Going Against My Grain

humans are a headache
overwhelmingly noisy
brass band of mass asses
coat of arms: “I Am So Great”

women are six times more susceptible
to headaches, FYI
I understand the reason, too, because
I Am So Great

Marital

We were once so thrilled that not even
Forces of the galaxies could control us
Comets shot across the sky. The world spun
One turn of tide came after another
Until being beautiful, almost perfect,
For each other vanished with some heavenly bodies
This is the meaning of taken for granted -
From a full universe to nothing but counting flaws;

And counting debris of our original oneness
When your joys and troubles were mine as well
Maybe, prayers went to Mercury and burned;
Enthusiasm to learn went to Pluto and fizzled out
The only things lingering on Earth are secrets,
Too many of this unexpressed words and emotions
They have probably buried responsibilities,
Replaced anniversaries, sullied sacred vows

We could be gathering stars, and returning our sight
On the common sky, the same heavens of dreams
We could be defying boredom and gravity,
Creating our own new sparks;
But unless pride is swallowed, peace remains elusive
Unless sorry is meant, harmony stays unattainable
Can we search again for the middle ground
That worked for us, the genesis of our cosmos?

midnight passersby

i cannot see my feet
because the fog has crept its way
to my knees.
i seem to be floating
with swaying legs
going nowhere
watching trees pass me
and the moon is spotlighting
the distance ahead
and i fall into the rhythm
of counting stars

Dracula

Onto the open veranda,
steps a figure.
A cloak slithers about his back, writhes across the tiled floor, and flicks its corners in the wind.
His breathless body pauses,
waiting for the limp mannered girls’ inevitable invitation.
Without the aid of movement,
he enters.
Dips his head in the slightest of greetings,
White lips twitch over glinting ivory teeth,
Brown eyes glimmer in the moonlight,
Coyly toying with the hearts imagination.
He extends an arm,
unfolds a hand,
and waits.
He watches as the pulse quickens,
transfixed by his alluringly tainted charm.
A smile glitters at the corner of his lips as she succumbs,
and he dips his head again, watching with black eyes that never seem to look at you,
but for you.

Natascha Tallowin Bio

    Natascha Tallowin is a writer and poet from Suffolk, England. Whilst most of her time is spent writing poetry and sitting in patches of sunlight on the floor listening to David Bowie, she is also working on a magic-realism novel entitled ‘Guylian’s Magic’.

When Jesoo falls ill, I, Dr Fred Hammy,

When Jesoo falls ill, I, Dr Fred Hammy,
dissect him with a butter knife, making his
entrails slippery, &

discover he’s swallowed the cross/ I
can’t really blame him, considering what they
plan to do with him on that cross, but

one of the rusty nails has pierced his
cirrhotic liver (diseased like most winos) &
he needs a tetanus shot before he gets

lockdick & his balls fall off/ I, Dr Fred Hammy,
cure Jesoo by cutting off his dick, getting
blood in the butter/ I ask Jesoo to

pay me some bread, but he stiffs me like
Judas, who stiffened shortly after he
hanged himself/ well, I never snitched on

Jesoo, but I want to be paid/ I, Dr Fred Hammy, am
no freebe, except when the bars close & I
wanna get laid, but it looks like tonight Jesoo

is burning me/ he’s probably cross about the cross, &
he holds his bitterness inside/ so
I take it out & set it back up on the hill, but

this just pisses Jesoo off more, much
of the piss running down his leg, because
crucifixion scares the piss out of him, &

Daddy is still going to do it to him/ He’s even joined
the Republican Party, proving that even God can be one
selfish, cruel sonofabitch, even if His son did

grow up with the poor & favors them mightily/ Daddy
learned from the gitgo that He’d prosper more
with the corporate herd/ who else can put

gold in the tithing plate?/ so
Daddy seals His son’s fate & strings him up from
the cross/ it proves that Daddy’s boss, &

British Petroleum gives Daddy the key to the
offshore oilwells, as His nailed son
rots (like a

pelican coated with
crude & sinking to the
bottom of the Gulf)

gulp

gulp

gulp ...

!

Civilization

Eat MacDonald’s or Kentucky Chicken
Drink Coca Cola or Pepsi
Listen to Jazz or Rock n’ Roll
Smoke Kent or Marlboro
Watch CNN or Hollywood movies
Wear blue jeans or polos
Drive a GM or Ford
Invest in derivatives rather than in properties
Go online with an IBM or Apple
Read New York Times or Great Gatsby
Play football or baseball
Microsoft all your Intel hardware
Talk aloud about freedom, democracy, human rights
Support the strike against devilish Iranians
Evil North Koreans, demon Mainland Chinese
Most important: vote while you google, google while you vote
And you will become an American
A political correct member of the truly civilized world

Quasi Americans, welcome aboard

Changming Yuan Bio

    Changming Yuan, two-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009), who grew up in rural China and published several books before moving to Canada, currently teaches writing in Vancouver and has had poetry appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, CC&D, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine and 270 other literary publications worldwide.

Debut

she offered herself
generously to her
audience
while icy hands
gloved and hidden
waited
to smother
her moment

We’re Not Children

Shall I say to you:

Stop.
Don’t look.
Don’t listen.
Simply.....just.....stop.

Or shall I say:

Don’t stop.
Be blind.
Be deaf.
Simply.....just.....cross.....that...street.....to......me.

turn your head

hiding behind
the cross
he puts his hand
up her dress
and presses
his index finger
to her lips
as a way
of
silencing her

shhh

Watch the YouTube video

Maxwell Baumbach Bio

    Maxwell Baumbach is a writer from Elmhurst, Illinois. You can see him at www.youtube.com/MaxwellThePoet. He is also the editor of the new publication Heavy Hands Ink. His work has appeared in Opium Poetry 2.0, The Cynic Online Magazine, Thunderclap!, Record Magazine, Black-Listed Magazine, and Five Fishes Journal. It is upcoming in vox poetica, Yes, Poetry, Clutching at Straws, and The Shine Journal. He enjoys watching pro wrestling, which is totally real, as well as reading obscene amounts of poetry.

New Vada

Sage brushed
ore dusted
neon naked
in full sky paint
torrid landscape
barks to Luna

Bio

Henry “Hank” Sosnowski, South Chicago born Polish-American followed his gypsy heart across America from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to North Carolina’s shore. Following Brecht’s edict that an artist must “First feed the face, then talk right and wrong,” Sosnowski worked as a newsboy, caddy, fry cook, steel worker, blues musician, pipefitter, pool hustler/card shark, landscaper, railroad brakeman, auto part salesman, actor, warehouse manager, woman’s clothing rep, waiter, missionary, writer, Alaskan game warden, book store manager, morning DJ, corporate VP, marketing director, dishwasher, factory worker, car salesman, handyman, customer service rep, janitor, teacher, hot rod show promoter.

Sosnowski currently lives and teaches in Reno, Nevada, inspiration for his one-man traveling show: “Write Before Your Eyes! Hank the Revelator - Live on Stage 24/7!” For one week, Sosnowski comes to town to write/perform/live on an outdoor stage replica of a 1930s writer’s; garret, melding written, spoken and performance art.

Sosnowski is the winner of the 2006 Sierra Arts Foundation Writer’s Grant.

My Grandfather

was born in 1871, the year
Rimbaud died in Ethiopia,
then called Abyssinia
if my scrambled
brain serves me right.
I swore I’d never tell anyone
this story, but seeing how
Alzheimer’s and death
run in my family
tree and tumors
any day might start spreading up here
in my head, here goes:
I used to have to
give the old man baths
and one time he forgot I
was my father’s son
and asked if I wanted to play
Nancy Boys. I said I didn’t know what
Nancy Boys meant and he said:
It’s when you pull my pecker
and I pull on yours.
I said: Easy there, partner
and stormed downstairs
to help my mother
with the dishes
and throughout the 43 years
the Lord gave me with my wife
this was 1 of 2 things
I kept from her.

Hank Threadgill bio

    Hank Threadgill was raised near the Fort Worth stockyards in North Texas, in a neighborhood they used to call “Hell’s Half Acre.” A former musical instrument salesman and the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, Hank relocated to Arlington, TX in the late 1940s, where he has slowly seen open fields turn into parking lots. He was born in 1922, the same year as Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, and Howard Zinn, though he rarely esteems himself worthy of such marvelous company. His poetry has appeared sporadically over the years in many journals that are now defunct, such as: Backboard Quarterly, Sign Waves, The Hemlock Review, Time & Again, Gone Fishing, Glossolalia, Fail Swoop, The Vicambulist, and Zero Ducats.

Thinking. I hate that.

I think the reason why I’m doing this
is because I’m lonely.
I’m sorry. I’m rationalizing.
I look over and see the bartender's yellow bracelet
and I imagine having a conversation
and I ask him if there’s a cancer story
and he says no
and he asks about my blue bracelet
(which happens to have ALS at the top for us to see)

and I have stories with MY cancer bracelet
that I’m not even wearing,
which I won’t get into

and I think about the cancer
and he asks me about the ALS
and then I start thinking.

I hate that.

Keep me Sane

I keep seeing you appearing places
I know you’d come in your wheelchair with your wife
but you’d be there to see me
when I’m falling apart
because of you

I need to have these
hallucinogenic memories
to keep me sane

Macchu Pichu

slabs of rock
like shards of plates
protect what is yet to fall.

we must remember in daylight
to never hold on too tight
because that which is sacred
is that which will suffocate
if not
broken.

we must share every particle
of ourselves
knowing
there will never be an end.

we must love as possessively
as the space between shadow.

we must worship the rock
that hearts are built upon.

I used to imagine
the trees on the mountainside
were soldiers
spilling over.
invading.
now they look like tears.

I used to think
the key to love was sacrifice.
now I think
it’s surrender.

I want to know
the holy parts of anger
to dissect
like taking apart religion.

I want to caress the face
of the earth
with my index finger
like it was the sunken valley
of your eyes
the night
I knew you would
leave.

Next of Kin Have Been Informed
but Should Refrain
from Asking Questions

What do people mean when they talk about
the integrity of war?

Is it a comment on the neatness of body bags
laid out in line?

Or maybe they are referring to injured people
rising above despair?

Can it be they mean the finer principles of war
have been upheld?

(Doesn’t everyone do their best to keep friendly
fire incidents to a minimum?)

Maybe our generals court integrity for strategies
of ‘win some, lose some’?

Can it be politicians promote their own integrity
to win elections?

Maybe it’s all about being polite, discreet, about
to whom the spoils of war?

I asked a soldier who lost an arm and a leg in Iraq
but he just shrugged

Maybe (the soldier said) I should ask the orphans
and widows...on both sides?

Lots of questions and not nearly enough answers
or right ones

A Place to Stand to Move the Earth

Candlewood Lake, long ago, with summer
friends, noticing the moon climbing higher,
sliding across the sky,

friends whose names and faces have all faded
but the moon has come clearer, like the night
several years later

on the shores of Lake Champlain while looking
through a telescope, when I first really
noticed the detailed moon

and saw the shadows of craters floating
on the edge, and later on a lake float,
moon mirrored in water,

another summer, other summer friends,
seeing the special illuminations
and now tonight, drawn now

to a crater with amazing edges
in Mare Imbrium, while frogs croak loudly
by a pond, and now, now

looking at a map, learning the crater
is named Archimedes, perhaps a place
to stand to move the earth,

I see the less interesting neighbors
Autolycos and Aristillus, I
wonder, will they amaze

in future years, with friends known and unknown
gazing anew at the familiar, what
size will the lake be then?

