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Rape Seed Lisa Gray     He would be her last. For millennia. She drew the bright red lipstick carefully round the contours of her mouth and pressed her lips together in satisfaction in the car mirror. He or she. Each life she’d known it could be either. Just like she could be. That’s why it hadn’t been easy. Tracking them down. Age had been a problem. They could be any. When one was a child, she’d experienced a strange pang of regret. But she knew she must never let sentiment get in the way of killing them. After all it wasn’t the body that was important. It was the voice. That was the way she recognised them. Just like she’d vowed she would do. In Egypt. In 472B.C.     This time it was a he. She felt her chest tighten just as she had the first time he had spoken to her. She knew. She knew he was her last. The last of five. The last of the five who had raped her. Way back then. He could have spoken Chinese or Arabic or any other language. This time it was English. But it would have made no difference. It was the intonation in his voice. The intonation she had memorised. For millennia.     The dream she hadn’t memorised. The dream that kept recurring. She’d wanted to blot that out. Like she’d blotted everything out afterwards. And she’d done it successfully during the daytime. But it came at nights. Like it always did. The running running of her sandaled feet across desert sand. And the sound of her pursuers. And the darkness that enveloped her when they caught her. She’d blotted everything out after that except their voices. But she’d sworn never to forget them. And she hadn’t. Through successive lifetimes.     But the headaches had bothered her.     Anxiety had been the doctor’s definition. And she had to admit to a feeling of anxiety. Not over the killings. But over something she had felt she had forgotten. Long ago.     But soon it would be over. The mission of millennia. She felt a glorious sense of freedom as she started the car engine and headed out of the city. Her life would be different from now on. And the next life would be different. And the next. She’d settle down. Maybe have children.     The tightness in her chest seemed to intensify and the pain spread to her head. An asthma attack. She couldn’t afford to have one of those. When she had work to do. She slid her hand into her coat pocket, pulled out the inhaler, took a swig and replaced it in her pocket, wondering what had triggered it this time. Each lifetime she’d had it. That and the headaches. But each lifetime it had been something different that had caused an attack. She looked around. The grey atmosphere of the city had given way to rolling open fields. Of bright yellow. She couldn’t understand it. There was no pollution here. Nothing to trigger this tightness she felt. This anxiety.     She was just an ordinary house-hunter going to see a house for sale. In the middle of nowhere. That’s where she’d tracked him down to. It couldn’t be more convenient. But would he be alone?     Well, if not, too bad she thought. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had others to dispose of. Relatives of rapers. She didn’t feel bad about it. After all, she couldn’t let them spread their seed.     She’d been before of course. To check it out. That’s why she knew the way. She saw the sign and turned off on to a single track road with passing places. Three miles later, with no car to be seen in either direction, she pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car. It was a nineteen eighties’ style bungalow, low and wide, with a small, neglected garden surrounding it, the wide, open fields of yellow to its rear spreading like some seductive virus slowly swallowing the distant blue hills. It might have been attractive in its day but the forces of wind and rain had weathered and aged it and now it appeared to be decaying fast. She smoothed down her red coat, placed her black patent bag over her arm carefully and slammed the door of the car. She looked for some sign of life. There was none. Her black patent shoes picked their way carefully over the dirty, sparsely granite-chipped driveway, each crunch announcing her arrival. There was no sound. No sound of a dog barking.     Good, she thought. Animals could be a nuisance.     She noted the outbuildings to the left of the house and the large, double garage. She stopped and listened, an attractive, black-haired well-dressed thirty-year-old woman, a threat to no-one. That’s how she would appear to anyone who was watching. She put her finger on the bell and waited. There was no sound from within. No twitch of a curtain. Nothing. She pressed again, her nose wrinkling at the strange smell that wafted on the air. Still nothing.     Odd, she thought.     She looked at her watch. She’d said two thirty. It was already past that. Surely he hadn’t gone out. She looked around. More likely he was in one of the outbuildings, the garage or the barn. She listened but heard nothing except the low moo of a Highland Cow in the field to the right of the house. She rang a third time, this time knocking loudly on the door. Nothing.     She picked her way through the gravel round to the back of the house and looked down at her shoes. No sandals. Shoes. Black shiny patent shoes scarred with knife-like scratches. She swore beneath her breath. There was no-one at the rear of the house. Only an ocean of yellow stretching for miles. She wondered briefly what the crop was. She had a feeling she knew the name already but it seemed to be escaping her. So many crops in so many countries. In so many millennia. Whatever it was it was obviously profitable to warrant its spread. Otherwise the farmer would have stopped it. Didn’t he realise there was always danger in things spreading? In things getting out of control.     The silence was beginning to irritate her. She picked her way towards the barn. He had to be there. The gravel was gone, replaced by hard-packed earth. She felt the first few drops of rain on her face and cursed. That’s all she needed. A downpour would turn the farmyard into a miry swamp, difficult to escape from. She quickened her pace.     She could see he was dead as soon as she reached the barn. Whoever had killed him was a professional. Someone who’d killed before. In fact the angle of the knife thrust was very like her own work. She had to admire that. Though she still felt cheated. Someone had done her job for her. And she didn’t like it. Any more than she like the smell that was wafting through the open barn door. The smell that started her nose running. She put a hand in her coat pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. That’s why she didn’t see the figure. The small, black figure highlighted with a halo of yellow standing in the frame of the barn door.     Damn, she said to herself, as she spotted him. You’re getting careless. The raper’s relative.     Then she laughed to herself. This one would be easy to deal with. He was only a kid.     Still she felt uneasy. And she felt the tightness gripping her chest. The tightness she always felt this way when kids were involved.     “Oh, you poor kid,” she said, walking towards him. “You shouldn’t be seeing a thing like this. I’m the lady who came to see your house. I’ve just found him. Is it your dad?”     The child nodded dumbly but didn’t speak. He was small but neatly dressed in a red pullover and black jeans. She liked his style. But she knew she couldn’t let sentiment get in her way. She opened her black, patent handbag and her hand wound slowly round the handle of the knife. She was close enough now. One thrust and it would be over. It would all be over. The mission of millennia.     But she was wrong. She knew that the moment he spoke.     “He was my dad!”     For she recognised the voice. Like she’d recognised the others. Had she been wrong? Were there more than five? Or was the man on the floor of the barn not one of them?     The voice went on as if he knew what she was thinking.     “Yes, he was one of them. I knew from the first time I was born into this incarnation. From the first time I heard his voice.”     She gasped. He was like her. There was something she needed to remember. Something from 472B.C.     The voice went on.     “But I waited. I waited for the right time. Then I killed him.”     The voice was like the others but there was something different. Some other intonation. She pulled the knife from her bag but her eyes were streaming. Streaming. She couldn’t see. Was it tears? What was wrong with her? And there was an overpowering smell. She had to finish it. If only she could see. One thrust was all it would take.     The voice went on.     “And the time is now. You see I recognised your voice on speakerphone. Mother!”     She’d been right all along. It only took one thrust. From a professional. But it wasn’t over. She realised that as she felt the searing pain in her chest where he’d stuck the knife. Yes, a true professional. Like her. Her son. For now she remembered. Remembered what she’d heard in his voice. Her intonation. And she remembered what she’d forgotten. The child she’d borne after that night. Millennia ago. The child she’d wanted no part of. The child she’d abandoned.     She staggered past him. She had to get to the car. To the hospital. If she didn’t die, she could stop it here. Stop it like she should have done long ago. She knew he was following her. Following her down the wet, now muddy track that led to the car. If she could only reach it. She’d be safe. There was still time to save herself. And her son. She knew the rain had stopped and the sun had come out for she felt the warmth on her face. But she couldn’t see. Her eyes were streaming and she couldn’t breathe. The tightness in her chest was expanding. The knife wound or the asthma? She had no time to question. Until her hand closed on the handle of the car door and she slid inside.     She lay gasping on the seat. She was safe now. She’d only to start the car and reach the hospital. She could heal and she could heal her son. She could stop it like she should have stopped it millennia before. Her hand wrenched the collar of her coat from her neck. She couldn’t breathe and her eyes seemed sticky. Her hand fumbled for the gear stick. But something was obscuring her vision. She looked at the windscreen. It was covered in yellow.     That damn crop in the field, she thought. It had left its deposits. Deposits that had spread. All over her windscreen. She wished she could remember its name but somehow it escaped her. She turned on the ignition and the wipers. But she still couldn’t move. For standing in the path of the car was the child. Her child. She couldn’t kill her child. She couldn’t start a new cycle of revenge. She felt the pain tighten in her chest and she knew soon it would all be over. But not the way she’d planned. She turned off the windscreen wipers and the car engine and watched, with a glorious sense of freedom, as the yellow dust spread over the windscreen. And then, as her airways struggled for a final breath of clean air, she started, for she suddenly knew it wasn’t over. It would never be over. And it was all her fault. For she could have stopped it. Now it was too late. What had she done? And as her chest sucked in one final painful gasp of air, her mouth opened and slackened as if she wanted to say something. For she’d finally remembered. Remembered her son. And the name of that cursed yellow plant that now covered her like a coffin lid.     Rapeseed. —————————————————     “What do you think, Jim? Self-defence?”     Detective Jim Malone nodded.     He looked at the little boy who stood with his back to the field of yellow.     “Poor mite! He must have been terrified! Attacked by a complete stranger who came to view his house. A woman too. What are the chances of that?”     “Yeah, you never know who’s out there, do you?”     Sandy Gallagher put a sympathetic arm round the boy.     “We’d better take him with us.”     The two detectives bundled the little boy into the back of the police car.     He sat silent and morose between the two men.     “Shock, I expect,” said Sandy, on the journey back to town.     Jim nodded.     It was as they were passing fields of yellow that the little boy suddenly spoke for the first time.     “Can you open the window?”     “Open the window! What for?”     “He probably needs some air,” said Sandy.     Jim nodded and pressed the button that lowered the window. A strange smell drifted through the car. It seemed to affect the kid too for he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an inhaler.     Poor kid, thought Jim. Asthma.     He knew what that was like. That’s why he couldn’t wait to get back to the city. His asthma was always worse out here in the country. He couldn’t understand it.     You’d think clean, country air would be good for me.     He felt an unexplained anxiety and his head hurt.     The little boy in the back seat of the police car couldn’t wait to get back to the city too. For he had work to do. On his mission of millennia. When he was a she, he’d concentrated on killing. Women. Through successive lifetimes. But now he was male. He looked out at the fields of yellow spreading its sickly seed over the countryside. A field of rape. Just like he’d be. Spreading himself all over the countryside. And through the millennia. A raper’s relative. Always producing more raper’s relatives. With no-one to stop it. Out of control.     Jim Malone pressed his lips together in satisfaction. He would be his last. For millennia. He experienced a strange pang of regret. But he knew he mustn’t let sentiment get in his way. He was a child. But the body wasn’t important. It was the voice. That was the way he’d recognised him. Just like he’d vowed he’d do. In Egypt. In 472B.C. He’d felt his chest tighten as soon as the kid spoke. The intonation in his voice. The intonation he had memorised. For millennia. Her intonation. The intonation that had made him hate women and kill. Through successive lifetimes. The dream he hadn’t memorised. The dream that kept recurring. The dream that came at nights. Like it always did. The running running of his sandaled feet across desert sand. Away from her. And her bastard. She’d let him down. She’d asked for it. Like all women did. And he’d punished them all from that moment. In his search for her. Through successive lifetimes. But he’d never found her.     She’s probably dead, he thought. Like that poor woman.     But he’d found the child. And he would be his last.     Soon it would be over. The mission of millennia. He felt a glorious sense of freedom. His life would be different from now on. And the next life would be different. And the next. He’d settle down. Maybe have children.     He glanced at the boy sitting next to him, swigging the inhaler as though his life depended on it. The boy who’d lost his mother. Like he lost his lover. In Egypt. In 472B.C.     No, he couldn’t do it. He pressed the button to roll up the window. The environs of the city were fast approaching. He was feeling strangely better. His chest was easing. His head no longer hurt. He could stop it. He could stop it now. Like he’d stopped that damn smell.     Rapeseed. He’d remembered the name.     How apt, he thought.     “You can stay with me, kid,” he said suddenly.     The boy looked at him strangely.     “I can?” he said.     “Sure. After all I could have been your dad.”     He laughed.     “In another life.”     “Or my sister. Or my brother,” went on the boy, excited, as if remembering something.     “Yeah, we’ve got a lot in common,” said Jim, taking out his inhaler and waving it in the air. “After all, we’re all just one big family, aren’t we?”     The boy smiled. The fields of rape had vanished, swallowed by the pollution of the city. But for some strange reason, he felt his chest ease for the first time. And his head no longer hurt. He looked down at Jim Malone’s feet. At the sturdy, black patent shoes.     “I like your style,” he said.     Jim glanced down then turned and smiled at him.     “Yeah, it’s a whole lot better than sandals, isn’t it?”     And they both laughed.

The Buggers Lisa Gray     Language is a funny thing. Yesterday’s swear word is today’s catchphrase. Things change so quickly. Blink and you miss it. I missed it. And so did everyone else. That’s how the Buggers got their power.     I remember the first time the leaflet came through the door. You won’t remember it. It was in the days before our paperless Society.     “Put your mind at ease with a phone and e-mail check from Comscan,” it said. “Protect your communications from public and criminal use. You will have peace of mind. You owe it to yourself.”     It looked like any other leaflet. Harmless. Re-cyclable. So that’s what I did with it. And never gave any more thought to it.     Until the leaflets stopped coming.     And the bills.     “In order to eliminate our carbon footprint we will no longer be issuing paper bills. You can pay your electricity bill online. Go to www——————————.”     That was when things changed.     I trudged wearily up the stairs to the old computer Reggie had given me. He’s a good boy. My Reggie. Looking after his mum.     I logged on. Reggie had shown me how. He was always good with computers.     I was just about to go on to the website when I saw a familiar name on the screen.     “Would you benefit from a Comscan Communications Check? Don’t put yourself at risk! Call now on ———————— or visit our website at www——————————.”     Branching out! I thought. That didn’t take them long.     But that’s how things start.     In a small way.     And get bigger.     An hour later, I sat down to watch the telly, my electricity bill unpaid.     I’d no need to worry about computers. Reggie would do it for me.     He’s a good boy, my Reggie.     It was the adverts.     “Isn’t it time you had a Comscan? A check from the U.K.’s leading provider of telephone and internet security. Press the red button on your remote to find out more.”     I shouldn’t have done it! But I did. I was curious. Like they know we’ll be. And I liked pressing buttons. Like we all used to.     That’s how I joined Comscan.     “I’m safe now,” I said to Reggie when he came over that evening.     Reggie was unusually silent.     “All I need to do now is learn how to send an e-mail,” I said.     “I’ll show you,” said Reggie.     He’s a good boy, my Reggie. Nothing’s too much trouble.     And he’s done so well for himself!     I sent a lot of e-mails at the beginning and made a lot of calls. After all, I was safe. No-one could read my e-mails or listen to my calls. Comscan would see to that.     I guess that’s when I got foolish.     I’ve always been a trusting sort of person. That’s what it was like in my day. Not like today. I sometimes forget times have changed. And people.     It all started when I was ill for two weeks. You can’t afford to be ill these days.     That’s how they get you.     I checked my e-mail for the first time in fourteen days. All two hundred and forty of them. My head buzzed as I read all the final demands threatening court action if I did not pay the bills. Gas, electricity, telephone, car tax, income tax. I couldn’t believe it.     I wasn’t a criminal. And yet I was being treated like one. All because I’d been ill.     That’s when I sent the angry e-mails.     I made a few phone calls too.     “Your calls may be recorded,” said the recorded messages.     I wasn’t worried.     I had Comscan.     Oh there were a few who were downright nasty.     “Don’t speak to me like that!” they said.     Like what? I thought.     I’d only complained. Complaining’s not a crime. Is it?     I told Reggie all about it.     “I don’t think you should do that,” he said.     “I’m only complaining,” I said to him. “It’s not a crime.”     “They’re protecting the public interest,” he said.     “I’m the public,” I said. “And they’re not protecting me. They’re attacking me. All because I was ill.”     “You should have paid your bills,” he said.     I didn’t blame Reggie. Even for not paying my bills. I knew all his money was tied up in shares. Communications, I think.     He had to be a “by the book man”.     In his job.     But I didn’t have to be.     I’d never been interested in politics. Not like Reggie had been.     But I was incensed. I joined the Civil Liberties Campaigners and went on marches.     “Bring back paper bills!” read my placards.     “Paper bills! Paper bills!” chanted the P.C. less pensioners marching behind me.     Of course we attracted the attention of the media.     There were telephone calls. And e-mails. Lots of them.     But I wasn’t worried. I had Comscan.     I was safe.     I hadn’t seen much of Reggie for a while. I guess he was busy. After all, he has an important job.     Then it happened.     I was logging on when I saw it.     “Plans afoot to bug e-mail.”     I read on.     “Plans are afoot for a giant database to retain details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the U.K.,” it said.     “Comscan, the leading provider of telephone and internet security has agreed to pass on its information in the interests of national security.”     I couldn’t believe it.     You couldn’t rely on anyone nowadays.     Every e-mail and phone call in the U.K. to be bugged?     “What evil-minded person came up with that one?” I thought.     But I wasn’t worried.     I wasn’t a threat.     I still phoned Reggie.     He wasn’t available.     Not even when I was arrested.     Things change so quickly. Blink and you miss it. I missed it. And so did everyone else.     That’s how the Buggers got their power.     And Reggie, my Reggie?     Oh, he was on national television. I saw it from my prison cell. Like thousands of others. A spokesman for the Home Office said, “Keeping a database of electronic information is in the interests of National Security. It’s the only way of conquering crime and protecting the public.”     And there he was.     I told you he had an important job.     He retired shortly after that. Made a killing on his shares, I hear.     Comscan.     The funny thing is he looked like any other man. Harmless.     He’d started out in such a small way. And got bigger.     But that’s when they get you.     Things change so quickly. Language. And people.     Just like my Reggie.     The Bugger!

Special Collection Norm Hudson     I’ve never liked change.     Not like Josie. She’s forever changing things. New house, new curtains, new cushions. Not that we can afford it. Not on a dustman’s salary. But she’s clever, my Josie. Wonderful with money. I don’t know how she does it!     Me? I like things to stay the same. I get attached to things, you see. Silly, isn’t it? But I guess there comes a day when you can’t hang on to things. You have to let go. And that day had come.     It was Josie’s idea really. I resisted at first. As I usually did. But then I had to admit she was right.     But it was still painful.     Even as I watched Alf and Joe look around the room of our small, semi-detached.     “You havin’ a clearout?” Alf said jovially, looking round the almost bare room.     A real case, Alf. A laugh a minute.     I nodded.     “Josie’s idea,” I muttered.     “That’s women for you,” said Joe. “Never satisfied with what they’ve got.”     Joe was quieter. Didn’t say a lot.     “Hope it wasn’t a wedding present,” said Alf, as he and Joe lifted each end of the sofa.     “No,” I laughed.     Not a wedding present. More than that.     I looked at the dingy coloured, floral sofa and two chairs. The flowers had been fresh, like our marriage, fifteen years ago, when I’d bought the three piece suite with my first pay packet, after the wedding. Our very first piece of furniture. How excited we both had been! And that was just the start. If that sofa could talk it could tell you a few things, I can tell you. Like, for example, what we got up to on it. Yes, that sofa was part of our lives all right. We’d grown alike together.     I felt a bit sad looking at those flowers, now faded and almost worn away.     Still I had nothing to complain about. It had served us well that suite.     “Hold on a minute!” I said. “You can take the replacement covers and cushions as well!”     I ran into the kitchen and returned clutching a big, black bag. I tossed it on to the sofa.     “I might as well get rid of this too!” I said. “It came with the sofa.”     “Wife couldn’t stand it, eh?” said Joe, looking around for Josie. “Saying goodbye to the sofa.”     “No,” I said. “It’s hard parting with something that’s been such a part of your life.”     “Only way to make room for the new,” said Joe.     I always thought Joe was wise.     I followed Alf and Joe out to the van. I didn’t help them. I couldn’t. Saying goodbye to fifteen years of your life wasn’t easy.     They tossed my sofa with the black bag on it into those grinding blades. I’d watched them every working day of my life reducing other people’s goods to pulp but this wasn’t other people’s. This was mine. I winced as the blades struggled to devour my sofa. My life. Fifteen years of it.     How Jodie would have laughed!     “I don’t know why you get so attached to things!” she had said. “They’re only things! Get rid of them!”     Jodie was right. I realised that, that day.     I’d come home from work, tired. Not in the back-breaking way I used to, in the days of lifting heavy dustbins. No, my job was easier now. Everything automated. Easily disposed of. I enjoyed doing Special Collection. Getting rid of large, cumbersome things other people didn’t want. Making way for the new.     But I’d never used the service myself. There was no need. I was happy with what I’d got.     I thought Jodie was too. It just shows. You never know.     I opened the front door. Right away I knew something was different. The hall seemed empty. No pictures. No ornaments.     I laughed.     Minimalism. I’d forgotten. The “in” thing. Jodie always liked the “in” thing.     She’s probably packed away all my car-boot trinkets in cardboard boxes in the loft, like she always does, I thought.      We’d argue about it, make up on “our” sofa and I’d get them out of the loft the next day, like I always did.     I walked into the living room. It was bare too.     She’s carrying it a bit far, I thought.     That was Jodie all over. No half measures.     “Where are all the pictures and ornaments?” I said.     Not that I needed them. Jodie was all the picture I needed. Standing there looking beautiful in a jacket that almost looked like real leather.     I don’t know how she does it on a dustman’s salary.     I wanted to put my arms round her, feel that leather and the soft body under it. She’d always looked after herself. Eaten small. And I’d been happy to do the same. We’d argue about the ornaments and then make up. Oh, how I was looking forward to the making up!     I took one step towards her.     “I’ve taken them,” she said.     I laughed.     “Taken them where? The loft?”     I’d almost reached her. She moved away.     “I’ve taken everything!” she said.     She seemed distant. Cold. Not like my Jodie.     “Except this.”     She pointed at the sofa.     “I’ve come back for this. But I’ve decided I don’t want it! It’s old! Worn out! Like you! You can get rid of this!”     “What are you talking about?” I said.     Get rid of “our” sofa? What was she thinking about?     “I’ve taken it all, you fool!” she said. “The money in the joint account and the house contents. I don’t want to be a dustbin man’s wife any longer. I want to be rid of it all! I want a change!”     “Look, if it’s that old sofa that’s upsetting you, we can get rid of it,” I said.     Perhaps I had been a bit stubborn about it. I hadn’t realised it upset her so much.     “It’s not that stupid old sofa,” she said. It’s you! You’re weak, spineless and unambitious. Where do you think all your money’s been going for the last fifteen years? I’ve been saving it! Saving it for today! Saving it so I can leave you at last!”     “Leave me?” I said.     “You can’t leave me!” I shouted.     I’ve never liked change.     “Yes, I can,” she said. “I’ve already left. I only came back for the last black bag.”     She pointed to a large black bag on the living room floor.     “What’s in there?” I said.     “The replacement covers for the sofa and the cushions,” she said. “But I don’t want them now.”     I didn’t want the black bag either.     That’s why I got rid of it.     I waited till Alf and Joe had climbed into the lorry and waved them goodbye. I went into the house. It’s a wonderful thing. Special Collection. Everything automated. Easily disposed of. But it’s still painful. A bit like relationships. Still there comes a time when you can’t hang on to things. Jodie was right. And she got her change.     Me? I don’t like change. I like things to stay the same. I get attached to things, you see.     Though I now can see Jodie’s point of view. And I know she’s seen mine.     Funny how you grow alike after fifteen years.     I walked into the kitchen.     But I’m going to give up Special Collection, I thought. It’s too painful getting rid of large, cumbersome things.     I picked up the replacement covers and cushions, that covered the kitchen floor, and walked upstairs to the loft.     I don’t know if Jodie would have approved.     But then she shouldn’t have come back for the last bag – and the sofa.     I guess you could say she became attached to it at last.     Silly, wasn’t she?     But then, as Joe said, that’s women for you.     Never satisfied with what they’ve got.

untitled (grey) Donald Gaither thru grey fog funeral cars’ yellowed lights two-by-two

Janet Kuypers reads poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

November Wind Donald Gaither coulds racing — seagulls ride motionless in the wind

Being Fired From The Sheet Metal Shop By An Ex Lover Doug Draime Hammering the tin flat, I could feel her eyes watching, traveling up and down my body, from the office overlooking the machines. She walked down the stairs into the work area with my check in her beautiful hand. Her thick black hair shinny and pulled back tightly into a bun. The sheet of tin held snug in the automatic vise, I continued to hammer. But then I felt her closer, smelling the Tabu she wore, feeling the heat of her body. I looked up wiping my brow. Her cold, dark eyes were slamming into my mine: “We’re gonna have to let you go” I pointed down at my gym bag “I took my stuff outta my locker this morning, I figured this was coming” She didn’t say a word, just handed me my check, turned and walked away in her tight white mini skirt. As she walked back up the wooden stairs a couple of guys on the other machines, grabbed their crotches, one stuck his tongue out intimating cunnilingus.

