down in the dirt
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Janet K., Editor
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In This Issue... Fritz Hamilton Brian Looney Liam Spencer Tom Ball Nathan Hahs Kristopher Miller Travis Green Frank De Canio Matthew T. Birdsall Donna Pucciani Mark Breckenridge Cheryl Hicks Sarah Lucille Marchant Kenneth DiMaggio Steve Dodd Brandi Capozzi Christopher Hanson Daniel J Roozen Kerry Lown Whalen Clinton Van Inman Ruth Juris William Masters Jon Brunette Wm. Samuel Bradford Eleanor Leonne Bennett 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.

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Every other person in a wheelchair Fritz Hamilton Every other person in a wheelchair, the others with canes & walkers, except the ones who can’t even move. Eventually nothing can move, & you’re not even conscious of it, call it nirvana, call it death, unless you’re masochistic enough to believe in reincarnation when you can do it all over again/ all that suffering is good for you, it helps you grow/ the only mercy is that it’s short, & after the worms eat you, you can be nothing, from which you cruelly sprang, but now there is no spring, only nothingness, so REJOICE!

The demons revolt Fritz Hamilton The demons revolt! They break from Lucifer & the angels. They tread independantly on the faces of the meek, who won’t inherit the earth. The demons revolt! After the horrors of recent centuries, who’d want it?/ have we really cleaned up from the holocaust & WWII?/ from Korea & Nam & our ventures in the MidEast?/ can we be forgiven by the Palestinians & the Israelis, the Egyptians & Iraqis, the Iranians, the Lebanese?/ must we ally with the Saudis who blew us up at 9/ll with Al Qaeda as George W floundered & the great Reagan gave the economy to the filthy rich & postured like a hero at the Berlin Wall?/ & we can thank Ronnie for being a 3rd World country where the rich have everything & the rest of us have a standard of living like Brazil/ bless our non-existent Middle Class as millions more are added to the streets. Dead God bless America as the demons dance on our bones & our corpses are as black as our president who doesn’t seem to know what to do ... !

The Bosst Brian Looney So, what do you do? I’ve seen you demand decaf, and it must be fresh. I’ve seen you fly off the handle and rage without smiles. I’ve seen you disturb, escalate, disrupt. This infuriates you further. And yet you want our loyalty. Well I don’t worship you. I don’t even like you. You poise hungrily with claws. You’re not afraid to use them. You are proud of that. Take care of people, and they take care of you. I guess that never occurred to you. What a life you must be living.

Brian Looney Bio     Brian Looney was born 12/2/85 and is from Albuquerque, NM. He likes it when Lady Poetry kicks him in the head. The harder the better. Check out his website at Reclusewritings.com.

Janet Kuypers reads the Brian Looney May 2012 Down in the Dirt poem the Boss with live piano music by Gary

Watch the YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading the poem straight from the May 2012 issue, live 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (w/ live piano from Gary)

such days Liam Spencer The job was a popularity contest conducted by the tough guys. To be in the contest, one had to be physically large, powerful, and have endured a lot of physical punishment in their lives. They had a certain brotherhood. The rest of us were second rate because we were smaller. The bigger guys in the brotherhood took turns to see who could be the meanest to the smaller guys. Those who were not mean enough were out of the brotherhood. Few made the decision to exclude themselves from such membership. They didn’t last long with the company.     Exceptions to the less than huge being bullied were the few who had reputations for being either crazy or tough enough to do damage. They were largely left alone. I was one of them. This was due to a party some months prior at which a coked up nut job pointed a gun in my face over his girlfriend. I sat there coldly staring at death without blinking while the gunman raged. Unable to strike the fear of death in me, he got frustrated and left without firing a shot. One guy at the jobsite, Jason, knew of this, and told the others to leave me alone. More than a few doubted Jason on this, as they saw nothing to warrant caution.     Uneasy weeks rolled on as we all worked in the blazing sun on the remodeling site. I saw smaller guy after smaller guy come and go quickly. It happened like clockwork. The guy would start on a Monday, get bullied and harassed all day, be intimidated to where he doubted himself and feared getting a beating, and quit by Tuesday or Wednesday. The few that mouthed off would be beaten. I kept to myself.     Jason called off one day, due to his three year old being sick. Doug was the biggest and meanest guy there. He hated Jason, but didn’t dare challenge him dead on. Instead, he decided to take me on when Jason was absent, to prove Jason wrong and boost his status.     First Doug began belittling my work. I was a mix of golfer and hammer swinger, known for speed, not for power. I worked feverishly. It was my style, and all I had. It wasn’t enough for Doug, or so he pretended. He barked, I hustled. Part of the reason I did was it was early and I wasn’t yet fully awake. As I grew more awake, I grew angrier at Doug. The others in the brotherhood stayed quiet. I thought they knew something.     Finally lunchtime arrived. I was famished. The brotherhood headed off to eat huge amounts of food and tell each other how tough they were. The other guys left in trucks to get burgers. I was broke, so I sat off to the side and ate my sandwhiches and smoked. I heard the brotherhood hooping and hollering. Deep laughter filled the remodeling site.     The other smaller guys weren’t yet back from the burger joint when the brotherhood decided work was to begin. The foreman was usually gone from the site, but was known to watch from a distance to keep an eye on things. He hadn’t been on the site all day, so the brotherhood was in charge.     Doug called to me. His tone was stern.     “You, little shit, go over to the pile of rocks and smooth them over. The landscapers need to work there this afternoon. Start with the larger rocks near the back of the garage. No, first, get that log out of there. Toss it in the woods. Hurry it the fuck up! Come on, get moving!”     I walked over to the garage. There were sizable rocks there, but I didn’t know why they should be moved. The log, I could understand though. The brotherhood had been near there for lunch, so they probably saw the area as an eye sore and decided I should clean it up. I didn’t care, as I got paid the same no matter what.     I came to the log, and hurriedly lifted one end to begin tossing it away. The log came up easily. It was dried out and weighed even less than I thought. I tossed it, and then heard the worst sound one can hear from a log; loud buzzing!     A cloud of really pissed off yellow jackets rose from nowhere. I turned and ran, full sprint. The brotherhood laughed in the distance. A few wasps got me. I ran faster. The brotherhood laughed harder. The buzzing grew louder. I ran even faster. The sound of laughter grew louder and louder.     They didn’t realize I was running right at them. By the time that reality set in, it was too late. They yelled     “NO! NO! Run the other way!”     Not a chance in hell. I ran right at the brotherhood, in full sprint. The fat fuckers couldn’t accelerate, and the bees needed a good target. I would bring them one. It was me or the brotherhood, and you just knew who it’d be!     I made sure to pass Doug first, and delighted in hearing him cuss as the cloud of wasps engulfed him. I was being stung less and less as I heard the brotherhood yelp more and more. Before I knew it, no wasps were chasing me.     When I had tired of running and was sure no more bees were coming, I stopped and watched the aftermath. The brotherhood and the laughter could not be found or heard. A pickup came driving down the lane. The driver was laughing hysterically. The passenger was the foreman. The truck stopped and the drivers’ window rolled down.     “Are you ok, son?” He hardly held his snicker.     “yeah, I only got ten stings or so.”     “Let me introduce myself. I’m Dan. I own the company.”     “Oh, nice to meet you.”     “That was the gawddamned funniest thing I ever saw! You really turned it on them! Hilarious! Hop on back, we’ll give you a ride.”     I hopped in the back of the truck and we made our way down to the site. Members of the brotherhood meandered everywhere. Big red spots covered their bodies. Dan and the foreman laughed and laughed. I didn’t dare.     An angry Doug approached, giving me the evil eye.     “That fucker! He ran toward us deliberately! Did you see...”     “Yeah, I saw the whole thing. We were sitting up there watching to see what you guys were up to. We saw it ALL.”     Doug turned and walked away. A few of the other members of the brotherhood snickered, even as they had been stung too. Dan announced that the day was over because of the bee attack. The brotherhood piled into trucks. Dan gave me my day’s wage and added a hundred bucks, saying it was worth it for the entertainment, and gave me a ride to the bus stop. As he dropped me off, Dan advised me to not come back. The brotherhood would not take kindly to the bee thing. Then he gave me another hundred and bid me good luck.     I rode the bus to the first bar, and got off. I needed some drink to counter the bee stings. Alcohol was invented for such days.

A.D. 2100 Tom Ball     People were happy that, “We had eliminated world poverty and all were educated.”     Computers were almost free...     Everyone agreed, “That it was best to have a majority vote for everything.” “Presidents were just figure heads,” they said.     As the figure head however, I said, “These days there was not much memory work in school. We developed creativity instead... It was a real accomplishment.”     And I knew that people who had memories beyond A.D. 2020 had them mostly erased with hypnosis.     But I remembered, “Every child is born a genius...” as Buckminister Fuller had said well over a hundred years ago.     “More books, more art and more movies were in order.” I said.     But for myself I told people, “I wanted more power for the UW.     So I told the UW, “To break up big companies such as media conglomerates.     No lobby groups were allowed.”     And I insisted on, “English speaking for everyone in the world.”     Under my leadership I had UW troops brake up disturbances and there were no more wars.     I said, “There was a big savings on defence spending.”     Regarding eternal youth I had my spies cover it up and keep it for themselves and the government. I had been a spy myself. As I grew older I changed official positions and changed lovers so no one would notice I was living forever     Average lifespan was just 120; though most of these people had plastic surgery to look young to the day they died of old age. And the spies lived on beyond all limits.     As leader, I insisted, “Drugs were restricted; you needed to get them from a physician’s assistant.”     I proclaimed, “As before strong drugs like cocaine and heroin were banned, but there were a lot of stimulants and tranquilizers out there.”     I had to create jobs so I gave people work assisting computers. But I knew there was, “No need of people really...” So I was hard pressed.     But some preferred “To be served by a human...”     All new buildings had to go through me so cities featured forests of towers all with curvature...     Colonies were on the moon and Mars and I sent their best writers there... to inspire people to go to space.     But some said, “Ours was a timeless civilization.”     “History is an illusion,” they said, “So too progress.”     “Previously people believed in God,” and they still do...     But I wondered if people were really happy?     And I openly questioned the people. p XXXX     But then one day, I snapped and in a jealous rage I irrevocably murdered my lover’s boyfriend (such things occur even in this enlightened age).     I was put in prison. In our part of our world the prison was covered with black boxes which were prisoner cells. People here had been sentenced to a full life in prison with no hope of getting free. Their crime was radical politics. Their punishment was here in solitary confinement with no entertainment or media of any kind and they would never be freed.     And it was impossible to kill yourself as the robots were ever vigilant and so many figured they were in a fate worse than death.     Hunger strikes only resulted in being force fed brutally by the robots.     No visitors allowed     The spies let it be known that, “The greatest threat to civilization was radical thinking and so people knew the punishment was out there but some did it anyway. They knew solitary confinement for life was the punishment for such thinking.”     No one had ever escaped the prison here...     People died at about 80 looking old in the prison.     Black cells had light from 8 m high and made of unbreakable glass.     Sound proof cells     Outside it averaged -75 C as we were in the far north of this world.     The warden let it be known to all worlds, “That being a radical would result in misery for the perpetrators.” p XXXX     Time passed...     I hoped for regime change but there was no change even after living here in prison 50 or more years.     Outside my true love must have asked about my whereabouts... she was probably in prison too as a result     People were well rewarded if they blew the whistle... on radicals.     They believed it was important to “maintain the status quo.”     The government insisted, “They had frozen technology at its pinnacle. Took it as far as they could without endangering all humanity. p XXXX     Narrative continued by spy OPX-3244     I reaffirmed with people here that, “Entertainment on this world was largely in the form of video games, sports, comedy and tragic movies. Old-fashioned courtship was the norm.”     50 companies controlled the world and some didn’t like that. Others had a struggle for luxuries.     As a spy I announced, “It couldn’t go any further or we’d lose control.”     “New viruses and nukes and death rays and computer control... It was all getting out of hand.” I said.     And I told other spies and leaders that, “Eternal youth was no good for the masses; people needed to fear death.”     Other politicians were full of themselves but didn’t rock the boat...     I told them, “No one had any real ideas for change.”     I thought, “I was the universe’s most intelligent person.”     I felt guilty that I was arresting the best. But I had a job to do...

Untitled (ask me) Nathan Hahs if you ask me it’s unfair but no one asked me if you were to ask me i don’t care anymore not anymore but no one asked me

Janet Kuypers reads the Nathan Hahs May 2012 Untitled Down in the Dirt poem with live piano music by Gary

Watch the YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading the poem straight from the May 2012 issue, live 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (w/ live piano from Gary)

Shrapnel Kristopher Miller     Your words were so much like grenade shrapnel. They exploded and they took a good chunk of my flesh but they did not kill me. But your words left shrapnel pieces embedded into my skin. No matter how hard I try to pull them out, the metal pieces just go deeper and deeper into my muscles, into my bone marrow, and into my nerves. I writhe in agony at the shrapnel you gave me and I grip my body to put pressure on somewhere else to relieve the pain but it does not go away. Those pieces eat into me as maggots eat into a corpse. And the next thing I know, I am a corpse with the shrapnel finally digging into my heart and my spine. I am six feet under just as the shrapnel is twenty inches under my carcass. Then without warning, I wake up from the pain and from my death from...I don’t know what. Will? Happiness? Optimism? I break apart the wood holding me in and I dig the soft, moist, maggot ridden dirt like I was some mortician who took the shrapnel out of my body. I burst open the earthly surface and I crawl out and cry like I would have been alive if they were actually ripping the shrapnel pieces out of me. I cry in pain, I swallow the air, but I get up and hold my dirty, bleeding self as I walk in the rain drenching me. It cleans me up, it makes me feel so cold but it makes me feel alive in reminding me that the shrapnel did not completely sever my nerves. I walk to the gate, that rusty gate, and I kicked both the gate doors down. I walk through the rain, out of the graveyard, all healed up and clean, to receive another bit of shrapnel again.

Early Morning Travis Green Early morning, I can hear my granddad’s tractor rumbling through cotton fields, it’s engine emitting gusts of smoke in the foggy air, while across the barren road, in dry fields, I can see my mom and aunt pick cucumbers in the escaping heat, their faces drenched with sweat, as they trail from row to row, bent over, steady working like the sky that polishes the landscape throughout the seasons. This continues nearly half the day, until they resume back home, then noticing them half way at the door, I run and open it, Hey mom, hey Aunt Cynthia, How was your day? as they searched for deep breaths before responding, Another scorcher, and soon granddad would ease in, grinning with one of his usual sly smiles, as I stared at him, perhaps, wondering how someone could work their life away, still energetic, laughing like it would always be this way.

Peregrinations Frank De Canio What is life if not a moment’s breach with death; a sentinel in place to guard the heartland which we left behind us in our quest to help restore a troubled peace. Life’s a brief respite from bliss; a kindling light that seeds the night with harried fields that yield the harvests that we reap till turning over in the heap from which we stirred. Life’s a bankrupt state of past desires’ vested interests; arousal’s panoply of hypnagogic images; a posthumous jostling of death’s headboard by collapsing stars; a personified Pleiades who tuck us into cosmic pockets when we’re young and rocket us to Mars when sleep’s deep enough to reach the Morning star. Life’s a nova in the galaxy of death; a fracture in the fortress of the universe, a dissonance in music of the spheres; death’s bad dream before awakening.

Hooked on a Feeling Matthew T. Birdsall Every Friday night is sold out for dollar beers and amateur wrestling at the historic theater on the corner of Roosevelt and MLK, Jr. The line forms early to warm up with chilled flasks under the slumped over marquee that was stripped of its title and flashing lights 10 years ago after a duel with the super cinema. Toddlers sneak away from the huddles to peek through the duct taped asterisks on the windows at aging musclemen with vegetable ears who smack each other to feel something.

