Volume 18 Spring

the

OFF

beat.

There are groups of us, in pockets around the world, whose tastes lean a bit toward the eccentric... volume 18, Spring 2018

faculty editor Curtis VanDonkelaar

managing editors Paulina Minnebo Katie Dudlets

editorial staff Natalie Zunker

Mary Nguyen

Michala White

Alexa Koboldt

Jake Vaive

Madison Kautman

Emily Tyler

Ah-Janai Hudson

Martha Spall

Cailin Haggerty

Sierra Richards

Ella Caudill

Kristina Pierson

Holly Bronson

Cheyenne Nutlouis

Ben Bland

Ashita Nichanametla

special thanks Julie Taylor

Lizzie Taylor

Laura Julier

Emily Claus

Copyright Š 2018 by Michigan State University The paper used in this publication meets the minimun requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Espresso Book Machine East Lansing, Michigan 48823-5245 Printed and bound in the United Stated of America.

21 20 19 18

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Library of Congress Control Number: ISBN: 978-0-9978151-5-3 Book design by Sierra Richards Cover Art by Brittainy Newman Cover Art Description: Joan Fernandez Caberea (left) and Yunier Lopez (right) pose for a portrait as Cantaleta and Petuino the clown in Santiago, Cuba on Jul. 15, 2017.

After becoming the first Cuban circus clown to perform with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Joan Fernandez Cabrera, 30, saw that dream disappear this past May when he learned that the 146-year-old circus closed its curtains for good. He and 500 clowns, acrobats, and stage crew members were left scrambling for new jobs at the end of an era. Motivated by the American value system, he looks for success back in his home country of Cuba by joining the Cuban National Circus.

Visit MSU Espresso Book Machine at www.lib.msu.edu/ebm

Editor’s Note It’s the rich aroma of buttery popcorn and peanuts scattered about your feet. The dazzle of lights and the intoxication of cotton candy colors. The vibration in the stands as the elephants stampede and lions roar. The gleam of wonder in childlike eyes under the stripes of the big top. The spectacle devoured: smirking clowns, alluring acrobats, and the whiskered, rosy cheeks of the bearded lady.

The show is a celebration of the strange, the bizarre and eccentric, the outlandish. Likewise, we are the ringmasters of a magnificently misfit troupe of storytellers. Only, our performance lies within these pages rather than onstage.

We bring together the stories that excite, that amuse, that uplift the human spirit above the confines of normal.

It’s been our privilege and honor to run the show over the past year, to provide a platform to those who are offbeat and unashamed. But as another semester comes to a close and commencement looms in the distance, it’s time for us to bow, wave an editorial goodbye, and trade our top hats for graduation caps, passing the former off to the next group of managing editors.

They will continue to move forward with boldness, with purpose, with tenacity, letting inspiration and curiosity guide them. They will continue to champion the work of brilliantly peculiar minds, of literary innovators who thrive at the fringe of convention.

Of course, their editorial journey won’t come without its own hurdles.

But greatness doesn’t come from comfort. It arises from hardship, from injustice, from brokenness—things we’ve all experienced on the path to our most sincere selves. It’s because of these things that we read with compassion, write with ambition, and strive to leave this world more colorful, more vibrant, more connected for our being here.

We hope you enjoy the show. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages. . .

Welcome to the circus.

Katie Dudlets and Paulina Minnebo Managing Editors

Contents Volume 18 | Spring 2018

13

15

18

The Never-Ending Somersault James Hamby Poetry

You Can’t Just Murder People A.J. Atwater Fiction

From the Anoletolian Round Table Richard LeBlond Sequential Art

23

27

29

You Probably Met Thor at a Gas Station at 3:00 a.m. and He Hated You Katie Krantz Fiction

32

Genesis Carl Auerbach Poetry

A Field Guide to Killing Your Mother Claire Rubin Poetry

35

Eating Breakfast at the Table of an Alternate Reality Shirley Jones-Luke Poetry

The Worrisome Sweater Soramimi Hanarejima Fiction

36

Grandma Living off Fortunetelling Kevin McDaniel Poetry

37 42 55

Subplot Carla Damron Fiction

Have a Heart Jaqueline Valacich Fiction

wild flowers Michael Jack O’Brien Poetry

56

57

58

Diagnosis: Sonnet Scott A. Volz Poetry

Paper Planes Scott A. Volz Poetry

Three Is the Magic Number: or Five, or Seven or Nine Anthony Velasquez Creative Nonfiction

66

67

68

Projection Dheepa Maturi Poetry

Angular Woman Caitlin Sellers Poetry

72

75

Out of My Mind Tim Bascom Creative Nonfiction

78

Facetime with the Famous Memoirist Rita Ciresi Creative Nonfiction

The Comments Section Erin Slaughter Creative Nonfiction

76

Full Support Margaret Rutley Poetry

Talking to a Soldier Flown in From Nam Last Night Judith Cody Poetry

80

82

October, Early Helen Wickes Poetry

Takers Jud Widing Fiction

91

Phoenix Accidentally Returns as Millipede Diane Larson Poetry

92

Roosevelt’s Play Diane Larson Poetry

93 My Baby A, K Forrest Poetry

94 100 104

No Thank You. I Don’t Eat Monkey.

Michael Coolen Creative Nonfiction

Kiowa Jim Was Here Robert Garner McBrearty Fiction

The Harvard Computers Alyssa Ross Poetry

106 107 112

Bride of Turpentine Kathryn Almy Poetry

Freddie Erin Hoffman Fiction

Far From Home Sarah Carleton Poetry

113 120 122

Top Ten Hits Frank Weisberg Fiction

The Cure That Ales You (Your Spell Check Is Complete) Paul Perilli Poetry

Palindromephilia David Sheskin Poetry

124 127 128 Chinook Mom Joseph S. Pete Fiction

The Candidate William Doreski Poetry

Weird Ambition Rebecca Humes Creative Nonfiction

133 135 137 The Pianos Virginia Sutton Poetry

Pinal Mountain Regional Park Virginia Sutton Poetry

The Matriarchal Legacy of an Astral Warrior Michael McLaughlin Fiction

145 153 165

Cirque de la Lune Paige Pfeifer Fiction

Meet the Authors

Call for Submissions

The Offbeat

The Never-Ending Somersault James Hamby “The Never-Ending Somersault,” announced the acrobat, “is a feat beyond the credulous!”

He promptly removed his hat.

The puerile crowd began to gasp, then burst into applause.

And one another’s hands they clasped to watch this feat that broke the laws of science. Undaunted, calm, and proud, he tucked his knees beneath his chin.

He prayed his feat would please the crowd and then began to spin.

He twirled and rolled and tumbled on, going round and round and round— he knew soon that he would be gone but still he spun upon the ground.

Centrifugal force began to build, it almost stopped the show, for people feared he would be killed— his feet were first to go.

Flying off his whirling ankles, they shot into the stands amidst a shower of blood that rankled the house—and then off came his hands.

His calves and forearms followed next, then biceps and his thighs.

His head flopped fiercely on his neck, and then out popped his eyes.

James Hamby | 13

The Offbeat

His tongue and nostrils followed suit, his mandible and pate were split asunder, but still the crowd would cheer and root, they saw in it no blunder.

Now, behold the twirling torso, the organs began to rain— the audience shouted “Bravo!

We will never see this again!”

And then a twirling rib cage, complete with dangling spine, was all that lingered on the stage going in a circular line.

And still it spun and glistened, stopping, slick in dew-like gore.

But those who listened heard a whisper, “Do they desire more?”

14 | James Hamby

The Offbeat

You Can’t Just Murder People A.J. Atwater “Size 13?” Humpty repeats back.

“And D-width,” she says. “Pumps.”

“Pumps, size 13, D-width. Let me see what I can find.”

Humpty pushes through the swinging doors into the back-stock area.

He pauses by the suede boots and puts a hand to his chest. A woman with size 13, D-width feet. He looks down at his own: size 14, E-width feet. He keeps his hand over his heart as he moves to dusty shelves in the back-stock area. He recalls pumps. Black with a tiny bow at the toe. Three-inch heels. That would make the woman his height.

He pulls a box from the shelf. Blows dust from the box top and looks inside. The pumps are like powerful, miniature canoes with heels.

Glossy. Patent leather. He tucks the treasure under his arm and pushes back through the swinging doors.

“We’re in luck,” he says.

“Really?”

“Well, I’m rather tuned into larger sizes. You can understand why.”

His gaze travels down to his feet, then up to her. She nods, stands and fits her right foot against his left. “An inch longer and half an inch wider,” she says.

Humpty looks at the women. Her hair comes to her shoulders in shades of gold, red, and purple with black tipping the very ends. Her eyebrows are penciled in, and they arch at him. She wears tall leather boots.

“Let’s give them a try,” she says and folds into one of the beige leather chairs lining the shoe department.

A.J. Atwater | 15

The Offbeat

Humpty takes the shoes from their box and sets them on the floor side-by-side. He gives her a quick smile, gets down on one knee, and unzips one of her long leather boots, slides it from her foot carefully, holding his breath like he’s in a high stakes poker game. Her hosiery feels smooth. He removes a shoehorn from his back pocket, reaching for it under the hem of his suit coat. Another quick smile at her, then he shoehorns the pump on.

She turns her foot side-to-side, testing out the angles of the shoe. “I like the little bow, don’t you?” she asks Humpty.

“It’s a nice touch,” he says, nodding.

“Let’s put the other one on so I can go for a quick walk around the shoe department,” she says.

Humpty does and watches her march a little unsteady at first, then pick up speed and flash past him, dress hem rustling. Her multicolored hair lofts a little. A killer-shark smile crosses her face on the second swept past. Then she stops next to him.

“Well, it looks like we did it,” she says. “I’ll take them.”

Humpty rings up the sale and bags the shoes. He comes around the counter with the bag. They walk to the edge of the shoe department.

Humpty continues to walk with her through the mall, carrying her shoes, and out the main entrance to her van. They climb inside.

“Are you in the habit of walking off the job with strange women?” she asks, looking at Humpty as he pulls his door shut.

“I did, didn’t I?” Humpty says. “But I’ve never met a woman with size 13, D-width feet before and I wasn’t going to let you just walk away.”

The woman gives him a sideway glance. “What’s your name?” she asks.

“Humpty.”

“Humpty what?”

16 | A.J. Atwater

The Offbeat

“Anderson,” he says. “I invented it.” Humpty leans toward the woman.

“I chose it because I thought others could relate to it. And it works.

Humpty Anderson has worked.”

“You can’t just name yourself,” she says.

“You know the deserted motel on the edge of McGregor, near the coast highway? That’s where I grew up,” he says. “I called myself Humpty, so I guess that’s made up too.”

“Let me get this straight,” the woman says, “you raised yourself in that deserted motel?”

“I was pushed from a car,” Humpty says. “I was already big for my age. The motel had everything I needed. What I didn’t have, I stole.”

“You stole what you needed,” she says. “Me, I did something different to get what I needed.”

“What did you do?” Humpty asks.

“I murdered my husband,” she says. “The pumps are for his funeral.”

“What do you mean?” he says. “You can’t just murder people.”

“It was easy,” she says. “Battery acid in orange juice.”

Humpty grips the dash with his hands, then turns to the woman. “Did he hurt you?”

“Over and over. His hands were like nails, always nailing me,” she says.

“The people who dropped me off in the middle of the night? They hurt me too. We’ve both been hurt,” he says and takes her hands in his.

A.J. Atwater | 17

The Offbeat

From the Anoletolian Round Table Richard LeBlond Sequential Art

Every autumn, one or two lizards called Carolina Anoles enter my house through the back door. At first, I thought they were looking for a place to hibernate. But according to the biological literature (which of course was written by humans, not lizards), the anole doesn’t hibernate. I hope they are after food, as I fear being carried away by cockroaches while sleeping. I have even renamed the house for them: Anoletolia.

I’m not sure how long the anoles stay. I have never seen them leave the house, and only one body has ever been found. It looked like a stick figure, a skeleton wrapped in black skin. Maybe the others were carted off by cockroaches as they slept.

But I now know why they enter the house: for intellectual stimulation and creativity, for settling into an armchair with a good book, and listening to an early baroque mass. These are not fanciful imaginings on my part; I have photographic evidence.

18 | Richard LeBlond

The Offbeat

“I am drafting my third novel,” he told me, “Life on the Fly. I call it a novel, but it’s really just nonfiction in a witness protection program to save me from beatings and lawsuits.”

Richard LeBlond | 19

The Offbeat

“So you’re a fan of Monteverdi, are you? I read somewhere that his music was composed by Francis Bacon. Nice frame job, by the way.”

20 | Richard LeBlond

The Offbeat

“It’s a good read, but I like McMurtry’s novels better. I got the feeling here that he sees himself more as a book lover than a novelist. He owns a bookstore, and works in it. He visits bookstores. He knows the history of books. He knows the history of bookstores.

“I’m that way with cockroaches. I arrange their exoskeletons according to the Dewey decimate system.”

Richard LeBlond | 21

The Offbeat

“But what about this, The Best of Edward Abbey? He’s a strange bird, much edgier. You know what I think? I think he was a redneck who had the misfortune of being an intellectual, a philosopher with two wings: left and right.

“But he wrote The Brave Cowboy in the 1950s, and that novel was the genesis of a sad and lovely little movie, Lonely Are the Brave. Bet you didn’t know that, LeBlond.”

22 | Richard LeBlond

The Offbeat

You Probably Met Thor at a Gas Station at 3:00 a.m. and He Hated You Katie Krantz The neon sign flickered. On. And off. On and off.

Onandoffandonandoff andonandoffandonandoff and on again. Junk food wrappers sparkled with the turquoise reflection, blue and white and blue again. Hotdogs rotated solemnly in the corner, accompanied by the pathetic whirrrrrr of the oven and the persistent bzzzzzzt of the fluorescent lights above. The air was full of stale spice that assaulted the nose; an elephant thundering across a field of delicate flowers.

Airborne ammonia wafted into my eyes from the open bathroom door.

Unmentionably disgusting stains meandered up and down the walls in a graceful sonata.

His beard was only one shade off the hot dogs’ synthetic mustard, and his eyebrows were as thick as the buns. In his massive hands was a tiny pack of Wintergreen mint-flavored chewing gum. He leaned against the counter next to the slushy machine. With every chew, a peculiar hammer fastened to his belt whacked the hazy linoleum. His bulging arm muscles seemed to be attempting an escape from both his skeleton and the pit-stained, sleeveless band T-shirt fluttering about his torso.

“Oi, wut ore yew looking at?”

“Nothing.”

I made a quick escape down an aisle lined with salty snacks. Ahead of me, rainbows of cholesterol-saturated crunch swooped regally down silver racks. Currents of flavor particles and saturated fats formed streams that swirled and flowed, making their way toward that bearded dude. On their way, they formed clouds and storms, a skyscape of empty calories. They burrowed their way into the man’s Katie Krantz | 23

The Offbeat

nasty shirt, clawed in between the fibers of worn-out jeans, and generally avoided the misshapen hammer.

Lightning crackled. The hazy, greasy Plexiglas windows filtered out any brilliance the light may have had. When thunder whacked at the storm clouds, the packaged foods shivered, glancing around for the source of the commotion. Beard guy stared directly at my left ear, probably because my face was tactfully turned away. The neon cellophane captured my gaze, and I did not try to figure out if there was leftover food stuck in his beard in my peripheral vision. Or whether his hand was intentionally on the hammer.

“One more time for yer daft head. Wut ore yew looking at?” His accent was so thick, he had to hurl the words out of his mouth and fling them onto me. And the wall and the racks of junk food. They dropped like mucus down to sticky floor tiles, mixing with dust bunnies.

“Like I told you, nothing.” His beard hairs shook with the tension of his irrational territorialism. Thunder smashed against the sky.

“Maybe your beard.”

His work boots smashed against the vinyl. Right foot (lightning).

Left foot (thunder). Arms a’swinging (bursts of heavy rain).

“Don’t yew know who I am?” His beard bobbed in the wind of his words. His eyebrows waggled like wiener-dogs. His cloud-gray eyes vaguely twitched with tension rolling over from the vein popping out of his forehead.

“How would I know who you are?” Why? Why couldn’t I just fall into a defensive position on the floor? Why did I need to challenge the angry man with fists the size of my head and a hammer-shaped ticket to the emergency room?

He stopped in his tracks. The soles of his boots planted into the floor, and for a quiet moment, the sky went back to bed. His head tilted. His eyes narrowed.

BOOM—lightning struck the nearby road. Black scorch marked the asphalt.

24 | Katie Krantz

The Offbeat

“IDJIT,” he roared, and then looked at me expectantly. I raised an eyebrow. He raised both eyebrows. I leaned backward a few inches. He put his fists on his hips and puffed out his chest. I snatched the candy bar I came in for. He watched me slowly back away, refusing to break eye contact.

“Wow, okay,” I said, trying to pretend I didn’t hear him huffing, “I’m just gonna go buy an energy drink. Are you going to be okay here?”

“I AM OKAY ANYWHAR. I AM THE STRONGEST BEIN’ IN THE GALACKSY.” His breath smelled like sausage.

“Yeah bud, you look pretty ripped.” I took a few more steps back.

“DO YA QUESTION ME, YA LAVVY HEID.” He had the dental impression of an aging stray dog that had tried to gnaw on a metal pipe.

“No, I don’t question you. You look really strong, man.” I put my hands up carefully, the candy swinging from my fingertips. He continued to quiver with unjustified rage. The storm outside swirled around the rest stop, sealing us into our strange standoff with the mentally-absent cashier, pot smoke wafting from his nose in a delicate stream to caress the round clock for a time that’s numerically comfortable only when it’s early afternoon.

“DO YA WANNA FIGHT A GOD, YA PUNY HUMAN?” Damn it.

“Nope.”

“YA THINK YER SORRY ARSE CAN BEAT ME?” Why me?

“Not at all.” I continued to slowly back away and made my way quietly out from between the aisles, bumping against the buzzing refrigerators. Thunder and lightning clapped and struck and clapped and struck as he stalked his way toward me, his breathing louder than the sky.

The huffing became a low growl. The low growl became a roar and then all of a sudden, the beard guy was screaming at the top of his lungs in the middle of a gas station snack aisle after midnight, beard Katie Krantz | 25

The Offbeat

quivering and forehead vein pulsing. No words, just screaming. The cashier tugged at his collar and sank two inches deeper into his plastic chair.

The storm outside raged. The hammer wiggled. I pulled an energy drink out of the fridge. He stopped yelling.

“THAT’S RIGHT YE DAMN WELL BETTER BACK DOWN,” he yelled, conveniently moving his arms to flex his two-liter biceps. His beard quietly waved at me in indignation, shedding snack dust left and right. He spun around on his massive heels and stomped back out the door. Thunderlightningthunder.

Casually making my way to the front of the room, I watched him stroll into the storm. Even in a tank top, he didn’t flinch as the water slapped across his skin. He made his way into the black night, his blown-up form growing hazier and hazier as he left the gas station behind on foot.

I, on the other hand, picked out a two-dollar umbrella and got into my Prius. The cashier’s bloodshot eyes stared exclusively at the register.

I spiked my blood sugar to the sound of low-quality radio. The storm stopped.

26 | Katie Krantz

The Offbeat

A Field Guide to Killing Your Mother Claire Rubin There it was on a back table among the remaindered books overprinted, undersold a slightly torn cover, a half price sticker exactly the book I have been looking for since last August needing advice about my mother who is deranging my life, leaving only meager Valium

traces of compos mentis despite handfuls of Vicodin and

accusing me of stealing her toothpaste, her wallet, her filthy old bathrobe for God’s sake bribing liquor stores to deliver cartons of scotch to the basement door weaving up the staircase clutching her oversize purse complaining to the police that I don’t make her lunch on time and lock her in the laundry room for days staying up all night, ice cubes clinking, TV blaring, dark circles under my eyes as I leave for my pathetic job at Amazon roller skating at twenty below to find extension cords, crock pots, cameras & carpet sweepers Twenty chapters, each with intriguing ideas, captivating suggestions The first on the benefits of raising black widow spiders (females only) in the comfort of your very own home

Claire Rubin | 27

The Offbeat

another describing a trip to Burj Khalifa in Dubai or the Shanghai Tower in China architectural wonders, each standing more than two thousand feet above the ground, huge vistas from single pane windows wait, here’s a trip to the Galapagos, although it comes with a black box warning about slippery volcanic rocks that can slice-and-sliver-if-you-fall what of buying an Excalibur Crossbow with a crank cocking device and spending Saturdays learning to shoot at an archery range, before taking off to hunt deer or Whatever a crucial chapter on solo helicopter skiing in Alaska where you can be dropped on a remote mountain and picked up (or not) several weeks later a final chapter explaining which combinations of drugs should be avoided at all cost, particularly alcohol and benzos or cocaine and opiates, aka speedballs I gleefully grab the book and take it to the register where a sales person with spiked blue hair and seventeen piercings looks at me a bit strangely as she slips it into a brown bag

28 | Claire Rubin

The Offbeat

The Worrisome Sweater Soramimi Hanarejima To put it to good use, you spin the gray fibers of her insecurity into yarn that you then knit into a sweater. It’s warm and looks good on you. You were concerned it might grate on your nerves, but insecurity has never really bothered you, and the sweater is actually very soft.

Though there is a tingling sensation you get in your fingertips when you run them down the sleeve, to feel what used to be the source of so much of her doubt. This becomes part of the sweater’s charm—for you.

She, however, does not like it at all when you wear this sweater.

“No one knows it’s your insecurity,” you protest.

“No one except me, and I find it weird to be reminded of my insecurity by seeing it on your body,” she says.

“All right, then you won’t see me wearing this anymore,” you tell her.

And indeed, she doesn’t. You keep the sweater concealed beneath your coat whenever you meet up with her on these winter days. You think it will do her some good to be in oblivious proximity to her insecurity.

Without any insecurity to worry her, she takes to the open mic, trains for the 5k run in the spring, launches into fervent discussion with colleagues and friends—focused on what interests her, not what others think of her.

Without those nagging, debilitating questions—Am I good enough?

Can I really do this?—she is encumbered not by a sense of inadequacy but by ambition and curiosity which she must now figure out how to carry.

Within a few weeks, she’s on the playhouse stage, delivering her set of freshly composed poetry in the annual community contest. Sitting Soramimi Hanarejima | 29

The Offbeat

amid the attentive audience, you are enthralled by her words. Her pithy yet epic tales impart upon you a keen awareness that all her open mic performances have led to this moment and have made her a master of delivery; sweeps of her arm and turns of her head orient the audience in her world, while her honed vocal chords fill the air with clear, resonant words. The imagery of mythic empires and enchanted creatures rendered by her voice and accentuated by her gestures couldn’t be more spellbinding.

The competition includes several of the town’s seasoned poets, yet she’s able to hold her own and comes out with third place. This outcome exceeds all her expectations. She had no aspirations to place at all and just wanted to push her work to the next level. So, she feels like she got the bargain of a lifetime: serious practice, public recognition, and euphoric accomplishment all in one fell swoop.

Afterwards, she walks over to you, beaming as she comes up the aisle draining of townsfolk heading out.

Saying nothing, you both hug ecstatically. But within seconds, she’s suddenly pulling away, withdrawing from you step by backward step.

Her eyes are wide, as if to let out an anxiety all too familiar to you.

You can practically hear her thoughts.

Am I actually good at this? Maybe I just got lucky. What if they made a mistake? What if they just felt sorry for me?

She’s undoubtedly felt the insecurity that lies beneath your coat.

Before you know it, she’s running out of the playhouse. Then you’re running after her down the street. Even having felt the insecurity, her athletic abilities are at peak performance.

Muscle memory, you conclude, annoyed that you’re barely—if at all— gaining on her.

In frantic pursuit, you peel off your coat and toss it aside. Somehow you manage to then get the sweater off without losing momentum.

Dashing down the street in a t-shirt now, you’re sure she’s headed to the park; she always goes to the fountain when she’s feeling especially 30 | Soramimi Hanarejima

The Offbeat

unsure of herself. So, you head for the east entrance to the park, to take the path to the rhododendrons that neighbor the fountain.