Easy Vic G. A. Scheinoha I’m only jumping at shadows, he chides himself. While unseen, the huge, dimly outlined figure slips up closer before it strikes.

Janet Kuypers reads poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

Why? Eric Burbridge     This was the first time I sat in a booth of “The Pancake House” nearest the corner window. It fascinates me to watch pedestrians at a busy intersection press the button to walk across the street. They hit it two or three times.     Why? It don’t work people!     It never worked, not just in my village, but everywhere else. That’s just as ineffective as a “curb your dog” signs. Have you ever seen someone curb their dog?     I needed the exercise so I dropped those questions in the village suggestion box earlier. The mayor, a short guy with an uneven beard and a broken nose, read it on the spot. You know what that got me. But, I must say, it was an articulate “mind your own business.”     I declined a coffee refill, extended my “Hurry Cane” and decided to take the six block journey to Walmart. My meds should be ready. I felt pretty good for a retiree with a trick knee. The heat and humidity works wonders on my occasional touch of arthritic stiffness. I remember when they laid the new sidewalks along the business district, reddish-brown cement with a cobblestone pattern. Those indentations made it a nightmare to shovel the snow. Why? That was another question I should’ve asked. But, the business community didn’t seem to mind, they have snow blowers and salt.     I got to the intersection of California and Turner Ave, and, of course, a little old wearing string less gym shoes and leaning on a walker pressed the walk button. “It don’t work, miss.” I said.     “How do you know?” She snapped and pressed it again.     “Well, excuse me, sorry I mentioned it.” Stand there all day sea hag. She gave me a dirty look when the light changed and traffic came to a squeaking halt. She was first off the sidewalk and gave the cars a mouthful of colorful language.     I took a breather on a bench outside the store. The site of the village police ticketing people for expired stickers and handicap plaques wasn’t pretty. But, at $250 a pop why don’t people exercise more caution? A few employees on a smoke break ran me away. Cigarette smoke makes my nose itch.     I snatched a shopping cart and almost jammed my fingers in the process.     Is there a cart in the store that the wheels don’t bump or stick? I pulled out three; no luck. That was my limit. I hate it when people hear me bumping down the aisle. But, what the hell. My medicine was ready. The short pharmacy assistant with the blotchy skin, nappy hair and nasty attitude rolled her eyes and pushed my order across the counter. I smiled and thanked her. That really pissed her off. Either she likes me or she doesn’t like tall distinguished looking old guys who don’t look their age.     I headed for electronics. I stopped at the five dollar DVD and CD bin.     Why in the world do they throw them in there like that? You can’t get to the bottom and if you could the weight has damaged them. They must recycle them later. On the other side of the store a bin full of boxed candy. The same dumb policy, why?     The temperature peaked and I started to catch the bus, but I needed to complete my exercise. A blue Cadillac STS pulled up and stopped. “Mr. Williams, jump in, it’s too hot. I’ll drop you.” Mayor Atkins said. I’m surprised; he got smart a while ago, now he wants to give me a ride.     “Thank you, Mr. Mayor, but I’ll walk. I’m right down the street.”     “C’mon, I got good news for ya.” I hopped in and the AC felt good. “I hear your block’s got a dog problem. The village will post a few ‘curb your dog’ signs.”     Am I clairvoyant or what? “It does?” He nodded. “I never heard of it.” He pulled in my drive. “Thanks for the ride, Mr. Mayor, have a good one.” I saw my neighbor’s four-legged shit factory make a deposit on my freshly cut lawn. That was a first. I guess the mayor was right.

Powerless Eric Burbridge     I’m an auto thief apprentice of the legendary Ernst Pitts. My name is Mallory Pitts, his nephew. Both of us are 60’s muscle car enthusiasts.     We’re also vampires...that’s right vampires. We’re smart ones; we rarely feed on humans although human blood is best there are other alternatives.     We work for a guy named Pablo. Pablo’s only love, stealing cars and bodybuilding. He was short and wide. His powerful build intimidated his employees, except a couple of dark average height and weight guys like us who could literally rip his head off that body of his. He resented that, but wanted his best people, his words, to deliver a ’69 Charger R/T he staked out.     “Cool,” my uncle said.     The target vehicle was parked in a driveway under a large tree on a dark quiet street. Good cover, the house looked empty and a block party down the street made it ideal. That’s why it didn’t smell right. Uncle Ernst agreed, but we needed the money. “We do our usual recon with an extra vehicle,” he said. Our normal was two. And, our methods are guarded as close as our supernatural status. Vans are typical, but if you want to get caught use a van for anything. Keep it safe and simple. Late model vehicles aren’t conspicuous; our preference Toyotas. We do the usual, disable the alarm/gps, check for cop traps and go straight to the transfer point.     The off and on drizzle made it humid. High wind gusts set off alarms on several vehicles and as usual nobody paid attention. All I needed was a retractable slim jim and wire cutters. The white Charger with the black bubble bee stripe waited. Nothing changed since I drove by; I walked up to the target popped the door, cut the wires to the system. The alarm died. I did a double take of the area and backed out the driveway. Three blocked later I made a right turn and on the next corner Uncle Ernst jumped in.     “Let’s switch, I know you love these especially a spotless beauty like this one.”     “Thanks, nephew.” He laughed and drummed on his fingers on the wood grain steering wheel. We pulled on to 95th street and cruised west. Thirty seconds later a flood of flashing blue lights sped toward us.     “I don’t like this uncle.”     “They’re coming up behind us too. Maybe they’re going somewhere else...” He didn’t finish before the cops cars drifted into our lane. We made a hard right into a service alley. “Get out and wait here if you can Mallory, I got this!” The 440 Magnum engine kicked in and he zoomed out the alley. I ducked between two dumpsters. A squad car zipped past. Good. They missed me. I braced myself on the foul smelling container. My left hand slipped and splashed in a puddle of water. Something bit the mess out of my hand; tiny sharp teeth punctured my glove. I snatched it back. I fell and my face splashed in the putrid water. A stinging sensation engulfed my entire body.     Oh no, a rat bite!     I was paralyzed. The only thing that can neutralize a vampire other then sunlight is rabies. The incubation for humans; 3 to 8 weeks, for us it’s instantaneous, but temporary if you aren’t bitten multiple times. I saw something creeping along the wall in the glow of the street light. Suddenly, a car sped through and splashed water in my face. I winked profusely to ease the burning in my eyes and slight numbness took over below my neck. Two rats waddled through the puddle and sniffed at my mouth. Their whiskers rubbed against my nose and lips. My mind fought to override the paralysis. No luck.     Please don’t bite or chew on me!     More vermin ruffled the hair on the back of my head. Another crawled on my face and stuck his noise in my ear. Their squeaky sounds were driving me crazy.     If I could only move my arms!     My cell rang. He must’ve gotten away. Good. This virus should wear off soon.     A rat bumped around in my pants leg around my ankles. I felt little sharp feet creep up my leg and stop. What now? I closed my eyes; if the sunlight doesn’t get me the rats will.     Think positive, Pitts. *     Birds started to chirp and then I heard a truck pull up. The vermin scattered and the feeling in my legs returned, but I still couldn’t move my head. I saw boots and then somebody grabbed me, threw me in the truck and the door slammed.     “You didn’t answer.” Uncle Ernst said. “What happened to you?” He tossed a towel in the back. I sat up and wiped off. The sky turned dark blue. Dawn approached.     “A rat bit me...I thought I wouldn’t make it.”     “A rat?”     “Yeah.”     “Man...sit back, we’re going somewhere. I got a surprise for you.” We pulled into a garage we use. I felt better. In the corner Pablo was strapped to a chair with his mouth duct taped. “The only one who knew about the job is you.” He slapped Pablo, hard. “We barely got away. You set us up.” He shook his head and moaned and groaned through the tape. “Now you’ll see what we can really do. You first nephew it’ll strengthen you.”     I sank my canines into his jugular. That arterial flow pulsated in the back of my throat. I gulped until I was satisfied. Uncle Ernst finished him off. We relaxed.     “Let’s branch out on our own.” He said.     “Well, uncle, I think I’ll wait a while. After tonight’s mess I have to rethink if this is the way I want to make a living.”

Follow Up M. A. Schaffner You can᾿t tell by looking in our faces. For some of us the tests are just routine. For others, of course, a sentence of death. Brave or stupid, cowardly or aware, more or less imaginative or astute -- strange that we should all be called a patient. Then the friendly helpful receptionist who shuffles and cuts evolving decks of files. Then the corridors, buffed and vacuumed daily. As many times as we sit and wait for each procedure labeled as routine, the first that isn᾿t can only mean but one link in a chain that holds a swing on a porch from which we watch the healthy pass.

Anthropogenic M. A. Schaffner There was a time when Pterodactyls flew around the atrium through the fountain that spurted up three storeys in the mall. This shows it was never about just shopping but the seafood crisis and thermal drafts emanating from the first floor food court. No, I can᾿t imagine what it felt then, torn from oceanic vistas and plains as vast as half the planet, as the roads that tie one outlet plaza to the next in a necklace of the world᾿s great wonders then hung around its winged serpent᾿s neck. Our own necks swell each day. Our collars shrink to match the slow contraction of the time allowed for empty spaces on the maps.

M. A. Schaffner Short Bio     M. A. Schaffner has had poems published in Shenandoah , Prairie Schooner , Agni , Poetry Ireland , Poetry Wales , and elsewhere. Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia or the 19th century.

One Thursday Liam Spencer     It was a time of excitement. After being with my girlfriend for eighteen months of great times, her house finally sold. She and her hubby would soon be able to finally divorce. We were in love, and things were amazing between us. We found an amazing apartment in the happening Queen Anne Area of Seattle, and moved in together. It was the beginning of a truly amazing chapter in our relationship.     There was one area that held our relationship back at that time. Her sister had recently moved into the area. The three of us were to live together. Her sister was needy. She had left a long term relationship in Salt Lake, and both the guy and memories haunted her daily. She needed Samantha.     I tried to stay out of the way as best I could, especially when her sister’s needs were at their highest. Numerous times I left the apartment to wander the streets until I felt it safe to return. To be honest, it was tedious. It happened so often. Nearly daily.     Nonetheless, there were great times, with laughter and love. Not to mention the sex. Every night, not just a few times a week. Shared meals and mornings, laughter, conversations, morning coffee, plans.... It was happiness for the most part.     One Thursday evening, her sister came home upset. Her ex had pulled yet more shit. On and on. Endless. She needed her older sister. I left so they could talk. Samantha gave me the look that said, “thank you.”     I walked and walked. I was tired and bored. I decided to go in to a bar down the street. It was a dive bar with neighborhood feel. I heard the pool table as I went in. it might be a good way to kill a few hours, I thought.     The place was filling up. I got into a game of pool for the first time in years, and managed to win. Then I won again. Being an outsider, no one was left to play. They all did their social stuff, and tuned out.     In walked four women. All were attractive, and in their higher twenties. They were buzzed on this and that. Immediately, they seized on the pool table and me. A tall brunette grabbed my pool stick and seductively blew the chalk off it.     She introduced herself. Tanya. Her eyes smiled devilishly. She stood all too close. I kept looking for Samantha.     Tanya stood closer, then closer still. She looked away, toward her girlfriend, who smiled more broadly. Suddenly, I was grabbed from behind, and violently pulled toward the pool table. Tanya shoved hard. I landed with my back on top of the pool table, with Tanya climbing on top, as though she was riding me.     She leaned in, her eyes aglow, in power.     “We’re taking you home tonight...”     She kissed me, her tongue sliding into my mouth.     “If my girlfriend sees this, she’ll kill us all.”     “Well bring her too then.”     The lesbian bartender/owner rescued me, shoeing the girls off. They went off to get even higher.     A short dullard looking guy stood there in front of me. He was with three other people. All looked dullard. He spoke in harsh terms with a deep southern accent.     “YOU on THIS table?! What the hell?”     “Yeah, rack’em up.” What the hell indeed.     I won the first game, as he scratched. Rather than pleasant, he scowled.     “Who’s next?!”     “I don’t know.”     “I AM!”     I looked around. There was no one.     “Rack’em.”     I lost bad, and didn’t care. He beamed, and challenged all. I put quarters up. What the hell.     We went out for a smoke. He bragged and talked, then kissed his girlfriend violently. The world was his.     I finished and went inside. The girls from earlier had taken the table. They laughed silliness as they shot the wrong balls. Giggles. Hearty. Great times. The same brunette came over and grabbed my privates, then kissed me, laughing and flirting, then laughing again. My mind wondered....No. No way I would give up Samantha.... Still, nice to be wanted.     In walked Alabama. His eyes flashed hate. It was HIS table. He ran over, arguing violently. The girls laughed on and on. As one shot, he grabbed the cue ball, and yelled, “IT’S MY TABLE!” He slammed the cue ball onto the table, hard as possible.     “HEY!” One of the owners. She was a bull dike. Her muscles had muscles. One of the nicest people I have ever met.     “WHAT?! IT”S MY FUCKING TABLE! THESE BITCHES....”     “ENOUGH!”     The guy picked up the cue ball again. His blood running hot. He threw it as hard as he could. The ball hit me right in the chest.     “YOU FUCK!”     I began to charge at him.     An arm smacked against me so hard it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was one of the owners. She stood there, muscles and all, face purple with rage, ready to beat ass, as though she’d been preparing for this for years.     “He’s mine!” She gritted through her teeth.     “Yes, he is.” I answered, stopped in my tracks.     “COME ON, BITCH!” The dumb shit spewed.     He hit her first. There was no impact.     I’m not sure if it was her right hook or her second swing that really knocked him out. Nor am I sure of who all kicked his friend and girlfriend’s asses. All I know is that I, for once, was not in trouble. The cops came and I hid inside sipping beer.     The girls were gone for the time. I decided to try to sneak home, hoping Faye wasn’t still needing Samantha.     The place was dark. I slowly crept in, making my way down the hallway toward our room, careful not to disturb Faye.     I used my cell phone to light my way into bed. Samantha pulled my arm under her and nestled against me. Nothing has ever felt so good.     “Where have you been?’ she tenderly asked.     “Seeing what I’ve missed, and realizing that I don’t miss it.”     I held her tighter. We both let out satisfaction. Life was merely beginning...

Fuck him Liam Spencer     Things were going as well as they could, I guess.     After a long battle of unemployment that followed a long spell on workers’ comp, I had a new job with a very well respected government agency. I was excited for such an opportunity. I dreamt of the usual; benefits, pension, vacation, the same health insurance Congress Critters get, and job security through our strong union.     Well, to be more correct, I had what turned out to be a tryout. IF I could make the grade, I might eventually get those things. I didn’t realize any of this at the time.     They “hired” in unbelievable numbers. By the hundreds. Literally. Most would quit or get fired. It was a long hard job, every day. There was little to no training. We would be weeded out, one by one, whether the reasons for dismissal were real or imagined.     I hadn’t realized what I had gotten myself into yet.     The trainer that I was sent with for three days remarked on my walk speed. I was the fastest he had seen in his twenty years of training. The brief training was only regarding carrying mail, and little else. We were in a quiet suburb north of Seattle. The trainer knew all of his customers very well, and really knew the ins and outs. He could do his route blindfolded, but certainly not gagged.     After training, I was sent out with three hours of mail. The time given does not matter. Each “swing (block)” is to take fifteen minutes somehow. That meant twelve swings. It might take a newbie five or even up to seven hours to complete three hours. I came rolling in after three and a half hours. Supervisors stared at me with their mouths hanging open.     My reputation took off quickly. I never mentioned that I had fifteen years logistics experience. Supes began arguing over who got me on their part of delivery. I was sent to a different route each day, and somehow ended up figuring shit out, although I cussed like crazy under my breath by the minute.     The first of us newbies to be let go was, in truth, just not cut out for the job. Some just don’t have it. A few others could have been good, but made simple mistakes while in too much of a hurry. The corporate officers would routinely stake out new hires, and wait for us to make a mistake. If caught, it was termination.     The probationary period was one hundred and twenty calendar days. That’s a long time to be both fast as fuck and perfect. Every day meant some newbie was fired or quit. Every day brought panic.     I finally got put on the same route for a few days in a row. It was a nice route in the wealthy upper Queen Anne neighborhood. It was a hot summer, and lugging all that mail around in ninety three degree heat took it’s toll. Yet, this route had long stretches of wondrous shade.     I walked along happily, surrounded by the wealth of others. Their three to four million dollar homes stood so friendishly, so welcoming. It felt like a home, especially since almost no one was home. I happily marched along dropping mail, breathing in the cooler, shaded air, dropping mail in known mailboxes. I reasoned that, even though I may never own a three million dollar house like these, at least I’d get to work in such areas every day. It was such a break from dreary places I lived. Night and day. This really is the job for me.     I took the next swing down a one way road that looked very much like a mere driveway at the entrance. It was like a secret road that few would know even existed, so private, secluded. The road winded and turned, houses littered sporadically. The whole place seemed so upbeat. Undiscovered.     There sat a brand new Rolls Royce. New. Beautiful. Amazing. My eyes couldn’t part from it. I actually drooled. What a beauty! I watched it as I walked past, then watched it again as I neared in the other direction, delivering, delivering, delivering...all on pace. Happily moving on and on.     I finished that swing, drove a block, and began the next. This swing was sunnier, and I began sweating more. There were hills of stairs to haul the mail up and down. Such a beautiful neighborhood. The one house for sale was three and a half million dollars, and needed a roof.     Around my fifth delivery, I heard tires squealing. Then I heard an engine revving, followed by more squealing. Soon the Rolls from earlier came flying through the street. Smoke rolled from its’ wheels. The beauty came to a screeching stop right beside me. The tinted window rolled down. An older man with a white beard glared at me.     “HEY!!!! YOU’RE DELIVERING MAIL TO THE WRONG GAWD DAMNED ADDRESSES!!!!!! LOOK AT THIS SHIT!”     He was waving a sales flier. Third class mail.     “LOOK, YOU STUPID SHIT...YOU OVIOUSLY CAN’T READ, SO I’LL READ IT TO YOU! 6172...6172! 6172 IS MY GAWD DAMN NEIGHBOR! THIS...YOU PUT THIS IN MY MAILBOX!”     My eyes were wide in panic. This could cost me my job. Newbies got fired for such things.     “Oh sir...I am so, so sorry! I’m new on this route and...”     “I DON’T WANT TO FUCKING HEAR IT!!!! YOU’RE JUST TOO FUCKING STUPID FOR THIS SIMPLE FUCKING JOB!!! I WILL HAVE YOUR GAWD DAMN JOB FOR THIS! YOU STUPID SHIT!”     “Sir, I am so very sorry. I’ll go back and deliver it if you want...I...”     “NO!!! NO!!! HELL NO! I NEVER WANT YOU BACK HERE AGAIN! YOU’RE TOO FUCKING STUPID...”     He went on, enraged. Something hit a nerve with me. I took a deep breath, then interrupted him;     “SIR! If you have a problem with my performance, call 1 800 EAT SHIT!”     His face went from red to purple. The window rolled up. The Rolls tore off, smoke flying off tires. It rounded a corner violently, barely missing a woman walking a stroller across the street. She hurried along, around the corner.     I walked along delivering mail. Suddenly the neighborhood sucked. The job sucked. I was terrible. I grumbled, and counted down hours until I would get home and drink beer, alone and hopeless, but away from shit. Maybe this wasn’t my kind of job after all.     A few houses later, I walked up thirty feet of stairs. Sweat was pouring off me. My smile was gone. The mail seemed to weigh even more. The sun beat down mercilessly.     The door opened as I approached the porch. An older man walked out. His plain white tee shirt barely held his belly back. He had a face that seemed to naturally snarl as if he hadn’t smiled in twenty years. His hands were rough, obviously from working very hard. The house was amazing and obviously pricy. He looked at me with snarl.     “Oh fuck,” I thought, “I cannot have fucked up your mail! I haven’t even delivered it yet!”     I triple checked the address.     “Here.” He growled. He handed me an ice cold Pepsi.     “Oh, thank you!”     He took his mail, looked it over grumpily.     “I heard that son a bitch.”     His scowl deepened into aggression.     “You won’t BELIEVE the shit we all have to put up with around here...all because THAT guy was probably born with a tiny pecker!”     I laughed so hard I almost fell over. The old guy lost his scowl and actually grinned. It looked like his face broke. His face turned red. He regained the scowl, turned and walked inside.     “Fuck that guy. You’re doing a fine job. Keep up the good work.”     I finished the day roughly on schedule. I was afraid of getting fired, but it never happened. All that was said about the Rolls complaint was a supe saying “Well, nothing new there. Welcome aboard.”     Every day, for as long as long as I was on that route, I made sure to misdeliver that asshole’s mail. I’ve never been on that route since.     Fuck him.

