Philadelphia Stories Summer 2015

Cultivating a community of writers,

artists, and readers across the Delaware Valley

S UM M E R / 2 0 1 5 / F R E E

CADILLAC ACADEMY ROBERT KERBECK / WE SHALL, YES CLAUDIA BURBANK / JESUS CHRIST, IT’S JESUS CHRIST OWEN OXLEY HAMILL

CONTENTS FEATURES 12 WE SHALL, YES (fiction)..................................................................................................................................CLAUDIA BURBANK 18 JESUS CHRIST, IT’S JESUS CHRIST (fiction).....................................................................................OWEN OXLEY HAMILL 24 A DAY AT THE BALLPARK WITH DAD (essay)................................................................................ROBERT FREEDMAN 28 5 SIGNS THAT YOUR SHORT STORY IS RUNNING AMOK (column)............................AIMEE LABRIE

SPRAY THEIR HAIR INTO BEEHIVES.................................................................................................KELLY MCQUAIN 11 SONG FOR FREDO CORLEONE.........................................................................................................MARTIN WILEY 16 IN CHURCH IN CUENCA...........................................................................................................................TIMOTHY SAFFORD 23 ODE TO SCRAPPLE.......................................................................................................................................GRANT CLAUSER 26 LOVE IS LIKE THIS...........................................................................................................................................NICOLE S. LEVY

ART The Fortune Telling Machine by Jerry DiFalco

Academy Students in Plein Air by Catherine Quillman

Catherine Quillman is a former Arts journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her background in publications has included running her own greeting card company, Country Scenes, and her current work publishing regional history books illustrated with old postcards and vintage photographs.

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Jerry is a full-time professional fine artist who lives and works in Philadelphia He won the 2009 City of Philadelphia Human Relation’s Award in Arts and Culture; an individual Artist’s Fellowship (2002, $30.000) from the PollockKrasner Foundation in New York City, New York; and; two Individual Artist’s Grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1992 and 1987). His art has appeared in over 300 solo and group exhibitions around the world since 1974. He works in printmaking, painting, mixed media assemblage, and environmental installation.

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Margate’s Lucy in Turquoise Mists OR The Doors of Perception in New Jersey by Jerry DiFalco

Abundance by Suzanne Comer

Suzanne Comer explores the use of digital photography as an art form. She is especially known for using elements of her photographs to create award-winning photomontages.

These works, as well as her unmanipulated photos, are selected for exhibit in numerous juried shows each year.

See more work at: http://comersuz.home.comcast.net.

Bowl of Flying Fruit by Pamela Parsons

As a lifelong resident of Bucks County, Parsons’ work started in the spirit of the Pennsylvania Impressionists and has more recently evolved to expressionist in nature. She holds a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Arcadia University and has studied art at many local universities and art centers.

I Lived Here Once by Christine Walinski

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Christine received her AFA from Keystone College and her BFA and Art Education Certification from Tyler School of Art. She has taught Art at various summer programs to a wide range of students over the years. She is inspired by nature, color and shapes. She uses painting as a way to reflect on memories and experiences. She resides in Manayunk with her creative family. More work can be viewed at www.christinewalinski.com

Down the Shore by Kevin Hogan

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Kevin Hogan is a native Philadelphian with a lifelong love of photography. His most recent work involves the use of his iPhone and mobile image software in a process called app smashing.

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Burrow by Christine Walinski

Saint Paul’s Cathedral 4 by Pam McLean-Parker

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Assistant Fiction Editor Amy Luginbuhl

Poetry Editor Courtney Bambrick Assistant Poetry Editor Nicole Pasquarello Director of Development Sharon Sood

Production Manager Jon Busch

10 TWO GIRLS IN WEST PHILLY

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Fiction Editor Mitchell Sommers

Art Director Derek Carnegie

POETRY

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Publisher/Executive Director Christine Weiser

Nonfiction Editor Julia MacDonnell Chang

3 CADILLAC ACADEMY (fiction)..................................................................................................................ROBERT KERBECK

COVER

Publisher/Editorial Director Carla Spataro

Pam McLean-Parker began exhibiting her photographs in 1988 while working towards a B.F.A. degree at Rosemont College. Her work has appeared on exhibit in galleries and art centers for over two decades and has received numerous awards. www.pmpfinephotography.com

Philadelphia Stories, founded in 2004, is a non-profit literary magazine that publishes the finest literary fiction, poetry, and art from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware and distributes free of charge to a wide demographic throughout the region. Our mission is to develop a community of writers, artists, and readers through the magazine, and through education programs such as writer’s workshops, reading series, and other affordable professional development programs for emerging writers and artists. Philadelphia Stories is a 501c3.

To support Philadelphia Stories and the local arts, please visit www.philadelphiastories.org to become a member today!

Web Design Loic Duros Board of Directors Kerri Schuster, secretary Mitchell Sommers Alison Hicks Alex Husted Polia Tzvetanova Editorial Board Sara Asikainen, fiction Peter Baroth, poetry Alex Brubaker, fiction Deb Burnham, poetry Jon Busch, fiction Liz Chang, poetry Melinda Clemmer, fiction Sam Dodge, non-fiction Liz Dolan, poetry Margot Douaihy, poetry Stephanie Durann, poetry Brian Ellis, fiction Ally Evans, fiction Kathleen Furin, fiction Elizabeth Green, fiction Pat Green, poetry Kathleen Furin, fiction Claire Haggerty, fiction Daniel Huppman, fiction Aimee LaBrie, fiction Andrew Linton, fiction Nathan Long, fiction Chelsea Covington Maass, fiction Rachel Mamola, non-fiction Walt Maguire, fiction George McDermott, poetry Deborah Off, non-fiction Carolina Ortiz, fiction Donna Wolf-Palacio, poetry Aimee Penna, poetry Tracey M. Romero, non-fiction John Shea, poetry John Shea, non-fiction Carla Spataro, fiction Luke Stromberg, poetry Maria Thiaw, poetry Sean Toner, non-fiction Valeria Tsygankova, poetry Cassandra Visceglia, non-fiction Glenna Walsh, non-fiction Sarah Wecht, non-fiction Lena Van, fiction Che Yeun, fiction SUPPORT PROVIDED IN PART

BY THE PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL FUND.

Cadillac Academy Robert Kerbeck

“We’re gonna bump him,” the general manager, Ted Schwartz, said.

“Get him in here.”

I was pretty sure, even then, that we weren’t going to murder anyone—as in bump him off—but since I was brand new at the Philly dealership as well as straight out of college, I thought I ought to double-check.

I’d overheard one of the other salesmen say that Ted had been in federal prison, so my concerns weren’t completely without merit.

“Bump him…how?”

But Ted had already bolted out of his office, carrying the monster-sized Styrofoam cup of coffee I’d never seen him without. As I watched his back, his index finger beckoned. I heard, “Come on. Walk and talk.”

When I finally caught up to him, he was halfway down the football field-sized showroom, smoking a cigarette.

“Did you call him yet?” he asked, blowing smoke right in my face, like he somehow knew cigarette smoke nauseated me.

“The customer? No, you just told me…”

“Not now. Before.” Ted’s voice was as gravelly as a rat-pack singer.

In his late fifties, he wore an expensive designer suit, with a thick gold chain dangling from one wrist and a massive silver watch on the other.

“No, he called asking for a guy named Bear, and the receptionist gave the call to me. She said Bear didn’t work here anymore.”

Ted snickered and shot me a sideways glance, increasing his speed to Mach 8 as he led me into the new car storage bay. If the showroom was the size of a football field, then the storage bay was the entire stadium.

“Show me,” said Ted. For the first time I knew what he meant and guided him to the car that had recently come in. I zigged and zagged through rows of shiny new cars, some with the chalk from the freight companies still on the windshield. Ted stayed on my ass the whole way, until I found the gold 1990 Cadillac Allante convertible with the white leather interior.

“Oh, this is gonna be good. This is gonna be like poppin’ a virgin’s cherry. Except you’re the virgin.” Ted laughed and pointed his cigarette at the star-patterned tie I’d bought for the job, my first since graduating college. I backed away when it appeared he was going to actually put a hole through it.

“I remember him now,” Ted said. “Foster. Black guy, of course. Who else would order that color combo? You figured that out, right, when you saw the Caddy? Please tell me you knew at least that?” Off of my savemy-ass nod, Ted started up again, talking as fast as he walked. “Foster ordered the Caddy so he could get it exactly the way he wanted it, but he kept busting our balls on the price. He knew our cost on every option,

knew the freight charges, had the invoice down cold. Hell, he should be the one working here, not you. He even knew about the dealer holdback.”

“What’s that?” I asked and immediately regretted it.

“Jesus fuck, whose dick did you suck again to get this job?”

“Uh, my dad plays tennis with the owner, Mr. Kutner.”

I wanted to explain that we didn’t belong to the same country club as Mr. Kutner, or any country club for that matter. I didn’t want Ted thinking I couldn’t handle the rough neighborhood. The Cadillac dealership was surrounded by boarded-up buildings with weeds as tall as basketball players, and was the lone sign of affluence—or any money really—as far as the eye could see, unless you counted the occasional gas station or fast-food restaurant.

“Lemme guess, English major?”

“Philosophy.” When Ted continued to glare at me while puffing away, I added, “English minor.”

