This Zine Will Change Your Life

A LITTLE BIPOLAR by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2012-01-28T12:37:00.001-06:00

I started writing on my forehead, yo. That’s why I’m in here. Yeah, I’m a little Bipolar, but less than 50%. Why did I write on my forehead, yo? I don’t know. I was bored and I was fucking hungry. The last place I was at fed me dry rice and cold fish. I like fish, but not cold. So I looked in the mirror to make sure I did not spell anything wrong. I just wrote, 666, yo, because I am a little devil when I am bored and hungry. Yeah, yo, could you call my mom to pick me up. The doctor does not think I should go home. I had issues with my mom before. But, yo, I promise I’ll be good. I won’t back talk her anymore or threaten to kill her dog. I was on the wrong meds at the time and her dog was talking some nasty things to me. Yo, I want to go back to work selling peanuts at the ballpark. Yeah, yo, my boss knows I am a little Bipolar. He lets me work as long as I take my meds. He has a son like me, so he knows, yo, what I am going through. I’m ready to leave. I am rehabilitated, yo. I want to see my girlfriend. I want to take
flowers to her grave.

Night Genes - Cyber Me by FlatRat

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal lives in Los Angeles County and works in the mental health field.  His prose and poetry have appeared in Full Of Crow, In Between Altered States and This Zine Will Change Your Life.  His latest book  Peering into the Sun is out from Poet's Democracy.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published A Prayer for My Tongue by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. Check it out. 

Street artist unknown.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Night Genes is a San Francisco based trio driven by the rich baritone of Eric Ingersoll. "Cyber Me" is the first single from their forthcoming album Like The Blood.  

The Interview by Eric Suhem

2012-01-13T23:20:00.000-06:00

Mona pushed through the double-doors, out-of breath, into the lobby of Widgets Inc., hoping she was not too late for her job interview. She had been out of work for 9 months, after a round of layoffs at her last job, and was desperate to find employment. Her stomach rumbled with nervousness as she was greeted by 2 men and a woman, all dressed in white lab coats, and holding clipboards. “Welcome to your interview, Mona, this way please.” As they walked down the hallway of neutral grey nylon carpeting, the woman described to Mona the history of Widgets Inc., and some of the specific requirements of the job for which Mona was applying. 

They entered the copy room, Mona was given a piece of paper, and was asked to make a copy. She opened the lid of the copier, put the original down on the glass, and pressed the 'Start' button. The bright light from the copier shot up from the glass, transforming the head of one of the interviewers into a tangle of wild colorful flowers, vines, and butterflies. The copy room then became a dense, rich tropical forest, like images Mona had of the Amazon. She frolicked among the foliage, not wanting to leave. Eventually the two remaining interviewers led her back into the hallway of neutral grey nylon carpeting, as they scribbled notes on their clipboards. The building janitor entered the copy room, and the remains of Interviewer #1, consisting of wilted flowers, equatorial leaves, and dead butterfly wings, were all swept under the rug. 

Mona didn‟t quite know what to make of the copy room, but she had been reading recently about progressive companies using cutting-edge interview techniques. They walked down the hallway to the large door of a conference room. “Now you will have the opportunity to meet the owner and founder of Widgets Inc., we know her as Ms. M.” Mona opened the door, and saw a young woman leading a group on an expedition through a tropical rainforest. Suddenly the scene in the conference room changed, and the woman was swimming in what appeared to be the Coral Reef, taking underwater photographs and studying obscure marine life. Then they saw Ms. M selling widgets out of the trunk of her car, building a lucrative business, and eventually sitting in a large office atop the Widgets Inc. building. All of these scenes flashed by in the conference room. 

Before Mona could respond, they were joined in the neutral gray carpeted hallway by the building janitor, holding odd custodial devices. Mona was asked by the interviewers to tell them what made Mona "Mona," and she gave her prepared speech. “What a colorful anecdote,” said the janitor upon completion of the speech, while crushing stationary flies with a hammer. “But I don‟t see the utility of it.” The interviewers stepped back as the janitor continued, “To understand your utility, we would like you to open these 3 utility closets,” he said, gesturing to the next 3 doors in the hallway, as the interviewers scribbled on their clipboards. 

Mona opened the 1st door, and did not see mops, brooms, cleansers, or utilities, but rather a lonesome nighttime highway, with a small diner off to the right, amidst the shrubs. Sitting in the diner, hunched over a cup of coffee, wearing a dark green raincoat, was Ms. M, brooding, staring into the caffeine. A waitress nearby held a pot aloft, prompting for refill. Mona shut the door quickly and re-opened it. This time it was a typical utility closet with mops, brooms, etc. 

The 2nd door opened into a vista of an open field. Situated in the field was Ms. M, on an operating room table, all of the body except for the head covered by a white cloth, an I.V. nearby pumping fluids into her arm. There was nothing else around her, except the strangely colored weeds of the field. Mona quickly closed the door, and re-opened it. This time she found the usual utility room items. 

As Mona opened the 3rd door, a utility was not revealed, but rather a small mountain lake, the water lapping up to the shore near Mona‟s feet. In the middle of the lake was the bloated corpse of Ms. M, floating in an inner tube, wearing an evening gown and a propeller beanie. Staring in disbelief, Mona quickly closed the door and re-opened it. The lake was gone.
 

The janitor stepped in and closed the 3rd door. He would be seen later that evening entering the copy room, opening the Xerox lid, and pressing the 'Copy' button, the bright light shining through the paper into his eyes, transforming his head into a gigantic brightly-colored flower. The flower-headed figure would leave the building, and disappear into the night, petals fluttering onto the parking lot pavement. 

The interviewers then simply asked Mona, “Though it may not end well, do you still want the position?” Mona looked at the clock, which showed 2:43 p.m. Without hesitation, her reply was “Yes.” 

“Excellent, you‟ll be hearing from us.” said the interviewers, as they led her to the 'Exit' door. Through a window in the door, Mona could see that the hallway was filled with water. She donned her snorkeling gear, which she kept in a travel bag for just such an occasion, attaching fins and breathing mask. She dove into the hallway and swam through a large hydraulic chute, which led upwards through the building. Opening a trapdoor at the end of the chute, she emerged on the roof of the building, into the sunshine. 

At 2:45 p.m. in the city hospital, a bouncing baby girl was born to a young couple, who named her Mona. She would become a world famous explorer, oceanographer, and a successful, though mysterious, corporate titan and captain of industry.
Yellow Ostrich - "Hold On" by Afternoon Records

Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer. He is in the orange hallway.  
This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Linen Garden by Eric Suhem. Check it out. 

Street art by Gaia. 

 Photo by Adam Lawrence.

"Hold On" by Yellow Ostrich comes from the band's 2011 debut. They just announced that the album's follow-up will be released this March, and will be called "Strange Land."

Drunk Poet at the Wrong House by Shelley Ontis

2011-12-31T01:40:00.001-06:00

I have been forced
from my home.
There were no stones
thrown through windows,
no warnings, threats,
no symbolic fires lit
on my lawn while I was gone.

Instead, rain pelted me on the stoop
right through the awning I know
I put up last year. The porch light
that burned out yesterday
nearly blinded me,
amazing-ingly. I spilled
my beer. As a siren woo-wooed
ever closer, locked doors scoffed
at my jingle-worn keys and I thought:
I am not wanted here.

Warm Body by WildChildSounds

Shelley Ontis is a freelance writer in Illinois. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in over 25 publications, including Defenestration, Bartleby Snopes, Niteblade and the upcoming Zombie Kong anthology from Books of the Dead Press.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

Austin, TX is home to Wild Child, a large band with a gentle sound. They released their debut album "Pillow Talk" last month.

Five New Messages by David Greenspan

2011-12-17T11:18:00.001-06:00

I

(read: the base self. animalistic. scratch me until blood pours over white leather. like syringes stuck in knee-caps, my body simply can't bend that way anymore, honey.)

Need

(read: every pore in my body has its mouth open screaming your name.)

To

(read: to.)

See

(read: fuck. touch. skin on skin. I always mix up emotions and body parts.)

You

(read: the version of you I hold so close in my mind. weeks and months past. your current version is a pale comparison to the glowing ember that will not go away.)

Oregon Bike Trails - "Swimsuit" by indiemusicfilter

David Greenspan is the author of the chapbook 'i tried to bear the elephants and lost' (NAP 2012). His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, from Heavy Feather Review, >Kill Author, Mud Luscious, Vinyl and other journals. Find candy and white vans here.    

Street artist unknown.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Oregon Bike Trails is one of our favorite finds of 2011. They are from Santa Monica, CA and are filled with every bit of sun and waves and warmth. 

Aftershock by John Wawrzaszek

2011-11-28T22:59:00.001-06:00

“So tell me what happened.”

I looked up to see a police officer, decked out in a bullet proof vest. It made his chest puff out; hewasn’t that strong or fat. Handcuffs hung from a loop in his belt. The night was settled in now. The streetlights shone off the oil slicks on the blacktopped street. I could see my bike a few feet from me. Wrecked. Totally figures. What the hell happened?

“What the hell happened?”

Was there an echo? The officer stared down at me. His name tag read HARRIS. I didn’t know whatrank he was. Officer Harris? Lieutenant Harris?

“I guess, from the looks of it, I fell off my bike.”

His walkie talkie buzzed. He turned around to get it from the back of his belt. As he moved, I saw a car behind him. Not a cop car, a long brown boat, the kind an old person drives. The hood looked familiar.

“How do you feel?” I heard him say.

“My head’s on fire.” My hair was wet. We were under a street light so everything looked yellow. My hand looked orange.

“That bicycle over there?”

“It’s mine.” The front tire was all mangled. Spokes stuck out like an up-turned umbrella. That’s great,I just changed the tube on that thing. There was a wet spot by the bike. I must have slipped.

“And the young man?” I heard someone say, an unknown voice, faraway. I couldn’t sense what direction the sound came from. “Oh my god.”

What the heck were they talking about? I mean, I couldn’t even see this person.

“And what happened, would you say?” The officer was pulling a notebook from his back pocket.

“It was so dark out, and the rain. I didn’t even see him there,” said this voice.

“So did this person hit you first?” the questioning continued.

“Well as I said, it was dark. He came out of nowhere,” said this voice. It wasn’t coming over the police radio.

“Ok. And you are alright? No bumps on the head?”

“No officer. Our airbag didn’t even deploy.”

“An EMT is on the way. I don’t know how we beat them here.” The officer was off to the side leaning into the brown boat.

A siren was off in the distance. It got really loud in a minute. I looked up and there was a huge light in my face. The ambulance wasn’t stopping. It must have been going at least fifty. Man this thing’s gonna kill me. I stood up. How can you not see me here? I went to run but my legs gave out. Did I break a bone? I had done that once before, jumped off a swing when I was twelve. My body went limp then. The paramedics said I was in shock. This time, I didn’t feel like I was in shock. The concrete felt hard. My hands slapped a puddle in the yellow line in the middle of the street. I rolled over. That worked in movies. The car would pass over. Or was that for trains? I covered my face. This is it, all she wrote.

The light reached my head. I yelled out. The officer didn’t turn around. The vehicle didn’t stop. It ran me over. Wait. It kept on driving pulling up to the car.

“Where is the victim?” said an eager medic.

“Over there,” directed the officer.

Another EMT pulled a stretcher out of the back of the ambulance. The metal legs snapped down and straightened out. Its wheels made a grinding noise. I was on my stomach watching this all happen.

“Hurry, this guy’s lost a lot of blood.”

I felt my head again.

“Check his pulse. Is he breathing?” asked the second EMT.

“Nothing. Move.” The first EMT began to administer CPR. My lungs felt full for a second.

“I don’t think so Jim, he’s too far gone,” said the second EMT.

The first one got off the body. I never noticed a body until now. As he got up, his foot kicked a shattered bicycle helmet. I felt my head again. It was still wet, but now a darker orange in the light.

Issues by heartmusicgroup

John Wawrzaszek is a born and raised Chicagoan. By day heworks at Columbia College managing theirrecycling program and at night, attends classes in their Fiction Writing department.Along with publishing the Muse, the News,and the Noose, he is active in the zine community, notably as an organizerfor the Chicago Zine Fest. He curates the reading series Two Cookie Minimum and is a contributing writer for Newcity andGapers Block. Like a true Chicagoan, his beer of choice is Old Style. Visit him here.

Street art by Haculla.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Supreme Cuts is a Chicago-based duo making a mixture of haunting and sexy post-dub music.

Cellular Gospel by Salisbury Bushnell

2011-11-12T16:17:00.001-06:00

Like a Paternal Tree? by Collages

Mike Bushnell has two cats. He lives in New York City, where he work as a Business Development Analyst. He has a book out called Traumahawk. He recently performed at Flux Factory, Occupy Wall Street, and other locations and events. You can email Mike at iamaparty@gmail.com and he would love to read with you. Gospel Cellular is from a book called Mesomorph Gospels that is in search of a publisher, same email if you want to go prospectin.

Photo by  Adam Lawrence. 
Street artist unknown. 

Collages  is the dream pop project of Chicagoan Jesse Bustamante.

The Gospel According to Stan by James Carson

2011-10-30T21:57:00.000-05:00

And the people of Israel found themselves in the desert, with only locusts and wild nettles to eat.And they cried out to God, "Lord, send us a saviour! Or at least give us the recipe for pan-fried locusts in a nettle sauce." 

And God, who had been busy project managing a plague of frogs, heard their cries and said, "I will send you Moses and he will lead you into the Promised Land." And the Israelites rejoiced, for Moses had gained a solid reputation for producing plain, but wholesome food. 

But Moses called on the Israelites to offer their hunger to God, and he preached to them by day and by night on the virtues of fasting. And when the Israelites saw that Moses was all gong and no dinner, there was much gnashing of teeth and rumbling of stomachs. They cried out to Moses, “You must take our grievances to King Herod.” And because he was new in the job, Moses listened to the people and said unto them, “I will take your demands to Herod, for I am your prophet.” 

And the Israelites said, “Prophet?” 

And Moses said, “All right, shop steward.” 

And so Moses brought before Herod the demands of the Israelites for statutory coffee breaks and free jelly donuts on the Sabbath. And because Herod was unused to collective bargaining, he agreed to release all his Hebrew slaves in return for a condominium in the Sahara. 

Then Moses returned in triumph and cried out, “People of Israel, I have won for you a new covenant! From now on, you shall have flexi-time, private healthcare and a memorial day weekend,  whatever that is.”And the Israelites said, “Yes, but did you remember the jelly donuts?”And Moses said, "Bugger." 

Then among the Israelites there was much gnashing of teeth and shaking of fists. And they said to Moses, “If you are to remain our leader, you must take our demands to God.”And Moses said “Demands?”And the Israelites said “All right, prayers.” 

And so Moses went to the top of the mountain and called on the Lord God. But God, who was busy working out the budget for the apocalypse, was angry at another interruption, and threatened Moses with gardening leave.And Moses said, “Lord, give me the tools to lead your people, and I shall trouble you no more.”And God said, “Hang on a bit, I think I’ve got something in the attic.” 

Then Moses returned from God with two tablets of stone, and he called out to the Israelites, “Behold, my people, the commandments given by God.”And the Israelites said, “Commandments?And Moses said, “All right, laws.”And the Israelites said, “Let’s just call them guidelines and have done with it. After all, nothing’s carved in stone, is it?”And Moses looked upon the tablets of stone and said, “Er…” 

Then Moses grew angry, for he saw that the Israelites had created a graven image. And he said unto them, “People of Israel, I have warned you not to worship any image in gold or silver, or wood, or stone. And the Israelites responded, “Yes, but you never said anything about chocolate.”For they were worshipping a great fountain of chocolate, and paying homage with marshmallows, crying out: “All praise to the Fondue!” 

