Alex Odom

Living in the World

I have not lived in a world without Nintendo,
color or cable TV, without the internet—
though I did not know what it was
until I was twelve—without confusion,
or where a child can understand things like:

why no one picks him for kick-ball;
why parents fight,
downsizing, depression, suicide;
a world without single moms;

a world without little boys and little girls
holding hands on the walk home from school,
hoping their friends will not see and tease them;

without older boys and older girls
sneaking under cold aluminum bleachers;
fumbling in the backseats of beat-up Fords;
buying cheap beer,
Trojan condoms,
pregnancy tests;

a world without Prozac—
though it was not
prescribed to me until I was nineteen—

or without some mothers
pushing their sons
to go to college,
get a job, a wife,
a house in a nice neighborhood;

a world without Starbucks,
or a world in which it was not someone’s job
to sit in a tiny beige cell
and tell other people
I’m sorry we’re going to have to let you go;

a world without husbands and wives fighting
in houses with empty bedrooms,
trying to have babies,
getting excited to hear they are finally pregnant;
a world without some babies born still,

some husbands and wives
seldom speaking or making love;
a world without separate bank accounts,
internet porn,
single-malt scotch—
though I did not acquire
a taste for it until I was twenty-six—

or a world in which little boys
do not grow into little men
and spend weeks in motel rooms,
because they are afraid
to meet the same ends as their fathers.

CP

Alex Odom is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at Longwood University, with a concentration in playwriting. His plays have been produced at the Avastama Play Festival and New Acme Winter Works Festival. His work has been published by One Act Play Depot, Boston Literary Magazine, Foundling Review, Six Sentences, 50 to 1, and Flashquake. He is the founder and Administrative Director of 0 to 60: Longwood Ten-Minute Play Festival, and the co-founder and prose editor of Picture Postcard Press.

Patrick Anderson

Grief

My mother's tears sprinkle the Irish linen
she presses for Thanksgiving. "What I miss
most, is your father going on about
my cooking," she says. "Like the General
in Babette's Feast."

The stainless soleplate catches
the afternoon sun and throws
light all around the kitchen.
My mother adds more dead weight
to her shadow.

CP

Patrick Anderson works for an environmental consulting firm in Seattle. He has a mad passion for language and poetry, and when not working, can usually be found on his ketch on Lake Union, scribbling in a notebook.

J. Bradley

The Stranger

Son, you will wear shame like a bruise
if I accidentally catch you flossing
want from the gums of your zipper.

Make sure you lock the door, hide
what papers line the cage of your lust
when you aren't surveying
the botanical garden of your body.

Swallow the sparrows of yes
before they escape; wash
your hands after.

CP

J. Bradley is the author of Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in wtf pwm, decomP, Dogzplot, Writers' Bloc among other journals. Find out more about him here.

Deborah Shannon

Daughter

—for Otto Plath

You do not know, you do not know
how you have burdened me
a weight
like a coffin
sealing my life.

Who would have known
a moment of moaning,
your mother’s fingernails raking
across my back
could bring such regret?

You were always different,
never sugar and spice
but a bitter glimpse of bad genes
in a line of self-destructing root
sown through generations.

I have always been scared of you
with your unfamiliar power
in small bones
like thorns
in a crown.

My daughter, what would my life have been
without the smother of you,
without my Aryan blood
running blue
through you?

Many times I thought of killing you,
how easy that would have been.
Your pretty silk pillow
collecting muffled screams
while I whispered a lullaby.

You drank my life
for a year
for ten lost years, if you want to know,
like a vampire-girl
laughing with bloody teeth.

Life, a shadow and a dream.
Death, a sweet release
from the burden of you
from the guilt
of spawning you.

—Inspired by Sylvia Plath's Daddy

CP

Deborah Shannon lives in Manhattan and is completing her graduate degree in creative writing from Florida International University. Her work has appeared in numerous online venues, and she has also written several plays and a novel.

