Unshod Quills

On the theme of Amelia Earhart 

photo – DRG-
“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
Amelia Earhart

Five Questions For Amelia Earhart

Q. What is style?

A routine encompassing a wide variety of maneuvers. 

Q. What happened?

I was declared legally dead on January 5, 1939.

Q. What is your favorite poem?

Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose and Poetry by Howard Nemerov.
“They clearly flew instead of fell.” 

Q. What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?

The stars seemed near enough to touch and never before have I seen so many. I always believed the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, but I was sure of it that night.

Q. Have you been to heaven?

The angels look like flight instructors. 

photo: DRG –
“Women get more notoriety when they crash.”
Amelia Earhart

Dena Rash Guzman – Amelia Earhart –
“There are two kinds of stones, as everyone knows, one of which rolls..”

Author Biography

Dena is a poet and the editor of Unshod Quills. She works as managing director for Shanghai’s Hal Publishing. Her first book of poetry, “Chairman Mao Praises Me Good At Chat” is due from Dog On A Chain Press in 2012. www.denarashguzman.com

On the themes of  Amelia Earhart, slut, and conspiracies

Now There is the Circling

Now there is the circling.
The round edges of the rolling horizon
and the circling. The endless watch
until eyes see nothing and the ocean
becomes a featureless field.

Now there is the circling.
The instruments record nothing, not even
the circling. The radio calls go unanswered
until eyes see a white bird calling
and the wings are straightened to follow.

The windows are spun sugar. The wings gingerbread.
Amelia, the witch is blind and cannot guide your plane.

Now there is the circling.
Amelia removes a shoe and drops it into the sea.
Then she is all urgency, all hurry and flight.
Dropping her socks, her pants, her shirt. Her hat.
Her arm held a moment longer, she hesitates, looks over and down
and drops her goggles into the sea.

Circling, Amelia unfolds
and drops a sheet of newspaper into the sea.
And another. And more. Leaving an uncertain spiral
of flotsam, jetsam riding the waves until they sink, broken and lost.

Amelia wears a small gold ring, and when the paper is gone,
she drops it into the sea.
An unlikely pathway disappearing into the surf.
Her shoes, her dear hat.
Her ring. The papers. She follows them around
and down and into a final, perfect descent.
No photo finish. No joyful woodcutter waiting with open arms
for his lost children to return. No joyful cries.

Just a cry like a bird rising up
one long, clear call filling the cabin,
filling her mind like pressure.
Like remembered struggle against so much.

popular song

our bus stop was a miserable huddle
of teenagers who fucking knew
we had nothing in common
no solidarity, no rallying point
nothing

I stood  above the group
smoking, waiting to hear the
whine of the bus coming down the hill
made sure I got on last
exhaled smoke as I sat down

find your seat! the driver yelled
to be heard
the radio was louder
than my head and I made
a point of hating the song – whatever it was

I sat unmoved
even when the morning DJ played
the song I’d sung into
my hairbrush at the bathroom mirror
the night before

I let myself hate the girls who sat
three in a seat singing, bopping
and swinging their perfect hair to the beat
chewing gum and talking over their favorite song

I find I am Sitting

I sit in the front seat again to drive myself home.
fast lane

I hold your hand.
I’ve come a long way to be with you, to hold your hand.

I lower myself onto a cushion. I am as still as a fish eye.
I found a picture of you. Behind you, a mirror like a fish eye.

My feet are sore from standing.
My feet are so tired from standing.

Author Biography

Wendy G. Ellis lives in Lancaster County, PA. She is an editor at Unshod Quills. Her work has appeared in Fried Chicken And Coffee, Housefire, and The Montucky Review.

Three poems on the theme of Secret Life from April’s featured poet, Jane Gilday. 

DOVE IN THE GARDEN.

In the beginning was the Wah,
and it was the Wah,
and it was good.
And it begat the Diddy
which begat the Diddy Wah
which begat The Diddy Wah Ditty
And it was good. You could read
and dance to it at the same time.

And the Wah begat Joe and Jill.
And The Wah sayeth to them
“Mi Casa Es Su Casa and
Mi Garden Es Su Garden.
Stay as long as you like,
(try the peaches–they’re great)
It’s all rent-free and No Hidden Fees
But, if you choose to leave here
things will get hellish quick.
I guarantee you they will.
But it’s a free world
and I’ll love you kids anyway
no matter what stupidass
crap you get into.”

And Joe and Jill said unto The Wah:
“What’s The Catch?”

And so Joe and Jill left Wah’s Garden
with full bellies and big ideas.
They hopped onboard a dirigible and flew to Earth,
where they soon found themselves in Hellsborough, NJ
where they built a swell condo and opened a Gun Shop.

Next thing you know Joe and Jill had 5 sons:
Joo, Jess, Lammy, Bud & Dunno.

Joo went into banking with a sideline in Health Foods.

Jess became a hippie commune farmer.

Lammy pursued the Gun Trade, wove rugs and directed S & M films.

Bud became a cook and opened a chain of Wah’s Garden Franchise
Restaurants–eat in or take out.

Dunno invented Law and then voted himself King.
(he never did have much sense)

After all the boys were born, Joe and Jill had one daughter, Dove.
She was real pretty.

Being the only residents of Hellsborough, NJ,
which was the only town on earth, The Eweman family
(Eweman was Joe and Jill’s last name)
pretty much had to see a lot of each other.

And the boys, being boys, grew up and became Taller Boys
with hankerings for Some Loving.
And their sister Dove was the Only Game in town.
So they began their wooing of Dove.

Joo said “I got plenty money,
healthy food, will treat you like a queen,
but I’m the boss.”

Jess said “We won’t need money,
we’ll always eat well, I’ll never double cross you,
and did I mention I own a portable winery?
Oh, and I’m the boss. Gimme a kiss.”

Lammy said “You’re so beautiful
that I’ll wrap you in sheets, or else.
You’re so weak I’ll beat the weakness out of you.
You must scrub my floors to prove my love for you.
Oh, and I’m The Boss of all the other bosses,
Plus I have good hashish and you’ll star in my latest film
‘Pretty Lady In Dog Chains.’ ”

Bud said “None Of This Matters
But let’s Do It anyhow.
Does a Boss in the Wok hear one fist punching?
I’m the Boss, but what is a Boss but a Boss Of Nothing?”

Dunno said “I’ll make you First Lady
at least ’til you get old and ugly,
because I believe in Beauty.
And I’ve bribed all the other bosses–
Don’t listen to them–they’re nobodies.
Listen to me–I’m the Boss and have the
self-stamped badge to prove it, baby.”

Dove wasn’t all that thrilled by any of the boys’ sale pitches.

So she refused to marry any, but did date all of them, casually and
discretely. Each brother assumed he was the only apple of Dove’s eye. Many
bastards were born of these dates but everybody pretended not to notice.
Soon Hellsborough was not only the Only Town on Earth, it was the biggest.
Over 6 billion born and super-sizing daily.

Many moons passed. The original 5 sons of Joe and Jill were still around.
And they were pretty pissed, being by now plenty suspicious of each other
regarding Who Dove Loves, since there were a heck of a lot more people
floating around Hellsborough than their respective once-a-week Dove Love
Sessions could account for.

Each son was pretty dang sure that Dove mighta forgotten (or worse: never
understood to begin with) Who Was Boss. They began to tangle and bicker
amongst themselves.

Joo was tired of being beaten up so he built a big fence around his yard and
put up a sign: ‘Keep Out. Mess with me and you’ll be sorry.’ Then he
stocked-up on guns.

Jess said “Hey Joo, you and I are like brothers–oops, I mean we ARE
brothers–and what’s a little Dove-swapping among brothers? If anybody
messes with you they’re messing with me. Need any guns? I bought a bunch
from Lammy.”

Lammy said “Anybody not me is evil and must die, especially Joo and Jesse.
My guns are bigger than your guns plus I bought a buncha Guided Stones from
a Korean guy who Bud knows. Prepare to kiss my ass, losers.”

Bud said “Leave me the heck out of this, I’m opening 25 more Wah’s Garden
franchises this week. Each one has 250 Atomic Stun Guns mounted on its roof,
just in case of any trouble. I got enough on my mind. Plus all of you have
unpaid tabs. Pay up or I’ll foreclose on your houses, with one hand
clapping.”

Dunno said “I’m with all of you guys, you shifty-eyed backstabbers and
esteemed allies. I just wrote a new law that says you gotta do what I say OR
ELSE. Kiss my ass. Say, anybody wanna buy more guns?”

Pretty soon all five brothers got drunk and began shooting up Hellsborough.
The grocery store burnt down so food became scarce. The creekwater went foul
so people went thirsty. It was Non Stop No Fun. It was a real riot.

Dove was so tired of all of her brother-boyfriends’ bullshit. All five of
them were only good for one thing and parallel parking ain’t all that
important anyhow. So she did the best thing she could think of. She
telephoned Wah. Sang him her ditty. Asked if he could help out, stop all the
ruckus.

