Flash

ETYMON STREET VIEW by Mike Corrao

April 8, 2019

She (subject) receives a note which says, “I am without past.” On the backside is a photograph of a street sign: Roberta Ave. The crossroad is obscured. What used to be green is now dull and graying. Its metal spine curves to the left. Backgrounds are warped by time. The subject is tasked with determining the origins of this symbol. Finding what has been vacated of context. Erasures performed without audience. Certain criteria are arranged to flesh out her process. Suites are dressed in ethernet cables and blue light filters. Rounds of copper are blanketed in rubberized shells. She moves through a set of localized databases. Dragging her feet along the surface of the excavation site. Playing with direct keywords and terminology. Each result yields answers specific to its location. One meaning does not proliferate into the next. One prominent figure does not name a second street after themself. In Waukesha, Wisconsin she finds a Roberta without a source. The avenue appears without momentum, emerging quietly from a larger grid. Harrison, Frame, Wabash, Estberg, Douglass, Roberta, Coolidge, Hoover. Incipit formulas and procedures are unveiled:

All names have an origin. If they are one word, they will come from one place. If they are many words, they will converge from many places.

In the case of the former, said source might be of significance to specific people involved in its creation, zoning, or development. Specific Robertas. Those famous or related.

If the name has no origin here (which it does not), then its origin might arise from better hidden minutiae. Roberta who performed a charitable act. Significant strangers. Offhanded mentions of artists or architects. Misheard introductions.

When a street is unimportant, that is to say, not worth thoroughly documenting, it might appear to abruptly jump from not existing at all to having existed forever. Somewhere between the years of 1974 and 1986, Roberta Avenue is conceived.

An unspecified individual (under government employ) signs forms that are assumed to exist and names the street after someone (something, somewhere) for some particular reason. The individual then shifts interest to another street and loses any tangible connection to Roberta.

Over time, the relationship between land and language become obscured. What was once straightforward can quickly spread into endless and ever-changing labyrinths. The entropic nature of duration disrupts these pathways. A mountainside road becomes Silver Lake Drive. A coastal boulevard becomes Pine Street.

What is left is hard to identify. She sways through luminous corridors. “My tactility is measured in lumens.” Her hands collapse around strands of frayed monitor hair. What is visible is rendered haptic. What is spoken is rendered real. New data accumulates. Particles of dirt climb from key to nail bed. Neural structures materialize in the periphery, but again this etymology is without its source. Metonyms form chains, linking from part to whole. From whole to greater whole. Roberta extends her reach across liminal spaces. Ennui in posture. Dancing around the virtual ballroom. “Your physiology is tested for anomalies.” White text crawls across the screen, but she does not pursue this lead. Instead, she continues her excavation. Old web pages map outdated countrysides. Where roads crawl through unwieldy topographies, each hill flattened and repurposed.

She skims a series of land acquisition and zoning documents. No new information comes to the surface. Phone calls lead to answering machines and non sequitur transfers. Landlines form matrices under guise of the rhizome. Disembodied voices dictate a lipid yawn. Keys displaced by an external pressure. She sifts through prophetic audio files and CCTV footage. The natural slouch of the human physique makes her nauseous. Each figure that wobbles across the monitor. The slow pan of the camera. “Towers form under veil of ash.” She returns to the photograph. Searching through image aggregators and video archives. Long-dead strangers construct each house in zig-zag patterns along the avenue. Surveys form jagged plots of land. She again shifts focus, moving from historical evidence to abstract representations.

Foreign documents rise out of the engine. Where dataplasm has begun to coagulate. Radio waves are dragged under the surface by spore densities “I speak to you as if we have not spoken before.” But this is a lie. There is a familiarity in the candidness of the white text. “We reconvene after the fires are out.” Roberta Ave consumes its own identity. The machine feeds on its own afterbirth. Nourished by the infrastructures which reveal its parentage. Clergymen divinate the body in paraffin. In this web of connections, each thread has been severed. White text mocks with conspiratorial glee. “You see only what has been present.” Phantom limbs caress her interior, feigning their introduction. In which these new appendages might continue her search while she is away—passive and unconscious.

Roberta Ave taunts her with hints of information. “SUBJECT gifts [redacted] namesake to new passage.” The sign mutates. The metal spine straightening its posture. Anachronistic compulsions render previous data collecting methods obsolete. Street names rearrange themselves. Harrison, Roberta, Estberg, Douglass, Coolidge, Hoover, Frame, Wabash. Script removed from its plate. She fears that each name is without purpose, without origin or incipit. There is no event to create this creature. It stumbles haphazardly through time, appearing before and after its predicted creation. She finds obscured photographs and scrawled notes.

