IN THOSE DAYS WE by Jen Tomaloff

IN THOSE DAYS WE

Jennifer L. Tomaloff

IN THOSE DAYS WE Jennifer L. Tomaloff

IN THOSE DAYS WE | ÂŠ 2012 Jennifer L. Tomaloff | All works contained herein are owned by their individual authors | No part of this book may be used except in brief quotation without the express permission of the author(s). bendinglightintoverse.com ISBN-13: 978-1479376452 ISBN-10: 1479376450

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Special thanks and dedication to the talented individuals whose works are contained in these pages.

CONTENTS

BREAKING THE CIRCLE

Len Kuntz

THE WIRE

Len Kuntz

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BARN

Robert Kloss

THE BOYS SHIRTLESS IN THEIR WAGON

Robert Kloss

MY PHOTOGRAPH

Norman Lock

SARAH

Molly Gaudry

MATILDA

Molly Gaudry

HOGS

J. A. Tyler

THE THIRD DAUGHTER

J. A. Tyler

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

Kathryn Rantala

WALLPAPER SPRING

Kathryn Rantala

Ben Tanzer

Ryan W. Bradley

Andrew Borgstrom

Meg Tuite

WHITE NOISE THE WOOD PILE OUR PERFECT POSTURE AND BARE FOREARMS BURTON: CIRCA 1956: NEW YEAR’S EVE

EMMETT’S ESCAPE: 1940, BAINBRIDGE, MD BOOT CAMP

Meg Tuite

THE FALLING FATHER-OBJECT

Kyle Hemmings

THERE ARE TWO THINGS ABOUT MY BROTHER THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Kyle Hemmings

BRIEF IN CASE

Parker Tettleton

WE’RE

Parker Tettleton

FRIENDS

Marcus Speh

ROKOVOKO

Marcus Speh

A BABY SO LARGE

Chad Redden

THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS

Chad Redden

BURIED

Robert Vaughan

CALIFORNIA TAN

Robert Vaughan

UN CAFE

J. Bradley

107

J. Bradley

109

ELMER FROM MILWAUKEE

David Tomaloff

111

WHAT’S WRONG WITH JACK

David Tomaloff

113

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BREAKING THE CIRCLE By Len Kuntz

It was not their fault that they became men. As boys, as boys playing marbles in a field outside their father’s farm one day, the larger lost his favorite steelies in a game of marbles and set about beating the thin marksman. This is what I can do with my fists, the larger one thought. This is what I can do with my rage. The younger one took the bulk of the beating, but he, too, considered-- Wrath has a release. This is what Dad has been trying to teach us all these years. After the fight, their father took them both back behind the barn. “Pick your own switches,” he said. It was August. The slender limbs were still young, which meant the sticks would not break easily, which meant the lashing went on into the evening because the rule was that corporal penance only ended when the samplings snapped. That night the boys, the brothers, they lay in silence, lay on 2

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their bunks brooding and pondering their punishment, how their furious hatred had taken root and torched an entire day. Tiny pieces of glass and metal had caused it. No wonder why wars went on forever. No wonder either, that vehemence began to bathe and swirl inside each boy, a cake batter congealing, more and more of it with each day and every evening, until both boys seethed, until the youths were angry men with more hatred than ideas, until that final day when the thinner one showed his older brother by killing him first, then adding a suicide shot, halting the handoff, ending the plague, once and for all breaking the mad, mad circle.

ď Ľď Ś

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THE WIRE By Len Kuntz

We are fools. It happens more times than we know. Quite often, the truth stares us in the eye while we, in turn, look over its shoulder. Or else we make ourselves dead by daydreaming. Or maybe we are simply too dull to notice. That’s how it is with this photograph where everything is as it’s not--clean and simple, sharp and innocent, a sly-but-brazen guarantee of hopefulness. We do not know the sins of this young man’s past. We have yet to see his skin stained with blood. His heart has still not been fully tampered with. We are a dope to let a camera seduce us, but it does. Perhaps most telling is the crease marks, or at least the center one which, at first glance, resembles a metal cord or the wire from an electrical fence. Once you take notice, it dominates 6

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the frame and will never leave, you will always see it and wonder. You will study how it bisects this man’s world—yard, barn, hill, horizon and house. How it slices his torso in two, the highest cut mark being near the man’s aorta. And you will wonder and ponder its meaning in a way akin to tarot card reading. If you’d gone back into the past—if it had been you!— not the You in the picture but You The Photographer, might you have seen the garrote marking the image, might you have told the young man to flee, GET AWAY! outrun your demons and never look back? Because if we look again, we see dried smudges on the northwest edge of the frame. Could be spilled coffee, cocoa, mud even. Blood even. How will we ever know now? A final study shows a similar smudge, only it’s a lighter, fainter blemish, close to translucent, above the young man’s shirt front, eastside, as if someone had mistaken where his heart would be, circling it as one love encircles another, claiming it as its own, making an early attempt not for rescue but for salvation. A sword pierces the circle diagonally. The wire cleaves it horizontally. Under attack we are told to grin and wear our white shirts starched. Underneath it all, we are but wire and circles, the struggle our own, the truth ours to share or take to the grave.

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE BARN By Robert Kloss

In the shadow of the barn the men sat on barrels playing a game they called “poker” while around them strewn apple crates rotted. From dawn til dusk this remained the posture of the men except in the intervening hours when the farmer’s eldest daughter brought them water in a tin bucket and this they slurped, cool and irony from a tin ladle. The farmer’s daughter whose neck they watched, whose finger tips, whose full pink lips. The farmer’s eldest daughter they knew only as “honey” and “darling” and these men who she knew only as the fellows she watched from her bedroom window, the fellows she named “Cliff” and “Roy” and “Francis” while she fogged the glass with her exhalations, and while her dolls on their shelves crowded and watched with glass eyes, the cracks trembling the paint upon their porcelain.

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THE BOYS SHIRTLESS IN THEIR WAGON By Robert Kloss

The boys shirtless in their wagon, husky and American, crew cut and bull-strong. The boy scrunched warm in the little wagon with the girl, the warmth of her back against his chest, her hair in his nose, the strawberry shampoo. The freckles on her arms. And smell of dogs in the yard and the clucking of chickens in the dust obscured for the tractor idling, the stink of its gasoline. And the tractor idled while their father attended to the men playing poker in the shadow of the barn. And the tractor idled when their father shouted “I said clear out” and the tractor idled while the dull thunk of metal on skull and the plummet of man. The tractor idled while their father lay bleeding and dissolving into the yard and the children scattered as chickens, mindless and clucking in the dust.

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MY PHOTOGRAPH By Norman Lock

I have it still: the collected sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay that I purchased at a used bookstore in Omaha, though the book means little to me now. What matters, now, is the photograph someone had left in its pages. Had it not been an old black-and-white print, stained and worn at the edges, I doubt I would have kept it. It had the look of something looked at many, many times before coming to me. (How it did happen to come to me, whether by providence or chance, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve often wondered over the years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; each conjecture yielding in its turn to another just as unsatisfying.) There was about the photograph something peremptory that would not let me turn away. What is shown in the photo is ordinary: my persistent interest in it lies not in its content but elsewhere and is related in my mind to a complex emotion whose principal themes are loss and the panic that overtakes me whenever I think how irretrievably the young girl and the man are lost to me. Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it strange to be anguished by the loss of two people I do not know? I can scarcely understand my own response to an image that, in itself, touches me not at all. The girl is giving the man, who is partially kneeling, a piece of cake. Smiling, she holds it for him to take in his mouth as a 14

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communicant might the host from the hand of a priest. But the action and its meaning, if it has a meaning, are of no importance to me. Nor is the landscape in which the two figures enact this small, prosaic drama. From the man’s overalls and hat as much as from the windmill in the background, I know they have been photographed on a farm. (I have never given the photographer a moment’s thought.) From their clothing, I know the picture was taken in the 1920’s or 30’s – perhaps as late as the 1940’s, provided the two figures inhabited a truly rural area. (I have always assumed the landscape and the two figures are American, but they needn’t be. There is nothing at all in the image or on the paper stock of the print to identify a country of origin.) When I was a little girl growing up in Ohio during the war, I wore such a smock and leggings as the girl in the picture has on and my father wore just such a hat. But the anecdotal history of my photograph has, as I said, no meaning for me. What absorbs me is the impossibility of my ever finding these two people, of their being forever gone from the world, theirs and my own. They have only a kind of weak, pronominal existence now – one where antecedents have vanished. The girl, the man (who may be her father, uncle, or some other known to her intimately, chastely), and the world they two inhabit exist only in my photograph. (I have always imagined there is no other print save mine.) For years I lived in dread of losing the picture: a fear equivalent, to give you an idea of my anxiety when contemplating its loss, to looking in a mirror one morning to fix 15

