Table of Contents

poetry

(the passionate stuff)

performance art

(9/25/18 “Life and Death and Everything Between”
show at Poetry @ The Gallery Cabaret, Chicago)

prose

(the meat & potatoes stuff)

lunchtime poll topic

(commentaries on relevant topics)

Letters from the Editor

(the boss lady’ editorial)

AIDS news

Wait Until Dark

The Day the Earth Stood Still

“The girl wearing her grandmother’s shawl,
the girl who sees me with nowhere in my eyes,
says, “I saw you dead last night.” I laugh and
her darkness opens into smiles.” John Allman

Lost highways end in incognito lounges,
shoot ‘em up bang bang bars where beer
flows from foam lipped taps, tepid as
bad water in a glass.
All the Skidrow junkies, former uptown
beauty queens, no name super stars with
their empty-of-life faces, neon lit, all aglow
and perfectly made up for a viewing, lightning
bugs where their eyes used to be.
Outside the picture window, rain falls
like mercury on glass. The classic jukebox
armature is paused above spinning disc
but no music plays. Even car lamps in
the parking lot, switched on, illuminate nothing,
not even the auto-asphyxiation couple before
the deed, striated scarves around their throats
like slowly tightening Mexican neckties,
hands in each other’s pants.
A full metal jacket leaving the muzzle is
stalled inches away from impact. Blood
spatters on graffiti Art walls anticipate
shadows cast on cracked pavement where
the chalk outlines should go.
Yellow incident tape and blue light special
lights advertise one night only.
It has always been like this. Always will be.

Wait Until Dark

“Nothing premiered in this neighborhood but
13 year old hookers.” Michael Connelly

Every day, waking in pain, feeling as
if she’d survived another war between
the states, a civil war of epic clashes,
not one fought on homeland battlefields
strewn with the bodies of brothers,
blood pools for eyes, ravaged hollow
spaces where their brain pans should be
but one as personal as a night spent on a
gurney or an operating theater as the main
feature for the night.

Every day, another war to end all wars,
false dawn in a no man’s land, escaping gas
from no pilot stove, oven door open,
double hung windows sealed by weather
stripping over plastic sheets; a perfect
chamber to wake up dead in.

Every day, vintage maps marred by
troop emplacement plans, continents
described by huge black spaces labeled:
UNKNOWN, areas almost as large as
Ultima Thule polar wastes, all the places
she visits on a daily basis after nightmare
incursions in an awful place: a silver flask
in one hand, a butcher’s knife in the other,
ready as she’ll ever be for the next assault.

Wicker Man

“All of America is an insane asylum”
                                         Ezra Pound

Every weekend, all summer,
streets blocked for parties,
a confluence of mayhem and
violence, throbbing speakers
emitting something that might
have been confused with music:
a bass machine with voices that
could only be a mixed chorus of
the eternally damned. All the sweat
infused faces alight with flames
from repurposed oil barrels emitting
a suffocation of black fumes.
All those distorted, barely human
features writhing in a parody
of dance, a Breughel grotesque
embodied as acolytes in an
All American cult of the criminally
insane, tribal facial tattoos optional,
blood initiation rites expected, after
midnight, when the official singing
of the sirens begins, when the flotilla
of Black Maria vans and tumbrel
carts arrive. In this neighborhood,
where the rents are low, where
pressurized beer kegs explode,
where Corona bottles have burning
rags inside instead of tepid, flat
beer and limes, where gasoline fumes
are the new scents of these mean
streets of broken dreams.
The arcs these bottles describe
like mad minute tracer rounds
in the dark, fireworks in full
display, explosions after, almost
beautiful to behold.

Kosovo

(for Jan Tuzinsky)

A burning
paper Goethe
prays
in Serb
for four hundred dead children

In Schiller’s stone eye
gleams a tear of mercury

There’s a Gypsy weeping
for a little Romany fairy
at the bottom of the Adriatic

Blood
has an irresistible color
of the bluish dusk of the sky
from which falls
light and glitterings
like a gust of May rain
to fertilize the wounded earth.

Molto Adagio

The old move in.
Slowly and clumsily,
not of their own volition
and without somebody else’s help.
Tiresomely they move their old-fashioned furniture,
their antediluvian opinions
and dogged pains in their joints.

With shaking limbs
they look in vain for switches
on the unfamiliar walls
of their new living space.
They can’t manage to switch on the light
in a twilight of loneliness and unknowing.

Pointlessly they utter all the words,
which they now remember with difficulty.
Their own words
no longer mean anything to them.
They don’t understand them.
They’ve forgotten what they were for.
They remind them of nothing.

For them. For honoured and precious persons,
to whom respect and gratitude are due.

The old move in.
Tediously and maladroitly,
unintentionally
and completely alone.
Sluggishly they move their old-fashioned furniture,
out-of-date opinions
and importunate pains in their joints.

Persistently and unpleasantly
they touch us
with their trembling extremities.
Dejectedly they catch us by the throat.

The old move in
on us.
Little by little and inexpertly,
willy-nilly
and under their own steam.
Strenuously we move our obsolete furniture,
used-up opinions
and painful joints.
And other things
which have already served their purpose.

Inconspicuously and unavoidably
we become honoured and precious persons
to whom respect and gratitude are due.

Tenaciously and depressingly
we continue in the persistence of our actions,
fluently sliding into the punch lines of stories
of course like the hands of a clock.

With our head we direct
all the way down
ready to strike the precise time.

And above us
a blue sky
yawns incomprehensibly
into which the wind flings the glittering mirrors of memory.

Lady in Blues

Bluish dress flows like crystal clear water
mirroring an afternoon sky
passing clouds as pale
as mother of pearl

That reappear in seeming
silk handkerchief
with vegetational motives
and circle round buds

But her face and delicate embroidery
look much too serene and serious
for night club tricks and treats
featuring grace and attention
to ear-rings and ornate veil instead

That square and triangle
seeming natural rounds
retaining full flowers as
part of the head decoration
roses square the ears
falling down like tulips
unto her shoulders
mediated by golden-silver cross
in midst of her decolletage

Her eyes looking either passionate
or proud of such a glory
that could live
without passion of power
since she’s entitled simply
Lady in Blue Dress
without reference to any
noble religious or burgher title

Though rings covering her fingers
may point to affluent wealth.

Camille (in Brown and Green)

Middle-aged woman in brown
black fur-rimmed jacket
brown black curtain
chestnut short hair

And from the jacket
on downwards
cascade of green and brown
strong like an orthodox rock

Still flexible like a plant
and as broad as a pool

It is definitely a dress.

Painter at Barbizon
Greeneries of Yellow

Pointillist detailing fall
of light in full forest
the painter stands
out in green jacket

Amidst dots of light
dressing his surroundings
like flowers to a field
of monochrome green

But his hat stick and easel
carrying to his back
are signing a yellow halo
to round of blackish beard and shirt

That centrifuge matter to the very center
of the vibrant quake of green this painting is.

Quoting The Simpsons

I like it
and do it
though I worry
that it’ll lead
to that fucking
Monty Python thing
where the shock of the unexpected
goes away
so instead of laughing
you’re just left with
that feeling
of “oh, that’s
where that came from”
and that smile
in acknowledgment
at a joke
told well,

or worse
the Buster Keaton
3 Stooges
thing
where we few
keep saying
over and over
at a man
falling down
that THAT’s comedy
and don’t move
to anything
for 30 or 40
or 100 years.

other things
have to be funny.
we can’t keep
drinking the same water
dry.
we are not
unreasonable
cowards
afraid to move forward
and look at something new.

but then
I’m saying this
in a form
dead for 80 years.
forget it.
maybe I miss my old glasses
which saw new things
when I put them.
that’s all.
that’s all it is.
really.

Bio

    DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Predictable tides

I wake at 5
to the sun
like a brass band -
fuck off sun,
I don’t want you around
until 7
when I have to go to work.
butterflies
and birds
can fuck off too. I sleep
with the window open,
traffic sounds coming in
like predictable tides
and all I want
is to win a boxing match
or some other dream. my radio plays
at 6:55
and it’s never music,
always
news
of some foreign catastrophe
and I can’t figure out
how to change it.

Bio

    DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Grief Has No Use by Date

Grief has no use by date
Grief is excess baggage
You carry until you drop
May be a death, injury or loss
Might be something that makes you stop
When your thoughts are both deep and dark
The cost is your displaced happiness
You stop at a past moment. Hold it as mirror
It defines who you are. You cannot go anywhere
without your pet grief reminding you.
She owns you. He controls you.
Limits are laws, too. They know you
better than you do. Put down your grief for one tear.
Can we talk this through?

Antilibraries Anonymous

“YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THEIR LIBRARIES”
And these piled tomes that sit and wait like cats for your attention
are as important as the ones you read (and re-read) because they are your favorites
The turning of pages takes time, and time runs away over years
Melts months into moments and squeezes weeks into milli-moments
A day is a butterfly wing. An hour a breath. Each book read a marathon!
Now look @all your neglected lovers, awaiting harem night.
One by one they parade for your specific eyes. You love them all
in different ways. In fact, you smile when you meet
someone who likes the same authors you do. A bonding occurs.
You both commit to the impossible task/of reading every book
by every author that you love. It took them all their lives to write,
it will take you all your lives to read. Every life. Every night.

but the ocean

no longer hides-plastic/shipwrecks
Arctic melting to reveal past failures
plastic islands in Pacific and Atlantic
plastic nano-particles in our bloodstream
and the stomachs of migrating birds
We still pour Fukushima into our food chain
(do not drink Californian wines/nor seafood ...
Mutations abound..needles in the beaches...
Slop of sewage in the Bay of Bengal
No longer bathe in the “Sacred Ganges”
unless and until you see those bodies floating past...
Once you would repair to the ocean to restore and revive
Now the ocean sends Tsunamis to gather those still alive
and sweep them like debris after Wimberly floods
or Houston or New Orleans...Water is angry and depressed
You asked for healing waters...
Who will heal these oceans of emotions unexpressed?

Said the Feather to the Rock

Said the Feather to the Rock
“Why don’t you change?”
Said the Right Wing to the Left
“We need both of us to fly”
Said the city to the trees
“May I hide in you?”
Said Progress to History
“Why must we repeat?”
Said the fish to the sea
“How can I heal us both?”
Said the sea to the land
“You are part of me”
Said Time to Infinity-
“When can I catch up?”

Backdoor Santa

the kid was shocked not
because i was buying beer
but because i was drinking so
early in the morning
they didn’t have the black and milds
i wanted
so i got a pack of Kools instead

a little girl pulled on
my beard to see if it
was real
she found a broken xbox
in her stocking
plus she couldn’t explain
the rash she got on her neck
or why her eye twitches
every few seconds

i don’t always ring the bell
in front of Macy’s
but it helps pay the rent
my ex came over last night
and cooked me christmas dinner
she would still be with me
if i wasn’t so giving
to so many people

me and a bunch of other santas
were riding the 1 train en route to
south ferry
we were discussing the difference between
Tupac’s music and b.i.g.’s
with an insight
Quentin Tarrantino
would have appreciated
after that, we couldn’t think
of anything else to do
so we started singing christmas carols

it was a kodak moment for sure...

Christmas, cambridge, ohio, 1998

it was blue eyes, red hair and a scottish accent
that reeled me in and lured me
from maine
i played surrogate dad to 3 sons

alex, loved using my laptop and my library card
joshua, caught the football passes i threw
michael was three and just michael

we were as rare as the snowflakes
that fell in cambridge, ohio
i temped in a plastics factory
wore flannel shirts, jeans and boots
and channelled my inner springsteen

our only christmas together, maureen’s sons
strung popcorn into jewels
and wrapped it around a tree

maureen and i spent some night
in a two step at local bars
tryin to figure out what love was
every time i came into a bar
the dj’s offered to play r and b
as a way of making me feel at home
but i liked all music

maureen and the kids
put a black angel at the top
of the tree

they wanted to let me know they accepted me

One Christmas

my mom’s friend, elise
came over and she brought everyone gifts
and no one thought about daddy
not being around anymore
my brothers and i, played and rode
our bicycles, with her kids
and we forgot blacks and whites
weren’t supposed to get along
and mama and elise cooked christmas dinner
the way only single moms could
and visions of empty rooms and closets
where daddy once was, dissappeared

and the world will one day
live up to dr. king’s dream
and left and right will only
become directions
and me and friends will celebrate
the holidays
like i did when i was a kid
naive and happy, and there will be
peace on earth

the fangs of your wolves

    i want my tears back, you are not worth all the oceans i cried in your name; you are not worth all the moments you took away from me—all that wasted time, and i could’ve found my one, the one that i was meant to be with forever; instead of a timid boy hiding behind a thousand masks pretending that one of them made him a man—you said that you loved me, but not because it was sincere; just because you needed someone and i was the body that your lust hungered for—i wish i had been better at deciphering the signs, but i was too in love with you to see all the warnings; i was too swept up in emotion to see the truth that looked me straight in the eyes when i mistook the sirens in your eyes for mermaids—but i am wise to you now, and i will never fall beneath the spell of your golden moon; because i know there is no kindness in the fangs of your wolves.

Linda M. Crate Bio

    Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. Her third novel Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016.

like the phoenix

sleepy as a winter’s sun
never did you wake
from the song of your nightmares,
and instead of trusting my light
you divorced your attention to me
basking only in the cold comfort
of everything you’ve ever known;
you tried to drag me down
into your abyss of void—
but night isn’t meant only for the darkest
most haunting lullabies
i always tried to show you the silver song
of moon and stars,
but you never could see the light
only the darkness;
exiled me to an island of silence
many moons i spent alone
still, i was hopeful that one day you would
remember and desire me again—
but the truth is you never wanted my naked soul
only my naked body,
and blinded by my adoration of you and my love
my heart caved into the carnal desire
of your teeth and tongue;
but one day vampire i will rise on the arms
of the flames that spell out your destruction
because like the phoenix i’ll never perish.

Linda M. Crate Bio

    Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. Her third novel Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016.

power of my dreams

silver shimmering moonlight
lyrics of the night
comfort me
as they fall into my window
they are whispers of love
i never received
as a child, and they give me hope
for better tomorrows;
where i can find love in the hearts
of people i’ve never met—
i remember when i was little i used
to believe that if i were a good
enough little girl that my father would
come rescue me,
but i have since learned in my narrative
that i have to be brave and save
myself;
because not every little princess is loved—
i grew up believing i would never be good enough,
every day wanting nothing more than to die;
going to school with the cutting tongues of bullies
who never relented from their unkindness
coming home to a father who demanded work
from me and was merciless in regards
to my dreams—
i spent many nights in tears, finding the catharsis
that comes when the pain falls out;
learning that i had to be strong enough to survive
if only to show them the power of my dreams.

Linda M. Crate Bio

    Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. Her third novel Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016.

the carving knife

i saw the pretty
robin’s egg
cracked open
on the sidewalk,
and i thought of the baby
robins safe in the nest
with her parents;
it made me smile for a moment
before i winced—
i knew i would never know
that sort of love
because my father didn’t
want nor need me,
and the man who married my mother forced
me to stand alone against this world;
all i wanted was to be was a
good enough daughter
that i could earn the love i was starving for—
he only gave me his cruelest cutlery
made me an outsider in my
own family
gave me an inheritance of nightmares
that still wake me
in anguish and pain or else anger,
and he is kind now as if in doing so
he can undo all the pain he gave me;
but that’s not true my childhood traumas
still carve into me.

Linda M. Crate Bio

    Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. Her third novel Centaurs & Magic was published November 2016.

Free Speech Canto L

“I doubt if any country was ever
so thoroughly and intelligently policed
in the history of the world”
said
the man who was Attorney General
during the First World War
(after the war was over and he was out of office),
and
one of the adverbs was truer than the other

But trials were expensive and a lot of work,
and so for the vast majority of the ‘cases’
the field agents used different methods:
“We go on the theory that you cannot
correct evils by putting men in prison,
if there is
a possibility of their being educated”
And so began the campaign
to correct what they considered evil
with what they considered education,
suppressing expression with warnings
sometimes general:

“your only safety lies in . . .
keeping your disturbing talk to yourself”

“the American Government demanded . . .
that he keep his mouth shut”

“whether he had made
the statement in question or not,
my visit would be a warning to him”

and sometimes specific:

“I admonished the defendant [sic] that he should not be free . . .
in enunciating revolutionary principles”

“Subject was cautioned by Agent
that he should give up his Socialist tendencies”

“in the judgment of Agent,
no man can vote for Berger,
as subject did,
and
be considered a loyal citizen”

 
And
these and thousands of other instances
educated the people

Free Speech Canto LIV

The Apostle of Freedom, Thomas Jefferson,
wrote
(anonymously at first,
but
later publicly acknowledged and cited
as one of the ten things
he was most proud to be the author of)
in the Kentucky resolutions that the states
“retain to themselves the right
of judging how far the licentiousness
of speech and of the press may be abridged”
Later,
when President,
he wrote,
in a letter to one of his allies
“And
I have therefore long thought
that a few prosecutions
of the most prominent offenders
would have a wholesome effect in restoring
the integrity of the presses
Not a general prosecution,
for that would look like persecution,
but a selected one”

And thus,
in a rare instance of consistency,
he encouraged several allies
to commence state persecution
of those critical of him

Among those singled out was Harry Croswell,
publisher of The Wasp in upstate New York,
“a malicious and seditious man”
because he had dared
“to represent him,
the said Thomas Jefferson, as unworthy
the confidence, respect, and attachment
of the people of the said United States”
Croswell was convicted,
and though
his conviction was upheld on appeal,
he never served time,
as
New York and many other states
were changing their laws around this time
to allow truth as a defense in such cases

Many years later,
when he was long out of office
and no longer had the power
to punish his enemies,
Jefferson took a more libertarian attitude
Of course,
he expressed that attitude
in a letter written to a Frenchman,
not to any American who might be
in a position to implement his views

Free Speech Canto LVI: Jefferson redux

Post-presidency,
he was involved, indirectly,
in a strange manner of censorship
David Hume’s The History of England,
the recommended text on the subject,
seemed to Jefferson to be an instance
where ‘truth’ might not win over ‘error’,
and
so the scales must be weighted in ‘truth’s’ favor

Once again,
Jefferson didn’t do his own dirty work
That had already been done by an Englishman
named John Baxter,
someone who had
“performed a good operation” on Hume’s work
“corrected in the text his misrepresentations”
“corrections . . . so cautiously introduced
that you are rarely sensible
of the momentary change of your guide
You go on reading true history”
“history republicanised”
“as if Hume himself had given it”

Having what he believed to be
the only copy extant in America,
Jefferson asked several publishers
“Can we not have it re-printed here?”
But,
probably for no other scruple
than cold commercial consideration,
none took him up on the offer

Yet
that was only a minor setback,
for
Jefferson made sure Baxter’s bastardization
was an important part of the curriculum
at the university he founded,
“the only remedy”
against the “great apostle of Toryism”

Original Sin

America,
not wanting to whitewash history,
from our Appalachian holler
I renounce my white privilege
and beg forgiveness
for the white guy’s hereditary sin
of being history’s sole perpetrator
of genocide, slavery, war,
sexism, racism, imperialism, colonialism,
and most other toxic isms.
So then, please God,
in my next iteration
could I be reborn
the immaculate minority
female American
(Latino, Asian, African, or...,)
so I can “go
and sin no more.”