The Hills Donna Pucciani shrug off morning fog like an old coat, as if to say they could manage without cover but the sky knows a little warmth would not go unnoticed

Skull and Bone Salad Mark Breckenridge Skull and bone salad, all dressed up down in Ritzville, welcomes aristocracy to the Party of Judgment.

Legacy, After a Fashion Cheryl Hicks     Mamma has always had a love for other people’s possessions. When the Glaspies two houses down bought a Thunderbird, she had to have one, too. (It was ice blue and just unconventional enough to be a little naughty.) And when Aunt Bessa Lee died and the cousins were rifling through her stuff, Mamma became an avid collector of carnival glass, not because she liked its iridescent sheen, but because the cousins did.     For a strong woman, she was constantly swayed by the desires of others. Or maybe she just wanted to belong. Unsure of how to satisfy, or perhaps even how to identify, her own needs, she got by the best way she knew how—by borrowing. Even her personality seems to have been a loaner. It’s as though when identities were handed out, she copied hers down and used it, like a detailed set of stage directions. Her margins were overflowing with braced instructions such as: [followed by a reproving silence], [shuddering with revulsion], and [as though she has lost her reason]. She was flexible and a quick study, so this technique would work for a while. But then a better set of personal guidelines or a new method of acting would come along, and she’d turn her back on her old characteristics.     She was always in a hurry, almost comically eager to cast off the old Glenda and don the new whoever. In effect, she became a human palimpsest on which her former self was partially rubbed away, but still visible to the most observant. Especially if you could ever sneak up behind her without her knowing you were there. As the quiet, middle child in a family of five, I was often able to blend into the background and just watch. Sometimes I could tell she had nearly reached her expiration date and was about to become a different entity. Sometimes I had no idea what she was up to.     The year before I started school, I remember watching her one Tuesday morning from the kitchen table where I had parked myself with books and crayons to wait for the milkman. I always sat there and waited for him to appear, waited for the light unanswered rap on the door that would announce the entrance of the blond man all in white, rattling through the back entrance with bottles of bright future in their no nonsense cages.     “Well, good morning, pretty lady!”     No answer but the almost silent scuff of a wax color.     On to the refrigerator he would stride like a master magician never needing an assistant. There, undaunted by the lack of applause, he would decide how many bottles to leave and which ones deserved the top shelf. And then [as though obviously unrehearsed] Mamma would suddenly and unexpectedly be there, caught of course, unaware in her not-so-terrible black gown.     There was no question of them speaking. An accomplished performer herself, she would glide barefoot, stage left, brushing back sleepy auburn hair, to remove a tablet-shaped roast from the freezer and toss its thudding white mass into the sink.     Seemingly unaware that she was oozing music, she broadcast around the clock, a regular symphony of contraries. Too full-blown to be a princess, too small to be a queen, she was an indrawn breath, a glamorous vulture with wild blue eyes under spiked lashes. In other words, she was a showstopper. She would venture about with her chin down, eyes up, and her creamy cheeks stained faint, fairy tale blush, while her well-trained waist, rounded knees and hips, all testified to childbirth, implying experience and somehow, conversely, her lack of it. With hair too long to be gamine and lips too full to be still, she was so cool, so secure in her indifferent potential.     And men like the milkman lapped up her music like cream. Men like him and unlike. Men of all kinds.     And so it was I noted that on Tuesday of each week, the magic milkman loaned his eyes to her silent performance, always playing his part with just the right mixture of menace and nonchalance, watching her dance across the floor, both half pretending to be lashed by desire and only half-heartedly offering more than either he or she really hoped to satisfy.      And each week as though by coincidence, I would be there [seemingly unaware] at my observation post, where barely moving my head and scarcely raising my eyes, I would look up from my uncolored book, at my penciled in future, and sigh.     Of course, reruns of Mamma’s performance in what I came to think of as the “Milkman Show” came to a screeching halt after a few weeks, as soon as she learned that he was in fact not having a fling with Mrs. Johnson. That was about the same time Mamma quit spending time at home and started managing the real estate offices of Dominic Delgado.     I am not sure why or how she got that job, but somewhere in her amalgamation of personalities, she seems to have stored the facsimile of a receptionist-slash-typist-slash-whatever it is secretaries are supposed to be. She preferred to refer to herself, however, as the office manager. I had a suspicion that what she really did was file her nails a lot, cross her legs meaningfully, and look generally appealing.     Of course, this new job required subtle changes in her wardrobe and habits. She could never have succeeded in her new position if she had continued to present herself as a fashionably bored housewife who slept until ten and didn’t get dressed until noon. I saw her briefly each morning, about the time Romper Room started, as she swooped past leaving a scent trail of Chanel No. 5, gathering her gloves, handbag and keys, before exiting the back door to the garage.     Her wardrobe was new. And monochromatic. Some days it was off-white. Some days stark black. And some days (this was my personal favorite) lipstick red. This meant that her figure flattering, short-jacketed dresses, high-heeled pointy pumps and mandatory multiple accessories were all the same color. And I’m pretty sure she changed her hair color slightly. It was so dark that when the sun hit it, the highlights were midnight blue. The changes in hair color and style of dress were subtle, but she was as deliberate and as focused as a wavelength when she set her sights on something.     She had never been the hug-and-kiss-goodbye type of mom, and since the housekeeper took care of my creature comforts, I was a little relieved each day when she went swishing on her way and left me to my routine. Most of my preschool mornings were spent with Captains Krunch and Kangaroo. I didn’t connect with others easily, and like an undiscovered planet with no known satellites, I kept to myself whenever possible. I’m sure my parents found me to be perverse and strangely stoic. I, however, thought of myself as brilliantly transparent, like a rare jewel meant to be viewed only through protective glass.     I’m not sure when my fascination with things Indian began. I do know that the first time I saw a photo of the Taj Mahal, I was amazed by its onion-shaped dome and surrounding minarets, and I was morbidly intrigued by the idea of it being a mausoleum. I admit I had a secret longing to be exotic. And with blond hair, pale skin and water colored eyes, I was about as far from exotic as a child could be. Not one to be thwarted by the circumstances of my heritage, however, it was not uncommon for me to wrap myself in a homemade sari. Wrapped in the luxury of red and gold drapery fabric, I would glide about the house as though only tangentially tacked to reality. And sometimes with a less than semi-precious plastic stone pasted tentatively to the center of my forehead, dead center, I would stand on my head, propped against the family room wall for stability, with my sari rubber-banded to my ankles for security, and to keep the billows from coming between me and the constant changes on the TV screen.     To the casual observer taking in my inverted stance, from pointed toes above to dotted brow below, I must have seemed like a bizarre exclamation mark. In my own way, I was developing my own form of self-discipline and devotedly practicing the art of making a statement without opening my mouth.     But even the dependability of a routine doesn’t always offer adequate protection. Propped upside down in my weird pursuit of vertical realignment, I can’t say I remember any interruptions of my TV shows that specific Friday in late November, but with most of the things we claim to remember, what we really recall is the retelling of the tale in years to come. I know the cumulative replay of J.F.K.’s brutal slaying marked me. The slow motion pictures of a grown man being tossed violently to then fro by invisible forces, and the images of a dark-haired wife and confused children held captive in the margins of history as a casket was ceremoniously paraded past.     Maybe I shouldn’t have been left alone, standing on my head, watching such events unfold. Such experiences leave lasting impressions. Even now, when I see the Zapruder film start to unwind, I automatically take on the posture of a dumbfounded puppy, head slightly tipped to the side, as though my body is angling involuntarily toward inversion, as though I am physically trying to understand the deepest symbolism imbedded in such seemingly senseless acts.     Maybe being a witness is just a step in the loss of innocence, a necessary step in discovering how truly topsy-turvy life can become. I have learned that comprehension can take years to develop, and that it is not necessarily inevitable, unlike disappointment and compression of the spine...     Those preschool years, before I was shuttled off to the safety of public school, were often tinged with mysteries and things I simply didn’t understand. For example, I vaguely remember once that spring when two agents from the F.B.I. came to live with us. All of our phones disappeared, except the one in my mother’s room, and it was attached to a large tan recording device of some kind. I didn’t really know what was going on, only that I was no longer allowed to answer the phone.     I thought it had something to do with her job. I had heard my father talking about Delgado’s “questionable business affiliations” and his Italian heritage, kidding her that she would have to quit work if her boss started expecting her to “go to the mattresses....” But the jokes ended abruptly with the arrival of our houseguests.     At first, Mamma seemed disoriented, like she didn’t know what to do, or who to be. She no longer dressed up and left each day. And she couldn’t really lounge about in the layered clouds of her chiffon peignoirs. But she was resilient, and after a brief exploratory period, settled on a pretty good impersonation of Mary Tyler Moore, complete with a short pageboy, black turtleneck, flats, and slim charcoal slacks. (I attributed her wardrobe’s lack of color to the fact that the Dick Van Dyke Show was also in black and white.) It was during this time of real-life crime drama that the maid quit. But that didn’t deter Mamma. After all, if Laura Petrie could manage without help....     I’m still not sure how the investigation resolved itself. I don’t remember hearing that a meeting had been arranged between Mamma and Delgado, but I heard about it later that week. And about how the F.B.I. agents hid in the back seat of her car that Friday evening. And how they jumped out and nabbed the menacing man on a dark and deserted back road. I never heard why, or what they did to him. But I was sure life was somehow about to be different. Again.     It didn’t take Mamma long to rebound. By the following Monday, she had bleached her hair blond (probably having convinced herself that it was a necessary step in acquiring a new identity) and darkened the beauty mark beside her lip, which only days before she had struggled to obscure. Since she had gained almost celebrity status in the neighborhood, she was always going off somewhere for coffee or lunch, undoubtedly giving each new audience a vivid recounting of the recent dangerous events.     Of course, being around all of those new people was bound to stir to life the fires of longing within her. No matter how exciting, the status quo of our daily lives was a faintly burning ember in contrast to the blaze of glory that loomed like a bright promise just over the horizon. Change, whether drastic or almost undetectable, was usually signaled by a period of pouting on Mamma’s part, a warning that something or someone was about to be revamped. During these times of imminent transformation, I would instinctively maintain a low profile, watching the process from a safe distance, and hope the changes would be ones that would fulfill my own fantasies. I would have welcomed a new game room, a pool, or a vacation to Disney Land. But instead we got new carpet in the den, and a more modern dinette set. This was somehow connected with the fact that my brother had joined the Cub Scouts and Mamma had been designated the Den Mother.     Those who didn’t know Mamma well might think she was self-absorbed and maybe even cold. But I have memories of quiet times when just the two of us would snuggle on the sofa in the family room. It was usually in the evening after dinner, after baths, before bed. And though the television was always on, it was mostly background noise. She never offered a bedtime story, but instead would talk to me just above a whisper about what my life would be like someday. The whole time she talked, she gently brushed my hair back from my face again and again, tucking it behind my ear over and over as though silently reinforcing the predictions and possibilities she was sharing with me.     Life with Mamma revolved around potential. I went to sleep each night firmly believing I could be a doctor, an artist, or the commander of a space station. More importantly, I learned how to be resilient, self-sufficient, and how to survive the disappointments that would pepper my life.     These times with Mamma were special, maybe in part because I knew they were fleeting. I always knew that the next day I would be left on my own again, tethered loosely to a new housekeeper. Left alone to stand on my head, eat my midmorning cereal snack, and watch a vertically inverted Jack LaLane go through his daily exercise routine. Left alone to connect numbered dots, practice my blossoming reading skills, and wait for a glimpse into the mystery of the milkman. Left alone on my swing in the backyard, belting out “Red Roses for a Blue Lady,” as I pumped my legs melodramatically to a trapeze beat. Left alone to imagine a future where I could be anything, or anyone, anywhere I might want to be. (Previously published in The Best of the First Line and The Best of the First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006)

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION:     Cheryl Hicks has been published in Crate, Halfway Down the Stairs, Southern Hum, The Best of the First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006, Families: The Frontline of Pluralism, The Remembrance Project at Howard University, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Other Poetry (UK), Juice, Poems-For-All, Literal Translations, Toward the Light (Canada), The Sigurd Journal, Ginosko, Eskimo Pie, Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, Heliotrope, Makar, Snakeskin (UK), HerCircle, The Orphan Leaf Review (UK), the delinquent (UK), Autumn Sky Poetry, Silent Actor, Avatar Review, Word Riot, Clockwise Cat, Halfway Down the Stairs, Monkey Kettle (UK), Washington Literary Review, Shakespeare’s Monkey Review, and Unquiet Desperation (UK). She has been a featured poet at C/Oasis, is a previous recipient of the Paddock Poetry Award and presented poems from her series titled Conversations with the Virgin at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference in Tucson, Arizona. ARTIST STATEMENT:     My art focuses on those aspects of personality that people sometimesattempt to obscure or skew in an effort to be accepted by society. In keeping with the creation of avisual veil, technically speaking, my art borrows from the theory ofpointillism and the digital effects of photographic half-toning. It is very much a product of pop culture. Covered with one-inch “dots” cut from magazines,my large paintings are couched behind a montage overlay of juxtaposed,equidistant grains. On the physicalplane, the painted image lies behind the dot matrix, but at times the viewer’seye shifts and the dots recede, effectively pulling the viewer in for a closerlook at the small, sampled spots. This visual manipulation alters theoriginal image in much the same way granular synthesis alters an auditoryrecording. Playing on the visualdichotomy of high and low frequencies, the result is simultaneously adeconstructed visual cloud as well as a series of individual images spaced atequal intervals, which are constantly combined and averaged by the human eye tocreate the resulting residual effect. My mixed media canvases alsocontain an almost subliminal visual and psychological “subtext.” For example, the sepia toned painting of mymother, titled “A Revisionist History of Glenda,” is covered withvibrantly colored dots cut primarily from fashion magazines. I did this in an attempt to “refashion” mymother’s morbidly unhappy life.     Hicks’ art has been shown across Texas and in New York, and her collages have appeared in CELLA’s Round Trip, Anti-, Atticus Review, Blue Print Review, and Creative Soup. Her mixed media work was featured at the Fort Worth Contemporary in July 2008.

12 January 2009 Sarah Lucille Marchant sometimes I feel as though I’m hiding behind newspaper skin and liquid bones. my eyes are filled with newsprint and I blink back punctuation marks with every smile or tear. I am a hollow story. I am a thoughtless goodbye and a statement caught on the wind and dusted by ashen adjectives. I know, for certain, that my semi-colon life is nothing fascinating I am chaotic -- I am shuffled --         I am a fragment, not a sentence                 and a stained droplet, not a river.

Sarah Lucille Marchant Bio     Sarah Lucille Marchant is a Missouri resident and university student, studying literature and journalism. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Line Zero, Every Day Fiction, A Cappella Zoo, and Straylight.