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your face and seeing no face looking back at you. At first I kept the picture in a frame to gaze at and also to camouflage it among others hanging on the wall – pictures of my husband and children, who no longer meant anything to me, not now that my photograph had been delivered into my hands by the most extraordinary means. But I was never at ease in case the house should catch fire or someone should steal my photograph, drawn by its power; for its power cannot be denied. Later, I found various hiding places for it: in a drawer among linen tablecloths, in the family album, under the rag rug, in the pages of this book or that one. (Perhaps in this way, my photograph had come to be placed in the book of Millay’s sonnets.) But no place seemed safe enough, and my heart nearly stopped each time I opened my husband’s old briefcase to assure myself that my photograph was still there. (He had left it and me years earlier.) After a while – a long while it must be admitted, I was no longer incurious about the girl and the man. I needed to know them – had to know them. That wish, that desire, grew little by little into an obsession. I thought of returning to Omaha to see if I could discover their identity. Perhaps someone living yet remembered them, for the two persons in my photograph were very likely dead. (I thought of them that way.) But I soon gave up the idea as impractical and futile. But don’t you see that because of my obsession, which was now full-blown, I could not stand the idea that this man and this child should be without a name or history? For a time I assuaged my panic with invention, 16

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but there was always something unstable about each identity I concocted for him and for her. They faded as my photograph might have done, had I not taken the greatest care not to expose it to direct light or excessive heat or humidity. And so in the end I became the little girl in my photograph, and I made of the man in the soft, misshapen hat and overalls my father. I had to be sure of their identities – can’t you see that? Otherwise, they would not stay regardless of my custodianship; and the pain I would feel at their going would destroy me. As for my father (the one the world called real), I no longer remember him; have begun, in fact, to doubt that I had any other father except this man in my photograph, who kneels to receive from my hand a piece of cake. I am an old woman, and I have had my photograph for more than thirty years. Tomorrow or one day next week, I intend to drive into the country around Lancaster. I remember having seen windmills there like the one in my photograph. My suitcase is already packed with a little light-colored smock and leggings such as I am wearing in my photograph. I have only to get in the car and go.

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SARAH By Molly Gaudry

That is my sister Sarah you see here, the one squinting into the light. That was our dead brother’s Harley Davidson. He worked two jobs to pay for it. Sarah and I were on a trip in his memory. We rode from New York City to southern California on that thing. Can you believe it? But I wasn’t taking the photograph of her. I had taken a million photographs of her by then—all in front of some restaurant, always after our supper. No, it is the man in the white hat, the one in the background holding open the door to that restaurant, the one feeding a stray cat a scrap of bacon from his hand, that I had my eye on. That man became my husband not long after. That man is your great-grandfather.

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MATILDA By Molly Gaudry

Here we are on our honeymoon. He loved that cat. Can you guess what the cat’s name was? Matilda! Miss Matilda Tabby! Can you believe Matilda was a boy! We didn’t know! And that’s me there in my new lace-up boots. They even had heels. You can tell from the photograph I’ve always been short. I loved those boots. I could lace them both in under a minute and off we’d go, James and Matilda and I. That was our secret place, not far from the house but hidden from view from the street. You think we’re smiling at you, but that camera was on a timer. It was a wedding gift from Sarah.

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HOGS By J. A. Tyler

(originally published in Prick of the Spindle) His mind had fallen away in great heaping chunks. Nature in the form of a sickle, slice slicing. Glaciers melting into sunspoiled fruit, flies pillaging, worms in and out and through. Unable to control himself or the world. Rocking in a chair and sipping on his pipe. Bringing food up and into his mouth, chewing in mostly gums. Pissing in the weeds behind the house and feeding the hogs from their soggy bucket. Singing to them, like the chirping of mindless birds, hands folding and unfolding in waves. In reflections he didn’t understand his own face. Couldn’t find himself within it. Sagging skin like war on his cheeks. Lips of bent and rusting wire. A mouth shaping words that wouldn’t happen. Hooked in his mouth, holding tight to three standalone teeth. Breathing copper and sulfur from the bellows of his stomach, like the end of things. Smiling because his face was hinged only that way, drooping low and sadly creaking. They called to him grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft, rattling their way across the back porch. A girl and a boy and a 24

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girl swinging from the limbs of ripe trees and calling again and again grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft. Play cards with us grandpa daft. Play your harmonica for us grandpa daft. Show us how the earth turns grandpa daft. He was quiet and smiled, stunned silent in an unpinned jaw and hollow eyes. Their father would hand him the small finger loop of glass, offering the moon in a bottle. And grandpa daft would drink back slow and heavy, unheeded, like it was water. The father offered and grandpa daft drank back, slick and clean. Never stumbling and never tasting the kettle undercurrents. Their father offered and grandpa daft drank long and lean like the flanks of a running horse. Like the stretch of a horizon. Chugging down with his pipe still poking from the corner of those bluing lips. Tipping back in his chair. The boy watched the girls, clambering up and down his withering now branches of arms. Pecking at his head and brow as if they were baby birds pegging down seedlings from his grassless skin. The boy watched as the girls punched his thighs, unable to break the stride from hog pen and then back again, to his chair and the porch. Shouting the while grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft. Come and get us, chase us, show us how you make water in july grandpa daft grandpa daft grandpa daft. And their mother would chastise them all, the boy for doing 25

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nothing and the girls for punching and poking at her own father. You leave grandfather alone she would say, swatting a lone bee from the porch eave, smoothing stray sweating hairs back onto her head. What has he ever done to you this man she would ask them and they would all stare down at their bare feet, toes wiggling shamefully on the scattered dirty boards. Yes mama they would mumble under breath slight as wind, watching grandpa daft rocking in the chair and looking vacant and like swimming and not hearing anything. Sometimes they saw from the porch father’s arm around grandpa daft’s shoulders as his hands went folding and unfolding in rainbows of feed. The hogs trampling back and forth in grunts and squealing hiccups, grandpa daft nodding his head with the movement of their father’s lips. And boy girl girl twisting white clothing in water and scrubbing white clothing with the senseless fat of soap and running white clothing over the silver mountains of a washboard. Sitting on the porch working, watching their father work, watching their grandfather work. Don’t get between a sow and her new ones was what they heard their father saying that night of the day it happened. Like every night where something he says clatters down the canals of their ears and they feel ashamed for having thought anything else or in between. That’s what we know and now you know it he told them that night when their mother was hiding tears behind her 26

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head and in the tensing of her shoulders. He knew it their father told them and winked at the boy and smiled small at the girls. He knew to be careful their father said, waiting in silence, hurrying to a morning that would blot out the stains of grandpa daft calling blood and becky becky becky. Because at the kitchen table, round and etched in the scrapes and weight of pots and pans and dishes they had sat, the father and the boy and the girls and grandpa daft. And their mother had tucked her dress underneath her as she sat and led a prayer like the rustling of papery wings above begging flames. Like every night ending with a unbroken amen. Like every night chasing down spoons and forks and knives ragged and chiming against plates. Gobbled down and hushed and sometimes only a clearing of throats or the swallow of rock water from clear glasses. Because midway between potatoes and steak, grandpa daft had started in calling becky becky becky with question marks like bleeding. Like blood he sang becky. He moaned and gurgled becky. He woke from a dream where becky stood. He walked on a shore called becky where his toes sank in sand and the waves rolled over him in turn making points. Asking to empty bloodless faces becky becky becky. Their mother wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t becky. The girls and the boy and the father werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t becky. Because becky was the marsh soft and molding part of his brain, running aground as his three teeth worked through the tendons of steak 27

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and a gray pebble in the starch. Because when the hogs started their violent sounds the girls ran from the room where they were doing each other’s hair in braids like twisted bread. And on the porch the noise tripled and the smear on each hog’s face was reddish brown and raw looking and screaming. The boy there at the well, buckets in hands, locked in place, a mute attached to his lungs. And their father leaning one hand on the wall of the barn, another on his hip pocket, a stalk of grass shooting from his teeth and lips. And their mother behind them all, bracing herself in the doorway, her knuckles white as snow in early winter, when it falls in a covering like pieces of the sky.

