The Fable Online Issue 1 March, 2015
Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kedar
Š2015, The Fable Online|Contributing Authors Painting titled Crossroads used in cover creation by Matteo Cattonar, used by permission.
Contributing Authors Arthur Heifetz Frederick Foote Michael Constantine McConnell Nolan Liebert R.L. Black Robin Wyatt Dunn
P o et r y
Carpets by Arthur Heifetz "A beautiful carpet brings a smile to your face each morning" (Persian saying)
The skeins of yarn deftly wound around the warp in Turkish or Persian knots have survived the tread of children's feet the hurried pace of the dog the clawing of the cat.
Their hastily sewn repairs resemble the scars you bear from falls and surgeries. Their pile has worn thin in spots like the balding pate you hide beneath your hat. On the merghoums and soumaks the ends are left dangling like all the unfinished business in your life.
You and the carpets have acquired a certain patina that comes only from experience,
the saffron and pomegranate dyes mellowing with age, your hair taking on a silver luster your skin a jaundiced tint.
You'd like to think you've both aged gracefully. The almond blossoms and jasmine on the baktiari still fill you with love and longing, The tortoises on the kashgai continue to hold out the promise of long life.
Arthur Heifetz teaches ESL to refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan in Richmond, Va. He has had over 180 poems published around the world, including Dubai, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, France, India, Spain and Great Britain. He taught for four years in Tunisia and Iran. A sampling of his work may be found at polishedbrasspoems.com
Strike by Michael Constantine McConnell We watch the same sun fall, twisting fingers of cloud, reaching toward a green that could never match your eyes reflecting hanging vines or a thousand points of frost, the scent of your neck, a streamside hammock where time falls apart. Birds start praying when rain, like knees of the damned, pound, shatter into blinding slivers of art, a spiral of tangled mirrors, the memory of dust. Then you kiss like thunder, separated by those three words. One. Two. Three. Then lightning. Michael's poetry and prose have been featured in such anthologies as The Best of Electric Velocipede, Body and Soul: Narratives of Healing from Ars Medica, Reading Lips and Other Ways to Overcome a Disability, and Solace in So Many Words, for which he was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize in the essay category.
Originally from Detroit, he is currently a proud resident of San Marcos, Texas, pursuing a doctoral degree in Developmental Education at Texas State University and singing in degenerate Scots-Irish bands after sundown.
Flash F iction
Flight by Nolan Liebert There’s the suit on the bed, white wings emblazoned on the chest. He picks it up, feels the Spandex smooth beneath his fingertips, presses it against his face. It is cool and still smells of gunpowder and ozone. He unzips the back and sits down. Like everyone else, he steps in, one leg at a time. He shakes as he stands up and slips his arms through the sleeves. Slowly, he reaches behind and finds the ribbon attached to the zipper and pulls it up. Too much force snaps the zipper off at the top. He drops it and it floats gently to the floor. The cape is draped over the back of a chair. He takes it and shakes it with a flourish. He wraps it around his neck and fastens the clasp. In the bathroom, he oils his hands and pushes his hair back, nice and slick. Finished, he turns to look in the mirror. The arms are no longer rippling with muscles, the chest isn’t broad enough and the wings hang like a tired flag, the legs sag in testament to his decaying bones. His hair, what’s left, doesn’t hide the shine of his scalp. He nods and turns away from the mirror and the memories it distorts. When he leaves the apartment he makes sure all the lights are off, all the appliances unplugged, but doesn’t lock the door. Nobody sees him in the stairwell, climbing, flight after flight. And then he’s on the roof, wind whipping around him, fluttering the loose fabric around his frame. He smiles at the sunlight and the warm tar and the car horns. No police sirens. The city is safe. This was his dream. The ledge feels firm beneath his feet. And then he jumps, puts his arms out. Upward, he thinks, and this time he doesn’t fly.
Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota where he lives with his wife and children in a house that is not a covered wagon. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Gone Lawn, ExFic, Map Literary, An Alphabet of Embers, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter @nliebert.