Janet Kuypers reads the Sarah Lucille Marchant May 2012 Down in the Dirt poem 12 January 2009 with live piano music by Gary

Watch the YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading the poem straight from the May 2012 issue, live 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (w/ live piano from Gary)

Between the Barbed Wire and the Still-to-be-Discovered ‘God Particle’ Remains an Unfinished Line of American Poetry (#1). Kenneth DiMaggio To paraphrase an old Country & Western song “I’ve been looking for God in all the wrong places” but after Kuwait   Iraq   and Afghanistan whenever I pick up   aim   and fire my rifle feels just like a piece of Heaven --that never quite reaches a city called Hartford where kids who can’t aim much less read can still kill after firing stolen hand- -guns while riding Sting- -ray bicycles and just as you illegally came here from Honduras or Mexico your unintended homicide in this syringe-sharing city does not make your death here in America legal Are we all aliens and if so where is our space ship? And in the meantime Mickey Mouse keeps waiving to us from Disney World as if this is the way back home

The Horoscope Readers Steve Dodd     “It’s like the weather forecast. They always tell you what the weather’s been like today, before they tell you ‘bout the weather tomorrow.”     She scowled and Becky knew she was meant to speak now, “Yes, why do they do that Gran?”     “To trick you into thinking they know, when they don’t.” The old woman tapped on the open newspaper with a bony finger, “Your ruler Mercury’s retrograde cycle will continue ‘till the eleventh. After that you should expect a blend of confidence and attention to detail that makes you smart about love. That’s no use to me, no use to anyone. You follow me girl?”     “I do Gran.”     The old woman rocked her body in the over-stuffed armchair. “Where’s my purse?”     “Are you sitting on it Gran?”     “Might be, hard to tell.”     “You could have sat on it.”     “I said might be. I didn’t say did. Ease up.”     Becky flinched and looked away. Her eyes went to the mantle piece crowded with ornaments and envelopes. “Isn’t it behind the clock Gran?” she said. “I think I see it.”     “Is it, yes, you’re a good girl Rebecky,” the old woman said smiling. “Fetch it for me there’s a poppet.”     Becky went over to the fire place. The pink leather purse was propped up behind an old station clock. A simple brass timepiece mounted in a carved hunk of Welsh slate. Heavy, Victorian utility, designed to tell the time and deter thieves. Hadn’t deterred Grandpa though, she thought. If it wasn’t nailed down, Grandpa nicked it, like so many things in this house.     “You take a tenner Becky and pop to the shops for me.”     “Okay Gran.”     “There’s a good girl, I’ll just sit here and finish the paper. This new astrologer is just useless. I can’t read anymore of her, she’s making me cross.”     “What shall I get Gran?”     “Oh, and could you take my library books back?”     “Course, but what do you want me to buy Gran?”     “Best get a can of Butcher’s Choice for Henry’s tea, he deserves it.”     “Anything else?”     “Oh twenty Lambert Butlers and a Crunchie.”     “Yes Gran.”     “The books are in the bag under the table. Mind you don’t wake Henry he’s just got off; what a fuss he made. Oh, and if you could pick me up some new ones that’d be nice; anything by Betty Neels.”     When Becky left her Gran’s house, she slyly checked next door’s driveway. She hoped Mike was out there; and he was. Working on his motorbike; the exhaust pipe still on its oily sheet. But as she stepped closer she saw he was not alone. His creepy kid brother was lurking close behind, like Mike’s shadow. Becky looked down, turned her head to the opposite side and hurried out the gate. Maybe, she thought, he’d be on his own when she got back.     In the library, they asked after Gran and in the corner shop too; although there Becky felt the man just wanted an excuse to remind her about the paper bill. On the way back she craned her neck to see over the top of the hedges. When she got close to Gran’s, she went on tip-toe; only to come face to face with creepy Kevin.     “Hey Mike, its’ string bean Becky, back to stay with her Granny. You want to put some ointment on those swollen mosquito bites string bean. I’ll rub it on your chest for you if you like.”     “You’re so immature Kevin.”     “Yeah, well watcha gonna be when you grow up, an ironing board.”     Becky felt her cheeks flush and hurried around the back to Gran’s kitchen. She thought if his nasty little brother knows I fancy Mike, then why doesn’t he?     Gran had nodded off, the paper on her lap still open to the same page. When Becky put the bag back under the table, Henry stirred in his basket. The old Yorkshire terrier looked at her with his gluey eyes as if to say, what now? The sight of the dejected animal made Becky feel, just for an instant, that there might be creatures worse off than her self. “It wasn’t my idea Henry,” she whispered. “And besides it’ll grow back.”     The old dog stood up and gave Becky a clear view of the home-trimmed fringe. Then he turned in a lazy circle and curled into a ball on the aertex blanket that had once served in Becky’s cot. Becky had held him wrapped in that blanket, while Gran had used the nail scissors.     “You were quick.”     “Sorry Gran did I wake you?”     “Oh I had a lovely little sleep dear. Get a look at Mikey did you?”     “What do you mean?” Becky snapped.     The old woman used her elbows to lever herself upright. “Just teasing poppet; did you get my ciggies?”     “Course; and Mr Patel said you’re behind with the paper bill.”     “I’m sure he didn’t say any such thing.”     Becky threw herself back into an armchair and pouted. “Smart about love,” she muttered. “Why do you always read our stars when you know they aren’t any good?”     The old woman looked at Becky for a moment, “Habit,” she said slowly. “That and they used to be good, dependable. But then Patrick Hanley stopped,” she pulled her cardigan closed under her neck, “He’s gone now, retired to some Greek island with his boyfriend. All the best astrologers are poofs poppet.”     “Gran you can’t say that.”     “Oh I know what you’re thinking, but it’s true. They put more effort into reading the future.”     “Why, because you think they’re the creative type?”     “No, and I know you’re making fun of me. No, it’s because they know there’ll be nothing of them to see it.”     “I don’t get it.”     “Family poppet, it’s what’s most important, seeing the next generation moving on.” The old woman caught Becky’s eyes and smiled, “I want to see you happy Becky, and you can’t be if you go on being angry with your Mum.”     “She started it.”     “And you can end it.”     “I don’t want to.”     “Becky-Rebecky, you know you do. You just don’t know how. That’s what we need a good horoscope for, to give us a little nudge in the right direction.” The old woman sat forward and patted both her knees, “Make us a cup of tea Becky there’s a love,” she said. “You can patch things up with your mum, I’ll help you. After all, you can’t stay here much longer; you’ve got to get back to school.”     “Oh no, not that on top of everything else.”     “I know poppet, I hated school too. Best thing about it, was where I met your Grandad.”     Becky smiled and her Grandmother smiled too, just the memory of the old rascal made them both breathe a little more easily. Becky got up and went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Looking out of the kitchen window into the garden she remembered helping him trap wood pigeons with a sieve propped up with a stick on a string. A little of Gran’s Bran Flakes under the sieve as bait.     “Pigeons get constipated same as everyone else Rebecky, but I’ve got a cure for ‘em,” he’d croaked in his smoker’s voice.     “You do Grandad, what’s that?”     “Nice hot bath in a pan with some spuds and carrots.” Then he would laugh his wonderful hacking laugh. His whole face creased around his mouth like a sock puppet.     All Becky’s memories of her Grandad involved him laughing. The pleasure he took in doing something just a little crooked made them all feel more alive; he was such an easy man to forgive, so full of joy and mischief. Even towards the end, he was still up to something or other. His mirth mixed with the cancer in a way that took the sting out of it. “They won’t miss it girl,” had to be the phrase she’d heard him say to her Gran more than any other.     Becky spooned the tea bags out of the mugs and remembered the goose he’d brought, when he and Gran had come to stay. The last Christmas that Dad was still home. “That’s an awful generous present Roy,” her Dad had said, and her Mum had looked sideways at him and shook her head.     “Yeah Dad,” she’d said, “Nice of you to take it out the wrapping so we can’t see how much you spent on it. Oh look Sainsbury’s aren’t doing such a hot job of plucking these birds are they?” And he’d given her his raspy laugh in reply.     Later, after dinner, when she had got into the sherry with Gran, her Mum had asked him if it was a swan. He’d said, “They won’t miss it girl,” and they’d all laughed, even the ones who didn’t know why it was funny.     When Becky handed her Gran her tea, she wondered if she missed him more than she did her Dad.     “Thanks Becky, you sit down now, you look all misty-eyed.”     “I’m alright Gran.”     The old woman wriggled forwards in her chair and put the hot mug down on the carpet, “Your Mum and me,” she said, leaning closer to Becky so their knees touched. “We always did rub each other up the wrong way.”     Then with Becky giving her full attention, she went on, “I was always saying the wrong thing to her without meaning to and she to me. Earth and air poppet, we can’t help it.”     She smiled at Becky and eased back into her seat, “Now you and me,” she said, “We’re the same sign. That makes it easy for us to get along. But it doesn’t mean your mother loves you any less. Loves us both. Just as we love her.”     Becky sighed, “I’m just happier here with you Gran.”     “And I’m trying to explain why Rebecky,” sighed the old woman. Then she squirmed forward in her seat and felt for her mug on the floor. Becky thought she should help, but her Gran found the handle and lifted the mug to her mouth. She blew across the top and said quietly, “And I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that motorcycle Michael lives next door.”     “Gran!” complained Becky.     “Listen Becky, you’re Grandad and me,” the old woman screwed up her eyes as if she was trying to see the way forward in the rain. “We made your mother and then,” she looked into her tea, lifted it to her lips, then changed her mind. “Your mother,” she went on, “Well your Dad’s a good man, but a Capricorn with an Aquarius,” she brought the mug to her mouth and took a sip. “It was never going to work, not that she’d listen,” another sip, “And I’m glad she didn’t, because here you are.”     Becky smiled thinly at her Gran and the old woman smiled back. Then her Gran quickly put her mug back on the carpet and shook a crooked finger in the air between. “You need to see that our lives Becky,” she declared, “Yours, mine and your Mum’s are not separate.”     “We’re not.”     “No, we’re a line that stretches into the future.”     “A line?”     “Yes, like a relay race, passing on from one to the other.” The old woman nodded to herself, and then patted down her cardigan pockets, feeling for her cigarettes, “One day,” she went on, “You’ll meet someone, and he’ll see you and you’ll know.”     “He doesn’t see me, only his stupid brother sees me,” muttered Becky under her breath.     Her Gran smiled, “You just need to learn to see what’s important poppet.”     “Why doesn’t he like me Gran? Is it because of...,” Becky looked down.     “Oh no, no,” said her Gran, “He’s no match for you Becky, not at all. Ah, here’s my ciggies.” The old woman tore off the cellophane wrapper and fished out a cigarette. “Why I remember,” she said, “When he was brought home from the hospital, shrivelled little monkey; Gemini, doesn’t know his own mind.” She lit up. “No, you be patient,” she said exhaling smoke, “Find yourself a nice Taurus, like your Grandad.”     “I thought you said she didn’t know her stuff Gran.”     “Who dear, your mother?”     “No, the new horoscope woman in the paper.”     “No one asks for advice when they don’t need it poppet.”     “Mum says I never take her advice, says I only take the advice I want to hear.”     “You just lack a little confidence girl, but it’ll come, it’ll come. Now wake up old Henry, and let’s see if he’s forgiven me for his haircut. He looks so much better now, without all that greasy hair in his eyes, able to have a good look at the world again.”

Steady Brandi Capozzi silver-threaded, bare. On the oak you drift off to hummings. Fall asleep when the world is wrong. Something sits gently— a moth— wide-winged and shining silver-blue, an orb on each side— for seeing through. Balanced over top the chasm. Solid against the squelch. Not a stutter. Not one pulse flick of fear. There is only this humming. Imperceptible words dissolving into ions. And you dream when the world is wrong, because you are still capable of dreaming. It will still be there come morning.

Charlotte Christopher Hanson Spittle contorted smiles And lips Drenched in green Seek the satins that never Satisfy, Sheets fallen, Wings blistered And holes burnt through the Bottoms of Shoes. I pace myself alongside The white of one left Eye Gazing to the Two-step I take, An answer to Her dance with Me being the partner, Reluctant, Somehow scared And even more so out of place. I know I’ll leave, And more importantly, I know she’ll come home, Empty With little more than Lint in pocket, Abandoned, Just a shiver of looking for Warm. And if my cold hasn’t taken over Quite yet, I’ll give her a Blanket, It’s the best I can do, But at least it’s Something.

Christopher Hanson Bio     I actually burnt my hand with a cigarette (by accident of course) while writing this bio. I torched my hand and knocked my beer over with the resulting flail and “S!*T,” that accompanied the pain of both excessive heat and lost liquor. I managed to drench my cat via the waterfall of hops and other things good flowing over my desk, but managed to save the laptop so that I could finish this simple little statement called, “me.” Sometimes a moment’s worth more than any list of accolades could ever be.     On another note, I have been/will be published in – “A Brilliant Record,” “Stray Branch,” and “Down in the Dirt” (but you know that).

