April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Melissa didn’t know why she was surprised that you could see all the gum stuck to the parking lot. You could see it right through the clunky gray snow and ice drowned by exhaust fumes. Every frostless patch shone with a newer squashed piece of color against the old, worn black tar. She imagined future gum archaeologists studying the rise and fall of the Clear Valley Mall.
Ah yes. Here we have a fine specimen of Big League Chew. I’d say probably from around 1984 or 85. Hmm. Could be from a mall rat or arcade junkie. Oh, and it looks we could have a teeth whitener, circa 2012, over here.
She remembered giggling in school when the nuns got riled up about gum in any form, whether it was being chewed, stuck under desks, or shoved in notes. Gum took them under siege—it was everywhere.
Melissa felt a little overwhelmed when she thought about the things they were right about, but even more so about the things they got wrong, and in that brief few seconds, before she continued walking toward the mall entrance—when her eyes perused the vast parking lot wasteland filled with dirty snow and chewed up gum—she wondered if she really believed in anything.
—J.M. Breen
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
My center grows cold and heavy. In Nagasaki, the winter months move on slowly. With my cast iron heart planted firmly in my chest, I find that simple tasks have now become difficult: getting out of bed, grooming myself, getting ready for work. The heater has been on the fritz—that, or my Welsh roommate and I are simply too stupid to read the Japanese on the remote and can’t figure out how to turn it on. After fiddling with the remote for the millionth time, I set the thing down and forget about it. I crawl into the warmth of my comforter and futon mattress and wait for my heart to grow heavier.
—Daniel Clausen
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
The burgers sizzled on the griddle. Bun, lettuce, onions and ketchup off to the side. I glance at the ticket. Drop the fries into the famished Canola oil. Nine more orders are tugging at my grease-tipped sleeves. Bring it on. I’m in the zone, slinging meat and killing potatoes. Sweat leaking from my ball cap. A welcomed type of sweat. Perspiration that pays. Heals.
I walked into this burger joint three weeks ago. Broken. Groveling. Borrowed a pen from the cute counter girl with a nose ring. Filled out the application, adding a few small untruths to cover the gaps of unemployment. My hair was unruly, my beard unkempt. Clothes outsized and pilfered from a church bin, shoes battered from pounding ashpalt. Walking to soup kitchens, walking to forget. Told the manager a sad tale. Homeless, formerly addicted, just needed a break. Pleaded softly. He stared. His eyes measured me, my eyes returned the volley with an inaudible prayer. Shook my hand. Start Monday he told me.
I flip a couple of beef patties and pulled the fries out before the coroner had to be called. Grabbed the pickles. Wiped my forehead, eight more tickets needing my magic. I wrap the burgers snugly and smiled at nose ring girl. Hope was percolating again. I shuffle over to the griddle, people are hungry, so am I. Bring it on.
—Chris Milam
Chris Milam resides in Hamilton, Ohio. He’s a voracious reader and a lover of baseball. A flash story of his was recently published by The Molotov Cocktail.
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
She got a freaking tattoo! The nose piercing last year wasn’t enough. She had to get a Celtic arm band tattoo. She’s not even Irish.
I blame Janice for this—introducing liberal ideas into our home like some greenie on a mission. Still, when I told her, I expected her to be upset. I should have known better. “Everyone should be able to do whatever they want to their bodies,” she said. “It’s her body and her choice.”
Back in the old days we didn’t have choices. You either did what you were supposed to do, or you were put out of the house.
A freaking tattoo! My father would have used his belt. And I would have understood. Normal woman don’t get tattoos. They’re for biker chicks or women with weird hair.
“It’s my body, she said. “You don’t own me. I own me. It’s an expression of my rights.”
She’s got rights. She can vote, can’t she? Why does she need a freaking tattoo?
I blame Janice for this, introducing tofu and yoga into our home—the two goddamn things that have ruined this country. Now, mother and daughter go off yoga-ing together.
I wish I had a son. He would’ve introduced football, wrestling and NASCAR into the family. Good ol’ American-family sports. We could’ve gone bowling together. Not yoga-ing. We could’ve joined a league and worn those cool shirts with our names embroidered above the front pocket. We could’ve had a few beers together. We could’ve been a real family.
Instead we have greenies, tofu and freaking tattoos.
I blamed Janice for this. I stuck my finger in her face and shook it up and down. “Janice,” I said. “I’m not happy! Your mother has gotten herself a freaking tattoo and it’s your goddamn fault!”
—Gerard Bianco
Gerard Bianco is a playwright, author, jewelry designer, artist and filmmaker. he holds an MFA in Writing from Albertus Magnus College.
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Look at it this way. They forced you to wear a hair net. Because your locks were too long for the rusted chicken-fried-steak trailer, that grease-pit concession-stand prison uglifying the edge of the racetrack. As if the orangutan with rotted-out teeth on the other side of the counter, the dude standing there with chewing-tobacco drool, slobbering all over himself, drenched in day-old sweat, the dude on his fifth can of Stroh’s, hell bent for the grandstand with his skeletal meth-head girlfriend to watch modified cars drive around in a circle for two hours–that dude–like he would give a shit if one single hair from your head wound up in his chicken-fried steak sandwich. Look at it that way. They forced you to wear a hair net. They got what they deserved. They all got what they fucking deserved.
—Gary Singh
Gary Singh is an award-winning journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he has published hundreds of works including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. He is a sucker for anything that fogs the opposites of native and exotic, luxury and the gutter, academe and the street.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
They scare me. Give me blizzards but not a blue day with a ground of ice and a T-Rex bite to the air. She enters the kitchen in a white tank and short shorts. The slink of corn flakes into her bowl stings. The stillness gets me most of all: inescapable frost that digs the face when shoveling out a pickup bed or packing tools to fix some old fart’s frozen pipes. She has her mother’s skin, clear with dapples around the crest of her nose and tops of her shoulders, and my yellow teeth. We talk to each other (I don’t want to make it sound like we live in silence) but we don’t say much. Except for the storms. Like the prom night. At 2 when I woke to a broken bathroom mirror and her with fists bloody and an eye black: fists from the mirror, I never found out about the eye. But she cried on me that night. Mascara staining shoulders of my shirt a deep violet black. Her tears were torrents and I was there. She told me she hated me and she hated that mother was gone and I was there. She told me she loved me anyway and I was there. At 4 I made Denver omelets and some strong coffee. She skipped volleyball practice and told me jokes.
—Jenna giving you a ride?
—No.
—Bus?
—Yeah.
—It’s cold out.
—I know it.
—Susie, I could take you. Lemme get the truck warming.
—No.
She stands at the bottom of the driveway, balling fists inside her gloves because the fingers are too thin.
by Aaron Bauer
Aaron Bauer lives in Colorado and received his MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His work has recently appeared in Prism Review, Spillway, Superstition Review, and many other journals. Also, he has served as Editor for Permafrost and is a Contributing-Editor for PoemoftheWeek.org.
