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daniel donaghy
TUG-OF-WAR chad willenborg
GOON jenna clark embrey
MOLESKIN author profile
ADAM REX
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c o n t e n t s ART 3 F is For Fox by Kristen Solecki. Kristen is a senior illustration major at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her work is inspired by her love of books, collage, costume, and paint.
CONTENTS
10 Smeared Pages With Hope by Kristen Solecki. (See Bio Above)
FEATURES 3 Tug-of-War (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Donaghy 10 Goon (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chad Willenborg 18 Moleskin (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jenna Clark Embrey 19 Quickpicks
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12 Storm by Kathleen Montrey. Kathleen has been drawing and painting since she was a child, growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She currently resides in South Philadelphia.
11 Sunflowers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Eileen Moeller 13 Highlights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Bill Connolly 16 Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jason Jones 20 Father’s Gluepot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nick Ripatrazone
14 Main Street in Manayunk by Pauline Braun. Pauline began painting FineArts about ten years ago while raising her children. She is currently studying Fine-Arts at Montgomery Community College, and is a member of the Manayunk Art Center. www.paulinebraun.com.
LOCAL AUTHOR PROFILE 17 Avalon Porch by Kathleen Montrey. (See Bio Above)
16 Adam Rex
PHILADELPHIASTORIES.ORG Publisher/Fiction Editor Carla Spataro Publisher/Managing Editor Christine Weiser Poetry Editor Conrad Weiser Guest Poetry Editor Pat Green Essay Editor Matt Jordan Associate Fiction Editor Marc Schuster
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Director of Development Sharon Sood Production Manager Derek Carnegie Web Design Walt Maguire
Editorial Board Christine Cavalier, poetry Liz Dolan, poetry Holly Dolan, fiction Sandy Farnan, non-fiction Teresa FitzPatrick, fiction Marylou Fusco, fiction Denise Gess, fiction Pat Green, poetry Joanne Green, fiction Fran Grote, fiction Diane Guarnieri, poetry Cecily Kellogg, poetry Nathan Long, fiction Walt Maguire, fiction Patricia Mastricolo, fiction George McDermott, poetry Harriet Levin Millan, poetry Elizabeth Mosier, fiction Julie Odell, fiction Ryan Romine, fiction Marc Schuster, fiction John Shea, poetry & non-fiction Janice Wilson Stridick, fiction Michelle Wittle, fiction
20 Swirly by Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon. (See Bio Above)
planning & development board Rebeca Barroso Blythe Boyer Michelle Wittle Aimee LaBrie Autumn Konopka Cover Art: Lilacs by Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon. Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon is an artist living and working in the Philadelphia area. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College, a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and also graduated from the International School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy. Her current collection features digital works created by taking a photograph, modifying it digitally, printing it, painting/drawing on it, scanning it back in to the computer and continuing the process.
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TUG-OF-WAR fter he hit our last halfie onto the roof of Perlstein’s Glass, Frankie Wnek stepped over the broomstick we used for a bat and shimmied up a drainpipe to get it. Frankie was my age, fourteen. Since I was pitching and gave up the home run, I was supposed to go, but when he said don’t worry about it, I wasn’t going to argue. Who knew when that pipe was going to snap away from the wall? Who knew that two older kids named Chickenhead and Toot were already up there, just for the hell of it, waiting to take turns punching whoever came up, then grab his ankles and swing him back and forth over the ledge? Perlstein’s was a four-story building, so I had to look straight up to see what was going on, and I had to squint hard against the sun, which was just then breaking through a stretch of gray clouds. Frankie was screaming, of course, that goes without saying, and he kept trying to bend himself toward the roof like he was doing crunches, like I would have done, if I’d been the one up there. He could only get so far, though, before he dropped again and writhed like a snake, or like Houdini in those old black-and-white movies, hands clenched behind his knees. Frankie had long, straight black hair that hung a good foot below his head and his cheeks were watermelon red and puffy. Chickenhead and Toot laughed with their mouths wide open, looking at each other, then down at Frankie, then at the gathering crowd. They laughed even harder when Frankie pissed himself and the piss ran down his bare chest to his face.
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F is For Fox by Kristen Solecki © 2008 “Oh my God!” I could hear one of them yell. “Holy fucking shit!” Frankie turned his head to one side and shouted for someone to get his mom, who was a bartender at Felix’s, and after he did, about eight people took off to go get her. When something like that happens, you do the first thing that makes sense or you just stand there and do nothing. It’s one
way or the other––I learned that a long time ago––and you don’t know until you’re in the middle of something like that which way you’ll go. You might yell for Chickenhead and Toot to pull Frankie up or run to get Frankie’s mom or go home and call the cops or just stand there watching the moment unfold like it’s on TV, like I did.
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t u g - o f - w a r One thing you don’t do is look away. That’s against human nature. You can try to turn from the stuff you don’t want to see, but your mind will force you to look again, the same way you’d have to turn and face the train you knew was about to run you down. It’s not that I didn’t want to do something. I did. Frankie was my friend since fifth grade and we hung out together just about every day. It’s just that I was more scared watching Frankie hang there than any time my father went to town on my mother, which is saying a lot. I was afraid the guys swinging Frankie would swing me next. Put yourself in my shoes. You’re fourteen and don’t know what you’d do even if you could do something. Maybe you talk to someone beside you. Maybe you don’t or can’t. Maybe you look around for your mother, even though she won’t be home for hours yet, and your father, who you just know is going to show up soon
enough to put his two cents in. No matter what, you end up doing something with your hands. You clasp your fingers together behind your neck or across your forehead, or you squeeze them into fists and bury them into your crossed arms, which is what I did. Even that late in the year, I had a T-shirt on, and after we stopped playing I got cold. I watched from our sidewalk across the street, leaning without thinking about it into the front fender of old man Dangler’s shiny blue Charger. It all happened so fast––two minutes, maybe three––but even now it’s still happening. Frankie is hanging there four years before he enlists in the Army, launches rockets in Kuwait, then comes home with headaches that won’t let up and crisped bodies in his dreams that want nothing to do with war. Chickenhead and Toot are laughing together two years before they disappear separately,
Chickenhead from a baseball bat outside the Aramingo Diner, Toot from a heroin overdose in the back bedroom of his sister’s house. Frankie’s mom is limping up Jasper Street before she moved away without telling anyone, her voice a shrill string of exclamations, hands over her head as if she could pluck Frankie like a stray balloon. Then there was my father, who had followed her out of the bar, quiet as he always was, running a black pocket comb through his greasy blond hair as he walked. A month later, already thinning from the cancer that would kill him before spring, he’d call me from my room one night to sit with him at the glass dinner table. He’d have his tall can of Schaefer’s and tiny drinking glass, and he’d ask me through a Pall Mall haze if I hated him. It was the day of Halloween, and Perlstein’s Glass was at the intersection of Huntington and Jasper Streets in
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS We’ve had a crazy spring! People really got into our first online auction (think eBay, but all the money goes to a good cause), and the Spring Fling at the American Swedish Historical Museum in South Philadelphia was a blast (if you haven’t yet discovered this very cool destination, you have to check it out). We didn’t raise quite as much money as we do with the Silent Auction, but at one point we looked at each other and realized we were actually having fun! We’re also learning a lot preparing for the release of our first title, Broad Street, from our new books division, PS Books (psbookspublishing.org). The book publishing world is a whole different animal than magazine publishing, and we’re lucky to have friends who know what they’re doing to offer their advice as we move along. PS Books aims to distinguish itself from other boutique publishers by offering an edgy blend of commercial and literary fiction and creative non-fiction by regional writers, and we will distribute nationally. All book sales proceeds will go directly toward supporting the magazine. If you want to read more of the behind-the-scenes of putting out a lit mag and launching a new book press, or if you’re looking for great writing tips, or maybe just some juicy lit gossip, check out our new blog: http://philadelphiastories.wordpress.com/ We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events. Get all the details on our site: www.PhiladelphiaStories.org. 4
Thanks! Carla Spataro and Christine Weiser Publishers
Beretta76 at Spring Fling; photo by Thomas Johnson
www.philadelphiastories.org
d a n i e l Kensington, a nothing neighborhood in North Philly once alive with mill work and railroad traffic, but now stifled by El track shadows and the hulking skeletons of burned-out factory buildings. The leaves on the few trees were gone for the year with all of the birds except for the pigeons that walked the roof’s ledge on either side of Frankie, whose mom, despite her bad foot, got to the corner fast. “Frankie!” she yelled. “What the hell are you two doing? Pull him up. Frankie!” “Relax,” Chickenhead hollered down. Bob Harv gave Chickenhead his nickname because of his skinny neck and early baldness. “We’re just messing around. Right, Frankie?” But Frankie didn’t say anything. He was crying hard and trying to keep his head even with the horizon. His head must have throbbing. “Pull him up now or so help me God, I’ll kill you both,” Frankie’s mom said.
