Flash Fire 500

Waterbed by Len Kuntz

2011-03-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

When the fire burned down our garage my sister could only ask about the waterbed.

“You can’t burn a waterbed, can you?” she asked, her goggle eyes big as pucks.

She was mine alone to love, like a strange painting or the neighbor’s lonesome cat. Our father was always away. Our mother didn’t care for retards.

The man who interviewed me didn’t work for the fire department and I could tell he thought I was the culprit because he charged forth in hot pursuit of a motive. I could have given him plenty.

The smell of a fire gets on something; it bores in and can’t ever really be removed. Rank skunk spray you can rid yourself, but fire, it smolders in the fabric forever.

Jeanie was sis’s name but we changed it up, always with the letter J though: Jezebel, Janine, Jacqui, Junebug. She rather enjoyed the idea that she could become so many different people so easily.

When my mother was at Mr. Taylor’s house comparing bird watching stories, Jeanie liked nothing more than to sneak up to my parent’s bedroom and flop about on the waterbed. She became a mermaid on that thing. A queen being ferried betwixt regal landscapes. A damsel on a raft. A silly girl, not so smart, who at least knew how to swim.

When our parents divorced the first thing to go besides Pop was that waterbed. Mother stabbed it to death with an ice pick and later the carpet man spent the better part of a day fixing things, flooring-wise. He even carried the rubber mat out to the garage like some defeated sea creature slung over his shoulders.

It’s in a safe place now. Jeanie and I step over it every morning on our way to school, me to mine and Jeanie to her special one. I tell her someday she’ll swim again and I think she believes me.

Len Kuntz lives in rural Washington. His work appears widely in print and online at such places as Juked, Cricket Online Review, Troubadour 21 and also at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

Think Like A Mushroom by Steve Himmer

2011-01-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

*from The Bee-Loud Glade, Atticus Books 2011

Early the next morning, I set out mushroom hunting. I lay on the ground where a cluster of orange-spotted white mushrooms huddled by the trunk of a tree, and I watched them for an hour or two, maybe longer, trying to imagine the way they might think. They didn’t move much, but I’m fairly sure I saw one of them grow; I saw it grow, or else I watched a mushroom move that wasn’t really a mushroom at all—if beehives and bird nests could be cameras and speakers, why not a microphone disguised as a mushroom? A few months earlier I might not have noticed a mushroom growing, but I’d become attuned to a slow-moving world. I’d definitely never noticed any growth in the wide range of mushrooms produced by Second Nature, companion pieces for bushes and trees and fake fallen logs and often just the right touch for a convincing lobby display.

I watched, and I waited, and I discovered that a growing mushroom likes to be dwarfed by something taller beside it, likes to live in that something’s long shadow. These particular mushrooms, the whitish ones with orange spots, depended on the tall, solid tree they’d grown against (I think it was a maple, because it dropped helicopters, and its leaves looked like the logo on bottles of pancake syrup) for its protection and shade and, I assumed, nutrients and water supply. Sometimes they were also half-covered by grasses and moss, close to concealed and easily missed by an eye not looking for them.

So I learned a lot about mushrooms and their shy lives. I learned that they’re quick to cower and quick to hide, that they’re willing to keep quiet and small so long as they’re left to grow—not too tall! not so big!—in relative peace. They prefer dull, drab colors, colors that won’t grab attention, and the ones with bright tops, orange domes and red-speckled saucers, I guessed were more often than not only setting a trap to keep danger away from their less eye-catching kin. Those, I thought, were the mushrooms most likely to be poisonous—the ones that grabbed all the attention.

Thinking like a mushroom came quickly to me, and it worked. In the first place I looked, brushing aside a soft curtain of moss and weeds, I found three perfect mushrooms crouched in the shadow of a large rock. They were so close they were practically—but not quite—touching each other, and as soon as I leaned close and disturbed the air around them my nostrils filled with the sweet scent of secrets, of wine cellars and old canning jars and the thrilling surprise of turning a stone to find a bustling community of potato bugs and millipedes thriving beneath. The excitement of life where it wasn’t expected.

Steve Himmer's novel THE BEE-LOUD GLADE, from which this piece is excerpted, will be published in April 2011. He edits the webjournal Necessary Fiction, and has a website at SteveHimmer.com.

Cartesian Doubt by Christy Crutchfield

2011-01-06T13:06:00.000-08:00

One dead leaf became eight when Max crushed it in his hand. Students didn’t laugh when he said, “So Descartes walks into a bar.” Today, Max found his wrinkles in the window at his tenure meeting. He felt the sun reaching for his bald spot. And why would anyone invent this reality for himself? The bearded kids call his midterms unclear. “The bartender says, ‘Can I get you a drink?’” And who would invent Cate’s disappearance to another college? Cate who was grounding with her study of destruction and hurricanes and Florida, who traced the rifts in his fingernails and attributed them to inconsistent diet. The chalk snapping against the board during the class, though, that seemed invented. “Descartes says, ‘I think not.’” So she didn’t get tenure last year, so Florida now, but object permanency, she still exists: pontificate, vindicate, locate. And why not cancel class when the two pieces of chalk fall into your palm? They wouldn’t have fit together because the center turned to dust, yellow handprints settling in his corduroy. And sometimes it’s hard to remember to send to journals and sometimes it’s hard to remember to fix the coffee table. “And disappears.” Max curved his path to step on the driest leaves.

Christy Crutchfield writes and teaches in Western Mass. Her works have appeared in Mississippi Review, Necessary Fiction, PANK, Everyday Genius and others. She is an Associate Editor for Keyhole Magazine. Visit her at http://thehopelessmonster.blogspot.com/

WHEN AND IF THE BODY WAS by Eric Beeny

2010-12-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Long ago, Dr. Coffin tried following home his where-to-begin road, littered with bread crumbs like phantoms held hostage in a haunted house who couldn’t pay Death the ransom.

Vultures with feathers like torn napkins were pecking at the crumbs’ ghost-sheets, trying to disrobe them.

Dr. Coffin bent down, picked one of the phantom crumbs up, put it in his mouth.

It was stale, as if it’d been dead a few days.

He wondered when and if the body was.

The vultures ravaged what little life left them, clawing each other’s napkins out over scraps of hostages.

One napkin floated in the air, in front of Dr. Coffin’s face.

He reached out, snatched it.

Warm words fell out of his mouth and plopped on the ground.

He used the napkin to wipe his mouth.

When he finally found home, ghosts were floating through the house like wet toilet paper.

All the vultures had flown away—they couldn’t stand the smell.

Eric Beeny is the author of THE DYING BLOOM (Pangur Ban Party, 2009), SNOWING FIREFLIES (Folded Word Press, 2010), OF CREATURES (Gold Wake Press, 2010), PSEUDO-MASOCHISM (Medulla Publishing, 2011), MILK LIKE A MELTED GHOST (Thumbscrews Press, 2011), and some other things. He blogs at Dead End on Progressive Ave. (http://ericbeeny.blogspot.com).

ELEGY FOR SUMMER by Howie Good & Cynthia Gray

2010-12-14T08:08:00.000-08:00

September speaks to you in tongues.
It tells the truth. A droplet of blood on white tile,
a sparrow singing in the airport atrium.
No one ever questioned whether you'd arrive,
only where you'd arrive and why.
In September your purpose is obscured
like a god whose name it's forbidden to utter.
Quietly, the whole world asks for your devotion.
You cleave to the mystical meaning of the numeral five,
unfolding five fingers to reveal an empty hand.
"Emptiness is but fullness turned inside out,"
says the woman asking you for change
as the wind starts blowing off the water.

Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011). With Dale Wisely, he is the co-founder of the digital chapbook publisher White Knuckle Press, http://www.whiteknucklepress.com

Cynthia Gray has exhibited work at Sculpture Center, NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and other venues. She lives in Brooklyn and writes at collectiveexperience.org.

Out of Breath by Alexis Boddy-Cotruta

2009-05-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

The two boys run. As fast as they possibly can. Trees all around, bobbing up and down with each stride. Breath falling back on their faces, blurring vision.

Was...he?

Yes...he was.

How can you tell?

I just can, OK.

Slower now, as though distance from the scene gives less warrant for speed. A road. Cars shushing past in a long row of silver, blue, black, red. They will have to step out. Wave a hand, ask for help. They look at one another.

The bigger one, the taller one, takes the lead. As he always does. As he always will do. Got to be in charge. Got to take the lead. He lifts one arm, waving it up and down like a parking barrier gone berserk. Cars slow but don't stop. He begins yelling.

Hey.
Hey!
Help us!

The other one, the smaller one, the skinnier one, joins in. They both jump up and down waving their hands. Scissor jumps. Just like gym class. A car pulls off the side of the road. Silver. A man gets out. He is older than their dad. That is the way they measure age. Constant referral back to their parents. He walks over. A woman sits in the car, purse under her chin.

What's the matter here?

There's a man, in the woods, he's dead.

First time saying those words. They seem strange. As though he may be lying.

An ambulance comes. Flashing beacons rebound off dark trees. A woman in overalls with a soothing voice and blankets.

A car pulls up. A known car. Their Mum's car.

My poor darlings.

The smaller one begins to cry. That's OK. That's his prerogative as the smaller one. The bigger one is stoic. That is what he must do. Got to be in charge of everything.

A trolley clattering out of the woods. A lump covered in a blanket. Same as the blankets wrapped around them. A red-faced man pushing it. Shaking his head at the woman with the soothing voice.

The smell of decomposition drifts up their noses. Mingling with the scent of pine cones and mud.

Mum pulls them close. Her perfume blots out the other smell for now. But it will return later. From now on the woods will always smell bad. Always that rancid aftertaste.

Copyright 2009

Interview: Flash Fire 5 with J.S. Graustein

2009-05-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

J.S. Graustein knows how to get it done. She’s the managing editor of Folded Word Press (of which the equally ambitious Jessie Carty—Shape of a Box—is founding editor), and the creator and curator of the Twitter-zine phenoms PicFic and Form.Reborn. All three of these endeavors, with rumors of a fourth in the works, bustle beneath the umbrella of Folded Word Press. The collaboration of these two artistic juggernauts (that reside on opposite coasts) is probably the biggest news of 2009, with the inception of the Flash Fire 5 a close second. But not only does J.S. Graustein edit, publish, and bend over backwards for her contributors, she also writes herself. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming here at Flash Fire 500, Wamack: A Journal of the Arts, and Rattlesnake Review. Take a peek at her blog for a complete listing. Despite her myriad responsibilities (have I mentioned she is a wife and a mother as well?) she found the time to take a crack at the Flash Fire 5…then she went back to work.

1) What's the most ridiculous thing you've worn when writing?

My swimsuit. No wait, you said "ridiculous" not "frightening." It would have to be my anti-mosquito gear. I love to take my journal along while exploring my in-laws' woods every summer. But sitting on a shaded granite boulder in July requires a Bug-Off cap (has a giant flap over the ears & neck), a yellow long-sleeved XXL men's fishing shirt, grungy jeans, and brown knee-high rubber boots. My daughter refuses to be seen with me in it, even by the ferns.

2) Who is your greatest writing influence?

Madeleine L'Engle. She wrote for kids. She wrote for grown-ups. She wrote prose. She wrote poetry. And she wrote me a gentle letter when I sent her my gruesome poetry at sixteen. To this day, A Wrinkle in Time evokes sensory flashes: beards, acoustic guitar, Velamints, pipe tobacco. I had a massive crush on the teacher that read it to us in 4th grade. Me-ow!

3) Did you ever imagine you'd be doing an interview at an obscure ezine called Flash Fire 500 one day?

Depends on the universe. In the one my physical body inhabits while sending kids to school and walking to the grocery store? No. Never. But my mind warps in and out of four others. In one of them, I'm an arrogant man that can't believe it took this long.

4) In terms of writing, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Still supported by the same brilliant patron of the arts. He'll give me a grant to write for a year amongst the graves of my ancestors in Northamptonshire. I'll invite him to come along. Despite all propriety, we'll skip town together under cover of darkness and leave my newly-adult children to forage the garden for themselves.

5) You crash a party out in the middle of nowhere. There are celebrities in each corner of the room, but you can only visit with one . Corner #1: Oprah. Corner #2: The Dalai Lama. Corner #3: Kermit the Frog. Corner #4: Dustin Diamond a.k.a Screech from "Saved by the Bell." Who do you talk to?

First of all, I've never crashed a party in my life. I can't even force myself to attend when I'm invited. But if YOU dragged me there, it would have to be Kermit. First, I would ask him to absolve me of the horrible sins I committed against his kin while getting my biology degrees. Then I'd beg him for a kiss in hopes of some magical transformation. Miss Piggy can bite me.

Fly on the Wall of a Serial Killing by Rebecca Gaffron

2009-05-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

Body in a suitcase.

Male. Female. It makes no difference. Young or old is irrelevant. Hopes and dreams are etched into the features. Potential lies crushed under unnaturally folded limbs. Intangible concepts can’t be killed, energy is neither created nor destroyed, but it’s all lost just the same.

I feel the killer loitering nearby, relaxed. You make an easy victim. You are predictable. I know what you’re going to say before you open your mouth. I know it before you get out of bed in the morning. The hesitation. The second guesses and apologetic guilt. They might as well be bull’s eyes on your forehead.

And I wonder — is there some perverse thrill in despair? Some sanctimonious reward in proving that things really are worse than they seem? Some instant of delight in the paralyzing fear that nothing you do will ever be enough? Or ever be right?

“Enough of what? And right for whom?” I scream.

Or maybe I just mutter it into the stagnant conversation hanging between us. But you don’t stir. My warning is lost on you. I stretch my wings and flutter away, out of the killer’s reach but suffering from your absence. Your choice to be absent.

I leave the air heavy with clichés about lives not lived. There’s no room for one more. You wouldn’t hear it anyway, not now the killer is moving. You embrace this slow death with a sigh of relief, submitting to insecurity’s garrote without the slightest gurgle.

Self-doubt leaves you lost, an empty shell.

Another body in a suitcase.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Rebecca is a mother and sometimes writer who recently traded the rolling hills of Central Pennsylvania for a wind-swept barn in Britain. Occasionally people read her stories in journals like Pear Noir, Ink Sweat and Tears, Camroc Press, The Salt River Review, SNReview, & Colored Chalk.

A Suburban Story by Wayne Scheer

2009-05-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

Jason had to make an unexpected stop at his house mid afternoon. He expected no one to be home. Instead, two cars lined the driveway so he had to park in the street.

He felt his knees wobble as he approached the front door of his freshly-painted home. The white trim against the solid brick structure gave the appearance that solid citizens lived there, people who adhered to a conventional code.

But he sensed something had gone terribly wrong. The black BMW in the driveway, which he knew belonged to Clarke Peters, who shared an office with Becky, was parked behind her mini-van. They were both supposed to be at work.

Images of the past weekend with Clarke and Elise Peters flashed though his mind: Becky reaching out to grab a crumb from Clarke's shirt; the wives laughing at their husbands' idiosyncrasies. At the time, Jason thought nothing of it. Now, he fumed.

The perfectly manicured lawn mocked him as he made his way to the front door.