Computational deities form a new lexicon. She watches as they reorient each previously scanned and cleared database. Roberta Ave disappears from familiar places, and reappears in previously unseen alcoves. The machine unhinges its yaw. And the subject is gifted the phantom limbs that she has been promised. New appendages climb from her hips and shoulders. Anatomy expanding / Exoskeleton forming. She feasts on etymon. With tendrils latching to electrical currents and expanding the circumference of the circuit. Molluscular mouth siphoning power for the ever-growing mechanism. A new praxis must be organized. Where these phantom limbs may continue working through unconscious states. Collecting and categorizing the mass of data as the body lies dormant. She allows these sentient extensions of her self to carry on through intermission.

THE FIRST TIME I PERFORMED by Benjamin Niespodziany

April 7, 2019

The first time I performed in Russia was under the direction of the king. His daughter's best friend's wedding was held in a refurbished factory that once made statues of the great whirling dervishes. I was the third piece of the matryoshka at the wedding, jumping out of a cloud once the song started to play. The fellow who fell after me broke his leg, and the rest of the event was a medical disaster. The king got drunk. We still got paid.

The first time I performed in Penn Station, an overweight man asked me to be his wife. He said he had a basement down the street that was just for me. My top hat grew full of spare change, and an eyeless woman snatched it. She hopped on the next train just as the doors closed and showed me her dead white eyes. The rats fast scurried up my shirt. I ate a napkin, swallowed a receipt. I slept on the floor and dreamed about warmth.

The first time I performed on a beach in Vietnam, I passed out. Woke with nightfall, covered in sunburns. The local entertainers told me to wrap up head to toe in clothing. They wore bandannas over their faces and asked for fast massages. I took off the next week and soaked in aloe vera. Plucked fruit I had never seen from a tree I could hardly reach. I bathed in a cave while the locals prayed about King Kong's promised return. A rude man in my canoe ate my shoes then offered me coffee. I laughed at a three-legged calf. I deserved it. The sunsets were so damn beautiful, less cheap than the noodles.

The first time I performed at the circus, I was a lower-level balancing act. Most of us were hungover, unsober, tip-toeing gracefully into our next sip. I slipped into a spin but caught myself and avoided disaster. No one but the director noticed my error. I was never asked back. As I left, I said farewell to the lion as it ate the trapeze artist's vibrator inside of his cage, a cage nicer than mine.

The first time I performed my last performance was earlier today. The sky was gray, vacant of both sunshine and stars. I was flawlessly processing the Macarena on a tight rope when the opera house caught fire. At first, everyone cheered, thinking it part of the show, but when the song went silent and I properly screamed atop the balance beam, the audience knew it was real. We are all outside now, wrapped in firefighter blankets, watching the building burn, the ash dancing with the already damp sky. It felt like the end of a black and white movie but with fewer cigarettes. I put in my resignation and waited for the curtain to close.

LITTLE SISTER, WHY HAVEN’T WE HEARD FROM YOU? by Timothy Boudreau

April 4, 2019

We remember the shy teenager who visited aunts and uncles with a novel and a piece of knitting. The adult in an over-sized sweater, huddled in a corner over a cup of tea.

Though separated by ten years we had similar interests and for a time considered ourselves creative people.

We always meant to collaborate. What happened?

Especially now I feel you may have insight to offer. Wisdom from a place unknown to the rest of us.

Thus enclosed find a few ideas. Feel free to alter them in any way. Merge your memories. Melt your vision over mine like caramel over an apple.

Our story about a brother and sister. Begin as children, the brother thirteen, the sister three, sitting in his lap with a book. Enchanted castles, blue cheerful moons, talking animals, silver stars shining. His eyes on the page, her head tilted to watch him as he reads.

A sense of trust. A sharing of words and imagination. Her then soft hand on his knee. Her shaking laughter, curls bouncing, when he mimics the animal sounds.

We must allow ourselves to make brave mistakes. There will be opportunities for lyricism. There should be a place for deep feeling.

Her heart. A condition she was born with. Poor circulation; its inefficiency. Later this might be a metaphor for other things.

The essay she writes in her single semester at UVM, detested by her sour coven of dormmates. Her brother tries first to bully her into believing it isn’t any good. We must tell it from her side. Stress its shimmering quietude. Its common sense and strength.

Sister, while you consider this know also that Uncle Fred and Aunt Josie miss you terribly. Mother awaits word. She sits near the phone while looking out the kitchen window. Lights a candle; listens for the wind.

In our story perhaps the brother finds for a time a female companion. Jittery, frail, tongue-tied with strangers, his hands fluttering birds—yet still. The family at a loss how to explain his good fortune. Sensitive to his sister’s loneliness, when he calls he tries not to sound giddy.

