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Anxiety and Stress in the Form of Snakes David Hernandez Graduating in creative writing with a Bachelors of Arts, not wanting to edit or teach, made me apply for work in every shop, restaurant, and hotel. Every day I come home thinking I might get an interview, but after a few days, a call never comes. Questions appear in my head: “Do I qualify for work?” “Am I suitable for work?” Anxiety and stress builds up inside. I worry about not paying the debts to my parents or earn money with my efforts, being pressured to start a family. I sleep to keep the stress down only to wake in front of a snake formed body. Arms turned to serpent heads, legs turned to serpent tails, and soon the body became comprised of snakes. They extended their reach, engulfing my body, and then devouring it. “What can I do to make them stop?” “How do I conquer this fear of stress and anxiety?”

I Pull the Strings David Hernandez I’m a dummy an instrument for show, my right arm points forward my left arm stretches outward but never reaches its target, never touches the children. I’m a puppet a toy to tinker, my right arm bends sideways my left arm shifts up and down but my legs don’t walk, they can only kick. We take a bow, the children laugh at us, What can we do? Our minds can think but our eyes remain frozen our mouths remain shut.

Learning to Forget David Hernandez The Las Palmas Medical Center where I applied for work made me think of the patients I could help. An obsessive- compulsive father unable to draw social boundaries between himself and his teenage daughter. A social-anxious widow unable to converse with men due to her being judged. A depressive college student, now graduated from art, full of doubt and fear that he will be unsuited for work. A suicidal bachelor who thinks that cutting off his arms will serve as repentance for distancing himself from the family. Then each day I would try to forget those memories, they would eat away my rational behavior.

Getting Ready Amy Locke     James shivered in the cereal aisle. He couldn’t understand why it was so cold here, far from the freezer section of the grocery store, and on a balmy April day. He put his hands in the pockets of his dark jacket and studied the boxes before him. Big-headed cartoons grinned manically behind bowls of cereal, flanked by swirls of marshmallows and milk as thick as glue. This was unfamiliar territory. He wanted to go to his end of the aisle and pick up a box of bran flakes. Lily could stand to eat something for breakfast that didn’t resemble a pile of candy. And he would let her sprinkle a little sugar on top, he supposed, maybe a few banana slices. Then again, he thought with a grunt, he didn’t want to deal with Brenda if he were to set Lily off into a tantrum over a bowl of “Grandpa cereal.” When it came to his daughter, it was easiest to just do things her way. And that was simple enough, when he was the one visiting her. But this weekend Brenda, her husband Jack, and little Lily had decided to spend Easter at his home.     “You’re getting too old to make the drive, Dad,” Brenda had insisted on the phone. James didn’t bother contesting the point, which he thought was probably true, if a little insulting. It had been a long time since he had entertained guests, though, and he wasn’t sure what was expected of him. The idea of disappointing Brenda and her family had him squirming over the smallest details. He wanted his typically bare kitchen to be stocked with just the right cereals and snacks for Lily, but the pressure was already making him feel uneasy—the wall of circus colored boxes in front of him seemed to be growing. Giving up, he grabbed something fruity and something chocolaty and moved on.     A wheel on his shopping cart was too loose. Combined with the shuffle of his loafers, its rattling created a muted but grating cacophony. He couldn’t concentrate. The mental shopping list he’d pieced together was fuzzy. Paper towels, carrots, graham crackers. What else? He was drawn to a pyramid of diapers displayed at the end of an aisle. Diapers? He tentatively reached out for a package, trying to remember when children stop wearing diapers, trying to remember Lily’s age. A dusty memory broke into his thoughts—he was changing Lily, bald and bawling and so tiny, with Brenda wearily coaching him from a rocking chair. Or was that Brenda squawking on the changing table and his Ruby in the rocking chair? Ruby. She would’ve remembered the list—she would’ve written it down. She always knew what was best. James let out a wheezy sigh and put the diapers in his cart, just in case. His arm ached, at the inside of his elbow, right where Ruby had liked to set her thin hand, with fingers slightly curled.     “I don’t want to do this without you,” he said, as if she could hear him. His head was filled with images of his home—the dingy carpets and curtain-less windows, the seldom-used kitchen; his wife’s shoes all lined up in the guest room closet, harboring dust and wispy cobwebs. Brenda had grown up in that house but the thought of her there now, with her own healthy blossoming family, seemed absurd. With Ruby gone, it was a solitary place—a cocoon, a tomb.     “What if . . .” he said. He heard his voice, gravelly and damp with phlegm, like it was pushing through a wall of wet sand, and he felt a hundred years old. “What if,” he said again, not knowing how to finish the sentence. He looked around for a bench, wishing he could sit down. There was one near the restrooms in the back corner so he turned that way. Clipping the nearby display with a wheel of his shopping cart, half a dozen packages of diapers fell to the floor. He frowned. When had he turned into this bumbling, befuddled old man? He had been himself this morning, hadn’t he? He stared down at the diapers, as if he might find the answer spelled out on the lavender packaging. A few shoppers had stopped to watch him. Heat crawled up his neck and unfurled in his ears and weathered cheeks. Arthritis had too firm a grip on his lower back to let him bend down and pick up after himself so he murmured “I’m sorry,” to no one in particular, and walked away.     The bench was made of cold, slick metal—uncomfortable, but its sturdiness was reassuring to James. He sat down, putting one hand on each knee, and thought again of his wife. Picturing her sweet face was the surest way to chase off a bad mood. But today, he could hardly bring up the image. With shaking hands, he pulled his wallet out of his trouser pocket. He stared down at the brown leather, soft and well-worn from years of use, and a strange, swift surge of dread went through him. It quivered in his gut, so tangible, like something sharp trying to break out of him. He took a gulping breath and the feeling passed. He opened the wallet. The familiar photograph was tucked behind clear plastic. Seeing it soothed him like a cool hand on his forehead. It was an old picture, showing Ruby’s red hair as yet untouched by gray. He had surprised her with the camera, capturing her mouth half open, eyes brightened with laughter as they often were. She had loved to laugh, to tease, to coax smiles from him. He ran his thumb across the plastic, wishing he could return to this moment from some distant summer. They had been on a family vacation, or a Sunday afternoon picnic. James wasn’t sure. But he remembered that dress well—black gauzy material that floated like morning fog around her, covered in tiny red dots, with a matching red belt on her trim waist. The straps of it had left her freckled shoulders exposed. It had been five years since he last kissed those freckles.     “What’s the matter, gramps?” A biting voice pulled him from his reverie. He looked up to see two shaggy-haired boys nearby. They were young, perhaps thirteen, all squared shoulders and jutting jaws, full of the shuddery bravado of boys too eager to become men. Only now did he realize he was crying. He pocketed his wallet with one hand, swiping at his tears with the other.     “Yeah, what’s wrong?” said the one who hadn’t spoken first. “You piss your pants?”     “Forget your diaper this morning?” the other added. “Don’t think those are your size,” he said, peering into James’ shopping cart. They elbowed each other back and forth.     The pair looked arrogant and uneasy at the same time—proud to get away with such disrespectfulness, but also prepared to run and feign innocence if needed. James’ eyes bulged. It had been some time since he last felt so compelled to cuff someone. He stood, arm lifted to shake a finger in their smug faces. But before he could show them he knew just as many sharp words as they did, and likely more, the boys paled.     “Dude,” one of them said, his tone now high and panicky. “What’s wrong with you?”     “Shut up,” the other urged. “Let’s just go.” They turned and rushed down the nearest aisle.     “Nothing’s wrong with me,” James grumbled as he watched them leave. “Little punks.” He was the only one now in this back corner of the store. He looked around. The carefully arranged end of aisle displays and keenly polished floors were sad, he thought, with no people milling about them.     “All this food, just waiting to rot,” he said, looking over the varied items. There were bunches of bananas, canned pears, cheap wine, soda crackers. One display was of several dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese, stacked under a sign reading “Canned Ravioli—$0.75 per can!” He stared at it, shaking his head. The misprint agitated him so much that he went over and swiped at one of the boxes with the back of his hand. The whole display toppled like a set of painstakingly arranged dominoes.     “Whoops-a-daisy,” James said, waving his arms with stage-like flamboyance. “Made another little mess. Well, can’t blame a relic like me, can you? I don’t know what I’m doing—I’m old!”     He looked around defiantly, daring any employees to come and reprimand him. But only one shopper, a young woman in a gray jogging suit, crept into view. She wove her cart out from one aisle and into another, giving James a short glance. He sighed, a little deflated that his outburst wasn’t even worth a shelf stocker coming over to shush him.     He went back to the bench and sat down, unsure of what to do with himself. A headache had been pulsing at his temples all morning and the pain was starting to spread, reaching down to his stomach and out to every limb. The cart at his side was an unpleasant reminder of the task at hand—a task he couldn’t bring himself to complete. At the moment, he wanted more than anything to be in his bed—resting, meeting Ruby in his dreams, and not worrying about how he was supposed to entertain Brenda and her family without cable television.     Perhaps he should cancel. He could go home, call Brenda, and tell her not to come. He was sick. The house was infested with cockroaches. He would work out some lie to convince her. She would be upset, and make him feel guilty, but that was nothing new. It would be better, in the long run—Brenda wouldn’t have to be disappointed in James’ shortcomings as a host. He loved his daughter, of course, but he didn’t want to see the look on her face when she came into his house; didn’t want to know what words she would use to criticize him, to make him feel old and useless, to make him feel Ruby’s absence sharper than ever. And he wouldn’t miss Jack droning on about his job with poorly feigned modesty, telling stale stories and asking the same trivial questions, as if James wasn’t lucid enough to remember them from the last family gathering. But it did hurt him to know he wouldn’t feel Lily’s fierce little hugs, her arms linked tight around his neck, or receive her whispered secrets and stories, always infused with giggles, or hear her singing to herself. Ruby used to sing to herself, too—some song remembered from childhood or a wordless tune hummed low. He missed that sound more than anything.     James was standing in line now, with three people in front of him. He was in the express lane but the cashier was moving slowly. The steady beeping of items ringing up made him think of a heart monitor. He started to sweat. The woman in front of him was perusing the magazine rack, her back turned to her shopping cart. Her child, a little boy, sat in the front section beside her purse and he held its leather strap tightly in his small, plump hands. He had wide brown eyes, very much like Ruby’s—dark and silky with a tinge of red, like chestnuts or cherry wood. Those were Ruby’s eyes, and Brenda’s, too.     “Are Lily’s brown?” he wondered aloud. He wished he knew—it felt so important.     “Lilies are white,” the little boy said. He swung his feet.     “Not always,” the woman said without turning around. “It depends on the type, Jeffrey. Remember the pink ones?”     “I wasn’t talking about the flower,” James said.     “My mommy has a flower shop. Where do you work?”     “Nowhere,” James said. “I’m retired.”     “Old people retire. My grandpa is retired. He sits on the couch all day. What do you do all day?”     “Nothing,” James said, and it felt like the truth. Day after day, he sat in his recliner, he reread the same books, he watched the local news; he stared out the window of his two bedroom home and envied the neighbors walking by, and the birds and the trees, because they seemed so sure and purposeful, so glad to be alive. Gladness was foreign to James. He didn’t feel it when he received impersonal Christmas cards and obligatory catch-up phone calls from the few friends he had still living. He didn’t feel it when Brenda begrudgingly invited him to holiday dinners only to criticize his every comment, or simply ignore him. He felt something very close to gladness, though, when Lily scrambled onto his lap and asked for a story, reaching up to rub the stubble on his chin, her eyes full of contentment. He could nearly see them; nearly make out the color of them.     He was beginning to feel very ill. If only the cashier would hurry up so he could buy these . . . . He looked down to see what he had clamped in one hand. It was a small box. “Light bulbs?” He didn’t need light bulbs. He didn’t remember picking them up. “Where the hell did these come from?”     “Hell,” the little boy giggled.     “Excuse me,” the woman said. She stuffed a magazine back into place, rumpling its cover, and turned around. Angry creases framed her mouth and settled between her eyebrows that had been plucked to the thinness of guitar strings. “Did you just swear at my child? Did you just swear at my four-year-old child?”     James didn’t understand what she was saying. His world was going smudgy, as if life was nothing more than a charcoal sketch—all its shades and certainties being blurred into nonsense by someone’s careless hand, by this frowning woman and her brown-eyed child.     “Did you bring me these light bulbs?” he asked her, shaking the box. “Did you put these in my hand?” He swayed, trying not to fall into her—her angular elbows would surely go through him like shards of glass if he did.     “No,” the woman shouted. “I didn’t put anything in your hand.” She leaned around the customer in front of her to glare at the cashier, waving her hands in the air. “Can you do something? This man is deranged.”     “I’m deranged? You’re the one hollering.”     “Can’t you make him leave?”     “I’m not allowed to touch anyone,” the cashier replied. He sized up James for a moment. “He seems harmless. Just confused, I think. He’s old.” He went back to ringing up items.     “Then call a manager over, at least. He’s making me very uncomfortable.”     The cashier shrugged and picked up a phone beside the register. James was vaguely aware that everyone within earshot was staring at him.     “You remind me of my daughter,” he said to the woman.     “Just go away,” she said. Her face was very pink. “Please.”     He did want to go away. Wherever away was, it was sure to be better than this smothering limbo. He didn’t remember getting in line, or walking through the store, or how he got to the store. He didn’t know how he ended up here, penned in by these young hateful strangers and the register beeping like a metronome, demanding that he keep time with this world—keep breathing, keep living, though his heart had surely stopped five years ago.     “I’ve been trying to leave,” he said, his voice hoarse and alien to his ears. “I don’t want to be here with you. I don’t like you, any of you. I just want to go home.” His eyes were going dark at the edges, filling with the same blackness that was hanging heavy in that closet full of left behind shoes.     “Exit’s that way,” the woman said. She moved aside to let him pass but James’ legs were quivering on the quicksand floor. Even two steps were unmanageable; he staggered, lurching into her. She grunted in disgust, shrugging him away.     “Are you drunk?”     “Mommy, blood,” the little boy said. James and the woman looked at the smear of it on her forearm.     “Sir, you can’t take those without paying,” the cashier said.     James was still holding the light bulbs. He clutched the box to his chest like a talisman, with arms raised just enough for everyone to see the side of his jacket, wet with blood, and the thick black handle.     “Is that a knife?” someone said. “He has a knife!”     “No, he’s been stabbed,” said another gray faced stranger.     “Me?” James said, and he smiled because it seemed so silly. He didn’t remember the man who approached him in the parking lot with desperate, hateful eyes. He didn’t remember how he refused to give up his wallet, or how the man said “you think I won’t kill you?” with spittle gathering at the corners of his cracked lips. And the moment when the man pushed the steel blade into his torso and left it there was lost to James, cocooned in some corner of his brain where its cold grasp couldn’t reach him.     “What’s the matter with all of you?” he said to the crowd that had gathered around him. They were all speaking at once, pointing, pulling out cell phones, clutching their children. James started to feel afraid. Someone took him by the elbow and pulled him out of the checkout lane, into the wide aisle. The box of light bulbs slipped out of his hands and was crushed under someone’s feet.     “What happened?” someone said close to his ear.     “I don’t know.” He grabbed a fistful of the person’s shirt and shook it. “I don’t know, damn it. I don’t know how I got here.”     “You didn’t see who did it?”     “Did what?”     “He’s in some kind of psychological shock. Has anyone called an ambulance?”“Should we take the knife out?”     “No, no one touch it. It’s probably been keeping him alive—slowing the bleeding.”     “What?” James said. He could feel the shirt bunched in his hand still. It felt like flannel, but couldn’t see the person wearing it. All around him, he could only see uneven smears of dim colors, as if he were looking into a broken kaleidoscope. Trying to bring the world into focus was exhausting so he closed his eyes.     There was something expansive and cold beneath him, hard against his shoulder blades; something soft and lumpy was shoved under his head. He was on the floor.     “I’m sorry I called you deranged.” He recognized the angry woman’s voice, close-by and quiet and trembling.     “That’s all right,” James murmured. His anxiety was dissolving, leaving a nebulous sense of well-being. He smiled. “Maybe not so much like my daughter. She never apologizes.”     “The ambulance is coming. You’ll be at the hospital soon.”     “That so? Not for long, I hope. My family is coming for Easter. Ruby would want them to come. I want to be ready for them. Fussy Brenda and boring Jack and sweet little Lily. Lily. She’s so much like my Ruby.”     “Shush now. They’re almost here.”     “You know, I’ve just remembered it.”     “What?”     “Lily’s eyes. They’re green, like mine.” He was so relieved that he could see them. “Green. I’d show you, but I don’t want to open them.” The space above him was growing heavy and encroaching onto his chest, tamping him down against the floor. He sighed. “I don’t feel quite right.”     “I know. Do you mind if I hold your hand?”      “Maybe the little boy.”     “You mean Jeffrey?”     “Yes. A soft little hand would be nice.”     “Come here, Jeffrey. It’s all right.”     The little boy came and put his tender skinned hand in James’ leathery one and squeezed, and though James couldn’t quite make his thick calloused fingers fold shut over those small fingers, he could feel the warmth of them. For a moment it seemed he could feel it running all through him, and then he felt nothing at all.

The Burden Of Marriage Kelly Haas Shackelford When alcohol   strips bare the pretense of documents made official before the eyes of God, and I dig deep for the courage to stare into the mirror of truth, reflecting  in your eyes. I am not greeted by fires of desire raging wild, but the slow controlled burn of obligation, razing your soul. And I know, I am but a burden to bear.