Once there, you see her standing before those mighty pillars of rushing water, their hissing and splashing placating her.

You stride swiftly out of the shrubbery and pull her into another hug.

She’s warm from all the running, and so are you, together warm enough to make you forget that your t-shirt leaves your arms almost entirely exposed to the February air.

“Why did you bring it?” she demands in a heavy whisper.

“You were amazing,” you tell her. “Even with your insecurity right there in the audience. It can only keep you from the truth and from your ability if you let it.”

“Point taken,” she murmurs.

With that, you know that there is no longer any need for the sweater. But you do need to retrieve it soon, before the sweater makes some little kid into a premature worrier.

Soramimi Hanarejima | 31

The Offbeat

Genesis Carl Auerbach Poetry 1.

On a subway to the Bronx, a teenage girl with a ponytail waves and smiles at a baby. The baby smiles back. That’s what babies do. Everybody loves a baby.

A woman is kidnapped because she is pregnant. After she gives birth, the kidnappers turn her over to a cartel, who sell the baby to the highest bidder and scavenge the mother for body parts.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.

2.

A little boy and his older brother are running past me down the street.

They are wearing football jerseys. The little brother is proud that he can keep up with his big brother.

First, they indoctrinate the child soldier. Then, they give him drugs and have him kill someone. Afterward he feels strong, powerful.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The second day.

3.

The young woman eating lunch at the table next to me is complaining about her boyfriend to her friend. The issue is not serious. She just likes having a boyfriend to complain about.

The harvest was poor that year, so the family sold their oldest daughter to a traffcker, who sold her to a wealthy Filipino businessman.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The third day.

32 | Carl Auerbach

The Offbeat

4.

My colleague at the university married the man she had been dating since their senior year in high school. She looked radiant at the wedding, like a Raphael painting of the Madonna.

The refugee fled her village in Honduras after her husband beat her with a heavy two-by-four. It was because she had been outside talking to her sister when she should have been at home. It was the first time he had beaten her in front of their two daughters.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The fourth day.

5.

I was sitting on a bench by Central Park smoking a cigar when the woman passing by told me that cigars aren’t as bad for you as cigarettes, and that her father smoked cigars and lived till 90.

When I was in Rwanda I was told that there are very few older people who are still alive. Most of them were too frail to survive the genocide.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The fifth day.

6.

Saints and sages can know suffering of great magnitude and still continue to love God. As Wittgenstein lay dying, his last words were: “I have had a good life.”

My father’s younger sister, my Aunt Francis, was “retarded,” which was the expression that they used in the 1940s. My grandmother took care of Francis because there was no one else to do it. Francis was fat and ugly and unhappy. She had no friends. The week before she died, she told her family that she wished she never had been born.

And there was evening, and there was morning. The sixth day.

Carl Auerbach | 33

The Offbeat

7.

Ramana Maharshi says that when we see clearly, we will know that the world and all things in it are beautiful and perfect. Apparently, it is possible to feel this way.

34 | Carl Auerbach

The Offbeat

Eating Breakfast at the Table of an Alternate Reality Shirley Jones-Luke Pass the toast, please although it’s a jumble of geometric shapes like a Picasso painting Can I have the butter, too? creamy, smooth squares melting across the pyramid of infinity Your reality is not for me.

Stop thinking that I want what you want I’m not stable in this world. Would I be stable in yours?

Your answer is a hollow-sounding void, It will be my cemetery of nothing, you say, shiftless forms, ghosts from other galaxies, the shades in Hades, sip tea and watch me balance on the edge of oblivion, pass the sugar . . . where’s the milk?

You smirk and hand me the cup. I reach for it and fall fall fall forever.

Shirley Jones-Luke | 35

The Offbeat

Grandma Living off Fortunetelling Kevin McDaniel Living, what I do with a pack of Lucky Strikes and cheap bourbon.

I crack up at crude jokes heard and long forgotten.

What I do with a pack of playing cards, I crack up at crude jokes heard and long forgotten, blowing smoke about kings, queens, and one-eyed jacks.

Playing cards, all Grandma ever had, blowing smoke about kings, queens, and one-eyed jacks, her cataract eye skimmed solemn inked expressions for cryptic omens.

All Grandma ever had, nostrils exhaling smoke entangled with a joker’s tragedy, her cataract eye skimmed solemn inked expressions for cryptic omens, living.

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Subplot Carla Damron “Oh, please. I would never say that.” She peers over my shoulder at the computer screen.

“Shhhh,” I caution, as I click the keys. Finally, the log-jam of writer’s block has lifted, a crack of light peering back as I muddle through this scene. I have been fighting the same five pages for days now.

Above the monitor is a white board, which had been suggested by someone in my writer’s group. A rainbow of post-it notes lay scattered across it, a color for each character. My writing coach said to use this to balance the story lines. I spent four days on post-its, a lovely way to avoid actual writing. Yesterday, I alphabetized the books on the shelves that take up two walls of my little writing office, vacuumed and dusted the apartment, and cleaned out my refrigerator.

Not writing turns me into Martha Stewart.

“Don’t go,” I type. “Don’t leave me.” But without another word, he walks away.

That sounds canned. I need to find a more unique way for Page (yellow) to plead with her lover, Diego (green), who has another lover (mauve) that Page is clueless about.

Page pushes a shoulder forward. A pale moon of breast bubbles up from the neckline of her sweater. Diego’s brows lift.

“Don’t go,” she whispers. The flow of words invigorates me. It’s been so long. So very long.

When she leans in, the weight of her arm is heavy on the back of my chair. “I sound pathetic,” she says. “He cheats on me and this is how I respond?”

“You don’t know about the cheating,” I reply.

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Her silk scarf flutters against my neck. “Hello! I’m right here.

Reading your shit.”

Diego doesn’t reply. His finger touches her chin, trails down her neck, skims the pale flesh he used to savor. “I have to go. We both know it’s what has to be.”

Page doesn’t watch as he exits, doesn’t hurry after him because she knows it doesn’t matter. Diego left her days ago, first at the restaurant when his long silences felt itchy and strained. Then yesterday at his place, when he didn’t undress her and mentioned an “early morning” to get her to leave. The signs have been there. She chose to ignore them.

“Seriously? Why would I do that?” She has moved to the other side of my offce.

“Be quiet.” My fingers fly across the keyboard. A tear escapes Page’s eye; a perfect, clear drop that slides down her cheek. She has many more tears, an ocean of them, but for now, this one is all she can spare.

I smile; that last bit sounds arty.

“Why am I crying? If that lame-ass prick wants to leave me, good riddance.” When she tosses an Elizabeth Strout novel on the desk, I jump.

She moves to the white board. “What’s this? It looks like someone threw up giant confetti.”

I explain the post-its, noting her yellow thread takes up most of the first eight chapters. “You’re almost the main character.” I hope this placates her.

“Yellow? Cowardly yellow? And what happens in chapter nine? I seem to disappear.”

“I . . . haven’t worked that out yet.” I don’t tell her that, after being the main murder suspect and most prominent red herring, she is found dead in the condo of Diego’s lover. “That’s hard to believe. You’ve sure worked out everything else.” She hovers over me, so I lean over the keyboard, worried she might usurp it and type her own dialogue right out from under me. I must ride this wave of creative juice after 38 | Carla Damron

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too many days of blank pages. That’s how it is in this writing life: feast or famine, and famine leads to vacuuming and alphabetizing books.

“You’re wasting your time.” She has moved to my bookshelf. Her finger glides from one binding to the next, like she is looking for something she lost.

I look at the screen. If I can just finish this, I will be done with the flashback in chapter eight and move on to the mauve post-it: Diego’s lover. I haven’t assigned her a name yet, so I’ll have to scan my favorite obituary website to see if anything stands out. I borrowed “Page” from an Amazon book reviewer.

Page moves to the window as his red Corvette pulls away from the curb. She can hear strains of music from his dashboard, loud enough to wake the neighbors. She glances anxiously at the house across the street but no lights blink on. The flash of red rounds the corner and disappears. He is gone, and there’s this dark emptiness growing inside her as she tries to envision a life without him.

“I always hated that car. Nothin’ but a shiny red penis with a bad sound system.”

“Quiet!” If Page is to be a red herring, I must get her to the scene of the murder. I cast a sideways glance at my unwanted visitor. How do I get her to Diego’s the night he is stabbed? Does she go there to win him back? What evidence does she leave behind? My gaze falls on the scarf around her neck. Of course.

“What? Why are you staring at me?”

“I created you. I can stare if I want.”

If I go after him, I can remind him what he’s giving up.

“Seriously. You’re about to make me puke.” She grabs my chair and spins me around. “You make me less interesting than a sheet of typing paper. Your readers deserve better. Hell, I deserve better!”

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My patience has evaporated. I am beyond tired but I’m finally making headway if only SHE would leave me the hell alone. “Stop that!” I command. “You are my creation. You have to do what I say.”

“Do I?” She pulls up a chair to sit beside me. I’ve never seen the chair before: it’s tufted aqua velvet, with cherry wood accents.

She’s taller now. Her hair, which I’d written to be wavy brown falling just past her shoulders, is turning auburn, in a very straight bob-cut at her neckline. “You have such a pathetic need for control.”

“Huh?” I ask.

She points to the story-board and barks, “This monstrosity. Why assign me a story when I have my own? You’ve plotted and connived and not given a thought to who I am or what I might have to say.”

“That’s not how it works,” I say through gritted teeth. I want her gone. I have pages ready to be filled.

“You spend your creative energy on little colored sheets of paper. You let them tell you what happens next instead of listening to me.”

I wish I could turn OFF her voice, but it bellows, filling the room like a great gust of air. The post-its wave and take flight like tiny multicolored kites.

“Hey!” I yell.

She stands. No longer five-three, as I’d written her, but six feet of commanding presence. Her silk scarf has turned into a scarlet boa which she wraps around her shoulders like a glittery red snake. Her shoes have turned from subtle brown pumps to shiny red stilettos.

And when did she get the hat? It’s a beret, a perfect match for her sparkling green eyes.

They used to be brown, too.

“I’ve decided not to be in this book of yours,” she says. “I won’t be a mere subplot.”

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And with a wave of her hand, the screen changes. Lines of dialogue melt. The narrative fades to gray, then gone. All that work . . . lost.

All those hours . . . wasted.

She leans over my shoulder again. “Now, are you ready to listen to me?”

I look at her, afraid. She smells like lavender. Her face has become more angular, her cheekbones strong, her lips full and dark as garnets. She comes close, her words warm against my ear.

“Who are you?” I ask. I must know. My fingers tremble as I reach for the keyboard.

“My name sure as hell isn’t Page. It’s Vanessa.”

Vanessa, I type.

“I killed Diego, and I promise, I shed not a single tear.” She pulls up a chair like she’s prepared to stay a while. “And wait till you hear what happened in chapter two.”

I lift my hands from the keys. The story board is a giant white emptiness. “I don’t know where you’re taking me,” I whisper.

She laughs. “Isn’t that the point?”

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Have a Heart Jaqueline Valacich Aziz Hadid’s strong, young heart beat a steady rhythm in his chest.

It was late afternoon on the outskirts of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The 18-year-old was expertly teasing the tattered football back and forth between his feet, weaving through narrow paths in and around the scattered one-room shacks strewn with drying laundry and littered with garbage. He giggled as the horde of chattering children chased after him, unsuccessful in their attempts to steal the ball. “Ah!” he cried out when a swift kick missed the ball and connected solidly with his shin.

“Come on, Aziz, kick the ball!” whined his 10-year-old sister, Mishka.

He skillfully manipulated the ball into position and drew back his foot. Movement in his peripheral caused him to stop short of contact.

He gaped at the two luxury sedans rolling down the dirt road, dust billowing around their tires. He wiped sweat and dust from his brow with a wiry, sunbaked forearm.

The children stood in stunned silence.

The polished, copper-toned vehicles halted in front of a make-shift shanty, pieced together with sheets of rusty tin and clapboard scraps.

His pulse quickened, and his heart began to thump vigorously against his rib cage. He licked dry, sun-parched lips, took a couple of steps, and stopped.

The rear door on the lead car opened and a leg, clad in pressed silk and a high-polished shoe, stepped onto the sand. A large man in a headdress unfolded the rest of himself from the vehicle, reached back inside and retrieved a black leather briefcase. Adjusting his suit jacket over his barrel chest, he walked the short distance to the shabby dwelling and knocked on the scrap of tin that served as a door.

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Aziz executed a few more stiff-legged steps and halted when his mother, clad in a faded burqa, answered the knock.

She stood silent while the man spoke.

After she screamed and clutched her chest, he rushed to her side.

“Mama!” he cried out, arriving in time to catch her.

Her rheumy eyes looked pleadingly into his and she reached up with a wrinkled hand to touch his cheek. “My beautiful son!”

“Aziz Hadid?”

He turned and lifted his quivering chin. “Yes, I am Aziz Hadid.”

“It’s time,” the man said.

Aziz nodded bravely.

“No!” His mother seized his ragged pant leg.

He gently lifted her to her feet and hugged her tight. “It’s okay, mama. I am honored and so is our family. Your life and Mishka’s will be so much better now,” he reassured her and kissed her creased forehead.

The man opened the briefcase and held it up.

Aziz leaned forward and gasped.

His mother buried her face in his chest and shook her head, refusing to look.

Two more briefcases with identical contents were delivered to the doorstep by a shorter, suit-clad gentleman, along with a set of car keys.

Aziz untangled his mother from his shirt. “Mama, look.” He turned her face toward the instant wealth. Then he nodded and pushed her arm toward the car keys the man jingled in front of her.

She accepted them with a shaky hand.

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“We must go now, boy,” the man said, coaxing him toward the waiting sedans.

“No, take me,” his mother blubbered as a fresh flood of tears streamed down her weathered face.

“We can’t take you. Your heart is worn out, old woman.”

“Be strong, mama.” Aziz kissed his mother again, inhaled through his nose and allowed the man to grasp his arm and lead him to the second car in line.

Cool, dry air-conditioning washed over him as he settled into the soft leather of the padded backseat. The sweat on his body dried instantly.

The hair stood up on his arms as his skin crawled with goosebumps.

He shivered and hugged himself. Two men in identical dark suits and headdresses sat on either side of him.

The driver started the car, manipulated a three-point turn, and slowly back-tracked down the sandy roadway.

Craning to peer out the rear window, Aziz swallowed the lump in his throat. His little sister ran after the car until she and the other RollsRoyce were but mere specks on the horizon. Facing front again, his breath caught in his throat. “My mother doesn’t know how to drive an automobile,” he said to no one in particular. He startled when, after a moment of stunned silence, the inside of the Rolls erupted with laughter.

“She will learn,” one of the men said.

He flinched and leaned away when the big man to his right chuckled, patted his leg too hard, and roughly mussed his hair. He shrugged and said in a small voice, “Yes, I suppose she will learn.” Never having ridden in a car before, like a baby, the motion soon put him to sleep.

He awoke an hour later and gawked at the tall, shiny buildings and the sparkling clean streets of Tabuk. So many bright lights and beautiful people. He held his breath as the Rolls pulled up in front of the neonlit, glass and steel, Ertiaad Hotel.

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In an effort to view every inch of the hotel lobby, his head swiveled like an owl’s on his neck. His bare feet sank into thick red carpet, and the glare from the shiny, beige marble tiles prompted him to shade his eyes with one hand. He stopped short at the back of the lobby. A heavy hand pushed him into one of the small boxes along the wall.

“Ah!” he yelped and crouched low when the elevator began its swift ascent to the penthouse. He smiled sheepishly when his guardians guffawed, and the big one smacked him on the back with a dinnerplate-sized palm.

“Careful of the merchandise,” the smaller of the two men said.

When the elevator opened in the penthouse, Aziz stood stunned. A sprawling king-size bed, piled high with pillows and adorned with fur throws, rested against one wall covered in padded, pin-tucked leather.

Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed a panoramic view of the city lights and the setting sun. The gray marble bathroom was bigger than his mother’s home.

“You’ll be spending the night here,” one of the men said. “You may order anything you want from room service.” He lifted the leatherbound menu from the desk and handed it to him. “The king requests you order only ‘heart healthy’ items.” He jeered, revealing large tobacco-stained teeth. “We’ll be right outside the door.”

Aziz accepted the menu with a filthy hand, shamefully aware of the dirt packed under his finger nails. When the door closed, he stood in front of a large mirror and attempted to smooth the cowlicks in his hair, brushing the dust from his clothes. He knew the men outside his door weren’t there to cater to his every whim. They were there to make sure he didn’t leave.

The next morning, Aziz sat erect and still on the thick mattress. The pillows and bedding lay in a tangled heap on the floor where he slept the night before. He showered and finger-combed his hair before donning the provided floor-length, white-cotton thobe.

He bit into a crisp green apple, swiped the juice from his chin with the back of his hand, and giggled when the coyote was flattened under his own boulder and then taunted by the roadrunner. He had never seen a moving picture box before. His little sister would have loved this.

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The door to the penthouse opened.

He jumped and dropped the apple. Suddenly having a hard time swallowing the mouthful of tangy-sweet pulp, he gulped and stood.

“Let’s go.”

Aziz was no less awe-struck by the return trip down the elevator, through the hotel and back into the luxury sedan, than he had been the night before. This will soon be a way of life for Mishka and Mama. He smiled.

His eyes widened as the Rolls-Royce pulled up next to a massive airplane that sat alone on an expansive runway. He leaned forward and craned his neck to peer out the sedan window. The beast loomed, big and shiny.

“Welcome to the Royal Airbus A380,” the big man said. “At least you’re going out in style,” he followed with harsh laughter.

Aziz timed it just right and swerved, narrowly avoiding the large paw attempting to slap his leg in jest.

Upon entering the luxurious custom airliner, he halted. With a shaky hand, he grasped a gold handrail on the wall. His heart raced, his vision blurred, and the shining interior quickly lost brightness at the periphery. His breaths came fast and shallow.

One of the men led him to a white leather couch and pushed him down. “Put your head between your knees,” the man instructed.

“Breathe slowly.”

He sensed a change inside the craft, as if the air had suddenly been sucked from the room. He raised his head and allowed his eyes to travel up from spotless black shoes to a rich-navy suit, and finally, a noble head wrapped in a flowing ghutra, held in place over a skull cap with a cord sewn of gold thread. Two men steadied the pale and weak, King Ahmed Al Saud. In one fluid movement Aziz slid from the couch onto his knees and bent forward at the feet of the new arrival.

“Get up, Aziz Hadid,” the king said.

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He hurried to stand, staring down at his feet.

The regal man placed a manicured, albeit shaky, hand on his shoulder.

“You are performing an indescribable duty to your king, country, and Allah. For your loyalty and service, you and your family will be handsomely rewarded. In this life and the next. Your mother and sister will want for nothing, all because of you.”

Aziz merely nodded, keeping his eyes on the thick-piled white carpet.

His entire body trembled under the king’s touch. A sweat bead tickled its way down his spine. *** Less than an hour later and thirty-five thousand feet above international waters, Aziz laid on a gurney while a nurse in baby blue scrubs wheeled him into a stainless steel and harshly lit, surgical bay.

A similarly dressed man stood at a wall-mounted scrub sink, vigorously scouring his sudsy hands with a tiny brush.

Aziz lay flat on his back, shivering in the stark brightness. He took a shallow breath and wrinkled his nose at the acrid, astringent odors.

The double doors behind him opened with a slap of rubber on rubber and he craned his neck, swiveling his head on the gurney.

Two masked nurses wheeled in another: King Al Saud. A tangled mass of wires and tubes connected the silver-haired ruler to beeping monitors and bags filled with different colored fluids.

The man at the sink held his hands up and walked to the head of the king’s gurney. He leaned over. “We’re almost ready, your majesty.”

“Very good, doctor,” the king replied.

“Bring me the donor heart,” the doctor said while another nurse helped him glove up and tie a surgical mask over his nose and mouth.

Aziz’s gurney began to move closer to the doctor. His heart began to thump in his chest and his pulse raced. His scalp tightened and he was drenched in cold sweat. A tear rolled down the side of his head to splash on the steel gurney.

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“Be brave, son. You’re a hero. And your family will never live in poverty again,” the doctor said, bending over and staring into his face with piercing green eyes. Sandy brown curls stuck out from the cap on his head and framed the doctor’s face.

Aziz sniffed and then rotated his head until his eyes locked on the king’s as they lay side by side on identical gurneys. Someone swiped the inside of his arm with ice-cold liquid, and then a quick pinch.

King Al Saud smiled warmly and winked at him.

The doctor nodded at the nurse waiting at the head of the two gurneys. She began to turn dials on tanks and untangle tubes attached to plastic masks.

Aziz whispered a prayer. He flinched when the nurse placed a plastic mask over his nose and mouth. His body trembled violently. He focused on an overhead light as a black rose quickly bloomed and then obliterated his vision. *** When Aziz awoke, he feared he was blind. He opened his eyes but could see only inky blackness, then ominous shapes and floating shadows. Before panic seized him, the darkness gave way to a pale gray haze, and the haze retreated into a bright white light and white ceiling tile. He palpated the surface under him and came to the realization he was in a bed. The smell of fresh bed linens, disinfectants, and antiseptics surrounded him. A low, steady beeping kept time somewhere behind him.

“How are you feeling, sir?” the doctor asked.

He startled, lowered his eyes, and turned his head. His vision swam out of focus. When he could see again, the green-eyed, curly-haired doctor met his gaze with fevered anticipation. His head ached and his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Tubes ran from both arms and wires led from patches stuck to the skin on his chest. His chest felt as if he had been hit by a truck. “Where am I?” he croaked.

“Water.”

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He clutched at the cup the doctor held in front of him and gasped. He furled his brow and studied the deep wrinkles, trimmed cuticles and polished nails of a much bigger hand than his own. His eyes traveled up the arm. His brain commanded his hand to squeeze the cup and water soaked the blankets.

“Is something wrong, your majesty?”

Your majesty? “Mirror,” he said.

A moment later a nurse entered with a hand-held mirror.

He held the mirror in front of his face and his breath caught. Piercing coffee eyes stared back at him behind hooded, heavy lids that gave way to deep crows-feet around the outer corners. His once unruly, black mop was now a luxurious silver mane. Fear quickened his heartbeat. He turned the mirror around and studied the back of it, then looked into it again. King Al Saud?

“There must be some mistake,” he said.

“What mistake, sir?” the doctor asked, his brows knitted.

“I am not…um I am?” How did this happen? Why did he look like King Al Saud?

“If there is something you need, your majesty, I’ll get it for you.

Anything.” The doctor leaned in and put a cold stethoscope on Aziz’s chest.

“I think I just need to sleep,” Aziz said, unable to keep his lids open.

“I’m dreaming.”

But he wasn’t dreaming and his repeated attempts to explain only caused worried expressions and whispers until he finally gave up. *** Aziz spent the next two months recovering from the heart transplant surgery. During that time, he also discovered what it was like to be king and quickly settled into his new station. Whatever he desired, he possessed. Whatever he demanded was done. The only restrictions he Jaqueline Valacich | 49

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came to realize were within his own, 70-year-old body. Joints, muscles, and bodily functions didn’t work the same as his 18-year-old ones.

The day the doctor cleared him to travel, he summoned the same men who had retrieved him from his home outside Tabuk. “I wish to see my moth—the mother of the boy.”

His heart beat with excitement and anticipation when the Rolls coasted to a stop in front of the clapboard shack he remembered so well. “She still lives here?” he asked.

“Yes, the foolish old woman refuses to move,” the driver said.

Aziz bristled, but held his tongue. “And the other Rolls-Royce?” he asked.

“It’s behind that row of shacks over there. The children play in it.”

The big man shook his head in disgust.

Aziz giggled. Giddy with delight at the prospect of seeing his mother and sister again, he hurried across the sand, knocked on the familiar scrap of tin and waited.

His mother took one look at him and collapsed, sobbing and wailing.

“No! You can’t have my daughter too. Please, have mercy!” She clutched at the hem of the silk robe he wore.

