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NEGAUNEE, MICHIGAN by Ron Riekki

September 10, 2019

I grew up in Negaunee.

It’s a town you’ve never heard of.

My ancestors are Saami.

It’s an entire culture you’ve never heard of.

My father was a sampler.

It’s a job you’ve never heard of. He collected iron ore samples from the mines for testing.

We live by a lot of mines you’ve never heard of—Empire, Tilden, Jackson.

Upper Peninsula’s often misspelled Upper Penisula. I swear to God. Although God wouldn’t like me swearing about how the place I was born and raised is called a penisula by people who don’t use spellcheck.

But this all happened before spellcheck.

Before the internet.

Before cell phones.

Back when the world was simple. Back before revenge porn and hacking and texting-while-driving and the whole stupidity of living now.

This was in the 1980s. In the U.P. With my parents who were off-the-grid before there was a grid to be off of.

We didn’t even own a TV. I mean, we did. For three months. Then my mother saw a boob on HBO and she said, “Enough” and it was gone as fast as it came.

We went back to euchre and Scrabble and solitaire and backyard bent-rim basketball and my favorite game—and this was an actual game I’d play with my brother—Getting Lost in the Woods. That was the entire game. Go in the woods and try, on purpose, to get as lost as possible and find your way home. Mostly, it was easy. There was the Negaunee airport where the occasional plane might come or go and that always gave you some sense of direction. And then there was something called the sun that always gave you an east and west and, really, what more do you need than that to get home? Then there was something called memorization. We knew every birch and creek and patch of switchgrass for ten miles in all directions from our house.

My father had taken us to see The Fox and the Hound and my brother had decided he was now a fox, so he wanted to play this game every day. Every single day. Even after our mother banned us because of what we were doing to our socks. Our socks were turning orange from the iron ore that seemed to be everywhere, as if the mines were bleeding with it. And, worse, we had prickers in everything, so that our mother would prick her finger folding our shirts, impossible to get them out with washing so she’d have to pick them out one by one. But our mother threw away a pair of socks and a shirt that weren’t salvageable and we’d taken them out of the garbage, then went into the woods and changed into them, putting our good clothes up in a tree fort we half-tried to make. Foxes are not good at making tree forts. But they are good at getting home. We’d spin in circles to disorient ourselves, then purposely try to go down paths we’d never went down before, searching for the most unknown parts of the woods possible, and we ended up discovering cliffs where you could see Lake Superior all the way from Negaunee, and a den of snakes where my brother pushed me into it so I fell forward and experienced a snake go down the front of my shirt with me standing and screaming and my chest wriggling around with the serpent inside me, and a river that was untouched by ore so that we swam under the noon June sun with the world shining around us like it was showing off its green perfection.

The problem was I wanted to go see another movie.

My father said fine and took us to Back to the Future. Instantly my brother was not a fox anymore. He now wanted to play guitar and ride a skateboard. And my brother is obsessive. Every single day I’d hear him butchering Chuck Berry riffs to the point that my father banned the guitar from the house, my brother off in the woods where I’d hear the weak sounds of off-key “Johnny B. Goode” working to reach my ears. And the hill in front of our house was not made for skateboarding. It was too rocky. And the skateboard my parents bought him was cheap, so it couldn’t take the rocks. My brother would try again and again but it was useless. There was no skateboarding with that piece of crap.

After he started talking about wanting to invent a time machine, it was me who got the idea of taking him to another movie, to see if he’d fall in love with another character, if he’d switch from Tod the Fox to Marty McFly to something else.

There were a few theaters in Marquette and Ishpeming, none in Negaunee. And they’d show current just-released stuff but also popular films that’d come out in the last few years. The theaters were beautiful back then, before they were all torn down and corporate boxes put up to replace them. I remembered walking into those old theaters and just feeling transformed before the movie even started. There was one theater in Marquette where it felt like the back row had you a football field away from the screen and the whole theater curved like a spoon so it was like you were in a concert hall. And there were old-world designs on the ceiling so that you’d put your head back and look up in awe at the attempts at Michelangelo.

Maybe it was those theaters that did it to my brother.

Or maybe it was a mental health issue, a mental health issue you’d never heard of before. But we could choose between E.T., Aliens, or The Breakfast Club. I told my father maybe it’s best if we don’t go to a movie about aliens, especially not one where the aliens tear people in half. I didn’t want to wake up and find my brother trying to tear me in half. Although I suspected he would leave the movie thinking he was Ripley, that he’d try to protect us from aliens that would never come.

We went to The Breakfast Club and, after, my brother was on a mission to have everyone in the school get along. He’d invite the jocks and heads and nerds and loners to our house. He’d play basketball with the jocks and get lost in the woods with the heads and he’d play solitaire with the loners and Scrabble with the nerds and, best of all, he’d try to get them to overlap, to get the jocks smoking during Scrabble and the heads to play basketball with the loners. And sometimes it’d work.

I saw my brother as the film director of our hometown, controlling it all.