Easy, He Said Joan Koerper     “It was easy,” D.J. said.     “Someday We’ll Be Together,” I crooned along with Diana Ross and the Supremes playing on the car radio. When the song ended, I crossed my right leg over my left, twisted my body to face D.J. in the driver’s seat and put my right hand on the dashboard of the white 1962 Chrysler 300 Coupe. “What was easy, Honey?” I queried.     “Killing them,” he said.     “What? What are you talking about? Killing whom? You didn’t have to go to Vietnam and you won’t have to. Did your mom have a swarm of ants at the house this morning? Killing whom?”     “The women I’ve killed so far,” he said, without flinching.     “Oh D.J., cut it out. I still don’t understand what you are talking about. Shaking my head in confusion, I went on. “Gee, D.J., we are on our way to Kensington Lake, it is a gorgeous summer day and I just don’t see why you are even mentioning killing. I thought we were going to have a day away just to ourselves.” Pulling both legs up under me on the bench seat I rattled off our picnic menu on my fingers. “We’ve got fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, soda and cherry pie in the Thermos Picnic Pack. It’s going to be a great day. Let’s just enjoy it,” I responded to my fiancé.     “Okay,” he replied, taking a puff from his Viceroy. “But it was still easy.”     “D.J., I am just going to sing along here, and I would really appreciate it if you would stop. Okay?”     “Okay,” he said again. “It was still easy, you know. I’d just offer them a ride or invite them on a picnic, on a day like today, just like we’re having. Getting a date is easy. Making the most of it is even easier.”     My heart rate swelled. I’d know D.J. for a couple of years, but it wasn’t a day-to-day relationship. I had met him through a friend and, for most of the year he was off to college in Illinois while I was at Mercy College of Detroit. At the end of the summer I was transferring to Michigan State University in East Lansing.     I knew all too well what he was alluding to. The media had dubbed the man The Co-Ed Killer. I didn’t know one young woman of college age in Michigan who didn’t tremble at the thought of this savage serial killer.     “Mary was pretty, you know,” D.J. started. Just a little younger than me; nineteen. It was hot that night and she had gone out for a walk. We struck up a conversation and I bought her food at her favorite pizzeria over there off the Eastern Michigan campus. She had a nice smile. She really liked my car so I told her I’d take her on a ride.     We headed for the country north of Ypsilanti. I knew about the deserted farm house. Thought she’d never be found. Or thought at least that her bones would be bare before they were discovered. Too bad she surfaced so soon. Three weeks. Not long enough. Luck of the draw I guess. I had a knife with me but there was this butcher knife there at the house and it was so much better than mine. I lost track of counting. Just got into it, I guess.”     If this was a joke, it was a sick one. It had to be a joke. But, there was already part of me trying to figure out how I could get out of the car speeding west along the I-96 at 75 miles an hour. Impossible. I tried to make light of it.     “D.J., please. Stop! Now!” I begged, shaking my head and turning my body back in the passenger seat to face forward. The names of the victims were burned into my memory. Sisters I never knew. The body of Mary Fleszar, 19, was found on August 7, 1967 in an old farm house two miles north of Ypsilanti; missing since July 18, 1967. She was killed in a frenzy, stabbed 30-40 times.     I shivered despite the warm wind. “You are ruining our day and this is not funny. I am not up for any practical jokes,” I pleaded, remembering the time he flipped a bowl of water in my face after I had just gussied up for an evening out so he could get a good laugh.     “No joke. Just reminiscing,” he continued. “Now, Eileen, she was the youngest and would fall for anything, I swear. Girls can be so gullible. She really wanted it; she wanted it bad. I set her on fire all right.”     Eileen Adams, 13, was found in January, 1968 in plain sight just south of Ypsilanti. She had been raped, beaten with a hammer, had a three inch nail pounded into her skull and was strangled with an electrical cord.     Elivis Presley’s voice filled the car with his rendition of “Suspicious Minds”. Suddenly, I flashed on the knife, hammer and electrical cord nestled into the left side of the trunk of the car I saw when loading the picnic basket. I knew the victims to date had been strangled, shot, stabbed and partially dismembered. Still, these were ordinary enough items to have in a man’s car trunk, weren’t they?     My brain forged on, making unwanted associations like someone playing hopscotch jumping from neuron to neuron landing on a cluster illuminating another commonality between the victims to date and me. All were Caucasian with brown hair and between the ages of 13-23, just like me. And, they were all abducted. D.J. had the details to all the killings that had been released to the public. I memorized the details trying to make sure I wouldn’t fall into the killer’s trap. D.J. must have memorized the details as well. This was my fiancé. He was not a killer. Still, he’d gone too far. Denial is a convenient defense mechanism.     “Stop, D.J. I mean it. Stop it. Now!” I demanded.     D.J. turned his head, slowly and deliberately and looked me straight in the eyes. His lips twisted into a sneer. He started on the next account. “Joan—ah, now there’s a name that sounds familiar, eh Mary Joan? Anyway, Joan was like the others. She was hitchhiking in front of Eastern Michigan’s Student Union, and an easy pick up. She wanted a free meal and a good looking man. I gave her both.”     The body of Joan Schnell, 20 was found on July 7, 1968 at a construction site in Ypsilanti, raped and stabbed to death.     My good friend denial was quickly slipping away. Only a spider’s thread linked me to sanity.     Was I in the car with the Co-Ed Killer?     Was this D.J.’s idea of a horrible joke?     Barely hiding my repulsion I was beginning to pant with fear.     Not wanting him to see his effect on me, I turned my head to peer out the window, seeking comfort in the miles of dense woods that sped by on either side of the road; Red Maple, Yellow Birch, White Spruce and Black Ash trees I loved. Until I realized the forest could serve as a curtain to any murder. Pine cone needles, wind and traffic cloaking the screams. The flora and fauna of the forest floor concealing a disposed body while nature did its work, eventually absorbing it into the landscape. The forest was taking on ominous proportions in my mind.     “Jane Louise, ah, I like those double names, don’t I Mary Joan? Anyway, Jane Louise was a law student at the University of Michigan, supposedly brilliant, but too trusting for her own good.”     Jane Louise Mixer, 31 had been reported missing on March 21, 1969. It was too late. She had already been beaten, raped, shot and her stockings were twisted around her neck. Her body was found in the Ypsilanti Cemetery that same day.     By now, I was biting the inside of my mouth so hard the iron taste of blood was inescapable. Had I ever felt so vulnerable? So threatened and petrified? Determined not to let him see how I was shaking uncontrollably on the inside, I began humming and rubbing my left upper arm with the palm of my right hand.     “Now, Maralynn, she was good looking, but way too mouthy. Didn’t her mother tell her not to hitchhike, or talk like she did to men? If she did, she didn’t listen. There she was, just waiting for a ride outside the Arborland Mall. She got out of hand, though, especially for a sixteen year old.     Maralynn Skelton’s body was found on March 25, 1969 at the same construction site in Ypsilanti as Joan Schell’s. She had been beaten savagely about the head to the point that her skull was shattered. She was raped and a wooden branch had been jammed into her vagina.     “That girl, Dawn, she was stronger than she looked. She was a virgin, you know. Thirteen. She put up way too much fuss and paid for it. Not that the outcome would have been any different but I wasn’t in the mood for all her squealing and complaining.”     The body of thirteen year old Dawn Bason was found on April 16, 1969 alongside a peaceful country road in Ypsilanti. Missing for only a day, she too had been raped, mutilated and strangled with an electrical cord. Her breasts were also cut off.     Feeling the bile rising in my throat I focused on choking it back down. I was experiencing only a taste of the terror each of these women felt. This was war: psychological warfare and I wasn’t going to let him win. Steeling my eyes on the passing blur of the trees I kept quiet imagining and rehearsing escape strategies if this wasn’t some kind of sick performance. It was then I knew I would kill him if I had to in order to come out of this alive.     “I needed someone a bit older after that,” he started in again. “Alice was a grad student at the University of Michigan. She was twenty-three. I promised her I’d let her go after I raped her but she found out I don’t keep my promises.”     Three teenage boys found the body of Alice Kalom in an abandoned farmhouse on June 9, 1969. Alice had been raped, beaten, shot in the head, stabbed repeatedly, and her throat was cut.     “Then, there was Roxy. Sounds like a stage name, doesn’t it? Like she would be a good dancer. She was disappointing.”     The remains of seventeen year-old Roxy Phillips were found by two boys who were looking for fossils in Pescadero Canyon on July13, 1969. While she had been missing only two weeks, her nude body was badly decomposed and a belt was wrapped tightly around her neck.     Having crossed over a line of sanity, I sat motionless, disassociating. From six feet above, I looked down at my body sitting in the car almost unrecognizable, crippled with fear.     When the radio announcer broadcast the name of the next tune, Santana’s “Evil Ways”, D.J. reached over, turned up the volume and sang along with the tune at ear-splitting levels until it ended. Then, suddenly, he switched the radio off.     “Evil ways. Karen Sue liked that song as well. I took her to buy a wig, you know. She got to wear it, too. Her debut was her finale.”     On July 23, 1969, a doctor and his wife found the body of Karen Sue Beineman in a wooded gully with her panties stuffed in her mouth. She had been raped and strangled. Her face was beaten beyond recognition.     The oratory ceased. It was Saturday, July 26, 1969. The last killing had happened Wednesday. We sat in silence until the green road sign announced the exit to Kensington Metropolitan Park, a mile away.     Kensington Metropolitan Park was a place of joy for me since I was a toddler. It was there, on family excursions, I picnicked and played ball with my cousins, learned to swim in the lake and attended summer swimming day camp in elementary school. I loved it. But, suddenly, the safe familiarity of the 4, 337 acres of rolling hills and 1200 acres of lake was destroyed.     It might be the last thing I saw before I was murdered.     D.J.’s maniacal, deliberate, laugh began piercing the air as we pulled off onto the exit.     He was hitting his hands against the steering wheel and lifted his head as if he was strutting.     He beamed with pride. “I got you,” he said, poking his finger in my face. “I was so good you think I’m him, don’t you? The Co-ed Killer?     “God, that felt great! Jokes on you, Mary Joan!”     Infuriated to the point of near paralysis, my consciousness struggled to reenter my body; to make my hand open the now unlocked door My feet groped for, and clumsily met the ground. Reorienting myself took me a minute or two. Balancing against the open car door frame and the roof, I reacquainted myself with gravitational pull.     Somehow putting on a good face, I tried not to let him know how alienated I was. I had stood my ground but the rage I felt kept writhing its’ way further and further into my being, drilling through my bone marrow and finally permeating my cellular structure screaming out against all the psychological abuses women endure. Manipulations providing warped men entertainment that we were supposed to sit back, take, and laugh off.     Legally, in 1969, girls and women were still the property of men; our fathers, our husbands. My mother could not even open a bank account without the permission of her husband. All we females could hope for was someone who would treat their property fairly, with love, or at least, benevolence. The bottom line though was clear. We were chattels. Living dolls providing amusement and services. We were not persons. It wasn’t until 1971 that the Supreme Court of the United States finally declared women as persons under the law.     Five days later, John Norman Collins, twenty-two, a good looking Caucasion senior at Eastern Michigan University, studying elementary education, was arrested for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The Co-Ed murders stopped. We all breathed a deep sigh of gratitude and relief.     John Norman Collins was convicted of Karen Sue Beineman’s murder on August 19, 1970. Of the seven murders, it was the only one the Prosecution was able to prove against him in Washtenaw County Court. He continues to serve his sentence at Marquette Branch Prison in Michigan.     No one had ever been as deliberately cruel to me as D.J. was that horrifying day. Committing my life to this man, or anyone else who pulled such stunts, was not an option. I simply would not accept this treatment as “normal.”     It took a few months to find the right time to break the engagement. My parents and his partied well together, were of the same religion, socio-economic status, and both looked forward to the merging of families. Shelving substantial social pressure, I called off the wedding on Valentine’s Day, 1970. When I tried to give back the ring, an emerald in a gold setting I designed, D.J. declined to accept it.     The next day I rode the bus to the edge of the Michigan State Campus, calmly disembarked and went to the closest jewelers. “I would like to have this engraved on the inside of the band,” I said, taking the ring box out of my purse and flipping it open.     “Of course, Miss. And, how would you like it to read?” the jeweler queried.     I didn’t blink an eye, “Freedom. MJK”.

The Outlet Peter McMillan     Along the interstate between Detroit and Toledo—if you look closely—you might see an unmarked exit to a modest-looking outlet. Not one of those sprawling villages of Nike, Gap, Liz Claiborne, Eddie Bauer, and Circuit City. Just a flat, windowless, concrete box signed “THE OUTLET.”     I’d driven this route dozens of times and had never seen this exit before. I would have missed it again if I hadn’t happened to be thinking about Dieter Knecht. #     Dieter was a young journeyman machinist from Grand Rapids who caught a ride with me a few years back. He was headed south, as far as I was going, he said.     He told me about the place where he’d been working to make some cash before getting back on the road. He said he probably wouldn’t have seen the exit himself if he hadn’t been walking that stretch. From the outside, the outlet didn’t look like much, but inside it was incredibly— well, it was just incredible, he said.     Broad, well-lit corridors, like streets, were lined with shops and offices, pavilions and temples and mysteriously embellished doors of varying sizes and shapes, he said. Escalators and elevators rose and descended out of sight. A maze in three dimensions, and, of course, there was no map. However, there was a custodian who would direct you wherever you wanted to go, he said, and when you were done, you could tell him you wanted to try something else.     Dieter insisted you couldn’t exhaust all of the possibilities, but even if you tried, at some point you had to stick with something for a while. Not so much because you found what you were looking for, as that you suddenly craved something familiar. Ultimately, that’s why he didn’t stay. The familiar was too elusive and transient. So he got back on the interstate and that’s when we met.     He reminded me of a character from one of those Steppenwolf or Magister Ludi books my girlfriend in college was into pre-Woodstock. From his description, it sounded like a pretty good trip. Not for me though. Not anymore. Just how strongly had Dieter had been drawn in, I wondered. It wasn’t the ‘60s anymore, and he would have likely been on his own and very lonely. I didn’t blame him.     He was too young—like we had been—to know that all this had been done before. Too young to know that one day he would also be irrevocably sucked into the comfortably banal. After decades of corporate, I no longer felt capable of resisting the pull of the everyday and the substantial. When I looked at Dieter, I looked knowingly, but without jealousy or maliciousness. Except for having to relive the last 40 years, I might have wished to be 25 again. Would I have been any different? #     At Dieter’s magical outlet, the parking lot was empty. Approaching the front door, I was struck by the still, soundless emptiness. Nothing emanated from within either. With a gentle tug, the solid steel door swung smoothly and noiselessly on rusty hinges.     This wasn’t the grand entrance Dieter had prepared me for, with portals leading off in all directions to labyrinthine chains of stores and shops and vendors and artisans and entertainers and maybe even phenomenal, unreal, and psychedelic adventures.     It was simply an ordinary warehouse. The reception area—if that’s what they’re called in warehouses—had cheap industrial furniture—a metal desk and a couple of plastic cafeteria chairs. Papers and binders were haphazardly stacked on a rickety metal bookshelf beside a three-drawer filing cabinet. A coffee percolator sat atop the cabinet and on the wall was a hunting and fishing calendar opened to the right month but the wrong year. Elsewhere, the room was bare.     A door at the back appeared to be the only way to go. The worn carpet showed the way, but I decided to sit down and wait for the caretaker. After 15 minutes or so, restless and on edge from the eerie solitude, I got up to learn where in the world Dieter had sent me.     The back door opened wide with a slight push, and sunlight rushed in to fill the rectangle of floor behind me. Before me was the parking lot I’d left to enter by the front door. There was just the one car. It was mine, but it was my red Opel and Cheryl’s glass beads were gently swaying from the rear-view mirror.

Peter McMillan Bio     The author is a freelance writer and ESL instructor who lives on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario with his wife and two flat-coated retrievers. In 2012, he published his first book, Flash! Fiction.

Have a Seat Eric Burbridge     Dr. Donovan looked out the window of his small dental practice. For a professional of short physical stature, he was a giant to his special clientele. The white glow from the moon failed to penetrate the fast moving cloud cover. A tall figure draped in a long black coat emerged from the misty forest across the road. A month passed since he last hobbled to the office. The pounding on the door told him his friend was in transition. “Hello my friend, come in and have a seat...relax, relax.” Donovan gently strapped his patient to the chair, washed his hands and positioned the huge examination lamp over the patient. His friend’s eyes were bloodshot, hair sprouted all over his face and his mouth began to stretch. “Open wide, my friend.” He probed his mouth with the instruments. “Your gums healed from the surgery.” He stepped back and watched in amazement while the chest, arms and legs of the patient burst through his clothing. The patient struggled to speak, but only moaned. His muzzle was fully protruded. “You’re ready for the fitting my friend.” Donovan patted his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”      He unlocked a steel reinforced door and entered a room that displayed his expertise in taxidermy. He couldn’t help but hesitate to admire his latest completion; a brownish black buck. He heard the patient struggle in the restraints. He grabbed the dentures from the cabinet and rushed to his side. “Open wide...that’s good. These are special, extra strong fangs or ‘Canines’ as some pros say.” The patient chomped on the air adjusting to the dentures and howled with joy. “You like those...good, but be careful not to lose them after the transition. You’re a senior now so use wisdom.” He opened a cabinet drawer next to the sink and pulled out a .38 special. As a precaution, he loaded a silver bullet in each chamber. He opened the back door and loosened the straps. His patient dashed out the room.     The erratic flight of a huge bat caught Donovan’s eye. It came to rest on the fence. He went to the workroom, got a wooden stake and put a crucifix in his pocket. His tall, elderly well dressed patient stood in the entrance. “It’s good to see you my friend, have a seat.”     “Hello, doctor.” His majestic voice filled the room. “Sorry I missed my last appointment.” He sat and Donovan draped a cloth over his tuxedo.     “A man with your appetite needs to have tartar removed every month.” Donovan tested the drill and took a pick from its wrapping. “Relax my friend. He finished his work and rinsed his mouth.     “Doctor, instead of money I offer you a long life by joining us.” He towered over the dentist; his bloodshot eyes fixated on his neck.     “No thanks, cash, check or plastic is fine.”     “But, I insist.”     Donovan turned and hit the print button for the invoice. He pulled out the stake, spun and slammed it into his patient’s chest. A putrid smelling fluid shot out the wound while he grabbed at the stick. He fell back on the seat. Donovan tightened the leather strap and watched him jerk and squirm. He waved the crucifix in his pale face. “It’s time for you to retire, my friend.” He left the room, took out the .38 and waited at the back door for his previous customer. Once that business was finished he could retire in peace.

Plato’s Cave Clinton Van Inman Of course the rooms are filled with shadows While lazar lights and computer programs prove More cost effective than fire yet the cardboard Cut-outs and the curtains have remained the same As well as those old lies that trees are real, That the way out really goes somewhere, That math leads more than circles, And that the Wizard himself is behind the curtains Keeping the whole domino world from collapsing. Yet only a few poets and down and outers dare climb The arduous way out as most prefer To sit and argue about living conditions And have learned to love the rope Or some other back door reality.

