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No.
I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged…I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.” —Erica Jong
Table of Contents Lisa Dellaporta biography and Heat
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Jonathan Francesco biography
4 5
After School
10
Cathy Colburn biography Floodgates
11
The Burn
12
Propane and Lemonade
13 14
Jay Sizemore biography Motherly Advice
15
Waking up a Husband
16
Kenneth Pobo biography
18
Doing Dishes with Marc Bolan and Floribunda Gwen
19
Marshall Warfield biography
20
Leaving the Paleolithic
21 22
Jess Simms biography
23
Moonshine
28
Cynthia June Long biography
29
Second Singlehood
32
Valerie Loveland biography MRSA and Home Repair is more complicated if your Ex is named Phillip
About this Issue Owner/Editor-in-chief: Kimberly Zapata Copy Editor: Amanda Davis Layout/Graphic Designer: Jon Loudon Intern: Marion Mitchell Cover Photo: Eleanor Leonne Bennett
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Lisa DellaPorta lives in Spruce Hill, Philadelphia, and holds a BS in English from West Chester University. She has written stage adaptations for after school programs, held the position of Op-Ed Editor for the WCU Quad, and freelanced for several nonprofits. Currently, she works for a start-up in Philadelphia’s Center City district. She has an unhealthy obsession with the Oxford comma...and chocolate.
Heat The AC was out, again, and he had given up all hope of wearing presentable clothes. He lie supine, sprawled across the faded bedspread, in a cotton undershirt worn thin and transparent from age and friction. It was not yet midday and the thickness of the air, heavy with moisture and crackling with heat, was already oppressive as hell. He knew that he should start packing his
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meager possessions: a toothbrush, pirated films from Market Street, a sweatshirt that had been brought along one strangely chilly evening but never needed. Such things were inevitable, and meeting them with acceptance and preparation was the expected, responsible reaction. But he didn’t move from the bed. Denial held him fast, running sweet and slow through his veins. She would come home from work (where he hadn’t gone today), shedding layers of fabric
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as she shuffled first through the kitchenette and then towards the bedroom, and roll onto the mattress beside him sleek and naked as the night. This was how it was and how it had been. And this was how, he hoped, with fading resolve, it could be still. “It was never meant to last, Bobby,” she had said. There was no inflection, no tenderness. Her voice had been flat and tepid though it had sent a chill enough through his bones. She’d paced languidly around the bedroom while she’d said it, as if reciting the words in time to a practiced oration, an almost bored preoccupation to the movements of her impatient hands. “This is what we had agreed on. At the end of the summer, after the internship, we’d part ways. You promised you’d be okay with it. You said you wouldn’t want more.” He had agreed to this, in the late days of May, when the warmer months stretched before him like an unplowed field of ripened wheat, endless and untouched, beckoning him with a slowly rippling wave. An emotionless, beneficial relationship was chic and adult and all the things a young man of his age and sparse, Bohemian employment should desire. Through the steamy lengths of June and July he had touched her, devoured her, whispered her name in the sing-song voice of want, and told himself that this was nothing he could control. Yet as August drew to a close, he felt within him a strange new honesty. How could you stop loving the sun that shone upon the once barren land? How could you turn a deaf ear to the roaring ocean of generosity that was lust, and being lusted after? The Armenian couple on the floor above him were arguing again. He could hear it, muffled, through the floorboards. The stamping of a foot, the arc of a screeching feminine voice as it intersected with a low
Lisa Dellaporta
male baritone. How universal the argument is, he thought, that you can understand it without the coherence of words, that anguish and rage are such commonalities of man. He had never argued with her before last night. There was something about the radiating heat of summer that quashed the more volatile emotions, a hibernation of the extremes. Still. Every night, after they returned from the slavish, grunting stupor of their work studies, there had been a laziness that masked the trajectory of his intentions, even to himself. Each embrace, he now realized, had been weighed and measured and considered on some secondary level, what might mean more and what might be a signal of continued, future happiness. He had expected her to welcome him with open arms and relish his declaration. Surely her guidelines had been for show, grand gestures of bravado and feminist clout. It had never occurred to him that, conversely, she welcomed summer’s end. And he’d withered under that rejection, and perhaps put up too little of a fight. For hours he stayed until the light began to fade through the slatted Venetian blinds. He heard the key in the lock and jumped, straightening himself and running a hand through the curly tangle of his hair. Suddenly he regretted not showering, allowing the muggy remains of the day to appear so evident on his body. But he would make her see. He had words, enough, for this. The man accompanying her was familiar, a face from a board meeting, suited in expensive wool, and swaddled in brand-name musk. From where he stood, they could not see him and, uninhibited, hands found faces and mouths found mouths and his world became quieted, chilled—decidedly autumnal.
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Jonathan Francesco With a passion for well-crafted fiction, Jonathan Francesco has spent the last several years developing various creative writing projects, ranging from weekly online serials to fulllength novels, that he is continually revising and seeking to publish. Driven by a desire to improve his skills, he enrolled in the Creative Writing Program at the Community College of Philadelphia. His writing has been featured in the college’s award-winning literary magazine, Limited Editions, and he received recognition in the college’s creative writing contest. With strong opinions and philosophies about the craft of writing, he enjoys deep discussions about the techniques that characterize a quality story. Jonathan also serves as a staff reviewer for the music website NewReleaseTuesday.com, which provides the opportunity to write reviews for new releases in his favorite music genres. Since a story is almost always brewing somewhere in his head, Jonathan is constantly looking for new areas of inspiration, new opportunities to learn about others, and new characters to bring to life.