Rex Rutherford’s Land

    The lazy heat glowed over and into the three-story apartment complex on 11^th and Westmoreland in the middle of January. This year, as for most years, there wasn’t much gloom in the skies during a month when the rest of the country was frosty and dark. It was true that even June was gloomier in Los Angeles. This January just had sporadic shots of heat that weren’t very shocking, thus, the laziness of it. The apartment building sponged the heat, though, letting whatever warmth there was creep in easily to the apartments.
    The building was built in the early ‘70’s by less than thorough developers from New Jersey, who believed Korea Town would be the next Beverly Hills. They waited two years for the transition to take place, then split, having left the building in a haphazard state. While the City made certain demands, Rex Rutherford was able to convince them only a few were necessary. It was Korea Town after all, and at least he wasn’t as bad as those Koreans normally were. Therefore, to this day, air conditioning and proper insulation were among several things absent in the building.
    Tenets in apartments 4, 8, and 20 considered leaving after a few months of occupation. Hot water would frequently not be available; faucet handles broke easily; fridges were in bad shape, making strange, gurgling, animalistic noises; and cockroaches had constant celebrations of their dominance. All this for $1,600 a month one bedrooms. Rex Rutherford would argue that $1,600 in early 2008 was cheap in the context of the market - somehow cheaper than the already over-priced average of $1,000 in that area – and that “expectations had to be proper to the location.” Rex was planning to evict the Nigerian tenets in apartments 3 and 7 for being late on rent for the second month in a row. He also suspected they had extra, unreported (and probably illegal) people living in both apartments.
    Rex Rutherford’s father had moved to New York after WWII from Leeds, England, then settled down in Los Angeles with a well-established American bird. This bird’s father was quite the entrepreneurial landowner, back when there was much to be got in old L.A. When this man died in the 1950’s, all he had property-wise passed down to Rex’s dad. Two decades of property conquests (mostly just the continuation of the properties inherited) ended when Rex’s father died at the age of 58. This threw onto the 22 year old Rex a fair amount of land.
    While his father lost an unfortunate number of properties right before his death, there were still exceptional heaps left. Friends of Rex’s dad helped the young man establish himself. They gave him pointers on proper landowner procedures, business practices, and, most important of all, discussed the proper business mentality. Whatever illusions he was used to as an aspiring young spy novelist, a successful landowner had no place for them.
    Rex’s first acquisition was the profitable apartment building on 11^th and Westmoreland. Not much was spent on the upkeep, so the profit margin was higher than most buildings. There was always a sentimental, gut reaction when he saw this building. It was still his after 35 years. What Rex inherited were 15 apartment buildings, 9 restaurants, 5 coffee shops, and a movie theater. He lost some of these over the years, but would end up gaining more. At present, Rex owned 22 apartment buildings, 12 restaurants, 8 coffee shops, the movie theater, and his most momentous triumph, 14 jean shops. This was the business he was most proud of. 14 all claimed under his hand. His father didn’t have even one.
    In 1980, one venture was a bit more complicated than what he had done up until that time. By his late 20’s, Rex had completed four spy novels, none of them published. Still with a vital creative spirit, his friends would tell him, he acquired an independent bookstore in Mt. Washington. Many of the employees and customers were wary of this acquisition, but Rex promised he was “one of them.” He was a struggling writer himself, so they should know where his sympathies lay. By his early 30’s, though, Rex had given up writing altogether. Soon after this creative abandonment – two years after buying the land the bookstore was on – he raised the rent beyond the capacity of what the bookstore could possibly match, forcing the property to be taken over by a jean shop. This was jean shop number four.
    The bookstore stretched itself financially for several months, clinging to the location for as long as possible owing to the popularity amongst the locals. After the boot from it’s original location, the bookstore closed down completely. The bookstore’s owner had kept the ship going for 22 years, but stood no chance against the likes of Rex Rutherford. Many Mt. Washington locals started calling the landowner “Rich Ruthless.” The nickname began to stick and spread. Being the tough businessman he was, Rex allowed these insults to fall off his shoulder like water. He was even unfazed by the death threats he received after the Mt. Washington bookstore shut down.
    “Rich Ruthless” had practiced similar business procedures elsewhere, leading to similar reactions. With the tenets at his apartment buildings, Rex boasted of 384 evictions in 35 years. Fellow landowners openly denounced such ruthlessness but secretly admired his audacity. They joked with him in private he must have inherited his father’s tactful balance of prudence with cruelty. In a similar British fashion, Rex was discreet in class distinction. Of the 384 evictions, 12 were in properties in Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, and Marina Del Rey. 22 were in Santa Monica and Mar Vista. The rest were in Korea Town, Mid-City, and some other blotches of lower income Los Angeles neighborhoods.
    There were other “confrontations” - Rex always referred to them in quotation marks - after the bookstore in Mt. Washington. There was Mel’s, a restaurant, bar, and jazz club in Marina Del Rey that was frequented by locals and internationals alike. It was world-renowned for it’s choice selections in seafood, interior design, customer service, and entertainment since the late ‘40’s. Rex’s father was a regular. After 40 years of business, Rex booted them out. He had an offer from Denny’s. It was a hard decision but, in the end, the financial pressure of the best in populist fine dining won out. Again, Rex received death threats, this time from places as far away as Lausanne, Switzerland, and Toronto, Canada.
    There was also Carl’s Coffee in West L.A., which became a Starbucks; Melinda’s Bakery in Culver City became an Applebee’s; and the Venice indie music store, Station to Station, became jean shop number 9. “Rich Ruthless” had made his presence known in the three decades of land conquests. One of the most important aspects to Rex’s success - besides the convenient situation of inheritance - was how his personal presentation contradicted his nickname. He was a gentleman.
    Anyone who knew only of his business dealings thought he deserved not just his nickname but also something much worse. All those who interacted with him for only a few minutes were instantly impressed with his Anglo-American gentility. In personal attire, housing, vehicles, and any other possessions, he gave the impression of low-key, moderate, Middle-Class Joe Smith. Not tasteless, just average and unassuming.
    He almost always wore a Dodgers baseball cap, Nike shoes four to five years old, and a limited variety of shirts, shorts, pants, and sweaters. Rex rarely ever wore a business suit or a sports jacket. Even his physicality was average. He stood at 5'10", weighed 170 pounds, had short brown hair, brown eyes, no facial hair, was in decent but not great shape, and his face was non-descript. He married an unassuming woman from Minnesota, dutiful and loyal to him for 17 years. They lived in a moderately large house in Marina Del Rey, owned two 2004 BMW’s, and had one golden retriever named Ike. Let it not be mistaken by this humility, though, that Rex was bashful. Rex knew what to do with his money. He invested in all the right places and made it work for him.
    And in terms of business practices, there was always one location he boasted of having integrity: the small independent movie theater in Santa Monica he inherited from his father. Decades went by of, at best, moderate profit one year here or there because of some hit or other. It was the only property he owned which had a business typically in the loss column. He could have raised the rent to boot them out, but he chose not to. Some people assumed he must’ve been an indie or foreign movie buff, but he wasn’t. He never traveled inside the theater to watch a movie, nor did he do so in any indie theater. Rex and his wife were loyal patrons of AMC, Mann, Loews, and Pacific Theaters.
    So why did he hang onto the theater when he could have easily chosen not to, as he did with other properties? Nobody knew, and his wife never asked. But now, in the last couple years, things changed. The indie company who’d been running the theater for years had new ownership and a new direction. There was the company’s new Mega-Multiplex at the Westside Pavilion mall that opened the year before. Three other Los Angeles theaters in the chain closed down in the last 18 months. Rex’s Santa Monica theater was the last. All efforts by the company were to shift to the Mega-Multiplex. Unlike the other three theaters, which Rex did not own, he would not allow other theater companies to move in.
    Instead, Rex wanted to demolish the building and put in two competing jean shops, number 15 and 16. There were protestors who, having found out Rex’s intentions, wanted the City of Santa Monica to stop the demolition from happening. There was some question as to whether the beautiful construct was old enough to qualify as a historical site. Perhaps the City could even force Rex to put a theater at the location.
    Rex was driving to his Marina Del Rey home from a meeting in San Diego when he realized the decision – historical site, yea or nay - was made earlier in the day by the Santa Monica City Council. He decided to give his secretary a ring to find the result - she was at home in the evening but always on call - and also get last year’s profits from his properties. The following day he’d go over the numbers in detail with his business accountant, but he liked listening to the casual tone of his secretary first. Her voice made those numbers seem more human, more tender.
    “Good evening, Mr. Rutherford. How was your trip to San Diego?” Rutherford’s secretary’s voice came from his headset cell phone. Rex didn’t answer her query, even though the trip to San Diego went well. He didn’t call her to chat about his trip to San Diego. His lack of a response unsettled her, but then she had to remind herself, even after three years, Rex Rutherford was a practical businessman, not her best friend. “Good news, Mr. Rutherford ...”
    “The Santa Monica City Council decided ... ?”
    They both kept the lingering pause going, as if there was a silent drum roll.
    “They decided the building is not a historical site!” The secretary exclaimed in excitement, instantly instigating cheers.
    “Yahhoooo!”
    “The City is certainly on the mark, Mr. Rutherford.”
    “This time they are. While I’ve got you on the phone, there is some other news which arrived today.”
    “Oh yes, of course. I’m so sorry, I almost forgot.”
    “You almost forgot?”
    “I know, silly me.”
    “So what do we have?” Rex asked gently but sharply. “Let’s start with Santa Monica, since we were just talking about it.”
    “Apartment complexes and condominiums, net profit total ... you don’t want the individual properties, right?”
    “That’s correct. Tomorrow will be the day for details. Is something wrong? You don’t seem to be responding as quickly as usual.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Rutherford, maybe I’m acting weird because I’m a little emotional right now ...”
    “Oh, why?”
    “... My mother passed away earlier today ...”
    “I’m very sorry to hear that.”
    “It was the first heart attack she ever had, and just like that ... I’m sorry to bother you with my personal life, it’s just that it’s been so hard ...”
    “It’s very heavy, my dear. I understand. If you would like to postpone this conversation, we can.”
    “No, no, it’s ok. I can keep going.”
    “Ok then, please continue.”
    Rex would look into getting a new secretary in the coming days. He hated drama and he knew his secretary would probably be a wreck for a few weeks now.
    “So, net profit,” the secretary began, gathering herself together, “total for apartment and condominium complexes in Santa Monica: $1,694,302.”
    “I did spend quite a bit on Ocean Park and 6^th.”
    “The profits aren’t down for Santa Monica from last year are they? They seem -”
    “Oh, no, no. Just not as much ‘up’ from last year as I would have liked. No worries. Next, please.”
    Rex Rutherford’s secretary continued with the various profits in the various areas. After the apartment buildings in Santa Monica were the restaurants, the jean shop, and the coffee shop in Santa Monica. Then came the apartment buildings, restaurants, jean shop, and coffee shop in the Pacific Palisades. Then came Brentwood, Malibu, Marina Del Rey, Mar Vista, and the other areas. Total net profit for all properties in all areas: $25.8 million. Not quite as high as he hoped, but it was early 2008 and the mortgage crisis was putting everyone on edge. He couldn’t raise rent as high as the natural growth of the market should allow him to. That was fine. Rex Rutherford was a good man, a good businessman, and a good landowner. He knew his limits.
    Besides, he had an excellent taxman who’d help ensure his capital would be healthily protected. Which reminded him, after finishing the conversation with his secretary and turning into his driveway in Marina Del Rey, he needed to call the taxman. Always best to start early with taxes. Get them out of the way. Once the car was parked, Rex dialed into his cell while carrying his briefcase and walked to the front door, still with his headset on. Entering his home, the taxman answered on the other line, while Rex saw his wife watching TV and talking on her cell. Man and wife blew happy kisses to each other. As Rex began to walk to his office, his wife gave him a signal to hold on. He stopped to look at her as she touched her lips with her fingers, then pointed to him. They needed to talk.
    Rex nodded in affirmation then went down the hall to his office, as they both continued their separate phone conversations. Rex knew his wife wanted to discuss the move to Minnesota again, to be closer to her aging mother. He was expecting she would not as easily accept a “no” from him like past times. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. Fortunately, he could delay it a little longer. He had to go to the movie theater in Santa Monica. Now with the OK from the City, there was no time to waste on the demolition and construction process. Unfortunately, a City ordinance stated 24 hours must pass before anyone, even the owner, could go onto the property after the City’s decision. Well, it was his land, after all.
    Soon, Rex retrieved the paperwork on the building and put it in his briefcase, then left the house, still on the cell with his taxman. Back in the car, Rex and his taxman had finally finished with their “how is so and so,” “what about so and so,” and “I heard so and so.” The casual pleasantries aside, it was time for business. The taxman had some unpleasant news for Rex. He was no longer going to be his taxman. In fact, he was no longer going to be anyone’s taxman. He actually quit the “tax evasion business,” as he called it. Instead, he was now working for an organization that fought against corporate tax loopholes. Rex was taken aback while driving north on Lincoln blvd. towards Santa Monica, but made sure not to show any hint of shock in his voice.
    “I’m working for the other side now, Rex.”
    “Oh, the good guys? The ‘other side’ is a colossal and just as greedy bureaucracy posing as a regulatory service for the public. You’re making a big mistake, Harry. I thought you knew better.”
    “Wealth is one thing, Rex, but you know as well as I that –”
    “I’d like to hear your reasons for the big change, but I’ve got some work to do. Good night, Harry, and good luck with your ‘good fight’.”
    The ex-taxman was about to say something when Rex turned off his cell phone. Rex took off his headset, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and continued to drive towards Santa Monica.
    Ten minutes later and he was at the theater. It was dark out and not much traffic on Wilshire blvd. near 14^th. Certainly not much foot traffic in this not very popular section of Santa Monica. Rex parked his car then walked to the shut down, fenced off theater. He carried with him the papers for the building, his keys, and a large, black, metallic flashlight (to tap on the ground to scare rats, if need be, as well as for illumination). The gate opened with the keys, then the front entrance to the theater came soon after. Rex surveyed the small lobby and concessions area with the flashlight. Eventually he found what he was looking for: a switch-box for breakers to turn on the theater’s lights. He didn’t know which switches turned on what, so he turned them all on, including those with timers.
    There was something in auditorium #2 he needed to check before he called the demolitionist. While entering the auditorium, he cleared his throat loudly, abnormally so. Rex had a certain emotional anxiousness, left from the excitement of the Santa Monica City Council decision, the annual profits estimates, the awkward, unexpected chat with his taxman (and his secretary), and the lingering expectation that his wife wanted to move to Minnesota. A mixture of emotions was not something Rex particularly liked. So, like how he often would when uncomfortable, he cleared his throat. Editors complained the characters in his youthful spy novels were two-dimensional, not complicated enough. If complexity in characters was what they wanted, he’d respond, why was it that most popular spy novels had simplistic characters with exciting plots? The plot was the key for Rex Rutherford. Leave complex characters and themes to Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.
    Now it was plots of land always on Rex’s mind, to which the current one had a problem. Near the exit on the right of the auditorium, close to the screen, there seemed to be something there that didn’t belong. As he walked towards it with the flashlight (the auditorium’s lights missed certain areas), he realized it was a homeless person, sleeping with various bags and other items surrounding it.
    “Thrrweeeeeeet!” Rex whistled loudly to awaken the slumbering vagrant. “Wake up!”
    Rex took a few steps closer and couldn’t see a face, nor tell if it was male or female. But there definitely was a person there, and it was breathing. Then it coughed, and then it moved to one side a bit.
    “Hey, come on! Get out of here!” Rex demanded.
    The vagrant didn’t respond.
    “I know you’re awake! Get up and get out of here! This is private property! Go to the Promenade to take your nap!”
    Eventually, the vagrant jostled around, grumbled, snortled, sat up, then spat on the ground.
    “Fucking hell ...” Rex said quietly to himself.
    The vagrant jostled around some more, it’s back to Rex, and then it farted. The smell was awful.
    “Aw, Jesus Christ, get out of here, why don’t you?”
    He couldn’t call the police, because, technically, he himself wasn’t allowed on the property until tomorrow because of the 24 hour City ordinance. It was a ridiculous triviality that unfortunately resulted in Rex having to deal with this filthy lump by himself. Perhaps just threatening to call the police would help inspire the vagrant to move faster.
    “If you’re not off this property in three minutes, I’m calling the cops. The exit is right in front of you there.”
    Soon, the vagrant turned around and showed it’s dirty, old, male face. The face was so filthy it was hard to distinguish which race it belonged to. The large, bulging eyes tried hard to discern the identity of the angry landowner before him.
    “What the hell’re you looking at?” Rex exclaimed. “I told you I’m giving you three minutes before I call the cops.”
    The eyes of the vagrant lit up as if struck by an epiphany. A strange, animalistic sense of irony overcame the vagrant, and he began to laugh. He laughed for a while, which made Rex uneasy, then the vagrant stopped laughing and said,
    “Rich Ruthless.”
    Then the vagrant went back to laughing.
    “What did you call me?”
    “Rich Ruthless.”
    “Look, buddy, I’m serious. I want you off my property right now. I’m not waiting anymore.”
    “Call the cops. I don’t care.” The vagrant grumbled as he went back to lie down.
    Who was this? How did he know of that stupid nickname? The vagrant obviously recognized him upon inspection. But Rex had no idea who this was. It could be anyone from the past. Rex hated being known without knowing the knower. And he was known by a homeless turd, as well.
    “Look, you piece of shit ...” Rex began.
    “Don’t call me that, Rich Ruthless. Rich Ruthless ... Rich Ruthless ...” The vagrant repeated again and again in an angry taunt, then farted again. The vagrant began to laugh continuously.
    “God damn it!” Rex exploded.
    Rex almost never lost his Anglo-American cool. Now was one of those rare times. Then suddenly the auditorium lights turned off. One of the switches which was on a timer must have been for this auditorium. The vagrant kept laughing in the darkness, then continued with his taunt,
    “Rich Ruthless, Rich Ruthless, Rich Ruthless ...”
    “God damn it, shut up!!” Rex barked as he turned the flashlight back on, shooting the light onto the vagrant.
    There was a peculiar noise coming from the homeless man ... a wet, mushy noise ... As Rex got closer and smelled what the noise had produced, he realized what the vagrant was doing.
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Rex yelled in disgust.
    He continued to shine the light on the vagrant and took a step closer, seeing the liquidy yellowish brown mess oozing from under the layers of the homeless man’s clothes. The vagrant had diarrhea. As Rex made a quick step backward in disgust, he tripped over one of the auditorium seats, which made his body react with a jerk forward. The awkward momentum of both movements, the darkness, and his extreme disgust with the lump of an animal in front of him, made Rex lose his balance and fall forward. He’d gotten so close to the vagrant by this point that the fall forward made Rex fall almost completely on top of him. Instead of falling on top of the vagrant’s body, though, Rex’s face fell inches from the diarrhea.
    “Oh shit, shit!” Rex yelled in fright, disgust, shame, and anger. There was almost a high-pitched squeal in the way Rex yelled. Some of the diarrhea got on his nose.
    “That’s right, eat my shit.” The vagrant grumbled.
    Something triggered in Rex a violent anger he never knew. This pathetic excuse for a human being had pushed the landowner into a realm of humiliation and disgust Rex never, ever wanted to enter. In seconds, Rex gripped the large, metallic, black flashlight and began to beat the vagrant’s body with it. The vagrant yelled and screamed in defiance and pain, but Rex was ruthless with his blows. He got on his feet, giving him the proper leverage, and took a good crack at the vagrant’s skull ... Rex hit the skull again and again until it was obvious the homeless man was dead.