Wah was no dummy. He passed along Dove’s appeal to Mrs. Wah. Mrs. Wah passed
along Dove’s appeal to her mother-in-law, Wah’s Ma, upon whose kitchen wall
hung a cross-stitched sampler that read ‘Home Sweet Home’.

Wah’s Ma knew what to do. Though the proof was hidden within the fine print
of thousands of mumbo-jumbo contracts and scrolls, Wah’s Ma, indeed, was the
actual, original & bona-fide Rightful Owner and Landlord of every atom on
Earth. It was Wah’s Ma who built the darn planet in the first place, at a
ceramics class she took at Lily Maes’ House Of Pottery.

Wah’s Ma got in her Ma Ship (accompanied by her staff–‘Gabriel Angelotti &
Sons, Inc, Odd Jobs, Established Day One’– who piloted her 144,000
economy-sized Celestial Escort craft) and flew to Earth, where she
double-parked in the skies above Hellsborough, which was now one bigass
5-Alarm fire, everybody hollering, shooting guns, and drinking Hi-Octane
Martinis, just because.

Wah’s Ma didn’t say anything to the folks below. No bullhorn from On High.
No decrees, ultimatums or pronouncements. She just opened the hatch on the
Ma Ships’s underside, revealing to all below Wah’s Ma’s favorite
problem-solving device: her Non Evil Eye.

It was just one large impossibly beautiful eye. It could only do two things.
It could look, and it could weep. And as the billion of troubled souls below
looked up at the Non Evil Eye, it wept. It wept one tear, but what a tear!

The tear gathered at the crease of The Eye, slowly let itself yield to
gravity, and then it fell. It fell slowly, like a feather. As it fell it
expanded until it filled the entire sky above Hellsborough. As it expanded
it turned into a torrent of rain, a rain so thick there was no gap between
drops. It looked like a huge ocean falliing from the sky, falling as slow as
a feather falls.

As it descended the people below responded in various ways.

Some bowed and prayed. Some shouted “It’s a trick, don’t look at it and it
will go away!” Others shouted ‘Bullshit’. Some hollered “Take me with you.”
Many took photos with their multi-purpose cell phones and sent them via
e-mail to their friends, along with messages like ‘LOL!!!’ and “wassup wid
this shit, homey?” Most acted as if nothing unusual was going on, and
proceeded to drive their Hummers to HelMart, where there was a swell ‘Final
Days! sale going on.

Some turned their weapons upwards and fired. The bullets and missiles
vaporized as soon as they hit the teardrop-that-was-now-a-

____________________________

TO FIND ELVIS YA GOTTA FIND GOD’S COUNTRY

to find elvis ya gotta find god’s country…..god’s country is 2-lane
highways with black & white signs identifying the state route,
the old national route, the county route and the local street name.

ya gotta find places where people work at hard labor jobs for a
living…where they understand the wonderful glamour of big hair and lotsa
make-up…where men wear bigass belt buckles under bigass beer bellies…where
there are diners with breakfast specials and a country music station can be
heard drifting from the kitchen at dawn along with the smell of home fries
and grits…where the churches have odd poetic names like “the solid rock
first-born church of the living god, sanctified”…..where there are large
indoor “farmer’s markets” often housed in old quonset-hut structures or
converted commercial poultry houses or old army barracks, wherein many small
merchants have little stalls and the smell of cold cuts and fried food
hovers….such places are often only open on weekends…where the sound of
screaming little kids, holding tight to the weary hands of a beleagured
19-year old mother with no man–that bastard took off–can be heard for the
sad and wonderful human music it is….where people are not so cut off from
their own souls that they can’t weep along with hank when he sings “i’m so
lonesome i could cry”….where if you tell someone you’ve bought a banjo
nobody rolls their eyes or says “hee haw” in sarcastic derision but instead
says “good for you” and “i’ve always right enjoyed the sound of a good banjo
myself”….where the only franchises to be found are mickey D’s, a wal-mart
and an amoco station….where there are Winn Dixie food markets and Dollar
General Stores…..where there are lots of bars and not one of them is named
“Ye Inn at Deacon’s Crossing”…..where bed and breakfasts are unknown but
“vacancy and free tv” motels painted flamingo pink are plentiful…..where
lots of people smoke tobacco because they can’t get morphine at the 7-11 at
3 am after their ex just called up drunk from illinois and made vague
threats…. where going to church is never a reason to think someone
unsophisticated and indeed where the concepts of sophistication or
unsophistication come to mind about as often as the importance of nouvelle
cuisine…..where black lace and nylon means saturday night bliss and sunday
morning regret…where  you might meet many women named Verna, Rachel
Louise, Hattie, Fern and Elvie…..and many men named Ibber, Orval, Harv and
Buddy Jr……where the 32nd-generation version of tommy james and the
shondells playing at the local nightclub is the biggest event in memory
although one of the local preachers plans a record-burning beforehand
outside the venue…where people talk slower and listen deeper….where
people call each other Darling regardless of age or gender…where dirty
words are serious business….where the mullet is king of Do’s….where
anybody can tell you where Orion is on a given evening….where grace is
said before dinner….where biscuits and gravy are the main course…where
the biggest house in town belongs to that prosperous federal official, the
postmaster….where, when you overhear a teenage girl imploring her grandma
to let her move to “the city,” she is referring to a town of 22,000 souls
thirteen miles away that you have never heard of.

find these places tangibly and you will find black velvet elvis and why he
mattered, deeply.

________________

NASCAR BIBLE CAMP

So junior was picking his boogers
and mommy got mad bout it and hollered
so daddy got mad and waved his fist
knocking over his beer cup
that made daddy madder so
he slapped junior
who fell off the bleachers
and all the people stood up to see
which got all the other people madder
cause they couldnt see the nascars no more
then we hadda go to first aid with junior
daddy felt bad so he bought us hot dogs
but his plastic money card didnt work
so mommy got mad and hollered
wheres all the money go you bastard
and daddy hollered you oughtta know
all them fancy things from wal mart bitch
then mommy started screaming
daddy said that’s it
but then the first aid man gave mommy a pill
and daddy said hows about one for me doc
then junior was all band aided okay
and we got in the car
then sister dropped her hot dog
daddy screamed this is new seat liners dammit you brats
then sister cried she hadda go to the bathroom
so we stopped at dairy queen
and mommy got everybody milk shake
and we got back in the car
it was a real pretty day
then the car in front was too slow
and hit the front of daddys bumper
daddy started screaming
mommy had a nosebleed from the glass
and daddy wanted to hit the old lady
whose car had hit us from driving too slow
until the cops came
they made daddy walk slow and breathe
into a bottle then gave daddy
a piece of paper and a warning
so we got back in the car
and daddy said those cop bastards
they almost as bad as you kids
then mommy started crying some more
and daddy said that’s it
no more nascar from now on
i’m going with the guys
and mommy said oh lord i hope so
i hadda go and marry you
i hope you and the damn guys get hit by a nascar
then daddy said oh we’ll see about that
then we kept driving in the car
and things got all quiet
except junior was crying
that was yesterday
and so far summer vacation has been nice
tomorrow i start bible camp
and junior hasta go back to the hospital
for tests even tho he aint in school yet
and daddys hollering money dont grow on trees
but anyhow tomorrow is bible camp.

________________________________

Author Biography

Jane Gilday was born in the northeast USA in the 1950s. Jane has lived in the Bucks County, PA area, since 1990, making a living through painting and her music. She is currently a member of the NYC-based band ‘Peter Stampfel’s Ether Frolic Mob.’ 

on the theme of secret life

SKYCLAD

He started with her eyes by accident, the first thing he imagined about her. They appeared alone just off his patio, steaming in the night air. Irises like ripe olives. The eyes jerked from side to side, as terrified as he was. She must have been in pain, her eyes naked and disembodied like that. They disappeared when he blinked.

He had wanted her since childhood, a lovelorn third-grader searching for her in every girl on the playground while the other boys wrestled in the dirt. Girls on the playground and girls in the dorms and girls in the grocery store and none of them were her except in parts: there were her eyebrows furrowed over a book, here were her knees peeking from under a skirt, over there were her feet in turquoise flip-flops.

He tried to think of the most logical way to begin, but before he could stop himself, her breasts came into the dark like fog, pale and moonlit. He went to them, reached for her left breast, his fingers curled around the back of it where her ribs and her heart should have been.

He began again, and again, for hours. Her thighs like twin pours of buttermilk shimmered in the dark then drifted away; her carnation lips, the bottom one thicker than the top, parted in a silent gasp and were gone. Her shoulders, her lower back, her calves curved like furled wings, everything coming and going by luminescent pieces in the
night. When the parts of her lingered long enough to touch, she was warm and insubstantial as bathwater.

Then, a few hours before dawn, she appeared, whole and naked, draped unconscious over his green plastic deck lounger. Her skin white like feathers, her hair black as pond water.