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After School “Caleb? Caleb, what happened?” Dayana Forbes nervously shot up from the bench in her high school hallway. She stood in horror as a boy from her geometry class stumbled out of the boys’ restroom, clad only in an unbuttoned shirt and torn boxers that barely clung to his waist. Each step of his bare feet was a struggle and he appeared about to lose his balance; yet, with every inch, he forced himself forward. His face and exposed limbs were covered in bruises and bloody gashes. His usually tidy brown hair was a mess, and his emerald green eyes were filled with horror. Dayana could see that he couldn’t stay standing much longer. She rushed toward him, seeing his legs begin to give out seconds before she got to him. She extended her arms just in time to prevent his tall but frail form from crashing to the ground. His bony body felt heavy in her thin arms. It was as if he had no strength to hold himself up. She assisted him to the bench—her slender form just barely able to support him—and helped him sit down. A small puddle of blood quickly gathered around where he sat. She also noticed a long trail of blood coming from the restroom to the bench. His were not minor injuries. Dayana quickly dialed 911, nervously twirling her long, dirty-blonde hair the entire time. Her heart was racing, but she managed to get out the information without a noticeable stutter. Within a minute, she closed her phone. “Help’s coming Caleb. They’ll be here soon.” She stroked his neck, not caring about the blood that smeared onto her hands. “What happened to your clothes?” She looked away. She knew how shy he was and the fact that he didn’t seem to care
Jonathan Francesco
about his near-naked state troubled her even more. “Caleb, can you hear me?” She gently took his hand. No response. He was typically quiet, but he was always warm and laid back. Now, he looked almost dead. Only the rise and fall of his chest with each deep breath and the slight trembling of his body gave her a sense that he was still alive. “Caleb, you have to tell me what happened.” She tried to look him in the eyes, but his remained fixated on the restroom. “Did he do this? Garret? I know he’s been picking on you.” His grip on her hand tighten. She looked up to see a tear rolling down his cheek, mingling with a spot of blood. “I was helping Mr. Altman straighten up after class.” Caleb swallowed a mixture of saliva and blood. “Everyone had gotten into groups so the desks and chairs were all over the place. It wasn’t fair that the teacher had to do all the work. You know?” She nodded. “Of course. That was good of you to help.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think anyone else was still here. Right after Mr. Altman left, I was just going to my locker to get some books I needed for homework. Garret was waiting for me there. I could see that he was really pissed.” He tilted his head back to fight sobs. “I tried to run but he stopped me and threw me into the lockers. I called for help but everyone else was gone. Then Garret put his hand over my mouth. He was so much stronger than me.” Caleb held his chest and took a deep breath. “He slammed me through the door of that bathroom. I crashed and landed on the floor. He just kept hitting me and wouldn’t stop. Then he started to rip off all of my clothes and kicked me into one of the stalls. I really thought he was going to beat me to death.”
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Dayana felt her stomach turn. She thrust her eyes closed. It almost made her vomit to think of how Caleb must’ve felt as he was assaulted. He was a year younger than the other sophomores and, worse yet, looked young for his age, despite his height. He never had a chance against an oversized bully. She opened her eyes again and saw Caleb staring out the front window at the dusk sky. “Why now?” She turned his head to look him in the eyes. “He’s been bugging you for months, but he’s never done anything like this before.” “The principal saw him bothering me yesterday. Garret tried to pretend like everything was okay, but he got suspended. He was so mad. I could tell.” Caleb began to cry. Dayana couldn’t take seeing him like this. “Hey, don’t give him the satisfaction of shedding tears. That’s what he wants. Help’s coming. They’ll fix you up and you’ll be okay.” He shook his head. “I’m not okay. I won’t ever be okay again.” “Is there something you’re not telling me, Caleb?” She scanned his battered body, paying particular attention to the blood pooled underneath him. Was there a wound hidden under the scraps of clothing remaining on his body? Her eyes moved upward to his abdomen. Then, she noticed the awkward way that Caleb was seated on the bench. She placed her hands over her mouth. The truth smacked her with a relentless force. She’d assumed his clothes were just ripped off to humiliate him. In all the confusion of seeing Caleb so bloodied, she’d never considered that Garret was capable of a deeper violation. Fury was building inside of her. Who could do that to somebody as kind and sweet as Caleb? “Oh God! Caleb, no!” She wrapped her
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arms protectively around him. “Did he . . . did he force you to do something?” Heavy breaths prevented her from uttering the horrible word. Caleb tensed up but didn’t pull away. She loosened her grip to avoid making him uncomfortable. “He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t want to.” Caleb stared straight ahead. “He said that telling on him was something a sissy would do. He wanted to show me how to be a man.” His fists tightened. A chill shot up Dayana’s spine. She angrily gripped the bench. Dayana could see the sweat forming on his neck as he recalled what happened. “Caleb, I’m so sorry.” She cupped his hand in hers. “Somebody should’ve been able to stop this. Someone should’ve seen. I should’ve seen. I was studying right down the hall.” She felt her breath leave her as a memory of moving to the beat of a rock tune playing through earbud headphones taunted her. “I wasn’t even paying attention.” She couldn’t even look at Caleb, but he needed her now. She forced herself to return her gaze to him. “But I’m here now and I want to help you.” He looked her in the eyes. “You can’t help me anymore. Nobody can help me.” His words sounded so empty to her, so cold. It was totally devoid of the care that usually filled his voice. Dayana moved closer to him. “You have to let me at least try.” His eyes looked so lifeless as she stared into them. It cut her deeply to see what he’d been reduced to in the hours since she’d last seen him. Caleb lowered his folded arms to his lap. “It’s so cold,” he said, more to himself than to her. Dayana scanned him head to toe. His almost naked body was shivering. She then looked at her watch. Almost five o’clock. It’d
