Poems by Koss

Where Art Came From

the primateria of paintings

was a clot of blood

from the vagina of a walrus

once extracted

it was packed in a tube

called Winsor Newton Walrus Red

Andy Warhol used it for Campbell’s Soup—

the first known paintings.

meanwhile in Germany, 

Joseph Beuys was slathering something 

on paper

no one thought to ask what—

probably bunny blood

Nowhere Pussy Poem

And there we were and

here we are again and I

don't know how we got

to this place this dark

space between walls that

bleed dim dreams

And I'm spread-eagled in

a Ferlinghetti poem teetering

on the ledge of something

empty yet monumental

Spinning with my nowhere

pussy on the axis of your

nowhere hand is where its

at tonight in Nowhere Pussy-

land

And you are fucking me into 

non-existence with your big 

dumb club hand fucking me and 

fucking me and not fucking me at

all Fucking the pussy that's not mine

that's not there, that's maybe

yours and funny thing is I think I

could get to like it here in Nowhere

Pussyland it feels kind of familiar

here like punching a clock every

morning for two years or eating

the same sandwich every day at

twelve Yes, I could grow to like

it but I think I'll pass

This nowhere pussy is going somewhere,

nowhere, over there, anywhere 

without you

Koss, a queer writer and artist, has also been published in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Rogue Agent, Exquisite Corpse, and many other journals. She also has work forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020. Find her on Twitter @Koss51209969, Instagram @koss_singular, or her website at http://koss-works.com.

The Dictionary (Part Seven) by Jane Judith

straw:  eventually you'll admit to recognizing some number of patterns

bataille:  i can't imagine who would have the time to transform what we have into love

horse:  i've always wanted someone to die at a good place in my emotional arc since i know i could never kill someone at a good place in my emotional arc

writing:  scar tissue just doesn't happen that often what with modern protections.  i'll never be permanent so i have to do something, and a paycheck is supposed to be guarantee that my interests are skin deep

mammals:  hegemony probably wouldn't function if it didn't fear whatever comes next.  foresight will win it some millennia then sublimate into horror films

big:  equality on my end is only a stepping stone to inferiority.  if not i wouldn't value it

worthlessness:  eventually you'll have struck enough poses that you'll get to admit to being a poseur

nature:  equality on my end is only a stepping stone to inferiority.  if not i wouldn't value it

insects:  i actually used to focus on things

gun:  like in the borges story, the old gods realized too late that being formally recognized as associates was the prerequisite to a focused massacre.  one wonders if they ever really paid attention to their subjects, the way they're surprised by the appearance of something as phallic as a gun

acker:  i happen to relate much more to the people i'm paid to pity than to the rest of the staff who's involved in this grift

cock:  the gentleman was familiar, so i was certain our encounter was bound to end in death

pussy:  i love you so much that i want each tooth to feel like the prick of a harp string.  if you're in my stomach we won't feel affection

athena:  the hum around words is a pathetic thing.  i hope to grow small in its artificial light.  i aspire to die simply with a lover by my side, with some pretensions of being more important than i am.  i'd like my final words to be something i would never believe

cunt:  i'm trying to suck out your soul or your entrails, which science says are the same

hetero:  like jesus, i feel the weight of having to carry my own wood.  i smuggle in more comparisons via the correctness of my obscenities

cattle:  it's probably disgusting to project possible earnest moments of understanding onto people who just see me as a co-worker

sheep:  i strive more violently when i have nowhere soft to rest myself.  the modern world keeps me safely away from those heights.  it's hard to admit that stillness is mostly valuable as an endpoint

russia:  there are people with more dignity than me

electricity:  hegemony might have done more good than you ever will

fashion:  i could've paid less or more attention in geometry and be running the world by now

twitter:  the pathetic me is the real one and the one who leaves incisions is just a parasite on someone who's trying their honest best.  i convince myself the opposite is true and scribble words

james the greater:  the gentleman was familiar, so i was certain our encounter was bound to end in death

hen:  people talk to me about the daybreak and i try to write everything down but even when i understand i know they're better qualified

pink:  there are buttons i would press one trillion times

husserl:  walking into the city gives me the chance for confrontation.  if i keep it in my head i'm always winning.  i pass close to a restaurant's outdoor seating and hope the patrons are disgusted enough to order another round of eighteen dollar drinks

