Mark James Andrews

Old Murphy beds and sweaty blankets

Midwestern noir downtown
in winter at mid century
the feral men and women
are given fever by liquor
in a barroom blasting the Heat
up from basement boilers
into the toy light of toy neon
framing the brass cash register
of quiet paper bills and tinkle coins.

The monster juke with 45 rpm’s
pumps out plastic falsetto solace
to these men in little toy leathers
or summer cloth coats stuffed under
with layers of St. Vincent de Paul
these women without lipstick or hats
leaning up to the bar apron
scuffing the cracked linoleum
kicking the ghosts of dried spittoons
perching languid and sweating on stools
dreaming of Miami or Cal beaches

all greased up under the toy Ra sun
stretching out like sleek seals
but trapped in real time working up
to an urgent fast fold down fuck
in old Murphy beds and sweaty blankets
that furnish the studio flops
up the back stairs but never passing
the pay phone on the wall by the door
with the metallic chord dangling taut
around the dying neck
of the Yellow Pages crumbling
in the dry heat like some Egyptian tome.


Breathe into the dry paper

We are both screwed
into these cheap
leatherette stools.

While nodding
into his scotch
the professor asks:

"What's next
for you, Marco?”
Cough.
“Paris?"

He published
2 novels
in the '60s.

His soul is still
wandering back
there and then.

I focus
on the bar sex
napkin cartoons

lift one up
to my nose
and mouth
and breathe into
the dry paper.

No guru
no method
no PHD
                          
my fingers fold
a delicate creased
Japanese bird.

CP

Mark James Andrews is the author of Burning Trash (Pudding House, 2010). His writing has appeared in many print and online venues including Red Fez, Full of Crow, Literary Burlesque, Short, Fast, and Deadly Anthology, Camel Saloon, Deuce Coupe, and Thunderclap. He lives approximately one mile from the city limits of Detroit most of the time.

Marcus Speh

Publicity photo from MAX ERNST — MY VAGABOND LIFE, MY DISQUIET

Max Ernst in Sedona

He talks to the rocks. He tells them who he is and he’s impressed by their stoicism. He hasn’t lost his good looks but the Navajo women aren’t interested in the painter who sits half-naked under a Jojoba tree and asks about spirits and sauces because he likes his potatoes with thick sauce like Germans do. This is, for him, a sign that he’s alive. Nobody here has heard of him but they believe him because he can draw like a god. One of the women tells the others: his lines come alive like snakes. He shows them his ankles where the painted serpents bit him. He bled red ink. He calls every Indian ‘lady’. One of them reminds him of his mother another of a whore in Berlin. He looks at the sky long and hard as if the sky could come down and settle on his canvas like a tamed animal. His dreams, at night, get up and walk around the compound all by themselves, making up landscapes.

CP

Marcus Speh lives in Berlin, Germany, where the tradition of Dada and surrealism are still strong. He curates the One Thousand Shipwrecked Penguins project, serves as maitre d' of the kaffe in katmandu and has got nothing to flawnt at http://marcusspeh.com

Al Ortolani

 

Discovering Rose

Not even the oldest neighbor (two
were interviewed)
recalled what this fringe of daffodils
once outlined.
So for the sake of history, they invented
a plausible, potting shed
with stacks of dank, clay pots,
stacked one inside the other,
leaning (impossibly) into
a shadow of tomato stakes, some
tied with nylon stockings.

A pair of cotton gloves, pinked
with a faded, blossom print
quietly feminine, caressed the lip
of a watering can.
Tools (industriously)
hung on pegboard:
the small spade and the weeding claw
and the iron crowbar for poking
holes for bulbs. All were connected
(poignantly) with cobwebs
in a galvanized bucket.

On the upper shelves, beyond
the curiosity of her cats, stood
brown bottles and dusty cardboard
labeled Poison. A sleepy
wasp flitted in the doorway
breeze. She kept a fence (defensively), probably
of painted wire.
Below the fly-specked window squatted
a bushel basket, half-filled
with the neighbor children’s stained baseballs
and scuffed plastic Frisbees.

CP

Al Ortolani is a teacher in Kansas. His poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly, The Laurel Review, The English Journal and others. His second book of poetry is Finding the Edge from Woodley Press at Washburn University. He is a co-editor of The Little Balkans Review.

Susan Tepper

Chocolates

The heart box of chocolates isn't velvet or ruffled satin.  No bow either.  It's the cheap variety— drugstore or worse.  Maybe he got it from the Gas & Go.  Red faux foil is coming off staining my fingers.  These days I put nothing past him.  He does what's needed, expected, the bare minimum.  OK.  So I put all my bare skimpy things away.  Shoved them into a plastic bin under the bed.  And I've got some pretty fine things.  Little bustiers with garters and sheer white stockings.  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday lace teddys.   Cutie French maid stuff he used to drool over.  Now it's tee-shirts and flannel pj bottoms. 

Next to me in bed he's snoring.  I pick through the crappy chocolates eating the coconut clusters, soft ones that aren't cherry, fake truffles, caramels.  Next I hit the nut clusters and caramellos.  By 1 a.m. I've pretty much decimated the box.  The brown crinkly papers overflow onto the comforter.  He snores and changes sides.  His one leg extended out.  He always sleeps one leg out of the covers.  Says it's how his father slept.  Says it proudly.  Like it's a medal or something.  Your father, I think.  You mean the guy who stopped fucking your mother and then she went insane.  You mean that guy?

CP

Susan Tepper is author of the novel, What May Have Been, (with Gary Percesepe) published by Cervena Barva Press, Deer & Other Stories (Wilderness House Press 2009) and the poetry chapbook, Blue Edge. Tepper has received 6 nominations for the Pushcart Prize. She writes MONDAY CHAT on the Fictionaut blog, and "Madame Tishka Advises on Love & Other Storms" at Thunderclap Press. Her reading series FIZZ at KGB Bar is quite popular.