AFTER ALL - greg dybec

They tell us how naïve we were to have sprawled lethargically in fields of ash and chase down the remaining blackbirds with stones in hope of some bird-mash gumbo sprinkled with bark. These new men in masks say that we are lucky to be alive, since we’re just young children and all. I don’t trust them. Their masks cloud their eyes and there is no telling if the faces underneath exist or not. They tell us that we are on the threshold of a new world, and that the apocalypse wasn’t so apocalyptic after all. They explain that new ferns and hollies are beginning to sprout toward the Eastern coast, and soon enough we will see schools and hospitals once more. I don’t know what they mean, but I’m hungry and there are crickets still left over in our bunker, at the edge of woods where cracked road meets a wrinkled blanket of ash.




Greg Dybec
www.QuietColor.com
Love and Hydrogen
Jim Shepard

IRIS - rick hale

I'm going to wash my belongings and pile them all together in the same room.‭ ‬I'm going to shut the door and allow them to become familiar with each other.‭ ‬Then we will go to Mexico.‭ ‬I will eat biscuits.‭ ‬I will go outside.‭ ‬The sun will look dazzlingly light and secure,‭ ‬and I will give it a new name.‭ ‬You will introduce yourself to me as Iris.‭ ‬You will pick up your white stick and take me out into the desert.‭ ‬We will hunt for things,‭ ‬holding our guns and looking through our sights at unimportant things.‭ ‬Your rainbow eyes will fall on me hard.‭ ‬My body will wake up lying in your bed with my head on your chest.‭ ‬I will tell you about the time I washed all my belongings and went outside.‭ ‬You will tell me about the snowball effect,‭ ‬that it is not an accumulation or gathering of speed.‭ ‬You will tell me it is an explosion.‭ ‬A firecracker of cold white powder fanned out across the pavement like the eyeless spread of an albino peacock's tail.


Rick Hale
http://pelicanmagic.blogspot.com
The Journey to the East
Hermann Hesse

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

'AFTER THE PRAYER' - bl pawelek

DEWEY - rick hale

My placid uncle enjoyed the‭ ‬1990‭ ‬shore of the lake in a plaid lawn chair.‭ ‬He had a fishing pole with an empty plastic milk jug where the hook would normally be.‭ ‬At night he'd cast the jug out through the evening bugs clouding over the water and it would come down with a hollow splash.‭ ‬Reel in,‭ ‬cast again.‭ ‬Splash.‭ ‬There was a giant lidless jar of Vlasics open beside his chair.‭ ‬He would allow himself a pickle every time he bopped an alligator's head with the jug.‭ ‬Fonk.‭ ‬It was usually pitch dark,‭ ‬but he could tell when he'd succeeded by the sound of thrashing and clapping jaws out in the water.‭ ‬My uncle would crunch a bumpy pickle with his teeth.‭ ‬His large laughs would go out through the marshy air like storks,‭ ‬invisible in the dark as they flew to peck at the lizards‭' ‬rough green skin.‭ ‬But there came a day when those alligators learned to follow the jug to shore.‭ ‬They slid out of the pale green water,‭ ‬smashed the jar.‭ ‬Pickles slopped out and the label got all wet.‭ ‬Vlasic.‭ ‬My uncle laughed as he ran.



Rick Hale
http://pelicanmagic.blogspot.com
The Journey to the East
Hermann Hesse

TRANSPORT - howie good

I clambered aboard as ordered.‭ ‬It was dark inside,‭ ‬though it wasn‭’‬t night and wouldn‭’‬t be night for hours.‭ ‬Ghosts of lost objects patrolled the aisle.‭ ‬I leaned back and closed my eyes.‭ ‬When I woke up,‭ ‬fire was cradling my head in its lap.‭ ‬We were far from anyplace I knew.‭ ‬The woman reading to her seatmate hesitated over certain words‭ ‬– verdigris,‭ ‬exculpatory‭ ‬– as if she feared their meaning.‭ ‬Others passed around a Polaroid of a brick wall.‭ ‬Poor everybody,‭ ‬I thought.‭ ‬The sun,‭ ‬suddenly below the horizon,‭ ‬continued to breathe with difficulty.



Howie Good
http://www.roninpress.org/eBooks/poetry003/howie%20good%20%20halflife%20and%20other%20poems.pdf
The Arrival‭
‬Daniel Simko

TEXT MESSAGE TO SPOONMAN - stefanie karlina greene

Just watched a kid with no chin, but somehow squeezed into skinny jeans, windmill his arms as he skipped across an intersection. I'm at a loss for words.