It would be realistic to write a scene after the brother’s companion breaks it off. The sister is called, a sobbing message left. He mangles and repeats the phrase, But I didn’t do anything wrong. The words likely unintelligible due to the sobbing, though he’ll never know if his sister listens. Or if she does whether able to understand.

The sister calls some months later.

“I’m sorry but I can’t be there. Seeing Mom now makes me crazy. I have to get away.”

“Away” is a series of apartments in towns no further than an hour distant. “Away” is a bedroom to which she returns after work to read and knit, as a wind rattles the windows.

On long winter nights she masters a variety of stitches. Cabled, seed, herringbone. Waffled, cross, garter, farrow. Dreams of the undulating line formed by a succession of purls; knit stitches in mounded V’s.

Little Sister, as you read these understand we’re trying everything. Mother’s idea to spend time in your favorite places. At the Reading Room in the Prescott Library; on the bench next to the birdbath; along the winding path through mother’s birches where we try not to imagine you as a fallen leaf fading into the forest floor.

The sense of dislocation, a misplacing of years, when the older brother at last visits one of her apartments. After not having seen or spoken to her. She has called because she needs money. Her building is dark, shabby; the apartment cramped. Around the living room saucers with crumbs and saucy smears. Empty wine bottles under an end table with cracked legs.

“I’m working again.”

“I’m glad to hear.”

She asks, “Are you still at the office?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still hate it?”

He spends at most an hour. The sister is experiencing various ailments and takes miscellaneous prescriptions. She wears several sweaters. Her hair is gray at the temples though she is twenty-eight. The brother’s hair entirely white.

“The blue and white pills are for my heart. They regulate the pulse.”

“What are the yellow ones for?”

“Anxiety.”

Her skin a pellucid blue the paleness of water-reflected moonlight.

“Do they help?”

“No.”

Had we known your heart was as serious. We worried but didn’t know it was worse than suspected.

We swear we would’ve been there to put our arms around you.

Near the end of our story he runs into his sister at an outdoor event. She wears a paisley blouse and skirt; she is drunk, perhaps high. Hair short, wrists and shoulders tattooed, wearing sunglasses though rain threatens. Her fingers sketch intangible shapes in the air. She is with an older man with a cane, shawl and silver medallion. He is charming, in fact riveting. The brother knows at once that they are involved.

The man’s handshake is firm. “Ah, the brother. I’ve heard so much.”

After they part she watches her brother’s bent figure walk away. “Bye now. See you never.”

Little Sister, we wonder about your modes of communication. Mother’s clock that mysteriously stops and starts; inexplicable slamming doors; phenomena of other kinds. We want to believe these are signs.

We can’t be sure the extent of the powers you’ve grown into. We wonder by what hidden currents you’ll arrive, via what vivid strikes of multi-colored lightning. Some of us are afraid but we feel sure you’ll make the attempt.

No reason for our story to conclude with her body in bed, limbs splayed, eyelids frozen open, tongue visible between parted lips. But the family has read that approaching the final moment the dying sometimes experience an enveloping warmth and comfort. An immersion in an embracing light. Perhaps later the opportunity to reach out for those left behind. Little Sister, please don’t tell us we’ve heard it wrong.

GENTLY USED by Olivia Holbrook

April 3, 2019

I sit outside on the hard concrete, feeling the cold seep through the fabric against my thighs, then through my skin, then to my bones. I hold the mug in my hands, they’re shaking. The warmth feels like something distant, warming my palms, making them sweat, while the air numbs my knuckles. And fingers. I see the light in the clouds, reflecting off of something that only my dilated pupils can see. It’s morning. But we’re still here, and I’m still seeing the patterns in the sky that are telling my brain, “you just might not make it to that dentist appointment later, babygirl." He’s passed out on the couch inside. If I force my eyes away from the colors dancing in the sky and look through the glass, I can see his feet dangling off the end, his skin blending with the mahogany wood as my brain keeps the world melting and twisting. I turn back and try to stare up into the sun, trying to take in all of that blinding beautiful light with my eyes that are so black and so tired from seeing what isn’t really there.

We had dropped at midnight, the acrid taste seeping out from under my tongue. For some reason I had expected the paper to melt, I know paper doesn’t melt, but still my throat had been surprised as the little square, sapped of its chemicals, forced its way down. I look at my phone, nine fifty four am. It has been such a long night. I can feel every minute spent shivering, then curled up in bed, our bodies pressed together in the hope that somehow his skin against mine would force our muscles to relax, our jaws to unclench, the shivering to stop. I can feel those minutes like wrinkles embedded into my skin. I spent so much time looking at the skin. The transparent skin stretched tightly over the writhing, pulsing veins running along my palms, now safely hidden away against the hot ceramic inscribed with: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”.