Then my dad chimed in. “Let’s go, assholes. Move it. Then get down here so I can beat some sense into you sons of bitches.” He looked over his shoulder after he spoke and saw me standing across the street. “Hey, Davey,” he shouted. “Get over here.” He kept staring at me until I started around the car toward him. I didn’t like where all of this was headed, I’ll tell you that. Even before I reached my dad, I could smell the stale Schaefer’s on his breath and the Pall Mall smoke that stunk up his clothes. I could see him already, wringing his fists in Perlstein’s back alley, ready to be a tough guy like it’s Friday night outside Felix’s and he just called someone into the street because he didn’t like their look or their tone. I could picture the ring of neighbors, some cheering, some with crossed arms, in a side lot few cops came through. And I could see what I guess he couldn’t: there were two of them, and they would either
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gang up against him or run right past, laughing at how drunk and slow and stupid he was. He was going to get killed some day, my mother always told him. “Oh Jesus Christ,” said Toot, who got his nickname from blowing trumpet sounds into his thumb while getting stoned with Mikey K., Vic Turner, and those guys outside Griffin’s Deli. “Fucking cry baby.” With that, Toot started to pull Frankie up without telling Chickenhead, holding Frankie’s ankle with one hand while grabbing first the back of Frankie’s knee, then his wrist, with the other. Frankie’s weight shifted fast, and his ankle slipped so easily from Chickenhead’s hands it’s amazing he hadn’t already fallen. Frankie swung like a pendulum into the wall, face first, and now Toot had Frankie all by himself. Toot had him pinned against the building, underneath the stone ledge. You could see he wouldn’t have him for long,
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t u g - o f - w a r though, and you could hear it, too. Underneath Frankie screaming was Toot straining and grunting. “Fuck,” Toot pushed out every few breaths. “Fuck, stay still, man.” Some people on the street started rushing back toward the sidewalk. Many were crying, and with any quick move
one way or the other, you could hear the whole crowd suck in a breath. Now Toot was a big dude––strong as hell, about 6’2” and 250 pounds––so Frankie’s lucky Toot had him and not Chickenhead, who was about as scrawny as Old Lady Lewis, who held her Yorkie against her shoulder as she looked up from her spot
Reading Her Skull By Natalie Ford because it’s close now under her thrust pale skin, catching every stranger’s eye before they refocus and rush to greet us passing in the street even when daylight drops and she pulls on a knit cap, you can tell it’s close still, pressing up hard under the thin textured yarn and bone shapes her eyes now they’re shorn – even the dark brows that made her grave over books, easy to spot in pictures, gone she laughs nearing the house, saying she believes now in phrenology, in that old science of self: Here, character Here, temperament
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while, walking still closer by her side, I read it differently, silently: Here, destiny Natalie Ford is originally from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She has recently returned to Bucks County after completing a PhD in Victorian literature and psychology at the University of York, England. Ford’s poetry has appeared in national and international journals.
next to three other women her age, which would have been around my grandparents’ age if any of them had lived that long. They all wore white Skippy tennis sneakers and shirts with pictures of their dogs. “Where the fuck are the cops?” someone asked, which is what we were all wondering. And I was thinking about the bucket truck they’d need to get Frankie down, along with Chickenhead and Toot, and about the ambulance you could already imagine on the sidewalk, with some EMT giving Frankie the onceover inside the small van awash in yellow light. Someone said something about getting mattresses, and then people were rushing again, including my father this time. “Come on, Davey,” he said, pushing me toward the house. It was like I’d been stung by something, though. My legs wouldn’t move. They had no strength in them, no feeling whatsoever. I remember looking up at my father and saying “I can’t” before he ran into our house without me. “Hang on, baby,” Frankie’s mother called up. “Help’s coming.” She was holding her hands up near her mouth and squeezing the fingers of her right hand inside the fist of the left. Chickenhead reached across Toot to grab Frankie’s other arm and foot, but they hung too far down the wall, so he grabbed the arm that Toot already had and pulled. I don’t know how Frankie’s arm didn’t snap off or come out of its socket, but Chickenhead and Toot were able to lift that arm enough to make the other arm swing around, and when it did, on the third or fourth try, Frankie grabbed onto the ledge and propped his legs stiff against the wall. The three of them were working together now, with Frankie’s feet flush against the bricks like he was about to run up it and Toot tilted back at a forty-five degree angle, like he was anchoring a tug-of-war, until Chickenhead pulled so hard he almost threw himself past Frankie and off the
d a n i e l roof. He lurched forward far enough for me to see his whole top hanging over the edge before something rocked him just as hard backward, and when it did, Frankie’s feet found enough traction to let him scale the few feet to the roof’s stone lip, when he slid his knee over and Chickenhead and Toot pulled him up. It was like the Phillies won the Series or something, let me tell you. Everyone clapping and jumping up and down. Frankie’s mom hugging everybody and saying, “Thank you, Jesus” to the sky, as if God had been the one to pull Frankie up. Right or wrong, that’s the version that spread around the neighborhood. Father Flatley said so at Mass the next Sunday and, for the next few months, people greeted Frankie on the street as Chosen One or, more often, Jesus. People who didn’t like Frankie from before cut him some slack, even if they teased him while they did it. “Stay off those roofs, Jesus,” Chickie Pell, who ran Griffin’s, said one afternoon. “You ain’t a bouncing ball.” My dad missed the whole thing fighting with a mattress in our doorway. He didn’t see Frankie go up, didn’t see all three of them sitting up there so close they could have been friends. He brought the mattress out anyway, just in case, and hollered up a few times for Chickenhead and Toot to jump before some dads tried to calm him down, holding their hands up to their shoulders, palms out, almost begging him, which he liked, I think, more than Frankie being safe. By the time the cops came, Chickenhead and Toot were gone. Frankie yelled long after the fact that they had run to the back of the roof, but he didn’t turn to look, which means they either shot down that drainpipe pretty damn fast or they jumped across the fivefoot alley to a line of row houses and disappeared inside an abandoned one. It took half an hour for a fire truck with a bucket to show and get Frankie back to
the street. It took the rest of that week and into the next one for my father to stop talking about what he would have done to Chickenhead and Toot, those bastards, if he had gotten his hands on them. Anything could have set him off, so my mother and I watched what we said and how we looked at him more than usual. We made sure the front door was unlocked when he came home from work and that there was a cold can of Schaefer’s just opened on the table. And in my room I rehearsed into my mirror what I’d do the next time his voice boomed at my mother. I bent into the football crouch he taught me and practiced throwing my shoulder like a punch. I pictured his hands sliding from my mother’s face or neck to try in vain to grab me as I charged. Every time I went over it in my head, my mother got away clean, my shoulder drove through, not into, him, just like he’d taught me, and took his sorry ass to the ground.