“Well, philosophize this, Einstein. You’re going to bring in this Foster.

You’re gonna personally spit shine his car and have it glistening in the setting sun. You’re gonna demo the car he custom ordered and show him every beautiful option it has. He’s gonna float back to your cubicle to sign the paperwork, all high as a kite. And then you’re gonna bump him.”

When I stared at Ted blankly, he took a long drag, finishing the cigarette.

“You’re going to tell him he has to pay more for the car.” He said it slowly like I was retarded.

“But,” I stuttered, “Mr. Foster said he already finalized the price when he ordered it. He said he left a five-thousand-dollar deposit. He knew the exact balance he has remaining. He’s bringing a cashier’s check.”

Ted grabbed me by the back of my neck and pulled me so close I could see that his teeth were fake, even the ones all the way in the back of his grinning mouth.

“What did I tell you? This is gonna be fun.”

After a terse conversation with Mr. Foster to set the time for delivery (5:45, right after he got off work) I got the lightning-fast Caddy (it had the most torque of any front-wheel drive vehicle in the world) into service to be prepped and detailed. On my way back to my cubicle to begin the paperwork, I ran into the only saleswoman at the dealership, Kelly.

She was in last place on the sales board if I didn’t count myself, which I didn’t because I’d just started. Kelly was coming out of the bathroom and feigned surprise to run into me as though she’d been searching everywhere for me, including the women’s bathroom.

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“There he is. First week and already a sale.”

In her late twenties, Kelly was about as sexy as a woman could be working at a car dealership, which meant she dressed one step short of full-on stripper. She was a light-skinned black girl, a nod to the North Philadelphia inner city neighborhood. I guessed this was how Kelly made her sales, getting guys to think they had a chance with her, if they bought a car. Myself, I knew I had no chance and so had kept quiet anytime I was in her overly fragrant presence.

“Thanks, but it wasn’t really my deal. It was a guy named Bear’s. I just inherited it.”

“Better to be lucky than good, kid,” she said and rubbed against me the way a cat does when it wants attention. I’d noticed the single mother didn’t appear to care about her own sales numbers. She was always the last to jump up whenever a new customer walked onto the sales floor.

Maybe the stiletto heels slowed her reaction time.

The lack of commissions didn’t seem to affect her wardrobe budget, however, with each day’s outfit more elaborate (and revealing) than the one the day before. Me, I was rotating my one suit with two different-colored shirts (white and blue) and the three ties I owned, one new.

I’d promised myself the first thing I’d buy with my commission from the Foster deal would be an expensive Italian suit.

“Come on, I’ll buy you some Doritos.” Kelly took my hand like we were walking home from middle school and I was the luckiest boy in the school.

At the vending machine, she smiled as she patted her skintight red leather dress up and down.

“Now where is my money?” She alternated between bedroom whisper giggles and barroom cackles as she laughed at her joke. “How about you treat this time? I’ll owe you one.” Kelly put the long, red fingernail of her index finger into her mouth and simulated fellatio. Then the giggles and cackles started anew.

I bought us—meaning her—an extra-large bag of Doritos, a Milky Way, and a bag of Skittles, as well as a 32-ounce Pepsi, which we shared over a rickety card table in what passed for the employee lounge.

“What happened to Bear?” I asked as she inhaled the Doritos like a teenage boy.

“He died.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, he stole a cash deposit from a customer and went on a cocaine binge. Had a heart attack,” she said while chomp chomping away.

“That’s terrible.”

“What do you care? You got a commission out of it.”

When Kelly saw my expression, she stopped shoveling Doritos into her face.

“I’m sorry. That was cruel. Even for the car business.”

She offered me the chips, but I declined. Kelly seemed quite happy about that and broke into a wide smile as she dug back into the bag.

open the driver’s door.

“I know how the car works,” Foster said from ten feet away, smelling the trap.

“Of course you do, but new model years always have new features.

Even I don’t know every one.”

Foster came around to my side and leaned down to glare at me through the still open passenger door. “Why don’t you?” he asked, blocking what was left of the sunlight as well as my exit. “Isn’t that your job?”

Now I got the meaning behind Ted’s snicker and sideways glance.

In life, there was no such thing as a free lunch or, in the case of the automobile business, a free commission. I was going to have to earn my first sale.

“What do they say? That only God is perfect?”

I don’t know why I played the God card since I’m not religious in the least, but it seemed to work. Foster took a step back.

“I’ve only been working here a week, but I study the brochures and manuals every night when I get home,” I continued, playing the part of the hardworking kid, which I’d been right up until I graduated six months earlier, just in time for a worldwide recession. Since then, however, I seemed to have lost the spring in my step. I’d spent my days lounging about my childhood home, getting a bazillion rejection letters for jobs I didn’t want. My old man had told me I could wipe my ass with a liberal arts degree. It turned out he was right. I still couldn’t believe I was selling cars for a living.

“Let’s get this deal done,” Foster said, and circled the car like a shark, inspecting it for damage. He then turned and headed back toward the showroom.

Foster took up a lot of space inside my tiny cubicle. He was hunched over my desk with his cashier’s check protected between his elbows.

“Okie dokie.” I slid into the desk chair opposite him, taking care not to bang heads. “Let’s start with the registration for your new Cadillac Allante convertible,” I said with the flair of a game show host.

Ted had instructed me to have Foster fill out every single paper related to the car before we got to the purchase contract. That way, Ted said, the man would already be committed to buying the car when the “bump” occurred.

“Lemme see the purchase contract,” Foster said.

“We’re saving the best for last,” I said, wondering again where these hokey phrases were coming from. I’d never said okie dokie in my life, but mountainous student loan debt has a way of making you do things you never thought you would.

“I’m not signing anything until I see the final purchase contract.”

“Of course. I completely understand. Well, since there’s no easy way to say this, I’ll give it to you straight.” Give it to you straight? I wanted to throw up, but I plowed on. “At the moment, I don’t have a finished contract, since we have a small problem.”

I’d expected Foster to ask, “What problem?” but he said nothing, just death-stared me until I found myself beginning to sweat.

“Mr. Foster, the price you were quoted on the vehicle is below what it cost us to buy the vehicle. I’m sure you’d agree that we should make at least something on the transaction.”

Foster pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it on the desk. “This is the price your company agreed to when it took my five-thousand-dollar deposit. This is a binding contract. You will sell me the vehicle for this price.” Foster jabbed his middle finger at the bottom of the page, while his other hand curled into a fist.

Ted had given me a number of comebacks and talking points, but they went out the window. All I could think was that Foster was right—

Foster showed up in a cab at 5:45, as the sunlight was beginning to fade. He was big and altogether hostile, as if he already expected a problem. In his late thirties, he wore an expensive three-piece suit, though unlike Ted’s, which hung off the GM’s gaunt frame, Foster’s was filled out like a former linebacker turned TV commentator. He made me—a solid high school wrestler—look puny in comparison. His demeanor thawed slightly when I took him to see the gold Caddy convertible, shining perfectly, the impossibly bright metallic paint illuminating the barbed wire-encased parking lot of the dealership.

“Hop in, I’ll show you some of the features,” I said, cringing at how quickly I’d crossed over to using the hackneyed terminology of the car business. I opened the passenger door and got in, then leaned across to

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THE FORTUNE TELLING MACHINE by JERRY DIFALCO

5

and that he was going to kill me.

“I, uh, see your point, but…”

“I want to speak to the general manager,” Foster said and stood.

Ted had prepped me for this too, but it had happened a lot faster than we’d planned. I hadn’t even told Foster how much more we wanted him to pay—not that it was going to make any difference.

“Yes, sir. I’ll go get him.”

how, he was able to turn Foster around.

“How about a drink? Or maybe a cigar? How ’bout both?” Ted said with a crescendo.

“I don’t drink or smoke. Surprised?”

There was an innuendo behind Foster’s comment that was as dark as the color of his skin, but it didn’t appear to faze Ted. “Not in the least. Your vice appears to be good taste in fast cars. The color combo you ordered is something else. I’m gonna order a couple more like that. I think they’ll fly out of here. Please have a seat.”

Foster sat in the chair closest to the door, as Ted picked up his enormous cup of coffee and pushed it toward Kelly. “Hon, fill this up for me, would you?”

This time Kelly and I were the ones equally flabbergasted. If anyone should have gotten Ted coffee, it was me, since it was my deal he was working on. Kelly recovered more quickly than I did and took the cup and exited the office.

“Mr. Foster, what’s your first name?” Ted asked.

“You don’t need to know my fucking first name. You just need to honor the terms of this contract.”

Ted’s reaction to Foster’s obscenity was to smile as though the man had complimented his thinning silver hair.

“Here’s my cashier’s check for the balance.” Foster produced the contract and check and stood to place them on Ted’s desk. Foster remained standing as Kelly re-entered and handed Ted the cup of coffee.

“The reason I wanted your first name is when delivering bad news I think it’s nicer to do it informally.” Ted paused to sip the coffee. “Plus, since you knew the man, you might find what I have to tell you upsetting.

Please, Mr. Foster, sit.”

The impending revelation seemed to confuse Foster.

“What man? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Sit and I’ll tell you.”

Foster warily sat onto the edge of the padded metal chair.

