Spittoon 3 3 by Spittoon Press

Spittoon 2.4

Spittoon

Volume Three Issue Three Disintegration

Fall 2013

www.spittoonmag.com

ISSN: 2166-0840

Spittoon 3.3

Fiction Editor Matt VanderMeulen

Poetry Editor Kristin Abraham

Creative Nonfiction Editor Kristin Abraham

Front cover art by Dimitri Castrique: “Fill me up babe.” Digital photograph. Back cover art: “Disintegration.” Digital photograph, courtesy of Stock Exchange.

Spittoon 3.3

Table of Contents Irene Turner

The Lessons

Graham Tugwell

The Masks of Mister Brougham

Jacob Schepers

Erin Lyndal Martin

nonfiction

fiction

poetry

fiction

Elegy for the Compos Mentis

There Are Cats in the Coliseum

Paulus Kapteyn

The Eavesdroppers

fiction

Jeffrey Hecker

Generations of Robertos Answering Si poetry

Black Box Suggestion Box

poetry

Nels Hanson

Waiting for White King

fiction

Jenny Ferguson

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Living on Mars!

poetry

Defense after Stealing the Afghan Blanket poetry Consignment Life Darren C. Demaree

poetry

EMILY AS SLEEP IN A PALM

Susana H. Case

Velvet Elvis

Carrie Bennett

BEFORE THE END THERE IS A WHITE SKY poetry 56

Contributors

Spittoon 3.3

The Lessons Irene Turner

We roll up Palos Verdes Drive, North in my mom’s burnt-orange ’71 Corolla. My brother is blond and six and mostly tolerable unless he’s putting his fingers on my side of the back seat. I can see where we are when I squint through the sloping side window, but my view of the future is blocked by the passenger seat. My mother punches on KABC and talktalktalk radio. The sun beats down while Dr. Toni Grant soothes yet another caller with her blend of pop psychologist-wisdom: I’m good at tuning it out. Mom listens intently to each tale of infidelity-anxietysuicidal depression. We never discuss them. The lessons aren’t for us, but for her. I think it’s dumb to take advice from the radio; we beg my mother to switch to KHJ. If we’re really lucky, she will and they’ll play Black Superman (Muhammad Ali). We know all the lyrics and all three of us can sing to it: we call it The Butterfly Song. Or maybe Clarence and I will discuss our plans to appear on The Gong Show: if my mother will only let us audition, we’re sure they’ll let us lip sync The Streak. When we were tiny, we had babysitters like JoJo, who loved us like she had loved our mother in the 1940s (until JoJo showed signs of dementia and we all cried when my mother had to let her go). Or Mrs. Wilmes who smoked away her indifference and let us watch roller derby until I think my mother caught her drinking. Nobody cried for her. Now I’m seven, eight or nine, but no more than ten, and I’ve got my own lessons today. In my twenties, I asked my mom why she was always taking me to classes. “You were bright,” she said. “You needed to something to do.” There is plenty to discover in 70s Los Angeles – this is what I learn:

The Museum of Science and Industry has a loading dock. It also has model trains and hatching baby chicks.

Spittoon 3.3 Turner, The Lessons

Some director thought Geology would be stimulating to ten 4th graders on a Saturday. Fool’s Gold is my favorite because it glitters, even though it’s obviously fake. Crystalline salt quartz tastes exactly like you think it will on the trifold cardboard display.

To make a doll cake: Pull out your ovenproof Pyrex and fill it with cake batter. Bake at 450 degrees or whatever the Duncan Hines box says. Upend the bowl and dump it out upside down. Stick your naked doll in the spongy goodness. Don't use Barbie. A Skipper rip-off works better because it’s cheaper and shorter. Frost a dress over her and bring it to your school’s Cakewalk. Someone else will lick it away.

If your arrows are off center, it’s better to have them cluster than scatter. Archery is cool because making the same mistake over and over is a good thing: it's easier to correct your aim. Estes model rockets often fizzle even as you light their tiny firecracker stages. And they’re doomed to disappoint you when they fall back out of the sky.

At Miss Dawn’s Swim School, I’m always the best of the worst, a splay of gangly limbs and eye goggles and ear infections and chlorine. I'd rather have green hair than have to keep tugging off my bright yellow swim cap, the rubber stretching as it yanks my scalp.

(I get thrown off a horse. I quit.)

If your mother puts you in dance because the doctor says it’ll improve your coordination: Brownie Brown Studios will give you toe shoes because you’ve had decent attendance, even if you’re way too young. The pain in your feet will prevent you from feeling awkward or ungainly. Ditto for your recital tutu.

Spittoon 3.3 Turner, The Lessons

Keep your eyes focused on one point as you pirouette so you won’t get dizzy. And wait until the last moment to snap your head. It’s really obvious when you’re off the beat in tap class. (I took a whole year of tumbling and never managed a cartwheel – some fear of head trauma, it’s the reason I can’t dive.)

Want to twirl a baton? Hold it in the middle, roll your fingers, stir it like you would a stew. If you go fast enough, it looks like twirling. Unless, of course, you’re me.

I’m a crack shot with a rifle when prone shooting at targets. My Junior Marksman medal proves it: received from the NRA.

Sewing is boring because there are too many steps and you have to follow a pattern and if you screw up you have to rip it out. And holding the class in the Singer store in the Del Amo Mall only reminds you how much cuter the clothes are at Bullocks or Robinsons or even JC Penney or Sears.

Hearts will never be replaced as my favorite card game, although I take a whole summer of Bridge. In Bridge, you can’t shoot the moon or dump points on people; bidding is a pain, because you have to memorize. My small hands need a holder to clutch all 13 cards. And how am I supposed to practice? Nobody in my family plays.

Radio Shack kits come with transistors and resistors which you can never quite tell apart. Solder is beautiful as it beads off the tip of your gun. It forms perfect balls that splash onto the wires. Melting the red grid is more fun than completing the circuit or buzzer. The stench of burning plastic is its own kind of high.

The lessons slow when we move to Newport Beach. 1975. My mother cracks, spends a year in a mental hospital. She’ll recover, but relapse twice. I quit dance when I discover I’ve been lied to about my ability. I learn to love horses at camp.

Spittoon 3.3 Turner, The Lessons

My mother becomes phobic about freeways and driving without a companion. I go with her when Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not busy with school and homework. My father mostly takes her, instead. I ask him much later if there were any signs of what would happen. He says the move was only the trigger. The pressure had been building for years.

Spittoon 3.3

The Masks of Mister Brougham Graham Tugwell

If he was beginning it himself, he would begin it with himself sitting on the side of the bed, head bowed and pale in shadowless morning light. He’d note in passing the empty side of the double bed, describing it lying pristine and undisturbed. He would note the bedside locker scrupulously devoid of dust and upon it, the cambersennie flower, fresh in its flute of glass. That would say enough about his character for now. He’d have himself sitting there at the beginning of the story, the story he’d call: THE MASKS OF MISTER BROUGHAM Or— THE CURLEW AND THE PIG Or something else, something better... He sighed— titles were neither his strength nor his responsibility, they were added only when the whole thing had become clear. For now the shape of the story lay lightly in his head, all the things that needed to happen— beginning, middle and end, a pattern barely there, signposts that would only become real when they were passed. The pattern told him to sit there and let himself be seen and described. This morning he felt old and tired because this morning the story needed him to feel old and tired. He was fifty-four. That, for now at least, was an immutable fact. His name was Mr Brougham. In his hands he held the mask. With fingers he felt rough feathers, traced the long, cold smoothness of beak. Explored the facet-hardness of its red stone eyes, the soft chamois-warmth of its inner lining... He knew that there could be a cutaway there, showing the history of the mask, giving depth and texture to the narrative. But which history to choose?

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

In one of the stories he’d made it himself, shaping the stones and cutting feathers from curlews and crows. In another he’d found the mask as a dying boy, washed up on the edge of the reservoir. In another it had been passed down from father to son for one hundred years, always passed with that whispered cry: Kee-haw. He remembered them all. All of them were true. No matter. It had found its way to him. Sometimes Mr Brougham wore the mask. Sometimes the mask wore Mr Brougham. It was whatever the story needed it to be. Sure that enough had been set up, Mr Brougham rose—Note the click of knees, he thought— and crossed the room to the wardrobe, leaving the mask a boneless bird mid-scream on sheets. Carefully he got dressed—a three-piece suit, dark grey, chosen from dozens. A white shirt, completed with silver cufflinks. A thin black tie, knotted and smoothed in place behind the waistcoat. A costume. As all things were, this close to the center.

** Dermot Brougham snapped awake—that unmistakable, inscrutable knowing that someone was watching. Turning in pillows he found his father standing in the doorway. In one clenched fist he held his curlew mask; in black feathered folds shone scarlet. “Dad,” whispered Dermot, sleep leaving words heavy and dull, “Are you okay? Why are you standing there?” His father sighed. (And in that weary exhalation was the sum of their relationship) “I’m looking in at you, son— poignantly— because it humanizes me.”