grey:  subjective soft edges seek objective ones

nine:  if i touch an itch it keeps being an itch forever, but i also end up getting in trouble.  sunglasses are an incredible work around, and so are browser screens, but nothing really compares to being alone

rimbaud:  there's so much fucking anime that tells you to live in the real world and has that message ignored by all of its fans, which is why i admire them or suck them off.  if i ever watched television that was honest i would change my name

television:  the muscular tics that determine every scene you play are actually quite small

man:  if you have a flask in your desk you must be living through some kind of gilded age.  i'll admit to being jealous

hermes:  if you don't listen to other people, you'll be incredibly boring.  if that changes you you're a victim of peer pressure and may be entitled to compensation

ten:  hegemony has a taste i take for granted

taste:  some day i might have wanted to have had one

Jane Judith (@udasnej) lives and writes in the Midwest United States and the internet.  Previous works are at https://neutralspaces.co/iridescence4/

Palm Wounds by Sam Westcott

I: The Farmer 

The farmer grew wretched that summer, his skin turning grey, shallow, inward upon itself, and it occurred to him the man who called himself his son would soon be expecting the farm willed to him. 

Kyle, the farmer’s grandson, had flown a drone over the farmer’s property at the head of the season. When the boy showed the farmer the footage, the farmer watched the boy’s laptop screen in silence. He blinked, a slow recognition uncoiling in his head, headed to the door. He didn’t return until sometime after sunrise, and lying in his bed, couldn’t sleep, but pretended to sleep, the boys’ morning movements sounding muffled through his door. 

When he rose and took to the kitchen, and the boy asked him where he’d been, the farmer said simply, “Thought I saw something on that video of yours.”  

Kyle was munching oatmeal at the kitchen table, the strawberries they were growing together staining the milk a stark, Mars-like red. “Was it those tanks? By the woods?” 

The water tanks. The boy had flown his drone over them and caught a mass of flies resting atop the tanks, hovering around them in mid-air. Little black specs swarmed together, a cloud of contracted pupils. A cloud of pupils he thought he could hear buzzing in unison on the video, meant mammal death. 

He sat beside his grandson at the table, his breath coming slow and heavy and deep from his chest. “Keep a secret?” he said. 

Dawson, and his wife, Cathy, had adopted Kyle when he was four, after his parents had died in a car crash. That’s when the farmer met him, and he’d become his grandson. Now, Dawson and Cathy lived with him in the city. During the fall, the trio trucked the farmer’s produce into town for him. Laid it out on fold-out tables, selling it to the city folk for cash. The farmer liked that Kyle had been bred into this and how he had a head-start in kindergarten math from counting the change from the customers. 

But this fall, the farmer wanted Kyle to stay back on the farm with him. When Dawson asked the farmer about this one day, Dawson’s truck idling in the famer’s driveway, the famer tilted his chin down as if to protect it, looked at him that way. “Just a secret project,” he said. “You know? Between two old farm hands”. 

The farmer had a black cavity for a mouth now, he realized. His teeth coming loose from their gums, lolling onto his tongue. His spit a dehydrated piss-brown, his piss a blood-brown that soaked the earth once a day near supper time, when Kyle would have to clutch a fistful of flannel to hold the old man upright. 

 He knew Kyle could tell he was dying, and still the boy walked beside him down the rows of strawberry bushes, two figures bent wrinkled and brown and calloused in the sun. The berries staining the air around them in a way that seemed to make them the only thing that mattered, and they were occasionally giving the other permission to slip the sweet life into their mouths. 

One day, the farmer rose sullenly, pulled upwards as though by threads. A few rows over, Kyle was fastidiously filling a bucket of berries. The farmer’s hand came to his heart, black spots floating into his vision.

When he awoke, he was in the farmhouse, and Kyle was trying to get him to drink some water. 

“Go back into the city tonight,” the farmer said. It’d taken a while for Kyle to convince him the black spots he’d seen before passing out weren’t flies. And calming down, laying down stripped on the couch, the farmer realized he hadn’t let himself get inside fear like that unless he was dreaming, and couldn’t control it anyway. “Tell your father to come back here tomorrow.” 

“Will you be ok, grandpa?” 

There was a small bowl of the day’s strawberries washed and laid beside him. The farmer chose the biggest strawberry he could see from the pile before him, held it between his thumb and first finger, and laid it over his eye like an eyepatch. “Strawberry fields, forever,” he said, and his laugh croaked, sputtered, emanated dust.  

