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| Bong Bong. DOGZPLOT is for the babies. |
WHAT DO WE KNOW? - RACHEL BONDURANT
I
was in love once when I was nine. It was a neighbor boy who used to chase
me down the street whenever I passed his house. One day, he wasn't there
to chase me. I went into my own house and found my mother, who was
sitting in a chair beside the window.
"Mama,
where is Jack?" I asked.
"The
neighbor boy? They moved away," she said.
"But
I loved him," I told her.
"You're
too young to know what that word means," she told the window.
"Oh," I said, because when you're nine, you think you can know anything, and you
become accustomed to being told you can’t. "What does it mean?"
My
mother looked at me then, sharply, the way she did when I was being
insolent. After a moment, she told me, “Go and play,” so I did.
That
night, my father left for good. Or maybe I'm remembering it wrong;
perhaps by then, he'd already gone.
Rachel Bondurant
sometimestheygohere.tumblr.com
Prodigal Summer
Barbara Kingsolver
GRAY MATTERS - ETHAN SWAGE
Yesterday I
stepped through glass doors uninvited, shifted from light to dark. Yesterday I
applied; spoke to a man, to a woman. Their suits were gray. Their words were
gray. They said nothing at all. I said nothing in return. During our exchange,
a bird died on the windowsill. In deference I relented, accepted, extolled. The
man collected signatures; the woman extended a flaccid hand. We nodded
equilaterally. I thought I heard gunfire in the distance: an execution,
possibly mine.
Afterward, I
traded dark for light. I shuffled home hired, shed my suit hired, watched my
girlfriend fold origami penises hired, sat atop the crest of my roof and traded
whispers with the moon hired. Despite myself, I had been hired, indentured.
Today my suit
is gray. My thoughts are gray. I slip pills under my tongue, linger at a
gleaming urinal and mimic the touch of yesterday’s flaccid hand. At my desk I
sit dutifully rigid and peck randomly at ordered keys. I watch letters bestrew
a screen once bleached and barren. Punctuation pecks at my eyes. AutoCorrect
shaves razor-thin layers from my brain. Blood splatters onto my corp-issued
Blackberry in 160-platelet bursts.
Tomorrow I
will demand a raise.
Ethan Swage
ethanswage@optimum.net
Black House
Stephen King and Peter Straub
LIL' SIS - CHRISTOPHER JAMES
“I
grew up just the same as her,” Brian often said, “and I didn’t kill myself.”
Sometimes
he sounded proud of himself, sometimes angry with her. Increasingly now, as he
grew older, he sounded confused. He’s started using polite euphemisms for ‘kill
myself.’ Take my life. End it all. Bow out.
“Bow
wow?” I said once.
Brian
doesn’t think I should joke, but she was my sister too.
My
son used to tell me all the silver linings that clouds had. “Some people say
that there are beautiful sunsets after a nuclear winter. When a bird dies its
body nourishes the soil that keeps a million flowers alive.” I thought he was
such an optimist. My little trooper, always finding the bright side to
everything.
It
was Brian who pointed out that he was spending every waking moment thinking
about nuclear winters and dead birds, desperately trying to find the good
things that come out of bad.
“You
should watch him,” Brian said. “She used to do that too. You don’t remember
because you were too young.”
Brian
thinks my son will bow out.
Suicide,
my son tells me, often brings families closer together.
Christopher James
sutcliffechris@hotmail.com
The 158 Pound Marriage
John Irving
THE RADIO - JUANITA WALTON
She takes six
baths per day and listens to the radio while she soaks. He forgets sometimes
that he has to help. It is easy now for him to get lost in television, where
all the women still walk upright on long lean limbs that support upper halves
with ease. Long lean limbs that do what limbs should. Lean limbs that flinch
and tense and spread.
She howls and
bangs a fist against the side of the bathtub. She crawls like a stone with her
arms to the corner of the bathroom where linoleum meets carpet. She cries out and brushes her
cheeks, chin, palms and tongue tip against the soft and cool places her feet
used to go. She explores the wet fibers and dirt tucked into the crevice there, loose but still bound. The dirt in some spots
adhesive. He likes the strain in her voice, her need makes him hard. Reminds
him of when she could still feel below the waist, before she was numb to thumb tacks
jammed into her heels and long jagged razor traces of flesh folds along her
inner thighs and calves.
When she sleeps,
he conducts experiments.
When she sleeps
he watches, waits for spasms. He pinches until blue and punches until tired when
her shakes come. She wakes from the sound of his breathing, not the dull thuds
of fist against dead nerves and meat.
He asks if he
can and she lets.
Juanita Walton
juanitawalton@gmail.com
Wetlands
Charlotte Roche
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