He tried suppressing images of Becky and Clarke together. He considered turning around and retreating to his office. Should he ring the bell to give them time to prepare?

But why was he assuming the worst of his wife? He knew their marriage had been strained of late, particularly in the bedroom, but he never expected this.

Standing motionless with his key in the lock, he made his decision and pushed open the door. What he saw surprised him even more than what he had feared.

Becky and Elise sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee.

"Hi, honey," he said, trying to act nonchalant. "I thought you were working?"

"Elise came by the office to bring Clarke something and we decided to play hooky." Becky smiled, first at Elise, and then at him.

Kissing his wife, and exhaling for what seemed like the first time since he pulled up to his house, he said he needed a file from his office. On his way, he glanced towards the master bedroom and noticed the bed unmade. At first nothing unusual registered. Then, tangled amidst the sheets, he saw red panties he knew didn't belong to his wife.

The wobbly knees returned.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Wayne Scheer has been locked in a room with his computer and pet turtle since his retirement. (Wayne's, not the turtle's.) To keep from going back to work, he's published hundreds of short stories and essays, including, Revealing Moments, a collection of twenty-four flash stories, available at http://www.pearnoir.com/thumbscrews.htm. Wayne can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com

When One Door Shuts… by Judith Kelly Quaempts

2009-05-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

I sit in perfect, selfish solitude amid the wreckage of Robert's garden. In dappled light I view shorn heirloom roses, trampled Russian sage, massacred lavender.

Mother of God, I can’t believe the carnage.

Only the birch escaped the slaughter and now tosses in the wind that passes through the sycamore that shades me from the morning sun.

Robert retired last night at ten. I don’t know when he crept out here and murdered all his flowers.

He must have hung himself soon after.

I sit in perfect, selfish solitude, dreaming of a lap pool, where once was only garden.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Judith Kelly Quaempts lives and writes in rural eastern Oregon. A member of the Internet Writers Workshop, her work has appeared in Camroc Press Review, Drunk and Lonely Men, and T-Zero.

Hanif Kureishi to the Rescue! by Harold Pumiceous

2009-05-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

On the 5th March 2099, three weeks before the ozonosphere suffocates the entire human race, citizens of the picturesque hamlet Buffock, East Woking will awake to a revolving UFO Pie – fourteen hectares in diameter and nineteen hectares in width – coming to land in meaty resplendence atop the Buffock Hills.

The pie, constructed from an impenetrable puff pastry from the Planet Ginsters (constructed as a marketing campaign in 2089) comes to rest on the main hill, where it looms over the hamlet, blocking out the sun and casting a shadow over Surrey. From its vulvate centre, reinforced with a tungsten ‘meat’ cover, a shutter opens and begins cannoning the townsfolk.

People flee their homes as flaming pies come blasting through their windows, igniting their front rooms, wounding their children and terrorising the vegetarians. These pie mortars, some of which are shaped more like dough balls, explode upon impact, splatting acidic pork meat from their floury cores, which blinds and intoxicates millions with its noxious pig rind extracts.

In a bakery, two miles out of town, pie expert Gary Loomis gets a phone call from the Prime Minister. It turns out that he is the only man who can save the nation from total pie annihilation through his unparalleled knowledge of every pie ever baked and how to devour a pie in under two bites.

Choppered into Buffock over the cover of darkness, Gary leaps onto the pie, where he slips on the pastry, falls into the centre and burns up like a meteorite in the sun. The pie takes off and advances on Shropshire. At this point, there is only one thing for it – the biggest mouth in the planet is called in to cool the surface.

At dusk, the writer Hanif Kureishi is jettisoned into the sky and suctions his way across the pie face, finding the vulvate opening and blowing a whole bellyful of hot air into the centre. The pie swoops through the purple night sky, sending Hanif flying into Suffolk Arts Centre. Crashing into the Pennines, the pie explodes over the north of England, killing 34,000 people.

Two weeks later, a day before the human race is obliterated through mass asphyxiation, the world unites in their respect for Hanif, who is awarded the keys to America, Russia and Europe, and later (by popular demand), the world.

Lord bless Hanif.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Harold is an Edinburgh-based writing man. He nurses kumquats back to full health. If he disappeared, he would return a week later as a shop assistant in Poole (somewhere in England). Funnier bio information has been deleted at his request.

Getting Off by Brandi Wells

2009-05-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

He is inside me. It is a very standard thing to say. An overused description. Fucked, screwed, tapped, porked, dicked, stuck, jabbed, sexed. It doesn’t matter, except you know that we are having sex. You have a clear idea of a penis being inside a vagina. You understand the concept.

Maybe I could describe it so you could picture it. I could tell you his cock is pierced and his pubic hair, unruly. His skin is dark tan or maybe light brown. And I have razor burn from trying to shave my bikini line. My hair is almost black against white-white skin. None of that is the point. It’s not important. Just forget it.

The important part is I’m about to get off. It has nothing to do with his penis inside me. I can’t even feel that thing. What matters is the way his stomach, his fat roll, is rubbing against my clit every time he jabs, sticks, fucks, dicks me. I want to get off, but I’m disgusted at the way his stomach is rubbing me.

Just before, the second before I am about to cum, he pulls out and splatters across my stomach. I slide out of bed, careful not to rub against the sheets. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror watching the gunk slide down my belly. Then I wipe it off with damp toilet paper.

I close my eyes. Reach down. I feel sick. I vomit into the bathroom sink. I have to pull the stopper out and wipe the vomit off, a mixture of wine and hunks of chicken and broccoli. But at least I came.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Brandi Wells has a BA in Creative Writing and her fiction appears in or is forthcoming in elimae, Pear Noir, Monkey Bicycle, Wigleaf, and Rumble. She has a chapbook forthcoming as part the chapbook collective Fox Force 5, which is being released by Paper Hero Press. She blogs at http://brandiwells.blogspot.com/

Susie Pancakes by xTx

2009-05-12T04:30:00.000-07:00

Susie Pancakes had a dream wherein she was flying. Thick black wings made of babies’ flesh erupted from her spinal column and grew to the size of pirate ship sails. From the dream world below, dream people thought her a giant black butterfly, her needle-sized body barely visible beneath the monstrous baby-meat wings. The dream people pointed while covering the eyes of their children.

The flying went on into eternity…in the dream. So many ribbons of rivers…so many squares of green, squares of brown, clouds, buildings, and the quiet cold loneliness. The rotting death of newborns, strong on her back, keeping her airborne…alive, Susie Pancakes was forsaken.

Over and over, Susie Pancakes willed the wings to take her to the ground, but they did not comply. Susie Pancakes longed for the touch of grass beneath her feet, the feeling of shoes on cracked pavement and the idea of gravity.

Eventually Susie Pancakes became lucid in her dream, and willed herself awake. The room was dark and still. She sat upright, turned, and put her feet onto the floor. Finding gravity, Susie Pancakes walked the welcome safety of the floor to the kitchen, and proceeded to create warm stacks of her namesake.

Lost in the familiar, the burnt crust of the dream shook loose and was lost.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: xTx has a forthcoming chapbook with nonpress, and will be featured in the 2009 Dogzplot Flash Fiction Anthology. She blogs nonsense here. She thanks you for your time.

Interview: Flash Fire 5 with Christopher Allen

2009-05-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

His name is Christopher Allen. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ruthless Peoples Magazine, Flash Fire 500, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. But don’t let his picture fool you. This disarming, charming, clean-shaven man is one of the most methodical, relentless, talented writers out there. We recently found him poised atop Mt. Everest conferring with his Sherpa about the best way to launch himself into the literary stratosphere. While we couldn’t hear the Sherpa’s response, the diamond eyes of Christopher Allen told us all we needed to know. Shiver. Luckily, he took a few moments to answer The Flash Fire 5 before continuing on his journey.

1) What's the most ridiculous thing you've worn when writing?

“Ridiculous” is relative. I’ve written naked of course (in bed, in the bathtub), but I think the most ridiculous thing I’ve worn while writing is the residue of forgotten shaving cream when I just had to get something written down before I forgot it.

2) Who is your greatest writing influence?

Homer Simpson informs everything I do and believe; Bill Bryson, and the hundreds of writers on my shelves, influence me (which means I just steal things from them); the people standing next to me waiting for the bus inspire me. So: everything and everyone. But mainly Homer.

3) Did you ever imagine you'd be doing an interview at an obscure ezine called Flash Fire 500 one day?

The obvious answer is “yes, of course”. I also imagined I’d be doing a second interview at a very well-known ezine called Flash Fire 500 (with a following of 2 million).

4) In terms of writing, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Is “rich” a place? If it is, then I see myself there. At least somebody sees me there, right?

5) You crash a party out in the middle of nowhere. There are celebrities in each corner of the room, but you can only visit with one . Corner #1: Oprah. Corner #2: The Dalai Lama. Corner #3: Kermit the Frog. Corner #4: Dustin Diamond a.k.a Screech from "Saved by the Bell." Who do you talk to?

Why did I crash this party? I hate parties. I can only assume someone has a gun jammed into my left kidney, so I’ll have to ask him which corner we need to visit. We confer. He says he wants an autograph from Dustin Diamond, but then I ask him if we can Google Dustin first because I don’t recognize him and I never watched Saved by the Bell. We confer. Guy with the gun then says the Lama will do since I’ve seen Seven Years in Tibet (despite Brad Pitt’s awful German accent) at least seven times. “But what about Oprah(’s Book Club)?? We went to the same elementary school in Nashville.” “Urban legend,” guy with the gun says and pokes me toward Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso. At least seven times.

If you missed Christopher's Flash Fire 500 contribution, you can read it here.

Night Moves by Barry Basden

2009-05-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

The big dog peed the bed, you say,
standing with your pillow in the
doorway to my room. Of course, you
can stay the night with me.

The dogs are restless without your
body to press against. One curls
in the upholstered chair while the
other lies by the bed on the Mexican rug.

Just after the grandmother clock
strikes two, the dogs leave; their
nails click on the tile and soon they
are barking at the French doors in

the den--a cat or maybe some strange
night bird has invaded our back yard.
I feel the little dog lick my hand,
wanting me to let her out to chase

away creatures of the night. I ignore
her but lie awake beside you and watch
something hover over us, suspended
on fetid wings in the still, dark air.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Barry Basden writes mostly short pieces. Some have been published in various online venues. Some have not.

shut up and eat by Steve Calamars

2009-05-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

The bathroom smells of toothpaste and green deodorant. Henry Rorschach is shirtless at the sink before work. He is wearing gray slacks and black shoes. His teeth are brushed and his face is clean.

Henry opens the medicine cabinet above the sink. He removes shaving-cream and a straight-razor that belonged to his grandfather. He closes the cabinet and applies the shaving-cream.

The bathroom door is open. He can hear his wife and four sons downstairs. His wife is packing their lunchboxes. His sons are eating cereal from ceramic bowls with metal spoons. The four boys are arguing and his wife repeatedly says, “Shut up and eat.”

Henry opens the straight razor and wets the blade beneath the faucet. He looks in the mirror and pulls the blade up his neck, over his chin and up beneath his bottom lip. He examines the shave and wets the blade beneath the faucet. Henry pulls the blade across his cheeks and down above his top lip. He examines the completed shave and wets the blade again. He dries the blade on a bath towel and closes the razor. Henry sets it on the back of the toilet and rinses his face in the sink.

He dries his skin and runs his hand across his face. He looks in the mirror and confirms a smooth shave. His job requires that he be neat and clean in appearance at all times. Henry is an assistant manager for a successful supermarket. He studies himself and believes that his employers will approve.

A bowl breaks downstairs.

“God dammit!” his wife says.

Henry stops and looks down at the bathroom floor.

“I told you to shut up and eat!” his wife says. “Now there’s shit all over the floor!”

His sons are quiet. Henry can hear his wife cleaning the mess and lecturing the boys. He stands and stares at the soft pink tile of the bathroom floor.

“Now shut up and finish your cereal!” his wife says. “You all have half-an-hour till the bus comes.”

Henry walks over quietly and shuts the bathroom door. He locks the door and picks the straight razor back up.

He opens the razor and wets the blade. He looks in the mirror and slightly tilts his head back. Henry pulls the blade and cuts his throat from ear-to-ear. He sets the razor in the sink and looks briefly at his face in the mirror.

The floor shifts and the room spins. Henry staggers over to the bathtub and lies down inside. He looks up at the ceiling and hopes that one of his sons keeps the razor.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Steve Calamars lives in San Antonio, TX. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from U.T-San Antonio and now works for UPS, loading trucks from 3am to 9am. When he is not working or sleeping, he writes (mainly prose). The stuff he writes can be found in bottle rockets and Zygote in My Coffee. He can be found in sccalamars@yahoo.com

The Day Nixon Resigned by Derek Osborne

2009-05-03T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was at a rock concert in Jersey City. Some promoter got the wonderful idea of staging a mini Woodstock at the old baseball stadium, down where Home Depot is now. Just the ride into that part of town was enough to kill any Love-Buzz portrayed on the flyers. The place was a death trap, with only one gate, and we mooed like cattle entering the tunnel, spreading out over the infield. The whole thing stank of crooked fire marshals and union carpenters.

The stage was above home plate, the requisite wall of Marshall amps forming a menacing, heavy metal backdrop, not what I wanted from the Beach Boys and CSNY. Over by the right-field pole a guy in a lime-green leisure suit was hawking Orange Barrel Sunshine.

“OB, man, OB.”

“How much?”

“Four bucks.”

We bought enough for our group and everyone dropped. Pulling a bag of Qualudes from his pocket he said, “It’s speedy, bro, for later?”

“Now you tell us.”

“A Lincoln for five,” he offered.

“There’s six of us.”

“I can’t break the bag, bro.”

The music was good. Mike Love kept saying if this were LA the girls would all have their tops off. One girl actually did get naked, but six guys had to play guard. It was Jersey City. When “The Boys” finished their set I went to find our iridescent friend to have a little chat, but he’d closed up shop. Suddenly, Steve Stills came running out on stage waving his arms.

“Guess what?” he said, grabbing a mic, pausing to get our attention.

Crosby also came out. Steve couldn’t see him, and just when he was about to announce the news, David ran up and ripped the mic from his hand.

“Nixon’s resigned, man!”

Crosby started a chant, No More, No War. Steve just glared at him. I saw his fist get tight. People were going ballistic, hugging and chanting with tears in their eyes. When Steve looked out at the crowd and then back at Crosby, his fist began to relax. The others came out and the band launched into “Ohio”. The rest of the show was a bad acid blur.

But later that night, under the harsh glare of the outfield towers, I stood in front of the stage and watched the clean-up crews working. I was strung-out and tired and sad. Under the awful white light the dilapidated stadium showed its age, the pre-packaged litter of love being swept into piles and burned. I had been fighting that man and the war for years; I couldn’t believe it was over. Up through the haze at the foot of the stage I saw Neil, hands in his jean pockets, surveying the carnage and shaking his head. He saw me and we both smiled, soldiers after the battle.

“You live around here?”

“’Bout an hour,” I said.

He thought for a moment, looking out again at the fires.

“Well, drive safe, man.”