Breaking the Sword Daniel J Roozen     When he awoke there was something fluttering in front of him - back and forth, back and forth - moving to a semi-regular beat. He waited until his eyes focused. There was noise, too, but he didn’t identify it all at first. A swoosh. They were Maple leaves on the trees above him, swaying in the breeze. That was the feeling on his skin, then, that raised the hairs on his arms.     The leaves gave him something to orient himself against. He was lying on his back in the woods. That realization brought other questions: How did he get into this forest? Why was he asleep? What did “deciduous” mean, really? He began searching his memory as he lay there, but no answers revealed themselves.     That was scary, and it encouraged him to search further. Who was he? What was his name? John? No, that didn’t sound right. Patrick? Meh. Zachery? He liked that last one, so he chose to think of himself by that label. Zachery.     Zach sniffed the air. It smelled moist, even a bit mildewy. And why did it make him hungry? He rolled his head over to look to the right. In the roots of a tree next to his head there were a bunch of little plants with white plumes on top. Wild mushroom. Yes, that’s what it was called. It made his stomach rumble; he must like to eat them. Something, just a feeling, warned him to stay safe and wait. He should cook them first.     Well, he figured out about as much as he could lying here. Zach pulled himself up to a sitting position to take note of his surroundings. He sat in a small clearing in a forest. There were a few different kinds of trees, but most of them had the same shape of leaves. Maple. It must have been well into summer as the trees were full and green. The clearing was well shaded, but several small openings in the tree cover let the bright midday sun through; lush blades of grass grew tall in those areas.     There were two breaks in the trees and brush that could be called paths. With one thought, Zach felt empty and lost, not knowing where he was or where he could go to get help. In the next thought, he wondered how he knew things, like that those wild mushrooms were unsafe until cooked, or these trees were deciduous, or the thick moss on one side of the trees meant that way was generally north... or was it south?     A distant melody became louder, though he couldn’t pinpoint the source. It felt like it would be more normal and comfortable for him to stand, so he did so, as the song — a song of trumpets and flutes — came nearer. Zach wasn’t sure whether to feel frightened or eager. He decided on the latter and let a smile cross his face as the melody took a rest in the clearing. Well, it wasn’t in the clearing so much as it was there with him, all around him, but mostly in the tree branches above. There was one, or maybe two, sources to the song.     Leaves rustled above one of the paths and a marionette dropped suddenly from the upper branches. The doll was simple, wooden, and without many markings, but half as tall as a man. The leaves blocked Zach’s sight so he couldn’t see the puppeteer in the trees. He couldn’t make out any strings on the marionette, either, but perhaps it was controlled by fish line that was just too thin to see this far away.     “Why hello,” Zach said to the puppet with a smile. “And where did you come from? Is this some sort of dream?”     The music drifted off down the path as the puppet turned its head to the side - even passed horizontal, since it didn’t have a neck — as if to consider Zach thoughtfully. The marionette sounded like twigs dropped in a pile as it moved all of its limbs to turn and point down the path in the direction of the music.     “You want me to go that way?” Zach wondered. It made as much sense as anything else, though it seemed quite an odd way for anyone to help him. Why communicate through a puppet like this? “Can’t you just come down and talk with me?” Zach pleaded. Briefly, he contemplated how he knew words and speech and how to make his mouth move to produce them when a moment ago he thought the only purpose of that large opening in his face was for eating the thoroughly cooked but wildly delicious mushrooms.     The puppeteer in the trees, if there was one after all, said nothing. The marionette just shifted, looked straight at Zachery, then turned again to point down the path. By this time the melody was so far away that Zach had a hard time making it out and he suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to chase after it as his only connection to some sort of civilization. Why he wanted civilization, he didn’t yet know, but he ran down the path; maybe someone there would know him.     Down the path he raced, following a curve here and a bend there, always chasing after that upbeat melody. When the path became unclear or there was more than one way to go, the marionette would drop down from the trees to confront him again. The first couple of times the puppet took a few moments to examine him first. Maybe Zach had it wrong, he thought. Maybe I’m the odd one out here. Maybe the world is populated by marionettes.     As he considered that possibility, feeling even more alone, the marionette would turn again, lift up its legs, and point down another path. So Zach followed; he had nothing to do but follow. The forest grew ever larger as he continued wandering down path after path. Sometimes the marionette would send him in a circle, down paths he had already trodden, but Zachery paid it little heed. It must be part of some grand plot, he figured.     Before too long, though it seemed like an eternity to Zach’s limited experience, he came finally to an end in the paths at another clearing. There was no village; there was no civilization or other people. No one was there to tell him who he was or what he was doing in this large forest. However, there, at the far edge of the clearing, a break in the tree cover let a sharp beam of light down into the forest to strike a large but ordinary stone. In that large but ordinary stone rested a very unordinary sword, leather and studded hilt protruding about a foot above the stone.     The marionette joined him again just to his left, this time close enough that Zach could reach out and shake its hand, if he had felt so inclined to do something as silly as moving someone else’s hand around. Four more marionettes dropped out of the trees near the sword, and another couple pairs appeared at the right edge of the clearing and started dancing together. So, either there was a village of people hiding in the trees, running from branch to branch, odd enough never to come down but only interact through puppets on strings or, the more likely explanation, marionettes were the people and Zachery was the weird creation.     The sword spoke to him. It begged him to take it. He walked towards the sword and all the marionettes stopped and turned to watch him. He stepped right up to the sword and with two hands grasped the hilt. Bracing one foot against the stone he pulled back and, after some effort, the sword came out of the stone. What a thing of beauty it was, shiny and sharp and about three feet long.     He practiced with the sword, feeling the weight of it as he swung it around with two hands, then with one hand. There was a perfect balance to it; what a fine cutting machine. Yes, cutting. He whipped the sword around to land against a tree. Thwack! The sword wedged itself into the side of the tree. Zach pulled the sword free and the fresh wound in the tree dried up and scabbed over with a dark brown substance.     That had felt amazingly good to Zachery — to have the power, yes, power over life and death. He looked up at the marionettes, a thought suddenly coming to them. Maybe they were the rightful owners of this land, but it didn’t have to be that way. With this sword, there’s no way they could stand against him.     So he did it, slowly at first to get the hang of it. The sword sliced through the air and with a thwack and a crack half of the first marionette fell to the ground. A back slice caught the next two at the same time, reducing them to a pile of twigs. The remaining puppets surrounded him, seeking to stop him before he could continue the damage, but it made little difference to Zachery and his newfound power. The sword struck out again, seeming eager now to taste the break of wood. Zach spun, sword outstretched, and four more puppets fell to the ground.     Only one remained now, the one who had led him to this sword in the first place. What did it think he would do with this sword once he found it? Was this destruction not the purpose of a sword? The marionette turned away, disappointed, Zach was sure. Zach ground his teeth together and swept the sword above the puppet, cutting through the strings that held it up, and another wooden marionette fell to the ground, lifeless.     Zachery was all alone then. That was the power of the sword, wasn’t it? Destruction, death, loneliness. It was an evil beast that held a wicked power over man, to kill without mercy. The purpose of bringing him here was not to lay waste to all these beautiful puppets, but to stop the hatred and killing.     Zach held the sword up before him, hands outstretched, blade pointing to the sky. “We will end this,” he promised the sword. Zach vowed he would find a way to break the sword.     Metellus examined the ground by the tall tree with mushrooms growing in its roots. He was trained as a tracker and hunter from infancy; he could tell that someone was here, and recently. But most disturbing of all was a mark in the ground by that tree.     A man had been laying there for a time, not long. There was no blood around, no sign of struggle. The man had laid there for, surely, a very short and peaceful nap. A set of footprints led away, to a path in the forest, but no footprints led here, to this little spot in the clearing. There, engraved on the ground, was the white chalk mark of the outline of a tree with a half-moon above it.     That a man left here without coming was curious enough, Metellus thought, but this strange mark disturbed him greatly. It meant nothing in his culture, but he had seen it before, perhaps at the village library.     “Solo!” They called him Solo because he had lost an eye in battle when he was just a teen. Solo approached. He was bald and dressed like Metellus: light but durable brown corduroy pants, slim fit but loose tunic. Comfortable, yet ready for action. “I’ve found something I want to investigate,” Metellus said. “Come with me. The rest of you—” for they were in a hunting group of six “—continue on. We’ll meet you back in the village tonight.”     The tracks were simple enough to follow, so they went quickly. There was only one man, alone, quite sure of where he was going. He had made a couple turns, went in circles once or twice, but always moved quickly. At each turn Metellus stopped and he and Solo examined the area carefully, just to make sure they weren’t going too fast to miss anything. They looked for snapped twigs, bent grass or bush branches, overturned rocks... There was nothing to indicate anything more; just a single man in the woods.     They continued on and before too long came to another clearing. Whereas the canopy kept the forest mostly dim, at the far end of this clearing there was a break in the trees. A beam of light cast into the clearing on a large gray boulder. At the side of the clearing stood a man holding a long sword in front of him, pointed at the sky, with a beaming smile on his face. This was the man that had appeared out of nowhere.     As he lowered the sword, Zachery found two men standing in the clearing. So there were other men in this land! They were dressed somewhat strangely. He glanced down at himself; Zachery wore a flat black shirt and pants, but they wore different colors and different types of clothing. The shirt that went over the shirt... Zach searched his thoughts for that one. Tunic.     “Who are you?” The first one spoke, the one with two eyes. The other stood a step behind. “Are you from around here?”     His words sounded friendly and his mouth was upturned in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. And yet they both had a hand on the hilt of the sword they wore at their waists. It wasn’t so much threatening — they tried to be casual — but they were ever at the ready. Zach could tell they were ready for danger if danger were to arise, and surely it did often.     “Come with us,” they implored him, and why should he not? These men would help him bring peace; they needed it more than anyone.     They gave Zach a piece of cloth and had him tie it around his waist so he could hang his sword in the belt. These men knew when to use a sword; thankfully they also knew how to put it away. Did they want the sword? Was it a friend for them? Or a necessary evil?     They showed him the way out of the forest, down a hill, and along a path until they came to a place with even more people. The people had built buildings all close together near a river and it appeared they spent their time moving from one building to another. A few didn’t even do anything. They sat at the entrances to the buildings and watched people go by. They had surrounded the gathering of buildings — a village; yes, that’s the name — with tall pointed sticks.     “What’s your name?” the man asked him again as they approached the village.     “My name?” Zachery wondered what it was they were asking him.     “What do they call you? You must have a name.”     Ah. That was the label he had come up with for himself. “Zachery,” he said. “I call myself Zachery.”     “Where are you from?” Metellus asked.     Zach shook his head. “I have no memory before the clearing.”     Metellus turned to his companion. “Solo, go. Ask the old man at the library about the symbol we found.” Solo didn’t hesitate to follow the command. “Zachery,” he said, putting his hand on Zach’s shoulder, “my name is Metellus. You will come with me to the Training Ground.”     The “Library” was really the home of an older man in their village. Some called him the Wisdom, though usually it was just “the old man at the library.” Whereas most of the buildings in this small hunting and fishing village were really tents that became permanent structures over the years, or at best a one-story cottage, the Library was the only two story building. Very little space was reserved for cooking, eating, or sleeping for the Wisdom, mostly just a small corner on the second floor. The rest of the area was filled to the brim with books on shelf after shelf.     Solo came in quickly but consciously. The Wisdom himself was not exactly above the command structure, but outside it, so Solo had learned to tread carefully. The Wisdom was once a traveling salesman with a secret obsession for books. After having collected piles of books from all over the world this village offered to store them for him if he shared his knowledge and a discount on prices. Eventually he grew tired of wandering and settled down in the village, always with them but never quite one of them.     “Wisdom? Are you there?” Solo called out. He contemplated for a moment whether the Wisdom was out and he would have to search all of these books himself. He shuddered. Surely that would take a lifetime.     It didn’t take long for the old man to peak his head through the hole in the ceiling where the stairs descended from. “Hello? Oh! A visitor!” The head disappeared and Solo heard some scrambling across the ceiling. Before long the old man scurried down the stairs, this time feet first, and rushed up to Solo, peering at him through a monocle in his left eye. The Wisdom’s thinning white hair draped over his shoulders and he wore a light brown cloak down to the floor. “So,” the old man said in his high scratchy voice. “What do you have for me today?”     “Metellus and I found a man in the forest today—” Solo started, to be immediately cut off by the Wisdom.     “A man? A man, you say. Alone in the forest?” Always one to scurry, the old man scurried to the east wall, across from the door, and ran his finger across several books, until finally stopping on a thick, leather-bound volume. “Here’s one about strange appearances from across the ages. Have you heard the one about the mermaid found in the desert? Yes, very strange.”     “I don’t have time for this,” Solo said, already exasperated.     The old man smiled for a moment, and Solo immediately wished he hadn’t said it. He needed the Wisdom’s help, however he would give it. Then the old man let out an old cacophonous laugh. “Time? Well that certainly is an interesting concept.” The Wisdom put the book away and scurried to another place on the bookshelf. “Yes, what is life without time? Time is meaningless; we made it up. And yet, it keeps everything from happening at once.” He slipped another book down, this one clearly older, its pages made of parchment and its cover a thin pressed wood. “Time, as they say, is relative. Ha! And yet, unlike my relatives, I want more of it!”     “Wisdom, we found a symbol in the forest, as well,” Solo said, hoping to distract the old man from yet another tangent. “It seems the man we found arrived on earth at the place we found the symbol.”     “A symbol. A symbol, you say.” The old man scratched his dirty white beard. “A symbol in white chalk scratched in the ground?”     “Yes. Yes! How did you know?” Solo caught himself, not wanting another tangent, and quickly went on. “The symbol was of a tree, and above the tree a crescent moon.”     The old man stopped in thought, then disappeared up the stairs even quicker than he came. Solo stared at the opening in the ceiling for a minute, then two minutes, thinking the old man had just gone up to retrieve another book. When he didn’t return for five minutes Solo, a man of action, had assumed the Wisdom wanted to be alone and wasn’t going to help him.     Solo walked to the door when the head popped out of the opening in the ceiling again. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”     “No,” Solo said, relieved that the Wisdom was still aware of him. “No, I will wait for your response right here.”     “Great. Would you like some tea?”     “The symbol, Wisdom.”     “Ah, yes, your symbol of chalk. A tree and a crescent moon. One moment.” The head disappeared again and Solo waited anxiously by the door. It wasn’t for a long while, an hour maybe, before the Wisdom returned, walking somberly down the stairs this time, book open before him.     “What is it, Wisdom?” Solo pressed. “What have you found?”     “Not much,” he said slowly. “I had to go back very far. Even the old writings say very little. But the symbol transcends the Ages; it was meant to be remembered. There is an old set of prophecies that mention the coming of a man, the Sent One, destined to break a sword and bring peace on earth and heralded forth,” the Wisdom placed the book open in front of Solo, “by your chalk symbol of a tree watched over by a crescent moon.”     In the book there was a clear drawing of the symbol, the same he and Metellus had seen in the woods. “That’s it. That’s what I’ve been looking for. Thank you, Wisdom!”     “Be careful, Solo,” the Wisdom warned. “The prophecies are very clear that he was sent for peace, but unclear as to whether it was predetermined that he would achieve it. One thing, however, is very clear. He gives each one of us a choice. What will you choose, my friend? What world do you want to live in?”     The Training Ground, it turned out, was a large open space surrounded by a few small buildings that Metellus called armories. In this place many men carried swords. Some enjoyed it. Others practiced the sword with form and seriousness. Some were skilled and sliced through the air easily. Other men were clumsy and unused to the sword.     Zach pulled out his own sword. The moves the others were using didn’t look difficult. He moved the sword to and fro, up and down, until he looked just like the other men in the Training Ground, flying through the air with ease.     Metellus roared with laughter. “Ho, ho! So, you know nothing about yourself, but you certainly know how to use that sword. We will be able to use you in the war.”     “No,” Zach exclaimed. “I cannot!”     “You have a sword and know how to use it,” Metellus said, trying to reason with him. “Whysoever would you not help a friend? Are we not friends, Zachery? Did I not find you in the forest and show you the way to civilization? Would you want me to die on the battlefield?”     “Of course not, my friend Metellus,” Zachery said, at once concerned that he had hurt this nice man’s feelings. “But war is not the way, cannot be the way, for me. My purpose is to break this sword.”     “Break that sword?” Metellus laughed loud enough for the other men in the Training Ground to hear him and turn to see the two. “What good would that do? Break a sword? We have many swords, and bows and arrows, as well. Will you destroy all of our weapons?”     Zach furled his brow. Did he make a joke for this man to laugh at him so? Or did he threaten the man somehow so that he worries about defense? “No, of course not, my friend. Just this sword. I do not know what it means or what it will accomplish, but it was made for me and I for it. This sword was built to be broken and I was built to break it.”     The mouth of this man changed from a smile to a frown. He now looked angry with Zach, and his other friends were crowding around him.     “Am I such a threat to you?” Zach wondered.     “What do you think?” Metellus said. He gestured to indicate the land outside the village. “The world is at war. People are fighting for their crops, their property, their families. We fight for our very lives. What if everyone were like you?”     Zach tilted his head. That was certainly a good question. One man’s actions may not matter to the world in the great scheme of things, but what if others copied that man? What if the strange actions of one man became commonplace? For surely that is how we should act. If we want the world to be one way, then we should act that way, he thought.     Perhaps people do not usually act like that, though. As the men here at the Training Ground crowded around him, Zachery could feel it himself. Peer pressure; the tendency to want to do what the people around him were doing, to war like they warred. How many of these man fought because they wanted to fight and how many fought because that was the world they lived in? What world do I want to live in? Zachery wondered to himself for the first time.     “If everyone in the world stopped fighting, there would be no war,” Zach said out loud before he realized it. “If everyone broke their swords, there would be peace.”     It was a proper answer — that is what the man asked, after all — but he did not seem to appreciate the answer to his question. Metellus gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword rather tightly, and others around him did as well, or went off as if to find a nearby weapon they could use.     Metellus put his arm around Zach and turned him not-so-gently to face the river in the distance. “Do you see the gallows over there by the river?” Metallus asked. There was an open wooden structure, about twice the height of a man, with a blade hanging, like a thick razor, ready to fall. “That is what happens to young men in this village, and many others across the land, who are like you and choose not to help defend their fellow man against danger.”     “What does it do?” Though he had a sword, the concept of death, like war, meant little to Zachery.     “It cuts off their head,” Metellus said sharply, slicing at the air across his neck quickly to illustrate the point. “They cease to be. Is that the end you want for yourself, o Zachery?”     “Of course no man would choose death, but neither do I want to kill.” Zachery looked to the others, now crowding around him and pressing in. “I implore all of you, not to make this mistake. You could kill me now, and that may satisfy your bloodlust for a time, or you may let me go. Perhaps, through peace, we will all find what we are really looking for.”     The reply did not take long to come. “Kill him,” came the cry. Zach did not know who made it, perhaps someone in the back, but there seemed to be no disagreement as all in the crowd raised their right hand and cheered.     The corner of Metellus’s lip furled up as he declared, “Take him to the gallows.”     Metellus, Zachery, and the two men holding him led the mob. The other warriors, a few dozen of them altogether, followed. With swords drawn and at the ready, the warriors were practically begging Zachery to try to run. Run, and taste their steal.     Solo ran to the head of the crowd in a hurry, having just visited the old man at the library for several hours. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon now and the twilight hour cast an orange and red glow across the land. “Metellus,” Solo called out. “Sir, I have news.”     Metellus’ face was grim. “Can’t it wait? We want to get this over with before dark.” There was no need to explain what it was they were looking to do.     “Sir, it is about the man and the symbol.” Metellus let Solo pull him aside. They still walked with the crowd, in front but beside it. “I talked with the old man and asked him about the symbol we saw, the one with the outline of a tree and a half-moon.”     “And?” Metellus pressed.     “It’s not seen often. Only in the most ancient of literature, and only hints about it, really. The old man had to scour through a dozen different volumes while I was there.”     “What does it mean?” Metellus urged him. “Out with it man! What do you have to say?”     “It is the symbol of the Sent One. The one meant to bring peace and prosperity.” Metellus growled and turn away, and now it was Solo’s turn to beg. “What? What is the problem?”     “He did preach peace, but you know our laws,” Metellus explained. “It is too late now. We lead him to his death.”     Solo looked to the river. They were taking him to the gallows. Metellus... he knew. He knew of the choice for peace; Zachery must have spoken to him. Yet still he chose war and death. But Metellus wasn’t the only one with the choice. What will I choose? he wondered.     “May I see his sword?” Solo asked. Metellus grabbed it from one of the men holding Zach and tossed it casually to Solo. It didn’t matter to him anymore. Metellus had made his choice.     Solo looked up, holding the sword firmly in his left hand now, took a breath, and then knocked out one of the men holding Zach with a right hook. He went down like a bag of rocks. Solo didn’t stop to think about what was happening and grabbed Zach by the arm. The others were so stunned, for a moment, that they didn’t stop him.     “Follow me!” Solo commanded Zach as he pulled him away and began running to the river, to the gallows. In two quick steps he bounded up onto the gallows platform and stood on the edge, gazing over the raging river below.     “What are you doing?” Zach wondered.     Solo thrust the sword to Zach. “I’m choosing. You will break that sword. You will bring peace. I will help you. But first we must get away from here. Now, jump!”

