Roses from Shit: Blood, Booze, and Other Things in Nature by C. E. Hoffman

I could sum up this chapbook by Canadian writer C. E. Hoffman with these pinnacle lines: “That glimpse of sweat down my arm from my breast/like the sliver of spit on the other/from fingerfucking my face for 10 cents on the internet./THIS BODY IS MINE, it is soul and breath/no matter what eyes lie upon it,” and call it good, count on the beautiful, dirty lyricism to carry readers to this work, but the conventions of the review genre and the realities of publishing preclude me from such brevity and necessitate a longer write-up. Fuck me, I guess.

My correspondence with Hoffman began in the slush pile, where I pulled a couple poems for FILTH and within moments felt that click, that inexplicable gut response that tells me when something is good enough to run on the site, before I’d even made my way to the end of the submission. I would call myself a fan if I’d read more of their work, so when I got the opportunity to do just that I jumped at it, and I’m glad I did, because Blood, Booze, and Other Things in Nature is the kind of thing that inspires fandom.

It’s brutally unpretentious, for starters. There are conventional poetic forms to be played with here, certainly, and Hoffman clearly knows how to write a poem, but this is also poetry that’s meant to reach the reader where they’re at, rich enough for the highfalutin types but immediate enough for the lay consumer (I confess myself more the latter.), laid out in accessible lines one after the other which slip through the mind and leave a gliding impression before ushering the reader on to the next gift to be offered. It makes for a pleasurable reading experience, the thing I prioritize more than any other. 

The chapbook is also vulgar as fuck, but does not cross that ever-important line into unintentional parody territory. There is tasteful sex work and drug use and domestic violence juxtaposed with a clear love of nature and the more gentle aspects of human existence, creating an effect not of contrast but of blending, wherein all things are valid and all things are to be worthy of consideration and adornment, and the full manifestation of this is beauty from filth, roses from shit, and it’s breathtaking to behold.

The sense of unadorned prettiness is hard to explain but so valuable to the text. Hoffman isn’t fucking around: These are bruiser poems, uncompromising without being too in-your-face about it, shock laid aside in favor of delicacy, a tapestry of the grotesque and the sublime in equal measure, woven with threads of reality so fine as to be achingly fragile. This is poetry for people that don’t like poetry just as much as it for the die-hards that trawl the zine sections of indie bookstores, the accessibility a boon in every sense.

So now, I’m a fan, and I can give a fan’s recommendation to this little book, which is really more useful than the checkmark or star from a review. What Hoffman has done here is not just worthy of praise, but more importantly, is something worth reading, absorbing, allowing to live in your mind for a moment, just long enough to leave behind it a glistening trail of loveliness. Tune in and drop out, it’s good shit.

Blood, Booze, and Other Things in Nature by C. E. Hoffman is available May 15 from Alien Buddha Press. Review by Alexandrine Ogundimu.

Hotel Eternity by Rus Khomutoff

TO EXIST BETWEEN ETERNITIES WILD NOTHING LIKE THE EYES OF THE SKY AXIS INFINITY DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE BLISS PLAY AS DECADENCE THOUGHTCRIME/COME FORWARD WITH YOUR VISCERA AND VIOLENCE AND SHARE MY WINGS/SHAKE YOUR INFINESSENCE SLOT CANYON HIGHBREATH NARCOTIC ERUPTIONS CLOUD NOTHINGS EXOTIC PULSE A NAME BEYOND DESIRE SEMAPHORE SIN PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK TALKING TWILIGHT/BLOOD LABYRINTH BLOOD ALL THE DARK REBIRTHS ARE MINE/BENEATH THE RAMJET ALLEGRO TEMPLE OF THE NIGHT SUN THE NAKED TRUTHS I KNOW NOT OF/ INTO A SPHERE OF YOUTHFUL SYMPATHY RIDES THE THIEF OF YOUTH THIN AIR ADDICTIONS MELANCHOLY BODY SACRILEGE TATTOO HIGHWAY INSOMNIA PUNK/ TEENAGE BLOOD REPETITION OF A THOUSAND HUNGRY EYES/SOMETIMES WE ARE ALL ETERNAL IN THE CONSTELLATION OF MIDNIGHT MOSAIC FACTION/ MY GREEN UNQUEEN GALLERY CRUSH HYPERRITUAL AUTUMN CRY OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE AND A DUEL/SOME TALK TO MEN WHILE OTHERS TALK TO GODS DANCE IT VISCIOUS RIDDLE OF THE SANDS CHAMELEON CHARADE STAR CODE CHALICE/ASK THE DESERT ORACLE THESE POISON DECLARATIONS THE REAL UNREAL CONVERSATIONS WITH A NEW REALITY/NATURE’S SYMPHONY DRAFT INTOXICATION

Moonburn by C. E. Hoffman

God can’t do it all alone. Like he said that Tuesday on a podcast, 

“I can’t be everything for everyone. 

That’s why I made all of you.” 

I was prepared to believe him. I’ve sucked cocks for a living; I’ve cut skin and rescued kittens. Tiny worlds escape from my cuticles. I lick galaxies off my lips. I sob, “I’m worthy” to my therapist. I plunder the Amazon in search of neck-support pillows and ear wax removal kits only to abandon them thanks to poetic poverty and guilt over pregnant women in warehouses barred from bathroom breaks. I like emo and country because they’re pathetic and adorable and say the same thing. They are crabs without shells. Like me. 

Who decided to call a zodiac a “cancer?” Why is my skin so delicate the moon could make it burn. Why do I sit here, wax plugging my ears, leftover food stuck up my guts because he and I finally managed anal. 

Why do we need to give everything a name? 

Am I a punk without my safety pins? A feminist without listing my pronouns? Why do you need to know? I’m sometimes a woman, occasionally a man, a will-o-fucking-wisp or glimpse of infinity. 

I am. Human. Trying hard, clapping quietly. 

Isn’t that enough? 

Am I a bitch, slut, sub, dyke, cunt, stupid, silly, whore? Is that the worst I’ve ever been? Or the best? Am I just beginning to discover what I can do. 

Maybe we shouldn’t give babies names. Identity only complicates. We’d be better off back in the godslop, the intractable infinitude, the all the one the never was before the word the bang before snakes woke us up. 

No one can retrace their steps to the moon. No one can return to the womb. If we did, it’d be cold. Home becomes a cage if you go back too soon, or never had the chance to leave. The show must go on because it must. 

Life ain’t all blowjobs and daisies, babe. But it ain’t all holocausts and hurricanes. Truth exists beyond entrances or exits, past the road stops of right and wrong, over and under and through, out and further and higher and ever onward, across the rainbow bridge over the moon river astride the river styx, where the rejects are accepted and oppressed run free, where pixies gallop across meadows of the great ideas we forgot, the tip-of-the-tongues, the what-I-meant-was, the fiddledeedees of the soul, out amongst the animals Adam has yet to name. 

C. E. Hoffman was born, gave birth, and tried to die in Edmonton, AB (not necessarily in that order.) A grant winner and cat lover, they wrote their first novel at eleven years old, and have continued writing ever since. Their #OwnVoices debut Sluts and Whores is available via Thurston Howl Publications. Find more weirdness at cehoffman.net

Poems by Drew Buxton

Taker’s Walk 

for The Undertaker 

Big brother,  with firecrackers and a box of scorpions, 

with a pocket full of loose Swedish Fish,  me following blindly in the infinite summer days, 

too hot to think  always following dumb. 

(Big brother,  what got into us  on your birthday,  the night Dad let us have two Cokes  and we couldn’t sleep  and we tiptoed down to the cellar  and you dared me to peek into the rosewood casket with the gold handles?) 

Just how did you get up without waking me,  find the bottles,  work your way through the house? 

Sneak!—  how did you strike a match  and step out and not look back, 

step out alone  into the desert night I wanted to feel so bad and for so long, 

the night we said we’d walk into together,  the night we agreed on  after Uncle Paul drove us to Bakersfield in his Studebaker,  and Mil Mascaras pinned Super Scorpion  1, 2, 3, 

the one that had us suplexing off beds and couches, the one that made me cry and Mom yell. 

(In Death Valley,  the cooking summer threatening to keep us from our night forever, yes, summer again,  those days when Dad was busy down in the cellar.) 

Undertaker,  what is your act  but a shudder  from one of your nightmares  when Mom gave you microwaved milk and snored next to you  on the bottom bunk? 

Who was I to not accept the smoke  and to fight through the window  and fill my lungs with our night 

but a stubborn boy? 

Lug,  you too!  You thief in the night!  You big bully! 

after Sexton

Nobody Around You 

Bobby has a mouth full of onion ring,  and his phone keeps buzzing,  so he is distracted.  He’s not paying attention to me  talking about how Jenn,  my only bagel,  ghosted me.  “Sorry, man.  It’s just I got a new bee in the hive,” he says. 

I don’t know if it was intentional.  If you don’t respond to a message within 48 hours, the bagel disappears from your chats,  but if you pay 150 beans,  you can get them back.  You get 1000 beans free when you first sign up, but now I’m down to my last 64. 

Bobby has a job and credit card.  He doesn’t like Jack in the Box,  but he meets me here  because it’s what I can afford,  and I’m too stubborn to let him pay for me.  When Bobby runs out of beans,  with one touch,  he buys 8000 more for $49.99. 

Why do a select few bagels have more beans  than they could ever spend,  while so many of us have less beans than toes on our feet? 

When a chat dies,  and I have no other chats going,  I feel so alone and envious of people I hear about who died in accidents and shootings. 

When you run out of people to swipe on on Tinder, it shows your face, tiny,  in the middle of a white screen,  with text that says,  “There’s no one new around you.”  Sometimes it says that  when I’m swiping  and eating egg rolls and french toast  in the Jack in the Box dining room,  late at night,  all alone  except for the high school worker  watching  and waiting for me to leave  so he can start mopping the floor. 

I heard about a guy who,  after getting unmatched,  took a bath with a toaster. 

Walking home after a bad Coffee Meets Bagel date, my friend’s friend stepped in front of an 18-wheeler. He texted my friend right before  and said that his date had only answered his questions and never asked him any. 

I do anything I can to stay alive.  I eat, jerkoff, and sleep.  Sleep is the best way to wait it out,  even though you hate that you wake up. 

I can either eat six tacos tonight  or extend my chat with Jenn for another 48 hours. Just 2000 beans would get me  a large curly fry and large chocolate milkshake, or a Sourdough Jack and a slice of cheesecake. At Jack in the Box, they understand  that even people without money  deserve variety.  Maybe she’s just been busy  and truly meant to respond. She might light up when she sees she’s been given another shot, but I might come off as desperate  and ruin my shot with her later on other apps,  if she reappears in my life as a bee or a flame. 

It could be a crazy story we tell our kids  about how close it came to never happening,  how close they were to not existing,  how I almost traded it all  for a box of loaded tiny tacos. 

How the despair will multiply though,  if she ignores me again  while my belly rumbles. 

A lot of them write on their profiles  that they don’t know why they’re on the app,  but I know why.  It’s the loneliness. 

At least I’m aware  and know what I want.  I want someone who,  when they write “Happy B-Day!” on my Facebook timeline, puts more into it than that,  and writes an inside joke with it  for everyone to see,  maybe even an insult.  I want someone who knows before Facebook tells them. I want them to ask me in real life  when it is and  then stop to add it to their Google calendar.

Drew is a social worker from Texas. His work has been featured in Joyland, Hobart, Vice, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn among other publications. Find him at drewbuxton.com

Poems by Amy Moretsele

Sip down from the jagged side

Watching the seconds tick by waiting

for a breath, a break

these unhinged feelings have stalked me all day

in the draining shadows as the sun rose

and the leaking ones as it sets

They stretch

across the heaving distance of this old house’s

floors, dancing on worn baseboards

and I tap my fingers 

Morning Breath 

Yesterday I found myself looking for a reason to bleed, because I can't possibly be whole in a broken world in this place that tells me I am missing parts - xxxxxxxxxxxxxxI see them around from time to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxtime – there xxxxxxxxxxxxxxlies my prestige pinky on the laundry chair, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxmy loveliness leg walks xxxxxxxxxxxxxxthrough me en route to the bathroom, staring xxxxxxxxxxxxxxback at me atop my cereal is my affluence ankle xxxxxxxxxxxxxxand I have nightmarish thoughts of them handed the possessions xxxxxxxxxxxxxxI don't possess xxxxxxxxxxxxxxin any form but the yearning of my chest So I curled up, belly in head as if by dipping underwater I could silence them, and watch the bubbles float up from my breath instead, appraising each one for their simple beauty

Amy Moretsele is a daydreamer who writes for that sensation of easy-breathing following word vomit. Her work has appeared in The Squawkback, Fly on the Wall Press, Dust Poetry Magazine and Re-Side Zine. You can find her on Twitter @amymoretsele.

Petaluma by Bethany Browning

Ivan experienced two kinds of pain: sad pain and angry pain. The sad pain ranged from lightly melancholy to thoughtfully morose and downright mournful. The angry version took him on a wild ride through hissy fits to blinding tantrums.

Today, the anger was boiling. Ravenous fury tore at his abdomen like a feral beast.

Ivan’s pain had existed there, tucked next to his pancreas, snuggled up to his spleen, peeking out from under a lung, his whole life. Forty or more years now.

Enough.

Ivan phoned his physician at Yauza. No appointments. And for what? You want surgery? Today? Nyet, she said. I can prescribe more pills, she said.