“Do not touch the king!” The big man moved in with his hand raised.

Aziz caught his arm. “Strike her and you die.” Then he bent and placed his mouth close to his mother’s ear. “I want you and Mishka to come live with me in the palace.”

Her wide, red-rimmed eyes met his and her brow creased. She snuffed loudly and wiped her nose and tears on the hem of her burqa.

He stared into her eyes, willing her to understand. It’s me, Mama.

Then he said, “For what you have sacrificed, I wish to repay you.”

“You could never repay me,” she answered. “All the money, cars, or palaces in the world could not repay me for what you have taken.”

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“I know,” Aziz said, eyes streaming tears upon the realization of his mother’s love for him. “But I wish to make the rest of your days more comfortable. Please come.”

She shook her head.

“Mama, it’s me,” he whispered in her ear.

She shrunk from him, her eyes wide as saucers. “You’re crazy!”

“No, it’s me, I am Aziz.” He put the king’s hand on the king’s chest.

She merely stared at him.

“Mishka has a scar on her shin where she fell last year on a scrap of tin. It became infected and she almost lost the leg. You have a can buried out back. It’s full of our baby teeth. You call it your ‘buried treasure.’”

Her mouth opened and the stare changed from one of fear to awe.

“You can’t be my Aziz.” She leaned closer and searched his eyes. “Can you?”

He nodded and pulled her to her feet. “Gather their belongings,” he ordered his men. “Then, empty the trunk and leave the briefcases.”

Aziz clapped the large man, hard, on the back and silently celebrated when he winced. How do you like it?

Aziz and his family sat quietly in the back of the Rolls; awkward silence. The pile of briefcases, full of money, became smaller and smaller in the rearview. He leaned in and said to Mishka, “You’re going to love the moving picture box.”

She shrunk against her mother and stared at him with large round eyes.

The days turned into weeks and the weeks to months. Aziz was thrilled to have his mother and sister living with him in the palace and, as he had, they quickly became accustomed to their new lifestyle.

He smothered them with anything their hearts desired. They seemed to accept the impossible: that Aziz now inhabited the king’s body. He

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told them it was a miracle, and they shouldn’t second guess the power of Allah. Everything was wonderful. Almost.

Aziz was still a young man at heart and the king’s elderly body became more and more cumbersome and inhibiting for him. He soon resented the many years taken from him. And, as king, he was now accustomed to having his every wish fulfilled.

One afternoon, he brooded while the palace children played football in the courtyard. He loved to play football and before he realized what he was doing, he ran to join them. The king’s eldest son and heir to the throne, Prince Nayef Al Saud, an accomplished player, quickly put his elderly father in his place: sweating and panting on the sidelines.

“Give it up, Old Papa,” the prince taunted, receiving raucous laughter from the other children.

Aziz fumed. Later that day, he gave the order, “Tell my son I wish him to accompany me to Paris tomorrow.”

Next, he summoned the doctor and the two spent a long afternoon, alone together behind closed doors. He spent the rest of the night secluded in his chambers, refusing to speak to anyone, including his mother and sister.

The next day, King Al Saud and his entourage, which customarily included the cardiologist, along with Prince Nayef, boarded the Royal Airbus bound for Paris. *** Six hours later, an ambulance waited as the plane landed on the tarmac in Paris. King Al Saud was quickly loaded onto a gurney and rushed to the Hospital Américain de Paris.

Al Jazeera covered the death of the king for weeks. The country had rejoiced in their monarch’s successful recovery from heart transplant surgery only to plummet into despair at his demise due to complications. ***

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Two months after the Paris trip, the young Prince Nayef Al Saud rested comfortably in his palace bed in Tabuk.

A light knock.

“Enter.”

A very young and beautiful woman glided through the door carrying bolts of silk and a tape measure over her shoulder. “I’ve come to do a fitting for the coronation ceremony.”

He smiled and motioned for two servants to help him stand in front of a full-length mirror. The woman fussed and fluttered around him while he silently admired her full lips and supple curves. She stood back.

Nayef lifted his chin and assessed the finished product.

“Fit for a new king.”

Nayef turned toward the voice and met the doctor’s admiring eyes and wide smile.

“Leave us.”

The two men silently waited for the room to clear.

The doctor bent forward and stared deep into his eyes. “Is it you, your majesty?”

Aziz stared back. “Yes.” If you only knew.

The doctor straightened and smiled. “Now that you have a body to match the heart, you should enjoy a long and prosperous life.”

“Thanks to you, doctor.”

“I will see you at the crowning ceremony, your majesty.” The doctor bowed his head and left the room.

Aziz turned toward the mirror. He admired his clear and sparkling chocolate-brown eyes, now set in a smooth and flawless olivecomplexion. His hair was full, shiny, and jet-black once again. He Jaqueline Valacich | 53

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flexed his toned and supple young muscles and giggled with delight.

The only flaw on his perfect young canvas, was the large zipper-scar that ran from his sternum to his belly button. But that would fade with time, of which he now possessed plenty.

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wild flowers Michael Jack O’Brien

hiking through mountain meadows i drank in first the red of wild roses the blue of the lupines and the iris-scorching orange of california poppies but then quickly became tipsy and a bit nauseated from the aroma of the purple hypertensia. it was in deep forest that the flowers became too bold. the searching tendrils of tiny pink scar-flowers reached out for my wrists, encircled my waist, then pulled me to the ground among the red-flecked rapansia that released saccharine-scented spores until i passed out among the wild flowers.

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Diagnosis: Sonnet Scott A. Volz I wrote this for you—words from the heart that gush like blood from a ruptured vein.

Delivery is not in this doctor’s art; I encounter resistance of a verbal strain.

The rhymes, the rhymes—oh, I managed to force, torturing syntax like some mad inquisitor.

If the deaf could hear, they would remorse at the lyrical pain my verse could administer.

I curse the poet of smooth expression who cuts the cliché like a malignant growth.

No degree applies to prescriptions of passion, yet I’d trade Hippocrates for Shakespearean oath.

Love infected, I speak of how I yearn, but the phrasing makes my stomach churn.

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Paper Planes Scott A. Volz Perfectly-creased, they float for fifty feet before hook and dive and crumpled nose.

And so, whether I’m on a jumbo or some sardine box with wings, there’s a moment mid-flight when I fear of falling— football-spiral, air to earth— a breaking like birdsong as it wings away with summer morning.

I should have paid attention in the science classes of school years gone by.

Instead, I folded paper planes amidst the daydream clouds.

Perhaps then I wouldn’t be so amazed as we pass through fog-breath and eiderdown— physics and fictions merged, the green silk and golden weave of flying carpet.

Perhaps then this wouldn’t seem so much like magic.

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Three Is the Magic Number: or Five, or Seven or Nine Anthony Velasquez When I first arrived in Busan and was hired to be the new native speaker English teacher at a private English academy, there were certain things that I had to get used to right quick: feeling rough hands and sharp elbows from older ajummas towing trundlers of cabbage, onions, and radishes as they jostle for a position on the subway, the smell of kimchi and cigarettes emanating from the older, grouchy ajeossi in the driver’s seat, and close encounters of the motorcycle-kind barreling down the sidewalk. I had to get used to the schedule changes at work, with no warning, and the bacchanalia, Korean-style, with my boss and co-teachers who regularly took me out for mounds of barbecued pork belly, beer, and soju until I was as pickled as the banchan which covered nearly every inch of the table.

This was followed by more “staff bonding” for late night rounds with more soju while singing “Hotel California” and “Country Roads” in a noraebang until 3:00, sometimes 4:00 in the morning, on a weeknight. I had to get used to long hours.

Settling into Dynamic Busan!, Korea’s second city anchored by the world’s sixth largest port. Even more so, I had to get used to living in a very small, “furnished” one-room windowless apartment in an old run-down, fifth floor, walk-up-of-a-building provided by my school.

By furnished, though, that meant my director outfitted me with a mattress, a blanket, a pillow, and a clothes rack for the living room/ bedroom; a bowl, a plate, a fork, a spoon, a set of metal chopsticks, and a ramyeon pot for the kitchen; and a small hand towel for the bathroom. The refrigerator was next to two gas burners set atop the laundry washing machine next to the kitchen sink and a small countertop. The cramped bathroom was fitted with a mirrored medicine cabinet above the basin and there was a hand-held shower nozzle affixed above the toilet. I’d slept in worse places. All this I could deal with. But what really took a while to get used to were the visitors.

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I didn’t mind the silverfish in my place. I had even taken to calling them my friends. But the cockroaches in my apartment were a different story. The roaches here in Korea don’t scurry when the light is flicked on. They don’t even notice you. And if they do, it’s just to scan you up and down with judgement. Some of them were R.O.U.S.es: Roaches of Unusual Size. Some of them even flew. I once saw a cockroach so big in my bathroom, I don’t know if it was fear that made me gasp or if it was embarrassment for walking in on him.

I slammed the door. I had to do something, but what? If I kill him, a creature this big, somebody is going to notice he’s missing, I thought.

So, if I was to see this contract through and collect an attractive year-end bonus and severance, I had to get used to having roommates.

I counted down my days until I could cash out and get my schoolsponsored return ticket home to California.

Until I met Susanna. She came from New York and had been teaching in Busan for ten years. We hit it off right away. Both of us were probably attracted to each other immediately for the same reasons: we both found each other different. In a country where a woman who is a size four feels she is fat, where a woman endowed with a sizable bust is a scandal afoot, and where the locals assumed her voluminous, wavy dark brown hair must’ve come from the salon, not from her ScotchIrish descent, I could really appreciate how she stood out in a crowd.

And I guess I was kind of exotic, too, since I am “people of the sun,” I have a Spanish surname, and I have a year-round tan that glistens like refried beans. Korean men like to gesture to me with a thumbs-up on one hand while stroking their cheeks with the other and saying “Oh! Very good!” in reference to my beard. And when Susanna invited me into her place for the first time and I heard Willie Nelson singing, “I live the life I love and I love the life I live,” coming from her iTunes, I thought, as long as she’s going to be here in Busan, I’m not booking that plane home just yet.

After four months of dating, we traded in our rent-free onerooms, negotiated housing allowances with our employers, and pulled together some of our savings for the deposit on a sparkling new apartment on the corner of the eighteenth floor of a high-rise building. The living room features a big picture window overlooking Gwangalli Beach and the Diamond Bridge that nightly displays light shows illuminated by tens of thousands of LED bulbs like a massive Lite Brite out in the waters of the East Sea. Out the large kitchen window, I can take in the skyscrapers of Marine City where some of Anthony Velasquez | 59

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the world’s largest apartment buildings have assembled in front of the evergreen-forested, conical tower of Jangsan Mountain. In the bedroom, which features a walk-in closet and an enclosed balcony, there is a view of more high-rise apartment buildings and the little emerald islands of Oryukdo. Most importantly, in the bathroom, the shower is contained within tile and glass and it features a toilet that has so many controls to heat the seat and vary the bidet and enema settings, that even to this day, I still haven’t figured them all out. My roach motel and soju-swilling days were over, but I still had to get used to visitors of another kind: the unexpected callers. *** One morning, while Susanna was asleep in the bedroom and I was at the kitchen table that doubles as my writing desk, loud chimes rang from the doorbell. I checked the screen of the video intercom on the wall to the right of my flat screen TV and noticed a stranger was right outside my door in the hall. I checked in on Sus who sleepily glanced up at me, so I told her, “I got this, Babe,” and met the man at the door.

“Annyeong haseyo,” said the stocky, twenty-something Korean man with a white polo shirt and navy chinos who held a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.

“Annyeong haseyo,” I said while holding the metal door.

He then said something I couldn’t understand. I was lost after the greeting of hello. So, in a phrase that I know is still incorrect but at least a native could understand, I said, “Na Hangul mani chogum, mianhamnida.”

“Wait,” he replied.

I waited while he set the pen on the clipboard he placed on the floor.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, typing something into it in a flurry of stubby, nimble fingers, then extended his arm out with the screen of his phone facing me, where I read, “There’s something inconvenient about you.”

Oh my God, he read my mind, I thought. I wondered if this stranger had been talking to my girlfriend. I read it again, this time aloud to 60 | Anthony Velasquez

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the man at my door. “There’s something inconvenient about me?” I said.

“Nae,” he replied. Yes. *** You learn a lot about yourself when you’re living in a foreign country, but learn even more about yourself when you start playing house for keeps with the person you are most intimate with after many years of living alone. You’ll see things about yourself that only he or she will notice.

One afternoon, while I was at the kitchen table, typing away at the keyboard of my notebook as I often do, Susanna walked out of the bedroom, topless, in a pair of blue jeans. She was rummaging through the top drawer of the credenza near me looking for a little hairband for a ponytail. Now, I’m the kind of guy who loves a pair of naked breasts above a pair of blue jeans. Even more so, especially accented with a ponytail and glasses. But that day, I learned something different about myself, and Sus learned something new about me.

As she was pulling her hair back with a black, nylon hair tie, she said, “So, do you want to go to the duck place after work tonight, Ant?” “Ok,” I said, kind of dazed though. I was transfixed by her. But, not by her lovely breasts, but by a very minor detail one-inch by one-inch just above her pelvis. “Babe, I think you need to fix your jeans there in the front. There’s a tag sticking out of the top of your left hip, above the waistline there. You might want to fix that.”

She looked at me incredulous. Then said, “Anthony, really? The tag is the problem you see with what I’m wearing right now? Did you think I was going to go out like this?”

“No, Babe, just, you know, there’s that tag there.”

“Wait,” laughing and cupping her breasts, giving them a playful bounce, she said, “So, here I am, practically putting my tits in your face, which, I know are pretty nice, and all you can see is this little tag? Wow, Ant. God you’re OCD.” Anthony Velasquez | 61

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Yeah, I guess I am. *** So yes, there’s something inconvenient about me: I have many obsessions and compulsions. It takes me a long time to get dressed, which is why I am often so late. I can’t just fly out the door. Not because I’m vain, but because getting dressed involves a painstaking process. It begins by choosing the right boxers or briefs to match what kind of day it is. When the Dodgers are on the road, I wear my away grays and blues. During football season, black and yellow is in order on game day. Also, I bet Johnny Cash wore black underwear.

So when I kind of feel like an outlaw, need a bit of a swagger on certain days, I need black cotton briefs. Other times, I wear pastel -colored boxers with palm trees or animals on them. This is usually on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, because those days are not as serious as, say, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. And if I can’t find the right pair I already had in my head that morning because I forgot they’re in the laundry basket, I do an impromptu line-up in order to get a good view of them all and attempt to rationalize why I would make such a decision.

My socks also must go through a vetting process before choosing which pair, but with a twist. I believe socks are like shoes, one is specifically designed for the left and one is specifically designed for the right foot. So, after choosing a pair, I dangle them from my outstretched arms to see which direction the toe is pointing. Then the left sock must go on the left foot first. Always. I believe that if I was to rush out the door and put a right-adjusted sock on my left foot, or even sheath my right foot before stocking my left first, something really bad would happen. Like, have a really shitty day at work, get run over by a motorcycle while walking on the sidewalk, or even get hit by a bus. But that would never happen. Left sock on left foot first.

Always.

Then certain things have to go in certain pockets. With an odd number of things in each pocket. The right front pocket of my pants or shorts will always contain my subway card, the card that functions as a key to my building and the front door of my apartment, and change for the bus, which will either be three, five, seven, or nine coins based on their denominations. In the left front pocket is a handkerchief: a vestige from my childhood when I was an allergic-to62 | Anthony Velasquez

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everything, asthmatic boy who spent a lot of time with his maternal grandmother. In the back left is my cell phone, in my back right pocket, my wallet. Always.

Yet I’m not ready. I need something to carry. A backpack or a computer bag that is packed with an odd number of things. Or, in my hand, I grab a book with a bookmark and a pen (that would be good, that would be three things, and if I get lost and bored with my book I could use the pen to write on the title pages, the end pages, and in the margins). As long as I have something to carry: a bag, a book, an iPod, an umbrella, a jacket, a coffee mug; as long as I’ve got an odd number of things to carry, I think I’m going to make it out there.

So this means that after I have chosen what intimates to wear, I’ve got to start counting things. I count how many things I’ve got to do in the shower. Usually it’s three: wash my hair, wash my body, brush my teeth. Three things. Maybe five. If I’m feeling extra greasy, I’ll try my lady’s facial scrub. Then, though I don’t have much hair to worry about due to my receding hairline, but because I need a fifth thing to do, usually I’ll try her conditioner. Five things.

But it’s not just about counting things before I leave the house, it involves so many other simple activities throughout the day. Every email will contain an odd number of sentences. If it’s a phone message, since they are usually brief enough, within those odd number of sentences, they will be comprised of an odd number of words. I’m truly afraid I might jinx myself if I don’t follow my rules. So my instant messages aren’t so instant. A run to the store to pick up some eggs or milk isn’t as convenient as it is for most others: I need to leave the store with an odd number of things. Which means I have to count what I’ve put in my cart before checkout. If it’s an even number of items, then I must go back to the produce section or the dairy case and look for something I might use later. And if nothing is calling me, then I may just literally end up with a can of beans. Or maybe a piece of good chocolate for Sus. Also, I love cooking but I can’t follow recipes. Whatever I cook, it must contain an odd number of ingredients. Even within the number of ingredients, there’s a ritual to their application. One potato, three potatoes, five potatoes, but never two or four. Three shakes of salt, five turns of the pepper mill. I think an even number of flavors will just cancel each other all out into something quite bland. So don’t be Anthony Velasquez | 63

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surprised if a hint of parsley, paprika, or cumin is detected in one of my dishes. And if I’m making a cocktail, usually a squeeze of citrus or three dashes of Angostura bitters will quench this thirst for the odd.

The only exception to my affection for odd numbers is when playing roulette. I believe there are some lucky even numbers, though all are related to Dodgers and Steelers greats. 2 - Tommy, 12 - Bradshaw, 22 - Kershaw, 32 - Franco, 34 - Fernando, 36 - The Bus. Three favorite Dodgers and three favorite Steelers.

Please don’t tell me I’m ridiculous or overly superstitious. This is just a way of life for me. The only way I know how to survive in this world. *** Something I don’t find inconvenient, but my girlfriend does, is my obsession with naming things. Many people name a few of their favorite plants; I don’t think it’s that odd to name all of the twenty-three plants in our house. She already had Roberta the rubber plant and Phil the philodendron. But the succulents and cacti became Spike Lee, J.T., Thelma & Louise, Mary Jane, and Vera to name a few. Also, I don’t feel naming my coats and addressing them as if they were people is that strange. They are named after their maker or an obvious characteristic.

There’s Pendleton, Haggar, Blue Velvet, for example, and Fleece Navidad, a Mountain Hardware zip-up fleece I once got for Christmas.

Nothing unusual. But I have heard from others that it seems kind of weird that I’ve named my knives. Kuidaore is a thirteen-inch gyuto hailing from Osaka. She comes from a long line of Samurai swords with over 600 years of family history. I slept with her once before unwrapping and unsheathing her and putting her to work for the first time. She looks over Sakura (my santoku from Shikoku), Tori (my paring knife from Migata), Millie (my cleaver from Connecticut), and Pearl (my oyster knife I picked up in Ventura) on the magnetic knife strip in our kitchen. Susanna won’t touch Kuidaore, though. I think she’s jealous. She’s also suggested that maybe, since I like naming things, we should get a puppy or even a kid.

The latter one there truly frightens me, though. Especially if it was a boy.

What if he ended up just like me? Or even worse. ***

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All these things went through my head after I had read, “There’s something inconvenient about you.” I wanted to tell him everything.

He had me pegged. Had me down pat. Then I realized all this was too personal so I tacked a different approach.

“Okay,” I said. “Yes, there’s something inconvenient about me. You see, when I get tired or drink too much, my right eye gets lazy. And I think one ear is lower than the other, so my glasses always look crooked.

And—” I was going to show him the fungus on my left big toe but he interrupted.

“Annniyo,” he said. No. Then he picked up the clipboard and showed me a sheet with a floor plan of my apartment. “Eodie,” he said, pointing to the interior map of my home. Where? I realized he is asking where is something in need of repair.

I thought for a few seconds. Well, the washing machine does this little jingle on random days around 8:00 p.m. even when it’s not in use. And the air conditioner beeps for no reason, around 1:00 a.m., so I’d like to know why these machines are talking to me and what they are trying to say.

But that would only be two things. I’m a pretty honest guy. I didn’t want to make up something just to have three inconveniences and make the maintenance men come in here for unnecessary labor. So I shook my head and said, “Anniyo, apateu-ho, kenchana.” No, apartment room, okay.

He shook his head in the affirmative. “Annyeonghi gyeseyo,” he said.

Goodbye, I’m leaving.

I smiled, nodded my head, and waved a hand. “Annyeonghi gaseyo,” I said. Goodbye, I’m staying.

Anthony Velasquez | 65

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Projection Dheepa Maturi I think we’re all a color, she said, so, what’s mine?

The answer bubbled from my lips: You’re orange, I told her.

Not jack-o-lantern, not traffc cone, but the orange that flings coral and cantaloupe across the darkening— that births earth, that mothers harvest, infiltrating and exploding daylight.

I watched her eyes comprehend our conjoined roots and our tether to the future.

I knew she felt my orange hand on her orange heart.

I gathered my breath, piece by piece.

What color am I? I asked, and my hands curved to receive her bounty.

I think you’re beige.

Let’s get something to eat.

66 | Dheepa Maturi

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Angular Woman Caitlin Sellers I am not an angular woman.

I cannot cut you with a glance of my eyes, strike you senseless with my jawline, carve you with my high cheekbones, floor you with my chiseled form.

I am a curvy woman, bending time and space with every step.

More of a score than a tablature, I flap my arms and wing it, scat and whistle and improvise, stretching out notes along the bars, tinkling glasses, and savory smoke— I’m all riffs around the edges, blues, not baroque.

I am not an angular woman.

I cannot give you the cut and dry; there’s always ferment to my syllables.

They soak behind my ribs, overwrought and overthought.

More potent than I intended.

I am a curvy woman.

Longitude and latitude crisscross in perfection along my round reflection.

The earth never ran in straight lines.

And neither do I.

Caitlin Sellers | 67

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The Comments Section Erin Slaughter

Ardmore woman gets 30 years in prison for killing husband of two months blog.al.com | By Shelly Haskins | September 19, 2011 at 3:05 PM ATHENS, Alabama — A Limestone County woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison today for killing her husband just two months after their 2009 wedding.1 Pamela B. Terry, also known as Pamela Terry Slaughter, 50,2 pleaded guilty July 6 to the Aug. 23, 2009 murder of Steven Charles Slaughter, according to a release from Attorney General Luther Strange.

Strange said after Slaughter and Pamela Terry decided to separate after two months of marriage, he was writing her a check to reimburse her for wedding expenses when she shot him in the back of the head at her home in Ardmore.3 She then called the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office and confessed and waited for deputies to come and arrest her.4 1 “. . . she’s at home taking a nap . . . that’s what five orgasms does to a woman . . .” – My dad, overheard talking to my grandma in her kitchen while my sister and I were in the living room. We’d planned to go to the beach, but Dad and Pam had a fight the morning we were supposed to leave. It was about Pam’s twelve-year-old daughter, how she’d started following Stephanie and I on our walks around the neighborhood, asking us questions about sex. I don’t remember what we could have possibly told her. Maybe to ask her mom—maybe something about condoms? We spent our last four days in town at Grandma’s.

My dad went to smooth things over with Pam, but we never went back to that house.

2 “She was his midlife crisis. He didn’t want to turn 50 alone. He should have waited.” – My grandma, or my mom. Or both.

3 “Execution style.” – An attorney (I’m assuming ours) at the sentencing.

4 “She called me and said what she’d done, and I told her you have to call the police. I kept her on the line until I called them, and they were on their way to her house. I asked her where she’d done it. She said the living room. I said no where like where on his body . . .” – Pam’s sister in her statement at the sentencing.

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Post comment as...

buckelew Oct 19, 2011 Welcome to Ardmore.5

14Liberty Sep 20, 2011 30 years? Why not LIFE? Oh, yeah, double standards.