Milton and World War Two Drew Marshall     “Excuse me, young man, can you help me carry this bag to my building, down the street. I’m seventy seven. Yesterday was my birthday. I’m a World War Two, veteran. Do you remember that war?     “I know the history. I wasn’t born yet.”     I was airborne in New Guinea. We were there for weeks, without water or lights. They had to drive trucks in with food and water so we could bath. Thank God, Harry Truman dropped the atom bomb. They say it’s inhuman, but what is war? War is inhuman. The Japanese never would have surrendered. Thank God, Harry Truman dropped the atom bomb.”     “I agree. The Germans wouldn’t have hesitated, to use the bomb on us. I watched a documentary on it. We’re lucky we beat them to the punch.”

Always As Honest As Your Last Drink Benjamin Sabin     It happened that night. William was drunk—as drunk as he’d ever been without blacking out—when a woman had come racing around the corner and grabbed him by the loosely fitting coat.     “Did you see him? Did you see my boy come by here?” she said. Her grip was tight, pleading, as if his coat could help.     “No,” said William.     “Are you sure? He just ran this way. You’d have to be blind.”     “Blind drunk,” said William, convinced that he was the cleverest man about.     She let go and he floated backward out of arms reach.     “Maybe I did see him,” he said. “Short little guy, right? Tousled hair?”     “You saw him. I knew it.”     “How could I not? That little bastard stole my wallet.”     “Which way did he go?”     William pointed. “Down by the river like he had a fire under his ass.”     “Thank you, thank you so much. I thought I’d lost him.”     The woman ran as fast as she could in the direction that William’s finger had indicated and called out as an afterthought: “I’ll return your wallet when I find my boy.”     William finished his smoke, walked back into the bar, and ordered a drink with confidence.

console Janet Kuypers haiku 3/1/14 canned condolences were all I heard when I lost the love of my life

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

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku console 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)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku console as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (C, with a “day to night” filter)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku console as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem console live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem console live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

Vigilantism William Masters     Antonia had paid $85 (on sale, marked down from $125) for a beige linen skirt she found on the sale rack while browsing in LYDIA SHAW, a tony woman’s boutique at the Embarcadero Center. She had found the skirt on Friday evening after work and intended to wear it (with her long-sleeved, navy blue raw silk blouse and beige Evan Picone pumps) the next afternoon for a late lunch with her visiting sister. She did not especially like her older sister, so she aimed to outscore her on the sartorial scale.     When she got home (she took a 41Union bus) and tried on the skirt with the blouse and the shoes, she noticed that a good four inch piece of hem was loose. If Antonia’s sister had bought the skirt, she would have simply repaired the hem herself. If Antonia had still lived at home, she would have given the skirt to her mother for repair. But Antonia’s fingers had never touched a needle and thread. Looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror, she felt the absurd pleasure she derived from her purchase leaking away, replaced with an easy annoyance soon preempted by that petulance so commonly shared by younger, prettier, smarter sisters. She made up her mind to arrive at the store when it opened Saturday morning and demand that the weekend tailor repair the loose hem that morning.     By 9:30 the next morning Antonia was on the No. 45 bus (the No. 41 Union ran only during peak hours on weekdays), rather surprised to see so many people so early on a Saturday morning and so thankful to find a seat she didn’t have to share. Antonia sat near the rear of the bus on one of two plastic seats facing each other (like the end seats on the Southern Pacific commuter train). Across from her sat a young man with a whimpering little girl of about six who Antonia assumed was his daughter due to the strong physical resemblance also shared by the slightly older boy seated on the other side of the father. The trio sat uncomfortably at attention. Tears streamed down the little girl’s cheeks and sobs erupted from her clenched face.     “Stop crying. Stop it,” her father repeated while administering a series of tiny punches to her shoulder.     Seated in the back was a group of noisy teenagers located just beneath the NO FOOD - RADIOS SILENT sign, playing a boom box. An obviously annoyed elderly woman, sitting nearby, turned around and sternly pointed to the sign and asked them to turn off the radio.     “Hey, old lady, show me your MUNI badge,” responded the anonymous speaker. The closely shaved sides of his head accentuated the hunk of long black hair covering his scalp, projecting a scariness to rival the current level of make-up and special effects seen in movies.     The little girl continued crying, now louder than ever. “Stop it,” her father continued. “Close your mouth. Now.”     When the little girl didn’t respond to the order, the father pressed the inside of his hand upward against her chin to stifle the cries.     “Stop it!”     The little girl stopped just long enough to adjust to this new, painful situation then pulled her father’s hand away.     “Bobby, help me!” she implored.     The older brother neither moved nor acknowledged his sister’s plea, although Antonia sensed his discomfort. Tears flowed and sobs continued. The father took hold of his daughter’s wrist and squeezed it tightly between his fingers.     “Stop it! Stop crying,” he insisted.     As he released his hand from his daughter’s wrist, Antonia saw the white finger marks left by the father’s grip suddenly refill with blood.     “Stop it!”     He shook her violently. As the son began to lean forward, his father’s outstretched hand pushed him back into his seat. Antonia sensed the father’s rage with his son for this gesture of disobedience and felt terrified as she observed his waning patience with the daughter run out.     At just this moment a tall, shaven headed, skinny young man rose from his seat located between the boom box kids and the benched family. The skinny young man’s trouser cuffs were tied with shoe laces. A baseball cap was tucked underneath the necktie that served as his belt. Hermes was neatly stitched on the left cuff of his long-sleeved shirt. The bike messenger grabbed the bus bar (for steadiness) with his left hand and the collar of the father with his free hand. This single-handed grip lifted the father several inches from his seat, and then abruptly released him to his former position. With a gesture of unsurpassing swiftness and grace, Hermes picked up a surprised little girl and gently placed her in his former seat. Now seated next to the father, the messenger turned his face to the father’s head, and sotto vocce said,     “Don’t get up.”     The messenger gripped the father’s wrist.     “Don’t move.”     With a movement, as sure as any chiropractic adjustment, the messenger abruptly rotated the father’s wrist. Antonia heard a loud snap. The father winced, but remained silent while for an instant, the son’s eyes met the messenger’s stare witnessed by the elderly woman.     The woman turned around in her seat to look the teen-aged speaker in the eye, delivering a cautionary glance which she lowered, like a spotlight, to his wrist. His hand involuntarily twitched as he reduced the volume.     The little girl, seated in her new position, had stopped crying.     The bus had just turned from Union onto Stockton Street, stopping to allow a crowd of anxious shoppers to board as they headed for Union Square carrying empty plastic bags. Antonia, impatient to leave and transfer to the 1 California bus line, rose simultaneously with the messenger to disembark at the next stop. As she headed for the back door, the messenger turned to the back seat, ripped the boom box from the lap of its owner and threw the radio out the open bus window. A tiny explosion registered the crash. In three long strides the messenger reached the back door of the stopped bus and jumped off, disappearing into the dense Saturday morning Stockton street crowd. Only the top of his shaven head remained visible as it moved down the sidewalk, rising above the shorter Asian statures.     Antonia had barely escaped the bus before it continued sparking its way on wires through the Stockton Street tunnel. Relieved, but teary eyed, she crossed the street, waiting within a large group for a 1 California. When it arrived in just a couple of minutes, a group of old Asian women impolitely pushed her aside to board. She waited for the next 1 California that arrived in record time, but when the bus doors opened Antonia could not make her feet climb the bus steps.     “On or off, lady?” the MUNI driver shouted, out of patience but not out of breath.     Antonia stepped aside, gripped by a feeling of helplessness and fear, followed by a general sensation of physical weakness.     “Don’t pass out,” she told herself.     As the bus pulled away she regained her aplomb and decided to walk the remaining distance, all downhill, from the bus stop to the Embarcadero Center. A ten minute walk brought her to the front doors of LYDIA SHAW through which she passed as tightly wound as a spool of thread.     She approached the counter and recognized the sales associate as the person who had actually rung up the sale only last night.     “Good morning.”     “Hello.”     “I bought this skirt last night.” She pulled out the skirt and the receipt from the bag. Her right hand had formed itself into a fist and rested on the counter. “I don’t want to return or exchange it,” she assured the young sales associate,” I just want the tailor to sew up this hem,” she said holding the loose material between two fingers of her left hand, and leaning slightly forward added, “by noon today.”     The young sales associate noticed beads of perspiration on the customer’s forehead. “Oh, yes. I remember you. Just a moment. I’ll see what I can do. Please have a seat.” She walked from behind the counter and led Antonia toward a sofa covered in an old fashioned style of elaborate embroidery. In a few minutes a striking looking woman in her mid-sixties walked up to Antonia, extending her hand.     “Hello. I’m Lydia Shaw. Millie advised me about your problem. Although we don’t maintain a tailor on the premises during weekends anymore, I think I can help you.” She walked to the counter and picked up the skirt and examined the Visa slip, “Won’t you come with me, Ms. Foerster?”     Antonia followed her into an elegant office and sat down in a high-backed, wood-framed chair upholstered in some complicated pattern. Ms. Shaw poured two cups of tea then sat down behind an enormous wooden desk inlaid with a hand-decorated leather blotter.     “Have some caffeine-free chamomile tea, my dear.”     Antonia accepted the tea. Ms. Shaw pulled out a rolling drawer loaded with spools of thread.     “I’m using some really wonderful Chinese silk thread,” she said putting on a pair of glasses and expertly threading a needle. She sipped her tea. “You know, I started in this business forty-one years ago by sewing costumes for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.”     She had begun stitching the hem with surprising speed.     I used to sew, mostly repairing costumes worn by singers who kept changing sizes, usually in the wrong direction. After only a few years I developed arthritis peculiar to the repetitive movements associated with hand sewing. Lucky for me, I was still young, but not as pretty as you, Ms. Foerster. My lover during that period, a three pack-a-day smoker, was a rich, fabric importer who was, as they said in those days, besotted with me. Of course, he was married. After his early death at forty-three from a heart attack, I learned that he had left me a considerable sum of money. His wife, a famous beauty who had been painted in her youth by Paxton, was livid. Not because her husband had a mistress, but because I was a young, not very pretty seamstress. She felt not diminished, but embarrassed by the comparison. Although she couldn’t prevent me from obtaining the money, eventually, she convinced me that years of litigation would pass before I saw a penny. I had to promise to leave New York City and never return. The weather and environs around San Francisco have been much better for my arthritis and I have, as they say, prospered.”     She had completed sewing the hem and admired her own handiwork.     “There,” she said folding the skirt and rising from her chair. “What are you going to wear with it?”     “A long-sleeved, blue raw silk blouse.”     “Such good taste. I hope I shall see you again, Ms. Foerster. Good bye.”     As Antonia left the store, she felt somewhat relaxed. Instead of catching a bus immediately, she walked a few blocks to stretch her legs. Approaching the 1 California bus stop, she felt her pulse begin to race. Hearing the sound of the bus, she actually felt a sensation of pins and needles spreading throughout her body. When the bus stopped, quite near to her, she changed her mind and decided to take a No. 42 or a Marina Express instead. Those buses would drop her in walking distance to her apartment. She backtracked to the appropriate bus stop. Again, after practically no wait, a 42 pulled up. Antonia allowed everyone else to board the bus before she began to step up.     She couldn’t budge. As her body temperature dropped, the bus driver shot her a merciless look. “Are you coming girl?”     “No. No thank you.”     The sudden closing of bus doors sounded to Antonia like a slap. Reflexively she laid her hand on her cheek. She walked three blocks to the line of cabs in front of Hyatt Regency Hotel. Seated inside a cab, she instantly relaxed.     “Larkin and Greenwich,” she snapped at the driver.     As she rode home she knew at once what lay before her and coolly began to calculate how much a daily, round-trip cab ride to work would cost her each week, each month and so on and so forth.

Average Allie: A Narrative That Will Inevitably Be Made Into a Four-Part Film Series for Tweens Kevin Cooley     Jessie’s eyes slid quickly over to the—no, no, her name can’t be Jessie. That’s a man’s name too, you know—much too ambiguous to garner any real sympathy from the major demographic: young female readers.     Bella’s eyes—darted implies a sense of urgency, let’s go with that—but no, Bella won’t do either—been used.     How about Allie? Allie is vulnerable enough for any thirteen to eighteen-year-old girl to relate to. And yet, at the same time, Allie isn’t repulsive and worn to the point where it’s completely unreasonable to imagine her as a point of sexual desire by the male lead. Alyssa or Kim would probably work too—but we’ll take Allie for now and pocket the other names for another slightly insecure placeholder of a teenaged girl who seems plain on the outside, yet who yearns deeply for ironically mundane adventures on the inside.     Allie’s eyes darted amongst the ice skaters as they weaved patterns of circles around her and her best friend Anna—but Anna’s got the same first letter as Allie and has a slightly foreign sound to it and it’s probably more patriotic and generally more relatable to call her Stephanie.     A familiar tune that Allie vaguely recognized as a popular one floated into her. She hardly noticed; she would need all of her focus to make sure that she found him, the guy of her dreams, the perfect gentleman whose scribbled image occupied every other page of her algebra notebook in monochrome glory.     The only guy who could match up to this description was, of course, Nathan.     Except that his name was Eric, which makes him sound so much more sensitive.     “Is he here tonight Steph?” asked Allie. She stole a look behind her, still skating in a forward motion.     “Who, Nathan?”     “No, it’s Eric now.”     “Oh, right,” said Steph with a curt nod of immediate recollection as she swerved around an incoming skater. “He’s the strong and reliable main male character who fulfills social norms by seeming to defy them and captures your heart by taking an inexplicable interest in you, right Allie?”     “Yup, that would be him.”     He had to be there. He must just be getting a snack or something like that. He must be over at the snack stand, sauntering across the floor with ease in spite of his clunky skates and laughing with his significantly less sparkly friends who fade in and out of existence at the edges of the camera’s field of vision. His black muscle shirt would probably be rippling with his bulging-tight biceps that—     Allie’s legs buckled and her nose felt like it was cleaved in half as her body collided with the sideboard. All she could think of was that she hoped Eric didn’t see her carelessness. What a clumsy girl! How relatable! I’d bet that has happened to you before, huh?     She felt Steph’s hands wrapping around her and pulling her back to safety. Except, no, she didn’t because that would imply she finds some sort of solace in Stephanie’s friendship and that would in turn require further development of Stephanie’s character.     “Allie, you’re having a third-person omniscient thought tangent again,” said Steph impatiently.     “Sorry Steph,” Allie said from the shelter of Steph’s arms.     “Yeah, well, that’s what you get for being the point of view character,” she teased.     Allie laughed and hopped back to her feet. The pair circled the rink a few times, Allie’s head occasionally slanting one way or another to find signs of him.     When Allie came close to another full-on collision, this time with another wobbling skater, Steph placed her mittened hand on Allie’s shoulder and stopped her in the middle of the rink.     “What,” Allie said.     Steph took an enormous breath. “Do you want some genuine and heartfelt advice about this situation that I’m warranted to give to you because of my status as the experienced one that will lead you astray since you won’t be listening to your heart because you’ll be giving in to peer pressure?”     Allie closed her eyes and sighed. “Well, that would be fitting of your character archetype. Go on.”     But what isn’t fitting is the fact that Allie and Steph are ice skating, which could feasibly be a bonding experience for a group of young women and, to be honest, I really just don’t know what to have them talk about other than Eric. It’s probably safe to assume that the reader is going to “get” the relationship between Allie and Steph anyways since the reader probably has her own girl friends—they’ll get it I guess.     No, ice skating won’t do.     Seeing as Allie is a semi-standard teenaged-I-think girl with relationship issues, it would definitely be more appropriate if the pair were at a school dance, which they now are.     “This is the deal, right?” said Stephanie casually as she twiddled one of the particularly bright sequins on her dress between her glittery thumb and forefinger. “Eric is an incredible guy. You’re going to need to be as plain and dull as possible if you want to get his attention on that dance floor.”     “Do you think he’ll dance with me?” Allie mutters.     “Don’t get all present tense on me now Allie,” Steph warned as she pressed her hands tightly to her hips. “That’s exactly the kind of attitude that’s going to make Eric think that you’re a real person. And the fact that you’re not that kind of person seems to be the reason he likes you...which doesn’t make too much sense, if you think about it, but whatever.”     But Allie didn’t have time to register Steph’s futile warnings about the tense of her actualized dialogue because he was striding gracefully across the floor in a dust cloud of positive physical adjectives. Eric’s chiseled expression was accentuated by deep chocolate eyes that sunk carefully into the frame of his face to give off the impression that he was constantly contemplating his next action. The ink-stained hairs drifting lazily across his fa—no, no. His jet-black hair made him look so mysterious—better. Yes, jet-black, wow. The dark buttons of his equally dark dress shirt climbed his tight-formed abs and constricted to the notches in each one to lead gracefully into a few mercifully open buttons and a cream-white undershirt. And his face was chiseled. Chiseled as if the hand of a master Renaissance sculptor had personally chipped every fragment away from his godly cheeks into pristine flushed peach-pearl skin. Yes, chiseled. What a great word to describe the way in which his face was carved because it carries the implicit metaphor that somebody took the painstaking time to whittle his stone-hewn face in the same way that a sculptor would. Do you get it yet? Yes, you. Just wanted to make sure—it’s so important that I, the omniscient narrator, feel the need to step out of my elevated throne in Allie’s mind to personally inform you that his skin is, in fact, chiseled.     Yeah, it’s chiseled.     Oh yeah. And Allie and Stephanie both had brown hair.     The god-man approached slowly. The moisture in Allie’s throat choked out into a dry scratchiness. His steps were careful and well-measured. Stephanie was moving her lips but words didn’t seem to be coming out of them. He was approaching her—little insignificant Allie! To imagine that an all-powerful, muscle-strapped human being of the superior gender such as Eric Robinson could ever give little last-nameless Allie his attention was mind boggling.     “Hey,” said Eric in a voice as smooth as honeydew and rippling with mannish charisma.     “H—hey,” said Allie.     “Want to know something interesting?” said Eric, his eyebrows rising slightly.     It should be noted that, at this point in the story, Stephanie had an urgent appointment to attend and ran off from the dance. Never again would she return to the narrative.     “I—I think so,” said Allie, unsure of what Eric could possibly have to tell her.     Time stood still as Eric ran his nimble fingers through the thick locks of hair curtaining his forehead. Allie watched his every motion, completely mesmerized.     “Your family doesn’t understand you, do they?” asked Eric quietly.     “No, they don’t” said Allie. “It makes me quite relatable, but not in a way that’s so specific I’m locking anyone out.”     “We might have just talked for the first time, but I do understand you.”     His eyes, thick-laced with obscure beauty, met hers. There was silence for one tense moment. Eric’s neck craned slowly to touch his soft-but-still-masculine lips to Allie’s parched, chapped and generally average ones; her insides leapt into an elevated cluster of central joy.     As their lips came apart, Allie felt a burning question arise up with the passion inside of her.     “Wait, Eric. I just don’t understand something. I have a question I need you to answer.”     “Whatever it is, I can handle it for you,” said Eric with the slight crane of his neck dripping confident gusto.     “Why me? What makes me the one you love?”     But at that exact moment, Laura, one of Allie’s classmates, passed by and lit up with pleasant surprise as she saw Eric and Allie. Allie felt frustration and rage well up in the deepest pit of her stomach like a deadly poison—oh yeah, that’s great, you know exactly what that feels like. Laura was effortlessly graceful and intelligent; she was unquestionably talented at everything she attempted but let it inflate her ego. Allie had never forgotten the incident in which—     Yeah, she was pretty cool for a non-Eric person.     “Hey guys, what’s going on?” she said in passing with a quick flash of her bold smile.     Eric did not hesitate to act. He walked over to the side of the gym, picked up a folded wooden chair laid out for the anti-social sitters and hurled it down to the floor with a powerful heave. The airborne chair shattered into splinters at Laura’s feet.     “What the hell are you doing!” Laura shouted as she did an awkward double-take to avoid the projectile splinters.     “Away with you,” said Eric with absolute conviction seeping from his lustrous voice. “I have no absolutely no interest in you, or any other woman for that matter except for one that I am hopelessly devoted to—the girl who stands before me. Are you foolish enough to think that I, as a hormone-driven teenaged male, could possibly have mixed emotions about my romantic life? I clearly have no inclination toward anyone except for Allie and am irresolute in my conviction toward her.”     “Um, why?” asked Laura simply.     Allie began to blush at the bold actions of her masculine hero; she knew he would never abandon her for the rest of their lives together deep in the pit of her heart. She wouldn’t have much to contribute in terms of conversation at their nightly candlelit dinners, true, but she could spend the silent moments simply examining the immaculate structure of his jawbone.     “Stop spreading your lies Laura. We can never be together.”     “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t even know you that well! I was just walking by and saying—”     “What kind of conflict, Laura, would we ever have to keep things entertaining, hmm?     “Oh my god, I really hate this story,” muttered Laura, pressing a hand to her forehead.     Eric shouted something in response as she turned on her heel to leave but Allie didn’t quite care what it was because of what she saw approaching from across the dance floor. She was on a collision course with this hulking suave mass—his leather jacket sticking tight to his defined body yet still somehow allowing his arms to swing freely and carelessly as he grounded each gallant stride. And with each one of those long, offhand, advances—well, okay, you know what. This is the “other” guy—that’s the general point I’m trying to make. We all know what this is. He’s kind of a bad dude and all that stuff.      “Hey Allie,” said the approaching figure. His thick and slippery hair gave him a dark visage that indicated his name was Seth.      “Um—uh—hey there Seth,” was all Allie could muster in the presence of this anti-heroic manprize.      “Wait, who is this Allie?” Eric muttered mutinously...alliteration.     But it was about that point in the plot progression for Allie to momentarily abandon her infatuation with Eric, who was only moderately norm-defying, in favor of a more reckless choice.     Seth smiled his cocky smile at Allie, swiveled on his heel, and turned his back toward her.     “Why aren’t you looking at me Seth,” asked Allie.     “Because,” laughed Seth, “I can completely afford to disrespect you and you’ll still come back wanting more. That’s just the way it is. It’s kind of my thing—in case you didn’t notice.”     “You can’t just disrespect me like that,” said Allie, trying to conceal the inexplicable admiration radiating from her voice.     “Women secretly love to be disrespected—it turns them on and stuff.”     “That’s not the way a real gentleman would treat a woman who deserves respect,” chimed in Eric. He was doing a good job building contrast between the two of them.     Seth whipped around to face Allie, his smug grin lines etched across his winter-tan and virile face.     “You want to get out of here, don’t you hun?” he said, his sly voice now swirled with drops of merciful honey and sweet molasses.     Allie nodded her head mechanically, anticipating the offer he was leading up to.     “I can take you places Allie; places you’ve never been to and can only imagine in those twilit hours where the darkling sky gives birth to gleams of morning light. I’ll whisk you away from these suburban doldrums faster than the ink on this page can and woo you into sweet oblivion. Come on, Al’. You couldn’t even resist me if you were trying.”     “I’m not that easy, you know,” Allie said as she shuffled her legs awkwardly and forced herself to back away from Seth.     “Ha, are you kidding me? I could hook up with your best friend Steph on your birthday and you wouldn’t even be able to stop yourself from getting with all this.”     “Who’s Steph?” said Allie.     “Oh, sorry, I forgot,” said Seth.     Allie took a deep—fuck, don’t care.     Eric let out a triumphant laugh and crossed his arms—male arms can’t be mentioned without a muscle related compound modifier—his muscle-laden arms across his broad chest.     “So typical of an “other guy” like you,” Eric taunted with a tiny chuckle. “You don’t even need to exist Seth. The only reason you do is to create conflict and drag out the story.”     Seth whipped back his obsidian hair. “You think I’m only good for creating conflict, huh? Well I’m about to do a damn good job of it.”     Eric rolled up the sleeves of his tight black shirt. “Alright, you wanna personify the internal conflict inside of Allie in an external conflict between the two of us? I’m ready to dance.”     “There’s only one way to settle this,” Seth growled as he tore his leather jacket from his boulder-hard bod.     “Shirtless fistfight?”     “Oh yeah.”     The two fighters came together as one and Allie stepped back to seek safety from the torrent of flailing limbs.     She began to cry: “oh. oh. stop”.     And then she asked herself why.     These two powerful men were ready to rip each other open over her. It wasn’t like she could lose. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose.     She climbed to the top of the bleachers to watch the flailing limbs and the inevitable blood, to witness her masterpiece. Her feet hit the top step and even with the combatants beneath her brawling fiercely, she knew all the eyes were on her: the conductor, the powerful one.     And then Allie came to life.     This is the surge of charged cocaine veins mixed with a dash of laced hot chocolate on a frigid winter Sunday where an enduring hope lies frozen amongst the thigh-high snow.     She’d never thought so clearly in her life.     One fighter’s hand was clawing the inside of the other’s mouth in a fishhook as deep red blood puddled on the floor; she had so much life, so much power. She deserved the power now that she was alive and she knew it. She deserved it like ice cream and paychecks and a quick death.     The bleeding man reversed the hold and sunk his right fist into the other’s eye socket. The attacker’s entire body fell on top of the falling man and the two were tangled in their throes.     Allie stood on the bleachers and continued to conduct the dance from on high.     This is the surge of power killing must bring; the wonderfully dominating feeling of slaughtering and butchering your evasive prey to dissect its red, fatty meats and to consume its slow-cooked flesh.      Someone called for an ambulance. There were cries of pain now. Cries dedicated to her.     She was someone now. They were the ones with no names.     The broken threads were now taped so the shoelace could fit in the hole and she knew she could keep it this way if she tried.     She cheered them on in ill-sounding cackles.     The only dancer who hadn’t ceased to exist due to lack of relevancy to the narrative yet at this point was Laura, and she rolled her eyes at the empress atop the bleachers.     “In that case, I’m gonna head out,” she said, taking care not to trip over the sharp edge of the nearest page. “I’m going to go find Stephanie.”     I handed Allie the reigns, I didn’t have much of a choice—she knew I was there, saw me hiding behind the one-way window, for some reason.     “I’ll take it from here,” she whispered to me.

