Melanie Browne

A Couple of Unpretentious Skeletons Decide to Go Skinny Dipping

they watch the
moonlight
shimmer across
their pale white
bones,

taking
delight as the
water ripples
around them
in concentric
circles,

they roll joints
with their
phalanges,
passing them
back and forth,

they play rock,
paper, scissors
and brutal
sessions
of mercy,

grateful for
the absence of
flesh,
they laugh
about the
banality of
hemoglobin,

they stack
their vertebrae
against the trees,
munching on
Doritos and
pointing out
the Asellus Borealis

The Cloak of Nothingness

At a Halloween party
that year,
he had tied a few
black trash bags
around his waist,

another
was wrapped
around his
neck for
a cape

he was
barefoot
and his
greasy locks
hung down
In front of his
eyes,

every once in awhile
he would swat
at his hair
as if it was a fly

I asked him
about his costume,
What is it,
I wanted to know,

It's the black
cloak of nothingness’
He said,
His speech beginning
To slur,

you know,
before God
created the earth?

I wanted to
Ask him
If God kept
Postponing
the light
Because of
His massive hangovers,

but by then
he had flown away
into The crowd,
the cloak of nothingness
fluttering behind him

Trotsky's Ghost On Holiday

In Barcelona the weather is lovely,
Trotsky's ghost goes for a walk,
he thinks there are too many pigeons,
and points his finger at them,
'you are disturbing my thoughts,'
he tells them sternly,
but he forgot what those thoughts
were, and now he has a craving
for ice cream



CP

Melanie Browne lives in Texas with her husband and three children. She likes Halloween and always went trick or treating dressed as a zombie bride. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, 34th Parallel, and Unlikely Stories.

Len Kuntz

 

I Like You

I am not a stalker, but I like you.

Who wouldn’t?

Your choices are often odd but seldom wrong.  If there’s soup in summer, you’ll have it, slurping like a porpoise with that trilling giggle of yours.

You have a list of eight things you can never have too much of.  Seven of them make me quiver. 

You do not like animals other than stuffed ones, yet you pretend when your cousin, Pete, brings by his Lab. 

You are strong yet lithe and unmuscled.  I have posters of women with your shape of legs and the same small hands, though not one of the models can match you whole.

 Your eyes are ceramic blue.

I have made many attempts, some quite despicable.  Sometimes I hold my breath.

A climax can be gory or glorious, both bliss and release, but it’s not pity I want, or even forgiveness.

You should know that you are a permanent stain, a scar, a sickle cell, a long-worn smoke smell on my skin which soap cannot conquer or rid.

This is not enough but it’ll have to do.  I watch you from a safe perch, knowing where you are and what you’re doing, full of joy and promise in a life where I have left one foot in, and one foot out, of the picture.

CP

Len Kuntz lives in rural Washington State.  His writing appears in over 140 publications, at places like Necessary Fiction, Dogzplot, Word Riot and also at lenkuntz.blogspot.com

Christian Bell

Ordering

He walked into the bar, tattered backpack over his shoulders, translation dictionary in his hands. With much struggle, he ordered a beer. The bartender, frustrated, sighed. He sipped his beer, printed a to-do list that stretched to his last day. Museums, stores, restaurants. Then he pondered the language: how much does that cost, good afternoon, may I buy you a drink?

The Something

The something arrived one day, a fractured monument in miniature resting in the town square. You said, it looks like a golden avocado. I disagreed, thought it was more like squash, a copper color. Everyone saw the something differently. An authority said, it might be from space. Which caused parties, weirdness. Let’s not go, you said, and I agreed, so we watched the night from our window, celebrating things we knew, goblets of champagne and meteor showers.


CP

Christian Bell lives near Baltimore. His fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Skive Magazine, rumble, JMWW Quarterly, among others. He blogs at imnotemilioestevez.blogspot.com.