International Finance

    During the sixties and seventies life along the Arizona Sonora border was comfortable. Most residents on both sides were comfortable in both English and Spanish. Both sides retained their strongest cultural differences, but many of those became common in time. Length of residency was a determining factor. Except for four years during the Korean War, Jake Baker had lived along the border all of his life. The border meant nothing to him and he spent as much if not more of his time on the Mexican side as he did in Arizona.
    There was a time when Jake spent all of his time in Sonora because he lived there. He had established himself as a cattle buyer, and pursued a living doing that for many years. His headquarters changed at times, but he lived mostly in Navojoa, a small agricultural city located close to the Sierra Madre, almost in Sinaloa. It was a convenient place for Jake because the source of most of his cattle purchases was up in the high country of the Sierra Madres. Jake specialized in corriente steers that were the closest descendants from the cattle once imported by the Spaniards. High in those mountains the ranchers who raised small numbers of cattle had not yet changed to what was known as “Improved Mexicans” that were cattle crossbred for several generations with the European breeds commonly found in the United States. That situation never bothered Jake. He enjoyed the people in the Sierra Madre and found markets in the United States for the corrientes that were popular there for “roping steers” in rodeos.
    Jake didn’t spend all of his life in the mountains buying corrientes, he found plenty of time to make his way around to the many bars and houses of joy in the cities and towns of Sonora. He liked to refer to these forays as his “Social Life”. Jake would walk into a house of joy and all the girls who were waiting for clientele would jump up from tables and bar stools and run to him, almost fighting among them for chances to give him hugs and kisses. Jake was popular at all of his “social life” locations. He was not only a well thought of customer, he was also known for his generosity. Any girl who found herself in an emergency situation could count on Jake Baker for his help, both as a comfort and as a source of monetary aid.
    Jake’s Sonoran reputation is probably best expressed by a story his mother once told. Jake’s mother, a tough but feminine Western ranch woman would, in her later years, enjoy trips into Sonora to see the scenery and meet the “natives”. Before one of these trips she had mentioned her plans to one of her friends, a widow she had known for several years. The widow asked to be included on this trip and Jake’s mother agreed. She thought it would be nice to have company while traveling south of the border.
    The time was set, the bags all packed and the two women met at Jake mother’s house that was close to the border. The widow brought up the question of pocket money and said, “I have to go to the bank and cash a check before we leave.”
    “Not me,” Jake’s mother replied, “I’m just taking my checkbook with me.”
    “For heavens sake,” the widow said. “How do you expect to cash a check in Mexico?”
    “That’s no problem for me at all,” Jake’s mother said. “All I have to do is go into any whore house in the state of Sonora and tell them I am Jake Baker’s mother, and they will cash my check for any amount I write.

The Job

    Disbelief oozed out of every pore. Disbelief alternating with total numbness. Is this what they mean by denial, Martha Gilmartin wondered. Whatever it was, she was denying it right down to her stomach, which thought it was on a roller coaster hurtling earthward. After l5 years in a job which she had loved, she had been told that she must leave in one week. Downsizing, they called it—a horrible word. She felt downsized all right, her normal 5 feet five height felt as though she were two inches tall. She was 61. Where was she to go? Who would hire her now? She had felt very proud that she still had a job while others her age lived on pensions or social security. It had given her a feeling of confidence and a secret sense of superiority to everyone of her peers without a job. Now she felt totally powerless—her whole identity as a human being gone.
    She had been a professor, teaching fashion design at a small college and now she was nothing. Was suicide the answer? No, she couldn’t handle that thought—at least not right away. Was there to be a nursing home in her future? Horrors. She was perfectly healthy, perfectly capable of teaching, teaching, and teaching. She had a family, but they would say it’s time to take it easy, what do you need that job for, anyway. If you need money, we can help you out. The thought of living on others, even her own children—scary—a fear that everyone over a certain age must feel.
    Martha looked down at the cup of coffee developing its own signs of old age as she sat there in total shock, in a restaurant where the waitresses didn’t know how to tell the old lady they needed the table. A part of a poem from her schooldays crossed her mind—how did it go—something like:

“A primrose by the river brim,     A yellow primrose was to him,     And nothing more.”

    That’s what she was—a flower, really a weed, by the river waiting to be washed away by the next wave that came along. What’s with the self-pity, she told herself, that won’t help but I don’t care.
    “Hey, Martha, what are you up to these days? I haven’t seen you in a long time.” She looked up. Tom Johnson. A friend of her late husband. Should she pour her troubles out to him? She didn’t really know him well enough. Anyway, she knew what he would say, “Oh, don’t worry, with your experience you’ll find another job right away.”
    Tom sat down. He began to tell one of his jokes. He always started a conversation with a joke—a way to cover his shyness. As Martha sat there, silently, isolated, numb, Tom looked at her. “Martha, I have to talk to somebody. I just lost my job.”
    Martha looked at him. Was this a sick joke? Was there really someone in the world asking her for sympathy because he had lost a job? Life wasn’t just putting a knife in her back; it was laughing with glee as it twisted.
    “I know we don’t really know each other that well, but I have to talk to somebody or I’ll go crazy. My wife can’t understand the way I feel and I have this feeling you might. You always seemed pretty sensitive.”
    His wife doesn’t understand him. Martha smiled, Buddy, she thought, I understand all right—too well. “I can’t help you, Tom,” she said, “I’m in the same boat.”
    Tom looked at her in amazement. When did this happen? She told him about it—she told him all about it. All about her feelings of helplessness. He listened; he brought in his own feelings. They almost cried together.
    When they left the restaurant, they went their own ways. She felt better for a while. Then the numbness and disbelief returned. The week and the term ended. The dean, a healthy, overweight young man of 35 greeted her with an optimistic grin at life, born of the confidence that with his youth and credentials he could get another position anytime he wanted. He wished her good luck and benevolently added that if registration increased, she might be able to come back as an adjunct. Part-time did not carry the benefits or prestige of a full-time position and though it made him feel better to say it, to her it was the ultimate disgrace. At that moment she looked at his smile—the smile of a do-gooder—and hated him.
    A week later Tom called her. Could they meet for coffee? He was 58 and having a hard time finding a job. His wife didn’t say anything but he knew she hated having him at home all the time—she had bought a pillow for the living room couch which announced in colorful hand-embroidered letters, “For better or worse, but not for lunch.” His grown-up, well-employed children had no idea why he didn’t love his retirement—all that free time to play tennis and golf.
    They began to meet regularly. Martha realized that this was the first time she had ever had a male friend where the basis for the relationship was just that, a friendship. She began to accept her situation, as it sunk in that, at her age, full-time teaching in her field on a college level was the wispiest of fantasies, she started to look for part-time teaching jobs. She got up in the morning with no place to go except to find herself at the end of an unemployment line once a week. She told Tom about those feelings—he knew. She even made him laugh about it. She told him how she felt on the unemployment line—she told him about the clerks and their individual personalities as they highhandedly, or indignantly, or arrogantly or indifferently took her unemployment booklet, and as she mimicked them, they forgot their troubles for a moment and laughed.
    Tom, who had been a manager in a huge computer corporation, now took a job as a computer salesman, being paid on commission. Which meant he was part-time in a sense, too. Nobody cared where he went or what he did. There were no benefits, no structure. No one in the company really considered him an employee because they rarely saw him. It was hard to sell computers these days—the competition was fierce. He had taken the job primarily to get out of his wife’s way. Martha understood and in listening was able for that moment to forget herself. He told Martha about the way he felt having no medical benefits for his family anymore. No status among his employed friends who felt invulnerable, as teenagers feel invulnerable until the first time they are in a serious accident. Martha realized that in talking to Tom, something was happening to her. She began to realize that sharing thoughts and feelings with Tom had become very valuable to her—that this was what real friendship was all about—not having coffee with a girlfriend and discussing diets and fashions. She realized that she had found something precious—something she had never had before. Teaching had mostly been a one-way thing—she talked to—no, at—the class and rarely did she get real interaction about anything but the work assigned.
    Without realizing it, she began talking to her friends in a different way and suddenly they were talking to her in the same way that Tom did. It wasn’t about losing jobs—it was about husbands who didn’t care, children who did destructive things to themselves, illnesses that had become chronic and depressing, incomes that never seemed to be enough to leave space for financial ease—were these the same people she had always known?
    When the dean called her to teach one course as an adjunct, she took the job—no longer afraid of loss of prestige. She had a new relationship with her students and suddenly she found that they had lives, too. They invited her to their weddings, their bar mitzvahs, their baptisms. They told her about husbands who drank away their money, boyfriends who wouldn’t marry them, lovers that physically abused them. The dean responded to the liking the students had for her and gave her another course to teach. Word got around and registration for her courses increased. She told Tom about her new friends, her new students, her new courses.
    Tom hesitated a moment, then told her he had decided to open his own company servicing computers in the basement of his home. He said, “There’s something I have been thinking about—it’s a crazy new idea, never been done before, but I think I would like to try it.”
    “That’s great”, she said, “Now, if ever, is the time to take a chance.”
    “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you feel that way, because you are a part of my new plan.”
    She swallowed. What was she getting into? She liked Tom, but did he want her to invest in his company. She certainly did not have the discretionary income to do that. She liked Tom but she didn’t like him that much.
    Tom went on. “You are a fashion instructor. I know computers are coming out in new colors on a limited scale. But I thought it might be a new device to have computers come out in many different colors—it is just a selling technique that might appeal to women who wanted their computers to fit in with the rest of the décor in their homes or offices. What do you think? Of course, I won’t ask you to invest anything. Your salary will be commensurate with the results of our enterprise. Interested?”
    Martha grinned. “Yes, I’m interested. But why stop at colors—why not produce them in different patterns as well—plaids, stripes, match-your-sofa designs?” With that, she stood up and shook Tom’s hand in a gentleperson’s agreement.