Even our heroes had nothing to say.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: The other night I watched Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. It brought up memories. Whether you fought that war, or the war against the war, the scars remain. Unlike today, we all knew people who died: some in the jungle, some on the streets, some, years later, long after anyone cared.

The Hit by Matt Tuckey

2009-05-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

“I left the back door unlocked,” said Barney. “As if things aren’t bad enough already. I fucking hate myself sometimes.”

“Don’t say that,” said Chris.

Chris was sick of this. He knew how coming down felt. They both knew there was no chance of finding the drugs now. But Barney is mourning as well, he thought. That must be hell.

“It was a jogger off the estate. Runs over the hill. Can’t miss him. You’ll get the usual sum.”

Nodding, Chris reached over the inexplicably placed bottle of glue, inhaling the acrid fumes, and took the gun. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he said. “I liked him”.

Barney held up a silencing hand, gazing down.

Well, thought Chris. I tried. Barney had better pull himself together and lay off the drugs, otherwise someone will take his place.

“Let’s get it over with,” Chris said.

“Yeah,” Barney mumbled. “Let’s.”

* * *

On a hillside road, a black hoody covering his face, Chris shadowboxed to smother the fear.

What Jogger? Chris thought. I know that estate like the back of my hand. Who could break into Barney’s house and steal a load of drugs, right from the heart of his living room? Something isn’t right. Well… it’s only murder…

If he kept doing what he’d done before- keep schtump and claim ignorance- the police wouldn’t find him. Barney had always made sure of that.

A heavy figure stomped up the hill. Although distant, amidst the birdsong from the adjacent field, the man’s wheezing was already audible.

Chris jumped back into the tall, cloaking roadside grass. Inhaling deeply, he pulled out the Beretta. It seemed heavier than when he’d first picked it up.

A full minute crawled around his watch before the panting man, soon to be nothing but a carcass, passed in front of his vision.

Without hesitation, Chris lifted his arm out straight and pulled the trigger.

The blast destroyed the countryside silence, and a hole appeared momentarily in the jogger’s hood. The body was thrown sideways to the ground, as if tackled by an invisible rugby player. A geyser of blood deflected off the inside of the hood, like a man holding his thumb over a tap. Spraying forth into the blinding sunlight, it landed with a smatter on the wide rural road.

Chris released his breath. Another point of no return.

He had to know.

The rule is, you don’t go near them after the deed- but who was this jogger? Who had the balls?

The blood hadn’t quite reached the corpse’s shoulder yet, so Chris toed over the weighty torso.

Barney’s fear-etched mask grimaced back up at him.

Chris collapsed backwards and vomited on the asphalt.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Matt is 26 and hails from Oldham, Greater Manchester. He is a graduate of the University of Salford. Originally writing The Hit as a screenplay when he was 16, he recently adapted it to flash fiction for Flash Fire 500. Matt is an administrator and trains in Mixed Martial Arts.

The Tortoise in the Hair by G. Arthur Brown

2009-05-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

Pete Nevins bought the Fielding property in '48. It was all still farmland back then, you see. But Old Man Fielding hadn't been keeping it up at all, so Pete had to go around surveying all the outbuildings and pastures to make sure it was all up to snuff.

Second day he was out on the southern end of the property and came across a plot of what appeared to be brownish grass growing. When he got up closer, it was real strange--too soft and real long. The ground around it was very pale and waxy. He cut off a big piece and got a closer look. Turned out to be hair. About a half acre of it. He went in there poking around, wondering why there was all that hair there, and he came across a big tortoise, almost as big as the Galapagos ones. He named it and took it home with him. Pete believed there was something special about that tortoise. Course, he went back and set fire to all that the hair, because that sort of thing just ain't natural.

Pete told me, honest to God, that the first night he had that tortoise back home with him, he woke up the next morning bald. The damn thing had eaten off all his hair. So then Pete figured he'd strike up a deal with Clarence Magee, the barber. Everyday he was hauling home sacks brimming with hair to feed to that tortoise.

But I never liked it. Gave me the willies. Course, I was just a little boy then, you understand. One day as I was passing by on the way to the swim hole I saw that tortoise crawling around in Pete's front yard, trying to get close enough to one of the cats to eat its hair. I ain't never seen a hair-eater up close, and I wasn't about to touch the thing, but I crept up real close and kind of prodded it with my stick. Well, it burst like a damn bubble, got oily film all over the footpath. Nothing left but slime, not even a shell. Pete was out front at the time digging holes for fence posts, and he saw what had happened and ran up screaming his head off. He wouldn't shut up about that tortoise. He blamed me for its popping. I went up to the man, grabbed the spade out of his hands, and hit him upside the head. That shut him up real good. What else was I supposed to do?

I think I was already back home sipping lemonade when they found me and brought me here. Course, I was a kid, you have to understand. They couldn't do the things to me they really wanted to.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: G. Arthur Brown is unable to be biographied for reasons literary science has yet to explain.

Seat 13C, Flight 221 by J.S. Graustein

2009-05-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Jolted by adrenaline with each dip, she grips both arm rests as the wheels grind into the belly of the Airbus. Her swollen cheek aches with the change in cabin pressure, but she smiles anyway. I'm free.

Then she feels the knocking under her feet. Through her shoes. She looks around. No one is tapping feet or dropping large-print novels. She readjusts her bruised rib cage, then tries reading People to escape her shredded nerves during the bumpy ascent.

But again she feels knocking. Different this time. More insistent. She asks 13B if he feels anything. He shakes his head and apologizes. She shoves her hands into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt, wraps her fingers around the plastic bottle of tranquilizers, and rubs her thumb along the worn-soft label. That last dose should have been enough.

Yet she still feels it, under the ball of her right foot. Frantic knocking, pummeling the underside of the deck plate. She presses her arches into the vibrations, pays six dollars for a thimbleful of red wine, then glides to sleep before the captain snuffs out the seat belt light.

13B rouses her and retrieves her carry-on from the overhead bin. She struggles to pull it to the baggage claim and decides that pushing hurts less. At the carousel, her oversized Samsonite is the last one to emerge from the black-flap curtain. She wonders why she waited. I don't need anything in it.

At the exit, she looks back to see her bag jiggle past a group of Korean businessmen. A familiar fist—his fist—pokes out from the zipper, blue and stiff. And still.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: When J. S. Graustein isn't writing, she plays Managing Editor at Folded Word Press. Her path to the writing life is best expressed in mathematical terms:

w = [e - (h + m)] / OED

Having trouble solving for w? You'll find clues at http://jsgraustein.blogspot.com.

Interview: Flash Fire 5 with xTx

2009-04-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

She goes by the name of xTx. You’ve probably seen her roaming the hallways of the underground literary scene. Her work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Zygote in my Coffee, Mourning Silence, and Flash Fire 500, among many others. Visit her website for a complete listing. Like the Liz Phair of old, xTx is building her Queendom with blunt and brutal honesty, and an unapologetic attitude that commands respect. Also like Liz Phair, she possesses an endearing vulnerability that doesn’t take away from the rawness, but makes it more appetizing. We recently sat down with xTx for the first of a new interview series, Flash Fire 5. We hope she doesn’t mind the Liz Phair comparisons.

1) What's the most ridiculous thing you've worn when writing?

Because I don’t think being naked save for underpants is ridiculous, it would have to be fluorescent lime green knee-length tights and a gigantic white t-shirt with a picture of the Elvis postage stamp on the front or this:

2) Who is your greatest writing influence?

My greatest writing influence is every book I’ve ever read, every song I’ve ever sung, every brown eyed boy with low slung jeans, shirtless, with that muscular front “V” pointing its way to paradise, every pulpy pink bit of road kill scattered across battered blacktop, every crying bloodied child, every gang bang porn ever made, Jeff Buckley, my father’s raping fingers, alcohol and failure.

Sorry, that was more than one.

3) Did you ever imagine you'd be doing an interview at an obscure ezine called Flash Fire 500 one day?

I did. Like Jim Carrey, I too, in my youth, wrote a check to myself for a million dollars thus using the not-yet-known principles of The Secret to secure my fame and fortune. Except instead of a million dollar check, it was a note to myself on a piece of salami shaped notepaper from the deli where my mom worked that said something about being interviewed by FF500, and the words: turkey, everything, Dutch Crunch, extra mayo.

It’s been in my jewelry box since 1984.

4) In terms of writing, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I see myself going ‘public’ with my identity because one of my longtime readers who has made successful inroads into the publishing industry will want to make my blog into a novel. It will then get picked up as a movie. My only contractual stipulation…besides the 33 million dollar payout…will be to handle the casting couch. But that’s okay, all male actors will be told, in advance, that they will have to have sex with ‘the old lady’ and they will be fine with it because it’s a chance at stardom.

Sometimes I will audition 2 or 3 actors at a time.

5) You crash a party out in the middle of nowhere. There are celebrities in each corner of the room, but you can only visit with one . Corner #1: Oprah. Corner #2: The Dalai Lama. Corner #3: Kermit the Frog. Corner #4: Dustin Diamond a.k.a Screech from "Saved by the Bell." Who do you talk to?

It’s a toss up between Oprah and the Dalai Lama. Wait, could I kick Screech in the balls before I talk to anyone?

Yellow Liquids by E. Williamson

2009-04-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

The dried bones of the mushrooms sat in a plastic bag, crumpled mouse remains from the crusted pellets of owls. They were like something a child would find lying under a tree: harmless, dead, and Earthy.

Dan’s parents were on vacation, and his sister had rented a copy of some old movie starring this band from England called Pink Floyd. At first, they wouldn’t even go down my throat, but someone handed me a big plastic cup of pineapple juice. Chew, chew, chew..swallow, swallow.

Nothing…..

Draped over a couch in their family room, I counted the large knots in the wood paneling. Furious scolding emitted from the gaping mouths of looming cartoon figures, and a face watched from the center of each brown ripple. Forty-six..Forty-seven..

They seemed like a lot..too many. Their loudness hurt my ears, so I retreated to the living room.

I sat with a deafening crinkle on the plastic seat cover, and immediately had to excuse myself because I was sitting on someone’s lap. In fact all the chairs were suddenly full, and I had to apologize to everyone in the room, which worried me because I knew the room was empty.

Suddenly, I was afraid, not so much of the strangeness of the situation, but of the idea that the pressure I was feeling in my bladder would somehow result in my urinating on myself in front of all these people.

I almost wept with relief when I made it to the toilet, only to realize that I had forgotten to pull down my underwear. Now, the fabric of my jeans rested unbearably against my bare crotch.

My body wandered outside into that strange, hot Santa Ana wind and across the street to an elementary school where it laid down on the inky cement of the basketball court and soaked in the leftover warmth from the familiar blacktop.

And that’s where the boy found me, and in his awkward boy-like way, he tried to help by talking about all the things he thought girls liked. And every rainbow, heart and unicorn was as clear as day across the night sky. Hours, days, or maybe weeks later, I sat up and in great guttural heaves projected acidic yellow liquid through my mouth and nose.

That helped.

And eventually my eyes fell back into seeing in just one dimension, and I could no longer hear my heart crashing in my ears.

But for some reason, I decided to share a bed with my friend Dan, and the last thing I remember were the jealous eyes of the boy as we shut the door to the bedroom.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: E. Williamson spends her free time avoiding emus, marionettes, and super glue. She lives in Massachusetts, and this is her first published piece. You can find her at http://pinkmonkeychatter.blogspot.com

Inertia by Adam Moorad

2009-04-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

She wraps her legs around my legs and makes herself stretch
Now I’m on my face with her arm pressing my skull into soil, or something
I’m suffocating
Her dog brings its ball back
She licks its face
Her tongue presses against mine and I can taste what we are
One of us coughs
We’re so awkward and we think about stopping
She’s on her knees careening
I throw the dog its ball
I string from myself
I hear her laughing
I ask what she’s laughing at
She laughs louder
I ask her if she laughing at me
She coughs and says at something else

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Adam’s writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Underground Voices, Titular, DOGZPLOT, Thieves Jargon, and Pear Noir! He lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing. Find him here: http://adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com/

Abilify: A Warning Letter by Anne Rettenberg

2009-04-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

That once good doctor of years past
got something now to cure you fast.
Pharma rep gave him a pen,
free samples, buffet lunch, but when
he writes a script for your psychosis
it might not match your diagnosis.
It’s the drug Big Pharma’s selling;
that’s a fact doc won’t be telling.

A drug was made for schizophrenia;
it might not fix all that’s been eatin’ ya
if you’re in a bad depression.
But don’t you know it’s a recession?
Big Pharma’s got to make some money;
so what if the pill makes you feel funny?
They said those feelings go away--
but some effects are here to stay:
There’s that Tardive dyskinesia--
comes from meds for schizophrenia.
Then there’s the deadly NMS.
There’s even more they could confess:
Weight gain leads to funny things
like diabetic sugar swings.

You weren’t even hearing voices.
Were you given all the choices?

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Anne Rettenberg is a psychotherapist and occasional poet in New York City, where there is ample material for both pursuits.

My Second Life by Doug McIntire

2009-04-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

I awoke on a cold barren floor. As I looked around, the place was familiar. There was no furniture except an old couch with no cushions and bare springs poking through. The linoleum had been pulled up from the floor in pieces, exposing the hard wood beneath.

I couldn’t remember how I had come to this place, but I had been here for as long as I could remember. And now it was time to leave. The food was gone and without food, I would be dead.

I briefly considered that being dead might not be so bad. As long as I didn’t become one of them. But everyone becomes one of them when they die. I thought about torching this rat trap and standing here, burning down with the building. Then I couldn’t ever become one of them.

But I didn’t. I inspected the windows. They were boarded up to keep the dead ones out. The boards were in place, all except one. It had come loose on one end. Luckily they hadn’t found it, or they would’ve gotten in.

It didn’t matter now. I peeked out the grimy window. I couldn’t see any of them so I picked up a crowbar and pried the boards from the window. Once completed, I traded the crowbar for a rifle, opened the window and stepped out. It was the first time I’d been outside in…how long had it been? I couldn’t remember.

It was a small town, one that looked like a scene from the old west. I didn’t know where that thought came from, but that wasn’t an unusual occurrence these days.

I didn’t dwell. I knew I didn’t have much time. They were slow moving, but they would keep coming if they saw me. Shooting them would slow them further, but bullets couldn’t kill them. They were already dead.

I began walking, heading up the empty street. I was hungry. Hungrier than I could ever remember being.

I thought about looking for food in one of the other buildings. But they could be hiding in there, waiting for me. If food was in there, it was not for me.

As I walked, I saw the others come out to watch me. It was them. The dead ones. I couldn’t understand why they weren’t ambling toward me. They just stood in the doorways and shadows, watching me pass. Something about them had changed.

It was somehow significant. The thought nagged me, but it was distant, hard to reach, hard to wrap my mind around. It required too much effort.

I pushed the thought away and replaced it with one of my own. As they stood watching and I continued walking, all I could think about was finding food.

Food.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Doug McIntire is a central Texas author of speculative fiction. When he’s not writing, he enjoys riding his motorcycle and spending time with his wife and two children. You can find out about him and his writing at www.DougMcIntire.com.