Kenneth Radu

White Cloud in the Revolution

fallen to earth my wedding
dress spreads over the bed
my veil woven from breath
and sky

my groom sleeps
down the street I stand
by the window in the moon
light waiting for the enemy
to appear

shall I join a group
of men a political party
to pass new laws
gun shots break the silence
the people
feed on anguish

legislators quarrel
and even so the evening crawls
up the wall like a bat
tomorrow I marry
in a cold church
the blood in the streets
will soak my shoes

CP

Kenneth Radu's poems have appeared in fourpaperletters, Leaf Garden, Asphodel Madness, Eviscerator Heaven, and elsewhere. He lives in Quebec.

C.P. Stewart

The Trail

Time does not pass,
we pass through time,

the moon in tow,
the stars on wires,

towards that land
of beckoning spires,

our wagons creaking
under the weight of clocks

—From Taking it In

CP

C.P. Stewart lives with his family in North Yorkshire. Formerly singer and songwriter with the cult band Laughing Gravy, his poetry has been widely published in England, Canada and the United States. He is currently the poetry editor of Sotto Voce. Taking it In is available here.

xTx

COUNTING THE TIMES

I've done some rough math
and figured out
that since I first started masturbating
I've probably done it about
3,640 times in my life.
I don't know if this is good or bad.

If Hell is still a place for masturbators,
then I guess there will be a room
with my name on it.
I hope they have down comforters.
But probably not, on accounta
the eternal damnation.

WHY DID GOD
GIVE US CLITORISES
IF HE DIDN'T WANT US
TO PLAY WITH THEM?!?!!

CP

xTx is a master of many things. Count on it. See more of what she's about here.

Nana Ollerenshaw

EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE

We correspond by word
where every thought's an edit
to design an image of ourselves.
Distance brings us close.
Bodies do not intervene
or others' views
or daily living's linen
slow the romance of our heads
the mystery of face.

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.

DsD

maybe

Maybe he's licking her pussy right now. I'll smell his beard when I see him later. Maybe she's trying one more time to convince him to leave me for her. Maybe he's already convinced and is on his way. Maybe I'm going to throw up again.

Maybe I survived last night only to fall on my face on the sidewalk today, crying into the puddles of rain, shouting and sobbing at strangers, maybe I can get myself arrested or something, maybe nothing will ever be the same again. It hurts so much.

Maybe all I want is for him to walk in the door and fold me into his arms, and maybe I never want to see him again. Maybe I hate him and maybe I want him to fuck me hard with his dick still wet from that bitch.

Maybe I do want to kill myself to stop feeling like this, and I'm just not doing it because it's too selfish and it would really suck for my kids to have to grow up with that. I'd love to do it to him, though. Kill myself, that is; I'd love for him to live with that.

I wouldn't mess around with pills. I like blood.

CP

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

Jeanne Holtzman

The Tango Man

The wall between their bedrooms doesn't block out Frank's relentless snores. Nettie rolls on her side and then her back, throws the covers off and then pulls them back on. She squashes a pillow over her head. Finally she gives up, sits up, and reaches under the bed for her box. Pushing her dusty sex toys aside, she eases out the postcard. Stiff, yellow tape barely holds together the two ripped halves.

In the black and white photo, a young, sexy couple, dressed in black, dance the tango on a stone plaza. A black hat awaits donations. With fingers tentative as a caress, she turns the card over, and reads the once familiar handwriting, "We wouldn't have put out the hat."

She and Jake had danced for joy. The jitterbug, not the tango, the floor wooden, the shoes matching: wingtips, hers with heels. The postmark is 40 years old, but still Nettie can feel Jake holding her close, then flinging her away, twirling and spinning, arms entangled, back to back, side to side, until he pulled her in and caught her in a dip. Later, they would lie entwined and drift off in a cloud of James Moody and marijuana, as if they had invented romance.

Now passion is a phantom limb, non-existent except for the pain.

Something always broke the spell. Jake would fling her out and let her go. Or reel her in and let her drop. And then woo her again, kisses and tears. Repeat and repeat and repeat.

