Twenty-Four Hours Issue #24

TFH 24 / CONTRIBUTORS- ERIC JOHNSTON SARAH NICHOLS STEPHANIE NORRIS LAURA PAGE / COVER ART- HARVEY COBB / EDITING – JOSH MEDSKER XXX WEB: WWW.TWENTYFOURHOURSONLINE.ORG FB: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/TFHOFFICIAL/ TWITTER: @TFHPRESS ETSY: WWW.ETSY.COM/SHOP/TWENTYFOURHOURSPRESS Thanks to: Leigh!

Nineteen and Fifty-One

by Stephanie Norris (Nineteen) 1) life 2) is a list 3) that grows 4) longer 5) and longer 6) but always 7) ends with 8) death (Fifty-One) 1) Life 2) is a list 3) milk 4) cereal 5) toilet paper 6) something I forgot 7) it's ok 8) love

Two Poems by Sarah Nichols Assumptions of the Skin February tasted like turpentine and grief: our bodies after the last time, the stuttering hunger of acid in a throat.

My nights were fantasies of knives and those divine wind fighters giving their lives for emperors or lovers.

An empire of skin.

Love as granular as smoke.

First published in The Country of No, Finishing Line Press, 2012.

The 39 Steps It was a week or so after you’d left, and you wrote to tell me that yes, you were reading the messages I’d sent and yes, you were a coward who knew that if this was a military situation back in the day you would probably be shot and that yesterday had been a rough day in your new sobriety, what with your alcoholic father and the snow so you watched The 39 Steps and thought that there was something “off” about the pacing that you wanted to talk to me about and when I wrote back I agreed with you, saying only it was imperfect, a kind of blueprint for North by Northwest, but all I thought about was the hero and the heroine, handcuffed together and how once you told me that you’d imagined us in a theater drawn into that poisoned Hitchcock dream world while we burned like nitrate stock

and I wonder which plot we’re acting out now, if you’re the wrong man who didn’t commit the crime you’re accused of but who runs anyway, and if I’m the woman, guilty of something, redeeming herself through espionage, but who brings love birds to the wrong town, destroying the wrong man.

First published in The Country of No, Finishing Line Press, 2012.

Two Poems by Laura Page Shrugging the Iceberg In July 2016, Philando Castile was shot and killed by law enforcement officers, while complying with the officers’ requests. Days later, several police officers were shot and killed by a rogue sniper at an otherwise peaceful Black Lives gathering, protesting law enforcement overreach in the U.S. -LP ___________________________ So I told her that we were in the same boat, she says over our beers.

You said that? I ask.

I imagine a lifeboat, punctuating a titanic sentence, trying to buck her and her black friend into a long, black strikethrough.

Does it feel cold in here to you? She asks, then continues.

My boy’s a cop—always in danger.

I know.

And so I told her—Same as your black boy. Danger, danger, all the time.

You said that?

I said, girl, listen, Black Lives Matter, but so do blue ones.

Wait, you did?

I imagine the black girl’s heart the capsizing vessel, all the stuff rising into the dome of her last breathing blue blue blue.

She was really hurting over the deaths, she says.

So I posted to her timeline. I wanted her to know that I think She is one of the good ones.

She turns a cardboard coaster, concave from her sweating glass, over in her hand, the capsized Comma gently righted in her fingers.

I looked for the girl, as if she could be buoying, gasping there on the formica, my mouth a broken ocean liner shaping a stupid question.

You really said all that?

I told her all lives matter, she said, shrugging the iceberg, hugging her shoulders.

Creosote in a Chimney Flue First degree Think of it, I told you, like black carbon corn flakes stuck in the flue like cereal to the table with gluey milk.

The sweep of corn-flake creosote is easy, the bristles bend like I bent when I misunderstood the arc of your story. Then, we ate our breakfast quickly, heat escaping us, a build-up, a not uncomfortable—but not benign uncertainty in the way our exchanges combusted, the way our spoons clattered as dishes were cleared.

Second degree It got stickier, became combustible, a glaze in the flue at the glance of your flashlight, a blue patina on black, all my sweaters the fine knit variety, providing little insulation. I used to eye your course arans, liking and disliking your practicality, though the heat couldn’t escape us, though we put the glass doors in the fireplace, etched curlicues complementing cast iron hearth tools.

Third degree Forget corn flakes and bristles. The tiles finally turned ochre, mortar yielding finally to 100 pounds of carbon gum.

The flue was a choked artery. Fugue state. Old salt.

By then it was even too late for abrasives or rotary chains to dismantle my denial of chimneys, that what gets stuck comes down larger.

I had thought only of Mama’s lost heirloom silver, compelled to polish things when we no longer had any spit or shine, could no longer build a fire.

Three Poems by Eric Johnston Untitled Life and Death. Life or Death.

One a condition. One a choice.

I am framed by two bookends But I do not read every book in my library.

There is an ancient text of creation Let me dwell there until the shelf collapses.

We are the Ocean Waves begging to be distinct The soul lies beneath

Closers There are strange things done 'neath the Chicago sun Where the salesman is the boss But the strangest sale a whale of a tail was Glengarry and Glen Ross Second place wins the knives, you see First place a Cadillac There is a third place prize, you're fired!

You are not welcome back You must be alert and swift You cannot be caught dozing You must get schooled in your ABCs and Always Be Closing But the greatest lesson ever taught For salesmen true, not posers You better fucking listen up Because coffee is for closers!

-A note on the textThis publication is printed in Arial.

Arial, sometimes marketed or displayed in software as Arial MT, is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts. Fonts from the Arial family are packaged with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 onwards, some other Microsoft software applications,[1] Apple Mac OS X[2] and many PostScript 3 computer printers.[3] The typeface was designed in 1982 by a 10-person team, led by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, for Monotype Typography.[4] It was created to be metrically identical to the popular typeface Helvetica, with all character widths identical, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without having to pay for a Helvetica license. (Wikipedia)