Mark Jackley

Proximities

No one knew where his father was.
I was on the toilet, naked.
His mother, whom I barely knew,
was naked on her vast white bed.

When he, eight years old,
cried out for a moment in the darkness
of his room, dreaming, racing,
he too was far away.

—From There Will Be Silence While You Wait

Returning From the Clinic

You said you wanted comfort food
and so we stopped along the way
for chicken and dumplings,
mashed potatoes and gravy, a slice of pie.

That is, after taking a life,
we nourished ourselves, or tried.
We ate in silence, broken
by the scrape of knives.

—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.

Matt DeBenedictis

The Winter We Came Together With Purpose

We built a crossbow. We were two and no metal portrayed its frame; only wood found and cut made our weapon real. To avoid blisters a towel was wrapped in tightness and given just enough encouragement to protect our nine-year-old hands.

"Fuck yes," Joseph delighted as he ran both his hands slowly over our teamwork. As I recall he ran a finger underneath it, just lightly touching it; his finger tapped and twirled to some kind of silent song he found in the woods. His other hand steadied the frame with a loose grip, then a veined grip. All movements rotated in speed and style. Truthfully he stroked it, but my young eyes felt he was just touching it -- maybe looking for any flaws to fix.

The arrow itself did have a metal to it, as wood tips never do any damage. With access to arrowheads below none we scurried to unfinished buildings and homes still in debate. Underneath piles of trash and nestled under wood dust we found the perfect screws. Our decisions made them sharp. We wrestled them into each arrow.

As we built, as we searched, we spoke about a real test being needed. It must be able to cut flesh, one of us would say while the other agreed through rephrasing. We laughed as my arms twisted behind me. The rope married itself to my skin and the tree forced my posture to correction. Joseph wondered if I wanted a blindfold. I declined thinking that would make it worse.

"Why won't your mom let you watch He-Man?" Joseph asked checking out the level sight. “But Predator is okay?” He raised an eyebrow for a stupid question he knew the answer to.

My eyes focused on that screw. I could see the rust and his unmoving steady hold on our weapon. "Aliens could still be in God's fold," I said.

The crossbow failed, my skin merely bruised. A swift fist could have painted the same color. We looked to Schwarzenegger for the next designs. Behind my house a perfect ditch rolled over in a tarp and a casket of leaves, while somewhere we forgot a log waited to throw itself down from a tree once a trigger got tickled.

CP

Matt DeBenedictis does not own a car. He enjoys this about himself. His second chapbook Congratulations! There's No Last Place If Everyone Is Dead was just published. He has work featured in places like Lamination Colony and decomP. He blogs at wordsforguns.com and thinks you're fantastic just the way you are.

Kyle Hemmings

The Arrival

Somebody once told her, perhaps the Chinese grocer with dried raisin skin, spots of discoloration, that if your left eye twitches between 3 and 5 a.m., it means that someone from afar will come to visit. And although Chaya doesn't believe in superstitions, she knows that person has arrived. Her belly is rotund, bursting with new life.

Chaya likes to think of it as some miraculous fruit from a mulberry tree. Her mother explained the concept of birth to her in those terms. As a child, Chaya would close her eyes and imagine her mother as a young girl gathering leeks and onions into a pot, boiling young leaves or eating them raw, tasting cucumbers spiced with vinegar. Her mother would love to explain how you can take a late fig and press it into round or square cakes. It doesn't take much to be content. Much of the world is ignorant of this fact.

Chaya is worried. Her first baby exited this world almost as soon as she entered. It must have been the air, too thin to sustain, or the climate, too harsh to ripen. What if this new baby is deformed? What if this new baby grows into a starving man, bullied each day by all the fruit gatherers of this world? Will there be any fruit left for him? What if this baby grows into a girl, mirroring Chaya's left dimple and dead sea eyes, and grows into someone who disowns Chaya, a stranger who renounces her faith in the eternal return of spring and color? Suppose. Suppose. Suppose.

Or perhaps it is more like Chaya is carrying the moon inside her, unacquainted with its mysterious laws, and when that moon drops too soon or too late--the world will go dark at daybreak.

At night, she lies next to her husband, Nathan, a man who wears his Wachovia watch and years of undisclosed baggage in bed, and dreams of a little girl offering a handful of date palms, pistachio nuts to strangers. Will she starve? Was that little girl once her? Is that little girl inside her right now? That little girl always turns and smiles, then, her features become blurred, right before Chaya awakes. The memory of that dream, that girl, will stay with Chaya for the rest of the day, a lingering sunspot.

At dinner, Chaya asks her husband whether the pot roast, carrot tzimmes and potatoes are cooked to his taste, whether he is full. Yes, he says. Yes. He would never say otherwise.