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been over five minutes since she’d called the police. They’d be there any minute. After all the humiliation Caleb had already suffered, he deserved at least some amount of dignity. She shot a glance at the restroom. “Are your clothes still in there?” He nodded. “But they got torn up. They’ll never stay on me now.” “Even if there are a lot of holes, it’ll be better than going outside like this. You’ll freeze to death. I’ll go get them.” She took a few steps back, keeping her eyes carefully trained on Caleb as she dashed into the boys’ room. She saw his jacket, undershirt, pants, and sneakers on the floor in a pile under a urinal. They were bloodsplattered. “How could that bastard do this?” She kneeled down and gathered them in her arms. Caleb was right. They were unusable— the undershirt was torn in two, the jacket’s sleeves were ripped off, and the pants were splitting at the seam. She then looked over and noticed an oversized shoe hanging out from the handicap toilet stall. Confused, she went to investigate. She recoiled and grabbed a sink to keep her balance. Garret lay dead between the toilet and the wall, his drawers at his knees. His eyes and mouth were half-open and blood had pooled around his head. The handle of a small blade protruded from his neck. She gasped for air a moment before a breath escaped her lungs as a scream. She recoiled and fell through the stall door, hitting the ground with a thump. Even a bully like Garret looked pitiful with the blood oozing from his lifeless body. She placed her hands over her mouth and muttered a barely audible, “Oh my God!” She pushed herself to her feet and dashed out the door, dropping the clothes beneath the sink. Caleb was still seated nervously on
Jonathan Francesco
the bench. She rushed to him and kneeled down to be eye level with him. “Caleb, Garret’s still in there. I think he’s dead.” She placed her hands on his shoulders. “Caleb, you have to tell me what happened. The cops are coming and they’re going to find him.” Caleb looked away. “I don’t remember exactly what happened. I just remember that he wouldn’t stop. He just wouldn’t stop...I only wanted him to stop doing it. Then he did. I thought it was over, but then he took out the knife and held it to my throat. He told me that he was going to cut off my balls and take them as a prize for doing such a good job. I don’t remember what happened. I must’ve hit the knife away from my throat cause it went into his neck and he started to cough up blood. He was dead before I knew what was happening. I got up and I grabbed whatever clothes I could and walked out. That’s when you found me.” Dayana shivered. How could so much horror have gone on just a few rooms away without anyone noticing? Caleb looked so broken. She worried about what he’d do to himself if left alone. Blue and red flashing lights shined through the windows. Dayana turned to see the vehicles stopping in the parking lot. “See Caleb? The cops are here. We’ll get you through this.” Caleb turned to her and said, “Please, I don’t want to go alone.” He reached out his hand to her. “Can you come with me, so I have a friend there?” She took his hand and smiled. “You won’t be alone Caleb. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know how to fix this, but I promise you that we’ll figure it out together.” She helped him to his feet. The moment he was off the bench, his boxers snapped off and landed at his feet.
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Dayana could see the mortification in Caleb’s eyes, but she was amazed that he didn’t even try to cover himself. She took off her jacket and wrapped it around his waist. “I’m not going to let you be humiliated again, Caleb.” “You didn’t have to do that for me.” He stared at the floor, ashamed of himself. She turned his head up and looked him in the eyes. “Friends take care of each other, no matter what.” A tear escaped her eye. “I’m so sorry that I never paid much attention to you before. Every day you said ‘Hi’ to me and I just kind of ignored you every time.” “It’s okay. Everyone did.” She shook her head. “No, it’s not okay. It’s not okay to treat people like that. And I’m sorry, Caleb. I wasn’t a friend to you and I should’ve been. Maybe if somebody had stepped up sooner, you’d never have been alone. Garret could’ve never done that to you. But I’m here now and I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure you never are without a friend again.” Caleb closed his eyes. “Thank you, Dayana.” He hugged her as tightly as his weak arms would allow him too. He pulled back and wiped his tears away. Dayana noticed the faintest look of relief in his eyes. It was only a glimmer, but it was something. Dayana took Caleb’s hand in hers. “Whatever comes next, Caleb, we’ll face it together.”
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Jonathan Francesco | Photo by Eleanor Leonne Bennett
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Cathy T. Colborn is earning an MFA in creative writing at Rosemont College. She graduated from Rutgers-Camden, New Jersey, in 2011. She currently works as a freelance writer and photographer. Her writing has been published in Big River Poetry, Flashfiction. net, Ripple Zine, and Writers’ Bloc. You can see her published photography on the cover of The Four Quarters Magazine and an upcoming spread in OVS Magazine. Cathy has two poetry chapbooks: Recycled Shoes and Stoned in Paris and is the creator of a small online journal called Philly Flash Inferno. Cathy loves all things New Orleans. On the weekends, she bakes cupcakes and practices for the impending zombie apocalypse (but not at the same time). Visit her at: cathytcolborn.blogspot.com
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Floodgates Triple digits and my flip-flops melt to Bourbon Street, my beer is not so much carbonated as it is boiling by the candescence of Jean Lafitte’s ghost. The piano player is hammering Cat Stevens as my heart melts to the mahogany. My tears pollute my whiskey. The water level outside is the highest its been since Katrina. So, they open the floodgates. Streetcar not named “Desire” grinds the rails to the Garden District. The uptight conductor speaks of Anne Rice, Jolie, Pitt, maybe even Kravitz. The situation needs lubrication just like the same grind for us repeated offenders. Everything is so dry. So, the floodgates open. At Camelia Grill the waiter speaks to me like I am a plantation owner. We are both angry at this game. So, the floodgates open. When he is on his fifteen-minute break, we cool down, by perusing new ink at the neighboring tattoo shop. We both grew up with money. We both end up in the Garden District for laughs though we don’t really belong here either. I think of Gatsby. I think of you as my “West Egg party.” So does he... The floodgates open.
