down in the dirt
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Janet K., Editor
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In This Issue... Fritz Hamilton Clinton Van Inman Mel Waldman Kelley Jean White MD Roger Cowin Christopher Hanson Denny E. Marshall Ally Malinenko Justis Mills John Ragusa Jack Bristow Marie Barry Kyrsten Bean Sarah Scharnweber Jason Austin Matthew Roberts Rebecca L. Dupree Lam Pham Terry Ferrell Lucie M. Winborne Carl Scharwath Lina Webb Aceto Janet Kuypers

Note that any artwork that appears in Down in the Dirt will appear in black and white in the print edition of Down in the Dirt magazine.

Order this issue from our printer as a 5.56" x 8.5" ISSN# paperback book: or as the 6" x 9" ISBN# book “America the Lost”:

My room collapsing beneath me Fritz Hamilton My room collapsing beneath me/ all the pictures of my family staring at me from the wall/ as I go through the floor, their looks of there I go again shrivel my corpse/ my bones as alive as ever even being dead, like everybody else/ like my room/ like the whole world/ at last the apocalypse, the cataclsmic party/ I wet & dirty my pants, but the dead don’t notice, they don’t care/ their bones torn asunder/ nothing left to plunder/ we’re all down under/ hear the thunder of our dead Lord, fucking all the corpses that He’s whored/ the dead God is bored, but ennui is not new/ all dead & me too/ seeing no reason to stick around/ there is no reason & never was or will/ we’re all soul dead, what a ghastly thrill/ I’m on the move/ down down/ a bottomless death/ hold your breath, but there is none/ life be done/ BUT THERE NEVER WAS & NEVER WILL/ what a horror/ what A THRILL with nothing nothing nothing nonononononono ... !

Seeing a crazy Bunyon type Fritz Hamilton Seeing a crazy Jack Kerouac standing above the trees out my window, I at last am looking at GOD, & when I see him drooling down the trees that keep giving him the needle, & he’s stream of conscious babbling & knocking down block after block of Pasadena, I know this blockhead GOD is a twisted madman, who does the twist with Chubby Checker while playing chess with Goldbuggy who rooks him by stealing his piano, which is the minor key to the problem, as Kerouaky thinks he’s Neil Cassidy & goes on the road to run over a dinosaur who extends Jack’s fame clear into prelapsarian times before lap dancing like Mark Narinski does on Carol Doda to Pucinski in a ski mask before they shoot the conductor who goes off the track to run down Madame Bovary in a French twist more like Edith Piaf than Chubby Checker, & that old bisexual Cockteau grabs his cock & toe & grieves himself to death as the corporation tries to rape California by buying our U.S. Senate seat & the governorship & destroying our environmental laws as the dead are dying in Afghanistan & Iraq & everyplace else, & thank God (who’s DEAD!) that we’re all dead sparing us from the suffering ... !

Just Like Us Clinton Van Inman From one to six we will let you play with blocks and sticks then you will be ours. We will teach you to be our kind of Mensch as you color everything chain link grey. We will erase all magic inside of you. With picture ID and major credit and number 2 pencil you will be like us pushing and shoving all the way up to barely alive.

Janet Kuypers reading the Clinton Van Inman poem Just Like Us from the July 2011 issue (v096) of Down in the Dirt magazine

Watch this YouTube video read 07/05/11, live at the Café in Chicago

The Garden Mel Waldman     Clutching my sacred manuscripts, I stroll through the garden, gazing at my pretty flowers, my vibrant red and white roses blooming in the glorious sun and my old and dying daisies and sunflowers, shriveled up and vanishing into the earth.     Letting go, saying goodbye. Why?     I saunter around my garden and scatter my papers, more than six decades of creation, throughout the garden. And when all my papers are gone, I speak to the flowers and trees and all other beings and nonbeings hidden in the garden.     Letting go, saying goodbye. Why?     I whisper my words to all, and at the proper moment, I shriek holy truths accumulated over one man’s lifetime. And after speaking all my words of creation, I close my eyes and vanish.     I vanish from the Garden of Life and Death. Like my pretty flowers, I vanish into the earth.

BIO Mel Waldman, Ph. D.     Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS). He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter. After 9/11, he wrote 4 songs, including “Our Song,” which addresses the tragedy. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and commercial magazines including HAPPY, SWEET ANNIE PRESS, CHILDREN, CHURCHES AND DADDIES and DOWN IN THE DIRT (SCARS PUBLICATIONS), NEW THOUGHT JOURNAL, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, HARDBOILED, HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, ESPIONAGE, and THE SAINT. He is a past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis and was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature. Periodically, he has given poetry and prose readings and has appeared on national T.V. and cable T.V. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, American Mensa, Ltd., and the American Psychological Association. He is currently working on a mystery novel inspired by Freud’s case studies. Who Killed the Heartbreak Kid?, a mystery novel, was published by iUniverse in February 2006. It can be purchased at www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. Recently, some of his poems have appeared online in THE JERUSALEM POST. Dark Soul of the Millennium, a collection of plays and poetry, was published by World Audience, Inc. in January 2007. It can be purchased at www.worldaudience.org, www.bn.com, at /www.amazon.com, and other online bookstores or through local bookstores. A 7-volume short story collection was published by World Audience, Inc. in June 2007 and can also be purchased online at the above-mentioned sites.

When my older brother came back from war Kelley Jean White He spoke in many languages. We’d walk together in the streets until he ran out of breath. He commanded. He shouted. With his hands. We looked at him. Nothing was left to him but touch. What stories he told with his hands. They took my brother away. Breathing life.

America the Lost Roger Cowin Union man said, “You gotta fight for your rights.” The company replied, “If that’s how you wanna roll, We’ll move the business to Mexico – They’ll work for a dollar an hour, An extra dime for overtime.” And when the Mexican workers said, “We want two dollars an hour, after all Fair is fair and our families gotta be fed,” The company boss shook his head and said, “Adios amigos, were moving to China Where they’ll work for 50 cents an hour And never ask a penny for overtime.” One day, the Chinese workers are going to stand up And say, “We demand a living wage. Give us 75 cents a day and a quarter more for overtime.” No doubt the company will then decide In Africa they’ll work around the clock For a buck a day and so what if a few Die along the way, they’re dying anyway. Now, back in America, Wal-Mart comes along and says,” We’ll sell all these unemployed slobs The products made in China and Mexico That Americans used to make And they’ll have to buy from us because They can’t afford anything marked ‚Made in the U.S.A.” So the once proud, American worker Is forced to support the Mexican And Chinese economies, wondering Whatever happened to the American dream. Well, I’m her to tell you man, something You might not understand, that dream Was always a myth perpetuated by the rich To make the worker believe The harder you worked, the more you achieved. But when the poor tried to rise above their station, The American dream became Asian. Now all the jobs have gone away And buddy they ain’t coming back, No how, no way. And all the politician’s promises Nor all the mad tea parties in the world Will ever change.

Fleur de Lis Christopher Hanson The town’s quiet as the lights are finally out, The TV’s, All TVs silenced, And the bars have made their, “Last Call!” It’s then that I stumble, Tumble and find my way unto “Click,” unlock and enter, As I find the loneliness of “home” - A pleasure, Yes, A pleasure And for at least The next 12 hours. My lover lies in waiting, I lie away And in avoidance of “our” room. I’d rather go “Clickety-clack,” Typewriter crazy, An alternative to the “boing,” Or spring in my side – A bad bed or faulty partner, Take your pick, I pick the partner. This partner, The lady once sought And now discarded, Has now become paper, Words dirtied Like the sheets that’ll be left to Thrift shops. “Clickety-clack,” the patterns continue, “Clickety-clack,” I stutter something close to – “Sorry.” The town’s still quiet And the clock’s clicking future, While I finally find solace With a good-night’s dip into Words and drink Whilst letting sanity slip, Just a little And at least ‘til tomorrow.

“The man with many names.” (the Christopher Hanson Biography)     I was born “Christopher Hanson” in Minnesota; Born in the same hospital as Bob Dylan, not that it matters. I remember very little from this snowbound world having actually grown up in California where I picked up the nick-name, “Cloud,” I don’t know why, simply, “Cloud.” While in good old San Fran, I made nice with some fellows and females of Japanese decent. I picked up a sword, I learned to eat sushi and wander in between the realms of Aikido, Iaido and Zen. They dubbed me “Kazuki.” All aside and all names following me into college, I studied for five years at the University of Wisconsin and graduated with degrees in both Criminal Justice (to bust-up a broken system) and Anthropology – I love people, what can I say? During year five of college, I’d acquire my latest addition, “Yang Yun,” my Chinese name. The name basically translates to, “a tree in the cloud.” This was the name given to me by my wife, the love of my life that I met while studying abroad in China. Since my graduation in 2008, I’ve lived in China for nearly two years as a teacher and within this last year, have finally made it back to the states, wife and all. It’s been a wild ride and something tells me that it’s just begun. As for my “writing” and my “art,” it’s a time-honored tradition and way of life – at least for me.     I’ve travelled the world, I’ve come home. I’m educated, I’m uneducated. I write, I write and write some more. I drink and write again. This is my story, maybe your story and somebody else’s story. I write, I wander, I write and I love, this world and the many facets/faces of it – simply complicated.     I’ve been, or will be, published in, “A Brilliant Record,” “The Stray Branch” and “Down in the Dirt,” and am looking forward to continuing down this literary, literal and metaphorical road I venture.

Polar Mirage Denny E. Marshall Polar winds Ice like pellet Guns Stinging like bees Eyes can’t open All the way Walking to nowhere Lost and stranded In the middle Of a storm In a vast open desert Great white dunes Of ice and snow Shapes come to life Out in the cold Previously Published in Pablo Lennis Feb. 1998

Pillow Talk Ally Malinenko He’s telling me about his grandparents, the ones on Denny Street in Lawrenceville, how he used to go over there all the time and how close he was to his grandmother. I know this. I’ve heard and seen it. Seen it on the mornings of the anniversary of her death and birth. But watching him here, now, laying in bed, over wine, after sex, I think that it must be nice. It must be nice to be able to stir up that emotion. I think of my grandfather, who died when I was six. Things I remember: His smell. Now, I know it was beer, but then it was just the scent of the only other man that came to our house. That he ate mayonnaise sandwiches and my mother wouldn’t let me have one and that he wasn’t going to see my kindergarten music show, so I sat on the floor of my kitchen, drumsticks in hand and I sang at the top of my lungs, about Indians and the Old West, and I did the pussywillow rhyme, and beat the sticks in rhythm on the cheap linoleum of my parents kitchen, knowing it sounded better with the whole class on the hardwood of the stage. There will be the things I find out after, the cruelties that family can do to each other, his sickness, but that is not the same, that is someone else’s telling. These few moments, these are the things that belong to me. It was 1982. And he would be dead by the following year, and this will be all that I carry after that.

Career Advice Justis Mills     His lower jaw encroaches on his throat, while the upper engulfs his nose. His fingers are loosely clumped into spades, halfheartedly directed. The delicate nerves that clenched his fists are transplanted in his shoulder blades, doubly jointed with extra limbs that leave him always hunched. His bones are hollow; his blood is thin. His skull is remodeled to a point: eyes above the vertex, beady and sunken, searching for something that shines.     Men in black suits tell him it will be impossible, offer alternatives. Men in blue collars shake their heads, laugh, and spit. Men in white coats implore him to reconsider. He does not reconsider. He finds a man in a red smoking jacket, with dark glasses over twinkling eyes. They shake hands.     His ex wife has the house, kids. Says she liked how he looked at her, mistook it for love. Common mistake, really, and she doesn’t ask for half the money. She takes the house because he’s always at work anyway. Takes the kids for other reasons. They play on the roof, say daddy used to stand there and stare, dream of the day he comes back.     Work is not going well. People are scared to take the plane. He is not as rich as he used to be, or young. He finds peace on the way to 20,000 feet, staring out the window at them. He thinks of that time at school and smiles. The pressure of landing splits his head with pain. He does not ever have an affair. Wife thinks he does. Wife does, he thinks. He dares not ask.     Twenty years old, he is successful; he flies all the time. Meets a girl who stares at him, across the aisle. He stares back and the headache doesn’t come. Misses them outside the window. Next time, he sings inside his skull. Next time for sure. He translates their reply, their tiny voices strained: “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.”     He is sitting in a circle on the floor. Everyone is laughing, even the teacher. She stops them, smiles. It’s just so very cute.     “Don’t be silly,” she says. “Of course you can’t be a bird when you grow up.”

Justis Mills Bio     Justis Mills is the editor of First Stop Fiction. His work has recently appeared in Leaf Garden and Bloody Bridge, and is forthcoming elsewhere. In his spare time he is mostly tall.

Chaos and Creation John Ragusa I knew I was a writer When I realized Just how troubled I am. Creativity And depression Go hand in hand. Where there’s one, There is the other.

Janet Kuypers reading the John Ragusa poem Chaos and Creation from the July 2011 issue (v096) of Down in the Dirt magazine

Watch this YouTube video read 07/05/11, live at the Café in Chicago

Stranded Jack Bristow     The man woke on the isle at what he thought was daybreak. He knew neither who or where he was. The isle—rocky, mossy, and deserted looking—was small and looked as though a medieval castle had once stood upon it.     He was dressed in tattered white T-shirt and Levi’s. The Levi’s smelt of smoke and were very oily and grimy. He inspected his front and back pants pockets. He found a wallet and opened it and inside it was a California driver’s license. Name: Nathaniel Rosenbaum. Eyes: Green. Height: 6'1. Weight: 182 lbs.     The face in the photo was tanned and the hair brown.     He peered offland. He saw nothing in the water. No ships. Birds. Nothing.     He walked down the slope that led towards water. He bent his head down and looked in the azure water and saw the same face that was in the driver’s license looking back at him but this time with dirt and oil and minor scratches and scrapes on it.     “Nathaniel Rosenbaum. Nate Rosenbaum.” A pause. It wasn’t ringing any bells.     He walked back inland.     He stumbled on a crashsite. Helicopter. It lay charred and slanted. In spite of the ungodly pain inside his chest he climbed the copter, searching. “Please God. Help me find something useful. Anything.”     Inside on the pilot’s seat slumped a body charred with headphones on. Male. There was a charred attache briefcase near the pilot’s feet. He grabbed it and then he climbed out.     He ran back to the slope and down it toward the beautiful bright blue water and knelt down to it and splashed it in his face and then he breathed heavily.     He peered out far, cupping his eyes with his hands.     He saw something.     A person! A woman! Swimming.     He yelled out to her, jumping up and down. He saw her swim towards him and as she got closer he’d noticed her pace seemed superhuman. As she rapidly approached he saw for the first time below her waist the majestic green scales on the fishlike tail that were as incongruous to her body waist-up as the beautiful bright blue seawater was to the ugly, ruinious island.     “Hey,” she giggled, swimming around in circles and then on her back, letting the sun bathe her face. The man’s heart raced frantically; not from fear, but from exhilaration.     “Hello,” she said flirtatiously. “I’m Letica. Who’re you?”     “Well, according to the ID in my wallet, Nate—Nate Rosenbaum.”     “What are you doing here, Nate?”     “I wish I knew. I woke up at daybreak with no idea where I was. And more important, who I was/am. A little while after I woke I walked far inland in search of clues and answers.... Eventually I discovered a dead man in a crashed helicopter and this here briefcase.”     “What’s inside it?”     “Beats me. It’s locked. And I don’t have the key or the combination. Hell, I don’t know anything —I don’t know where I am, who I am, or what the hell it is I’m doing here. There are only two things I know. My name—Nathaniel. And the reason I’m here: apparently I survived a helicopter crash. Tell me. Did you hear the thing crash?”     The mermaid pushed her tawny-wet hair back with a savage jerk of the head and then she pursed her lips. Finally, she said: “Yes! The other day my family and I were awakened by a loud boom sound and then the water and the earth inside had started to shake violently. My dad told me it was an earthquake.”     The man had started to walk away.     “Where are you going?” the mermaid asked.     “I’ll be right back. I’m going to go find a rock big enough to hopefully smash this goddamned attache open.”     “You look dirty. Why don’t you come in and take a swim first?”     The man’s heart had begun to beat lustfully, frantically. He pulled his shirt off from over his head and then his pants and he was wearing only his underwear as he waded into the placid bright blue ocean water towards the mermaid and then he was kissing her neck and lips and then embracing her body.     “Oh, Nate. Don’t stop. Oh, I love you. Yes. Yes. Yes!”     “Nate. Nate. Nate!”     He woke for real in a tiny cubicle with the familiar sounds of pounded-on keyboards going off all around him and a big man dressed in slacks and a dingy-looking sportscoat nudging him.     “Wake up, Nate!”     “What is it?” he grumbled.     “Brickman is coming up to see if you finished your G03 reports. You better have ‘em ready, man. I’m not covering for yo’ ass like I did the last time.”

