Acrological by Jack Bedell

My uncle believed you only named a dog so it would come when you said its name. And he never named a dog anything that started with the same letter as any of the other commands he used, because he wanted his dogs to snap to it as soon as they heard that first sound. Never used the command “come” since it wasn’t sharp enough to carry, so we always had a line of bird dogs named King or Coop or Crown or Copper. Nothing starting with an S, for sure. God forbid the dog sat down before running in. Nothing with an H, because “high on” actually meant to run off. Couldn’t have that either. No Ls. Lying down was not an option until the job was done. Bs were out, too. “Be still” was a big one in the blind. No Ds—“Drop it.” No Ls—“Leave it.” No Gs—“Go.” It was always good to know, though, that he only expected one thing to happen whenever he said a name. 

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His latest collection is No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, 2018). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019. 

Even The Bad Ones by Jim Trainer

When I was working at that bougie place on the row, they offered health insurance but I got fired before I could get it. Maybe it was too many Saturday nights in the summer calling in sick while I was selling ounces of mushrooms and burning my feet on the beach down the Jersey shore. I think it was because besides the manager I was the only one in that place lucky enough to fuck this singer who worked there. He got his feelings hurt and took it out on me.  It was hard luck in Philly then. Bitter cold, February. We shared a cab. When she got out I followed her in. Her hair glowed red in the cab’s brake lights. We could see our breath when we laughed.

It wasn’t until summer that he got his revenge. He fired me. On the payphone at 83rd&3rd, in Stone Harbor. I leaned right, taking the weight off my foot. It was bandaged and burned. The sun was setting on the strip. It lit up the water-glass of Wild Turkey tilting in my hand like a jewel. The beach was deserted no families no one. I hung up and dug for your number in a pocketful of cigarettes and sand.  Your boyfriend answered so I hung up, limped across the street and back to my sad throne. I drank in dusk with gulls crying in the salty air. I had no apprehension of anything. My dead car, my sudden unemployment, the black September cleaving in.  Nothing. I sunk low in my chair and drank. It was the end of the summer and I blew it again.  I felt old and foolish like only the young can.

Curator at Going For the Throat, columnist for Into The Void and progenitor of stand-up tragedy,™ Jim Trainer's Keep Bleeding In The Anno Finem:  10 Years At Going For The Throat will be released this year through Yellow Lark Press. To sign up for Jim Trainer’s Poem Of The Week, visit jimtrainer.net.

500 Words on the Bare Minimum by F. Scott Arkansas

The bare minimum has fallen on hard times. Our new century has seen its once elegant hull wrecked upon the craggy cliffs of this post-post-post modern age. Dragged undertow by the likes of bio hacking, micro-dosing, and marginal gains—coupon clipping for the soul; a society of godless people hell bent on a short-cut to consciousness; set adrift in an iso-tank escape pod—halfway to nowhere and getting closer everyday.

We are maxed out. Worn down by the endless onslaught of empty noise—without haven, without course, doomed to “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.” We fill our bellies with ancient grains and goji berries, and yet the emptiness increases. We steer this vessel with a broken compass and yet we demand a speedy arrival. How are we to cure this longing that ails us?

Look no further wayward sojourner and fall with me into the buttery nooks of the Bare Minimum; the whole minimum and nothing but the minimum. A method unconcerned with outsmarting the tall hedge maze of fate but rather allowing the crushing abyss to wash over your blemished self “in an awesome wave.” Stop searching and you will find yourself. Want what you have and you will have it all. Content yourself with yourself and get reacquainted with the Bare Minimum (BM™).

Throw off the yoke of shame imposed on you by your masters and embrace the idioms of the unwashed masses; “Don’t work harder, work smarter!” “Cs get degrees,” and my favorite “Good enough for government work.” Because let’s face it, if it's good enough for the bondservants of American serfdom, then it's good enough for you!

Why spend what precious few hours you have left striving for the summit of a molehill when you could side step it all and embrace BM™. Contemplate eternity? I’d rather contemplate breakfast, “More BM™ please!” Because I am a simple man. In fact my only remaining hope is to one day live in a modestly furnished one-bedroom apartment above a quaint family-owned pizza shop on the outskirts of a big city. Close enough to be there and yet far enough to evade the epicenter of the blast. I believe in BM™, do you?

Before one more moment is lost you must realign yourself with BM™ and remember that history makes fools of us all: those of us who are mostly right are more than likely a fair bit wrong and those that are wrong are most certainly more frighteningly right than any of us would like to admit. So give up, embrace BM™ and accept that your communications degree is stupid. Why minor in Ethical Taxidermy when you could major in BM™ today.

So start outperforming, in an underachieving manner of speaking, and join BM™ now!

But before I go, if you’re wondering to yourself how you could thank me for my invitation, think nothing of it, after all, it was the very least I could do.

A Note on The Author…

F. Scott Arkansas was born in Omaha Nebraska in the midst of an electrical storm that claimed the lives of 38 people. He started BM™ fourteen years ago in an effort to combat the spread of unmediated individualism, which he has publicly decried as “cowardly.” He is both the founding member and junior executive fellow of the Institute for National Concentration, a public health trust committed to the abolition and subsequent destruction of unsightly leisure wear. He is married to 3 sets of fraternal twins and has an assortment of children he refers to as Canadians. Mr. Arkansas can be found among the Andean foothills searching for “our missing socks.”

