Suzy Devere

fixation with here

the hum of the air conditioner keeps me company when you're away and the sound of the crickets is the sound of your fingers on the keyboard in the next room while i sleep. there is no food network in my world and i don't like reality tv. you're just away for a little while, and then you'll be back. i make sure there's room for you in bed and take the big pillow off your side as well as mine. i've got a few empty drawers for your things. i imagine you. i invent you. i don't know you. you aren't coming back. you've never been here. everything lately involves the word "here" and i think that means that sense of place for me is tied to a word, which is itself transient.

CP

Suzy Devere appears and disappears seemingly at will. She could be camping in the underground right now, or back in Pattaya, sitting in a rattan chair in a bar overlooking the harbor, having drinks with some old ghosts of Vietnam.

Gary Beck

Possession

It is after midnight.
I lie alone
contorted on my bed,
room lined with
books, pictures, records,
a dozen poems on my desk,
works of beauty wisdom joy wild hearty lusty
obscene reverent ecstatic maudlin curious
erotic mad exuberance and find
imprisoned by my depth of learning feeling searching,
the memory of your too brief possession
paints your face upon a plaster-peeling ceiling,
splays your thighs across a molting rug
and preens your breasts upon a eunuch bed,
amiable and insolent.
The Arabs in my kitchen
rest their arms on six foot muskets,
chew beetle,
talk of ancient caravans
and maidens.
God is great.
Examining the invisible evidence of my desire
I smoke a final cigarette.
disdain a blindfold and say:
"I can't forget you."

—From Resonance, a collection of poems

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Gary Beck's poetry has appeared in many literary magazines, chapbooks, and collections. His original plays have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor venues. He has been, at various times, a theater director, art dealer, tennis pro, salvage diver, and ditch digger. He currently lives in New York City.

S.C. Morgan

Facebook

I'm on Crackbook
again
this time searching for you,
elusive as ever.
But I remember those years.
We shared stolen time
in my bed.
Your family waited
and I neglected mine.
In the end,
a total waste of
time

CP

S.C. Morgan grew up in Oregon, where she learned not everything is black and white. Now she lives in the jungles of Costa Rica where shades of gray cover the full spectrum. She writes because she can't help herself. Sometimes she gets published. You can read more of her work here.

Shannon Peil

Caught

She's talking
well
it's more than that
see
there are words floating across her lips
and spilling, tracing over and lifting off her tongue
out of her and into being
surrounding me, her, them, us
filling the room
and
this moment makes me lean forward, my senses dazzle

And for one sharp, breathless moment we catch eyes
to the point where I cannot think, or react, or
pretend I wasn't eavesdropping.

CP

Shannon Peil works a desk job that he prefers not to talk about. He also edits and occasionally writes at http://amphibi.us.

Ruth Schiffmann

Whispers and Laughter

Seven days ago I found out I was pregnant; I told Tony and he said he loved me. I said I needed to be alone.

Today, the bell rings and I push my way through a strange tangle of people in the stairwell. The air smells of sweat and Doritos. Hushed voices hiss my name.

My brother's knuckles break against Tony's jaw. His legs crumple beneath him and we all watch to see if he will get up. I am sure this is my punishment: to watch him come undone. The seconds go by mired in whispers and laughter. My brother reaches down and picks Tony up. Draping his arm over a shoulder, he leads him out of the storm we have created.

As they push through the door, Tony looks back and our eyes catch. I'm not laughing at him, but it's not enough.

The onlookers trail away. My eyes linger on the fresh red splattering on the floor and I know, as I knew yesterday when I felt the chill of the cold clinic corridors, he will never forgive me.

All I have inside me today is a diet coke and a heart made of stone.

CP

More than eighty of Ruth Schiffmann's stories and articles have been published, both online and in print.

Sheldon Lee Compton

The Stars Are a Birthmark for Me

The Captain was the heir. His father was an ice pick of a man, developed himself from immigrant to boss. The story was known. The Captain was known. There were many captains, five in all, but only one Captain. The son. The heir.

Kilill tattooed all the captains. Each one, as they rose in the family came to him and sat for their stars. Some were placed on kneecaps, others above the heart. These were the most noteworthy. Of his many, the Captain had two above his heart.

He told his soldiers the stars were a birthmark for him. Said in solitary confinement they called him The Wall because he couldn't be shifted. After he told them this, some of them in idle moments, long hours standing outside hotel rooms for the father, would call him Captain Wall.

The tattoos told your story. The Captain had plenty. Sat for his first stars before he was ten, one on each knee. The father told him this was a reminder he was never to bend to any man. To crush the stars beneath the weight of your knees was to gut yourself. He started looking people in the eyes and in the eyes only after that talk.

When Kilill gave the ten-year-old Captain his first star he was told to push deep, scar him. He was forced to drink half a pint of vodka before he sat for Kilill, ensuring plenty of blood.

The night his father asked him to toss a five-month old baby into the river, the Captain refused, said he would not kill a child.

We don't kill children, Papa, he said. And this child is my blood, my sister, born from your stable of whores.

For that transgression, the Captain was spared. He was not made to throw the child into the river, only to watch while two of his soldiers carried out the task.