“Sadly—and tragically—the salesman who sold you the car has died.” Ted let the news sink in for a moment. “Apparently, Mr. Bear had a major drug problem. He overdosed after stealing money from the dealership.”

“Bear is dead?” Foster asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Yes, he’s gone.”

“I don’t believe you. I wanna hear it from her.” He gestured toward Kelly, as if she was the only one in the room who would tell him the truth.

“You think he’s lying about somebody dying to get you to buy a car?”

“Girl, answer my question.”

“Mr. Foster, there’s no need to talk to her like...” I started.

“Answer my goddamn question.”

“Yes, he overdosed. Yes, he’s dead. Anything else?” Kelly said, wagging her finger.

Foster leaned back against his chair.

“A terrible situation that has affected all of us here, deeply,” said Ted. “And unfortunately, now you. As you can imagine, Mr. Bear wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote up that deal, a number of deals for that matter. Of course, we feel badly about that and want to offer you the very best price possible. I’ve spoken to our owner, Mr. Kutner, and he’s agreed to sell you the Cadillac for only one thousand dollars over invoice. That’s over three thousand off the list price.”

Foster stared at me, then Ted. “This is bullshit and you know it.

Somebody else approved that deal. Bear left me in his office when I told him my number, then he came back, said it was all good, and he signed the contract. Him dying is just a convenient excuse to fuck me over.”

“Mr. Foster, you know the price Bear wrote up is below what we paid

When I exited, a number of the other salesmen, all older white men in their forties and fifties, were hovering outside my cubicle, eavesdropping. As I headed toward Ted’s office, I saw more than a few eyes roll.

His door was closed, but through the glass window I could see him arguing with Kelly. Normally, Ted was seated behind his mahogany desk with the door open, but the two of them were standing in front of it, close together. Maybe he was firing her, which would be a shame, since she was the only salesperson who was nice to me, as well as nice to look at.

I knocked, since Ted had instructed me to get him right away if things were going off track. As I did, Ted reached for Kelly, to touch her in some way. The sound startled them and she pulled away toward the source of the disruption while his hand continued toward her, stroking the air where she’d been.

Kelly seemed relieved to open the door, like it had gotten stuffy inside and I was bringing fresh air. I certainly wasn’t bringing good news.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Not well. He wants to see you,” I said, pointing at Ted. “What’s that tell you, kid?” Ted asked.

“That he wants the deal he was promised.”

“No. He wants the fuckin’ gold Caddy he’s been waiting weeks for, that’s what he wants. He’s leaving here tonight in that car, just you watch.”

“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t even sit inside it. I think he’s gonna walk if we don’t give him his price.”

“How much you wanna bet?” Ted had reseated himself behind his desk. He was stroking his giant pinky ring as he stared at Kelly.

“Uh, I…” “How about this, Ted?” Kelly interjected. “If you’re right, I’ll let you buy me dinner tonight. But if the kid is right and Foster walks, you have to buy the two of us dinner.”

I’m not sure which of us was more blown away by Kelly’s proposal—Ted or me. It was probably a tie, since we both froze. I was starting to realize the two of them had more than a professional relationship, or perhaps more accurately, used to have more than a professional relationship, and I was now in the middle.

Ted broke the silence, giving me a look like I’d taken his prison bunk.

“Get me Foster now.”

When I returned to the office with Foster, the door was closed again and the two of them were standing, but this time their voices were not lowered. Ted’s hands churned in half circles like an agitated Tai Chi master, while Kelly’s flew about in karate chop-like bursts. They were fighting, and it wasn’t over a missed sale or a short commission. It was over a different type of deal gone wrong.

I knocked and the two separated, Ted back behind his desk and Kelly to open the door.

“Ted, this is Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster, this is Ted Schwartz, our general manager.”

Ted rose graciously and swept his arms up to the ceiling like he was a conductor. “Mr. Foster, what a pleasure. What can we get you? Coffee?

A soda?”

Foster shook his head no with the slightest of movements as I dropped the Caddy keys and paperwork on Ted’s desk, in case, some-

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ABUNDANCE by SUZANNE COMER

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Kelly screamed at me, “Stop him. He’s getting away.”

Even now—years later—I wonder why I did. I wasn’t that attracted to Kelly, though we did have a brief affair after I replaced Ted as general manager, until I had to fire her for her lack of production. Was chasing after Foster an attempt to show my bravery and win her? Or was I defending an old man from an unprovoked physical attack? Or was it something else?

When I reached Foster, he’d opened the driver’s door to the Cadillac.

It was twilight outside and the lot’s floodlights had come on, illuminating the scene that was to play out.

“Stop right there!” I hollered, thinking I sounded like a rookie cop on a bad TV show.

Foster smiled, the first smile I’d seen cross his face, as he removed his suit jacket and threw it across the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he began to roll up his sleeves that I realized what was happening. All of the black workers in the detail shop had come out of their wash bays to check out the commotion, as had the white salesmen on duty, who’d followed me out of the showroom. They surrounded us in a circle like we were on the high school playground, meeting up after school to settle our differences. Foster put his hands up to fight and advanced toward me. I noticed that the blacks had congregated on his side, the whites on mine. A detail guy I’d joked with earlier was glowering at me from behind Foster, while one of the sales guys, all of whom had treated me like shit simply because I was young and had graduated college, stepped forward to take my jacket.

I’d like to tell you I was defending myself—or Ted or Kelly or my job or the rule of law—but I wanted to hurt him for reasons that even now aren’t entirely clear to me.

I didn’t get to, though, since Foster was far too big and strong for me to beat in a fight, which, fortunately, I recognized before I got within his range. Instead, I performed a single-leg takedown, swooping low at Foster, who seemed almost amused by the tactic. There was even some laughing from our supporters—black and white—as I held onto Foster’s thigh while down on one knee, like perhaps I was going to beg for mercy. But the laughs didn’t last long. I pulled Foster’s leg up, and his amusement was replaced by alarm. He began to hop on one leg, which I quickly swept out from under him with my own, sending him crashing to the asphalt. That was pretty much the end of our altercation, though we remained like that, me on top and holding him down, for another three or four minutes, until the police arrived. No one in the crowd wanted to break us up—or even move—for fear of a potential race riot. And all the time, Foster was yelling, “I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna kill you.” All I could say was, “Not if you can’t get up.”

Foster smiled, the first smile I’d seen cross his face, as he removed his suit jacket and threw it across the passenger seat. It wasn’t until he began to roll up his sleeves that I realized what was happening. All of the black workers in the detail shop had come out of their wash bays to check out the commotion, as had the white salesmen on duty, who’d followed me out of the showroom. They surrounded us in a circle like we were on the high school playground, meeting up after school to settle our differences. for the vehicle. I’m happy to show you the invoice.” Ted rustled through the papers I’d left on his desk, and when he couldn’t find the invoice, I pulled it out for him and tried to hand it to Foster.

“I know what the invoice says.”

“Then you know we cannot sell you the car for that price. I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna waive my percentage as well as my salesperson’s commission on this deal—in honor of Bear’s memory. I’ll sell you the vehicle for five hundred over invoice.”

Foster rose and stepped toward Ted’s desk. He put the cashier’s check down and then picked up the keys to the Cadillac, which were also gold. Ted smiled at me. He put down his Styrofoam cup, almost in triumph, like he’d won the battle not only with Foster, but with me. His reward would be a free dinner later that evening with Kelly and, I figured, something else after that.

Foster was dangling the keys, which must have distracted us, or temporarily hypnotized us, since none of us noticed him pick up the cup of coffee until we saw it being poured over Ted’s head, steam rising up and off the old man’s skin. Then Ted started to convulse.

“Oh my God,” Kelly shouted and went to him. “Call 911! He’s got a bad heart; he’s had a triple bypass.”

I was dialing 911 on the desk phone when Ted slid out of his chair and fell to the ground.

“Fuck you,” Foster was hollering as I gave the operator our address.

“You want to fuck me? That’s what you get. I’m taking my car. You can sue my ass.”

Kelly left Ted to try to prevent Foster from leaving, but he shunted her aside.

“Fuck you too, bitch. Go take care of your sugar daddy.”

“Wait, you better not go anywhere,” I said, as Foster started to walk out, but he ignored me and left, taking the Caddy keys with him. Kelly went back to Ted, who was on the ground and, for all I knew, about to die.

We ended up keeping Foster’s five-thousand-dollar deposit, as well as the Caddy, which I sold shortly after the incident at full list. Ted turned out to be fine. He’d faked the heart attack, claiming he knew Foster would have to agree to give up his deposit in order to avoid prosecution for throwing the hot coffee. I didn’t believe that then, but as time has gone by and I’ve seen and done some crazy shit to make a sale, I know he did do it on purpose.

And I know I’ve done worse.

Robert Kerbeck’s short fiction can be read at Crack the Spine, Tower Journal, and Willow Review. His short stories “Breaststroker” and “Sex, Rugs, And RockAnd-Roll” are forthcoming in upstreet and Green Hills Literary Lantern, respectively.

Robert is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of the Malibu Writers Circle. A member of the Actors Studio, Robert has worked extensively in film and television. You can like him (and learn more) at www.facebook.com/ robertkerbeck.