An earlier version was published in Tuck Magazine (I.B. Rad added the immaculate).

Justice in Your home

A lacerate soul for worldly gains
A queen, captive of earthly credits
And forgetting moral constraints
In the pursuit of profits.
She was Inclined to willful paths,
Despite king’s stricture she was bent
on sordid gain.
After heir she was ready
To break every moral chain.
A stargazer was invited of paramount fame.
And appeasing her with befitting words,
Beyond any doubt, you would mother a son,
But at the cost of one hundred alive goats’ burn.
Churchgoing man(king) retorted firmly.
No need of such creature,
On the behalf of colossal crime
‘Though you are object of my affections
But my consent in this case would never be won’.
Sobbing before king, she squatted down,
And uttered, being a woman not as a queen
I entreat you, let me live alive.’
But king circled back to his chamber with
severe soliloquies.
For the sake of heir,
Queen secretly perpetrated huge crime
In a pen, one hundred alive creatures were
scorched with cries.
Right after certain spell,
A son came into existence
But God fearing man always uttered
How wicked man’s wicked advice
subdued Your carving, Your script,
I have been a participant,
I have been a member without any conribution.
‘You kept us just as our portion,
as regards our fate or karma,
Oh Lord! No justice in Your home.’
King became uncoupled growth from her affairs.
Being acutely churchly man never dared
to touch and caress the new born soul
His inwardness always shouted compressedly
‘No justice in Your home.’
Next day, in the wee hours, angel in white robes
appeared in king’s dream when he was
semi-conscious and augured,
“One day, natural order would reassert itself
with terrible consequences as wrong
been committed against natural order.
Wicked deeds, wrongdoers and
illicit creatures would meet their disaster”.
His words were as audible as someone
spoke in his chamber,
King woke up with a sudden jerk
Now king became more depressed but
he discussed the issue with no one.
His heart’s talks remained in heart.
When son became wise,
Proposal of ceremony was put and settled.
But theistic creature (king) even on the eve of
sacrament remained aside.
Queen visited his chamber and
began to weep.
‘Thine enmity is with mine,
My flower (son) never enjoyed father’s lap.
Cossetness is far-flung matter,
You never caressed tender soul’.
Between worldly bonds and spiritual norms he was torn.
With affirmative nod he set out
to accomplish worldly commitments
On the eve of wedlocks,
With shaky hands blessed the couple and
two arms hugged them tightly.
Now bride had been a member
Of new family and new territory
Some time later, home brimmed over with joys,
with the birth of grandsons and granddaughters,
Now sweet stammering voices began to utter
Grandpa and grandma and veneered past issues.
After some time, adolescent creatures evinced a desire
to journey grandmother’s home
A ship was readied,
And each and every one was set,
But king lagged by saying
Who would hold the reins
of kingdom in his absence?
What’s more he was not feeling well.
All ignored him and his excuses and departed happily.
King felt interested in watching them away
with constant gaze.
Yet ship was within sight,
It began to descend in the lap of halcyon waves.
Forthwith, everything sank before his eyes,
Worldly man’s heart also sank
King of great power could do nothing
except converting open palms into clenched fists.
Now King and kingdom were alone
With shrill cries he hunkered down,
Now past forgotten issues began to dangle
before madid (wet) eyes,
Voice trembled as he was made to speak,
As words came from heaven
‘Justice in Your home’.

* Wrong was committed against natural order and that natural order reasserts itself
with terrible consequences. Except king all died because they were born
from a creature whose birth was at the cost of hundred alive goats’ burn.

Harjeet Singh bio

    Harjeet Singh is an Indian English poet and short story writer. He is post graduate in English from his district college Hoshiarpur (Punjab). Punjabi is his mother tongue and regional language. Hindi is his national language. His father Principal “Joginder Singh” was an ardent lover of English language and his guidelines have made him able to grasp some of the fundamentals of this language. His work has appeared in Conceit magazine, Children Chruches & Daddies magazine, Literary yard, Indian ruminations, Scarlet leaf review, Creativity webzine and other magazines. He is the denizen of district Hoshiarpur (Punjab).

Empty home is fraught with.......

Day and night are my own
In my big home I alone
Postman and bill givers approach
When I am out of home
Those who give me a test
by thumping my door
at the crack of dawn,
They have to return without any dialogue
Because they raided,
They didn’t strike with my consent,
A fable of my late awakenings
because of prolonged night voyage
of fatigued peepers upto wee hours.
Many ones proposed,
only invisible agency can live alone
Sans folks, sans wife
Furthermore, without a dog
But being a self-respecting man,
never knocked at someone’s door
When need be.
When I am in profound sleep,
Sometimes, cell phones also sleep
In tension, lest some caller be missed.
Providence bestowed a realm of loneliness,
And handed over a responsibility for a few issues
Which I could raise only in detachment or in dejection.
Had I not lived in such ambience,
Perhaps I would have never composed suchwise,
Ideology would have been divergent, contrastive.
Despite such ilk of life
I am gratified with circumstantial thoughts
Besides situational themes and biases.
And further my empty home is fraught
with so many creatures in bound volumes.

Harjeet Singh bio

    Harjeet Singh is an Indian English poet and short story writer. He is post graduate in English from his district college Hoshiarpur (Punjab). Punjabi is his mother tongue and regional language. Hindi is his national language. His father Principal “Joginder Singh” was an ardent lover of English language and his guidelines have made him able to grasp some of the fundamentals of this language. His work has appeared in Conceit magazine, Children Chruches & Daddies magazine, Literary yard, Indian ruminations, Scarlet leaf review, Creativity webzine and other magazines. He is the denizen of district Hoshiarpur (Punjab).

How Did We Get This Far Out?
(3 Years Of This With You)

It took three years
To navigate a brokenness
I had mistaken for eternal bliss.
This infatuation to which I pledged so much
Did little more than obscure my view.
How had I dared to imagine it was more?

The ground was shifting beneath my feet.
There was every kind of danger,
But I was determined to stand.
How quickly that became unsound.

As unlike star-crossed lovers
As any had professed to be,
But I was holding out that hope.
I’m not holding anymore.

I will no longer do battle in your name.
I will no longer protect the borders that we made.
Your name is coming down today.

When only a day ago
The things we once aspired to tried to reaffirm their hold,
But desire was overrun.
The doubts in me are now fully formed --
My faith undone,
But not easily so --
Until the end --
When all was known.

I was prepared for what looked like a fight,
But all we wrestled with were nightmares.
You took my hand, but we lost it in the darkness.
We travelled so far beyond the way we knew
That we both lost sight of it.

A long time staring and seeing nothing.
I didn’t recognize you in your new disguise,
And you didn’t recognize me in mine.
Forever came too soon.

We’ll leave no history to be discovered,
Despite the fairytales we told ourselves.

The building is coming down today,
And everything we thought we were
Is coming down with it.

No more trying to make it plain.
The truth needs no explaining it,
And neither one of us had found it here.

Three years of this with you.

In love we imagined,
And fighting it;
At odds with truth,
And loving it.

All challengers were met with silence.
No intruders got past these gates.
We took it deep, and underground.

But disaster lay within our mist.
Little cracks were beginning to show
Around issues of trust and worth.
The wrong words were being said,
The wrong tone was being used,
But nothing was misunderstood.

Three years of this with you,
And finally, I let myself see.
How had we dared to imagine it was more?
Long after the point of our letting go,
We wonder.

How did we get this far out?

What were shadows to us
When once we seemed as one?
What were options, answers, and exits
When no one was seeking them.

Too late, I feel the weight of it.
Too late, I see the final viewing.

What declarations we made,
What battles we fought,
And thought nothing of them.

Against the world,
Against ourselves,
Against the truth,
Against the fates.

We fought for far off things
With out of touch people.

How had we dared to think it was more
Than a casual connection of strangers?

And how long did we last?
How long and how true?
We can’t even be certain of that.

The friendship became strained,
But we thought the love would last forever.
Even though the smallest attempt at conversation
Revealed too much at last,
And yet, not enough give and take on either side.

Defying the predictions of experts –
Until nothing had seemed beyond us –
We ignored all the warning signs;
But some tents were already folding,
And some voices becoming uncertain.

How much, so much, we gave to this,
Until, suddenly, there was nothing.

The Man She Loved

The man she loved,
Needed,
And battled for
Once blistered her ears
With the call of love,
But only once.

She Knew

She knew in time
His lie,
But did not know
To leave.

What I Would Just as Soon Be, and Why

The soul that snarls
on the outside
but smiles
on the inside

I prefer to

the soul that snarls
on the inside
but smiles
on the outside

because

I have never
been good
at reading
beyond

the eyes

to the true soul
that smiles
or snarls
subversively

so have always been
surprised

and would just as soon be
surprised

pleasantly

Crisis

There was a person whom I thought I knew. Something happened

and everything has changed. At first I didn’t quite know what to do but then I saw. And now we are estranged.

A crisis, like those sharp bends in your river’s life course, requires some jerks and reels, and shows your fellow raft-riders as knaves or saviors, and that it’s up to you who stays, who goes.

Nixon and Harding

Before he could resign or apologize
Before it occurred to him he could
Before he saw that he was at a crossroads
With a choice of ways to go
Before he saw that the choice at the crossroads was his—
Harding died.

Nixon didn’t.
He resigned, but never apologized
To our knowledge. But did he?
Privately?
Or was only death
The final, overdue,
Apology?

What other prestige
Has fallen to oblivion,
Erudition to ignominy,
Innocence to corruption,
Shouting loud as a star
Unheard
Swallowed
By a Black Hole
Dispatched before our time
Or yet to come?

What souls
Never look down at the crossroad to see the choices
Or into the mirror to see a soul look back?

Shells and starfish

Shells and starfish
caught in driftwood
shimmer from starlight

Untitled (fading)

Sundet skies
    streaked with fading light
        an empty moon
        and lost horizon
    your last smile

Winter roses

Winter roses
lightly brushed
by a blush of snow

Violations tested

Was driving to meet someone
who had so little time off for lunch.

Was running late, still a few miles
on a stretch of 120 to their office.

So although the sign said 30, I went 55,
following a cop speeding down the street.

So after about a mile, that copper
turned his lights on and signaled me over.

And he walked over to my Saturn,
asked me if I knew how fast I was going.

And I replied, saying, “I don’t know,
I was just following you sir.” And I waited.

If he wrote me a ticket, there’d be a record
that he was speeding while not in pursuit.

If he wrote me a ticket, his faults would be
found... and cops wanna think they’re invincible.

So the cop finally said to me,
after looking at me for more than a moment,

“Watch what you’re doing, and
watch your speed in the future.” That’s all he said.

And I nodded very subserviently, “Yes sir.”
And I, a little bit slower, went on my way.

I’m Thinking About Myself Too Much

all of my life it
has all been about you
what do you need
what do you want
how can i help you
what can i do for you
and now for once
i start to live
and now you tell me
that i’m thinking about
myself too much
and i think back to
all the time i’ve
spent with you
and all the care
i’ve given you
and now you tell me
that i’m thinking about
myself too much
and i’ve cooked for
you and i’ve cleaned
for you and i’ve made
sure everything in
your world made sense
and now you tell me
that i’m thinking about
myself too much
and all i can think
is that you’re only angry
because i’m thinking
about me at all

Only Half the Story

He was a troubled man.
He had a good life but let
demons in, to do him in.

In his struggles
he almost died
a number of times,

and even his family
pushed him away –
and only heard news

of his death
after he was
already cremated.

And it makes me wonder
if our love for him
ever completely went away –

because after all
the mistakes were made,
I want to believe

that he’s worth more
than what his demons
reduced him to.

–

I want to remember
that when I worked retail
he bought the biggest

teddy bear through me
when he just found out
that his wife was pregnant

with their first child...
and I suppose it was a fun way
for me to get the news too.

I want to remember
how he’d come inside
after plowing too many

streets to count that
were filled with feet
after feet of snow,

that little icicles would
be hanging off his
mustache from his breath.

I want to remember
him picking me up
from the airport,

where we decided to pay
the airport parking
machine with pennies,

dropping pointless pennies,
then laughing at
repurposing pennies

that once only
wasted space
in his truck’s ash try...

I want to remember
that a friend from his youth
(who was shorter than me

by the time I was twelve),
that his friend decided that
my nickname would be “shorty”...

I want to remember
how when I’d see him swim
he’d wear tiny speedos

(and that might seem
strange, but he got
a college scholarship for this –

he was a near-Olympic diver,
once in competition
with medal-winners

like Greg Louganis)...
and he’d go to the
diving board, and suddenly

this concrete construction
company owner
sprung with such skill

as he flipped through the air,
before making
the tiniest tear

and splash next to nothing
through that sheet of water,
that could shatter

like glass through the sky
if anyone tried the same
dive other than him.

–

You see, I want to remember
these little slices of his life,
these windows into

his acts of kindness,
how he was the kind of guy
who’d want to give

the shirt off his back
to a man in need.
I want to remember this.

Because I want to believe
that he wasn’t always lost.
I want to believe

that even though he erred
we should no longer
condemn him, but condemn

the thing that did this to him.
So I try to not
remember the demons,

but remember the man
inside. I want to believe,
and this is why I must remember.

Build Your Own Cross

why be a carpenter
and build your own cross
when Walmart
can do it for you

selling mass produced
2' tall
wooden crosses
with glued plastic flowers
to hammer into dirt
at roadsides
for accident victims

why be a carpenter

why build your own cross

when Walmart can do it for you

Janet Kuypers Bio

    Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.
    She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.
    She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images. Starting at this time Kuypers released a large number of CD releases currently available for sale at iTunes or amazon, including “Across the Pond”(a 3 CD set of poems by Oz Hardwick and Janet Kuypers with assorted vocals read to acoustic guitar of both Blues music and stylized Contemporary English Folk music), “Made Any Difference” (CD single of poem reading with multiple musicians), “Letting It All Out”, “What we Need in Life” (CD single by Janet Kuypers in Mom’s Favorite Vase of “What we Need in Life”, plus in guitarist Warren Peterson’s honor live recordings literally around the globe with guitarist John Yotko), “hmmm” (4 CD set), “Dobro Veče” (4 CD set), “the Stories of Women”, “Sexism and Other Stories”, “40”, “Live” (14 CD set), “an American Portrait” (Janet Kuypers/Kiki poetry to music from Jake & Haystack in Nashville), “Screeching to a Halt” (2008 CD EP of music from 5D/5D with Janet Kuypers poetry), “2 for the Price of 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from Peter Bartels), “the Evolution of Performance Art” (13 CD set), “Burn Through Me” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from The HA!Man of South Africa), “Seeing a Psychiatrist” (3 CD set), “The Things They Did To You” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Hope Chest in the Attic” (audio CD set), “St. Paul’s” (3 CD set), “the 2009 Poetry Game Show” (3 CD set), “Fusion” (Janet Kuypers poetry in multi CD set with Madison, WI jazz music from the Bastard Trio, the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and Paul Baker), “Chaos In Motion” (tracks from Internet radio shows on Chaotic Radio), “Chaotic Elements” (audio CD set for the poetry collection book and supplemental chapbooks for The Elements), “etc.” audio CD set, “Manic Depressive or Something” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Singular”, “Indian Flux” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “The Chaotic Collection #01-05”, “The DMJ Art Connection Disc 1” (Janet Kuypers poetry to music from the DMJ Art Connection), “Oh.” audio CD, “Live At the Café” (3 CD set), “String Theory” (Janet Kuypers reading other people's poetry, with music from “the DMJ Art Connection), “Scars Presents WZRD radio” (2 CD set), “SIN - Scars Internet News”, “Questions in a World Without Answers”, “Conflict • Contact • Control”, “How Do I Get There?”, “Sing Your Life”, “Dreams”, “Changing Gears”, “The Other Side”, “Death Comes in Threes”, “the final”, “Moving Performances”, “Seeing Things Differently”, “Live At Cafe Aloha”, “the Demo Tapes” (Mom’s Favorite Vase), “Something Is Sweating” (the Second Axing), “Live In Alaska” EP (the Second Axing), “the Entropy Project”, “Tick Tock” (with 5D/5D), “Six Eleven” “Stop. Look. Listen.”, “Stop. Look. Listen to the Music” (a compilation CD from the three bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds & Flowers” and “The Second Axing”), and “Change Rearrange” (the performance art poetry CD with sampled music).
    From 2010 through 2015 Kuypers also hosted the Chicago poetry open mic the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting weekly feature and open mic podcasts that were also released as YouTube videos.
    In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), the three collection books from 2004: Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound ISBN# ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, Prominent Tongue, Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the shutterfly ISSN# ISBN# hardcover art book life, in color, Post-Apocalyptic, Burn Through Me, Under the Sea (photo book), the Periodic Table of Poetry (with poems written for every element in the Periodic Table), a year long Journey, Bon Voyage! (a journal and photography book with select poems on travel as an American female vegetarian in India), and the mini books Part of my Pain, Let me See you Stripped, Say Nothing, Give me the News, when you Dream tonight, Rape, Sexism, Life & Death (with some Slovak poetry translations), Twitterati, and 100 Haikus, that coincided with the June 2014 release of the two poetry collection books Partial Nudity and Revealed. 2017, after her October 2015 move to Austin Texas, also witnessed the release of 2 Janet Kuypers book of poetry written in Austin, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 poems” and a book of poetry written for her poetry features and show, “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 show poems” (and both pheromemes books are available from two printers). In 2018, Scars Publications released “Antarctica: Earth’s Final Frontier” and “Antarctica: Wildlife” (2 Janet Kuypers full-color photography books from the first passenger ship to Antarctica in 2017), performance art books “Chapter 48 (v1)” (2009-2011) and “Chapter 48 (v2)” (2011-2018), the v5 cc&d poetry collection book “On the Edge”, and the interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”.