II: Kyle

The next day, Dawson rolled the truck to a stop in the farmer’s driveway. From the backseat, Kyle imagined the view of the place overhead, as if shot from his drone – there was a grey particulate blanketing the flat earth, the crops. The trees wilted, wayward. And when the wind came, spirals of dust, and soil spread upwards from the land, and he wondered if at the back of the property, that thick, growing mass of flies would spiral with it.  

Kyle often imagined the world like this, as seen from above. From up there, he thought, people’s shadows stretched out elongated, grown far before them. And he saw the human race as designed by aliens. Each individual with its own silent tag, a silhouette so large that when a person passed beneath the light of that dying star, they could be seen, and identified from far away, at the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere. It was here he liked to think of the flies as coming from. That thin layer of gas that separated the planet they lived on from that other. That mystery outside of the earth that was not the earth, but space, that blackness the earth was just one tiny part of. 

He let his gaze shift toward the cattle roaming the open fields acres away from him. The bells around their necks clanging on the wind, a sound that tied them to a man he knew without knowing was no longer apart of this world, would no longer hear them. 

Time passed like this, and when his father returned from inside the house, and approached the truck, Kyle could see in his eyes he was somewhere else. Maybe somewhere long before there was a Kyle, or somewhere long after there was anybody, and they stayed that way and shifted on the road as he began to drive back into the city. And the rattle of the dash between them, and the revving of the engine, and finally Kyle asked it though he didn’t have to ask it, that smell back on the farm, that was grandpa, yeah? 

Cathy was waiting on the porch for them when they got home, the will laid out on the table before her. Kyle watched her hand Dawson a margarita. “You didn’t tell me you’d signed it?” she said. 

“I didn’t.” 

Kyle could still smell the farmer, and he realized that Dawson could too, he was gulping the drink, red liquid sloshing out of his mouth, and eyeing the salt around the edge of the glass like he was thinking about snorting it. Kyle stepped around him, peered at the will: yep, there was Dawson’s signature slung cursive on the bottom.  

“Dawson,” Cathy said, picking up the stapled papers, turning them around as if having them upside down to Kyle would prevent him from reading it. “It says the farmer is passing the farm onto Kyle?”

Dawson blinked, his eyes just blinking. His temple cracked against the railing as he fell. From above him, Kyle saw how dark Dawson’s skin had become, how shriveled, and pruned. And he thought how strange his shadow must look now from above, now his soul was unclipped from it.   

Kyle stepped into the house. He had a small plastic bin in the fridge that he kept refilling with berries every time he went to the farm. When he returned to the deck, his mother was crying. “Berries?” he said, handing out the bowl of them. And then his mother, the mascara scarring her dark eyes, and matching the dark roots in her hair where the blonde was fading, ate one.   

III: Cathy

The first thing Cathy noticed as she sat across from Dawson, and Francis, was that the bandage that had been draped around Dawson’s palm for the past couple weeks was now gone. They were sitting in an Italian place in the city. It was the first restaurant Cathy, and her boyfriend, Jerry, had gone to when they first started dating.  

Cathy began pouring the four of them half glasses of Cab Sav. “Glad to see your hand is doing better, Dawson,” she said. Across the table, Francis smiled at her, and rested her hand on Dawson’s forearm. 

Dawson let his hand fall to the table, palm-up. Buried in the flesh there, the faintest divots. “Got lucky,” he said. “Kid only held on for a few minutes.” 

“What was he so mad about?” Jerry asked. His voice sounded low, and his speech unfurled slow and sure, like his thoughts were well water he slowly dragged up to the surface, passed around verbally. 

“Just got ticked off in the barn feeding the chicks,” Dawson said. “Short-tempered kid, one of the ones Cathy works with.” 

“Yes,” Cathy said. She’d volunteered at a juvenile delinquent program. A lot of the kids just needed help regulating their emotions, learning that they could control them by changing the way they thought about certain things. Of course, it didn’t help that a lot of them had had fucked up things happen to them at various points of their lives. Cathy mostly worked finding jobs for them. “But he apologized, right?” she said.

Dawson nodded. “After I told him to leave the farm. If the farmer had heard about what happened –” but his speech was cut off then, and he was laughing. 

“Did he find work?” Francis said. 

