'DIFFERENT VIEWS' - tray durhann
CHARLOTTE, THE APPARITION - savannah schroll guz
CHARLOTTE, THE APPARITION
savannah schroll guz
Over succeeding weeks, Charlotte felt her power and her perceptions grow steadily. She realized that she could move more quickly through time and space, that at night, she could disperse her atoms and displace those that made up his wife’s body when she and the doctor lay together. Charlotte did nothing to Irene (as Charlotte had heard the doctor call her), could do nothing except inhabit her form, feel, at the cellular level, the intricate workings of her body. Irene’s own soul never protested, never fought Charlotte ’s incursions: it merely contracted and diminished in size, curling on itself inside the woman’s unconscious mind, where Charlotte could sense its flaccid banality. Afterwards, when Charlotte reconstituted herself as pure ionized energy outside the woman’s body, Irene was always ill. It gave the doctor the impression that his wife was pregnant again, and for a week, the couple rejoiced.
Savannah Schroll Guz
www.savannahschrollguz.com
Put Your Head in my Lap
Claudia Smith
savannah schroll guz
Over succeeding weeks, Charlotte felt her power and her perceptions grow steadily. She realized that she could move more quickly through time and space, that at night, she could disperse her atoms and displace those that made up his wife’s body when she and the doctor lay together. Charlotte did nothing to Irene (as Charlotte had heard the doctor call her), could do nothing except inhabit her form, feel, at the cellular level, the intricate workings of her body. Irene’s own soul never protested, never fought Charlotte ’s incursions: it merely contracted and diminished in size, curling on itself inside the woman’s unconscious mind, where Charlotte could sense its flaccid banality. Afterwards, when Charlotte reconstituted herself as pure ionized energy outside the woman’s body, Irene was always ill. It gave the doctor the impression that his wife was pregnant again, and for a week, the couple rejoiced.
Savannah Schroll Guz
www.savannahschrollguz.com
Put Your Head in my Lap
Claudia Smith
LIKE GALLON MILK GULPERS - anelise chen
LIKE GALLON MILK GULPERS
anelise chen
Remember when you told me that stealing is just stickin’ it to the man and academia is for the effete and drinking just a way of life and poetry no undertaking for girls. I shouldn't believe anything you say anymore. Restructuring is for people who give up, like inveterate dieters, like people who throw television sets into rivers, like gallon milk gulpers. I think when you said this year was going to be tough you meant I was losing my mind. Ow-ow-ow cat. She had a paw with five fingers and a functional thumb. Wonder if she misses me, four months, five months without a surrogate. Five thousand miles away now but I am still here and I never visit.
Anelise Chen
http://thedirtypond.wordpress.com/
Break it Down
Lydia Davis
anelise chen
Remember when you told me that stealing is just stickin’ it to the man and academia is for the effete and drinking just a way of life and poetry no undertaking for girls. I shouldn't believe anything you say anymore. Restructuring is for people who give up, like inveterate dieters, like people who throw television sets into rivers, like gallon milk gulpers. I think when you said this year was going to be tough you meant I was losing my mind. Ow-ow-ow cat. She had a paw with five fingers and a functional thumb. Wonder if she misses me, four months, five months without a surrogate. Five thousand miles away now but I am still here and I never visit.
Anelise Chen
http://thedirtypond.wordpress.com/
Break it Down
Lydia Davis
AUGUST - kelly schirmann
AUGUST
kelly schirmann
paul lined the concrete floor with trashbags of it and we set about trimming while he ate pills and drove his truck into town for a couple more cases of gatorade.
the two new romanian girls sat at their own table drinking water and when we offered them a hit they made faces in foreign languages that still meant no.
at ten we realized he’d probably found someone to stay the night with so we said fuck it and took the tanqueray down to the river and got shitfaced and skipped rocks across the sandbar.
we weren't allowed to make cobbler in the kitchen anymore so we filled our beaters with blackberries and put them in each others' mouths and rubbed them on each others' bodies and our brown skin got torn by vines and we mixed the blood with blackberry juice and couldn't tell.
when we got back paul's truck was in the driveway and the garage radio was up the loudest it could go. we found him there, wildly high, figure-eighting around the trashbags with the new girls in the fluorescent lights, yelling through the distortion about elk on the freeway, the fucking wounds in our chests.
Kelly Schirmann
http://richardmanuelismyspiritanimal.blogspot.com
Kenyon College Commencement Speech for the Class of 2005
David Foster Wallace
kelly schirmann
paul lined the concrete floor with trashbags of it and we set about trimming while he ate pills and drove his truck into town for a couple more cases of gatorade.
the two new romanian girls sat at their own table drinking water and when we offered them a hit they made faces in foreign languages that still meant no.
at ten we realized he’d probably found someone to stay the night with so we said fuck it and took the tanqueray down to the river and got shitfaced and skipped rocks across the sandbar.
we weren't allowed to make cobbler in the kitchen anymore so we filled our beaters with blackberries and put them in each others' mouths and rubbed them on each others' bodies and our brown skin got torn by vines and we mixed the blood with blackberry juice and couldn't tell.
when we got back paul's truck was in the driveway and the garage radio was up the loudest it could go. we found him there, wildly high, figure-eighting around the trashbags with the new girls in the fluorescent lights, yelling through the distortion about elk on the freeway, the fucking wounds in our chests.