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

Dear Prudence Katie Karambelas Hill     I walk into the light and shade my eyes from the blinding glare of the mid-afternoon sun. Once my eyes adjust, I see a sandy blonde mop of hair in the distance attached to a stately body of muscles. My breath catches as my hand flies to my heart. It’s been five years since he went away and even the sight of the back of him makes my body go into overdrive.     He picks up a small, gray rock and tosses it, watching it skip, skip, skip before plunging into the water with a soft thud. I pick up the hem of my dress and trudge towards him over the dead crabs and seashells that crunch under my toes. He doesn’t see me but turns toward me when I’m only a few hundred feet away, as if he feels the energy between us the same as he did before.     I stop, hesitant, dropping my dress to my ankles. His eyes light up at the sight of me but the light doesn’t reach the rest of his features that are carved in an unfamiliar frown. I want to run to him like I would have before, but I know that time and distance has changed things. I’m not naîve enough to believe that they haven’t.     His palm goes up to his shoulder in a soft wave that’s like a whisper meant only for me. Even with the crashing of waves, I can still hear my heart drumming loudly in my chest, aching in a way that it hasn’t in a very long time. My feet feel like they’re weighted down in cement. Even though I want to close the gap between us and feel the familiar paths of muscle and bone that belong to Xavier, I know that I cannot. I secretly hope that he has the sense to come to me.     I feel Xavier’s gaze weighing heavily upon me, looking at all the change that has taken place over the five years we’ve been apart. The void between us loses space as he trudges in the sand towards me, at a pace that I always associated with tortoise and snails.     When he is but two or three feet from me, his lips curl into the crooked smile that was once reserved for nights spent together in the solitude of our bed. His smile causes a fluttering of palpitations in my body that feels ancient and unknown to me, even though they used to be the most familiar thing in the world. Five years has decayed my body into a loveless void of fake emotions. Anything real feels untrue.     “Hi,” he says. It’s a simple word but in it holds enough sorrow, happiness, lust and passion to fill me for the rest of my life.     My mouth opens but no words come out. I try again after a moment. “I’ve missed you.”     He smiles at me again but this time the smile is one of pain, and I wonder if he is shielding his eyes because of the strength of the sun or because he doesn’t want me to see how he really feels. “Prudence...” he begins before closing the gap between us and lightly picking up my hand and steadying it. I hadn’t realized it was shaking. “You’ve changed so much,” he says, dropping my hand and letting it fall. I note how warm it feels from such brief contact with another human. It’s been ages since I’ve felt that kind of touch.     “And so have you.”     I drink him in, letting my eyes absorb every freckle, every stray piece of hair. He’s wearing loose slacks, rolled up at the ankles. His feet are wet from letting the waves crash on them. His shirt has specks of wetness that cling to his muscles. I’m faintly aware of the flutter of his heartbeat underneath, the pounding that I once knew so well. It ignites something inside of me, bringing a flooding of memories of our time spent together. I yearn to put my head on his chest as I once would have. But time has hardened me, and where I once was full of life and light, I now feel rough and empty. He seems soft still, unharmed, and I yearn to touch him and see what it feels like. I have long lost these kinds of emotions and have wondered if I could ever get them back.     I feel an echo of what I used to feel for Xavier in the small space between us, a humming of energy aching to bring us even closer. We’ve lost five years and they’ve felt like the longest of my life. But there were many before them, many nights spent in an embrace that I’ve tried to imagine these past five years but could only feel as faintness around me in place of him, like a ghost that’s long disappeared.     His eyes trail up and down the body that he was once so familiar with. I wonder if he notices how much I’ve changed, how much hardness is in place of the softness I once had. I wonder if he can tell how much sorrow and pain I’ve been holding in all these years, how much time has changed me into a stone. He loved me once, I’m sure of that. But I’m unsure if he knows that those feelings were always reciprocated. In the end, I wasn’t sure he knew, because if actions really spoke louder than words, then he didn’t know. I was cruel, too cruel. But I know now that there was no other way, no other way to separate us in the way that we’ve been separated.     Sea gulls bark around us as we stand on the rough sand, untouched by the gentle waves surrounding us. A breeze catches me by surprise, and I throw my arms around myself, steadying my dress and warming my arms. In the same moment, Xavier reaches for me as he once would have, to keep me warm. His hands are placed on my arms, and they burn with an unfamiliar heat. It has the opposite effect on my body; I find myself shivering in spite of myself. This only brings him closer to me, sweeping me into an embrace that is both unexpected and unwanted. I did not want him to be this close, as much as my body is saying otherwise.     He pulls my head into the crevice of his neck, brushing his fingers through my pale blonde locks. It’s a gesture that I hadn’t remembered he’d ever done but now feels familiar, like a distant thought you can’t quite put your finger on. His fingers continue down my neck, tracing the curve of my shoulder and down my arm until finally, his fingers fall into the crevices of my own, where they once called home.     I don’t dare move my body, for fear that this could be the last time Xavier ever touches me again.     “I’ve missed you, Pru,” he says, strained. There’s an unfamiliar scratchiness to his voice, as if he has been yelling too much.     “Life has been kind to you,” I say, rubbing my thumb against his.     “How so?” He tries to lean in to see my face but I turn away from him.     “You look happy.”     He drops my hand and I feel a sudden coldness again. He takes both of his hands and grabs my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. “Happiness comes and goes.”     “I wouldn’t know.”     I start to walk away from him but he is quick to be at my side again, brushing his arms against mine as we walk. He is looking at me curiously and I divert my eyes towards the horizon, noting the fishing boats and the docks up ahead. When the docks are only a few hundred feet away, he finally speaks.     “Have you not felt happiness, Pru? In all the years we’ve been apart, have you not been happy at all?”     I stop and stare into the beautiful blue eyes that used to be able to read me like a book. I recall the countless nights after I left, the screams that woke me from my sleep, the hair that I lost for no apparent reason, the hollowness in my face, the shortness of my breathing, as if I barely existed anymore. I recall the letters received even though he wasn’t supposed to know where I’d gone. They stayed unopened and eventually, after two years, they stopped coming. I recall the endless nights of other men in my bed, the sick feeling in my stomach when they climaxed inside of me. I recall the way my body once moved quickly and lightly with a swiftness that has now diminished to a slow, dragging in the sand.     “No. I have been content, yes, but happiness has not been attainable here.” I leave it at that, hoping he does not prod further into my emptiness.     He nods slowly, picking up my hand again and dragging me onward toward the docks. When we reach them, I am bombarded by the smell of dead fish and the musk of sweaty fisherman tangled with the salt in the air. It is a smell I have grown accustomed to over time. I escaped to the ocean five years ago and it has steadied me in a way that nothing else could. The fish market was a familiarity gained from spending countless days letting the waves crash over me.     The men are vile here but they don’t care if you leave them after a night in bed and have been a source of comfort for me when I’ve felt lonely. Fishermen are always out at sea, so I’ve never had to worry about rumors being spread. They never seem to remember when they come back in to town anyways. Booze is limited at sea, so they spend their nights drinking enough at the local bars to forget where they are. I’m just a distant memory by morning.     I’ve made sure we walked to the market so Xavier would be kept at a distance. It’s impossible to be romantic when you are walking amongst dead fish. Between the stench and the sight of fish being gutted, there is a rawness that I’ve been drawn to here. It reminds me that life isn’t always worthless. Death sometimes sustains life.     “Tell me about your life,” Xavier says as we stop in front of a boat being unloaded. He doesn’t realize, but the man with dark shoulder length hair was a part of my life once. It was a night I felt my lowest, and I have to turn away from the boat and Xavier to keep the tears at bay. They are not welcome.     “I write,” I tell him. “I write and sketch. I try to create things.” I don’t mention the unspoken creation between us. I don’t mention the reason I left.     “Why didn’t you write me then? You say you write but I never heard back. Two years worth of letters, Pru, and nothing from you.” His voice doesn’t sound angry as much as it sounds hurt. I try not to focus on the fact that it is because of me. I believed I was the only one who had suffered. I believed that if the letters went unanswered that he would simply forget me.     I don’t answer his questions because I don’t have anything to say that would heal his hurt; instead I ask, “Why did you come here, Xavier?”     He presses his finger tips lightly on my spine, slowly pushing me to a piece of the docks that is unoccupied. I rest my forearms on the wood, letting my body relax ever so slightly. It is hard being numb, forcing your body to always be rigid and cold, never giving into your emotions.     “I came for you, Prudence. When you left...” He shakes his head and rests his arms on the wood rail next to me. I catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye and see him struggling to form words. “I didn’t want you to leave. Even after all these years, I still wish you hadn’t left.”     He is speaking words I never wished to hear. There was a reason I never wrote, a reason I ran away. How could he have understood? “I burned them, one by one, until they were ashes. I never read a single letter.” I don’t tell him that it was the best kind of therapy; that burning his letters was like burning a needle. It sterilized me.     He seems shocked, as if that was never a possibility. The Prudence he knew would have read them. But I wasn’t his Prudence after everything fell apart.     “You never read them? All those days I wrote to you to convince myself that you still loved me and you never even read a word of what I had to say?”     His shock has turned to anger now and it makes me uncomfortable. The people in my life here are not passionate like Xavier. I have been cooped up in my own little world. I hardly know what real emotions feel or sound or look like. But here I am, staring them in the face. He slams his anger down upon me in a way I could never have imagined or prepared for. I’m unable to speak or return his gaze. I keep my eyes locked on the horizon.     “You left me, Pru, and you never even gave me a chance. You never let me comfort you. You never let me have a say. It wasn’t right and you know that. What happened was awful but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have worked it out.”     He’s careful with his anger, as if he’s navigating a ship he’s afraid will sink if he speaks too loudly or too brash. I desperately wish he would yell and scream and just get it over with so I can be free of the uncomfortable feelings in the pit of my stomach that are aching to come back up and haunt me. I do not wish them into my head. I wish them away. They are distant memories that have haunted me for far too long. Time has only lessened the pain to a bearable measure but his words are slowly pulling the memories to the surface like a fish being caught and shocked by the air it cannot breathe. I cannot breathe with these memories in my head. My chest is constricted and I’m not sure if it is from the corset or my emotions trying to burst through.     I take a deep breath, exhaling the memories away. “What we had was lost.” It is a heavy statement, one that we both find many meanings in.     He lowers his head onto his forearms, and I watch the steadiness of his breathing as he tries to calm himself. When he finally rises, I’m hit by a jolt of memories flooding into me before I have a chance to stop them. One in particular hangs on to me more than the rest. He’s looking at me the way he did the night I left. I can almost feel my heart being ripped to pieces as it had that night. His face is distraught and hollow and... hopeless. When the first of the letters came, they caught me by surprise. I thought he agreed that all hope was lost, I thought he felt it in his bones the way I did. But I was wrong, for the letters trickled in day by day and for a while, it seemed as if his hope was building. He had two years filled with hope and I wonder, looking at him now, if the next three were anything like mine. Did he sit up late at night and dream empty dreams? Did he lose sight of beauty in the world? Did he desperately try and create it the way I had through my writing and sketching?     Now that the guise is dropped, I see the pain that he had masked when I first approached him. His eyes look like they’re searching me for answers I cannot give. I didn’t just break myself when I left, I broke Xavier too. That realization brings with it a whole new kind of pain, one I didn’t realize existed. To leave for one’s own good and protection hurts, but it hurts because I knew it was my pain to bear. But this, this is something different altogether. This is pain that I’ve caused. I never saved him from the life I ran away from. Maybe I even made it worse.     “You don’t mean that,” he says, slowly releasing his anger. His face shows his hurt but there is a hint of something else in it, something close to defeat.     I try to be brave as I look him straight in the eye like I did the day I left. “I do.”     “No,” he says. He is firm in his conviction. “No. What we had wasn’t lost. We could have fixed things. We could have persevered in spite of everything. But instead, you ran away. You gave up.”     His words hurt because he’s right. I gave up. But it was easier. I was convinced it would save him from pain in the long run. I was convinced he would have moved on by now. “Why did you come here?”     He grabs my hand and pulls me towards the end of the pier. I try to ignore the burning his hand sends through my body. When we are at the edge he looks out into the ocean as he speaks, keeping his voice steady and careful. “Do you see this ocean... how it goes on and on without us being able to see where it ends? That is like my love has always been for you. You never realized how much a part of me you were. When you left, it was like someone poured tar into the ocean. My world was darker and dirty; it suddenly wasn’t beautiful like it once was. It took me years to find happiness again. I wanted you to be a part of that happiness, Pru. I want you to come back with me. Be my ocean again.”     His words are beautiful. I wish ever so desperately that it is as easy as he claims it is to go back. But he doesn’t understand. He can’t understand. He did not lose what I lost. He did not feel what I felt. He did not bleed like I bled.     “I can’t,” I say to him, shaking my head, shaking away the warmth his words have bestowed upon me. “This is my life now.”     “I was once your life.” It’s barely a whisper.     “A long, long time ago, Xavier. We can’t go back.”     “Why not? Who makes the rules, Pru? We are our own selves. Why can’t we go back? If you don’t want to come with me, then I’ll stay here. I want to be with you. I don’t care where we go. I just want to love you.”     The walls I’ve built up around me are slowly coming apart. I can feel the emotions slipping in, as if someone is physically prying tears out of my eyes. The more I hold them back, the more they flow down the familiar paths of my cheeks until I’m sobbing uncontrollably. My body heaves with each sob, bringing with it a rawness of pain that I thought I had closed off. I should have never come. I should have stayed far, far away from Xavier.     “I cannot be the person you want me to be. That Prudence is dead,” I say between sobs. He tries to touch me but I jerk away with enough force that he doesn’t try again.     “You can honestly say that you don’t love me anymore?”     I can feel the heaviness of his gaze, and as I slowly turn towards him I am hit with the realization that this will be the last time I’ll ever see Xavier’s face. This will be the last time I break his heart. “Yes. I don’t love you, Xavier. You coming here was a waste of time. Please leave and never return. Forget about me.”     His face betrays his emotions and I can see that even though he acts like my words haven’t hurt him, they actually have. “How is it that easy for you? I have tried moving on. I’ve tried forgetting about you and it has been impossible! How can you stand here and look at me the way you are looking at me!”     “What do you want from me?” I practically scream at him, unable to keep my anger at bay.     He grabs my hands and brings them to his face, stroking my fingers against his cheekbones. “I want for you to remember. I want you to remember what our life was like before you went away. You were my bride, Pru. You were my everything. You aren’t being honest when you say you don’t love me anymore.”     I jerk my hands away from him. “Don’t you dare tell me to remember! I have spent five years forgetting everything that happened, everything we were. Don’t you dare tell me that it would’ve been better if I hadn’t left. Don’t pretend to know anything about me anymore. I meant what I said. The Pru that loved you is long gone. She will never come back. She is lost, Xavier.” He reaches to me again in a last attempt but I hold up my hand in a command that he cannot ignore. “Go home, Xavier. I’m not your home anymore.”     He holds himself together and does not speak. He gives me a slight nod, showing his surrender and puts a few fingers to my cheekbone, swiping them to my lips before bringing them to his own. It is a kiss that burns from my head to my toes and after a second, the feeling is gone because he pulls away and walks down the docks until he is swallowed by fishermen and customers. He does not look back.     I am alone on the end of the pier, and five years worth of emotions starts to swallow me until I’m curled up against the wooden beams and feeling as if there is nothing left inside of me. I made a decision before coming here, one that would change Xavier’s life if I had not made him leave.     This pain was always mine to bear. I wished for the longest time that Xavier hadn’t been caught up in the hurt that I caused. It was always my fault, my body that was wrong. When the pains started, when the blood seeped down my legs, I knew that it was because of me. I knew that I was broken, dysfunctional, wrong. I thought I had made a beautiful masterpiece but it was taken from me because I wasn’t any good. I wasn’t worth enough. I would never be enough for anyone.     I wipe the residue of tears from my eyes and grab the beam to pull myself up. My skirt is heavy today and I already feel weighted down by it. The weakness in my bones seems a thousand times worse than it did when I got to the ocean. The beams come to my waist and are easy to climb. I swing my legs around carefully so they are draped over the side where the ocean lays down below.     The water is a brilliant shade of dark blue, and I cannot see a single living thing beneath it. The color has a calming effect and so do the gentle sounds of waves crashing against the pier’s legs, a soft hum like a lullaby my mother used to sing to me when I was a little girl.     I don’t hesitate when I decide to push myself from the rail, releasing my hands and soaring for a split instance before I’m falling. The fall is quick because of the heaviness of my clothes. When I hit the water, it sends a chill throughout my entire body like small daggers being poked all over me. I don’t kick or scream or do anything but sink.     I am only slightly aware of two possible deaths my actions could bring. The first is being crashed into the pier itself. It would be a quick death if timed right, a head to the pier and I’m dead instantly.     The second is drowning.     It only takes me only a moment to realize I did not position myself well enough to hit the pier. But there is something magnificent about drowning. It is peaceful, unlike most of my life. The loss of air is constricting my lungs and they feel as if they may burst. I swallow water and sink farther and farther down. I can see the sun above me slowly disappearing as my skirt drags me lower. The water is cold, but as I lose consciousness it is getting warmer.     The water is inviting, wrapping me in its arms and bringing me closer to it. It has been a long time since I felt safe and welcome somewhere. There’s something peaceful about the way my body sways with the tide.     I have a flash of a memory before hitting the bottom, the one thing that I’ve never been able to escape, even now.     Xavier running into the room, hearing my screams. Blood everywhere. So much blood. Xavier asking if the baby is okay. I know it’s gone. Dead, not gone. Dead.     The water is inviting.     Dead.

Bakken Formation Brian Rodan     I came to the Bakken Formation, to the oil-patch around Williston, North Dakota, to get a job. I found Kevin. Kevin wants to hurt someone, he wants to hurt me.     This morning there is a strong, moist sweet smell of French sponge cakes. Lemon, vanilla and butter fragrances fill my nose, freshly baked, warm, hot even, just out of the oven and dusted with powdered sugar. I see two small, curved Madeleine cakes which could rest side-by-side in the palm of my hand. The cakes are visible but I cannot hold them. Wide-open cake-faces emerge in innocent bloom from the half-shell.     I don’t know if I am awake or asleep but one of those worlds holds the Madeleines and pulls me. I compulsively reach out a handful of wiggling fingers futilely hoping to caress the aroma of warm baked pastries.     But, my fingers wiggle in the air and they are cold. My hands are cold. My legs, face, nose, stomach and chest are all cold. Then I hear an annoying, tapping, rapping sound quickly repeating loudly and in rapid staccato, metal on metal and metal on glass. And, there is a voice, an angry, pissed-off and pissed-on voice that sounds harsh and tethered to a frozen landscape. “Hello. Hello. Who’s in here?” This tapping sound and the voice also come from one of the two worlds, either from the waking world or the sleeping world, and it is like a razor-sharp fish hook piercing deeply into my body, insidiously working its barbed hook into my flesh.     I don’t know if the insistent tapping and the tortured calling voice belongs to the waking or dreaming world. But, I know that this hook is dragging the two worlds together, like a grappling hook dragging two ships together into chaotic unavoidable confrontation.     Julia and Annie are my daughters, 16 and 11 years old. When they were still talking to me, I called them my two Madeleines, with their wide-open young faces emerging from the half-shell formed by their impeccable long straight brown hair that falls below each of their shoulders. Julia and Annie are the sponge cakes who absorbed it all. They were there for my unraveling. They were there when I slapped Marla because she took my vodka from me. They absorbed too much information, too much of the truth. I don’t know if they still have long hair. I doubt that they would even talk to me today. Julia and Annie are back in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania where I left them with Marla, their mother, overlooking the Shopping Mall.     The world did not end on Friday, December 21, 2012. However, that day and the events leading up to that day were still a catastrophic ending and beginning for me. Much more than a mere calendar coincidence.     My life must hold a central role in an ancient calendar which is unknown to me. There must be a musty, humid stone vault in the Yucatan which is filled with ingrown tree-roots, poisonous snakes and spiders where my likeness is carved in bas-relief as a permanently screwed victim etched in the stone walls. Surely, it takes divine intervention to screw the pooch so badly that whole epochs of calendared time come to an end so as to be coordinated with my actions and failures. No mere human (and certainly not me) is capable of such a feat without maliciously divine intervention. That was my first hint that I was being accompanied by another, Kevin must also be carved standing over my likeness in bas-relief in that Yucatan vault.     The Screwage, Friday, December 21, 2012: In the morning, Marla and I performed the last two joint acts of our 29 year marriage by filing bankruptcy and deeding the house back to the bank. In the afternoon, the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas declared Marla’s divorce from me final and granted Marla full custody of the two Madeleines. I could mount no dispute to the findings. In the evening, I packed my few remaining clothes in my 2003 Honda Pilot and left Pennsylvania and the life I had lived there for the last 59 years with no final destination in mind. My two darling Madeleines were not present for the slinking departure of their dismantled father in the night. If they had been present they would not have mourned or shed a tear, they had seen enough of their drunken unemployed dad.     I ended up here in Williston North Dakota with all my remaining worldly possessions contained within the Pilot. Many of the newcomers to Williston, like me, sleep in their cars because there is nowhere to live and no money to pay for it. Vehicles are the basic measurement of a life. My life has been reduced to a single Pilot-full. Noah had the cubit to measure his Ark and I have the Pilot-full as the unit which measures and defines me. I am better off, by far, than those poor bastards reduced to a Chevy Vega-full, or Nissan Sentra-full or other older or lesser denominations.     In Williston, North Dakota, references to supernatural intervention in my life or Mayan calendaring coincidences are not helpful when seeking employment, or hoping to retain recently obtained and tentatively held employment, such as my current circumstances. There is more nourishment and succor, though succor is a word I have never used before but it fits here as I suckle at the breast of my precipitous destruction, to refer to the events leading up to and occurring on Friday, December 21, 2012 as the “Screwage.” Many of those events were self-imposed and self-created but were still part of the Screwage all the same regardless of the cause.     In conversation these days I try to avoid, as much as possible, references to my past. However, when seeking employment, such as my job interview with Arne Stumpp my current 26 year old boss, referring to my past as the “Screwage” was, for reasons unknown to me, better received and more quickly explained. There is a simple, easily understood directness to “Screwage” a basic human archetype. Arne Stumpp must have a gloomy streak in his temperament despite his rosy outward demeanor.     The rapping, tapping, annoying repetitive sounds of metal on metal and metal on glass returns again. This time even louder and more insistent. Then, I hear a person walking outside my car, outside my Pilot-full. There are footsteps crunching on the snow and slush which had frozen into craggy solid shapes in the January night-time temperatures. I hear footsteps crunch through hollow air pockets in the shallow frozen puddles around the car.     Again, I hear the pissed-off insistent voice, now at the same time as the tapping. “Hello. Hello. Who’s in there? I know you’re in there.”     I open my eyes to see a big cloud of my breath freezing in the air in front of my face. It is January in Williston and it is cold, really cold, inside the Pilot. Arne said it would be minus 9 degrees last night, outside. It was at least that cold. The next night I’ll keep the engine running and waste the gas to keep the heater on.     Blue-green mercury vapor light fills the inside of my Honda Pilot from the overhead light posts hanging over the convenience store parking lot. Blue-green vapor light filters in the windows and creates blue-green fractals through the ice crystals of my breath which is frozen on the inside of the car windows. But, not everything is blue-green, I also see a wash of natural light through the fractals in the windows. It must be morning, 7 or 7:30.     I am inside my sleeping bag in back of my Honda, with all the rear seats folded down. This is my bedroom. I am wearing most of the clothes that I still own: two t-shirts, two sweatshirts, gloves, long underwear and pants. I’m still cold. But, this time the cold feels deeper and more threatening than just cold temperature alone. There is something more coldly threatening in the voice, in the tapping and the icy footsteps of this person walking around outside my Honda Pilot. This feels like a real-life awake experience but I can’t tell whether I am awake or asleep and dreaming.     I hear crunching in front of the car then a sound, a faint thump against the front bumper, in front of the hood. I sit up in my sleeping bag spread out in the back of the Pilot. An ambiguous shadow moves across the frozen fractals in the front windshield. Then there is a sound at the front bumper like someone pulled apart the plug that runs from the overhead parking light post to the plug in my engine block heater. I search around beside my sleeping bag for the broom stick I keep there as protection.     I am afraid that Kevin is walking around outside my Pilot. Kevin wants to hurt someone. I have never met Kevin, not the real person. But, I have seen and felt the effects of his rage, his anger, his compulsions. He lives in the Mancamps built outside Williston. Kevin is 23 years old, although he might be older, like me. He was unemployed for 3 years before he came to Williston, like me. Kevin has no family. He is lonely.     Kevin has worked in the Williston oil-patch driving truck for the rigs for 3 years. Kevin is making money. He has saved $52,000. Frustrated and unhappy, he wants to do something, anything other than working.     Mancamps are not what I thought they’d be. Identical 12" by 12" sleeping modules and cafeteria modules are bolted together like lego blocks into tic-tac-toe grids which seem to bleed out of the wheat fields outside town. Worker shifts in the oil patch are 24/7 and change constantly and so there are no predictable patterns of human traffic or activity. A handful of women live in the Mancamps but they are sequestered and never seen. The absence of women, and the balance to the social contract which women provide, is an unspoken emptiness.     Drinking, drugs, or fighting get residents kicked out of the Mancamps and that will return the offender to living and sleeping in his car. Because no one wants to return to sleeping in their car, there is no conflict, not even an appearance of conflict, in the Mancamps.     A pervasive smell of temporary-ness and hollow-ness infuses the halls, the sleeping modules and the cafeterias, everywhere and everything is empty and hollow, even the residents. An eerie quiet is everywhere. In the hallways and in the cafeterias people speak as little as possible and use low and muffled tones when they do speak. Mancamps are boring, banal, dull and monotonous. They are ascetic monasteries where people go for additional hollowing and to deny the flesh even more. And, if I am lucky, really lucky, then I will get to live in a Mancamp some day, instead of my Honda Pilot. The Madeleines are gone now, pushed away by the frozen images and sounds walking around my car.     Kevin wanders the sullen and barren halls of the tic-tac-toe grid of the Mancamps between his work shifts, 2 am or 2 pm are each the same to him. Sometimes the walls of his bedroom unit close in too much on him or the video games bore him and he is forced to walk the hollowed-out halls of his Mancamp empty and alone.     I came to know Kevin for the first time on the evening of the Screwage, when I left in my Pilot-full for parts unknown. I just didn’t know it was him. There was no name attached, it was just a feeling that I had. Driving into the unknown and unknowable. Chased into a corner with no escape. That was my introduction to what I later called Kevin. I hoped that Kevin would stay in Pennsylvania. But, he followed me to Williston.     I have been in Williston since Christmas, looking for a job and living in my Honda Pilot. Jobs don’t come easy, even in Williston, for 59 year old guys from Pennsylvania who had been unemployed for 3 years. Two weeks ago I was at a job interview with Arne Stumpp at the North Plains Tavern in Williston. When Arne told me to meet him at a bar for the job interview I knew he wasn’t serious about hiring me. I lied to Arne, telling him I was in my 20s, not pushing 60.     Before going into the North Plains for the job interview with Arne I sat in my car surveying my Pilot-full of possessions. I knew, without checking, that there was $162 left from the cash I took from Marla, one last gesture for her to discover on December 22. There were no credit cards, the bankruptcy took those away. Besides, it was warm in the bar and maybe Arne will pay for some fries or a meal before the interview is over.     Arne was sitting at the end of the bar and, as he predicted in our phone call, he was the only person in the whole place wearing a tie. It didn’t look like Arne intended to stay long.     When I introduced myself, Arne could not hide his disappointment at seeing a graying, fat, 59 year old. Almost immediately after shaking my hand he checked his phone, for the time, for messages, for any possible excuse to cut the job interview short. I had to move fast since it was obvious I would not be getting a meal or fries with this interview.     “I know how to make money for you. I call him Kevin. He lives in the Mancamps. He’s here, he has money and you can sell to him,” I said to Arne. I hated myself for saying this, for acknowledging Kevin’s existence to Arne or that Kevin might help me. I was afraid of Kevin, afraid of what he would do to the Madeleines. But, my statement got Arne’s attention. And, as I was hoping, it got me the job, at least for a while. Everything is temporary on some level. $750 a week for research about Kevin, it was a start.     After that interview, the Madeleines had disappeared. No matter how hard I tried to conjure up the blooming wide-open faces of Julia and Annie emerging from the half-shell I could see nothing, smell nothing, feel nothing. They were gone, until this morning.     And then the Madeleines were driven off again by the visitor in the ice and snow around my car, the beast from the stone vault who stalks me. I will not let them be chased away again. So, I wrap my sleeping bag tightly around my chest to brace against the cold, holding my stubby broomstick in my hand for protection.     I open the door to respond to the tapping and wrapping and calling from outside my Pilot. A heavy freeze, its whiteness visible in the morning air, covers the parking lot. There is a person at the door, buried in a large parka. Only a small oval of face is visible surrounded by a hood drawn tightly round. The person is shuffling from foot-to-foot in a jog to warm against the cold.     “I’m the clerk at this store. You are parked in our lot. You can’t park here overnight or use our electricity for the engine block heater. It’s not allowed. If I let you, we’d have fifty people here. I’ll get fired if I let you stay.”     But I told him it was ok. I showed him the stained napkin that his boss gave me with permission to stay. After seeing my napkin lease the convenience store clerk left me alone.     It wasn’t Kevin, this time. He would be back tonight. I will call the Madeleines on the phone at Arne’s office today and they will hang up on me. Then, I will call again tomorrow. I will not let them go, the beast in the stone vault will not win.

