Spring 2012
Issue #3 Spring 2012
Staff Editors-in-Chief Christine Chesko Kris Price
Assistant Editor Sarah Gein
Snail Mail Review is the love child of Founding Editors Christine Chesko and Kris Price. It is a bi-annual, independent publication located in Modesto, CA. We are currently accepting submissions for our Fall issue. Please send 35 poems of no more than 35 lines each or 1-7 pages of short fiction to: Snail Mail Review 3000 Coffee Rd Chateau Apt #B6 Modesto, CA 95355 Please accompany all submissions with a SASE and brief bio (3-5 lines). We do not accept previously published work or E-mail submissions. Deadline: June 30, 2012. Subscription Rates: 1 year submission (2 copies): $12.00 Single Copies: $7.00 s/h included All artwork is done by Sara Korupp. She is currently a student at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock, CA. We give her huge kudos for all her great work. troubled_catz@yahoo.com We would like to give special thanks to Sam Pierstorff and Lillian Vallee for their much needed advice and support. All Printing is done by Modesto Junior College English Department. Contact: snailmailreview@gmail.com Find us on Facebook (Search: Snail Mail Review)
All rights revert to authors and artists upon publication Spring 2012
Table of Contents Poetry David James “You Can’t Eat Poetry #2”
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Nancy Flynn “Day of Reckoning”
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Anthony Orona “Chopin Was a Girly Man”
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Stella Beratlis “Saddle-Soaping the Sofa”
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Gerald Locklin “The Frick Collection”
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Carrie Gendle “What My Parents Taught Me About Marriage”
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Gillian Wegener “Consider the Amusement Park Sparrow”
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Amanda England “Creation”
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Charles Rammelkamp “The Invisible Hand”
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Shelley Savren “Our House on Faversham Road”
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Ken Letko “Self-Improvement”
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Robert Penick “The Gentleman”
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James Babbs “45”
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Ray McGinnis “Closing My Ears”
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Jennifer Hamilton “Heavy”
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R. Yurman “Mother’s Father”
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Ned Dougherty “Desiccated”
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Barrett Warner “Inertia”
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Martha Modena Veatreace-Doody “Becoming the Keeper”
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Jennifer Lagier “Number 29”
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John Ronan “The Five Good-byes”
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Gary Thomas “The Nut Grass Groove”
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Zac Walsh “Dad Goes to Work, Age 50”
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Nathan Whiting “More”
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Pearse Murray “Stone Words”
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Mark Thalman “Waiting for Surgery”
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Jared Smith “Sound of a Nighthawk”
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Caleb Bouchard “Interruption”
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Short Fiction Gerald Fleming “The Extraordinary Accordionist”
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Angela Lam Turpin “No Sleep”
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Alan Steinberg “The Aspen Flasher”
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John Brantingham “The Phone Call”
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Editor’s Note / Christine Chesko Dear Readers, My co-editor- in-chief has a chair in his house right now that has a big pile of submissions stacked on top of it just waiting to be read. It is a mountain of submissions comparable to Mount Everest. It looks very daunting and time consuming. At any moment it may avalanche, and I could very well drown under the casacde of pages of poetry and short fiction. Well, maybe that’s just in my nightmares. In all sincerity,though, what I really think about this giant stack of submissions awaiting my considerattion and attention while not under the influence of anxiety-ridden thoughts, is that Snail Mail Review is alive and well. That stack of submissions shows me that Kris and I (and our small but greatly appreciated staff) have done something right. It means the hours of work we have dedicated to marketing and the money we have spent on ad space has paid off. It means that there are people out there who actually want to be a part of our publication. And I think that’s pretty darn cool. Kris and I would like to extend a huge thank you to those who continue to support and submit to our publication. As our journal continues to grow and the number of submissions we receive increases, we are hoping to someday evolve from our current saddle-stitching style to perfect binding. With this type of binding, it would allow for us to accept more work and feature more writers. I am so proud of what we have created and even more proud of the response our little journal has received. I only hope that as we continue our publication and try to improve the quality of our printing our readers and contributors will stick with us. I feel so endebted to the people who have supported us over the last year. We only want to provide a quality publication to our readers. I am so excited for what’s in store for Snail Mail Review in the future, and I hope you all are as well. Write On, Christine Chesko
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You Can’t Eat Poetry #2 after John Woods the best poems hurl a spear through the heart, dead center, bloodless. for a moment, you’re stunned, the hair on your neck standing like fur. there’s no pain in the chest, but joy rushing inside your body, a river of images tumbling from some great height. you are never the same. you have climbed the fever tree and stared into the distance. you believe flight is in your future. the more you read, the larger your wings grow, the stronger this urge to leap. for all your longing, you have found what you need. David James
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Day of Reckoning In our love poem for hurricanes, the wind insists on slaughtering butterflies and spicing the cumulonimbus chill. Gleaner at dawn, my hands are your breakfast, your chariot, a prayer wheel spinning us heavenward, beyond the reach of the armoire moored to an ivy of hair. No better companions, you and me, surrender’s flag flying, one tarry roof, and our circling dreams, gulls and water, far as the love-struck eye can see. As if we will make it past the bell, two souls keeping time with the comforting must of grapes, sour where it tickles our pipes. 