Boots

    The same sun scorched downtown Los Angeles that had seared the Iraq desert. Army Private First Class Samantha Cummings stood at attention holding a stack of boxes, her unwashed black hair slicked back in a ponytail and knotted military style. She stared out from Roberts Shoe Store onto Broadway, transfixed by a homeless man with hair and scraggly beard the color of ripe tomatoes. She’d only seen that hair color once before, on Staff Sergeant Daniel O’Conner.
    The man pushed his life in a shopping cart crammed with rags and stuffed trash bags. He glanced at Sam through the storefront window, his bloated face layered with dirt. His eyes had the meander of drink in them.
    Sam hoped hers didn’t. Since her return from Bagdad a year ago, her craving for alcohol sneaked up on her like an insurgent. Bathing took effort. She ate to exist. Friends disappeared. Her life started to look like the crusted bottom of her shot glass.
    The morning hangover began its retreat to the back of her head.
    The homeless man vanished down Broadway. She carried the boxes to the storeroom.
    In 2012, Sam passed as an everywoman: white, black, brown, Asian. She was a coffee colored Frappuccino. Frap. That’s what the soldiers nicknamed her. Her mother conceived her while on ecstasy during the days of big hair and shoulder pads. On Sam’s eighteenth birthday, she enlisted in the Army. She wanted a job and an education. But most of all she wanted to be part of a family.
    “Let me help you,” Hector said, coming up beside her.
    “It’s okay. I got it.” Sam flipped the string of beads aside. Rows of shoe boxes lined both walls with ladders every ten feet. She crammed the boxes into their cubbyholes.
    “Can I take you to lunch?” Hector asked, standing inside the curtain.
    “I told you before. I’m not interested.”
    “We could be friends.” He shrugged. “You could tell me about Iraq.”
    Sam thrust the last box into its space. The beads jangled. Hector left.
    She glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes until her lunch break. The slow workday gave her too much time to think. She needed a drink. It would keep away the flashbacks.
    “C’mon, Sam,” Hector said outside the curtain.
    “No.”
    Hector knew she was a vet. He didn’t need to know any more about her.
    On her way to the front of the store, Sam passed the imported Spanish sandals. Mr. Goldberg carried high-quality shoes. He showcased them on polished wood displays. She loved the smell of new leather, and how Mr. Goldberg played soft rock music in the background, with track lighting, and thick-padded chairs for the customers.
    The best part of being a salesperson was taking off the customer’s old shoes and putting on the new. The physical contact was honest. And she liked to watch people consider the new shoes—the trial walk, the mirror assessment—and if they made the purchase, everyone was happy.
    Sam headed toward the door. Maria and Bob stood at the counter looking at the computer screen.
    “Wait up,” Maria said. The heavy Mexican woman hurried over. “You’re leaving early again.”
    “No one’s here,” Sam said, towering over her. “I’ll make it up, stay later. Or something.”
    “You better.”
    “Totally.”
    “Or you’ll end up like that homeless man you were staring at.”
    “You think you’re funny?”
    “No, Sam. That’s the point.”
    “He reminded me of someone.”
    “In Iraq?”
    Sam turned away.
    “Try the VA.”
    Sam looked back at Maria. “I have.”
    “Try again. You need to talk to someone. My cousin—”
    “The VA doesn’t do jack shit.”
    “Rafael sees a counselor. It helps.”
    “Lucky him.”
    “So do the meds.”
    “I don’t take pills.”
    “Oh, Sam.”
    “I’m okay.” She liked Maria and especially Mr. Goldberg, a Vietnam vet who not only hired her but rented her a room above the shoe store. “It’s just a few minutes early.”
    Maria glared at her. “Mr. Goldberg has a soft spot for you, but this is a business. Doesn’t mean you won’t get fired.”
    “I’ll make it up.” Sam shoved the door open into a blast of heat.
    “Another thing,” Maria said. “Change your top. It has stains on it.”
    Oh fuck, Sam thought. But it gave her a good reason to go upstairs.
    She walked next door, up the narrow stairway and into her studio, the size of an iPhone. Curry reeked through the hundred-year-old walls from the Indian neighbors.
    Sam took off her blouse and unstuck the dog tags between her breasts. The Army had no use for her. Take your meds, get counseling, then you can re-enlist. But she wasn’t going to end up like her drug-addicted mother.
    The unmade Murphy bed screeched and dipped as she sat down in her bra and pants, the tousled sheets still damp from her night sweats.
    The Bacardi bottle sat on the kitchenette counter. She glanced sideways at it and looked away.
    The United States flag tacked over the peeling wallpaper dominated the room, but it was the image of herself and Marley on the wobbly dresser she carried with her.
    Sam had taken the seventeen-year-old private under her wing. She’d been driving the Humvee in Tikrit with Marley beside her when an IED exploded, killing him while she escaped with a gash in her leg. Thoughts of mortar attacks, roadside bombs, and Marley looped over and over again. Her mind became a greater terrorist weapon than anything the enemy had.
    Her combat boots sat next to the door, the tongues reversed, laces loose, prepared to slip into, ready for action. Sometimes she slept in them, would wear them to work if she could. Of all her souvenirs, the boots reminded her most of being a soldier. She never cleaned them, wanted to keep the Iraqi sand caked in the wedge between the midsoles and shanks.
    The springs shrieked as Sam dug her fists into the mattress and stood. She walked to the counter, unscrewed the top of the Bacardi, poured herself a shot and knocked it back. Liquid guilt ran down her throat.
    Sam picked up a blouse off the chair, smelled it and looked for stains. It would do. She dressed, grabbed a Snickers bar, took three strides and dashed out her room.
    Heading south on Broadway, Sam longed to be part of the city. Paved sidewalks, gutters, frying tortillas, old movie palaces, jewelry stores, flower stands, square patches of green where trees grew—all of it wondrous—not like the fucking sandbox of Iraq.
    The rum kicked in, made her thirsty as she continued down the historic center of town. The sun’s heat radiated from her soles to her scalp. A canopy of light siphoned the city of color.
    She watched a tourist slowly fold her map and use it as a fan. Businessmen slouched along, looking clammy in shirtsleeves. Women, their dresses moist with sweat, form fitted to their skin. Even the cars seemed to droop.
    Waves of heat shimmered off the pavement. They ambushed Sam, planting her back in Tikrit.
    She heard the rat-a-tat-tat of a Tabuk sniper rifle. Ducked. Dodged bullets.
    Scrambled behind a trash bin. Searched around for casualties. She looked at the top of buildings wondering where in the hell the insurgents fired from.
    “Hey, honey, whatsa matter?” An elderly black woman stooped over her.
    “Get down, ma’am!”
    “What for?”
    Sam grabbed at the woman, but she moved away. “Get down, ma’am! You’ll get killed!”
    “Honey, it’s just street drillin’. Those men over there, they’re makin’ holes in the cement.”
    Covered in sweat, Sam swerved to her left. A Buick and Chevrolet stopped at a red light. She saw the 4th Street sign below the one-way arrow. Her legs felt numb as she held onto the trash bin and lifted herself up.
    “You a soldier?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, looking into the face of the concerned woman.
    “I can tell. You fella’s always say ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’, so polite-like. Take it easy child, you’re home now.” The woman limped away.
    Sam reeled, felt for the flask in her back pocket but it wasn’t there. Construction workers whistled and made wolf calls at her. “Douche bags,” she moaned. Alcohol had always numbed the flashbacks. Her counselor in Bagdad told her they would fade. Why can’t I get better, she asked herself? Shaking, she blinked several times, forcing her eyes to focus as she continued south past McDonald’s.
    At 6th, she saw the man with tomato-color hair on the other side of the street, jostling his shopping cart. “It’s Los Angeles, not Los Angelees!” he shouted. His voice rasped like the sick, but Sam heard something familiar in the tone. He pushed his cart around the corner.
    The light turned green. Sam sprinted in front of the waiting cars to the other side of the road. She had grown up across the 6th Street Bridge that linked Boyle Heights to downtown. From the bedroom window of the apartment she shared with her mother, unless her mother had a boyfriend, Sam would gaze at the Los Angeles skyline.
    She followed the man into skid row.
    The smell hit her like a body slam. The stink of piss and shit, odors that mashed together like something died, made her eyes water. A block away, it was another world.
    She trailed the man with hair color people had an opinion about. The Towering Inferno. That’s what they called Staff Sergeant Daniel O’Conner, but not to his face. He knew, though, and took the jibe well. After all, he had a sense of humor, was confident, tall and powerfully built, the last man to end up broken, not the hunched and defeated man she was following. No, Sam thought. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be her hero.
    He shoved his gear into the guts of the city with Sam behind him. The last time she’d been to skid row was as a teenager, driving through with friends who taunted the homeless. The smell was one thing, but what she saw rocked her. City blocks of homeless lived under layers of tarp held up by shopping carts. Young and old, most black, and male, gathered on corners, sat on sidewalks, slouched against buildings, drug exchanges going down. Women too stoned or sick to worry about their bodies slumped over, their breasts falling out of their tops. It was hard for Sam to look into their faces, to see their despair. The whole damn place reeked of hopelessness. Refugees in the Middle East and Africa at least had tents and medicine.
    Sam put on her ass-kicking face, the one that said, “Leave me the fuck alone, or I’ll mess you up.” She walked as if she had on her combat boots, spine straight, eyes in the back of her head.
    Skid row mushroomed down side streets. Men staggered north toward 5th and the Mission. She stayed close behind the red-headed man. He turned left at San Pedro. And so did Sam.
    It was worse than 6th Street. Not even in Iraq had she seen deprivation like this: cardboard tents, overflowing trash bins used as crude borders, men sleeping on the ground. She watched a man pull up his pant leg and stick a needle in his ankle. Another man, his face distorted by alcohol, drank freely from a bottle. The men looked older than on 6th. Some had cardboard signs. One read, Veteran, please help me. Several wore fatigues. One, dressed in a field jacket, was missing his lower leg. Most, Sam thought, were Vietnam or Desert Storm vets. She felt her throat tighten, the familiar invasion of anger afraid to express itself. She’d been told by the Army never to show emotion in a war zone. But Sam brought the war home with her. So did the men slumped against the wall like human garbage.
    The red-headed man passed a large metal dumpster heaped with trash bags. It stank of rotten fruit. He disappeared behind the metal container with his cart.
    Sam looked at the angle of the sun. She had about ten minutes before thirteen hundred hours.
    There was a doorway across the street. She went over and stood in it.
    He sat against the brick wall emptying his bag of liquor bottles and beer cans. He shook one after another dry into his mouth. She understood his thirst, one that never reached an end until he passed out. He took a sack off the cart and emptied it: leftover Fritos bags, Oreo cookies, pretzels. He tore the bags apart and ran his tongue over the insides. He ate apple cores, chewed the strings off banana peels.
    “What are you—” he growled. “You. Lookin’ at?” His eyes roamed Sam’s face.
    Shards of sadness struck her heart. It was like seeing Marley’s strewn body all over again. Staff Sergeant O’Conner’s voice, even when drunk, was deep and rich. It identified him, like his hair. How could the man who saved her from being raped by two fellow soldiers and who refused to join in the witch-hunts of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a leader, who had a future of promotions and medals, end up on skid row?
    “You remind me of someone,” she said.
    How could a once strapping man who led with courage and integrity eat scraps like a dog next to a dumpster? What happened that the Army would leave behind one of their own? Like a militia, disillusionment and bitterness trampled over Sam’s love of country.
    ***
    She woke up to another hot morning. Her head throbbed from the shots of Bacardi she tossed back until midnight as she surfed the internet, including the VA, for a Daniel O’Conner. She found nothing.
    For breakfast, she ate a donut and washed it down with rum. She pulled on a soiled khaki T-shirt and a pair of old jeans and slipped into her combat boots, the dog tags tucked between her breasts.
    Sam knotted her ponytail, grabbed a canvas bag, stuffed it into her backpack and left. She had to be at work at twelve hundred hours.
    If O’Conner slept off the booze, he might be lucid and recognize her.
    At the liquor store, she filled the canvas bag with candy bars, cookies, trail mix, wrapped sandwiches and soda pop then headed down Broadway.
    The morning sun streaked the sky orange and pink. Yellow rays sliced skyscrapers and turned windows into furnaces. Sam hurried south.
    When she crossed Broadway at 6th, the same sun exposed skid row into a stunning morning of neglect. Lines of men pissed against walls, women squatted. She heard weeping.
    Sweat ran down her armpits, her head pounded. Sam felt shaky, chewed sand, and looked around. Where was Marley? She stumbled backwards into a gate.
    “Baby, whatchu doin’? You one fine piece of ass.” The man reached over and yanked at her backpack.
    “No!” Sam yelled. She didn’t want to collect Marley’s severed arms and legs to send home to his parents. “No,” she whimpered, grabbing the sides of her head with her hands. “I can’t do it,” she said sliding to the ground.
    “Shit, you crazy. This is my spot, bitch. Outa here!” he said and kicked her.
    Sam moaned and gripped her side. She saw a plastic water bottle lying on the sidewalk, crawled over and drank from it. A sign with arrows pointing to Little Tokyo and the Fashion District cut through the vapor of her flashback. Iraqi women wore abayas, not shorts and tank tops. Sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, Sam hit her fist against her forehead until it hurt.
    She saw the American flag hoisted on a pulley from a cherry picker over the 6th Street Bridge, heard the click clack of a shopping cart, and the music of Lil Wayne. The sounds pulled her away from the memory, away from a place that had no walls to hang onto.
    Sam held the bottle as she crawled to the edge of the sidewalk. She took deep breaths, focused and glanced around. What the fuck was she doing sitting on a curb in skid row with a dirty water bottle? “Or you’ll end up like that homeless man you were staring at.” “Oh Jesus.” Sam dropped the bottle in the gutter and trudged toward San Pedro Street.
    She had thought that when she came home, she’d get better, but living with her mother almost destroyed her. It began slowly, little agitations about housework, arguments that escalated into slammed doors. Then, one day, her mother called George Bush and Dick Cheney monsters who should be in prison. She accused Sam of murder for killing people who did nothing to the United States. Sam lunged at her, when she stumbled over a chair and fell. Her mother ran screaming into the bathroom and locked the door. “Get outa my house and don’t ever come back!” “Don’t worry! You’re a piece of shit for a mother, anyway!” She left and stayed with her friend Jenny until she told her to stop drinking and get her act together.
    In her combat boots, Sam scuffled along, hoping to catch O’Conner awake and coherent.
    She turned left. The shopping cart poked out from the trash bin. Sam walked to the dumpster and peered around it. O’Conner wasn’t there, but his bags and blankets were. She stepped into his corner and was using the toe of her boot to kick away mouse droppings when someone grabbed her hair and yanked back her head, forcing her to her knees. Terrified, she caught a glimpse of orange.
    “Private First Class Samantha Cummings, United States Army, Infantry Unit 23. Sergeant!” She raised her arms. Sweat streamed down her face.
    His grip remained firm.
    “Staff Sergeant O’Conner, I’ve brought provisions. They’re in my backpack. Sandwiches, candy bars, pretzels!”
    He let go of her hair. The ponytail fell between her shoulders.
    “I’m going to take off my backpack, stand, and face you, Sergeant.” Her fingers trembled, searched for the Velcro strap and ripped it aside. The bag slid to the ground. She rose with her back to him and turned around.
    She saw the war in his eyes. “It’s me. Frap.” His skin, filthy and sun-burnt, couldn’t hide the yellow hue of infection. He smelled of feces and urine. His jaw was slack, his gaze unsteady. “You want something to eat? I got all kinds of stuff,” Sam said. Her emotions buried in sand, began to tunnel, pushing aside lies and deceit.
    O’Conner tore open the backpack and emptied out the canvas bag. “Booze.”
    She knelt beside him and unwrapped a ham and cheese sandwich. “No booze. Here, have this,” she said, handing him the food. “Go on.” Her arm touched his as she encouraged him to eat.
    O’Conner sat back on his heels. “It’s all . . .”
    Sam leaned forward. “Go on.”
    “It’s all . . . stuck!”
    “What’s stuck?”
    He shook his head. “It’s all, stuck!” he cried. He grabbed the sandwich and scarfed it down in three bites. Mayonnaise dripped on his scruffy beard. He kept his sights on Sam as he tore open the Fritos bag and took a mouthful. He ripped apart the sack of Oreo cookies and ate those too. “Go away,” he said as black-and-white crumbs fell from his mouth.
    Sam shook her head.
    “Leave. Me. Alone!”
    “I don’t want to.”
    He drew his knees up to his chest, shut his eyes and leaned his head against the metal dumpster.
    Here was her comrade-in-arms, in an invisible war, where no one knew of his bravery, where ground zero happened to be wherever you stood.
    “You saved me from Jackson and Canali when they tried to rape me in the bathroom. I should have been able to protect myself. And when they tried to discharge me. For doing nothing. You stood up for me. Remember?” O’Conner didn’t move. “I never, thanked you. Cause it showed weakness.”
    O’Conner struggled to his knees. “I don’t know you!” His breath smelled rancid.
    “Yeah, you do.”
    “I don’t know you!” he cried.
    “You know me. You saved me twice, dude!”
    O’Conner stumbled to his feet and gripped the rail of his shopping cart, his spirit as razed as the smoking remains of a Humvee. He shoved off on his morning trek. For how long, Sam wondered.
    She gathered the bags of food and put them in the canvas bag. She kicked his rags to the side, took his blankets, flung them out, folded them and rearranged the cardboard floor. She put the blankets on top and hid the bag of food under his rags.
    Emotions overcame her. Loyalty, compassion, anger, love—feelings so strong tears fell like a long-awaited rain.
    Sam couldn’t save O’Conner, but she could save herself.
    She ripped off her dog tags and threw them in the dumpster. Once home, she’d take down the flag, fold it twelve times and tuck the picture of Marley and herself inside it. She’d throw out her military clothes and combat boots. Pour the rum down the sink. She’d go to the VA, badger them until she got an appointment. Join AA. She’d arrive and leave work on time.
    The morning began to cook. It was the same sun, but a new day. Sam walked in the opposite direction of O’Conner.