Suzy Devere

WHAT I NEED

I will write it down, this fear—this dread—so it can remind me,
when i'm rattling off
the long list of things i want
that none of it is what i need

not the shoes or dresses
purses, flowers, windows, doors
definitely not the liquor
perfumed soaps
or drugs

what i need is to ditch this fear

like i knew enough to ditch you.

WIT HUMOR CUNNING

like a serrated knife
when you're under it

twisting

black handle like a mountain
crowding out the sun

but next to
or on top of

it glistens and shines.
it's a beautiful modern day woman's
blessing and disguise.

still, underneath?

well, it's bloody down here.

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.

Ruth Schiffmann

 

Tiny Flakes

Someone has left the window open. A restless breeze finds its way through the torn screen and blows my heart to pieces. I watch glistening bits flutter and turn, suspended on a wave of raw air and think about reaching out, gathering handfuls of the pieces of myself, kneeling on the cold floor to put them back together.

Instead, I watch them settle, close my eyes and wait for another strong gust to carry them away. It will be better this way, I think. It will hurt less in the end. But still, stray bits linger, so I begin to give them away. I tuck a hard corner into the envelope when I pay my electric bill, mix tiny flakes into bowls of cold cereal and serve them to my family for breakfast, place a ragged edge in the recycling bin with last week's junk mail.

My father forgot my sister's name today. I brought him photos and pressed out her name like a newly minted coin. "I don't know her," he said, his eyes still wide and bright.

The heat kicks on and stirs up lost scraps of myself from the baseboards. I pluck a kite-shaped fragment and turn it over in my hands, wonder if this is what it feels like for him to watch scattered pieces of himself drift away, float back, then drift farther still.

I smooth out the section before me, feeling it thaw with the heat of my fingertips and the fear in my breath. It becomes less brittle as I press. Fold. Turn. Press. Fold. Turn. Until it looks like an origami swan. I cut a length of string and tie it from the curtain rod, push open the window and wait for the wind to find its way through the tear again.

I suck in cold air and wonder when my father will forget me, how I will remain whole when he does as I watch the tiny piece of my heart that remains, floating on the wind.

CP

Ruth Schiffmann puts pen to paper always hoping for that magical moment when words take on a life of their own. Some days the magic happens. On others, she writes in hopeful anticipation, knowing it will visit her again soon. More of her work can be viewed at www.RuthSchiffmann.com

Carter Jefferson

—USS De Haven, official Navy photo

 

Waiting on a Star

Once upon a time, far out in the Pacific, I stood the evening watch. No ships pocked the radar screen, we planned no course change, no enemy lurked nearby. But I'd glanced at the Nautical Almanac, and soon I broke the news.

As dusk gave way to darkness, I explained. In a few minutes we would see the "occultation of Venus." The helmsman, the signalman, one or two others on the bridge, listened and looked at the sky far off to port, where close together shone a bright star and a crescent moon.

Some of the men didn't know our planet has eight companions—
only seven now, I gather, but I haven't followed the debate. One man seemed surprised to hear that the earth revolves around the sun. Several of those guys had never finished high school, but they were smart. At any rate, they listened. Why not? There was nothing else to do.

"Holy shit, Mr. J., you ought to tell everybody, on the PA system."

So I did. And clumps of sailors poured out of the passageways below to look up while Venus reluctantly moved toward annihilation. Soon the sky painted a Turkish flag, and then, in an instant, the star disappeared.

"Wow!" The signalman stared, mouth hung open, while the heavens ignored us all.

But a few moments later Luna disgorged her prey. Venus popped back into view from the far side of the moon, and from the deck below I heard voices: "Well, goddamn!" "Hooray!" Somebody applauded. We breathed again. Once more, the Evening Star continued the slow and certain completion of its appointed rounds. And so did we.

CP

Carter Jefferson served on the USS De Haven, a destroyer, during the Korean War. He has published a biography, numerous newspaper and scholarly articles, book reviews, short stories, and essays, and is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop. His website is here: http://carterj.homestead.com/

Wynne Huddleston

Depressing Yourself

Depression lends
itself
to surrender,
I mean
you feel
ugly and
unhappy—
what’s the point
in getting
dressed or putting on
makeup
or combing
your hair?
It’s much
easier
to face
the enemy
when you’ve gone
over
to their side.