And Moses said, “Who is responsible for this idolatry?” And there came forth a terrible creature, whose skin was blood red, whose head was horned and whose tail was very pointy. 
And the creature said, “That would be me.” 
And Moses said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” 
But the creature said “ Actually, I think you’ll find it’s Stan. Clerical error at head office. Honestly, a thousand years in the outer darkness, and all thanks to a misprint. You just can’t get the staff.”And Moses said “The people will not listen to your blasphemy.” 

But Stan knew the way to the people’s hearts was through their stomachs. So he tempted the Israelites with spinach and ricotta pancakes, with mushroom risotto and with little apricot tartlets. And when they feasted on the food, the Israelites were amazed, saying to each other, “How on earth did he caramelise those parsnips?” and “He can brown my chicken thighs any time” and “If all he wants for that divine quiche is my eternal soul, he can have it.” 

So Moses tried to win his people back by displays of his miraculous powers. But when the Israelites ignored his trick with the cups and the balls, Moses called on the Lord God for help. And God, who was busy putting the finishing touches to a seven-year famine, appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and said, “You’re on a written warning now.” 

And so Moses retreated to the wilderness.But the Israelites rejoiced to see the burning bush, for they had been wondering how they were going to toast their marshmallows. 

Then King Herod unleashed his fury on the Israelites, for he had just read the small print on the condominium. And when he saw the management fees, he mobilised his army. The Israelites were terrified to see a hundred thousand of Herod’s soldiers approaching and cried out, “Moses, save our wives! Save our children! Save our lamb noisettes in a peppercorn sauce!” 

But Moses, said, “Save yourselves. For you have incurred the wrath of God!” 
And the Israelites said: “But you must come to our aid, for you are our shop steward.” 
And Moses said, “Excuse me?” 
And the Israelites said, “All right, prophet.” 

And so, Herod’s army pursued them to the shores of the Red Sea, and among the Israelites there was much gnashing of teeth and soiling of underwear. And Stan said to Moses, “You’ll need a better trick than the one with the cups and the balls to get out of this one, tablet boy.” 

But Moses raised his arms and the seas parted until the Israelites crossed safely to the other side, and their enemies were drowned. And when they had reached the other side, Moses looked upon Stan in triumph. And Stan said, “I still prefer the one with the cups and the balls.” 

Then Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey and obesity and diabetes. And the Israelites feasted on cheesecake and deep fried chicken thighs until their arteries were like tablets of stone. And Stan set up a fine dining bistro called “Hell’s Kitchen”, where he enjoyed the fruits of his labour, until he perished in a freak accident with a parsnip. 

But Moses lived to the age of one hundred and twenty, for he had followed a healthy Mediterranean diet. And at the end of his days, Moses said to the Israelites, "I will go now to the heavenly kingdom, where I shall prepare a banquet for you at the mansion of the Lord. And I promise that when you reach the kingdom of heaven, you shall feast at the table of the Lord forever!”

And the Israelites said: “Fair enough, but don't forget the jelly donuts.”

James Carson is from Glasgow, Scotland and has been writing off and on for most of his 49 years on the planet. He has enjoyed some success in writing competitions and his writing has been published in magazines and anthologies. He is currently studying for an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University at Glasgow. He is also a voracious reader, a gay man, an out-of-work librarian in search of a library and a big fan of chocolate cake.

Street artists unknown.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

The Through and Through Gospel Review is the latest project of Joel Marquard of the band Gospel Claws.

Best Western by Marty Cain

2011-10-14T22:11:00.001-05:00

Card swiped, clicked lock,
his bag a corpse on the floor,

glasses by the blinking clock,
floral chemicals, synthetic rosehip.

Blinds make perfect bars, striped wallpaper hypnotizes. Shark kills squid, says the TV voice.

His eyes reflect from the glass,
over shimmering city, navy sky.

Flicked switch at dusk. Curled
like a fetus in the pale duvet, he

hasn’t slept alone in months,
no rising stomachs by his side.

The radiator coughs and he thinks of
jerking off, but considers the others—

the businessmen in white briefs,
statues who stare at moon-scraped buildings,

who sleep with call girls, milky skin, slender fingers, silicone.

He dreams of rays of morning sun
streaming through tempered glass,

vacuumed floors, sparkling mirrors,
fresh sheets, no questions.

Youth Lagoon - Cannons by abrecaminos

Marty Cain is an undergraduate at Hamilton College, where he is concentrating in creative writing and cinema. His work has appeared in Welter, and he has two poems forthcoming in Breadcrumb Scabs.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Hanksy.

Youth Lagoon is a young, but hugely talented musician from Idaho.

Two poems by J. Bradley

2011-10-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

J. Bradley reads two poems from Thiz Zine Will Change Your Life from J. Bradley on Vimeo.

(Text Below)

J. Bradley is a contributing writer to Specter Magazine and the Interview Editor of PANK Magazine. His first novella, Bodies of Smoke, comes out this fall.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Quality Control by J. Bradley. Check it out.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by lädy.

M+A are a young duo from Forli, Italy who are releasing the debut album, Things. Yes, on November 8th.

The Monogamist Reinvents A Numeral System

As each wrinkle forms on your body,
I’ll kiss the tally marks.

I’ll appreciate the pop and crack
of our bones, the weight of you
on my left shoulder after the stove
or staircase wins a fight,
how much slower we’ll dance.

I want to watch each other
fall apart, apologize to each
gray hair on you head
for not causing them sooner.

Shift

I don’t want to speak of you
in the past tense.

If you are gone before me,
I will tell the kite of your dress
about my day, gas the house
with my favorite perfume.

I’ll walk down supermarket aisles
with my left hand half open.

I won’t see you everywhere
but just enough to turn my smile
into a campfire, one I can sit
children around and tell stories.

I’ll show them the short bus
of my arms, how I taught them
to stop letting you go.

Hooray by Greg Santos

2011-09-17T14:30:00.001-05:00

Yes, the world

will not have ended in 2012
as the Mayans predicted

but sadly nor will

hoverboards be en vogue.

The sun will continue to die,

magnificent tiny creatures

with feelers and luminescent bodies

we’ve never even discovered

will have gone extinct

under our noses,

but on the plus side

things will be sleeker,

shinier, smaller,

and more expensive.

Greg Santos is the author of The Emperor's Sofa (DC Books, 2010). He is also the poetry editor at pax americana.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published A Love Poem for Shelley by Hulk by Greg Santos which we are proud to let you know appears in The Emperor's Sofa. We are also happy to share with you that we recently riffed on The Emperor's Sofa over at our corporate blog This Blog Will Change your Life. Check it out.

Street artist unknown.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

"Calamity Song" comes from The Decemberists current release "The King is Dead."

Bad Baby by Matt Rowan

2011-09-03T02:06:00.000-05:00

Bad Baby doesn’t like me -- no, hates me. We simply do not see eye to eye. Go ahead and say that babies aren’t bad, and that I need to be the mature one, since I’m capable of writing and developing my thoughts. That’s what Bad Baby would argue, if she could, because she knows how to manipulate adults. She knows how easily we can be persuaded to believe babies aren’t capable of being bad. Except she knows that I’m not easily persuaded, so she hates me. She needs no words, in any form, to express this fact. It’s got me stressed, seriously.

My girlfriend feels she needs to do something about my stress, so what she does is seriously dangerous. She will find herself a hiding place (behind a tree, bush, telephone pole), just some random spot along the route I drive home, and she steps out in the street in front of my car mere moments before I’ve passed her.

She says this is a show of her great faith in me. She claims she’s trying to be supportive. I say she has gone off her rocker.

My girlfriend argues that I always stop in the nick of time, the bumper approximately an inch from her kneecaps, and I do this because we are so inextricably tied that my subconscious detects her presence / proximity, even when the rest of me does not. She’s done this every day since I started my new job at Waffles Inc. three months ago, and I haven’t come close to running her over yet while driving. Soooo she has that for evidence in her favor.

But I know that it’s mostly because of Bad Baby, once again. Bad Baby has me on high alert at all times. I’m not fearful for my life, just fearful of being out-of-nowhere cried at. That’s the problem with Bad Baby. She is always there to cry when I don’t need her around just in general. Crying makes it worse. It’s got me keyed up and anxious, even when I’m driving my car. You’d think a car, being inside of a car, would be contained enough to keep me from being too much on my guard, but it isn’t, because I know better. So I always spot my girlfriend before I do the tragic mistake of running her over. It’s because I’m worried about Bad Baby making a startling and hysterical entrance, at all times.

You’re probably wondering, who is Bad Baby? Maybe Bad Baby isn’t a baby? Bad Baby is a baby, thank you. I’ve had enough of Bad Baby, though. I can’t kill her because I’m not crazy, and plus because she’d be expecting me to try that, as a quick fix solution. Plus, she’s my daughter.

But I’ve vowed something needs to give.

What’ll it be then, Bad Baby?

Will it be you coming out of nowhere, in the backseat of the my car still loaded up in your car seat because you’re ever the safe traveler? Will it be your screaming cry from out of nowhere, surprising the hell out of me because I didn’t know you were in the back seat, in the first place? And your scaring the daylights out of me then leading to another ten car + pile up?

No.

It’ll be something instead. It’ll be me reacting to your screaming cry, crying myself right along with you until something gives, between you and I. Until you and I start, what’s this, laughing? Laughing at the absurdity of it all. Laughing so hard we’re crying. Laughing so hard we don’t even notice the thud and bump under tires as we scream with mirth all the way home.

That’s what it’ll be? Yes?Matt Rowan edits Untoward Magazine in his increasingly limited free time. He also enjoys various forms of social media: your twitters, your facebooks and so forth. He blogs occasionally at Bob Einstein Presents His Literary Equations. See a few of his previous publications at Metazen, Everyday Genius and Bartleby Snopes. He'd think that's just swell if you did.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

The Chicago band YAWN just released just release their debut album and it features the track "Acid."

Pillage by Lindsey Lewis Smithson

2011-08-20T09:30:00.010-05:00

Ed Herrmann narrates
the history of the Templars,
the fall of the Holy Land,
the empty rooms
of my white walled home.

They became a standing army
with no leader, no bases,
no land to drop their armor.

Here my shoes are left
upside down in the bedroom
and I go to bed
after yet another fight.

Sea Of Bees - Skinnybone by heavenlyrecordings

Lindsey Lewis Smithson is a graduate of UCR’s Palm Desert Low Residency MFA program and is the Poetry Editor for The Coachella Review. Some of Lindsey’s work has appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Word Riot, Mastodon Dentist, The Pacific Review and Krax, along with various other happy publishing homes. Prior to attending UCR she worked as a high school Creative Writing Teacher, the Poetry Editor for The Pacific Review, and as a crossing guard. To date she is also a reader for The Whistling Fire and is a budding eBay maven.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by 400ad.

Skinnybones comes from last year's full-length album from Sea of Bees, Songs for the Ravens.

Adjusting by Vincent Turner

2011-08-06T10:57:00.010-05:00

With a return of smile, we agree
this new found silence
that hangs in the air
as though
it has no place to be
but here
is not comfortable in its own skin,
like a stranger loitering
at a party awaiting
that first pairing of eye.

We like it here.
Our eyes
virgin
to the permanence of scenery
unlike the locals,
who see not the immortal shadow
of mountains just their persistent
threat of flood.

Each morning
you draw the blinds,
saturating the room
with the lazy lake's reflection-
A perfect postcard
supersized.

Then there are the birds,
dawn-scampering across
the mossy garden wall,
after three weeks
they are pecking
bread from our sill.

Yet at night, in heavy envy
darkness shrouds
the raw stretch of land
showcasing the sky
with clusters
of twinkling stars,
and we feel small
and human
and begin to miss
the rattle of a coke tin
blown down a street
of houses crammed together like teeth

where the distant shrill of a drunken row
was a nightly guarantee
and we'd look at each other
and smile
knowing there were others
Close,
and alike.

But here,
outside,
there is
but the hoot of a lonely owl

and I see you,

huddled on the sofa
beneath blanket
and sleeping cat,
the roar of the fire's reflection
wild-dancing your eyes.

Vincent Turner, lives in Co. Donegal, Ireland, having moved there from London last year. Vincent's work has been featured in a small amount of literary sites, some of these include Full of Crow, Ink Sweat and Tears, Gloomcupboard and Shoots and Vines. Vincent's first chapbook Envying Harry was published by erbacce-press last year. Vincent is the father of two sprightly boys.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by The Cheesy Vandal.

Young the Giant is a California-based band and "My Body" comes from their self-titled debut album.

Ride the Lightning by Victor David Giron

2011-07-23T20:20:00.013-05:00

This time, he knew she was aware of him. It was her little flicker, causing the white of her eyeballs and the precision of her dark-colored fibrovascular tissue to become targeted towards his. There as she sat in front of her computer in her apartment across from his. She wore nothing but a ridiculous pair of pink boy shorts riding up her perfectly shaped white as. It was final confirmation that she had wanted him to see-all those times.

That was enough to completely put him over the edge he was approaching ever since he could remember. No, it would not be the first time he would masturbate in an awkward situation. He, in fact, was a master of sorts when it came to getting in a quick one while there was a great chance of being captured in a moment he’d never forget. Sure, he knew the gravity of the chances he would take, but every time the urge was just too awesome to ignore. He was a self-proclaimed business man, by style and by trade, and he viewed this issue on the basis of a cost / benefit analysis. And always the cost of the awkward stare, the sudden rush of embarrassment he was sure to feel, far less than the incredible, beautiful benefit from satisfying his monster urge.

He’d satisfied the beast at work, at friend’s places during Super Bowl parties because of those fucking Victoria Secret’s commercials, at his girlfriend Cherish’s parents’ house because of her damn 19 year old sister. At the mall, the supermarket, at Best Buy, shit even at the dog-scrub place down the street. It was incredible, it was divine.

And, it all can be traced back to that very first embarrassing (or, in hindsight, inspiring) moment when he was 17.

He was in his bedroom with his little league trophies, third place wrestling tournament banners, Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris posters. He had always been a great student, but being sick of everyone calling him a geek, he fought hard to take his grades down. That night his textbooks lay open on the bed, but completely ignored in an ultimate show of defiance. He was alternating between listening to Metallica and “house” music because that’s what all the burnouts and cool kids listened to. He really preferred A-Ha, Europe, Paula Abdul, Erasure, Huey Lewis, but he had learned to keep these preferences to himself.

That night he was getting his head bob thing going to the beat of Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” while stomping around the room. He began thinking of his Spanish teacher Mrs. Olsen, who was in her 40s or even 50s. Her face was sort of torrid, a bit masculine. But from her neck down—man. Man, how her tight fitting skirts, her slick tan panty-hose, and her high heels really accentuated her curves and muscles. It was incredible. It was divine. So were those gold ankle bracelets that he fantasized taking off with his teeth as she’d put her heeled feet on his shoulders during his fantasies.

He suddenly had an image of Mrs. Olsen there in his room, crawling towards him, licking her big, red, wet lips. Although he knew it was way too early and his mother had a bad habit of coming into his room before she went to sleep, he felt the rage burn up like he had never before. It was overwhelming. He lay on his bed, unleashed it, let it sprout to full glory, and furiously worked to deliver its demand. With “Ride the Lighting” now reaching its manifest, he spread his legs, closed his eyes. After opening his eyes to better focus his energy, he realized that at the door stood his mother, Gloria, with mouth aghast and eyes the size of oranges. He thought of which way to turn over or whether to cover up with a pillow. But then, quite miraculously, he was showered with the grace of his life’s purpose. He shut his eyes and filled his mind with James Hetfield’s growling voice and thoughts of Mrs. Olsen’s mouth devouring his very soul. He didn’t hear his mother’s howl and the slamming of his bedroom door.