fought

a thousand wars are
fought in your honor, swinging
battle axes high

Betsy Bovine

    Betsy Bovine was a milk cow. Her best friend was Peggy Porker a sow. One day in the barnyard, during girl talk, Betsy asked Peggy, “Do you ever wish that you were a male of your species instead of a female?”
    “Why heavens no. Whatever makes you ask that Betsy dear?” responded Peggy shocked by such a question.
    “Well I read on the internet the other day this story about a male animal, a human being male animal actually, who became a human being female animal, because he believed that his mind was geared and wired toward the feminine side of things and not the masculine. So he had a sex change operation and became a female.
    “Fascinating,” was Peggy’s Vulcan like reply as she took another drag of her cigarette that she held ever so daintily in her hoof and then giggled, “Veeeery interesting.”
    “Well what do you think?” begged Betsy.
    “Think about what dear?” Peggy was nonplussed.
    “If I should get the operation or not. Sometimes I feel my masculine side emerging.”
    “You mean you have a split personality like Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide?”
    “No not like that. More like Cat Lynn the man woman in the article.”
    “I say go for it sweetie if that’s what you’re sure you want to do,” encouraged Peggy. “After all it’s either that or a lifetime of being milked and bred. That is of course unless you don’t mind those cold clamps on your udders each morning and then being put out to pasture every so often so old Mr. Avail A. Bull can jump your bones and knock you up.”
    “You know now that you put it that way I’m going to do it,” said a now enthused Betsy. “Males do have all the fun don’t they? They just eat and breed and leave us females alone with the hard job of raising their offspring. They got it made. Besides I don’t believe that I’m cut out for motherhood anyway. By God I’m going to do it,” she bellowed feeling proud and assertive just like a male of her species would feel she thought.
    “Well gotta go now dearie. I’ve got ten hungry piglets waiting on me for their dinner.” Peggy Porker stuffed out her cigarette, actually it was ditch weed rolled up in corn husks, gulped down the last of her homemade corn liquor swill and waddled her two hundred pound plus carcass back toward the farrowing house giving Betsy a rear end view of her waving her pig tail goodbye. Not a pleasant sight.
    Betsy had read that Cat Lynn’s surgery had been performed by one Dr. Ivanstein Muscovy. So she made an appointment to talk to him about such an operation for herself. Dr. Muscovy was one of the few doctors in the world that perform these operations and sometimes not so successfully.
    Dr. Muscovy lived in the USA now. Years ago he had fled his homeland during the war and had been given asylum here because he was quite knowledgeable in certain scientific experimental research. But even here he was still fearful for his life because his wartime experiments had not been quite kosher. So he tried to change his looks, he had already changed his name, by doing plastic surgery on himself. He botched the operation and left himself with a puffy, red, scarred up, bumpy face. The man was a quack.
    All this was unknown to Betsy of course as she entered his office and was greeted by the doctor’s bug eyed assistant Igor Equine. She was taken back by the horrible painfully looking hump on the poor old horse’s back as he sidled up to her and greeted her with a gummy hideous toothless smile. Poor Igor had previously had a terrible swayback having been ridden for many years by a three hundred pound female human. Dr. Muscovy had operated on him to correct the problem but unfortunately had over corrected it so that now Igor was often mistaken for a camel.
    “The good doctor will see you now,” he whinnied. “Walk this way please.”
    Betsy started to follow him when Igor suddenly turned around and scolded her. “Not like that. Like this. Like I walk.” He then showed her how to walk all bent over and hobbling with the right hoof dragging the floor. Betsy imitated his walk, best she could that is, and followed him to the good doctor’s office.
    Dr. Muscovy with a monocle over his right eye, a scrunched up face, and a cigarette in a long black cigarette holder dangling from his bill greeted her with a false warmness. “Willkommen meine fraulein you’ve come to the right place.” Betsy was a obviously a Holstein, a German breed of cow, and Dr. Muscovy therefore put a little German in his conversation to impress her and put her at ease. Though on occasion, like this time, he unconsciously still spoke in his native tongue.
    “Well I’m not quite sure that I’m ready to do this,” Betsy mooed somewhat shyly.
    “There’s nothing to fear my dear. It’s a quite safe operation and everybody is doing it nowadays. It’s the in thing to do. It’s trendy, fashionable. You might even say that it’s chick. I mean chic. All the hep cats are doing it,” he added.
    Worried about what all this would cost her Betsy asked him, “Is this covered under the Affordable Animal Health Care Act?"
    “Not yet yet but the Democats are working on it and President Opossum has promised us that it will be and he always gets his way you know.”
    “Well until that happens how much will it cost me?” asked Betsy.
    Dr. Muscovy told her how many clams it would set her back.
    “Wow that’s not chicken feed,” exclaimed Betsy taken back by the price. “I’m not sure I can afford to be a male, not just yet anyway.”
    “Look,” said Dr. Muscovy not wanting to lose a sale. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you, at the same cost, an operation that still leaves you as a female but adds the male organs. That way you can try it out and if you don’t like it you can go back the way you were. There will be no charge for the reverse the operation. Furthermore, at no charge to you also, I’ll convert you to all male of the specie if that’s what you want. Or you can remain dual gender and have the best of both worlds.”
    “Dual gender?” asked Betsy.
    “Oh yes dual gender. It’s the next big thing. Pretty soon every animal in the world will be wanting to be dual gendered. Just you wait and see. And you my dear can be at the forefront of it all just like Cat Lynn was with her operation.” Dr. Muscovy had never done a dual gender operation. But what the heck he thought. If he could pull that off he would make a lot of money and acquire a nice little nest egg to retire on.
    “I need to go back to the farm and think about all this,” said Betsy as politely as she could, still in sticker shock.
    “Okay then,” replied Dr. Muscovy realizing that he hadn’t made a sale today but not willing to give up just yet. So he sales pitched, “But don’t take too long. Our dual gender offer is a limited time offer only. Act now and save.”
    Betsy went back to the barnyard and talked to Peggy about all this.
    “Sounds like a bargain to me Betsy dearie. You can have the best of both worlds.”
    “What about the worst of both worlds Peggy. I don’t want to be fixed with that.”
    “Just have the doctor reverse you back then. Besides it might be a hoot being male and female at the same time. Sorry dearie but I’ve gotta go now. My break is over.” she said, stuffing the last of her pork rinds in her mouth. “Got nine hungry piglets wanting on me for supper.”
    “I thought you had ten.”
    “I did but last night in my sleep I rolled over on one and crushed him, or her, to death. Got nine now.”
    “Oh I’m sorry,” said Betsy.
    “Don’t be. It’s no big deal. Soon as this litter of Porker piglets is shipped off to the pig parlor, I’ll be making more anyway. Bye.”
    Betsy thought it over, decided to not to be chicken any longer and get this over with. So she saved up her milk money, accepted the limited time offer, it was still open, and scheduled a time for the operation.
    Dr. Muscovy operated and after the anesthesia wore off he met with her for a little postoperative chat.
    “The operation was a success dear, or should I say sir, or should I say dear sir,” he chuckled proud of himself for his corny humor. “Take a peek and see for yourself.”
    Betsy lifted up her sheet and looked at her nether regions. She was now plumbed both ways.
    “Now let me give you some advice before you’re discharged. Since you have two sexes now, whenever you are aroused, both sets of sexual equipment will be fully functional at the same time. Therefore before you go for that proverbial roll in the hay make sure you tell your partner that you’re acting either as a male or a female. This will avoid any unnecessary embarrassment for the both of you.” Dr. Muscovy tried to stifle a cackling little quack but was unable to do so.
    “Thank you for that information doctor,” Betsy said somewhat hesitatingly.
    “Bitte,” he said.
    “Huh?” said Betsy for she could not speak German even if she was of German descent.
    “Igor will show you out,” responded Dr. Muscovy quickly, anxious to get get her out of there before she asked any questions.
    “Walk this way please, “ said Igor again.
    Betsy did not need to be cued this time as she again imitated Igor’s walk until he was out of her sight.
    Back at the farm Betsy went about her business of being a milk cow. She was not quite ready to act as a bull yet but she still dreamed about being a one, dreamed both daydreams and nightdreams about it. And one night while sleeping she had one of those wet dreams. Not having been a male before she was not sure what had happened. But she soon was sure about one thing. Sure that she was pregnant now. Wondering how this could have happened without having had any sexual contact with a bull she went back to Dr. Muscovy for an explanation.
    “Unfortunately this is one of the side effects of being dual gendered, becoming self impregnated that is. I can abort the calf if you wish at no charge to you. All abortions are free under Opossum Care,” Dr. Muscovy informed her.
    Betsy was now thoroughly disgusted now with this whole gender thing. “You told me that I would have the best of both worlds and what I got was the worst of both worlds,” she screamed. “My lawyers Donkey, Cheetah and Cow will be getting in touch with you, you quack.”
    Igor did not show her out. She knew the way and the walk by now.
    Back at the farm Farmer Dell noticed Betsey’s pregnancy and didn’t like what he saw. He had told Betsy to have the operation thinking that he would then have two bovines for the price of one. Then he could sell Mr. Avail A. Bull for hamburger, use Betsy for breeding purposes and when that was done have her go back to being a milk cow. He didn’t want her inbreeding herself and producing deformed hideous looking mutated calves. No she would have to go. So next Monday morning he took her to the sale barn and she, not Mr. Avail A. Bull, became hamburger.

    Moral of the story: Be cowful of what you ask for you might not live to regret it.

Foot

    Speck called CBC News thirty minutes before calling the cops. The discovery belonged to him, and he didn’t want the police stealing the glory. Out on Exile Rock, the fog was dense and blinding-white, and, being that it was only the second day of the New Year, it was nut-shrivelling cold. Out on the Burrard Inlet foghorns moaned eerie warnings. Behind him, back in the trailer park, they were still setting off firecrackers, even at nine in the morning. Ernie Wildcat had fled the scene minutes before: I don’t need the heat, kid; there’s a warrant out on my ass.
    So all Speck had to do was wait for them to come see what he found.
    Make him famous.
    Few minutes later he heard the vehicles coming, the crunch of tires on the gravel by the railroad tracks. Headlights through the fog. Voices, a bunch of ‘em.
    Speck smiled.
    Put on his shocked face. “Over here!” he yelled.
BOXING DAY
    Speck was over at Bob the Toad’s playing Super Mario. Tey called him Bob the Toad on account that the kid had a round body, no neck to speak of, and a wide, wall-eyed face. Speck, comparatively, was small for the age of twelve, but sinewy, with a perpetually malnourished, Oliver Twist look to him.
    Speck handed the controls over to the Toad, stood, and tooted. For breakfast he had eaten a giant can of no-name chilli.
    “Make sure you use the air freshener this time,” said the Toad, not looking up from the screen.
    Walking down the narrow hall toward the tiny trailer crapper, Speck’s eyes lit up when he saw the cat litter box inside an open closet.
    “What’s so funny?” asked the Toad, when his friend returned, grinning.
    “I was just thinking of the time we pissed into Red Beard’s wine bottle when he was passed out drunk. Old bastard didn’t know no better.”
    “Yeah, that was pretty hilarious.”
    Speck picked up his control. “What time’s your mom home?”
    “Any time now, I guess. She said you can’t stay for dinner again. Sorry.”
    “She doesn’t like me for some reason,” Speck said.
    When Mrs. Monroe got home from her job at the bingo hall, Speck had to bite his tongue to keep from giggling. “Hi, Mrs. Monroe,” he said, “any big winners today?”
     Looking less than thrilled to see him, she said, “House always wins.”
    Mrs. Monroe was a very fat woman who wheezed and chain-smoked. Her cheeks threatened to swallow up her eyes. Her mouth was a tiny purple gash and Speck wondered how she even got enough food in there to feed her mammoth body.
    She clumped off down the hall toward her room. Ten seconds later she screamed: “Youlittlefuckingspeckofshit!”
    Bob the Toad looked at his friend like, what now?
    “Gotta jet, dude,” Speck said, as Mrs. Monroe galumphed back down the hall. His shoes were already on, so he grabbed his jean jacket and bounded out the door.
    “You better take that cat to the vet, Mrs. Monroe,” he called over his shoulder. “I think it’s sick.”
    The big woman jumped out the door, swinging a broom at Speck, who just barely dodged it. “You’re sick, Speck!” she yelled, loud enough for everyone in a ten-trailer radius to hear. “You are never allowed in here again, you scummy little creep.”
    Out of breath, Mrs. Monroe threw the broom like a spear and caught him in the ass. Speck nearly pissed himself laughing. “Assault on a minor,” he said from the road. Bob the Toad stared dully through the trailer window.
    “Think of your mother,” Mrs. Monroe said. “What probably really killed her was knowing she had such a rotten son.”

    Next day Speck was on the library computer, studying how to make pipe bombs. Didn’t look too hard, he thought. Then he flipped over to FaceBook. There was a message from the Toad saying that he couldn’t be his friend anymore and that he was going to stay with his dad for the rest of the holidays.
    Speck couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Monroe’s parting words. It made him think of his mother, back before she died of liver disease brought on by a steady supply of rotgut rice wine. She was the only person who ever called him by his first name, which was Charlie. Even his dad called him Speck. He remembers his mom cussing out his dad: “See what kinda shitty name you brought to this family? How’d you feel if you were a little runt and had to go ‘round people calling you Speck?”
    Speck Sr., sitting in his duct-taped Lazy-Boy, high on Oxys for his chronic back pain, would reply: “They do call me Speck. It’s an honor.”
    “Loser name for a loser man,” said his mother.
    Speck missed those days. Life had a routine back then, and there was always some food in the cupboard.
    But Speck was a realist; a survivor. Those days were gone, and now it was on him to make a go of things. Sitting in the library, he pulled his Prank Journal from his knapsack. Whenever life had him licked, he drew on it for inspiration. It also helped him to build better pranks in the future.
    Speck flipped pages.
    #36 – stole all wally the fishmanz salmon from his cooler an replaced them with a dead racoon. sold the fish to his enemy, bony Paul. 6/10
    #41 – did a bomb threat at school to get out of writing a test. called from a payphone and pretended to be ISIS. 8.5/10
    #72 – called up dad when he was wasted an pretended to be a guy from the lotto. told dad he won 2.4 million dollars. when I got home, dad was real nice (4 once) and took me to the keg, then for ice cream, then to wal-mart for new clothes. he went to the liquor mart, then bought 10 cartons of smokes. back home he told me I’m probably going to have to fend for myself soon ‘cuz he’s gonna be moving someplace where it’s sunny all the time. 10/10
    Speck flipped to the end and wrote:
    #99 – crapped in Mrs. Monroe’s cat litter box. I lost my best friend and she hit me with a broom and said my mom died cuz of me. 4/10.
    Speck looked around, saw a bum sleeping in a chair in the corner. Guy’s shoelaces were undone. He thought of tying them together and then watching as the dude got up and tumbled. Except he’d already done that. It was like, #11 or something, back when he was just starting out. No. #100 had to be something special.
NEW YEAR’S EVE
    Speck skulked down to Exile Rock to deliver supplies to Ernie Wildcat. To get to E.R. you had to cross the railroad tracks by the trestle, then go down a rocky embankment, through a rip in the chain-link fence, and you had to be sneaky, because if they rail cops caught you, they’d kick your ass out.
    Exile Rock was this spit of rocky stunted tree Blair Witch shit where folks went to get wasted in private. It was also the home of the Dawghouse.
    The Dawghouse was a ratty blue tent in a small clearing in the middle of Exile Rock. It’s where certain men of the hood went if they were in trouble at home or if they just wanted to escape their old ladies. There was a tacit understanding that no wives knew about The Dawghouse, because sometimes men humped other women there.
    #66: pumpjack frank was down at the doghouse screwing a tranny crack ho. I waited until they fell asleep then stole their clothes and put them in the firepit with lighter fluid an set them on fire. Then I ran around the tent, wailing like an indian. then I ran away. the tranny panties were nasty. barf! 8/10
    Its present occupant, the aforementioned Ernie Wildcat, wasn’t down there for the ladies. He was there to get righteously shittered somewhere his old lady?—affectionately dubbed “The Warhorse”—couldn’t find him. Speck walked up to the tent, glancing at the empty Aqua Velva bottles and hand sanitizer containers scattered on the weedy frost-brittle ground.
    Speck could hear him snoring inside the tent. Whole area smelled rotten, like a sickness. “Yo, Wildcat,” Speck called out, kicking at the front of the tent, “you home?”
    He looked around, at the mess, at the fire-pit, which contained the remnants of a dead seal. Made him want to hurl. Through the fog, he could barely make out the Lions Gate Bridge above. Once, he had seen a woman jump from it. They say the body was never found.
    His stomach growled. He hoped Ernie had at least a few bucks on him so he could get himself a cheeseburger.
    “Bless your stunted little balls,” Ernie said, ripping back the tent flap and peering out with his one good, squinty, bloodshot eye.
    “Least I got balls,” Speck replied. “You old nutless freak.”
    With a pleading jack-o-lantern grin, Ernie extended a shaky hand.
    “Money first, Ernie.”
    “C’mon, Speck buddy. Warhorse took all my dough, left me to starve.”
    From his knapsack, Speck procured a Coke bottle half full, of mixed hooch he filched from his dad, along with three 50mg Oxys, and a canister of silver spray paint he’d lifted from Rona an hour ago. “Lots of other customers I can sell this shit to,” Speck said. “Trixie’ll take it off my hands for ten bucks.”
    After thirty seconds of mad foraging in The Dawghouse, Ernie managed to scrounge up four bucks plus change.
    “Now I can put a down payment on a mansion up on “the Hill,” Speck said, gesturing north, to where the tops of the multimillion dollar homes on Sentinel Hill could be seen through the thick bank of fog. Less than a mile away; might as well be on a different planet.
    Speck would settle for a Happy Meal.