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[THE THIRD DAUGHTER] By J. A. Tyler

The third daughter was a daughter made of sun, so bright we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hold her. She sprung from my eyes when I was looking through a saddle of mountains. There was a horizon past the crags, and my third daughter rose between them, liquid hot and burning. I woke in these woods. My nieces, I have ten of them, they were swarming the trees, dropping death-blankets from their milkwhite arms, branches holding them up. In these woods, there is so much language that we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use. This deer-brother, his antlers silhouetting my face, he handed me a black dot on a white paper, the moment of my death. I looked into the spot on the page and my brother vanished, his deer-hooves into the treeline, past where I could exist. I have built seven houses here, and none of them remain. These lost woods are a purgatory where I soak in sun. My third daughter was the night that her mother said I love you and I had nothing to give back. I did not love her, could not, and the sun broke across her face as she waited for my response. My 30

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third daughter was the first day without daughters. There is love for moon and love for sun, but we cannot have both at once. Dear Brother: Can you imagine how fast we would sink without love? In these woods, remembering the woman who once loved me. We had dinner beneath a waterfall. We held hands. Later there was a bed and so many attempts. The night broke with a fever of sun looming, when she said I love you, and I could not. Dear Woods: Was there ever a time when you were without trees? A river cuts through this forest. I have followed it until I can run no farther, and it is all the same woods, cycles, there is no end. The horizon stretched in front of me, through the branches, it never comes close. My third daughter, there in the sky, always exactly that far away. In the opposite direction, where the river comes from, it is the moon, but the river never ends, never truncates in a lake or in stillness, and the moon is only a reflection of what we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have. In these woods I want to raise a kite, humming towards the sun, towards a daughter that never was. I want to close my eyes against the heat and feel a taut line floating in my hands. In these woods, I imagine the impossible, which is how we

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survive. I am supposed to be dying, but I refuse. I refuse to let my deerbrother dictate my death, and I refuse to listen to this third daughter who never says a word, who only shines. Deathdreams are what I am caught in, and there is no escaping from beneath them. In these woods I refuse, refute my death, because I am more deer-brother than anyone else. Deer-Moon: Imagine what it would be like if you had your own lightheart? My brother is a deer and we are a herd. He is hidden somewhere nearby, breathing. I can smell his hiding. I can feel the black cold of his eyes on my deer-back. We were brothers running by a river that was this same river. But my brother and I, when we were deer-children, the river ended in an open field. It disappeared into musk-sunsets and the ineffectual buzz of meadows. The river that my brother and I chased each other down, that river of oblivion, and it carried our hooves like air. Our child-herd, our running. In these woods, there is no unknowing. I know that I will never love a woman. I know that a woman will only love me once, long enough to see how wrong she can 32

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be. I know that I will never have daughters. I know that my brother will have ten of them, deer-daughters shaped just like him, with loving deer-hearts as large and as gracious as the sun. Because a river has two open ends, it cannot escape – it only runs. When we were deer we ran. Now I am chasing my deerbrother’s hide, invested in his disappearance. Only he can take the message of death back from my hands, and then our antlers will feel lighter on these heads. In these woods, I am one of so many deer, all of us confused and wanting, all of us searching. In these woods, where there is no finding what we have lost. My third daughter, with her beaming hair, she floats above me as I run in these woods, stumbling through the ashes of seven houses built and burned, of the slaughtered foxes and opened bears. Through the fish and the broken violins, birds dropping through clouds. This is no magic trick. I am lost, and there is only running left. Dear Death: How fast do we have to run to escape you? My third daughter melts the glaciers and I hear the swell of baking ice. This world is coming in towards me, but I won’t see it move until it is suffocating me. Then I will reach with my hands towards her light, and find our third daughter only then a 33

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sun, no longer a daughter we didn’t have. The third daughter is the third time that we attempted the impossible, the third time we failed, and the last time that a sun held deer-hooves in its light, raking through lost woods. The third daughter is waking to death-dreams, deer-daughters raining death-blankets, the ground beneath us yawning open. I am a deer, and I am running. There is no end to these woods – I will be running forever. I only stop to build houses and to burn them down. I only stoop to entice the animals in, the foxes and the bears, the birds and the fish. I only bring the animals in to kill them, to search on their insides for the deer-brother I am missing. I only search for my dear brother because he is lost, and I don’t want to die. In these woods, begging is mute – no sounds come from antlers. In these woods, the sun weighs as much as our shoulders, and a burden is a burden. Dear Dear: I am so sorry that I could not love you. Our daughter would have been beautiful.

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MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE By Kathryn Rantala

Ice, grinding on ice in its sleep, ratchets against my spine; the sound of saw-cuts deep downward on bone, flaying me where I lie. All white, all starving. Ice has dried and changed to sound; my eyes, to glass; my heart, to solids; all crushed by wheezing seas and my freezing Jesus. Tonight snows heavily in my mind. Beds creak and heave as souls leave them and the vengeful God of Silence steps aside for Ice All Mighty. Northern Lights scream colors across the sky — as if light were anything like that. Or heat. Or anything else we’ve known. Or recovered from. Photographed. As if we had ever really been here or part of anything, anywhere. Or able to choose. Begin it or end. Or aim. As if we’d been given names. And remembered them. And sent them ahead of us like bold ships with colorful flags on blue water. As if we had actually ever even seen the sea. Or felt it or loved it or told all our friends about it. Or written it down. The sea. Or anything else. Anything. As if we had ever written anything at all.

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WALLPAPER SPRING By Kathryn Rantala

Most alluring in nature, the angle: the tender oblique of tendrils exploring a post; birds in demure descent, decent and lovely with morsels; shoots wobbling themselves skyward, faint and pale as ghosts who think themselves out of ground. Nothing straight in nature, but rising and falling in private, purposeful ways; to settle, eventually, deep down after. Dear and thrilling—life—spent beyond the reach of its despair. All these legs before me! And none moving. I sort them by type: tripod and man; wood and clothed flesh—all supporting a cache of equipment and all capped by a long black hood. The bellows of the camera, its black gills, are quiet. I am cornered by pattern — walls, floor, procedure — trying not to breathe as my necklace dangles like rope on my heart. The whole room is watching. I cannot fathom even slightly the secrets behind all this: how the photographer will bloom permanence from behind a shroud. Once done, this is done forever — and taking forever. I sit locked in gaze with a man I cannot see. My boots root me to carpet. I am held round by wound wicker, the lifeless, dry embrace of twigs. How conspiracy entangles! I must not move. Though surely I can think, and cannot help thinking — as a meal, at its last, may consider the 38

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consumer — about the man behind the lens. He has a strong stance, I will give him that, and pleasant cologne. And the rest? Hard to gauge anything hunched. I imagine shapes in the mountain before me: hardscapes and soft; a stream of loose threads; pathways up and down; the peaks pitiless, footholds unsure — a fall from them certain, sudden, shattering, and….

Movement. His hand, perhaps? About to emerge

from cover? I’d thought him turned to stone. I hold as I am, in Time and across it; the whole collection of me, expectant, withheld; though my veins belong to themselves and do what they will, wandering every which way under my skin, the blood alive in them — rushing and rubbing, freshening with each circuit; rubbing and rushing, rushing and warming, warming and…. “Just a few moments longer,” he murmurs. “There will be a flash.” My hand loosens.

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WHITE NOISE By Ben Tanzer

They are both standing there. Young, happy and beautiful, not yet parents, not a care in the world. They have escaped their families and their suffocating little town and they are free, full of awe and wonder and struck by the possibilities still to come. At first I am not sure why that picture of them comes to me when it does. At the moment all I can see are little white lights as they bounce around my swelling brain. Blood has fogged my vision. And I can hear little except for the white noise of the crowd, the cacophony of voices merging and blending together as half the arena roots me on and the other half begs me to stop before I’m killed. But I can’t stop and I won’t stop. Good or bad, the crowd is lost in the thrill of the fight. I am doing my job and must continue doing so. I am an entertainer, and I am here to be destroyed for their pleasure, a pugilist hunger artist fighting until I fade away. The fans have come to escape their lives, the bad marriages, the dead end jobs, their physical and emotional pain, and they need to project all of that onto me. So I do my job, I do it well and everyone goes home happy. 42

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Which explains of course why I am thinking about my parents, this, now, it all starts there, with them, their lessons and admonitions. I am their creation, and just as I am the vehicle for your pain, I am the vessel for their dashed hopes and dreams. My parents had endless ideas about how they might go about supporting a young and growing family, but selling expired Alpaca meat or watered down paint door to door and town to town couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feed a house full of children much less help us escape who and what we were, impoverished, white trash nobodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. When they first approach us about the fight, it seems ludicrous to all involved, all but me anyway. I know that it is nothing more than a spectacle and a public sacrifice. Something I have been preparing for my whole life. The idea that I can win is unimaginable even to me, but the possibility that I might stand toe to toe with Larry Holmes for 15 rounds is as easy for me to imagine as putting on my pants. For Holmes it is a no-brainer. He is contractually obligated to defend his title, but with this fight he can get a breather, an easy payday, and as a great, but not so loved champion, the chance to look magnanimous by offering a chump a shot at glory. It is Rocky writ large, with an endless array of story lines to spin, including race, class and the oldest tale of them all, David versus Goliath. That I will be destroyed is assumed. That all will 43