Cathy felt Dawson’s shoe come down onto the toe of her pumps, and she recoiled it back to her side of the table. “Yes,” Cathy said. “At a car wash.” 

When the meals arrived, and they were eating, Cathy lay her fork down silently onto her plate. She sat there, eyes passing over each of them until finally, each one of them lifted their gaze from their plate and onto her pre-meditated smile. “We have an announcement,” Cathy said, and reached across the table to hold her sister’s hand. As if they were the ones who had been married, had always been married, and like no man was ever going to come between them. 

“Francis,” Cathy had said, a couple weeks before the dinner. “I can carry your child.” Harvest moon light upon the dash, and in through the windshield of the pickup truck, Francis at the wheel, Cathy beside her. The headlights out into the field before them, the corn stalks arcing their stiff backs into the frost-threatened night. 

Francis had been nervous about carrying. Their own mother, Suzette, had had two miscarriages before Francis was born. Three years later, another miscarriage, and then a year later, Cathy. Cathy knew that Francis had been just old enough that that miscarriage preceding her own birth had been fingerprinted onto her young memory. Pressed deep into the amygdala, and that now, as an adult, she often predicted future miscarriages for herself, playing the ‘what if’ game with Cathy over the phone – Francis tossing up different end-of-day scenarios (“what if I miscarriage and Dawson doesn’t love me, anymore?”; or worse, “what if I don’t survive the childbirth, and Dawson has to raise the child alone?”) – and Cathy reasoning these what ifs into little fruit flies, swatting them away. Only now, their mother seemed to be haunted by the premature deaths of her babies in her old age. And instead of talking with Cathy every night on the phone, Cathy knew that Francis was putting in time with her mother. They just knew each other better, is what she told herself. 

Cathy rolled down the window a little more, let her forearm stretch out beneath the stars. “I know you feel the farmer wants a grandson,” Cathy said now, and reached behind her, found the blanket Dawson kept tucked back there, and unfolded it around them. 

“Granddaughter,” Francis said, and laughed. 

“Yes,” Cathy said. “Because we were always the better workers.” 

Francis killed the headlights, and they sat there like they were fourteen again, and had just gotten off work. Maybe that first summer when Francis met Dawson, a new boy at the soccer field, and he’d gotten both Francis, and Cathy jobs on his father’s farm. 

“Remember the old water tanks out back?” Cathy said. 

“Yeah – left there from the war.”

“All those games of spotlight -- remember we’d hide in them, sometimes?” 

“The best hiding place,” Francis said. “Everyone was so scared to go back there. Nobody looked.” Cathy looked into the sky above, each star a kind of flashlight shooting desperate down onto the earth.

“You really mean it?” Francis said then, suddenly. “You’d really carry the baby for me?” 

“Of course.” 

“And Jerry? He’s OK with it?” 

“Yeah,” Cathy said. “He’ll be ok.” She pinched Francis’ thin thigh, and then her mouth was tasting her sweat-stained summer sweater. She ran her hand along her back. “Just think of it as my way of paying you back for all that time you spend talking with mom.” 

Of course, a year later, Cathy and Dawson would roll Francis, and Jerry’s dead bodies into the water tanks on back of the farmer’s property. The farmer was gone for the evening – gone into the city for something with Kyle, and that harvest moon up above them again in the sky. The paint-chipped water tanks reflecting the light of the sun that the moon was reflecting onto it into Cathy’s eyes, making her pupils small and animal.   

“You sure this is the best place?” she said. The bodies were stiff, frozen. Each tucked into a six-foot compost bag, leaves and twigs thrown in on top of their heads to hide them. 

“It is,” Dawson said. “They’ll stay here for a few weeks, and then these tanks will get taken down to the dump.”  

“What if the farmer comes back here?” 

“He won’t.” The bandage was gone now finally on his left hand, but in the silver light of the moon, Cathy thought she could still make out the faint divots in his palm. The skin in the centre of it seemed swollen slightly. Like an extra layer of skin had grown over something buried into it, caused a small mound, a tumor. And seeing this physical manifestation of their secret between again, Cathy was reminded that on some level, she trusted him.  

When the bodies were dumped, they drove back the lightless farm roads to their own place and passed Jerry’s SUV smashed and burning on the curb. Dawson slowed the truck as they drove by, and Cathy got a good lungful of the smoke.  