Kevin Cooley bio     Kevin Cooley is a prose writer and poet from Lake View, NY, just outside of Buffalo. He dabbles in metafiction and is rumored to feel very awkward when asked to write biographies in the third person as if he were not himself. He is currently publisher-fishing for his debut novel, The Minimum Wage: A Plot-Dry Novel in Which Not a Whole Lot Happens.

extinct Janet Kuypers haiku 2/15/14 when they go extinct do we study the mistakes or just study bones

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

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku extinct 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)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku extinct as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (C, flipped and posterized)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku extinct as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem extinct live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem extinct live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

Survivors of the Killing Fields Matthew Horstkotter In the streets the bodies are beaten Scared, bloodied, and broken No care for the dead Drowned in pools of their own blood Trampled by the fleeing Praying to make it home to their warm beds To wake up and call it a nightmare Repeating its self on the morning news Thankful to be alive to have a cup of joe Watching the repeating nightmare Knowing in their hearts What it was like to be there Innocents begging for their lives Sounds the news does not show Thanking god for their life One last swig of joe Packing their bags of to work they go Never to repeat what they saw Never to repeat what they heard Never to say that they were there Out there in the killing fields

Piggy Alex Patterson     It was another day, another class, another bell, and another taunt. This was the world I live in, the world all kids live in. My name is Piggy; this is what I am called. It was what my despicable peers call me and it is what my teachers call me; therefore it is my name. I, however, do not call myself Piggy. I call myself Mark. I call myself this because it was my name before Piggy, it was my name before this year, before I knew them and before they saw me. This is my story, but it is also the story of others like me. I know that I am not the only one being picked on and called names. I am not the only one to hide from the barrage of spitballs and hornets, but I was alone in my story. My story began like any other; my story began with a girl.     Her name was Veronica, she sat three desks ahead of me, two to the right and she would lean back just enough that the small beam of light that gently filtered in through the window would gracefully form a small halo around her long black hair. It was Science, third period, minutes before the bell would ring to let us out for lunch. I was sitting in the back of class, in an effort to avoid being noticed, and I was looking out of the window, I was dreaming of an escape. The bell rang releasing us from the classroom. We flocked into the cafeteria, eagerly awaiting the food that we had been promised. I walked to the tables, scanning the unfriendly environment for a place to sit. Then she spotted me, well... I spotted Veronica, but she waved me over and so I went. I approached the table nervously, she invited me! I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. She could be a friend, she could be someone to talk to – who knows, she may even be someone that would date me. I was foolish. I still believed in the kindness—no, that’s too optimistic—I still believed in the decency of humanity. I was at the table. “H-Hi Veronica,” I stuttered. She smiled at me and all I could see was her and me, a table and a chair that I could sit in. She gestured at the chair. This was it—I began to sit down.     I was laughed out of the cafeteria. It was a simple prank and it was something that I should have seen coming. Veronica was the decoy; the other kids were waiting for me to sit down. They pushed the chair out from under me when I began to sit. I had fallen for—The popular kid talks to you then pushes you so that you trip over another popular kid—before, but this was the first time that it had happened at lunch with a chair. The rest of the day slowly crawled by. I was laughed at and mocked throughout the day. Then I reached English. Looking back on it I miss the pranks and physical abuse, it was better than what would come: Piggy. That was my new name as designated by my English class on November 7, 2013. I can remember the day, I can remember the minute, the second; I can remember it all because this was the day that Hell began for me. We were reading Lord of the Flies. It was a good book; I had read it on my own the year before. I liked it then, but I liked English then. Back then English was fun, back then English was an escape, it was a way out from the world and its abuse; back then I could escape into the life of Kerbouchard, I could run away with Holden Caulfield, and I could experience Marlow’s adventures. But that was then. And this is now. And now was a different time; now was an unfriendly place that tried to drain the life from me at every corner and at every waking second. Now was a monstrous being of incomprehensible might and awe, and now was winning. I would sit in the back of classes hoping to not be noticed, I would sit in the corner of the cafeteria, I would skip lunch entirely on some days in a desperate attempt to avoid the contiguous presence of now. I was alone in the present, I was alone in the now and I could not see a future free from the suffocating grip of now.     It was a few days later that she came, her name was... I can’t recall what it was. She came a long time ago; her message though, her message is what I remember about her. She came to speak about bullying. She, a beautiful five-foot-eleven part time model with a loving husband and kid came in to talk to us about the bullies of the world. Her message was plain and pious. “Sticks and stones may break my bones” She rhymed. “But harsh words will never harm me.” This was the thing that stuck with me; of course the words would hurt me. The words are what hurt the worst. Beating would leave bruises, but those would fade in time. Piggy, Spaz, dork, these were the scars that never healed. I can remember all of the names, and I could remember all of the insults. She continued her message, “I would like to ask everyone. Has anyone here been bullied?” I could’ve raised my hand, I could have blown the whistle, but I could not. I could not bring attention to myself, I could not risk another name, I could not risk another beating. I could not trust this woman to help me; I could not trust the teachers to protect me from the barrage of insults and projectiles. I had gone to them before, their response was this model. This was the height of their power to protect me from the constant abuse. Their response was a beautiful woman who would rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but harsh words will never harm me.” I could not believe in this lie. The beatings would fade, but the words would stay etched into my heart until the day I die, they would remain there until today, the day that I decided to end them.     But now was not content to stay as it was. It slowly adapted as those around me learned new words of torment. Just as dork had given way to Piggy, Piggy would be brought down by another taunt. After a month, Piggy no longer seemed an apt name for me. I was still Piggy, but this word was now reserved for mercy – no, now I became a faggot. Fag was scrawled across notes and hurled at me in math, notes of damnation were stuffed into my bag and books when my back was turned, and then the day came when my mother discovered one of these notes. She cried that day, not for the note and not for the pain which I had endured. She wept because of who I was; because I was someone she didn’t want me to be. Now the truth of who I was became clear to me. I was an outsider: separated from the world by my personality, by my appearances, and by my desires.     I set down my pen. I was in my room. It was a simple room of plain walls and a plain bed. There was a window overlooking the open countryside in the corner of my room. I was at my desk. It was a simple wooden plank stretched across four metal legs. I looked down at my finished letter. It was a simple act. It was a simple act of escape; it was the easiest way out, and it was the hardest way out. I had the rope tied, and I was ready to end it; I was ready for my torment to end. I stood on my desk and placed my neck through the noose. I took one last look around, the window. I should see the world for one last time; I should feel the breeze one last time. I pulled my head back and stepped down from the desk. I walked slowly towards the window, slowly lengthening my time. I reached the window and pulled the sill down. The breeze felt cool on my skin... I could run away. I hadn’t considered that before. I could run away to another town, to another life. I could run away towards acceptance, for there had to be acceptance in the world, it is a rather large world after all. There had to be a better life, there is a better life for people like me. I took one last look around the room, one last look at the shambles of my life, and I began my new one.

floor Janet Kuypers haiku 2/8/14 Writhing on the floor, bruised, she cried, begged for an end. I had to kill her

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

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

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

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku floor as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon camera)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku floor as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Sony camera)

Stars David Sapp I toss my blanket aside, up from my tepid bed, up from my familiar, warm lover and peer through the cold pane; in this black, crystalline night, pulsing lights pierce the umbra; the flaming stars seem closer. Before her children, Osiris and Isis, when she was young and slender and febrile, the goddess of the cosmos arched her naked body across the sky, across an ancient, ebony desert, her toes and fingertips stretching across the horizon from Thebes to Giza; at dusk she swallowed the sun after he capered across her back in a blazing, solar barque; the stars, her vaulted firmament, freckled her smooth belly like glowing, jeweled bangles. She blew fiery kisses from afar, across a dark, frigid room, but on this night, so near, she whispers, scalding breath at my ear burning stars pressed upon my cheek, searing caresses upon my lips.

Brief Biographical Information     David Sapp is a writer and artist living near Lake Erie. He teaches at Firelands College in Huron, Ohio. His poems have appeared in The Alembic, The Chattahoochee Review, The Cape Rock, The Licking River Review, The Hurricane Review, The Bad Henry Review, Meat Whistle Quarterly, Red Cedar Review, RiverSedge and elsewhere. Additional publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; chapbooks, Close to Home and Two Buddha; and his novel, Flying Over Erie.

Close Encounter Allan Onik     Briggs hit the pavement and began sprinting. His sirens were blaring and his lights were flashing red and blue. It was a dark night, and the suspect had parked his car and ran into the nearby cornfield. Briggs shined his flashlight as he ran and spoke into his radio: “Got a runner, no dispatch needed. Out.”     The plants reached above his head and the glow created from his flashlight reached only inches until the next stalk. After only a few minutes in pursuit, he stopped, breathing heavily. It occurred to him that he was getting a bit older, that his belly was a bit flabbier than it’d been in his 20’s and 30’s, and that maybe he’d be better off watching Monday Night Football than chasing junkies through the heartland after sundown.     “Pig.”     The voice came from behind him and he felt himself being tackled. When Briggs landed he got soil in his mouth and was pinned and turned onto his back. A switchblade was opened and put to his neck. Briggs couldn’t see the man’s face—only shadows.     “I thought I’d fry me some bacon today, but I think I’ll let you live. Where I come from, once you’re spared you’re owned. No soul of your own anymore, porky. Your ass is mine. Always. Maybe not physically, but you’ll remember tonight—and that’s all that matters.” Briggs felt a slice being made in his shoulder, and the perp was gone.     Briggs sat on his porch. He eyed the cut on his shoulder marked as an “x.” He downed some scotch. “What’s this sad world coming to?” He spoke in the dark. He turned on his radio and a preacher was giving a sermon. He watched the fireflies light themselves while the sun set.     God wants us to be free. The preachers voice echoed through the airwaves. Because God loves us. We all have a destiny, and a plan, but it is up to us to make the most of every day, to use God’s gifts allotted to us—and to avoid devilish temptations...     Suddenly the words were replaced by static. Briggs’s jaw dropped involuntarily, and his drink slipped from his hand. Glass shattered on the wood floor. Above him was a hovering saucer with multicolored flashing lights, similar to but not exactly like the ones he’d seen in movies. The vessel seemed to bend the light around it, but made no sound. Before he knew it, he passed out.     (Bright warm light in all directions)     Briggs: Where am I?     Entity: You are in a space-time flux, communicating through electromagnetic pulse, not tongue—hence thought     Briggs: What do you want?     Entity: The better question would be, what do you want, sir? It seems you have lost faith in other creatures of your evolutionary makeup     Briggs: Why should I communicate with a stranger?     Entity: A stranger!!! How absurd!! WE are one and same. I simply come from a different continuum. I am your consciousness reflected back to you after a bit of a, lets say, crunch     Briggs: I never thought I’d go off the deep end like this. I’m probably drooling in padded room right now     Entity: Save your self-reflections for your muddied drinking sessions. I am your savior!!!     Briggs: Then help me. Make me believe in my brothers. In...anything!!!     Entity: All you have to remember that you are free, and that we are all bound by Love. Someday soon you will understand     When Briggs woke he was comfortably tucked in his bed. Coming in and out of his slumber, he barely noticed his missing scar tissue.

Wake Up Call Allan Onik     The undertaker finished polishing the bell. It was made of pure gold, and glinted under the full moon.     A priest was finishing a funeral in the middle of the cemetery:     “And so we know, as mortals, that our lives in our bodies are only a mask of our spirits. We know that there is a deeper one reality, in which we live with God—our surface lives covered with layers of experiences and emotions, trials and victories, loves and losses. Let us not fear for our friend, for he is with The Creator — his sins forgiven, and bliss found.”     A woman wearing a dark veil threw a rose on the coffin. The crowd began to shuffle toward the cemetery exit. The undertaker could still hear crying as the last few drove away.     He locked the parlor and headed for the light switch, but paused as he noticed a red pick up truck pull into the parking lot. It was blasting Heavy Metal Music from the 90’s, and two large men got out. The undertaker cringed. Both men were wearing jeans and flannel shirts. One was carrying a spiked bat, the other a sawed off shotgun. They walked to the parlor and knocked on its door after realizing it was locked.     “We know you’re in there Edgar, you rat! We’ve come for what’s ours!” The one with the bat said. He was fat and wore a shaggy gray beard.     “I don’t owe you fools anything. Do you think this town belongs to you and your thugs?”     “Everyone’s gotta pay their dues to Mr. Larson. We all know that.”     “Leave or I’ll call the police.”     “Then someone will be back tomorrow for one of your thumbs.”     “You know that God protects us all, right? That he, The Creator, watches all his children from afar, while they walk the earth in his name. That he performed miracles through his holy men—and still more miracles to this day.”     “Mr. Larson didn’t send us here for a sermon. We came for your protection dues. Why don’t you just hand over the cemetery bell? That’ll cover you for a while.” The man with the shotgun licked his chapped lips.     Edgar smiled. “God is watching you, and judgment shall come in his name.” The undertaker walked to the bell and rang it three times slowly. A wolf could be heard howling in the distance, and he could just barely hear a strange cackling.     “Jesus Christ Almighty!!” The one with the bat yelled, “let us in!! Now!!”     Hands with rotted flesh began to reach up from the cemetery graves. Moaning could be heard throughout the property. A small demon with a spear emerged from a crypt, and a flurry of bats silhouetted the full moon.     The men stopped banging on the parlor doors and ran for their truck, but as they reached the exit the cemetery gates swung shut and firmly locked. A large, black rat bit one of the men in the ankle. He staggered and a walking dead grabbed him in the midsection and gnawed at his neck, sending blood spraying in all directions. He fell on the ground and was consumed by oversized cockroaches.     “Come back here!” Edgar yelled to other. “It’s evil out there.”     He ran back to the parlor and Edgar opened the door for him. The grown man dropped his spiked back and sat on his hands, whimpering.     “It’s ok,” Edgar said softly, “I’ll be quick.” He tore off his face to reveal a smiling skull, with red glowing eyes.

The Raven Allan Onik     Edgar’s tome glowed white and cast shadows in the dimly lit library. He held it and read it, muttering softly to himself. His Raven was white and caged behind golden bars in the corner of the room.     “I shall see her nevermore!” Edgar cried, “my beloved Abatha. Taken by The Black Death.”     A shadow crawled from a shelved black book with an inverted cross. Behind the flow was a pointed tail. When it fused with The Raven, the bird’s eyes took on a red glow and its feathers turned black.     “Nevermore shall I look upon her face! Nevermore shall I hear her sing! Nevermore shall I feel her soft touch!”     The raven fluttered in the cage.     “What do you think of that? My dear bird? For I have little in the way of hope—my friends and Love taken by darkness. I have only a pet and my lore for company.”     The bird turned its head and pecked at the bars.     “Do you dream?”     The Raven sprang at him within the cage.     “Alas. Let us go for a walk.”     Above the cemetery gates read the sign “Westminster Hall and Burying Ground.” Edgar walked to the tombstone and opened the cage. Beneath the full moon The Raven flew with a red glow.     “Nevermore,” it said.

civil Janet Kuypers haiku 2/16/14 a civil war is raging in me, and I want a revolution

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

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

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

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku civil as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon camera)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku civil as a looping JKPoetryVine video on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Sony camera)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem civil live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem civil live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

Apocalypse = Revelation = ΑΠOKάλυΨις Anastasia Kalos I. Attraction He doesn’t shine as much as he shoots pheromones like quills that burrow under my skin. He has the eyes, liquid brown and lucid, orbs that follow lingering shadows and his pupils dilate and fill with predatory zeal. His lips move and his voice tumbles out, like a relentless wave from primordial eddying currents. Words run from of his lips like the most fragrant nectar, each vowel brushes against my body like sable. II. Agon When the barbs come, They pierce and sting. Thoughts dissolve, emotions fragment like shrapnel and each atom trembles. He snarls and his face contorts. I’m the hibernating turtle that tucks thoughts into imaginary shells, folding and adjusting, to escape through neural crevices. I disconnect as another tattered burgundy dahlia blooms over my eyelid. Metal tickles my tongue, where words dissolve like candy floss. Within my ear, a distorted knell bellows like a foghorn and I pass out. III. Denouement He returns late and drops like a loaded sack smelling of French sophistication in a bottle. In bed, we are divided and adhere to the worn sheets. His skin emits the dying fumes of a marriage between woody top notes and bad boy rage. Like morphine, sugar and nicotine combined, it attracted me once and sentenced me to a hideous labour and now, after a period of swollen eyes, sharp words and bruises, the routine abruptly ends and morning dawns, its metallic orange glow bathes my flesh. His renewed vigor is now aiming for another lamb. When my eyelids dare to allow light in, they accommodate the indentation of his body on the sheets. IV. Insight In the days since he packed, leaving quietly with no parting words, rage still prickles my nerve endings. I wait for confirmation, that he’ll vanish and dissolve. I feel blighted, yet liberated, tired and spent. Between breaths, my limbs stumble and hang like wet sheets. She is out there, this replica of me. He’ll open his mouth and smother her with sugar. He’ll stroke her with warm protean hands that will craft cauliflower ears and blood-red carnations in place of eyes and he’ll shade the flesh red, which will give way to eggplant purple, to fade to yellow and return to pale pink. Until he tires and she awakes.