Ryan Miller, Me, and the 1989 Oakland A’s by Patrick Nevins

            It started with Jose Canseco. The year before, he’d become the first Major Leaguer to hit forty homers and steal forty bases in a season. I’d missed it. So, when Ryan Miller introduced me to baseball the following spring (my father had taught me to fish, not to play games with balls), he claimed Canseco as his favorite slugger on the 1989 Oakland A’s. That left me with the other Bash Brother, Mark McGwire, which was more than okay with me. We collected their baseball cards, wore their t-shirts, pretended to be them when we smacked Wiffle balls over his fence.

            We divided other players, too. Ryan, having played the game longer, was the better infielder, and believing that short was the superior position, he took Walt Weiss. I’d be Mike Gallego, flipping him the ball to turn two, then pretending to be McGwire again at first when he threw it back. Ryan had the better arm, too, so he claimed starter Dave Stewart. I was happy to have closer Dennis Eckersley; his long hair and mustache made him look like a 70’s rocker, and he had a wicked sidearm delivery (my own throws were sloppy sidearm tosses that Ryan’s father, our Babe Ruth team’s assistant coach, tried to correct). Then there was Rickey Henderson. The Man of Steal was so cool, we each had to have him.

            Rickey Henderson notwithstanding, the ‘89 Oakland A’s gave us easy choices (and a World Series victory). Outside of the pure joy of watching Major League Baseball on TV, and two glorious afternoons at Wrigley Field (I’ll never forget walking up the tunnel to the Technicolor delight of grass, ivy, and sky), most things were out of our control.

            The following year, our favorite A’s were back, but the Reds swept them in the Series, a crushing upset and a major disappointment to us. Thirty years later, I see parallels in watching the A’s capture the pennant then and watching them leading the AL West now, as they play to empty stadiums. Not since my adolescence have I been so uncertain about what the future holds. College, adulthood—in 1990 those thoughts lived on a vague horizon, not unlike the gauzy territory in which I can one day take my children to Wrigley. But I can be almost certain that tomorrow will look just like today, as I could back then. As sure as I am that tomorrow I’ll stay in and report to my basement office, I could predict that Rickey Henderson would steal with a face-first slide that had him overtaking the bag, a Bash Brother would pummel the ball to bring him home, Eck would pick up the save, and Ryan and I would replay the infield magic in an endless game of catch.

            What I couldn’t predict was whether one of our fathers were stricken by a disease that left them unable to play catch, whether one of our brothers came home with Gulf War syndrome.

Patrick Nevins is Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College.

Crumbs by Brandi Spering

I’m sitting in the kitchen of my apartment, contemplating how I will transport this wooden, thirty year-old table my mother lent me. It’s one of the finer things we’ve owned—she’s owned, and for longer than she’s had me. I am determined to not ruin its stride or the condition my mother has kept it in, despite the paint chips from school projects and the wear on the legs from being carried to each new home. It has spent the last fifteen years on a cement floor, in my mother’s basement. Now, it is here and in use.

The table isn’t as long as I remember, not as oval. There are sesame seeds spread across it, two here, three there.

On the ceiling above me are three holes that appear as black dots if you look quickly. For the past two weeks, my roommates and I have feared ceiling collapse as walls are being demolished above. The exposed pipes running through this kitchen are clanging as if to say, why can’t you do something as workers hit them in the process. It has been raining drywall and wood screws and nails attached. Some in trash bags, some loose, hitting the fire escape before the yard.

Because the floor is on a slant, the fridge doors pop themselves open. Our milk spoils fast. We had and might still have, some unwelcome pets. But it seems to be improving. I spend some nights here and most days when I don’t have class. Empty pizza boxes keep finding their way to the floor.

I want stability.

Brandi Spering resides in South Philadelphia where she writes and paints. Her book, This I Can Tell You, will be released by Perennial Press, Winter 2020. Her work can also be found in Perennial Press’ Super/Natural: Art and Fiction for the Future, as well as Stardust Magazine’s Issue 5: Stills. More at Brandispering.com

The Silence When I Know by Marilyn Duarte

Giggling, caressing, shedding, we glide onto the king-sized bed, pushing its decorative runner to meet the wine-stained carpet. Our bodies form a tangled necklace; our limbs its dangling charms. Arms wrapped around my shoulders, you grin sloppily, then kiss my forehead gently. I tell myself that I am lucky: I have wanted this. You. Whisper a question disguised in innocence, but dripping in ridicule, and I know.

My body shrinks like an ocean ebb tide receding from the coast; diminished as we’re released from our orbits’ gravitational pulls. My throat turns dry and I stutter an incomplete answer. Desperate to reconstruct reality, I let you slide my hand to float over your heart and force the thump-thump beneath my palm to mean more than it does. As you fall asleep, your breathing grows slow and staticky. Images from earlier that evening swirl in my mind: when we wandered the cobblestone roads, sat snugly on an empty park bench next to the rose garden, where you told me how much you wanted me, but failed to mention you were lying.

I bury a whimper into my pillow, pause for breath, turn over. I cannot drown the truth. Why did I take pictures of us when we weaved through the trio of arches that faced the rippling midnight water? You asked, then snickered and said you didn’t want them. That they were meant for me to remember. The air conditioner buzzes. On the ground below, someone kicks a patio chair and it scrapes the deck surrounding the figure-eight shaped pool. A painful screech. The clock radio’s white numbers tremble just before the four rapidly flips to a five, silently reaching a new destination.