Cathy T. Colborn
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The Burn Nothing is as blue as a missing five o’clock shadow, that is too busy making love to be shaved, the burn on your cheek, as rough as a new pair of jeans begging to be broken, louder than a New York minute in the Spring, hovering you like a thunderous sky drenching you in your own rain, uncertain of the color of the atmosphere tomorrow, but definite as the cut of his razor left by your silken grave.
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TRANSIENT
Propane and Lemonade Propane and Lemonade, the sea sign said, gray air, syphoning salt water skies a blue with kites, they blew too, with plenty of sand gritty between my toes, as I strut you off and part the ways of... this killer cocktail. Propane: Caution: highly flammable, burn in small container until dry, shake, refill, nope, “Sorry, Station is Closed.” Lemonade: Hold, knead, caress, loosen the juice, squeeze until dried up. Add sugar. If soured, go back for more. “Sorry, Station is Closed.” So drink down what you got with a smile, lick it and feel the bitter residue of the sign in the store, by the shore of salt. Feel its burn. “Serve Chilled With a Flag For Warning, but No Cherry.” This drink is a killer time like you, by the sea-sign, you blew away too, with the sand, and the kites, and I strut you gone.
Cathy T. Colborn
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Jay Sizemore is a slave to the mechanism of modern materialism. He works in retail. The job, meant to see him through college, became an unlikely career but has allowed him the free time to pursue other efforts. When he thought his future could be planned, he attended Western Kentucky University, where he studied film and art and writing. There, while taking a poetry class, Dr. Tom Hunley loaned him a book by Bob Hicok. He realized then that he had no skill as a writer, but continued to scribble worthless words into his notepad. Despite his low opinion of himself, Jay Sizemore has had poetry published in several journals including Red River Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Turbulence, and, most recently, in the anthology Beyond the Dark Room. Currently he lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and three cats. He has found a day job to be the enemy of imagination, but poverty is the cruelest of muses.
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Motherly advice My mother lectured me on the importance of a nest egg: “You never know when a rain cloud is gonna burst,” she said. Most days, my nest egg is a goose egg, a savings account as useful as a phone book from Antarctica. Even an eggshell made of Benjamin’s wouldn’t repel water like nylon, and umbrellas can’t keep socks dry. Yesterday, I saw autopsy photos of Marilyn Monroe, the skin around her eyes a mask of broken blood vessels, her beauty forever framed on dorm room walls, gone, lost in a flood no one predicted. I found myself wondering what good an umbrella would be against a tidal wave.
Jay Sizemore
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Waking up a husband The mornings are indifferent to change, light swallowing the darkness with its yawn, breaking the tangibility of dreams. The cats paw at the bedroom door, alarm clocks skitter across the end table to avoid being snoozed, while a machine in the kitchen steams gargles and fills the air with the black scent of Colombian beans. There’s the comfort of legs entangled, sharing their warmth, drowsy faces pressed into pillows and the backs of necks, mussed up hair tickling the nose or the corner of the mouth, arms overlapped, fingers intertwined, cherishing these small moments together when the brain still clings to its rest, half-reality, half-fantasy, until that first trip to the bathroom breaks the spell. There’s no noticeable change, just a weight on one hand, going to sleep a lover, and waking up a husband.
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Jay Sizemore | Photo by Eleanor Leonne Bennett
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Kenneth Pobo has a chapbook slated for publication in November 2012 from Finishing Line Press called “Save My Place.” His work has appeared in several journals, including Indiana Review, Mudfish, Stickman Review, Centrifugal Eye, and elsewhere. Catch his radio show, “Obscure Oldies,” at WDNR 89.5’s website, wdnrfm.org, every Saturday from 6:00pm to 8:20pm EST.
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TRANSIENT
Doing dishes with Marc Bolan With the heat index at 117, I flop my hands in soapy water, ready to clean the casserole dish that held your luscious lasagna. You cook. I clean. The cats poop. Summer ends as it began. I hadn’t expected Marc Bolan to join me, don’t think of him doing dishes. Not in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, he never fit in to exact places, so he pops in where people still hum his songs. Short while he lived, now he’s tall, can barely fit in our kitchen. Twisting a towel, he says I wash too fast, hands back a plate for a redo. I ask about afterlife music. He says all galaxies swing. Andromeda makes unbelievable drum beats. He doesn’t miss Earth much. It’s like teriyaki—sometimes he gets a yen for it. Dishes done, he vanishes. The kitchen sparkles, sort of. I put on The Slider,
Floribunda Gwen Tree says I do everything wrong. I make fried chicken better than anyone in the family, which he won’t admit. He calls me a lousy driver, “like all women,” has five tickets, points up the wazoo. I can parallel park on a dime. He can’t even make the driveway without wounding our forsythia. Often I’d like to run him over, nail his carcass to an exit ramp. I won’t. I’m like an ant in an ice cube. I can’t move. Besides, sometimes he gives me eleven roses, says I’m the twelfth— he stole that from a Hank Williams Jr. record, but still…maybe he’ll get plunked in jail for bad driving, call me to get him out— I’ll be too busy, a floribunda scent wafting from the kitchen window, roses fully open in my grandmother’s vase.
turn it up, think that by now Bolan must be several light years away, close as breath.