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enjoy the show a given. As my parents travel the back roads of Texas selling their wares they notice that all small towns have one thing in common, local toughs who will fight any and all comers in whatever warehouse, barn, VFW hall or church basement is available. They also notice that hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars change hands every minute as the spectators bet on everything from who will throw the first punch to who will be left standing. My parents line us up one night in the backyard and my father hits my brothers and I in the faces as hard as he can. I am the only one to stand up and hit him back. After he wipes the blood from his nose Randall “Tex” Cobb is born and we are in business. For the next several years we travel across Texas and the Southwest fighting men, and women, all colors and sizes, some meaner, others weaker, better looking, uglier or more damaged physically and psychically. But all can take a hit and keep hitting themselves. Until they can’t, because no one can take more hits than I can, something they all learn the hard way. Holmes is loose and goofing off at the start of the fight and I let him have his moment. Soon enough though, Holmes sees that this isn’t a joke to me when I won’t go down and start to hit back, body blows and shots to the head, wherever, and 44

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whenever, I want. At first Holmes appears tired and confused as fights for his life, his pride, his place in history. He glares at his managers and bemoaning the fates he looks to the heavens for guidance. And then Holmes remembers all the countless hours he has put in at the gym. He rights himself, and slowly, then unmercifully, begins to elevate his game. Suddenly, he is more polished and has more rhythm, his punches coming faster and harder, a blur of gloves and aggression I cannot remotely sidestep or defend against. Before long the crowd is begging for the fight to be stopped and so is Holmes. His anger has dissipated and now he just doesn’t want to kill me. I know he won’t, can’t, but he doesn’t, and how could he, he has spent a lifetime be trained to hurt people without a thought or care. There is a moment near the end when sight and sound slowly merge into something else, where Holmes catches me flush on the temple and my head rocks back and forth and back again. For a moment things want to go black, maybe permanently, and I accept this as my fate. It is my responsibility to the fans and to the show. This is art and spectacle and I embrace my role. But then I think of that photo, of my parents, once so full of hope themselves and I know I can finish, and that all will be fine, this fight the culmination of their dreams and mine. That picture now hangs on the wall of my home and when I 45

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look at it I get to reminisce about other times and other places that now seem so long ago and so far away. Fans sometimes come by for autographs. Once in a while the phone rings when ESPN or HBO wants to talk about what almost once was. Mostly though I putter around the house with my dogs and lately more often than not, I do not remember who the people in that photo are or even who I am or was. No matter though, today I remember everything and the memories are beautiful.

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THE WOOD PILE By Ryan W. Bradley

When I think of him I think of the wood pile. Us in the backyard, he perched atop a year’s supply of firewood he’d just finished splitting. Sweat still dripping off his body when I took out the camera and snapped a picture--the last picture. The next day he was off to Vietnam and just months after that there was the horrid knock on the door. The news that he was gone. The wood pile was still large then, but it seemed to dwindle so quickly. Even now, all these years later, when I chop the wood I am dividing memories. Parceling out a little of the love that’s been stuck in me like a cancer ever since.

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OUR PERFECT POSTURE AND BARE FOREARMS By Andrew Borgstrom

In the evenings, before our still life dreams and after hours of plucking wooden splinters from the flesh of small children and smaller animals, we would place our unlit candle behind a bushel and light the bushel, let our bushel so shine to finally reveal our candle—its wax melted from proximity, our sad candle-puddles offering perfect wicks.

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BURTON: CIRCA 1956: NEW YEAR’S EVE By Meg Tuite

There was a construction to Burton that enfeebled me. I was only able to sit next to him after Harriet had doused me with a shot from her flask in the bathroom. He played the bongos at every party, though his rhythm only found its home in his words. His chatter was a charity. I snickered and snorted like some imbecile unable to offer anything to his ongoing entertainment. It was a potency of language that I followed not by any alphabet, but by the radiation that imploded from his unrestrained fervor. Tonight was the big night. New Year’s Eve, 1956. We were all wearing our party hats, had horns to blow and confetti to throw. I was sixteen and ready. Burton was seventeen and had no apparent allies. His intimacy was universal and all were fair game. Harriet was always half in the bag and ready for anything. She had those curves that most men were mesmerized by. Burton was the jury before the judgment. He was anyone or no one’s verdict. I made the mistake of telling Harriet in the bathroom that I was determined to kiss Burton. “Oh, my poor, poor Meredith. Here give me those lonely lips. Now pucker up for me.” She smeared her apple-red lipstick 52

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over my chapped lips. Then she dotted my cheeks with it and rubbed it over my cheekbones. “Oh, yes, now that’s much better, honey. Look. You’ve been colorized.” I stared at myself in the mirror. I did look less dreary and more like one of those snow cones we got at Coney Island, after the vendor had poured red syrup all over the colorless ice. Harriet took another swig of some kind of liquor my dad drank at home and handed me the silver flask. I often wondered where she got these items. She was sixteen going on at least twentyone. She was that kind of sophistication that stared at me from the faces in Life Magazine. She was Grace Kelly with swagger. I swallowed the burning liquid and felt it cascade through my bones. I straightened up a bit and felt that surge of bravado that only the hot coals from that flask could give me. I readjusted the swooping curl on my forehead, adjusted my paper hat and straightened my skirt. Harriet growled at me and said, “Go get him.” I marched out into the living room. Burton was still playing the bongos to some Carmen Miranda song scratching on the phonograph. Some of the girls were dancing together and I joined in. I kept an eye on Burton through a few more songs until he finally put the bongos away and was got up to leaf through the albums. Now was my moment.

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“You were really great on those bongos, Burton.” “Thanks, um….” “Meredith. Meredith Brown.” “Oh yeah, hey Meredith.” Burton didn’t even look up. He started bantering about his favorite Chuck Berry album. He didn’t care who his audience was. He rarely had his mouth closed. I grabbed an Elvis Presley album and ran over to the phonograph and pushed the disc down. I put it on the slow one I danced alone to at home. “Love Me Tender” started crooning from the record player. It was almost midnight and I had it in me. I took Burton’s arm and put it around my waist. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. He shut his mouth, smiled for the first time and looked down at me. I thought I was going to pass out. The grandfather clock in the hallway finally started chiming midnight. I’d been dancing with Burton, floating through the last five songs. I understood now what swooning meant. The gong started to ding off its twelve bells. I closed my eyes and lifted myself up on my heels to lay a big one on Burton with my bright, new red lips when I felt a tug as he was wrenched from my arms.

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I opened my eyes just as everyone shouted out “Happy New Year” in unison and blew their party horns while confetti cascaded everywhere around us. Harriet already had her tongue down Burton’s throat.

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EMMETT’S ESCAPE: 1940, BAINBRIDGE, MD BOOT CAMP By Meg Tuite

Yeah, that’s me in the photo. I was a changed man when I came back from boot camp in Bainbridge. The only photo my parents ever took of me. Leaning on my sea bag, one body muscle without an ounce of fat after six weeks of “Up and at em, drop em and grab em, fire drill, scrub down that deck, inspection, move it or lose it Boot. I ain’t your mommy and I never will be.” And this after a ten-hour day of marching, calisthenics, scrubbing clothes, rifle-over-your-head drills, pulling oars, loading heavy shells in guns. We didn’t get much sleep, but I still found time for my one love. Poetry. No one would break that out of me. I was eighteen in 1940 when I enlisted in the Navy. I had to escape my raunchy, German family. Six siblings and two crazy parents whose trademark to poetry was to snicker out dirty jokes at meals. “Who’s been churning your butter, Mama?” Dad would chortle. “You’re not going dairy on me with the milkman, are you, buttercup?” And he and mom would giggle and sing, dancing

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around the kitchen with their stomachs beating off one another. My brothers and sisters were no better. “I saw you and that he-man, Joseph, wriggling around like caterpillars at the river, Etta? Considering you’re still bait, maybe I’ll hook you up to my line and see if you can catch something for me, besides carp swill,” said Bertram, the eldest in the family. “Shut-up, you beast! You fat, hairy bog of a beast. You couldn’t get a girl if you captured her with your gnarly claws!” said Etta. “Oh, but you’re wrong, my slithering sister. I’ve even had a go of it with your so-called best friend, Lisa! Now there’s a delectable tasty.” Etta would charge Bertram screaming and ranting, while the younger kids roared, beating their chests like gorillas. It was insanity. The parents ignored them, whispering and dancing gut to gut as though no one else was in the room. Invisibility was something I excelled at. One of the states I found most interesting was to watch the family squabble around the dining room table throwing food and screeching while I evaporated into the ether, inside my head, going over lines I’d memorized from my favorite poets. Rilke and Rimbaud. If I remained quiet, I was able to camouflage myself in a vague, vaporous dream.

