(Cover image by Eleanor Leonne Bennett)

down in the dirt
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(for the print issn 1554-9623)
Janet K., Editor
http://scars.tv.dirt

In This Issue... Fritz Hamilton Liam Spencer Brian Looney Eric Burbridge Denny E. Marshall John Ragusa Zach Murphy (story and photography) Nathan Hahs Bill Wolak Megan Willoughby Jon Brunette Mark Vogel Kristen Forbes Michael Cavazos Bob Strother Don Thompson Christopher Reinhardt Krueger Gary Lundy Lasher Lane Cassia Gaden Gilmartin Janet Kuypers

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

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I’m nothing if not magnanimous Fritz Hamilton I’m nothing if not magnanimous! The management says the drawings on my door are offensive. I go on the offence & give her my life. She misuses her power to tell me I’m being evicted. I rage back to my room & think I don’t want that. I’m nothing if not magnanimous. Bravely, I go back & tell the manager I’m so SO sorry/ I offer her all my drawings, my nose, & my gonads. I go on the offence & give her my life. She incinerates my drawings, crushes my nose, & the dog eats my gonads/ I say thank you & give her my bellybutton. I’m nothing if not magnanimous. She gives me the Cub Scout wolf badge for magnanimity, & I march the Stars & Stripes to my room, not putting them on my door. I go on the offence & give her my life. I go to my mirror & see I’m a cow/ I put a straw in my bellybutton & suck me up. I’m nothing if not magnanimous. I go on the offence & give her my life ... !

Why use Newt, that great Right Wing bamboozler? Fritz Hamilton Why use Newt, that great Right Wing bamboozler? The whole world would elect Michael Jackson president instead. Of course he’s dead, but so is Newt. Mitt Romney is too astute not to give Newt the boot, but maybe not/ empty headed bamboozlers are the GOP norm. Why use Newt, that great Right Wing bamboozler? But we still have Michelle, the Christian, curing homos or Rick healing the economy by erasing Social Security. Of course he’s dead, but so is Newt. Bamboozlers are parr for the dug up course to keep it coarse & impossible to play. Why use Newt, that great Right Wing bamboozler? He’ll cause another world wide demolition. He’ll be our Genghis Khan murdering all in his way. Of course he’s dead, but so is Newt. This is the way the world ends, not with a whimper but a bang. Why use Newt, that great Right Wing bamboozler? Of course he’s dead, but SO IS THE WORLD ... ! (we could always elect Conrad Murray ... !)

Drift Liam Spencer The blinds allow some light to weasel through. another sleepless night Why even bother to try? I get up and drink more wine just a little Birds announce impending consciousness the rest of the world is waking up soon they will be having to pretend it’s all good faking laughs and smiles pretending to care, feigning interest the day mundane and sad but distracted Their torture awaits of going home being flooded with reminders this is all they’ll ever know all they can ever be their lives are scripted standard home for the neighborhood significant other, kids, bills, mortgages mindless tv, news, gossip the right conversations and experiences the right opinions, positions all the should be’s, all proper each an inner bullet shattering their soul killing them slowly, cruelly. Maybe I have nothing but I’m not them my wine kicks in I feel better drift to sleep

I Feel It When I’m Whole Brian Looney Because the good is a burden, a weight, a hassle. It gets so wounded, feels so limp. It gets so wounded, never whole. See it bleed all on me, maybe soaking in. Because I’ll befriend a vice before a virtue. Virtue must come later, after. It has some meaning when it’s not so easy. Something I can stress. Appreciation is a gift. I knew it at first, but then I forgot. I remembered it when I festered. I feel it when I’m whole.

Janet Kuypers reads the Brian Looney October 2012 (v111) Down in the Dirt magazine poem I Feel It When I’m Whole

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this poem straight from the October 2012 issue (v111) of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 10/10/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

Nun Eric Burbridge     Mitchell West saw the rage in Sister Cletus’ eyes. She stormed down the narrow aisle. Every step she took his heart skipped a beat. His classmates leaned to avoid being brushed by her Holy habit. The heat and humidity swirled in the room of thirty students. They said if you touched a nun or the habit that meant damnation. If they touched or hit you, that was fine. The smell of starchy mildew circulated around her with every rotation of the overhead fan. She towered over him and grinned, a sinister grin that fed off the fear of a terrorized chubby freskle faced kid. Her glassy bloodshot blue eyes bulged in their sockets next to her crooked broken nose. She unfolded her arms, pushed up her sleeve and revealed the brown spots that dotted her wrinkled pale skin. “I told you to shut up, Mr. West!” Her razor thin lips trembled with anger and exposed the tips of her pointed rat-like teeth.     Here it comes, Mitchell.     The enraged nun grabbed his arms and shook him and popped upside the head several times. “Shut up! I don’t know why your parents sent you here. You’ll never be anything.” She folded her speckled arms and walked to the front of the class. Mitchell sulked and held back his tears while his classmates snickered. He got suspended often and punished for things he didn’t do. Third grade was hell and he never forgot Sister Cletus. *     “Mr. West...Mr. West. Are you alright?”     “Uh...Yes, your honor.”     The elderly judge pushed back her grey hair, “The state may proceed.”     “Your honor, Ms. Sarah Metz is charged with first degree murder of her companion, Marley Cummings.” A.D.A. Mitchell West continued to stare at the accused. Unbelievable. Sister Cletus, twenty years older with a tattoo and boyish haircut. Jesus. What happened? She’d under gone a moral metamorphosis. Her eyes lit up and she grinned, nervously. Now she recognizes you, Mitchell. Hello, and welcome to my world, sister. “Your honor, the people request the defendant be held without bail.”

The Pork Belt Denny E. Marshall Old MacDonald has a farm E I E I owe And on this farm He had pigs. No marks on their ears E I E I owe Even thought he had thousands of them Washington DC texted him Said, “We have more pork than you” E I E I we all owe

Janet Kuypers reads the Denny E. Marshall October 2012 (v111) Down in the Dirt magazine poem the Pork Belt

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this poem straight from the October 2012 issue (v111) of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 10/24/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

the Life of a Cow John Ragusa     Nigel Kipling woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a cow.     He hadn’t the slightest idea how it happened. At first, he thought he must be dreaming, but he felt wide awake, so it wasn’t a dream; it was reality.     He supposed he’d have to get used to being milked by a farmer; it was embarrassing for him.     He regretted the loss of his human voice; he couldn’t communicate with anyone. All he could say was “Moo!”     Kipling prayed to God that he would go back to being a person. There were things he could do as a man that he couldn’t do as a cow.     He knew that cowboys would handle him roughly, by slipping a rope around his neck.     It was uncomfortable to be out in the heat all summer; as a man, he had been used to indoor air conditioning. But there was none in this field.     Nigel looked around him. He was in a pasture of grass with other cows. He felt strange in such surroundings. He wasn’t accustomed to this kind of environment.     He found that being a cow wasn’t fun at all. There just weren’t that many things to do. He thought that being a cow was boring, with nothing to do but graze in the grass. He wished there were more activities to keep him busy.     Then he’d be in pain if he got hoof-and-mouth disease. He’d suffer a lot with it, and it might kill him.     Kipling wondered if a witch had cast a spell on him to turn him into this animal. But he didn’t know any witches, so it wasn’t possible.     He missed being able to read. That was one of his favorite hobbies, but he couldn’t do it as a cow.     He’d get tired of only eating grass, too. He wouldn’t be able to eat what he liked.     Kipling was aware that animals don’t have souls; therefore, they don’t go to heaven after they die. Now that he was a cow, could he make it into heaven? Perhaps not.     He hoped the foxes wouldn’t find him, because they like to kill and eat cows. He could become one of their victims.     He was dying for a beer. But cows aren’t given beer to drink.     He couldn’t express himself, either, because cows cannot talk.     When it would rain, he’d also get all wet, since he’d be outdoors.     No, there definitely were no advantages to being a cow. He wouldn’t even be able to live much longer, because he was already an old cow. He’d have only a few years left to live.     He figured that his wife and children must be wondering where he was. He hadn’t had a chance to tell them goodbye before his transformation. They might be thinking that he deserted them. He hoped they didn’t think that.     Kipling began to worry then. As time went on, he would miss being with his family, the most important thing in his life. He’d be unable to talk or listen to them. They’d never have fun together again. What was he being punished for?     On the other hand, he wouldn’t have to work for a living anymore. He wouldn’t have to provide for a spouse and kids. He wouldn’t have any responsibilities to face. He wouldn’t have to pay taxes. All he had to do was relax in this big, comfortable field and eat grass all day. It wouldn’t be a bad existence at all.     And so Nigel Kipling sat down on the ground and began a life of contentment as a cow.     But then it was time for him to be taken away to the slaughterhouse. . . .

9/11 in Manhattan Zach Murphy     “A plane just flew into one of the twin towers!” Kelly exclaimed. She had just opened the door to the apartment after having walked our dog Henry.     That was how I woke up on September 11, 2001. I loved those buildings. From our apartment, it took about twenty minutes for me to walk down there. Sometimes I walked down by the Hudson River and crossed the pedestrian bridge at Stuyvesant High School. Most of the time, I paused on the steps to the street to take a long look at the twin towers. I marveled at their size and symmetry. I gazed at them frequently. Walking around New York, buildings often block your view of other buildings. Whenever I could see them, I drank them in.     “What?” I uttered.     “This plane was flying really low. It was very loud! I was talking to this woman, who was also walking her dog, and we both heard it and looked up at it. Then we heard this loud explosion and saw that it had hit the World Trade Center!” she said.     I immediately got out of bed, put some clothes on, and went down to the east corner of our block. There it was: the gaping, smoking hole in the building that was left by the first plane. I stared at it, along with other people who had stopped at the same street corner to look at it. After giving Henry some food, Kelly joined me.     “Wow. What if a terrorist had been flying that plane?” I asked Kelly.     “Wow,” she said.     We continued to stare at it. We were transfixed by what we saw.     “Does anyone know how it happened?” a man from our corner group asked.     “A plane hit it,” Kelly replied.     “I don’t know about that,” said another guy at the corner. “I didn’t see a plane hit it.”     “Well I did,” said Kelly.     This guy continued to verbally doubt that a plane had hit the building.     We were looking at the burning building when a huge explosion occurred on the face of the other building. One of the things I’ll never forget about that explosion, from seeing it on the street, is the huge fireball that slowly rose and poof! It disappeared.     Our corner group reacted to that. I went back inside, grabbed my camera, and took pictures of the burning buildings. Equally interesting to me are the people who were caught by my camera’s eye, who were on the street watching the buildings.     “It was a plane! I saw it!” said one of the men on our corner about the most famous explosion in world history. Strangely, he had a smile on his face when he said that.     It was confirmed that we were under attack. I looked down and kicked the concrete below me. I was an angry American. Not only was this my country, but it was my city and my favorite buildings.     Our group became larger as more people stopped to watch.     “There’s niggas inside there?” a man asked.     Kelly and I looked at him and nodded.     “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed.     I saw some people on the street who were laughing. I saw a woman running uptown; she was crying. I saw our downstairs neighbor, Danny.     “Hey, Danny,” I said.     This little old man was angry. “Can you believe this? They hit the Pentagon, too!” he said.     That was news to us. We followed him into our apartment building like zombies. It was time to turn on the television. We were freaking out. What if more planes are headed to New York? What if one of our planes shoots one down, and it crash lands on Manhattan and kills us? Those thoughts were running through my mind.     Poor Henry seemed to be confused and troubled. I remember him looking at me. He knew that Kelly and I were upset, but we weren’t fighting.     The phone rang. Kelly picked it up. “Hello?” she said. “Oh, hi Doug! I know! So I assume that the store is closed until further notice. Okay. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone. “The store is closed until further notice,” she said to me. That meant I had the day off from work.     When the towers fell, I was shitting: literally. I felt like I didn’t have the luxury of being glued to the TV set; we might have to run for our lives. I better take care of business while I have a chance to. I’ve never been more afraid for my life before or since. Upon exiting the bathroom, I realized that Kelly had gone out. I went out as well. While standing on LaGuardia Place, I saw World Trade Center Building 7 collapse. More cries from the witnesses were heard.     A white man, who appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties, passed by on a bicycle. “Deport every Arab. Kill every Arab you see,” he was chanting to whoever might be listening.     “Shut the hell up!” a voice yelled loudly from behind me.     The man on the bike shut up.     I turned in the direction that the angry voice had come from. I saw a young man with an olive complexion return my glance with furious eyes.     I saw a man jogging shortly after the Towers fell. That’s a man who’s serious about his exercise. I suppose that would make some people angry: not me. I exercise four days a week without exception. It’s important to me. Besides, if he had nothing to do with the attacks, then why hate him for jogging?     What bothered me was seeing a man and woman, both in their twenties and dressed in black, riding bicycles on Bleecker Street right after the Towers fell. They looked like East Village bohemians. They were smiling and laughing, and they seemed to be completely unaware of the catastrophe that was only a twenty-minute walk away. Oh, you’re so different from everybody else, aren’t you? You’re so cool.     Kelly and I got dinner from a Chinese restaurant and ate it in front of the television. We were listening to an interview with a man who had escaped from one of the Towers. He was covered in dust, and he was telling the story of how he had survived.     “As I was going down the stairs, I passed by handicapped people who were waiting for someone to help them,” he said before choking up.     Kelly and I both cried for the first time that day.     The next day, like many people all over the world, we continued to watch television coverage of 9/11. The phone rang. Kelly answered it.     “Hello? Hi, Doug,” she said. She became very angry. “Are you serious?!” she yelled.     “Give me the phone,” I said to her. She had just yelled at my boss.     “Hi, Zach,” Doug said. “We are opening the store today.”     “Okay,” I replied. It was Wednesday, one of my scheduled work days.     Kelly was really pissed off. She thought it was a terrible idea to open the bookstore the day after 9/11. I understood why she felt that way. You’re living on a small island, and the day after thousands of people were murdered on that island, you’re going back to business as usual. In fairness, Lynn and Doug, the owners of the store, opened it seven days a week. They probably reopened it out of habit. I was concerned about the fires that were raging fairly close to my home. In retrospect, it was very unlikely that the fires would be allowed to spread that far. At the time, though, I was still a little shell-shocked. I was thinking, okay, I’ll go to work. However, if I need to leave, to help Kelly evacuate, I won’t hesitate.     Doug had told Lynn about Kelly yelling at him over the phone. She was angry at Kelly. “Wouldn’t you rather be here than watching TV?” she asked me.     No, I thought. “Yes,” I said.     The store was busy that day. It annoyed me. It’s the day after 9/11, and you’re shopping? We had no break room to eat our lunches in. We would just sit in a corner of the store and eat. Sometimes we had to move because we were blocking books that a customer wanted to browse. Frequently, we had to stop eating to help a customer. It was pretty annoying, but at least it was paid time. Once again, my lunch was interrupted by someone who needed help finding a book. This time, I was more irritated than usual. I have to be here. Why are you here? I know that a lot of people demonize television, but aren’t you interested in what’s going on in the world today?     I’ve heard people say, “Never forget what happened on 9/11!”     I couldn’t forget it if I tried. I think about it nearly every day. Even after that day, I would still look in the direction of the Towers, hoping to see them. Ground Zero burned for months. One night, there was ash on the sidewalk in front of our apartment building that looked like snow. It’s still a little hard for me to believe that it all really happened. I’m somewhat obsessed with 9/11. I have magazines and newspapers from the day after. I’ve recorded lots of documentaries about it.     I love music: especially heavy metal. The next CD I wanted to buy was Beneath the Remains by Sepultura. Before I went into the Sam Goody store that used to be on Sixth Avenue near Eighth Street, I looked south toward Ground Zero. The familiar plume of smoke emanating from there was drifting toward New Jersey. This is a pretty morbid title to be purchasing, considering what happened down there. Should I buy it? Sure, I thought. I had nothing to do with those attacks, nor would I ever do anything like that. I bought it. Besides, if I hadn’t bought it, then the terrorists would have won, right?     I walked down to Ground Zero while it was still burning. I was very familiar with the route I took, it was the circumstances that had changed drastically. I came as close as I could, and in doing so joined a small group that had gathered at the gates of hell. Two cops were there to keep anyone from getting any closer. They appeared to be quite irritated. Traffic was also blocked from coming any closer to Ground Zero. A man walked onto the street so he could get a better picture with his camera.     “Get out of the street!” yelled one of the cops angrily at the man with the camera.     “Okay,” he said, while snapping another photo.     “Get out of the street or you’re going to be arrested!” shouted the cop.     That did it. The man went back to the corner, where we were looking at a building that had tons of steel and other debris on top of it. That was all we could really see, but it was an incredible sight nonetheless. A woman went into the street to snap a photo or two. Apparently, you could see a little more from the street.     “Get out of the street now!” the other cop roared.     “Okay,” she said. She continued to take pictures.     “Do you want to go to jail?!” he shouted.     “No,” she replied. She went back to the corner.     “These people are pathetic,” one cop said to the other, who agreed with him.     I disagree. I can’t speak for the rest of the people on that corner, but I was there to see part of an unbelievable moment in world history. I believe that 9/11 is the most incredible day in human history. You almost can’t overstate the importance of 9/11. Who knows? It may turn out to be the beginning of the end of our world. It led directly to one American war, and, as many people have alleged, it made the war in Iraq possible. How many people have died in these wars? How many people have been killed in the war on terror? As for the cops, instead of being angry at us, they should have directed their anger at those who were responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks.     Life must go on though. 9/11 happened on a Tuesday. Kelly took the rest of the week off from work. After all, she had seen all the major events in New York with her own eyes: not through the filter of television.     Weeks later, I was working at the store with my coworker Jose. The phone rang. Jose picked it up.     “Memoir Bookshop,” he said. His demeanor suddenly became serious. “It’s started? Okay. We’ll turn on the radio. Thanks. Bye-bye.” He hung up. He turned on the radio and twisted the knob to find the station that he wanted.     “We’re attacking Afghanistan,” he declared.     “Wow,” I said.     Some of the customers heard that exchange. “Excuse me, what did you say?” a lady asked.     “The military is attacking Afghanistan,” Jose replied.     Some of the people in the store displayed fear on their faces. They knew our country was heading down a dangerous road. I’m sure they knew that a response to 9/11 was inevitable, but it seemed like they weren’t quite ready for it.