4:44am Zak Parsons Restless in my bed and restless in my mind I’ve tried to sleep For hours now I’ve been laying down with my eyes closed This is the closest I get to sleep most of the time Just a mere rest of the eyes While my eyes may be at rest My mind spirals off into the sunset Those pink London sunsets

Janet Kuypers reads poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

We are all just patiently waiting for the man with the big scythe and no face Zak Parsons We are all just patiently waiting for the man with the big scythe and no face Waiting patiently for him to come knocking on our door and remind us of how little we have achieved in life Reasons to regret How much time, love, money, tears and energy we have wasted on people who wouldn’t even buy a big issue from you if you were curled up under a bridge Just about warm from your own fresh piss you are lying in With nothing but a blind stray dog for company

Dreamscape Frank De Canio I’ve taken my mother to the airport. God only knows how. I don’t own a car, and if I did, I wouldn’t know how to drive it. Anyway, I’m there, reading The New York Times. She tells me I’m tired. Of course I’m tired. 7 am is not a good hour for night birds to begin a journey. The scene metamorphoses. Wrapped in a cocoon, I’m lying in a hospital ward with a bevy of nurses cradling babies in their arms, as if they’d charm them out of Eden. It doesn’t matter. The road back is blocked by white-frocked seraphim brandishing hypodermic needles. The babies are being processed like slabs of meat for the world’s consumption. They do this with the kindly air of ministrants for the dispossessed. Soon the children will be suckled at the breast of lesser angels, on the first leg of their fruitless journey. It’s the last succor they’ll get before plummeting to earth, where there’ll be no survivors. I’m feeling sorry for them as I pull myself out of the sweating wreckage of night’s suffocating sleep, bracing for catastrophe.   First Published in Stray Branch Spring 2010

Frank De Canio brief bio     Frank De Canio was born & bred in New Jersey, works in New York. He loves music of all kinds, from Bach to Dory Previn, Amy Beach to Amy Winehouse, World Music, Latin, opera. Shakespeare is his consolation, writing his hobby. He likes Dylan Thomas, Keats, Wallace Stevens, Frost , Ginsburg, and Sylvia Plath as poets.

The Elephant in the Room Kathryn Lipari     Sinead’s own heartbeat wakes her. Displaced, she stares into the cave of her mind, then flips over and looks at the bedside clock display: Hello Sinead, it’s 2:00 am. Ocean sounds may help you go back to sleep–touch here.     She turns away, extends her leg and encounters nothing beside the cool sheets.     “I’ll be up in a bit,” Matthew had said three hours earlier when she dropped a kiss on the back of his head. “Just a few more dig-images to send.”     She imagines him in the office below, still bent over the slight glow of the screen. She strains her mind as if she can will the screen pictured in her head to replicate the one he is looking at: oiled blonds with open mouths? A long chain of exchanges with a married woman up late in some other slumbering city? A quivery flirtation with a friend of both of theirs on Picktyou? Her heart accelerates. She listens with her entire tense body, but can hear nothing from downstairs. Not the creak of a floorboard.     After she has watched the clock parade a half an hour of numbers, and each has wound her body tighter, she gets up. She pads past the children’s bedrooms and lowers herself precisely down the wooden stairs. The pounding of her heart grows to fill her ears.     The living room and kitchen are dark and calm, embellished with the small pulses of waiting electronic devices. The door to the office is cracked, greenish light spilling out. She approaches, one small footstep at a time, and pauses–looking in.     Matthew sits just as she left him, just as she pictured him–listing towards the screen of his computer, perched like a bird of prey.     She edges into the room, trying to look past him to the screen, but his torso is blocking it. She tiptoes closer, holding her breath. She can make out jerky movement, something streaming. She realizes she is hearing shouts or moans. Her guts churn, she thinks to spin and run from the room before she sees any more. Pulled in two directions, her body spasms, arms flapping, and Matthew spins around.     “What are you watching?” Her voice cracks.     He twitches too, as if the tension has arced from her to him. “Nothing. Nothing. I was just about to come up.” He darts out his hand to snap shut the computer closed.     “Let me see.” She steps forward and stops his hand.     “You don’t need to...”     “Let me see! It’s two in the morning.”     Matthew shrugs and wilts down into his chair. “You don’t want to see this.”     Sinead pushes the screen back and looks down to it. The picture is erratic and blurred, skipping and then reviving. There are splashes of dark green and brown. She frowns and looks harder.     “Baby.” Matthew’s voice is soft. “Don’t.”     Then Sinead notices the words running across the bottom of the picture: Elephant Cam. Steaming Live. Day 693, Maya’s Final Battle?. She slowly turns to Matthew. “You are not. watching this?”     He pushes up from his chair. “Let’s go to bed.”     She looks back to the screen and squints. The splotches translate themselves into foliage: broad leaves, snatches of dried grass, the view of something running fast through a tangle of strange plants. “What’s the camera on?”     “A drone, a robot? I don’t know. Come on, let’s go to bed.”     She feels him stand up behind her.     “They can spend the money on a robot and they can’t save the last elephant!” There’s a crack and the camera moves faster. “What were the noises? I heard something–shouting.”     Matthew’s hands close on her waist, he tugs her sideways.     “What were the noises?” She turns to him.     He looks away. “They shot her... She went crazy, ran. The camera is following the hunters.”     “They shot her? But we just voted on her name; I liked Maya, you and Will picked that African goddess.”     “The poachers have been tracking her for a while, I guess. She’s worth a fortune.”     “You guess? Is that what you’ve been doing down here? Watching this? How could you? When we’ve seen all those pictures.”     They have been in the e-news, one after another, a flood of elephant corpses: huge, withered, like the wrecks of proud sea vessels crumpled into the ocean floor. “What about Will?” She starts to cry on the name of their son, who had stood in their kitchen weeks before with a steadfast light in his round eyes and a plastic sword in his fist. “I’m going to go protect Maya,” he had said. “As soon as I am big enough.”     “How could you just watch this happen?”     Matthew shakes his head. “It’s horrible, honey, but it’s...it’s real.”     Sinead’s hands fly up to frame the computer screen, mirror it. “But it’s not. This is not real.”     A stream of voices erupts and they both look to the screen. The camera breaks through leaves and into a clearing filled with human forms moving spastically. Men in drab clothes with bandanas, and guns protruding like extra limbs. They are gesturing and shouting and then they all turn in the same direction and there are crashing noises and an enormous form comes into the picture. She is so big, so much bigger than the men; Sinead thinks that she ought be able to crush them like the underbrush with her wide legs, toss them aside with her long tusks. And it seems like this is what she intends, she lumbers towards the men, shaking her head, but they have a lethal way to close the space between them and her. They raise their long, complicated guns. There are cracks and shouts and then a horrible, low keening. She keeps coming at them, but her front legs are buckling and as she plows ahead her heavy head gets lower and lower.     The falling elephant is replaced by a face. One of the hunters has fronted the camera. His eyes are round and white, and he is yelling. His mouth is wide; Sinead can almost feel hot spittle on her face. He yells and shouts. Sinead cannot understand the emotion driving his words: elation, fear, triumph?     He moves aside and now the elephant is not moving, as if an implacable stone monolith has suddenly appeared in the picture. The hunters swarm her. Sinead and Matthew watch as her tusks are removed, the shouts and wild movement replaced by stern efficiency. Armed Wild Elephant Coalition Officers approx. three minutes away. Tusks currently valued at $1,000,000 each,. run the words across the screen. And then the men climb, hooting, into a jeep that Sinead had not noticed. It screeches away and the screen is still and silent.     Behind her Matthew makes a shuddering noise and Sinead feels his breath hot on the back of her neck. He presses his fingers against her waist; he is trying to guide her around and into his chest. “Come here baby. It’s all over.”     Sinead does not turn. She stares at the wrinkled hulk on the screen. Something red flashes across the top?–a bird?     “Come on, let’s go up to bed. It’s late. There’s nothing we can do.”     Sinead grabs his hands and peels them off her hips. “Let go of me.”     Matthew eels his fingers back around hers, holding them tight. “What’s the matter with you? Huh? I’m trying to help.”     “I know. I know you are. I’m sorry. It’s just so upsetting, you know?”     “I know it is, babe. Come on, let’s go upstairs, I’ll make you feel better.”     Matthew pushes against her hands, leading her clumsily out of the room from behind. Sinead lets herself be propelled, all the while thinking that she should protest, should not climb back up the stairs, while at the same time wondering why.

The Fall S. R. Mearns We were falling from the tall tree we’d been happy in Accelerating nauseously through the small green leaves Whips, thorns & troublesome branches That decorate full grown trees. Thundering downward toward uncertainty, Impact and probably injury, to what happens next Too fast for stopping, but too slow for certain death We experienced a hollow feeling between depression and despair Where some people holiday all their lives Couldn’t we have managed this differently? Why didn’t we hang on in there, why did our grip loosen Time stood, like a frosted dawn garden And a myriad of memoirs flicked fleetingly across our brain Then the impact came - A rush of pine needles neurological activity and pain Then nothing I got up, damaged, but functioning, i limped away Inwardly tarnished, but outwardly serviceable My heart however, i was told later, was uniquely broken, Unmendable, ah such absences! it was buried at sea, on or near Castle Beach, Tenby Where on 28th June two thousand and fourteen You yourself found it while shell diving One application of super glue, and a defibrillator or two And you looked into my eyes, and gave it back to me I can only thank you.

Three Lies and One Piece of Truth Kelley Jean White MD My bike has wheels. My favorite tree is green. My hair is yellow. Once, I was seventeen.

Dust by Sunlight Stephen McQuiggan     Hunger left him, the way it always did, when he reached her cottage door. It was a beautiful sunny day and her garden was picture book perfect, with flowers marching all the way up the path to the shiny red door, and a pond that winked back up to the sky. But sunlight could play tricks with your eyes. He knew it was no fairytale cottage. It was a witch’s lair.     Was it too late to pretend to be ill? He would not have to pretend too hard.     Sometimes, when he was sick, mum would bring him a bag of comics and a bowl of tangerines, and he would hug his chimp Jacko as he ate them, cuddle him close and stain his plastic face, bleach it with kisses. He wished he had Jacko with him now, but dad said it was babyish. Dad didn’t understand. It was the smell of the toy that was so comforting. Part of him sensed that smell would return to him in later life and break his heart.     ‘I want you on your Sunday school best behaviour,’ said mum, wetting her fingers and attempting to plaster down his unruly hair for the umpteenth time. ‘Do you hear me Alan? Remember your yes, please and thank yous.’     ‘Please don’t make me kiss her mum,’ said Alan, hating the whine in his voice but unable to help it. ‘I’ll be good, just don’t make me have to kiss her.’ Please don’t make me kiss that horrible old bitch.     She slapped him hard across the back of his legs as if she had read his mind. ‘Don’t you dare talk about your aunt like that!’     ‘Judy,’ said dad, ‘go easy. The kid does have a point after all.’     She glared at her husband coldly. ‘Maybe you’d like to take his place then?’     He looked at his watch as she arched her eyebrows. ‘Love to,’ he said, ‘but you know I have to pick Tony up at three. He’s expecting me.’     ‘It’s funny,’ she said, returning her attention to her son’s fringe, ‘how your little golf trips always coincide with my visits to my sister.’     ‘You know I’d rather be with you. It’s just the way it is. See you later honey.’ He gave Alan a sympathetic look, one reserved for males in their dealings with women, then tousled his hair, ruining all her previous endeavours.     Alan sighed as he watched him climb into the car and drive away without a wave. He felt like crying. It was Saturday. He should be down the pool with Goose and Andy, or playing football, or spying on Weaver Wright’s big sister, anything but standing here outside his aunt Gabriella’s.     Outside the lair of the Dust Witch.     ‘You be nice now,’ whispered mum. ‘You say hello when she speaks to you, and you look her in the eyes...’ A moment of hesitation as she realised her mistake. ‘You look at her when you do, and not a tear or a blubber or I’ll give you something to cry about, you hear me? It’s a pity of that poor soul, shame and disgrace.’     But mum was a hypocrite. As the years passed he could see the sympathy etched on her face losing out to revulsion. She hated her as much as he did.     She rang the bell and the door opened slowly, releasing a strong waft of lilac and urine. His heart began to race. She stood half hidden in the doorway where the sunlight barely licked her. He tried to back away but his mother’s arm acted as a barrier.     ‘Hello Judy love.’ Her voice crackled like an old radio. He supposed she meant to sound pleasant, but tender words would shrivel and die in that arid throat. He had heard mum tell dad that a voice coach was working with her, but to Alan it sounded as if her voice coach had been hijacked and burnt out.     He had told them a million times in school that her name was Durst but they never listened, she was always just Scabby Gabby Dust, Scabriella Dust, the Dust Witch and, cruellest of all, Queen Frogspawn. The Dust Witch was always with him, feeding on his shame. He wished from the bottom of his heart that she would just die and free him from the endless taunts. I hate her, he thought, I hate her very bones.     ‘Hello Gabriella,’ said mum, but her jollity was as forced as her smile.     She pushed him in, his aunt looming up before him, a nightmare made awful flesh. Her face was covered in warts, it looked like a bulging sack of tapioca. A single hideous eye protruded from her frogspawn skin, bulging out so far its lid could not lube it properly; tears stained her face like slug trails. She was breathing like a bumble bee. If she stopped breathing you would be able to hear that flimsy lid scrape over the jelly surface. He prayed she would never breathe again.     The bombsite of the other empty socket was scarred, folded over into the sickening pink petals of some carnivorous plant. Looking at her it was easy to believe she was a witch, one who had cheated the stake and escaped with her face half cooked.     He hurried past her, listening to his mum covering up his rudeness with small talk, and went straight to the kitchen. The table had already been set, and something was steaming on the cooker. The clock on the wall ticked rapidly, a sprinter’s heartbeat, keeping time with his distress.     ‘Say hello to your auntie, Alan.’ His mum’s voice betrayed none of the anger that flashed in her eyes.     ‘Ah, don’t worry pet, I know what young ones are like nowadays, no time for anything,’ croaked Gabby laughing; it sounded like a drunk trying to blow out birthday candles. ‘Sit down Alan love, dinner’s nearly ready.’     He sat down, fidgeting with his hands and with his eyes. Don’t touch anything, he thought, if you touch something you’ll catch her disease. That’s what they said at school. Your face will swell up and pimple over and -     His eyes rested on the kitchen bin, the skin bin, where she threw out her flesh after she shed it. He looked away quickly. Above the sink the old net curtain was stained (by her breath, she breathed on it and it turned) yellow by countless cigarettes.     ‘Alan! Your auntie’s talking to you!’     ‘Huh?’     Gabby was smiling at him. She looked as if she might eat him. ‘Ah, you’re in a wee world of your own pet. I asked if you’d like a sweetie before dinner?’     He nodded reluctantly to cover his embarrassment and she produced a mint from her apron pocket; mints weren’t sweets; aunt Tina always gave him Merry Maids.     ‘Go on, give us a smile.’     I’ll smile when you die, he thought. He stretched his mouth wide in rough approximation of appreciation, and Gabby cackled contentedly.     ‘Look at his little wrinkled forehead Judy,’ she said. ‘He must have some humdinger problems to make it crease like that. I think I’ll have to call him my little walnut.’     Alan just prayed that whatever she was cooking up in her cauldron was dry enough to slip into his trouser pockets when no-one was looking. He watched her amble to the cooker, ready to dish up whatever vile contagious muck she had concocted.     She put on a hat over her tinder hair, then leaned over the steaming pot. Her Cooking Hat she called it, but dad said she was bald and that she only wore it to stop her wig from frizzing. He imagined her in a nylon coffin, her hair sparking a blaze; the hag was scared of cremation. He smiled for real as she settled the hat on her head. She had chopped the pom-pom off and it looked limp and tired. It lay on her misshapen dome like a sullen rag. Someday soon it would become a dishcloth, its final, complete humiliation.     His mother’s eyes warned him, her mouth a knife slash, as Gabby turned on the radio and barked along. Under the cover of Country and Western the radio watched him continuously, the dials on its face a permanent wicked grin. It was her familiar, her techno-cat. Even the songs it played were in code so that you were constantly monitored; if you sang along you were only reporting on yourself. His smile faded. He would have to be careful here.     ‘Are you sure you don’t need a hand Gabriella?’     ‘No Judy dear. You know me, always fissling about. It’ll be ready in two ticks of a lamb’s tail.’ She carried a mug of tea over to her sister, and sat a large glass of Coke down beside Alan. ‘There you go little walnut. That’ll clean the dirty pennies in your belly.’     Then came two bowls, and Alan thought he might cry or vomit or both.     Only a vampire could eat this blood stew. He watched her wolf it down, her solitary eye scanning for the merest hint that someone might try to take it away from her; they would lose an arm if they did, and that arm would go straight into the pot too. Anyone who wants something that bad, dad says, wants it to patch over a hole in their soul.     ‘Eat up,’ said Gabby in between gulps. ‘Many’s the one would be glad of it.’     ‘Eat up son,’ said mum, the order implicit.     But he could not take his eyes off his aunt. She was an angry red, peeling in the bright sunlight that fell through the kitchen window. She was shedding her skin, transforming into something else, a creature of unknowable pain. Only her empty socket remained dark, impenetrable. He felt he could stare through it like a cheap telescope, stare straight into another world.     He took a mouthful of stew and somehow managed to swallow. It actually didn’t taste too bad, but that was only because she had cast some sort of charm over it.     He needed to escape; the food, the stilted chat, the awful bulging eye.     ‘Can I go to the toilet mum?’     ‘Of course, but don’t touch anything.’ As if. ‘And don’t be too long, we have to be going soon.’     ‘Oh, he’s a lucky one that his bowels are working,’ said Gabby. ‘There’s nothing as bad as constipation.’     ‘You still bunged up?’ asked mum. ‘Is it your irritable bowel?’     ‘Oh, true as turnips! I’m apple bound Judy, you can blame eggs all you like, but it’s apples that’ll do for me.’     He felt sick again. Why did women always discuss these things? He did not need the toilet, but now he wondered if he would make it in time. Leaving the kitchen he ran upstairs, making sure not to touch the greasy banister.     At the top he found a little car but he resisted the temptation to lift it up. The sight of it made him hate her even more, for he remembered the trap she had set for him before.     Once he had found a toy soldier in her living room. The room was so tidy he had been scared to move, and the soldier looked so out of place, like it had crawled over enemy lines and died. He pointed it out to mum but she had whispered harshly in his ear, ‘Put it down.’ Later he heard her say to dad, ‘Gabby’s no kids, she must have left it there to see if he would steal it.’     He kicked the car out of his way and, holding his breath, passed her bedroom door. Did he have the nerve to go in there? Would he dare go in and take something? At school the only way to beat them was to join them, and exaggerate. His stories of Scabriella always drew a crowd at break time, and because he was her nephew they were always taken as gospel. If he could just get one of her wigs or, best of all, a glass eye, that would really gross everyone out.     He put his hand on the clammy handle and opened the door. It was dark in there, heavy drapes blocking out all the light. Nothing felt real. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he felt he had walked into a shop window. There was a palpable sense of emptiness here, a sense that he was the first to have ever breathed here.     There was a small luminous stain of light, like a ghost’s thumbprint, just above the mirror; she was so ugly, she must have to sneak up on that, he thought. Making his way toward the window he almost tripped over. The floor was filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes, laid out in no seeming order.     He pulled back the thick curtains, letting in a single shaft of light. Blurred outlines became sharper, soft hints of colour pushed and pleaded with the darkness for recognition. The stain by the mirror revealed itself to be a doll’s eye.     He hated dolls, and now he could see her room was filled with their rigid bodies, their silence, their unnatural stillness. Behind those pursed plastic lips was barely suppressed laughter, sly and dry. Their eyes would snap into focus as soon as you turned your back; he had seen enough movies to know what they were capable of. He wasn’t fooled by their flowing dresses and pretty hair. He was surrounded by murderers.     As his eyes grew more accustomed to the light, he realised that what he had thought were boxes were actually little model houses, with fancy windows and painted doors. Some were shops, there was even a church, and the dolls were everywhere, hanging out at street corners, idling in miniature cars.     He almost laughed. He was in Toytown.     He stooped to look through the window of a barber shop, with its red and white matchstick pole, and stifled a scream. The bakers too, and the Post Office.     This was Gabby’s town. These were her children.     All the little dolls had been horribly scarred, their hair burnt down to their shiny scalps. They stared back passively at the giant in their midst, stared back with one unblinking bauble eye.     By the mirror, overlooking the town, was the largest doll of all, its single eye the flash of light he had seen as he entered her domain. As the sunlight spilled its guts into the room he saw her, Queen Frogspawn on her wicker throne gazing benignly down on her subjects, and he understood.     This was her world. Her family. Her friends.     They would talk to her, they would listen. They would never, ever judge. Shame crushed his eggshell heart.     He heard his mum calling him and he ran back downstairs, his hand on the banister; it wasn’t greasy at all.     ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘It’s time for us to go. You know your father’s waiting for us.’ He heard the lie in her voice and reddened for her.     ‘Bye Judy love, I enjoyed the wee gabble,’ said Gabby. ‘If I don’t see you through the week, I’ll see you through the window.’     ‘Say goodbye to your auntie, Alan.’ She was in as much of a hurry to leave as he had been.     He walked toward the Dust Witch, and with each step she shed her awful skin, transforming into a human being, into his aunt Gabriella. He kissed her on the lips.     ‘Bye aunt Gabby. Thank you.’ In the surprised silence that followed, he saw a fresh tear fall from her eye.     Outside his mother gripped his hand, gripped it tightly as if she were scared to speak and break the spell he was under.     ‘Are you crying?’ she asked as they reached the bottom of the path.     He turned his back to her, fiddling with the awkward latch on the gate. ‘It’s just the light in my eyes.’ The day was very bright, he thought he would get away with it.     ‘You shouldn’t stare at the sun,’ said his mother. ‘You can go blind.’     He thought about that the whole way home.