Mirage Kerry Lown Whalen     Ben trudged across campus to the drama theatre, a tin shed pitched on the foothills of Mount Stuart where fried fruit bats dangled like black rags from power lines and the odor of fermenting mangoes cloyed the air. Squinting in the glare, he yanked the peak of his cap lower, his head and body aching from a hangover. He thought about the beer he’d guzzled the night before at the student union. At closing time he’d been talking to the girl of his dreams – Kylie McBryde. He wished he could remember what he’d said; hoped he hadn’t ruined his chances with her. If it meant winning Kylie, he’d limit the beers he drank in future.     On his desk at home stood a stack of unfinished assignments. He’d already been warned by his tutor. “You’re talented, Ben, but undisciplined. Unless you submit your assignments, you’ll fail.”     He straightened his shoulders. Today he’d extend himself, show everyone what he could do.     He ambled into the dim theatre where a cluster of whirring ceiling fans barely stirred the languid air. His fellow students drooped like thirsty flowers in the tropical heat. He gazed at the stage, his pulse quickening at the thought of being chosen to perform coveted roles. In the spotlight he was bold, powerful, a natural actor who delivered his lines effortlessly. When Kylie McBryde was there he was at his brilliant best. At these times he was a raging King Lear, a malevolent Macbeth. But off-stage he changed. When he looked into Kylie’s cornflower eyes his spit evaporated and his knees quaked; his tongue turned to jelly and his words to blah. In her presence he felt like a loser and it was doing his head in.     Ben’s heart pounded when the tutor appeared centre stage and cleared his throat. In the practical exercise today, Ben needed maximum marks. With a clap of his hands, Trevor quietened the group.     “As you know, this exercise is assessable. Follow my directions precisely.” Ben listened attentively. “For this task, everyone should stay where they are.”     Ben wanted to leap into the air and click his heels because Kylie stood nearby, away from the idiots who mucked about with their mates or slumped moodily against the walls. She ignored everyone as she limbered up, doing arm and leg stretches and bending from the waist. His eyes slid sideways and remained on her body.     “This exercise is to develop your sense of touch.” With the assurance of Olivier, Trevor strutted the stage and paused for effect. “You will be blindfolded.” Gasps and murmurs hung in the air as Trevor outlined his expectations. “You are to explore the face of another student. Touch their hair, ears and features.” Trevor leapt from the stage, gathered up an armful of black scarves and strode around the theatre, handing them out to students.     He met Ben’s eyes. “You need top marks to stay in the course. Give it your best shot.”     Ben nodded, dried his clammy hands on his shirt-front and held the blindfold. For the hundredth time he wished the university’s tin-shed-excuse for a theatre flowed with cold air. His fingertips grazed needle-point bristles as he tied the scarf in place. He cursed, wishing he’d shaved that morning. But he wouldn’t allow anything to distract him – right now he needed to concentrate. His breathing quickened at the chance to partner Kylie, to stand toe to toe, chest to chest and touch her face. He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Perhaps today Kylie would see another side of him – the cool dude – the smooth stud – the guy who was rapt in her. He ran a hand through his hair, sweat dripping from his face.     Trevor returned to centre-stage. “Before starting the exercise, you’ll be disoriented. I want you to pirouette three times. Ready for the first spin?” He paused. “Turn now.”     The group obeyed, their bare feet swiveling on the warm smooth boards. Ben wanted to sneak a look at Kylie but the blindfold prevented it. He calculated he had turned full circle. Trevor waited until the group steadied before sending them spinning a second time and, with every muscle clenched, Ben channeled a wish to the universe that Kylie remain within reach. On his third spin, he gabbled a prayer.     Please God – make Kylie my partner and I promise I’ll finish my assignments – I’ll stop partying – I’ll do anything – absolutely anything – please, please, please, God.     Trevor sounded a warning. “Take care while you’re blindfolded. I don’t want any accidents.”     Ben’s prayer reverberated on his lips as he headed for Kylie, a sleepwalker with arms outstretched. He reached her, touched her shoulders, slid his hands down her arms and clasped her fingers in his. Relief loosened the tightness in his head and body. He was holding Kylie’s hands. Kylie’s hands!     “You might be able to identify your partner, but don’t speak.” Ben heeded Trevor’s words and focused on slowing his breathing. “This is a non-verbal exercise, relying solely on your sense of touch. Take it in turns to touch your partner’s face. Start now.”     With love in his hands, he reached for Kylie’s face. He caressed it softly, allowing his fingertips to linger on its contours, sweeping both hands upwards to lift her hair and let it drop, inhaling its fragrance as it fell to her shoulders. With every organ, muscle and sinew singing, he approached her lips and traced their shape. He teased them gently, his face moving close to hers. Attuned to her responses, he felt her breath on his cheek as he stroked the fine skin of her throat. His fingers resumed roaming, gliding up to the plane of her forehead, touching her eyebrows, skimming over the blindfold to her rounded cheeks and returning to trace her slightly-parted lips. As they wandered over her smooth features, his hands were creamy, honeyed, scented, the texture of her skin inscribing itself on his fingertips. Ben was aware of nothing but Kylie. Nothing existed for him but her and the moment.     “Stop!” Trevor’s command split the air, halting Ben’s lovemaking, jolting him back to reality. “Blindfolds off. Open your eyes.”     Tossing aside the blindfold, Ben stared in disbelief at the flushed face of Lindy Parker. Her mouth opened and syrup flowed.     “You really know how to use your hands, Ben.” Her eyes shone as she swayed close to him. He felt her hand on his cheek. “I was so carried away that I forgot to touch your face. Sorry babe.”     Gutted, aching, empty, he gazed into Lindy’s admiring eyes. A lead weight sat on his chest as he looked around to see who had partnered Kylie. His eyes scanned every corner but could not find her. She had vanished into the shimmering heat of a tropical afternoon. Trevor’s voice rang out, again interrupting Ben’s reverie.     “Your final assignment is due next week. See you then.”     The group muttered, collected their things, shouted their goodbyes and drifted out the door.     Ben waited while Trevor bundled the scarves into a box. “How’d I go, Trev? Did I pass?”     He nodded. “Top marks. You’re a natural Ben. Have great potential.”     “Thanks.”     Trevor paused. “This is personal, Ben. None of my business. But everyone knows you’re keen on Kylie.” Ben reddened, his chest tightened. “There’s something you need to know. Kylie’s not into guys.”

Kerry Lown Whalen biography     Kerry Lown Whalen lives with her husband on the Gold Coast of Australia. She has won prizes in literary competitions and had short stories published by Stringybark Publications, Bright Light Multimedia, Pure Slush and Down in the Dirt magazine.

Uncle Clinton Van Inman I thought you died In the last war but I See you are up to your Old tricks again Pointing your finger Bullying boys to join Your cause of killing People O say can you see the Fields filling with those Who believed your old lie That freedom means fighting Now more clownish than ever In those striped pants and hat, Yet not as real as rocking children Waiting, waiting to follow you, Sam

Clinton Van Inman Bio     Clinton is a high school teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida. He graduated from San Diego State University and was born in Walton on Thames, England. Recent publications include: Warwick Unbound, Tower Journal, The Poetry Magazine, Down in the Dirt, May, The Inquisition, The Journal, The Beatnik, The Hudson Review, Forge, Houston Literary Review, BlackCatPoems, and Out of Four. Hopefully, these poems will be published in two books called, “One Last Beat” and “Far From Out” as I am one the few last Beats of my generation standing.

Janet Kuypers reads the Clinton Van Inman May 2012 Down in the Dirt poem Uncle with live piano music by Gary

Watch the YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading the poem straight from the May 2012 issue, live 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (w/ live piano from Gary)

Watering Cattle at Twenty Below Ruth Juris They hunker round; rough splintered coats with sheets of ice shingling down their backs Ears but fuzzy stumps to the head, the remainders long since sloughed off to frostbite, small horns curled tight Blowing fountains of freezing breath coming from the warmth deep within Each bovine steam locomotive chugging its given track Come sleet and deep snow they plow through Yet waiting with round glossy brown eyes and frosted eyelashes For the act of the man with the ice axe Splitting asunder the frozen water which they cannot Allowing them a much needed and deep drought

Ruth Juris, in brief:     Ruth Juris is a practicing veterinarian and veterinary surgeon in Long Island, New York. She negotiates the knife edge between life and death all day every day, and writes poetry for a brief respite, to diffuse the tension and slip the noose of work-related stress from her neck.