The Chemist Nathan Hahs     My parents divorced when I was fifteen and I did not handle this well. I carried the stress in my neck and shoulders and, after a few months, I had pain all of my waking hours. My mom took me to the doctor, who gave me flexeril. I had this muscle relaxer for a couple of years before stopping. It eased the pain and put me to sleep. I was ever so grateful for the sleep, as I had always struggled with this.     At nineteen, I was given a prescription of xanax by my doctor to help with anxiety. At first, I used it exactly as it was prescribed. I didn’t want to become addicted to it. I was able to maintain this for about a year, but in the end I liked being able to escape from my reality too much and began to abuse it. I was in college by this time and the xanax was making me sleepy all of the time, so I started taking caffeine pills to wake up and be able to function during class and at work. When I wasn’t taking the No-Doze, I was taking a xanax. How Elvis Presley of me, I thought.     After a few months of this, I began to wonder if I might be a drug addict and stopped taking the No-Doze, because this was the easier of the two to stop, I figured. As time passed, my xanax prescription increased in both frequency and strength. I had started with 0.25mg prn twice daily. Now I had 1mg prn three times daily. Fear and denial has always been close compadres of mine; I was in denial about my heavy reliance on this pill, this downer, this central nervous system suppressant. I was afraid of what it meant if I was addicted. Or, maybe I just didn’t care. I now thought I needed it to function.     Shortly after turning twenty-one, I moved, dropped out of school, and got a different job. Through my job I met Shaun. It was Shaun who introduced me to marijuana. The two of us started hanging out and we met up with a friend of his, whose father had a stash of pot. We three drove to Walgreens and Shaun bought a corncob pipe. We drove to the father of this friend (a guy whose name I never knew) to get the pot. The house was locked. I am a small guy, a physical runt. I discovered at a very early age that I liked going places I was not allowed. I had been breaking and entering and trespassing since I was old enough to join Cub Scouts. Getting into this guy’s dad’s house was not going to be a problem for me. I found an unlocked kitchen window and snuck in. I let Shaun and this other dude in through the front door. This other dude quickly located his father’s weed. He dismantled the kitchen faucet to get the screen for the corncob pipe. I was learning minute by minute about the street drug culture. This was all new to me, but I said nothing for fear of looking stupid or inexperienced. I do know how to nod and smile with the best of them, though.     We were expecting tornadic weather that day: wind, hail, thunder and lightning. We were high and listened to the weather report as we drove around in Shaun’s car. At my suggestion, we headed directly for the storm and continued to smoke from the corncob pipe. He drove into and through the storm and, if that wasn’t good enough, turned right around and drove back through on our way back to my place. Shaun dropped me off and he and the nameless guy went on their way. I took a xanax and went to sleep. When I woke up, I felt terrible. I stayed in bed for the next 48 hours, popping xanax to hide from myself and whatever low I was experiencing.     My family, because of my mental health, always made sure I had xanax. If I had no money for marijuana or whatever else I fancied, I would swap xanax for them. I started dating the woman who would become my first wife. She was a recreational drug user and her behavior helped normalize my own. I chose all of my friends based on who I thought would make me feel like less of an addict by comparison.     I had three surgeries on my feet in my twenty-fifth year and was given vicadin for the post-op pain. I took it as prescribed at first, but continued with it as the pain subsided. I liked the way it made me feel, pain free...free of ALL pain, physical and emotional. I lied to my wife, mother, and doctor about the seriousness of the pain, just to get multiple refills. I maintained my lie until even I knew it was absurd. I was under general anesthetic for the first two surgeries and loved coming to after the procedure. For the third surgery, the doctor gave intravenous valium and a local anesthetic for my foot itself. Under the influence of the valium, I drooled and my eyes watered. I convinced the doctor to show me the tissue he was removing from my foot. I was affected by nothing and my usual anxiety and depression were gone.     Having my wisdom teeth removed was as good an experience as it could have been. I had minimal swelling and no discomfort, let alone pain. Nevertheless I took my demerol and I took it as frequently as I wanted to. I loved the high and I called in sick to work for the two days following my surgery, even thought my only real reason for staying home was so I could take the pain pills and numb out. I returned to work and continued to take the demerol as often as I could and still be able to function at least reasonably well on the job. I continued at this pace until I had exhausted all three refills the doctor had given me.     By this time my doctor had stopped giving me the xanax, so I switched to another doctor. I have always had a nervous stomach and it seemed to me to be getting worse the older I got. I complained to the doctor about being unable to eat and multiple panics each day. The doctor gave me not one, but two xanax prescriptions: 1mg thirty minutes before each meal and 1mg prn five times daily. She also gave me three refills for each separate prescription. I was VERY pleased with this. I no longer seemed to care whether or not I was addicted, I needed it to keep from going crazy. I was fired from my job and I isolated to hide my problems from everyone else and took lots and lots of xanax to feel unburdened my own life. I should add that if, at any time up to this point, I had access to any combination of the afore-mentioned drugs at the same time, you can be sure that I was combining them. I considered EVERYTHING in my life an experiment and my curiosity allowed me to justify my actions by testing cause and effect.     Tooth problems run in my family and I was no exception. I had to have two root canals and was given lortab for the pain. Again, I was given more than I really needed and I regularly indulged. The lortab made my eyes glassy and I acted like a space cadet when on them. I told my second wife I needed them, all of them, for the pain. She asked me not to drive while on them. For some reason, I obeyed this request.     At 32, my second wife had reached her limit of strife brought on by my mental illnesses (I had been hospitalized for depression and mania several times) and asked me to leave. I moved in with a friend who lived on the other side of the tracks. I applied for disability because of my bipolar disorder and was quickly approved. My friend is not a very social creature, but I am. Shortly after moving in with him, I knew all of the neighbors and was spending lots of time with these other degenerates. The guy next door was George Two Feathers, whose girlfriend and her two-month old son had just moved in with him.     One night, it was very late, I was over at George’s apartment. His girlfriend Angela was there with her child and there was this guy named Shane. Angela was neurotic, going on and on about how she needed five dollars. After a while, I could take no more of her nagging and I gave her the money. She and Shane left and I asked George what my five dollars had just bought. He said that they had gone to buy crack cocaine. This made me anxious, but also very, very intrigued. I was about to try the real stuff.     Angela and Shane were not gone very long. They returned and brought the dope over to the table where George and I were still situated and Angela placed a small opaque object on the table directly in front of me. She and George retrieved their pipes and began breaking the crack into four pieces, one for each of us. I was so nervous that George had to hold the pipe for me when it was my turn to smoke up. They walked me through the proper procedure and George then struck the lighter and I inhaled. The high was immediate. Immediate and mind-blowing, unlike anything I had known before. I now had a new best friend. As I exhaled, I slid out of the chair and onto the floor. I glanced at the clock. I wanted to time the high. It lasted 55 minutes before I felt the need to take another blast. Meanwhile, the other three blew through their share. Before I smoked again, I was kind enough to give George and Angela a small piece of what remained of mine. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and wanted us all to enjoy the drug. Shane had left sometime during my 55 minute high. I never saw him again. In keeping with the scientific testing of my life, I had started years earlier to carry around a journal with me at all times. I made detailed notes of that night’s experience and the few months that followed. I felt that this was all worth documenting. Looking back on that night, I am surprised at how long three people lasted with the little dope we had. That never happened again. I waited at George’s apartment until I came down from the high, as disappointing as it was to me that it had to come to an end at all, before going back to my apartment. I had totally forgotten about Angela’s baby in the room with us. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about much; I was getting high every day. Aside from the lying, I was having a great time and I could bury my shame with crack cocaine.     When I was ready to face the world, I marched right back over to George’s and asked if we could get some more dope. My roommate made me pay no bills and disability paid my child support plus my grandmother was sending me money, so I had a fair amount of money to blow and I was eager to do so. It was exciting.     I was always combining drugs to see how messed up I could get; crack was another weapon in my arsenal. George, Angela, and I started spending a lot of time together. Sometimes, I would buy the booze and they would get the dope and we’d all share. Other times, we relied on the money my grandmother was sending me for crack and, occasionally, weed. Angela had no job; she was living off George’s meager income. Soon he stopped going to work and we were all living off of mine. Angela would use her W.I.C card to buy baby food and formula at one store and then drive to another store and return it for cash. Neither of them had a car, so we used mine. We were using each other; my car proved a useful asset in my obtaining drugs.     We would party for days on end and then crash for a few hours. I was rarely at my own apartment. I would go there to get something to eat or maybe to sleep, but I mainly crashed on George’s couch. My roommate didn’t question me about my goings-on. He was on probation and needed this plausible deniability. I rarely saw my kids, though I would use them as an excuse to get away for a day to rest. I wasn’t going to see them. I was still married to my second wife and sometimes would call her in a fit of paranoia. She would question me, as would my mother, and I would lie about how I was spending all of my time.     One day I gave George money to buy dope. He left and I went outside to see where he went; I had grown curious about where he was getting the drugs. He seemed to have no problem taking me along when he scored pot, but was secretive about where the crack came from. As I was watching him disappear down the road, a Volkswagen pulled up in front of me and the rear window rolled down. Somehow I just instinctively knew what was about to happen. I walked over and the black woman asked me if I was a friend of George’s. I said I was. She motioned for me to come closer and we had our little drug deal right there. She told me to come and see her personally in apartment 2B, because, as she said, I was the one with the cash, not George. Now, I no longer needed my Native American friend or his crackhead girlfriend. I was proud of myself; I had handled my first buy like a seasoned pro. The three people in the car, all women, drove off and I closely watched them. George and Angela had told me that their main source for dope was ‘the Girls,’ two black, lesbian sisters who lived in the second floor apartment above the bar just two blocks from where we all lived. This was going to be easier than I thought.     My roommate worked 80+ hours a week. It really wasn’t much trouble avoiding him. I smoked what I had bought and then walked right down to see the Girls. They let me in and I was standing right next to another neighbor of mine, Randy. He worked, so he had income, and we started sharing dope with each other, taking turns buying depending on which one of us had the cash.     Back at the Girl’s place, we were getting to know each other better and better. The older of the two sisters, Audra, was the boss. Ariel, the other one, I soon learned was a loose cannon. A loose cannon who loved pills. I had xanax and geodon, both of which she was willing to trade with me for crack and weed. Audra had found out that I had a car, something she didn’t have and was desperate to use. After a few days, we struck up a deal: she would supply me amply with dope if I let her use my car to re-up. She said she preferred if I hung out with her or Ariel when she borrowed the car. This worked for me. She said I could even stay with her if that would make things easier. This totally worked for me. Now, I didn’t even have to leave the house to buy. I returned to my place to grab my meds and my checkbook. Now we were one big happy family: me, the Girls, Audra’s girlfriend, and lots and lots of drugs. Things just kept getting better for me. Except I now had to get used to 24 hour a day drug business and the fear of a drug raid, but that got better with time. I was going with the Girls on all of their buys, meeting all kinds of interesting people and taking notes the whole time. This didn’t seem to bother anyone. They seemed as curious by my actions as I was of theirs. As I was growing more comfortable with the situation, Audra’s girlfriend (I never found out her name, but she answered to “Hey, Girl,” and everybody involved seemed okay with that.) A few weeks after me joining the Girls, the girlfriend vanished. Audra later told me that this person was uncomfortable with my erratic behavior. Audra said she didn’t care. She said it was easier for her to find another woman than a licensed, insured car.     My wife had asked me to house-sit for her over the summer while she and our daughter went to visit her family in California. The timing couldn’t have been better, because the Girls had been asked to leave their place. My wife, who is a kindergarten teacher, left and the three of us moved in. We continued slinging dope, and business was more lucrative than ever, because we now had access to another vehicle. We partied and partied. Audra met a new girl, Amanda, who worked in the medical profession. She got high every morning before work and we would watch her young son sometimes while she was gone. Every now and again we would go over to Amanda’s house, where she lived with her aunt and grandmother, both crackheads. The Girls seemed have no problem bringing along a white guy and introducing me to the drug culture. In this world, I was the minority. A cracker. I found this all terribly fascinating.     My hunger for dope was growing. I wasn’t eating much, but this was nothing new for me. I only ate to keep from collapsing from malnutrition. I was making all of my decisions based on my drug addiction. I was supposed to be on ten prescriptions for my mental illnesses, but was only taking the xanax and geodon. The other eight scripts were eating up money that was better spent on dope.     One day Audra told me she had a business proposition for me. She said if I would invest $400 with her this week, she could pay me $600 next week. I agreed. She also said she had some Ecstasy, if I wanted to try it free of charge. I couldn’t resist. I popped the pill as soon as she handed it to me. I had heard a fair amount about this drug from friends bragging about how they liked it. As the day progressed, I was unimpressed. It was nice, but I was so used to the crack, that this paled in comparison. I never tried MDMA again.     As summer was winding down, the Girls and I vacated my wife’s place. They moved into a new apartment, with me forging work documents and letters of reference to help make them look like upstanding citizens, and I moved back in with my roommate. I didn’t stay there but a few weeks before moving back in with the Girls. Now we all seemed to be struggling to keep it together. Money was short and we couldn’t keep enough dope around to satisfy our habits. I had applied for two credit cards, with the intention of taking cash advances to buy dope. After a five-day binge, the Girls crashed. I was feeling very weak and I was getting frequent nose bleeds and having some chest pain. I was having more trouble than before thinking clearly and it was not amusing to me at this time. I took several xanax and went to my roommate’s apartment to sleep it off.     I wasn’t sure how long I had slept, but I figured quite a while judging from the number of missed calls and texts from the Girls. I tried calling them, but the call went straight to voicemail. My body and mind were going through withdrawal. I really needed a blast. I opened the front door of the apartment and my car was gone. I was so foggy-headed that it didn’t occur to me that the Girls had taken it to re-up. I had given them my other key, after all. The only thing I could think of was that it had been stolen. I called my wife, because the car was in her name and she called the police. The police then called me, wanting to play 20 Questions. I really couldn’t think at all. I was having putting together a complete sentence. Nothing was making ANY sense to me. I don’t remember what I told the police. When they finally let me go, I was frantic. I started calling anybody and everybody to get something, anything. I got a hold of a hooker who used and she drove over and sold me twenty dollars worth of rock. I smoked it, took some xanax and passed out.     I was awoken by my roommate. The cops had found the car. They had called my wife and told her that the driver was a known drug dealer. Wisely, my wife decided to not press charges. She had called my roommate and he got me up to go get the car. We arrived to find Ariel in the back of the cop car. She just shook her head at me. My roommate did all of the talking, because I was still incoherent. The next morning I had to answer (lie to) the questions being asked by my wife, my roommate, the police and, later, Audra and Ariel. I think it was pretty clear to everybody that I didn’t have any clue as to what I had been doing. Audra and Ariel were the most forgiving, because they needed the car to do business. I ignored the cops, my roommate, and wife and went back to stay with the Girls.     I lasted a couple of weeks, before needing to escape again. So, I went back to my apartment, self-medicated, and went to sleep. When I awoke, I was jonesing. I went to Randy’s apartment and, sure enough, he had some dope. As the night progressed we smoke and smoked and bought more and more, usually from prostitutes that Randy knew. . After a while of this, Randy started acting strange...or stranger...than usual, but we continued to get high. Then he just got really quiet. I paused to watch him and next he started seizing. I didn’t want to deal with an overdose; it was a buzzkiller. Randy was sideways. I grabbed what was left of the crack and left to find somewhere else to smoke it. The next day Randy seemed to have no memory whatsoever of the previous night.     Randy and I partied more days than not during the weeks of the next month. I was getting more and more desperate for dope. One night around midnight, I was at the end of my rope. I returned to my apartment from Randy’s and located my checkbook. I had no money, but I was going to write a check anyway. I had a brief moment of clarity and called my mom. She agreed to come and get me the next day and let me stay with her for a while, to get clean. Still totally trashed, I went to my car. In backing up I hit a car belonging to one of the other tenants. The collision was very loud and the neighbor came out and started shouting at me. My roommate came out and a cop pulled up. He wrote me a ticket and was going to take me jail for D.U.I., but my roommate convinced him to let me stay here, because my mom was coming the next day to take me to rehab. With my tail between my legs, I returned to the apartment, took a handful of xanax, and passed out.     The first paragraph is a lie. At thirteen, I broke my hand. The orthopedist gave me some painkiller, the name of which escapes me. My parents let me take the next day off from school and I took my pill. It did relieve the pain, but more than that, I liked the way it made my head feel. I complained a lot, hoping to get more of the drug (either in frequency or number of pills at one time), but my parents stood firm. I don’t think anyone, least of all me, would have entertained using words like “high” or “abuse,” but I knew that I enjoyed the feeling. I remember feeling frustrated when the real pain began to subside, because that meant I didn’t need it. But, I sure did want it! My next experience with drugs begins back at the first paragraph.     I was at my mom’s for only a few days before I landed in detox. The withdrawal from coming off the crack was intense. I was given thirty ativan, which I took in one day. After detox, I travelled to Florida to live with an ex-girlfriend. We each normalized the other’s behaviors. Over the next three years, I was in detox three more times, official rehab twice, and was arrested twice. I began combining street drugs, prescription drugs (mine and others), and whatever I could get OTC. I had no money, so I started stealing and trading sex for drugs. My girlfriend was trying to contain me, but she had gotten sucked into my vortex. Finally, I got tired of her complaining and left.     I had been concocting a plan to leave for weeks: to move to Las Vegas to live with some old user friends of mine. I was there for less than a week, before they asked me to leave. They said I was scary. So I traveled to Denver, where I spent four days on the streets, before being able to convince another old friend to let me stay with him. While homeless, I ended up in detox three times and arrested twice. On a cold December night, I found myself alone...again. This was the last time for me. At age 36, I was tired of waking up not knowing where I was or how I got there. Not having a clue what else to do, I prayed...