Daily pain of this magnitude had inured Ivan to fear. Standing naked in his bathtub and clutching a serrated kitchen knife, he wondered why he’d waited until now.

On with it.

The incision was ragged and meaty. Blood dribbled onto the white porcelain and collected in crimson swirls around the drain. He could only manage five inches or so before he got lightheaded.

It would have to do.

He wriggled his hand into the wound.

Ivan located the source of his lifelong discomfort. It was slimy, as one would expect. It was writhing. That was unexpected.

The pain slipped under Ivan’s rib. It pressed against the lower lobe of his left lung. When he was finally able to extract the cause of his pain, it was accompanied by an afterbirth of fat, tissue and gristle.

And screaming.

Ivan was the one screaming now.

Because when he encountered the source of his misery for the first time, the source of his misery encountered him back.

Pink, hot and throbbing with indignation, the tiny thing glowered at Ivan.

It pooped.

Ivan, unaware until this exact moment of what his life could be like without constant agony, felt better.

And worse.

He had released his tormenter and given himself an unspeakable burden.

And, as it turned out, a remarkable opportunity.

#

Before I found Vegas, I was a full-time telemarketer. You might say that’s using the term loosely. I wasn’t selling legit-ish cable packages or conducting market research surveys. I was the dickhead who’d phone your Mee-Maw during supper and sweet talk her into giving out her credit card number. I’d sign her up for a $59 monthly subscription for vitamins that either a) never arrived or b) if they did arrive, did nothing more than give her lava squirts because they were concocted solely of leftover toad catfish guts scraped from the bottom of a tank in Fujian. Blaster Beans we used to call them.

I didn’t love it, but when you grow up like I did you take the jobs where you can get them. I made enough money to pay for my shitty Tampa apartment, a used RV, and my yearly week-long vacation to Pigeon Forge. And I could make my own hours, so I felt like a fucking king.

But all that changed with Vegas. He was taking a whiz on my buddy, LaPork, who’d passed out next to the trash cans in the alley behind Captain Smutty’s Cove on Cinco de Mayo last year. LaPork woke up and kicked Vegas, who launched about three feet through the air and landed at my feet.

I beat LaPork so severely he permanently lost hearing in his left ear. I don’t feel one bit bad about it. I will not abide animal abuse, even if you did wake up with piss in your mouth.

Vegas came home with me.

He smelled like a dirty diaper and looked like a gremlin someone had left tied up out back during a lightning storm. His hair, where he had it, was the color and texture of a pipe brush. He refused to eat anything but Little Caesars Three Meat Treat pizzas, and he preferred to wash that down with Mountain Dew. His tail was L-shaped and when I walked him on my right side, it pointed at me as if to say, “I’m with stupid.”

We loved the attention. People stopped us in the street. They took pictures. Someone said, “You should be on Instagram.” I got a smartphone and signed up for all the social media. The rest is history.

T-shirts. Mugs. Calendars.

A viral video called “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” showing him throwing up anything that wasn’t a Three Meat Treat got 1.2 million views. I learned what irony was.

I quit my job, and we went on the road.

The Ugly Dog Contest circuit was where it was at. Louisville. Texarkana. West Monroe. He swept every title.

 If cheap ribbons and gift bags full of crap from local sponsors were any indication, Vegas was the ugliest dog on the planet.  

At the Beast of Birmingham contest at the Alabama Patriotism Picnic, Gun Show and Jesus Jamboree, we won a Smith & Wesson 360 PD Airlite. It was our most valuable prize to date.

“This ain’t legal, is it?” I asked the woman handing out the prizes.

“It’s for women.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a ladies’ gun, sir,” she said. “Fits in a pocketbook. You can tuck it right there in your fanny pack. It’s what I carry. Here. Take some bullets.” She pulled three bullets from the pocket of her jeggings.

I popped the bullets into the chamber because this chick was looking at me like I was a pussy.

“Do I need a license or something?”

“Last time I checked, fanny packs were legal in all fifty states,” she said.

“All right, then,” I said.

“That mangy-ass mutt is a lock for the big show,” she said.

“The big show?”

“Petaluma,” she said.

“Petaluma,” I said, letting the syllables luxuriate on my tongue. “What is it?”

“California,” she said. “It’s the grandaddy of Ugly Dog Contests. The biggest and most prestigious. You win that, Vegas’ll be famous.”

“He’s already famous,” I said.

“Y’all’ll get on the Tonight Show though,” she said. “Y’all been on the Tonight Show? Or just Instaface and Snaptwit or whatever?”

I wanted to go on the Tonight Show. The Tonight Show could make us rich. I’d never have to hawk shitamins to shut-in grannies again if I could get Vegas on the Tonight Show.

 “There’s no way Vegas doesn’t win that one,” she said. “He’s ugly as sin.”

Vegas, excited about hearing his name, took a dump next to her prize table.

I looked into it, and the gun lady was right. We had to take Petaluma. The contest was a few weeks away. Easy peasy, boobie squeezy. Vegas and I motored west and set up housekeeping right in the campground in the parking lot of the fairgrounds where the contest was held.

Little Caesars was a six-block walk.

We had some free time in the days leading up to the event, so I decided to up the stakes by teaching Vegas a couple of tricks. His intelligence matched his beauty, which meant that there wasn’t much to work with. But give him the right amount of greasy pizza cheese and you could convince him that shaking hands and rolling over was worth it.

 My favorite trick, though, coaxed after about ten solid hours of frustrating training, was whipping my girl gun out of my fanny pack, pretending to fire, and he’d fall down dead.

It was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. A showstopper. Those judges would have to be blind, deaf, dumb and stupid not to give my boy Vegas top prize.

In preparation for our inevitable triumph, I had spent the last bit of my savings on personalized Ugly Dog Contest Winner SWAG.

I’d spend evenings in the RV, Vegas cuddled up next to me, writing out slogans like, “Knock ‘Em Dead” and “Always Bet on Vegas.” My favorite said “Who’s Ugly Now, Bitch?” It wasn’t sexist. Bitch is a female dog.

All this merch was ready to go live on our site hours after the contest closed. That’s how much I believed we would win.

I’m not gonna lie. I was already practicing what I was going to say to Jimmy Fallon. Or was it Kimmel? Which one was Tonight Show? Jimmy Dean? Who knows? Who cares?

I planned it out something like this:

“Thanks for having us, Jimmy. Vegas and I are delighted to be here. You know, Jimmy, wherever Vegas and I go, animal adoptions spike in the weeks after. People realize that not all great dogs are beautiful. Vegas is an ambassador for dog adoptions. Oh, this T-shirt? It’s a custom Vegas available at our website, and you can get yourself one of these for $29.99. T-shirts not your style? Get yourself a mouse pad or a refrigerator magnet. I donate a portion of the proceeds to animal charities.”

That last part wasn’t true, but I had learned that you don’t need to be honest to make money. In fact, it works against you. Look, I will personally pound the tar out of anyone I see mistreating an animal. It’s my own personal charity, my superpower. I was keeping the money, and that’s how it was going to be.

#

It was the day of, and our shit was tight. Vegas’s tummy-tum was topped off with pizza and Dew. He’d gotten a full fourteen hours of sleep, and he was in a sunny mood. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in charisma. There were ugly dogs prancing all over the place; people were taking photos and petting them all. But not one of them got more attention than Vegas. Everyone recognized him. He knew exactly what was about to happen and he was lapping it up like it was another dog’s poo.

I surveyed the competition. A Chinese crested in a sequin top hat named Fitz. A shivering mini cockapoo whose only noticeable defect was obesity—and should have been disqualified for health reasons. People need to be responsible for their animals. Vegas may look like he’d been run through a cement mixer, but he was healthy as fuck. He had all his shots. His ten remaining teeth were pearly white. He hadn’t encountered a single flea since the night I found him at the dumpster. He had a bad diet, but I did my best. Who knew how long he’d been a dumpster diver before he met me? The gut wants what the gut wants. His BMI was, like, eight.

There were probably a hundred dogs, some of them real eye-stabbers, in this contest. But nothing compared to the grotesque combination of misshapen eyeballs, jutting underbite and undefinable stench of Vegas.

The competition started. One by one, the owners walked around the stage holding their dogs. They had names like “Guapo,” “JLo” and “Sweetie Pie.” No tricks. No X-factor. Just boring owners and their marginally unattractive dogs walking across the stage like it was a normal day in the park.

These amateurs were phoning it in. Did they not understand what was at stake?

Our turn.

Vegas darted up the stairs before me. He sat and waited for instruction, showing that he was a very good boy. He shook my hand. He rolled over. I made a finger gun (having realized earlier that producing a real firearm in a crowd was a bad idea). The crowd gasped.

“Bang!” I said.

Vegas dropped like a sack of rocks.

I blew the tip of my index finger and pantomimed holstering my weapon.

The crowd went wild.

“Vegas! Vegas! Vegas!”

He was a star. A grotesque, stinky, demonic star.

There was no losing this thing.

Strangers patted me on the back.

“That was awesome, dude,” they said. “Bang! That was cool.”

“He’s so ugly he’s cute,” they said. “You gonna breed him?”

“You got this,” they said. “Vegas is a winner. What’s that smell?”

People fed him treats. He barfed at their feet.

It was a madhouse. Exactly how I’d envisioned it.

I almost didn’t notice when Igor took the stage.

What was I looking at? A whippet? Mexican hairless? A fetal pig?

You could have told me that sumbitch was from outer space and I would have believed you.

I’d never seen nothing like that nowhere.

And what came next—well, no one could have seen that coming.

This thing had a routine. It scampered to one side of the stage and pumped its front legs up and down like a teenage pop star getting the crowd going. It performed a series of twirls and pirouettes. It glided. It walked on two legs like a champ.

It did a goddam somersault and I swear—and no one can tell me otherwise—it said “Ha-cha!” and flashed its spindly paws in jazz hands when it was done.

Its owner wrapped it in a blanket, James Brown-style, and shuttled it off the stage.

It appeared to be sweating.

Vegas and I were instantly forgotten.

“Igor! Igor! Igor!”

And, in the blink of a misshapen, golf ball-sized eye, we lost.

No trophy. No photo in the paper. No press release.

My savings, gone.

No Tonight Show.

#

We came in second.

And all because of my overconfidence, and my inability to research the competition, I was going to have to go back to telemarketing. I think they call that hubris.

By the way he was vigorously licking his own asshole, I could tell Vegas couldn’t have cared less. That only made me madder.

My gears were grinding.

Igor’s owner, whose name I never got, barely acknowledged me when I tried, grudgingly, to congratulate him. No reason not to be gentlemanly. We got beat fair and square.

“Congrats, man,” I said. “Enjoy the Tonight Show. You can turn that into a bunch of money, probably.” Look at me, a goddam E.F. Hutton.

“Yes,” he said. “Is point.”

He tucked Igor under his arm and sauntered off, looking like Lurch.  

Vegas farted.

I seethed.

But what more was there to do?  

“Here’s your gift bag,” the guy at the prize table said. “It’s pretty good. There’s a Lagunitas in there. And coupons for the sushi place at the casino. Sorry it didn’t work out better. Between you and me, I wish Vegas had won. My daughter has his calendar. And that guy? He’s a prick.”

“You know him?”

“Lives in my complex. I have a chiweenie named Waffles. I invited that guy and Igor to join us at the dog park next door and you would have thought I’d suggested we get together for a hydrochloric bubble bath and a vigorous round of fisting each other. He never even walks Igor as far as I can tell. Never seen him on a leash. Never leaves the apartment. He moved in a few weeks ago. Guess it was for this.”

“Vegas could use a run around a dog park,” I said. “Where do you live?”

“That’d be awesome,” he said. “Here’s the address. Crappy neighborhood. Great dog park, though.” He scribbled it on a piece of paper. “I’ll be home around five. Waffles would love to meet Vegas. And my daughter, of course. She’s gonna lose her mind. I’m Jordi. I live in 3C.”

Vegas extracted whatever it was out of his anus and was enthusiastically chewing it. He swallowed. He belched. It smelled like rotten cabbage.

“I think I’ll go congratulate him,” I said. “Be neighborly. Talk shop.”

“Good luck with that,” Jordi from 3C said. “Everyone hates him. We hear yelling all the time.”

“He yells at Igor?” My blood churned in my veins. I don’t care if you beat me in every ugly dog contest from Bangor to Bakersfield you will not talk rough to your animal. Not on my watch.

“Yeah man,” he said. “You can kind of hear Igor talking back, though? Weirdest thing in the world. Waffles will bark at me when I ask her to do something she don’t want to. But Igor? Don’t sound right.”

#

I parked the RV in front of Vineyard Village. It was a shitty apartment complex with flaking stucco and metal bars on all the windows. It had that weird combo of dollar store laundry detergent smell and cooked onions that seems to hang like a fog over spaces where too many poor people lived too close to each other.

But Jordi from 3C was right about one thing. The dog park next door was swank. Thick grass. Shade. Picnic tables. You’d have to be a real shithead to not take your dog there if you lived at Vineyard Village.

 I put Vegas on his leash and strutted around the courtyard like I owned the place. Best way to blend in is to act like you belong there.

Vegas sniffed around and peed on the landscaping. I heard yelling.

I couldn’t understand the language.

I followed the sounds to the last apartment at the end of the breezeway. I put my ear to the door. Two voices.