Kenneth Pobo
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Marshall Warfield teaches writing at Drexel University where he also helps to edit the literary magazine Painted Bride Quarterly. He studied at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. Recently, his poems have appeared in Press 1, and are forthcoming in 2013 in the poetry textbook, Poems for the Writing (Valerie Fox and Lynn Levin, Texture Press). One can find his online musings at drexelpublishing.org. He cherishes these wonderful places with which he is associated, but he also feels at home collaborating with artists in other mediums. In 2011, he worked with visual artist Angela Colasanti to create an interactive visual art and writing exhibit entitled Resonance: Speaking for the Arts. Currently he muddies his boots writing for David Kessler on the film Pines: a cinematic exploration of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
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TRANSIENT
Leaving the Paleolithic Lay the blanket here on cool ivy gathered breathing under the shade, we are always leaving the Paleolithic. There October exists nameless, there blankets are skins earned through spilled blood, there muscled men select and sort with grunts. Buying ripeness satisfies nothing, better that fruits be gathered, by our labors under blue skies. The crumbling farm of my grandparents carries on, tired goats grazing dry grass, tired chickens pecking aimlessly at shadows. Elsewhere a factory churns ceaselessly, your head on my chest everything fibrous, stretching and fraying.
Marshall Warfield
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Jess Simms loves coffee and beer. She spends her days as a barista (serving the former) and her nights as a writer (consuming the latter). Most recently, her writing has appeared in Weave Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, and the Fiction Brigade anthology Espresso Fiction: A Collection of Flash Fiction for the Average Joe. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and roots for the Penguins.
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TRANSIENT
Moonshine My jeans are wet. The fire is out. There’s cold dew on the grass and in the fine hairs on my forearms. It feels too cold for August. With the half-dawn light the grass looks coated in frost. I had one of those solid too-real dreams last night, the kind I only have when I’m wasted. It was the three of us, me and Chris and Iggy. We floated down a river on a raft, some Huck Finn shit made of logs. Trees spun by on the bank with tufted leaves like green smoke. A man in a seed cap passed us on a Jet Ski. The murky water churned in his wake. It nipped my skin like so many teeth. He was shouting about lions. “There’s lions in the woods,” he said, “You best use utmost caution.” Those are the words he used. Utmost caution. Iggy shouted back, his voice like a backmasked record. He said we’re on the river, man. Lions in the woods ain’t no nevermind to us. But now, it’s dawn. My senses confirm it. The mesquite smell of old campfire, the ping of my sneaker against an empty beer can. Chris is passed out face down on the ground, jean jacket balled up for a pillow. His drunken snores move the matted hair covering his face. Iggy is asleep sitting up against the car. The radio’s still on from last night, some shitty modern rock song that sounds like Nickelback. Somewhere beyond the radio’s sound waves there’s an interstate full of morning commuters, Ohioans and West Virginians, all bound east for their jobs in Pittsburgh. Our plan was to stay in a real campsite just north of the city. The concert we came to see was full of big names, names like Bob Dylan and the Mars Volta, and we figured the campsite would be a hippie heaven.
Jess Simms
All “Kumbaya” around campfires and mushrooms for sale and patchouli smells covering the skunk-stink of good weed. Except none of us thought to bring a tent. Five mason jars of moonshine—Yes!—and a quarter of Iggy’s dank California weed. A bundle of firewood, six lighters, a pack of blunts, two packs of hot dogs, three kinds of mustard, 64 cans of Miller High Life, an eight ball, a beer bong, a weed bong, and a tub of Chris’s girlfriend’s homemade potato salad. No tent. Turns out, the management found that suspicious. So we drove back down the interstate, defeated, until Iggy spotted a rutted service road just west of the West Virginia border. At its end we found a cleared patch with a firepit and a little wooden shack that was empty but locked, with working outlets by the front door where we could plug in the radio and blast it as loud as we damn well pleased. Iggy said we should be cool here. He said he’d used places like this all the time when he hitched to festivals in high school, that no one cared as long as you didn’t steal shit, that we’d buy a tent tomorrow and find a real campsite. No one had suggested we stay with Iggy’s parents. They’re not the kind of parents you drop in on. More the kind whose names pop up when their kid is drunk and oversharing. The song fades into a news report. Top story: owner of a private zoo in Jefferson County found mauled in his house. Animals still on the loose—a couple wolves, a chimpanzee, a giraffe. I don’t know how you lose a giraffe in Ohio. There’s no mention of lions. The radio segues into a McDonald’s ad and it’s the lingering moonshine or the power of suggestion, but I need an Egg McMuffin. I shake Iggy. He slides sideways down the car door and wakes when his head hits the dirt.
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His eyes are a dead man’s. I say, “I want McDonalds.” Iggy sits up, turns his head, finds a half-full jar of moonshine. He lifts it with both hands. His throat bobs. He coughs. Wipes his sleeve across his lips. His sigh is full of an addict’s relief. He says, “There’s one close.” “Where are we?” “Near Mount Pleasant,” Iggy answers, “in Ohio.” He pats at his thighs and the pockets of his hoodie, finds his cigarettes, a pink Bic. His fingers shake bad so he tosses me the pack. I pull out a smoke for each of us. He takes a long drag, closes his eyes. I scramble on my knees toward the moonshine. It tastes like peaches and Noxzema. Some songbird warbles an alarm call from the trees. The morning sunlight seems to bounce off of Iggy, whose skin is the flaky white of lichen. In the post-dawn his eyes have a moldy look, green-blue, vaguely toxic. He motions for the moonshine. He asks, “Should we take Chris?” I think about lions. About a hungry wolf stalking prey through stunted roadside brush and my friend from high school, who hit a coyote with her car driving down DublinGrandville Road in the Columbus suburbs. I think, there’s always more wild around us than we realize. I say, “We‘d better.” But Chris won’t wake up, not for shaking or yelling or a solid kick to the ribs from Iggy. I rub some moonshine on his lips. Chris just twitches and talks in sleepy tongues. I look up at Iggy, his eyes like a shrug. He takes off his hoodie and tosses it on Chris’s back, fishes the car keys out of his back pocket. I walk around to the passenger door. Iggy says, “Of course you’d make me fucking drive.” His glare is halfway between pissed and in love. Perfectly off balance. Right where I like to keep him. ••• The radio plays an old Tom Petty song.