The Papal Groping Chair Bill Wolak During the Tenth Century, a sex test for future popes evolved. After his election, the new pope would be seated on an open-bottom chair with his genitals exposed through the bottom of the groping chair. Then the youngest cleric in attendance would reach under the chair to inspect the pope’s scrotum to ensure he was not a eunuch and therefore ineligible to hold high ecclesiastical office. If the gentle squeeze revealed that everything was in order, the young cleric announced, “He has testicles!” To which the conclave responded, “God be praised.”

John reads the Bill Wolak October 2012 (v111) Down in the Dirt magazine poem The Papal Groping Chair

See YouTube video of John reading this poem straight from the October 2012 issue (v111) of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 10/10/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

The Bridge Over Charles River Megan Willoughby     I am free.     They tell me I am free.     I am not free—they lie.     I was let out of jail a month ago. I stopped counting how long I was in there after the first year. They tell me it is 2008.     The jail became my home. In those walls, behind those fences, I was among people that were worse than me. But here, out here, in this brave new world, I am an offender. People look at me with scorn. Something about me is different, no one can ever manage to put a finger on it. Maybe it’s the way I constantly look over my shoulder, or perhaps the secret lies behind my glassy eyes.     In the jail I could hide from the guilt. It really is a different world, right down to the toothbrushes.     But out here everything is different. It is lights out when I decide it’s time for lights out. I am expected to pick up my dry cleaning, but I see the face everywhere. I see it reflected in shop windows, in mirrors, in the faces of small children, in the sheen of a new car. I see it everywhere. I wish I could hide from it.     In the jail, people would tell me their stories. Heinous, horrible crimes of violence, rape, molestation, murder. It was routine, they felt no remorse but pretended to. But I can’t get away from the face.     Every time I get into a car, even though someone else is driving, I am afraid. What if it happens again? Some greater cosmic significance must have been attached to me. Does God laugh at me? Lightening always hits the same place twice. No matter what they tell you—it’s true.     Every time I see a bicycle with training wheels, I see the face.     One day, one fucking bitter, awful, rainy day, I climbed into my car. In high school, they told us how dangerous it was to drink and drive, but it never feels as dangerous when you do it. I told my friend I would be fine to drive—they were always a bit more mature, a bit more apt to moderation. They sometimes took the harder things I offered them, but now they have families and careers—such is life. We were never bad kids, but it was three PM and I was ripped.     I sat in the car for a while, chain smoking cigarettes. They began to lull me to sleep. I decided I would drive through my friend’s neighborhood as fast as I could, just to see if I could break the laws of gravity.     I began to drive. Slow at first. I lit another cigarette and clutched it between my teeth. I felt the smoke swirl around in my lungs. My uncle had died of lung cancer but I was young and foolish.     I began to drive faster. I let my body take over. My mind was in space, far above me, watching me. It was like a movie and I was the main character. It was exciting. The sight of me in the car, of the car racing down the empty street—it was the most beautiful thing I had ever felt.     Horsepower. I wanted more horsepower.     My foot slammed the pedal down. The car rocketed forward. I leaned back, not slowing for the turns, flying past cars backing out of driveways, flying past people coming home from wherever they were, flying past children on slip n’ slides.     I began to pay attention to the beautiful sunny color of a house.     I turned back to the road.     And I saw the face. After seeing the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed, here was this face lurching out at me. She was utterly terrified. Children should never know that they are going to die. She had the face of an eighty year old man and she had hardly lived her life. I remember a book I had read: The Horror was reflected in her face. She was nightmarish.     My tires screeched. I felt a bump. This was no rabbit. This was a toddler. A person. A fucking person. I didn’t believe in the soul then. But the moment I heard the thud, I believed in the soul.     I put my head down, closed my eyes, and began to cry long, deep sobs. The thud was bang bang banging over and over again. Look what you have done. Look what you have done, you stupid junkie.     I heard screams, I heard sobs.     The sounds got worse.     I heard the scream of an ambulance and police cars, the shout of paramedics, the shout of police officers. It felt like two seconds had passed. How can they be here so quick? I can barely think.     Someone pulled me out of the car. I was still sobbing. Snot was dripping from my nose, my face was completely wet with blood and tears.     A paramedic led me to an ambulance and began to clean the cut on my head.     A police officer had to restrain a woman. I didn’t pay attention to what she said, but whatever she did say, I probably deserved.     I stopped crying. My face went blank. I wanted to kill myself. I played a game with God in my head. Let me go back, let me die, let them live, let me die. I’m just a junkie.     God didn’t bargain back.     People were gathered outside. Yellow tape was put up. A sheet was pulled out. I didn’t look. I couldn’t. If I looked, I would start to cry again, and then everyone would hate me. They already did. But I didn’t want to cry and hate myself more.     Cars drove away silently.     I sat in the back of the other ambulance, board faced.     I was handcuffed, I remember the cool metal on my skin. They put them on too tight; my skin became raw in the squad car.     I was put in a cell.     I didn’t cry again until the trial. I had to dehumanize everyone. If I didn’t do so, I would cry during the entire thing. I said how sorry I was. It made no difference. I could see the face then too.     I was sent to jail.     And now I am back in the world, no more than a ruthless pig. I have killed, and who says it won’t happen again?     I see the face everywhere. I cannot bear it. I will never be the same. The fucking guilt.     They told me that her name was Susie.     I will wear ankle weights like Quentin. The water has always been so calming to me.

Waking Up Jon Brunette     My eyes opened and my hands twitched like lightning had jabbed me. As I touched the box in which I usually slept, I felt as though I was lying in the dark of night, and didn’t want to get up yet. I couldn’t move, however I tried, and my throat scratched like sandpaper. I drank a lot of liquor, like everyone did out in the West, in the early 1880s, and I never realized what could happen to me in that kind of stupor. Occasionally, the black would wrap me up like an old ratty blanket and my teeth would chatter as loudly as my heart could beat.     Usually, the dew would chill me to the bone and I would feel that I should have died; usually, I’d wake up by the logs where I would cook rabbit, or deer, and I would feel clammy and uncomfortable, and my wife would haul me back to bed somehow. It would take a moment before I’d realize that I smelled of liquor and I would have to pinch my nose on reflex. It had become habit to drink and fall asleep and have Holly carry me back to bed. I could always wake up, eventually, so no one would ever care.     Finally, I couldn’t be woken up.     On the occasion that I realized that Holly hadn’t carried me back to bed, I yelled as loudly as my lungs could call out. Only, the echo didn’t erupt through the canyon, as it should have done, as it always had whenever trouble had come our way, nor did it carry throughout the valley that surrounded the canyon, but exploded inside my head, trapped by the thick wooden bed. Then, it died as quickly as it had come out of me.     Now, I realized what must have happened—     My wife probably thought what I would always think whenever bodies were found on the ground that couldn’t be woken anymore—they couldn’t tolerate the West and had drunk themselves to death, like I must have done. As I lay still (the box didn’t allow a lot of movement), I realized that I could die alone and helplessly, yet not by intoxication, but by the fact that I must have been mistaken for such a cause and had been buried alive!     I prayed for Holly to find me below the mud, realize that I had finally woken up, and haul the box in which I lay back to the surface. And, then, I might not die, after all. I prayed to be able to live with Holly, above ground, as I always have before. Somehow, I couldn’t die; I just couldn’t—not like this, anyway!     Anyhow, I prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more, but no God, nor Holly, ever came to my rescue. The box would continue to remind me of the tomb in which Holly and whoever else had placed me, by the dull sound of my voice every time I would call out—indeed, no one could hear me anymore!     I continued to pray, alone and helplessly...     I continued to pray...

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.

Caskets surface in fields and marshland Mark Vogel Jazz man Charlie Hunter wryly smiles, saying, It’s going to be a long process, like he will never stop electric playing, like he knows for sure the dead never again will fit neatly in holes, like of course when floods recede, bodies will still search for air pushed from lungs. Now queued, so many already escape from quiet, traveling first in floating caskets, inevitably seeking wild lands. Maybe future authorities will chain dissolving soft hopes, and watch judiciously, with security night scopes, for first signs of mischievous arms reaching. For god sakes, thirty four miles away, under Spanish moss, Aunt Ester surfaces unrecognizable, found on the creek bed by kids and dogs, while up the road duck hunters, maybe as penance, face multiple pale ancestors freed, deposited before a crowded trailer park. As matter of fact the chocolate water overwhelms low land, the newest ponds breeding mosquito bumper crops as giant carp cruise under the surface, listening for Charlie Hunter’s unstoppable dancing music written exactly for restless humor slithering forth, accepting without judgment nameless creatures in the murk. Even Grandma, alive with the birds, no longer caring she isn’t Grandma, taps congas telling the sax that sooner rather than later light floats above pastels, and oil draws maps on slowly drying rot.

