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Order this issue from our printer as a 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback book (with both an ISSN# and a ISBN#) a Rural Story

What Must Be Done David Hernandez In the month of Christmas, I built the tree and set it with lights. It needs ornaments of different colors, besides red and green, and a star for the top. No presents under a tree, in an empty house with a foreclosure, I cannot rely on anyone’s help. I’ve been given duties to fulfill, which require a mother but I don’t want one. I must learn to grow, changes keep occurring and I keep feeling pressured. The children have no one to count on at all.

Cave Woman / Cave Man Soliloquy IX William F. Meyer, Jr. (for Gabrielle) The boy-baby is dead. It will not move or pee. Its eyes are open and the flies won’t leave it alone. My eyes run like the river and I am so alone. It put it in a hole in the back of the cave but the ugly bastard found it and gave its head to the black dog I am so filled with murder I am so afraid to face tomorrow. I am so afraid to face god.

Second Hand Cars David Hutt     I remember the first time I thought about hitchhiking. I was twelve or eleven years old, riding in the second hand car my friend’s mother had just bought. My friend said, “when I’m older I’m never buying a second-hand car. Only new ones for me. Shinny ones. With engines that work.” His mother looked at him. She had accepted second-hand cars long ago. “I ain’t ever gonna own a car,” I said. “I’m just gonna hitchhike.” She opened her mouth to me. “Better get used to going to where others are heading, then.”     I remember that whole scene now like one of those nineties sitcoms we used watch. We had us an audience on that ride back and they were laughing on cue, and we were strutting around the set, waiting for costume changes and forgetting our lines. My friend was the arrogant one with big plans but the audience knew from dramatic irony and life-learned lessons that he would never get anywhere, just talk and hope and all of it falling into the air. His mother was the wise woman who appears at the end of each episode to narrate the morals of the last thirty minutes. I was the odd one no-one really likes but the audience puts up with me because the writers give me funny one-liners. I was fat and geeky and the only people who loved me were the ones who were supposed to.     I don’t know what happened to my friend. He thought he was tough but he wasn’t and he started hanging out with kids who were, and that was it for him. We lost contact. Now, when I go home to see my parents I walk just to pass his house. We used to play football outside. Wheelie bins for goalposts and hedges for nets. Two-touch. World Cup. We’d do headers and volleys only and I’d usually win. There was a park across the road but we played in his front garden because it was ours. Ain’t nobody going to take our ball and stomp our heads into the mud in his front-garden.     His old man was loose with the drink. I learnt from an early age what a typical drunk was. I’d be sleeping over at my friend’s place and on his old man would come back around 3 a.m and we’d push a wardrobe in front of the bedroom door and pretend it was all a game. Kicks, you know. My friend gave me two BB-guns. I loaded the clips and tucked them down my boxer shorts. He took a BB-gun too. He said if his old man came through the door we drop him. He held the gun sideways and squinted his eyes like Clint Eastwood. But his old man would give up on us and go to find his wife to rinse his emotions on.     I don’t think my friend ever bought himself a brand new car. The last time I saw him he was taking a driving lesson in that second-hand car. The instructor was saying, “And don’t think about pushing the limits. Roads are 30 miles-per-hour; motorways are seventy; your life is second-hand cars.”

Janet Kuypers reads David Hutt’s writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, titled a Rural Story Excavation

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt mag, titled a Rural Story live 12/3/14 at Chicago’s the Café Gallery

Mike Huckabee tells us women Fritz Hamilton Mike Huckabee tells us women don’t need Uncle Sugar giving them sweet abortions when smart women want to bear their unwanted children to place them in foster homes when nobody wants to adopt them/ Mike wants to strew the field with babies, especially in our age when most women get pregnant by accident & don’t want to be mothers, but Mike wants them to be mothers anyway, even the women who’d rather abort than have a kid, like making them play tiddledywinks when they’d rather play basketball/ of course Mike won’t play with them because he’d rather watch tv & dream about being president, which, thank the Lord, MIKE is NOT ... !

same day Liam Spencer Brightness can be seen through the blinds A beautiful day lies in wait Hot coffee chases the hangover That the mumbling echos The young and beautiful play in the sun Without a care in the world A hot shower and five minutes Full thermos and off to work Boats are on the water People crowd the beaches Another day of stress And low wages A beautiful purple sunset Marks the end of child’s play Deadlines, deadbeats, unpayable bills Cigarette smoke and grumbles Couples walk hand and hand Beautiful evening of love Another day of getting nowhere Worsening gloom of tomorrow Moonlight lights the way Laughter fills restaurants and bars Cheap box wine fills the glass The one pleasure left Children and the beautiful have restful slumber Eager for a new day of sun and fun Laying there tossing and turning Not wanting a new day of nothing

Janet Kuypers reads Liam Spencer’s poem appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, titled a Rural Story thin line

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt mag, titled a Rural Story live 12/3/14 at Chicago’s the Café Gallery

Fjord Jumper A. Lenkeit the rain falls in an impersonal way the sun doesn’t scar me so much as it blinds me i wish i could feel the depth of your breath slow uncaring Earth easy come easy go bury me someday as if I’m your past or your secret

Janet Kuypers reads A. Lenkeit’s writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, titled a Rural Story Fjord Jumper

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt mag, titled a Rural Story live 12/3/14 at Chicago’s the Café Gallery