Choking

    The foreman finds the man’s body shortly after three in the afternoon. He sees the vivid orange of a safety vest sticking out of the snow at the base of a felled tree. He digs away only enough snow to see that a man is wearing the vest and that the man is not breathing. The foreman knows the dead faller well; they were once good friends.
    There is no hurry now so the foreman sits on a nearby stump smelling the sap and wood and watching the shadows lengthen as the sun drops below the distant mountains. He looks down at the dead man and thinks of the calls he will have to make tonight, calls to the RCMP, to his boss, to the man’s wife and son. He is not unsympathetic: it is simply that this has been a long day and he had looked forward to a few hours of peace before turning in. Things are more complicated now.
    It was too much to hope that the Death Crone wouldn’t be working: I knew nobody up there would be cutting me a break any time soon. I stand in the dusty parking lot for a minute or so, considering going somewhere else to buy booze, but that would be too much of a pain in the ass so I suck in my breath and pull open the door with its cracked glass and fly-specked Counter Attack poster and face the music—which, incidentally, is the worst Country music anyone has ever heard; I think they must pipe this shit in directly from Cowboy Hell. The song that’s on now sounds like what you might hear if you strolled by some farm hands sodomizing sheep while, in the background, someone was beating Tennessee Ernie Ford with a steel guitar. The Death Crone is really grooving on it: she bobs her mullet up and down to the merciless twanging and doesn’t look up.
    I stroll around the grubby store like I’m some big-shot connoisseur who actually gives two shits about what sort of overpriced hooch he buys. After what I figure is a reasonable length of time, I pick up a mickey of 5-Star whisky. Five stars, what a joke. The stuff is like a fiery enema. The only good thing about it now is how damn cheap it is. Used to be, though, that the bottles had plastic stars on them, but the cheap pricks stopped sticking them on in favour of the far less classy paper ones. I guess they figured some drunk was gonna lose an eye or something.
    When I was a kid, though, after a weekend with my old man, I used to search through the empties and pick out all the old 5-Star bottles, peel those plastic stars off, and then my friends and I could play sheriffs versus ninjas—sheriffs got badges, ninjas got throwing stars. Christ, I could deputize the whole neighbourhood—we’d have a regular posse—after a payday Friday night at my place.
    Anyway, I plunk my bottle down in front of the Death Crone who stares at it with her one good eye, then she looks up all cockeyed at me like maybe I just took a dump on the counter or something. Finally she manages to choke down her disdain long enough to punch in the numbers on her cash register.
    “Eight ninety-five,” she says.
    Her lazy eye is wobbling all over the room, and I want to say, “Hey, I’m over here,” and laugh and laugh but I never do ‘cause I think that eye can see right through you and I think she knows I’m a drunk even if I wouldn’t admit it to myself. And a drunk is about the worst fucking thing you can be.
    “Wait a sec’,” I say, grabbing a six-pack of Black Label from a big ice-filled chest shaped like a giant Pepsi can, although I doubt anyone ever bought a goddamn Pepsi in this shit-hole.
    I flop the beer on the counter like I’m impulse-buying or something, when what I really need is one for the road and she looks at me like I’m a cockroach pinned to the counter, wriggling my arms and legs all over and wondering why the hell I’m not getting anywhere. She waves her enormous hair around a few times to get it just right, and then she blows through her fat, pink lips like she’s got something better to do. Finally she rings up the total and I can pay and get the hell out.
    “Have a nice day,” I say.
    Finally I’m out of there and into the warm June evening and I feel a little guilty because I should want to get out and enjoy it but all I can really think about is drinking until it’s time to sleep it off and head to work tomorrow. And so it goes.
    It is immediately clear to the foreman what happened to the faller: as the man was making his back-cut, the big spruce shivered violently causing an entangled snag to break away and drop straight down onto the man below. This is called a widowmaker.
    The foreman imagines how the tree would have hung for a moment before inexorable forces brought it crashing down onto the man, crushing him into the snow at the base of the tree.
    Work. Just the thought of it pains me in my ass; I’m a chokerman, in case you were wondering, which is about the shittiest job you can have, next to—maybe—the window cleaner at a peep-show, although Windex-Boy probably has more interesting conversations and a better view.
    In the summer, choking isn’t so bad. I get up around 4 am and drive my sorry ass out into the middle of nowhere on some dusty washboard of a logging road. My first mind-numbing task is to grease the skidder—that’s the part where I roll around in the dirt trying to locate mud-caked grease nipples while the skidder operator, a fat, toothless bastard everyone calls Thumper—I figure he got this nickname because he’s had two bypass surgeries and now you can hear his erratically beating ticker from several feet away—yells at me to go faster as if I’m dragging the job out, you know, really milking it, because it’s so damn fun.
    Anyway, after the greasing party, Thumper fires up the machine and I start to run. I run beside the skidder out into the bush where I start setting chokers: the line skidder, if you’ve never seen one, looks kind of like a scorpion: a four-wheel drive, balloon-tired, turbo-charged scorpion with a big winch at the back and a heavy cable that runs out over a boom (that’s the scorpion’s tail); shorter, thinner cables called chokers move along the larger mainline cable. My job is to pull out the main cable and connect the chokers to logs. Six logs make a full lift, and then I can run beside the skidder back to the landing and unhook the chokers all the while trying not to be killed by other large pieces of logging equipment that are crashing through the bush around me, not to mention the flying limbs and roots that get kicked up when the logs are being winched in.
     If nothing else, it’s an excellent way to lose a finger or hand if you’re not quick enough on the release and some overzealous operator starts reefing in the logs with your hand still caught in the choker.
    The dust is thick and fills my nostrils and eyes and the noise cannot be believed. All day my throat is parched and I feel like I want to puke but I just keep running while Thumper bitches at me and I fumble with the goddamn chokers and he bitches some more and I hate his guts and I hate myself because I know I’m not much use and I just take it because I need the job and because I know that Thumper—fat, heart-attack-waiting-to-happen-AGAIN Thumper—is a tougher man than I’ll ever be. That’s choking.
    At coffee time I can finally stop running and sit down and Thumper shuts off the skidder and climbs down to tell me for the millionth time how he used to be a bad man who drank too much and took too many drugs but now he’s found Jesus and he wants to share the miracle of Jesus with me which is great because you know damn well Thumper never would have shared any of his booze; most days I wish to God Buddha had saved Thumper because I’m pretty sure no one has ever been bitched out at work by a born-again Buddhist but no luck because Jesus is Thumper’s co-pilot now and I start hoping that the Rapture rolls around and Thumper’s fat ass ascends to Heaven (in fact, I think I’d pay to see it happen) and leaves me in peace; either that or I’m hoping the skidder crushes me flat before the lunchtime sermon. And that’s choking too.
    Setting chokers in the winter is even worse: there’s no dust, but it is colder than a polar bear’s sphincter and my hands crack and bleed and my face goes numb and Thumper’s sermons become longer and more fatalistic. The roads are treacherous with ice and logging trucks and I drive to work in darkness and I never look up at the sun because my head is down and the chokers are frozen, unyielding and sharp in my hands; I never look up because I’m running all day long and then I drive home from work in the darkness and I drink myself stupid and rise again and start choking.
    The dead man’s pickup is parked on an unused landing about a quarter of a mile away. The door is unlocked and the foreman sits behind the steering wheel. The interior of the truck is covered with hoar frost and frigid sawdust and smells of chainsaw oil and cigarettes. The foreman finds two empty whisky bottles under the seat. He throws them out of the window into the deep snow at the far end of the landing. He sits behind the wheel again and calls his boss on the dead man’s radio. Next he calls his wife to tell her that he will be home late.
    It is more than two hours later when the foreman sees the headlights of the RCMP Suburban bouncing over the rough, icy road ahead of him. He leads the police and the coroner to the dead faller’s body. It is beginning to snow, and the beams of the police officers’ flashlights sparkle on the falling crystals. The foreman tells the police what he knows, and how he found the faller. The police tell the foreman that they can take it from here and that he can go.
    The foreman lingers in the darkness just outside the halo of light where the officers and the coroner are working. He waits until the faller’s body has been removed from the snow and placed on an aluminum sled and the officers have dragged the corpse back to their vehicle and loaded it inside. He waits until the taillights have vanished back the way they came before he begins his own journey home. The foreman suddenly feels very tired.
    I don’t want you to think I’m just a whiny punk complaining about having to work; it’s not really like that. I know lots of guys who love working in the bush, but I know just as many that hate it and want the hell out but they don’t know any other way. My old man was like that; he always told me he never wanted me to have to make a living the way he did, that he’d always wished for something different, but he couldn’t even say what it was, he just knew there was always something just out of his reach. I guess that’s why he drank so fucking much.
     I was off to university right after I graduated—that probably surprises you, foul-mouthed bastard that I am, but if you start quoting from “The Hollow Men” in a logging camp you’re bound to get an ass-kicking. I can be quite fucking eloquent in the correct company. I decided to major in English, not because I could ever get any sort of a job with a literature degree, but because I had always loved stories, poems, plays—a fact I’d had to hide from my friends when I was growing up.
    University was so much better than high school, which featured endless grammar worksheets followed by worksheets on poetry and we all wondered why the hell we had to learn about trochaic metrical pattern and all that shit when most of us were headed straight for the green chain anyway where the only rhythm was two-by-four, two-by-four, two-by-four, coffee-time, two-by-four. . . . Every poem we read in school had to rhyme, and it was made clear that only dead white guys had ever written anything worth reading and Shakespeare was the deadest, whitest guy of them all and he was the only one who’d ever written a play.
    I couldn’t believe it when I hit university and started reading modern stuff: poems that didn’t rhyme by poets whose lives seemed even more screwed up than mine, and books like A Clockwork Orange and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that were wild and strange and new. I read everything from Beowulf to Bukowski and I loved it all because I found a world in those words I had never known existed.
    Anyway, I was doing all right at SFU until the old man died; I left school right away to look after things and now I feel like I can’t go back until my mom can take care of herself, and she’s getting crazier by the day so I guess I’m stuck and I don’t resent anything except that I wish I didn’t know that there was another world beyond working and spending and getting drunk because I think it’s worse to know it’s there and you can’t have it than to live in oblivion choking and buying and drinking as if no one has ever had a thought that didn’t originate in his guts or balls.
    You know what Dylan Thomas said just before he died? “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. . . I believe that’s a new record.” He’d have been a hell of a chokerman.
    The Coroner’s Report reveals that the dead faller’s blood-alcohol level was 0.28% at the time of death. The foreman has already received phone calls from the Workers’ Compensation Board. The foreman lies to the woman on the phone on behalf of the dead faller although he does not believe that the Board will pay the man’s family any time soon, if ever. The foreman knows that the owner will not pay either. That is Company Policy.
    I think I know how my old man felt. Every time you reach out for something beautiful, something greater than yourself, there’s this thing you can’t even name—some dark shadow—obscuring things that should be clear, complicating things that should be so goddamned simple because there’s so much beauty all around you never see because your sight is blocked by dust and cheap plastic stars and shit and your ears are assaulted by cheap country music and mundane babbling.
    I want to stammer something beautiful, but what comes out is meaningless. The Shadow falls and I feel like I’m running in place chasing something I can’t see or name but I know that I need it or I’ll wither and die. And that’s choking too.
    The funeral is held three days later. The foreman wears his only suit. It is made of black wool and feels too tight: the collar digs into the flesh of his neck as he stands rigidly beside the hole that has been dug in the frozen earth of the cemetery. He watches the coffin lowered into the ground. Snow begins to fall.
    The foreman looks across the grave at the dead man’s wife and son and turns away.
    My mom is home when I get there and this is not necessarily a good thing. As I said before, she’s a loony old bat. She has always been a bit on edge—I mean, she named me Virgil, for Christsakes, and not after the poet, either, but after the guy in that song by Robbie Robertson—and I guess my dad’s death just put her over the brink.
    Now, before you think I’m being unfair or disrespectful to her, let me tell you what she does for a living and you can judge for yourself: my mom is an artist. Not so strange, you say, it worked out fairly well for Van Gogh—except for the part where he mailed his ear to his favorite prostitute, drank turpentine, and shot himself, of course—but at least he worked in a medium people wanted to hang on their walls.
    My mother paints on cow skulls. Not only is this not a lucrative occupation, it is right fucking weird.
    She is sitting on the front deck of our trailer—only people who sell these things, or have never lived in one, call them “mobile homes”— painting a skull which is balanced before her on a vertical beam: just picture the Graveyard Scene in a bovine version of Hamlet and you’ll have it: “Alas, poor Betsy; I knew her, Horatio . . . .” Behind her hangs a large wooden sign that reads, Caution: Artisan at Work.
    I remember my dad making that sign for her as a welcome-home present when my mom came back from the hospital after her first “breakdown.”
    She smiles at me as I come up the steps. The sunlight softens the lines on her face and burnishes her hair. Her eyes sparkle, “Come and see,” she says, indicating her work, “I think it’s my best one yet.”
    The skull’s hollow sockets stare out at me from behind a wash of swirling colours; it’s all there: the sleepy village, the jagged cathedral, the luminous stars and rolling hills. Starry Night.
    “It’s wonderful,” I tell her and, for what it’s worth, I mean it.
    I imagine cattle dying in a desert, sacks of bone wrapped in hide rotting under a blazing sun until all that remains is this skull, half-sunk in dust, reflecting back twilight and fading stars and I know my subconscious is filing this one away in that special folder marked Hellish Nightmares for Drunks and I’m consciously scratching that book of Hieronymus Bosch paintings off my mental list of possible birthday presents for her; I wouldn’t sleep for a week if she painted one of those on some poor ex-cow and I know the world isn’t ready for Hieronymus Bossy anyway.
    Still, there is something soothing about the van Gogh painting but I can’t say what. Maybe it’s that the sky is just the right colour, or maybe it’s that the moon has that haze like it did when you were a child looking up through tears at the night sky; there’s something haunting about it, too, I suppose.
    “I think it is your best one.”
    “Thank you,” she says and reaches up to touch my face. Her hand smells like marine paint and old bone. She looks at me for a while, her eyes far away.
    Suddenly she’s back. “Oh, Jim phoned. He wants you to call him.”
    Shit. This is definitely not in keeping with my plan, which is to sit around getting pissed and feeling miserable, but I know damn well Jim is going to keep calling and calling and I should probably try to “Choose Life” like it says on those stupid fucking tee shirts everyone is wearing so I grab the phone and tell him I’ll meet him at the pub after I clean myself up but I can’t be out late ‘cause I have to work tomorrow unlike his unemployed ass and he calls me a pussy and makes cow noises with his smart mouth until I hang up. Christ.
    So I’m at the pub and there’s a decent crowd because it’s two-for-one night. The booze is flowing freely and I’m doing a pretty good impersonation of Old Thumper, interpreting how he might behave if he came across Burt Reynolds and a group of canoe enthusiasts exploring some back-country waterway in the Ozarks and everyone is laughing their asses off and somewhere in my head is that last little vestige of sobriety, that nagging little Urkel voice that’s doing mental math out loud: “Well now, let’s see, Virgil. If you get to bed right now you’ll only get four hours of sleep and that’s not very much, so. . . .” I drown that annoying little bastard with a few shots of rye.
    It’s long after last call before the manager finally kicks us out and I’m out on the street with the crowd and guys are shoving each other and a couple of fights break out and the cops are circling the block like cruising sharks and someone decides we ought to head out to the river and party and I come up with what seems at the time to be a brilliant plan which is to skip sleeping altogether and head straight to work from the party.
    I’m right in the midst of putting Operation Drunken Shithead into action when I see her walking towards me and right away my heart is beating faster and I feel hollow inside because she’s the only one I’ve ever loved and she left me and it was my own damn fault and here she is now walking towards me like a Messenger of Hope and I know I’m going to blow this one before I even open my stupid mouth.
    “Virg,” she says, smiling, “It’s been a long time. What have you been up to?”
    “Still choking.”
    “I’m so sorry about your Dad.” She touches my shoulder and I want to hold her and bury my face in her hair and sob and beg her never to leave me again but I don’t.
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    And those words just hang there in space, weighted down with possibility and I want to cry out, “yes oh yes oh Christ you can save my soul,” but instead I give in to pettiness and pain and say something so crude I can’t even write it down and all she can do is start to cry and turn away and leave me alone again with the drunken laughter of the foolish and the damned.
    Why couldn’t she have come to me in the morning, or alone under starlight, or any other time when I’m so hurt and broken and lonely I would have wept and promised her everything? And I’d have meant it, too.
    I’m at the river and I’m pissed drunk just like everyone else clustered around the fire drinking and yelling and brawling and the firelight casts long, grotesque shadows that ripple along the stones of the beach and entwine themselves in the darkness of the trees and if you could just step out of yourself and take a sober look at this scene you’d wonder what it is that draws people to this river, this fire, this futile pursuit of oblivion, but I’m trapped in this moment now and things unfold as they must.
    A group of Neanderthals in a monstrous pickup truck are the self-appointed DJs for the evening; They have the speakers on the cab and the music cranked to an ear-splitting roar and they are playing Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry album over and over again and I wonder why these guys would spend so much money on a stereo system only to play such shitty music. My final mistake of the night is sharing my thoughts with them.
    The fourth time I hear, “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” I saunter over and engage the lead Troglodyte in what I hope will be a sophisticated discussion of popular music and I’ve got a pretty good opening worked out in my head but what spews out of my mouth is some drunken babble about how Dee Snider and his band blow goats and then I offer to loan them a couple of good mixed tapes I have so no one has to be assaulted by their crappy music anymore. The Bush-ape declines my offer by punching me in the face.
    I’m lying on my back and I can’t get up although I’m not trying too hard and the stars are shining down on me and I think they’re beautiful and I’m trying to get a good look at them but someone’s fist or boot keeps temporarily obscuring my view and I think about how much this is gonna hurt tomorrow and how I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut and how I’m not putting up much of a fight and wondering whether this guy will actually kill me.
    When I come to I’m in the cab of my truck which is parked in my driveway. Some friends I’ve got. Shit.
    I look at my face in the rearview mirror and I’m glad they didn’t wake my mom, though, ‘cause The Sasquatch sure made a mess of her little boy: my face is covered in dried blood and my right eye is swollen shut. I roll my tongue around my mouth and feel a hole where a tooth used to be. My head is pounding and it hurts when I breathe and I know it will hurt even more when I run which I’m going to have to do today all day long because when I look at my watch I see that it’s four in the morning: time to go to work.
    I stop at a 24-hour gas station and clean up my face as best I can and I know I reek like booze but I don’t know what else to do because anyone can be a chokerman, so if I don’t work someone else will and I need the money.
    The drive to work is sheer hell and I’m afraid I’m going to pass out but I make it in time; it’s still dark and Thumper’s not around when I pull onto the landing. I start greasing the skidder and I guess I must have dozed off because the next sensation I have is of being pulled out from under the machine by my legs.
    “Leave me alone, Thumper. Just run me over with the skidder.”
    But it’s not Thumper dragging my sorry ass over the dirt; it’s the foreman, and I feel my heart sink because Jurgen, apart from being one of the toughest men I’ve ever seen, is entirely devoid of humour. He takes his logging seriously and he doesn’t take shit from anyone.
    Jurgen looks at me for a minute and then he shakes his head. He sits down beside me and leans back against one of the skidder tires. It seems like forever before he finally says anything and I’m just sitting there feeling bad and wanting to die.
    At last he looks at me. “I knew your father,” he says, “did you know that?”
    I nod but don’t dare open my mouth to speak.
    “He was my friend for more than twenty years. I found his body, you know.”
    “I’m really sorry. . .”
    Jurgen’s look shuts me up. He’s not one for making speeches, so if he’s got something to say, it’s best just to listen.
    “Your dad, he drank too much. I knew this.”
    Jurgen shakes his head. “But I never said anything. That was a mistake. I gave you this job because of your dad, because I knew you needed the money. Because the goddamn company owed him something, owed you and your mother something, for all the years they took from him. I think now that was a mistake, too.”
    “No, it was really good of you. Look, I really messed up but I won’t do it again.”
    “Yes, you will. You will because this is not for you and you know it,” he says and I know he’s right.
    “You go home now. Come back tomorrow if you want to. Be sober if you come.”
    Jurgen looks around him at the dusty landing, the log deck, the skidder. “There’s nothing out here worth dying for. Go home.”
    The foreman watches as the taillights of the boy’s truck fade away into the distance. He picks up the radio transmitter. He will phone the boy’s mother, and then he will make a more difficult call he knows he should have made a long time ago.
    My mother is waiting for me when I pull into the driveway and seeing her seeing me makes me feel sick but she throws her arms around me and tells me that Jurgen called and then the owner called and I’m surprised at this.
    “He’s offered us some money. For Dad’s accident; I think Jurgen threatened him or something.”
    She smiles and I see tears sparkle in the corners of her eyes.
    “It’s quite a lot of money,” she adds.

