Writers AMuse Me Publishing

AS I WANDER THROUGH THE BOOK OF LIFE

by David Smith

Wandering through the book of life

I wander through the book of life

sweet different roads each traveled on

Those ones that took my crooked way

such passion in each foot step walked

While children look to me with hope

waiting for that softened stroke

to ease their horror, tomorrow’s wake

such passion in each foot step walked

For what am I but aged oak

with knot holes blackened opaque sight

Can beauty be as roughened edge

or must it slide as perfect hide?

If either or an answer is

then answers are but different strokes

Of those that paint with callow heart

or numbers be as perfect art I wander through the book of life

sweet different roads each traveled on

Those ones that took my crooked way

such passion in each foot step walked

While children look to me with hope

waiting for that softened stroke

to ease their horror, tomorrow’s wake

such passion in each foot step walked

For what am I but aged oak

with knot holes blackened opaque sight

Can beauty be as roughened edge

or must it slide as perfect hide?

If either or an answer is

then answers are but different strokes

Of those that paint with callow heart

or numbers be as perfect art

>>>> ~*~ <<<<

Unlock the Doors

The scribe that sits, veritable splendor

nothing to do but candor’s pique

inevitable time will tell the word

faith unheard is a trial of first

Faith so slight in light

words that fill the trollop’s heart

in splendor sitting scribe’s vain fight

for moral pluralistic tripe

Dawn a new day stops the scribe

of lust he does no more describe

such folk that sit within himself

yet fail to fight yet softened bell

So ring that copper dullard’s chime

let him crack the first wave’s time

standing to the frock of life

that whimsicaled, trident, spear of death

>>>> ~*~ <<<<

The Grapes of Wrath

The grapes of wrath

Like raisins in the sun

Or a young pompadour set stiff

Atop the head of a short sleeved punk

Barstool proclivities

The snot of alcohol

Makes a man a man

And women retort

Stand and be counted

Booze will do the trick

Svengali’s eyes a prize

For those that have no time to please

Themselves they stand

As man proclaims

Write’s the fetid wrong

And women retort

Mazzeyelltough the Jew proclaimed

Through haloed eyes of truth and write

What chance does he who sits not atop

That barstool high in god’s sweet eye?

The Bible told me so!

>>>> ~*~ <<<

Life taxes the death of boys

Life taxes the death of boys.

Which boys one often asks?

They the ones who sit and starve

and wonder where and when

Now gettin’ me wrong may be some claim

to fame as known in circular squares

Truth of matter

I cannot tatter

or totter to war with aplomb

Those boys I referred to,

the one’s so few know?

They be sittin’, waitin’,

where the hell is our stew?

Still they sit, starve and wait

for history’s cumulative crew,

to serve up that stew

of patriot cream

albeit in hell

where we don’t hear their screams.

Where mamma don’t sit

No crib for a bed.

>>>> ~*~ <<<

A simple paid for whore

I have broken the chain

of earthly gain.

Have flung myself

on highways lost

Flat I lay

without a care,

please ride your car

upon my back.

For Heaven’s flack

I have no suit

of armor shinning bright

to flick away the naughty nights,

amusement dims my thoughts.

Tightened thighs around my back

girding swift black flow.

Spurious, evil, lovely thoughts

keep my heart aglow.

Sit with me, gentle dame,

my money on your back.

Cigarettes, neon lights

to stub out on your back.

As I am, I’ll lick them clean,

wounds caress my tongue.

To mend your thoughts,

cease such woes

whores may have to cry.

For what is life without the whores,

who sweet delight my loins

in simple, cherished, love for gain.

So it is I must remain

a simple, paid for, whore.

>>>> ~*~ <<<

Dave's poetry anthology, As I Wander Through The Book Of Life, will be released on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2012. This is his second anthology of 'prose-etry'. Congratulations, Dave! This is a great collection.

We are thrilled to announce our first printed edition of poetry, or in this case, Prose-etry, written by Bertrand Bone-Eye-Fours (no, we know that's not his read name ). In a voice that is as strong as it is smooth, with metaphor dripping from the pages, this collection offers an incredible perspective on life, love, war, peace, and saying goodbye.

Poser Hippie by Bobbi McPheron-Heil

Bell bottoms bloom down the side with bandannas

Pockets patched with a bird on a fretboard

Bleached freedom code on the thigh

Woolworth wire rims, fishbowl round

Just to look like John

Clear eyed in a paisley dream world

Coy smile deceiving

Gauze flows with flower power

Sixies version of rickrack trim

Beads and daisy adornments

Suede sandals and dirty toes

Tame wild thing

Playfully flying the freak flag

Passing a flower

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

“No APA for What My Mama Said.” by Brittany Fonte

The fact of the matter is without citation in a copyright-centric world: Life is not fair. But the cruel joke in our universal human handbook is that it also goes on despite this. It goes on no matter how hideous an evening of stranger sex, how turbulent a custody situation, how ugly a slipshod facial surgery, how stupid a dire decision.

It goes on despite the unkind words of a woman who loves you, and to spite the kind man who’s texting mute, who knows you better than you know yourself. He’s seen you outside a mirror; he’s known you outside of clothes and inside of twenty. He’s built that plank of blind belief—and walked. You struggle for the life ring two decades too late and drown, wrong.

Life rolls forward, forcing regal, when an internal riot rips the best of your roots, and your mother is harsh, and your ‘father’ is… not. It moves, snail time, when the light in the tunnel is flickering: train. And it skips twelve lines when the chorus is all that you know, and the audience reads lips, and your pitch pipe is priming pot, or oregano. (You wouldn’t know the difference). Yes, the spotlight is spent on moments this smart.

Life skips, only, if you realize: Confidence molds more than a strong set of shoulders; it carries more than a chest of minutia in a tattered T-back on a day without shampoo. This is the single strainer for the weight of the world; this is the way through the world when your choice has turned sour and your words, soft, have curdled: satori.

When we gain years, we hope, we add fire to our stroke. If we do not, we use two sticks. We find a match. We blow on someone else’s spark. We bend to a wind we cannot wield and worry less. Someone else’s Mom: “It does not help.”

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

I'm not by Mary Cote-Walkden

If I was a dictionary

You would find me amazing

Tough old leather skin

Pages worn within

Gilted highlights gone

Strictly down-to-business

Dusty. Musty

Magic inside

The world defined

If I was a dictionary.

If I was a Christmas tree

You would find me beautiful

Broader at the base

Prickly rough-barked face

Needles protecting

Strictly ornamental

Sappy, happy

Some nooks and folds

Surprises hid inside

If I was a Christmas tree.

But I am not a dictionary

Nor a sparkling Christmas tree

So we will have to be content

With me being simply me.

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

On Throwing a Stone from the Top of a Moral, Glass Building by Brittany Fonte

For Jackie. Always.

Step. Step. Step; step, step.

Step. Step. Step step step.

The fifth story: I’ve climbed up here, via Weight Watchers activity points and a guilty, gut-jiggling conscience, to be alone with myself and my thoughts and someone else’s ideas about who I am or must be, now that I am in my thirties, peri-menopause threatening, my best-looking years behind me, waving curtly and somewhat embarrassed from the window at Abercrombie and Fitch.

I am here, dressed in mom-jeans that swallow my hefty hips, whole, and a (black) turtleneck that denies the existence of collarbones, breasts, a waist—everything but my chin-thickening, teeth-crumbling, cute-as-can-be children. I wear hole-created underwear—the kind that covers my criss-crossing C section scars with thick “Hanes for Her” elastic—and an underwire bra that leaves a pinched inch all alone, dimpled and denied bra entry, scratching against the rough cotton of said baby puke-stained shirt.

I long to disregard my domestic identity, levied as it is with water weight, warring cleaning supplies, wallops of want beneath the broad, daylight-streaming skylights. But I lack the maternal dictionary that celebrities use, along with the stylists, make-up artists, personal trainers, chefs and connections. I sit alone, self-help book still closed on my Oprah-channeling lap, craving calories that will only couple chastely with fat cells when I sleep, that will only texture my tummy and try my temper for seventeen-year-old swimsuit models with budding bimbo breasts and boutique shoes.

Pad. Pad. Pad; pad pad.

Pad. Pad. Pad pad pad.

The fourth story: I’ve wandered down here because they’ve put out a free continental breakfast. I can walk past the donuts—they appear to be cream-filled and I don’t care for cream—but other carbs court me, crying. There are bagels with peanut butter panting a 900 number pant, there are pancakes and potatoes and French toast ménage et trios-ing. I drink coffee with whole milk and saccharine-free sugar, knowing I will regret the choice later, think about wretching, find the idea too revolting (or difficult) then decide I’ve already killed my diet and eat two pints of Ben and Jerry’s—on sale at the Safeway 2/$7. Watch “Sleepless in Seattle.” I take a new, sparkling plate every time I visit the venerable breakfast bar (various times), leaving the old, bedeviled ones behind on other people’s dirty tables, stealth.

Pit. Pit. Pat; pit pat.

Pit. Pit. Pat pit pit.

The third story has an open women’s restroom; I’ve had too much caffeinated coffee and my bladder’s been perforated by two pregnancies. I close myself into a safe stall to breathe for a moment, to muscle my self-confidence into being. But when the door is closed, I cave; I eat the M&Ms I’ve stashed in my purse for children in long lines or car rides down the short street. I can count the ways in which I hate myself, as I hear the tinkling of wee woman rain on my right, my left, and, beneath the partition, see the dripping drip drip of a poorly constructed, stainless steel sink. Heartburn stings, as do: unrealized dreams, spousal regrets of religious proportions, drying desire, hair that won’t straighten, a forehead that folds, spare fuzz above lips and eyes and ankles.

I take the elevator to the second floor, sad, unsoothed by my stash.

The second story: It’s at least a Celsius degree colder than the other three stories, and I reach for my sweater, rolled into a whimpering ball in my once-pristine, now juice-covered, purse. The tag has been torn out—the “L” a reminder of the size of my boy-like bones and one-time heart. The recirculated air smothers me, as do the salient fingerprints suffocating the floor to ceiling windows. I should be at my desk. I should be editing technical reports and returning phone calls, but my mind is too full for details. I think: I cannot lose… I enumerate: spouse, family, respect, trust, status. But I have. And bottles, mops, lullabies and chauffering cannot buy them back.

C r a w l.

In the basement, I drop my bag. I ditch my sweater; I forget how to breathe. I finger my eyelashes and slip off my beaten Target-brand tennis shoes. I find a corner where the baseboards are almost clean and huddle, my head in my thighs, my arms hugging shins of sins.

There is nothing but pebble, here.

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

HISTORIC MESMERIZATION by David Smith

large print makes a Man stand taller-

so they say

once i sat upon a hill

light not far away

bleakness waited till the dawn

as i sat once upon a hill

able to stare one does

though rude to do

while sitting upon a hill

waiting for light

not far away

husband why do you stare

while sitting upon a hill?

i do believe your eyes will fall

upon such light

not far away

why do i stare sweet fondness true?

it has to do with sitting high

upon a hill

waiting for

light not far away

what of our child

dear man upon a hill

shall he learn to stare

waiting for light

not far away?

he may stare with awesome might

while sitting well upon a hill

for if he waits as young ones do

perhaps he'll see

his light not far away

oh grand, dear man, that would be

for our child not far away

while sitting upon a hill

staring down

his eyes to fall

upon his light

not far away

if dear heart

such quests to prove

while sitting upon a hill

to wait in divine

to stare ways down

on light so bleak

not far away

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

Needle Poetry by Bobbi McPheron-Heil

To the modern soul, less is more

To old ones, like mine, it's unfinished

It isn't just a bunch of curviness,

But a canvas whose palette

Grows from threads through simplest hands

Into creations of awe

Never just the finished product

But the twisted, knotted path

It began with a thought

A first word with a shuttle

Developing patterns rhythmed and rhymed

The pulse of the creator

In arpeggios and staccato stitchery

Tiny picot among bold waves

And loop de loops

The resolution of a harrowing ride

A luscious tedium, calming the soul

While igniting the senses

Tossed casually on a table to beautify a bauble

Backstage life, its secret beauty

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

Yoo Hoo! Mr. Drill Instructor! By AmandaLyn Donogal

‘Sir, yes Sir! Bob waved a grin

“I cannot wait, oh please begin”

My booties fit so nice and tight

The camp, immaculate, clean and bright

A marvelous job I do declare

I think you even clean the air!”

Bob breathed in deep, his chest out-thrust

Saw a glimmer of hope through Gunny’s crust.

‘Oh Sir, here Sir!’ Biff smiled wide

“Are you sure that we can’t go inside?

That nice man in there just oozed out charms

In fact a lot; he called ‘short arms’!

I’d like to get to know him better.

You know, I think a nice pink sweater

Would set this green off, give pizzazz

Do these splotchy pants enlarge my ass?”

Breaking formation, Bob glared at Biff

For the first time ever he felt the riff

Between him and his longtime sweet

With squinty eyes he slapped the seat

Of Gunny Bert, damned so hot

Muscles rippling, ass cheeks taut

“I think the green a perfect tone;

It suits my eyes, right to my bone.’

With tilted chin and winking lash

He licked his lips. ‘Oh! Let’s play MASH

Doctor, nurse, it would be fun

Oh, are you happy to see me, or wearing a gun?”

