Nancy Calhoun

Remembering Mother

She smelled of smoke,
bourbon and Coty L’aimant,
each redolent scent, even now,
setting me on a futile trail
of memory and wistfulness.
she couldn’t cope with life or love
or laundry or childish tantrums;
stood on a ledge her entire life,
waving off attempts to talk her in,
discounting the love she required
with utter desperation, refusing to
believe herself worthy,
angry that no one knew how
to love her in the savage way
she craved, leaving her to find
her only dependable escape
in chemical happiness
and me searching
for something
I would never find
and could not
stop seeking.

CP

Nancy Calhoun recently retired from corporate America. She has also sung opera part-time (quite well known in places no one has ever heard of). She lives in a small ranch town in southeast Arizona, in a home nestled in grasslands on a hill surrounded by mountains. Its beauty inspires her every day as she writes by the window, with opera playing on her Ipod.

DsD

Jealousy

Like mold, it spreads its silver stench.
Rotten tendrils weaving canker
wrap around my bones. Every time
I check his pockets now, I ponder
her round handwriting.

CP

DsD lives and writes in the raw. Trapped in a cave, she tends her cubs by day and licks her wounds at night.

xTx

Drunk (Enough To Enjoy) Public Dancing

I judge the numbness in my skull like I’m thumping a melon. Thump. Thump. Thump. Hmmm. I think I’m there. I think I’ve been there. I think the last four glasses of wine were not necessary.

Thorough.

The sun has long broken or maybe it’s the moon, or what happens in between and every face is strange which makes it easier. Nobody to know you. Nothing you need to care about.

I take off my shoes.

And at first, it’s like a swimming pool with me naked doing laps and the building faces with windows many like a crowd of eyes people staring but the grace I’m displaying with every liquid turn invokes beauty and they take the elevator down to the first floor and one by one remove their clothes and swim beside me. I am out of breath but still continue.

My chest a pufferfish. My scalp a pregnant sponge.

Then we all move together, as one, naked, a complete body, with hands and arms, faces, chins and shins. The music unites us and my skull with its numb hum…lights blurring past in neon stripes; a car chase.

I spin, eyes closed, smiling. My dad takes my hands and spins me faster. I can’t hear anything he says, but I know it’s stupid and so I laugh. Free.

CP

xTx has a mundane office job. She won't say where. But in real life, she writes. Her frequently controversial work has been published in many of the edgier venues on the web. Her fans follow her from place to place, excited by writing that is in heat. If you get a chance to hear her read, you will be astonished that her sweet, feminine voice can say such things. She also blogs, often with equally outrageous zest, here.

Beth Camp

Earth's Hair . . .

If I could count the hairs on your head,
I would count each one
with pine needles frosted white, or
as elm leaves drifting yellow in the wind, blowing free,
or in the tiny filaments of jellyfish swimming,
swimming in the sea. I see cities ratcheted up
your hills and at night, stars scattered on the ground.
And if I were lonely, I'd wrap myself
in dreams of you and never sleep.

CP

Beth Camp is on the road, most recently in South America. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Fickle Muses and The Eloquent Umbrella, among others. She's working on Standing Stones, a novel of the clearances set in Scotland, 1840. Previous publications: Mermaid Reflections and Effective Workplace Writing. She blogs here.

Janely Dela Pena

Technique

I like the way
you hang up the face towel
every night after washing
your face before going to bed.
With gentleness.
Hanging up the towel
like life
soaked with years
wrung from bruising failures.
I'd like to learn
how to face the towel,
hanging up the tears
as if to dry.
Hanging up the failures
to evaporate
so quietly,
quietly.
From your gentle gesture
I know you don't like
to bother others.
It's technique.

CP

Janely Dela Pena is a working student currently residing somewhere in the Philippines.

Wayne Scheer

Look Out, Kid
(Apologies to B. Dylan)

Johnny's in the basement mixing dandelion juice with cough syrup. I'm on the pavement thinking about how the government's been tapping my phone line ever since I started a website for out-of-work terrorists. Some guy with a badge and a trench coat, muttering about needing a pay off, tells me I'm a "person of interest."

