Rebecca Tsaros Dickson

A blatant invitation

Beauty says this is bullshit and I tend to agree. It’s not my fault you’re afraid of butterflies.

We are six kinds of awesome with chocolate sprinkles on top – until we’re apart. So, do you want me to promise never to fall in love? Or just never to say the words? You pick.

Here’s what I want: A few more hot breaths on my neck (Mmm, right there) . . . No storm to weather. No spell to break. Out of you, into me and back again.

Bite marks, too.

I embrace that which makes my heart race. I soak up every last sugary drop of adrenaline and squirrel it away. A girl never knows when she’ll need that kind of energy for you. And it’s the not knowing that gets me.

The truth is I am only a sadist in the bedroom. In the mundane that is day-to-day, I know what my heart needs. Not a morsel, nor a chunk. I won’t settle for half. I won’t settle.

All or none, babe.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the first feeling of comfort came when your fingers entwined with my own.

A wise man once said, “Just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.”

Oh, but it is.

So fuck your principles. Screw your fear. Come with me.

You know you want to.

–From I Could Tell You Stories, 2010

CP

Rebecca Tsaros Dickson, author of the collection, I Could Tell You Stories, is a former journalist. More of her work and a link for buying the book can be found at http://thinkingtoohard13.wordpress.com/. Follow her on twitter @Thinking2Hard13

Donal Mahoney

 

Night Light

The last visitor before I sleep
is always the old priest
puffing up the stairs to my door,
a wine cask under each arm,
a loaf of pumpernickel in his teeth.
He’s always too late to give the last rites,
and even though I’m usually dead by then,
it falls to me to console him.
So I say, “Father, Father,
you don’t have to hurry.
Faith is no longer a klieg.
It’s a night light left burning all day,
and its bulb is hissing.”

—first appeared in Commonweal Magazine, 2009

Those Poems, That Fire

I stood in the alley, still
in pajamas, somebody’s shoes,
another man’s coat, my eyes
on the bronc of the hoses.
Squawed in the blankets of neighbors,
my wife and three children sipped
chocolate, stood orange and still.
Of the hundred or more I had stored
in a drawer, I could remember,
comma for comma, no more than four,
none of them final,
all of them fetal.

—first appeared in Four Quarters, 1971


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.

Gary Presley

—Photo by Gary Presley, 2010

 

Debbie Drives Home

Cars are novels.

Little metal encapsulated novels.

Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, babies, toddlers, kids, workers and wanderers, mothers, fathers, teenyboppers.

iPoded beyond conversation, DVDs dug out and CDs rattling from the ceiling, cell-phone stories, GPS pointing, a beer between legs, wrappers on the floor, dust on the dashboard, tears on the seat.

Beat me, screw you, overdrawn checking account, kid smokin' dope, one wanting-stealing birth control pills, codeine and vodka, one gay-for-fun experimenting creep.

Not sure what's for dinner, not sure it matters, pizza, Chinese, breasts sagging, veins blue, never looks, not at me, no more, more Valium or Xanax, more mix and match, more Vicodin and vodka and sleep.

Cars are novels.

So many stories rollin' past, rollin' fast, rollin' into another story.

CP

Gary Presley's memoir, SEVEN WHEELCHAIRS: A Life beyond Polio, was published in October 2008 by the University of Iowa Press. Find links to his other work at http://www.garypresley.com

xTx

All Sales Final

I sat here. I am sitting here and I think: what does he want?

#1.  I know it’s not me, so that can be let go of.
#2.  I know it’s not me, so I can take the knives out.
#3.  I know it’s not me, so I can continue giving up.

If I was her maybe, or maybe if I cleaned up my act; wore dresses, crossed my legs, sat at a booth instead of the bar.

Made the boys laugh less.

Spoke when speakin to.

Danced when asked not alone on an empty floor, eyes closed.

Waited. Watched. Withering.

Nobody likes a circus in a person.  Nobody wants the me that I am.  This is a given.  I need a cage with a sign that tells everyone exactly what they are getting.

A written guarantee.  No surprises.  All sales final.

Therefore, my definitive answer to this question is; I only know what he doesn’t want.

And I know exactly where he can get it.

CP

xTx lives in California. Her work has been published in elimae, PANK, SmokeLong, Dogzplot and many other fine places.

John Grey

HER LIFE                               

Crocus pokes through permafrost.
Imagine that.
A flower in winter,
lone soldier against
the armies of chill.
And then there's the dandelion,
wasting all that color on being a weed.
The evidence is out there.
Be vulnerable, be contrary.
Flowers fold, are plucked, beheaded.
And yet, remember color.
It won't remember you.

THE TRAVELING BUG

I didn't once look back.
There was enough in the sky to keep me occupied.
Show me one family photograph where there's
someone with their wings spread wide and soaring.
But blackbirds did it with ease.
Even lumbering mourning doves gained altitude eventually.
The eagle promised me a ride on its back.
And what did my father say but,
"If you want, I'll drive you to the station."

There was more color in one wild flower
than in a hundred of their faces.
And the signposts gave out information...
so much more useful than advice.
I drank in bars with strangers.
There's something about somebody I've just met...
everything they are is still to come.
Beer or no beer, who could surprise me where I'm from.

So many towns that weren't my towns.
Such a cornucopia of different accents.
And customs, like habits but with fun and flair.
I even entered a cannon ball toss.
Barely budged the thing an inch from the circle...
But a thousand miles from home, easy...


