Gary Moshimer

During the Games

I was out of work and my wife was at her sister’s–a trial separation. I’d been watching the Olympics, and didn’t like the way the planets were lining up. First the luge guy dies. Then the doll-like figure skater spins so fast her nose bleeds. And Boner dies, tears on Chekhov's face. It was all too much.

I hadn’t bothered shoveling. My little house was caked in, the willows drooping with ice, sad. Snowplows beeped and flashed out there.

In the city there was an Amber alert. Girl of eight, blond and smiling. Maybe taken by her stepbrother. But when I went to the basement for some more beer she was there, sitting against a stack of boxes my wife had packed. I recognized her face even with her hood yanked tight. Her eyes were closed, lids bluish. I thought she was dead, but then heard her breath whistle though the tiny, blood-crusted nose. She wore a suit of snow, packed like a mummy. Parts of her bled through and made a red slushy.

Later the state police said I shouldn’t have moved her, thawed her, given her chicken soup. I should have called them first. I just wanted to make a difference in the world, was what I told them.

It didn’t take long for my wife to call. She’d seen my face under lights and camera, tongue tied. “Look,” I told her. “They found the cellar door open, and her footprints. She came over the hill from the highway.” She sounded like she didn’t believe me. “Can’t you come home?” I said.

Later I walked to the bar. I was a celebrity. Shots came my way. “I’m ready for winter to end,” I said. I was on the big screen for a while, then someone flipped back to the games, fed up. There was more skating. The Korean girl spun and I spun with her, picking up speed. There was no stopping, and I felt my face, waiting.

CP

Gary Moshimer works in a hospital and has stories in Word Riot, Smokelong Quarterly and other places.

Ivan Jenson

Love Noir

it was a night
when the stars
converged
and the sky
schemed
and the dark
air spoke
volumes of mist
and the headlights
revealed
a spiraling
road leading
to his
brand new
femme-fatale
she would
with her
leggings
and her heels
be the end
of him
but the suspense
was killing him
anyway
so he drove on...
this poem
is a cliff-hanger

Origins

If I understand
correctly then this
all comes to a complete
stop at which point
everyone has to
deboard this
plane of
consciousness
of fools
at which point
we will
either arrive
at a permanent vacation
or a hellish hostel
or instead be
re gifted and
returned
and replayed
like a remake
that is as
thoroughly
enjoyable
as the
original


CP

Ivan Jenson has published widely in the US and the UK and received recognition for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Poetry Super Highway, Hidden City Quarterly, and many others. He now writes novels and poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Diana Rosen

On the Way to the Newspaper Office

Like every workday, I hold my breath to
cross Rossmore at Clinton, an ironic curve
in the road where drivers speed up. No stoplight.
No stop sign. I pass by Lucerne, Gower, idyllic
little streets dotted with 1920s frame cottages
that now fetch six-figures for eight hundred
square feet, "close to everything." The tabby
cat lies curled up in the middle of the tiny patch of
lawn in front of the Parkers' one-story green
and sandstone ranch-house. The quiet draws me
until I realize the stillness is eternal sleep. I want
to change places, leave everything behind, swim
on the orange cloud of dust-to-dust; find myself
dialing Dead Animal Pick-up, swept into another day
selling advertising. Going home, I look over the tiny patch
of lawn in front of the Parkers' one-story green and
sandstone ranch-house, every blade of grass upright,
waltzing in the breeze of twilight. I walk up the few blocks
north to the Times Square cacophony of Melrose
and Vine, the surety of a stoplight, releasing my breath
on the blink of green.

CP

Diana Rosen's work has appeared in the anthologies Kiss Me Goodnight, Those Who Can...Teach, and Bold Ink plus the journals Lucidity, convolvulus, and RATTLE, among others.