CP

Kyle Hemmings lives in New Jersey. His work has been featured in Five Fishes, FourPaperLetters, Lacuna Journal, and others.

Diane Hoover Bechtler

Treatment

They covered me with a warm, just-out-of-the-dryer blanket.

The tight mesh on my head smashed my lashes and forced me to close my eyes. The radiation machine, about the size of a flattened beach ball, made a low whirring noise as it rose over my left side. It hovered for three seconds—one, two, three—then buzzed like a wasp and shot out a blue beam for ten seconds. I squeezed my eyes tighter closed because it was painfully bright.

The radiation smelled like the air right after lightning and just before rain.

The machine circled to my right side and began again. I tasted ozone. Then the nurses left their shielded area and unsnapped me. They helped me to the wheelchair and rolled me to my ride home. Brochures told of possible side effects: fatigue, nausea, and loss of hair.

For nearly three weeks, this was my routine. I sniffed 20 seconds of an atom bomb, and wondered if my hair would fall out before Christmas.

But one day I felt pretty good and my sister Mary talked me into going to the mall. While she tried on clothes, I made notes about my sore scalp and how happy I was that my hair hadn't fallen out.

I shoved the pen behind my ear. When I reached for it again, a hunk of my hair hung from the pen clip, and I screamed. Mary flew out of the stall still zipping her pants. "Are you okay? Did you fall?"

I stood in front of the mirror, mouth open, shaking my head and waving the pen clogged with black hair. Tears literally sprang from my eyes. "Look," I said and tossed the pen to her.

"Oh, no." She handed it back and hugged me.

I pitched the Bic in the trash and walked straight out to a cheap wig kiosk run by an Asian woman. She pretended not to notice my tears as she gathered my hair into a knot and clipped a fake ponytail on it. This would not work. It hurt, and soon the ponytail would have nothing to anchor it. The Asian woman offered a cheaper price while she unpinned the swishing nylon.

"No, but thank you," was all I could mumble as we walked away. I looked back and saw the surprise on the woman's face when she discovered her hands were full of my hair.

The end of my hair had begun.

CP

Diane Hoover Bechtler has a BA in English and an MFA from Queens University. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Thema, Literary Journal, and The Dead Mule, among others. She is currently looking for an agent for her memoir and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, Michael Gross, a poet with a day job, and their cat, Call Me IshMeow.

Anthony Liccione

from the whores, pimps, drugs and bars

much of this doesn't exist anymore,
the ammunition to keep that pen firing,
such a place where you could buy powder
for 15 cents to kill someone
and then your nose,
is now bulldozed, replaced with
a new building called Little Paris,
don't know what touristy
shit they sell... but they say
his name echoes up from the ground, but

every time I buy some food
at Zankou Chicken,
I have to drive by Buk's old
apartment a block away.
too bad he moved to San Pedro.
what a waste.
to be away from
the whores, pimps, drugs and bars,
but I guess even guys like him
want a nice place by the sea
when they get old.

CP

Anthony Liccione lives in Texas with his two children. His poems have appeared in several print and online journals, and he has four collections of poetry books.

David LaBounty

the death of the first and last draft

she flips
the suitless
cards
& asks
the mouthy
gods
for answers

he takes
the
bottle cap
& weaves
it through
his fingers
the way a
bored
dealer
plays
with an
impotent
chip

all the while

the tv
plays
songs
without
tunes
as the
magic
rises
like a
fireless
smoke
&
drifts
its way
back to
heaven

as if
the magic
was told
to hurry up

& get its ass
back home

CP

Poet and novelist David LaBounty has held jobs as a miner, a mechanic, a reporter and a salesman. His third novel, Affluenza, was published in 2009. He lives in Michigan.

Christian Bell

A Story About Glass

You didn’t know this but I walked by your house everyday and I would stop and listen to the music coming from within. Your windows open. The sound of a strumming guitar. Wasn’t sure if it was live or from the stereo. Then I heard your singing one day. Words about healing broken hearts of poor children living in rusted tenements. That day I was going to write a story about glass but instead stopped and listened, leaves rustling on a day it didn’t rain.

The Letters

We sent letters to your last known address hoping you were still alive. But we found out you’d been dead for 12 years. All those letters—family updates of job promotions, marriages, deaths—sent nowhere. Last week, we learned our letters had become a museum exhibit. At first, we were aghast; then, we saw it and weren’t. Viewers were moved to tears, as were we, seeing our handwriting, our words to you thought long lost. We can’t help but keep writing, this art form of you not dead, we still clinging to obscurest hope.