The problem is that one of the jocks took him to see Gremlins. And you’ll guess what happened: my brother thought he was a gremlin. The jocks and loners and heads quickly disappeared. A few of the nerds stuck around. One said he was a gremlin too. They became inseparable best friends. And I’d wake up with milk in my bed. An entire gallon poured into my sheets. I’d open my closet and all my clothes would fall on top of me. It got so I was terrified to ever go into our basement or garage or—if we actually had one—an attic.

I told my parents about the movies, how my brother becomes the movies he sees. They told me they know, that they’d spoken with a child psychologist. I asked if was helpful and they said no, that there was talk about fandom and character bonding but that the counselor didn’t ever have a patient before who became the characters in the film he saw. The counselor asked if he did this with television too and my parents said we don’t own a TV, but I know that when we had a TV for that short time my brother didn’t ever suddenly think he was a surgeon in the Korean War or a bartender in Boston or a member of the A-Team. No, television did nothing for him. It was all films. Something about movies. My parents tried to bring my brother to the counselor but my brother, in full gremlin mode, disappeared when he went to the bathroom and the police picked him up four hours later in Sands trying to climb down into a chimney. And, yes, there is a town named Sands near us. And another named Champion, which, as far as I know, has never won a sports championship in the history of its existence.

I told my parents that counseling was a waste of time. As fast as possible, we needed to take him to another movie, but we needed to be selective about what it was.

I recommended Gandhi.

My parents expressed concern saying that 1) they were worried he’d lead a revolution, and 2) it wasn’t playing at any theaters up here because it had been released in 1982, a bit too long ago for even the theaters that did reruns. I called around and found there was a theater showing it in Detroit. My parents compromised and instead brought back the TV with the addition of a VCR. They bought a VHS of Gandhi because, mainly, it was the only movie we all could agree on. There was immediate consensus on what not to show him, entire film genres, in fact. No horror, no action, no comedy (there was concern about nonstop jokes, which my mother said would “get on our nerves”) and—along those lines—no musicals, and no Westerns, no sci-fi, no crime films, no thrillers, no war movies, no disaster movies, no martial arts, no buddy-cop movies. It was a long list.

For a while, there was some brainstorming about romance, but my mother said he was too young for romance and my dad said no one is too young for romance and a fight ensued, which my mother won. I recommended a documentary, but we couldn’t come up with a good one since none of us had ever actually seen a documentary.

My father yelled out, “I got it!” and left us waiting for his answer, but it turned out his brilliant idea was having my brother watch a silent film.

But my mother said she was worried if he couldn’t speak. “What if he had to go to the hospital? How would he let us know?”

“Charades,” my father said, “We could figure it out.”

My mother gave a definite no.

My father set up the VCR while my mother watched my brother intently in his bedroom. There was worry he’d escape, somehow get hold of the VCR and melt it or worse.

We all sat watching the movie. Or, to be more exact, my brother watched the film and we watched my brother watch the film.

It was beautiful seeing the transformation take place. It happened around the moment when Ben Kingsley gives his protest speech to the packed auditorium. My brother took on this intense calm. I exchanged looks with my parents. We knew he’d be all right.

Later that week, he hitchhiked to Washington D.C.

We haven’t seen him in twenty years.

The last I heard, he’s in prison now.

Unfortunately, after Gandhi, he must have watched a comedic gangster film shortly afterwards. In Trenton, New Jersey, he robbed a bank with a banana.

I get letters from him every once in a while. He said they show movies every Friday at the prison.

I imagine him, every Friday, taking on a whole new persona, going back to his cell and being Batman and Cobb and Gandalf and Michael Corleone and Neo and one day, I wonder, if they’ll ever show The Shawshank Redemption, if he’ll escape to some distant version of Zihuatanejo, a place with crystal-clear beach and no electricity.

STURM UND DRANG by Paweł Markiewicz

September 9, 2019

My first sole little letter calling all ringing so beauteously muse-like and winged like the eternal, gentle pinion of a melancholic harp.

Dear valued mellow quaint readers-dreamers!

At 5.30 pm, the meek time has come with the dream-full inception, so that a new flimsy Sturm und Drang period has begun (the second Sturm und Drang, to wit: the turquoise time). And I am spellbound therefrom simply. Such a miracle with a starry charm of a magic-full summer night has enforced some fantasy. Any poem from me and any glimmer of the philosophy from me hasn't achieved that. But rather, the most marvelous eyes of my cat are such ghosts, in which the primeval ontologies of the antiquity slumbered in the lyrical, Edenic way. The cat has looked at my dog, plainly dulcet, what kindled a magical stark of time-philosophy and unveils spirit-like. These sparks aren't able to blaze fiercely like a handful of Luther's flames, but they are glowing, tenderly as well as lovingly, muse-like, as enchanted Apollonian moments that touch everybody's soul deeply and cherish a daydream, everlasting Zeus-like. And this cat is a dainty, dreamy herder of the infinite, angelic philosophy, and those cats from time immemorial have harbored primeval-weird from Egypt.

From cat's eyes, an eternity comes, which came along on my account at that early date. At the moment, a second era of Sturm und Drang is sparked. A primeval wild dream is freed and ready for the fantasy of the moon in the wonderful night.

Thee turquoise time—sore contemporary, created and always internet-oriented. This melancholy-period comprises all poems in English from authors who will write at their most gorgeous from 1 July to 31 December 2019 and will publish them on sundry internet-pages.