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Daniel Donaghy's next collection of poems, Start with the Trouble, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in fall 2009. His first collection, Streetfighting, was published by BkMk Press in 2005 and named a Finalist for the 2006 Paterson Prize. His poems and stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, Image, and many other journals and have been featured on Poetry Daily and on the Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia and attended the High School for Engineering and Science before earning degrees from Kutztown University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester. He now lives in Connecticut.
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LOCAL AUTHOR PROFILE Adam Rex understands children. As both a writer and illustrator of children’s books, his work captures the imaginative world children love to inhabit. His characters are heroic kids in cowboy boots who face the world fearlessly, taking on aliens and rambunctious zoo animals. His characters also include a lumbering, strangely human Frankenstein and assorted other monsters who somehow don’t seem so scary in the pages of his books. Kirkus heartily praises one of his books, saying, “As if more proof were needed that Adam Rex has a strange and goofy mind, here’s a visit to a meta-fictional zoo with some uncommonly crafty residents…Rex gives the whole episode a surreal, expect-anything feel…[A] gleefully postmodern romp” and Publisher’s Weekly classifies his illustrations as “oil paintings [that] hearken to 19th Century Barnum ads—or 1960’s counterculture poster art—in Rex’s offbeat tale.” Most recently, his novel, The True Meaning of Smekday was nominated alongside Harry Potter for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Despite his success in the highly competitive market of children’s book, Rex’s feet remain firmly planted on planet Earth. Are you more invested in writing or drawing? They’re both just different aspects of storytelling to me, so they’re somewhat intertwined. Of course, I illustrate books that I haven’t written from time to time, and I like the idea of writing something that I don’t go on to illustrate. How did you get connected with Cricket Magazine, Spider Magazine, and Amazing Stories? I really just did illustration work for these magazines. I never submitted any writing to them, apart from one poem that was published in Cricket. That was the first of a number of monster poems I’ve written, and I didn’t submit any more after deciding that I was more interested in seeing them collected in a book. That book became Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. 8
What were your favorite books as a kid and did they influence your approach to writing and illustrating? One of my favorites was certainly The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and I think its influence is pretty obvious in my own The True Meaning of Smekday. I’m beginning to think one of the greatest influences on the illustration
By Aimee LaBrie
work I do now is actually Chuck Jones. When I began to concentrate more on humorous illustration, I found that, in my mind, humor and illustration intersected squarely in the center of animated shorts like The Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera, Doc? What advice do you have in terms of the creative process for those of us struggling to get something on the page or canvas? I think I’m always trying to trick myself into thinking I’ve started already, so that I feel more comfortable making marks. In both illustrating and writing, that seems to be a matter of making a lot of careless messes at first, and giving myself permission to do badly, or to create something that may never develop or see the light of day. Do you draw and paint on a regular basis or just when you’re inspired (or have a deadline)? I suppose I only draw and paint when I’m inspired or have a deadline, but that covers pretty much every hour of every day. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a serious deadline. I do miss drawing and painting for the sheer pleasure of it–just sitting in cafes, sketching people, exploring ideas–I haven’t been able to do that in years. What are the differences between children’s illustration and fantasy art? I’m tempted to say there aren’t any, though I’m not sure anybody would believe me. Mostly it’s just a matter of content–most fantasy art is aimed at an early teen to adult audience. Fantasy lends itself to complex compositions, while art for younger audiences tends to work better when the images are a little more straightforward. Fantasy art also tends toward hyper-detailed minutiae and, ironically, fairly traditional realism–anything to help sell the authenticity of the imagined world. It’s the difference between an anatomically plausible dragon designed from the study of bats and snakes and lizards with hundreds of finely rendered, battle-scarred scales on the one side, and, on the other, Puff the Magic Dragon. What are you currently working on? I’m finishing the illustrations for a book in which a boy is given a pet blue whale as a punishment. I didn’t write that one, so I can honestly say it’s hilarious. And I’m supposedly writing my second novel. You mention on your website that you have two huge, gigantic cats. What are their names and occupations? The youngest is Dr. Simon Dicker. He’s not a medical doctor, obviously–he’s an astrophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania. Little Nemo is our oldest. She’s a stay-at-home-cat.
To view Rex’s work, visit adamrex.com.
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GOON round the corner he come all panting and wobble-eyed with his little sticks kicking out to the sides, and he slipped because the grass was wet. One of his Velcro shoes flew off and knocked into the siding. He got himself together, picked up his shoe, and bounced inside the house. Willard. I told Angela he’s over-sugared. The older one, Brian, come sprinting across the yard. “Will!” he’s hollering. “Will!” He dropped his old bat as he flew past me, and the screen door slapped shut, and then everything was quiet again. I went over to the wall and turned the water off. I’d moved in a couple months earlier. Angela and I talked about it for a few weeks, and I wasn’t hot on it at first, but she was ready to take a chance again, she said. She said her boys could use someone, too. Okay, I said. When this rental on Blue Ferry Road come available, I packed my stuff and their stuff and moved us all out here. I got to know the boys pretty well pretty fast. Brian’s happy to have anybody throw a ball at him. He’s one of those kids that, if they don’t have a catch partner, you always see staggering around the yard, chucking balls up in the air to themself. He’ll do pretty much what you tell him to. Will, he’s got more of an artistic side. He’ll sit for hours drawing bloodied-up versions of the cartoons he watches, wearing out felt tip markers to the point he’s got to lick them to keep them going. His tongue, it’ll be purple or green whenever he’s explaining his stories to you. They run for pages, and he only ever draws on one side, which is a waste, I said, but he’d throw a fit if you made him save on paper. I could hear thuds. The two of them
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Smeared Pages With Hope by Kristen Solecki © 2008 were talking in their bedroom. The light fixture in the hall was rattling. “Y’all quit dribbling in the house!” I called. “You heard me now, Brian!” When I come in, Brian looked up and give me a shrug. He didn’t have the ball, so I looked to the other side of the room, and, what it was was, Will was standing against the wall, knocking his old head against the sheetrock, whump, whump, whump. Brian and I stood between their
twin beds watching him go at it. “Way too much sugar,” I said. Brian stared. “Geeze.” Whump. “Quit that now,” I said. “You’re going to get a-“ Whump. “Melonhead.” I took his shoulder and set him back on the bed. He was wearing the blue shirt with the old messy looking monster on it he liked. Brian made to go.
g o o n “Hang on a minute, Tex. Stay put.” “Why?” “Because I said.” “Are you still washing the truck?” “What?” “Are you . . .” he said, like I was an idiot, “still washing the truck?” “Just stay here,” I told him. “Let me go wash my hands first.” We looked at them. They were pretty sticky. “What the hell you been doing? Hurry up.” Will had pulled his knees up to his chin and was rocking back and forth on his bedspread. He hooked his thumbs into the neck of his shirt and wiped at his nose so he looked like a bandit. “You’re an odd one, Mr. Will,” I said. Brian come back in, drying his hands on his basketball shorts. They’d been up to something. “Alright . . .” I sat down on the bed. I had to ask.