CP

John Grey, an Australian-born poet, has been a US resident since the late 1970s. He works as a financial systems analyst, and his poetry has been published in Slant,  Briar Cliff Review, Albatross, Poetry East, among others.

Stephen Jarrell Williams

 

STIRRING CIRCLES

In your pudding
stirring
circles

moon
white
skin

corks on your breasts

pulling them

jackhammering
the dip
center
hips
swaying

moaning
into a rollercoaster
almost bucking me off

we laugh
into a cuddle

against tomorrow.

HIDDEN

What is it
you hide?
Tell me before we burn.

I can't take the guessing anymore.

Soak me in your butter.
Fry me on your belly.
Taste me as you confess.


 CP
 
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night.  He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.  His parents are native Texans.  He has lived most of his life in California.  His poetry has appeared here and there and in-between...

Nana Ollerenshaw

 

AFTER THE STORM

Waves calve the sand
like polar cliffs.
A man and his son
are waist high
bearing the brunt,
their towels limp on the fence.
Something has brought them here
some wish to be part of wildness
and early morning
allowing the surge to knock them
stun them with its force.
They are alone,
the monotony of being safe,
the comforts and habits of home,
well meaning advice,
forgotten.
It doesn't matter that the boy's togs have torn,
that he is shivering
that his dad's late for work
or if they catch a cold.
They are together in mountains of water,
more alive than anyone.

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.

Pat St. Pierre

 

 

Ravages of War

I could not tell what your eyes saw
But somehow
I knew you were aware of the final summons –
The writ that is presented to all of us.
I was fearful of taking that last step
With you. Your eyes darted from side to side
Mine held steadfast.
We were both terrified of the unknown
Our eyes met for a second.
I reached for your hand,
And in the trance,
Everything became as clear as a summer day.
Your final gasp and my moan became indistinguishable.

—From Theater of Life

CP

Pat St. Pierre lives in Wilton, CT. Her work has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, The Shine Journal, Flutter, Wind, The Litchfield Review, among others. She blogs at www.pstpierre.wordpress.com. Theater of Life is available from Amazon.com.

Marcus Speh

 

Hänsel und Gretel

The heart is a limekiln and it always burns. Gretel is stuck inside: sharp nosed, short sighted, she carries the corners of her mouth a little higher than you would expect in this land of the drooping moods and her glasses in the bag because she's vain and wants people to look at her eyes and not at her spectacles. Her sample sentence: are you joking? It's tight in this oven: Hänsel is here, too, a Russian-German but that doesn't matter now, he's got one of his large hands, the right one with the crooked cut nails, on Gretel's left boob and milks it gaily to the rhythm of the music that rises all the way from the shop full of African artifacts and up to the roof and into the kitchen where Hänsel and Gretel share a baking tray. Hänsel's sentence isn't really a sentence: ah nah. Gretel looks at Hänsel and pushes his hand aside: are you joking? Hänsel puts his hand back: ah nah. The music has no climax, instead it returns to itself just like Hänsel and Gretel. Where's Hänsel's other hand? What's covering Gretel's other boob? Why don't you leave symmetry alone. Ah nah? Are you joking? I wish I was, so that we could laugh instead of stew here slowly. Perestrojka is rad. Their joint sentence: the witch can stuff it.

CP

Marcus Speh lives in Berlin near a large selection of fine coffee houses and an even larger selection of fine writers. He writes mostly in English. His short prose - sometimes published under the pseudonym Finnegan Flawnt - can be found or is forthcoming at >kill author, elimae, Emprise Review, Mad Hatters Review and elsewhere. More about him at marcusspeh.com

Jane Hammons

 

MAKING IT RIGHT

Somewhere between Alamogordo and Del Valle, Pammie Rose begins to understand. It’s too much blood.

Passengers see her there, every time they stumble to the back of the bus to pee, shit, or puke in the stuffy closet of a bathroom. A girl stretched out on the long backseat of the Greyhound bus, her head resting on a bright pink overnight case decorated with colorful stickers announcing the places she intends to go: Paris Cairo Hong Kong Rome.

Tonight she’s riding the midnight bus from El Paso.

Pammie Rose takes her flannel nightgown out of the suitcase and shoves it up under her short denim skirt. If she can hold it in for two more hours, she might make it all the way to Roswell. She wipes her hands on her blouse. Bloody fingerprints smear like evidence down the front of her blouse. A sweet eyelet lace Mommy bought her for rush week. She was supposed to pledge Alpha Chi Omega. Mommy had.

Mommy will be upset about the mess. Mommy is already mad that she has to be at the bus depot at 6 a.m. on a Friday morning. Tennis lessons Tuesday. Thursday horseback riding. Wednesday golf. Friday luncheon at the club. Pammie sketches Mommy’s calendar across the grimy wall of the bus.

She’s going to think about Christmas now. She has the whole rest of the semester until then. Can she get an excused absence?

Her nightgown squishes like a used up Kotex pad. It smells like metal. She hears a heartbeat pulsing between her ears. In her mouth she holds the room where an old woman stuck something inside her and emptied her out like a bucket.

Pammie Rose knows enough Spanish to know that she made the old woman angry. She waited too long. Everyone is mad.

She types her schedule onto the back of the seat in front of her. Western Civ Amer Lit Bio Chem. She crosses the bridge to Juarez at just the right time. One tiny dot plinks into the bucket. One little spot of blood on her panties. She turns the bus around. Puts everything back. Makes it right.

CP

Jane Hammons teaches writing at UC Berkeley. Her fiction has appeared most recently in Crimespree Magazine, A Twist of Noir, JMWW and decomP.