Let this most gorgeous magic dream come true!

MIND WHAT’S GOOD by L Mari Harris

September 9, 2019

The girl sits on her old teeter totter in the backyard, eating mini marshmallows out of a bag. Pushes off. Crick. Down. Crick. Pushes off again. Crick. Pork Chop the Chihuahua watches each marshmallow go from fingers to mouth, cocking one eyebrow, then the other.

A man in a black suit and hat walks down the alley. It’s early August, 98 degrees. He has something in his hand.

“Hey, Mister! What’s in your hand?”

The man stops at the fence and holds a hammer and a bar of soap up.

The girl and Pork Chop stare. Mrs. Potter from three houses over once walked through the alley carrying a squawking chicken she was going to turn into a nice soup with noodles and carrots and celery, but that was about as weird as the girl had ever seen.

“Why you wearing that hot suit?” The girl scratches Pork Chop behind his little ears. The tiny dog leans into her hand, shivers with contentment.

The man smiles and leans his forearms on the fence. “Would you like to hear the Word of God?”

“You a preacher or something?”

“Something like that. I help people, showing them God’s goodness and grace.”

“How you find them?”

“They tend to find me.” The man juggles the hammer and the bar of soap to his other hand, pulls a handkerchief out, wipes his brow.

The girl sees her best friend by the trees. Maggie?

The girl and Maggie, flip flops slapping on the sidewalks, giggling, arms draped around each other’s shoulders or waists, eyes down when the older boys would rev their engines and shout as they roared by, then giggling again, clutching their arms, the downy hairs tingling. Then, the girl’s daddy already downstate, springtime, one of the older boys stopping as she walked along the road, offering a ride, No thanks, offering it again, No, really, I’m almost home. Next day, girls laughing, boys pointing, one sticking his finger in her face, We hear you’re a good time. Everyone laughing, the girl cutting through backyards, missing her big bear of a daddy who still called her Princess Sunshine, missing her momma who's distracted from working three jobs, missing her best friend who called her trash as the girl ran out the school doors.

The man in the suit turns and looks. “See someone?”

“No, guess not. Mister, you haven’t said what you’re doing with those things.”

“Why, to do my washing and build a house for the Lord.”

The girl hears a saw start up in the garage. Daddy?

The girl’s daddy, building her a bookcase on their last weekend together, the girl sitting on a milk crate, watching, listening over the buzz of the saw and pounding of nails. Made a stupid mistake, baby. You mind what’s good and you won’t go wrong. But make sure it’s the good you’re hearing. That’s where I got it wrong. The girl wrapped her arms around her daddy and didn’t let go until her arms went numb.

The man in the suit cocks his head. “Hear something?”

“No, guess not. You got a long ways to go? You thirsty, Mister?”

“No, thank you. I’m on my way to Redemption. I was told it’s just up the way a bit, past the edge of town.”

“Past Mr. Elwood’s dairy farm?”

“So I hear.”

“What’s this Redemption look like?” The girl wonders if it’s a town she’s never heard of or maybe that church out on Hwy B where talk is they play with snakes and fall to the floor. She hopes it’s not that.

The man in the suit drums his fingers on the gate, furrows his eyebrows. “Horses with velvet-soft muzzles tickling your palm for sugar cubes. Lilac bushes big as houses. No fighting. Fresh sheets on your bed every night, and the smell of bacon frying every morning. No one ever has to go away or find themselves alone, because there are no mistakes and no lies. All the ice-cold lemonade and chocolate donuts and French fries with extra ketchup you could ever want.”

She loves it all.

Pork Chop jumps up and down, wagging his little tail. He loves it all too. The girl and the man both laugh. She scoops up Pork Chop and walks toward the gate. She wants to see this Redemption for herself.

WE THE PEOPLE by Nicholas Grider

September 8, 2019

WE THE PEOPLE

Hi there! Thank you for your patience as you adjust to our way of life. We are the people. We're just like you, except our clothing is less wrinkled and our databases are better organized. We're grateful you allowed us to ask you to welcome us in, and then kindly gave your consent to our decision to stay.

LET'S JOIN HANDS IN THANKFULNESS

We like it here. The reason we like it here is because this is where we are, which makes things a lot more convenient for everyone, especially us. That's what we mean when we point at the floor and say "Hallowed ground belongs to no one, but someone needs to make sure it stays presentable."

No one, of course, conquers any land they didn't think couldn't be improved, and while we admire your society, we don't think it is a utopia, but we held a meeting while you were busy scavenging for food and decided that a little bit of conquering never hurt anyone, and in any case, we'd rather avoid the term "conquering" in lieu of the word "upcycling," even if we do still prefer to roam the streets with our rifles loaded.

We're here at the center of what we've deemed is the center of anything that has a center; it has a nice view and is warm but not too humid and the kind of place where we'll all be long dead before anyone deals any consequences and we especially like that it's politely sunny and often April or May and forever spacious. An untamed lifetime of wide green days around which grand architectures of seduction and discipline and nocturne can be built.

The new, glistening fences are mostly decorative. Also seductive, depending which side you're on.