MY HOLLYWOOD GIRL by xTx

2009-04-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

Dear My Hollywood Girl:

I still can’t tear myself away from these photos. You mentioned it, but I didn’t believe it was true until I saw for myself; your transformation into sexy fucking hot slithering smoking sex the moment you put on those shoes and walked me through your routine.

Taking off those chunky Frankenstein-chic boots fresh from our laundromat meeting and slipping on those red stripperhero-powered stilettos turned on whatever had been turned off inside me and all the arrows flipped into the red.

So fucking cute and sparkly you always are despite the fact you’ve never let me kiss you, and not for my lack of trying. You’d think that might even be a turn off for me; the straight up friendship with no drunken makeouts…but it’s not. You are so cute and sparkly (I’ll say it more times if you let me) that I hang in there just waiting for the grinding, tongue-kiss payoff.

I understand and respect you aren’t about the girlongirl like I am. But patience is a virtue and I am virtuous like a motherfucker.

But your cuteness/sparkle went away in the magician-like moment when those shoes came on and you showed me how you walked with your hips leading and slid yourself up against that lucky wall and lazily dropped your head back so your hair fell and then you looked at me with sleepy sexy eyes over your shoulder you were so workin’ it.

Like you knew I wanted you.

Like you wanted me.

Like I had a chance.

And after you spent that lucky wall with the writhing of your flesh, you crawled across that fortunate floor, hunting me with your eyes, shimmying up my legs and onto my lap. And even though it was fully clothed with no music playing and a dog in the room lap dance, it was hot. If I had a dick, it would’ve been trigonometry hard. I can’t imagine what that would’ve been like had there been music, had there been drinks, had I been a man, a paying customer…and maybe that’s why I keep coming back to these pictures.

You keep it up Hollywood Girl. I will call you from time to time and you will call me and maybe we will go do your laundry again and you can show me another routine and you can wear those stripper shoes and maybe the dog can stay out of the room this time and you can throw me a bone and lower the lights and put flame to a few candles and your lips to mine….or more.

Please.

Your Orange County Girl

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: xTx is pleased and thankful to have been published in places like Thieves Jargon, Cherry Bleeds, decomP, Dogzplot, Zygote, Rumble and others. I blog at http://notimetosayit.blogspot.com. If you’d like to visit and tell me I’m awesome, that would be the shit, yo.

I in Awesome Wonder by Matt DeBenedictis

2009-04-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

I can fit her in that box, I said.

No reply.

What if we just left her here? What are the odds we would be caught?

No reply.

Are you going to help at all? I yelled. I slowly slide the panties back up her legs and over her thighs. The baby birds surrounded by solid pink we wrapped tight and snuggled in the tropics around her pussy.

He finally spoke. Let’s burn the house down. His voice a smoker’s cough in church.

Now we’re talking.

I put her hair back over her eyes. I hate that stare they give, so cold, nothing to add or contribute anymore, the remains of a once great meal that fades into the forgotten memory with each passing moment.

I have matches.

That’s good. He zipped up, put on his jacket. He stared at that box.

I want to burn that too, I said.

Fuck it. Fine let’s burn it all. We’ve been devils now lets be gods and wipe the slate clean. He poured some lighter fluid over her. It was her last bath.

He picked up the shovel. I lit a match and let it drop as we went up the stairs.

The fire was slow to grow. The clock spun and we sat outside in the tender line of the forest and drank as the flames slowly climbed the house. Four beers in by the time the flames met the kitchen. If you die in a fire you are either crippled or deserve it, I said.

No reply.

The branches hummed a melody when the smoke rose up their spines. It sounded like How Great Thou Art was creaking out of the woods for all the creatures hidden to hear.

The smoke left the trees and greeted the clouds.

A whisper remained.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Matt DeBenedictis has never hit a handicapped person in a fight. Fuck what you heard. Your friends speak in riddles with no truths. Matt has had writing featured in Lamination Colony, The Legendary, Shine, Ampersand Review, and blogs at outthrowingroses.blogspot.com. He is a writer for the metal site Noise Creep.

My Mother's Cooking by Claire

2009-04-01T04:59:00.000-07:00

My mom is going to make cookies.
She walks into the kitchen and
-BANG-
"Ouch!"
She stubbed her toe on the table again.
-CLANK-
She puts the bowl down on the counter
and starts to mix the ingredients.
Clink
Clank
Swoosh
SSSSSSS
"AHHH!"
She burned her finger--again--on the stove
while putting them into the oven.
30 minutes pass, and
-Ding!-
they are done.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Claire lives with her mother (another Flash Fire 500 contributor) in a less-than-tidy suburban home. She runs the 800 meter for her middle school track team and sprints from her crazy kid brother. Besides writing, Claire enjoys drawing and text-messaging her friends. This is her first published piece.

Recalculating by Cormac Brown

2009-03-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Recalculating…

…says the GPS in my car, every time I take a turn other than the one it suggested.

Recalculating…

…goes the female voice of its computer and the faint disappointment in that voice sounds just like my mother’s did, when I didn’t follow the path she chose for me. I wanted to make my own mistakes, to blaze my own trail.

No, I’ve never asked for directions, and often I seem simply lost.

Recalculating…

I’ll find my own way, on my own terms. I’ll change the cartography of my life or vanish off the face of the Earth trying.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: I’m Cormac Brown, an up-and-slumming writer in the city of Saint Francis. Some of my stories have appeared at Powder Burn Flash, Six Sentences, A Twist of Noir, Astonishing Adventures Magazine, and Crooked Magazine. You can find me at Cormac Writes.

Pinus Timbre by Johnsienoel

2009-03-26T15:40:00.001-07:00

Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.

Resinous scents bid
Aphids come hither
the honeydew laden sirens
lull the Apini tribe.

Thistle tops bristle
signaling the approaching front
painting bone on palest saffron
across the Siberian sky.

Shudder though they will
never a quiver felt below
rooted in the taiga
brooding pines soon to be felled.

Oestrus season has begun
the virgin’s blanket lying still
upon the feet.
Limbs creak in hushed
anticipation.

Noted length and girth
prized in the jacker’s eyes
the greening complete and most
ambrosial he takes the shaft
in hand and mounts.

Hewing ax in sculptor’s hands
at first penetration cries out
the timbre of the moment
silences the standing crowd.

As arctic kisses gusting down
he wields the decisive stroke.
One climactic call heralds in
felling of the wood.

Debased and deflowered
laid on somber ground
the lowly pine mourns its loss
of roots upon which stood.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Johnsienoel is still the Bawdy Broad of Paradoxical Persiflage who lives, works, writes and single parents in Charlotte, NC. It was recently suggested she stop leading life with her sexuality to which she quipped: "How does one lead with their sexuality when they have always lacked a penis and/or really big tits?"

Smartypants by Ray Succre

2009-03-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

I could not bend to the supernatural,
learned little from anatomy,
and the crumbles of philosophy gave my
tongue no good taste.

My land was unoriginal and confessing
every moment
its need for me was less than a dozen
well-weighted bees.

My skin was perfumed, stultified as a socialite
dropped in the sea,
where no other life is much urged to smell
the air.

None of this was new. I or else the
world was an enjambed,
fiendish cripple, a Richard descended
with false strength in mind,
until the marvelous hour I found my
element,
my very own cause to stand:

I had been a magnanimous prick, was the
truth, and enjoying
the breaths of others, sorting my own
amongst this din,
required no faith in a firmament or study
of axons,
no adoption of nothingness or
management of property,
not even a quaint, fresh odor,
but only that I relax and cease fucking
around with my smarts.

All of this was new.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Ray Succre lives on the Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has been published in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, and in many others across numerous countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay) was recently released in print and is available most places. A second, Amphisbaena, is forthcoming in Summer 2009.

Too Dark To Care by Branimir Hrvoj a.k.a. Jebozid

2009-03-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

Brown, crusted stains on the yellowed pillow
I crawl like a snail to the bathroom mirror
This face is not mine, not as I remember
Doc said in March - I won't see September

Legs spill like piss, head hits the spout
Teeth fill the sink, blood gushes out
Meat slaps the floor, bleeds out a prayer
This shriveled corpse - pills can't repair

Is this what life looks like?
A pile of bones in a leather bag
When bowels fail and mix shit with gore
Is this how spent souls smell?

On the wet ceramic grave, lies a pale, wrinkled mass
It's too late to coagulate, too dark to...

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Jeb is a Croatian Satan incarnation. Has great legs. Loves saying "Go team something".

One Day, I'd Like to Wake Up Silly by J.S. Graustein

2009-03-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

after dreaming of tanks that shoot magnolia
blossoms with Klingons at the helm,
I'd say, “Identify yourselves.”
They'd reply by showering my bicycle
with fragrant petals
near the embassy in Ouagadougou.
We'd then transport to England
for a skinny dip in River Nene.
Just as I'd order rounds for them
and all within the Vane Arms pub,
my husband's smoldering hands
would shiver me awake.
Neither of us would care about time, kids,
weather, lunch, or work.
I'd just stroke the silky skin on his
scalp while he says, “Make it so.”
And then we would.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: When J. S. Graustein isn't writing, she plays Managing Editor at Folded Word Press. Her path to the writing life is best expressed in mathematical terms:

w = [e - (h + m)] / OED

Having trouble solving for w? You'll find clues on her Twitter stream. Better yet, email her and she'll give you the answer.

Survival by John A. Ward

2009-03-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

I am at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida with a group of second lieutenants and ensigns and a petty officer who is deadly with a slingshot. We are flushing flying squirrels out of the treetops and he is knocking them out of the air with marbles. We pull out the projectiles and pop the squirrels in a sack. The critters are our dinner. We are here for three days.

At the campsite, another pre-flight student and I are assigned to the butchering detail. We sit on the bank of the creek. I pull on my leather gloves. We have been warned not to cut into a pelt without gloves because there is tularemia in these woods. Also, squirrels carry sylvatic plague, also known as bubonic plague, and we don't fancy getting any disease that will cause us to have boobs on our necks. I have gotten out my knife and my colleague is still sitting there, wrinkling up his nose, a city boy. This is familiar territory for me. I majored in biology.

"You don't like this, do you?" I say.

"No," he says, "do you?"

"I'll show you how."

I slit open the belly, dump the guts out, and point out the organs for him, a dissection lesson. I tell him to be careful not to cut the gall bladder because it will make the meat taste bitter. He nods and watches, but he is not going to do this. It's all right. I am comfortable with slaughter and I'm much faster alone. I skin all six and fill up the number ten can from the creek.

"We'll make soup," I say, "put in some of the pokeweed and prickly pear roots and eat it for three days."

Truth is, there isn't much meat on a flying squirrel and there are more trainees in our group than there are squirrels, so we just eat the vegetables and drink the broth to let our stomachs shrink so the squirrels will seem like a feast when we finally eat them.

After dinner, I go back to the creek to toss the can in to keep it cool. I hope that some crawdads will crawl in overnight to explore. We'll boil them up too. I tuck the can between two smooth bed stones to keep it from floating away. When I look up, "Hello!"

A beautiful black Labrador retriever is looking at me. I smile at him. If dogs could smile, black labs would. They radiate smile. I cross the creek talking to him like I'm his best buddy. He looks friendly and healthy, probably a pedigree. I pet his head and feel his shoulders and his haunch, "Good dog." I take off my belt and slip it around his neck to lead him back to the camp. He doesn't resist. He seems glad to have found a friend. Heck, they said we could eat anything we caught. I'm going to hold out and trade him for meat and potatoes.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: John A. Ward was born on Staten Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio running, writing and living with his dance partner. Links to his work can be found at http://www.geocities.com/jaward04@sbcglobal.net/dancfool.htm

The Pen-Sword by J

2009-03-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ages ago, Frannie had put away all the knives and scissors—thrown away the shivs made from fractured plastic trays. She'd hidden the screwdrivers, rubber mallet, and drill behind a door that locked. She'd packed away those five hardback anthologies frequently chucked at her head from the second floor. And Darth Vader's helmet, cape, and light sabre? Goodwill.

Yet Duncan still stood there, all four feet of him, armed with a pen. Her pen with a waxy black feather on the end. The one she naïvely kept in a can by the phone—a gag gift from her critique group's Christmas party. Frannie wasn't laughing now. Neither was Duncan. He stood facing her, pen poised above his head and wide eyes staring at her shoulder.

“I'll do it. You're gonna get it.”

He mock-stabbed then swished the pen in the air like a sword until the feather whispered its agreement.

Frannie tried the lines from workshops led by “professionals” with zero emotion in her voice. But she was sure Duncan could smell her exhaustion. Her last rational attempt was, “Does hurting people ever get you what you want?”

But Duncan's hemispheres no longer participated in the drama. Brain-stem signals fueled him now: 100% pure animal instinct, reflex, and involuntary muscle. He ran at her, made contact with her thigh, then jumped back, ready to strike again. He laughed at the hole he'd made in her tan slacks. A hole soon tinged with blood.

She'd failed. And now she had to bring Robert into it. She wasn't mom enough to rein the boy in, so now the love of her life would have to get hurt, too. The couple herded Duncan from kitchen to living room to the stairs. But then Robert (always) had to do the heavy lifting.

They never did get the pen-sword out of Duncan's hand. He stood in his doorway for thirty minutes—watching Frannie, rubbing the feather the wrong way down its shaft so that every barb unzipped—and smirked.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: J lives in relative obscurity (but not poverty) in the foothills of California. This is her first piece of fiction.

Taking Prisoners by Derek Osborne

2009-03-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

We had stopped by the side of the road to make camp in a big field outside the town. It had been slow going because we had prisoners and needed to stop every hour to keep them in line. The corporal complained how they slowed us down. There were beds and showers waiting in Leon. He complained to me but I ignored him. I was very tired after marching all day and wanted nothing more than to get some sleep.

He and the others stayed out by the fire, the kid from Liverpool, the sergeant who carried the biggest rabbit’s foot I have ever seen, and the huge Scott with his red beret and heavy, Browning machine gun. There were others as well but I do not recall them with any clarity. Around ten I heard the lieutenant come up and speak in urgent tones. I pretended to be asleep when he looked inside the tent. Then I heard them move out, so I got up and went outside. It was cold now and the stars were thick above the trees. You could hear the rifles clanking against their cartridge packs as they walked up the road in the dark. I found some soup in the pot so I made a seat of my rucksack and sat in the wet grass to eat. It was always cold at night and then hot on the road in the afternoon. The warm soup tasted good.

I heard shots and then screaming, then several more shots, the steady thud of the Browning gun firing short bursts underneath the sharper crack of the rifles, and the whole time there was the screaming. I sat and stared at the fire. The silence was awful. Then there was one more very loud scream and one last shot.

When they returned none of them wanted to talk. The sergeant couldn’t keep anything down. After that night, the corporal never complained again. He wasn’t a bad sort, and apologized when his orders came through. He made me promise to visit if I ever I got back to England.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: All of us learn by imitating others. For me, it was Hemingway. It took years to get that voice out of my head, but he taught me the basics - like riding a bike. Regardless of politics, the guy was a hell of a writer, and I owe him a great deal.

