(two friends, both racked by insomnia over different issues (health and money), write one another. The elder and wealthier consoles the younger and less financially secure. Like a late night cheeseburger and five dollar shake without the Tarantino detour, but with extra special friendship sauce, American Recession Style.)

D,

I feel for you, and all young people. I’m becoming more liberal every day. My friends are very wealthy, right wing, hard core born againners and I’m honestly getting so I can’t stand to be around them. Why do people with more money than God feel the need to hammer on poor people? If I hear, “50% of the people pay no taxes” one more time I’m going to puke. I tell him it’s because fucking Wal-Mart doesn’t pay enough to live on, let alone pay taxes. This comes from a guy who brags to me that he pays no taxes. He’s so  rich he donated land he bought in San Diego in the sixties to the Latter Day Saints. Why? They pay him so much a month, tax free until he dies, and then the land is theirs. He has ranches, cotton farms, you name it, and had the balls to tell me, when I bitched about the lack of jobs for blue collar workers, “What do you mean? Wal-Mart is always hiring.”

Yes, I too worry about your son, and the sons and daughters of millions of people.

Blame the politicians. What would you do if you owned a major business and they were taxing you to death, but also giving you access to virtual slave labor in China? I blame politicians for selling us out.

When I got out of the navy in the sixties I got five jobs in one day and had to then pick what I wanted. My choices were steel mills, the rubber factories in Akron, Ohio. Union truck driving jobs etc, etc. A kid could get out of high school and make as much as his dad in the factory, with good wages and benefits. There are no more steel mills in Pittsburg, not one single tire is made in Akron and the union truck driving jobs are gone. Why? Don’t blame the greedy corporations. They are greedy, but they didn’t give other countries the lopsided trade agreements, the politicians did. And yes, of course the politicians were getting rich from lobbyist representing big business, but honest politicians would have never sold us out like we’ve been sold out.

I like Ron Paul too. However, as much as I hate abortion, I know in my heart it is a woman’s choice, not some religious right politician and his past menopause voters. I’m dead against any politician who hammers gays. I don’t give a rats ass what your sex life consists of. You can fuck the ducks on your farm for all I care. Why is our sexual preference a political issue in a free country?

Will you die poor? Maybe, but I personally think you are too much a go-getter to let that happen. As fucked up as our country is, I still think there is hope. And then I tell myself, “You are full of shit, M.  There ain’t no fucking jobs.” I go back to my little town in Ohio and am embarrassed I came from there, until I think about it. They aren’t a bunch of shabby trailer park rednecks because they want to be.

My older sister is poor as a church mouse, and so is my oldest brother. She’s 65 and still working. B is 70 and has to work. I tried to give both of them money and they got so mad I didn’t think they’d speak to me again. I now listen to my sister’s stories about how they all pull together. They share everything. She doesn’t want my condescending charity, she has real friends to share food and everything else with. The people on my street aren’t like that. I asked my rich neighbor lady if I could borrow her utility trailer. Not that I couldn’t afford to rent one, but because I needed it for an hour. She turned me down. Can you borrow a goddamn little trailer? I bet you can.

And I know it’s easy for me to talk this shit when I’m wealthy, but you really do have something that I don’t have and it’s precious.
As easy as it is for me to spew this bullshit out, I do have an idea what you think when you look at your son. What future does he have? I think that when I look at my grandkids. Somehow we have to pull our heads out of our asses and vote in some good people. More than anything we need term limits in the House and Senate. Think about that.
D, I’m sorry you are up in the middle fo the night worrying. But you do have something that outshines most people. You have a good head on your shoulders. I think you’ll be OK.
One more little story. When I divorced my wife I lost everything. I honestly believed I’d never own a house again. I had  I had a friend whose dad was a self made man. Very wealthy, very aloof. He came to me and said, “I know you think it’s the end of the world, but I know what you are made of. You will be OK, I know it.

I’m telling you the same thing.

M

Author Biography

M. Kline is a writer and a fighter living  in Texas.  He is retired and enjoys spending time with his grandchildren.

The trees outside are slow today.
God, are you there? It’s me, Walter.
You again? Yes, me again. Whaddaya want?

I’ve got a brand new song to show you,
though it probably won’t blow your mind.
So sing it already. Jesus. I’m on the home

stretch. Only a few more months of pills
& this brain fog. You’re welcome.
What did you do? I never asked for your help.

You’re stuck with me now. Well, unstick me.
I’m not playing your game. I give back
my ticket. I’m done. You entered

into a contract, Walter. That was the old me.
I doubt that’s valid anymore. Until the end
of time. You don’t run the atomic clock.