    Five minutes later, Speck wasn’t at McDonald’s. He was still at Exile Rock, crying and chucking stones into the oily water. He thought of all the things he didn’t have. A mother. A friend. Respect at school. He wanted to stow away on one of the rusty Asian freighters that sat hulking on the water, only a few hundred yards from shore. Everything good seemed close yet impossibly far.
    Speck thought about how just last summer he and the Toad would come to this very spot and arrange the rocks into a maze. Salmon would swim in and get trapped. Then the two boys would club them over the head and sell them to the grizzled fishermen at their roadside stands on Capilano.
    Where would be find another friend like the Toad? There had to be others like him that would enjoy pranking the shit out of the world. Maybe he’d go back to the library and check if there was an on-line group of Pranksters. If there wasn’t, he could start one up, be the President. Become a YouTube sensation, get worldwide recognition. First he had to get his name out there.
    Wracking his brain for an idea, Speck stepped closer to the end of the spit that jutted into the inlet. He picked up a bowling ball-sized rock and heaved it into the water, shot-put style. In doing so he slipped on some slimy rocks and fell hard on his ass, legs in the freezing ocean. He swore and scrambled to his feet. Then he saw something. He bent down and picked up a soggy white Nike high-top sneaker. Old school, he thought, and heavy. Must be waterlogged.
    He looked inside, eyes going wide. He poked at the contents of the shoe and a small crab leaped out and scuttled across the rocks.
    Speck dredged a plastic liquor mart bag from the shore and carefully deposited the shoe inside. He whistled all the way back to the trailer park, carrying the bag under his arm. It began to rain hard, turning into a hailstorm. Fireworks began popping off beneath the Lion’s Gate Bridge.
    Speck grinned his biggest grin of the year.
    Things were going to turn around.
    The shoe was a sign.
NEW YEAR’S DAY
    The night brought heavy snowfall, and it was still coming down when Speck left his trailer at nine a.m. He retrieved the liquor mart bag from the outdoor freezer, then trudged up the alley. Half a block separated their trailer from the Monroe double-wide. He crouched behind a snow-caked hedge. He could hear Mrs. Monroe in there; when she moved, the entire trailer creaked. He could smell her cigarette smoke and see her Sasquatch head silhouetted in the frosted kitchen window. From a nearby trailer, someone had cranked up some old-school Eminem, which provided nice sound cover.
    Speck circled the hedge, looking both ways before commando sprinting up to the paint-peeled, saggy back porch, with its haphazardly strung Christmas lights. He pulled the sneaker from the bag and set it on the doorstep. He rapped several times on the dented aluminum door.Then sprinted down the road and crouched behind a thick pine.
     Mrs. Monroe stuck her head out, looked around. She wore a ratty pink robe. A cigarette dangled from her tiny food-hole. “Happy New Year, Mrs. Monroe,” he whispered. She leaned down, looked inside the bag and removed the shoe. Took a closer look.
    She went all freeze-frame. The cigarette fell from her lips and sparked down the stairs. She dropped the bag.
    Then she dropped.
    Face first down the stairs.
    Crack.
    Speck hoped it was the old wood of the bottom stair breaking, but he wasn’t betting on it.
    Mrs. Monroe ended up face down in the snow at the bottom of the stairs, her big ole butt jackknifed in the air.
    The falling snow reminded Speck of static on their ancient box television.
    When Mrs. Monroe didn’t move for a full minute, Speck looked around. Then he jogged back to retrieve the shoe. He put it back in the bag. As he moved away, he swished up the snow so as to not leave a trail.

    An hour later, an ambulance drove past the Speck trailer. Two cop cars. “C’mon, Speck,” yelled Speck Sr. “Some action’s goin’ on at the Monroe place. Let’s check it out.”
    They crunched down the snowy drive. His father wore a fur trapper hat and smoked weed from a small pipe. They joined the crowd of trailer park lookie-loos and watched the paramedics load Mrs. Monroe’s covered-up body into the ambulance. A cop asked people if anyone saw anything. Speck held his breath as neighbours shook their heads.
    “Too bad people have to die,” Speck Sr. said. “Your mom got along with that woman.”
    Speck looked up and a snowflake caught him in the eye.
    Hello, mom.

    Speck wiped condensation from his bedroom window, watching as the station wagon drove past bearing Mrs. Monroe’s ex-husband and Bob the Toad. He caught a glimpse of the Toad’s profile in the passenger seat.
    He felt like he should do something.
    Maybe go over there, act grown-up. Say sorry about your mom. Now we got something in common.
    But that would be weird.
    Even for Speck.
    Instead, he went outside to the freezer, removed the liquor mart bag and carried it back inside.
    Sitting at his tiny lopsided desk, he pushed aside some homework that he would never do. Placed the shoe on the desk. Put his hands inside plastic sandwich bags.
    With great care, Speck untied the rotted laces, pulled back the tongue, and removed the decayed foot from the shoe. It didn’t even look like a foot. More like something in the fire-pit back on Exile Rock. All the bones were there, attached by gobbets of gray-green tissue and some blackish frayed ribbons which he assumed was once a sock.
    The foot began dripping goo. He slid some math worksheets under the foot.
    “Hey!” called Speck Sr., outside the door. “What reeks in there, Speck?”
    “Fell in the ocean the other day.”
    “Change your ginch every once in a while, kid. Burn the ones you’re wearing.”
    “’Kay.”
    His dad stumbled off. Getting the foot back in the shoe proved more challenging than getting it out. Several toes snapped off.
    “You’re missin’ out, Toad,” he whispered.

    An hour later, Speck was back at Exile Rock. He dumped the shoe and loose toes into the water. Then he picked the shoe up again. “LOOK WHAT I FOUND!”
    Scrubby bushes parted behind him and Ernie Wildcat stepped out wearing a stained union suit.
    “What’chu got there, Munchkin?” Ernie slurred. His one good eye was wild and his lips were lined with silver paint.
    “It’s a shoe with a rotten foot in it is what it is.”
    “No fuggin’ way.”
    Speck pulled out the cell phone he stole off his dad. Dialed a number.
    “Who you calling?” Ernie asked.
    “The news first.”
    “How come you know the number of the news from memory?”
    “’Cause I’m smart, Ernie. I’m going to be on TV, fool.”
    Ernie hurried off and Speck could hear him frantically gathering his belongings from the Dawghouse.
    A woman’s voice on the other end of the line said, “CBC, how can I help you?”
    “My name is Speck,” he said. “Charles Speck. I just found a shoe with a dead foot in it. Thought you guys would want to know about it.”
    “Let me transfer you. Just a moment, Charles.”
    Charles.
    He held up the shoe and did a jig.
    He could kiss the damn foot.
    It was going to be a good year.

The Rag Doll and the Siamese

    My half-brother Tyler pointed at his blue 5.0 liter Mustang double-parked in the street. “Gimme back the keys to my ‘Stang,” he said. An extension ladder laid across the back seat stuck out the rear windows. Paint buckets, canvas tarps, disorganized tools and loose boards prevented the trunk fully closing. His buddy leaned against the car smoking a joint.
    It was past three a.m. Fifteen minutes earlier I’d been asleep, awoken by an aluminum ladder clinking the stoop, followed by the dull thud of a paint bucket against the railing. Tyler was back. I hadn’t seen him for a month – not since our last row. Paroled after eight years in prison, he roomed with me in a Brooklyn brownstone – until he left syringes and needles lying about, which I didn’t tolerate.
    When he asked after them, I was blunt: “I threw them out with the kitty litter. It’s tough love.”
    “I’ll show you tough love.” He knotted my shirt collar in one fist, tightened it like a noose and threw me against a wall and left, taking all his belongings except the docile Siamese he brought home – the cause célèbre of our first row. It wore a pink collar and tag identifying it as Tabitha, though Tyler nicknamed it Taboo, the same name he’d given our cat in grade school, also Siamese and also stolen.
    I’d heard nothing from Tyler for a month until the ladder clinked – and I hoped he lost his house key; if he knocked, I wouldn’t answer.
    But the key clicked in the lock; the ladder banged through the entryway. “Flip that switch,” he said, ordering someone about, and an upstairs light turned on. “Grab that bucket.” Footsteps tread heavy up the stairs and across the spare room. The ladder squeaked open and a set of keys jangled and clinked the aluminum.
    I came out of my room in pajamas and slippers to witness his buddy plunge a paint roller into a gallon can and slosh red paint up the baseboard and onto the wall. Taboo jumped from Marty’s shoulder into paint splatter and tracked kitty prints across the floor.
    “Tyler, what’s going on?” My best guess said he’d been shooting coke and in a sudden rush of euphoria decided ‘to do me a solid.’
    “We had leftover paint,” he said, ”and I thought you’d appreciate the gesture. Anyway, I came for Taboo.”
    “You didn’t even lay out a tarp.” My voice was shrill as I picked up the cat with a towel.
    “Go get this pussy a tarp,” he said to his buddy. Tyler took over painting and turned to me, saying, “I paint houses for a living, you know.”
    “You’re too messed up right now.”
    “I can handle my drugs. I’ll be finished in ten minutes.”
    “You’re done,” I said and snatched his keys off the ladder, dangling them to lure him into racing me downstairs. We faced off on the sidewalk beneath fading streetlight. His buddy leaned against the Mustang puffing weed — pulling a tarp from the trunk only after we appeared, sending boards clattering to the pavement.
    “Gimme the keys to my ‘Stang,” Marty said pointing at his car, still holding the roller.
    “Let me drive you guys.”
     “Gimme the damn keys.” He grabbed for them, but I stepped back. He lunged and nearly snagged them — but I clutched ring and keys overhead in a fist.
    “If you touched it, you should have had it,” I said, the way my father — his stepfather — chided us for missing fly balls that grazed our ball mitts.
    Tyler scowled, his face reddened; he got me by the collar. I dropped the keys, but too late — it was no longer about the keys. Tyler flipped out: he grit and bared his teeth; saliva seemed to boil behind his lips. He had me in a chokehold, thumbs pressing my windpipe. I wrapped my hands around his, prying, clawing at times to tear his flesh from mine. I was a rag doll that Tyler jerked backwards and downward in a graceless Tango.
    His buddy leaned against the car again, grinning as if this were sport. No one called police or came outside, but I could hardly shout out for help – I couldn’t breathe. Tyler squeezed with all his might and jerked me back once more, the coup de grâce: my eyes closed, my hands fell away, and I went limp.
    He must have relaxed his grip, for seconds later my arms flailed and hands stretched, reached . . . for anything . . . and came up gripping a two-by-four and swung it with wild fury. I gasped for air and opened my eyes, but Tyler reapplied his chokehold. I struck the side of his head — he let go, ducking and guarding his face. I took full advantage, cracking the board across his shins.
    Tyler fell to the ground whimpering, a child again. I held the board overhead, short-winded, ready to deliver a final blow. But to see him cowering in fear of this rag doll, I had to laugh and tossed the board aside; it bounced across the pavement with hollow, wooden pings.
     His buddy grinned and nodded, perhaps applauding my victory.
    I scuffed a shoe across the drive looking for the keys and removed mine from the ring. “Here’s the keys to your fucking ‘Stang,” I said, tossing the rest to his feet.
    Tabitha wandered out onto the porch and sat flicking its tail. I took her in my arms and motioned for Tyler’s buddy to come inside. I let him retrieve the ladder and paint, and locked the door when he’d gone, still holding the cat. The ladder clinked, the engine revved and Tyler’s ‘Stang rumbled down the street.
    I called Tabitha’s rightful owner next day, using the contact engraved on the collar tag. Her painter, she said, left a door ajar and the cat simply disappeared.

The Sound of White Metal

    “So do not be afraid.” – Matthew 10:31

    A masked man stood among bushes and swayed. He held a paintball gun and wore a blue armband. He faced a body of water with geese floating at its center. “What’s malamal mean?”
    Another masked gunman with a blue armband bent a branch. “I’m almost the guy’s fuckin’ boss.”
    “Maleel?”
    “In Shockman’s universe, that word doesn’t exist.”
    “You said it earlier. At Mom’s?”
    “Probably an architecture word.”
    “I don’t know.”
    Unrhythmically a robin chirped above them. Shockman snapped off the branch. “That’s so fucking annoying.”
    Fifteen feet behind them, a red flag topped an eight-foot pole. Beyond that, more blue-banded figures advanced into the woods.
    Shockman tapped the swaying man’s gun. “Now come on. Let’s see you crush it, Doggie.”
    Doggie aimed at the geese. Detuned distorted guitars rumbled in the distance. A synthesizer and drums fortified them.
    Doggie thought of Ty, his tail wagging and muscles rippling as he tried to sniff a butterfly.
    Doggie’s gun popped. The projectile flew twenty feet wide of the geese.
    Shockman repositioned himself. A photo of a nude woman stuck to the tread of one of his boots. “That shit’s not even music in my universe.”
    “Hey, Ty’s still really strong. He can really jump.”
    “White metal or whatever that buttonhead hillbilly over there called it? It’s so cantankerous.”
    “What’s can . . .” The music stopped. Doggie swayed, and adjusted his mask. “Remember when you still lived with us?”
    “What’s going on in that buttonhead’s head?”
    “And Ty, he bit that little girl?”
    “Where’s my fucking paint grenade? The website said they had paint grenades.”
    Popping came from the forest. Doggie turned around, then crouched. “Oh man. They’re coming.”
    “Relax. They’re still way out there.”
    “What are we gonna . . .”
    “We just hide here till somebody comes for that flag. Then sh-kh sh-kh sh-kh we crush those fuckers.”
    Doggie swayed. “That tree there? That’s a bur oak. I seen a lot of them on Third Street. Over there by Dovey’s?”
    “Yeah, Dovey’s. Get that shit outta here.”
    “We inject them. We got these chemicals, and we inject the chemicals. Into the trees?”
    “You ever see Terry there? At Dovey’s?”
    “It’s a highly pressurized injection system. Injections. That keeps those oaks strong.”
    “Terry Voxland?”
    “Or they get that nutrient deficial?”
    “She’s a volunteer or whatever?”
    “It’s pressurized. I don’t know.”
    The robin chirped awkwardly. Shockman fired upward. The paintball splashed through the branches, then the bird took flight. Shockman pushed Doggie’s gun toward the water. “You need practice. Let’s see you hit those geese.”
    “Does it hurt? When you get shot?”
    “It stings for like a second. Now come on. Hit that shit.”
    Doggie took aim. “Hey, Mom probably wouldn’t like that naked lady thing. You know that naked lady thing you got at your piano?”
    “Mannequin. Mannequin, Doggie. Now beat my shot.”
    Doggie adjusted his grip.
    “I never wanted to play that bastard piano. I wanted to go outside. But Mom, man. She’s got this crazy shit going on in her head.”
    The white metal glided and swayed, and then, abruptly, slowed, and warned stompingly.
    Doggie pictured his tree stake gun injecting fertilizer.
    His next shot sailed ten feet over the geese.
    “I should’ve smashed that buttonhead’s CD player.”
    Doggie huffed, then mumbled. “Caltenkron . . .”
    “I’ve got no idea what the fuck you’re saying, bro.”
    The music faded. More guns popped. Two blue-banded figures scrambled within the woods.
    A hundred feet from Shockman and Doggie crouched another figure, his back to them.
    “Shit, that’s Vozone. Watch me crush that shit.”
    “But that guy’s got blue.”
    “So?”
    “We’re blue.”
    “This is the bachelor party, Doggie. And I’m the fuckin’ bachelor.” Shockman advanced through foliage until he was fifteen feet behind Vozone. Five times Shockman’s gun popped.
    Splotches covered Vozone’s back. He fell forward and growled. “Aw I’m hit I’m hit I’m out. The fuck, Shockman? Your team, your team. Now I’m out. I’m on your fuckin’ team.”
    Shockman shrugged. “Sorry. Didn’t see your blue thing there.” He returned to Doggie by the flag.
    “Man, why did you shoot him, man?”
    “How can you beat that?” Shockman gripped his shoe. “These are Garrots. Look at that. Fucking Garrots.”
    “Man, we got less guys now.”
    “And that bottlehead Vozone says, ‘So?’ So? These are Garrots. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in those people’s heads.”
    “What people?”
    Shockman took out a phone. “Those Mexicans. Garrots are cutting-edge shit.”
    “Hey, oh no.” Doggie pointed at a small, D-shaped hole in a tree trunk. “That’s the EAB. Those EABs, they’ll kill this thing.”
    Shockman showed Doggie his phone. “Here, look at this shit.”
    “But we got these guns. For the EABs? These special guns? They’re pressurized guns.”
    “Look here. It says right here. ‘Paint grenades are available for five bucks each.’”
    “You just shoot them. That guy said no cell phones.”
    “Fuck him. The head-banging buttonhead. Let’s see you hit the geese.”
    Guns popped. Doggie stood and faced the water. “Looks like some babies out there.”
    “More of a challenge sh-kh sh-kh sh-kh.”
    Doggie swayed, and watched the geese. “Hey, what happened with that stripper last night?”
    “Nothing. Just fooling around. You gonna shoot?”
    “What about Barbara?”
    “Bar’s fine. Forget about that muffler last night. Now aim that thing. She’s a muffler.”
    Doggie took aim.
    “I tried to hire that Voxland bitch, get her to do some business development? But she won’t do BD. She says she’s happy where she is.”
    “Hey, you gonna get rid of that statue thing at your apartment?”
    “. . . happy working for that dinky-ass firm.”
    “. . . that manquil kin thing?”
    “Moothard or Mootzhart or whatever that dinky-ass firm’s called. Now shoot.”
    The white metal ripped through their area. A vocalist roared unintelligible lyrics. The voice sounded submerged.
    Doggie remembered Ty going up to a Mexican guy and wagging his tail. The man smiled and petted Ty.
    Doggie’s shot splattered against a tree.
    Shockman attempted to mimic the voice. “Kill your mom. Kill your dog. Rape your neighbor. Kill rape kill.”
    “Man, that’s what they’re saying? I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like it’s what they’re saying.”
    The music stopped.
    Shockman pulled out a flask. “If I had a paint grenade, I’d stuff it in that buttonhead’s mouth.”
    “That’s not what they’re saying.”
    Shockman lifted his mask slightly, then took a sip. “This shit fuckin’ tastes like piss. You and that charity.”
    Doggie adjusted his mask. “What’s malal . . .”
    “I gave you that fifty for Eabry. Eabry’s the best vodka. How much did you give those buttonheads?”
    Doggie swayed. “Huh? Hey, what’s cantrank . . .”
    “The fools outside Reinerts. Collecting money for dismembered kids or whatever?”
    “Dis . . . ten. Or fifteen. For poor kids or something.”
    “In my universe, that’s a waste.” Shockman used a stick to puncture the mouth on the sticker beneath his shoe.
    Paintball gunfire erupted, then a man shouted, “I’m out. Damn, fuckin’ shit. I’m out.”
    Doggie squeezed a paintball. “Hey, that guy over there? He said not to shoot at animals.”
    “It’s called a mannequin, Doggie. That statue thing at my piano? Women like that. They want you to dress them up like that.”
    The paintball burst between Doggie’s fingers. “Hey what’s that word you used earlier?”
    “Take care of them like that and tell them what to do.”
    “Mana . . . malebul or something?”
    “Male bull? Yeah, male bull. Ha. I said male bull. Get that shit off your fingers. Wipe it on the tree there.”
    “Ty’s a pit bull.” Doggie wiped his hands on his pants.
    “It’s malleable, Doggie. Malleable. It’s an architecture word.”
    “Was that stripper Mexican or something?”
    “She looked like Candy. At work? You take the potential client out for a few drinks? And you bring Candy? You’ll have a new client in no time.”
    The music returned. A growl ground over a wall of distortion.
    Ty licked the boy who fell off his bike.
    “Maybe this’ll come down on that buttonhead.” Shockman fired upward. “That fifty was for Eabry’s, man. And you get me this shit. What was going on in your head, Doggie Boy?”
    The music shifted: a piano pranced over a deep extended guitar note.
    Sometimes Ty growled and wagged his tail. He wanted to play then.
    Doggie swiped his gun, then mumbled something with the words “supposed to” in it.
    “What? I have no idea what you just said.”
    “I don’t know.”
    A hundred yards from them, a red-banded figure dashed from one patch of tall grass to another.
    “Shit. That’s Spokes. You see that? That’s Spokes. I’m gonna nail that buttonhead.”
    Guitars churned. Drums blasted. Doggie crouched and breathed quickly. “He’s on the other team?”
    Shockman turned Doggie toward the water. “All right, Doggie. You got one more shot at those geese; the other team will be here soon.”
    “You think he’ll shoot us? Man, I don’t want to get hit.”
    “I told you it’s fine. I’ll nail him.”
    “But I don’t want to get hit in my back.”
    “He won’t. Now you got one more practice shot.”
    Doggie aimed. The drum and guitar assault dissipated, and from it drifted a slow piano solo. The largest goose stuck its head in the water.
    One time, Ty bit a girl.
    Spokes’s head rose out of the grass, and Shockman used a stick to mash a paintball against a tree trunk. “These clients, they don’t know what the fuck they want. Spokes is gonna get slammed. What they want is to tell you how you fucked up.”
    Doggie lowered the gun. “Hey, what happened with that stripper?”
    “What they want is more sex partners.”
    “I saw you go into the bedroom.”
    “That’s what Dad wanted. More sex partners. That’s what everyone wants. That’s how you get jobs in architecture.”
    The piano played lingeringly and, as if surveying battlefield carnage, mournfully.
    The girl kept trying to put sunglasses on Ty. Doggie told her not to, but she kept trying.
    “Synergy. That’s what you want. So you get the Asians to do the work, and you get the hot women to do the business development. Events and dinners and that shit. Fuckin’ synergy.”
    “Hey, remember when Ty bit that girl?”
    Spokes scuttled to a bush.
    Shockman pulled off a piece of bark. “Spokes. The guy gets a monitor, the thing’s bigger than my monitors. I mean I got two monitors, but I’m almost his fucking boss.” Shockman pushed the barrel of Doggie’s gun until it pointed toward the geese. “Now come on Doggie. Fuckin’ crush that shit. This is your chance.”
    Clear electric guitar notes joined the piano.
    Doggie’s brother went to the little girl’s house. He was nice, and he asked her parents not to tell about the bite. Or Ty would have had to be put to sleep.
    “That stripper. You went in the bedroom.”
    “Listen, you got a favorite tool?”
    Doggie lowered the gun. “We got this pressured gun. Pressurized.”
    “So that tool’s great. Beautiful. I’m gonna nail Spokes right in the nuts. You love that tool. But sometimes it’s not there. So you use other tools.”
    “Bob lets me use it. The gun’s a pressurized tree stake gun? It’s like a gun and it puts this stuff in the tree. Injects it.”
    Louder popping. Someone shouted, “Aw, you asshole.” Spokes scooted closer to them.
    The piano played alone again, and slightly faster.
    Doggie thought it sounded like climbing a hill, and the sun starting to show.
    “Ty bit that girl. Remember that?”
    “Yeah, yeah, Doggie. Yeah. Now crush those geese sh-kh sh-kh sh-kh.”
    “She just went up to him and put those sunglasses on. I said ‘Don’t,’ but she just did it and she hurt his eye.”
    “I’m gonna nail this buttonhead. Right in the nuts.”
    “She wasn’t bleeding or anything. After he bit her?”
    “I was so nice to those people. Oh fuck, here they come.” The geese had taken flight, and drums joined the piano. “Now this is it. Aim. Come on, fucking aim.”
    Doggie’s gun rose as the geese approached and ascended. A distorted guitar slid in.
    Doggie thought of chainsaws. Bob used them to cut down dead ash trees, but also to prune.
    “I was so nice to those people. Talking about you, and your dog and that shit. And the bitch—you know the brat’s older sister?—she still wouldn’t let me screw her.”
    The white metal played triumphantly.
    Whenever he saw a little dog that barked and barked, Ty rolled onto his back.
    The geese, honking, flew overhead. Doggie’s gun did not fire.