"Why? I was just trying to have some fun."

"Don't matter what you did, kid. We're watching you don't do it again."

That's when Maggie comes fleet-footing down the street, her face full of black soot, talking about how her phone is being tapped, too.

"You don't have a phone," I tell her.

Mr. Trench Coat says he wants to be her friend, but he gets his orders from the D.A. She dances off on tiptoes and warns me against taking "No Doz."

Mr. Trench Coat warns me "to keep a clean nose."

I say I don't need to be taking advice from a man who wears plain clothes.

Well, time passes. I get sick, get well. I try to make a buck writing a program for an Internet porn site in Braille, but you never know what's gonna sell. Things aren't going well. I think of joining the army if I fail.

I start hanging around with users, abusers, six-time losers. I spend some time with a pretty girl, but I know she's just looking for a new fool. All the while, Mr. Trench Coat's voice keeps playing in my head like an old vinyl record stuck in a groove.

"Look out, kid. You gonna get hit."

"Why are you picking on me?" I ask as if he's right there. "I don't follow leaders, and I watch the parking meters."

Johnny finally gives up on mixing medicine. Says he's been reborn and wants me to join him in church, which I do. But all I really want is to keep warm. I even romance a sweet church-going chick. I'm so desperate to make her happy, I learn to dance and stop wearing short pants. She tells me I'm blessed and I try to be a success.

I even get a good job in an office and I get a business degree. But the boss's son needs a job and I get laid off. The only work I can find is in a factory. Twenty years of schooling and they put me on the day shift.

And my sweet, church-going chick runs off to Mexico with Johnny.

Mr. Trench Coat's voice returns. This time I listen to what he's saying.

"Look out, kid. They keep it all hid."

Maggie looks like an old woman now. She doesn't seem as crazy as she once did. "Better jump down a manhole," she says. "Light yourself a candle."

Now she's making sense. If I want to survive, I have to forget about this world and avoid its scandals. Make my own way and my own light.

"Is that right, Maggie? Is that what you're telling me? What else do I need to know?"

"Don't wear sandals."

Maggie, her face wrinkled, and her hair stringy, now reminds me of Mother Theresa. She stares into my eyes and I see truth.

"You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows."

Mr. Trench coat smiles and disappears.

CP

Wayne Scheer lives in Atlanta, somewhere down along the cove. He is a wicked messenger but if he cannot bring good news, he don't bring any. Download some of it for free here.

Diana Rosen

Uniontown, Pennsylvania

Strike time. Row after row
of coal miners sit around
the decaying projects, oblivious
to peeling paint, crumbling bricks,

talk how tunneling left them bent,
blackened, bitter. The begrudged
fifteen-cent raise the union negotiates
won’t cover lost wages, scrip owed

for bread and bones. Play football,
join the Army, they beg their sons,
anything but mine-dark days
that end with nothing, nothing at all

CP

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

Mark Jackley

AFTER BEING UP ALL NIGHT
AS HER HUSBAND EXPLAINED HE WAS LEAVING

Soon she moved to Baton Rouge,
where lost souls washed up
from New Orleans, some of whom
perhaps would also greet the day
clutching their ribs, bobbing
tearfully as morning
bled into the bedroom like a slow,
quiet flood of words.

CP

Mark Jackley is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cracks and Slats (Amsterdam Press). His first full-length collection, There Will Be Silence While You Wait, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. He lives in Sterling, VA

Nana Ollerenshaw

DRIVING TO LAWN HILL

Out here the highway starts with reassurance
but soon will dump its drivers on rough dirt,
washboard roads to unfenced silence,
an aftermath of dust.
Passing drivers lift a finger
knowing this red country can
destroy, a landscape simplified
to sky, earth, air and fire
but no water—the braided rivers run with sand.
The road leads on deeper into myth
towards fear in bareness, heat,
flat in all the compass points
so when a destination comes,
presents a campground, toilets, gorge,
the green of hidden water, palms,
a tiny spill of people, who've also driven here,
it's like redemption.

CP

Nana Ollerenshaw grew up in Connecticut, married an Australian and moved to Australia in 1965. She changed from school teaching to nursing in 1988, and currently lives in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland.