Mark Vogel bio     Mark Vogel has published short stories in Cities and Roads, Knight Literary Journal, Whimperbang, SN Review, and Our Stories. Poetry has appeared in Poetry Midwest, English Journal, Cape Rock, Dark Sky, Cold Mountain Review, Broken Bridge Review and other journals. He is currently Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Fireflies Kristen Forbes     My dad asks where I want to go for my birthday and it’s a joke because the only options are Pizza Hut, McDonalds or that one Chinese place a few doors down from my grandma’s hairdresser.     Once, my grandma asked me to pick up some coffee and Parmesan cheese from the grocery store while she was getting her hair re-permed and when I arrived at the salon five minutes past the time she had told me, her eyes were bulging like she’d just witnessed a car accident. “Oh, thank God,” she said as a hairstylist named Jenna or Gina or Jauna pulled the last pink foam roller out of her hair. “I thought for sure you got lost.”     “There are five fucking streets in this town,” I wanted to say, looking down to see a stack of outdated hair magazines on an end table near two chairs. “I got stuck talking to Mr. Larson,” I said instead.     “Oh, that poor man,” my grandma said as she shakily raised herself from her chair and slipped into the jacket Jenna or Gina or Juana was holding out for her. “Did he tell you about his wife?”     In surprisingly grotesque detail, Mr. Larson, the grocery manager, had told me all about the “mess in her brain” that occurred when his wife squarely hit her head on the corner of a step on their front porch during last winter’s snowstorm.     “Yeah, it sounds awful,” I told her. “Your hair looks nice.”     “Oh, I’m too old to look nice,” she said, pausing to sign her check in a shaky scrawl. “Do you think you’ll be able to find the way home okay? I might take a little snooze in the car.”     “It’s a two-minute drive,” I said, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t always hear me very well. *     “So what’ll it be?” my dad asks now and I say let’s go for Chinese and he pulls the menu out of a drawer in the kitchen and grabs his reading glasses from his pocket.     We pile into the car at 4:45 and Joe lets Grandma sit up front, for once. “Don’t you get that she’s old?” I asked him after the first twenty times he yelled “Shotgun!” and sprinted to the car as Grandma struggled to latch the lock on the chain-link fence behind her. “This isn’t like being home and hanging out with your douchebag friends – the woman is 97 years old, you dumbass.”      I was ten when Joe was born and I’ve never forgiven him. It is one thing to be three or four or five even and have your life turned upside-down by the arrival of a new sibling, but quite another when you’ve had an entire decade to get used to life as a pampered only child.     The drive to the Chinese restaurant takes about 45 seconds and we pass the town post office and gas station along the way. “There’s a parking spot, right in front,” Grandma says, as if there aren’t ten million parking spots every goddamn place you look.     “Isn’t this nice?” Dad says as he holds open the glass doors, allowing us through first so we can tell the hostess we’re a party of four. As she takes us to a table in the center of the room we pass a fish tank, the hallway that leads to the bathrooms, and a framed picture of a mountain range.     “Why is nobody else here?” Joe asks as he slides into a chair, cutting off Grandma, who stands shakily and wonders aloud where to put her cane. I hold her chair out for her and tuck the cane behind the chair at the next table over.     “We beat the rush,” Dad says, taking his seat and patting his breast pocket to make sure he still has his reading glasses.     “What’s mu shu?” Joe asks. “What’s moo goo gai pan?” he continues. “What’s any of this stuff?”     I look at the way his dirty brown hair sloppily falls to one side and wonder how this could possibly be the trend with teenagers right now. I catch myself thinking “teenagers” and feel like a 97-year-old woman.     We all sit and pass around oversized, laminated menus. “The big 2-4,” Dad says, and I say, “Yup, can you believe it?” and excuse myself to use the restroom.     The walls in here are pink and the sink is tiled and I realize this is the fourteenth time we’ve been to this restaurant since I first arrived in June. Dad and Joe have only been here a week, so it’s the first time for them. My eyebrows look weird when I study my reflection and I take a pair of tweezers from my purse, plucking at stray hairs. I wash my hands and dry them with the cloth towels I thought they’d outlawed for being so germy years ago. Different rules apply in these small towns.     The waitress is ready to take our order when I get back to the table and she glares at me as if I’m holding her back from something. I glance around the empty restaurant and back to her, saying the chicken-lemon-whatever-it-is is fine.     “Honey chicken?” she asks, glaring harder. “We don’t have lemon chicken.”     “Honey’s great,” I say. Grandma says she’ll have the same, Dad orders the Kung Pao shrimp, Joe asks a few obnoxious questions before settling on beef and broccoli, and we all order sweet tea and egg rolls as an appetizer.     “Do you feel older today?” Grandma asks, *     and I am seven again, with my mom’s hand on my wrist; she is kneeling into me and I smell lilacs. She just set a cake on the table – not homemade like the ones Sarah’s mom made for her birthdays, but a chocolate cake loaded with pink and purple flowers she’d picked up from Costco earlier that morning. “How does it feel to be seven?” she asked and I shrugged and said it felt exactly the same as six.     “But so much will happen to you this year, Sweetie. You’ll go to a new school and make new friends and learn things and it will be so much bigger and better than six. Now, stop being such a frowny-face and get ready for your friends.”     She straightened her legs to stand up and the lilac smell went with her as she vanished into the kitchen to work on the punch and find a package of napkins. A moment later the doorbell rang and Kelsey and Lisa filed into the living room, leaving their wrapped presents on a pile on the table and letting their moms tie balloons around their wrists. My mom came back in from the kitchen. “I thought I heard the doorbell,” she said as her red lipstick took up the whole room and her purple dress crinkled against her body as she walked. “I was just telling Melanie how exciting it is to turn seven.”     Yes, oh yes, the other moms agreed. More kids arrived and we pinned tails on a donkey taped to the wall in our living room and ate fat pieces of sugary cake before gathering in a circle so I could open all the wrapped boxes and cards.     I was on my third present, a stuffed purple elephant, when the door crashed open and in came my dad, smelling like rum. The looseness of his limbs reminded me of a snake as he slithered to the floor and sat in the circle, cross-legged like the kids, as the moms sat with legs neatly crossed on the couch and chairs across the room.     “Henry,” my mom said, as she pulled a pile of wrapping paper off the floor and slid it into the trash bag she’d brought out a few minutes earlier.     “Lydia,” my dad said, glassy-eyed and wide-smiled as I opened my next gift, a Barbie in a pink bikini.     “I’m so sorry, I really apologize,” I heard her whisper to some of the moms, as my dad continued to stare at me and smile. *     “I don’t feel a day older,” I say now, peeling the wrapper off my straw and taking a sip of sweet tea.     “That’s good,” Grandma tells me. “You don’t want to feel your days, trust me.”     “Why does it take so long if we’re the only ones here?” Joe asks, sitting upright to look toward the kitchen.     “Are you in a hurry?” Grandma asks, tapping her fingers in front of him on the table.     “This place is lame,” he replies.     “You’re lame,” I say quickly, forgetting for a moment how old I am.     Dad takes a sip too big and I can’t tell if he’s coughing or choking, but he waves his hand in front of him as if to say I’m fine, I’m fine. The egg rolls arrive and we drench them in sweet and sour sauce and Grandma dabs herself with her napkin when grease begins to dribble down her chin.     “It’s been so nice with you here this summer,” Grandma says, and reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. *     “She listens to you more than anyone, don’t ask me why,” my dad said six months ago as we carried cups of coffee and walked across campus. I’d be graduating soon and this was one of his final visits to school. “Why don’t you just go for the summer and get her to at least consider it?” he asked, before waving at this guy named Kyle, who was walking in the other direction, toward the gym. Kyle gave a tiny wave back, then turned his head toward the sidewalk as he continued to walk. My dad loved interacting with students, going to the library and bookstore, even eating in the cafeteria. Maybe he wished he was still here, and not a pharmacist.     I tried to take a sip and mask my expression, which I feared would be a giveaway that a few weeks earlier I’d drunkenly made out with this Kyle guy. The coffee was still too hot and scalded the tip of my tongue. “You want me to spend my first summer after graduating with a senile grandma in a town with a population of what, twenty people?” I asked my dad.     “Oh, it’s gotta be at least twenty-seven by now,” my dad said, winking at me. “Remember when those twins were born a few years ago?”     I tried another sip – still too hot. “And I’m supposed to be like, Hey, Grandma, how are you, by the way, how would you like to move back to Maine so Dad can put you in a retirement home, does that sound good?”     “I probably wouldn’t use those exact words,” my dad said, then looked at me carefully. “Can I give you a piece of advice?” he asked. We came to a bench and sat down, putting our cups between us. I looked at him expectantly, waiting for some wisdom about life and growing and selflessness.      “Take the lid off and let it cool a few minutes before you burn your tongue off,” he said instead. *     “It’s been fun here,” I say to Grandma now, and think how much I’ve failed. There were so many opportunities, so many chances to say, “Hey, would you ever consider moving and being closer to Dad?” But I chickened out every time, instead spending my days watching Murder She Wrote and doing crossword puzzles with her.     Dad said he and Joe were coming for my birthday. I haven’t officially celebrated a birthday since I was fifteen, *     a few months before my mother barreled into my room after a quick, light knock on my bedroom door.     “I didn’t say you could come in,” I said as she sat on the corner of my bed, where I lay with my knees bent toward the ceiling. “What’s the point of knocking if you’re just gonna come in anyway?” She picked at imaginary lint on her dress and waited for me to shut up.     “I’m leaving your father,” she said. “Do you want to come with me?” *     The honey chicken is crispy and greasy and sweet and I think I’ve gained five pounds in the three months I’ve been here.     “Mmm mmm mmm,” Grandma says and Joe shovels food into his mouth by the forkful. “I’ve always liked this place,” Dad says, and Grandma murmurs in agreement.     “There’s nothing special about it,” Joe says, then goes back to his shoveling.     “We’ll have to get dessert,” Dad says.     “Oh, no,” I say. “I’m already so full.”     “You only get one birthday a year,” Dad says, and motions toward the waitress, who comes over in a firestorm of annoyance. “It’s my daughter’s birthday,” my dad informs this woman who couldn’t care less. “Do you have any cake?”     “We have mango ice cream or deep-fried banana spring rolls,” the waitress says, squinting. Dad looks toward me. “What do you think, Sweetie?” he asks.     They both sound awful. “The ice cream sounds good,” I say.     “I’ll have one of those too, and a coffee,” my dad says. He looks at my brother, whose hair has fallen directly in front of his eyes. “Do you want anything?” my dad asks.     “Coffee,” he says, shaking his head to get his hair to move.     “You’re fourteen, what do you need coffee for?” my dad asks.     “You’re sixty, what do you need coffee for?” Joe asks.     “Jesus. Mom, what do you want?” Dad asks Grandma.     “I’ll have those pineapple eggroll things,” Grandma says.     “Banana spring rolls,” the waitress says, and I wonder if murderous thoughts are going through her mind because that’s certainly how it looks from the outside.     A few minutes later we’re clinking our cups of coffee together and Dad and Grandma are saying, “To Melanie, may it be your greatest year yet.” I swirl creamer into my coffee and pass the sugar down to Joe, who scoffs and says he drinks his coffee black.     “Coffee should be coffee,” he says, as if he’s been drinking it for a million years. “What’s the point of masquerading it as an ice cream sundae?” I’m pretty sure he learned the word “masquerade” recently and has been dying to put it in conversation. “It’s like ugly chicks,” he continues and I look to Grandma and see her raise her eyebrows. “Doesn’t matter how much makeup they wear, they’re still ugly underneath. Let ugly be ugly. Let coffee be coffee.”     Dad is looking at him with his head cocked to the side and his eyebrows scrunched, the same look he uses when he’s doing a Sudoku puzzle or reading a map. He shakes his head and looks at me. “Want to open your presents?”     Nobody brought any presents into the restaurant, so I don’t know how to respond. “You mean, now?” I say.     Dad grabs his jacket from the chair behind him and pulls out an envelope. “Yes, now,” he says, handing the envelope to me. I open it and find a Starbucks card inside.     “Thanks,” I say. “They don’t have Starbucks here, though.”     “Well, they have them back home,” Dad says, now looking at me with the Sudoku face. “Or wherever you decide to go.”     Grandma and I look at each other. “You haven’t told him?” she asks, before biting into a deep-friend banana spring roll.     Now Dad and Joe look at each other, then back at me. “Told me what?” Dad asks.     “I decided to stay here a little longer,” I say, looking down at the mango ice cream that’s melting to mush.     “What the fuck?” slips out of Joe’s mouth and Dad looks at him sternly. “Watch your mouth,” he says. “What are you talking about?” he asks me.     “I like it here,” I say quietly.     “Here?” Joe asks, and now he’s practically choking. “Here?” he repeats.     “I don’t know what I want to do,” I say. “I need time to figure it out.” I use the back of my spoon to mash the mango mush.     “But Mel, you were supposed to,” Dad starts, then stops.     “You had a very easy assignment,” Joe cuts in. “Convince Grandma to move to an old people home. Done. Not difficult. What have you been doing these last three months?”     Grandma is looking from one member of the family to the next, like she’s watching a never-ending tennis match.     “This is her home,” I say. “This is where she lives, where she’s always lived.”     “But that’s not what,” my dad tries again.     “You people want me to move to a home?” grandma says and the waitress brings us our bill.     The ride home is quiet and after everyone gets settled inside, I slip out the back door and sit on the porch, where fireflies cast their glow in the summer breeze. My mom had been the one to teach me how to catch them in jars, how to collect an entire family of fireflies in a little glass container. *     “What do you mean, you’re leaving Dad?” I had asked, and she leaned across the bed to push a strand of hair that was falling in my face behind my ear.     “Mel,” she said. “You know what I mean.”     Her eyes were swollen from crying and her face looked long and tired. “Do you want to come with me, Sweetie?”     I sat up in my bed, straightening the legs on my pajama bottoms. “Is Joe coming?” I asked.     “I’m not asking Joe,” she said. “I’m asking you.” *     “What are you doing out here?” Joe asks, now standing in front of the back door. He makes his way down the porch steps and I point toward the sky.     “Watching the fireflies,” I tell him. “Remember when we used to do that with Mom?”     “No,” he says quickly, and pushes past me to sit on the grass, which he starts pulling from the ground in clumps.     The fireflies make a buzz-buzz sound and I feel like my entire childhood is hanging in the summer air.     “This place sucks,” Joe says, looking up at me from the grass. “What are you going to do here?”     “What am I going to do anywhere?” I ask, leaning my head back to see more of the sky.     “You’re acting like a child,” Joe says.     “You are a child,” I say.     The next morning we make pancakes and fry strips of bacon in a pan on the stove. Grandma shuffles in, still wearing her robe, and starts the coffee maker. Dad reads the paper and says softly, as though he doesn’t expect anyone to hear, “I’ve been sober exactly seventeen years now. The day after Mel’s birthday. Seventeen years.”     “I’m not going to a home and if that’s all you came here to do, you might as well leave,” Grandma says as I flip bacon with a fork. I look up to see my dad’s reaction and am surprised to see she’s looking directly at me.     “Grandma,” I say.     “I mean it,” she says. “I was getting along just fine without you. You’ve always been so,” and then she stops.     “So what?” I ask and Dad’s newspaper is down and Joe’s coffee cup is up and they’re both staring in my direction.     “So like your mother,” she finishes, then excuses herself to go to the bathroom.     I transfer the strips of bacon onto a serving platter and turn off the stove. I set the bacon in the center of the table and ask my dad if he wants any orange juice.     “Melanie,” he says, and it’s the worst thing he could say, and tears start welling in my eyes. *     “You’re splitting us up?” I asked my mother as she looked at me, expectantly.     “You hate your brother,” she said matter-of-factly, like she had just ordered a pizza without olives and was doing me some kind of favor.     “I don’t hate him, hate him,” I said. “He’s just annoying sometimes.”     “Well, I’m not taking him with me,” she said. “He is way too much like your father.”     “Mom, he’s five,” I said and she looked at me blankly.     “Do you want to come with me or not?” she asked. *     “Melanie,” my dad repeats, and he gets out of his chair and stands next to me at the fridge, rubbing his hands on my shoulders. I squeeze my eyes shut, suck my tears back inside of me, and reach for the orange juice.     “I think she got the kind with the pulp,” I say. “I don’t know why she likes it so much.”     Nobody talks during breakfast and Joe looks blind every time he looks toward the window, where sun is shining fiercely through the panes of glass. The pancakes are too thick and gooey in the middle, but we eat them anyway as we drink our coffee and rattle our silverware against the plates.     “Maybe we could drive to the falls,” Dad says finally.     Grandma collects her dishes and puts them in the sink. “I’m too old for drives,” she says, and heads to the living room to work on a crossword puzzle.     “Maybe you two should go, and I’ll stay with Grandma,” Dad says, putting his own dishes in the sink on top of Grandma’s.     “Us?” I say, looking at Joe, who rolls his eyes. Dad nods and I realize this is one of those times where the decision’s already been made.     “Don’t worry, I’ll finish the dishes,” Dad says.     Joe and I put on our jackets and I grab my purse. He tries to open his door before I’ve had a chance to unlock it and yells at me to hurry up. I get in the car and start the ignition and we’ve gone about a block when he asks if we can stop somewhere and get beer.     “Absolutely not,” I say, and start making my way toward the waterfalls as he fiddles with the radio controls, bouncing from one station to the next.     “Cigarettes, then,” Joe says. “Something to make this a little less shitty.”     “You are fourteen years old,” I remind him and slap his hand away so the music will rest on one station.     “I know,” he says. “Same age you were when you were drinking at the house, right?”     We’re driving on the only main road of town and I look over at him quickly. “I never drank at the house,” I say. “And you were four, so it’s not like you would know.”     “Fine, maybe not when I was four,” he says. “But I remember everything from five on.”     “Yeah, right,” I tell him. We pass the town library.     “I remember the day mom left,” he says as we pass the town church.     “You could not possibly remember that,” I say.     “She was wearing a green shirt and she called you an ungrateful bitch and said that if you don’t leave with her now, she’ll never talk to you again,” he says.     The road is straight from here to the falls and I turn sideways to look at him closely. He has very smooth skin, not like most of the boys his age. And when his hair isn’t falling in them, his brown eyes are big and bright. The freckles that line his cheeks and nose look the same as the ones I see in the mirror every day.     “You said you were tired of being the adult and that she was the bitch for leaving behind a little kid and she grabbed that big black suitcase with wheels and slammed the door behind her,” Joe says. “And then you sat on the couch and cried forever.”     I look at him again and he’s looking back at me and all I can do is blink and breathe. Finally I look back toward the road and drive. When I see the gas station, I pull in and tell him to wait in the car while I go inside. I come back with a case of Budweiser and a pack of Parliament Lights.     We go to the waterfalls and stay there all day, drinking beer and chain-smoking and counting the cars that pass: three in three hours. We don’t talk anymore; we just stare at the cascading water, until darkness descends and the fireflies come out.     “I wish we had these back home,” I say finally.     “I thought this was your home now,” Joe says.     We get back in the car and it takes every ounce of concentration to drive in a semi-straight line. I hit the curb when I park Grandma’s car and we both realize we forgot to get rid of the beer cans that now line the back seat. Joe looks at me, panic in his eyes.     “We’ll deal with it later,” I tell him.     We tiptoe into the house and are stopped immediately by Dad and Grandma, both sitting alert at the table near the door.     “Oh, thank God,” Grandma says. “I thought for sure you got lost.”     “Have you been at the falls this whole time?” Dad asks, Sudoku expression taking over his face.     “Yes,” we both say, stumbling inside.     “You smell like smoke,” Grandma says as she rises from her seat. “And I’m moving back to Maine.”     “There was a campfire,” I say at the same time Joe says, “What?”     Grandma shrugs. “I’m getting too old for this,” she says, motioning her hands through the air, like she’s including the whole town in her “this.”     I stare at Grandma, then Dad, then look at the clock and the stack of bills on the counter, then back to Grandma. “Why’d you ask me to stay with you, then?” I ask her finally.     She gazes at me carefully. “I thought you could take care of me,” she says. She looks at Joe, who has leaned down to tie his shoes and almost falls in the process. “But maybe it’s time you take care of you.”     It’s cooler in the kitchen than it was outside. My skin feels dewy from the humidity and I’m starting to get a headache. The fireflies are swarming outside the windows and I can’t keep myself from staring at them. In their soft green glow, I try to see what lies ahead.