Stefanie Karline Greene
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

DRY CLEANING - justin c. witt

You don’t expect to come home one day and find a midget fucking your wife.‭ ‬It’s not something you can prepare yourself for,‭ ‬yet there he is,‭ ‬wearing that ridiculous Zorro mask,‭ ‬smacking her in the hip yelling‭ “‬Ho‭! ‬Ho‭! ‬Hooo‭!” ‬over and over again,‭ ‬neither one of them realizing you are there.‭

“HOOoooooOOOoooo‭!!!” ‬the midget screams,‭ ‬his ass-cheeks jiggling like Jell-O at each pelvic impact.‭

You remember that you forgot to pick up the dry cleaning,‭ ‬the words repeating themselves inside your head as you turn and leave the room.‭ ‬“Yes‭” ‬you say,‭ ‬walking back down the hall,‭ “‬the dry cleaning.‭”



‭Justin C. Witt
www.towncriermedia.com
The Sporting Club
Thomas McGuane

TO CHINA - caroline kepnes

We’re lovely people,‭ ‬Dan and I.‭ ‬We came to China because the mother spirit wants us to take in a child who already breathes rather than create anew.‭ ‬We’re ready.‭ ‬Dan plays jazz trombone,‭ ‬he’s as‭ ‬New Orleans as they come.‭ ‬I’m a financial planner for divorced women.‭ ‬We’re also regular.‭ ‬We eat peanut butter,‭ ‬mainstream,‭ ‬organic,‭ ‬we have a line on what really matters.‭ ‬Dan and me,‭ ‬we’re good people begging.‭ ‬I was adopted.‭ ‬I know what it is to make family.‭ ‬

But the family won’t get made,‭ ‬not entirely.‭ ‬I can’t get a line on little beige Derry.‭ ‬He’s mine but he doesn’t want to be mine.‭ ‬He’s a fish that gets away,‭ ‬not from Dan though.‭ ‬He wants Dan’s song.‭ ‬Dan looks at me different.‭ ‬I can see his first wife in his head,‭ ‬the paws on way she had with the babies they made.‭ ‬I hate jazz now.‭ ‬Jazz doesn’t give a shit.‭ ‬I play tight pop when Dan’s not here,‭ ‬pop doesn’t brat out on you and wander to daddy just because.‭ ‬I hit Derry yesterday.‭ ‬Dan can’t see it.‭ ‬He doesn’t know Derry’s skin like I do.‭ ‬Dumb jazzman,‭ ‬good daddy though,‭ ‬I’ll give him that.

THE FUTURE OF MASTURBATION - shannon peil

I fell in love with a girl I've never met.‭ ‬She writes like a whore and speaks like a poet.‭ ‬I like it when females write like deranged,‭ ‬drugged out sex addicts.‭ ‬I think maybe they're just like me.‭ ‬And I've never met anyone just like me.‭ ‬If I could clone myself as an identical female twin,‭ ‬I'd fuck her/me all day and hit her and not say I'm sorry cuz I don't lie to myself and she/me would know anyway.‭ ‬I would cum deep in me and lick it out and kiss her/me and make us taste us/it.‭ ‬If I could transfer a brain between bodies,‭ ‬I would switch my brain into my cloned identical sister's body and hers into mine and let her/me fuck me/her until she pulls out and covers us with us and the neighbors would complain.‭ ‬I would hold her/me/it up against a wall and the phone would ring and it would be God and he would be judging me and the neighbors would complain again.

LIKE FIVE O' CLOCK - parker tettleton

She pulled the book off its shelf. It meant something else now. He’d quote her in the mirror, at the backs of buses that kept her moving, something she’d said without saying. He would remember for them. She’d forget, without him, the way she wanted. Garland and lights were on her stub. The station was packed, like five o’clock, except it wasn’t.


Parker Tettleton
http://parker-augustlight.blogspot.com/
Pretty
Kim Chinquee

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

jenny perkins

PRE-REVELATION COFFEE WITH EX-GIRLFRIEND - s. craig renfroe, jr.

She said I have to believe. She said it was important and why she had called me after a year--not to have sex, though I asked to be sure. From Guadalajara, she came to North Carolina knowing no English but soon was doing poetry readings. Now, she was in a cult.

She pointed to her palms. “See the sparkles of light? That is the holy light. I have been anointed.”

“It’s the recessed halogens reflecting off some oil or sweat.”

“I can talk in tongues.” She talked in tongues.

“I can talk gibberish.” I talked gibberish.

“It’s ancient Aramaic. That hasn’t been heard in thousands of years.”

“Then, how do we know what it sounds like?”

She stood, short but all long black hair and cleavage. She laid one hand, sparkling palm down, on my heart and the other on my back. She prayed over me and fell into the tongues. We were in Starbucks.

“I’ve done what I can,” she said. “You have to save yourself.” She was crying.

“And you have to fuck yourself.”

Much later, when God came, I was sorry about that part.



S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.
http://craigrenfroe.blogspot.com
Twilight
William Gay

THE BREASTSTROKE - dawn corrigan

When we got back from space it turns out we could fly. Oh, not all 517. Only those who'd traveled beyond low Earth orbit had acquired the ability. Two dozen. And it wasn't really flying so much as a kind of swimming. There was no zooming through the air like Superman. Rather, you'd be thinking about what zero gravity felt like, and you'd take a step, and then instead of your foot landing on the ground it would land on air, which I know doesn't make sense but that's how it happened. The air would bear your weight and you’d swing your other foot forward, and that foot would land higher than the first, as though you were climbing an invisible staircase. And then--you couldn't help it--you'd push your arms together above your head and then separate them, like a person doing the breaststroke. And your body would follow. Once you had enough height there were loops, and flips--all in slow motion, like moving through a dream.