The DI looked at them and sighed

“For my country, I would have died

Past bullets, bombs, though minefields too

A Marine does whatever job’s to do

But in each life them comes a time

Perhaps a subtle hint sublime

So to you all, I gladly shout

They don’t pay me enough. Recruits, Fall Out!”

Saluted, executed a prim ‘bout-face.

“Oh Bob, my sweet, our Gunny’s amiss.”

“I know that Biff, now give us a kiss.”

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

A Writer Walks into a Bar…by Mary Walkden

I needed a drink… not some froo-froo fruity umbrella-type drink. I’m talking Livet, four fingers, straight up. The door to the pub was heavy, squeaked when I tugged on the cool wrought-iron handle.

The place was dark, dingy, reeked of urine and beer. Dust sparkles danced in a meager beam of sunlight that managed to fight its way through the filthy window. Yup, this was the right place.

I dropped to a stool at the corner of the bar, tucked my purse on my lap and ordered. The bartender was one big, scruffy dude. He had stubble on his chin and tiny black beady eyes that reminded me of that fecking mouse I found in the pantry a few months back. I hate mice. His nose twitched as he poured the Livet.

I felt his eyes on me as I swirled the amber gold in the cheap highball glass. It was probably stolen out of the bathroom of some no-tell motel. No matter. The alcohol would kill whatever might be living in there still. I picked up the drink and slammed it back, set it down on the smooth wood surface and poked at it with my finger. The bartender complied with a refill.

I had the worst best job in the world. Or perhaps that was the best worst job? For years I took care of the ungrateful brats. I gave up my career, my freedom, my identity for the purpose of raising my boys. I asked for so little in return. Could it really be that hard? Was I asking so much of them now to just have some time to write?

My toes dabbled into a sea of self-pity. It would be only seconds until I had shed my clothes and cannonballed right into the thick of it. Perhaps another shot of Livet would help me to shed some inhibitions too. If only shedding the weight was also so easy. How the hell much longer could I claim that it was all just maternity weight? There had to be a Statute of Limitations on that excuse; it was just so damned handy.

There was a shout at the end of the bar, a fist slamming down, glasses rattling and peanuts flying. What the hell? How dare someone interrupt my funk? I noticed the three men in the corner when I walked in, paid no real attention to any of them. Now they were becoming annoying.

“Hey! Keep it down, for God’s sake!”

I surprised myself. I had never spoken like that to anyone, let alone a bunch of strangers in the dirty disgusting little bar located somewhere just to the right of the asshole of the earth. I hoped no one heard me. I was outta luck… again.

The three men moved closer, one sitting on either side of me, the third standing behind. I could smell the alcoholic cocktail of their combined breath on my neck. I will admit it. I was scared shitless. There was only one thing to do. "Chuck," the one addressed the bartender, "Put down the damned pen for a minute and rack us up some more drinks here." The bartender complied.

“Ach, ‘tis a damsel in distress. A lass a bit down on her luck, maybe? Lost a love match, maybe? Don’t cry, lass.” The man to my right dug into his pocket, pulled out a dirty brown hanky that he passed to me.

“Don’t mind us.” The second man had a pinched face, Pall Mall hanging from his bottom lip. “Don’t mind us. John, Brendan and me… We do this all the time… the arguing I mean. Chuck stays out of it, keeps to behind the bar, scratching out his lines all the time. So it goes.”

Wait a minute. I looked again at the two, then slammed back another Levit. Charles was ready with the bottle, this time filling all four glasses.

I looked again at the men, shrugged and blurted out “I’m such a terrible mother!” I was sobbing. What the hell was happening to me?

The third spoke. “The fact that you recognize it probably means that it is not really the case.” He had a gentle face, a white beard, soft eyes.

“Would it be the lads that have such a hellfire awful ma?” It was the first one again, the one with the face of a leprechaun. I nodded.

“Boys are a challenge. I know. I was one once.” Ashes fell from the tip of the smoke. “I must have been a torture to mine. I studied chemistry, anthropology… never got a diploma in any of it.”

“Gwan now, Kurt. Be fair to yerself. That damned dustup in Germany got in yer way just a bit now, didn’t it?”

Kurt laughed. “Yeah, a bit. I can just imagine how annoyed my mother must have been. She was beside herself with worry because of me. She let me hear about that.” He winked at me.

“Well, that’s all fine and good, but my mother was a teacher. She was thrilled when I went to Stanford… to bad I didn’t finish what I started there.”

The cigarette was jabbed into an ashtray, another lit immediately. “She was a lover of books and words, though, John. She was bursting her buttons in the end. Lenny and George? The Hamiltons and Trasks? A Pulitzer and the Nobel? She didn’t give a shit about a piece of paper from a university. She was bursting her buttons. All our moms did in the end.”

“Ah, to be true. So, lass, what crime is it ye be guilty of with yer wee ones?”

All three stared at me, urged me on, hung on my words. “I… I… I have tried and tried, but I just can’t teach them to drive. They just don’t get it.” A look passed between the three of them, but no one said anything. “I have threatened, I have bribed, I have cried… even stupid people get drivers licenses, and my boys are not stupid, so what’s the problem? I don’t understand it. He’s doing his test right now. I know he isn’t going to pass. He’s failed three times already, and he just seems to get worse… more wound up and nervous. It probably doesn’t help the way I sit and scream and slam my foot on the floor of the passenger seat, looking for the fecking brake pedal.”

Kurt chuckled, then took a long drag on his smoke, ending in a coughing spasm that needed another shot of Livet to cure. The one at my shoulder turned away, but in the bar mirror I could see his shoulders shaking as he tried to contain his laughing.

“Tha’s it? Tha’s why yer a bad ma?”

I nodded.

“Well, this is an easy fix, isn’t it.” Kurt had found his voice again. He looked to his two partners who both nodded. “We’ll share our little secret with you, but you can’t tell anyone.”

“Like anyone would be daft enough to believe her anyways.” John rested his hand on my shoulder and chuckled.

Kurt signaled to the bartender, who in turn produced a bottle from below the counter. He passed it to me, then went to the other end of the bar.

“Rub it.” Kurt told me. I stared, unsure of what he was saying. “Rub the bottle. Go on. It won’t hurt ya.”

These guys were nucking futs, but what who the hell was I to talk? I downed my shot, moved the bottle to right in front of me and started to run my hands over the cool surface. The Irish one on my right started to sigh as he watched. The little pervert. I was about to whack him on the head with the bottle when a cloud of smoke appeared. It smelled like Pall Mall. Maybe it was.

As I waved the cloud away, a diminutive green man stood on the bar. He had gnarly toes, pointy ears and googly eyes… well, one eye. The other was covered with a patch, the perfect complement to his pirate hat and cape.

“Called me, you did?”

His ears wiggled when he talked. Kurt poured a fresh shot and handed it to the creature.

“We need a little favor.”

“Used your favor up, you did. And you, Behan,…” he pointed to the Irishman, “…and you as well, John.” He pointed to the grandpa at my shoulder, then turned to the bartender "Even Bukowski there, used up his wish, he did."

“Ah, yes, but she hasn’t. Her kid needs to pass his driving test. Give her a bit of a break. Help her out.”

“Ask it, she must.”

I had no idea what was going on. My head was spinning. The jukebox was doing a whaa-whaa noise in the corner. “Yeah… what he said. The kid… driving.”

“As you wish. Done, it is.”

Pfffft. Yeah, right. Like this hallucination was going to help at all. I tried to stand up, wobbled a bit. I needed to get out of there. The kid would be done his test in about twenty minutes and I needed some air before I went to pick him up and drive home.

“Well, that was fun, boys. I’ll be back in two weeks… when he is trying the test again. And I still have one kid to go after that. I could become a regular here.”

They laughed, toasted me, and I headed towards the door. And then it hit me. “Wait a minute.” I turned back to them. “What the heck were you fighting about? You said that you always have arguments. What’s that about?”

Sheepish looks passed between them. “Split infinitives. We were arguing about split infinitives.” Kurt shrugged.

“Last time, it was about info dumps.” The gentle grandpa added.

“An afore that, t’was the purple prose.” The Irishman winked and bowed. “See? We all sweat the little things. Just go with yer guts, Lass. The guts are never wrong, if ye learn to listen to them.”

Kurt smiled. “That, and a little help from Yoda genie, and you will be just fine.”

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

Meadow Gump by AmandaLyn Donogal

“My name’s Meadow… Meadow Gump.”

The lady on the bench beside me nodded, then turned quickly away.

“You like my flowers?”

She gave me a quick smile.

“My mama always tells me that life is bunch of flowers.”

She frowned at me.

I pulled one from the bunch. “See this pansy? It’s always smiling, always happy. When you are a pansy, you have to be happy.” I dropped the flower onto her lap.

“Ah… very nice.” She didn’t say it like she meant it.

Another lady was standing behind us now.

I pulled out another one. “This one, this yellow daffydill.. they are sunshine. Even on a rainy day, the daffydill is happy.” I grabbed another. “But this one, this Iris… she is very straight and sturdy and proper. I think this one is a bit of a tight-ass flower.” I hated the damned iris. It smelled like dog piss. I threw it onto the pavement. “And this? It’s stink weed, because there is always someone that butts their way in where they aren’t wanted, and then they stink up the whole place.” I leaned over and dropped the ugly thing into the garbage.

There were more people around, all watching me. I pulled out another viney flower. “This one? Its periwinkle. Some people love the color… but this is bad stuff. It gets into everything, winds around and chokes out the other flowers.” I yanked it from the rest of the bunch, beat it against the edge of the bench and then dropped it where my heel could grind it into mush.

“This is a lily. They drop that pollen crap all over everything. One time, the orange dust got into my new green dress with the white polka-dots and ruined it. I hate lilies!” I threw it over my shoulder. “Oh, and this one… a hydrangea… like a great big fat woman who takes over the whole room. There is no room for anyone else in the arrangement once she is in there. And this one?”

I was standing now, waving what was rest of my arrangement at the people standing around. “This one is a daisy. This is the one that people push up. It is the thing that is left of you when you are dead. It’s like the bad news flower.” I knew my voice was getting louder. “And here… lavender. I hate lavender because it reminds me of my grandmother and she always used to pinch my cheeks till they hurt. This is the old woman flower! Who the hell wants to be an old woman flower and smell like this?”

The people were shifting around, looking at the flowers scattered all over the ground, the bench, some still laying untouched on the laps of women sitting there on the bench. No one looked at me, though. They all were looking down the street, across the road, at their shoes. They knew the power of the flowers!

“This one! The worst of the bunch! It’s a rose, the politician of the flower world. It looks wonderful, all perfect and charming, smells great, but it is nothing more than a long stem of pricks just waiting to bite at you first chance they get. God forbid you be the balloon that is delivered with this flower, because they will pop you and leave you all limp and lifeless, stealing the air from inside you!”

The bus pulled up, farted as the door opened, and the people rushed to get on board. I gathered up my flowers, straightened them out, and smiled at the woman who walked up, looked at the leaving bus with a sigh and then sat down.