We are the people, and you are also the people, so we're just like you, simply a more efficient model or small cul-de-sac of "people" than many people. As far as peoples go, we are 0-60 in five seconds with an engine of progress quiet as an elderly cat's purr.

We like it here. We're glad you're happy to have us as your guests even though we have already spent time belonging everywhere. We have decided, though, of everywhere we belong, we belong here the most, though you belong here almost as much, for which we're glad.

FOREVER IS A LONG TIME

Don't worry, you won't be forgotten. Beginnings and endings have never been forgotten, and now, with the gleam of metal pressed against the gleam of sun, nothing will ever be forgotten again, unless we hold a referendum on it, but we have yet to decide how much each of your votes count.

Our preference for the past, for light blue oxford shirts and creased tan slacks and comfortable grins, does not make us ghosts. Not even the friendly kind. We are very real and work very hard to build monuments to our potential so large they will be easily understood centuries from now when hardly anyone is left to understand anything.

We organized and arrived here because that's what our people do. Our people invented adventures. Our people invented guest and host, arrival and departure, escape and captivity. Our people invented mirrors. Our people were responsible for the brief trend of everyone now living pausing at mirrors, turning to smile, leaning in and whispering the word whore at ourselves and/or whispering if it ain't broke, don't fix it and/or whispering I wanna know what love is.

Our people were the people who made the 1970s safe for carefully selected representatives of the populace to exercise public flamboyance. This is why God ushered polyester into being, so that we might be elastic without anybody getting any kind of ideas.

THE BENEVOLENT RULER EQUIVALENT OF ALL FIT

We're glad that you're glad that we spread the gospel of wellness to the people. Fitness, wellness, discipline, loose sweatpants, tight sweatpants, and the contextual encouragement of public shirtlessness among the men of the species, who are better at glistening outdoors in the May sunlight, hard at work making our world an easier place for you to live in.

We smile because our teeth are white. As white and cold as the soul of a child five minutes before conception, as white and cold as the flesh of a snake-shaped angel.

We're very grateful you welcomed us and gave us a tour and allowed us to rename everything and organize everything according to priority, then adjust priorities to move in sync with the market shuddering under low, bedazzling clouds.

We invented capitalism, and God invented Esther Williams as a reward. The heart of capitalism is this: why have just one Esther Williams when you can have two? Or more than two? That is why a mirror is always more important than what is placed in front of it.

God invented spandex bodysuits so that Slim Goodbody might survive and prosper, traveling the land like Johnny Appleseed dispersing the fruit of subtext instead of apples.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE NOW

We would like to teach you how to help us make the world a better place. In a small nameless stretch of the bible largely hidden from the light of political arguments and game shows, Jesus shrugs and says to Thomas, "Well I reckon in order for things to get better for some people, for other people it has to get worse. I don't know. When I asked my dad why sometimes I stop in places where people made in God's image never stop and just squint off into the insufficiently polluted air, one time he told me well, Adam and Eve forgot to eat the whole damn apple. Another time he told me this: kindling's not the same thing as the fuel for the fire. When he talks like that, it's a sign not to bother the part of him that is not me via divine intervention in the magic of sexual reproduction. I don't know. You hungry?"

We would like to teach you how to help us make the world better for as many people as possible, especially us. We would like to teach the world to sing, time permitting. Think of it this way. For every one Paul Simon in the world there are ten John Denvers. This is important because ten is usually a larger number than one.

Another thing Jesus sayeth unto some disciple, probably Jeff if there were a disciple named Jeff, "If I were to tell you that sometimes saying goodbye is saying goodnight, does that sound thoughtful or do I just sound high? Be honest. I won't ex-disciple you or anything."

The cure for doubt is not salvation. The cure for doubt is vacation. We would like to invite you to learn more about us by observing us at a distance as we settle in your homes, digging through your drawers and cupboards for unconsumed opiates and making fun of your dirty cutlery and your ideas about interior direction.

We're glad that you've agreed to our suggestion that you should cease the magic of sexual reproduction. We have taken a shine to you, and all children really do, anyway, is replace you, and we would never want to replace you; we like you just the way you are. We also like like to be in charge of who replaces whom.

Blue skies are on their way–blue the color of blue we have decided to name "sky blue" so that we may never forget. We wander your streets, cylinders of clouds in our pale blue oxford shirts with our hands on our hips or our fingers close to the safeties no our rifles, squinting at confusing buildings and animals and signs, debating each other whether it is better to be very good at winning or simply to win as much as possible, and to check our watches and say to each other, "Oh my, Harry, will you look at that," or "Hmm, the natives are probably getting restless," after which we all chuckle, spines curving so that we all slightly lean away from each other as we laugh, the social equivalent of a nigh orchid in time-lapse bloom.

Harm isn't on our agenda. Harm is just a common side effect. And side effects are what make being healthy seem all the better in comparison.

IN CONCLUSION (PART ONE)

We're glad you haven't raised any objections yet, at least none that have needed attending to. Everyone's happy when all the blades of the world are still sharp.