In A Hole Terri Muuss Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. The music is drilling a hole into my chest. It runs through me, waves of sound that bounce against my spine and move my body without consulting my brain. Sweat is pouring down my back. The music is so loud it hurts, but I throw myself at it like a rubber ball. My arms are elastic and I can’t feel my face. My heart is pounding in the same rhythm as the thump, thump, thump of the dance floor. I just know it will explode and I don’t care. Music crashes into walls as I fall into someone’s arms I don’t know. They slowly kiss me and I linger, cradled in arms that seem to have me securely for an instant. Gradually, I am brought back to standing, but my heart continues beating so fast and so hard I feel it is likely to rip itself out of my chest and fall onto the floor. My head tells me I need something else to quell the storm brewing in my body. With effort, I make my way through the sea of bodies to the bathroom. Everything is unusually sharp and emphatic, as though I must remember it all for a test later. As I stumble across the dance floor, I pass some guy in tight black pants, with no shirt on and a red feathered boa clinging to the sweat on his arms and back. He shakes his long black hair in time to the music and I watch as it becomes a smudge of black charcoal before me in the air. I am instantly soaked in his sweat. It hits my face like pin-pricks of ice. In the bathroom, I gently push my way past drag queens in tottering heels and pretty boys in chains and leather to find my place at the sink. In the metal basin, I see the remnants of someone’s sick along with a half-smoked cigarette, some ashes and a lipstick mark. Resting my arms at the edge of the filthy basin, I draw my eyes up to find a vacant-eyed, hollow-cheeked, pale version of myself in the mirror. My pupils are enormous and I see with fascination that they have blotted all the color from my irises. I scan for any trace of sea-foam green and find nothing but a circle, so shiny and reflective. I remark to anyone who might hear me that I have black beetles for eyes. I turn on the water and gently dab my cheeks and forehead, careful not to smudge what remains of my elaborate eye makeup. I take my hands, still wet with water, and drag them along the desert of my tongue. I am thirstier than I have ever been, but having spent the last of my cash on two tabs of X, have no more money for the $7 bottles of water they are selling at the bar. The owners here at Twilo are smart enough to know that no one comes here to drink their crappy, watered-down alcohol, so they overcharge us for bottled water, knowing how dehydrated the drugs we take will make us. I shrug, carefully tilt my head to the side and drink from the grimy spigot. The water has a metallic quality to it, like blood in my mouth, but I don’t care. I need it. I stumble back from the sink in my pleather boots and search for an empty bathroom stall, but here there are no single user stalls. Clumps of legs huddle behind bathroom doors, their owners deep in the negotiation of shared drug use. I am about to leave when suddenly, from behind, an arm links with my own and a smiling face appears next to mine. It is Trevor. He is a friend of my friends. We came here together tonight en masse and his friend Charles is friends with my friend Dan. I know very little about him except he is an amazing dancer and, ironically, works as a drug counselor in his other life. He strokes the inside of my arm with a dreamy fascination until one of the overcrowded stalls opens and empties. He quickly tugs me into the stall with him and locks the door behind us. “You are X-ing too hard, girl. Here, do a bump of K,” he says as he places the tiny spoon under my nose. I hold one nostril closed and use a quick intake of breath to take my medicine. I feel the tiny burn of it enter me and a slow buzzing sensation begins growing in my mind, like the feel of vibrating dental equipment in your mouth. I close my eyes and see strange patterns and lines. I can’t help but smile. Yes! THIS is what I needed. How did he know? “Thanks,” I say and my mouth lingers a bit too long on the S so that it sounds as though I am hissing like a snake. After doing his own bump, Trevor and I exit the bathroom, arms still linked, and suddenly it dawns on me: I feel... happy. I have been chemically chasing this feeling for months, perhaps years, and I smile again to myself, knowing that I will follow this feeling wherever I need to. The music sounds so amazing to me now, time feels frozen and I think to myself that this moment feels amazingly like clarity, that this is what infinity must feel like. A newfound energy controls me now, a calmer force. This, I say to myself, I can manage. Ecstasy has only taken me so far and now I know what I need to take me home. This combination is perfect and offers relief from the faceless, addling voices in my head. But I will need more. This small feeling of happiness must be magnified. If one bump is good, then two will be better and I can exponentially grow my happiness in perpetuity. I lean into Trevor and ask him to sit with me on the large sofas off to the side of the dance floor. I don’t want my supply of happiness to go off dancing somewhere without me. “Sure, honey,” he says and we look for a place on the crowded couches to sit. Already I feel the bitter drip of the K in the back of my throat and I sniff it back quickly, knowing I need more right away. We sit down and I do another bump. And then another. Then one more for good measure. “Slow down, sweetie,” Trevor drawls at me with dreamy eyes, “we have all night.” I lean back into the crushed velvet sofa and run my hands along the underside of the loveseat and the perfect red fabric there. Yes, we have all night. And I am gone. Sometime later, I awake from my trance, slightly sick and dizzy. I have no idea how long I have been lying here. With intense effort, I try to bring myself to sitting up, but it is no use. I can not move. The sickening thump thump thump of the music is back in the core of my chest and I think I must be having a heart attack. I realize suddenly, and with alarm, that someone’s face is in my face. It is Dan. He is talking to me. Asking me if I am okay. Am I okay? His question travels slowly through the canal of my ear into my brain and once it is there and registered fully, I try to speak. In my brain the words echo, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” but nothing comes out. I try again to speak. The words in my head are physically unable to exit my mouth. I am mute. I can not move. There is something sickeningly familiar about this... I have been here before. This feeling of being gone, immoveable, of being lost. It is almost too much to bear. This is too familiar. I need to shake this off. I need to be able to move. “You can’t speak, can you,” he smiles. “You are in a K-hole, darlin’.” In a hole. Yes, I am. I am lost and sick and I have no idea how long I have been here. I need to get out. Please, God, won’t someone help me. I have fallen into holes before and I often worry that the fabric of my mind has such rips and tears that I will fall through one day and never be found. I have to get out of here. Please help me get out of here. *originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

From Above Terri Muuss He’s coming. I look out of my bedroom window just in time to see our tan station wagon pull into the gravel of our driveway. The car leaves its red taillight behind like a stain. My heart begins revving; I feel sick. The engine is shut off and things heighten: kaleidoscope colors, adrenaline pulling all into a center point, edges, warping bed, table, desk, a tug of war, white static snow falling, my mind—reverb on a guitar. I hear a baby crying down the hallway—in my head, in my ear, a tunnel deep inside. Is it a neighbor’s baby? Pick it up. It’s deafening—a movie version of a baby crying on Dolby surround sound, then a banging, banging, banging—a headboard banging? A door banging open? The heat? It’s just the heat coming up in my cold room. The pipes. The heat coming up, shaking the ground, a volcano—no, no, a hot spring with steam shaking the pipes. It’s so cold. The heat coming up through the wooden slats of the floor, coming up—Shhhhhh—coming up. The Father coming up the stairs. The stairs. I can hear him stealing up. A poisonous gas floating up the staircase. Holding breath. I know exactly which stair. The fourth one. The fifth one creaks—the section of banister missing a pole. The eighth stair, I am so cold. I am shaking, shaking free from myself. I can see me, a movie actress, playing a part. I am playing a part below me. Shhhhhh—I am floating. Below, I can see me: cold and shaking. I know there is static in that girl down there, but not in me. I am split from her. Floating the way they say you do when you die, while he stands in the doorway. I watch me pretending until he comes in, he comes in, comes in the girl below me, me. He comes to me, the girl asleep, pretending. Then he stays with me. He stays in me. *originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

Wild Violets Terri Muuss My father’s hand tight around a fistful of pennies. They shine like mirrors as he counts them out on the edge of my Holly Hobby bedspread at midnight. One, two, three, four... I am paralyzed watching him. I am waiting. I want those pennies but what must I do to have them? They are painfully new, reflectively shiny. They dazzle me. I know how cold they will be until warmed in the tiny palm of my hand. They are such a precious thing. I want to put the pennies in my mouth. In the sides of my mouth, those copper pennies will taste like blood. He gathers me onto his lap and strokes my knee. In my right hand is a folded picture from one of my father’s hunting and fishing magazines. I like to look at the pictures of the fish: their glassy eyes tinged with blood, their clipped fins. I stare for hours at the huge fingers which push themselves under the fishes’ vermillion gills as they are held aloft into the white air. Their gills are red, so bright, held by men with yellow, crooked teeth and dark smiles. As I tighten my grip on the wrinkled paper in my hand, my father begins to smile, too. Later, I escape outside and stoop to collect violets and put them in the white wicker of my bicycle basket. I carefully pick each one at its base and kiss its delicate head before bundling them with bits of string or paperclips. I ride for long hours up and down Ellen Street, leaving small gifts of freshly picked dandelions and violets in my neighbors’ mailboxes. I ride my bike until my Achilles ache and the sun drips down the sky, leaving a wash of watercolor. “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,” I pronounce to the sky. At dusk, I go into the open field on our street to lie down in the tall grass and listen to the crickets sing until the streetlights come on. Most days, I run home so as not to be late. But some evenings, I lie for a few extra moments and allow myself to fade into the backdrop of night: to be lost, invisible, and yet a part of something larger than myself. Soon, I hear my mother’s call summoning me back to our house, the one with the peeling paint and secrets. But for a few seconds, I am free. Returning to my bike, I find the dry carcasses of violets wilted into the cracks of my white wicker bicycle basket. *originally published in Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013)

Terri Muuss Bio     Terri Muuss, whose poetry has appeared in Bolts of Silk, Apercus Quarterly, Long Island Quarterly, Red River Review and Whispers and Shouts, is the author of Over Exposed (JB Stillwater, 2013) and the one-woman show, Anatomy of a Doll, named “Best Theatre: Critics’ Pick of the Week” by the New York Daily News and performed throughout the US and Canada since 1998. Terri co-produced and hosted the monthly Manhattan poetry series Poetry at the Pulse for two years and her poem Rialto Beach won the 2013 Great Neck Poetry Prize. As a licensed social worker, Muuss specializes in the use of the arts as a healing mechanism for trauma survivors and teaches a course at Rutgers University to social workers entitled Youth Development Through the Written Arts. She currently lives on Long Island with her husband, writer Matt Pasca, and her two ginger-haired presidential experts, Rainer and Atticus. www.terrimuuss.com

The Dragon Trevor Hackley Copyright 2013 Edited by Leslie Silton     It was truly a dark night.     Thunder cracked. Lightning spiked and ripped — it shoved through the dark. There were no signs of the moon or stars or anything.     There was a certain cave located high in the mountains — these mountains themselves which vaulted, climbed and towered ever higher toward the heavens. These mountains were almost an embodiment of Man’s climb and striving towards greatness, glory, godliness; ultimatums over crags, across rivers and streams, the rough spots, the pointing rocks, the randomly rough veins and crevices, the dripping water. These mountains were a manifesto of nature: all is fair in love and war.     The cave itself was not (comparably) terribly high itself. Thirty or forty vertical paces up. For those of us who sought to reach it, the usual travelers anyhow, this was rather characteristic of the journey, and not at all a hindrance or drawback to the climb. And for those of us who sought to reach it, the unusual travelers, this provoked a mischievous light in the eye — to breast this peril and see what may come of it.     Either way, one went up the mountain to this cave — one step at a time. You slipped and you slid. You fell once or twice. If you hadn’t knocked your shin up at least once, by about a quarter ways up, you thought maybe this climb really has not been worth the trouble.     When you finally did arrive at the mouth of the cave, if you are smart, you stepped in the first six paces so water from the bluff above didn’t drip down upon your head.     By now you are more or less terribly interested to see what payoff this adventure should give you. What are to be the rewards for your labor?     Well, you crept in a little ways in, and then a little ways further. You passed rock along either side. It was shiny, rough. And there were dangerous-looking stuff hanging from above, known as stalactites. You kept on. Your feet crunched on the rock. Once or twice you heard a strange sound, so you wondered if anything different or unusual was underneath your feet. But in the next moment you disregarded it.     On you went, past the half-way mark. You were getting nearer and nearer the back. This was where your journey was supposed to culminate.     A few yards further. Your eyes narrowed. Your muscles began to tense. Where were you? You looked one way, then the other.     Your eyes took in the strange marks on the wall. There were signs of past travelers. Were they call-outs for help? Were they simply historical records? These and more thoughts and wonders and questions ran through your mind. The curiosity lasted a while, but when that ended, you turned away. Your interest was now back upon the main task at hand. You continued on.     Your head now picked up even more. You slowed. Your eyes groped. Is it there? The something you were searching in the place you had heard and read so much. Is this really it?     Anther step. One more. Oh wait. The next step—your foot was halfway there— when you saw something. It was not rock. (That surface was different.) This was almost smooth-looking, almost burnished. And the edges were cleaner.     You looked a little further up. You peered. Then it occurred to you. You pulled out a flint, struck it upon a rock. You found dry grass or a stick. Now lit, you took another look: the answer revealed: color—deep red. Skin-like. A scale. You brought the light up further. There! More scales. An arm, a claw. A wing.     You knew what was coming up and you watched expectantly. The head, long firm and bony.

Pointman’s Dilemma David S. Pointer Her observational tower platform shoes were nearly impossible for a proctologist to extract, so you really had to focus in on her elevated literature at eye level or risk missing the entire reading

Welcome Home James Warner     The voice on the other end of the line was crying, “I just don’t understand, Jared,” she choked on her tears as she tried to make sense of the situation, “Why would he have been driving? And so late at night. He’s been close to totally blind for years.” “I’m sorry, Catharine, I’ll be home as quick as possible,” I promised her.     “It’s nearly midnight, how are you stuck in traffic?” she questioned through a sob. “There was an accident that shut down two lanes, shouldn’t be much longer now though,” the mention of a car accident stirred a sharp inhale that was audible over the phone. “Just hurry, please,” she hung up the phone without a response.     Twenty minutes later I rolled into the drive way of a white stuccoed bungalow hoping that I had the right house, but with little certainty. I tried to picture the home that the young couple had invited me over to when they had first moved in a few summers ago, but even then my sight was beginning to fail me.     I examined with scrutiny the greenness of the lawn and the vitality of the shrubbery-my lawn and my shrubbery- before stepping towards the front door and extending an arm to knock. I caught myself before the fist made contact with the door and a rush of foolishness fell over me. I patted my pockets for a moment until I found his house keys-my house keys. I inserted the key into the lock, but the door was already open. Katharine sat in a love seat adjacent to the door, bent over with her elbows on her knees and her slender hands hiding the gentle freckles of her face. Her face rose as I entered the room and the blueness of her eyes behind the streaking mascara running down her face failed to fill me with sympathy, but instead desire. Her pain filled me with a pride that I never thought I would be certain of. I had dreamed of it, but until I saw the image of her morning the sudden death of her long time mentor, it had all simply been the fantasy of one lonely old man.     Katharine had walked over to me in my moment of reflection and began guided my arms into an embrace around her. Her unfamiliar touch startled me out of my thoughts and sent goose bumps across my skin. She noticed my reaction, but did not mention it. My palms sweat as they glided across the smooth pale skin of Katharine’s exposed shoulder. Her unfamiliar touch held firmly against the body that she had become so familiar with over the last five years. I still don’t understand why she had stayed with him for so long. He had been so immature, so obnoxious to her but also distant at the same time. I knew that Catharine had been the one to make the mortgage payments, even her engagement ring had been bought with the salary that I paid her. A lot had changed since my wife had passed away-my first wife, I reminded myself. It felt odd thinking of her that way. I would always love her, but the way I felt about this young woman in my arms was something I had never experienced before in eighty-eight years of life.     “Patrick hasn’t been able to drive since even before we began to study the possibilities of memory implantation, what the hell was he doing cruising around in the middle of the night?” she questioned, not expecting an answer. “He cared about you deeply, you know that, right?” I asked while staring into her eyes, unwaveringly. The strength of my gaze made her feel uncomfortable. “I suppose,” she responded, “I don’t think he had very many people left that he was still close with. His wife passed away shortly after they married, so he never had children,” she said in a matter of fact voice that stung me even though I wasn’t quite sure why.     “He made me his emergency contact,” she continued, “how sad that he would choose a co-worker,” her words laced with pity. “Just a co-worker?” the label twisted me like a wet shirt being rung, “You’ve worked together for over fifteen years. All those late nights in the lab together. None of that meant anything to you?” I was grasping at hope now, certainly she felt the same way, she just wasn’t ready to admit it yet. “Jared, what the fuck are you getting at? He was my boss and more than fifty years older than me. Not one single time did anything happen between us. I can’t believe you would think that I’d ever cheat on you,” fresh tears were forming under her eyes as a new form of hurt settled into her chest.     I softy grabbed her face with my hands so that our eyes met just a few inches apart. “Katharine, you are a beautiful, honest woman, and I know that you would never cheat, even if you wanted to. That’s why I did this,” I started to explain, “I know you’ve always wanted to be with me, but my age,” I paused and looked at my firm, strong body with pride that forced a smile over my lips. “Jared, I don’t care if you bought a new shirt, I can’t deal with you right now. Patrick’s been dead for less than two hours and you’re already back into your own little world,” my hands trailed her skin until there was nothing but air as she left the room.     “The procedure was a complete success,” I explained to her, “No side effects, no complications, minimal discomfort. And now look at me, here I am. We can be together now. Nobody ever has to know the truth. It can be just the two of us. The rest of our lives together, the wedding date is already set. If, I’m not mistaken we honeymoon in Cancun? Not my first choice, but it matters little to me. And children, I remember you telling me that he never wanted them. I lived life into old age without children once; I’d hate to do it again. We have the rest of our lives together, Katharine” I promised her, the euphoria dripping through my words.     Katharine had remained frozen in place with her back to me in silence until the whisper of “Patrick always called me Katharine, I’ve never heard you call me anything other than ‘Kathy,” escaped her.     “Ahhhh, now you understand,” I grinned. “I cracked the problem,” I explained, “The ability to transfer memories from one person to another has now been entirely solved. I told Jared to come to the lab to meet you this afternoon. The procedure went by without a hitch. Every last memory of mine stored in his cranium, all of his memories squeezed out and squished. My mind in that old withered body would have been redundant and depressing to look at, nothing a midnight drive through canyon country couldn’t fix though. So here I stand now. The man that you’ve been ashamed to love for so long in the body of the man that never deserved to be with you. Come to me.” Katharine swayed in place for a moment before crumpling to the ground.

Saturday Night Samba Erve Beiser     1966—     Hot, steamy, Saturday nite, uptown, New York, midnight...             Pushin’ cab                     I’m beat! Off-duty light on...     Before I can lock the rear doors, four young dudes jump in.     I say “I’m off-duty, I’m bringin’ the cab in”     “Hey, we’re goin’ to Randall’s Island. You gotta take us. It’s the law!”     “Sorry, it’s late and I’m thrashed!”     “We’re goin’ to Randall’s Island and you gotta take us, dude!”     I’m fearful, hear the word “Gotcha!”     They’re all grins and snickers. I sense big trouble, have to think fast. I get the hell outta the cab that’s still running and say:     “Take it!”     “Take What?”     “Take the fuckin’ cab!”     They jump out.     All around us...hordes of people...stoneos...wackos, broken bottles all over...and then     They start high-fivin’ me.     “DIG MY MAN! He gave me his cab. DIG MY MAN!”     People high-fivin’ me all over. Suddenly I’m this Hero man. Offered booze, pot, head busters, all kinda food.     “DIG MY MAN! DIG MY MAN! Come on with us, we’re gonna have a ball!     “Sorry man, I’m splittin’. It’s been a long, long nite. Later man—I’m outta here!”     And I tear-ass back to Brooklyn.