need Janet Kuypers haiku 2/16/14 I need to record these things to remind myself that I am alive

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

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

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

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

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku need as a looping JKPoetryVine video 9/27/14 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (on a Canon fs200 video camera)

See a Vine video of Janet Kuypers reading her twitter-length haiku need as a looping JKPoetryVine video 9/27/14 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (on a Sony Super Steady Shot camera)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem need live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haiku poem need live 6/10/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon Power Shot)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

Riding the Train Peter McMillan     Conductor speaking over the PA system: Attention passengers. Due to traffic congestion ahead, we’re stopped waiting for a signal. GO Transit would like to apologize for the delay.     Kayla! Over here!     Brandon?     Hey, what’s up? God, it’s crowded in here. Last time I saw you was ... Christopher’s house party back in grade 12. What’ve you been up to?     Thought that was you. That your Z4?     Yeah. Graduation present. God, is it ever stale in here! Hey, got plans for the long weekend?     Nothing special, why?     Me and Matt Tornquist—you remember him—are driving to Chicago. We’re gonna take in some clubs, do some sailing. Sorry, let me move that for you, ma’am. Some people, huh? Anyway, Saturday night there’s a party at Legends, and a lot of local Blues musicians will be there. You interested?     No way! That would be awesome! You know I love the Chicago Blues, and Buddy Guy ... will he be there?     Yeah, it’s his place.     That would totally rock! Better get your ticket out. Inspector’s coming. Tornquist? I know the name. Didn’t he have a sister, who, like, went crazy or something and ended up in a psych hospital in New York?     Yeah, Nicole, but he doesn’t like to talk about her, so don’t go there.     Whatever! Everybody’s got, like, something weird they don’t wanna talk about. But that’d be awesome—the trip I mean. You taking your car?     No, it’s burning oil, so I’m gonna leave it in the shop.     Conductor speaking over the PA system: Attention passengers. Once again, GO Transit would like to apologize for the delay.     Looks like we’re moving again. Matt’s got the Town Car. It’s a little buttoned-down, but it’s a great ride and loads of room, so, yeah, c’mon! Here’s my cell number.     Cool!     Great! So, what have you been up to?     Like, you know, school and stuff. I was at Queen’s, but it was, like, suffocating there, so I came home and Daddy got me a job til I find something else. I’m leaning towards Stanford. Brandon, over there! A couple of empty seats. Quick! Whew! First time in weeks I’ve got a seat. How about you? Weren’t you doing Andropology or something like that?     Anthropology, you mean? Not anymore. I switched to Philosophy. Looks like we’re stopping again. Unbelievable. This is why I take a later train. Not as crowded and not as many delays.     This is nothing. I’m used to standing the whole way. Anyway, you were saying.     Yeah, well I’m still planning to go to law school. Might even join the old man’s firm. For now, I’m just hanging out, reading Philosophy at U of T. It’s great! Mind-bending. I love it! And it’s great for law. Half my class is headed to law school.     Wow! I’m impressed. You always did have it together. I’m still not decided. So many possibilities. I just can’t, I mean, I’m not really ready.     No pressure though, right? We’re still young. We can make mistakes. Union’s next—finally! Besides, how can we explore if we don’t push the boundaries? Like in this class I’m taking. You know, most people just live on the surface. Their lives are regimented and shallow. Like the people on this train. On at 7:00 a.m. and off at 6:30 p.m. Day after day. And the things they say: “How are you?” or “That’s really interesting” or “I’m sorry to hear that” or “Have a great day.” You know they don’t mean any of it.     Hmm. I think I see what you’re saying, but, like, isn’t there something missing. I mean, if I say “How are you?” to someone, won’t she be polite back? OK, she may not care, and same for me, but at least we’ll be polite, don’t you think? Maybe it’s not real, but isn’t it, like, better than, uh, being rude and getting in somebody’s face? And as long as the ride’s smooth and you get where you’re going, who cares, right?     Conductor speaking over the PA system: Union Station, this stop. Union Station. This is the final stop for this train. On behalf of GO Transit, we would like to apologize for the delay and any inconvenience it may have caused. Have a nice day.

Peter McMillan bio     The author is a freelance writer and ESL instructor who lives on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario with his wife and two flat-coated retrievers. He has published three anthologies of his reprinted stories: Flash! Fiction, Flash! Fiction 2, and Flash! Fiction 3.

Winter Eighty-Nine R. H. Palmer     His name is Michael, or maybe it isn’t. For some reason Conner rings a bell. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not the right one to tell this story, but it’s starting to get chilly up here and I’ll be damned if I walked all this way to chicken out now.     Michael-Conner joined me, but he’s is a little faded, so I guess I’ll keep going by myself. He keeps telling me to call Jenny and get her to come out. He loved that girl. But I can’t call her and I keep trying to tell him that. That’s why we’re here in the first place.     Jenny killed herself six years ago, and Michael-Conner has been rolling ever since.     She’d been such a nice girl, or mostly. I always liked her, maybe a bit too much, but I know everyone else did too. The last time we saw her alive was three days before she died at the Halloween party she threw at her parents’ house. She loved to throw all-nighters in that big, old townhouse while her parents were on date night across the river. It was one of those creepy-old, Victorian-style mansions that creaks when you open a door and whines in the middle of the night because it’s too damned tired to be a house anymore. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be that old and have to hold everything together. Fucking houses.     The party was one of the games Jenny and Michael-Conner played together and forced everyone else to join in. She’d be the host of one of those murder-mysteries, you know, and said she was always the murderer. Every single time. No one believed her though, so we just kept playing. I can’t remember a time when we actually finished the game and found out who murdered us all. That was the genius part. She knew what she was doing. Being a kid, you know.     We were the bad version of the bad kids. The type your parents tell you not to hang around and for once you agree with them. Michael-Conner-or-maybe-it-was-Jeff introduced us to what he called “the underground,” but later I found out that his underground had been above ground and unpopular for almost 30 years. He smoked Kools. He smoked grass. He smoked just about anything you could grind up and put in a pipe. Yes, a pipe – he was that kid.     Jenny and Michael-Conner-Jeff had disappeared for hours that night, and none of us thought anything of it. I just assumed they were upstairs, or whatever, but now that I think about it, it might’ve just been the house making noises. Disappearances happened all the time with those two, but we didn’t care. And after all, we didn’t even remember his name. When he came back to the party alone, no one noticed. But when she didn’t come back at all, we did.     Jenny was high-class sexy, you know, the sexy that doesn’t overdo itself. I knew she was leaps and bounds over my head, but for some reason she always stuck around with us. She always had on short shorts and those tight fitting shirts with heavy eye makeup and dark purple lipstick. She put this wave in her hair close to her face and liked to call herself ZaSu and smoked newspaper blunts out of an antique cigarette holder she found at a rummage sale. And she was a Christian too, according to her, and innocent. She wore one of those big-studded, gold crosses around her neck some of the time, with tiny figurines of a boy and a girl she stole from the outlet mall. We all knew she was full of shit, but we always agreed with her.     When we realized she hadn’t come back in, Michael-Conner-Jeff remembered she’d gone home, to her own house, across town to the no-good part. We were left in her parents’ house alone, which immediately freaked us, and we packed up everything we could find – including all the good liquor – and went our separate ways. Across town, into the slums of Conger Boulevard and Ninth Street, Jenny was relieving her babysitter, a small, Chinese girl named Na Ya. She paid her in dimes.     The little red and white trailer she lived in still sits 173 feet from the front door of the gas station even these many years later. Don’t ask me how I know. I only walked it drunk three dozen times, and crawled a few of those. We all have to drive by it on the way to town, and none of us ever look directly at it. Maybe it’s not really there after all. I don’t know. It stopped being there to us because she was gone too. In my head, I picture it all caved in, just like she was in death.     The day she died, Jenny had run over to that gas station where the nasty Sig Adams worked. She never told us, but I know what happened. I read the papers before tearing them into strips to mimic her favorite brand of homemade cigarettes. At least I think they’re hers. But I heard all the gossip on the news too, about the daughter of a respectable, local politician. She was damned near a celebrity in death; so much more than she’d been in life.     Jenny was always at that gas station to steal food for her kids ‘cause she spent all her money on weed. We even gave her money, sometimes, but she’d be higher than a hot air balloon in August in under three hours. Those poor kids. I always felt so bad for them. But I felt bad for Jenny too. She never got much sleep on account of them. And she told me she never wanted them around anyway. I think she was lying to me about that. That poor Jenny.     She was arrested nearly once a week at that gas station for stealing because Sig Adams would report her every time, but Sheriff Kreke never took her in. He knew who she was and who those two babies were she had inside. No DCFS agent would dare try to take away the grandkids of a Senator, politics, you know. She was safe as could be, or almost. And she knew it too.     I’d seen those kids once; they’d been sleeping in a third- or fourth-generation crib, in a tiny room decorated with peeling wallpaper consisting of early 80s Sesame Street characters. It was an oak crib painted white some decades before. I was higher than a kite when I was in that room and the Sesame Street characters kept running and disappearing behind a dresser or closet door. They freaked me out, so I got away as soon as I could by offering to make banana pancakes, my specialty when everyone is too much something-or-other to make food. My secret is to grind up the banana in place of the flour. It’s one of the most fascinating things to do.     Jenny had been in that baby room too, looking at them with awe and terror at the same time. She often said they were the best and worst things to happen to her.     I remember they had the most basic physical features: ears as prominent as trumpets, bright red and screaming just like their little mouths; a subtle chin matching their mother’s and a direct link to the Tennessee mountain McKitrick’s on her Senator’s father’s side. They had low cheekbones, again not promising, and too-small mouths. They did have the largest, widest-set eyes I’d ever seen. Back then, I thought I imagined them turning into horses or hammerhead sharks. Little baby mutants. That freaked me out too.     Jenny said the eyes would have heavy lids with a squint when they got older and she hated it. They’d look just like her. Said their faces were going to make them look ugly, though I always thought Michael-Conner-Jeff was a bit more attractive than that. She said those eyes reminded her of a story he’d told her once about his great-grandmother who raised seven kids on her own while her drunkard husband got himself killed in Germany. I don’t know how.     The story goes that the mutant babies were hungry that morning, and she’d gone over to steal some milk and cereal like she’d done a thousand times over. She would lock her front door with the babies on the floor and run like a bat outta hell to get to the station and back in under five minutes. It was like a game for her, trying to beat her old time. I like to imagine that she bought the milk and stole the cheaper cereal once she got there. It’s easier to think of her that way.     Kreke told the news that she’d dumped out the single-serving cereal into an old pan and sloshed the milk in afterward, and that’s how he found them. I know those kids was worse than that, covered in milk, their own mess, and the smell of Mary Jane on the kitchen floor, like always. When he’d finally forced his way into the trailer after half an hour of fist pounding and baby crying, he found Jenny in the back bathroom with a four-inch kitchen knife on the floor. He gave some bad descriptions too, like her eyes were open and unfocused out the bedroom window, but I don’t like to think about Jenny like that. She’d dug that knife into her stomach. I wonder now what she’d been looking for.     Michael-Conner-Jeff spoke for a long time at her funeral. It wasn’t a real funeral though, we weren’t allowed at that; it was a memorial for us at the top of the cliff after we snuck into the morgue to steal her ashes. We just wanted to pay tribute to the girl none of us really ever knew. Her parents had been furious about that, and they rounded us all up and threw us in jail for a couple weeks. I’ve still got the fine and community volunteer hours to finish, but I think I’ll get to it this year, maybe.     When he spoke, he read some of her poetry. It shocked me that she’d been so good. I never would’ve guessed that out of a girl like her.     “And this last one, she’s got it called, ‘Those Photos of You’,” he started at the end of the memorial. It wasn’t like memorials on television. There wasn’t any rain.     “‘Never in my life have I wanted to hate you so much, for everything you did wrong and right; for every time I asked you for help, real help, and you told me no; for never telling me I’m good enough for you and for making me realize that’s true.’”     We all suspected she’d been talking about her parents, but really, I think she meant Michael-Conner-Jeff. I don’t know for sure. It made me sad enough to want to cry, but I figured crying wouldn’t be the thing to do just then, so I thought about my dog at home, and the time he nearly chewed clear through my favorite red boots. That got me out of crying-mode real quick.     He continued, “‘I’d like to hate you most for making me feel guilty for being happy; for being drunk at my own birthday party this year; and for taking advantage of my patience when I was nearly done. I was awful for leaving my cigarettes in your car, but you didn’t have to act rudely to my stuffed animals. And for that time I scratched your back, and you shook my wrists, but you never did mine.’”     Michael-Conner-Jeff was crying now. I felt bad for him. Silent tears were running down his face, but he wiped them away between inhales from his pipe.     “‘Mostly, I want to thank you for letting me think you read my work, when all I wanted was a little appreciation, and for always calling me crazy.’”     She loved to write, I suppose, just as much as she loved to smoke and drink. She really loved to write. I guess, this last time, she was caught up in her own world. We scattered her ashes from the top of Fern Cliff across the river.     Going through her trailer, I heard her parents found too many books. She’s written in them all, in the margins and on the covers. Jenny was deep, a lot deeper than we’d all thought. It’s amazing what people teach you about themselves when they die. Her favorites had been Woolf and Chopin. We all wonder why she didn’t just walk into the water with stones in her pockets like that Edna chick.     I think she probably didn’t want to steal the stones. That sounds like her.     Her other poetry made me think she was happy. Jenny was a girl who always seemed cheerful, even though she never broke a smile. She wasn’t like that. She led a life filled with dreams of accomplishment and untainted love, but that never surfaced from the interior of that red and white trailer, and the books she kept inside. So we’ll never really know what it was like in her head.     Me? I guess I’m a creature of habit. It’s been too many years since then. Jenny’s gravestone never has flowers when I visit, so I pick some dandelions and tie them together with some newspaper strips. She would’ve appreciated my creativity and thoughtfulness. I know she’s not in the actual ground there, but Fern Cliff was closed when a couple teenagers jumped and died there a few summers back, so I can’t visit unless it’s late at night, and I’m always afraid I’ll fall when I’m high.     Michael-Conner-Jeff disengaged from our group when she died, mostly. I still talk to him from time to time, mostly around the anniversary of Jenny’s death. It was like we lost another person, though he wasn’t missed as much. He wasn’t ever the same. I’ve never learned his name, I guess I could ask him now, but I won’t. I suppose that’s me being lazy after all. I don’t know.     I talk to her though, at her gravestone and tonight at the top of the cliff. I tell her how things are going. I just lost my job, again, but I’m applying for a manager’s position at a home improvement store, though I doubt they’ll take me. My name doesn’t mean much for reliability. It’s almost Christmas, so I tell her what my perfect sister and her perfect family are doing in perfect Utah while I sleep off another hangover at my girlfriend’s house. Every now and then, Michael-Conner-Jeff interrupts my blubbering with a word or two of his own, about his new paramour or how Jenny’s little kids are doing. The Senator is retired now, after his wife died, and he takes care of them down in Florida. I think Michael-Conner-Jeff sees them every now and again, but I don’t know for sure.     As the wind whistles through the air at the top of cliff, where I’m reciting this to you now, I get the sense that Jenny knew exactly what she was doing all along. She used to quote someone, and I’ve forgotten that name too, but when we would be doing something we weren’t supposed to, she’d stop us and, all serious-like, say, “You only live once, but if you do it right, then once is enough.”     And I know she’s been right all along.

Life Goes On Marlon Jackson Life goes on even after your mistakes Some things aren’t meant to be where you cannot forsake Even after death and even after life You’ll never know what goes on whether wrong or right Life goes on yeah life goes on What you do after an incident is your purpose that’s bond.

Janet Kuypers reads poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading poems from various writers from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” (Including Donald Gaither’s poems “Untitled (grey)” and “November Wind”, G. A. Scheinoha’s poem “Easy Vic”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poems “console”, “extinct” and “civil”, Zak Parson’s poem “4:44am”, Janet Kuypers’ haiku poem “need”, and Marlon Jackson’s poem “Life Goes On”) live 4/1/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon ps)

The Face Jon Brunette     Wearing anything or nothing at all, Leslie could make the gayest of men yearn for the loveliness of her thighs, her crimson lips, or, even, the wax in her ears. She could turn heads quicker than almost any movie star could; she could make anyone’s knees wobble like a bowl full of jelly; and, she could show more passion in bed than Marilyn Monroe could.     She could do it all, until the day she died.     A friend named Abe Stetson had stared at Leslie so many times that his eyes had become as noticeable around her as our entire state’s had; it had never mattered to Leslie if their eyes had been male or female—she had enjoyed both equally. Like everyone else could, I could understand their lust. After all, Leslie had made the Good Humor Man throw ice down his ice-cream suit, and, then, shiver with delight, and everyone had known that the Good Humor Man hadn’t been the only one.     One day, I found Leslie behind my studio, lying as stiffly as the mannequins that always stand around Marshall Fields. The cops had to snap their steely handcuffs onto someone, of course, so that someone had become me.     With a million dollars in bail paid, I took Abe around to my studio, where Leslie had modeled as often as she had for Playboy, though, at first, he would only sit there—until Leslie stared down at him with a look that could put heat in his blood and not just his pants. It might have taken a few minutes, but, finally, Abe saw my collection of face plates modeled by Leslie, nailed to the yellow stucco ceiling. And, as I had hoped that he would, he jumped like a rabbit chased by a German shepherd.     I knew that Abe would talk. Unlike Playboy, I had loved Leslie’s face and her lovely face alone; she had offered it willingly, unlike the way that Abe had offered his arm on the legal injection table, which had made me, the jaded reporters, and Leslie’s infant son turn red. Maybe Abe should have loved her face the same way that I had loved it. Maybe, then, he could have died happily.