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BOWL OF FLYING FRUIT by PAMELA PARSONS

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Two Girls in West Philly Spray Their Hair into Beehives Poem by Kelly McQuain

They are the summer’s buzz and the chill of cold forties pressed to the sweaty crooks of their knees, pretty as a pair of hip-hop princesses dressed up in thrift shop finery. Tonight they are golden, all honey and shiver, and sweet clover perfume as the moon peeks out. Honeysuckle and lavender, clever and bawdy, they’re here to kick the door in to the after party. Their lips are glossed, aglow like lightning bugs, their hair is teased as high as the rafters. They’re ready for business if that business is pleasure. Tonight they’re the girls every man here is after. They’ve unlocked the laughter from their private honeycombs, sugared old hurts till they taste like Alizé. They sparkle, they shimmer; friends find them unfamiliar; they dance with each other, push drunk men out of the way. Tonight someone’s tagging the overpass again; someone’s got hotdogs sizzling on a grill.

Someone’s spilling cheap gossip that stings like 80 proof. None of it matters to these two kissing girls.

Kelly McQuain is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow whose poetry collection, VELVET RODEO (2014), won Bloom magazine’s chapbook award. His work most recently appeared in Asssaracus magazine and the anthologies The Queer South and Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books. More work is due out soon in Knockout, the Mount Hope literary magazine and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems from New York Quarterly Books. www.KellyMcQuain.wordpress.com

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Song for Fredo Corleone Poem by Martin Wiley

Somewhere, in a land where untold stories wrap themselves around impatient and waiting eyes, there is a movie where Michael’s heart breaks.

Where his hired killer balks, and Death himself refuses to shoot.

Where Fredo lives.

Where he sits, rocking in an empty canoe, whispering Hail Marys to the rhythm of the murmuring waves gently bumping up against the side of his boat. The sun is shining, an hour before sunset, dinner has been started, and he can already smell the garlic out over the water.

When he looks to the shore, his brother stands there, watching calmly, and with a smile.

Martin Wiley is a recovering poet and spoken word artist. While working on a novel and teaching English at Community College of Philadelphia, his five-year old daughter’s love for words has caused him to fall off the wagon, and step back into poetry. He lives with his wife and two children in South Philly.

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We Shall, Yes Claudia Burbank

You hate the fried egg in front of you, but you eat a teensy bit and try not to gag. A teensy bit no bigger than a dime, which is the weekly allowance you don’t get when you’re up here in the north for the summer. It’s that drippy, gluey yolk that always does it. Your crazy aunt is at the stove and there’s no telling what she might do. So you poke it, slide it around the plate, and when she turns around to look, you move your mouth as if you’re chewing. She turns back and takes a swig from a tumbler. You’re old enough to know that the amber liquid is booze. You’ve never seen your crazy aunt, or anyone else for that matter, drink at breakfast. You’ve never seen anyone drink except at dinner. And when your Pop slipped on black ice and broke both knees and spent five days reclined in the recliner with his eyes closed, moaning and then blasting Wagner on the hi-fi because there was no way at first of getting to a doctor in the snow, and then as the days passed, it was too far and too late and what good was a doctor anyhow?

No, this is different, even for your crazy aunt. She’s barefoot and wearing a peach linen mini dress as short as anything Twiggy slouches around in. From the front you’d think everything’s okay. But when she turns around to the stove you see that it’s unzipped all the way, all the way being down over her rear, and that there’s nothing underneath. No Cross-Your-Heart Bra, no 18-Hour Girdle, not even white cotton panties.

You watch her breasts move, her bottom move, beneath the still peach fabric. Your older brother Phil watches, too, but your cousin Woody looks down, cheek propped on one hand. When his mom drinks she tends to only half-dress as if she’s doing you a big favor to cover herself at all. If your Mom were here, she’d yell at her because Yvonne is younger than she is. “Oh, for God’s sake, Yvonne, put some clothes on.” Then Yvonne would argue that she had a dress on, that she wasn’t completely naked, and that everyone’s seen her before anyhow, which is true. Just not in the kitchen. Or anywhere downstairs where no one, but no one, is ever allowed in a robe or pajamas or what your Mom making a face, calls déshabillé.

Yvonne would argue in a go-ahead-I-dare-you tone, batting the crumpled false eyelashes she forgot to take off the night before. Then they’d fight in French because they’re French Canadian, and they do their best fighting in French. You wouldn’t get the words, but you’d get the cursing, the verbal slaps, the tit-for-tat venom being spit across the room. Your Mom would switch back to make sure you got her parting shot, even if you had to look it up because you didn’t trust your brother to know what it meant. She’d throw out “slattern” or “slovenly” like a stinky fart that hangs in the air and glance at you. It’s her way of building your vocabulary.

But your Mom is home in New Jersey with your Pop. They dropped

you and Phil off here in the northern tip of New Hampshire for the annual stay with the grandparents. There’s your father’s parents and your mother’s mother, great aunts and uncles, regular aunts and uncles, cousins of all kinds. You and Phil switch off every week between the two sides to keep everyone happy. This week is your mother’s side, the crazy French Canadians.

Phil smirks because he knows you hate eggs, knows you’ll be the one to get in trouble. He spears a whole slimy fried egg and stuffs it in his mouth, then opens wide and waggles his tongue so you can see the disgusting mess inside. He snorts. That makes Woody, one year older than you, and one younger than Phil, laugh. For some reason no one ever forces Woody to eat breakfast the way they do you and Phil. You’re pretty sure your crazy aunt Yvonne cooks you breakfast only because your Mom would find out if she didn’t and World War III would start. “What are they feeding you for breakfast?” your Mom asks in her letters. “Are you getting enough?” This from a mother who never makes you breakfast. This from a mother who taught you how to open those little single boxes of cereal and pour the milk right in before you even turned three.

Suddenly you feel sorry for your crazy aunt in her open dress knocking back a glass of something.

We’re all done, Woody announces, glancing up at his mother. All right then, she says, not even looking up. But Woody and Phil have already scraped their chairs back and are out the screen door and thumping down the porch steps before the door whacks shut. You’ll be home for lunch, she says as if they’re still sitting there, and shoves something around a pan with a spatula. You switch your plate with the egg for Phil’s clean one.

The kitchen is large and old and painted the same mint green as all the old kitchens in this city, at least all the ones you’ve ever seen, both French and English. It might be the only thing these two families have in common. Phil calls it puke green with a touch of snot. He only says that because you once said it looked like melted mint parfait, which is your favorite dessert. The wooden cabinets, the bead board, the wooden kitchen table and chairs where you’re sitting. Puke green with a touch of snot.

Or melted mint parfait. It depends on your perspective, Pop would say.

Whatever you want to call it, it’s not improving the color of your crazy aunt’s skin. Now she turns around and sags against the stove. Her hair is blonde and blowsy like Marilyn Monroe’s, only she hasn’t combed it yet, so it’s sticking out on one side and matted on the other. It’s not real, your Mom told you once when she caught you staring. Her real hair’s just as dark as yours. That stunned you. Not so much that your crazy aunt was really brunette, but that you, too, could change yourself into a blonde.

You could be blonde and people wouldn’t know unless they knew you

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MARGATE’S LUCY IN TURQUOISE MISTS OR THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION IN NEW JERSEY by JERRY DIFALCO

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from before. You could be anything you wanted. You could be someone else.

Are you done? Yvonne asks in a tone that says you are done, you better not even think for a moment that you’re not. Are you done with that breakfast I made just for you? She hasn’t washed the makeup off from yesterday and you wonder if Marilyn looked that bad in the morning.

That puffiness around the eyes, the eyes red. One dress shoulder slipped down. Her naked shoulder is round with a few small moles. You get a crazy thought about walking up to her and picking at one of her moles.

You get crazy thoughts sometimes around this family.

Yes’m, you say. It was very good, you add, thinking this might stall her off because you’re not sure what she might be getting at. Once you told her how the yolk makes you feel like throwing up. She’d stared at you, long and hard, as if debating what to do with you, and puffed on her cigarette sending smoke signals to the ceiling. You look straight at her now and smile a little with Phil’s empty plate in front of you. But she’s looking somewhere beyond, fuzzy and unfocused. Let’s get this over with, she says, and drains her glass with her head thrown back, making a slurping sound. Your Mom would yell if you ever slurped like that.

You follow her bare thumping feet up the blue carpeted stairs, the little black patches on the bottoms of her heels from the kitchen floor, the frosted coral toenails which she let you paint last week even though you messed up and she had to fix each one with a swab of nail polish remover. Except at the beach, your Mom is death on bare feet of any kind.

You’re glad she’s not here with her speech about disgusting and dirty and tetanus and ancient manure buried everywhere you look. You wonder if Yvonne has any inkling how much danger she’s in. How she’ll get blood poisoning or TB or polio and her legs will rot off and she’ll die. Or leprosy! She’ll get leprosy from padding around on the carpet and you’ll have to abandon her on an island somewhere. You imagine her standing on a rocky shore, waving as the boat pulls away.

You feel guilty following Yvonne’s doomed, dirty feet and half-naked rear down the blue carpeted hall, past blue carpeted bedrooms, to your Grandmother’s door. Every morning before she knocks she looks down at you one last time to see if you pass muster. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she swears, “Jesus.” Now she squints. I should do your hair, she murmurs. Before your mother comes back up next month. I could fix you up and make you pretty. She knocks—Maman!—and opens the door and pushes you in and closes it behind you.