The blood is not on your hands, son. It is on the hands of your soldiers. It should always be this way. Do this, and you will live many years.

It took a week for the Captain to build up the nerve to cut away the star covering his right knee.

Once he had both stars cut away from his knees, the Captain wrapped the ragged pieces of inked flesh in hand towels and carried them to his father. He presented them from his knees, the blood soaking through his pants and making puddles on the parquet flooring.

These are for my sister, Papa. These are for my sister. My sister.

His admittance to the hospital was kept as quiet as possible, but his soldiers knew what had happened. Captain Wall became Captain AWOL. When they heard the Captain had used a bed spring to cut away the stars above his heart, they stopped talking. And before very long, it was as if the Captain had simply been killed in battle. He became a memory best forgotten.

Business continued. The father survived, as was his tendency.

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Sheldon Lee Compton lives in Eastern Kentucky. In his county, most everyone carries a gun, boots are the primary footwear, and there are cemeteries located along hilltops. All in all, he doesn't so much mind living in the The New Old West. His work can be found in places like PANK, Emprise Review, >kill author, Monkeybicycle and elsewhere.

Wayne Scheer

The Circle of His Arms

Francine rests her head on her husband's chest. In turn, he circles both his arms around her. The white stubble where dark chest hair used to be stings her cheek and she rearranges her head to find a comfortable position.

She once knew each hair on his body, each mole and birthmark. Now it feels so different. She sees the familiar, slightly raised birthmark just below his left nipple. Memories flash, like lightning in a summer sky; she observes Tom as a young man in the back seat of his father's 1961 Buick. She sits beside him, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, unbuttoning his shirt. Her blouse is open, but she guides his hand away from her breast, not out of modesty, but embarrassment at him discovering that her bra is padded.

Francine smiles, and in her mind she runs her hand over his chest for the first time, seeing his birthmark and kissing it gently. Now, over forty years later, she touches her lips to the same spot. This time, she listens to his heart race and tries not to see the pink surgical scar running down the middle of his chest.

"Welcome home," she whispers. "I love you."

She feels him pull her even closer into the circle of his arms. His chest expands as he inhales enough breath to say he loves her, too.

—First appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, 2004

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Wayne Scheer has published hundreds of short stories and essays, including, Revealing Moments, a collection of twenty-four flash stories, available here. Wayne has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net.

Fiona McCashin

—Photo courtesy Wikimedia

Afternoon Special, 99p

Grandmother was a tyrant—I admit it. She had a red face with a sharp nose, fierce eyes, and white hair pulled back tight in a bun. When you were well-behaved she was stern, but when you were bad, she became a monster. Sometimes I read in the paper that a pensioner was mugged, or an old lady was tricked into giving away her savings, and I can’t help but laugh out loud. Nobody would have dared try anything like that on Grandmother. Everyone was scared of her—even grown-ups quaked in their boots when she called their names. Grandmother always wore slippers, except to church, and she used a cane, so if you ran away, she never could have caught you. But nobody ran away from Grandmother. And when she lifted the cane, and beat you with it, you didn’t cry.

Of course, you don’t get grandmothers like that any more. These days, they're all biscuits and lemonade and five-pound-notes. Or so I presume, from what I witness in the café. And these so-called grannies, with their insipid conversation and their pink cardigans and doting smiles, bore me. Have their personalities worn away with age? Perhaps a disobedient child who skips around the café, runs his greasy paws along my clean glass display cabinet, and does not come when he is called should not be beaten with the stick, but you could give him a slap. A sharp word might even do the trick; these children are as soft as their grandparents. But nothing? As Grandmother used to say, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

And that is why, in Grandmother's memory, I’ve put a new item on my menu. Every child gets a free top-up of my special cola, and if a bad little boy (or girl) vomits up all over his clothes afterwards, I take him in the back to get cleaned up, and I whisper in his soft little ear: "You got sick because you were a bad boy. If you misbehave again, it will happen again."

It rarely takes two doses.

CP

Fiona McCashin lives in Belfast, where she wastes 99% of her writing time trying to come up with witty or memorable bios. She also collects snow-globes.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA

The Saints Preserve Us in Shamrock, Texas

In late October 1979 I was the designated passenger as a friend drove us across America from east to west in his enormous gas-guzzling, eleven-year-old Ford, heaped with things we thought we’d need for winter in the Rocky Mountains. That included a pup-tent.

We hit old Route 66 and used the tent for the first time outside Oklahoma City, setting it up in a grassy field that seemed to be owned by the KOA. It was dark when we got the tent up. In the morning, I pushed open the flap and realized we were sharing the field with a herd of cows. No KOA office, no toilets, no showers.

We hustled out of there. On the Interstate we made good time until we reached the Texas Panhandle. Suddenly, as we came over a rise in the highway, the car’s bonnet started steaming, then billowing, and the car began to lurch about. My friend got it off onto the shoulder where the engine gave up completely. We pried the bonnet open and boiling liquids sprayed about.

I’m sure we were cussing and panicking. There was, however, a sign by the highway indicating a service station not far ahead. My friend set off on foot, and I quivered with fright in the car. At least it was a sunny afternoon.