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

Dermot looked at his suddenly humanized father but could see no difference. And now, perhaps, an outside perspective on Brougham: Not tall, but with the air of someone taller. Thin. An accountant’s beard around flesh-colored lips. Clear, grey eyes. Balding. Grey coming through black hair on his temples. “Go back to sleep,” said Mr Brougham, almost kindly. “Is it today?” asked Dermot. “Yes,” said his father, “It’s today.” (Indulge in a little foreshadowing there) Dermot lifted himself in the bed. “What should I do?” A note of rising panic. “Where will I be needed, Dad?” Mr Brougham reached for the door. “Sleep,” he said. “It’s still early. Too early to know if you’ll be needed or not.” Dermot lay down and watched his father become a sliver of light that went with the soft click of the bedroom door. Walking down the hallway Mr Brougham thought: Symmetry, because now the point of view can shift to—

** Simon Brougham woke. (And does it matter that this scene took place two hours before the beginning of the story?) (No) (No need to even mention that) Simon Brougham woke, shocked at how cold he was. Shocked at how stiff and tired his body was, how worthless sleep had been. Mind numb, it took him time to hear the sounds, took time to recognize them: People, moving through tents and sleeping bags and voices, shouting:

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

“Put on your masks! Put on your masks!” In the chill, dew-soaked envelope of the tent, Simon turned this way and that, a crabbed hand searching grass and ground. He found the edge of his mask and pulled it out from underneath him, its features distorting with the stretch, snapping, when freed, a sting to the flesh of his hand. He touched it. Unpleasant pink rubber; it stank with the high smell of piss, drilling to the back of his head. As shadowy figures moved between tents and called to their occupants, he slowly pulled it on, but coughing, tore it off again. He clutched the pig mask in his hands. Cheap, nasty thing, he thought. It shivered in his grip, an organ plucked cold from an opening. Simon Brougham thought of his father. Thought of the curlew mask. He didn’t know, could no longer even guess, where one began and the other ended— Sometimes a voice came through that wasn’t his father’s— Sometimes he moved as if it wasn’t a man underneath at all. And what Malchi Swain offered wasn’t better but was, perhaps, just as good. Maybe it was a way to get his father back. Maybe there’d be a father to get back. Maybe... He swallowed a breath of air and plunged his face into the belly of the pig, fought to live with its stink and unwholesome touch. Softly gagging, softly moaning, he fumbled with the zip of the tent and scrambled free, joining the rest of the rising girls and boys. Through pork-rimmed holes he looked at the camp they’d come to make—the sloping field, a clamor of tents, convex and concave colors, glittering with morning’s dew. One by one they birthed children and were empty. “Put on your masks!” came the cries, “Put on your masks!”

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

And underneath, the rumble and splutter of that morning’s cleared lungs and filled mouths. The swine-headed throng were straggling up the rise because there, in front of the hedge and its skeleton trees—Malchi Swain, in denim and leather and wearing that grin— Behind him the pile of ash where last night they’d burned, one by one, their bird masks. Plastic flakes, eyes and beaks: the night’s rain had brought rivulets of black down the slope, amongst the tents. Lines to follow. Convergence. And as they came onto him Malchi Swain held up his mask. Pale, shadowless morning light on all these things: Bristles of wire. Tusks of brass. Green eyes of stone, copper-fastened in place. A thing he had made himself. Malchi lifted it and slow and lovingly found himself inside the swine. His voice came through the snout, between the tusks, rough and low. “A change is coming,” said Malchi Swain, “It’s time for a new beginning.” A stirring of wind. (Cold, empty, punctuation.) “We’re taking the town for ourselves,” growled Malchi Swain and a hundred pairs of piggish eyes looked on him in silence. “He’s just one man,” said Swain, “An old and tired man.” A rain of freezing pinpricks had come down; drops too small to be seen, too small to be guarded against—a soaking of all, through cloth to skin. “We were his hands once, and he used us as he saw fit.” The pile of slag behind him, where a hundred birds had ended, settled and ran with the rain. “No more, I tell you. The time of the curlew is done. Now begins the time of the pig!” His bog oak truncheon, thrust, fucked the sky— Again! Again! And boys and girls stretched pink rubber down over heads, pulling holes for eyes and teeth to poke through. Beating the air with cloven fists they gave out with guttering, gluttoring, rough swine voices that rose into trembling translucent foetal squeals—

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

Lost amongst them, Simon Brougham, tasting the horrible innards of pig and snorting and grunting and squealing, and weeping, wetting his face and slicking his inners... War. It would be war. The crowd moved onto the road. Pig-masked, Malchi Swain took them down towards the town. The morning’s rain was burned away by strengthening sun. Shadows thickened, colors enriched; things defined as Mr Brougham made his way up through the town: the gentle breath of traffic, the scent of cambersennies, shop-fronts in glass and color and the four-pronged spire over all. His town. Mr Brougham gave the people he passed a judicious smattering of nods and polite ‘hello’s’. Just for the look of the thing. Because the bodies he met were not people, not really, they were things to place into the narrative when needed; plot or texture—players or crowd— there to fulfill their function and go. He could stop and chat, he could name and describe the bodies he met, and it wouldn’t matter which he chose. All had the same practical ubiquity; all of them as good as the next—their sole and necessary worth. They looked on the leisurely stride of Brougham and sent his way dumb plastic smiles and waves of dull compliance, saying: We know our purpose. We know our place. Crossing near an identifiable landmark Mr Brougham thought: Perhaps I should encounter a child who has yet to fully understand their place and purpose. Demonstrate through his or her innocent yet willful defiance how the town really works. Wouldn’t it be a good image: slowly he could bend down and whisper as the child stared at the scarlet eyes of the mask, held like a dead thing in his fist. It happened.

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

He got the image. He left the screaming child and walked on. Only a few in town had a distinct, individual presence. One of them was waving at him from the door of a bar. Doctor Proufot. Mr Brougham looked on the Doctor. Costume: brown corduroy trousers, mustard waistcoat, tweed coat, on one lapel an egg-yolk stain as seal of approval. Physique: piggish pink and redness of jowls and nose, thick neck and thinning hair. Presence: the stink of chemical and cigar, the must of proximity in impersonal spaces. Everything in order. “Gregory,” said Mr Brougham. Conforming to character, the doctor grunted his greeting: “Happening today, is it?” He knocked the head of a cigar against the case. “Yes,” said Mr Brougham, “Stories like this have to happen every now and again. But I don’t imagine it’ll be a long one.” “And there’ll be bodies to patch up at the end?” The flick of red fingers birthed a flame. “Sending young boys down into the dark?” Mr Brougham looked at the Doctor, admired cracked veins across his bulbous purple nose. He smiled. “We’ll see where the story takes us, Doctor.” Proufot grunted. “Isn’t that always the case?” Trailing smoke characteristically rank, the doctor went in to be lost in the dark of the bar. (Something here to facilitate the passing of time, the changing of location) Mr Brougham stood in the graveyard on the edge of town. He regarded the statue at the confluence of paths and passages: three women arranged in ragged adoration of their dying savior pinned in emaciated brass. A crucifixion, it had been modified to meet the needs of the town— where once had been the head of a man, it had been replaced with that of a curlew; rough sacking, red stone, held barbed wire, it had screamed at the sky. There to be seen, to give strength to the symbol.

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

But the curlew was no more. Vandals had taken it down and Brougham was mildly peeved to see his handiwork smashed amongst the graves. And in its place? He looked at it now. A pumpkin, hacked without grace or forethought, the rough semblance of a pig. Already settling into rotting shambles, it was a mild offence to Brougham how badly made it was. It had taken him three weeks to make the curlew—judging the roughness of sacking, how rusted and twined the barbed wire should be. It had been a thing of love. But this monstrosity... they could’ve just written PIG on a rag and stuck it there instead for all its worth. In years gone by there had been the dog and the horse and the fly: the story, finding shapes for itself, calling people to gather round, to find the power and the pattern there. When he was a boy, old Martin Boyle, done as a goat in tri-color pearls... Old signs, old shapes... But now was the time of the curlew and as long as Brougham drew breath it always would be. He retrieved red stones from the shattered head and left the pumpkin-pig on the torso of Christ. An exercise in hubris. How long would it last?

** Down they came through fields, pouring out to fill the roadway, one hundred boys and girls; porcine, full with youth, and at their head the green-eyed Malchi Swain. In one hand his truncheon swinging, pointing the way for the crowd to go. He roared the boar and they chimed in with pigglish squeals. Stumbling amongst pig-headed bodies, Simon Brougham, retching with the smell of rubber become almost an intimate thing. Carried along, carried along... From the town Brougham senior, gone within the mask—his face replaced with eyes of stone and screaming beak. Who wore who? He had become the thing, the completed thing.