Jack Bristow has written for Hobopancakes, Cataraville, The New Flesh, Troubador21 and Inwood Indiana.

A Beautiful Lie Marie Barry     The silence surrounds us. There’s nothing but the silence, no wailing of the wind blowing through our hair, no thunder crashing from the dark rain clouds that hang high above us bringing the threat of rain. It’s too gray out, too depressing and I feel so lonely when it’s just us, because it seems like there’s no one else in the world but me and her and the gray clouds drifting slowly above.     The water behind her moves back and forth with the incoming tide on the beach below. We’re standing on top of a glacier. It’s a small glacier and we shouldn’t be here. But she wanted to take pictures standing on the glacier, her back to my camera as she turns her head and smiles softly while I capture her in the moment. She likes the way the dark ocean and gray clouds make the world look dismal, she likes the way the snow beneath her feet makes it look bright in contrast. She likes it when it’s just us, when we’re far away from home and standing on a glacier makes it look like we’re detached from civilization, maybe alone in Antarctica. Antarctica is far from where we live, but it’s not far enough to escape what I know, what she doesn’t know.     She pauses for a moment as I readjust the lens and check to see how much film is left. As I work her dark eyes scan the water in front of us, watching the waves move and maybe waiting to find something, to see an animal appear for a moment and break the surface of the water, coming up to say hello.     She turns back to me and watches me, and there’s something in her eyes that makes me pause.     I have a secret.     She’s baited me with curiosity, and I suddenly need to know, no matter how trivial this secret might be.     What kind of secret?     A life-changing one.     She stops talking, her gaze still connected to mine. She isn’t speaking and I’m waiting, but a few moments pass by and I realize that she’s not continuing, so I’m the one who needs to press on.     Are you going to tell me?     And she just smiles back. ~*~     My sister committed suicide three weeks after we had taken pictures of her on the glacier. At least it seemed like suicide. No one could come up with any other explanation besides that. It wasn’t a homicide. There was no evidence of rough play or markings or anything that would point to it.     She had gone out before dinner, telling me that she had to stop at the store to buy some things for school. She had been awfully quiet, watching me carefully as I filled myself with carbs before I headed out for my football game. Her behavior was odd, because she had always been quiet, but never around me. I was her twin brother, and she told me almost everything.     I tried using our twin telepathy to find out what was wrong. I got nothing, and I felt none of the sadness that seemed to be lining her face. I tried to joke with her, to bring a smile to her face, but she resisted me and remained downcast.     “He’s not hurting you, is he?”     Her boyfriend was the quarterback on my team. I didn’t like him. I never liked him. He was too egotistical, too full of himself for her. He didn’t know how to treat her right like I did, what to say and do to make her smile. I knew how to make her happy. He did everything wrong.     “No, silly. I’m just feeling pensive.”     I put my plate of pasta down and opened my arms to her, inviting her in. She came to me and I held her close, wrapping her in my arms tightly to protect her from whatever demon was gnawing away at her happiness. She was warm and delicate against my chest as I cradled her close, and she gave forth a gasp that sounded like she was crying.     When she pulled away there were no tears in her eyes, just distance.     “I’ll see you at the game?”     I made it a question, because something inside me told me she’s not coming. When she shook her head I wasn’t surprised, just worried. I wanted to reach out and pull her back, hold her to me until she confessed what was wrong. She could have cried and I wouldn’t care; I would have missed my game to comfort her and keep her safe and help her through her problem. She was my younger twin sister and I wanted to protect her. I need to.     She left first and then I did, heading straight to school for my game. We played as hard as we could and we were almost near victory when it began to rain and we had to stop playing. The other team refused to forfeit, but we ended up with the win anyway because we were ahead.     It was after that, when I went to greet my family in the stands and they asked if I had heard from sister that I knew something serious had happened. When we got home and she wasn’t there my parents started to panic. When Marcus called to ask to see her later we knew that we needed help.     She had thrown herself off the glacier. The police found footprints that matched hers in the snow, and they figured she had drowned in the water below. Her body was found on the beach, her skin icy and blue due to the freezing ocean water. Hypothermia probably killed her.     I cried like I had never cried before when I found out. I was sick, spending half of the night with my head over the toilet. I couldn’t grasp my mind around what had happened. All I saw was us on the glacier, me with my camera and her standing in the snow smiling at me. And then the memory changed. I saw her jumping, slowly descending into the ocean water below, her hair flying out around her in a halo like some falling angel.     I burned the pictures later that night, when I was able to pull myself off of the floor. I regretted it immediately afterward, but the regret was weak and I was too shocked to care. Part of my heart died, part of me died. There was a void now in the place of my life where she used to fit perfectly, as my twin. An empty space with her name on it but no one occupying it.     And I had a guilty secret that she had never known.     And she had the secret that she had never told me. ~*~     Two months after her death my parents called me downstairs to our den. I came, slowly and cautiously and zombie-like. I hadn’t been right since she had been gone. Nothing was right. At school everyone pitied me, careful around me when they spoke to me about things, afraid that I might suddenly go crazy on them with the constant grief that had swallowed up my heart.     And they pitied Marcus. I wanted nothing more than to strangle the son-of-a-bitch. He had gotten something that I would never have and I hated him for it.     Sitting on the couch, I noticed something odd about the looks on their faces. They were nervous, and my mother was holding a packet of papers in her shaking hands. I knew instinctively that this involved my sister. Everything did these days.     “Honey, this is hard,” my mother began carefully, but her voice was cracking as tears began to slowly trickle down. My heart pounded in my chest with anxiety. I suddenly didn’t want to know what they wanted to tell me. I knew it wasn’t good. “But we feel you need to know. Please try to understand. Please don’t hate us.”     It was the mention of hatred that made me tense, but I reached out to take the packet of paper from her hands. At first I was confused by what the papers said. They were adoption forms from the year I was born - from Canada, for a baby girl.     It hit me so hard that I felt sick again and my heart beat slowed and I was waiting to drop dead, but death never came and neither did the nausea.     I could barely feel the papers slipping from my hands as I somehow ended up on my feet. “What the hell?” I screamed. “What the fucking hell?”     And suddenly I was running up the stairs, ignoring the sounds of my parents’ yells following me. I ran straight to my older sister’s room and kicked open her door, wanting answers and explanations and something to make things right.     I startled her; she was visibly uneasy with the anger and confusion that must have been evident on my face. I stared at her, anger pulsing through my veins as I attempted to find the right words to express myself, but they weren’t coming out.     “Kate,” I muttered. “Did you know? About us, about...I’m not...she wasn’t...”     I can’t articulate a sentence more than that. Kate stares at me for a moment, unsure of what to say, but she begins nodding sorrowfully and I’m feeling faint at the confirmation. I sway slightly and she’s up, pulling me into a hug as tears run down my cheeks and I feel myself growing numb.     “I’m sorry,” she whispered in my ear, and I could hear the strain in her voice and sense the tears in her eyes. “I knew. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But Mom and Dad didn’t want to tell you, they didn’t want you to know. She was the daughter of their friends and they died suddenly and no one wanted to take her and Mom had just given birth to you and they thought it would be safer if you grew up thinking you were twins. I’m sorry. They didn’t think you’d understand any other explanation.”     “Were they ever going to tell us?”     Kate tensed at the sound of my voice. I sounded dead, uncaring. I didn’t care anymore. Nothing at all mattered, because everything was a lie. Everything.     “No...but...” She paused. I tensed. “...she knew.”     Any part of my life that had survived the ordeal, the death of my twin sister who wasn’t really my twin or sister at all, shattered. The world faded into black and I went with it, letting go. ~*~     The air is cold outside, brisk and chilly as autumn begins to end and winter starts. It’s typical Alaskan weather, and I’m outside, walking around the condominium where we live. Kate’s back at college, and I’m finally speaking to my parents again. Things at school are back to normal – not as normal as they used to be, but as normal as they are going to get.     A few leaves break off of a tree and flutter down in front of me, brief glimpses of red, brown, orange, and yellow. I kick at them for getting in my way. They barely move more than a few feet in front of me and I kick at them again, anger from nowhere seizing me from within.     “You’re being a little harsh. They’re just leaves.”     I barely look over my shoulder at the voice that’s addressed me. Jordan is watching me, her hands in her jacket pocket as she peers at me. There’s caution in her eyes, the same caution that’s in the eyes of everyone who comes near me.     I stop venting at the leaves and turn around, shoving my hands in my jacket pocket. It’s suddenly very cold, a wind from the sea tousling my hair. “Hey,” I mumble, eyes on the pavement to avoid her gaze.     It’s silent for a moment, and then she speaks. “Do you want to come inside?” There’s shyness in her voice when she speaks to me, shyness mixed with hesitance. “I’m going to make hot chocolate. Aaron’s going to be home in about half-an-hour. You guys can hang out if you’d like.”     Aaron was her stepbrother and a member of the football team. The three of us are the same age, and even though we live in the same condominium and have classes together I don’t know him too well. He seems nice, but we just never really got around to talking to each other. I know Jordan better, because she had been friends with my sister.     My heart tightens at the thought of my sister. I couldn’t stop thinking of her as my sister, even though she wasn’t. Too much had gone on between us to change that. And at the same time, I was still angry. If we had known we weren’t twins, weren’t even siblings, than things could have been different.     “So...”     I smile apologetically at Jordan, realizing that I must have been ignoring her. “Yeah, I’ll come hang,” I say. “It should be cool. And I’m cold, so some hot chocolate would be awesome.”     She smiles back at me and we head inside. Jordan’s home is nice, neat and cozy at the same time. Her mother and stepfather and other siblings aren’t home, so I settle myself comfortably on her couch and she sits across from me.     There’s an awkward pause as she starts drumming her fingers on her knees. “How are you?” she asks after a moment, and I can tell she’s afraid to have asked the question.     “My life sucks. What a surprise, right?”     She smiles slightly at my sarcasm. There’s another pause, another awkward moment. Outside I hear the noise of a car roaring in and skidding to a halt. Jordan looks up suddenly, and we both wait until we can hear a key turn in the lock.     A door opens and shuts somewhere inside. “Jordan?” Aaron calls, his voice echoing slightly. His footsteps grow louder and louder until he steps into the den. “Hey...” He drifts off when he sees me, eyebrows raised with surprise. Jordan turns a bright red as Aaron looks from me to her several times, suddenly seeming very nervous.     There’s something in the way that he’s looking at her that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, like I’m intruding on something I shouldn’t be there for. I’ve heard rumors about them, things the other guys on the football team have mentioned to me in passing that I’ve never really paid attention to until now. Things like Aaron being a little too overprotective of his stepsister, how he seemed almost jealous whenever one of the guys went up to Jordan to flirt with her and how he was always watching her, always making sure she was okay.     Jordan stands up, clasping her hands together as she smiles at us both. “Well, I’m going into the kitchen to make that hot chocolate. You guys hang out. I’ll be back.” She shots Aaron a glare and turns, leaving the den.     Aaron looks at me, still somewhat confused. “I’ll be right back,” he says as nonchalantly as he possibly can and heads in the direction Jordan just went.     I’m alone. A clock is ticking loudly off in the distance, comforting and annoying at the same time. I wait for a few more minutes, and when no one comes back I get up as quietly as I can and sneak towards the kitchen.     Their voices are quiet and I’m curious, only snooping because I find a sudden need to know if the rumors are true. If there’s someone else in this crazy place we call home that has a secret like the one I kept from my sister. I wanted to know if people as seemingly average as Jordan and Aaron were just like me.     I stay as far back in the shadows of the hallway as I can, peering through the doorframe at the bright kitchen lights. Jordan is mixing something in a pot that’s sitting on the stove and Aaron is stands apart from her, arms folded across his chest. They’re both facing each other and I know I’m safe, because they’re too momentarily absorbed in their dilemma to worry about me.     “I was just being friendly, that’s all. He’s had a hard time since his sister died. I didn’t think it would hurt to be nice.”     Aaron sighs as he thinks over what Jordan has just said. “You’re right,” he admits grudgingly. “I guess I overacted. It’s just...”     “I know, I know. Don’t worry about it.”     “I mean, he’s a nice guy. Seems like it at least, I don’t really know him that well. He can tackle pretty well though. I guess I just thought...well, I guess I just need to start trusting you more.”     She nods, pulling a spoon out of the pot and moving to the sink to wash it. Aaron comes up behind her and puts both hands around her waist, pulling her close as he rests his lips against the base of her neck.     I pull back and rush into the den, throwing myself on the couch. A few more minutes pass before they both come back, Jordan carrying two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and looking visibly happier and relaxed. Aaron is at ease too, and he gives me what looks like a genuine smile.     “Sorry I can’t hang man, but I’ve actually got a meeting with Coach about my tactics for the next game,” he says to me. “Come over again when I’ve got time. We’ll definitely chill. Video games.”     “Alright,” I respond, and we pound our fists together like we’ve been best friends our entire lives. He turns to look at Jordan and I can’t see the expression he gives to her, but she turns a bright red again and looks down. His hand brushes gently against her knees as he passes her to get to the door.     I wait until I hear him drive away. “I won’t say anything.”     She looks at me suddenly and her blush deepens. “Is it that obvious?”     I nod slowly and give her half a smile as she sighs and puts her head in her hands. “I try telling him...” she drifts off, searching for the right words. “He doesn’t understand. I just...you must think we’re disgusting.”     I shook my head fervently. “No way,” I insisted. “You guys are stepsiblings. It’s fine. Really, I don’t care.”     Her smile is genuine as she wrings her hands together nervously. “Thanks.”     There’s another pause, but this time something is different. The air is no longer laced with tension and the awkwardness is gone. We’re at ease with each other. I can relax now and maybe enjoy myself.     “Do your parents know?”     She rolls her eyes at me, but she’s laughing. “No! Could you imagine if that happened?”     I couldn’t imagine how her parents react, because I didn’t know her parents. But I could imagine what would happen with mine. I would be disowned, shamed from my family, hated, ridiculed...the list would go on and on. Or they would kill me. Which ever got the point across quicker would be their first pick.     I left Jordan’s a little while later, feeling better about myself. We had talked most of the time and she eventually mentioned my sister, like I knew she would. I was surprised that I managed to keep myself composed, surprised that I didn’t break down at the mention of her name and that my cheeks stayed dry. Only my heart ached, ached with a longing that I knew I would never be able to cure.     When I went in my room I took out all the pictures of my sister that I could find and I hung them everywhere in my room. Soon there was nothing but her hanging on my wall, her dark eyes that matched mine perfectly in our fake twin façade staring at me no matter where I looked.     “I love you.”     A weight disappeared off my chest, faded away with the admittance of my words. I had told her I loved her all the time – I love my little sister, I love my twin. But this time the words were different. The meaning had changed. Everything had changed.     I woke later that night to the sound of rain pouring on the roof. I crept downstairs, a gray dawn breaking over the horizon. I laid myself down on the rug in the den and pulled a blanket over me, my eyes glued to the skylight above. I watched the rain bounce off the glass and run in rivulets. I listened to it pounding.     It reminded me of a time that I had come downstairs to find my sister lying on the rug with a blanket over her, watching the rain pour. It was earlier in the morning and I wasn’t sure why we were both up. I just remember thinking that I had never seen her look so beautiful before. She seemed almost angelic with the way her hair framed her skin as her eyes watched the sky above.     I flopped onto my stomach next to her, just to be close to her. She smiled at me to acknowledge my presence but she didn’t look at me. I reached out and began to trace the lines in the palm of her hand that was stretched out above her head. We didn’t say anything, not for a long time. She watched the rain and I watched her and there was nothing but the silence surrounding us, no other distractions.     I almost got too close, but I fought against the strongest urge I had ever fought in my life. I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what consequences it would have brought on, how she would react. I ended up having to leave her, go upstairs to my room and hate myself for even thinking such a thought.     While watching the rain and lying on the rug alone, I realized that it would have been alright if I had kissed her. We weren’t siblings, we weren’t twins, we weren’t even from the same family. It would have been fine, nothing but our secret. ~*~     I’m standing on the edge of the glacier, looking over into the ocean below. It’s dark and uninviting and I curse at it, hating it for taking her away from me. I should hate her more for choosing to take herself away from me, but I can’t bring myself to do that. I loved and cared about her too much.     I scream her name out and it gets lost in the wind, but it feels good to scream it. I’m freeing myself from the bonds that are keeping me down, letting go of some of the sadness that I’ve been drowning in for months.     Winter’s over and spring is coming, the weather is warming and the seasons are changing. The world is coming back to life, and so must mine.     I have a secret.     I hear her voice taunting me in the back of my head. She did have a secret. I knew what it was. She had known we weren’t twins, not related at all. She had found out that day of the pictures. That was why she had wanted to go out with me alone. She wanted to tell me, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She was afraid of what would happen if she told me the truth. She was afraid of the change.     But she loved me, she promised me in penmanship. She loved me. She always had and always would. There was no one closer to her than me, her wonderful phony older twin brother.     At least that’s what her letter said. Jordan found it wedged underneath the couch in my living room one of the nights she came over. Just to talk, of course. Aaron was still in the picture.     Her letter also said that she couldn’t take the guilt anymore, having to lie to me about everything and pretend that we were still part of each other after she discovered that we weren’t. She couldn’t take seeing the love in my eyes for her and listen to me go on about her being my sibling. She hated living the lie.     She didn’t think I would understand if she had told me. She thought that the knowledge would somehow drive us mad.     Her letter made me hate myself, though only for a little while. If I had known, maybe things would have been different. Judging by what she wrote me, things would have eventually turned out to be the same.     The wind picks up and even though the weather is warming I still live in Alaska and the air is chilly on my face. I tighten my jacket around me as I look towards the sky. The clouds are still gray, but they’re lighter in color and soon sunlight might even shine through. When it does it will illuminate the ocean in front of me, and maybe it will transform it. Maybe I won’t look out at the sea and see a girl jumping to an icy demise. Maybe I’d just see water, the giver of life.     I turn to go. It’s time to leave this part of my life behind. Time to let go of the secrets and start anew. Time to restart my existence.     It’s easy to walk away, but with every step I feel like I’m falling.     But the water never reaches out to grab me and pull me away like I think it will. Instead it pushes me out towards my home; it gives me another chance at fixing the lie.