He took off his own clothes, his prick shrunken in the cold, and he moved her aside on the lounger and stretched out beside her. He lifted her wrist and rested her thin fingers on his thigh. He pushed his nose into her hair, which smelled like wet maple leaves, and he whispered to her that this would do for now.

——-

on the theme of secret life

THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN

Marshall:

He was wearing this long-sleeve shirt, like a business shirt, but it was unbuttoned over a t-shirt, something with a print but I didn’t see what, and the open shirt flapped around him as he fell so he looked like a newspaper someone had tossed over the railing.

I’m trying to remember what his face looked like. Before he hit, you know. But all I keep thinking about is that shirt. I kept expecting him to fold up into a plane, one of those complicated things we’re supposed to make in physics class and then fly out behind the Ag building to see whose will float the farthest. Wide wings and a short fuselage, hanging in the air forever. I guess he would have failed.

* * *

Nikki:

My back was turned. I was talking to Janice about this boy we’d seen downstairs the night before. He had blond hair—he wasn’t the one who jumped. That guy was, I don’t know, it was hard to tell when we saw him after, but he wasn’t blond.

By the time I turned around, everyone but Latisha and Colton and some kid I don’t know was leaning way over the railing. I leaned way over the railing, too, and saw him down there near the fountain. I thought that maybe his shirt was blood. We were ten floors up, so it was hard to tell anything but the dark shape around him.

I bet he was from a smaller school than ours, just here at the honors symposium because they had to meet their quota. I bet he didn’t fit in anywhere. I bet he crashed every party he ever went to.

* * *

Latisha:

I think that guy is the most selfish bastard I’ve ever known. I mean, I didn’t know him, but if I had, he’d be the most selfish. I’m kind of pissed anyone’s even talking about it. I don’t want to think about him, about why he jumped or why he did it indoors, about how sad his life might have been.

My life is sad sometimes too, but you don’t see me dive-bombing everyone else’s breakfast or ruining everyone else’s school trip.

I hope no one blames his parents or his teachers for not “seeing the signs” or whatever. And I keep thinking about the maids here; they’re going to have to clean up all that blood, they’re going to have nightmares about this for years. I mean, I probably will, too. We all will. And this jerk didn’t think of any of that. Or maybe he did and he figured his problems are more important than ours so he just jumped anyway. I mean, that’s just about the definition of evil, if you ask me.

* * *

Colton:

I’d seen him at Starbucks before he jumped, ordering some special sugar coffee with extra whipped cream or flavor shots or some shit like that. I think he was queer. No wonder he jumped. If I was queer I’d have jumped, too. But I’m not.

I’d be scared of the long drop, not because I’d be scared of jumping but because if you’re going to do something like that, it ought to be exhilarating, wind rushing through your arms and cars screeching to a halt just before you land. But indoors like this, with maids pushing carts between the rooms and some businessman about to fold his newspaper? I think he just wanted attention. I think he’s somewhere hoping I’m still thinking about him. And I am. And I don’t know what to do with that. It pisses me off so much I want to run away, I want to put my fist in a wall.

* * *

Janice:

My aunt Gabriela jumped in New York City when I was six years old. She was in the north tower and she called us to tell us she was on the hundred and first floor with no way down. A whole gang of people had thrown desks and chairs through the plate glass windows just to release the smoke and the fumes, just to get some air in there they could all breathe. That’s when she decided to jump. She said she’d been so scared, had been crying and screaming—on the speaker phone with my mom, her voice sounded raspy—but then that rush of cold morning air pushed her hair away from her face and the sky was so clean, so blue, and her lungs felt cold and she had this moment of clarity. Clear like the sky, she told my mom. We were all in the living room, our book bags on the floor. The TV was showing footage but none of us watched it—we were all watching my mom talk into the speaker phone. My mom was screaming and crying, just like my aunt Gabriela had been, but Gabriela kept telling my mom to calm down, that everything was okay. She’d seen the sunrise, she’d felt the wind under her arms, she felt so free, she felt so alive. “This is the way to end it,” she told my mom. “Not down there in the flames and the chaos. It’s hell in here. Out there is heaven.” And then she jumped.

I was the only one in my family who was glad she’d done it. I liked that she’d basically said fuck you to those bastards in the planes. But this kid? I don’t know what his problem was. I mean, how bad could his life have been? What problems did he think he had that were worse than dying in stairwell that felt like a furnace?

* * *

Bryan:

I know that he weighed 175 pounds. Dropping from the tenth-floor balcony, a kid like him—like me, I guess, since he was about my size—would fall at a rate of about sixty feet per second. That’s forty miles per hour. He took just under two seconds to hit the floor. I can’t imagine how he remained intact when he landed. Just bones and meat and blood. I would have expected him to burst.

I’m guessing he figured he would die, and that would be the end of it, and he wouldn’t be around to care whether he was still intact or not. But from what I’ve read, whether it’s science or religion, you linger. Maybe it’s the last electrical impulses shooting from the body into the brain, flashing across synapses. Or maybe it’s whatever spiritual essence is left of you, clinging to the body because it used to give you life. Either way, from what I’ve read, death can take hours.

I wonder how long he lingered down there, apologizing to the guy who threw up his eggs or giving the finger to all the gawkers and weepers. I wonder if he was still around when I walked through the lobby the next day, stepping around the Caution: Wet Floor signs and looking for signs of a blood stain in the tile.

If I had been the one who jumped, and he were the one standing there studying the floor for some sign I’d ever existed, I would have thanked him just for stopping by.

——-

on the theme of razor dance

CLEAVE

Everyone is kissing and cuddling and fucking and arguing and bearing children and buying property and splitting up and sharing children and selling property and they have no idea what any of it means. I had childhood blood oaths in the firs, the hush of my feet in fallen needles and the scent of earthworms on my fingers, the blood hot on my palms. When I was in middle school, Ron Lasseter cornered me in the boy’s room, all beef and knuckles, his lips like mating slugs and his teeth too big for his face, and he shoved me against the mirror so hard I came off the ground and ended up sitting in the sink. The seat of my pants was wet from the faucet. My face was wet with his spittle. He turned me loose with a fist in my gut, thought he’d caught me playing with myself—I was trying to get out my pocket knife—and called me a queer. Later I dug the Swiss army from my sock drawer and carved into my thigh, up high where no one would see. Another time, I cut four parallel gashes into my chest; on weekends at the lake, I told people I’d been attacked by a bobcat. At night I put the small folding blade against my tongue, wrapped the edge in wet meat. A nickel in my teeth, a battery on my tongue, silver in my veins rising quick through the skin. In my college job, amid the onions and the cool wet juice of tomatoes, the garlic and spiced sausage, I felt the sting when the meat slicer stuck and then slipped loose before I could move my hand, a thin wheel of blood—a sudden line of red on the tile wall—me rooting in the salami for the tip of my finger.

When my girlfriend Lena first saw the scars, I told her all my stories. But then she clawed my back in sex so hard I bled, I told her all the truth. She slipped out of bed and tiptoed naked into the kitchen, came back with a paring knife. I held out my arm but she turned my palm and pressed the handle into my fingers. Do me, she said. When I cut her I was blinded by a sliver of light, a white arc across my retina, and I had to close my eyes. When she cut me, I
peeled like fruit.

——-

on the theme of silent movie

CAMERA OBSCURA

When they left the theater they were already arguing. Matilda gestured with her handbag and it swung like a wrecking ball; Gerhardt waved his gloved hands violently in the air; Leo jabbed his folded umbrella like a sword with each point he thought he was making. The people they passed on the sidewalk parted around them and glared or shook their heads before closing again on the other side, but the trio argued loudly anyway, oblivious.

Matilda was insisting that when the film had ended on the shot in the woods, the camera angled upward into the trees, the director was indicating hope and happiness. “Look at all that sunlight,” she said. “Coming down in rays like that through the leaves? It was like a vision of heaven.”

“Exactly,” Gerhardt said. “That’s why it represents death. When do you see scenes like that except in graveyards?” He moved his hands over his head to indicate the leaves blowing, the sunlight falling in somber rays. He looked like a madman having a convulsive fit.

“I see it plenty,” Matilda said. “I see it now. Look over there across the street, you just look there in the park.” Her handbag swung on the end of her arm as she pointed, and she swayed with the weight of it. “See those trees? See the sunlight? Show me a graveyard.”

“I think you guys are missing the point,” Leo said. “This whole movie was about questions, about uncertainty. You think it would give all that up to end with something so definite as you’re talking about?”

“Of course!” Gerhardt said. “That’s why it’s an ending. It has to resolve things, it has to answer all those questions.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Matilda said. “There is no answer in death, in graveyards. The sunlight in the trees has to mean hope. It has to mean certainty.”

“You show me one thing, one thing in this life more certain than death.”

“Please, you two, I swear,” Leo said.

“Okay, fine,” Gerhardt said. “What uncertainty do you find in that ending?”

“I find no ending at all, for one thing.”