You swam against the tide but you drowned
in the sky. That makes sense to me now.

I’ve got a song for you too: Because my love
for you would break my heart in two,
if you should fall
into my arms
& tremble
like a flower.

What happened to originality? It was lost
when I became man. Not so easy, is it?
I don’t know how you people do it.

It’s a matter of resolve—a feeling
that everything will get better. The body,
this fleshy mess, repairs itself & houses
whatever it is that writes my songs.

You know I’m the ghost writer, don’t you?
No, you’re not. It is mankind
that sings. It’s why we gave ourselves
vocal chords, chatterbox. You wouldn’t

understand. Hey, I put this thing in motion
in a matter of days. Do you realize how quickly
I could take it all away? You should read

my latest pamphlet. That’s okay, old
friend. Things have changed. We built this
up & we’ll be the ones to tear it down.

But what about me? We’ll give you
a front row seat & then, once it’s gone,
it’s back to the infinite nothing for you.

Maybe I’ll see what Beelzebub’s up to.
Whatever you do, get ready.
You’ll wish that you had somebody
to sing your songs for you.

________________________

Walter Edgewater & The Tiny Cup 

(on the theme of coffee)

Frankly, gentlemen, I don’t care
about what business was like
when you were street vendors.
All I want is a place to sit, but not
atop rogue coats left by a ghost

or a robot. Everything belongs
to someone. No apparitions, only
partitions between the real

& the right, plate glass window
connected by sunlight—showing
insides, smudges, & tape stains.

Two girls sit next to me:
1. The one I love, wrote her
love poems on Valentine’s, & now,
President’s Day. 2. One wearing the same
green & black flannel shirt as me.

Hunched over the same way.
Hair tossed & messed the same way.
Chomping fingernails the same way.

Funny how these minute details
& modicum appearances are missed
by one & celebrated by another persona.

1. She’s got polka-dotted sneakers,
gray & white flannel. Before we were
seated, she raised her voice & needed to
leave immediately—people crashed
& bumped her like she wasn’t there.

Now seated in the sun, she’s kissed—
now, again. Still wearing sneakers.
3. Girl across table: please stop
picking your nose. By now, you should

know that I see everything, all
is filtered through me. To understand,
I throw myself into the depths.
Someday I’ll get out & we’ll see.
Until then I’m here & we’ll see.

_________

Walter Edgewater Sees a Nosaj Thing
(on the theme of coffee)

Is this what the kids are listening to
today—zombie music? Two guys
in overcoats, eyes like silver dollars,
(sand dollars, Papier Gamâché says), skulk
& swing arms, shoulders brandished, ready
to strike anyone willing to look. I’m sore
to the spine, back cracking & knees rigid.
In a shifty room I’m not moving,
not even the softest toe tap or head nod.
In between acts, tripping patrons flock
to doors, need to leave. They reach the back,
run into the rope blocking the path
from the pit, gaze around, befuddled.
This is the strangest thing they’ve ever seen.

Nosaj Thing finally takes the stage,
the shakers rush forward & nod knowingly
to the music of the skinny kid,
barely twenty, so busy, knob-twisting,
head-neck-shoulder dipping & ducking,
so busy up there, an art so intricate,
tempo controlled by twists of the wrists,
effortless, he only stops midair
to casually wipe sweat from his brow,
a movement figured into the equation,
all so mathematical, precise, every single
sound placed in its proper container.
He plays for ninety minutes straight
without even the slightest silence. I pay
attention as best I can with some guy
swaying in front of me, inching closer
& closer with every loop, no regard
for my space, until I’m purposely mouth-
breathing down his neck so he knows
I’m the strangest thing he’s ever seen.
He asks me to back up. I do not change.
I leave early, joints too tired to stand.

Today is a Sunday. I drink coffee
in my leopard print robe. Tomorrow,
I’ll listen to last night’s songs
through headphones at my desk
as I answer work emails.

_______________

Walter Edgewater Never Gives all the Heart
(on the theme of love)

I never give all the heart, for love
is bullshit, mostly. I leave
work early to find your sheets
left at last night’s laundromat, children
threatening as I enter. They’re right
where you left them—cold
in the dryer. You return home
again, but only to complain
about the heat—we can’t control it,
or our hearts. I hope you’re happy
when you’re not here, where others
appreciate you more, as you remind me.
I was happy, years ago, & I was
last night. A thin young woman
danced next to me—I leaned
against the stage—her hairy arm
brushed mine bare. She stared
at me, I thought, but really
she looked through to the stack
of empty beer cups left
by the night’s opening
act. She split them apart
& swung the little swill
& screamed, I’m just really thirsty!