Nettie replaces the card, the box. Frank’s snores, incessant as the sea, lull her to sleep.

CP

Jeanne Holtzman is an aging hippie, writer and women’s health care practitioner. Her work has appeared in Night Train, The Los Angeles Review, Dogzplot, Hobart, Foundling Review, flashquake, and others.

Nancy Calhoun

Cardiac Unrest

I wait alone
in a crowd of the worried and afraid
while they probe your hesitating heart
my own beating a fearful tattoo
willing the panicky taste to leave my mouth

closing my eyes I see you on the table
in my crazed mind an ethereal glow surrounds
a swarm of wizards in masks and tall hats
waving wands of mystery over your draped body
snaking a tiny battleship through your veins

I wait, feeling chilled, dreamlike
for the head wizard to emerge to pronounce
the exorcism successful, the war won,
and imagine you leaping from the table
in cape and tights,

your heart able to beat in my chest again.

—From Sip Wine, Drink Stars

CP

After several years as a business executive, opera singer, and general seeker-after-enlightenment, Nancy Calhoun has found her calling as a poet. Her first collection is entitled Sip Wine, Drink Stars and is available here, along with more about her and her work. Nancy lives in southeast Arizona’s wine country, and writes beside a panoramic view of mountains, grasslands and wildlife.

Catherine Zickgraf

Anhelina

Instinct, I guess, drove the roach to disappear between the sofa back and the seat cushion. I had never seen that species before. It was longer and paler than the black, smashed, mucus-oozing type I’d side-step back in college on my way to the cafeteria for breakfast. Anhelina had hidden her original upholstery under a thinning sheet. It was stuffed behind her cushions and into her couch’s nether world, cutting off the creature’s path. Soon its hairy legs reemerged, toting their organ-full, overgrown fingernail of a body toward my thigh. I kept my cool—Mom taught me it’s impolite to spazz at your hostess’s roach-infested couch—but I transitioned nevertheless to her rusted folding chair.

Anhelina had birthed eight children, and her breasts spilled down toward her lap. On her coffee table, I spread open a binder filled with my handwritten pages I’d xeroxed in Mom’s home office. My English lesson began with a chart. I’d drawn it well, my pen sliding smoothly down the ruler’s metal thread—lines dividing English pronouns into singular and plural columns and first-, second-, and third-person rows.

She looked past her page, though, mentioning in her musical Puerto-Rican: no sé leer—she had never learned to read. Her adult sons had tried teaching her, but she never really saw the point. Then, dropping big tears on my fresh lesson, she told me about how the last son to visit had gifted her with three pairs of white socks. But her teenaged daughters had quickly ripped through the pack and worn those socks hard against her peeling linoleum. The bottoms were sticky, she said, her nostrils crunched in tragic disgust. And while a good sink washing with the rest of the family’s socks would most likely render them sort of clean, she insisted the fresh white of the unopened pack was gone for good.

CP

Catherine Zickgraf is indebted to myspace for helping her find her long-lost son whom she placed for adoption two decades ago—thus you can find her blog there: myspace.com/czickgraf. Her poetry has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, and decomP. She has work forthcoming in Bartleby-Snopes and GUD Magazine, and she is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee.

Wayne Scheer

—Summer Evening by Edward Hopper

Patriotic Duty, 1942

"What about me?" I keep asking Billy. "What about me?"

It's another hot, muggy evening. Me and Billy are out on the porch, swattin' at skeeters and talking. I'm wearing as little as I can without getting arrested, but Billy's so keen on his plans he hardly notices.

He used to notice. I remember when he couldn't keep his hands off me. No matter where we'd go in his dad's Ford, we'd always end up at the quarry. I remember the first time I let him take off my top. You'd think the boy had never seen breasts before, the way he looked at me with his dark eyes glistening in the moonlight. He wouldn't admit it, but I knew they were full up with tears of joy.