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Iggy lights another cigarette and hangs it out the window. My cellphone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out, but it’s just my dad. I can play out the conversation before it happens. He’d say, why bother asking permission for the concert when you planned to go regardless? I’d tell him I can make my own choices, and he’d tell me to be safe. To call him when I’m coming home. His tone, best described as resigned. I let it go to voicemail. The truth is this isn’t even real running away, and certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’m 19 and at this point, my dad’s place is just my summer home. The truth is I was maybe a difficult kid, and my dad’s pretty used to me disappearing. The Tom Petty song ends. The DJs take the air and says, “We’ve got an update on that zoo escape.” Iggy turns up the volume. The female DJ says, “The animals didn’t escape—the owner let them out. The animals, in return, mauled him to death.” “Can you maul something not to death?” “Point being, this guy’s a lock for a Darwin award this year.” “Sick,” Iggy mutters and says, “You hearing this?” “I heard it this morning.” The DJs shift to some comedy sketch. Iggy circles through the dial: A country station, NPR, talk radio, static-masked pop, then it’s back to the top. I stare out the window but it’s the same basic shit that’s on every interstate. Stunted oaks and pine trees, billboards for Applebees and BP and Holiday Inn. We pass a giant Big Mac with a catchy slogan, the familiar golden arches, the words Next Exit. Iggy asks, “Who was that call from?” And I know it won’t fly but I say, “What call?”
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“The one you didn’t answer.” His eyes locked in glazed attention to the road ahead, like he’s looking through the highway to some hidden, deeper meaning. But that’s Iggy. That little green spark in his eyes, the one put there by the moonshine, like it lit a fire in his brain. He taps his index finger on the steering wheel. I say, “My dad.” “You should call him back.” “Like you’re my fucking dad.” And like Iggy has reason to give anyone advice. Iggy, whose parents are so out of the picture he doesn’t even know their street address. Whose mom sends him a card every year for his birthday, but got the dates mixed up and sends it three months early. Every year. “You’re lucky,” Iggy says, “that he cares enough to call.” “I’m a fucking adult.” Except my voice is a three-year-old pre-tantrum. I roll down my window, light up another smoke. Iggy follows suit. The way he takes his next hit, it’s smug, like he won some contest. I ask, “Think they have French fries for breakfast?” “They’ve got hash browns,” he answers, changing lanes to make our exit. *** Mount Pleasant has a convenience store— closed—and a Motel Six. The rest of the town is made of brick. A red brick house with a sign out front that says Historical Society. A tan brick schoolhouse between perfectly square brick houses, like this town’s some movie set, a pristine America. Even the fucking McDonald’s is brick, painted a sterile white. It’s the kind of McDonald’s with a front patio instead of a PlayPlace. Some teenagers cling to the chain-link fence of the basketball court across the street, t-shirts slung over their shoulders like towels. They’re staring at the restaurant. Flashing red and blue lights
Jess Simms
spin over their faces. We turn into the parking lot and there’s two cop cars, a fire truck, an ambulance with its back doors open. A woman sits on the metal bumper, fingers pressed into her temples while a paramedic wraps her arm in gauze. It seems like the whole population of Mount Pleasant is clustered on the blacktop, gawking at something close to the front doors. I check the cupholders for paraphernalia while Iggy circles for a spot. “Heart attack?” Iggy suggests. “All this for a fucking heart attack?” He shrugs. “It’s a small town.” But the way he says it, like he knows it’s bullshit. We stand at the crowd’s edge beside a cop who’s questioning a McDonald’s employee in a dark blue polo, dirty blonde ponytail laced through her cap. The whole crowd’s staring at something I’m too short to see—everyone except one guy, leaning against a light-pole with his arms crossed and a toothpick in his teeth. The look passing under the brim of his seed cap is somewhere between lust and disgust. The cardboard above his head says I can spice things up! with a new Spicy Chicken Sandwich. I feel like an extra in an episode of Law and Order. The cop asks the employee, “Did the parents see the animal?” Iggy perches on his tiptoes. Whatever he sees makes his left eyebrow twitch. The employee answers, “They told her to stop. She screamed ‘Doggie!’ and ran for it.” She lifts her hat and wipes beneath the band, even though it’s still too cool out for sweating. Her face is a blanched kind of prepuking color. She asks the cop, “Where’d it come from?” The cop just shakes his head. Iggy lowers from his tiptoes, shaking his head, a semi-conscious gesture of denial. I’ve seen the look in his eyes before. It’s the crazed