Nancy Flynn
Chopin was a Girly Man He was lucky to have stumbled across a piano And I hope he knew that I pray to God he knew though I could picture his long pretty fingers just now galloping across the white keys and I think he did So I lean against my room full of guitars with strings broken and missing listening to Nocturne #9 sipping on root beer and feeling much better about my inadequacy  Anthony Orona
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Saddle-Soaping the Sofa My sister commented on the terrible scratches on the leather sofa, her toddler’s game of tic-tac-toe scratched into the light brown skin if you want to know the truth, she said. So from her box of shoe stuff out came the saddle soap which, the label directs, must be worked into a lather in the round tin and applied with a clean white cloth Next wiped with another, slightly damp. While we polished, I told her he did it to me too and she just moved that cloth around and around in a small circle. I never know saddle soap could smell so clean, so unbearably antiseptic--did you? Why we didn’t take opposite sides for maximum efficiency I don’t know. Instead, we worked right next to each other, my cloth wiping next to her last swipe, one cushion at a time, square by damp square. And she knew I’d kept quiet in the stained days of accusation and denial. We kept cleaning, marveling at the dirt on the cloths and how we both worked so hard at our endeavor. Stella Beratlis
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The Frick Collection Henry Clay Frick, The docent explains, Collected not themes, periods, artists, Techniques, movements, schools, Nations, regions, or cities, In any sort of pedagogical fullness: He simply collected Masterpieces, The works that gave him The greatest aesthetic pleasure, To be enjoyed within his mansion On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Adjoining Central Park, Which he later donated to serve as The Museum of his Collection. What a bizarre idea: To buy the best, The most beautiful, Works of art, Regardless of Extrinsic Values, Or other extrinsic considerations, And of course it worked. How rare in the art world, Or, I guess, in any world, Is simple, plain, uncontaminated Common Sense.  Gerald Locklin
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What My Parents Taught Me About Marriage My own children will never be the station from which two trains depart in opposite directions, or the flock of geese that scatter at the sound of a Winchester, or the money to construct a bridge between two islands, or the fire hose that weeps to save a devoured home.  Carrie Gendle
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Consider the Amusement Park Sparrow The sparrow counts her blessings in the scatter of crumbs left under the bench, in the scrap of burger bun left on the table. She preens her brown feathers in a puddle near the flume ride and perches in a topiary tree to call her distant mate. To her, the human world is made of flightless giants whose language is dull thunder and whose heavy step and stooped shoulder reveal the weight of solid bone. Seldom noticed, she makes her home under the low hedge, cool, quiet, half dark, even through the long afternoon, and when the fireworks burst every night, she doesn’t quiver, for she knows the voices of the gods well and she loves the wondrous stories they tell.  Gillian Wegener
Creation
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Come closer, and I'll tell you a secret: I can create you. I can stretch sinew over bone, knit your muscles to your frame and breathe life into you, changing you to suit my needs. I can add lines to your face, pounds to your frame; I can trace the length of your jaw with a pencil where once I trailed my fingers. I can direct others on marionette strings to crush the neck I have given you. I can erase those you love, brush their ashes off the page and rain little bits of them, graphite and rubber, onto the carpet to be forgotten. I will create you, you will open your mouth and my words will come out-I will create you so I can destroy you, and after your glorious demise, the dust will settle and you'll assume your place at my feet. In the limbo I create for you, you will feel the tread of footsteps on your back, and you will know that your pain is easing my bruises: as you authored them, so I author you.  Amanda England
The Invisible Hand A smug bastard with a smug-bastard smile, Gordon loved to talk about “the invisible hand,” as if he knew how the world operated. Invisible to the rest of us, yet Gordon could distinguish that hand, its grasping fingers, punishing knuckles, smooth, swatting palm. “The Wealth of Nations,” he sighed, as if talking to a bunch of idiots, his students in the seminar. “An individual pursuing his self-interest tends to promote the good of his community as a whole.” This was his way of justifying all the foreclosures, rate hikes, fees, insider information that fed his own fortune, looking at us as if we were all the beneficiaries of his largess. So when I learned about the stroke, my first thought was, Serves the bastard right; couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Only later, when I saw the vacant expression, the slack-jawed drool, the blanket on his wheelchair-bound lap, did I feel the invisible hand of guilt pressing down on my windpipe, ungrateful shit that I was.
Charles Rammelkamp
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Our House on Faversham Road You’re seven in the picture with shorts, a button-down shirt, hair sun-bleached blond, parted on the side. My long brown braids drape a white eyelet dress mom made specially for my sixth birthday. We stretch our arms in the room we share upstairs with a balcony where we can almost touch the playground swings. Our youngest sister’s not yet born, Dad hasn’t had a heart attack, not the first or fifth. Maples, oaks and weeping willows are not a parking lot with just a patch of grass, but a forest leading to a slab of blacktop frozen over wintertime. Mom warns, You’ll fall and crack your heads! Still we venture across thin ice. Our boots sink, but you escape in stocking feet, return with Mom who yells and bends into the ice releasing my two feet, socks, shoes, but just one boot. She doesn’t know arthritis yet, hasn’t had her knee replaced. Summer nights, fireflies lighting cradled hands, hide ‘n’ seek with neighbor kids. We haven’t left, it’s not been forty years when we find the newest owner home and ruby tiles replacing living room royal blue rugs.
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We hold hands, the way Mom likes it, white bay window behind us, like a frame, years before you get divorced, I leave for California, have a child. We’re squinting, waiting for the camera click before the party starts, as sunshine pours into our eyes. 
Shelley Savren
Self-Improvement I had been spending too much time drying the bottoms of my feet after a shower. Every day my teeth would be sleepy before noon. And my earlobes had no ambition whatsoever. From this rut, I could barely see. I couldn’t cough up a hairball to save myself. I needed something that could measure my worth and make me feel valued like an old coin with a rare mint mark. So I started vacuuming my teeth after flossing and talking things over with some dust bunnies peeking from behind the kitchen stove. That got me going. Now I can count the change without taking it out of my pocket. I can run to the mailbox left handed. While I still can’t answer all of the questions inside my refrigerator, I am ready for the path that leads to the open door of the corridor where I can relax and let go. Ken Letko
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The Gentleman (For Gilbert Michael Smith, d. 2010) He walks by my house every day, makes his purchase at the liquor store and returns, carrying a small package under one arm. Something is very wrong with the other; there are no bones in it, anywhere. It hangs from his shoulder like a flaccid balloon. When the wind blows, his fingers flutter like confetti and his forearm bends at impossible angles. I talked to him once, walking back, each of us with our bag of mercy. He was a kind man, polite, intelligent, without anyone, waiting to die. A great sadness hung over him. I’ve never seen him speak to anyone else. One day he will stop walking to the liquor store and no one will notice but me.  Robert Penick
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45 45 minutes past the hour and I’m working on getting drunk again 45 years gone and what the hell have I done with my life nothing good on the TV but I keep watching anyway waiting for something to happen 45 rpm records on the turntable I play them sometimes to remind me of things 45 pictures floating in the darkness of my mind in some of them she’s laughing in some of them she’s crying in all of them she looks beautiful even the ones where she turns and slowly walks away James Babbs
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Closing My Ears When I don’t listen to myself I lie and tell you it doesn’t matter, am driven to follow down back alleys of your bad advice. When I don’t listen to myself I give just to get, ask a stranger at the bar, how do you like me so far? When I don’t listen to myself I undo my seat belt, drive with one hand on the steering wheel, my eyes on the rear view mirror. When I don’t listen to myself I forget to drink enough water. I eat too much. Say yes to everything and keep reworking this poem. Ray McGinnis
Heavy
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tsunamis and suicide wash over seductive, destructive torturous in method entice us invite thoughts of when water subsides. Wisdom hides in her closet hoarding what we need looking for mismatched socks, like famine and plenty, they coexist. so we fend for ourselves. try to recollect her visage raised eyebrow, pursed lips capricious guiding gaze that confirms or denies; she only has at heart our getting lost. mother groans and s t r e t we quake fearful of nameless future foes uncreated they loom in tomorrow's shadow.
c
h
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luna ventures closer than she's been in an age pushing and pulling tides that so recently overwhelmed. trying to see what we’ve done to ourselves, she rocks a vexed earth to troubled sleep. 