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Denice Penrose     ‘You are herby summoned’ the letter began. My heart lurched and I ran through a mental catalogue of bills. The terror chord faded, as I reminded myself I had no unpaid bills. I read further. The letter in my hand was not a debtor’s summons, but a summons for jury duty.     As a keen aficionado of CSI, and all programmes covering murder most foul, I was rather excited. I had always wanted to be on a jury. I wondered what type of case we would have to hear. I had quizzed a friend who had served on a jury. Janine had told me juries are only used for more serious crimes. She had served on a drunk driving case. Janine had hated the experience, not liking the sense of holding someone’s life in her hands. ‘All that waiting around was so boring’ she’d told me. I remained undaunted, and now that my opportunity had arrived, I was really looking forward to it.     I was disappointed by Barry’s response when I read the letter to him in bed that evening: ‘What a drag. I guess you don’t have any choice.’     Chloe and James shared my enthusiasm. ‘Wow Mom, that’s neat. Just like on TV.’     I had to arrange time off work, which was a bit tricky, as I’m a school teacher. They arranged a cover supervisor, and I prepared plenty of work to keep my classes busy. I arranged for Barry to pick up the children, and collected take away menus as a precaution. I went onto the Criminal Justice Website, and read up on courtroom procedure.     My excitement kept me awake most of the night before I was due in court, and I was up before the alarm. I arrived at the courts early. My bag was searched, and then my papers were checked by the Jury clerk. Then the waiting began. When the other jurors arrived, the Jury Clerk went over the procedure, and reminded us that no recording devices or mobile phones were permitted. Then she told us: ‘Your names will be written on cards, and if your name is drawn, you will be called for court. Until then, please wait here.’     I had come prepared, and settled down to read my book, but was too excited to follow the plot. The door opened, and the Clerk came back in. She reeled off a list of names, but mine wasn’t included. I sighed and returned to my book. The process was repeated, but again, my name was not called. Eventually, I was allowed out at lunchtime to get something to eat, before returning to wait. I finished my book, and realising we wouldn’t be needed, the clerk sent us home. I left feeling wrung out, even though I had done nothing all day. So much for TV juries, I muttered driving home.     The routine was more familiar the following day. I’d brought a much thicker book this time, but didn’t need it. My name was called, and we were led into the court room. I’d never been inside a real courtroom before. The walls were wood panelled. The judge’s desk was in front, facing the desks of both the defence and prosecution. The jury’s seats were along the side, wooden benches much like church pews. Somehow it was more utilitarian and less prestigious than I had expected. The stage was set, the main actors in their places. The defendant was seated behind a clear screen, and other bit players, the court recorder were waiting for our entrance.     I read out the oath, my hand trembling slightly on the Bible I held, nervous now that my part had begun. The first performance was from the Prosecutor. He told us that John Evans had murdered his wife and child, then outlined his case, and detailed the evidence he would lay before us. With growing horror the significance of my role dispersed my fog of excitement. This isn’t CSI. This is the real thing. This is murder.     Then it was the turn of the defending advocate to rebut, and outline his defence. The defendant sat silently. I examined his face for signs of guilt, but his features were impassive. So much for the shifty-looking defendants of TV. The advocate for the defence concluded his opening statement: ‘This case is entirely circumstantial. I intend to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that my client is innocent.’     The judge dismissed us for the day, instructing us to appear at 9:00am the following morning, and the prosecution to have their first witness ready. I left the courthouse with a sea of thoughts. The most frustrating part was that I couldn’t talk to anyone. We aren’t aloud to talk about the case to anyone except members of the jury and even then, only when we are all together. I felt the weight of responsibility. If we found him guilty the defendant would spend the rest of his life in prison. I was terrified that we might get it wrong.     A sleepless night later, the trial began in earnest. The prosecutor presented a damning case, while the defence parried and shredded their evidence. The cut and thrust of their arguments kept me enthralled, and I struggled to keep up with my notes.     ‘And where did you find the murder weapon?’ asked the prosecutor.     ‘It was lying beside the body of Mrs Evans,’ answered DS Carlisle.     ‘And whose fingerprints were on the knife?’     ‘The defendant’s.’     Then the defence advocate rose and asked: ‘To whom did the knife belong?’     ‘It was Mr Evan’s knife.’     ‘So isn’t it reasonable then to expect his fingerprints on the knife?’     ‘Yes. But we found no other fingerprints.’     ‘If the real killer wore gloves? Would you find other fingerprints then?’     ‘No.’     The process was repeated, with the prosecution presenting their case, and the defence refuting it. Some of the evidence became very technical, but it was explained clearly enough for us to follow. The prosecution showed how Mr Evans had the means and the opportunity. For motive they suggested his wife had been having an affair, but had been unable to produce a lover. The only shock came when the coroner revealed that the child was not Mr Evan’s daughter. A shadow crossed the defendant’s face, but was so fleeting, I couldn’t be sure that I had seen it. The defence focused on the lack of motive, and poked holes in theories. I had hoped that a clearer picture would develop, but it didn’t.     Then it was time for the defence to present their case, and Mr Evans took the stand. He was well dressed in a smart navy suit, and paisley tie. His face was pale, rings around his eyes, but he held his head high, and spoke clearly.     ‘Where were you on the night of the murder?’ asked his lawyer.     ‘I was down at my local having a drink with my mates.’     ‘When did you leave?’     ‘I went home around 10.’     ‘Tell the court what happened next.’     For the first time, Mr Evan’s voice began to tremble. ‘I went home. I found them lying there. There was blood everywhere. I held Helen, but it was too late. She was dead.’ He paused and a sob escaped.     ‘What did you do next?’     ‘I called 999.’     Mr Evans was questioned about his relationship with his wife and daughter.     ‘Like all couples, we had disagreements from time to time. She wasn’t having an affair. I would have known. She had an affair a long time ago, when I was away working. She had told me, and I knew Sophie was the result. But I loved her like my own.’     As he spoke, I detected an edge to his voice, and for the first time, I didn’t believe him. Instinctively, I knew he had hated living with another man’s child. But did this mean he killed them?     The prosecution worked to discredit his story, pointing out that Mr Evans had enough time to go home and kill his wife before returning to the pub. They focussed on his fingerprints, and his wife’s blood on his clothes, all of which were explained away by his story.     Finally, we heard closing arguments, and each side urged us to find in their favour. The defence advocate spoke: ‘This is not a man who murdered his family, but a man who has lost his family to a cruel crime. Do not compound the injustice by imprisoning him for a crime didn’t commit. A crime for which he is already paying the price in pain and grief. Find my client not guilty.’     Finally, we were sent to the jury room to deliberate. We chose a retired Banker as our foreman, and he immediately asked for a vote. It was half and half, and so the discussions began.     ‘If he left the pub, someone must have seen him.’     ‘They couldn’t find anyone. Also, while he was seen at the bar, no one can verify he was there every minute. But there was no CCTV footage to prove either way. The camera had been vandalised the week before.’     ‘Why would a man do that to his wife?’     ‘Well, she’d had an affair before; maybe she was having another one. And Evans found out.’     We reviewed our notes, pored over the transcripts, and argued for hours. Regularly we voted, but still could not reach a consensus. Finally the Forman spoke: ‘I think the issue is reasonable doubt. We have to be sure he killed his wife to return a guilty verdict. To my mind there is too much doubt.’     We still had not reached a verdict, and were allowed to go home, but would have to return the next day to continue discussions.     I was last to leave, the car park was empty. While heading for my car, I saw the defendant talking on the phone. I’ll never understand why people think they have to shout on mobile phones, but his words stopped me in my tracks. ‘The brat wasn’t mine. The bitch had been lying to me for years. I saw the resemblance when I met her old boss at the pub that night. Once he’d a few in him, he told me about the affair.’ An icy wind blew down my neck. He turned away, and I couldn’t hear him. I fumbled for my keys, and started the car, with trembling hands. I knew he’d killed his wife. I knew why.     I can’t remember the ride home, or anything about that night. I knew I would have to tell the clerk in the morning, and it was a relief when I finally returned to court.     The relief was short lived. The clerk told me that no new evidence could be introduced at this time. I could not tell the jury, as we had to deliberate on the evidence presented in court. I tried hard to sway them, arguing every point I could think of. I knew he had done it, but looking at the evidence, I could understand their doubts. It all came down to reasonable doubt. Finally, we reached a verdict, and returned to the court.     ‘Have you reached a verdict?’ the judge asked     ‘We have your honour,’ replied our foreman.     ‘In the matter of the people vs Evans, how do you find?’     ‘Not guilty.’

The Hitchhiker Jesse Martin     He sat at his desk, picked up a new yellow pencil, and started to write on a fresh pad.     Some time passed, and the lead tip broke.     Jaden sighed and set the pencil down. The eraser was worn down to the metal band, and the paint had faded where his fingers had gripped it. He sat back in his hair and massaged his cramping hand, letting the pencil drop to the desk. Curly peelings of wood and lead dust littered the floor next to his chair. The manuscript pile looked to be around thirty pages.     The clock read 12:15 AM. Jaden released another sigh and flicked the pencil off his desk. It clinked to the floor and became still. He stared at the clock. Had he really been sitting at his desk for over three hours? The neatly stacked pile of manuscript, torn from the thinning legal pad, seemed to suggest that yes, he had.     Jaden stood up from his desk, stretched his aching muscles, and put on his coat. He had an appointment with Stevenson, his lawyer, and his wife and her lawyer, to discuss the terms of their divorce. The appointment was at nine o’clock, and he wanted to sleep a few hours off first. Maybe shave and comb his hair, too, if he had time. He took the manuscript, stuffed it in a manila folder, slipped it in his backpack, and forgot about it.     Outside, a faint orange glow hovered above the tops of distant, dark skyscrapers. Skirts of light hung from streetlamps, and purple clouds dirtied the sky, dispersing amongst an abyss of blackness and stars. A dry snow dusted neatly over every exposed surface, as if painted by a delicate and steady hand.     Stepping over a mound of snow, Jaden unlocked his car and clumsily got in, bringing with him clumps of snow that stuck to the soles of his shoes.     How could he have written for that long? He knew he had a meeting the next morning.     He pulled the manila folder out of his pack and began to page through what he had written. Horror, he thought. Jaden read the piece before him with disdain. It was amateur at best. A cheap attempt at a literary horror story, he thought, and retired the pages to his backpack, resisting the urge to toss them out into the windy night.     Jaden pushed the key into the ignition and started the car. He dug around the glove compartment, pulled out a flask, took a nip of sour mash whiskey, and hid the bottle behind some stray papers and candy wrappers.     He brooded silently, feeling his stomach warming. When the car had warmed, he drove off into the night.     The interstate was a dark continuum, piercing the snowy winter night—vast, empty, silent. The car’s headlights shot through the chilly night. Warm air and jazz music poured from the counsel. Jaden began to doze off. He cracked the window, allowing a huff of frigid air to lick his face. He shot up and was awake again.     Ten minutes later, he saw a man walking along the road in the emergency lane. It’s ten degrees under, he thought, amazed. The man seemed to be dressed well: a thick jacket, a hat, gloves.     Jaden pulled his car over in front of the man, and, leaning out of his window, called, “Can I help you?” He had to yell over the howl of the wind.     The stranger waved a hand and approached the car. When he got close, Jaden was able to appreciate the man’s sheer size. He was wearing a big jacket. His face was wrapped in a thick, gray wool scarf, his eyes peeking out amongst pink, wind burned flesh.     “You wouldn’t mind giving a man a lift, would you?” said the man, his voice muffled through the scarf.     For a moment, Jaden hesitated. Hitchhikers in 2012, he thought.     “Sure thing.”     The man walked around the front of the idling car. His gait was smooth, not laborious like some his stature. He opened the door and plopped into the passenger seat. A thin dusting of snow fell from his body. He pulled off one large mitten and stuck out a hand to Jaden. Jaden shook the hand, finding the flesh to be rough and cold. “My name’s Bill,” the man said. “How do you do?”     “Jaden. And I’m doing just fine, thanks.” Bill seemed to smile from behind his scarf, the folds flexing upward in a grin.     Jaden put the car in drive and pulled back on the highway.     “So, where are you headed to?” Jaden asked. He would tell his lawyer about this, he thought then. He and Stevenson had become friends over the course of his tumultuous legal endeavor.     “Cove’s Point,” Bill said. Point, as it was often referred to, was about fifteen miles west of Sheboygan, where his home waited. Where his wife was still living. Jaden realized he would be driving with Bill for at least another hour. Outside, the snow fell in heavier loads.     Jaden flicked a glance over to Bill, who was staring out the window. “That’s pretty much where I’m going.”     “What are you going there for? If you don’t mind me asking.” His voice was muffled beneath the animated scarf. Jaden wondered what the man’s face looked like. Would he look like a celebrity? Was he deformed? Had he been in a car accident, or perhaps attacked by a dog, and covered his face to hide the hideous scars tracing around his mouth and neck?     Jaden hesitated for a moment. “Divorce.”     Bill looked over and nodded heavily, as if he understood exactly what Jaden was feeling. His eyes looked glassy and dark, reflecting the green dashboard lights. He still hadn’t taken the scarf off his face. It looked almost painfully tight around his face, like cellophane wrapping on a pack of raw hamburger.     The nose portion of the scarf twitched, and Bill looked into Jaden’s eyes. “Have you been drinking?” Bill asked.     “No...no I haven’t.” But his voice was small, and he found himself not looking at the hitchhiker, but the speedometer.     “You haven’t.”     Bill opened the glove compartment and pulled out the flask, holding it up for Jaden to see.     “Is this apple juice?” Bill asked humorlessly. Jaden didn’t respond. “I’m not going to hitch a ride with a drunk, Jaden.”     Jaden looked out at the road and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I’m not drunk,” he said.     “You better let me drive.”     “No. I’ll let you out at the next exit.”     “That’s not okay with me. You let me drive or you let me out now.”     Jaden looked at the temperature reading outside: -14 degrees. He couldn’t let Bill walk around in that weather. It would be murder. His concentration on the road lapsed for a moment, and the car began to veer into the ditch. Bill reached a quick hand over and corrected the wheel. Jaden looked ashamedly into Bill’s gaze, and nodded.     After they had pulled over and switched seats, Bill accelerated onto the highway and slowly brought the car up to fifty miles per hour. Snowdrifts had begun to move across the road like giant white slugs. A stiff wind pushed against the side of the car.     Jaden sat slumped in the passenger seat, and had begun to take nips at the flask again. Bill either didn’t notice these or chose not to say anything about them, for he kept quiet as he navigated the car through the winter night. Warm air pumped out of the dashboard. The faint hum of static buzzed underneath the sound of the wind outside the car.     After a while, Jaden was drunk.     “Tell me about your divorce, Jaden,” Bill said.     Jaden tipped the last of the whiskey down his throat, and began, telling how they had met in college, got married after graduation. How Christy had begun to come home later and later, sometimes not at all. How his phone calls weren’t answered some late nights when he sat awake in bed alone, unable to sleep. “Sometimes, she’d pick up,” he said, “say she was still working. One time, though, the guy she was sleeping with slipped—made a mistake. He called the home phone and I picked up. When I asked Christy about it, she denied it at first, but then told me everything. She packed her things to go live with the guy. When I moved closer to work, she and the guy moved back into the house. My house. She said I had problems drinking, and that was why she was leaving me. It never got bad, though. I never touched her.”     “And how does all that make you feel?” Bill asked. The scarf was still tight around his features.     He was speechless for a moment. “That guy”—Jaden pointed a finger aggressively in the direction they were driving—“is sleeping in my bed.”     “That doesn’t seem fair to me at all,” Bill said.     “No, it doesn’t,” Jaden grumbled.     For a while, neither of them said anything. Bill seemed very calm. He simply was, regulating the heat and radio stations as needed and taking an occasional glance over to Jaden, who grew drowsy again. His head bobbed as he swayed in and out of sleep, warmed by the hot air rushing into his face. Blood rushed through his ears, thumping and swishing. A cacophony.     “Should we get off here?” Bill asked.     Jaden startled, saw the correct exit sign, and slurred something like a yes. Bill flicked on the blinker, took the exit. Five minutes later, they were driving between rows of tall, dark houses. The clock on the radio read 1:20 when Bill pulled into the empty parking lot of a bar on the north side of Sheboygan.     “Hey, buddy,” Bill said, touching Jaden’s shoulder with his giant fingers. “Wake up.”     Jaden opened his eyes, thinking that he had sobered, if only a little. “Why the hell are you still wearing that damned scarf?” Jaden asked, his words stumbling out of his mouth like sludge.     “Come on. Come with me.”     Bill led Jaden into the bar, steadying him when he began to sway on his feet. The bar was empty except for two bearded old men sitting at the far end of the long, scarred bar top. Rows of bottles housing golden and clear and colored liquids faced them. A mirror showed their reflections in its dusty, greasy surface.     “I can’t have anything to drink,” Jaden said, suddenly feeling scared. “I’m an alcoholic, my wife would say. Not supposed to drink. Not me.”     “Looks like you’ve already shot that to hell,” Bill responded, grinning, and sat them both at the bar. “We don’t have to drink anything. I’m not drinking anything.”     “Then why are we here?”     “To talk about your problems. Bars are good places to talk about problems.”     “And what might those be—the ‘problems’?”     “Your wife. Her lover.”     Jaden felt a wave of nausea at the thought of Christy sleeping with another man, and lowered his head, tears prickling in his eyes.     When the bartender, a husky, balding man with a walrus moustache, stepped out of the kitchen, Bill gestured him over and whispered for two boilermakers. The bartender made the drinks hurriedly, and placed them in front of the two men.     “And what about them?” Jaden asked cautiously. His eyes flicked to the drink on the table, and then back at Bill.     “What are you going to do about them?”     “I don’t know. Divorce her, I guess.” Jaden felt his insides melting, dripping. He felt weak and exposed, and wanted Bill gone. Bill questioning him seemed to drag these frightened emotions out into too much daylight.     “And you think that’ll help?” Bill suggested. Jaden nodded. Bill sighed and slid the tall drink over to him, gesturing toward it with an open palm.     Jaden shook his head and turned away.     “Drink.”     Jaden paused, reached a hand over, raised the glass to his mouth, and let the cold drink pour down his throat.     “You should go take care of them,” Bill said.     “Like...?” Jaden asked, and looked to Bill to confirm what he was thinking. Bill nodded and pushed the drink closer to him. When Jaden finished the first drink, Bill slid the other one to him. Jaden drank that one, too, consuming it all in one go.     “If I do, will you take off that damned scarf?”     “Sure.”     “Okay, let’s go, get it over with.”     Bill drove. When they pulled up to Jaden’s house—they had passed it three times before Jaden had happened to drunkenly glance at it, saying, “Heyuhh, there it is!” Bill killed the engine and turned to face Jaden. Jaden’s eyes were unable to focus on one point for more than a moment, and his posture was closer to a liquid than a solid human made of flesh and bone.     “You’re going to do it.”     “I’m gonna do it.”     Bill nodded. Jaden turned to reach for the door handle.     “Wait,” Bill said, laughing. “Anything for me to do while I’m waiting?”     Jaden snorted. “Story I just finished. In the backpack.” He shook his head and giggled, letting himself out of the car and walking across the lawn. Bill watched him pluck a key from his pocket and enter the house.     Bill reclined the driver’s seat, removed his scarf from his face, and found the story in Jaden’s backpack. The sheets were torn from a legal pad. Fine hairs of pink eraser littered the pages, and smudge marks populated the pages.     Ten minutes later, Jaden reappeared from behind the house, wiping his hands on his pants and limping toward the parked car.     Jaden opened the car door and plopped down in the passenger seat, weeping. Smears of blood painted his face and hands red. The smell of blood and whiskey reeked in the car.     “Did you do it?” Bill asked.     Jaden nodded and buried his face in his palms.     “So your problem is taken care of?”     “Yes.”     “Do you want to see now?”     Jaden nodded miserably, and Bill removed the scarf from his face, showing the drunk, red-faced man.

