Aaron Clark

TRUANTS AT THE BALLPARK

One kid with his dad had a hotdog like an arm and a soda he needed both hands for. I chewed dry Hot Fries that we’d snuck in the game under our hats. We’d forgot soda.

We’d left school before lunch and walked an hour to the Ballpark. Keith bought tickets with quarters he won all week from Odds & Evens.

“We better go,” I said. “My mom might worry.”

“Your dad just left her,” Keith said. “After my dad left, my mom stayed in bed all day. Your mom won’t care.”

For the first time, I thought that, too.

CP

Aaron Clark teaches English at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, Texas. His new infant boy is in the 90th percentile for height and weight.

Howie Good

 

A LITTLE DEATH

Hear that?
Coyotes.
One got our cat.

It’s midnight,
but still hot
from the heat of day.

The bed springs
go weep, weep.

We lie panting
in the sudden
emptiness afterward,

wings coated
with ash.

CP

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of the  poetry collection, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.

Margaret A. Frey

The Eight-Day Men

We kept our senses until the light failed, the last lantern sputtering down on day three. We kept our spirits up until Ruggio begged the Holy Virgin, spewed prayers and the Act of Contrition for the sake of our wretched Protestant souls. A thousand times.

With songs and laughter, we drowned out Ruggio's words then switched to bitter complaints about hard-nosed bosses and shifty lawyers. They'd pay for their rotten oversight and promised safety measures, always two steps behind a collapse or fire. We'd make them pay, if we weren't all dead. Otto Muller said we'd be converted Harp Players by then.

We kept our dignity until the hunger and thirst, the God awful loneliness made us wonder if we'd passed on, unsuspecting ghosts. We shouted out one another's names. Twenty-one men. As minutes stretched into days, our tongues thickened; our speech grew slow and weak. They were voices we barely recognized. They were names we no longer believed in.

On the eighth day, we were rescued, hauled from the drift mouth like the ore we'd mined—black, rank lumps of men. Topside, the light blinded us. We tipped our grizzled chins to the sun then bowed low, retching up the crisp November air. We were creatures of darkness but our wives, sisters and mothers covered us with kisses and cheered our return.

Otto Muller took a single breath then died on a stretcher, an unrepentant Lutheran. For the rest? We kissed the ground and rejoined our families. Over frothy pints, we told our stories to eager reporters, who tagged us the "Eight-Day Men." The headlines fueled the nation's imagination, making heroes out of frightened men.
 
We kept our fears secret but for sweaty dreams that yanked us awake with exhausting regularity. The boys—nippers and mule tenders—those rescued earlier, slipped from youth to sullen manhood as quick as a page turning. A conjurer's trick, some whispered. Or the mountain's revenge.

We kept our heads, while the best of what we were stayed buried, nearly 500 feet down.

For a long while, we envied Otto Muller and spoke his name with hushed respect. While we stroked our loved ones, repeated our tales of luck and good fortune, we knew the truth:

Otto Muller outsmarted everyone. He died, yes. But he died only once.

CP

Margaret A. Frey writes from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Over the years, her work has appeared in numerous online and print venues. Right now, she's researching and dreaming up a longer work on the American coal industry. When she's not, she's romping with her canine literary critics. Her furry companions prefer walking and playing to writing. Who knows? They could be on to something.

Ramon Collins

 

EVENING ALONE

Sharon arrived at an overcast beach to the squawks and swoops of seagulls. One settled on the nearby seawall.

She glanced sideways. "Do you have Christmas mornings and birthday parties?"

The gull strutted a few steps down the wall.

"Please don't go away. Stay and talk," Sharon said. The gull stood on one leg and cocked its head toward her. She rubbed a knuckle under her eye.

"I need your advice."

The gull put its foot down, stretched its wings out and swept into the salty breeze. Sharon stood, crossed the esplanade and stopped at the water's edge.

"Do you have Christmas mornings and birthday parties?" she asked an incoming wave. It turned and swirled back as she walked away.

Darkening clouds broke now and the setting sun peeked over the horizon like a half-drowned orange.

In the wet sand, light glinted off a gold ring.

CP

Ramon Collins is a retired cartoonist who, out of necessity, started studying and writing fiction in 1997. He has had stories in print and online. Collins lives on the NE edge of the Mojave Desert.