Kristen Forbes Bio     Kristen Forbes is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon whose work has been published in Wavelength Magazine, Aspens Magazine, Stork Magazine, Portland Tribune, Beaverton Valley Times, Lake Oswego Review, West Linn Tidings, Pause: Journal of Dramatic Writing, the Stand Up To Cancer website, and other publications. She holds a BFA in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University.

Ricky’s Sickness Michael Cavazos     Guadalupe hit the on switch, and a strong bopping beat roared from her speakers. The party was on. Everybody was having a good time. Fools played beer pong. Fellas took shots, getting some fire in their bellies. Females stared the others down, their eyes packed with bullets. Couples grinded on the living room floor assured that they were going to get lucky tonight.     On a couch by the bathroom and through the haze and stench of marijuana smoke, Ricky sat with a simple boyish smile stapled to his lips. He was hanging out with people who might as well have been family and he was drunk enough to make new friends feel loose around him, especially this chick he just met, Lucy Vargas.     “So what’s it like being the hottest girl here?” he asked.     “You’re full of crap, boy”, was her response.     He gave her a modest, “Thanks”.     Lucy cocked her eyebrow. “Quit messin’ with me.”     “C’mon, you know you like it”, replied Ricky. She did. He had just told her four lies in the past two minutes and almost all of them she believed. His lies made her laugh, and he felt smooth telling them. He could be smoother than cream at times. More so when he was drunk. This was going to be one of those times. “I joke with all the pretty chicks.” He shot her a fast wink.     Lucy smiled heavily making her bronze cheeks bulge and her luscious lips widen. She looked into her Dr. Pepper and vodka as if it had all the answers in the world. She took out her mirror and fixed her hair. A ring of silver choked her finger. “Hey chick, do you got a boyfriend or something?”     She looked back at Ricky with her dimples plastered on her cheeks. “No I don’t got a boyfriend or something.” She slipped her hand in her pocket. When she pulled out, the ring was gone. “Tell me Mr. R-R-R-Ricky”, she rolled her tongue, making Ricky blush. He loved it when the sexy Mexican chicks did that. “Are you always a flirt or is that just what whores do?”     Ricky took a long sip of his Coke and Jack Daniels. When he spoke, he had an evil grin with a tipsy slur. “You tell me, Mizz La-la-la-Lucy.”     She matched the length of his gulp and her eyes become feline and bloodthirsty. She looked at him up and down, with a crescent smile, “That’s just what whores do.” She winked at him, and then moved a little closer to him.     Ricky’s mind bobbed and weaved with drunkenness. If he were sober he could never ask this. “So, you wanna go outside“, he stuck a thumb out at the door, “and make out, chick?”     She stood up, grabbed his hand to lead him out the door, putting him on her lusty leash.     They went over to the stair cases. They were smiling, but they both felt painfully awkward.     Ricky’s judgment had been obliterated by his fourth drink. With no restraint holding him back, he kissed her on the cheek, actually missing her lips. She kissed him back, missing as well. Ricky made it on the second try, and they started the soft sparring match of young lips and hungry tongues. For the next fifteen minutes, the only sound in the sky was the sound of their kisses.     They were both in a lusty mood especially Ricky, who hadn’t so much as grinded in a month.     Lucy broke off to wipe some spit off her lips, still smiling in her feline way.     Ricky could only stare; he was enchanted by her.     “Guess we shouldn’t go back to the party”, she said.     “Nah, guess not.” Ricky snaked his arm around her hips, “Lucy, chick, I really like you.”     She looked at him blankly and started laughing. “You’re drunk you. You hardly even know me.”     “I’m sober enough to know I’m in love with you. I wanna marry you and have kids with you. I wanna take care of you.” He started kissing her neck.      She pulled away, “Dude, that’s just creepy.”     Ricky gave her the eyes of a kicked puppy     She laughed till her abs burned.” Let’s go, kid.”     “Go where, sexy?” Ricky stared at her half awake. The alcohol made his legs feel heavy.     “To our honey moon, punk!” She dragged him up, letting him rest his head on her exposed shoulder. She could feel the prickly stubble from his chin stab her soft skin. It felt good.     Ricky blurted out, “Ok well...I wanna have sex right here and now!”      “No, stupid”, she chuckled, “my apartment’s right up here.”     “What?! Really?! That’s cool!”     They walked up to room three fifteen. She unlocked her door and let him on her bed.     Ricky was starting to genuinely like Lucy more and more, each time he ran his eyes over her physique. It was too luscious to be street-legal. She had perky breasts squeezed together in a brown V. Her waist was thin, her hips were wide. She was a hot-rod of a woman.      He stared at her blankly from the bed, enjoying the view, and then he grabbed her arm and pulled her on top of him. Her weight was hot and crushing. He loved it. His body was hungry for her, it wanted to devour her and savor her flavor for as long it could.     But, it was all wrong somehow. A cold ball of fear formed in his stomach. It wasn’t just the fact that premarital sex would grant him a coach pass to hell, it’s just that sex could mess things up-especially bad sex. He really liked this chick; he didn’t want to screw it up.     He started to caress her back, soaking in her warmth through his fingertips. He took off her shirt, and felt for her bra strap. He tried to take it off, but it wouldn’t give.     He gave up on the bra, and just stroked his right hand around the top of her breasts. He circled his left hand around her stomach. She moved her hand to meet his. She kissed him on the lips. Her breath tasted of candy. He was very tired. She inched her tongue in his mouth then pulled back. He closed his eyes, and very unintentionally passed into sub consciousness.     Ricky dreamt of himself and his mother and father, but in this dream they were back to the family they had been before his dad split when he was two. He saw his family like he had seen them in his grandma’s old photo albums.     His mother was beautiful, short and petite with very fair skin, with long lustrous black hair. His father was tall and dark with a chiseled face. His physique was burly. Ricky, as a two year old baby, had the look of his mother but with his father’s tan. The baby was the product of two disillusioned young lovers.     In this dream he was a baby and when he was a baby, he would often walk around the house looking at his pudgy hands. He walked around his old house until he heard rocking and moaning movements from his parents’ bedroom.     He opened the door just so he could see a slice of their room. He couldn’t believe what he’d seen. His father was on top of his mother. They were rocking back and forth making noises like a horny monkey. His tiny mind couldn’t comprehend that this was how he’d been created. They seemed to be in pain, but at the same time happy. Their auras blasted intense love.     Then the dream faded away from his vision and he was eighteen once more. The room came back, burning bright with fire. His mother was on top this time, but not with his dad. He shut his eyes tight and he opened them for an instance. On top of the room, black clouds of smoke swayed about. His mother was losing her faithfulness, just like how she had done in real life. Ricky never knew who she had done it with, but this man literally had no face. She was rutting him like an animal. He couldn’t describe the kind of disgust he was feeling except, that it was paralyzing. Her face was branded with the insane feeling that being intoxicated brings, and her eyes were glazed with the insane pleasure that only sex can give     Hanging from the front of the room, was his father, shedding tears of fire. The skin from his body floated to the floor as black ash. Only a sad skeleton remained of him.     Ricky was still frozen from hearing his mom screech from the pain of penetration. He now felt shame. Despite all the catholic philosophy his mom had tried to put in him, he still managed to have premarital sex three times in the past eight months. He met those willing girls, just like how he met Lucy: drunk and smiling. He didn’t love any of them. He didn’t even like any of them. In the morning he would wake up next to them and run his eyes over their naked bodies, and feel nothing but hate. However, he kept doing it to get that rush of pure primal passion; it probably gave his mother the same feeling when she did it...     He could not take it anymore; he rushed to his mom, begging her to stop.     His mother just laughed still being jostled by the man.     “Why, son? You’re just like me.” She grabbed his arm with a skeleton hand, which burned with lust. Her head burst into flame, revealing a red joyful skull. “You’re just like me”. Her skull morphed into each one of the girls he’d slept with. It finally ended with Lucy’s haughty face. Ricky gasped.     “....Just like me...” When he looked at the man, he saw himself lying on the bed with a simple lopsided smile, staring right back.     “I’ll stop! Mom. I promise! I’ll stop!” He woke up to the taste of salty tears. He felt for his naked body but couldn’t because an armor of clothes protected his nudeness.     He looked to his left. There she was, shirtless and breasts covered. He cupped them in his hands, massaging them and basking in their softness. He kissed them and kissed her lips. All she did was twitch and snore. She was beautiful even with the crust in her eyes and with drool dripping out of her mouth. Her eyes fluttered open big and bright, like sunrise on a summer day     She pulled her face in a soft grin. She reached for his hair to caress it. “You’re still here.”     “Umm...yeah”, he did the same to her. Trying hard to match her stare “listen”, he noisily swallowed, “...I like you Lucy, and we don’t gotta do what we were trying to do last night for a good long while...I mean I like you.”     She shrugged. “You feel asleep.” She let him go to reach the blanket. She covered them with it. She hugged him tight and whispered in his hear “I like you too, but I think you’re going to have to leave in an hour or so.” She kissed him on his cheekbone laid back down and pulled Ricky’s head down to her chest. She brought the cotton blanket over her neck, covering Ricky from the world.     Ricky frowned. ”Why do I gotta leave?” He came up from the blanket. She threw up a crowned finger, “Because I’m married.”     He waited for her face to crack into laughter. He needed her to be kidding. She was smiling, but he knew there was no joke behind it. Last night’s alcohol began to catch up to him; it made his stomach churn violently. He rushed to the bathroom to throw up three months of guilt and hypocrisy. The back of his throat burned with hopelessness... You’re just like me.