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

One to meet the horde. He stopped and gathered a crisp, fresh breath through curlew beak and bending, plucked a cambersennie from the roadside green. He attached it to a lapel with a mattersley pin and strolled on, a snatch of song trickling out: The biting bitch, The killing kind, The blind led onwards by the blind... The horde was heard first; booted feet tramping low under the screech of piglets, then, over the curve of the road, indistinct blurs became heads, rose uneven as points of pink on bodies in denim and leather black. A flash of green the eyes of Malchi Swain. Mr Brougham clasped hands behind his back, bowed his head, and waited for them to come. The two sides met at the foot of the slope, an insignificant spot between hedges and fields, significant now and forever more. In the watchful silence Swain took a step from his retinue, looking left and right in open-snout leer. Taller than Brougham and spider-thin, all limb and grin, his truncheon a nonchalance resting across the nape of his neck. Fingers sent between buttons scratched his flat pale stomach. “So,” he said, less a word than a yawn. “What do you have to say for yourself?” He spat into cambersennies, took his truncheon down to swing. “What way does this have to go? All you need do is...” A flick of a wrist. A grin deep in the mouth of the pig. “Step aside.” Slowly the curlew looked up. Assemble d pigs stared at deep and red uneven stones. “Green eyes,” said Brougham in soft contempt, “Rubbish. Did you think of that?” Swain fought down his first reply and lifted a hand instead. “We get to have it now,” and a finger jabbed at Brougham, “Your time is up! We—” Brougham held up a palm. “Call me ‘old man’.”

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

Swain closed his mouth, blinked and said “What?” “’Your time is up, old man!’ You’re trying to be the Fiery Upstart. Talk like one. Get it right.” Swain’s finger curled to clench in a wobbling uncertain fist. Soft the noise of lips licked within the pig. “I don’t know what you’re.” The truncheon turned in his grip. Softer: “I don’t know what.” Mr Brougham shook beak and feathers and sighed: “Malchi, Malchi, Malchi... I am...” He let out a long, soft breath. “Disappointed in you.” In silence loud the uneasy crowd— a cough or two, squeak and rustle of shifting weight. “A pig, Malchi...” He tutted his distaste. “No imagination. Could’ve been any animal you wanted. But you chose that. The first thing that came to your mind, am I right?” Swain glared and ground his teeth. “Does it matter?” he said thickly, “Does it fucking matter? We’re—” Brougham’s tone: the sad resignation at a dull child still getting the easiest questions wrong: “Does it matter? Malchi, where do you think you live?” The ranks of swine-masked youth stared at their leader, perceptibly diminishing in their eyes. Swain spun on his Cuban heel, pointing with a free hand. “I’ve got them all!” he roared, taking in the crowd. “They’re all with me! You won’t get to use them any more! We decide! We do!” And those words, bracketed by field and hedge and body rebounded, expanded in their shame and dewed a sweat on the neck of Swain. Brougham crossed his arms. “What do you think is going to happen? You think you’ll get a throne? Hmm? The town will bow down to you?” Ludicrous Swain, all leg and glower, pork juice running inside his mask, pooling to drip from the point of his chin, held in the gaze of Brougham like a spider under glass. “Have you given it any thought whatsoever? What happens next?”

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

Cloud in the sky from all points of horizon and Malchi Swain brandished his truncheon. “This happens next!” he roared. “If you don’t get out the way, this is what fucking happens!” (Would a crack of lightning be too much?) (Yes.) Unaccompanied by effects, the truncheon hovered in the air. Useless, useless, until it came down. Brougham had words: “You’re a thug, Swain. That’s all you are. All you’re good for. Hit it until it stops— that’s your solution—smash it, break it, root in the rubbish until you find a piece you can use.” The wind rose and got between clothes and skin— all naked against the outside world. “Heaven forbid you ever build something.” “I’ve built them,” whispered Malchi Swain, “I’ve made them.” The curlew stared at the pig. “Come out,” the curlew called. Heads turned. “Come out here, Dermot. I know you’re there.” A head rose in the hedge rows and a body clambered over the gate. Dutiful, Dermot Brougham came to stand beside his father, gawping at the throng of pigs. Lazily, as if but a minor thing, Brougham brought his fist around and burst the mouth of his youngest son. Cry from the throng: “Don’t! Dad!” and Simon Brougham, ripping his pig mask in rubber shreds, ran to his brother upon the road. The curlew stared. “That’s one you’ve lost, Mr Swain.” “I’ve more,” said Malchi, “There’s more. There’s enough.” The gaze of the bird fell on the crowd and there was the shuffle of stepping back. Brougham’s voice was soft, carried to each set of ears as if intended only for them:

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

“Do you doubt I know every last thing about you? That one little secret that cuts to your heart?” The damp noise of a hundred throats struggling to swallow— His finger shot out, took one at random: “Bosco Sherlock,” he said, “Where does the hilt of your knife go at night?” Another— “Gabby Graves. The thing your grandfather made you wear. That new hole they cut in the belt to make fit.” Bodies were streaming from the crowd, running back the way they came, tearing away their rubber masks. Those who remained got the force of the curlew’s stare. “It’s fun, isn’t it, to pretend? Pretend you can be something else. Pretend you have choice in what you do. Pretend you matter.” And the smile in the depths of the curlew’s mouth...“Go home. Stay faces in the crowd. Don’t make me name you.” Malchi Swain swung to scream at retreating backs: “No! We can do this! Stay—he’s just a man! Just one man! We’re so close!” He turned back to Brougham, eyes wild, mouth a hole, and he swung the truncheon with all his might— But somehow the head of Simon Brougham got in the way— spurt of blood from an eye—and when he swung again there was the jaw of Dermot Brougham— crack and the boy sprawled on the road. Malchi lifted the club again. But. He couldn’t. It slid from his grip. Ditches thick with drifts of pink; wind took scraps of rubber across fields. A handful of pigs remained to witness the curlew come to Malchi: “You too,” whispered Brougham, “I have your secret too.” A single word, deep into the ear of the pig... He broke.

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

The last looked on Malchi Swain, wretched, kneeling in the road and softly took themselves away. As his sons groaned and bled and clutched each other Brougham put his arm around Swain. “Shall I show you?” he whispered, “Shall we go see what’s at the heart of this?” Malchi Swain wept.

“Describe it,” said Brougham, “Describe what’s happening.” “You’re... you’re leading me.” “Go on.” “Leading me by the hand. We’re... please, Mr Brougham, I’m sorry. I’m sorry—” “No. No. Describe it.” “We’re going up through hills. Through the trees. Birds are watching us. You have me by the hand. I’ve lost my mask. Back there, somewhere. In the fields.” “Where are we going, Malchi?” “The reservoir. You’re taking me to the reservoir. We’re going up, up into the hills. Birds are watching us. All the time, there are birds...” “Now what?” “We’re walking. Just walking. The sun has gone in. It’s cold. We’re far from the town. We’re near it? Are we near it?” “Through here. This way. Through here.” They came to edge of the reservoir. “Tell me what you see,” said Mr Brougham.

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

On his knees and leaning out, Malchi Swain stared into the depths. “There’s nothing,” he said, “The water’s clear.” He looked at Mr Brougham for approval. “I can see the bottom. The stones on the bottom.” Brougham whispered “They’re not stones.” And sudden clarity; the shape and size of the thing— “I thought it was just. I thought it was.” Words were useless. Malchi tried to look away but his head was turned against the protests of his neck. “That’s what makes the stories,” said Mr Brougham, “That’s the bargain. You wear the mask and you do what it wants. A stupid, violent child like you—what stories would you let out?” Below the stones flexed and moved. Something... opened. “You still want this?” “No! No! I’ve learned my lesson— I know my place—” “Malchi, when you start a story, you have to end it.” “Please, I was wrong. I didn’t know— Let me go and I’ll leave the town! I’ll go for good!” “No, I can’t let it end like that. All I can do is kneel down. Put my mouth to your ear. I can whisper ‘Sorry.’ I can give you that moment.” Brougham knelt and whispered “Sorry.” The thing in the reservoir rose and took the head of Malchi Swain.

The body lay on the edge of the reservoir. Simon Brougham sat on the edge of his bed. Thinking:

Spittoon 3.3 Tugwell, The Masks of Mister Brougham

Never escape. Never get out. Trapped in it, all of us trapped. Forever. Dermot Brougham sat on the edge of his bed. Thinking: What use will they have for me next? Let it be kind. Let it be gentle, just for once. Please. Mr Brougham sat on the edge of the bed. (Because it mirrored the opening scene) (Because he had seen and done such things that day) (Because doesn’t it look good?) (Because doesn’t it mean something?) (Because because because because—) No. He sat because he was tired. He was tired.

