I follow a man because something is promising about the way he only looks
forward as he walks, through narrow streets and across the yards of colorful
homes wrapped in Catalan flags and steaming in the summer breeze. He doesn’t
look back but I know he’s leading me somewhere. We cut through alleyways and
apartments heavy with European graffiti and intricate circuits of clothing line
that tangle and rise and appear to be holding up the walls. Children flood the
thin streets, and everybody looks overheated in a way that’s passionate and not
at all discomforting. The man picks up his pace as we cross a stretch of grass,
while the breeze acquires a chill and the day prepares to end. We eventually
reach the water, and there’s a group of what I assume to be his friends on top
of a hill. They’re all limbs and long hair, melting into shadows as the sun
descends. As we approach the hill I notice the Mediterranean is dark and thick
beyond a large freight yard, with stacked boxcars and sleeping machinery all
red, yellow, and blue, stretching what must be miles along the coast. The air is
sweet and makes me hungry. Looking out over the yard and into the water, the
thought that one-day none of it may exist makes it all so pretty; in the way
that it’s pretty when Spanish girls cry.

Love Not Love – Ford Dagenham

He saw her long black hair first 1991 at her locker in college hall wearing all black with floppy black hat and knew and felt she would be special for ever.

Her boyfriend in prison she wanted nothing right now she said smoking close together in the smoking corner by kitchen bins while he said nothing at all heart in his mouth heart in his boots.

He went out in her car colour of primer at lunchtimes and she cried on his shoulder upset for no reason on birthdays at the pub on the sea wall where big boats float into London.

He dropped out of university 1994 she got her degree 1996 met a man there and too late he said something late at night after the pub shut sat in his garden staring at the stars.

She married he went wearing shiny borrowed suit and ate only booze embracing everyone and demanded to know she was happy before he could leave for the pub to punch a hand dryer and cry for two hours at the sea wall where big boats float into London.

She moved abroad 10 years and had three daughters kept in touch by telephone and postcard visited twice a year for calm days on garden furniture and quiet forest walks daughters run everywhere her husband never came.

His grandmother died 2006 she left her husband and fled home with daughters and stayed in his bed one New Years Eve where at last they touched.

She rang every night and said we’re not going out you know he laughed happy but worried about her alone in council accommodation.

She was seeing someone from the old days a friend told him he’d seen it on Facebook and he said no she isn’t but when she called she said she was and the Nick Cave song playing was burned into a sad place in his mind and he punched big holes into the bedroom door.

She hadn’t known what she was doing she said and sleeping together one more time he couldn’t stay inside her because she convulsed laughing at his rape jokes and friends again they have endless afternoon coffees.

Skyline – Eirik Gumeny

We were fucked up – on cocaine, on acid, on a case of shitty beer and
on everything else we were handed that night.  We were hot – trapped
in a tiny bathroom with a broken door and a radiator set on Kill.  We
could’ve, should’ve, just turned on the water and taken a shower.
Taken a bath, a piss, curled up on the mat and taken a nap.  I
could’ve, should’ve, fucked her against the sink, watched the both of
us in the mirror.  But we wanted, needed, air, and the window was in
better shape than the door.

We danced along that ledge, along a foot of concrete, tearing off our
clothes, laughing and shouting at the skyline that stabbed through the
streets.  We danced along that ledge, craning our necks to stare into
infinity and breathe in broken moonlight.  We could’ve, should’ve,
crawled back inside, leaned against the tub and fallen asleep in each
other’s arms.  But we were fucked up and freezing, naked and
screaming, and we wanted it to last forever.