Serve and Protect Eric Burbridge     “Let me make myself perfectly clear, I have no regrets for what happened on June 16th. On that hot, sunny day I, Benny Nater, shot and killed two cops. One cop deserved it; his partner was, as they say nowadays, collateral damage. I took the neighborhood shortcut and got stopped by the cops in a gangway. One of them was a big hate filled guy who spat the word ‘nigger’ like a casual hello. I’m short, but strong and agile. I’ve been wrestling since the age of five. “I’m killing you,” he said and grabbed at me. I grabbed his arm, spun him and snatched the gun out of his hand. I put a bullet between both their eyes. I panicked, took the gun and ran to the next gangway. I shook all over. I pulled myself together and hurried to the subway. I arrived at city hall and applied for the Metropolitan Police Department.”     “Whoa...Why are you telling me this, Benny?” Detective Sergeant Larry Childs dabbed sweat off his wrinkled brow and saggy flesh under his eyes. “We weren’t that close.”     “Because, you know I’m lying.” I tried to be sarcastic and funny. It didn’t work. “I’m sick and I want to tell the truth about things.”      Childs sighed and uncrossed his long legs and stood. “You know what; write this mess down. I’ll go over this so-called revelation later. You need rest.” He turned at the door and gave me a suspicious look.      He moved to the side to let the doctors by. “Excuse me.”     “Wait a second, Childs. Meet Doctors Patel and Brown.”     Childs was phony but polite. He smiled and they shook. “Hello, Doctor Patel, Doctor Brown, nice to meet you.”     “We didn’t mean to interrupt gentlemen, we need to check something.” Patel said in thundering Indian accent for such a short guy. He flipped a switch on the machine and scribbled on his chart. “Looks good.” Doctor Brown peered over his shoulder, rubbed his sandy colored beard and nodded in agreement. They excused themselves and Childs gave them a dirty look.     “Bye, Nater.” I chuckled and it hurt.     I didn’t tell my illustrious ex-partner the whole truth about that day. When I stepped out of the gangway I saw my dad getting in the car. I calmed down and asked him to drop me at the subway. He gave me the once over and said, “hop in.” He shot me a few curious looks. That cop look I hated. I struggled not to panic, but calmness came out of nowhere. I thanked God. We stopped at the corner gas station. He pumped gas; I stashed the pistol under the seat while sirens screamed past like the world came to an end.     The cops started to block off the street. I’ve never seen that many cop cars in my life. We got through the road block with no problem. Six months prior my dad, homicide Detective Lt. Samuel Nater retired from the force. He stressed, “Stay over my aunt’s house for a couple of days until the situation calms down. Every young brother in the hood will be under suspicion until they caught the guy’s responsible for this shit.”     When they investigate and determine I’m telling the truth, involving my dad would please a few of those bastards.     That ain’t going to happen.     My dad called and told me the Gestapo tactics his former colleagues used. Officers Smith and Larsen were darlings of the city administration. They wanted the killers more than money. They plucked the William brothers out of a hat full of bad actors in the hood. They beat them into submission and got their confessions. They deserved it. Their reign of terror of burglaries and other thefts to murder of good kids with futures ended.     I felt bad for them, but I shook it off.     Fuck ‘em, case closed.     Five years after their convictions, one brother got the death penalty, the other life with no parole, they got shanked in prison.     Case entirely closed.     I stayed away from home an extra day. Dad called and said. “I’m on my way over.” He was pissed. I felt it through the phone he must have found the pistol.     I’m dead if he did!     Hell, I planned to get it when I got back home. I relaxed and didn’t let my imagination run too wild. I almost choked on my beer when Auntie Jane ran in the living room. For a two hundred fifty pounds I didn’t know she had it in her. “Your dad’s been in an accident,” she shouted. “Let’s go, he’s at St. Michael’s.” *     My aunt paced back and forth outside the ER doors. We saw an overweight doctor in blue scrubs and a white surgical mask dangling around his neck stop at the nurse’s station. Our hearts skipped a beat when he looked our way. I couldn’t tell if his solemn expression was one of professionalism or negative news. He cracked a quick smile and introduced himself. His statement, “We stabilized Mr. Nater for the time being,” didn’t sit well with the rest of the family. I couldn’t blame the doctor, it was what it was, but they still asked questions nobody could answer. He did say we could each see him for a minute when he gets to ICU. I tried to shake the feeling I was losing my dad. The ticking and beeping of the medical devices scared the shit out of me. I touched his bandaged shoulder, “Dad, it’s me.” His eyes popped open. He turned slowly and I saw that frown. The swelling didn’t hide a thing. He lifted his arm, “Come closer,” he commanded, in a stronger voice than I expected. “I know what you did.”     “Dad, I was going to get it, I—”     “Shut up and listen I don’t have much time.” He took a deep breath. My heart skipped a beat; please don’t die dad, please. His drowsy reddened eyes focused on me. “I was a detective, remember?” I nodded. “I put two and two together when I heard what happened. You came out that gangway and thank God nobody saw you.” He coughed and grimaced in pain and so did I.     “Take it easy dad, don’t talk.”     He sighed, frustrated, “Again, shut up and listen, I got that and it’s not department issue. I think it’s a ‘drop gun’ which means you did the right thing. They deserved it, the assholes. I put that thing in a special place it might come in handy when you get on the force.” He tried to smile. “Smart move, Benny, you’ll be a good cop, give ‘em hell son.”     Three hours later retired Detective William Nater passed.     I cried for days. The law came down on the guy driving the second car that hit my dad. He was legally drunk. It wasn’t his fault, but the female who caused the whole thing had connections. Whoever’s fault it was my dad didn’t jump out the ground.      The family moved on; I joined the department, but my attitude didn’t change.     Fuck the police! *     On the sixth month anniversary of my dad’s death I entered the police academy. The preliminary interview put me front of a heavy set guy with bad skin, a flattened boxer’s nose and stained teeth. I suppressed a laugh when he told me the benefits of taking advantage of the dental plan and the other perks. “We know who your old man was; don’t expect any breaks, asshole.” He said.     “I don’t and I’m ready, sir.” His eyes lit up...he didn’t expect that. I gave him a hard look. If he only knew.     Welcome to the police academy, Benny.     I prepared myself for the BS, especially the racism.     I aced every facet of the training. The majority of my classmates were fresh out of high school. I had two years at the Metropolitan Institute of Technology under my belt. Knowing my dad he probably figured if I get in the academy I wouldn’t stay. When it cooled after the death of those cops I’d make a move.     He’d be right.     I hid my trick shoulder long enough. I could pop it in and out when I pleased. When the doctors determine the handicap, out the door I go. A win, win situation; I get cop training and go finish my engineering pursuits.     So I thought.     “You’re too close to graduation and you’re at the top of your class.” The commander said, his seat shot back and hit the wall when he sprang to his feet. He stood in perfect military posture. The female candidates loved his keen features, chopped blonde hair and broad shoulders. “So, Officer Nater, we are not kicking you out.” Shit, I knew I was gone. Oh well now for Plan B, whatever that was. “There’s only a few weeks left; we’re handing you off to someone else. Is that acceptable to you, officer?”     Hell no, but I couldn’t get the words out. “Yes, sir.” I snapped to attention.     He walked past and tapped my arm. “Relax, Nater, have a seat and the door slammed behind him. Damn, how do I get out of this place? They won’t tolerate a resignation. It’s understood that they want some years for their investment. Two figures appeared outside the smoked glass panel door. They laughed and mumbled something before the door opened. A medium height guy with a fat red face carrying a folder rushed over to the desk and slammed it on top of other documents. A chewed up stogy hung off his razor thin lips, it smelled freshly extinguished and he needed a haircut. A coffee stain covered the lower half of his shirt pocket. That shirt had seen better days. A beer belly he cultivated over the years poked through a missing button above his belt. Whoever this guy was he belonged in a “Law and Order” episode.     “I’m LT. Marty Lyle.” He extended his massive hand; his shake felt like a vise grip. I flexed my fingers and acted like it didn’t hurt. He opened the folder. “You hate cops I see, Officer Nater.” He didn’t look up and kept reading.     “What? I didn’t say that.”      “You don’t have too, we watch everything about everybody. You don’t socialize that often, with the others. I knew your dad, he wasn’t friendly either.”     “Excuse me, sir. What do you want?”     He looked up and snarled. “What did you say to me?”     Oh no, I had enough problems. I hesitated. “I said what do you want, sir?”     “I’m Internal Affairs and you been drafted...and I ain’t taking no for an answer.” He snapped.     I gulped and thought; the police who police the police want me. Why not? “OK, since you insist.” He nodded. “I checked your academics; two years at The Metropolitan Institute of Technology with a 4.0 GPA, impressive.” The Internal Affairs officer gave me an inquisitive look. “I’m not going to ask why you left.” He shook his head. “But, it must be a good one. So, if you’re in we got paperwork to do. Officially, I ask again are you in or out?” He looked dead serious. Am I joining the mob or what?     I reached over, “I’m in.” We shook.     “Welcome to IA, forget your friends and hope you don’t have to deal with them in your capacity. If and when they hear you joined ‘The Rat Squad’ they’ll stop speaking. Take the rest of the day off.” Lyle slid a piece of paper across the table. “Be at that address at 8:00am.” He glanced at me, slammed the folder shut and headed for the door. I leaned back and looked around the dingy gray interrogation room. What have I done and where would this decision take me?     Where would I be if I thought before I joined IA?     Regrets sucks and you can’t do a damn thing about it. *     Medical professionals weren’t the most cooperative group when pressured by law enforcement. They expressed reluctance with flash smiles, sighs and disapproving shrugs. I didn’t blame them; don’t let a cop get shot the world has to stop. Dr. Patel was a good guy that’s why I chose him, but his ER and OR expertise caused him to have several run-ins with a few stupid police officials. “Don’t mind Det. Childs doctor, he’s an asshole.” His grin said it all. I was lucky to be acquainted with a family of jack-of-all-trade doctors. “Bad news or what?”     He pulled up a chair and those piercing analytical eyes glanced at the IV’s. “Well, Benny, it’s advanced.” I closed my eyes; think positive Benny. “This is an aggressive type of pancreatic cancer. We want to do more tests before we recommend, if any, a treatment plan,” the doctor said.     “Jesus, that sounds so standard procedure it makes me sicker.”     Patel shrugged. “I’m giving it to you straight no BS like you say, Benny, bear with me.”     “Sorry...it’s not every day you get a death sentence.”     “Maybe not, Benny. I want you to go home and try to relax. I know that’s easier said than done, but do it. I’m on this, I’ll be in touch.” He patted my shoulder and left.     That diagnosis hardened my resolve to make Childs pay for his dirt. When he falls so will his boys. I believe that worried the hell out of him, especially my revelation. *     Detective Lawrence Childs couldn’t exit through the revolving door fast enough. He inhaled the hot humid air and slowly let it escape his lungs along with the headache Nater gave him. He froze at the curb and signaled the elderly valet parking attendant for his vehicle. What the hell was he up to? He killed to cops and joined the force. Bullshit. But what if he did? Was he terminal or what? The old timer pulled up in his old school Chevy Impala and held the door open. Childs slapped a five in his palm. “Take care, old guy.” He sped into traffic. He loved it when cops spotted the candy red finish with the shiny 22 inch rims. They’d freak when he flashed his IA badge. The apologies made his day; half of them were assholes anyway.     Cynicism was IA’s life blood.     The first time he met Nater his gut twitched and ten years later; the same damn feeling.     He’d hoped being partnered with a minority the guy would be more conservative. The go along to get along Negro, but instead the SOB hated everybody. Nater’s investigations involved the majority on the force. That kept them at odds. His revelation, true or not, screamed he had nothing to lose.     Jesus! If he killed those cops what will Carmen, Nater’s ex-wife think? Officer Larsen was her first cousin. *     It took a brief stay in the hospital to realize how lonely I am. Over a ten year period I’d lost seven of my close relatives. I couldn’t get Carmen pregnant to save my life. Thank God, since kids suffer the most in divorces. I missed what I never had; go figure. A skinny blonde nurse helped me go of bed to get dressed. “Will someone come to get you?” She asked.     “No.” She looked surprised. “I’ll be OK.” I thought about my Auntie Jane in a nursing home. Now I know how she felt before her dementia got worse. I slipped on my pants and wished I had a long sleeve shirt to hide the needle marks that lined my arms.     One of the parking attendants hailed a cab. A ping of jealousy hit me watching the old timer’s swagger when moved gracefully between rows of cars. I should be so lucky.     Concentrate on what matters, Benny.     You’ve set the stage for Childs to expose himself.     I’d been at odds with Lawrence Childs for months during the investigation of a cop who decided to carry a non-department issue weapon. Aaron “quick draw” Rosman prided himself in being the fastest in the city. He wasn’t a fool or a bully, but a good guy who like everybody else, wanted the advantage in a bad situation. His commander gave him, what turned out to be his last warning, on the day he answered a home invasion call. Rosman and his partner followed procedure to the letter, but anything can and did happen. The boyfriend was trying to get his property back. She called the cops and all hell broke loose.     Long story short; angry drunken guy and plain clothes cops don’t mix.     The guy made a move and “quick draw” dropped him, but he took one in the knee. His weapon flew out his hand, hit the floor and discharged another round that hit the girlfriend in the shoulder. It went clean through her and the bedroom wall and hit a two year old in her crib. Childs did everything to keep him on the force. I wanted him prosecuted. Childs won, and that called for a celebration.     Detective Childs’ home exceeded his salary. But, I didn’t wonder why at first, but suspicion latched on to me like a parasite. Marlena Childs, a six foot shapely plus size blonde trophy wife showed off her dream house. Every room had a full bath; the contemporary open floor plan ranch style creation belonged in Dwell magazine. Their finances to afford that beauty; a hefty inheritance. The food was superb, whoever wiped up the potato salad and coleslaw should market it. Carmen went back inside to get more food. I ran my mouth so much I forgot to tell her to bring more beer. I excused myself and left my boss and the brass sitting there.     I really needed another beer.     I heard Carmen and Childs chatting in the kitchen. I cut the corner in time to see my wife brush Childs hand off her behind. My heart skipped a beat. I grabbed my chest. “What’s wrong, Benny?” She shouted. They helped me to a chair. I struggled to catch my breath.     “Nothing...nothing.” My nemesis and Carmen! She wouldn’t do that. I must be drunk, seeing stuff that wasn’t there. No, she rejected him in a nice way. It was him, not her.     That dirty SOB!     What are frienemies for, Benny?     How’d he like it if I did that to him? He’d freak, but I’m not that type. I don’t like blondes anyway. I guess he couldn’t resist Carmen’s traffic stopping ass.     I stared at Carmen most of the way home. She kept concentrated on the road and tried to play it off. “Since you won’t go to the ER, make an appointment in the morning.”     “You care, Carmen?”My tone reached interrogation levels. She couldn’t hide it...it was true, not my imagination.     “Of course, Benny.” Beads of sweat formed on her overly tanned forehead. “What’s wrong with you?”     “Nothing you’d admit. Keep your eyes on the road.” I didn’t sleep all night. Whenever Carmen opened those big brown eyes I was looking at her. She pursued me during my final months in the academy. When I resurfaced in Internal Affairs it didn’t faze her at all. My family warned me not to marry her. “Mixed marriages will be a problem,” they advised. I ignored them. I was spoiled and in love beyond logic. I could feel the “we told you so” when they found out we broke up. We grew further apart and so did my hatred. She didn’t question why; she knew. Divorcing her was a necessity, but destroying Childs became an obsession.     It won’t be long before Childs tells Carmen and she contacts me, “Did you kill my cousin?”     “Of course not,” and my sarcasm would be her answer. It did feel weird when I found out Officer Larsen was her family.     I tipped the cabbie ten bucks for helping me with my bag. He insisted; I didn’t think I looked that weak. Oh well, it will get worse, but don’t think about that now, Benny, you got revenge to nurture.     I through my bag on the sofa and hit the remote to check the DVR; sixty-four percent used. Time to watch and delete; but first a couple of slices of four day old pizza. The frig needed to be stocked. No beer; I can’t drink it anyway. I popped the food in the micro and went in my bedroom. Just like I left it, none of the booby traps were sprung. Good, the bigger brother wasn’t watching. The answering machine blinked; nothing but telemarketers. I pride myself in not having the typical TV cops filthy apartment. My style; warm colors, contemporary furniture, floor plants, mirrors and organization like somebody with sense. I tossed half the pizza, it tasted funny, and several episodes of my favorite programs later I decided to call Dr. Clifford Brown. He requested an update on my well being. *     Dr. Clifford Brown’s demeanor standing next to Dr. Patel was unquestionable, oncologies best walked past Childs without arousing any suspicion. And why should he, the FBI pride themselves on training their under covers well. Agent Brown liked to be called doctor. He worked hard for his doctorate in criminology. I thought he was too short to be a fed, but his favorite clique, “big things come in small packages” proved to be right in this case. I called Brown months ago and convinced him to investigate IA or at least Childs. He agreed, but he expressed his reservations; why, he wouldn’t say. I told Childs about what I did before Brown came in. When he walked in I knew that was the signal we would be taped. I didn’t expect Childs to leave; the SOB was supposed to explode when I make accusations he’s dirty and so are his friends. “So what, you won’t live to see shit happen to us,” he’d say. But, I’ll get him to incriminate himself later if it’s the last thing I do.     Dr. Brown shuffled loose papers and files. He blanked his computer screen, stood and shook my hand. His once over made me feel strange, sympathy didn’t sit well with me. And, that’s how he looked. “How are you, Benny?”     I giggled. “I’ll live...for a while longer.” Brown blue pinstriped suit fit his short frame well. “You look better in scrubs, Doctor Brown.”     “Yeah right, sit down, coffee or tea?”     “No thanks, I’m good.” He poured a cup of Joe and sat back down.     “Sorry about the other day...”     “What did you say to spook him like that?” He interrupted.     “Nothing.” I lied. “Maybe he didn’t like the way I looked, which makes sense, since he hates me.”     Brown sighed and rubbed his pointed chin. He looked impatient and opened a folder. “The bean counters are talking plenty of shit, Benny.”     “Since when did the bureau have a budget? Fuck ‘em I gave you three good tips.”     Childs relationship with a vice cop smelled funny when I saw them outside a bar on the local hoe stroll. Curiosity kicked in. I parked my unmarked car and sat across the street in a bus shelter. A couple of hookers came by and ignored the cops; strange. Hookers mess with everybody, maybe not verbally, but by body language. It hit me, Childs was dirty. Hookers and IA, what a combo. There was a rumor of drugs and money missing from the proverbial evidence room. We found out why and who did it, but Childs helped sidetrack the investigation. “It will compromise other agencies long work.”     Bullshit! I’d been quiet long enough so I told the feds.     “It isn’t that easy, Benny.” Agent Brown said.     “You’ve got to have something.” I said. “I know you want to be cautious, but tell me something.”     “Well. It’s so-so; you know, go home and take care of yourself, Benny. I’ll be in touch, soon.”     I turned at the door. “I’d hate to die in vain; I put a lot on the line, Brown.     “I know.”     “Good.” I slammed the door and headed home. *     Detective Childs hit his speed dial. He still loved and trusted Carmen Nater enough to share what her ex told him. She deserved to know, that would ease her regrets for their fling. Years passed, but he knew her and it still lingered. On the fourth ring he hung up. Leave it alone, for now, plus she won’t believe him. Why would he cop to an open-shut case? No weapon was recovered, but they confessed.     Who cares...their dead?     And, why would the DA resurrect the case and get the city sued? That will not happen.     Nater was lying, if he made that statement on his death bed it wouldn’t matter.     Childs’ cell rang. He glanced at the screen; headquarters. He slammed his hands on the wheel. “What the hell do they want?” He shouted. “Childs...Childs.” No answer. “Hello.” The screen went blank. He tossed it the seat and pulled over. He waited for a text message. It chimed a few seconds later. “Right on time, what do they want?” He read. Get to the commander’s office ASAP. “Now what?” He reached for the strobe light, slapped it on the roof and made a beeline to the office.     He doubled parked in front of an older squad car behind the station entered his code on the door and stepped into a cloud of cigar smoke. “No smoking in the building, officers.” What a waste of breath, but Commander Earl Banks said it every day. That smelly cloud was his; rank has its privileges. He tapped on the door, paused until he saw a shadow in the smoked glass and entered. “What’s up, commander?” His nose twitched from the cigar odor.     Banks handed Childs a folder. “Congrats sergeant you made Lieutenant, you impressed the big boys.” The sunlight that seeped through the blinds reflected off Banks bald head. He picked up his burger and devoured what was left. “Want some fries?”     Childs shook his head. “Thanks, sir. This is quite a surprise.”     The commander wiped his mouth and smiled. Apparently he didn’t feel the food wedged in the gold caps on his front teeth. “Now you can work a desk and get overweight like me.”     That would be one hell of an accomplishment he weighed close to three hundred pounds. “No sir, my wife would kill me. If you put in a word for me, thanks.”     “You’re welcome, Lieutenant. Now go get drunk like somebody with sense.”     Childs pinches himself; it hurt and the newest Lt. Detective in Internal Affairs pulled off in his old school toward the nearest cop bar. Two beers later he concluded he needed to cut his criminal ties. Several calls and “don’t contact me again; forget because I forgot” should do it. NO...up close and personal would convince them he meant business. He made a mental check list of the necessary stops.     First: The head hooker on Fifth Street.     Second: A dirty vice cop.     Third: A drug dealers for the stock brokers.     Last; the school cop who knew the 10-12 year olds who ran a discreet child porno ring. They planned to quit when they reached fourteen.     Three days later Lt. Childs finished severing his criminal ties and he did it without smacking a lot of them around.     He was focused; so focused he didn’t notice Agent Clifford Brown, Ph.D. following him. *     I couldn’t believe it; Childs promoted to Lieutenant. What in the hell were they thinking? They weren’t, but what do I know. The majority of the guys who called agreed.     God help us!     That’s all I needed and then Dr. Patel calls and adds a time limit to my death sentence. “Who’s to say for sure, Benny, maybe a year...year and a half at most? I’m sorry, Benny.”     “You don’t sound good doc, you having a bad day?”     “I hate this part of the job.” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me. I heard you’re a good police of police.”     “What? You mean I’m not a bad rat.” I said and laughed.     “You said it, I didn’t.”     “I’ve helped a few cops.” Patel probably talked to a cop at the hospital who moonlighted in security. A few years ago he did something stupid; putting money in his pocket that didn’t belong there. I went to bat for him, got him cleared of the charges. Childs and his crowd disagreed. And, thinking of the devil. “Hey doc, I got a call, I’ll talk to you later.” Childs, what did he want? “Hello.”     “Hey Nater, guess what? I out rank you, ain’t that wonderful?” Childs cackle made me sick.     “Congratulations, Lt. Childs.”     “You heard...good news travels fast don’t it?”     “That’s bad news travels fast.”     “Yeah well, whatever. I’m having a party, join us.” What...and invite from Childs. “You there?”     “Yeah, I’m here.”     “Seriously, Nater, let’s bury the hatchet, face to face. You feel up to coming? If not, I understand.” He said that with seriousness I never heard come out of his mouth.     “OK, I’ll be there.” The hatchet will be buried in your head you dirty SOB. Cops have a ton of responsibility and power. A split second decision makes the difference in many situations. People put their trust in us even though they don’t like us. IA’s suppose to keep it clean. I wasn’t an angel, but I wasn’t dirty. The only thing that will stop my disdain for Childs; a time machine and Hollywood was fresh out. Several years ago I thought of killing him. I accidently found the gun I used on those cops. My dad said he put it up for a rainy day. I didn’t care, but I knocked the damn thing off the top, almost hidden, shelf in his wood shop. I put it back and plotted Childs demise. With our history, if he skins his knee they’ll swear I did it.     I got over the heartbreak and wished him and my ex-wife the worse. I’d forgotten about that damn gun until recently. All the years I worked with Childs I never knew he lived in Mt. Pinewood across the tracks from the hood before he join the force. What if and when the feds decide to bust him they find the gun that killed those cops? Since that case was closed they might ignore it. But, if they didn’t that would be great. He’ll know I planted it and what I said was true. *     I received a warm welcome at the Childs’ home. Their politeness followed proper etiquette. A hearty handshake from my frienemy and “I’m sorry, forgive me, Benny” didn’t mean shit. Tell that to the victims of the bad cops you and your cohorts kept on the force. I smiled, we hugged and the drinking continued in his mancave. His collection of model aircraft and ships that lined the teakwood recreation room was impressive. He had an eye for detail. I loved the adjacent billiard room; it reminded me of the pool hall in the classic “The Hustler.” Posters of Jackie Gleason, Paul Newman and George C. Scott were all over the place. Childs said, “He tried to replicate the set as much as possible.” We all agreed it was an enviable accomplishment. After he beat the pants off us, the party moved to the pool area.     I left my beer and went back to get it.     Time to plant the weapon, I won’t have long.     The best place, in plain sight, right behind that huge replica of “The Titanic.” I slid it into place, grabbed my beer and walked toward the door. Marlena cut me off; she scared the mess out of me. “Where you going, Benny?” She had lust in those wide set blue eyes.     “Back to the party.” I held up my can. “I forgot my beer.”     She hugged me tight. “Sorry you’re sick.” She kissed me and her tongue explored every corner of my mouth and she smelled like roses. I lifted her skirt and caressed her bare, smooth flesh. I broke away and pulled her over to a chair by the door so I could hear anybody coming.. Then I spun her around, bent her over the chair and rode her like a horse. We laid there panting like dogs, caught our breath and returned to the party like nothing happened.     It was good! Marlena Childs was one helluva aphrodisiac!     I didn’t think I had much, if anything, left. I didn’t feel bad either, she started it; I wasn’t thinking about her. I left the party drunk and satisfied. *     I spun my wheelchair away from the bathroom mirror. My forty pound weight loss showed on my face. Two months into my hospice stay I fought depression daily. I received the best care money could buy. This place looked like a resort, but the cloud of death hung over us.     No word from Agent Brown, either way, that didn’t help my spirits. I stopped watching TV and listening to the radio. I read instead, the library became my hangout. I finally got a guy down the hall to let me read his huge hardcover edition of “Mandela” when Agent Brown tapped on the door.     “Can I come in?”     “Of course, good to see you, Doctor Brown.”     “Why don’t you answer your phone?” He pulled up a chair.     I shrugged. “I haven’t felt like talking lately.”     “Well Benny, yesterday they screeched your boy’s place, a summer house and all his other shit. We got the tapes too.” Brown dug in his attaché case and produced a ballistics report. “We found a revolver in his recreation room. It matches the bullets they pulled out of some guys who got popped years ago in Mt. Pinewood.”     “What?” Jesus that was the wrong gun!     Brown gave me a confused look. “They were adversaries of Childs that lived down the street before he joined the force. Can you believe that idiot kept the gun? He didn’t kill them, but still.”     “No...no I can’t, damn he’s got trouble.” How did my dad get that gun? Did he shot those guys or what? He must’ve meant to throw that gun away. It had to be; he wouldn’t leave it for me to get caught with it. The one I planted was his weapon.     What a coincidence, but a good one. Childs was fucked and he deserved it.     I could tell Brown had a hard time looking at me. That sympathetic expression said loud and clear I wouldn’t see him again. “On behalf of the bureau thanks, Benny.” We shook and he gathered his things. “I’ll call you soon, bye my brother.” His eyes started to water. He turned and left.     I tried to feel better, but it didn’t work. I hit the button for more medication. Another tap on the door and Carmen stuck her head in. “Surprise, Benny.” She looked great in a blue summer dress and low heel sandals.     “Hello Carmen, it’s been years. You come to wish me farewell.”     She sighed. “Your sarcasm really sucks, Benny.”     “Come closer, Carmen, I wanted to tell you something, you’ll love this.” She pulled up a chair. “Let me make myself perfectly clear...”

High Tech Hemingway Mark Scott     It was about noon thirty when I walked into Jerry’s Sports Bar and Day Trades. It was a clean, well-lighted place where you could go and get yourself some free Wi-Fi, and watch the fights on closed circuit television for the price of a few drinks. Married women who couldn’t even get their links clicked at home could go to Jerry’s and get googled all afternoon.     I saw ol’ Sam lying face down on the floor. He looked deader than hell. I asked the bartender, “What’s this?”     “Sam’s dead.”     I rolled Sam over and took out his wallet. A man could look dead, and a man could be dead, but that didn’t mean you didn’t have a responsibility to him. “Did you run his health-care card?”     “System’s down. But he’s dead for sure. Heart attack.”     “What happened?”     “You want the whole story?”     “Yep.”     “Sam met Louise 20 years ago, on the shore by the snow-capped mountains of New Orleans.”     “Yeah, New Orleans ain’t what it used to be. What then?”     “They talked, went to bed, and got married. He started a dot-com, and made a fortune. She liked to talk and spend money. Sam, not so much.”     “She liked to Ritz it up, huh?”     “Spent all his money, and then some. He really loved her though.”     “Heart attack, you say.”     “Third one. And it killed him deader than hell.”     I kneeled down and closed Sam’s eyes for him. It just wasn’t right to leave him there staring at the ceiling. “Did you call 9-11?”     “They’re coming, but they pulled his cholesterol and blood pressure stats, and I described how he was lying there blue faced and not breathing. So they’ll be here when they get here.”     I stood there and realized, then, that Sam was like the Lucky Man in that old English ballad from way back in the days when they didn’t even have MTV yet, and you had to jam something called an “8-track” into a contraption that looked like a toaster oven. Yeah, no money could save him, so he lay down and he died. “It’s a hell of a thing, a third heart attack.”     “It’s an awful thing,” the bartender said.     “Who do think will win tonight?” I pointed up at the tube, where the fight promoter with the electrified hairdo was plugging the big fight.     “I think Mayweather for sure.”     The bartender metered me out an ounce-and-a-quarter shot of my favorite whiskey. I asked him if he was still with his web-master girlfriend.     “Yeah,” he said. “Best thing ever happened to me. Gives me a good scroll whenever I need it, and runs in background mode when she ought to. Like a real lady, you know?”     “You’re a lucky man.” I downed the whiskey, paid for it, stepped over ol’ Sam, and walked out under a phosphorescent blue and gray sky, humming to myself that old English ballad about the guy who had white horses and ladies by the score. The Doppler radar said rain, but on this day the ol’ Doppler had it wrong.

diogen2222, art by Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Eleanor Leonne Bennett Bio (20120229)     Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16 year old iinternationally award winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic,The World Photography Organisation, Nature’s Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland trust and Postal Heritage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News Website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United states and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited, having shown work in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and The Environmental Photographer of the year Exhibition (2011) amongst many other locations. She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. www.eleanorleonnebennett.com

Belief William Ogden Haynes This morning he believes that life will go on forever. He just came out of the sunrise service on Easter, clean, renewed and right with the world. He is in church clothes, all communioned up and assured of eternal life. The sun warms his face As he walks to the parking lot, looking forward to watching football in the afternoon. But driving home, he sees the pulse beat in his wrist as he grips the steering wheel. And he realizes that life is just a bunch of complicated biochemical reactions and electrical impulses, no matter what you believe. It can all end in an instant, like when a bug gets stepped on, an artery becomes just a little too narrow, a tumor metastasizes or an airplane wing falls off in turbulence. In his den, he watches the fat orange cat by the television who lies on his back in a square of sunlight, oblivious to the mysteries of heaven and biology. Yet, there is the spark of life inside of him, running on automatic pilot. The furry belly rises and falls, slowly and rhythmically, just one stopped breath away from a short trip to a backyard hole in a cardboard box.