Grandmother is sitting up in a four-poster across a room filled with large dark furniture. She wears a pink satin bed jacket with flounces around the collar and the cuffs. Not once have you ever seen this Grandmother without her face, without her hair perfectly crimped, without her pearl earrings. “Does she still wear those damn earrings in bed?” your Mom asked, rolling her eyes. She was paraded, too, growing up, every morning. “Such a ridiculous woman. Supercilious.” She hissed the word out in a way that made you run to look it up.

Now you walk across the room to the left side of the bed by the window with white frilly curtains. Walk slowly like your mother warned. Like a little lady, no funny stuff. The boys aren’t allowed here, not that they care. But you’re the only granddaughter on this side of the family, the only girl among six cousins and your brother. You feel special, singled out in a way your parents don’t like. Stop where your Grandmother’s knees make little hills under the pale blue satin coverlet and wait. She’s writing note cards, a stack already addressed beside her. On the bed tray that Yvonne makes up every day are an egg cup with a cratered shell and the remains of a grapefruit half. They look jagged and violent, as if someone smashed them and stuffed them into their face the way Phil would. Your grandmother smiles at you.

She is very tan from Florida, where she spends half the year now that

your grandfather is gone. He looks on from the nightstand, heavy-lidded, lips slightly pursed. Perhaps that’s because of the plastic flamingos on the lawn. Two neon pink flamingos in a mill town hardly an hour from Quebec.

What do they mean? you asked your Mom. Mean? she frowned.

Mean? Why does everything have to mean for you? She was looking very annoyed. You’d already asked why people had mirrored reflecting balls on pedestals on their lawns. Flamingos mean she goes to Florida, she said. That’s all. It says I got these in Florida where you haven’t been.

Good morning, Grandmother says, ending her scribbles with a flourish. Good morning, you say. She speaks English because she knows you don’t speak French like the rest of her family. Your Mom gave up on that long ago, after the baby books in French and the records of French folk songs. It just didn’t take is what she says with a shrug. She’d tried with Phil too. No way was it going to take in New Jersey surrounded by English.

Grandmother gestures you to come closer. The triple strand pearl bracelet on her wrist clicks softly. I think she sleeps with that stuff on, your Mom once said. Even she’s never seen her own mother without the pearls, the hair, the perfectly made face. Lean in and kiss your Grandmother’s dry powdery cheek. A light, quick brush the way your Mom taught you. Nothing sticky, nothing slurpy.

She picks up a little book and turns to a page with today’s date in gold letters: 18 juillet 1965. “Oh! We shall dine out tonight!” she exclaims. “Won’t that be fun! This morning Laurent shall come at ten”— Laurent’s the driver—”then I shall buy a new chapeau at Marcoux et Fils, and cocoa butter pour le peau. Do you know what that means?” She looks at you politely. You shake your head. You know what’s coming.

“Such a pity,” she says. “La plus belle langue du monde.” She makes a large circle with the pearl-clicking arm. “But it can’t be helped, can it? All of you are anglo, all my grandchildren—tout. Tout! No more pure laine.

How did that happen, can you explain? There’s no one left. Personne!”

She looks disconsolate.

This is the conversation you have every morning. How your generation is the first ever on your mother’s side not to be pure Canadienne, descended from the very first settlers. Or at least not to be French.

They never miss a chance to remind you. Even your Mom will suddenly look at you like she just noticed a glowy-eyed kid from the Village of the Damned. “It’s too bad,” she’ll say, shaking her head. Phil is smartmouthed so he’ll say, “Well, don’t look at me.” But you’re not sure what to make of it. How could you be you without your Pop? How could you be at all?

Now Grandmother pats your hand briskly in a not-your-fault sort of way and turns back to her little book. At one she shall play bridge at Mme. Gagné’s. At four she shall meet her best friend Jeannette at the Gypsy Tea Room.

Grandmother is the only person you’ve ever heard say “shall.” And the only one who goes to Tea Rooms. You are dying to go to the Gypsy Tea Room even though you hate tea, just to see if there’s a gypsy despite what your Mom says.

There’s no gypsy, she sighs. There was never a gypsy. It’s just a name to get people like you to come in. What they would do, people would go for a drive in the mountains. They’d stop at a roadside tea room, one with a panoramic view. They’d have tea and cake and look at the mountains.

Then they’d drive back. Your Mom can’t believe anyone still does it, it’s so old-fashioned. She can’t believe any tea rooms still exist in the White Mountains.

You are still dying to go.

“Now, tell me what shall you do today?” Your Grandmother peers over her little book, pen poised in the air.

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I LIVED HERE ONCE by CHRISTINE WALINSKI

You could hug her. You could jump right into that high four-poster with the pale blue slippy satin, and throw yourself all over her like a mutt.

You are ten years old, you’re wearing madras shorts, red sneakers, a sleeveless cotton shirt. Your knees are scraped and grubby. This strange, dear French Canadian Grandmother believes you have a calendar. You have appointments. You have important things to do.

“We shall visit Grammy Cobb.” This is the answer you give every morning. Safe. Unalarming.

“Ah oui, there’s always that. One has obligations, n’est-ce pas? And what else?”

“I shall play poker with Woody and Phil. Then I shall lunch.” She waits, expecting more. “Then I shall read a comic book.”

“Bon!” she says. You wonder if she understands “poker” or “comic book.”

Once your Mom caught you and Phil by surprise. I shall burp (you burped long and loud). I shall barf (he made retching sounds). I shall pick my nose and I shall eat it. She came on red-faced, wild-eyed, swinging while you dodged out of reach. You don’t know what it’s like. Swat. Coming from a different language. Swat. You Americans. Think you’re better.

Swat. You and your lousy Thanksgiving. We were already here a generation. Swat. Stupid Plymouth Rock.

Now, before you’re excused, Grandmother puts her notebook down and asks you to donnez-moi her perfume from the vanity. The table is filled with tinted, round glass bottles. Atomizers, they’re called. Each has a long curved stem with a pale silky bulb on the end. They remind you of

mutant insects that got hit by a radiation cloud. Donnez-moi Shitty Blue, Grandmother always directs. At least that’s what it sounds like.

When you first told your Mom about Shitty Blue she made you repeat it a few times. Then she burst out laughing. Laughed until she started coughing and crying at the same time. “Oh, that’s perfect,” she gasped, wiping her cheek with the side of a finger. “Just perfect.” Orchidée Bleue, she explained. A favorite from the ‘20s. She tried and tried to get you to say it right, squeezing your cheeks to make the right shape. “Oh forget it,” she gave up. “Shitty Blue it is.”

Claudia Burbank’s honors include the Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, two Fellowships from the New Jersey Arts Council, and the Inkwell Prize. Her prose and poetry have been published in Prairie Schooner, upstreet, The Antioch Review, Gargoyle, Puerto del Sol, and Washington Square Review among other journals.

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In Church in Cuenca Poem by Timothy Safford

In church in Cuenca Ecuador I watched a woman Come to mass Before she went to market To sell the chickens Strapped upon her back Their scrawny featherless legs and pointy feet near my nose as we danced up the aisle To receive bread that A priest held like the rising sun.

He stood behind a large offering basket So I gathered my nine coins.

She reached back And like the archer pulls an arrow from the quiver She pulled a chicken And laid her there On radishes and potatoes That the toothless man sacrificed Just a moment before.

Manna back to god Lunch for a priest The tenth coin.

Timothy Safford is an Episcopal Priest, having moved to Philadelphia from Los Angeles in 1999 to serve as the pastor of Christ Church, in Old City. Poetry is a hobby, and, “In Church in Cuenca” is his first published poem.

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BURROW by CHRISTINE WALINSKI

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Jesus Christ, It’s Jesus Christ Owen Oxley Hamill

A Beginning. We had been conducting workshops all week; today was the last day. The first story, Panic! at the Disco, centered on a man who assumed people were yelling, “This dance club’s on fire!” because his moves were so hot. We read and critiqued the story of Jennifer and her boyfriend Hewitt, titled Jennifer Loves Hewitt. And a third student imagined a cookbook written by David Foster Wallace.1 We were crammed around two large lab tables pushed together, the twelve of us. I was seated at a corner, trying not to lean my torso into the sharp edge protruding out at me. Jane sat two seats to my right, and wanted to begin this workshop as she did all the others. She leaned forward, around the students between us, and asked me to read a section of my story aloud. She suggested the opening paragraph.

On the right panel, streaks of chalk were only partially erased. The right edge of this panel sat behind the open door, which had swung recklessly around its hinge until banging against the chalk ledge, then had vibrated back about six inches before coming to rest. Out the open doorway sat a vending machine, flanked on either side by the men’s and women’s restrooms. A girl was jabbing the heel of her palm into the front of the machine and firmly instructing the stuck bag of Bugles to accept its fate as her morning snack, dammit. A boy paused momentarily outside the men’s restroom to zip his fly before echoing down the hallway.

Answering Jane’s question, Keith cleared his throat and said, “I don’t think there was enough development of Jesus. At the end of the story, I still didn’t know much about him.” He sat slouched in his seat, his left ankle resting on his right thigh, tapping his fingers lazily on the instep of his shoe. This posture and his glasses often conspired to grant him an aura of casual intelligence. Recently, trying to put Jane’s grammar lessons to use, he had proclaimed his favorite band to be The Whom.

