Ray Scanlon

 

 

Wiffle Ball

A warm early May sun dips, shading the back yard; gnats and mosquitos rule the air; pine warblers command the treetops. Jeff, his cigar aromatic, plays wiffle ball with his children. Runner, fielder, pitcher, and batter constantly change places as near-chaos unfolds from iterating the simple, if cryptic, rules. Jord and his dad pitch to strike each other out. The girls take their base-running leads in cartwheels.


CP

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. On the web: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.

Rachel Mangini

NO SLEEP

You are gone and still I have to sleep in our bed. Share it with the raw pink throbbing heart of what was us. It's whimpering, this thing. Smells like the inside of an ear. Its ooze is ruining the sheets.


CP

Rachel Mangini lives in Pittsburgh where she writes during evenings and weekends. She is the fiction editor of Hot Metal Bridge Magazine. Online she lives at everyonesanocean.wordpress.com.

Katherine Gleason

Last Week

Christmas Day, light snow falls on the rhododendron forest outside of Knoxville. Matthew has gone to the airport to pick up his father. In the kitchen, Lucy bakes cookies. Butter and cinnamon crowd the house.

Mark asks me, "You're coming back for New Year's, right?"

I sit on his bed, one hand on his ankle, and say, "I don't know."

He shifts his legs away from me, kneecaps shining through the skin like doorknobs. "Well," he says, "we don't always get what we want."

The next day, Matthew drives me to the airport. At home, I make a cup of tea, sleep a little, get the call.

"This is it," his sister Lucy says.

The airlines won't grant me a bereavement fare. "Ma'am, you're not really family," the reservation agent says.

"And besides," I think, "he's not dead yet."

On the bus from New York City, small children grumble, chant the childhood car-trip refrain. My right leg tingles with sleep. I imagine arriving too late. The grey-eyed house stands silent, locked tight. My back to the rhododendrons, I rest my face against a pane. My breath clouds the glass; there is nothing to see inside. 

When I do step through the back door, Lucy is still in the kitchen. The radio is still on. Now, though, the house smells of bleach. She shakes her head. He hasn't eaten, has hardly opened his eyes since I left.

His bed, a rented hospital contraption, dominates the living room. I perch on the side, watch him breathe, his head tilted back, mouth open.

He stirs, mumbles. Lucy and Matthew return to the room.

"I have to get my hair done," he says, "and then I am going to meet Mom." The long dead mother, whom I'm said to resemble.

Lucy, her head still wagging, clicks her tongue.

Matthew pulls back. "I'm glad Dad didn't have to hear that," he says and steps out to join his father who is smoking on the porch.

"Shut up," Lucy calls after him.

Even I, fag hag, homo fellow traveler, psychic twin, am taken aback. Egged on by my own misgivings, I glare in Matthew's wake, then rummage in my bag, pull out a hairbrush. Working from the ends inward, I smooth, straighten, and untangle, then arrange Mark's bangs in an arc across the forehead. When I am done, he is fluffy, the newly hatched chick of a predatory bird.

A day or two later, he opens the hollow furnace of his eyes, looks at me, and sees his mother.

"Are we there yet?" he asks.


CP

Katherine Gleason’s stories have appeared in Best American Erotica, Alimentum, Cream City Review, Ducts.org, La Petite Zine, Mississippi Review Online, Monkeybicycle, River Styx, Southeast Review, and Windy City Times. She won first prize in the 2007 River Styx Micro-Fiction Contest, was a finalist in the 2008 Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short Short Story Contest, and earned an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s August 2008 Very Short Story Contest.

Joshua Michael Stewart

FARMERS’ MARKET

Fog wafts up from the cool grass behind rows of tents
in the church parking lot. A lanky teen in basketball
shorts helps a man with a handlebar mustache unload

blueberries and strawberries from the back of a pickup.
A woman wearing pearls and a periwinkle shrug lifts
zucchinis out of pine baskets, rolls their rubbery bodies

in her fingers as if she’s about to tell them their futures.
I love the wetness of greens, the warm bread wrapped
in red cloth, the crunch of biting into an apple, the smell

of dirt on hands. I love how the words food and community
spool off my tongue, and how they belong here. But what
will this place mean to the little boy I saw earlier squealing

with delight as he crawled under a table to pet the black
lab with the graying muzzle, the boy who’s now near
the maple syrup stand where two police officers handcuff

his mother, a woman with bruised arms and sunken cheeks?
What does the boy mean to us? A man in a red ball cap
carries him off as his mother’s lowered into the back

of a squad car. His arms shoot out from his sides, trembling
with war like spears. The whole time spitting knives
from his throat: “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”



WHAT’S ONE MORE DAY

Storefronts line the streets like convicts
condemned to a firing squad. A man
sputtering on about the end of days
wraps a scarf around his charred voice.

I was laid-off weeks ago, haven’t told
anyone. Every morning I put on a suit,
walk to the park, and feed the pigeons
breadcrumbs out of my briefcase. Tonight,

on my way home, it begins to snow.
By the time I see our porch light I’m ready
to fess up. I’m in the foyer, blowing
warmth back into my hands. My new bride

descends the staircase wearing nothing
but house slippers and a false beard.



SPRING MORNING

                                —for Kate Hill Cantrill


To the cat, my thigh’s no more than a fleshy
stepladder, a tool for squinting out the window
that’s next to the bed. From my position,
I can see sky and clouds, tops of trees,

the occasional flash of bird and the filthy
underside of drawn-up blinds. The cat
reports on ground activity. His chatters
indicate the return of robins, his yowls

announcing that the calico from the brown
house is reclined like a roman emperor,
sunning itself on a slab of concrete.
There’s the rumble and squeal of the garbage

truck, the urgency of an ambulance siren.
Today there’re no big questions to ask
or answer, only small rituals: the whine
and teething of a bandsaw, the rhythmic

thwacking of a hammer. My neighbor,
always out in his yard with a pencil
behind his ear, driving something
beautiful and strong into his life.


CP

Joshua Michael Stewart has had poems published in Massachusetts Review, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Georgetown Review, William and Mary Review, Flint Hills Review, Pedestal Magazine, Evansville Review and Worcester Review. Pudding House Publications published his Chapbook Vintage Gray in 2007. Visit him at www.joshuamichaelstewart.yolasite.com