In a dusty corner of scripture, Jesus asks The Lord Our God "What's the deal with death? People live, sometimes not for long, and then die, and mostly stay dead after that. I dunno, it just seems inefficient. There was silence, according to the gospel, after which The Lord Our God sayeth unto his only son, "Well dancing's not efficient either, and you can't do it forever. Wanna know why?" When Jesus shrugs and digs the toe of his sandal into the Hollywood silt and says sure, God sayeth unto him, "If dancing were permanent, it would stop being dancing."

We're glad you've been so hospitable. We've learned a lot. We've learned that suffering is like dancing and bleeding is a form of suffering and, one way or another, bleeding always stops. As you flee into the new chapters of your lives as dwellers of periphery, keep this in mind: there is an end to everything, but there's also an exception that proves the rule. We're happy to share with you, gathered here today beneath sky blue blasts of noise swirling down the narrow streets of our home, that there's an end to everything, which is God's plan, which means it's a good thing. Someone has to be the exception, though. So we have decided there will be an end to everything but us. We hope, someday, whispering to strangers in the shade of distant trees, you'll sometimes stop to say to each other "it was very gracious of those people, whoever they were, to give us the gift of adventure, shoulder the burden of being the motionless locus of the world's sphere, and to share with us some helpful hints about sharing in the profit margin of God's providence."

IN CONCLUSION (PART TWO)

By now, of course, you are already gone. But we generally prefer to remember not to forget. This is why the God we've chosen to invest a lot of money in and to allow to so often bless us was kind enough both to invent databases and to allow us to view them as infinite. We don't want to have to say goodbye, though. And so: goodnight.

SNAPSHOT BEFORE THE INCIDENT by Brian Brunson

September 6, 2019

With no foreboding of the approaching cataclysm, an orange brown finch, pecking at fallen crumbs, is startled by a fat gray pigeon flying down; a nervous young man watches the barista behind the cart in the courtyard; the barista clears the moist used espresso grounds from the filter with two loud thwacks against the rubber bar as her phone chimes in a text message from that boy listed under her contacts as ‘tinydicpic’; the sun hits the four story glass building reflecting the five story concrete building opposite; a broad shouldered well-suited man holds the hand of his elderly father, slowly walking along the sidewalk; the air swirls ever slightly between the buildings, kicking up a napkin and a leaf; a bee flits between the flowers on the bush in the corner; a man, deep into middle age, his pot belly accentuated by his polo shirt tucked into his jeans, carries his mocha gingerly so as to not spill any; one lone nebulous cloud in the blue sky creeps toward the sun, but never quite covers it; a one-footed pigeon rests on the gravel landscape along the wall; the palo verde tree soaks up the spring sun; a teenager on the wooden bench pauses from his game app to trace with his eye the figure of a business woman rushing past, getting particularly stuck on the curve of her hips; a woman tells, with a tone of disapproval, her younger sister, “I understand, I understand”; the hazy daytime moon drifts towards the horizon; a woman stands in the sun outside her black sedan, searching through her pocketbook for any loose change to feed the meter.

A block away a man, naked, filthy, crawls out of the storm drain.

LOVE RUNS AWAY TO JOIN THE CIRCUS by Kieron Walquist

September 4, 2019

The Ringleader lets the circus run itself into the ground, unsupervised. Ever since the accident, he hides himself in his trailer. Away from the police, the press, the public. All who lie in wait outside, hunched and hungry. Ready to ambush. Ready to accuse: how could you let this happen? Confined by choice, the ringleader doesn’t eat much. Drinks religiously. Sleeps. Occasionally peeks behind the dusty blinds at the sun. You stay with him in his misery. Longing to be loved. But he refuses to want you. Says: you don’t belong in the circus! Go home. You tell him the back door is unlocked. That anyone could break into such sadness.

***

The Acrobat makes the dance look effortless. Without the weight of wings, she flies. Streaks the skyline of the tallest circus tent. Bound in a blood-red ribbon of silk, she unravels. Becomes undone. Tumbles towards you. The cops, the cameras, the citizens. Down below, everyone evacuates. Clearing a patch of hard-packed earth for her. There’s no safety net. Suddenly, she stops. Hangs herself by an ankle. Unharmed, the acrobat spreads her arms. TA-DAH! But the onlookers leave, having seen it all before. You promise that she was enough. That your love is enough. She swears it isn’t. Sighs. She really felt it this time. Fame. You tell her they wanted a fall. One more circus catastrophe.

***

The Beast Tamer feeds the menagerie of animals raw, red meat. Refills the empty stock tanks with cool, crisp water. Scrubs the dust and dirt off the elephants. Tousles the winter coat of the black bear. Playing nice, the beast tamer puts on a show for the authorities, the anchormen, the audience. But you know better. Before the accident, his animals were often sedated and starved. Never let loose. You want to be abused. To have that harsh, heavy kind of love. He says you’re feral. Too wild to hold down. You counter that his crime is obvious. That others will see the suffering safari and wonder: where did the meat come from?

***

The Fire Eater buries the evidence deep inside a burn barrel. With blistered and blackened hands, he rains gasoline over the remains. Strikes a match. Ignites a fountain of fire. Inhales the smoke. Singed by the hush of heat, he walks away from the blaze. Burning up. Bejeweled in beads of sweat. You follow. Feverish from head to toe. You vow to keep it all a secret. You won’t tell a soul. Not the rangers, the reporters, the residents—no one. He thanks you, but rejects the thought of romance. With you, it’s just too cold. You ask, if he eats fire, when did he become so scared?