“What do other people think about that?” Jane asked. “Do people agree with Keith?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Chloe. “There wasn’t a whole lot of depth to his character.”

Leah leaned forward in her seat and reached her hand out towards the middle of the table to catch Jane’s attention. Leah’s last story, a series of diary entries written by a mother grieving the death of an infant daughter, had been written with an anguish that bled through the fiction unit and into something real. “I think the lack of character development actually helped make him more relatable.” She spoke softly, as she always did, and I leaned forward to catch every word, grimacing as I bumped my sternum against the corner of the table. “There’s no need to characterize him. Others have already done that. Matthew, for example, and Mark, Luke, and John. He could be two-dimensional in the story because he’s Jesus, and Jesus isn’t two-dimensional, so therefore he wasn’t two-dimensional.” All the air gone from her lungs, she deflated back into her seat.

“Well,” Jane said, “that may be so, but we need to focus on what he’s like in this story.” She pressed her forefinger into the story as she spoke. “Emily, how about you, what did you think?”

“Jesus was cool,” Emily said. “I have nothing actually constructive to say because this is an intro class and I’m the obligatory classmate who doesn’t give a shit.”

Matt cleared his throat and said, “I didn’t think there was a whole lot of development, honestly. He’s sort of a one-note character, sort of flat.”

Jesus is a really shitty professor. Standing at the front of the lecture hall, he looked odd in a coat and tie, no beard and trimmed hair. But I suppose the dress code applies to everyone, even the Son of God. Staring forlornly out at our Religious Studies class on the first day of the semester, he looked as if he expected more from the Second Coming.

I think we all did. The syllabus began with Buddhism, which I couldn’t imagine was Jesus’ forte. Alas, the curriculum was set in stone, although that shouldn’t have been a problem for him.

A Middle. “So,” said Jane, “let’s start with this: Who is the main character of the story?” She looked around the table. “Caitlin?” she asked, looking at Courtney.

“Courtney,” Courtney corrected her.

Jane jutted her chin slightly left and squinted, puzzled. “No,” she said slowly. “There weren’t any characters named Courtney in the story.” She flipped through the piece, skimming each page. “I think it’s pretty clear the main character is Jesus.” She looked up and nodded at Courtney, nudging her glasses back up the bridge of her nose before continuing. “Okay, let’s discuss this Jesus Christ character. What do we know about him? Do we sympathize with him or not?” Jane gestured to the chalkboard stretching across the entire front wall, made up of two smaller chalkboards pushed together. Scribbled on the left panel, the white chalk nearly washed out by the morning sun barging in through the windows, was WAYS TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS. Jane had written that at the start of class as a reminder of our discussion on character development a few classes ago, prompted by a student’s contention that because his main character hated both warm soda and carpets, that character was neither flat nor static.

The title of the cookbook was Infinite Zest. Chapter One was titled “Looking to Add More Seafood to Your Diet? Consider the Lobster.” Chapter Two was just a picture of an Aquafina bottle, the caption reading: “fig. 1: This is Water.” And that was it, that was the whole story; i.e. a Food Network recipe for lobster rolls and a bottle of water.

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DOWN THE SHORE by KEVIN HOGAN

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He shrugged and Jane nodded.

Leah’s spine snapped straight and she said, “No, he wasn’t flat, because he’s Jesus. We all already know who he is, what he did. We know him.”

pulled the trigger. At the flash of the muzzle, she awoke from her dream and suddenly realized that everyone she had ever loved was gay.” She held her story against her chest, smiling down into her lap, her eyes flitting up to the faces surrounding her. The workshop leader, her back to me, clasped her hands together and asked the group to comment.

A classmate, her voice wavering slightly, answered first. “Your writing sort of reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates. You know that story about the girl in the Detroit Correctional Institute, how it’s written kinda like the first draft of a story? Yeah, this is, too.”

“Yeah,” agreed another student. “A little like Oates, but at the same time, totally different. Mostly not, but then again, sort of.”

“Actually,” a third student said, “I’d peg you as more of a young Alice Munro, because back then, she didn’t have a Nobel Prize, either.”

A brief pause in the feedback prompted the leader to ask the boy leaning his head against the door for his opinion. He answered, “Your story reminds me of Amy Tan’s ‘Two Kinds’ because I didn’t read that for class, either.”

Finally, another student compared the girl to George Orwell because even he sometimes struggled with specific setting details. “Apparently,” the student said, “the first draft of his novel was called The 1980s.”

As we filed out of the classroom, Jesus said, “I’ll be in my office later this afternoon.” He shrugged indifferently. “Stop by if you want.”

Sitting in my dorm after class, I couldn’t help but feel the urge to take advantage of this opportunity. Here was the Messiah, available to answer any and all questions I had. He was no longer bloodied and inanimate on the cross, towering up behind the pastor at church and leering at me on Christmas Eve, wondering why he hadn’t seen me since Easter. Deciding to go, I made a list of questions I wanted to ask, questions like: Are we all Christians now? Should I start going to church more often? And can I submit prayers in person? If so, I’d like to sleep with Maggie from math class, please.

Door ajar, I peeked into his office as I knocked. Slouched down in his chair against a backdrop of disorderly bookshelves, his feet were up on the desk, a New York Times crossword puzzle balancing on his thigh. He had changed since class—he was now wearing a white robe that descended down his body to his Birkenstocks, a rope belt knotted around his waist. He had also donned a cheap-looking Jesus-style wig and beard, complete with a plastic Crown of Thorns. He was a Halloween store Jesus.

He looked up to nod me into his office, then returned to the puzzle, chewing the back of his pen, brow furrowed. A few moments passed in silence and then he began talking to himself. “Give ‘em blank. Four letters,” he said. “I don’t know, give ‘em what? Fish? Wine? Hope? Love?

No, none of those end in L.” He mumbled inaudibly for a few seconds before exploding in exasperation, yelling, “Oh, for my own sake! I give up!” The puzzle fell to the floor as his feet thudded to the ground, and he clambered up in his seat. He tossed the pen onto his desk and wriggled his fingers underneath his snug crown to massage his temples. Smiling wearily, he asked, “How are you, my son?”

“Not too bad, not too bad at all,” I answered, drumming my fingers on the arm rests of my chair. “So, you’re a college professor now?”

“Yeah, the pay scale for Messiah didn’t keep up with inflation, so I looked elsewhere for employment. Not that academia is all that much better these days. At least I’m not an adjunct.”

I thought about some of the questions I wanted to ask Jesus. “Let me ask you this, Mr. Christ –” Jesus bristled at my formality and interjected with a raised hand, his open palm facing me. “Please, call me Jesus. Mr. Christ was my father.”

He chuckled softly to himself before stopping and raising his hand once more. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “actually, God was my father.”

“What about Joseph?”

“Well, yeah.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I send a card to both on Father’s Day.”

“What’s all this?” I asked, gesturing to the bookshelves behind Jesus. Thick books stood at attention on the shelves, some of them looking as though they might disintegrate into a pile of dust should anyone attempt to flip through them. On another shelf were stacks of scrolls, yellowed parchment and a stone tablet.

He twisted his torso around in his chair, surveying the shelves, and said, “Oh, that’s just some research. I haven’t published anything in a while and I need to impress the tenure committee.”

“What was the last thing you published?”

“I wrote an article called ‘Pontius Pilate: Dick.’” He shook his head.

“It wasn’t well-received. Apparently it was too biased.”

“And what about the Bible? That’s a collection of stories from your life, right?”

“Yeah,” Jesus said, “some of them originally appeared in The New Yorker.”

“So, what are you working on now?” I asked.

He got up from his chair and stood at the bookshelves, his back to me. He picked up a few papers, examined them. As he searched, he said, “I’m working on two things right now—a self-improvement book tentatively titled The Power of Me Compels You! and also this.” He turned around, handing me a manuscript, and said, “It’s just a rough draft.” The title of the work was: Christianity > Buddhism: A Critical Comparative Examination.

“So, you’re comparing things like Heaven and Nirvana?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “and I do, admittedly, have to give them the edge on that one. I mean, who do we have, Switchfoot? Give me a break.” Jesus talked excitedly for a few moments about his own band, called , or: The Band Formerly Known as Ichthys. He then turned his attention to In Utero, heaping praise onto Kurt Cobain. “And Dave Grohl drummed his fucking heart out in Nirvana, sure, I can’t deny that, but Foo Fighters?

I mean, every song sounds the same, man!”

Preach, Jesus, preach.

A brief pause drifted over our group, lapsing into a silence, and I glanced over at the other half of the class, engaged in a workshop of their own. Huddled in the opposite corner across the room, those twelve students were being led by another MFA student, a second year student like Jane. In that corner of the room was another door, this one closed, built farther back along the same wall as the first door. One of the students was balancing on the back two legs of his chair, his head resting against the square glass window of the door, across which the boy with the zipped fly had echoed not long ago.

A girl was reading the final sentence of her story aloud for the group: “The gun was cold and heavy in her hand. She held it to her temple and

Jane asked our group about the plot, and I returned my attention to my own workshop.

“Well,” said Mario, “I thought the plot was a bit ludicrous.”