“Hi, my name is Meadow… Meadow Gump.”

~~~~~~* ~~~~~~

Handsome Dave’s Des Moines Dive Shop

Our hero steps in, a wink, a grin,

A shake to seal the deal

Location is prime, so is the time

The result will have great curb appeal.

Draped in velvet and silk, bar stocked with the milk

Of mothers whose sons like their booze

Served in glasses fine, side of eggs kept in brine

They can sit, sip, perhaps even snooze.

But more to the point, the main thrust of the joint

More than smoke and an off-color joke

Are the rooms just upstairs, promiscuous lairs,

Never spoke of, the pinch and the poke.

But laws that forbid meant the purpose be hid

From the towers of municipal powers

So something unique, to cause men-folk to peek

And bring flowers to concubine bowers.

But Dave had a plan, a resourceful man

For his inn full intended for sin

With a tank and a mask, he set to the task

Props within, he was destined to win.

The sign set out, in letters bold, stout,

Handsome Dave, a place all men will crave

It’s a Dive Shop, you see, though no water there be

It’s the rave cause yer girl makes the wave.

It still sits there today, oh where? I do pray

I beseech you the name of the street

The one place divined, the shop you will find

At the corner….

Down two blocks

Where Beaver and Johnston meet.

PROSE

Maybe we will wet a line on Sunday by David Smith

"How ya doin' Dave? We gonna wet a line on Sunday? Hey brother what's up? Somethin' botherin' ya?"

"Just read Reverend Dillinger's last Sunday Sermon, kinda got me to thinkin' Bob, I wonder why folks hate the truth so much?"

"What, the fucking Reverend is givin' up the damned ghost? Tellin' the damned truth? Shit I doubt that Dave, he is prolly just shittin' us again. He enjoys a good shittin' on occasion that bastardo does. Forget it, sit down, let's have a shot or two. A shot or two always makes ya feel a bit better Dave. Hang on be right back."

"Thanks Bob, damn as usual that is good. So, I am reading this damned sermon. You know brother I do not let many folks inside. We have been inside together so it is a bit different for us. Gotta tell ya his words pissed me off, then, then you know what the hell happened?"

"Not unless you tell me brother, cheers."

"It fucking pissed me off because it, it, damn this is good shit! Anyway I got pissed off, then I got sad again. I thought I was over that shit Bob, guess I am not."

"So Dave, you are gonna let that son of a bitch take that much power over you? Not like you brother, no sir!"

"Hell Bob it is not the Reverend. Shit that man is so full of bull-shyte his eyes are brown, but, and I suppose there is always a damned but Bob, this time he was telling the damned truth and it moved me because it never left me and it damned well is giving me a touch of the others. Pour me another, let's go out on the damned porch I need some fresh sea air."

"Sure Dave. Go on out and I'll bring us a couple of chasers as well. Heard from Chuck lately? Never mind, you can tell me when I get the hooch, hang on brother."

"How many times have we seen that old man sun Bob? I wonder if it, well, if it sees us? Ever thought that the sun might really be that chariot of fire Bob, being led by some gallant warrior? Look there's that damn hawk again! That buzzard of a damn bird has been flying around the back of this place and out into that chariot for a few days now. Maybe it's a sign Bob."

"Dunno Dave, don't see no sign trailin' from it. I wonder if a hawk could trail a sign? Reckon you need a fuckin' bi-plane to trail a good sign. Nope, even a hawk can't trail no sign from it's ass. Well I suppose it depends on the size of the sign right Dave? I mean if it aint too big it might be able to brother. Whadda ya think Dave?"

"Don't know Bob, but I do see your point. You think the sun can see Bob?"

"Hell Dave I can hardly see myself, but if you remember and you do, we saw the sun once and it beat the shit out of us. Yah, I reckon the sun can see because that day it picked us out special to blast the shit out of us. Least it didn't fuckin' kill us Dave, least that brother."

"You got a point Bob, but I think it was just one of those things and the sun really cannot see. I betcha it cannot see, then again?"

"Nah Dave it is a ball of fire. No chariot, no warrior in it, like you say chasin' across the heaven. Nope just a hot ball of fire Dave."

"Maybe that is a good thing Bob. It would be sad to think it had picked us out right brother?"

"Yah I suppose Dave. So what about the sermon from that lyin' bastardo Flakewaiter?"

"Here I got a copy in my jacket, hang on, here, read it."

"Shit that is quite a sermon and this time the mother fucker was not lyin'! You need another beer Dave? Hang on, I'll get us a couple more."

"Thanks Bob and yah, I reckon we will wet a line come Sunday."

Walmart by Maribeth Emmert

The sun was raising high over the Wal-Mart on Wanamaker as my daughter, Jessica, and I browsed the Subway menu. She chose the chicken teriyaki and I got a meatball sub. We ate them quietly while sharing a soda.

I was a bit concerned about Jessica. Usually she talked non-stop like eleven year olds do. She hadn’t said more than a few words since we left home. I watched her pick the lettuce spilled onto her napkin and nibble on it. Our eyes met. She let out a shy laugh and handed me a napkin.

“Sauce, right there,” she poked my face.

I wiped off my cheeks and then she sat up very seriously.

“Daddy,” she paused. “Dad, I think um...maybe I should start wearing bras.”

I could feel myself break out into a sweat. I knew this would happen, but so soon? I thought this was more of a high school thing but Jess is just a fifth grader ! I’m all for having an extra layer between her and the middle school boys she’d be facing next year but I wish I had more time to Google this!

I felt like grounding her for springing this on me. I couldn’t say no. I didn’t know what to say! We just came here for batteries and milk!

Jessica sat there waiting for an answer. I took a bit of my sandwich to buy me some time. I knew there was no reason not to say yes but I just couldn’t. Jessica crossed her arms. Why did she have to be so mean? I had to say something.

“Sure sweetie,” I said as casually as I could.

So we threw away our trash and headed toward the underwear section. I just followed her, let her take the lead. We winded our way through clothing racks and customers. Why couldn’t I be like them? Buying cereal, cake mix, and light bulbs without a care in the world?

So there we were. Looking at bras. Hundreds of styles and colors and sizes. I could tell this was going to take awhile.

“Which one do you want?”

Jessica slowly walked up and down the aisle, occasionally stopping, picking up a large bra, giggling, and putting it back. Finally she called me over to the far end of the aisle. “These are the ones Lacy has,” she said. She pointed to a pack of three colorful training bras.

“Okay…” I picked them up and handed them to her.

“No, I don’t want these! I can’t have the same ones as Lacy! That could cause confusion!” She shoved the package into my hands.

Just as I was putting the bras back on the rack, I heard a familiar pair of voices calling my name.

“Richard!” My secretary, Hannah and her husband, Mark, were speed-walking toward Jessica and me as if they were afraid we’d try to run away. I wish I could run away.

“Oh Richy, is this little Jess? Oh look at you, are you trying on bras?” Hannah patted poor Jessica’s face with her long fingers. Jessica was horrified.

“Hey there, Rich!” Mark thumped me on the back so hard my glasses fell off. I bent down to get them and on my way up I knocked down three cheetah print bras.

I bent down again to pick the bras up. This time, before I was halfway up, my jacket was pulled over my head and I couldn’t stand straight up. For some reason, I thought it was Mark, I don’t know why but I just shouted, “Damn it, Mark!”

I stood up as fast as I could with all my strength. Whatever was holding me back released me, it was raining bras.

Mark and Hannah burst out laughing. Mark came up behind me and unhooked a bra that was hanging from the tag on the collar of my jacket. That explained why I couldn’t stand up. Bras covered the aisle. I had almost knocked the entire rack over. I covered my face with my hands. Jessica screamed and ran off, Hannah trotted after her, red heels clicking away.

Mark was still laughing. He put his hand on my shoulder and sighed. We both just stared at the colorful puddles of bras.

“Funny,” Mark said, “I just had déjà vu.”

an excercise in nothing by Nick DaSein

time, the memorial which eclipses eternity.

to stand on the precipice one must neverthless be prepared to indulge in at least a slight glimpse over the edge, into the abyss. do you not agree?

Algernon Permutational Quip wandered about. he finally found himself at the edge of his destination whereupon he quizzed the gouge in his memory.

"oh dear heart of my mind have you come well equipped to answer me? have you found such forgiveness as to mention me in your prayers? i find myself here, my toes touching the emptiness of my life, how can you help, would you please help?" Algernon had his toes over the edge. they stared down into the abyss and quivered in deathly fright.

"i am the voice which has lead you to me dear friend. have you washed your heart of hatred? are you ready to find the ending of the beginning?"

"the what? i understand no words which find place in my ear, do you intend for me not to understand? oh, by the way, you have a sweet voice indeed." algae as he was known to all that had been of him, with him, to him, tilted his head towards the empty almost losing his balance then not.

"you sway to and fro Algae, do you desire to be in your end or are you going to make war with it now that you are so very close?"

"hey bud! listen can you either or not? i have found myself at the end of the beginning. i care not to wait longer, can you either begin or end? there are quite a few following and if you do not mind we have to get on with it."

Algae turned to the voice of his past. "why do you question me sir? must i decide now? cannot i wait as most have done, at least put it off a bit?"

there was a rather large person behind him with many coming up behind. they appeared to Algae as locusts, a great teaming black hord of insects which confused him to no end indeed.

"they are coming. you can see they are. come on get on with it or move aside." the large person with two faces pushed up behind him, pressed, yet Algae resisted and did not fall.

"you have two faces. how can i move to the side when you have two faces. no, no, this will not do. i cannot be pushed to the side when i am at the end of my beginning by a person with two faces.

Algae stepped to the side and the person with two faces walked into the nothing that waited but did not speak.

"why did I move? i did not intend to move, yet, i did. how very strange." Algae quizzed himself as at the beginning but did not understand the answer as so few before had understood, had moved to the side, had allowed the persons with two faces to pass them up into the joy of nothing abyss of friendly persuasion.

"the abyss of friendly persuasion. what a fine and gentle name. perhaps i should not have stepped to the side. perhaps indeed i should have tucked my toes into my heart, simply walked forward, then, then i would not be standing to the side as the locust plague draws near

So You’re Jesus by Richard Pannbacker

Me: So you’re Jesus. Wow!

Jesus: Jesus Kohen, if you please. With a “K”. I was a priest after all.

Me: Oh, I didn’t know. Were you born a Kohen?

Jesus: Joe and Mary didn’t have last names - skilled labor you know. But all that training with those old Essenes – straight A’s too. I should be a rabbi at least!

Me: You don’t look like your pictures.

Jesus: You think we had cameras? Kodaks or Leicas maybe? We couldn’t even draw much. My cousin Maury could paint a little, but the rest of us couldn’t draw flies.

Me: Why isn’t your full name in the Bible?

Jesus: My agent. He said one-word names were going to be big, like Madonna (not the original one) or Cher. Besides, the other guys in my business – Buddha, Confucius – just one name.

Me: What about Jesus Christ?

Jesus: Paul’s idea. Peter, Paul and Mary – they cooked up quite a little church, am I right?

Me: But you’re Jewish.

Jesus: What?” I look Irish? In those days anybody who was anybody was Jewish. And I was their King! How about that!

Me: But after the Roman’s crowned you they crucified you.

Jesus: We got a double – central casting. Such a schlimazel!

Me: Did many people know? About the double I mean.

Jesus: We kept a lid on it so Judas wouldn’t spill the beans. That putz!

Me: So, about the miracles…

Jesus: Special effects they added later. The loaves and fishes we had catered. But I told a great story!

Me: Yes you did. Did a lot of people follow you?

Jesus: A lot? You have no idea. DeMille was a piker! That entrance into Jerusalem was big. Really big.

Me: But then they arrested you, right?

Jesus: Judas – that schmuck! Thirty lousy pieces of silver. I felt marked down.

Me: And they tortured you.

Jesus: It got a little rough; nothing I couldn’t handle. Gibson overdid it a little.

Me: So now you’re in Heaven.

Jesus: You bet! At the right hand of the big guy.

Me: And you said we’d get there too.

Jesus: Right. “Many mansions.” Well, not so many any more. A lot of people have moved in. I could show you some very nice condos, though.

Me: Any beachfront?

Jesus: Sorry. They tried doing an ocean way back, but the sealer didn’t hold. So they got Noah.

Me: I guess it’s pretty nice there.

Jesus: Palm Beach, eat your heart out! The golf alone is worth the trip.

Me: And you’re the Son of God?

Jesus: We all are. But I did get special billing. Fulfilling prophesies will do that for you.

Me: And you founded one of the world’s great religions.

Jesus: Peter did a lot of the legwork, and Paul, as I mentioned.

Me: What do you think of that religion now?

Jesus: Well, you start something up – you never know.

Passing On by Elwood Jake

Ellie asked her Papa what was beautiful.

“Oh, it’s hard to say dear, sometimes it’s just the turning around in a dark place and seeing the smile of a stranger, something that you don’t expect and are happy and surprised to see!”

“Like when you’re scared, huh, or lonely?”

“Yes, that’s beautiful I think. I know the sunsets and sunrises and the deep blue of travel book seas, sure they are beautiful; after all Ellie, God made them up for us didn’t he, and so they have to be. Beautiful I mean!”

Ellie’s Papa sat and talked to his daughter. If you were to walk into the room where they were conversing, you would probably have to say something like, now that’s a beautiful scene. A Papa with his daughter sitting before a glowing fire, talking about the uncertainty of beauty, you’d have to think to yourself, no, that is no more, it can’t be. Not possible now. Maybe before, but certainly not now! If you stood and watched and listened maybe you could trick yourself into hearing what you really wanted to hear.

“Ellie dear heart,” Papa tickled his little girl under the chin, then ran his hairy adult loving hand up the outside of her cheek and nestled his fingers in the beauty of her clean, full child’s hair. He lightly scratched the top of her head.

“That feel good Ellie?”

“Oh yes Papa, it does! Don’t stop, okay? It feels really good, too good!” The Papa continued giving his little girl what she wanted.

“That’s kind a beautiful isn’t it? S’pose scratchin’ the head of somebody you love and making them feel really good and cared for, that’s beautiful, isn’t it sweetheart?”