Victor David Giron is the son of immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. He's a CPA bar owner and runs Curbside Splendor Publishing, a small press that showcases art and literature celebrating urbanism. He puts on literary events, and sells books by Chicago-based publishers and authors at the Logan Square Farmers Market. His work has appeared in Rougarou, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, Diverse Voices Quarterly, among others, and his first novel Sophomoric Philosophy came out in November 2010. He lives in Chicago.

Street art by Lädy.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

'Girls on Medication' is the new single from the Brooklyn band Caged Animals.

Idle Time by Robert Long

2011-07-09T23:39:00.013-05:00

I am running, and embarrassed: if you run in a suit, you can't help but look a fool. Don't look at anyone; pretend they are not there. That's the trick. The station steps test my legs. I'm not fit enough for this, not at any time of day.

When I reach the top the station clock says 7:59:04 and my train is the 7:58. The platform is empty. Everyone else made it.

The next train is not due for ten minutes. When I try to double check the time I find I have forgotten my watch. Perfect. Overhead, the clock flicks through what digits it can. The display is decrepit and cannot relate the seconds that involve sixes or sevens. You have to figure those out for yourself. I am staring at it so absently that I do not notice when, attempting to indicate 8:01:27, it stops.

The first concerned face is of a tall, bald man standing under the clock. His eyes meet those of a matronly woman with fierce red hair standing beside him. They connect because they have been sharing a pastime: looking at their watches and then at the station clock, both of which have stopped.

Someone says something. Soon after, everyone says something. The guy in the coffee kiosk, in a position of unexpected authority, says his watch has stopped too. Questions fly around. The radio that plays me songs I don’t know and adverts I hate each morning continues to do its worst. The DJ is excited about the song he is going to play next. He is excited about all the songs, every last one of them. Nothing else has changed. It is only the clocks.

My shoes are dirty, I see now. Not just scuffed after my run but actually dirty. Mud smears the inside of each of them. Funny I should notice when there is something happening on the platform to hold my attention, but there it is. Did that happen this morning, or last night? I wasn’t out late, and it was still light when I came home. I would have noticed. But how did it happen this morning? There’s nowhere on my journey this could happen. Bizarre. I think that there must be a way I can clean this up without anyone noticing. I look around and realise I am wrong. There is no way. All of a sudden, people are noticing everything.

“I have to get to work.” The voice of the girl talking to me is slightly pleading. She looks young enough that I am surprised she is late for work rather than school. I don’t know why she has picked me to speak to. I don’t even serve coffee.

“I’m late already,” she says, “I can’t wait here all day.” She looks past me, down the track, craning her neck. I turn to do the same. No train is visible, and you can see them coming from a long way off. I have been here longer than ten minutes, I am sure of it.

A railway employee walks along the platform. The red-haired woman grabs him and demands to know what is happening. He shrugs. “Clock’s a piece of junk,” he says.

“And our watches? Where’s the train?” the girl asks.

Another shrug. He looks at the electronic departures board next to the clock. “No reported delays,” he says, and disappears.

Whispers and then talk. Everyone is running late; lots of us were running late before this and now we are never going to make it. There are presentations to give; there are meetings to attend. There are papers that need finishing by 10 and if they aren’t written then there’s no point in going to work at all, not today, not any day after it.

“You must be late,” the girl says. She sounds very certain and I wonder why.

“I am now,” I say. My answer makes me laugh. Sorry I’m late, boss, but it’s the trains and the clocks that did it. It’s time itself that’s responsible, there’s nothing a humble commuter can do about that.

“I’m so late,” the girl says, and looks down the line again, narrowing her eyes. “They’re going to fire me, I know it. I can’t get away with this again.”

I nod sympathetically. “There’s nothing you can do,” I say, trying to cheer her up. What I say registers, but I don’t think I succeed.

Phones don’t work. People try them again and again, but it doesn’t help. They tell each other they can’t make calls or send messages and then that the clocks on their displays have stopped. Because so many expressions ask me to, I try mine; it is the same. The tall man starts doing a Sudoku on his phone instead. He’s pretending to be concerned about all this, but I can tell the truth is otherwise. I think he might be on to something.

The conversations become a constant hum. We stare down the tracks. They offer nothing.

“To hell with this,” the red-haired woman says. She’s trying to be angry but she’s scared now. She keeps looking at the station clock and her phone and gets more and more desperate each time. It’s stopped, I want to say, now stop yourself. You can’t make time move or trains come. You’re utterly helpless; enjoy it. But before I or anyone else can say anything she takes flight, running – as much as she is able – down the stairs towards the ticket hall.

She does not come back. Others drift away, the taboo broken by one and now open to universal dereliction. For those of us who remain, the anger eventually passes and so does the fear. I try to guess how long we’ve been there. An hour? Who could tell? The tall man finishes his Sudoku and starts another one. I can tell he is pleased. The girl gives up on me and starts talking to some others who look close to her age and they dance in front of the coffee kiosk, egged on by the proprietor, now transformed into a breakfast-time lothario. All these girls he sees for such a short period each day are now his for who knows how long, perhaps forever. The tunes spin and the girls dance and his sales go through the roof.

A kindly-looking, elderly lady I have not noticed before hands me some tissues. “You’ll need to wet them,” she says. I do not initially understand, but she winks at me and says “for your shoes.” Her smile is wide and conspiratorial, and I am glad to return it. In full view of anyone who might care to look, I wipe the dirt away. Much better. If I were going to work, I would be well prepared.

As if recalling an amusing old habit, I look up at the station clock. 8:01:27. No change there, only beneath it. I can feel an enormous smile on my face, put there by I am not quite sure what. And to think only a second before this I was tired, irritated and bored by the day ahead.

I sit down on the platform edge. The clock is behind me. The others will tell me if it moves; surely one of them will notice eventually. I look across the lines and see things I have not seen before: the trees that lean out over the tracks, growing around the passing trains; the steady whirl of business in the town centre, deliveries being made and received, uniformed staff hurrying to work; the way the people and the rustling wind change the picture subtly but constantly.

Yes, I am sad when it happens. I am the first one to see it and the first one to say it. “Train,” I call out. “The train is coming.”

I stand up. It is the same train as every morning, and it feels like the end of the world.

Robert Long lives in Romford, England. He has had work published by the Muscle & Blood Literary Journal; Bards & Sages Quarterly and the Terminal Earth anthology amongst others, and has recently finished work on a novel. More information about this writing can be found here.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Rake of the Quite Frankly Krew and Almost Famous respectively.

"Holy Ghost/Gold Coast" comes from the new solo album by Chicago's Will Phalen.

Jack Jackson by Melodie Corrigall

2011-06-25T20:28:00.021-05:00

Jack Jackson, a traveling salesman, always sold his quota of elephants: the customers liked him and he knew how to excite a quick win-win deal. He always thought to mention to prospective customers that he was putting his dog through university. And, in tough cases, he would add sadly that his alligator-in-law had been deep in bed with a severe case of rick-rack for more years than he would care to mention. The sympathetic consumers would turn their heads to the side, tweak their dry nostrils and reluctantly order an elephant—nothing fancy just a small compact model. Mr. Jackson would thank them and quickly pull the installment contract out of his bamboo brief case.

Once, when he’d been a bit tipsy on beet juice, Jack had confessed to a colleague that he had no connection with dogs in or out of university and that he had never even seen his alligator-in-law, although he had faith that he had one, somewhere. “But,” Mr. Jackson glowed,” Business was business” and he had to feed himself and his rather robust little wife.

It is an hysterical truism to say that times were difficult in Jack’s day and age. The economic climate had changed since old Mr. Jackson, Jack’s father, had been a successful lawn-mower salesman. For one thing, there was no longer any grass to speak of; it was a closed subject. All available blades had been converted into mats and traded with the enemy for china thimbles, a commodity the nation swooned for. Secondly, all the straw not suitable for sale abroad was being used for houses. So what was one to recommend as food for an elephant unless you knew of a spare straw house that could be rationed out for consumption.

It was true that people had been crying out for elephants a few years earlier but that was before the housing boom had used up most of the countries‟ straw. An average elephant, without being a pig, could eat a man out of house and home.

Although the nation loved and admired elephant salesmen and everyone considered it was wise to know at least one, Betsy, Jack’s wife, had never been pleased about her husband’s profession. It was the product not the prestige that Betsy objected to. She was not partial to elephants. Only great loyalty had kept her from confessing her distaste to Jack.

Over the years she had bravely attempted to be civil to the elephants that Jack brought home and to react in a charmingly enthusiastic fashion whenever the topic came up. After all elephants were Jack’s life. Betsy suspected that she would have had a happier life if her husband had sold Ferris wheels or bottle caps but he didn’t and that was that. The fact remained that although she hated elephants she loved Jack. Result—her lips were sealed.

Jack also had a skeleton in his closet that kept him tossing and turning long into a hot night. His guilty secret, that no one except the occasional elephant guessed, was that he didn’t like elephants either. In fact at times he could hardly tolerate them. They made him sneeze and turned his knee caps mauve. Fortunately in his business he was always required to wear long pants; had Bermuda shorts caught on his career would have been ruined.

All through the years Jack had born this horrid cross. Eventually he could bear it no longer. Just before his fourteenth year as an elephant salesman Jack decided to ask to be transferred to another department. He’d say he wasn’t as young as he used to be and that he couldn’t move elephants like he’d done in the old days. He thought it wiser not to tell Betsy until it was all settled and then there’d be fewer questions.

His only concern was that Betsy really enjoyed a good elephant; the greyer the better, she’d often say. It was unfair to cut her off completely. If the company did agree to move him to the button-hole department or carnation stems Betsy’d have seen the last of the elephants. If you didn’t sell ‘em, you didn’t see ‘em—that was the law. The elephant room was always locked; taboo to non-salesmen. There wouldn’t even be an occasional elephant to drop over for tea.

Loyal husband that he was, Jack realized that his decision was selfish but he just couldn’t bear to go on selling those dreadful beasts. After much fretting Jack finally came up with an idea: a stuffed elephant. Yes. Why not? He’d buy Betsy an authentic perfumed stuffed elephant all her own. Something to keep her company all day as she patched. Something to fill up the house and filter the sunshine. Brilliant idea if he did say it himself. Better than roses, a stuffed elephant didn’t fade or lose its petals.

So on that fateful day when Jack was officially transferred to the fringe unit, he invested five dollars a week until death in the largest grittiest elephant ever stuffed. He kept it all top secret and planned never to go into Betsy’s sewing room after the gift was delivered.

Betsy, as all good wives, knew that Jack was changing jobs before he did. She imagined it was because he was no longer the speed skater he had been and she felt sad. She didn’t mention it to him but late at night wooed to sleep by waves of Jack’s rough snores she worried about how her poor husband would manage without his grey friends. For her, it would be a relief. No more massive grey feet plodding across the vestibule or dirtying up the rugs, no more straw cakes to be served at tea, no urgent late night calls from a desperate customer with a faulty elephant. But for Jack it would represent the loss of youth and a lonely old age. So Betsy, loving wife that she was, decided to buy Jack a small compact elephant from his associate Ed Krinkly. A comfy economy model for Jack to read the paper by and spend a Sunday with.

The deal was quickly arranged and the gift was to be delivered the very day Jack was transferred. The day that Jack left the elephant promotion department there was a commemoration dinner at tea-time. There were serpentines, walruses and champagne. After everyone had eaten their thirst away there were speeches. The motley crowd felt a little sad for good old Jack—past his prime he was. “Never thought Jack would give up his elephants,” they muttered through their cream cheese sandwiches. The big boss, Mr. Knottle, wound up the celebration with a sensitive traditional oration which included the popular elephant myth, a cherished tale to all elephant lovers. The story explains how an elephants can detect sincerity and how an elephant exposed to a human who dislikes him for more than 12 hours straight will explode in a volcanic burst, his remains covering the area in thick pink fluff. Everybody chuckled at the favourite old story. Many didn’t doubt that it was true. Elephants are shrewd. I wouldn’t put it past them as one man commented.

When Jack arrived home there were two elephants and one proud wife to greet him. The elephants had been delivered at five-thirty exact. One was stuffed, the other hungry.

“What a lovely surprise,” Jack choked when his wife had introduced her gift.

“Great minds think alike,” wept his wife.

After the elephants were seen and seen to, the anxious couple settled down to a quiet supper. Both were openly pleased with the other’s gift and looked forward to a short happy future. They talked about the elephant tale and laughed self-consciously. Imagine anyone not liking elephants. Those darling grey beasts. Was it possible? Why Jack was as sure that his wife loved elephants as he was that she loved him. Yes, Betsy felt the same way about her husband. If she doubted Jack’s love of elephants she would have to doubt the sun. They both laughed again glancing over their shoulders at the munching grey beast who stared mutely at them from the other room. shorts caught on his career would have been ruined.

Jack and Betsy went to bed early but they couldn’t sleep. They tossed and turned. Eventually Betsy had to get up and remake the bed, carefully tucking the covers in at the end. What a silly old myth one said, and they laughed. Why think of it? One shrugged. Good night. At last they both lay quietly, pretending to be asleep. Hours, like years, of quiet listening rolled over them. They floated along inside their own skin listening to the other’s breath. The feeling of guilt slowly crawled over them like tiny spiders. About five o’clock they both had fallen off to ragged sleep.

At five-thirty they were awakened with a bang. The house shook and then Jack and Betsy were asleep again hibernating for life under a sea of pink fluff.

Melodie Corrigall ignores pundits' advice to write about what you know. She has never owned nor sold an elephant, but being an existentialist, skilled at making snow angels, she emphasizes with Jack Johnson's angst. Her writing has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, Toasted Cheese, The Blue Lake Review, November 3rd Club, Halfway Down the Stairs and Subtle Fiction.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published The Circus and The Library by Melodie Corrigall. Check it out.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Appa the Dancing Elephant.

E.M.F is from the EP from Zorch. It may be the strangest song we've ever heard. But we think we like it.

hunger by John Sweet

2011-06-11T16:17:00.012-05:00

sitting in a sunfilled room out west
waiting for christ and whatever
excuses he might bring, and i can’t
shake this recurring dream of
my oldest son’s death

can’t get warm with all of
this poison in my veins

can’t smile without bleeding, can’t
sleep without remembering and
i refuse to let the past exist solely in the past

and what did you do when there was
no one there to kiss the
frost from your fingertips?

how much of your life did you waste
sleeping in the spaces between
the houses of your old lovers?

feels good rolling in the filth and
the dirt for a little while,
but then it’s time to grow up

it’s time to drive west and to
find the room you will grow old in

it’s time to stop dreaming

John Sweet (noun), b. 1968, date of death as yet determined. alternatively confused and confusing. opposed to all organized religions and political ideologies. a major believer in writing as catharsis. recent collections include CONTINUUM (Kendra Steiner Editions) and IN THE PALACE OF DYING LIGHT (Ten Pages Press). A new collection currently in the works, will hopefully see the light of the day before the end of 2011.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

That Ghost is Ryan Schmale, and he just released his latest album "Songs Out Here."