To Move Heaven and Earth Jeff Burt     Today I dig out a septic tank and shit-caked leach lines. Tomorrow when I join my fellow homeless workers hanging together in the morning at Home Depot trying to get picked for a day job I might landscape or knock out walls for a do-it-yourselfer. I know I will take less than a day—a half-day job, a two-hour job, an hour job, smaller and smaller segments of a day, would all be fine. I count time in dollar bills as they enter my hand. A twenty, and a paid lunch. No complexities—hard currency, fast food. I have been jobless for two years, homeless for one year and more, and forgotten forever.     Work—you stand, you ride, you dig, you ride, you stand again. All of these are distinct and become all of your life in the moment. This is not a Zen experience with leaping across halves of the brain. This is the hypothalamic now, the reptilian now, the fear now, the now now.     I have learned that to move heaven and earth, for the earth part, one must actually move earth.     Many day laborers sing, or moan, as is their voice. We sing of love, of sexual conquest, of sexy women, of drugs and beer, of violence; we sing of God, for God, against God. But the songs we share, that we burst out and sing together, are always about love, the love for another, the love for a woman. We sing like sailors once would chant, we sing only short stanzas, ribald and muscular, protecting the hearts that beat the syllable love loudly, then softly, loudly, then softly, sending it coursing through our cells. It is only then, when we notice the beating, that it wounds. The remainder of the long spells without singing is like the mind unobservant of the concussive heart.     On the street corners where my brothers perform, those who can keep a guitar by their bed under a bridge or a grove of trees or an uncle’s garage, have coins and currency tossed into the hat or guitar case for most songs, but the songs that draw the purses and wallets the quickest are the love songs, old love songs, new love songs, songs in French and Arabic and Italian. Men who can strum four chords make pittance, but a man who can strum the chord of love with his vocal cords is the man who will dine better at the end of the day.     When you have a job day after day, month after month, year after year, you wake with expectations. The expectations can cause anxiety or promise to fill your body. When you wake on the weekends, your expectations change, or perhaps they vanish as rest comes to rescue the mind by taking it from the swells and eddies to the shore. But to a man in a shed living on a borrowed couch and donated clothes, most days start with no expectation, no change. Most days don’t even have anxiety, for what climb in elevation of promise or fall over a cliff into despair could possibly happen to someone washing his face with a small cake of soap from the Salvation Army? Water runs from the hose to the basin. Soap lathers. It is all very simple. If the water doesn’t run or the soap does not lather, what difference does it make? If I miss my corner at Home Depot, will it make a difference to my long-term objective? Do I even have an objective? Right now, all I have are daily needs.     Today could be the last day that I work for a week.     Today could be the last day that I work.     Today could be the last day.     Today.          A deranged barbarian, a human reverted to pre-literate being—I know the look, the look of how evoluted the other, how de-evoluted I appear. We eat charred hearts like hyenas, scavenge like bears through trash cans and dumpsters, carry broadaxes somewhere under our three sweatshirts, if not on drugs then we should be on drugs, if not drunk then perhaps a little alcohol might do us good. So if I eat on the bus, all those thoughts will run through the other passengers’ minds. I know. I used to have the same thoughts of these savage assassins of protocol.     But many of us are refugees from economic hurricanes with no country to take us in, no longer part of the going forward history of this country, trapped in barbed wire of the border crossing that is the holding cell for neither this nor that, months, days, years of loss.     I have read that in Africa generations of the displaced have survived on nothing more than familial identity to grasp and the concept of homeland that would be returned to them, a heaven on earth. Decades in the holding tank, treading water, surviving.     But we have no homeland. We have a plot of land as large as our bodies, a small rectangle on which to work out our fate. And when we do enter the country, it will not be the same country as we left, refugees out of time, out of destiny, out of communal history.     Even though sane, some of us at times fight flying the pennant of mental illness, the flags of abyss and loneliness. We talk to ourselves, but we talk to ourselves aloud too often, or with too high a volume. No one notices a priest speaking to himself, or an engineer, or a teacher, or a doctor. But the further down the pay scale the more we begin to assign a mental deviation to the self-talker, so that when we hit clerk, assistant, homemaker, auto specialist, day laborer, they are noticed.     Some homeless sing, because all they have is songs. A homeless man or woman wrapped in two coats and gloves on a summer day singing is deemed crazy, while the radiologist walking from one building to another with a lead apron below his blue coat singing out loud is sane.     An unshaven man with busted flaps for shoes and a K-mart bag for a backpack singing Alleluia diverts the most sympathetic eyes as the people scatter on the sidewalk, while a pastor with the cloth around his neck sings The Devil with the Red Dress On and gathers smiles and high fives.     I talk like many, unable to keep myself from sharing to the next man, greedy for an audience. I have little to share. I have no intimacy, therefore lack any sensitive speech. I have no circumstances to share that anyone will be eager to hear, no history, no future, no dreams.     Yet I speak. I talk of politics aloud in husky voice, of medicine and prosthesis and bio-robots with vigor. I speak aloud to have the waves of sound to pound the drums of my ears, to vibrate the cochlea and canals, to work the hammer, anvil, and stirrup like a Greek god pounding out a shield of brilliance.     So I sing. Let them guess my occupation. ———     It takes thirty minutes to get to a place to stand for work.     It takes sixty minutes and a three-mile walk to get food stamps.     It takes ninety minutes and a four-mile walk to get a bus pass.     It takes forever to get your identification, and then you are never pleased with who you are, as if magically the act of identifying one’s self could generate a different name, a genie could give you a wish for a successful past, a pleasant present, a promised tomorrow.     It’s not simply the picture.     It’s the same old name, the name of the failure.     It’s the deleted history. The lack of an address.     If I could only augment my skills with a few classes, the job counselor says, forgetting I don’t have a shiny dime to my name. If I could only have a permanent mailing address other than homeless services post office boxes the human services clerk says; if I could only get a foot up and make enough to get on food stamps things would start to pick up, the food distribution person says; if I could only be optimistic without reason, the social worker says; if only you could eliminate your desires your needs would be less, my Buddhist advocate says; if only you could eliminate your negative desires and ask God to help you with your positive desires your needs would be met, my Christian advocate says; if only you could win the lottery or find money laying on the ground, my buddy says; if only.     A journey begins with a single step. Many of my journeys have been just that, a single step, and a falling back, a starting over, a falling back. Each person takes his or her own journey, but we day-laborers and homeless in the range of sanity desire mostly a tourist guide, somewhere on a beaten path we could trace like a child traces the raised outline of a spider’s web in a children’s book, quietly, studiously, to the end. Where does it start? Just point to the place and we will walk whatever miles it takes to get there. We don’t care where it goes. To be on the way to anything would be pleasant. To have taken three or four steps in the same direction, stopping, and going in the same direction again would be pleasant. ———     What is one without an occupation? When meeting someone, the second or third question is what do you do for a living, and what can I say? An occupation defines status, interest, perhaps lifestyle. And day laborer defines status and lifestyle as the lack of status and lifestyle, and certainly not the interest of the day laborer, and does not pique the interest of the other person either.     When someone states his occupation as an engineer, people already have catalogs of perceptions—intelligent, well-schooled, hard-working, barely social, introverted, high-salaried, and married or marriageable.     When someone states her occupation as marketing, the catalogs of creative, extroverted, talkative, artsy, well-dressed, and anxious may come forward.     Store clerk, bus driver, programmer, salesperson, nurse, contractor, even drug dealer, car thief, scam artist, all with images and character ascribed. What images cascade for day laborer? Homeless? Little to start a conversation with. Little to sustain a conversation. I love music, many types, but who will stay in a conversation with me for ten minutes about music when they know I live in a shed and do landscaping if I’m lucky a few days a week?     A surname once described your profession—Fowler, a person who handled birds; Smith, a person who had a craft done by hand; Wheeler, a person who worked with wagons; Lord, a person who didn’t work but owned others who did.     What would my name be described by my current profession? Oddjobber? Shoveler? Hoer? Stoneplacer? Workless?     Many of us are liars, not habitual liars, but commonplace. We enhance our resumes to get work. If someone asks have we ever framed, we say yes, though a hammer and nail may be as foreign to our hands as a surgical scalpel, or no more recent than the skin of a beautiful woman. If someone asks have we ever done grout, we say yes, though more probably we’ve cleaned grout with bleach or removed it with a screwdriver or dremel, the artistic touch of laying grout not part of our skill set.     We lie about our recent housing. We invent circumstances, a personal history, just to get a leg up, a foot hold in the climb of the daunting mountain face. We know that if we can only get that first step, that job, that apartment, that benefit, that care, that counseling, that food, that handout, that it will be the first step of many up the wall of rock. So we lie, we lie about having the first place that supports us. Yes, we have family in the area. Yes, we are just waiting on a check. Yes, we got screwed. We have always been screwed.     Two out of three of us lie, a job counselor told me, and I wondered why the other third did not? Perhaps they were religious zealots, or too simple mentally, or too troubled, to lie. And why must we lie? It’s not exactly for show, since we have nothing to display. It’s not for inflating our own egos, since we have virtually none. It’s all done for the leg up, the hold, the hold to be able to reach to the next hold, and on and on up the rocky face, to a job, to a home, to a life.     A life. That would be nice.

another life Allen M Weber while driving near the bay I smeared my breath from a window to see fishing boats like stars on blue- black water impossibly white scoured by rising sun they appeared cleaner more earnest than their lazy cousins still swaying beside frivolous piers as a waterman I gulped salty air heard seagulls cry felt the frigid texture of the nets a blunt November ache in my hands and valid fear of the sea in time I turned away savored a careful sip of coffee as Yo Yo Ma played Mozart on the radio

Sibling Rivalry Denice Penrose     My sister Janine is much prettier than me. If I’m honest, she’s beautiful. I am not. I am the ‘older sister’, but by bizarre symmetry, my life has been lived in her shadow. Not that I resent her for it – who could resent someone so bright and vivacious?     I never felt that our parents loved her more than me. They encouraged both of us to be ourselves, and to do our best at whatever we chose to do. We were lucky – it could have been different, if they had favoured her. As children, we had squabbled – all siblings do. When we were younger, it was about toys and dolls, then boys, and later our parent’s car. We always made up again. Where there are siblings, there will always be rivalry.     Predictably, she was the popular one at school. I was the scholarly one. Our friends mirrored our differences. Janine’s were beautiful and scatty, vacuous, given to irresponsible behaviour and pranks. My friends were sober and scholarly. The exceptions were the boys who asked me out just to meet Janine. In her defence, she never ‘stole’ a boy from me, most of them were of no interest to her. Those she took over dumped me first, so it couldn’t really be stealing. We inhabited such different spheres that rivalry was never an option. You can’t compete with someone who is not in your league.     Once she stole one of my essays, trashing the spelling and grammar to make it appear like her writing. It didn’t work – her teacher recognised my work. When I found out, I responded in kind, venting my anger on her make up drawer. But, I couldn’t stay angry with her for long. She was upset because she failed the course as a result, and I couldn’t bear seeing her desolate. Even then, she knew how to manipulate my emotions. She never stole my work again. Instead she cajoled me to help her. She passed her O levels, and left school as soon as she could. I delighted in knowing she was dependent on me. In return, she taught me about makeup and fashion. When she did irritate me, she always knew how to charm me out of my most sullen and angry thoughts.     We’ve remained friends through the years, and have both done well in our chosen careers. We’re both successful and respected. I am single; she goes through men faster than I do tissues. But it does occasionally niggle that she prances scantily clad down some fashion show aisle or pouts for a camera, and earns more than me and my PhD.     She has always turned to me in times of crisis, and I’ve enjoyed the superior feeling it augured. Today was no different. We sat outside the trendy wine bar in the bright English sunshine (an oxymoron, I know!) and sipped our champagne (she only drank Dom Perignon). Her beautiful face was marred with worry. I wondered if a boyfriend had actually dumped her first.     ‘I’m scared,’ she said, coming quickly to her concerns, voice taut with fear.     ‘Of what?’ I asked in surprise. She was the most confident person I knew.     ‘I think someone tried to kill me.’     ‘You can’t be serious?’ Although, knowing her penchant for drama, I was not dreadfully surprised. ‘Why would anyone want to kill you? That sort of thing only happens in novels and on TV.’     ‘Modelling is not known as a cut-throat career without reason,’ she responded. ‘A major cosmetic chain is shopping for a new face. I’ve heard I’m on the shortlist.’     ‘What makes you think someone is trying to kill you?’ I asked sceptically.     ‘I’ve sensed someone watching me,’ she whispered     I had to restrain myself from laughing aloud. ‘Isn’t that the point of what you do?’     ‘It’s not the same – it’s not like being admired or ogled, it’s weirder than that. Creepy even.’     ‘So you think someone is trying to kill you because of a creepy feeling? Has anything actually happened to hurt you?’     ‘A brick nearly hit me,’ she pouted, clearly upset by my lack of sympathy.     I put my glass down sharply; the crystal shuddered, but didn’t fracture.     ‘Where was this?’     ‘I was walking home, and out of nowhere, a brick whistled past me, and shattered on the pavement.’     Suddenly clarity came. ‘Aren’t they doing construction work in your street? I thought they were renovating that old Victorian house. Is it possible it was just an accident?’     ‘Of course,’ she sighed like someone completing a difficult puzzle. ‘I didn’t think of that! I was walking past the scaffolding at the time. Although, there didn’t seem to be anyone around.’     ‘Probably didn’t want to own up to dropping a brick – it was an accident. Surely you don’t think the construction workers would want to kill you?’     ‘Oh no, they usually whistle or comment when I go past,’ she replied innocently.     ‘See, it’s just your imagination. I’m sure no one is trying to hurt you,’ I soothed.     ‘I knew you’d help me make sense of this’ she smiled, the shadows disappearing from her face. ‘I can always count on you. To my clever sister’ she raised her glass in salute.     ‘To us,’ I echoed, and listened as she prattled on in her usual banal fashion, telling me the latest scandals. I laughed heartily at her stories of the season’s hottest designer’s tantrums, thinking again how different her world was to mine.     When we met a few weeks later, the shadows were back, fear deeply etched in her face.     ‘Someone is trying to kill me’ she whispered, as the waitress left to bring her a brandy and coke. That shook me – she was abandoning her trademark Dom. She was really scared.     ‘We talked about this last time; no one would want to kill you. The brick was just an accident. ‘     ‘It’s not the brick. I crashed my car.’     ‘Are you okay? Were you hurt? What happened’ I fired out of concern.     ‘I wasn’t going fast. The car just wouldn’t stop, and I drove into a tree. I wasn’t hurt. Jeremy has a few cuts, but I’m fine. The car’s a write-off.’     ‘That must have hurt’ I murmured, thinking of her fondness for the Aston Martin DB9. I’d always mocked her JB obsession. She’d already met the new Bond, and told me he was just as gorgeous in the flesh as on screen.     ‘Never mind the car. Someone’s trying to kill me.’ She said desperately.     ‘Why do you think that? You had an accident. Had you been drinking?     ‘No, you know I don’t drive if I’ve been drinking. The mechanic said that the brakes might of been tampered with.’     ‘Might have been tampered with?’ I sat up. ‘Are you serious?’     ‘He couldn’t tell for sure – there was too much damage from the accident. He said it was possible.’     ‘Oh,’ I sighed. ‘You scared me. He only said it was possible? Why do you keep thinking that someone is trying to kill you? Who would want to?’     ‘You don’t believe me,’ she sulked.     ‘It’s not that. You’re talking about accidents, and maybes, and feelings. There’s no evidence.’     ‘That’s so like you! I don’t need proof. I’m not imagining things. The brakes weren’t working,’ her voice cracked with barely restrained hysteria.     I hugged her, patting her back, as one does with a frightened child, as she cried in my arms.     ‘You must think I’m ridiculous,’ she hiccupped, dabbing at her eyes.     ‘No you’ve just had a nasty fright. Why would anyone want to kill you? You’ve already told me plenty of other ways to get rid of competition.’      ‘I guess you’re right, I am overreacting. Thanks.’ She hugged me, but I noticed that she downed the brandy quickly before calling for a bottle of Dom.     A week later, the phone rang. Janine was so distraught I couldn’t understand the words she garbled. I dressed, and rushed round to her flat. She answered the door wrapped in her dressing gown. She was wet, dripping a trail of water as she led me to the lounge. By now I was familiar with what was coming next. This time, she’d woken unable to breathe, under water in the Jacuzzi. She’d been to a party, and barely remembered arriving home. In her delusion, she thought she’d seen me in the flat. I assured her I’d been snug in my bed. I pointed to the bottles on the floor. She admitted she’d had a lot to drink. I suggested that the alcohol was responsible. She wanted to call the police. I made her some strong sweet tea, comforted her. I persuaded her that she didn’t need the police, there was no threat. I suggested counselling instead – she was delusional and paranoid, or was it just the Dom? She said she’d think about it.     The next time we met, she was her usual elegant composed self. She didn’t speak of the incident, and I didn’t ask. I told her instead of my new boss whose incessant, pedantic demands were driving me demented. She laughed, and topped my stories with the whims and demands of a model she knew. She was cheerful and animated. Whichever counsellor she was seeing, he was good. Or perhaps he had prescribed something particularly effective?     My working life became incredibly busy, and I didn’t see her for a while. I presented a paper on my research at a conference in America, and returned to find my boss had quit, leaving the lab in shambles. I spent so much time in my lab, my plants died. Finally, I was promoted, and able to hire someone to fill my former post. I was busier, but life assumed a new rhythm. I made a mental note to see Janine.     The phone shocked me awake. Janine was in hospital. She was asking for me. They wouldn’t tell me any more. I dressed quickly, breaking the speed limit to be with her. I was shocked at her pale and waif-like figure.     ‘She’ll be fine. She’s very lucky. ’ the doctor reassured me. Her current lover had found her unconscious in the bathroom. She’d eaten some poisonous mushrooms, but her habit of regurgitating food, meant that only a minute amount of poison had escaped into her system. A larger dose would have been fatal.     ‘Now do you believe me?’ she whispered. I nodded, and admitted I had been wrong. The police evidently took her seriously. As part of their investigation, they questioned me. ‘Mushrooms are her thing, not mine,’ I told them. ‘I don’t touch the things.’ I blamed myself for not seeing her for so long, and I confessed that I hadn’t taken her earlier ‘accidents’ more seriously.     She was very fond of rare mushrooms, and particularly truffles. A box had arrived from her favourite deli. Assuming it was a gift from an admirer, she had eagerly cooked a mushroom omelette, savouring every bite, before disposing of it all the calories. It had saved her life. The deli had no record of the delivery, and there were no other leads.     Janine’s body recovered quickly, but the haunted look was permanently unmasked. I could no longer mock, or laugh at her fears. I knew she was right. Someone was trying to kill her.     She returned to her bright and scant clothes, I to my sterile lab coat. We spoke often, met monthly with Dom, and gradually the shadows disappeared. A year passed.     We were going to Paris for the weekend, and I went to her flat to collect her. I opened the door with the key she’d given me. She lay at the foot of the stairs. The angle of her neck and stillness of her body told a clear tale. I knelt to check her pulse.     Quickly I replaced the screws in the top stair, and put away the screwdriver. I stepped calmly over her lifeless form to dial 999. ‘I need to report an accident,’ I sobbed.