All night I heard airborne signals
of love from another (You know
I love you, right?). I tried giving
everything once before—I failed.
Tonight I sloppily tuck you in
after you chastise me for stealing
the blankets last night, as I do
each night, while I sleep & you lie
awake. Everything is sometimes
lovely & a brief, dreamy, kind
delight (the latter a word used
so often to describe me)—sometimes.
I have lost before
& I will lose again.
You have lost me before
& you will lose me again.

_________________________

Walter Edgewater’s Reasons to Fall in Love with Walter Edgewater
(on the theme of love)

I have a job.

I am a locomotive.

My name is an anagram for “Wet, Wet, Large Dear.”

As a boy, the tip of my finger
was ground in the gears
of a mechanical chicken.

I have no will to live.

I live to serve my maker, wherever he is.

I see stars.

I drink shit coffee.

I skinned my foreskin
in a bicycle accident
as a child & didn’t
know if I should show
my friend because I didn’t know
if he or she was a he or a she.

I’m pretty okay at math.

I contemplate the philosophies
of everything in the universe.

I can do as many sit-ups
as Herschel Walker,
the former Dallas Cowboys star less famous
for his multiple personality disorder.

I’m a language poet.

I’ve never been to a dogfight.

…

Okay, I’ve been to one dogfight.

I lost my virginity on a kitchen floor

next to bowls of dog food.

Horses ride me.

I’m a champion
luchador.

I make my own cardboard.

Everything I buy is on sale.

I’m lonely.

I see the best minds of my generation
at the titty bar.

I’m really good at pissing
money away at the greyhound track.

I’m a member of a world-
wide poetry collective
based on chicken sandwiches.

I once stepped on a beehive
& when they swarmed on me,
I stung them.

Do I contradict myself?

I fall in love but never
out of it.

I’m a sailboat skipper.

I’m a coxcomb
but I just found out.

I planted America’s seed
in the sun.

I am the godhead
on fire.

I was born at a very early age.

I intend to live forever,
or die trying.

I can seal an envelope.

I am an actor
& this page is my stage.

I am a Renaissance man
on weekends in April & May
at the Oklahoma Renaissance
Festival in Muskogee, OK
at the Castle of Muskogee.

I get jokes.

I’ve been to the center
of the earth to search for the black sun
but found only rotten dinosaurs
(also known as oil, according to someone
who claims to have loved me once).

I objectify the human form.

I make a mean grilled cheese.

I make a gentle grilled cheese.

I make cheese.

Please, please, please—I’m in love
with the world, so help me
make it love me back.

I’m in love with you.

________________________

I Give Walter Edgewater a Haircut
(on the theme of childhood)

Walter has been here since childhood,
numbed & sleeping & threaded with cloth
to a three-post bed—the fourth yanked off

for whenever he thrashes or tries to
sail off. He’s fitted with a permanent sleep
mask, smeared with coal & threaded

with green & white electrical wires. I speak
into his ears while I cover my mouth
with the mesh of a window screen. First

I state the true meaning (here, “paper”)
& then what I will really say (here, “piper”).
Piper, Walter. Piper. He doesn’t know

anything but the boxy outlines of letters
projected onto the back of his sticky eyelids,
& the white text forging lines on black

expanse. I really mean “source” but say
“sauce.” Sauce, Walter. I’m feeding him
sleep intravenously & I stick patches

on his forehead & chest. All is hooked
with a nest of messy wires to the plasma
TV hanging rigid on the wall. I suppose you can say

he can only see what I tell him to imagine, indirectly.
Tonight, it’s time for a haircut in our old home-
town: the barbershop run by the local ex-con (Mike

the Butcher, as our grandmother called him).
He’s known for slicing little boys’ ears. Walter, gracious,
shows me the list of rules on the brown wall: “1. If your hair is long

we’re going to buzz it.” But wait—who’s that outside
in the darkened lot, next to the wooden wagon?
It’s her, last’s night final procession,

the woman with silken locks & no face. Why can’t you
give her a goddamned face, Walter? I’m saying face
& I MEAN IT. Face. Face. Fine.