“Bah, no ending. Look, movies like this, they always have to mean something, and that meaning comes in the ending, and that final meaning is always in the form of a symbol.”

“Exactly,” Matilda said. “The bell in Hunchback of Notre Dame, or that icy river in Way Down East.”

“That wasn’t the final image,” Gerhardt said.

“Regardless, filmmakers work in images and images are symbols. Sunlight is hope.”

“Sunlight in the trees is death.”

“Okay,” Leo said, thrusting his umbrella so that Matilda caught her purse to her chest and Gerhardt stepped instinctively to the side. “Okay, you want a symbol? Why is the sunlight coming through the trees?” He jabbed upward where the sky was clouding over. “If we wanted hope, they would have shown us bright light. If we wanted
death, they would have shown us shadows. Instead, they showed us both. We get both in one image. There is no answer. Or,” and here Leo stabbed toward them with his umbrella again, “or, how about this? The leaves are obscuring the light, the trees are covering up our chance at illumination. So we remain in a state of ignorance, and we get no easy answers.”

Gerhardt and Matilda looked at him a moment, then they turned to each other. They looked back at Leo. Then Gerhardt threw one arm high in the air, pointed his index finger, and waved it in a spiral like an orchestra conductor or a magician.

“A ha!” he announced, then he whirled on Matilda so she clutched her purse tighter. “There, even he agrees! The trees are blocking out the light! Death, you see! Where’s your hope and happiness now?”

Matilda studied him a moment, looked to Leo, then dropped her purse heavily at her side. “You’re the one who’s hopeless,” she said. “And I’m hungry.” They walked on, arguing more quietly now that they were also looking for a small diner or café, and after a block they’d pulled several paces ahead, their argument getting dim as the afternoon light. Leo looked up at the sky wearily as the first few drops of rain started to fall.

——-

on the theme of David Lynch

DRINKING COFFEE WITH DAVID LYNCH

David: Hi there, how’re you doing?
Sam: Good. How are you doing?
David: I’m doing good. Yeah. Yeah, I’m doing good.
Sam: So, what’s going on?
David: Just, you know, working on some stuff.
Sam: Yeah? What’s that— What’s that you’re drinking?
David: Damn good coffee!
Sam: Ha! I always liked that character.
David: What character?
Sam: That cop, Kyle McLachlan, always drinking coffee and eating pie.
David: You’re a cop?
Sam: No. Twin Peaks.
David: Yeah, we’re a couple of mountaintops, the both of us.
Sam: I meant—
David: Coffee grows best in the mountains, you know. And coffee works best on the mind. It’s all connected.
Sam: Okay.
David: I’ll pour you another cup if you want.
Sam: I’m still working on mine.
David: This is my third.
Sam: Today?
David: Since I got here.
Sam: You must really like the coffee here.
David: I’m not here for the coffee. I just wanted to come here.
Sam: To Winkie’s?
David: This Winkie’s.
Sam: Okay, why this Winkie’s?
David: It’s kind of embarrassing.
Sam: Go ahead.
David: I had a dream about this place.
Sam: Oh, boy.
David: See what I mean?
Sam: Okay, so you had a dream about this place. Tell me.
David: A bunch of my friends were going to a party but when we got to the house it was locked. My friends decided to go in through a window on the second floor, because we’d brought a ladder with us, but when my friend Gerard got up there, the window wouldn’t open. There was a tree not far from the window and Gerard climbed the tree and started to rock it back and forth until he could kick the upstairs window in. But he couldn’t reach the window on his own, so I climbed the ladder to the roof and tossed Gerard a rope and tugged back on it like a slingshot. I was wearing a porcelain jester’s mask, with big eyes and high arched eyebrows and a tiny V-shaped grin. I pulled Gerard back and back and back and then let go, watched him sling back in the branches and shoot back toward the window. It took him three times with the tree whipping back and forth but he broke the window. Everyone cheered and moved the ladder closer to the window. Inside, somebody’s family was having dinner, and Barry and Gerard were there. I sat next to someone I assume was the father, the man of the house—fifties or sixties, spiky gray hair, scowling face—and I glared at him through my mask but he couldn’t tell because the mask just smiled. Barry said “Come here, man, I want to show you something,” and ducked out a side door into the garage. I looked at the scowling man, smiled, and blew pot smoke I’d never inhaled into the dad-man’s face. Gerard looked at me like he was upset that we didn’t invite him. I went out to the garage. Barry was sitting on the ground beside an ice blue 1958 Buick Riviera, rolling a spliff. I sat down and he lit up, and I realized I couldn’t smoke with the mask on. But I grinned under
the mask so my lips would fit the porcelain lips, and then I relaxed. I grinned again, and this time I pursed my lips and looked at my reflection in the Buick’s hubcap. The lips of the mask moved a little. Then some more. I managed to open them a bit. Barry passed what I thought was the smoking spliff but it wasn’t it had changed into a hot, black cup of coffee, a small cup but the steam billowing from it like engine exhaust, somewhere pistons were churning, grease against the steel, and I got the rim of the black cup through the parted lips of the mask and took a long, boiling sip. Barry laughed. I passing the cup back and kept working my lips. The lips of the masked pursed and flexed and moved. They were my lips now, black with coffee and thin. Barry passed me the cup again only now he wasn’t Barry, he was Darla, this waitress I like here, and she winked at me and that’s when I knew where I really needed to be today.
Sam: So you did come here for the coffee.
David: No, I came here because my parents’ neighbor had a 1958 Buick Riviera and he worked in this neighborhood, and I always remembered that his name was Fielding the same as the street this place is one.
Sam: And you wanted coffee.
David: I always want coffee.
Sam: What makes you so obsessed with coffee?
David: It’s the flavor, it’s the temperature, it’s the color, it’s the aroma. But inside all that. That’s just the packaging, the
surface. I look for the essence. Go to the water, go to the grounds. Backward. Go to the beans. In the end, it’s all about the beans.
Sam: What makes the beans so important?
David: The beans extend life. The beans expand consciousness. A product of the beans, a damn fine cup of coffee, see these? See my teeth? Look at my teeth.
Sam: You look like a donkey when you do that.
David: Look at them, look close. They’re stained, you see. I could bleach them but I don’t. It’s a mark. The brew of the beans allows me to be a human computer. The brew of the beans is vital to all my travel. I’m travelling right now. I can travel anywhere without even moving.
Sam: Isn’t that a line from Dune?
David: It’s a line from life, a lifeline from the beans. It all comes back to the beans. That’s why I went back to the beans, got into the roasting, joined the brotherhood and sisterhood, what’s the gender neutral of that? Joined the hood of beans, got into the business but it’s more than a business, it’s a secret society, of which I am a part.
Sam: You own a coffee company?
David: He who controls the beans, controls the universe!
Sam: Okay, that one is definitely a line from Dune.
David: It’s a line from—
Sam: Whatever. Do you roast beans yourself?
David: In a hot air popper or in my oven, sometimes when I just want to experiment, but I only dabble.
Sam: Leave the real work to the experts?
David: We’re all experts in our own minds and I’m involved in all of it, the whole process, but my primary concern is that the coffee comes out tasting great, lots of caffeine, lots of fuel for the brain.
Sam: Whatever it takes to put a cup in front of you, eh?
David: The coffee must flow.
Sam: Is it organic?
David: Yeah yeah yeah, it’s organic!
Sam: Oh. Geez. Can I have some?
David: Yeah yeah yeah, I’m gonna get you some.
Sam: Geez, thanks. I feel dreamy just thinking about it.
David: Speaking of dreams—
Sam: No.
David: Sorry?
Sam: Well, it’s time to say good-bye, David. It’s been so nice drinking coffee with you.
David: Thank you, Sam. I was so excited and nervous. It was sure great to have you to talk to.
Sam: Remember, I’ll be watching for you on the big screen.
David: Okay, Sam. Won’t that be the day?
Sam: Good luck, David. Take care of yourself. And be careful.
David: I will. Thanks again.
Sam: Okay then.
David’s Barbie-doll head, crushed in one fist with her curly blonde hair trapped between his fingers: David, it was so nice meeting you. All the luck in the world.
David: Thank you, Barbie.

___________________

Author Biography

Samuel Snoek-Brown was raised in Texas and has lived all over, but home is the Pacific Northwest. Production editor for Jersey Devil Press, his fiction can be found in print and online by visiting his website: snoekbrown.com.

On the theme of David Lynch

Notes for the Script I’d Write for Lynch

“Golden rose, the color of the dream I had…
It’s only a dream
I’d love to tell somebody about this dream…”

-Jimi Hendrix

I. They say to live as if you’re traveling—
It’s worth sticking around just to see what happens.

II. Toward Dionysus grease hair and worst fear, toward the miracle.
Hitchhiker’s murder. A scalp in the pool. Fast-food car. Same pants every day.
Our splintered protagonist.
Another word: murk (& its confidence).
Cinema returns us to anima:
Motel room sex, vacuum cleaner watching like a dog.
Her skin had the red of the shower water,
the blue cold of pipes and the silver of the screen.
The perfect poet’s luck, like a rattlesnake tamed.