AUNT GWEN TOLD ME, IN CONFIDENCE by Kenneth Pobo

2011-05-22T00:46:00.015-05:00

AUNT GWEN TOLD ME, IN CONFIDENCE,

that in a previous life she

was Joan Crawford, a shop girl,

a no one can stop girl

who became a star. She glided

down an elegant staircase

in a black gown,

a pearl necklace,

heard L.B. Mayer say,

“Joan, don’t you look lovely!”

Aunt Gwen bartended

at Cal’s Tap, died a pauper.

L. B. Mayer was really

a customer banging his tumbler

on the bar. She never

visited Hollywood

but kept an autographed picture

of Crawford in in her desk—

on top of the one

of her daughter's prom.

Kenneth Pobo has a new chapbook out from Thunderclap Press called Closer Walks. Later this year, Deadly Chaps will bring out his chapbook called Tiny Torn Maps. His work appears Stickman Review, 2River View, Word Riot, Dogzplot and elsewhere.

Street artist unknown.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Advanced Base is the new project from Owen Ashworth who was formerly known as Casiotone for Painfully Alone.

Buster and Tank by Chris Castle

2011-05-15T18:28:00.016-05:00

I got the letter from Buster a month before Christmas. Around that time when everyone stops at the shop windows to decide whether to buy their gifts now or wait a little longer. The letter was short and told me the things he wanted to say; he started it with my name, rather than a nickname and I knew we were in trouble. The letter was to the point and terrible. When it was over I read it again and then I wrote him back, as best I could.

I came home for Christmas. I saw my mum and my sister, played with her kids. I’m better now and we are something like a family again. It’s become a little joke, these past few visits, when I pour the non alcoholic ginger wine, making a big show of it, like I used to with the real stuff. I always plonk two ice cubes down with a splash, to let them know I still find it funny. We talked and exchanged presents and then it was over; I guess you know when you’re getting older, when Christmas moves so quickly; it’s like every hour is accelerated. They went to my sisters for New Year’s. I couldn’t go to parties now and there was a part of me that was relieved about that, as much as the other part, which missed the craziness.

Buster came to my house the same day. People were in the streets, putting up banners, readying themselves for the festivities. I was standing by the front door, fixing the light, like I’d promised, when I saw him. He walked up to the gate and then stopped, as if he wasn’t sure if it was the right house or not. Buster has been my best friend for nearly twenty five years, since we were both five years old. I faced him and ushered him through the gate, like I was backing a car out of the driveway. He came forward slowly and then stood a few inches from me. There were no handshakes this time. I drew him in and he came to me and we stood there, holding each other for a very long time.

Then we went inside.

We had the whole day and no plans for it. We could have gone for a drive, headed into town, but none of that came up. Instead, we simply sat in my mother’s living room; it had that odd feeling of being too bare without the decorations, as if it were a stranger’s house. Buster looked around, took his time staring at the photographs, sometimes asking questions, other times just watching. He reached the last one, of my nephew and traced a finger along his face. When it was over I offered up coffee and he nodded, like he was afraid to trust himself to speak right then.

We drank our coffee and finally Buster began to talk slowly. He spoke carefully and he sounded the same as the letter he’d sent me. It wasn’t his real voice, we both knew that, but the voice he’d made himself use; trained on certain phrases and words that he’d taken from the meetings. He told me the date he’d last gambled and the time, too. It wouldn’t have mattered, the time, but the way he said it, his voice thinning and almost cracking, it sounded as if it was almost a secret of some kind. He went on, slowly gripping his hands then wringing them, as if he’d been stung or bitten. Then it was over and he looked up to me, knowing there was no answer to what he had just told me.

Buster had changed, there was no doubting that. He was hollowed out where he sat, as if he was the younger, more fragile brother of the man I grew up with. His eyes were gaunt and shot, his face pale, like he was recovering from flu. There were other things, things I only noticed because I knew him so well; habits he had now assumed, like adjusting and re-adjusting the strap of his watch, the way he thumbed his throat as if he’d just shaved three or four times. His wedding ring was back on his finger, but there was a knot of skin around either side of it. The ring was in a different spot. It looked as if it had been wrenched off and then returned.

I knew he saw the same habits in me when I started visiting him after kicking the booze. He had pointed them out in that good natured way of his, and we had laughed about it. I ran my fingers over my lips countless times, like I was still drying the beer froth from my lips. Other times I would run my hand over the back of my neck, like I was slapping on aftershave. I also tied knots in my hair, the way I did when I was a kid, just before bedtime and getting tired. If he hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known and I was glad that he didn’t see me as fragile. That year, for Christmas, he bought me a bottle of aftershave and took me to the barbers. It was the first time, coming out of the barbers, feeling the cold wind on my ears and walking with Buster, that I thought I was a real person again. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

Slowly, I asked him questions; how much he had gambled, what it had led to. He answered each of them in the same careful way, thinking and then speaking, drawing breath when he was finding it hard. There wasn’t a lot I asked him but he answered me true enough. It was the same, whatever the addiction; it whittled you down to the bare bones, making everything terribly simple; what a person had lost, what the person had left. Buster was lucky; he still had his family, he still had his job. The things he had lost could be re-built; some of those, we both knew, he wouldn’t be able to reclaim; some of them he wouldn’t want anyway. The conversation spluttered out and I refilled our cups.

I made lunch for us. There was a TV in the living room, but for some reason neither of us made the effort to turn it on; it felt like if there was any intrusions, something might break in the house, or between us. Instead I went about the food and he followed me, sitting in the chair, asking me a few questions about my job-I worked abroad as a teacher-and swapping a few stories of his own about his work. In-between, when there were no words, there was just the sound of me preparing the food; the crack of eggs, the sound of the knife against the board. He collected plates and cutlery and set the table next door. Outside a car backfired and Buster spilled the knife and fork onto the floor and I realised how scared he still was.

After we ate, Buster mentioned the strangest thing; he wanted to get to work on the garden. I looked at him and for the first time, I smiled a natural smile; Buster was not a gardener. He was born inside walls, and walls were where he stayed. But I looked at him then and I knew he was serious. He looked out the back door, surveying the humble plot and his eyes lit for the first time since he’d stepped through the door. It was true there was some work that needed to be done, manual stuff that my mother could not do herself, and I said it would be a good idea. He collected the plates and dumped them in the sink as I went looking for the keys to the shed.

It was a small thing, the garden; a simple path, a few flower beds, two overgrown hedges to keep the neighbours away. At the end of the path were two huge oak trees that used to scare me as a kid. The hedges were the thing and I set up the ladder and got the clippers out accordingly. Buster went up and I steadied the ladder and we got to work. We worked in near silence, Buster calling down once in a while to say he was done, the two of us standing back and deciding if the branches had been brought down low enough. At some stage the pub a few hundred feet from my mum’s oak trees blared into life; the management were testing the sound system for the night, but that was it. We worked on, bagging what we cut, until three bin liners were full, the stray branches poking out the sides like hungry fingers.

We went on, taking time out to mend the small gate that divided the two hedges, brushing down the cobwebs that cloaked it. By the time we were done, I could see Buster was already eyeing up the oak trees. I told him it was too big a job but he reasoned we could take down the over-hanging branches. He took off his gloves and flexed his hands; his palms were blistered and sweaty but neither of us said anything. We broke for a few minutes while I refilled the flask and then we went right back to it. The branches fell in big, thick clumps, the sound heavy and billowy. I wiped away sweat and at some point found blood on my gloves; one of the branches had cut my brow, leaving a long, simple cut from one eyebrow to the other. I hadn’t felt a thing.

We finished; the ladder was unable to extend further and we carefully cut the branches into smaller pieces and filled the bags. By then it was dark and stars had begun to sit in the sky above us. I didn’t know what time it was, didn’t want to know. Buster looked at the bags gathered at our feet and suggested we make a bonfire up. I agreed, thinking the same thought at almost the same time. I told him and for the first time that day, he smiled.

Buster made up some more food; left-overs from the fridge, cold cuts; I called my family and wished them a happy New Year. I walked back and smiled at Buster moving around the kitchen; it was a standing joke when we were growing up that he knew my mum’s kitchen better than the rest of us did. Once, in desperation, my sister called him and asked him where the pickle jar was; sure enough it was at the back of the cupboard, tucked behind the beetroot, to the left.

We took the food out to the garden and laid our plates on the ground; the sound from the bar was in full swing now and the stars above us were beaming. There was a full moon. The lights from the houses either side guided us enough to let us start up the fire and then, after a short while, the bin was burning bright. We steadily emptied everything into it; carefully folding the bags into neat squares and setting them under a rock so they didn’t blow away. My body was aching by then and I had never felt better. I didn’t feel the need to wash down; either; the dirt and the blood seemed to feel fresh somehow, like it was necessary to me. A thick piece of bark popped and was followed up by another noise; a couple in the pub car park screaming at each other. Somebody intervened, someone else. Then there was a new sound; a car’s tyres screeching, followed by jeering applause.

We sat on the cold stone of the path and ate our food. The fire crackled and rose higher; the smoke ran clear in the freezing night air. I looked up and saw the moon was full. Buster began to talk but it was different now, more like his old self. It felt as if he’d exhausted himself back to his natural state of mind. He told me about his youngest and the things he did to make him laugh. Then he mentioned the local club we had used to go to years before and how it was now a department store. Further back, he jogged my memory for the name of an old teacher of ours, one who had been teased mercilessly and locked one of our classmates in a cupboard.

I poured more coffee and felt the jolt of it run through me, making me suddenly aware of just how cold it was. I fished out a small packet of cigarillos and offered him one, before taking one for myself. It was something like a joke-the only addiction left for the two of us. Neither of us even enjoyed smoking that much, not really; but we lit them up and smoked them. For those few minutes I enjoyed it in a way I had never done before. The feeling of the smoke in my body, then breathing it out and gulping in the iced air felt good. Buster blew great plumes of smoke and then tossed his into the burning bin.

He said he had to make his phone-calls now.

I turned away from the fire and watched him go. There was a moment when he stopped at the door, his hand on the doorknob. I thought, for a moment, he was going to turn round and walk back and I knew if he did he would be that same figure that had made his way to the front gate; hollowed out and somehow defeated. But then there was the sound of the door opening, that unearthly grinding sound it always made and then he was gone. I looked back to the fire.

I drank more coffee and looked at the stars. I thought about things, things that mattered and other, unimportant matters. I closed my eyes and thought about people I had known and tried to picture what they were doing in that instant. I tried to imagine most of them happy. I wished luck to those who I couldn’t quite find it in myself to see smiling. When I heard the door crunch open I didn’t know if a lot of time had passed or not, though it had felt like it. I turned back round and saw Buster come towards me. He was still uncertain on his feet, as if a loud noise had just stunned him, but he didn’t shamble the way he had done; he looked as if a certain strength had returned to him. When he sat he patted my shoulder, but didn’t speak and that was enough. More than that, it was what felt right. He moved a little on the ground, as if trying to find the exact same spot as he had done before and then went on watching the fire. After a few minutes he wished me a happy New Year. I laughed, having missed it, missed the noise from the pub, not checking my watch, having no-one that would have rung me, and he laughed too. And then it began to snow.

I wasn’t sure if it was just tiredness at first. I thought I had felt snow fall onto my cheek, but for some reason, I had decided that it was actually a small fragment of the stars falling on me. Then a second flake fell, a third. After a minute or so, it fell in a soft, steady swirl all around us. I looked over to Buster and he was craning his neck, watching it happen all around us. And it really did look as if the stars were all tumbling down around us and a part of me waited for the moon to fall out of the sky. And it was beautiful.

The sky collapsing and falling in on itself was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Buster pulled himself up and reached down for me. Both of us looked up to the sky and let the blizzard rain down on us, as if it was the most natural sight in the world. We opened out arms and one of us was screaming and then the other and then we couldn’t stop. The two of us went on, screaming and howling and I didn’t know if we were laughing or crying, scared or exhilarated, but we kept on. We kept on and didn’t care if someone rang the cops or shouted blue murder at us, because none of it mattered, none of it at all. The fire died quietly near to where we stood, drowned by the falling stars and there was nothing left but the cold night sky above us. And I felt the blood drying on my skin and my limbs aching so bad they were fit to burst and I carried on. Buster brushed my hand and I looked over, but he was still howling, his eyes wet with tears or snow or something else. I looked to him for a long moment. Then I looked back up and faced the moon. We just couldn’t stop screaming.

Chris is English, but works in Greece. He has been published over 250 times. His influences include Ray Carver, PT Anderson and Stephen King. He can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Reckoning by Chris Castle. Check it out.

Street art by Nick Walker.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Falcon is a side project of some of the members of the Brooklyn-based band Longwave. Their new album Disappear will be released on May 17th.

Pieces of Home by Mitch James

2011-04-30T10:30:00.010-05:00

It's left holes in me
Like my mother's blanket--
Riddled with hard, black circles
Where cigarettes have burnt through
Again and again.

My brother's 15.
He says:
"She caught her hair on fire the other day."
He laughs.

I stare at the dull orange of half-empty pill bottles.

My father spends his morning rounded about the shoulders,
Folded like a miser over money,
Rolling cigarettes as fast as he smokes them.

It'd been a year since I seen my father.
When I came home not a syllable was spoken.

Two days later
He said:
"I haven't hugged you yet. I'm glad you came home."

He felt too small to be a father,
Like squeezing a leather bag of tools.

And what now,
A poem?

The alphabet is too small
In all it's combinations.

Mitch James was born and raised in Central Illinois, where he received a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Eastern Illinois University. Mitch currently lives in Pennsylvania, where he completed his Masters Degree in Literature from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He's had fiction and poetry published in such journals as Westward Quarterly, The Vehicle, Foliate Oak, decomP and others.

Street art by Least Wanted. You can find his book here.
Photo by Adam Lawrence.

Brooklyn's Rubblebucket will release their new album Omega La La on June 7th.

I Know from My Bed by Michael Lee Johnson

2011-04-15T09:28:00.016-05:00

Sometimes I feel

like a sad sack-

a worn out old man

with clown facial wrinkles.

I know when I reflect,

stare out my window

at the snow falling

from my bed,

my back to yours,

reflecting on my pain-

ignoring yours-

I isolate your love,

lose your touch

to another-

forgetting,

it is our bed,

not mine,

that I lie in.

-1999-

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. Michael has been published in over 23 countries. He is also editor/publisher of five poetry sites, all open for submissions, which can be found at his website. His poetry books, 4 sale, are also available through his site.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Indiana Poem by Michael Lee Johnson. Check it out.

Pin-up image by legendary illustrator Gil Elvgren. Pasted up by a street curator of unknown identity.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.

"Is It Done" comes from the new solo album "Several Shades of Why" from Dinosaur Jr. front man J Mascis which was recently released by Sub Pop Records.

Frog-a-Rama by Gary Moore

2011-04-02T15:59:00.013-05:00

Should you be at a loose end one day, and looking for something to take away the boredom of modern day living, why not take a trip down to Frog-a-Rama - West Farmington's most popular nature reserve. There you can pass an entertaining afternoon dressed in wet weather clothing pushing frogs out of trees with a long stick. This exciting pastime has been in operation for a few years now, but the story of how it came to be is a curious one.

It all started when a colony of dancing tree frogs was discovered by Beryl Harris, a keen member of many wildlife preservation societies. Up until that point it was thought that the West Farmington dancing tree frog was extinct. Beryl had been spending some time in the middle of West Farmington woods studying fox droppings when it had suddenly started to rain. She took shelter under a tree, and ten minutes later was surprised to feel the unmistakable sensation of a frog falling on her head. She looked up and saw that the branches of the tree that she was sheltering under was infested with dancing frogs. The overwhelming sense of joy that she felt as she was battered into unconsciousness by falling frogs can easily be imagined.