Was that German?

I looked through the window.

The Lurch-looking dick-licker was bitching at Igor. I couldn’t decipher what he was upset about. He sounded sad, then mad, then sad again. Like a spectrum.

Igor walked away.

He was wearing tiny pants. Khakis. And a crew neck sweater. And glasses.

I’d never seen those options at Pet Pals.

I looked down at Vegas. If I could get horn rims like that for his bulbous head and bulgy eyes, that would be a real humdinger.

Lurch wasn’t done. He followed Igor into the living room. He nudged Igor with his foot.

Igor jumped and made a noise. He clambered onto the sofa and continued vocalizing. It wasn’t a bark. Nor a growl. It felt like a debate.

I’d seen enough. I kicked the door open. Igor and Lurch stared at me with their mouths open.

I whipped the girl gun out of my fanny pack and fired all three shots into Lurch.

Vegas fell down, pretending to be dead.

Igor squealed and scurried into another room. I immediately worried that I had traumatized him.

I saw a news report once where this dog needed therapy after seeing its owner get flattened by falling tree branch. I worried that seeing his daddy take three bullets to the sternum would have the same negative effect on Igor’s emotional state.

 I felt bad about that.

“I’m calling the cops.” It was Jordi from 3C.

“Oh, shit. I shot the German,” I said.

“Russian.”

“What?”

“Ivan. He’s Russian. I’ve been watching. One-hundred-percent he’s a spy.”

I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Vegas shoved his back foot into his ear and made whining sounds. He pulled it out and sniffed it.

“Don’t worry dude,” Jordi from 3C said, dialing the phone. “It was self-defense. You came by to congratulate him. You saw him pounding on Igor. He came after you. You fired. I saw the whole thing.”

“You did?”

He told dispatch he saw the whole thing.

“Whoa, is that Vegas from the ViewTube?” one of the cops asked when they arrived.

“You know him?” I asked.

“My kids do that thing he does.” The cop mimicked barfing. “You have no idea how much Little Caesars we go through now. Mind if I get a selfie?”

Turns out that the cops don’t give a shit about Russians getting shot in their short-term, fully furnished crappy apartments. You tell them that the guy you pumped three bullets into with a female gun is a KGB-defector-kompromat-Gorski-Putin-motherfucker who was beating his dog, and they thank you for doing the lord’s work. The EMTs whisked the body out of there, the cops went back to whatever it was they were doing, and it was like nothing had happened at all. They told me I might hear from the FBI, but maybe not.

After everyone left, Igor emerged from the back of the apartment. He cocked his head.

“You gonna take him?” Jordi from 3C was looking around the apartment for stuff he could pilfer.

“You don’t want him?”

“Nah,” he said. “I got Waffles. Landlord only allows one dog.”

I scooped Igor into my arms. He didn’t wiggle or give kisses. He didn’t sniff me.

He felt tense. Irritated.

He smelled like Irish Spring.

His breath didn’t have that fuggy dog smell. It was minty. Like he’d recently brushed.

“Looks like you’ve got two winners now,” Jordi from 3C said. “Imma call the Ugly Dog people and tell them you’ve generously agreed to take Igor and Vegas on the Tonight Show and whatever else they’ve lined up. Think they’ve got Today and Good Morning America, too. Don’t worry. I’ll spin it right. You’re a hero. Took down a spy ring. Gave a dog a home.”

I held Igor out in front of me like a baby. It felt like holding up a raw roasting chicken. If the chicken was dressed like Carlton Banks.

Igor scowled. He looked at me—hard—with his one good eye.

“You idiot,” he said.

He turned his head and spit at Vegas. The spittle sat on Vegas’s head like a frog’s foamy egg cluster. He was too stupid to notice it.

Under normal circumstances, I would have choked out anyone—or anything—that was disrespectful to Vegas.

But I didn’t know what this was. Only that it was mine now. And I had already killed to protect it.

I had given myself an unspeakable burden.

And, as it turned out, a remarkable opportunity.

Bethany Browning hides clues in all her stories for the plucky gang of middle schoolers who are determined to reveal her true identity. Keep going, guys! You’re closer than ever. She’s also had stories published at esotericamag.com and in the forthcoming volumes of Stories We Tell After Midnight and Angel Rust. She can be found on Twitter @buzzwordsocial    

Poems by Josh Vigil

In which we take a virtual sewing class

I line buttons across my spine,            and beg him to thread the needle,          to sew them like fine hairs crossed.         I blow a kiss where the pin pricks,     make a wish for the ditch to stretch.         I hammer gems against pocked skin,   pits now filled with precious stones.        I glimmer under his gentle light,             fat sweat drops along stiff chests.            I tell him to hurry, I want to be covered by day’s end, I say leave no trough bare. xx

I no longer crave the monastic life

Into the air, I raise the whip, let it descend onto lush exteriors. Your portrait pocked by hot marks, my King. I envy the red velvet interiors of your mouth. I wish to lick you. Thumbing pleather with my happy palms, I imagine a waterfall  erupting from my mouth as the room fills by showers of saliva. Drooling, I pity myself mostly.

Sometimes can-do girls can’t

He slings his provoking poise like bushels of bonbons  off a bomber, fills me  with sickly lust.  His chest arranged  to rouse hunger,  mine visible to incite  pity. I feel an oppression  in the heart, one of desire like arteries being squeezed  empty: a tensile tube of toothpaste.  It’s really a terrible thing,  a heart. And yet, I ache  for this brief dalliance that I know will only become wasted  by my honeyed expectations.  In the meantime, cracking marigolds  with my clean thumb.

Josh Vigil is a writer living in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blush, Expat Press, Full Stop, Neutral Spaces Magazine, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere.

Miss Neale's Fee by Dora Cardinal

Their arrangement with Kahler was that he would leave an hour before Stu arrived and return only when Sue texted him that Stu was gone. A bad compromise Sue and Stu had forced on him after his freakout last week. He had seemed to Stu to be channelling Haubstadt's ghost that night. The three of them had tried experimenting with cucking, at Kahler's request, and Stu and Sue had been on shrooms trying to collect themselves enough to fuck, and the idea that had seemed so hot to Kahler minutes ago - Sue with another man - he now hated. He had to beg the two of them not to call the cops on him after he calmed down.

But this bad compromise had its perks for Kahler. He loved the idea of being a martyr and making a noble sacrifice for his wife's happiness. It was an opportunity to feel good about feeling resentful. He would privately bitch to a trusted friend or 2 but carefully control his every feeling when Sue or Stu were around, as though there was some glory in never resisting.

Their marriage was set up to fail. As soon as they and everyone they knew got the COVID vaccine they had played musical chairs with their relationships and roommates, rushing into new arrangements to put as abrupt and complete an end as possible to the old ones that lockdown had made so monotonous. Too few years later, in NBP-25 lockdown, these new arrangements were showing themselves to be just as poorly-considered and untenable. Everyone they knew was once again stuck living and sleeping with people who made them miserable.

Sue was worried about how Stu would be after that bad trip. She didn't want to have to coerce another fuck out of him. As soon as Kahler was out the door Sue started putting makeup on, planning something that would look especially pathetic after a few careful tears. She felt like shit for doing this but there was no other way to make sure Stu didn't leave her. Crossing from the bathroom to her bedroom, Sue paused to look through the closed door, imagine the familiar balcony rail, picture herself jumping. Image of her body broken after the 5-story fall. She had resigned herself to taking comfort in how familiar her intrusive thoughts were - it was the closest thing she got most days to a break from her hypercritical internal running commentary on how awful every single thing she did was. So she obsessed about that future, imagining her loved ones grieving. Maybe some of her friends who hadn't talked to each other in ages would reconnect and bond over this. And they would all move on eventually.

The second Stu took his shoes off and closed the door behind him she broke down, wailing, telling him how much she truly wanted to kill herself. He started crying too. For the first time since he was 7, not that Sue knew. Even with her cock up his ass a few minutes later he kept sobbing here and there.

Now, the last time Sue thought about Sylmar was a few weeks ago. She saw Sylmar had updated her profile pic. She waited till 12 people had reacted and then just liked it - she wasn't sure how Sylmar felt about her and didn't want to make her uncomfortable by being overly friendly, but didn't want to burn bridges either. Sue had enough going on to keep herself busy but still, she remembered Sylmar now and then and she missed her. But whenever she thought about Sylmar and wondered how she was doing, she remembered she was still living with Todd. She couldn't reach out to her yet, not while Todd was such an influence. She was sure Todd had turned Sylmar against her and she worried he might take any contact between her and Sylmar as a threat and strike back, taking away even more of Sue's friends. Urge to run out the backdoor and jump. Sue caught herself and remembered it wasn't healthy to let Todd in her head. He didn't deserve her energy. She set a 5-minute timer on her phone and did a mindfulness exercise to reroute her thoughts.

Todd Hadnot's new knife came in the mail the next day. To celebrate he locked himself in the bathroom with a half pint of Beam and sat naked in the bathtub, slicing the calluses off his toes and fingers and taking a pull after each digit was shaved down. It was very troubling to him - as a man, he took pride in his work calluses, but he couldn't help hating the way they made his skin feel. His callused hands rubbing against each other squeaked silently and painfully to him as if they were covered in cornstarch. And he wouldn't consider a pumice stone, ever. That's for girls. Even a kitchen knife would be too dainty. So he bought himself this nice switchblade as a treat and paid $5 extra to have the knife's name, HAUBSTADT, engraved on the blade.

When Sylmar clocked out of her work-from-home job and left her room, Todd's door was closed and his knife was in their bathroom sink, covered in drying bloodstains and translucent chunks of dead skin. She flipped the tap on and ran back to her room for a mask and gloves before cleaning the knife. She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually seen Todd, or talked to him at all except to get his half of rent. For all she knew Todd had been sucked into some pandemic denier cult online, but she preferred to belive he was just preoccupied and easily distracted.

Sylmar tossed a burrito in the microwave, turned the coffee machine back on to reheat the rest of the pot, and pulled out her phone. A new message from Kahler Schoeneck, 20 min ago:

hey are you up at all?

yeah hey, what's up?

god... I just heard abt something rly fucked up

with Sue and Stu I need to talk to someone abt

is that ok?

sure, what happened?

are they back together??

YEAH

its so fucked up like

she manipulated him into coming over again

while I wasnt home and just broke down crying

saying shed k word herself if they couldnt fuck

anymore

like what do you do with that? what am I supposed

to do? I'm rly fucking worried for Stu if he can't get

away from her and she cant get her shit together

ughhhhh fuck that

I'm so sorry idk what you can do that's so much

always here if you need to talk abt it tho, it's cool

tysm

like how does this even keep happening you know?

its so fucking sad. I thought Stu finally figured it out

after the last time and now I just dont know

how does this end? when one of them d words?

Sylmar didn't know what she could say in reply, so she turned the screen off and set her phone down somewhere. She took the burrito and a mug of now-lukewarm coffee back to her room and opened her laptop. Kahler had said just what she'd been thinking, but she didn't know how to say it in a way Facebook wouldn't flag as a cry for help or a death threat. So instead of talking about how Sue had to die to save Stu, Sylmar had been spending the last month researching the murder-for-hire business and coming up with a plan.

Sylmar had only met Lloyd twice, but they talked online a lot. He seemed to never leave the house even when it had been safe, living only online, getting friends, roommates, and gig workers across several apps to do his shopping and deliver his food. One night he got too high on some research chemical (its name was an alphanumeric string so impressively random that Sylmar threw an exclamation point at the end and started using it as a password) and he accidentally told her about this guy Catesby he knew, the agent for a hitwoman who called herself "Miss Neale". It took 3 weeks for her to convince Lloyd to put her in touch with Catesby, and after that they were never as close as they used to be.

What little info Sylmar could find about Miss Neale's reputation excited her, and she was sure she would be perfect. Miss Neale was a professional who prided herself on ensuring this messy work was always done cleanly and quickly. Perfect because Sue's death needed to be as painless as possible, so that it would be as painless as possible for Stu.

Kahler's message echoing her most private obsession was a sign that it was finally time. Sylmar cashed out her 401k to pay Miss Neale's fee. She hoped Stu would understand it was what had to be done. A few days after making the payment as Catesby had instructed, she woke up and found a handful of texts waiting for her. She barely talked to anyone these days and couldn't remember the last time she'd had notifications to wake up to. On every app, a funeral procession of memorial posts from people who'd barely known Sue. Nobody knew why Sue was dead. Sylmar recognized that she would be alone with her secret for the rest of her life, and she went back to sleep to avoid thinking about that.

The night Sue died, she had Stu come over again. While they took each other's clothes off, she said, 

"Baby, I wanna try something new tonight. Let's pretend we're on a private jet over the ocean."

"What?"

Stu's fingers paused their caressing and lifted from her skin a little. She started to worry about rejection. Image of her body mangled after the 5-story fall.

"What do you mean?", he said, a little softer, bringing his fingers back down to glide over her back and arms.

"I mean like - okay. A private jet. A really fancy one. And you're the pilot. I want you to fuck me this time. You have the jet on autopilot, you have me bent over the co-pilot's chair and you're fucking pounding me. You lean away from me here and there to just barely touch the controls, make course adjustments. I'm getting myself off in sync with you. When I'm about to cum, I feel it building, I want you to take over manual control and take us into a deep dive, I want the G forces to throw me against the wall and my ass'll sting from how fast your cock slips back out of me and we'll finish on our own, you'll be holding onto the controls with your left hand so you don't get slammed into the wall with me... the plane will just skim the water and then you'l pull us back up to cruising altitude, you'll get lube and cum and shit all over the handles... kelp will hang off the wings like strings of cum..."