Momma’s Boy Gone Bad William A. Greenfield Dear Mother I am sorry for not coming to visit you, for not sitting cross legged in the open field while reciting confessions to you. I am sorry you cannot hear my thousand thanks for the many model trains and superheroes that drove the family debt to somewhere between impossible and my father’s insanity. I should have leapt from my bed and came to your defense late at night when you screamed at him, demanding the car keys because you “just wanted to go for a ride”. I now confess mother. It wasn’t the heroes I craved. It was you I so selfishly wanted; not to be shared with brothers or sisters; just you and me having French toast at the diner on Sunday morning, you and me on a train ride to the city, your voice singing Nature Boy only to me. I am sorry you denied yourself baubles and furs. But I now understand why you feared the darkness, why the TV stayed on all night, why you couldn’t make the briefest of trips to the nearby market. Someday I will bite back on my own fears and come to visit you. I suppose we could reminisce about model trains and I could explain why there is a small machine at my bedside recycling white noise late at night like an old TV after the anthem has concluded.

Ebb and Flow Kennita Ballard We need to open our eyes Then open them wider than that We do not get the privilege To simply Be Black Flesh weeps And puddles underneath as A heritage A culture Pulse through red tape bandages And statistic shaped scabs No we do not get the privilege of Simply being Because if we were left to be This would not be an issue Everything I do does not effect me But everything I do effects A we But we are recognized as a unit When there is blood and where there are fools We are punished as a unit We all bear this whipping of history Our selves vibrate Together But in polyrhythmic sound

a Rural Story Iftekhar Sayeed Based On Events     “Command attention in this leather corset with attached black Venice lace, lace-up front, cap sleeves, zip up back and thong.”     And Fida marched down the catwalk so attired and the audience clapped. Fida was a tall, fair, woman, with chiseled features and a smile like poetry – erotic poetry. Her ample black, wavy hair lay draped around her shoulders.     We were attending a display of leather lingerie, made in Bangladesh for export. The Sheraton hotel ball room was filled with foreign buyers – Korean, Japanese, European, American....They sat around circular tables making notes on their laptops or iPads, sometimes taking pictures.     In one corner of the hall were projected in large letters: No beauty she doth miss When all her robes are on; But Beauty’s self she is When all her robes are gone.     And beneath it in red letters were the words: “After tonight, you will know these words aren’t true.”     I found myself seated next to the American ambassador, a black, corpulent Muslim called Kamal Hassan; and a tall, thin American priest called Father Ricardo. The hall was air-conditioned to an extraordinary degree. We had our choice of beverages, and mine was whiskey, so I didn’t feel all that cold.     “That was a very violent election,” I commented.     “Very violent,” agreed the ambassador, taking a drink of whiskey, like me.     “Well, it’s all over, and we’re on track for democracy,” replied the priest, sipping his ginger ale.     “But at what price, Father? How many human lives does it take to create democracy?” I asked.     They were both silent. True, the buyers who had left had come back – they were in the room. But I wondered how many hundred people had been murdered and how many girls raped.     “Sexy black leather bustier with stretch lace back, lightly padded underwire cups, boning, red ribbon details, satin bow details, adjustable straps, side zipper closure and matching thong with red ribbon ties.” The lady added on the microphone that the stockings were not supplied.     I broke the silence. “I’ve been reading Graham Greene’s ‘A Quiet American’.”     “And we’re both Americans here,” chuckled the Americans, especially the priest.     “After a massacre, Arden Pyle says that they died for democracy. Did our people die for democracy?”     The priest played with the glass and screwed up his mouth. “It’s early days yet. When civil society is more firmly established, the violence will die down. Besides, the people have a right to vote.”     We were interrupted by another announcement.     “This sexy siren corset features black leather with a zip-up front, panels of smooth leather and textured leather with a lace up back, matching thong and removable garters.” Again she added that the stockings we could see were not supplied.     The cold war had recently been over and General Harun ur Rashid had been deposed after ten years. I used to be his philosophical advisor, and when the donors gave him the push, I lost my job at the university too. I was now a pariah for my association with the General. I was thinking of becoming an English teacher.     Again Fida came back on the catwalk.     “This sexy stretch leather teddy features mesh panels, studded details, lightly padded underwire cups, criss-cross front neckline, front zipper, adjustable shoulder straps, detachable garter straps and thong back. The stockings are not included.”     At last, the show was over and Fida came over to our table in a flowered chiffon saree.     “How was the show, Father?” she asked coyly.     Both men agreed that it was good.     “I hope you get a lot of orders,” prayed the priest.     And how did I get to share a table with a priest and an ambassador? Through Fida’s invitation, which was a long story.     Fida’s sister, Faiza, had been missing. Their father, Reza Karim, took the child out one afternoon, dumped her in front of St. Gregory’s College on Asad Avenue, and ran off with the police in hot pursuit. Fida told me that her father was a river pirate, and that they’d been brought up by their uncle, a postal officer. In his home district he enjoyed immunity from the law on account of the generous bribes he paid but he had wandered beyond his territory in the capital, Dhaka. He wasn’t caught, having disappeared in one of the by-lanes of Mohammedpur.     But Fida’s sister and her uncle and aunt were worried to death – she hadn’t shown up for a week. Then there was an advertisement in the papers from Fr. Ricardo, with Faiza’s picture, and a notice that her family could pick her up from the college. Gratefully, Fida and I went to pick up the girl and made the acquaintance of Fr. Ricardo.     Faiza was a pretty ten-year-old, fair like her sister, but with a diminutive nose and her hair was cut short with the bangs nearly reaching her straight brows. She was all poetry – lyric poetry. So when it was time for the show, Fida invited Fr. Ricardo and he invited the American ambassador.     Going to bed that night, after tucking in Faiza, I asked Fida if she was going to regale me with one of her leather lingerie.     “I’m tired of leather. I’ve got a surprise for you.” And she disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, I gasped, and sat up in my pyjamas.     She had on a lace garter halter dress with attached stockings, and no thongs. She looked wild with her hair over her face and one arm on her hips. I began to undress. Despite the fan, the heat had suddenly become oppressive.     It was time to take Faiza back to her village home in Ferozepur. It was a long journey by steamer, and Fr. Ricardo insisted on coming with us to deliver his charge properly. We reached the town dock at 5:30. It was a noisy, bustling scene, with launches docking and leaving every minute and disgorging and sucking up large numbers of passengers.     We found the P.S.Ostrich, our steamer, and after crossing the gangplank we proceeded up the companionway to the first class – but Fr. Ricardo turned left into the third class.     “What? Father? You aren’t coming with us?”     He mumbled something about wanting to be with the people and disappeared.     We crossed the saloon and entered our wood-paneled cabin – number 4. Faiza was excited, and she immediately stepped out on the other side to the narrow deck adjoining our cabin. But she was disappointed with the view.     There were the buildings of the very old town across the expanse of water and launches of various decks floating on the Buriganga. The crows quartered the water for fish. Paddle boats transferred passengers to the third class below. A smell of diesel pervaded the air.     The cabin was a white affair except for the table between the two berths and the berths themselves, which were brown. The table had splotches on it and the brown carpet had a semi-circular tear under the table. Still, it was comfortable with a vent in the roof for air-conditioning and jalousies next to the deck, now covered with three curtains, each bearing the insignia of the corporation, a blue-black logo of an eight-handled wheel encircling a propeller of BIWTC, with these letters beneath. A pair of revolving fans hung above the bronze, metal curves concealing the light bulbs above the beds and the table. A wash-basin stood across from the table between the two doors, with a mirror above. The floor was green as was the entire deck. A fluorescent light hung in the middle of the white ceiling. This was to be our home for the next twelve hours.     “The ship is beautiful!” exclaimed Faiza, having overcome her initial disappointment.     “Not ship – steamer,” I corrected her.     “Steamer,” she repeated in her nasal voice.     Faiza was busy preparing our things, especially something to eat. She handed out biscuits. She wore a black kameez flowered at the top and a matching shalwar with black pumps. Faiza had on a red frock. The two sisters looked lovely.     We locked our door and made it to the front deck. The steamer had started and we were going under the bridge and past the factories.     All evening, the wind beat against our ear-drums, so that it was as much sound as substance. The other sounds were those of the engine, constantly humming away; voices conversing rapidly, masculine as well as feminine.     At sunset, the waters behind us shone like quicksilver, while those ahead were dark. One could make out the colours of the fluttering dresses and clothes; after some time, however, we were all reduced to shadows, and, finally, voices. The glow of a cigarette end would then be plainly visible.     We had a dinner of ‘smoked hilsa’, a delicacy on a steamer.     “Delicious!” said Faiza as she chewed a morsel of the fish.     “They really make it well, don’t they?” commented Fida, as she raised her fork.     “Yeas, Faiza, it’s delicious!” I added.     “Poor Fr. Ricardo! I wonder what he’s eating!” wondered Fida. “I have an idea. Let’s send him some of the fish. I’ll ask the waiter to give it to the sahib.”     I didn’t think it was a wise idea, but I went along. After all, the people didn’t eat smoked hilsa.     The saloon was still empty with a couple and two children next to us. The mother was ladling out the rice to the children. At another table, an elderly couple were eating rice and curry in silence. The waiters stood around in their red uniforms. Most of the passengers were still on the deck, and they started trickling in around nine. We had finished by then and we went to the cabin so Faiza could wash her fingers. Then we locked the door and went on to the nearly deserted deck.     Earlier in the evening, when it was light, I had read the legend on the wall of the deck. P.S.OSTRICH YEAR OF BUILT 1929 BY GARDEN REACH WORKSHOP, CALCUTTA RENOVATED AND DIESELISED BY DOCKYARD AND ENGINEERING WORKS LTD. B.S.E.C. NARAYANGANJ IN 1996     It was a British-period relic, still working.     The steamer cast a powerful beam of light in which we could see the midges. We saw a boat beside the steamer on the choppy waves, unlit, in the dark, a boy and a man catching fish. The wind blew against our ears, a steady drumbeat. A gibbous moon rose, and the waves became silver right up to the lower deck. Fida and I gazed our fill, but Faiza began to yawn.     “Sleepy?” asked Fida.     Faiza nodded.     “I have a gift for you,’ and Fida produced a mobile phone from her bag.     Faiza’s round eyes widened. “That’s for me?”     “That’s for you, and I want you to keep in touch with me every day. Here, give me a call.”     Faiza fiddled with the dials and failed. “I can’t.”     After a little training, she was able to call both Fida and me. Sleep seemed to have deserted her and we stayed on the deck for some time before turning in. Fida slept with Faiza and I slept alone.     We reached Barisal at dawn. The muezzin called to prayer. We packed hurriedly and I stepped out on our side of the deck.     “Zafar! Fida!”     Somebody was calling us from below. It was Fr.Ricardo in a boat.     “Yes, Father, we are coming,” shouted Fida. To me, she explained, “He’s right. We have to take a boat to Ferozepur. There are no roads from Barisal.”     This was the first time that I had got into a boat from a steamer. Fortunately, there were several of them, waiting for passengers, so you could walk from one to another, very gingerly. The odour rose from the water hyacinths. Finally, we were on our way, the four of us and the paddlers.     It was a lovely scenery. On either bank, there were areca palms, date palms and banana groves. The villages with their tin and thatched roofs appeared among a clearing of mango and jack-fruit trees. Sometimes a column of smoke would reveal breakfast being made. The hay had been gathered in bell-shaped ricks. Cows chewed the cud or cropped the grass. The oars dipped at regular intervals. Other boats were black parentheses in the distance in the early morning sun. It was warm, but not hot yet.     Fr. Ricardo had on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a leather bag. He was dressed for the occasion. He must have made trips like these many times.     The sunlight began to sparkle on the waters, and we reached Ferozepur ghat. This was a pontoon, rusted and old, at which our solitary boat – the others had sailed off to their respective villages – docked, with a rope tied to the pontoon.     “Salamwalaikum!” greeted a gentleman in white pyjamas and punjabi, a skullcap, flip-flops and a length of dark beard. From his resemblance to Fida, I gathered he was Fida’s paternal uncle, her de facto father.     “Salamwalaikum!” replied the two of us, the priest and I. Fida and Faiza salaamed his feet, and he bestowed blessings on them.     He caressed Faiza on the head, and there were tears in his eyes to have her back.     “My name is Aziz,” he introduced himself, hugging the both of us in turn. “We can’t express our gratitude to Fr. Ricardo in words or deeds.” He spoke in Bengali but Fr. Ricardo understood     “Please come this way, it’s getting hot,” and some of the loitering men in undershirts and lungis produced a couple of umbrellas against the sun. We walked the dirt road, with the paddy on either side, smelling fresh and ripe. Aziz led the way with an umbrella, pointing out various features of the surrounding countryside now and then.     The cuckoo called at intervals and black drongos perched on the backs of cows and buffalos.     After a trek of half an hour, the paddy fields gave way to an enclosure holding two tin-built houses. The smell of paddy gave way to the smell of cooking. We were ushered into a large room containing upright chairs and a large bed with an embroidered nakshikatha – a traditional rural motif – bedspread. We took our seats and were served mango sherbet by Jamil, Aziz’s son. Jamil was an overgrown lad of twelve, in a t-shirt and shorts. Like the rest of the family, he was also fair.     “Jamil is a straight-A student; he always comes top of the class,” announced Fida, at which Jamil seemed embarrassed. He was two years older than Faiza.     Fida gave a packet of sweets to Jamil and then Faiza and Jamil disappeared, giggling continuously.      “I hope your journey was not too difficult,’ said Aziz. At this, there was some talk of the priest travelling third class. Aziz was horrified. The priest again explained that he always travelled third class.     The sherbet cooled us with its sweet-sour taste, for the room was getting hot, despite the fan overhead at full speed. It was as though somebody were lighting a fire in the room.     Then Fida’s aunt, Selina, stepped in from the kitchen, wearing a light green saree, the border covering her head. We rose and proffered our salaam. She was a small woman with an oval face and a brown complexion. On seeing the priest, she broke into tears. “If it hadn’t been for you, we would never have seen Faiza again. May Allah do good to you and always look after you.” She was obviously unmindful that he had a different god.     Breakfast was served at the solitary table after Jamil’s books had been removed. It consisted of parata, omelette and vegetables. We all ate greedily, having had nothing to eat since dinner.     Now and then a knot of people in lungis and vests would come round to see the sahib and stand at the door, giggling. We got used to them. The priest became a celebrity.     After this, the talk inevitably reverted to politics, and how the new government was doing.     “Not too well,’ opined Aziz.     “We must give them time, Aziz Bhai,” remonstrated Fr. Ricardo.      The ladies had disappeared to some other room.     I kept my silence on politics, not expecting much to change for the better.     “We have a disadvantage, Father,” began Aziz. “Our MP belongs to the opposition. We are loyal to him and no amount of intimidation could force us to vote for the other side.”     “That is admirable.”     “Unfortunately, we won’t get much help for our constituency because of that, so we don’t look forward to anything. However, we expect violence because the ruling party is determined to win next time and they’re rounding their thugs. Our MP is thinking of doing the same thing, otherwise he won’t win next time.”     The priest was silent. And the topic changed from politics to less volatile subjects, like the weather and the coming harvest.     The talk went on with bouts of silence until it was lunchtime and what a feast it was. Fida, her aunt, Faiza and Jamil all helped with setting the table and serving the pilau, and numerous curries. Jamil stood guard over the table and swatted the flies.     The heat and a full belly called for a siesta. I fell asleep in the chair and Fr. Ricardo and Aziz stretched out on the bed. The priest snored.     Finally, it was times for us to leave. We were going back to Dhaka by another steamer, the P.S. Mahsud at six in the evening, but we had to start early for we had a boat to catch. Faiza and Fida bid tearful farewells and Faiza promised to call every day.     This time we had plain rice and curry in the saloon and stayed off the deck which was crowded with the passengers from Barisal. Instead we turned in – and made love.     “I’ll have to be on top,” suggested Fida, with a grin.     Ferozepur had been spared the violence of the last election – but not any longer. An earnest of things to come was a phone call from Selina, Faiza’s aunt, on Faiza’s mobile phone. She said that Reza had joined the political party – as youth organizer. I knew what that meant. He would indoctrinate young children, give them guns, teach them to collect ‘taxes’ and bring out processions. They would be very effective on polling day and for hartals. A criminal was best suited to do this sort of thing.     A few months later another – a more frantic – phone call came from Ferozepur. Jamil had been visiting brothels and getting drunk at night. Where did he get the money? That was a mystery.     All this time Faiza continued to praise Jamil. He was a good student, a great football player and a good cousin. She seemed to have a crush on Jamil.     The mystery was soon cleared up: Jamil had joined the student wing of the party under his uncle’s tutelage. His source of income was the usual – extortion. There was nothing the family could do. His marks began to go down and soon he was the last boy in class – and proud of it.     The years passed, and it was time for another election. Now, there was daily violence as the opposition called ‘hartals’ for a free and fair election. A hartal is not a general strike. It is a violent attempt to keep traffic off the roads by throwing cocktails and petrol bombs at vehicles. Boys like Jamil were very instrumental at this sort of thing. On hartal day, the roads were deserted.     The ball room at Sheraton was nearly deserted, too, this time as the buyers took fright and left, waiting on events.     I found myself sitting next to Kamal Hassan, the American ambassador. Fida had invited him and put us two together.     “Black lame, and eyelash lace bodysuit with a plunging neckline, criss-cross detail, lace-up back and adjustable straps,” announced the lady. “Cat ears are not included.”     Fida took the catwalk and for a while all eyes were on her exquisite appearance.     I turned to the ambassador.     “This has to stop,” I said with vehemence.     He looked down at his glass. “The violence is intolerable.”     “You can engineer a military coup. The people want the military.”     He looked up at me with his big eyes.     “It’s a good thing Fr. Ricardo isn’t here. I broached the subject with him and he wouldn’t hear of it. He has powerful friends in Congress.”     “But why?”     “He has a vision. He thinks the Church is the archetypical civil society, neither business nor state. He wants to spread this blessing of Christendom to other parts of the world. Voluntary associations and freedom. That’s what’s driving him.”     “But what about our civilization? Our historical development? For fourteen hundred years we’ve had military rule.”     “I’ve tried to reason with him. I myself am Muslim, and I can’t accept his arguments. I have known in childhood what violence can do to people. I was one of the lucky ones. But, as I said, he has friends in Congress.”     I mumbled under my breath, and I didn’t care if the ambassador was listening:     “Where there is love, let me sow hatred,     Where there is pardon, injury,     Where there is truth, error,     Where there is faith, doubt,     Where there is hope, despair,     Where there is light, darkness,     Where there is joy, sadness....”     “Wet look garter belt with scalloped stretch lace under panel, elasticized waist, adjustable metal garters, and large metal hook and eye closure at center back.”     Another model took over from Fida to sport the described lingerie.     I had nothing more to say. It was a question of power. For ten years Washington had propped up our dictator, and as soon as the cold war was over, he became dispensable. And now democracy, whatever the violence involved, however many died or were raped.     “Metallic wet look chemise with moulded underwire push-up cups, centre back hook and eye closure with keyhole, adjustable straps, removable garters, and elasticized hem.” Fida was back on the catwalk, swaying with grace. “It also features metallic wet look twisted cutout detail on cups and hips.” Her voice added: “Wet look stockings not included.”     I noticed that the repudiation of the quote, and the quote itself, from Palgrave about the naked woman being beauty’s self was not there. The organizers seemed to have been less thorough this time.     Every day on TV we saw young student politicians pursuing vehicles and hurling bombs. Many people were in burn units, some of them dying after fighting for their lives for several days, even weeks. I hated to think that one of these thugs was Jamil, Fida’s cousin.     Meanwhile, the news from Ferozepur, via Faiza’s mobile, continued to be repeatedly bad. One day Faiza called and told Fida that their father had killed a man. Selina filled in the details. There was rivalry within the party and after an altercation Reza had stabbed the man to death. Reza, however, was not in hiding and the police weren’t looking for him. He was a party man, and so above the law.     Finally, the election came and the opposition won. There was even more violent celebration.     Then came the call. Selina was wailing and it was Reza, in a broken voice, who delivered the message to me rather than to Fida.     Faiza had committed suicide.     Jamil and some of his friends, jubilant, had picked her up and taken her to the empty school. There they had gang raped her and taken pictures of the scenes. These they circulated throughout the village.     Faiza came home, and swallowed insecticide.