The twelve who’d walked on the moon, they could fly like Superman. Or so we heard. They never let us see, and they never came to our parties.


Dawn Corrigan
http://www.girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/editors
The Lone Pilgrim
Laurie Colwin

THE OPENING - jenny breukelaar

He waved his thing at her and called out to her trying not to think about the hole in his sock but she just kept walking, tap-tap-tapping with her cane and her eyes were like pearls. She looked like she was drowning. He loved her pearls. One morning when there was no one else around to hear him, he offered to lick them. She never said anything.

She stopped then in front of him, this silent girl with drowned eyes and she waved her magic wand in front of her. Wave wave. He froze and his dick went limp in his hands. Sunlight fell down on them from between the dark branches.



Jenny Breukelaar
www.thelivingsuitcase.com.au
Nightmare Town
Dashiell Hammett

A SPECIAL BELT - chelsea hogue

Nothing is left but silence. At least he has that. Roberto is laying in the trench, surrounded by a scene of no striking faces, just a monogamous flow of ordinary. He can look up the side of the mountain that almost looks human.

He’s a Spanish conquistador building shelter out of palm branches, regal, cool, calculated yet impulsive, taking native prisoners. He looks over his mangled armor, coiled around him now like a sardine lid, hundreds of feral guinea pigs’ tiny claws clinking over his breastplate.

He’s a martyr. He’s a soldier. He’s a young boy sitting inside a large bugle horn, painted candy-red, sitting cross-legged, laughing.

Revisiting everything Barry Hannah

WHAT BETSY WANTS - linda sands

She wants to keep him around longer than a night. She wants to be more than his fuck buddy, the one he calls when he wants a piece of ass without buying it dinner. She knows she’s not pretty enough for him, not skinny enough or nice enough and her crooked teeth, she figures they might have something to do with it, although he never minds feeling them skim across his cock.

She wants him to shut off his phone when he walks in her door because the chime and ding of all those pretty girls calling him gets annoying after a while and she has to try even harder to please him, even harder to get him to understand she is so much more than this naked girl standing in front of him willing to do anything he asks at any time.

TELL ME - walter campbell

She tells me that it always smells damp this time of year, like everyone left their gym towels in the sewers, and the smell’s leeching up. It makes me wonder what the locker room at her gym smells like.

She tells me that everyone gets sweaty, and they glisten like glazed donuts this time of year. It makes me wonder if she eats donuts, because I find myself no longer wanting to eat them. Ever.

She tells me that the last time it was this time of year—meaning last year—she was with another guy—meaning not me—and he became insatiably horny with the change in season. I start to tell her I’d prefer not to hear about that when

she tells me that she’s glad I don’t get that way this time of year. It makes me wonder if I should tell her something about my ex that I’m glad she’s not.

She tells me that her favorite time of year is the other time of year. It makes me wonder why I don’t have a favorite time of year.



Walter Campbell
walter.campbell02@gmail.com
Sharp Teeth
Toby Barlow

FRUSTRATION - blake wilcox

“Shit,” Jones said, “I cannot write this stupid story.”

His husband, Mel, piped in. “Well,” he said, “think of a river running down saccharine banks, cascading over rocks dotted with quartz like the chips in the ice cream I bought, which is delicious, just so you know. That’s you. You’re the river. Or, no, the words you’re writing are a river, like a river of ink, but distilled, or something, because if you were a river of ink, you’d be all over the page, and nobody could read it. But, hey, that might be ironic, right? Probably something like that. You’d know better than me, sweetie-bear. My sweetie-bear, the writer river rider of ink, over those rocks, kicking some rock ass, because that’s what you do—you kick ass, baby. And I know you can do it. A hang-up here and a stint of writer’s block there is nothing in the grandest schemes of things, the great literary cosmos you traverse every goddamn day and wrangle those glittering stars down for the puny mortals like me to look upon and squeal and squirm with delight, oh yes.”

“No,” Jones said, “I’m pretty sure I just can’t write the story.”


Blake Wilcox
caloncentaru@hotmail.com
The People of Paper
Salvador Plascencia

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

'DARK DAYS' - alyssa davis

A BROAD - scott akalis

A BROAD

scott akalis

Only 3 words. All he knows: No habla espanol. Streets smell of diesel smoke like daddy´s old tractor. Why so many stray dogs? No birth control, she says. For the first time he's white and tall. The sun burns his head. The ceiling bumps it. The bed is safe.



Scott Akalis
akalis@post.harvard.edu
Straight Man
Richard Russo

EFFIGIES - eric bennett

EFFIGIES

eric bennett

You collect statues of Jesus. Line them neatly on every ledge in your shrinking flat. You arrange them – rearrange them until the order is right. One Jesus, two Jesus, red Jesus, blue.

You set the plastic sacred-heart Jesus on the mantle next to the-Lord-is-my-shepherd Jesus with bronzed lambs. You shift the three inch high replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta so their spoon-smooth faces capture the ambient light. You position, reposition, and position again until there’s a shape to the silence between you and the icons.