"Sure... that sounds hot. We can try that."

He pulled her panties off, tossed them into a corner, put on a very serious face and said,

"Please fasten your seatbelt, and ensure that your tray table is in the upright locked position."

It was when he started making those motorboat noises with his mouth that Sue admitted to herself Stu didn't get what she wanted him to do. She stopped pretending to enjoy it and said,

"Sweetie, no, stop. Not like that."

He stopped thrusting, bent over, moving his hands from her hips to her shoulders, and said,

"What's wrong?"

"That's not what an airplane sounds like. Have you ever flown? It's just a steady hum, like Nnnnnnnnn - and a private jet is even quieter. I imagine. It's a smooth ride. I want you to talk to me, please."

He pulled out abruptly, leaving her with a burning rawness in her asshole, and took a step back. Sue's fear of rejection took over again. Image of the late Sue Schoeneck, limbs splayed and bent at reflex angles, facedown and pulped after the 5-story fall. A news headline that strangers would share on social media and that other strangers would criticize for how it referred to her. Her name spoken over Zoom for TDOR. Image of Stu broken up crying and vulnerable again. Oh - Stu was talking to her...

"... and I am TRYING, I PROMISE, but you - jesus christ Sue, did you just start listening now? You know I hate it when you tune me out like that, I'm TRYING to tell you what's going on and what I'm feeling and it's like you don't even care? DO I FUCKING EXIST TO YOU SUE? DO YOU REALIZE I'M A WHOLE FUCKING PERSON JUST LIKE YOU? THAT THERE IS A WHOLE WORLD OF PEOPLE OUT HERE AND NOT JUST YOUR INTERNAL FUCKING MONOLOGUE? DO - "

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!!! Don't FUCKING yell at me!! You KNOW that's a trigger you FUCKING asshole!"

Sue pushed Stu aside to get to the pile of clothes and dress back up.

"I'm going to the corner store," she said, pointedly staring a foot to the left of his head as she put her dress back on. "You need to be gone by the time I get back, cuz I am texting Kahler to say he can come home now."

Sue wished she was dead. Why did she bother with Stu? With men? They never understood. Why did she bother with life? She knew she didn't deserve to live, didn't deserve second third fourth chances from everyone. And they didn't deserve what she put them through. Image of herself, straddling the balcony rail, ready to tip over. Feeling of gravity taking hold. She imagined the bliss of knowing she had overcome her instinctive will to live. The satisfaction of knowing her death was imminent, and guaranteed by immutable physical laws.

She farted and felt something dribble out and run down her inner thigh. Then Miss Neale, sitting in the back of an SUV parked a few blocks back, shot Sue Schoeneck in the head and was out of town by the time Kahler, driving home, found Sue's body.

Dora Cardinal lives in Milwaukee, WI. This is her first published work. She also plays laptop and voice in the band Ballstomper. She can be found on Twitter @sylansylpo.

Poems by Lexy Experiment

Each Drop is a Measure 

of the distance between desire and how much you dare. Slip to the top of a mountain  beside a thundercloud in Sundance to start the search, or did you start back home 

where an idea drifted in like fog rising at Hurricane Ridge, like steam roiling off Sol Duc  hot springs where if you swim to the hot spot in the middle and she meets you there, you  avert your eyes too quickly, like Kyoto 

or in Nagoya, or on a ship one full day south of Kagoshima where the foreign tongues  sound so sultry and you are naked, alone floating over that floor jet, legs spread wide  enough to feel the vibrations, 

but here you hear snatches that you recognize at least, govoryu po-Russki, and in Lava  Hot Springs you only rest and watch, spread your arms in the slippery water, slide your  toes between the one you know well and those you want to know more. You can feel the  currents but you haven’t learned yet how to follow them all the way down 

the way your river guide moves his rudders without even seeming to think about the  rapids; you are too acutely aware of the space around your body, you need someone to  grab you hard and tow you 

back to the Snake River sultry green where you walk the wide rocks along Idaho Falls in  broad daylight; the signs warn against surprising currents and yes, in some places you  could be seduced by the shallow only to find yourself pinned 

under a secret rock overhang. You hardly ever catch a full breath when you are thinking  about lust anyway, 

might as well be hiking downhill in the dark from the place you watched the sun set over  the Salmon River straddling a ridge so small you can see straight up and down the valley,  sweaty and scared; 

that path is slower than falling into a rabbit hole or out of a boat at Folly Bridge near  Oxford but faster than sitting still with your head spinning for weeks, wanting what’s in  Manhattan but not knowing what’s next. You never thought you'd need it so much, nor  that the pink waves of the Great Salt Lake and the white foam they froth during a stormy  night could seem like something you would want to climb into 

that you’d want to slide your knees wide, dig your palms into salt and take pictures from 

behind. Portland, Poky, poly, you lie in a rocky pool where two currents collide; the river  stings in cold water one way and if you push back against the moss you feel scalding on  your shoulder blades so instead all you do is lay yourself in the middle again, arch your  back 

feeling safe in the lukewarm. Cartographers know that not all paths connect the way  you’d expect, that some glaciers find a different way down every spring. You know 

that you can’t stand the discord but still, you must continue mapping these desires that  cannot be dissolved.

Anticipation of the Traveling Not-So-Slut 

A brown haired woman in Portland sent me a poem that began, 

at least your pimp has a name, a neck 

you could put your two good hands around. 

But I have neither of these things. 

++ 

I have not held N's throat like he has mine, 

have not asked anything 

about his name. 

I was afraid of my feelings, 

wanted to see him mostly in fragments, 

his way with words leaves me weak-kneed, 

I am 

dangling. 

++ 

I can’t ask for a name until I have his neck in Manhattan 

(or an airport, anywhere) 

can’t offer my own throat again 

until I have made a whole host of other things happen. 

+ Now + 

I don't crawl to N naked, blowing bubbles, 

making photos in the bath. 

The silence 

seduces me  

to wonder about wants again 

instead of why nots. 

+ Before November + 

+ When She Moves to New Zealand + 

When I trust my desire I want to kiss 

that brown haired beauty in Portland. 

I want to slide next to her on a park bench , 

meet without speaking,

bring each other something to read. 

Kiss her under the fall leaves. 

Then leave. 

+ When She, Like Art + 

Surely there is a kind of seduction Chris craves 

that I can’t offer. 

+ When I Remember + 

+ Nin Andrews + 

Choosing a poem for that park bench, in Portland, 

I think of marking my orgasms 

against her glossary* 

to count the time. 

* Except Kamikazee, Quotepart, and Ombre, please. 

+ After Our Second Date in May, + 

+ I Said November + 

I can’t measure my lust in months anymore, 

those fleeting last fall days in Manhattan 

could wander in and out with any kind of outcome. 

I’m too scared to wonder yet 

whether I could wrap my hands around any of N, 

wear a belt around my neck, 

wrap my mind around enough of my wants 

be a kick ass sexy woman who can submit. 

But I want to.

Lexy is an experiment. She is the alter ego for an east coast USA writer and woman of nonsense. According to Hogan Assessments, Lexy's main drivers are science, hedonism, and aesthetics; the Hogan also says she is high-risk because she’s mischievous and excitable. Twitter: @LexyExperiment

47 Cents Short by Julian Grant

I shop at Aldi's, the discount market that shares its buying power with the fancy Trader Joes here in Chicago (they're owned by two brothers). Both serve different customers though - Aldi's being the cheaper, clearly, but it's not poor ugly, like most knock-off stores with dusty pallets of stale food dumped on a dirty floor with yellow fluorescent lighting buzzing overhead. It's spotlessly clean in there, with orderly rows of off-brand wine, exotic chocolate, organic jerky ($3.99 package/ 100 percent grass-fed beef), and gourmet nuts all right there as you come in - all in well-groomed but cut-rate rows. You don't feel beggared here, yet most of the people that come here are. Mom's counting pennies using their weekly flyer for Appetito's Soft Pretzels, vegan chicken nuggets for the kids, or frozen canapes from France (Two for Ten), or old folks like me stretching every dollar they got. Your government assistance SNAP card can be used on any of these Aldi things just fine but not for kid or adult diapers or lady toilet paper stuff, go figure.

You can find food staples here too though - tin house-brand soup, processed sandwich meats, .89 cent eggs, white bread, and American cheese - but that's not what fills most people's shopping carts. It's more extravagant foodstuffs on a budget that closes the sale. I'm on a fixed income myself but I enjoy treating myself to a fresh rotisserie chicken (.79 cents a pound) now and eat it for the whole week. I'd start with one side of the breast plus tinned veggies (beans or corn or maybe both if I'd find them dented cans in the clearance aisle - I never know what I'm going to find there. Every week's a surprise) one night and then move to the next day, flipping the pre-cooked bird over for the meat below, eat both legs and drums on another night and then boil the carcass for soup once I'd gone round-robin on the bird. For a while there, things were pretty tight, so it was Aunt Maple's Protein Pancake Mix ($2.99 @ box with 14 grams of protein per serving!) only that I'd make last for as long as I could. I did 6 days once on just one box - but I got pretty tired of it by the end - even using their own Aldi jam to mix things up. So, it was a nice surprise to see another old-timer like me in there all by himself, shuffling through the aisles, not really noticing the good stuff I like to buy or read about on the shelves. I'll imagine myself having some fancy stuffed olives (even if they give me indigestion), or perhaps enjoying a glass of that Winking Owl Merlot with an enticing lady friend (though I no longer have the stomach for either). It doesn't cost anything to dream.

He was dusty old, kinda shuffling along, all faded-out amidst the bright gewgaws everywhere so I tried to figure out what he might be looking for. It's easy once you start, matching people to their shopping. You wouldn't look at me and think Starburst Fruit Roll-Up ($1.99 - Taste the Rainbow), but they remind me of when I was a little kid, and I'd make 'em last too. I couldn't always get them but when I did, it didn't matter what time of year it was, it was my Summer again. So, when I saw this fella with two cans of something and a box of crackers, I knew he wasn't out shopping for himself and his own wife. That's bachelor food or, more than likely, widower food, and I saw him carrying his three things to the checkout girl Sarah who I like the best. She's in most days and always has a smile for me. Now, I'd already spent my cash limit, filling up my handbasket (I can still use, thank you) and my own stuff doesn't always amount up to a lot - but my curiosity does. I wanted to know what he had planned - Beefaroni? Chicken Soup? He looked like a No-Beans Chili guy, maybe? So, I wandered over, playing my little guessing game, not being nosey - but being interested. He was counting out his change, not using the government SNAP and Sarah was telling him that he was giving her nickels instead of quarters as he plinked the coins on her counter. 

"You're 47 cents short, Sir. Those are nickels, not quarters. You haven't got enough." 

He was grumbling, not mad, but weathering dark so I saw that this was a good chance to step in and help a little. I was tight - but not so tight that I couldn't pay forward what he needed to get his stuff. 

"Here, Sarah, I got that," I said, pushing two quarters up to her and smiling at the fella, not in an 'I'm flushed and you ain't way, just in an "it-happens-to-us-all-don't-sweat-it," neighborly way. He nodded at me, bundling up his tins and crackers in his arms 'cause they charge for bags at Aldi's and it gave me a chance to sneak a quick peek at his purchases. 

That was worth my four bits.

He'd picked the beef and chicken Pure Being with no corn, wheat, or soy. With no added colors or artificial flavoring. 

I smiled knowing that he knew about using the crackers to make it last that much longer. Dog food always tastes better on a shingle.

Julian Grant is a filmmaker, educator, and author of strange short stories plus full-length novels/ non-fiction texts and comics. A tenured Associate Professor at Columbia College Chicago, his work has been published by Avalon Literary Review, Crepe & Penn, Clever Magazine, Peeking Cat Literary Journal, Danse Macabre, Fiction on the Web, CafeLit, Horla, Bond Street Review and Free Bundle. Find out more about him at www.juliangrant.com.