Enough Kyrsten Bean For you, enough is not enough. My star-tattooed hipbones ensconce an apocryphal drift. You were my hub back then. Now, I sit in the shower letting the water shift around me into the drain You throw violets from glass vases onto a paved street iron-shoed hooves crushing petal debris I have fashioned you out of fiction your blank bullets ricochet across my flesh.

Kyrsten Bean Bio     A poet, musician and writer, Kyrsten had been stacking piles of poetry in her living spaces for 29 years. At some point she decided that her words were lonely – they were suffocating stacked three feet high in old notebooks. She is on a crusade to find a home for her homeless compositions of words, and spends all of her free time searching for havens. She lingers outside the fringe, trying at times to get a real job, only to throw in the towel again and go back to creating.

Nolan Press Sarah Scharnweber     “Sure, I want to sell-out, isn’t that the point?”  Billy’s head was down; his fingers continued slapping the keys filling the room with a rhythmic clicking.  “In the end, we are all doing it for a reason – to get paid.”     Liv tilted her laptop screen down and stared at him from across the table, one dark brown eyebrow raised.  “Are you serious?”  Her mouth hung ajar and her brown eyes begged for an explanation.     “Of course, I’m serious.  The only reason I write them down is because I think that I’m good enough to be paid for it.  If you don’t want to admit it, that’s fine; but, the bottom line is—we want to make a living doing it.”     “Sure, I want to make a living doing it, but you have to understand that I wouldn’t be trying to make a living doing something this difficult if I didn’t love the work.”  She huffed, then lifted her computer screen and looked down as if she were going to begin working.  Then she lifted her face again, “You may be nothing more than a worthless sell out, I’m not.  I care about the work and if it sells, great.”     “Okay.”  Billy muttered under his breath.  “I didn’t mean to piss you off.”     She turned her brown eyes down to the computer screen as if in shame, “Thanks.”     “For what?”  Billy’s voice was a bit annoyed, but he forced himself to curb his annoyance.     “Because you didn’t mean to upset me, I just don’t like the idea that I might be a sell out and I snapped.”  She wasn’t trying to pick the conversation up again, but she didn’t know how to apologize without making an argument for her beliefs.     “Okay, let’s just drop it.”  He looked back down at his screen and began typing again.  They sat that way, quiet, both of them typing away without a word.     After a few hours of working in silence, Billy clapped his hands and looked up at Liv, “Finished.”     “You’re ready to send out your letters?”  Liv was excited.     Billy nodded, “I’m going to send it out to the places where I can e-query first and then I’ll send the others out when my paycheck comes.  I can send out three tonight.     He tilted his head back down and began sending e-mails. #     The next morning, when Billy checked his e-mail, he had a message from someone that surprised him.  He stared at it for a moment, uncertain of why he would be receiving a message from Nolan Press, Ltd.  He thought about it and couldn’t even remember having sent anything to them, but the subject line read “Your Recent Submission.”     Billy bounced up and down in his seat while he opened the message and began to read.  He couldn’t believe what it said, but he continued reading all the way to the end.  He stood up in front of his monitor, still staring at the words in front of him for a moment before he realized that he was awake and this was really happening.     He sat down on the couch, readjusted himself in his seat and began reading the letter aloud to himself:     Dear, Mr. Chambers,     We are delighted to say that we would like to read your manuscript.  Nolan Press is a new and upcoming publishing company and we believe that you may be our first break-out artist.  Please, send us some sample chapters immediately. Please send chapters in-line text as we do not open attachments.     Thank you, again for your interest in our company and we await your prompt response.     There was no signature at the end of the letter.     He looked up at the clock, hoping it was late enough to wake Liv.  It wasn’t.  He paced back and forth down the hallway that led to her room for several minutes.  He knew she would want to hear about this, but she was so angry in the morning and he didn’t want to deal with her shit.  He wrestled with the thought for several minutes before he stopped in front of her door and began to knock.     She groaned from far inside the room, but he pounded on the door harder.  “You have to get up, you have to get up; you have to get up.”  He chanted to her, his voice low, but loud enough to resonate through the door.     He heard several thumps and then the door opened.  Liv was wrapped in blankets.  “What’s your problem?”  Her voice was flat.     “Guess who’s a step closer to a sale!”  He giggled.     “No way.”  Liv rolled her eyes and pushed the door closed, but was blocked by Billy’s foot.  She glared at him.  “I’m not stupid, there’s no way.”     “That’s what I thought, too, but someone sent me a letter.  It was from some company called Nolan Press; they asked me for sample chapters.”     “Let me get dressed.”  She rolled her eyes again as she closed the door behind her. #     A few minutes later, she stepped up behind the couch and looked over Billy’s shoulder as he opened the email.     Billy sat quiet while he waited for her to finish reading it.     She stood upright and then bent back, cracking her spine as she did.  “Well, that’s pretty amazing.”  She leaned back in next to him; her breath warmed his ear.  “You don’t see anything weird about all of this?”     “It’s weird that they’re interested in my story?  Why do you have to act like that?  It’s not weird; it’s wonderful; I’m going to get to sell-out!”  He puffed his chest up as he proclaimed this and dusted off his non-existent lapel.     “I just don’t remember this company; did you query them?”  Liv knew that he hadn’t; in fact, she had organized his entire list of publishers and had even been the one to put them in the database for him while he put the finishing touches on his novel.     “You just don’t want me to succeed before you.”  He was joking, but it held the serious weight of a joke based in reality.     “Did you send them a query?”  Liv pressed; her eyes wide.     “No, but that’s not the point; they are going to publish me.”  He seemed as if he didn’t want to admit what they both knew: this wasn’t a normal publisher’s offer. #     For the next two days, Billy touted himself as a published author to anyone who would listen.  Liv tried to let him bask in the limelight and enjoy his success, but the prospect of this being some nut who was trying to take advantage of Billy—or worse—was a very real threat.     It wasn’t long before Billy received as second email that wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic.     Dear Mr. Chambers.     We regretfully cannot take this story in its current state.  Due to the large volume of stories that we have already accepted, with male protagonists, we will be unable to publish your story if you continue to have a male main character.  We understand that you work is something of a labor of love and without that love, you would not be working to be a novelist, so if you cannot make the suggested change, we will understand; however, we will have to decline to take your novel if it remains in its current state.     Thank you again for your time.     Billy wanted to cry.  He didn’t want to make Danny, his main character, a different person, but he did want to be published.  So, he spent that night and the following night changing Danny to Delinda and masculine pronouns to feminine ones.     Three mornings later – one week after he finished his story, Billy sent his full manuscript to Nolan Press. #     Six days passed before Billy heard from Nolan again.  Though he thought about them daily, he was relieved each day that he didn’t receive anything from them     When he opened his inbox, his heart dropped to his stomach, this email was serious; it wasn’t from the generic company email; it was from Eric Shore, Contracts Division.     Billy was excited.  He almost didn’t want to open it alone.  He wanted to go and get Liv before he opened it, but she wasn’t home and he couldn’t wait.     Dear Mr. Chambers,     My name is Eric Shore; I work as a contract writer for Nolan Press.  I would like to thank you for your submission, but we require you to make a few changes before you will be offered a contract for your novel.  Please, feel free to look over the comments I have left for you – these should be very reasonable – and if you feel that you can make the suggested changes, we can talk about opportunities.     We thank you again for your interest in Nolan Press and would like to continue to work with you in the future.     Billy rested his head in the palm of his hand.  “You just have to do what they ask.  You knew this could happen and you said you’d do whatever it takes.”     He turned back to his computer and opened the list.  There was a long list of little changes, suggestions that he found mostly realistic. After skimming the list, he found only one problem; with the last suggestion: 376. Kill William.     He searched the manuscript, looking for a William, but found none and after hours of worrying and searching, figured it must have been a mistake.  He pushed his way through the changes, skipping the final one and deciding it would be best to leave it unmentioned and hope they would overlook it.     Three hours passed and Billy received another email from Nolan Press; this one was from another member of their staff: Sheila Perkins, Editor.     Billy closed his eyes and clicked on the message.  He looked up at the wall clock, hoping that he would be able to wait until Liv came home; but it would be a few more hours before that and he didn’t want to wait.  He turned back to his computer screen.     Dear Mr. Chambers,     We find it dreadfully upsetting that you were unable to follow the editorial staff’s suggestions.  We would like you to kill William as per editor suggestion, number 376.  As you did not complete this task, we will withdraw our offer.  If you would like to respond to this decision, you can email me at this address.  We are willing to work with you.     Thank you for your repeated cooperation     Billy sat on the couch and thought about how he should respond.  After several minutes, he clicked reply and started typing,     Dear Ms Perkins,     I thank you for your consideration on this matter.  I apologize for any trouble I may have caused, but I sincerely don’t see a character by this name and feel that it is impossible for me to comply with your request.  If you would like to send me details on this change, I would be glad to oblige and change what is needed.  Please accept my full apologies for this misunderstanding and I am very sorry for any time you have lost due to this issue.     Billy sat back and closed his eyes.  After only a moment, he heard a familiar noise; he had received a new email.  He lifted his head and looked up.  “Sheila Perkins, Nolan Press, Ltd.”     He clicked on the email and read it.  It was short and to the point,     Dear Mr. Chambers,     We will send details on the editorial suggestion 376: Kill William via courier within the hour.  Thank you for your cooperation.     Billy laid his head back, closed his eyes and waited for his delivery. #     Liv walked into the apartment and put her keys on the table.  She sat her purse down, flipped through the mail and called out to Billy.  “I saw your car out there; why are you so quiet?”     The apartment was still.     She looked into the living room.  Billy lay on the couch, his head was cocked back.  She wondered what he had been doing when he passed out there.     She walked to the couch, readying herself to grab him by the shoulders when she saw the streak of blood that led from his head, down the back of the couch and pooled on the floor beneath him.     There was a hole in his forehead and his neck was tilted at an unnatural angle; he held a manila envelope against his body.  She slid the manila envelope from under his arm and opened it.  Inside was a single piece of paper with one line typed on it in large print: “#376: Kill William”