Author Biography

Test Pattern

Sarah’s white dressing gown is hanging on the nails driven into the window sash. She likes to hang it over the window by the TV at night, since there is no curtain. This way she can turn on the television and watch in peace without the intrusion of headlights or moonlight or any other light, no noise of anything moving or breathing, just her and the soft blinkering picture, the gentle hum of the various machines in her home. She mentally takes inventory, the things that hum and make noise in this room, all of them powered on for some reason, as if it’s the noise which comforts: Sharp 50 inch screen TV, which had taken three men to get it into place; Sony DVD player; Panasonic VHS player; Sony Playstation, Nintendo Gamecube; a Hewlett Packard stack with 160 gigs of memory, a gig of RAM, and a flat-screen monitor currently displaying moving pictures of fish, though the picture changes every time her mailer checks the mail, usually every two minutes; two digital clocks, one of them a clock radio that Corey uses when he doesn’t feel like coming in the room to sleep with her, so he can wake up to Howard Stern. He used to wake up to the feel of her against him. The remote feels warm in her hand from where it’s been lodged against her thigh. She’s gone through the channels and not found anything. She’s paged through the on-demand screens full of soft-core porn and other films and found nothing. Corey’s CDs are boxed in alphabetically ordered milk crates against the wall, but there’s nothing there to listen to. She remembers movies she seen that she liked, the one about the falling building with Steve McQueen, Towering Inferno, that’s it. She remembers how cute OJ was in that movie as some guy named Harry Jernigan, as if any black man has ever had that name. There was another one, a really freaky one, where the TV came alive, turned into a lurid pair of lips and talked someone into it, talked the man into getting naked, talked him into delivering himself naked into her cathode embrace, where he was promptly eaten or something. This reminds her of the cute little blonde girl from Poltergeist, which somehow brings her to Showgirls, row upon row of bare-boobed dancers being tweaked and ogled by some men who purportedly employed them, how Corey had come out with her afterward shaking his long head of hair, how they’d made love in the car after laughing at the silliness, all that bare flesh and awkward pool-fucking exciting the loins in spite of its awful putrid badness and gratuitous everything. She remembers watching some hard stuff with Corey, how his eyes had been following the actor performing the blowjob, how he’d asked her to get a boob job after. She knew it was wrong, but she liked the way these women looked, and she knew he did, so why not, as it wasn’t hurting anyone. She sits in her bra and panties, thinks of stripping down the rest of the way for Corey before he opens the door. The thought excites her, and she reaches behind her back and unclasps the hooks, and the TV goes out with a pop and the house is dark. Sarah curses, walks over to the wall and wiggles the cable connection. It seems slightly loose so she turns it a few times, her hard breasts pushed against the warm screen of the TV and that TV-eater-of-people movie comes to mind again and she moves back, fumbles for the remote on the sofa, raps it against her hands, presses first the TV button then the cable, but it simply won’t turn on. Time passes. She can’t tell how much, as she doesn’t own a watch and the sim-card in her cell-phone has gone hay-wire. Corey’s working late tonight, Sarah guesses. If she could just see a clock and know what time it is, she could guess if he was driving past the multiplex or down the street, past the video store and the KFC.  The wind stirs her dressing gown and for a moment it looks just like a person hanging there in the air, like a ghost maybe, from the Scooby-Doo movie. She moves the dressing gown aside and looks out at the completely dark, dead street. For once there are no oncoming cars. The Tom Cruise film War of the Worlds will be out soon. She wonders what’s happened. If she reaches heaven someday she wonders if she’ll realize she’s there.

_______

The Feel of My Heart

The way Misty looks is like a rumor. How they begin as one thing and end up as another. We’re all mixed up. Couples fucking each other and no one’s supposed to know. She is dealing cards three at a time, then two, for euchre. Rick and Sandy, my partner for this game, are chasing their whisky with each other’s spit. I see something dart across the kitchen floor and Rick sees it too. He grabs his .22 and shoots it and Misty drops the last set of cards, a bead of blood showing on her outer arm. She slaps at it like a fly bite.

“Fuckhead.” she says. “You shot me.” She dabs at the blood with a bar napkin. “A little.”The rat is twitching in the middle of the floor, leaving a smear as it crawls for a hole.

“But I got the rat,” Rick says, and blows across the pistol barrel like a gunslinger, and Sandy kisses the side of his neck and tells him what a nice shot he is.

“Asshole.” I say it low, so he can’t hear me. Misty shakes her head at me quick-like.

“Something you want to say, Daniel?” Rick levels the .22 at my face, a warm black eye swimming in front of me. I shake my head and feel my guts go loose.

“Clubs are trump,” Misty says. “Yours to make.” She’s holding the napkin to her arm again. Her cards are down. Sandy looks at Rick before she says no.