The Courier William Masters     LAID OFF.     For the third time in eleven years, forty-four year old paralegal Philip Morelli felt victimized by law firm economics: with good settlement or trial victory for client, law firm sends attorneys to the Sonoma Mission Inn for a long weekend as reward and (after a victory celebration and banquet) lays off half the paralegals as currently unnecessary since the 2008/9 financial debacle.     Vastly unsuccessful in any measurable terms of financial or career accomplishment, Philip had somehow missed any middle-aged feelings of sinister nostalgia or sour regrets for past mistakes. Instead he felt vaguely melancholy, vowing never to work in law firms again.     As he completed the EDD on-line unemployment form, he made a few tabulations: he had $18k in a CD, $2500 in his checking account, 130k in his 401k plus his $920 monthly unemployment insurance “award,” a new, $423 monthly cobra premium (if he wished to keep his medical insurance), an old 1995 VW beetle in need of both a new clutch and a master brake cylinder (if he wished to keep his wheels), a bum right knee preventing him from any more serious bicycling, four more months of gym membership, a laptop and a couple of real friends.     Unaccountably, he held an unjustifiably high opinion of himself as eminently worthy.     “After all,” Philip reminded himself, “a good ego should function like a piece of corning-ware, able to take both the heat and the cold.”     Philip resisted any compulsion to update his resume (again), to meet with headhunters (flowering examples of the carnivorous entrepreneur) or to place himself in the hands of temp agency personnel (hyenas, incognito). He refused to review daily legal publications for job listings and failed to implement the traditional gestures of the newly unemployed by informing his network of friends and acquaintances that he was currently looking for work, by adoption of an unemployment benefit budget, and by administration of that sobering inventory of self, triggered only by sickness, death, job loss, destitution, divorce, envy or fat.     Instead, Philip purchased a bottle of McCallan single malt scotch (to dull his nervous system) and a slab of Marcel & Henri house pate (to raise his cholesterol) and walked home from the store (to exonerate his conscience for the fat and alcohol he was about to consume).     When he reached his cozy, one-bedroom Russian Hill apartment, he mixed himself a large scotch and soda, spread some pate on a piece of sourdough baguette, and sat down at his keyboard to compose the following advertisement.     EXPERIENCED INTERNATIONAL COURIER: RELIABLE, PRESENTABLE AND AFFABLE. Call (415) 775-8990 for detail.     He laughed Monday morning as he paid for and sent his ad electronically to the San Francisco Span, the remaining vestige of yellow journalism in San Francisco (as compared to the morning paper which chronicled the news and the afternoon paper which examined the news more closely) to begin with the Sunday paper and run for a week. He laughed again, deprecatingly at himself, now $216.30 poorer, and placed his passport on the fireplace mantel as a sign of confidence (or folly) that his advertisement might produce some employment or adventure.     After returning home the following Saturday afternoon after a brisk, but not strenuous bike ride, Philip noticed the red flashing of his answering machine light and hit the playback key to hear the following message in a heavy Russian accent: “This is Boris re: your courier advertisement. I will call only once more, punctually, at 9:00 PM. If interested, remain at this number.”     By 7:30 Philip was eating linguine with homemade tomato sauce dusted with grated Romano and a baby lettuce salad with garlic croutons. He washed dinner down with a cheap, but friendly bottle of Peruvian Merlot followed by a scoop of Hagen Daz non-fat raspberry sorbet. Taking a cup of coffee into his bedroom, Philip laid on his bed working bridge problems as he waited for the call.     At 8:30 Philip dialed the Menlo Park Geological Survey number to obtain accurate earth time and readjust both his clock and his watch. At 8:45 Jean called to make a bridge date, and by 8:55 Philip felt too excited to read his Bridge World magazine any longer.     As the second hand swept the last fifteen seconds until 9:00 p.m., the phone rang. Philip let it ring a second time before answering,     “Hello.”     “This is Boris. Are you person who advertised as courier?”     “Yes, I am.”     “What names are you using, please?”     “Philip and Morelli,” he replied in his best smart-ass cadence.     “There is a little delivery I would like you to make for me. Please listen without interruption before you decide anything.”     “OK.”     “Next Wednesday, I want you to personally deliver a blue envelope to a mailbox in Zurich, Switzerland. I will pay you $1500 in cash for this errand. Will you go?”     “Yes, when do I—.”     “Wait. What is name on passport?”     “Philip Morelli.” Philip heard laughter.     “Ah, such utter lack of complication. On Monday at 10:00 AM you will bring your passport and pick up round-trip tickets, in your names, at the American Airlines office on Sutter near Stockton Street. With the tickets the clerk will give you a leather pouch. Return home BEFORE YOU OPEN THE POUCH to find further instructions, itinerary and cash. If you have not picked up tickets by 10:30, I shall assume you have changed mind or were detained. After 10:30 this offer expires. Timing is everything, Mr. Morelli. Good-bye.”     Philip felt the twin surges of excitement and anticipation for a paid vacation under attack by vague, irrational fears; the whole deal might be a hoax.     Nevertheless, on Monday morning at 8:30 AM Philip used his Fast Pass to ride the No. 45 bus downtown to Union Square. By 8:50 he sipped coffee and read the San Francisco Span at Forgis, a tony Sutter street cafe. Although the ticket office opened at 8:30, Philip did not rise until 10:15 to walk the half block to make the pick-up.     Four faces monitored him as he passed through the revolving door. A tall, slim young woman rose from behind the counter and smiled at him as he walked past the velvet ropes.     “Mr. Morelli,” she inquired?”     She looked him straight in the eye. She wore no name badge. Neither did the other three people.     “Yes, I’m Mr. Morelli.”     “Good Morning, sir. May I please see your passport?     She accepted and made a copy of the document.     “Thank you. We always make copies of passports whenever clients obtain tickets in this manner,” she said, vocally italicizing obtain.     “Is that often?”     She ignored his question with smiling disinterest. From underneath the counter, she produced a brown leather pouch and gave it to him with the tickets.     “Please sign this receipt for the tickets. Thank you.”     She passed the tickets and the leather pouch to Philip. One of the other three persons opened the door for him and offered this information.     “There is a limousine waiting for your use at the corner of Sutter and Stockton. It will remain there for five minutes. Good day, sir.”     Out the door, Philip observed that a half block down Sutter Street, at the corner of Stockton, an illegally parked black limo waited with its lights flashing. As he walked toward the limo, the driver simultaneously waved away curious onlookers while beckoning to Philip.     “Like a ride, buddy?”     Some internal response clicked into place. Philip hadn’t seen The Ghost Writer (2010; Roman Polanski) for nothing. He shook his head no as he walked past the cab up Stockton Street to the tunnel bus stop, at which he almost immediately hopped a No. 45 home. While on the bus he resisted opening the pouch, but read the tickets. They were FIRST CLASS tickets departing SFO at 7:00 AM tomorrow, with an hour stopover in NYC, arriving in Zurich the following morning at 8:10 AM, and returning two days later. The round-trip price read $6729. Six thousand, seven hundred and twenty-nine dollars. Something didn’t make sense. $1500 paid to him to deliver an envelope using a $6729 first class ticket. Anticipation raced through Philip’s veins delivering the giddy feeling of a player holding a winning ticket.     As soon as he arrived home, Philip sat down at his desk and opened the pouch to find a blue colored envelope without any outside writing and a letter addressed to him. The blue envelope felt as if it were made of some very thin metal. It was so light, that there might have been nothing inside, but Philip could see a small, dark rectangle through the blue envelope. He opened the letter. Fifteen one hundred dollar bills fell out. The letter read:     Dear Mr. Morelli,     After you arrive in Zurich, take a taxi to the Dolder Grand Hotel where I have reserved a room (room and meals prepaid) in your name. Refresh yourself and have breakfast in charming terrace dining room. After breakfast take leather pouch with the blue envelope inside to address in this letter. Use enclosed key to open post box and place pouch inside mailbox. After you relock post box, give key to duty person (badge name Hans Neumeyer). Return to hotel and call phone number under the post box address. Leave following message: “Thank you for the good tourist instructions,” and hang up. You have now completed your job. Do whatever you want. Make sure you are on plane returning to SF the following day at 10:00 AM (timing is everything). If you complete this task successfully, I may have other jobs for you. BORIS     Later that morning, Philip took the fifteen one hundred dollar bills to his bank for examination. He hadn’t watched Five Fingers (1952; Joseph Mankiewicz) for nothing. The bills were not counterfeit.     Punctually, at 4:00 AM the following morning, a Super Shuttle picked up Philip and drove him to SFO along with two dangerously cheerful and wide awake passengers.     In the first class section on board the plane, the steward offered Philip a succession of food choices (all rejected) and alcoholic beverages (all accepted). During the flight, Philip observed that none of the first class passengers engaged in any conversation with anyone else. No one seemed to be traveling with a companion. Two people worked on laptops (the faint noise of hand hitting the non silent keyboards was still heard five rows away), three people slept, two read.     Philip, feeling the effects of some not so vin-ordinaire, napped. Awakening sometime later, he felt vaguely uncomfortable, sensing a distinctly metallic aftertaste in his mouth. Trying to stand, dizziness forced him back into his seat. He rang for the steward whose perfunctory sympathy mocked Philip’s condition.     “I know I drank a lot of wine. Still, if this were a train, I might claim that I’ve been drugged.” He hadn’t seen The Lady Vanishes (1937; Alfred Hitchcock) for nothing.     The steward’s attitude morphed itself into unconditional disbelief.     “May I offer you something to dilute the damage sir,” asked the steward unconvinced?     Philip nodded yes.     “Allow me to suggest a remedy. Our special brew of hangover tea,” responded the steward authoritatively.     Both laughed as Philip good-naturedly accepted the offer.     Some impulse made Philip pull out his faded, blue canvass overnight bag from underneath his $6729 seat. He opened it to find the leather pouch MISSING. Of course, he had both the instruction letter and mailbox key in his trouser pocket and the blue envelope inside his jacket pocket. He hadn’t read so many Graham Green novels for nothing.     Feeling better after drinking his hangover tea, Philip got up to stretch his legs as he walked to the bathroom. Inside, he splashed some water on his face and combed his thick, luxuriantly wavy brown hair. Opening the door to return to his seat, Philip noticed that the person occupying the right-hand window seat was the limo driver who had beckoned to him near the ticket office. Lying on the empty seat next to him was the brown leather pouch.     The former limo driver, now an expensively dressed first class passenger looked at Philip, innocently inquiring, “Did you happen to lose this, buddy? I found it on the floor in the bathroom and was about to notify the steward.”     “Why, yes I did.”     “Oh, really,” he asked handing the pouch to Philip, “I noticed a folded piece of paper inside when I checked for identification.”     “Thank you.” Returning to his seat, Philip opened what should have been an empty pouch to find a piece of paper folded in half. Unfolding the paper, he read: Don’t try to deliver your package or you may not awaken from your next nap, buddy.     He laid the pouch on the empty seat beside him and rang for the steward to order more wine, suppressing a knee-jerk compulsion to send a written response to the fake limo driver because he couldn’t think of anything witty to say. Instead, he drank another glass of wine and fell asleep.     Philip awakened to the unpleasant aroma of eggs and toast. While other passengers ate breakfast, Philip ordered coffee. After tasting the coffee, he ordered an espresso.     After the breakfast service, the steward announced landing in 65 minutes. Philip asked the Steward for his jacket. He actually hadn’t checked it since finding the pouch stolen, so sure with his blossoming aplomb that the letter remained untouched. Philip’s hand found the letter. He put it inside his shirt, feeling the envelope slip to his waist. He packed the empty pouch in his overnight bag and readjusted his watch to the Pilot’s announcement of current Zurich time.     Since Philip had no baggage to claim, he headed straight for the Customs section. The Customs official was the woman from the San Francisco ticket counter. After checking his luggage and welcoming him to Switzerland, she asked,     “Do you still have everything?”     “I do,” responded Philip.     “Good luck, Mr. Morelli,” she added, smiling conspiratorially. The name on her badge read Ms. Froy.     As he entered the section taking him to the transportation center, he saw a young man holding this sign: Dolder Grand Hotel - Transit for Mr. Morelli. The same gut feeling that had stopped Philip from taking the limo in San Francisco now sounded an alarm to stop him from accepting this ride. After all, he hadn’t watched Dr. No (1962; Terence Young) for nothing. Feeling a surge of boldness derived only from the sublimity of ignorance, Philip decided to play.     “What password did the hotel tell you to use for me,” Philip asked the now puzzled young man?     “Password,” he asked, completely fooled by the ridiculous piece of hokum?     Philip, transformed by his absurd pleasure in sensing this fakery, walked confidently away from the potential kidnapper to hail a cab. Four Saabs tried to fit into one space. He picked the cab with the oldest looking driver, a fifty-some year-old woman and asked, “English?”     “Of course, sir” she replied. Her “of course” sounded just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. “German, Italian, English and French. In that order.”     Both Laughed. She opened the door for Philip, and laid his suitcase on the seat next to him.     “Dolder Grand Hotel, please,” instructed Philip, amused at the loftiness of the name.     “I don’t like to lose a fare, sir, but that very exclusive hotel always supplies a personal driver to transport its guests.”     Philip felt touched by her honesty.     “I know,” he lied. “I didn’t like the driver.”     “All right, mister, get in and we go” she said as the taxi moved carefully into an airport exit lane.     “How long will it take us to reach hotel?”     “About 20 minutes.”     “You inspire my confidence. Can you tell me anything more about this exclusive hotel which sends drivers to pick up its guests?”     “Oh sure. First, you don’t look like the people the hotel usually picks up.”      “Why not?”     “You are not expensively dressed,” she began. “You don’t have good luggage. You are too well mannered to taxi drivers. Also, you don’t look like you work out with a personal trainer.”     Although Philip felt certain her concluding remark had something to do with the potential amount of the tip, he felt the rest of his newly gained stage confidence leaking away when he noticed the false Dolder Grand driver was tailing him. He informed his current driver.     “The Dolder Grand drivers are always tall, gray-haired men,” she replied, looking in her rear-view mirror, “this driver looks like a ski instructor.”     Philip agreed.     They arrived at the hotel at 9:40 AM. He asked her if she could return at noon to take him to the address in the letter. She replied that she could. The ride would be about ten minutes. She gave him her card. Philip looked at the name.     “I’ll see you later, Anna,” he said, giving her a hefty tip (expenses).     A hotel attendant opened Philip’s car door, sternly informing him that a hotel driver should have met him at the airport. Philip ignored the attendant and carried his own worn, canvass overnight bag inside the hotel. The attendant, unaccustomed to such cheap luggage, delivered a look of carefully gauged contempt, reserved for guests unfamiliar with protocol, and without the slightest knowledge of how to conduct themselves with servants.     Once inside, an impeccably dressed, tall, once blond-haired man of about 60 greeted Philip by name, shook his hand, introduced himself as Hans Mueller, the hotel’s executive manager and escorted Philip into a plush, private office.     “The hotel sent a driver to meet you, Mr. Morelli. Did you miss him? We haven’t heard from him ourselves.”     “Was he a 5'9", 22 year old blond with very white teeth,” Philip asked?     “No, Franz is a 6'2", 64 year-old with thick gray hair.”     “Then I am reporting Franz missing from duty. Some blond 22 year-old ski instructor type impersonated your official driver. The impersonator followed me here.”     “I see.” Mr. Mueller rose, having relieved Philip of his passport and had a bellman show him to an unexpectedly elegant room containing a real fireplace, a stand-up desk, a sofa and an arm chair with matching hassock.     “Enjoy your stay, sir.” The bellman waved, leaving before Philip could tip him. Immediately, Philip checked the time (timing was everything).     He locked the door and inserted the letter and key into the pouch taking it with him into the bathroom. He took a long shower, redressed into his-single change of clothing. Carrying the pouch, he left, anticipating a first-rate meal in the charming terrace dining room.     After the waiter brought breakfast, including a pot of coffee, Philip felt famished, but caution stopped him from consuming even a taste of the waffles, sausage, eggs or a nibble of the baguette.     “Maybe just a cup of coffee,” he thought to himself. “Oh, no,” he remembered! He hadn’t seen Notorious (1946; Alfred Hitchcock) for nothing. “I’ll eat lunch in some posh hotel dining room later,” he thought to himself, “after I deliver my ‘merchandise’.” He laughed at his attempt at “spy terminology.” Pushing his food away, he opened some bottled water to drink.     Two tables further down in his row, the waiter greeted (“Welcome back, Mlle.) and seated a woman with pale, wound blond hair. Her legs were pretty and her teeth were white. She could easily have been the older sister of the fake chauffeur. The waiter obviously knew her. Philip turned away, ignoring her with interest as the waiter approached his table.     “Is something wrong with our food,” he asked with mock alarm, looking at the untouched breakfast?     Philip wondered if the waiter was related to the airplane steward.     “No,” he replied and rose to leave.     Since he had twenty minutes before Anna arrived, he headed back to his room. Just as he was ready to push the elevator button, the bellman appeared.     “Telephone call for you, Mr. Morelli. You can take it in booth no. 3,” he said pointing out a row of handsome telephone booths.     Philip entered the leather-lined booth, sensing immediately from the closed door that the booth was soundproofed. He picked up the phone.     “Yes, what is it,” he asked?     “This is your guardian angel, buddy, reminding you that heaven is best seen in old age. If you insist on making your delivery, you will arrive in heaven decades early.”     The angel hung up. The manager knocked on the booth’s door.     “Mr. Morelli, you have a confidential telephone call on the line in my office. Please follow me.”     “I shall leave you alone now. Just pick up the phone and press the flashing button.”     With a tone of mild expectancy, Philip answered, “Yes?”     “Mr. Morelli, this is Boris. Listen carefully. You will not deliver the envelope as planned. A driver will pick you up in five minutes and take you to meet someone who will receive the envelope. Is this understood?”     “No,” replied Philip with matured annoyance, “I have been drugged, robbed and threatened. I’m afraid to eat food based on the justifiable apprehension that I would not survive it. So, I repeat, no. I only go with my planned taxi driver, Anna. So if you want me to make the delivery give me the address NOW or I will simply fly home, leaving the letter here for you, and keep the money.” Silence lasted for about ten seconds.     “Please, Mr. Morelli, I fear that you have slipped into rhetoric. Do you have pencil?”     Philip picked up a fountain pen from the desk and a piece of hotel stationery. “I do.”     “Tell taxi driver will take you to 84 Curzon St. W. Ring door bell and deliver letter to person who will open door.”     “No, I don’t like that address, he said. “I didn’t see The Secret Agent (1936; Alfred Hitchcock) for nothing. Forget it. I want some place more public.” He fingered a brochure of fine dining on the concierge’s desk, eyeing the restaurant listing. “Have the person meet me at the Scobar Grill. I am going to order a large lunch that, incidentally, will appear on my expense account. Give me a description of the person, who will receive the merchandise,” he said authoritatively.     “The blond woman who sat near you in terrace dining room. Do you remember what she looks like?”     “I do.”     “I am leaving in five minutes for the restaurant. If the woman hasn’t arrived by the time I finish lunch, I shall assume that she is not coming and leave. Good-by.” He hung up, amused by his own shallow audacity and left the office to ask the concierge to book a table for him at the Scobar Grill. As he walked outside, he saw Anna, a few minutes early, waiting for him. Entering the taxi, he informed her of the change in destination.     “I only hope the restaurant will let you in, sir, without a jacket. It is a very snooty place,” she said, with lifted eyebrow and an emphasis on the word snooty.     “Since this very exclusive hotel has just made the reservation, I shall depend on its lofty reputation to get me in,” he answered. He wore a pair of navy blue cotton Dockers, long sleeved linen; white collared T-shirt (to show off his good upper body) and a pair of woven Italian sandals, the most expensive piece of footwear Philip had ever purchased. His side trouser pocket now carried the letter.     “Is the restaurant close?”     “In four minutes,” she replied holding up four fingers of her right hand.     “After lunch, when I am ready to go, is there a way I can call you?”     “Yes,” Anna replied, giving him another card. “Call the taxi number and ask for the driver number on the card. A Dispatcher will radio me. How long do you think you will be?     “My guess is about an hour and a half.” Philip gave her an American fifty dollar bill (expenses).     “All right,” Anna replied noting the denomination of the bill and soon drove up to a large porch. There was no sign. As the taxi stopped, an attendant opened the taxi door. “Welcome to the Scobar Grill, sir.”     Philip entered the restaurant by stepping down into an enormous dining room. In the middle of the floor, a quintet played chamber music. The host (the fake blond kidnapper from the airport) approached, taking him (rather too firmly) by the arm and leading him to a table by the front window overlooking the porch entrance.     “Welcome, Mr. Morelli. We have been expecting you ever since your hotel called and we are... overjoyed that we can seat you.”     Indeed not another vacant table remained among the 40 or so other tables, each set with a potted begonia of ravishing hue.     “Will someone be joining you, sir, he asked?     “Someone will, but only for a drink. Please bring me a Lillet blanc on the rocks with a splash of soda.”     The blond faker turned without a word and walked to the bar to place Philip’s order. A server brought a menu. Philip noticed that he was the only male without a jacket and tie.     “What am I doing,” thought Philip? “Having an adventure,” he answered himself about to order a fabulous lunch (and expense it) hoping fun or joy would invade immediately. Instead the host arrived with his drink.     “Please do me a favor,” asked Philip.     “Why of course,” answered the false chauffeur.     “Taste my drink.”     Without waiting a second, the faker drained half the glass.     “I love Lillet. This and the next are on the house,” he replied, chuckling as he left.     The server brought a replacement drink and escorted Mlle. (dressed in some silky looking, long-sleeved white blouse and beige skirt) to his table. Philip rose, not ungraciously, but without enthusiasm. “Won’t you order a drink,” Philip asked?     She smiled at Philip. “My usual, Pierre,” she said distractedly. The red begonia on the table (the only red begonia among the ravishing hues of the other tables) looked like a piece of jewelry seen against her white blouse.     “I am Josette.” She spoke without accent, reaching for the envelope that Peter had placed in his empty plate. As her hand glided toward his plate, Philip snatched the blue envelope and placed it underneath the shiny piece of round, white porcelain in front of him.     “Are we playing a board game, Mr. Morelli? You’re not going to ask for more money?”     “Certainly not,” replied Philip. “Nothing as adolescent as a board game nor beneath contempt as a request for more money. I have an appetite for information.”     “Ask me anything,” she responded impatiently. The sibilance in ask assumed a vaguely foreign intonation. The server brought her a cocktail.     “What is it?”     “Stoli on the rocks with two squeezes of fresh lime.” She drained the glass with a single gulp, lifted the empty glass, and then hit the table with it.     From across the dining room Pierre recognized her signal for another drink. “I want to know what the dark rectangle inside the envelope is.”     “Realize first that every additional minute I sit here reduces your chances of survival.”     “Then please begin.”     “The dark rectangle is a new kind of disk, differently shaped for both sound and three dimensional picture transmissions. The inventor doesn’t trust the patent office to keep its design confidential. We couldn’t use any normal courier service. Boris insisted that only an ignorant innocent could complete the delivery. Don’t you think this is an intellectual property problem for an unemployed paralegal like you,” she asked with immeasurably controlled contempt?     Pierre delivered another double to Josette. Gradually, Josette’s speech continued in a vaguely Middle European accent. “The picture projection is particularly valuable. As a teaching tool, it’s unparalleled...” Her pronunciation of “t’s” now reached staccato articulation.     “...medical students and doctors can observe a life-sized projection of some famous doctor displaying some new surgical technique without the famous doctor’s actual, physical presence. I’ll bet that doctor or his ‘agents’ will charge plenty, too,” she added parenthetically.     “One can watch the assembly of a piece of furniture. Furniture instructions are especially worthless. Imagine someone demonstrating how to set the most advanced DVR, use of Blue Ray or offer guidance for use of the latest software for a new, underused PC. In the comfort of your own home you can watch some famous chef preparing fabulous dishes or a munitions expert demonstrate bomb assembly.”     “The projection quality now attainable is so remarkable that one could fool an audience into believing that the projection and sound quality on stage was the actual presence of the person standing in front of the podium. What an alibi that could furnish someone whose projection spoke to an audience of 600 dentists in Omaha, Nebraska while the speaker was actually strangling his mistress in Marbella, Spain.”     “But the real breakthrough,” Josette continued, “is the ability of the projection to fully integrate with matter. Just imagine someone projecting the image of a safecracker inside a locked vault; the projection has only to use its hand to turn the inside handle and open the safe from inside.”     “Consider projecting the image of an assassin right inside the White House into the President’s bedroom. The chief executive enters his bedroom, sleepy after a long day of fund-raising for his second term to find some Cheshire cat, smiling assassin sitting on the foot of his bed, waiting to shoot him. The projection, integrating with matter, picks up and fires the very pistol kept in the nightstand for the President’s personal use. The bullet, entering through the forehead, lodges itself in the President’s brain, resulting in hemorrhage, hematoma and death. The secret service rushes into the bedroom to find only the corpse, but no assassin. Someone simply turned off the projection leaving no evidence of entry. This is the world’s greatest assassination technology, Mr. Morelli.”     Pierre served another drink; a double hit the table. Josette consumed it with a coal miner’s thirst.     “The Japanese will probably buy it,” began Philip, “since they recently paid twelve million dollars for Claude Monet’s ‘Rouen Cathedral, Afternoon Effect’. Yes, they will bid the most and buy the secret. Then they will manufacture the technology and sell it to whoever can afford the price. News media will report the names of the Presidents, Premiers, and Dictators found murdered in their bedrooms and limousines, in their saunas and their private jets while the tabloids will headline the names of the murdered bookies, rich husbands, plastic surgeons and attorneys dispatched by their respective customers, forgotten wives, scarred B movie queens, and unhappy clients. Stock markets will soar and plunge according to the hits. Newly invented polls will forecast public support (or displeasure) for the next victims. Las Vegas will supply odds for the next likely assassination candidates. A group calling itself Citizens For A Cleaner World will nominate five people each year for assassination. Release of these names will coincide with the announcement of the Academy Award Nominations each January while the actual assassinations will follow the Oscar broadcast in February.”     Philip stopped to catch his breath and admire his invention.     “You know,” continued Philip, “I think I can identify, catalog and index vodka fantasies as well as any other unemployed paralegal. Since you won’t tell me the truth about the item, maybe you will identify this material,” he asked now holding the envelope in his hand?     “It is a special metallurgical covering used to maintain a constant temperature of —.” Sensing her mistake, she stopped mid explanation.     “Would removal of the item from the envelope and exposure to room temperature destroy the contents,” Philip asked matter-of-factly?     “You Americans are apt to overdo good deeds and heroic gestures. So you think destruction of the article a good notion? You come from such a nation of do-gooders. You make me sick. Your naiveté only invokes revulsion in me.”     Suddenly, Philip grabbed Josette’s hand, applying a slow, painful squeeze.     It was a gesture so unexpected, so physical that Josette’s gasps turned heads from nearby tables.     “You don’t seem to be a projection,” he said.     “Flesh and blood,” she replied, as Philip released her hand.     “I can’t say that I believe anything you’ve just told me. Still, you rate an award. You recite nicely.”     Philip handed the envelope to Josette who quickly put it inside her purse.     “Thank you, Philip,” she said with just the slightest slur in thank. “Now I can go.” She rose from her chair, and with a single wobble, turned to leave.     Philip’s eyes followed her exit. For a second, she remained out of sight until she emerged on the porch. He watched her through the window, framing her movement like the rectangle of a giant movie screen, as she stepped down to the sidewalk. Philip noticed that she no longer carried her purse. He was just about to look around for it at the table when a gun shot, so loud that it may have been amplified, dropped Josette’s body to the sidewalk. From his seat, watching through the window, it seemed as though Philip were watching a movie. A large red spot, growing larger like a flower opening its petals, appeared on Josette’s blouse. An ambulance appeared. Two persons lifted Josette’s body into the vehicle and drove away.     Philip supposed the police would arrive and question him (especially since she had just left his table) and the others who had recent contact with her. The Hotel waiter knew her. (“Welcome back, Mlle.”) This restaurant knew her (“My usual, Pierre.”). Boris knew her. (“The blond woman who sat near you...”).     Shaken and numb, Philip signaled for Pierre who merely asked him if he was ready to order lunch.     Philip ignored the question.     “Aren’t the police coming?”     “I don’t think so. Today’s special is—”     “Stop,” cried Philip! “Please call this number and request this driver,” he said to Pierre handing him the card. “I don’t think I’ll stay for lunch.”     He sat, poetically still, for several minutes, waiting for the taxi and concentrating as if he were solving a bridge problem. Suddenly, the horror of the murder faded within Philip’s thoughts. Appetite, so long ignored, returned. So did Pierre.     “Your taxi is here, sir,” he reported.     Philip left a generous tip. “For the floorshow,” he said circumspectly to Pierre. Anna waited outside. He got in the taxi.     “Back to the hotel, please.”     Back in his room, Philip felt wasted. He hit the bed (having made a taxi reservation with Anna for 7:00 AM tomorrow) and fell asleep. The phone awakened him. He looked at his watch. 7:18 PM.     “Hello Philip.”     “Boris. You big espionage magnate, am I done?     “Yes, you have completed your job.”     “I haven’t solved the riddle.”     Silence.     “Riddle? Philip, I think you suffer from jet lag. Thank-you for good job. I will be in touch.”     Philip called the desk to ask for a 5a.m. wake-up call. Philip undressed, felt the cool sheets against his skin, and fell comfortably asleep. When he awakened, five minutes before his wake-up call, his condition recalled to him the first morning of summer after school term ended. He felt slightly weightless and wonderfully relaxed. He could do anything. He still had his life before him. Hopes and aspirations renewed themselves.     He answered the phone to hear a real person making his wake up call. He took a ten minute shower and dried himself off using the warm air attachment next to the shower. The room service waiter found him dressed and packed when he delivered the coffee and rolls.     At 6:45 a.m., he went downstairs to retrieve his passport. Anna had arrived early. On his way to the airport, Philip debated whether or not this line of work might have a future for him.     “Could I do this every week,” he asked himself?     At the airport he paid Anna and gave her another big tip ($1500 plus expenses).     “Good-by,” he said feeling as if he were saying good-bye to a teammate.     Customs offered no surprises. As he boarded the plane with the other first class passengers, he noticed, far in front of him, a tall woman with pale, wound blond hair, smiling and alive. Well, Philip hadn’t seen North By Northwest (1959; Alfred Hitchcock) for nothing.     Yes, he thought, spreading himself in his seat, closing his eyes in exultation, timing is everything.     After a nap, Philip declined (as usual) any food, but accepted (now out of tradition) an offer of chilled wine.     He felt certain of a new, burgeoning career. As he reviewed the circumstances of the last twenty four hours, he considered whether or not all the threats and warnings were just so much borscht. Philip now laughed at the fake shooting. In retrospect, he now realized the whole gallery of players comprised a troupe of actors playing multiple roles. The disk wasn’t the new technology, but simply a device used to camouflage the real invention: the blue envelope. Or so went his current theory.     With only his carry-on luggage, Philip had nothing to declare and passed like sand through customs. Approaching the front of SFO, Philip remained on the lower level to find a taxi instead of taking the escalator to the second level for a Super shuttle. At 10 a.m. no traffic impeded the ride and Philip found himself deposited in front of his building by 10:35a.m. holding a $42 taxi receipt (for expense purposes) in hand.     Unlocking his front door, he felt giddy as he entered his apartment. Three days had not changed his home. His umbrella tree did not need watering. Nothing had spoiled in the refrigerator. Only two phone messages awaited him. No unusual mail. Still, his apartment felt smaller. He suddenly minded, for the first time, that this fireplace did not work and that his bathroom was not spacious.     Number one phone message was from Boris: “Everything OK. You rose to all occasions and successfully passed job test to receive permanent offer of employment from company. Please remain home tomorrow in AM until you receive my FEDEX. Will speak with you soon.”     The following morning at 8:30, FEDEX made its delivery. Inside the FEDEX letter Philip found a pad of expense account sheets and a dozen self addressed envelopes (with post box numbers, of course), new employee medical forms, eight one hundred dollar bills and this letter:     My Dear Philip,     Please accept this additional $800 to cover your expenses (taxis, food, tips) plus little extra for unpleasant excitement. Next time will be easier. Will phone you tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM with new offer. If you do not pick up, I assume you are not interested in my offer of employment.     Boris     P.S.: Rio has good weather this time of year.     The 2nd phone message was from the agency that had placed him with his former employer. Although he had not notified anyone (layoff news circulates fast), some perfunctorily smooth-sounding, but anonymous voice offered to send him on an interview to some prestigious, but unnamed law firm. Philip immediately called the agency to inform it that he was already employed. When the diligently nosy person asked what firm had hired him, Philip replied that he was now in the shipping and receiving business and asked to have his name removed from any list of possible candidates for future positions (his nose imagined the faint smell of smoking timbers while a picture of burning bridges passed before his eyes). He said good-bye, and before any response, hung up.     “I have never been to Rio,” thought Philip deciding what to have for lunch as he searched the internet for phone numbers to luggage stores.