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I even wrote some of my own poems at night. Not so great, but I kept the poems anyway alongside my books in my drawer. I pulled them out at night to read when my brothers, who all slept in the same room, were drooling over girly magazines or snoring. They called me “the Pastor” because I was boring, never told a joke and read all the time. I was damn thankful when they accepted me into the Navy. How was I ever going to see the world if I didn’t get away from this madhouse? Mother and Father never cried when I told them I was leaving. “You are a grown man now, Emmett. You can do as you please,” Mom said. The parents took me to the station, smiled and waved me off as I boarded the train to freedom. My poetry and books were stashed away in my bag. Boot camp was a hell of a challenge. For those six weeks I worked myself like a fanatic to be the best. I despised getting called out for any infraction and I quickly found that the best way to anonymity in the navy was to do everything they said, fast and well. * * * * Emmett didn’t make friends easily, but Henry, his bunkmate, became an easy chum. Henry had no interest in poetry or any of that nonsense, but he loved to listen to Emmett recite after hours. Sometimes they stayed up all night. Henry was a great listener. Emmett was intrigued by that. No one in his family had ever paid attention to anything he said and now he had a friend who lingered over his every word. He was 60

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thankful for Henry. Henry had fallen in love long before Emmett had a notion. Henry would stare into Emmett’s hollowed out features from the flashlight and ask him to read more of his verse. Emmett was taken in by Henry’s total and utter devotion. Henry knew he had an easy target, but it was all in the timing. Emmett was a conformist, but a loner as well, and that wasn’t a bad combo. Henry had worked much rougher cases than this to get a guy to have sex with him. I’m not the same person in that photo. A lifetime had passed in those six weeks of boot camp and I was forced to go home on leave to show off my uniform before my first assignment. I was a sailor now and within a week I would be on my way overseas to Europe to sweep mines and lead landing craft to invasion beaches. * * * * “Lights out.” Emmett looked forward to his time with Henry. He could open up to him. It wasn’t the usual slap on the back that he got from the other comrades in his company. This was something more like a kinship and closeness that he didn’t share with any of the others. Emmett found himself thinking of Henry more often than not. He was experiencing some kind of bodily tingle that he’d never known before when he was with Henry. Of course, he’d masturbated at home in the locked bathroom to an old painting of a man on a horse with his hat in the air and a woman up behind him for years. He found he didn’t look at the woman very often when he became erect. It was the wildness of 61

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that man and his bravado that encompassed all of Emmett’s lusty thoughts. And now he was feeling something as close to that as he ever had with Henry. His body became charged whenever they talked. He liked that Henry was very physical with him. He was always touching Emmett’s arm or rubbing his buzz haircut when they were laughing. And so, it happened. One night, the lights went out and Emmett’s lights went on. Henry climbed down into his bunk and his hands were touching places on Emmett that no one had ever touched before. Henry didn’t care that Emmett just lay there. From the first touch, Emmett was full-salute and Henry took care of the rest. And now I was back and dad had the camera. It was autumn in Baltimore. I could see the leaves swirling around me and dad working to get the angle just right. And it was Rimbaud that came to me in that moment. That intense look of sadness. Already much older than anyone ever could be. I knew it would always be goodbyes in my life. Not a coming, but a going. Rimbaud’s poem, “Farewell,” was whispering in my head when dad snapped that shot. “Autumn already!–But why regret an eternal sun if we are embarked on the discovery of the divine light– far from all those who fret over seasons.

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Autumn. Risen through the motionless mists, our boat turns toward the port of misery, the enormous city with fire-and-mud-stained sky.”

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THE FALLING FATHER-OBJECT By Kyle Hemmings

he could have been your father with stable answers on windy days but he was too busy swinging from windows that froze his own silhouettes, his knuckles bleeding from smashing the glasspanels of vitrines, he, so envious of objects d'art made from Turkish glass-blowing, or how he kept falling from tightropes of his own choosing, & you, the heir with an incredible itch, inherited from his father, the tendency to catch & not let go & break your own back & all around you little Plasticine men with melting smiles are falling from the antique sky. you want to pawn 7 broken versions of you in wet paste and salt dough, but the shops are going under & if glue filled the sea, it wouldn’t be enough to rebuild a family & anyway, a German from Hershey ran away with the formula--you are destined to be a polymer of falling & what never quite hits ground.

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THERE ARE TWO THINGS ABOUT MY BROTHER THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW By Kyle Hemmings

1. Charley Horse At night, he hid in his parents’ bedroom & watched them make him two brothers. He’d stifle a cry when one leg cramped, or a giggle, if one parent made a funny sound. Charley heard that people in the last hours of dying, like if they were shot, made strange happy noises. The room smelled of sweet pea perfume & the underside of narcissistic streets. Or maybe the inside of a shoe. Charley wondered if one brother would be born claustrophobic. After the two brothers almost reached the level of Charley, he told each of them: I watched you being made. By the time, the brothers outgrew Charley, they went everywhere together. Two of them would wait outside while Charley spent time with a prostitute. They’d listen to his cries & look at each other & smirk. Or they would ask Charley weird questions, like Do bats dream & of what? Later, Charlie became a G-man. Sneaking into the rooms of bootleggers, gangster kingpins, sugar-tongue molls on dope, he did not go blind or dumb. Later, he was silenced. One brother did become claustrophobic in the tenement house. He enlisted. He never returned from the war. Or maybe it was the Russian Winter that swallowed him. Maybe 68

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his wish of white space came true. The remaining brother wore a constant blush across his cheeks. As if being watched by the other two who were no longer there. Sometimes he couldn’t feel his legs.

2. Pu He discovers it at the heart of everything & gives it a name: plutonium. Never had much of a system for regret or use for apologies, yet he finds it in the protoplasm of lovemaking, in the nuclei of his fuzzy thoughts, in the hearts of women a Pluto & some impossible planets away. In the white meltdown of a room, he tells a girl who treads on silver theories: I have your chemical formula. I can turn you into an acid wind. Or I can stop you with love. Saddened by her destructive properties, the girl goes away, plants herself in the center of the earth. There are mysterious love letters. Some read: How can we undo what we have done? One day, a girl without little fingers tells him that plutonium has already been discovered, that he has been too late for everything. Now nameless, he considers a new future in plastics. He turns into water/ is in exile wherever he goes. The girl at the center of the earth stays mushroom-silent. The funny sister on billboards, the one who spreads jam across everything, wears gloves and dark glasses in twin beds. This, she thinks, will prevent the spread of her radioactive goo.

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BRIEF IN CASE By Parker Tettleton

You’re like me. You’re like anyone. You’re like yourself. You’re not.

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WE’RE By Parker Tettleton

Slanted sun-on-charcoal & smiles-on-vaudeville lips & don’t trees look fucked when they’re behind us?

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FRIENDS By Marcus Speh

Tara, I look at us in that photo, taken so many years ago, I look at you sandwiched between Tom and me, with our left arms in casts, so ridiculous, it makes me think of music that is ridiculous also, music by Charles Ives with two bands playing against one another, or two melodies backpacking a third, or an instrument entering a dialog of two other instruments like a dangerous stranger. It makes me think of your musical voice and your rich hair, Tara, I’m thinking of you as my ship begins the landing process. In an hour tops I’ll stand on another planet, millions of light years away from where that photo was taken, and with my right arm, the same arm that hugged your right shoulder back there on a summer day, I will conjure convoluted caterpillars from the cargo bay onto the surface of a new world. Tom’s long been dead and you’re dead, too, you, who said to me then or around that time: Perry, I think you ought to go to the stars one day. You’d surely make a swell rocketeer, a marvelous astronaut, a smug space traveler. I bet the universe would lie at your feet if you wanted to. You said that so many years ago before you and everyone else in that photo died. ***

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The pilot had finished his tube food. His life was very trite, though he looked fancy in his silver-lined space suit and the gold-gleaming helmet. He had one of the bots take a photograph of

him

standing

in front

his

banana-shaped ship.

