she did, the glass tumbled onto the table, smashing to pieces, and dark red Chianti spread across the white table cloth and crawled its way toward Jimmy. “Jesus Christ,” said Jimmy as he released her arm and grabbed the edge of the tablecloth to halt the spreading wine. Marcie, free now, jumped up, grabbed her purse, backed away from the table out of his reach. “If you try to stop me from leaving or follow me out of this place, I’ll scream and scream bloody murder. Create the worst scene you can ever imagine.” Marcie took one step back and turned abruptly to hustle around occupied tables blocking a clear path to the front door, but just as she turned the corner on the adjacent table, Mindy was hurrying toward Jimmy’s table with a clean cloth clutched in her hand. Neither woman saw the other until too late. They collided with a force that threw Mindy into Jimmy who had just stood up to grab hold of Marcie. Mindy and Jimmy, arms flying in all directions, tumbled onto the table and knocked over the two empty chairs that banged onto the floor. The restaurant erupted in chaos. Marcie ran toward the front door.
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“Com’ on,” someone shouted. “They need help.” “Call 911,” someone else shouted. A couple of the diners ran toward the table where Mindy and Jimmy were sprawled out. Others stared and gawked in disbelief. And those seated near the front of the restaurant strained their heads over the gathering crowd trying to get a better look. Marcie pushed open the front door, and as she did cymbals clashed in the “Toreador” song and collided into the cacophony of noise coming through the open door from inside the restaurant. As the door slammed shut behind her, gunshots rang out, loud and clear, cutting straight through the music flowing over the parking lot.
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Making a Point in a L-Triangle KATE SCARPETTA
You only come over when you want—which is never when I invite you. It’s been ok, because I was and still am in love with you. Since I just said that, you won’t want to come over now, but you will want to come again. You always do. Just looking at each other compresses the walls. Breathing in with plastic bags on our heads. Nothing but suffocation. I am the one you torture and are tortured by. If I were a boxer, my nickname might be: “The Tormented Tormentor.” Partially-fulfilled and never treated with impartiality, I am so objectified that I know what shapes feel like. I’ve felt your dirty thoughts touch me. I exist whether you like it or not—and whether she likes it or not. I know too much about you for us to sleep together without it ruining everything. If I didn’t know you, we could just do it and move on. I could move on. I tell myself that’s what went wrong. I say, “We should have.” That’s what I mumble when I’m standing in lines, when I’m waiting for something unimportant. I’ve seen us threaded in the racks of the magazines in the back corner of a bodega. We rip and tear at each other and the glossy pages, while the owner ignores our reflection in the convex security mirror. (It’s the bodega on Havemeyer Street with the nice Indian guy who’s obsessed with cricket. He’d rather watch the game on his small TV set instead of two idiots going at it next to rows of chips and candy.) I’ve seen us in big sporting goods stores, in those tall, dark, skyscraper aisles of running shoes. How many miles have I ran because of you? The Facebook photos of me with medals from half-marathons. They’re for you, babe. Look at my body, tan and toned, and change your mind. In my fantasy, we’re on the ground after knocking over hundreds of boxes of Nikes and New Balances. The contents of the boxes and their lids are everywhere: shoes, sheets of tissue paper, and wedges of tissue paper that are uncomfortable
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enough to stop and remove from underneath us, before resuming and trying to keep quiet. Then, of course, there are all the bathrooms: airplanes, restaurants, bookstores, libraries, and even friend’s apartments (these usually have bathtubs too). Whenever I wash my hands, whenever I look up at the mirror to see the stalls and the surfaces behind me, I think of us wasting it. All these spaces we keep leaving absent. We aren’t the only things left untouched you know. There’s shower curtains to be pulled, potpourri to be spilled, doors to be closed or left open, handles to be grabbed, tables and desks to be mounted, rocking chairs and ordinary chairs to be pushed on and pushed off of, rugs, tile, and hardwood to lay, land, and finish on. Never once do I think of us in a bed with sheets and pillows. Sex with you would be—will be— something with a hard edge. This whole thing with you is regret—or something like it—which makes some sense, but not much. Every moment where it might have happened was when I found you to be unattractive. You’d look as desperate as I felt, and it would ruin my desire, like coughing right before a kiss—which actually happened to us once. Last weekend, you said, “I wore this for you.” Did that mean you wore this for me to take off of you? Was that the type of exchange you were going for, when you left your house and went looking for me at parties wearing this? This being an outfit of nothing but black fabric, exposed skin, and a stain of red lipstick that looked like candied vinyl. You grabbed my hand as I passed. I wanted you to notice me not noticing you—you did, but then you grabbed me. That was beyond unfair. Acquiescent: rarely for others, but always for you. I felt like a page of Braille. I received your fingers without protest, without anything short of submission. You needed to touch me, so of course you were entitled to. I stood there and took it and felt metallic. “Just let me touch you,” you said. Your fingertips were already moving up my forearms, then to my shoulders, and then back down to my waist. Your hands landed, lifted, and landed again and again. Your touch felt like a winged insect. Mercutio said Queen Mab’s wings were “of a