In Plane Sight Jason Austin     The dusk sky had that smell of thunder clouds rolling in as I hit the lab door. A handful of cars were scattered in the parking lot for the evening crews. I had a long night ahead of me if I was to help Dr. Weinstein with publishing his results. The hard part wouldn’t be manipulating delta and theta waves in our patients, it would be keeping my mind off the half-naked cosmetology students that I dodged all night like a skateboarder through a minefield. All those pulsating fun-bags dancing around, getting all juiced up with beer-sweat. Dammit! Why were smoking hot women so god-awful frightening?     “OK Leroy,” Dr. Weinstein said from behind the glass. “Alright, we’ve got Mrs. Efram all set up on table two. Slide on your goggles and we’ll get started.”     I pulled the goggles over my eyes thinking how they made me look like a cross between a fifties biker and that blind guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation. What was his name? Anyway, I double-checked the connectors planted just under Mrs. Efram’s bushel of salt-and-pepper hair. Her worry lines made them look like large sheet music notations.     “She’s in REM sleep,” I said.     Mrs. Efram’s theta wave activity was always so bright, like a golden aura emanating from the third eye. It was beautiful. Hard to believe it was causing her so much anguish.     “Activity’s pretty hot here; theta waves are fluctuating rapidly.” I reported.     “Heart rate is up, perspiration and EEG are all on point,” Dr. Weinstein answered. “I’m initiating wave adjustment.”     The counter wave stimuli that Dr. Weinstein produced through Mr’s Efram’s headgear produced an almost instant change in her wave aura; it slowed to a crawl then sped up again—tuning itself to Dr. Weinstein’s command. Watching it ripple about her frame could likely cause sea-sickness to the untrained eye, but I’d been using the wave goggles for nearly a month now and each time I was able to judge the effect with greater accuracy.     “Mrs. Efram,” I said, “Look to your left.”     Her eyes rolled to her left under the dancing lids.     “Now look to the right.”     Again her eyes obeyed.     “Good Mrs. Efram. You’re in complete control. Nothing can harm you and everything is for your best interest. Look down if you understand this.”     Once more the nodules beneath her eyelids did as commanded. For the next twenty minutes I stood vigilant over her prostrated frame, watching for theta and delta wave evidence that she was losing lucidity. Whenever it wavered, Dr. Weinstein readjusted the stimuli to compensate and she regained control of the dream.     “Okay Mrs. Efram, you’ve done great. I’m going to count backwards from ten and when I’m done you’ll be wide awake and feeling fully rested.”     Dr. Weinstein made the proper adjustments from the control to increase beta wave activity and awaken our patient.     “How do you feel Mrs. Efram?” I asked.     “I heard you,” she said with tears already starting. “I was in control. For the first time I was in control. And I kicked his ass!” *****     “Leroy, come here,” Weinstein said. “You’ve got to see this.”     I hoped whatever he was eyeballing was worth a wicked crick in his neck. He’d been staring up at the night sky the whole time I was locking up. Thing is, he was wearing the wave goggles. They were half of the equipment responsible for the most revolutionary form of psychotherapy since Prozac and he was using them as a toy. Not that he didn’t have every right. I mean he did invent the things. But they played a bit with the visual cortex. The basics were an independent power supply that charged pretty fast and a multiteired, adaptive lens structure with generators for optoelectronic modulation. It wasn’t really made, so much, to adjust to light or distance, but instead to the eyes of the wearer in tandem with the auric EM field. It was sort of like an optometer, except it did the adjustment automatically. It was how I was able to make out the theta and delta wave disruptions emanating from a patient.     “Should you really be using those outside the lab?” I asked wandering up to him.     “Who’s the boss here, kid?”     He clicked off the goggles, removed them and handed them to me. “Take a look.”     “They’re just stars,” I reminded him. “And their not even that bright.”     “Just look.”     I took the goggles, strapped them on and rebooted. It was best to turn them off and reboot for a different wearer every time because it made a data recording of retinal patterns and optical adjustments and... “Whoa.”     “In the words of the almighty Spock: fascinating...isn’t it?”     It’s still hard to describe, but I can tell you the almighty Spock didn’t have a word in English or Vulcan that fit.     “My God, even the dimmest ones have almost blinding coronas.”     “Mhm.”     “I can see...everything. What are those wisps in between?”     “Minor cloud formations. So light you can barely see them with the naked eye, but through there...”     “Silver lining. And the colors. I never thought of stars having colors.”     “Look around on the ground.”     I grudgingly pulled away from the awesomeness and peered at the surrounding woods and grassy acres beyond the lot. The trees were alive with electric colors. A pair of rabbits in the distance were brilliant with sheen. I soaked it in for I don’t know how many more minutes before removing the goggles.     “That was...”     “I know.” Weinstein said. There are only two things in world worth gazing at for hours and a sky like that is one of them.”     “What’s the other?”     “A room full of naked strippers, of course. Where’s your head, son?”     I chuckled.     “It’s got me rethinking additional applications. For the technology. Having a little something extra for the pencilpushers couldn’t hurt considering the crap they’ve been giving me lately about results and funding.”     “They wouldn’t really cut us off would they?”     “I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “They kept telling me that it was drugs they wanted, not real cures, not real therapies. Just the next magic pill that makes you forget the disease for a few hours instead of curing it for a lifetime. Find a way to make them live with it. The first time I ever heard those words come out of an executive’s mouth, I knew I could never let them have meaning for me.”     And that’s why I was his student.     “They wouldn’t let you park in the lot tonight?” I asked.     “I promised my wife I’d start taking a few health tips to heart. Walking a few extra yards from the front door is the least of it. Just do it for me, Nathan, she says. Ah. I’ve had it with those nasty bran muffins. And if they do cut off the funding, well, at least I’ll still have my health.”     “Mr.’s Efram isn’t the only one who had a great breakthrough today. She confronted thirty years of her father’s abuse and potentially turned her life around all because your work gave her the ability to take control in a way she never has before. A lifetime of antidepressants, suicide attempts and shrinks putting her in the poorhouse could be over. Who else could have thought of treating mental illness through expanding the Kirlian Effect?”     “You might have,” he said.     “Me? Are you kidding?”     “Leroy, why do you think I chose you out of all the other students at this university? Your insight, your ability to think outside the box is what advancement in any field of science is all about.”     Oh puke. I blushed like a virgin on a first date.     “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. You’re going to have to learn to take a compliment if you expect to be a pioneer.” He stuck his overactive finger at me. “You also need to loosen up. God, when I was your age I was too busy trying to get laid to be a teacher’s pet. Speaking of which...”     “Aw c’mon Dr. Weinstein.” I wanted desperately to end the line of conversation. I was never in a mood to talk about my fat, sexless existence. A twenty-year-old virgin, a hundred pounds overweight, pretending to be the second coming of James Bond on the internet? Shit, I’d make fun of him.     “Alright, alright, forget I said anything.”     He head out to his car, hands in his pockets, sauntering like he hadn’t a care in the world. No wonder I liked being around him, looked up to him; except for not being handsome and dashing, he was everything I wasn’t. Namely, confident.     “Night, Doc,” I hollered with a wave.     “She’s out there waiting for you, kid,” he piped without looking back.     Hmf. Confident.     I barely caught a glimpse of the car in my peripheral vision before it screeched behind me and struck Weinstein head on. I’d parked mine under a bushel of trees that inhibited the street lights. All I remember is seeing Weinstein, cast in shadow, fly one way and the goggles fly another. Quiet and running on one headlight, the culprit car spun out and, for a minute, I thought it would go for me. I mean, everything happened so fast, but I remember how it sat there a little too long, like the driver couldn’t decide whether two-birds-with-one-stone was worth the extra gas. After it peeled off I sprinted over to Weinstein sprawled in the middle of the street.     He was broken up pretty bad. Blood was quickly painting the blacktop. The car had plowed into him while he was hunched over the goggles. At the speed it was going, there’s no way Weinstein didn’t have internal injuries, massive ones at that. I could barely see straight. My eyes were flooding and I felt the electrocution of adrenaline robbing my senses. I tried my best though. I told him to lie still, which sounded awfully stupid and pulled my phone to call for an ambulance. He bubbled something through his bloody pool of a mouth. God only knew what. Then he pressed the goggles into my hands.     “It’s okay,” I said pointlessly. “It’s okay.” *****     The rooftop of my building was always a good place to let things go. I must’ve looked invisible in the night, with my midnight complexion and still wearing the black suit I had on from the funeral. I guess I’d kept it on the rest of the day as some sort of unconscious tribute; though right then, nothing reminded me more of the Doc than the sky above. It was like the stars were talking to me in Morse code. Oh, to unlock the secrets of the universe in the ebb and flow of the sparkling. It was a clear night too, even the naked sight of it was enough to snag admirers, apparently of all ages. Across the street, a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen scampered up a tree in the adjacent park just to sit and watch. The goggles were making him look like he was flickering, almost like a firefly in the park’s playground...at—I looked at the clock—11:44 pm? A little late for...     That’s when I saw the kid in the tree stand up. I mean the boy just stood up and looked off into the sky like it was calling him. I swear it looked like he was going to jump. I yelled out to him, but I guess he didn’t hear me.     Then damn, if he didn’t jump right out of that tree.     That’s when I closed my eyes and ripped off the goggles. Because I could have sworn that boy jumped from that tree and lit off into the sky like Superman. I gripped the goggles in both trembling hands. There was no way they’d make me see something like that. On top of everything else, the damn things couldn’t make a person hallucinate...could they? I looked down into the park and, sure enough, the kid was gone. My only question now was, was he there at all. I decided to abandon the roof for a closer perspective from the street.     I stood under a street light like I was headlining in Vegas. I slipped on the goggles and timidly opened my eyes like a newborn getting his first look at the world.     Nothing. I didn’t see squat. I panned through the park, down both sides of the street, everywhere in my field of perception. All I saw was a stray dog and a couple of passing cars—perfectly within the realm of reality. What was I thinking? The whole deal with Weinsein getting creamed like he had was taking its toll; I’d have an anxiety attack if I wasn’t careful. Although up until now, none of it had caused me to hallucinate. I breathed a sigh of tepid relief and headed back inside to make sweet, sweet love to my pillow.     Before I could open the door I got pushed aside by someone I couldn’t see. I spun quick, ready to get in a fight or hand over my pocket change.     There was nothing, no one. In fact, almost immediately I began to deny I’d felt anything at all. How could I not? No one was there. No one.     Except...     Across the street, floating around the park playground there was...someone. And she was floating. Somehow her steps were out of sync with her movement. And it was a her. Young, about my age. She was...like the boy: there but not there. Her head hung low, like she was looking for something she’d dropped. I reached for the goggles to take them off and the moment my fingers touched them I knew to keep them on. Come on Leroy, keep it together. What the hell was going on? I shouldn’t be seeing these things. None of this is real.     In the blink of an eye, the girl spun toward me and leapt, what must have been, forty yards across the grass to land not ten feet in front of me. I felt my blood freeze and I was sure I’d pass out. I quickly waged a campaign to stay on my feet as I felt myself casting off into panic. Had to reason it out. I had to stay grounded. So I just watched her. I avoided judging what I was seeing and just watched. In doing so, I became slowly bathed in an onrush of sheer comfort. She moved closer to me. I almost removed the goggles again but I...     She didn’t just have an aura; she was the aura. I recognized the theta signatures, but they were far more complex. They weren’t waves that pulsed outside of her; they were her flesh. They painted her into existence like Michaelangelo’s pallet. She was absolutely exquisite. It was like being in the presence of something otherworldly, something you can’t describe because you’ve never seen it, but awesomely familiar. I’d dreamed about women like her. Her eyes had a reach that could snatch the moon from the heavens. It was like staring into a pond so deep and so captivating that you couldn’t tear yourself away until you could see all the way to the bottom. As she got closer the aura effect increased, making it more difficult to fixate on her form. I mean, I could see her, but I just couldn’t perceive her in definitive terms. It was like having visual agnosia where some folks are unable to distinguish a person’s face and they’re forced to recognize them by their voice or clothing. Maybe the goggles didn’t work right outside the lab setting. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure it mattered. I could see so much else, as it were. I couldn’t explain it thoroughly, but there was just something so real, so true about what I was witnessing. Like I was meant to see her that way from the beginning. If I’d allowed myself to think about it, I would have been astonished at the vacuum of fear. I guess I was too busy being awed to be frightened. Or too busy falling in...Oh my God!     “Hi,” I said, quivering. Hi?! Hi?! Was that really the best I could come up with? Dr. Nathan Weinstein’s premier protege and all I had in my verbal attache for a moment like this was “hi?”     “I’m Leroy. What’s your name?” On a roll now.     She suddenly looked puzzled, like she couldn’t remember the answer. For a second it seemed almost painful for her to even try.     “Are you all right?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I was suddenly concerned for her.     She seemed like she couldn’t answer because something else was demanding her attention. The only thing happening around us was quiet night, but dammit, if something wasn’t tugging at her, distracting her. Then she spoke. “I ha...t...if...pl...me...     I rattled my fat head. It suddenly felt like my brains were made of clam chowder. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Was it some kind of foreign language? If so, I’d never heard it and I’d read quite a few books in a number of dialects. It was more like the words were incomplete, like she was speaking through a busted cell. Moreover, why would I be able to hear anything at all. Did just being able to see her somehow influence my other perceptions.     “Can you tell me your name?” I asked.     She tried to speak, but again I got nothing but esophageal static. She looked disheartened, like I’d let her down. She knew she wasn’t getting through.     “Please. I can’t understand you. Keep talking. I’ll try.”     That’s when she reached out to me.     Her hand lifted to my face. I expected to feel a natural touch, but instead it was like she reached inside me and caressed my very being, like she touched part of me that was long sleeping. I wanted to grab her, to hold her close and never let go, but I knew I couldn’t. I was so scared of her running away from me. Yet I knew I couldn’t stop her form doing just that. Whatever the looming disturbance that had her yoked was stronger than both of us. She turned her attention to an indeterminate direction and before I could articulate a single plea, she soared off as if tethered to the very night. I stayed out front for quite a while after the... angel had glided away. Angel was all I could think to call her. I waited and waited and waited. What had I seen? Why had I seen it?     My God, she was beautiful.     I couldn’t even take off the damn wave goggles. I must have looked ridiculous. It took forever for the lash of the early April air to drive me back inside where any hope of sleep would be just that: hope. *****     Don’t ask me why, but walking around a Costco always helped me think. And I had a crap-load of thinking to do. The meandering shoppers, the sound of price scanners, even the random, bitchy eight-year-old that wouldn’t stop until his mother caved in on the overpriced toy or what passed for candy were like white noise that stimulated my brain cells. Put it together, Leroy, I said to myself for the hundredth time this morning. What was it you saw last night? How could you see it? The two most important questions to unlocking this paranormal perplexity and they weren’t even foremost in my thoughts.     No.     Who was she? That’s the question that consumed me. The one question that would probably yield the least results and it was all I could think. Who was my angel?     Electronics was my favorite spot to hang out. Computers, sound systems and hulking televisions hung all over the place and I gawked at that fine-ass reporter from channel 5 news with the killer boobs, hovering over me from a sixty-inch Sony LED.     “Local authorities still have no leads on the attack of William Paterson freshman Carolina Reyes, the girlfriend of national phenom basketball player LeShawn Rucker. Reyes has been in fight for her life ever since she was apparently assaulted while standing outside the William Paterson library annex just four days ago. This all happens while Rucker, himself, has been fielding questions about his possible decision to forgo the remainder of his college career to turn professional.”     Feh! I couldn’t wander ten feet without hearing girls my age joke about how they were going to stalk him and trick him into getting them pregnant. He was handsome, popular, getting richer by the second and since he was six-feet-nine-inches of basketball stardom, I boiled to think of how he impressed in the locker room showers. I hated him. In fact, I nearly put my foot through the television until I saw the other picture. Her picture. The picture of the victim.     Angel. *****     From the library to the lab and back again and again, I jumped like an equestrian horseman. I reran any and all applicable data on Weinstein’s auric imaging tech. What Semyon Kirlian had pioneered in 1939, Abraham Weinstein had revolutionized. Relating brain wave patterns to auric science was one thing, but technologically manipulating the effect was genius on a whole different scale.     