The Cop from Hell Jon Brunette     Jack joined the police academy after he left college. He liked to wear the gold shield, the black leather jacket, the leather gloves, and the gun. Mostly, he liked the gun. It stayed on his hip, like an extension of his body, pulled rarely, but pulled nonetheless. When he did have to pull it, he’d pull it out with zest, like an Old West gunfighter about to hang. He understood that he was upholding the law, punishing the lawless, but he couldn’t help it—the gun brought joy to every situation. He could tell that he had had a great-great-grandfather in the Old West, who had killed thirty men like his father had always told him.     In his childhood, his father would always talk as though his great-great-grandfather had brought a lot of pain to the land, and had died because of it. He had been killed below a noose by a lawman his father couldn’t remember, yet he could still recall his relative proudly, like a parent would look at his son at Little League practice. Jack loved his gun like his relative must have. It became an extension of his body, like an arm or a leg; he would feel limp without it.     In college, Jack did time in jail. He had to expose his body to the guards in strip searches, and also, which burned him behind the eyes, he had to take a pickle inside his rear. Two inmates had held him down: one pulled his arms out; the other yanked his pants off and put an appliance into Jack. As he sat in solitary (he had snitched on them and had gotten the hole, which he had never really minded), he dreamt about those that he would put behind bars, who could rape as much as humanly possible, as long as they didn’t rape Jack. After Jack got out of college, and also jail, he joined the police academy, and never looked back.     Years later, he had to kill someone. He had never killed anything that had ever lived—not bird, deer, or fish—but the bullet he had put into the criminal who had shattered a window at a local liquor store and had killed the owner for a bottle of vodka had to die by Jack’s hands. It brought a thrill that couldn’t be extinguished, like a grease fire that erupted harder below water. He didn’t just become a cop to put people behind bars to rape others to their hearts’ contents, he wanted to right wrongs, but mostly, hurt people who also hurt people, and feel the power of the badge. He wanted to feel the power of the gun, too. He loved that gun, like his great-great-grandfather must have in the 1890s.     Many years later, Jack still carried that gun. He would still wear his badge proudly, too. He truly loved his job: nothing compared to the ability to hurt people who lived unjustly; it brought quite a thrill to punish people who liked to harm other people. He would put bullets into their bodies; he would kick them disrespectfully, and tell them they shouldn’t think that crime paid. It didn’t, and Jack would tell them as aggressively as he could.     With skin like that of an alligator, and a heart just as cold, Jack put his badge above his black leather jacket, and the pistol on his hip like an appendage that would never leave his body. He stood at the metaphoric gate, fire in his eyes, fire in his heart, and hate equally powerful; he stood at the metaphoric gate to guard his master like he had been trained to do.     Inside that gate sat the Devil, whom Jack respected beyond anyone alive; he would always respect Him like he had always respected his great-great-grandfather. He liked playing cop, beyond any job imaginable, in Hell or on Earth, as they were actually the same place. Like others didn’t, he enjoyed life in Hell.

Jon Brunette Bio     Jon Brunette went to high school in Mound Westonka High School, in Mound, Minnesota, but never graduated. Mental health problems, Schizo-Affective Disorder, limited his time in school. Still, his work has appeared in print and online. His work has appeared in “The Storyteller” (editor Regina Williams), in their October-November-December 2008 issue, and their January-February-March 2010 issue. Also, he has appeared in “MicroHorror.com” (editor Nathan Rosen), from February 2009 and into March of 2012. And, of course, he has appeared in “Down In The Dirt” (editor Alex Rand at first, a second editor has accepted others), from 2009 and into early 2012. His name has appeared in “Alfred Hitchcock Mysery Magazine” as Honorable Mention to their “Mysterious Photograph Contest”--his name appeared but not his work. His is trying to write a mystery novel to submit to an editor/agent/publisher in 2013.