Bob Above by Thea Zimmer

In the default room, my secondary hope(lessness) is to make them want to die for the existence they’ve allowed me, a living death rather than something sacred and brilliant. There’s a razorblade hidden inside a box of Sominex, just in case, and a bottle of gin I hide under the big wide bed of adolescent sprawl. I must be young. I could be thirteen or thirty. It could be spring, long past or ever present. My body a blob, the sheets holding me loosely, smudged with sweat from family-slashed dreams and salty snacks (train-wrecks, morgues, Cheetos). My mother says all this lying in bed is without purpose; I’d say it is without time. Bless-Ed, without restraint. Filling only with you, Bob. You come to me (and come inside, haha). Knock knock! She stands in the doorway in her mom jeans, suggesting in her jaunty manner I eat buttery bread and oozy cheesy pasta, the thought of which, in my ravaged state, makes me want to devour, to annihilate fat and meat, yet I know the edibles, like words sent in love letters, will likely revolt, RETURN TO SENDER, make me run to the john in the en-suite bath with the yellow wallpaper, the words refusing to be flushed. Your face resurfacing. As if life were merely eternal waiting, deathly jabbing! Letter upon letter. Hang-nails mangled, scar upon scar. More days without you than with. Only you can save. You’re lanky too. Your dirty-blond hair cuts across your face, your eyes skirting away, as if ashamed of your own good looks, like a man in a photo, a man I can barely remember, emitting low rumbly laughs, body-warmth, sinuous, on an old twin-bed, a shabby sublet, in the room… cryptic Judge Judy, lullabies of Oprah, Dr. Phil…. the mumble of news, a forever drone…. your voice drifting beyond the murmurs, the TV echoes, its sound-shield of devastations…

Layered in webs we feel but do not see, gathered in old-timey corners, shadows among many, darkness cultivated in daily dive-bars, your face cigarette-lit from where you lounge, glamorously idle, your scruffy blankness, a jolt to my groin—it seems—in stealth or shame, pulling me along in avoidance of the swarthy bartender (with whom you live for free until you find a job that suits). He feeds (on) your low-glow, your dirty blondness, in his fantasies; you sit two stools down from James Dean, Kurt Cobain. It’s not until my endless waiting bores (into) you that you swivel-around. I meet your eyes, their metallic-grey containment! I sidle up, your dick poking me through your pants. I take you home. Your blunt cries remain. “Get up. It’s almost night.” Moving through me, my nether-parts tangled in afterthought, anticipation, infused with pity-lust, it’s all the same. No clocks. They make me nervous. There’s a big closet with feminine clothes left hanging, waiting, their assault of bright colors. Rarely, I slip out to a nearby store. A few supplies, for destruction of self and others. 

“For God’s sake,” my mother says, “get out of bed.” Later, she’s merry, going out with Earl, murmuring sweet to him, which the poor man soaks right up, there in the doorway of the room. His hair’s pure-white. Once frightened? My mother has told me: his wife is horrid. My mother’s hair must be a joke, the crew-cut she gave herself long ago in such a drama, frozen in the ‘80s, the hairstyles suggesting female independence, the need for a man perhaps more reprehensible than in the 70s, the 90s, now. 

“Have you washed the sheets lately?” Like she doesn’t know this bed’s been here forever, its pillows damp, splotched with love.

Sometimes, Bob, you’re a Botticelli boy, and we’re thrilled to make love under mother’s nose. In this very bed made for waiting. All perspective swooshes and warps, the parting of seas, the timelessness of grandeur, closer, closer, you come, your eyes in their light-blue sweetness. Your lips are perfect cushions upon which to float. There’s a tiny scar on your sculpted chin. Your Armani jacket laid aside, you chuckle about your youth and inexperience, your inbred wealth, the Florentine dynasty from whence you came. We lie in bed, disheveled, ecstatic. You lean over, your blond hair catching the light. It halos you as you weep above. You disappear. 

“Honey, get up. It’s almost night.” 

“Shut the door, please, mother.” I carry on by whatever means, Sominex, Benadryl, Nyquil, gin, pilfered Valium, whichever works. 

The TV voices, lull to darkness, Mom and Earl going on with happy, banal chatter just beyond the door, mother’s murmurs, Earl’s baritone acknowledgments, coalescing in some great purpose, your accent cutting through, both aristocratic and streetwise, your words Yankee-clipped, the tone offhand; you barely ask to walk me home. I’m convinced, Bob, of your Puritan roots. You’re a fire-and-brimstone preacher, a cape flowing off your able shoulders, your face nobly perturbed, its flatness subtly (deliciously) reproaching. It’s dramatic, Mom would say—

if I told her—my love all mixed up together with disgust. Let me tell you. 

“He's a jerk,” my mother has said, making her little signal, ever since I can remember, for “dick”: two fingers sticking out in an apex from her crotch. My sisters, a little older than I, they remember better, our mother in bed for days, weeks on end, after you “ran off with that bitch.” She winks at me. She’s devoted and happy with her Earl, no longer lamenting a man who left her moaning his loss, a man who’d also left my sisters, who’d grabbed at what they could, little girls disbelieving who I can still hear crying in the far reaches of the house. You wrote a letter that said you’re NEVER coming back. 

Would you like me to wait? 

Thea Zimmer’s stories appear in Fringe (Emerson), Hobart, r.kv.r.y quarterly, Mannequin Haus, New Dead Families, Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind, Weirdyear, Infective Ink, Infinity’s Kitchen, Hackwriters, and Dial Magazine (The New School). She’s working on a short-story collection. She’s also the librettist for a dystopic multimedia opera and the scriptwriter for a virtual-reality experience promoting peaceful coexistence. https://theazimmer.wordpress.com

DIY Lamp Kit by A.S. Coomer

Dana bought the DIY Lamp Kit on a drunk. She’d ordered it online, free two-day shipping, then promptly forgot about it. That’s how some drunks are. When the little package was delivered to her front door, she’d wondered what it was. She took it to the kitchen and opened it with scissors. 

The cover on the box showed a woman’s smiling face lit by the light of a wine bottle that was now, tada, a lamp. Dana stared at the box for some time before the hazy recollection of ordering it came back. She still couldn’t remember why making a lamp had crossed her mind in the first place.

She walked to the bathroom to take her medication wondering what she’d use to make her lamp. There were plenty of empty bottles around, just not wine. Dana had never been a big fan of wine. It stained your teeth and tasted like expired juice. She liked bourbon though. Rye especially. There were a few empties in the recycling now, another getting close.

She opened the bathroom mirror and got the bottle. Dana shook two pills free and swallowed them with a palmful of water from the tap. 

Back in the kitchen she microwaved her coffee then sat down at the scuffed farmer’s table with the DIY Lamp Kit. She opened the box and removed its contents piece by piece. She unfolded the instructions and learned the names of the pieces. She read over the directions and learned how each brass piece fit together.

It’s like a functional puzzle, she thought, holding the bulb-less lamp up. Now, what to use?

She decided to drink on it.

Dana rinsed her plate in the sink, dried it off, then put it in the cabinet. The fading rays of the sun slipped between the towering oaks out back and fell in long slanted columns through the kitchen window. 

Dana turned around and leaned against the counter, letting the sun shine on her face. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, just feeling the warmth and seeing orange. The sun set and Dana stood blinking in what felt like a sudden darkness.

She crossed the room and felt along the wall until she found the switch. The first thing she saw was the DIY Lamp sitting on the shelf beside the table. 

How many weeks ago had it been that she sat at the table and put that thing together?

She’d taken to counting the weeks in bottles. 

Last week was a seven-bottle week. This was looking to be an eight or nine. 

Dana kept swearing to herself she was going to start cutting back. She knew it was bad to drink on the medications she took for her bipolar disorder but she’d tried quitting cold turkey three weeks ago and she couldn’t even hold a pen her hands shook so bad. She’d read in a Raymond Carver short story that you could stop drinking slowly by first switching to champagne. She’d never cared for the stuff but she was thinking about giving it a try. 

She walked across her little kitchen and picked up the bronze lamp. She ran her fingers along the cool metal finial. She wished she could peel away the layers of her life the way she could dissemble each piece of the lamp. Something in there wasn’t working. She’d gone off the rails, she could see it but only vaguely, like shapes through a clouded window.

When she came to, Dana was crumpled on the bathroom floor. Late afternoon sun streaked through the curtains falling all around her in shifting patterns. She watched the light and shadows dance for some time before pushing herself up into a sitting position. She held her aching head in her hands. She pressed her fists to her temples and squeezed. 

On the floor beside her was her bottle of Xanax. The cap was nowhere in sight. It was empty but two of them sat beside the trashcan. 

How many does that mean I took?

She couldn’t remember. 

Not enough, she thought, forcing herself to her feet. 

She turned on the shower then stripped down, her arms feeling twice their normal weight and half as useful. 

She’d been afraid something just like this was going to happen. 

It’d been a twelve-bottle week. Dana couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a bite. She stepped into the shower and let the scalding water revive her numbed limbs. She let the water beat against her face until the hot water ran out. 

After she’d toweled herself dry and dressed, Dana dry-swallowed the last two Xanax then took the empty prescription bottle into the kitchen and stuffed it into the plastic grocery bag with all the others. She’d become paranoid that her neighbors could tell how bad off she was by her garbage. If no bottles of pills or booze went out they had nothing to suspect. 

She marveled at the dozens of orange RX bottles in the bag. She’d peeled off the labels so they stood naked and mostly transparent in the early afternoon light. 

She put on a pot of coffee and sat at the table watching it brew. She had some Old Grandad left and thought that’d fix it up fine. 

The lamp caught Dana’s eye and she smiled, having an idea, finally, for it. She got out the hot glue gun and the garden shears and sat down at the farmer’s table with the bag of prescription bottles. She removed each cap then carefully cut the bottles in half. She glued them, side by side, one by one, until she had a cylindrical base for the DIY Lamp. She went back around with the hot glue gun, hitting each of the seams from the outside, then set it down on the kitchen counter beside the outlet. She plugged it in then got a bulb from the hall closet and screwed it on. She half-expected it not to work but it did. 

A.S. Coomer is a writer and musician. Books include Memorabilia, The Fetishists, Shining the Light, The Devil's Gospel, The Flock Unseen, Birth of a Monster (forthcoming from Grindhouse Press) and others. His novelette Stor-All Self-Storage was published in C.V. Hunt's HORRORAMA anthology. He runs Lost, Long Gone, Forgotten Records, a "record label" for poetry. He co-edits Cocklebur Press, a micropress for "books that stick." @ascoomer www.ascoomer.com www.ascoomer.bandcamp.com

An Ode to the Bitter Girls by Jenna Faccenda

A word I wouldn’t usually associate myself with But seems to be tied to  Girls like me

The ones who know what it feels like to have another man’s hands touch her not so gently Or pleasurably

A map of his finger prints still paint my skin

I am talking about the kind of girls that know what the underground looks like And when I say underground I mean hell And when is say hell I mean the type of pain that’s unable to be put into words

I might be bitter But at least I am still capable of feeling

i’ve watched the caucuses of girls  Fade through the motions of life their light burned out Insides hollow  Dark Cold Emotionless

But you see my emotions Join me in bed at night Leaving me with a sour sweet taste  that bitter dissatisfaction 

This poem is for the girls who decided to take the love they gave Back Even when he said they can’t The girls who aren’t afraid to claim themselves 

But I guess that makes them bitter girls Tough-lipped girls Unbearable girls Unlovable girls

I guess that makes them girls like me

Jenna Faccenda is a Philadelphia native and writer. She is enrolled in Rosemont College’s M.F.A and M.A. program and is a marketing executive for Casemate Publishers. She is also the co-founder of Writely Me and the founder of Eclipse Lit. Her writings have been published in the Literary Hatchet, Lame Kid Zine, Rhytmn & Bones Press, Women on Writing, amongst others. Phoenix from the Ashes (2018) is her debut chapbook. Follow her ramblings on Twitter @faccenda_jenna.

Ink & Metal: Work-in-Progress by R.G. Vasicek

Yes. Work. Progress. All of it: in a nutshell. Split the atom. We make noises because we are human beings. We think. Language machines are eating people. Skizzenbuch. Zig’s Notebooks in Prague. Augenblick. We regurgitate information. We are programmable. We are made of elementary particles. Zigzagging is required to elude U-boats. Thought experiments. Are you a machine? Are you a spontaneous thinker? Paprika goes into the goulash in Amerika. 

There is no statistical regularity to human fucking. No pattern we can see. It just happens. Or does not. Sounds & waveforms made during an orgasm. Claude Shannon coins “information theory” in a secret paper.

And yet what? What means anything.

Uncertainty.

Surprise. 

Her name is Zoë. She wields her hips in a crescent lunge on the cusp of a come. She is a secret policewoman. She records everything people say into a notebook. She is a poet. A dreamer.

Information is entropy.

She instructs her lovers: Draw in your belly. Crescent lunge. Fuck. Excellent. Again. 

She pushes apart his buttocks and gives a critical examination of his asshole. She ejects the man from her apartment. His name is Moosbrooger, a giant Neanderthal of a man.

Moosbrooger wanders the metropolis like a buffoon. Enters a tavern. Orders a Pilsner. 

Omphalos of dreams. People are everywhere. Nightmares. The metropolis speaks its truth. Every edifice. Every street.

Well. Here I am. New York New York New York. Metropolis of amores. Never quite becoming. Almost. Not quite. City of almost. Stacy’s hips. What might I have done for Stacy’s hips? Wielded over me. Crescent lunges. Yelps of Patchogue Patchogue Patchogue!

Is/was. We keep trying. Amerika is a memory.

Yes. This is fun. Whatever this is. A ride. A journey. A labyrinth. We speak into each other’s earholes. Brain algorithms. A whisper. A breath. A murmur. 

Plug in the numbers. Eat the lasagna. Everybody is everybody. Singularities are rare. Every now and again: a surprise: a boo. A Boolean search reveals all. Almost. Not quite. Tip of iceberg.

The funhouse mirror is a collide-o-scope.

Machine fragments in your skull. Titanium-plated cranium. Your cerebellum jiggles like Jell-O. And/or J-Lo. We are machine creatures. We are projections. Holograms. Delusions. Hallucinations. A short-circuit in the Computer. Machine language.

Ugly day. Television storm. November leaves plummet. Look: another one! You speak to me like a half-sister. I remove your panties. Isabel & Pierre. The Kraken lurks in all the Minds of the Planet. 

I like the simplicity of my existence: a desk. a chair.

She says: Do you like chocolate? She pulls out my cock and begins to suck. I am bug-eyed. Rigid. Ass clenched. Eager to cum. Abstain. 