Katryn Ligachev

The Sound of Coughing

I thought I tempted fate
(burglaries, cancer, true love!)

but no: I just stated a falsehood
(cold soup, rent, mildew)

(Not my) Motherland

windswept, crunched leaves
flickering like eyelids

with your tongue
I'll amputate my troubles

and leave a hot raw cave
into which you pour
(forever on credit)

these foreign names
female names

and in the midst of it all
an ingenious metaphysics
or do I mean "ontology"?

for this is the fascination
(this and the concept of my underwear)
of anonymous, unknown Russia

Hanging

mute women
with their edges snapped off
converging hungrily on the buffet

I get my knives out by the fountain
to drain rivers of sucrose

hanging above the lobby of a fine hotel
are eighteen heavy carcasses

my meat
my meat
my mother

Later, I'll bathe her stamped flank
by the settling stretch of the ocean

CP

Katryn Ligachev doesn't do much other than write. She will get a job when the food runs out.

She Was

things i rush to write with a hammering heart

When my father died, he didn’t get sick, or fall ill, or anything like that, he just died. He was and then he wasn’t. Just like that, snap. There was no goodbye and no last words. No letter or advice, or I will love you when I go. I don’t think about this often. About what he might have said. Actually, I never think about what he might have said, had he been given the chance. I know what I said. I can remember each word, counting each breath until the last. I held his hand and I whispered to him and the nurse stood next to me and told me he could hear me, that she believed that a brain flooded with blood, deprived of oxygen, dead, that some small part, would know, could feel, could make it through and be present. I didn’t believe her. I’d asked the doctor earlier, as I’d watched tears seep out of my father’s taped up eyes, was he crying, and he shook his head, no. He asked me if I wanted him to explain and I silently nodded my head yes. I wanted to understand this, what was happening to his body. He sat next to me and explained that he was gone, that he was and then he wasn’t. I touched the tears on my father’s cheeks and held my fingers out to him. He curled my fingers back into the palm of my hand and explained synapses and brain death and involuntary responses. And I nodded yes, I understand. And it was comforting, that he wasn’t. I thought, if he knew, he wouldn’t be able to leave, leaving would be unbearable. I knew that. So when the nurse told me that he was, that some part, some tiny, bigger than dead part still was, I wanted to tell her no. But because I couldn’t be sure, but because even back then I understood that a nurse knows death better than a doctor, I rested my head on his steady beating chest and whispered to him, that he had to find a way to leave, that I wanted him to go, that he could, that I let him. And I held his spasming hand for another two or three minutes and then he stopped being. And that’s how that happened. It was a very long time ago. I was a little girl and now I’m not. And I don’t think about it anymore. I think of other things. Of books he read me and poetry he wrote. That’s what I think about. Until I read something like The Road. And then I think, what would he have said if he could have, if he’d known, if we’d been allowed that conversation, if it hadn’t just been me doing all the talking, telling him to go. Would he have told me about love, forever? That I could always talk to him, that he’d always be there to listen? That he’d keep loving me, that I’d be loved, that I wouldn’t be fatherless. And I wonder, if he’d told me about love, forever, his love forever, would I have believed him? Would I still, today, flip the coin looking for the tarnish, the blindside, the ending lurking around the corner? I miss(ed) my dad and it was a loss.

CP

She Was going to tell us who she was, but decided she wouldn't. Still, she has a lot to say. Changing from day to day here.

Nancy Calhoun

 

 

OUT TO DINNER

We took a table in a small café
some would describe as graceless.
Not much ambiance, not much class.

The neon beer sign over the bar
glowed a garish pink and piped-in
cowboy guitar played too loud.

We ordered wine and looked around
where a few other couples
were silhouetted in the dim light.

Neither the wine nor the meal was memorable
but as we waited for dessert,
you took my hand.

Not being one for public displays,
I knew you hoped no one noticed,
but I, loving your touch,

knew that every couple
in this charmless little place
wished that they were us.

—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.

Mark Jackley

Breaking Up

We picked up lethal shards of glass
from the carpets and the stairs.
Put twisted picture frames
and ripped-up photos into piles.
Yanked my daughter's bicycle
out from under barbells,
swept up shattered dishes,
vacuumed cat shit in the hall.
Wiped the now bare walls.
Stared at busted lamps
and splintered chairs.
The entire time, we uttered not a sound.
Then we tossed it all into big black bags
and left it on the curb,
where under the morning stars
it disappeared for good.

—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.

Robert Louis Henry

Local Folk Art

Local folk art
like ladybug mailboxes
and REPENT on
a telephone pole
giant aluminum crosses
near the adult stores
and knee-high crucifixes
to mark where
their daughter was
killed while waiting
for the school bus.
He still drives fast
on that road,
and jokes about
the banjos gettin’
louder.
And local folk art
like the collection of
telephone poles
arranged like a
crop-circle
at that trailer
that burned down.
Not the meth dealer
or the meth dealer
across from the meth dealer,
but the one past the dam,
and the red barn.

