down in the dirt
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Janet K., Editor
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In This Issue... Fritz Hamilton Tom Ball Brian Looney Liam Spencer Travis Green Changming Yuan Steven Pelcman Elena Botts Matt Hlinak Eric Holden Kathleen Hennessey Eric Burbridge John Constantine Mastor Kenneth DiMaggio Denny E. Marshall Lori Ulrich J. D. Riso Christopher Hanson Kathryn Leetch Gibson Culbreth John Ragusa Rex Bromfield Jennifer E. Lee Jeffrey Park Jon Brunette Ian C Smith Larry Schug Derek A Davis Chad D. Barber Joseph Lisowski Janet Kuypers

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Glass Eye performs Fritz Hamilton     Skinny & bent with age, Glass Eye moves through the Blue Line Train to Long Beach. When he has enough people watching, he gouges his glass eye out of its socket & exhibits it to the disgusted & frightened commuters. He reaches out with his other hand to collect the coins of the outraged & pitying throng. Glass Eye does this all day long as the train goes from Long Beach to Union Stn in L.A. & back again. When the train stops running at midnight, Glass Eye gets out at the end of the line in Long Beach to count his earnings & retire to the streets for another hour of panhandling, & he gets another bottle of Cisco or Maddog 20 20 or Nighttrain to sustain him until he finds a dooway or dumpster where he can spend the night. He awakens early to get another bottle & start the routine all over. Maybe he can find enroute a piece of clothing less foul & malodorous than what he’s wearing & make the change. Maybe he’ll go to the beach to strip down & swim away his filth. Maybe he’ll even make it to the senior center for a square meal. This can reduce his desperation & loneliness.      Anyway, the constant guzzling of cheap wine can make you pretty squirrelly, & what’s more like a squirrel than a rat without a fuzzy tail?     So Glass Eye finds himself on the Long Beach platform at the end of the day, & a rat that’s bigger than One Eye stands beside him.     “You look like shit,” says the rat, “& you smell like shit. You have the soul of a rat but the body of a broken down old man.”     “Thank you,” says Glass Eye.     “The kindest thing I could do is eat you, but I suspect you taste like shit.”     “Thank you.”     “Being polite doesn’t cut it, Fred.”     “Cut what, the shit?”     “You’re kind of clever for a piece of shit, Fred.”     “How do you know my name, Rat? If you know my name, you already know too much. The kindest thing you can do is leave me alone.”     “Isolation will get you nowhere, Fred. Even a rat like me needs some companionship. The platform is now vacated. The trains have stopped running.”     “I thought so too, but one’s coming our way right now.”     “I can’t take it, Fred. They don’t allow rats on the train.”     “I’ll find companionship on the train.”     “It’s arriving now, Fred, & there are no companions on it. You’ll have to ride it by yourself. Maybe you shouldn’t ride it by yourself. If you don’t get on it, maybe I’ll be your companion, but I think I’d rather eat you. Here it comes, Fred. What are you going to do?”     Fred falls in front of the train. Nobody seems to care. The train runs over him & doesn’t stop. The rat disappears.

I ride the Goldline train home. Fritz Hamilton     It’s near midnight, & I’m on my last lap from a movie in Culver City, a stop from my Pasadena Stop, when it’s announced that my Memorial Park Stn is closed. We must get off & wait for a bus to take us further. I can use the exercise, so I don’t wait for the bus. I walk through the nightlife of Pasadena & arrive at Memorial Park station with cops & police cars all over. I can see down the steps that a train is stopped, & police aren’t letting anybody off.     I ask one of the cops guarding the tape to keep us from getting close to the crime scene, “What’s happening?”     He smiles at me & shakes his head without answering.     I leave the crowd that’s gathered & walk the two blocks to Centennial Place where I live. I ask David, our big security guard, if he knows what’s going on.     “All I know is somebody got knifed at the Goldline Stn.”     As he prepares to get off his shift, I climb up to my room. I turn the light on & discover that I’m sopped with blood, & something is sticking out of my belly. It’s a knife buried to the hilt.     Jesoo himself is crucified to my wall, laughing down at me. “Fred, you ass, the victim is not supposed to leave the scene of the crime.”     “But Jesoo, I wasn’t at the crime scene. I got off at the stop before & walked home.”     “Well, Fred, you’d better file a report.”

Marooned Tom Ball     And so it was that the three girls and I were marooned on a remote moon without any long distance communication devices     We existed in a tiny pod where there was barely enough room to move. But we could recycle air and waste so we could stay alive.     One girl said they must have really hated us to deny us the basic right to entertainment. We didn’t have any entertainment as they had removed the consoles from the escape pod which is what we were in. And there were no drugs.     We were all specialized and useless in this dry desert moon.     In time we grew to hate each other but above all we were bored. We all kept journals hoping to sell them if we were ever rescued. But no one knew we were marooned here except those on our mother ship (now in distant space).     One of the girls announced, “She was bored to death after only a few months and she started babbling and took a space suit out to die.” Then another girl did the same and finally the remaining girl and I decided to turn the power off and die slowly of lack of oxygen. XXXX     100 years later...     Captain TYR OP arrived at this moon with a handful of colonists. The first thing they did was resurrect the dead bodies as they were all frozen. Technology eliminated any brain damage. And so we were all alive again.     The first thing I asked for was stimulants and virtual reality entertainment hook up. I stayed immersed in virtual reality for a dozen years before I finally emerged sane again. But no more trips for me. I resolved to be a world designer based on Earth.

That Heartbeat Brian Looney     I was listening to that heartbeat. I get to thinking about its force and speed, the clenching spasm. I wonder at its health, at the wearing muscle.     I sleep on my back or side, though I’ve lain on my chest, feeling it squirm, sending out blood. I hate it working when it’s time for rest, pushing itself still. It reminds me of my limits: the cold stops that I have known, that I have yet to meet.     I think about my heartbeat, especially in the dark, knocking on my insides. I forget all about sleep, and now it’s just us two, an unhappy pair. It plies me with questions, keeps me all awake, bugs me with its motion.

Janet Kuypers reads the Brian Looney July-August 2012 Down in the Dirt writing That Heartbeat

See YouTube video of Janet Kypers reading his writing straight from the July-August 2012 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 7/4/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

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.

turn Liam Spencer We talked and drank and smoked As I tried not to look at the roll That greatly surpassed her tits As she sat drinking and smoking But no one could help but notice We talked and drank and smoked And I sized her up She was a merely decent looking woman But pleasant, likeable, intelligent There was also obvious availability We talked and drank and smoked on the porch while others milled about we covered politics and personalities ethics and commonalities no fluff, right to the point we talked and drank and smoked and she began telling me what she found attractive about me face, arms, legs, smarts, personality I thought she was going to make a pass We talked and drank and smoked And she went on To say that there was one thing that detracted from my attractiveness; my belly is too big.

Fall Travis Green Brown color oak trees stand near the dog house. Sunlight shines lower and bright red and purple leaves rest near my doorstep, while I thought I heard an echo, but fairly turned, nothing, just the sky looking into my steel eyes each time tracing my heartbeat, trapping my lucid language into burning drained dreams.

John reads the Travis Green July-August 2012 (v108) Down in the Dirt magazine poem Fall

See YouTube video of John reading this poem straight from the August 2012 issue (v235) of cc&d magazine, live 8/29/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

Politically Incorrect Poems (10): Fuck Off, You America Changming Yuan You believe you are the savior of the human world While you are the destroyer of most living civilizations You say you represent the biggest peace-keeping force on earth While you are the most shameful and shameless trouble-maker You act as if you are a highly respectable cop While you behave like a despiteful criminal You stand out among all nations While you try to keep everyone else down You claim to uphold freedom, democracy and human rights While you treat all other fellow beings worse than animals You feel proud of the way you have been able to live While you forget your lifestyle is based on the suffering of all others You enjoy setting fire in everyone else’s yard in broad daylight While you prohibit all others from lighting a lamp at midnight You encourage your own people to be unique or different While you force all others to convert to your tastes You never stop throwing stones at others’ windows While you yourself live in a big glass house You seldom hesitate to strike against anyone you dislike While you are always ready to duck down before the valiant You call yourself the greatest leader of humanity While you are nothing but just a new member of our community You allege your economy and high tech have made the world more livable While the world might well have been a more peaceful planet without you Fuck off, you America

Changming Yuan bio     Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman and 4-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China and published several monographs before moving to Canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan teaches independently in Vancouver and has poetry appear in nearly 470 literary publications across 19 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg, SAND and Taj Mahal Review.

a Hospital View Steven Pelcman She appears from out of a cluster of trees, pious in their withering, and whose branches are clasped in prayer, as a manifestation of blackness marching alone to God’s calling leaving behind frosty breaths in the falling snow. A nurse, young and nervously smiling and dressed in white steps outside for a quick cigarette and releases small puffs of smoke into the cold air and when they both open umbrellas, how much alike trees they are, bearing the weight of the moment suffering against a pale sky.

Steven Pelcman Bio     Steven Pelcman is a writer of poetry and short stories who has spent the past few years completing the novels titled RIVERBED and SPENDING TIME and books of poems titled, WHERE THE LEAVES DARKEN and LIKE WATER TO STONE. He has been published in a number of magazines including: The Windsor Review, Paris/Atlantic, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Voxhumana magazine, Nomad’s Choir, Fourth River magazine, Salzburg Poetry Review, River Oak Review, www.enskyment.org and many others. He has been nominated for the 2011 Pushcart prize. Steven resides in Germany where he teaches in academia and as a business language trainer and consultant.

purpose Elena Botts world explodes from lips, an iridescent bubble we walk on the side of the highway in daylight and once more, your saliva pops and I don’t know why, but I watch turn my head a strange profile aimless are your eyes they gleam in light, then in shadow immerse we clasp hands, then disengage, turn around behind, watch our shadows pivot like dark strangers following close and dangerous at our heels but then we stride on like birds on migration, steady, ground-gaining silhouettes our heart beats swinging along to the erratic pulse of seemingly graceless minds traces of us lie behind and ahead as we move between lines with all the purpose of uniquely being

Elena Botts Bio     Elena grew up in Maryland, and currently lives in Northern Virginia. She is still attending school. She likes to run. And write.