He told me then he wanted to marry me and give me a house load of kids. Eight, maybe nine, is what he said.

"Whoa," I told him. "You have any idea what it would be like feeding that many?"

"I don't care," he said. "I'll work all day and we'll make love all night."

So how come now, just six months married, he wants to go off to war?

"It's my patriotic duty," he tells me. "The Japanese attacked us."

"You mean if you don't play soldier, the Japs are gonna come here to Rockville, Missouri, and take this ratty old house away from us? Maybe we should let them," I say. "One summer, and they'll go crawling back to wherever they came from."

Billy doesn't even laugh. His eyes are far away.

I bet he expects me to wait for him, although he could be gone for years. Or maybe he'll never come back. The thought makes me shiver, even though it's so damn hot.

This isn't the time to tell him about his baby that's growing inside me. I don't want him to stay just because he's going to be a father.

"What about me?" is all I can think of to say. "What about me?"

CP

Wayne Scheer has published hundreds of short stories and essays, including, Revealing Moments, a collection of twenty-four flash stories, available at http://www.pearnoir.com/thumbscrews.htm. He's been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net.

Jim Harrington

SKIRTS

“You can't go out wearing that skirt.”

“Why not?”

“It's no bigger than a Band-aid.”

“It's what everyone's wearing.”

“You're not everyone. You're my daughter.”

“Daaad.”

“You're not going to the movie dressed like that. Go change.”

“But, Jeff will be here any minute.”

“He'll wait.”

“We'll be late.”

“Late, or not at all. Your choice.”

“Mom would let me go.”

“Your mother's not here.”

“Maybe she would be if you weren’t such a control freak.”

“And maybe she left because she started wearing Band-aid sized skirts. Now go change...please?”

CP

Jim Harrington lives in Huntersville, NC, with his wife and two cats. His stories have appeared in Every Day Fiction, Bent Pin Quarterly, Long Story Short, Flashshot and others. He currently serves as a flash fiction editor for Apollo’s Lyre. You can read more of his stories at www.jimharringtononline.net.

Doug Bond

Why Aren’t There Fireflies

Julie’s moving a little crooked, and for a moment I want to steady her, slow down. I wonder if one will ever take. She’s never been here this time of year. Doesn’t know the way rain comes in summer, taking all day to build. A firefly lights up and disappears in the ferns along the roadside. We’re walking quickly again. I'm trying for long deep breaths.

Mom’s Doctor had called at six am from ICU to give Dad an update. There were complications. Hematologist brought in from New Haven. We’d been at the hospital since we got in. It’s been a long day. Julie needs sleep.

“We should probably head back,” I say, “I think my Dad wants us to watch something with him.” I’d seen the Victor Borge tape lying out on the table next to his coaster. Coming up the driveway to the house, the blue light of the TV reflects through the front window. Audience laughter and piano sounds mingle and pitch through the screen door.

I remember a Fourth of July as a kid, running around the house, my hands full with sparklers, being chased by our dogs. I want to tell Julie, but she is staring across the field. There are hundreds of fireflies crackling along the tree line and the old stonewall.

"It’s not fair! Why the fuck aren’t there fireflies in San Francisco..." Her voice starts to break.

I tell her to hold on and turn towards the open garage and make my way in the dark, past the rakes and shovels, back to the shelves, and to the web-skinned small pots, the loose-lidded glass jars.

CP

Doug Bond is a writer, runner, husband, father, and singer of songs who has endured life in Manhattan and along the Western fault lines, most recently in San Francisco in loving, creative partnership with his wife, daughter, Ben (a Lab), and assorted other hungry creatures.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo of Wancourt British Cemetery, France, by Ross Eldridge, 2008

The War to End All Wars

My little dugout, my home these last two or three days: I am in a narrow trench about four feet deep, and my dugout is a hole scooped out of the trench side and roofed over with a piece of corrugated iron. When, at night, we settle to rest, and hang up oilsheets at the openings, and light our candle, we are quite comfortable, and happy. —Lance-Corporal Frank Earley, 1 September 1918.