Insatiable Appetite by Anonymous

2009-03-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Tasty poison; I couldn’t resist your broad shoulders.
Caramel-colored, or should I say dulce de leche,
your monochromatic skin had no tan lines to stop
my tongue; I’d already crossed the border.
You savored my stew, simmered slowly,
tender and yielding to your bite.
Unfamiliar paprika, you learned to like it.
But I can’t cook all day,
and you were always hungry.
You raided my refrigerator for cold leftovers,
after I asked you not to.
I had to put a lock on the refrigerator door.
I had to tell you to take your large ladle
and go stir someone else’s pot.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Anonymous is an amateur poet and cook and a healthcare professional in New York City. She savors natural ingredients and bittersweet flavor.

The Readers in Car 103 by Christopher Allen

2009-03-05T12:07:00.001-08:00

Jessie wasn't the best reader, but he decided he had to give it a whirl. On the train last week, he’d fallen in love with the literate look of the woman who, with her nose in a novel, ended up sitting opposite him. That afternoon he went out and swiped the first book he saw.

The next morning at precisely 8:22 he boarded the train, took his seat across from The Reader, as he now called her, and opened his book to page 103 where he imagined a love story called The Readers in Car 103:

“Good morning,” he’d greet. Or maybe just, “Hiya.”

“Good morning,” she’d reply. And she’d smile.

Jessie, however, couldn’t muster courage to greet. Thrumming fingers on page 103, he drank in The Reader reading. Her eyes, lowered to the book in her thinly veiled lap, were lashed halfmoons in the window of Jessie’s night train. Her hands, vanilla dreamsicles dripping on her cornflower-blue dress, dog-eared her sticky pages.

He missed his stop and dropped his book. The moment he reached to retrieve it, The Reader crossed her legs and moaned, "Oh God!"

A heady breeze of blood powdered Jessie senseless for a page, but he recovered and returned to The Readers in Car 103:

“I love you,” he’d confess. Or maybe, “Let’s fuck.”

“You’re worthy,” she’d say, wiping the drool from his lower lip.

But Jessie was neither romantic nor crude, so he continued to catalogue The Reader’s every freckle and curve. Sweat drops at her temples glistened like intellect. Four lines on her forehead outed a serious, experienced soul. Her strawberry mouth puckered a thousand silent kisses towards the words on her page.

Hungry for the letters of her lap, Jessie’s lips parted, mimicking each buss. The faster she gobbled, the faster Jessie mime-gobbled. But try as he might, he could never taste the words on her pages 168, 169, 170 . . .

She smacked her book shut and looked up.

Jessie’s shocked eyes shot holes through page 103. He felt The Reader’s eyes caress and crawl in and out of him. She’d see he was stout, bearded, blond and nothing if not a devoted reader. She’d surely notice the literariness in his book, House Plants for the Homeless. She’d sense his smell: the earthy, bacterial Renaissance Man. If she was smiling when he looked up, he’d have to wolf her down.

With a coquette's eye-batting gentleness and the courage of a bear, he raised the windows to his soul and gazed into hers. Then, like a sudden sea mist, came the burning realization, the unbearable pain. He pinched his eyes and regretted the misreading.

“I’ll spray you again!” a woman’s voice shouted. “Someone get this smelly creep off me, or I’ll fuck him up good.”

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Christopher Allen writes character-driven fiction. Several of his short stories will be published this year. He lives a life of luxury in Germany. Hate him.

eternal return by Chris Deal

2009-03-04T07:15:00.000-08:00

long, too long,
but i can still
remember her smile,
like a moment after
the singularity
snapped, eternally
returning to the
first moment i saw,
the moment we first,
unexpected,
so damn early in
the morning, her
there, leaning over,
kissing me softly on
the lips, coming
through the sleeping
fog, then she was gone,
her smile on my lips,
still, tasting, always,
thank god it's always there,
we will always return
to that one moment,
that first kiss,
that waking i pray to see
again, me there, her coming
out of the dark,
first night,
there, before, the first
smile,
years earlier,
so far earlier,
i haven't seen her in so

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Chris Deal writes from Huntersville, NC.

Popcorn Chicken Snack Boxes by Holly Anderson

2009-02-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

Of course I got the facelift I’d do anything for him our relationship was that special it was like he saw my soul through his melting caramel brown eyes so full of wild spirit I was smitten the first time I saw him in that tiny diaper clinging to my fingers like a baby bird on a branch my husband understood and I don’t care that people said we exploited him putting him in our TV commercials he wanted to work wanted to do for us we were happy and the money poured in everyone wanted to see him touch him take their picture with him he was probably 7 when he had his first drink at a Valentine’s Day dinner it seemed wrong not giving him some champagne too and we ate filet mignon and lobster he loved chewing the tails and caviar sandwiches and popcorn chicken snack boxes day or night life was good the business grew and grew I was enchanted by our darling didn’t notice my husband’s feelings changing to green envy and later full blown jealousy when he had to leave our bed to make room for T____ such a natural progression from caregiver to colleague to best friend to pardon me who are you to judge people can’t help who they love it’s like the weather it simply descends upon you and then you’re deep in it until it blows away my husband was in the guest room then so when his heart problems started we thought it best he still loved T____ I used to push T____ high higher on the swing set until he hit 200 pounds my husband would watch from the upstairs window and laugh we were still happy and T____ was a charming co-host at the parties we threw so good for business and so was T____ walking around the room with mimosas at brunches or mixing martinis people couldn’t believe how clever he was but I knew from the first moment how important he would be so the facelift was nothing I wanted him satisfied and when that meant looking like the 14 year-old he was so what and then my hair was chemically straightened that Japanese technique gave the best results he loved twirling my hair around his fingers then I dyed it jet-black grew it long and swung it around his laughing face while astride him yes oh yes after my husband I swear I heard his heart explode just like an airborn cantaloupe hitting the driveway died we buried him sold the business T____ and I had even more time then when friendship turned the corner and we were suddenly looking at each other with dewy eyes flirting and the touching crackled with electricity and 70 year-old me was reborn he made feel like a girl so I wanted to look like one too for him it was all for him my beloved my own true wildheart.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Holly Anderson authored Lily Lou(Purgatory Pie Press)and Sheherezade(Pyramid Atlantic), anthologized in Up is Up But So is Down: NY's Downtown Literary Scene,1974-1992 (NYU Press)Unbearables(Autonomedia) & First-Person Intense(Mudborn Press). She performs with Lisa B. Burns in NYC as New Randy. http://www.smokemusic.tv/content/mission-burma-holly-anderson

A Man Who Loved to Polka by Peter Cherches

2009-02-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

There once was a man who loved to dance the polka. He wasn’t Polish, but he loved to dance the polka. His name was Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith loved the polka so much that he decided to drive thousands of miles from his home in California to Erie, Pennsylvania, for the annual Erie Polka Festival.

When Mr. Smith got to the festival it appeared to him that he was the only non-Polish person there. Everybody was speaking Polish. Many of the people were recent immigrants who spoke only a little English.

The festival was held in an enormous dance hall, where two live bands played polkas non-stop, and everybody danced and ate Polish food.

The food was very tasty. There were pierogies—little dumplings filled with potatoes or meat or cheese, kielbasa—Polish sausage, and plenty of kapusta—cabbage.

Mr. Smith felt a little out of place because he didn’t speak Polish, but he was having a good time, because he loved the polka.

It took a while, but Mr. Smith finally found the courage to ask a woman to dance the polka with him. He went up to a very pretty young lady and said, “May I have this dance?”

At first the young lady said nothing and stared blankly. Then all of a sudden she smiled and said, “Tak,” which is Polish for “yes.”

They danced the polka. She was a very good dancer. Mr. Smith wasn’t so bad himself.

After a little while, the young lady spoke to Mr. Smith in a very thick Polish accent.

“What is your name?” she asked him, which was almost all the English she knew.

“Mr. Smith,” replied Mr. Smith. “And what is your name?” he asked.

“Christina,” she replied.

They kept dancing. They were both smiling and having a very good time. Mr. Smith thought he was falling in love with Christina, and he hoped Christina was falling in love with him.

After a little while longer, Christina said, “Mr. Smith, I will call you Mr. Smuskiewicz.”

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Peter Cherches blogs about food, travel and writing at http://petercherches.blogspot.com

Dead Chinese Girls by Matt Tuckey

2009-02-21T05:59:00.000-08:00

“I’ve just had a horrible thought,” said Carl, keeping his voice down.

The adjoining corridor, the turning point in the staircase, led up to more student rooms and the kitchen. They hung around there out of convenience- you open your door and, more often than not, you’ve got company.

But now, having the doors open all the time was a hindrance of sorts. Whenever they went up to the kitchen, just as they turned the corner to step into the communal area, there was a strange odour. It might have been a familiar one; Andy couldn’t place it, but there were tones that reminded him of...well, something bad.

Heather was easily unnerved, but Carl needed to spit this out.

“That smell upstairs...” he said, voice low. “Well- I’ve not seen the Chinese girl in a while...”

A collective shudder ran through all of them. Heather, gasping, was the only one to voice her fear. Her Liverpudlian accent was more noticeable than usual.

“Oh, Carl, don’t even say that. Oh my god.”

Carl looked across the faces of his housemates:

Andy, thinking, maybe...

Heather, thinking, I hope not...

Carl already saw the BBC bulletin on the Scandal of Salford University Accommodation in his mind...How will Moira Stewart handle this situation?

“Has anyone seen her this week?” Andy asked.

A pause.

“Her mates haven’t called in ages,” said Carl. “I hope I’m wrong...I mean, y’know... I’ve not even seen her, like, cooking in the kitchen or anything.”

Carl, trying to rationalise, acted older than 21. But his maturity wasn’t without weakness.

“Go and knock on for her, Heath.”

Heather’s expression said it all: Why the fuck me? It’s your theory.

Carl stepped forward and nodded Heather up. Andy watched them walk up the stairs and out of sight, but not earshot.

A faint knock.

A click.

The faint, high-pitched timbre of a female oriental voice flittered down the staircase.

Relief started to leak through the cracks of tension.

So if it’s not the rotting corpse of a reclusive Chinese immigrant student, lain undiscovered by ten other residents in a Salford flat, Andy thought, what the hell is that smell?

The strained, inaudible, and seemingly overly polite conversation that Heather was managing to pull off was drawing to a close. The door clicked shut. Heather staggered down the stairs, leaning on the banister and stifling an outburst of laughter. She took a breath, mouth wide open.

“She’s cooking fresh fish in her room!”

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Born in 1982 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, Matt is a council administrator and an amateur writer. A graduate from the University of Salford, he writes at powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com.

THE BOLD WEST IS A PEW AGAIN by RC Miller

2009-02-20T06:57:00.000-08:00

Minimally filled two sizes too sober,
The bold west is a pew again

Earning how many coins inhabit the cover
Of virgin frogs duplicating lice flakes.

Offshore I cross the mandible crutch
Harmonious as a zombie purgatory backflipping toward

This pitiful inheritance of wide stifled potato chips.
Slithered splatters of oatmeal lenient AIDS

Gown homicides whacking off
Wacky cells whacking weeds

And seducing my Barely Legals spread eagle.
Shorty you yank that nose hair from the fridge,

Yanking a cold sore from the disinfectant pad.
And icing the bridge before the road

Your wet parts
Goose a dirge buried in frowning haste

Imported our confounded fate.
Like the ornate superbug bumps on cone spuds

Filled with progress but fragile pus inside,
A diaper glue and the lunge of my goo

Ductapes together couplets of a carjacking
Called the don't wait up flag balls benediction.

Minimally filled two colons too ivory,
Our loyal pals the euthanized ding

A gristle affirming Buddha hall laid my piebald Mary Beth
Pressata pressed a dictated hick bleech.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Born 1974 in Parkersburg, WV, RC Miller is a poet and photographer currently living in New York City. He may be found at http://visionblues.blogspot.com/

To the Goddess of Rumor by William Doreski

2009-02-18T11:40:00.001-08:00

Beside the river, hellebore
six feet tall flouts thick-veined leaves
floppy and toxic as your tongue.

I kneel at the river and cup
a handful of water not to drink
but to smell. Oily and sour

with pollutants, it would serve
to wash down a tatter of raw
hellebore salad and send me

foul-breathed into the dark place
your rumors would consign me
if I listened too hard to their gist.

You with your corrugated hair,
expensively styled, insist
with your wry immortality

on a way of seeing the world
through the many graces of fiction.
You amuse rather than bemuse

so everyone gladly kneels
or at least sits comfortably
at the long marble-topped bar

you pretend is your altar.
The Friday night crowd regards you
as a cunning mortal ready

with anecdote and innuendo
but too quick to select a male
to wring all night like a mop.

I try to avoid that scene
but sometimes thirst compels me
to approach your altar waving

a twenty-dollar bill. Your greed
overcomes your dignity. The drink
I buy you buys nothing but
a rumor about some hefty blonde
and me, but I laugh so honestly
when I hear you slander me

that even death by toxic plant
seems foolish enough to attempt
in honor of your artistry.

Copyright 2009

For Want of a Blade by Sanford Allen

2009-02-17T20:29:00.000-08:00

Most of the men in the town worked for the sawmill. They worked hard, and the dust from the big whirling blade clung to their sweaty arms and necks.

They washed off the dust each night and collected their pay each week.

One day the blade broke. It made a high sharp noise, and a flying shard sliced into a man's throat.

The man lay on the dust-covered floor, and his life bled away as the others tried to comfort him.

They put a picture of the man on the wall and closed the mill, but only until a new blade arrived.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Sanford Allen hails from San Antonio, Texas. Home of the Alamo and some of the best $2.99 enchilada plates you're likely to find. His fiction has appeared in print and online publications including Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales, Necrotic Tissue and Niteblade. His website is www.sanfordallen.com.

Word Gatherer by Ethel Rohan

2009-02-16T17:19:00.000-08:00

I plucked letters in the alphabet orchard. Just ripe letters that tasted orange, looked spicy, and smelled of excitement.

I swallowed the letters whole and performed tumbles. When the letters distilled, I opened my mouth and sang, and this is what came out:

Should together at accuse encampment city blank to down Sundays childish had I and hospital if the and been ran the booklets by emptied ferret elsewhere.

The words delicious, dizzying.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco. She received her MFA in fiction from Mills College, CA. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Cantaraville; SUB-LIT; Word Riot; Identity Theory; and mud luscious, among others. Her blog is www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com

Anniversary by David Erlewine

2009-02-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

Karen stirred from bed. Marvin peeked out from under the pillow and then pulled the covers up to his neck.

“Heater broken?”

“Marvin,” she said and walked to the bathroom.

He counted from 10 to 1, back to 17, down to -4. He was back up to 27 when he stood up.

“Jesus.”

Though he knew it was locked, he jiggled the doorknob.

“Let’s get this over with.”

The little lock clicked and he entered. She leaned over the sink, ass in the air. The little teddy she wore had a thumb-sized hole by her right rib cage. The teddy looked like it would send dust flying if whacked hard enough.

Marv shuffled over to her and lined things up.

“Happy anniversary, Timothy,” she said.

“Happy anniversary, Tim,” Marv said, glancing out the little window at the backyard. The pool’s outline still peered out from under the dirt, crabgrass, weeds and lime-colored grass. He made a note to pick up some more dirt.