I look down at my shoulder. I see the grittiness of my skin, a tell tale sign that I have been sweating, covering myself in salt and life and God it has been such a long night. My eyes, so tired of seeing, but forced open from the drugs still flowing through my brain, land upon lines. Thin white scars, relics from a time when I had not yet learned how to love myself through the pain.

I think of an old denim jacket, hanging up in a thrift store, the edges frayed, the blue, once dark and saturated with indigo dye, faded to something soft, and just a little patchy. The seams are puckering, curling the edges of the collar, from that time, or all of those times, that someone decided to throw it in the dryer rather than waiting for the thick fabric to air dry, telling themselves that it would just make the jacket softer, no harm done. The kind of jacket that makes you go: “wow, you sure have been loved” which really means: “wow, someone took shit care of you.”

I look down at my shoulder, covered in sweat, and hair, and little, smooth, white lines that cut through the pores, and I feel at once all of the hands that have kneaded their way into my skin down to my bones.

I think of thin brown hands with tapering fingers that reach down to a place untouched and push their way through the delicate pink skin all the way up to my chest where they hold on to my heart, only a little bit too tightly, until they decide they don’t want to anymore. They squeeze before letting go, leaving fingerprints that stay embedded in the flesh to always remind me that these hands no longer want me. I think of fingers with skin like mine, just a little too pale to be beautiful, and nails covered with chipping black paint, running along my neck down to my chest with a gentleness that I have never felt in my life. These hands make me feel like porcelain. I think of hands known by sight but never by touch before now, before we are both a little bit broken. These hands hit me and I learn that it is not safe to have skin made of porcelain when so many hands don’t know how to hold on to something without breaking it. I think of hands that are golden and covered in an ashy layer of chalk or salt. These hands are wide and strong and dig into the skin that I have turned into clay in the hope that it will not break again. They leave white fingerprints wherever they grab at me, trying to pull me closer without letting me get closer and I see that having skin like clay will only leave me shaped into something by hands that are not my own and I think that this might be worse than breaking.

I am the denim jacket, worn and faded and stretched by too many hands. My body, like all bodies, is used, not in the “you only used me for my body, you asshole” type of way, but in the way that makes old denim jackets so much more comfortable than new ones. I laugh as I look at the mug in my hands. How silly to suggest we could ever do anything in the bodies we are given other than to try to find ourselves.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? by Josh Olsen

April 2, 2019

Instead of buying a new costume for Kelso, our 7-year-old Aussie/Collie mix, we repurposed an easy one from years before, and strapped a small rubber jockey to his harness. All of the puppy parents at the doggy daycare costume party kept referring to Kelso as a jockey, although technically he was the horse in the horse and jockey relationship, but still I failed to correct them, not wanting to be the asshole who insists the green guy with the bolts in his neck is actually “Frankenstein’s Monster,” not Frankenstein. There were no fewer than three dogs dressed like Wonder Woman, and one as Robin (Batman’s young ward). Diego the Chihuahua was a piñata, Nigel the Corgi was a sushi roll, and Gladys the Leonberger, who was only 8 months old and already nearing 100 pounds, required no costume. The party was professionally catered. We ate sliders, potato salad, hand cut potato chips, and Chicago style hot dogs, and I discreetly shared my scraps with Kelso. There was not one but two live DJs, both of them dressed in flashy evening clubwear - one with a silver fedora - and they switched tracks as each dog was called to the stage. For Manny the Miniature Poodle, who was dressed like Beetlejuice and accompanied by his mother, who was either dressed like Winona Ryder’s character or just an aging goth, the DJ played “Jump in the Line” by Harry Belafonte. For Goose the Australian Shepherd, who was dressed like a werewolf, they played “Werewolves of London.” And when the DJ couldn’t find a suitable track to match the dog/costume combination, they played “Who Let the Dogs Out,” the innocuous Baja Men hit. The costume contest was judged by three local “celebrities,” one of which was the owner of a bakery (for humans), who wore a full Scooby-Doo costume. Most of the contest entrants won a prize, and even those who didn’t, such as Kelso, received a complimentary bag of treats. From start to finish, the entire event was little more than two hours long, and being the grand soiree that it was, almost no one shat on the floor.

SHARP PAIN by Andrew Ciaccio

March 31, 2019

You can get by just fine being dull. You can actually do very well for yourself.