First Impressions of the New Neighbors by R.L. Black
You haven’t seen the sun in days, only gray, but this morning a splash of color across the street catches your eye. A large woman and a tall, thin man climb out of a bright orange moving van into the pouring rain. They don’t bother with umbrellas. Their new yard is a giant puddle of muck. You watch from your covered porch and wonder why they’ve chosen a day like today to move in. Couldn’t they have waited for the rain to stop? You would have waited. The man opens the back of the van and they drag a mattress out. You see them struggle for a good hold and strain to hang on as the mattress flops. They’re navigating across the quagmire that was once a lawn, lugging the heavy, awkward thing between them. He’s walking backwards and she’s looking around him to see where they’re going, and she slips, she falls, and so does the mattress. The man is doubled over and appears to be laughing. You’re laughing, too. Not out loud, but there’s laughter inside, and there’s at least a half-way smile on your face, and you feel guilty. The man helps the woman up. She’s covered in mud and the mattress is lying in the mud and the rain is still falling. She notices you watching and holds up her fat middle finger. You’re not off to a good start, you and this new person who lives across the street. Later, when the rain stops, you’ll bake a cake, a special cake, a Mississippi Mudd Cake, and you’ll go over and welcome your finger-flipping neighbor and her funny friend to the neighborhood.
R.L. Black lives in Tennessee and writes flash fiction and poetry. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in freeze frame fiction, Maudlin House, Pidgeonholes, Literary Orphans, and more. She is EIC of Unbroken Journal. You can find out more about the author and her publications at rlblack.weebly.com.
Short story
Crossroads by Frederick K. Foote
The Crossroads is a legendary location in African American folklore where north-south and east-west roads cross. At these rural Crossroads, one can meet the devil at midnight and engage in unholy transactions. The usual terms are the seller offers his or her soul in exchange for wealth, fame, beauty, success, etc. The Crossroads is located in the south in Mississippi or Alabama or anywhere there are country Crossroads and believers.
### She sits at the Crossroads with her legs akimbo, her dusty brogans facing north and south. The well-worn plaid skirt and man’s blue work shirt are faded and comfortable. Her blue denim jacket is threadbare at the elbows and missing an original button, with an odd-shaped ivory replacement. Her skin is as red as Georgia's clay and her curly reddish-brown hair is pulled back into a shoulder length ponytail. She has generous lips, large, too white teeth, round bump of a nose and a face disposed to open smiles and loud laughter. There is a silver mouth harp in her right hand and a long slender joint in her left. She inhales, holds it in, closes her eyes and slowly releases the imprisoned smoke. The joint is ashes, by the time she looks south at the dust rising from a car approaching at speed. The expensive foreign car slows and slows as it approaches her. It idles to stop in front of her, the tinted windows reflecting the lowering sun. The car stands silent, shiny, and black. The dust settles. It is quieter than before the coupe arrived. She can almost make out her dusty reflection in the shiny door as she starts to play slow, blues full of stillborn things, ripped guts, dark days, regrets and bitterness. Her music is her voice. The still air and parched ground welcome and soak up her wounded words. The window on the passenger side rolls down. The music invades the dark interior, makes a U-turn and returns to the welcoming dryness of air and earth. “How much?” The voice is deep, dark, demanding. She plays a sweet bridge and ups the tempo a little.
“Bitch, you hear me. How much do you want to rent and rend those well-used holes between your dusty red legs? He won’t want your shopworn goods.” She bends notes in an impossible manner. “I’m being nice. Nicer than he will ever be.” He pauses for her response. She plays a not interested, move on blues. “Bitch, I can get out of this car and take what I want. I will leave you sprawled out, naked and bleeding.” She catches the rhythm, mood, and pitch of his voice and plays his words back to him. “Are you mocking me? You black, red-faced cunt! YouShe makes his words sound like a stuck, squealing piglet. There are the sounds of something pounding and pounding from the insides of the dark space of the car. The car rocks and shudders and finally settles to a standstill. “I know you’re waiting for him. Stupid bitch. He doesn’t deal with poor, nigger shit like you. He will fucking destroy you. Fucking, stupid cunt!” The voice is tense now with a trace of fear, a little trembling. “Yeah, you wait your stupid black ass here. You’ll see.” The mouth harp blasts a train whistle, the chug, chug of a steam locomotive pulling out of the station. Traveling music. The window goes up. The car accelerates without his consent. It spins up a dust storm as it fishtails down the road. ### The shadows are long, and the air is cooling as the southbound black-and-white pulls across the road and parks in front of her. There is the chatter of the car radio as the driver gets out and puts on her campaign hat, tilted forward shading the black wraparound sunglasses. The patrol woman parks her spit-shined boots right in front of the harp player. She stands there silently staring down as the musician smiles up at her. “Show me some ID.” Her voice is thick as molasses and tired as death with just a suggestion of unreasonable anger barely caged. “Are you another Crossroads groupie?” She shrugs and opens her arms to show she has no purse. She pats the pockets of her jacket to show they are empty. “You’re messing with me. You’re trying to piss me off at the end of my shift.” She leans down to the still smiling woman. “ID or go to jail until we ID you, groupie. Your choice.” The harmonica player hits a mournful riff, with a facial expression to match. The quick kick of the booted foot catches her hard in the shoulder and topples her over backward. The next foot catches her in the right side and lifts her off the ground.