She grunted as he slipped inside her.

“Grab my shoulders, like you did.”

He dug his nails into her shoulders.

"Right," she said.

He looked at them in the little mirror, her little tongue darting out between her lips, his face reddening, extra skin under his chin. He knew not to glance out the window. He hadn't done it three years ago so he didn't get to today.

Just before he came, his breathing getting ragged, Karen banged on the sink. She pushed off of him, washed up, and then went downstairs.

Even when he smelled coffee, Marv found himself unable to leave the bathroom. Would they relive this day the same way in five years? Why hadn't they left the house where three years ago today their boy took his last breaths just as Marv was getting ready to cum all over Karen’s back, just as their son's friend banged on the bathroom door yelling I can't lift Tim off the bottom of the pool?

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: David Erlewine has stories appearing in elimae, SmokeLong Quarterly, decomP, The Pedestal, and a number of other journals. He edits fiction for Dogzplot. His sad little blog is http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/

Love on the Move by Bill West

2009-02-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

It would have made more sense if Todd and Stella had made love in the same place, at the same time. But they were a busy couple with time only for love-on-the-fly. And he was in Croydon while she was on a small planetoid somewhere near Vulpecula.

Todd left the restaurant without paying and rushed back to his hotel room. His Quarkberry's silky voice was still delivering the countdown to foreplay as he stumbled through the bedroom door. After tearing off his clothes he slipped into the warm viscous bath of the Eroticon5 in-room entertainment system. The blue frosted plexi-lid closed with a hiss. Air tubes poked up Todd's nose and the total-immersion gel sucked him down below its surface.

Bio-feedback virtual-sex has been a boon to lovers on the move in a bullish interstellar economy, or so the adverts said. "You will make her groan in awe of your interstellar rod. Cum at the speed of light. Keep her gasping for more with our multiphase infinite loop mode with pneumatic enhancement. (Patents pending)"

Okay, so the visuals he'd ordered weren't actually of Stella but those of a TV presenter he fancied. And admittedly he'd twiddled with the body contour settings, changing them from "petite" to "voluptuous" and of course he'd applied voice profiling to mellow her somewhat petulant and sometimes commanding tone to a voice of an altogether lower timbre with smoky overtones of silky richness.

The Vulpeculian quadrant possesses some of the most advanced cybernetic products to be found anywhere. Stella, who had a headache, switched her Eroticon8 in-room entertainment system to auto-respond while she enjoyed a long soothing sauna instead. She glugged several glasses of chilled Murgon, a local wine with a delicate rose petal bouquet, returning just in time to catch the last groans and gasps and the final ecstatic thrustings. Wishing to feel closer to Todd at this tender moment she decided to replay the whole incident by viewing the encounter from his perspective.

The manufacturers of the Eroticon8 were not displeased to be cited in the divorce proceedings. Nor were they ungenerous at the outcome, presenting Todd with a portable and heavily customized Eroticon9 unit, the ultimate companion for single men on the move.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Bill West lives in Shropshire, UK. He is a member of a number on-line writing communities and is Group Host for the WriteWords Flash Fiction One Group. His work has appeared at MicroHorror, Kaleidotrope, Static Movement, Twisted Tongue, Zygote in My Coffee, FlashQuake, Heavy Glow, 52 Stitches and other places. www.writewords.org.uk/bill_west

THE MAN WHO CARRIES THE DOG by Roberta Allen

2009-02-12T08:35:00.001-08:00

The disabled woman, who is a kleptomaniac, calls the German woman's new boyfriend 'The Man Who Carries The Dog' because he usually walks a few paces behind his German girlfriend, carrying in his arms her toy dachshund, which is female but has a masculine-sounding German name.

I've heard that German is his second language though I've never heard him speak German. I've rarely heard him say anything--even in English. When I asked if he and his girlfriend had a good Christmas eve, however, he surprised me by saying, "Yes, but nothing I can speak about," which made me wonder if this seemingly meek, morose Englishman had a wild side he kept hidden, unlike the disabled woman who hid nothing but the things she stole.

In fact, it was easier to imagine the disabled woman (who was uninhibited and lively despite her disability) having wild sex than it was to imagine the meek, morose Englishman having any sex, especially after he wound up in the hospital with

1) gallstones

2) a bleeding pancreas and

3) a mild heart attack, at which point, he seemed to give up hope, leading me to believe that the disabled woman's disability and kleptomania were preferable to the sickness and depression of 'The Man Who Carries The Dog' though no one has asked me to choose.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Roberta Allen is the author of eight books, including two flash collections, THE TRAVELING WOMAN and CERTAIN PEOPLE, praised by The New York Times Book Review, and the writing guide FAST FICTION. She teaches at The New School and in private workshops. www.robertaallen.com

A Sextuplet Flashgasm of Danger with Multiple Partners by Curt A. Strophe

2009-02-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

I. Stanley Grabowski's Accident

As rebellious teens, we lit firecrackers, then tossed them into a petro-filled bucket. Stanley's idea... He must've splashed some gasoline on his flannel, because when he lit the last bottle rocket, flames snaked up his torso.

"Fire! I'm on fire!" he screamed, before stopping, dropping, and rolling over a mudspot.

II. Rejection is Futile

After logging into her FaceSpace account, Paris sees: "You Have a Friend Request from Tra'al Grabowski!"

Hmmm... No avatar.

In college, she'd broken up with an Astrophysics major named Stanley Grabowski because of his obsession with UFOs.

She almost clicks "REJECT?", but gets up for another martini.

Something smells awful.

Entering the kitchen, there's...What the—? Three fat, slimy tentacles thrash from underneath the table. An unearthly shriek and putrid stench fill the air.

Paris screams and sprints back. A new message has popped up on-screen: "I don't like rejection. Accept the Friendship Request or die, humanoid."

She clicks: "ACCEPT!"

III. No Love for the Lana

Yesterday Tra'al caught me reading Cosmo-Gasm magazine's Sex Secrets for 2109. With big hopeful eyes, I whispered, "Let's try anal... I-I mean, Lana tonight."

"Lana? That's gross!"

"C'mon, baby! Cosmo-Gasm says it's in style," I begged in my cutest voice. "Pwease?"

"Maybe."

I couldn't believe my prude fiancée was considering this!

That night we rented Lana—a buxom fembot—and the fantasy became a nightmare.

During foreplay I discovered Lana's flowery miasma to be nauseating. Tra'al inhaled it ecstatically. While Tra'al's tentacles caressed Lana's rubberized lips and metallic breasts, my flaccid eyestalks recoiled in disgust.

As they were coming, I was leaving.

IV. Stanley's Thank You Letter to Cosmo-Gasm Magazine

Getting anally probed on a regular basis took some getting used to…

At first, I found that having my alien girlfriend shove a huge, glowing orb up my ass wasn't only uncomfortable, it was also kind of humiliating. Fortunately, she taught me some sex wisdom from Cosmo-Gasm magazine:

1.) There's no such thing as too hard, or too fast. I'm just the passenger!

2.) The best time to probe was when I didn't feel like it. My body was lying to me!

I've now realized: tabloid sex advice is infallible. Since the (Cosmo-Gasm recommended) tentacle assignment surgery, life's improved immensely.

V. Last Tanga in Paris (Not Starring Marlon Brando)

Tra'al the Zulian gives Paris a green capsule. "Swallow this."

"Why?" she asks.

"Pregnancy protection."

Alien babies are hot. I want one, she thinks while pretending to swallow the capsule.

"Now butter me, baby," Tra'al says.

With humans, butter allows for tasty lubrication. Zulians claim its phospholipids enhance orgasm. The waterbed is soon a slippery tangle of limbs and tentacles.

By morning light Paris notices a pillbox: Tanga Inhibitors.

Unknown to her, Tanga (literally: birth) is an Earth term for "painful parasitoid." The gestation cycle is approximately four hours.

Paris screams as a baby Zulian devours her from the inside.

VI. Tra'al's Accident

Luckily, the accident only singed Stanley's eyebrows. He quit school a week later. We never saw him again.

Yesterday, he phoned me. The caller ID showed: "Tra'al the Zulian." He insisted it was him. He needed bail money. Stanley was in jail for accidentally killing his celebrity girlfriend. I hung up.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Curt A. Strophe: "I'm a student of environmental science, life, and all other things strange. I have no cats or children because I'm allergic to them. I plan on owning neither in the near future."

The Tracing Game by Teresa Houle

2009-02-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

Shadows skip across the bedroom wall at 80 km/hour. It wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't use their high beams, but it's the price you pay for living on a dark highway with low property taxes.

“How do you sleep in here?” Sandra asked from the comfort of her sleeping bag on the floor next to the bed.

“You get used to it,” I said. I had the whole bed to myself while my best friend tried to find comfort like a dog.

“You should share my bed with me.”

“But everyone will think we are dykes.”

“Only if we tell them that we slept in the same bed.”

“Okay, don't tell anyone then,” she said. “This floor is killing me.”

Sandra crawled out of her sleeping bag and into the warm double bed with my holly hobbie sheets and matching pillowcases. I knew they were little kids sheets but I still loved them.

After several minutes of awkward positioning and making sure that none of our parts were touching we settled into talking about boys we would kiss.

“Davie is cute but I always see him digging for gold,” Sandra said. “It makes him un-kissable.”

“Ewwww…I didn't know he was a picker.”

After making our way through the boys in our class then our grade, we were starting to run out of boys to talk about.

“You know what helps me relax to sleep?” Sandra asked. “If someone traces words and pictures on my back with their finger.”

My stomach suddenly felt high up in my throat.

“Okay,” I tried to not sound so nervous.

She rolled and lifted up her pajamas to expose her clean white back.

“Don't tell me what you are writing,” she said. “Let me guess.”

I started with my name, which she knew immediately. “Do something hard, but don't push too hard. Be gentle.”

I started to trace the name of my dog into her back when she turned around suddenly.

“Your turn,” she said. “I want to show you how I like it.”

I turned around and exposed my back. I hoped that it was as clean and white as hers.

Ripples of goose flesh radiated up my body when her delicate tips met my skin. She barely touched me as she moved slowly in lines and circles. I felt her warm breath on my cool back. I was relaxed yet stimulated; her touch consumed me.

“You haven't guessed yet.”

“I haven't figured it out,” I lied. “It's my first time doing this. Keep trying.”

She repeated her strokes and her breath became slower, more relaxed.

I could feel the letters taking shape on my skin.

I love you, over and over, I love you.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Teresa lives in Victoria BC with her adoring family and enjoys writing for Flash Fire 500. She also enjoys tickles and warm breath on the back of her neck.

In Queen's Park by Bruce Holland Rogers

2009-02-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

In Queen's Park, Charles thinks he can tell the difference between mothers and au pairs by the tiny lines around the mothers' eyes. There's more to the difference than merely noticing that the au pairs are hardly out of childhood themselves. Some of the mums steering prams or pushchairs around the park are young, too. But the mums, he thinks, are marked.

If Charles couldn't see the lines, he'd still know. He grew up in another country, so he smiles at strangers. He says hello. The au pairs smile back at him sometimes. The mums, never. Someone might say, Well, an au pair is a foreigner, too, usually. She didn't grow up here in the historical soot and stones. Yes, someone might say that, missing the point.

Charles found a teddy bear on the pavement.

"Madame!" he called to the woman steering her child under the shade of the plane trees. "Is this...Did you drop this?"

She turned, eyes narrow with suspicion until she saw the toy.

Charles said, "Someone was going to miss this!"

The mother thanked him, still squinting a little though she and Charles both stood out of the sun. Then she turned away, all business.

Charles has seen the posters on shop windows or plastered on the back of vans. The little blonde girl, where and when last seen. This year's signs. There were different ones last year and the year before that.

Women with children on the circular paths stop now and then to look over their shoulders. When Charles walks in the park, a man alone, he feels their gazes, feels them memorizing the color of his shirt, the way he trims his beard, something about him, in case.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Bruce Holland Rogers teaches at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA, a program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize and two World Fantasy Awards. For more of his fiction, please visit www.shortshortshort.com.

It Was Dark When They Met by Jan Windle

2009-02-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

Their lips were small crabs
searching a shell
Salt
was their sweetness
and dry
their seahorse tongues.

Her breath was made of candle glow.
He could not extinguish her
so
he waited for her
to blow over.

His tongue was a tsunami
she was the shore laid waste.

That night
pearl divers

were the only survivors.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: An artist and illustrator turned writer. Published flash fiction online at www.dogzplot.com (2007 - 2009) and in print in the 2008 Dogzplot Anthology. Poetry published in print in The Delinquent Magazine Issue 7 (2008). Interests: painting; writing; reading; Italy

The Beast Within by Bill West

2009-02-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

At six a.m., the sixty six Leytonstone bus rattles his bedroom window. He wakes and lies in his narrow bed, listening to the rain on the glass and the plash of water dripping from the broken gutter and cascading onto the wheely bins below. He can already smell the wet plaster patch in the corner of the ceiling. And he senses something else. Something wrong. Something strange and out of place. Light marches across the bedroom wall as another bus grinds past casting a monstrous shadow on the wall.

He grabs for the bedside lamp and switches it on. It takes a few blinks before he solves the puzzle of what it is hanging above his bed. Suspended from a mucous rope two large slugs entwine, their sexual organs locked together like a blue silicon gel alien. The slime across the ceiling spells out a message.

He laughs. A message from above. Nighttime and wet weather always makes her horny.

He clambers up the stairs to her attic room.

She is naked, lying in the middle of her big round bed. Water is dripping at many points from the ceiling, spattering onto her wet skin which gleams iridescent in the green lamplight. She winks and blinks, strokes her thighs and grins her big grin. He strokes her cool flesh, takes a grip and flips her over so that she is faced down and spread-eagled. Naked, he mounts her. Skin to slick skin, he wraps his arms around her big chest. And holds on tight.

Their lovemaking is muscular and intense. The floor and walls shake. Soon the bed disappears under a foaming solution bubbling from between her thighs. And only when she is finished does he allow himself to come.

He arches his back. His eyes pop, neck bulges, mouth gapes and croaks a cry of ecstasy.

“Ribbet.”

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Bill West lives in Shropshire, UK. He is a member of a number on-line writing communities and is Group Host for the WriteWords Flash Fiction One Group. His work has appeared at MicroHorror, Kaleidotrope, Static Movement, Twisted Tongue, Zygote in My Coffee, FlashQuake, Heavy Glow, 52 Stitches and other places. www.writewords.org.uk/bill_west

Transmutation by Anne Brooke

2009-02-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

Funny how, as Cath had got older, the garden had become her enemy. She used to love to sink her hands deep into warm soil, feeling the seeds sift and dance through her fingers. Each colour left a different sensation against her skin. Orange, yellow, red, sometimes even mauve if she was lucky.

All winter she would watch them. In her mind she could already see how they would be in the spring. Her grandmother had once told her she had the gift and she’d never questioned it.

As the seeds sprouted, tiny shoots forcing fragile strands into air, she would sometimes sit and talk to them. She would tell them the colours they would become, and how their small glories would add to the greater glories of the world. She hoped it were true.