—First appeared in 3:AM Magazine, May 2009

Exaggerations

Dandridge has at
least forty cemeteries,
six churches, and two
rickety bars. The drugstore
has a classic soda fountain,
and it’s considered an attraction.
Down the road from it
you’re on the highway
with its chains of banks
and franchises of foods
exactly like every other
half-developed city.
Near the lake there’s
a restaurant that a
professional wrestler
bought for his mother,
and it’s considered an attraction.
But I’ve been there,
it’s just seafood.

—First appeared in 3:AM Magazine, May 2009


CP

Robert Louis Henry lives in Tennessee. His writing appears in some publications. His latest book, God loves rich kids and we smoke off the same cigarette is available free here. He's editor-in-chief of Leaf Garden Press.

Hattie Wilcox

Down with the Pimps of Peace

His neighbors sometimes weld
late into the evening
a bevy of Harleys
gather 'round the torch
silent, waiting to be jumped
and come back alive, the loud
rumbling seat of power
for those who sleep where they work
scream and fight into the night
disturbances mostly muffled
by square footage big enough
to house a fleet of trucks

In a warehouse he lives alone
behind metal, walls with no windows
content to paint in artificial light
images of happiness and connection
children busy at the beach
holding their mothers' hands
dreaming and building with wet sand
endless sunshine and shadow
rippling in an oily mirage
of no expectations

He reads the Tao, the now
floats in the cool stream of words
living in the books of Tolle, Dyer, Chopra
drinks daily from the overflowing cup
in the club of the pimps of peace
who hawk the warm and sterile
tightly-wrapped bandages of
brainwashing away all extremes
to purge pain from its strongholds
in betrayal, hunger, hope, and desire

He speaks the language of stillness
carries himself like a priest
who many mornings is mired
deep in the heat of chaos
that is the survival of his past
years of childhood beatings
difficult to reconcile even though
he maintains an exterior calm
having passed with flying colors
through the drinking, brawling
balls of confusion years
he long ago put behind him
in the closed closet
with the rest of it

I love him and though
he is out of my sight
he is part of my everyday being
and each day I pray
there are enough books
with enough words
to keep him safe
his guarded heart open
his fragile soul at rest
enough words
to keep his flame
from burning down
before he has a chance
to close his eyes
and accept the touch
of a hand on his skin
to sleep unafraid
and let someone in
his taped-up broken window

CP

Hattie Wilcox's love of poetry and piano led her to songwriting and the 2008 release of her debut CD, Red Bird Tattoo. She has won prize money for her lyrics and has lived to see her first royalty check. She continues to write poetry—her first love. Find out more at http://hattiewilcox.com/

Richard Prins

A saxophone’s the only thing

A saxophone’s the only thing
ever made me feel
like a woman,
thighs thrumming with the sass
of spidery arpeggios
tickling their way
into me. I fit a prehensile knuckle
between nose and brow
and dig at the delicious chaos there.
One of my lovers used to privately convulse
like this in our aftermaths. Tingling
showers of notes leave me
no choice. I submit. I am not
ashamed
to moan approval, but the
feminine breathiness of me!
astonishes. So does the golden, unabating
shriek (now I roar!) that banishes
all smoke between us. My loins clench
the multiple goodness when it tricks
me into thinking it’ll stop. But the fucker’s
got another
rollicking release. It loves
my ass, it needs
my tits, it makes me
hot, it
bursts for me,
and is lulled by the cymbal’s dissipation.

CP

Richard Prins divides his time between New York City and Dar es Salaam. He will soon begin MFA studies at NYU. He has published a chapbook, Pedestrian Prophets, and his work has also appeared in Elimae, Zygote in My Coffee, The Catalonian Review, Foundling Review and others.

Michael Estabrook

I Guess Not

I was feeling pretty good after tonight's Kung Fu workout, sparred with Kevin, my black belt buddy, learned to deflect punches, block side kicks, and stab an assailant with his own damn knife!

"What about a gun?" my wife asks.

"Well, you can't defend against a gun. Do what you're told and hope to get out of it unscathed."

She frowns. I've disappointed her with my defensive abilities. "OK and as far as a knife goes, what would you do if we were in a dark alley and some big guy came at us with a knife?"

She comes at me with a pretend knife, and I twist her arm (gently) this way and that, slashing her own pretty white neck with her own pretend knife.

"See, one smooth, slick movement and you're done for." I'm feeling pretty good about what I've learned, but once again she's unimpressed.

She laughs and says, "So that big guy in the dark alley, you really don't expect to scare him away do you?" And sashays out of the room.

No, no I guess not.