    I’m sitting on the deck and it’s quiet and dark and I don’t know how all of this will turn out but I figure I owe Jurgen more than a thank you. I guess I will go to work tomorrow. Hell, I’ll work all summer and save up some money and in the fall, who knows? Maybe the local college is worth a shot.
    I lean back in my chair and look up at the stars and know I’ll never reach them but at least I’ve got a clear view.

Brief Bio:     Mike Carson is a full-time high-school teacher and part-time writer who would like to be a full-time writer and part-time teacher. Mike holds a B.A. (English Literature) from Simon Fraser University, and an M.Ed. (Curriculum) from the University of Northern British Columbia. He lives in Prince George with his wife, Lisa, and ten-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Matthew. His work has appeared in The London Magazine, Tall Tales and Short Stories, B.C. Outfitter Magazine, Otherwords (publication of the now defunct BC Festival of the Arts), and UNBC’s Reflections on Water.     “Choking” received Honourable Mention in the 2009 Surrey International Writers’ Conference Storyteller’s Award Contest.

News Story

    A summer day, bright and hot and clear blue. Little puffs of clouds were blown toward the River so quickly they frayed; above them, long strips of clouds moved slowly in the opposite direction.
    A pigeon winged down to a balcony. A white cat slept on the balcony in the complete relaxation of a cat in the sun. It flexed itself and, passing in a moment from lassitude to coiled energy, pounced. The bird was quicker and fluttered down to the street. The cat crouched at the very edge of the balcony, watching, its white paw still held out to strike.
    The street was quiet. It was residential and summer and the middle of the week.
    An elderly woman who was pulling a shopping cart stopped to talk to another woman who was sitting on her front steps. Both women wore stocking and black dresses with white collars. They spoke the patois of the bayou country.
    Two teenage girls wearing jeans and message T-shirts – “Peel me pinch me suck me – Louisiana crawfish” and “I may not be perfect but parts of me are excellent!” – sauntered along, ripe and ready but not quite knowing they were looking for it.
    A young man in a dark blue suit strode briskly along. He carried a briefcase, and though not handsome, looked neat and very presentable. The two elderly women looked after him with approval. The two girls did not even glance.
    A young man crossed the street. He was bearded, he wore tight jeans and a T-shirt, but there was still something meticulous about the way he looked. It was that the beard was coifed, there was a glint of gold at the neck and ear, the body was well tended to. Though he was white, he had an afro pick in his hip pocket. Two men ambling together at the other end of the block had the same details of appearance. Beside that, there was something enigmatically the same about the three of them.
    Rock music ripped up the quietness of the street. Their big box was heard before they were seen. A band of black boys came around the corner. In black jeans and white sneakers, their limber legs danced from pure exuberance.
    There was not much traffic on the street. The little green Vieux Carrè bus stopped at the corner and let off a young woman in Indian gear who hooked her finger through a coat hanger and carried a dress for success suit slung down her back, picked up a black cleaning lady who had been lost in the Bible while she waited. A Harley farted down the street. The biker was a wiry old man with cruel lines around his mouth and flat, hard eyes; long grey braids fell below his helmet. So that is what happens to Hell’s Angels when they grow old. A few cars and vans went by.
    A police car turned onto the street and cruised slowly. Suddenly it moved into the curb. The meaning was clear: someone was to be stopped. All the eyes on the street fastened on the car.
    The young man in the suit, still holding his briefcase, started to run. Looking back over his shoulder, he ran toward the corner. His knees pumped high.
    The police car jumped into higher speed and shot ahead, bumped up on the sidewalk, across it from curb to steps. Cut off, the young man raised his hands while the rest of him slumped.
    The two officers, both black, a man and a woman, quickly got out of the car. The male officer slammed the man against the flat wall of a Creole cottage and patted him down while the female officer looked into the briefcase.
    The man was put into the squad car. It backed off the sidewalk and drove away.
    There was nothing about it in the papers the next day.

In Media Res

        Night sounds muted by the kind of slight drizzled that hardly counts for rain in New Orleans. Through the window, over the balcony, across the street, five or six voices talking all at once, contentious, though it was not clear what the quarrel was about. A fine edge of hysteria cut through the other voices, a jabbering shriek. The other voices then seemed to be arguing over how to calm the one voice.
    “Take it easy...You’ll be all right...Let’s just get to the car....”
    “There’s something in the apartment to counter...For Chris’sake, shut up!”
    Screams, wild shrieks out of the very torso, out of the terrified, primitive brain; banging on metal.
    The framed scene showed in a circle of light that wavered in the rain. Across the street, a girl had thrown herself over the hood of a parked car and pounded on the metal. There were shadowy figures, male and female, behind her. She screamed without a break, but it was not just screaming – she was trying for words, yet it all came out a jumble.
    A light went on.
    “Oh God, she’ll wake up the whole street!”
    “Do you want the cops to come?”
    “I got the stuff on me. I’m getting out.” A male figure detached itself from the shadowy group and ran around the corner.
    The others pulled her off the car and tried to walk her down the street. Her legs gave under her bonelessly. She sat on the sidewalk screaming, and some words were coming clear: “....want to kill me....something to stop it....die....”
    “Can you guys carry her?” A female voice.
    She was hauled up spread-eagle by someone at each arm and leg. They dogtrotted off into the night.

The Price of Life

    I wonder what it will feel like when I shove the knife into T.J. Price’s chest. Will it be hard and crunchy as I bust through his ribs? Or will it go smooth like slicing through cookie dough? I wish I knew. But I suppose the surprise of it will make the deed more exciting.
    It’s damn cold out here. It’s like, January and all I’m wearing is a hoodie over a t-shirt, and baggy army pants. I love these pants. They belonged to my brother Garrett. I was real young, probably four, when he killed an armored car driver and ran off with like a shitload of dough. Didn’t get real far. Cops shot him dead in the fucking street. But what I really remember is what he told me as he sat on his bed, wearing these army pants and loading his .22 right in front of me. He was like, “Little dude, when you grow up, remember that in life it’s every man for himself. Survival of the fittest. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, no matter what the consequences.”
    He was seventeen when he blew the guy’s head off and the cops killed him. When Garrett’s clothes were returned to us, I kept the pants for when I was big enough to wear them. Something to remember him by. Something to give me courage when I would follow in his footsteps.
    Even though it’s not pouring rain, the tiny droplets of drizzle are pelting me as if the harsh wind wants to shoot me down. If there’s a God, maybe he knows what I’m gonna do. Too bad, man. Try and stop me.
    I’m standing on this ledge that has this big flowerpot on it. Totally doesn’t fit with the shithole concert venue it stands in front of in the shithole neighborhood, but maybe it does since it’s filled with old dirt and remnants of past floral inhabitants. Death in a pot. Sweet.
    Since I’m freezing my ass off, I think I’ll walk over to the other side of the bus that T.J. Price is sitting in all warm and dry and full of himself. Maybe the bus will block the wind. I walk around the back, looking for anyone watching, but no one is around. Just some bums shaking their cups of change. I look up into the back window of the bus, the shade pulled up, and there’s a dude playing Grand Theft Auto on a TV hanging from the ceiling. That game is so badass, you can kill people and crash stolen cars, and when the cops catch ya, you can just start all over again.
    I can tell it’s not T.J. Price playing it. The silhouette is bald and has a pointy nose. Price has long hair and a goatee. That bastard always gets the women, seriously, they always drool over him. It’s sick. Anyway, I snuck into the concert down in Chicago last night, since there’s no way in hell I’ll pay to see that bastard and his ‘back up band’ perform. I say back up because I’m sure he treats them like they’re nothing, seeing as he’s the one stealing all the attention. Yeah sure, he’s got pipes like no other human on earth, but it’s the way he dances all around on stage, banging his head, showing off how great he can sing, smiling at all the girls with that grin that says ‘Yeah I’m sexy, keep staring at my big dick,’ and he unbuttons his shirt slowly throughout the show as he’s all sweaty and gross. Fucking bastard.
    I drove all the way up here to Milwaukee because I knew it would be easier to kill him here. I’ve mentioned what a shithole place this is, and after all, the old apartment of a serial killer is down the street. As I was leaving home, I told my mom that I might not be coming back – ever. She said okay. After my dad was killed during a drug deal by undercover cops and Garrett was killed by cops, she stopped giving a shit about anything. It’s alright by me, since I could drop out of high school and have full access to her extensive alcohol and weed stash.
    I have nothing to lose, no matter what happens tonight.
    The bus blocks the wind a little, but I can’t help shivering and wishing I had worn a jacket over my hoodie. There’s a little ledge where I can sit with my back to the bus and my legs dangling into the side parking lot. I wait.
    Waiting is the hardest part. More than once I think about getting up and banging on the bus door so I can storm in and take care of business, but instead I shift position on the ledge so I can see the bus door. I just realized that the big window on the side of the bus has the shade up and I can see clearly inside. There he is, T.J. Price, grinning that stupid grin as he talks to someone I can’t see. All I can hope for is that he comes out - alone. I want it to be just him and me. This is our business.
    T.J.’s band isn’t real well known, no matter how many people worship him. I mean, he’s not like Justin Timberlake or someone like that. He’s metal, or at least he thinks he is, so his band is considered ‘big’ in this genre, I guess. But not so big that the band members don’t sometimes hang around their official online chat room. Total nerds those fans are, man. I only went once. Okay maybe twice...or three times...aw fuck it. I’m not a nerd though, so don’t even think it. Anyway, my bro had this old computer he stole from like a mom and pop electronics store or something and did some sneaky wiring to snag some free Internet – something he was real good at doing. Besides shooting things. Needless to say, he taught me everything, so that’s how I got cable for my mom too, she likes to sit and watch sappy movies and get drunk. Anyway, back when I actually respected T.J. and his guys, I decided to check out what the nerdy fans were up to. I went by the name of DragonFlame because dragons are badass and fire is even more badass. I’ll never forget the time I happened to be around when the man himself decided to come for a chat.
    “Hey, hey!” he said when he came in. Everyone greeted him as if God himself had just appeared, and I’ll admit, I was pretty damn excited to see him. T.J. Price wanted to hang with his fans. How cool is that? I mean, the dude is seriously a killer singer. And no, I never kissed the ground he walked on like all the others do. Anyway, I let everyone drool over him for a while before deciding to send him a private message. That way my words wouldn’t get lost in the mess of adoration. It went a little something like this:

     hi TJ
     hey
     how’s it going
     great
     you sound really great on the new album
     killer vocals man
     yeah thanx
     can I ask you something
     ok
     I’d really like to be a singer someday just like you
     can’t afford lessons or nothing so maybe you can give me some tips
     you know I figure it’s better to learn a few things from someone like you

