July 2013 | back-issues, fiction
It felt like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, like I’d walked into a house that looked like mine, but belonged to someone else. She found me in the kitchen drinking a glass of water. Her eyes welled up and shone bright with what would soon form tears. I was in the right house, but at ten in the morning, I should’ve been somewhere else.
“Don’t cry,” I said.
“How much do we have?” She always cut to what mattered most, and in that minute, what mattered most was money. She didn’t care how I lost my job, she only cared that in that moment, I didn’t have one.
“We’ve got enough. Don’t worry, I’ll find something.” I didn’t know how long it would take and we both knew my words were empty, but I said them anyway.
“And then?” Her voice rose; she was angry, but not at me.
“And then I’ll find something,” I said, letting my tone match hers. “Where are the kids?”
She pointed toward the back yard.
I walked to the window, frosted with ice. Through a clear patch, I envied the innocence on the other side. “Where’s the camera?” I asked. “I want to save this.”
“We sold it. The last time.”
About a month later, I was working again and with my first check, I bought another camera. Nothing fancy, just something that saved scenes worth saving because some things are more important to save than money.
by Foster Trecost
Foster Trecost is from New Orleans, but he lives in Germany. His stories have appeared in Elimae, Corium and Metazen, among other places.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
This Door was locked by David Berkowitz
The pig tooth hangs from a vintage nail
the scissors cut and paste Tempe, Arizona
job for a cubicle cowboy
makes one detestable,
numbers never dialed
written on stained Post-It notes
she called me an asshole
and I call her dead
no cigarettes
plenty of blue pills
sweep the memories
under the bed
the sand warps under midnight pressure
unpaid bills
by the
people under the stairs
stare at a spider
watch a meteorite shower at 5 a.m.
don’t have a drink
you can’t afford it
go anyways
charge it
pay later
who fucking cares
do I have anything to live for anymore…
while contemplating,
I can’t answer that dad,
I can’t answer that mom,
I can’t answer that stranger in the gas station.
Me and the Darkness and 40oz’s of Freedom
I was walking home drunk down Moreland Avenue around five in the morning. I didn’t have any money for a cab and I had no one to call. I heard footsteps behind me for quite a while and looked back occasionally and saw someone walking behind me. I finally got paranoid enough that when I saw a small brick wall next to the sidewalk I was walking down I casually sat down and lit a cigarette hoping that the person behind me would walk past me and leave me the hell alone so I could walk in drunken inspired peace. An older black man approached me as I sat there on the small brick wall. He asked me how I was doing. I said “pretty good, but this fucking walk is killing me.” He didn’t say anything and just reached into his jacket and pulled out a scratched and faded gold wristwatch. He asked if I would give him five bucks for it. I said “what the fuck” and reached into my pants and pulled out a crisp five dollar bill and handed it to him. He said “hell yeah buddy, now I can get a drink” He handed me the watch and I put the scratched and faded gold watch on my right hand and finished stumbling home. I noticed the next day that it didn’t even work and it smelled funny.
Clean Bugs, Dirty Carpet
Me and the wife were sitting around the living room after we finished our TV dinners. It was the usual Hungry Man roast beef with mashed potatoes and corn with a brownie for desert. The wife was flipping through endless channels when she stopped upon the local cable access channel. They were flashing pictures of recent guys arrested for soliciting prostitutes in the county, trying to embarrass them or some shit. I had a mouth full of a potatoes and corn when I saw my drunken mug shot from last week flash across the TV screen.
Brett Stout is a 33-year-old writer and artist. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He writes while mainly hung-over on white lined paper in a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC. He published his first novel of prose and poetry entitled “Lab Rat Manifesto” in 2007.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
I drive a car
of irreplaceable parts
going south.
I crawl out of town at night,
a girl with a limp on my arm,
not knowing which belt
or hose is cracked,
leaking like a fistful
of fluids.
The headlights reach down
where the pavement
is supposed to be.
I have a feel for the tires
as they pitch
into the shoulder.
Then slowly guide them out and away
from the deeper ditch below,
hot with toxic runoff.
If a computer can get a virus,
then my car has asthma.
It gets winded at stoplights
like a chain smoker
who just finished sprinting uphill
to the hospital.
There is nothing my car needs
that isn’t lying
out somewhere on the dark road ahead,
at a gas station or rest stop
filled up with strangers like us.
We live one mile at a time
on boiled coffee and canned meat,
nursing overheated engine blocks
to speed our planned obsolescence.
by Greg Jensen
Greg Jensen has worked with homeless adults living with mental illness and addiction problems for the past seventeen years. In addition to being a poet, he is a dad, husband, and avid bicyclist who works on the Seattle’s original Skid Road.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Involution
In the early mornings
when the world sleeps
we stretch the thin membrane
hiding our sneering beast
from a world of ironed shirts.
Territorial claims at the bus stop.
An unaware prey (still sleeping),
is awoken by a hyenas’ mad stare.
The bus driver, half pig,
greets all and no one with grunts.
He is on schedule but actually never left the station.
The metro is buzzing:
everyone is collecting nectar
for the sacred weekends.
And when the grasshoppers awake
later in the day,
Ironed shirts rule once more.
Only the occasional ragged dogs
rummage through the garbage
in search after some spilled honey.
The Invisible Hand
Move along and continue to consume.
There´re still people over there to impress.
Never mind the elephant in the room.
New cars, jewelry, champagne and perfume –
Adopt the lifestyle and scent of success.
Move along and continue to consume.
There is no dusty scheme to exhume.
The wheels must turn to create progress.
Never mind the elephant in the room.
Dampen angst, down to a moan, and resume
The search for solace with food in excess.
Move along and continue to consume.
Limping charts and numbers reeking of gloom.
Suppress, forget and invent things to possess.
Never mind the elephant in the room.
There’s a dead emperor and no costume.
Calm down people, there´s no need for distress.
Move along and continue to consume.
Never mind the elephant in the room.
Mattias Renberg lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He has studied creative writing in both English and Swedish. He has previously been published in Over Yonder, an anthology by Rofous Press.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Two nights after the breakup
Drunk
I dial your number wrong
Suddenly, through fate and pulses
Twitches through air
I am connected to a stranger, you
Minus one number, or maybe two
Transverse.
Your name sloshes around, lulls out of my mouth
Half-cocked
Loose on my misshapen tongue
Even after hearing an older woman answer
I carry on talking to you.
She doesn’t hang up, doesn’t break our connection
And in her reply there is a furry, conspiring, lilt
She is fluent in slurry and beg
In sludge-mumbled anger and desperation
And all that ugly language that love
Reduces us to. Or is the booze?
I thought I heard her say
“don’t do it”
I stared at the phone, glowing apps
But her voice could have come from antiquity.
“don’t do it”
maybe she said
“sleep on it”
Maybe she told me to shut the fuck up
Then hung up
Sending that connection looping back
A rubber band, snapping,
Racing back to where it lived.
by Jennifer Ihasz
Jenn Ihasz. is 42 years old and recently went back to college to study History and English Literature.