Jennifer Hamilton
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Mother’s Father eyes purple with rage he wagged his fists in the face of a huge cop come to confiscate slot machines from the backroom of the family store a tiny quiet man he took a swing and the cops dragged him to jail his 30 days served he had new slots installed Mother spun this tale that I might know my beloved soft-eyed Grandpa as he had been in her childhood slow to ignite but once roused ablaze  R. Yurman
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Desiccated that tomato is a lesson of my ego contemplating wrinkles and bruise the one I told Sarah was delicious because she picked it from her vine this fruit I brag I eat like apples with shirts of seed and squirt to prove it slow dying and desiccated its bashful skin whispering at the zucchini and squash ‘he ate tuna sandwiches all week and never once sliced me, he doesn’t care of what’s at home if no one’s there to see it’
Ned Dougherty
Inertia The planet isn’t spinning as fast as yesterday. I count twenty-eight hours from sunset to sunset, the red moon confused, raising up at three in the afternoon. Makes you wonder if the people struggling to live on that rock can only see the Earth at night, our blue and green invisible by day. Variations on this question carry me almost a week. Marney wants to know if I love her. I ask, Why do we only know other worlds by night? And she, Easier to see points of light in black skies. What about points of darkness? Why are you so sad, she says. When will you wear new pants? Inertia can be fooled by making rapid, careless decisions. This explains my sudden appearance at Old Navy, despite the deer carcass in the pick-up bed, struck by traffic near our drive. I pull up denim trousers, tuck in, snap a belt, turn in front of mirrors. But unable to commit I grab a package of socks instead. A crowd has gathered around my truck, staring at the gore, incredulous someone could drive the smell of death so far into town. It is almost midnight. The sun is shining.  Barrett Warner
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Becoming the Keeper I am from my father’s nebulizer, green mist forcing breath in Chesapeake dawn. I am from the cast-iron skillet, from cornbread my mother bakes on weekends. I am from the plate of crumbs my brother says are cornbread seeds. I am from Deanwood, biting bitter hydrangea petals by the bedroom window. I am from the plum tree with cradling branches where I read Little Women. I am from crabgrass, circling the plum tree, hiding green snakes my moon-eyed cat and my father kill. I am from honeysuckle vines with dried snake skin woven in its leaves. I am from the Ohio River, swelling its banks, stealing everything my parents own. I am from the tales my brother tells at night, ones he makes up better than ever I could. I am from St. Stephen’s Green, O’Connell Street, writing in Bewley’s Dublin I barely knew but taught me well. I am from Somerset, watching my mother ride bareback, half Cherokee, unwilling to bind a horse. I am from Jeffersonville, my uncle in the back lot burning scrub brush under starlight as he whispers stories he wants me to keep. Hush, child, he says. Listen.
Martha Modena Veatreace-Doody
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Number 29 Last night the body count escalated, another banger gunned down just outside our campus garage. Stunned college students report nine shots, a man on the ground bleeding while two gang members run. I monitor the emergency radio, jog from classroom to classroom; maintenance men lock all exterior doors. TV crews and police arrive with sirens and cameras. Yellow tape and red smears deface the dark lawn. My phone rings constantly, frantic parents, terrified faculty, newsmen demanding eye witness reports. Tonight I worry about inevitable revenge, cautiously unlock my car and drive away, shiver all the way home.  Jennifer Lagier
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The Five Good-byes At the back door, Sandy says, “Good-bye.” Hates to go, has to go, is going… One. Lifts her purse: “I said, ‘good-bye’.” Two’s petulant Because I’m reading in the sports page, fall’s First football scores, another obit for the Mets. “Kiss?” Three’s the kiss, the walk past the garden To the dusty drive where she turns, torn: “Water the roses?” I’ll water. “Call?” I’ll call. Four’s a doleful, over-the-shoulder, “So, good-bye,” The saddest in our trailing stages Of separation, at the house, airport, over the phone. Women like five good-byes. Guys, no: “See ya!” That easy relief of wise guy distance, D-Fense! Finally, she buckles up in the Volvo, the black wagon, Heads for the highway waving five, “Bye-bye.” John Ronan
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The Nut Grass Groove I’m inclined to agree with Miss Maudie: Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a whole yard. The world’s worst weed, and I’m pulling it from all the spots in my yard where it meets soil. I’m also troweling it up from six inches down where those sly black nuts launch their tentacled tendrils to prove to me God’s inescapable sense of humor: no matter the human assiduity, leverage, herbicide, or hope, nut grass negates human effort. I think: Prayer is for larger matters, but Lord, show me the way. And the Lord does, but not In the way I prayed. And now I am in the nut grass groove, a personal human rhythm that finds them in their secret slender peek-a-boo whatcha-gonna-do arsenals, and removes them cleanly to the eye alone, admitting at last to myself they will be back, simultaneously acknowledging to them with a smirk, so will I. Gary Thomas
Dad Goes to Work, Age 50
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I wake up on a couch in a room of the house where I grew up. To my right dad is on a chair, coughing, wrestling between dreams and nicotine. His sleep stays on him thick, burning leaves between paper, yet I can only stay awake in this home. I come here to hide at times because I know I will wake wrecked by dawn on my own. I have my home where I live, but I find myself here, next to dad, as he shakes in his sleep, as the room unwraps into soot at the base of our dead fire. Soon he will wake too, to go to work, again, and stand at the same spot he has stood since six months before I was born. I do not have his loyalty or whatever else it might take to die so slow. I quicken as he coughs and wheezes, curious what life bourbon will lead for me once he is gone. Now he sleeps here to be alone yet we are together, the two of us making brutal sense of the other. I can only sit up to rest and think of how being his child was good, how blowing my nose of unease on his sleeve at the end of each of his cruel workdays meant peace. How distant those days when we shared this house like brothers, how folly made me go and grow out of it all.
 Zac Walsh
More
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My readers suggest I should do more for them. Some say I should do more for myself. More is an impossible and easy word. It means nothing until more occurs. The days are gone to be more radical if it means more disagreeable, kindness far from its result. What my poems lack is placed here for readers to unite to find new agreements against me or old arguments, learn their fine souls when they notice an absence of mine, of me. Usually my readers are you. What time is it? In a high level consciousness clocks are never noticed. You will do best without clocks, more time unlikely for my poems mostly are the same length. Do you need to be elsewhere? Then stop reading here. More won’t help us. Clocks have never helped poems. They help some painters, most composers. Dancers get their music and you get the sad ordeal of me attempting to do more for myself. To do so you become vital. Become brilliant and admire my honesty; my words, as you read this, not sea ducks as they land between high waves, but conductors who hear a nearly silent oboe when the brass gets wicked. You’ll taste more.  Nathan Whiting
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Stone Words In time the stolid silence of stone comes to life from the way we place it: laying slab on slab, held together by sand, lime, water and labor-love. We frame an ope for an entrance front or a window that limits our view: in and out of ourselves, bounded, quoin-defined as dressed stone will do. We construct ourselves in stoic word upon word held together with the weight of space slant conjunctions between noun on verb as building identity blocks will do. The matter of granite, lime, brown, blue, flag, sand. takes form in its placing. Mortar gives way and slab on slab fails from wear—as words fail without speech.  Pearse Murray
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Waiting for Surgery If I could run, I would dodge and weave like escaping a cloud of bees, but there is no place to hide from coronary bypasses. Reading about the procedure, my brain goes television snow. Tomorrow, the surgeon will crack my chest. But today, I extinguish the flames of anxiety: buy Christmas coffee, make sure my wife has extra money, write her a love letter with directions, just in case . . .  Mark Thalman
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Sound of a Nighthawk I lay awake for a long while after the harvest was gathered in and the fancy stemmed glassware had been drained of its wine, and I listened to the earth. A coyote beyond the golf course filled its throat with the moon. Its sound did not match the clock ticking on the wall of my study. A syncopation and a ululation left something dancing between. Claws swept across my back. Then the sound of a nighthawk. Something I have never seen that carries dusk upon its feathers, eating little things that fly away.  Jared Smith