A 1977 Affair Jordan Blum     Julie is throwing The Bee Gees’ Horizontal onto the lawn as I park and finish disinfecting the car for the night. It lands on a pile of clothes, jewelry, and pictures. Incidentally, it was always my least favorite album of theirs; ironically, it was the first one she ever gave me. As I walk to the house, she glances up at me like a rat being caught in adultery.     In the living room, she is bent over another box of records, rummaging for more shit. Her plants are tied together in a box beside the empty suitcases, and I want to smash a vase against her. She takes another record out of the box and walks toward the window. “Whoa. What the hell is that?”     She holds up the copy of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends that I bought her the day after our second date, on a hot summer night like tonight. We were walking off the effects of wine and chicken and passed a record store that had it in the window. She gasped and squeezed my arm. I surprised her with it at her parents’ house the next day. She was wearing the same purple dress she wore at our senior prom.     I shake my head. She sniffles and turns back around to toss the fucker out of the window. I put a TV dinner in the microwave and then sit on the sofa, taking off my shoes and cracking open a beer. “When did you start tonight?” I say.     She covers her face and breathes heavily.     “About an hour ago.”     “You’re ridiculous.”     “I’m leaving this time. For real. It’s too much,” she says, handing me her wedding ring. I keep my palm closed and let it drop and dent the floor. It’s echo interrupts us.     “Well why aren’t you packed then?”     “I’m sorting through it.” She picks up a teddy bear and becomes a statue.     “Where is he?” I yawn. The microwave beeps and I ignore it.     “At a sleepover. The Todds.”     Across the room, a stack of literature is spread out on the floor. Sam is discretely pissing on her copy of Othello, and I chuckle.     “You know a lot about those, don’t you, Jules?”     Outside, fireworks go off, and I remember what day it is. “Maybe I’ll go join them and celebrate, too. What do you think?”     Now she’s throwing VHS tapes and bed linens through the window.     “Do you still have it?” She says.     “Have what, dear?”     “You know what, Adam.”     I take out the red Trojan wrapper that I’ve contemplated all week. I imitate gagging as I put it against my nose and inhale. Julie scoffs. Sam eats one of the discarded tissues by her feet.     “Still smells like the two of you. And in our car, too. Doesn’t Mr. Rushinski have an office or SUV you could’ve used?”     She sucks her lips inward and nods, knowing she can’t win this one. Not tonight.     “You might as well start bringing that stuff back in,” I say. “We both know where this isn’t going.”     Outside, Dan Rothenberg is jogging again. He sees his son only on the third weekend of every month now. With supervision. “Miranda brainwashed him. She lied during the whole battle,” he told me months ago. A few days later was his first attempted. I still feel a shiver when I hear sirens. Ever since he was released from the hospital, he wears turtlenecks and long sleeved collared shirts exclusively. And sunglasses. He says running helps. We barely see him anymore. I’m afraid to ask why.     Our family portrait from last Christmas rests on top of a suitcase. Julie notices Dan and then approaches me with her arms out, her expression identical to how it was before we kissed at our wedding. For a moment, I feel like I’m suffocating. My knees go soft. I back away and smack her. She cowers to the floor. Sam snarls at me.     “I’m sorry, Adam. Really, I—”     “I’m calling my lawyer first thing tomorrow and making sure you don’t get one goddamned cent from me.” I finish my beer and smash it on the table. “Let Mr. Rushinski take care of you.”     I climb over her and up the steps. She follows for a bit before falling into herself. I slam the bedroom door so loudly that she screams. For a moment, I stand behind it and listen for her next move. Truth be told, my eyes are usually more bloodshot than hers these days. So far, I’ve flipped out at and subsequently lost six clients. My boss says I’m starting to become a threat to the business. I tell him that that’s just the tip of the iceberg.     Above our bed, I study the painting she made for our first anniversary. It was based on a sketch she did of me before we’d even met, back when we were just secret admirers suffering through class a few rows apart. I must’ve written a dozen songs about her back then. I never worked up the courage to sing them.     I pull the door open so hard that it dents the wall. “Sweetie?”     “Yes, Adam?” I can hear hope in her voice.     “Be a doll and turn out the hallway light. It’s shining through the keyhole and cheating me of sleep.”

Candles Jordan Blum     It started again on her 71st birthday, after she woke up with the sun and read her reminders and showered and brushed and treated and combed and dried and tied and wiped and patted and sprayed and perfected. She rifled through two jewelry boxes until she found the immaculate emerald brooch, which she pinned onto her pink, fluffy blouse, and then stared into the mirror with a bittersweet grin, remembering how Seymour used to call her “First Lady Agatha” whenever she wore it.     Downstairs, foulness permeated from the freezer inside the garage; it seeped into every corner of the kitchen and laundry room and clashed with the perfume that radiated from her skin. She’d left the door open the previous night, and a pile of nibbled lunchmeats, apples, and holiday jelly candies lay on the ground. A plate of lox and cucumbers rested on the second self; in its center was a dead mouse.     “Arthur will clean this up when the family gets here, I’m sure,” she said to the corroded elephant lamp beside her feet.     It was a gift given to Arthur on his 8th birthday, when they had taken him to see Starless and Bible Black, a drive-in sci-fi popcorn flick. They’d always meant to replace it, but somehow the years were dissolved by smaller moments.     She took her vitamins with a gulp of water and headed toward the mailbox outside. A garden of dying poppies and orange daylilies lay beneath it, surrounding a chipped greeting sign that read: “Goren Today, Gone Tomorrow. Enter with joy and bid adieu to sorrow.”Usually the Merlick’s dog, Lehto, would circle her feet as she approached the curb, but he was nowhere to be found. She opened the flap gleefully, expecting to see a pile of elaborate cards, each decorated with precision and distinctness to express the affection of the giver. Instead, she found only a flyer for a used car sale and the newest circular from the neighborhood market. She peered inside for nearly a minute, as if her cataracts were playing tricks with the light, before retreating.     Laying by the lamp in the living room were her medications, which she devoured along with soup, tea, and half of a tuna sandwich as commercials interrupted game shows on Channel 53. Every three weeks, following childhood recollections and cognitive exercises, her psychiatrist would tell her the term as he wrote off another script, but she would never try to remember it. “I went this long without knowing it. Who wants to bother now?” she yawned to Groucho Marx, who was lighting another cigar behind the vintage television screen.     Occasionally she would attend meetings for diseases she didn’t have or place herself subtly in the background as families photographed themselves. Once, when she was 19 and still dating Leonard, she left her phone number on a discarded napkin at a dance hall, only to be harassed by a pervert until dawn a week later. As with all of her ex-boyfriends, she would write to Leonard sparsely for months after their relationship ended and her marriage began. Rarely would they ever reply, which only compelled her to try again with more desperation. The fact that Seymour never knew made her feel relieved and normal rather than guilty.     She awoke in the darkness, smiling at the transparent snapshots of a dream that was slipping away. The timers were set to turn off most of the electronics shortly past 7 p.m., when the commotion of the day usually ended and the serenity of night set in. She looked around at the emptiness, clinging to the smell of familiar cologne that still lingered in her subconscious, abandoned and hollow. There was no message from Arthur on the answering machine.     Sadly, she reflected as she sat at the dining room table, there would be no celebrations to prepare and clean up anymore. No streamers to hang; no cakes to create; no relatives to regale; no robotic airplanes or slick new watches to wrap. Gone were the skinned knees to kiss and the broken hearts to mend; time no longer had room for burnt roasts or insincere banter with the other wives at corporate gatherings. There was no need to take the grandchildren clothes shopping again. There would only be silence now.      Inside the china closet, she found a shopping bag from Bradley’ nestled between the Lenox teapots. She poured out nearly two dozen numbered candles and sorted them in sequential order, from 1 to 22 and then from 26 to 27, remembering the time Arthur had to move back home because he lost his sales job. She smelled each wick and studied the patterns of melted wax. Finally, she lit them all, cherishing their warmth and color and memories, before blowing them out and heading upstairs.      There was no need to wash up, no reason to scrape or trim or dry or spray or cover or do anything at all. She simply stared into the bathroom mirror, wondering if and when her appendages would disappear, too. Eventually, she made her way into the bed, shivering and suddenly intimidated by its enormousness. For a moment, she swore she heard Seymour coming up the stairs, carrying French vanilla cocoa and his clarinet to help her fall asleep. She wondered how much longer she’d have to wait before experiencing that again. Most of all, she wondered how she became estranged from God so easily.

If I Could Have You One Day a Year Lyn Lifshin rare as those orchids that only bloom some nights of the yucca plant that can take one hundred years. It would be enough to wait in bland rooms waking up to mud tracks on white tile if I knew there’d be 24 in your arms, a bolero as foreplay. it wouldn’t matter, sharing other lovers or wives, women who spend hours close to your skin as their own skin goes rose. This is now what they get from their husbands. If this, life, bloomed once a year, haunting and short lived as the first wild plum leaves there would be something to hold my breath for, to ache after, like an inmate crossing the days off. What was barred, what I could have most haunating. And what of the bolero, well there are some things we should not talk about but I’d keep souvenirs, who doesn’t: a shot on Facebook, a rose I kept for another poem, scent of skin. He dances close. I think of riders getting on and off a merry go round: you can only play so long. The wild plum goes lace, goes petals in the wind. I’d look down and try to dram what I couldn’t hold any longer, sequins falling from the dress he held me in as his arms did

Maybe Venus de Milo Wasn’t Happy With Hers Lyn Lifshin So with one gone, at least, she could pose not showing what was no longer what it was. Arms, Yu lift weights, stay thin but the suddenly it’s as if earth’s kiss was so strong and they were too vulnerable, didn’t have it in them to resist. May be pushing more men off would have helped. Or pulling what seemed so resistant closer, working the burn, terrified of being burnt and not giving my arms over to the sun when he backed away from them and never slicing a wrist or arm off like Venus as if with out him adoring perfect skin, there wasn’t anything worth holding

Curious Savages Sarah Lucille Marchant 1. And it was the last night I could kiss Emily’s cheek, the last we could put our fists in, recite our elements, as she shuffled in, glanced around, and mischievously switched off the lights. 2. Standing, circled in the spotlight, Travis serenading the lot of us and a Christmas package placed on the piano, I breathed, simultaneously whole and empty. 3. People are only interesting, only have that spark until you get to know them. When you become familiar, I have to fight the impulse to run.

Priorities Sarah Lucille Marchant Sometimes it is right and good to neglect poetry in favor of other worthier pursuits. Sleep, pleasant conversation, trying on dresses, kissing a little. Inevitably you will return, spelling your ink and rendering your heart in your own particular alphabet if only to keep record of the things worth neglecting poetry for.

The clock winked. Natasha Grewal     As always, Nina sat at her college coffeehouse during her break. It was a year ago when her husband of fifteen years broke out the news to her that he was seeing someone at work and didn’t want to be married to Nina anymore. For months, she was suspecting of him having an affair, but never said anything for the sake of her two kids. In India, she grew up in a lower middle class family. Her dad worked in a city while her mom with her two kids stayed in the village. He came home on the weekends only. While growing up, Nina felt that her brother always got better treatment than her. She had to quit school after 12th grade because her parents couldn’t afford to send both kids for post secondary education. In their mind, it was foolish to spend that kind of money on a girl child. Girls have no use for the family since they go and live in their husband’s family after marriage. A few days after she turned eighteen, her mom told her to dress up in a traditional Indian outfit as someone was coming to see her for marriage. She was not given any description of the suitor except that he belonged to a well to do family. That was enough for her parents. Nina’s mother instructed her to prepare tea and serve it with homemade Indian sweets to the guests in the living room where they were chatting with her parents. She was told to speak only to answer their questions in the most pleasant manner. The suitor and his parents liked her and she got married two months later. There was no other meeting with her husband prior to the marriage. A year later, she gave birth to a boy and then, a girl. She had spent her entire married life looking after her husband, his family and the kids. Now, the man who promised to take care of her in sickness and in health did not love her anymore and was in love with someone else. She was not sure if he ever loved her. Perhaps, she didn’t love him either. For the first six months after the divorce, Nina sank into depression and kept blaming herself for their failed marriage. Finally, a close friend of hers took her for counselling and it was the counsellor who advised her to enrol in courses at a community college. She always wanted to be a social worker and help abandoned children. Nina followed the advice and here, she was sitting at a coffeehouse of her college. She looked at the clock and it winked at her. The clock was trying to tell her to move on and not to look back just like itself. In that moment, Nina realized that finally, she could be herself and live her life the way she wanted, not the way her husband or father would like her to live. Nina gathered her stuff and embraced the new journey ahead of her.

To The Meadows, Again C. Covey Mason     Louise was sure this one would be different, as she was every time.     The woman had accompanied the band on their tour, and now it was over. Louise wanted to spend just a little longer with the guitarist—the one whom she had been sleeping with for the past two months in many uncomfortable locations. She asked him if he would mind taking the train up to Bethel to see the house she grew up in.     He didn’t want to go, so he told her that he wouldn’t go.     She continued to ask him, again and again. Louise had not seen the condominium of her childhood for seventeen years, not since she was sixteen-years-old when her parents had divorced. After the split, she had lived with her mother in a studio apartment in Boston, sleeping on the couch for the rest of high school. When she agreed to pay for the train tickets, he said fine.     It was a short train ride, less than an hour, and the guitarist slept most of the way. They arrived in Bethel just after noon. She guided the guitarist down the platform and into Eddie’s Grocery to get some coffee and eggs. They drank the coffee and ate the eggs, paid, and left.     Louise was nervous that she might see someone who she knew from high school as they walked down Main Street. They turned right on Spring Street, across from the elementary school, and then turned left onto Exeter Street. After a half-mile, they arrived at a series of culs-de-sac. They walked on for a while and turned into a figure eight neighborhood of identical condominiums: The Meadows.     Her feet ached in her many strapped shoes. She wore a white dress with a deep V-neck and arm holes so low she needed to wear a tank-top underneath to cover her breasts and sides. She wore a black one.     There were no people or cars or children’s toys in the lawns of the houses. This was very different from Louise’s memory. The two walked across the center of the first loop, filled with dry dirt and islands of brittle grass. They moved to the second loop, then to the first house on the right.     Louise and the guitarist stood in the small front yard looking up at her childhood home.     The front lawn was mostly a sickly brown with small clumps of dandelions coming through in different spots. Where there used to be shrubs in front of the home, there were now their skeletons.? The off-white vinyl siding was stained with dirt and water, ignored for a long time. The siding had begun to fall apart where it met the roof, looking like grafts of dead skin. One of the second floor windows was broken, the first floor ones boarded up. The plywood was spray painted: the one on the left with a large penis in red paint; the one on the right had?This Is A WindoW?written across it in black.     The guitarist lit a cigaret and laughed at the graffiti.     Louise felt very sad looking at the abandoned, degraded house.     The guitarist said, Let’s go in.     She said, I don’t know.     He said, Come on. It will be fun.     He walked to the front door and pushed on it with his shoulder. She told him to stop, but he slammed into it three more times, then called the door a fucker, and then kicked the door by the doorknob, which snapped the rotted door jamb and swung open. He turned to Louise and swung his arms into the house, waving her forward with a knowing smirk on his face, the lit cigaret between his off-white teeth.     She walked across the threshold and was overwhelmed by the smell of mold and decay. The air felt thick, dense inside. She stood on the carpet landing just inside the door; stairs led directly up to the living room and kitchen, and down into the basement. She stuck her head down the stairs to the basement and the stench grew stronger, wafting over her and causing her to vomit a little in her mouth.     She pivoted and walked up the carpeted stairs, and they creaked and squished underneath her feet. Following her, the guitarist coughed, then made a guttural sound with his throat and spit on the floor. She turned to him and scrunched her eyebrows, and then she turned back to what used to be the living room. The carpet was a similar shade to the exterior off-white of the house. One of the corners was pulled up, waterlogged plywood shown underneath. In the far corner, there was a door to the kitchenette. She walked toward the kitchen and inside found a fridge duct-taped shut. The stove was rusted on the electric burners. A couple of the tiles on the floor were cracked. One of the cabinet doors dangled on one of its hinges, but the rest of the kitchen was how she remembered it—only with more dust and black along the edges of the counter.     Then she turned back around and walked up the second flight of stairs     The stairs led to a hallway. The room at the end of the hallway had been hers. She walked toward it, and it took ages. The paint peeled everywhere, and bubbles descended from the ceiling. She felt a pain and nausea in her stomach, and she continued to step forward, each step causing the floor to moan in tired agony.     She stepped into her room and had trouble swallowing. Along the edges of the room, the dirt colored carpet was black with mold. Looking up, the ceiling sagged and the paint peeled, little square flakes speckling off the edges, some having fallen onto the floor, mingling with the edges of the carpet. The walls had greenish-black ovals in several spots that looked like large tear-drops descending down the wall. She moved over to one and touched it with her hand. The softness of the patch of wall repulsed her.     Moving back to the center, Louise took in her room and choked a little in her tightening throat. The guitarist came behind her, paining the floor with each of his steps. He entered her room and said, Fuck. What a shit hole.     She turned to him and fell into his shoulder, crying, pulling her arms into her body and up to her face. He backed up, and she staggered forward a little. He flicked the cigaret butt onto the floor, and she stomped it out. She scrunched her eyebrows and made a look at him to show him how angry she was and how he better not do that again—but he was already looking out the window. Then he went back into the hallway and to the bathroom, and she stomped after him.     To her surprise, the bathroom was relatively clean, the tile not looking much different than it did when she lived there, except for the dust that had collected on the surfaces. The guitarist dusted off the edge of the sink, opened up a little baggy, and dumped a couple of pills on the counter. He turned to Louise and asked her if she wanted any as he prepared one. She stood just outside the doorway, her feet sunk into the carpet—it felt like they were sinking deeper and deeper. She lifted her feet just to show herself that she could, that she wasn’t trapped.     She looked down the hallway into her room, and then back into the bathroom. She stuck her lower jaw forward, and looked at him inviting her with his wide eyes and dirty smile. She said, Fine, to herself, threw her arms down, and walked into the bathroom.     She took one of the pills, already wrapped in a tissue, and swallowed it dry. She swayed back into the hallway knowing that soon everything would feel much better. It would be all right. After a moment, he approached her in the hallway and pushed his hips into her, moving has hands down to her backside and kissing her neck. She put her hands on his biceps and started to push him away, but she had no strength.     Nor did she really mind any more. He led her down the path of the hallway into her old bedroom.     She was lain on the floor and her underwear pulled down below her dress as she examined the beautiful pattern of chipped paint in the corners of her bedroom ceiling. It was like a very intricate spiderweb, she thought, feeling warm and tingly all over her body—she barely felt the weight on top of her; it was just a warm, fuzzy pressure that felt comforting and safe, though somewhere, she thought it probably wasn’t.     Looking into that spiderweb, the girl began to feel like she was floating, like the soft carpet beneath her was a cloud bringing her upwards toward the ceiling and away from everything. It all felt so wonderful up there above the rotting floor. Louise smiled in a far off way and was weightless, only barely, somewhere far away, sensing her body being rocked back and forth.     But after a little while, she looked back down at that poor girl on her back in such a clean, white dress on that dirty, off-white carpet, and she felt very sad—she pitied her and felt so bad for that girl. It was such a shame, to end up here again.

Manifest Liam C. Calhoun She’s the same old Country girl When she settles back in With Plentiful rice in mouth; Dry and yet fulfilling with Words echoing In between chopsticks, A sentence upon And within Every Other Mouthful. She has a way with Talking while Drinking tea Wherein Her hands, Once left to grains of Mao, Speak nearly as much as the Sound of Slurping mountainsides, Leaves telling stories And roots shaking rock – A little something so very Ancient As the burdens of old now Overwhelm Her 25-year old back. And he’s a way, Away, a way away With tinkered thoughts of Mirages behind silk screens, The gentle sweep of Fingernails Upon back, Shooting stars, Dodging cars And failure. A man On the run, Wanted by only one, But persisting in his faith of the Road. He never ate, He only watched her And he never drank, He only watched her; Until the faint dreams of sunrise Gave birth And the new day was promised to Sleep.

Until Father Liam C. Calhoun Pops said – “Keep your eye on the ball,” Before I knew her. Her being – Women, a woman The woman and awry in a Fool’s paradise passion. And atop 12 hours, a recliner, A throne, a crucifixion, Pops later forgot – Me, At wild-eyed sixteen, My cigarette butts, Whiskey splatter, And the, “birds,” And the, “bees,” And the, “manhood,” Swagger, And bravado, As they, Her, and she, Bloomed; what was Once captured in fractions, Now noticeably summoned To a whole by - Smell, Hair, Breasts and strut, Oh those stolen glances. And atop another 12 hours, another recliner Another throne, another crucifixion Pops once more remembered – Me, A more than somber seventeen And Thanksgiving, When her stomach – Spoke for two, And maybe three: Her, The baby, And I, but the baby, My clone, Or rather half-clone, And failed display of maturity. “Son, didn’t we talk about the Birds and the bees,” No pops, “We didn’t.” Cue the advice sons seldom Heed as Momma said – “You should have listened to me,” “And not your Pappy.” And for once, I agreed, But only listened to myself, Calling it The wrong time to tune-in, As I’m now 26, And very much a mirror, The forgetful father To me, the parts left behind. My clone, Or rather daughter – Eight years of age now... I think.

Concerte, But More Like Dirt Paul Smith Concrete, eh? Concrete is simple, precise You’re not You’re a dirt guy, Ed Complicated With concrete There is just so much You buy it, you place it, you cure it And there it is Concrete guys have tools-generators, vibrators, trowels, snap-ties Your trailer looks empty Your brow is all wrinkled There’s no way for you to get your wedge in Your wedge of complication You could steal the concrete But that, too, is simple Something you don’t like You like dirt How much is there? Depends on how you measure it Depends on who measures it Where does it come from? Who picks up the trucking? Contaminated? How do you handle these questions? Through different people Who hedge, hem and haw Most important of all How does it get paid? The rest – plans, specs, promises All nonsense. . . . . .and can be castrated by Complications So you say you want a concrete guy? A guy like me? Ah! A concrete guy who can think like a dirt guy! Someone who can introduce the complication and mystery Of dirt Into the stringent realm of concrete Because he understands the difference Someone like me You know, Ed, I like you I think we have a complicated future together

A Late Night Rurik Asher Baumrin The floorboards creak beneath my foot as I sneak past my own mother’s cold bedroom into my own, and I wobble and I hop like a bashful drunk. I nonetheless am a bashful drunk who is home only for the brief sleep that follows an evening of pickled debauchery, sour like genitals. I am polemically challenged in my dreams and I constantly oppose myself despite all my goals and resolutions to stay nice and clean before returning to the dingy, hot apartment that squeezes my mouth with sticky residual plastic and churns my stomach sicker. My paranoia is a paw thud and my mother will never hear me, it’s my sister who always catches me.

