17 June 2009

Waiting

You’re touching my back and I want you to stop.  I don’t want to feel you; I don’t want to be next to you, not here, not ever.  The waiting room smells clean, too clean, almost an anti-clean, as if they’re trying to cover something up, and they ARE trying to cover something up.  The magazines are weird, like Golf and Travel and Leisure  from 2005.  I blame you for this, I blame you for all of this; and I swear to God that if something happens, if something goes wrong, then I will make you bleed to death with me.

by kevin fink

12 June 2009

Combat Surgeon

After operating all night, the surgeon came up out of blood and gore to stand in the morning sunlight.

A sniper, aiming at the red cross, held his breath and slowly squeezed the trigger.

The doctor tumbled back into the sandbagged cellar, living just long enough for someone to take down his last letter home.

by barry basden

10 June 2009

Behemoths in the Basement

I'm standing at arms length from the 50's set, holding the rabbit ears, just so.  The only light, a TV light—flinging an icy cast to every corner.  My grandfather sits before it on the edge of his seat.  The picture bows, then zigzags sharp as teeth, as I search to calm it with coordinates.

"This way," he says, waving his wine bottle.  "A little more…"  And the picture stills, while I inch about—its fickle corners twitching.  In a moment the commercials will end and the wrestlers will return.  And my grandfather, a slight man, will inhabit their oily bulk.  Squirm in his overstuffed chair with each half nelson and scissor lock.  Their well timed pratfalls, his answer to a quiet life.

"There!" he says, raising his hand like a traffic cop.  "Don't move."  And I freeze, peeking over the aerials, while the vertical hold plays tug of war with the ring ropes—skittish again and I circle the set—Haystacks Calhoun massive in the small bright square—undulating; one cheek north, the other south.  My grandfather's opponents escaping into the curved screen's edges.

"Wait!  Wait!  There.  That's it.  Good, good…"

My grandfather expanding visibly in that testosterone laden light.  His behemoth's hand around the bottle while I poise statue-like, holding my breath.  The rabbit ears suspended, just so.

by robert scotellaro

5 June 2009

The Eleventh Day 

The first time we have coffee after psychology class, you laugh as I pour too much sugar in my over-sized mug, and it’s refreshing to see, I think, the humor behind a man’s cravings. The second time we meet, I learn that you take coffee black, and the real reason you are drawn to psychology as you speak of the dark day your mother jumped out of a window when you were a girl. The third time we meet on a Monday, I tell you about my father, how he left us when I was a boy. And the way I foolishly search for him in a crowd, as if a reunion with him, the father of my emptiness would make a damn difference now.

The next time we meet, I have shaved, trimmed my hair, and my skin’s got some color. It’s all those lonely hours you see, under the scorching sun, watching waves crash and spill, crash and spill over the rocks.

On the eleventh day, I am thinking of you-you-you, how I want us to forget the coffee and drink beer in a pub, under the low-lights, down the street. I want to drink beer with you and rum and vodka, all of it, my finger finally reaching out to you, those moist lips, while my wife does her rotations at the hospital.

See, it’s her job to save people.

by angela carlton

2 June 2009

Crushed by the Sky

I decided to watch the stars from a dirt road lined by withering corn husks. The moon was crescent-shaped and overwhelmed by millions of twinkling stars. Hypnotized by the constantly blinking stars, I shut my eyes too many times and woke hours later to find the sky empty save for the sliver of a moon and a sheet of black velvet. I was surrounded by billions of invisible shards of broken glass. The moon, tired of its loneliness, gave up its fight against gravity and plummeted down to greet me, crashing in all its ceramic glory upon my sleep-swollen cheeks.

by nathaniel tower

27 May 2009

Late Night Songwriting

He needed to write a song so he picked up the guitar.  The song was not about love gone bad or love gone well, an aching heart or an aching head, not about saving a planet that doesn't want saving, not about the moon, the stars, or clouds, not about the rain falling on a beautiful face a little after midnight.  It was not about tears, science class, or the Periodic Table of Elements, nor was it about red wine or waking hung over.  It certainly wasn't about dancing, feeling the rhythm, or eating ice cream in the park.  There was no dreaming in it at all, none.  It wasn't about feeling bad or blue or feeling anything.  And it was not about Cheryl Morrison laughing at a silly joke and not about holding hands or waves on the beach.  It was not about death; it wasn't about that at all, how everything in one flashing moment, the beach and the ice cream and the dancing and the moon and the stars and the laughing and that rain-soaked face, became unbearable.  No, his song was not about any of these things.