Wednesday’s Child Susan Rocks     The pub door opened, blowing in a gust of frigid air. A girl was watching me from the pavement. I had a glimpse of dark hair peeking from a pink headscarf, framing a heart-shaped face, and she smiled. I pushed through the door, but she had been swallowed by the fog. A hand on my shoulder made me jump.     ‘Where you dashing off to? Can’t you hang on for me?’     ‘Geoff. Sorry, I saw ... a girl, walking past. I thought ...’     ‘A girl, wow! A girl walking down the road. That is weird isn’t it?’ He slapped my back. ‘Come on then, let’s get back to bedsit towers. There’s a Fast and Furious film on Sky I want to see, fancy coming up and watching with me?’     ‘Um. Well, maybe, after I’ve had dinner.’ I couldn’t say no to Geoff, however much I tried. There was something about him that drew people like kids to a jar of sweets, and I occasionally tried to mimic his easy manner; and failed. He often pushed his floppy hair back from his forehead, but the only time I tried it, I knocked a girl’s chin with my elbow. We walked home along the damp street, Geoff busily texting some girl he’d met, giving me a running commentary. All I could think about was that heart-shaped face.     I was staring out of the bedsit window, pricking the cling-film shielding my meal-for-one from the microwaves, when she appeared again through the fog. As she passed I swear she paused, a faint smile flickering across her face. Her eyes caught me, mesmerised me: pleading, a sadness hiding in the depths.     Then she was gone.     I couldn’t get her out of my mind. All week, I looked out for her, reasoning she must live nearby. I had been psyching myself up to ask Geoff how I could start chatting to her, but he kept pulling my leg about it so I decided to work it out myself.     The following Wednesday I got home early for once as Geoff was taking a girl to the cinema. Filling a Pot Noodle with boiling water, something caught my eye outside the window and there she was! I slopped water over the worktop as I dropped the kettle and dashed to the door, running past Miss Jennings, going into her room opposite. I ran for the gate, but the girl had disappeared into the drizzle. As I turned back, I spotted a bunch of lilies lying on the broken slats of the bus shelter’s bench across the road. * * * * * * * * * * * *     Sandra rinsed the suds from the saucepan and balanced it precariously on top of the pile of dishes on the drainer. She wiped away some orange pollen that had fallen from the lilies on the window sill and dried her hands. Still no sign of Derek. She switched on her small radio and tried to listen to a report about President Kennedy’s funeral but the newsreader’s words washed over her. This was the fourth time Derek had failed to come round. There was always a plausible excuse but...     She heard Barbara’s door opening across the hall, and went out,     ‘Hello Barb, you’re late home tonight.’     Barbara jumped, dropping her keys, ‘God, Sandra, you made me jump.’ She scooped up the keys.     Sandra leaned against her door-frame. ‘So, what have you been doing?’     ‘Nothing. I caught up with ... an old friend ... from school.’ She began rummaging through her handbag, backing into her room.     ‘Derek’s hasn’t turned up again. Fancy a cuppa?’     ‘Um. No thanks. I’ve got some letters to write, and er, stuff.’     Sandra frowned. ‘Come on. Just a quick one.’     ‘No really. If I don’t write soon Mum’ll think I’m dead and be round here banging on the door.’     ‘Why don’t you phone her?’ Sandra looked at the payphone in the hall, for once not adorned with an “Out of Order” notice.     ‘Oh. It’s probably broken, besides, once Mum gets started ... cost me a fortune. Um, I haven’t got any cash.’ She began edging backwards.     ‘Alright, if you’re sure. If you change your mind -’ The door closed. Sandra hesitated, lifted her hand to knock again. She heard the scratchy sound of You’ll Never Walk Alone coming from the record player. Derek’s favourite song. She let her hand drop. Back in her bedsit, she filled the kettle, put it on the gas ring, and stared at her reflection in the window. A bus pulled up at the shelter across the road and she momentarily hoped Derek might appear, but it was Mr Bowles from next door. He doffed his trilby in greeting and Sandra forced a smile. The kettle whistled and she made her tea, curling up on the saggy sofa with the latest Agatha Christie, seeking distraction.     Later, as she was drifting off to sleep, Sandra thought she heard Barbara’s door open and coins being fed into the phone, a muffled conversation. Sleep eluded her for several hours. * * * * * * * * * * * *     The following Wednesday, Geoff insisted we go to the regular singles night at the Crown and Anchor near Bournemouth pier. We walked in the door, and straightaway Geoff introduced me to Abi, a friend’s cousin. I realised he was trying to fix me up. As soon as she spoke my skin heated, filling the gaps between my damned freckles, bleeding into my carroty hair. I stuttered hello and we joined a group at a table. I became fixated on the beer mat in front of me as everyone chatted, Geoff trying to include me. I drank my beer far too quickly, closely followed by the vodka shots someone bought. Buoyed by alcohol, I told Geoff this was pointless.     ‘Sorry, but I’m meeting someone, later,’ I blurted.     Geoff looked confused, asking who it was, so I told him. The girl who lives near here, you know, I pointed her out the other day, and walked out, ignoring Geoff’s expression. I felt quite elated until the cold air hit me, then I simply felt sick and a bit dizzy. I walked home, bumping into Miss Jennings in the lobby, knocking her bag from her hand. Apologising profusely, I picked it up     ‘You remind me of a young man I used to know,’ she said, startling me into blushing.     ‘Do I Miss Jennings?’     ‘The name’s Barbara,’ she said, pushing her faded blonde curls behind her ear.     ‘Have you lived here long, Miss ... Barbara?’     ‘Oh, a long, long time. I ... something keeps me ... I can’t bring myself to leave.’ I looked at the patches of mould dappling the ceiling and wondered why on earth anyone would want to spend their whole lives in a place like this.     As soon as I looked out of my window the girl appeared, the mist swirling around her, and all other thoughts drained from my brain. I waved tentatively. Would I ever be able to speak to her?     The next morning I caught a lucky break. On the wall outside was a glove, black suede, slim, elegant. I picked it up and smelt something faintly floral, triggering a memory – my grandfather’s funeral and the ostentatious floral tributes that had swamped the crowded church with a sickly scent. Was the glove hers? Did she wear gloves? A snapshot of the past few Wednesdays ran through my mind like a jerky silent movie. There; yesterday; she’d taken her hand from her pocket to push her hair back under her headscarf, slim hand, red polished nails, no glove; it must be hers! I placed it reverently in the inside pocket of my jacket, next to my heart, a tangible reminder she was real.     The following week, I waited for her in the lobby, heart pounding beneath the suede glove. Continually clearing my throat, I rehearsed my planned speech, until I thought I saw a shape by the gate, distorted through the coloured glass in the door. I slipped quietly into the front garden, looking up and down the road but it was empty. The sky was clear, strings of stars punctuated by the comma of a new moon. I waited and waited until my teeth chattered and my fingers turned blue.     She didn’t appear. * * * * * * * * * * * *     Sandra and Barbara had arranged to meet in the coffee bar after work. When Sandra arrived she saw Heather in a booth at the back and tried to get to the counter without being seen.     ‘Sandra,’ Heather called, waving. Too late, sighing she weaved through the tables towards her. The Beatles singing She Loves You was playing on the jukebox, fighting to be heard above the clatter of cups and chatter from the kids sitting around the stained Formica tables.     ‘Is Barbara here yet?’     ‘Haven’t seen her,’ Heather smirked at Sandra, ‘s’pect she’s busy, meeting her new bloke.’ Sandra glanced up sharply,     ‘What bloke? Has she met someone?’     ‘Didn’t you know?’ Heather said, dunking a biscuit. Sandra ordered a coffee from the waitress as Barbara dashed in/     ‘Sorry I’m late, last minute customer.’ She dumped a couple of carriers on the floor, sliding onto the banquette next to Sandra.     ‘Been buying up the stock again?’ Heather picked up one of the bags, pulling out a turquoise silk blouse.     ‘Only a couple of tops, they were on special offer.’     ‘I’ve been telling Sandra about your new bloke,’ Heather said.     ‘Yes, Barbara, why didn’t you say anything?’ Sandra put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘It’s about time you got over Dave. What’s his name? We ought to go on a double date.’     Barbara blushed, ‘Um well, -’     ‘Double dating might be tricky, eh Bar?’ Heather said as Barbara wriggled out of her scarlet coat.     ‘What’s wrong with a double date?’ Sandra said. ‘What’s that in your pocket? Is it a photo of him, let’s see.’     Barbara snatched the photo strip and dropped it into her handbag, turning away to order a coffee. ‘It’s an old one.’     Sandra sipped her coffee, watching the two women. Heather could be quite nasty sometimes and she clearly had it in for Barbara today.     ‘How was work Sandra?’ Barbara asked, pushing her blonde curls behind her ears and gulping hot coffee.     ‘Fine thanks.’     ‘So, how’s Derek, Sandra? Still going strong are you?’ Heather lit a cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke towards the ceiling.     ‘Fine thanks. I don’t see him very often at the moment, he’s doing a lot of overtime.’     ‘Overtime? Is that what they call it these -’     ‘Come on Bar, let’s go home, we can talk better there, without being constantly interrupted.’     Barbara scanned the coffee bar. ‘Oh, there’s Mandy, I need to speak to her about ... you go on. I’ll give you a knock when I get back.’     ‘I’ll hang on if you like.’     ‘No, no. I might be a while,’ she got up, gathering her bags and joined a group of girls at the counter. Sandra watched her, an odd thought tickling her brain, but she shook it away.     ‘More coffee Sandra?’     Sandra shook her head, ‘No thanks,’ and left, returning to the cold drizzle outside. She swiftly tied a scarf around her head and thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her mac. A bus chugged past, sending spray over the pavement. Sandra looked at the people staring blankly through the windows. Barbara was acting very strangely at the moment. Sandra decided she would have a nice bubble bath, if there was any hot water left. If Barbara turned up fine, if not, well, it was up to her. She stepped over a puddle, wondering what to do about Derek. * * * * * * * * * * * *     The girl began invading my dreams.     She was sitting in the freshly painted bus shelter, surrounded by flowers. There were no holes in the roof, the wooden bench unbroken. I was on the opposite pavement and she was watching, waiting for me. I started to cross the road but it felt like I was walking through deep water. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get closer. She would gradually fade and the bus shelter would return to its normal state of disrepair.     I told work I was sick. I spent hours and hours staring out of my window, but she never appeared. Wednesday evening I was standing at my window when there was a knock on the door.     ‘Come on mate, I know you’re in there.’     ‘Geoff? What are you doing here?’     ‘Came to see what was going on. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.’     ‘Come in then. I’ve ... not been sleeping. Feel sort of feverish.’ I filled the kettle and a movement outside made my stomach lurch, but it was only Miss Jennings.     ‘What are you looking at?’ Geoff was fiddling with my iPod.     ‘Nothing ... oh.’ She was there. Illuminated by car headlights, she was sitting in the bus shelter. I flung the door open, pushing past Miss Jennings as I lunged for the front door.     ‘Wait,’ she called.     ‘Eddie. What the hell’s going on,’ Geoff tried to grab my arm but missed. I wrenched open the gate.     ‘Stop.’ Miss Jennings was almost screaming.     I stepped into the road.     Something pushed me.     I fell.     Hard. * * * * * * * * * * * *     Sandra was slowly stirring a Vesta curry around the saucepan. On the window sill was another bunch of lilies Derek had bought her the previous weekend, dropping heavy hints about sleeping together. Although she had left home two years previously, her mother’s dire warnings still rang in her ears. The disgrace of being a “fallen woman” unmarried and pregnant. Derek kept saying he loved her, he should be happy to wait. Sandra wasn’t expecting a ring on her finger, she wasn’t naîve. But she had to be sure.     Her dinner cooked, she turned off the gas and took a plate from the cupboard, glancing out of the window. She saw a couple sitting in the bus shelter, their faces in shadow as the street-lights struggled to pierce the fog. She carefully fished the plastic packet of rice from the boiling water and cut it open. A car drove past, the headlights cutting across the bus shelter. Derek and Barbara were huddled on the seat, foreheads together, his hand on her thigh. Sandra dropped the rice, boiling water splashing down her legs. She stumbled for the door, slipping on the threadbare mat in the hall, ran along the path, tears blurring her vision.     ‘Derek,’ she cried, fumbling with the gate latch.     Derek leapt up, ‘Sandra, stop. I can explain. It’s not what you ... look out.’     Sandra stepped into the road. * * * * * * * * * * * *     Pain shot through my head. I heard someone shout ‘Sandra, no,’ the screech of tyres, hissing air brakes, a sickening thud. Silence.     Geoff was bending over me, ‘Eddie? What the fuck d’you think you’re doing? Trying to kill yourself?’ His face was drained of colour as he helped me climb gingerly to my feet.     ‘The girl,’ I said, pointing across the road.     ‘There’s no-one there Eddie.’ Geoff led me to the wall and I sat down.     The bus had come to a stop and people were jumping off, running to the body in the middle of the road, shouting into their phones. A man was kneeling beside her. He stood, shaking his head.     ‘What happened?’ I swayed and Geoff grabbed me.     ‘It was Miss Jennings. She pushed you out of the way. The bus must have caught her.’ He seemed to be speaking from the end of a tunnel but I wasn’t really listening, I was looking at the bus shelter. The girl was there, smiling. She stood, reached out her hand and another figure appeared beside her. I glimpsed blonde curls above a scarlet coat as they stepped into the bus shelter.     And faded to nothing.

Musical Interludes Ronald Charles Epstein Again, disparity divides the genders, Women expect the orchestra as men aspire to be Gene Krupa pounding out the solos.

Janet Kuypers reads Ronald Charles Epstein’s writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, titled a Rural Story Musical Interludes

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading writing appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt mag, titled a Rural Story live 12/3/14 at Chicago’s the Café Gallery

There’s a Tavern in the Town Matt LeShay     Damnedest thing. Walked to the bar for cigarettes Saturday morning. Nothing strange about that. I get my smokes there because it’s the cheapest place in town. Also, because it’s a free standing building, no other building attached. Another law in the Sunshine State of Florida. You can smoke in a bar if it’s not hooked to another building. Nice law. So, as is my wont, I go to this bar where I can smoke one habit while I drink the other.     I had a late night, drinking other people’s beer, smoking other people’s dope, and inhaling my own cigarettes. Saturday morning I’m out. So, I walk the two and a half blocks to the bar. It’s full. At 9 o’clock in the a.m. the bar’s packed. I buy smokes, order a draft, and go to a booth. As I say, the bar, you know, where normal drunks sit on tall stools, is elbow-to-elbow with people who do what they do best.     The bar has four booths lining one wall. This is no man’s land. If you go into this bar room and sit at a booth when there’s space at the bar, two things will happen. One, you won’t get served, you gotta hustle your own beers. And, two, people will sneak glances at you. Contemptuous glances. No, you never want to sit in a booth when there’s room at the bar.     I’m not of this bar or from this bar. My name’s not known here. I just go in, order a draft, sit, and listen to the regulars. Today the overly crowded bar is quiet, subdued, none of the usual banter. I notice the pool table is covered. It’s early, maybe Florida has a law you can’t play pool before 9 a.m. That would be a good law. Children couldn’t sneak in a fast game of 8-ball before first bell. The savings in millions of pool table quarters could then be used for the school’s coke and candy machines.     But, I digress. I’m amazed to see this bar has a pool table cover as it seems to be lacking in other public house accoutrements. (Accoutrement being one of those college words, like mayonnaise or gabardine.) A broom would be nice, maybe even a mop, toilet brush, and something to wipe down the bar top. A dollar bill dropped on the bar is impossible to pick up. It tends to stick where it lands. If only NASA had this marvelous sticky stuff. The ‗O’ rings would never have failed and Christa McAuliffe would be getting her teacher’s pension.     This drinking establishment is an eclectic grouping of people. (Eclectic is another one of those words but may be ignored as it’s used mostly in Ivy League schools.) There is no theme to this bar. There’s bikers but it’s not a biker bar. Whores, but not a pick-up bar. Druggies, retirees, fags, and dykes. Burnt out hippies and Vietnam Vets. Both locked in the 60’s. You can find welfare people, working people, people looking for work, and loafers. The owner of this bar doesn’t care who comes in. He just wants their money. And the patrons give it to him too. He deals in quantity not quality.     Two middle age ladies come and sit across from me in my booth. The other three booths have filled up. One of the ladies looks sad. The other is sniffling and dabs her eyes with a Kleenex. Probably has, as they say in the T.V. commercial, a low grade allergy.     The bar room door literally bursts open and in walks a little man. A scruffy little man in his mid-50’s. He’s dressed in a recently purchased brown Salvation Army suit. Under the suit coat he’s wearing a blue dress shirt with a wide burgundy tie. The tie has a sail boat painted on it that says, “West Palm Beach,” in script. The scruffy fellow has salt and pepper hair with matching beard. The hair is greased down so it covers his head like a skull cap. The unkempt beard hangs from his face. His trouser legs just barely reach his high-top tennis shoes. Behind him comes an elderly man attired in Scottish garb, red plaid kilt, Tam-o-shanter cap, white knee socks, and patton leather black shoes. And this is what really gets my attention; he’s playing “Amazing Grace” on bag pipes. Bag pipes! Saturday morning in a funky-ass bar! The scruffy man is importantly carrying a plastic vase above his head in a Eucharistic manner worthy of any bishop celebrating high mass. They both solemnly march to the pool table and the scruffy man sets the vase squarely in the middle of it. The sniffling lady now openly cries and the sad lady takes her place sniffling. I ask the newly sniffling lady what the hell’s going on here.     “Evon died,” she whispers. “Those are his ashes.” She cocks a thumb to the crying lady and says, “This is Evon’s wife. Ah, ex-wife. No, wait. That’s not right.” She searches for the word. “Widow!” She says, no longer whispering, obviously proud of finding the correct term. “This is Evon’s widow!”     This causes the crying lady to escalate to a wail. I couldn’t tell if it was from Evon’s demise or her new found title. The sniffling lady pats her friend’s shoulder and the wailing drops back to crying.     “I guess it would be inappropriate for me to leave,” I said to the sniffling lady. “Just stopped for some smokes and a beer.”     “You better stick around,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right to walk out on Evon’s funeral. Besides, there’s gonna be free food and a keg.”     “I didn’t know him,” I said.     “That’s awright. A lot of these people didn’t know him. Just came for the eats and beer. Evon would have liked this turn out.”     “What’d he die from?”     “Drugs.”     “Overdose?”     “Underdose. Couldn’t find any. Withdrawals. You can get gawd awful sick and die if you got a jones and can’t get no dope,” the sniffling lady explained.     “Sorry.”     “You wanna beer?”     “During a funeral?” I ask.     “It’s okay. We’ll have to pay for it. They haven’t opened the free keg.” She signals the bartender and he brings over three beers. I pay for them. The crying lady, Evon’s widow, takes a break from her mourning to drink her beer.     “Got a light?” she asks, shaking out a Salem. I lit her smoke, shrugged, and had one myself.     “That’s Cooter Rankin,” the sniffling lady points toward the scruffy man. “He’s a preacher. Got his preacher certificate back in the 80’s. Cost $75.00. I seen it too. He was gonna have a church and open up a bingo parlor. Said churches could do that. Even had a name picked out, ‗Blessed In Nature’s Glorified Order.’ First letter of each word spelled out Bingo. Just as he was getting geared up, the state let the Indians have gambling. That put the kibosh to Cooter’s plans. Damn shame. Could have been a real money maker.”     Reverend Cooter said a few words about Evon. Said he liked Ozzie Osborn and maybe someone could put a quarter in the juke box and play some Black Sabbath. Someone did.     No one ever explained the bag piper. Maybe, like me, he just stopped for a beer.     The free keg was brought out and tapped. Three or four pounds of sliced baloney, loaves of wonder bread, a double bag box of potato chips, and French’s mustard in the squeeze bottle were tastefully arranged around the plastic vase.     As the bar rushed the keg and baloney, I found my chance to slip out. Evon and I weren’t really that close.