At First Glance Bob Strother     Bernice Crowder was slumped in her wheelchair, dozing, when the squeak, squeak, squeak of rubber soles on linoleum awakened her. She checked the screen of the muted television where Vanna White illuminated letter tiles and smiled brightly for the cameras. Must be dinnertime, Bernice thought.     A moment later, one of the nurses poked her head through the doorway. Her nameplate read Olivia, and her smile was not nearly as effortless as Vanna’s. “May I wheel you down to the dining area, Ms. Crowder?”     “Not tonight, Olivia. I think I’ll take dinner in my room.”     “Oh, come on now,” the plump woman said. “Don’t you want to spend some time with your friends?” Her mouth still bore the same tight smile, but her dark eyes held the hint of a challenge—like she might just decide to whisk Bernice away in spite of any protestations to the contrary.     Bernice supposed it was a necessary thing on occasion—the nurses’ disregard for what they likely considered the irrational whimsies of the residents. After all, at least half the nursing home’s population suffered from a marked lack of their faculties. But not her—not yet, at least—and she was determined to stand her ground. She straightened in her chair and squared her shoulders. “I’m quite sure my friends will not suffer from my absence.” Then, to avoid any further discussion, she added, “I’m not feeling well this evening. It might be a cold. I wouldn’t want to expose anyone else.”     Olivia pursed her thin lips and nodded. “All right, then. I’ll have someone bring your dinner shortly. Ring if you need anything.” She turned and left, squeaking back down the corridor.     Dinner, Bernice thought. It was Saturday, so the evening’s fare would be meatloaf covered with a gelatinous, gray skim of what passed for gravy, mashed potatoes, and overcooked green beans. It was barely palatable. Even less palatable was the way her friends cooed and fawned over the home’s latest arrival—Emma Gamble, a heavily made-up octogenarian who claimed to have once been a Las Vegas stage star. The woman’s stories were overly dramatic, often bawdy, and, to Bernice’s way of thinking, almost assuredly complete lies.     She grasped the wheels of her chair, maneuvered around the foot of her bed, and paused just inside the doorway of her room. In the hallway, men and women headed toward the dining area, shuffling behind walkers or in wheelchairs, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed. They reminded Bernice of a movie she’d seen in her younger days. Something of the Dead, wasn’t it?     A gaggle of women appeared to her left. They moved slowly but without the need for devices or assistance: her usual dining partners, plus one—Emma Gamble—who already was holding forth with another of her rambling tales. The women huddled around her like chicks after a hen, straining for every word. A frown creased Bernice’s forehead. She flipped off the wall switch next to the door and retreated into the shadows as the group passed. “Enjoy your story time, ladies,” she murmured. “I’d rather watch TV. It’s much more believable.”     As Bernice was about to turn back, she heard a commotion—laughter and youthful voices. Curious, she inched forward and peered around the doorframe. Strolling down the corridor was Blanche McCall—at seventy-three, one of the home’s more sprightly residents—accompanied by a younger man and woman, a teen-aged boy, and an even younger blonde-haired girl. Before Bernice could retreat into the shadows, Blanche caught her eye.     “Hello, Bernice. This is my son and daughter-in-law and my grandchildren. We’re going out for dinner.”     The couple nodded, the boy crossed his arms over his chest, looking bored, but the young girl stepped forward and offered her hand. “I’m Tiffany,” she said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”     Bernice took the girl’s hand in her own, feeling the smooth, soft skin and the warmth of her grasp, losing herself in the child’s innocent green eyes. She held on for just a few seconds too long before forcing her gaze back to her friend. “That’s wonderful, Blanche. Do have a grand time, won’t you?” She watched as the happy group disappeared through the building’s entrance foyer, then she pivoted the wheelchair and returned to her station beside the bed. On the television, Wheel of Fortune had given way to Jeopardy. There in the darkened room, a tear fell from Bernice’s cheek and formed a tiny bead on her hand—the hand still tingling from the young girl’s touch. .....     She was fifty-two when it happened, driving home from the drugstore after replenishing her supply of over-the-counter antihistamines. She’d taken the cut-through street, the one she always used to avoid the main thoroughfare’s traffic lights, and was deciding on what to cook for dinner when she spotted the yellow vase. It sat alongside the road among some flattened cardboard boxes and other assorted rubbish obviously meant for trash pickup. Such a lovely color, she thought as she passed by. It would look perfect on the dining room table with some tulips from the garden. On impulse, she circled the block and came back around, slower this time, and eased to a stop just beyond the uneven heap of boxes. She hesitated for a moment, embarrassed at the thought of rummaging through someone else’s castoffs. What if someone saw her? Then she thought, Rubbish! I’ll only be a minute, and chuckled at her joke.     Bernice left her car running and hurried back to the trash. She glanced left and right, and, satisfied no one was watching, scooped up the vase. She turned it in her hands, admiring the way it gleamed incandescently in the sunlight. It really was beautiful, and in such good shape it looked practically new.     Bernice heard a noise behind her and turned. At an intersection some fifty yards back, a silver sedan had stopped in the roadway. Two men—one black, one white—got out and circled back to the rear of the vehicle. The black man opened the trunk, and for a moment, it blocked Bernice’s view of them. Then, seconds later, the trunk lid slammed shut and only the black man was visible.     What on earth was going on?     As she stood clutching the vase, the black man re-entered the car, gunned the engine once, and whipped past her down the street. Bernice blinked. Did I just see what I think I saw? She checked the adjacent houses, this time hoping she would see a curious face peering out from behind a window—but again, there was nothing. With her heart racing, Bernice ran back to her car, threw it in gear, and sped off in pursuit of the silver sedan.     She caught up with the car a block further on but had no idea what she was going to do. Her eyes scanned the yards and cross streets, searching desperately for some sign of life—someone whom she could alert and ask to call the police. Up ahead the sedan swung wide into a three-way intersection, careened through a sharp u-turn, and raced by her again heading back the way they’d come. He’s seen me, she thought. He knows I’m following him and he’s trying to get away.     Bernice slammed on her brakes and cut the wheels hard right. She jerked into a paved driveway, threw the car into reverse, and bounced back out onto the road. The sedan’s rear window shimmered in the sunlight, now almost a full block ahead of her. She jammed down on the accelerator, heard the squeal of the tires as her car leapt forward. Gradually she gained ground, bumping over cracked asphalt and potholes, her fingers turning white on the steering wheel.     She’d heard of an adrenaline rush—read about it somewhere—and thought that must be what was happening to her. Her pulse thumped like a drum in her ears and her whole body trembled. But inside ... inside, she felt alive. For once in her life, she was actually doing something. Something she’d only read about in novels, something heroic.     A stoplight loomed in the distance, signaling the main artery toward downtown. Could she stay with him in traffic? She pressed hard on the gas pedal, pulling within twenty yards of the other vehicle. Then, almost before she realized what had happened, the silver sedan blew through the yellow, hooked a left, and was gone. Bernice braked abruptly and stopped just short of the intersection, breathing hard.     On the other side of the street, a Seven-Eleven offered two-liter Pepsis for seventy-nine cents and Marlboros for two-twenty-five a pack. When the light changed, Bernice rolled into the parking lot and stopped by the outside pay phone.     The two responding police officers—one black with Sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, the other a younger white man with none—asked Bernice to show them the scene of the abduction. She did so, pulling onto the shoulder where she had first seen the vase as the patrol unit nosed in behind her. The two officers got out of their car and joined Bernice at the edge of the road.     “All right, Mrs. Crowder,” the older man said, “please tell us again what you saw.”     Bernice retold her account of the incident—how she’d seen the men stop and walk to the rear of the sedan, and how a moment later, the black man had locked the other man in the trunk. “Then he got back into the car and took off.”     “And you followed them.”     “Yes, I’m not sure why; it’s not like me at all to be so impetuous. I just didn’t know what else to do. The way he was driving—much too fast for this road, I’m sure—and the way he made that U-turn, I’m positive he was trying to make a getaway.”     The officer who had introduced himself as Sergeant Johnson turned to his younger partner. “Haskins, knock on some doors. See if you can find anyone else who witnessed the incident.”     As Haskins walked away, Johnson took a pad and pencil from his pocket and said, “Just once more, Mrs. Crowder, if you don’t mind. Let’s start with your driver’s license information this time.” He licked the tip of the pencil and took notes as Bernice talked.     Several minutes later, another car arrived, this one without the markings and light bar of the patrol unit. A tall, heavyset man got out and introduced himself as Detective Styles. He had bristly gray hair, heavy jowls, and eyes that never left Bernice’s as Officer Johnson explained the situation. Then Styles asked Bernice to tell the story yet again.     When she finished he said, “Seems like a strange place for a kidnapping—right here on a busy cut-through street, with you and whomever else might be observing.”     Bernice wasn’t sure what to say. Was this man questioning what she saw? Her cheeks grew warm and she felt a rush of anger building inside her. “I know what I saw.”     The detective looked at Officer Johnson and raised his eyebrows. Then he stepped over to her car and looked inside. When he returned he asked, “Are you on medication, Mrs. Crowder?”     She thought of the two tablets she’d swallowed before leaving the drugstore parking lot. “I took a couple of antihistamines for my allergies.”     “What about alcohol? There are several empty beer cans in the floor of the rear passenger compartment.”     Oh, my God. Bernice glanced back toward her car. She’d thought she heard something rattling around in the back. “Those are my husband’s empty cans from his fishing trip last weekend. I asked him I don’t know how many times ...”     Bernice paused as the younger officer returned and addressed Sergeant Johnson.     “Two of the neighbors saw Mrs. Crowder picking through the trash but no one saw anything else.”     Bernice felt a flush creep up along her neck. Picking through the trash; how awful it sounded—as though she were a vagrant or something.     The detective sighed loudly. “Okay, ma’am, you can return to your car for a minute while we sort this out.”     Once inside the car, Bernice’s breathing went shallow again—not from excitement as it had during the car chase, but from a growing awareness that she was being humored. In her rearview mirror she saw the detective’s jowls quiver as he shook his head and clapped Johnson on the shoulder, saw the barely concealed amusement on his face as he sauntered to her car and leaned down to the open window.     “You can go on home now, Mrs. Crowder. We’ll take it from here. That is, if you feel okay to drive.”     “Why wouldn’t I feel all right to drive?” she snapped as she started the engine and yanked the gearshift lever into Drive. She almost said something else, but thought better of it and pulled back onto the road. As the detective grew smaller in her mirror, tears welled up behind Bernice’s eyes. That was so humiliating, she thought. They didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me at all.     A few blocks from her house, Bernice turned onto Brice Avenue, eased to the curb, and shut off the car’s motor. Retrieving a small, embroidered handkerchief from her purse, she adjusted the rearview mirror and dabbed at her eyes. Nothing gained by going home looking like I’ve been crying. It was while she was repairing her mascara that the blue van rounded the corner of a side street a half-block behind her and stopped, facing back the way Bernice had come. She mightn’t have paid it any attention at all except for the little blonde girl playing in the yard next to the van.     Her hair was so light and shiny it appeared flaxen in the bright afternoon sunlight. As Bernice watched, the girl approached the vehicle and seemed to be talking with its occupant. A moment later, the passenger door swung open and the little girl climbed in. As soon as the door was closed, the van screeched away and hurtled down the street.     Bernice sat in her car, transfixed by what she’d just seen. Her first, natural impulse was to find a telephone and call the police. Then she remembered the detective—the way he’d looked at her when he’d told her to go on home. The humiliation she’d felt. It couldn’t happen twice, could it? Not in the same day. Not within the same hour.     “I’m being ridiculous,” she said. “It was probably the girl’s parents.” Then she started her car and drove home.     But even after she began preparing dinner, she couldn’t get her mind off the girl. When the telephone rang she snatched it up, eager for distraction. The caller was Sergeant Johnson.     “I thought you’d want to know, ma’am. We solved the mystery of the silver sedan. A similar car came back down the road only minutes after you’d left, and we pulled it over. Seems two men from the local Ford dealership were checking for a rattle in the sedan’s trunk. One climbed into the trunk to check it out while the other drove. I’d have gotten back to you sooner but we received another call—a little girl kidnapped over on Brice Avenue, kind of close to your house. The whole department’s been looking for her.” He paused for a moment. “You were absolutely right in calling us, Mrs. Crowder. The incident may have seemed a bit implausible at the time, but we have to check all these things out.”     Bernice tightened her trembling grip on the telephone. “I ... Sergeant Johnson ... I may have seen something ... on Brice Avenue ... after I left you.” She stumbled through the rest of it—what little there was. When she was done, Sergeant Johnson thanked her politely and rang off, his unasked question hanging over her head like a thick, dark cloud: Why didn’t you call us?     Bernice was quiet at dinner that evening, telling her husband that her allergies were bothering her again. She stayed up alone to catch the eleven o’clock news, hoping against hope that the little blonde girl had been found.     She had, but the news was not good. .....     “Mrs. Crowder, I have your dinner. Shall I put it on your tray?”     Bernice opened her eyes. One of the kitchen help stood silhouetted in the doorway. “Yes ... the tray will be fine. Thank you.”     Bernice waited while the woman arranged her tray and pushed it within her reach. She removed the round metal top, placed it to one side, and sniffed the food. No smell, no flavor, might as well be cardboard.     About now the others would be having their dessert and lingering over cups of tepid coffee, doing anything to avoid going back to their lonely rooms and the long night ahead. But things always looked cheerier in the morning: the nurses’ standard mantra. There would be breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and stories, always the stories. If they weren’t Emma Gamble’s they would be someone else’s. Everyone had their stories—everyone except Bernice.     She might’ve had a story.     The men from the car dealership would have been a good one. Everyone would have laughed. But that story couldn’t be separated from the other one. The little blonde girl’s story—the time Bernice might have been a heroine, but wasn’t.     Bernice took a bite of mashed potatoes. They were stiff and cold and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She put down her fork and turned to stare out the window where the trees formed skeletal outlines framed by a lowering black and purple sky.

August Don Thompson     Everyone here tends toward ghostliness by the end of summer. Irritable, enervated, worn so thin we see through each other. Old arguments come back to haunt us in August.     Women’s voices scrape like knives on a whetstone, honing for a fight. Men won’t talk at all; their lizard eyes glare out from under a silence too hot to touch.     If an evening breeze stirs at all, it blows hard from the wrong direction. Grit gets in your teeth, and its so dry you’d swear it originated in an ancient ossuary. Balm has nothing to do with it.     After dark, the sirens—hopefully in the distance, fading. But you hear the spectral wail down the street, the lamentations next door, the banshee in your attic. At least the blood cries out from the sidewalk with a voice only God can hear.     Maybe this August won’t be like that. I think the seminars will be good for us and those weekends at the retreat center among the high pines. Up there the air is too thin to hold a grudge. Already I feel anger flicker to the end of its neurons and burn out. And the lovely blue enzymes of peace seeping into my mind. I think everything will be all right... Easy to say at the end of April.