There is No Soundness Matt Hlinak     I gave her my heart.     She gave me chlamydia.     These two lines are running through my head like a wise-ass country song while the doctor is explaining my test results. My dickhole still stings from the swab he jammed in there to take the sample. I kept putting off going to the doctor long after I’d stopped having doubts about why white stuff kept oozing out. But now my worst fear is realized. Actually, that’s not true; my sixth worst fear is realized. My worst fears are, in descending order: AIDS, hepatitis, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, then chlamydia. I’d been hoping for a bladder infection.     “I’m going to put you on a course of antibiotics,” he says, scribbling lazily onto the prescription pad. “Your partner may well be asymptomatic, but it is important that your partner also sees a doctor and goes on antibiotics. Otherwise you can become re-infected. You need to inform anyone with whom you’ve had sexual contact within the last sixty days. Undiagnosed chlamydia can cause severe complications, including infertility and blindness, in any female partners you may have had.”     We met at a campus bar during my senior year at the University of Illinois, at the time when Ken Starr was publicly exploring the sex life of the Leader of the Free World. Up to that point, my sex life had been non-existent without alcohol and only marginally better with it. I am naturally shy, which had left me frustrated and lonely in high school, but in college I discovered that somewhere between drinks seven and nine, the alcohol lowered my inhibitions enough to allow for extroversion while still retaining sufficient intelligence for charm. Once I reached the tenth drink, though, my night’s activities became limited to the consumption of more liquor and perhaps damage to public property, but nothing more interesting.     During a pub crawl one warm spring evening, I found myself sipping my eighth Seven and Seven at the bar next to a petite marketing major. While most of the other girls had tanned themselves naturally over spring break or unnaturally at one of the seven tanning salons that dotted the campus, her skin was the color of dogwood blossoms, pale and lightly freckled. She ordered a gin and tonic in a drawl that, while not Southern, was certainly rural. I commented on her accent and asked her if she was from Brooklyn, which really wasn’t funny, but she laughed anyway. She told me she was from a tiny town about an hour away from Springfield that no one had ever heard of, but I knew a guy from my dorm freshman year who had gone to the same high school as her, so I told her about the time he woke up drunk in the middle of the night and peed in his roommate’s closet because he thought it was a bathroom stall. She laughed again, and I figured I was in.     We chatted for a while before dancing drunkenly in the middle of a bar with no dance floor. I leaned in and kissed her, which seemed to catch her by surprise, but she kissed me back, so I asked her if she wanted to get out of there. She said she did, and we left without telling our respective groups of friends we were going. Her apartment was just a block away so we headed there. Right outside the bar we ran into a panhandler, a fast-talking man in his thirties with about three teeth, who kept trying to spark up a conversation. She nodded politely as he worked through his pitch, and I tried to hurry her along. The guy persisted until I threw a handful of pocket change at him. He swore at me, but stopped to pick the coins up off the ground. A scowl darkened her face.     “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.     “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just like you and I like talking to you and I didn’t want to be interrupted.”     She smiled and said it’s okay.     Her bed was big and soft and covered with fluffy pillows and stuffed animals and it smelled like lilacs. It was the most girlish room I’d ever been in and I told her so. She said she liked her room this way because she was “a fucking princess, goddamnit.” I laughed and drew her to me. She didn’t exactly seem adventurous, but I could tell from the way she moved and moaned beneath me that she’d done this before. We screwed clumsily before I passed out in her bed. The next morning I asked for her phone number, and she gave it to me, but she still seemed surprised when I called her later that afternoon. This was four months ago, and we’ve been together ever since.     I walk out of the doctor’s office numbly, dumbly clutching a prescription for amoxicillin. Although the clouds are forming a hazy curtain obscuring the sun, the air envelops me like an old quilt, and I immediately start sweating. I’m doing mathematical calculations in my head. The last girl I slept with before her had been on New Year’s Eve. Now it’s the last week in August. There is no question where I got it.     I’m having a hard time accepting that a girl so sweet, so caring could do this to me. We’d lived together this summer and spent so much time together, I can’t even imagine how she managed to contract chlamydia without me knowing about it. I’m not a suspicious guy or anything, and she’d given me no reason to distrust her, but I have to think there’d have been some sign she was fooling around. I jog my memory and can’t come up with anything.     It’s hard to believe that I thought we had something serious. If she can’t go four months without screwing around on me, what hope do we have for a long-term relationship? I’m so angry I want to call her up and scream at her, but I imagine her crying on the other end of the phone, and I know I’ll cave. I’m not one for confrontation, and the thought of yelling at a crying girl who I thought I was in love with doesn’t give me any satisfaction. It’s better to just hold off until I’ve calmed down and can think rationally about the situation.     We were inseparable during that last month of school. I was taking only two classes that semester and had just accepted a job editing copy for a middling Chicago newspaper, so I was almost completely free from responsibility for the one and only time in my adult life. She had landed an internship at a downtown ad agency, so we were going to be together all summer as well. We were giddy with new love and the infinite possibilities life seemed to hold out for us. One night we lay naked in her bed well past three in the morning, discussing our future. We were both a little drunk, but I was always careful not to over-imbibe around her. This was my first and only real relationship, and I was trying not to screw things up.     “If money was not an issue,” I asked her, “what would you want to do?”     “Do you mean for a job?”     “Yeah.”     “Hmmm,” she let her latte-colored eyes linger on the ceiling while she thought about it. “I’d want to work for an animal shelter.”     “Oh yeah? Why an animal shelter?”     “I like animals and I think it would be fun to take care of puppies all day.”     “What about the ones they can’t give away?” I asked, picking up a baby-blue stuffed bunny and examining its beady eyes.     “What do you mean?”     “I mean the ones they have to—” and I wrung my hands around the stuffed animal’s throat for effect.     “Oh, you’re mean,” she said yanking the bunny away from me.     “I’m just being realistic.”     “You ask about my dream job, and you want me to be realistic?”     “You’re right,” I said, running my fingers through the soft spirals of her untamed hair. “That wasn’t fair.”     “Anyway, if money wasn’t an issue, then I could take the dogs no one wanted to my big house and let them play in my big yard.”     “Okay, so you want to be the neighborhood’s crazy cat lady?”     “Dogs, not cats,” she said with a shove. “I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”     “Because I’m so funny,” I said, climbing on top of her. She looked so vulnerable beneath me, her tiny body so fragile, her slim, pale throat so delicate, her wide, brown eyes so trusting. I brushed my lips across her forehead.     “What would you do?” she asked.     “I don’t know.” I kissed her on the cheek and let my lips linger against her skin.     “Come on now,” she said, pushing me off. “It’s not fair. You have to answer the question, too.”     “Okay. I’d like to find a nice cozy bar with a fireplace. And I’d like to spend all day sitting in front of the fireplace, reading a novel and drinking imported beer.”     “That’s not a job.”     “No, but it’d be cool if it was.”     “You want to spend all day drinking by yourself? I think that’s the saddest fantasy I ever heard.”     “I never said I was by myself. You like to read, don’t you?”     “Yeah, but I don’t want to sit in a bar all day.”     “Too bad. This one’s my fantasy, not yours.”     I get home and there’s a message from her on my answering machine. It doesn’t say, Sorry I gave you a disgusting disease I got from some slimy bastard who probably doesn’t even remember my name. Instead it says, Hey, handsome, just calling to say, ‘Hi.’ Give me a call when you get in. Love you. Her voice tugs at the pit of my stomach, and all I can think of for a split second is cradling her in my arms, but then, as if on cue, my cock starts throbbing, which causes me to envision some faceless horde of greasy, infectious guys with gold chains nestled in the thick tufts of their chest hair going to town on her. I seem to have forgotten to breathe, which makes me dizzy until I plop down on the couch and inhale deeply and deliberately.     She went back to school for her senior year three weeks ago, just about the time I started noticing my condition. While I am by no means well-off, my copy-editing job is a real job, which means I have more money than I’ve ever had in my life, so I took her to what we both felt was a fancy restaurant for our last night together in the city before she returned to campus. She wore her curly hair up, and it looked like a bouquet of wild flowers. I had donned my one and only suit, sans tie, which I felt made me look casually sophisticated. We sipped mid-priced merlot over candlelight while gazing longingly into one another’s eyes.     “Are you going to miss me?” she asked.     “Of course I will, but we’re going to see each other in just two weeks.”     “I know, but we haven’t been apart that long since we started dating. Maybe you’ll start to forget about me.”     “I won’t forget about you,” I responded, grabbing her hand.     “How do you know?”     “Well, they say absence makes the heart grow stronger.”     “Fonder.”     “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”     “Do you really believe that?”     “Sure, why not? Don’t you?”     “I don’t know,” she replied. “What about ‘out of sight, out of mind’?”     “That’s just a dumb expression.”     “It’s no dumber than ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’” she shot back a little testily.     “Yes, but my expression is nicer.”     “But that doesn’t make it true.”     “No,” I said, taking a sip of wine. “I guess it doesn’t.”     “It’s just that it’s been such a wonderful summer, I don’t want it end. Everything has gone so perfectly, I’m afraid that my leaving will screw it all up somehow.”     “Don’t be silly,” I said, and then bent over the table and kissed her. I could feel the heat from the candle burning a few inches from our faces. We were seated by the window, but there was no moonlight.     I’m not ready to call her back. Instead I snatch a paperback off the bookshelf and go to the bar down the street, which doesn’t get much business on a Tuesday afternoon. The bar is a little too well-lit to be cozy, and it has a fireplace, but they don’t light it in August. The waitress there is a close to a decade older than me and big-boned, but she has a warm, white smile and she remembers me from the last time I was there, so she sits down to chat with me when things are slow. We like all the same movies, which sometimes is enough. I knock back nine Seven and Sevens and convince her to join me at my place after her shift ends. Thankfully I manage to find a not-quite-expired rubber in the back of my medicine cabinet, so neither of us winds up any sicker than we started.     The waitress is gone when I wake up, which is good because I’m late for work and feel unclean. I show up at the office obviously hung over and miss three typos in the article I’m proofreading. My boss tells me I’m not in college anymore and that I need to pull it together. I want to tell her not to expect perfection unless she wants to increase my imperfect salary, but instead I tell her I’m coming down with something, which isn’t exactly a lie, and promise to bring a sharper eye tomorrow. I make it through the rest of the day without any more screw-ups and duck out early. The light on my answering machine is flashing when I get home. Of course it’s her. Hi, honey, I guess I missed you last night. I know you’re probably busy but we haven’t talked in a few days and I’d love to hear your voice. Love you. I’m still not ready to deal with this so I erase the message and go to bed.     I wake up at four in the morning because I have a bad dream. She’s in it. In the dream, I keep trying to talk to her, to hold her hand, but it’s like she doesn’t know who I am, and she’s pulling away from me. Her vast brown eyes have been replaced by inscrutable black buttons. She’s afraid of me. I can’t get back to sleep, so I decide to start my day early. I clean up and eat breakfast and get to the office an hour and a half earlier than usual to make up for my poor performance yesterday. My boss is already there. I drink a pot of coffee and tear through my day’s clips. By three o’clock fatigue sets in, and I spend the last two hours playing Solitaire on my computer. When I trudge out the door at the end of the day, my boss gives me a brief wave without eye contact before turning her attention back to her computer screen.     There are two messages on the machine when I get home. The first is from my college roommate asking me to join him at the local sports bar for two-dollar beer night. I skip to the next message and hear her voice, laced with pain. Hey, it’s me. Please give me a call when you get this. I just want to know you’re okay . . . and I want to make sure you’re still coming down this weekend. I don’t care what time it is in when you get in. Please call me. I delete the message and go meet my old roommate at the bar. He asks how she’s doing, and I tell him we broke up. He asks what happened, and I tell him I don’t want to talk about it. The waitress is a tiny blonde in a short skirt who is vigorously chewing a piece of spearmint gum. I race through twelve beers and try to strike up a conversation with her, but she pretends the music is too loud to hear and moves on to her next table. My friend laughs at me, and I’m not in the mood for his shit, so I slap forty dollars on the table and stumble home. There are two messages on the machine that I erase without playing.     I wake up at five in the morning because my phone is ringing. I look at the caller ID and see that it’s her. I don’t pick up and she doesn’t leave a message. I call my boss, who thankfully isn’t in yet, and leave a voicemail telling her I’m too sick to come in. I don’t care if she believes me. I unplug the phone from the wall and spend the day in bed. I get up around four in the afternoon and sit unshowered in my boxers on the couch for the next few hours, drinking scotch and watching a Planet of the Apes marathon playing on cable. The sun sets, but I don’t get up to turn on the light, leaving the room awash in the synthetic blue glow of the TV set. And then I hear a knock at the door.     I know it’s her. For a second I think I’ll just ignore it, but then I remember that I never lock the door when I’m home, and besides, she has a key. So I just sit there, completely still, as she pushes the door open, spilling light from the hallway into the dark apartment.     “Hello?” she says, groping along the wall in search of the light switch. She finds it and flips it on.     I turn off the TV and rise to meet her. I’m drunk, and I’m dirty, and I’m unshaven, and I’m in my underwear. She is wearing wrinkled sweats, and her hair is matted to the sides of her head, and her cheeks are blotchy, and her eyes are pink and swollen. She is beautiful.     “What’s wrong?” she asks.     She stands before me completely exposed, and I can see the pain bursting from inside her, which can only mean that she loves me, no matter what she’s done. Suddenly I think I love her more than I did before this all happened. I no longer care if she’s cheated on me as long as she’s willing to be mine now. I run forward and take her in my arms, and she collapses into me, sobbing.     “I was so scared,” she whispers.     I hold her for a moment, stroking her hair. I press my lips against her hot forehead and inhale the sweetly-familiar aroma of her hair. Then her body stiffens. She stands up straight and pushes away from me.     “Why didn’t you call?”     I’m taken aback by this question. I’ve spent the whole week feeling aggrieved, so I’m surprised to be put on the defensive. But of course, she has no idea what’s been going on.     “I’ve been try to figure out what to say to you.”     “For a whole week?” she continues. “You had me so worried. Do you know what you put me through?”     And then I just tell her everything. I tell her how she gave me chlamydia, and that I freaked out about it and didn’t know what to say to her, and that I slept with a waitress to get back at her and how that just made me feel worse, and now I don’t care about the chlamydia anymore and I love her and I’m sorry and I want to make everything go back to the way it used to be. I’m almost crying now, and I drop to my knees and hold her hand in my hands. She looks down on me, letting my words register, and then she pulls her hand away.     “You fucking asshole. How do you even know you got it from me?”     “I haven’t been with anyone else in a long time, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”     “Well, I care. I haven’t been with anyone since we started dating. If I gave it to you, I got it before we ever met. You have no right.”     “I guess I just assumed you were cheating on me. It just feels like we’ve been together so long, it’s hard to imagine you being with someone else. It made me sick just thinking about it.”     “I make you sick?”     “That’s not what I mean. It’s just that this kind of thing never happened to me before.”     “So what would you have done if I hadn’t come here? Would you ever have called me back? Would you have just kept sitting around drinking in the dark and fucking waitresses?”     “This isn’t me.”     “Oh, yeah? Who is it then?”     “You know I’m not normally like this.”     “But if you are going to act like this when things get rough, how can I be with you?”     “Can’t we just talk about this?”     “Okay,” she says, glaring down at me. “Talk.”     Put on the spot like this, I can’t think of a single thing to say. My mind goes from a jumble of ideas and emotions to absolutely blank. I stammer for a moment before exclaiming, “I love you,” and it feels like the truth.     “You do?”     “Isn’t that enough?”     “You let me think you were dead. I’ve never felt so scared and alone as I’ve been these last few days. Every time I look at you, I’m going to remember that feeling. You completely abandoned me.”     “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”     “No, you won’t.”     She turns to leave the apartment. I’m still kneeling on the carpet in my boxers as the door slams shut. My stomach churns and I rise to vomit in the sink. The smell of half-digested scotch fills the air. Though I know she’s still in the car, I call her apartment and leave a heartfelt message, begging her to forgive me, then another, and another, and then I call at all hours of the day and night but give up on leaving messages. But she never calls me back.     A few weeks later my chlamydia clears up. By then I’ve stopped calling.

Matt Hlinak Bio     Matt Hlinak teaches at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. His fiction has recently appeared in Post, The Mayo Review, Midwest Literary Magazine, Review Americana, Camroc Press Review and Birmingham Arts Journal. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Liz, and their daughter, Madeleine.