Headquarters required regular proof of existence and, more importantly, proper composure. He picked up his knapsack and smelled the leather. A robot asked him what he was doing: they were always trying to learn without knowing that they were, like children. He’d admitted it to himself long ago: he preferred the company of machines to the company of men. I don’t feel like explaining, he said to the bot, don’t make me. I can’t make you do anything, said the robot, it’s not in my nature. The pilot shrugged and the machine didn’t insist but devoted itself to clearing a patch of ground for the IDEA OF CIVILIZATION, which was deployed wherever the space man landed. When it got to work, it hummed the melody of NEW YORK, NEW YORK. The pilot took a book from his knapsack and opened it on his knees. He read aloud: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.” Perry closed the book, put it away, took off his white boots and began, eyes closed, to dance to the drums in his head. He felt how Tara joined him, her brown hair flying, and his friend Tom, too. 77

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Slowly, the seven robots that were at work around the ship, lifted their heads to look and learn. Slowly they approached, watched the dancing man for a bit and then, one after the other, joined in, each of them picking up a different beat of the silent song, stomping around, enjoying themselves as much as machines have ever enjoyed themselves when leaving the path of their narrow purpose. Inside the space ship, a timer went off too early. A hatch opened and the IDEA OF CIVILIZATION slid forward, through the door and on the ground, into the midst of the dancing figures. The giant machine quickly ran through its internal testing procedures. Then it sent a warning signal. This was really just for the protocol, since nothing had ever happened out of the ordinary: by this time, the robot crew and the pilot would safely be back in orbit to watch over the initiation process. Then it exploded.

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ROKOVOKO By Marcus Speh

I was ready for technology. I was born ready. When the first automobiles appeared, I went for them like the early Christians for Jesus: the low humming of a car was like prayer to me; its vibrations were my sexual awakening…but gosh how I digress. I wanted to tell you about the history of vehicles, didn’t I? You see, after sixty-thousand years side by side with the horse, cars were only the beginning; planes, rockets, a whole industry of colorful but soulless plastic built on oil. When the black gold went belly up, that was the beginning of the end of the hydrocarbon age. During the last phase, the cars became lighter and lighter and almost disappeared. They turned into transparent hulls that moved more and more slowly: people were responding to the disappearance of vehicles by defying speed and stress. Everything slowed almost to a crawl until Grahame Queequeg from Rokovoko, a man with only basic education but a great heart, discovered by accident that human passion could be used as a virtually inexhaustible energy source, and that it could be efficiently funneled into moving bodies which would then, in turn, move us. This is the slogan of the Queequeg Corporation, “We move you with whatever moves you” . The rest, as they say, is love. Soon, retro vehicles were all the rage, especially those from that age between the wars, when 80

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the cars had been huge, bulging like sexual organs, bellowing out mankind’s song of worldly domination. They turned gas stations into love parlors, of course, they’re at every corner now, and scientific progress meant that we became so good at using our emotions as energy that a single tear can now propel a plane half way around the world; a belly laugh will fuel an entire cruise ship in the mediterranean for a week; and when a man dies, the grief of the survivors will power a city for a year. Who’d have thought all this only a hundred years ago. Hail Queequeg, I say, we are a lucky people indeed—and now we have so much that when I feel deeply satisfied I can simply let this magnificent feeling go to waste.

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A BABY SO LARGE By Chad Redden

You said, look at my baby. I was your baby. You said, my baby has grown so large. I had grown so large. You said, my baby has grown so large, he will need clothes made from parachutes. I went outside to look for parachutes. You said, no, baby don’t go outside. You said, baby you’ve grown so large you don’t have clothes to wear outside. I was your naked baby. You said, we’ll bring the parachutes inside, baby. I sat down on your lap. You said, baby with parachute clothes you’ll always smell like the high air. You said, baby, parachutes smell like the high air up near the clouds. I put my head on your shoulder. You said, baby, the high air up near the clouds is part Heaven air, Heaven air that fell from the Heaven part of air. You said, baby, everyone will want to hold you if you smell like Heaven. I closed my eyes and thought about parachutes scooping up the high part of the air and bringing it down to the ground. I thought about parachutists folding their parachutes and capturing the high air in their parachutes as soon as they hit the ground. I thought about the trucks waiting for the parachutists to fold the high air up into parachutes, then the trucks loaded with parachutes driving to our house. You said, look at my baby! growing again! You said, baby, we’ll need vegetables the size of trees to feed you. You said, baby, we’ll need a whole lake 84

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to bathe you. You said, baby, I’ll need to be the size of the ocean to hug you. I saw that I had grown again. I would need treesized vegetables. I would need a lake-sized tub. I would need to need you to be the size of the ocean and feel your currents drown me.

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THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS By Chad Redden

He said he didn’t need to sit down. He didn’t need water. He said the reason was plain. He said even with all our knowledge of the United States of America that ninety-nine lives out of every hundred are failures. He said he wished he had a wife. If he had a wife he would divorce her. He said many people never remember the state capital of Nevada. If he had a wife he would divorce her if she didn’t know Carson City was the state capital of Nevada. He would divorce his wife even if she did know Carson City was the capital of Nevada. He said so long as I live I am thick and populated. He said it was impossible for him separate himself from his United States of America. Even if his United States did not fit him. The reason was plain. He said scientifically speaking each of us is the sum total of our own individual United States. If you don't fit your United States you must change. We are all cars now, he said. We are all individuals, he said. If you cannot change, you will be a failure of your United States. Just as cars made of snow in tropical climates are failures. You must fit your United States. He said we are all cars now and car life faces the same confrontations all other life forms confront. We must consider the confrontation of becoming extinct. He said our history may account for some of our dumbness to this great fact. Primitive cars did not recognize 88

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their United States. They saw themselves as horses and horse powered vehicles. He said this allowed violent storms to make their flesh food. Horses and horse powered vehicles are edible. He said life is better now. The reason was plain. Men have turned into cars. He said if he had a wife that wasn’t a car he would divorce her. He said cars subjugated weather creatures. Cars discovered external combustion engines. Cars press buttons and make buildings. Cars travel the United States without wires. Cars turn darkness into daylight. He said he didn’t need to sit down. He said the self-preservation of cars unlike all other living things has been more complex than for any other organism on the earth. He said today science identifies cars as the only highly evolved creature that not only honks but also turns left and right. From this learn which type of car you are. He said learn from the mistakes of other cars.

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BURIED By Robert Vaughan

She crushes out a cigarette on the patio. Shakes her head. “Trent’ll call soon,” I say. “You’ll see.” But we both know he won’t. The plane went down in the Hindu Kush. Over a week ago. Still missing. A celebrated pilot in the air force. That’s where we’d all met, Pensacola boot camp in 2005. Then Debbie and I both got pregnant. Return tickets home. We were lucky to score jobs at the Wal-Mart in Keene. She still doesn’t know it was the same guy. Trent. She lights another Marlboro. I grab it from her. Extinguish it. “It’s all I have,” she pleads. “Debbie don’t,” I say. “Think of your kid.”

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CALIFORNIA TAN By Robert Vaughan

Jack was nearing the end of his day at California Suncare. He’d already cold called fifty new accounts and more than ten ordered the new spa intro: five tanning accelerators and one eight ounce aloe product for when the customer went a little too far. Jack referred to them as one of the lizard species: iguanas, geckoes; the tan-till-yer-fried set. His manager, Terry, walked past his cubicle and stopped. “D’ja meet your daily quota?” Terry asked. “Before lunch.” He tried to sound neutral, but Terry micromanaged him. Jack’s phone rang, letting him off the hook. “Sorry, gotta’ take this call!” Jack looked at the caller i.d. Eddie. He picked up the phone, annoyed that Terry was still standing there, monitoring his customer quality assurance. “California Suncare, how may I help you?” He paused, half twirling around in his swivel chair. Terry was lingering. “Great ma’am,” he fabricated. ‘And how did you hear about us?” With a doubtful glance, Terry walked away.

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“Dude,” Jack whispered. “What’s up?” He peered around his blue cubicle partition, scanning the room for Terry. “What’s that crap about ma’am?” Eddie joked. “Sorry, man. The Gestapo was hovering.” “He’s not dead yet? That’s unfortunate.” Eddie called about fifteen times a day. He was a real estate agent for Coldwall- Banker and sold million dollar estates in Rancho Palos Verdes and Laguna Beach. Places Jack recognized as part of Los Angeles, but had never been to since he moved from New York City after finishing college. More than anything, Eddie was a trust fun kid. He didn’t really have to work, but he did, so instead of driving the Audi he’d been given for turning 21, he could afford to lease a Mercedes convertible. “Tell me about it,” Jack moaned. “The guy has it in for me because I sell more than he does.” “Ah, let it go. Don’t let the grovelers bring you down. Hey, got any plans for tonight?” “Nah, don’t think so.” Jack hadn’t yet checked with Kristina, who also worked for California Suncare. She’d left earlier that afternoon for a movie audition, which she referred to as a cattle 95

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call. “Kristina hasn’t called me yet.” “I already spoke to her.” Jack tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “Oh? And?” He noticed Terry coming down the corridor, so he switched voices again. “Sure. Mrs. White, we can ship those cases out to you by Friday.” He felt Terry pause just past his desk, lingering. “The vultures?” Eddie asked. “No trouble at all, Mrs. White. Glad to hear the accelerators are flying off the shelves. You’re gonna’ love this new aloe!” Jack said loudly. Terry was gone. “The reason why I called Kristina is because I’ve got a great idea! Brook came up with it. They’re shooting fireworks off of the Santa Monica Pier for the 4th of July.” “Cool!” Jack said. It had been years since he’d seen fireworks or done anything for the 4th of July. In fact, ever since Bush’s Operation Desert Storm, he’d been somewhat sour on America’s patriotic celebrations. “Yeah,” Eddie said. “And here’s the really cool thing: they’re at sunrise tomorrow. 5:30 a.m.”