Weinstein was amazing.     Almost feeling like a rat in a maze with the endless and exhausting online searches, a fringe article on astral projection managed to sniff me out and pull me along. I’m not sure Weinstein would ever have lined up the transcendentalists theory that many people, perhaps all, actually leave their bodies when they’re asleep—although he certainly would not have dismissed them. They believed a person’s consciousness or astral form leaves the physical body, but retains a connection with it, like an umbilical cord or radio wave. Once out, it can travel unbound along the astral plane. It literally had the entire universe as its playground. Time and space become irrelevant boundaries. And furthermore, it might very well be a natural part of REM sleep.     I held my breath a little as a I put it into perspective point by point. Coma is the condition of a brain which is accompanied by dominant theta wave activity. Is that what Angel—I mean Carolina was; a projected mass of her own theta waves taking shape? Was it possible?     It would mean either her or the goggles had one hell of a range. Maybe her brainwaves were putting out more than usual, trying to force consciousness to the surface. I was suddenly ashamed of myself, fantasizing about such a helpless creature. If I’d invented the world’s first functional pair of X-Ray glasses , I’d be on every sorority’s terror-watch list from here to California. I wished I could see her, but fat chance they’d let my fat-ass in. News reports had the doctors giving her around fifty percent odds , but with some head injuries it was a just roll of the dice. Her parents were already draining their own sick days being at her bedside and I wasn’t about to offer them any false hope. The goggles had never been tested on comatose patients and I’d need access to the rest of Weinstein’s lab equipment which was no longer available. The only other option was to pray that somehow she could reestablish contact, which there was no reason to believe was even possible. “Shit!” I never wished I was both wrong and right about something. So help me, if this turned out to be a matter of the whole mechanism just going freaky and zapping my brain with something that made me see shit that wasn’t real.     God, please don’t tell me I’m that lonely and pathetic.     But I couldn’t get her out of my head—or whatever part of me she was occupying. She’d tried to say something; I know it! Was she just dreaming?     Or was I? I had to know. *****     The goggles tucked into my backpack, I marched right up to the nurse’s desk and asked to see her.     “Her parents and other family members are with her almost ‘round-the-clock. You’d have to get their permission,” the nurse, not as hot as Carolina, said.     Well step up, wonder boy. Just tapdance right into her room and tell Mom and Dad your dead man’s theory about scoping out their comatose daughter’s aura with your costume-prop Darth Vader goggles. “OK. Thanks.”     The room door looked pretty scary I’ll admit—like a mouth that would chomp me in half and spit me out if it found me unpalatable. Inside, hushed and faltering, but audible, I could hear Carolina’s parents praying. In this case, her mother’s native Spanish was a universal cry that even the most ignorant in foreign languages could understand. I tried to look inside; I swear I did. But it was a no-go. My shoes became laced bear-traps and I just hovered before the little colored, plastic flags screwed to the room’s status plate.     “Carolina,” her father whimpered. He talked directly to his daughter and in perfect English as he was still used to doing. Mom handled Spanish while Dad, English so Carolina’s bilingualism was assured. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise. The doctor’s say maybe you can hear me. I wish I knew if that were true. I’m not so sure I’d want you to hear everything I’m saying. You know I’m not like your mother; she pours everything she has into those rosaries and I kind of count on her to keep me in God’s good graces.” He paused and did a rocky swallow. “But I have a hard time staying hopeful. I swear, baby, I mean I swear I’m holding onto it with everything I’ve got; they say it’s the best thing you can do for your loved ones. But it feels so fragile, like if I give just the slightest inch, it’ll be snatched away. Like they’re going to tell us any second that we’re wasting our time, there’s nothing they can do. I wish I were stronger, Carolina...like you.”     It all ended in a gurgle caused by hands blanketing a distraught father’s mug. I sighed in defeat, wanting to plop down on the floor. My knees were certainly weak enough to excuse it. Instead, I just ran my thumb under the backpack’s strap—you know, the one I’d use later to hang myself for being so stupid—and walked away.     ****     An hour of driving around proved to be a dumb idea. I always ended up coasting through a Dairy Queen or a donut shop and going home with my gut a few inches closer to the steering wheel. Wouldn’t you know I had a dozen jelly-filled and a giant malted cozied up beside me on the passenger-seat like a prom date. Both untouched, though. My mind was a million miles away and usually had to be somewhere in the vicinity for me to enjoy a junk-binge. It was important to break the thought cycle, get out of my own way and try to rationalize something that was intrinsically irrational.     Without even realizing, I’d driven within a quarter-mile of the place where Weinstein had been rundown with no more consideration than a fly hitting the windshield. Funny where your mind takes you when you’re not even paying attention. They’d had news-cameras up here the day it happened. Nothing now but some police tape lashed around the nearby trees. I parked on the street and glared at the exact spot where he lay only 48 hours ago, choking on his own blood. Was I looking for the part of me left there? Maybe I thought I could retrieve it; only, I wasn’t sure I wanted it back. I’d done just about everything wrong that night. My description of the car was vague, at best, because of the lack of light and my petrified brain not focusing on the license plate. The most police managed to get were a few tire-skids, which weren’t going to be much help. I hammered my skull against the steering wheel, feeling sorry for myself until I couldn’t stand the stench of it anymore.     Three donuts, chased by half the malt and, I was coasting through the recent campus expansion around William Paterson University. Twenty-six, fresh acres of grassy knolls and pretentious facades, including a new library. Why did I even consider it post high school? It was too close to home. What happened to that grand gesture of a jumpstart I had lined up? I’d planned one wicked Houdini—a sure fire nuke of any and everything that reminded me of who I used to be. I was going to lose fifty pounds, take some tae-kwon-do classes over the summer then head cross-country. The looks on people’s faces when I, the cool, mysterious kid from parts unknown strutted across the courtyard. I’d have a philosophy book under my arm, have a set of brass knuckles in one pocket and a pack of condoms in the other.     Hell yeah!     Of course, maybe I had a better chance of being struck by lightning, in the middle of a desert, while sharing a sundae with the Abominable Snowman...but I didn’t care. I would get as close as I could and never look back. I’d dare life to try and stop me! And no woman could resist me. I could have a woman like Carolina without...     Carolina.     I’ll be damned. Wasn’t she attacked somewhere around the new library out here? Only a day or so after Weinstein was killed. She was supposed to have been waiting for her ride and got waylaid by some thug. Goddamn! This sure was a brainiac move: driving out here when I’m trying to jettison the stressors.     I idled in front of the library, eyeballing the cordoned crime scene and besieged by imaginary scenarios of what must have happened. Carolina standing innocently by the entrance, minding her own business then blindsided by some rectal flotsam with a hard-on for dope money. It made me sick. Truth told, I got salty enough to spit Alkaseltzer. Bringing it to a boil made made me need to hit something. It got so bad, I had to park and get the hell out of my car as I was primed to tear out the upholstery with my bare hands. I could see her so vividly. She was standing there, in her air of innocence, books clung to her bosom and completely clueless of the pending danger. She’s caught completely off-guard. Brutish, vise-like hands clutch her neck. She’s rattled in that bastard’s grip like a castanet before his fist flies downward, crashing into her and sends her head slamming into the unforgiving concrete. I could see it! It all happened right there! Damn him! I could see it all!     I could see the... truth.     Like a moth to a flame, I was lead to a bundle of bushes outside the cordoned area. My eyes groped the loosely tilled soil until the faintest sparkle captured them. I reached down and dug out a necklace that was, as best I could tell, pretty heavy in karats. On the back was inscribed, CAROLINA, MY LOVE FOREVER.     My chest tumbled in every possible direction. And I knew the last time I’d felt it. It was the feeling I’d been grasping at for days. I booked back to the car and popped the trunk. I practically threw the tarp covering the goggles into the street, I went for it so fast. I strapped them on and whipped my head around like a busted compass. I practically sniffed the air like a bloodhound, hoping in vain, that my other sense could tell me something the feeling couldn’t.     Nothing. The air was empty.     My racing blood returned to a crawl and my balloon plummeted back to earth. My gelatinous-ass flattened against the side of the car and I stared at my size-twelves as if they should have some words of wisdom to share. Even if they had, I’m not sure I’d have listened. Thoroughly disgusted with myself, I eased upright and hammered the trunk closed.     And my angel cometh.     There, in all her radiance, was Carolina Reyes. Her effervescent astral form glowed before me like a shrunken star. My arms trembled as I struggled to keep them at my sides. The urge to hold her must have been ten times stronger.     “Carolina,” I panted tearfully.     She smiled.     Just when I thought her astral incandescence didn’t get any brighter.     “You’ve been with me the whole time, haven’t you? You led me here.”     She didn’t speak. Or at least didn’t make any verbal note I could pick up. Rather she spoke with her entire self. That is how it felt. It’s like we were beyond words. Either these astral forms seemed to have more than one way of communicating, or I just had a rapport with Carolina’s that was like a direct line to my soul. She looked at the necklace seized in my trembling fist. “Le..., she mumbled.     “What?” I said impatiently. I ached to hear her say something I could understand. So when she tried to speak I jumped on the moment. “My name is Leroy, Leroy Lofton.” I held up the necklace. “Can you tell me what this means? You wanted me to find it, I know. What should I do with it? Do you want me to bring it to you? I don’t know if they’d let me.”     She stepped or hovered to within inches of me.     “Leroy,” she said.     I could have flown to the moon and back. She said my name! She knew who I was! I had gotten through! What a time for my usually fat mouth to dry up. “I...I...”     I think even in her astral form she knew a fear-frozen loser when she saw one. She cupped my hand with the necklace and gazed at the cordoned area. Best I could tell, she was looking at something specific. Was there something else I missed? I knew I had what she wanted. There was nothing else there but strips of police tape.     And I understood.     Not an easy task, to break through the cement that encased my brain. Carolina reached for my face and moved closer. Her form seemed much more illuminated than before, more clear. Maybe I had tuned to her, moved into alignment with her. It was funny how the angelic brilliance of her astral form never blinded me, no matter how close she came. It must have been a different nature of light. Like my eyes only interpreted the true light that existed from within rather than absorbed the light from without. I like to think some of her light passed through me as she kissed me. There’s certainly no other way I can explain it. Something like that really can’t be put into words, only put into heart. That night, I was left holding the necklace and a swelling joy that lit me afire. Not just because my angel had spoken to me, but because it didn’t matter if she never did again. It was enough that I’d helped her. I sure didn’t expect it to be. But, bless my soul, it was enough. *****     I brought the necklace into the downtown Police station and to a detective Bill Wiles who was in charge of Carolina’s case. Stupid me just assumed I could drop it off and leave. No chance. Wiles grilled me for a few minutes, until he was convinced I’d just found it and wasn’t involved in the assault.     After he traced the necklace’s purchase, Wiles went out to that midget mansion paid for with “questionable” money. LeShawn Rucker answered the door in a mild sweat. He’d thought for sure Wiles was the father of the sixteen-year-old girl he’d shooed out the back when he heard the doorbell. Rucker remembered Wiles as the detective who questioned him the night of Carolina’s attack. Wiles beat around the bush a little to bring Rucker’s guard down then presented the necklace.     “Oh yeah,” the idiot said, “It was a gift for our three-month anniversary. Should have seen her eyes when I gave it to her; she lit up.” Then he got teary-eyed and said, “She’ll be glad to have back when she wakes up.”     “A three-month anniversary,” Wiles said. “That’s cute. How long ago was it?”     “About two weeks.”     “Really? Because I traced the necklace to Roman’s Jewelry on Madison. According to their records it was bought on the eighteenth; that was barely a week ago. Jeweler’s a big basketball fan too. He remembers selling it to you on that day.”     “Um, yeah that’s right. I’d forgotten the three-month thing and Carolina got upset with me. What guy do you know remembers stuff like that? I bought it last minute.”     “Hm. The eighteenth was the same day Carolina Reyes was attacked, you know. If I remember right, you told me you hadn’t even seen her that day.”     Rucker bit himself. “I-I didn’t. I had it delivered.”     At that point, Wiles had to keep his cop’s lip-curl under lock-and-key, while Rucker continued to chew on his expensive athletic-shoe leather.     “I thought you just said she “lit up” when you gave it to her.”     From there, it all spilled out like a colonic. Rucker cried like the little rich bitch that he was and confessed to hitting Carolina during an argument. He fought with her that night at the library. His little charm-bobble didn’t work. She was still intent on going to the police and telling them all about the accident. Rucker wasn’t hearing it. He wasn’t about to have his future in the pros get smoked up like a blunt. They’d been arguing about that night driving home from the party. Rucker had been drinking and was well over the legal limit. Carolina had, at least managed to talk him into taking the less populated back roads home. She continued to beg him to let her drive, but Rucker was being a nuclear asshole. He even claimed it was her fault for distracting him, said it was she who caused him to careen into that Weinstein guy. Guess it’s always somebody else’s fault. I later wondered if she had to talk him out of backing up over the fat guy. I’m sure Rucker didn’t want witnesses. Anyway, there it was. Wiles found the car in the garage, unmoved since the accident. Rucker was too scared out of his tiny little mind to have the damage repaired. He said he didn’t mean to hurt Carolina, just wanted to make her understand. Well if the message was, “woman-beaters often come in pretty packages”, I’d say she got it. *****     I sat in the lobby for a straight hour. Even after I’d looked at the clock for the fortieth time, I still hadn’t worked up the courage to at least ask to see Carolina. They’d never let me in. Family was still keeping virtual round-the-clock vigil at her bedside. They’d heard about the break in the case, but my name hadn’t been mentioned. Since Rucker confessed to everything it didn’t look like they would need much more from me than my official statements. I wondered could I ever tell anyone about the astral form that visited me. It’d probably be a one-way ticket to a padded cell. Better that I be content that the truth came out and that Carolina and Weinstein had justice give them an early Christmas gift. The feeling suddenly waxed genuine. I decided to call it day and leave things as they were. It promptly seemed intrusive to try and see Carolina now. I didn’t want her mother feeling like a sideshow. I kept it simple and inquired at the nurse’s station on Carolina’s condition. I told the on-duty my name and that I was working for my school newspaper.     “There hasn’t been much change,” she said. “She’s...     “Get a doctor!” Carolina’s mother had zipped alongside the desk so fast it left me checking the floor for skid-marks. “Get a doctor,” she repeated.     My guts dropped to the floor. Oh god, what had happened? In a heartbeat, a wave of nurses and two doctors within earshot rushed Carolina’s room. I sort of calmly rode the wave in behind as they ignored me. I damn sure kept my distance, but angled and shifted like a squirrel clawing his way up a tree. Peering through the harried white-coats and pastel uniforms, I was able to make out the face of Carolina Reyes.     I completely fell apart.     My knees felt like they were resting on stilts of jellied cranberry sauce. I would’ve fallen against the wall if I wasn’t sure I’d draw too much attention. This just couldn’t be happening.     Her eyes fluttered and lifted open like aching bird wings. She’d muttered something, which sent her mother into hysterics. Smart woman, advancing on the moment. Looked like she wanted to draw Carolina out, rattle her to consciousness. Doctors practically had to wrestle moms away so they could check out their patient. It became a general bustle after a few minutes and I backed off. Boy, I could have flown out of that hospital right then, I was feeling so good. I might have to find a little corner to cry in if I wasn’t careful. And if I didn’t then, what I heard next might have surely sent me into a womanly fit.     “Leroy?”     It was faint, but I heard it. Somebody had said my name. Only one of them knew who I was. It was the on-duty nurse from the desk. She’d said my name. I had no idea why, but I always felt like I was about to be strung up when I heard my name mentioned from across a room. “That’s him,” the nurse said.     Carolina’s mother trotted out and hoisted me by the arm.     “Are you Leroy?” she asked.     “Yes,” I choked.     “Please come in, quickly.” She towed me into the room under some serious horsepower. Never underestimate the strength of a distraught mother. The others had parted like the Red Sea, opening a path directly to the bed. Moms was definitely running the place. She whipped me in front of here daughter and held me fast by the arm like she was worried I might try to make a break for it.     My eyes bounced from stem to stern, groping for something, anything to focus on besides the woman, I now felt somehow, I’d violated. What I was I thinking? Playing around in someone else’s head like that! I was such a world class loser! I deserved what I got!     Carolina looked at me in a way I couldn’t interpret. So I tried not to. Instead I just returned it and spent the rest of my energy keeping my bladder in one piece. The tingling waves I felt when she merged her hand with mine was like a tide of peace that, all at once, washed away my fear. And I thought, this is what angels do.     “Hi Leroy,” she smiled softly.     “Hi.”

