July 2019 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
All the students are sitting on the floor, so are several teachers,
even the principal. The visiting poet is sitting on a chair.
There are perhaps a dozen students — silent, serious, though
they exchange occasional knowing glances and smiles.
The visiting poet, too, is silent. So are four or five teachers
and the principal – the room soundless, except for exhalations
and the recorded message that harried them into this small room.
The room is the principal’s office and every available inch of floor
is occupied by the eighteen people summarily herded by the principal
into his inner sanctum. For once, the visiting poet is voiceless,
no well rehearsed lines on his lips, though his eyes take everything in.
The pre-recorded monotony of dread booms everywhere via the school
intercom — into every classroom, gym, washroom, office, stairwell.
This is a school lock-down.
Get into a classroom,
clear the hallways, or leave
the premises immediately.
The principal knows this is just a drill: a post-Columbine reality
of departments of education. His school has failed to measure up
in a previous time-trial at emptying halls, hence this repeat drill.
Teachers and students know the score. They know about the ominous
SWAT unit sweeping the halls for deranged gunmen and other such
non-conformists. Only the visiting poet is uncertain, wondering whether
he may somehow have inadvertently set all this in motion the moment
he set foot inside the school and headed towards the main office.
The principal checks his wrist watch again, giving it a shake as if to hasten time. The bored teens shift and re-shift their lank shapes as only teens can.
The teachers relax, their day now blessed by an extended recess.
The visiting poet muses on imagery inherent in the word lock-down,
its currency in prison language. Lockout, lockup, lock step, lock-box,
lock jaw, lock, stock and barrel. His mind spins combinations.
He has already noted the principal locked the door behind him
before sitting on the floor. It’s the first time the visiting poet has been
confined in a principal’s office – he reflects on the irony: it has taken
him almost a lifetime to achieve this rare distinction. He also realizes
that choosing to sit where he has, his head is the only target visible
above the window line. The poet has again made himself vulnerable.
The intercom monotony ceases as abruptly as it began. The principal
stands, thanks everyone for co-operating and this seminar of the silent
disperses. The pulsing din of academia bursts to life from the ashes
and in the visiting poet’s head metaphors ricochet everywhere,
as he now attempts to emulate the springy step of his nubile hostess,
trailing her down the now-raucous hall to where they await his poems.
Glen Sorestad
Glen Sorestad is a well known Canadian poet from Saskatoon, who has published over twenty books of poems. His poems have appeared in over seventy anthologies and textbooks, in publications all over North America, in many other countries as well and have been translated into eight languages.
July 2019 | poetry
The Truth About Eternity
The happily ever after is the return to the disenchanted life. —Ruth Daniell
Check the refrigerator door,
the photos of your son at six, at ten,
graduating from high school,
gone, lost to the skirr of time,
of your wife before the pain set in—
the hikes, the ski trips, vacations
to lands with grapes and siestas,
yourself fifty pounds ago holding
a little boy on your lap, your arm
around a gorgeous woman with hair
the color of a midnight fairytale,
of Fred and Toots in Michigan standing
in front of the largest birch tree you’d
ever seen, cut down by Fred shortly
before time’s timber felled him and Toots,
of Dave Fick, your wife’s sailing instructor,
whose swim trunks slid south exposing sailors’
crack when he launched his boat from your dock,
and whose ashes now mix with sand and soot
in the depths of Walloon Lake,
of Art and Cee Culman, multimillionaires who spent
a summer laying tile in their kitchen only to realize
that what they’d learned was useless since they’d never
use those skills again before they died—and they didn’t—
of Bill Mackinen who taught you that no politician had
the right to define a “family” as a man, a woman, and
their children only—Bill who died watching the Tigers
route the Braves on his hospital TV, and
today, photos of Chuck Kinder, the best writing teacher
you ever had who, in the midst of criticizing a boring story
you’d written, fell into a raucous coughing spasm and,
once recovered, proclaimed, “that’s what happens
when you smoke seven joints in a row.”
Your refrigerator door gives the lie
to eternity—the door from whose surface
someone, someday, will remove your photos,
put them into a shoebox, and store them
on some disenchanted shelf.
The Truth About Conspiracies
What about those nitwits that won’t vaccinate
their kids against measles—the same screwballs
who criticize climate change deniers because
they denigrate science? Didn’t god invent jail cells
for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children?
What do you think happens when an
antivaccine ninny gets wheeled into
an emergency room gasping for breath
and holding her chest? Does she shout,
“Don’t touch me with that EKG!” Or,
“Keep that oxygen away from me!” Or,
“Don’t you dare take my blood!” No,
once in the ER, she becomes a big booster
of medical science. Just as there are no
atheists in foxholes, there aren’t many
antivaccine nutters in cardiac care units.