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grasshopper,” but you’re more of a “nightmare” than a “dream.” So, I guess your wings can be “of a hornet.” When I try to touch you, you always move away. Should get a net? You’re never frozen by me. That ice—that inability to resist being manipulated only happens to me. Your fingers squeezed into mine, and just like that: we were outside. Zippered flesh. You didn’t want to be seen. You still saw the world beyond our interactions, unlike me the dumb deer who glazes over in the beam of your headlights, your body, your smile. You wanted to do something to me and the ability to write it off, to hit me, to keep going, and to finally isolate “us” beyond something meaningful. “A physical sexual thing.” That’s what we are, but somehow, still, that’s all we aren’t. That night, I thought, “How strange! Being used for the first time is almost enjoyable, but it’s not.” I couldn’t even let you do it, because you really wanted to just throw me out. Do me, undo me, and be done with me. I knew you wanted me. I know you still want me sometimes, but I don’t care. (I do.) If you want to keep me, then I’ll move again. Then I’ll come and be there, or here, or wherever. But, not until that happens, and it might not happen.
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Refuse to Swim We have here a dog, harbour voiced, lashed off hungry shadows. An uncastable vessel, it arrives under duress of real boats, this dog. Then we have a dog and three things to do, like wind in a desert we pray to, its bones stuck in a dog's drying throat.
*
Morning collapses on the bench, lights up a joint. A stoning to get rid of the war, and the four of us try to take on the elbows of a cross, like Holi, but dirty: morning, the city, seagull, and I.
*
I say this with a signal light's urge to lose its job. I think of you like a tequila bottle to the lips, the hot springs' fumes drinking down stars. I would say other things if I wanted to be kind.
*
I feel like I have to, he said, to hold to the language of one empire in face of another. At night the arriving ships bellow like whalesong in a cactus' sap where you are.
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*
You gather gestures in a basket and they escape. A chair speaks in riddles and a table's denial is flat. But the footstool is honest: even when it's stored away, it yearns to break down. The lockpick work of thieving death from death, while tilapia meat begins to glow in the pan.
Hari Alluri
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Teaching the Map When I showed the boys a map of the world I knew it was a bad way to teach them The lesson—the map does not demonstrate well the bigness Of the world. Only that Georgia is orange and that the sea is a uniform Shade of blue. None of us have ever been to Georgia. Why is Asia Cut in half? one asks. Why do they call me African? says another. Why don’t the islands get drowned By the sea, and where do all the names come from? Reduced, a map is A reduction. We are an unchecked species; we destroy The planet with maps. What is a border? one asks, while another Furtively gazes at his crush, sitting beside him, elbows Touching unconsciously, pencils scattered like lost boats. That, That. The swollen sting of his loving you, the quiet In his mind that paints you distinct and shining, that is the border We create and recreate. New York is yellow. The sea remains blue: The sea is not actually blue, you know, another says. I know, says Another—it is the color of the sky. Why is the sky blue? Because space Is black. Black like me, says another. Black is beautiful, he repeats. Galaxy children. Space children. Come to school to learn what a border is. Come to school to cut yourself out of a thin paper of naming Wrap yourself, perhaps find protection, not at all, or: Confusion is its own form of uplift. Borders sometimes will separate Us from ourselves. One more voice opens an orange with his Fingers and the split rind fills the room. Can I get some? Yes— He divides precisely, thin fingers. For once, there’s enough. We go back To the map. It doesn’t make sense about space, Another says. Why if space is black is the sky blue. Is the sky even real? He asks. What makes a sky a sky? Another voice: Land has borders but do Sky and sea have borders? Does blue mean Borderless? Others shake their head, No, while one says, What if we lived without Borders? No we can’t do that, says another. There would be Too much fighting. But maybe if nobody knew who to fight we’d be forced To get along. I like knowing where I belong, says another. I belong In my home. I belong with who I love and who loves me. Another: The Whole world will not love you. Another, Haters gonna hate. The Gulf of Mexico Sits bright and divided. I think about the dead Buried beneath, ghosts wandering plains, etched into the ridges and valleys And oblivious blue of the sea. No map of the earth Includes stars. This seems like an oversight. I am too quiet: The boy with a crush looks at me, long and questioning. He says nothing: I say, this is what we do, as humans, now. This is our Way. Christina Olivares 40