Marilyn Duarte holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa’s low-residency program and is currently a Staff Writer at Longleaf Review, a Creative Nonfiction, Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine, and an Assistant Creative Nonfiction Editor at Pithead Chapel. Her work has appeared in The Tishman Review, (mac)ro(mic), Ellipsis Zine, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and elsewhere. Originally from Toronto, she now divides her time between Canada and Portugal. You can find her at www.marilynduartewriter.com and on Twitter @MareDuarte28.

A Refresher by Evan James Sheldon

            Dad is watching cartoons, reruns of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and drinking. I’m supposed to be asleep, but I sneak out of my room and watch from around the corner. He doesn’t laugh or smile while he watches, though his face is lit up from the glow of the television, making him look like a ghost in the dark. I notice that every time they say cow-a-bunga he takes a sip of whiskey, like he’s playing a game all by himself.

            Eventually, I return to my room and pull out my action figures, Raphael and Michelangelo and Leonardo, I can’t find Donatello but he was never my favorite anyway. I don’t turn on the light so my dad won’t notice. I fight monsters turned into outrageous things by ooze, things Bebop and Rocksteady would be afraid of. I always defeat them, except tonight it doesn’t work. I can’t think of what my turtles should do to take down the evil creatures. I can’t picture them winning.

            And I think I understand why my dad plays his own game, maybe he’s forgotten how to take down the evil creatures too. Maybe he needs to watch how it’s done.

            I sneak back out but he’s fallen asleep. I leave Leonardo on Dad’s lap.

Evan James Sheldon is Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at evanjamessheldon.com. 

When You’re The Homecoming Queen’s Best Friend by Candace Hartsuyker

You’ll grow up white trash in a tin can trailer, surrounded by beer bottles and dogs with torn ears and starving eyes. All the other girls in your neighborhood will complain about their swollen ankles and pregnant bellies and twist cords of Sour Patch Punch Straws in their mouths, suck granules of sugar from their fingers.

You’ll wish you could see your name in the yearbook, bright as a string of Christmas lights. Instead, you’ll be on the float like a servant, holding the homecoming queen’s dress so it doesn’t get dirty. Everyone will see that you’re not a princess or a duchess; you’re just the homecoming queen’s best friend.

On the float, the homecoming queen will beam, pearly teeth shining, wrist flicking in a princess wave, plastic tiara like a wreath of stars on her head. You’ll stand to the side, ready to grab her in case she loses her balance on the rotating float. You’ll feel like furniture, like a dusty ottoman shoved in a corner unnoticed.

You’ll think about how you’re the one who let the homecoming queen copy your homework so she wouldn’t fail biology class. And that’s when you’ll shove the homecoming queen, watch as she falls to the blacktop below. No one will notice that you pushed the homecoming queen; they’ll only notice that she fell.

When the school nurse arrives, no one will notice the missing tiara, plucked from the homecoming queen’s head. They’ll be too busy comforting the homecoming queen who will be sopping her tears up with the hem of her ballgown dress.

Safe at home, you’ll take the scratched, plastic tiara from out of your purse and try it on, smile like a stretched-out rubber band.  You’ll keep smiling, even as mascara and blush run in a slurry down your face, mouth sludgy as an open wound. And you’ll say to yourself: everything’s okay now. You got what you wanted. You’re not just some girl. You’re somebody.

Candace Hartsuyker has an M.F.A in Creative Writing from McNeese State University and reads for PANK. She has been published in Cotton Xenomorph, Heavy Feather Review, The Hunger and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter at C_Hartsuyker.

Nine Years by E.S. Fletcher

That long ago, nursing pillow hugging my body, a little one suckled in the odd hours of the night. The house silent, partner and pets perhaps dreaming of each other. During those marathon feedings, the early days of this arranged marriage when we were getting used to one another, books kept me company, prevented me drifting into the blackout sleep of the overtired.

Of those middle-of-the-night companions, I most recall Dervla Murphy’s Eight Feet in the Andes. It had been recommended to me by a woman I’d met while traveling in Guatemala—one of those brief, insignificant connections that still leaves its mark.

The book, a journey of the author and her nine-year-old daughter trekking with their mule in the rugged wilds of Peru, made me marvel. How I wanted to hand that confidence, that inner resourcefulness to the silky being curled against my breast. But it had only been a few years before that I’d found anything resembling such moxie, traveling alone to Guatemala where I stayed in comfortable if modest posadas, a plastic card ready to buy my way out of most trouble.

How do you give your child what you, yourself, do not possess?

It had only been a few years prior that a daykeeper read my Mayan horoscope. He looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t be afraid. Fear is a blocking energy.”

With those words, I had broken down in tears. I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t felt afraid. Fear resided in every cell of my body. It had nearly kept me from traveling outside the country. Kept me from using my voice. From being seen. It had grown in me like a tumor that needed excision.

Yet fear wasn’t something you could surgically remove in one go—it required a slower process, a shrinking, so as not to damage all that was good. Within that year, I would return to Guatemala to study with the man who’d told me not to be afraid. I would begin my lifelong clearing of fear. I’d released enough of it to risk bringing a new being into this broken world, trusting my own imperfections to be a good-enough mother.