Plight of Troth Christopher Reinhardt Krueger     When he stopped showing up, Colin’s boss called his phone but it was off. His friends called too and, unable to reach him, assumed he had finally cut loose and they were happy for him. The neighbors had hardly known him. He hardly spoke to his mother and his father was dead. Colin Myers had disappeared and for a long time very few people noticed and hardly anyone seemed to care.     It had just begun to be cold when, almost a year earlier, Colin and his girlfriend Sierra moved to a ground floor apartment in West Philadelphia. Colin’s mother, Diane, had hated the idea of the move from the moment she heard of it but knew it was out of her hands. Since her husband’s death of a heart attack while Colin was in college, Colin had hardly spoken to her except to blame her, often in public and to her embarrassment, for the death. He said she pushed him too hard so she could have her big fucking house and her Lexus and get her goddamned nails done every week and so on. It wasn’t an innovative thought, nor was it ever well delivered, but it hung in her mind like a foul stench in the kitchen and made conversation between her and her son quite unbearable.     When he moved out, Colin left unlabeled boxes in the corner of the basement. He didn’t leave a note and he didn’t say goodbye. ***     Neither Colin nor Sierra moved with much and their apartment was sparsely furnished. In the bedroom: just a full size mattress on the floor and some collapsible fabric cabinets in which clothes were sorted but left unfolded. The living room: a big maroon couch, an old gray tube TV with a bunny ear antenna, and a wood and cinder block bookshelf on which a boombox sat. There was hardly anything in the basement: a washer and dryer, some spray painted pictures on the exposed brick walls, and an old chest freezer set in the shadow beneath the stairs. The space was illuminated by a single dangling bulb which could be turned on only by a frayed, dangling cord.     Shortly after the move, Colin found a job working at a liquor store near the house and Sierra started working in Center City selling designer clothes. Before their routines became tiresome, they would laugh together about the differences between the desperate sides of men they each saw throughout the day. Colin saw the drunks through the bulletproof glass and usually called the police two or three times a shift while Sierra was hit on by businessmen who unabashedly displayed their wedding bands. It made her think of Colin and, though she had never even caught him checking out another girl, she sometimes wondered how he acted when she wasn’t around.     Sierra was crazy about Colin and he knew it. When he was able to sleep in, he’d often wake to find small flowers in his shoes - usually from the weeds in the sidewalk out front, and a lunch already prepared for him in the refrigerator. When he’d return home from an evening shift, there would often be a cup of tea steeping on the table and Sierra would be in bed, naked and pretending to be asleep. When they made love she deferred to his pleasure and tried to learn the little things he liked by noticing what made him shudder and afterward she often whispered in his ear that she wished she could feel what he felt.     It made Colin uncomfortable to hear this sort of thing from her and he felt that he was losing sight of her behind all the attention she gave. It didn’t exactly surprise him when Sierra started making hints about rings but he pretended not to notice and thought it might be time to move on. ***     After having heard nothing from her son for nearly a year, Diane began to worry. She tried calling him many times but the phone was never on. She left voicemails until the box was full but the calls were never returned. She called what friends’ phone numbers she had, but either the numbers had been changed or they too hadn’t heard from him. She called the family members to whom she thought he might have reached out. Not the slightest whisper anywhere.     Through her salon, Diane found out where Sierra’s family lived and went to the house. It sat on an isolated hill surrounded by barren trees and when she parked at the top of the driveway she closed the car door softly and with apprehension. Walking across the driveway toward the paint-chipped porch, her footsteps on the gravel sounded like grinding bone. She went to the door, rang the bell, and waited.     A man about Diane’s age swung the door open. He wore a pressed buttoned shirt and tie with a dark red sweater over top. He seemed either to be expecting visitors or wholly unaccustomed to them.     When the man heard who Diane was and what she was there for, he became very rigid. He told Diane that he also hardly heard from his daughter but that he knew the address to the place and would give it to her. Leaving the front door open, he walked into the house but he did not invite Diane in.     The man went to a table in the hall and picked up a pad of paper from amongst picture frames turned face down. The rug on which he stood was thick with cat hair. The hall was dark and the cool air rushing out the door was stale.     The man handed Diane the slip of paper with an address on it. He said he would prefer if she didn’t say where she got it. He closed the door without saying goodbye. ***     A few hours later Sierra opened her front door until the chain caught and peered through the gap. “Mrs. Myers,” she said, her head shaking once with surprise, “what are you doing here?”     “Hi, Sierra. Sorry to show up unannounced. I’m looking for Colin. Is he home? Do you know where he is?” Diane tried to peer around the girl and into the apartment.     Sierra looked at Diane with calm but unwavering eyes. Her gaze had been fixed long enough to make Diane uncomfortable when she finally kicked something out of the way and opened the door so Diane could pass through. “Don’t know where he is. He’s not really been living here for a while.” Sierra said.     The women stood in the hallway between the door and the main living area. The apartment was nearly empty but was warmed by the smells from the kitchen.     “He just left? And didn’t even tell you where he was going?”     “No, nothing. I mean, he left a bunch of stuff here, but he didn’t mention his plans or what the hell he was up to.” Sierra waved her hands as if inviting Diane to look around. “I packed up what he left and put it in the basement. You can look through it if you want.” Sierra closed her eyes and swallowed. “Things were so good, and I don’t know why he wanted anything to change.”     They stood silently in the hallway for a moment before Diane said she’d go down and check out what he left behind. ***     At the top of the stairs Diane tried the switch but nothing happened. The light from the living room illuminated the walls halfway down into the basement and Diane held the banister as she walked down the creaking stairs. At the bottom she slid her feet across the cement floor to make sure there were no more steps.     She found and pulled the cord dangling from the ceiling and the light buzzed on. Much of the basement remained in shadow. There were boxes pushed up against the corner opposite the stairs and she opened one of them. CDs. Random pieces of paper. Fliers for concerts. More of the same was in another box and a bunch of clothes were in the third.     Squatting beside the boxes with one hand on the rough and dusty cardboard, an electric motor clicked on in the dark and the dangling light dimmed. The noise startled Diane and caused her to lose her balance and topple backward. The light returned to normal and Diane scanned the room and saw faces spray painted on the walls. She heard footsteps upstairs and struggled to right herself.     Leaning and looking down the stairs, Sierra blocked much of the light and cast a shadow on the wall. She called down to Diane, saying, “Chili’s ready. Want some?”     Diane dusted off her pants with her palm and said with a waver in her voice that, she was quite hungry and would be up in just a minute.     She closed the boxes. The motor stopped and Diane looked into the returning silence and saw a shape in the shadow beneath the stairs. She walked over to the side of the stairs and saw the large chest freezer nestled underneath. In front of the freezer there was a drain and the cement around the drain was discolored and cracking. A small tube ran from the behind the freezer to the drain and when Diane turned and to walk back to the front of the stairs, her foot was caught underneath the tube. She stumbled and dislodged the drain cap.     She bent to pick up the grimy cap and leaned over the top of the drain. She gagged from the smell, dropped the cap and straightened her back. Rising suddenly, she banged her head on the bottom corner of a stair and she reached her hand behind her head and rubbed it. She cursed quietly and said her own name and then held her breath and bent over again. She reset the drain cap and slid the tube back into it.     Entering the light on the stairs again she looked at her fingers and saw rough and rusty smears of brown and red. Between the open backs of the stairs she saw the top of the freezer and a long shape which seemed to be a jacket dangling in the corner from a chain coming off the stairs.     She went upstairs and saw the bathroom door was open and went in. She washed her hands and turned in the mirror, trying to see where she had hit her head. She felt the bump and when she pulled away her hands they were clean. ***     Diane went into the kitchen and Sierra invited her to sit. Sierra stood at the sink washing dishes with her back to the room. On the counter there was a long strip of used plastic wrap and on the table there was a plastic bowl and a spotted silver spoon. Diane thanked Sierra for the food and sat down.     Adjusting herself in the chair, Diane said, “You know, something’s backing up that drain down there. You might want to call the city or the landlord to make sure the main’s not blocked.” Sierra acknowledged the thought with a noise and Diane took a spoonful of Chili. “You’re right though. There sure doesn’t seem to be anything significant in those boxes. ...He really didn’t say anything before he left? Did you call the police? What if something happened to him?”     “Mrs. Myers, police around here aren’t the sharpest bunch. Besides, they’re not going to respond to a call for a missing mid-twenty year old man anyway. Not around here.”     “But aren’t you surprised that he didn’t tell you anything about where he was going?”     Sierra turned from the dishes, threw the towel down onto the counter, and faced Diane.     “Look, you think I like the fact that he pulled away from me? I know you never liked me, but I thought your son did. I thought we were going to get married, Diane. Do you have any idea what it feels like? To think you’ll be a part of someone forever and they have them start to slip away? What was I supposed to do?” The two women stared at each other in the cold kitchen. The pot steamed and the chili bubbled on the stove behind Sierra. “I think it’s best that you leave. You can take the boxes if you want them.”     Diane stared at Sierra. The girl seemed fierce and frightened. Diane rose from the table and said she was going to take the boxes of random things but leave his clothes just in case he came back. ***     At the bottom of the stairs, Diane picked up the two boxes with papers and CDs and when she started up the stairs she saw again the shape in the corner. She set the boxes on a stair and walked around to the front of the freezer.     She stepped carefully over the tube and the drain pipe and set one hand on top of the freezer. She smelled the odor from the drain and she held her breath as she leaned and reached her free hand toward the chain that dangled from the stair. She saw that what she thought was a jacket on a hanger attached to the chain was actually an old button flannel shirt that had once belonged to Colin’s dad.     She tried to pull the shirt toward her. The chain was on a track on the crossbeam coming out from beneath the top stair and it slid out from the corner a few inches before getting stuck.     Diane stopped pulling the shirt and chain toward her when she heard the sound of wood falling and rolling on the concrete floor in the corner. Releasing the shirt, she heard the thin clink of metal tapping lightly on the chain. She bent over and reached her hand into the dark space between the wall and the freezer. A bat. Pulling it out, she rattled the chain and something metal fell to the floor. She set the bat down and reached her hand into the dark again but pulled it back abruptly when she touched something sharp. The freezer clicked on again and she toppled backward in surprise. As she fell back, one of her hands fell onto the drain cap and jostled it. She smelled the stale odor of the drain and noticed that her hand was sticky.     Diane stood up and reached her hand back into the corner carefully and grasped the handle of a long hacksaw. The blade of the saw was caught on something in the corner and as she pulled harder the saw came free and something hollow rattled in the corner and Diane heard it tap against the backside of the freezer.     She stood and rested her waist on the edge of the freezer, leaning over and trying to see what had fallen in the dark. She was finely balanced, her feet off the ground. She could only make out a a circular shape in the dark corner. She thought it might have been a funnel, but she couldn’t reach far enough down to feel it.     When Diane rotated her weight off of the edge of the freezer, the lid of the machine shifted and as she lowered her feet back to the floor, the lid rose slightly and the light inside escaped through the narrow crack. Diane raised the lid and in the light she saw that her hands were stained a brownish red again. In the freezer there were stacked bags of indecipherable marbled meat. She reached in and pulled a bag out.     Deep in the bottom of the freezer she saw the opaque white curve of a bone. She reached down into the cold and tried to pull it out, but it was long and stuck under the weight of the bags. She pulled bag upon bag of meat out of the freezer. At the bottom of the cold machine, in the last bag atop the bone: a scarred hand unmistakably her son’s, a silver wedding band glimmering through the freezer burn.

i believe i’m done with this. the proverbial towel. Gary Lundy blood gushes in predictable fashion in every direction. this may be my final action. as his skin continues to tighten around his skeleton we all know. to trust what the eyes demand our first loss. require a naming a second. it is not caused by the medication but by the body slowly shutting down. it’s pretty helpless walking in the deep snow blowing. what you yearn for is what is unrecognizable.

Janet Kuypers reads the Gary Lundy October 2012 (v111) Down in the Dirt magazine poem i believe i’m done with this. the proverbial towel.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this poem straight from the October 2012 issue (v111) of Down in the Dirt magazine, live 10/10/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery open mic in Chicago)

The Black Mirror Lasher Lane     After donning only black for almost a decade as the honorable wife who’d long surpassed Italian-Catholic mourning etiquette, my grandmother had finally given up the label of third wheel-slash-lonely widow. She had remarried, this time to an eccentric German man named Gerhard. Not only did he inherit her extremely loud snoring, which we were all thankful for, but she inherited his horsehair mattress, which he refused to part with, and she admitted took some getting used to because it was so lumpy it felt like the horse was still in it. She also acquired his massive relic of a house on the corner of 87th street in North Bergen, a town that was home to two Revolutionary War sites: The Battle of Bull’s Ferry and the Three Pigeons Inn.     My grandmother’s name was Antoinette, but she’d rather have been called Nettie. The year was 1964, and she’d been living with us for the past seven years in our refurbished basement, while caring for my terminally ill grandfather until he died that same year. Terribly lonely for male companionship, she’d just about worn out all the grooves on her sentimental Dean Martin and Perry Como records, listening to them alone every night, crying in her underground apartment that is, until she finally met Gerhard.     While they were dating, Gerhard would telephone, and when my mom answered, he’d ask, “Is Nutty there?” his thick German accent getting in the way. My mom often took pleasure in replying, “She sure is!” Her obvious, resentful attitude wasn’t because her mother had found love again with someone other than her own father, but I think it was due to my grandmother placing Gerhard on a much higher pedestal than she’d even placed her first husband.     Gerhard was a lonely widower too, but always mild-mannered and calm, unlike my deceased, much older, excitable Irish-tempered grandfather, who finally had reason to make good on his promise to come back as a fly and “bug” us, especially now that my grandmother had remarried.     While my father instantly welcomed Gerhard as a second dad, my mom held back. She hated the way my grandmother would refer to him as her “Santa Claus.” Not that Gerhard was hairy and overweight, but like Santa he was always jovial and he did have a gut, which I’m sure he acquired from his love of beer. Besides being German like my dad, it was one of the reasons he and my dad got along so well from the moment they met; both men never seeming to be seen without beer bottles as appendages.     My grandmother had once again become an enthusiastic new bride who’d forgotten how much she loved to entertain, so she and Gerhard would invite us, along with many of our relatives to weekly Sunday dinners. While the snow fell quietly outside, and the house was filled with the smell of a roast she was cooking that steamed up all the windows, the adults would entertain themselves with small talk and cocktails, while my brother and me, being bored-out-of-our-mind teenagers and having no interest in their topics of conversation would wander the enormous rooms. Just as the way Gerhard dressed himself, each room was like stepping decades into the past. The house was a sort of museum-like curiosity shop with its elaborately carved, though well-worn antique furniture, Egyptian statues, taxidermied animals, and stones and crystals in colors we’d never seen before. But an even better, more interesting place was the spacious attic with its secretary that contained books about astronomy and astrology, but there were two very old books with peculiar titles having to do with the soul and cosmic conception.     The endless attic was filled with more antique furniture, not placed in a way that looked like it was being stored but like a room that was still in use. While Will continued to explore the immense space, opening and closing doors and drawers, I grabbed a chair and sat down at a desk. I carefully took one of the old books from the secretary shelf, and a pamphlet fell from inside its pages, almost as if it wanted to be discovered. I retrieved it from the floor and began leafing through it, reading certain parts out loud to Will. “Hey, listen to this: It says here something about scrying, an ancient practice for seeing into the past, present or future by using a reflective surface like a mirror. It says that mirrors are linked to the Moon, so they should always be backed with silver. A black mirror is best for eliminating all outside interference, as it acts as a portal to other planes in the universe. Nostradamus used one, and the Aztecs’ were made of obsidian. It also says that scrying is not easy since the subconscious and conscious must be mastered first, usually through meditation.”      “It sounds like some kind of witchcraft; do you think Grandma married a witch?” Will asked as he opened the doors to a very large, burled wood armoire.     As I looked up to answer Will, I found him holding the exact object I’d just been reading about. Of course we’d both seen mirrors before, but we’d never seen one like this, a black one. It was oval-shaped with an ornate frame.     Just then our grandmother called to us from the bottom of the attic steps. “Henry, Will? Are you up there? Dinner’s ready.” She started to ascend the steps, flipping on the attic lights, saying that she’d been looking all over for us. She’d heard us talking and saw the attic door slightly ajar.     Will had time to shove the mirror back into the armoire, but it was too late; she’d already seen me holding the book. When I asked her about it, her nervous, desperate reaction, pleading for us to leave it alone and never touch it again, only sparked my curiousity further. She said that it was Gerhard’s book. He was a Rosicrucian and believed in stuff like reincarnation, auras, and using mirrors to see into the past, present and future.     With that said, I looked over at Will, neither one of us mentioning the mirror we’d found.     “What are auras?” I asked.     “I don’t know, some weird hocus-pocus stuff,” she said, shaking her head as she rolled her eyes. Everyone supposedly has their own color surrounding them that means something. Let’s go, boys. The food is getting cold.” From the way she acted, she seemed embarrassed, dismissing our new grandfather’s choice of faith, as if the mystic rituals of our own faith, Catholicism, were any less bizarre.     We reluctantly joined the company downstairs as she followed. “Any other room is fine, but promise me you boys won’t go up there again?” she said, making sure to close the attic door tightly behind us. I didn’t answer her; I wasn’t promising anything.     The next Sunday we looked forward to our adventure. Since I was determined to attempt using the mirror to see if it really worked, I had persuaded Will to sneak off to the attic with me. My plan was to follow the scrying ritual word for word. First, we took out the votives we’d found in a drawer along with some stick matches, lighting and placing them on either side of the mirror. Then, using a small flashlight I’d brought from home as light to read by, I’d dictate, almost whispering, as Will sat halfway across the attic, facing the black-as-coal gateway to another realm, which was promised to be a key to the past, present or future where one world ended and another began. Per my instructions, Will sat in front of the mirror with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, as I told him to silently call on the angelic presence.     Will forgot for a moment that we were supposed to be quiet. He couldn’t stop himself from giggling, then yelled out loud, “Angelic? As in angels? You want me to talk to angels? ”     “Sssshhh!” I whispered back as loudly as I could. “We’re not supposed to be up here. Remember? Now...open your eyes and look into the mirror. Don’t look with your eyes but with your mind’s eye.”     My saying that caused Will to have another uncontrollable giggling fit.     “Look. If you’re not going to be serious, then forget it.” Sometimes I had to remind my brother to practice self-control, to not act immature or overly dramatic. ***     Nothing had happened on our second attempt, but that didn’t mean I was about to give up. While everyone around me, including Will, was becoming obsessed with this new group from England, the Beatles, I was becoming obsessed with this strange devotion I’d discovered. I even went so far as to sneak one of the books home with me on certain weekends. It became all I thought about, this weird “religion” that believed we all were born from the Sun and died from the Moon, that we were aided by Planetary Angels, that all the souls that would ever be created resided in mansions since the beginning of time, eternally recycled yet infinitely connected toone another, each sharing a sixth sense, that Silver Cords were attached to our physical bodies and only in death would these cords be severed. And that by looking in a mirror we could see another time. Not only did I start imagining everyone I saw walking around like marionettes attached to the Heavens by strings, but I also wondered who I might have been a hundred years ago and if the mirror would ever show me. I even began meditating daily as the book suggested.     While most fourteen-year-old boys spent hours locked in the bathroom obsessed with a certain part of their anatomy, I began locking myself in the bathroom for a much different reason, obsessed with a glimpse of my past or future self. I’d sit in the dark, staring into the mirror with the streetlight shining through the window as my only illumination.      Will really didn’t care one way or another. He wasn’t obsessed like I was, but he went along with me because I was his older brother. And as a winter of Sundays slowly crept by, so that no one would be looking for us, our excuse to use the mirror became that we’d pretend to take long walks before dinner since the attic entry and stairs leading outside were both situated together on the opposite side of the house from everyone else. We’d gotten so good at our charade that when we were done with our attic antics, we’d sneak downstairs, put our coats and boots on and step outside for a few minutes to stand in the snow, waiting for our noses to turn red from the cold, then as loud as we could, we’d deliberately stamp the snow off our boots, leaving the hall door open a little longer than it should have been to let the smell of winter back inside.     Finally, after months of successful deception, Will saw something. The vision had terrified him so much that it made him want to stop scrying. Before the vision, I remember him asking if I was standing right behind him because he’d seen a shadowy silhouette directly in back of him, which reflected in the mirror. I was at least ten feet away and had never moved from my chair. Then he told me that within the mirror he saw a lot of flames surrounding water and that he saw himself in the middle of that water, drowning. My first reaction was to laugh. Will had quite an imagination. So I dismissed what he said at first until I saw the look on his face and then realized how genuinely scared he was. He begged me to go back downstairs. I relented, snuffing out the candles, and we returned to our relatives.     During the Sundays that followed, I’d sit at the dinner table noticing that neither Gerhard or my grandmother shared his supernal beliefs with the rest of the family. I wondered if he and my grandmother ever discussed the tenets of the Rosy Cross when they were alone. I studied Gerhard’s unflappable posture, always serene, content, and contemplative. And I think I understood why. The Rosicrucian faith was a lot for any mortal to contemplate.     In the weeks that followed, I forced Will to continue our trips to the attic, taking his place as seer. I was determined to see something...anything. Hesitant, he agreed only if I allowed him to sit on the attic steps with the flashlight should he want to make a quick escape. Nothing ever happened other than winter had turned to spring. I never saw anything.     Although, as the years passed and my interest turned away from mirrors and towards the opposite sex, I did see one thing, and that was that the mirror never meant to be malevolent, but by then it was too late. At the time, Will and I didn’t realize the mirror had offered us a gift, it had tried to forewarn us of an event four years into the future involving fire and water that would take my brother’s life. It wasn’t until that tragic event occurred that I’d be able to recall Will’s vision and understand.