Spittoon 3.3

Elegy for the Compos Mentis Jacob Schepers

That this is a doozy of a dose alarms your afternoon guest. That the hospital gown feels like a second skin is a bad sign and the first in a long line of setbacks. There is such a thing as excess and you rapidly approach it. The limit in calculus is a certain value thought of in terms of a topological net. Suppose f is a real-valued function and c is a real number. The precipitate expression means that f(x) can be made to be as close to the limit as desired by making x sufficiently close to c. That you attribute an intimacy to this function anthropomorphizes the numbers. That you think of the domain as a landscape reminds you of Iowa. Though you have never visited you develop a romanticized notion of the place. You hear summers are nice and you imagine sewing a gown into a sundress.

Spittoon 3.3

There Are Cats in the Coliseum Erin Lyndal Martin

One of those stories that always appears in the dull journals with sketched Adirondack chairs on the front. With a hat in it? Yes. One of those journals. And they have “America” or something in the name. What will our story be about? Europe. They’re always about Europe. The plague? Nothing that epic. People can compare it to the plague later if they want after the story wins accolades. Then can it have sex in it? Yes. You have to have sex with a Frenchman. I do? Not you. Your character. It’s in first person. And there’s sex with a Frenchman? Yes. Good sex? You don’t think about it in those terms. It’s just sex. You like it and you want to sneak away to write about it in your diary but you never get the chance. Right, and I don’t even have a chance to brush my teeth and that makes toothbrushing kind of sexual too. See? You’re ready to write it.

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

I’m writing it? I thought you were writing it. I can’t. Why can’t you? I’ve never been to Europe. You don’t have to go. You can just look at a map and make some claim like how the park benches are all small. People won’t really catch it if you make a statement like that as long as you get other details right. But you know what it means to be in Europe. And all those magazines want is to know you’ve been to Europe. Remember when I said I was only having two drinks tonight? Make that a baker’s two. Whiskey sour? Yes. I’ll get it, though. Where were we? You had sex and it was just so-so. But I thought you said I liked it. You did like it. You just don’t realize it until later. Like when I’m on the airplane and at some point I look out and think I’ll see the ocean, but I don’t, and I suddenly think that the sex was fun. No it’s much sooner than that. The next day. You’ll be eating some rich food— Brie dripping off a cracker? Yes, and you’ll know you liked it. Does he cook for me? No, but he dicks you over.

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

In one night? Yes. That’s not much time. No, it’s not. And there has to be that scene. The next morning. in the shower. I wake up and he’s, well, he’s doing something, I don’t know what. And I get in the shower, and I’m washing myself and thinking how it feels the same even though it’s a shower in Paris, and then I look at his shampoo bottles and shaving cream. And he has all that. But it’s French. And there’s a moment where I look at the bottle and I think, “wow. Even in France you have to lather, rinse, repeat.” That happens before he dicks you over. One more thing. What? You’re sixteen. Are my parents there? No. Why not? There’s ways. Wayward aunts. Maybe my parents overcompensate for their divorce and send me to Europe. No. it’s not that. So I’m sixteen. And then, wait, I have to put a cherry stem between my teeth and lean in all sexy when I ask this. Is it my first time? Yes. Do I have sex with him because a, I’m drunk b, I’m insecure c, I want to lose it to a French guy? None of those. Sort of b and c I guess. You’re just there in Paris and it seems like a good time to have sex for the first time.

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

Well, I’m not going to call this story anything stupid like “Remember Paris,” you know. No, no. You shouldn’t. What should I call it then? Something European. I had this senile Italian professor. I asked her how Rome was. She said there were cats in the Coliseum. We could call the story that. It’s almost there. Maybe I’ll be in a bar. In Paris. And I’ll be reading a guide book, and he’ll see it open to a page with a picture of the coliseum. And he’ll come up and say, “there are cats in the Coliseum.” Maybe. Or maybe, listen: “There are Violets on the Appian Way.” The what? The Appian Way. It was an old road in Italy. I learned about it in Latin class. We read a story about a senator who moved his family in a wagon and they went down the Appian Way. Are there violets there? Maybe. No. And he has to dick me over? Yes, but in some vague way. Like he doesn’t tell me beforehand that he doesn’t want to keep in touch afterwards? No, nothing like that. He does something dickish the morning after. It’s not what he doesn’t do. Does he, like, have an STD or something? Is he married?

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

No. Something happens to you that wouldn’t happen if you had been older and wiser. Oh. The moral of the story. Well, readers can feel superior. You have to make it seem like Europe has taught you something. About small benches? About Life. Uppercase. How do we know I’ve learned? Is there an epiphany? Maybe I see someone younger than I am on the plane, and I feel sorry for her because she’s so young and ditzy, and then I realize I’m kind of the same. It won’t be like that. You don’t get on the plane. I don’t leave? You leave. But we can’t watch you get on the plane. The farthest we can go is you see a skycap driver and you realize you’re thinking about how to get him into bed but you don’t want to have sex with him. I don’t think I’m like that. I don’t suddenly become seductive. Maybe it’s that I look at the skycap driver and he’s so ordinary and I realize that the French man I had sex with was that ordinary too. That could happen, but you can’t say he’s ordinary. You can mention glancing at him and then you don’t mention him again. The fact that you forget about him shows how he is forgettable and you won’t forget the man you had sex with just because you had sex with him. But he’s not remarkable. Do you think a lot of Frenchmen deflower American girls this way? I would like to be a Frenchman. I don’t think you would deflower American tourist girls. I would watch them in the sun wearing little outfits. You don’t have to be French to do that.

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

You would deflower American tourist girls. She can’t leave anything there. I’m not going to have her leave a necklace behind at the guy’s house or anything. And she’s not going to think about him giving it to somebody else. She doesn’t have to leave a necklace. You think she should leave anything? She could. Nothing big. Sunscreen. Hellfire. You burn for having sex. She could leave cigarettes. Obvious reference to adulthood. Her passport. Can she leave a book about the plague? Only if it has a happy ending. There’s so much we can’t put in. What else? Body hair. Or lack thereof. This is France. Even then. Do you think it matters? That we’re lucky enough to live in a time of relative peace? The details. How he dicks her over. What it means. I’m sure she goes on to many great things because of her time in Europe. Is that how it works?

Spittoon 3.3 Martin, There Are Cats in the Coliseum

I never went to Europe. Look where I am. I went. I’m with you. I mean, well, I just don’t know. What do we say to make the story matter? It’s in one of those deck chair magazines. It doesn’t matter at all. It looks like it. The font they use. Like when you’re a kid and you put your crappy report in a pretty binder? No. This is art. Oh. I think, in Europe, the first marvelous thing is the maple syrup. What about it? It’s warm. They do that at IHOP. True. I think you should go back to the Coliseum and the old road. The Appian Way? Yes. Make sure there are violets.

Spittoon 3.3

The Eavesdropper Paulus Kapteyn

the eavesdropper listens to two women, p and t, and a man,r, in their twenties. they look similar. they could be sisters. r, has a disagreeable head: lonely, groping and dumb. she abandoned us last night, said t. i was tired, said p. what did you do, asked t. i packed, said r. i’m moving. i’m on the top floor. it started humming. did you move there, asked t. i have been there for a year, said r. where is it, asked t. you have a place already, asked p. p was the woman our eavesdropper the one who is intently listening to this conversation ,wants to fuck. she has large thick thighs. the eavesdropper is partial to thickness. yeah, said r. this space i’m moving out of has no elevator. i think i have enough people. i saved boxes from my last move. the sentence i think i have enough people doesn’t make sense. it disturbs the eavesdropper. it makes him uneasy, anxious. it isn’t right. when our eavesdropper talks to someone he talks to himself. he has a sentence in his mind that he thinks is sensible and he needs to get it out. life is not easy he thought to himself. life is not easy he said to himself inaudibly. LIFE IS NOT EASY!!! he blurted out. the two young women and the young man looked at him. he ignored them and stared at his screen. r speaks with the least amount of effort. it suits his demureness. i have plastic crates, r said. i got some of those, t said. she has large knees. the eavesdropper considers them. he feels grateful for their levity. she has a few white bumps on her face from stress. she has flat wide lips. one straight flight of stairs, said r. what does he mean one straight flight of stairs our eavesdropper thinks to himself. that cannot be what he said. p has kinky curly hair. the eavesdropper believes in the bounty and youth of her hair. the eavesdropper sees that t has a green dress on. he is unable to see the dress and the knees at the same time. he is only thinking about the green dress. the dress is green it is green like rice. no it is green like money. he feels pained about listening