Beryl, together with other members of the local wildlife society made a study of the frogs. It was found that the frogs fed on a diet of insects that were foolish enough to walk, crawl or fly past them, much like normal non-tree dwelling frogs. The colony that Beryl had discovered inhabited two adjacent trees. All of the female frogs lived in one tree, where they spent their time discussing the merits of different male frogs, while all of the males lived in the tree next door, where they spent their time talking about baseball and motorbikes. During dry periods the two genders kept apart, but when it rained the patter of raindrops caused all of the frogs to become agitated, and they would leap up and down in a frenzied amphibian dance. As the branches of the trees became wetter and more slippery, the occasional frog would miss its footing on the descending part of its leap and fall out of the tree. The unlucky ones hitting a few more branches on the way down. Once on the woodland floor, there would be an opportunity for both genders to meet with the production of tadpoles being the result. A short film was made of the spectacle and broadcast at 4 a.m. one Wednesday morning a few years ago. You may have seen it.

The study of the dancing tree frogs had been going for a year and a half when the great drought of 2004 started. This was bad news for frog watchers and amorous frogs alike. No rain meant no dancing, which meant no plummeting to the ground, which in turn meant no tadpoles. As the drought went on the watchers became more and more concerned. If it didn't rain soon the frogs were in danger of whithering away. Beryl and her wildlife group decided that something had to be done. It was obvious that a way had to be found to water the frogs, but as they all lived in trees twenty feet off the ground miles away from any mains water supply, it was not going to be easy to find a solution. The only semi-practical suggestion anyone could come up with was to use a fire truck, but unfortunately there was no access road into the woods for it to drive on.

As the hot dry days went on, Beryl and her group became more and more concerned fot the frog's welfare. By the middle of August with the weather forecast to remain the same for some time, panic had started to set in, and with no other viable alternative at hand it was decided to hack a road through the woods to the frog colony. Work began at once, and went on 24 hours a day under the broiling sun during the daytime, and under huge arc lamps at night. In a monumental feat of civic engineering the road was completed in just three days. With the asphalt barely dry a second-hand fire truck, purchased at considerable cost rolled along the road and pulled up by the trees containing the frogs. Hoses were unrolled, valves turned, and gallons of water were pumped into the air above the frog's habitat. A great cheer went up from the small crowd of road-workers and naturalists. Unfortunately, instead of dancing, all of the frogs remained stationary. After fifteen minutes it became apparent that they were not going to move. Beryl told the man who was spraying the water to direct the jet onto the frogs in order to encourage them to leave the trees. Although this had the effect of getting the frogs onto the floor, as soon as they hit the ground they scurried behind the tree trunks and hid from the water. There was good reason for this. If you cast your mind back to the last time that you were knocked out of a tree by a water cannon, you will recall that when you hit the floor, romance was not the first thing on your mind.

After half an hour, the fire truck had run out of water, and seizing their chance all of the frogs climbed back into the trees. A second attempt was made later in the day with the same result. What had not been realized at the time was that the West Farmington dancing tree frogs danced due to a partial diet of the extremely rare Ohion woodland ant. This particular ant carried an acid in its body which when ingested caused the frogs to leap up and down when they came into contact with water. As the ant hills that supplied the frogs with this supplement to their diet had been buried under eight inches of tarmac when the road had been laid, it was unsurprising that the frogs no longer danced. Although unfortunately this fact was not known at the time.

Beryl and her group were faced with a problem. They realised that they could not blow the frogs out of the trees with hoses, but would have to direct a fine spray overhead to simulate rain, and as the frogs inexplicably refused to dance they would have to be gently helped on their way. The best way to achieve this was by using a long stick with a soft tennis ball on the end to push the frogs off of the branches. As fire trucks and tennis balls cost a lot of money, it was decided to recoup the cost by opening the site up to the general public. Thus it was that Frog-a-Rama came to be.

Today you can not only push frogs out of trees while getting soaking wet in the process, but you can also buy postcards and cuddly toy frogs at the gift shop, and have your photograph taken while holding a stick with a tennis ball on the end of it. All for a very reasonable fee.

Frog-a-Rama is just off East Main Street and is open all year round. Well worth a visit.

Gary Moore is a bewildered Englishman living in France where he spends most of his time hanging radiators on walls and sticking copper pipes together. When not doing so this he spends his spare time writing satirical rubbish, and has been accidentally published by Charging Ram books in Canada. Frog-a-Rama is one of the short stories published in his recently released book "Churchmouse Tales" which is available in paper and Kindle version on Amazon. His second book "Auntie Vera and the search for Vivien Leigh's haircut" is due out in October.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Sticker art by LEW.

"Horses" is latest single from the High Highs.

The Last Barbie by Cameron Dezen Hammon

2011-03-19T23:55:00.018-05:00

This is the last Barbie

I will get before my birthday she says

Mountain of peach and tan friends

A placeholder

For the sister I cannot give her.

My husband hides

Under stained comforter

Watches USA v. Slovenia.

She wants a plain one she says

One who looks like her

She is happy in bathwater

Warm amniotic

She digs Barbie out of her cardboard prison,

Splinters tiny fingernails

Readies each new friend for the water.

There is always water on the floor

It runs through me like a sieve.

I am making a family Look Mommy!

Can we go to a park? I want another fruit roll-up

Look at this girl These two are friends

Cameron Dezen Hammon earned her BA in Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. She has fronted a math rock band, scooped ice cream and taught elementary music in Brooklyn. So far, her favorite job is being a mother to a four year old, self professed glitter artist. She has written for Curator Magazine, NYLON, and Houston's 002. She lives in Houston, TX with her rock star husband and daughter.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Sticker advertisement defacing an illegally posted poster advertisement by unknown artist.

Bibio is the alias of British producer Stephen Wilkinson. He is releasing his next album "Mind Bokeh" on March 29th through Warp Records.

Tight Black Pants by Chris Hivner

2011-03-02T15:15:00.013-06:00

Da da da da da da da da da da
Da da da da da da da da da da
Da da da da da da da da da.
The guitarist picked out the tune
on thin, tenuous strings.
“Oh, how mercy stings,”
he sang
as smooth as experienced hands
playing a dumbek drum.
“You fed me with lies,”
he sang forcefully.

The waitress sidled by
and I stared
at the roundness of her ass

in the tight black pants.
She was too young
for me to ask out
but what of reverie?
Were my dreams regulated? Could
she feel my imagined hands
on her curves?

“Too many lights on different nights,”
the singer groaned
as I flirted with the waitress
I could never have.
I ordered another drink
that I didn’t want,
convincing myself
of my charm
when she offered a smile.
Da da da da da da da da da da
Da da da da da da da da da da
the guitar mocked me.

Her breasts brushed against me
when she sat the glass
on the table
and I would swear
she whispered into my ear
but all I could hear was
“Oh, how mercy stings.”

The bearded singer
took a break.
He walked past my table
giving me an exuberant
thumbs up
as if I were his number one fan
but all I could see were
rubescent lips whispering
to every man in the club.

We screwed
until exhaustion took me.
The waitress
I could never have
smoked half a pack of cigarettes
while watching
a Charlie Chan movie

with the sound off.
I ordered a drink
and laughed nervously
while the singer
sat outside my bedroom door
picking out a tune
on brand new
cat-gut strings.

END

Chris Hivner writes from a small town in Pennsylvania while his mind wanders through parallel dimensions. He has recently had poems published in Underground Voices, The Cynic Online Magazine and Halfway down the stairs. He has a chapbook of poems "Edged in Blue," published by Foothills Publishing and a collection of short horror stories, "The Spaces Between Your Screams" published by eTreasures Publishing.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Nope.

"Every Place is a House" comes from Chicago-based Map & Atlases debut album Perch Patchwork which was released last year through Barsuk Records.

Eco-fiction by D.E. Fredd

2011-02-18T09:47:00.008-06:00

Last month we caught up with D. E. Fredd whose short fiction has appeared in many publications over the past four years. As with several creative artists, he has championed charitable causes, the most recent being eco-fiction.

Editor: Welcome to our pages. I think it might be worthwhile to begin by defining what you mean by eco-fiction.

DEF: Essentially it’s comprised of the author personally practicing sound ecological techniques and carrying that behavior over into his fiction. If you’ve watched any films from the 1940s and 1950s, you probably noticed how many people smoke. Every scene has characters lighting up. No doubt the viewing audience at the time saw this as accepted behavior. Such was the power of the media. We now know what the health risk was. In my writing I try to have each fictional character aware of sound environmental and recycling practices. If all fiction writers were to show their characters in this light, readers would soon recognize that as sound behavior.

Editor: Could you give some examples?

DEF: I won’t bore you with my personal life, but I do use recycled paper and have a compost bin. I have rearranged my workspace so that I write by natural light most of the time. We live in a rural area with our own well, but, if we didn’t, I would never drink bottled water. In the summer we use our garden for most of our produce. As far as my fiction goes, I wrote a story where the main character took his life by leaving the car running in the garage. That bothered me environmentally so I went back and changed it to having him hang himself using a hemp rope.

Editor: That seems like a small adjustment. I suppose you advocate manual strangulation over any other means of murder.

DEF: I would. I know it sounds strange, but the main focus is that all the characters in my stories, good and evil, are very aware of conserving energy and the ecological plight our planet is in. They’re not preaching by any means; they just display a respect for their environment.

Editor: Are there any other writers who are following your example?

DEF: Not that I’m aware of. It would be great if I could get a luminary like Nora Roberts to sign on.

Editor: Aside from using daylight to work and living off the land during the summer, are there any other conservation changes you’d like to see?

DEF: A growing area of concern for me right now is our nation’s infatuation with

Editor: As in bagels for breakfast?

DEF: Exactly. Think of the energy that could be saved if we all gave up toasting our carbohydrates. It certainly doesn’t enhance the nutritional value; in fact, it may kill most vitamins. It’s a coin flip as to whether rolls taste better. Every morning in the home and at restaurants, energy is consumed at record rates as we bow down before the great toaster god. And what’s wrong, I ask you, with a plain old cheese sandwich as opposed to grilled cheese. And why must we insist on toasted muffins and hot dog rolls? I could go on and on, but the point is that, if we are to shake off our energy dependence, sacrifices must be made. Would it kill us to have a slice of plain old bread each morning? I’m trying to think up an anagram for my cause. I like GUT, “Give Up Toast,” but I’m amenable to other suggestions.

Editor: Maybe our readers can come up with something, but is the boycott, if that’s what it is, going well?

DEF: As far as I’m concerned, personally, it is. My family isn’t as onboard as I might like. Untoasted English muffins are a tough sell. Let’s just say there have been some very tense mornings lately.

Editor: Well, we all have our little domestic battles to fight. I wish you the best with your eco-fiction and toast crusade.

DEF: Thank you for the opportunity to publicize my ideas. I really appreciate it. And there’s nothing wrong with room temperature food. America seems to have a religious aura about the “hot lunch” program for school kids and senior citizens.

Editor: We thank you for your time.

DEF: Sushi, now there’s a food that’s energy efficient--catch and chew.

Editor: Again, your ideas are interesting to say the least and we appreciate your sharing them.

DEF: If you don’t like fish, there is steak tartare. The French love it; it’s practically a national dish.

Editor: Good bye. My assistant will point you towards the exit.

DEF: Another pet peeve of mine is that computer keyboards need to be standardized. The delete key, depending on the laptop manufacturer, is always in a different place. It takes me a few seconds to locate it. That adds up over a day’s time.

Editor: Speaking of deletion . . . .

DEF: I’ll see myself out.

D.E. Fredd lives in Townsend, Massachusetts. He has had over one hundred and fifty short stories and poems published in literary reviews and journals. He received the Theodore Hoepfner Award given by the Southern Humanities Review for the bext short fiction of 2005 and was a 2006 Ontario Award Finalist. He won the 2006 Black River Chapbook Competition and received a 2007, 2009 and 2010 Pushcart Nomination. He has been included in the Million Writers Award of Notable Stories fro 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

The bearded freak-folk boys from Fleet Foxes are back, and this is the title track from their new album due out May 3rd on Sub Pop.

my angel rocks back and forth (ex-voto) by Giacomo Lee

2011-02-05T16:46:00.020-06:00

'The beaming globe and the clock face walk hand-in-hand on a summer stroll...’

My apparatus slowly pumps away.

My eyes flicker beneath my lids through catalogues of dreams never to be found or repeated.

I’m all tucked in, well looked after. I’m all blue in crisp pajamas and my sheets are green and crease-free because I’m a stone at the bottom of a riverbed.

Twinkle twinkle little star.

I pivot in my dreams as if I can hear what the doctor tells my wife in the room, what he’ll tell me when I finally skip from the hard road to this soft bed, awake again.

My hand slowly paints over my sketch.

A madman with a knife towers over his wife and child!

A gentleman bleeds from the head thanks to a fallen flower pot!

In each picture the Madonna shines in the corner and I breathe a sigh of relief for the family. The wife and child were saved, and the gentleman didn’t bleed to death in the street. Living to tell the tale, they painted these offerings back in the 1800s in thanks to Our Lady who watched over them in their darkest hours.

I’m carrying Tommy as Claire carries me along through the gallery after another physio session.

Tommy’s a snoozing bundle in my arms, and I smile down at him, finally realising I have a lot to give thanks for, no matter my state. I’m awake again.

‘This is amazing...’ Claire muses in front of me at one of those paintings of a Black Madonna.

#

I still haven’t decided the colour of my Mary.

#

I began by sketching the people in the road outside the station. I sketched the pelican lollipops and zebra stripes. The policeman in the UV jacket on his bike. The blinking blood red ambulance.

I was the last thing I placed in this composition.

Tommy still couldn’t walk, but he could say my name, crawling on the carpet towards me as I tried to raise him onto his feet by clap, clap, clapping in the air, shaking a maraca. I tried to imagine a surge in my own legs. They needed more time, my therapists said.

#

I remember listening to the circling, twinkling harps of my angel rocks back and forth as the escalators carried me to the light and mouth at the top. A million screens flickered around me with the same synchronised image of a comedian in a fat suit and drag, nothing quite so grotesque.

We’re kept slow as the world bustles around overground.

I have a lot to give thanks for - my bloodied body hanging onto the threads of life was actually like a peaceful rock slumbering at the bottom of a riverbed.

#

I’m safely submerged again, open my eyes in the cool blue.

Holding onto railings, I walk out of the water, watched by physiotherapists with clipboards. Claire and Tommy are waiting for me in the clean white examination room. I’m showing signs of improvement they say.

I finish Her image. Outside the door, Tommy crawls the carpet towards Claire, who’s shaking a maraca.

Claire carries him from the examination table into his chair, his hair still damp. That James used to be dead to the world terrifies her, a whole era of time gone after falling through a trap door. There she would miss the next part of this rotating world’s hand-in-hand walk with time, leaving her behind in the park.

‘And the dish ran away with the spoon’ she reads to Tom in his cot, before turning on the circling chimes of the baby mobile that hangs above him.

‘Twinkle twinkle little star...’

Claire holds up the red yellow maraca. Behind her is my framed ex-voto. Tommy gurgles and begins crawling on the carpet in between us. I begin clapping for encouragement and then we start all over again, and again. Tommy lets the pacifier go from his mouth and with a bending of physics he’s up on his feet, into Claire’s arms. The bee has flown, and Claire sets him back onto the ground to see if he can do the same into my arms, clapping in the air. Tommy accepts the challenge, blonde curls in a sway, his arms wide open, and I lean forward and pace to meet him halfway, taking him up and away in my arms, Claire screaming in ecstasy.