Kelly Schirmann
http://richardmanuelismyspiritanimal.blogspot.com
Kenyon College Commencement Speech for the Class of 2005
David Foster Wallace
I TOOK A SECRET PICTURE OF YOUR BACK - e. soderback
I TOOK A SECRET PICTURE OF YOUR BACK
e. soderback
I want to talk about how the point 12 size of the font in Microsoft Word scares me, and about how you had me read out loud essays by Chuck Klosterman on the floor of your bedroom in a pile of clean laundry. I want to talk about how you didn’t let me stop, and how we were drunk and sloppy and how I was playing with the material of one of your t-shirt sleeves while I read. Let’s talk about when I would pause, when you would tell me to keep going, that I was doing great, how I would stumble over words, and use the creepy voice you showed me when asking the questions. I want to talk about how excited we were, tripping over the bicycles that lined the hallway, to go and sit cross-legged between boxes of VHS tapes, ashing our rolled cigarettes everywhere just for me to read these essays outloud, just because I said I haven’t read to someone in years. I want to talk about how I can’t hold your hands, how I don’t know what your wrists feel like.
E. Soderback
http://www.heycoolparty.blogspot.com/
Henry and June
Anais Nin
e. soderback
I want to talk about how the point 12 size of the font in Microsoft Word scares me, and about how you had me read out loud essays by Chuck Klosterman on the floor of your bedroom in a pile of clean laundry. I want to talk about how you didn’t let me stop, and how we were drunk and sloppy and how I was playing with the material of one of your t-shirt sleeves while I read. Let’s talk about when I would pause, when you would tell me to keep going, that I was doing great, how I would stumble over words, and use the creepy voice you showed me when asking the questions. I want to talk about how excited we were, tripping over the bicycles that lined the hallway, to go and sit cross-legged between boxes of VHS tapes, ashing our rolled cigarettes everywhere just for me to read these essays outloud, just because I said I haven’t read to someone in years. I want to talk about how I can’t hold your hands, how I don’t know what your wrists feel like.
E. Soderback
http://www.heycoolparty.blogspot.com/
Henry and June
Anais Nin
SOMEBODY IS EXCITED - adam marston
SOMEBODY IS EXCITED
adam marston
Somebody is excited to meet you. You can hear their breathing because you talked with them on the phone once. It reminds you of everything, so you slip and hit your head. No one is excited to meet you. When you open your mouth to tell them it becomes a worldwide cave. Everyone is spelunking on your teeth and down your gullet. They investigate what you talk about because they are near your voice box. They can hear what you really mean. Someone excited tells you to shut up. When you close your mouth, it is a bomb shelter.
Adam Marston
http://hyperdigitalism.blogspot.com/
A Three Dog Life
Abigail Thomas
adam marston
Somebody is excited to meet you. You can hear their breathing because you talked with them on the phone once. It reminds you of everything, so you slip and hit your head. No one is excited to meet you. When you open your mouth to tell them it becomes a worldwide cave. Everyone is spelunking on your teeth and down your gullet. They investigate what you talk about because they are near your voice box. They can hear what you really mean. Someone excited tells you to shut up. When you close your mouth, it is a bomb shelter.
Adam Marston
http://hyperdigitalism.blogspot.com/
A Three Dog Life
Abigail Thomas
TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES - thomas mundt
TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES
thomas mundt
Tim opened the Ziploc bag and dumped his dead goldfish, Tigris and Euphrates, into the toilet. He watched as they sank to the bottom of the bowl and bobbed back up to the surface. Then he panicked. Did he just make a grave mistake? Did he just see gills billowing, dorsal fins flopping? He rolled up the right sleeve of his Bears hoodie and grabbed the copper corpses from off the water. His hand trembled, now blue-green from the Tidy Bowl. He held Tigris and Euphrates under the bright lights of the vanity. Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead. He felt semi-relieved as he dropped his friends back into the bowl and flushed. He watched as the vortex sucked them under. Then he pictured them traveling through miles and miles of plumbing before being shat out into the Pacific, just off the coast of Oahu. Then he saw God’s huge hands poke through the clouds, holding those paddles he saw on ER. Then he watched God shrink the paddles down to the size of thimbles and hold them against their tiny chests. Then he heard God yell Clear! Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead.