***

The Magician replays and rehearses the old routine. He shuffles the cards, carefully picks the one unknown. Stuffs a rabbit into a top hat. Makes it vanish, then reappear. He saws the pretty girl in-half, but she always comes back together. Every trick he has up his sleeve works. He makes no mistakes. Nothing goes wrong. Yet, something did go wrong. Just once. And they want an explanation. The law, the live broadcast, the locals. You come to his defense. A good magician never reveals his secrets. That’s what you love about him. He begs you to leave. You’re only making it worse. You have no trouble disappearing on your own.

***

The Fortuneteller meets with the ringleader. The acrobat. The beast tamer. The fire eater. The magician. Welcomes them into her sanctuary. A small space—a room crowded by candles. Air thick with the scent of incense. Roses. Beeswax. Something dead. With milk-white eyes, she considers her crystal ball. Translates her Tarot cards. Looks over the lines pressed into palms. She forewarns them of a frightening future. This time, they believe it—before, they had laughed. You believe the fortuneteller. Offer your hand. Ask: is there love between us? She looks. Shakes her head. I see no future with you.

***

You were the brave volunteer. Out of hundreds of outstretched hands, they reached for yours. Chosen, you were carried from the crowd. Brought up on the stage. Held still by the ringleader, the acrobat, the beast tamer, the fire eater, the magician. Electric, the circus performers declared dangerous acts. The swell of sound from the audience—cheers and cries—left you feeling frozen. But you couldn’t have backed out. Not in front of the high-wire. The black bear. The flamethrower. The water-filled tank. You had to play the part. And you did. But before you died in the accident, you looked back at the performers. Thought they all felt it. Love.

A CHILDHOOD IN FIVE ACTS by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

September 3, 2019

Out back behind the house, there was a rusty old oil drum that Da used late at night for burning stuff. Once Sammy and I found what looked like some kind of animal bones in it, but we didn’t dare ask about the kitten that Sammy had found the week before. This is how I grew up.

I couldn’t help Sammy, I couldn’t save him because he would always cry, even when I whispered, “Don’t cry, don’t.” He couldn’t stop his eyes from leaking like a broken tap, that’s what Da would call him, “Ya fucking little broken tap,” and Sammy would squeeze his eyes together tight, but the more Da yelled at him, the more he cried, and there was nothing I could do about what happened next. This is how I grew up.

I never talked at school, and my clothes and fingernails were dirty. Ms. Carmody would ask, “What’s wrong, Delilah?” but I couldn’t answer because deep inside I liked her, and I couldn’t stand to see her eyes change when she looked at me, like I was a little broken tap too. This is how I grew up.

Once, I got caught in a tree, and Da looked out the back window and saw me hanging there, choking. He ran out and saved me, and then he took off his belt and hit me with the folded leather over and over and over again, yelling, “Stupid bitch, you coulda died,” until I wished I had. But I didn’t cry, I wasn’t like Sammy. This is how I grew up.

Da was Hephaestus, forging us and pounding our wings until we couldn’t fly and we couldn’t remember ever having feathers. Sammy evaporated in the quench, but I got folded into myself and hammered flat over and over and over again until I was hard as Damascus and double-edged and no longer myself. This is how I grew up.

JUDITH, MOTHER by Matthew Lovitt

August 11, 2019

Judith didn’t want to force the boy, but Jacob refused the chance to be reborn in His image. Willow, the regression therapist, said he suffered a PTSD-like disease, and that simulating a second birth would release him from the trauma of years of processed food, daycare by television. And so she held tight the down blanket wrapped around his body, the mock vaginal lips that parted at the crown of his head. He kicked and screamed, and she whispered that soon they would be together again.

Willow said, Again?

And Judith imagined what it would be like to cut the crusts off of her boy’s sandwiches, chauffeur him to cotillion, and buy him his first semi-automatic weapon—everything that she didn’t get to do for her first Gift. Because God bestowed upon the faithful riches—Judith was a vessel for Him. Perfect posture, tiny steps, shirtsleeves past the wrists.

The boy vomited in his womb, and the therapist considered Judith’s many mounted animal heads—antelope, deer, and ram.

What would you call this room? Willow said.

An office, I guess.

And how many rooms do you have?

Twelve if you count the workshop out back.

Willow whistled a cartoon whistle, as if she was impressed. Judith sensed a twinge of contempt. But the therapist didn’t know how dearly she paid—a dead husband and organs.

Judith forced a smile. I’ve been blessed.

Willow said, It would be better for him to birth into your arms, so that you can wipe away the afterbirth from his eyes, nose, and lips.

But his mess, Judith said.

The first of many, I’m afraid.

She grimaced.

And to have him otherwise could make him upset.

Well I’d rather not.

Who would?

Ruin this blouse, I meant.

In his down womb, Jacob writhed, gagged, and spit.

Judith held the mock-opening against her chest.

Willow reached for the boy.