My husband was an accountant in suburban Oklahoma at an office above an Applebee’s. He made six figures and drank from a coffee mug with Mount Rushmore engraved on it. He did this every day for 20-some years. Then on a snowy Tuesday, standing at the microwave in his windswept khakis, watching his leftover casserole go round-and-round, he lost his edge. Out the window, kids skated on a makeshift ice rink in the strip mall parking lot. The casserole boiled over then exploded as he walked out of the building, leaving the dead hum of fluorescents behind.

I was in the kitchen chopping onions for goulash when he walked in and took the knife out of my hand. He threw it in a 50-gallon black trash bag where it clanked against the other serrated knives already at the bottom. He moved down the granite counter, throwing in a butcher knife and paring knife. “Anything sharp has to go,” he said tossing in a peeler. I sat down at the table with tears in my eyes. “Damn onions!” he shouted back, disappearing into the garage with the bag slung over his shoulder.

He emptied the fishing hooks from his tackle box. He tossed in drill bits, needle nose pliers and a putty knife from his workbench. He dismantled the lawn mower and bagged the blades. Then up the stairs to my office. He riffled through my desk, took out a pair of scissors and emptied the stapler. He examined two pencils, threw the sharpest one in. He moved through dressers and drawers, shelves and crawl spaces. When he came to the last closet at the end of the hallway, he stopped. I watched the blood drain from his face like he’d been cut lengthwise. Out of a plastic bin, he brought up a pair of little pink ice skates. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The blades went out of focus as the sharp realization of what was really lost came clear.

IDROT by Levi Rumata

March 28, 2019

[ WALL LIFE ]

In the new curved shapes to come, how we’d imagined the arrival at a monument – something we’d rehearsed many times in anticipation of a disillusionment we’d known then only as some vague, signless desire – it was not as we could have guessed. There weren’t accompanying gestures or sightings of ectoplasm at the old cement factory. It turns out that, for much of our searching, it had been around. Like a landscape pulling apart stretched seethrough thin, so much so we were passing right with it. Screenprinting. On the house that still had its xmas lites up, we noticed how the bulbs that had for two seasons been flashing closed faulty lengths of its strand into a nitely eyesore was signaling just fine now. You were saying how you’d crashed your dad’s car and how it was no big deal. It’s been years. And so there was plenty of time to get to know the inside of the monument, standing in the same spot. Timeshare. There had been furniture. We’d hauled the furniture out to the curb. We went a while without furniture and then eventually in increments we’d accumulated other furniture. New and different furniture from the furniture we’d hauled to the curb, but not so different that it wasn’t furniture. And all this time we’d covered up our nakedness with cloth.

[ CIRCLE ]

At the identification olympics our source says he’s pioneered backward modular projection. There have, he says, been offers from sponsors. Patrons they used to be called. Grants as well they say sometimes. Something done presumably to mutual benefit. An agreement to enter into that form of social engineering, the business of presenting new linkages. Strategically. Gracefully imprinting an action with the flourish of signature. One’s mark at once removal and a making real. When you cut out a piece of wall to make a door you’ve created both the passage and the door itself. A hoof is half ground. An idea is born and dies if it can’t get its jigsaw wet enough with what’s at hand. Institutional codes. But at the other end there’s the quota of inner bridges. I live, says our source, above the reptile shop on Division Street, and some mornings I like to wake up early and buy flowers at the little place next door. I take them back upstairs to my apartment and I burn them to keep warm.

[ COMMUNION ]

Is this where I sign up for enlightenment? asked the false orphan. All around him the other patrons of the tavern glared. They knew who his father was and they liked him. He was nothing like his father. Unlike his father he’d fathered no children. Even in strange places, places he’d never been, like this one, the townsfolk seemed to know. Word travelled as fast, at least, as he did. Finally he’d arrived at the exact place, now, that he wasn’t, and as such felt should be able to sleep the sleep of a destroyed god. He makes his way over to an open table in the middle of the room amid the rising murmurs. He takes from his rucksack the sack of dead batteries he uses as a pillow. In his condition, there’s the cheapest thing on the menu and then there’s how much he’ll pay for it.

[ LOCUS ]

A basement or a garage is no place for modesty. The best decisions are left out in the street the way you might remove your shoes in a home with nice rugs. Even the consciousness of choice as such, the casual wielding of one’s sword to separate according to taste or inclination one thing from another. Even that demands forgetting. It hardly matters whether the space in question is under the house or adjacent to it. Fundamentally, it’s both, the prefixes of designation loosening their hold, slipping. Stripped to the root of being thrown, the arc describes our narrowing orbit. The resulting convergence sans intention is what gives birth to the room. It’s base age, and also it’s garment.