CP

Michael Estabrook has published chapbooks and appeared in various magazines through the years, but he is still searching for that perfect poem. Right now he is looking for it in his wife and says if it's anywhere, that's where it will be.

Robert Rogge

D-Day

They were ship-bound for a long time. They slept and ate and slithered on the wet steel decks in their hobnailed boots. They tended their weapons, the salt air a menace to the steel.

A thin whistling sounded overhead as Spitfires flashed ahead to screen their way. The June air was cold and low, dark clouds scraped at the silver barrage balloons bobbing above the armada. The balloons kept strafing planes at a respectful height, where the Spits could get at them.

The ship heaved, and paper bags greased with vomit splashed over the slimy sides. The rolling sea conquered the seasick men and they spewed and gagged, cursing Hitler, the war, their parents. King and country became gross obscenities.

There was no hiding this armada. Ships were solid from horizon to horizon and the men were heartened. Massive battleships, enormous in size and promise, and tiny torpedo boats dashed boldly across the white caps around them.

They oiled their weapons and waited. A misty rain smothered the ships, row by row. The white cliffs disappeared in the deepening gloom, and a fantasia of tiny riding lights bobbed and weaved on the sea. The last RAF day fighters swooped low over the balloons, turning back to warmth and comfort.

Lowering black clouds scudded overhead. Each turn of the screw pushed them south to the beaches. A destroyer, siren whooping in crescendo, cut across their bow, Aldis lamp flickering, white wake foaming. In the darkness, a low, droning sound gradually penetrated through the noises of the ships. Hundreds of planes filled with men, equipment, and bombs. It went on and on, a deep monotone against the tenor chorus of the ships and the sea.

Few men slept that night. Cigarettes glowed and dimmed in the bunk tiers. Their equipment thumped and clanked to the ship’s motions, beating the time of their voyage into the unknown.

Next morning, they became aware of a change in the ship’s motion. The channel waters swished against the hull more softly. Gripping the rails, they stared at a long, low, dark smudge ahead. A man puked over the side and wiped his sleeve across his mouth.

Tiny climbing chains of red dots went into the clouds. Heavy, thickly muffled red flashes ran low along the smudge of land. Moments later, uneven rumblings came to them across the water. Noncoms moved among the men, checking their harnesses one last time. The bow ramps jerked down as the crew tested the gear.

Now they could see things on the beach: vehicles, fires, craters, dots that were moving men. The ship edged past a smoking hulk, stirring bodies that hung limp in lifebelts, floating in the oily, iridescent water.

One of the big ships opened her 15-inch guns and concussions overpowered them. Great masses of reddish-brown smoke rushed downwind; they heard the roar of the immense shells as they hurtled inland.

Some men fell down when the ship jarred against the shingle. The ramps crashed down and crewmen trailing lifelines raced down, struggled through the surf to the beach, and staked the lines taut. They waved back and the officers went down the steep ramps into the living sea, leading their men into an unknown world.

The soul-stirring skirl of the pipers in full cry drove them ashore.

—Adapted from Fearsome Battle

CP

Robert Rogge, an American, fought with the Canadian Army in World War II. He wrote of his experiences in Fearsome Battle. Under the pen name, Robert Elliot, he is also author of The Eagle's Height, a novel of air combat in World War I.

Isabel Kestner

Introductions

If I could offer you only
this face, that time and grace
have both been kind to, and

if you would be satisfied
with only these, then I would
despise you.

I want our screams competing
though the dark until at daybreak
they make harmony,
two voices in one song.

When I show you my demons
I don't want to be bothered
with introductions. It's
best that you already know them.

CP

Isabel Kestner is a poet and writer who spent half her life in New Jersey and half in Virginia, making her an odd blend of Southern Woman and Jersey Girl. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications since the age of seventeen. Her first collection of poetry, Strange Things She Heard, was released in December 2009. In addition to poetry she also writes for film.

Justin Hyde

the kicker

yesterday
i had to
yell at myself
out loud
not to pull into that casino
off route sixty-six
in north kansas.
last week
on a run through wisconsin
i was up twenty-eight hundred at the ho-chunk
before i pulled three hundred
out of my checking account
and another three hundred out of my corvette fund.
kicker is
i don't even like to gamble
it's just the only thing
this side of a
smith & wesson
to the temple
keeping my mind
off the ex.

stretching my calves on the curb behind the coffee shop

little
sudanese boy
at the back door
of the african grocery
declares
matter of factly:

the sun
is a
dangerous
fire.

feels good on the
skin though,
i say
turning my face up
and holding out
my arms.

like warm
palm oil,
he says

doing the
same.

CP

Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works with criminals.