Graffiti on the Desk. Matthew Roberts Reading graffiti on a desk and walls in a classroom. A lot of it in Korean, of which I can make out a little. The stuff in English is original. Not entirely sure what the kid meant when he or she scratched in, ‘EAT FUCK!’ on the table, but I get the general idea.

Janet Kuypers reading the Matthew Roberts poem Graffiti on the Desk from the July 2011 issue (v096) of Down in the Dirt magazine

Watch this YouTube video read 07/05/11, live at the Café in Chicago

The Green Flannel Napkin Rebecca L. Dupree     The boys in the kitchen had taken Allison’s bread knife away from the bread station; unfortunately it wasn’t until it was too late that she noticed. For now she continued to hop contently from one foot to the other, enjoying the soft squeaking her pink converse sneakers were making on the cement floor. She tapped a slotted spoon against her leg in tune with the squeaking, a melody of boredom that annoyed the diners in front of her. When hopping lost the amusement it provided, she went on to hair and nail grooming, done mostly with her teeth. In the middle of chewing on a lengthy strand of her wheat colored hair, she spied one of the last people in the buffet line approach her. The bowl of bread placed on the table in front of her brimmed over with uneven lumps that had been rejected by the dinners. Not wanting to seem like a failure amongst the other volunteers, she had a flash of inspiration. She held the slotted spoon out in front of her, blocking anybody trying to go past without considering what she had to offer.     “French bread sir?”     The man gave Allison a distracted glance. He was already balancing a tray brimming with a Styrofoam plate heaped with lukewarm spaghetti, a melting ice cream sandwich and a can of no-brand cola. He grabbed a chunk of bread and dropped it in the dead center of his spaghetti sauce. Without a word of thanks, he lumbered off to find a seat at one of the VFW’s fold up tables that Allison had helped set up earlier that night.     “Thank you for supporting troop 57!” she called out to him, but the words were lost in the busy noise that filled the air. She had been saying it all night in one form or another, letting people know that the troop appreciated the support of their neighbors. It seemed like the whole town had shown up for the privilege to buy mediocre spaghetti and sit at long tables to eat it. This turnout was to be expected. Whenever the Boy Scouts held a fundraiser to benefit one cause or another, the townspeople could be counted on to come in droves. The citizens of this town fancied themselves to be a helpful bunch. Besides, this was the Boy Scout’s annual spaghetti dinner. This dinner was a tradition. The only other fund raiser that drew a bigger crowd was the Fireman’s Auction, and that wouldn’t even happen until May. So on this Sunday night, everyone was here, eating pasta. The town was a homestead for farmers and laborers, thus making the room a sea of flannel shirts and trucker hats, hunting stories and NASCAR statistics. The scene was completed by several little snot nosed kids running around, and a handful of black clad teenagers clustered in groups, trying to look bored and cool at the same time.     The only people in the entire place that looked sharp and halfway respectable were the Boy Scouts themselves. They must of taken special effort tonight, because every single last guy in the troop looked clean and pressed, as if they never had done anything in their uniforms except stand and serve food. Even the Cub Scouts, clad in their blue uniforms, looked especially neat tonight as they ran around handing out napkins and clearing away dirty dishes. But by far the most impressive had to be the Eagle Scouts. The town had a tradition of turning out an unusually high number of Eagle Scouts. The troop even won some kind of award for having the most scouts achieve that rank. They were all present tonight, six of the finest young men the town had to offer. They were surveying the scene in their uniforms complete with sashes, parading around like billboards for their many achievements, all marked by little colored circles on their chest.     Perhaps the best looking one of them all was Allison’s own boyfriend, Kyle. Kyle was the reason she was helping out tonight. She let her eyes wander around until she saw him. He was standing over where Cub Scouts were handing out sodas, conversing with the local history teacher and gesturing wildly with his hands. Kyle looked so tall that he dwarfed the man, making the poor guy look more like the student than the instructor. Allison didn’t know if it was the uniform, the confident look on his face, or her own hopeless adoration of the guy, but at that point she felt thrilled just looking at him across the room. Sticking the spoon in the back pocket of her jeans, she spit out the lock of hair she was gnawing on and started to fix it back into place.     Kyle finished his discussion and sauntered over to her, a smirk decorating his face. A flutter of emotion started in the middle of her chest and spread quickly to her brain. Allison felt a burning desire to kiss him right there. She wanted to jump on top of the folding tables and exclaim to all the members of the town what a wonderful, upstanding, perfect boyfriend she had.     “Hello stranger,” she giggled. “May I offer you a piece of bread?”     “Can I have a piece of you instead? You look delicious.” He seized a hunk of bread from the bowl and took a giant bite of it. He chewed with vigor, and then smiled. A thousand perfect white teeth showed through his smile.     “I’m so glad that you let me help out tonight. I’m having fun.” Allison placed her hand on his chest, slightly moving his sash off his shoulder. “Anything with you is fun.”     “If you think this is a blast, you should see what is coming up.” Kyle removed her hand and then straightened his sash back into military-like perfection. “I’m going to make a speech.”     “You’re going to announce new candidates for Eagle Scout!”     “Nope. You’re never going to guess.”     Allison cocked her head to the side. “You’re going to announce another dinner, aren’t you?”     He laughed. “In a way.” Behind Kyle, two other scouts started setting up a microphone. The rest of the group shuffled around, gathering behind the microphone stand. The Cub Scouts that had been interrupted from helping stood in front, holding out stacks of napkins and dishes. Older scouts came out of the kitchen, holding the pots and pans and knifes that they had been washing.     “It looks like you’re on,” Allison pointed to the front of the room where the scouts were waiting.      “Perfect. Oh, and by the way, I would like to see you right after I finish my speech.” He winked at her. “Wish me luck.”     Allison clasped her hands together gleefully. Screaming out in joy was not an option in this crowded room, so instead she broke into a wide grin and bit down on her tongue.     Kyle swaggered up to the front. Taking the microphone from one of the other scouts, he stepped up on a folding chair. He let out a sharp whistle and then started.     “Everybody, may I have your attention for the moment!” People politely stopped talking and put down their plastic forks. When the room was silent, he started again.      “I would like to start by thanking the VFW for letting us use their place tonight. Without their kindness, there would be no spaghetti dinner because none of us have a dinning room big enough to hold the whole town.” Kyle tossed the microphone from one hand to the other. “Thank you, VFW.”      People, enamored by his boyish charm, chuckled. He went on, doing the usual thanks to grocery stores that had donated produce, mothers who had prepared and cooked, and parents that were a constant source of support to the scouts. Allison sighed. She cracked her knuckles, but did so very softly. She didn’t want to interrupt Kyle, but she did want him to finish soon.     “Now, I want to do something special here tonight.” He paused. “Because everyone from this town is so supportive and wonderful, I want to share a story with you all. One of our Boy Scout campfire stories. This one is about food, much like the food you have on your plates in front of you. Think of it as a thank you gift.”     Kyle shut his eyes and began his story. “Once, there was a great civilization. They were brave people and they had many gifts to offer others. But in the place that they lived, they lacked one important object. They lacked food. Due to wars and disasters beyond their control, their food supply was dangerously low. So they moved on. They moved to a place that had lots of food. The people who were in control of the food had no idea that they were now splitting it up with persons unknown. For a time, this arrangement worked. But then one day, a person from the great civilization got hungry. And he ate something he wasn’t supposed to.”     Kyle paused for dramatic effect. When he started talking again, he was whispering.     “But the strange thing was, nobody noticed. Nobody noticed at all. So what did these people from the great civilization do? They kept it up. They kept eating what they weren’t supposed to. And nobody noticed.”     All of a sudden, a loud noise rang out in the VFW hall. It took a second for Allison to realize what it was. Turning away from Kyle’s speech, she noticed for the first time that all the other Scouts were in the back of the room. They looked much the same as they had before, except one minor difference. Each scout held in his hand a sharp kitchen knife. The sound, Allison realized, was from all the doors locking simultaneously. The scouts started to lick their lips with long pointy tongues.     One of the townspeople stood up. He was a large man, about forty years old, wearing a flannel shirt as green as the John Deere tractor he spent his days on. His hair stuck out in little puffs from underneath his trucker hat. His size would have been intimidating in any setting, yet at this moment he resembled a frightened sixth grader.     “What the hell is going on here?” The man shouted out, his eyes darting like small fish in a bowl.     The man didn’t get any answers. A dead silence sat heavy in the air. One of the older scouts strolled over to the man. The scout was carrying something hidden from view. In the back of the room a baby started to cry. The scout causally approached the man, who seemed strangely quiet and subdued. The scout revealed what he was holding. A salt shaker. A smile crept along his face as he slowly sprinkled grains of salt on the man’s head.     “Do you know, great townspeople, what these people, my people, ate that they weren’t supposed to?”     A panic rose up in the crowd. Allison reached for her bread knife. A sob caught in her throat when all she found was the slotted spoon. Terrified, she plowed through the bread station scrambling for the absent knife. Finally realizing that it wasn’t there, she grasped for a weapon, any weapon, as she tried to make her way to the kitchen and the back entrance. But it was too late. Kyle was on her back. She felt his sharp teeth bury their way into her spine.     “This is the surprise, my love. I know it hurts, but soon it will be over. You’ll never have to feel this pain again. Oh, you taste good. I knew you would be delicious.”     The last thing Allison saw before she lost consciousness was a Cub Scout, covered in blood, daintily wiping his mouth with the green flannel shirt of his victim.

King of the Castle Lam Pham     When Chenglei stood up in the middle of history class to denounce our teacher for having bourgeois sympathies, I had my reservations. It was hard to imagine Shuy-lei, a quiet and bookish man who looked more like a turtle than a capitalist sympathizer of posing any threat to the Red Guard and Chairman Mao’s revolution. The entire class was silent as the elderly instructor did his best to placate Chenglei’s wild screams, and I felt like a coward for not saying anything in his defense. Both of my parents had been poor farmers, but our lack of wealth didn’t guarantee my safety any more than it did Shuy-Lei. Anyone could be publicly vilified by the Red Guard; I’ve seen children my age beaten and left bleeding on the streets in the name of cultural cleansing.     So I watched Chenglei and three other boys in the class steadily make their way towards the man, like chess pieces being pushed by a force that were neither of Mao’s making or theirs. It was the spirit of the revolution that passed the coil of rope up the aisle, the demands of true freedom that stripped, shaved, and bound the old man to his desk. The written obscenities scrawled onto his body with charcoal, the shallow lacerations across his face and torso from split shafts of bamboo, they were evidence of a disquieting momentum that had taken hold of China; an impetus that was still reaching its crest. Shuy-Lei would have been strapped to the desk until morning if my friend Feng hadn’t slipped into the classroom later that evening to cut him free.     “I told him to leave the village,” Feng was only eleven then, a full year older than me. A few years ago, during the Great Leap Forward, Feng and his father had broken into the closed communal mess-halls and stolen food for the starving village. It wasn’t long before one of our neighbors had given Feng’s father to the authorities for extra rations. Since then, he’d acquired an unspoken status among the few children who still remembered what it was like to starve, to watch their loved ones die while the pile of scavenged iron and scrapped metal they had tortured themselves for laid useless roadside. All in the name of Mao.     “We can’t stay here much longer Bojing.”     “There’s nothing we can do,” I told him as I lanced at a passing cicada with my wooden pole. The tip had been lathered with glue. Although there had been improvements in grain cultivation, food was still scarce, and cicadas made for an easy meal to stave off hunger. “It’s happening everywhere. Running won’t solve anything.”     Feng sighed. “So all we can do is wait?”     I didn’t reply. Adults had been the Red Guard’s primary targets when the Cultural Revolution first began, but once the parents had started abandoning their homes, we became our own victims. Shuy-Lei had been the last teacher to stay behind, a poor man who’d staunchly believed that education could stem the rising red tide that was threatening to swallow us all. He used to call Feng “Achilles,” due to his height, and I, his “Hector.” At eleven, Feng stood at a towering five-foot-eleven. It had protected him from the Red Guard so far, but we both knew it wouldn’t last.     “Come on,” I handed him the wooden pole. “There’s a meeting tonight.”     He looked away. “I can’t make it.”     I sucked a lungful of air through my teeth. “Chenglei will notice.”     “Then tell him I got sick from eating too many bugs,” Feng grinned, snapping my pole in the air with a flick of his wrist. A pinned cicada squirmed at its end. “Start using that quick mind of yours Hector.”     “Fine, but just one thing Achilles,” I gave him a measured look. “Whatever you’re doing later, be extra careful. It won’t be hard for them to figure out you sprung Shuy-Lei.”     “You sound like my whiny old mother,” he snorted, brusquely hugging me. He slipped something sharp in my hand. “I’ll see you later tonight.”     The meeting took place in the school’s former faculty lounge. Chenglei was reciting one of Mao’s speeches, the campaign against “The Four Olds,” when I slunk in. The knife Feng had used to cut Shuy-Lei free was safely tucked underneath my shirt, behind the belt.     “You’re late Bojing,” thirty pair of eyes turned to me, scrutinizing. Before the Red Guard, Chenglei had been a timid boy, always the last to participate in any group activity, terrified of public speaking. How proud he stood now, his back as stiff as a sword, his words cracking the air like whiplash. The meek mouse transformed, a vicious viper born. “We were worried an ox ghost had caught you.”     “Ox ghost” meant traitor, the opposition. His implication was obvious enough. “Someone let Shuy-Lei out,” I reported, my hands sweating. “I lost track of time looking for him.”     The entire room responded the way I knew they would. They broke into hysterics, giddy with the idea of a live manhunt. By the time they actually organized a search party, the old man would be long gone, or so I hoped.     Chenglei didn’t react to the news like the others. He waited for the room to settle, before answering, “I know, I saw who sprung the old chicken free.”     I saw the reason behind this telling admission immediately. Chenglei had set up Shuy-Lei’s public humiliation earlier in order to sniff out any defected Guards. He smiled at me, knowing full well that I knew. “Where’s Feng, Bojing?”     “I don’t know.”     He shrugged as if he’d anticipated it. “Doesn’t matter, he’ll turn up eventually. I have a more important question for you,” the room seemed to condense as the Red Guard drew tighter around me. “Whose side are you on?”     When we were younger, we used to play a game called “King of the Castle.” The object of the game is to stay on top of a designated area, a hill or the top of the jungle gym, and retain that position from the other players. The memory came to mind as I stood on the campus rooftop, the stretch of the village bled in late evening dusk. It wasn’t very late when we saw Feng approach the entrance of north campus. Chenglei stood next to me, surveying his territory like Agamemnon. He’d laid out his plan with meticulous care, sparing no detail in obtaining his Achilles. There were Red Guards posted at every corridor, entrance, and exit, hidden from plain sight.     At the start of the revolution, Red Guard’s weaponry consisted of mostly wooden swords fashioned out of discarded planks of dried out wood or trussed bamboo sticks. They’d since graduated to firearms and homemade grenades.     “Here comes our wayward warrior,” I heard him gloat. The Guard behind me pressed the muzzle of his pistol at the small of my back. “No one can escape this revolution Bojing, we need to smash the old world if we are to rebuild it anew.”     Down below, we watched Feng surrender to the five Guards that surrounded him, his arms arching towards us like flags. With guns trained on him, Chenglei’s cronies took a moment to tender the prey, pistol whipping and kicking him to the floor as the stars above watched helplessly. I felt the gun on my back relax, dipping slightly away.     “Checkmate,” Chenglei whispered.     My fingers crept closer to the handle of my hidden blade. I still had one move to make.