Our naked bodies entangled in the quadrangle. The audience is bigger than we expected.

writing gets us nowhere because the flicker is already flickering and i cannot see what is coming because i am a human being at a machine in an invisible factory  

Megafloods on Mars 3.6 billion years ago

Are we capturing any of this? Your camera is peculiar. Eyeball the size of a grapefruit. Grid engaged. Rule of Thirds. A hand slides down the back of your underpants. Is she kissing your mouth? Rigid cock in a latex condom. She wants you to rubber-fuck her pussy. Her clitoris is erect. Grinding. She opens opens

Zig’s life in ink & metal. Particles of light. Electric light. Starlight. Furnace of a yellow dwarf sun. We keep fighting. Fighting ourselves. Derrida speaks of the “granular structure” of form in language. “Spacing as writing is the becoming-absent...” Discontinuity. Discreteness. The chaos of Kierkegaard. The Aztecs of Mexico. The Mayan glyphs. “The stream of oral speech...” Chaosmos. Hypermedia. The criminalization of journalism. Human brains in a cloud chamber. I lean against a kitchen cabinet, and I watch her give me a blowjob. My ass is bare & clenched. Whole milk in the refrigerator. Skim milk. I come like an ox. Signal & noise. Radiotelegraph operators. We are perpetual-motion machines. Blurs. Distortion. Feedback. I come in your mouth. You come in mine. 69 68 67. Every position in the machine assemblage. Patience. Curiosity. A thousand words can take us to Nirvana. Silence. Emptiness. Nothingness.

She pushes her hand into my underpants for empirical “gropings.” Yes. I am hard. I want her. She receives me dogmatically. Glancing at me over her right shoulder. 

I am increasingly the worst+case scenario = me. She opens my asshole. I open hers.

The nonlanguage of fucking.

Reacting to largely manufactured threats is probably a meaningless existence. Her nipple grazes my lips. We walk around the apartment like satyrs. Half-naked in flannel shirts. Kneeling on carpets and floorboards. Everything happens inside our heads. Curtains keeps reality outside. 

Radio storms. TV storms. EMFs. Electromagnetic fucking.

COLOSSUS. Mark I. ENIAC. International Business Machines are eating the planet. Veterans of the Atari Wars.

She says: Let’s begin in First Position.

The active (firing) of neurons. You are under attack. Thoughts everywhere!

The Boolean algebra of our fucking. We are again having sex, and I like it very much. Probability theory. Soviet telephony. Czechoslovakian telephony. Artaud: “When I write there is nothing other than what I write.”

We are human computers: I make a series of electromechanical decisions. 

The television bath of violence. War on every channel. And we pay a subscription?

Nobody goes anywhere. Nobody can be anybody anymore.

Spirals & spirals of thought. Spaghetti noodles of the noggin. Gödel: “Undecidable” propositions. The flesh in a chair. Blue light. Computer. Cyborg.

Am I what Derrida calls “the man of infinite tasks”? 

Am I analog or digital?

The to-and-fro movement of fucking.

Melancholia alkoholia mechanikolia kokolia cokacolia kofolakolia

I stare out to sea. What. What. What. Every wave in every sea passes through my mind. We begin at the beginning, where else? She has known me for longer than I know myself. Zoë’s crooked smile. Her ass bobbing gently on my cock. We are lovers. We are friends. She is like a sister to me. Melville has taught me well about the “deliciousness” of a sister. Every thought is repressed. Every act is questioned. I wander too long at the edge of the sea. Knee-deep at low tide. Just beyond the reach of great white sharks. And yet these days sharks seem to swim closer and closer to shore. I am from an island. How can it be otherwise? I live in a metropolis. Park my car on the street. Everything is possible. Even nothing. Are you trying to cancel yourself? 

This work-in-progress is getting ahead of you, isn’t it? Beyond me. Every language machine on the planet stands no chance. Derrida speaks of the 1000th-generation computer. The amnesiac machine.

Cyberoptics. Cyberfucking. We got it under control. No control.

 R.G. Vasicek is the author of the Prague/NYC cybernetic anti-novel THE DEFECTORS. He tweets @rg_vasicek

Women’s Work (excerpt) by Madeleine Barnes

Madeleine Barnes is a writer and visual artist. Her debut poetry collection, You Do Not Have To Be Good, was published by Trio House Press in July 2020. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Women’s Work (Tolsun Books, 2021). She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine, a publication that showcases the work of women and non-binary creators. She can be found on Twitter at @maddsnacks

Poems by Palaces P.

Our Lover

Our lover told me that we’re cute together because we have similar tastes Isn’t it poetry? How profoundly he’s come to know me? Used to hold my hair when I’d overdrink; now, you hold it for him

& the light leaves my mouth & my skin tastes your teeth & it’s blood down my throat & it’s blood like red stars

Of Mice and Men

They are scared to look at me since when they do, they don’t often stop I joke around offense and they tremble Something flowing, turning upward in them, a shining flask

I’m tired of writing  of any violence except that one

It’s sad, I think how I spent a young life afraid of them Now, yes, thank God I do drink and enjoy

Leisurely Ramble

i found a picture of me after one of the times you made me cry but looking back it just looks like i got facefucked something you told me i don’t want because you told me what i want and like and you had to be more interesting but, look at me,  i’m writing poems like these now

do you think it’s because i didn't push your thoughts down the way that you’d do mine yes, just like you did, so many times, far too many facefucks for me— too much for my hands to count?

anyway, i got mine when we spoke the first time in months when i came to you all the way gory with my hurt you said not to contact you again, but i thought  that was weird 'cause i could only swear i wasn’t knocking at your door, i was trying to leave a dent

Wolves in My Kitchen

every day i get up at dawn, just to self-harm feeling like the new wolf in my kitchen—

not the one i saw when i was the only one in the house tripping out

and i see everything that i knew  of myself was just delusion,

needles and pins waking my limbs from the outside in—

so, i will go all inside out again disorderly

Boiling Water

i couldn’t be an actress, anymore; touching all of those feelings, all of the time,  i felt too raw that’s the reason i used to avoid your eyes and i cover my mouth, clench the other hand, when i abruptly recite A Philosophical Enquiry Into  the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

i have poems made up of unused titles about you

Palaces is Editor-in-Chief of Wrongdoing Magazine and an Editor at a few other publications, including CHEAP POP and Walled Women Magazine. She’s placed her own work in Eclectica Magazine, Maudlin House, BlazeVOX, Witch Craft Magazine and many others. She has a BAH from Queen’s University, and she is working on a budding book series. You can read more about her at pascalepotvin.comor @pascalepalaces on Twitter.

Red Flag by Dafna Steinberg

My flag boy and your flag boy were sit-tin' by the fire. 

My flag boy told your flag boy:

 "I'm gon-na set your flag on fire.

- Dixie Cups “Iko Iko”

I

For our first meeting, I arrive at the diner more or less on time. He is already there, which surprises me.

He is not my type at all.  

We met on a dating app. In one of his profile pictures he was drunk and shirtless. I have very little faith that this will go anywhere. 

He is conventionally attractive, with sandy blonde hair and a chiseled jaw. His name is Ted or Keith or Jake but he might as well be named after a Ken doll. He is wearing a peach colored polo shirt and pressed khakis. He looks up from the menu and sees me walking towards him. He smiles like a car salesman.  I smile back forcefully and fiddle with my phone so I can check the time before putting it in my purse. I figure we will be done in an hour.  

“Well, hello there!” he says a little too energetically. In his eyes, I see gears turning. 

I debate if I should order alcohol or not. 

II

Revealing our red flags becomes a game. 

He tells me stories of his recent travels to South America. He says he doesn’t have a job currently because he left his last one to travel. 

“Well that’s a red flag,” I say, louder than I probably should. In his eyes, I see a flash of shock and perhaps hurt. Maybe this will take less than an hour.  

He melts into amusement. 

“Are you counting red flags?”

“Are you not?” I maintain eye contact as I take a sip of water. 

He chuckles and looks as if he is about to say something when a server comes over to take our orders.

III

“So I was watching a documentary about a serial killer this week.” 

“Red flag,” I say, even though I love documentaries about serial killers.

He laughs and continues.  “It was about this guy called the Toy Box Killer. He lived in New Mexico and murdered women in a sound proof trailer. Before he killed them, he raped and tortured them.” 

In his eyes, I see a spark of mischief. He is trying to figure out what boundaries I have set. 

He has shown his hand. I decide to raise him. 

Leaning to him across the small table, I say in a low voice “Yeah…his name was David Parker Ray and he lived in Elephant Butte, New Mexico. It’s not far from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.” 

I can’t tell if he is surprised or disappointed.

“Red flag,” he says. The straight line of his mouth curls into a smile. “How do you know that?”

“I lived in Truth or Consequences for a six weeks while doing an artist residency. I learned a lot about the Toy Box Killer when I lived there.”

As I say this, I make sure to raise my eyebrows and widen my eyes. 

“Double red flag,” he says, bending even closer to me. 

IV

He tells me about his last job.

“Yeah, when I worked at the car dealersh-“ 

He stops himself midsentence. His looks at me, horrified.

“RED FLAG,” he says. 

I burst out laughing. Oh my God. He IS a car salesman. And without me saying anything, he already knows how I feel about it. I realize that maybe I was wrong about him. 

He pays the check and offers me a ride home. Even though I live walking distance, I accept and ask him if he is going to murder me.

V

He parks in front of my building. In his car, neither of us moves. I notice a drop of water hit the windshield and the skies open like a Biblical story. People run underneath awnings of local businesses. The more prepared thrust umbrellas in the air. I turn back and he is watching me. In his eyes, I see a full moon. Did he just lick his lips?

“My cheeks hurt from laughing so much,” he finally says. 

“Mine too.” 

He uses this as an invitation to touch my face. His hand feels soft against my skin. I close my eyes and feel his fingers trace down until they wrap around my throat. 

I smile. He squeezes.  

Later, he will tell me, “I don’t usually do that, but your body called for it somehow.”

VI

Before our second meeting, I want to keep the tension. I send him a text describing the outfit I have planned. His response is exactly what I hope. 

Awww lord help me.

Which Lord? Yours or mine?

Or Satan?

Definitely Satan. I think you’ll like a little evil.

Evil, no…but there may be an 

offering to a goddess.

Okay…as long as I don’t have to be good.

No, you don’t. As long as you 

don’t mind being the offering. 

But what kind of sacrifice would you 

be looking for?

I’m not looking for a sacrifice. 

I’m looking for an offering. 

There’s a difference. 

You’ll have to teach me.

VII

We meet outside in the rain. We both have umbrellas but he offers me his arm so I can walk underneath his. He compliments my outfit. It is the one I had described to him earlier. In his eyes, I see the fishnets I am wearing being ripped apart.

I take him to my favorite bar, a speakeasy upstairs from a dry cleaner. The doorman says hello to me and quickly gives him the up and down. The doorman looks back to me and gives me a quizzical face. 

“It’s just the two of us,” I tell the doorman with a wink. 

At the bar, I receive the same look from the bartender who makes small talk with us.

“Witch’s Brew?” the bartender asks me. I nod and the bartender leaves to make my drink. 

“They know you here, huh?” he asks watching the bartender pour champagne into a coupe glass. 

“Yes,” I say. I don’t mention that they normally see me alone. 

VIII

The room is molded Jello and we are watching it jiggle from the inside.  I down my third (or is it fourth?) Witch’s Brew. It is a simple concoction of champagne and crème de violette, a recipe I made up one drunken night.  The drink name comes from its color. In the warm tungsten glow of the bar, it looks like dark jade. When you shine a white light into it, it becomes a vibrant amethyst. It tastes like a love potion. 

He orders me another one, before nuzzling his lips into the curve of my neck. His hand skims under the bottom of my skirt and creeps to the inside of my thigh. 

IX

He sees the painting hanging above my bed. It is of a goddess holding a viper. He looks at it for a long time, examining the details of her hands and the scales of the serpent. Her eyes stare back at him, unblinking. For a moment, I wonder if they are communicating. 

“That is the goddess who needs an offering,” I say. 

What transpires next is a sequence: He reaches for the light switch. He grabs a fistful of my hair, like Perseus holding Medusa’s head. He throws me on the mattress with such force I fear the slats beneath will break. His body weighs me down like rocks in my pocket. I am drowning. 

Overwhelmed, I try to pull away but he pins my arms above me. He is breathing hard. The room spins. I wonder if any of this is real. There is a mounting pressure inside me that builds and builds, but doesn’t peak. It’s as if my body knows that he is ruining me. 

In his eyes, I see the fire with which he wants to burn me alive.

X

In my kitchen, I cut an apple and offer him a slice. With a smile, he says “You really are a witch.” I cannot tell if he is joking. 

He wraps his lips around the apple piece in my fingers and slowly bites down, crunching its crisp between his teeth. As he chews, his hands caress my bare back, pulling me close to him. He kisses me and I taste honey.  Transfixed, I drink him in. 

He is not my type at all. The best ones never are. 