Her image beams at us from the corner of my painting as I pirouette, a love all around us.

Raised in both Italy and England, Giacomo Lee currently writes and teaches in London. His debut novel Red Trick is forthcoming on Blank Screen Books, and other works by the author can be found in zines such as Poxymash, The Beat and Quail Bell, along with the 2010 New Asian Writing anthology.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

Sleigh Bells was one of the biggest indie bands of 2010 and this is a remix of a track from their debut album Treats.

Perch by David Mac

2011-01-20T11:36:00.013-06:00

The loner, the loser,
the madman,
are the only birds
in my tree.

I watch them come and go,
peck and prune,
chirp and perch,
stay a while.

And I can't decide whether
to feed them or
scare them or
shoot them.

But leave one to admire:
lonesomeness, loss
madness,
just one.

Hey, where's the
bluebird?
I'm still waiting
to see him.

Ah, bluebird don't
mean nothing.
He comes when
he comes.

David Mac is a 32 year-old forklift driver from the UK whose work can be found in Ambit, Purple Patch, Weyfarers, United Press, Monkey Kettle, Mud Luscious, Word Riot, and many other journals, as well as, being a featured poet on The Poetry Kit's 'Caught On The Net.' He has various self-published chapbooks available, plus 'These Dirty Nothings' and 'Room is Brutal' from erbacce-press.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published Kerouac won't let me get no Sleep! by David Mac. Check it out.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art on the left by Gaia and on the right by Clown Soldier.

Pure is off of San Francisco based Blackbird Blackbird's debut ep Let's Move on Together.

A Prayer for My Tongue by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2011-01-06T22:28:00.010-06:00

My tongue flew away
from my mouth
It landed on the roof
shouting out my name.
My lips prayed
for its safety.
I saw my tongue
saved by birds
before it fell
to its demise.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. He works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, California. His poems in English and Spanish have appeared in print and online poetry journals. His poetry book, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest Press. His chapbooks have been published Dead Beat Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, and New Polish Beat. His chapbook, Digging A Grave, was just published by Kendra Steiner Editions in December 2010.

This Zine Will Change Your Life previously published The End of the World by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. Check it out.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by You Would defacing a painted mural-ad for the film "Burlesque."

Is there a better way to kick off the new year than with a Hall & Oates cover? For more on The Bird & The Bee visit their website here.

Two poems by bl pawelek

2010-12-23T10:21:00.017-06:00

bull of the stars

the angel voice sings
to the stars every night
then quits
awaiting its next turn
another turn
to burn past dark sky open air
and touch the fire presented

the song will start again
on an abandoned hill
of little memories
the eyes will rise
the voice strong
the stars will fall again

listen
to the oriole bird

memory existence
when we all smoked
with the women in plaid
all wearing hats

you look to the sky
and still believe in god
in the sunshine the blue sky
not watching for larger wings
confidence in ignorance

moving from open areas to closed
singing the songs a bit softer
pushing the orange under the black
bullock knows how to last

we grab the branch one last time
smile at the ground instead of the air
hold the breath

bl pawelek is a sometime writer and artist living in Madison. A month or so ago, he decided to take a break from writing and was nominated the next day for a Pushcart. Go figure. Now he is not sure what to do.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Cernesto.
Triptych by bl pawelek.

Daybreak is from I was a King and this Norwegian band's new album will be released January 25th though Sounds Familyre.

M...is for by Paul Beckman

2010-12-10T12:24:00.016-06:00

Mirsky’s mother is laughing. She is laughing great peals of laughter. If his mother had a gut she would split it. If she had tears they would be running down her cheeks—if she had cheeks. She’d be slapping her knee in laughter— if there was a knee or a hand to slap it.

His mother is dead. She has been dead for a long time, but now, finally now, she can rest in peace—up there in seventh heaven.

Her wish has finally come true. Her curse has come true. Both one and the same.

“You should have one just like you,” she would say to Mirsky at the drop of a hat with no provocation at all. Whenever anything was bothering her she would look his way as if to blame him and say it.

And for good measure—“If there’s a God above then you should have twins just like you. Or, almost too much to hope for—triplets.”

Did she wish Mirsky one just like him when he had his picture in the paper for saving the kitten from drowning in the pond? They called him a young local hero. She called him a schmuck for risking his life for a dumb animal. Did his mother wish him one just like him when he won the art award at the sixth-grade assembly? “What good is drawing a tree?” She asked.

“Why couldn’t you win the science award?” Did she wish Mirsky one just like him for winning the essay contest in eighth grade, the hundred-yard dash as a freshman, or the home run crown in the Babe Ruth League?

It must have slipped her mind.

But now it’s different. She knows that he has one just like him. She always knew he would. Of course. It was inevitable. The inevitable’s name is Julie and to add to the connection she is named after Mirsky’s mother in the Jewish tradition of using the same first initial to honor a departed loved one. Janice was his mother’s name. He also has a son. She was still alive when David was born. The first call Mirsky made when he got out of the delivery room was to his mother.

“Mom,” he yelled excitedly into the phone. “I’m a father! It’s a boy. And he’s beautiful.”

“Mazel tov,” she said. “He should be just like you.” Then she hung up.

Mirsky’s mother is having the time of her death. JulieJulieJulie. She must love saying the name over and over.

Julie is not a bad girl. She is however, street smart, wily, totally loyal to her friends, who come before anyone and everyone. She is harder to pin down than a watermelon seed and getting her to agree on anything is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall with a ten-penny nail. She can find a loop-hole in the waterproof ass of a frog and twist any previous agreement by quoting one word either in or out of context. She is not disrespectful. She is not exactly respectful either. She just is. Mirsky did not just fall off a turnip truck—but he cannot beat this kid with a Louisville Slugger.

“Don’t you remember,” she said recently. “I told you two months ago that I was going to the Metallica concert this Thursday.”

“No,” Mirsky said, “I don’t remember any such conversation.”

“At your age you forget everything,” she says.

And so it goes. Day after day. And it’s on these kinds of days that he misses his wife most. Elaine will come back—they always return to each other and act as if nothing unusual has happened. It’s been six months so far, and that’s the longest either has taken off from the family.

Mirsky was never home as a boy—there was always somewhere to go and something to do. Julie’s the same. He never had homework. His Mother always asked and he always told her, “No homework today, Mom,” or, “I finished it in school.” Mirsky got the grades he did because he earned them. Once, after a brutally bad report card, he told his mother he failed because the teachers didn’t like his accent.

“Accent! What the hell are you talking about accent? You were born and raised right here in Connecticut.” Mirsky’s Mother, a shade under five feet tall stood toe to toe with him, her head tilted back, yelling up at her son. Their profiles were mirror images, long foreheads, nose bump in the same place, and their hair— kinky and mousy brown—so exact as if to be interchangeable.

“That’s what they hate, Mom,” he told her. “That’s why they won’t give me good grades.”

“You deserve to have a kid just like you. I hope you have a large family and they are all like you. I hope they look like you, act like you, and have accents like you.”

“But Mom, I don’t have an accent.”

“Are you telling me that your teachers are liars?” she asked.

Ping and Pong—Mirsky and his Mother sparring through conversations. Testing and pushing, deeper and deeper—never having a quiet, calm discourse. Their personalities were as identical as their hair.

“OK, I’ll tell you what they really don’t like about me and why they won’t give me good grades,” Mirsky said.

“I can’t wait. Tell me,” she said, arms folded.

“Promise you won’t get mad.”

“Why should I get mad?” she asked, already fuming.

“Promise?”

“OK. I promise.”

“It’s not my accent they hate—it’s yours.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have an accent.”

“See, I knew you’d get mad.”

“I’m not mad—but I don’t have an accent.”

“I’m flunking because of you and you’re not even mad at my teachers,” Mirsky tells her. “You never stick up for me.”

Mirsky’s mother is laughing this week because his daughter brought home a shirtless boy with a leather vest, four earrings, a tattoo, a nipple ring and hair down to his waist. She met him at the concert, Julie said. Mirsky told her that he could only stay for dinner and she threw it back to him that he’d always said her friends were welcome.

“He is welcome to stay for dinner,” Mirsky told her. “Pick a bowl and let me know which corner he wants to eat in.”

Julie stormed up to her room, leaving her new best friend in the family room watching “Gilligan’s Island.” She kept out of Mirsky’s sight for three days, but Trevor, his house guest, stayed and ate and watched TV and slept on the floor. He never acknowledged Mirsky’s presence except to tell him as he was leaving on the fourth day that he didn’t deserve to have a daughter as good as Julie.

Mirsky’s mother would be getting a good belly laugh over this. He has to go to school to meet with the principal and Julie’s English teacher. Julie was supposed to write a poem and plagiarized one instead.

“It’s not true, Dad,” she said. “I did write the poem. I can’t help it if I’m a natural.”

Julie held out til the end. She kept her story up a lot longer than most could have.

“She’s just like you,” he heard his mother say repeatedly during the conference. Julie finally told the truth. Her version, but she only cracked when her English teacher pulled a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” from her desk drawer.

“I went to the library and grabbed an old dusty book off the bottom shelf and copied a poem. I figured that since it was so old no one would have heard of it and I’d be OK.”

Mirsky had to suppress a smile and his own laughter, hiding them behind a few coughs.

“JustlikeyouJustlikeyouJustlikeyou,” Mirsky knew his Mother was saying between fits of laughter and probably pointing he and Julie out to her friends and saying, “she’sjustlikehimshe’sjustlikehim.”

The following day Julie showed up with a kitten.

“What’s that?” Mirsky asked.

“C’mon, Dad. Even you know a kitten when you see one. You promised me that I could have a kitten if I made honors.”

Mirsky told her that he didn’t remember that conversation and said, “But you didn’t make honors anyway.”

“Technically, that’s correct,” she said. “But with this kitten around to remind me, I will make honors next time”

“Technically, the kitten goes,” he told her.

“You never keep your promises,” she whined.

Mirsky knew that his mother was watching. She knew what was coming and was laughing— waiting to hear the words. She never had as much enjoyment when she was living. Finally, Mirsky stood and walked over to where Julie was sitting and held his hands above her head and intoned, “In the tradition of our people, carried on by our family, a tradition passed down from parent to child, from generation to generation, begun somewhere in some far off land, a tradition as important in the life-cycle rite of passage as Bat Mitzvah, first date, and the inevitable birthday check from the grandparents . . .”

“Ha ha ha,” his mother laughed. “Ha ha ha.” She knows what’s about to happen. She knows that he is about to break a solemn vow that he made to himself many times over the years.

“What’s the point?” Julie asked.

Mirsky continued, “Julie, my little girl, my ray of sunshine, I want you to know that I will pray every day that you should have what I have. I want you to share my joy and experiences. You should have a child just like you.”

He turned and walked a few steps and then turned back towards Julie. She had a tear in her eye. She got up and walked over to him, and gave him the kind of hug she did when she was a little girl.

“Thanks, Dad. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in a very long time.”

“You’re welcome,” Mirsky said. “You can keep the kitten.”

end

Paul Beckman is a real estate salesman, a writer, snorkeler, traveler ad photographer. He specializes in short story, flash & micro fiction. He received and MFA from Bennington College. Some of his publishing credits include: The Connecticut Review, Playboy, Other Voices, Web Del Sol, Jewish Currents, Monkey Bicycle, Exquisite Corpse, Opium and Thug Lit.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street Art by SURE, a Marine who recently lost his life in Afghanistan. For more about SURE please check out the following video.

Led to Sea is the work of L. Alex Guy, and this track comes from her latest album Into The Darkening Sky which was released by Eleven Records.

What You Pay For by Robert O'Shea

2010-11-27T17:08:00.020-06:00

I get stopped on the street. On the tube someone will press too close. In a queue a hardened penis jabs me. At a café a waiter scrawls his number on my napkin. People forget themselves.

A taxi driver may try to bring me on a detour. Offer me money. Or try to take it for free. Nobody gets it for free. No taxi driver could afford me.

Even with money I still have to see other qualities. They need to interest me. Need to have something that doesn’t make me want to fart in public. I interview my clients. I expect I am the first whore to do that. But I am worth it. They know that.

They have heard about me on the grape vine. My number can’t be found in any phone book. My mug shot can’t be found in no grubby wank mag. There is no email, finger print, paper trail, address. I am hard to find.

Only the precious few know.

There is:

Peter, owner of New York. So powerful that he can afford not to be seen. He caused the recession. The mood simply took him because I refused to respond to his call. He could destroy the world…simply because I won’t kiss his ear. He is the earthquake that swallows hundreds. He once paid me with a tropical island.

Emily, daughter of a female icon. She has cost her mother millions in cover-up money. When Emily doesn’t get her way she cuts people up, college friends, dorm mates, random men. Emily’s mother pays me to give her happiness. Only briefly. Enough to stop Emily killing for another few months.

Azrial, the Satanist.

Hilary, the politician’s wife.

James, the obsessive director.

I fix. Clean. Empty their wallets. Make them hungry for more. Once you taste me you can never have enough.

Have you seen me?

Briefly on the street? Were you shocked by my beauty? Stopped in your tracks?

Did you go looking for me; follow around the corner only to find a dead-end alleyway?

I am hard to find.

I will see what you’re like.

Are you worth it?

Robert O'Shea is a Dubliner living in New Zealand. His stories have been published in Ireland (New Irish Writing), England (First Edition Magazine), New Zealand (Her Magazine) and the US (365tomorrows). His story Cut Throat was shortlisted for the Hennessy X O Literary Awards (2009). He won the Writing4all Short Story Summer Competition with his story sleep. His most recent stories were published in Bravado Magazine and Verdad Magazine. His next two stories will be published in Outburst Magazine and New Leaf. He is currently working on a novel.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by TrustoCorp.

This is a new track from this throwback band from Philly.

Quality Control by J. Bradley

2010-11-09T00:09:00.046-06:00

"Never stop the wedding during the ceremony," Michael said, pointing to the sickle shaped scar beneath his right eye, "The canyon dug by the bride's engagement ring last forever."

I swallowed the words. A week ago, I watched Michael stumble into the courtyard, the Old-Grand Dad on his breath a thumbtack in the dreams Marianne, my ex-fiancé, had. I don't know why I didn't have the courage to back out of the wedding, out of the gravity well of her arms. I thought in the Craigslist ad about preventing mistakes, Michael would have been more subtle, more clever. "You can't do this," Michael yelled, "you can't do this to us. I love you." I told Marianne's feet and Michael’s blood I loved him, too, before pulling him through the muck of his blood alcohol level and thickets of angry stares. It's amazing what a little bit of your past mixed with a loud lie can do to pry you out of the abandoned refrigerator she would become.

Michael explained that each time someone does this, they have to do it differently as not to get caught, so no one sees a pattern. The Blackberry he handed me not only is linked to the ad but also contains a list of what each person did to break up a relationship or stop a wedding and whether it failed or succeeded. "If you fuck up, break the phone and get rid of the pieces," Michael said, "I'll make sure you get another one. You only get one shot with each person and you don't get out of it because you failed. You'll keep answering the ad until you get one of them right." I waited fifteen minutes after he left to leave the building.

###

At home on the couch, I thumbed through the war plans and their outcomes:

"Slit subject's wrist, wrote "I can never love you" on bathroom wall in her blood. Ex-fiancé attends therapy three times a week.
Attempted seducing subject at bridal shower. Subject asked if she could share me with fiancé later. Politely explained only into women then walked away."
"Hired baby actor. Pretended baby was subject's and claimed subject was the father. Managed to doctor DNA results. Maury's audience howled for subject's balls.
"Hit on subject's fiancé. Fiancé broke four ribs, blackened left eye, swallowed two pints of my own blood. Subject broke up with fiancé as police entered the bar."
"Cut subject's brake lines. Car ran into tree. Ex-fiancé in coma."