Adrift David J. Tabak For Garry Cooper, too.     Rathead is up to something. I can tell by the way he twists the bone in his nose. He always twists it when he is up to no good. He’s been waiting for this moment for a long time. He was the big cheese, el grand enchilada, the Great Kahuna who was just waiting for me to fail. And now the moment has arrived.     Rathead was the tops until yours truly washed up on shore after drinking too much on the lido deck, trying to convince the blasted co-eds that I was far more handsome and talented than I appeared. Fortunately, I expropriated a life jacket before doing a feeble imitation of some flabby aquatic mammal on the narrow railing three decks above a roiling ocean. The last thing I heard before I succumbed to the waves was mindless giggling and a suggestion that they check out the disco.     I managed to catch the deck lights of the Polynesian Princess slipping over the horizon, blithely ignorant that it was one late-middle-aged-Jewish-therapist-whose-best-years-were-behind-him lighter. If I was the captain, I wouldn’t bother to circle back for a cursory search; what would be the point? Whatever meager contribution I would be expected to make was as mushy and indistinct as the playbill from the mediocre musical revue I had been subjected to earlier that evening.     A bellyful of Mai Tais lulled me to sleep and I awoke blinking madly in the morning sun while seagulls soared overhead, debating with myself whether their becoming vultures would be evolution or devolution. The sea was the temperature of urine and it smelled as nice. My mind fumbled through a deck of cause and effect as it tried to come up with a reasonable explanation of how and why I would meet my maker in the middle of the South Pacific. When I finally washed up on St. Peter’s doorstep, would he look down at me with ponderous eyebrows and cumulous beard and christen me “asshole”?     Despite probability and personal inclination, I survived the day. Neither sharks nor dehydration claimed me. I bobbed like a brightly colored lobster trap buoy. I tried to find some sort of Zen-like detachment as I was truly one with nature. It didn’t work; I was, however, wiser, vowing never again to delude myself that young women find me the least bit attractive. Whatever aquatic animal would eventually consume my flesh could thank me for the wisdom.     The sun set and as darkness fell, so did the temperature. I looked past the pitiless moon, wondering if God expected me to reconcile. Was he standing at some kitchen counter in heaven, tapping a sandaled foot and sighing like my first ex-wife when she discovered my afternoon exertions with my second ex-wife? I offered no different explanation to him than I did to her. It was His hideous narcissism that drove me away. Not into the arms of another God, but to simple and unapologetic atheism.     I crossed my arms in a final attempt to keep myself warm and was disappointed that a prayer escaped my chapped lips. I hoped I could die with a modicum of self-respect, completely bereft of bargaining and acceptance. I came into this world pissed off; I hoped I would leave it the same way. I closed my eyes for what I assumed would be the final time and firmly extended my middle fingers for whoever would find whatever was left of my body.     My atheism was seriously challenged when I opened my eyes. If there was a heaven, this would be how I would design it. The first thing I saw when I pried open my salt-crusted eyelids was a perfectly formed medium-roast coffee-colored breast with an eraser rigid nipple surrounded by a Werther’s Original Caramel areola. To my utter delight and amazement it was accompanied by an exact twin five inches to the left. I puckered my mouth open and whispered “nice bazooms, Lord.”     A voice as light as a butterfly’s wing echoed “nye s ‘bazoomzlahd?” Heaven got better, because the perfect breasts were below a heart-shaped face, with fig-full lips, a button nose, and two almond-shaped eyes with irises of pure ebony. A newly whelped baby could not be as innocent as the face staring down at me. I tried to raise my head, but my brain had calcified in the ocean and now weighed more than my Wednesday night bowling ball. I howled in pain and the lovely child rocked me in her long lithe arms and hushed me. “Nye s ‘bazoomzlahd,” she whispered, “nye s ‘bazoomzlahd.” To add gravy to the icing, she pressed my face into her commodious bosom. If I had known the afterlife would be this nice, I would have been a far more religious younger dead man a long time ago.     Heaven got even better with a twittering of giggles from the other side of the palm fronds. Two equally beautiful and equally naked naiads slithered across the sugar sands to where the ocean belched me up. They pressed their breasts into my face by way of greeting and I reciprocated by gurgling with delight.     As was God’s modus operandi, my joy was finite and short lived. The palm fronds parted again to the sound that reminded me of the time I accidentally dropped a spoon in the garbage disposal while it was in full spin. Scruffy men with the outline of their ribs painted on their cocoa bodies appeared with bows loaded with arrows pointed directly at my crotch.     Judging by their angry looks, it would have been prudent to politely ask the girls to desist in their ministrations, but I could not. While lechery urged me to enjoy it to the last drop, I was incapable of pushing a flea away let alone nubile women whose fingers were wandering in my beard and hair. Over the sounds of their giggles, I could hear the whine of the bowstrings as they were drawn back almost to the point of no return.     The men parted to reveal what I could only call an antique animated mannequin with bangles dangling from scrawny legs and arms. He wore a bone through his prominent nose and his scalp was festooned with the skull of some enormous rodent that was perched jauntily in a nest of pigeon feathers. He also carried a small wooden stick with a smaller animal skull on top as if he were doing the world’s worst Polynesian ventriloquist act.     He stamped up to me, threatening to crush me with his child-sized feet. While his sandals were made from coconut husks, I was sure that, if he bought them from a department store, they would either light up or have some brightly colored depiction of an animal on the soles.     His eyes were beady and needed a good pair of glasses. Perhaps if he could see better, he would be less of a prick. He grasped the plastic buckles securing the life preserver to me. Even he was surprised when the whole rig snapped open to reveal my pasty pruned skin under an impossibly wrinkled Hawaiian shirt.     The villagers fell onto the sand burying their heads as if they wanted to disappear. Rathead looked bewildered. He resembled the incumbent in a mayoral campaign who had been coasting to victory but had just been photographed kissing an underage intern. This was not a happy development. He raised the phallic symbol over his head and I wondered who had the harder head—me or the rat?     Just then, my cellphone that had been protected in utero in the pocket of my shirt, fell onto a rock and began to play “Go Cubs Go,” which I always considered to be ironic but which the natives considered apocalyptic.     Rathead tried to convince his followers that they should not be afraid like him. His hand was trembling as he tried to poke at the phone that had been cha-cha-ing along a flat rock. He did nothing to reassure his flock and knew it. Unfortunately, he learned the same lesson that had been plowed into me the year I graduated with my Master’s degree in Social Work—-being an asshole isn’t particularly effective in reassuring people.     Mustering whatever energy I had left in my sodden body, I reached to shut off the ringer. Unfortunately, my fingers had been in the sea water for so long that a lady finger soaked in espresso overnight would have had more substance. All I managed to do was knock the phone off of the rock to a smaller rock upon which it split open, revealing a portrait of Alice, my curly haired retriever, looking dopey as ever.     The murmurs of those gathered could come from fear, amazement, or urine dribbling down quivering legs. They had never seen a dog, especially one with creepy yellow eyes and a tongue so long that you could legibly write the Magna Carta on it. At any minute, this Hell Hound might break the bonds that had been confining it to my postage-stamp-sized cell-phone screen and tear them to shreds. Of course, all the actual Alice could do was excessively lick them and perhaps happy-pee on their feet.     Rathead narrowed his eyes and straightened his head dress. With a look of utter distain, he gargled some curt phrases. I was surrounded and hoisted by a band of moist and sour-smelling warriors. They bore me up on their shoulders, daring not to make eye contact nor mention the fecund aroma of the brine-cured feces in my pants.     Rathead lifted his rodent stick to the heavens and headed towards the palm fronds, pausing when he arrived. The maidens danced their way forward and spread the bushes so we might pass.     Being borne headfirst made me uncomfortable; my subconscious convinced me there was the bilious maw of an active volcano awaiting me. I twisted my head around and noticed that the entire island was no more than five feet above sea level. It was less an island and more a pimple in the middle of the ocean. Clearly, the ancestors of this Neolithic tribe were duped by an unscrupulous real estate agent who waxed rhapsodic about the easy access to the water. Of course, easy access is a two-way street. I would have to stake out a tall tree during monsoon season.     As we approached a semicircle of disheveled huts, which would present no challenge for an asthmatic wolf, I noticed to my chagrin a large iron pot on a fire. I didn’t know what bothered me more, the fact that I would soon be boiled alive or how utterly unimaginative my captors were. They circled the pot three times, giving me a chance to inspect the surface of the steaming water. Apparently I would be a bland dish as there was nothing in the pot by way of a flavor enhancement. Perhaps that would be my final “fuck you” to the primitives. I imagined them chewing through my flavorless sinews.     My natural inclination was to struggle and beg, but I was simply too tired to protest. Being in the water for so long and in the ridiculous situation that would be my end wore me pile of ambivalence. Whatever comes next could be no worse than whatever came before.     The men lowered me to the hard, sharp ground. Before I knew it, finger centipedes removed the salt-crusted clothes from my body and tossed them into the fire beneath the iron pot. The flames roiled up great clouds of thick black smoke, which I assumed was a harbinger of something unpleasant.     I let out my last sigh, as the hands lifted me up again. Goodbye, cruel world. Fuck you and your perpetual inconvenience. I was going to a better place—away from you. Up I went into the air and I could feel the steam rising through my fungus-crusted toes; I was indeed to be a most inedible potage.     I assumed the pain would be a bit delayed until my feet were fully submerged, but at first the pot seemed to contain water slightly warmer than bath water. I was sure I would soon be screaming agony, but so far, all I wanted to do was to sigh contently. My shins and thick thighs didn’t seem to mind either. Perhaps I was getting old and my pain receptors were so crippled by indifference that they would even phone in the agony. My genitals registered no complaint either as I contentedly urinated into the water—consider it seasoning. My chest, with its forest of gray hair and size A breasts also contently marinated sous-vide.     It was only when the lithe fingers of the lovely ladies scrubbed me with bricks of pumice that I realized it wasn’t a stew; it was a hot tub. Even my penis woke from its Cymbalta-induced Rip Van Winkey slumber and rose from the surface like some sort of sea serpent, much to the delight of those circling the pot. I suppose it was a fertility symbol.     I was lifted out of the warm water like an enormous matzo ball. The maidens pressed their flesh against mine to both dry and warm me. Every single boyhood fantasy was realized—and then some. God was either off his game or really on it.     I was placed on my feet, but supported under each armpit, so I would not have to bear the full gravity of my weight. The maidens wrapped a belt of leaves around my loins and I was amazed I wasn’t allergic. The least insect-infested woven mat was placed in front of me and I was lowered on top.     A wooden bowl of twigs, fish entrails and God-knows-what-else appeared in front of me. I had gone without food for at least thirty-six hours and my stomach could have digested concrete. They gave me a limp grey-like substance that I supposed was their version of flatbread, but it made a paper napkin seem tasty. It was down my gullet before my brain had time to be repulsed.     While I could not say it was in the pantheon of best things I had ever tasted, it was not revolting. It was warm, filling, and the twigs provided ample opportunity to chew. A hollowed-out coconut shell was handed to me. It had the bouquet of fermented urine after a meal of asparagus in an asparagus cream sauce. I was most likely severely dehydrated and most likely marooned, so a good stiff one would do me good. I held my nose with one hand and downed the beverage, which was disconcertedly body temperature and could strip off three layers of paint. My body went limp, except for my penis, which peaked out from among the fronds like Livingston beating a path through the jungle. The maidens laughed with delight, each trying to get my attention. For the first time ever, beautiful women were interested in my genetic code.     Behind me was the sound of grunting from both weight and anger. I sloshed my sodden head around to see Rathead carrying an assortment of charms, feathers, and plastic rings from a six-pack out of a hut. He looked at me, suddenly wishing his teeth were as sharp as they were brown. He was being evicted from the prime hovel in the village.     I was sure every god goes through this at some time. All those Sumerian idols with their Little Eva eyes grown wider as Abraham’s hammer swung towards their faces. Abraham’s God, après schtupping Mary, wondered where everybody had gone. No god goes to their oblivion quietly, but the problem is that no one cares. Once the luster is off the divine rose, you might as well complain to Zoltan, the Babylonian God of Disenchantment.     I tried not to gloat, but Rathead was such an inveterate asshole that I couldn’t hide my satisfaction. No one seemed happier than the maidens, who apparently had to minister to his every perversity, which, judging by the fact that they all desired a long shower, were legion. They danced around me like gnats, as who I assumed was the chief, judging by the number of feathers stuck in his gray hair and the length of his sagging breasts, pointed towards a hut.     Four nubiles accompanied me into a dark hut, which smelled of old gym socks. It was impossible to complain when one maiden offered me her breasts for a pillow, two others flanked me on either side, and the lithest of the cadre laid on top of me as a blanket. There is nothing better than waking up and, for once, realizing your reality was better than any gin-induced dream.     What amazed me was how little it took to impress my people. They had such an inordinately low standard for a deity. During the first week, I noticed them drinking water from a stagnant pool into which they multitasked by also urinating and defecating. All the while there was a perfectly clean fresh water spring, not fifty yards away. They knew nothing of sanitation, but they had a healthy dose of skepticism and assumed the spring was too good to be true. Why risk it when there is a perfectly good pond from which to get a lukewarm drink of cholera? They watched me dip my coconut shell into the spring and make happy num noises to show they had nothing to be afraid of.     The chief assigned the least promising of his five sons (and I can assure you the competition to the bottom was fierce) to test the water. He trembled as he reached to take the coconut out of my hand and scoop up a quarter-cup of water, which he paused at his lips while locking his gaze on me. Maybe this is what Isaac looked like watching Abraham’s knife glint in the sunlight, praying like mad that a ram with no depth perception decided to take a stroll in the underbrush. I suddenly understood why Gods turn vengeful. “Trust me” means “Trust me, God damn it!”     I kept reminding myself to be a patient and benevolent god. These were simple folk who were cut off from civilization and its gifts of basic common sense. Although it has never been my strong suit, I would just need to be more understanding. But as I watched Nimrod Jr. sip barely a thimble-full of water and swallow it as if he was a teenager walking down a dark hallway in a slasher movie, it was all I could do to restrain myself from slapping him. He was surprised that he didn’t fall dead immediately and was simply waiting for a more painful and prolonged death. The islanders stood around with a look of concern and relief that at least they weren’t the ones who had been poisoned by fresh clean water. What didn’t they understand about num num?     I suddenly felt like a fraud. Not because I was pretending to be a god to a tribe of Neolithic idiots, but because of all the people who could possibly worship me, I had been chosen by a tribe of Neolithic idiots. Other gods were worshiped by ascetic monks or sex-crazed suburbanites. Why couldn’t I be their God? What did it mean that I was worshiped by people who proved Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest was clearly wrong? If a god was known by the company who worshiped him, I was pretty sure I would be the laughing stock of the Deities Conference as the other gods read my name badge and said “Oh, you are that god worshipped on the island of Neolithic idiots.”     As the week progressed and no one was doubled over in either direction, my stature grew. Not a moment went by without some father offering the sexual favors of his daughters, wives, or acquaintances. For the first time in my life, I could be choosey. As was par for the course, the right message was not received and I was soon offered a coterie of sons, husbands, or uncles. I was forced to have sex with any woman who parted the beaded door of my hut, just to get some peace.     Every morning as I escorted my latest mat mate out, I caught a glimpse of Rathead, who stuck around, because, on a small island, there isn’t anywhere to go. Eventually and sadly, you always end up where you started or start where you ended. He was the only one who did not curry favor with me because there was no point to it. No god gives up his place just because he is a nice guy. His time had come, just as had the time of whatever schmuck he replaced. He probably suspected this moment would arrive, he just didn’t expect it to arrive so soon.     The only thing Rathead had left was an overwhelming and all-consuming desire to see me fail. I showed the tribal knuckle scrapers how to make a primitive sundial by inserting a stick in the sand and tracking the sun’s shadow. At first they just stood there like chickens staring up at rain. I tried to explain the certain immutable facts about the sun. It rose in the east and in the morning and set at night in the west. With slight variations, its path was essentially the same every day. A clock would tell them when it was time to work and when it was time to stop working. They could actually schedule their day and not simply do things as they thought of them. This was the beginning of civilization, but they could only think of it as just another fantastic gift that I brought down from heaven, completely missing the point that there was a distinct difference between eight o’clock in the morning and three in the afternoon.     Rathead waited until the last villager turned in for the night before he struck, stealing the stick. I was awakened from my bed of the luxurious bosom of one of the chief’s oldest wives—who was probably in her thirties but looked sixty—by a hubbub outside my hut. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw nearly the whole village knelling in a semi-circle where my sundial had been. Their faces were sand covered and tear streaked as if they were keening ostriches.     They all pointed at the hole where the time stick had been and at the footprints leading to Rathead’s hut. The only face not sandy or moist was Rathead’s, who, twisting the bone in his nose, looked like a cat that finally put a mouse out of its misery. What a schmuck.     I found a small, relatively straight twig by the entrance to my hut. With the triumph of Iwo Jima Marines, I shoved it back in the hole and time was restored miraculously. From the way the tribe carried on, you would have thought I just squeezed the Christ child from between my hairy, freckled thighs. There was genuflecting, there was waving of hands madly in the air and tears and snot flowing freely, enough to embarrass a Pentecostal.     Even Rathead seemed impressed. He nodded and said something that would have probably been loosely translated as “touché, asshole.” I tried to look vengeful, or at least spiteful, just to see him flinch. But he didn’t; he just stood there with his tattooed arms crossed and eyes narrowed, while something crawled in his right eyebrow.     He was daring me to do my worst. Perhaps he knew I was as powerful as he was and that divinity depended on the self-delusion of the adherents. He knew I didn’t dare try anything for fear of appearing impotent and vulnerable to the wrath of the disappointed.     Maybe it wasn’t defiance, but desire? He had been in on the secret that only gods knew. While it made them powerful, it wasn’t particularly comforting. Whatever afterlife mythology he told the masses to prevent them from going mad from staring into the void, it didn’t work for him. Perhaps it would be a relief if, for once, he was punished by a genuinely powerful and vengeful god instead of dressing up every natural disaster or minor inconvenience as an indistinct indication of an immortal’s displeasure.     I looked at Rathead again and noticed a crooked smile. He was looking over my left shoulder where a scruffy little Gen Xer whom I dubbed “Shithead” was trying to get my attention. On this little island paradise, one showed appreciation by standing very close and breathing heavily into your companion’s nostrils. Given that the diet of most of these people was enough to revolt the least picky mongrel and their oral hygiene was limited to spitting out rotten teeth, it was best not to excel at anything.     Shithead wandered up with his face pocked with pimples, placed both hands on my shoulders and exhaled with all the force of a fire hose. I would be washing that flotsam and jetsam from his three previous meals out of my beard for days. He slobbered in the international language of sycophancy; I’m sure complimenting me on my power, my brilliance, my benevolence and my virility. If he truly wanted to know my mind, he should have also complimented me on my enormous restraint of not kneeing him in the groin.     Like any self-respecting ass-kisser, he was a weather vane for the winds of change. Once he figured out that Rathead was out and I was in, he dumped all semblances of loyalty to the old regime and began to follow me around like a hungry dog. Although we did not speak a single common word, we understood each other perfectly. He was willing to do anything I wanted so long as I was willing to acknowledge him as my presumed successor. Of course, he was merely biding his time until when he could put me out on the tropical island equivalent of an ice flow. I suppose he thought he was being clever. But I had been denied tenure enough times by former grad students to know not to turn my back on anyone. Even an idiot can effectively wield a knife.     At first, having an assistant god had some benefits, such as performing minor miracles, including splinter and other objects-stuck-in-nostrils removal. My devotees required constant adult supervision. But even in these small matters, Shithead could not be trusted not to tear me down. Even after the simplest miracle, I could tell he was whispering sedition into my people’s ears. They would look initially shocked, unwilling to believe what they were being told, and then would stare at me indignantly as if I was the one who suggested that they should worship me in the first place.     When I took him aside and tried to nonverbally explain I knew what he was up to, he would smile like a child who was about to be given a lollipop as an appetizer. The more I yelled at him, the more he nodded sympathetically as if I was complaining about someone else.     I would walk away from Shithead, and he would explain to the concerned islanders that I was pissed at them and the road to redemption ran through his tollbooth.     Contemplating my impotence under the mantle of omnipotence, I shuffled back to my hut while Shithead was soliciting sexual favors from virgins. That’s okay, I doubt I could convince my member to stand at attention. I shuffled the palm fronds into something like the shape of another human being and fell asleep with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. I was the alien in the land where I was considered to be a God. Was the Judeo-Christian God that I was raised with laughing at me, or was it simply Shithead banging the virgins in the undergrowth?     I woke up in the morning, sucking on a palm frond as if it were my mother’s teat. There was commotion outside my door. Even though I had been on this island for nearly a year, I barely spoke enough words to impress a newborn. I heard a bunch of gibberish peppered with the words “baha grom.” Baha was their word for any liquid. It could be water, rain, or piss. Grom was some verb that meant to get bigger. So something wet was getting bigger. Baha Grom. It sounded like a pep rally cheer at a perennial loser. Baha grom—don’t beat us up. Baha grom—we wished we went to another school. Baha grom—it is just as embarrassing for you as it is for us.     I dragged a filthy arm across my nose and pushed through the door. The island’s population was milling outside my hut. Obviously they had wanted me to be disturbed earlier, but were prevented by Shithead, who saw this as his chance to push me aside, and by Rathead, who wanted the situation to get so dire that I would fail and fall.     Something was clearly going wrong and I was either its author or their savior. They would just have to see which way the wind was blowing. I acknowledged their annoying supplications as the chief pointed excitedly towards the ocean. I stepped over at least five bodies, whose owners refused to remove their faces from the sand.     By the time we snaked our way through the prone islanders to the sound of monkey howls, it was clear what was causing the commotion. The beach, as it were, wasn’t. Where yesterday had been sugar-white sands, now was ocean.     These were simple folk with no written language, less imagination, and nothing else to do all day but fish, screw, and worry about whether I was in a good mood or not. But the one thing they did know was when the ocean didn’t look right. When you live on an island one Justin Bieber above sea level, you pay attention to what the ocean is doing. And right now, the ocean was rising. Baha was groming like it meant business; some of the trunks of the palms that held the hammocks were now serving as yard sticks for our imminent destruction. Somewhere in the Arctic or Antarctic, an island-size piece of glacier calved off and fell into the ocean.     The sand between my toes feels moist and insecure. The chief, with pupils as wide as his lip plates, points at the ocean, begging me to do something. Rathead and Shithead have forgiven each other’s trespasses and look to me for salvation. Rathead has pulled the bone from his nose, while Shithead shuffles like he was a kid who just realized his parents forgot to pick him up.     The only thing worse than impotence is the inability to abdicate. I look up at the cloudless sky while the sun plashes in the rising tides. The gulls lazily circle overhead; their chortles, a substitute for an indifferent God who can’t even be bothered to laugh.