Dafna Steinberg is an interdisciplinary artist, who makes work around the themes of feminism, identity, memory and grief. While her art practice is mostly in the visual, she has recently found a new facet of her voice through writing. Other writing pieces of hers have been published in Push Up Daisies! Magazine. Originally from Washington, DC, Steinberg currently resides in Philadelphia, PA with her cat, Otis. She can be found on Instagram @dafnasteinbergart

Blood & Black Leather by Perry Ruhland

Saint Sebastian, martyred for eternity in alternating tones of black and white, projected piety flickering across a brick wall. A phantom saint suspended in digital amber, roaring film grain burnt into the ropes coiled around his bare chest, searing through crooked arrows and congealing globs of black blood. Agony, captured in the single tear rolling down the model’s cheek. Ecstasy, preserved in the erection raging in the folds of his snug loincloth. The Elysian Field’s signature. It matched the atmosphere – stark, brutal, sexy. It matched the clientele, too.

Leon had noticed the man with the pierced nose checking him out twenty minutes ago. Despite the swarm of handsome faces intermingling among the dancefloor, the stranger was impossible to miss – tall, muscular, sporting ripped jeans and an unzipped leather jacket, a toned chest pressing against a skin-tight shirt. It was the meticulously-manicured appearance of the consummate bad boy, an ultimately flimsy facade when coupled with his bashfulness. Yes, bashfulness - for every time Leon’s gaze met the stranger’s own, his head jerked away, traces of crimson cheeks not entirely lost beneath the Pleasure Dome’s kaleidoscopic strobes. It was cute, or so Leon thought.

It was only after Leon had finished his second cocktail of the evening that the man made his move. His eyes met Leon’s own and finally stuck, a tight grin flashing across his face; controlled, cocky, a touch overcompensating for his prior cowardice. Leon grinned back. Just how he liked them.

Leon loved men. Not necessarily in the manner others of his persuasion loved men, although one could be forgiven for mistaking his love for theirs, but in a more spiritual sense. In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say Leon’s love for men was something more suited for the spiritual realm, a love akin to the way the architect loves the great cathedrals, and the astronomer loves the milky way. To Leon, the masculine were the one true Great Work of creation, alchemical perfection made manifest. He loved their forms, their scents, their rituals, their behaviors, their creeds, their sisyphean quest for an ideal they could never quite embody, always reaching, always struggling, always fighting. He could see it in the stranger’s posture as he pushed across the dancefloor, his muscles pulsing beneath his sleeves with every step, dual razorblades glistening in his eyes. He could feel it burning within himself.

The stranger spoke in a honeyed baritone barely discernible above the blaring cacophony of Bizarre Love Triangle, emerald eyes twinkling brighter than any light. He asked Leon if he wanted a drink. Leon knew his answer, but he didn’t reply. He watched instead, rapping his nails across the bar, polished pink digits clicking loosely in tune with the pounding drum machine. He admired the way the shadows sculpted the stranger’s cheekbones, the way a prism of flashing colors danced across his skin, the way a single bead of sweat rolled down his neck. For a moment, the stranger’s neck grew flushed. Leon smirked.

He accepted the drink, of course. The stranger smiled as he hopped onto an adjacent stool, his grin just wide enough to betray his manufactured cool. Leon asked for a rum and coke, and the stranger waved the bartender over. He ordered drinks, and Leon watched.

As Leon had discerned from afar, the man was quite cute – but there was something more to him, something exhilarating. It was in his shaggy op of raven hair, in the studded piercings through his right ear, in the stubble dancing across his lantern jaw, in the cracked sheet of onyx hastily painted across his nails, in the charmingly garish leviathan cross hanging from his neck. He had the appearance of a man who cared very much about how little it appeared like he cared – a certain goth-chic swagger, a cocksure posturing towards the darkness. Leon held back a smirk. If only he knew.

The stranger cleared his throat when the barkeep left. He stuck a hand out and said his name was Romeo. Leon laughed. Of course it was. Leon introduced himself, shaking the man’s hand. He had a firm grip, and judging by the little smirk he gave, he wanted Leon to know it. Leon found it adorable.

The drinks arrived soon after. Romeo slid the bartender a twenty and grabbed his glass, a tumbler of hickory fluid and fragmented ice. Leon asked him what it was.

“Jack, on rocks,” Romeo answered, the slightest tinge of a boast creeping into his voice. 

On cue, he took a sip. He made a point not to flinch.

“Ooh,” Leon cooed, sipping his own sugary cocktail. “A hard drink,”

“Yeah,” Romeo nodded, a twinkle igniting in those emerald eyes. “That’s how I like ‘em.”

Leon laughed. For as flushed as Romeo was on the approach, he appeared to have found his confidence by now, his leg kicked up against the bar in a facsimile of casual posture, his head resting against a flexing forearm, his face constantly affixed with that grin. He could see the intended darkness now, the mystery, the danger his uniform sought to embody; a thinly sketched aura, but a present one nonetheless. Leon couldn’t blame the stranger for being intimidated by him at first – all men were. He couldn’t blame them either.

He waited until the first drink was down to invite Romeo back to his place. The man with the pierced nose didn’t refuse. His mask faltered once more as he stumbled over an attempt at casual acceptance. Leon smiled. The stranger really was adorable. 

For a horrible moment, Leon almost felt bad for him.

Romeo drove the two home. He was too inebriated to drive properly, but sober enough that it didn’t pose any real danger. Besides, Leon noted, the gesture clearly meant a great deal to the stranger, who had made a show of hurtling down the road well over the speed limit whenever traffic allowed. He blasted music all the way – industrial stuff, mostly, clanging metal and tortured lyrics. Romeo mentioned he was a musician himself between songs. Made this kind of music. Leon giggled. Of course he did.

The duo sat on Leon’s couch and spent an hour emptying a champagne bottle. They discussed music, art, politics, and whatever else Romeo had on his mind. The man with emerald eyes naturally led the conversation, and Leon merely crafted his thoughts and opinions wholesale for whatever would best propel the dialogue. Romeo was enthusiastic about his interests, pinballing from topic to topic at a whirlwind pace, bombarding Leon with trivia and braggadocious claims of signed horror film posters and hookups with underground musicians. Truly, none of it interested Leon in the slightest; art, philosophy, politic, over the years he had come to find such diversions to be ultimately trivial in the face of his own particular pursuits. 

Yet therein lay the magic of beauty, true beauty – for even though the topics of Romeo’s discussion didn’t excite Leon on their own merits, Romeo made them exciting by simply being their vessel. It was in his silhouette, skilfully carved beneath the shadow of night, moonlight glistening across his form. It was in his arms, freed from the confines of his jacket, muscular without distorting or engorging their proportions. It was in his legs, long and thick and defined, stretched casually across the couch. It was in his cock, half-erect, pressed against the folds of black jeans. But it was more than his body. It was his delivery, his posture, his laughter, the way he’d lean forwards to listen as Leon strung along calculated responses, how he’d flash that grin after firing off a particularly bold statement. It was intoxicating.

In his many years on the prowl, Leon had taken countless ‘beautiful’ men home – men of superficial beauty, of sculpted bodies and dull souls, charming facades meant to be admired, their contents fated to be forgotten. This was the norm for such men – all charm and flash and bravado plastered over a yawning oblivion. Beautiful vessels, perhaps, but hardly beautiful men, objects crafted by God or His equivalent to be used and discarded. Romeo was an exception. Exceptions were rare. Exceptions were exciting.

Romeo was fully drunk by the time he kissed Leon. His mouth tasted of booze and spearmint. A sloppy kiss. It felt good regardless. Leon knew what came next. First went the shirt, peeled over Romeo’s head, skin-tight and drenched, smelling of sweat and cologne. Leon’s own hot-pink mesh top followed. Belts came next, and pants after. The two kissed again, embracing on the couch, toned bodies interlinked, the bulges between their legs pressed against each other. Romeo reached for Leon’s groin. Leon clasped his wrist.

“The bedroom,” He whispered.

Romeo didn’t have to be told twice.

Leon’s bed was front and center, king-sized and draped in lavender sheets. Besides it sat a nightstand, adorned with nothing but a lamp and a stout ceramic bowl. Attached to each bedpost, chains – silver chains and black cuffs. “Kinky,” Romeo snickered.

“Mmm,” Leon responded, draping an arm over Romeo’s shoulder, hairs tingling on the back of his neck. “I think they’d look good on you.”

 “I prefer to be on top.” Romeo smirked.

Leon chuckled and shoved the man onto the bed. 

“Not tonight you don’t.”

Romeo giggled as he hit the mattress, sprawling onto his back. And that’s when he saw it. Above him, suspended ten feet in the air, was a mirror, rimmed by a string of white lights. It was every bit as massive as the bed itself, and positioned precisely to present its double — a second bed, a second set of cuffs, a second Romeo. Yes, Romeo saw himself in that mirror, his arms, his legs, his abs, his cock, his own body, his perfect body, beauty bathed in an angelic glow, a prince of the night captured in shimmering crystal. Leon watched Romeo as he watched himself, admired himself, became himself. And there, sprawled across that bed, something changed. For reasons Romeo couldn’t quite understand but Leon knew perfectly well, something shifted within him, a new understanding of himself, of his role with Leon, of his role in the world. He did not want to be in control tonight. He wanted to be worshipped. To have his body be the vessel for another man’s prayer. He laughed. He grinned. He looked to Leon and met his eyes and that razor glint shined and he said–

“Why not?”

~

Leon stood before the mirror clad in leather pants and combat boots. He rolled the kamisori over in his hand. He murmured something before the blade in velvet tongues, his eyes closed, his hands clasped, fingers webbed around the handle, knuckles turning white. The razor kissed his lips. Words that none could hear reverberated across the blade. Pink tongue flashed across the edge. Blood and saliva intermingled and disappeared.

Leon loved the instrument. A single piece of stainless steel molded and hammered into a true masterwork of design; sharp, thin, elegant, flawless. It reminded him of himself.

He stuck the razor in his boot and returned to the bedroom.

~

Romeo, draped across the sheets, pale head propped up against violet pillows. Naked. Smiling. Blushing. Erect. Limbs spread out to each end of the bed, cuffs constricted around his wrists and ankles, chains pulled taut. Leon, legs straddled around his captive’s chest, leather pants pressed against bare skin. A finger slid across the submissive’s cheek and down his chin, stubble bristling beneath a pastel nail. A black ball gag, large and full of holes, dangled above Romeo’s mouth. Those emerald eyes fluttered between it and Leon.

Romeo asked for last words. Leon kissed him instead. Blood and saliva mixed between interlinked tongues. Romeo didn’t notice. Or he didn’t care. Ecstasy overwhelmed all else. His mouth curled open in a moan. The wiffle-gag followed, wedged between the submissive’s teeth, straps pulled tight around his head, buckled in the back.

“Comfy?” Leon asked, a light touch stroking his captive’s hair, obsidian strands threaded between his fingers.

Romeo grunted, an affirmation rendered wholly unintelligible. Drool bubbled up from the gag’s holes and cascaded down his cheek. His cock twitched. Leon grinned.

And he dug a single pink nail into porcelain flesh. A trickle of crimson oozed from the puncture wound, the bound prince buckling as folds of pristine skin unfurled into crimson buds. Romeo’s body quaked, hips twitching as Leon smeared red over white, inching down his captive’s torso and up his shaft, licking it off his fingertip. It tasted of salt and sweat and sugar, and it burned Leon’s throat and it burned just right. 

The kamisori slid from Leon’s boot and into his hand. The blade glimmered in the light, a thousand stars refracting off its shimmering edge. Leon lowered it to Romeo’s body with a trembling grip, his hand guided by bliss, tip trailing across the bound man’s form, tracing every muscle, every curve, the polished edge sending shivers down the beauty’s spine. He teased the razor up Romeo’s quivering cock, its point pressed against the pink head, beads of precum dripping down onto steel, smothering the mirror in hot fluids. Romeo moaned again. He mumbled something that sounded like ‘please’. Those emerald eyes ripped from the ceiling and met Leon’s once more.

And Leon froze.

There, bound below him, lay a man. Proportionally faultless, skin nigh-unblemished, soul untarnished, every centimeter of his body carefully composed, every fiber of skin glistening in the light. It was Romeo, just as he left him; naked, bound, aroused. But the man on the bed wasn’t merely Romeo. Maybe it was the blood on his tongue, maybe it was the burning in his loins, but here, now, Leon understood that the man bound to his bed was more than just a man – he was the ideal, he was the ideal Leon had been chasing his whole life. Romeo’s was a beauty that matched – no, surpassed – Leon’s own. He was the Great Work, the Perfect Man, an angel tied to a bed. 

Leon never had a true, lasting interest in other men. Not as anything but templates, canvases, models, abstractions. Relationships had never crossed his mind, and the idea of actual romance with a man held no appeal. For a moment, that changed. For a moment, Leon wished he could be with Romeo forever. In this moment, in this eternity, Leon does not tarnish the perfect body, he does not destroy the miracle of creation. He lives with it, he embraces it, he fuses with it, and the two burn together in a light that slays Venus, that drives Narcissus to despair, that blinds the Demiurge. A life unimaginable.

The vision was perfect. And Leon chose the alternative. He chose a greater ecstasy. Because this Romeo in chains – he was a gift from the heavens. The ultimate man, an Adonis insurmountable, every curve and every surface of his body impeccable. He was brought to Leon’s bed for a reason. He was brought there to be enjoyed. To be destroyed. To have Leon be the one to do it. To taste the obliteration of pure beauty and defile the angelic personified. Nobody since the legionnaires who struck down Saint Sebastian with their volleys were ever able to enjoy such a beauty in such a pure expression of love. Nobody would ever love this man in such an immaculate way as Leon. He would be the first to love this Great Work as a man should. He would be the last to.