“Clubs it is. I’ll go alone,” Rick says, and it’s my lead. I think of the sawed-off baseball bat under the front seat of my Crown Vic. I toss out the ace of spades. Misty’s not even paying attention; she’s hitting the pipe. I look around the table, it’s all slow motion now. I can see Rick’s fingers moving slightly, tapping the table, and there’s Misty large in my vision, her head tossed back, the tendons in her neck working.

Later that night I’ll be biting her, just a little, when Rick will knock the door down and demand I leave. It will end badly. Misty will get shot at again. There will be a struggle, and I’ll wake up with her washing my face of brain and gore from Rick.

Right now, though, it’s just the sound of my own breathing and Rick in the doorway, that tiny pistol waving in our faces, and Misty’s giggle, a current broken, a connection missed, the feel of my heart hard in my throat.

Author Biography

Rusty Barnes lives and writes in Revere MA. He co-founded Night Train  and oversees Fried Chicken and Coffee, a blogazine of rural and Appalachian interests. His latest collection of fiction is called Mostly Redneck. A recent collection of his poetry, Broke, can be found  here. 

The little boy and I were at his house. It was just after his birthday party (it was just him and me) and we were standing on the picnic table because we were about to stomp around on his cake because we thought it would be fun. His mama came out screaming, “What’re you two doin’?

We jumped down off that picnic table and he ran one way and I ran the other.

She had a stick in her hand and she was swinging it. It was a small branch, she called it a switch and I could see why cuz when she waved it, I heard it say, “Switch, switch.”

She was screaming and saying things I couldn’t understand. That little boy and I ran and ran and ran.

Then my mama came over the fence. I had never in my short life seen her do anything like that. My mama was big with comfy arms for resting your head on and she grunted whenever she stood, but she was over that fence.

She went at that little boy’s mama like my dog went after a squirrel.

That boy’s mama went down and limp like that squirrel. That fast. And she was like a sock on the ground.

My mama sat down on the bench. She sat and looked at the moon over the trees – a sliver in the midday sky. She sat like that breathing and breathing, like me when I play real hard, until she was normal again.

She talked quiet and calm the way she can when she wants to and the little boy and I went to her. I sat on her lap and the boy leaned on her leg with his head against that comfy arm.

She went to touching that little boy’s bruises and cuts. He had bruises everywhere. I had never once touched those bruises.

She talked slow like a river of honey to that little boy, “I used to talk to your mama. I thought we were the same about children, raising them up right with manners. With discipline.”

The little boy backed away from her then. Fear made his shoulders rise and his face go hard and sad.

Mama looked at him like she was the angel who picks people up when they die and takes them to heaven – sad for them cuz living is good.

She said, “But I didn’t mean that the way she did.”

“She means spankins’,” the boy said.

The boy and my mama kept looking at each other with a silence of understanding like birds and small things when they all know their places.

“I didn’t know your mama had the devil whispering in her ear to put you in your place – he puts people in hell and that’s what your demon mama did.”

That little boy and I said, “Puuaa,” with our breath and then mama remembered to say, “God rest her soul.”

She picked me up off her lap and knelt down at the boy’s feet and I don’t know how, but it looked like she was gonna pray to him.

“Will she hurt me when she wakes up?”

“She’ll never wake up again,” mama said with her eyebrows thick and fallen down tree branchy.

That little boy smiled. He whooped and hollered like a little boy again.

My mama grunted and stood. “Now, it’s time for you two to go inside for awhile.”

She turned to the little boy and said, “I want you to call your daddy.”

The daddy came home and the little boy and I watched while he dug a big hole.

I never did see that little boy again.

Somebody else moved into the house.

The boy grew up, as we all did. He sent my mama letters. Photos. No return address.

“We don’t want any connections, you know.” That’s what mama said about that.

On his birthday, every year till I was grown, my mama made a big cake and we danced in it in our bare feet.

______

Writer’s Block and The Imaginary Phone Call
on the theme of Love

I say, “I’m writing a book about you and mom and I.”

“Uh-huh.”

My brother isn’t one to talk to fill the air. Well, yea, he is, what’m I saying. He totally is.

So he fills the air with his words. His rage. His…well, I’ll let him tell you.