Lost and Found Eric Holden     Looking down the ridge from the area I had chosen for the evening hunt, the snow seemed to be falling from the sky like feathers floating in a gentle breeze. I could not help but question myself as I sat in my tree stand. Is the wind carrying my scent away from where the deer normally travel? Did I remember to place my stand so that I would easily be able to draw my bow? This was the first time I had been back hunting since my father died of a heart attack a couple years back. I had spent my previous years of hunting having him help me with these things. These were my thoughts as the accumulation of the early morning and the long hike caught up with me, easing me into a nap.     What was that noise? Something had awoken me but climbing back to the present after such a sound sleep was like swimming in honey. I could not get a grasp on reality for a minute, and when I did, I found myself struggling for breath. Lying on a branch just 30 yards in front of me was a mountain lion watching its surroundings, ready to pounce at a given moment. I had heard stories about mountain lions in this area but there had not been an actual sighting since before I was born 20 years ago. I could hear every beat of my heart. Then, I realized what had jerked me awake as the animal let out a horrifying screech that easily could have been mistaken as a women screaming in fear. This has got to be a dream, I thought as my body tensed up. This cloud cover from the snow must have brought this normally nocturnal animal out early in search of food.     Then, a voice from inside me demanded that I take a breath, calm down, and take in my surroundings. I began to slowly breathe in, letting half of what I inhaled out. This was a trick my Dad taught me from his days as an Army Ranger. Originally, this trick was used when I first started hunting in an attempt to calm down my adrenaline so I could get off a steady shot. Once I had calmed down enough to loosen my muscles back up, I traced the animal’s tracks in the snow. I started at the base of the tree that the mountain lion was currently in, and followed its tracks, which actually led right under me. Unbelievable, I thought. This animal passed right under me as I slept. If it were not for the leaves being wet and the snow creating a cushion to prevent sticks from breaking, I would have more than likely woken up at the sound of leaves crunching beneath its paws as it approached my tree. Undoubtedly this would have caused me to jump in surprise, when I saw what was making the noise, and fall out of the stand. I would have been hanging from the tree by my safety strap as a toy for this cat.     As the light began to fade, the mountain lion stood up from its perch on the limb and climbed down the tree. Its massive light brown body then moved at ease, disappearing and reappearing through the trees, tail flicking back and forth like a silent serpent, away from me. Yet, this did not comfort me. My truck was parked in the direction it went and my cell phone was in the glove box. I had no way to call for help.     By the time I had completely lost sight of it, the light was so dim I normally would have already been on my way in for the evening to meet up with my dad and brothers. Again, questions came rushing over me. Should I stay here over night? Will this animal be sitting in a tree over the path I walk out on? I wished so badly that one of my brothers would have gone with me today. Then at least I would have someone to realize instantly I was in trouble after I failed to return to the truck. But they were working, had plans, or felt that it was too soon to go hunting since dads’ death.      I was alone.     Eventually, it was completely dark and the snow began falling at a much quicker rate, stinging my frozen face with each flurry. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ski mask, putting it on in an attempt to trap some heat and combat the snow. , I thought. I tied my backpack and bow to the rope attached to the side of the stand, and gently lowered them to the ground. Then, I slowly climbed down the spikes I had screwed in the side of the tree, careful with each step not to slip. As my boots imprinted in the snow, I remembered the tracks the mountain lion made. I could not help but feel that at any moment I could get attacked. I tried to untie the knot around my backpack and bow, but my hands were too numb and were shaking too hard to get a grasp on it. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my knife, with one swipe, I cut the rope free. I then put my knife back into my pocket, strapped the backpack tight around my shoulders, and picked up my bow. I grabbed my flashlight and shined the light around the area where I had seen the tracks. I could not find a single one. I came to the realization that the snow was falling too hard; it had filled the animal’s tracks up. Making it impossible for me to track which direction it went once I got to the area it disappeared. I decided, however, to creep my way over to where I had lost sight of it.     With each step I made, I swore I could hear something else moving along with me. Yet, when I shined my flashlight in the direction I heard sounds, I saw nothing. After a few more steps I heard that unmistakable shriek a few hundred yards in front of me, immediately followed by a second, different one, to my right. My teeth began chattering uncontrollably filling my body in a panic. I still had about a mile and a half till I reached my truck. Just then, I remembered that about 100 yards dead ahead of me was an old logging road that went down into the valley. At the bottom of the road was an overhang my dad and I waited out a spring storm in while turkey hunting four years ago. I could stay in there all night, I thought. It can act as a roof to keep the snow from falling on me while at the same time, protection because there is only one entrance. I turned off my flashlight and slipped it into my back pocket so I would not draw any unwanted attention to myself. Also, this would create a free hand if I needed to quickly grab my knife.     After what seemed like hours, I arrived at the top of the logging road. Well, it’s now or never, I thought. As I began to make my way down the hill, I could hear my dad’s voice in my head, “be careful of the ankle breakers,” as I carefully made sure each foot was set in place due to rocks and branches being hidden by the blanket of snow. Luckily, tonight was a full moon so I did not need a flashlight due to the moonlight reflecting off the snow, illuminating the woods just enough.     Once I got to the bottom of the hill, I made an immediate left, knowing the overhang was fairly close. I was quickly stopped, however, from the spider web of sticker bushes that tangled me up with each step I took. Just then, I heard the mountain lion let out that terrifying screech again. Shit! If I had not actually seen what made that sound earlier, I would have honestly thought a women was getting murdered. Unable to place which direction it came from, I began fighting my way through the sticker bushes. Occasionally, I was briefly stopped by a thorn scratching the side of my face where the eyehole of the ski mask was. Once I was freed, I saw the overhang and began running as fast as possible towards it, plowing the snow beneath my boots with each stride. Once inside, I was finally able to feel safe.     As I sat with my back to the rock wall, I faced out of the opening which I had crawled through. I noticed that because the overhang is a kind of shallow cave, and the overhead rock ledge acts as a roof, the leaves that had blown in over time were dry. I remembered back to stories dad told me about his Army days and how he was forced to sleep in the snow during training exercises. He said that “if you can get enough dry leaves, and find some type of cover, you can create somewhat of a nest to keep yourself warm.” Quickly, I began taking handful after handful of leaves and began piling them up against the far back wall. After a couple minutes of this, I felt something in my right hand. I dropped the leaves from my left hand and reached into my back pocket for my flashlight. Once I turned it on, I saw that I was holding a watch. It had a black plastic wristband and face while the glass was somewhat dirty, but I could still see the numbers. <>IWait, a second, I remember dad saying he lost his watch once we got back to the truck after waiting out the storm here. I can’t believe it, this is his. I can’t believe it is still here after all this time, I thought. I looked at it for a moment but then the cold began to bite away at me again. I slipped it into my back pocket, still holding the flashlight to see the remainder of the leaves.     Once I finished making the bed for the night, I took off my backpack and pulled out some heat packs. After shaking them up, I placed one on top of my head, under my ski mask, one in each of my boots, and one in each of my gloves. Then, I pulled the watch back out, settled in my nest of leaves and began looking the watch over. As I was doing this, I noticed a pack of coyotes howling in the distance. They must be fighting over something to eat, I thought. Yet, I felt that the woods seemed slightly peaceful at this point. I began to wonder whether my family would notice I did not return home since my mom goes to bed early and my brothers were either working overnight or went to a friend’s house. Who knew, maybe they weren’t coming home till the morning? I pushed the thoughts away and simply listened to the distant howls of coyotes.      Eventually, I decided to just lie down. I put the watch in a pocket on my jacket that zips shut and set my arrows and knife out next to me in case I received an unwanted visitor overnight. I grabbed my backpack and placed it on the ground beneath my head, in an attempt to make things a little more comfortable. After what seemed like hours, I felt my eyes getting heavy and fell asleep.     When I was startled awake by a screech owl, I noticed it was actually getting bright outside. I guessed the time to be around 7:00 in the morning. Jack, my 18 year old younger brother should have gotten home from work about two hours ago. I wonder if he noticed my truck was not home, I thought as I sat up and began to pack all my stuff up. I strapped my backpack around my shoulders, grabbed my bow, and crawled out of the overhang. Luckily it had stopped snowing, but there was still a cloud cover and the wind had really picked up over night, as it hissed through the trees. Before I set out on my way up the hill, I took a moment to look at the overhang that served as my refuge for the night. It was nothing special, just a part of the cliff in the side of a hill that jetted out about ten feet. It was about four feet tall, with a solid grey color to it, similar to the color on the hide of a grey squirrel. There were icicles hanging from the cliff everywhere I looked, almost as if there was a solid sheet of ice on it. It does not look all that comfortable at all, but it really did keep me warmer than I thought it would overnight. I wonder what dad would think about this entire situation, I thought as I turned around to head back through the sticker bushes and up the hill. Well, I survived the night, that’s what really matters.     Once I reached the top of the hill, I stopped for a short moment to catch my breath before starting the journey back to my truck. As I was slowly making my way through the woods, I was checking for tracks in the snow. I saw deer and coyote tacks all over, but not a single cat track. As I cautiously continued on, I was startled by a scream. This time though, it did not sound like a women, it had a deeper pitch to it. I leaned against a nearby tree and listened. After a few minutes, I heard it again. This time, the sound was not blurred out by the crunching of snow beneath my boots. I heard it clearly. Trying to push away excitement, I yelled back. Almost on cue I heard three voices begin talking at the same time in excitement. I heard a four wheeler start up, and saw two people running towards me. Flashes of orange and red disappeared and reappeared through the trees with each step they took, getting closer and closer to me. As I began running towards them, I saw my brother Jack come sliding around the bend of the path on dad’s old four wheeler. It then hit me all at once, I was not alone and never would be.

Eric Holden brief bio (updated 3/23/12)     Eric Holden was born in Fenton, Missouri and is currently a junior majoring in Public Relations with a Minor in Creative Writing at Southeast Missouri State University. He is one of four boys and his hobbies include hunting and fishing. After graduation, Eric hopes to pursue a career in Major League Baseball.