Nine years have passed since those hazy nights in the rocker. Neither my daughter nor I have the mettle to trek through the Andes with little more than our wits. In that, I have spectacularly failed. I have a child afraid of houseflies and new foods, a child who, like her mother, lacks the temperament to sleep in a tent on stony ground. I have my regrets. But what if the books we read heal the inheritance we leave for our children? I hold out hope that something of that story’s boldness leached into her milk dreams.

E.S. Fletcher holds an MFA from Hamline University. She has twice been a nonfiction finalist in The Loft Mentor Series. Her writing has appeared in The Literary Bohemian, Sea Stories, Confrontation and is forthcoming in Leaping Clear. She writes and teaches yoga in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Twitter: @esfletcher

The show never begins by Mark Danowsky

The show never begins

We’ve been here before. This same venue in Delaware. There are two rows of seats facing the stage, red velvet curtain to the glossy floor. A lesbian couple arrives with two children. They ask if we can read to their child. You say you’ll do it. You’re handed a book. You start to read but the child is distracted. You try to engage the child. The one mom says the child knows the book well because she helped write it. The mom says there’s no need to explain the book just to read it. You ask the couple if they wouldn’t mind if we move seats so we can sit near them and the child for the show. This time, an old man gets up grumbling about our involvement with the couple and leaves the show. This time, we move seats. This time, you keep trying to engage the child. The show never begins. 

Mark Danowsky is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Shaped Like Swans by Cathy Ulrich

Shaped Like Swans

The sad little dictator’s father dies unexpectedly. The sad little dictator is unprepared for such responsibility. He lives alone in the castle on the hill. The barricade is concrete and eight inches thick. The sad little dictator looks out from the highest window over the barricade. He smokes stubby cigars that smell like burnt banana peels. His footsteps echo on the hardwood floors. He orders expensive rugs and walks on them barefoot. He listens to Elvis Presley on the turntable while he smokes his stubby cigars. When his advisors come to him with news, he tells them you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, taps ashes into the weave of the expensive rugs, and they back out of the room, nodding and nodding and nodding.

The sad little dictator begins an affair with a woman from town. She is beautiful in the way that women from town are. Her hair is thick like thunderclouds. The sad little dictator’s mother was a woman from town and beautiful in this same way. He remembers how her eyes would narrow and blink when his father brought him to see her, how she would say my boy.

Do you love me, the sad little dictator says to his lover. He is smoking one of his cigars, pensively puffing the smoke out the window. He meets his lover in a hotel room every other Thursday afternoon. The hotel lays chocolates on both pillows, folds the hand towels into the shape of a swan.

What would you do, says the sad little dictator’s lover from under a pile of white sheets, if I said I didn’t love you?

I would have you killed, says the sad little dictator.

His lover says nothing. She has three children and a husband with large hands. Sometimes she bakes bread with the window open; she listens to sparrow song.

The sad little dictator says: Well?

I love you, his lover says.

The sad little dictator doesn’t like washing his hands, but he likes the hand towels folded like swans. He unwinds them while his lover dresses, drapes them over the edge of the rumpled bed. Outside, a car is waiting — two cars, one for her and one for him. The sad little dictator watches his lover go to the first car from the hotel room window. She never looks back wistfully; he would like for her to look back wistfully.

When the sad little dictator returns to the castle on the hill, he orders his advisors to order the head of housekeeping to order the bathroom maids to fold all the hand towels in all of the sixteen bathrooms into the shapes of swans. He orders them to have a pair of high-heeled shoes delivered to his lover’s home.

He puts a Dean Martin record on the turntable, he listens to Sway. He wipes his hands on the lap of his wool pants.

The sad little dictator receives a message that his lover has run away with her husband and three children. The message uses a code known only to the sad little dictator and his ancestors and the codewriters themselves. The sad little dictator has never met any of them; the sad little dictator never will. The message says, in code, fled. The message offers to hunt down the fleeing lover and her family; the message offers to make examples of them all. The sad little dictator lights a cigar, listens to Frank Sinatra.

His advisors ask what he would like, outside of swan-shaped towels and high-heeled shoes sitting toppled outside the door of an empty cottage.

Fly me to the moon, says the sad little dictator, and his advisors nod, nod, nod.

The record skips on the turntable, and the sad little dictator holds the coded message in his hands, thinks of the fluttering of his mother’s small feet as she dangled above his head, how his mother’s feet were, he thought, like birds, how he and his father watched until the fluttering slowed and slowed and finally stopped.

When Cathy Ulrich was a maid, she folded the toilet paper to a point, but the towels just went on the racks. Her work has been published in various journals, including Rabid Oak, Adroit and Puerto del Sol.

Interwoven Foliage by Susan Triemert

It was the last image of my father, taken at a reptile zoo in the middle of Florida. I continue to search the photograph for whatever I may have missed. As if I’d overlooked a charcoal-coated osprey lurking behind a branch or the jagged shell of a reptile egg rubbing against my father’s shoe. If I look close--squint through the fingerprint-smudges and past the tired edges--I might find what’s not visible to the naked eye. The scaly auburn bark freeing itself from a longleaf pine; or the delicate, lavender blossoms of the beautyberry. And by that shrub, spot the speckled wings of a swallowtail, a native butterfly slurping up its sweet nectar. Further back, notice the interwoven foliage: the firebush and spiderwort and silver buttonwood, tangled, strangling out the light.