Tuesday – Shannon Peil

He calls himself a fucking idiot and kicks the shitbox again before picking up his shirt, throwing it over his shoulder and turning back to walk back the way he came. He fingers the phone in his pocket and knows someone would pick him up if he tried hard enough but maybe not cuz it’s the middle of a workday and then he pats his back pocket and makes sure his wallet is in there and how much could a cab really cost from here to there, it can’t be that bad. It’s probably worth it, it’s hot as hell out here today but he could use the exercise and needs to be careful with his money for the next few weeks while he figures this all out. He wonders if he should just walk to an auto parts store and buy a starter yeah it’s probably the starter but he isn’t sure. They’d ask him what kind of car it was and he’d look at them and say it’s a 1980 shitbox, I think it’s a 1.8 liter flat four but it’s definitely a shitbox can you look that up in the system there buddy. His lighter’s in his hand now and he wonders why he even keeps it in his pocket, he doesn’t smoke anymore but he wonders if that guy at the bus stop wants to bum him one and he’s pretty sure he’s got fifty cents in his pocket. He thinks fuck this cigarette is good, worth a whole dollar even though it’s a menthol it’s not so bad and how far away is he now. Probably 10 miles and his feet are aching already and he doesn’t even know what he’ll do when he gets home. A car honks and he looks over and three girls are whistling at him and his cheeks start burning and he thinks about asking for a ride but okay the light goes green and they’re gone. He flicks the cigarette butt into the gutter and immediately receives a dirty look from a young woman on a bicycle but he’s too tired to do anything but blankly stare at her.

Vade Mecum – Hayley Chewins

The sea whips its weight behind us, pulling back like an obstinate child
when we turn to laugh in the direction of the sun. I have often thought of
this place, of you, and have put your feet back exactly where they were, in
the hollows where your heels had sunk into the sand. To say that the dunes,
the wind, the sea, all gathered together in a truce to hurry us from our
stagnant paths, undulating silently, would be whimsical – but we are in
love, and so whimsical let’s be. ‘Let’s be magical!’ I say, and you don’t
even notice the impulsive incoherence of my thought, but instead, wishing me
towards you, place your ear on mine, as if listening for the murmur of a
wave’s oscillation. I would catch you gliding, like a small boy, on the edge
where the foam’s line touched the beach; I would catch you floating, a piece
of dark kelp, in the crash of the ocean’s cerulean burden. I have pulled you
past too many memories to let this one contract and die. The darkness
threatens us from the West, motioning to the hill that winds us home. I will
sleep, a rough tide for lullabies. I will keep the pearl of your voice,
untouched. I will sleep, and rest this memory, so it can grow into a great
stalk of black kelp, and rush with the sweep of the moon’s pull towards the
apex of the sky.

What You Are About To Do, Do Quickly – Shane Jesse Christmass

The knothole in the wall had indeed become a human-house in a four-story redbrick building in Jerusalem.

The horse-cups of coffee, the eyes closed or staring, lost in watering.

The stone had clearly been rolled back, enough done, for duty-once as contentedly at his Godly task. Christ, the hero of this tale stared at Judas.

An indefinable dread came upon Jesus.

He rose to shake the acoustic shadows.

Judas ran to the donkey-house, the stable, as thin ascensions of blue smoke signalled preparations for some reason that had abandoned the mystical-enterprise and constructed the strip-mining that melted in Jesus’ mouth.

In addition, Satan yielded up the life that had spanned another life.

The synagogue, said that Jesus was resented and arranged with convenient Holy Troops and Squadrons, and that he collected all of the elemental powers of the Jewish race, but the talent was now summer-gone.

Judas whispered. “No wonder that fellow thought me forlorn.”

My mother wanted a daughter that looked like Scout from To Kill A
Mockingbird. She expected a daughter like Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird.
She herself had looked like Scout from To Kill A Mocking bird. She loves
Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird.

My mother got me instead. A mess. A mob. I came out happy and loud and with
a maelstrom of blonde hair. Everyone asked how I got that blonde hair. My
parents always responded: “the postman” and I didn’t get that joke until
recently. I know my mother loves me but sometimes I think I disappointed her
for looking the way I do/did.

I looked nothing like Scout. No pixie cut. No straight hair or chicken legs.
Breasts by the time I was thirteen.

Twenty-four years later, I cannot get a grip on my hair. When I lived in
Brooklyn and my friend died, my mother came to visit me. She and I sat in
the living room while she tried to comb the rat’s nest out of the back of my
head. We wouldn’t have been able to do that, had I looked like Scout from To
Kill A Mockingbird the way she’d wanted.