Thomas Mundt
rustykluth@gmail.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
thomas mundt
Tim opened the Ziploc bag and dumped his dead goldfish, Tigris and Euphrates, into the toilet. He watched as they sank to the bottom of the bowl and bobbed back up to the surface. Then he panicked. Did he just make a grave mistake? Did he just see gills billowing, dorsal fins flopping? He rolled up the right sleeve of his Bears hoodie and grabbed the copper corpses from off the water. His hand trembled, now blue-green from the Tidy Bowl. He held Tigris and Euphrates under the bright lights of the vanity. Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead. He felt semi-relieved as he dropped his friends back into the bowl and flushed. He watched as the vortex sucked them under. Then he pictured them traveling through miles and miles of plumbing before being shat out into the Pacific, just off the coast of Oahu. Then he saw God’s huge hands poke through the clouds, holding those paddles he saw on ER. Then he watched God shrink the paddles down to the size of thimbles and hold them against their tiny chests. Then he heard God yell Clear! Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead.
Thomas Mundt
rustykluth@gmail.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
THIN ME - dave erlewine
THIN ME
dave erlewine
At the airport, Jen glances at my face. During her Europe trip, I’ve gained weight from worry. Over dinner, she stares.
“You look like Uncle Mark.” She stabs a scallop and swallows. “He’d be Jabba and I’d be Leia. Messed up my buns with his dick. Cracked himself up.”
Something is happening between us, it’s weird. “Thin me,” I say.
**
I’m placed on a cottage cheese diet. Caught eating cookies, a ball gag is inserted. “You Vichy fuck,” she says, grinding my face.
In bed, I inquire about the Vichy reference. She talks about the man whose Vichy grandfather collaborated with Nazis. She fucked his ass and yelled Arbeit macht frei.
She shrugs at my expression. “Guys like that paid for college.”
**
Within a month, I’m down to 175. We agree things are good, no need to change up
**
She says yes. Before I get off my knee, she pushes me to the floor, fucks me around the room.
I slink away from her snores, dig around the pantry. I move balled Nutty Bars around my mouth, spitting most into the trash.
Dave Erlewine
http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/
tunneling to the center of the earth
kevin wilson
dave erlewine
At the airport, Jen glances at my face. During her Europe trip, I’ve gained weight from worry. Over dinner, she stares.
“You look like Uncle Mark.” She stabs a scallop and swallows. “He’d be Jabba and I’d be Leia. Messed up my buns with his dick. Cracked himself up.”
Something is happening between us, it’s weird. “Thin me,” I say.
**
I’m placed on a cottage cheese diet. Caught eating cookies, a ball gag is inserted. “You Vichy fuck,” she says, grinding my face.
In bed, I inquire about the Vichy reference. She talks about the man whose Vichy grandfather collaborated with Nazis. She fucked his ass and yelled Arbeit macht frei.
She shrugs at my expression. “Guys like that paid for college.”
**
Within a month, I’m down to 175. We agree things are good, no need to change up
**
She says yes. Before I get off my knee, she pushes me to the floor, fucks me around the room.
I slink away from her snores, dig around the pantry. I move balled Nutty Bars around my mouth, spitting most into the trash.
Dave Erlewine
http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/
tunneling to the center of the earth
kevin wilson
THE MEANING OF YES - eric bennett
THE MEANING OF YES
eric bennett
He held her hand too tightly.
And everything felt serious like church or right before a spanking. The sky was pool blue and the trees were whispering windy secrets, or were they warnings?
They crossed the street to the lot with the goliath tree that had a hundred hairy arms, but all she could remember was lying in the grass and how it tickled her earlobes. She also remembered his curious hands rubbing shame between her legs. Confused, she didn’t know how to think so she smiled which, looking back, he took as approval.
She did not approve.
Hers was a quiet insurgence. She made up horrible names to call him, names like snake man, dog butt, and poop licker. These names pleased her which, looking back, he took for encouragement.
eb
Now, she understands how much miscommunication played a role in those ironically sunny days when his shady face smothered her. Did her eyes give him permission? Did her hips lie by moving in rhythm with his hands? Did she make tiny yes noises? These are things she can’t remember yet determine whether she goes to heaven or hell.
“I have to remember,” she whispers to herself.
Eric Bennett
ebennett@tkc.edu
Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
eric bennett
He held her hand too tightly.
And everything felt serious like church or right before a spanking. The sky was pool blue and the trees were whispering windy secrets, or were they warnings?
They crossed the street to the lot with the goliath tree that had a hundred hairy arms, but all she could remember was lying in the grass and how it tickled her earlobes. She also remembered his curious hands rubbing shame between her legs. Confused, she didn’t know how to think so she smiled which, looking back, he took as approval.
She did not approve.
Hers was a quiet insurgence. She made up horrible names to call him, names like snake man, dog butt, and poop licker. These names pleased her which, looking back, he took for encouragement.
eb
Now, she understands how much miscommunication played a role in those ironically sunny days when his shady face smothered her. Did her eyes give him permission? Did her hips lie by moving in rhythm with his hands? Did she make tiny yes noises? These are things she can’t remember yet determine whether she goes to heaven or hell.
“I have to remember,” she whispers to herself.
Eric Bennett
ebennett@tkc.edu
Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
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