“Oh yes Papa, it is, yes, this is really beautiful, ‘cause it feels so good, so really good!”

The little girl stared up into the face of her Papa. It glowed, ruddy against the flames of the fire. His eyes sparkled as though given a second chance to hold, to be forgiven, and to carry on forever the dreams of so many others. Ellie didn’t understand her Papa’s face, but she knew that it too was beautiful.

“Papa, why is your face so beautiful?”

Papa started, just a little bit, the question surprising him, pulling his thoughts away from his daughter and the crackling fire and their beauty.

“Is it Ellie? That’s awfully nice of you, sweetheart. I mean, that you find my face beautiful.”

“Oh Papa, I do, I do. You and Mama have the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen, but why are they beautiful Papa, why?”

“Gosh Ellie, I never thought about that. I know that Mama’s face was beautiful, that’s for sure. You and Mama, so beautiful, but me, don’t know about me baby?”

“C’mon Papa, you have the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. Why?”

“Well sweetheart, I s’pose it’s a question of the beholder, isn’t it?”

“What is the beholder, Papa?”

“You Ellie, you. Beholder that means the person looking at and beholding.” The Papa chuckled lightly.

“I think it comes from an awfully old language Ellie. The word beholder I mean.”

“You think so Papa?”

The Papa held his sweetheart a little tighter, comfy-tight. That was also beautiful. He rested the underside of his face on the top of her beautiful hair.

That too was beautiful.

“First of all baby, in this ancient language of our forefathers I believe that be, that is the first part of the word beholder, meant to take the person or object to be scrutinized and---!”

Ellie pulled away from her Papa, just a little bit and looked up into his face.

“Scrutinized means to examine and to judge, sweetheart, it’s not part of the old language.”

“Okay Papa!” Ellie nestled back into the beauty of her Papa.

“Like I was saying, this word beholder comes from the ancient language. And be means to hold the person or object in your hands, hold it, feel it, and see it. That’s what the be part of the word means.”

“So does the Holder part of the word, Papa, does that mean the looker?” Ellie giggled, and tried to get even closer to her Papa.

“Well, yes, it kind a means that Ellie, but it means something even a little more!”

“What’s that Papa?”

“Ellie, in the old language of our fathers, the Holder was a special person a person picked out by God and blessed with the gift of Holden. The Holders, as they were called way back then, they didn’t ever ask themselves what was beautiful, they knew it ‘cause God had chosen them to know and not to have to ask the question.”

“I think it’s kind a sad Papa!”

“What baby?”

“That God didn’t give everybody the gift of Holden. Not very nice of him, was it?”

“It’s a good point that your makin’ there baby, but I don’t have the answer. No, I can’t answer for God sweetheart, just the way it was and back then nobody did much questioning. It was all just taken for a matter of fact that some could see the beauty and some not, but God, in his great wisdom had given some, but not all, the gift, and the some who were the Holders could at least describe the beauty to those who were not.”

“I don’t like that part Papa I don’t think that is beautiful at all!”

“Do you want me to stop telling the story of the Holders baby? I will if it hurts.”

“It doesn’t hurt Papa, but it is unfair!” Ellie stiffened under her Papa’s touch and it was less beautiful.

“Well Ellie, want me to go on?”

“I s’pose so,” the daughter shrumpfed together and shut here eyes tight.

“It’s not so bad, really, sweetheart. After all, you are a Holder!”

“Me Papa, I am a Holder?”

“Sure are baby, and one of the descendants, that means you’re a child of our ancestors, Ellie, old great grand relatives who were Holders, understand?”

“Yes Papa!” Ellie snuggled closer, back to where it was more beautiful.

“The Holders are the sweet people, the innocent and loving ones.”

“Papa, if I am a Holder, how come I have to ask you what is beautiful? Shouldn’t I know Papa? Shouldn’t I?”

“You do, sweetheart, you do, but the in between has confused you, has messed up your ability to be a Holder.”

“The in between, Papa?”

“Yes, the thousands of years since the first Holders passed by. It is like this Ellie. Long long ago the Holders, as I said, were the folks who could automatically see beauty. They had a direct connection to God, and you and I know that God is beauty, that we know for sure, don’t we Ellie?”

“That’s what they tell us Papa.”

“Ellie baby, you know when folks talk about their blood kin, don’t you? You can remember Uncle Robards Langley talking about the fact that one never never lets blood kin down, is always there to help our family, our own blood? You remember Uncle Robards saying that?”

“Yes Papa, I do.”

“Then you know that families however great or small, share their blood with each other, right?”

“Yes Papa, I undertand.”

“Well, Ellie, you know then that there is good blood and bad blood and that it is in all of us. Over the thousands of years, the Holders, ‘cause they were closer to God then the others and more perfect, pitied the lesser ones and gave of their own blood so that everyone might see the beauty. Now that was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not sure Papa!”

“Ellie, you are so beautiful and so smart. After the thousands of years, the blood did get a little thinned out, had too many of the non seeing folk mixed in with it. We are all a part of, all folks from the first mixing, that’s why you question and ask and are not sure of what is beautiful and what is not, it is cause of the thinning and the mixing, that is the reason and there is nothing we can do about it, I’m sorry!”

“Don’t be sorry Papa, we still got the good in us don’t we?”

“Yes Ellie, we do. That’s why we are still looking for the things that are staring us back in our faces and why we sometimes don’t recognize them.”

“So the folks who weren’t Holders, they were bad folks, Papa, so part of us is from bad folk?”

“No baby, some of us is from different folk, and that is the beauty of the whole thing!”

“You mean, Papa, that different is also beautiful? I don’t think I like that!”

“Not beautiful, Ellie, but it can be, like sometimes we are, and sometimes not. Think about when we do different things. What about when you hurt a friend or twist the tail of our cat, or swat a living insect to death. What about that?”

“That’s not different, Papa, that’s bad!”

“Do you like it sometimes when you do it, baby, just remember, does it make you feel good, just a little bit good? Does the feeling bad about it later, after you’ve done it, does that make you feel good?”

“No Papa, after, it just makes me feel bad!”

“All the time Ellie, all the time?” Papa leaned to his daughter and kissed her on the forehead.

“Most of the time Papa, but not all the time!”

“Bad, baby, but not different?”

“No, Papa, different is day and night, white and black, blue and red, that’s different Papa, but it isn’t bad! I do the bad things Papa, like twist Frieda’s tail, or when I say to Rebecca that I got a better doll then she has, just ‘cause hers is really better, that’s bad, Papa, but not different!”

“So you think about it all sometimes do you my love? Think about the times you feel bad and promise yourself not to ever ever do the bad things again? Do you think about that Ellie?”

“Yes Papa, I do, and it makes me scared, makes me feel bad inside! It’s not beautiful, Papa, is it?”

“Yes it is baby, yes it is. It is the part of you that is the Holder!” Ellie tightened her bear hug on her Papa.

“You gonna finish telling me the story Papa?”

“Do you remember when Billy got his new air-rifle for Christmas, do you remember that?”

“Yes, Papa, I remember.” Ellie sank into her Papa, the remembrance hurt.

“Do you remember the killing?”

“Do we have to talk about this Papa? I want to talk about the Holders and beautiful things, alright, please?”

“We are doing that honey, shall we stop? It’s up to you!” Ellie felt her Papa, felt his fingers stroke her hair, felt his beauty. Her Holder asked him to continue.

“You came to me with the Robin in your hand. You had picked the bird up off of the ground and it had fluttered its last death struggle in the palm of your hand, it bled and stained you, do you remember?”

“Yes!” Tears ran down her cheeks and her Papa’s checked, red cotton shirt blotted them up.

“I didn’t mean to, Papa, really you know I didn’t!”

“It’s alright sweetheart, it’s alright, but you did kill it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did!”

“Do you know why, baby, do you know why?”

“Cause of Billy, that bad boy, he did it, he made me. I didn’t want to Papa, I love birds, you know that, especially Robins!”

“But baby, he made you want his gun, didn’t he? He made you want to show him that you could and that you were with him and the same as he, right?”

“Yes Papa, I s’pose so!”

“What did you do then?”

“I took the rifle and killed the Robin!”

“Did you want to?”

“No, I didn’t!” Ellie sat up and stared into the fire. The child felt itself, hugged itself.

“Yes I did!” Once again she fell back into her Papa and wept into him. He reassured her, talked to her of her, stroked and loved her.

“Should the children of the Robin hate you?”

“I don’t want them to, no I don’t, but yes, they should!”

“Should they make you pay for the death of their mother?”

“Yes they should, they should, I did such a bad thing Papa, it wasn’t beautiful, no it wasn’t! I can’t be a Holder, no I can’t, I am too bad!” The Papa’s tears streamed down his face, they fell into his daughter’s hair and he held her tightly, as he would have held her mother.

“I love you, baby, but you know the children of the Robin are dead, that they could not live without their mother, that they could not feed themselves, could they?”

Ellie wretched in the agony of herself, in the self despising of a little girl who was trying to understand, who could not forgive herself.

“Should you be dead, my beautiful daughter, should you be dead?”

“It would be the only fair thing Papa, yes, the only fair thing!”

“Should I kill you then, fair daughter, should I?”

Ellie looked up to her Papa.

“Should you Papa, should you?”

“Would it make your mother happy, restore her to us, would it be beautiful?”

“I killed her Papa, I did it, I killed her. She was so beautiful, so beautiful!”

“Her love was her beauty, my daughter her love was that and nothing else. Do you want to kill that? Would it make her happy to see you now the way you are, punishing yourself for her?”

The Papa took the child up to himself. He held her straight out and looked into her eyes from one who loved unconditionally to one who had yet to learn.

#

Ellie and her mother had driven together in the rain, the automobile too heavy, too hard for Ellie’s mother to handle. When the dog ran in front of the car, Ellie had screamed and her mother had jerked the steering wheel to the side, sending the car skidding on the wet road into the drainage ditch. The Mother had removed her hands from the steering wheel, instinctively realizing that there was nothing else she could do. She had thrown herself over her daughter and saved her life. She was beautiful.

“Your mother is beautiful, Ellie. Do you want her to be sad? Do you want to hold her back, to make her love meaningless? Your Mother loves you she is the spark inside of you that makes you a Holder, that makes you closer to her, that allows you to live!”

The fire began to die down, light crackles popping up as the flames died. Beauty danced on the ceiling of the room. The Papa and the child slept together as one, held in each other, the essence of the Holders and beautiful.

POETRY

Above the Anger by Paula Blois

A ghostly sight passes the mirror

Appearing tense ,tired, distraught

Chained by emotions

limbs weighted by thought

Giving power to the aggressor

A promise is made to reflection

Take control without fear

No longer be bound

Your freedom is near

Rising above

Lighter in spirit

Your reflection is proof

Let the heart feel forgiveness

No longer aloof

Peace has been found

The Soul is but a Passing Tide by Leo Coldstoy

I remember that day

held the child close,

not just a hug

a part of me

I remember that day

Funny thing, the sun

up every morning

down at eve

ever try to hug the sun

I did, that day in may

those things held tight

don't let go,

you can ride your bike

no worries child you'll get it soon

there you go, you got it now

first days are much the same

school house strange

yet warm soft rooms

a hint of some strange smell in child

oh Lord don't let those days divide

as said before oft true and tried

the soul is but a passing tide

yet as we mourn that day divide

old sun rises sure as love's soft smile

down it goes in ever more

to find that child

hugged by the sun

A simple paid for whore by David Smith

I have broken the chain

of earthly gain.

Have flung myself

on highways lost

Flat I lay

without a care,

please ride your car

upon my back.

For Heaven’s flack

I have no suit

of armor shinning bright

to flick away the naughty nights,

amusement dims my thoughts.

Tightened thighs around my back

girding swift black flow.

Spurious, evil, lovely thoughts

keep my heart aglow.

Sit with me, gentle dame,

my money on your back.

Cigarettes, neon lights

to stub out on your back.

As I am, I’ll lick them clean,

wounds caress my tongue.

To mend your thoughts,

cease such woes

whores may have to cry.

For what is life without the whores,

who sweet delight my loins

in simple, cherished, love for gain.

So it is I must remain

a simple, paid for, whore.

Conundrum by Bobbi McPheron-Hiel

Someone get inside my head

Do what I can't do

Take the melodies and voices

And make them real for me

I get the words and sometimes a rhyme

But my fingers are paralyzed

Not quick enough to blend the notes

Memories fleeting as I glance away

So, please, get inside my head

You might be pleased

It's like being on a lifelong quest

With the pot of gold under my arm

Just searching sometimes recklessly

Flailing through the mists of words

Trying to see the rainbow

When I've already got the prize

The goal I've already seen

Promised land, or whatever you want to call it

I can hear it

I can see it on a stage

I can feel it

But I can't touch it

And that's what I need for you to do

Strong the Heart by Pamela Lord

What shall we do

by thought to create

a form so true and fair

that we must love it

since it is of our seeming

and our semblance there.

Then is self in love with self

for we must be drawn

to that within our flesh and bone

the best and worst appear

in another’s aspect

we perceive to be our own.

Is it not ironic

we meet by happenstance

with each in awe to cry

and marvel at the other

that we who diverse are

meet agreement in our eye.

The stains and tarnish

upon an ignoble self

the defects shown

draw away in horror

from these faults and falseness

that is the other’s and our own.

But these fearful frames

we must not abandon

turn back the hope and hand

reach out to clasp the other

acceptance be the guide

to love and understand.

For now we are as two

yet one is possible

shall never be apart

embrace, time and trials

we shall bend, not break

Love make strong the heart.

Ponder the coffee for God by Steve Park

Dregs Dregs

Bitter dregs

Smell the taste

Cream Cream

Taste sweetness cream

Lightness on tongue

Drink Drink

Drink in gulp