Not a Love Connection Kathleen Hennessey     The grandfather clock in my living room chimed, the resonating sound letting me know that I was running late. I had a date at seven, in one hour. I sighed and put down the long, curved silver knife I was holding.     “I’ll be back to finish up in a bit,” I patted the girl tied to the table on the shoulder, my hand leaving behind a smear of blood that stood out against her pale skin. I didn’t know if she would be alive when I got back later. Judging by the amount of blood on the white linoleum floor, I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be.     The girl looked blankly up at me as I ascended the stairs, her face streaked with tears and her bloodied, pale lips expertly sewn shut. None of this would have happened if she had just gotten my Goddamn hair cut right. I asked for a three in the front, not a two.     As I got up to my bedroom, I realized that just washing up wouldn’t do. I needed to shower and scrub my hands and face. Blood was difficult to wash off. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     Donned in my black suit and tie, with my dark, too-short hair combed neatly, I left for my date in my deep blue Mustang GT. I drove too fast, risking a speeding ticket on my otherwise flawless record, and arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early.     “Reservation for James Brookman,” I told the bored-looking girl at the front of Bella Italiano.     She tapped at the computer with her fluorescent fake nails. “Mr. Brookman. Welcome to Bella Italiano. If you’ll follow me, your table is right this way,” She was all smiles when she knew I had an actual reservation. I was seated at a corner table and ordered a Sonnenschein Whiskey, imported from Germany, on the rocks as I waited for my date, Lyla, to arrive.     Thanks to eHarmony.com, I was able to keep up these regular dates. Some of them blossomed into something that lasted a few weeks, and some of them ended....badly, bloodily. Just because I was a killer and Washington’s most wanted didn’t mean that I too couldn’t find and be capable of love.     James Brookman was the name on the profile where I had met Lyla, but I went by several other names; Adam Hess, Liam Cummings, and Brevin Smith, among others. Several profiles allowed me to go on dates and, if I wanted or needed to, kill the women without being suspected by the police. Boyfriends and online dating profiles were one of the first places a detective would check for a possible murderer.     Besides, I was too smart for the FBI. I wasn’t like the idiots who kill people and leave behind hair, fingerprints, semen and whatnot. I was clean; spotless actually. The closest I’ve ever been to being caught was when FBI Detective Smith saw my shadowed figure kidnapping one of my victims. Suddenly, as if these thoughts sent some kind of signal, my shoulder began to ache. The old bullet wound from that night had never really healed properly. I rolled my shoulders to relieve the pain.     Luckily though, I was able to escape with the girl I was going to cut up, and was never suspected. No one would guess that their friendly town architect was a serial killer. I was almost comparable to Batman/Bruce Wayne, that whole situation.     If people knew, though, I could have some pretty killer, well, killer names, like The Murder Architect. Ah, well, cest’ la vie. People just knew that there was someone out there taking young women. In my defense, I only took the ones that deserved to be killed, like the little blond thing in my basement, for example. They were all incompetent, useless wastes of oxygen and finite resources.     “James?” A soft feminine voice spoke from behind me. I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed someone approaching. I turned, smiling, and saw my date. She was average height, with black hair and tanned skin. She was wearing a long-sleeved red dress that emphasized her slim waist. I spotted a series of rings through the cartilage of her left ear.     “Lyla,” I said, kissing her hand, “You look stunning.” I pulled her chair out and seated her before once again taking my place across the burgundy-clothed table.     “Thank you,” she smiled just as the waiter came with the bottle of wine.     Just as he was about to pour the expensive merlot into our glasses, Lyla said, “Oh no, take that shit back. I’ll have a Kansas Slammer.” I raised my eyebrows, impressed. Lyla gave me what looked like an apologetic smile, “Sorry. I’m a hard liquor kind of girl.”     I laughed, “I was just trying to seem sophisticated to impress you. I hate wine,” I waved the waiter off and ordered two Kansas Slammers, vodka, white grape juice, tequila, a splash of lemon juice over ice with a lime wedge. This woman had a fantastic taste.     When the beverages arrived, we ordered dinner and toasted to non-disastrous first dates. “So James,” Lyla began, “What do you do?”     Without skipping a beat, I replied smoothly, “I’m an architect.” I was a pro at keeping my little hobby a secret. When she inevitably asked what I did for fun I would reply with the typical answers: reading, running, playing the guitar, etcetera, etcetera.     I buttered a piece of bread as I asked, “And what do you do, Lyla?”     She bit into the bread (I appreciated that she wasn’t one of those I’ll just have a salad kind of women), chewed and said, “I’m a detective for the FBI. I’m actually working on a case, trying to catch the man taking all those women. Have you heard of that on the news? I was this close,” she held her thumb and pointer finger about an inch apart, “to catching him a few months ago.”     I froze as soon as the words, ‘detective for the FBI’ passed her sparkling maroon-colored lips. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection before. Smith was a common last name, however, and she hadn’t listed her occupation in her online profile. So how could I have possibly known?     Had she recognized me from that night? Was this some sort of setup? Perhaps they had cross-referenced who some of the missing women had gone on dates with, the common thread being me.     She continued, “Sometimes I go on these dates as part of my investigation.” So that was a yes on the question of her suspecting me. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit fucking goddamned shit, was all I could think for several seconds. I could feel my heart beating in time with the seconds passing by. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Ba Boom. Ba Boom.     “James? Are you alright?” Lyla asked me, subtly raising one eyebrow and intently studying my face.     I blinked and quickly composed myself. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was just....thinking about those awful murders.” Phew, I thought, nice recovery there, dumb ass.     Lyla nodded. “That’s actually why I was a little late tonight. I worked late doing some research, trying to make a criminal and geographic profile.”     “Find anything interesting? Or is that ‘classified’ information?” I smiled, letting her know that I was ‘only teasing’, but inside I really just wanted to know if she was getting close to finding me. I will be the first to admit that I was careless; killing the majority of girls I had met on eHarmony, foolishly ignoring the connection that was obvious between the girls that had gone missing: Me. They had all been on dates with me. I was becoming more and more certain that this ‘date’ was a set up by the FBI to investigate me. I realized then and there that I needed to cut back on the killing for awhile. If girls started going missing, after this date I would be suspect numero uno. I’d have to pick up some other kind of hobby, like knitting or basket-weaving or reading from Oprah’s book list....none of this would ever happen, by the way. I’m not gay, obviously, as I’d be taking men if I were.     “Some interesting facts, but nothing concrete,” she refused to look at me as she said this, making me even more suspicious that she was not on this date to find love so much as to find a killer.     I dropped the subject so as not to raise suspicion and cleared my throat, “Will you please excuse me? I need to use the restroom.”     “Sure, sure.” She nodded and perused the dessert menu.     I all but ran to the restaurant’s bathroom. I had some decisions to make about Lyla Smith, and whether or not she would live to see another day. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     The freezing water I splashed on my face cleared my mind somewhat, and allowed me to focus and come to a reasonable conclusion.     I had a few different options here. I could keep dating her, finding out information she’d learned about the case, and, at the same time, lead her in the completely wrong direction.     I could kill her. The thought of doing so sent shivers up my spine and I smiled at all the things I could do to her. I could almost see the look on her face as I tied her down to the table in my basement, afraid and shocked. Shocked that I was the killer she’d been after, even though it seemed as though she may have already suspected me. Shocked that she, by some twist of fate, had ended up on a date with me. I’d take my time with Lyla, making the pain last as long as possible. I pictured sewing her full, red lips shut to stifle her screams, slowly cutting her wrists, the blood pulsing out and dripping onto the floor like red rain. Once she was dead, I’d cut the fingers from her hands, and, after ripping out the stitches holding her lips shut, pull out all her teeth, as was my typical method. No finger prints, no dental records with which to identify the dismembered body parts.     And then, finally, she would die. I would cut her into many little pieces, much like carving a Christmas ham, by far the messiest part of the whole process. I’d spread her body parts across several counties, burn the fingers, and grind the teeth into dust, letting the wind carry the evidence away. That was my modus operandi, part of the reason I was never caught because of how carefully I disposed of the bodies. This method was taught to me by my mother, who would bring home prostitutes, fuck and then kill them. I learned how to dispose of a body when I was eight years old, and by the time I was fourteen, I was killing people on my own; from cheating slut girlfriends to cheating bastard classmates.     Or, I could leave after this date and never contact her again, letting her chase me. Let’s be honest, killing people is much more exciting when someone out there knows my dirty little secret and is trying to track me down. The rush of cutting open a woman as she moans and screams behind the stitches in her lips sent shivers down my spine with excitement, but it was even more rewarding imagining the parts of her body being found by the FBI, forcing them to piece together the puzzle, as well as the found body parts.     As much fun as killing Lyla would be, I chose to go with the latter option. I’d pretend we just hadn’t made a love connection, and let her live to try and find me. I enjoyed this game of cat and mouse too much to take her life.     I washed my hands, thinking that after Lyla left, maybe I’d take the hostess home to torture and kill. I was sure the girl in my basement was already dead, and I wanted someone to play with.     But first thing first, I had to finish my date with Lyla and escape before she suspected me even more.     As she came into view, I saw her on her sleek black cell phone, talking in hushed tones and a serious look on her face. Once she saw me, her eyes briefly widened in panic. She immediately shut the phone and smiled.     “You’re blushing. Is something the matter?” I asked without looking directly at her and placed the cloth napkin back onto my lap in a flourish.     Lyla cleared her through, took a long chug of her drink and said, “I was just thinking maybe you had run off on me.” She was obviously flustered, because not even a mentally impaired person would have believed her lie. I’m disappointed to say, Lyla was not turning out to be the great foe I had thought and wanted her to be. It was a shame really, a travesty.     I laughed cordially and replied, smiling brilliantly, “On you? Never.” I was ramping up the charm to send manipulate her mind into thinking whatever I persuaded her to.     Lyla quickly and conspicuously changed the subject. “Shall we order? I’m starving.” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     “Well that was exquisite,” I said as I placed my fork delicately on my empty plate. Lyla just nodded, checking her phone again. I would have been very displeased at her behavior, had I not known she was corresponding with her superior, taking orders. Her face paled as she checked her phone one last time after the bill was paid and we were preparing to say our goodbyes.     I was going to stick with my decision to let her live, because, quite honestly, she needed some practice in the ways of being an FBI detective. I hoped that one day she would become someone who posed as a true challenge and threat to me.     I offered her my arm as we walked out and she took it, hands obviously slick with sweat. I was making her nervous, which I must admit more than excited me. I had to angle my body away from her and make sure that my jacket covered the slight problem I was having in my lower frontal area. The problem had disappeared by the time I had walked Lyla to her car, a tasteful beige Volvo. She unlocked the car and then turned to face me. I knew where this was headed.     “Do you want to....go....somewhere?” She had composed herself and gave me a coy, suggestive smile. I grinned back, playing my part as she was playing hers.     “Yes, I’d like that. How about my place? You can follow me there,” I suggested and cocked my head to the side, looking as though I didn’t know for a fact that she would say yes. Lyla nodded, smiled, and then got in her car, ready to follow me home. I knew we would end up at my house eventually, anyway. I didn’t want to outright refuse as to avoid more suspicion. I knew Lyla wanted to investigate me, and I wanted to assure her that I had nothing to hide.     As I drove, slowly because she was a cop and I didn’t want a ticket, I weighed the possible risks of bringing Lyla home with me. My murder room was well hidden beneath the storm cellar, the door blending in with the concrete walls perfectly. I knew Lyla wanted to snoop around and find some sort of damning evidence, but she wouldn’t find any. I could guarantee that.     Once at my house, I parked in the garage, Lyla parked in the driveway, and then I led her through the front door. She looked around, taking in the elegant chandelier and rich mahogany furnishings.     “Nice place.” She said, awe-struck. I glanced around. I didn’t really see what was so special about it. I really wanted to show her downstairs, the part of the house of which I was most proud, but couldn’t. I had a cover to keep, unfortunately.     “Thank you. Would you like a drink?”     She nodded and continued to peruse the decorations around my home, pretending to be interested, but really for looking for any sort of clue.     I walked to the kitchen and froze when I saw a puddle of blood forming underneath the door down to the cellar. The girl I had thought would be dead by the time I got back obviously tried to make an escape attempt.     I knew my freedom was at risk, so I did something I had never done before: panic. I could hear Lyla’s heels clacking their way up the wood-floored hall toward the kitchen. She was saying something, God only knows what, but stopped abruptly as her eyes narrowed in on the blood.     The jig was up. And now Lyla had to die and I had to leave Washington and lay low for an indefinite period of time.     In the second it took Lyla to pull a pistol out from under her dress (it was very well hidden in the curve-hugging fabric, might I add), I had lunged behind the counter just before the shots began firing. I knew this would wake the neighbors, and someone would call 911. I needed to get the Hell out of dodge, so I quickly grabbed a knife from the top of the kitchen counter (a dull blade, not my preferred weapon of choice) and rolled out of the room, bullets whizzing past my ears and just barely missing me.     The shots stopped firing from the barrel of the pistol, and I crouched and snuck around to get an upper-hand on Lyla.     “I knew it was you,” I heard her voice call; “You messed up. You’re a common link between all those missing girls. We crosschecked your eHarmony profiles and the dead girls. It had to be you.” She was trying to get me to reply so she could judge my location, “Hey James, remember when I shot you in the shoulder? How’d that heal up by the way?”     I spotted her creeping around, back pressed to the wall, trying to find me. Quieter than even the slightest of breezes, I crept toward her. With all the power of my good shoulder, I slammed the knife into the back of her knee so hard that the tip was visible through the front of her knee. Blood gushed out and she screamed, dropping her gun in surprise agony. I twisted the blade inside the wound, which would make it hurt so much more and heal much less quickly, fascinated by the amount of blood that could come out of her knee as I twisted the handle this way and that. The blood gushing down her leg and onto the hardwood floor matched the color of her velvet red dress, as if it were simply a train, an accent to the ensemble.     Lyla finally fell back, crippled in pain, allowing me to crawl on top of her and slowly, so slowly cut open her cheek and down her jaw as she cried and struggled against me. I practically doubled her in height in weight, so her attempts to get away were all futile—     She kneed me, hard, in the groin, and I fell to the side. She dragged herself down the hall toward where she had dropped her gun. The surge of adrenaline forced me to get over the pain and rush toward her, once again putting my weight on her. I held my knife against her throat and she stopped thrashing.     “Good girl, Lyla,” I whispered in her ear, “Unfortunately, I do have to kill you. You know too much about me and, quite frankly, I’d say that makes us friends. I’ve never been the kind of person to have friends.”     She shook her head and the blade bit into her skin slightly and I felt her entire body wince from the pain. It was fantastic.     “The blood in the kitchen. What is it? Whose is it?” She said it too fast, and I knew she was stalling for time. I wanted to play with her for as long as possible, so I answered.     “The bitch that got my haircut wrong. I could have sworn that she’d be dead by the time I got back, but obviously that one was a fighter. She almost made it out too,” I sighed sarcastically, “Sadly; you won’t get the same opportunity to escape. We’re going to have fun Lyla. Do you like pain?” I asked as I plunged the knife shallowly into her side. She had the good sense to arch up and that moment and was able to avoid most of the damage, as well as loosen my hold on her. Managing to stand, she limped toward the gun and grabbed it, whipping around to take aim at me.     “FREEZE!” She screamed.     “No need to yell, Lyla. I’m about four feet from you. Let’s use our inside voices so as not to disturb the neighbors.” I winked at her and she took another step away from me. I could tell she was scared and I flashed a grin.     “Shut up, James. You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—,”     “You’re going to arrest me?” I asked incredulously. “On a bad leg and bleeding half to death. This ought to be a show. I’m sure this will be funnier than that idiotic series Twilight,” I smirked and held out my hand, giving her the typical ‘bring it on’ gesture.     “JAMES BROOKMAN. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS RAISED IN THE AIR....,” I whipped my head toward the front window, only now noticing the search light lighting up my front yard.     “I’m not stupid enough to go in without back up. If I didn’t answer my boss’s texts every five minutes, he knew something was wrong.” Lyla said quietly. I looked back to her and saw her gun lowered to her side. She knew she didn’t need it anymore. I was surrounded. It was over. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -     I was placed in handcuffs by a fat police officer and leaned against the car, just staring at the stars. I figured it would be awhile until I got to see them again. My sights switched from the heavens to Lyla, who was sitting in an ambulance getting her wounds taken care of. I stared at her, wanting to memorize every line and curve of her.     Once she was finished talking to the paramedic, she and the cop who had cuffed me came over to take me to jail.     “Oh, Lyla?” I called before the burly police officer shoved me into the back of his cruiser.     She turned slowly back to me and nodded at Officer Pushy to let me speak. “What is it, James.” Her body was tense and a trail of blood dripped in a perfect line down her flushed, bright cheeks. She was leaning heavily on her left leg, since I had twisted my knife deep into the back of her right knee. “Is this funnier than Twilight?”     I smiled at her little jibe before brushing it off, “I’ve always wanted to escape from prison,” I winked at her and shifted myself into the back of the car, lights flashing and making the wet pavement look like a river of blood. I smiled. Before the door closed in my face, I confidently said, “See you soon.”     The torturing and killing would have to come to an end. I had re-prioritized my life in the last hour, and my happy play time could no longer come before my freedom. In all honesty, I’m a damn handsome guy; I would be butt-raped left and right if I went to prison.     I’d escape in record time, before I even made it to jail. The cuffs were already halfway off by the time Officer Idiot found the car’s keys in his folds of fat. I estimated that I would taste sweet freedom in about twenty minutes.     I planned to sneak back to my house, grab some supplies, including a myriad of fake IDs, and get the hell out of dodge. I’d stop killing women, and pick up a new hobby.     Probably hunting.

Kathleen Hennessey brief bio (2012)     Kathleen Hennessey is a sophmore at Southeast Missouri State University studying journalism, english, and creative writing. She has been writing since a young age and has written four complete, unpublished novels as well as poems and short stories.