The Pomegranate Lesson Wm. Samuel Bradford     “Mr. Boyleson, until you learn to substantiate your claims with evidence from the text, I do not give a rat’s ass about your opinion.”     Mr. Boyleson sat back down.     I took my feet off of my desk, abandoning my reclined position and another attempt at discussing Emerson’s “transparent eyeball.” One kid thought it meant he had a glass eye.     “Just forget it. Now, you’re all probably wondering why the desks have been turned so that you are facing a blank wall. Let’s be real: you don’t know transcendentalism – you know how to repeat me in an essay. I’m sick of it. If you really want to understand it, you’ve got to try it.”     I took the bulging sack out from my desk. It was burlap – I wanted burlap for the drama. I walked up to each desk and pulled out a ripe pomegranate from the bag. I placed each pomegranate on the center of each desk, leaning over the students more than I needed to. Smell me, I thought. Smell the one you hate. There was no sound except my shoes echoing on the linoleum, but in that room they carry the portent of chariot wheels. I went around the perimeter and I sat back at my desk. They looked at me.     “If Thoreau is right, the pomegranate on your desk possesses the mystery of the universe. Find it. There are forty-five minutes left in class. When you achieve transcendence, you are excused.”     With his overbite, Boyleson had almost no chin. His mouth was agape and I wondered how he could have such large teeth on top and such tiny ones below. Then he came to.     “But, Mr. Brooks —”     “Remember Zen: work three years, and then you can ask a question. It’s time to break free, lemmings.”     I watched the eight of them watch the pomegranates. Three looked down at the desk, backs rigid and necks straight down. It looked like they had no heads. Four took turns looking at each other, opting to justify their bewilderment with a comrade.     “Take your eyes off that pomegranate again and I will fail you. Do not try me.”     They looked at the pomegranate again. A fresh shiver rippled through the headless ones. Only Boyleson was unfazed. He held the pomegranate up to his face. His nose was touching it. He looked directly at it, unblinking. I could see his profile, and his ruddy cheek, plump with baby fat, was level with the ripe pomegranate. He held that pose for a while, and then he set it on his desk and sighed, deflating his cheek. The four eye-talkers snuck glances at each other. One stabbed his fruit with a pencil and a stream of pomegranate juice sprayed the wall in front of him. A girl sat back in her chair, twisting her black hair in her fingers. One leg crossed over the other, and she traced circles in the air with her foot as her finger went through her hair.     The hair-twirler began carving a peace sign in the skin of the pomegranate. Under the deep red and purple, the skin of a pomegranate is very white. She worked with a pencil and the circle was flat on one side, more like the letter D. She came up to me and said that she saw world peace.     “No one fights against the pomegranate and the pomegranate doesn’t fight against anyone. Nonviolent protest – like Gandhi and Martin Luther Ki—”     “Sit down.”     Everyone opened their pomegranate except for Boyleson. A girl lined up each aril on her desk like rows from a melting abacus. Her fingers were stained. One boy had eaten all of the arils in five minutes and spent the rest of the time picking seeds out of his teeth. Another took out a ruler and started a list of various measurements of the split pomegranate. Occasionally I saw a flicker – the florescent light glinting off the surface of Boyleson’s pomegranate as he picked it back up and resumed pressing his nose into it. He kept setting it back down on the desk, always back to the center, very gently. His cheek was redder.     I rejected several answers. It was not the Jewish symbol of one seed for each mitzvah. It was not the rejuvenation of nature. It was not a microcosm of the human skull that we were cracking open, though I did like that one. They stood up; I sat them back down. No one was allowed to use the bathroom.     Two eye-talkers slept. Then I heard Boyleson sniffling. The pomegranate was back on his desk; his head was lowered and his shoulders trembled. A tear made a zig-zag path down the tender zits on his face. He was keeping it in and no one else noticed. I saw his older brother cry once when he broke his arm pitching a baseball – they didn’t look alike, one with an overbite and one with an underbite. But they looked so similar when they cried. I had a travel packet of tissues in my desk, but I couldn’t give him one; he’d lose it if anyone saw. I looked away so that he wouldn’t feel my eyes on him. He sobbed. His mouth and eyes twisted up. Tears dripped onto the pomegranate and down the side of it. Somehow he did it without making a noise. I was trying to think how to sneak a tissue to him when suddenly the kid next to him whispered “fuck” and slowly stood up.     He had been one of the headless ones, and he had emptied the arils from his pomegranate and put them all into one hand and slowly squeezed them. The juice ran down his arm and onto the floor.     “Fuck!” The word smacked me in the face. “Oh Goddam!” He looked at the pomegranate in his hand like it was his own heart. I had never heard him talk above a grumble. He was bigger than me.     The other students looked at him. The sleepers woke up. They covered their mouths and looked over at me.     “Mr. Golding?” I said. I had sworn too when I first really understood Thoreau.     He had a sweating shaved head. He started rocking back and forth, holding the pulverized arils in both hands. The kids all started laughing. Boyleson had lost it and was really bawling, still looking at that wall.     “God.” His voice came from the floor. The kid still rocked back and forth. His head looked like a toad on a stick. “The Uni-verse!” His eyes gaped and wrinkles rippled all the way up his head. I had never realized that his eyes were blue until then. The tooth-picker was on his knees, laughing so hard that he was sucking in air like he had been punched in the stomach.     “What the hell?” whispered the hair-twirler. She didn’t realize she was talking that loud.     “I understand! I understaaaaaannnd!” My throat tightened as I felt the desks shake. The boy closed his eyes and raised his hands above his head. He sprinkled the pomegranate bits onto his head. Some stuck in the sweat and others rolled down in droplets and stuck on his temples. He looked very serene. Then he took what was left and started rubbing the pomegranate over his face.     “Golding, you need to take a seat, buddy. It’s alright.” He opened his eyes and looked at me like he could see my atoms spinning around. His baggy jowls looked bloody from the pomegranate. He opened his mouth and I could see the tonsils in the back of his throat expand.     “Holy – holy... I’m free!”     The other students stopped laughing. There was only the sound of Boyleson, still weeping, choking on his mucous.     Golding held out his arms like an airplane and made circles around the room. One by one, he knocked the pomegranates on the floor and stomped them into a pulp. He grunted with each one. I felt paralyzed. The boy stopped at Boyleson’s virgin pomegranate. Boyleson had stopped crying and was slumped down in his chair, quivering before Golding. Somehow, with some knowledge beyond what I knew, Boyleson gave his pomegranate to Golding. We all watched. Golding took the pomegranate in his hand. He brought it up to his face, like Boyleson did, nosing it.     Nobody moved for a long time. “Tell us!” the former hair-twirler cried to Golding. Her eyes were wide and black. We were all below him. I was sitting back down.     Golding took in a breath very slowly. His eyes widened like he wanted the pomegranate to fall inside. He held up the pomegranate in the air. All the heads in the room traveled up with it. Dear God, I thought. Then he slammed it on the floor. It exploded and red juice shot out in all directions. Then Golding yelled “I’ve got to kill myself!” and ran out of my classroom.     The school police officer, who served in Korea, stopped Golding down by the highway. They sent all the kids home early. Golding’s parents came and picked him up, and they had checked him in to some clinic that night. I had to meet with the assistant principal in my room with the pomegranate waste still all over the place.     “What the hell happened in here?” The assistant principal normally had a southern accent, but it went away when she was mad. I always wondered which one was fake. She used to be a math teacher.     “And what’s with all the papayas?” Her bulbous hair shook at me.     “Well, uh — we were talking about all the mysteries of nature, and I wanted to introduce some hands-on, kinesthetic learning opportunities – I wanted them to see the connection between Thoreau and the Jewish symbolism of each seed representing a Jewish mitzvah in the Torah ... It’s nonviolent protest, you know, like Gandhi and Martin Luth—”     “Well you just stay after and help the custodian clean up.”     “Yes ma’am.”     “It’s a strange world we’re livin’ in,” she said later. She was talking in her southern accent again. “Drug addicts are an unfortunate reality.”     “What?”     “The child confessed to taking pills right before your class.”     “Oh.”     “Mr. Brooks,” she and her hair said. “Everything alright?”     “Yeah – I just thought for a minute that – never mind.”

Leftovers, art by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

A Microcosm of Society Janet Kuypers 1991     No one appeared in the back half of the courtroom. Thoughts raced through Steven Kohl’s mind as his eyes darted across the room. How did this happen? Was he really to blame? Will the jury members decide whether there is enough evidence against him to warrant a trial? Why are there cuts on his hands? Why can’t he remember the last three weeks of his life?     Steve thought he might wake up soon, and discover that none of this had ever happened. That he wasn’t trying to defend himself. That Erica wasn’t dead.     He shifted in his chair. The wet cotton of his shirt collar burned against his neck. Like the branches of the trees in the ravine where Erica was found, the wool of his suit scratched his legs, his hands. He wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead, but he was afraid that he would seem too nervous to the jury if he moved. He wanted to run out of the courtroom, stand in the February snow and feel his tears freeze as they rolled down his face.     He looked over at the papers in front of his lawyer. The names Stonum, Smith and Manchester embossed the top of the page. Steve couldn’t bring himself to look at Stonum’s face.     Stonum’s face was chiseled and sharp. There was no room for emotion, unless closing remarks in a case called for a strong emotional appeal. The same thought kept going through Stonum’s head: this boy couldn’t remember who he was, much less where he was, for the last three weeks of his life. When Stonum suggested that Steve go to Dr. Litmann for a psychological examination, Steve broke down. He told Stonum that his cocaine use became daily about six weeks ago, and he started mixing drugs shortly before he lost his memory.     It was the beginning of the fourth day. The prosecutor stood.     “I would like to call to the stand a Miss Kathleen O’Connor.”     Stonum jumped. “We have testimony from a Doctor Litmann, with whom she has been seeking therapy, that Miss O’Connor should not be able to testify in this case. I submit his report to you, your Honor, which outlines the fact that Miss O’Connor has been known to compulsively lie and that her perception of the truth is often distorted. We believe that it would be inappropriate and possibly detrimental if Miss O’Connor testified.”     The testimony for the case was beginning to rely on character witnesses, and because no specific reason was mentioned for having Kathleen O’Connor testify, the judge said he would review the report and decide whether or not to allow her to testify the next day.     Kathleen looked at Doctor Litmann seated next to her, then bowed her head. Her letters to him were in a pile on his lap. She stood up, adjusted her dress and solemnly walked away.     Dr. Litmann stared at the chair where she had sat. When he gained the strength, he looked at the letter at the top of the pile.     Dear Doctor Litmann:     I just had a session with you, and you asked me to start writing letters to a friend every day so that I could start to open myself up and understand myself more. Well, I don’t have any friends. I don’t know if I’ll ever let you see these letters, but I’ll write them to you.     You were asking me about my childhood in session today. Do all doctors ask about a person’s childhood? I guess you must figure that any patient of theirs must have been abused by their father or wanted to kill their mother or something. No, I wasn’t beaten, or starved, and I didn’t even know what the word “incest” was until I was checking the spelling of “insect” in the dictionary.     I know, I know, I’m avoiding the subject. Open up, you said. Open up, God-damnit.     Fine.     As a child I wasn’t liked by other kids. I was too smart, you see, and I had been taught at an early age to respect authority. Actually, I don’t think I was ever taught that, because my parents didn’t seem to teach me much of anything. I just knew I had to listen to them when they yelled at me.     All of my life I was afraid of my father. He never really was a father to me, for he wasn’t home often, but when he was home, all he seemed to do was yell at me. I always figured that I must have done something wrong, because he was never happy with me. Hence the self-esteem problem, I guess. I think that’s why I got messed up with all those other men, too, doc. But you said we’d get to that in a later session.     The thing is, they always told me that I had to act a certain way, and that I had to do all of these things, but I never knew why I had to do them. If it was to be a good person, then I wanted to know who the hell decided what was good. From what I understood, good wasn’t fun. It wasn’t even self-fulfilling.     But I was going to do what they wanted. I got into a good school, and decided to study in a field that I didn’t like. But, you see, that would get me a job with good pay — even if I didn’t like it — and would make everyone in society think that everything was good in my life. If I just went through the motions, people would think I was happy, and then they might leave me alone.     But that didn’t work.     Doc, I’m tired. The medication you make me take at night really knocks me out. I’ll write later.     She never signed her letters, and she always typed them so that they could never be traced to her. She made sure she covered all of her bases.     Litmann pressed his right hand over his eyes, almost in an effort to hold his face together.     Dear Doctor—     Hi. I’m back. It’s night again. I like writing at night. I write at the desk in my room by two candles. I could turn on the lights, but the candles make shadows on the walls. I like the shadows. They make me think of everything out there that I’m not supposed to do.     In our session today you wanted me to tell you about the turning point of my life. You figured out that there was some sort of event in my life that made me want to rebel against all the empty values my parents tried to shove down my throat. That event was a man.     You see, he was a boyfriend of mine — a boring one that fit into my plan of having a boring future. I’d get a boring job, and I’d marry that boring man and we’d live in a boring house with boring children and act happy. I thought it would all be simple enough — I mean, the man seemed harmless and all. But he wasn’t.     He went away to school with me, and at the first chance he got, he got me drunk. And he raped me.     It occurred to me then that my boring life wasn’t going to happen. Doc, I thought I could just float by life, going through the motions without feeling anything, whether it be pain or happiness. The rape tore me apart inside. This man was supposed to be the security in life, and he killed any security I thought I could ever feel. I knew that what he did wasn’t right, but I also knew that there was nothing I could really do about it, because society seemed to ignore things like rape. Nothing seemed right anymore.      I looked into different religions. I read the new testament, and I tried to go through the old one, but the reading was just too dry. God just seemed like a joke to me. I deduced that religion was just a means to keep the masses in their place. But it wouldn’t hold me down.     I wonder why I don’t tell you all of these things while I’m in session with you. Maybe it’s because you’re trying to make me “normal” again — normal in the eyes of society. Well, their rules don’t make sense.     Dear Doc —     I can’t love unconditionally.     I think everyone thinks I’m just very cold. But it’s just that I can’t love someone that I can’t respect or admire. I don’t think I love my family, because I can’t respect their values, and I can’t love other people because I can’t trust them. That’s where my value system comes in. I decided that the only person I could trust and love is myself. So my goals should be to make myself happy, right? If I do that, what more could I want? Why should I want to please others?     And I liked having those one night stands. I liked the power I felt when I could make a man want me so much and I had the power to do with him whatever I wanted. You could say that I wanted to get back at the man who raped me, you could say that I was looking for someone to care for me the way I wanted my father to when I was a child — but I wanted the power. I wanted the control of others — and it was an emotional control, which was even stronger than a physical control. I felt an emotional high from making them weak. I don’t know which high was stronger.     Dear Doc—     I’m not afraid to tell you the next part, for even if I do give you these letters, you can’t tell anyone about them. I’ve checked into the laws, and because of the nature of the case and client confidentiality privileges, you couldn’t utter a word.     Now, I never got into drugs. I drank a lot, which I guess I get from my father, but I never touched drugs. But I had ways of getting a hold of them, and cheap. So I started selling stuff to some of the college students — particularly the good looking men. If my plan was going to work, I had to pick the right kinds of people. I’d go to the men in the elite fraternity houses — the ones that you needed not only good looks, but also a lot of money and a lot of connections to get in to.     Then I found the man. Steve. Gullable bastard, isn’t he? Then I found the woman. A typical bitch — bleach blond, sorority, stupid as all hell. The type that makes me look like something is wrong with me for not wearing designer clothes. I knew I could make Steve do something he normally wouldn’t — and maybe this would be my little way of destroying a microcosm of the society. It’s destroying Steve. And it destroyed Erica.     Litmann looked up. He pulled his glasses from his face. He didn’t know if the steam on the glass was from his sweat or his tears. He got up, clenching the letters. He left the room.

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, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, Prominent Tongue, Chaotic Elements, Fusion, her death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, and A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Words, (available a a color and as a b&w photography journalism and art book). Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).