Not that it matters, but you’re almost always wrong. And you went to college and got your head messed with – liberalized. You haven’t ever been to war so you don’t know anything about life and death. You’ve never pulled the trigger. You’ve killed, but abortion’s not the same and you know it. The wife already hates you and if you say anything bad about her, we’ll sue you. And I’d be careful cuz some of her relatives are mean as the day is long (and I mean that in a good way) and they’ll find you. Or your daughter. You should think of Emma. What’s she gonna think of what you have to say about yourself. You can’t tell her about abortion cuz then she’ll have one. You can’t tell her about your boyfriend in high school cuz then she’ll have sex. And my kids. What’ll happen to them if people find out they’re related to you – could cost them. We don’t live in a place where it’s ok to talk like you do, telling people shameful things and being ashamed of your ancestors and telling history wrong. We just can’t say things like that. And you know about our cousin, but you don’t know how he’s hurt our uncle – how he went to Vietnam and then had to raise a gay son – do you know what that was like. No, of course you don’t and you don’t spank. Your kid’s gonna grow up cussing and acting like she can do anything she wants and how’s that gonna work out for her. You know she’s a girl, right? And how’s your husband John gonna feel when he knows what you did and what you were like and he’s gonna feel so cheated.

And you never had a son either while we’re talking.

You don’t have anything to write about anyway. I don’t know why anyone should listen to you.

If you write anything about me, I will sue you.

Yea, so…

Give Emma my love. Tell John hello.

Author Biography

Jenny Forrester was the 2011 winner of the Richard Hugo House New Works Competition contest and the runner up in Indiana Review’s 1/2K prize. Find out more about her writing at Trailer Trash Writing on Facebook.

Vuluture - Holly Hinkle on Dancing About Architecture

Spiked Fence
(enough rope)

Survival. We talked of little else.

In a book, you read how to jump a spiked fence

so you could camp in a church corridor.

You told me how you scaled it twice a day,

sometimes more, having spent the last

of your money on good rope.

I would give up everything to walk beside you.

Traffic’s taillights cast red in our hair,

our packs rising off the down of our jackets.

I wouldn’t last. I know.

I listen to the black and neon rush

of street noise through the phone.

__________

Topanga Canyon Road
(love)

In the cold pressed, gray light of the basement,

where you discovered the photo album from 1910, the green hurricane lamp,

the great iron-banded trunk you wanted to drag up for me,

I find you packed to leave the boardwalk.

Wet tarmac smell. Black as the night is long.

The road is folded down inside the trunk,

we can open the heavy lid together.

I will help clothe you in that hard, moonlit coat.

__________

Venice Beach
(love)

My sister was at work and I was away that early spring,

when our brother packed one bag for the streets.

The first night: steady rain and his drawing paper wrinkled.

It was cold. I don’t think he ate. My stomach empty that week.

I dreamt my sister and I were a part of the day he left,

of saying goodbye to him on the outskirts of Venice Beach.

From there we could see the boardwalk, smell its salt

and perfumed oils, dyed cotton and clove cigarettes.

We were not there the day he left. It is a loneliness,

knowing that he always walked on after we stopped

at the front steps of home. No memory of when he followed us inside.

He walked down a road we could not follow,

that tore like a frail map. The pieces turned into leaves.

Author and Artist Biography

Holly Hinkle has been creating collage and mixed-media artwork since 2008. With found objects and small antiques as a backdrop, she is always thinking about ways she might create exceptional beauty from unrefined objects that once had a very simple purpose. Her poetry has appeared in Poems and Plays and The Arsenic Lobster. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Beginning this month, she is Arts Editor for Unshod Quills.

you said:

you cannot be a good artist
you don’t promote
self awareness or change

i was lying down
on one side of the couch
& i rolled over to the
other side:

are you happy?

Author Biography

Frank Reardon is from Boston. He has a full length collection of poetry called Interstate Chokehold from Neo Poiesis Press, and his next, The Nirvana Haymaker, is due in 2012.

AS LIGHT FAINTED

Mom sold a cow in a vicinal village; hence she looks out for it whenever driving past a herd of cattle. She never could discern the cow yet, so it hurts her. Sure she wouldn’t stop a bus by a pasture to look for her dear cow now, when so much time passed, though she still hopes that it would recognize the master. However, what for should she stop a regular bus there?

… I said that I wasn’t against doing shopping with her, why should I, and it was the only truth that I allowed myself that time. Shopping is ever a good chance for making choice, there is no compelling.  She was looking for a gift to her friend Natasha, in spite that she keenly tried garments on herself.

For some reason she had almost no make-up and wore somber clothes. Or was it a make-up attracting little attention, one could never tell that. Still there was little color about her, except a red gym bag in her hand. What for had she called me and made a date: to inspect me, to look into an old mirror, a turbid one?Опоздание

After a little delay she had swiftly showed up at a bus station then. I was aware she would come without fail, no doubt, but I was taken aback when she cropped up. I didn’t give her a smack on the cheek, as if we hadn’t lived together several years ago. Five years ago. Then I had singled out her for dim light in her grey eyes, those turned into green while looking into them closely.