Rude Awakening Eric Burbridge     Don’t be late old school, we know where you live.     Those words were etched in my memory and times running out. This is the second pawn shop I’d been where the broker chomped on an extinguished cigar and rolled it in his mouth. It drove me crazy. His beady eyes strained looking for the latch to release the keyboard of the word processor. He ran his stubby fingers over it and massaged his nappy goatee.     A well kept machine, looks brand new, but, I can’t use it. Sorry.     What? You just said its well kept.     I know, but, I still can’t use it. People don’t use these. Where you been? Ever hear of a computer? And you want fifty bucks...please. I’ll give you ten.     Do I look desperate? I wish I would. So this is Clark Street Pawn.     I prefer, loan company, he grinned and exposed his tobacco stained teeth. Look, I know you’re disgusted, but don’t waste your time. My family owns most of the shops in this part of town. You wont get a better deal. Sorry.     Look at all this junk, but my word processor is worthless. Keep your ten dollars. I covered it and rushed out the door. I should’ve never got that stuff on credit. Manny and Sid wanted their money by six.     Don’t be late old school, we know where you live, they said.     Smoking crack at fifty; a tragedy. And now I had stooped to doing business with two young boys, who looked like characters out of a video game. Manny, a one-eyed goon who sounded like something was caught in his throat. Sid, an illiterate runt with a tiny head and a brain to match.     Rush hour started while I struggled through the rain with the awkward machine. I dodged waves of humanity going in the opposite direction, only to find my cars cracked windshield desecrated with a $50 parking ticket.     Don’t be late old school. Those words rang in my mind.     I got in and slammed my hands on the wheel. I had a ticket, a worthless word processor and no place to get the money. Now what? My mind wandered; then it hit me. I had money in my work locker. Hallelujah!     4:00pm. I had just enough time to get there before the shift left. I ignored the wet pavement and sped up, swerving in and out of slower traffic on Clark Street.     I pulled into the company lot, flashed my badge to security, parked and ran in through the maze of dormant machinery toward the locker room. I stuck my key in the lock, turned and it broke.     Oh shit. I slammed my hand into the door and flopped down on the bench. My hand throbbed. I’m already screwed, thats all I needed for it to be broken.     Simmons? A deep voice echoed off the cramped walls.     What?     Is that you making all that noise?     Yeah. I looked up and Rodney walked toward me, looking concerned. I left some money in my coat and this damn key breaks.     He sat and the bench buckled under his three hundred pound frame. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and looked at me with pity. Which I didn’t need or appreciate. You look whacked, Simmons. I know its hard, but you better leave that shit alone. Been there, done that. Get some help before you blow your pension.     I know. I needed fifty bucks, not a sermon.     Anyway, how much you need?     Fifty.     He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. He pointed at the money. But understand theres juice on this. Thirty percent. He made a notation in his book. So thats sixty five, payday.     Take some of the juice off, for a word processor, I got in my car.     I’m not a pawn shop Simmons, sixty-five on Friday. We shook and he walked away shaking his head. I leaned back on the locker and sighed. Thank God.     5:15pm. Don’t be late, old school.     I merged into traffic. The congestion faded like an early morning fog. I relaxed the tense grip I had on the wheel, while I maneuvered toward the expressway. Today, I did things and went places I never dreamed. I had to stop being an old school fool and get help. I’d make some calls first thing in the morning.     6:00pm. I pulled between two cars and waited. Portions of Ada Park were barren; minimal maintenance, sprinkled with felons and the unemployed, that had grown into havens for the lawless.     Sid sat on a bench. He got up, tossed his beer and walked to my car with his cold, lifeless eyes focused on me. He got in and held out his hand. What’s up old school? Those beer soaked words turned my stomach.     Wheres your boy?     Busy.     I gave him the money. He spread it out in one hand like a card player.     Were even. He put five bags on the console. If you need credit, I’ll meet you somewhere. Heres my cell number. I took the card, he pointed at the bags. Give me forty for those Friday.     He opened the door and got out. Got to go, old school. He hobbled in his oversized pants toward the basketball courts and disappeared into the crowd. A slick move. He knew I’d smoke it. *     I pulled in my garage and sat for a minute. Now, I had crack, a ticket and a worthless word processor. What a day. I went inside and tossed the bags like dice on the kitchen counter. Staring at them, knowing what would happen, I opened one and put a morsel on my tongue. It froze. This is the bomb. I dashed upstairs, fumbled through my drawer and found my pipe.     After this I’m going into Rehab.     I loaded it and waved the lighter flame beneath, watching the vapors of death swirl, rising to the top, giving me that feeling. The intense rush of sexual arousal and fantasies accompanied by acceleration of my heartbeat, made my head drop like it had been severed from my body. This ritual continued for several hours until I realized I had my last bag. My heart raced while looking for Sids number. I hit the speed dial. No answer. I paced for what seemed like an eternity. I tried again; success.     What’s up?     This is old school. I need five more. I prayed he would say yes.     Thats cool. Meet me at the park. *     An eerie silence accompanied the parks darkness, but stupidity ruled and I pulled up and parked. Someone sat on a back bench. I couldnt see so I walked closer. Manny turned and looked at me with contempt.     You were late, old school, he hissed.     No I wasnt. Sid said you were busy so I gave him the money.     I gave you the product, asshole...not Sid. Manny got up and stepped back.     I thought you worked together. Then it hit me. A set-up.     You thought wrong. He pulled a gun out of his belt and leveled it at me. I remember two flash bangs and the wind being knocked out of me when my back slammed into the sidewalk. I caught a glimpse of the stars before my eyes closed.     The light returned, a face with pitted skin peered down at me. I’m Detective Vitner, Mr. Simmons, you don’t have to worry about your friends. Mannys been executed, shot in the face and head. His sidekick Sid, took an involuntary swan dive off the bridge over I-57. The detective chuckled. We ruled you out as a suspect, you almost had the ultimate alibi, death. You won’t be so lucky next time. Think about it. Get help and good bye.     A doctor with a short white beard examined me and said I’d been in a coma for two weeks. The bullets lodged above and below my heart would be my companions for the rest of my life.     I had been clean for six months, that felt good, but being called, old school, still sent chills down my spine.

untitled John Constantine Mastor Pike Place Market flying fish a Seattle postcard. Fresh water fishing poems appear at the surface.

Between the Barbed Wire and the Still-to-be-Discovered God Particle, Remains an Unfinished Line of American Poetry (#4). Kenneth DiMaggio H   E   L   L she writes on the fog she just breathed on the windshield of the stolen car whose driver she urges to “Drive fast! Drive crazy fast!!” stopping only for a hamburger and some blood at the cash register And how much more before these two tender terrorists escape the neon & halogen trying to recruit you or get Jesus to save you and reach H   E   L   L which she now traces on the flesh of an angel she has just unbuttoned

A Ship In Flight Denny E. Marshall The arrow Goes out spinning Fast and far Landing on a orbit Near spheres and stars That can see And shine Like curves in space In her rotation I feel the gravity 1st Published “Candlelight Poetry Journal” Fall 1996

John reads the Denny E. Marshall July-August 2012 (v108) Down in the Dirt magazine poem a Ship in Flight

See YouTube video of John reading this poem straight from the August 2012 issue (v235) of cc&d magazine, live 8/29/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

You Lost Me When I was Six Lori Ulrich     My daughter wrote a poem in her grade twelve creative writing class. In it was the line, “you lost me when I was six.” I knew it was intended for me. The truth of the words overwhelms all other thoughts.     My son was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was nine. After major surgery and three years of chemotherapy, during which he had lost his sight, he was now facing a new world of blindness. His sister was six, in grade one when it all began. In our family’s inconceivable pain and struggles during this time, she was lost. Not lost in the physical sense; she was there; she was always there, standing in silence, behind the whispers and hushed voices of faces wet with tears. She was the other one, the one no one asked about. The one who understood at six, that her world was about to change in ways unimaginable.     She asked me years later, when she was doing a report for a developmental psychology paper at school, what some of our families best memories were of her when she was in middle childhood, age’s six to eleven. I thought about what I could tell her. I could see her in my mind, snapshots, but she was always quiet, somber. I couldn’t recall any laughter, any fun. I cried because I was ashamed, ashamed that I could not remember the ordinary everyday things about my daughter. There is a lack of clarity for me over a three year time frame. I remember only fragments, the rest was too painful. I blocked out those memories, and with them went some of the memories of her. I hardly remember her learning to read, bringing home her little readers, her Christmas concerts, her excitement over learning new things, her favorite toys and activities. What could I tell her? What could she write?     I could start by telling her that sometimes, in the early morning I would stand in her doorway and watch her breathe, her lips pressed firmly together. I would sometimes step into her room, careful not to disturb, touch her cheek, and stroke her long brown hair back from the pillow, tell her I was sorry. I could tell her I did this for twelve years, from the time that she was six, to the time when she was eighteen and moved away.     I could tell her how she held her brother’s hand before he went into surgery at the hospital, kissing him before he went into the operating room, not sure if she would see him again. I remember how the first thing she did when she came home from school in the weeks following the surgery was go to him to see how his day was, and lay beside him, holding his hand.     I could tell her that she read all her story books to him, explained the pictures in detail, and giggled with him, when she was six. She began to read just as his eyesight faded. When she was seven, she became his “teacher.” I remember how she was the one that took his hand when we went out; she took him up and down the shopping aisles, guiding him to things that would make him laugh. She taught him how to navigate through all the mud puddles in the early spring on our farm, how to run and jump over round hay bales by listening to her voice. She challenged him to do things for himself, be independent, by pushing him to his limits. She was the one that walked him into the school and to his classroom, in middle childhood. I could tell her that she watched him during the day at school from afar, careful not to overstep her boundaries, but she was there if he needed. She was the one who witnessed the injustices of being the “blind boy” in school. I could tell her she was, and is still, selfless when it comes to her brother. She never once, in all those years asked for anything for herself.     She never displayed anger, only a quiet acceptance of the way things were. When she was eleven, he was fourteen. They would drive the quad through the yard, with him driving, hands on the controls with a big grin and her giving directions sitting closely behind him. He was in a position of complete trust. And so was she. When his friends were thinking about dating and parties he was contemplating possible death. He was always waiting for MRI results, every six months, to see if things were stable, to see where he would go next.     They would talk for hours, whispering behind the closed bedroom door, and she would comfort him with her words, and her gentle ways. In his darkest moments and greatest fears he would sleep on a mat outside her door, and call to her in the night if he needed someone. She was always there.     This is what I remember of her childhood. These are my best memories of my daughter. This is what she can write. I am sure her teacher would be impressed. “White lights” are creative. They are elegant and simple. There are no trophies or medals hanging on the walls of her room. Her name does not echo off the walls of the school. If there was a badge of honor, no one would see it. Wherever her life’s path takes her, it will be with integrity and character.     Every night she would ask me, when she was six, “Mama, do you love me?” We would read her favorite story, Mama, Do You Love Me, by B. Joose over and over, making up our own reasons of how much we loved each other, and I’d always end the story with the words, “I will love you, forever and for always, because you are my Dear One.” I still say those words today, sneaking them into a cell phone message, text, or email. Regret settles inside me, for I was unable to protect her from the vicissitudes of life. I wonder if she knows how proud I am of her. I have different memories of her childhood than other parents would have, but my memories are special and I would not trade them. Both of my children are unique; they see life through a different lens, living their lives in an honest way. Today, my daughter and my son are best friends. They see each other every day. He has followed his own path, living independently and attending university. She is just beginning her life’s adventures. My son smiles and speaks with pride saying, “You know, she is becoming more like me every day.” There is nothing he wouldn’t do for his sister, or she for him.

Snapshots from a Clandestine Hell J. D. Riso

America the “Gulp” Christopher Hanson I take a Gulp, To wash the day Down, So very far down And away from the Hollow faces And even paler Words That permeate the Malls, halls And roads that lead to a Silent kind of slavery. I take a Gulp To sink even further unto Revolution, evolution And nausea As I witness The knife And once more into the Back, Our collective back, Unnoticed, uncaring And almost wished for. I take a gulp, I take a gulp, I finish it off. I grab another, I finish it off, And another and another and another So that I may succumb to a Different kind of sickness. It’s in this “state,” No pun intended, That I can finally see – America’s An illusion And my noose is slightly Looser Than yours.

Christopher Hanson 1st person 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”.