Spittoon 3.3 Kapteyn, The Eavesdropper

to a conversation that has nothing to do with him. he feels a supple warmth in his abdomen. do you like it, asked t. sometimes, said r. projects vary. do you work from home, asked t. no, said r. r has pinched knees. they made me fill out a form. did you get saucy, asked p. the eavesdropper looks like he is brooding. what is he listening to. does he hear your thought reader? is he absorbing every thought into dark matter. he is turning violet, yellow and blue. is he a rainbow reverberating with the sound of white light? is he a spy. he has felt like one ever since he was a child when he had to side with his mother to survive his mother and to side with his father to survive his father. i don’t fail, said p. i was half assing it. i started getting covers. there are adjustments i have to make. the eaves dropper is scared to look at p. what if she looks at him? what is it with the eavesdropper. is he seeing someone for his compulsion. is the medication not working. he has to listen to every word. he gets angry. i can see him getting angry when he can’t hear what they say. he starts to mumble inaudibly. it looks like a man in a fight with himself. do you draw, asked t. t is the one who facilitates the conversation. she clearly wants to have something with the tepid young man. the prurient eavesdropper thinks about the scrawny young man. he thinks about sucking his big dick for surely a young laconic man has got to have a huge cock to answer for his skinny ass self. the two women are asking questions. why all these questions? the eavesdropper likes it. he doesn’t mind it. he used to ask his omniscient father all kinds of questions. he had an answer for everything. the eavesdropper is a gentlemen. the young man also is gentle. he likes the sound of his even voice. he has a large nose and thin winsome lips. p spilled her drink. do you free lance, asked r. the young man really wants to fuck p. p has no interest in him. she won’t be with p because r wants him. yeah not so much, said r. i do websites. i work in a hospital, said t. i don’t like it but its stable. i just left school. is it harder when you leave school. does it get any easier? the eavesdropper felt nauseous. it’s not an easy world. people are starving. they are living in rooms with four five six ten other people. i want to start painting again, said p.

Spittoon 3.3 Kapteyn, The Eavesdropper

when i got into design i liked it, said t. it’s gotten away from me now. who is this nameless man listening to the conversation. wherever he goes no asks for his name. we have seen him before. he looks like that actor what’s his name? i forget his name. the eavesdropper is in a trance. he is absorbed in nothingness. he peers into a crevice. things are uncomplicated. they discuss employment. the young man follows t’s lead which is making p jealous. she sidles the oregonian into her coat. she intends to keep it for herself. she wants something for herself where are you from, asked t. central oregon, said r. it’s very green. where would you move to, asked t. both women have faces that will distend in ten years. he had it all planned out, t said. it was sad. so sad. if you saw it. you would laugh. i don’t know. how many images on his site, asked p. one, said t. over and over again. why? the eavesdropper has a hard time hearing what they are saying. it upsets and arouses him. he looks at p as she opens up her black book. she has personal things in it. she talks about her what she calls stupid poems. do yo have a journal, t asked. no, said r. r has a paper cup in his hand. it is empty. the two women talk about their past. it is painful for the eavesdropper. he has an ocular migraine bright white and yellow splats mar his vision. he singles out the woman with the large hair that connotes miasma and viscosity. the young man squirms like a worm looking for a code. r talks about his deadline. he works better with one. the two women explain their inner most feeling about mammograms. he listens intently to how the human breast is flattened in plates. growths were discovered. there was a misdiagnosis, terror, a lapse. i’m next to a guy in an office, said r. survey questions, said p. what survey questions, asked r. what is your dream house, asked p. your favorite style. i feel like crying, said r. the eavesdropper thinks they are talking about him. they have lowered their voices. he hears hushed whispers, millions of them. do you eat meat, asked t. yes, r said. i’m not trying t be flip, said t. i have to go to ikea, said t.

Spittoon 3.3 Kapteyn, The Eavesdropper

are you good at putting furniture together, asked t. i canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even follow the target instructions. yes i put together a dining room set, said r. i was on prozac he has a greenish blue tattoo on his hand. it is there so that everyone can see it. he wants everyone to see that he is a man with a tattoo on his hand. the tattoo in itself doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean anything. it looks self inflicted. do you have allergies, asked t. wheat, r said. do you have plans today, asked t. our eavesdropper pities the young man. his nose looks like it is slipping from his face like a bad pair of glasses.

Spittoon 3.3

Generations of Robertos Answering Si Jeffrey Hecker

--for Alex Dalton

The town of El Porvenir loses power in the freak storm. Roberto II tosses out a spoiled question from Roberto I’s walk-in refrigerator: “Do you think Mexico City Philharmonic enjoys gathering as one massive dinner party post-performance?” Roberto III answers si and supplies sound reasoning: camaraderie, mutual interest, tuned tympanic membranes, Etude Dudes screenprints sold briefly in Escuela Superior de Musica y Danza de Monterrey’s gift shop. Roberto IV also answers si. Does Roberto IV regret answering si? Who knows? Does Roberto IV struggle to explain why he believes si? Si. Senorita stripper siblings upstairs index Windex coupons and fantasize volunteer firefighters. Let’s rename them Peggy Sue and Black Betty, after the hit songs. Black Betty answers: “woodwinds don’t sit well with horns; strings don’t mix well with percussion.” Peggy Sue chimes in: “stigma exists within the same instrument sections as well.” Roberto II asks if the pole-dancers are god-damned musicians. Robert IV asks an oil portrait of Roberto I is finishing a race in dead heat the same as losing? Peggy Sue and Black Betty eat the cookies Roberto II used to bribe all of the original question participants.

Spittoon 3.3 Hecker, Generations of Robertos…

Roberto III is looking forward to Oatmeal Raisin. Roberto III doesn’t yet know. It’s easy to answer incorrectly with stomachs, hearts. Beneath the breath, Roberto IV prays Mexico City Philharmonic represents earth’s final remaining Dionysian cult.

Spittoon 3.3

Black Box Suggestion Box Jeffrey Hecker

Passenger 21A, coach class, as usual, deep inside your hummingbird’s throat. You swallowed 136 husbands, regurgitated 45. --Dan, San Bernadino, California -------------------Your GAMA union propeller gyrated off your plane. Anything insect outside sucked into your brakes and brokeass turbine. --Shelley, Huntsville, Alabama -------------------I thought carrying a passenger en route to a Fijian vacation won on a game show ought to signify the 747’s not going to crash. --Ginny, West Valley City, Utah -------------------That cypress tree formation could be LAX… --Simone, McAllen, Texas -------------------Help me—I mean Help us all! --Margaret, Sterling Heights, Michigan -------------------At 8,000 feet, falling, an off-duty British Airways flight attendant (not Delta) helped kids secure oxygen masks. She promised: “if we time a jump right before colliding with ocean, you’ll survive due to your innocence and low centers of gravity.” Children locked on her face for a sign she was lying. She’d practiced restraint since Ronald Reagan International.

Spittoon 3.3 Hecker, Black Box Suggestion Box

Your airlineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flight attendants boasted no such lines, nor hairlines, promised nothing to everybody. --Kelvin, Gainesville, Florida -------------------We taxied a half-hour just to die? --Jeffrey, Portsmouth, Virginia

Spittoon 3.3

Waiting for White King Nels Hanson

“Happy Birthday!” I lifted my glass as the red record’s notes rose and fell like my heart and Nat King Cole declared, “Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa men have named you . . . .” “To Geraldine Ferraro. Whoever you are.” It was August 26, 1984, and I gazed up at her many handsome faces in the many clippings on the wall above my bedstead, at the easy smile, the clear eyes below the crisp wing of blonde-silver hair stirred by the blowing fan. We could have been sisters. We looked alike, just under the skin, like the Gold Lady who’d appeared in the morning light in the empty House of The Butterfly in Acacia—after May Eve when my heart acted up— The Butterfly had glided about the breathless room before suddenly it hesitated, swerved and slowly beating wide bending prismed wings was returning, and at sunrise The Lady told me to find my lost only daughter Kyla. “You’re my guardian angel,” Kyla’s husband Delmus called up to me last night when I’d lowered the bottle on the string and I’d felt like Ferraro or the Gold Lady. He tripped and dropped his fifth of whiskey, when the hunters fired the machinegun across the vineyards, their pickup’s headlights like demon eyes picking out the frozen jackrabbits. At first I thought they shot at the rapist-murderer, the lurking Standpipe Strangler, who preyed on black prostitutes kidnapped from West Fresno, and I’d taken my gold derringer from the black trunk. Finally, The Butterfly had settled down toward daylight. My heart was better. All things are made ready, “The Book of Changes” told me half an hour ago as I threw the bright pennies and I heard the roar of cars and tractors and trucks, the calling happy farmers filling the barnyard for Delmus’ harvest party. Their excited expectant greetings seemed kindly echoes of the screeching knife Delmus had sharpened at the grinder the day before. Then the men started drinking, laughing and shooting the rifle they’d brought to