Jar of Hearts Bob Strother     Frances sat next to the aisle in the first pew, the place traditionally reserved for the bereaved spouse. Earl rested a few feet in front of her, his burnished bronze casket flanked by a dozen sprays of flowers and soon to be draped with the American flag, a testament to his military service in Viet Nam. She would have preferred one of the chairs behind the pulpit, where the assistant pastor or choir director sat on Sundays—where she could see anyone who might drift in after the service started. But that would have been quite a break with convention, one she couldn’t easily justify. So she’d have to hope for a chance to spot the late-arrivals during the recessional.     She felt an arm slide over her shoulders and turned to give her son a reassuring smile. I’m holding up okay, it said. She reached out and grasped his other hand and squeezed it for a second. Next to Josh sat his wife and their two boys—Frances’ precious grandbabies—but at ages eighteen and twenty, she supposed they weren’t really babies anymore, except to her. They’d been proud of their grandpa, and he’d been good to them, taking them to the Braves’ games, playing catch in the backyard.     It was early yet, prelude music playing in the background—Andrea Bocelli’s dulcet tenor arias soaring up toward the cathedral ceiling like sparks from a fire. Frances took the time to close her eyes. The fragrance of roses filled her nostrils. She remembered the sweet smell of the pink ones Earl had brought her for their fiftieth anniversary, how she’d pressed one of the blossoms into a photo album chronicling the event. How happy they’d been. All those moments, she thought, lost in time like tears in rain.     The sound of muted footsteps reached Frances’ ears, and she looked up as somber-faced men from the funeral home closed the casket for a final time. She straightened her back and took a deep breath. The funeral began with Pastor Dekes extolling Earl’s contributions to the church, recounting his service first as a deacon, then, in more recent years, as an elder. He was followed by a number of Earl’s friends offering brief recollections of past times together, and finally, a song—“Precious Memories”—performed flawlessly by Frances’ best friend, Ruth Matthews.     As Frances and her family followed the casket out through the church, her gaze swept the pews, noting a few attendees she didn’t know. Others seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place them out of context.     During the ride to the cemetery, she sat between her two grandchildren who swapped stories about their grandfather. Frances sometimes nodded or murmured agreement, but mostly remained quiet. The graveside service was brief, but well attended, and again Frances’ eyes searched the periphery of the milling crowd for interlopers, but found no new faces.     Ruth approached, teetering awkwardly across the uneven ground in heels that were too high. “Oh, Fran,” she said. “I hope the song I selected was all right. I didn’t want to bother you with such details before the funeral.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye with a tissue. “I know you had your hands full, so I asked Josh, and he said it would be good, something Earl would have appreciated.”     “It was most appropriate,” Frances said. “After all, if anyone knew Earl as well as me, it was you.”     A change flitted across Ruth’s face, an expression so subtle only a best friend might register it. Then it was gone and Ruth said, “If there’s anything I can do, anything at all...”     “Your song was enough, dear. I’ll treasure it always.” .....     At home that evening, after family and friends had finally departed, after the hams and fried chicken and casseroles were stuffed neatly away in the refrigerator and the downstairs lights switched off, Frances trudged up the stairs to the bedroom she and Earl had shared for more than five decades. Outside the window, last vestiges of the day’s sun embered the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north. There are all sorts of sunsets, she thought, on all sorts of things, relationships, too.     Frances slipped out of her funeral dress and into a thin cotton housecoat. She went into the bathroom and washed her face, removed the pins from her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. Her face in the mirror, while etched with the lines of age, was still taut, her features distinct. Not too bad for seventy—but maybe not good enough.     Back in the bedroom, Frances opened the closet and pulled out the glass jar she’d found a few days before while searching for Earl’s burial policy. It had been on a high shelf—she had risked life and limb climbing up there on a three-step ladder—hidden behind stacks of old Newsweek magazines. One foot high and wide, it had rounded corners and a circular metal top. The name Tom’s was emblazoned across the front in red script letters. It reminded her of ones she’d seen years ago in grocery stores and gas stations, filled with peanut butter, cheese, and malt crackers. But not this one; this one held a different sort of treasure. Under a mélange of old property tax receipts and outdated automobile insurance notices, she’d found a bundle of wallet-size photographs held together with a rubber band.     She loosened the twist-off top for the second time, spilled the photos onto the bed, and turned each one face up. Frances recognized some: time-faded shots of girls from the high school she and Earl attended, others of more recent vintage. Most she didn’t know, although she believed one to be a realtor lady whose face once decorated billboards all over town, another possibly a cashier from the Winn-Dixie. They were dated on the back, dates ranging from Earl’s sophomore year in high school up until 2008. Some were single dates, but many spanned weeks, and a few, months.     Frances selected one of the prints and held it up to the light: long blonde hair, big cobalt-blue eyes, and smooth skin honeyed by the sun—herself, fifty-three years ago. The date on the back read June 3, 1959— the evening of her and Earl’s high school graduation, the night she’d lost her virginity in the backseat of a ’51 Ford. Earl had left the date open-ended, she supposed, because their lovemaking had never really ended, continuing right up until a few days before his death.     She turned each photograph over to the dated side and placed them in chronological order. Her husband, who vowed to remain forever faithful all those long years ago, had cheated on her with at least eighteen different women. Earl’s girls—his sweethearts. He’d always been a charmer. She’d have to give him that. She’d certainly fallen for it.     Then, in what she considered a sad and useless bit of speculation, she wondered how he’d managed to get photographs of all his conquests, particularly the one-night-stands. On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t gotten them all. Maybe there were even more conquests somewhere out there in cheating land. Remembering an adage she’d read somewhere, Frances shook her head and muttered, “Ignorance is not bliss; it’s just easier.”     Frances replaced the rubber band and dropped the bundle back into the jar. It made a hollow thud—like a clod of earth falling on a coffin lid. That thought took her back to earlier in the day, to the funeral and graveside service. Her quest to identify Earl’s former lovers had proven virtually fruitless. Most had probably moved on long ago; perhaps a few had died.     She dropped the last photo back into the jar—the one of Ruth, in her younger days, with the date beginning years ago and left open-ended as well. “Precious memories,” Francis said, “oh, how they must linger for you, too, dear.”     Frances had inadvertently discovered a truth, one she hadn’t wanted, one that would not set her free, but rather, hold her captive for the rest of her life. One she could neither forgive nor forget. After a while, she rose slowly from the bed and walked to the window where the darkening sky had thickened but offered no stars, only a moon pale as bone.

Lime Green Buddha Justin W. Price This story was originally published in the February 2012 edition of efiction magazine. It has also appeared in the December 2012 edition of the Rusty Nail and will be featured in an upcoming anthology of Portland, Oregon based authors. 1.     There’s a little Asian goods store across the street from my apartment. I walk by the shop every day on my way to work and every day I see this lime green Buddha ash tray happily smiling at me through the store front windows. I’m drawn by the rotund belly and jovial face of the Buddha.     This afternoon after work, I go into the store. A little bell on the door announces my arrival. I’ve never been in here before yet it seems familiar to me. Wood carvings of the Yin and the Yang, posters of dragons, posters of dogs, Chinese cookbooks, Japanese cookbooks. The lime green Buddha.     “Can I help you?” I turn and see a very pretty girl. She’s Asian and has long black hair, fleckless brown skin, small lips, a button nose. She’s very petite. Her name is Lilly, so says her name badge.     “Huh?” I stammer.     “Can I help you? With something. Are you looking for something?” She smiles. She’s beautiful. There is warmth in her smile.     “Huh? Uh, yeah. I wanna buy this Buddha here.”     She grabs it gently from its window display, brushing my hand with her hips as she does. She takes the rotund green figure and walks him to the checkout counter. “Anything else?” She asks.     “No, I don’t think so?”     “No, nothing else.” She rings me up, wraps the Buddha up neatly in newsprint then picks up the pen from the counter and writes something on my receipt before she shoves it all in the bag and hands it to me. “Have a nice day. See you again!”     I walk out the door, a little bell on the door announcing my departure. 2.     I couldn’t tell you why I bought it. I don’t smoke and I’m not drawn particularly to Buddhism or to Asian art in general, yet, here I am, walking up three flights of stairs to my apartment, holding a plastic bag which contains a lime green Buddha ash tray. I enter my apartment, kick off my black and white Chucks, toss my jacket on the tattered red patent leather love seat and take the Buddha out of the bag. I carefully unwrap it and set it on the center of my glass coffee table. The table is littered with finger print smudges and food stains.     Inside the bag is a receipt for the Buddha. It cost me $20. On the back of the receipt is a phone number for Lilly. I know it’s her number because beneath the seven-digit number is the name ‘Lilly’. I’m glad to see her number and I decide to give her a call.     The phone rings four times and then her voice mail comes on. “Uh, hi, Lilly, this is uh, James. You, uh, put your number on my receipt. I’m the guy that bought the lime green Buddha ash tray from you. At the store you work at. Anyway, I’m calling because I assume you want me too because you gave me your number, so, uh, call me back if you want too,” and I give her my number and hang up. 3.     It’s six in the evening. I called Lilly about an hour ago and now I’m in the kitchen making dinner. I can’t cook in a messy kitchen. The kitchen is the only room in the apartment where nothing is out of order. I’m making wild trout stuffed with corn bread and wrapped in bacon with a side of cheesy Brussels sprouts. I’ve just decapitated the trout, gutted it and split it open. Now I’m rolling it in dried corn bread batter and also stuffing it with the batter, with white onions, with lemon wedges, with garlic, with chives. I do this to a second trout and I lay them both in a frying pan greased with peanut oil, where I then wrap them with bacon strips on either end, sear them in a pan for a minute on each side and then place into a baking pan, greased with shortening and olive oil and then shove into the oven and bake at a low temperature. I am just starting to prepare to steam the Brussels sprouts when my phone rings.     “Uh, hello,” I say.     “Hi.”     “Who is this?” I have the phone resting between my neck and shoulder blade.     “This is Lilly. From the store. You called me.”     “Oh, yes. Yeah, I called you. You wrote your number on my receipt.”     “I did?”     “Yeah. You did. You don’t remember?”     “Not really. Sorta.”     “Sorta? Do you do this sort of thing often?”     “No. Not really. That was my first time.”     “Okay,” I shrug. “So, why did you want me to call you?’     “Do you think I’m pretty?”     “Do I think you’re pretty?”     “Yes. Do you think I’m pretty?”     “Yeah. I do. I do think you’re pretty. What are you doing?” I throw the sprouts into the steamer and walk over to my apartment window. I live in an 800 square foot studio on the 3rd floor of the Drake, which has a manual elevator, oak staircase, skinny hallways and low ceilings. It was built in 1908. I often stand at the window and admire the view. I can see the whole city from here. Two of the seven bridges of Portland. The Portland Building. Mt Hood. The Columbia River. I look down and I can see white oak trees. Maples. A traffic jam. A pot dealer. Lilly. Standing outside the Asian store at the bus stop.     “I’m waiting for the bus,” she says.     “Do you like fish?”     “Do I like fish?”     “Yes. Do you like fish? I’m cooking fish for dinner. And Brussels Sprouts. Would you like some fish?”     “Are you asking me to have dinner with you? Fish?”     “Yes. My girlfriend is out of town and I’m lonely.”     “I have to go. My bus is coming.”     I look out the window and see that the bus is not coming. “That doesn’t answer my question,” I say.     “Fish isn’t my favorite. Why did you call me if you have a girlfriend?”     “The fish is really fresh. I caught it this morning, actually,” I lie. It was actually purchased yesterday from the fish market across the street from my work. It was probably alive three days ago.     “Where do you live?”     “I live across the street. In the Drake. If you look up you can see me. I’m on the third floor. I’m waving,” I wave and she looks up but I don’t think she sees me. “I thought you said your bus was coming?”     “Not my bus. I was wrong.”     “Do you want some fish?”     “I thought you said you had a girlfriend,” She pauses and I hear her sigh. “Which apartment is yours?”     “I’ll buzz you in.” 4.     Lilly likes fish now. She said my trout was amazing and the Brussels sprouts were “pretty okay.” After I steamed them, I cut them in half, poured melted unsalted butter on them, sprinkled them with organic Swiss cheese, which I let melt before serving.     I show her around my apartment, which doesn’t take long. She likes the art-deco style of decoration we— my girlfriend and I— have. The posters of Audrey Hepburn, of James Dean, of skinny Elvis. My bookshelf with In Cold Blood, with Oliver Twist, with Fight Club, with The Odyssey, with poetry books by Whitman, by Plath, by Poe, by Shakespeare, with the Kama Sutra.     “Not mine,” I say. “It’s my girlfriend’s.”     She nods.     “Have you read it?”     She nods again and says, “No.”     She seems very impressed that I’ve read all the books. I tell her I’m an English major and I work in a food cart on 4th and Main that sells sandwiches stuffed with French fries and your choice of meat with a ‘secret sauce’ that’s actually just Thousand Island salad dressing and she says that’s “pretty okay.”     We’re sitting on my couch now and we’ve been talking for an hour. She’s a first generation American. Both her parents were born in Hanoi. She was born in Baltimore and moved here six years ago. She had two uncles killed by American G.I.’s during the War when they were just children. We talk about how we’re both pacifists and how Vietnam and the War in Iraq were both “terrible tragedies.” She’s 24 years old and she goes to Portland State, majoring in music therapy, which she tries to explain to me but is beyond my realm of understanding.     “It’s basically therapy but instead of using a couch and words, you use music,” She explains to me.     “You can go to school for that?”     “Yes. I’m going to open a private practice.”     “Why don’t you just major in music?”     “Because I’m a flute player.”     “So?” I say. I know nothing about music.     “So there’s not a big market for flute players.”     I think she’s beautiful and before I know it, my lips are on hers and then on her neck. My hands are on her small breasts and she is moaning a little. She leans into me. I feel her hips arch into mine. I feel our hearts beating together. Her skin feels soft and healthy.     We don’t even move to the bed before we are both naked and making love ferociously on the couch. We are both skilled lovers and she is letting me know that she approves of my performance. By the time we’re finished, we’re both in the shower and she tells me that this is her first time showering with a man. I don’t believe her. I let her wash me and I wash her. We collapse into bed, still a little damp and fall asleep. 5.     I wake up in my bed, alone and still naked. I sigh and get up and take a quick look around the apartment to confirm that Lilly is indeed gone. I shave and make a pot of coffee. There’s a note from Lilly on the counter:     Had a lot of fun last night. Let’s do it again soon,     and she again leaves her number.     I want to fry some eggs. I put some unsalted butter in the pan, crack open two Cage-free eggs and cook them sunny side up. They cook quickly, spitting and popping at me from the pan. I peel and chop an onion and throw a quarter of it into the pan with the eggs and brown them. I wrap the remaining onion in red saran wrap and put it in my crisper in the fridge. I throw some rye bread (which I will add Marionberry jam too) in the toaster and pan fry some ham steak. When it’s all done, I put in on my plate and eat it slowly while sipping my coffee.     I’m tired of this game we play. Of the lies we tell. I put my plate and coffee mug in the dishwasher and hand wash all the pans I cooked with and head to the shower. I look at the picture on the wall of Lilly and I last summer at Multnomah Falls and feel myself smile. That was back before we had to pretend to be strangers in order to connect with one another; in order to be intimate. Back before we had to pretend to be liars.     It had been the best day of our young relationship. She’d never been to the Falls and we found a rare sunny Saturday in October. She was wearing her PSU Vikings grey and green hoodie and jeans with Nordic tennis shoes. She had on a Nike baseball cap and she’d pulled her long pony tail through the hole in the back. As we climbed to the top of the Falls, we held hands and smiled. When we reached the summit, we kissed and she giggled. We found a tourist to take our picture.     “Cute couple,” I heard the man’s wife say as they walked away.     She was right. We were cute together.     The game was her idea and we’ve been playing it for six months now. She’d presented it to me just a few short weeks after that trip. She told me she couldn’t feel close to someone she knew. She told me she couldn’t love me unless we pretended not to care about each other. She told me she needed to keep getting to know me in order to be with me.     I stand in the shower and let the hot water cascade down my body. The shower is mine. Her shampoos. Her conditioners. Her razors. All gone. This place is now devoid of her. There’s some black mold growing on the ceiling which I still need to call the apartment manager about.     I get out of the shower and slowly dry myself with the same mildewed towel I’ve been using all week. When I’m mostly dry I drop it on the floor. I brush my teeth and when I spit I don’t clean it up. My mirror has spit stains. I leave the towel on the floor and put on my ratty boxer shorts and non-matching socks. I step out into the main room of our— my— studio and look for some clean pants, which I find underneath some t shirts that I forgot to dry and which are beginning to mildew. The apartment used to be so immaculate.     I walk back to the kitchen table and grab the note from Lilly and reread several times before crumpling it up. I walk to the coffee table, uncrumple it and read it again. I recrumple it and place the piece of paper on the Buddha ash tray and I light it on fire. I watch it burn while I drink the rest of my coffee, which has turned cold.