An orchestral version of "Highway to Hell" came out of the phone. The e-mail read "Samantha 301-423-5432." I waited fifteen minutes then called Samantha. Anxiety bled out of her "hello."

"I understand you need a mistake prevented," the standard opening for this line of work.

Yes...I do. I'm getting married in a month," she let the swarm of that sentence settle in her stomach before continuing. "He's a great guy and all but I can't see myself with him for the rest of my life and I don't want to break his heart". I'm not allowed to let thoughts of if he's such a great guy, why are you doing this to him creep in.

"Tell me about your fiancé. What does he do? What is he into? Has he ever cheated on you?" Health inspector, Billy Joel and Pabst Blue Ribbon, twice. "Let me see what I can do. You won't know when it happens or what will happen. Play along and trust me and I'll get you out of this. Understood?" Samantha says ok. I hang up.

###

I worked the angles out in my head and they're all covered in lungs shriveled by smoke or poison in the kitchen of a sports bar, a gas leak and a manager with a smoking habit, a piano accident without the healing powers of animation and Mel Blanc, a bad batch of PBR combined with the conjuring of one of his former lovers. I checked the phone's done list and they're all there; my irises sky write "what the fuck on the nearest wall.

###

Samantha's fiancé will wake up the next morning. He'll trip on a rope that lights a candle that teethes a rope that releases a catapult that launches an egg into a bulls-eye that causes dominoes to collapse, spelling out "I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. SINCERELY, SAMANTHA." He'll marvel at the care she took to tell him, a metaphor for the needless complexity of emotions, before collapsing into tears. He will find her phone number no longer works, her furniture carefully removed like organs. In a week, Samantha will have the Blackberry. She will figure out if she too can stomach being the thumbtack.

J. Bradley is the author of Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books, 2009) and the author of the flash fiction chapbook The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You Is A Robot (Safety Third Enterprises, 2010). He is the Interview Editor of PANK Magazine and lives here.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Olek.

Home Video is a Brooklyn-based band releasing a new album through Warp Records on November 16th.

The Session by Lorraine Sears

2010-10-26T15:04:00.015-05:00

He grudgingly walks into thrice weekly sessions as always, hating that he has to be there, but with nowhere else to go. These people look on him as one of their own, although he is nothing like them. They're simply a crutch he has to rely on and for that he loathes their very existence.

The worm-haired, loony bitch in the flowing skirts and wooden beads welcomes him, just like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that…

With her sing-song voice, open arms and an ever ready plastic cup of tepid water; the goofy smile on her face tries to build trust with him, but all it does is make him build his walls higher.

The group isn’t all here yet. And that pisses him off; how hard can it be to make it at the same time to the same place for each session for Christ’s sake? He’s here to endure it. Loony bitch is here. Jim with the bad sniffing habit, who wears sock and sandals, is here. And Alice, the fat one, who always comes with her pockets stuffed full of food has made it on time. Though if she couldn’t eat in the session he doubts she’d make it at all. She seems to have a real problem being separated from her food.

But then Nigel and Nancy walk through the door, arm in arm, eye to eye, simpering and cooing at each other. In their matching tracksuits, with their own private language, they make him want to throw stuff. In fact, he dreams about picking up one of the institutional grey plastic chairs and smashing that vile link they seem have to each other.

He potters about the edges of the community hall, from one trestle table to another, not wanting to do anything except leave. The fish tank that’s there to calm and inspire catches his eye. He goes up and bangs on the side, wondering if it really bothers the fish like people always tell their kids it does.

Harvey comes in next. He’s got a new red coupe’, the lucky bastard. Thankfully he can’t bring it in to the session, though he would if he could. But even though he’s had to leave it outside he shows off the keys anyway. And the key fob that imitates about six different car horns. Yeah, he’s really fucking annoying too, constantly turning up with the latest boys toys.

Finally everyone is assembled and loony bitch gets them in some sort of loose circle to welcome them. And everyone but her has to sit on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that makes their arse sweat. Full of her own self-importance she calls the register to make sure everyone is really there. Because nothing patronises like making people say ‘yes’ when they hear their name called. God he hates it here.

Halfway through the session, which today focuses on using creative energy, loony bitch sits them all down again to pass round a tray of rainbow mugs filled with water and a stale biscuit, just enough on the plate for one each. Nothing stronger, nothing more, just in case someone has a ‘sensitivity’ or some other namby-pamby crap. He takes the biscuit and crumbles it between his fingers, watching the crumbs pile on the floor. He knows as soon as he gets out of here he’s heading straight the corner-shop for something stronger than fucking water.

Stories full of ‘good morals’ are told next, and everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts. He doesn’t say anything, but simply glares at Jim, who’s sniffed and wiped silvery trails from his nose up his sleeve throughout. But then it’s nowhere near as bad as when the guitar comes out and loony bitch invites them all to sing-along with her. He treats her to his baleful glare instead now as she bobs around encouraging their participation.

Finally, two hours are up, the torture is over for another day. Loony bitch checks her watch and tells everyone the session is almost ended. In the regular routine they all hurry to stack chairs back around the walls so they can leave. And just like always it’s in this moment he feels a tiny connection with the others, that maybe they hate this as much as him.

At 11am on the dot the doors open, and a matronly army of women with kind faces come in, all searching for their charges. He sees the one who’s there for him, and for the first time since walking through the doors he smiles.

"Hey sweetheart," the doting woman calls to him. "Did you have a nice time at pre-school?"

In her mid-thirties, Lorraine Sears tries to portray herself as sensible, wife and mother to all but those who know her best. Her imagination has always been her driving force, and through the years she has formed a strong bind with it, and now it work for her as opposed to against her; the many notebooks littering her home are a testament to this long and often fiery relationship. You can find more of her stories with Untreed Reads, Black Heart Magazine, The Scrambler and Pond Ripples to name but a few. Lorraine also has a blog where she shares the joy and despair of writing.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by The Googly Eye Cru.

Twin Sister released their second ep back in March, and this is a new remix from the Tennessee band Coolrunnings.

The Circus and The Library by Melodie Corrigall

2010-10-12T21:19:00.010-05:00

When the circus married the library, she was only a small fair. Once the nuptials were performed, however, audience demands increased.

The circus, always stumbling to satisfy, expanded and diversified. With frantic compliance, she added more and more acts.

Although frightened of heights, the circus cared enough to include a trapeze act. Clothed in a scanty sequined costume, the terrified creature minced her way across the wide expanse. She dared not suggest a regulation safety net, instructed as she had been to keep expenses down. Below, the crowed oowed and awed, warning her to take care while threatening disfavor if she lost her nerve.

She was the pretty girl (such a sweet face), the one in the satin outfit who held the torch when the magician did his tricks. It was she who caught the scarves when he was finished, picked up the rabbit and the hat. When he threw the knives, cavalier in the knowledge that a slip would not cut his throat, it was she who trembled expectantly.

The library, medium sized when the couple married, expanded at his convenience. No smell of sawdust, no sweat of crowds, and no greasepaint or animal droppings for him. As defined in book, the library was civilized. He recorded history. “Silence please, people are reading.” No animals here only order, blessed order and time for all things.

At night the library closed. The lights were turned off to preserve energy, the shutters were drawn. The staff filed out smiling, and nodded farewells. The library slept.

Not so, the circus. In the evenings the largest crowds gathered and shouted for more.

They waited expectantly for the lion tamer to be eaten, the trapeze artist to fall, and the fire eater to be enflamed. And even after they finally lumbered out, dropping popcorn and drink containers, leaving to return to their real world, the circus continued. Alone now without an audience and with no encouraging applause. Cleaning, packing up, feeling the animals, mending the broken bones.

The library was the library, open or closed. The books, breathing a life of their own, needed no one to affirm their worth. They waited confident and uncaring. The circus depended on the crowd, waited expectantly to see the audience’s mood. Fearful that something would go wrong, a bad review, a poor gate, disaster.

“The circus will close down.”

The aging circus, paint peeling from her coloured wagons, her canvas rent, struggled to keep up the show, adding more and more unlikely attractions.

Scheduling was difficult. The audience careless of the animal’s health, the staff’s fatigue, demanded more action. What are we paying for? Might as well stay home and look at T.V. Bring on the lions.

The circus didn’t tame the lions herself, she was too timid. She only entered the cages after the show to clean the cages.

In time, to satisfy demand, the circus would even bloat her thin frame into a balloon like fat lady. Comments from her fans and from the media confirmed that she was grotesque. They call it as they see it. Keep them coming, keep them laughing.

One February the circus wound down; the music limped from 7/8 to 3/4 time. In a retrospective moment, the circus confessed to her seated companion that she took wanted to be in the book business. The library was too wise to concern himself with carnival fantasies. “A circus is a circus,” he fondly offered. Then to her strident barks, “Keep you voice down, you will disturb the books.”

When the circus married the library, she was only a small fair. But when they separated, she transformed into a ship and sailed away.

Melodie Corrigall's work has appeared in Room, Canadian Short Fiction, Horizon, Dalhousie Review, Viola Beadleton's Compendium, Toasted Cheese, The November 3rd Club and Other Voices.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by unknown artist.

Gold Panda creates beautiful electronic soundscapes and pounding beats for Ghostly International.

known by John Grochalski

2010-10-01T12:10:00.011-05:00

she grabs my arm and says

i’m sorry but i don’t think

i know you

i put down my beer

and tell her

it’s fine

millions of people don’t know me

and she lets go

to sit back down with her old man

maybe her father

he looks eighty

she looks sixty

he has a beer in front of him

and she has a rum and coke

they were drunk when they

walked in this joint

can’t we get any music

in here? she says

can’t i smoke in here?

come on

she keeps telling her old man

it’s fine

don’t worry

but he won’t touch his beer

just watches the floor

as she fiddles with her newport

digging through her purse

with the other hand

to find a light

anyone got a light?

she asks

but no one answers

they just watch jeopardy

or the yankees game

well, can you call us a cab?

she asks the bartender

and he dials the phone

quicker than i’ve ever seen him move

for anything

then says they’ll be here in minutes, darling

before going to the other end of the bar

to look for the cab

outside the neon-soaked window

come on

she prods the old man

at which point he looks up

from the floor with sad, baggy

old man eyes

eyes tired of looking at the world

and grabs the sweaty bottle

just as she finds a light

and stumbles off the stool

to go outside

and have a quick smoke

in the summer rain

smiling my way

one more person out of millions

who knows me now

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch Out. His chapbook, Glass City, is forthcoming from Low Ghost Press. Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Paul Richard.

This track comes from Broken Social Scene's most recent release Forgiveness Rock Record which was released on back on May 4th.

Foxy Knoxy by Francis Raven

2010-09-17T13:03:00.012-05:00

to remove her foreignness to remove her remove to remove her intimidating vibrator from the vanity to remove her stillborn false witness to remove her vacancy to remove his convenient forgetfulness of the morning after to remove her press posed beauty to remove the fleeing African to remove her cartwheels to remove her five-page confessional to remove his expert’s theory of a single assailant’s attack from behind to remove the knife from the kitchen drawer with police intuition is to remove the case is to lend her freedom is to remove her

Francis Raven's books include Architectonic Conjectures (Silenced Press, 2010), Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shifting the Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox, 2005) and the novel, Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). Francis lives in Washington, DC; you can check out more of his work at his website.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Celso.

Aussie's Tame Impala make fine psych-rock and just released their debut album InnerSpeaker.

Reckoning by Chris Castle

2010-09-01T14:48:00.019-05:00

He took his lunch in the café by the pier. Most days he sat in with the other men, but today the factory was smoky and heavy and he needed to get out. He ordered coffee, a sandwich, took the table he usually grabbed at weekends, when he came in here, both Saturday and Sunday. He smiled as the waitress took his order, noticing her surprise at him sitting there, clutching the menu.

He looked out to the pier; the tourists gone now, the promenade forgotten. The sky was grey and the first splatters of rain hit the window. To anyone else it would be gloomy, depressing even, but to him it was beautiful; being able to see the clouds gather, hear the raindrops fall. He watched the patterns of the shower form across the glass, seeing the waitress watch him in the reflection; all she saw was a young man staring out of the window, trying to catch the girls’ eyes. That was all she knew.

He ate the food and refilled his cup. He glanced at his watch and saw he still had ten minutes. Maybe he would buy another book from over the road, be served by the girl he had fallen a little in love with over the last month. Maybe he would go down onto the pier and watch the waves. So much freedom, he thought, smiling, looking round to find the waitress and seeing the woman walk straight towards his table, him. He felt his stomach lurch, as she sat down opposite him with a quiet bustle.

“I know. I know, so don’t try and deny it.” Her voice was small but sharp, each word searing. “I know who you are and don’t you dare try and deny it.” He put his palms up, feeling the inside of himself explode. He had waited for months for this moment.

He had expected a crowd, a riot even. Now, there was just a small woman, armed, facing him with the truth.

He sat and listened as she spoke. Her hands in-front of her, as if she was reading from an invisible script. He could tell she had rehearsed this a thousand times, practising over and over, the moment she came face to face with the monster, now a man. Her voice wavered, it strained, but she didn’t break. For that, he almost admired her. Somewhere close-by, the waitress hovered over them, a table over or two, monitoring them out of the corner of her eye. Even as he followed the woman opposite, he tracked the waitress too; aware of her warmth towards him draining away the more she looked at the other woman. She did not hear the words, but she saw her agony and understood well enough.

When she was done, the woman drew back, folded the outstretched hands into her chest. It almost looked as if she was praying. Her face, drained of all colour, was all creases and pale skin and dark lines. He wondered what she must have looked like before, if she had once been beautiful. How she must have looked when she was alive and not broken, before he stole everything she had held precious in her heart from her.

She asked one last question, so low it was almost a whisper. He nodded; suddenly aware he had not spoken since she had sat down. He had offered no defence; he had none to offer.

“Dylan. Dylan Taylor. I chose it myself. I don’t know why they let me choose it. I don’t know why I chose that name. I’m twenty.” His voice was shaky; but then, was that his voice? Or was it just another layer, another lie, to place on top of the others? She tried to show disgust, to sneer, but she couldn’t manage it, not quite. She was not corrupt enough to manage viciousness. Instead she buckled, looked at him with a depth in his eyes he could not remember seeing before. He wanted to look away, but he knew he could not; he would not allow himself to be a coward, not anymore.

“You took from me!” The four words shook as they came out of her mouth. He didn’t want to hear anymore, he couldn’t bare it. He listened. “I don’t have any love left. There is no-one around me to ask for my love. And who’s going to love me? I need love and no-one’s going to love me. And…and…there must be a reckoning for that.”

She slammed her hands down onto the table; she drew up her fists and held them to the sides of her face, as if she was waiting for another blow, a final one to finish her. “There must be a reckoning.” Those were her final words, the ones she had settled upon. That was the end of it.

She stared at him a good long time. No more words now. She brought her hands down to the surface of the table, so close their fingers were almost touching. Then she withdrew and brought her hands to the top of her throat, zipping hr coat, re-adjusting he scarf. She rose in silence and drew her bag to her chest. He watched her as she slid out, making her way to the door. She walked out into the rain, fat drops not even making her flinch, as she marched off down the road. Off to finish what she had started here, he knew. He placed the money down on the table; saw her fingerprints on the surface. He put his own on top, trying to feel the heat of them. But there was nothing but coldness underneath. He walked out, not even looking back to waitress, even as she felt her eyes burn into his back. It had begun.