I’d once committed to memory what the picture captured: the way my father pitched patches of leaves to the alligators, dark and menacing, like a harbinger of his death. Had memorized the way a bevy of dazzling and vibrant peacocks appear to be closing in on him. Perched precariously, he was, between light and darkness, life and death. Weeks later, he’d be gone. I continue to scan the photograph, expecting new details to emerge. Hunt, too, for what the photo could never reveal: my father’s inner dialogue, what he was most proud of, his biggest fears. Had it been to die? Had it been to leave his family so soon?

Susan Triemert holds an MA in Education and an MFA from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She has been published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Cheat River Review, Crab Orchard Review, A-Minor, Evening Street Review, Pithead Chapel, 101word stories and elsewhere. She lives in St. Paul with her husband, their two sons, and never enough animals. Twitter: @SusanTriemert

Signing your life away by Thad DeVassie

A young attorney arrives at my father’s house now that his law office is limiting visitors per social distancing protocols. He unloads a stack of papers filled with empowering decisions – last will and testament, multiple powers of attorney.

Don, a gentle fossil of a man who has known my father for forty-seven years, is here to serve as witness. Oddly, it is our first acquaintance.

At the circular dining room table, the attorney explains the documents in painstaking detail. My father interjects his own lawyering, attempting to interpret in layman-speak what my brother and I comprehend. The lawyer is polite and patient. He is on the clock.

My eighty-year-old father stops the attorney at the Do Not Resuscitate clause to clarify how resuscitation, should he choke or some obstruction occur, sending wrong signals to a caregiver, requires an addendum. He reads aloud specifics he had the attorney insert.

I catch a side profile of the attorney. The part in his hair, disheveled toward the crown, suggests he rolled out of bed and chose the business casual route. This isn’t a shower-first meeting. I wonder what his billable rate is, if his firm charges full rate for travel, if he’s gunning for partner.

My brother wears his standard-issue Harley Davidson t-shirt and coordinated orange and black ball cap. His beard is working toward ZZ Top promise; his Crystal Gayle waterfall of hair down his back, meticulously sectioned by rubber bands into a ponytail, reveals greater progress. He’s speechless throughout this procession yet upholds the definition of menacing. I notice the attorney avoids eye contact with him, locking eyes with me whenever possible.

As my father completes a recitation of his inserted DNR clause, he gets choked up, pleased with his own act of legalese, perhaps staving off a premature curtain call. He is, after all, part of the vulnerable population. My father and Don sign papers. My father has been orchestrating this moment for weeks, giving us updates along the way – the logistics, purpose, parties involved. Somewhere along the way I assumed we had a bit part in this play. And now I can't tell – is this a comedy? A tragedy? Are there hidden cameras?

Don and the attorney get up to leave. My father pops to his feet. There is a comingling of thank yous and glad-handing among the three actors. There is chatter about sidestepping probate and the noteworthy work accomplished this morning. My father speaks of his desire to orchestrate an encore presentation for my mother at her memory care ward. I remain seated, my eyes affixed on their hands, the all-too-close camaraderie of exceptionally pleased adults, and all I can think of is this pandemic, social distancing, the countless handwashing memes pouring over me. How strange to be a witness to this important tactical execution, of papers notarized, and to be in the company of these men, some of whom I might never see again.  Thankfully nobody reached for the doughnut holes at the center of the table, but the paperwork, in the event of an untimely death, has been notarized.

Thad DeVassie's work has appeared in numerous journals including Unbroken, Spelk, Lunate, Ghost City Review, 50-Word Stories, FEED, and Barely South Review. His chapbook, THIS SIDE OF UTOPIA, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. A lifelong Ohioan, he writes from the outskirts of Columbus. Find him online @thaddevassie. 

2901 Philadelphia Cove by Damon McKinney

        Sometimes the curtains were blue. They didn’t notice though, blindness struck them immune to the worldly objects. Their eyes weren’t milky, missing, or disconnected. They still saw but the light couldn’t reach their heart anymore. At least that’s how the occupants described their condition.

The curtains shifted colors from blue to deep golden red, mirroring the setting sun.

        The house sagged. A depression, an indent, wallowed out in the middle of the parlor. They didn’t notice. Pins and needles, static, white noise washed their legs, that buzzing of nerves from sitting too long. And yet, still, they walked. Room to room, pounding along worn carpet paths. Or stumbling after too much afternoon wine.

        Noise crashed against the walls. Scratching, vibrating, pillow talk soothed their ears. Voices they thought long gone caressed their memories, music held their rapt attention and commercials played in the distance. Yet they were deaf to the world outside. Misery and loneliness found no place in their home.

        The curtains were blue.

Damon McKinney is an Indigenous writer from Oklahoma and a graduate of the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. He has a B.A in English with a Minor in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in JMWW blog, Equinox, Fancy Arm Hole Series 1, and Knights Library Magazine and JHHF Review. He is the former Associate Editor for Likely Red Press, a former Contributing Editor of Fiction for Barren Magazine, and the Managing Editor for Emerge Literary Journal.

She Used To Be Someone Else Too by Jason Schwartzman

It’s late and the bus is still an hour away from this small town in the northern neck of upstate New York. I’m outside on a bench—inside there are pinball machines no one is playing. We start slowly. I ask if she’s sure the bus will really come. “It will,” she says. She sees I’m on my laptop and tells me the Wi-Fi password to the coffee shop next door. She takes out some cigarettes. On some days she has to choose, she says, cigarettes or food.