    The pause was too long. The droolfest in the main room was looking pretty overwhelming for T.J., so I hoped he’d see that at least one of his fans was actually sane.

     people always ask me that
     I WANNA SING LIKE YOU TJ TEACH ME
     what the hell am I supposed to tell people??
     I’m the only one who can sing like me
     I’m tired of making up shit to answer that question every night on tour

    I stared at the screen. It wasn’t like I had asked for a full-blown lesson. I’m the only one who can sing like me. What a crock.

     dude that’s cold
     you come in here to supposedly chat with your fans but instead you bite my head off and soak in everyone bowing down to you
     you’re bowing down too so you shouldn’t be talking
     like hell
     I just asked you a simple question
     you say no one sings like you but I think that’s because you don’t let anyone sing like you
     exactly. You’re a genius
     you’re a dick Price
     consider yourself one fan short, and one day you’ll be sorry you treated me like shit

    I left the chat room without waiting for a response.
    The bus door opening just scared the crap out of me, and I grip the knife that I got hidden in the front pocket of my hoodie. But it’s just Dan, the guitarist, walking towards me with a bag over his shoulder. If he tells me to take a hike, maybe I’ll kill him too.
    “What are you doing out here in the cold?” he asks. He doesn’t even have a coat on at all, so he’s already shivering. I realize that my whole body is vibrating like mad.
    “I’m...uh...waiting for T.J. I want to meet him.”
    Now the rest of the band is exiting the bus and walking inside! I’m gonna miss my chance. I stand up, watching T.J. proudly stride up the ramp with his arm around the shoulders of a chick. I grip the knife again.
    “Did you drive here? Is there a place you can go to keep warm for a while?”
    “Uh...no. I...took the bus.” It’s a lie, but I did park far away so my car won’t be identified right away. “Can I please meet T.J. and the others? I won’t be in the way, I just want to shake their hands.”
    Dan smiles. “Yeah, I guess you can come on in with me. You’ll get real sick being out here waiting for doors to open, which won’t be for like...” he looks at his watch, “two hours.” He sticks out his hand and I release the knife in my pocket to shake. “What’s your name?”
    “Greg.” Crap, I should have come up with a fake name.
    “Nice to meet you, Greg. Follow me. Maybe we can get you something hot to drink.”
    Wow. This dude is really cool. He is the example all musicians should follow. I wish he didn’t have to see what I was going to do to his band mate. Or maybe he won’t give a damn since I’m sure he knows what an ass T.J. Price is.
    He takes me into the side door that leads into a dim room with a few couches that look like a blast from the past. There are some of those big black boxes that bands use to pack their gear stacked in various corners. On one side of the room is what I think is a bathroom that’s probably never been cleaned, and the other side has the door that leads to the stage. My stomach growls at the pizzas on a table against the wall.
    Dan tells me to help myself, and soon returns with some hot chocolate from somewhere else in the building. “I know chocolate and pizza is a weird combo, but it’s all they got around here.”
    The drink is pretty bland, but anything hot right now is perfect. “Thanks dude, this is really cool of you.”
    “No problem.”
    Two other band members are chowing down on pizza along with some other women, and guys that I figure are roadies. No T.J. though. He’s probably off somewhere having it with his chick. Better be good because it’ll be his last time.
    Now that we finished eating, I’m meeting the others in the band. They shake my hand and tell me it’s cool if I hang here until doors open to the ticket holders. Dan says, “Dunno where T.J. went off to. Probably the bar.”
    “I’m gonna see if they have some water at the bar,” I say. “Hot chocolate doesn’t exactly quench my thirst.”
    I walk out the door that leads out into the venue and past the few steps that go up to the stage. The bar is in the back, and sure enough, there’s T.J. Price chatting with his woman. He’s wearing a long sleeve black shirt, black leather pants, and a black beanie on his head. I grip my knife as I approach. Do I just stab him through his spine, or do I talk to him and make sure he knows why he’s going to die?
    I ask the bartender for some water, and I stand at the bar about a foot away from my victim. He’s stopped talking to the hot chick to take a drink of his beer, so I’ll say something.
    “T.J. Price, right?” I look up at him, as I only come up to his shoulder. He could probably kick my ass.
    “Yeah,” he says. “Did you sneak in or something?”
    “No.” I think I sounded snippy, but I’m nervous, I’m pissed. “Dan let me in.”
    “Alright dude, I was just joking.” He smiles a little before taking another sip.
    I’m gripping the knife so hard my hand hurts. I want so bad to just whip it out and slice right through his heart, but I can’t, he’s not facing me. The chick murmurs something about getting some food, and T.J. declines to join her. Now it’s just him and me. Even the bartender has disappeared.
    “Do you remember a few weeks ago when you came into your band’s chat room?” My voice is barely above a whisper.
    “Yeah,” he says.
    “Do you remember someone sending you a private message, asking for some tips on how to be a better singer? Do you remember how you told him off with your badass attitude? That person was me.”
    Now he’s facing me. He raises one eyebrow, his beer bottle an inch from his chin. “Yeah,” he says, just as quietly as I had spoke. “I remember that.”
    “You remember how I said that one day you’d be sorry you acted like a dick? That time is now.”
    Just as the muscles in my right arm tense to pull the knife out and bust through his chest, the loud blast of guitar and drums sends my heart up and almost through my throat. T.J. moves toward the stage. “Gotta do sound check kid. We can talk later.”
    Run. Run and stab him in the back. Stab him so many times that the doctors will lose count when examining his corpse. Watch him bleed all over, in front of everyone, who cares if I get caught. It will be done.
    But I’m standing here, frozen as if my feet are stuck in concrete, just watching him walk away. Taking a deep breath, I finally bring the knife out, close to my body and take fast strides towards him, but he makes it to the stage, grabs the mike, and belts out a song with the band. Goddamnit.
    I go backstage and plop myself onto one of the nasty couches, replacing the knife in my hoodie pocket, and now I stare at the wall. Garrett’s probably watching me, here in spirit or something, laughing his ass off because I hesitated. “Little dude,” he’d say, “don’t be a pussy. Rid the world of another pompous ass. Do what you gotta do, man.”
    Garrett knew all about not being a pussy. He wanted to join the army, serve his country, give our mom something to be proud of. But he failed the test three times since he dropped out of school and didn’t know anything except video games and how to clean and shoot his .22. The government didn’t much like his criminal record either, so Garrett decided to use his weapon knowledge in a different way. He lost his goal, and I will lose mine too, I just know it. I can never be as good as T.J., he said so himself. No one can sing like him. But you know what? I’m gonna make sure no one ever has him as competition. Even if I have to practice singing in a jail cell.
    Sound check is finally done. They all come back to the room, talking loudly about their songs, about how small the stage is, about how lame it is that they can’t play on the big stage, about how cool it is to have their girlfriends there. The four women are getting as many glances as possible at T.J.’s leather-covered ass when the other guys aren’t looking. Jesus, these women need buckets to catch their drool...
    T.J. decides he’s suddenly hungry and wants a sandwich since all the pizza is gone. “I’ll walk over to the convenient store across the street,” he says. “Be back in a few.”
    Barely a minute passes before I sneak out the door behind him. The cold air bites me hard as if it remembers me and wants to make sure I don’t get away again. T.J. is at the bottom of the ramp, and I remain at least 20 feet behind him past the bums at the bus stop, across the street and into the store.
    It’s really bright in here, but nice and warm. Is this a good place to kill him? It would be so much better outside where I can leave his body out in the cold then make a run for it, but hey, there’s only two or three people here plus the cashier. Nothing can interrupt me here.
    T.J. is standing at the cooler in a back corner of the store that holds the variety of sandwiches, picking up one, putting it down, then picking up another. I walk around all the shelves to the back where the soda and juice coolers line the walls. I stare into the center of his back and bring the knife out again, this time without hesitation. Step by careful step I make my way down this last aisle towards him. I’m five steps away. I bring my arm back with all the strength I can muster from everywhere in my body.
    A gunshot. The three other customers scream and dive to the tile floor. The cashier is slumped over on the floor behind the counter as a masked man empties the cash register. I’m frozen again.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I see T.J. clutching the sandwich cooler and staring at me. I realize that I still have the knife raised above my shoulder, pointed in his direction. He looks from me to my weapon, and back again. I hear the cha-ching of the cash register closing. Where did the fucking robber guy go?
    Another gunshot. The glass of one soda cooler door shatters just as I’m tackled to the ground. I squeeze my eyes shut, I have no idea what the hell this robber is gonna do to me since I have a weapon too. Wait. My knife. I dropped it. He’s on top of me, and I’m doomed.
    There are more gunshots, but they’re towards the front of the store. Is it the cops? Some woman is screaming loud enough to shatter the damn windows, but a bullet shuts her up. Wait. If the madman is still up there, then who the fuck...?
    I open my eyes to see T.J. hovering over me and breathing hard like a watchdog. There are beads of sweat forming on his face and his eyes are wide, staring down the aisle. I hear the clicking of a gun reloading, a sound I know all too well. T.J. continues to stare.
    “Where’s the weapon?” I hear. The robber is at the end of the aisle, the direction I came from. I look on the floor around me but can’t find it. T.J.’s eyes are now on me. Why is he looking at me like that? It’s like...he’s sad or something. This is more of a time to be shitting your pants in fear, not sad.
    There it is! The knife is behind T.J. The guy is demanding we send it his way or our heads will be splattered all over the nice white linoleum.
    “It’s behind you,” I whisper to T.J. “Let me get it.”
    “No.” He creeps off of me and picks up the knife. “Stay there,” he says to me. He holds up his free arm as if expecting me to attack.
    I’m sitting here in the middle of the aisle, a freak with a gun behind me, and a freaked out man with a knife in front of me. This whole plan is going real good.
    “Give me the damn knife!” the masked man yells. But T.J. keeps looking at me, then at the guy, then the knife, then me again. What the hell dude? Do you want him to kill us?
    Holy shit! He’s pounced and now he’s got my arm and is pulling me towards the door. I can’t even stand up. He’s pulling so hard and fast. I’m a fucking human mop. The cans of soup and fruit on the shelves are exploding. Bam bam bam. The bullets are following us. T.J.’s almost at the door.
    Bam.
    Blood. Man, it’s totally spilling out of his left side! All over his hands, the floor, the door. Whoa, another shot just missed his head! Now T.J. is half out on the sidewalk, the shards of the glass door spread out beneath him. I totally fall right on top of him and my hands are all sliced up from the glass. And after all this, T.J.’s still got the knife in a death grip.
    I pry it from his bloody fingers and don’t think twice. This knife was meant to kill, and kill it shall.
    Right in the chest, and it’s hard like really stale bread. My victim hits the floor, the gun sliding towards the back of the store. Out and in, out and in, over and over. I can’t believe the blood, this is absolutely insane. Fucking unbelievable. My arm is tired and the guy is beyond dead. I drop the knife and stare. I wanted a corpse. I got one.
    I crawl back towards T.J., who is still writhing slowly on the ground. I’m smearing the dead guy’s blood as I crawl, like a trail of death. The glass shards don’t even matter now; my hands and knees are so bloody, what’s a little more? He’s staring at me again, but no sadness now. If I know anything about expressions, I’d say he’s relieved. I didn’t kill him. The robber didn’t kill him.
    But most importantly, I didn’t kill him.
    The cops are here. I tell them what happened. I came to Milwaukee to see T.J. and his band. I hung out with them. Followed him to the store. Guy robs it. Kills people. Shoots T.J. I kill the robber. They wanna know where the knife came from, but before I could tell them, the paramedics start putting T.J. in the ambulance. I hear him yell, “Wait!”
    I look in his direction and he points to me. “That kid...he...”
    Was gonna kill me? Go ahead man. Say it. It’s the Goddamned truth.
    “...he saved my life. Go easy on him.”
    Holy shit. I think my jaw just hit the concrete.
    They lift him into the ambulance. “Sing kid!” he calls out. “Just sing, that’s all you gotta do.”
    They close the doors and speed away. Now I’m sitting in the back of the cop car, singing a little tune I’ve practiced endlessly - written by the one and only T.J. Price.