Francis Raven

Priors

before she accepted the job; before we were preapproved for the
mortgage; before we knew the city where we would live, where we
would have children; before the iPod; before we knew about Ikea;
before exurbia; before the Internet; before she studied economics;
before the election; before we joined the Y; before ‘hanging chads,’
‘quagmire,’ and ‘neocon’; before she took Tums; before I knew how
to ride a bike; before Katrina; before I stopped drinking; before we
could observe our own historical moment; before teenagers
stopped dropping acid; before the last resurgence; before granite
countertops; before the OC; before nostalgia; before I saw her
sitting; before, what were we thinking
before?

CP

Francis Raven has published three volumes of poetry: Provisions ( 2009), Shifting the Question More Complicated (2007) and Taste: Gastronomic Poems (2005) as well as a novel, Inverted Curvatures. He lives in Washington, DC, and more of his work can be found here.

Jessica Ashah

Remember Canal

The memory
taking place on Canal Street;
shopping in Chinatown,
or is it SoHo?
begins with your quest
to truly understand people.

The Fakeness;
from handbags to jewelry
to Pashminas
to one hundred Carrie Bradshaw lookalikes
to thugs, foreigners, and Yankee caps.

The obsession
with a football star
begins when you sneak onto Metro North
then the Z train
back to Canal

after you turned fourteen
and ran into him.
I heart New York 'Ticky Tacky'—
breakable and cheap.
The relationship

With a cute, lonely boy
who you grew up with
is disarrayed
and ceases
because of dissent.

Grime and garbage,
key chains and fuzzy gloves,
love and regret,
earrings and earmuffs,
all on Canal.

Your lessons in ignorance
from your parents.
How unlovable they made you feel.
Jade figures of Buddha.
Counterfeit fragrances sold by an Indian

with blond streaks in his hair.
he grabs your hand
and strokes your palm with his finger
enticing you to buy.
Amongst the sweat of Canal,

of NYC, and a fake Rolex
you tried to find yourself
beginning with your mother
scolding you for staring.

CP

Jessica Ashah was born and raised in Bridgeport, CT, one hour from Manhattan. She has been published in the Sequoya Review and currently lives in Chattanooga.

Daniel Romo

Last Summer

We ran Ibex Avenue—
Staying out as late as we could
Observing the crickets,
Before our mothers called us
In three different languages.
For a late dinner.

Paul called everyone
A dickhead that year,
And Tony kissed all three of the
Hernandez girls,
Even Eva with the mole on her neck
Shaped like a churro.

On Saturdays we played with a
Lopsided rubber basketball
In my fissured driveway,
Trampling
My senile neighbor's begonias,
And then drank from her tired hose,
Letting the water dribble down
Our scrawny chests
Before tossing it aside
Proudly looking up to the August sky
With palms outstretched
As if we were
Gods.

When we heard the incantations
Of the Indian ice cream man,
We ran inside our homes
Gathering change to buy
Mexican candies made
With trace amounts of lead,
And sweet cigarettes
With powdered sugar tips.

We didn't call each other
Fags
For enticing the ladybugs
To crawl up our fingertips.
We saved bravado for our dads,
Who cursed at the TV
When the Dodgers lost.

We all even cried
When I moved away.

I hear Paul has testicular cancer now.
And Tony is paying alimony to four exes.
But we were bad asses then.

Lying on rooftops,
Humming the song
Of the ice cream man,
Puffing away on
Candy cigs.

CP

Daniel Romo lives in Southern California and teaches high school there. He has been published in various forums, and is currently seeking admittance into a rather swell low residency MFA program. He strives to be witty and relevant in his poetry, but claims to use first person too much. He's addicted to SportsCenter and thinks gray sky the utmost inspiration.

Kristina Marie Darling

Saint Brigid

Or do I mean a mourning dove, rustling in the trees? Again, the harps are quiet. Ever since her miracles stopped, the sisters have wept and wept. And when the organ starts up, groaning under vaults and beams, light catches the dust in every window. Pews begin to glisten as though they were polished steel. A dark bird warbles in the nunnery while the hagiographers nod their heads, listening intently from the eaves.