Even though you’re an atheist you believe in God. But you surmise he doesn’t believe in you. So, you gather his images and arrange them throughout the apartment. You require his manifest presence – his eyes on you.

You stand silent in the center of the room. Lift your hands shoulder high, palms out. Listen to the silent thunder of the Lord of hosts and know the statue alignment is ideal. Your mouth rarely smiles but inside your brain, you smile.

All eyes are on you. Reaching deep into your mouth and scooping out a prayer, you speak into the hush. You begin, “Now that I have your attention...”

BEARDED AND BEETLED - henry vauban

BEARDED AND BEETLED

henry vauban

I grew a beard to hide the beetle in my mind or the other way around. Black dogs aren’t always lonely and not everything that looks lost is lost. Only $9.99 limited time only always ends up dusty yellowed plastic at a flea market with all the other broken watches.

I wear codeine on my post-surgery foot and beetle to the bathroom.

I dress like Peter Pan hit by a sedan and pincushion my belly against thrombosis.

The neighborhood cats are fat but never allowed indoors. My neighbor bangs and bangs his house green but my utility bills are rising and the windmills keep turning and the coal keeps burning and whatever happens at nuclear power plants isn’t slowing down either.

“Yo can I bum a cig?” some kid asks me on the street.

I am made of money and giving cigarettes to kids is cool.

The audacity of strangers with outstretched arms not even pretending to be broken down and ashamed to beg.

I take stock of my mustard jar drinking vessels. I’d give one to a polar bear for his coat.

I kiss glaciers. We are the same.



Henry Vauban
http://vauban.tumblr.com
The Dictator is Drinking Alone
Amber Sparks

CTRL. ALT. RIOT GIRL - melanie williams

CTRL. ALT. RIOT GIRL

melanie williams

Disconnect, conclusion. Her lips an overdue rent check. Her bones the frame of my borrowed futon. Caution tape, her tongue. And green lights. Saying “go,” saying “later.” Saying nothing.



Melanie Williams
mlwilliams918@gmail.com
We Disappear
Scott Heim

WOMAN OF THE DAY - michael herman

WOMAN OF THE DAY

michael herman

I'm a man, and I have needs. Yesterday, I'm walking to work. The sky is blue and looks like the sky. The grass is green, looking like grass. The tress, flowers, and plants—all looking like trees, flowers, and plants. It's early. On my way to work I find a ten dollar bill on the ground, then run into an old friend I haven't seen since high school.

"Hello, old friend," I say. "I haven't seen you since high school. You've aged, but you still look like you—as you should."

"Hello," my old friend says.

My old friend leads me back to her apartment. We talk. She makes me coffee, and we have sex. On my way to work again, I notice that the ten dollar bill is gone and ninety dollars is missing from my wallet. Everything still looking like it should—the sky, grass, trees, flowers, and plants. At work I can't help but think of my old friend. She hasn't changed since high school, but that's okay, because I like her just the way she is—as she should be.



Michael Herman
hermanmu@gmail.com
The Box Man
Kobo Abe

LYZ AND DUNCAN - lavinia ludlow

LYZ AND DUNCAN

lavinia ludlow

This morning, my band mates discussed their relationship deal breakers.

“If he lives with his parents,” Joleen said.

“If he smokes,” Ella said.

“If he won’t eat out my ass.” Meet Lyz. She’s captain of her roller derby team. Enough said. Well, not exactly.

Apparently, Lyz used to be fat. Like really fat. Like needing the surgery fat but a few years ago she began puking up everything she ate instead. No one had ever seen her not fat, so after all that fat melted off, she became this hot girl who fronted an East Side punk band, and thereafter, she capitalized on ever opportunity that presented itself, in terms of what she wore, how she posed in pictures, who she hit on, who she allowed to hit on her, who she kissed, fucked, you get the picture.

She’s gone around with my best friend Duncan for months, and I’ve never once disapproved, but since her admission, I haven’t been able to look Duncan in the eye.

Tonight at the bar, he says to me,

“I have a funny taste in my mouth.”

I grip my bottle of Guinness Extra Stout and chug before he can ask for a sip.



Lavinia Ludlow
http://upbondageupyours.blogspot.com/2007/02/little-love-poem.html
A Little Love Poem
Tony O’Neil

A VERY STYLISH ORNAMENT - chelsea hogue

A VERY STYLISH ORNAMENT

chelsea hogue

The retard that all of the other retards admired was Janel. She was only a little retarded. At the yard sale they were instructed to all hold hands. Janel picked out a long silver necklace with assorted lockets on the end, a cowboy toothbrush holder and rubber banded Monopoly money. All of the others, instructed to stay together, began asking if there were, perhaps, more cowboys.