Voices come through on her walkie-talkie. Taxi drivers. She tells me how bad everything is in the town. How her taxi drivers used to be engineers. They used to be CEOs. How everyone is in decline, “including me.” But she also laughs. She is sad, but she is more happy than sad, I would say.

One of the voices belongs to a man named Steve. He is one of the drivers. Or he is her husband, I can’t tell.

“Bye, my love,” she says to Steve.

I keep becoming invested in these little stranger interactions. I can’t tell if I’m just searching for something to spice the vacant hours, or if it’s because of something larger, my real life turning into a wasteland where unknowability and drama and color are flowers that no longer bloom.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she says to Steve. 

“Taxi driving is where they can hide,” she says to me, not without sympathy. Now that they’re no longer engineers, no longer CEOs.

She used to be someone else too, she tells me in between drags. Used to study anthropology. Now, she is hiding. On her days off, she says, she doesn’t come here, where we are.

“Otherwise I’m just bus lady. Taxi lady.”

On her days off, she doesn’t want to be these things. Her walkie-talkie keeps ringing, almost every minute. When we’re talking, she lets it ring longer before she presses the button to receive the call. In the parking lot, our conversation accelerates into increasingly personal territory. I tell her I think I am in decline too — she said it so I can say it. We are talking about things maybe we wouldn’t talk about if we knew each other better.

“What is your name, by the way?” she asks.

The bus will be here soon, but before it comes, Steve shows up. He comes from around a corner so I can’t see if he is coming from a taxi or he’s just there to keep her company during the graveyard shift, to share a cigarette. I like the idea of that, of Steve speeding over for a few drags with his wife, this lonely corner a little less lonely. We all talk for a while and then Steve leaves. He heads back around the corner, and when the dispatcher starts talking about him, she still never pivots to a “we.” Then she mentions an ex-girlfriend, though maybe she dates men too.

I end up appreciating the ambiguity — that all I can puzzle out of them is their fondness for each other. Then the dispatcher’s walkie-talkie starts ringing again and I throw my backpack over my shoulder. As the bus pulls up, we wish each other nice lives.

Jason Schwartzman is the senior editor of True.Ink, the revival of an old pulp & adventure magazine. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Narratively, Hobart, River Teeth, and Human Parts, among other places. You can find him on twitter at @jdschwartzman. His website is jdschwartzman.com.

By Any Other Name by Evan James Sheldon

Jimson tied herself to the train tracks and waited to feel the vibrations. She figured there wasn’t any better way to get a sense of impending death. To feel it in your chest, starting as a thrum and moving to a buzz, would be the only way to know it fully. At least that was how she imagined it. A lot of people she knew had died; she wasn’t going in unprepared.

            A man came, wearing a long cape and a top hat and he twirled his moustache deviously. What are you doing here? This is my spot. Jimson laughed at him. He was funny, being a cartoon and all. Weren’t cartoons supposed to be funny?

Move along, Jimson said. There’s plenty of track and I was here first. She grabbed a loose bit of rope with her teeth and tightened herself down. 

            The cartoon man swore and swore, and twirled his moustache so furiously that the end became frayed like a cheap paint brush. Jimson wanted to rip it off and create some fake rock paintings of spaceships or one of those geoglyphs of a giant hyena that you can only see from the sky, something hidden unless you knew exactly how to look.

            A cartoon lady arrived, she had rope burns on her arms, but they were healing. What the fuck is this? she said, gesturing to Jimson.

My name means poison, Jimson said. No one knew what to do. 

            They all turned and watched as the train, like a pinprick, like an ever-expanding black hole, appeared on the horizon pulling them toward the inevitable.  

Evan James Sheldon is Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at evanjamessheldon.com. 

Time For Change: Poetry & Art by Ron Howard

Whether we are moving

toward or away from our soul

is the acid test

of mankind’s state of civilization,

its smallest common denominator: me.

My blackness knows it is time to fight

I feel my blackness taping its hands,

exercising, getting in shape

to ensure it passes with distinction

the anticipated tests along the way.

My humanity knows it is time to unite,

oppose people in power

who control by dividing the multitudes

through racial myths based on contempt

for others surrounded by casualties

and pain, determined to survive, even thrive

along with the next wave of warriors

proud to stand together

to change the world for the better for all.

If there is a neck to be choked

be it on the body of racism

whose demise will help free

white people who accept the demands

of a myth, which to be kept alive,

requires that they hide

        their fear

                their guilt

                        their shame

                                their humanity.

Ron Howard is a photographer, painter, poet and the current President of the Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center (MRAC), an art and humanities center in Philadelphia, which hosts many SVJ events. Along with his talents as a photographer, visual artist and writer, and his appreciation of the arts, Howard has brought his non-profit organizational development and international institution building skills to the MRAC. He was Chief Operations Officer for the Opportunities Industrialization Centers International (OICI) for more than thirty years and served from 2004 to 2007 as the organization's Acting CEO, prior to his retirement in 2007. The global OIC movement was started in Philadelphia by Rev. Leon H. Sullivan.

THE MAYOR WAS THERE ALSO WITHOUT A MASK by Sean Ennis

Right before lightning struck, something crackled in the kitchen. We were going to go to the protest then we didn’t go to the protest, the weather. Our neighbor is a cop with a pretty nice singing voice. We hear him when he takes out the trash. We cut down the holly bushes and now the branches look like some medieval defense mechanism, but there’s a better view from the hammock. We’re definitely going to the next protest.