What about extended warranties?
A company has so little confidence
in its product that it sells you a warrantee
on top of the warrantee that already
comes with the oven, iron, refrigerator,
or the most shameful appliance of all—
the electric can opener. Isn’t a sign
of adulthood, of entrance into what Lacan
called the “Symbolic Order,” the ability
to operate a manual can opener? Doesn’t
that old-timey can opener allow us to assume
our place in Western Civilization? The truth
(and this poem is about the truth) is that
the company knows these gismos will last for years.
They play on our insecurity and incompetence: sell us
warrantees that make us pay twice as much for the widget
than it’s worth. Thank you P.T. Barnum!
Speaking of what lasts—every day I put cat poop
in the plastic bag my newspaper comes in
and it will stay in that plastic bag as long
as the plastic bag exists, which is forever.
Think of that—the only proof we have of eternity—
a plastic bag full of cat poop! Wait, there’s more—
I shave with the Gillette razor my father bought
in the thirties and used all through World War II.
Stainless steel doesn’t rust! The Gillette company
realized in the sixties that, if they kept making
this quality product, something that never needs
to be replaced, they’d go broke. So they turned to
the plastic disposables they make today that occupy
our landfills and compete for space in our oceans.
What about expiration dates? I get it with mayonnaise.
When green spores or brown splotches spoil its virginal
perfection, it’s time for the garbage bin. No problem there, but
everyone knows that salsa and Tobasco sauce never go bad.
They’re too hot to go bad, like my wife whose body may
be gnarled in places and is often wracked with pain,
but her essence, her bedrock goodness, her passionate
kindness and understanding will outlast any date etched
on a tombstone or printed on a death notice.
The Truth About Obituaries
The one time you absolutely must read
the obituary column and you can’t
because you’re dead! You will never read
what the amorphous “They” wrote about you.
And no fair writing your own obit. That’s cheating.
Talk about a conflict of interest!
The point of reading your obituary
is to see what others thought about you.
After all, as Sartre said in rebuke to Heidegger:
My death is not only not my ownmost possibility,
it isn’t my possibility at all. I’ll be dead!
No, my death, wrote Sartre, is some other
poor sod’s possibility (I’m paraphrasing here).
Someone other than me will discover my body—
maybe my sweet wife as she struggles to
find warmth in our bed only to discover
the cold hulk that was me; or some overworked
cop, called after a neighbor saw too many
newspapers bunched on my front porch;
or some luckless EMT who has to pry
my broken body out of twisted metal.
Will that final scribe highlight my kindness,
my fortitude in resisting the government as
a conscientious objector during Viet Nam?
Or will she focus on my disgust with academia
and the ever-dwindling psychoanalytic mirage;
my disappointments about growing up
in Cheyenne, Wyoming—a dusty, backward,
one-horse town that might as well have been
in the deep South—with an alcoholic father
and a mother who chose an alcoholic man?
Will she emphasize how ill-tempered I am
after my daily walk? How crabby I get
before dinner? Will she find some scandal
I’d forgotten or didn’t even know about?
As I rethink this now, it will be good
to be dead when my obit appears.
I’m with Sartre’s—let the other
deal with my demise.
Charlie Brice
Charlie Brice is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), and An Accident of Blood (2019), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Permafrost, The Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.
July 2019 | poetry
The opposite of anything is the thing itself— Say, a face or a body.
Say, lilacs blooming from within the barrel of a gun.
As it pertains to the living, say then: each day is a crash course in survival.
Say, under extreme conditions,
a mother may kill and / or abandon her young.
As such, say it possible at every baptism, we arrive as low-hanging fruit.
That we are as strange & as meek as thy neighbor. Say, especially, this means
what we can’t say otherwise: say— of guilt & love, only the smallest
child can explain the difference …
Say, then, you believe the sun burns as extremely as it hungers. That violence figures
as a mercy which yields great returns on a body.
Say then: I am worthy.
Say, this time, I will be more than the slow infinity of my name in God’s mouth.
That should night come, I will be given
proper burial. At the very least— say: one day,
a perfect animal will make a house from my bones.
Susan L. Leary
Susan L. Leary’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in such places as Posit Journal, The Christian Century, Heavy Feather Review, Arcturus (Chicago Review of Books), and Into the Void. She is both a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and her chapbook, This Girl, Your Disciple, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in August 2019. She teaches English Composition at the University of Miami (FL). Find her at www.susanlleary.com.
July 2019 | fiction
The mole traps haven’t sprung. The wishbone handles of grey metal stick up from the ground like tuning forks. If I’d caught, the handles would be angled wide apart – V for victory, or fuck off, depending which way you look. I seldom trap one, but it makes me look busy.