The poets in Los Angeles must
wear boots, their hair like Gogol’s, matted by cheap chlorine, rolling flint with thumbs
to breathe tobacco’s crystals through stiffness.

Notebook aphorisms like:
“Drink from the L.A. River, you grow a tail. The ocean, the intra-uterine salt, no harm there.”

The similes in film stay subconscious, dampening the lens & your heart
in the seats.
I want to make some of them conscious:
“My father is like a dead raven.”

For the film:
“The Poet’s L.A.,” muscle-red & runny:
L.A. of diner eggs and morning beer
L.A. of long hair that doesn’t itch
L.A. of a woman’s breath caught in a handkerchief, waxy cherry
L.A. of stoplights blinking in closed eyes, salsa colors,
trying to sleep with sunspots:
hot breath of the DVD player projecting flashes of Naomi Watts’ psychotic breasts—pulsating the elastic plump
of her panties like a cartoon heart thumping a shirt.

III. At 12 or so Lynch became an Eagle Scout.
I told Mom, “Do you think I have time for that kind of thing right now?”

It’s rare now these days I’m not wired in the jaw,
In yoga they tell me I have rigid ankles.
In yoga I keep my thoughts.
I fist around their salts like I’m breaking a horse.
My plump exhaust-smell “fuck you.”

I’ll leave home someday w/ a palm of wedding rings
to melt down, playground woodchips in my shoes & a water bottle of wine
siphoned from grandpa.
Leave the rooms where the obsidian taste of hairspray stung
the eyes & tongue w/ flush. That L.A. of nude colored bras in suburbs
w/in folds of dove-wing blouses in church, the one-breath high of beauty products
during hugs, the smell of marriage—
Crystalline mothers walking toward me
like sculptures being made. They’d only let me slip away
out of kindness, I suppose.

IV. 21st Century skin: air-conditioned. The wind on the body after the pool.
The buildings decades too old, bondo split open
like eggplant, the color of an angry man’s face.
I drive up Vermont, looking in on storefront iglesia
dug outta the wall by bullhorns, I see cheap pilates
& the Guevara/Hendrix murals “Hate Free Community”—

A little about me: Before I die
I will see Nashville, Austin, N.Y.
& their hieroglyphs, hospitality, foolhardy mania,
thick drainage of every town.

V. Coffee-stained books piled three neat stacks
by the heat vent, your bed dragged & shoved into the closet space,
clothes dipping into the fucking like willows.
“Never heard a man speak like this man before,” you allow to the blender, getting him another warm Blue Moon from the weak fridge.
Your roommate’s cocaine & highball dress slides up her hips when she stands—
“It’s just like a bathing suit, big deal.”
He crosses wind-gray 5 p.m. intersections with the ambulances, hand inside jacket
like warming a pistol w/ his nerves.

VI. Country song I’d write if it rhymed:
“A man came at me with haywire.
I didn’t kill him but I turned him red.
I see him when I press my thumb down on my eyelid in the sun.
The same way a night blacked out is a dream.”

VII.                        The supermarket parking lot,
hard black lava w/ boot imprints, snags of plastic bags tumbleweeded across the dog city.
Buying meat and malt liquor. A lament, this is, for the unpressed. For the insides of televisions.
For a hungover squint in nighttime
making out the glitter of people. Snake charm for blue souls,
the bruises of miracles waiting—another night, another journal,
another set of meals. Talcum torsos.
Igneous needs, aquiline shame.
For days, “Little Wing” plays for headache’s bent tones
& its piles of grating metal keys.
If this weren’t California we’d have a howling moon, that’s what it’d be called you know,
the moon-tongue freeway, azure deaths.
L.A.’s trapped snow rushing the ears like the speed of light, deafening heaven, brain
in dull white, the sky a crunched ice cube wormed.
A young black woman pulls me close at the party, purple beneath her skirt.
“You’re a good dancer.” I don’t believe her. I’m no dull, dumb snake or sad fag.
You know what I mean. You know how that kind of nighttime feels.

VIII. In another unquenched December night
with the chipping white doors closed
on me in my bedroom,
dead mists of the celluloid swerves
my body’s made from floor to bed half-man
for five years,
sloppy on my winter couch
I watched “Mulholland Dr.” with my boots tied together and slung over the pillow like ice skates.

IX. My favorite colors: red, iron gray, silver, L.A. nighttime smog-black
w/ crackling hue, dark blood sunset orange, sour purple, housing project brick & brown,
static, rust.

My favorite Lynch line: “No I want you to fuck it—Shit yes, pour the fucking beer!”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
I’m thinking maybe a family flick at this point, a family of muses:
The Dad a Frank Booth, the Mom his mother,
the baby the Elephant Man, Lynch smoking
his scentless cigarettes w/ palmade face & I could play
the suburban beatnik eldest son stealing everyone’s pills.

X. Rose City—autistic laughter,
syrupy smiles, big noses, no good bars.

I dedicate this to my future wife—
Bonnet, learned & glistening, the woman
we all want—
Dear, this is my journal,
don’t ask anyone else
about my home.

And David—
Try to find something to do with this. All thanks. All apologies.

______________________________

On the theme of Secret Life

Parking Lot Oil Puddles with Jim Morrison

They talk an alky ramble. Dance

on tables—I’m on my knees,
the patchwork of my jeans grinds
to a bitter white dust in the dirt mix,
hardwood ground.
Highway taillights to
hamburgers. Green signs, wind, rock
& roll music—Giving lookers the finger. Telling the men
on the corner to fuck their mothers.
“Hey you! Short-shorts! Fuck your mother!”
Orange juice, Goldfish, red candle, the used body
of the blender with pink shredded strawberries.
My fingers cringing your waistband
like a grave’s fingers. My fingers turning to bones
where they’re wrapped. Your pants falling to the floor.
Apartment bedroom doors with codes like safes that beep
when you know them. The black oaks and magnolias sway
from where I sit like people speaking in tongues. Ashen Sister Ruth
giving up her vows to stalk the jungle, chest heaving
in a red dress, red lipstick, red ringlets, looking out of breath
for Mr. Dean, whose balls hang down the hair
coming from his shorts, my grandmother’s age as an actor.
Slime ring of a day-old beer can on the table. Used blue razors
rattling the closet ledge,
syringes jammed with hair. Her hand during sleep
paints my belly red.
Her blood pillows. Her mother’s loose-hanging leopard
thong she shows on the couch. Her ass through the string glowing toward
the bathroom like two pieces of toast.
Empty water bottles. My girlfriends sucking
the metals from their thumbs.

______________________

Author Biography

Michael Juliani is a poet/writer from Pasadena, California currently living in South Los Angeles as a journalism student at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. He’s a columnist for Neon Tommy. His work has appeared at Thought Catalog and as a guest to The Faster Times. Reach him at juliani@usc.edu. Connect with him at michaeljuliani.wordpress.com.

Nonfiction on the theme Secret Life

Hang, or, With a Little Help From My Friends

Leviticus 19:28 “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”

“Jesus Christ, man – do you ever drink any water?”

My skin is taut. So taut, that it is almost impossible for someone to grab a handful of the flesh across my back, to pinch a chunk of it together. This is a problem, because this is a necessary part of the process. This is an even bigger problem, because in order for me to be able to follow through on what I have set out to do this evening, my flesh has to have some give in it.

There is no other way.

The date is May 12th, 2001. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. This evening marks five years to the day that my own mother passed away — May 12th, 1996 — which just so happened to be Mother’s Day of that year. Me being the always-suffering and mourning son, I’ve decided that instead of my usual routine of getting plowed on as many illegal substances as possible at one time and making blubbering, incoherent long distance phone calls to members of my family and ex-girlfriends in the middle of the night, I’m going to try something different this year.

Very different.

*****

For the last few months, I have been working with some very interesting people. I stumbled into this weird little world right as my latest attempt at fitting in in The Straight World had flamed-the-fuck-on-out. I had just lost my last gig working as the manager of some chain restaurant because I was so fucking irresponsible and fucked-up in the head that I couldn‘t even get to work on time anymore. My truck had also recently been repossessed — right in front of my boss, which I think helped lead him into making the decision to can my ass, which he did at four-thirty in the morning on a Sunday.

Like I said — I had by then somehow drifted into this very weird and alternate universe type of world. I had become friendly with some people in Phoenix who were pushing the envelope on a lot of fronts — “artists,” if you will. I was a member of an Internet community that was geared toward people who were into body modification, and through that site I was able to connect with some people locally. After spending some time with them, I was asked to help them with their businesses.

Anyway — that part doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that through these people, there were things that I once thought impossible now being shown to not only be possible, but suddenly plausible. I have always been one to sort of let The Universe guide me to wherever it was that I needed to be, and being around these people had shown me that there were plenty of people out there in the world who were doing something akin to what I had always done, albeit in very different manifestations.