She yanked him away, shot the therapist a look like you’re next.

He could die, Willow said.

Every life comes with certain risks.

And then Judith hummed a lullaby until Jacob’s life passed through her—water through a sieve. The remnants: tiny deposits of sin. But now the boy was free to enter heaven. Or burn in hell, as God wished. And then Judith lay the boy’s body on the ground, rocked forward to a crouch, and lunged at Willow, pummeled her face and chest. She was surprised by how little blood stained her fists. When the bitch was good and dead, Judith looked over her shoulder to Jacob, and noticed the body fluids seeping through the comforter, blotting the carpet yellow and red.

She muttered, Shit.

Judith dragged Jacob by the feet, to the metal shed out back, and into the storage closet where he and Willow could be stashed. The following day she would dump them in a wastewater pit one county west. The chemical sludge would eat away their skin or at least the fingerprints that might tie her to them. But first, but now, she needed to ask for His forgiveness, receive His wisdom.

Judith sat in the last pew of Calvary Assembly. A gaggle of accordion-shaped matrons gathered near the front of the hall, around Joseph, the preacher, preaching The End. Their task was to hold one another witness to be saved from sin. And it was through such service they might glimpse heaven. Then Joseph said he had to take to the shop his Benz, but there was time if anyone would like to testify their faith to Him. Two women shot to their feet, gave one another a sideways glance.

Judith laughed, lifted her gaze to the heavens, and prayed: God, thank you for saving me. It’s been a long journey, and I’m trying my best, but sometimes I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be in Your service. I know the two followers I delivered to you today were unclean—that woman smelled like cigarettes and likely the boy couldn’t complete a quick slant. For this I ask your forgiveness, and another chance. Please give me a sign: a healthy prospect or a new, functional uterus. Sure every setback is an opportunity, but I’m at the end of my wits.

Judith parked her Escalade two blocks from the elementary. She waited for the last girl to lope down the schools front steps, toward her car, then held out the window a rope of saltwater taffy.

She said, Hungry?

The girl grimaced. Not for your garbage candy.

Judith gasped.

And why are you so creepy?

My word.

Against mine.

I don’t know what you mean, Judith said.

The girl plucked her cellphone from her pocket. Well maybe we should call the police, and see what happens then.

SLEEPY TIGER by Matthew Bookin

August 9, 2019

Paul started doing deliveries. He was 19 days sober. The passenger side of his car still looked like a carefully crushed soda can. The travel bottle of Listerine was still in his glove box.

Emir’s food truck business had expanded into an actual restaurant. Paul was hired on as their 31-year-old delivery boy. He picked up racks of steamed dumplings from the restaurant and loaded them into the back of his nearly defeated red car. It was early summer and sometimes, mostly on the weekends, he could be out making deliveries until dawn. He felt quiet and newly alive. He was experiencing traffic lights in an honest, gentle way. People smiled at him and tipped with paper money. A woman handed him an apple with a lipstick-lined bite taken from its side. Fire hydrants bled happily into the streets. Strangers seemed mysterious, hungry, and kind. Light rain washed the city dust from his windshield when he couldn’t afford a new jug of electric blue washer fluid.

The sobriety app he’d downloaded offered up an inspirational quote every day. “Be in love with your life. Every minute,” Jack Kerouac told Paul from some place in the past. Paul knew that Jack Kerouac drank himself to death while living in his mother’s guest room. Paul flipped his phone facedown in the passenger seat of his car and imagined a long stem rose floating dumbly in a full bottle of non-alcoholic beer.

When he was wasted, every day was a casino. Now that he was sober, every day was a boardwalk at dawn.

Paul felt good in a fragile way, like an old light bulb that would pop and burn out at any moment. He could barely make eye contact with anyone. He carried mammoth stacks of dumpling trays up marathon flights of apartment complex stairs. He fed lonely people and he fed families. Some doors opened and he’d find himself facing a mirror. He never tried the food.

The feeling he had when he stopped moving was deep and kaleidoscopic. It swirled and absorbed him. It dryly intoxicated. His psychedelic sadness posed no mysteries. It was his belt, looped tightly to the doorknob of the closet. It was circles inside of boxes. Cages and codes. Heart attacks and cracked pitchers of spiked lemonade. Bad vibes he paid for. No giving, just getting. The fifth can of a six-pack. A vast field of patiently unlit green candles arranged like guillotined sunflowers. The “blah blah blah” of his broken heart.

The restaurant closed quickly and sadly. Emir was widely accused of gentrifying the neighborhood, so he shuttered the place and vanished from the city. For a few weeks, every evening after the delivery job died, Paul would buy several cartons of dumplings from a Chinese takeout place next to his Stepmom’s apartment, where he’d been staying. He’d drive around all night long with the unfamiliar dumplings in his backseat, not really going anywhere. His car would smell like scallions forevermore and the wind was getting colder. When the mornings rolled around he’d donate the untouched food to a shelter downtown.

At his very best, he felt like the only man working behind the scenes at a fireworks display.

Six months later, at the conclusion of a particularly cruel day, Paul bought a tall can of Budweiser beer from a gas station lacking a front door. That was pretty much the end of him.