To sip too slow

Cup Cup

Near bottomed cup

Reflect dark mirror

Looking Looking

Look down eyes

Distant far so black

Jesus Jesus

Jesus where

No never God found

Trumpets Trumpets

Trumpets sound angelic

Cream and drink and dregs

Here gone enjoy

I Ask Why Green by Kathleen McMahon

I ask of God why green or gold

why black, why white

why talk, why howl, or even ask?

I wait, I wait

while days grow years

yet God's not answered back.

Can He hear I wonder

can He hear just me

lost among the ghosts of man

that He once dreamed would be?

Or if I learned to listen

would I then learn to hear

His shattered words in every molecule—

Even me?

The Modern Miracle of Political Proficiency by Mary Walkden

Time bombs tick

Rulers talk

at table round

no words profound

Starving? Strife?

check the ground

no oil found

let them eat cake.

We’ll travel, look

be wined and dined

our bellies full

but babies? A renewable resource.

Sixty-watt smile

Need braces?

Raise taxes.

Oh look! A camera.

Pandemic bugs

Swine flu? Oh dear!

Save us first

Then we’ll help you.

The fear’s the game

Some bait and switch

Don’t worry

We know what to do

Justification

For any plight

Panic – a renewable resource.

Shiny shiny

Over here

Just trust me.

I will sing for you.

bombs galore

new acid rain

soldiers die

mothers cry

in ivory halls

lets pick our fights

not wrongs or rights

rather who will grease our palms.

no nitty gritty.

what a pity

blood – a renewable resource.

Might is right

The rest? who cares.

My state dinner and

peace prize await.

Dirty air

No water fresh

Species die

Their mothers cry

Ice caps melt

Earth shivers, shakes

We need new ways

to turn a buck

Gather round

For words profound

Copenhagen? Sure,

Bring me a beer.

Pitter patter,

can’t get at ‘er

stupidity- a renewable resource

Wait for the cue

Of what to do

Gluttony reigns

and we’ll all go down together

Annwyn by Kieran Borsden

The mortal gait takes its toll

as we stroll beyond the hills

milled by man - the green that drives

our blood is dry, and dripping rain

cannot cure the withered bone

gathered in the bowl that caught

the dregs of life.

With hope behind the eye – love

within hushed darkness mirrors

a morning star; the clouded

fog that forms our home beyond

the final breath waits ahead,

patiently, beyond the gate,

in luminous grey.

To descend the top, to drop,

perchance to fall,

in placid sacrifice, or call

to arms astray from harm

that I may no longer dismay –

for here, silent, I am home

with the lost - the forsaken

of the faded forge that cores

the heat in a land where feet

have never tread; where Death has

no dominion, yet is

a welcome friend.

whiskey hard-on by AmandaLyn Donogal

god forbid you consider

my lot, my pain.

god forbid you wait,

contain your wants

for the sake of my needs.

once again your urges

take precedence,

your demands rule,

guised as love for convenience sake.

god forbid you just hold me

understand my exhaustion

cradle my fears

for even just one moment.

instead, you caress and woo your bottle

foreplay reserved for Jim Beam;

for me? ragged remnants

and fruitless thrusts

booze-laden breath

careless, clumsy, oblivious –

prince charming for trailer trash.

but such is life;

the rent is due.

Belly of the Devil by Bobbi McPheron Heil

Peeled, the shell of life matter

Boiled in tempest water's foam

Membrane shrunk, fearful observance

Cracked beneath the shelter's dome

Sliced without a drop of blood

Heart extracted, fallen down

Mixed, catalystic portion

With silver weapon ground

Lunar phases, mockery

Crushed between thin fingers

Melds their substances together

Until no past trace lingers

Willful portionry implemented

Reassembled, spoon fed plan

Saucered, served supplementation

Benefiting weakened man

Colorless tongue becomes more pallid

No longer any need to beg

Crushed between jaws of doom

Protein laden, deviled egg

POETRY

Angel by Paula Blois

Ten fingers and toes

Your name, no one knows

Never nurtured or fed

Plastic bag for a bed

Hidden from view

For a day or two

Ice on the ground

The day you were found

Angelic and sweet

Blue toes on your feet

A miracle they say

Yet, you're cast away

Some Way by Scott LeGault

With morning crisper,

Rested winds whisper

Noted assumptions

About where they came.

A mind can renew

What hands wish they knew;

And strong backs know well

What souls sometimes name.

Wanderings of wings,

And much finer things,

The heart can ponder,

And great books retain.

On which days and nights

To follow such plights;

For even good blood

Will set a deep stain.

bob the fucking garbage man by Elwood Jake

lackluster ambivalence

nightshrouds in dark rooms

the minds of voyeurs

throbbing in sermons

waiting waiting

for the quick

and the dead

Bob the fucking garbage man

lost his job, stood with men

what the fuck is that he often said

shit it's my guts what a ya make of that?

Bob the fucking garbage man

pour me another just lost it man

dark shades surround the man of courage

he speaks with carnal frankness

for the ones that do not listen

Bob the fucking garbage man

lost his job

Don't worry Bob you got your pension

money in the bank Bobby money in the bank

missiles, lead, burn the bastardos, damn my guts are dead

dark shades surround the man of courage

he speaks with carnal frankness

reply's the same

pour me beer chase it with pain

Bob the fucking garbage man

lost his job

carnal frankness spoke to Bob the garbage man

who lost his job, stood with men

the hell do you expect Bobby

time is not the essence it is the sweet delay of consideration

pour me beer chase it with pain

Bob the fucking garbage man

lost his job

sweet love that soft dalliance with swift death

chimes within hearts of warriors

bend to hold the child

let tears fold them in angel's wings

speak with carnal frankness

evil strikes ignore the pain

god waits in vain

Bob the garbage man lost his job

stood with men

not weary heart nor lifeless use by David Smith

peace, descendant of passion

creature of the night

sits in despondent dark

flight's patho'er treeless

limbless frightenend plight

of weary heart such lifeless use

I look at her such blithe delight

why fly despondent in darkness sight

blind, not sure of righteous plight

this sad and lonely creature slight

oblique in troth of saddened

crueher of weary lifeless use

what to do for descendant passion

question asked in passion's stew

why should she sit in saddened hue

no colors bounding in her heart

no, oh damned and wretched thought

to rescue rides the crimson knight

I shall hold her hard and true

give her light and life's sweet chew

to gamble not in longer fret

this winsome darling charm that flew

o're useless limbless frightenend plight

not weary heart nor lifeless use

Haunted by Kie Borsden

Should another night through mourning

beckon brighter beacons, calling

forth a final moment falling

eternally in the awning

strung as a tarnished, taunting veil tied tight

(the strings emitting hymns that sting and spite)

then my heart shall swoop the sky;

shall swift with feet a gait against the time

in tidal flowing, unencumbered flight.

As in lore, in thought is dawning

a day of broken dreams fawning

the cadent caprice so daunting –

should again the night be morning.

Johnathan Living-Stoned Seagull by AmandaLyn Donogal

In perplexed consternation

Eye to the sky

Once more I spy

Trying to fly

A bird.

Greatly messed-up migration?

A bird on the wing

Poetical thing

or plain ding-a-ling?

The latter.

Strange genetic mutation?

A bird thinking that

he flies like a bat?

consumed a vat?

Play ball.

Astute summarization –

I presume a bird lost

Not quite albatross

He needs a new boss

Fly away.

Thorough investigation

MJ in his feed

Or smoking some weed

the chuckle I need

right now

No watery location

anywhere near

dirt and grass here

open a beer

and watch

As, with determination

around me you flap

stoned little chap

enough of this crap

go home.

A Summer of Naked by Steve Park

Fine memories I have

Oh what a year

fun over there

fun over here

Birds were all roosted

Raccoons out for play

Such a fun summer

I wanted to stay

Love by candlelight

Swillin' some wine

Had fun on the rocker

Fun all the time

Watching TV?

Or doin' some cookin'

OK to be naked

Cause nobody’s lookin'

Searchin' for real fun?

My friends I do plead

Have a summer of naked

For real fun indeed...

From the Master’s hands by Mary Cote

The door creaked open, gentle groan, bell tingling.

a step back, opening memory, as journeys through time.

Hardwood, dust, oil, wax, scents, ages past did their part,

Lifted spirits from cracks and crannies, set them free to roam

In one corner, in the back, he sat

Guitar on his knee

Strings gently humming.

Quarter-sawn oak, beveled lead glass, polished brass clasps

woodcarvers canvas, chiseled roses, vines entwined

His inspiration? Love? Pride? Shown in every cut

Masterpiece true, Crowned in finial fine

He sits gently strumming

A song on his lips,

serenade sublime

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa men have named you

masterpieced canvas lady, mystic smile

dancing in the room, waltzing past mildewed books

Chipped tea sets, treadle machines long forgotten,

Ancient love’s labors

Now cold and lonely

Lovely works of art.

PROSE

Liturgy of a Scourge by Nyla Bass

“How can you not attend his funeral?” my elder sister Vera asked. Her tone was subversive; it reeked of censorship. She was sitting at her kitchen table, stirring a cup of coffee.

I could feel her eyes on me from across the table. I could feel her will compelling me to answer, trying to draw me into a conversation I had little interest in having. I ignored her, and continued flipping through my magazine.

Vera picked up her cup, took a tentative sip and pressed on. “He raised us, gave us…”

A dismissive noise rose from the back of my throat.

Vera caught the sound. “No, Susan. He deserves some credit.”

“Here we go.” I didn’t bother with trying to divert Vera from her soapbox.

Vera ticked through the hackneyed list of endowments. “He took on three kids that weren’t his. He gave us the best, put us all through college. He even supported us for years after they split up. Arranging his funeral was the least I could do to repay him.”

I shifted in my seat. “Vera, you know I hate talking about this shit.”

“You never talk about him.” Vera got up and poured herself a refill. “Mother’s gone, but she rarely ever spoke of him. I can’t even mention his name to Teddy. You guys... it’s like some… triple-agent top secret society code of silence bullshit…”

I laughed. Even when she’s pissed Vera could be funny.

“…elite club that I was never allowed to join,” she finished. Vera took her seat. “I just don’t see how you feel that you don’t owe him anything.” Her movements were brusque, jerky as she doctored her coffee. “Look, I’m not saying that he was a saint, but Mother was no angel either. She brought a lot down on herself.”

“How would you know? You only lived with us for a month before they shipped you back to Grandma, and you only visited a few times each year,” I shot back.

Vera waved her hand in dismissal. “I was thirteen, old enough to see that she’d provoke him… pick fights. Anyway, it was twenty-five years ago.” She paused, drank some coffee. "You saw how broken up he was when Mother left him, and when she died, but he’d been happier these past few years, especially after my twins were born. He adored them, and they love him so much,” Vera sniffed.

I had no response to that.

“It was taken just last month,” Vera nodded toward the fridge to a photograph under a magnet; a happy oldish man was sandwiched between her own laughing five-year-old twins.

I stared at the man with the silly birthday hat sitting askew on his short gray curls, helping the twins open the gifts he’d bought. Happiness, eternalized in celluloid, radiated from the twins as they pressed themselves lovingly against the grinning imposter. I saw myself at five, remembered birthdays and lavish gifts, scenes similar to that of the twins’. The pale faces and downcast eyes in old photos of my brother and myself as we cowered in the presence of that familiar scourge, bore no resemblance to Vera’s photo. “He played the happy Grandpa well, so different from the tyrant that he was, and now he’s finally dead.”

“That’s harsh, even for you.”

“Harsh, Vera? Teddy, Mother and I lived under his tyranny for ten years.”

“Come on. Tyranny? We went to private schools, had the best of everything. Those visits with you guys were the happiest times of my life. Even way out in the boonies with Grandma, I felt well cared-for by him,” Vera argued.

“Yes. Mom made sure of that. You lived with Grandma because you were free labor for the family store, same as Mom had been at that age, but that wasn’t the only reason. Do you remember the Christmas that Mom wouldn’t let you come?”

“Teddy had the measles,” Vera answered; but there was a new hesitancy in her tone.

“Teddy’s never had the measles. It was because Mom…was a mess. She couldn’t take the chance that you’d go back and tell everybody.”

“Tell what?” Vera sloshed coffee, grabbed the paper towels.

She’d waited a long time for the truth, so I spoke the awful words that I wouldn’t be able to take back. “We worked so hard to be a normal family when you visited. It really was the best time of our lives. The rest of the time the ‘good doctor’, your charming benefactor, beat the living shit out of us.”

A shocked gasp erupted from Vera, but she didn’t interrupt.

“I pee’d my bed in fear of him, until I was eight. He’d back-hand me for it, for biting my nails, for being too scared of him to learn to tell the time, for a million other infractions. He seemed to enjoy slapping me.” The horror, locked away for so long, seemed paltry, diluted and meager in the recounting. “He would force Teddy to practice fighting with him; he claimed he was teaching Teddy to defend himself. He’d punch little Teddy in the chest like a man... broke his ribs, twice. Poor Teddy lived in absolute terror of those lessons”.

Vera’s head was bowed. Tears leaked from the hand covering her face.

I went to her, put my arms around her. “He didn’t just slap Mom around; he would use his fists. We saw him raise our ninety-six-pound mother up over his head, then drop her body behind him…a helluva thing for kids to see, even worse than the time we watched him shoot a bullet into a bed pillow, just to scare her.” I sat back down. “Battery and broken bones, terrorized into staying with him...Mom was so ashamed. It took ten years, but she finally found the strength to leave him.”

“But afterward, you and Teddy…?” Vera handed me a paper towel.

“...Kept her secret.” I looked at the photograph. The scourge who my mother once loved above her children, laughed with my sister’s twins. Tears streamed down my face. “I’m not going to his funeral.”

Peg by Bellakentuky

We all reacted differently the first time we heard the news that the old man had won the lottery. Scotty Fisher, who’d just learned to smoke, had a Marlboro dangling from his lips. He jumped from his perch on the stone lion that sat on Mrs. Brown’s stoop, yelling, “What the fuck!” The cig flipped from his pinkish lips and burned a clean hole in his new jeans. Jay McDonald choked on a Twizzler. Jay was the fat one of our group, and the only one who’d never learned how to throw a baseball, or shoot a free throw. When Jay was four, his dad left the house to go get a six-pack at Monty’s Liquor Warehouse on East 199th St, and never returned. That very day, Jay, started putting on weight. Bobby Cantano slapped his leg and started laughing like a hyena because that’s what he always did. But Alffonso De Luca barely cracked a smile. Alffonso was the cool kid. He merely looked off down Decature Avenue and said, “Well, I hope he gets his fucking leg fixed.”