Earley was killed the next day, aged 19.

I didn't learn of the death of Lance-Corporal Earley on the Western Front until I read the Imperial War Museum publication, 1918 - Year of Victory, by Malcolm Brown. I was looking for information on my grandfather's older brother, James Arthur Lancaster, killed the same day fighting alongside the Canadians on an offshoot of the Hindenburg Line.

There are only five sentences in the book about that battle. I don't know how long it lasted or how many men died. Were there any trees left near Arras by 1918? Was it raining? Had the Tommies had time for breakfast? Were prayers held? Did anyone sing God Save the King? Did anyone try and run away?

Did my mother's uncle die immediately? Was he bagged or boxed? Was he missed? He was 24 when he died fighting for his country; since he'd volunteered in 1915, I imagine he did care about his country.

I've never seen a photograph of James Arthur as an adult, but there's one taken in about 1905, picturing him, then eleven, his sister Maud, about nine, and my grandfather, William Lancaster, four or five. The boys looked much alike, their hair freshly cut, dressed in identical fine suits that may have been hired for the occasion. The boys looked a bit flash, but Maud was dressed in many layers of unattractive cloth, set off by drooping ringlets. That sort of plain takes some work.

I have a number of James Arthur's military records now. He was sent to France in October 1917. One of the last papers says he was In the Field. And on 23 September 1918, someone wrote Killed in Action and stamped and signed the page.

My great-grandparents received word of their son's death at home in Harle Syke. Who answered the door? It was just a few weeks before the war ended.

Another document, dated 4 May 1919, has my great-grandfather signing for medals awarded to his dead son: The War and Victory Medals. I have no idea where they might have gone.

The exact whereabouts of James Arthur Lancaster's grave was not known in my family until five years ago when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission advised he was buried in Wancourt British Cemetery in Northern France, not far from where he died. His name is on two memorials in Harle Syke, one by the town's bowling green. I wonder if he bowled.

On 11 November 2008, we commemorated the 90th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended the War to End All Wars. Two Royal Marines were killed in Afghanistan that day, squabbling with Afghans over some dusty real estate they want for themselves and we wouldn't know what to do with if we could take it from them successfully.

Many more have died since. So it goes.

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.

Mark Jackley

Appalachian Night

Enfolded by pure darkness
a train slips through the hills,
past the occasional litter of homes
leaking yellow light.

In a kitchen window
the silhouette of an enormous man who thinks,
gazing at the train,
he could love anyone on board.

—From There Will Be Silence While You Wait

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 available from Plain View Press. He lives in Sterling, VA.

Nora Nadjarian

The Face of the Moon, And Another Story

We sat and looked at the moon, the way its face changed, and the way it didn’t. Of course, I said, it’s not the moon that changes, it’s us. We change by the minute, we grow older, and we see things differently. For example, I never noticed that the moon had eyelashes, not until tonight. You said you couldn’t really see that, not at all. You preferred the fact that the word “lunatic” sounded like an attic on the moon, and that it must be the only empty attic in the universe.

We talked for a long time. I said “awesome” several times and pretended I was cool, and American. But of course I am not, never was, can’t be, not even in my dreams. I’m no more cool and American than the moon has eyelashes. And yet, I can pretend. We can pretend to be at the edge of the world, as if we were the first people to discover America. We can pretend that maybe one day some old couple will find their old photos in an attic, and one of them will be a black and white photograph of the moon. We can enjoy all this pretense, drink red wine, get drunk on suppositions.

I must admit the moon looks very full tonight. Even you look–how can I put it–different in this light. That’s the other story: that I made all this up one night while you were asleep. The window was open, your face was bathed in moonlight. I wanted so much to be a part of your dream that I almost woke you.

CP

Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from the island of Cyprus. Her work has appeared in various publications throughout the world, most recently in Staccato Fiction.

DsD

On the Phone After Work

Don't sigh at me like that!
I deserve a beer.