Today she could hardly remember the woman she’d once been. Her hands were gnarled and twisted, bent out of shape. It had been many years since seeds had flourished into plants and flowers under her management. Now her touch brought only misery and regret. And the knowledge that everything changed.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Anne Brooke has been shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Novel Award and the Asham Award for Women Writers. Her latest poetry collection is A Stranger’s Table and her latest novel is Maloney’s Law. More information can be found at www.annebrooke.com and she keeps a journal at http://annebrooke.blogspot.com.

Prologue to Gadabout by Derek Osborne

2009-02-03T05:28:00.000-08:00

Roberto Mosquera, a stout little man who had grown up in the rough seas surrounding Coruña, paced back and forth across the bridge of the Argentina Star. They had left San Juan that morning, bound for Trinidad and then Buenos Aires, but now the big ship had altered course, heading straight into the open arms of a hurricane. They had known it was coming; the company had ships all over the globe, but better to be at sea and clear of the land than to attempt to ride it out in port. Waves they could handle; storm tides and steel piers were another matter entirely.

Roberto was Chief Engineer; the ship his bastard daughter born of a cold shipyard and group of men bent on moving commerce. He watched the collection of color monitors filling the console beneath the huge, plexi-glass windows. For nine hundred feet the ship ran ahead, six containers deep on deck. She was rolling now, but no more than six or seven degrees through the arc. He had already flooded the ballast, already ordered a course to wind. The gain on the both radars was all the way up, the night pitch black, the rain so heavy at times he could not see the mast head light.

“Put on your headset,” he snapped in Portuguese at the man now monitoring the radio.

They had picked up a distress call from a yacht in their vicinity.

“If you can’t take it, turn down the volume. I want the log to read that we monitored them.”

They had picked up the Mayday an hour ago. At first, the voice had been calm and professional. The Argentina Star had responded with her own position and situation. If Roberto tried to turn the ship they could flounder.

“Why didn’t they just get a hotel and let the boat go?” he said to the operator.

The radioman, new to the ship but knowing the ropes, pursed his lips and stayed silent.

“This one has monsters,” Roberto added, straining to see the bow through the storm.

The door to the day cabin opened and the Captain stepped out. The little room was meant to be nothing more than a berth and a head for those on watch.

“Our motion is changing,” he said, running his hands back through a thick head of greasy gray hair. “It’s coming.”

He scanned the console and looked at the solid black windows.

“Who is on?” he asked his Chief Engineer, indicating the radio.

“A yacht,” Roberto said.

The two men looked at each other.

“Have you made the log entries?” the Captain asked.

Roberto shook his head. They listened to the rain pelting the 19 mm Lexan windows like gun shots. They listened to the wind screaming hysterical bursts of eternity just outside the steel doors.

“I’ll make them,” the Captain said. “It won’t be long.”

With that, he turned and went back to bed.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: This is the prologue to my new novel “Gadabout”. Not “The Perfect Storm”, but more the perfect paradise attacked by the Perfect Storm’s mommy. Move over, Gloucester Men, da’ Carribee gonna make you t’ink twice.

When I Die by Holly Day

2009-01-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

when I die, no one
will be able to find me. I’ll be
slumped at my desk
in the corner of the basement
hidden by mountains of loose paper
balls of yarn
yards of unworked embroidery canvas
mountains of rumpled afghans.
even the smell of my corpse rotting
will go undetected for days
mixing in with the spice of
smashed jars of canned tomatoes and pickles
the full catbox
the open bag of peppery beef jerky on the desk
eventually, someone will come
to close my office door
seal the seam shut with duct tape and drywall spackle
hang a Christmas tree-shaped deodorizer from the door knob
paint over the doorway and pretend
I never existed.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Holly Day lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her two children, husband, and cat. Her newest nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities. Her poetry and fiction have most recently appeared in Penny Blood Review, Pearl, and Tar Wolf Review.

WE ARE THE YOUNG by Harold Pumiceous

2009-01-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

We are the Young People. You might have seen us around. Our kind gather in herds of six in louche nightclubs, mingling in small cliques of cocksure bucks of quite unimaginable attractiveness, discussing various hedonistic activities that best befit the energy and spirit of our age. We range from anything between 16-29, are enviably pretty to look at, and indulge in so much pleasure-seeking revelry, those who are excluded from our group (the over 29s) are left open-jawed in stupefaction.

It is a Friday evening. Here, in the Kingdom of the Young, a pulsating orb of kinetic energy vibrates throughout the entire city. The night is ours. We gather in Wilson’s Nightclub, once an OAP home, to consume various alcoholic substances and have conversations pertaining to matters of the incredibly Young. Norman Smedley, a Young Man of seventeen, takes a sip of his drink and chuckles most heartily.

“The thrill for me is knowing that in forty minutes, I’m going to make myself so sick, I will expel my bowels,” he explains to his lover, Beryl Gunridge.

“Indeed. I am also visited by insurmountable pleasure at the prospect of making myself throw up on a tramp, and perhaps even permitting a heroin dealer to rent out my ovaries for the night,” she replies, looking Young and enviably pretty.

As the evening continues, the Young People unite in a miasma of ethanized transcendence, erecting a ten-foot beercan with which they deify their self-destructing nowness – slaves to the moment, worshippers of the never-forming wrinkle.

In a candlelit bedroom in Hackney, George Corbett, a Young Man of staggering attractiveness, beds an older woman of 43.

“I enjoy the sensation of loving you,” he says, thrusting himself inside her, “because you are older and wiser, like my mother.”

“Yes. Afterwards, I will bring you juice and cookies, permit you to suckle from my maternal breast and sing you a reassuring song that condemns all the demons in your soul,” she replies, cushioning his Young penis with her well-tested uterus.

All over the land, Young People are doing things. They are dancing to generic Europop, letting the repetitive candied rhythms infuse their loins with sweat-swilling pleasure. They are sharing lips and tongues, fusing their spring-loaded freedoms and swiveling their hips in slender-boned merriment.

“It is my opinion, being Young, that older people are less attractive, saggier and generally more worthless than us. They are condemned forever to skitter around the dazzling baseness of our follies, eyeing us with searing jealousy, and never eclipsing our timeless beauty,” says a Young Person, blinking his days away.

He is right. For we are the Young. We will never grow old.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Harold is an Edinburgh-based writing man. He nurses kumquats back to full health. If he disappeared, he would return a week later as a shop assistant in Poole (somewhere in England). Funnier bio information has been deleted at his request.

Union by Gary Beck

2009-01-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

However
reflections come, go,
remain sullenly poised,
posing in some venereal show,
passing in venal promenade,
wines on an east river terrace.
The blonde cannibal smiles,
her ravenous mouth
corrupt with midnight couplings,
that beautiful mouth
how many nights fastened on mine,
then gushing obscenities,
until our bodies joined
like two ferocious beasts,
finally screaming comecomecomemmme,
afterwards falling apart,
two strangers in a soiled bed,
strangers with dirty souls.

Copyright 2009

Author’s Bio: Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His short stories have recently appeared in numerous literary magazines.

Poker by Richard Wink

2009-01-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Urging the Queen to play something authentic
sing from the liver
even if it doesn't beat
and is crafted from tracing paper,
bow your head earnestly to one side
have some fun, loosen up
spit your bubble gum in a paper cup
that's been doing the rounds

Drift in
sit down on a
chair that folds back
look carefully it is numbered.
A little six
and a bigger seven

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Richard Wink is an English writer. He runs the litzine Gloom Cupboard.

YOUR TOWN by John Grey

2009-01-28T10:38:00.000-08:00

hair falling over
your face, your shoulders
like the approach of night

and eyes like the bright mile
of a shopping street

that mouth
where the rich people live
Georgian? Victorian?
maybe even a gambling house
behind a barely perceptible smile

some antique shops
sewn into the dress
windows full of point lace
china, pewter

but the breasts
like undeveloped land
beyond the last estate

and thigh forests
so thick that
even after one man's
been through them with his axe
nothing feels chopped down

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: John Grey. Australian born poet, US resident since late seventies. Works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Slant, Briar Cliff Review and Albatross with work upcoming in Poetry East, Cape Rock and REAL.

Drinking with Janis by Derek Osborne

2009-01-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

In 1970, Holmdel was still a rural township. With only two cops, Brady and his son, we had the run of the roads after dark. Our farm bordered the back of the Garden State Arts Center, a wonderful, open-air amphitheater with gentle lawns that surrounded the stage. It looked like someone had landed a white flying saucer and left it there on the hill. A pine forest bordered the properties. Whenever we wanted to see a show, we simply sat in the shadows and waited ‘til dusk, then climbed the fence and got in for free.

That year The Arts Center decided to host rock concerts. Iron Butterfly, the Rascals, and Grand Funk Railroad had already played, but nothing compared to the night Janis Joplin showed up with her Full Tilt Boogie Band. Thousands of people had come without tickets and nearly caused a riot.

On occasion, security would bust us for climbing the fence, but this night they had their hands full. We hopped on over and started down the hill, running into a bunch of people sitting in a circle, smoking and sharing a bottle of JD. They invited us over, so we sat down and clasped hands and bid the usual greetings. This wild looking chick dressed all in purple boa’s leaned in and looked over.

“Hey, man.”

It was Janis Joplin. We were sitting with the band.

“Holy shit,” was all I could manage.

It was a warm summer evening, just after twilight. The bright lights of The Center washed across the back lawn. A gentle breeze came up and swept the feathers and silk Janis wore in her hair. Her famous, rose color granny glasses hung down with a dozen other baubles and braided, leather strings.

”How you doin’, man?”

”I’m doing fine,” I said, “This is far out.”

I was seventeen.

”You guys live around here?”

”Yeah, this is like, our backyard.”

”That’s pretty cool,” she said, “Glad you came.”

It was only a moment, a brief moment, our eyes met and I felt her kid-sister charm and that tragic sorrow we would all come to know. Her soul flew out at me, rushed passed my shoulder and entered the forest, swaying the pines as the wind followed after. Her eyes softened, she smiled and leaned back into the circle.

Out in front the crowd was roaring and chanting. Someone passed me the pipe. A few minutes later the stage manager came and said it was time for the show.

My friends and I watched as the band walked down the hill and in through a pair of gray steel doors. I was hoping she might turn around and wave, but she didn’t. It was a hell of a show. All those freaks crashed the gates; the crowd spilled down over the promenade and half way into the parking lots. After that night, The Arts Center banned all rock concerts. Two months later, Janis was dead.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Derek Osborne grew up on a secluded, 1200 acre estate in the middle of New Jersey during the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. Despite all that’s happened, he still thinks it’s a wonderful life.

Enwombed by Mikhail Schizimerov

2009-01-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

FLASH:

Was it she? Scarlet heart, swollen mouth. Was it she?

Was it she, amid the tendrils of chaos, in a bulletproof vest, with a colt 45 pressed to the back of Larry King?s head? was it she, napalm Iraqi, luminous Kurd? was it she who blew out my crotch?

Must think.

Must retrace steps.

Doves. A flutter. Doves aflutter. Sometime around three. Inside the mansion of a popular American news anchor. Sounds. A stirring. Sounds astirring. A cardiac interruption. Fade to black.

A pair of lips. Creases and reds. Cheeks. Plump and powdered. A scalpel, an operating table. A surgeon extends his hand, bescissored and masked. He snips me, snips me, snips me? snips off my penis.

Pain. Shooting pain. Howls, cries and wails. Black again.

Tonight on the Larry King show, a live special from Baghdad! Larry is being held hostage in a prison camp beside the river Tigris, where a band of fundamentalists are planning to remove his penis and stick a small explosive discharge between his legs. Plus, music from Shania Twain!

Hell. A pink demon sits within. Silent and stubborn. Mesopotamian spittle awakes me. A woman. Her. Her vagina. A prawn cracker with a mouth, a sliver of brain? dribbling blood. Words. Insensate, demure. A shaven-headed Larry King tied to the chair behind me.

?I had a dream, Mr. King. I was being fucked by your butch American army. Your big American cocks were inside my little Kurd vagina. Your monkey man president was sending another missile into my village, a big shiny hardcock missile, to fuck us all??

Did I? Did I see? Did I look down and see that I had a bomb emerging from the bleeding wound were I once had a penis? Did I see two penises in a jar? Did I notice my own was bigger than that of Larry King?

Was it me? Was it me? Was it me who arranged for the missiles to be fired that afternoon? Was it me, with my crotch thrust before the president, who took the orders to wipe out this Iraqi village?

Holy fuck. It was me.

?Now you see what it feels like to have baby! Only you give birth to death? you give birth to war and destruct. Now you see what it feels like to have your son wiped out by missile, now you know the pain of giving birth to chaos?? Ten seconds on the clock. Six seconds. Three seconds. Fuck the president. Fuck America. Fuck war. Fuck?.

Tonight on the Larry King show, a memorial special. We meet the friends and family who spoke to him before a bomb exploded between his legs, and the brave legless soldier who avenged his death. Julia Roberts introduces clips from his finest and funniest shows?

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Mikhail was bazoomed from the ferric folds of Lady Sulsa. Between composing slyly xenophobic anti-American flashes, he always finds time to SALT THE SINUS and marry his 45rd wench.

Jennifer, Leave the Grave by Claire D. Mackenzie

2009-01-21T07:44:00.000-08:00

This is an invitation.

You are in no position to refuse.

Walk into our odour. Step with caution along the befouled towpath, pausing once to admire the ironbound haddock woman, bedecked in the blue entrails of one-hundred failing fathers. Your mother.

Admire the wreckage, strewn across the sunken clocks of her adolescence, pooling in the sewers of his DNA – mother, father – spinning forwards, spanning backwards, forever backward.

Pluck a photograph from the time-washed tree. Notice her crossed finger – a wish, a lament? Her raised middle finger – a gesture, a love? Observe his trembling hand, his twitching leg – already one-thousand miles away, languishing in the council of fallen dads. There are no returns.

Can you blame him?

Buckle up for the main show. She is the film, you are the audience. As always. Lose yourself in the stumbling arrogance of her Mondays, the obnoxious bleach of her Fridays. Those bathetic, batwinged days of youth, of casuistry. Take a moment. Take an eternity. For she took your time.

Soon the weekend rolls around, on that ever-running reel, spooling the time in which questions were answers, answers were questions, and curiosity was the huggable stepfather you never had, nor never needed.

For you had her. She had you.

She had you, and she wouldn’t let you go.

Now you have to leave her. Now you have to stand up, wipe the formaldehyde sobs from her headstone, and get out of the graveyard. There are no mothers or fathers anymore, merely the spectres, stomping around in their fishnet stockings and surgical shoes, bitching about how hot it is here in the endless cinema of memory.