All five of us grew up in the borough of Queens. We met when we got caught up in the aftermath of Alffonso, cracking an egg in Mr. Abernathy’s winter cap before recess at school. Mr. Abernathy found his rabbit fur hat filled with yellow goo and demanded to know who perpetrated this heinous act. No one in the 5th grade class of The Bronx Elementary School #124 wanted to say a word. Alffonso was cool; even back then.

However, Cynthia Johnson, who had a reputation of being a rat, blurted out that it was a boy who’d done it. Upon further questioning, Cynthia clammed up. She might be a rat, but she wasn’t completely stupid.

Mr. Abernathy sent the girls outside with Mrs. Dyche’s class and took us boys to the coatroom. This was where we bonded, as we waited for the punishment that we all knew was going to be bad. Alffonso told us to keep quiet, and he’d make it right. So we did.

That was five years ago, and every day since we’ve gathered on the stoop of Mrs. Brown’s apartment house at the corner of Decatur and Bedford Park to talk about girls, and whatever else crossed our minds, but it was mostly girls, with the exception of the old man we had named Peg.

Peg was a mystery to us. To our young eyes, he looked like he was a hundred, but in reality, he was probably only fifty, maybe sixty. He was always seated across the street from Mrs. Brown’s stoop in front of Carmine’s Pizza Shop. He had a rickety old table he would set up, and a small yellow stool that had one leg shorter than the other two; so he always sat crooked with one leg fully extended. Peg was skinny with thin arms like pencils. No matter what the weather, he wore long-sleeved plaid shirts with the sleeves rolled up to his armpits. His skin was old and leathery like the seat of a broken down Chevy. He sat on that corner, all day, every day, carving little wooden birds with a long skinny knife that we called The Butcher. Peg sold his little birds for two dollars a piece. There was never a moment when we gathered on the stoop that Peg wasn’t at his spot carving those birds, and whistling to himself.

Then one hot summer day several years back, as we talked and fantasized about Becky Moynahan’s breasts being sweaty, Bobby Cantano got wide-eyed and pointed across the street. We all looked and saw the old man sitting on his yellow stool wearing shorts. Alffonso De Luca said, “That’s just wrong,” and lit up a Lucky Strike.

Jay stuttered when he asked, “Where’s his leg?”

We stared trying to understand how a man with one leg balances on a tippy stool, when De Luca said, “You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots! He’s a peg leg. It’s laying on the ground next to him.”

Bobby Cantano gestured like he was going to throw up then asked “Why did he take it off? Why is he wearing shorts? Why does it look like the old stump behind my house?”

Jay giggled. “If he was sitting just right, we could see up his pants leg.”

“Yeah, like we’d want to,” Scotty stood next to Alffonso with his arms crossed. Poor Scotty; he always wanted to be Alffonso.

Alffonso snuffed out his Lucky Strike with the scuffed toe of his hightops. “If you ask me, cops oughta arrest his ass for being obscene. A man just doesn’t drop his leg on the sidewalk like that. It ain’t right.”

From that day forward, the old man became Peg Leg, later revised to just Peg.

The only one of our group to ever get close to Peg was Jay. One afternoon we sat around the stoop playing poker. Jay had to piss and went down the alley next to Mrs. Brown’s apartment building. While he was gone, we set up the cards so we knew he’d lose. Scotty dealt the hand and proposed a bet; whoever lost had to cross the street, go straight up to Peg, pull their pants down, and moon him. When Jay lost, we all thought he’d cry, but he didn’t. He just walked straight across the boulevard, turned to face us, and pulled his pants down. You could’ve heard Bobby’s hyena laugh three blocks away. When Jay was done, he pulled his pants back up and turned back toward Peg. Several seconds ticked by, and we were breathless waiting to see what would happen next. Then Jay walked back across the boulevard, and when he got to the stoop, he held up a five dollar bill.

We all gasped.

Peg gave me five bucks.”

“What the-” Alffonso stood and snatched the bill from Jay’s hands.

“Is it real?” Scotty asked.

“It’s real alright.” Alffonso held the bill up to the sky.

“What did he say?” Bobby asked.

“He said ‘thanks for the show’.” Jay snatched the bill back from De Luca.

“What the-” De Luca said. We all stared at the mysterious man across the street.

The day we heard Peg had won the lottery, we knew something was up, because the old man wasn’t on his corner. Peg being missing brought a great degree of conversation and speculation, everything from he was dead to he’d been snatched by aliens. But Mrs. Brown left the building and told us the news. She said he’d bought the ticket right there at the Grab-N-Go store on the corner, that it was worth millions.

“Well, that’s the last time we’ll see old Peg,” De Luca said.

But the next day, Peg was back on his corner sitting on his yellow stool. This brought on an even larger amount of conversation and speculation. Bobby Cantano went so far as to accuse Mrs. Brown of being a liar. Just as we’d gotten ourselves worked into a frenzy, Scotty Fisher’s older brother Jason came by. He asked if we’d heard the news about the old wood carver. We said yeah, but it must’ve been a lie because the old man was back on his corner. But Jason told us it was true; the cute girl who worked at the Grab-N-Go had told him so. Then he dropped the bomb of all bombs. He told us that Peg had given all the money away. He bought old Mrs. Kretchner a new wheelchair and promised money to everyone around the neighborhood who came asking. Jason was pissed because he didn’t get the word until it was all gone; ‘A million bucks, gone like that’. He snapped his fingers, and left us.

“What the fuck...” Alffonso said. We all looked at the old man across the street, whistling, as he carved something that looked like a one legged cuckoo bird.

Guess Who by Richard Pannbacker

Hi, it’s Billy. Just had to phone and let you know. I’m in Denver and I’ve got twenty-four hours! Eat your heart out! Who knows…I might! Rock and roll!

Manhattan up, please. Yes, I’m a guest here.

Again, please. Actually, I think I’ll take it into the restaurant.

Yes, this table’s fine.

I’ll have the strip sirloin, medium rare. And the Cabernet Sauvignon, number sixteen. A glass please. Oh. Okay, a bottle then.

Hi. I saw you’re sitting alone; would you mind if I joined you? Thank you. Waiter, I’m moving over here.

My name’s Billy. Glad to meet you, Chris. Yes, it’s a very nice Cab. Would you like a glass? Another glass here, please. Are you a student? That’s great; I used to go to the University here too. What’s your major? Chemistry! Wow, that’s challenging!

Oh, I’m here to give a lecture. Pretty dull stuff.

You have to go study? Okay. Well, very nice meeting you.

No, I’ll pay cash. You’re welcome.

Hello, room service? Yes, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, room 412.

Hello, desk? Do you have a college student named Chris staying here? Yes, that sounds right. Would you ring the room please? Thanks.

Hello, Chris. We met in the restaurant. Billy, right. I wondered if you would have time for a drink down at the bar - a break from studying? Great! Twenty minutes? See you there!

Hi Chris, what’s your pleasure? You know, that’s one of my favorites! Bombay Sapphire on the rocks please; yes, two. You’re studying for a Calculus exam? Why here? Oh, I understand; I once had a roommate like that. You know, I used to teach Calc I and II; maybe I could help. Really, it would be my pleasure. Yeah, it’s noisy here - could we go to your room? Sure, we can take our drinks with us.

No, that’s not a mess. You should see my room. You’ve got a better bed, though. You haven’t tried it? Check it out. Yes…comfy? Why not? Mmm…nice, very nice. Sure, we can look at the Calculus a little later. I’ve got all night.

You’ll be right back? Okay, I’ll get comfortable too.

Chilly in here. Oh well. That’s why God made warm bodies.

You have something you’d like to show me? Absolutely!

Oh!

Ah, hello Douglas. Chris, this is my spouse, Douglas. But I guess you’ve met.

Tender by Gary Helm

Charlie was an ancient negro gentleman who lived in a shanty by the railroad track in Greensville, North Carolina. He had spent his life working for the railroad laying track all over the state, and when he retired he bought himself a small piece of land near the track and built his wood shanty there. He always greeted everyone with a friendly smile, for though he had been born shortly after the civil war and had experienced all the indignities of the segregated south, he bore no ill will toward anyone.

Charlie had a dog named Tender. The dog stayed with him for thirteen years until it died of old age. Charlie said the dog wasn’t really his. Tender just hung around because he wanted to and that was fine with Charlie. He never tried to put a collar or a rope around the dog’s neck. “I never would bother,” Charlie said, “since he wouldn’t do what I told him no how. But if I wants him to do somethin’ I asks him, and if he wanta do it, he do it. An he know the difference too. When I tells him, he don’t do what I tells him, but if I asks him, most times he do.” It was an arrangement that suited both dog and man.

Tender, being an unusual name for a dog, caused many people to ask why Charlie had named him that; Charlie explained that when he had worked on the railroad, he had worked a lot on a tender, which was a small car attached to a steam locomotive that carried wood or coal to fuel the locomotive, and that it just sorta hung on behind which was what Tender the dog did, so Charlie called him Tender. Charlie would always go on to tell the listener that working on the tender had been some of the best times in his life.

Tender had one bad habit; he liked to chase the trains as they rolled by. Charlie asked him not to do that because he was afraid the dog might get caught under the wheels and crushed, but Tender ignored that request and kept chasing trains his whole life. He had a special knack of knowing when the train was coming even before it came into sight. Maybe it was the vibrations in the ground or the position of the sun in the sky. Charlie never did figure out how the dog knew, but he always did. When Tender was young, he would chase the trains for miles, but toward the end of his life the dog didn’t really chase them anymore. He would sit beside the track and when a train came along he would stand and take a few steps, but then give up and sit down again. Later he would just sit and watch the trains pass and fade into the distance as though he still wanted to chase them, but just didn’t have the energy anymore.

After Tender died Charlie didn’t hang around long, as though Tender’s death had soured the shanty for him. One day he walked out onto the track, looked up and down then began walking. No one knows if he walked fifty miles or five hundred; he never came back to the shanty by the tracks, but the one thing everybody knew was that Charlie and Tender loved trains.

Blue Skies… Smiling at You! by Arthur Carey

“Good morning and welcome to Trans-Am-Global Air, now combining the best of three great airlines! I am First Officer Ellen Randolph. On behalf of Capt. Thomas Merton and the rest of our crew, I look forward to serving you on Flight 733 from New York to San Francisco with service to Schenectady, N.Y., Coshocton, Ohio, Sioux Falls, S.D., and Boise, Idaho.

Our takeoff will be delayed approximately 30 minutes due to a mechanical malfunction of the Homeland Security full body image-scanning system. Late arrivals for this flight are being strip-searched.

On today’s nine-hour, fifty-seven minute flight, the non-stop travel premium of $50 is waived! Please secure all carry-on luggage in the overhead rental compartments. Failure to return your rental compartment key upon exiting the aircraft will result in a $20 replacement charge.

This aircraft has been modified to offer our new Comfy, Cozy Seating. Due to a reduction in leg room, it is advisable to walk about the cabin periodically during the flight to restore blood circulation.

Once you have settled in, please place a major credit card in the armrest scanner to pay for services selected during the fight. There is a 3% surcharge for credit card use unless you hold a Trans-Am-Global Fly ‘n’ Smile card. Please advise one of our flight attendants—Kelly, Juanita and John—if you wish to pay cash. Since they are independent contractors, tips are appreciated!

Sit back and enjoy our Budget Buster à la carte service. To activate the computer screen on the seatback facing you, insert a dollar bill (good for 30 minutes!) and push the green button with the large dollar sign. Please note two late changes in the amenities offered. The cotton blankets are now $10, and the double-weight, wool coverlet with pillow is $12.95. Since most of our flight will be at an altitude of 45,000 feet with heating reduced to conserve fuel, these are options worth considering.

Restroom facilities are available without charge at both ends of the aircraft during the first 30 minutes of each flight segment. One-dollar tokens for use at other times can be purchased in the machines outside restrooms.

Upon reaching our cruising altitude, flight attendants will provide a complimentary serving of water as our way of saying “Welcome Aboard!” Savory meal offerings today range from $9.50 for the De-Lite Full low-cal plate of breadsticks, soy salad and carrot ribbons to $18 for Surprise Pot Pie, served piping hot after thawing and reheating in our on-board microwave ovens.

In a few moments, individual viewing screens will drop and those passengers who order audio earphones at a charge of $10 will be able to enjoy premium films and recorded television programming. Passengers who do not wish to watch movies or TV can pay a one-time charge of $4 to have the screens retracted during the flight. Retain your headsets if you wish to hear the captain make the FAA’s required “wakie, wakie” calls to airport controllers to announce our request for landing instructions.

Want more comfort? For only $5, you can purchase seat reclining privileges! Sit up or lean back as you wish!

During the flight, recirculation of air will be reduced to conserve energy. Passengers with breathing difficulties will be provided oxygen masks for a nominal charge.

Let me emphasize there is absolutely no truth to the rumor reported on the Internet website Trans-Am-Global Sucks! of a charge for use of seat cushion floatation devices in the event of an unscheduled water deplaning. Cushions are provided without cost if returned promptly after use. In the event of an unscheduled flight interruption, access to departure chutes will be by boarding priority: first class, business and economy, in that order.

Before arriving in San Francisco, now scheduled at Gate 72, Concourse B, Terminal 1, passengers will have the opportunity to purchase expedited delivery of luggage. Non-expedited luggage will be available for pickup within 24 hours at Terminals 2 or 3. Check the arrival board for additional information.