CP

Kristina Marie Darling, a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has been widely published in such venues as The Colorado Review and Shenandoah, among others. She is also the author of eight chapbooks. Her awards include residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Centrum Foundation, and the Prairie Center of the Arts.

Ross Eldridge

Live, We Watch the Dead

A few weeks ago I watched the eight hearses carrying the bodies of eight British soldiers, all under the age of 30, passing through the little village of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire. These lads, three of whom were only 18 years of age, were killed in action in Afghanistan. The last eighty soldiers returning to England's green and pleasant land in coffins draped with the Union Flag were driven slowly through Wootton Bassett, from a nearby airfield on the way to autopsies at a hospital in Oxfordshire. Up until then there might have been one, two or a very few hearses, and the processions would stop at the War Memorial in the village's main street for a minute's silence. The local shopkeepers and businessmen and pedestrians have been coming out for the passing by in greater and greater numbers.

This time, with so many of our lads flag-draped in their boxes making the trip, thousands of viewers turned out, coming not only from the vicinity, but from many parts of Britain. The press was there. The live cameras were running. I watched it happening on the telly from the comfort and discomfort of my front room. The crowds were said to be eight-deep, but I counted and it was more than that. I saw a lot of young people weeping and hugging each other; it was the old-timers in the crowd who remained stoic in the face of all that sadness. Old-timers under their sunglasses.

The closest I have come to the art of war was a spell in the Cadet Corps when I was at grammar school. I hated the experience. I did take part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Crécy in a school history class, which was interesting because my direct ancestor, the Earl of Stafford, was a commander in the English army at Crécy.

The war in Afghanistan is, I'm afraid, a black hole. It can only suck men and machines in and spit them out, ruined and destroyed. The War on Terror is a religious war; it is the same war that gave us the Crusades and the reaction to them. Jerusalem may be the navel of the world, but it is the centre of all evil as well as the focus of religious experience. I'm afraid the Christian Right and the Jewish State are just forms of Talibanism. Our Taliban is better than yours.

We in England and America don't really want fuzzy-wuzzy Islamist things in our towns and villages, not if we're being honest. Why in the world do our leaders and churchmen think we need to convert the world to Western Democracy? To the Pepsi Generation? To MacDonald's? To Starbucks?

I felt a great sadness watching the line of hearses make its way through Wootton Bassett on my television. The crowds were so extensive, and the number of long, black vehicles so large that they did not pause at the War Memorial for a minute's silence for the first time. The memorial, like so many, many others in Britain and around the world is engraved "Lest We Forget."

I think they should have made that stop, taken the minute, taken the chance that more hearts would break. Some things one really should not forget.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

Tears

He insisted on oatmeal and fried onions for breakfast. Following, he wants to go outside to water the roses.

Nan is at the sink, scrubbing the skillet. Stilled by his request, she takes a breath, reminds herself that it is not an outrageous request, just another request—she does not know how many this morning alone. She lets the cast iron thud to the bottom of the sink before she cuts across his path to the door.

Outside, she dries her hands on her pants as she rounds the house to check the lock on the gate leading out front—to the vast and unfamiliar neighborhood—and then she returns to the backyard, surveys for things he might trip over.

The yard had never seemed "too large" until recently. In fact, when she and Ross first viewed the house, they had had doubts about the size of the backyard—would it comfortably hold the four or five children they were planning?

Nan stands at the edge of the yard, her mind alive with the wild boyish ramblings that had never occurred. The dark braids, wisps of hair escaping, which had never swung upside down from the lowest branch of the oak she and her husband had planted in anticipation.

She shakes herself from the thoughts, reminding herself not to compare what she'd wanted and what she'd received.

She turns to find her father-in-law outside. He stands over the rose bushes, a steady stream of yellow showering.

Nan laughs, afraid of what she might do otherwise.

Her father-in-law appears shaken at her reaction. "I'm sorry. Did I need to put the nozzle on first?" he asks.

She breathes deep. "It's okay, Poppa. Let's just put the hose away and go back inside."

