Tell Me, Tall Man

I was in line at a fast-food restaurant with which you are familiar, standing behind a software engineer who, like all software engineers, had a touch of the –tisms. He was tall, of course, neatly muscled, and odd, all of which was already apparent but became clearer when he turned to me, as if surprised to find me standing behind, and said,

I redesigned my points app so that it randomly chooses a food item from the menu within my points price range.

You must like variety, I replied.

Not really.

The person in front of him, who was ordering from this well-known menu ploddingly, as if she had never heard of fast food, asked time-consuming questions to the minor in the uniform, some of which the minor, helpful but baffled by this line of inquiry, passed on to the tired manager who expedited both dine-in and drive-thru lines.

If not for variety, then why adapt the app?

Because you get what you get, the tall man explained.

He turned back around and, as if studying the selections somehow mattered to him despite the app, resumed his prior gaping, over the head of the astonishing newbie, at the menu, which suddenly appeared, mounted over a Bunn and two soft-serve machines, as if it might fall from the wall and crush the harried manager and the uniformed minor.

You are entitled to what you ask for, I told the tall man, who turned at the waist and looked down at me another time.

You get what you get.

Because of the app, which you made!

Correct.

Therefore, you like variety.

I would not say that.

Then you like surprises.

No big surprises on this menu, he said.

Then you do this, why? Because you ascribe to the philosophy in the Rolling Stones song?

I would not say I am dissatisfied.

I mean the other song, the one with the children’s choir.

John Lennon’s X-mas song?

No, I mean…

You do not seem to comprehend that you get what you get.

Because you have asked for it, I insisted.

He turned back around to check the progress of the menu, which was irrelevant to him.

By redesigning the app to deliver unnecessary variety, I added, you are essentially getting what you want.

Previously, the tall man had turned at the waist to look down at me over his left shoulder. Now, as if alternating for sake of variety, he turned to look over his right.

The app randomizes my order.

There has never been a question about that, I replied. The question is why you have randomized the app.

Because I can, the tall man said. And because you get what you get.

####

At this point you interrupt me and ask why I started this story with the words “of course.”

What? I ask.

In your exposition, you remind me, you said “He is tall, of course.” Why “tall”?

“Was,” I correct you. I said “He was tall.”

 

Matt Wanat

Professor of English at Ohio University Lancaster, Matt Wanat is co-editor of Breaking Down Breaking Bad and The Films of Clint Eastwood. Wanat has published critical essays, encyclopedia articles, reviews, and book chapters on various authors and filmmakers. Wanat’s fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction publications are available or forthcoming in The Wayfarer, Coffin Bell, The Wax Paper, and Pennsylvania English. Wanat resides in rural southeastern Ohio.

Retcon

The day as white as snow reversed

The gash in the boy’s chin-flesh reknit

The starling sucks its song back into its head

 

The fire net door quiets to static nothing

The moth rises from dust toward the turncoat beacon

A spark flies away

 

Alto notes return to brass the bell replaced in its glass

And the phone calling from the next room cuts out

Like a false alarm the clock windmills counterclockwise

 

Days grow long

Father walks through the door with his back turned

In every direction the family waits for him to come home.

 

Nick Visconti

Nick Visconti is a writer living in Brooklyn with an artist and a cat. He plays softball most weekends.

Chatterbox

Bells clanging      clang clang,

crunching rocks      underneath these feet,

chirping      birds

chirping      crickets,

silence masks its own noise,      a white noise,

hostile      eggshell      cream colored-noise

 

There are       so many subjects

that are      Difficult to talk about.

 

Focus on the sunrise shining,      glinting off

diamond rings,      trespassing through windows,

windows of houses,      quiet, early, early like

the railroad workers,      the airline service desk,

screaming babies,      diner cooks

 

Different people      will find some subjects

more difficult to talk about      than others.

 

And our edges are      eventually eroded by the

onslaught of      unpredictable weather patterns

and we all eventually      disappear,

though we never entirely leave      our guises

behind,      our treasure troves six feet under

the ground and      thousands of feet above

 

All that I care about      is the memories.