Through the Ice

    They stood on a windswept rise just above the brook. Along the shore ice gripped the cattails and lily pads and skunk cabbages. From there the brook ice stretched out glistening under the dim cold winter sun. Blueyed Gurty looked up at her father.
    Can we walk out on the ice Dad, asked Gurty.
    Father coughed into his hand before answering.
    Why sure you can go out on the ice. It’s plenty thick this time of year.
    The wind chill blew at them from the far shore. On the far shore, the trees sparkled covered with the remnants of last night’s ice storm. The sky hung blue, but a lifeless dull blue, dulled by the cold. They started down the slope toward the brook, their boots swishing loudly through the long stiff indian grass.
    Walking on the ice is a magical thing, said Father. You walk on the water. Sort of like Jesus.
    But there was no ice under Jesus to hold him up.
    Sure, said Father. But there’s water under you holding you up. It just happens to be frozen. So it is just like Jesus. It’s all just water after all. All walking on the cold. On the solid water.
    She looked up at him quizzically.
    That makes no sense Dad.
    He smiled and she smiled back, as she always did.
    They reached the edge of the brook and started out across the ice. The blue surface stretched before them riddled here and there with darker blue jagged lines, as though they were cracks that had healed. They went out.
    There’s a void under us, said Father. Just imagine. A black cold void full of water. Like I said this is a magical thing, to be out here. A magical thing.
    The wind chill swept past. Gurty pulled up her hood and got out ahead of her father. The ice groaned under them.
    What’s that sound, said Gurty back over her shoulder to her father.
    The ice, he said. The ice is talking. The ice always talks.
    The groaning and crackling surrounded them.
    What’s it saying, called back Gurty.
    You should not be on me is what it’s saying, he said.
    You should not be on me.
    Gurty suddenly felt flushed with slight fear.
    Are you sure this is safe Dad, she called back over her shoulder.
    Safe as anything else, he said. Hey—don’t get out so far ahead of me.
    I’m okay.
    Why are you walking on me, groaned the ice. Is it not bad enough that I lay here all winter, over this bed of ice cold water, with these icier winds blowing over my top? And you come to weigh me down further. I am only so strong—
    But I’m walking on you because it is magical.
    Magical, groaned the ice. A crackling sound spread out around Gurty.
    Magical maybe—but I am only so strong.
    Instantly the ice under Gurty gave way with a sharp crack and she shot feet first straight down into the cold black water without even a splash. Father leapt forward to the edge of the hole.
    Gurty, he called into the jagged hole, his arms waving.
    Gurty—
    The ice crumbled beneath him with a series of snapping groans and he was forced back from the edge of the hole. Not knowing what else to do, he broke into a run back up the mile to the house. Never before had his feet felt so heavy. Never before had his legs moved so slowly. Never before had the tall dry grass clutched at his feet so strongly. Once at the house at last, he called 911.
    My daughter’s gone through the ice, he gasped.
    Yes—through the ice—down the brook—
    In a flash a gleaming red crash truck and sleek police car came to his house. He came out.
    Down to the brook, he cried. My Gurty’s under the ice down by the brook.
    Pile in, said the policeman as he got into the back of the crash truck. Another policeman, a fireman and a diver already sat there wearing grim faces. Father got in and the truck jounced its way across the stubbly field and down the rough indian grass slope into the teeth of the wind chill to the edge of the brook. The truck jounced so hard father hung on tight to keep from being hurled out. At the edge of the brook, they got out.
    There, said Gurty’s father, pointing. She went in under there.
    The hole lay gaping a hundred yards out onto the ice. The diver got out of the crash truck wearing a black wet suit and an aqualung. The fireman and policemen checked his gear.
    I’ll get her, he said.
    Are you sure, said Father.
    Yes I will, he said. Just wait.
    Wait, said the policeman. Here wait you need your safety line—
    He clutched up a coil of white rope from the crash truck.
    No no, said the diver. There’s no time to waste. That line would just slow me down. Got to move fast—I’ve gone under the ice before. I’ll be okay.
    He ran out onto the ice and the groaning came up around him and as he approached the hole the ice began cracking and he also, as Gurty had, went down feet first into the water through the ice. But he’d planned it that way. He would be safe. He had a wet suit. He had an aqualung. The diver swam under the ice and the dim glow from above diffused into the water around him. He swam away from Gurty’s hole and dove to the muddy bottom. He felt his way back and forth in a zigzag pattern across the bottom and then went back up to the bottom of the ice. He ran a gloved hand over the underside of the ice. How terrible, he thought. A girl’s under here somewhere. The diver had training. He knew how drowning worked; how the panic of being trapped underwater would fold itself over the girl like a heavy wet blanket and she would breathe again at last—but breathe water. Breathe death. But the diver was all right under the ice. He breathed freely. The bubbles from the aqualung spread out over the bottom of the ice. He kept on looking for a while. He had time.
    He ran his fingers over the smooth hardpacked bottom.
    He ran his fingers against the smooth solid ice.
    He kept looking carefully, but then he realized—the cold was freezing up the valve of the aqualung. He knew this could happen if a valve malfunctioned but it never had really ever happened before that he knew of. Slowly the air came less and less through his mouthpiece. He cursed how lucky he had become, to be the only one he’d ever heard of that this had happened to. The aqualung valve was breaking down, as all mechanical things strain to do. The air came harder and harder and then stopped. So the valve of the aqualung had malfunctioned. All machinery strains to malfunction. Every car strains to break down and leave you stranded at the side of the road with no phone, in the middle of nowhere. Every lawn mower strains not to start when the humidity is high as the overgrown grass. Every snow blower strains to jam, to burn out and force you into shoveling. Every valve strains to freeze and clog with ice and to stop passing air.
    Panic rose in him. He held his breath. Pain filled his lungs. He lost his bearings. He did not know where his hole was. This wasn’t supposed to happen. When things happen that aren’t supposed to you can’t think any more. Which way to the hole? He pushed against the underside of the ice and punched his fists into the ice but it stretched above him hard as steel. The panic in him swept toward the breath hold breakpoint; funny. Funny. Funny the things you think. This was the official term. Breath hold breakpoint. What a phrase, what a phrase. He’d learned it in diving school.
    The breath hold breakpoint raced toward him. His head and lungs seemed ready to explode. He flailed his arms pounding at the ice as his stomach began to cramp up hard and vomit crept up from far below, as he would not allow himself to think he was about to die.
    Back at the crash truck the policemen and Gurty’s father stood wringing their hands.
    He has to find her, said father.
    He should have come up by now, said a policeman.
    They waited. They radioed for more help. In time another crash truck, a fire truck and two more police cars set parked on the indian grass with the wind chill blowing over them.
    One more diver went down and found nothing.
    Two more joined him and still found nothing.
    I don’t know what to do, said the fire chief. Your daughter and my diver. They’re both lost. We can’t drag the brook because of the ice—
    My Gurty, breathed father.
    My Gurty.
    My diver.
    What are we going to do?
    There’s nothing to do.
    We’ve got to wait until spring.
    They’re gone.
    Just let go.
    Because they’re gone.
    After several hours they left the scene. There was no more point to being there. The police chief and fire chief would spend days doing paperwork to make the deaths all official and legal. The next day the newspaper would scream the headlines TWO LOST UNDER THE ICE.
    TWO LOST UNDER THE ICE.
    A memorial service was held for Gurty at the small green church miles from the house and the relatives gathered around, the brothers, the sisters; they stayed a few days, and while they were there, talk and food filled the hours. But then they were gone. Father sat alone in his house. Father balled up the newspaper that screamed TWO LOST UNDER THE ICE and threw it across the room and it lay in the corner of the room until fifty years later well after his death when the abandoned house surrounded by miles of barren fields finally collapsed as all empty houses collapse in time. Empty houses strain to collapse the same way machinery strains to break down. Boards loosened and fell. Porches sagged and tilted. Glass broke and roofs filled with holes. Gutters hung sloping to the ground. All the paint weathered away. Every nail strained to pull out and be free. Every ceiling fell. Every two by four buckled. The shell of a house finally fell in protest at having been left alone. The new owners of the property finally bulldozed the rubble under, as all things are bulldozed under in time.
    But now the wind blew over the ice, over the holes they had gone through, in the pitch dark of the night. The cold stitched shut the holes overnight. The two lay under there drifting among the winter fish. The harsh days came and went. Light snow fell. The wind never let up. The ice grew thicker as the winter went on. It stretched tight blueveined over the water. No one came down to the ice again that winter. The police chief’s plan was to search for the bodies in the spring, after the ice melted. No point in thinking about it now. Father drank wine every day to forget his daughter out there under the ice. Good heavy Hungarian red wine; Egri Bikaver. It got so cold that winter that birds froze solid in the trees overnight. Each night when the air was at its coldest the icy moon stared down bright white, its face void of thought. The cold stars twinkled silently. The planets shone steadily. The ice cold air held it all up; the solid ice cold air. The birches by the brook stood covered in ice. The sleet blew in, then out. Snow came and went. The snow lay clumped in the indian grass. The days and weeks crept by. The winter clamped down icy tight on the brook and the woods and the fields. Father sat every night in the kitchen alone, drumming his fingers on the black-streaked tabletop.
    He had told her how safe it was to go out on the ice.
    Like Jesus, he had said.
    Just like Jesus.
    He should have been leading the way, he thought.
    He should have gone through the ice instead.
    He gazed out the window across the barren field that surrounded his lonely house with tears streaming down his cheeks, but he stood silent.
    Father never cried.
    Spring came. The days grew longer. The winds grew warmer. The sun thinned the ice. The time to look for Gurty neared.
    Gurty, said Father at the table with his wine.
    I let you drive the car when you were thirteen. On the highway, of all places. One hundred miles an hour you drove. Crazy, crazy. I said slow down, slow down—but you just laughed. And I laughed with you.
    I let you stay out all night when you went to the prom. I didn’t trust that boy but I knew you could handle him.
    I told you go, have fun. Have all the fun you can. When you came home the next day we laughed as you told me how foolishly clumsy the boy had been.
    I let you row the canoe alone on the brook when you were ten. So what that it tipped over. You got a fast swimming lesson. You stayed safe through it all. You came back, laughing. You got back into the canoe. You rowed to the shore. You stood before me soaked, laughing.
    I let you cry all you wanted when God took your mother; you cried enough for the both of us until at last we could smile again.
    But then I let you walk out on the ice—
    I should have gone out ahead.
    I should be under the ice.
    Not you.
    After enough of the heavy wine he lay on the bottom of the brook looking up where she drifted there against the bottom of the ice, her hair loosely floating in the water, her body outlined by the soft glow coming down through.
    Beautiful, he thought.
    I never realized she was so beautiful.
    The earth tilted forward toward springtime. The brook slowly thawed. The ice slowly dissipated. The surface of the water stretched like a gone ceiling over a great room full of water where you could drift up and up and up forever, back up into the clear warm air. But she did not. She did not spring out of the water all whole and alive.
    Instead they dragged the brook with great black hooks. We have to do it this way, said the Mayor.
    But—she’ll get all mangled—don’t do it this way.
    It’s the only way, said the mayor.
    Yes, said the police chief.
    That’s right, said the fire chief.
    Here, the mayor said to father. Come sit in the truck and let us do our job.
    Father said no, not with hooks like this—they will pierce her in her thighs in the belly in the throat and they will pull her up, stretch and rip her flesh, rip free and let her plummet to the bottom again only to be dragged up again—no, its that diver who’d going to get all torn up like that don’t think of Gurty like that think of the diver impaled through the eye socket and dragged up, his stiff blackclad body being pulled up into the boats. But not her. Don’t rip and tear my Gurty that way. Don’t pull her into the boat stiff bloated rockhard and dead.
    And he got his wish.
    They used the hooks, but uselessly.
    They found no one.
    They dragged for three days. The state police made the final try. At last they brought their white boat in. They wore long faces.
    There’s no use, said the mayor.
    No, said the fire chief.
    They belong to the brook now.
    Everyone left and the summer sun swept over the sparkling brook through the months, and the trees and bushes and grasses on the slope down to the brook grew lush, the humid nights dotted with lightning bugs, until another winter came, and another summer, and a winter again, back and forth back and forth forever. Father paid to have a stone put into Hope cemetery for Gurty. He bought a plot and all. For her remembrance. He kept flowers by the stone all year round. She grew whole and alive to father when he stood there by the grave. At last he came to the grave on a day like the day he let her walk out on the ice, and he had followed behind, when he should have led the way.
    He should have been the one to fall through the ice.
    Come on, she called back, laughing.
    He strained to keep up.
    Come on, she said.
    He strained to get ahead of her.
    He passed her; he got ahead of her at last; he stepped out onto the empty grave. Never before had he stepped on the grave. The wind chill swept over father and the stone and the frost-heaved ground crunched under his feet. Father stepped onto the grave and the ground groaned cracked and snapped, and he went down feet first through the sudden hole, a hole round, smooth, and deep, and he and Gurty were together again and the hole sealed over above them and there was no need for panic, for she was there, alive, whole and beautiful; they could breathe easily under there; no one could touch them under there; he never came up again.

Jim Meirose bio

    His short work has appeared in many literary magazines and journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, South Carolina Review, and Witness.

    A chapbook of his short stories has a released in October 2010 by Burning River.

    His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and the Shirley Jackson Award. One of his stories was cited in the O. Henry awards anthology.