And NO, 30 years in her case is NOT the same as life because she’ll be out in just a few years.6

Jerome Stcharles Sep 20, 2011 now us taxpayers have to support her for the rest of her life..very pitiful. she needs to be shot in the back of her head.7

5 “It’s still Madison, basically, but the address is in Harvest.” – My dad, explaining where he lived now, as he drove us from the airport to Pam’s house.

I don’t know how Ardmore is in Harvest, or how Harvest is in Madison, or why everyone who lives anywhere seems to think their town is especially wild. There were no other murders in Ardmore that year. Not even my dad’s, according to the crime rate statistics, which lists the number of murders at zero. The number of rapes is also zero. The number of burglaries and thefts is 13. You could argue it’s all the same, burglarizing bodies, stealing another 30 years or so worth of breath.

6 “You have the Alabama Attorney General’s Information, right? When you move, make sure to call and let them know your new address, so they can notify you when she’s up for parole. So you can go down there and make sure she stays in jail. They say the family’s statements are often very persuasive.” – My grandma, approximately every six months.

7 LOL Erin Slaughter | 69

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Elliott Sep 20, 2011 This is one strange story.8 9

12chimes Sep 19, 2011 killed him..called the police..confessed..waited for them to show up to arrest her..sounds like she watched “slingblade” one too many times.10

User Friendly Sep 19, 2011 2 months? geez. 30, 1/3 of the sentence she’ll be eligable for parole (10 years), then every 3 years from then on she’ll be up for parole hearing. ugh keep her in11

8 I never noticed that the Attorney General’s name was Strange. LOL. 9 “What an incredibly strange thing to have happen.” – A friend, when I first told her The Story. Is it strange? I suppose the answer is: of course. But every time I tell someone The Story and they react this way, it catches me off guard.

I mean, people kill each other all the time. The only strange thing is that it happened in my life, but I was quick to accept it as just the way things were, the way life worked. I had accepted it, I think, before I walked back up the stairs to my bedroom that night. Processing it was a different matter.

10 “I’ve never seen Slingblade. People say it’s good, or whatever. I don’t know. I’m not really into action movies.” – Me, in some conversation long before I found this article and read the comments. I’ve still never seen Slingblade. I wonder if Pam had. I wonder if they have movie nights in prison, like they do on Orange is the New Black.

11 “Who knows where I’ll even live when she’s up for parole? What if I have a job I can’t take time off from to travel to Alabama? What if I don’t care if she stays in jail or not? What if I just don’t want to deal with it?” – Comments I do not make.

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jarhaid Sep 19, 2011 Gee whiz. I hope she waited until he at least signed the check.12 13

tcarl Sep 19, 2011 I never heard of a woman who did not take the money first, cash the check, then do whatever.14

Creole Chavez Sep 19, 2011 RIP. Slaughter is her married name. That’s ironic.15 16 17

12 LOL 13 Did he sign it, though? I don’t know.

14 “You’re only afraid of guns because of your dad, though. And because you’re a woman.” – A male acquaintance. Neither of those are the reasons I don’t want to own a gun, or be near one. It’s because I don’t want to be in the same room with anything whose only purpose is to harm.

15 “Based on your name, I definitely thought this was going to be some kind of horror story. I was pleasantly surprised.” – A journal editor, after reading an essay I wrote about my father’s murder and its connection to my inability to trust romantic partners.

16 “Slaughter. You know, like the murdering.” – Me, restating/pronouncing my last name to one of my students on the first day of the semester.

17 It is ironic. It truly is. LOL. Erin Slaughter | 71

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Out of My Mind Tim Bascom The cranium is a space traveler’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish.

—Vladimir Nabokov I stand under the downpour of the showerhead, still half asleep. The threads of heated water unspool onto my scalp and stream away.

The water is warm and soothing at the back of my neck where spine meets skull, the connection point of will and action. Then my mind, drummed into a kind of sour wakefulness, begins its day-long monologue: “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho. It’s off to work we go.”

Hearing that internal voice, I cringe: “Do you realize you’re talking to yourself, even singing? A Disney song, no less? What makes you any different from the guy on the cardboard mat who keeps lecturing the air downtown?”

Not much, it seems. *** I may walk into the office like any other “sane” person—smiling, saying the requisite “Hello. Fine. How about you?”—but always, always, I hear an internal voice chattering back at me, echoing in the space-shuttling cabin of my existence. Even if distracted by someone passing by—another ship in the abyss—I am eventually forced back upon the company of myself, that disembodied monologuist who is locked up in a physical shell. As a result, whatever connection I can make with you or anyone else must happen through fleshy walls, limited to the crude tools that I use for “outerspace” exploration: fingers that stretch, ears that strain, a nose that flares. All converted to electrical impulses that leap the synaptic gap to show up inside my cockpit as a flurry of blinking lights or binary blips or something more mysterious because (and this is really strange) I can’t actually see inside myself. Despite residing there, I am blind to the interior. *** 72 | Tim Bascom

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“You seem so close-minded!” That’s what you might say.

However, aren’t we all? In a sense, aren’t we all locked away within our own cells, living alone in separate chambers at the bottom of the sea?

Okay, that’s an oversimplification. Some people must experience less confinement than I do, otherwise, they would not appear so peacefully free. And even if I don’t feel as liberated, I must admit I have some blessed moments of release.

Oddly, basketball provides a fine reprieve—probably because the inner voice goes silent for a while and no longer reminds me of my own solitude. The droning commentator drops the mic and the body takes over, doing its own unconscious thing in relation to all the other players: dashing, lunging, whirling, leaping, tossing, snatching, tipping, braking, pivoting, bouncing, catching, stretching, banking, blocking—all on independent autopilot while the me who is usually talking like this gets to rest, even puts feet up on the metaphoric sill and watches.

Sex? Same thing! Feet on the windowsill. The only dampener comes from my spouse whispering something wretchedly cerebral as I caress the dome of her breast—something that will force me back into my ever-thinking self, such as, “We’ve got to remember our appointment with the accountant tomorrow.” *** Nearly fifteen hundred years ago, brilliant Saint Augustine put a different spin on human consciousness. Savvy to how his eyes and ears and nose brought things into his brain, he marveled at how much could be stored inside a person and recalled later. “For even when I am surrounded by darkness and silence,” he said, “I can, if I wish, summon up colors.”

Augustine was so impressed by this wealth of recorded material that he described the mind as a spacious palace, a mental mansion bulging with treasure, and he was right. It’s amazing how much can be remembered and kept. The human mind is the most remarkable flash drive ever—tiny on the outside, ginormous on the inside.

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However, no matter how many internal rooms we might explore, a skull is still a closed space, therefore a place we may want to leave. *** In high school, a buddy of mine whacked foreheads with another soccer player while leaping to head a ball. I could tell he was knocked out before he even slammed onto his back. He was already gone; his body reduced to a mass plummeting through space. Later, he confirmed that he had been absent, because, when I asked him about that moment, he couldn’t recall a thing.

Well, sometimes I wish I could be knocked out too—thrown right out of my head. And if I could get out, I think I’d go join someone else in a less familiar skull.

So you might keep an eye out for me—you know, wandering around.

I’ll ring the doorbell, in whatever way spirits ring doorbells. You can choose to ignore me. But if you decide to let me in, maybe we can be soul buddies. Maybe we can drink margaritas and eat chips and put our feet up on the sill. Maybe we can look out at the world through your portals, sharing laughs as we see the strange hands doing their thing: waving back or reaching out as they do.

Look for me, okay? I’ll drop by, if I can get out of my mind.

74 | Tim Bascom

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Full Support Margaret Rutley My doctor bra, pristine, saved only for him.

My white bra, bleached to yellow, never saw the clinic.

My first bra, padded, cratered like a volcano.

My honeymoon bra, embellished with beads hung like a belly dancer’s.

My senior bra, with firm support, pulled up over my feet.

Margaret Rutley | 75

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Talking to a Soldier Flown in From Nam Last Night Judith Cody His eyes stare at something that I cannot see, a scene glowing consummate of time figured in a place that refuses the proper recess of memory, still his eyes ignite the mystery attempting to look even deeper, examine, burn, bore into that moment formed just twenty or so hours ago, far away from here, yet so close by medical evacuation. Time and place are confused here—yesterday, far away is identical to today— it’s all in the eyes.

He looks as ordinary as one can look in a G.I. uniform, with about a hundred sticky black stitches sewn through the sunscorched skin of his left face, the thread winds from below his blond bottom lashes curls to the edge of a scab-crusted lip smiling a strange grin at something a thousand miles away in a broiling jungle dangling from the far edge of China.

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‘Are you going home?’

“Uh, uh. No. I don’t want to go home.

Don’t you see?

I’ve got to get back.

Right away.

Tom got me out.

He’s stuck there. I’ve got to get back.

Right away.

Been here too long.

Not that hurt.

I’ve got to get back.

Right away.

Look, I’m not hurt bad. I’m going back. Got to get outta here.

Don’t you see?

Six months in Nam with these guys, four left now. They’re waiting for me now. Right now god damn it, right now.”

Judith Cody | 77

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Creative Nonfiction

Facetime with the Famous Memoirist Rita Ciresi Am I here now?

Can you hear me?

Can you see me? No? Thank God for small favors.

How many students are on the line?

Holy cow. Are you all from everywhere?

And you’ve all read my memoir?

You probably know more about me than I do.

You’re probably all younger than me too.

Sure, I’ll answer any question. Truthfully. It’s all about the truth, isn’t it?

No. I wanted to be a real artist. You know, with real paint.

Because I got married.

Because I had children.

Because I got divorced and needed to pay the rent.

Because the kids left home.

For fun. At first. And because writers get to drink beer for breakfast.

By hand. Because writing is a physical act. Like jogging.

Although you won’t catch me dead doing that.

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In small sections.

I spread it out on the floor.

I moved the pieces around until I couldn’t move them any other way.

I read it out loud until I couldn’t stand hearing another word of it.

Because I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging.

Because I didn’t want to sound like a victim.

Because my parents were dead.

Because I don’t give a rat’s ass what my ex thinks about me.

Because my kids have different last names.

Because the story was more important than my ego.

Because if I don’t write, I feel like a cat with its whiskers cut off.

Because blah blah blah. I guess that’s what all writers say.

Wait. Are you still there? I’m just lighting a cigarette. On my stove.

I hope we don’t all go up in flames.

Rita Ciresi | 79

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Poetry

October, Early Helen Wickes Because the carrots are on sale that day, I hoist up the twenty-pounder.

There is a clove-scented guy in yellow linen, fedora, and onyx links. He shoves in line and plunks some change, muttering something about a donut. “Krispy Kreme?” asks the old clerk, whose name I see, is Joe. “Yeah,” grunts the suit who lumbers off (aren’t they the very empress of donuts? I love the oxymoronic perfection, the clasp of crisp to goo, the lady behind me murmurs). Anyhow, Joe hoists a silver, and calls out, “Hey, buddy, we don’t take rubles here.”

The suit pivots, says something about St. Petersburg way last June, the flowers’ perfume, and oops sorry, but he’s plenty churlish. And yet, how peaceful the world was for an afternoon that previous spring— that spring, the suit remembers. Each of us here, lined up, waiting it out, and recalls a place— a tranquil sky while running by the river, kids at play for me, an almond orchard near Calaveras, and a fragrant pink cloud-bloom. At last, my turn, I’m tensed for the— Ma’am, that carrot juice, health and eyes routine— but no, our old Joe saying, “Lady, you’re buying for some darn horse, now tell me I’m right.”

And our Joe’s gone into rhapsody. His daughter runs cows for a living out in the foothills, way down the valley. (Reverie snapped, the people in line

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snarl and squint, Joe couldn’t care less.). “Here I am,” he says, “bagging your stuff. My kid’s way down the valley, she’s a ropin’ and a reinin’.”

Helen Wickes | 81

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Fiction

Takers Jud Widing Idiots. He could spot a taker from a block and a half away. The flat twinkle in the eye and the slight quickening of the step. All the same.

He didn’t have to move a muscle. Just stand, smile, and let them come to him.

This latest taker was slimmer than his usual quarry. If he felt the slightest misgiving, it was quickly extinguished. The yokel had an ugly wife—maybe a sister, it wouldn’t surprise him—and two fat kids.

He was just like the others, even if he didn’t look like it at first.

Besides, Gareth was casting a wide net. Didn’t those guys who farmed tuna wind up with a few dolphins every now and then? A small price to pay.

The yokel trailed his awful brood right up to Gareth. Approachable Gareth, standing and smiling.

With practiced amiability, Gareth leaned forward and extended the tray. Just the slightest bit. Just enough to seal the deal. It was almost funny how easily people would yield to just a hint of solicitation.

When it became actually funny was when they took the cookie.

“Free samples?” The yokel gurgled.

Gareth smiled as hard as he could. “Yes, sir!”

And that was all it took. The yokel palmed a cookie off Gareth’s tray and shoved it straight into his mouth without even engaging his fingers. That approach always sickened and elated Gareth in equal measure.

“Would your family like one?” Gareth asked.

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“No, thank you,” the sister wife replied. “I’m trying to watch my figure.”

Gareth chuckled at that. He trusted she was too dumb to understand why.

“And what about these,” the word caught in his throat, “adorable little kiddos?”

The gremlins bounced and bubbled like farts in a tub, “Ooooh Mommy, Daddy, can we? Can we? Can we? Can we?!?” They sounded exactly like alarm clocks.

Daddy looked to Mommy, who mooned at her spawn.

To, ha, sweeten the deal, Gareth said, “These actually have seventy percent less sugar than any other cookie on the market.” That was almost certainly not true. But what were they going to do, take it to a lab?

If they did, they’d find a lot more to fuss about than sugar.

Mommy melted like the chocolate bars she undoubtedly had stuffed into her pockets, “All right. You can each have half a cookie.”

The children cheered. Gareth knelt down, bringing the tray to their level. He was all too happy.

“And how old are you two?” he asked as the bigger of the two palmed a cookie, just like Daddy.

“I’m six,” the little shit smear announced like it was something to be proud of, “and she’s four.” He broke the cookie in half and handed the smaller piece to his sister. Oh yes, this was a born taker.

Six and four. Gareth tried to guess height and weight. If his math was right, a half of a dose each would still do the job, so he could let a bit of honesty seep into his smile.

“Six and four! Do you take good care of your sister?”

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The kid nodded. Unlike Daddy, he used two hands to nibble on his cookie. Half of it was winding up on the sidewalk.

Gareth frowned and stood back up. “So what do you think of the cookies?”

“Real nice,” the yokel boomed and his eyes were locked on the tray.

As if he needed a second. One was more than enough to get the job done. Gently, as he leaned in, Gareth shifted his weight away from the family. The nuclear waste family. Ooh, that was good. He made a mental note of that.

“You folks have a great day now,” Gareth smiled.

The disappointment was splattered on the yokel’s mug. It was probably the closest he’d ever get to beauty. “You too,” was all he said.

And then he shuffled off into the punishing midday heat.

Once the heifers—yes, even if they weren’t the average takers, they could be honorarily inducted into their ranks–were out of earshot, Gareth allowed himself to really laugh. This was the best part.

Watching them walk away, oblivious.

It never failed to astonish him. Nobody ever asked him who he worked for, or why he was standing in front of (he turned around) a law office and a boutique hat store, with a tray of unmarked cookies. Every once in a while somebody would ask him what was in them more often than not because they had a food allergy. He wasn’t even wearing an apron, or a hat, or anything to link him to a real establishment. He used to have a t-shirt onto which he’d silkscreened a fake bakery logo, but one day he forgot it and got just as many takers as any other day. Now it was like a game for him. How disreputable a front could he present, and still get takers?

So far, he’d never lost.

Here’s what the future had in store for that inbred hick family. For a few days, they’ll be fine. Then they’ll get a tummy ache. No worries, everybody gets those. They’ll drain some Pepto and be on their way.

Then they’ll feel feverish. Chills, sweats, overwhelming fatigue. An agonizing dryness of the throat comes next. It’ll burn to drink water, 84 | Jud Widing

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and any food they try to ingest will come back up, along with a half a cup of blood. If they aren’t already bedridden by then, they’ll be laid out by crippling vertigo. After that, they’ll get a really bad rash.

Small onions compared to the rest, but Gareth had worked hard on the compound to get that delayed release dermatological assault.

Adding insult to injury that sort of thing.

Then, and only then, does the poison start attacking the central nervous system. Muscle spasms, violent expectorations from every orifice, and a shutdown of the digestive system. They languish like that for as long as it takes for them to starve. And Mommy will just have to watch, over days and days, as Daddy and her two little darlings gasped their last.

That’ll teach ’em. Idiots.

He got a whole gaggle of tourists, most takers he’d ever hooked at once. Just four cookies left on the tray. But that was all right; it was tending towards sunset. He’d be heading home himself soon. He might even have time to synthesize more of his Special Sauce before he put on his stupid orange vest and went to work. The work that paid the bills, anyway.

“Oooh,” cooed some idiot woman over his shoulder, “do I see free cookies?”

Gareth never had to dig too deep to fetch that first grin for a new taker. He turned, proffering the tray in one balletic motion. “Yes, ma’am!”

The woman was a classic taker; fat draped in a floral mumu and a fanny pack vanishing into her folds. She extended her hand halfway to the tray, making a little claw with her thumb and forefinger, “May I?” “By all means.”

The woman plucked a cookie from the tray as though she sensed its power. Just as delicately, she took a nibble. Not enough to do anybody any good.

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She swirled the crumbs around her mouth like wine. “Hmm,” she pondered. “What’s in this?”

Gareth caught his brow sliding towards his nose. “Are you concerned about a food allergy?”

“No, I’m just trying to place the taste.”

“Oh now, did you get any taste from such a small bite?”

“I did, and I’m trying to place it,” Her nose was curled slightly.

Absurdly, Gareth’s most overwhelming emotion was offense. How dare she curl her nose at his baking! “They’re chocolate chip cookies.”

“What bakery are they from?”

“I made them,” Gareth snapped.

The woman blinked hard. “Hey, I’m really sorry if I offended you. I’m an amateur baker. I’m trying to work on my palate.”

Gareth had plenty of toothy digs for that level of pretension, but he recognized détente when he saw it. Nobody was going to eat a cookie if they were agitated.

“That’s quite all right. I hope I didn’t come off as overly aggressive. I’m just . . . trying a new recipe, is all.”

Good will, and fellowship christened her face one again. Gareth wanted to smash it.

“So where’s your bakery?” she asked.

For a moment Gareth blanked on the name of his fictional establishment.

Then it came to him. “Oh! It’s called Leslie’s. That’s my boss’ name, Leslie. It’s his bakery. It’s in, um SoHo.” The woman seemed to be suppressing a laugh. Bitch.

“Well, yes, that makes sense. Seeing as we’re in SoHo. I figured he wouldn’t send you here from, like, Queens.”

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Gareth ground his teeth. It was a testament to his superior genetics that his chompers withstood his constant abuse without going all jagged. “I like to keep my cookie recipe close to the vest, you understand. But it’s really just a, um, superior chocolate chip cookie.”

“Hm,” said the woman. She flipped the cookie around to investigate every side, like she was looking for the expiration date. “I thought I tasted almond. And then something fruitier, like . . . citrus, almost.”

For just a split second, Gareth consider running. His compound was absolutely tasteless. Or so he’d assumed–he’d obviously never tasted it. Were his cookies actually bad? Had the takers just been humoring him this whole time? Impossible, no way that many of them had even a glancing familiarity with good manners. But he’d given them something free; maybe they felt bad . . .

“Is it not good?” Gareth detected an unbecoming whine in his voice.

The woman was still staring at the cookie. Finally, she looked back up to Gareth. “Maybe it’s just not for me.” She tossed the cookie into a nearby garbage can.

She tossed the cookie in the garbage.

“Woah woah woah woah,” Gareth huffed. “Hang on a second. You barely had a single bite. You couldn’t even taste anything!”

She shrugged. “I’m just being honest. I’m not saying it was bad and I don’t believe in discouraging anybody from following their passions. I’m just giving you my honest opinion, so you can, and I don’t have it. Maybe try tweaking the recipe?”

“Tweaking the . . .” Gareth sputtered for a few seconds. “Lady, people love my cookies.”

“I’m happy to hear that, sweetie,” she mooed with unctuous sincerity. “So I’m gonna be the lone v—” “Try another bite. A great big bite, see what you think.”

“Why does it matter what one lady thinks of your cookies? Most people like them, why’ve I gotta like them too?”

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“It’s not about liking it, it’s about whether or not you actually ate any!”

“Mister, stop shouting.”

“I’m not shouting!” he shouted.

The woman took a deep breath. Gareth felt like she was doing it on his behalf. She was gonna eat a fucking cookie if he had to shove it down her fat, stupid throat.

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m just saying I know baking’s personal, and a lot of people won’t give you honest opinions because they don’t wanna hurt your feelings. So I’m going.”

“Did I ask for your opinion?”

“Nope,” she shrugged. “I guess not. Sorry to bother you. Thanks for the cookie.”

“That you didn’t fucking eat.”

That cow, that fucking bitch. She just shook her head at him and waddled back to the buffet, or wherever the fuck she was going.

The cookies on the tray were rattling. Gareth’s arm was shaking. As were his knees. How dare she. How dare she. How dare she?!

A few people in his immediate vicinity were staring at him. They probably heard him swear. All right, so he would have to ditch this corner earlier than expected.

He hung his head. The tectonic scraping in his jaw struck him like a tuning fork. He was thrumming. How dare she.

Naturally, his eye went to the cookies.

He stared at them for quite a while.

He couldn’t. It would be idiotic.

But would a nibble hurt him? She’d gotten a taste from the tiniest little sample.

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He needed to know.

Maybe a little crumb, would make him sick for a day or two. That was worth it in the name of greater understanding, wasn’t it?

He picked up a cookie.

Maybe he could just lick it.

He chuckled and put it back down.

It didn’t matter what they tasted like. He baked them to cull the herd, to shuffle the takers of the world off to the great larder in the sky. It was stupid to worry about whether or not one of those takers did or didn’t like his cookie. What did he care?

He palmed a cookie off his tray and lifted it to his mouth.

Tentatively, he caressed it with his tongue.

All he could taste was the cookie itself. Then . . . what would you call it, the body? None of the notes.

He pulled his lips back and brought his markedly jagged teeth down on the tiniest portion of the cookie.

There was a definite citrus note to it, it was pretty overpowering. He couldn’t really tell how it did or didn’t, uh, pair with the rest of the, the body.

He took another little nibble. The tiniest nibble.

No almonds, just citrus, and chocolate. It wasn’t bad, really. What had that lady been on about, scrunching her nose like that? The citrus note was really more of an orange note. The orange note and the chocolate note blended, activating taste buds all up, and down the tongue. That’s how you knew it was a rich, complex cookie.

He took another itty bitty bite. One last one. Yes, there was some almond notes. But it was a beautiful blend with the other notes! The citrus was a little bit overpowering, sure, and there was now a kind of fishy note. Who knew how that one got there?

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All right, this was the last bite. He made it slightly bigger. Not too big, on the order of seven crumbs instead of three. There were all the notes at once. The seafood note was stronger now, but it wasn’t great.

Good heavens! How had so many of the takers told him to his face that the cookies were great? Why had nobody been honest with him?

Gareth sighed and dumped the remaining two and a half cookies into the garbage can. He’d need to go home and work on the recipe.

Perhaps a reevaluation of his synthesization techniques was also in order. Ugh, this was a project that would take several days. He was hoping to bang another batch out before work, then hit the streets with them tomorrow. But he couldn’t be slinging a subpar cookie, could he? The idiots wouldn’t care, but he would, damn it. He would.

Tail between his legs, Gareth drifted home.

For a few days, he was fine.

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Phoenix Accidentally Returns as Millipede Diane Larson As much as you’ve burned me baby, I should be ashes by now – Rodney Crowell So I messed up, big deal, speaking in reincarnation terms, I got dealt down to millipede, not that there is anything wrong with that.