Chelsea Hogue
ChelseaSHogue@gmail.com
Revisiting everything Barry Hannah

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

'IN THE MORAVIAN CEMETERY, BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA'
- chris cocca

IF THIS WAS AN OLD PREACHER STORY - kyle minor

IF THIS WAS AN OLD PREACHER STORY

kyle minor

The old man sat on the steps of the Dorr Street Clinic and hoped they’d take his plasma and give him fifty bucks. If this was an old preacher story he’d be homeless, but he had a home in the back room of his daughter’s girlfriend’s house three streets back. He waited all afternoon for the nurse to come outside and call his name, but she never did. If this was an old preacher story, he’d fall asleep on the sidewalk and none of us would know his name, but the nurse knew his name and it was Clarence. Around five o’clock the security guard came over and gave him six bucks to get some cheap whisky from the liquor store next to the pizza shop. If this was an old preacher story, somebody would have given him a dime and not cared that it wasn’t enough to get some cheap whisky from the liquor store next to the pizza shop. After he got the whisky, he drank some of it and started walking home. If this was an old preacher story, a little child would run out in front of a speeding city garbage truck on Dorr Street, and if this was an old preacher story, the old man would run like we’d never seen him run before, throw his body in front of the dump truck, and push the child to the safety of the median in the split second before the dump truck crushed his head and body and all the bystanders gathered around to marvel at his sacrifice. But the old man was just walking home. It was getting dark, and he forgot to get some bread for his daughter and her girlfriend. He hoped they would leave him alone for not getting the bread. If this was an old preacher story, all the people of the city would gather for a grand memorial at Maplewood Cemetery, and an old preacher would deliver the news of the homeless man’s sacrifice, and remind the gathered how we can’t judge a man by his outward appearance. Something would stir in the heart of a small boy in the crowd, and he would begin to believe that the purpose of his life was to help those less fortunate. He would grow up to build a homeless shelter downtown, found a job training program, a rehabilitation center, a halfway house. But nobody died, no one was saved, no one bothered the old man on his walk home. When he reached the house, nobody asked about the bread. He went back to his drafty room, turned on the television, and drank some of his whisky. If this was an old preacher story, this could be your life, if you didn’t renew your mind. The consequences of sin haunt you even in the here and now. But there was a cop show on the television. A car chase, a sting operation, the bad guys got it in the end. The old man watched with pleasure, and he drank the whisky, and that brought him some pleasure. He went out into the living room and sat for a few minutes with his daughter and her girlfriend, and that brought him some pleasure. Sometimes he scratched up a dollar and bought a lottery ticket and hoped to win his millions, but if he did, he thought, this is what he’d do with it. Watch cop shows on television, drink his whisky, sit for awhile with his daughter and her girlfriend.



Kyle Minor
kyle@kyleminor.com
The Union Jack
Imre Kertesz

SPUN OUT OF - kenneth pobo

SPUN OUT OF

kenneth pobo

Control—I say, in a library parking lot with an old couple walking to their car and talking about tree surgeons, that I would like to see America fall. You say you’d like to see America be great again. Tennis, no love. A cop comes.

At the police station, I’m turned over to the FBI, the CIA, the ABC, the 123. Stern people ask about my opinion of One Life To Live—do I prefer it when Karen was cheating on Larry Wolek or now when gay characters marry. Larry wouldn’t like that. I figure it’s best to have no opinion, to wrap any view I have in old newspaper and hope fish sellers can peddle it.

“Do you truly love America ?” some former pop star asks while looking in a mirror.

“Yes,” I blurt, hoping door number three will open and my dream kitchen appears.

Jail. Distance. No letters in or out. Duct tape on my lips and genitals. Maybe I got my wish— America did fall. Hard. And in its place? A commercial. Cialis. Swiffers.



Kenneth Pobo
http://www.mainstreetrag.com/
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
Kevin Wilson

WEBCAM CELEBRITY; FILM AND UPLOAD - rebecca gaffron

WEBCAM CELEBRITY; FILM AND UPLOAD

rebecca gaffron

You might want to cover your face, in case your boss likes that homemade porn shit. What would he think? You know, if he saw you lying on your bed fucking yourself. Or what about that guy from the book shop, the one who kind of smiles at you, but always disappears before you get up the nerve to say hello?

He might not know it’s you. He’d be sitting there, rubbing himself, watching that rubber cock split you open. And just when he’s in danger of blowing a load all over the keyboard, he sees the way your chin juts as you cum all pixilated. It reminds him of that day you wanted to ask if he’d like to join you for coffee. He recognizes you from a single magical moment that drained away in the eleven steps from the door to the counter and left you asking in a zombie voice for the latest tabloid rag.



Rebecca Gaffron
http://www.rebeccawriting.wordpress.com/
Touch Me
Alan Stewart Carl

WHAT SANDRA WANTS - linda sands

WHAT SANDRA WANTS

linda sands

She wants another woman. She’s not sure which one, but she knows the girl needs to have big tits, because that is what she sees when she’s lying in bed with her husband and the lights are dimmed and she whispers, baby? What are you thinking of, as his hands run over her flabby stomach and she squeezes her own breasts. And he says, dutifully, You Baby. You.

And she wishes he’d lied. She wishes he’d said another woman. Even maybe that he’d picked the same one she was thinking about- the waitress at the restaurant, the blonde with the plunging top and the tattoo of the horned angel on her breast.

That’s what Sandra wants. Yes. Right now. That girl in this bed baring that tattoo and pulling Sandra’s hands away and replacing them with her lips.