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Interruption I’ve read the dead poets and the living poets, the unknown poets and the unbearable poets, the cowboy poets and the cry baby poets, the black poets and the women poets, the sane poets (it didn’t take me long) and the suicidal poets, the “political” poets and the “true” poets. I’ve read the young poets and the old poets (I liked them much better), the punk-rock poets and the drunkard poets, the happy poets (like hell) and the sad poets (hell yeah), the persecuted poets and the withered poets, the unpoetic poets and the soft poets, the poet’s poets and the nobody poets. Bad poets. Mad poets. Carry on. Caleb Bouchard
“The Extraordinary Accordionist” Gerald Fleming
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Mario Badio set up under a lamp post at the center of the square. Tourist groups sometimes passed there on the way to see the Romanesque church down the hill. If even a few groups came that day, and from each group ten kind souls tossed coins into his case, that would be a good day. The residents around the square were accustomed to buskers—this, the prettiest place in town—musicians had a right to make their living—but the bad music that rose to their windows was sometimes more than they could bear: fiddle-notes like tin being torn, inattentive guitar, flutes whose bamboo seemed to be twisting itself back to the forest. So when the accordionist sat on the bench under the lamp post, lit a cigarette, uncased his Scandalli Polifonico with its fortyone black and white keys, its hundred-and-twenty bright chrome buttons, its hand-carved reeds, the eighteen folds of its bellows, when the shoulder strap and the bass strap were snug around his torso, nothing was out the ordinary: the hotel maids hurried to clean the disheveled rooms, the waiter at the café on the square hurried to set the outdoor tables for lunch, but the square itself was almost empty, only an old man on a bench lifting his face to the sun. Mario Badio shoved his cigarette to the side of his mouth and began to play. He started slowly—a gentle French waltz, L’indífference, and though anyone who knows accordionists knows that it takes a few songs to get the blood flowing, in L’Indifference it was as if the trudge up the hill were enough, and his fingers across the keys and over the Braille of bass-buttons traveled lightly, with a dexterity that seemed to belie the man’s hands themselves: short, stout fingers, rough—the hands of a working man. He played with L’indífference a while, staring, reporting the song once straight through, every bar, then again, this time decorated, rococo, then yet again, now abstracting the waltz,
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disornamenting it, atonal. The waiter setting tables stopped and turned his way No one was near Badio. No tour groups passing, and the old man at the side of the square had turned his angular face slightly in the direction of the music, but only slightly. Badio brought L’indifference home now, saddening it in musettes and single bellow-shakes, ending with a dolefulness the waiter had never heard, and he, still turned in the accordionist’s direction, called out over his shoulder to two women in the kitchen. The accordionist’s coin-case was empty, but that didn’t seem to concern him. He played La Foule next, an old Southern French song about a mad and joyous crowd dancing an insane farandole, a man & woman losing each other in the crowd. It’s fast: 6/8 time, and Mario Badio played it that way then came round again and played it faster, and soon hotel maids were leaning out the windows and the desk clerk stepped into the square in her high heels and floral skirt, and the old man turned fully as Badio’s velocity increased, double bellow-shakes, triple, and all around the square windows were thrown open, and though the sun went behind a cloud and the square went cold, it didn’t seem to matter to the accordionist nor to his new audience who, once he finished the mad farandole, burst into applause, to which applause he nodded, slightly, then without pause launched into the great Russian “Black Eyes”—Les Yeux Noirs to the people of that town, and the town had never heard such a thing, this mournful overture, played French café style, oversweet, then as if traveling the song, taking it country by country, version by version from Turkey to Russia, the journey urgent, Badio never once extending his bellows dramatically the way some do, the bellows themselves so controlled one would have thought they were his own lungs— and perhaps they were, for he was a long-distance player, this one, and ten minutes into those black yeux the sun came out again and the square went ablaze with light, with the new gold of chestnut trees, and by now everyone within earshot was in the
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square: the maids and the waiter and kitchen workers, the fifthfloor residents and the fourth, the buildings emptying, the old man standing now, the stunned crowd not approaching Badio, but by their numbers brought closer to him as he played and played, and it was difficult to distinguish his fingers from the shadow of his fingers in the sun, it was all so fast. What range! What crescendo, decrescendo! The bellows quivering like violin tremolos, oh Badio pulled music out of that machine like no one ever had, he was at fifteen minutes now, and the waiter and the cook began to dance on the uneven paving stones, and of course the dance spread, and by the time Les Yeux was in its twentieth minute, chrome bass-buttons flashing in the sun, the whole square was dancing, trios, couples, singles, and in one magnificent glissando Badio brought it to an end. Applause, of course, coins tossed into the case. That was all. The accordionist smiled, nodded again, and, having played for an hour, decided to stop. The sun went behind a cloud, neighbors and workers went inside, and Mario Badio snapped his accordion away and crossed the square toward the subway. At around 2 a tourist group came, their guide asking them to pause a moment, to notice the square’s almost preternatural serenity, pointing out the figure of an old man on a bench in the far corner, his face inclined toward the sun, his angular features reminding the tour guide of Giacometti.
“No Sleep” Angela Lam Turpin
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It’s like a catchy song you can’t get out of your head. It plays over and over again, that same melody, and just when you think it’s gone, someone says something to start it over again. It’s just a silly dream, I keep telling myself. Let it go. But it follows me like a mist, shrouding my thoughts, collecting itself around my body, until I feel like I am walking through sleep. In my dream, I’m being chased by my mother dressed as the Grim Reaper. In her tangled dark robes, she slices through fog with a Kill Bill machete and screams, “I brought you into this world, I’ll take you out.” My mother has been dead for 10 years. I haven’t thought much about her, hardly at all. I’m a practical man, a stock clerk studying to be an engineer, and I know from my professors that only the facts count. But this dream unsettles me. For three days, I drink coffee in the afternoon, double espresso with two packets of sugar, a makeshift elixir of go-go-go. In the evening, when my co-workers head over to the cantina for margaritas and chips and salsa, I down a bottle of Gatorade and an energy bar to hurtle me through the commute home. My boss says, “You should take a vacation. Get some rest.” But the last thing I want to do is sleep. Ever since that dream of my machete-wielding mother three nights ago, I’ve been keeping myself up. By choice. I don’t tell anyone. They’d think I’m crazy. At night, while my roommate, Dave, snores, I reread the scariest passages from Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes until each word emblazons on the backs of my eyelids. I drink cup after cup of coffee until my eyes twitch and my hands jitter, then I switch to Earl Gray tea. By three o’ clock, I line up the shaving cream, after shave, and cologne in the medicine cabinet with the labels facing me. I clip my nails although I clipped them last night. I go down to the laundry room
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and peel lint off the filter. I clean the refrigerator, lining up the food in alphabetical order, left to right, avocados to radishes. By the time five o’ clock rolls around, Dave wakes up. I go with him for a jog, thinking the brisk air swirling around my tired skin will keep the spark alive. I try hard to keep pace, but my uneven breathing can’t pump enough oxygen to my knees. I fall behind. When we get home at six, I limp for the bathroom. Dave pants, “Save me some hot water, will you?” “No problem, buddy.” I turn on the cold water and jiggle beneath the initial rush. “Woo-hah-hah!” I close my eyes and let the wet pulse invigorate me. Ten minutes later, my roommate raps on the door. “I thought you said you’d save some hot water.” “I am.” “Not if you keep that up.” I towel dry, smiling crookedly at Dave who frowns. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “It’s freezing.” “Let it run a bit. It’ll warm up. Promise.” “I swear, Jerry, as soon as I get that promotion I’m out of here.” I don’t argue. Dave’s been waiting to become manager for six months. I check the company stock in the paper. It fell three points. I smile. Dave won’t be going anywhere. In the kitchen, I call Susan, my girlfriend. She’s blow drying her hair and trying to talk but all I hear is an annoying buzz. “Turn it off,” I say. “You’re making me deaf.” “Did you sleep well?” she asks. “Like a baby.” It’s not a lie. Being the oldest of seven children, I know for a fact that babies never sleep. “Good. Then maybe you can drive me to work. The carburetor’s out and I can’t get it fixed till I get paid on Friday.”