And again she made complaints against a chilly day, she felt cold as ever, as it had been with her previously. I had to break invisible ice and offered my hand, just to make her warm. I was so rash to wring her hand that it made her utter a scream: oh, you broke my nail!  Her shriek in a loud voice in a near-empty bleak hall proved to be so natural. The same way she would cry out unconsciously when in bed with me once. I mused if she was crying out similarly when she was with her husband then.

However, could we consider our meeting a date? If only I could be driving up a sumptuous car with an armful of flowers to take her to a restaurant! Maybe all the years she has been expecting it: fancied to drive with her man to a grand restaurant! It meant – with me; that’s why she had called me possibly. And I just took her to a cafe to have coffee. Like students.

It hadn’t occurred to me to turn up with a bouquet of five roses then, reckoning the years passed. Well, in so much time she might appeared right for the forfeited cry that struck me, it burst out so easily as if had been prepared well beforehand.

In addition she said that she turned out to be a good housewife, regularly baking pasty. I couldn’t imagine her making jam in summer or pickling cucumbers for winter. Yes, when with me she did her best to turn a dinner into a feast, and I had nothing against it, but I never knew when I’d be back in the evening. And I never had desire to warm up a dish, even mouth-watering one.

I didn’t tell her much at the meeting. I didn’t say that I was ever glad to her calls, and I knew her voice right away. For some reason I didn’t tell her that. And she was eager to hear from me that she was still young, and attractive, and seducing. Who could confirm it but me?

I could have told her that she hadn’t changed much if she was after that. But I didn’t utter it; I didn’t meet happiness in her eyes. The light fainted, that’s why I hadn’t recognized her in a moment, and it was enough for her to see that.

Afterwards I had a dream as if I had failed to identify her at the bus station, and I startled in my bed. On the other hand, was it a bad dream?

…Driving back I watched three girls in my bus, they were friends, students, going home to my town. One had wonderful black eyes and a shade of a smile I never got completely. Another wasn’t so sweet, she wore stylish glasses and some deep thought seemed to be concealed behind. At a terminal station a young man was waiting for them, just by himself. He picked the third girl, I had paid no attention. She had been sleeping all the time while travelling, and she had a drowsy look. Like a cow. And he took her home.

Still and all, I love natural flowers, somewhat faded…

Author Biography

Mr. Valery Petrovskiy is a journalist and short story writer from Russia.
Не is an English Department graduate at Chuvash State University, Cheboksary, graduated in journalism at VKSch Higher School, Moscow. He has been writing prose since 2005.  His writing has been published in English in Australia and the United States in The Scrambler, Rusty Typer, BRICKrethoric, NAP Magazine, Literary Burlesque, The Other Room, Curbside Quotidian, DANSE MACABRE, WidowMoon Press, PRIME MINCER, Apocrypha and Abstractions, The Legendary, The Fringe, Skive and Going Down Swinging magazines.

on a rare evening not yet shot dead
my own whispered pacing fades across
the carpet through the lush echoes of
a vinyl caress to witness
another crossed out calendar box
on the kitchen wall,
a snake-line of black Sharpie
trailing behind

crumpled papers scatter and run low on heart
as somewhere in the walls symphonic voices from
old Berlin crush the soul of another son
of the silent age

too often, watering plants in the moonlight
feels like any other opaque lie
and fingers tremble over spilled ink,
inflamed pages, idiot remorse;
I can’t stand another sound
is all I hear in my rotten ears
and the last grain of time finally slips away
to reveal
the three hands of the clock gliding
in and out of life
in and out of sight
and in the heavy blink of your silken eyes
I realize I am finally tired
and I crawl to the waiting bed like
a dog into the hole where
he buried his bone
to sleep the good sleep I’ve
heard rumors of through all these silent ages

__________

Strawberry Fields Forever
(on childhood)

their house was made of brick
and the strawberries grew
in their fields like gasoline wildfire

the fields surrounded
the house on all sides, and they
went right up to the house,
built about a century
ago by strawberry farmers
now maintained by an elderly
strawberry farmer, his wife
who stared down from
the second story
window of that brick
house, and the farmer’s grown
son, who walked
around with some uncertain
handicap of the body
and mind