Close the gate behind you.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Claire D. Mackenzie furrows the fields of fire. She sends bats screaming out into the night and tells the little lapwing children to drink bleach. Her tenure as the black-knuckled underling of Sir Cerberus expired long ago. She sticks around merely for the vista.

iVibrate by iDrew

2009-01-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

so we've been chatting for ages
i've no idea what about
oh you know where you from
where do you work what clubs
what tunes what food
i wasn't paying that much attention
'cos his eyes were a sumptuous warm brown
and there was a tiny curved crease
in the corner of his mouth
when he smiled

that was the exact moment
i fell in love
well ok
the exact moment i wanted to be fucked

i was right up for it
not had a decent shag
since i can't even remember
was so gutted when he stood up
and said sorry he had to go with his mates
they were on a beer mission
with them all making alpha display
laddish noises
put yer number in my phone he said

i was dying to snog him
body brush against him
so accidentally
make him change his mind take him home
but he winked and went
i was watching him
in the mirror behind the bar
i saw him look back
with confusion on his face

then i couldn't believe he was returning
oh wow oh my god i can hardly breathe
and his arm reaches out
he's gonna swoop me up
how cute
sorry he says forgot my phone

that was the exact moment
or so i thought
the ground would swallow me up

but Gemma came over fucking hell Drew
you struck gold he's well fit
nah i said small dick and we cackled
got another drink

then off home
with drunken flat mate Gemma
yet again
but that was it
right there
that
was the exact moment
i thought does it really matter

and that was also the moment
i remembered there's always
my girl's best friend
in the bedside cupboard

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Drew considers herself to be a free range clubber going anywhere the beats are pumpin'. She also plays with the Clueless Collective: http://www.cluelesscollective.co.uk/

In Jest by Johnsie Noel

2009-01-16T12:29:00.000-08:00

Kind sir,
I sustain
that I remain
perplexed by
your question.

Why
do I mind,
to lay supine
digesting your
erection?

It's quite simple
sir,
I can well infer
by your dolt
expression

you cannot see
it wouldn't mind me
had it been by
my own
suggestion.

But by your
persistent insistence
on where our
heads should be

I duplicitously
hunker down
and ingest on your
mediocrity.

Copyright 2009

Author's bio: Johnsie Noel is a southern bawdy broad of paradoxical persiflage who regurgitates men and feeds them to her pets.

Enough by Derek Osborne

2009-01-15T07:40:00.000-08:00

We ran the boat up onto a shoal and into some reeds for cover. I set up a triage down below in the main cabin. They just kept bringing down wounded and there wasn’t any more room. I tried to tell the lieutenant but he’d already lost it. He laughed and jumped overboard. They shot him when he tried to climb the bank on the other side of the river.

I was used to small-arms fire and toe-poppers but these guys had mortar wounds. They were all blown apart. The floor of the cabin was slick with blood and the pump stopped working. I could no longer see the toe of my boot. The air got so bad I had to get out. Now they were bringing more wounded in from the bush and laying them down along the railing inside of the cockpit.I could hear the fire fight off in the forest. The boat was listing to one side from the weight of all those men.

“I think they nicked it,” the sergeant said. He had propped himself up on a little bulkhead by the wheel. His face was already paper thin and he had that look in his eyes. Blood ran down his right side and onto the deck. “Are the choppers coming?”

I nodded and tried to smile. The thought of it spread a wonderful calm over his face and for one brief moment I felt like I’d done something good. Then the kid at his feet made a choking sound and we both saw the light go out of his eyes.

“Ah shit,” the sergeant whispered. I knelt down and held his hand. The two of us watched as another soul came up from below and headed off down river. The sergeant would bleed out soon. I had no more dressings. I had already used my shirt and the legs of my trousers.

There weren’t any choppers coming.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: I did not fight in the Vietnam conflict; I fought the war against it. Over the years I have lost several friends who were there. They died of cancer, addiction and suicide. They honored me by telling their stories.

Martial Law by Eric Godsil

2009-01-15T07:20:00.000-08:00

This is Martial Law,
Iron boots of oppression pound the desolate streets,
Making void the once bustling sound of freedom,
The voices of kids laughing in the moonlight,
Now is just an echo,
Replaced by the shots of domestication,
Ringing from the same barrels that once shouted for freedom,
The hollow shells drop leaving in their wake a hollow trail,
Gunpowder soaks up the tears shed by liberty's children,
They see them as "terrorists" fighting for a lost cause,
We see them as freedom fighters,
Waging war for a cause never lost.
Neon green eyes peer through the darkness,
Watching for the steps of those stepping out of place,
Seeking to subdue the savage beast of patriotism,
And as the sun rises the dew holds drops of blood,
Dripping from those who have a drop of hope,
Drooling over the idea of having their country of old.

This is Martial Law,
These "rebels" are put down in public squares and dark alleys,
Armor covered soldiers' solid in their stares,
Gaze into the eyes of their neighbors and friends,
Unmerciful mercenaries paid with the idea of civil upheaval,
Riddle these "traitors" with torrents of bullets,
No questions asked,
No answers needed.
The stench of decay hovers over city streets,
Crowds of dreamers lie in waiting,
Flaming bottles held steadily in their hands,
As the marching grows louder sweat lingers from the brows of anticipation,
Windows filled with the faces of eager idealists,
The scent of freedom is smelled with every exhalation,
The feeling of independence felt as the salt perspires through every pore,
Thickening the air around the passionate people patiently waiting for retribution,
Revenge for the deaths of "deviants" that were nothing more than martyrs,
They were the parents and children,
Who would not let the idea die,

This is Martial Law,
The ground shakes below their steady feet,
Confident faces of supremacy collide with splenetic faces of uncertainty,
The light glows as the blaze rages,
Cast from the hands of the caged ages,
Swarmed with a torrent of ire and rage,
Erupting from the soul of freedoms seekers,
The windows spit fire as the dark corners churn out lead,
From the rooftops the rebel cries haunt the dreams of the slumbering,
Hailing from the skies,
A wall of bricks and stone descend upon the submissive soldiers,
In the middle knuckle meets knuckle,
Bone meets bone,
Blood meets blood,
Subjugation meets Freedom.
Cities rise to raze this abomination of a country they love so much,
To take to the streets with weapons in their hands and hope in their hearts,
The very blocks that used to be their homes now are war zones,
The sewers filled with the blood of martyrs and enemies alike,
Draining from the roads above.
We will be undeterred from our cause,
Unswerving in our resolve,
Unstoppable in our revolution,
For this is our country,
This is our home,
This is Our Law.

Copyright 2009

Author’s Bio: Other than watching the world go round and round I enjoy witty banter and sly conversation.

Rock Star by Dana Freck

2009-01-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

I was going to be a man of the cloth;
I was going to be a musician.
I was going to be so many things
before I came upon this vixen.

Such talent I had,
I was so often told;
A band was then formed
my soul was then sold.

This new life, this new world,
This new guitar, and this new girl.

Sanity torn away it seems,
ripped apart at the seams.

The crowd it cheers, the crowd it screams.
What was the price for all of my dreams?

My faith they took away from me,
I was left bereft and scarred.
They added to my ego trip,
and God from me was barred.

Better to be worshipped,
than a worshipper to He.
Why should I look up to Him,
when they all look up to me?

In youth it was so tempting;
the lights, fortune and fame.
Now it's just a way of life,
for who is left to blame?

Copyright 2009

Author’s Bio: Dana lives in Louisville, KY with her fiancé and son. It is a sweet little fairy tale of a family story. Dana is opposed to telling fairy tales and concentrates on darker aspects of life and psyche in her writing. We can only hope the poor child involved turns out normal with her brand of bedtime stories.

Breaking Sacrament by William Soule

2009-01-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

The bishop adjusts the oversized tongue
of his tie and preaches the importance of Sunday
best and the blessing of uniformity, skimming

through his Book of Mormon; the pews flutter
with scripture as everyone thumbs to Moroni
and reads the supporting verse. Demon-skin

descends from the ceiling, red
as Webster's dictionary. They move to sacrament,
ignore his wingspan, spell transubstantiation

through prayer. Two sable horns curl
like paralyzed tails around his face. He blows smoke
through his nostrils and forks the oversized tie

of his tongue against his teeth. He towers
two severed heads above the bishop, grinning
hooves clopping alongside the hardwood podium

like gorillas. He stretches with a heavy groan,
muscle-bound — a deceased bodybuilder ejaculating
from hell, metamorphosed. Unclad, the meaty sword

of his erection fails to raise an eyebrow —
the couples bound in Celestial Marriage,
their many children, and the elders. Subdue

the sins of thy flesh, they say. The deacon
ahems, holding a tray of dissevered Home Pride,
the manifestation vaporizing into reality.

My tie tightens as I select the perfect piece.
He flashes teeth at me and moves along the pew,
his grin the curve of an angel's wing

I admire every week. Mouse-tailing, I adjust
my dress pants, the belt a constricting snake —
the devil returning — and I wonder why

Eve was never criticized for her nakedness.
The bishop masticates, swallows bread, his Adam's
apple a bobbing fist; I want to crack his knuckles.

I want him to shout upwards, strip to nothing
but coffee-dark hair goosebumped by the gelid air
of truth, and toss his scriptures aside for once

to preach a sudden change of heart.

Copyright 2009

Author’s Bio: William Soule is a Filipino-American poet from Utah. He's a featured poet at One Night Stanzas and has poems published in Tattoo Highway, the delinquent, elimae, and Every Day Poets, among others. He also unleashes a pent-up ADHD on the drums and raises his surrogate child, a two-year old pit bull.

ode to sleep by Peter Schwartz

2009-01-14T10:20:00.000-08:00

this is my house of sleep
the three impossible rooms I disappear
to when the world swells beyond repair
my most midnight act

this bowl over that glass
as order breeds neglect as teeth
grow like rows of night who
want to bite or

elbow out
the light.

-

my house of sleep
where I hide a single breath, the one the vultures
never see, obscured by clouds a million
times over, the pulse

in the ceiling in a dying streak
of karma, the terrible thing that packs
garbage into pillows or
empties my

pockets.

-

this is the third room
in my house of sleep, the place
I'm pressed to when the
spirits storm

reminding me
even giants need crutches
need that same bowl over
that same glass-

a limp signature
of darkness.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Peter Schwartz has more styles than a Natal Midlands Dwarf Chameleon. His work's been featured on such sites as Arsenic Lobster, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. His third chapbook 'ghost diet' will be published by Altered Crow Press in late 2009. See the extent of his shenanigans at: www.sitrahahra.com.

heretics by David McLean

2009-01-14T06:53:00.000-08:00

Encratites, Gnostics, Marcionites, all these people
plundering dreams, their own laid bare like virginity
their burden – abstinence and ascetics, motherfuckers,

and none of them mad or mad enough to expose
their genitals as a leaf wherein to clothe discourse,
for the indexical absurdity that is bodies and bodices

is a penis, pointing at flesh and damnation therein
enclosed, otherwise homeless. which is just what
sleazy Jesus taught us in his dry dreams

they say, like when god told Salome
that we are saved when we trample on modesty
and the sexes are one sex without male and female,

so probably some sort of sportsmen, closed cunts of nuns,
or men with less than a seven inch heaven, virginal
impotent children heaving dreams, a castrato's salvation

not worth taking. for thine is the kingdom
the power and the raped face of heaven,
thine is the feces and the feckless semen,

Jesus, thine the ignorant nipple pensive devils
have bitten, the nun's frigging finger, and thine
all the victims, historically speaking

most of these children - god was not kidding
and only heretics were listening to him;
ignoring the question of his existence

he still says things

Copyright 2009

Author’s Bio: David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there in a cottage on a hill with a woman, five selfish cats, and a stupid puppy. Website: mourningabortion.blogspot.com.

what's your problem? by D.C. Porder

2009-01-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

i need a calculator to solve
your sadness. you write
poems called hate and
i fall like rain between
the lines. please indent me
to describe the darkness.
“cash or credit?” you ask
when we kiss.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: D.C. Porder has one gray hair. He believes in caffeine and plot-drive. His residence is a frozen computer. One time he ate a chocolate-covered cricket. Learn more at www.dcporder.blogspot.com.

Croatian Roulette by Branimir Hrvoj aka Jebozid

2009-01-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

Black eyes extinguished on the spot –
wrong side of St. Andrew's cross.
A horn-ripping wail; a brakes-burning scream.
Slow motion re-runs immune to passing years.

From counseling to therapy; from sermon to rehab.
Retired from driving - now works as a flagman.
To outlast the Sunday he drops in the Golden Rat.
Behind the silver wheel - he bets it all on black.

Life is like a train
you sometimes miss the lane
you sometimes melt the tracks
you gain what no one lacks
and long for a better day

Red murdering train #69;
she couldn't affect the Grand Jury in the sky.
To compensate the loss - she used to drink for a while;
embezzled her ideals; now enjoys being numb.

She's writing fantasy in her excess time -
misbehaving goblins and gay dragons make her smile.
She ends her lonely weekends with casino lemonades;
her feelings filed to "cases lost"; she bets it all on red.

Life seems like the law
sometimes makes no sense at all
you sometimes pay the bail
and wait for the skies to change
into a better day

He wryly remarks above the slowing wheel:
"The odds are pretty good one of us will win;
I really can't remember when April was so sultry".
She accepts the small-talk with untrained words of flirting:

"We could cool our feet in a fountain just outside;
maybe we could talk or maybe count the stars?"
He smiles; her bluff is called; they don't stay to see
when the sly acrylic bullet nestles on the green.

The Earth is just a ball
that spins with no control
upon the wheel of fate
you sometimes lose all bets
but win a better day

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: About me? Well, ol' Jeb likes coffee, music, people, and liquor. Lives in Croatia. Has great legs.

Ten Years by Eric Godsil

2009-01-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

Ten years,
Slowly suffocating on the sulfur of patience,
Polluting my lungs,
Lingering in the air around me,
Evasive and illusive,
This broken winged angel,
Beauty exudes from every pore.

Ten years,
Of solace within solitude,
Acceptance of loneliness,
Dreaming of the intangible,
Entrapping and elegant,
This Unstoppable fantasy,
Forcing through the seams of patchworked blockades.

Ten years,
Steadily watching as each fragile wing spreads,
Showing the magnificence of their owner,
Eclipsed only by her smile,
Each eye a sanctuary,
A secluded space for the soul to rest,
Protecting me from my worst demons.

Ten years,
The reason for my very being,
Each pain endured,
A lesson on how to treat her,
Like she deserves,
A harborer of joy,
Woman; in its purest form.

Ten years,
Acceptance in its most raging manifestation,
Entity of love and envy,
Entwining delicate conflicts,
Straining to keep from shattering,
A feeling expanding for a decade,
I will wait ten more.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: I live in a small town in Indiana....I LOVE when it snows outside. I am a veteran of two foreign wars and am just watching the world go round and round.

soft and bright by Teresa Houle

2009-01-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

soft and bright
two eyes
a nose
bean-filled feet, with no toes
lost in flight - forgotten
behind the refrigerator
lodged and smiling
sitting on the hot coils
caught alight
soft and bright

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Teresa lives in Victoria British Columbia and plays with her toddler all day.

Three Dark Men by Tia Prouhet

2009-01-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

To uncoil this muscle
aching to release,
let go this terror
and deliquesce into
chest and lip,
would break me.

You speak to me
and we are Vega
and Altair,
fingers falling once a week
in casual circumstance.

Let's go back to summer
when the air was warm
and we had nothing but time:
poetry over waves
and static, bedsheets.

Copyright 2009

Author's Bio: Tia enjoys earrings and writing in Texas, where the sun is hot enough to melt skin.