The right foot is raised for another blow when the red-skinned woman plays a shrieking, note of rage and the car radio responds with an answering squelch, a burst of angry static ending with a cry of anguish. The booted foot pauses in midair as the patrolwoman turns toward her car in disbelief. The woman scrambles back away from the cop and plays a sound like leathery wings on a black night, flapping in obscene sensuality. The radio gasps, stutters and screams and screams until the sound is painful to the ear and punishing to the soul. The officer is covering her ears as she falls to her knees. “You, you your kind. These fucking Crossroads… He’s not real… just superstition.” She fumbles for her gun. The pitch changes, blood gushes from her nose. She bites her tongue, more blood. She turns slowly and crawls toward her car. With each inch, the noise eases back, less shrill, less painful. She crawls into the silent car, loses consciousness for a minute or two. The musician stands on the shoulder of the road holding her ribs on her right side as the bloody officer straps on her seatbelt. Still shaking, the cop starts the car. She accelerates quickly and spins around in a circle and aims the patrol car at the harp woman. The public address loudspeaker, the car radio, and the sirens all explode in sonic madness as the car sweeps by inches from the woman bent in pain and playing her heart out. The black-and-white calliope rolls into and out of the ditch, through a barbed-wire fence and across a field accelerating and accelerating as it carries away the din. As darkness descends and the night enfolds the land, they come from all directions to the Crossroads to sell, trade and bargain, but not with him. He is a myth. They come to dance to her tune in the dark of night.
Frederick K. Foote, Jr. was born in and resides in Sacramento, California. You can find his work online at: spectermagazine.com, akashicbooks.com, pikerpress.com, everydayfiction.com, Short Fiction Break, https://birdspiledloosely.wordpress.com/, Sirenzine, and in the print copy of the 2014 Sacramento City College Susurrus Literary Magazine and in, The Way the Light Slants, by Silly Tree Anthologies.
Saint Francis by Robin Wyatt Dunn
I left the lawnmower with the motor running, cigar clamped between my teeth, when Johnny came to see me. I call him Johnny Appleseed, he’s got that sallow complexion I like in a man, tells me what I need to know: that he’s familiar with abuse. “How’s it hanging, Francis?” I looked at him and I knew that today was gonna be a day, one of those kinds of days, the kind where you look at your gun a little too long. “Hiya Johnny.” “I got something interesting for you.” “What is it?” I hold out my hand and he plops the present there for me, a tooth, with a little blood still on it. “One of your own?” I say, looking up at him, tall skinny fellow, grinning my shit-eating grin. He looks uncomfortable. “Big Sal told me to give it to you, said you’d understand.” “What?” “Big Sal, he said―” “He said I’d understand?” “He said―” “Finish my lawn,” I tell him, and brush past him, human tooth clenched in my palm, flipflops slapping on my feet. I am seventy-two years old. They never let you retire in this town. ### Marcia is standing outside on her corner, looking sad, which is why I like her, she’s a beautiful woman. “Hey Marcia.”