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gleam that means he really needs a drink. I touch his wrist and he flinches away, looking everywhere but at me, even turning to the cop to ask, “Is the restaurant still open?” The cop’s stare is cold. He gestures to the woman with the sickly face. “This here’s the manager. You’ll have to ask her.” But there’s no need to ask. She twists her mouth and spits, like some cowgirl from the Wild West. Spits and squints disgust at Iggy. She’s got buck teeth that show when she scowls, oversized ears folded down by her hat’s band. The whole effect is of some pissed off rabbit. “There’s a Burger King down the street,” the cop says. He slides his hand down the manager’s back and leads her away from us, like we’re something dangerous. We’re the center of attention now, overexposed in the crowd’s sudden hush. The man in the seed cap shakes his head and moves away, muttering under his breath, but I can’t concentrate on him. Instead I look at his negative space, the clear view around the light pole to the patio beyond. A metal table flipped onto its side with a red umbrella bent up against the fence. Sticky brown stain of spilled pop, a trail of drops where it rolled toward the brick wall. A broken hash brown and a sprawl of parfait and a gray-brown muzzle with blood-stained teeth. Not a dog, I realize. A wolf. It’s missing one eye and half its skull. Even dead it has an air of menace. Beyond it, a little human head with pigtails. I think she was wearing pink but that could just be bloodstains because everything is pink and red, brown at the edges. Her right arm’s slanted across her body, like she tried to hold her guts in. But she failed; they’re dragged out over the concrete, red-gray intestines in a pile, one strand still stuck between the wolf’s teeth. A half-eaten Egg McMuffin leans against her entrails, like it was
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set there as a garnish. Iggy says, “You wanna do that?” “What?” “Burger King.” I turn and regard the unwelcoming eyes. The woman on the ambulance bumper is sobbing. Nearby paramedics discuss testing for rabies. I tell Iggy, “Let’s go.” At Burger King’s drive-thru speaker I shout my order over Iggy and he orders a feast’s worth of Croissan’Wiches and CiniMinis, a flimsy gray tray of large coffees. Back on the highway, we pass a minivan. A hound’s streamlined muzzle pokes through the open window, tongue lolling to catch the breeze, its black eyes thrilled to be in motion. Iggy flattens his palm against my thigh, squeezes, says, “I’m sure Chris is fine.” But I’d never said he wasn’t. *** The sun’s full in the sky by the time the Taurus ambles up beside the cold fire. Chris is fine, just like Iggy said he’d be. He’s awake with Iggy’s hoodie still draped over his shoulders. Glassy eyes track our arrival, his morning scruff a smudge along his jawline. Iggy lets out an audible whoosh of relief. When he kills the motor the radio continues outside from the radio, Duran Duran accompanied by a cacophony of birds. Iggy asks, “Anything happen while we were gone?” Chris shrugs his big shoulders. “I got high,” he says. The hoodie slides down his back. He doesn’t seem to notice. A scowl flashes in Iggy’s eyes, twists his lips. “That’s for all of us,” he says. “For the concert.” The wind pushes his hair into his open mouth. His hand rakes across his face to clear it. “Just a bit, man. Just maintenance.” Chris’s voice pitched to defense mode, because I know and Iggy knows—maintenance for
TRANSIENT
Chris is more than most men could handle. Iggy purposely avoids looking at our stash, and instead just tosses the Burger King bag to Chris, who tries to catch it but moves too slow. The bag thumps against the ground between his sneakers. Iggy says, “Breakfast.” “I wondered.” Chris gropes inside the bag, paws the sandwiches, trapped by indecision. Iggy says, “We should go.” Chris nods in vague acknowledgement. Iggy bustles around our impromptu campsite, picking up empty cigarette packs and moonshine bottles. The charred leftover hot dogs he leaves for some animal. Even when Iggy tosses all our shit in the backseat of the Taurus, Chris is still perusing his breakfast options. Iggy cuts off Duran Duran mid-sentence and in the silence there’s the crinkle of Chris’s rummaging, until the silence hits his ears and he stops too, and then there’s nothing. The distant hum of traffic from the interstate. The shrill screech of songbirds. White noise. Iggy tucks the radio beneath his arm. “We should go,” he says again. “What’s the rush?” “It’s not safe here. Family in Mount Pleasant got attacked by a wolf.” “Bullshit.” “Probably from that fucking zoo. Shit’s all over the news. You should’ve heard it.” Chris says, “I ain’t heard shit.” “Iggy’s not lying,” I say, and Chris turns his head like something dead underwater, looks at me with half-opened mud-brown eyes. I tell him, “I saw it.” Because Iggy might make this shit up, but not me. I’m a solid source. Chris stands with his hand still stuffed inside the breakfast bag and slides into the backseat. I take shotgun. Iggy gets behind the wheel without even a snarky comment, which says something
Jess Simms
about where Iggy is, mentally. He’s never too put out for snark. Chris asks, “Did you see it?” Iggy flicks his eyes toward the rear-view mirror. He puts the car in gear. I say, “The body.” We rock down the service road, swaying with the ruts and gravel like it’s a rough sea and we’re the shoddy raft braving it. Chris asks, “Was it gross?” Iggy says, “It was a kid.” It’s not the answer to his question but it makes Chris quiet. I pull out a joint once we’ve merged into traffic. We smoke it down then dig in to breakfast, and let the DJs do the talking.
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Cynthia June Long spent the first fifteen years of her career as a librarian. Now she wants to fill libraries with her own works. But for now, she continues to do both: as the Library Coordinator at the Community College of Philadelphia by day, and a student, pursuing her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College, by night. When she’s not working on her novel, she also dabbles in poetry and creative nonfiction. Occasionally, she still eats cereal for supper, but only when she’s hard at work writing.