Maybe I will need the large can of Raid – Kyle Brett

Working at an art center as a receptionist is a fun vocation.  Granted this job also has its less than romantic sides as well. Today was one of those less romantic days.

I was hounded by a budding artist about the amount of pesticides that are in the complex’s air system. She can smell and feel these pesticides assaulting her fragile artistic bodice and thus, she believes, these chemicals affect her work greatly. Her voice was calloused and strained from substances of older, freer days. Oils and incense from the seventies stained her skin brown. She complained and kibitzed about liver damage and secret pollutants. I nodded and played the good receptionist. This is not to say that I was not tenderly fingering the giant can of Raid that sat under my desk. Visions of Raid covered sugarplums being forced fed into the artist’s cavity filled mouth danced a nasty tango in my mind. The fumes would cause her to cough out her liver that was allegedly being poisoned. My laughter would drown out death rattles of the homeless looking artist.

Suddenly, I snap back into reality.

“I will make a note of this problem. Have a nice day ma’am.”

Tongues – Sean H. Doyle

Bring back tongue-tooth daughter.

She will not survive out there. Not without her pills. Not without the
proper amount of sleep. How could you do this? A child. She is just a child.
Nobody should’ve taken her anywhere to begin with. Now look at what you’ve
done? Leave me here to figure out a plan. You people can never be trusted.

Love-struck ink runs farther, unstuck tongues cannot regain.

“I’ll wait here for her. Just like this. If I move I might miss her so I
will sit right here and not move. She said she would be here. Two hours ago.
Or was it six? I can wait. For her. I can wait. Maybe I should tell her what
I saw. Maybe I should show her what I cannot tell her. I‘ll just wait.”

So find another way to go.

Don’t go in there. If you go in there, bad things will be waiting. Remember
what I told you about muscle memory. Remember that I told you that you’d be
able to observe other more important things. This is one of those times. I
tell you these things to prepare you for these moments. Find the cracks.
You’ll see.

Before It Dies – Benjamin Imamovic

It will stop the stretch-marks and give you a chance to bond with the little
one, his wife said and passed him a bottle of coconut oil. He said, Sure,
I’ll give it a go. He knelt before her. At first his wife’s stomach was half
a beach-ball, then a swallowed balloon, then a watermelon, then his
childhood dreams. He kept at it and said, Nice. After she gave birth, he
oiled that stomach, when she was asleep or when they would shower or when
they made love his hands kneaded and stroked the woman’s skin. Very nice, he
said and the baby cried and the woman giggled at her husband’s touch. He
bought a calendar and crossed off the days in red pen. He waited. So nice,
so nice, it’s still growing, he said. Soon the baby stopped crying and the
woman stopped moving. When nine months came the woman was as big as his
whole world and he was still there, still kneeling in front of her.
Eventually, the neighbours called triple-zero and the ambulance needed a
crane to remove the obese woman and the man who wanted more oil, please,
just a little more before it dies.

Sometimes What I say Means Something – Iris Rainier

Waiting for the bus and I am so hungry that it has turned into nausea. Smarties are in my purse but I will not eat them because a) I do not like Smarties and b) they will make me feel worse, duh.

There was a startled jogger on my behalf thirty seconds ago.  I was reading a book out loud; that’s what I do lately as entertainment and I was reading a freshly bought book called Man Suit and just as I finished dramatically saying, ‘He sleeps face down every night in a chalk outline of himself’ I looked up and saw the startled jogger. It was funny.

The girl that owns Pilot Books, the store I just left, told me she went to New York City three times this year. Three times, I exclaimed and she said, yes, I love a boy there. That’s when I said, so do I.

We shared something right then, as if one of us had given the other one a tampon, and we both shrugged and stared each other in the eye and I was happy to not hate you right then; I was happy to be able to say so do I.