[ EXHIBITION ]

Our sciences were on display. Laid out across the gymnasium in a great tangle, its hallways and staircases indifferent to where they deadended. We give the order to seal up the cul-de-sacs, domed underwater cities, a lock-in at the skating rink. On this particular screen you can observe live in real time the activities of those most distant from you. You provide commentary. In order to succeed, it needs to breed more of the same. And perhaps one day it will, all dressed up in ribbons and recited. For now we stack the chairs. We fold the tables. We polish up our silence and the lock on its box. We take off our clothes at the block party and meditate in the center of the parking lot. We stack the parking lots. We feed mistakes into the apparatus, prep the disquisition. The vivisected image nostalgic for the defiance of form.

RELATIONSHIP MONTAGE by Derek Andersen

March 25, 2019

Just as the conventionally attractive couple locks eyes, igniting a passion that burns with the fury of a thousand supernovas, “I’m a Believer” begins to play. / Cut to a long shot of the conventionally attractive couple skipping through an idyllic meadow, chuckling as they pursue a yellow butterfly. / Cut to the conventionally attractive woman massaging the man’s shoulders as he steps up to a carnival booth. / Cut to the conventionally attractive man ensnaring a bottle and bestowing a massive plush bear upon the woman. / Cut to a crane shot of the conventionally attractive couple breaking out in a meticulously choreographed dance routine in a public square, compelling onlookers to toss aside their belongings and join in. / Cut to the couple locking lips in the eye of a hurricane, too absorbed in one another to notice the debris swirling around them. / Cut to the conventionally attractive woman helping the man’s mother plant a row of tiger lilies in her garden. / Cut to the man toasting a beer with his father, who nods approvingly from his lawn chair. / Cut to a tracking shot of the conventionally attractive couple trailing a real estate agent through a cozy, cottage-style home. / Cut to the couple assuming the missionary position in their new bedroom. / Cut to the conventionally attractive man balanced atop a two-story ladder, hanging Christmas lights. The backing track skips as the conventionally attractive woman rocks the ladder, cackling maniacally. / Cut to a close-up of the man cautiously climbing down, pale-faced. / Cut to the conventionally attractive woman ambling into the man’s study. Even as she insistently kisses the back of his neck, he remains fixated on pinning a green butterfly. Zoom out and pan over his boundless menagerie—wings of magenta, indigo, chartreuse, fuchsia, etc.—trapped in eternal flight. / Cut to a reaction shot of the woman rolling her eyes and tossing a baby blue specimen to the floor. / Cut to the conventionally attractive couple holding hands atop a white tablecloth. The candlelight throws shadows into the woman’s cavernous eye sockets. / Cut to the man strolling to the bathroom, leaving his phone facedown on the table. / Cut to a closeup of the phone, faceup, as he returns to his seat. / Cut to the conventionally attractive couple locked in unremarkable coitus. / Cut to a Dutch angle shot of the conventionally attractive woman placing a box cutter in the man’s hand. Zoom in on her blissful expression as she guides the blade into the tender flesh of her ribcage. The backing vocals in “I’m a Believer” erupt into shrieks as a single drop of blood crashes onto their pristine, white bedsheets. / Cut to the conventionally attractive man gagging as his father carves the Thanksgiving turkey. Pan to the woman passed out, a pair of empty wine bottles before her. / Cut to a shadowy shot of the conventionally attractive man drawing the blinds of his study, plugging earbuds into his phone, and dipping his hand in Vaseline. / Cut to a low angle shot of the woman slamming her fist against the door, nostrils flaring. / Cut to a high angle shot of the man fumbling to wipe the Vaseline from his fingertips, frantic expression illuminated by his phone screen. / Cut to a Dutch angle shot of the conventionally attractive man, again, pressing the box cutter to the conventionally attractive woman’s ribcage. / Cut to a closeup of the woman grasping his trembling hand and hungrily forcing the blade deeper. A crimson rivulet oozes forth, gleaming in a flash of lightning. The backing track slows to half-speed, perverting the singer’s voice into a nightmarish baritone. / Cut to a closeup of the woman’s eyes rolling back into her skull like a euphoric junkie. Pan over the legion of purple scars, crisscrossing her abdomen. / Cut to the conventionally attractive man answering his phone and making a “whoa, slow down” hand gesture. / Cut to the man’s mother, on the other end of the line, breaking down into sobs. Zoom out over her garden, viciously choked out by the tiger lilies. Continue zooming out until the mother is a pixilated speck in a fiery orange jungle. / Cut to