Kid’s Table Jack Foraker     Thanksgiving is at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I like their house. It is in Sacramento. It smells like fireplace.     Lots of people come to Thanksgiving. Auntie Liz tells me I am getting big. Uncle George tells me I look just like Dad. Auntie Rose tells me I am very tall. Ted asks me how old I am. I tell him five. Grandpa tells me I look just like Mom. Grandma kisses me lots.     There is no room at the big table. I sit at a small table that is not in the dining room. It is in the hallway. Kelly and my cousin Jake sit with me. It is the kid’s table.     Mom tells me I have to watch Kelly. She tells me I have to make sure that she does not choke because I am her older brother. We eat dinner. I make sure that Kelly does not choke.     We go back to Sacramento for Thanksgiving again. It’s the same as last time. Mom and Dad sit at the big table. Kelly and I sit at the kid’s table. Jake makes a snowman out of his potatoes. It’s funny. Auntie Liz sees, and she tells him to stop playing with his food.     There’s noise from the other table. We can’t see why. We go into the dining room, and there is Ted on one knee and there is Auntie Rose, crying and looking at her hand. Auntie Rose keeps saying yes and everyone is clapping and cheering.     Auntie Liz and Uncle George have a new baby! It’s a little girl. Her name is Margaret, but we call her Marg. She’s really tiny with big brown eyes and she looks always scared. She also cries a lot. So maybe she is scared? Maybe everything being new is scary? Margaret is so tiny she can’t even sit in a high chair yet. Auntie Liz holds her and she gets to sit at the big table with them. I’m jealous, a little.     There’s a lot of trouble getting to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving. First, Mom takes a long time to finish the cornbread that we’re bringing. Then, there’s a big traffic jam on the road. Mom and Dad fight over who’s fault it is that we’re late. Kelly and I stay quiet.     When we do get there, Grandma kisses me all over like always. Auntie Rose is really fat, because she’s pregnant. The baby will come in January.     I’ve got another sister this year, Nora. She’s a really tiny thing. I can see her from the kid’s table, looking around the living room, opening and closing her little fists. She’s always been very quiet, ever since she was born.     Aunt Rose looks normal again, but I don’t tell her that. She hugs me and asks me how school is. I tell her. Then she says hi to Kelly. Kelly smiles and says that she looks better not pregnant. Aunt Rose laughs. Later, Mom pulls Kelly into a room and yells at her about it. I don’t see it happening, but I know that’s the reason why.     Nora’s old enough to sit with us this year. I’m in charge of feeding her. She eats baby food, and it’s very gross. It’s like this pinkish throw-up but it smells like strawberries. I dare Kelly to try some. No way, she says. I tell Jake to try some, but he won’t do it either.     Nora’s still in the high chair, but now she’s old enough to be mad about it. She says, No chair—over and over. I’m like, Sorry, Mom says so. She screams.     Jake’s not sitting at our table anymore. He’s at the other table, sitting with the parents. He’s sitting in Dad’s spot. I see him sitting there, and I get angry. I tell Kelly and she nods. On the car ride back, I tell Mom that I hate her.     And Mom says, Ryan, just don’t.     Kelly and Nora and I spend this Thanksgiving at Dad’s new place, which is down by LA, sort of. It’s close to his parents. My grandma on Dad’s side is really good at cooking. She brings this pumpkin pie that I kind of wish we’d eat first, before the turkey and all that stuff.     It’s just the six of us. Dad’s an only child, so we all get to sit around the same table, even little Nora. During dinner, Grandma’s all, So Ryan, how is your school going?     And I’m like, It’s great. (Even though, a couple weeks ago, Jesse said I was a fag when I forgot to lock the bathroom stall. Even though I had such a stuffed up nose this one day that I sneezed and blew boogers all over my desk while I was sitting right next to Sarah, and she laughed at me.) I smile. After dinner, we eat the pie.     My parents got all the holidays sorted out—we’re spending Thanksgiving and Fourth of July with Mom, and then Christmas and Easter with Dad. Easter seems like a bogus holiday if you want to know what I think.     Anyways, I’m like about to start high school next year, but I still haven’t got a phone. Maybe I’ll get one for Christmas in a month, but I think it’s pretty dumb that I haven’t gotten one already. Jeremy just got a phone. Sean got a phone last year. Toby’s had a phone since fifth grade. Literally everyone has one. So why don’t I?     Then there’s an announcement after dinner. I’m still sitting at the kid’s table and all, but after we’ve eaten, Aunt Rose tells us to come into the dining room, all the kids. She’s holding these pictures in her hands, and she says, crying, that she’s pregnant again. You would think my family won the lottery or something. Mom’s completely sobbing, and Grandma has her arms out, grabbing and hugging everyone, and Aunt Liz and Uncle George are both clapping and hugging other people. I clap too. I mean, obviously I’m happy for her and everything. Maybe Mom will see me and be proud of me and get me that phone.     So Jake’s gotten all goth since last year. He has black hair. Actually, the way everyone’s reacting to it is pretty funny. Mom asks me, Do you think he’s okay? What I wouldn’t give to see Grandpa’s face when Jake sits down at his table.     Where I’m sitting there isn’t anything exciting going on. Nora’s got this loose tooth she can twist around one-eighty, which is pretty much the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. I try and text Jeremy, but Mom sees and takes my phone away. Be respectful, she spits. So nothing’s new. I had to help Uncle George take the kid’s table down from the attic; we left the high chair up there.     But next year, we need the high chair too. It’s for Beau, Jake and Marg’s youngest brother. Grandma makes me bring it down. Jake doesn’t help. Uncle George told him to, but he’s just been on his phone since then, not helping. Like, get off your stupid phone. Help.     Ted’s no longer with us. He and Aunt Rose split up. Mom said it was for the best, which is funny considering how she thought he was the greatest before all this drama started. Funny what a couple months can do.     Now that Ted’s vacated our Thanksgiving, I’m the one sitting between Aunt Rose and Mom with the cornbread right in front of me. Finally, no more Nora putting cranberry sauce on her wrist and pretending she cut herself, no more Marg quietly humming the theme song to Magic Fairy Playtime as she eats her turkey, no more ribbons of mashed potato squeezing out from between the fingers of Beau’s fist, no more Kelly whining about how the stuffing is made. This table will be so much less annoying.     But I’m wrong. This table is like way worse. All my relatives want to talk about here is politics and jobs, crap like that.     Grandpa had a heart attack, earlier this year. He’s fine now, but there was that one day. It was like the night before a test—no. It was like the night before a final, before the biggest test of your whole life, for like math or something. Where nothing can make you think about anything else. We all thought it was going to happen. Then it didn’t.     But now, Grandma’s serious about him quitting, and he is too—I mean, I would be too if my heart almost stopped. So when Mom and us all get to their house, it smells like nothing. Just nothing. The glass bowl of soot on the coffee table is gone and so is the one on the kitchen counter, and that mist that hung in the air’s been cleared out too. The whole house feels like new. Except for the table in the dining room, that’s still scratched and worn out. Us too, we’re all the same too.     I have this girlfriend now, and she’s all anyone wants to ask me about. I get like the same sort of questions from everybody, said in the same pattern, like everyone’s reading off a questionnaire or something.     Q: So, who is she?     A: Her name’s Haley.     Q: Tell me about her.     A: Blonde-ish, like me. Tall for a girl. No freckles. Brown eyes—y’know?     Q: Where is she going to college?     A: She doesn’t know, none of us do. Decisions don’t come out till like March or April.     Q: And how did you both meet?     A: Um, at a football game.     Which isn’t a lie, but does leave out some of the important details. We did meet at a football game, but neither of us made it to the actual game. We spent the whole time in the parking lot with the windows of her car rolled down a couple inches, enough that we wouldn’t suffocate. One thing led to another and here we are now: high off each other’s smells.     Before we leave for Sac, I call Haley. Of course, she doesn’t pick up. She has this new person—a friend, she calls him. His name’s Jeff. I think they’re at the movies or something, so maybe she’s not picking up because it’s in the middle of the movie? Maybe the theater gets bad service?     Everyone looks the same at Thanksgiving except for Jake. For one, he’s wearing a turtleneck and ripped up jeans, but he also just looks like shit, pale and droopy, basically. Without even asking, Aunt Liz says that he’s going through a rough patch, whatever that means.     We sit down for dinner. The seats are different this year. Kelly joining us meant that everyone got shuffled around a little. Now, Grandma’s sitting where Grandpa used to sit, at the head of the table. I think about Grandpa a lot actually, his ashy hands, his clothes that still smelled like smoke, even after a year. He quit, he really did. But it was already there, the white dot on his lungs—swept through him in a breath. Sometimes, I think, you reach a point where the change itself isn’t enough.     Grandma’s a flustered wreck, even worse than she was last year. I think the stress of the holidays has gotten to her. I tell Mom, Grandma doesn’t look so good. No, she says, she doesn’t. And Jake looks shitty too. He’s thin but somehow still looks like, at any second, he’s going to throw up. I ask him how life outside college is, and he says it’s great, which turns out to be wrong, a lie. Uncle George tells me that Jake’s been living at home for the past year.     Dinner isn’t any better. For starters, it’s election season, and everyone thinks that this one candidate is the worst thing that could happen to this country, literally; they won’t shut up about it. And then, the turkey’s undercooked, totally raw. It’s so bad that we have to microwave it. We nuke the entire turkey in the microwave.     After the fiasco last year, Mom agrees to host Thanksgiving at her place. She doesn’t have any sort of foldout so the kids all kneel around the coffee table in the living room, like they’re at some oriental hole-in-the-wall or something. And when I say kids, I’m using the term loosely. Nora’s in high school, and Beau’s in that strange bubble of life where it’s socially normalized, trendy even, to have metal wires glued to your teeth.     Now that I’m of age, Mom lets me drink with the rest of my relatives, and I realize how sloppy Uncle George gets and how giggly Aunt Rose becomes when you toss a Cabernet into the mix. Jake looks like an entirely different person. I barely even recognize him. I don’t even have to ask and Aunt Liz tells all, just pours it out like an exhale. She tells me, holding a hand up to her mouth, that he has depression, officially now. She says that now he’s on some meds that help him feel better, a little more every day, and I say I’m so glad for him, and I mean it, actually. Though I now realize I’ve only seen him twenty one times in my whole life.     Aunt Rose brings her boyfriend or S.O. or something—name’s Frank. He seems nice to me. Kelly gets demoted to the coffee table with Nora and the others to make sure there’s a chair for him right next to Aunt Rose, right next to a glistening pile of cranberry sauce.     Over dinner, everyone talks; I don’t know what about exactly. I’ve been busy thinking of something I was talking about with Beau earlier, before we sat down to eat. Apparently, Beau’s really into archaeology right now, especially the Egyptian stuff. He was showing me this book he has, one about the Valley of Kings, a picture book, basically. Beau was telling me about this explorer—     Aunt Rose says to me, a little drunk at this point, So Ryan, hey Ryan, how’re things? Life? The real world?     —he travelled through the Egyptian desert, down the Nile, hunting for a pyramid, or tomb, or something. He found none of that. Then, all of a sudden, he stumbled on something undiscovered: a hidden entranceway in the valley, buried under sand and rock. Somehow, he cleared the rubble out, got it open. Then, cracking open the stone door, holding onto that golden dream of what he might find beyond (treasure, history, artifacts, the pharaoh himself), he finds nothing but cobwebs and dust.

Value from Nothingness Janet Kuypers a two-tweet meme/poem 1/28/14 The unemployed lie around & do nothing, but those who work vacation so they can lie around & do nothing. What is the value of nothingness? # Is the Universe filled with nothingness or dark matter, pulling on us, tugging on us, affecting us... What is the value of nothingness?

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See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem Value from Nothingness/U> live 8/27/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem Value from Nothingness live 8/27/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery (S)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading (C) her poem Found Haiku from memory in conversation live 8/27/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery including this poem

The Fairest of Them All Lexi Lovetere     He showed interest in me in a way no one has before. It was a curious thing. Stolen glances and indirect compliments were the only things that told me I was attractive. He wasn’t always so nice. Actually he was quite blunt most of the time. When the other girls started wearing makeup he looked at me and thought I could use some too. It only started with blush but that led to mascara which quickly escalated to masking my face with every product the world had to offer. I wonder if he could see me anymore, but that really didn’t matter.     He saw my hair and how dull it was. Another hair color perhaps? Or maybe if I just styled it differently? I tried both and at the moment he was captivated by the changes. They were so new and different and exciting. He looked at me from every angle and approved of what I had done. But the next day he did not look at me the same. The excitement had faded and what was once so different and new had lost its vitality. Another hair color perhaps?     He saw my body and thought that I could do better. He shamed me for eating dessert that night. My thighs were too large and my butt was too flat for his liking. Some celery sticks in the morning, a workout to follow, skip lunch, I can have dinner tomorrow. I felt weaker but my waistline was thinner. Is that what he wanted? I could do better.     He saw my clothing as if my body wasn’t enough. Wear this and wear that. Wear something thinner and shorter. My skin was getting cold. I couldn’t keep up with all the trends and the fads. He wanted deep cut tops and short riding skirts, maybe a heel or two for good measure. I thought I could do that. My skin was getting cold.     He saw it all. He thought I should change it all. And so I did. I looked at him and asked if I was good enough yet. Had I done it right? Was I presentable yet? No, not yet. But I was tired of him. My vision was clouded because I depended on what he thought of me. He judged me the best. But not anymore, I was done with him. So I smashed him, I smashed him into little pieces and shards until he flew to the floor in every direction. I had finally made him what he had made me, shattered and broken. I picked up a piece of him and looked him in the eye and then I started to cry. My mirror was broken and so was I.

Trying to figure out what’s going on, but it’s hard to think when the world’s crumbling Fritz Hamilton Trying to figure out what’s going on, but it’s hard to think when the world’s crumbling, & the crumbs are falling onto my head, & then the crumbs are burying me, & they’re over my eyes & nose/ it makes me anxious like a rat trapped beneath water in a sewer/ I need more sewers/ I have a taste for the water, & I feel comfortable with rats nibbling my toes/ a toenail caught in a rat’s throat, & the crumbs are graham crackers, & the sewerage is sour milk/ if I had it to do over, I’d kill myself when the graham cracker & milk ran out, then I wouldn’t have to wash the dish/ I could leave it to the discretion of the next rat    .        .        .

A Bad Influence David Hernandez The light blazed on my skin. The straps tightened their grip, making sure my arms and legs remain secured to the table. A small shadow of a pendulum blade, swinging back and forth, grew larger as the blade grew closer. I look to my left, a niece who seemed like a daughter, lost her love for me, especially when I tried to escape, the blade only a few inches from my stomach. My eyes growl with resent at the family, who where never present, since my decision. I look to my right, a young girl—the real daughter, cries for someone she could’ve depended on, the blade now close to my stomach, slicing through the flesh. My eyes smile with satisfaction, the blade freeing me from my burden. “How can you believe in something that isn’t real,” she asks. “It’s there, that’s how I know.”

A Rogue Independent David Hernandez Police lights flashed throughout the trees, looking for me, while avoiding the rocks I threw. To counter my attack, they sent fired bullets and racing German Shepherds from every direction. One bullet struck my left shoulder, another pierced my right leg. The German shepherd tightened its grip on my left arm, and the lights kept getting brighter. A blow to the shepherd’s head, with a pointed rock, forced the dog to let go. I tried to crawl, but couldn’t gain any distance, my injuries left me at the mercy of the police. If only I could reach the river; it would carry me away from these people who tell me not to move, not to be myself. It’s the same dream, and I find myself back at the same clinic, telling my doctor, “I can’t break the curse; I still find myself being this person.” “Keep taking your medication, and you will find yourself with a peace of mind.”

Someday Deanna Morris     Every morning, as the coffee brews, Ellie retrieves the newspaper from her front porch and wonders if one of these mornings she will find her son on the doorstep next to the rolled up early edition or - having opened the paper - using it as blanket. It would be a long drive for him, but he’s been known to arrive unexpectedly.     She only talks to him on the phone now. The last conversation they had, he said he was writing a letter to the aliens. And he remarked that he really was supposed to be the Pope, but it’s too late now, and, also, he has always been a genius. He tells her he lives on social security and that he is rich. And, oh, he is so happy. She hopes he is. Ellie is getting too old for these conversations, but he is her son.     He has owned four German Shepherds. Every one of his dogs was depressed. He had to carry the last one up and down four flights of stairs because the dog was either too tired or sick, or both. When her son speaks of his own health, he says he hopes that when he dies, someone puts his body in a garbage bag and leaves it on the curb – that’s if the German shepherd doesn’t eat him first.     She says, “Don’t talk like that.”     But he does talk like that. It’s almost a relief when he doesn’t call, but it has been ten months now. She’d call him, but she is having trouble hearing. Of course, when he speaks to her he rarely takes a breath, asking no questions about her. When he does stop speaking for a moment, Ellie asks him what he has been doing besides writing a letter to the aliens. “I’ve been building a machine out of old Miller cans and scrap wire to contact them” since he does not know where to mail the letter.     Ellie finishes her coffee and the paper. The phone rings. It is her son. He does not sound like her son. He is sullen. He is more than sullen. It seems his feet have swollen to twice their size and itch with a kind of relentless stinging only relieved by a foot soak – water in an empty wastebasket. Then there are the roaches and the bedbugs. He has never mentioned those before and he has never been sick. He says people get sick because they want to.     “I am sending you a thousand dollars. Go to a doctor.”     “O.K. but they don’t know anything.”     The next time he tells her his legs, as well as his feet, are swollen twice their size. He tells her he can only walk about 6 inches, shuffle really. Maybe he should go to the doctor he says. “I got the check.” After he hangs up, Ellie wonders if he will live much longer, unassisted. It is time to for him to come live with her, no matter how difficult it might be for her. She’ll call him next week after she organizes her closets and makes room for him.     Ellie had him when she was a 21 year old war bride. She raised him alone the three years his father was in the Philippines. When he returned from war, he took her in his arms and kissed her long and hard and then saw his son out of the corner of his eye. “Is that child a boy or a girl?” he asked. Ellie promised to get the shoulder length curls of her son cut the next day and she did. She begged her husband to leave the night light on for the child, but he said big boys aren’t afraid of the dark. Her husband commented that “he sure doesn’t look like me. He’s all you, Ellie.”     That was a long time ago now. Ellie is in her 90’s, her husband passed on several years ago and her son lives across the country from her. She decides she must ask him to come live with her. What else can she do? He is deteriorating. She should have done it long ago, but she didn’t want to turn him into a sissy man. Then she could stop worrying any longer that he’d show up on her front porch unexpectedly, or that he die alone in his one bedroom walkup.     She pulls out the scrapbooks to remind herself of whom she is inviting home. There are many pictures of him. He is not smiling in any of them. She thought for sure there was at least one of him smiling. One of the photos is of her husband on a sunny afternoon, the shadow of her husband a silhouette on the garage door behind him. Her son is directly beneath the shadow. Neither of them are smiling.     She’ll set up a room for him in her sewing room. She no longer sews, her eyes dimming and her hands no longer nimble. She knows she will have to supply him with cigarettes and bourbon, but she no longer smokes or drinks so she can afford that. The only thing she really worries about is that he will talk to her all day long and that he will rarely shower.     The weeks pass, Ellie prepares and then picks up the phone. On the other end at her son’s apartment, the phone rings on and on. There is no answering machine. The German Shepherd whimpers. His ears cock at the sound of the garbage truck pulling up to the curb.

Mirrors Anne Britting Oleson     “Alice,” my mother whispered over the phone, her voice urgent. “There’s someone here.”     When my father had died, I’d moved my mother into the apartment behind the garage. At nearly 80, without Dad to take care of her, she really couldn’t stay by herself—becoming forgetful, hearing intruders. It was a compromise. When I’d suggested an assisted living facility, she’d reared back.     “Don’t be bossy, Allie.”     I didn’t realize until later that she’d called me Allie. She never called me that. Allie was dead. The other Alice.     My mother’s identical twin had died when they were thirteen, a freak thing, spinal meningitis. I was named after her: Alice. I’d heard the story often enough as a child, how one day Alice had been fine, and the next day, dead. My mother would sometimes say, with a confused faraway look in her blue eyes, that she’d felt a piece of herself missing after that. Then she’d shake her head, her dark hair swinging behind the wide band she wore, and smile at me.     “Until you came along,” she’d say, and go back to the dishes or the gardening. My mother’s hands were always busy.     So the other Alice walked with me for all my childhood. A shadow. A mirror. They were identical, Alice and Eleanor. From the pictures, I knew I looked very much like them, could have been the third triplet—but for my green eyes. It was not uncomfortable: far from it. Other people had guardian angels, imaginary friends. I had the other Alice.     I mused about her as I grew older. What would she have looked like now, at seventeen? Or now, at twenty-two? Thirty-five? There were pictures of my mother scattered through albums at those ages, and pictures of me. “You might be twins,” my friends, lighting on them, would exclaim.     “We might be,” my mother would always say, looking up from making cookies or sewing on a button.     “We’re not,” I’d say.     Tonight, though her voice shook with the urgency I’d grown familiar with. “Shall I call the police?”     “No,” I said quickly, snapping up out of sleep. She’d done that last time, embarrassingly, as there had proven to be no sign of an intruder. “No, I’ll come.”     I didn’t bother with slippers or robe. Her door was in the entry between the kitchen and garage. I knocked: twice, then a moment’s pause, then two more raps, the knock that let her know it was I. The secret knock she’d shared with the other Alice as kids.     The door opened a crack, and my mother drew me into her darkened kitchen. When I reached for the light switch, she stopped me. “No. She’ll know where we are.”     She? I fought down the impatience. “Where did you hear her?”     My mother’s hand shook on my arm. She really was frightened, and I had to remember that. She was an old frightened woman. “Bathroom,” she said. “I saw her.”     This time my heart stopped.     “You stay here.” I grabbed up the cast iron skillet from the stove top.     “Be careful,” she whispered.     Frying pan aloft, I stepped softly down the hallway, listening hard. I heard no sound. The bathroom door was ajar, and, with my back against the wall, I shoved it open quickly.     Nothing.     I waited, still holding my breath, then peered around. The window between the toilet and the bathtub glowed softly. The shower curtain was pulled open. There was no one there. I lowered the skillet and flicked on the light. The bathroom was empty. As I turned, I caught a fleeting glimpse of myself in the mirror over the sink, dark hair, tired green eyes.     “Allie?” she called from the kitchen.     “It’s okay, Mom,” I said. I went back to her in the kitchen. “There’s no one.” I set the pan back down on the stove. “Can I make you some cocoa?”     At first, confusion. Then relief.     “I’ll make it,” she said after a pause, and did. For a moment I had my mother back, watching her get out the milk, the cocoa, the saucepan. Her hands moved as I remembered, quick, sure. Her fright had faded, and she was once more a competent—thought slightly stooped, silver-haired—elderly woman.     We drank in silence, and as the clock struck one, I stood to rinse the mugs and pan. My mother moved down the hallway, and I heard the flick of the light switch just before her cry.     She was shrunk back against the bathroom wall, staring at the mirror. When she saw me, she held out a shaking hand, pointing.     “There!” she cried. “Who is she? What does she want with me?”     In the mirror, an old woman with silver hair and wrinkled, liver-spotted skin stared back at her with wild blue eyes.     “Who is she?”     I reached for my mother, and she buried her face in my shoulder, leaving me looking into my own face in the mirror. The face which had once been hers. The one she still recognized. Allie’s. The other Alice.

P1370494, 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

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her prose Orange Musk from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” live 7/8/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her prose Orange Musk from Down in the Dirt v129, “a Bad Influence” live 7/8/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon Power Dhow)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers hosting the poetry open mic 7/8/15 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago - WHICH INCLUDES HER READING THIS PIECE

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