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“No problem.” I’ll drive with the windows rolled down and the radio blasting. At the stoplight, my eyelashes flutter. A woman strolls up to the car and stops. With her hands against the hood, hips swaying, she sings, “Tell me what you want, what you really, really, want.” She licks her lips provocatively and wiggles until she’s lying on the hood. The car behind me honks. The light is green. I blink. The woman is gone. I accelerate to the next light. It happens again. “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” This time the woman kisses the windshield with her big red lips. My heart leaps into my throat. The car behind me honks again. I can’t go with her lying against the hood. She’ll fall and sue me. So I park and get out. The man in the car behind me curses. I don’t listen. I tug the woman from the hood. She squeals and wiggles and sings, “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” Other cars are speeding around me. Drivers are screaming, “Are you fucking crazy!” The woman slinks down and disappears. I rub my eyes. Everything wavers. I don’t feel well. I need to sit down, maybe eat a Power bar or drink an espresso shot. My heart palpitates. I don’t know what’s happening. But I can’t go to sleep. I just can’t. The rush of traffic fades in and out. I pinch my cheeks, my arms, my thighs. The woman returns, her hands touching my face. I’m crying. She presses her lips close to my ear and whispers, “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” “For you to leave me alone!” I shout. “Are you all right?” An officer stands above me. Blue and white lights flash above his head. I squint. “I’m fine.” The officer handcuffs me. “Get in. I’m taking you down to the station for questioning.”
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I don’t know what’s happening. What’s real and what’s not real. “My girlfriend expects me to pick her up and take her to work. Can I call her?” “At the station.” The officer glances in the rearview mirror. “You on any medications?” “No.” “Have you been drinking?” “Coffee, mostly.” “Any sleep?” “No!” I scream. “You are NOT getting me to sleep.” The woman returns. She slips her hands between the handcuffs and tickles my spine. I squirm. “Please, don’t. Please.” “Everybody needs to sleep,” the officer says. “Unless you’re dead.” “Then kill me. Please, just kill me.” The officer radios the station. I glance at the woman. She withdraws her hands. Like a child, she curls up in my lap and falls asleep.
“The Aspen Flasher “ Alan Steinberg
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He took her to the top of the mountain. And not only that, he took her on an ice-day, one of those days when there's melt then freeze and the slopes get slick and hard. It was the kind of day where if you crashed you would break bones. Or worse. All of us on ski patrol hated days like that, because things didn't look so bad. The ice was scattered and maybe covered by a light dusting of snow, so you really couldn't see it until you came right up on a patch. I tried to tell them, but he just smiled his wise-ass smile and thanked me. It was all right, he said, they would be careful. Why, just the week before they had skied on a tighter run, in worse conditions. And anyway, he said, he would go first and set the line for her, and when they got back they would certainly tell the patrol leader just how dedicated I was. And what was my name? And thanks just the same. I stood there a minute. I could see the woman was scared, real scared, but the man cut her off from showing it, saying some macho thing about the skiing they'd done and her lessons and so on. All the same, you could see it in her eyes. Still, there wasn't anything I could do. The day was clear. The slopes were open. I couldn't just grab them and shove them back down, much as I wanted to. So I left them and started off on one of the side trails. But I couldn't seem to get them out of my mind. I'd seen the kind before - the kind that comes swooping up to Aspen in Porches and Audis, wearing the latest fashions out of magazines, all ready for a little excitement, a little fun on the slopes and after, in the bars and bedrooms. We called the men 'Flashers.' They were always in their thirties or forties, beginning to feel what they called their good years slipping away. So they figured they'd hide the truth by pushing out to the edge of things. But they couldn't do it alone.
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They needed a witness. A Snow Queen. Someone to testify for them, to get out there on the edge and watch in wonder while they braved on. I'd seen hundreds like her - pretty, young, adoring, dressed in all the right fashions. Decoration and witness. And for all the makeup and cool, innocent as hell. So, all the time I was skiing down, I kept having this bad feeling, like a tightness in my chest. I finally just broke off the run and decided to go back up - traverse the trail to where we kept one of the emergency snowcats and then take it up the snowroad. I put the accelerator to the floor going back up, knowing Maintenance would give me hell for pushing it so hard. But the feeling I had kept getting worse and worse. When I got to the trailhead, I was already too late. I could see two tracks heading down - but only one of them went vertical. And it was a bad track, really out of control: almost straight vertical and then arced, where you could see the skier tried to pull out and break speed but couldn't get the ski edge to bite enough. I could see the track break to the right, to the forest side and disappear. Unless there was a miracle down there, I knew there would be a big wipeout. Standing there, I could imagine how it was: the man had gone ahead to break trail, but he'd gone too far down. Instead of traversing to the side to break speed and be able to check on the woman, he'd gone too vertical, too fast. Probably showing off. Then he had to bail out, leaving the woman all alone on the top of a kamikaze trail, on an ice-day. I don't know what must have gone through her mind as she stood there watching him. Maybe she knew enough to realize that he was out of control. Maybe she thought she could help him. Maybe she was too scared to think straight, or otherwise she might have gone back the way I did, down one of the service trails. But maybe she couldn't think at all, because you could see the other track, the woman's track, just went straight for the ice ridge. I could see a few places where she'd tried to dig in and slow herself. But she'd come right through the plow and the tracks just streaked towards the ice-ledge and over. Don't let it be, I kept saying to myself. Either she'd panicked and didn't know what to
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do, or was too scared of the vertical. But no matter what, the track went right off the trail and over to the ice ledge. I figured that even though she'd only gone a little ways down the slope, at the angle she went over she'd have to be going thirty or forty miles an hour. I took a deep breath and started up the cat. I tried going as steep as I could and the cat slipped some on the ice, so that I had to gun it to keep it from tipping over. I managed to come up a little under the ice ledge and the woman's tracks. I tied the safety rope we kept in the storage bin around the snow cat and I strapped the first aid pack on my back. Then I lowered myself over the ridge and looked down. It was terrible, but merciful in a way. She had gone off the trail just as I thought. Head first, I would guess, like at a ski jump. Only there was a big rock ledge down below, and a series of freestanding boulders, some cleared of snow by the wind, others covered or barely covered. The woman didn't have a chance. I could see the body crumpled beneath one of the big overhangs. At least it would have been quick. She'd have had that struggle on the slope to dig in. She'd be so busy then, she wouldn't have any time to think. Then she'd hit the ice patch and accelerate and in a moment she'd be over the ledge and airborne. That would be the worst time. She would be up in the air for a moment, suspended almost, the momentum making it seem like she was being held up by the air. And then, the moment would shatter. Gravity would take over. She'd start to plummet. Maybe, she would even flail her arms and legs, as if trying to fly. Or maybe it would happen so fast she would just lean into the air, like a ski jumper, keeping herself upright for the few seconds it would take for her to hit. And right then I began to hate the man, seeing him again standing there in his calm smugness, knowing it was people like that who caused so much of the misery in the world; knowing it was people like that who would always lead the innocent to disaster. The woman was dead, all right. The autopsy report would show she had broken her neck. "Death was instantaneous," the