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A rusty barbed wire fence run through the woods behind the house. It had been there a long time, and the trees had grown around the wire in places. Parts of it were all swallowed up in bark. We picked our way over logs and through the trees, until Brian said, “Here!” and he ducked under the fence and began to pass through. Will lollygagged behind us. He swerved through the leaves like his compass was loose, and when I called his name, he bumped off a tree, made some googly sound effect, then fell down flat, spazzing with his arms out. “Ow, mother!” Brian pulled his jersey off a barb. He took a step back on the other side. “Come on,” he said. “It’s up the hill!” “Let’s go, Willard.” I raised the middle wire. “Get through here now.” He didn’t want to, but I waited, and so he pushed himself up and slipped under. The two of them run up the cowpath into the clearing, and for a second I
Sunflowers By Eileen Moeller Vincent understood them: the way they yield their darkling faces to the sun, aflame for its arcing shimmer dance across the day’s mysterious expanse, how big they are, how weighty, over grown, the way they lean together in the fields, conspiring to hold each other up, creak and groan as their heads reach critical mass, aswarm with too much seed. He gathered them in vases, painted their petaled fall from grace, bunched together, shy, askew and awkward, out of place, caught their surprise at being indoors, the droop and shrug of leaves, the way they suddenly dropped, losing all of their color. Too painful to paint them riotous at the roadside in full bloom: signs of what we were before the crows moved in to feed. Eileen Moeller has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including Feminist Studies, Paterson Literary Review, Caprice, Blue Fifth Review, and in anthologies. A website manuscript: Body in Transit, appears at www.skinnycatdesign.co.uk/eileen/index2.html
thought about the way all kids run. As I come out of the trees, it was like being in the country. Where Angela’s and I were living was kind of the outer belt of suburbs, and a lot of folks who lived here drove across the river and into the city for work. There were gas pumps not more than three hundred yards away, but you couldn’t see them. You couldn’t see any manmade stuff at all here. All you could see was the fence running around the field, and then the hills, and the grass, and the trees, and that’s it. No wires in the sky. It was August, a couple weeks before school. They run through the shadow of a cloud, and I followed them up the empty hill. They’d told me they’d found something dead.
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Nights, Angela would go to bed before me so she’d be asleep by when I got there, which, I was learning, was how she preferred it. For a long while, I worked only second shifts with the ovens—we’re the largest processor of canned pet food in the region—and a few of us would always go out after, and I’d be home around one or so. But then they moved me to doing a lot of thirds, emptying tankers of liquid horse meat. I’d have a drink in the kitchen before bed, and when I lay beside her, I tried to sleep, though I’d usually be too wound up with things I wanted to ask her, like where she was all day when she said she only had meetings in the morning. Traffic was always bad, she said. The sun would come up, and we’d go through it all over, and as I lay there, I knew the field mice that chewed holes in my clothes were creeping around, under the boxspring—maybe even in it—or climbing through her shoes in the closet. The traffic racing on the highway was sometimes enough to keep me from thinking too much on them. People use that road to skip the stoplights out of town. They travel too fast on it, and along the shoulder you’ll find possum and deer that didn’t get out of the way.
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Storm by Kathleen Montrey © 2008
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Angela worried the kids would play too close to the ditch or skateboard too far down the asphalt drive. She told me over and over it wasn’t a good home for kids. She didn’t like it out here. She wanted to find, eventually, a better place to live, even if it would be a little smaller, like their apartment before. The exterminator told us to get a cat, so we did, but it was a prowler, and one night come home with a gash in its chest. Even in the house, it took two days to catch it and take it to the vet. I had to put the medicine on because Angela wouldn’t, it gave her the willies. Finally one night I come in, it hopped off the counter and out the screendoor and we never saw it again. It bothered Will the most. He used to put paper helmets on the thing. Hero. Hero never caught one mouse I knew of. The headlights would set the window’s shadow crawling across the ceiling, and I remember thinking what might have put the hole in that cat’s chest like that? A claw, maybe. Or teeth. I pressed my fingers on the tattoo behind her shoulder and felt her lungs fill. I rubbed the rose like I rubbed the salve on the stitches. Maybe a barbed wire fence had done it, or some old boy’s rake.
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It was a young red Hereford, and it was lying on its side in the grass. The
boys were standing over it. The smell of animal was strong in the heat, and I slowed as I got nearer, and then my stomach just dropped to my hipbones. I felt dizzy. Sticks were poking out of the little cow’s nostrils and mouth—a whole mess of them. Its white face was all stuffed up with them and made it look like some old broom. I hadn’t ever seen anything dead that way before. Brian studied me. He tried to laugh. “It was dead,” he said. I pushed him over. Will fell to the ground, too, on his own, and a second later he was crying. “What were you guys thinking? This is stupid.” Will stopped just long enough to see how his brother would answer. When Brian didn’t, Will started crying again. He rolled in the grass. “Do you hear me?” I said. “Knock it off, Willard. Get up.” I squatted down next to it and looked at the sticks jammed up in there. “You a part of this, too?” I asked Will. It was something else. “Both of you, get these sticks out of it, right now.” I stepped back so they could move in. They began to pull them out of its face one at a time. They seemed to know just how. Will, he dangled a long twig in front of his eyes for a sec. Brian was working faster.
“Did you all think it would bite you or something? Huh?” Will dropped the stick. “It bit Zach. On his fingers.” His mouth hung open. Brian glared at him vicious. He turned away. “You mean it wasn’t dead?” I said. “Brian?” He stayed crouched there, wiping a slimy stick in the grass. “Was it or wasn’t it?” “Not at first,” Will said.
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Zach lived across the highway and around the corner from us. I could hear the TV on, but no one come to the door, so I knocked again, harder. “Zach!” “PlayStation,” Brian said. Their crummy dog started barking. I poked my head in the door and called again, and the TV snapped off, and so I went in after him. The dog was jumping all under my feet. I pushed it away with my boot. It was the first time I’d ever been in their place. Cereal bowls on the kitchen table, a cracker box on the floor with crackers all over. They were keeping the fridge closed with masking tape. I caught fat Zach by the shirt as he tried to squeeze out the sliding door, and I hauled him around, and we pulled the screen off its track. I stepped on the damn dog again, and it yelped and went
g o o n flat then scurried across the dirty linoleum to I don’t know where. I whirled Zach onto the taped-up couch. It let out a slow hiss as he sank in it. “You stretched out my shirt!” he said. The dog was still yipping. “Yeah, hell, and I broke the door, too. Will!” I lifted the screen and got the wheels back in the groove. “Goddamn it. Brian! Get in here.” They come in slow. Will raised a hand. “Hi, Zach.” He plopped down on the couch, wiggled a sec, then pulled the black remote out from under him. He held it in his hands like he’d never seen one before. “No. Put it down,” I told him. “What?” “Just put it down,” I said. “Y’all get off my property,” Zach told us. “You shut up a minute. Sit on the couch there, too, Brian.” Three blind monkeys they looked like. They needed a leader, but there wasn’t any. “Somebody better start saying something,” I said. “Now.” Zach got nervous. Angela’s wouldn’t look at him. “Stupid cow was eating my pop tart,” he said. Will’s eyes lit up. “You were feeding it, Zach. Remember?” “Remember,” I said. “You better remember.” “Not all of it! I wasn’t,” Zach said. “I wasn’t. It just started-“ “So we had to stop it,” Brian explained. “It wouldn’t stop eating Zach’s food,” Will cried. He got to his feet, not even knowing he was doing it. “Sit down. And stay sat down.” “You seen it,” Zach said to the boys. Brian was real calm. “That’s the way it happened, Tim.” He’d get better at this as he got older. I tried to imagine how they brought it down. Chasing after it. The whole thing. “Regular heroes. Stopped a cow from eating a pop tart. How’d you think
to start putting the sticks in it?” They shrugged. “Huh? You guys aren’t even supposed to be in that pasture,” I said.