Of course he does.
We have beer
at home, though.

My sigh wanted
to encompass
declined credit card,
potty training, & the fact:

I deserve to be held.

CP

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

Peggy McFarland

Left Out in the Cold

Too loud. Mom had kicked them out of the trailer for the afternoon. Daddy needed his sleep. She locked the door; he could not be disturbed. The teary-eyed sisters shivered as they sat on the wrought iron step, bored. Both wished their father worked days.

The frozen dirt driveway held nothing of interest for the three and four year old sisters. A sagging chicken wire fence bordered the back of their tiny lot, a visual divider at best between the trailer park and a forest of scrub pine. The girls gazed at the forbidden woods but did not want to chance their mother's anger. She had warned, "Stay close."

Bonnie's red tights and plaid skirt did not keep her warm from November's biting wind. The cold nipped her exposed skin—last year’s winter coat did not reach the waistband of her skirt. Karen’s coat was also too short but denim overalls protected her skin. Bonnie hugged her shins and rested her chin in the dip between her knees.

With a sidelong look, Bonnie watched her younger sister wipe her nose with the back of her mitten. Green snot stuck to the blue yarn. Karen tried to shake off the glob. She snapped her hand and then stopped to inspect. Still stuck. She flung her hand sideways. Bonnie shrieked. The offending mitten brushed against her skirt! Eyes gleaming, Karen jumped to play a new game: chase big sis and rub snots on her. Karen could play a long time; her nose oozed plenty of ammunition.

Bonnie ran to the fence. Another shriek pierced the quiet afternoon as Karen aimed another strike. The older girl ripped her tights on a jagged tine of chicken wire. Karen squealed but stopped before the fence. Fairy tales warned that woods were dangerous. And so did mom's hand.

Quick to spot weakness, Bonnie taunted her younger sister: baby, baby. Karen clambered over the fence.

***

Anna heard their muffled shrieks. If he didn’t yell, she could ignore the girls. Heartless maybe, but he'd hit her if they woke him.

She should be outside, with them, playing, laughing…. Anna allowed her defensive voice to beat down her guilt. The girls had to learn to take care of themselves and not depend on others and that life wasn't fair.

But, they looked so vulnerable. Anna reminded herself, they knew to stay-in-the-yard. Her right palm tingled, memory residue from the time she swatted (thrashed oh god she gave what she got oh god please forgive her) their backsides.

Tired. So tired. Of him, of the guilt, of the responsibility, of this shitty white-trash life. She needed sleep. Not now, with a basket full of his wrinkled shirts and the threat of a shiner.

With the television volume on low, she escaped to the glamorous world of her soap and allowed the monotony of ironing numb her.

***

The setting sun spotlighted red threads against the wire. Dried blood blended into a rust spot. Dead pine needles cushioned a tiny pink sneaker, its frayed shoelace loose in the bitter wind. The approaching sirens did not drown out the papery rustle of dried leaves, or the crow's abrasive caw, or her husband's ranting blame, or her own crushing conscience.

CP

Peggy McFarland writes one nanofiction story daily at twitter. Follow her at twitter.com/peggywriter, and soon you may read her blogs at http://www.pegjet.blogspot.com/

Suzy Devere

TIPTOE BABY

tiptoe
tiptoe baby

be loud
about me

but
quiet
about leaving

**
whistle
whistle sweetheart

then hold your
breath a little longer

don't
waste it
on reasons why

**

tap dance darling

stick to that
sweet
soft shoe

and i say

halleluja
for the
short goodbye

**

it's a slow
dark night

and you may
never
be missed

CP

Suzy Devere is a prostitute, a drug addict, a Dr.'s wife, a Lawyer's wife, a mistress to a famous Saudi Sheik, a mother, an intellectual, an academic, an athlete, a painter, a drawer, a photographer, and writer who feels utterly, stunningly alone. Her work has appeared in various sites on-line including Black-Listed and 3:00 AM. Suzy has lived all over the world but right now lives next door to you.