We went to the next protest — and where does the time go? — and a racist tried to start some shit that the guy who taught my son chess finished. Good for this town, some of which tries hard. The police chief said, “I’ll take a meeting with anyone” though this whole thing was meeting-like, and his goofs had beaten up a guy not that long ago right in the highway whose name I should have looked up. It’s June in Mississippi and it’s not clear if my son will ever go to school again, but we thought this was educational.

At home alone, I have cookies — that I baked — for dinner. Mind you, the fridge is packed, the freezer is full, and the pantry is stacked. Standing in the heat has killed my appetite. Still, I can hear them down at the bandstand, the long line of concerned citizens who wanted to air their grievances into the microphone.  But there were people noticeably absent. My son’s teachers, that would have been nice. It’s hard for me to say what’s important these days.

Deplatforming is a word I just learned and some stranger on Twitter is having the worst night of his life. Our dogs are playing and it’s really just a fight with no teeth. The new puppy, whose dreams I am now a part of, has found a toy that belonged to a dog we had to have euthanized, defeated by blindness and probably undiagnosed cancer. His old ghost has reappeared, wagging, though is unwanted.

About The Author

Sean Ennis is the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A) and his flash fiction has recently appeared in Passages North, Hobart, (mac)ro(mic), Tiny Molecules, and BULL Men's Fiction. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net

We Can’t Go Back: Interview with Mishka Shubaly

We Can’t Go Back:

Interview with Mishka Shubaly

Rob Kaniuk: Mishka, you put a lot of art into the world (books, articles, music). Are your creative pursuits goal oriented, a compulsion, or is it just work?

Mishka Shubaly: The answer is yes. We talk about doing it for the love of it, writing for truth and for art and for redemption. Sadly, sometimes you’re just writing for rent. But I’d argue that even writing for rent is worthwhile. There have been many times where I was doing a record review or a little think piece or Yet Another Update On My Sobriety and thought “this is a waste of time” and then come out of it with new insight. I’ve never had that happen when I’m making a spreadsheet or something. Writing is still the best job worth hating.

RK: Dylan said of songwriting: “It took me a long time to get to do consciously what I used to be able to do unconsciously. It happens to everybody.”

Do you struggle in writing where it used to flow freely?

MS: Fucking Dylan, man. I hate when folks quote him these days because it feels like we’re rolling around in our parents’ vomit... but the truth is that his words are still pertinent because he’s so unfairly gifted (and because so little has changed in race relations in the US since he wrote ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol.’) Yes, absolutely, I struggle in writing. I was talking to a writer yesterday about how to get that crucial first draft down. I ran her through what I think is the best way to get it done. When I got down off my soapbox, she said “Wow. So that’s how you write?” And I was like “Hell no, I hardly even write anymore and when I do, it’s in the worst, most scattered way possible.” I think when you’re a kid, you believe writing will save you from the human condition. As you get older, you realize that writing can make life more livable but that the only cure for the human condition is death.

RK: Are you telling me writing won't save us? You ruined my life a little bit right there. To follow that up; we share similar views on the dangers of hope. Is it all hopeless? Do you place hope in anything today?

MS:How can I redeem this... Yes, Virginia, writing will save you. But it’s not a binary. You don’t scrawl your way through some depraved tome, write the greatest two words in the English language-- THE END-- and then you’re transformed instantly from Lowly Sinner to Hallowed Saint. Writing has saved my ass again and again and again. But it’s more like your life is a leaky boat. Writing is not a brand new boat. But it is a shitload of epoxy and fiberglass. Writing can help you patch that leaky boat enough that it will stop leaking, maybe even enough that it may feel a little bit like a new boat. But writing is not a new boat. There is no new boat. And on the subject of hope... I think the only danger of hope is that it will keep you tethered to this earth, which is to say it will keep you alive. But I think it’s good to have hope, even necessary. I mean, that’s how I feel right now after running and petting my cat and drinking too much coffee.

But if you really want a Super Nintendo for Christmas and you hope and hope and hope all through October/ November/ December and then don’t get one Christmas morning, are you a jackass for hoping? I don’t think so. That hope probably buoyed you up those three months before Christmas. If you force yourself not to hope and then you don’t get a Super Nintendo, well, you still feel disappointment. Maybe not as much, but this life is not about sparing yourself pain and disappointment. This life is about feeling the good feelings-- love, hope, closeness, forgiveness-- with no fear of pain and disappointment. So I guess right now I say yeah, give in to hope, let it flow through your tired body. Do I put hope in anything today? Nope, not really. There’s an infinite list of bad things I hope don’t happen, but there’s not really any positive things I’m wishing for. But then, my life is pretty sweet already.

RK: Okay, now that we’re all depressed about not getting the SNES for Christmas and writing won't save us, let’s talk about how your life maintains its sweetness: the new book, Cold Turkey. First of all, congratulations.

Can you tell us why Cold Turkey is important to you. Who is this book for?

MS: Cold Turkey is actually a great example of what I was discussing earlier-- how writing gives back to you, whether you want it to or not. Cold Turkey is an audiobook about how to quit drinking and stay sober without AA or rehab. I did a little PR session with Audible before the book launched and they coached me how to talk about how I wanted to give back to the community and help people and so on. That’s all bullshit. I had zero desire to write the book and wanted very much NOT to write the book. I agreed to do it for two shitty reasons: because I needed the money and because I selfishly never wanted to have to answer another email from someone in crisis about how to quit drinking. However, once I got into it, I realized both that I had a lot to say on the subject and that I cared deeply-- not just about the subject or my experience of it, but that I cared deeply about anyone and everyone trying to get their shit together. Life is frustrating and sometimes you can convince yourself that you’re a shittier person than you are and then thank God writing proves you wrong.