CP

Christian Bell lives near Baltimore, Maryland. His fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Pindeldyboz, Skive Magazine, rumble, flashquake, and JMWW Quarterly. He posts many of these little stories here and blogs at imnotemilioestevez.

Donal Mahoney

In Break Formation

The indications used to come
like movie fighter planes in break
formation, one by one, the perfect
plummet, down and out. This time they’re

slower. But after supper, when I hear
her in the kitchen hum again, hum
higher, higher, till my ears are

numb, I remember how it was
the last time: how she hummed
to Aramaic peaks, flung
supper plates across the kitchen
till I brought her by the shoulders

humming to the chair.
I remember how the final days
her eyelids, operating on their own,
rose and fell, how she strolled
among the children, winding tractors,
hugging dolls, how finally

I phoned and had them come again,
how I walked behind them
as they took her by the shoulders,
house dress in the breeze, slowly

down the walk and to the curbing,
watched them bend her in the back
seat of the squad again,

how I watched them pull away
and heard again the parliament
of neighbors talking.

—first appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Winter 1968-69


CP

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey) and other national and international publications.

Jessie Carty

Hidden Treasure

From a yard sale I bought a jewelry box of pressed orangey wood
which had three small drawers on the right side and one long
plastic door on the left
stenciled with a white oval.

On the left I hung my necklaces.
In the top two drawers I stowed rings
and charms. But, the bottom drawer, was shorter.
Behind it I hid my meager money. The bills
earned from mowing a lawn, watching
a child, or skipping lunch
at school.

But he found it there, and in my shoe and somehow,
even in the last place I thought a father would go—
an underwear drawer.

CP

Jessie Carty's work has appeared in Margie, Weave and The Northville Review. She is the author of two chapbooks At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House, 2009) and The Wait of Atom (Folded Word, 2009). Her first full length collection will be released in 2010. You can find her around the web but mostly here.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge, 2010

Winter in Amble, 2009-2010

We've all got a winter of 2009-2010 story, haven't we? I'm hoping this is the winter I remember a few years from now when the promise of Global Warming is honoured and I'll be sitting down by the River Coquet in January watching the flamingos mucking about. I'll be wearing my Bermuda shorts.

Amble in the Ice is somewhat off the beaten track. The Northumberland Council is only gritting vitally important roads (and paths and pavements are not even mentioned at County Hall). The A-1068 is getting a very little grit now and then and one can slide through the edge of town. Our few shops and the minimart are not getting much attention.

We don't have a supermarket. We have a minimart operated by the Co-op. A year ago the Co-op managed to cram a great deal of food and drink into their small space. In early summer they closed for renovations: out came about a quarter of the shelves and one of the check-outs, and in came.… Well, less of everything and none of some.… And a large empty area was created for people to queue in unhappily, and a few racks of rubbishy children's summer gear were tucked just inside the door. The liquor section was extended (successfully, I think, as our only off-licence has closed at Christmas) and the butcher's section vanished under shrink-wrapped packets of slightly off-colour meat products.

So, Amblers tend to shop out of town. Goes without saying, though I've said it anyway. There's an ASDA Superstore miles south of us. I don't have a vehicle. I use the bus and get lifts. I rely on our Co-op minimart for basics.

For over a week, the minimart has had the look of shops in East Germany before Reunification. Empty shelves 98%, some unusual items 2%. Just after New Year, our minimart had no dairy products, no fruit or vegetables, no meat or poultry or seafood. It did have a very large heap of butter-substitute products: spreads as they are referred to properly (margarine is toxic, hasn't been sold for decades). And there were many two-litre bottles of Co-op Diet Lemonade. For fuck's sake, I thought, and came home with Lemonade and two cartons of I Can't Believe it's Not Butter, and my Lotto ticket.

Yesterday I trundled (there's a good word!) through ice and snow across to the Co-op minimart and found…well, I didn't find…except for a considerable quantity of Toblerone Chocolates in different sizes (the shape remains the same or it ain't Toblerone). I'm the odd person who doesn't much like chocolate. Go figure. Already having this week's Lotto ticket (the winner, I hope!) I trundled (still quite a good word) back to the flat empty-handed.

Last night the BBC told us, early in the evening, that it was the same temperature as Moscow (-20C). Later in the night they updated this to the same temperature as the South Pole (-22C). This is cold fucking comfort for you! And, today, the story is that it will get worse. And how? Polar bears ice-fishing in the Thames? "I am the Walrus" becomes the new National Anthem?

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.