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

kill the pig and the running horse weather vane rang like a bell before it skidded down the barn’s steel roof. I took a long drink of Wild Turkey, waiting for Joaquin Murrietta to dismount his white stallion Rey Blanco, White King, and in his boots with silver spurs climb Kate’s rose trellis, her road to Eddie Dodge— I met Joaquin first in 1915 as Ramon Zapata, Aaron Markham’s chauffeur, who later became Domingo Esquivel, Hollywood’s first Zorro— “Butterfly, Butterfly, where is my pretty wife, pretty as you, Butterfly?” I had known it last night—talking and sharing drinks with Delmus, as I sat at my upstairs window, Delmus on the lawn with his back against the elm—that my true love was returning to find again his lost Belle Solar. I told Delmus about the white station wagon at noon with the silver horse on its hood, the handsome mustached Mexican man at the wheel, before we danced long distance, Delmus on the grass and I two stories above him. For a moment I’d felt Ramon’s cheek next to mine, the fearsome window finally lifted, the cool ocean breeze, The Butterfly again tenderly open-winged to the night as I lifted my gown and Delmus ran off through the vineyard. How close were love and death, like a dove and a raven together on a wire, now the white bird fading black, the black bird shining white— “Buena suerte, Senorita!”(“Good luck, Lady!”) Ramon exclaimed from behind the big wheel when the red-faced hawk screamed and dived for my pheasant feather hat that day Ramon drove Aaron’s Rolls the wide sweep of Monterey Bay and later we pulled up in the sand at Pacific Grove and all the migrating monarchs had flown in off the sea. “Muchas alas,” Ramon said from up front and at my side Aaron answered, “Yes, Amigo, many wings.” “Mariposa, Mariposa, donde es mi esposa linda, linda como tu, Mariposa?” Ramon sang as the blue waves and colored wings came in. The week before Aaron had hypnotized him by Cantua Creek near Coalinga and Ramon remembered being Murrietta and found the treasure under the flat stone. Then he blinked and whispered that once in another life he and I had been engaged

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

to be married, that before I was Dolly Mable I had been beautiful, black-eyed, raven-haired Belle Solar. Last night, as Kate ran through the field to meet Eddie Dodge in the blue gum grove beyond the vineyard, Joaquin was next to me for an instant, at my shoulder, murmuring—“At last I’ve found you, my lost and ravished purest love—” And then as I tuned to take him in my arms forever he was suddenly gone and I feared a gang of white men riding up as I felt The Butterfly tense and lift its wingtips. Now someone was tapping at my chamber door. I set the glass on the night table, patted my hair, then reached for the silver monogrammed mirror. I hadn’t heard Ramon’s white car drive in or his boots on the stairway. “Domingo?” “Mrs. Grayson?” I corked the bottle, slipping it under the sheet as the knob turned and the door swung wide. “You took down the string to the lock!” My granddaughter, my young self, looked radiant, a splendor in a white cotton dress, more glorious than my picture on the night table— I wore the purple velvet at the leaded glass door of Aaron Markham’s great house, after he’d kidnapped me from the Acacia Harvest Fair and then later Dr. Bolger arrived with the colored map of The Butterfly, his leather bag of many little bottles and the ether and sharp needles. “Many men will leave the earth on the wings of The Butterfly, and when you die, Pretty Lady, you will know, it will fly away,” Dr. Bolger insisted as I turned my head. “What a marvelous death!” And then Aaron had entered, dressed in black, to kneel and place the long-stemmed yellow roses across my changed breasts, one the gold sun and the other the amber harvest moon.

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

A month later, when I was healed and we made love again, in the final throes of passion he’d cried out, “Anna!” Kate’s face glowed pink under her smooth cheek, her eyes wave-green, her brown hair combed and glistening with streaks and sudden spangles of red and bronze my silver hair still remembered. Mona Lisa . . . . Kate was I, I was Kate, 17 again, as when my driver Eddie Dodge had carried me from the hot Cadillac across the shadowed lawn and Kate stood waiting on the step, smiling, with my face— In her hand she held something wrapped in tissue paper. “And it’s so cool in here! You’ve opened the window! Smell the roses!” One hand partly raised as she looked upon the green fields, the Kate that was I stood at the end of the bed—just beyond the purple dress and its scattered diamonds waking in the morning light, Murrietta’s gold Aaron long ago had turned to precious gems— The “I Ching” on the table would whisper, “14. Ta Yu / Possession in Great Measure,” if Kate turned and reached past the old woman on the bed to throw the shiny pennies, asking if Joaquin/Ramon/Domingo and she would be happy at last:

The fire in heaven above shines far, and all things stand out in the light and become manifest. The meaning of this hexagram parallels the saying of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth.”

“It’s our lucky day,” the girl at the window was saying, I was saying, “like when Ferraro got nominated. Remember?” Buena suerte, Senorita. Ah Ramon—Domingo, hurry! Your treasure, your diamonds are safe, Joaquin. We’ll fly away, you and I, on Butterfly wings—

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

“Mariposa, Mariposa, donde es mi esposa linda, linda como tu, Mariposa?” “Mrs. Grayson?” But Domingo died 30 years ago, in Time Magazine. The wind is part of the process, the rain is part of the process . . . . Confucius said. I wasn’t thinking clearly, it was all the traffic and the drunk broke farmers laughing and shouting from the barnyard where Delmus’ party wound towards its climax, Nat’s record resetting and playing a hundredth time. The Wild Turkey. Then the frightened, charging horse, after the men began firing the gun they had brought for the pig. Again I lay on the bed and felt The Butterfly stir under my blue gown, the embroidered swarm of butterflies waver at my raised collar as when from the north window I’d watched the running men waving arms and finally Delmus casting the long loop of rope to catch the terrified horse. “I have a surprise,” Kate was saying. “I have two surprises. Look—” “What’s that—” She held out her fingers. “Eddie asked me last night.” Kate’s hand was graceful, slender and young. Unspotted. On her narrow ring finger she wore the simple band. With my own ghostly hand, I gently turned Kate’s over. I touched the shining palm, lightly. Happiness, it said. Peace. Peace was T’AI, 11: 1 and 1 made 1. “It only takes one,” Eddie had said that first day, when we looked forever for Kyla’s hidden farm the Gold Lady had said to find.

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

“You’ll have a wonderful life,” I said, closing Kate’s warm fingers. “Mrs. Grayson?” Kate looked at me, waiting. “Call me Dolly—” I opened my arms and Kate leaned to embrace me. Kate smelled clean and fresh, my better double, my unknown self, shiny bright, the girl I’d been a life ago and forsaken. Kate leaned back, holding out the package. “If it weren’t for you, Eddie and I would never have met.” I looked into Kate’s green eyes, suddenly loving her more for being always separate from me, for being Kate and not a second, younger Dolly I could steal— The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships . . . “You make me feel like Prospero.” “Open your gift, Dolly.” “I should be giving you a present.” It felt like a vase. One end was open, covered only with sheer tissue paper. I’d received many gifts in my life, first my father’s silver heart, then Aaron’s little hourglass filled with gold dust and the ring with the black shooting star “for she who conquers night,” the butterfly brooch, the airmen’s wings and a thousand tokens from all my friends in Acacia and beyond—but this was the best, the one I unwrapped now. It was from Kate, my granddaughter, who loved me, whom I loved and had led to Eddie Dodge, whom I also loved. There were many little pinholes in the paper—it was perfumed soap, and Kate had wanted to keep the sweetness fresh. “It was hard to get,” Kate was saying, brushing back her thick hair, a white star through gold waves . . . . “But I thought you’d like it.”

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

“I know I will.” “You’ve been cooped up in here, you never get out. Remember, you told me about your friend, on The Manifest, the one who woke up in her cabin with the big tattoo?” “I know, I’ve got to get away. It’s my new resolution.” The scent of yellow roses washed the room. Kate was a rose. I picked at the last bit of tape. “I found it on the trellis,” Kate told me. It was a rose, but more than a rose, the curved glass magnifying and distorting the contents that darted like a trapped rainbow. You’ll die today, said the bladed fan as Ferraro’s clippings fluttered in a ghostly fanfare along the wall. I tried to place my hand over the wide mouth of the bottle. But it was clumsy to hold, slipping from my grasp, rolling onto the bed. “It’s all right,” Kate said softly. “I’ll get it.” It flew up, out of the Mason jar and landed on the sheet, cocking its wings like two animated flags from another planet. “Catch it—” I lurched upright with my hands out. “Get it quick—” Kate reached for the stunned Butterfly and the yellow black-striped scalloped wings edged in purple beat once and rose in the fresh air, climbing toward the ceiling. “Oh catch it, don’t hurt it but catch it—” White-faced Kate looked at me half a second and followed The Butterfly that floated chest high around the corner of the bed with Kate just behind stretching out her arms.