Bio

    Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonym for a writer living somewhere on Earth. Though banned on Mars, his fiction appears in over fifty Earth publications. Ogurek founded the controversial literary subgenre known as unsplatterpunk, which uses splatterpunk conventions (e.g., extreme violence, gore, taboo subject matter) to deliver a positive message. He guest-edited Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #58: UNSPLATTERPUNK!, the first ever unsplatterpunk anthology. He reviews films at that same magazine. Recent longer works include the young adult novel Branch Turner vs the Currants (World Castle Publishing) and the horror/suspense novella Encounter at an Abandoned Church (Scarlet Leaf Publishing). More at www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com. Twitter: @unsplatter

Fake News

    Thelma is watching the television news. “We’ll be right back after this short break.”
    She turns down the volume and sighs.
    “What are they saying, now?” Fred, her husband asks the question without looking up from his iPad. He’s watching his favorite dog video on Facebook. For the fifth time. It’s the one where the canine is pestered by a rather annoying cat. The dog has had enough; with his massive head, the mutt pushes the cat off the couch. It lands on the floor with a resounding thud. Fred snickers.
    “Something about aliens attacking the country.”
    “Yeah, right,” says Fred. “Are you watching Fox News or one of the ‘fake news’ networks?”
    “Fake.”
    “Yeah.”
    Thelma flips over to Fox News. It’s carrying a “feel-good” story about a horse that got its foot stuck in a storm drain in Boise, Idaho. Along the bottom of the screen are the latest NFL scores. Just as they lead the rescued horse to a trailer, the network breaks to a commercial.
    “So many commercials!” she remarks.
    Thelma flips back to the fake news network. They’re finished with their commercial and are showing a split-screen image: the left-hand side shows both the President and the Vice President of the United States being led off in handcuffs by Federal Marshals. On the right, there’s a rather odd saucer-shaped craft hovering above the ground, shooting laser beams at a group of buildings in the distance. The caption reads “Alien attack near Omaha, NE.” The ticker reads: “Hundreds dead near Omaha... Northern Command responding with troops and planes... Many members of President’s Cabinet reported missing... In the absence of President, Vice President, and House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, Secretary of State McKinnis sworn in as president... Martial law declared in six western states...”
    “What’s it sayin’ now, Thelma?” Fred asks. He’s moved on to another one of his favorites: people who tease their pets by seemingly disappearing behind a towel. In reality, the pet owner ducks around a corner just as they drop the towel. The poor canines are completely baffled by the trick.
    “Aliens again. Somethin’ about martial law and McKinnis takin’ control of the government.”
    “I sure wish they wouldn’t make shit up!”
    “Fred, keep your voice down please!” replied Thelma. “You’re gonna give yourself another mini-stroke if you’re not careful.”
    “Sorry, you’re right. It just makes me so damn mad. First, they call our beloved president a crook and a traitor. Now all this crap about some alien invasion.”
    Fred puts aside his iPad; he’s watching the fake news program with Thelma. It’s gone to a single screen showing smoldering carnage and charred rubble where once an apartment complex stood. The bottom ticker reads: “...DEADLY ATTACK CLAIMS DOZENS OF LIVES IN CHATEAU CONDO COMPLEX ON 41ST STREET IN COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA...”
    “It’s those damn lib’rals. If the previous administration hadn’t cut back on the D.O.D. budget we’d have plenty of weapons to blast those UFOs out of the sky—assuming they’re even real! I bet they probably staged this whole goddamned thing as part of their plans to take over the government. Turn over to Fox News, hon. Let’s see if they got anything on these so-called aliens.”
    Thelma obediently flips back to Fox News. The commercial is over and the anchor and his guest panelists are discussing how a candidate’s emails from the previous election were deleted and the devices destroyed with a sledgehammer.
    “You see? Nothing on Fox about an invasion. I knew it was fake. Fake as a two-dollar bill!”
    “But Fred, aren’t there two-dollar bills?”
    Fred’s face turns bright red. “Three! I meant a ‘three-dollar’ bill.”
    “I’m tellin’ ya, hon,” Fred continues, “they’ll be H-E-double-EL to pay when God-fearing, patriotic citizens rise up and declare their own martial—”
    Fred’s diatribe is interrupted by the blast from a 250-Megawatt laser canon emanating from one of the Dreyzrxian spacecraft five kilometers away. Fred and Thelma’s house, their television set, along with Fred and Thelma, are vaporized in the fake invasion.
    “After this commercial break, we’ll bring you more on the fabricated testimony of a former, discredited FBI agent. Don’t go away. You’re watching Fox News.”

Belief

    I still watch you, you know. I watch you now more than I ever did before. Now, I would follow you anywhere that you go for another glimpse. I have more time to watch you, now that I know what it is like to lose you. If I cannot have you as I used to now, I will have you any way that I can. So I watch you.
    I think you know that I watch you still. I think you like to know that, though we can no longer touch, you can still see me, and I can still see you. I hope that it provides some comfort to you, as it does for me. You seem happy enough, though.
    Last summer, at the seaside, you were swimming. You cut through the waves without making a ripple. You looked young, like you did on our honeymoon. It seems so long ago now. You were wearing a suit that I didn’t recognize, but it suited you. You were laughing in the waves, alone and not minding. You always did like to be alone more than I did.
    I sat on the beach for hours. I didn’t wear swimsuit or sunscreen. I got burned that day, you know, but I didn’t even notice at the time. I didn’t care, when I could sit there and watch you. I sat in the burning sun in clothes that I should have worn to the office, would have worn to the office if I had not seen you going by and guessed where you were going. I would have gone to work that day if I had not chosen to follow you. I don’t regret that choice.
    That time, it was soon enough after they all believed that I had lost you. They forgave me, smiled at me, tried to console me, and asked that I try not to let it happen again. It was the fifth time after that that was unforgivable. By then, they thought that I should have gotten over it enough that I could return to normal. They didn’t understand why I still did not come. They did not know that I saw you and could not not follow you.
    It was pride that did this to us, pride that lets me always watch you but never touch you. You were too proud to listen to me when I told you not to go. I was too proud to beg you.
    You wanted me to ask you to stay, to want you to stay in that evening because I wanted your company, not out of any fear of what might happen to you. You wanted the reminder that I loved you. You did not want to be the first to bend. You never wanted that, and our relationship before that night was fueled as much by anger as by love. I was as proud as you were, and my brother never understood how our relationship worked. I think that our friends might have understood better, just a little.
    I was worried for you that night. I had heard the news, and you had not. You did not believe what I told you. You thought I was being too proud to admit that I wanted you to stay for your company. You didn’t believe that I could ask, after our argument that afternoon. I knew why you wanted to get away. I knew what you wanted before you would stay. But I was still angry, too, in spite of all my worry for you.
    I would not say what you wanted to hear. I would not beg you. You would not hear what I was saying because it wasn’t said the way you wanted to hear.
    Neither of us is at fault for what happened that night. I know that, though no one believes that I do. We both made mistakes. We both listened to our pride over our reason, as we had done many times before. There is no fault or blame for us.
    And still I miss you, still I watch you. Christmas was an agony. Our families both insisted that I spend it with them. They miss you, too, you know, and they have not the reassurance that I have of being able to watch you day by day.
    I did not want to spend Christmas with either family. I did not want to be reminded, and I wanted to spend the day watching you. It had been twenty years since we had not had Christmas together. But your family in particular would not hear me tell them no. So I spent Christmas with them, and you were not there. I bought you a gift, those earrings that you admired so much but feared that we couldn’t afford. I had no idea how to give them to you.
    I left the earrings on your grave. I see you now, and you are wearing them, so I know that you received them. It is poor second best to having been able to spend the day with you.
    Christmas was one of our holidays. We met then. I’m sure you remember. The only two people on the cold, lonely beach, watching the snow fall on the breaking waves. It does not often snow so near the water, but it did that year. I bought you a cup of coffee. So romantic. So cliché. You only drank tea, and we were fighting before the afternoon was over. We both left in anger, swearing never to see each other again. There was so much anger, so much passion, for two who were strangers. I believed that I never wanted to see you again.
    But you were there on the beach the next day, when I returned. That time, you bought me a cup of tea, when I only drink coffee.
    The third day, we settled on hot chocolate. We married thirteen months later, and for twenty years drank hot chocolate instead of coffee or tea. It was one of the few compromises we made. Even now, when all I can do is watch you and you aren’t held to our rules anymore, I see you drink hot chocolate when your favorite tea is offered. Little things like that hurt more than anything else.
    It is our anniversary now.
    They tell me that you are dead. I tell them that I know that, but they don’t believe me. They tell me that you are gone, and they don’t want to hear it when I tell them that they are wrong, that you’re still here, that I see you almost every day.
    They tell me that you are gone, but I don’t believe them. You are never gone while I can still see you.

Last Sunset at the Lake

    Three weeks after we fled the city, taking refuge at the lake house up here in the mountains, a man walks out of the lake with a knife in his eye.
    Tom and I always try to make time to enjoy the sunset together. This evening we’re both out on the balcony when Tom grunts something, and I look up from my book to see the Diseased. We watch him walk right out of that sunset over the lake, up the beach, dripping blood and water. He doesn’t see us, turns, and walks into the woods.
    After a few moments, Tom gets up from his chair, saying, “Well, I think I’ll need a second cup of coffee.”
    “While you’re in the kitchen,” I say, “Maybe you should call the police. Perhaps an ambulance.” Sometimes they still respond.
    We hadn’t wanted to abandon the city. It was unfair to those who stayed behind, leaving them to deal with the worst of the mess. I still believe most of the Diseased can be helped, at least early on, with enough care and understanding. I volunteered for a time, taking food to the sick in our neighbourhood. But after one of the Diseased set fire to the elevator in our building, we packed up and came here. The airport is closed and the railways are refusing to run trains west of the continental divide, so we’re lucky to have the Prius.
     One of Tom’s co-workers wanted a ride with us. He’s a great guy, but we had to say no. We didn’t know if he might be sick or not, and we have the children to think of. He tried to stop us leaving without him, kneeling in front of our car, crying and begging. It was embarrassing.
    The Disease has been simmering on the edges of society for a few years. It started by killing a hundred people one year, five hundred the next, a thousand. It only attacked the weakest and most vulnerable. Then the plague made the jump, to its current aggressive form, which can eat up most anyone.
    The infection takes hold of different people in different ways. Many can go on with their lives with little trouble for a time. Some don’t even realize that they’re infected. Others seem to be gripped quick and hard. They degenerate to half-consciousness and unnatural hungers within hours.
    A certain panic set in over the metropolis when the mayor succumbed live on TV.
    I’m sure we’ll go back to the city eventually. We love living in Vancouver. Most of the time.
    Our neighbours here at the lake are Mormons. We haven’t seen them recently, but hope they’re okay. We replaced the lock we broke through on their door. We’ve been careful not to make a mess, and plan to leave them a cheque for the food we’ve taken. It’s not bad food, a bit bland. Tom misses avocados, and the children are not thrilled with oatmeal for breakfast. I’m running low on almond milk. Yesterday I used up the last of the lip balm. Things are getting tough. I know it’s getting to be time to move on.
    Some of the Diseased appear curable. A few manage to take it upon themselves to seek help, although the vast majority are far too crazed. They don’t respect any limits in who they attack, family, children or lovers. You’re safe inside if you don’t let anyone in, but you can’t let anyone in. You can’t even open the door to your closest friends or relatives if you’re not one hundred percent sure they’re okay.
    And now the Disease has made its way here to resort country.
    If you’re out in the open and the hungriest see you, they will try to destroy you. We’ll become prisoners in our own homes, and even Mormon stockpiles can’t last forever.
    On the east side of these mountains, a fence is going up. It’s got drones, guard dogs, and nervous armed people in ugly green uniforms. They’re trying to contain the plague. Of course some people get over, the fence is long and incomplete. Wire cutters aren’t that expensive.
    Tom comes back out onto the balcony.
    “What did emergency services say?’ I ask. A Diseased woman appears down the beach, followed by two or three more. They are singing the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They are off-key.
    “Got a recording that all operators are busy,” Tom says, taking a sip of his Nespresso Carmelito.
    I say, “Maybe we can find a new place in Cranbrook or Kimberely to hole up in.”
    Tom turns to me. “Honey, I think it’s time to move to Alberta. I’m sorry.”
    It’s alright. I’m sure we’ll go on surviving. Somehow. We’ve managed so far. There are quarantine centers at official crossings. I fear there will be no almond milk or avocados for quite some time. The sun is setting.