I have always, from a very young age, wanted to separate mind and body. Whether it was through meditation, drugs, sleep deprivation, exercise, or even fasting — I was apt to give it a shot. I’d followed seers, shamans, medicine men, and every other type of charlatan out there in the world who had promises of being able to complete or even come close to this type of separation.

Some of my new friends achieved this goal before my very eyes. I had witnessed some very intense things, and came to the realization [as the anniversary of my mother’s death was inching closer on the calendar] that I was going to use this opportunity that The Universe was putting before me for something new and powerful. I was not going to waste this. I was not going to do as I always had and get loaded on whatever I could get my hands on. No, I was going to take this to a whole different level of mourning.

I was going to fly.
After witnessing many flesh suspensions, I came to the conclusion that I was going to do one my damn self. My new friends did this type of thing almost every night, weather permitting. If you wanted to be hung in Phoenix, these were the people that were doing it. I had seen a few suspensions done as performances before I met these people, but they were always run by my new friends anyway. And now that I was around them on a daily basis, I was also able to witness private suspensions that happened.

I knew that this was what I wanted to do, and in my meditation earlier in the week, I was able to reach a place of clarity I had not been able to reach before – which was a good sign for me. After speaking with my friend who ran the suspension group and explaining the circumstances behind my decision, it was decided that we would do this on Saturday night, in the privacy of his back yard. When he asked me how I wanted to “go up,” I asked him which method would constrict my breathing the most, as I was pretty convinced that in order to achieve the state of mind/body separation I was looking for, a lack of oxygen was imperative.

It was then decided that I was going to go up “suicide” style – with four large hooks through the flesh of my upper back. The four hooks would support all of my weight, and also lift my shoulders up and back, which would change the way that oxygen was flowing into my body. I had seen another friend do this very type of suspension about a month earlier, so I knew what to expect on a very basic level.

*****

The day I was to be hung, my then-girlfriend was acting up something fierce. She was young, and also someone who at that time in her life was struggling very much with being accepted by this crew of people. At one point during the day, she actually said out loud —

“I don’t understand why you get to be the only one to suspend tonight? It isn’t fair. Your mother has been dead for five years. Get over it.”

My blood began to boil immediately. I tried very hard to stay within myself and let the words just slide away, because I wasn’t about to let her childish petulance get in the way of something that was very important to me — especially something that I was taking on in such a spiritual and deeply personal manner. She then asked me if she could call some of her friends so that they could come and watch. I shot that idea down very quickly, and watched her go stumble over to the computer to pout about it.

I honestly didn’t care so much in the moment. I had much more important things on my mind.

*****

I am now sitting backward on a metal folding chair as two of my friends are trying to grab up enough of a handful of my flesh to push a hook through it. They are struggling, because my flesh will not cooperate with them. Standing in front of me is the girlfriend of my friend who is in charge of everything. She is currently running the show, since The Universe struck him down with a terrible bout of food poisoning.

I took that as a sign.

She is holding my hands as the first hook pushes through. There is an audible pop as the hook comes through the other side of the lump of skin that my friends managed to grab hold of. I feel a little light-headed, so she shoves a handful of Skittles into my mouth, and then she wipes my face down with a paper towel soaked in rubbing alcohol. My then-girlfriend is standing in the corner, still pouting and acting petulant.

“One down, three to go – you hangin’ in there, buddy?”

I nod and go back to chewing on the candy in my mouth, trying to focus on what I am about to do. In my lifetime I have already walked on hot coals and broken glass. In my lifetime I have already fasted for ten days. In my lifetime I have already taken peyote with a Navajo medicine man.

I understand that this will be different, but somehow similar. The need for this exploration comes from the same root inside of me.

*****

Three hooks later, and I am now standing outside in the back yard. One friend is on top of the roof, waiting for the signal to start cranking me up into the air from the two friends who are standing next to me. The hooks in my back are attached to ropes that are attached to an apparatus that is attached to a winch. I am smoking.

“You have to lean yourself forward a little bit, try and get a good stretch going so that the hooks loosen you up a bit. If you don’t do that, you’ll probably pass out as soon as you go up. Okay?”

I follow the advice given and start to lean myself as far forward as I can. My friend’s girlfriend asked me if there was any music that I wanted to listen to, so I had her throw on Adam And Eve, by The Catherine Wheel. I loved that album. Perfect little songs. I imagined myself floating to them as I stretched myself out further and further, pulling the lines as tight as they would go. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet.

“I’m ready to go up, guys. I’m ready to go now.”

I can hear the winch cranking. I can feel the pressure in my flesh as the lines start to get tension in them. I can feel myself being pulled back and up. My two friends are standing on either side of me now, each one of them holding onto my hands as they inspect the lines and the hooks — to make sure nothing will go wrong.

*****

Sean H. Doyle

When you are weightless, nothing around you makes any sense. I can still hear the music, but it sounds like it is under water. I know that my breathing has changed, because the lights out here have dimmed. My feet are no longer on the ground and nobody is holding my hands. The illusion of being held up is gone — I am hanging from hooks in my flesh.

Closing my eyes, I try to navigate the millions of thoughts that are being processed by my mind. There is no pain. All I feel is the pressure of my flesh holding my weight. For a brief second, my mind flashes to the possibility of one of the hooks popping through my skin, but I quickly squash that thought — my friends would not let that happen to me. They are taking this as seriously as I am. They all know how important this moment is for me.

When you are weightless, there is no time. A minute can be an hour. An hour can be a minute. What happens outside of your body is inconsequential. What happens inside of your mind is all that matters. In my mind, I am trying to find her. I know she is in here with me. I can feel her. I can almost smell her.

*****

When I open my eyes, everyone is staring at me. I am still hanging in the sky. It is raining, but none of the drops are hitting me. The rain is light. The ground below me is wet with it, but none of it is on my body. The air feels warm. Someone is talking in hushed tones, but I cannot make out the words. Looking up into the night, I can see a clear patch in the clouds, and I can see the flicker and glow of the stars.

“I’m ready to come down now. Thank you.”

When you are weightless, and your feet touch the ground again, it is a very awkward feeling. Almost like having sea legs — you just do not trust that the earth will stand still for you. When the initial contact is made and the sole of your shoe touches the pavement for the first time, you feel something that I cannot even begin to describe with language.

Everything feels like it happened so quickly, but you realize you must have been up in the air for a while when you hear that the album is on the last track. Your friends have huddled around you quietly, offering you sips of water and another handful of candy to go with the cigarette you’ve asked for. You do not feel faint, even though they have all told you that you might.

If anything, you feel just right. As if you actually were able to accomplish what you set out to do.

*****

In retrospect, I am thankful that I took this journey. Would I do it again? I don’t think so. There is no need for me to revisit something that might cheapen the experience that I had with it – which was my main reason for doing it in the first place, to experience something powerful. Over the years, I’ve talked to some people about the experience, but mostly, I never really felt any reason to talk about it at great length. It was my experience. I am thankful that I was able to do this in a safe and emotionally supportive place – the people that were there with me will always have a little nook that belongs to them in my timeline.

Author Biography

Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, NY. He works hard every day to be a better person.

Nonfiction on the theme Secret Life

The Bus Ride

I didn’t know how much Hans had broken my heart until I got on that bus alone.

I sat in the window seat crowded by the two Arab men who sat with me in the two-person seat. Sitting in the window seat looking out the grease stained window, hours passed by. In the suffocating heat of the day, I could see Israeli soldiers through the window. As the soldiers walked down the road their boots kicked up clouds of dust from the heat baked dusty road.

Passing rubble from bombed out buildings, and an old shelled out military vehicle on the road, the bus drove along. How far from the border with Lebanon it was, I couldn’t really tell. The man sitting next to me kept moving closer. The stench of his body odor was so powerful that I almost started retching.

The nurse had given me instructions about where to get off the bus. I walked up the path to the doctor’s house. The air was thick with heat and humidity. My blue shirt was tight across my lower abdomen. Sweat was trickling down from my neck. Sweat saturated my shirt and the wet spots spread across my breasts. It was not only the heat, but fear, shame, nausea and sadness.

The house had a red banister along the steps and smelled freshly painted, with potted plants as well as beautiful trees and plants growing next to the house. It was reassuring to see things growing. My arm felt heavy. I did not want to knock on the door. I knew I had no choice. I knocked on the door.

*

The Kupat Holim is Israel’s national health clinic. My first appointment with the doctor had been at one of the Kupat Holim clinics. The kibbutz truck had dropped me off there in the town closest to the kibbutz. The truck was filled with grapefruits going to the market. I had probably picked some of those grapefruits.

That day, the waiting room was filled with Jews and Arabs, mostly women. Its walls were concrete blocks, with no posters or pictures on any of them. I was waiting in a prison visiting area. Hot air surrounded all of us. Children ran through the room. The clock on the wall had stopped. It was the kind of clock that I had in my elementary school. This one was covered with dust. It did not look as though it had been telling time for quite awhile.