a long shot of the conventionally attractive man writing in the jaundiced glow of the moon. The wings of his specimens drench the room in mournful shadows. / Cut to a quick closeup of the phrases “something missing,” and “dying spark” penned in impeccable cursive. / Cut to a longer-lasting closeup of “what is broken is broken.” / Cut to the conventionally attractive woman slumbering in their bedroom. The man tiptoes into the shot. He sets the letter on her nightstand, looking her over. Her chest rises and falls in a delicate rhythm, expression lost in some blissful dreamscape. Grimacing, the man snatches the letter and tucks it back into his pocket. / Cut to a closeup of the woman shooting one eye open as he slinks out of the room. / Cut to the conventionally attractive man cinched in the woman’s embrace. Pan behind his back to reveal a pregnancy test clasped in the woman’s hand. / Cut to a nurse lathering gel on the woman’s stomach. Pan to the man and zoom in on his bloodless face, as the backing track’s vocals skip “I couldn’t leave her—I couldn’t leave her—I couldn’t leave her—” / Cut to the conventionally attractive man stumbling into the house late one night, visibly drunk. As he chucks leftovers into the microwave, he spots his office door ajar. / Cut to a high angle shot of the man collapsing to his knees. Pan over the man’s butterflies strewn across the office floor, mutilated beyond recognition. Keep panning to convey the sheer scale of the decimation—several carcasses have been decapitated, others de-winged, and a choice few stomped into a pulp. The man’s letter lies at the center of it all, ripped to shreds. “I’m a Believer” cuts off. / Now, in silence, cut to the man slamming his fists against the bathroom door. / Cut to the conventionally attractive woman slumped naked in the bathtub, legs spread. / Cut back to the man repeatedly throwing his shoulder into the door, until he collapses. / Cut to a closeup of the woman unraveling a coat hanger. / Cut back to a closeup of the man, unleashing an anguished shriek that causes the projector to sputter maniacally, machine-gunning an incomprehensible blur of frames. / Wait for a moment as white engulfs the screen—an immaculate, all-consuming white, like the first glimpse of daylight from the womb. / Pan across a wine-dark sea, catching faint glimmers of moonlight. / Continue panning until the beach comes into view. And then the crackling tongues of flame. / Zoom out slowly, deliberately over the flames. Give the viewer a sense of their breadth—their sprawling, football-field breadth. / Stop zooming when the conventionally attractive man and the conventionally attractive woman come into view on the left and right side of the flames, respectively. The woman’s stomach is flat. / Cut to a medium shot of the man, face contorted in a constipated grimace. Several other conventionally attractive couples line the frame behind him, doling out shoulder rubs, we’re-here-for-you’s, and other gestures of support. / Cut to a closeup of the woman, shot through the fire. Between red and orange undulations she can be seen gritting her teeth, the cords in her neck springing forth. A single tear trickles from her left eye as she charges forward. / Alternate between closeups of the conventionally attractive woman and man. In each of these shots, the woman grows more agonized, her shrieks of pain piercing the night like daggers, growing incrementally sharper. The man, meanwhile, becomes increasingly distraught, until the couples must band together and restrain him from dashing headlong into the flames. / Cut to a long shot of the conventionally attractive woman emerging before the conventionally attractive man, unscathed. The couples release the man from their grasp. He doesn’t say anything. He stares teary-eyed at the woman, nostrils oozing discharge, lower lip trembling like a child’s. The woman bows her head, awaiting his judgment. Let the shot marinate for several moments. / Pan across the faces of the crowd, each more spellbound than the last. / Cut back to that same long shot of the conventionally attractive man and woman. At last, the man rushes forward. The instant he embraces the woman, “I’m a Believer” comes crashing back through the speakers, undistorted, in a triumphant tidal wave. / Cut back to the crowd, hysterically applauding and hooting and whistling (with one man even pantomiming ass slapping). / Cut to a long shot of the sugary beach, the conquered flames, the jubilant crowd, the man hoisting the woman above his head and twirling her in a spasm of joy—capture it all. Hold that same long shot as fireworks crackle through the sky, their blue and yellow shrapnel cascading down in the shape of butterfly wings. / Roll the credits. / At the conclusion of the credits, cut back to the conventionally attractive man, still twirling the woman counterclockwise. / Zoom in on the woman’s back pocket, until a slender white tube comes into view. Draw into focus the words emblazoned on the tube: Lidocaine Topical Numbing Cream.