Linda Sands
http://linda-sands.com/
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Wells Tower

MOURNING - alec bryan

MOURNING

alec bryan

The rain: slanted drizzle, grayscale backdrop, leafless trees drenched. The populace of black parasols, feathering the rain, raven-wing-like, down the acrylic coated nylon onto the already soaked greens. Parasols grouped tight, snug, closer than amphibians morphing into frogs in desiccated ponds, gasping for air, for space, confined only by circumstance. Closeness like this is never wanted.

The plot of earth is pried open, exposing the wet sloppy clay interior, modest puddles of uneven proportions pock the hole.

An ecclesiastic groan from the pastor, an imitation of life, a veritable dyslogy on death, a fabricated ray of light battered by the onslaught of rain, battered back into the mouth from whence it came, back into the sealed casket, back into the mother’s womb, battered back into the dirt, back into time immemorial, then, no more groans, no more words, just rain and a miniature casket lowered into a hole.

Shovelfuls of clods cover the entire opening until the casket is slurped back into the earth, and all that remains to be done is the smoothing of dirt once the rain stops so the grass sods evenly, and for two doltish umbrellas to leave the scene—like the others did minutes before.



Alec Bryan
http://www.alecbryan.com/
2666
Robert Bolano

AT THE END, I DREAMT ONLY OF ELLIPSES - brett fogarty

AT THE END, I DREAMT ONLY OF ELLIPSES

brett fogarty

She says something about Asheville and the districts (or was it neighborhoods?) I add, “enclaves” and another voice says, “borough”. Every city is beautiful in Spring, even the kids are better behaved, my wife talks of their little hands folding neatly into one another’s.

I map the things that correspond in her mind: Districts to cities, Art Deco buildings to beauty, folded hands to even tempers. She says, “quarters” then “parishes” and we pass a man on the sidewalk reading aloud from filthy spiral bound notebook. He catches my eye and pleads,

“We must protect the lion and the lamb from the wolves in our ancestors stolen clothing. Mothers and fathers- Action!”

On the car ride home we talk about architecture over a soft rock station that puts the kids asleep. We get to a bridge over a half-frozen river and on the far bank there are dozens of equally spaced road flares going off, glowing red in stark black. I push the accelerator down hard and it jolts the kids awake. My wife yells, she asks me what the hell do I think I am doing. I shout back,

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”



Brett Fogarty
brettfogarty@gmail.com
The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster

SHIM SHAM SHIMMY - ryder collins

SHIM SHAM SHIMMY

ryder collins

My boyfriend becomes the Dalai Lama whenever my back’s to him. I keep crab-walking frontwards, but there’s espresso to be made and those hydroponics, and at night I have to dance.



Ryder Collins
http://bignortherngirlgoes.blogspot.com/
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

'AN EPILEPTIC GOES TO SONIC YOUTH' - regan mcgrory

DUMB THINKIN' - kenneth pobo

DUMB THINKIN’

kenneth pobo

It’s a Saturday night and the sky is a pair of broken glasses.

Dindi listens to old country music. Cal Smith sings about a wife who is guilty of dumb thinkin’. She’s not married. In fact, she’d like to take marriage and feed it so much cotton candy it dies of terminal over-sweetening.

She’s been in 27 relationships, loathes that word. Love should never have more than two syllables. Sometimes she’s full of dumb thinkin’. Sometimes he’s full of dumb thinkin’. Sometimes they’re full of dumb thinkin’. Sometimes dumb thinkin’ gets pregnant and a very intelligent baby is born.

She’s only wanted to murder ten of her ex’s. The rest she wants to be dirty magazines stored in the attic and only discovered when she climbs up to get Christmas decorations. She hasn’t actually killed anybody despite several invitations.

Without glasses, she dopes around. So does the sky. Except it does so with clouds and the sun looks so hot serving pale guests in a bright yellow frock.



Kenneth Pobo
www.mainstreetrag.com
The Bloody Chamber
Angela Carter

THE MUSIC WITH YOU - eric bennett

THE MUSIC WITH YOU

eric bennett

I put on a chunky gray sweater and stand on my balcony in the cold wind. It’s a purplish evening and I can smell the roasted cashews from the corner vendor and the wool of my sweater. I look across the street and into your window, olden Jew. From this distance I can’t hear the music your bow makes on the strings of the violin but the movement of your plucking and strumming holds my attention, your arms flailing like branches in a gale. I envy your poise, your mysterious movements and tilting grace.

Working late one evening, you come to mind and I worry. I imagine you performing for the furniture in your empty apartment and the dark mouth of your lonely window. And you slumping slowly to the floor, staring blankly – the small movements by which we know someone is alive disappearing altogether, and the music with you.



Eric Bennett
http://www.pw.org/content/eric_bennett
The Bigness of the World
Lori Ostlund

SUN & MOON - howie good

SUN & MOON

howie good

1
It’s cold even for January. There’s no one else on the path. The backs of houses hidden the rest of the year are visible through the leafless trees. I feel like I’m looking at something I shouldn’t. Off in the distance a dog begins barking. Snow patchily covers the ruins of a garden the town planted in memory of the dead children, a brother and sister. The most mysterious thing, I read somewhere, is a fact clearly stated. The sun will shine for another six billion years.

