'SUPERHERO: A PRIVATE ANTHEM' - peter schwartzTHE WOMAN AND THE WOLF - len kuntz
THE WOMAN AND THE WOLF
len kuntz
She pulled apart while I watched from a safe, short distance.
In the kitchen I did home work as a clock radio played Elton John and “Bennie and the Jets” got her swaying, her cigarette smoke an anorexic genie escaping through the spackled ceiling. She was just drunk then, but later the swaying would return, more a wobble, her unsteady sea-bound legs plodding unfamiliarly on this flat and dusty earth.
I was warned: the disease had a pattern, a cadence, an inevitable predictability. Nevertheless it unnerved and strangled me.
In time she shed every trace of loveliness, resorted to growling and staccato bursts of paranoia. Her eyes were stripped and raw, like a starved wolf’s.
In that same kitchen where she once fed me she bit down on my arm and would not release even as I screamed and punched and slammed her head against the refrigerator. Had Dad not been there she might have eaten me.
Yesterday when I visited she looked past me, warbling an undecipherable chant, summoning old friends and ghosts, addressing the coven, casting spells and cursing me to hell.
“But Mother,” I said, “isn’t it too late for that?”
Len Kuntz
lenk98290@hotmail.com
The Delivery Man
Joe McGinniss Jr.
len kuntz
She pulled apart while I watched from a safe, short distance.
In the kitchen I did home work as a clock radio played Elton John and “Bennie and the Jets” got her swaying, her cigarette smoke an anorexic genie escaping through the spackled ceiling. She was just drunk then, but later the swaying would return, more a wobble, her unsteady sea-bound legs plodding unfamiliarly on this flat and dusty earth.
I was warned: the disease had a pattern, a cadence, an inevitable predictability. Nevertheless it unnerved and strangled me.
In time she shed every trace of loveliness, resorted to growling and staccato bursts of paranoia. Her eyes were stripped and raw, like a starved wolf’s.
In that same kitchen where she once fed me she bit down on my arm and would not release even as I screamed and punched and slammed her head against the refrigerator. Had Dad not been there she might have eaten me.
Yesterday when I visited she looked past me, warbling an undecipherable chant, summoning old friends and ghosts, addressing the coven, casting spells and cursing me to hell.
“But Mother,” I said, “isn’t it too late for that?”
Len Kuntz
lenk98290@hotmail.com
The Delivery Man
Joe McGinniss Jr.
LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT - howie good
LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT
howie good
There was a time I might’ve enjoyed the tang of truck exhaust following me home, or the boarded-up windows of a discount liquor store. Then tick-borne diseases in fitted choir robes climbed down from the scaffold and disappeared into the crowd. I sat on the curb heartbroken. In theory every sequence of moves ought to be reversible. But somewhere it’s always the summer after mom died, and raining, and the rain is passing notes to us through a slit in the ground.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford
howie good
There was a time I might’ve enjoyed the tang of truck exhaust following me home, or the boarded-up windows of a discount liquor store. Then tick-borne diseases in fitted choir robes climbed down from the scaffold and disappeared into the crowd. I sat on the curb heartbroken. In theory every sequence of moves ought to be reversible. But somewhere it’s always the summer after mom died, and raining, and the rain is passing notes to us through a slit in the ground.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford
THEY DID NOT WANT TO KNOW - timothy gager
THEY DID NOT WANT TO KNOW
timothy gager
From your old life, those friends at your funeral were clueless, failed to note it was drugs that killed you. They laughed; their hair and clothes fresh, their zamboni lip gloss chucked wet ice and their smiles blinded us like splashy soda commercials. They bloomed, sprung out of the ground like flowers; the world was such a wonderful place.
Timothy Gager
www.timothygager.com
Leaving Las Vegas
John O'Brien
timothy gager
From your old life, those friends at your funeral were clueless, failed to note it was drugs that killed you. They laughed; their hair and clothes fresh, their zamboni lip gloss chucked wet ice and their smiles blinded us like splashy soda commercials. They bloomed, sprung out of the ground like flowers; the world was such a wonderful place.
Timothy Gager
www.timothygager.com
Leaving Las Vegas
John O'Brien
JOHNNY CAME BY - barry basden
JOHNNY CAME BY
barry basden
He rode in on a little red Honda yesterday evening. Came all the way from Sacramento. Took him four days. Said he stopped in Phoenix and my dad gave him twenty bucks for gas. Last of the big spenders that guy. He still owes me the twelve hundred he stole when I was in the army.
Johnny said he was pissing blood from the road vibrations. He sat on the bike in the driveway while we talked. Mary Lou wouldn't let him in the house after last time. That was long ago, but she's like that. Well, he's still my son no matter what.
Then a grackle flew over and splattered him and it ran down behind his ear and into his collar. I hosed it off as best I could and gave him everything I had in my wallet before he rode off.
I stood there awhile listening to those fucking birds settle into the top of the tall cedar by the garage. I thought about taking the shotgun to them but decided against it. Sure as I did out there in the dark, one of those paranoid dopeheads across the street would start shooting back.