    This story has been previously published on RueScribe.com

Donald and Vladimir at the Summit

    While cooling his heels waiting for Vladimir Putin, President Trump posted an all time high of 37 tweets in an hour. “I’m really quite good at this stuff. Don’t know why people chide me so much. Probably a little envious.”
    Putin’s secretary apologized for his tardiness. “He’ll be here shortly. Something serious came up and he had to immediately attend to it before this ever so important meeting with you Mr. President.”
    “Must’ve been urgent,” Trump uncharacteristically temporized. “The old keep ‘em waiting game to show who’s in charge,” Trump said to himself. “I’ve used it a few times (big fib) myself.” Actually Putin was putting the finishing touches on a plan to annex the Baltic states after his successful annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine. Rationalizing about how many Russians inhabited there qualifying bringing them back under Russian domain. What’s good for President Putin is good for Russia
    Turning to his translator. “Look TI.” He preferred TI as Trump’s Translator rather than her actual name Lustina Cravemore. “What’s wrong with State?” Trump asked himself. “Sending someone with a name like that on a mission as important as this? I gotta shape those guys up. President Putin I’d like to introduce my translator Lustina Cravemore. I don’t think so. No it won’t do. Won’t do at all. TI’s more professional.”
    “TI when we get in there greet him with the usual stuff. Good morning comrade Putin. President Trump wants you to know how great it is to be here with you. Looking forward to his meeting unlike that lame bloke Obama. Further find out what he calls his place at home in Moscow. These guys and the Chinese love to romanticize their domiciles. Is it near the Lubyanka? I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. Together with the Armatage, if we have time I’d like to tour them. Pour it on.”
    “Ask him how his liver is? Don’t look at me that way TI, just do as I ask. Don’t forget to inquire about his wife and how’s work going? Plain simple statements like that. No condescending airs. No snobbish, elitist, pseudo-intellectual stuff like State spawns.”
    “Mr. President if I may. I don’t think it’s historically accurate for you addressing President Putin as comrade Putin. The term is generally restricted to Russian citizens or communists. Why he might find it a little unsettling for a capitalist to so rapidly assume such familiarity with him. However it’s even being used by social democrats and libertarians in the U. S.”
    “Ordered the Fibee guys to keep an eye on these so-called social democrats. In particular Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. Free college education! Medicare for every body! Ouch! Where do these people think this money comes from? Lemonade stands. Domestic bake sales.”
    “In addition Mr. President I’m sure he doesn’t live near the Lubyanka
    “No. Some time ago I helped organize a Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow and sought to pursue building a Trump Tower there. Putin wasn’t firmly in charge then. Maybe he’d be up to it now. Recruit a few billionaire oligarchs as investors maybe even as partners.”
    “President Trump the Lubyanka is a prison for serious felons, terrorists and political dissonants. “
    “What a handy little device that would be for protesters. ... Ah! Forget you heard that TI. Understood? Otherwise it’s Coast Guard Station #636 in the Farallon Islands for you. Medias going to be all over you demanding to interview you as the only witness to this historical meeting. You gotta be careful with what you say. I’ll provide you with an appropriate outline to their arrogant questions. Mum’s the word. Loose lips sink ships.” TI momentarily thought about book sales and companion movie. Maybe she could get Baldwin from SNL to play Trump. TI never anticipated Omarosa’s explosive book.
    “Well if the Lubyanka’s out maybe I could visit the Armatage.”
    “Mr. President. I believe you’re referring to the Hermitage.”
    “You say Hermitage. I say Armatage. Big deal.”
    “Yes sir. It’s a museum containing all kinds of Russian art.”
    “Imagine that and I thought the Armatage had all kinds of weapons from the past to the present. Russian art! Yeah and everybody else’s art from all over Europe. Borrowed in perpetuity from every country they occupied. Stealing everything not nailed down.” TI winced thinking how this statement would go over with Germany’s Angela Merkel. Germany had been very active collecting and “protecting” art from other countries as well.
    “Mr. President. I’m not exactly familiar with the phrase: How’s you liver?
    How will I explain it?”
    “No sweat TI. Old school. Another way to inquire about some ones health. Imperative to determine a person’s medical condition prior to conducting business with them. People can’t resist talking about themselves (If anyone was more dedicated to that behavior it would be hard to find them.) in particular their health. It’s a good ploy to show your interest and empathy for another’s welfare.”
    “That’s very interesting sir. Henry VIII used to incarcerate anyone inquiring about his health as a threat to his longevity on the throne.”
    “Irrelevant. A long time ago. Man was careless with his wives.”
    “But sir. N. Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has a guarded porta-potty that only he can use on trips. Believes his metabolites provide valuable information about his health which might be used against him by his enemies.”
    “That guy’s a piece of work. Hey! Wait a minute. Not a bad idea. Write that one down. Look into it will you? Do a feasibility study. Air Force One’s big enough to carry it. All very hush-hush. God knows what the Democrats would say about it. Think I’m strange enough. A guarded porta-potty would go viral on all those liberal media TV stations. Why wasn’t I informed about this TI?”
    “Don’t know sir. The Company’s responsible for information like that. As an interpreter I wasn’t on the need-to-know-list.”
    “Come on now start talking or he’s going to think we’re talking about him. Which of course that’s what we’re doing.”
    Ah! One more thing Mr. President. I don’t think it’s advisable to inquire about his wife’s health.”
    “Why’s that TI?”
    “He’s presently not married. Divorced Lyudmila Alexandovna some time ago. Among other lady companions he presently favors keeping company with Alisa Kharcheva. Shortly after graduating from high school she posed as “Miss April” in an erotic calendar dedicated to his 2010 birthday. Seems she made a good impression on him.”
    “How do you know this stuff TI?”
    “State Department demands we do our homework prior to visiting a country.” TI nearly swallowed her tongue when she realized she’d indirectly criticized the President’s lack of preparation.
    “Vlady. You little devil. You’re getting away with murder here. While I’m taking heat from the media for some past relatively innocent interaction with someone stupidly named after the weather who happened to be a practicing female ecdysiast.” TI nearly dropped her teeth in an aquarium about Putin “getting away with murder” and the President’s dalliance with a stripper. The gang at State would never believe this stuff and certainly hadn’t prepared her for this.
    TI to Putin with outrageous phonetic English transcription.
         “Kak pozhivaete. “How are you? How’s your health?”
    Trump responded to President Putin. Khrasho. Spascibo. “Fine. Thank you for asking.”
    “Kak robota? Hows work going? Not too many problems I hope.” And so it went.
    “Vlady. Before we get into some heavy duty stuff. Want to give you props for the execution of the FIFA World Cup. Your guys did a bang up job. Didn’t see anyone kneeling when you played your national anthem. Aside from those Siberian gun activists all was quiet on the western front.” Trump was unduly pleased with himself as he usually is using this line. “I’ve still got to do some work on that with the NFL,” he said to himself. “By the way how did your guys handle those Siberian protestors?”
    “Ve haff our vays. Taking a line from your beloved Hollywood movies we made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.” Trump predictably laughed.
    “What was that Vlady?” I’d like to control our protestors and false news producers better than I have.” Putin never answered Trump’s question.
    “Donnie you have the political means to handle naysayers. Threaten them; I mean challenge them with a temporary moratorium on that portion of your Bill of Rights dealing with freedom of speech and press. If that doesn’t work amend the first amendment. It’s not the first time in your country’s history. Your 18^th amendment ratified liquor prohibition in 1919.” “Strange how this country could have become so powerful prohibiting liquor,” Vladimir said to himself. “Such a howling mad notion would never occur here where next to mother’s milk vodka reigns essential.” Aloud. “After some time your country men thought better of this great experiment and repealed it in 1933 with the 21^st amendment. The precedent’s there for such a motion.”
    “Vlady that sounds like fascism. There are some people in the states calling me a fascist right now.”
    “Here for me Donnie we consider such a move as expeditious. Oh! If you will. I prefer Vlad or Vladimir rather than Vlady. Latter is little too juvenile for me.”
    “I get it Vlad. Couldn’t agree with you more. I prefer Donald to Don or Donnie. Donald’s just fine. Don’t let anyone say we didn’t accomplish anything at this summit.” TI nearly swallowed her tongue a second or third time. She’d already lost count.
    “Sto eto paket” “What kind of package is this Vladimir?”
    “A FIFA Soccer Ball signed by the Russian team, Vlad responded.
    “This is great. It will go right on my mantle.” He didn’t have a mantle at any one of his places but thought it would sound good to say so. “Your guys did all right. Our team if you could call them that didn’t qualify. Tunisia, Turkey, Panama and Iceland qualified but we didn’t Rather embarrassing.” As an after thought. “At least our women’s team is first rate.” Putin smiled at Trump’s lame boast.
    TI. Take this will you. Be careful. It might have a bomb inside,” Trump said jokingly. Putin. smiled predictably. “The FBI will conduct a routine security check.”
    “Vladimir these cheese blintzes are to die for.”
    “Some people have Donald.”
    “Didn’t know you had such a sense of humor Vlad. Wouldn’t have expected the former Director of the KGB to make a joke. People have seriously misjudged you in the past.”
    “Yes they have,” and you’r certainly one of them, Putin thought.
    “Are you drinking cognac Vladimir? I’ll bet it’s Stolica. First rate. And the Bulgarian caviar. Scrumptious. Together with ones favorite partner, the blintzes and cognac this would be a great combination to handle Russian winters.”
    “This would be a great combination to handle Russia’s winters.”
    “Actually Donald we’re in Finland, but I get your drift.”
    “I’m going on a diet right after this trip. Where did you get the caviar from? Thought you guys drained the Catspeean and Dirty Seas killing all these little fish producing caviar in exchange for raising cotton with all that water. Vlad according to a former Russian scientist I met, you received some bad advice from your economists and hydrologists. We’ve been successfully growing cotton for some time in the states. Tough to compete with our production.”
    Putin refrained from replying that all that production at one time was due to slavery. Wouldn’t be a good idea to point this out as the host for the first summit meeting between Russia and the United states.
    “And your hydrologists miscalculated how much water was lost from the Catspeean and Dirty Seas.” More water lost dramatically reduced sea level seriously damaging the fishing industry.
    “Allow me to correct you Mr. President. It’s Beluga caviar. Not Bulgarian. Moreover the little fishes you referred to are large 3 to 6' white sturgeon from the Caspian and Black Seas respectively producing eggs for caviar. Dirty Sea has a pollution connotation we wish to avoid. And yes our hydrologists underestimated the inflow and outflow water rates. The hydrologists didn’t have their best days on the project.”
    “Where are they now Vladimir?”
    “Taking refresher courses measuring natural rates of rainfall into the water shed and the amount of water dawn off for cotton production. And after that a little sojourn in Siberia for some attitude adjustment.”
    “Man! I wish I could do something like that with our intelligence services, State, Justice Department and even members of congress. In particular GOP members who do not support my agenda and procedures. Throw in some of the false news purveyors. These folks are getting into hissy fits because I won’t answer all their inane questions.”
    “By the way Donald who was the informer; I mean scientist who told you about the problems with the Catspeean and Dirty Seas, now you’ve got me saying it?”
    “Vladimir. Wish I could comply but it happened some time ago and his name eludes me.” Putin believed Trump was lying through his teeth but he patiently accepted it knowing he had a few whoppers of his own up his sleeve.
    “If it ever occurs to you would you let me know as soon as possible. Maybe a little shock treatment would be helpful for the man’s welfare.”

    “Are you sure you won’t try some cognac Donald?”     “I’m sure it’s great stuff but it’s not for me.” Putin had surprisingly forgotten Trump was a teetotaler.     “Well Vladimir we’ve discussed many serious issues here which we mostly agree on. A good start to this new American-Russian relationship stopping terrorism, fate of refugees, NATO, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, middle East peace and N. Korea.”
    “Yes indeed Donald. What did that English warlord; I mean English wordsmith say about WWII? This isn’t the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning but the beginning of the beginning.” TI wasn’t sure about the accuracy of Putin’s borrowed quote from Winston Churchill but it wasn’t her role to correct President Putin. State would not approve of such outlandish behavior.
    “Vladimir before we finish up here there’s one issue I have to discuss with you. The folks back home won’t forgive me if I fail to address it. They, mostly the Democrats, simply won’t leave it alone.”
    “Donald! Donald! We’ve accomplished so much today don’t hesitate to bring it up.”
    “Not my style to hesitate. Some critics think I speak before I think. Others believe I’m poorly informed passing on incorrect information. Still others think I’m an outright liar.”
    “Imagine that. A few folks here sometimes think I may be going too fast and far with governmental reorganization.” “Wonder where those folks are now?” TI asked herself.
    Putin continued. “It’s all for the good of the country and it’s my challenge to dictate; I mean convince them that these decisions are in their best interests. By the way Donald reports of your presentation at the recent NATO meeting have garnered considerable attention.” “That’s an understatement and a half, if I’ve ever heard one,” TI said to herself.
    “You quite correctly pointed out that all 28 members were not meeting their financial obligations to NATO. They can’t expect a nation 4000 miles away to carry the burden alone. After all you’ve done for years, you’re still supporting one of the biggest air bases in the world at Ramstein Germany. Resulting in a considerable economic contribution to Germany in addition to your annual dues. Not fair my good man. Not fair. Moreover your statement about protecting Montenegro was most inspiring. But somewhat controversial in my opinion.” Putin did not envision Montenegro as a major threat to Russia. Would barely qualify for a good practice run.
    “It’s a tough sell in the states Vlad. Lots of folks oppose our self styled role as the world’s policeman. Europe has to play the major role here. Many of our people don’t support our global leadership and financial support to NATO. Had to let Europe know. Still there was considerable support from congress. I’m not sure they’re listening to their voters. Some consider NATO an outdated solution. Cold war’s over. Fortunately our respective nations came to their senses. We have to quit growling at one another. NATO must be a sore point for you guys. Maybe if we dismantle NATO it wouldn’t be like waving a red flag at a bull or at a bear.”
    “Well said Donald. Keep that thought. It’s just not necessary for today’s real world politic. Perhaps you’d consider reducing the size of your war games in the Persian Gulf and removing those missiles and troops from Poland we’d be obliged.”
    “I’ll do it Vladimir but I’m sure some folks at home will criticize me for weakening NATO. I’m actually getting grief conducting this summit meeting without a whole cadre of advisers. They think I can’t manage these negotiations on my own.” “You’ve got that one right,” Putin thought. “And the all mighty media wrapped in the American flag are strongly put out because they don’t know what’s going on.”
    “I know you can do this Donald. We both want the same thing.”
    TI was like a deer caught in a headlight. “What is the same thing? Does President Trump really believe that if NATO was dismantled Russia wouldn’t move to annex the Baltic states and poorly treated Poland, the perpetual stomping ground for Germany and Russia? This decision will not play well in the states and most certainly not in Europe.”
    “Vlad the last matter I need to discus with you are the alleged cyber attacks against the United States. In particular those that many (All Democrats, a few republicans, various investigative agencies) believe influenced the U. S. 2016 presidential election. For months I’ve been criticized and hounded by the liberal media addressing this issue with Russia and especially with you. Vladimir, did Russia’s cyber warfare influence the outcome of the 2016 election?
    “Donald, before I answer that you must know Russia strongly preferred you to win the election. We did not want to negotiate with the Clintons or Hillary in particular. Earlier, we had conducted some business with you concerning The Miss Universe Contest in Moscow. Based on that experience we believed we could positively interact with you. Accordingly we would do everything we could to see you elected.” “It certainly seems you did everything you could,” TI thought.
    Putin continued. “But how could a nation as powerful and technologically advanced as the U.S. be influenced by nations with fewer resources? It’s just not a viable proposition. So! We did not influence the election with our cyber warfare. Patently inconceivable.”
    “You may not have influenced the election but you did everything you could,” TI mused. “President Putin’s argument is based on semantics.”
    “Don’t know why Americans fail to understand or accept how impossible this would be. Were we actually altering the accuracy of voting machines? Were messages emanating from TVs, radios, washing machines or toasters? According to your government Hillary received 62.5 million popular votes. You received 60 million. Almost a one to one ratio with a slight edge to Hillary. Fortunately your sensible electoral college voting gave you the victory. If Russia had influenced the popular vote your count would’ve been significantly higher than hers. But that wasn’t the case.
    “Well Vlad. Some highly placed intelligence services concluded that Russia hacked and cast Hillary as a propaganda target. More over 12 Russian officials in the U. S. were indicted as alleged Russian spies. Then there’s the curious case of Maria Butina. The irony of an alleged Russian spy graduating from American University is almost too much to bear. How fate loves a jest.”
    “As we speak we’re looking into this now. Never expected to hear something so poetic from you Donald.”
    “Have to admit the quote was taken from Edmund Rostand’s hero Cyrano de Bergerac. According to some of my critics Russian hacking still persists.”
    “Donald, I can assure you that if our investigative services are conducting unauthorized meddling or hacking, they will be seriously disciplined.”
    “Oh my God and the PTA,” TI muttered to herself. “Well then who else would be authorizing such activity? I swear Putin’s nose just got a little longer. Don’t know If I’ll ever recover from this assignment. I may have to ask State if I can stay at home translating Russian pork belly production.”
    “Sounds good Vladimir. I can in good conscience carry this message home with me. Still some critics believe that I colluded with you to fraudulently steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton.”
    “Hillary Clinton’s highly checkered political history had more influence in the election than any alleged cyber meddling from Russia. I don’t know why you Republicans let Obama so easily off the hook. All this presumed meddling and purported cyber warfare was conducted under his watch way before (March) the 2016 election. Obama did very little to stop it and kept it under wraps. Kerry offered some weak excuse that Obama didn’t release this information before the election because you thought the election was rigged and this information would provide you a basis for recall. The Democrats sure didn’t hesitate calling you out several days before the election based on a reported screed in a men’s locker room about women.”
    ‘“I was a little careless pounding my chest bragging about past encounters of a different kind with women.” “Good grief,” TI moaned to herself.”
    “Obama was a Teflon president.”
    “Never heard that one before.”
    “Nothing ever stuck to him. The Ft. Worth killing spree (13 dead, dozens wounded) by Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan. His TV appearance with Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and his parents. Obama almost made a hero out of this guy. Traded a deserter for 5 proven terrorists. Thought it was a fair trade. Liberal press never held him accountable for this. His Secretary of State (Hillary) was never held accountable for Benghazi and he stayed as far away as possible from that sorry tragic event. Once again Hillary’s negligent loss of thousands of e-mails. No sign of Obama cracking the whip
    To this day no one’s been fired, demoted, transferred, or disciplined about the so called lost e-mails. You guys should’ve been all over him on these two matters alone, but he walked away Simon pure.”
    “Teflon President. That’s a good one. Have to use it when I publish my book. You know Vlad, some of my critics are angry with me because we’re getting along so well.” Putin responded with his signature crocodile grin.
    “Vladimir it’s time to take our leave from a truly memorable summit. Right up there with Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam.
    TI almost tugged on Trumps suit coat. “Ah! Mr. President, she quietly murmured, “President Roosevelt wasn’t at Potsdam. He had passed away. President Truman represented the U.S with Prime Minister Churchill at Potsdam. Stalin hated to fly but he hated leaving Russia more because he feared a coup d’etat.”
    “A coups de what?” Trump replied.
    “A radical governmental overthrow,” TI politely answered.
    Putin said to himself. “Good thing he brought this young lady along as his interpreter, we could not have accomplished much without her.”
    As the two presidents rose to shake hands President Trump asked TI, “What’s the Russian words for “Goodbye and Thank you.”
    “Do-cbidanna. President Putin. Spascibo.”
    “Do-cbidanna President Trump. Cactlibogo pyti.”
    “What did he say? TI” What did he say,” Trump asked.
    “He wished you a good journey home,” she replied.
    Putin was pleased with Trump’s awkward effort to communicate in Russian his thanks for the summit. But gnashed his teeth at his dreadful pronunciation. Based on his extraordinary experience with Trump the last two hours he needed at least a full tumbler of cognac from his secretary.
    As they walked to their waiting car Trump turned to TI. “TI. You done good kid. You’ve got my vote. But if you expect to rise in diplomatic services, you’ve got to do something with your name. We can’t let you wander all over Europe as Lustina Cravemore.” What half-wit came up with a name like that for a woman? Trump said to himself.
    Lustina was reeling from this mind boggling experience. If any one had asked her, she could’ve benefited from a tumbler of cognac . The last two hours had been very demanding communicating between two of the world’s heavy hitters. She was emotionally and physically drained. But still wasn’t pleased with Trump’s need to change her name. She felt like Kafka’s protagonist Gregor Samsa who saw himself gradually becoming an insect as she metamorphosed from Lustina Cravemore to Trump’s Interpreter.
    “TI I’ve just had another great idea. I’m going to invite President Putin to come to America. Mostly to piss off the Democrats. Pelosi, Sanders and Schumer will need mouth to mouth resuscitation. Bet there won’t be many volunteers for that unsavory chore. I could pull a General Douglas Macarthur just after World War II. Ride in an open air motorcade down Lake Shore Drive to Sheridan Road finishing up at the Northwestern Campus in Evanston. Putin and I could make some banal comments about world peace. ... TI do you think Mueller’s witch hunt would derail this idea?” Before TI could answer Trump continued.
    “Even better! I’ll also invite President for Life Kim Jung Un. Both guys could address Congress. Do you think Ryan would support such a notion? I can just see it now Putin on one side, Un on the other with me in the middle of course. I’m bigger than these two shorties and I’m obliged to say more handsome. There I’ll be. Mrs. Trump’s fourth child leaving office after coordinating world peace. I’m young enough to see it all in the history books. Sure, there’ll be a few jealous malcontents. Maybe by that time Pelosi et al may have recovered from their initial anxiety attacks.”
    As President Trump rambled on TI experienced her own epiphany. After witnessing the colossal ego of these two world leaders and some of their horrendous and witless commentary she knew she was through with diplomatic service. She wondered if the Benedictine nuns could set her straight — perhaps a special branch with a vow of silence.