She thought she couldn’t remember what’d happened to the SUV, that the memory she had of her and Dawson destroying it, lighting it on fire wasn’t a memory at all, but something thin, malleable, and imagined. 

But they’d done it for a reason. 

“I can’t tell her,” Dawson had said, hands coming down onto the kitchen table, spilling wine between them. “It’s better I kill them both, and we adopt Kyle. Live together. It’s better Francis dies not knowing, than to live with the knowing, to raise a child that is not hers.”  

“Jesus, Dawson,” was all she’d said. And she’d smiled. 

She was listening to “You Are Too Beautiful,” playing on the record player in the living room in the farmhouse Francis and Dawson had just built. It was a month before the four of them met at that Italian place she liked; a month before her and Francis’ announcement. And weeks before they’d sit in the truck together, and Cathy would tell her she’d carry for her.  

Their mother was unwell, and Cathy could hear her voice through the crackle of the receiver as Francis held it to her ear in the kitchen. The sound of her mother’s weeping blurring with Frank Sinatra’s voice coming low through the speakers. She poked her head into the kitchen, and Francis turned, and met her eye. Certain things pass through sisters this way, and Cathy sensed Francis telling her it was fine, she could handle it. And then Francis moved an empty bucket with her foot, and smiled at her, as if to tell her to bring in the clothes from the line. So she picked it up on her way out the kitchen door, and walked into the August afternoon. 

The sun came down in that way it does at the end of August when there’s a hint of summer’s own death within the tint of it. An annual realization that summer was not immortal but was passing now like all things into something else. 

At the clothesline, Cathy plucked a clothespin from her sister’s blouse, and laid it into the blue plastic tub beside her foot. She could feel the grass beneath her feet, and then the sound of Dawson’s axe coming from within the barn. It was a few steps over, and when she entered, she stood there, bathing in the heat, and the scent of the horses. The fluorescent lights overhead dim, and faded, and it made the entire space feel well-worn, and lived in. She moved through the doorway, her shadow elongating long and black onto the wooden floor.

Dawson was crouching now at the back of the barn and she could see his white shirt tucked into his jeans. And she approached slowly, and stood beside him, she took in the chicken coop before them. A small herd of yellow energy, all moving, and waddling, and clicking their tiny beaks. There was a warm red light beaming down into the coop, throwing off heat as though it were a mother. And Cathy felt this warmth on her bare, thin shins, and let her hand drop onto Dawson’s hard shoulder. 

His head turned then, aware of her now for the first time that afternoon. She heard his lips part, the horses grow silent around them, aware of something, and the dust pirouetted around Cathy’s eyeballs, and she sneezed. She felt her hand tighten around Dawson’s triceps, and still he didn’t speak. Like he too could hear this silence and wasn’t ready to disturb it, or wanted to disturb it, recognizing it as a kind of calm you want to avoid having in your life.  

He’d stopped feeding the chicks, and Cathy watched as they moved in a turgid flurry of yellow fluff, and then she was pulling him up by the bicep, and he was coming willingly, and they were falling onto a pile of hay off to the side. And he was behind her now, her dress pushed up, his belt buckle coming down lightly on her bare skin, and then his bare skin on hers, and then inside of hers and they moved quietly, her body pressing a kind of angel into the hay, and she stuffed her mouth with it to keep the silence alive. 

She didn’t think it would happen, or that it would happen this suddenly, and then suddenly it stopped, and she turned to look, Dawson’s blue eyes wide and wild, his fingertip out and under the fluorescent light a small grey orb of semen formed perfect there, resting. And in the space between them, now in that moment, possibilities were birthed. Alternatives. 

So Cathy chose one, and pushed Dawson’s finger into her mouth and then inched him forward and into her and her cry lighting the whole barn up around them in a cacophony of snorts, and cheeps, and the barn door banging closed hard from the wind, and then Dawson’s palm pressed firm against her mouth because she was screaming. And she bit down into it and she made choked muttering noises against it, and his blood taste in her scream, his eyes flared, pupils black holes and his hips driving forward fucking her still, and like that until Kyle was conceived. 

And then there was a silence again and in her head all Cathy could hear was her breathing slow and swinging, like Sinatra singing.  