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They tailed me like dogs to the metal shed on our lot. The backyard was
damp, and the shed was situated in its lowest spot—it was always full of mosquitoes. I brushed a cobweb off my nose and grabbed the old shovel. “Ho, mother,” Brian smiled, rubbing his shoulder. “You gonna bury it, Tim?” I tossed the thing to him. He spun it
Highlights By Bill Connolly Of all the indiscreet behaviors that colored my college years, my deep drags of yellow highlighter those zebra stripes I painted across textbook pages may be my most peculiar disgrace. How hard it was to draw the line when drawing those lines. Once I had stretched that cautionary color like crime scene tape across chapters, inches led easily to yards until half of a story, most of an epic lay glistening from my indiscriminate, squeaky touch. Professors derided aimless effort and preached diligence while, headphones on, I rode my own neon yellow Zamboni machine, painting long bands of importance in their sacred texts. Those books, still on my shelves, have one lesson left to teach: sharpen my daily search for the heart of what matters. And so I will cap the marker of expedience and read my days deeply: I will notice that dot of yellow in the corner of my daughter’s eye when I’ve spoken too harshly, the beautiful yellow parentheses framing my wife’s mouth when she says something funny, and the furrow in my young son’s brow, its yellow crevice telling me that this word he cannot pronounce yet is, in his opinion, important. Bill Connolly is an administrator in the Woodstown-Pilesgrove Regional School District in Woodstown, NJ.
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Main Street in Manayunk by Pauline Braun © 2008 in his hands. “No,” I said. I let that sink in. We went back into the woods.
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None of them was very good. Will, he was about useless. Zach was probably the best because he was the heaviest, but he wasn’t into it. In little more than a half hour, they had this uneven ditch about four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep. “Shovel sucks,” Zach said. Will showed me his palm. “I got a splinter.” A horsefly settled just below the calf’s eye and sat there in the sun like it was waiting for a bus. “The hole’s not big enough yet,” I told them. “Look at it.” Zach held his arms out to get the width of the calf, then he tried to hold his measure as he moved his hands over the hole. “It’s goddamn close.” Brian snatched up the shovel. “Why we have to put it in the ground?” he
asked. “Won’t it just-“ “Because y’all killed it.” I looked around at them. “Aren’t you even embarrassed? I’d be. Or maybe you’d rather go over there, Brian, and tell the farmer y’all killed his calf.” “No.” “Huh? And for no reason,” I added. “It wasn’t just me.” Brian put the shovel on his shoulder and swung for the fence. “Get serious,” I said. “Tim, shouldn’t we tell the farmer anyway?” Will asked. The barn roof showed just over the hill. Zach wiped his nose. “Don’t forget it was eating my food. We said the reason.” I threw a stick at his head, but it missed. “That’s right,” Will remembered. “It was eating his pop tart.” “So I heard.” The sun was getting low. Brian was quiet. He tapped the dead Hereford soft-
ly with the shovel. “Dig,” I said. “Oh mother . . .”
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When we got back, Angela’s car was in the drive behind my truck. “Aw, hell, your mom’s home,” I said. It was a joke they never got. Zach walked home punching a cloud of gnats like he was hacking through some jungle, and the boys and I went inside. “Where have you been?” she wanted to know. “No note. No nothing.” They escaped for their room. “Where have you been?” I said. “We went out on a hike. Wash up!” I called to them. She faced me, waiting for something better. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” I squirted Lemon Joy on my hands and knocked the faucet on. I wanted to say things. She set two cans on the counter. I shut the water off.
g o o n “You want green beans,” she said, “or baked beans?”
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I don’t know, she and I had met in this strip mall bar I tried after work once because I was tired of the bullshit at the regular one. It was called Sidewinders. It was next to a Chinese take-out, and she was eating a rice thing with her cigarette going when I come in. Rum and ginger ale. I sat down next to her, and I asked the sleepy girl behind the counter for a Budweiser, which took her a whole five minutes to get it, open it, and set it on the little cardboard. The whole time I’m waiting, Angela’s stopped eating and is just staring at the side of my face—smoking at me—because I practically sat on her lunch when there’s a hundred open seats in the place. That’s my style. “I bet they call you Apeneck,” she said. “Who does?” “Somebody ought to.” I bought her a drink. Snoozin Susan brown bagged us a six, and we took it out to my truck. We drove out to the lake, to that parking lot behind the parking lot that had a chain up for a while, but the chain was down and I just pulled back where the weeds grew through the gravel and stopped beside this tall brush pile somebody cleared. The lake glittered through the trees. “You’re making me feel back in high school,” she said. “Sorry,” I said, and I cracked another can for her. I opened the crammed glovebox to get a napkin to wrap around the can, la-dee-dah. “Good lord,” she said. “Half Burger King’s stuffed in there.” I kissed her. “Apeneck,” she laughed, pulling at my hairs. “A-a-ape-ne-e-eck.” I laughed, too. No one had ever called me that before. She slid closer. “What did you do to your hands?” She kissed them. Ducks were quacking.
“Nothing,” I said. “Some bullshit.”
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When I come downstairs morning after the cow thing, Will was crosslegged in front of the TV. The volume was turned low, and he was sucking on a tube of Gogurt. “Morning, Mr. Will. How’d you sleep?” I had a headache. “You’re up early,” I tried again. “Can we go to the grave?” “The grave. No. I don’t want you guys in the pasture at all for a while. Why would you want to go to the grave?” I waggled my fingers at him. “To put flowers on it.” “I see. And where would you get flowers, Willard?” “At Walgreen’s they have some. Fake kind.” The nearest intersection was about a quarter mile down the highway, and there was a new little plaza there, built for neighborhoods creeping this way from town. So far, they had the gas station and a drugstore and a little pizza place, where I took them once, and a hair salon. Couple offices, maybe. One place had kung fu classes. Others had lease signs in the windows. “And what are you going to buy flowers with?” I asked. “Money. Duh.” I went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Duh. A fresh trail of mouse droppings run along the counter’s splashguard. During the night, I had come down for a drink of juice and found a mouse scrambling in the empty sink. It couldn’t get out. It reminded me of the kids with their boards at the skate park. I stood there half-awake, watching it scratch its way up the steel sides only to slide back down. Then I gripped the roll of paper towels and set to it with soft, quiet crushes. I barely slept at all. Will sang along with a commercial for some sort of crap. “Hey,” I called. He come to the doorway. “C’mere, buddy.” I took Angela’s
purse off the chair.