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report read. "She never knew what hit her," the pathologist told me. Still, I kept looking for vital signs even though I knew I wouldn't find any. In the end, I got the body tied up in a rescue sling and used the snowcat to lift her up and over the ledge. Then I laid her in the back of the cat on the safety litter and headed over towards the other side of the slope where the stockbroker had gone. I can't say now what I was feeling, whether the murderous rage was building in me then or it just came later when I got to where the sonofabitch was. But I felt it then, all right. He was lying with his back against a tree and he had that sickly, rigid look that probably meant he was beginning to go into shock. His right leg was twisted in a crazy angle so that you knew right away it was broken. But I tell you I didn't care. Maybe that's a horrible thing to say for someone working on ski patrol, but it's true. I was just standing over him looking down and seeing not his bleached-white face but that smirky grin from before. It was every smug, you-can't-tell-me-Iknow-everything face, and I had this overwhelming urge to leave him there, to leave him to suffer, to freeze, to let him hear his own heart stop beating. I had to close my eyes and turn away to keep from doing it. I think I even took a step or two. But the mood passed and I didn't leave him. Instead I made a splint for his leg, using the ski poles for bracing. And I got him in the back of the snowcat and covered with blankets. Then I gunned the cat down the hill, telling myself that it didn't matter so much if his leg got jostled because I had to get him help before he went into shock. And all that was true. But maybe I wanted him to feel the pain. And maybe I wanted to keep him from going into shock because I wanted him to remember who it was that was lying next to him. And all the way down the hill I kept telling myself that I hoped the leg wouldn't ever be right. That it would be paralyzed or something. I wanted him to have to sit in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and think about what he had done. When I told the patrol leader about it, he just said, "It'll pass."
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He was right. The rage passed. But I didn't want to let it go. It didn't seem fair. So, I went to see the man in the hospital. They had put his leg in traction. There was some talk that maybe the bones wouldn't all mesh. But he was going to go to Boston where this famous orthopedic surgeon was. You know the story - big money gets the best. He was lying on the bed with his leg up in the air, like you see in some of those old movies. The television was going and he was staring at it, but I don't think he was paying much attention. When I came in, he turned his head to look at me. If he recognized me, he didn't let on. "I'm the one that brought you down," I said, from the doorway. The man didn't say anything. He just turned his head back to the tv. I didn't blame him, in a way. Seeing me must have been like a reproach. But then, that's what I wanted it to be. "Going to be while, I guess," I said, nodding with my head to the elevated leg. Pain killers or no, I imagined it had to hurt. He still didn't say anything, making it seem like he was really watching the television. I began to feel that anger from before starting up again. "What do you want?" he said finally, his voice a little dry and hoarse-sounding. "Money?" He turned his head to look at me. " Maybe he had a smirk on his face. Or maybe he had a smirk in his voice. Or maybe it was just me. "You know about the girl?" I asked. I figured he knew, but I wanted to make sure that the pain from the leg didn't blot it out. He didn't say anything or change expression, so that I began to wonder if maybe it was the pain killers. But then he moved his head a little so that he could look out the small high window. "Yeah," he said, but there was nothing to the tone, nothing that sounded sad or full of regret. Nothing that made you feel the death of a scared girl sailing off to oblivion. "Look," I said, coming over and leaning my face close, "if you have to keep at it, don't take anyone with you." He took a long time answering, like he was trying to find just
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the right way to say it - one that even someone dumb like me couldn't mistake. "Yeah, sure," he said, and this time it was all wise-ass. So without even thinking about it, I did what I should have done before. I reached out and grabbed his leg, the one that was hanging in the air, and I twisted it. He screamed so hard I almost had to cover my ears. I was hoping that wherever she was, the Snow Queen would hear it.
“The Phone Call” John Brantingham
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Sitting in his truck outside the convenience store in Weed, California, Harrison is overwhelmed by the joy triggered by a memory, and it takes him a minute, but he realizes that it’s the store and the pay phone in an old fashioned phone booth that’s done it to him. When he and Carol were first married, they used to make prank phone calls. It was juvenile, but it’s what they all had done, their entire circle of friends, when they had been in college, and then when they were married, it was something they could all do that was cheap and fun. They’d have get-togethers where they’d get drunk and call people. The game was to keep the person on the other side on the phone as long as possible, and true masters, like Harrison, would prank call people who had been at those parties the next day, and keep them on the phone in ridiculous conversations. One night, he and Carol were driving home early from one of those parties, and they called the host of the party, telling him that they were the police, and that there had been complaints about the noise. They almost convinced the host to go downstairs and apologize to the neighbors before he realized who it was. What Harrison remembers most though is standing in the phone booth after they’d hung up and laughing and hugging Carol and how the hug had turned into a kiss and how supremely happy he’d been at that moment. Later, he’d called Carol pretending to be an ex-boyfriend whose voice was easy for him to imitate. She’d flirted a while, and then when she realized who it was, she said that she’d known all along and that she was just getting him back. Harrison decides that he should have known right then that their marriage would end in divorce. That was one of the signs -- neon, flashing and unmistakable. On the other hand, he realizes that if they hadn’t divorced and that he was with her right now, he would be interpreting their past in a completely different way. That moment would be
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romanticized. He’d be thinking that she always knew how to play with him, how he never could or really wanted to be able to lie to her. It starts to rain now, which is no great surprise in Northern California, and Harrison finds himself climbing out of the truck and into the phone booth. He’s been thinking a lot about how he should be the bigger person lately. He should call her up right now and do one of the prank phone calls, and they’ll laugh about it when it’s done and talk about old times, and she’ll see that he doesn’t have any hard feelings. He doesn’t resent her. It wasn’t all her, after all. She ended it, but it wasn’t all her. He dials the number and finds out that he doesn’t have enough change. He could call her from the cell phone, but she’d just see his caller ID. Caller ID has killed prank phone calls, he supposes. He jogs into the store and gets change from the clerk. Back in the booth, he’s a little out of breath and realizes that this has stopped being a spur of the moment lark and has turned into something that’s making him queazy. Still, he dials the number his fingers know from muscle memory, and puts in the change the computer voice tells him, and he waits as the phone on the other side rings. Rule number one for the prank caller, he remembers from all those years ago, is to know what he’s going to say, what the prank call is, before he’s picked up the phone, but as she picks up on the other side, and says her hello in the singsong way she’s had for as long as he’s known her, he realizes that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to say. “Hello?” she asks again. He should pretend to be her ex-boyfriend again and flirt with her. But of course, now he is her ex, and that’s exactly what he was going to do -- flirt. The idea of that catches up with him, and he’s going to speak, but he can’t form the words, and anyway, all of his resentment has formed a fist in his throat. “Hello?” she says again, this time louder. “Listen, I don’t know why you keep doing this, but I want it to stop.” She breaths on the other side of the line, and Harrison holds his breath. She’d recognize the sound of his breathing. “Do you hear me, you son of