Millipede is one of the coolest terrestrial crustaceans around, an acutely successful species. But I am Phoenix, or was, until he made me so mad I cursed him and all his progeny and in a hubristic burst of flame, returned as millipede instead of little larval worm, the one who crawls out of that warm pile of ashes to rise up again, winged, brilliant, and flapping.

Well, screw that Phoenix myth, I am hermaphrodite, need no one else, I will populate the world with low millions, millipedes.

Parthenogenetic, I can self-fertilize. I must admit I found myself in a precarious position there for a while, somehow indoors, hanging upside down on an open door-frame. But I called upon a fellow creature to assist me, a human female, one with potential. She’s given me a jar of soil to till and takes me out to walk on her hand. She likes that, and so do I. Now I see that I am partial to females and their ability to nurture.

I have seven good years left in me. Perhaps I shall reincarnate as a human, and then sprout some wings. I feel an itching on my dorsal side.

Diane Larson | 91

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Roosevelt’s Play

Poetry

Diane Larson Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play,” and I feel this way when I work alone in the laboratory. It’s a bad neighborhood; city cops sit at the door of the clinic to prevent gang fights. We serve a population of girls who work the streets.

Nurses drop off specimens, wash their hands, and disappear. It’s a lonely business until I find parasites to keep me company. Trichomonas vaginalis, Trich for short. I make a positive ID by how she moves. We’re talking locomotion of a single-celled animal in saline solution between a slide and a cover slip. Imagine a swimming pool one millimeter deep. I can sense them even before I see them. Trich have antennae, or flagella, that wave and thrash about. These antennae sprout from the top of their head, but all they have is a head, with nuclei that look like two googly eyes.

They swim spasmodically, with a flagellum attached to the bottom of their cell. Trichomonas need body heat, so they like the warm place above the microscope bulb. They have a fifth flagellum, and this one is connected to the undulating membrane. When the little creatures get tired out, maybe a little dry or a bit chilled, they spin in slow motion with small, quivering jerks. That’s the undulating membrane talking.

But sometimes, if the light hits them just right, they glisten, become transparent, and I can see their organelles. Perhaps I am intruding on their sexual practice, which is something called longitudinal binary fission.

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Poetry

My Baby A, K Forrest My baby is waiting in someone else’s body, biding their time, eating their twin, learning to listen and unform her mouth.

My baby comes out with the goo all over them, pulling her umbilical cord out the socket and wailing, gums bare, ready-made teeth holes pressed between his lips, and pink, slick with their spit and tongue ache from rubbing it too hard.

But my baby leaves me every month, kicking would-be legs at me as they pass, angry with their red fluid, their body, they got to get out somehow. My baby squishes their jaw at me, wrapped in a toilet paper blanket.

My baby sits on a cotton finger, sucking their thumb in the trash and bathing in the rain.

A, K Forrest | 93

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No Thank You. I Don’t Eat Monkey.

Michael Coolen While living and working in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, I once served a typical American breakfast to my Gambian girlfriend, Fatou. The meal consisted of eggs sunny-side up, hash browns, bacon, toast, and marmalade (I was in a former British colony). Fatou slid her fork around the plate lethargically, eating nothing.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“Dis egg, mahn,” she said. “It reminds me of melted baby chicken.

Mahkle, you can’t not make me eat dis.”

I tried to show Fatou how to mix it in with the hash browns and sop it up with the toast and ketchup, but she was unmoved.

“Mahkle,” she said. “Only savages eat uncooked food. You a savage, Mahkle.”

What people of one culture consider a delicacy, those of another culture might not.

Years earlier, while in graduate school in Seattle, I attended my first ethnomusicology dinner party. Students brought food and drink from all over the world. The host, Lim Chew Pah, was born in Penang, Malaysia. He started the evening by blending a large bottle of 190-proof grain alcohol known as Everclear, with fruits, vegetables, and suspicious-looking herbs. The concoction tasted a great deal like Crest mint toothpaste.

Next, he dished up an incredibly hot and spicy squid/okra/curry sauce served over jasmine rice. The 190-proof mint toothpaste concoction must have numbed my ability to gauge the actual temperature of the curry because I woke up the next morning with searing pain in my mouth. I pulled off little pieces of skin hanging from my palate. My girlfriend, Annie, had slept on the couch that night because the air in 94 | Michael Coolen

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our bedroom was so toxic. She refused to talk with me face-to-face for the rest of the day. That would not be the only time Chew Pah prepared something that resulted in Annie’s sleeping on the couch.

Chew Pah was also fond of durian, a fruit that’s very popular in Malaysia, where local McDonald’s even serve up durian milk shakes.

One day, Chew came over to my houseboat carrying a spiky-looking soccer ball. When he cut it open, the smell reminded me of skunk cabbage. A friend visiting me at the time took a bite and said it tasted like a combination of a cantaloupe and a fart. When I sampled it, I agreed except I couldn’t detect the cantaloupe. The New York Times labeled it as, “the Indiana Jones of Gastronomy,” food critic Richard Sterling once described durian as, “pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.” From my own experience, I know that five-day old African palm wine does taste a lot like turpentine with onions. However, I am unable to confirm Mr. Sterling’s comment, since I have never eaten pig-shit.

As for the aftertaste, food guru Anthony Bourdain, who actually likes the stuff, noted that your breath smells like you’ve been Frenchkissing your dead grandmother. I never liked my grandmother. I called her Grandma Witch.

People in Singapore are fined $5,000 for transporting either containers of gasoline or durian on public transportation.

My career as a researcher studying music around the world has brought me into contact with a wide variety of different cuisines, some of which were glorious, while others challenged even my gag reflex.

Surströmming, for example. I won’t tell you how to pronounce this Swedish word for sour herring, and the closest you want to be to an open can of Surströmming is the International Space Station. Some airlines actually ban the possession of cans of Surströmming because it might explode during the flight.

Korean kimchi, on the other hand, is one of my favorite foods. I first discovered it while I was studying the art of Korean p’ansori singing.

Traditional practitioners of this art form were said to swallow glass fragments and sing for eight hours in order to toughen up their throats and give them a huskier sound. After that, I imagine kimchi was relatively refreshing.

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Kimchi is a kind of Korean sauerkraut that doesn’t require a Polish sausage to make it edible. Napa cabbage, ginger, peppers, radishes, and other veggies are compressed in a container and left to ferment for a few days or weeks, often buried in the ground. I learned how to make several different kinds of kimchi, and I always kept a jar in my refrigerator while I was in grad school. Sometimes I would get so hungry for it that I’d get up in the middle of the night and fork some into my mouth to satisfying my cravings. Annie got tired of sleeping on the couch and moved back to Nebraska.

As for French cuisine, I think it can be quite delicious. I think I could spend the rest of my life living on just various breads and cheeses.

However, it is sometimes hard for me to swallow all the patriotic pride associated with it.

While doing research in Avignon one year, I boarded a train headed south. Seated across from me was a lovely young woman with a cello in the seat next to her. Paulette and I had a friendly conversation about my fondness for the music of Maurice Ravel and other French composers.

Suddenly, she asked a question that evoked the provocateur in me; a French word I define as someone who likes to piss people off when I think they’ve earned it.

“So, you love the French music. What do you think of the French cuisine?”

Uh oh, I thought. I could almost smell the aroma of French gastronomic nationalism.

I looked at my watch and sighed: one more hour to Saintes-Mariesde-la-Mer. I knew I couldn’t play nice for that long.

“It’s . . . uhm . . . okay,” I said. I swear that Paulette’s pupils enlarged to the size of a silver dollar.

“Okay?” she said. “What do you mean? What is this ‘okay’?”

“I mean French cuisine is okay,” I continued. “Not bad, even tasty on occasion.And the wine is good, although the beer is not much to shout home about.”

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“What is this ‘shouting’?” she asked. “What is this just ‘okay’?”

I noticed she had almost torn her train schedule in half.

“Tell me, my American ee-dee-OAT-tuh,” she continued. “What cuisine is better?”

Okay, cherie, I thought. You really wanna know?

“Well,” I started, “Indian cuisine is better.”

“Indian cuisine?” she asked, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Indian cuisine?” she repeated, gesturing to other passengers, hoping they’d carried some hoes and pitchforks aboard the train. “He thinks the Indian cuisine is better than the French cuisine? Incredible.”

Her actual word was “incroyable,” which is a very difficult word to pronounce with a clenched jaw.

“Not so incroyable,” I continued. “Vegetarian, non-vegetarian, dairy, non-dairy, hot, cold, medium, spicy, bland. Indians have been improving on recipes and cooking fabulous food for thousands of years! I think they’ve gotten the hang of it.”

By this time Paulette had reduced her train schedule to confetti.

“French cuisine, on the other hand,” I continued, “is based on the need to make strong soups and sauces to cover the nasty taste of meat gone rancid because there were no refrigerators. Until a couple hundred years ago, eighty percent of what the French ate was miserable bread dunked in miserable sauces hiding the miserable flavor of miserable meat. In fact, I suspect that’s where Victor Hugo got the title for his novel.”

“You are stoo-peed,” Paulette snapped. “French cuisine is the best cuisine du monde!”

“Ha,” I replied in a loud, conspiratorial whisper. “As long as there’s a good Indian restaurant open anywhere in France, French cuisine isn’t even the best cuisine in France!”

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“You are a sauvage,” she screamed. She grabbed her cello and moved to the other end of the car. I decided not to ask her for her phone number.

Some of my greatest culinary experiences occurred in the Peace Corps. I not only loved most of the food, but the Gambians in West Africa are generous and thoughtful hosts. When preparing the afternoon meal, a large amount of rice is cooked so that if anybody shows up to visit, there is enough to accommodate for guests. In part, this is done to make sure that friends or family who are having a tough time with jobs and money can stop by and have a meal without asking for it.

During one of my research trips, I took along a friend who had a week off from his post in the capital. We crossed the river and drove far into the bush of North Bank, spending the night at one village near the Stonehenge-like stone circles I wanted to visit the next day. As Andy and I sat down for a communal meal, a huge gourd bowl filled with rice and meat was put in front of us. When I asked about the ingredients, our host replied that the meat was monkey.

“Thank you,” I said, “but I don’t eat monkey. It’s against my religion back in the USA.” My African hosts were most gracious in accepting my explanation, but Andy looked over at me and whispered.

“What religion is that?”

“FCCV,” I replied. “I’m an ordained minister.”

“I’ve never heard of FCCV,” said Andy. “What is it?”

“The First Church of Christ Vegetarian. Ministers are not allowed to eat monkey.”

I thought I might have better luck with the second gourd bowl I saw being delivered. In this case, the host told me that the meat was local bat.

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I simply responded that I didn’t eat bats either. However, I made sure to down handfuls of rice with okra, and we were able to be courteous guests.

In the years since retiring from research and travel, though, I still miss the laughter, the candlelight, the children giggling in the darkness, the jokes and proverbs, and the night sounds accompanying evening meals in a village.

And, although I later learned that the bats in the region Andy and I visited might have been infected with Ebola, I sincerely regret not sampling some of the monkey.

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Kiowa Jim Was Here Robert Garner McBrearty Lefty goes out to check the horses and runs back into the cabin a minute later, crying out, “Kiowa Jim! I saw Kiowa Jim!” We all jump up, grabbing our guns. All of us except Whiskey Ed, who just sits at the table, dealing solitaire, a smirk on his face.“You’re crazy,” he says. “Kiowa Jim doesn’t ride this far north.”

“I saw him! I saw Kiowa Jim. Out by the horses.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“It was him. It was Kiowa Jim.” Lefty’s usually a reliable man. “Make sure you’re loaded, boys,” I say.

“Pistols, your rifles, too. Put a knife in your belt.”

Mesquite Pete’s prone to overreact, and he says in a quavering voice, “He’ll kill us all. He’ll take our nuts while we’re still alive. That’s what he does.”

Whiskey Ed snorts, “You ever see him do that?”

“Sure I have. I heard about it.”

Yukon Jack’s eyes are wild. “Mad beaver!” he cries out.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask.

“I seen it! Beaver gone mad. Rabies! Hundreds of them. Drag a man down!”

“Shut up. Nobody here’s getting killed by a mad beaver or by Kiowa Jim. There’s five of us. We’ve got the door barred. We’ll wait him out.”

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“He’ll burn us out,” Pete says. “That’s what he does. He’ll burn down the cabin and shoot us down like dogs when we come out.”

Whiskey Ed pulls on his bottle. “You ever seen him do that? Burn down a cabin and shoot people when they come out?”

“Sure I have. I heard about it.”

We hear stirring out by the corral, the horses moving, kicking their hooves around, something swinging metal against wood. The wind picks up, rattles the cheap plank boards of the cabin. I look at the walls. This place would go up like tinder. Whiskey Ed’s noticing the same thing, frowning at the walls. He pushes his bottle away and stands up.

“Turn out the lamp.”

We stand in the darkness, listening to our breathing.

“I don’t like this,” Whiskey says. “If he is out there, I don’t like the idea of waiting to be burned out.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Let’s try talking to him. Open the door a crack. Find out what he wants. Negotiate.”

“He wants our nuts,” Lefty says. “How do you negotiate with a guy like that?”

“Mad beaver!” Yukon Jack screams. His big body barrels around in the darkness and we grab him and hold him.

“Shut up!”

He writhes and flings his arms about, but he settles when Ed pours a long drink down his throat.

But now Mesquite Pete’s losing it. “Oh, just kill me!” he sobs, “I can’t stand this waiting. Just kill me and get it over with!”

It’s tempting, but I say, “Shut up, Pete. I’m going to open the door.

You all stand behind me. Whatever happens, don’t let him grab me.”

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The boys huddle behind me as I crack open the door. “Kiowa Jim! We’ve got no quarrel with you!”

No response. Just the sound of the wind. The horses stirring.

“What do you want with us?” I shout.

Lefty’s behind me, pressed into my back by the others. I can’t still my racing heart.

“He wants one of us!” Mesquite Pete screams. “Take Lefty!” He shoves Lefty by me, and I don’t try to grab him as he stumbles past into the darkness. I bar the door while Lefty turns about and beats at the wood and pleads to be let in.

“Go fight him like a man!” Whiskey Ed yells through the door.

Lefty screams and we hear running; maybe he’s looking for cover in the darkness. Then there are more terrified screams. Something heavy falls against the door. Lefty’s back, whimpering, “Let me in!

Please let me in.”

“Aim your guns at the door,” I say.

“We’re going to shoot Lefty now?” Whiskey asks. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“Not Lefty. If Kiowa Jim tries to come in, shoot him.”

I open the door, grab Lefty by the shirt, drag him in, and he falls on the plank wood floor.

Mesquite Pete is frantic. “Did he take your nuts?”

“I don’t think so,” Lefty blubbers.

“Better check him, Whiskey.”

Whiskey bends over him. “He’s good.”

“He’ll burn us out!” Mesquite Pete yells.

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“Okay, we’re going to make a break for it,” I say. “Stick together.

Guns ready. We’ll get the horses and ride out. He can’t kill us all.”

We move through the darkness. The wind. The horses stirring. Our labored breath. “Stay low,” I whisper.

“Keep your wits about you,” Whiskey encourages.

“There he is!” Mesquite Pete screams.

“I see him!” Lefty cries back.

Yukon Jack, huge and wild-eyed, rears up before me. “Mad beaver!”

Then we’re all firing at once, shot after shot, spinning around, firing into the darkness. Something takes the breath out of me. Right in the middle, up high in the chest. I’m flat on the ground, the stars overhead, the horses out of the corral now and running. I hear a couple more shots and then silence. Bodies lie sprawled around me.

I call out, “Boys?” Only one slow voice calls back, “I’m here,” but I can’t even get my head to turn his way.

“You hit, Whiskey?”

“Yeah,” he calls slowly. “I guess I am. I’m hit real good.”

“I am too.”

We lie there in the darkness for a while. He gives a tired sort of chuckle, and I know he’s thinking how much he’d like a last pull on the bottle. “Well, at least we can say it was Kiowa Jim that got us.”

The stars brighten over our heads. Brightest I’ve ever seen them. Or maybe I haven’t noticed them in a long time. “No,” I say, “We can’t even say that.”

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The Harvard Computers Alyssa Ross

A woman with a pride of other high-mane maids has the power to become a cosmic network of numbers, collecting the data of starlight.

The two who are deaf hear what we cannot— the universe echoing through time, back to the beginning.

These machine women measure light, allowing us to witness our cataclysmic birth, too far away to touch or change.

These saline women with incisive eyes peer through the black and white photograph, Pickering, their leader, tucked in the sheepish middle.

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Charles doesn’t look as boastful as he should, knowing these calculating women are commonly classified as cold, metal telescopes, or a hot harem of bodies, bereft of the in-between.

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Bride of Turpentine Kathryn Almy I took one look at him and said, “This one’s a keeper.”

Of course, that’s what I do—keep things—just look at my garage. See these brushes in the jar? They’ll be good as new next time a paint job needs doing.

Anything you need, I’m sure I’ve got it here somewhere: coffee cans full of nails, inflatable rafts, the complete

Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. A person could live in here, and I do. I just need a mate, and I think he’ll like it here. There’s golf clubs and six old TV sets.

I even have enough folding chairs to seat all the wedding guests. The tool bench will be our altar, and afterward we’ll grill hot dogs in the driveway. There’ll be dancing under the bare light bulb to music from the transistor, moths circling our heads like stars. After the guests are gone, us newlyweds will stretch out on a couple of old army cots. I like a man with staying power.

But to be safe, I’ll keep my groom in the deep freeze with the venison steaks, some black-eyed peas my mother brought from the old country, and that bag of dead cicadas from 1973.

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Fiction

Freddie Erin Hoffman

After third period, I bear against the lunch rush toward the back of McDermott High. People are clearly upset with me; my safety-pinned tote bag catches on several sweaters as I cross the school’s entryway, and I tread on many feet trying to maneuver my way between loitering cliques.

I accidentally barrel through one pack of boys gathered near the exit, and I emerge from their posse smelling more like teen spirit than I would like. Calvin York, McDermott’s star swimmer, hollers at me from the center of the group.

“Late for psychotherapy, Batty?”

Betty. My name is Betty. Calvin is going through a growth spurt right now, so his pubescent voice cracks over everyone’s heads. His beanpole crony gives him a medicated high-five; his sloppy aim suggests tranquilizers.

I tug at my sweatshirt sleeves, which are damp from sucking on them, and carry on toward the southern wing of the school. I’m sure it’s real important for you to get to your Wonder Bread sandwich and lunchtime fuck, Calvin, I want to say, but I’ve got somewhere to be.

Freddie is waiting for me.

I charge between red lockers without looking back at the throngs of oily delinquents behind me. Mr. Tully’s lab room is at the east corner of the school, the farthest possible from the entryway. The placard outside his door reads Room 122 in faded white script. There used to be braille underneath, but Remy Menkins shaved the bumps off with her nail file last term, and no one has fixed it since.

The door is unlocked. I set my bag on the lab counter two minutes after the lunch bell rings and position it to mask lewd doodles carved Erin Hoffman | 107

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into the slab. (Freddie shouldn’t have to see the angular cartoon of a woman being ravaged by squid tentacles while I work on him.) Mr. Tully does not look up from his desk computer, a chunky relic of the early 2000s. A bundle of cords ropes out of the back of the computer like a naked spine and arches over towers of ungraded lab reports to outlets that jut out from the wall, halfway dislocated from their sockets.

“Is it okay if I work on my cat during lunch?” I ask Mr. Tully, though I know he won’t mind. Flesh-colored light glints off of his ‘70s era aviators. He’s watching porn again.

“Mm-hmm,” he grunts. He flexes his woolly forearms and absently pats his thinning comb over against his scalp. The strands soak up budding beads of sweat, and Mr. Tully wipes his palms on yellowstained khakis. “Go ahead.”

I swiftly gather all of my supplies on the lab counter—baking sheet, scissors, scalpel, hair tie—and jog to the supply closet where Freddie waits. The room is lined with faux wood shelves of microscopes, which we spent the first half of the term using to study plant cells. (Or at least we were supposed to use them to study plant cells. Spencer McGibbons decided it was a better idea to jerk off onto the slides and spend class watching his progeny die off beneath the glass. Now the plates are mottled with a transparent white crust, and no one will clean them. We let Mr. Tully think that it’s mold.)

Freddie lies in the Igloo cooler sitting in the back corner of the closet, blue and white like the one we used to bring for soccer game snack time. (I quit the season Janie Zo threw her cleat at my front teeth for playing with worms instead of defending the goal. I don’t know what happened to the cooler.) I open the lid, and air puffs out in a single putrid gust. I inhale deeply.

So much better than snack time.

Rigid cat torsos are stacked atop one another in the cooler, looking like some sort of dissection kitty Jenga, and even though seven pairs of eyes look up at me, I can tell Freddie apart at once. His yellow slit-eyes seem dull behind the Ziploc bag, but they shine in a way that the other cats’ eyes don’t, two perfect, slippery orbs. The other cats’ 108 | Erin Hoffman

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eyes are ugly, broken. They’re deflated in some parts, and their lumpy corneas cloud with a moldered fog.

Without disturbing the other cats, I hook my thumbs under Freddie’s armpits and lift his svelte frame into my arms. “Good kitty,” I coo.

Other students do not take as good care of their cats as I do my Freddie. They wrest them up by a single paw, dangle them at a distance, and drop them onto their examination trays like pig slop in a trough. Not me. I cradle Freddie to my breast and massage his left hock through the bag as I walk back to my station. I pretend the crinkle of plastic is Freddie purring.

“Do you know Calvin York?” I ask Mr. Tully when Freddie and I make it back to the table. The lab directions say to wear latex gloves, but I think it is wrong to treat Freddie like toxic waste; skin-to-skin contact is important for emotional development, after all.

Mr. Tully picks at a piece of cauliflower stuck in his under bite, eyes still fixed on the computer screen. “Hmm?” “Calvin York. Have you had him in class?”

“No.” I smile to myself. Freddie is a better swimmer than Calvin by far; he has been swimming in the golden juices of his Ziploc cocoon for five days now. His fur is matted down in sopping purls like a Van Gogh skyline, and when I gently guide his hind legs into the open air he has the form of an Olympic diver, paws fixed rigidly above his head.

I lay Freddie on his baking sheet as gently as I can. Sour liquid pools beneath him.

“You wouldn’t like him,” I say.

“No?” “No.” Freddie’s coat has too much fluid in it. I take Freddie to the sink and try to squeeze it out, which is difficult since his skin keeps flapping around in the basin. Since I peeled it off, Freddie’s fur drapes over his body like a shawl, banded butterscotch and black. The only parts still Erin Hoffman | 109

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attached to him are little socks of skin on his paws and the fur on his face, though, unbeknownst to Mr. Tully, I let Freddie keep a few extra inches of skin on his neck, so tufts of fur would still bulge beneath his chin like a regal neck ruff. I finally wring Freddie’s coat enough so that he no longer sloshes against the shallow perimeter of his baking sheet.

“There’s my handsome man,” I whisper.

It’s no wonder Mr. Tully doesn’t like high schoolers. High schoolers are not handsome creatures; they are not regal. Their entire life’s mission is to bare the most skin possible without being forced to put on an extra layer from the Lost and Found Box, decency be damned.

Take Cadie Corzetti: at her last house party, someone convinced Cadie to pierce her own belly button with a sewing needle, and she hasn’t worn a shirt that extends past her rib cage since. Cadie thinks she looks mature. All I see is back acne and the chapped red tissue of an infected piercing.

Freddie is not like these teenagers; he is not vain or insecure. Muscle stretches over his skeleton in striated pink cutlets, but I would not call him muscular. His belly bulges. I finger its balloonish arc, tracing the incision I made the other day, and smile at the way it makes his furless limbs seem comically scrawny. He bears these imperfections proudly.

Freddie knows he is perfect in my eyes.

Time passes in soothing ripples as I comb my fingers through Freddie’s fur and pick at the dried mouse guts beneath his claws. Only the glazed click of Mr. Tully’s mouse breaks the silence. I sigh.

The grating chatter of my fellow students snaps me out of my reverie.