by david luoma

20 May 2009

The African Prince

She ran her finger delicately along the seams of the comforter, sometimes scratching, sometimes smoothing out the wrinkles. The sun was already up and made deep-creased shadows on the quilt, like a terrain, an endless desert of sand dunes or rocky steppe, what she imagined those places being like. The gentle finger meditation of the morning around the timeless patterns helped to quiet the spinning of the room; a mandala expressing the state of her soul—slow but a wreck, sprawled and aimless. She considered this a novel experience: 9:30 a.m., her skirt suit still hung neatly behind the closet door, her high heels cast (not placed) by her chest of drawers, a briefcase of backlog papers and forms and then herself okay, okay with all of this. She imagined her whole life as a thread of the quilt, broke—as of last night—unthreading, unraveling imperceptibly each minute, a wild but joyful flaw, threatening the whole dense network of effort and attention she had spent so many years perfecting. She heard the angry vibration of her cell phone in the briefcase. She heard the furnace of the house click on and off as it tried to hold on to a constant 67 degrees, as the temperature outside kept rising and rising. It might even hit 30 today, she thought to herself, tilting her head back to peer up into the window, a cloudless blue sky. Everything was about to become possible. The cell phone had been left uncharged and would soon die of its own accord. The icicles were shriveling fast into the most delicate strings of wet sunlight. She would need to purchase the plane tickets today; she would need to see a doctor, likely. Vanishing, she said. I’m just about to vanish completely.

by ryan pendell

13 May 2009

The Cleavage 

As I rode the train from Philly to DC I noticed an attractive young woman sitting across from me.  She wore a low-cut blouse that shouted “look at mine’.  But being a gentleman I resisted the temptation to stare.  I know she wanted me to, but if I did it would be a moral victory for her.

So I exercised great self discipline.  I forced my eyes to focus on her navel, thereby avoiding both eye contact and mammary contact.  As I focused on that neutral area I felt my right eye starting to quiver.  I grimaced and then it happened, a muscle gave way and my right eye shifted to the forbidden target, staring wantonly into the depths of that glorious cleavage.  The woman smiled, for she knew she had won.  She had displayed her two marvelous assets and I had openly endorsed their quality.

To its credit my left eye had maintained its neutral focus; however, the right eye remains permanently focused, about chest high.  So if you encounter a cross-eyed man staring simultaneously at your navel and chest, then that is me. 

My therapy requires that I avoid watching all sports that involve large spherical objects, such as basketball and bowling.  Golf and tennis are OK.

I considered suing her for maintaining an attractive nuisance.  My attorney asked if I could recognize her face, but I must confess that I am not sure that she had a face.  I told him that I could recognize those glands in a lineup (they are like fingerprints in that no two pair are alike).  In fact, I begged him to show me a lineup.

by richard ladson

6 May 2009

Rhonda Has a Bad Night

She sits on the bench in the holding cell, sulking.  She knows that arresting officers-- policemen in general--and criminals have a lot in common, that they go together like paisley.  In the game of law and order they’re partners in a buddy system. She also knows that on this lonely, God-forsaken planet, everyone needs a smile, perhaps only the criminal more than the arresting officer at two a.m. on a Sunday morning in the local police station of good ol’ death-by-boredom Strafford Township.  Her smiles’ failure to elicit a return is painful.  She’s failed on at least two counts.  One, she got caught.  Two, the cop wouldn’t smile.  And she has black ink on her thumb pads and handcuffs on her wrists.  And they’ve just had the impertinence to take the ugliest picture of her that’s ever been taken and she has no idea what happens next.  Frick, frick, frick.  She’s arrested. 

by phoebe wilcox

28 April 2009

Ending It

He loved the slender candle and the time it had burned, time that had passed so quickly. He knew he must blow out the candle and get on with it, whatever it was. He blew on the flame but it was a trick candle. The flame disappeared for a second and ignited. He watched the flame. He blew it out again, repeatedly, obstinately, compulsively. He knew he should stop staring into the flame, conquer this obsession, move on. A gust of sadness passed. He licked thumb and forefinger, and pinched the wick. He felt nothing.

by ogden belfret

22 April 2009

Amongst the Herd

Lunchtime awaits you and the rest of the herd everyday at eleven atthe cubicle farm.  Folks mill around the refrigerator and microwave, retrieving sandwiches and heating up last night's leftovers. You grab yours and take your food to your seat because it's the only time they let you have personal internet time.