Long Distance – Shannon Peil

i rolled over and turned my pillow over and kept my face on it and said i feel sick
i brought my legs up to my chest and hugged them and said i feel sick
i poked you in the back with my big toe until you rolled over and said i feel sick

you looked at me and blinked your eyes and put your hand on my face and said shut up
i rolled over again and again and cocooned myself in the blanket and you said shut up
i put my hand on your ass and i don’t feel anything and i asked why and you said shut up

i got up and you sat up and you asked why and i said sorry
and you asked why
and i said sorry
and you asked why i was sorry
and i got back in bed the wrong way and lay with my head towards the tv
and my feet towards the headboard
and i kicked the pillows off the bed

i said i’m sorry that you aren’t real

i rolled over and kicked the blankets away and brought my knees to my chest and said i feel sick.

Your snores are comfort.
Your comforter is soft.
Your soft is comforting.
I lay awake
sometimes.

I want to
make myself some cereal.

© Shannon Peil, 2010

[others]

© Shannon Peil, 2010

[others]

There is something coiling its way around my heart.

Not necessarily sinister in nature, but I am leery of it.

It has not made its intentions known as of yet, but I can tell it will soon.

It could very well be a monster of some sort. I can feel its hot breath
on the back of my neck. Waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Anticipatory, even.

Something must break. It always has to happen that way. Nothing will change,
until
something gets broken. Otherwise, there is no room in here for anything new.

Secretly, I love this feeling.

Fortune – Jessica Otto

She looked at the hairline cracks in your shoulder blade, breathed
through the creaking flesh that stretches across your knuckles.  She
gave you strong sake and a bowl of edamame which you did not eat but
emptied into the handkerchief I gave you, that you never use.  Now I
hold out my hand.  She said the cicadas will not sprout for another
century.  Sea salt crusts upon the cotton as I lift a bean pod to my
mouth and split green in my teeth.  One hundred years of good fortune
froth forth as I sip the sake on your breath.

Hear me now – Ani Smith

Inasmuch as I think I shouldn’t speak, I think you shouldn’t speak either.
When it comes to talking, only one of us can deliver the speech that neither
of us wants to hear. When it comes to telling my dear, you’re telling me
things I never longed to hear. But oh me, I am saying nothing. My mouth’s
fly is open, my tongue is lolling like a soft pink blob on an inner tube
floating on the sea of my face. I am like a cardiac arrest patient on crack
but you keep talking. My god, you keep talking.

Bean Casings – Jeff Chon

Someone had sprayed diarrhea on the Men’s room floor.  We had to clean it up because we were the only guys working.   Through the opened door, the smell backdrafted into our faces.  I staggered, smothered like the naked, Napalmed Vietnamese girl from that photo, and puked in the hall.  Chuckie said to clean up the puke and he’d start inside.

I dropped the sawdust and began to mop.  I’ll never forget what I saw in that split second from the doorway—curdled and tan on the tile, empty bean casings floating like beetle husks.

I wasn’t going back in there.

Things I learned from my inbox today – Shannon Peil

Viagra and Cialis are on sale. I can get them shipped for low low prices from Canada. Hot chicks want to hook up with me on the facebook of sex. My teeth need whitened. Someone regrets to inform me that my work is not suitable for their publication, but wish me luck in the future. I need a bigger, more erect penis. Apparently I write decent stuff, but should refrain from swearing so much. Viagra and Cialis are still on sale, but I need to act soon. And thank god I inherited some money from Africa, I really need it.

Sui Caedere – David Milano

Blade held in right hand, left clenched in fist. This is how they would find
her; dead, arm in bucket, drained. All for the best, she thought. Deep
breath. Slashing. Didn’t hurt. Wasn’t sure she’d actually cut until blood
started gushing. Quick glance down, saw the wound open. Light headed. Her
heart pounding. Blood flowing. Hot panic flashed across her mind. A film ran
of what life could have been. Then everything went dark.

She awoke hours later, lying on the floor. Arm caked with dried blood. Must
have passed out. Hoarse laugh, morbid joke. Couldn’t even get that right.

She never knows what to expect. The ad says, handsome, discreet. He
smiles and there’s a flash of silver at one side. It gets her hot knowing
this man lost a tooth and replaced it with silver. She leads him to the
kitchen. Here? He asks and she nods. It was used for little else. Afterwards
he asks to see her again and she gestures in a half-hearted way at the
spotless pots and pans.