Steve Calamars

a victimless crime

this cat-burglar in a
cat-suit and black stilettos

slipped thru an open
window and caught me
in my boxers in the
kitchen of a tiny
apartment

she slipped me outta'
my shorts and clutched
onto the family jewels

down on her knees
she got what she came
for and slipped back
out the window
before i could even
mount a respectable
defense

the only evidence she
was even ever here

were the scratches on
my thighs and the
lipstick smudges
she left along my
obliques—

CP

Steve Calamars lives in San Antonio, TX. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and works in a grocery store. His first poetry chapbook, American Violence, will be released April 2010 from New Polish Beat. He blogs here.

Eileen Elkinson

A Moment in Time

If I could capture a moment in time
hold it in my hand and disappear within it,
it would be the time we froze stumbling through
mounds of snow to find an open coffee house
Our cheeks bright red and eyes tearing from the stinging wind
We were shining then
laughing and shining.
I look up from my book at your pensive face,
so many years so many thrilling moments
and I know now,
I have no need to disappear.

CP

Eileen Elkinson's work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Long Story Short, The Shine Journal, and others. She is an editor for Mezzozine Magazine and lives in Asheville, N.C.

xTx

—1957 publicity photo for Jailhouse Rock

The King & I

I asked my mom to write a paragraph about when she met Elvis. Here it is:

1957—Elvis was gonna appear at the (San Francisco) Civic Center Auditorium (tickets $2.75 and $3.75) the day before myself and 2 girlfriends went to the Mark Hopkins Hotel and asked for Colonel Parker's room Went up to the room and talked to Tom Disken (El's road manager). He told us to meet Col Parker at the side of the stage before the show. We did and were escorted backstage where there was a press conference (I'd say about 12 of us fan club girls and maybe 12 newspaper people.) Elvis came in and sat on a table in front of us where we could all ask him questions. Then when that was finished we could go get autographs and ask for the obligatory kiss. He was 23 and really adorable back then, before the Vegas Elvis took over. He'd be 75 today. The end!

Then I asked, “How were you feeling during it and when you got the kiss specifically?” And she said:

I LOVED him. How do you think I felt?! I was like a tween and he was like a David Pattison (?) or the Jonas Bros. (?) Just upset I only had one flashbulb (yes, I know I'm old) and could only take one picture.

Then I asked how old she was when this happened and she said:

1957 would've made me 14. Now you're beginning to dig too deep. Are you thinking you’re his illegitimate love child or something?

CP

xTx loves her mom. More of what she loves is here.

Lewis Coleman

© Adam Swaine at Pictures of England.com

St John’s

A thousand years
ago
they prayed
in a shed

until
men built
the church

sandstone
red.

people died

William Shenstone
for one

whose stone back
I’ve sat against
in many a
drunk

and
smoked with

and
dreamt
green dreams

but none
like my friend

who killed
our friend

crushed his head
with metal

for money

and left him
with the
poppies

for a schoolboy
to find

not twenty metres
from Shenstone’s grave.

CP

Lewis Coleman's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Changing Times and Everyday Weirdness Magazine.

John Grey

BOY SCOUTS

We needed a fire but matches were verboten
so rubbing two sticks together it had to be.
Just like primitive man, when the tiniest flame
suddenly crackled in the flakes of bark, my heart bounced.
And then when dry leaves suddenly set ablaze
and twigs and broken branches followed,
my chest puffed up like a frog's throat.

In moments, the fire was
huge and hot and bright enough
to make day out of night.
We were surely back there
at the beginning of mankind.
We'd been warmed, we'd seen each
other's faces glowing like kitchen windows.

What was next? Meat for the flame?
Gather stones and wood, forge tools?
Go off into the dark and hunt the beast?
Bludgeon a deer, spear a raccoon?
Back in civilization,
we'd be expected to help old ladies across the street.
More signs that the wheel had been invented.

CP

John Grey, born in Australia, has lived in the USA since the 1970s. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slant, Briar Cliff Review, Albatross, Poetry East, Cape Rock, REAL and elsewhere.

Kenneth Radu

Hunters

This road separates
a forest        pushes
five hundred miles
into further silence
and thickness.
Deadly nightshade
grows on its edge,
weasels' teeth click
against bones.
Two men with knives
cold cocks and knapsacks
whistle folk tunes
around a bend
where they wait
for a family of campers
to offer a ride.

CP

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

Cathy Kinn

To My Classmates Who've Left Our High School Web Site

May I say ditto to all who have asked you back. At this late date, being in touch with those I started out with has been a magical gift. The wit, thoughtfulness, and presence of many here sustained me in difficult and lonely times. I think we can provide the same to you, if you will return.

But I must add one caveat: I do not miss having to defend Truth, Justice, and the American Way against Mark's outrageous comments and bigoted slurs.

There were many sleepless nights during those times.

CP

Cathy Kinn, a former nun, plays contract bridge and loves Mexico.