LITTLE SPINES  I promise you this mouth of snake smoke, summer like a gutted country church house: field rich, steeple stunted, overgrown with fireweed, pews broken & picked like teeth. The stained glass in your eyes saggy, distorted by a grinning gravity. I abrade my knuckles on the cinnamon red bricks of you – what will be long left standing. Where men sleep beneath the floor. I promise for you this splayed watchdog. No need for a chain chewed bedpost. No need for ticking, the pull of blood like needle-loyal thread through your body. We start at the end. I promise you cradles. I promise you coffins. When we were in the forest of legs, when we were children with different connotations for wolves, each finger was a little spine, unbroken and accusing. Every time we fucked we made an alcove
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in the garden, and she so needed secrets. A hedge maze – brimming with spent, drugged children – designed with no way out. Brother, blood still lines my fingernails. I still sleep under a mobile of tire irons. Oh holy night. Oh how they ring.
Caitlin Scarano
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Charles Gabel’s New Skill and Other Updates from your Network after their last fucking email about “careerism” & how we should take to mending daylight back into our wardrobe, I’m ready to pester the ash around me into something useful not like a poem, more like a version of me that’s willing to improve—it’s five after midnight my mouth worn down in the small print promise to unsubscribe every further update from LinkedIn, yes, where the dead go to chatter & tell us we’ve got to be pliable, goal-oriented but if I can’t introduce myself online how will everyone here know I’ve taken to driving through roundabouts at night with my eyes closed, lips pressed lightly into the steer, that this is the best I got
Adrian Sobol
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OKCUPID I Love me, love me, come around to the side of the house and love me. My criteria is different than most, I want to hear the stunt-casing fall from the tin draw of the roof, the rain, and the collection in my mouth. Disgrace me, from a bucket. Leave by the door where your offering of fingers is transparent. Wet, they bounce weirdly. Everything is weird, actually, until another morning happens and you are on your way to it, another one bein’ just another man on his way in the sunshine singin’ with the coins in his hand.
II Who’s your dreamgirl? I could invent that quiz and pray to insert my name at the last moment, before the trickle makes liquid blue light bouncing off the top of your drink to the finger pads litelite- lightly make up for your lips. Is it me? There are three questions and all involve my breastplate and some electronics. Her heartnoise was embarrassing; so much so it got left in your bureau files. I’m much different, assuring you, guiding you to the street to watch the fireworks.
III But I’m the most supportive, I said, after six when the hard boiling is done. One tenth past and the yolk is your lost sunrise. But, when I finally shared it: do you like the feel in your palm? And the color indicates generation, consideration, and calmness. I carry them in my body, heartell. I’m not aware of their status, though. Did you foster geraniums, weirdo? I have questions that lead to the top running into the water, causing the pool to warm in the winter, alerting anyone lingering near your bed of my arrival.
IV I had a great pair of tatties but they got so droopin’. In the older days he wore a metal plate in his head– and just imagine. I mean before radio waves but I guess there still were voices, only you’d smell them, too. Can you speak the same way with those old teeth? Does it affect the words you say? Clink together a response in your head that goes right to the deep of me. Where I started growing. I think I’m very deeply affected by you, because I feel good again, which has kept me here and feelin’ summery.
Danielle Wheeler
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CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
Hari Alluri is a poet and co-founder of Locked Horn Press. Christopher DiCicco teaches high school English. Joe Halstead is a writer living and working in West Virginia. Thomas Kearnes is a 38-year-old author from Houston. Marilyn Morgan is a retired English teacher, who lives and writes in Central New York State. Christina Olivares is a poet and educator from NYC and has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Caitlin Scarano is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program.
Kate Scarpetta is a nomadic professional golfer from Crystal Lake, PA and tweets at @kate_scarpetta. Adrian Sobol lives in Colorado, where he's working on his MFA. Danielle Wheeler was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe fellow at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and currently lives in Louisiana.
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