In the cube next to yours, you hear your neighbor snore and it is no ordinary snore.  It is one of legend, worthy of the Guinness Book of World Records if there was a category for loudest, most obnoxious snore.  It varies from sighs that linger, to sudden gasps that startle, to pained gurgling fits that sound like they come from a possessed cappuccino machine.  You surreptitiously open and slam a drawer to wake him, this menace to your hour of tranquility.  It grants you a reprieve, but it never lasts.  You try to tune him out as best you can, quietly fume while reading your email and the latest headlines, taking angry bites of your turkey on rye.

At noon, it stops automatically without the aid of slamming drawers. You resist the urge to key his car.

by matt mok

15 April 2009

Along the Lines of Disconnects: Time

The police officer asked if there might be dinosaur remains betweenthe walls. Nita put her hand over the receiver to ask the others whose numbers were simply too many to count. "Yes, yes, this is Nebraska," one offered as an explanation. Those in the living room with Nita were frantically trying to decide if they should draw thecurtains shut. Through the window, Nita could see it raining as she repeated the address. She hung up and discovered two more people--though she had left them shivering and huddled together in the bed in the back room--inexplicably gone or, at the very least, invisible, perhaps consumed by the sheets, the layers of time.

by heather mcshane

8 April 2009
Camp Coffee

When we fished the Pine River, Ed LeBlanc, Walter Ruszkowski, Brother Bentley and I, for thirty-some years, coffee was the glue; the morning glue, the late evening glue, even though we’d often unearth our beer from a natural cooler in early evening, a foot down in damp earth. Coffee, camp coffee for your information, has a ritual. It is thick, it is dark, it is pot-boiled over a squaw-pine fire, it is strong, it is enough to wake the demon in you, to stoke the cheese and late-night pepperoni. First man up makes the fire, second man the coffee; but into that pot has to go fresh eggshells to hold the grounds down, give coffee a taste of history, a sense of place. That means at least one egg be cracked open for its shells, usually in the shadows and glimmers of false dawn. I suspect that’s wherescrambled eggs originated, from some camp like ours, settlers rushing westerly, lumberjacks hungry, hoboes lobbying for breakfast. So, coffee has made its way into poems, gatherings, memories, a time and thing not letting go, like old stories where the temporal voices have gone downhill and out of range, yet hang on for the asking. 

by tom sheehan

1 April 2009
Waiting for the Bull

Sitting on the fence-post, Mrs. Peters finished eating a tangerine. She ran her thumb inside the hollow of the skin, a barren womb, she thought. Then, more gently, she moved her fingers along the concave wall of the skin, and it became something sensual. Turning towards the heifers, luring them closer with tangerine skin; she shooed flies that danced around their dumbfounded blinkless gaze. In the lower pasture a heifer bawled. Heated heifers mounted one another, artlessly. A blunt, mean urge animals were allowed.

Near the north field amber dust kicked up off the road. John B. bringing his bull. The roof of his truck moved jaggedly along the tops of the cornfield. John B. was six-feet-two, bigger than her husband. Muscular, skin golden as white raisins. She wanted John B. to part her – to leave his honey inside her belly, to take shape inside her, the way water takes shape when it enters a stream.

She unlocked the aluminum gate and rode it open. John B. let out a yippee and pulled his trailer in. Catching the scent of ripened heifers; the bull strutted out to the field where they waited. Closing the gate, John B.'s forearm brushed her shoulder; her body hummed with desire. He hopped onto his truck, his sockless foot resting on the running board, he beamed, “See you, Mrs. Pete.” 

The empty trailer swayed away from her. She picked up the tangerine skin and tore it into small pieces, making a trail back to the house.

by miriam polli katsikis