They’re coming. I give Freddie’s snout a kiss before the first kids file into the room. Sawyer Grady, my lab partner, struts over to my station with a cocky bounce in his step. His baseball cap is backwards, and blonde strands flare out from its base. “Did you spend all of lunch with that thing, Batty?” He faces his pack of brutes, inviting them to laugh. “Freak,” he breathes.

I look at the clock. Fifty minutes and then I’ll have you to myself again, Freddie, I think. Fifty minutes and they’ll be gone.

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My lips taste like formaldehyde, and I lick them again.

Freddie is a good cat.

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Far From Home Sarah Carleton The house on the corner had stacks of comics, plates of Oreos, glass after glass of grape juice.

My friend had pale skin and purple teeth, a doll with hair that grew, and a bedroom with a view of the school.

Afternoons, I visited her kitchen table to forestall the long walk home, lodging myself in the smell of cartoon ink and the dizzy spill of plots and characters so facile you could hear the laugh track.

Under the spell of sugar and pablum, I grew dull.

I sponged cookies, thumbed Archies, and skedaddled by nightfall, soul-sickened and ready for the mile-long climb back to the acrid comfort of squabbling sisters, library books, green vegetables.

Poetry

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Top Ten Hits Frank Weisberg “Bartender,” I called, “another beer.”

He slid me a glass. I took a sip and noticed an older blonde giving me looks at the end of the bar. She was fleshy and big bodied, with these thighs that I liked. She was really showing them off, too, in this little black dress at least a size too small. I could tell she was a drunk; she had that unmistakable bloat about her that only drunks get. But there was a lingering quality to her features: bright blue eyes, a sharp angular face . . . this woman had been beautiful once, maybe even really beautiful.

“You know,” she said, “you should be more careful about where you sit.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“Seven assholes have come and gone,” she told me, “and they’ve all sat in that seat. It has me worried about you.”

I looked around. There were open chairs everywhere.

“You think I’m an asshole because I chose this seat?”

She put on some lipstick. “I can’t say for sure, honey. But you might be.”

I got up and moved a few seats over. Then I bought her a drink.

Whenever her glass got low, I sent her another. She was drinking whiskey sodas and smiled every time a fresh one popped up in front of her. I must have bought her four or five rounds while she sat there.

I liked it for some reason. But things could only go on like that for so long. Eventually, I ran out of cash.

“That’s it,” I told her. “No more.”

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She put her drink down and walked over to me. “What’s the matter? I thought we were having fun.”

“I’m tapped out.”

“So you don’t want to drink anymore?”

“Hell, I can always drink. Paying for it is where I run into trouble.”

She lit a smoke and looked me up and down. I was in rags even though I’d just done a wash at the laundry. “Come on,” she said, “I know a place.”

I followed her out of the bar. She led me to a little convenience store down the block.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Anything you want, honey. It’s on me.”

Shit, I thought, a rich one at last. I went up and down the aisles.

I picked out salamis, cheeses, sausages, peanuts, crackers, some whiskey, and cold beer. In the back of the fridge was a bottle of champagne. Fuck it, I thought, and I threw it in my little basket, too.

“What about you?” I asked. “Something you need?”

She flashed me a couple of fifths she already had in her purse. I took that as a no. We went up to the counter together. The woman had a big smile on her face while the clerk rang everything up. “Will that be cash or check? I’ll need to see ID for a check.”

“Credit,” said the woman. “Charge everything to Grant, Maxwell Grant, on account.”

“Hold on,” said the clerk, “I’ll need to verify.”

He picked up the phone and made a call. It was brief. The woman never seemed worried. I smoked and figured I’d have to put everything back. But, sure enough, the clerk hung up the phone and passed me the bags. I couldn’t believe it.

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We went back to my place and opened the beers. She told me her name was Maggie and she was forty years old and living on alimony.

That’s where Grant came in. He was the bank.

“He’s not going to come after me when he sees the bill, is he?”

She laughed, “Don’t you worry about him, honey. I’ll buy what I want, when I want, and for who I want. All he’s going to do is pay for it.”

She got up to walk around my place. There wasn’t a whole lot to see: some chairs, a table, my couch. The typewriter caught her eye. “You any good with that thing?”

I lit a smoke. “Every writer thinks he’s good with that thing.”

“But have you ever been printed?”

“I get plenty of rejection letters with my name on them.”

She laughed. “Where do you work?”

“A place called Ralph’s. It’s a barbeque joint downtown: ribs, steaks, pulled pork. I wash dishes in the back.”

She opened her fifth. “Do you like it?”

I laughed. “Who would like a thing like that?”

“Some people take pride in their work, no matter what it is.”

“Yeah, well, when I start taking pride in a clean dish, I’ll know it’s over.” I sipped my beer. “Listen, thanks again for all the food. That was a hell of a thing to do for somebody like me. Most days all I’ve got to eat are some apples.”

“Apples?”

“Yeah, but lately I’ve been thinking about making the switch to grapes. You have to put too much faith in an apple. There’s only one of them. If that son of a bitch gets bruised, the whole thing rots. At least with grapes you have variety. One bad grape is an individual problem. There could be a hundred good ones still left on the vine.”

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Maggie smiled. “You’re a talker,” she said. “I like talkers.” Then she went over to the window and stuck her head out. She took a deep breath and looked back at me. “I just realized I don’t know you very well. You aren’t some kind of maniac, are you?”

“No more than most men,” I told her.

She hit her fifth again. “I heard these women talking about a killer hitting people on the head with a hammer downtown. The police are saying the killer takes the bodies up to wine country and burns them.”

“I heard that, too. For a while I thought it was a friend of mine.”

“You have a friend you think is capable of that?”

“Oh yeah, Marvin, but it wasn’t him. He’d already left town when it started. Now he lives on a farm in Omaha and tells people the news.”

She took a seat. “Well, I guess that’s one less nut to worry about in this city.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

We raised our drinks and drank. Then we drank some more. Maggie spotted my radio. “Hey,” she said, “how about some music?” She got up and turned the radio on. They were playing “Palisades Park.” She cranked it up as loud as it would go and started to wiggle.

“Watch!” she shouted. “I’m a great dancer!”

She bopped, she shimmied, she shook. Maggie wasn’t kidding. She could really move. And she knew all the steps too: the Watusi, the Pony, the Mashed Potato, they were easy for her. She had rhythm, all right. But there was trouble afoot. Her dress was tight to begin with, and now it was being stretched to its limits. While Maggie did the Monkey, her tits flopped right out of it. There they were: two giant breasts naked in the moonlight. I almost fainted at the sight of them.

She smiled and went into a grind. “You like that, don’t you, dirty boy?” Soon the dress was off entirely. She was only in her panties now.

Her tits swung freely, knocking into each other like those pendulums you see on the desks of big shots. She started to sweat. Her mascara 116 | Frank Weisberg

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ran. Streams flowed from her armpits and wrapped around her waist, emptying into the crack of her ass. Little drops began to gather on the floor beneath her.

“This is making me hot!” she screamed. “HOT!” I could barely hear her over the radio. “Palisades Park” ended, and she went into a dead sprint across my apartment. I wasn’t ready for her at all. She lunged at me and landed right in my lap. The force knocked my chair over, and we ended up on the floor.

Maggie went to work right away. She started kissing anything that got close enough to her face: my ear, my nose, my chin, she didn’t care. I had lipstick all over my head. Finally she worked her way into my mouth. She tasted like whiskey and beer nuts. Every inch of her was slick with sweat. I kept trying to get a fistful of ass, but my hands would just slip off. I had to settle for petting. It was the only way I could get a grip.

“All right, lover,” she said, “let me see that cock!”

The radio was still turned all the way up. “Leader of the Pack” came on. Before the first rev of the engine, my pants were off and around my ankles. It happened that fast. Maggie was all over me. Her head bobbed; up and down she went. Her tongue was everywhere. I closed my eyes and put my hands behind my head. For a few minutes all was right with the world. I thought of pleasant things, like waves at the beach and candy, and I wondered what it was salamanders were always doing under the rocks they loved so much.

Then everything changed. “Leader of the Pack” was over. It’s a short song, so I hadn’t cum yet. The next one was “You Don’t Own Me,” that Lesley Gore tune. I noticed a change in Maggie as soon as she heard her voice. Her grip got tighter and she started mumbling while she sucked. I could only make out every third word: shit . . . fuck . . . bastard . . . mother . . . asshole . . .

“Hey,” I said, “are you talking about me or that guy Grant?”

Maggie didn’t like that. “Don’t you say his name!” she screamed.

“I never want to hear that name again! He doesn’t own me! NOT Frank Weisberg | 117

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ANYMORE, HE DOESN’T! I’ll fuck the whole city! He thinks he can tell me what to do? Well, he CAN’T!” Her grip got even tighter. It felt like she was trying to squeeze toothpaste out of a tube with the cap still on. Sooner or later, that tube was going to burst.

“Shit!” I yelled, “STOP!” But she didn’t stop. She tugged harder. Her teeth got involved. She twisted my balls like a madwoman. Maggie wasn’t trying to please me anymore. She wanted to hurt me. She wanted to make me pay. I was being punished for the sins of her husband—and maybe all men—like some sleazy Jesus. I tried to grab her head and force her off me. But she pinned my arms at my side and kept going. There was no escape.

She was eating me alive.

“HELP!” I yelled, “HELP!” But it was no use. The music was too loud. No one could hear me scream.

She bit, she tugged, she squeezed; struggling only made it worse.

She’d just dig her nails in deeper, sink her teeth in further. When I was a kid, I took a trip to the zoo with my class. They had a snake den at the zoo. I remembered watching a frightened rabbit being lowered into the tank of a python, who wrapped him up just as soon as he hit the ground. The rabbit fought back for a while, but soon he was still and quiet.

I looked down at Maggie. Her head and hands were merciless. I thought I heard her sobbing, but she wouldn’t let up. She only opened wider. She swallowed more and more of me, inch by inch, until I was nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her reach for her purse.

She fiddled around inside and pulled out a hammer. I watched her lift it high above her head. It was silver and shining in the light. Then she brought it down on me: whack! And again: whack!

Suddenly I was hovering over the both of us. There was my body beneath me, being beaten to hell by that crazed woman. She hit me again and again. My head was turning to mush. I lit a smoke and watched her go, not quite knowing what to make of things. In the 118 | Frank Weisberg

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movies, death was about loss. When a man died, he was supposed to be haunted by what he would miss: his wife, his children, his dog.

But what about me? What would I miss? Washing another dish at Ralph’s? To hell with that; I could start over now. Death had only possibilities for a guy like me.

Then I heard a voice. “Welcome, brother,” it said.

I looked up. Spread across my apartment were six other guys, all types: young, old, tall, short, soft, badass, and every one of them had the same hole in their forehead. We floated over to the center of the room while Maggie went to work behind us. The leader was a thin teenager in a red bandana. He had what might have turned into a mustache someday and wore a denim jacket with cut-off sleeves.

“Tough break,” he said. “I was the first. She found me at an arcade.

‘Any machine you want,’ she told me. I thought it was my lucky day . . . ” He lit a smoke. “We go by our songs on this side. I’m ‘Hit The Road Jack’ . . .” He went around the room. There was “Frankie And Johnny,” “Where Did Our Love Go,” a couple Connie Francis songs, and “The Wanderer.”

I shook everyone’s hands. “I guess that makes me ‘You Don’t Own Me,’ doesn’t it?”

“The Wanderer” held up a brush and some shoe polish. “Care for a shine, pal?”

“Hey,” said Jack, “give that to the new guy. You just got yourself a promotion.”

He handed over the kit and sat down with the rest of them. They all had their feet up on my coffee table. I knelt down and went to work, unsure of what it would mean if I refused.

Well, I thought, I hope she won’t be long with the next one.

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The Cure That Ales You (Your Spell Check Is Complete) Paul Perilli In hefty potions They had greed on that too To keep the boos happy Noting they could do A soar loser Ever herd of one Made dinner for her bothers They beast each other up A hard-noosed area Boast people on the sea The remnant he was charging Wasn’t ass appealing Back and froth talk He hit the break for sure With a pale of gray water He sighed on for a second tour Have to remain clam It swept overt you Led to the off ice To hire someone knew Her hick pink lips She put pout there At pone time First I’ll come my hair He waned to come to my place To draw a deep breather Three days and tow nights It wend on for many weeks Big wood hopping block One of the moist exotic 120 | Paul Perilli

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He put it on the tablet He knew that mush about it The variety stories Twenty years older than her souse Listing to jazz It all pained out With his hand son the keyboard He trued a few sites A lick of the mouse button Brought it hoe that night Sitting in the soft char To see photos of my trip to Pairs He issued his replay Which cured all his ales

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Palindromephilia David Sheskin Last year at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association while waiting for an Elevator I could not help but notice a sign in the lobby which read A slut nixes sex in Tulsa Which the fat lady standing next to me said happens to be a p alindrome which if you don’t Know is a sequence of characters that reads the same backwards or forward. Adjacent to the Sign was an arrow directing all interested parties to the Green Room at 3 p.m. PM for a seminar on The History and Diversity of Palindromes which it turned out I along with my Rubenesque New acquaintance had traveled thousands of miles to attend. ‌.

Those in attendance at the seminar were a curious mix of academics, religious fanatics and Panhandlers fresh off the street. Towards the end of the seminar each of those present was asked To come up to the front of room and recite their favorite Palindrome.

Among those uttered were

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Repel evil as a live leper Steven, I left an oily lion at feline vets Swap God for a janitor; rot in a jar of dog paws Do geese see God? I’m a lasagna hog, go hang a salami My contribution

No son! Onanism’s a gross orgasm sin – a no-no, son!

Was met with tepid applause a scowl or two and to the surprise of everybody one enthusiastic Bravo! that came from the back of the room out of the rouged and rounded mouth of my new Lady friend who later that evening while lying beside me in bed would confide (at the very Moment I was whispering into her right ear Nurses, run! Says sick Cissy as nurses run) she was One of only a handful of people in the whole world afflicted with a mysterious condition known As

Palindromephila.

Which in the Dictionary of Mental Disorders is defined as sexual arousal brought about by Exposure to a Palindrome.

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Chinook Mom Joseph S. Pete Francis was not popular among his platoon-mates, even before his mom decided to tag along on their Iraq deployment.

She sported a bad-part-of-town Army/Navy surplus store flak vest to the airplane hangar, where all the soldiers were twitchy, full of false bravado and hungover to the point that they would dry-retch until noon. First Sergeant was apoplectic and demanded to know how she even got on the post. He bellowed like a drill instructor as a sandbagged vein ridge-lined his temple.

Francis’s mother met his glare, resolutely. When he paused, she started in. The platoon couldn’t hear what she was saying all the way over on the other side of the hangar, but First Sergeant’s posture told the whole story. She shamed an iron rod of a recruitment-poster enlisted man—who often bragged you shouldn’t call him sir because he worked for a living—to shoulder-slumping and shoegazing. For the first time anyone could remember, First Sergeant held his tongue.

He cast his eyes down to the shoelace eyelets in his spit-and-polish combat boots, and wondered who had invented those little rings in the first place. She triumphantly crammed herself between grunts in the plane’s cattle-truck seating.

As they flew toward the base in Kuwait where they would stage before entering Iraq, she whispered in Francis’s ear about his female classmate who was now in medical school and how his prom date had a baby with that baseball player, who had gotten on as a machinist at the refinery. She brought up the girl down the block who took the train into the city, and worked in insurance. She mentioned his brother, who had opened a second restaurant and was eyeing real estate near the mall. Oh, and did he remember that girl at church?

Well, she was with animal control now.

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that he should heap on seconds at the chow hall to maintain his weight in all this heat and stress, and that he could shoot better if he breathed more slowly and deliberately. She urged him to throw grenades more like baseballs, to follow through on the motion. Francis would return from 72-hour recon missions with a peppering of stubble, and she fretted over whether his blemished chin would deny her future grandchildren.

She started to accompany him outside the wire. One day, she ran up and boarded the Chinook helicopter with an M4 carbine slung over her shoulder. No one knew where she got it, and she didn’t bother to carry it at the ready as the soldiers had been trained to do.

Though she had no previous tactical experience, she pointed out to Francis everything he was doing wrong as his patrol trudged through the dusty streets. She advised Francis on how to better scan rooftops for snipers and brush off the neighborhood kids who doggedly trailed his platoon asking for candy and soccer balls, so they wouldn’t get hurt or killed if insurgents attacked.

“Go home, go see your mother,” Francis’s mom told them.

Francis’s mom won over all his platoon-mates with the gruff, nononsense way she handled the locals. And also by grabbing a hand grenade from his flak vest while they were pinned down by a sniper, striding directly toward the rooftop where the sniper was perched, and lobbing it up there, taking him out in a burst of smoke.

“Damn, Francis’s mom,” Private Jones said. “That one had our number. He had us dead to rights. You deserve a Silver Star or something.”

Everyone thanked her profusely and slapped her on the back of her flak vest after they returned safely to the FOB after the mission. No one spoke to Francis.

Late one night on the FOB, amid the still and quiet after the nightly mortar shelling finally ended, he asked her why she followed him to a war zone, why she didn’t just wait in her well-feathered suburban nest for him to come home. That’s what people did. She could hang a banner in her front lawn for his homecoming and squeal with excitement upon seeing him at the airport. But for now, she could Joseph S. Pete | 125

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give him some space. She could be shopping at Crate and Barrel and imbibing Thirsty Thursday night margarita specials. She could lead a normal, regular life back home, and leave him the hell alone.

“You’re embarrassing me, mom,” he said. “I’m touched that you came all the way out here and everything, but I’m supposed to be able to handle this on my own.”

“Now you’re being selfish,” she said. “You were selfish when you enlisted, not even thinking of your poor mother.”

She told him she didn’t want to wake up at 3:30 a.m. with a sixth sense that her only son, her flesh and blood, died alone in the desert.

With a burden of grief like that, why even rouse your weary limbs out of the swaddling of blankets in bed? Why bother? Why bother with anything?

“It would be more than I could bear,” she said, looking him dead in the eyes. “It would be more than you could realistically ask anyone to bear.”

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The Candidate William Doreski When the candidate kisses a baby the parents have to throw it away.

When he shakes a hand it falls off, gray with mold. When he speaks before a crowd the faint of heart faint and their hearts stop forever.

When he accepts a bribe the global monetary system collapses. He’s tired of his rumpled image so he buys a suit of pure eel skin. It flatters but doesn’t fully conceal him. He combs his hair backwards and forwards at once. Its orange shock illuminates the death of religion.

The sweat of his armpits greases a thousand diesel engines, but they whine and explode anyway.

Desperate for affection, the candidate hires me to polish his smile. I wield various power tools to grind off his features, then replace them with rubber appliances cast from faces of the famous dead. He likes my work. For a bonus I receive a gallon jar of pickled brains. They’re still alive, so I consult them. Their collective wisdom assumes the circular exclamation of a moon in heat. I tote that hole in the cosmos to the candidate, drop it at his feet. He nudges it with one Gucci loafer.

Do I expect thanks? I expect him to wear that halo around his neck like the yoke of the people he claims to want to bear into the singular future. He’ll try. But the burden of all those discarded babies and deceased supporters drags him to his knees. I warp the cosmic absence around him, then hoist him to his feet. He staggers but gains solid footing. Yes, he can win this election if only the stars would stop rotating in their socket-holes, and if the women he has soiled wash thoroughly enough to forget him.

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Weird Ambition Rebecca Humes Attraction: The House on the Rock Instruments play themselves when a special token is inserted. The first time it happens, I’m pretty sure most people do the same thing I did, which is look around for the rabbit running with a timepiece or some talking animals playing croquet with flamingos. Maybe it was the abstract beauty of the instruments’ display, or the slightly offbeat horror show style of music that kept me searching for things out of eye corners, but no, I’m actually sure it was the fact that we seemed to be clamoring our way deeper underground that made me eat the cake so I could fit into the scene. I was warned ahead of time that the House on the Rock attraction was a collection of the weird, and being aware of my own saturation with strangeness, I felt prepared and excited for my visit.

In the first of the three sections of the tour, all was hunky dory for me and my writing class buddy; but as we went deeper into the abyss, we agreed that the level of oddity exceeded our expectations. We were informed that we had to make it to the carousel by four o’clock in order to go through the last third of the tour. Somewhere between the underground city’s apothecary and the hundredth model ship that followed the whale built to scale, I was sure we must be close. We had to trot through much of the second act to make it, and just as I earlier predicted, we easily identified the carousel. Neck hinged back and mouth gaping, it may have taken a cattle prod to get me moving along.

The nice man with the beard working the third section hovered and warned, “I just want to make sure you know there are nine more rooms to go.” He said so in a way a father would tell his son that if he ate his peas he may get some pudding, with a long, hard emphasis on the word nine.

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Accolades Upon entering the third realm of the Wisconsin attraction, it was like all the weird occurrences of my life flashed before my eyes, and I was brought back to one of my earliest memories. In a soft, low murmur I would repeat the overemphasized words “Geenne Siiimmmmy” while staring out my Grandma’s picture window, pudgy four-year-old hands held up to the glass like Carol Anne’s against her TV. I had much in common with Carol Anne. Blond hair, blue eyes, and just weird enough to get mixed up with the TV people/Poltergeist kinda crowd. Grandma eventually figured out that I was talking about Gene Simmons, and this was one of the early signs that I was, indeed, a little weirdo. I’ve received this type of accusation my whole life, and have generally taken it as a compliment. Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice is a viable representative of our kind. She poignantly states, “Well, I’ve read through that handbook for the recently deceased. It says: ‘live people ignore the strange and unusual’. I myself am strange and unusual.”

Though I feel honored to be one of the funky folk, I admit to some squirming over the fact that I’ve never fit in, anywhere. Too fucked up for the normal crowd, too regular for the freakiest freaks, too accepting, too unifying, too middle-of-the-road, not enough this or that . . . I play the games nicely and can relate to just about anything, yet I always tend to have the lowest percentage point of view. It’s an ongoing conundrum. Even still, I roll through life getting the bizarre knick-knacks of creation caught up in my being. They shimmer and clank like my high school band uniform, with all the medals I won at Solo and Ensemble. When I post a link about a Ween song expressing that I have a “Tick in my Brain,” or a John Waters quote about pubes, speak in movie quotes, continously talk about Homer Simpson like he’s a real family member or express my infatuation with gaudy, fuzzy wallpaper . . . I’m not bragging, but wafting my unique language, like a naked mole rat chirping from a tree waiting to hear back from its species in the distance. Standing anywhere in the House on the Rock, I felt like it was the tree where all the eccentrics hooked up upon our epic return from the South for the winter, tweeting loud enough for the whole town to hear.

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Hey you. Yeah, you! Show me your weird resume Have you ever stood looking at a model of Buckingham Palace the size of a twin bed and were so in awe over the level of detail and time it must have taken to create it, that you decided right then and there that everything about your life makes sense and that you’ll never question your own desires ever again? Maybe you’ve looked at a masterpiece by da Vinci or van Gogh and felt connected to the transcendent qualities of creation, yet still felt humbled enough to believe that you would never be capable of making your own masterly artwork. Somewhere in between all the variations of belief, experience, and imagination is the gradation of your weird pH balance. Yeah sure, we’re all weird, right? Everything has a chance to appear odd from a certain perspective. But let’s be real here. There just are things, people, and places that rank higher on the inscrutable Richter scale. Not everyone can stomach Naked Lunch, Divine eating dog shit, or the smell of Grandma’s creepy basement full of old books, shoes, and taxidermy.

Authentically weird individuals tend to know they’ll never fit in, and that could make or break their ability to successfully function. But I believe that when the weird authentically allow art into their lives, they’ll have powerfully functional survival tools. The strange and unusual need art to cope, breathe, relate, and function in the world.

Maybe as creators or as collectors, performers, or voyeurs, seekers of artifacts, or masters of devices. It’s all about truly embracing who you really are. The House on the Rock is like a mirror that answers the question: “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the strangest of them all?”