Nan guides his hands as they push his penis back through the slit in his boxer shorts. She watches him tug on the zipper, pulling his pants closed and she's momentarily pleased that he remembers still how to operate the fastener.

"They'll bloom full with a good watering," he tells her as they walk across the patio to the back door, and Nan nods, glancing back to the rose bush, the wetness clinging to petals, like a shimmer of tears in the mid-morning sun.

—From Mother Love

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz writes fiction and poetry and is widely published. Her chapbook, Mother Love, is available for free download here.

Ivan Brkaric

Leeches

Leeches draw blood.

She leans over again
and takes another
piece of gum
from your cup holder.

Then she turns your radio to
a different station.

She talks about herself
and expects you to listen.

And when you don't…

She calls you selfish
and insensitive.

She says you don't
care about her feelings,
but it's your life
she slowly sucks away.

CP

Ivan Brkaric's poetry has appeared in Why Vandalism?, Blowback Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Lit Up Magazine, The, lesserflamingo, and The Legendary. He also edits Callused Hands.

Jan Campana

Contemplating Life Pulling Weeds

I lose myself in an inexplicable reverie.
Who was Richard J. Andrews?
Born 1859–Died 1901.
Was he a farmer or a circuit rider?
I like to think he was a horse thief,
who sold the animals to feed
his ailing wife and six young children.
How did he die?
Was it influenza, a tragic accident or murder?
Endless possibilities come to mind as I
beautify his weathered plot.

If it were my headstone,
would anyone remember me:
a lonely student with a knack
for daydreaming and
a passion for the outdoors?
Or will my memory be lost
on another oily-faced teenager
contemplating community service hours?

CP

Jan Campana lives in Raleigh, NC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Californian, The News & Observer, Maternal Spark, Pens On Fire, Short Story Library, among others.

John Grey

DOG NIGHTS

you’ re naked
like I’m chasing the dog,
coining towards me,
flesh flapping like wings,
and I’m wondering
why the fuck you left
suddenly like that,
as you leap upon me,
securing my body like leather
and I’m out rushing through
dead streets, down wind-tunnel
alleys, listening for
that familiar yelp,
and you ride up and down
on my hardness
while I’m thinking
he’s never going to turn up
when suddenly I come
and there he is
diving into a trash can
like three fish heads
and a half eaten packet of bacon bits
is the way to freedom
and you’re licking me
and he’s licking me
and we’re all bundled up
and furry and pretending
that warm and cozy is the
same as glad to see each other

CP

John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal, among others.

Ivan Jenson

Simply Must

must
take a class
go
on a diet
make a new friend
travel

must
control thoughts
emotions
money

must
listen to Bach
or a bar band

must
order in
take out

or maybe
this must
not be
a very good
movie I am watching

CP

Born in LA, Ivan Jenson was a prodigy in poetry and art. He moved to New York City where he received recognition and praise 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 or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Hidden City Quarterly, Thoughtsmith, Viral Cat, Poetic Desperation, and Bread & Circuses, among others.

DsD

The Wrong Green

and I hate it,
the jealousy,
always with me,
twisting thoughts,
casting its dark rot
on my one best thing,
my love.

More than I hate her,
I despise the dank
green viscous growth
Rosemary's baby
turning into something
I don't know and can't control
but something mine.

CP

DsD lives and writes in the raw. Trapped in a cave, she tends her cubs by day and licks her wounds at night.

Lydia Suarez

The Wisdom of Birds

Crows strut along a track
working off an evening meal
of worms and garter snakes
let me by with a caw,
one lap for disappointing my parents,
another for being happy at the misfortune of others.
Girls in middle school,
with angled footsteps
slide toward the oval knoll
pull up black woolen socks
part ponytails like rivers
and wait.
A man too decrepit to be alive
with slack skin, no shirt and ear buds,
passes me
scares the crows who understand
the devil knows more because he is old
than because he is the devil.

CP

Lydia Suarez has had poems and stories published in Prism Review, Shine, Quality Fiction, All Things Girl, Tuesday Shorts, 971 Menu, among others. Her memoir, Pale Northern Legs, won the Dead of Winter Non-Fiction Contest.