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“Ugh.” Jack was a late sleeper. His mother said his main talent was sleeping past noon, earning him the family nick-name Slug. “Wait, here’s my idea.” Eddie said. “We take sleeping bags, pillows, hibachi, booze, and our babes.” Jack wondered if he was reading from a pre-made list. “Have a little party, then sleep under the stars. We’d wake up with a bang, right when the fireworks start.” Jack had to admit, it sounded a little unusual. Intriguing. And he was game for most new experiences. “What did Kristina say?” He was sure she’d protest. She was much more of a Westin sort of girl. Blow dryers. Fluffy robes. Spa services. “She said it sounds like a blast,” Eddie said. “In fact, she’s here now. Why don’t you ask her?” Wait- here? At Eddie’s place? And why hadn’t Eddie mentioned that sooner? “Hi, honey,” Kristina said. “Hi.” He peered around the corner of his cubicle. Coast was clear. “Have you been drinking?” Jack asked. “We’re just having a glass of wine, Jack, relax. Brook’s here too. She’s packing a bag. Did Eddie tell you the plan?” 97

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“Kind of.” Jack felt a pang of jealousy, and slightly left out. “Don’t pout, Jack. We’ll meet you on the Santa Monica Pier. It’s only ten minutes from Westwood. How much longer are you stuck at the prison?” “But, I don’t even have bathing trunks. Or a towel.” “You can wear one of Eddie’s,” Kristina said. “And towels are already packed.” When he hung up the phone, Jack felt confused. There was a part of him that was excited: fireworks at the beach! Oh boy! And then, there was a part of him that felt left behind, like a stray dog at a lake house that ran too far from home. He looked at his cold call list. There were eighteen more tanning salons in Kentucky and Tennessee that he’d not yet called. Screw this, he thought, and clocked out early. He knew that Terry would write him up on Friday. It was the kind of shit that Terry lived for. But tomorrow was a holiday and no-one would be at California Suncare anyhow. As he drove to the Pier, he reflected on his job. Jack thought tanning was insane. That people who actually spent time working on a tan were fools. His mother pointed out that if they were all fools he was making a fortune selling a product that only made him as foolish as they were. Okay, yeah, Mom, he 98

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reasoned, but I was never able to send you the check every month that I can now. That shut her up. Ever since Jack’s father died, Jack did what he could to help out. There were six brothers and sisters still at home. That was a lot of people to fit into a trailer. He found a parking spot on 2nd Street and headed for the Pier. It was hot out, and he’d forgotten his water bottle at work. “Shit,” he said. Terry will probably place a Quaalude in it. A man bumped into him. “Hey!” the man said. “Watch it!” Normally it’s the kind of thing that Jack avoided, and moved on. But for some reason he turned around to face the man. “Excuse me? I believe it was you who bumped into me.” The homeless man smelled grimy, his shoulder length hair was matted dreads, eyes clouded over. A wave of stale alcohol hit Jack. He smiled. “You’re right,” he said, backing up. “I’m sorry.” As Jack walked away, he flashed on his father. Not now. The bum continued shouting expletives. The Pier was no more crowded than usual with a half dozen fishermen, tourists, jewelry peddlers, and exercise fanatics. Jack saw his three buddies sitting on the end of the Pier, dangling their legs. They faced the ocean with their backs to him, so he 99

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stopped about ten yards away, spying on them. A fisherman partially blocked the view. Eddie was shirtless between Kristina and Brook, the ladies wore bikinis, Brook’s new tattoo, a skull with roses ascended from the edge of her white bikini bottom. Kristina threw back her head and laughed hysterically, slapping Eddie on the shoulder. Again, feelings of jealousy combined with bile in his throat. What was his problem? The fisherman, a person Jack thought looked to be around eighty,

suddenly

turned

toward

him,

eyeballing

him

suspiciously. “What you lookin at?” he drawled in a thick accent. It broke Jack’s gaze and he lurched forward, well wide of the cantankerous stranger. Geez, what is it with me and these freaks today, Jack wondered. Less than a half hour later, they’d staked out an area on the Santa Monica beach, fifty yards north of the Pier. Sure enough, Eddie brought an extra pair of Hurley board shorts. Jack’s matchbox thin legs made him self-conscious, but after his first margarita, he forgot. Brook grew up in Reseda, and the margarita coolers were her 100

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idea. “Omigod, it’s, like, the best, isn’t it? On these hot summer afternoons?” She asked, pouring Jack a refill. He smiled, nodding his head, noticing Kristina was helping Eddie start the hibachi. “They’re awfully chummy,” Jack said, motioning with his thumb. “Yeah,” Brook said, slugging back half of her refreshed glass. She burped. “Oops!” Giggled. “It’s like, really cool that we all get along sooo great!” Jack couldn’t help himself. “It’s like- magic!” Brook giggled again, her white teeth dazzling. She spilled her drink when she leaned against Jack. He had to admit, her cool, accelerator drenched skin gave him goose bumps and her tan body shimmered in her white skimpy bikini. She smelled lemony and something floral that Jack couldn’t place. Jasmine, perhaps. But it was nice. Two can play this game, Jack thought, as he laughed at the giddiness of nothing in particular. About an hour before sunset, they settled into a mild game of gin rummy. Jack could cheat easily by just leaning ever so slightly back on his haunches while everyone rearranged a freshly dealt hand. Brook openly revealed her cards, whereas Kristina organized her cards close. She’d played cards with Jack one too many times. Whoever won a hand got to gulp a shot of 101

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Cuervo. The gin rummy evolved into a game of war which whittled down to the last two: Brook and Jack. “Ya wanna go do some boogie boarding?” Eddie asked Kristina. “Sure!” she replied, grabbing hers. “Be careful, guys, you’re a little bombed,” Jack warned. “Plus, it’s shark feeding time.” Ever since Jack saw the movie “Jaws” he refused to swim at dusk or anytime later. He started to hum that ever familiar soundtrack theme to the movie. “Oh, Jack,” Kristina sighed. Eddie said, “Chill, dude.” Jack watched them walk to the water’s edge, kicking at the shimmering waves in the setting sun. He hated feeling suspicious, and the unnerving sense of paranoia that felt like a churning motion in his guts. Did he even love Kristina? Yes, of course he did! “Hey, are you okay?” Brook asked. “Can we quit playing cards. You win!” “Aw, it was just getting interesting. Now I know something’s up 102

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cause you never fold!” He looked at Brook’s clear skin, her gorgeous front teeth. “Hey, can I ask you something?” He lowered his eyes. “About you and Eddie, I mean.” Brook shrugged. “Sure.” “You guys ever,” he rolled onto his side, shuffled the cards, “I mean… ever…do it, with someone else?” There was a long pause. “Another couple?” “Huh?” Brook’s face was contorted into a position he’d never seen before. He knew he was delving into an area he’d never discussed with her. He looked out at the ocean, watching his girlfriend having the time of her life with Eddie. “Ya’ know, swingers. Pinch hitters.” “Ew, gross, Jack. Are you serious?” She sat up. “That is like totally vile-” “Never mind, forget it. C’mon, let’s go join them.” He held out his hand to her. They body surfed and boogie boarded while Jack watched. He simply refused to get wet, with the exception of his feet. No pleas of ‘it’s like bath water!’ or ‘you don’t know what you’re 103

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missing!’ would change his mind. The sun sank until it was nestled behind cirrus wisps on the horizon. “I’m chilly,” said Kristina. “Let’s change out of our suits and into real clothes. Wanna come?” “Okay,” Brook agreed. The boys strolled back to their staked out area on the sand. “Great day, huh, Jackie ol boy?” Eddie said. He grinned, looking like one of the Monkees with his wet jet black bobbish hair that hung in his eyes. He cracked open another Corona, squeezed a freshly cut lime wedge into the top. “Dude, Kristina is quite an athlete. Did you see her ride those waves?” “Yeah, dude, great day,” Jack fumed. “Listen…why don’t you just fuck her?” Eddie looked shocked. “Woah, bro.” “Don’t ‘woah, bro’ me, shithead. You’ve been all over my girl’s ass all day. You call me, all casual like, from your house, then put HER on your phone. You ignore your own lady all afternoon. You think I’m just gonna’ sit around and watch you make the moves while I par le vous fran say with your chick?”