Because We Could Kathryn Leetch     I sit on the warm, plastic bench, reflecting on the time I used to spend here. I tumble back through the years. The paint on the aging plastic bench, once a brilliant yellow, has now faded almost completely. I shed my shoes, just like I used to do. I look down at my feet as I stir the mulch, feeling the wooden pieces slipping between my toes. The mulch replaces what used to be brown rocks when I played here. I liked the rocks, I longed for the rocks. A warm breeze ruffles my hair as I close my eyes and I remember the good times I had at Hot Tot Park in St. Peters. I’m five-years old again, surprised at how easy it is to slip back in time. I picture my little self scampering around with my friends. Not tall enough for the monkey bars, I go back to the blue slide. My favorite. My skin tingles as I remember how the plastic, baked by the hot summer sun, burned me on those long-ago days. I smile and remember how a little burn wasn’t going to stop me from going down the best slide in the world. I loved going to the park. No worries. No stress. Simpler times. I didn’t have to worry about homework assignments, papers, tests, work, boys. OK. I may have worried about boys, but surely not like I do now. Sitting on this warm bench, I think about my life, how far I have come, and what I am now. So much began in this place.     I find myself wondering, thinking, reminiscing. Where has the time gone? Just yesterday, it seems, I was running around this place—not caring, just playing. Playing and running so hard; sweat running down my forehead and off the tip of my nose; cheeks as red as my hair; big smiles, glowing blue eyes, and loud laughs.     I see myself standing at the top of the curved and twisted blue slide. I would wave to my mom who used to wait anxiously for my arrival at the bottom. I smile that same big smile. I wanted to show my mom how big I was, how I could go down a slide all by myself. I wonder if she’d be proud to see the places I’ve been to now. Gripping the green bar tightly, I sit myself down on the bright blue plastic. I remember the feeling of my heart racing, beating so fast. My palms sweat. My smile broadens. The thrill of rushing down the big slide, knowing that my mom is at the bottom with open arms, ready to catch me. I remember thinking how proud she must be. 1...2...3...Go! I can see myself starting to glide down the slide, almost in slow motion. Then as I begin to pick up speed, so do my memories. Screaming playfully, I open my mouth, as if trying to catch the air that’s passing by, flying through my hair. I see my mom, and I know she’ll be there to catch me. I reach the end and pop out quickly. My mom, quick on her feet, catches me and swirls me around in a million circles. We both shout in laughter.     I find myself longing for this time of certainty and confidence in my mother that has since faded. I love my mom. I love the way she made me feel when I was young. I grip the bench tight, thinking about how different life is now. Would she be there when I came down a slide now? Is she as proud of me, now, as she was then? She was there when I was five. She was there when I was ten. She barely made it to my fifteenth year. Twenty now, I’m afraid of falling still, but she is no longer there to catch me.     I look around the park, wondering where the time has gone, remembering Hot Tot Park like it was yesterday. I wish so bad that I could go back to being five again; playing, and being silly because I could. I want to find my inner child. I want a place to belong again. When you’re little, everyone gets along. No big break ups. No fights between friends that can end the everlasting bond that is promised in the beginning. No arguments with parents that have any real meaning. All you have to worry about is what your friend said the other day, or when your crush threw a pencil at you, but couldn’t figure out why. We look back, and we know why. It’s because he could.     I close my eyes again, breathe a deep breath, take myself back to when I was five. My mom stands me back on my feet after she gives me a big kiss on the forehead. I smile up at her, feeling the heat of the sun on my face. I giggle, and run toward the swings. They’re my second favorite. The idea of being in the air with nothing more than a rubber seat between me and bruised and broken bones amazed me. I couldn’t pump my legs, so my dad was always good at helping me get as high as possible. The “Underdog” was my dad’s specialty. He pushed me until I was high enough, and once I was, he would push one last time, and then run underneath me before I swung back again. He would count down, too, so I knew when it was coming. 1...2...3... Go! I smile as I remember how nervous I would get. I always thought I was going to hit him on my way back. My dad is a tall guy, so it was risky business. I can still hear him counting down until the moment came: The “Underdog.” I can still feel the beat of my heart quickening in pace; the smile on both of our faces after I saw him in front of me again. My dad is so cool.     When my parents were together, life was perfect. We spent so much time together; doing all kinds of things. We would go to the park, or the movies, or out to eat, or tons of other things. Even going to the store with my mom was an adventure. Where did those times go? Why did they have to get a divorce and ruin everything? Was it something I did? Was I too much of a burden on them? I could have gone down the slide without her help. I could have learned how to pump my legs so they could sit together instead of helping me. Now I know why. It was because they could.     When I was little, my brother was my best friend. He is three years older than me, so we were close. I used to hang out with him and his friends instead of my own. He would try to do the “Underdog” too, but he wasn’t big enough yet. He would ask me to race him down the slides, even though he knew he was always going to win. He let me win sometimes, but the majority of wins went to him. Whenever we went to the park, I would get jealous of him because he could reach the monkey bars, and swing on his own. He could run faster than me. He could hide better than me. I still look up to my big brother. He didn’t mind when I tagged along with him and his friends, though he claimed he did at the time. We both knew that our bond as brother and sister was different from most, and we liked that. My big brother is so awesome.     I sit here on this bench that wishes it was still bright yellow like it used to be. With the mulch underneath my feet, I gaze across the park. I look at the big blue slide, the green monkey bars that I could probably reach now without much effort, the swing set reduced to a single swing. I look back on all of the times I had at Hot Tot Park- and I wish I could get them all back. I wish I could go back to simpler times. Not a care in the world.     I look at my little seven year old sister sitting next to me. She wonders why I am so content sitting here, looking at this run-down old park. We could be doing so many other things, like shopping, or riding bikes. She may be seven, but she acts like she’s fifteen. She loves going to the park, though, loves it a lot. The parks she goes to are much different than Hot Tot Park. These parks have fancy names, big bright green and red slides, swing sets with ten swings, hop scotch games, and instead of brown rocks, or even mulch, she gets rubber flooring decorated with many different colors. The familiar monkey bars are much more than just a straight set of bars at her park. They are windy and twisty and curvy, making it much more challenging. I would have given anything for that kind of a park when I was her age. No wonder she’s bored at Hot Tot.     I look at my not-so-little sister, and remember when I was her age. All she cares about is her boyfriend of the week, or her spelling test coming up. Spelling tests. Do you remember those? I was so good at them. Spelling words like “cat” and “pencil”, not “hemoglobin” or “thrombocytes.” Simple words. Basic words. She sits next to me, adjusting her pink cotton skirt, looks up at me and smiles. I know that smile. Once, it appeared on my face. Somewhere deep within me, I know it’s still there. The soft wind blows her hair, her tan skin feels the sun, and she grabs my hand.     “Sis?” she says softly, “What are you thinkin’ about?”     “Oh, just about when I was your age and how fun life was.”     She goes on to ask why I think life isn’t fun after a certain point, why I can’t make it fun. She may be seven, but she asks good questions. She makes me stop and think. Why? She’s right. Why can’t life be fun after the age of five or six? We have to make life what we want it to be, and if we are okay with disappointing those we love, then that’s okay. If we want to right our wrongs, then we have to put forth the effort to do so. Our life is what we make it, and it’s up to us to enjoy it while we can.     I remember the smells of the park, and I can smell the same scent just by touching my sister’s hand. Dirty, dusty, dry but sweaty. The smells of childhood return as I look at my sister, touch her hand, and pat her on the back. The sweat on her back makes her shirt stick, and on her forehead, makes her hair wet.     A ladybug lands on my knee, and I pause. My sister goes to flick it off, but I quickly pull her finger away. The little creature takes tiny steps, wandering, clueless, with no destination in mind. Seeing the ladybug reminds me of being little again myself. I had no real direction or destination in life, not to my knowledge anyway. I didn’t know which way to go, and the only way I got anywhere was if someone picked me up and took me there. I let the ladybug crawl onto my finger, and I hear my sister gasp in awe. Her breath escapes her, and her mouth drops open. I lift up the bug, and help it fly away gracefully, much as I have found myself doing lately. I’ve learned the art of taking little steps; I’ve found the grace that allows me to do little things on my own. Soon enough I will fly away with my newfound strength. Like a ladybug.     We decide that we should go because it is starting to get late. My sister is off and running as soon as she stands up. She has the energy and liveliness that I once had. She runs because she can. I stop and take a second to say goodbye. I do this because I can. Goodbye to Hot Tot Park. Goodbye to the swings and the slide that used to be. Goodbye to the monkey bars I continue to hate. Goodbye to the mulch that was once rocks. Goodbye to the half-yellow plastic bench. Goodbye to the sweaty, dusty, dirty park. Goodbye to childhood. I wish I could stay longer.     I am here because I can be.     I have memories because I could.     I am moving on because I can.

The Dealer Gibson Culbreth     The Container Store had just opened a month ago; it’s large, rectangular stature throwing sweet shade into the late July heat. At first London paid it no mind. She and Atticus were in the throes of love, playing house in their first dirty little studio together only a few blocks away from the Department of National Defense.     Atticus guided her inside the store, lightly pushing her through the rows of shelving and boxes and carts. She had her hangover shades on and her sundress was strapless and slipping continuously and she just wanted to sit down and drink some water to make up for the bottle of wine they’d split for breakfast. She caught sight of herself in a disco ball patterned jewelry box and her stained, creased lips pulled up to reveal pink teeth. She moved her hand to her mouth and Atticus brushed past her, grabbing onto her wrist and tugging her along faster now.     “Why’re we here?” She asked, glancing at the clerks whose eyes were peeled back like boiled eggs.     “We’ve just got to get some tiny gift bags. That’s all.” Atticus was smiling, his purpled teeth gleaming in the fluorescent light. His hair was crazed, still un-brushed and tangled in the back from their escapades the night before. His t-shirt had a hole in the armpit and there was a stain on his jeans. London came into herself long enough to realize that the both of them looked atrocious, that the sales peoples eyes were glued to them so tightly because they appeared to be two mad people encroaching upon the territory of the ones with cash. Little did they know that Atticus had lifted some poor suckers wallet a few nights ago and they had some cash, so they could be people too.     It took Atticus roughly twenty minutes to find the tiny clear bags for his operation that night. As they paid for the bags with an ostentatious fifty-dollar bill the clerk glared at the pair of them, closely examining the bill before begrudgingly accepting it into her cash drawer. She shot a look to London that was awash in pity and left her shivering all the way into the humid air of the city. She thought she could feel the building sigh as they headed on their way. At one point, maybe not even too long ago, she would have blended into these people and their real lives. She lost herself to a brief moment of memory. Of her mother taking her to a store similar to this one and trying to buy things to keep her books in for college, of her sister talking excitedly about visiting her and the Smithsonian and how normal her life would be if those things were the true things. But Atticus was pulling with his crazy hair and dirty hands and he smiled at her quickly like a camera flash and she fell into step beside him, because it seemed to her now that if she was not beside him she might just get lost in the tangled web of her own deceit.     She went with Atticus as he bought weed. They went to a park and smoked the last two of their good cigarettes down to the filter and they waited. They sat side by side but did not touch, and they stayed quiet, listening to the forest of bamboo hollowly knock about in the wind around them. Atticus’s t-shirt was sticking to his sweaty back and London kept her arms clamped over her chest to stop any slippage of her broken down dress. She wished quickly, as the sobriety began to set in, that she had extra money for a new dress. A shiny new dress with good elastic, that wouldn’t fall down with her sweat, maybe one that fit her new slimmer frame. But she knew that the money they earned in this deal was for staving off the sobriety and keeping the two of them as alive as possible.     Atticus was already starting to shake a little bit, and he had gotten deathly quiet. The bags under his eyes seemed to shun the pale skin around them and his sweat made his forehead gleam under his curls. He caught London staring; her eyes wide and listless and he forced a smile for her sake. He leaned over and kissed her quickly.     “I love you, you know that right?” He placed his hand over hers, squeezing it.     “I know. I love you too.”     “I know that this isn’t ideal, but I’m really glad you’re here with me.”     London could only grin like a silly little girl on a television show as the goopy sensation of love dripped through her limbs. A few moments later bamboo shoots began to pop behind them, underfoot of heavy boots. A guy, he couldn’t have been older than 25, stepped forward from the brush. He had a baseball cap down shading his eyes and he wore an oversized black leather coat. London could only imagine how warm it must have been under all that disguise.     Usually London tried to ignore the drug deals Atticus made. She never asked him questions and she never needed to know details. That day though, since she didn’t want to sit in their apartment on their sweat stained mattress and wonder when he was coming back, she was mercilessly exposed to the reality of their problem. She saw Atticus take the weed and a bottle of pills that would keep them going for a while longer and she saw the guy take the money and count it, and hold it up to the sunlight to expose the water marks. And then they shook hands and the guy smiled at her, pearly teeth under a shadow and then he turned and left. Atticus pressed some white pills into her palm and she sighed, exhausting the breath she’d been holding since the cigarette ended. She placed them on her tongue, their chalky skin stretching across her taste buds and she swallowed.     “What is it?”     “Oxycodone.” Atticus popped two and they lay back in the grass, sweating and waiting for the pills to start working.     Atticus was marketing to college kids, specifically freshmen who had no real idea of what they were buying and what it normally cost. The first buyer was a kid in a green striped shirt. For some reason that shirt had London convinced at first glance that he was a rugby player, even though she knew that rugby wasn’t exactly an American thing.     The kid came into their bare apartment and stood with his head down, his hands in his pockets while Atticus rooted around the kitchen; looking for the coffee canister he kept their drugs in.     “Hey there,” the kid said in London’s general direction. She was sitting in the middle of their mattress on the floor, a deck of cards arching across the thin sheet. She looked up at him, her vision slightly blurred and she nodded her head, hoping that he wouldn’t remember what she looked like and at the same moment wishing she looked better.     “Aha!” Atticus sprang victoriously from the kitchen and London resumed her game of solitaire. The cards were swaying like flames below her fingers but she kept moving them around, shuffling and replacing them all the while trying to nail down the rules in her head. She couldn’t remember the point of the game, if they all had to be the same color or suit or if that even mattered. The harder she concentrated the lower the voices in the room became.     As Atticus and the rugby kid were talking in the corner London suddenly felt violently lonely. She could feel the harsh judgment of her mother present in the room as if she were standing there, pointing to Atticus while he was handing this kid his weed and shouting “this boy isn’t good enough for you! I always expected better!” She shuttered quickly, pulling her eyes off the cards long enough to grab a plastic bottle of vodka they had picked up on their way home, out from under Atticus’s pillow. She unscrewed the top and gulped four burning, searing seconds. She stopped when Atticus smacked the back of her head. The last bit went up her nose, burning her eyes and nostrils.     “What are you doing? That’s for later!” He screwed the top back on and slipped it into his back pocket. She could hear him apologize to rugby kid and shake his hand.     London felt as though she were standing next to herself in the room, shaking her pale slumped shoulders on the bed and pulling at her hair in attempt to get her to look to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who was so tall and lithe and beautiful and who was fucking her life up one pill at a time, one deal at a time, one hour at a time. She could still feel the stares of the sales people at the store, of the darkened drug dealer’s eyes, and of this kid burying themselves into the skin on her face like burs. She reached for the cards to smear them across the bed and then she lifted herself. The kid backed out the door as London launched herself at Atticus, catching him around the hips with both her arms and driving him back into the wall. He bounced off immediately, kicking out and catching her in the stomach.     “What are you doing?” He grunted, trying to shell her off of his waist. She let go with her right hand to grab the bottle from his back pocket and he kicked again, this time trouncing her collarbone. She yelled out, one half hearted shriek while still clutching the bottle.     She stood and ran, slamming the front door in his face and racing down the hallway with no shoes on, her feet slapping against the slick tile floor for a few moments before she felt his arms elapse her, grabbing onto her around the middle and tightening as he lifted her feet from the floor. He walked her all the way back to the apartment, kicked the front door closed with his leg and then threw her onto the bed.     Once she was there he lay down next to her and weaved his arms tightly around her middle. She did not cry or move further into him but she thought, “this is my life. This is my boyfriend and this is where I live and these are the things we do and this is normal. This is my life.” And she took another drink of the vodka before passing it to him.     “I know this whole situation sucks, but how else are we going to make money?”     “We can get jobs.”     Atticus’s breath was sweet and smoky and hot as it brushed against her ear. “I don’t know about you, but I doubt anyone would hire me. This is just a temporary thing until we can get our feet on the ground ya know? We’ll be ok. Are you worried?” He was stroking her hand, each of her fingers individually. He kissed the back of her neck and she could feel his forehead press against her.     “Yes, I’m worried.”     “I’ll take care of you London. I’ll always take care of you.” He raised himself up on one elbow and curled his face around to meet hers. “I love you, and I didn’t move here with you to get you caught up in a shitty world. Right now, this is just a means to an end. I promise it won’t last forever.” And then he kissed her, so tenderly that she almost forgot the bruise blooming on her collarbone in the shape of his shoe, that the rugby kid and the drug dealer in the woods got blurry and faded from memory and all she could see and hear was him and the love he carried inside of him, all for her. Just for her.