I leaned back in my chair and listened to Jane ask others in the group to offer their thoughts on the plot. The wall of windows behind me provided a view of the courtyard below, asleep for the winter under a cover-

20

ing of snow, the fountain rooted in a sheet of ice. The sky—cloudless and smooth; the mid-morning sun—painted low in the sky and still yawning away from the horizon. The rays of sun, weaving through the grasping fingers of the bare trees, reflected off the snow and up through our third floor windows, bathing the room in a harsh glow. The dust particles basked in the warmth, aimlessly.

“You thought it was ludicrous?” asked Shania. She sat facing the windows, the same spot she had occupied last class, also a workshop.

Evidently, she had learned from an entire class period spent squinting into the aggressive sunrays and was now wearing sunglasses. “In what way was it ludicrous?”

Mario looked down, not meeting Shania’s gaze, and said, “Well, Jesus comes back and he’s a teacher, and he’s, like, sad.”

“So, what’s your issue with?” Shania asked. “The Second Coming or that teaching isn’t always a rewarding job experience?”

Matt jumped in, saying, “I had trouble believing that Jesus wouldn’t be able to tackle a New York Times crossword puzzle.”

“You don’t know what day it was,” Shania shot back. “It could have been a weekend puzzle. You ever done one of those? They’re hard as shit, you don’t even know!”

Jane rapped her knuckles sharply against the tabletop, reasserting control. “Hey, hey, hey!” With all eyes back on her, she continued, saying, “Let’s get back to the story. What is the plot asking of the reader?”

“To suspend your disbelief,” answered Mario.

Jane next called on Leah. “I thought there was too much plot,” she said, nearly whispered. “There’s no need to provide Jesus with a story, because he already has one.”

“So,” Mario responded, “maybe he should have just written ‘You know Jesus? The dude from the Bible? Yeah, go read that, it’s a great

story on a piece of paper and handed it in.”

“So,” I asked Jesus, “you’ve been dead for two thousand years, huh?

How’s that been? What have you been doing to pass the time?”

“Well,” he answered, “I was brushing up on my Hebrew, keeping up with the slang.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d that go?”

“Actually, I stopped. Instead of taking a course on Judaism, I decided to just read Portnoy’s Complaint because I figured it would be easier.

Now, I’m all shiksa this! and goyim that! You know, l’chaim and whatnot.

I’ve also been masturbating non-stop, but whether that’s because of the book or just all the free time, I really can’t say.”

“Any other hobbies?” I asked.

“I also took up whittling.”

“Whittling, did you say?”

“Yeah, one of the disciples turned me on to it. I think it might have been Judas. So, good job for that, but I can’t give him too much credit because, you know, he turned out to be an asshole. Just like I said he would.” Jesus shrugged his shoulders as a way of resigning himself to the dickishness of Judas.

And An End. “So, we don’t have much time left,” said Jane. “Let’s talk about the ending of the story.”

“I thought it was surprising,” Chloe said. “I was worried it would be really preachy, but it wasn’t really.”

“I didn’t think it was preachy enough,” said Leah.

“Did you get more requests for miracles or carpentry stuff?” I asked Jesus.

“Oh, I built a lot of bookshelves, birdhouses, stuff like that,” Jesus

Suburban Philadelphia f ust be more t o l i ere m “Th

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aving everything .” an h e th

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poetry, creative nonfiction, short-story, novel, dramatic writing, or writing for children and young adults

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21

Suburban Philadelphia

answered. “I once built a model ship and called it the U.S.S. Miracle. I tried to fit it in this empty bottle I had lying around, but I just simply do not understand how they do that.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty tricky.”

“Anyway, I filled the empty bottle with water and turned it into wine, had myself a good time.” He scratched his fake beard wistfully and sighed at the whitewashed wall, maybe imagining himself with a bottle of Merlot and a TiVo full of Alias episodes, or whatever people do with a night to themselves.

I really hated to ruin his moment, but I still had one more question I wanted to ask. I knew death would come, but that was about all I knew.

Jesus had been there, he had been killed and lived to tell the tale, more or less. I wanted to know if it hurt—not the process of dying, that was just life—but right before, a few seconds before. Was there a white light, any pain, what? Was it out-of-body; did it hurt the most right before?

I draped my torso over the left armrest of my chair, trying to gently nudge into his peripheral. He looked my way, still in a sort of stupor, and I asked him my question. He began to laugh and cut me off, saying: “Oh no, getting crucified was awesome, are you kidding? I’ve been up in heaven for two thousand years, showing chicks my scars. I was getting laid all the time.”

dents sat on each side of him, all of them on the same side of the table.

Jesus wearily refused the wine list and asked about the restaurant’s whiskey. “Or whiskey or bourbon or whatever,” he said. When the waitress asked if he’d be interested in Maker’s Mark, he snapped, “I am the Maker’s Mark!” She retreated sheepishly, bringing him back a beer instead, and Jesus then began to field questions from his students. One student asked him about tips for beginner water walkers. “Try Utah,” Jesus answered. “Very buoyant lakes, from what I’ve heard.” And on he went, at one point scolding a student who asked him to multiply his meal after the student decided he was hungry enough to eat more than one piece of salmon. Jesus himself didn’t really seem to be eating; he just spread his arms out in front of him, smiling and nodding at the students on either side of him. They slowly began turning to each other, speaking in hushed tones, laughing softly. A few students, feeling the stillness at the center of the table, cast wayward glances back towards Jesus, just as whispering students can feel the stern silence of a professor waiting to continue with the lesson. But Jesus was simply sipping at his drink through a smile, pleasantly lost in his mind. He seemed content to leave the students to themselves.

Eating lunch in town a couple hours after class, my friend pointed towards the front door of the restaurant and said, “Dude looks like Jesus.”

I looked up to see a man walking in, his robe descending down his body to his Birkenstocks, a rope belt knotted around his waist. He stamped his feet, shedding snow onto the welcome mat. Following him, twelve students crowded around the hostess, following her to a long narrow table. Jesus sat at the middle of the table and his stu-

Born and raised in Lansdale, PA, Owen is a recent graduate of Penn State University, with a B.A. in History. This is his first published story.

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22

Ode to Scrapple Poem by Grant Clauser

Its name is what was left when all the better words were taken for other things.

Here there’s title and history, will to stake a claim in one word. Scrapple.

I rise early, before the sun and daughters, before the dog stretches his old bones across the door jam to pee in the dark, because the economy of dawn is momentary and true.

The night’s crumbs tumbling into the morning’s expectant wag, and in that crossroad moment when things become only present, before either shadow or light lay claim, I look for compass points toward the day, plan the route.

Scrapple knows where it comes from and doesn’t mind, wastes nothing and still keeps it together, not like me, moving through the years like a traveler dropping excess kit along the trail as the day heats up.

Let’s get righteous about waste, about taking up what others leave behind.

We build new cities on the broken walls of the conquered.

We raise our children in the light of things we’ve lost, and still we bury our dead in green fields.

So dawn I fry the offal, a ponhoss of cornmeal and pork bones in butter with eggs, the dog sniffing around the floor for bits I’ve forgotten.

Grant Clauser is the author of two poetry books, Necessary Myths (Broadkill River Press 2013) and The Trouble with Rivers (Foothills Publishing 2012). Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cheat River Review, The Good Men Project, Mason’s Road, Painted Bride Quarterly, Seattle Review and others. He also writes about electronics, teaches poetry at random places and chases trout with a stick. Grant’s blog is www.uniambic.com

23

A Day at the Ballpark With Dad Robert Freedman

For me, it was the best place on earth: Connie Mack Stadium. That’s where the Philadelphia Phillies played; my home town favorites, my heroes, the guys I wanted to grow up to be. Guys like Robin Roberts, Del Ennis, Granny Hamner, who played shortstop, and who, Dad said, was “tough as nails.” The big wad in Granny’s cheek was chewing tobacco Dad told me. He was always spitting—Granny that is, not Dad. Dad smoked cigars as we sat in the stadium on those warm summer days.

I was happy then. Being at the ballpark with my dad and my younger brother Paul was as close to perfect as my life could be.

Sports were the only way that I was able to connect with my father.

In our regular day-to-day life he was distant, silent for the most part, sometimes threatening. Usually I tried to avoid him; Mom was always telling us not to “bother your father.” Like he might explode if pushed the wrong way.

We’d arrive at the ballpark early. Connie Mack Stadium was in North Philadelphia, in a tough neighborhood, by which I mean an African-American one. Back then, in the mid-fifties we said, a “colored section.” So, when we parked the car, Dad would give some “colored” kid a dollar to watch the car while we were gone. I understood that it was a sort of bribe, but one that everybody could agree on. Give the kid a buck, or else come back to find your tires slashed.

Before the game we would go to a little hole in the wall soda fountain where Dad would order us hot dogs with chili sauce, and chocolate cream sodas. I can’t tell you with words how delicious that food was. I can tell you how I felt about my father then. I thought he was perfect— strong, smart, even kind. I loved him in a way I could never have spoken out loud.

Dad always got us good seats, down close to the field on the first base side. That would be the best place to catch a foul ball, Dad said, though we never did get one. Walking out from the dark tunnels into the bright interior of the stadium took my breath away. It was so big, so vivid, with the bright green outfield grass and the brown dirt of the infield, lovingly tended to by the grounds crew. Some of the players would already be out on the field taking batting practice or running sprints. Someday, I told myself, I would be out there too, wearing a red, pinstriped Phillies uniform. I didn’t tell Dad that, though. I was afraid he might have laughed at me. That would have ruined everything.