Barry Basden
www.camrocpressreview.com
FORMS OF INTERCESSION
Jayne Pupek
barry basden
He rode in on a little red Honda yesterday evening. Came all the way from Sacramento. Took him four days. Said he stopped in Phoenix and my dad gave him twenty bucks for gas. Last of the big spenders that guy. He still owes me the twelve hundred he stole when I was in the army.
Johnny said he was pissing blood from the road vibrations. He sat on the bike in the driveway while we talked. Mary Lou wouldn't let him in the house after last time. That was long ago, but she's like that. Well, he's still my son no matter what.
Then a grackle flew over and splattered him and it ran down behind his ear and into his collar. I hosed it off as best I could and gave him everything I had in my wallet before he rode off.
I stood there awhile listening to those fucking birds settle into the top of the tall cedar by the garage. I thought about taking the shotgun to them but decided against it. Sure as I did out there in the dark, one of those paranoid dopeheads across the street would start shooting back.
Barry Basden
www.camrocpressreview.com
FORMS OF INTERCESSION
Jayne Pupek
A MILLION WORLDS - maddie gorman
A MILLION WORLDS
maddie gorman
She thinks of needles and honeycomb, big balloon sized rain drops, heavy footed nouns falling clumsy on her head and that’s why it throbs at night while she tries to fall asleep, chasing birds of thought in every direction, grasping at their blurry feathers, squeezing her eyes so tight that little droplets of color appear, birthed out of a blank screen, mutating as if to music. She tugs at her pubic hair softly, individually and methodically, compulsively out of a habit so strong she wakes in the morning with her hand inside her underwear, cupping her mound gently as if to protect it from the damage of post-apocalyptic earth, alien invasions, and mass kidnappings, often including a chase scene. Even in her sleep she knows her heart circles in little catapults, propelling her weightless mind-body through vast, maze-like escapes with danger at every turn.
Maddie Gorman
http://members.shaw.ca/kingofcats/
Lighthousekeeping
Jeanette Winterson
maddie gorman
She thinks of needles and honeycomb, big balloon sized rain drops, heavy footed nouns falling clumsy on her head and that’s why it throbs at night while she tries to fall asleep, chasing birds of thought in every direction, grasping at their blurry feathers, squeezing her eyes so tight that little droplets of color appear, birthed out of a blank screen, mutating as if to music. She tugs at her pubic hair softly, individually and methodically, compulsively out of a habit so strong she wakes in the morning with her hand inside her underwear, cupping her mound gently as if to protect it from the damage of post-apocalyptic earth, alien invasions, and mass kidnappings, often including a chase scene. Even in her sleep she knows her heart circles in little catapults, propelling her weightless mind-body through vast, maze-like escapes with danger at every turn.
Maddie Gorman
http://members.shaw.ca/kingofcats/
Lighthousekeeping
Jeanette Winterson
SUMMER OF '74 - richard osgood
SUMMER OF ‘74
richard osgood
It lay between them like a toppled geranium, dirt and stem and shattered terracotta, the crash of guilt and remorse on mirage pavement from Manchester to White River Junction, where campers and canoe-topped station wagons exit at places like Sutton and Sunapee and Georges Mills, miles behind her the humorless doctor with cold hands and rubber words—dilation and curettage—instruments of finality scrape remnants of first love and fluttered loins into a stainless steel pan, the shape of which reminds her of a banana split, and there beside her the boy who doesn't hold her hand or wipe away her tears but rambles on and on about senior year and ski team and how they should just be friends.
Richard Osgood
r.osgood@fuse.net
Underworld
Don DeLillo
richard osgood
It lay between them like a toppled geranium, dirt and stem and shattered terracotta, the crash of guilt and remorse on mirage pavement from Manchester to White River Junction, where campers and canoe-topped station wagons exit at places like Sutton and Sunapee and Georges Mills, miles behind her the humorless doctor with cold hands and rubber words—dilation and curettage—instruments of finality scrape remnants of first love and fluttered loins into a stainless steel pan, the shape of which reminds her of a banana split, and there beside her the boy who doesn't hold her hand or wipe away her tears but rambles on and on about senior year and ski team and how they should just be friends.
Richard Osgood
r.osgood@fuse.net
Underworld
Don DeLillo
THE RATS IN THE TOWN DUMP - ben loory
THE RATS IN THE TOWN DUMP
ben loory
The rats in the town dump collect the bullets after people shoot at them. They take them home, melt them down, then make torpedoes.
They load the torpedoes into their submarines and cruise the sewers after rainstorms and hunt down and destroy all the frogs they can find. Frogs and toads and other little things.
Sometimes we hear the war down there and poke our heads into the sewers and scream.
Stop! Why are you doing that?
But by then only broken frogs remain.
Ben Loory
www.facebook.com/benamuckee
little pictures: fiction for the new age
andrew ramer
ben loory
The rats in the town dump collect the bullets after people shoot at them. They take them home, melt them down, then make torpedoes.
They load the torpedoes into their submarines and cruise the sewers after rainstorms and hunt down and destroy all the frogs they can find. Frogs and toads and other little things.
Sometimes we hear the war down there and poke our heads into the sewers and scream.
Stop! Why are you doing that?
But by then only broken frogs remain.
Ben Loory
www.facebook.com/benamuckee
little pictures: fiction for the new age
andrew ramer
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