We hope you enjoy your trip on Trans-Am-Global Airlines. Come fly with us again and let the blue skies smile at you!”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Discontinuous Cows by Dean Kisling

They were just two middle school teachers on summer vacation, trying to see a little country, get away from the wilderness of Los Angeles, get somewhere you could actually see stars at night. They were middle-aged, but fighting it off with vegetables and athletic shoes and yoga classes. They were driving up Nevada state highway 379 north of Duckwater, on the way to the Alkali Desert where they intended to camp out and go hiking.

It was late June, not too hot, and they had the windows down and Jack Johnson playing on the CD player. They had seen some green pastures and hay fields around Duckwater, but now they were out in the desert again, driving along about sixty-five on a mostly empty two-lane blacktop road.

A farm truck came up behind them and went on around with its engine roaring and its canvas tarp flapping. It was a good sized truck with wooden slats for sides and a back gate that split in the middle to swing open for loading and unloading. There were cow legs sticking out between the wood slats, and the sudden, nauseating smell of rotting meat.

The legs stuck out in random places, some up pretty high, which gave the impression the truck was full to the brim with dead cows that could not have walked in on their own. And then there was that smell.

Most people have encountered some dead and rotting meat by the time they are middle-aged. Some dried out road kill pancake or a dead mouse in the back of the closet or some baloney tucked behind a stack of low-fat yogurt containers—those ones in a flavor you don’t really like but you got because they were on sale. And they can tell the difference between old, desiccated flesh and fresher stuff, stuff that is still moist and turning strange colors, or maybe looking eerily in motion with maggots crawling all around on it, or a swarm of flies.

Dead fairly recently, is what I mean, with that smell that about knocks you over, and that’s what this truck with the legs sticking out smelled like. Enough to make you gag as it passed you on a desert highway going eighty miles an hour—the legs bouncing up and down with the bumps in the road. Going much too fast for any flies to linger outside the truck, but you could imagine them under that canvas tarp.

That’s the first thing Norma imagined—about six billion flies buzzing around under the tarp, some of them wandering too close to the edge and getting blown off into the desert. What a surprise that must be for them. Thinking things were going pretty good. They were going to eat some meat and lay some eggs, complete the cycle of life as nature intended, and then that’s all gone, and there you are, tumbling in the turbulent desert air, cycle of life pulled out from under you, maybe ending your short life going splat on the windshield of two school teachers. Norma taught biology, among other things, and egg-laying was as close as she ever had to get to explaining sex to children, for which she was grateful.

Louise’s initial thought was how the cows had gotten in the truck in the first place. She could tell by the legs that they weren’t standing. She imagined the cows in there sort of sliding around on top of each other. Maybe they had just been dumped in by a front-end loader, already dead. One leg stuck out the top through a hole in the tarp, its hoof angled forward like some weird-ass periscope.

“Get a picture,” Louise said. Her voice sounded muffled because she was trying to talk without breathing.

Norma reached into the back seat to find her camera. The truck was steadily pulling away. The truck driver in a big hurry to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, or outrun the stink, or maybe just crazy… who knew? Louise sped up to try to stay with it but she was still losing ground. By the time Norma turned back around and got the camera ready, another strange thing happened.

An F-16 swooped down right over their heads about a hundred feet off the ground. It swooshed on over the truck and started climbing, a faint black smoke coming from its tail. Norma got a shot of the truck with the jet fighter beyond it—nose slightly up and banking to starboard.

A truck full of dead cows barreling down the highway in the middle of nowhere. A nauseating smell that made you want to be just about anywhere else. And a jet fighter fiercely asserting its presence. Did it get any more weird-ass than that?

Louise only said things like “weird-ass” during summer vacation. She taught arithmetic, and the thing about arithmetic is that it has dependable rules and ordered relationships you can count on—there’s nothing weird-ass about it. Louise wanted the students to understand that. And she wanted their parents to know they could count on her to give their children something stable and solid to help them cope with life. She wanted to keep her job.

This, however, was a very weird-ass business, this truck full of dead cows with jet fighter escort in the Nevada desert. Weirder than even Las Vegas, where they had just spent a day and a night. Las Vegas had a fake sphinx and fake volcano and fake castles and thousands of people faking having a good time, but it didn’t have anything as weird as this. Well, maybe.

“Can we slow down and get some breathable air?” said Norma.

In fact, there were some fairly weird-ass things about arithmetic, when you stopped to think about it. Like when you multiplied and divided fractions. Or that if you added all the digits in a number together and if that sum was divisible by three then the number itself was divisible by three, which was practically like numerology. But thankfully there weren’t too many you had to deal with in middle school. Mostly things were pretty simple and straightforward and some rules—like, no dividing by zero allowed—you didn’t have to explain because they were just true and always the same and that was that. And if you needed six decimal places in the value for pi you just looked it up in a table in the back of the book and you didn’t have to worry about how they figured that out or if it made any sense or if you could trust them to be right. Everybody else used the same table and even if there was a typo somewhere what did it matter as long as everybody agreed? It’s not like the kids were trying to land a space craft on Mars or anything. What mattered was that there were things you could count on.

“How did the picture turn out?” asked Louise. She eased off the gas as the truck disappeared over a low hill.

“Too far away,” said Norma. “You see a truck and a jet. You can’t really see the legs sticking out, or that the jet swooped right over him. What the hell was that?”

“It was a truck full of dead cows.”

“It was a jet fighter. They fly around in the desert all the time.”

“He was just curious.

“He could smell it even up there.

“He was practicing his attack dive.

“He was messing with the truck driver.

“He was showing off.

“He knew there were two cute schoolteachers in the car.

“They died of mad cow disease.”

“They ate radioactive hay.”

“They were killed by space aliens.”

“It’s a government cover-up.”

“We’re going to get sick and die horribly.”

“I want a shower. Please stop the car.”

“Maybe we should go back to Vegas for another night.

“He’s going to blast him as soon as there aren’t any witnesses.

And this, boys and girls, is why you never divide by zero. Because you might blow up your engine chasing a truck full of dead cows and get stuck all alone in the desert with no cell phone coverage and all you can do is wait for a van full of scientists in white biohazard suits to show up and spray disinfectant all over you. Then they will take you to a secret underground military installation for intensive debriefing and make you sign a non-disclosure agreement in your own blood. There will be veiled and not so veiled threats about being disappeared from normal human society if you don’t keep your mouth shut. Is that what you want? Or you can just be a good citizen and go along and everything will be fine. What’s it gonna be?

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Miramar and Waverly by Adelaide B. Shaw

”Dad, may Candace play in here for awhile? My head aches. I’m going to lie down.”

The elderly man stopped his writing, nodded to Becky and waved a welcome to the seven year old girl standing in the doorway. She gave a big smile and immediately placed herself on the floor along with a drawing pad and a large box of crayons.

“Where are the others?” Will asked.

“Bobby, Aunt Jenny and Freddy are on the beach. Daddy and Uncle Jim went to the store.”

Will should have been on the beach, renewing his daily swim habit, playing with his grandchildren, enjoying life. He hadn’t been out of the house for several days. Everything was an effort now with Emma gone.

“Why aren’t you with them?” he asked.

The little girl stopped her drawing and shook her dark head, as if it were obvious. “I have to do something important.”

”Ummm.” Will wondered what could be so important to a seven-year-old that she would give up a morning on the beach.

Grandfather and granddaughter worked quietly for several minutes, he with his writing and she with her drawing. The occasional happy shout came in through the open window along with the screech of gulls and the rhythmic splash of waves.

“Grandpa, do mermaids wear shoes?”

“What?” The imagination of children was wonderful. “I don’t know. They don’t have feet. Just fins.”

“I know that Grandpa, but could you put a shoe on a fin?”

“Ummm, maybe, with a long strap going from the shoe up and around the fish tail and tied around the waist.”

He couldn’t believe himself; designing shoes for a mermaid. What he should be doing was writing his monthly article, a dull article for sure…dull as dust. He had run out of ideas and enthusiasm. His monthly ruminations about the joys and challenges of retirement seemed like the perfect solution when he retired, just enough required work, and the pressure associated with it, to be doable at his age and enough extra cash to splurge now and then.

For five years the arrangement had been successful, but the last few articles had not been as well received as the others: How to Live When Retired; How to Keep Your Spirit Alive... Once he thought he knew; books, exercise, family, friends, keep busy. gardening, travel… He had done all of that and had written about it. Now he was stale, boring, his editor said. His articles mirrored his mood. Sure, he had lost his wife, his life partner, but so had others. How do they keep their spirits alive?

“You’re sinking into a maudlin caricature of retirement and aging,” his editor told him the previous week. “Where’s the joy and fun you used to write about? You’re not dead yet.”

No, not dead, but as good as.

“Show me, Grandpa, how to make the mermaid’s shoes. Red shoes. Pleeeaase.”

Ahhh; please. With that smile, those dimples and that sweet pleading voice Will had no choice but to obey. Taking the offered red crayon, he drew a shoe on one fin and circled a line around the tail to represent a strap reaching up to the waist. Will worked slowly, taking careful note of Candace’s drawing which was surprisingly good for a seven-year-old. The mermaid was well proportioned, shapely and very bare.

“Thanks, Grandpa. I’ll draw the other shoe.”

With remarkable accuracy, Candace copied his rendition and drew the other shoe. At the mermaid’s waist she brought the two lines together and drew a neat bow.

“There. Now I can make Miramar’s wedding dress. That’s going to be white, just like a real bride, not red like her shoes. She so wants red shoes, I said would make them red.””

“That’s nice,” Will said, patting Candace on the head and gently nudging her back to her spot on the floor.

“She’s going to marry Waverly, you know.”

“Ummmm... I suppose he’s a merman, is he?”

Why was he encouraging her? Imagination in a child is great, but Candace sometimes got carried away. Two summers ago, it was a talking rabbit named Connor she had met while on one of their walks.

“He lives in the woods,” she had said, “and wants us to keep Rollo out. Rabbits don’t like dogs, you know.”

She was inconsolable until Rollo was kept on a leash when they walked past the woods.

Then there was the incident last Christmas. She had climbed in a store window display and joined the mechanical elves at their tea party, after first moving the table further back from the store window.

“The elves were afraid of the people pushing against the window. It could break, you know. They asked me to help because no one else would listen.”

Now it was Miramar and Waverly.

“Yes, Grandpa. Waverly is a merman. He and Miramar are alone in the water world. They don’t have any family or sea money for a wedding. I promised to help.”

Water world? Sea money? Shoes for mermaids? He had to stop this. “You know, Candace, there are no such creatures as mermaids and mermen. They are only found in stories. Perhaps you had better do something else for awhile.”

Will was at a loss as to how to deal with this latest fantasy. Maybe he should wake Becky from her nap.

Candace pursed her lips and shook her head. “The stories are real, Grandpa. I saw Miramar. She was so unhappy. I have to help. I promised. See? I made her a wedding dress with a veil and the red shoes she wanted. Now I have to make a wedding suit for Waverly and collect more sea money.” She patted the pockets of her shorts which rattled.

“What’s in your pockets?” Will asked.

“Sea shells. It’s sea money, you know.”

Will didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know how to deal with Candace; he didn’t know what to write about in his article; he didn’t know how to live anymore. He shook his head and said no more. His daughter would have to deal with Candace. His editor would have to take whatever drivel he came up with.

Several minutes passed before Will became aware that he was alone. He looked in on Becky, but she was still napping. After checking the remaining rooms he hurried down to the beach.

“She’s digging over there.” Candace’s twelve-year-old brother Bobby pointed to a spot along the dunes where a bright green bucket and shovel lay on the sand. “I had to drag her away from the rocks again.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She was there a minute ago.”

With his heart thumping, Will ran toward a line of rocks jutting into the ocean. The tide was in, and waves washed over the rocks with a dangerous force. Someone was on the head rock.

“Cannnn dace!” His voice was lost on the wind.

Bobby and the rest of Will’s family followed behind, calling out her name.

Waves rushed up and over the craggy surfaces of the rocks, throwing up spumes of water which caught the sun, sending up a shower of glitter lights. Will thought he saw a second figure on the head rock. He shaded his eyes and squinted for a better look. Candace was at the bottom of the rocks, standing in water up to her knees.

As Will approached, Candace tossed two sheets of drawing paper into the water. They were quickly pulled by a wave and carried out to sea – the drawings of Miramar and Waverly in their wedding finery. Will, trying to watch Candace and watch the figures on the rock, couldn’t quite grasp what he was seeing. The two figures, a man and a woman, had no legs, but fish tails. With a quick thrust of their arms, they dove into the water

“Candace. Come away. You frightened us.”

“Not yet, Grandpa. I promised to get Miramar and Waverly sea money.” She emptied her pockets on the sand and began tossing the shells into the waves. “I can’t throw far. They won’t reach them.” She looked about to cry.