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

Her knee bumped and jostled the night table, the map of bird migrations flying up and my leather-framed picture falling, the Orange Blossom perfume bottle tipping and tumbling to the floor, the hand mirror and brush sliding off, The Butterfly’s striped yellow blurred, reflected in the falling silver— “Mona Lisa!” “Careful—” Ferraro’s clippings came loose, drifting down like autumn leaves as Kate grabbed for The Butterfly and her fingers brushed the wall above my head. “The screen. Close the window—” But The Butterfly heard, I knew it would. In the middle of a slow glide across the bed it turned sharply as I waited. Its swept-back wings shot cruelly through my hands as if I made a hoop for it to fly through—my whole life had shaped a hoop for something evading me as the streaming colors crossed my wrists and blue veins and angled toward the window. “Run!” Luckily The Butterfly slowed, abruptly tilting back, with long extended legs settling down on the sill and I thought I watched it in a dream— It flexed its wings twice, marvelous, waited, then once more like the night in Acacia, on the upturned hand mirror pretending to rest, casually mimicking itself in flight, flaunting its reflected patterns within patterns. It could change size at will, once it got past the screen. “Careful, careful—” I was hoarse, breathless now. My heart hurt when it folded sharply inward like that. “Don’t scare it. Plan your moves—” The Butterfly flared its wings that flashed blue and silver like struck matches, taunting me. “Just block it. Then close the window.”

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

The girl didn’t understand and I rose on my own as something fell from the bed. “Yes,” said Kate, intent on The Butterfly, she was on my side, I wasn’t alone this time. “That’s what I’ll do.” “Slowly,” I whispered. “It’s smart as a cat.” Later we would laugh about this, it was like a Chinese village wedding, when the bride tries to grab the paper butterfly tied like a kite to a long stick. But I’d read another Chinese story: There were two lovers, then one died and became a butterfly. I saw Kate hunch her shoulders, approaching the window, one hand already slightly raised to guard the torn screen when something happened, was happening—she started to leap forward as if she were suddenly taking flight— She was tripping over the jar with the yellow rose—no—it was the whiskey bottle that had fallen and spun across the floor. Wild Turkey! “No!” Kate lunged, her hands brushing the sill, The Butterfly quickly lifting itself above her fingertips. It flittered through the sagging two-foot tear in the screen. The Butterfly was gone, flittering through the tear in the screen. The Butterfly was gone— The tragedy kept repeating but already it had ended, it was history, dead as Greece—only The Butterfly’s striped ghost floated at the rusty mesh. “Hurry, before it gets away. You can chase it in the car—” “What?” “You heard me!”

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

Kate jumped to her feet, running in a white blur as I moved to the window and scanned the trellis. The Butterfly didn’t perch among the roses where Kate said she’d found it. I pushed open the screen, raising it from its hooks, letting it fall toward the grass as I gazed upward searching. There it was, like a God turned visible! How effortlessly it clasped and stroked and let the sky flow away, no flaw or hesitation. Through its natural element how nimbly it bore itself calmly home . . . . Unencumbered and at ease it flew large and free now, beating the soft air beyond the branches of the elm, swimming surely in the blue above the green waves of vines— It had gone so softly, so gently, I hadn’t felt it slip away . . . . Without strain it dipped and dived in a streak, instantly and gracefully pulling up, neatly wheeling low above the vineyard like a hawk in a dream, like the red-faced hawk on the way to Carmel beyond Monterey, disturbing the grape leaves in a glowing swath. Buena suerte, Senorita! The sun caught its broad lifted painted wings and for a moment I saw them glare white, bled of color, like the snowy owl’s coming home from Bodie on Nevada Day, Halloween, after meeting the Reno judge with the silk pantaloons and the rubber knife— And it did come back, The Butterfly swerving in a saffron blaze at my cheek. Now it was small and lit on a serrated leaf just beyond my hand. I could see its tiny eyes, round and dark like the pearl in Aaron Markham’s hat. And its striped face, the yellow skin stretched tight as leather, the black spears of velvet. It was nearly tame and let my finger brush a lovely shiny sculpted leg. Everything was all right. It was just a little butterfly returned to drink nectar from

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

the roses on the trellis—it wasn’t mine but the swallowtail the same yellow as the blooms, as if two petals had broken off and begun to hover in a pair. I could scoop it up gently in my palm, admire its stark curves enclosing the center pools of deep violet like cool water, then let it go. I wouldn’t put it back in the jar as I stood straight and opened my gown and saw my true Butterfly. Reaching to grasp Kate’s kind gift I realized my mistake. I was mixed up, drunk, I’d been right the first time— There were two butterflies and now it was too late as the small butterfly flew away and I stood inside the flashing whirlwind swirling at my ears. Secretly The Butterfly had made a last approach and swiveled just above my head—I couldn’t see it but only feel the strong spiral current it cut in the air so I wore a tall dizzy crown. Its wingtips flicked the back of my neck, whipping my hair—turning and turning The Butterfly breathed like a bellows in and out until between the shifting blasts I could hear the whirr of its huge heart like the hush of a watch’s spinning flywheel below the lever escapement and the straining of the hairspring. The whisper that drove the feathery gears seemed to speak from within my own breast— Goodbye. The Butterfly rose up in a sudden rushing column, taking the air as it left a trail of falling light, dyed sun drifting through the hundred shades past the elm’s stirring leaves. Again it worked its wings, like the rare condor I had seen on TV and mentioned to Kyla the night before, when she brought the poached eggs and told me that cooped up in the closed room I was like a moth in a snuff box. I held the windowsill—now I couldn’t catch my breath, something gripped my heart in its talons. Someone held my heart in his hand, squeezing with nails and long fingers. It was Aaron Markham who constricted and stopped its rise and fall— If you wish, we can meet later . . . . Aaron was the rapist, the “Standpipe Strangler” on the loose across the fields!

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

I saw The Butterfly’s silent shadow running fast across the vineyard. The Butterfly sailed high, a silhouette against the sun, its spread wings making sudden stained windows before it veered downward, its pointed wingtips etching dim fleeting arcs, entering the far open loft of a barn. It emerged from the dark door and climbed in a broken loop heading north, much smaller, diminishing. Now it changed course, aiming west and turned to black wings way beyond Lemas. Then only the faintest speck rising toward the Coast Range and the Pacific sea. “No,” I whispered with my hands holding my weight against the sill. “Don’t go.” I watched the empty sky, waiting, looking west. All my life I waited. After a while, The Butterfly not returning, the big death not coming yet—only occasional cars and pickups passing along Linda Verde, a silver plane alone in the pale blue, King Cole’s song still calling to me—I left the window and limped to the bed— My left arm and leg felt numb. My heart hit like a hoof against my left ribs. A picture of Ferraro’s lay face down on the sheet. Her run had finished too. I set myself on the edge of the mattress, then with my good hand lifted my leg and let my head fall propped against the two pillows. I took several shallow breaths, working carefully around the silver pain down my sternum, and raised my right hand. From my neck to my hips I yanked the silk to unsnap the row of buttons, throwing open the gown. Lengthwise I saw someone else’s body, the bare span of skin where The Butterfly had lived 60 years since Dr. Bolger and May Eve in San Francisco—for three years in the big house by the sea until on New Year’s Aaron wore white and announced that Anna was alive again, a 12-year-old girl named Mai Lee in Chinatown, and took the purple dress with Murrietta’s diamonds for a wedding present.

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

“Stop!” “You’ll always have The Butterfly!” Then my finger jerked once, a whole lifetime. “If you wish,” Aaron gasped, his linen suit soaking red from the growing dime of blood, “we can meet later.” Louder than the town whistle’s noon roar, the gunshot echoed sharply down the years, close, through the leaves of the elm. I was the murderer and thief, I freely admitted it now as I watched The Butterfly’s white shadow, the blank death of myself and made no amends. I leaned forward, reaching for the purple dress and draping it across my knees, and turned, slipping my hand under the pillow. I held the derringer out in front of me, feeling its weight and the touch of the gold trigger, across my palm the raised swirls, the ivory grip carved with my Butterfly as I looked back at the open window. Maybe The Butterfly didn’t fly forever out to sea. Maybe its straight path made a wide circle, across the whole world. You could see its perfect shadow crossing a map of blue oceans and green valleys and beyond the clouds the highest white-peaked mountain in Tibet before The Butterfly hurried to complete its migration and return to me. Once after May Eve, in Acacia, in the morning sun through the blinds, a woman all in gold stood at my bed, smiling so tenderly, as if to say, “Don’t worry. Nothing can ever hurt you.” But she wasn’t Ferraro or Kyla or even Kate. Who was she? Now I would never know. I gripped and cocked the gun, again listening for the hooves striking the ground as the horse came running at a gallop from a hundred miles. But it wasn’t White King, Joaquin’s stallion Rey Blanco come in time to save Belle Solar from the murderous assault—

Spittoon 3.3 Hanson, Waiting for White King

It was Aaron Markham’s wild mount black as midnight, as the grave that held the two white roses, one for Aaron, one for Anna, racing toward me from Cantua Creek and hateful Captain Harry Love who’d ridden down and beheaded Joaquin Murrieta— All along Aaron followed me through the Acacia Harvest Fair, to the Ferris wheel, then leaped into my carriage and threw the wood bar across my lap as the starred circle climbed to the top of its arc and stopped forever under the shocked and watching stars— “Anna, my darling, have I found you again?” Now I knew it wasn’t Joaquin or Domingo who yesterday pulled into the barnyard in the long station wagon. The white car’s shining silver horse on the hood was Rey Negro, Black King—as I stood proudly at my open window, to show Ramon Zapata the resplendent Butterfly that Belle Solar had brought back in love and triumph from the other world.

