Literary Orphans

Becoming a Vegetarian & 2 micro pieces
by Mark Stewart

Dreamspace_Reloaded_6_by_Denis_Olivier

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Becoming a Vegetarian

If the airplane smelled any stronger of hotdogs I would believe I’d gone to hell. If the windows were any smaller I would believe I would never see another ray of sunshine again. If the aisles were any closer I’m sure my knees would be inside my chest. Grabbing the air marshal’s gun was the wrong thing to do. Demanding the pilot jettison all hot dogs and hot dog related paraphernalia felt like the right thing to do but was obviously wrong. Screaming for an hour after they locked me in the bathroom was the right thing to do because at least now the cravings have subsided.

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Decorative Rug

“Get him off my rug,” was always the first thing. It was usually followed by, “No, no, no, no!” while she carried the dog by its armpits, held away from her body, a yellow spray of urine still shooting from him despite his confusion at suddenly being vertical. The dog would be cast outside and the rest of the family employed as a toxic spill clean up crew, scrubbing with brushes and suds at a stain that would never come out. After the dog’s untimely death, the rug was dry cleaned twice, but the evidence of his many victories, while faded, always remained. True to his vision, his territory was established, wrestled from the matriarch with terrible permanence. I often visited his grave and occasionally ate lunch there.

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Mourning Traffic

It was the twenty-sixth time I’d sinned in ten minutes. I didn’t want to, but the guy was begging me for it. Not in any meaningful way, nothing dramatic like the middle finger, just those small ways that kill the joy of your day one millimeter at a time. Going by millimeters, I was now officially eight miles past my joy. The next way station on the road he had so effortlessly started me traveling on was made up of chainsaws, shallow graves, and scandalous murder trials. So while I’d not yet committed any physical act, as the Catholics say, I’d sinned in my heart. I’d had the impulse. Twenty-six impulses. All of them deliciously rendered in my mind in ghastly detail. I wonder if people would cut you off less if there was a law that you were justifiably allowed to ram them with your car. Let’s say the consequences of being an ass in traffic netted you a 3% chance of a fatal collision. Would people still do it? Maybe if that one sin was more common I wouldn’t have twenty-six other sins weighing down any eventual upward momentum. Maybe I should change lanes.

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Mark Allyn Stewart teaches a variety of writing classes for Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center. He has a master’s degree in writing from Oklahoma City University and probably lives somewhere around there but there’s no way to be sure.

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–Art by Denis Olivier

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