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Zach’s mom called and spilled the beans. Old Zach the Sack complained I made them dig—it give him blisters— and soon it all come out, and, presto, the bag calls Angela. “Why didn’t you tell me? “Why did you bury it? “Why wouldn’t you tell me?” She’s a strong arguer, Angela is. She gets energy from it, though I’m not sure about her reasoning sometimes. She’d gone on and on and ended her favorite way with, “End of story.” She called Information. The farmer was a Carlson or a Carlton, and as soon as she had the right number she called the old boy up. “I’ve got to go to work,” she told me. “You’re going to take care of this.” “Okay,” I said. “I thought I’d taken care of it yesterday.” “I know you do. I know you do . . . Hello,” she said. “Is this Mr. Carlson?” His mailbox was a half mile down the road from ours, the opposite way from the plaza, but then I had to drive my truck another quarter mile down his old gravel lane, which went around the foot of the pasture, and then up to his house and barn on the far slope. I drove slow. A new Chevy sat in the dirt drive. I got out and shut my door. The house had a cool, settled look to it, and the whole place, even outside, smelled like a basement. It might have been the weather. He was waiting just inside the screendoor, and he let me into the enclosed porch and stepped aside as the door eased shut against my back. In an instant, a dog was sniffing my boots. This happens regular to us who work the floor at the plant. I tried to shake it without overdoing it, but it growled and started sniffing and licking again. Carlson spoke to the dog then shut it in the kitchen. The porch was concrete and covered with a big round rug, and a pair of stuffed chairs faced each other, and a shelf of magazines and newspapers. A
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chain of pop can tabs hung from an empty birdcage, and this feather dangled at the end of that. It was dyed blue, like the kind you might win at a carnival or get at a gift shop. “Where you keep your bird at?” I asked. “It died from fumes from something I had on the stove,” Carlson said. “On accident.” He was heavy, and moved and talked slow, but he had this calmness and confidence about him because of it—he might have hurried on his own account, but it was clear you weren’t going to rush him. I never got the impression he was dumb. He smelled like he had just shaved. “You want to have a seat here?” He raised the birdcage by its pole and set it aside. “I was surprised to get your call, but I was glad you did. I hadn’t realized what happened. Go on. Sit.” “That was Angie who called,” I told
him. “So she said.” “Believe me, we’d love to tell you this was all an accident.” He sat down, too. “I know you would. I’d prefer to believe it.” “We can pay you for it.” His big hands rested in his lap. He was looking at the stripe on my boot where his dog had licked. “I don’t know it’s the price that worries me so much,” he said, “though it might’ve at one time. I can see how it might be some relief to you to pay something for it.” He smiled sadly. “Her calling, your coming up here says a bit. I appreciate that part.” He cleared his throat and looked hard at me. “I just went out there after lunch. You all buried it?” I leaned forward, nodding. “I suppose there’s been some pretty sharp words in the household over all
Physics By Jason Jones
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Every day I carry my arms and legs in a sling suspended from my teeth. There’s a physicist who sits in a corner of the bar I frequent, and he brags of how he’s working on a mathematical formula that will connect everything in the universe. “I certainly hope that there’s something you can do for me,” I mutter out the side of my mouth so as not to drop my dangling appendages. He smiles and nods and looks dreamily out the window at the stars, perhaps for inspiration from the divine. But, seeing none forthcoming, he turns his gaze back to the bartender and exclaims, “ANY DAY NOW!” as his smile disappears and his blue-eyed optimistic gaze is fixed to the bottom of an empty glass. Jason Jones is a graduate of Temple University. He lives and works in Philadelphia as an Editor for Taylor and Francs Group, LLC.
this,” he said. “Yes sir, there sure has.” “Imagine there could be some more yet.” I wasn’t sure if he meant there should be, or if he was just guessing there would. I leaned back and found myself not caring what he meant, exactly. “You bet there will,” I told him. “What was that calf worth?” I asked. “It’s important those boys learn the price of things.” “It’s not just the price.” “Still.” A flicker of sun caught his face through the screen. “Did you notice it was the only one out there?” I hadn’t. I told him so. “I haven’t kept my own cows in ten years,” he said, as if it were something. “That one was my granddaughter’s.” “She had her own calf?” “Prizewinner,” he said. “She helped raise it.” “Then we definitely want to pay her for it.” His mouth moved slowly as he stared at me. “She’s moved off with her mother to we don’t know where.” The dog started barking behind the door. “They’re not really your boys, are they?” “No.” “How they manage to kill it? They got a gun?” “No,” I said. My voice raised a little. “Sticks. Rocks. A bat, maybe.” He studied me, but I didn’t flinch. He looked out the window of the old porch. “How old are they?” he asked. I told him.
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I called in sick and went and found her in the Sidewinder. She was sitting with some smiley guy, with her stool turned to face him, sipping her rum and ginger ale. She saw me but didn’t say anything as I sat down on the other side of her. Susan waited her to say yea or nay, but Angela she just kept her back to me. Maybe she rolled her eyes. “I went to talk to that old Carlson,” I said.
g o o n She turned half around. There was lipstick on her straw. “You should have,” she said. “I’m Tim.” I stretched my hand past her. He didn’t take it. “You all talking business?” “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she said. “Can’t you see I’m sick,” I said. She lit a fresh one. “There’s no point in prolonging this. How do you want to play it?” “What do you mean?” “Just get it over with,” the man told her. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
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I went to my closet and threw all my clothes into my duffel bag. I had broke my right middle finger on him when it got caught weird in his collar. I sat going over my checkbook, one-handed, until they come home. They had been at their dad’s girlfriend’s place, and Angela had picked them up, after I guess she had taken Smiley home or to the hospital. She didn’t explain anything. I was planning to check into a motel somewhere. The boys were chewing candy bars and went straight past me to the TV. Will, he was carrying a plastic package of birthday prizes. He held it in front of my face as he went by. “What’s those for?” I asked. “The grave.” “I thought you were getting flowers.” “We didn’t like them,” Angela said. “Get out of here. I’m serious.” We stared across my big bag that had the outside pockets chewed up by mice.
In the pasture, Will opened the birthday prizes one by one. He was fascinated by them, and I could see him struggling to keep on task, as Angela put it. The boys insisted I come with them, and Angela didn’t say no. All she said to me was, “You don’t ride with us.” I followed them in my truck. She was slowed down some, done with the insults and the hollering and just waiting for me to shove off. I was ready to. The boys could tell something was wrong with us. She talked quietly to them, almost in a whisper, while to me she spoke a touch louder than regular. It was as if there were two groups—she and I were one, and she and the boys were another—and, to be a part of them both, she had to run two different personalities. “Aw, hurry up, Will,” Brian said. Will whipped around. “Be quiet, Brian!” He pulled a spider ring from his finger and added it to the circle in the dirt. Angela tapped Brian, and they walked down to the creek for a spell, since it seemed Will might be a while. The creek run from a Avalon Porch by Kathleen Montrey © 2008 dirty pond on the hilltop and curled its way to the bigger creek below Carlson’s house. The held him between us while she smoked. banks were steep with switchbacks “There’s something wrong with you,” she where the dirt had caved away. As my hissed at me. “How many chances do eyes followed it, I saw Carlson’s blue you want? You’re messed up.” truck driving toward us. For a sec, I won“I’m messed up? You spend afternoons dered what to do, how we might go with Dudley Dipshit, and I’m messed up. without him being the wiser. He pulled What, you expect me to hug him?” up beside us. “You knew it was going to happen,” Carlson looked at the little rubber she said. “You wanted it.” and plastic things scattered over the dirt. Later, I thought of more things I “What you doing, there?” he asked. could have said. ��� Will glanced up at him. “These
Will came in holding a plastic cup. “This was under the couch,” he said. “Well, that’s not where it belongs,” Angela said. “Go and drop it in the dishwater. I’ll wash it up.” He skated to the sink in his socks, dropped it in, then went to her, and she