Another Sunday, another Sunday roast. A ceremonial carve up. Do you take these legs and breasts as your lawfully stuffed lunch? Soon she’ll start banging the saucepans on the hob and peeling vegetables. The needle will start after breakfast. Could be anything. How long to cook the meat is our Sunday family favourite. Last week I did the cooking.
“It’s running with blood,” she said and didn’t touch it.
We used to yell but it skidded out of control. Rattled the kids. A bit of pushing that’s all, a slammed door, a smashed plate.
Yesterday she said, “Don’t roll your eyes at me. You’re beginning to look like your father.”
I said, “Control your temper. You’re beginning to sound like your mother.”
My father’s got his anxiety. Her mother’s dead.
To find the mole runs I prod the grass with a screwdriver then dig round holes into them with a trowel. I set the traps on a hair-trigger and lower them in. Lay on a lid of turf, plug the gaps with dead leaves to stop daylight or draughts. The moles sense both. Noses like radar dishes.
“Mum says lunch is ready. Can you come and cut the meat.” Our youngest enjoys running errands for his mother. I follow him as he runs back up the path from the toolshed.
Chicken’s on the table. The sharpening steel, carving knife and fork laid out like an amputation.
“This bird doesn’t smell right,” I say.
“In what way?” she says.
“Smells like shit. Literally like shit. Excrement.” I prize apart its back end and bring out a smear of brown on the knife.
“Smell that,” I say.
“I can smell it from here.” She takes the carving fork from my hand, spears the meat and dumps it in the bin.
“Just roast potatoes and veg today. The chicken is shit,” she says to the kids.
Back outside a trap’s been sprung. I pull the dead animal from the earth, its neck broken, a lick of blood oozes from its mouth. I take the mole to the fence and spike its corpse onto the barbed wire. By morning all trace of it will be gone.
Steven John
Steven John’s writing has appeared in Riggwelter, Spelk, Fictive Dream, Cabinet of Heed, EllipsisZine, Ghost Parachute and Best Microfiction 2019. He’s won Bath Ad Hoc Fiction a record six times and has been nominated for BIFFY 2019. He lives in The Cotswolds, England. Steven is Fiction & Special Features Editor at www.newflashfictionreview.com @StevenJohnWrite www.stevenjohnwriter.com
July 2019 | poetry
Japan’s Revenge
Like a flotilla revenging World War Two
an army of Japanese KonMari acolytes
are assaulting the cluttered disorder
rampant in our consumer laden homes
Mari Kondo, their high Netflix priestess,
advocates testing possessions for sparks of joy
and if there are no sparks
they’re off to Goodwill
For many, Mari Kondo is the antidote
to an out of control modern life
and by following the KonMari method
your home becomes a sanctuary of order
Yet like a time-consuming sponge
order nurtures conventional thinking
and studies show randomness
can spark creative ideas
This repackaged Shintoism
would have castrated the creativity
of Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein,
and Steve Jobs who loved their messy desks
Somewhere on my desk are studies
linking messiness to creativity
but with so many paper piles
I am not sure where they are
Barbie Turns 60
Barbie you razor thin blonde
who mutilated so many body images
who worshipped consumption
of sports cars, fashions and dream houses
who dallied on and off
with Ken but never married
Of course, it’s easy to understand
the lack of long-term attraction
between the model “it” couple
Very photogenic, but missing
some major private parts
Now Barbie you have to realize
your frozen good looks
can’t last forever and
it’s time to face the reality
of hitting the big six o
and let some wrinkles show
and consider a plastic butt tuck
Soon Mattel will have to replace
your suburban dream house
with Barbie’s Assisted Living
No dream kitchen
just communal dining
No spacious rooms
just one room and
God Forbid a roommate
So, Barbie your lack of eros
may not have stimulated Ken
but capitalism will honor you
as the queen of consumption
who stimulated the economy
Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel Inc.
Sam Love
Sam Love lives in New Bern, N.C. which is as good a place as any to observe the drama that currently passes for Western Civilization. He has published and produced enough material in mass circulation media including Washingtonian and Smithsonian magazines that he has earned the right to be a footnote. After years of work with visual images and linear print he turned to poetry so people can make the movie in their head. His poems have been published in Kakalak, Slippery Elm, Voices on the Wind, The Lyricist, Flying South, Sleet and other publications. Eno published by Duke University has published six of his environmental poems and four of his poems have been featured on Poetry in Plain Sight posters throughout North Carolina. His latest poetry book, Cogitation, is available from Unsolicited Press. His illustrated children’s book My Little Plastic Bag is available in Spanish and English and has won numerous awards including a Nautilus Award. He is currently president of the New Bern local Poetry Group that organizes a monthly open mike.