Jim Murdoch

OLD HAUNTS

No, I am not a ghost
but I could not say with
the same certainty that
I am not a lost soul.

THE END OF ALL ILLUSIONS

Yes, even granite men
melt in the rain in time.

ON CONSCIOUSNESS

The pain was not great.
No, I could not say that,
but it was constant
like the clanging bell of truth
or the persistence of memory.

Descartes was so wrong.

BECKETT

Even extinguished candles
hold some slight warmth
for an evanescent time.

CP

Jim Murdoch lives in Scotland. Find out more about him here.

Eric V. Neagu

That Day

That day I noticed the trees saturated with early spring moisture at their base, and the dark dampness gave way to winter bleached bark halfway up and into the sparse branchlets. I remember this. I also remember water at the side of the road, the wooded side, where sporadic spring flowers tried desperately to alter nature's winter hangover. In spots the water stagnated in ponds deep enough that the slightest wind caught the surface and pushed small ripples one way and then another. That was still early morning and I could not tell if it was perfect or horrible.

There was the cheap lunch. A stolen hour from work with the old man, 80 now. His voice had been growing weaker, although I ignored every wispy decibel and focused on the laughter, which still had strength. So we joked as much as we could, but the rain came down and the clouds never broke and the joking tailed off into the dead sound of a slight spring rain.

"He needs $600?"

"Are you going to give it to him?"

"He needs $600. You call him and drop it off for me."

"Okay."

Not much from there to speak of. He mentioned death more than anyone should when consuming fast food. No more than five or ten years left he thought. Only his poetry remained, maybe a sketch, or a few days in his gardens; all of them overgrown these last few years, but he cannot notice. Everything else will be left to others.

I loved the old man, so I took the $600 to my brother and I looked the other way when that simple fool blamed society, bad police, a bum attorney, and everything but his own ignorance and misplaced attention. He stood leaning against my door. I raised the automatic window and then pretended it was an accident. He pulled his hands away. The car smelled of burnt oil and a strange sound ticked in the wheel well. I did not ask what the money was for and made my mind worry about the car instead.

That day, on the way home, the sun opened briefly in the sky. Before then, not a ray through the clouds, and then light flooded through the thin new leaves in the growing canopy above the road. And I thought God is a kind of sun reminding us that time is moving and we better move, too. I passed through the warm light and returned to clouds on the way home. By Chicago it rained and I had to drop something at work before heading home.

I remember eating something good for dinner and checking my bank account twice and wanting summer to come so I could pretend clouds were an anomaly, a strangeness that happened on bad days when death and debt filled the voids in the sky and sleepy warm air drugged our sense of ill.

CP

Eric V. Neagu is a civil engineer who lives in Chicago and works to revitalize depressed communities. More of his writing can be found in The National Ledger, Bewildering Stories, and Hackwriters.

Beth Camp

I Come From . . .

I come from the country, an
estancia so far from the city that
only the men go on horseback,
driving the cattle to market. When they return,
we'll set up the barbeque on the patio.
The old men will play their guitars,
and the women will dance. Ah, I remember last time.
I could feel Renaldo's eyes on me
as I placed a vase of yellow flowers on my head,
fanned my skirts back and forth, and
placed my feet just so.
Singing, I danced faster and faster,
my hips moving,
the flowers steady and true.

I come from San Telmo, a barrio in Buenos Aires.
I sit on my third floor verandah each morning,
hidden from the crowds below. I sip hot coffee.
The sugar from my sweet rolls sticks to my fingers.
Parrots nest high in the nearby palm trees, and
red flowers bloom in a Ceibo; later,
I'll twine them in my hair when I dance the tango.
Ah, Renaldo, I long for when you come to the city.
I will put my black dress on and dance with you
cheek to cheek.

CP

Beth Camp is currently on the road, most recently in South America (six months). Her short stories and poems have appeared in Fickle Muses and The Eloquent Umbrella, among others. She's working on Standing Stones, a novel of the clearances set in Scotland, 1840. Previous publications: Mermaid Reflections (poetry chapbook, 2006), Effective Workplace Writing (textbook, 1995). Blog: http://bethandwriting.blogspot.com

Sarah J. Sloat

Red Cap

Tarry, stray,
and you fall into his lap:

a pillory and bellylaugh,
for that is the plunge of strumpets.

