Tyler Bigney

Soft & warm

I dreamt about it again last night.
This time the terrorists dropped bombs
filled with Cyanogen chloride.
Everyone was wearing gas masks,
but it didn’t matter.
I was five years old when
I first realized I was going to die.
Now I’m older. But I still watch cartoons
on Saturday mornings and look at the comics
before I read the news.
My mother on the floor, spitting blood,
a bubble bursting, a terrible sound.
I yelled for my father, but I heard
only my voice calling back. It was then
that I leaned in and rested my cheek
on death’s cheek and found it to be soft
and warm. I felt tall and brave.
I gave myself to the bees and to the secrets
I never gave the chance to consume me.

My aunt returned home

My aunt returned home from church to find my uncle in the bedroom closet, his feet swaying a good two feet off the floor. She didn’t dare look at his face. She bent down and lay still beneath his feet, biting her bottom lip until she tasted rusted pennies. The world outside was mostly hushed, a little wind rattling the window. A car passed on the dirt road, stirring up dust, and was gone.

CP

Tyler Bigney was born in 1984 and now lives in Nova Scotia. His work has appeared in Poetry New Zealand, The Meadow, Iodine, Neon, and Third Wednesday among others.

Andrea Kneeland

poster by Alphonse Mucha, public domain, WikiPaintings

Imagination

I’m looking for something to wear when I find the t-shirt in my best friend’s closet. I’m so shocked for a minute that I forget what I’m doing or where I am at all and then I get a whiff of gin and remember that we’re on a schedule, sort of.  She is waiting for me.  She is impatient.  She is maybe a little angry that I had spilled so much gin on myself because that gin had cost her money and she is in between jobs and two months behind in her rent.

I rip a glittery looking wifebeater from a hanger, stuff the t-shirt in my purse and drop my alcohol-soaked top on the ground.  I am ready to dance.

Except not really, anymore.  I’m not ready for anything.

The problem is not that I’m wondering where she got the t-shirt or why it says CUMBUCKET.COM across the front in big black letters.  The problem is that I know.

The problem was that last year, when I had meant to type craigslist into the address bar on my ex’s computer, I had been distracted by a bird slamming straight into the sliding glass window, concussing itself with a smear of blood and feathers and beakbone before dropping to the concrete.  The problem was I had only gotten so far as “c” when I’d heard the bang and jumped from my seat to run to the window.  The problem was that after about 15 seconds the bird’s corpse had become uninteresting and I’d walked back to his computer and the address bar had auto-filled itself and directed me to a website that exclusively featured women kneeling down in front of galvanized aluminum buckets filled with horse semen.

Most of the women vomit up the semen up about half way through.  Right back into the bucket.  And then they start from square one again.  The women who finish the whole bucket get a t-shirt.  

The problem is that when people tell you your worst enemy is your imagination, they’re wrong.  When people tell you that whatever you’re imagining is probably worse than the real thing, they’re wrong.

Imagination is never as bad as the internet.

The problem is that I don’t know which way to be upset, so when I start sobbing in the cab and my best friend turns to me and tells me it’s okay, that I don’t smell like gin and that I look pretty and that my ex didn’t deserve me and that any one of the guys at the club will be lucky to go home with me, all I can do is let her hug me while I press my teary waterproof lashes against her shoulder.

We make the cab pull over so I can throw up and she rubs Preparation H into the crook of her arm to tighten up the needle holes, then she hands me a breath mint.  I suck on it ferociously, clasp her face between my hands and look at her hard.  “Everything will be okay,” I tell her and she laughs.

Flood

When the wetness crept out beneath the door, I watched for a while with mild interest before I remembered that I was not dreaming.  The wetness tinged the carpet pink.  I opened the door, I held my breath: I expected the water to touch the ceiling.  I expected to see your body floating above me.  Nothing floated.  My ankles got cold.  The water was uncomfortable.  Not dream like.  Nearer the site of the wounds the wetness was red instead of pink.  I was afraid of turning the water off, of the finality of that: I kept everything running.  I considered dissecting your body to create a library of you.  I would label the jars: Ryan’s mole; Ryan’s left incisor; Ryan’s pineal gland; Ryan’s clavicle.  But there would also be a finality in that, almost as much finality as there would be in turning the knob of the faucet.  Your eyes were open and they looked like fists.  The razor blade stayed lodged in one wrist, camped there like a stubborn tourist.  I crawled into the bath.

CP

Andrea Kneeland's first book, the Birds & the Beasts, is from Cow Heavy Books. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Prick of the Spindle, Dark Sky Magazine, Knee-jerk Magazine, Juked, Everyday Genius, Corium Magazine, Dogzplot, and mud luscious press. She is a web editor for Hobart.

Peycho Kanev

Barking

“The beauty will save the world,”
someone screamed in my ear, and
I looked toward the horizon
at some hint of rain.
The living goes with the living,
and the dead goes with the dead–
This is the philosophy of life
that we never fully understand.
My time will come,
and your time will come,
and we will see the truth at the end,
but until that happens let’s look at
the painter who’s drawing that dog,
which looks like it will open its
mouth.


CP

Peycho Kanev lives in Chicago. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his writing has appeared in more than 400 literary magazines.  Walking Through Walls, a short story collection, and American Notebooks, a poetry collection, were published in Bulgaria. His latest collection of poems is Bone Silence, published in 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Michael J. Solender

 For Me and Him

I smelled him upon opening the chest. I’d forgotten the musky boozy scent that lingered in his chair years after he passed. The scent immediately returned me to Sunday whisker rubs he gave me right before he shaved. Two days growth nearly cut my oily cheeks but I loved it just the same.

His blue sport coat was right on top. It was folded just so, I knew ma was behind the care it found in the worn cedar chest. She wouldn't give that coat away. She couldn't. That was his Friday night coat. He wore it every Friday when they went out for supper. Thirty years he wore that same coat and now I held it close to my face and inhaled all I could of his grace and goodness.

Threadbare and worn, it was all that I hung onto, all that I had left of him and I cried. Folding it back up I felt a scrap of paper in the right breast pocket. In his precise and careful hand was written, “I am but dust and ash.”

I stopped crying immediately and recognized this as a Talmudic verse. I knew there would be a corresponding note found in the other pocket and there was.

It read, “The world was created for me alone.”

CP

Michael J. Solender is the author of the short story and poetry chapbook, Last Winter’s Leaves, published by Full of Crow Press. He is the editor of the online magazine, On The Wing. More of his work can be found at michaeljwrites.com.