Spittoon 3.3

We’re Living on Mars! Jenny Ferguson

When there’s a twenty-minute time lag between I love you & I love you too or I don’t love you at all or Did you remember to turn off the space stove? we are inside time in the canyonlands of coupledom where matches take twenty minutes to burn to the finger-held end, where we would pretend to be Russian cosmonauts holding our twenty-minute flames. But scientists they tell us there’s no fire in space. So with time between us, Do I look fat in this spacesuit? plays an origami game with my fingers, folding and creasing the Mars Society promotional materials, our recycled toilet paper: “Mars is the great challenge of our time.” And this is the worst Christmas gift I could give you. To eat dehydrated stew like potato chips because we are not allowed to shower because the pee water recycler contains ten percent more urate, more yellowed than well water where I used to swim at the spring’s source. Because of the Russian cosmonauts this one-way trip and you’re in love with Mars and I want a stove that burns old growth to cook you real food so you’ll want to swing me from the tire-swing branch in the blighted apple tree with its withered apples sun-shrunk fleshy earth taste.

Spittoon 3.3

Defense after Stealing the Afghan Blanket Jenny Ferguson

Never have I ever crushed on a gas station attendant, his greasy shirt, his ring finger may or may not be unadorned. Never have I ever tried to drown myself in lukewarm bathwater, Les Mis ringing underwater the sounds of angry men. I have never shredded a pair of hiking boots climbing up waterfall. Never lost my eyebrow ring during a shift at the restaurant. Never ever swallowed my chloroquine tablets anticipating night sweats, vivid dreams, taste of banana coating my tongue. I never returned a pair of hiking boots to the store, complaining of stitches too easy to rip. Of course, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never broken my right arm, above the wrist, after falling asleep riding my bicycle after a t-ball game. A childhood game, we sit on a hill banked by Lake Independent in my car, the night interrupted by cloud, 35 miles without brakes, rolling through two stop signs.

Spittoon 3.3

Consignment Life Jenny Ferguson

It’s my habit to buy things men bought when they learned they were common moths and their summer was burning hard. He who died in my bedroom, built my log house. He who claimed my car fresh off the lot in the fall of 1993, his widow couldn’t bring herself to sell for years. And I shower in the yard sometimes, a garden hose hanging from one of the trees he planted inside a rubber tire. And I invent stories to explain the fork tine scar on the vinyl lining the passenger door. And I haven’t seen the stars, haven’t felt the wind rush through my windows slipping into my veins like this before. Someone loved this red pony like I do and there is comfort in the stick-on floor tiles, water stains on the roof, the gauche wallpaper my cat shreds with delight. In owning these things, in touching the candle, I am moth-like too.

Spittoon 3.3

EMILY AS SLEEP IN A PALM Darren C. Demaree

It was a brawl, our intent to hold each other more, to cradle the crushing nature of our marquee feelings & our (we better lay a tarp down) physical abandoning of this world. It was free combustion. It was not nice. It was a dream I had once.

Spittoon 3.3

Velvet Elvis* * Susana H. Case

In Britain, stray Elvis play with discarded Christmas velvet, scurvy grass grows in salty verges, and two men are charged with Elvis coursing in Lincolnshire, where the feet and heads of Elvis are being found without their bodies. “It is quite clear,” proclaim the local police, “that something is not quite right.” In Australia, an arsonist attacks two ghost Elvis, a Welshman wrestles a dusky Elvis, and an Elvis climbs aboard the wing of a plane bound for Papua New Guinea. In Nepal, where protesters demand the execution of a rogue Elvis, the government commits to an Elvis cap. Vietnamese officials permit a sanctuary for retired Elvis to remain operational in spite of public-health concerns. Flooding in South Africa allows the escape of 15,000 farm Elvis. “There used to be only a few Elvis in the Limpopo River,” reports the manager. “Now there are a lot.” The bored Elvis of Gibraltar bite people for want of chocolate. Californians petition the White House to end the state’s ban on Elvis. “It’s hard to get in trouble with an Elvis,” protests an Elvis activist. Elvis on the Gulf Coast wash up with wounds from screwdrivers and 9mm bullets. An Elvis is found in the pocket of a dead man in the Sonoran Desert.

*A partially found poem, the word “Elvis” replacing various animals. The text fragments were strung together from Harper’s Magazine, March 2013.

Spittoon 3.3

BEFORE THE END THERE IS A WHITE SKY Carrie Bennett

*** Or maybe I am flying over some distant city knowing I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t said what needed to be said yet I am willing to write this letter to the last minute of the last day leave me without comfort. When I go inside the rooms of my mind seemed different I see there are many walls I do not recognize and the fruit tasted sweet on the tree from the moment I saw it.

** * *

Spittoon 3.3 Bennett, BEFORE THE END…

*** You tell me for many years there was the white noise and then there wasn’t for a while there wasn’t the white noise and now there is. I don’t know what meaning is I don’t know how to create meaning but the winter light creates stark angles across the snow and blue sky. I know there are little animals to feed I need to keep the animals warm and safe I need to sweep the floors fold the blankets just sit still you tell me and I want to but can’t. I want to say watch for the two red petals that fell onto the floor last night they will stay there until they are gone. I take the wrong pills and then I take the right pills life isn’t some achievement and I ***

Spittoon 3.3 Bennett, BEFORE THE END…

*** I think one day I will ruin everything and I won’t care or I won’t care for a long time. What does the child say it says remember the body means shame what does shame say there is always guilt. I sit and wait I say into the phone I can’t stop crying there are the plants to water the animals to take care of I don’t know when I stopped caring think back to the moment when the heart begins to lose itself when memory leads to nothing when what is lost doesn’t mean that much to you. The red tulips loosely droop from their vase I’ve learned lots of things like how to name what isn’t there. ***

Contributors

Irene Turner’s publications include Gargoyle, Pank, Pear Noir!, and Popcorn Fiction. A professional screenwriter, she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for An American Crime. Graham Tugwell is an Irish writer and performer. Seventy of his short stories have been published across five continents. He lives in the village where his stories take place. He loves it with a very special kind of hate. His website is grahamtugwell.com.

Jacob Schepers’s poetry has appeared or will appear in PANK, Verse, The Fiddleback, and REAL, among others. He is a graduate student in English at SUNY Buffalo and lives with his wife and sons in Amherst, New York.

Erin Lyndal Martin is a writer based in Madison, WI.

Paulus Kapteyn is an artist/writer. He lives in Portland, Oregon. He has had his work in Pank, Blip, Bad Penny, etc..... www.pauluskapteyn.com.

Jeffrey Hecker was born in 1977 in Norfolk, Virginia. He’s the author of Rumble Seat (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011), the chapbook Hornbook (Horse Less Press, 2012), & the forthcoming chapbook Instructions for the Orgy (Sunnyoutside Press, 2013). Recent work has appeared in La Reata Review, Mascara Literary Review, Atticus Review, La Fovea, The Waterhouse Review, Zocalo Public Square, The Burning Bush 2, & LEVELER. He’s a staff book reviewer for Fjords Review. He resides with his wife Robin in Olde Towne Portsmouth, Virginia.

Nels Hanson’s fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and two Pushcart Prize nominations. Stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals, and are in press at Works & Days, Tattoo Highway, The Milo Review, Thrice, and Emerge Literary Journal. Hanson lives with his wife, Vicki, on the Central Coast of California.

Jenny Ferguson is a Canadian studying for her PhD in the USA. Currently obsessed with the musical Rent, she sincerely hopes to one day use this line in unscripted conversation: “I didn’t recognize you without the handcuffs.”

Darren C. Demaree is living and writing in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children. He is the author of As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013) and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2014); both are forthcoming from 8th House Publishing House. He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations.

Susana H. Case’s most recent book is Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013). Please visit her at http://iris.nyit.edu~shcase/.

Carrie Bennett is the author of biography of water (Words Works’ Washington Prize, 2004) and chapbooks A Quiet Winter (Dancing Girl press, 2012) and Animals in Pretty Cages (Dancing Girl, forthcoming). Her poetry has been published in Boston Review, Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, Horse Less Review, Indiana Review, Interim, Prose-Poem Project among many others. After receiving her MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Bennett moved to Somerville, MA, where she teaches writing seminars on theater and feminist performance theory at Boston University. In 2012 she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship and was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.