CHANCES by Conor McNamara

March 22, 2019

I’ve been exchanging letters with an inmate at Downstate Correctional Facility, the friend of a friend. In my letters I talk about my work, the woods and the hours. Even though I scoff at Lena's "attracting happiness" theories, I encourage my friend's friend to "keep his head up" and I assure him that he is loved. I decided that when I got laid off, I would drive to Fishkill, New York and visit him. Leaving my cellphone and wallet in a drab locker room that smells like puke, I cross the metal detector. And then I'm in the visitors’ center at table 5-3, waiting. A young man plays dominoes with his mother. Another eats M&M's with his girlfriend. In a play area for parents, a laminated sign taped to a kiddie slide reminds inmates to "clean up after your children." My friend's friend doesn't know that I'm coming. I feel anxious, but not really in a bad way. I'm just unsure of where to rest my eyes. I've made money and I've pawned X-Box games. I've gone months without a decent meal and Pablo and I have made ourselves sick at the Brazilian steakhouse on Lehigh Street. I’ve brushed up against a lot of strange that eventually became comfortable. But rarely have I felt so out of place. Do I look at the correctional officers? Will my gaze interrupt the few minutes of peace a young couple gets to spend in each other’s company? Should I just stare at the floor? My friend's friend walks past me. Neither of us knows what the other looks like. The correctional officers point him in my direction. He’s tall and moves with athletic grace. He tells me about his job working in the prison's kitchen. His cellmate doesn't shower. I buy him a soda and some boneless wings from a vending machine. I microwave the wings. He doesn't have the freedom to do that. On the floor, red electrical tape indicates to the inmates where they can walk and where they can't. He tells me about his daughter and how she’s learning the alphabet. When he talks to her on the phone, he plays dumb, stumbling over the order of letters so that she can correct him. I know once I leave the prison, I'll be rushed back into the grittiness of my own life. Loneliness broken up by sports podcasts, strip malls, half-read collections of poetry in my glove box, and laughs with Pablo. But at table 5-3, I'm humbled and I can't escape the overwhelming reality that my life is as good as any. I rest my eyes on my friend's friend. I do my best to listen. Suddenly our time is interrupted by an alarm. Visiting hours are over. We shake hands and hug, and I'm shuffled out of the visitors’ center with crying loved ones and loved ones hardened by years of this routine.

TIME PASSES FASTER AT SEA by Graham Irvin

March 21, 2019

In Korea everyone called my grandfather Pete because they didn’t know he was going to be a grandfather some day.

When my parents got married Pete punched me in the face. He wanted me to grow up tough.

My mom won’t forget the stories Pete told her about working radar in the belly of a battleship, seeing big green blips of terror appear and disappear. He told her they were bigger than the ship, by two or three times.

My mom says, ‘What could that have been?’

When there was a big green blip approaching on the radar Pete thought, ‘I’m dead.’ And when that big green blip disappeared Pete thought, ‘I’m not dead.’

When Pete was my grandfather he told me to never grab myself when I jump off a battleship. It’s the one sure thing he learned in the Navy.

He said, ‘It will rip your stuff right off.’

He asked me to paint his red weathervane like a confederate flag. I said, ‘I don’t feel like it.’ Then he died.

Pete’s battleship crossed the international date line in the Pacific Ocean every few weeks. He wrote in his diary, ‘There is no tomorrow.’

He wrote a poem about being the world’s loneliest soldier.

He wrote his girl Jen and asked if she was seeing any of the neighborhood men when he was out of town.

Jen was what people called my grandmother before they knew she was going to be a grandmother.

When Pete was in Japan he met a woman called Mitchi.

When he was in San Francisco he met a woman called Ilene.

When he was docked in Alaska he saw a seal carcass with blubber that moved like hair.

He wrote a story longhand about a girl who put a garden hose inside of herself before having sex with her brother. Then the girl had sex with her aunt. And then her brother and aunt at the same time. Pete bought a manual Underwood to type a second draft.

My grandfather lived in the hospital with cancer for a week. I sat in the backseat of my mom’s car and listened to Death Cab for Cutie on a portable CD player on the ride there.

When he died my grandmother gave me his old guitar. I learned to play Title and Registration and then gave up.

Pete played mandolin in a gospel band with his brother and sister. They even recorded a song for the radio once.

Then Pete joined the Navy.

Pete wrote in his diary, ‘Some days are Monday and other days are Tuesday.’

And, ‘Everything written is written in blood.’

When Marines from Busen left bags around the ship, Pete stole their guns and boots and sent them to his brother.

After kissing Ilene in San Francisco, Pete called Jen and asked, ‘Have you been faithful?’

And Jen said, ‘Yes.’

The next time he could afford a train to China Grove, they got married.

Pete wrote in his diary about their wedding night, ‘Four times.’

In Florida Pete and Jen took a canoe through the everglades. Alligators rocked their boat.

They had a kid and had a kid and had a kid and had a kid. One of them found Pete’s diary in a barn and wrote their name on a page that said, ‘Time passes faster at sea.’

Pete hid the diary until he died. His stomach turned into a garbage disposal and took him with it.

It was quick.

Jen lived forgetting until she forgot the final thing.

It was two days after my birthday. We celebrated with pulled pork and potato salad.

No one called her Jen.

No one cried about it.