My friend returned in a tow-truck driven by someone from the garage up ahead. The mechanic hitched up the dead Ford and we drove into Shamrock, Texas.

In 1979, it looked a bit like the end of the Earth. I’d been accustomed to beaches in Bermuda, not dust and tumbleweeds and wooden, raised sidewalks. There were a fair number of boarded-up store-fronts; everything needed a lick of paint. The mechanic said he’d look at the car, and we went looking for a Coke. When we returned the mechanic said things looked bad: The radiator had completely disintegrated. With no way to get hold of a new radiator to fit the old car, we were buggered.

Then I said something odd but not unexpected. I told my friend that if he quit smoking right then (something I’d done recently, so I was insufferable about it) everything would work out. My friend agreed, though not happily, and we wandered around Shamrock waiting for the miracle. An hour later, back at the garage, our mechanic was smiling. He’d been to the town’s dump and had found a 1968 Ford, our model, and cut the radiator out of it. We paid $100 for our afternoon in Shamrock, which was a fair bit in 1979.

I’d asked what exactly the people in Shamrock did, with it being little more than a service station. The oddest thing, it turned out. Every March the Shamrock Post Office receives many, many cards and letters to be posted from there with the Shamrock cancellation mark on the envelope. Cards and letters celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, going all over the world.

It was late October and the town was quiet and dusty as we drove back to the Interstate.

We pushed on to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and then into Durango, Colorado, which seemed like the Promised Land after the Texas Panhandle. But every St. Patrick’s Day I think of shamrocks, and 1968 Fords in Texas.

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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 at Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Emma Stein

For This Poem

It is a shock to spot a corpse
in the spot where before only the
underbelly of leaves pressed.
Now, the surface supports
jutting, unnatural limbs,
and hair pushed and pulled
by sweat.

I put my hand to my heart,
made a little gasp,
so the division between those who
stayed back would not be so marked
by a lack of sympathy.
I told myself that I approached
for the sake of this poem,
so this poem could breathe.

I didn’t expect the blood
that had coalesced in the dip below its
open eye.

CP

Emma Stein lives in New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in Chantarelle's Notebook, Leaf Garden, Thirteen Myna Birds, Illogical Muse, and others.

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.

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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


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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.

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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.

Chloe Caldwell

Daffodils and Deodorant and You

I will not die on my birthday. I will not die on my birthday. I will not die on my birthday even though the daffodils are up and alive already on this weird coast reminding me too early that my birthday is coming and that I will be another year older and that I still do not have myself as I want myself. I will not turn my birthday into a death day.

Dumb Daffodils.

I will not have a sobbing phone call. I will not have a mass email. I will not have a friend find me dead and alone in my kitchen. Birthday cake will not be eaten at my grave over the next few years because I will not die on my birthday.

I will not copy you. I will not copy you. I will not copy you even though I used to copy you I will not copy you this time.

I will not do heroin. I will not do heroin. I will not do heroin because I only did heroin once or thrice with you and I want it to stay there—with you—only you, with you on your wood floor, melted hot in your spoon by your bookshelves in your part of Brooklyn during the day.

I will not do heroin even if it is free. Even if I am sad.

I will understand. I will understand because I do understand. I do understand wanting to die.

I will understand what it is like to be in a sterile new apartment alone in a city with a high suicide rate and have your phone not ring for days. To give it a little shake to make sure it is alive and working.

I will understand sending cryptic texts and having vacant sex.

I will remember your backpack and wear my own.

I will remember your preferred deodorant and vodka brands that you carried in your backpack and carry my own.

I will remember to share my deodorant and vodka with whomever I am drinking or sleeping with.

I will remember how you produced creatively constantly and I will produce my own.

I will remember your hair dye and dye my own.

I will remember your apartment, how it was more like a museum, colorful and messy and I will create my own.

I will listen to your songs and sing my own.

I will read your poems and write my own.

I will write.

I will sing.

I will not die on my birthday.

I will try to be the person you described me as in your poem:

“Small locks fall on shoulders full of faith.”

I will stay small and full and locked and faithed.

I will write.

I will sing.

I will not hang myself on my birthday this spring.

CP

Chloe Caldwell is addicted to email and also to oatmeal. Sometimes together. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gloom Cupboard, Zygote in my Coffee, and Gutter Eloquence.

Glenn Lyvers

Rewind

He was 3 years old when I unloaded,
Flailing my arms like a cinema cliché,
Spanking and reciting…

A smack with eve-ry an-gry syll-a-ble.

It happened all at once – I became like my mother,
as though I were programmed to rerun,
And after…he looked at me like I was a stranger.

That night he flinched when I tucked him in.

For the price of a broken VCR,
I taught him to fear me –
to trust me less than the dog.

Dear Lord, - Rewind.

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Glenn Lyvers is the author of Glenn Lyvers Midwest Collection, available on Amazon. Glenn recently won a Wolfson Award from Indiana University and Best Poet 2009 from Midwest Literary Magazine. He is also the current editor of Poetry Quarterly at http://poetryquarterly.com/