July 2017 | fiction
I pulled open the small drawer below the wall phone and saw a point of silver sticking out beneath the mélange of business cards, a sticky pad, and a strip of lime green cloth.
Sucking in a sharp gasp of air, I said, “I never gave up hope I would find you. I just put you in the wrong drawer.”
I gazed at the simple – yet elegant – letter opener that had “Made in Germany” stamped at the end of the haft where it joined the handle. He used it most of his life. Then it was my turn to slice open envelopes.
To catch more of the knife’s glimmer, I drifted toward the window, cut by the certainty that I would never see light reflecting from his eyes again.
Fay L. Loomis
Fay L. Loomis, a nemophilist (haunter of the woods, one who loves the forest, its beauty, and its solitude), lives in upstate New York. An active member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, her poetry and prose have appeared in online and print publications, most recently in Peacock Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Watershed Review, and First Literary Review-East.
July 2017 | poetry
Scientists call it the measure of the disorder
or randomness in a system.
Too abstract?
Then reduce it to this: it’s hard,
very hard, to make things better
but it’s always possible to make them worse.
Thus relationships, children, companies, countries.
Entropy is the clock that forever
runs forward and down until it no longer
resembles a clock at all.
Meanwhile the love leaks out of marriages
one molecule at a time,
airlines beat passengers in their seats
and drag them screaming off the plane,
and we drop bombs on our enemies so big
they dwarf our own disorder, or so
we think, or would think, if thinking were something
still within our grasp.
I must make time in my desert of a day
to visit the grave of Robinson Jeffers and tell
his silent stone that our republic
no longer shines as it perishes
and entropy is the reason.
I’m sure that will comfort his departed shade,
long since dissipated into millions of strange shadows
by that other, more efficient entropy, death.
Kurt Luchs
Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Former People Journal, Into the Void, Minetta Review, Poydras Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, Otis Nebula, Sheila-Na-Gig, Right Hand Pointing, Roanoke Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Noctua Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Antiphon, among others. He founded the literary humor site TheBigJewel.com, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television (Politically Incorrect and the Late Late Show) and radio (American Comedy Network). In September 2017 Sagging Meniscus Press will publish his humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny).
July 2017 | poetry
Swimming Laps
crawl up 1 crawl down
2 up 3 down 4 up 5 how
many minutes how fast the heart
rate down 6 the second hand do-si-do-ing with the minute
hand of the big wall clock the beat of the rock-a-billy on
the boom box up 7 breaststroke down 8
up 9 down 10 flip turn up 11
backstroke down 12 butterfly up 13 down
14 sidestroke 15 16 how long? long enough
next crop of legs dangling swinging impatient on
the ledge, lanes a blur up down up down bathing caps goggles
you know/don’t know men women counting strokes times
laps minutes days (how many this week) (not enough) hot pink/
slate black FitBits blinking/sleeping pulses (up, down) calories in out…
You know nothing about the people in these bodies. Only
their swimsuits, sliding jumping climbing getting in/out. You say hi
to the red bikini. To the floral board shorts. You/they hustle to the showers,
to the lockers, to the hairdryers. Presto! Ms Bikini perfect in Givency suiting.
Spiked Prada’s. Mr. Board Shorts casual Armani all the way. The stay-at homes,
the techies, the mommy/daddies, the laid-offs, the bigwigs, the retirees – headed out
in their yogapants grungy sneakers /crocs, toting their Lululemon/Nike/no-
name duffel bags off to the parking lot. Remotes awakening their shiny Masaratis
their slightly dented Kias, their ‘50’s Corvette convertibles, lovingly restored.
Their Honda minivans moving forward backing carefully anonymously into the world.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Again.
Suffering, Medicalized (in the ER on a Friday night)
On a scale of 1 -10, where 1 is no pain and 10 is the worst you can imagine, how bad is your pain?
10.
How would you describe it? Check two:
Burning ☐
aching ☐
stabbing ☐
shooting ☐
lacerating ☐
piercing ☐
pounding ☐
radiating ☐
throbbing ☐
stinging ☐
crushing ☐
Two isn’t enough choices
Sorry, that’s all the computer gives you.
How is your mood? Remember, just check two:
happy ☐
unhappy ☐
angry ☐
miserable ☐
anxious ☐
terrified ☐
hopeless ☐
hopeful ☐
depressed ☐
suicidal ☐
Thank you. Take a seat in the waiting room, and fill out these other forms. The doctor will see you in order of the time of your arrival. Or maybe the nurse. Or maybe the intern. Someone, at any rate.
May I have your insurance card while you are working on the forms?
Oh – your card has expired. Come back when it has been corrected. The 800 number is on your old card. They open at 8 AM on Monday.
Goodbye, have a nice weekend.
Marian Kaplun Shapiro
Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988), a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). A Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often embeds the topics of peace and violence by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she is a five-time Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2012.