It’s difficult to find information about the House on the Rock’s creator, Alex Jordan. The tales say he didn’t like to socialize and consistently refused interviews. I’ve read a couple of things that suggests he built the place single-handedly, and in response to that I humfph a spraying scoff through my lips and roll my eyes with hilarity and exasperation. I mean, gheesh. Did you see that one room with all the organs and drums? That was just one of the rooms where my mind floundered visualizing how many friends it took and how much ingenuity must have oozed from them when creating the sculptures of tympani and snares, let alone how much wood and iron, and dudes with drills it must have taken to build all the custom walkways around these massive sculptures. I was taken back to my sculpture class a year ago when I decided to make a Louise 130 | Rebecca Humes

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Bourgeois-style spider out of chicken wire; wrestling the two-foot by three-foot arachnid with needle nose plyers tenderized my top half’s muscles and made early ’90s Beck end-of-album electronic-techno style noises buzz in my brains for days. I really couldn’t fathom what the creators of this place felt when they were trying to drill two stories worth of instruments into each other. While I stood still in the room with the symphonic orchestra of mannequins, the ship full of marching band members—several of which had faces that looked like Grandma’s old melted candles or just about to morph into the Planet of the Apes, and the scantily clad ladies on top of life-size elephants stacked atop one another.. . . . I felt linked arm-in-arm with myself rushing faster and faster down the yellow brick road singing Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my. I looked around, hoping I might be able to gauge how little kids were coping with the mechanical insanity of this room. It was obvious people were putting tokens in, because the band would stop playing for a moment, and then start right back up, all their joints and janky movements making more noises than the local carnival’s bad dream music. By now I knew this was one of the largest artist’s coping mechanisms in existence, and I wondered just how many people Alex Jordan sat and smoked with after sculpturebuilding lunch breaks.

Perspectives Perspective is key here. I’m sure there were plenty of people who hated this place and sulked and pouted after one of their family members dragged them through it. When asked who wanted to attend with us out of our group of six, the one who had been to House on the Rock before stated, “No thanks, once was plenty enough for me.” Pretty much the whole time I was at HOTR, I wished to be arm-in-arm with John Waters, hearing his commentary on the sporty speed of kitsch flashing before our eyes. My actual companion was great. His years of photography experience and geekiness coincided with mine, and his commentary was pretty on par. At one point we watched the three-story carousel of dolls, and I caught him on tape sounding just like Eddie Izzard saying, “The women up there, you’re lookin‘ right into their crotch; there’s just no way around that.”

A kid may not notice just how many breasts there are floating about, but the adult probably will. A kid may possibly get caught up in the dolls’ dresses rather than the creepiness of their faces. Myself, I noticed the intricate details of the art. Not only what it took to make Rebecca Humes | 131

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the thousands upon thousands of sculptures, but also what it took to find the various collections of stuff. My Rock buddy wondered when everything got cleaned and repaired, while the dank basement atmosphere helped my Hobbit skin feel at home. I consistently wanted to sit and smoke a green pipe and just admire the festivities, but by the time I left I was sure I already had.

Motivation Who am I? How do I start doing stuff that may actually manifest what’s in my head? What should I do with my life? These are pretty typical questions. I feel like we’ve all been there at some point, if not every single day. Lately, with another graduation around the corner, I wonder what my real motivation is. Even though it’s not so easy finding information about the people who created the House on the Rock, the multi-page brochure states that “Alex Jordan’s retreat built atop a chimney of rock opened to the public in 1960. The retreat was only the beginning. Alex used to explain his sprawling creation of collections, displays and galleries by saying that ‘one thing just sort of led to another.’”

That seems about as good a logic as anything else. Maybe it was for himself that Jordan built this monstrous display, or for the success of being different, or maybe it was just for the high from being the weirdest of the weird. Maybe the collection of crowns following the rooms of armor is a metaphor for the fact that he was the king of his own domain, and no one could knock down his fantastical ideals. It’s pretty common knowledge that he spent the bulk of his life pouring himself into this unique labyrinth of a camp. Whether he was being ostentatious or secretly sincere is a question that doesn’t matter to me. I’m just glad that there’s a museum in existence as audacious as HOTR, where high art can fuck right off, and low art could be honored long before Postmodernism had a chance to make its mark.

This cave of wonder has an Art Brut, Austin Powers-before-hewas-even-a-glint-in-his-mother’s-eye, pre-Chuck E. Cheese dog band kinda vibe, a real authentic weirdo’s survival guide. The trick is to stand out, not fit in, unless you make it fit with some pliers and screwdrivers.

Creative Nonfiction

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The Pianos Virginia Sutton Mother’s a gifted pianist, so my father says, with a decade of lessons at a baby grand.

But she will not play since their marriage.

Now she hates such music.

My father says her fingers were once smooth over ivory keys.

He sight-reads music, plays honky-tonk on his mother’s upright when we arrive in Indiana.

Stop it, Bob, Mother hisses near his ear, tugging at the orange belt circling her waist. Right now. He turns, handsome face melting beneath the gaudy sun of her blue and orange dotted dress.

Briefly we have a rented piano.

Mother chain-smokes outside during lessons.

My father wants my sister and me to learn, tatters from Mother’s privileged childhood.

Neither of us is talented. I stumble through instruction books, keys all the same, seemingly equally far away to my seven-year-old hands.

My little sister picks it up faster but isn’t very good either.

Soon we are a home without an instrument. Then my parents’ milkman friend gifts us an old upright with a broken sound board; a wealthy customer wanted it gone.

Frightfully out of tune, it has a Victorian stool with curlicues.

Now he loves to play, lives to play, but Mother does not allow it.

Following her recent brain aneurysm, she’s meaner, cursing if he goes near the piano, if he attempts a few bars of a Christmas carol.

Mother screams her hatred— at him, at the piano, at joy.

He only plays Saturdays when she’s at the beauty salon.

Nothing like Mother’s, though I never hear her strike a note or even see her stroke the keys.

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I tire of forties hits but I understand his heart is a beat-up thing. I want him to play, I want his body to soar with his limited gift; nothing like Mother’s, though I never hear her strike a note or even see her stroke the keys.

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Pinal Mountain Regional Park Virginia Sutton Maricopa, Arizona The spotless Arizona morning sky promised heat, even in spring. A rocky trail beckoned, and with plenty of water, a twosome began to climb.

They planned a picnic on the path. Desert plants bloomed, California poppies, yellow and orange.

Out of nowhere, bees attacked one of the pair, stinging; he fell.

His unscathed companion called the ranger, who contacted the fire department and paramedics.

No one went near the stricken man without donning special equipment, preventative protection from Africanized bee stings.

In the huge park, silence but for faint buzzing up the trail, picnic items abandoned.

Rescue radios chattered as everyone waited, some hoping he would be saved, others knowing his fate.

Think of the man’s last words, how they sat in his now grotesque mouth.

Unable to speak, smothered by the swarm, silenced, swallowing what he ached to say.

Heart stopped, body filled with poison, he died.

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The corpse waited beneath a blistering sky, his twenty-two year journey done.

Continuous swelling as bees clambered across the body until the intruder was finally removed.

In the hospital morgue the coroner counted over one thousand bee stings.

Rangers closed Merkle Trail, Vista Trail, bathrooms, the parking lot, ramadas and picnic sites.

Killer bees were finally exterminated, park rangers preventing another colony from moving into an empty hive.

Unsettling, yet it was their responsibility to help guard lives, Whether hapless or fortunate.

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The Matriarchal Legacy of an Astral Warrior Michael McLaughlin Year: 3237 Location: In synchronized orbit above the planet Dacron 9 Starla stood motionless next to the biomass transporter. From oval portals, light and shadow slashed across the compartment at bisecting angles from the dual suns. Killing was never fun, but Starla felt confident she’d die in her sleep an old woman—she was a seventh-generation Astral Warrior.

Starla sighed, closed her eyes, and let her mind wander before her appearance on Killing with the Stars. Other things were on her mind.

The universe is a constant battle to protect my family’s copyrighted legacy . . . the paparazzi are blood suckers trying to get that one picture of me out of style . . . and now I am in a televised death shootout with a petty criminal named Felonious. This is what happens when there is so little crime in the universe?

Starla cleared her mind, smiled, and opened her eyes, and caught her reflection in the polished steel walls of the ship. God forbid she’d have a puckered seam or a wrinkled blouse. Any fashion faux pas would be on the nightly news: Starla, the Omega girl for an out-of-style dynasty?

Initially, the producers of the show wanted her to wear a leopard skin leotard and red, knit leg warmers, but she had better fashion sense. The producers would never have asked her grandmothers to wear that hideous outfit. Never. Because it would be an urban setting for the shootout, Starla chose to wear a stylish, loose-fitting pink jumpsuit with red, high heel patent leather boots. She had cut her hair short and sassy, the tips dyed hot-damn-red, and wore wet pink lipstick. Of course, she also wore her maroon sunglasses with the star frames. The fans expected it. She was Starla. Image is all anyone has in this world.

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Vibrations from the spaceship’s Zircon power chargers startled her, and she instinctively reached for the small metal weapon at her side.

The Pulsar II felt perfect in the palm of her hand. It always did.

Holding the weapon, she felt her great grandmother’s life force, Borealis (The Great One), in it. The weapon was ancient by modern standards, but still reliable, and could kill at 1,000 meters with laser accuracy. Then again, maybe Starla would retire the weapon to the ritual niche after she faced Felonius—something to hand down to her daughters. Yes, this would be the weapon’s final kill.

Bong.

The transporter door opened, and Starla waited for the Weapons Referee to clear her. The Weapons Referee walked down the hallway towards Starla to check for any unauthorized weapons or secret devices. When she glared up, the approaching referee flinched and stumbled. That was always the case. When Starla was dressed, dressed to kill, people were afraid of her. The referee produced a hand-held, weapon-seeking ratchet and scanned Starla, her eyes rapidly blinking in fear.

Starla was cleared to go and stepped into the small capsule. Her body tingled with excitement. Her female ancestors must have had the same feeling. It was the shared reality of her matriarchal legacy.

Show time. Time to kill. *** Stan and Frank were already in the control studio at their panels adjusting the color balances and the diode frequency modulators for the show. The men worked in silence, calibrating the instruments with quick twists of their limp wrists. Both were dressed in black shoes, black pants, black belts, and white shirts.

Without looking up, Stan remarked, “PJ is late.”

“Maybe she went shopping,” Frank answered.

Stan exhaled. “The color of her clothes makes my eyes sting.”

“Right, too much color swank. She doesn’t accessorize, she excessorizes.”

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PJ entered drinking a diet Coke, her fifth of the day, and plopped in the control chair behind the men. She was dressed in her normal work outfit of a bright pink tee, plaid walking shorts, giant hoop earrings, and chartreuse granny shoes.

“Good evening, guys. Remind me, who’s on the show tonight?” PJ asked, eyes flashing around the monitor screens.

Stan answered, “A shootout.”

Frank added, “Starla versus Felonious.”

PJ yawned. “Wake me if I fall asleep. We could make history tonight.”

PJ knocked back more Coke.

Both Frank and Stan turned and slowly looked back at PJ. They both tilted their heads, their mouths slightly open.

PJ noticed their stares. “History, as in the lowest-rated event of Starla’s life. Felonious stands no chance against her; it will be just us three watching the show.” PJ yelled, “Let’s get it on!”

Stan paused to remember what that meant. PJ was always speaking in ancient words and phrases. He’d come back at her this time—he had looked that saying up. “Yeah, bang a gong, let’s get it on.”

PJ popped open another can of diet Coke from her refrigerated purse.

She stared up at the spectator meter. It was flat. “Frank, queue the camera on the starship. Pump up the color.”

Both Stan and Frank said simultaneously, “PJ, can I wear my sunglasses, the color hurts my eyes.” *** The capsule fired away from the orbiting mothership and descended in a fiery arch toward the planet surface. The props department had made it to look like the old Buck Rogers spacecraft.

In the control booth PJ barked, “Queue sound.”

Frank pressed the audio feed button. “Flight of the Valykries” played.

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“Where did they dig up that old tune?” Stan mumbled.

PJ commanded, “Follow that capsule down. I want every spark and glowing ember.” She added, “This may be the highlight of the event.”

Again she glanced over at the spectator meter. It had perked up. She knew she would have to pull out every theatrical trick to draw and keep an audience.

The cameras followed the capsule down, flames leaping from the tail.

The producers had added pyros to the fuel mixture so it would really flare out. Then the capsule swooped in and bounced along the ground, until it came to a stop, the nose slightly tilted down, sparks and flames still shooting out the tail.

PJ glanced at the spectator meter and the needle bounced off the bottom. PJ groaned and knew viewers would only stay with the program to see what Starla was wearing.

Inside the capsule, Starla stood and looked her clothes over. The door swished open automatically.

PJ snapped her fingers and pointed. “Lose the soundtrack. Stand ready for the entrance. A full shot of Starla in the hatchway, then a close-up of her weapon and a cut to her shoes.”

Frank grumbled, “Women and shoes.”

Starla stepped out the door, her weapon at the ready, and paused so the camera could get a good profile shot of her.

“Stan, close-up of her weapon.”

“What is that old relic?” Frank asked no one in particular.

PJ answered, “That belonged to her great grandmother. It’s a Pulsar II.” Stan said, “You should see what Felonious is packing. It is the oldest weapon I’ve ever seen. I believe it’s a Colt 45.”

PJ added, “It still can kill. Better be ready when that . . . ” PJ paused for emphasis, “ . . . puppy goes ballistic.”

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Stan and Frank shook their heads in uncertainty what she meant.

PJ added, “That is, if he gets to pull the trigger.”

On the planet, Starla walked down a city street, past strategically placed business logos. They were well-lit and some had “deep discount” signs flashing. When Starla got to her spot, she stopped and looked around. No Felonious. She was always supposed to be the last one in and make the grand entrance. He was grandstanding, and no one did that to a seventh-generation Astral Warrior. No one.

Starla saw Felonious slowly strolling down the street toward her, smoking a cigar. He was a big man, dressed in brown corduroy pants tucked into old, scuffed black cowboy boots, a wrinkled gray cotton shirt, and a duck hunter’s orange down vest that was two sizes too small. He had on a blue straw cowboy hat. Under his fat stomach was a tattered leather holster and the Colt 45.

My God, Starla thought, he’s mocking me with those clothes. Then she noticed the old revolver. Insult to injury, he’s trying to kill me with an old gun.

PJ rubbed her eyes in the control booth and yelled, “What the hell is he wearing? This guy knows how to disrespect every sharp dressed woman in the universe. I’ll kill him myself.”

Felonious approached Starla and twirled the cigar in his mouth as he spoke. “Well, well, well, we meet. The great and wondrous Starla herself. You know, you look shorter in person.”

Starla’s muscles tightened. This was his moment. He would pay for this, but now, let him have his say. Soon enough there would be certain death for a man with no taste in clothes.

“We are now forever joined in time, place, and form. We meet and one of us will die. At worse I will be . . . what’s that old book term . . . a footnote to your proud and luminous female heritage. Then again, maybe I’ll get lucky and kill you.”

Starla couldn’t keep her silence. “You’re not going to get lucky.”

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“I’m not?” He took the cigar out of his mouth, rolled it in his fingers, and put the wet shiny end back in. “And why am I not going to get lucky, Starla?”

“Luck was outlawed years ago in this galaxy.”

“Oh, oh, oh. That was a funny one Starla.”

“He sounds like Santa Claus,” PJ whispered, wishing she had another Coke.

“Yes, no matter the outcome, our names and lives will be interwoven in the eternal fabric of destiny. Some lonely night when you are old and gray, with your granddaughter on your lap as you’re regaling her with daring deeds of your wondrous exploits, you will happen upon my picture and remember the brief time we had together.”

PJ looked over at the spectator meter and it was falling fast. “There it goes.”

Felonious droned on, “We are but two souls lost in mortal combat.

Lovers in a cosmic dance of death. And then at the moment of truth, when we draw our weapons and fire, one will become stardust. Call it our kismet.”

PJ squirmed in her seat. “Shoot, Starla, shoot! Frank, queue the church bells. Maybe that will move things along.”

Ding, ding, dong.

“Well, Starla, I hear the bells and that means only one thing.”

Everyone in the control booth sighed and said, “Thank God.” “But first, let me take a last look at you. I guess it might be hero worship that makes you taller then you are. You never did have the stylish panache of your mother. Losing your fashion sense at a young age, Starla? You were never as good as your mother.” Felonious smiled and moved the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. One hand dangled over the large Colt 45.

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Starla relaxed and let seven generations of matriarchal legacy guide her next move.

PJ look at the spectator meter and saw it was barely up. “Frank, get a two-shot and then we’ll go to quick cuts from face to face and weapon to weapon, see if we can build some tension.”

Felonious grabbed his Colt 45 and jerked it from the holster. Starla waited, knowing the ratings were low. Give the viewers what they came for. Felonious raised his weapon, and Starla could tell he had no clue what he was doing; he may have never actually fired the weapon before. As his finger squeezed the trigger, Starla instantaneously raised her weapon and fired, the beam of light hitting him in the chest, and he stumbled backwards.

“Are you getting all of this, Frank?”

“Yes, PJ. Got the facial expressions, the trigger finger, the old relic weapon.”

Then the Colt fired in a loud roar and flash and smoke poured from the barrel of the gun. Felonious’s head tilted back and his body began to fall.

“Damn that was loud!” PJ yelled.

“Don’t worry, I equalized the sound,” Stan said.

PJ leaned forward in her chair staring at the figures. “Stan, wardrobe shot, left side, Starla. What is that? There seems to be something wrong, her clothes are torn or is that . . .” PJ’s eyes widened. She screamed, “Blood! Blood!” Her head jerked to the spectator meter. It was pegged in the hot zone.

Frank yanked his hand off the console buttons and gasped.

PJ screamed, “Frank, stay with me! Don’t lose it!”

Stan immediately put Felonious’s fall into a slow-motion regenerator.

“I can’t suspend his fall forever.”

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PJ was out of her control seat, her eyes bugged out. Damn, she needed a Coke. “Stay on the blood stain!”

Stan shouted, “Felonious is going down. Gravity! Gravity!”

PJ yelled, “Add more frames! Stay tight on the tear and Starla’s blood spot!”

Stan yelled again, “I can only defy the law of gravity so long, PJ. He’s going down!”

PJ snapped her fingers and said, “Cut to real-time fall.”

Felonious hit the ground, dust billowed up in swirling clouds.

PJ barked, “Back to slow-mo. The gun.”

PJ pointed, “Great shot, Stan. Cut to blood spot. Cut to Starla’s face.

Terrific.”

Starla carefully put her weapon back in her pocket. She could feel the sting from the bullet but refused to look down. It was only a flesh wound. She knew the torn and blood-stained jumpsuit would be an instant collector’s item, and she could sell it on Eternal Bay. Maybe give the money to charity. Or she could save the jumpsuit for the ritual niche, let her descendants marvel at the day she escaped death.

Starla walked toward the fallen smoldering body and looked down at the big man, the smoking cigar still in his clenched mouth. She smirked and said, “I guess I look a little taller now.”

PJ slumped back in her control console and exclaimed, “Wow.” She glanced at the spectator meter. It was pulsating high and glorious.

Fiction

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Cirque de la Lune Paige Pfeifer It was 2:00 in the afternoon and the moon was out, as she usually was for the matinee showing. The sky behind her was a dull red-and-white striped canvas, and stars masqueraded as pinholes of light where the hooks came through to hold her in place above the polite crowds. A woman sat in the curve of the plaster crescent with her arms and legs wrapped in pink silk.

Far below sat men and women from all walks of life—high society ladies with hats full of flowers and dresses the colors of jewels, dockhands with rough cotton shirts crisscrossed with suspenders, bankers in top hats half as tall as their children. But when the aerialist fell, they all gasped, some covering their eyes or turning into the person beside them.

The woman tipped over the edge of the moon in what appeared to be an accident, but she turned lazily, head over heels, until her feet landed on the ground. In a show of grace, she unwrapped her limbs from the silk and took a long, sweeping bow. The applause from the audience swelled until the tent threatened to pop. She took another bow, curls bouncing, and ran through the side entrance of the big top, passing The Trapeze Artist on her way out. He gave a nod. “Your timing was off,� noted a calm, detached voice. The Aerialist spared the speaker a glance and hurried on, leaving the other two performers at the tent.

The Trapeze Artist closed his eyes, briefly, and turned to face the person behind him. The woman gazing back at him looked to be no older than 22. Her costume was short and red, and while the length was shockingly immodest, it was perfect for twisting her legs back over her shoulders or folding into a shape that resembled the cheap, doughy pretzels sold in front of the menagerie tent. Her posture mirrored The Trapeze Artist, with the straight spine and pulled-back Paige Pfeifer | 145

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shoulders of a performer trained from birth. The Trapeze Artist stood taller, silent.

“What?” demanded The Contortionist.

He simply continued to look.

“Tell me.”

A shrug. “I wonder about you, sometimes.”

“Elaborate.” The Contortionist’s voice was harsh in contrast to the soft, halting tones of The Trapeze Artist.

“I wonder why you say some of the things you say.”

She smiled, a broad curve that showed all her teeth. “Small chaoses.”

He waited patiently for her to continue. She always continued.

“It’s all the little things that build up. A comment on poor balance, withholding a smile, forgetting someone’s name you’ve met three times already. The small gestures are the ones that make a big difference in the end, right?” With that, she slipped past him and into the tent, perfectly in sync as the ringleader announced, “An incredible spectacle that tests human strength like nothing ever before seen by human eyes!”

The Trapeze Artist watched her go. His face remained passive.

Rumors filtered through dressing rooms and whispered onboard the trains in the dead of night claimed The Contortionist had killed her parents as a child. She did it with the knife her mother used to carve up chicken for dinner, they hissed. Or no, she used the axe that her father kept on their farm for when the stove ran out of wood. But that’s wrong, the voices argued—she lit the house on fire and rode off on the back of a passing carriage. Some said that the circus was her punishment; it was a method to ship her away and keep her off the streets so she couldn’t get into heaven-knows-what. Others said she had done years in prison, or in one of those filthy, damp sanatoriums.

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The Trapeze Artist knew better than to indulge in rumors. To feed the flames of gossip would be to completely give oneself over to the fantastical, to live in a world so completely absurd that the false histories become reality. In the already bizarre life of a circus performer, gossip could be just the thing to loosen the last grip he had on reality.

*** “I’m going to steal the stars.” The Contortionist spoke nonchalantly as they walked in step with one another, their shoulders rigid and their posture unfriendly.

The Trapeze Artist looked at her. Waited. Then, “Last time someone took them, the moon refused to come up for three days. She doesn’t like being lonely.” A pause. “The oceans turned into themselves—do you remember? No fish came into the ports for weeks.”

“Think how great my act will look when I’m covered in stardust.

People will come from every state to see the lady who can bend the celestial bodies with her own.”

*** The tallest tree on site only reached halfway to the sky. The Contortionist sighed. It will have to do, she thought.

She climbed through the branches with ease; her flexibility made weaving between the leaves a simple job. Below, she could hear the roustabouts shouting at one another as they loaded the tents into the train cars to be shipped away with them to the next city. The circus was its own kind of private city. A secretive, traveling village that spread out overnight and disappeared at dusk, filled with strange, colorful inhabitants and traditions.

She made it to the top of the tree, her head poking out of the dome of leaves. She could see to the edge of the town, with its sleeping stone houses gushing smoke from their chimneys, and the faint twinkle of lamps being lit by the lamplighters and the street urchins competing for money. More importantly, she could see the stars.

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She made quick work of unfolding her net, looping the end around her hand once, twice, three times for good measure. Up here, in the tallest tree, there was nothing but shifting blackness around her, nothing her net could accidentally get caught on besides the invisible magic that worked to paint the night dark. She took a deep breath and threw the net as hard as she could.

Up, up, up it sailed. And missed. The net came flying back down toward her. The Contortionist dug her fingers into the bark of the tree, feeling the rough wood bite into her skin. She threw the net again more forcefully, and this time it looped around a handful of lights in the sky. A dark, empty patch was left in its wake. Her bad spirits instantly dissolved, and she gently pulled the net back down.