The chairs were old folding chairs. The little padding that had once been there was now rubbed away. My butt was aching from sitting so long. The back of my shirt was damp from the sweat. My bra was tight. My boobs were big and very sore. Hot. Trouble breathing. Alone in this stark room.

A door finally opened and I was surprised to be called in by the doctor. Looking down at my stomach I felt afraid. Dr. Mendelsohn introduced himself and sat down on a stool by the examining table. He motioned for me to take a seat on the table. The heat was blasting me. This is what a prison cell is like: the walls bare and no window. The doctor’s bushy eyebrows and nose hairs that needed trimming reminded me of my father. His eyes were a dark brown, and when he looked into my eyes, I felt that he could sense my fear. I had trouble explaining myself in Hebrew. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest staring at me.

I kept trying to explain to him, “the kibbutz nurse had done numerous urine pregnancy tests on me, which were always negative.”

“They should have sent you sooner for a blood test,” he said, his worry mixed with anger. For a short while I felt his eyes almost glaring at me. He removed a hankie from his coat pocket and used it to wipe the sweat forming small beads on his brow. He stood up for a moment and walked over to the small desk in the room.  Moments passed with him clearing his throat and blinking his eyes rapidly.

All of the wasted hours I spent back at the kibbutz running into bathrooms to see if my period had possibly started. The bathrooms in the fields where I had been working were disgusting. Newspaper was used for toilet paper and was thrown on the floor covered in shit. My period never started, and in the meantime, the largest measles epidemic to ever hit the country had swept through the entire kibbutz. I was throwing up all of the time and then got sick with the measles with a rash and vomiting for days. I knew I was in trouble when I looked down at my growing abdomen covered with a rash.

I wanted someone to help me. I had no choice but to let this doctor sitting in the exam room help me in any way possible. I could not cope with a deformed baby. I did not want any baby.  The exam room suddenly started to feel cold and I began shaking.

The doctor walked back to where his stool was. He sat down and moved his stool closer to me and started to speak in almost a whisper. His eyes had begun to soften.  He moved in closer to me and I could smell the garlic on his breath. I sensed that his anger was dissipating. He moved in close enough for me to see his nose hairs that needed trimming. I started to relax.  He opened his heart up to me. I knew that somehow he was going to help me.

I could barely hear him as he explained to me in Hebrew, “Abortion is illegal in Israel except under very special circumstances. If someone is going to try and have an abortion in the hospital it must be approved ahead of time by a special committee.”

The doctor looked up at me sitting on the paper covering the exam table. His eyebrows were wild and unkempt.

“You are too far along to wait for the committee to meet. Usually they approve abortions when there is a case of measles but there is not enough time to wait for them to meet and approve the procedure. It will be dangerous to wait much longer.”

Dr. Mendelsohn then spoke to me in English. He turned his head for a moment to see that the door was still closed. His breath still smelled of garlic and his teeth were slightly yellowed. “I can do the abortion in my house. It is illegal but there are many doctors who perform abortions in their homes.”

The doctor explained to me that babies exposed to measles can be born deaf and blind. Their brains are misshapen. Their hearts can be damaged. He kept emphasizing that the brain damage causes mental retardation. He never really asked me if I wanted to keep the baby.

“You will need to ask the kibbutz to approve the money and then we can schedule the procedure. We don’t have much time. It will be too dangerous to wait much longer.” I had to trust him. I was out of options.

A special committee at the kibbutz had to meet and vote on whether to pay for the procedure. The meeting room was in a room off of the dining hall. I could hear workers busy in the kitchen preparing the evening meal. Once again I was sitting waiting for help. My life was in their hands. Waiting. Waiting. Sweat once again rolling down my back. There were subtle flutters in my abdomen. I wanted to ignore these. I did not need to be reminded that there was a baby growing. Headache throbbing. Low back aching. Breasts sore. So hot. Now trickles of sweat forming under my growing breasts.

I knew that the head of the kibbutz really liked me and wanted to marry me. He could not understand why I was living with a German, non-Jewish hippie. I was feeling so desperate at that moment that I wanted to barge into the room where they were meeting and shout out, “Ari. I am ready to marry you.” Marriage was not really what I wanted. What I needed was someone to take care of me and tell me that it was safe to go to the doctor’s house.

I also tried not to think of the great sex that the German and I had. We could fuck all night and get up at four in the morning to go to work.

The door to the meeting room opened. Ari told me they would get the money ready right away.

*

Arriving at the doctor’s house, my hand finally was able to knock – the first time softly and the second time my knuckles hurt from knocking so hard.

The doctor let me in to the house. The room off of the entry way had artwork on the walls and a comfortable looking couch. I wanted to lie down on that couch. Dr. Mendelsohn took the envelope of money from me and led me into a room that looked like it belonged in a hospital. There was a table with stirrups and sterile packs of instruments. There was also a machine there, which I imagined was going to suck the baby out of me. It looked like a grey box with dials. Tubing and a bottle attached to it.  For a moment all I could think of was a vacuum-suck sound.

I was startled to see another older man standing in the room. Dr Mendelsohn introduced me to Dr. Solomon who did not look as kind as Dr Mendelsohn did. His eyes were hidden behind his glasses, which were falling down off of his pointy nose.

“I was worried about how far along you are, so thought it best to have another doctor here in case any problems developed.” I held out my hand to shake the hand of Dr. Solomon, but he seemed not to notice.

On the theme of Secret Life

Oh Lie, I Thought You Were Golden: Courting Neko Case

I: We’re Spinning and I Can’t Stop Looking At Your Eyes

Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado.
We grab each other’s braids like twin sisters
and tug the pretty off our shoulders. Go,
in circles. No one survives this twister.

As soon as we flip the first car over,
the whole town scatters. They’re praying for us
to fall apart. Let them have no quarter.
Let them scream for days in an upturned bus.

If you let go, we’re done for. Don’t let go.
Death’s the only thing you can get for free.
Is your scalp bloody? Mine too. Don’t let go.
Wrap your hands in hair and say victory.

We need each other. I’m stuck. I’m bleeding,
spinning around in a dance you’re leading.

II: . . . and the Crowd Ran Away Covered In Feathers and Feedback

Spinning around in a dance you’re leading,
I’ve become dependent on vertigo,
every breath as heavy breathing,
and every black as the wings of crows.

Make me a fist with your dominant hand
and press your knuckles to my head like knives.
It straightens my sight and starts up the band:
it’s me and what birds that we left alive.

There’s just one chord, but it rings forever.
You’re the only one who can stand it here,
watching dueling feedbacks choke each other.
There isn’t a room that our songs can’t clear.

Nobody’s leaving ‘til ev’ry amp blows.
The band is drunk and you’re ready to go.

III: A Haymaker Away From the End of the World

The band is drunk and you’re ready to go.
We leave. It smells like hominy outside.
We’re sixteen again. Two tramps in the snow,
falling down and rolling when we collide.

It was play, but now you’re punching me hard.
I catch you in the chest with my right fist.
For just a second, I let down my guard,
hear the blood from my nose hit snow and hiss.

I bet civilizations went extinct
when something that does, suddenly doesn’t.
Let’s go back and look. Don’t bother to think.
Watch them trot out their dead by the dozen.

We stand up and turn around. You’re leading,
to a party with some songs worth heeding.

IV: We Always End Up Staying At Home Arguing Over Things We Did In Dreams

To: A party. With: Some songs worth heeding
shoved into our pockets like restless hands.
That’s the invitation we’re repeating
to each other, like we don’t understand.

It’s not like there’s anywhere worth going.
(The graffiti at Gabe’s Oasis? Gone.)
It’s not like there’s anyone worth knowing.
(They don’t dream: they just pass out on your lawn.)

Look. Once, I dreamt that we were in a flood.
You were an attractive librarian
and I was drowning. You mentioned your blood
before you let me go under again.

I’m almost sure you did it for the rush.
You think your blood is much too dangerous.

V: When You Try To Scare Me I Just Say “Ooh la la”

You think your blood is much too dangerous?
I’ve got a heart-attack in my pocket,
veins that pump nothing but bruises and rust:
they say my eyes must be in your sockets.

You could sing through the Acuff-Rose songbook
and not find a tune that scares me enough
to look away when you unhook
your bra and toss it off into the dust.

There’s only a bit of sex in this crown.
Here: the bathroom light makes you monochrome,
out of the shower and looking around
with a towel hanging off your hip-bone.

Your blood tints you pink and then disappears,
but it’s only red and white, salt and fear.

VI: Those Fuckers at IHOP Could Have Just Put Me In a Booth

But it’s only red and white, salt and fear.
Don’t worry, it’s just a nifty last line,
It’s nothing obsessive, nothing severe.
Shit, I was just trying to make a rhyme.

None of this is actually about you.
Every one of these is about me
and how clever I must be to construe
an empty bed into some poetry.

You ever go into a restaurant,
watch them take away all the silverware
except the one for you, like they forgot?
Table for seven, down to half a pair?