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Eddie took a swig of his beer. “I think you have an active imagination, son.” “Uh huh.” Jack saw the girls heading back from the restroom area. “Just remember, I’m onto you.” He motioned two fingers toward his eyes, then back at Eddie. “Is that supposed to be a threat?” “Maybe.” Jack felt the adrenaline flowing, egging him on. He knew he could pound the crap out of Eddie. “Hello ladies!” Eddie called when they were within hearing distance. “Another Corona?”

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UN CAFE By J. Bradley

I don’t know why Donna puts the bendy straw in my cup of coffee. I can bend down just fine and sip from the rim. I only ruined my shirt half the time. I think she likes to watch the torture of the coffee crawling up the straw, the parts of my mouth that still work playing tug of war with gravity, how I sweat just to get that searing hit of caffeine. Love isn’t watching someone die; it’s living long enough to make the one you love suffer quietly for everything you did and didn’t do.

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KP By J. Bradley

Carl caresses my neck with the potato peeler, breathing heavily about him and I making soup tonight out of the salt seeping from our skin. “Baby, it’s not winter yet,” I whisper. The potato peeler disappears from my neck. Parts of the ceiling buzz. I feel my back growing goosebumps.

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ELMER FROM MILWAUKEE By David Tomaloff

ELMER FROM MILWAUKEE WAS A RAILROAD MAN. His legs were forged of iron and his eyes, of smoke and coal. IT’S A MAN'S WAY, he’d explain to those who'd press him for his trademark refusal to grin. Elmer was called for the land that he loved. The land where his feet touched firmly the soil. The land where his calloused hands built, for him and his, their home. IT'S A GOOD DAY TO COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS, he'd say. Knuckles placed firmly on hips, atop legs made wholly of iron, jutting from boots that have kissed god's country, but preferred instead the bite of the rust at dawn. It was said that Elmer could shake hands with Old Scratch—that he could baptize those hands in fire and birth them again, anew. GOT NO USE FOR A DEVIL, he’d say. AIN'T A ONE BEEN MADE COULD STAND A SHOVEL AND A DAY'S WORTH OF SWEAT. The city, it spread out all around him. Some say Old Elmer he called it a disease.

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WHAT’S WRONG WITH JACK By David Tomaloff

Jack never said much. WHAT’S WRONG WITH JACK? and WHY DOESN’T JACK SPEAK? Jack was many things, but among them, Jack was quiet. Jack was an astronomer. Jack, the chief of police, a baker of many fine things. Some days, Jack was the fireman who’d rescue young mothers and help daughters to find lost dogs. Jack raced cars when he found the time. He raced horses other days, and then he’d trace his father’s footsteps in the field. A proud farmer was Jack—Jack, his big hands, just like his dad’s. Jack was a doctor on rainy afternoons. He tended to the sick, healed them with little more than kind words and his cowboy grin. DON’T WANDER OFF, JACK and JACK, KEEP AWAY FROM THE ROAD. Boy Jack, the adventurer. Jack—a conqueror of seas and of land—killed by a truck at the age of just three. 1932 was the quietest of years. And Jack was a lot of things. Among them, he was missed.

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CONTRIBUTORS Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State. His work appears widely in print and online at such places as Moon Milk Review, PANK, The Literarian and Necessary Fiction. Every few days he shares his thoughts about writing and other things at lenkuntz.blogspot.com Robert Kloss is the author of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria and The Alligators of Abraham. He is found online at robertkloss.com. Norman Lock has written novels and short fiction as well as stage, radio, and screen plays. He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. His latest literary fictions are the novels Shadowplay (Ellipsis Press), the shortfiction collections Grim Tales (Mud Luscious Press) and Pieces for Small Orchestra & Other Fictions (Spuyten Duyvil Press), and the novella Escherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal (Ravenna Press). Earlier works include A History of the Imagination (FC2), Land of the Snow Men (Calamari Press), and the acclaimed Absurdist drama The House of Correction (Broadway Play Publishing Co.). A Turkish-language production of The House of Correction opens in Istanbul in November. In the Time of Rat is due from Ravenna Press, Love Among the Particles from Bellevue Literary Press, both in 2013. 115

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Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil. She is the founder of The Lit Pub. J. A. Tyler’s most recent novel is Comatose, a work of poetic fragments based on 9/11 and forests. He lives in Colorado and runs Mud Luscious Press. Kathryn Rantala’s most recent work is in Cascadia, Pear Noir!; Alice Blue; Upstairs at Duroc; Cake Train. Additional fiction and poetry has appeared in The Denver Quarterly, Field, Iowa Review (web), New Orleans Review, 3rd bed, elimae, Archipelago, Painted Bride Quarterly, Portland Review, Oregon Review and many other places. Her most recent books are A Partial View Toward Nazareth (poetic prose, Casa de Snapdragon Press, 2010), Traveling With the Primates (poetry and prose, 2008) and The Plant Waterer and other things in common (prose, 2006). She founded Ravenna Press (ravennapress.com), Snow Monkey and The Anemone Sidecar. Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father’s House and So Different Now among others. Ben also oversees day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life the center of his growing lifestyle empire. 116

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Ryan W. Bradley has fronted a punk band, done construction in the Arctic Circle, managed an independent childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bookstore, and now designs book covers. He is the author of three chapbooks, a story collection, PRIZE WINNERS (Artistically Declined Press, 2011), and a novel, CODE FOR FAILURE (Black Coffee Press, 2012). He received his MFA from Pacific University and lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons. Andrew Borgstrom is the author of Meat Is All (Nephew, 2011) and Explanations (The Cupboard, 2010). He is an associate editor with Mud Luscious Press. He lives in the desert and washes the dishes alone. Meg Tuiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s writing has appeared in numerous journals including Berkeley Fiction Review, 34th Parallel, Epiphany, JMWW, One, the Journal, Monkeybicycle and Boston Literary Magazine. She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. She is the fiction editor of Santa Fe Literary Review and Connotation Press, author of Domestic Apparition (2011) San Francisco Bay Press, Disparate Pathos (2012) Monkey Puzzle Press, Reverberations (2012) Deadly Chaps Press, Implosion (2013) Sententia Books and has edited and co-authored The Exquisite Quartet Anthology-2011. Her blog: megtuite.wordpress.com.

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Kyle Hemmings lives and dies in New Jersey. He is the author of several chapbooks of poems/prose: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press), Cat People (Scars) and Tokyo Girls in Science Fiction (NAP.) He has been pubbed at Gold Wake Press, Thunderclap Press, Blue Fifth Review, Step Away, and Wigleaf. He blogs at upatberggasse19.blogspot.com. Parker Tettletonâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s work is featured in &/or forthcoming from Gargoyle, Mud Luscious, elimae, em: me, & Short, Fast, & Deadly, among others. His most recent collection, Greens, is available from Thunderclap! Press. David Tomaloff builds things out of ampersands and light. His work has appeared in several chapbooks, anthologies, and in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, A-Minor, >kill author, PANK, and elimae. He is also co-author of the collaborative poetry collection YOU ARE JAGUAR, with Ryan W. Bradley (Artistically

Declined

Press,

2012).

Send

him

threats:

davidtomaloff.com Marcus Speh is a German writer who lives in Berlin. His short fiction collection Thank You For Your Sperm will be published by MadHat Press in 2013. Marcus blogs at marcusspeh.com.

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Chad Redden resides in Indianapolis where edits NAP. An incomplete list of links related to Chad's works can be found at chadredden.blogspot.com. Robert Vaughan leads writing roundtables at Redbird- Redoak Writing. His prose and poetry can be found in numerous journals. His short fiction, 10,000 Dollar Pyramid was a finalist in the Micro-Fiction Awards 2012. He is senior flash fiction editor at JMWW, and Lost in Thought magazines. He was the head judge for Wisconsin People & Ideas 2012 Fiction contest. He hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His book, Flash Fiction Fridays, is at Amazon. His poetry chapbook, Microtones, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. His blog: rgv7735.wordpress.com. J. Bradley is the author of the novella Bodies Made of Smoke (HOUSEFIRE, 2011) and the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle. He lives at iheartfailure.net

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