Broken Bread Matthew Schmidt I clampdown, in conversation my mouth, uvula, tracheotomy— or well meaning words stick to my palate as a tang of boysenberry lingering. This is going nowhere you say when arguments do not resolve themselves through our well meaning deferments, concessions. I’ll paint the vestibule if you’ll wash the laundry. Don’t you know all my socks are dirty? Won’t you dirty your jeans, white; drips, blots? Give me this day daily rhetorical punditry. No, give me this day sparse clouds silent mouths, cluck-less in tongue, your cheek to kiss a rosy red and forget possibility inherent in thorns which are there if we let them remain. I simply shift my eyes when your hips meet your hands. Forgive my traipsing to the sink while you were sprucing up singing a lullaby softly over scratch of razor on leg; I needed to brush my hair darling. I needed to floss—don’t you see we keep doing and doing maintenance while we still can. Your orange slippers, fuzzy muff tops. Your crossword puzzles started all over the house. I paint each square white a new beginning for the entry for guests to see how neat how well-lit and airy our domicile has become now that we two get along, agree on a direction in which to flow, hoist spinnaker bow down that way, near buoy we’ll veer right and keep going until we wake or fall asleep in the burgeoning sunlight.

Off to the Races Mike Brennan     The tremors had increased to a dangerous degree. It had never been this horrifying. Even a triple dose of Xanax couldn’t take away the shakes and the insufferably internal sense of impending doom away. I packed a suitcase, while my muscles twitched through the process, counting out at least a week’s worth of clothing, all the while somehow knowing that I’d forget something. My stomach somersaulted for the second time this morning. I couldn’t reach the toilet but made it to the sink. Yellow bile and a symphony of dry heaves poured out of me into the cracked porcelain, as I washed it all down, pushing the larger chunks through the drain with my nicotine stained fingers.     I caught myself in the mirror. My skin was ravaged and scratched. I brushed my teeth and surveyed the damaged two-bedroom apartment. Empty bottles and cans, stolen and borrowed books, random and loose papers, full and empty prescription bottles, and dead bugs and cigarette butts littered both the linoleum and the thrift store carpeting. My bed, sofa, and skin were all a graffiti collage of uninspired Jackson Pollock styled scars and burns.     Three days before, I had officially received my MFA from the University of Upper Michigan and turned in the final grades for the Freshman College Composition class I had been teaching this past semester. I was now kicked out of academia on my ass, unemployed and on the verge of a complete mental and physical breakdown. I gave in and began the steps to check myself into the Veteran’s rehabilitation center in Milwaukee, but first I had to detox in Stony Ridge, Michigan without dying in the process.     I downed my last remaining shots of bottom shelf gin seconds before the Disabled American Veteran’s(DAV) van arrived to whisk me away to the hospital. It was the same two hour ride I had taken before but this time I had to vomit a couple times by the side of the road although nothing came out except noxious gusts of air.     Once I arrived I was immediately taken to the ER. IV’s were attached, blood was drawn, and when I was finally semi-hydrated. I was shot up with some Ativan, which did help some, but the staff obviously underestimated my tolerance following my several years long crash course of benzodiazepines chewed up and washed down with copious quantities of booze. My hands still shook but not nearly as violently. An hour later I was given two Librium and a large multi-vitamin, before my gurney was pushed into an elevator to take me up to the Detox Wing.     Veterans from over sixty years worth of American conflicts surrounded me in varying states of disarray, all with purple hearts and with decorations of scars and small units of wheelchair bound and armless amputees caught in this trap between life and death. Ball caps bearing the slogans World War II, Korea, and Vietnam Veteran, the titles of various Naval vessels, and Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom told the true story cut out of most high school history books. I just had a large gash on my forehead from when I blacked out and fell face-first into my bookshelf after my last day of class.     When the Librium began to finally smooth out my shakes, I suddenly realized that it was both a Friday and two days before my 30th birthday. Fuck it, I thought, I really won’t die before I’m 30. A lot of people surely had bet I would.     My mind kept wrapping itself around concepts such as cirrhosis, jaundice, alcoholic hepatitis, and internal bleeding. My stomach and liver definitely no longer wanted to be friends with me. Even my brain had begun to seem as if it had contracted an untreatable disease. I had heard the term Wet Brain before, and mine seemed like it was soaking in formaldehyde, and possibly about to be displayed in some carnival exhibit; I assumed right next to the Siamese baby fetuses in crudely aged mason jars.     A crew-cut male nurse wheeled me into my room of recovery and hooked me up to more machines. He asked me what was wrong in so many words.     I laughed a little and replied, “I’m totally burnt out from overwork and have been boozing way too much for too long.”     “Well Will, You are in good hands. My names James, and if you need anything just push the assistance button and I’ll take care of it. What is your pain level right now between 1 and 10?”     “8”     “I’ll be back in a few minutes with some Ativan and Hydrocodone? I’ll also get some gauze and antibiotic gel for that head wound of yours. First let me take your vitals.”     He placed a clamp on my finger, ran a device across my forehead that took my temperature, and allowed the standard sleeve to squeeze the pulse out of my right arm.     “All right, I’ll be back in a flash.”     I laid back and gave in to the shakes that rolled from my toes to forehead like miniature seismic waves. I closed my eyes and thought of everywhere I could be but here. When he returned with the medication cart, he scanned my wrist band, punched in some numbers, and handed me a cup of water with my Ativan and Vicodin tablets.     I chewed the pills up in a sly manner that wouldn’t attract his attention, and swallowed the goo down greedily with a quick gulp of water followed by some room-temperature coffee to get rid of the aftertaste.     “Would you like some ice cream, since it is pretty obvious you haven’t been eating anything”     “Sure, vanilla, I guess I might be able to hold that down.”     “You bet,” he said, while I started to feel the meds take effect, “I’ll be right back.”     Was this the bottom that so many alcoholics often spoke of? I felt I had hit it so many times already but for whatever unknown reason, I just had to keep digging further down.     James gave me an institutional grade cup of vanilla ice cream and by the time I had it down into my raw tender stomach, the meds sent me into a sleep completely void of dreams.     When I awoke, I was still slightly buzzed from the meds and desperately needed a cigarette. I pressed the buzzer for James’ assistance, and a minute later he pulled open the curtain concealing my bed.     “You think you could wheel me out for a cigarette man,” I asked him, figuring he wouldn’t mind since he was also a Veteran.     “I can’t Will, but I can give you a nicotine patch and gum.”     “I guess that will have to do,” I frowned, twiddling my thumbs anxiously. He soon slapped on the patch, I popped in some Nicorette gum, and turned on the TV. I gradually passed out again, watching a 9/11 conspiracy program on the History Channel. My last conscious thought was that I couldn’t believe it had already been over ten years since September 11th and three years since I had been medically discharged out of the Navy during my second enlistment. A lot had changed. It seemed that now I had to as well.     Two days later, I was provided a doggy bag full of prescription drugs and driven to Milwaukee. Once in the van, I opened the bag of medication, fished out the bottle of 85 Ativan tablets I was given, shook out a small handful, and chewed them up like breath mints. I figured that it would be better for both myself and the staff dealing with me that I go in with a bit of a buzz on rather than completely sick and panic stricken.     By the time I entered the building, I was feeling a bit better than bad, and walked into what was called the Domiciliary 123. There were a few Vets around my age but the average seemed to be in the late fifties/early sixties. Judging from the caps, t-shirts, and ID card holders wrapped around their necks, most of the patients had been in the Army, followed by a not very close second place of Marines, more than a handful of Sailors, and maybe one or two former Air Force personnel. Military ranks I am sure were of all levels but the vast majority seemed to have been enlisted. I guessed officers didn’t do enough dirt to develop mental illness and substance abuse problems.     A kindly female doctor, who I had talked to on the phone a few times to make reservations for my bed, led me into her office. I was fairly drunk every time I had talked to her, but I never thought she would be this cute and intellectual looking. I answered all her standard questions coherently, tried not to sound too sarcastic, and when she asked me about my academic background, she smiled and said, “Oh I think you are going to be trouble around here.” I just replied with a dumbfounded grin, as she shook her head of shoulder length brown hair. I took in all of her figure and would later call her Nurse Lavender, due to her love of aromatherapy.     She asked me about my medications I brought with me and I made a mental debate about whether I should tell her about the bottle of Ativan in my pocket, or attempt to smuggle them in. I quickly caved in, not wanting any trouble and hoping that honesty was truly one of the first steps towards recovery and admitted to having them and taking a few more than recommended on the ride over to avoid a possible seizure or anxiety attack.     “Well you’re not checked in yet so that’s not an issue and we will keep you on the same medication until you are evaluated by a psychiatrist and have a full physical done by a doctor.”     This information immediately made me more at ease with the whole terrifying and ultimately humiliating situation. I had never been totally sober asides from a few spurts here and there, and of course while on deployments. Ever since I was 13, drugs and especially alcohol had always been my pretty consistent companions throughout the years. Now it felt as if my spouse of sixteen years had died in a horrific head-on collision. I could only watch on in horror as she bled out through her neck. I now belonged to the custody of the VA, but I had to do this if I was to live.     I was led to my room by an orderly, where I would be spending the next 90 days. My bedding was already made and my roommate was lying in his right next to mine and reading a Narcotics Anonymous text, which I recalled rolling joints and doing lines of coke on the cover of when I was a teenager.     “I’m Will,” I told him, while starting to unpack my suitcase and place items in the storage locker across from my bed. I couldn’t believe the similarities between this room and so many of the barracks rooms I had stayed in while in the service.     “I’m Harry,” the skinny black man with crooked crocodile teeth and gray hair told me. He kind of looked like Morgan Freeman if he was a dope fiend and had lived on the street for a few decades.     “Good to meet you Harry, what are you in for?”     “Crack, I’ve been smoking the shit since 1985.”     Damn, I thought, I was only two years old when he started smoking rock.     “I’m here for booze bro. The bottle finally broke me down. What service were you in?”     “The Navy. You?”     “Same man. What was your rate?”     “I was a cook. That was pretty much all they let niggas do back then,” Harry replied with a toothy chuckle uniquely his grizzled own.     “Yeah I know man, there was a race riot on my boat in 72’. The USS Nixon.”     “Oh yeah man, I knew about that shit. I got out in 74’.”     “Damn you’re a Nam Vet huh?”     “Yes sir,” he chuckled. “First time I tried drugs and haven’t stopped much since. I’ve been in and out of jail and rehabs so much I can’t even count, but I know this time the Lord be looking out for me. I be 60 next week son and can’t be doing this shit no more. How old are you brotha?”     “30 today,” I mumbled, glumly thinking where I would be at sixty, or where else I could be today.     “Another Gemini huh, right on. You know we’re all fucked up, good and evil twins, your either one or the other any given day you dig?”     I nodded in agreement, and thought it actually made quite a bit of sense.     “It’s all good though, you see here Will, all you need is faith in God and a good piece of pussy here and there and you’ll be all right.”     I figured out that he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic with three primary obsessions: recovery through devout Christianity, the link he perceived between crack cocaine and Satan, and a hunger for women that often crossed the fine line between a voracious sexual appetite and full blown nymphomania. He was a pervert to a T. I’d soon witness him hit on damn near every female that crossed his path, and while I usually found his antics hilarious, it often pissed off other patients of both genders and especially the staff. He often randomly sang old R&B and Gospel songs at top volume, and had some very animated mood swings on an almost hourly basis. Several patients would look at me in wide-eyed sympathy and say, “Damn that’s your roommate. That motherfucker would drive me crazy.” I would just shrug and laugh, since I thought the old man was hysterical; although the various sedatives I was taking four times a day probably would have made Hannibal Lector amusing to pal around with in this place.     After I unpacked, I headed out to smoke and quickly found myself lost in the large brown rectangle of a building, every side looking the same, and with the only knowledge being that the smoke shack and zone was outside the cafeteria. Feeling like a lobotomized zombie, I eventually found the exit doors and had to sign a sheet with the time next to my room number to go outside and was told how I had to be back in before 11, even though the protocol was that I was restricted to the hospital grounds for the first two weeks of my stay. There wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go anyway.      I was struck by the surreal scene outside. I seemed to have found myself in a strange mishmash of a drug rehab, mental ward, minimum security prison, homeless shelter, and makeshift military base. There were three different treatment programs: PTSD, General Mental Health, and SAR or Substance Abuse Rehabilitation, which was the largest population, and the wing we lived on was D, or a as I informed a letter communally designating us as drunks and druggies.     Two men in wheelchairs kept fighting with each other, while the refrain of “Anyone got a Newport?” bellowing around them.     “Sorry man, I only got Camels.”     “Beggars can’t be choosers. You mind.”     I offered up my crumpled cigarette pack.     “Thanks brotha,” the old man said, while removing one with trembling hands.     I encountered what was going to be the major topic of conversation out in the smoke shack, which was VA Disability Claims and how to increase your rating to get a higher monthly check. It was obvious some people desperately needed it but some of the Vets were just trying to scam the system to support their drug habits. I also was secondarily informed that when the checks came in a large percentage of patients would vanish since the VA guaranteed three square meals a day and a plastic mattress until they got paid. It was the third of the month so a few random names and the stories of their disappearances were passed around like the cigarettes they were smoking.     There were all kinds of characters mulling around, some talking to themselves, others nodding out into medicated oblivion. I began chatting with a couple of Vets that seemed to be around my age.     “Hey what’s up man, I am Will O’Bannon,” I introduced myself.     “I’m Jack and this is Mike.” They both seemed rather fit and mentally together, so I figured they probably were ex-combat Marines or soldiers from Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom.     “What are you guys in for?”     “Heroin and PTSD. How about you?”     “Booze, though it seems like they just want to keep feeding me pills like peanuts instead.”     “You know it. They got us on Methadone and just try to keep upping the dose so we don’t go out and use. Of course, I tell them no but the clinic makes a shit-ton of money from the VA,” Mike, the taller one of the duo told me. “It’s worse than H and the last thing I want to do is get totally strung out on that shit. As long as I’m not going through withdrawal, I’m cool. But I know one motherfucker named Jorge who is on 340 milligrams a day. The whole thing is about money. It’s like a legal dope game.”     “Damn, I’ve got a tolerance for drugs but that shit would kill me.”     “It’s actually pretty good here if you truly work the program. I mean, if you honestly want to get clean this is the best place to start, but there are a lot of really fucked up people here, and some of them are just here to get off the streets. There are a ton of whacked out bums, schizos, and brain dead crack heads straight out of the pen.”      “Yeah,” I replied. “That’s pretty obvious. So what is there to do around here?”     “It’s the weekend so you’re not going to have to do anything until Monday. Who’s you case manager?”     “I’m pretty sure it’s some guy named Noah.”     “That’s cool. He’s ours too and he’s pretty good but really out there man. I mean he is one strange dude. On Monday, you will start doing group therapy with us and Noah, go to coping skills and anger management classes, have occupational therapy which is pretty much arts and crafts hour, and then go to an AA or NA meeting at night. They do keep you busy around here and then you will have homework on top of it all.”     “Great. I just graduated from school, I’m not really in the whole homework mindset,” I laughed while puffing on my Camel.     “You just graduated?”     “Yeah, I just got an MFA.”     “No shit. You just got a Master’s degree? What, on the GI Bill?”     “Yeah.”     “Damn, you must be a genius,” Mike laughed, “Were you an officer?”     “Nah. Just an E-4. ”     “What service were you in?”     “The Navy.”     “For real? A fucking squid. So you never saw real combat or shit.”     “Nah, but I am considered an Operation Iraqi Freedom Vet and worked on the Flight Deck of an aircraft carrier, which got pretty hairy at times but it definitely wasn’t combat but is considered the second most dangerous job in the world, and for whatever reason I’m still considered a combat Vet on paper, but fuck it, it doesn’t matter to me.”     “Sure man. I hear you. You want to go get in line to eat?” Jack asked, putting out his smoke in a coffee can, “It’s about lunch time.”     We entered the cafeteria, and stood in the short line that was rapidly forming full of more men in t-shirts and ball caps displaying the usual names of armed forces and conflicts. I was quickly becoming accustomed to the sight of amputees and other guys confined to wheelchairs, and quickly learned how to interact with them without seeming patronizingly sympathetic. I was starting to feel somewhat normal, if not slightly intoxicated, by my medications and definitely still a bit out of place since, while I did serve for two stints in a time of war; I mainly drank and fucked foreign whores when I wasn’t on duty which led to my medical discharge after a pretty heavy alcoholic incident in Guam, although I still retained full benefits even though that incident also happened to accidently collide with an F18 Hornet the following morning.     My experiences paled in comparison to spending long months shooting Hajjis and dodging IEDs in the desert. Planes were much more my style than guns anyway. That’s why I joined the Navy, along with the GI Bill and all the promised travel opportunities I took full advantage of. There was also an obvious tension between Vietnam Vets and Post 9/11 Vets considering the reception we received and the lack of respect they got from their ever so liberated hippie peers.     As I waited in line with Jack and Mike, I was soon accosted by a tall orderly, who asked “Where’s your badge?”     “What badge?” I asked, before noticing that Mike and Jack wore ID cards around their necks.     “He just got here today,” Mike told, “He’ll get his on Monday.”     The man left and Mike explained, “See this is your Veteran ID badge, and on the back is a list of the foods you can’t or won’t eat that you’ll go over with the dietician. Try to put down anything that you can think of because they will make you eat whatever shit their serving.”     Jack laughed, “I just made my own in the computer lab.”     We entered the kitchen, where they were serving meat loaf which was fine by me. The staff was led by a large black woman with a goatee that she must have been aware of but did nothing about. One of her underlings plopped the helping onto my plate followed by a side of fried potatoes, and we each filled up cups of coffee and sat down at a table to eat.      I had just finished my meal in the hurried guarded manner that only the military or a prison sentence can instill in a person, when a commotion occurred across the cafeteria, which must have seated around 200 people. A man on crutches but with both legs intact suddenly swiped off his tray from the table spilling food all over the floor and started screaming unintelligibly, as two orderlies including the one who chose to confront me ran over to him. His back was turned to me as they led him away, and I watched the emblematic back of his U.S Marine Corps leather jacket disappear around the corner while two white coats held firmly onto both of his arms at the elbows as he screeched off.     “Fuck,” was all I could say, as Jack mindless slopped a dinner roll in some gravy.     “It happens all the time here, Man. Are you ready to go take your afternoon meds?”     “Yeah,” I told him, as we dumped the refuse off our trays into two large barrels, placed our trays into a winding washing machine, and headed over to the nurse’s station where I appreciatively popped my pills, while they swallowed down their methadone and took some other pills and went out to chain-smoke and observe my new surroundings more attentively for a few more hours until dinner was served.     Most patients were silent and others discussed what meds they were on. A few looked like they were lost in a pharmaceutical oblivion they would never find their way out of. I was sure that if I was a Tunnel Rat in Nam, I would need to be sedated for the rest of my life, and it should be America’s duty to do the deed. Once the meds took hold, all the war stories began. How you could buy beer in the Philippines with severed Vietcong ears, what wounds everyone had, and the details of various firefights that collided into one surreal nightmare of several oral narratives. The after effects of Agent Orange were apparent and discussed everywhere both inside and out of the building. There were at least two Nam Vets who must have been accidently napalmed, which I deduced by their extensive skin grafts over their severe burn scars. There were also bunch of guys in their mid twenties, obviously younger than me, who returned from Afghanistan and now had to kick their burgeoning heroin habits; some by choice others by familial force. My alcoholism seemed like nothing compared to all these obviously broken purple hearts.     I was easily institutionalized. I’d long known that about myself. The military, the university, the hospital, the bottle, the girlfriends; I always fell into routines with little effort. It was the fear of not having a routine that really relentlessly gnawed at me. I went to groups and classes geared at a 5th grade educational level, popped my pills, and began working on a ceramic ashtray in our vocational skills class, which was really arts and crafts, that I figured I would give my loving chain-smoking Grandma. The sedatives made my hands so calm that I could paint the tiny thin lines of the ashtray that had eluded all my canvases for longer than I could remember.     Besides Jack and Mike, my group included two other Wills, who both happened to be middle aged black dudes. They would stand beside me on each side and be like “Check out how us Wills is an Oreo.” Neither of them were combat Vets but both were chronic alcoholics, and had each been through the system, even this exact program, a couple times prior. They had nowhere to go and were just rolling through all this again, much like I was, and hoping the best would come out of their live’s SNAFUs. I instinctively knew all this wouldn’t get me sober. I enjoyed now being relatively clear headed and not vomiting up my pancreas in the morning, but I still felt entitled to beer, which I swore to myself was all I would ever drink again, but I had to avoid the harder shit being handed around the hospital; namely heroin.     It soon became fairly obvious that Mike wasn’t as dedicated to kicking his habit as he let on when I first met him. He flunked one of our random piss quizzes for opiates and cocaine, a speedball he shot up in the hospital parking lot with one of his dealers, and developed a routine of disappearing several times a day. Staff would be unable to find him for hours, and he still wasn’t kicked out. He also went to the Brewers Stadium for drinks at night, since we weren’t breathalyzed, but would come back obviously buzzed on their ballpark vendor’s beer. Somehow he just kept getting away with doing as he pleased. One day we were standing alone in the corner in the main yard, and he pulled a packet out of his pocket.     “Want some of this man?” he asked, showing me the small cellophane wrapped ball of brown powder.     “Nah man. Shit we are in rehab.” I was tempted though. It would feel great to just get loaded out of my mind.     “Come on, fuck it, it’s a nice day, let’s go get high?”     “No bro. I’ll catch you later.”     That night, Mike and Jack were shooting up in their room since it was Jack’s last day and he didn’t have to worry about a piss test. Jack OD’d and Mike brought him back around with a can of NARCAN that he bought at the methadone clinic the day before. Jack bounced out as early as possible the next morning, since he was on the drug testing list, and Mike told me what happened in confidence immediately after. I knew I was by hospital rules supposed to say something to the staff, but I ignored it. I figured the truth would come out soon enough anyways and it did. I still don’t know if the staff knew all I knew about what was going on behind their locked doors.     Two hours later, Mike was tossing his stuff around his room and screaming at the orderlies about how he actually saved Jack’s life, before storming out with two garbage bags of clothing. He had nowhere to go. His parents had kicked him out, he had no money, and I soon learned he was crashing in the hospital’s large park at night, while hustling for his habit on the streets of Milwaukee during the day. I saw him a few times, but knew enough to stay away, although part of me wanted to score some dope for when I was released, but there were room searches and I wasn’t about to risk anything. I also thought it was wrong to bring all that shit in here, when so many people were sick and trying to kick, and Mike was undoubtedly hurting hard inside, but was obviously still too in love with his habit to stop for any apparent reason.     Mike was just the closest buddy to me, but patients were relapsing on a constant basis and forced to admit it in front of all us peers. They didn’t kick you out immediately for using or drinking, so several people still did, if they didn’t just take off come payday. Most people were serious about getting well. I straddled the fence and figured I would be drinking again despite any miraculous treatment. I just didn’t want to die doing it, and because I was at least determined to give this my best shot, I started hanging out with the older Vets who were serious about why they were in here. Soon there were a few of us who always wound up eating and smoking together in between our days full of classes, or the therapy sessions where I focused on if I was a walking horror show for women, and trying to determine what exactly had happened to my life through the haze of the past year.      There was Scott, who was an Army Vet in his mid-forties who was another of the rare strictly boozers. He had been on a self-destructive epic bender like mine, where he had to drink to survive and avoid seizures, and detoxed five times before finally being admitted to the Dom. He fell from middle-class wealth to homelessness as the bottles piled up over a period of only a few months as he drank and watched movies in a permanent haze.      It was his second stay here though, and he had in fact been a patient in the Domiciliary ten years before for a freebase coke habit, and met his ex-wife here who was an RN at the time, and left against doctor’s advice, got married, and was sober for several years before he started his liter of vodka a day downward spiral. He was now trying to get into one of the programs where he worked on the VA grounds while he lived here indefinitely, but had to complete the rehab section first and stay sober for at least three months. Almost all the patients had been here at least once before.     One of the Vietnam Vets I came quite close to, although he was not being treated for substance abuse, was Dr. Bob, the most educated patient besides myself, who was a psych professor at Marquette University, and had placed himself in here under the General Health section because his wife of twenty something years died on my birthday, and he needed some rest and to also deal with some traumatic issues related to his time in Nam. I never asked him about it, but knew his PTSD was horrific and very longstanding. We generally bonded, because we both were educators, and he always called me “professor,” and I called him “doc,” and laughed a bit that we were more educated than the majority of the staff but were on the wrong side of the treatment plan. I knew he would be all right, he really just needed an escape from life for awhile and was not in any kind of danger to himself or others, like many of the other patients were. He also always went out of his way to help everyone, especially the younger combat Vets who looked up to him as a mentor. I did as well, as he plotted my academic future for me, which I really hoped it was possible for me now to get back to.     Another pal was a lighter skinned black dude named Dominick from Chicago, who was an ex-Marine in his early fifties who served in Okinawa in the 80’s, had done a couple stretches in prison for various non-violent crimes, and was here to kick a strong but strictly nasal heroin habit. I also gave him a tremendous amount of respect considering he was also trying to quit smoking cigarettes at the same time. I found it unimaginably sadistic to quit both substances simultaneously, and he struggled tremendously with his withdrawal symptoms from both. I just really dug his form of religion which denies that you speak of God, a major staple of meetings, which he undoubtedly learned in prison. He always walked out during the prayers which I admired.     These guys, along with the two other Wills, formed our therapy group, which with the exception of Dr. Bob all had to go to the same classes and AA meetings together. As I admitted my powerlessness over alcohol, and painted my therapeutic ashtray for an hour a day right as my afternoon Klonopin and Ativan tablets really started to kick in; new guys admitted themselves in droves. The almost unbearable humidity of the summer heat waves, now starting to sizzle up the Midwest, may have had something to do with the hordes of reinforcements replacing all the troops that had fled as my time there wound down like an antique clock.     Soon I was technically 30 days sober, then 45, and was heading towards 60 and I really didn’t feel cured of anything but slightly fitter, happier and more comfortable rather than a nervous twitching mess. Most of the self-help slogans said in all my groups I’d heard before, or knew plenty about, and although I got along with almost all of the patients very well, I knew I would soon find myself with a beer in my hand again despite any inner will or higher power. I figured it would happen almost sub-consciously, but because I was feeling better and more physically and mentally together, I tried to put relapse plots out of my mind, which was an almost impossibility with my anxiety issues.     I also couldn’t find my higher power, spoken of so often in AA meetings, no matter how hard I looked under my mattress or in my metal closet locker drawers. My smart ass response was that it must be my shoes, because they were the only things I knew for sure had a soul. Asides from my sarcasm, I did put effort into everything else I had to undergo and revealed my feelings, wrote out my thoughts, and did try to picture a sober existence, but it always seemed like a grim apparition I wished for but was sure I couldn’t wholeheartedly grasp.     I applied online from the hospital computer lab for a teaching position at a small community college in Stony Ridge near the Michigan VA I had just detoxed in. It was a major step down from UMU, but other than this small application towards my future I really couldn’t think of anything else to do with or change in my life, but was starting to really itch to get back to my own apartment. No one had any advice with what to do with my life other than to stay sober and I was tired of that obvious answer. My anxiety over my post-college purgatory was going to kill me quicker than the alcohol I kept thinking and fretting about. My biggest problem now was what to do next with my miserably lost life of such potential I was told enough I had but just couldn’t believe.     I still had some money in the bank, and I could always file for unemployment, so I asked our chief counselor Noah if I could go home earlier than my allotted 90 days. The strange and mostly useless counselor who looked and talked like Doc Brown from Back to the Future agreed and my release date was set. I figured someone else would need my bed much more desperately and that this was a selfless act on my part since the Vet to replace me was likely homeless and broke, so I started counting down the days until my discharge, while keeping my head down and sticking to the program.     Dominick had a car so we started checking out some local AA and NA meetings, which were nicknamed “gunslinger” meetings because of their disordered noisy zealousness. I was always the only white guy, and would pick up on the inquisitive looks with just a little nervousness, as the brothers and sisters shouted out about struggling to stay off crack, their higher powers interventions, and not finding or hating or being thankful for their jobs. It was like an outlandish thunderous church gone crazy. The meetings were held in clubhouses that had No Weapons signs on all the doors. I felt like Eminem in 8 Mile, surprised at the similarities between Milwaukee and Detroit, as the addicts shouted out of turn, praised and tore into each other; and I just immensely enjoyed these so much more than the primarily Caucasian run book club/prayer circles that were all of the other ones I’d attended so far.     Two days before I was going to hop on the bus back to Michigan, we had another heroin OD in the Domiciliary, but this time it was a fatal fix. I didn’t know Jorge well, but I had talked to him a few times out in the smoking shack, and he seemed nice enough if not terminally fucked up by all the methadone he was taking in continuously increased doses. He was a long-term resident, and an Iraq War Army Vet, and had been living here for over a year. This night he shot some dope on top of all his methadone and the staff found him the wrong shade of blue in his room. He was living straight down the hall from me, and I looked on as the paramedics tried to revive him before taking him out of the building on a stretcher with the cloth of death covering his face.     It was shocking, and further fueled my focus on leaving. People dying and nearly dying around me from overdoses only added as a major incentive to get out of this hospital immediately. I was definitely an alcoholic but the issues I encountered were new to me. I wasn’t up for the transition from recent Masters Degree recipient, college educator and struggling artist to being surrounded by crack, smack, vivid nightmare flashbacks, and the scariest side-effects of manic depression and schizophrenia.     The next day I talked a fellow patient out of slashing his wrists with a razor blade in front of his counselors. Tom was definitely the kind of man that belonged here, but was also a kind of gentle giant. He was black as hell, about 6'5 and 250 and always dressed in tattered rags that really showed he just came off the streets which he always topped with a battered and filthy U.S. Navy ball-cap. Tom was one of the worst of the many schizophrenics, much more so than my schizo crack-head roommate Harry, and at one point had attacked his own mother with a samurai sword in Puerto Rico, and had also drunk bleach in a botched suicide attempt.     Tom was probably on more medications than anyone else there; I had seen a print out of his med list and it was several pages long, and one morning he was accused of not being in his room during bed checks, and was up for a disciplinary review board. I knew for a fact he had gone inside and to his room that night because I was with him, and a couple of us signed a makeshift petition saying he was innocent, and if he did wander off somewhere it was because he was so pilled out every evening.     Tom showed me the razor blade he had hidden under his tongue, and slyly told me, “If they try to kick me out of here or do anything crazy, I’m pulling this fucker out and slashing every vein in my arms and wiping all the blood on my counselor’s faces before I tear open my motherfucking jugular.”     “It’s not worth it man,” I told him, trying to be as calm as the greatest mental illness suicide prevention counselor, but completely desperate to talk him down. “They are definitely not going to kick you out with nowhere to go. They won’t do anything but talk to you. Give me the blade Tom. I’ll talk to them myself if something goes wrong. You have my word brother.”     This seemed to work and we both relaxed. He gave me the blade, which I pocketed, and then I noticed his eyes growing misty.     “Thanks Will. I appreciate it. I won’t do nothing stupid.”     I sighed with relief, and later flushed the blade down the toilet in my room. Despite Tom’s obvious madness, I really liked and cared about him and he cried a few emotional tears when I hugged him goodbye when I was heading home. I truly hoped he would have all the treatment he needed and it would be extensive. Psych wards, VA hospitals, prisons or perpetual homelessness were basically all that would ever await the man in America, whose mental pains were more extreme than almost anyone I had ever known; although the residual horrors of Vietnam were also always around us, and watching guys having sudden, violent flashbacks from a war fought thirty years ago on an almost daily basis was equally unnerving.     I had to leave. In many ways I was feeling my treatment was just making me worse by expanding my fragile receptivity. I had sunk so low emotionally, and so unbelievably fast, I would do anything to go back six months ago. It was this event that seemed to send everything in my world down to the dirt. I just desperately hoped I had enough strength to climb up to somewhere resembling where I’d once been. I was lost without a map and only a broken inner compass and hoped every waking moment I would make something of myself in this world somehow and someway, because just like after I left the Navy and retired my status as a sailor, I was now a man with no identity. I was one of the many hollow men cored straight through by this mad new millennium.     I left Wisconsin with the diagnoses of a bi-polar recovering alcoholic with severe general anxiety disorder tagged on my back, and said goodbye to everyone, somewhat unsure that I was really ready to go home and confront myself and the wretched past. I was wished good luck and told to stay in touch several times, unpacked and cleaned up my room, checked out with everyone I needed to, grabbed my stuff including my many medications and the finished therapeutic ashtray secured in a small box packed with newspaper, and finally caught my bus back to Michigan.     There were about twenty men on the bus and I was the youngest by at least twenty years. These Vets had come to Wisconsin from Michigan for short stays for various medical reasons Stony Ridge wasn’t equipped to handle, and it was obvious to them why I was here. They could tell I had come from the nutty druggy drunkard ward. I popped an excessive amount of my sedatives and slept for the six hour drive back to Stony Ridge, where I would have to spend the night at a motel before being taken back to Middleton and my old apartment in the morning. This was a terrifying but my only and totally free prospect.     The motel was the kind that I had gotten drunk in thousands of times, and as I sat there on the bed and turned on the basic cable TV, I kept thinking about how much I wanted to get loaded tonight but also how badly I didn’t. My mother and grandmother had paid someone to clean out my apartment so I could start anew, and all I wanted was to get back to my own hole in the wall. Or maybe just to smash right through it.     You’re supposed to go to an AA meeting as soon as you step out of rehab but I wouldn’t. I really didn’t like them or feel like that ritualistic bonding of defected human beings helped me in any way shape or form like it did for so many others. I just sat there by myself and moped for several moments. There was a grocery store across the street where I could buy any bottle and there were a couple bars in walking distance. My inner-self was completely torn in half; the exquisite corpse syndrome again. You’re also supposed to call someone when you were contemplating blowing you sobriety like I was. I had the numbers of all the guys I befriended in Milwaukee but wanted to put most of them and the traumas of that whole experience and those poor guys behind me, and decided to update my family on my location and to say hello and I’m fine, but knew I was still was royally screwed and quickly caved into the temptations of my favorite vice.     I wasn’t going to go back to view my past sober. I was too weak and couldn’t or wouldn’t. I walked to the store almost as if I was sleepwalking to go find my crutches that happened to be stored across the street. Nothing felt like it was of my own choice. I was just a bad actor starring in a terrible play. So I played along. I took the dreaded walk that I somewhat knew I would the whole time I was in treatment, which was now totally wasted just like I was going to be in a few minutes and bought a case of Coors and a pint of gin.     I opened the debauching and devilish genie’s gin bottle and knew the vicious cycle was about to begin anew, but I knew it wouldn’t in full force. Unlike the alcoholics I’d heard in meetings, I knew it would take some time and not instantaneously for the real hell of alcoholism to engulf me, but the disease was definitely still in the parking lot of my subconscious mind doing push-ups and watching old Mike fix smack in his dealer’s car the whole time I pledged my desire to never drink or use again. I justified my actions by saying to myself I was celebrating completing my treatment, with cheap gin washed down with Coors, and I was going home to what I guessed I considered as much of one as I’d ever had of my own; a haunted hovel just like the boats full of ghosts I had also once found myself living on. It was now off to the races from here.