Leon understood this to be his destiny. He ejaculated in the confines of his leather. 

So he leaned forward, planted a kiss on Romeo’s forehead, and slashed him open from his throat to his sternum.

Romeo screamed and gargled and came. Hot love splattered the sheets. Arterial spray dotted Leon’s face. Romeo writhed in his bonds, his dying cries lost behind his gag, bubbles of blood and saliva building and sweltering and bursting as flesh folded and blossomed and bled. “It’s okay,” Leon whispered, grabbing the stygian bowl from the nightstand and pressing it against his victim’s yawning gash. “It’s okay now. It’s all over.”

The kamisori dropped. Leon cradled Romeo’s cheek. The captive man wept and the killer dried his tears. 

“It won’t hurt anymore,” Leon promised. “It’s done.”

Romeo’s gaze met Leon’s own for the very last time.

“Let go.”

Leon watched the last moments of life dance across Romeo’s eyes. Those wonderful emerald eyes. The razors in them dulled. The fight behind them ceased. No amount of strength, nor spirit, nor struggle could stop this. His battle meant nothing anymore. So he looked up. 

Romeo lost his life staring in the mirror above him, and in those last moments he understood that he did not die as a man. He died as an angel. Beauty made flesh.

With the last of his strength, the Great Work smiled and died.

~

Leon stood before the shrine, nude and spattered in blood, lost in the utterance of his holy gospel. A story of love and lust, Apollo and Bacchus, heaven and hell, night and day, pain and pleasure, blood and black leather. He had been here many times before. He would be here many times again. Closing his eyes, Leon held the black bowl to his lips and drank. Blood, saliva, sweat, and sperm mixed in his mouth, swirled together, and were summarily spewed forth, a concoction splattering across the shrine’s marble face, fluids flickering in candlelight. Something rumbled. Twin mirror-eyes glowed.

In those glowing pools, Leon saw his eyes as two stars, his hair as molten gold, his face as carved marble, his skin as shimmering diamond. In those glowing pools, he saw himself as he is, himself as he always was, and he knew for as long as the moon rose and waters flowed and beautiful men fell beneath his blade, he would see himself as he will always be.

He began to cry.

Perry Ruhland is an author and filmmaker based in Chicago, Illinois. His work explores grotesque terrors, gay masculinity, and cosmic despair. He has seen 'Cruising' at least eight times. He can be found on Twitter @Perry_Ruh

Blood on Our Hands by Damien Ark

with scorched earth unnoticed

putrefied oceans of sludge

boiling into soaring flames

dancefloors become memorials

no more safe places to pray

suffocating with a bag over his head

or a boot on a neck (etc.…)

the dead are your laughing stock

wouldn’t it be funny to entice a war

because it's all a joke to you

here’s the graph to show you this is real

not it’s not. but that livestreamed 

facebook video of a mosque shot up

if only you could VR pleasure overload that shit up your ass or cunt

will my grave

have a swastika painted over it

who will be there

to soak up the blood

and squeeze it back into my coffins

to kiss the forehead of a grieving mother

her son drawn against the wall

who will be there

to scrape up the remains

of brain matter and lacerated flesh

so we continue to pray for rain

in every language with the same tongue

you will disintegrate

like you always do

turn your back

when the finger is raised

there's no forgetting

when nobody had ever cared

and it all happens so fast

before the slate is blown to smithereens

and left to collapse in on itself

totality of permanence is always

a complicated concept for those who

are never affected by it

by those who must learn of it through

bullshit extra-curriculum classes and school books

and when those who suffer ask for recognition

the answer is always no

do you dare to reach for

something fragile that's descending

before it shatters at your feet

as if it were a natural instinct to you

the answer is always no

lucid dreaming could be

more common than existing

when we're obsessively craving

for absolutes, a tinder match

materialism, satin furniture

gelatin anti-aging capsules

a tiny affordable bedroom 

dragon fruit exported from three separate countries

a triple whopper and a twelve-pack of beer 

but besides eternal life,

warm bodies with no souls

we could wake up under

a bodhi tree

we could be living in a simulation

but then what does it matter

what is there to celebrate

the wheel of life

unbreakable petrified wood

a crumbling staircase

this perfect night terror haunting

in which we seek freedom

from our razorfucked twisted minds or

to be ourselves without social prejudice

this corrupted hardware sparking

like a dirty thunderstorm

i think we’re ready to heal now

we could walk hand in hand and

get shot to death and driven over by 

patriots and martyrs 

gold towers collecting and selling the data

we could be living their simulation

but then what does it matter

if all that matters to us

is to fulfill our hunger, desire, fears

we could conquer mars

let this planet rot

and detonate another

we could sandwich all of the trash islands

and bury it on the moon

destitution

gore and soft fingertips

decay down to the cellular structure

destructive energies between two bodies

host, worm, pressure, the worthless creature

burrows into my forehead and rims my eyelids

hatred and violence fetishized

male embodiment, the hand is a bump stock

crushing the core of our corrupt nature

cleansing bullets and ruined flesh

with a smothering blanket of reflection

of love, compassion, empathy

take your tanks to the vigil

rub your face in the blood of these strangers

false limitations like a wet dream in limbo

snapped together, relocate your limbs

virginal and pure like the morning star that you are

nobody could hold that hate better than you

remember what touch is meant to feel like

we're not supposed to act this way

we should know this by now

the answer is always no

the sound of their guitars strumming wildly

mimicking the sound of bullets flying

great-grandma's parched lips singing

a hundred-year-old Caucasus melody

they raced horses while dancing

and taught their children the lute

and accordion and how to fire back

with their tongue, music, prayer

violin strings plucked apart

wooden necks like daggers into throats

a passport to Georgia

a phonograph to Azerbaijan

postcards from Armenia

here is the sound of a million dead bodies

being buried in mass graves

or left to rot in shit

through a choir of children slaughtered

limbs scattered where their songs were born from

listen to the hymn

some refuse to hear it

some refuse to believe it

music and truth buried deep in our dirt

What are your true colors? Which of these examples represents you? An American flag? A confederate flag? A blue lives matter flag? A flag with a lone star on it? A flag with a tank on it? A flag with a snake on it? A blue lives matter flag with a Punisher skull on it? A confederate flag with a blue lives matter flag on it? A nazi flag? A bikini top American flag made in an American prison? A confederate flag over your genitals made by a kid with a gun to their head in a sweatshop? Selling their body to rich American businessmen visiting for a quick venture fuck. American flag pinned to the cashmere suit. Purchasing a Black Lives Matter Bumper Sticker and natural handcrafted bath bombs on Etsy. Purchasing a Youth Large Blue Lives Matter shirt and natural handcrafted bath bombs on Etsy. Will it fit my yet to be indoctrinated son? When he goes to school, will he know which flag is which? I see the American flag. And I see the flag on my shirt. I see the confederate flag on her hat. I see the Trump flag on a barbed wire fence outside the local grocers shops. I see a handmade Trump Confederate flag painted onto a rundown rural Midwest house. The black population in the rundown rural town with the rundown rural Midwest houses - .02%. No flag? Antifa flag?  Do you have a flagpole? Do you put it up and down the way you’re supposed to or do you keep it up in your front yard like it’s just another garden accessory? What do you think about burning flags? What do you think about what happens when a flag falls to the ground? What do you think about people wearing a flag? What do you think the military thinks about it? What do you think about the American flag on the moon? What do you think about the American flag forced down the throats of every country that can be exploited? Which flag do you pledge for? Does the kid look at his shirt, look at the hat, look at the American flag on the left side of the classroom and then the lone star flag on the right side of the classroom and pledge to them all? Or just one of them? Can he decide? When should he stand or sit down? There is no color in any of the flags. There is no flag. There is no symbol. What you conceive of it has been inside you since the beginning of human evolution. You won’t read about that in the Biology books in Texas, kid. Are you a pride flag? A trans flag? A pride trans poc flag? Let’s fight over it. Which is more inclusive? Are you feeling heard yet? Are you feeling included yet? Has queer replaced gay yet? The fuck does any of this shit matter if you’re all shot dead in the same place at the same time? Feeling like a real fucking faggot right now. Can I drive down a neighborhood of confederate flags with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker? A pride flag on a flagpole next to a Blue Lives Matter flag on a flagpole as a truck drives by with a confederate flag waving in the wind. Is that a religious flag or a nationalist flag? Where does that belong? Not at my dyke rally, faggot. I thought we were on the same side, then you said we weren’t, but now we’re all shot to death. Which flags from which countries do you support? Which do you want to burn? Do you ever buy a tiny pin for your backpack or a shirt of a country you’ve never been to and know nothing about to show your support for them? Would you wear it while sucking dick in front of a mother fucker that’s ready to chop your head off? Fuck it, you’re getting your head chopped off wherever. Which flags do you fear most? Do most flags look the same? There is no color in the flags. There is no flag. Do you let the waste you leave behind represent you? What does representation look like to you? Where did that cloth come from? Where did that hat and that bikini top and that thread come from? Nice sweater. So postmodern and outspoken. Yeah, that represents your personality so well, like holy fuck. You look so good in that. You’re going to get fucked. People are going to fucking love you. Did you write a thank you letter to the eight-year-old girl that made it in a half-flooded garage, emphasizing how sorry you are that she gets gang-raped by her ten traffickers every night? No, take that ugly sweater off. It doesn’t look good on you. Do you ever feel pretty or handsome when you’re naked or do you only have high self-esteem when you’re wearing clothes that represent you? I think it would all look better thrown into the center of the street like the piece of shit it is. Are you protesting yet? Are you dressed for it? One end of the flagpoles from the liberal goes through the eyes of the conservative. One end of the flagpoles from the conservative goes through the eyes of the liberal. The flags touch each other. They form one color. No color. One unified symbol. No symbol. Here it is. The debate’s over. You lose and you lose and you lose. Some of us have lost since we were born, living in a boring cyberpunk dystopian nightmare, and some of us are having the biggest fucking wet dream we’ve ever had before we croak on our last breath. You see a void in it. We’re all apathetic. We’ve all known it from birth. You hate the way things are going, I hate the way things are going, you’re one side, I’m the other, we both picked sides, we both want to see shit fucked up for good, we both want to die. Is it coming quick and heavy like a cock slamming into every hole or slow and painful like a hand over your mouth and the cock thick and long and drilling into you as the blood runs down the rapist's balls? Everything ends here, not for the better, not for the worst, because that’s how we designed it over thousands of years. You can feel it, right? The tower wrapped in cloth will collapse. The bombs will drop. And yet we will build and survive like roaches all over again. 

Torches of Iniquity by Kurt Luchs

A nasty rumor is easier to get started than my old pickup. When I realized the engine wasn’t even going to turn over, I gave up and walked the half-mile to the coffee shop, where a heated discussion was already underway among the usual suspects. As it so often did these days, it focused on our small town’s newest residents, Jim and Mary Nickerson.

“I tell you it isn’t natural,” said Tom.

“What isn’t?” I said.

“The strange lights in their living room window every morning,” he said.

“That’s no crime,” I said, “unless they’re signaling to enemy planes or something like that.”

Lauri chimed in. “What about last fall, when we burned our annual Wicker Man and they took no part?” she said.

“The right to opt out is a basic American freedom,” I said.

“But it doesn’t exactly make them good citizens either, does it?” said Mark.

“It doesn’t make them anything,” I said.

“That’s right,” said Joey, “they’re nothing to us, nothing at all.”

“That isn’t what I meant, Joey,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.

“I’ve seen some things,” she said.

“What things?” I said.

“Like all the weird packages that are delivered to their door,” she said.

“Yeah, I’ve seen them too,” said Meg.

I was mentally preparing a withering retort but then Jay said, “I heard something when I walked the dog past their house the other day.” Our little circle paused expectantly, wondering what fresh iniquity we were about to learn of. “I heard them saying the alphabet backwards, without being stopped first by a state trooper,” he said.

Somehow, that did it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“We’ve got to burn them out, there’s no other way,” somebody said, I didn’t see who. Frank the coffee shop owner pulled out a box of torches, lit them one by one, and solemnly handed them to each member of the group. I refused to carry one, but marched alongside them as they left the coffee shop and headed to the Nickerson’s place with murder in their eyes.

Mary Nickerson answered the door wearing only a grass skirt and a necklace of flowers. Her breasts were bare, and let me tell you they improved the mood of the group considerably. We let out a collective sigh.

Mary smiled and said, “Oh, how wonderful! You’ve brought more torches! Our new shipment of tiki torches hasn’t arrived yet, so this is perfect timing.”

I said, “Are you holding a tiki party at this hour of the morning?”

“This is how we start every day,” Mary said, “in honor of our island home. Jim and I both come from the same tiny Hawaiian isle. But please, it’s cold out there, come on in and join the party.” 

We stepped inside. There was a warm fire burning in the fireplace and a couple of tiki torches flickering. A Gabby Pahinui album was playing. Jim Nickerson came over and shook our hands. He too wore only a grass skirt and a flower necklace, but his naked breasts didn’t cause nearly as much excitement. Mary brought out a bottle of Bailey’s and poured a healthy slug into each of our coffee cups.

“Is this one of your quaint island customs?” said Joey.

“Not really,” Mary said, “but it ought to be, don’t you think?” We all nodded in agreement and began to remove the clothing from our torsos..

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) has poems published or forthcoming in Plume Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Bitter Oleander. He won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press.