The Donut Party

    “So, do you collect comic books or jazz albums,” Tim politely asked Omar, the new employee in our market’s produce department.
    Omar was stacking apples at the time; he stopped and leaned against the apple boxes upon his produce cart. “I fucking hate jazz music and I’ve never read a comic book in my life.”
    “Well, you just look like you would collect one of the two,” Tim stammered.
    “What in the fuck makes me look like I collect either one? Do I look like a fucking dork?”
    Tim took a step back, turned and was ready to leave but decided to make one more attempt to make friends. “Well, no. But everybody collects something. Right?”
    “Are you special needs or something?” Tim gave no response, just a blank stare. “You don’t want to know what I collect, kid. It would make your stomach turn.”
    “I was just trying to make small talk. You’re new and I was just trying to introduce myself. Hi. I’m Tim. I work on the front end.” He extended his hand out in an effort to shake hands.
    Omar straightened his long figure off of the apple boxes in an effort to put a little distance between them. “I don’t shake hands... not because I am worried that your douche baggery is somehow contagious, although it my be, that is not the point, but strictly for the fact that shaking hands is an invention of ‘the man.’ It was introduced to America by Sir Walter Raleigh as a tool of deception, to make the Native Americans believe that the white man was trustworthy and that they viewed the Indians as fucking equals.”
    “So, are you Native American?” Tim asked, uncomfortably, as though he may have offended the new employee.
    “No, I’m fucking Jewish,” he went back to stacking apples. “Can’t you tell?” his voice trailing off into the distance.
    Omar was no longer a practicing Jew, but an atheist. Although he looked Jewish, with long, black, wavy hair that came down past his shoulders and a long black beard. He was tall and slender, had a prominent nose and dark brown eyes hidden behind thick-lensed eyeglasses, with hard, black, plastic frames that looked like they came out of the 1950s. He was originally from Vermont but lived in Tulsa for 3 years now, attending TU as a graduate art student. His transportation was a rusty ten-speed, even though Tulsa was an unfriendly city for bicyclers.
    Tulsa was and always had been, inundated with squirrels; they were everywhere, so needless to say, so were their corpses, littering the streets throughout the town. After living in Tulsa for a few months, Omar began collecting pictures of squirrel casualties with his Polaroid camera and filing them away in dead-squirrel photo journals that he intended on using for his graduate art exhibit. He had four albums, each categorized by location of homicide when the photo was taken: “One Step from Freedom,” “U-turn,” “Oblivious,” and “Obliterated.”
    Over the years his squirrel pictures acquired a cult status among his friends with people frequently stopping by to see his work. He would occasionally sell a photo for the right price and give some of his prize photos as birthday gifts to his closest friends. There were several that he kept framed and were not for sale at any price, pictures like: “Arnold waves to heaven,” “Gabe blows his top,” and “Kirby #3 discovers roller blades.”
    Omar was a very difficult person to make friends with, because he held nothing back when it came to speaking his mind. What many would be thinking (but would not say) in a typical social setting, Omar addressed without fail. Most people hated him for his veracious honesty, but if you could see through his insecurities he was truly a genuine person. Every Monday afternoon at 1 pm, Omar held a tea party for his closest friends. If you were privileged enough to be invited to “Onsies,” you knew that you had fallen into his good graces.
    Omar bathed once a week, just before “Onsies,” and because he was traveling on bicycle in the Tulsa heat, by the end of the week he usually smelled pretty ripe. Omar claimed he would like to bathe more frequently but he had marijuana plants growing in his bathtub, so he chose to bathe in a large galvanized tub that sat in the corner of his living room. Not that we ever saw him, it was just understood what the tub was used for because there was a washcloth draped over the side, a long-handled, scrub-brush hanging through one of the metal loop handles and a yellow rubber duck that sat damp on the window ledge next to the tub dripping water onto the hard wood floor during our “Onsie” meetings.
    In December of 2007, Tulsa faced one of the worst ice storms of the century; power was out across the entire city for several days. Some people were without heat, electricity and phones for up to two weeks. Everybody was affected to some degree. At the organic supermarket, people were irritable and short with each other.
    A few days after the storm we reopened the store. While Omar and I were walking to lunch from the back room, an elderly woman approached us from the bulk aisle. (In an organic market, many items are sold in bulk from large plastic containers that you open at the bottom and allow gravity to push the food out of the container until you have filled your bag to the desired height and then you release the handle to stop the flow.) The elderly woman approached us with a baffled and irritable look upon her face, “How does this work?” she said as she shook the plastic bag at Omar. Without hesitation, Omar quipped, “You open the bag from the top, place it over your head and close it off firmly around your neck. Breathe in and out rapidly until it’s all over and you are out of your wrinkled misery.” Of course Omar was reprimanded for the comment and several days later he was called back into the break room to get reprimanded once again by our manager.
    “Omar,” he said, “we have to have a talk.”
    “What, fucking now?” Omar said as he shrugged his shoulders and hung his head.
    “Omar, you have been reprimanded for rudeness and your social skills are horrendous. You don’t bathe and your odor offends the customers. Now I have to address your work attire.”
    “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? You told us a few days ago that we would not have to be back in uniform until everybody had their power turned back on and could begin washing their clothes again.”
    Our manager was beginning to get flustered. “Those,” he gestured at Omar with both hands, “are not clothes you work in.”
    “No,” Omar murmured, “the’re my favorite Jammies.” Omar was wearing a red, plaid pair of pajama bottoms with holes in the knees, a striped pajama top with the dominant color of yellow, and slippers that looked like small hedgehogs with eyes and a tails.
    “Exactly, Omar, they are pajamas. Pajamas and slippers. When I said you didn’t have to wear your uniform, I just assumed everyone would understand that t-shirt and jeans would be preferred. Not pajamas.”
    Omar leaned back against the table in the break room and twisted his beard as he thought. “But you never clarified that.”
    “Your right, Omar. I didn’t clarify it because it’s common sense. You’re hanging by a thread, Omar. If you need this job, then you need to quit alienating your coworkers and start reaching out to make them feel like you want to be part of the team. Everybody considers you the biggest prick they have ever met. If you don’t pull a rabbit out of your hat quick, then you’re going to be looking for another job.”
    As our manager stormed from the room, I could tell Omar was embarrassed and worried about loosing his job. “I don’t need this job, but I like working here. Everybody is pretty cool actually; I just hate trying to be nice. I think it is a stupid thing that society requires from us when we are living in “the man’s” world.” I felt bad for him because he genuinely felt this way; it wasn’t an act.
    The following morning was Omar’s day off; his face was long and miserable as he walked into the store in his pajamas with two large boxes of donuts, his spirit broken by “the man.” He walked into our manager’s office.
    “Hey, I thought we might throw a donut party this morning,” Omar said mumbling, afraid somebody might hear him. It looked painful for him to try and smile. “I bought two dozen donuts for the crew, just to, you know, lift everybody’s spirits. It’s been a tough week on all of us.”
    “Really, Omar. You bought donuts for the crew. Seriously?” our manager asked. Omar looked to the ground as he shook his head, ‘yes.’ “I can’t believe this,” he reached into his desk and handed Omar the company camera, “take this back to the break room with the donuts. I have to capture this once-in-a-life-time affair. I’ll round up the troops and meet you back there in ten minutes.”
    In the break room, Omar refused to say much. Our manager knew it embarrassed him, so he continually threw praise toward Omar for his “effort to lift the store’s spirit,” with a donut party on his day off.
    After everybody dispersed and went back to work, Omar and I sat in the break room discussing his job. “These fucking donuts set me back a good ten-bucks.”
    “Well, it probably saved your job.”
    “They didn’t even finish them all. I should of just bought one-and-a-half dozen, saved a few bucks. Man, I feel like my principles have been raped. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so disgraced.”
    I didn’t know how to console him. He was utterly defeated and there was no way to lift his spirits. “I don’t know what to say, Omar. You did the right thing. You had to, to keep your job.” I stood and told him I had to get back to work. “Do you want me to take this back up to the office?” I asked him as I held the company camera.
    “No, No. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take it up there after I clean all this shit up.”
    The following morning, Omar failed to show up for work. Our store manager seemed somewhat relieved even though the stress on the crew was strong. Our boss would not have to fire Omar after all, instead he could list this as “job abandonment” on Omar’s part, leaving the store safe from any wrongful termination lawsuit.
    Near the end of my shift, I was called into the manager’s office. My boss was extremely hot, doing everything he could to keep his anger under control. He shook the camera at me, “did you know about these?” he asked me.
    “Know about what?”
    He could tell through my confusion that I was oblivious to what was on the camera; then he showed me. There were several slides with Omar’s erect penis adorned in donuts, the shaft sticking right through the donut holes. “He stuck his dick in our donuts before we ate them. We ate dick-donuts! What kind of animal does this? How do you even think this shit up?”
    “Well, sir, nobody thinks like Omar,” I allowed him to believe that the pictures were taken prior to the party. That’s how Omar would of wanted it. He finally screwed, “the man.”

The Sleeper

    One wrong move and I was for sure going to end up flat as a pancake! While the climb up the Ural mountains of Russia had seemed like a piece of cake, the inside of the tallest peak Mount Naordnaya was another thing! What had I been thinking?! Obviously I hadn’t! Or else I would not find myself in this predicament!
    Okay, let me back up to a year ago when I was at my Uncle’s deathbed. My name is Danielle Lang, Dani to my friends and family, and to my uncle, being the person that raised me when my father, his brother, and my mother died in a car crash. I was five years old and he was my only family in the whole world! I was never exactly sure what my uncle did for a living. I know he always brought me the most wonderful gifts, while I attended school and he wandered the world. I always thought he was some kind of archeologist, but he turned out to be a treasure hunter, finding artifacts and selling them to the highest bidder.
    I had just turned eighteen and graduated high school and I didn’t expect I would be loosing the only family I had. I loved my uncle with his incredible stories, that ignited my imagination and made me realize that I had the same adventure genes as he did.
    As I sat by his bed in the hospital I listened to him asking a last promise of me. I thought how could I deny this wonderful man? My uncle started telling me a story that seemed unreal. He had been traveling in Russia after he had found some old manuscripts. They mentioned a legend about the some ancient people that lived in the mountains of Russia and about the two ruling twin brothers, Darr and Kieff. They told of the jealousy of one brother towards the other and the plotting and planning of Kieff to make Darr, the one with magic abilities and popular with the people, disappear. Apparently Kieff used the help of an evil priest to get rid of Darr and keep all the riches and the power for himself.
    As the legend went, Darr and Kieff had inherited their throne from their parents after they had died from an avalanche. Darr, older by two minutes, loved his brother and tried to overlook the fact that his brother was always scheming against him. It was always known that the the oldest of the twins would inherit magical powers, like being able to manipulate the elements, like calling the wind, water and fire to do his will. This is what Kieff wanted most in life and he didn’t care how he got it. Even if meant killing Darr to get what he most desired.....the power.
    They turned twenty and were at the height of their rule when Kieff decided he needed to carry out his plan to be the sole heir and possessor of the power of the elements. He didn’t know that there was no way he could obtain those powers. Only the first born could, which was Darr. This is when he decided to enlist the help of the evil priest, who knew that Kieff would never get those powers. The priest had hated Kieff’s parents, the king and queen, and coveted the power they possessed for himself. Of course Kieff thought in his vanity that the priest was helping him because of his loyalty to him. The priest came up with his own plan to kill both Darr and Kieff and keep all the riches for himself while making Kieff think he was helping him destroy Darr. The plan was to send Darr to the secret caves in the mountain to search for a lost child. When he got there he would be manacled and a ritual would be performed that the priest had been working on. The ritual itself would put Darr to sleep for all time and make the cave his tomb.
    Of course Kieff didn’t know he would also be in that tomb, the ritual would take place that evening and Kieff had been beside himself, thinking of how great everything would be after the power passed on to him, because this was the way he thought it would happen.
    When evening came, Kieff went looking for Darr to notify him of the disappearance of a child. And of course Darr’s first reaction was to go search for the child! Kieff accompanied Darr on the search, directing him towards the place that had been agreed upon with the priest. They climbed the icy mountain and headed into the frozen caves, because that’s where Kieff told Darr the child had been spotted. When they arrived and entered the cave, the followers the priest had enlisted helped him subdue Darr and Kieff. Kieff could not believe he had been tricked! The priest performed the ritual of putting them to sleep, starting with Darr. He would be the most trouble because of the power. Darr struggled, but because he was stunned and would never have believed the betrayal of his brother he loved so much, he was fast overtaken and put to sleep. Kieff managed to get himself free and told the priest he would not be entombed. No one knew for sure how it happened, maybe Darr still managed to get a hold of the elements but the icy cave collapsed. Everyone in the cave was buried in the ice never to be found. Darr himself was already frozen and remained asleep forever.

Eight, art by Mark Graham

    The story was incredible! I told my uncle that I had loved it! All at once with the most serious face I had ever seen on my uncle, he told me it was real! He told me how he had found those manuscripts, while exploring a cave in the mountains in Russia. Even though he lost the old manuscripts in a cave-in and almost lost his life, he had read them and they told of the story of the two brothers. He had also done some asking around at the village located at the bottom of the mountain. The villagers were not very forthcoming in their answers. They were very superstitious. The story had happened about four to five hundred years ago. Some of them spoke of how a few years ago, one of the elders had come across a tomb made of ice in a cave.
    In that tomb was a man that looked as if he had died yesterday, time not having ravished his youthful appearance, the ice keeping him and his treasure in its hold.
    My uncle wanted me to go back and find this treasure. While he didn’t believe that there was a person still in an icy tomb, especially the way the villagers had said the elder had described the person in the ice. He told me he didn’t have anything to leave me for the future. He felt he could rely on me to find this treasure and it would help my future and he could die in peace.
    And this is what finds me here with my life now in jeopardy, on a ledge that is crumbling beneath my feet. What had I been thinking to journey all the way to Russia from America? But, how could I not keep my promise to my dear uncle that took the responsibility to raise me and love me after my parents’ untimely death? I was so sad when he passed away in his sleep. And here I was with my life literately hanging by a thread. or should I say rope? I knew the rope was not going to hold me much longer. I don’t think I had ever been so scared in my life as I was at this moment!

    All of a sudden I felt the air shift! I felt like I was being lifted in mid air, but I just couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, and somehow I was being held gently and felt safe. Next thing I knew I was in a room in a lower part of the cave. There was ice all around and in the middle was what looked like an Egyptian sarcophagus but made of ice, so it was transparent. And in that sarcophagus was a man! At that moment I thought about the story that my uncle had been told! I was actually seeing a legend and couldn’t grasp it! It was the stuff of dreams! I walked towards him and I felt as if I had no choice. I wanted to go to him, I was compelled to go to him. When I was close enough to really see him, I was shocked! He looked like he was just taking a nap. And that’s not all, he was beautiful!
    Suddenly his eyes were looking at me! He had the most incredible sea green eyes with a tilt to them. His hair was silky black and so long it seemed it reached his lower back. I was awestruck! I felt a sudden shift in the air and he was standing right next to me! He said to me in a strange accent “I have been waiting for you.’
    All I could stutter back was, “You have? Why?’ He told me what had happened and it was almost the same story my uncle had told me with a few exceptions. At the end when the evil priest had cast the curse, Darr was able to make a change that had been a risk for him to take. The change he made was for his one true love to find him and the curse would be broken. He had saved me from falling to my death in the abyss of the cave. And guess what? I was his true love! Hurray for me! I had never thought about dating an older guy. Especially four hundred years old! But he was well preserved for his age. The treasure had also survived and he was loaded! I think my uncle would have been happy with me just having the treasure. But, hey I don’t think I could any happier then I was at this moment. Life was really looking up. But first things first, we would have to spend the night in the cold cave. While accommodations weren’t the best, the company sure was. I was warm all night long. The sleeper had awakened.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

what is veganism?

A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?

This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?

We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. I really like (“Writing Your Name”). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge” for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on “Hope Chest in the Attic”) Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.” I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies” and “The Room of the Rape” were particularly powerful pieces.

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does “on the road” presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, WrBrian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Brian B. Braddock, WrI passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
“Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
“Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright © 1993 through 2011 Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”,which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.

Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published monthly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact Janet Kuypers via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for snail-mail address or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright Copyright © 1993 through 2011 Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.