A branch cracked on the other side of the tree. The Contortionist jumped, and the stars knocked together in the net, producing a hollow cracking sound. A head appeared from around the trunk of the tree, and a person came into view. Despite the dim light, she could see the features of The Trapeze Artist clearly—the scar on his chin from when he missed the bar when he was seven and banged his head instead. The smudged, unidentifiable tattoo on his arm that had been done in one of those new, distasteful parlors in London.

“What are you doing?” she snapped, trying to regain her composure.

“How long have you been here?”

His steady gaze locked onto hers. “I can’t let you take them away.” His voice sounded sad.

“Stay out of it.” She wound up and threw the net again, but before it could travel more than three feet in the direction of the stars, The Trapeze Artist swung higher up the tree and caught hold of her net with one hand.

She yanked on it as hard as she could. He lurched forward, eyes widening as his balance shifted too far. But his hand was still tightly gripping the branch he had used to climb up, and he stayed in his spot.

She yanked again. Nothing happened.

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“I don’t think you understand.” The Contortionist’s voice was condescending and cold. “I need this. If I don’t fix my act, I’m gone.

I’m ‘not pulling in a big enough crowd,’ apparently.”

“You’d be taking them away from everyone. No one owns them, they belong to the universe,” said The Trapeze Artist.

“And now, they belong in my net. If I don’t take from the world, someone else is going to take from me. And that’s something I can’t afford.”

“But think about all the people who will miss them. The people who rely on the stars for direction.”

“They can come to our show and see them for a small price. I want to share them. I’ll give them back. Please.”

Slowly, he nodded. “All right.” A pause. “But I have a better way.”

Before she had a chance to respond, The Trapeze Artist swung off the branch, touching down on the grass below, his landing silent.

The Contortionist weighed her options for a moment before scrambling down the tree after him, holding the stars close to her chest. They were as hard as rocks and softly lit from within, the glow slowly spreading out from their cores. There was a filmy quality about them. Each one was about as big as two fists, but they were surprisingly light, even the bigger ones that held more wishes from people who had run out of luck. The Contortionist had no trouble making sure they didn’t fall and break open, spilling hopes and dreams and light across the muddy earth.

She followed him across the grounds and into a train car. He moved through the cars quickly, passing the compartments where they usually slept, where they kept the animals, where the equipment was stored. Suddenly he stopped, reaching the end of the line. He opened the door and disappeared from view.

The Contortionist stepped out the door with the stars clutched to her chest. She looked up. The Trapeze Artist had climbed onto the roof. With a deep breath, she put her hands on the ladder and started to climb, her heavenly treasure tucked under her arm. Her hands Paige Pfeifer | 149

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were starting to sweat. He might be used to heights, but she only performed on the ground.

Finally, she pulled herself over the top of the car. The train started to move as they stood gazing down the length of the cars that seemed to disappear into the inky world of the unknown.

“Ready?” He looked at her expectantly.

And suddenly, she understood what they were about to do. It was brilliant. She wondered how she hadn’t thought of it herself. “Yes.” She carefully emptied the net onto the roof of the car and placed her jacket over the stars to hold them in place. Together, they unfurled the net and threw it into the air. It filled with wind, like the sail on a boat.

It took all night, but eventually they made their way down the length of the train and the sky, collecting each and every brilliant star the universe had to offer.

The moon wept for her loneliness.

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Meet The Authors Jud Widing’s work has appeared in publications such as Storgy, Sus-

pense Magazine, Star 82 Review, and Voices. His third novel, A Middling Sort, will be released on April 20th. He can also be found as a regular contributor at It Djents.

Were he a circus performer, his act would be introduced, with evident regret from the announcer, as “The Man With The Selfish Belly Button.”

Helen Wickes lives in Oakland, California. She grew up on a farm

in Pennsylvania. She is the author of four books of poetry: In Search of Landscape, 2007, Sixteen Rivers Press; Dowser’s Apprentice and Moon Over Zabriskie, both in 2014 from Glass Lyre Press; World As You Left It, 2015, Sixteen Rivers Press.

I’d be the recalcitrant zebra, saying, no, no.

Frank Weisberg is 32 years old and works as an administrator

at a performing arts school in New York City. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees from SUNY Purchase College and an MFA in writing from the California College of Arts. His fiction has appeared in sPARKLE & bLINK and Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art. His comic strip, The Afterlife, debuted in Palooka Magazine Issue 7.

Watch as he types not even a single word in an entire day. Be amazed at his ability to pace endlessly. And be sure to tell your friends about the time you saw him do everything but anything at all.

In the off-season, Scott A. Volz resides in Evansville, Indiana. His writing has appeared in the Gravel Literary Journal, Red Earth Review, and the Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.

Formerly the strongman’s apprentice (defeated by mishap during feats of strength), Scott A. Volz is now the Master of Un-Ceremonies. He follows behind the elephants on parade, gets blood stains out of the lion tamer’s coat, and keeps the clowns well-stocked with greasepaint. Among other duties.

Anthony Velasquez is a native of California’s Central Valley,

having lived in Visalia, Davis, and Sacramento. He spent many years as a bartender, server, sommelier, and student in Sacramento before traveling to over a dozen countries and four continents. Since 2009, he has called Busan, South Korea his home. Two dozen of his food, wine, and travel articles have been published in KOREA Magazine, Haps Korea, and Busan Haps. Anthony Velasquez is an M.F.S. candidate at Lindenwood University. This is his first U.S. publication.

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I wish to divert your attention to the center ring, where Jacqueline Valacich from Tucson, Arizona, will stick her head in a lion’s mouth while juggling two kids, two dogs, a husband, and the treacherous feat of storytelling. In the past year, she has placed stories in such death defying publications as JitterPress, Vagabond Press/Ink Stains Edition, and HelloHorror, all without the use of a safety net.

Virginia Chase Sutton’s chapbook, Down River, was recent-

ly released. Her second book, What Brings You to Del Amo. won the “Morse Poetry Prize” and is being republished by Doubleback Books.

Embellishments was her first and Of a Transient Nature was her third.

Winner of several writing awards, her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and many other literary publications, journals, and anthologies.

Virginia Chase Sutton’s poems glitter with spangles and beads, high-flying on the trapeze.

erin Slaughter is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Elegy for

the Body, 2017, Slash Pine Press; and GIRLFIRE, 2018, Dancing Girl Press. She holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University, and is editor and co-founder of literary journal The Hunger. You can find her writing in Another Chicago Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Sundog Lit, Tishman Review, and elsewhere.

While she has a lifelong dream of running away to join the circus, she’s afraid of knives, fire, heights, and has no real circus talents; she once saw a traveling act of Pomeranians racing down playground slides, and she figures that’s as close to happiness as any creature can get.

Meet the Authors

David Sheskin is a writer an artist who lives in Bethel, Connecticut and whose work has been published extensively over the years.

If he were in a circus he would be introduced as a “Magician With a Pen,” which happens to be the name of a book of his unique pen and ink drawings.

Caitlin Sellers received her BA in English and French from

Louisiana College in Pineville, Louisiana, and she is currently pursuing a master of arts in teaching from Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. She is a participant in the Escadrille Louisiane program sponsored by the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), a program that trains future teachers from Louisiana to serve in French Immersion programs in elementary schools throughout the state. Caitlin’s interests include modern French poetry, anything written by Flannery O’Connor, and excessive amounts of very strong coffee. Like the kind brewed with pure nitrogen.

margaret rutley has published poetry in Canada, the U.S.,

the U.K., and New Zealand. Her works appear in literary journals such as Haiku Canada Review, The Prairie Journal, Island Writer, Presence, Kokako, and Akitsu Review. Anthologies that carry her poetry include: Deep Breath, Wordless, The Sacred in Contemporary Haiku, and They Gave Us Life. She has poetry online with underthebasho.com. Margaret collaborates with Sidney Bending and NIka, publishing under the name, “The Heron’s Quill.” She is a member of Haiku Canada, The Haiku Society of America, and The British Haiku Society and has won awards for haiku/senryu.

Introducing Mags the Clown. She can joke at 90 words per minute with gusts up to 120.

Claire Scott Rubin is an award winning poet who has received

multiple “Pushcart Prize” nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Enizagam, New Ohio Review, and Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Claire states that if she were a circus performer the announcer would introduce her as a slightly crazed clown who will keep the audience laughing until the very last minute when she reveals an unsettling surprise.

Alyssa D. Ross was born in Guntersville, Alabama, but spent over a decade in Northern Virginia. After abandoning art school in Richmond, she went on to pursue writing. She now holds an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD from Auburn University, where she now teaches writing and literature. Select readings are available at www.alyssarosswrites.com.

If Alyssa were a circus performer, her act would be called, “The Word Swallowing Woman Walking the Tightrope of Time.”

Paige Pfeifer is from Chicago, goes to school in Alabama, and

sometimes lives in Florida and/or Prague (depending on if Disney World is hiring or not). She is an English major with a minor in creative writing, and has been on staff at The Marr’s Field Journal, University of Alabama’s literary magazine. Her favorite personal story is about how she once impulsively got tattooed at a strip club, and her favorite published story is this one, because it’s her first.

Here is an act that defies all laws of gravity! Look on as her body and head are split into two separate entities. Watch as she conjures up the improbable right before your eyes: dreams of ice cream castles, musical storm clouds heavy with the weight of a thousand songs, financial stability! Now introducing . . . the Head in the Clouds!

Joseph S. Pete once won a calculator at a circus raffle and his life

has pretty much gone downhill from there. Pete is an award-winning journalist, a war veteran, a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio, and a 2017 “Pushcart Prize” nominee who was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Chaucer chump never accomplished. His literary work has appeared in more than 100 journals, including Dogzplot, Perch Magazine, and The Tipton Poetry Journal. He’ll believe any apocryphal quote attributed to P.T. Barnum.

This melancholy clown will leap to fantastic, thrilling, death-defying heights for your amusement.

paul Perilli’s recent writing appears, or is forthcoming in, bioSto

ries, The Transnational, Hektoen International, The Satirist, Coldnoon, Litro, Intima, Numero Ciinq, Taj Mahal Review, Thema, and The Offbeat. His chapbook Orwell’s Year is forthcoming from Blue Cubicle Press.

Readers, dear readers, did you know a spell check program is only as good as its understanding of the material before it? That a typing area does not necessarily result in a misspelling? So you see, a pint of beer may cure all your ales. Though it may also be the ail that cures you. Which brings me to the poem, “The Cure That Ales You: Your Spell Check is Complete.”

Michael Jack O’Brien has published poems for over fifty years

in both print and on-line journals, most recently Blue Heron Review, Trajectory, Colloquial, The Hungry Chimera, The Ravens Perch, and Gravel. Also, his work has appeared in three anthologies: Gridlock: Poetry of Southern California, Proposal on Brooklyn Bridge, and California: Dreams and Realities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, introducing the Teetering Poet, the Stilt-Man, Michael Jack O’Brien! From atop his wooden legs he writes until he falls.

Michael McLaughlin was a founder and member of an impro-

visational comedy theater for 20 years in Sacramento, California. He has dozens of short stories published around the world, even Canada. In 2005, he semi-retired to Ajijic, Mexico with his trophy wife. Presently he is director and producer of the longest running lip sync show in the world in Ajijic, Mexico on Lake Chapala.

Ladies and gentlemen . . . and now for something really indifferent . . . a man of letters, particular the letters M, J, and Z . . . a handsome rascal who can cook . . . a man loved by dogs, mothers, and grocery clerks . . . I give you the prestidigitator of the vernacular (the music swells here and white elephants are unleashed to trumpet and stampede) Michael “Big Mac” McLaughlin!

Kevin J. McDaniel lives in Pulaski, Virginia, with his wife, two

daughters, and their menagerie of pets. To date, his work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers: Wiley Cash Volume X, Artemis Journal, Bloodroot, Broad River Review, Common Ground Review, Flexible Persona, Floyd County Moonshine, Gravel, Temenos, The Cape Rock, The Main Street Rag, The Pikeville Review,

and others. He is the author of the chapbook, Family Talks, which was published by Finishing Line Press. His most recent collection, At the Foot of a Mountain, will be released in 2018 by Desert Willow Press.

If he were a circus performer, he would announce his act as “The Great Enigma who doesn’t fit comfortably in a box!”

Robert Garner McBrearty’s stories have appeared in many

places, including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, North American Review, Narrative, and New England Review. They can also be located in his three collections of short stories.

The illusionist Robert Garner McBrearty will now make donuts and cups of cafe con leche magically appear in the hands of the audience, and if not, oh well, he tried.

Dheepa R. Maturi is a graduate of the University of Michigan and

the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Brevity, The Fourth River, Tiferet, Every Day Poems, Tweetspeak Poetry, A Tea Reader, Mothers Always Write, Here Comes Everyone, Flying Island, Branches, Hoosier Lit, Corium, Dear America: Reflections on Race, and The Indianapolis Review. Her short story, “Three Days,” was a finalist in the Tiferet 2017 Writing Contest. She lives with her family in Indianapolis.

Richard LeBlond is a retired biologist living in North Carolina.

His essays and photographs have appeared in numerous U.S. and international journals, including Montreal Review, Redux, Compose, New Theory, Lowestoft Chronicle, Concis, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. His work has been nominated for awards such as, “Best American Travel Writing” and “Best of the Net.”

The crowd thought all the clowns had exited the little car, but the ringmaster said, “I think there’s one more.” Sure enough, a rickety old clown, his red nose hanging by the last drool of glue, exited with a loud groan.

“You’ve let the lions know you’re ready,” said the ringmaster.

Diane Larson curated “ArtWrite, an Ekphrasis,” with her students at the University of Miami and a grant from The Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables. She’s edited four books of poetry illustrating art, part of the Special Collection at the University of Miami’s Richter Library. Her poem, Cellophane, was included in the Book Lung exhibition of STIR, A Festival of Words, 516 Arts, Albuquerque. Five collaborations with Maureen Seaton appeared in the January 2009 online issue of AdmitT-

wo. A native Chicagoan, Diane presented at AWP 2009 in the Pedagogy forum at the Chicago Hilton. “Follow Me to the Chandelier Room,” a collaboration written at the Chicago Hilton with Meredith Danton Camel, appeared in the 2010 online edition of The Whistling Fire. A James A. Michener Writing Fellow, Diane has taught writing at Broward College as an adjunct professor. She has an MFA from the University of Miami.

Sue Storm, The Invisible Girl, Founding Member of the Fantastic Four.

Katie Krantz is a student and early career writer from Atlanta,

Georgia. She is also graduate of the Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop for Genre Fiction (2017) and of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop (2017). She will most likely be attending the University of Virginia for a BA in English in the fall.

Katie Krantz, a magician for all folks, will leave you stupefied, dazzled, and amazed when she communes with the greater forces at hand.

Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer from Boston, Massa-

chusetts. Ms. Luke is an author of color specializing in poetry of experience and witness. She has an MFA from Emerson College where she studied nonfiction and poetry. Her poems mix the two genres. Shirley was a 2017 Poetry Fellow at the Watering Hole Poetry Retreat.

If she were a circus performer, her act would be announced as: “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the marvelously mesmerizing Mom as she balances art and parenthood atop the high wire of life while riding a single-wheeled motorcycle!”

By day, she is Rebecca Humes, a Maharishi University of Management graduate with BA in creative writing and art. She is a hybrid creature, extracting weirdness, abstraction, dualities, and the bipolarity of shadow and light from life experiences and delusions.

Introducing: The Devil Stick Goddess, Bootylicious Becca, performing a light show of fetish and fantasy from the pits of heavy metal mayhem.

Circus performer is one of her vicarious personalities, one piece of patchwork in the epic blanket of her dreams, blurring into reality, and keeping expression warm in the long dark nights of the soul.

Erin Hoffman is an English creative writing major at Colgate

University in Hamilton, New York. Originally from Chicago, Erin now uses her passion for writing on Colgate’s campus as co-editor of the university’s literary magazine, The Colgate Portfolio. In addition to being a

writing devotee, Erin is also an avid violist, a sub-par crafter, and a proud parent of a basset hound named Gertrude.

If Erin were a circus performer, she would be introduced as “Erin the Descriptive Wing-Shot,” because she has a knack for the uncanny in all of her visual descriptions.

Soramimi Hanarejima, keeper of the Tempered Psyche’s Emo-

tionarium, will coax all manner of feelings to take vibrant forms visible to the mind’s eye and choreograph their interplay for your cognitive pleasure! If you like what you see today, more stunts await you in Soramimi’s collection Visits to the Confabulatrium.

James Hamby is the associate director of the writing center at

Middle Tennessee State University. His poetry has appeared previously in The Offbeat, Measure, Light, and other journals. He really does know how to juggle.

And now presenting The Amazing James: acrobat, hunger artist, and conjuror extraordinaire! Watch closely as he attempts feats of verse and humor that seldom end well right before your very eyes!

A, K Forrest is an undergraduate student at Lincoln University in

Missouri studying creative writing. Their work has previously been published in the university’s journal, Arts & Letters.

The best way for someone to announce my circus act would have to be: “Here’s the Amazing Organizer! They’ve got a list and sticky note for everything!”

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has

published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His new poetry collection is A Black River, A Dark Fall.

He would be introduced as the two-dimensional man: an elephant trainer whose charges trampled him flat and then ran off to Washington.

South Carolinian Carla Damron is a fiction writer and social worker. Her most recent novel, The Stone Necklace, was selected for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s “Star Award” for best novel, and was chosen to be the “One Book, One Community” read for Columbia SC in 2016. Damron also authored multiple short stories and the Caleb

Knowles mystery series in which she explores social issues like addiction, homelessness, and mental illness. Named the 2014 South Carolina Social Worker of the Year, Damron holds an MFA in creative writing and a master’s degree in social work.

She’s a social worker! She’s a novelist! Her brother is a professional mime!

She has a slinky (the toy) collection and KNOWS that Pluto is a planet, no matter what Neil De Grasse Tyson says! She is on a mission to rid the world of all Peeps marshmallow candies and, according to her Fitbit, she has walked the length of Africa!

Michael Coolen, Creator of The Penile Colonies: Living with XY Disorder.

Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, and writer living in Oregon. In addition to three Fulbright Fellowships and four National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, he has won awards from the Oregon Poetry Association and the Oregon Writers Colony. His essay, “Let Me Tell You How My Father Died,” was awarded first prize in the 2017 national Ageless Authors competition. He’s been published in dozens of journals and online publications. He’s a published composer, with works performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, New England Conservatory of Music, Museum of Modern Art, and the Christie Gallery.

I would have the Ringmaster say, “And now THE INVISIBLE MAN,” and I would uncover the Harry Potter cloak of invisibility showing only my feet in large clown shoes.

Judith Cody is a poet, composer, and photographer who has won

national awards in poetry, music, and photography, and is published in over 130 national and international journals. A poem is in the Smithsonian Institute’s permanent collection, in Spanish and in English. Her poem won second place in the national Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition in 2017. Poems were quarter-finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize. One of her poems was chosen from a world selection by the Norton Center for the Arts and featured in a gallery exhibit. Visitors welcome at www.judithcody.com.

Introducing, Judith Cody, a poet who defies danger, who works without a safety net, who finds her fulfillment while treading on the narrowest edge of society’s cutting edge and coaxes the amazing from the desolate as she travels the world, while she wonders if this is all true or is she only fantasizing?

Rita Ciresi is terrified of heights, so writing is her sole high-wire act.

She is author of the novels Bring Back My Body to Me, Pink Slip, Blue Italian, and Remind Me Again Why I Married You, and three award-winning story collections, Second Wife, Sometimes I Dream in Italian and Mother Rocket. She teaches at the University of South Florida and serves as a mentor for Bay Path University’s online MFA program in creative nonfiction.

Sarah Carleton writes poetry, edits fiction, plays the banjo, and

raises her son in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Off the Coast, The Binnacle, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Chattahoochee Review, Tar River Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, and New Ohio Review.

As the circus maestro says, “This aficionada of fine motor skills has the most nimble fingers in the western hemisphere!”

Tim Bascom is the author of a novel, a collection of essays, and two

prize-winning memoirs: Running to the Fire and Chameleon Days. His essays have won editor’s prizes at The Missouri Review and Florida Review, being selected for “Best Creative Nonfiction” and “Best American Travel Writing.” Bascom, who received his MFA from the University of Iowa, is director of creative writing at Waldorf University.

If Tim became a circus performer, the Ringmaster might introduce him like this: “And now . . . the saddest clown on a tightrope, the master of disaster, Tim (Catastrophe) Bascom.”

Carl Auerbach is a professor of psychology at Yeshiva University, where he specializes in the psychology of trauma and family psychology.

He lives in New York City.

If he were a circus performer he would be introduced as an aging tight rope walker who hopes they haven’t taken away the net.

AJ Atwater is an author whose fiction has been published in Nano-

ism, Literary Orphans, The Gravity of the Thing, Cowboy Jamboree, KYSO Flash, Crack the Spine, Barely South Review, DM du Jour, Heavy Feather Review, Jellyfish Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, PANK, 50-Word Stories, Vestal Review, Star 82 Review, Proof Magazine, and others. AJ is a recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Prose and a McKnight/ARAC Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature. AJ’s short story, “Neither An Entrance Nor An Exit,” is

included in the anthology Between Stone and Flesh. AJ is an art columnist, art blogger, and abstract painter studying at the Art Student League of New York.

Does not jump through hoops.

Kathryn Almy lives and writes in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications, most recently Star 82 Review, The New Verse News, The 3288 Review, and Encore.

Kathryn Almy and her Trained Walrus wow crowds with a High-wire Act of Awkwardness and Time-wasting!

Meet the Cover Artist Brittainy Newman is a visual journalist from New York City and

is currently pursuing a BFA in photojournalism at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is fascinated by ideas that spark new perspectives on familiar challenges. She revels in taking the world we all know and turning it around by viewing it from a strange, but a strangely enlightening new angle. Topics that interest her range from family and unusual career choices to themes of loss and sacrifice. In 2017, Brittainy was selected

by Photo Boite as one of their 30 Under 30 women photographers. That same year, she attended the Eddie Adams Workshop and her portrait of a reborn doll owner was a finalist for the American Experience category in the 15th annual Smithsonian Magazine photo contest. Her work has been recognized by National Geographic’s Daily Dozen, and in 2018, Brittainy was awarded the Nikon Award for Best Portfolio in the student-run RIT NPPA What We Do Competition. When she’s not working, she loves taking pictures, going to local markets, and trying different restaurants.

She has aspirations of one day working on a feature-length documentary and telling epic love stories.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, feast your eyes on the extraordinary, uncomparable Brittainy the Clown. She’s goofy, even downright foolish, but deep down Brittainy posses a kind of simple wisdom. She is funny and expressive and as a result, a lot of people see her as the life of the party. The rest of theom are terrified of you.

Call for Submissions The Offbeat is calling for the zany, the thought-provoking, the humorous, and the quirky to submit work for us to read! The Offbeat, a literary journal specializing in undisputedly unique works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and sequential art, is accepting submissions.

Submit writing that is intriguing, eccentric, and, most importantly, “off the beaten path.”

We ask for different. We DO NOT mean unnecessarily explicit content produced purely for the purpose of being shocking. We are interested in quality. No matter where you come from or what you do, we want to hear from you!

NOTE: We attempt to respond as quickly as we can to submissions, but we may take up to six months. If you submit near the end of spring or beginning of summer, we’ll have escaped into fields of flowers. You’ll hear in the fall.

General Guidelines: Up to three poems or flash fictions (under 1,000 words each) may be submitted in the same file. Sequential art should not exceed 10 pages. All other pieces should be limited to 4,000 words. Please wait to hear back from us on a submission before sending a second in that category.

Simultaneous submissions will be accepted under the condition that you will immediately inform us if your work is being published elsewhere. Authors we’ve published before—we love you. We’ll always love you, but please wait a year before submitting again. We love other people, too.

Legalities: Upon acceptance of your submission, you have granted The Offbeat first publication rights of your piece.

We pay through a contributor copy for all authors.