AS SEEN ON TV by Kyra Kondis

August 8, 2019

Bedazzler

It’s your idea to go as KISS for your first real Halloween party in your freshman year of high school, and of course nobody warns you that your three friends will back out of the costume at the last second. You won’t get their text until your mother drops you off a block away from the party’s actual location. A few weeks before, you’d begged her for the $19.95 you needed to punch plastic rhinestones up and down the legs of too-small black jeans; you have to wear these jeans. It starts to drizzle before you get to the door of the house—everything is always at some rich kid’s stone-sided house, and there are always rigid family photos taken against a cloudy studio backdrop hanging on the wall, and you can never find the bathroom because you’re not used to a house so big—and when you get inside, your thick face paint is dripping down your neck and all three of your friends are nurses in low-cut white smocks. No one offers you a drink, so you make your own, and at the end of the night, Jeremiah Lewis puts his arm around your waist, and his hand brushes against the studs on the seat of your jeans, and he smells like vodka and Sprite when he whispers to you that he always thought clowns were kind of hot.

ShamWow

Your first summer job is a lifeguarding gig at your neighborhood pool, and your first paycheck goes to buying a crop top, bright pink and snug and off-the-shoulder, the kind everyone’s wearing with high-waisted shorts. In front of the mirror, admiring the shock of pink against denim and the way your hair falls over your bare shoulders, you think you look more grown-up now, like a girl who could drive or vote or be in college. You wear the outfit all weekend, pausing to enjoy it every time you pass your reflection in a store window, the glass door at the smoothie place, the side of your parents’ freshly washed car. The following morning at work, an elderly man complains that his lounge chair is wet and hands you his square shammy towel: Be a dear, he says, smiling, and help me wipe this up. Quickly, you flatten the chair, mop the water off the resin-coated wicker, and prop the chair back up, skimming it for extra droplets. When you’re done, the man tells you that he likes that suit you wear, the two-piece red one with the plus-sign on the chest.

Chia Pet

Ryan Daniels is in his first year of college, and it’s over winter break that he asks you out on a date, and of course you say yes because it’s your senior year of high school, and this is how you become somebody. He takes you to the Wendy’s drive-through and parks by the empty lake, so dark and so quiet you can’t believe there’s more city on the other side. You pinch your French fries daintily when you eat them, and you don’t dare dip them in ketchup, and everything feels like part of a movie, either romance or horror, you’re not quite sure. On the floor of the passenger’s side of Ryan’s car, you notice a tan-orange bust of Bob Ross, his green sprout-curls wilting away from his face; you love Bob Ross, you tell Ryan, giddy to make a connection on your mostly-quiet date. You say: you didn’t have much around the house growing up, but you always had paint. Ryan laughs and says he took the dumb thing from his lame little brother. Then he reclines your seat for you and stifles a French-fry burp before his weight covers yours. Wait, you say once, or maybe more than once, but he doesn’t hear you. The lights in the car click off.

Snuggie

In your first year of college, your roommate’s boyfriend makes fun of you when he realizes you have a sleeved blanket; it looks like a bathrobe, he gasps between laughs, or a tent. As the first semester passes, you spend most of your days curled up in it, in your lofted bed where you can always hear your neighbor’s alarm clock go off in the mornings. When your roommate asks if something is wrong, you tell her you’re just cold. But the more class you miss, the more you remember you’re wasting your loans, and the more you waste, the less you see the point of anything at all. One day, your roommate lets her boyfriend take a nap in the room while she goes to intramural soccer practice, and if everything didn’t feel so heavy, it would be hard to drift back to sleep with a near-stranger sprawled out under your roommate’s purple bedspread. It’s as if they’ve forgotten you’re in there, too, or they’ve decided it no longer matters. About an hour after you finally doze off again, a strange sound wakes you up, and you open your eyes to your roommate’s boyfriend holding a photo of something, the purple bedspread moving up and down along with his hand. You shut your eyes again and burrow your arms in your blanket sleeves and wait, your gut coiling. When he’s finished, your roommate’s boyfriend goes to the bathroom, and you open your eyes again. There’s a picture missing from your corkboard, the one of you and your cousin together at the lake the summer before.

OxiClean

Your therapist at the university health center asks if you’re happy, and you say yes. You tell her how your boyfriend took you out last night to your favorite restaurant with the spinach dip and steak frites. You tell her how he told you he loved you. Finally, you think, you’ve done enough for someone to love you. You don’t tell her that when you went back to your apartment, he did it again, the thing where he says he doesn’t expect sex but that it would be foolish for him to be in a relationship without it when there are so many girls who could give it to him. You don’t tell her that you lay there and hoped it would be quicker this time. You don’t tell her that when you got up afterward, you left a red stain behind, small and round like an egg. Your therapist raises her eyebrows, writes something down, says not to be afraid to share the whole story. You answer that you aren’t. When you get home, you pull the soiled sheets from the hamper and attack them with stain remover, scrubbing at the spot in the middle. This is the most energy you’ve had in weeks. You run the sheets through a rinse until the stain is gone, and looking at the newly clean fabric, you wonder how to tell what’s real. You’d know for sure, you decide, if you’d really been wronged.

Right?