“I don’t got time for you today.” “You hurt my feelings, Marcia.” She looked off in the distance. “Look, take twenty bucks, okay,” I slipped the bill next to her tit, “and look, you talk to Big Sal today? Yesterday?” “Huh-uh.” She shook her head, chewing on her gum. “You sure?” “Yep.” “See ya, Marcia.” “Bye bye.” She waved, some little gesture, the way that woman uses her hands, it makes me want to die, die young. ### “It’s Francis!” I shouted, standing outside, heaving my gut up into my throat, using every ounce, every available once, to penetrate the stone, “I need to talk to Sal!” “He’s busy!” said the guard, nervous, too young for this job. I ignored him. “Sal!” The guard looked at me with a new look, it’s a lot of fear, not good at all. He ducked inside the door. I wished suddenly I still carried my gun. I wished I’d been born a Puerto Rican. ### I followed him up the stairs. Him this boy in his cheap black suit, too hot for this weather, for this city, for this century, living a dream the rest of the state forgot: like dealing drugs gets you any respect anymore. “Wait here,” said the boy. “You got it,” I said, grinning at him, shifting my weight, caressing my gut in my wife beater. I’ve known a few men over the years, not biblically you understand, but known ‘em pretty well, every man makes his own peace with this city, you have to, you have to ignore some of it, you have to make excuses, but the question is: what kind of excuses did you make, and which things did you ignore?
The boy opens the door and then Sal starts shouting, and the man is bleeding, his mouth pouring blood onto the floor. “I don’t know what to do . . . I don’t know what to do . . . should I,” says the boy, whimpering almost, and I smile at him, nice and sweet, and shut the door in his face. And the man blood pouring from his mouth starts to cry. Sometimes I have that effect on people. “I guess this is his, huh?” I say, holding the tooth out for Sal to look at. Sal looks very unwell indeed. He’s too fat, first of all, not healthy to be that fat, but his eyes, he looks like he’s been drinking gasoline. Or hemlock. “I gotta take a shit,” says Sal, but he doesn’t make a move. “Sal, why am I here, holding this man’s tooth?” “I gotta take a shit!” “You want me to call a doctor?” “I gotta TAKE A SHIT!” I suppressed the urge to laugh. “Sal, why don’t you go do that, then, and I’ll take care of your acquaintance here.” But Sal didn’t move. And the man really began to bawl, to howl, crying his bloody mouth to the ceiling. “Shut up!” I said, and the man looked at me, deeply wounded. But he shut up. “I woke up, I knew, it was today,” said Sal suddenly, the words tumbling out of his mouth as his gun tumbled into his hand from his desk, “I knew that today I would see the stars, the stars of night would come inside, I’ve seen them, they’re here Francis, my God, it’s today, it’s today . . .” I should have just walked away. I should have left town. I should have been born in Argentina. At least there you could get a decent steak. I walked towards Sal, slowly, my hands in the air, stupid smile on my face. “Sal? It’s me, Francis. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. You got problems, we all got problems, like this guy, shit, he lost a tooth!” And, incredibly, Sal begins to laugh, a huge laugh comes bubbling out of him, bubbling so hard that it jiggles his hand resting with the gun on his huge belly, and suddenly it goes
off, opening a new hole in the wall. “Aennngh!” said Sal, lurching to his feet, more mobile than I would have given him credit for. “Jesus, Sal, you’re an embarrassment.” He looked at me like he wanted to shoot me. He probably did. “Hey, guy,” I said to Mr. Toothless. “Tell me what the fuck happened, huh?” “He, he shtook thout my tooth!” “Fuck. Sal. What am I going to do with you? Christ, you want me to call the police?” “Yeah. They gotta know.” “Why don’t you just give me the gun, huh, Sal? Just hand me the gun, let’s go have a drink.” And, my stars, my stars, my stars so far away, I know their names, they know that I am only a man, the useless fucking crook hands me the gun. And I hand twenty dollars to the man with blood pouring out of his mouth, and I help the two-bit gangster down the stairs, down the stairs to the bar, so we can have a drink. This is what I do with my retirement. I nurse shit gangsters to sleep, so I can fucking mow my lawn in peace. When I die, I know that I will be a star too, so far away, far away from Los Angeles.
Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. He's online at robindunn.com
Thank you for reading our inaugural issue. Our next issue will be released in April, 2015. Follow us on Twitter @FableOnline