Fireflies Cassia Gaden Gilmartin     The hem of my dress is torn by the time the music stops. I don’t know how the yellow stain got there, or how my tights managed to tear like a ravine opening and leave the skin of one knee exposed. The disco lights flicker out and the main light turns on. I shut my eyes against it. When I open them, I know my friends will be smiling at me – faces caked with make-up, deathly pale underneath, like painted ghosts. I know I’ll have to smile back.     “Kayla?” The voice is needlessly loud, like she hasn’t figured out the music has stopped playing.     I squint up at her and see nothing but black, kohl-rimmed eyes, a dark pit where her mouth should have been. The air behind her is crowded with silver dust. I mumble something about needing a drink of water, and try not to feel their eyes on me as I push through crowds to reach the door.     I’d hoped the air would be clean outside, but it’s full of cigarette smoke. The smoke trails up from crowds of laughing teenagers, making patterns in the sky. When Mom smoked I used to tell her what I saw in those patterns, strange things like fish with legs or a river flowing uphill. I can’t see pictures in the smoke from these laughing boys’ cigarettes. I don’t even want to.     There’s only one figure I want to see. My best friend is standing by the far wall, hunched in on himself. Where everyone else is dressed as if it’s high summer, his heavy coat seems to weigh him down.     “Kayla.” My name sounds so much gentler when he says it, the harsh “k” softened somehow. He doesn’t speak my name like it’s a question, the way everyone else does. There is no pressure to answer him.     “I wish I hadn’t had to come here.” I kick a leaf from the ground, and watch it flutter back into place. There’s a tear running through it, nearly all the way from the tip to the stem. If I touch it again, it will break. I leave it be. My hands clench into fists as I try not to move.     “They wouldn’t have made you come out tonight,” he says, “if you’d told them.” In all the time we’ve been friends, he’s never been angry at me. But his voice is tight now, choked with a feeling I can’t recognise, don’t want to recognise.     Sarah used to sound that way, when she was still with us.     “I know.”     I don’t realise how strange I sounded until he looks at me, questions chasing each other through his eyes. Then I realise I spoke too soon, as if someone would punish me if I didn’t force the words out on time. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about my sister. About the way she used to smile when she came home from the gym, her whole body still trembling from the strain, as if she was proud of some great achievement. And how fast I used to run up to my bedroom when I heard the bathroom door lock behind her after mealtimes. The sound of her retching, so loud I felt certain she would tear herself apart. And how, when I look in the mirror now – ten days after her funeral – I realise I look just like her.     He says nothing more. I place my hand against the wall and let my fingers spread out, opening and opening.     And then I see them. Little points of yellow light against the night sky, darting back and forth. I don’t understand. As soon as they’re getting somewhere, they always turn back the way they have come.     “I haven’t seen those in a while.”     His eyes search the expanse of sky above us. “Seen what?”     “Fireflies.” As a child I used to trap them in empty jam jars. I’d watch them bash against the glass, until their lights went out.     He frowns. “Did you ever try catching them when you were little? I tried, but I was useless at it.”     “Yeah. I tried, too.” I don’t say that I was better at it than he was, or that I feel strangely guilty now – now that I realise, at that age, they never seemed like living creatures to me.     Behind us, a girl in a black sequined dress is running, laughing with her friends. I know before she does when she’s about to fall. I see her eyes widen, hear the shout of pain as her knee hits the ground. I see her friends lift her up, and try not to watch the trail of blood slide downwards.     “Do you think it hurt?” I ask. “When we caught them, I mean.”     He answers right away, faster than I was expecting. “I’m pretty sure they’re too small to feel anything like that.”     “You think so?”     He offers me no answer. I tremble. Not just because of the cold, though the chill of the night air has crept inside me now. I feel like I’m freezing from the inside out. I can’t see them yet, but I know they’re coming. I can hear their laughter, the clack of their shoes hitting the pavement. They’ll be looking for me – those strangers I’ve made myself call friends. I thought I could do this, but now, I can’t face them.     “Sorry. I have to go.” In the moments I’ve spent here, my voice has shrunken. Now, it sounds just like Sarah’s.     I turn to leave, but his hand on my shoulder pulls me back. “Be careful.”     I can read his thoughts, clear as day. He’s thinking about the box of tablets he found under my bedside table when he visited our house two weeks ago. Thirty pills. The website I visited told me that would be enough. Back then, I really meant to use them, to get the hell out of this world. But then Sarah got out of here first, and all I could think was that one of us had to stay.     My fingers move to the ripped hem of my dress, trace the line of torn lace towards the ground until I can’t reach any further.     “I will.”     I wonder if he can read my thoughts, too. As I turn my back to him again, the fireflies crowd around us. I’ll stay, I tell myself, and I pray the thought reaches him. I’ll stay.

medicine Janet Kuypers (1994)     A few years ago, I felt so much pain in my joints that I couldn’t walk or pick up a carton of milk in the morning. At age 21, I limped and ached; my right ankle, left knee, and right hand were swollen. I was also sore in my back and shoulders. I cried in pain daily.     I went to the first doctor. He x-rayed my hand, told me that I may have a jammed thumb, but that there would be no evidence of it in an x-ray and that the pain and swelling would just go away. Then I went to the second doctor. There may be a stress fracture in my right foot, he said, but it was nothing serious. There were no drugs prescribed for the pain, and he handed me an ace bandage and a pair of crutches and headed me out the door.     I went to my third doctor, who happened to be the first female doctor I saw. She put all the symptoms together and thought I may have a form of arthritis. She referred me to a specialist at a nearby hospital.     She was the first doctor who listened to me. Every other experience of mine was of a doctor addressing only one of the problems I mentioned, then brushing the problem off as minor. I felt as if I was getting nowhere in discovering the root of my illness. I felt as if no one wanted to help me. •••     A friend and co-worker was recently hospitalized with an ulcer. When she came back, the pain still remained–especially during menstruation. She always had severe menstrual cramps, and with the ulcer present there would be days at the office when she would have to lay down underneath her desk until the pain went away.     Sometimes the pain would make her cry at her desk. Once I had to help her walk to her train station in the middle of the day, because she had to be bed-ridden and she didn’t know if she could walk the block to her train without collapsing.     She didn’t want to go back to the hospital after being admitted for days with an ulcer. She told me about how uncomfortable she felt with her male doctor. That the doctors she had never listened to her. That she felt they dismissed her problems as all in her head. I told her to see someone else, and to tell them how she felt, even if she had to be belligerent. She was paying for and had the right to proper treatment.     She finally saw a doctor. Then another. A few times it was suggested to her to go on the pill, since hormonal therapy may reduce the cramps. But she took that advice from a doctor years earlier, and she knew the pills made her more violently moody, and often didn’t help with the pain. No one suggested other alternatives to her. She followed her doctors orders. •••     My grandmother was a feisty and strong woman in her mid-eighties. Her bowling average hovered around 176. She lived alone in a condominium. Our family had dinner together weekly with her.     While I was away at school, I started getting phone calls from my family about how grandma hadn’t been feeling well. She went to a doctor complaining of stomach pains, and his diagnosis was that she had a yeast infection. She told him she knew her body well enough at this point in her life to know that she did not have a yeast infection. That a yeast infection wasn’t causing this pain. She thought his diagnosis was ludicrous. The doctor brushed her off.     She told us this. We told her to get a second opinion. She saw another doctor. The stomach pains persisted, and due to the cold weather her asthma was acting up. She was always out of breath. Tired. In pain.     Still no answers from this doctor. He told her it was probably a stomach flu and that she would be fine soon. He gave her a prescription.     Within two weeks she was in the hospital with a laceration in her stomach. The laceration was worse because she had it for a while and it wasn’t treated. Strong acidic fluids were seeping through her body and infecting other organs. She was admitted to the hospital on a Friday; by Saturday morning, she was dead. •••     I told friends about my grandmother’s experience with the doctors. More than one person mentioned that my grandmother’s next of kin could probably win a lawsuit against the doctor who misdiagnosed her, especially when she complained to us when she was alive that he didn’t listen to her. But the problem was deeper than that.     That doctor, like the ones myself and my friend had been to, didn’t think he was doing a poor job. If you asked him, he probably would have thought that he was doing a perfectly good job.     The problem was as simple as not listening. Those doctors didn’t take us seriously. Simply put, they didn’t listen to us.     Why? Is it that all doctors are callous? No, from my experience alone I knew that the female doctor was helpful and took me seriously. Was it that male doctors didn’t listen to anyone and female doctors did? Not from what I knew. Stories like these of doctors ignoring patient’s feelings and statements are relatively foreign to men I talked to. In fact, often when I mention stories like these to a woman, she usually has another story like it to add to the list. It almost seems that most women I know don’t feel comfortable with a male doctor. But men don’t feel that way at all.     Most men don’t feel that way because they have never had that problem. They have always been listened to. They have had doctors pay attention to them. They have received better treatment, on the whole, than women.     I decided since that last bout with the doctors that from now on I would see a female doctor whenever I could. But that doesn’t solve the problem either. I should be able to go to a doctor, no matter if the physician is male or female, and feel confident that I will get the medical attention I need.     But I don’t feel that confidence. Neither do a lot of women.

Guilt Janet Kuypers (Summer 1994)     I was walking down the street one evening, it was about 10:30, I was walking from my office to my car. I had to cross over the river to get to it, and I noticed a homeless man leaning against the railing, not looking over, but looking toward the sidewalk, holding a plastic cup in his hand. A 32-ounce cup, one of the ones you get at Taco Bell across the river. Plastic. Refillable.     Normally I don’t donate anything to homeless people, because usually they just spend the money on alcohol or cigarettes or cocaine or something, and I don’t want to help them with their habit. Besides, even if they do use my money for good food, my giving them money will only help them for a few hours, and I’d have to keep giving them money all of their life in order for them to survive. Once you’ve given money, donated something to them, then you’re bound to them, in a way, and you want to see that they’ll turn out okay. Besides, he should be working for a living, like me, leaving my office in the middle of the night, and not out asking for hand outs.     I’m getting off the subject here... Oh, yes, I was walking along the sidewalk on the side of the bridge, and the homeless man was there, you see, they know to stand on the sidewalks on the bridge because once you start walking on the bridge you have to walk up to them, and the entire time you’re made to feel guilty for having money and not giving them any. They even have some sort of set-up where certain people work certain bridges.     Well, wait, I’m doing it again... Well, I was walking there, but it wasn’t like I was going to lunch, which is the time I normally see this homeless man, because during lunch there is lots of light and lots of people around and lots of cars driving by and I’m not alone and I have somewhere to go and I don’t have the time to stop my conversation and think about him.     Well, anyway, I was walking toward him, step by step getting closer, and it was so dark and there were these spotlights that seemed to just beat down on me while I was walking. I felt like the whole world was watching me, but there was no one else around, no one except for that homeless man. And I got this really strange feeling, kind of in the pit of my stomach, and my knees were feeling a little weak, like every time I was bending my leg to take a step my knee would just give out and I might fall right there, on the sidewalk. I even started to feel a little dizzy while I was on the bridge, so I figured the best thing I could do was just get across the bridge as soon as possible.     I figured it had to be being on the bridge that made me feel that way, for I get a bit queasy when I’m near water. I don’t usually have that problem during lunch when I walk over the bridge and back again, but I figured that since I was alone I was able to think about all that water. With my knees feeling the way they were I was afraid I was going to fall into the water, so I had to get myself together and just march right across the bridge, head locked forward, looking at nothing around the sidewalk, nothing on the sidewalk, until I got to the other side.     And when I crossed, the light-headed feeling just kind of went away, and I still felt funny, but I felt better. I thought that was the funniest thing.

Watch the YouTube video Published in her book Close Cover Before Striking, read (for future audio CD release) live at Striking with Nature and Humanity at Trunk Fest , in an outdoor Evanston IL feature 06/25/11

See the full YouTube video of Striking with Nature and Humanity at Trunk Fest, live 06/25/11, with this writing

Watch the YouTube video of Kuypers reading this poem at the open mike 3/14/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago, from the Kodak