A Philosophical Question John Ragusa Is torment Derived from insanity, Or, rather, from Seeing reality

Janet Kuypers reads the John Ragusa July-August 2012 Down in the Dirt poem a Philosophical Question

See YouTube video of Janet Kypers reading his poem straight from the July-August 2012 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 7/4/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

Hearing the Meat Rex Bromfield     It’s quiet here at night. Dark. Restful. Unlike most folks who sign up for this job, I don’t mind the constant sound of the meat. Some choose solitary careers precisely so they can be left alone; night security guards, long-haul truckers, forest rangers. Night shift work lets you gather your thoughts, think about things that others normally don’t have the time or inclination for during the hustle and bustle of a busy working day, amid the crush of other people. I am one of those people. There are studies that say shift work disrupts circadian rhythms, causes hormone imbalances, heart disease, psychological disorders and obesity. This can’t be true. I think those tests are being conducted on people who aren’t suited to shift work in the first place. People who sleep at night, afraid of he dark.      Of course there are no forest rangers any more, not since they realized that it’s a good idea to let wild fires run their course. It’s been many decades since forest decline was a problem. Everyone used to be worried that deforestation was causing a serious buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now we have more trees than we know what to do with. Everything is covered with plant life. In Brazil, they’re growing a twenty story condo with a genetically engineered tree called the Patriarca da Floresta†.     Since life began on Earth every process of nature has been a struggle of one kind or another. Ever since humans realized that we evolved to be in partnership with nature, to relieve it of the constant struggle to adapt and thrive, things have gone a lot better. Human participation has helped nature do away with most of those struggles. Nature is a wonderful thing. It was my respect for this partnership that got me into this work. I’m more than a night security guard; I’m trained as a biological technician. It really only takes three or four people to run this plant during the day. At night all that’s needed is someone to recognize and report malfunctions before they can get out of control. It never happens. Growing meat in vitro is so simple it could be monitored by the computers full time, but the law requires that a human always be present. My plant has nine floors, each over thirty thousand square feet. The building is packed with row upon row of light alloy scaffold frames. Every floor-to-ceiling frame is loaded with cultured beef cells in various stages of development—a genetic hybrid of bison/beef muscle that is constantly exercising and growing. The steady flow and drip of pulsed acetylcholine liquid nutrients, the constant movement everywhere, makes it seem that the whole place is alive. I have to admit that at first it was a bit unsettling—especially in the dark. But you get used to it. Marjorie, the head of personnel, said it reminded her of crickets on a warm summer night in the country. Marjorie is older than anyone else here, and she’s been to the country, so I guess she would know. “Technically, it is alive,” she said on my first day, then waved her hand at a seven hundred pound rack of mature squeezing, pulsating muscle tissue. “It’s anxious to be harvested and loaded into trucks for delivery,” she said as though she believed the meat to be not only alive but conscious. I didn’t understand it back then, but I do now. After a few weeks of living with the growing meat, exercising itself into nice lean steaks and roasts, your body kind of gets into sync with it. Transformers in the basement supply the electrical impulses that stimulate the muscle tissue to contract and relax about twenty-five times a minute. Everything throughout the building runs according to those signals and pretty soon your metabolism falls into step with it. You become a part of the living meat plant.     Marjorie told me that some people can’t take it. It gives them the creeps. Not me. To me it’s a perfectly natural thing. It’s regeneration and growth. She gave me a key to the roof and told me I could take my breaks up there to get away from the meat whenever I wanted to. She said there was psychiatric counselling available, too, but I don’t see how this peaceful environment could create any problems. Okay, so there have been some suicides. But again, I think those people were simply not suited to this kind of work.     We’re doing a service to humankind here. This single plant feeds a city of six million without harming a single animal. In the old days they used to corral thousands of terrified cows and pigs, herd them through long, filthy runs of wood and steel and onto the stinking slaughterhouse kill floor where they would be hung by their hind legs, drained and gutted. Efficiently processed by bloodied butchers, wielding razor sharp knives, carving each animals down to extract the muscle tissue we call steak or hamburger or pork chops.     Now all there is is this soothing meat music—the voices of nature and humans working together.     There is no longer a global food crisis. Plants like this are feeding the world. My plant started with a single line of about 10,000 stem cells. You could keep that many cells in a fridge in a shot glass. Within a few months of opening we were shipping 1,000 tons of beef a day. We only produce beef here. Other plants make chicken or pork. Pork is difficult because the start up cultures keep wanting to differentiate into brain cells instead of muscle. The scientists can’t quite understand why pork is so finicky that way, but they’re working on it.     There’s a hand-written sign on the tiled wall down in the cafeteria that says ‘The Meat Shall Inherit the Earth’. You can see that they tried to clean it off—I guess because the guy who wrote it was one of the three night technicians who killed himself—but he wrote it with a fat black permanent marker pen, so even though it’s faint, you can still read it. I think I know what he meant. Most living things are meat. We are the meat. The meat is us. That’s why I listen to the meat. I care about it and I know the meat cares about me. It talks to me. It probably sounds strange but it’s not. People have long conversations with their phones—not on their phones, with their phones. They call it artificial intelligence. I don’t think there’s anything intelligent about it, by the way. It’s mostly gossip. What I have with the meat here at night is meaningful. The meat tells me that everything is alive and that we humans are part of a planetary ebb and flow of life. I listen, and the meat tells me its great story of our mutual natural history.     I’ve been at this job for three months now, but I’m still up early every afternoon anxious to get to work. I don’t bother with a social life—too much trouble. Anyway the hours don’t allow it. Being with the meat is better anyway.     Lately I’ve been thinking about becoming vegetarian. I guess I already am. The place where I used to eat, is one of those cafes where you order on the touch screen tabletop and a robot brings your food. The video menu shows real people preparing the food, but I don’t think there’s anyone back there. I think everything is machine-made. I’d rather eat machine food anyway—it’s more sanitary. I don’t feel much like eating meat lately, though, not even if it’s from my plant. I guess this seems hypocritical but I just don’t seem to have a taste for it anymore. I have a real rapport with the meat at the plant. It feels wrong to eat it.     I stopped taking my breaks on the roof about a week ago. I don’t really like being away from the meat. Besides nine floors is pretty high up and it kind of makes me dizzy just thinking about it. The wall around the edge is only about a foot high and that scares me a bit, too. I’d rather be down here talking with the meat. There is more meaning in what the meat says than what you can get from any conversation with someone outside. That’s why I pack a peanut butter sandwich lunch and come straight to work. I try to arrange it so I’m leaving in the morning just as the day people arrive so I don’t have to get any more involved than I need to.     Last night the meat said it was probably better for me to stay by myself anyway.     The meat is right.     I really would like to get over my fear of the roof. The fresh air of nature is good. Maybe if I leave the door open I will still be able to hear the meat, still be able to take my breaks up there.     Tonight I’ll try that.     I know I’ll be more relaxed on the roof if I can hear the meat. **     †The Patriarca da Floresta Pilot Project (PFPP)     Sao Paolo Brazil - 2067     The Patriarca da Floresta Project, on schedule for completion early in 2069 in a suburb of Sã     o Paulo, Brazil, is a genetic engineering project initiated through an international partnership between Brazil, China and Denmark. During a three-year study, beginning in 2044, a team of twenty genetic engineers working on the World Wide Grid began an intensive analysis of the genetic code of the Patriarca da Floresta, one of the oldest and largest non-coniferous tree species in the world. In a painstaking process, the team redesigned the tree’s gene sequencing so that it will not only grow twenty times more quickly, but self-regulate its overall configuration into a free-standing thirty-three story low-income residential housing structure in the Morumbi ‘Favela’, a slum of Sã     o Paulo. The tree’s canopy has been genetically re-purposed to divert 40% of its photosynthesis to the production of electricity. An integrated plumbing a sewage system will provide clean water to the residents and redirect all organic waste to provide fertilizer for the growth and maintenance of the structure. Though not the first of its kind, the project is the largest. The first such project was the 2029 Vegan addition to The Tavern on the Green in New York’s Central Park in 2029.

Heated Jennifer E. Lee The anger rises hot channels of desperation fill me smoke billows out reaching hoping for a resolution pushes up further bursting out like a frustrated child who does not get what she wants heated to the point of expectancy when damage occurs irrevocable unacceptable heat.

Janet Kuypers reads the Jennifer E. Lee July-August 2012 Down in the Dirt poem Heated

See YouTube video of Janet Kypers reading her poem straight from the July-August 2012 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 7/4/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

Auction Jeffrey Park Did we go together to the auction house or did I meet you there – I only remember the way you signaled your desires to the auctioneer: a flip of your scarf, a pursing of your lips, a sudden intensity in your stare, even when it was clear to everyone that the item on the block was just plain junk, so they’d have to wonder if that crossing of legs had really been a signal at all. Of course it was. You only bid on those objects that would be useful to you – you who were rebuilding an existence out of strangers’ broken or never-had-worked-in-the-first-place appliances. A spare coupling here, some hard to find tubing there and the certain knowledge that you’d be laughing all the way to the garage.

Jeffrey Park Bio     Baltimore native Jeffrey Park currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His latest poems have appeared in Subliminal Interiors, Mobius, Danse Macabre, cc&d Magazine, Right Hand Pointing and elsewhere. Visit his website at http://www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com/.

Will Work for Food Jon Brunette     It didn’t sound like I should have, but I told my wife to do what had to be done anyway. I really didn’t think I’d be able to survive otherwise. I took the phone out of my pocket, our brand-new Ford cruising down Highway 169 towards Plymouth, where we lived comfortably, and dialed our home phone number. My wife answered; after three bleeps, her chirpy voice interrupted. She spoke calmly, and rationally, despite what I told her to do.     I told Karie to put Junior in the basement and tie him up. She told me that she could, exactly as I had told her, wrapping twine around his wrists and ankles. Then, she could put him in the basement, by the furnace, where he could sit warmly and comfortably, yet where he couldn’t cause any trouble. She told me that she could turn off the bulb, using the cord below the fixture, and keep him in the dark, physically and mentally, as he could never understand why his father and mother had to tie him up occasionally. He didn’t have to understand; it was probably better that he didn’t.     Driving home, I looked down at the gas tank meter, pointed squarely at empty. I had to take the car to the nearest station or not make it back. It took five minutes before I got back onto the road. Yet, as our Ford climbed back onto Highway 169, it had picked up another passenger.     I couldn’t just leave him on the curb with that sign that read WILL WORK FOR FOOD etched in magic marker, and besides, he didn’t want food; he just wanted a ride back to his apartment. After I had first seen him, I had assumed that he lived just as well as me, with a wife and a kid, the homeless part just to get money, yet he told me through a scraggly beard that he had just gotten divorced and had to live like a pauper in a small apartment near Brooklyn Center.     I hated to drive into Brooklyn Center, situated so closely to Minneapolis, yet I said to him anyway, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” as I had lived cheaply, too, before I had met Karie, whose wealth had changed my life.     Karie had also made a baby, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore.     On the way back to Brooklyn Center, which I had assumed would be just a slight detour, he yanked out a pistol and held the barrel to my head. I had to laugh, yet his manner meant business. “Why do this to me?” I asked him.     He replied, “You’ve got a car, and, probably, a lot of money, too.” I told him that I lived in Plymouth, where wealthy people lived, and he told me, “We just have to go to a cash machine and take out some dough, and that’ll be all.” He probably figured he wouldn’t have to hold that sign anymore, which probably did embarrass him. It also embarrassed me, but, hunger did, too, which was what pulled us off the road. My body flopped down onto his lap like a fish yanked out of the lake, yet his gun hand didn’t budge.     “Get up,” he told me, jabbing the barrel into me. While I lay lightheaded, the car as wild as a drunk would drive, I stabbed my teeth into his thighs. His lap exploded into a bloody mess, and, as I had hoped it would, the gun handle slipped. I took it out of his hands. He probably didn’t really want to kill me, but, still, I did want to kill him.     Actually, I had to kill him. Now, my vampire teeth wouldn’t have to bite into Junior anymore, and he could play, untied, for at least another night.     So could I. Previously published before (March 16 2012) on “MicroHorror.com”.

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 Age of Yearning Ian C Smith     Awkwardly, he Googles, low in hope, forms a partial jigsaw of the past, her children, her father’s death. Modest success inspires him. He finds her ex-husband’s whereabouts, even her grandfather’s rates record, but no recent trace of her. He is wary of contacting the ex-husband. Then he lurches into luck, her brother still living in their childhood district, or somebody of his odd name and initial. He will not phone, only write with care, thoughts of her possible death hovering.     They were only sixteen, now she lodges in his mind, nightly. He read this happens when more past than future is left. He reasons the listing could be her nephew. This generational distancing suits him. What worries most are questions. Why? What do you want? Whatever for?     He has written a poem, using her as the model of a sensual girl long ago. Publication is due in a glossy book. He could say he wants her to have it. They shared music, their bodies, not poetry. He knows the book is an excuse. She might laugh, if she is alive, might be married again, probably is, to a coarse, suspicious, jealous man.     He has posted the letter, thinks of damning letters going astray in novels. Fool is his favourite word for himself. He wonders if he would like her again, remembers her wearing a cheong-sam, needs to know what she remembers of him, them, beyond photographs. It is as if he saw, long ago, half a film. What did her character do in later scenes? He must understand the entire script, knows he could not explain this.     For his address he used a P.O. Box. His marriage old, children gone a’roving, he considers postal inefficiency, calculates a different day each time. He likens himself to a spinning dog biting an itch at the base of its tail. When they broke up it wasn’t good. Well, it never is, is it?     His is a calmer sadness now. She lived in a bustling corner hotel near a station where he caught the train. On journeys he thinks of the two of them. He was excitable, lived alone in silence, except for his hours with her which gleam in a retrospective wash of light. He strains to resist glossing the past.     Dropping the letter through that slot has dropped his mind into a war zone where tragedy and wan happiness co-exist, his messy mistakes, unreliable memory, directing a searchlight on vignettes, skerricks of history featuring himself. He blames, not only his foolishness but his marching-in-place existence. Like passing the scene of an old crime, disappointment and relief come and go when enough thought-drifting days vanish. He had been aghast at time’s winged arrow, all those great poems, plays, and stories. He does not mention his failed contact to his wife, but it is not a secret. The dark streets of his mind astound him.     He comes across his old P.O. Box number looking through mementoes, a sheer fluke, remembers writing it without thinking on the self-addressed envelope he sent with the letter three months ago. He understands these small mistakes influence life’s slalom course which seems steeper and faster now. Those nineteenth-century novels again, undelivered letters, declarations of love or guilt – life-changing stuff. Thinking of the information he sought fills him with trepidation. At first his hopes rose like a rocket, reaching an apex then plummeting, ignorant of his carelessness. Now they are all over the place again. A stranger might have received his news. Ancient memories disturbing him caused him to compose the letter, nerves, the obsolete return address. Memory, anxiety, followed by chance, the stunned realization of his mistake.     He sweats over another letter. He knows there probably never was a reply, but grasps the excuse to try once more. A golden morning beyond the window, light wind, trees surfing in air. Lonely people listen for the mailman, invent scenarios, believe in fate. They stare at nothing, strain to recall fragments of the past beyond recollection.     Lives reflect like fun-park mirrors, children, divorces, loving well, some storm, some calm, loving no longer. Days drain into the gulf of old age. He remembers curls on her nape, her head turned to blow smoke away. Tracking her, logic got ambushed, sure, his foolish assumptions, that wrong address. A postal worker, an obvious TV fan with an old-time attitude to service, places a newspaper ad., proving the Dead Letter Office still has a pulse. Her answering machine grants a reprieve but she had only just missed him. His phone, shrill, throbbing, stabs him. Bone-lonely, he is bereft of confidence. Longing for time lost, he picks up.     A lot can change over that many years. The rush hour trains shaking their floor should stir the blood under his scars. He presses fingers to his temples, ponders a decision about a haircut, willing himself to match her bravery as questions needing details line up.     In the rain walking with her again. How remote that bare room. In the beloved city he walks too fast like he did fifty years gone. His heartbeat in her underage womb while he, excluded, walked alone, ignorant, into his battling future. Now, two old people on this old street. Before she told him her lonely secret, her shy presentation of photographs. They walk, passing faces so young, sexy, like her black-and-white image. She strokes a lucky cat, auburn hair caressing her pale, slender neck as he slows down for her, at fault, her breath short, heart contracted. They agree with her parents’ decision, know they were too young in the past, that elusive time of smoke and sweat, its confounding catch-me-if-you-can. He would walk through a ball of fire if it took him back to what was. Although pleased to have traced her he grapples with the details, and grief. The tears he sheds are tears unshed then for the graceful girl he mourns, holding that cat to her warm belly, her smile which now he glimpses again. He calls her gently by her maiden name, its Italian curvaceousness changed twice, now slipped back into use, revived. They sit, rest, glad to have survived.     Feel my heart, she says, her voice veiled, guiding his fingertips to a place below her right collarbone, not where he believes their beating hearts lie. At first touch he thinks she has been hurt, then it feels like a box beneath her skin. He manages not to recoil like a boy when she says, It’s a pacemaker. He shows off by being self-deprecatory, hears more about her life’s potholes, the mistakes, the marriages, betrayals, says, I’ll help you stop smoking, concerned she could drop dead, her old nose frothy in her cappuccino, no longer in need of the facelift she’d buy if she won Tattslotto.     Fate and the years can combine like events in a nineteenth-century novel. His old black heart beats strongly, the comfort of books an indulgence. Each time she calls she sounds petulant, alone with love’s distant aftertaste. She tells him she is still young, claims he talks slant, that he mourns the past.