Almost without thinking he looked down to his watch. The break had ended. By now they would be asking after him, checking the toilets, the smoking area. The first stab to his chest; maybe that was the first place she was heading to. She may have been following him for days, for all he knew. He had supplied her with the name, offered her the rope, the weapon, to do the job; all that was left was for her to decide how quick and how hard she wanted to act.

The rain grew heavier, pushing him into shops, into archways. Overhead a plane roared, blocking out all other sounds. He closed his eyes and imagined where it was heading, what the place had to offer; it was his favourite pastime-planes, trains, cars with foreign number plates; all those forms of escape. It flashed into his mind, and then broke apart as an idea; he did not have the money, the means. Even a passport was out of reach. The plane hurtled on, leaving him behind. He felt the tears falling and was glad for the rain as he looked up into the sky.

The rain grew heavier, so he stepped inside a bar. He ordered a whiskey and for a moment almost laughed at the idea of the bar man asking him for an ID. He took his drink to the corner, by the window and sipped it. The sting was so strong it almost made him gag. He, who had sworn never to drink again. The new life in tatters now and gone. He looked around to all the old men, nursing their bitters, rifling through the newspapers. Tomorrow he could be on the front page, all over again. Before and after, hunter, hunted.

The bar was a hang out for students in the area. On a night out, the only one he had risked, they had ended up here. He had watched fascinated at the energy of them all, the wildness in the way they laughed, the casualness with how they screamed and moved. It had reminded him of how he was as a kid, everything unchecked. Later, a girl had kissed him for no other reason than he was there and had not tried to make a move on her. She span away soon after and he was already forgotten, even as he reached after her. He withdrew though; no scenes, no attention, those were his rules. His was face already burning from the cheers of the workmates and something else, too. The electricity of his first kiss.

He finished his drink and laid the money he had out on the table. He thought about risking going back to the house, but decided against it. Instead, he pulled his jacket close, turned up the collar and pushed the hat over his head. The bar man acknowledged him as he left and he nodded back. Tomorrow, he thought bitterly, that exchange will be on the news, in the papers. The barman, barely older than himself, would make money out of it, maybe girls. All for a casual wave of the hand.

The rain grew heavier, melting the cars that drove by, blurring the shops into one mess of bricks. He walked to his favourite food shop and bought himself treats that he normally reserved for the weekends. He walked into the bookies and bet on horses in the closest three races. All of them lost, but he felt the exhilaration of following them, all the same. After it was over he bought a coffee from the machine in the corner and ate his food as he circled more races he had no intention of gambling on. The whiskey wore off, the buzz faded. He finished his food and pitched the drink into the bin. He had gambled; another small dream realised from the list.

As he walked to the bookshop he wondered about the factory. By now the black mark would have gone against him, a phone call may have been placed to the flat. The fact he did not own a mobile was a source of amusement to the factory men, as was his ignorance of the internet, even as they jostled him into the corner to watch some sex film or real life accident. He went along with it, minute’s later sick in the toilets, remembering to wipe his mouth, grateful for the gum he always carried. Sometimes he wondered if he used the gum without realising it, to wipe the taste of the lies he steadily told, somehow keeping his mouth fresh, his words clean and undetected.

He stepped inside the bookshop, the old bell ringing over his head as he entered. A man was at the counter and his heart half sank, half beat stronger; what would he have said to her? The chance to have said anything to her. He walked into the aisles, looking idly at all the books he would never have the chance to read now. All that time, reading and learning, enveloping him, offering him so many windows of escape. The stories so clear and crisp, absorbing every one of them, making them a part of his own life, building a childhood he would never have.

Her voice came from the left, as a door opened. She returned from her lunch break; spoke to the man who left the counter. She answered the phone and helped a customer; her name was Joanna. At the end of the conversation she gently laughed and then placed the phone back in the cradle. He listened, rocking on his heels with her laugh, even the knowledge of her name. With his last act, he took the book from the shelf, the one he knew and loved above all else, and took it to the counter.

She acknowledged him, smiled and took the book. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just a smile she provided for all the customers. He was just another stranger passing through her day and out of her life. This he knew. She made a joke about the weather and slipped the book inside a bag and then another. It was a simple thing to do, but thoughtful and something others would not do. The little actions of grace and kindness that set people apart. He handed over the money and thanked her, then peeled back into the aisle, the phone ringing and distracting her.

He crouched in the aisle as she spoke, took the pen and notepad he carried in his pocket at all times; the book had been a warning, a guide of notes and single-word reports to sustain his lies, to keep his new life intact. Now, at last, he could use it for a good thing. He wrote her name at the top, wrote the words below it. Then, he slipped the book out of the bag and set it squarely on the floor, the note resting on top. It was a small gesture, but everything in the world to him, now. He walked out of the shop, nodding to her, she returning the nod, the phone still cradled under her jaw as she checked the computer screen. Then, like that, it was over.

He pushed the bags into the bin and walked towards the pier. There was no money left, no other small dreams left to conquer along this small beach town road. He closed his eyes as his feet hit the sand, imagined a life with the girl, one unfettered and straightforward. Holding her hand, drinking coffee. Buying her flowers from a stall and watching films. All the small pieces that make up a simple life. All the things he had denied himself, all that time ago. The rain fell harder as he pulled off his work-boots, his socks. The wet sand settled his heart as he walked towards the waves, making him feel young again. Not that that could ever be true. He had lived a life without youth, paying for his mistake. It was what he had deserved; it was what he had accepted. Now, as he stepped into the foam, the rest of what he had to pay was due. He walked into the sea, the water exploding with each bullet of rain that impacted on the surface. It was beautiful, he decided as he waded further in. It was all beautiful, every second of it. He almost smiled as the water climbed over him, but for the woman’s eyes. Those eyes, wet and round and full. That was that filled him, over every other thing, as the water climbed higher, the rain unstoppable.

Chris Castle is English, but works in Greece. He has been published over 100 times. His influences include Ray Carver, Stephen King and the films of PT Anderson. He can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com.

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Faro.

Andreya has soul that bleeds through every note of her debut album "Lost Where I Belong" which will be released this September by Ninja Tune Records.

Not Much Today by Zach Fishel

2010-08-19T13:06:00.007-05:00

The room is silent.
My lungs are not,
they are rasping with the rattling of deer antlers during rut,
mixed with the swish swash oh my gosh of too many cigarettes I never smoked.
Bob Dylan is sorrowfully plucking away in the corner, and I pull the harmonica out
and bend notes like arrows across the hallway and into the bathroom,
where the toilet paper has run out again.
The things that traumatize a man without hope.

I'm just kidding,
because the sun was peeking through the window to see if I was safe.
I just told a lie to make sure he would keep checking.

Zach Fishel is currently living in Pittsburgh where he spends his free time writing and reading. In between the two he wants to attend Graduate School for a Masters in English concentrating on Kerouac and the Beat Generation. He thinks he would be good at this because he knows the difference between surviving and living for a living. He has work at Four Paper Letters and Curly Red Stories and one day he hopes to run his own small press for writers with more heart than earthworms. (they have five hearts)

Photograph by Adam Lawrence.
Street artist unknown.

Kyle Field is the man behind the folk tunes of Little Wings.

Bare Knuckles by Ryan W. Bradley

2010-08-03T10:18:00.009-05:00

In this light my knuckles look soft,

small and uneventful, nothing

like the swollen pink of my father’s.

They look harmless, my knuckles,

and the light has nothing to do with it.

My dad’s always looked menacing,

gripping a steering wheel or

pulling a belt off by the buckle.

I took a picture of my fist

and stared at it for hours.

Everybody has fists,

but there are differences,

and I want to purge mine

before my child comes into the world

with blank, bare knuckles.

Before my child knows

what a fist is or learns to feel

the bone chips that lie under

the surface of mine and realizes

knuckles don’t stay bare for long.

Ryan W. Bradley has fronted a punk band, done construction in the Arctic Circle and managed a children's bookstore. He is the author of a chapbook, Aquarium (Thunderclap Press, 2010), and a novel, Code for Failure (Black Coffee Press, 2012). He is the editor of Artistically Declined Press and received his MFA from Pacific University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a myriad of publications including The Oregonian, Oranges & Sardines, Sir! Magazine and PANK. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons. Ryan is also Morning Gorgeous. He is not Ryan Reynolds.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art by Kosbey.

EXCERPTS FROM THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HARRIET THE SPY by Jen Michalski

2010-07-22T23:06:00.018-05:00

I will be damned if I will pee blood and have a baby. Boy, ole golly about shot through the roof when I said that. I mean it, I’ll be damned if get my period, even if she explained you don’t pee blood and that you can’t have a baby without being impregnated first. Marion Hawthorne may think she knows everything, but wait until I tell her about how menstruation really works. She’s going to turn as green as a pickle. But I don’t think I will have a period because I am a spy. Where would I keep my maxi pads when I’m on the lamb? But Ole Golly says even Mati Hari had periods, so I maybe I will have to reconsider.

Beth Ellen stopped eating. Zeeny came in from Milan or wherever mothers who are models go for photo shoots and told Beth Ellen she looked like a cow. If Beth Ellen is a cow, I must be a hippopotamus. Doesn’t Zeeny know everyone calls Beth Ellen a mouse? Doesn’t she know Beth Ellen is the skinniest girl in our class? Not only does Beth Ellen not eat, but she takes some pills Zeeny gave her to make her not hungry. What kind of person doesn’t want to eat? If I couldn’t eat my tomato sandwiches I would die. But maybe if I was doing spy work in the Sahara I might need those pills to survive. Or maybe I could give them to people I was interrogating. If they didn’t eat they would get weak and succumb to questioning faster. I need to ask Beth Ellen for one of these pills, but it will have to wait until she gets back from the hospital. She hasn’t been at school all week, and her grandmother says she isn’t feeling well.

The boy with the purple socks now wears a purple ascot as well. Sport and Pinky Whitehead call him gay boy, but I don’t understand; what’s so terrible about being happy?

I always thought little Joe Curry would drive the De Santis out of business because he eats more food from their deli than he delivers. But he no longer sits in the stockroom eating pepperoni sticks and cheese all day. On my spy route last week he sat in the alley smoking bubbles from a little glass pipe. Why would smoking a little bubble pipe make him too happy to eat? Today I spied him taking food from the De Santis’ stock room, but he wasn’t eating it. He was selling it to some people down the street. Then he went into an apartment building and came out with a little package. Back in the alley, he pulled some rock candy out of the package and smoked it. I know little joe curry isn’t all there, but this is the weirdest thing I’ve seen anybody do. I’m going to have to follow him closely the rest of the week to get to the bottom of this.

Janie Gibbs was working on something new in her lab today. I don’t normally like to hang out in Janie’s lab because things have a tendency to blow up, but sport wasn’t around and I’d finished my spy route early. She made me stay very far back from the bench because she said the ingredients of methamphetamine are very volatile and I could get burned. I asked what about her? But she just smiled that smile of hers and kept boiling something. I asked her if methamphetamine is like the play-Doh she made last summer and sold to the kids in the lower school cheaper than the store stuff but she said, oh, Harriet, for a spy, you’re so naïve. I said, no I’m not - you’re just crazy - and left.

Sport and I hung out at his apartment until it was time for me to go home and eat dinner. I eat dinner the same time every night because that’s when the cook cooks it, but sport and his father eat whenever they want. Sometimes they don’t eat at all if sport’s dad doesn’t make any money. Anyway, I was lying on his bed reading comic books and he laid on top of me and poked me with it from inside his pants and I told him to stop because I was at this really good part in atom ant but he kept at it. We’re too young to make babies, I said, but he said we weren’t going to make a baby because he was going to stop early. I didn’t care what his plan was because I wanted to finish atom ant and plus it hurt. But then it got me thinking and I asked sport if I was his girlfriend now and he said no, you’re not my girlfriend because you’re ugly and then I called him a poor, dirty writer’s son and went home. Ole golly said that when people call you ugly they really mean you’re pretty. The seventh grade is definitely tougher than the sixth grade.

P.s., I don’t want to be sport’s girlfriend anyway because I am a spy and romantic attachments are too complicated, even for Mati Hari.

That sport is sure fresh. Who does he think he is, sitting with Carrie Andrews at lunch? I had to sit with the boy with the purple socks and ascot, and when I told him what sport and I did, he got really excited and asked what sport’s thing looked like. I said, I don’t know, why don’t you ask him? And then I skipped school and my spy route the rest of the day.

My parents had a conference about something. I tried to listen at the door but they talked quietly. I did hear the word “home school.” At first I thought no way, I want to go to the Gregory school but then maybe it would be fun. Ole golly could teach me just about anything those teachers could. I could eat lunch at home, and then I could go on my spy route. Boy, would Jamie and sport be jealous.

There is a rumor going around that I am a slut. When I asked sport about it he shrugged and walked away with Carrie Andrews. I wonder if the boy in the purple socks and ascot started it. I couldn’t ask him because pinky beat him up during gym and he went home with a broken nose. The upshot of all this is that a spy’s cover should never, never be blown, and if people are talking about a spy, that means she’s visible. The only thing to do would be to go into deep cover. I need to ask my parents about the home-schooling again.

Beth Ellen is still in the hospital. My mother says it’s not really a hospital at all but a place people go when they need help. Does she mean the loony bin? I bet if I tell everyone at school that Beth Ellen is crazy, they’ll stop talking about me.

I had a dream that Beth Ellen and I were kissing. When I woke up, I still wanted to kiss her. I wonder if she thinks I’m ugly. I wish she would come back. Some days, aside from Ole Golly, I think she is the only friend I have left.

Ole golly says that when life gives you lemons, you learn to make lemonade. So I am keeping up my spy route. I followed little Joe to the apartment building where he gets the rock candy. I pretended to read the mail boxes in the lobby while he was upstairs. Boy, that place was a dump. Urine and trash everywhere. I wondered if Jamie could make me some rock candy to sell at school, but then the strangest thing happened; I thought I saw Jamie walking down the other side of the street while I was tailing Joe back to the deli. What business would she have in the rock candy neighborhood, unless she’s already selling rock candy she’s made? What kind of rat fink wouldn’t cut in her friend? I can’t wait until home schooling starts. I’ll start my own rock candy business.

Beth Ellen is moving to Germany with Zeeny. I know spies are supposed to be tough, but I sunk under the tub water so ole golly couldn’t hear me and cried. I’m sure she would say something about bucking up, being brave, but I really think the only thing to do is to follow Beth Ellen to Germany. I will get Beth Ellen’s address from her grandmother, take my passport from when I went with my mother to Paris last summer, and go.

The guy giving me a ride to the airport is nice. He’s older and smells too much like cigarettes and onions, but when I explain everything to him, he pats my shoulder and tells me not to worry. He’s not driving the way to JFK that the taxi usually does, but I’m sure he knows a better way. After all, cab drivers always cheat you. Ole golly used to say as much and walked everywhere or took the subway. I wonder what she will think when I don’t come back. She always says to thine own self be true but she also always says a fool and his money are soon parted. I’d better get traveler’s checks just in case.

Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, Close Encounters, is available from So New (2007), her second is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013), and her novella May - September (2010) will be published by Press 53 in October as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. Her chapbook Cross Sections (2008) is available from Publishing Genius. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: BALTIMORE (CityLit Press 2010) and edits the literary quarterly jmww.

Photo by Adam Lawrence.
Street art JOS-L.

"Spy on the Floor" comes from the latest album from Chicago Underground Duo, Boca Negra, which was released by Thrill Jockey back in January.