POP’s Gas Justin W. Price For Elizabeth Bishop     BARSTOW 2 MILES, the green sign informed Royce as he sped east on the 405 to his ultimate destination: Las Vegas. His brand new, blood red Mercedes XLR, with white racing stripes, purred as he fantasized about the coming week. A fat bank roll, a chic suite at the Wynn, and an escort or two, guaranteed a week he would likely forget but wish he wouldn’t.     He watched the valley through Gucci shades as the wind sped through his hair and headed east to debauchery with the wind in his hair, tunes booming, and a cigarette craving. Royce glanced at his fuel gauge, which crept towards the “E” and he exited the freeway to Barstow, California where signs indicated self-serve gas stations to the left and one, POP’S Gas, full service to the right. He pressed the button, closing the top to the convertible and turned right.     Even though it was just a little over two hours from his home in Venice Beach, he’d never been to Barstow. Ramshackle buildings crumbled on either side of him. Saggy roofed houses enclosed by rotten wooden porches lined the streets. Worn out dogs, shirtless children and homely men and women swatted at flies as they gathered on dead lawns. It contrasted with Royce’s Venice Beach mini-mansion, which he’d inherited following his estranged father’s suicide. His backyard was the Pacific Ocean beachfront, which he jogged on daily with his burly black lab Brutus in tow.     All that’s missing are tumbleweeds and a street duel, Royce mused as he drove through Barstow. He felt a gust of hot wind and white knuckled the steering wheel.     After nearly two miles of decayed stores, unattractive people and pathetic excuses for parks and houses, he reached the full service station which, like the rest of the town, was old and crumbling. The sign rising above the station read “PO S”, and Royce snickered. The sagging roof over the two rotary pumps was off white. The rust colored station store had bars over the dirty windows and missing boards on the outside walls. Neon signs that were turned off, but may not have worked anyway, promised ICE and Budweiser.     To the left of the store, a silver trailer, like a colossal tube of rusted aluminum foil, stood on cinderblocks. The screens on the windows were broken but Royce could see lacy white curtains showing behind them and flower pots on either side of the trailer door. One pot held a single daffodil, the other, a juvenile Joshua tree.     On a folding chair in front of the trailer sat a man with a mangy brown hound dog curled at his feet. Royce would sooner put Brutus down than let him look like that mangy mutt. The man was quite dirty and wore a long, curly grey beard, dark blue overalls covered in grease stains and a name patch that Royce couldn’t read from where he was. He wore scuffed dark brown boots, and long, chaotic curly black hair protruded from beneath a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. He was chomping on a cigarette and whittling a stick with a large hunting knife. He smiled a mostly toothless smile and waved as Royce pulled in.     “Be right over, friend,” he shouted.     Royce couldn’t tell if the man was white or Mexican and wasn’t sure which he hoped for. As he pulled to a stop next to one of the pumps, he wondered if he might have been better off doubling back and finding one of the self-service stations closer to town. When he remembered how much he detested the smell of gasoline and the act of pumping his own gas, he decided to stay.     “Smokin ain’t allowed by the pumps. I hope you don’t mind if’n I finish this smoke here before I help you. You ain’t in no hurry, I reckon, if’n you pulled this far off the freeway.”     Royce rolled up his windows, exited the car, made an exaggerated motion as he locked the doors, a honk confirming his success, and looked at the man. He cupped his hand over his eyes and squinted. “Actually, I kind of am. I came here for the convenience.” The wind blew heat all over Royce and dirt careened across the highway like a brown lather. A couple of buzzards circled overhead. He reached into his front pocket for his soft pack of Marlboro Reds. “Nice dog you got there.”     The man looked at the dog, huffed, took a deep drag off his cigarette and exhaled slowly, the smoke curling away like an ashy snake before disintegrating. He stood up, shoved the knife into the holster at his waist, tossed the cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot. “Ain’t nothin’ convenient about this place, friend,” he said as he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a can of Skoal and put a large plug of it into his mouth. Pat, his name patch read in thick, red thread. “Just a passin’ through place two miles off the freeway. The more convenient places just off the freeway, I reckon. So, friend, you didn’t come here for the convenience,” he began to lumber towards Royce, each boot scuffling across the cracked concrete.     The sound reminded Royce of all those nights hiding in the cellar when his dad came home drunk. The scuffling stumbling of a man trying to keep balance and trying to find an outlet for his frustrations. It was usually Royce.     His dad had seemed so tall and strong but one day—Royce was thirteen—Royce realized he was big enough to take on his dad. When his dad shuffled through the house, Jack Daniels sloshing with each step, he swung at Royce. Royce swung back, his dad staggered and fell. They never spoke again. Royce was shocked to find out that in spite of his father’s drunken outrages, the collection agency thrived and had been left to the Next of Kin: Royce.     Pat advanced with deliberateness, a lump of tobacco wedged between his lips and his gums. Royce himself was six feet tall and used to looking down at people, but Pat towered over him. “Look, I’m in a hurry. Can you just give me some gas? I’ve got cash,” Royce said, craning his neck. He tapped a cigarette out of the soft pack and tucked it behind his ear. In the distance, he could hear cicadas and a strange squeaking sound that he couldn’t identify.     “I reckon you do. Don’t take nothin’ but,” he said. He was right up on Royce now and Royce could smell his garbage breath, his pungent body odor, his sunburnt skin. His eyes were hollowed out red caverns, his lips were dry and cratered and his voice was like sandpaper. “This place ‘longs to my pop, sweet baby Jesus rest his soul. I ain’t changed a thing. He’d be li’ble to come out the ground and slap me good across my face if’n I took credit cards,” he laughed and patted Royce on the shoulder. His laugh turned into a cough.     As Pat coughed, Royce stepped back and shook his shoulder. What an inheritance, Royce thought. Royce smirked at the man and wiped the dirt from his white collared blue silk shirt.     “Sorry ‘bout that, son. Sometimes I forget not all folks is touchy feely. Fill ‘er up?”     Royce needed to fill up—he wasn’t sure where the next gas would be—but he didn’t want to stay longer than he had to. Long enough to smoke. That’s it. “Twenty,” He barked. “And make it snappy.”     Pat spit a large wad of sticky tobacco just millimeters from Royce’s alligator skin shoes. He smiled, revealing wide gaps in his mouth and diseased gums. Royce noticed a clean white band of skin on the man’s left ring finger. “Let’s see that cash, son.” Pat said.     Royce’s mind began to wander. He looked around and cursed himself for having driven so far off the freeway. The sun was beginning to descend and on either side of the station was nothing but desert. The wind wailed, gusting away from town, and he felt his hair pulling on his scalp. He once again considered getting back in the car and driving into town but figured the man could just grab him and pull him away faster than Royce could maneuver. Besides, his cigarette craving was beginning to overwhelm him and he wasn’t about to light up in his Mercedes. Without lowering his eyes from Pat, he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a gold money clip and snapped out a crisp twenty dollar bill.     Pat grabbed the bill, held it up to his nose and then crumpled it into his pocket. “Looks like twenty it is, son,” but he stood there and made no move for the gas pump.     The two men looked at each other, Pat with curiosity, Royce with distress. He felt again like that little boy hiding in the cellar. He heard Pat’s feet scuffling against the cracked concrete.     “Say, where ya headin’?” Pat grinned.     Royce scoffed and stepped back, just out of range of Pat’s necrotic halitosis. “Just pump the gas, please. I’m in a hurry. I’ll just go smoke a cigarette and say hello to your mangy dog.”     Pat smacked his lips and pointed a greasy finger at Royce. “Son, no one calls my dog mangy. That’s Rufus. You be real kind to Rufus, un’erstand?”     “Okay.”     “I ‘spect you one of them Vegas boys, lookin’ to go strike it rich. No other reason a fella like you be down this way,” he paused and ran his hand along the hood of the Mercedes. “Course, looks like you already got the rich part down good, so maybe you’re just goin’ to find some women with loose morals and have yourself a time you won’t tell no one about. What happens there stays there, no what’uh’mean?”     Royce looked at the hood of his car, which now had a large black handprint on it. “Don’t touch my car. You’re getting it dirty. Don’t talk to me. Just pump gas.”     Pat smiled again. “You’re in the desert, son. What chu ‘spect? Now, do Rufus a kindly thing and smoke over by the store. He don’t like strangers and, ‘sides, Rufus’ lungs are real wonky. He’s older than God hisself, I think. He ‘longs to my pop, sweet baby Jesus rest his soul. Rufus done quit smokin’, oh, five six, seven months ago.” He smiled again as he walked around to the pump. “Now, son, you need to open the tank for me, or can I do it myself?”     Royce popped the cigarette in his mouth, unlocked the car, reached inside, and pulled the lever beneath the driver’s seat. He then slammed the door and quickly pressed the lock button the key ring. “I’ll just be over here having a smoke. But I’ll be watchin’ the whole time.”     Pat spit another wad, this one right next to Royce’s tires. “Yes. I reckon you might. Don’t you worry none. Just go over and have a nice smoke.”     Royce walked askance towards the store. Glancing over at the trailer, he was able to glimpse the blurred outline of family photos and a couch. Beside the trailer, he saw a grill with some kind of pungent gray meat cooking on it. My God, Royce thought, I think he lives there. Pathetic. “Hey there Rufus,” Royce shouted as he approached the store. Rufus said nothing. He was lying in the sun gathering flies and Royce thought at first that he was dead until he saw his legs kick and heard him whimper. The faint squeaking sound was louder now. He reached the store, and, with his eyes on Pat, lit his cigarette.     “You want me to wash your windows, son?” Pat hollered through cupped hands. “I’d be much obliged.”     Royce exhaled smoke rings. “Why not. You already dirtied the car anyway.”     “Wasn’t me son,” Pat said as he grabbed a dusty mop bucket and squeegee. “Mother nature did that. Ain’t nothing clean around here.”     Royce took another drag off the cigarette and looked again at the store. The door was padlocked and had an imposing chain wrapped around the handles. The windows had a thick layer of dirt on them. He strolled to the other side and glimpsed cactus and Joshua trees in the near distance, starving for water and affection. The squeak was louder now. He took a refreshing drag from his cigarette.     Royce saw movement and squinted. Between a pair of cacti, a small derrick was pumping, up, down, up down, slowly yet insistently. Royce stared and walked closer to it, forgetting about his Mercedes for a moment. As he walked closer, the squeak grew louder still.     Yes. Sure enough. It was a derrick. It was pumping. Up and down. Up and down. Royce took another drag off his cigarette and then tossed it away and just stared. He looked around him, at the barren landscape, and the collapsing buildings in the distance. He looked at the crumbling gas station and the aluminum foil trailer. He looked again at the derrick. He turned around and realized he’d walked far enough that he could no longer see his car and he began to run, but slowed when he caught a ray of sun reflecting off the hood.     As he rounded the front of the store, he heard the chain clatter and looked to see Pat swinging the door open and walking inside. The chain rocked wildly, clanking against the door frame. Royce dug his keys out of his pocket and made his way to the Mercedes but, before he could reach it, Pat exited the store and looked right at Royce. The rustle of locusts crumpled into Royce’s ears. Royce was frozen.     “Come here, son.”     Royce looked at the Mercedes, he looked at Pat and his holstered knife. He looked at Rufus, back at the Mercedes, back at Pat.     “I just want to shake your hand. Thank you kindly for your business,” Pat grinned.     “No. That’s okay. Not a problem.” Out of the corner of his eye, Royce saw something fly out of door of the store. A cicada? It was small, green and ... crumpled. It was floating in the air, ascending away from town. Out of the door, another something and another something. No. Not cicadas. Royce soon realized it was cash. Cash money. He walked with trepidation to the door of the store and froze again. Piled taller than Royce and as far back as he could see were piles and piles of money, all crumpled bills. Top to bottom, the store was filled with them. Even as some of the bills flew off, Pat didn’t close the door or make any movement to grab them. He just stood and watched Royce watch the money float away.

Elephant Soup Janet Doggett     Fifteen years ago I found out the tattoo of the Chinese character done in pastel colors and outlined in sharp black ink over my left breast signified something other than “soul of a poet.” We were in my husband’s office at the university on a blistering and dusty West Texas day. The sky was orange. My husband’s Asian friend took a step closer, peered through her thick glasses: “It says, Elephant,” she said. “Or something maybe about Soup, but no Poet here.” She smiled wide. I blinked rapidly, and muttered my thanks as those around me laughed loudly to the music of “Elephant Soup.” ***     “How many times have they tried so far today?” The Boston hospital nurse was touching the pad of her index finger to needle marks on my arms and hands. She was wearing blue gloves with the finger part ripped out, and had on blue lipstick to match. “What’s wrong, your veins don’t make no blood?” She thought this was the first time I’d heard that. “Seventeen,” I said. “Seventeen times.”     “We are going to have to put a port in you,” she said. I pulled back my shirt a bit, showing her my scar where my port once was. She also saw my tattoo. “What does it mean?” she asked. I never knew what to say when people asked that. I knew what I wanted it to mean. I knew what it probably really meant. I said what I always said. “It means poet.”     I have four tattoos. My elephant tattoo was my first. I was incredibly young and rebellious and somehow getting that tattoo made me feel dangerous in a sexy way. I was marked by an apprentice in a Lubbock, Texas, shop in the backroom where there was green neon paint and black lights. His name was Eddie. He had pointy elf ears and black greasy hair. My second tattoo was one of a gecko on my left ankle. Simple, straightforward, I was hooked. I had finished my master’s degree and felt like shouting to the world, “I’m the Lizard King I can do anything.” My third was of a phoenix – just a black outline – on my lower back. This was before they came to be known as “tramp stamps.” (One day my son, when he was 10 years old, asked me why I would get a “tramp stamp.”) My fourth and last one was on top of my right foot. The pain of the needle screeching through my thin skin, popping nerves was memorable at least. The picture is of a flower with a Sanskrit saying that (I’m pretty sure means), “watched over.”     There are people who say that those who get tattoos get them in order to outwardly show an inward hurt. They are a way to mark oneself, to denote a difference. If that is true, I guess I have reason enough. What’s interesting is those reasons didn’t come until after the tattoos. ***     After moving to the Boston area, I begin to get sick. It took about five years and hundreds of medical appointments for doctors to diagnose me: Type 1 diabetes, Celiac Disease, Stage 3 Cirrhosis, hypothalamic hypothyroidism, bipolar disorder. I had my gallbladder removed, a hysterectomy, both of my knee caps were crumbled from degenerative bone disease and had to be replaced. In two weeks I’m facing colon surgery. I have been in the hospital a lot.     “You have been in the hospital a lot,” said the 20-something white coat whom I had to see as part of my pre-admission testing this week.     “Yes.” I didn’t know what else she wanted me to say.     “Why?” she asked. “I mean you had pancreatitis your last admission. Did you do some heavy drinking the night before?” Her pencil tapped the clipboard she was carrying. She looked just past my right shoulder.     I wanted to stick a fork in her forehead at that moment. Instead I calmly explained to her that I no longer drink because I have liver disease in an advanced stage and I’m in the hospital a lot because with more than 4 auto-immune diseases a lot can and will go wrong at any given moment. In my mind. I mean I explained that to her in my mind. In reality I stuttered and blinked and said something like, “No, they don’t know why I got that.”     I realized later that what she was looking for was a confession that I was in the hospital a lot because I wanted to be – because something was mentally wrong with me. Perhaps I had something akin to Munchausen’s Syndrome. The thought made me nauseated. ***     One day last summer I was driving my then 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter to her friend’s house. My daughter’s friend smokes a lot of cigarettes. My son asked me if I had ever smoked cigarettes and I honestly could tell him that I had not. He said, “That’s because you’re pure!”     I wanted to stop the car and hold him tight. At that moment I couldn’t think of another person on this God-given Earth who would think me pure – me with the four tattoos and the liver disease. Me with the crooked little veins. My dietary restrictions. The extra weight. My idealism.     Sometimes I wonder if I will live to be elderly. And if I do, will anyone find my tattoos attractive on this porous sagging green-veined skin that I’m covered in? Does it really matter?     One day I will unzip my body from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. I will throw away my marked skin, my elephant soup, and my diseases. And like so many doves, my true self will tumble out white and pure, and soar.

Turning into the Wind M.C. Rydel For Paulo Chicago in the winter has calm days, Sunny and mild, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, Calm, the trees barely moving, yet noticeable. The wind, when you’re working windward, lets you zigzag And get where you’re going despite the chill. The city is home to a school for alchemists: Intro to Stones, Exploring Elixirs, Just two of the courses in a comprehensive curriculum, Including sailing and track for physical fitness, Meteorology and Curses, possible electives. There’s going to be a call for gold, soon. The school’s recruiting and raising tuition. Its ad campaign makes emerald tablets into posters Hanging on the sides of buses and inside elevated trains And challenges everybody to turn into the wind. A few clever students figure it out, though. They molt and shed and transform into breezes, Reappear months later, southerly in springtime, Straight from the west on the Fourth of July, And they travel into the future, As if waking from an induced sleep Like an intruder in somebody else’s dreams. That’s how they get there, knowing where They’ve buried the gold, knowing its worth Ten times more than when they made it. They get to live years longer than the norm. Alchemists rarely retire. Why would they? They hop through centuries ahead of the rest of us: Epitaphs on stelae like ten minute video tapes, The best ones taken, when they don’t know the camera’s on.