Human Construct of Time Janet Kuypers (10/21/11 #1) is this the best of times is this the worst of times or is this just           one of those times only humans understand time where did all the time go, we ask time slips away as we search for ways to avoid looking old to avoid death if i ever saw god i’d have to ask, how old are you? how much longer do you just sit there                    observe but time is a human construct i have to remind myself as i sit and think at times like these

Watch this YouTube video read live 11/01/11, at the Café open mike she hosts in Chicago

See this YouTube video of Kuypers reading this and other new poems & poetry from 11/11 cc&d and Down in the Dirt magazines, the day they were released

Watch this YouTube video of take 1 (in studio) read 12/31/11, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking

Watch this YouTube video of take 2 (in studio) read 12/31/11, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking

Watch this YouTube video of take 3 (in studio) read 12/31/11, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking

Watch this YouTube video of take 4 (in studio) read 12/31/11, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking

Watch this YouTube video live at Café Ballou 1/2/12, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking (from the Samsung)

Watch this YouTube video live at Café Ballou 1/2/12, with John Yotko on guitar and sampled wind-up clock ticking (from the Sony)

Vegetarian Stands by the Meat Sale Janet Kuypers 5/6/12 it’s raining out, and no one wants to be outside. and if they do come here, they just want to get the bare essentials and get home as quickly as they can. they surely don’t want to contend with me, just trying to make a living. a huge clock looms at the opposite wall. i keep glancing at the time, and think of the huge calendar looking over new york in Atlas Shrugged, as everyone is reduced to merely trudging through their days. someone just wished me good luck, because i think everyone would rather be sleeping than here. and it’s true. i just glanced at that clock again. i’m only one eighth the way through my day. and this woman who has chosen to not have children has to keep smiling despite the weather and fawn over every passing child i see. this vegetarian stands next to the sign saying “hot ham” is the deli sale today, as employees place baked and fried chicken in packages for sale behind me. i try to smile, because it’s my job, even though it’s raining outside, as the second hand on the clock clicks more slowly today.

Watch the YouTube video of Kuypers reading this poem at the open mike 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago (W/ by live piano music from Gary)

Watch the YouTube video of Kuypers’ open mike 5/9/12 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago, plus her poetry (w/ live piano from Gary)

Watch this Youtube video of Janet Kuypers 5/18/13 reading this poem “Vegetarian Stands by the Meat Sale” in Nashville TN in the Tag Team feature reading

Watch this Youtube video of the Janet Kuypers & C Ra McGuirt “Tag Team” 1+ hour feature in Nashville 5/18/13 (which includes this poem)

Janet Kuypers Bio     Janet Kuypers has a Communications degree in News/Editorial Journalism (starting in computer science engineering studies) from the UIUC. She had the equivalent of a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. A portrait photographer for years in the early 1990s, she was also an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and she started her publishing career as an editor of two literary magazines. Later she was an art director, webmaster and photographer for a few magazines for a publishing company in Chicago, and this Journalism major was even the final featured poetry performer of 15 poets with a 10 minute feature at the 2006 Society of Professional Journalism Expo’s Chicago Poetry Showcase. This certified minister was even the officiant of a wedding in 2006.     She sang with acoustic bands “Mom’s Favorite Vase”, “Weeds and Flowers” and “the Second Axing”, and does music sampling. Kuypers is published in books, magazines and on the internet around 9,300 times for writing, and over 17,800 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and Discover U, won the award for a Poetry Ambassador and was nominated as Poet of the Year for 2006 by the International Society of Poets. She has also been highlighted on radio stations, including WEFT (90.1FM), WLUW (88.7FM), WSUM (91.7FM), WZRD (88.3FM), WLS (8900AM), the internet radio stations ArtistFirst dot com, chicagopoetry.com’s Poetry World Radio and Scars Internet Radio (SIR), and was even shortly on Q101 FM radio. She has also appeared on television for poetry in Nashville (in 1997), Chicago (in 1997), and northern Illinois (in a few appearances on the show for the Lake County Poets Society in 2006). Kuypers was also interviewed on her art work on Urbana’s WCIA channel 3 10 o’clock news.     She turned her writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D, The DMJ Art Connection, Order From Chaos, Peter Bartels, Jake and Haystack, the Bastard Trio, and the JoAnne Pow!ers Trio, and starting in 2005 Kuypers ran a monthly iPodCast of her work, as well mixed JK Radio — an Internet radio station — into Scars Internet Radio (both radio stations on the Internet air 2005-2009). She even managed the Chaotic Radio show (an hour long Internet radio show 1.5 years, 2006-2007) through BZoO.org and chaoticarts.org. She has performed spoken word and music across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national poetry tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam; her bands have had concerts in Chicago and in Alaska; in 2003 she hosted and performed at a weekly poetry and music open mike (called Sing Your Life), and from 2002 through 2005 was a featured performance artist, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images.     Since 2010 Kuypers also hosts the Chicago poetry open mic at the Café Gallery, while also broadcasting the Cafés weekly feature podcasts (and where she sometimes also performs impromptu mini-features of poetry or short stories or songs, in addition to other shows she performs live in the Chicago area).     In addition to being published with Bernadette Miller in the short story collection book Domestic Blisters, as well as in a book of poetry turned to prose with Eric Bonholtzer in the book Duality, Kuypers has had many books of her own published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism), Contents Under Pressure, etc., and eventually The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Other Side (European travel book), The Boss Lady’s Editorials, The Boss Lady’s Editorials (2005 Expanded Edition), Seeing Things Differently, Change/Rearrange, Death Comes in Threes, Moving Performances, Six Eleven, Live at Cafe Aloha, Dreams, Rough Mixes, The Entropy Project, The Other Side (2006 edition), Stop., Sing Your Life, the hardcover art book (with an editorial) in cc&d v165.25, the Kuypers edition of Writings to Honour & Cherish, The Kuypers Edition: Blister and Burn, S&M, cc&d v170.5, cc&d v171.5: Living in Chaos, Tick Tock, cc&d v1273.22: Silent Screams, Taking It All In, It All Comes Down, Rising to the Surface, Galapagos, Chapter 38 (v1 and volume 1), Chapter 38 (v2 and Volume 2), Chapter 38 v3, Finally: Literature for the Snotty and Elite (Volume 1, Volume 2 and part 1 of a 3 part set), A Wake-Up Call From Tradition (part 2 of a 3 part set), (recovery), Dark Matter: the mind of Janet Kuypers , Evolution, Adolph Hitler, O .J. Simpson and U.S. Politics, the one thing the government still has no control over, (tweet), Get Your Buzz On, Janet & Jean Together, po•em, Taking Poetry to the Streets, the Cana-Dixie Chi-town Union, the Written Word, Dual, Prepare Her for This, uncorrect, Living in a Big World (color interior book with art and with “Seeing a Psychiatrist”), Pulled the Trigger (part 3 of a 3 part set), Venture to the Unknown (select writings with extensive color NASA/Huubble Space Telescope images), Janet Kuypers: Enriched, She’s an Open Book, “40”, Sexism and Other Stories, the Stories of Women, Prominent Pen (Kuypers edition), Elemental, the paperback book of the 2012 Datebook (which was also released as a spiral-bound cc&d ISSN# 2012 little spiral datebook, , Chaotic Elements, and Fusion, the (select) death poetry book Stabity Stabity Stab Stab Stab, the 2012 art book a Picture’s Worth 1,000 words (available with both b&w interior pages and full color interior pages, the 2013 ISSN# color art book Life, in Color, and Post Apocalyptic Burn Through Me and Under the Sea (photo book). Three collection books were also published of her work in 2004, Oeuvre (poetry), Exaro Versus (prose) and L’arte (art).

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