Closure

Snaps, buttons, zippers, bows,
tape, staples, envelopes…
There you go, and here I sigh
wondering how to say goodbye.

October

the last trip to some unknown place
the last squeeze of lime in the Tequila
the last unforgettable melted-crayon sunset
the last green apple core rotting on the ground
the last crunchy leaf that finally let go
the last time you held me to your heart
the first blow of cold against my face


CP

Wynne Huddleston is an elementary music teacher and grandmother. She decided on her 50th birthday that it was time to do the things she had always dreamed of doing—taking ballroom dance lessons and becoming a published poet. After giving up on finding a dance partner, she plunged full force into poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Emerald Tales, Gemini Magazine, The Shine Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, among others.

Robert Laughlin

 

The Call Girl Goes Domestic

He loved her at first sight
And rescued her from her profession;
For that she’ll always thank him.

But on their wedding night
And every other in succession,
She cannot help but rank him.

CP

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. His short stories have been published widely, and his novel, Vow of Silence, was favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. His website is at www.pw.org/content/robert_laughlin.

Linda Simoni-Wastila

A ∩ B

I think of us as a Venn diagram, two ovals making
union, my yin seeking optimal overlap with your yang.
But north-facing magnets perpetually polarize our
perimeters, every minor interaction implodes into
a push-me-pull-me tug-o-drama – the toothpaste cap
rolling in the bathroom sink, the crusted cans
cluttering the recycle bin, the maxed-out (again)
Visa. Tits-for-tats, our minefields of petty
disgruntlements escalate, words carelessly
scattershot – always, never, fault, hate – leaving
behind crumb trails of unarticulated ultimatums.

But then, we sleep or, perhaps, make love – no,
it’s fucking pure and simple – and we lose ourselves
in the animal noises, the words peel away, and our
amalgamations circle to their singular intersection.

Last Trip

If I had known

the trip to the hospital

was the last time

you would ever be outside

I would not have rushed

you through the rain.


CP

Linda Simoni-Wastila crunches numbers by day and churns words at night. You can find her work in The Sun, Tattoo Highway, Boston Literary Magazine, BluePrint Review, The Shine Journal and elsewhere. She reads other writers' stuff at JMWW. She lives and loves in Baltimore, a town where her Northern birthright and Southern breeding comfortably commingle. She muses at http://linda-leftbrainwrite.blogspot.com.

Dawn West

 

The Funeral

I've never been where my father died. His lungs plumped up, sponges drawing in salt water. "The sea's in my blood," he would say, running a warm hand through my hair. "It's dangerous." I would pout. I would check to make sure the alarm system was on. I would wear SPF 50 sunscreen. I would take daily walks and eat strictly organic. I would live wound tight with possibilities. He laughed at me all the time and I hated it. He didn't know what it was like being married to a risk analyst. He didn't know the effect it had on me. I'd already lived without him for a year when my father died. Rick was hit by a bike messenger three days before our fifth anniversary; so much for statistical safety.

Seventy-five people came to my father's funeral. My mother tapped a powder puff on her nose and muttered, "Not bad, honey." My brother stood at the podium and said, "My dad had heart." I wanted to punch him in the face. Who doesn't have heart? Who doesn't feel it screaming against their skin every moment of the day? Who doesn't know what it feels like to have it turned inside out and shaken?

My mother scattered his ashes in our backyard. She started making these low, mangy howls like an abused animal while pieces of him flew back in her face. I gave her a packet of Kleenex from my purse. My brother ran inside. He came back with three shot glasses, a salt shaker, and the bottle of tequila I'd put in the freezer. We clicked our glasses together. We licked salt off our wrists. We all stopped crying. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the waves.

CP

Dawn West is a cheap date. She prefers dresses and lives in Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in lovely places like Necessary Fiction, Nanoism, and SmokeLong Quarterly.