Happy Hour Terry Ferrell     I’ve been asked on more than one occasion what really happened that day. I guess you could say it’s entirely my fault. Well, at least partially. Certainly the blame is not fully hers.     Like many professionals, sometimes I allowed myself to be married to my work. I guess you could say I was the first real workaholic, even though back then we just called it devotion. You also have to keep in mind I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders. Coming up with creative and innovative names for every little thing that moves was intense work. And the boss, although, a really nice guy, was not someone whose bad side you wanted to be on.     She knew the importance of my job coming into this whole thing, but you know how young love goes. A person tells you they once killed their own brother in a jealous rage, but you don’t care; you’re in love. Besides, it’s not like I ever killed my brother or anything like that. In fact, it would be several more years before murder would corrupt our little community. I was just your average, everyday guy trying to hold down a job.     She never overtly complained about my work habits even though it would have been impossible for her to hide her true feelings from me. When connected as powerfully as we were, your feelings and emotions are no longer a private matter. She was truly a part of me, you know what I mean?     Now, I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I just take a couple of days off? Thinking back, I can’t rightly say. We spent every Sunday together, the boss was a real stickler for remembering the Sabbath and all of that, and I guess I thought that was enough. The boss wasn’t so a rigid a guy he wouldn’t give me a couple of days off. Hell, he even told me on a number of occasions I had been granted a beautiful gift and I better not let her get away. But, I liked the work. The environment was nice and I was really making a name for myself.     This is probably a longer story than you thought. Let me buy you a drink. What’s your poison? Capitan and Coke, it is! Bartender, can I get a Capitan and Coke for my friend here and another Manhattan for me. I was never a rum type of guy, you know. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes!     I enjoyed the work. I really felt I had a purpose. I guess I thought me having a purpose was good enough for both of us. Even though I knew she was lonely, I never really took it into account. I kept telling myself I would plan something special for her. But, you know how it is. Life happens and little romantic ideas get pushed to the backburner. So, it was no real surprise when she got the wandering eye.     I had seen him a couple of times before any of this ever happened. He used to sit under this tree and write poetry. She had seen him before too. One day we passed him on our way for groceries. She glanced over at him once. Then again. And again. I couldn’t blame her. He had this skin that shimmered in the sunlight. and a voice like cotton balls, light and soft; the voice of an angel, really. His words sort of hung in the air and lazily floated about like dandelion seeds.     I guess it was about three days after this encounter when it all really went down. I was over in a little meadow take some inventory of wildflowers about thirty yards or so from our little poet friend and his tree. I was quite engaged in my counting, when I happened to glance up and saw her walking towards him. I probably did one of those double takes you see nowadays in cartoons.     I was surprised on a number of levels to see her. She usually stayed near the house and kept to herself. I watched them for several moments. She had no idea I was there. If he knew, he certainly did not take any notice. It all happened so fast. One minute he was saying something to make her laugh and offering her a piece fruit. I can still see her trembling hands as she lifted the fruit to her lips.     Back then, the laws were not as lenient as they are today. This crime was unspeakable, the worst really! One would have guessed I would have been furious. I wasn’t though. I knew this was my fault, which is why I did what I did.     I ran to my little Mockingbird, that’s what I called her, and pulled her into my arms. She was crying. I was crying. He was just sort of smirking. She cried and begged my forgiveness, while I cried and begged her forgiveness. Then, I did what I thought was the right thing.     Dear friend, forgive me, but I too took a bite. I can still vividly remember the smell as I sunk my teeth in. It was sort of like nectar, honey, and milk all wrapped in jasmine leaves. And how could I forget that red skin? You’ve never seen such a deep shade of red, like blood, only less morbid. No sir, they don’t make apples like that anymore.     Anyway, I couldn’t bear the thought of her being punished; her boiling alone for all eternity was a pain too harsh for my soul to withstand. I decided then and there I would rather roast with her forever like two Cornish game hens in the hot fires of the afterlife rather than being separated. And, well, I guess you know how the rest turned out.     Anyway, where are my manners? Enough about me. What brings you here?

Terry Ferrell Bio     Terry Ferrell has had a number of essays, short stories, and poetry published in Exit 109, Radford University’s literary magazine. In addition to these publications, his graduate thesis, “Gonna Start Riot: Feminism in the Punk Rock Subculture,” was accepted and read at UCLA’s 2007 Thinking About Gender conference. Terry currently teaches English and Literature at ECPI, College of Technology in Glen Allen, Virginia.

The Juke Joint Lucie M. Winborne I veer at dusk from the curved Southern highway toward a light filled with gnats and yellow bar smoke, thread my way through the clink of glasses filled with amber, the creak of weighted stools on uneven boards that tremble beneath baritone laughter. A young man barks his joy in rippling currents through the air: Enos, he cries to the reed-thin old man in the lime jello suit, fingers gone to bone on the valves of his keys, Enos, play the blues. The old man slowly reaches in the pockets of his youth where dusty days lie sleeping like hounds on summer porches, blows them into the sweat-soaked air. Bodies curl like liquid snakes around the notes and each other, eyes jeweled with passion, mouths flaring wide in shouts of sweet salvation. The young man laughs hot breath into my face, his arm my encircling guide. I am half overcome by the beat of this animal moment, half afraid to be swept with this river of humanity, as deep as good Mississippi earth and as fertile

Empty Surrender Carl Scharwath I surrendered a memory of an altered me. Long ago, an essence filled my writing. Now I have gone adrift. The echo of words never born. Invisible reflections, white paper can they form again? In blurred shapes of her and forgotten youth.

Carl Scharwath Bio     The Orlando Sentinel and Lake Healthy Living Magazine have both described Carl Scharwath as the Ürunning poet.Ý His interests include raising his daughter, competitive running, sprint triathlons and taekwondo (heÙs a 2nd degree black belt).     His work appears all over the world in publications such as Paper Wasp (Australia), Structo (The UK), Taj Mahal Review (India) and Abandoned Towers. He was also recently awarded ÜBest in IssueÝ in Haiku Reality Magazine. His first short story was published last July in the Birmingham Arts Journal. His favorite authors are Hermann Hesse and Edith Wharton.

My Damn Linda Webb Aceto Desperation shrieks, brings on the flash, white hot crash, down under where I lie. Degradation sears the soul,   and, oh, my damn, holy despair snaps through my veins. Heartless desperation signals the senses; cursing memos crawl out from the flesh.