2
The moon enters in a dark overcoat. It’s possible to see the suicide in people’s faces, the slope of their shoulders, the way their clothing is worn, their gait. There are days – many, in fact – fingers drum impatiently on the roof. The stairs that lead up also lead down to an iron bed, rumpled sheets, a photograph of insomnia. And always the same ending. I’m hunched over, tightening a screw with the edge of a dime. It does a bad job.

NOVOCALIEN - walter conley

NOVOCALIEN

walter conley

I got this friend named Henry. Calls himself H-Dot. No idea why. Henry is small, dried dead bird shrunken tiny small. 110lbs without his hair cut. But this motherfucker eats more ice cream than my whole fat family put together. Every time he leaves the house, he makes you stop so he can buy 3 or 4 M&M ice cream cookie sandwiches. The thing is, though, Henry's got bad teeth. Rotten-ass bad. So when he bites down into them, he'll scream and cry and shake his head and his knobby little knees will even start to buckle. And you know I'd like to help him. I really would. But I'm scared to speak out against a love that strong.



Walter Conley
http://baag2009.blogspot.com
HELLBOX
John O'Hara

ORCHARD - j. bradley

ORCHARD

j. bradley

When I'm alone, I pluck loose skin off my feet. The more mileage devoured, the longer you live; it's why I kiss like the past.



J. Bradley
http://iheartfailure.net
New Year A Romance
Amy McDaniel

MATTHEW BLASI - beer money

BEER MONEY

matthew blasi

Hell no he didn't want a Jaeger bomb. Dude just started talking around drink three, a kind of lonely talk that most nights any guy sitting next to him at the bar would have listened to and nodded and been like yeah, I know, man, I know. But he was ten-hour shift tired and Jaeger made him sick every time. He didn't care if it tasted like licorice. He counted off on his fingers. One, he don't drink that shit. Two, he was well along.

I like that, said the guy. We're well along.

The guy's name was Ray, something with A in it, worked somewhere he was fuzzy about. He told Ray about the child support and all the overtime. He said it was quote bumfucking brutal.

Ray nodded like yeah, and said, I got three kids. He showed the pictures in his wallet.

The little one looks like you.

Ba-dow.

He took out his pictures to show Ray and spilled beer on them. There was his family staring out wrinkled plastic. Beer soaking through the gloss.

Ray said, Shit.

He folded it up soggy and stuck it back in his pocket.

Shit.



Matthew Blasi
mattblasi@gmail.com
Libra
Don Delillo

SWINGS - daniel romo

SWINGS

daniel romo

In third grade I threw Theo Adams off his swing. He soared; beautiful, more bird than boy, flailing limbs romancing gravity, more acquainted with the clouds than any other kid at Kennedy Elementary —His dad was a paraplegic from a stock car-racing accident many years ago, so I just hoped Theo’d be okay. He was really good at ding-dong-ditch, and ringing doorbells, rolling away wildly in a wheelchair didn’t sound as fun. The ground jealous; broken arm when he landed. Theo lost the desire to go on the swings after that, playing dodgeball instead. I think he races boats these days. I lost recess for a week.



Daniel Romo
http://danielromo.wordpress.com/
Shadow Ball
Charles Harper Webb

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

PETER SCHWARTZ

TWO THOUSAND CITY AND TWO - mimi vaquer

TWO THOUSAND CITY AND TWO

mimi vaquer

I.
Background music. Background. A thousand page textbook, Art Through the Ages, squared off on a drink-rimmed coffee table. The light has melted the candles sitting too close to the window, and they are prime for restless fingers. What happens when the sleep covers the eyes and crusts them still awake? What happens still awake?

II.
The backseat is still breathing. I can make out the vinyl among suitcases of days left to spill on its surface. The weekly planner, a dear diary, a novel to leech water from a stone. What need is there for words when history lives on floorboards of Volkswagens?

III.
I told of a dream and I stopped because I told of a dream and I stopped because I remembered you were there.

IV.
We bifurcated the days according to the calendar of light and dark. We bought a dog. The city never stopped.



Mimi Vaquer
http://mimivaquer.typepad.com/blog/
Finding Peace
Sheila Schwartz

THE MORNING COMMUTE: THE INTERNALIZATION CANNOT CONTINUE - louisa casanave

THE MORNING COMMUTE: THE INTERNALIZATION CANNOT CONTINUE

louisa casanave

Half an hour subway delays, a woman listening to techno-core, a Lenny Kravits look-a-like, one hour before you usually wake up because your therapist wants to squeeze in a session before group therapy; the train is inching along like a millipede and uptown service has stopped. You use the emergency exit to walk to the front car to leave the train. The subway station looks like a cesarean birth. You walk one mile north and a half mile east to get to therapy, just to leave after 20 minutes to trek back to Brooklyn, past the Hilton Hotel that’s opposite Radio City Music Hall, the very junction where he told you it wasn’t like that, the day before your sister told you she was going to marry her cheating boyfriend and in your mind the two events are still inseparable. You depart the crowded rush hour train and you can’t hold in your fart any longer.