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things are to mark his grave,” he said, standing up. Carlson got out of his truck, and his dog waddled over to my boot. “You about finished, Will?” I said. “No. Why’d they leave? They were supposed to stay for the whole funeral.” Angela and Brian sat beside the creek, talking. Brian bent to the mud, pulled something out, and swished it back and forth in the water. “Well, I’m not sure they understood exactly what you’re doing here, Willard. When you’re the master of ceremonies, it’s important you explain to folks what’s going on, so they don’t nod off during the service.” He swept his hand. “These things are to mark its grave,” he said again. Carlson opened his wallet and unfolded a little green award ribbon. “You can put that on there, too.” “What’s it for?” “That’s its tag,” Carlson said. Will flattened it in his palm and tried to read the gold lettering—maybe Smiley could teach him—then he just put it with the rest. “They all mark his grave,” Will was saying. “Especially this one.” He picked up a sparkwheel and pulled its trigger. “I should keep this one, to remember.” “I think you better leave it.” His eyes clouded. “Goon!” “What?” “Mommy says you’re a goon, Daddy says you’re a goon. Everybody thinks you’re a goon.” He pulled the trigger and turned away to watch it spin in private. “Aw, that’s not true, Will,” I said. Carlson waved and went down slowly to introduce himself to Angela. “What else she say, Will?” “We’re moving to another place. And you’re going somewhere else. End of story.” Angela shook Carlson’s hand, and he walked off like he had business to do, check his fence, maybe. Brian called out and come running past Angela up toward Will and me. He held out his
hand when he reached us. They huddled close, like kids will when they’ve got something new to show. Will took a step back. “To mark the grave!” Brian grinned. He laid it with the other things. Some blanched bone. It looked like something washed up from the sea. “No!” said Will. “It’s not part of it!” “Yes,” Brian said. “No! Mom!” Willard flew down the hill, sticks kicking. She sat on an old stump, smoking a cigarette, keeping her distance. He was waving his arms, trying to explain the situation before he even got there. He clutched her belt loops. The wind blew her hair. The ground went lighter, then darker. Then lighter. “She said I could ride back to the house with you,” Brian told me. “Then what?” We stood there. “Okay, let’s go.” We left without waving. The dog come running down the hill. It shot out of the weeds when we turned the bend and chased us down the lane. When I hit the brakes it come out in front of us and stood with its paws out flat and lowered its head. It fell in to chasing us along the passenger side, barking wild again. Brian watched it beneath the window. I slowed a little so it could keep up. Once it popped up high enough where I could actually see its ears, and Brian called it a name. I put my right arm out to hold him as I put on the brakes. My broken finger throbbed on his chest. There was a yelp. The wheels skidded in the dust and gravel. “Oh mother,” Brian said. He looked over at me. “We hit it!” he said. “You hit it.” I could see the highway. He opened his door and leaned to look, then hopped out. The dog limped off into the high weeds. He didn’t call to it. The weeds were still. He leaned back in the door. “He be alright?” he asked. “He’s still walking,” I said. Brian stepped away from the cab. He looked down the road. Angela’s car was
coming way behind us. She stopped before they got any closer. I made out the shape of her head over the steering wheel way back there. We were staring at each other, backwards and forwards. Just get it over with. I could still hear the way he said it. I said it myself. “What?” Brian asked. “You go with her now. Tell her about the dog.” “But she said-“ “Go with her, I said.” I opened the glove box, and brushed the napkins onto the floor. “Here.” “What?” “Here. Take these.” “Why?” “You give them to her.” The bundle felt stiff in my hand. “Just like this.” I wrapped his hand around the straws. He shut the door and backed away as I pulled onto the highway. Chad Willenborg's stories have appeared in First City Review, Fugue, and McSweeney's. He is working on a novel set in Philadelphia and a collection of "cover versions" of James Joyce's Dubliners.
favorite recent reads from the editorial board of philadelphia stories
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Quite Ugly One Morning proves (if proof were needed) that Christopher Brookmyre is the king of deranged Scots crime fiction. Think of a literary version of the film Shoot ‘Em Up and you’re almost there. Perhaps with a good dose of Trainspotting thrown in. He’s been compared to Carl Hiaasen, and indeed Brookmyre’s threshold of the grotesque hovers somewhere around mad killers and weed whackers, but with a side of haggis. If you like Hiaasen and Westlake, you will not be disappointed by anything Mr. Brookmyre pens. By Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus Books-Time Warner 1996, reprinted 2004) — Gregory Frost
Drown by Junot Diaz. This debut collection of short stories by the recent Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) is a sharp yet lush collection of loosely connected stories. Tracing the adolescent evolution of a young boy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to a young man in New Jersy, Diaz weaves his many stories into a single, multi-faceted narrative. Using occasional Spanglish to deepen his tales’ texture, Diaz never leans on his cross-cultural references as a literary crutch. His portraits are funny, moving, and painfully human. (Riverhead Books, 1996) —Ryan Romine
What is the What by Dave Eggers is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a “Lost Boy” of Sudan who trekked from his native village after it was attacked through desert to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. He was later granted political asylum in the US. Part adventure story, part heart- breaking saga, this novel will become an American epic. It was chosen as the One Book, One Philadelphia 2008 selection and recently educated the entire city regarding the conflicts in Southern and Northern Sudan. To read the stories of local Sudanese, written as part of a Drexel University collaboration with One Book, go to www.valentinoachakdeng.org. (Vintage; Reprint edition, 2007) — Harriet Levin Millan
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MOLESKIN e doesn’t know about her tattoos until they sleep together. After they finish, his eyes adjust enough to the darkness so that he can make out the black ink on her back and stomach. There are three: small, medium, large. The level of grayness and fading indicate that the smallest one was first and the largest one was last. He can’t see that much detail. She prepares homemade mushroom ravioli for dinner. A girl who matches her shoes and her purse, she doesn’t look like the kind who would have tattoos. He tries to decipher their meanings and authors: Maimonides, Cummings, Shakespeare. She stares at him and tries to determine his ethnicity. He is half Filipino. What are they doing? One-night stand. But what do you call it after the second night? Bistand. Third night? Polystand. She works as a tutor for undereducated kids with overpaid parents. She helps them write papers and do calculus and sometimes gets paid extra to do it for them. He knows she wrote an essay that got a lacrosse player into UPenn. He doesn’t know about her brief career as a model, the breast implants she had inserted and removed during college, or the affair with her Neuroscience professor. The affair had lasted through the final two years of her undergraduate career. It was almost passionate, almost something like love. The professor never really ended it, he just started bringing
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Sugar Factory. This is where their lives intersect. He works at The Brooklyn Rail. Makes Xeroxes of other people’s writing. He tells her he is a copy editor. She knows this is a lie. They meet when her boyfriend leaves her in front of The Dinner Party. The boyfriend, an actor, goes to buy cigarettes and never comes back. Camel Wide Lights, which she can then no longer stomach. He loans her subway fare, the trustfund actor boyfriend had always paid for taxis. She makes him gazpacho in exchange. They sleep together once, then once again. It becomes a habit. After a long discussion, they decide to be less frequent with their sexual visits. This plan does not work out. For the next month, they have sex five, six, seven, eight times a week. What would they call a thing like this? There are various terms, all crude and all with somewhat negative, seedy connotations. She considers pushing for a commitment, but he is younger than her and wouldn’t understand. She bakes oatmeal cookies with butterscotch chips. He is two years her junior, on the verge of being born in a different Swirly by Nicole Kristiana FitzGibbon © 2008 decade. She has an eating disorder that appears to go unnohis wife to more and more campus functiced, though he sometimes slides his tions. hand down her hipbones and remarks on Heartbroken, she moves to the city their jaggedness. He is leading on a girl after graduation. Rents an apartment in West Hartford. She sees the emails with three other girls, near the Domino this girl sends him. Where did he meet