Welcome to the New Normal

    In May 2018, I pulled out my newspaper one morning for breakfast and read about a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, a story emblazoned with a full-color photo of young women holding each other and crying, and, like most violence junkies in America, I was transfixed and had to read on. According to the article, the shooter was someone who recently graduated from this school, and apparently, they decided to come back and start shooting people.
    I don’t know if they had an idea of who or why. But that kind of information gets lost very quickly — or is never found.
    It’s starting to sound more and more familiar, I thought, until that was confirmed when I read verbatim from the May 19-20 2018 Wall Street Journal. “The shooting is the deadliest school shooting since a gunman killed 17 people in February in Parkland, FL, and is the country’s ninth fatal gun shooting in 2018 on school grounds”.

    That’s three months.
    Multiple people killed, I’m talking double digits, in a school, and this is the most violent school killing, in three months.
    More importantly, in the middle of May in 2018 this was the ninth fatal gun shooting on school grounds. Nine, in 20 weeks. That averages to one fatal gun shooting on school grounds every 15.5 days.
    I want that to sink in.

    Because I went to school just south of Chicago, and I’m pretty sure that the thought of walking into Carl Sandburg High School with a gun to start killing people didn’t cross anyone’s mind. If it did, they sure as Hell didn’t do it, because no one has actually shot anyone en masse at my high school. But it could be that since I grew up in Illinois (in Cook County, with Chicago), gun restrictions are insane and kids when I went to high school didn’t think of finding guns, I don’t know. But then I think of my husband, who lived in the middle of the mountains in Pennsylvania when he grew up (wait, I think everything in Pennsylvania is pretty much in the middle of mountains), and my husband learned to shoot a gun when he was little more than a toddler — just over four.
    Wait, his dad was ex-military and was a state police officer, maybe this not-yet-in-school 4-year old shooting guns is a bad example, but it makes the point, that because these kids often hunted, some kids would go to school carrying guns, and leaving them in their lockers (I hear the guns were unloaded). It might sound a little strange to this city girl, to bring your shotgun to school and leave it in your locker, but —
    I don’t really know how to finish that sentence, instead of saying a generic B.S. line like, “but things were different then.”
    And I DON’T want to be one of those old people who talks about the old days when things were this elusive “different”. I’m not old, really, trust me, I know I’ve run this magazine for over 25 years (that’s more than half my life), but I’m not old, trust me, really. I’m also one of those people that refuses to use the dreaded “simpler”about past times too. But as much as I hate to say it, the thing is, if I look at it objectively, things were easier back in the day — before cell phones a family paid $20 to $50 for a land line, and that was all. People didn’t equip every child with individual phone to take anywhere that was also a full computer so this elusive never-before-heard-of force called Google could give you all the surface information you could ever need. (And not have to retain for all of your school exams.)
    But then again, in the “old days”(wow, that seems like the last millennia) parents weren’t afraid of their children walking home from school without being abducted (I don’t have kids, but I hear that’s a thing now), or shot (or maybe I’m just thinking of a couple-block radius south of the Loop in Chicago when I say that). Okay, maybe things are different, and maybe with this boon of technology there may potentially come a boom of violence.
    But really, I can’t imagine there is a definite link with technology in general and violence.
    But, this violence, these mass shootings we’re seeing in schools now, what could cause this change in people? What has changed in how children and teens are raised to think that going into your high school — whether you’re still attending it or have recently graduated from it — and opening fire on teachers and your fellow students? Is it a zero-tolerance policy in grade schools that suspend an 11-year old honor student at a Maryland school after he made a “gun gesture” with his hand on the bus on the way to school? (http://gunsnfreedom.com/11-year-old-honor-student-is-suspended-after-shaping-hand-like-a-gun/1129) Or suspend a 10-year old boy in a Nashville school after a teacher saw him hold his slice of pizza with a bite taken out of it that might make it look like a gun, and accused him of threatening other students with his pizza slice gun? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2077777/Dough-Boy-10-punished-brandishing-gun-shaped-slice-pizza.html) Or suspend a 10-year old boy in an Ohio school after a teacher saw him hold his hand in the shape of a gun and say “boom”? (https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/us/ohio-boy-suspended-finger-gun/index.html) Or suspend a 6-year old boy in Colorado after a teacher saw him hold his hand in the shape of a gun and say “you’re dead”? (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/6-year-old-fingers-shape-of-gun-suspended_n_6813864.html) And what the hey, let’s not even make this all about boys, because maybe you heard when they suspended a 5-year old girl in a North Carolina school for picking up a piece of wood bent that looked like a gun, and while they played at their “kingdom”, she was the guard, protecting the king and queen with her stick gun? (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/30/5-year-old-girl-suspended-from-school-for-playing-with-stick-gun-at-recess/?noredirect= on&utm_term=.fcbc0846d39c). Yes, these are real stories, and this zero-tolerance policy nation-wide may make kids grow up uncomfortable acting out things in a childhood non-harming manner, that might make them turn to any violence that they were shielded from when while they were learning about what these things really mean. It’s just a theory...
    So I keep reading the newspapers, hoping for an answer, and not finding one. After the Texas shooting, reports would say that the surviving students must have prayed to God to save them. Everyone mourns, and everyone say they’ll do something about it, and nothing is ever done. High schoolers after 17 students were killed in a Lakeland, FL shooting protested that more laws should be in place to stop these shootings from happening. They’re too young to vote, but they rally for politicians to change their world for the better — and do these massacres actually genuinely change minds? As callous as this may sound, a lot of people in the United States like having the right to bear arms, and they — like most Americans — use guns responsibly. And as far as the “massacres” go, they may change minds locally, and in the long run, only temporarily. But quoting a gun control article in The Economist May 26^th, 2018, “They have already won a tiny victory in Texas. The governor, Greg Abbott, had offered a free shotgun in a prize draw for people singing up to his re-election campaign. He is now offering a $250 gift certificate.”
    But how local, and how temporary, can changes be, and will these minor things ever make a difference? They key may be in understanding the shooters themselves...
    In Santa Fe, the shooter’s father on May 22nd cited bullying in the boy’s rampage.
    Bullying.
    God, how much was I picked on, knocked over, bullied, for being smart.
    I bet those brats that I still loathe for their terrible actions to me back then are glad I didn’t come into school with a loaded gun and shoot them all down. That would show them, and teach everyone else a lesson.
    Or would it? Because apparently people aren’t learning any lessons, or there wouldn’t be a mass shooting like this every few weeks.
    We can study the stats and postulate that on average these shooters “are typically male, teenage, white, from a rural or suburban setting, attended the school they attacked and got their guns from home or family members.” (The Wall Street Journal, 6/4/18) But “explanations like bullying are insufficient, experts say, since few bullied children pick up a gun in retaliation.” (So, I guess that means I’m in the majority, lucky me, I love being in the majority...)
    So can I understand what’s in the mind of a shooter like this, one who isn’t killed themselves during their shootings? Okay... I will not give the names of any shooters in this article (they don’t need more recognition for what they’ve done), but one school shooter now serving a life sentence at Valley State Prison in California said in a recent interview, “All I know is that I was hurting and that I wanted to hurt people.” The morning of his shooting spree, after his father left for work, the Wall Street Journal 6/4/18 reported that he “got his father’s key to his gun cabinet, loaded a revolver with eight .22-caliber bullets, jamming extra bullets into his pockets.” He said “he wanted make enough noise to attract the attention of the police, and hoped to be shot and killed.”
    Now, I don’t have that much testimony from school shooters (since most seem to die before apprehension) but those words don’t sound like a tough-guy to me, or an action hero on a shooting spree, but like someone who doesn’t have anything to live for.
    Now, I can’t speak for everyone when I was younger, but when I was young I thought things sucked in high school (I cannot count how many times I cried alone in my bedroom, just hoping the pain would stop)... But I remembered thinking that I had a lot of potential — and high school is only four years long. I could make a new start when I went away for college. (And I did.) And I can’t imagine that others in my school, no matter how angry they got at times, ever genuinely thought that killing others — because they themselves were in such pain — and then hoping to be killed at the end of their rampage, was ever an option. So if we managed to not kill people en masse as we grew up, is there a change on how kids are raised now that may stifle them until they burst?

    Now, I’ve just shared comments from one shooter, who could get into his father’s gun cabinet (and this shooter did nothing wrong in the past, there was never a reason to not trust their son), but I’m sure this isn’t the story for every student, or every person who decides to get a gun and kill people. And even if they do not know someone with a gun, even if they may have a previous felony charge or a mental health issue (two reasons the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, cite for not allowing gun sales), flaws in background checks are often because states are only suggested to send this data to the NICS, but thousands go unreported annually, and mental-health cases are also incomplete due to the cry for privacy rules of sharing health information. And, according to The Wall Street Journal 6/12/18, a gunman “purchased several guns and killed 26 people at a church last year in Southerland Springs, Texas. Years earlier, [the gunman] was court-martialed by the Air Force on charges of assaulting his wife and young child. The Air Force didn’t submit the records to NICS.”
     But why confine the violence to school shootings? I mean, once school was out, I read of how a man in Annapolis killed 5 and injured more at the Capital Gazette newspaper office June 28^{Font size="-2">th}. And Wall Street Journal even reported 6/30/18 that “Capital Gazette staff were shown a photo of [the shooter] years ago, and were warned that if they ever saw him to call 911.” But on this Thursday in 2018, “he barricaded one door at the ... newsroom, shot his way through another and killed 5 employees with a 12-gauge shotgun.”
    So, lucky for us, maybe the mass shooters aren’t only high-schoolers anymore — I was beginning to feel left out... Because when it comes down to it, I don’t think it’s technology that is making us more violent, though we can find more ways through social media to complain and give out the right warning signs when things aren’t going right for us. The technology may connect us in ways we never understood before the Internet, but that connectivity can be so shallow that everyone always ends up feeling more alone (If you don’t understand me ask yourself: how many friends do you have on Facebook and twitter and Instagram and Pintrest, and how many friends can you call up when you need someone to talk to?). And maybe that technology “connectivity”, which becomes a lack of connectivity, maybe that is the first step for those who never learn of another option to solve their problems, until they resort to killing others and wanting to be killed themselves, because they feel too alone to know how to look for a solution.

Janet Kuypers^©
Editor in Chief

    P.S.: After writing this, I saw the Wall Street Journal 8𓩙󄝮 headline “Schools Buy Shooter Insurance”, so schools could have ‘active-assistance’ coverage to confront this new reality. Welcome to America, these schools actually consider this option as a method to avoid litigation and offset costs of potential future student victims. Sure, they want to protect the students, but ultimately what it comes down to is that the dollar is bottom line.

Virus Awareness: 30 years to stopping HIV

    Back in the 1980s, as the vice-administrator for Operation Snowball, we taught high schoolers about the risks of many things in our lives, from anything from caffeine and nicotine to alcohol to drugs. It was an outlet to share your problems in an open environment, and it taught you about dangers that you might not even be aware of yet.. like AIDS.
    In the 1990s, seeing what actually contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) until the AIDS virus attacked their immune system, made me want to share any news about this acquired immunodeficiency syndrome to help anyone infected — and to help remind people how to protect themselves.
    I even wrote the fictional epic novel “The Key to Believing” about drug company scientists looking for medicines to find a cure, or at least a vaccine, released in 2002.
    And I know what this virus can do to the body. And I know historically how drug cocktails, which were insanely expensive, seemed only designed to help lengthen the body’s ability to fight infections — since the AIDS?virus killed their host’s immune system. There is a lot about this one virus that seems so ugly, so horrific, and so unfair, so if I couldn’t do anything personally to make this virus go away, I could hopefully let cc&d be a place where people could learn more about it — in an effort to help themselves and other people.
    Over the past 15 years, I have heard a lot about making efforts to fight... breast cancer, or heart disease. More than that, I’ve heard many television advertisements for all the new drugs to help with every ailment you can imagine. Take Keytruda to help fight cancer cells. Take Invokana® or Jardiance for type-2 diabetes. Try Entresto for fighting heart failure. Take Lipitor for cholesterol. Take Anoro for COPD. And wait — pop Prilosec or Prevacid for heartburn (editor’s note: stop eating food that is really bad for you, and you might not get heartburn). And whatever you do, don’t forget your medications for Erectile Dysfunction too: Cialis, Viagra, Levitra (or the double-digit list of more choices for you men who can’t get it up). Because drug companies learned that we’d rather take pills than truly address solving our problems.
    It seems that Americans now want to look for a pill that might get them out of the trouble they are into now in their lives.?And the thing is, I’ve noticed this influx of medications for real and imagines health problems, but I have heard nothing about medical research for HIV and AIDS.
    The other day a commercial started for another drug and I thought, oh great, what is this one about, so I started to tune out. And they said they were on the pill, Truvada, but women weren’t taking this pill, so I had to stop. The ad didn’t say much, but it sounded like a pill for people not infected with HIV or AIDS to potentially help stop them from getting HIV.
    Of course, the ad talked about making safe and smart choices throughout your life anyway, but I really wondered: if this really the vaccine on the horizon for truly combating HIV?and AIDS.
    Yes, I have had a lot on my plate since the new millennium, so I could understand that if I wasn’t actively looking for these reports I could easily miss them. Now over these past years, HIV and AIDS have gone from an acute fatal disease to a chronic, manageable condition (which I am grateful about for my friends with AIDS). But there isn’t a cure yet, which, like many people, makes me want to somehow continue helping battle AIDS.
    All I do remember thinking over these years that people are looking for all sorts of pills to help them with any problem that can think of in our bodies, but I hear nobody talking about making an effort to help this very sinister virus — that is so ugly, so horrific, and so unfair. But as I said, if I wasn’t actively looking for these reports I suppose I could easily miss them.
    And maybe that should change.
    Now, unlike my 1996 and 1997 issues of cc&d (where we could afford the space to reprint “AIDS?watch” stories), we don’t have space to reporting news articles you can find online. So let me share a few web links with you, and let’s be proud of the massive progress we’ve made. Think of it: it’s amazing that a 20-year old with HIV can have a life expectancy of 70 — because few diseases have seen this much progress in such a short time.
    So let’s keep fighting the good fight.

https://innovation.org/diseases/infectious/HIV-AIDS
https://medicalxpress.com/hiv-aids-news/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/hiv_and_aids/
http://www.curecountdown.org/research-updates/
https://www.health24.com/Medical/HIV-AIDS/News

Janet Kuypers^©
Editor in Chief