A Fe(male) Behind Bars Janet Kuypers January 29, production room, Seattle Magazine     For only two weeks she had been preparing for this interview. She struggled to get it approved at the magazine she worked for. See, Chris Hodgkins was a flash from the past, there was no current interest, no timeliness in doing an article on her. In fact, she knew from people who have checked on her whereabouts that she was just living in an apartment on her own, occasionally working, usually not in politics or her usual seminars. The public forget about her anyway - no one wanted to hear what she had to say anymore. Not that she had fallen out of favor with the American public - in fact, she was loved by most women when she decided to leave the public eye. If anything, the American public had fallen out of favor with her.     But Melanie wanted to write about her, find out why she left, why she really left. The editors knew Chris didn’t grant a single interview since she decided to leave her work in the women’s rights movement. Besides, even if she got the interview, Chris knew how to deal with the media, with audiences, and she would probably manipulate Melanie into asking only what she wanted asked.     But the writer said she was sure there was something more, she could feel it in her bones, and the editors always told her to follow that feeling, so please let her do it now. So the editors and the higher-ups told her to try to get the interview, and get back to them with her progress at that task.     They expected to never hear about the matter again.     Bet she came back to them not one week later, saying one phone call was all it took. She called Chris directly, and not only did this elusive leader grant her an interview, but in Chris’ own home. Editors were a bit stunned. They let her go ahead with the interview, told her to focus on the “where are they now,” “why did she leave” angles, and they’ll put together a long piece for a future issue. A long fluff-piece, they thought, but they had to let her go ahead with it, after having no faith in her ability to get an interview.     Maybe it was just because no one tried to get an interview with her anymore, the writer thought. Maybe the editors were right, that there’s no story here, at least not anymore. But now, even after feeling this fear which began to grow into a dread, she had to go through with it. She had to research this woman, inside and out, and talk to her. See what makes her tick. What made her decide to give it all up.     And the more she looked, the more questions she had. Maybe is was the journalist inside her, to question everything put in front of you, but she couldn’t get those questions out of her head. writer’s tape recorded diary entry, February 11     I didn’t know what I was getting into when I decided to interview her, Chris Hodgkins, feminist leader. I did all the research I could, but for some reason I still don't know where to start, and I have to walk into her apartment tonight.     The more I studied her, the more I was interested. She became a prominent figure in the women’s movement when she wrote her first book, A Woman Behind Bars. The theory was that all women in our society were behind bars, in a sense, that they were forced into a role of looking beautiful, into the role of mother for children, servant for husband, employee for boss, sexual object for single (well, probably all) men.     The chapter that interested me the most was the one on how women adorn themselves in our society in order to please men. Women put on make-up, they grow long hair and long nails, both difficult to work with. They shave their legs, they shave their armpits. They tweeze their eyebrows - they pull hair out of their face from the follicle. Perfume behind the knees, at the ankles, at the chest and neck, in the hair. The list goes on.     But that’s not even the point of all of this. The thing is, a few years ago she managed to pull together the majority of twenty- and thirty-something women out there into her cause. Everyone loved her, in a strange sort of way. She had a great command over audiences. She would hold rallies in New York, then San Francisco, then Chicago, and before you knew it, everyone was talking about her, she was running seminars all around the country, she was appearing on morning talk shows. She was the first real leader in the feminist movement, a movement which for years was felt in everyone but laid dormant because it had no Hitler.     Did I say Hitler? I just meant he was a good leader. I didn’t mean she was Hitler, not at all, she’s not like that, she’s not even calling anyone into action, she’s just telling people to educate themselves. She’s not even telling people to change, because she figures that if she can educate them, they would want to change anyway. And usually more radical feminist and lesbians are leery of that, they want more action - and she doesn’t do that, and they still support her. A movement needs a strong leader, and she was it.     Chris is an interesting looking woman. You’d think she was a lesbian by her appearance - she was tall, somewhat built, but not to look tough, just big. She had chin-length hair, which seems a little long for her, but it looks like she has just forgotten to cut it in a while, and not like she wants to look sexy with it. She almost looks like a little boy. Sharp bones in her face, and big, round eyes.     That was all I knew before I started doing research on her. I started looking into her childhood first, found out that her parents were killed in a robbery when she was fourteen, so she started high school in a small town where her aunt and uncle lived. Her aunt died a year later, and she lived with her uncle until she moved out and went to college. Her uncle died a year before she began to gain fame. In essence, there was no family of hers that I could talk to, to find out from if she played with Barbie Dolls with her best friend in her bedroom or played in the ravine in the back yard with the other boys from all over the neighborhood. To see if her theories were right - even on her. All of that was lost to me.     She took honors classes in high school, kept to herself socially. In fact, most of her classmates didn’t know whether or not she was a girl, she looked so boyish. Even the other girls in her gym class didn’t know sometimes, I mean, they knew she was a girl because she was in gym class with them, but she never even changed in front of them. She wouldn’t take a shower and she would change in a bathroom stall.     So I started hearing things like this, little things from old classmates, but as soon as they started telling me how they really felt about her, how they thought she was strange, they would then clam up. But it was in my head then; I started wondering what happened in her early childhood that made her so introverted in high school. Maybe the deaths of her parents did it to her, made her become so anti-social. Maybe the loss of her aunt, the only other maternal figure in her life, made her become so masculine. It was a theory that began to make more and more sense to me, but how was I supposed to ask her such a question? How was I supposed to ask her if her parents molested her before they died, and that’s why she’s got this anger inside of her that comes out seminar after seminar? the interview, Friday, February 11     The apartment building was relatively small, on the fringes of some rough neighborhoods. Not to say that she couldn't take care of herself, she had proven that she could years ago. The interviewer followed the directions explicitly to get to the apartment, and Chris' door was on the side. She knocked on the door.     Snap one, that was the chain. Click one, that was the first dead bolt. Another click, and the door was free. With a quick jerk the door was pulled open half-way by a strong, toned forearm. Chris stood there, waiting for the interviewer to make the official introduction.     “Hi, I’m Melanie, from Seattle Magazine,” she blurted out, as she tried to kick the snow off her boots and held out her hand. Chris nudged her head toward the inside and told her to come in. The interviewer followed.     She followed Chris down the stairs, looking for clues to her psyche in her clothes, in her form. Grey pants. Baggy. Very baggy. Button-down shirt. White. Sleeves rolled up, make a note of that. Not very thin, but not fat - just kind of there, without much form. Doc Maartens. She had big feet. She was tall, too - maybe five feet, ten inches. But her feet looked huge. The interviewer stared at her feet as they walked down the dark hall. I’ll bet no one has looked at her feet before, she thought.     Chris lived in one of the basement apartments, so they walked past the laundry room, the boiler room, and then reached a stream of tan doors. Hers was the third. Chris opened the door, the interviewer followed.     She looked around. A comfortable easy chair, rust colored, worn. Walls - covered with bookshelves. Books on Marx, Kafka, Rand. History Books. Science books. No photos. No pictures. A small t.v. in the corner on a table, the cord hanging down, unplugged. Blankets on the floor. Keep looking, the interviewer thought. A standing lamp by the chair. The room was yellow in the light. Where were the windows? Oh, she forgot for a moment, they’re in the basement. Sink, half full.     “May I use the washroom?” she asked, and without saying a word, Chris pointed it out to her.     Check the bathroom, the interviewer thought. No make-up. Makes sense. Generic soap, organic shampoo. Razor. Toothbrush. Colgate bottle. Hairbrush. Rubber band, barrette. Yeah, Chris usually sometimes her hair back, at least from what the interviewer can remember from the photographs.     “Wanna beer?” Chris yells from the refrigerator to the bathroom. “No, thanks,” the interviewer says. She turns on the water.     She wants to look through the trash, see what she can find. No, that's too much, she thought, besides, what’s going to be in the trash in the washroom that would surprise her so? Nothing, she was sure of it, and from then on she made a point of avoiding even looking in the direction of the trash can.     This was getting out of hand, she thought. There was no story here. Nothing out of the ordinary, other than the fact that Chris decided to give up her cause, and now she’s living life in this tiny, dark basement apartment.     The interviewer walked out into the yellow living room. Chris was stretched out in a chair, legs apart, drinking a beer with no label.     “I really appreciate you offering me this time to talk to you.”     “No problem.”     The interviewer sat there, suddenly so confused. Chris was terse. She didn’t want to talk, yet she accepted the interview and offered her home as the meeting place. They sat in silence for a moment, a long moment.     “What kind of beer are you drinking?”     “My own.” Chris sat for a moment, almost waiting for the interviewer to ask what she meant. “You see, the landlord gave me some keys for a storage room on this floor, so I converted it into a sort of micro-brewery. I’ve come up with this one -” she held the bottle to the interviewer - “and another one, a pretty sweet dark beer. I call this one ‘Ocean Lager.’“     The interviewer felt she had to take the bottle. “Ocean Lager, that’s a nice name,” and she took a small sip and passed the bottle back to Chris.     “Yeah, I used to be a photographer, back when I was in high school and college, and I loved working in the dark, timing things, and I loved the stench of the chemicals. I’ve given up on the photography years ago, so I thought that this would be a hobby like that. You know, it smells, it’s dark, you have to add things the right way and wait the right amount of time. I like it. And it’s cheaper, too,” she said, and with that she took another swig. “Cheaper than photography as well as buying beer from the store.”     The interviewer tried to listen to her voice. It was raspy, feminine, almost sexy, but it was very low; she didn’t know if she’d ever heard a woman’s voice this low before.     “I was looking at your great career,” the interviewer finally started, “and thought it surprising that you just decided one day to leave. You had everything going the right way. People were listening to you. What happened?”     She thought she had dropped a bomb.     No one ever got a straight answer for that question.     “Well, it was my time to go. I couldn’t take the spotlight anymore. I wanted to become who I really was, not what the world wanted me to be, not what the world perceived me as. I still haven’t done that. I haven’t become myself yet.”     “When were you yourself? Or were you ever?”     “I suppose I was, when I was little, but by the time I got to high school, I started hiding from everyone, because no one seemed to want to know who I really was. I didn’t fit in as who I really was. So then I started with my seminars, started trying to work my way to success, and people started to like me. But in all of that time that I was working on women’s rights, I wasn’t who I really am deep down inside. Not that I didn’t believe in the cause, but I was doing it because it seemed like the best route to success. And when I reached the top, people still wanted more out of me, more that I wasn’t ready to give. I wanted to take some of myself back.”     “Have you gotten any of yourself back since you’ve left the spotlight?”     “Some.” Chris paused. “I can sit at home by myself and act the way I want to, without having to project a certain image for everyone else. People have begun to leave me alone.” She paused, then looked at the interviewer. “Not that I consider you and interruption; I wouldn’t have accepted the interview if I didn’t want you here. If fact, I think I really wanted to be able to tell someone how I feel, what I’ve gone through. I don’t talk to many people nowadays. This is like a confessional.”     The interviewer wondered for a moment what Chris was planning to confess.     Chris paused, swirled her beer in her bottle, then looked up. “Sometimes I think of getting a pet. I’d get a cat, but then I think of this stereotypical image of an old woman in an apartment alone with forty cats, where she keeps picking a different one up and asking, ‘you love me, don’t you?’ I don’t want to be like that. Maybe a dog. But a pet requires too much care, and I think I’d end up depending on it more than I should. I should have another human being in my life, not an animal. But I’m so afraid I’ll be alone.”     “Why do you think you’ll be alone?”     “I carry this baggage around with me everywhere. People know me as Chris Hodgkins, and that’s not who I am. I don’t want anyone liking me because I’m Chris Hodgkins. That’s not real. Chris isn’t real, not the Chris everyone knows. The only way I could escape her is to go off to another country in a few years, maybe, and start life all over again.”     “Isn’t that a scary thought, though? I mean, you could ride on your fame for a while longer, make more money, be more secure. You wouldn’t have to work as hard at anything. And people respect you.”     “People respect a person that I’m not. Okay, maybe that person is a part of me, but it’s not all of me. The world doesn’t know the whole story.”     “What is the whole story?” the interviewer asked. By this time she put her pen and paper down and wasn’t writing a word. She was lost in the conversation, like the many people who had heard her speak before. Suddenly she felt she was thrown into the middle of a philosophical conversation, and she was completely enthralled. “Can anyone know the whole story about another person?” she asked.     “Do you really want to know my story?” Chris asked.     “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.”     “You realize that if I tell you, it goes off the record. Besides, you won’t be able to substantiate anything I say. More than that no one would believe it, especially not your editors.”     At this point, she didn’t even care about the interview. “Off the record. Fine.” the confession, February 11, 10:35 p.m.     Chris sat there for a minute, legs apart, elbows on her knees, beer hanging down between her legs. She kept swirling the liquid in the glass. She took the last two gulps, then put the bottle on the ground between her feet.     “I wanna take a bath,” she said, and with that she got up and walked toward the bathroom. Halfway there she stopped, turned around, and walked to the refrigerator. It creaked open, she pulled out another beer, let the door close while she twisted the cap off. She walked into the bathroom.     The interviewer could hear the water running in the bathtub. She didn’t know what to do. Was she supposed to sit there? Leave?     Chris popped her head out of the bathroom. “I hope you don’t mind, but I really need to relax. Besides, it’s cold in here. Sorry if the cold is bothering you. We can continue the interview in the bathroom, if you want,” and she threw her head back into the bathroom.     Melanie didn’t know what to think. She edged her way to the bathroom door. When she looked in, she was Chris with her hair pulled back, lighting one candle. “The curtain will be closed. Is this okay with you?” Chris asked.     The interviewer paused. “Sure,” she said. She sounded confused.     “Okay, then just wait outside until I’m in the bathtub. I’ll yell through the door when you can come in.” And Chris closed the door, and the interviewer leaned against the door frame. Her note pad and pen sat in the living room.     A few minutes passed, or maybe it was a few hours. The water finally silenced. She could hear the curtain close. “You can come in now.”     The interviewer opened the door. The curtain to the bathtub was closed. There was one candle lit on the counter next to the sink, and one glowing from the other side of the curtain. The mirror was fogged with steam. Chris’ clothes were sitting in a pile on the floor. There was no where to sit. The interviewer shut both seats from the toilet and sat down.     “Okay, I’m here,” the interviewer said, as if she wanted Chris to recognize what an effort she went through. “Tell me your story.” She almost felt as if she deserved to hear Chris’ story at this point, that Chris had made her feel so awkward that she at least deserved her curiosity satisfied. She could hear little splashes from the tub.     “You still haven’t asked me about my childhood. You’re not a very good reporter, you know,” Chris said, as if she wanted the interviewer to know that it didn’t have to come down to this. “You could have found out a lot more about me before now.”     They both sat there, each silent.     “It must have hurt when your parents died.”     “I suppose. I didn’t know how to take it.”     “What was the effect of both of your parents dying at such an early age in your life on you?”     “I was stunned, I guess. What I remember most was that my mother was strong, but she followed dad blindly. And dad, he had his views - he was a political scientist - but no one took him seriously because he didn’t have the background. He wasn’t in the right circles. I just remember dad saying to mom, ‘if only I had a different start, things would be different.’ In essence, he wanted to be someone he wasn’t. He failed because he wasn’t who he needed to be.”     “Did it hurt you to see your father think of himself as a failure?”     “He had the choice. He knew what he wanted to do all of his life. He knew the conventional routes to achieving what he wanted - he knew what he needed to do. But he chose to take a different route, and people thought he didn’t have the training he needed, that he didn’t know what he was talking about. But he made that choice to take that different route. He could have become what he needed to in order to get what he wanted. But he didn’t, and in the end, he never got anything.”     “But you, you got what you wanted in your life, right?”     “Yes, but that was because I made the conscious choice to change into what I had to be in order to succeed. If I didn’t make those changes, no one would have accepted my theories on human relations and no one would have listened to my speeches on women’s rights.”     “How did you have to change?”     The interviewer finally hit the nail on the head.     “I’m not ready to answer that question yet. Ask me later.”     The interviewer paused, then continued.     “Okay, so your parents died and you had to move in with your aunt and uncle. How well did you know them?”     “Not at all. In fact, they didn’t even know I existed. You see, my father had no family in the States, he moved here from England, and he lost contact with all of his family. Mom’s family didn’t want her marrying dad, I still don’t know why, so they disowned her when she married him. She never spoke to any of them. In fact, my mother’s sister didn’t even know my parents died until the state had to research my family’s history to see who I should be pushed off on to. When my aunt and uncle took me in, it was the first time they ever saw me. It was the first time the even knew I existed.”     The interviewer could hear the water moving behind the curtain, and then Chris continued.     “My parents were in New Jersey, and my aunt and uncle were in Montana. It was a complete life change for me.”     “How did you get along with other kids from school?”     “Before my parents died, fine. Once I changed schools, I didn’t fit in. I didn’t know how to fit in. I thought it would be too fake if I tried to act like all the other girls, even the ones who were like me, who didn’t fit in. I just didn’t know how to be a girl. I wanted to, and I tried, but it was so hard.     “I just wanted to be looked at as a girl. I didn’t want anyone to question it.”     “Why would they?”     “Because I looked so boyish. Because I didn’t go on dates. Because I was so anti-social.”     “Do you think that has something to do with the fact that your mother died, then a year later your aunt died? They were your maternal figures, and you lost them both at a crucial age.”     “Yes. But my aunt didn’t know how to deal with me. She never had children. She left me alone most of the time. She knew that was what I wanted. I remember once she asked me if I had gotten my period yet in my life. I didn’t, but I didn’t want her to think that, so I said yes, so the next day she bought me pads. I didn’t know what to do with them. The day after that I told her that I would buy them myself from now on, so she didn’t have to, but I thanked her anyway. That way I knew she would think that I was still buying them, even if that box in my closet was the same box that she bought me.     “Relations with her were strange. And when she died, I only had classmates and my uncle to take cues from. I wanted to be like the girls in school, so I tried not to take cues from my uncle. I tried to avoid being like my uncle. But sometimes I couldn’t help it.”     “Why did you want so hard to be a girl? Did you want to fit in? Or do you think it had more to do with your mom?”     “No, it wasn’t that at all. There wasn’t a part of me that said I needed to be feminine. But at that age I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and that was work in political science and sociology - specifically, in women’s rights. I knew I wanted that, and I knew that I’d have a better chance of succeeding in that field if I was - well, if I was a girl.”     “But you were a girl, no matter how much you didn’t fit in.”     And that was when Chris decided to drop the bomb.     “But that’s exactly it, Melanie - I’m - well - I’m not a woman.”     “There are sometimes when I don’t feel feminine - when I want to go out and drink beer, I know what you -”     “No, you’re not listening to me,” Chris cut in. “I’m not a woman. I’m a man. My name is Chris, not Christine. I am a man, I have a penis, I’ve got testosterone running through my body. Just not a lot of it.”     “You don’t really expect me to -”     “Look, when my parents died, I knew what I wanted to do with my life - I knew before they died. But I also knew that I wouldn’t be taken seriously in the field unless I was a woman. So at fourteen, when they died, I had a clean slate. I told everyone I was a girl. I was given to my aunt and uncle as a girl. I went to my new school as a girl.     “And I went to gym classes and I didn’t have breasts, and I had to hide from all the other girls. Although I was boyish-looking, I wasn’t manly, so I got away with it. I shaved only occasionally, only when I had to. And once I got out of high school, acting like a girl was easier. No one questioned who I said I was. People accepted me as a woman.     “Then I started doing the work I did, and people loved me. I got a lot more fame for it than I ever anticipated. I was succeeding. It was wonderful.     “But then it hit me - I’m all alone, and I can tell no one about who I really am. I’ve been doing this all my life, and people would look at me like I was a freak if I went out and told them the truth now. I’m a man, and I like women, I’m not gay, and I could never tell any women that exists that has ever heard of me the truth, because then they will no longer trust me or anything I have ever said regarding women’s rights. I would take the whole movement backwards if I told the world who I really was.”     “That you were a man.”     “You still don’t believe me, do you? I’m telling you this because you wanted to know, you wanted me to tell you this. And because I needed to tell someone. But I can’t destroy women’s chances of being treated with respect in this country by telling everyone.”     “So what you’re telling me is that at age fourteen you decided to become a woman so you could do the work you wanted to do in your life.”     “Yes.”     “But that’s a lot to do to yourself, especially at fourteen. What made you decide to do it?”     “My mother’s strength, but her submission to my father, made me want to go into the field. My father’s desire to do what he wanted, but his failure to achieve it because he wasn’t what the world wanted, made me decide to become a woman. I realized then that I could never succeed in this field if I wasn’t one.     “And look at the success I’ve had! Look at all of the people I managed to bring together! I was famous, people were reading my books, people wanted my opinions. I was succeeding.     “But even with all my success, people still expected a messenger for the welfare of women all over the world to be a woman - even the other women expected this. No one would have listened to me for a second if I was a man.”     “And so you stopped because -”     “Because there’s a price you pay by becoming what the world wants you to be. My father knew that, and he didn’t want to pay that price. He didn’t, and he failed at what he wanted to do. I was willing to pay the price, I made the sacrifices, and I actually beat the odds and succeeded. But then I realized that I lost myself in the process. I’m a man, and look at me. People think I’m a woman. I wear fake breasts in public. I have no close relationships. I have nothing to call my own other than my success. Well, after a while, that wasn’t enough. So this is part of my long road to becoming myself again.     “I’m going to have to change my identity and move to another country, I’m going to have to start all over again, I’m going to have to more completely separate myself from working on women’s rights, but it’s the only way I can do it. I’ll know I did what I wanted, even if it cost a lot. The next few years will now have to be me correcting all that I changed in myself in order to succeed. Correcting all my mistakes.     “I want to have a family someday. How am I supposed to be a father? There are so many things I have to change. I couldn’t go on telling the world I was a woman any more. But I couldn’t tell them I wasn’t one, so I just had to fade away, until I didn’t matter anymore.”     The interviewer sat there in silence.     “Do you have any other questions?” Chris asked.     The interviewer sat there, confused, not knowing if she should believe Chris or not. She could rip the curtain open and see for herself, she thought, but either way they would both be embarrassed.     “No.”     “Then you can go,” Chris said. “I want to get out of this bath.”     Melanie walked out of the bathroom, closed the door. Then she started thinking of all the little things, not changing with the other girls in school, looking so boyish, the low voice, the way she sat, her feet, the razor, the toilet seats. Could she be telling the truth? Could he be telling the truth, the interviewer thought, is Chris a she or a he? She didn’t know anymore. But it seemed to make sense. Her birth certificate would be the only thing that would prove it to anyone, unless she somehow got it changed.     She could have had her birth certificate changed, the interviewer thought, and therefore there would be no real proof that Chris was lying, other than looking at her naked. It was such a preposterous story, yet it seemed so possible that she tended to believe it. It didn’t matter anyway, because she couldn’t write about it, proof or not, she offered this information off the record. She grabbed her pencil and note pad from the living room and walked to the door.     Just as she was about to leave, Chris walked out from the bathroom. She walked over to the front door to open it for the interviewer. Melanie walked through the doorway, without saying a word, as Chris said, “Good story, wasn’t it?”     The interviewer turned around once more, but didn’t get to see Chris’ face before the door was shut. Once again, she was left with her doubts. She walked down the hall.     note: this work is fiction. Any correlations between any part of this story and events that have taken place in real life are purely coincidental.

Janet Kuypers Bio     Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.     She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.     She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.     Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the weekly Chicago poetry open mic at the Café, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).     In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, and the Stories of Women. Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).