We’d buy scorecards before we got to our seats, from a guy who waved a fistful about and hollered, “Get your pro-grammms here.” Dad bought two, and gave one to me. Paul was still too young to know how to keep score, and didn’t seem all that interested anyhow. Dad, though, had taught me how to do it—all the symbols and numbers you had to know to keep a running account of who had done what at each turn of

bat. It was complicated, but I picked it up quickly because Dad expected me to, and because I wanted more than anything to please him.

Once the game got underway, we settled back into the hard wooden chairs and became totally absorbed in the action on the field. Dad kept up a running commentary on the game, yelling encouragements at the Philly batters— “Come on, Richie. A little bingle. Let’s get it going.”

Richie Ashburn was the leadoff hitter for the Phils and consistently had one of the best batting averages in the National League. Dad turned to me almost every time Ashburn came to the plate and said, “See, you don’t have to be a slugger to be a great player.” If Ashburn worked the count to three and two, Dad yelled out, “A walk’s as good as a hit.” There were dozens of these phrases he would use, depending on the situation and who was at the plate. The other men in the seats around us were doing the same, whooping and yelling, and I’d also join in, though my voice wasn’t loud enough to be heard. Still, it felt good, like I was part of something bigger than myself. Dad’s loudest comments were reserved for the opposing team. He’d yell so loud I was sure the players could hear him. “No hitter, no hitter. This guy’s a bum. Strike him out. Put it in his ear.” This last, I finally figured out, meant for our pitcher to hit the opposing batter in the head with the baseball. I don’t think Dad meant that seriously.

We were all yelling and cheering together for the team, responding as one to every moment, good or bad, on the field. And when a Phillie player knocked one out of the ballpark for a homerun, all of us jumped up as one body, screaming and stomping, cheering. Dad and I stood there side by side clapping our hands as Willy “Puddinghead” Jones or catcher Stan Lopata or Elmer Valo circled the bases. If the homerun put us ahead or won the game, maybe Dad even slapped me on the back. My little brother, Paul, cheered too, but I got the feeling that he was doing it just because everybody else was and as soon as he could, he’d sit back down and continue eating roasted peanuts, the shells now scattered all under his seat.

By the ninth inning, unless it was a particularly close game, I was tired and ready to leave. Including the drive over, we would have been gone for five hours or more. On the other hand, I really wasn’t ready for the day at the park to end. I knew that once we left Connie Mack Stadium and got back in the car (whose tires were still in one piece) everything would go back to the way it was. Dad would stop talking, stop buying us treats. He’d drive us straight home, wouldn’t look at me, and I, smart boy that I was, would also stop chattering, stop asking questions, stop being happy. And wait for the next day at the ballpark.

By the time I graduated from John Bartram High School, Dad and I had stopped going to the games. We didn’t have much to say to each

24

SAINT PAUL’S CATHEDRAL 4 by PAM MCLEAN-PARKER

other—not even about the Phillies. And once I left for college and continued on with my life, Dad and I grew even further apart. I imagined that he was angry that I had not followed in his footsteps to become a doctor, upset that I married a non-Jewish woman, disappointed that I had moved my family 3000 miles away from Philadelphia. Our days at Connie Mack Stadium were a distant memory.

Then in 1978 (8 years after Connie Mack was taken down), Mom and Dad came to visit us in Seattle. Maybe because he was now retired, Dad seemed gentler, more open. He allowed my young daughters to climb onto his lap as he read them book after book. I bought us tickets to go see the Mariners play—good seats too, right on the first base side like

Dad had taught me. We drank beer and ate peanuts and I kept score in the program. Dad still cheered and jeered at the action on the field. I did too. We shared the same vocabulary once again. Father and son.

From almost the moment of my birth, my family has called me Butch. I was an eleven pound baby. I often feel like I’m operating undercover when people call me Rob or Robert. Rob has gotten degrees, held jobs, raised a family and even published lots of stories. But in my later years, I have launched into reclaiming my Butchness. These days, Butch likes to hang out at the beach and go surfing.

25

Love is Like This Poem by Nicole S. Levy

I stay awake at night to write you a love song.

In the morning, you break me down by line, insisting what’s wrong with you.

I’m a batter now swinging, you, you, you until that moment—terror—when I find myself standing selfless and suddenly alone swinging the bat at air then dropping it all together because what does it matter if I curl up like a kitten at the plate purr myself into a tight ball still as domestic pottery until that moment—relief—when you step back on the mound pitching wild till my porcelain eyes shatter.

Nicole lives in West Philadelphia where she is a member of the Suppose an Eyes poetry workshop. Her poems have appeared in Apiary and you can find them also at www.lightheartedaffair.com.

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27

5 Signs that your short story is running amok Aimee LaBrie List articles are popular these days. We want answers to life’s most difficult questions in easy-to-scan, numbered points. I read those articles too, the ones with titles like “10 secrets to a bettered life, “11 things happy couples do,” “19 ways you are sabotaging yourself at work “ (number one: reading fluffy blog posts while on the clock). Most of the times, the lists are not unlike suggestions you would find in a Highlights or a religious publication. Smile more, hug more, take the time to smell the roses, and other assorted clichés that you wouldn’t ever, ever want to appear in your own writing. But in this particular case, I promise that these five things can really help you improve your fiction. Or, at the very least, give you some concrete ways to avoid fiction-killing mistakes.

Here are a few of the warning signs that you’ve lost the reins of your story, and it’s on the verge of running away from you.

them with a few more skills, make them better conversationalist, something, anything to allow them a way to escape without the threat of life imprisonment or a public hanging.

3.

1.

Animals start speaking. Why is this wrong? Shouldn’t the squirrel have his say? Look at Animal Farm! No, do not look at Animal Farm, because that is a novel. When writing short fiction, oddness is good, but you don’t have the space to give us the real back story about why this particular squirrel speaks with a British accent. You’ve got to get to heart of the matter and fast. Often, lengthy exposition and details flashbacks to explain odd situations are not friends of the short story; they can get in the way unless you are very, very clever. Solution: focus on your characters. If they are complicated and full of desire of some kind, you don’t need a weird twist or animals haunting their ex-wives (for counterpoint, see: “Jealous Husband Returns in the Form of Parrot”).

2.

Your characters can’t stop talking about the weather. Pages and pages of unnecessary dialogue are fine in draft form, because they can help you figure out your characters. In short fiction, unless it’s clear that when they talk about the weather, they’re actually talking about the character’s upcoming abortion (see: “Hills like White Elephants”), get rid of unnecessary dialogue. While you’re at it, get rid of characters calling each other by name every other line, John. Sarah, this doesn’t happen in real life, Sarah. Solution: get out of the chattiness and have something happen. A walnut can fall from a nearby tree, right into the other character’s mouth. Better yet, the action should arise from a random act, but from one of the character’s actions. For example, maybe your character is thinking, This guy is a windbag, I must do something to get him to stop talking.

When your dialogue is dragging on and on and on and nothing of importance is being said, it’s akin to getting your truck stuck in mud. You’ve got to stop revving the engine, get out of the cab, and push the damn thing.

Your ending is a blood bath. Let’s make a group proclamation that no one will die in our stories ever again, particularly in the final paragraph. Particularly by suicide, and particularly by suicide of a first person narrator. You can have a bunch of people already dead at the beginning, but when violence is your only way to end the story, it means you’ve forgotten to invest your character with any real desires to be pursuing in the story. In other words, the conflict should be a human, understandable, relatable thing; partially internal, and partially arising from circumstance and relationships. It should not take the form of an atomic bomb, a shootout at a bank, or a stampede of ponies. Killing people off in the end is cheating—it means you haven’t thought enough about the characters’ motivations to find another way out. Solution: go back and find out what each person wants more than anything and what s/he is willing to do to get it. Have the action unfold from the characters struggling to get what they want.

4.

Your final scene takes place in a prison, an insane asylum, or the narrator’s bed (as in: “it was all a dream...”): In this scenario, you’ve probably again written yourself into a corner. Your characters are acting crazy or dragons have suddenly appeared on the subway and you don’t know how to wrangle back into the real world. Again, for first drafts, I say, go ahead and let it all fly, but when you go back to the page for revision, remember that we thoughtful, introverted readers care more about the people in your story than we do about an unexpected ending. Solution: don’t give yourself an easy out. If you find that the only way you can escape is through one of these cheat valves, perhaps you’ve set the wall too high for the character to climb or not given him enough strengths to face the challenge. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that we want our characters to be active and capable of change and so you can go back and endow

5.

You need a diagram to keep track of the characters. A short story is like a canoe. Because of the brevity of the form, it can only hold so many people. When extra characters get in, the canoe starts to sink. Too few, and it’s difficult to get anywhere without a struggle. My rule is four named characters in a story maximum. Solution: if you find you cannot stop with four characters, consider yourself lucky—it’s a novel.

Of course, as with any list of “must not do’s” there will be writers who break these rules and do so brilliantly. If you can get away with it, break at will. If not, allow yourself to make those mistakes in your drafts, but when you get down the real business of revising, kill all of those little darlings.

28

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