Ignoring the cries of the others crowding around them, Will picked up the shells and threw them as far as he could.

“Look,” shouted Bobby. “Are those dolphins splashing out there?”

Will put a hand on Candace’s shoulder. She knew what was out there. So did he; not dolphins, but something remarkable, something magical, something that renewed his spirit and brought joy back into his life. Was it real or imagined? The power of suggestion or a trick of light? Will wasn’t sure which and he didn’t care.

Candace yanked on his arm and pointed out toward the splashing. “Did you see that, Grandpa?”

Will nodded. Yes, he had seen it, a flash of red in the rolling waves -- Miramar’s shoes.

“Thanks, Grandpa,” Candace said as they walked back.

“And thank you, Candace. Thank you.”

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Lovelorn Bastard by Nyla Bass

“We’re getting Chinese takeout for lunch, would you like to order anything?” I asked my boss, Carl. My question was pretty straight-forward, but his response stupefied me. “What is Leila having?” he asked.

I blinked a couple of times, and pressed my lips together to stifle the words that almost tumbled out. “Um…,” I consulted my order list, “…house special lo mein,” I said, instead of what is wrong with you asshole?

“I’ll have that too, and an egg roll,” then Carl asked, “did Leila get an eggroll?” as though the question made sense. I sighed, shook my head in an ambiguous motion, and made a hasty exit, “I’ll go call this order in”.

Carl’s obsession with Leila -- the lead in our department, has been a source of hilarity for the other six of us staff members, for years. Far less amusing, is the fact that people working in other areas, are beginning to notice it. A fact that is inconsequential to our boss -- because he imagines himself undetected, and so goes around doing dumb obsessive shit, as though he were the fucking ‘invisible man’.

As I drove to Peking Wok, my mind traveled back five years, to when Carl’s wife had worked on the job. Carl was a circumspect man back then, so his current sorry ass situation is merely proof that when Carl’s wife had left the company, his discretion and self-respect had left along with her.

I arrived with the lunch via the western exit, the whisper-quiet automatic doors sliding closed behind me. Carl was several yards up ahead, in the path near the restrooms. His back was turned away from traffic coming from the west, and my approach was muffled by thick carpeting underfoot. I started to call out, to draw attention to my advance, but curiosity silenced me. Taking care not to crinkle the lunch bags, I watched as Carl stooped into a semi-crouch, tilted and stretched his paunchy body, then craned his neck in a combination weirdly similar to an avian mating dance I’d once seen on the Nature Channel. I crept close enough to follow his trajectory, and surmised that if you twisted and stretched just so… you’d get a perfect view into Leila’s cube. I shook my head at the pathetic bastard and coughed, loudly. Carl jumped about a foot… nearly shat, and escaped into the men’s room.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been caught. We’d nailed him countless times, eavesdropping (his ear all but pressed against the fabric-covered partition) outside of Leila’s cube. For the benefit of whoever happened to happen upon him, he’d devised a perversely entertaining travesty -- he’d pretend that he’d stopped there randomly, would mutter to himself, and pat his trouser pockets as though he’d forgotten something, then would end the whole charade with a ridiculous Aha!, followed by a mad dash off to do whatever he’d supposedly just remembered.

In my own best interest, I avoid delving into any psychopathology behind Carl’s little enactments, or on his behavior as a whole; particularly since thought in that direction inevitably conjures up that old saying, ‘if it walks like a duck...’

A few months ago, I’d finally had it with Carl’s aggravating habit of publicly thanking Leila for her participation in projects that she hadn’t been involved with. Rather than bring in Human Resources, which really wasn’t my style -- I decided to corner Lucky Leila instead.

“That’s very hard to believe,” I’d said, to Leila’s response on whether she’d ever been involved with Carl.

“Even so… the answer is no, and before you ask again… I do not do anything to encourage him,” Leila had said; each denial punctuated by the gold bangles clinking expensively with each twist of her wrist, as she’d stirred her deluxe mocha latte-chino.

I’d ogled the bangles, the pricey coffee then pointedly suggested, “you know, constantly accepting his gifts… could be construed, as provocation… of his attention, as well”.

Leila completely missed the connection, “we’re old friends... why shouldn’t I accept his gifts?”

“Hmm,” so I pinned her down with, “why don’t you correct him when he gives you credit for projects that you haven’t worked on?”

The duplicitous confession I’d expected to get from Leila was somewhat less than ‘duplicit’, “Gosh, you know… when we’re in those meetings, I just tune him out… I have no idea what he’s saying most of the time,” she’d shrugged; then she’d gone on her merry way.

The reckoning hadn’t gone quite like I’d envisioned.

Leila still flat-out refuses to openly acknowledge his indulgence. Perhaps having to confront her own avarice, has something to do with it -- what with all the baskets of mangoes and strawberries; bagels, donuts, breakfasts, lunches; gift cards; coupons; vending machine snacks; souvenirs; books; music; cheese from Wisconsin; and who knows what the hell else... it’s a veritable fucking cornucopia; which she sometimes shares with us peasants.

I’ve contemplated many times, on whether to show Leila the photo I’d stealthily taken last Christmas, of Carl transferring a trunk load of gifts from his SUV, to hers… but I’ve decided to give her one more chance to own up.

I dropped Carl’s lunch off at his desk, and headed for the break room. My co-workers were looking at the company’s new organizational restructuring chart. I scanned the chart, skipped over ‘new hires’, and zeroed in on the few ‘rehires’ listed; then sighed in disappointment… Carl’s wife wasn’t on the list. I set the document aside, bit into my eggroll, and thought about Carl’s wife. I thought about Leila too; and strangely, the image of Gravy Train dry dog food popped into my head. Our minds can certainly form some weird associations. I looked over at Leila sitting off by herself over near the fax machine, browsing through an upscale magazine. I took another bite of my eggroll, and pictured a gravy train… abandoned… its metal all rusted… half the cars lying derailed off the track; and I smiled.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Erection Campaign by AmandaLyn Donogal

Some press! Some press! My kingdom for some press!

A baby to caress

An issue to obsess

A pancake to flip, christen a ship,

Profound words from my lip

Yes, stroke me!

Some power! More power! Unbridled power,

Above others to tower

Blare horns, toss a flower

To send men off to war

Then I’ll send a few more

I don’t need to say why –

I’ll command it; they’ll die

Watch as mothers grieve, cry

It strokes me.

Fear him! Jeer him! Vote not for my foe

Tell him ‘say it ain’t so’

Watch. Your taxes will grow

The economy slow

It’s all his fault, you know,

But I’ll make things sound

Bank profits abound,

Get more oil from the ground

Now stroke me!

An ‘X’! An ‘X’! By my name put your ‘X’

Watch the muscles I’ll flex

It’s much better than sex.

With my mandate held tight

Now bend over, don’t fight

This won’t hurt. You’re so tight!

Time to fuck you, alright?

'Cause you stroked me.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

A dream of you by Kie Borsden

The greatest pain is that your grief

is tangible in your slow-paced

flows of satin hair, and each night

you near closer as if to touch,

but your translucent shades are,

in reality, opaque black

and my paralysed fingers twitch

with the knowledge that you stand upon

a precipice; your pallid skin,

although beautiful, is cheerless

in your throbbing vision – I cannot weep

for my eyes are not open, but the mind

is undone by our concluding warmth –

I could have known you once.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Born by David Smith

there is a light

it is between the times

of dark despair

of pleasant wish

fertile garden

fed by bright

incandescence, bearing fruit

not taken in mortal plight

promised to us

by eternal life

the light that

waits in the hearts of each

child that snatches life in breath

from such dark as light

a cry, a gurgle, a baby born

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

No Comment by Ben Nardolilli

Don’t mention them.

You know who. The ones who never did

Anything, never helped

Anyone, the names and faces

You look at when you have to buy

A six-pack and soup in the checkout,

Whose babies you have to care about,

Whose marriages you have to follow,

Who trials and tribulations

Are considered a national pastime,

Whose scandals are somehow better,

Purer in sin, and more relevant

That all the hate and theft

Going on under our noses in the capital.

Don’t mention them.

Your words give them sunlight,

Your clicks give them their rain,

Nothing else can feed them,

Their talentless lives are a void

To be avoided and it is easy to do so.

Don’t mention them.

Don’t think you are better than them

And then mention them

To make fun how stupid they are,

Just don’t mention them,

Be quiet about them,

Condemn and mock someone else,

Your neighbor perhaps,

Or the president,

But not them, they don’t deserve it,

And when you pay them attention

They get paid

For doing nothing, being nothing,

Having no talent, having no message,

Their handlers and managers

Don’t care if you don’t really care,

If you’re being ironic, or sarcastic,

If you mention them,

Their fame grows and their assets

Bubble up and they remain famous,

Don’t talk about them,

Treat them like the recent dead

That they should and pass over

All that we know too much already

With a well deserved silence.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The Spot for Yuriy Kamensky in My Brain by Lindsay Gross

Creatively stagnant blood pulses through my arms

Slowly solidifies like a jelly mold with fatty chunks;

Trained and engrained fingers desensitize,

(Re)appropriate credence to continue –

Continue trying to find the missing beat

Like a red jigsaw puzzle without edges.

But what happens then?

No boundaries like spilt coffee under and over

The wooden planks behind your bedroom barrier –

So textured and stained from the broken blobs of the lava lamp

That’s been mesmerizing my every musingthoughtaction

Until your outline was imprinted irrevocably in my memory.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Injustice by Kie Borsden

Justice in jest is no even-handedness

for palms pass spaced and pressed fingertips spread

from those hands, land to pat sweaty backs;

to shake with clammy ease their own likeness.

When counterfeit sincerity passes through

a faux of ersatz pretense to a criminal grin,

the mocking song of the 'righteous' chorus sets

a twisted tone to partiality.

When that pound of flesh is a pound of shit,

slit throats gargle; when the hang man barters

for the judge's arms unfolded; when fairness

is lost in turned cheeks; when justice just is…

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The Underbelly by Valentina Cano

Underneath that smile lies a sewer system.

An intricate course

of hollow lines and watery tunnels,

dark and smelling of decayed metal.

I see it open before me,

casting its shadow of dust

all around me,

sinking the chair, the table,

the vase sitting there.

Sinking them into that mire

of teeth and shiny lips.

I clutch at the walls with shuddering fingers

but I feel my stomach drop

like a plate a second away from smashing.

My eyes roll upwards like coin slots,

and I fall, I’m falling

splashing and tearing into that

soup of dirt and chunks of hair.

Into that smile covered with gloss.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

I Got Them Holiday Gift Giving Blues Again by J. Mesch

I didn’t know what

To get you for the holidays...

Some art for your foyer?

The concept was boring

Those tickets you wanted

To something on Broadway

Entailed my imploring

A favor from someone who knows

What’s worth seeing

And what’s not sold out, and

Your schedule agreeing

I thought then some music

A bottle of boozic,

A Gibson guitar,

A personal star

(Impossibly far, but somehow exciting,

Eternal sky-lighting)

And as the list grew ever longer,

Each item seemed just that much wronger

I thought of re-using a gift that I‘d gotten

But conscience, alerted, rebelled crying “Rotten”

Embarrassed, avoiding my eyes in the glass

I aimed for excess, but just came up with crass.

Exhausted, unsettled, your gift still a blank

I thought wanly panting, of cash from the bank

So shockingly gauche that I panicked at last

Convinced that my cool was now all in the past

My image no longer urbane, polished, suave

If I blew this, I’d hide in a closet and starve

I had to come up with a gift that was awesome:

A set of handmade clubs, and the option to emboss ‘em;

Some flutes to hold champagne, blown in Venice by a master;

Antiques from ancient Delphi, weathered marble, alabaster;

There seemed no dearth of gifts I could imagine you’d adore

But not one that I could buy and feel I knew you’d like for sure

The time had come for drastic and unmitigated measures

I’d have to cast still further for yet undiscovered pleasures

In stern and dedicated mood I dressed for foul and fair

And grimly slogged through mire and fen

To seek what was not there

Horizons blankly reaching, hills receding in the mist

Still the gift that siren-called to me was not held in my fist.

Some years went by, I headed home,

A pale and shadowed fright

The gift that still eluded me

Would haunt me day and night

At three A.M., at five and then at noon I’d start to cry

From deep within my substance

I would howl, “A Gucci tie!”

“A gem encrusted corkscrew!”

“Maid service for the year!”

“A cruise to somewhere unexplored, a case of Danish beer”

These concepts would betimes erupt, explosive and unbidden.

I grew to dread society; I practiced stealth, quite hidden

Just furtively emerging to buy Milky Ways and water

With hands clapped tightly to my mouth

While hollering “A quarter“

Pound of sturgeon roe, a truffle from the Piedmont”

A Morgan horse with saddle and a stepstool for the Siedmont

I couldn’t stop reviewing like a film forever playing

The gifts I might have given you, the choices kept arraying

While I, beyond all help by now was paralyzed, encumbered

By vacillation, anergy, my days were clearly numbered

If I continued on this track, nights staggering unslumbered

Days spent ingesting candy bars, moods ochre’d and burnt Umber’d...

One day in somewhat lighter mood I took myself to task

I posed myself a question, thus: Perhaps I should just ask

I’ll phone to Rita, she’s a friend. I’ll query honestly:

Is there something you would like to have?

And Larry, what would he?

So cheered was I at just the thought,

Although I’d suffered shriftly

My cries and moans were barely heard

My sobs receded swiftly

My health, in short, improved so much

I threw a New Year’s Bash,

Invited all the neighbors and as gifts I gave them cash.

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