IV: Kyle again 

Back on the farm, the farm Kyle owns now, although he hasn’t yet begun to think of the farm as his. His mother is beside him, driving Dawson’s 4x4. He’d told her they should probably go back to the farm. Told her that whatever had killed Dawson was likely to kill others in the city, whoever had bought, and eaten food from the farm that summer, and the way he saw Cathy glaring at him he knew she was unable to tell the difference between what was really real, and what he said was real, like how sometimes he confused what he saw on the drone, and what he saw with his own eyes.   

When Cathy pulls up on the handbrake in what is now Kyle’s driveway, he isn’t sure if it’s the smell, or the sound that overtakes him first.  

“What is that?” Cathy says, but Kyle just plugs his nose, and listens. The sound is deep, and roaring, like a million cicadas crying in unison, but pitched down, lower, into a bass register. So that it’s not something Kyle hears, but feels, reverberating within his chest.  

The sky is darker, like the sun’s been blocked, and looking out across the flat farmland, Kyle can see the mass of them rise as one. The grey particulate that’d been blanketing the earth earlier when Dawson found the farmer’s body, that particulate all begins to vibrate now. And Kyle sees that it’s not a particulate, but a mass dropping of tiny, grey eggs, perfect in their formation as small orbs, and twitching, and rolling back and forth in the dust, and in the soil, and from within the throttling sound in Kyle’s chest comes a whine, higher-pitched, and its harmonizing with the drone, and Kyle realizes where the higher sound is coming from as soon as the eggs burst, and the babies leech into the air blind, and colliding. And the rows of corn that before had stood erect, and tall, collapse as one, and from within their thick green stalks burst forth the flies. 

 Kyle is holding his mother’s hand, her palm in his before he realizes he is holding his mother’s hand, and then they’re running, and Kyle is leading them to the strawberry field. Behind them and around them the whirling bears down, and the air is black not like a night but like a non-day, and Kyle buries himself into the bushes, into the soil. The red berries around him, their smell thick, and already forming into a memory that a future version of himself will recall soon, alone and parentless upon the earth in a new day beside his shadow. 

Sam Westcott is a writer, and musician living, and working in Ottawa, Ontario. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from Close To The Bone, Deer Heart Magazine, and the Paper Mill Press, and was a second place winner in the Gregory J. Power Poetry Competition. He is currently studying Creative Writing at Humber College, where he is at work on his first novel. He is the guitarist and co-songwriter for the new-jazz group Internet Celebrities. He can be found on Twitter @samwwestcott

Poems by Heath Ison

BIRD OF OBLIVION

caution tape wrapped around my body,

suffocating myself to sleep

swallowing spit, gasping for

dead air within the confines of

pre-existing dreamscapes

NAIL GUNS & MASCARA

 it’s never a good idea to put the weapon down

the origin of her taste was one

of cryptic danger which is better left

unresolved on any night

the first time she killed me i was butchered

into her mouth, bleeding pearlescent ink,

every fragment dissolving under the tongue

the second time she killed me i was left

untouched for the sacrifice of a destitute heaven.

a heaven made of neon smoke & shadow

impressions whose expiration date was way

past corroded.

the third time she killed me—she promised

would be the last to complete her spiteful

holy trinity—i was lost. i had forgotten my name,

sense of sense & sense of senses. i could not

touch & i could not see. she said it was my

gift from her.

blind. in love. in birth & death.

i am grateful to have been her victim.

Heath Ison is inside The GENESIS of USELESSNESS. His poetry/short story collection ANTI-GRIP (Plastic/Other, 2020) is now available. He is on Twitter @h33thison.

Poems by T.W. Selvey

Tell me what you want me to do

curve into space      confront a crisis   it’s random   horniness    a hefty pig snout    top of the line violence   put you on a pedestal of the filthy      vile condom sediment     where a man empties into the post coital ocean      boredom builds    and it sinks into petulant gums   discharge teeth   to attack the pale   shriveled worm   the moral of the story gloats   when the curtain closes   and the police state begins    the audience will have to swim   on flotation devices   made of cellulite    I want to be      an octopus    rubbery    strangle me     I enjoyed your botched robbery   do you need penicillin?   or are you still a celibate priest    in the forest of naked females   like a deer caught in anemic headlights    I stare blankly with monstrously innocent green lights       looking forward    to burying me in his backyard        fully stocked synthetic medicine cabinets   nefarious sleeping pills sold to undercover cops      under microfiber sheets     a murderous antithesis to caring        hugging the recently deceased     welcome them in phosphorescent dreams    it’s the afterlife in a lab coat   chemistry   the sadistic science   in fishnet stockings   bruised white clouds         with processed pork product in her hand   covering his private area with an animal's undigested face  stained glass windows present telescoped images    fat holy men    evil grins    constellation holograms  advancing faith     when seen from the right angle       it’s a threat    sex     subjected to paper shredder treatment        the front-line reassignment    fight    anatomical trench rats           carry out a bayonet circumcision    the 3D dot matrix printers   slowly reorganize       bodily functions    and now they no longer           want to fuck you     or anyone else for that matter      behind the church  a spacious wooded area     