Delusion – Jessica Otto

The galleon called Delusion swims through the mouse hole and into the
stagnant harbor.  Midnight’s fog rolled with it, weaving a mirage of
nereids; green skinned and draped in ragged sail cloth, dancing up and
down across the bow, swinging from the naked figurehead.   They come
from coral hills peppered with bodies tied to grounded masts, limbs
long pulped by the waves.  A green star falls and smolders in the
waves.  Another ghost, I think.

Socrates Adams

I am sitting in sunlight in a park on a bench. It is a bright day in the
park. The bench underneath me is in the park which I am sitting in. It is
great to have sunlight shining on my face while I am in the park. The park
has a bench in it which I am sitting on. I am shot through the head by a
bullet fired from a powerful sniper rifle.

Shannon Peil

Waking up in a coffin, presumably under layers of dirt, oxygen preservation
became my number one priority. I try to put aside anger at the people
who buried me – despite just being really sleepy and not actually deceased -
and attempt to regulate my breathing. Next, I pull my shirt up over my head
like a bag to keep from breathing in dirt while I punch my way through the
cheap fiberboard. Then, anger.

Our Similarities, Our Differences – Chloe Caldwell

I am sitting in the sun outside of Café Fiore. A woman is sitting next to me
in the same legs crossed position. We both have on jeans and hats with blond
hair underneath them. We both sip out of our paper cups. She’s reading ‘Our
Babies, Our Bodies.’ I’m reading ‘The Diary of A Sex Fiend.’ She’s pregnant.
I have Plan B in my purse. I quickly swallow my pills with my coffee.

© Shannon Peil, 2010

[others]

“Did you bring a lunch?”

“No, I was thinking of going over to the Wendy’s. Wanna come?”

“I’ll pass, I brought a sandwich. But let me know when you take lunch, I’ll come smoke with you before you go.”

“Cool. I’ll let you know, I’ve gotta run upstairs real quick. Hand me that tube? Thanks.”

They’re rushing around, taking care of normal every day things. And I’m sitting here, flexing and unflexing my fingers, watching everyone pass around me. They don’t take any notice of me, almost trained not to settle their eyes on people like me, and there are many of us. Sitting in matte black plastic armchairs up and down the aisles. My hair is messy and I don’t give a shit.

“Did you see Lost last night?” I look up, but this girl isn’t speaking to me. She is smiling and barely containing her excitement as her friend nods. She explodes into various ‘oh my god’ and ‘I couldn’t believe it’ exclamations and the two laugh, walking down the hallway. They do not look at me. Slowly, I stand, check my hair in the reflection of an approximation of a painting, a piece of ‘art’ mass produced to hang in long hallways under fluorescent lighting that couldn’t be considered offensive to anyone. My hair is still messy.

Stepping into the room across from that chair, littered in old tissues, I look upon my lover. He doesn’t see me. No one in this entire building sees me. I kneel by his side and nod, once, slowly, at a person with a carefully trained expression on his face. He does not smile, or look unhappy. Just empty. Carefully empty as he bows his head towards me, and turns off the machines.

Outside the room, under the unpleasant fluorescent lights, a pair of twenty-somethings rummage through their purses for packs of cigarettes and complain about their bosses. Inside the room, the respirator turns off. My lover’s chest ceases to rise and fall with regular rhythm. The orderly keeps his eyes off of me, turns off a few dials, and pulls the sheets up over my husband’s face. He exits the room, careful not to make any contact with me, and begins to whistle as he jogs down the hallway.

“Hey guys, wait up – Can I bum one?”

© Shannon Peil, 2009

[others]

aptly, skillfully

throw away the culture of industry

impossibility implicit in admittance of

failure, unsuccessfully

rationalize engagement of corporate

life, existence

commodities expecting social perfection

dollars cents money

barter for souls with no exchange rate for

panic attacks, cultural anxiety

© Shannon Peil, 2009

[others]

All wrapped up in red white ‘n blue

Here all pretty to see mama again

After he got blown apart four thousand miles away

In some desert shithole

He couldn’t even pronounce

Put back together again to see mama

© Shannon Peil, 2009

[others]