Down the hatch lie rooms
strewn with wool, stockings

and children's shoes,
lined with moss and stumpage.

No surprise to hear
the village hiss, complicitous.

Gossips consider it no mystery
how girls go down,

kindling for the appetite,
when the wolf asks

what you keep beneath
your apron, little mistress

and you reply: wine and tarts,
old beast, a ruse, a rosebud.

CP

Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in Germany. Sarah's poems have appeared in Juked, Bateau and Opium, among other publications. Her chapbook, In the Voice of a Minor Saint, was published in early 2009 by Tilt Press. She keeps a blog at http://theraininmypurse.blogspot.com.

Brandon S. Roy

On Death

I once knew a woman that died three times.
I asked her, "Does it hurt to die?"
She said, "No, it's the people that keep
bringing you back that's a pain."

Bloody Fingertips

I prick my fingers, with a safety pin, when I'm sad.
I believe I do it do see if I can still feel.

I sit and push as much blood out as I can.
I sometimes write in my notebook with my fingers.

I'll write out an idea or a poem
Then I'll cry

Writing really is blood and tears
but mostly blood

Busy Mom's Suicide Note

Family - I left supper on the stove. You may want to warm it up.

Greg - I took care of all the arrangements. Your good suit is at the cleaners; the ticket's on the island in the kitchen.

Jamie - Don't forget your violin lesson - Thursday.

Scott - Be sure to take the clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer.

P.S. - Peroxide will probably get that blood out of the carpet.

CP

Brandon S. Roy lives in Louisiana. His work has appeared in a numerous journals, including the Ottawa Arts Review, Loch Raven Review, Origami Condom, Pedestal Magazine and Pocket Change.

Erin McKnight

To the Quick

She's the kind of girl that takes long baths. A girl who counts the beads of sweat that trickle from temple to ear. Whose arm shares the tub's ledge with a kitten that leans over to paw at her rippling belly. Who notices the vein inside the cat's claw before it hooks her stretched skin. A girl whose mauled fingernails are outlined with traces of blood. Who never would be a girl for long. The kind that couldn't be blamed for failing to grip a slippery baby should it slide into bathwater turned cool.

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Erin McKnight is a Scottish writer now living in Texas. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and W.W. Norton's The Best Creative Nonfiction. Erin is the fiction editor for the Prick of the Spindle and reviews poetry and fiction titles for Bookslut. She holds an MFA in creative writing, and teaches fiction writing in the Dallas community college system.

Heidi Kenyon

—Photo by Heidi Kenyon

I made the most kickass potato salad last night. Fortunately for me, none of the kids like it, so it's mine, all mine! They can have PB&J or tuna for lunch and I will eat a pint of potato salad.

I'm not regressing to my old job here, so you're on your own for quantities. Make it look right and don't forget to taste it! A lot! Add more of whatever until you've got a flavor you like.

Hmm, I think it's easiest to write this recipe more or less in the style of Joy:

Bleu-Green Potato Salad

Boil in heavily salted water until tender when pierced with a fork:

whole, skin-on waxy potatoes such as Red Bliss or Yukon Gold, not russets

Meanwhile, combine in a large bowl:

radishes, sliced or diced small
a shitload of fresh dill, chopped
finely chopped celery, if you're into it
lots of crumbled blue cheese
bacon bits, if you so desire

When the potatoes are done, drain and then cool them with cold water. Cut them into smallish cubes and add to the bowl. Then put in:

sour cream to coat everything well
kosher salt and lots of black pepper

Mix together, taste, and adjust seasoning. Add more dill, salt, and pepper if you like. If the flavor is just a little flat, splash in some

sherry vinegar

or other acid to your taste. Enjoy at room temperature or chilled.

Duh, refrigerate leftovers.

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Heidi Kenyon ran a culinary school until the current economic malaise closed its doors. Now she and her family live on a small farm on an island in Puget Sound. Details of their lifestyle and more of her delightfully eccentric recipes can be found at post-urban farm wife.