I picked as fast as I could
when the farmer or his
slower son spoke to my mother
or to other nearby pickers
or when the old woman
stared down
from
her window tower
watching us

but when they
were all gone
I ate berries fresh
from the dirt

no one needed
to wash those berries

they were stymied
with bugs often
enough, and were small,
but they were real
and they were raw
and juicy in the summer
sun
and I recall the sweat
of that sun falling
down on us
as we picked up
our full baskets (my
stomach also full)
and walked to the porch
of the brick house

the farmer’s son always
wore overalls, blue
jean overalls with dirt
scuffed around his
knees and ankles,
and he’d talk kindly to my
mother in a slow stilted cadence
as if he were reciting to a class
of students who might
mock him, but
we never mocked him

I knew he was just a strawberry
farmer’s son, and even then
as a child I realized
that being one was better than being
like most other men I saw in the world
—with or without the handicap

and sometimes the old
farmer was there, too

sitting on his porch
tired and talkative and
older than any man I had
ever seen in my life
and they’d take our few
dollars and we would
walk back to our car,
load the car, drive away

maybe we’d be back later
that month, or that summer,
sometimes we never
went at all
many of those summers
went by, the absent
summers, and I am glad
I have not been back since
the age of eleven
or twelve

I don’t want to see how
the old woman no
longer watched from her
window tower
or how the old man no
longer sat on his
porch in the sunlight
and I don’t want to see how
the farmer’s grown son
dealt with the banks or the funeral
homes or the land investors
or the neighbors or the
nurses at the hospital
or the whole world
crashing down
around him

I want to close my eyes
and look up from
the dirt, the rows of fire
engine red strawberries,
and see them there
all of them
and see my mother there
picking beside me
putting each strawberry into
a yellow bowl

put one
more strawberry
in my mouth;
never open my eyes
again

_________

The Night No One Went Home
(on childhood)

potshots from the gristmill
and away we go a’running

weedstalks tough like tire irons
thumping polecats skitter wild

in August, we dream of October
in October we dream of honor,
and we know a ghost is waiting

someone set fire to the gristmill
the summer after the shooting

the coupe still sits burnt out
amidst the wishing field of grain

the wind runs through that grain nightly
the moon watches with envy

children think they are alive
especially when they play dead

potshots strike the hollow oak
where we once thought of honey bees

and owl eyes in nighttime fevers;
the moon a great dying tilt-a-whirl

and this I promised to promise—
with a match left in my pocket,
I’ll wait for you come, Autumn
lest I burn it down alone

_____________________

as the sowing, the reaping
(on love)

fear oiled the mechanics of our love
and in the reproductive silence that followed, you opened
gifts a day early, wrapping falling to the floor
mingling with popcorn spilled from a paper bag
from which we each pulled greasy specks and chewed
in the quiet of October, red leaves stuck to the windowpane

the mistake too often made is giving small books
of poetry from unknown publishers from Portland
or Fort Collins or Montpellier or Louisville;
the first pages are fingered gently by each of you
a sense of wonder and worry thriving in the veins
the books are gone soon enough on trains and jets
never seen again, forgotten, unread, lost
always lamented over, wishing they formed a stack
in my study corner rather than a troubled mind

on most nights, those books were worth the trade,
other nights, though—not a page would I barter for a single
image of you against the dawn of that last day together,
pictures and pages in the fire of this heart’s eternal uncertainty;
curling black pages like their raven hair; gone gone

_______________

The Raped and the Loved
(on the theme of coffee)

the art gallery displayed photos of the raped
and the children they bore, hated, and one day
learned to love, women with long nimble weeping
fingers and toes, slender souls of nonpareil scar-tissue
that writhed and sang in a dirt-floor celebration
of militant reinvention, spring-loaded renunciation,
and the most unkind joy the godless world of man
and his guns and his machetes has ever known

they served coffee and European beer and someone ranted
midwest polemics and another of economic recoil, and many
a bitter word of oil companies retched across the room
as the ivory white smiles of the raped looked on,
their little reminders of a man’s murder-lust holding their hands
or sitting on their laps, or standing beside them, trying to help
carry the burden of the repellent world on their shoulders as the most
stunning blue light caressed the African skies behind them,
nothing at all like the disemboweled orange din hovering over our
American sprawl, where the machetes are dull, the smiles are
numb, and the raped and loved go equally unnoticed

Author Biography

James H Duncan is a New York native and is the editor of Hobo Camp Review, an online literary magazine that celebrates the traveling word. James has twice been nominated for the annual Best of the Net award and once for the Pushcart Prize for his poetry. He is the author of five collections of poetry and short stories and has appeared in dozens of print and online magazines around the world. He now resides in New York City where he works as a freelance writer and as a writer/editor at American Artist magazine, where he has published numerous articles on art history and contemporary realist painters. His website is at here.