m o l e s k i n her? Filled with something resembling jealousy, she googles the WeHa girl. Mentions West Hartford in front of him. Hm…what? He says, looking up from his cereal with a blank face. After the Hartford girl incident has subsided in her mind, he buys her a present. A wooden bookmark, carved like a tree, bought at the Christmas market in the neighborhood. This alters the meaning of everything. Startled by this new action of gift-giving, she decides on something hastily and without too much creativity. He receives a new copy of The Tropic of Cancer and homemade raspberry brownies. She wraps the first in The New York Times Book Review. He appreciates the humor. He tells her he would like to seriously date her in a few years. He’s not ready now. Why does he say this? Perhaps he is genuine. Or maybe, more likely, he wants to pacify her. He goes to visit the girl in West Hartford. He wants to pacify her too. He likes to keep his options open, as he is acutely aware of his youth and attractiveness. In his presence, she feels old and almost sagacious. She is only 23. They go out to dinner several times a week, sometimes with his father. She realizes that his parents think they’re dating. His mother tries to discuss their future together. No, no, your son has issues with commitment, that’s what she wants to say. Instead she smiles with her mouth held tightly together and listens to parenting tips. Goes to Dean & Deluca, prepares lobster risotto. She has no contact with her own parents. It is a mutual understanding of inevitable separation. Her parents divorced when she was an infant. Father is a surgeon whom she has barely seen in twenty years. Mother is an alcoholic Presbyterian minister who is addicted to crosswords puzzles and venomous critiques of her daughters. These daughters inherited their mother’s dark good looks and tendency toward addiction. Now, in lonely winters, she withholds food as a form of comfort. He notices this. Her abandon-
ment issues and low self-esteem combine to form her passionate attachment to him. Pretending to be aloof, he secretly idolizes her. What are they doing? There is no word for this. Lovers: implies an ending and an obstacle. Friends: does not contain room for sexual encounters. Fuck: can’t explain the dinners and the kissing of her inner wrist. Undefined. This conversation they avoid. He worries about emotional investment. She is concerned about her intense—perhaps unhealthy —attachment. A definition is needed to establish boundaries, and when they have none, the situation is peculiar and uncomfortably amorphous. A solid, silent, secure understanding is found only in the liquid fusion of their bare legs and torsos. The sex between them is: karma-phala, mitzvah, asa. She makes breakfast. Eggs with cheese he can’t pronounce, French toast from thick slices of challah, Kona coffee, strawberries. What are they doing? They go to his brother’s wedding and dance—she removes her heels and is barefoot. They have had too much champagne and too few pigs-in-a-blanket. Back in their shared hotel room, they fall onto the bed, still in their dress clothes. He traces the curves of her face with his index finger, drunkenly and softly. She starts to babble about language. It doesn’t mean anything, she says. Labels can’t confine us and define us and it doesn’t mean anything at all, she sings. She says that their fucking and their dancing and their Sunday mornings don’t have to be called anything. She says they exist outside of a definition. He looks at her. He brushes her hair off her face. He looks at her. He looks at her. They have sex, slow motion and wet and warm and sweet. He says, I love you. What? She asks. How does that feel? He pretends to repeat. Oh, good, it feels good. What does this mean? Realizing that it doesn’t have to mean anything, they continue to have it silently mean quite a great deal. What are they doing? There is no
word for this. Back in the city, she learns how to make Beef Wellington and crème brûlée. He gets a job as an editorial assistant in Midtown, earning twice what he was earning at his previous job. Gets a two-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. She is thrifty, to a fault, and still lives in a cramped studio space with college friends whom she would no longer consider friendly. He asks her to move in with him. Separate bedrooms. Roommates. It is a faulty attempt at gaining a word for this. Each night they have sex and then one sleepily retreats back to his or her own bed. In the morning they share a pot of coffee and the arts section. She notices that all their friends are getting married. They get invitations to these weddings. Recycled paper with organic ink, letterpress with woodcuts, one is even from Pineider in Florence. Each invitation is addressed to both of them by name. Aching, she has no word for this. While grocery shopping, they run into the girl from West Hartford. Girl: blonde, stocky soccer-player figure.
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They invite the girl over for dinner. She prepares salmon roulade, arugula salad, rosemary couscous, and marzipan cookies. After the girl leaves, she asks if they can share a bedroom. Why? He asks, genuinely puzzled but not suspicious. She tells him one of the bedrooms should be made into a study—-they both need their space to write—-and maybe they could leave a bed for their crashing friends. He agrees as he takes his fourth cookie. The merging of bedrooms is swift and charming. Her female friends are ecstatic; they take it as a promising sign. At a bar one night with old school chums, he is teased about his enviable relationship. These statements of friendly jealousy are met with confusion and raised eyebrows. What relationship? He asks. His friends laugh and shake their heads. What are you doing? They ask. That night, for the first time in their history, they fall asleep without having sex. He pulls her head towards the nook of his chest and shoulder, as if this act was natural and commonplace. What is this? They both search for words. He
receives a call at work. His father has died. Heart attack. 67. Smoker. The funeral is in Brooklyn with echoes of Manila. She learns bits and pieces of Tagalog. Natay: death: the process of transformation from one state to another. She likes this definition. His mother, a WASP from Pennington, New Jersey, throws herself headlong into Filipino rituals. The mirrors and glass surfaces in the house are covered with black fabric. Are they sitting shivah? She wonders. He and his mother don’t take baths for a week. The process seems oddly familiar to her—-her father was raised Hasidic. Searching through his father’s study in the Greenpoint apartment, he finds three novels by José Rizal, a Welsh love spoon, and a worn copy of Go Tell It on the Mountain. He takes them all, dissonant fragments of the man who raised him. Leaving his parents’—-his mother’s—apartment, they travel home together silently. Somewhere along Bushwick Avenue, she starts to drag him in the direction of home. He feels heavy and sore, fingers raw in her palm. Back in their apartment, she fixes
Father’s Gluepot By Nick Ripatrazone Sticky heat clouds the windows. He carries the kettle-boiled water, a rag round his knuckles to swallow steam. He fills the outer pot: the glue bubbles. I cross my hands beneath my bottom while he mixes the foggy muck. 22
kubeh and borekas and spitz cake. This is all she knows to do. Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba. She is conveniently chopping onions. Yit’barakh v’yish’tabach v’yit’pa’ar. They eat in solid quietness. In bed that night, they lie next to each other, unmoving, unsleeping. A hand wanders over the imaginary boundary—-there are bits of stomach flesh and salty skin slowly mingling. The sex is silent and mutually understood. She is pink and soft and cool to the touch, a familiar body to move with. His eyes are wet and his hands are sweaty against her hips. Is there an answer to all this? Could there ever be an answer to this? There is a sybaritic sadness in death. Afterwards, she lets his head rest on her naked chest. They fall asleep like this. Her: propped up on pillows, clutching his head and shoulders, one thin leg exposed to the air. Him: curled, wrapped, pressed into her, mouth on her collarbone, hurt and unwashed. He takes weeks to mourn, more than she thinks is healthy. He recovers slowly—-blinking, unstretched. She bakes dark chocolate cookies and fruit tarts. What are they doing? Neither knows a word for it. They make a ritual of evening walks in Prospect Park. He contemplates a trip to the Philippines, visiting relatives, “discovering his roots.” She tells him it’s a good idea. It will help your writing, she says. She bites her lip. The end for him. Apartment: now worn and common. Her body is a shape of divinity that fits into his hips during nights of quiet taxi noise. The Philippines will not help his writing, he understands this. New Year’s Day Night. She is pregnant. Decides to tell him. Decides not to tell him. She makes homemade mushroom ravioli. Tells him. Eyes wide, there is a word for this.
I’ll use this on your running mouth. Nick Ripatrazone was named a runner-up in the 2008 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, and his short story collection manuscript, Mustard, was a semifinalist for the 2008 Hudson Prize. Recent work has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Saint Ann 's Review, Hobart, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Yale Anglers' Journal, and elsewhere. He is pursuing an MFA from the University of Texas, El Paso.
Jenna Clark Embrey, a native of Hershey, Pennsylvania, is a 2008 graduate of Dickinson College with a double major in English and Theatre. In addition to writing short stories and plays, Jenna enjoys ice skating and reciting the alphabet backwards.