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TRANSIENT
Second Singlehood Divorce is never easy, and the relative simplicity of the legal dissolution of my marriage—no property, no kids, no blatant animosity (except for the one time I wrote “I hate you” in soap on the bathroom mirror)—suggests the possibility of a smooth transition back into single life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, we had never even set up joint checking accounts and I had retained my so-called maiden name, details which may indicate not feminism, as I had supposed, but a certain unknown foresight. At least I wasn’t alone in my unwanted return to a single status. One friend wed a serial cheater; another, a depressive who refused to get out of bed on Christmas morning. No matter what the circumstances, the effects of divorce are surprisingly more stark and far-reaching than the written text on the long-awaited formal decree. Divorce is adolescence redux, a return to those horrible early 20’s years. I looked like an adult. I went to work, purchased groceries, paid my bills. But I was living like a teenager, eating cereal for supper and falling asleep on the couch in front of the television. And I couldn’t even afford cable. Certain matter-offact technicalities would pound my stomach unexpectedly, like filling out my employer’s emergency contact form. At thirty-five years old, I was back to listing my mother—and she lives out of state. I changed my beneficiaries quickly, mainly for spite since I had no one else. No matter what happens, I didn’t want him getting the money. So I picked my nieces instead of my sister, who told me all along I shouldn’t marry him. Even my body mocked me. Stopping oral contraceptives after several years yielded a fresh crop of acne. At the time I had a hell job, a position I
Cynthia June Long
watched destroy two of my close friends, and when the second friend quit, I was reassigned to succeed the position she loathed. I had seriously considered resigning, and from day one started looking for a new job. No doubt this occupational stress contributed to the decline of my marriage. I was admittedly miserable; I didn’t have a lot of energy for our relationship. A year later when I found a new position, I thought he’d be happy. Finally, I thought, I can put energy back into us. Instead he told me, ten minutes before our pastoral counseling appointment, that he wasn’t interested in putting energy into us. In the weeks which followed, as I started my new job, acquaintances came up to me and told me how happy I looked. I stared at them blankly. My life was falling apart. Which goes to show how horrible that other job really was. Divorce was a chocolate sundae in comparison. I couldn’t tolerate an empty apartment, so I moved into a house-share with acquaintances. I had optimistically expected grand times of dinner parties and kibbutzlike cooperation, but we ended up arguing over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, just like when I was married. The one-nighta-week bonding over fantastically-plotted cop dramas wasn’t enough to ameliorate my loneliness. Despite the popcorn and ice cream movie nights, when staring at a dark ceiling one hour before dawn, I was utterly alone. A little while earlier, I was one-half of a pair. I became less than whole, a failure. It isn’t only for the camaraderie that I pooled my resources with friends. Money was tight, even without the added responsibility of children. I know one friend who rented out the spare bedrooms of his house to pay the mortgage he could no longer afford on a solo salary. Another friend set the heat at fifty degrees all winter, turning it up only
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for guests. I prefer to be warm, so the first thing I did—even before he moved out—was to cancel the cable. The expensive gym with a hot tub at the Bellevue Hotel was another luxury I could no longer afford. I started taking walks, just as I had when my father died. I scrimped to afford the occasional massage; some weeks, that was the only human contact I had. I attended one of those modern, enlightened churches, and I insisted on a Service of Divorce. (Lutherans don’t do annulments). I needed a funeral for my marriage, a ritualized mourning, a promise of hope. Then I went to Ireland, climbing to the top of Blarney Castle so I could lean over backwards and kiss a stone reportedly pissed upon by locals. It was a better honeymoon than my first. Afraid of heights, I conquered the round tower at Kildare. Traveling rugged country roads alone, I regained some of my self-confidence. Another friend has taken up tennis, and is visiting Europe country-bycountry, one summer at a time. I returned home and finished my novel. The unexpected result of divorce is the realization that it was a detour, not a dead end. On the other side of the washed-out bridge of your life, you find yourself. It’s youplus, yourself exponentially. It’s the you you would have been if you hadn’t wasted all that time with that asshole.
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TRANSIENT
Cynthia June Long | Photo by Kimberly Zapata
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Valerie Loveland is the author of Reanimated, Somehow (Scrambler Books 2009). Her work has been featured in Best of the Web 2008 and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She enjoys running, video games, and listening to poetry. She has a BA in professional writing from Rowan University (1998), and recently passed her boards to become a licensed optician. She has recently become obsessed with open courseware and has been taking an unreasonable amount of classes online. She is coming close to meeting her goal of reading 100 books this year (not as impressive as it sounds when the books are poetry books). She lives in Action, Massachusetts.
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TRANSIENT
MRSA
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus The insurance company and the hospital fight over paying my bill. Since then, I avoid my health care and community associations. I never fondle contaminated surfaces. At the gym, I drape my towel, white as blood cells, over the weight bench: a cape to cover the puddles of infection. Who says the chivalrous are dead? I wrapped myself like a mummy last Halloween. I make my doctor wash his hands before he kisses me. The same goes for hand-holding. It’s true, I ignored the fever, shortness of breath because I had a new man in my life. The nurses took away my chocolates—it’s against hospital rules. I blame spiders. Everyone without a microscope falls for MRSA’s spider bite disguise. Who actually washes their hands for 30 seconds? They showed me photos of the magnified bacteria. How can MRSA sting and scrape me without sharp edges? Why is my skin red with fever and heat when it looks like a cluster of snowballs?
Home Repair is More Complicated if Your Ex is Named Phillip He claimed the screwdriver guy was a different Phillip. He wouldn’t marry me because I suggested we should change our name to Screwdriver. Self-centered, self-centering. Too much torque caused his cam-out. He spun in x-shaped slots: a plus-shaped face, a crosshead skull. A practical occupation. We were still friends after we broke up– I set him up with my friend Hex, my friend Torx, my friend Bristol. It didn’t work out. Now, I do odd jobs myself.
Valerie Loveland
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tr a n s i e n tp u b l i s h i n g . c o m ISSUE #1