So I lied. I want you. I’m weak and flushed.
This home we never had was made for us.

VII: Barreling Down the Boulevard, Lookin’ For the Heart of Saturday Night

This home we never had was made for us:
a place in downtown Minneapolis
where the marquees run thicker than forests.
Their lights kiss the snow and whisper Miss’s.

We get all dressed up and then stay inside,
dance in the living room where we belong,
hitch-step and laugh about hookers and brides,
to prove Tom Waits right and our mothers wrong.

Scratch that. Instead, a farm in Wisconsin.
You still have those two broken pianos?
Put them in the pasture, out in the wind,
and let the rain pluck their strings when it blows.

Oh, the pianos have been drinking, dear.
Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.

VIII: Women With High-Powered Weapons In Your Precious American Underground

Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.
Darken my table with blackness and sweat.
Slur something sordid into my ear
like a baroness with a clarinet.

That melody sounds a bit unsteady,
like the one in that song by your friend Dan,
where everything good is dead already,
walking through rubies like they’re grains of sand.

And we’ve all seen how you brandish a sword:
one handed, calves flexed, your bent little toe
up in an arc I know I’ve seen before.
It’s the greeting of persuasion. Hello.

You say it backwards before you exhale.
For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.

IX: A 1970 Wolf on a 1968 Cougar

For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.
Wolves can be like that when they mate for life,
tracking each other, looking for details:
the scent of your fur, some blood on a knife.

From your hairline to the tip of your nose,
there’s a lupine slope that lowers your eyes
and lines them both up like X’s and O’s:
degrees enough for a hundred Julys.

You’re the only one who’s a wolf, let’s say.
So, I’m a poacher. You have no season,
and you leave my crosshairs in disarray
when instead of teeth you give me reason.

Someday I’ll shoot you and muzzle your snout.
If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout.

X: Weighing Skin and Silence By the Pound

If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout
at this winter that buried us in white,
snowed us in with our devotion and doubt,
an urge to purse our lips and kiss the night.

That voice of yours is bigger than us both,
and it moves for miles in this weather.
It migrates like a parrot when it goes:
primary colors, primary feathers.

Everyone’s flesh looks warmer than mine.
Especially yours, fair but thick, stretched taut
across your chest and guts, your skull and spine,
your breath and your blood and your blues: hot.

Let me crawl in your body and inhale.
I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.

XI: Murder Ballad

I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.
Catwalks and railcars and kerosene dreams,
all heating you up and draining you pale.
Head under water, those bubbles are screams.

Dredging up time from deep in the soil:
Letters. A lantern. An old bassinet.
Grandmother’s kettle, brought to a boil.
Head under water, your throat’s getting wet.

I need to know: when you opened the door,
could you feel the water calling your name?
Now you’re learning what an undertow’s for:
a home no one sees for broken old waves.

Head under water, you squirm like a trout.
This isn’t anything to sing about.

XII: Budokan (Sort Of)

This isn’t anything to sing about,
but I wouldn’t stop you if you started.
Look at the things we’ve learned to live without.
We’re endless. We’re the nearly departed.

Your voice is cinnamon and estrogen,
just a bit too powerful to be sweet,
but that can be charming to certain men.
Open up. Let’s compare our crooked teeth.

Start me up a fire and a scandal.
Come on now, Virginian, sing me a tune.
Some Cheap Trick into your hairbrush handle:
Oh southern girls, you got nothin’ to lose.

Feverish and hungry and mostly good,
I heard love ate a man right where he stood.

XIII: Letter From a Sycophant

I heard love ate a man right where he stood,
so only get as close as the distance
of a drum: Crack. Boom. Snare heads stopping wood.
Over and over ‘til you get the hint.

Here’s one: I’ve got a weakness for redheads.
Waitresses. Bass players. Women of risk.
Pull me apart and examine my threads.
Spindles with miles of lives that I missed.

I know some weird things happened here, somewhat:
we ruined a town, you killed me in a dream,
I put you in a watery grave. But,
still, solitude, and not you, is my theme.

Okay. One more, now that I’m understood.
I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.

XIV: Bangladesh

I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.
We’re the last two tigers in the circus.
Our fur is gilded like sun-withered wood
and we’re too old for anything but trust.

We spend the whole day pacing our cages,
with a feral feeling spinning on top.
We need to act our size and not our ages
if we want the spinning to never stop.

Tonight’s the night. Let’s darken our white chests
with their insides. With their souls. Run ‘til dawn
and then nuzzle back up in nature’s breast.
Sink all your claws into her and hold on.

Never, never let go. Never let go.
Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado.

XV: As Necessary As the Jaws of Powerful Animals

Neko, we’re two halves of a tornado
spinning around in a dance you’re leading.
The band is drunk and you’re ready to go
to a party with some songs worth heeding.

You think your blood is much too dangerous,
but it’s only red and white, salt and fear.
This home we never had was made for us.
Shake your shadow sober and bring it here.

For all our turning we can’t catch our tails.
If I could, I’d heat up your bones and shout:
I bet you’re warmer than fresh death for sale.
This isn’t anything to sing about.

I heard love ate a man right where he stood.
I’m terrified. Are you terrified? Good.

Author Biography:

Ryan Werner is a janitor in the Midwest. He plays guitar and does vocals in the sleaze rock band Legal Fingers and runs the music/literature project Our Band Could Be Your Lit.

On the theme of David Lynch

I Do Love Norma’s Pies

Tamara Kelly is a professional fiber artist, pattern designer, writer, blogger, and amateur photographer. She lives in Iowa, on the banks of the Mississippi River, and likes it. Her website is www.mooglyblog.com and she takes on all yarny challenges.

On the theme of David Lynch

Roadkill as Definition

“Gatorade. Fuck, no Gatorade,” Sanford mumbled.

She hopped in the ’78 Malibu and zipped to the 7-11 for red Gatorade, her libation of choice when as high as she clearly was.

God this is good stuff, she thought, then: Damn, I wish I had some porn.

Sanford was wearing sunglasses because it was sunny. She drove by three couples holding hands on the corner. Highschool love.

Fucking a-holes, she thought. Doing nothing but standing there, locking digits to prove co-nnec-tion … boning in ways that don’t even feel good … making claims to territory in some attempt to be someone since you’re with someone.

To be someone you gotta’ own someone, right? You have to be connected to stay afloat, stay high. Passion gives us the high – the dopamine-induced, theater presentation of love – that keeps us going on this fucking wheel. We play the parts we are told because our brains pump it into us to support the whole process so we can breed and spread and claim and own and be.

Passion without love would lead to chaos. Without love we’d be missing the claim and the associated protection. Passion is the prize, the high – but what is love?

Sanford pulled into the 7-11, one spot left.

Who the fuck are all these people at 7-11 in the middle of the god damn day? Nachos and Heavy Metal and underage smokers and some guy who needs shoe polish. Good fucking luck, asshole.

Gatorade and a lighter and a pack – two packs – of Camels. Camel Lights. I don’t need the penny. Yeah, thanks.

And off to the car. Sanford backed out easy because the edge had come on soon. The sound of trains racing.

Easy does it, cowboy. Breathe through and move this boat of a car outta’ here nice and fucking easy.

Sanford pulled her baseball cap down as she drove past the corner of couples and swung the Malibu around the strip mall, to the back streets. The quiet, bright, back streets of suburbia.

Slam! 

Fuck – what the fuck is that!!

Sanford kept her foot pressed on the brake. She could smell the tire smoke from the screech she’d just made. She looked straight ahead and there, in the middle of the street, was a possum who had been hit by a car. Its eyes were glassy and reflective and it looked right at her. It was barely able to move. There was a big patch of blood draining out of its right side.

It was huge. Much bigger than she had a possum would be. Bigger than a small dog even.

“God damnit!”

Her mind raced: I don’t know what to do… I can’t – it’s dying. It needs to die. It’s like it’s looking at me to be the one to save it… I’m not a farmer.

Fuck!!

Sanford pounded the steering wheel while the animal teetered helplessly and stared at her.

With a snort and a hard slam of the gearshift into reverse, she threw her arm over the seat, looked behind her, and backed down the street,.

“Fuck fuck fuck!”

At the end of the street, Sanford turned back to the possum. It hadn’t moved. She slid the gear into drive and, with a grip squeezing her guts, she snorted the slime of coke down the back of her throat and slammed her foot on the gas pedal.

“Oh God, oh God!!” she screamed, her eyes pounding as her ears flooded.

The car gained speed before it crashed into the possum with a dull thud. She felt two muted bumps as the wheels drove over the now-dead animal.

Sanford’s heart ached. She took a deep breath and lit a cigarette.

“That,” she realized, “is love.”

Author Biography

Tammy Lynne Stoner is the Fiction Editor for Gertrude Press. She is the creator/writer of “Dottie’s Magic Pockets,” which has been in a dozen international film festivals and is in 100+ libraries in the US and Canada.  Her work has been published most recently in Draft and Society (Pale House). Her website: TammyLynneStoner.com.