Summer’s End Wedding Fayre H. D. Loughrey     Thrown by an eager hand, the confetti leaps into the flower-scented air. It dances across to the white walls of the marquee that are billowing in a drizzle-soaked November breeze. A shard lands on the quivering paper lanterns, to gaze down at the crowd below.     A multitude of figures are milling between mannequins in white and seven, eight, nine-tiered delights of meringue and buttercream. Infrequent punctures of black tie appear amongst the ivory décor. Delicate fingers - some steady, some shaking, but all newly bedecked in diamond – trace the necklines of dresses as they pass each other in groups of two or three.     The air grows warm with pregnant anticipation; whispers build into dull drones whose notes are pulled high by occasional girlish screams. The sound makes some pale faces wince. Somewhere in the throng, the lingering sugary breath of a contented sigh lifts the confetti from its position and it floats down, landing on the panting shoulders of a girl in red.     “This is it – this is the pair!”     “Are you sure?”     “Damn sure!”     “But the colour! Do you really want that sticking out from under your dress? It’ll look like your toes are bleeding.”     “I adore them – they’re different!”     “They’re hideous. And the heel is much too high. Can’t you just stick to the traditional white, like I did?”     “Mum –“     “Not these. Not ever.”     The girl in red sinks onto an ivory stool, her mother’s fingers clasped around her wrist like talons. In a slow movement, the girl leans down to her ankles, her plaited hair falling over her shoulder.     The confetti is swept away to curl through the air between exposed ankles before launching towards the lanterns along with a tossed bouquet. It lands like a kiss on a fabric petal and clings as they fall into the clutches of a blond girl with no ring on her left hand.     “Me next!”     “It only works if a bride throws it at a wedding, dummy.”     “I’m only joking, Laura.”     “Sure. Look, I don’t care which one, why don’t you pick?”     “This one. The flowers match the dress.”     “Fine.”     “It’s your wedding, Laura.”     “You’re into this stuff, not me.”     “Are you into him?”     “Who?”     “Exactly.”     Tossed again, the bouquet lands harder on the temporary flooring as the girl in black stomps away, the blond in her wake. Careless feet kick it along the ground until it rolls under a purple, velvet curtain.     A bride scoops it up and the confetti is cleaved to the sweaty skin of her hand.     “Just say the word, John, and I’ll call the whole thing off. I know it’s sudden but I’m staring at myself in wedding dress, for Christ’s sake, and I’ve never felt so ... alien. I’d tear it off if I could! I’m telling you, I don’t want this. It’s not too late for us.”     The confetti shakes beneath the bride’s movements as she holds the phone closer against her ear. For a moment, there is silence.     “Hello?”     The confetti grows moist and darkens on the bride’s skin.     “John? Are you there?”     There is a rustle, then silk and lace pour down the body of the bride, dragging the torn confetti with it. It sinks onto the laminate floor before it is blinded by a mass of fabric. Only the distant sound of the marquee, quivering in a growing wind, echoes somewhere beyond the walls of the dress.

Fin de Siècle Mid-Teens Ralph Monday Mayan apocalypse two years removed, catastrophes plenty for the picking, they lie all about like some gaping rotten fish rising from the ocean floor. The world is covered in global crustaceans, Choirs of angels have ceased singing, existence slowed by treading through dark mud. Feral instincts diminished by electronic reality, salvation by flea markets, sacrament drunk from corroded tin, tribulation sprung from the loins of men and women. No flower springs from this rotted corpse, no champion throws down the gauntlet, the spear embedded in Plexiglas for Christmas browsing mall herds. Any red light which glows in the western sky, or beams down, Cyclops eye, from back windows, is a razored sliver honed on brittle bones. We live in houses of the dead. For every person alive, behind each individual walks a hundred ghosts. We do not know the sacrament. We have lost the regenerated tree. Helpless, we hang like mummified bats, eyes turned downward, ears attentive listening for century’s last heartbeat.

Starry Night Alex Patterson     “Don’t cry” Vincent said.     “I’m going to the stars!” Elizabeth cried out, small tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Elizabeth quickly dabbed at her eyes, before embracing Vincent. “Happy Birthday Elizabeth.” Elizabeth stepped away from Vincent, her broad smile slowly changing into a sly grin. “It’s your birthday too, you know.”     “And we’ll celebrate that tomorrow” Vincent quickly responded. “But today it’s your birthday. Once we get back we can do something for mine.”     “And I’ll hold you to that. We’re not going to repeat last year, I won’t have you skipping a celebration each year.”     “I’m your older brother –“     Elizabeth laughed, “We’re twins! We have the same birthday, for all we know I’m older.” This was true, Elizabeth and Vincent were twins, although it was hard to tell unless you already knew that fact. Elizabeth had blond frizzy hair, brown eyes, and was quick to give a gentle smile. Vincent was different. He had black hair, green eyes, and was one of the most serious people that the city had seen. He rarely ever smiled, except for when he was with Elizabeth.     “We can argue about this on the way up to the surface.” Vincent smiled, swiftly turning as he led Elizabeth towards the surface, towards the stars.     Elizabeth briskly walked besides Vincent; she had to take two steps to match one of Vincent’s long strides. “Where are we going?” She asked. “Jacob found a hole in the Border this morning. We should try to reach it before curfew.” Elizabeth nodded in agreement. Being caught outside during curfew would be bad. Curfew was one of the most important laws, for many reasons: most important of which was after the lights went out, it was nearly impossible to see your outstretched hand, let alone safely navigate the twisting streets of the city.     It wasn’t far to the Border, or so it was called. The Border really wasn’t much of a border. It was more of a chain link fence that served to represent the end of the lighted city. The lighted city had once stretched far into the darkness. It was once a sprawling city, but when the doors to the surface were shut, the lighted portions of the city shrank back until only the city center and a few acres of farmland remained. The areas that were once populated fell into a state of darkness.     The lights began to flicker as they neared the Border. “We should hurry.” Vincent said. “They’ll check the perimeter soon.” Vincent and Elizabeth wandered down the Border, poking and prodding at the fence, until they found the small cut in the fence that Jacob had described. “Here we are.” Vincent said, as he gently lifted the flap of the fence, forming a small hole for Elizabeth to crawl through. After she made it through, Elizabeth turned and reciprocated the favor for Vincent.     After they were through the Border Vincent pulled two thin flashlights from his coat pocket. Handing one to Elizabeth, he looked into the thick veil of darkness that stretched out before them. “How far do you think it goes?” Elizabeth asked.     “It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to reach the exit. If we hurry we can be in the starlight in an hour.”     “Let’s go then!” Elizabeth said as she rushed forward.     They walked through the derelict city, carefully avoiding the mounds of rubble that occasionally blocked their path. They went forward slowly, relying on the small beams of light that emitted from their flashlights. They chose not to talk as they went through the darkness. Vincent was lost in thought, thinking about the tales of monsters and stories of what life was once like in the city; while Elizabeth was consumed by her dreams of the stars. She thought back to the descriptions that her grandmother had told her; she thought back upon her childhood drawings – knowing that in just a few minutes she would be standing underneath the starlight, that until now she had only dreamed about seeing.     They were close to the passageways now. The dark building that surrounded them receded into an open plain, the fragmented road started to decay into a smooth pathway covered in grass. The road straightened until they came to a massive arch way that spanned the road and ascended up into the darkness high above the reach of their lights. “Where do we go from here?” Elizabeth asked.     “I don’t know. As far as I can tell, this is the farthest anyone’s been from the city. I think the road will go up eventually.” Elizabeth walked into the gaping maw of the arch, eager to greet the stars with her own eyes.     They walked forward in silence, steadily growing more and more anxious as the road began to rise, sloping upwards towards the surface. “What did you say?” Elizabeth asked.     “What? I didn’t say anything. What are you-” A voice drifted up towards them from the dark recesses of the passage. Elizabeth and Vincent briefly looked at each other. “Run?”     “Run.” She agreed. They ran down the road their, flashlights sending dancing beams along the walls around them. A small alcove appeared along the wall to their left, set into the far wall was a metal door. “In here” Vincent whispered, as he pulled opened the metal door. The door screamed out in a shrill cry, as the rusty hinges were forced into action. The door led to a small storage room. Elizabeth closed the door behind them, filling the room with the moans of the door. The room was crowded with shelves. The shelves were filled with miscellaneous instruments that were once used for maintaining the dark roadway outside. Cans of grease, and boxes of light bulbs lay underneath a pile of dust near the back corner while a mound of cardboard boxes threatened to collapse to the left of the entrance.     They waited in silence as the voices steadily approached. Vincent turned off his flashlight and motioned for Elizabeth to do the same. The room descended into darkness. They waited in silence as the voices steadily got closer. The tense seconds stretched into minutes until the voices became audible. Two men were speaking, that much was clear, but their words were like guttural growls. Their footsteps thudded down the road, until the men came to a halt outside of the storage room.     The voices stopped outside of the door. The muffled sounds of a make-shift camp slipped in through the door as the two men set heavy packs on the ground. A dancing light flickered into the storage room, underneath the door, as the men started a small fire.     “We can’t stay here.” Elizabeth whispered.     “We can’t leave either. Vincent reminded her. “I don’t think we should trust that those two people will simply let us walk by.”     “We can’t leave through the door, but...” She gestured up, towards the back of the room. The metal for a small vent glinted in the firelight above the metal shelves. “We should be able to climb out.” Vincent nodded in agreement “let me go up first,” he said.     “Be careful.”     The light from the fire outside illuminated the base of the shelves, but the top shelves were shrouded in darkness. Vincent could barely see the bars that he used as handholds, as he climbed up towards the vent. The entrance to the vent was clasped shut by two rusted prongs. The first prong fell off with a simple nudge, but the other was held firmly in place. Vincent looked down at Elizabeth. “It’s rusted shut” He whispered. “Hand me up a flashlight.” Elizabeth complied. Vincent held on to shelf with one hand, twisting his body to the right, as he leaned down to take the flashlight from Elizabeth. The shelving shuddered under the pull, but remained upright. Vincent straightened, and gently tested the flashlight against the prong. Steadily pushing harder against it until the prong popped off with a soft click. “Alright, I’m in. Let’s get-”     The vent entrance collapsed outwards, slamming into the shelf before falling to the ground with a thud. The door was thrust open as two men stormed into the room. The dim light concealed their faces; they each wore an assortment of mismatched garments. The first man wore baggy khaki pants, tied to his waist with a frayed rope, and he wore a leather jacket; in his hand he wielded a long metal pipe. The other man was short; he was wearing jeans and a black duster, which made the short knife in his hand all the more terrifying.     They didn’t notice Vincent, but instead turned on Elizabeth who held her flashlight like a small club. Vincent pounced from the shelves with a cry, tackling the man with the club, while Elizabeth lunged at the other man, swinging her flashlight towards his head. Vincent rolled on top, trying to rip the club from the man’s grasp. He clawed the man’s hands, while the man punched at his gut. Vincent leaned forward, head-butting the man in the nose. He felt the crunch of cartilage and bone; the man grunted in frustration as Vincent pulled the pipe from his hands. He turned around in time to see Elizabeth hit the other man in the head with her flashlight. She groaned and put a hand to her chest, as Vincent pulled her through the door. He quickly shut the door behind them and jammed the door shut by wedging the pipe in between the door and the floor.     “You okay?” Vincent asked after he had caught his breath.     “No.” Came the weak reply. Vincent turned around, Elizabeth was sitting down. Her side was drenched in blood, but she looked oddly calm. Vincent chocked back a sob, rushing to her. He ripped off part of his shirt, searching for the wound. A long, jagged, cut ran down her chest going down to her left hip. He tied the scrap over what looked to be the worst of the wound. He carefully put one arm under the crook of her knees, and the other behind her back. “I have to take you back,” he muttered as he picked her up. Vincent turned back towards the city when more voices came up through the darkness. The words were in the same language as the two other men.     “We’re trapped.” Vincent said as he stopped, turning slowly around. “No. No, no, no.” He muttered to himself. “Not trapped. We can still go up.” He started to run up the sloping road. “We can go to the surface. They’ll be help there. Up top, they can help us.”     “Vincent.” Elizabeth murmured. “It’s okay.” Vincent kept running. “I need you to know that it’s okay.” Vincent began to cry, hot tears streamed down his cheeks as his footsteps echoed off the tunnel walls. “I want you to know that I love you. You’re my brother, you’re the best brother that I could ever wish for.”     “Save your energy. We’re almost there.” The road began to level out, until a gentle breeze started to drift in towards them. “Feel that Elizabeth? That’s the stars. That’s the starlight.”     They emerged out of the tunnel and onto a plain. Before them stretched the world, and above them in the night sky lay a blanket of darkness. The stars were smothered, blotted out by the years of pollution and war. Vincent fell to his knees as he cradled Elizabeth. He wept as he looked down at her gentle face. She lifted her hand, placing it gently on his cheek in an attempt to wipe away a tear saying “Don’t cry, I’m going to the stars.”

Sea Scape Donald Gaither waves crash — sea foam thick enough to ice a giant cake

Janet Kuypers reads Donald Gaither’s poem appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine, titled a Rural Story Sea Scape

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading Donald Gaither’s poem Sea Scape, appearing in the v126 issue of Down in the Dirt mag, titled a Rural Story live 12/17/14 at Chicago’s the Café Gallery

My brain was Janet Kuypers this poem was started 5/20/14, written daily through 5/24/14 and was conceived after hearing the Vittorio Carlit poem “The Trouble with Librarians” My brain was fighting to get out. My brain was watching the ash fall from Mount St. Helens before I collected it, so I could never forget. My brain was stupefied after my name was called for winning the award. The only thing my brain could think was that the man on stage from the American Legion with my medal looked like he was the nicest man on earth. My brain was stunned into silence, first looking skyward in breathless anticipation at our astronomers as the year began anew, before the Challenger disaster took all our hope away. My brain was doing everything it could to shut itself off, but no one could ever drink enough when rape while intoxicated is still rape. My brain was anxious, waiting for a piece of the Berlin Wall, that a friend gave me for finding future freedom. My brain was... quiet, and proud, after paying my first security deposit and one month rent for my first chance to get away. My brain was smarter than the men out there who expected me to lift my shirt for them. I went to the parades, I got the beads. For once, the men were objectified when I made men strip for beads at Mardi Gras. My brain was scanning the chaos of the men around me — The countdown was broadcast on the New York loudspeakers, but so many men were just pissing in the street, so I had to make sure none got on my shoes. Then the ball dropped. My brain was getting moral contemplating the sacredness of animals around the world, when my brain made the conscious choice to no longer kill them, or even ask others to kill for me. My brain was calibrating the wind speed on this rocky red range, until, during the dead of winter, after seeing no one for miles in Utah’s Arches National Park the decision was made: get in the lotus position naked and meditate on a mountaintop until the wind was just too cold. By then it was time to get dressed and hike back to civilization. My brain was scanning the rolling Montana roads, not seeing cars or cops for miles. My brain gave my foot the okay to floor it, and for miles the speedometer went as high as it could until my brain was satiated and I brought the car speed back down to ninety out in the middle of nowhere. My brain was waiting for everyone to start driving as the light just turned green. Then my brain registered from the rear view mirror the car speeding toward me. My brain went into survival mode, turned the wheels of my car to save the motorcyclist’s life in front of me before my car skidded for one hundred eight feet and my mother had to come to the hospital I was born in to identify a body. My brain was struggling to piece back together a life it lost. Make those connections, you’ve done this before, my brain kept telling myself. My brain got my lungs to start breathing again. And after they removed that feeding tube, my brain had to rationalize eating again. It was a chant from my brain...         Get out of that wheelchair.         Stand on your feet.         You have places to go.         This isn’t how         it’s supposed to be. My brain was contemplating philosophy, because on this first date we talked philosophy half the night. And I let him kiss me goodnight. My brain was, for one day, allowing me to feel like a princess. Look, I’m getting married today, someone else will take care of it. My brain has done enough for this. Let me be happy. My brain was crouching down on top of that glacier when the wind became just that violent. My brain was determined to get to the top of that mountain - I know I’m not a climber, I know I prefer hot tubs but those ski lifts are closed and these are the Alps and really, how many times will you get the chance to climb the Alps? My brain knows you’re only wearing sandals and socks and there’s snow and water everywhere, but this is your only chance... My brain felt like a heel being carried past the last water pit coming down from that mountain. But looking back, my brain was pleased. It had to try. My brain was trying to remember how to breathe, turning my head, hoping I could catch my breath as the atmosphere was pushing me at one hundred twenty miles per hour before someone pulled my parachute. My brain was elated, finding out that huge bottles of beer sold at a street vendor were only three for a dollar in Shanghai. What a deal. My brain was thrown into journalism mode after the levees broke from hurricane Katrina. The water poured in, and ocean waves were frozen into the street. I pulled out the camera, snapped photos of one house after another; some burnt to embers while most were spray-painted with destruction notices and evacuation premonitions. My brain was too wired to think about relaxing in the hot tub outdoors at eleven thirty at night while it was still daylight, because I was reveling in Capitalism while docked in Russia My brain was commanding me to talk loudly, clearly, say the lines right and make sure everything goes off without a hitch as you finish the ceremony and declare the couple husband and wife. My brain was wracking itself, trying to figure out what to do, how to be healthy, so I may not die the way my mother did. My brain was on high alert, but more than that, my brain was excited to keep swimming further down to get closer to the row of over two dozen sleeping white-tipped sharks off the Galapagos islands. My brain was consciously calculating constellations I had never seen before in the Southern Hemisphere. And the constellation I coined the “Martini” (because it was shaped like a martini glass) was actually Phoenix, the most prominent constellation in the Southern sky.         After my brain was searching         for any way to cool down         during the hottest         Indy five hundred in decades... My brain was afterwards edging out men’s outstretched hands. My brain knew Jack Nicholson would rather high five a female. And so he did. My brain was keeping me awake again last night, thinking about what went down during the day or what I gotta do tomorrow. My brain’s always thinking of new places, contemplating new challenges and opting for new options. I lie awake and I think that’s my brain for you, always looking for something new.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading (C) her poem My brain was from her “Partial Nudity” book release feature live 6/18/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading (S) her poem My brain was from her “Partial Nudity” book release feature live 6/18/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery

octopi and brains Janet Kuypers haiku 3/31/14 did you know that an octopus has a brain in every tentacle?

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku octopi and brains live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku octopi and brains live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (posterize)

octopi and dogs Janet Kuypers haiku 3/31/14 did you know that an octopus has three times more neurons than a dog?

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku octopi and dogs live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku octopi and dogs live 4/9/14 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (posterize)

only Janet Kuypers haiku 3/29/14 some southern barber shops in the eighties only cut hair for white men

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku only live 9/27/14 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (Canon)

See YouTube video 9/27/14 of Janet Kuypers on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio performing many poems, including this one (Canon)

Download this poem in the free chapbook “6 Second Poems”, w/ poems read on 9/27/14 WZRD 88.3 FM radio

life (haiku) Janet Kuypers Periodic Table haiku 2/22/14 I am more than just C, H, O, N, P and S — I am so much more

Visit the Kuypers Twitter page for short poems— join http://twitter.com/janetkuypers.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her Periodic Table haiku life live 2/23/14 at Chemistry, Poetry and a Brat in Kenosha WI at the Brat Stop (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her Periodic Table haiku life live 2/23/14 at Chemistry, Poetry and a Brat in Kenosha WI at the Brat Stop (C, Threshold filter)

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