Louisa Casanave
www.louisapoetry.blogspot.com
Invitation to a Beheading
Nabokov

TALKING TO A GIRL ON MISSION STREET - nate east

TALKING TO A GIRL ON MISSION STREET

nate east

Well anyway you can only write one story about the flood. Smoke spilled out of her mouth as she spoke and her hair spiked down over her face in shiny triangles. Because after you write one it seems like everything turns out to be about Noah, everything you write on after that. And then you try super hard to avoid writing about not just the story itself but also variations and retellings and similar themes, and pretty soon every poem ends with the opposite of G/d destroying the world, or if He ends up going for it then in your poem no one is chosen to survive so the boat’s empty except for the two-by-two animals and beasts, the captain’s wheel thing just spins by itself with no one to steer so the barge slashes around in the gale and skyscraper waves, wildly bucking and tipping and the maelstrom rips wooden boards and rigging off the side of the ship.

She flicks away her cigarette pulls a fresh one out of her bag. Ha ha, do you have a light? Takes a long deep breath of smoke and lets it drift slowly out of her mouth again in little waves and then she’s silent for a while and when she starts to talk she’s not looking at me anymore. Everything ends up as some stupid bible imitation or childish parody, anyway. Her eyes are clear grey staring off in the darkness and then suddenly they snap back onto me like a wolf’s. Seriously, she says. Everything I or you will ever write. She doesn’t smile.



Nate East
www.nateeast.com
The Girl on the Fridge
Etgar Keret

NO, TURN ON RED - michelle orabona

NO, TURN ON RED

michelle orabona

She showed up as the sun was setting with an eyebrow raised and her incisors biting down on the skin under her lower lip while she bounced her bicycle seat against her hip. She knew I was going to do anything she asked. We sat on my porch till the street lights came on, then rode through town with a wide tip black magic marker and added inappropriate punctuation to billboards and traffic signs.

That was the night she sucked on a blackened finger at the corner of her mouth and said, “Hey, did you know Niagra Falls is moving backwards?” and then stared down at her chewed up fingernails without looking back at me because whenever she said hey, did you know… we both knew that she was going to be telling me something I never could have found out on my own.

That was also the night I looked down at my hand and saw her stained fingers alternating with mine. When I looked up again her face was right there.

The next time I saw her, her hands were clean and her face was far away.



Michelle Orabona
http://www.mayaswellbeme.blogspot.com/
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak

STELLA'S SONG - xtx

STELLA’S SONG

XTX

I remember you used to call me, “Stella” for reasons you could never adequately explain. Every attempt made you sound stoned out of your mind or like you were hiding something. I chalked it up to a name you assigned to all of your girlfriends and I didn’t care because you looked how you looked and smelled how you smelled and fucked how you fucked.

The week after we broke up and you moved out, I opened a hand-written letter addressed to you from a Stella Chadwick. It was your mom. I never gave you the letter and involuntarily reevaluated what the past seven months had really been about. I thought maybe I shouldn’t have cut every grilled cheese sandwich I made for you on the diagonal or shampooed your hair whenever we bathed together. You never asked for these things. I gave them willingly. How would I have known?

Or, somehow, did I?

Fixing your tie, handing you a towel fresh from the dryer, wiping the wet rings from underneath your beer and finding it a coaster; you’d follow each action with loving praise in a signature song crooned quietly: Sweet, sweet Stella, Stella so sweet. A song I always worked hard to hear; even when on my knees: Pavlovian.

I find myself humming it sometimes when I need a dark place to go to. It always gets me there.

HOW TO BE THE OTHER WOMAN - maxine lopez-keough

HOW TO BE THE OTHER WOMAN

maxine lopez-keough

1. Become the kind of girl that asks important questions.
2. Remove the spine. Coil tightly. Store for winter.
3. Require a well-devised plan to secure your evening presence.
4. Pick up your anchor.
5. Develop the hips, the curve of the back, the piano-player’s fingers.
6. Provide a sense of urgency.
7. Evolve past him.
8. Regret the need to stop for air, water. (Do so audibly.)
9. Make space into a home.
10. Keep coffee shops, enemies closer.
11. Embody every port in every storm.
12. Replace the heart with a ticking clock
12b. Hold his head to the space above the left breast; give unmeasured time.
13. Learn to sleep while being watched.
14. Separate limb from limb, slowly, with vengeance.
15. Say the name until it loses all its meaning.
16. Make waiting a triumphant act.
17. Forget you have a mother.
18. Invest in bulbs; misremember their species.
19. Have the kinds of hands that heal, reform.
20. Be willing to light yourself on fire.
21. Listen for the voice that says: It was for you that I planted this garden.
22. Leave before you are asked to.



Maxine Lopez-Keough
http://thatsnice.tumblr.com
The Cradle Place
Thomas Lux

HENRY'S VOICE - neila mezynski

HENRY’S VOICE

neila mezynski

A raspy cough, Banana Cream Pie, endless cartoons, excuses. Sunk deep, quoting unalive philosophers, blaming. No one looking. Listening. Henry heard a clear voice above the deadwood. It was his. This slow house filled with the dead. He listened.



Neila Mezynski
http://www.wordriot.org/archives/576
Tobacco Road
Erskine Caldwell
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