 

Samantha Moya

Samantha Moya is a data specialist with a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Colorado Boulder. She does her own writing and arts on the side. Her work has been featured in Serotonin Poetry, The Raven Review, Epoch Press, Tension Literary, and The Poetry Question. She is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico and currently resides in Denver, Colorado with her husband and two dogs. She can be found at Twitter/X and Instagram @samanthalmoya.

When Was Takes Over Your Life

You mourn yesterday’s bare branches when

not a single cherry blossom was

on them. The silent neighbor who takes

slow walks, where is he? You can’t get over

their absence, how they settled into your

invisible calendar, tracked life

 

so you didn’t have to ponder life’s

unanswerable questions when

3:00 in the morning haunts and acts your

nag. There is no present, only was.

You don’t want to know this play is over

so decades of scenes come back, take

 

you on journeys the future would take

you on, if you believed in it. You guess life’s

mysteries have answered themselves over

time—Who are your loves? Your friends? When

your brother-in-law died young–wasn’t

that day the most tragic? A late baby–your

 

happiest? Done. You walk past the house your

mother lived in, relive all the outtakes

of the movie that starred only you, was

boys, tears, edge-of-your-seat drama, life

that was always about to happen when

the sun rose. She watched. And it’s over.

 

Even your father’s judgments are over.

That report card he frowned at, that boy you’re

still wild about, the career you’d start when

you got real, the money he’d say it takes

to survive in the world, make a full life.

You didn’t know all those strictures were

 

your spine. You Google old boyfriends, always

a bad idea. Most are dead and over

you. Actors alive during your whole life

slip away. Why do you care? But losing your

touchstones means finding new ones. That takes

an open heart. Living backwards started when?

 

 

Dreams are no better. They take over

where the day left off, flashing their childhood

pictures when your life was going to be.

 

Rosanne Singer

Rosanne Singer is a poet and memoirist living in Baltimore and just about to finish an MFA at the University of Baltimore. For 25 years, she was a teaching artist in the Maryland schools and also part of small arts teams working with wounded warriors and their families at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, and with pediatric patients at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, DC. Her recent poetry appears in Allium Journal and 1-70 Review, and her recent memoir appears in The Baltimore Fishbowl and Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine.

Claire Scott

Keeping Score

 

The score 983 to 735

he’s quite a bit ahead

(as you can see)

46 points for washing my car

52 for buying me flowers

minus 10 because slightly wilted

I lost 66 points when I called him fuck face

after he watched four hours of women’s

beach volleyball, focused on barely-there bikinis

and 358 when I dropped our tax return in the toilet

but wait, just in

579 points for fixing his phlegmatic computer

saving us a small fortune

I gloat and glee around the room

eternally grateful to You Tube

the god of Fixing All Things

I love this game

but the score suddenly shifts

I lose 937 points for flouncing & swaggering

I collapse on the sofa & swig straight gin

(lose 88 more points)

who cares

stupid ledger

stupid game

 

 

Cutting Onions

 

My husband is cutting an onion with a spoon,

an almost impossible task. I notice

there’s a lock on the drawer with knives,

the first drawer on the left, under the counter.

Is he slow-sliding into dementia? Our kids

 

are long gone, no need to hide knives, especially

since I just sharpened my Kyoku carving knife

to slice tonight’s roast chicken. What of the row

of wine bottles lined up like empty soldiers?

Did he pour out all that expensive chardonnay?

 

And where is the thick cotton clothes line

that just arrived from Amazon,

the god of Good Things? I watched

a YouTube video on how to make a clove hitch

that won’t come untied, even under the weight of wet sheets.

 

Is it time to call Dr. Campbell? Am I losing my husband

to a one-way disease? Could Aricept help?

What of coconut oil or Coral calcium

or maybe twenty jumping jacks a day?

The onion is reduced to a soggy goo.

 

My husband frowns and tosses it in the trash.

For sure a call to Dr. Campbell first thing in the morning.

Tonight I will drive across the Golden Gate Bridge

and gaze down at the currents of swirling water.

If only I could find my car keys.

 

 

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, and Healing Muse, among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.