RK: I made it out of a similar hole and sometimes I struggle with regret and shame. In the movie On The Waterfront, Brando said, “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.”

It seems you made the best of it, but do you ever feel like your time with drugs and alcohol robbed you of your contention?

MS: Yes and no. We would all love to go back and rewrite our pasts, even those of us who aren’t addicts and alcoholics. And we’ve all read those corny sci-fi stories where someone goes back in time and steps on a butterfly and then Hitler becomes president or whatever. Here’s the thing. Or here’s a couple of things. You can’t go back. I can’t go back. We can’t go back. We can only move forward. You are currently the youngest you will ever be. The only meaningful question is “can I be a contender now?”

Human beings are great at magnifying the negative and obscuring the positive. Maybe you were hungover and missed work on a day during which you would have been hit by a car and paralyzed. We don’t know what could have happened and we can’t know. We obsess about that time we missed hitting the lottery by one measly number… but we instantly forget all the times we should have been run over by taxis, buses, ice cream trucks, etc. It’s useful to recall the bad shit that could have happened to you-- that should have happened to you-- but didn’t.

At this point in my life, I’m not just grateful that I’m sober, I’m also grateful that I was a fuckup. Living as a penniless alcoholic for a long time taught me empathy. And it’s given me a lot of other skills that come in handy from time to time. And I’ve made a career of writing about the mistakes I’ve made... so thank fucking God for those mistakes.

RK: Amen. Thank God for those mistakes. Okay, let’s shift to something more serious: biscuits or cornbread?

MS: Oh man, that’s tough. I think I’m going to go with cornbread. I do love a good biscuit, though. I had English muffins this morning that were handmade by a friend and they were out-of-this-world good.

RK: I agree. A bad biscuit is better than a dried up cornbread, but good cornbread is undefeated. Before we go, I want to give you the floor. What is important to Mishka Shubaly? What’s on your mind?

MS: Nothing cosmic or deep! I need to snake the drain on the sink, I need to change the cat litter, I need to apply for a bunch of grants to keep my head above water here. I guess this is where I plug the new record? I just put out an EP on band camp called “I’ll Be Gone.” People are saying it’s the best record I’ve ever done. You be the judge: https://mishkashubaly.bandcamp.com/album/ill-be-gone

Mishka Shubaly is a bestselling author, a writing teacher, a cult songwriter, a road dog on house arrest, a shipwreck survivor, and a clue on Jeopardy! His most recent work is the audiobook Cold Turkey: How to Quit Drinking by Not Drinking

Forsythia by Kathryn Weidener

Forsythia

by Kathryn Weidener

Sunshine melted the ice on the bees’ front porch this morning and my beekeeper emailed to ask if I’d seen any activity around the hive since the weather had warmed up. Warmed up? I’ll admit this is a whole lot nicer than it has been, but any bee that ventures forth today will not find anything worth visiting. Little chickadees and sparrows were hopping around in some of the larger clusters of forsythia earlier today. As one landed on a stem, little puffs of snow would fall below and another bird would fly out setting off small avalanches revealing their still brown stems.

Jane clipped forsythia on New Year’s Day to force it to bloom in her dining room for the annual seed ordering party in mid January. Surrounded by glossy seed catalogues eight friends spent a gray Sunday afternoon planning their flowers and produce for the next growing season. Pages turned and decisions made to purchase: beets, broccoli, kohlrabi, lettuce, peas, radish, tomatillos. Why not venture into new crops? Everything looks so hopeful and green. From the windowsill the wanton yellow arms of forsythia called us to believe in spring.

The week before Valentine’s Day I clipped my own forsythia and on Valentine’s Day my husband brought home a lovely bouquet of mixed cut flowers. I deftly split it in two and added color to our bathroom and the kitchen island. The new flowers put the forsythia to shame. It took nearly two weeks before I saw specks of yellow on the brown stems. But they bloomed for my birthday. I posted it on Facebook.

The seeds were delivered to Jane’s house the first week of February. At home snow fell from the sky and ice filled the streets. It took a week before we could gather for seed sorting. We had all saved junk mail envelopes to take our share of the loot. Ever tried to actually separate 300 seeds into 40/40/20% piles? The least experienced gardener got the envelope with the planting directions.

As I got off the plane at LAX I could smell the warmth. Even through the car exhaust the scent of jasmine was in the air. Year round something is always in bloom. My granddaughter, Allison enjoyed discovering different flowers on our walks to and from the park. The next time I will be there at the end of April she will have a new brother.  In New Jersey, the forsythia will be in full bloom.

About The Author

Kathryn Weidener is a professional storyteller and has been telling tales all her life. Her publishing credits include arielchart.blogspot.com, US1 Worksheets, Hobby Farm Magazine, and Sandpaper. A BA degree in Communication also led her through careers in social work, accounting and ESOL tutoring.She is the current matriarch of a long lineage of NJ farmers and gardeners. She and her husband lived an 1839 farmhouse on the Raritan River for 18 years and currently reside in Princeton, NJ. http://www.njstorynet.org/kathryn-weidener