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a bitch? Stop calling here.” She bangs the phone down. When she’s off the phone, Harrison puts the receiver down and leans against the glass, gasping for air. So maybe he does have hard feelings. Maybe he does resent her. It was all her fault, after all, damn it. It wasn’t Harrison who cheated, and damn it, he should have known all those years ago when she thought she was flirting with her ex that she was no good. What is it that comes up on a caller ID when someone calls from a phone booth? Is she going to know that he’s calling from a phone booth in Weed? If she can see that, then she’s going to know who called. He has to be the only person she knows who travels to Weed on business on a regular basis. Frankly, he’s probably the only person in the world who does that. And even though the thought alone of doing it makes him sick, he picks up the phone and dials her number again. This time instead of saying “Hello,” she says, “What?” He’s almost not able to spit out any words again, but he forces himself to say, “Carol?” There’s a pause on the other side. “Harrison? Was that you a second ago?” “Yeah, can you hear me?” “Yes?” He can hear the edge of ire rising up in her voice, but he can head her off this time. “I could hear you talking on the other side, and I kept answering you, but I must have had a bad connection.” “Oh.” He knows her well enough to know what’s happening on the other side of the phone. She was all worked up to yell at someone, and when she heard Harrison’s voice, she was really going to let him have it, and now she’s disappointed because she can’t. The anger’s working out of her, but she kind of wishes she could have yelled. “Why didn’t you just use the cell phone?” “Do you remember that phone booth we called up Gary from the night of that party?” “Sure,” she says. “There was this booth sitting out in the rain here in Weed, and I thought I’d call you and talk about old times.”
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“All right.” In his head, he thought there’d be humor and happiness in their voices, but there’s just too much in the way. “So you’ve been getting hang-ups lately?” “Yeah,” she says. The anger is rising in her voice. “We think it’s Joey’s ex-wife. She isn’t taking her divorce well.” Carol goes into the custody fight and her pleas for her husband to come back and now this, phone calls where the other person is silent on the other side. Carol’s beginning to become scared. It’s just so creepy, but Harrison finds himself siding with Joey’s poor wife, of course. When Carol is done talking about her life, she tells him goodbye without asking about his, and she hangs up. That was always the way in their married life too. Yeah, that prank phone call should have been his signal that she was going to be bad for him. There were a million other signals as well that he would have interpreted differently if she had stayed with him, that he did interpret differently while she was with him, but the basic, fundamental truth, he tells himself in this phone booth that has gone nearly opaque from the steam from his body heat and his breath, is that she flirted when he called her all those years ago. He laughed with her then when they figured out what had happened, but he doesn’t think that he’s going to be laughing about it tonight, and he’s fairly certain that he’s made his very last prank phone call.
Contributor’s Biographies James Babbs has published hundreds of poems over the last several years in print journals and online. He lives in the same small town where he grew up. He works for the government but doesn’t like to talk about it. He has a cherry tree and two grapevines in his back yard and several pesky rabbits. His books are available from www.xlibris.com, www.lulu.com & www.interiornoisepress.com. (22) Stella Beratlis lives and writes in Modesto, California. Her work has appeared in Song of the San Joaquin, Snail Mail Review, Penumbra, Quercus Review, and the anthology The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press). She is co-editor of More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Press). She teaches English at Modesto Junior College. (12) Caleb Bouchard has just recently finished compiling poems for his second chapbook tentatively titled Cigarettes & Cell Phones. He lives in Acworth, Georgia, where he goes to school and listens to a lot of Morrissey. He writes more about himself at www.somethingofsignificance.tumblr.com. (37) John Brantingham has had hundreds of poems and stories published in the United States and the United. He is the fiction editor in charge of novellas at the newly formed Spout Hill Press and one of two fiction editors at the Chiron Review. His first poetry collection East of Los Angeles is published by Anaphora Literary Press, and Let Us All Pray Now to Our Own Strange Gods is forthcoming from World Parade Books. He teaches composition and creative writing at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. (52) Ned Dougherty is a teacher, bartender and poet living in Taos, NM. His work has been published by several small presses across
the West and in various corners of the Internet. He is an active participant in the Taos poetry scene hosting events, performing at readings and cultivating the youth voice. (26) Amanda England is a writer living in Western Maryland. She has had work published most recently in The Orange Room Review, The Legendary, The New Plains Review, The Camroc Press Review, and The Foundling Review. When not writing, she serves on The Hedge Apple reading committee and moderates a peer critique group. Read more about her work at http://lazywritersguidetoprocrastination.blogspot.com. (16) Gerald Fleming's latest book is Night of Pure Breathing: Prose Poems from Hanging Loose Press in New York. "The Extraordinary Accordionist" is from a book of longer prose poems, The Choreographer, to be published by Sixteen Rivers Press next spring. He taught in the San Francisco public schools for thirtyseven years. (39) Nancy Flynn hails from the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania. She attended Oberlin College, Cornell University, and has a Creative Writing M.A. from SUNY/Binghamton. Her writing’s received the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and an Oregon Literary Fellowship; her second poetry chapbook, Eternity a Coal’s Throw, will be published by Burning River in 2012. A former university administrator, she now writes creatively and edits carefully from a sea-green house (according to Crayola) near Alberta Park in Portland, Oregon. More about her writing and publications at www.nancyflynn.com. (10) Carrie Gendle is an aspiring English professor and author from Modesto, CA. She has been writing since the age of five. Several of her poems have been published in the literature and art journal The Gendle Family Refrigerator. The "AWESOME!" magnet holds her works on, which is kind of a big deal. (14)