Confession (with no penance, so far) Larry Schug Oh, I done bad deeds down in ‘lanta; sneaky little bastard I was back then, got away with ‘em too. 25 years later I think back to them bad old days; I don’t admit to the evil I done, not even to myself anymore. Things be goin’ too good.

Untitled Derek A Davis     After the universe exploded, I was the only survivor. Since there was nothing left in the universe, I decided to make another one. I thought to myself, “I should make a perfect universe.” So then I did. I went to the star-mine and gathered enough stars to fit into the universe that I was creating. I had complete creative control so there was nothing stopping me from making it how I wanted. I made each of the billions of star a different color so whenever anyone looked up there would be a beautiful starlight show, with a magical rainbow that blinds men’s eyes upon looking at it. I also planned on taking rainbows back, they were always pretty cool, but they didn’t have to represents something and have a connotation to it. Nature would just remain natural. I arranged all the stars in the universe to spell my name up, so everyone knew who was responsible for creating a perfect universe. As of the time I was creating the new universe, there was no one to appreciate what I was doing. I wanted this new universe to be perfect, so I put a lot of thought into everything I did. I began to make planets, each planet that has everything necessary to sustain life. One planet was made of chocolate, with chocolate lava, chocolate water, chocolate air, and even chocolate chocolate. Rightfully so, the next planet was made of ice cream, with egg nog rivers. I stated to feel like I had too much power, but that feeling quickly went away when I realized that I did not care. I said to myself “Why am I talking to myself? I should create people, but only cool people. I don’t want any dumb jerks messing up my perfect universe.” So I began creating people. I reached deep within myself and pulled out a highly concentrated strand of my awesome DNA and modeled people after pure coolness. I knew it would take several hours for the people to be done, so I went back to creating the universe. I know we all used to share one planet, so I made 100 planets that everyone could live on. I made everyone the same color so one could invent racism. I made everyone blue, and it was really cool. I thought about all of the problems the last universe had, war, hatred, fighting, suffering, etc. I did not want the people I created to suffer and live unhappy lives... “How much sense does it make if I have the power to make the entire universe harmonious and remove every kind of suffering there is to allow things like that to go on?” I thought to myself. “If I wanted everyone to suffer I would just make them suffer, but I want everyone happy, I want everyone to live in peace and never have to worry about being killed, robbed, or mistreated by any other person. I tried to imagine who ever created the last universe, and thought he must have not been very cool, whoever it was must have had the power to do everything since he created the universe, but there was so much fighting, famine, death, and illness, suffering and overall evil. He could have used his powers to stop that, but he didn’t. I would never want to see so much suffering, so I made it to where there was none. The people were finally finished, I spread them all across of the thousands of planets I created. There needed to be enough people for the universe to be awesome, so I though 9 hundred million billion was a good amount of people. I thought to myself, “hopefully the perfect universe I created would be perfect. How could it not be? I have unlimited power, and I am creating the universe and the people that live in it. I can at least control the people-nay! - Not control them, but when I create them just do so without instilling evil qualities into people. I am all powerful, it’s no big deal for me to disallow the mistreatment of humanity, I don’t want my creation to experience every pain, suffering, or sadness... after all why they fuck would I?!” But guess what!? Everyone lived happy lives; there was no kind of suffering for the rest of the history of forever. I thought that was pretty dope; everyone else did too. I was happy none of the people I created knew of the first universe; I’m glad they didn’t know what evil was, what it was to kill and hate people. That’s how life should be. I did it right. I finished everything; the universe was finally complete, and perfect. After a long hour of creating all of existence, I was pretty tired so I had to rest. I went to my home, which was atop the largest structure ever in existence (Mt. Saint Awesome), next door to the universe. Upon entering my house, I collapsed on my water bed filled with ambrosia and was left to lay with my thoughts. “It kind of sucks that the last universe was destroyed; of course I miss all of the people... I could just bring them back to life! I think I will, well why wouldn’t I? I have unlimited power and can do whatever I want!!!!!! That’s why I’m confused, the last creator of the universe had unlimited power and could do whatever he wanted but he just chose not to. He chooses to allow endless pain and suffering among the people he created. I never understood that, especially when the innocent people were harmed.... That was the worst thing for me to deal with, which is why no one will have to worry about any of that in this universe. They are going to actually have happy lives without promises of happiness after a long life of suffering. I am not going to tell people to live righteous lives and allow so much bad stuff to go on around them, that’s stupid. As a matter of fact, whoever made the last universe is no good in my book. What kind of person would do that? Oh well enough of that, I need to get back to relaxing, the universe can run itself.”

Logic Chad D. Barber Isaac, eyes to the ground. Earth and sun governed, like as moon. Theories ergo, a physicist and theologian. To find truth, with math and alchemy in tune.

Chad D. Barber bio     Chad D. Barber is a 27 year old male who hails from Buffalo New York. He worsk full time as a Sous Chef, and attend Erie Community College.

Memory from the Womb Joseph Lisowski A love ache. Time breaks Lines in rhythm The I aches, Ear breaks Sound Into particles Of light then Dark like a mine. I trace lightly One fingertip Along your wound. You were born To flower pleasure Tingle, gasp, swoon.

Joseph Lisowski Bio     From 1986 to 1996, Joseph Lisowski was Professor of English at the University of the Virgin Islands.  St. Thomas serves as the setting for three of his detective fiction novels Looking for Lisa, Full Body Rub, and Looking for Lauren.  He is now teaching at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina and directing The Center for Teaching Excellence there.  Recent chapbooks include JB, a dialogue in poem form between John the Baptist and King Herod (PoetryRepairShop), Stashu Kapinski Strikes Out (Rank Stranger Press), Fatherhood at Fifty (Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry), Art Lessons (Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry),  Stashu Kapinski Gets Lucky, (Pudding House Press), and Stashu Kapinski Looks for Love (erbacce press, Liverpool, UK).  (Stashu Kapinski is an amalgam of voices from the Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh where I grew up—unemployed steel workers, chronic drunks, disenfranchised immigrants—who, in spite of it all, have not totally given up hope.)     Joseph Lisowski has lived many lives: as a wide-eyed boy, a keeper of keys, a beach comber...   (There are poems somewhere commemorating them all.)  Now he regularly bicycles along the banks of the Pasquotank River near the outer banks of North Carolina where he and his wife Linda are both professors at Elizabeth City State University.

Growing Up Female Janet Kuypers 1994     Some argue that men and women have inherent differences — whether described as physical or genetic. However, a lot of the differences between men and women in general are taught to us by society, by all of the people and things that influence us daily.     When women are born, they are given pink dresses and bows in their hair. Little boys are given light blue jumpers. Even when they are infants, even if other adults can’t tell what the sex of the child, this is done — precisely to insure that the rest of the world will know what the sex of the child is. As they are raised, they are given toys to play with — girls the infamous Barbie, and boys the popular G.I. Joe. Girls progress to baby dolls they can dress and feed and burp, with accessories such as baby bottles, strollers and blankets. Boys progress to model cars and trucks, then on to guns and weapons, then the prized bicycle, then sports equipment, then building and erector sets.     As they grow, parents decide what clothes the children will wear, and what their hair will look like, and what toys they will play with, and how they will go about playing. Girls are clothed in little dresses, fully equipped with tights and buckled shoes, and are given little bows to hold back their longer, more cumbersome hair. They are encouraged to have a best friend to stay in the house with, to play house with, to play quietly with, to put make-up on, and to maintain a one-on-one, more intimate relationship. They role-play, and even in their play define roles for themselves — or at least define that there are roles that exist in the world.     As boys grow they are encouraged to go outdoors, to be rowdy, to find new friends, explore boundaries, play sports where they learn cooperation and competition, and even learn to battle in play fights. They are dressed in comfortable pants and t-shirts and athletic sneakers. Their hair is short and manageable. They learn to get dirty. They learn to win. They learn to lead other boys in play — larger numbers of children than women are accustomed to dealing with.     Each sex interacts with other children of primarily the same sex, but these same-sex children have been taught like them to do the things their sex is supposed to do. They reinforce the behavior of other children — the behavior taught to them from their parents, their siblings, their toys, their television, their movies, their fairy tales. Each sex learns about interactions with others, but they learn entirely different things. The traits each sex take from these experiences are vastly different from the traits of the other sex.     Girls learn the importance of intimacy and trust, fostered by their female best friend. They learn not to be rowdy — they learn a more sedentary form of play. They learn the value of taking care of others. They learn to pretend and role-play the position of mother. They learn the value of their physical looks. They learn from their physical idol — the Barbie doll. If Barbie was a real woman, at 5' 10" her measurements would be a little more like 38, 18, 32, and she would weigh 110 pounds — an almost unattainable figure at best.     Boys learn the importance of working with other people toward a common goal. They learn to get along with a large number of people. They learn to win — they learn the American notion of competition, and they also learn the harder lesson of not trusting others, especially when other children are working toward the same goal as they are. They learn to explore new things and not be afraid. They learn to stretch themselves physically. They learn to work toward their goals. They learn about pain, about losing, and about winning. And although boys do not necessarily gain close relationships in the same way girls do, they gain a common bond between other boys — any and all boys that can jump in and join the game with them.     Some of the values both sexes take from their childhood are valuable — in fact, most of the traits taught to both sexes are admirable. However, it is important to remember three things:     1. Both sets of traits are particularly one-sided. One learns the value of competition, but doesn’t learn how to interact on a personal level. The other learns deep trust, which can be detrimental when in a battle, such as a sport. One learns to build and create, but not interact. The other learns to imagine, but only on the level of interaction with a significant other.     2. These differences are taught to us, given to us, by our parents, commercials on television, by other friends we meet, by our siblings, by the colors that surround us, by the toys given to us, by our idols from out toys — from the likes of Barbie and G.I. Joe, by our cartoon role models, by our clothing purchased for us. Boys are expected to go outside to play and get dirty. Girls are expected to keep their pretty clothes clean, even if they were comfortable in their dress, tights and patent leather shoes to go outside and play.     There may by genetic or physical differences between the sexes, there may not be. I won’t even address that point; it is irrelevant. The differences that are present in the values the sexes distinctively possess are not exclusive to any one sex. They are taught to us by male and female role models everywhere in our society. They are imposed on us from the day we are born to long after we are adults.     3. These two separate sets of traits, when placed with each other, one on one, face to face, are suddenly in great conflict.     First of all, boys are taught to hate girls, and girls are taught to hate boys. Girls are taught to trust and develop an intimate relationship, boys are taught not to get close, but to win, whatever the cost.     As they grow up, the woman looks for a long-term relationship, the man looks for sex. The woman is taught to keep sex from the man, and the man is taught to feign a relationship to gain sex. The woman is taught to trust, the man is taught to use that trust against her. •••     It is a power that society influences over each and every one of us. It is a power that each and every one of us as members of society play into and reinforce in each other, as well as teach to our children. It is taught, shown to us by ads in magazines, by commercials, by children’s toys and clothes, by the way girls associate with their mommy and boys disassociate from their mommy and run to daddy. It is evident by the way women are taught to make themselves look beautiful while men are taught to look rugged. By the want women are calming and men are forceful.     It is taught to us and perpetuated in this society by everyone in it that accepts it — women as well as men. Our mothers teach us this as well as our fathers.     But it is taught to us.     And these separations of personalities are not specifically inherent (genetically) to one sex or another — they have been arbitrarily placed in these positions because they worked for so long in keeping the sexes separated. And although women are making changes toward being more equal in this society, they are fighting not only against a work place that may not react to her so kindly, but they are fighting against everything they have been taught, against all the forces that have influenced them in the past.     And when some women do succeed in making these changes, they are looked upon by some (male and female) as strange because they do not possess what this society considers “normal” traits for a woman.     The problem is not with the people in this society. They are doing only what is expected of them, what has always worked in the past. That is to be expected. The problem is with what the society as a whole accepts as normal. They are created roles which further drive the sexes apart.     Only when we notice these things can we understand why we have been raised to differently, why there is so much conflict between the sexes. And only when we notice these things can we learn to accept that there are other choices for how to raise our children, and how we ourselves should live.

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 Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, 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, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, and the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages. Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).