Jennifer Hamilton is a teacher of English and Literature at Modesto Junior College. She earned her Master of Letters and PhD from University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and she has published both academic and creative writing. Her poems have been included in Jan ’10 issue of Stanislaus County Connections, Collisions II, Collisions III; she co-authored a book of poetry and photography entitled Origami Ideas. She was founding editor and sponsor of Blackberry Winter (a creative writing journal at Rochester College, 4 editions). Her poetry has been on exhibit in galleries in upstate New York and Modesto, CA. (24) David James' second book, She Dances Like Mussolini, won the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award for poetry. More than twenty of his one-act plays have been produced from New York to California. He teaches for Oakland Community College. (9) Jennifer Lagier’s five books are Coyote Dream Cantos (Iota Press, 1992), Where We Grew Up (Small Poetry Press, 1999), SecondClass Citizen (Voices in Italian Americana Folio Series, 2000), The Mangia Syndrome (Pudding House Publications, 2004), and Fishing for Portents (Pudding House Publications, 2008). She is a college instructor/librarian. (29) Ken Letko’s poems have appeared in three chapbooks as well as in a number of anthologies and magazines, including Ale House, Bloodroot, Dos Passos Review, Natural Bridge, Poem, and Rattle. The North American Review nominated his poem “Mannequin with Teeth” for a Pushcart Prize. In January 2012 Longhouse Press of Guilford, VT published seventeen of his poems in a pamphlet titled Forgotten Inventors. (20) Gerald Locklin is now a professor emeritus of English at Cal State, Long Beach, where he has taught since 1965. Information on his books is available at www.geraldlocklin.org and a Fan Facebook is also maintained for him at www.facebook.com/geraldlocklin and
his email address is glocklin@csulb.edu. He is a friend and great fan of Gerald Haslam, whom he considers the greatest prose writer of his generation. (13) Ray McGinnis is author of Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry. He has studied at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Banff, Alberta, Canada. He teaches writing workshops both in his home town of Vancouver, British Columbia, and on writing workshop tours across North America. At his Website, www.writetotheheart.com, is information about poetry and nature adventure retreats in Hawaii and other events planned for 2012. He is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Institute for Poetic Medicine, based in Mountain View, California. (23) Pearse Murray, a native of Dublin, Ireland, lives in Upstate New York. He has had several poems published in a variety of anthologies and in on-line and print magazines. He was recently one of the award winners in the short story series The Lonely Voice sponsored by the Irish Writers Centre. (34) Anthony Orona is a poet from Diamond Bar, California, just outside of Los Angeles. He has been writing for a few years now and has been published in The Chiron Review and Beatlick News. He is currently going through college and is pursuing a career in writing and teaching. (11) Robert L. Penick says: "When Mike Smith died, everyone noticed. His obituary was posted in the bar on my block. People really cared about the guy. When he passed, we didn't pour one out for him. We drank one down." (21) Charles Rammelkamp’s collection involving missionaries in a leper colony in Vietnam during the war entitled Fusen Bakudan will be published by Time Being Books in 2012. He edits an online
literary journal called The Potomac. http://thepotomacjournal.com/ (17) John J. Ronan is a poet and playwright. He has received national honors for his poetry and is a former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. From 2008 to 2010 he served as Poet Laureate for the city of Gloucester, MA., and in 2009 published a new book of poems, Marrowbone Lane, which was "Highly Recommended" by the Boston Authors Club. His comedy, The Yeats Game, under the direction of Kathy Richter, will have its New York premiere February 29, 2012, at The Producer's Club, 358 W. 44th St. theronan.org (30) Shelley Savren’s book, The Common Fire, was published by Red Hen Press in 2004. Her book, The Wild Shine of Oranges will be released by Tebot Bach Press in fall 2012. She holds an M.F.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles, and her work is widely published in literary magazines, including Solo, Rattle, and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Ventura, California and is a full-time English Professor at Oxnard College. www.shelleysavren.com (18) Jared Smith's Complete Collected Poems: 1971-2011 is forthcoming this spring from NYQ Books in both hard- and softcover. He has 9 previous volumes, and his poems, essays, and literary commentary have appeared in hundreds of journals in the U.S., Europe, and China. (36) Alan Steinberg has published fiction (Cry of the Leopard, St. Martin’s Press), poetry (Fathering, Sarasota Poetry press), and drama (The Road to Corinth, Players Press). (46) Mark Thalman is the author of Catching the Limit, Fairweather Books (2009). His work has appeared in Carolina Quarterly, CutBank, Pedestal Magazine, and Verse Daily among others. He is the editor of poetry.us.com. For more information please visit markthalman.com. (35)
Gary Thomas is a charter member of the Central Valley writing group known as Licensed Fools. He has been published in such journals as Penumbra, California English, CLiPs, ZamBomba, TalkArts, In the Grove, hardpan, and Snail Mail Review, and he knows himself lucky to be included in the poetry anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. (31) Angela Lam Turpin is the author of the chick lit novels, Legs and Out Of Balance, and the paranormal thriller, Blood Moon Rising. She has been writing professionally for over 20 years. In her next lifetime, she would like to get as much sleep as possible. (42) Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow, is Distinguished Professor of English and Poet-inResidence at Kennedy-King College. Glacier Fire, her most recent book, won the Word Press Poetry Prize. Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein published her poem “Walking under Night Sky” in his cassette “Bread & Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from Their Works.” (28) Zac Walsh is contributing editor of the Arroyo Literary Review. He won the 2009 Robert V. Williams Award for Fiction and his work has been published by Cimarron Review, Alligator Juniper, The Platte Valley Review, Specter Magazine, Gulf Stream, Big Lucks, The DuPage Valley Review, The Whistling Fire, Thirty-First Bird Review, Occam’s Razor, and ZAUM. He teaches English at Chabot College in Hayward, Ca. (32) Barrett Warner raises horses at his farm in Maryland's Gunpowder watershed. His poems have been published in California Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Natural Bridge, and Comstock Review. New work will also appear in Freshwater and Quarter After Eight. His chapbook Til I'm Blue in the Face was published by Tropos Press. (27)
Gillian Wegener has had poetry published or forthcoming in In Posse, Sow’s Ear Review, Packinghouse Review, Snail Mail Review, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and her first fulllength collection of poetry, The Opposite of Clairvoyance was published in 2008 by Sixteen Rivers Press. A resident of Modesto, she coordinates and hosts the Second Tuesday Reading Series, and this year co-edited the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press). (15) Nathan Whiting, as dancer and a choreographer, has been part of pieces which blur the stage and audience. His poetry has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Presa, The Hawaii Review, Best American Poetry, and other publications. (33) R. Yurman has been committing poetry for more than 55 years despite numerous and unending cease and desist orders. Now aided and abetted by grandson Jacob, a glutton for language just turned 4, he continues to dance and sing his way through this often dismal world. This poem marks his third appearance in Snail Mail Review. (25)
Snail Mail Review Art Submissions The magazine logo is the snail with the mustache, monocle, top hat, and stamp on its back. Include this in your art submission for the front cover. Note that all artwork has to be in black and white. Also remember to draw dark enough so that it will actually show up when copied. Please submit all pictures by e-mail to snailmailreview@gmail.com in jpeg format. The picture should fit a 5 ½ inch by 8 ½ inch page size. If you draw a picture larger than this, make sure it can be seen clearly when shrunken.
Snail Logo:
Your art submission should include the following:
Cover Art Poetry Pic Short Story Pic End Comic Short Bio
The guidelines are as follows:
Snail Mail Review
Poetry
A Contemporary Literary Journal With
Draw your clever artwork here. It must allude to poetry and can include the snail logo.
Your Artwork Here with Snail Logo Short Fiction Draw your clever artwork here. It must allude to short fiction and may include the snail logo if preferred.
End Comic The end comic must have six frames and should include the snail logo. The comic can be about anything as long as it is appropriate.
Past Contributors Sam Pierstorff Lillian Vallee Ruth Moon Kempher Connie Post Cleo Griffith Diana M. Raab Paul Hostovsky Ed Bearden Burlee Vang