                                                                                                                                perfect for

disposing of bodies          and I recommend dumping mine                         over there                               

under the handsome            

haggard            

oak        

  tree

Act Surprised 

sharpen the dull tip     it’s wicked

it hurts

bled and   weaponized            the vines are thick                  

pristine            toned

unsuspecting

                        a good routine             stay                 on track

juicy, fat, just  the right amount

a garden of eden                     a sunburned     paradise

                  cigar burn

     welts           hate condescension

  getting even                          so infantile

armed                                                  emotionally stunted

creep up

on a landscape            of mouths

incisions                      and fuck

fucking        chloroform                      an amphitheater

apologies                     took a necklace

had to              had the claws

of a nocturnal animal

used them

each breast                                          is loaned

 compounding interest                        the visible scar

a tiny room                              compassion appears

don’t remove it

and the contract stipulates   no liability

no return policy

can’t change a mind                            mind changed

channeled voices         built televisions          

in flipped, inverse eyes

watch what they want             turn up the echo chamber,

please

this is a distant planet for somebody’s telescope       so much laziness

maybe they can’t figure out how to use it

the sky turns                it has cognition           and looks down

on a white tray                        ground chuck              its blood

drips on the linoleum

dropped           picked up                   

a dry heave turned wet

cooked                        a woman’s spine

brittle ladled osteoporosis stew         half-digested bologna

a cake! it’s a surprise                         

who doesn’t love a surprise?

Cops

the police offered me categorical statements

a box heaving authoritarian categorical                     statements

growing a square patch / of strict realities

useful excuses are not in tune / or in time

fumigate the imagination

the pleasurable hole of            no understanding

chew up philosophy and spit fried                  minds back into the shell

how can a cracked mouth still be so much?  

unfortunate imbecile

roaming the unstructured halls                       with drug-enhanced flies

their flightpaths taking a less irrational          turn than mine  

identity liberated         the righteous against the         less efficacious

they inhabit repression in endless parodies

believe society / its expansive abstractions

a personal status quo is criminal

preparing for all their unbound rules

no appreciation for the ugliest parts / the sucking methods

hideous anthropomorph 

a sore protrusion and then live with apologetic misery

donut-leprosy

various numbers

fucked amoral / the sensual bloodless blobs

unquestioningly under the control of a drug-enhanced

genital apparatus

gravity-defying / visually       enticing

a hemorrhaged standpoint

cat graft / limbs / nobs / puerile / penile-asphyxiation

a little itchy / luminescent fungus / sticks out and mutates a metonym

non-vegan biopsy / anal face mask

still breastfed I decide when to wean vacant breasts

conservative mandate / explosive facial cum-shot

fat nine months / appetizing point of view

guilty / been bad / spanked and I should be a permanent oral septic tank

intellectual word virus / a less overt animal

interesting pupil          combinations

masochistic                                         maternal slapping

where did those stainless-steel nails all come from?

the chance to stand / stuck on one truncated foot

wrist restraints / my recitation

surely the worst conformist / drug experience / I’ve ever witnessed

dilated ass       out in an open invitation

contemplate the least              comical sewer

captured by the vaginal crisper drawer

the power of bones decided to bitch

hostile laws pumped through a lover’s nipples / bit

then it suddenly opened

her torn open refrigerator

her exquisitely decorated uniform

and when they requested my car registration and insurance

cooperative mind horribly screwed    over by strict adherence / color categories

spaced-out ethics

a state patrol officer blocks    and interrupts my memory

a general embarrassment to all impaired drivers / closed off / a blackhole everywhere

a bizarre household

some remote location within appears to be    controlling every open movement and thought from some remote location within the inorganic front of her power institution

head of the household

a series of parasitic methods

screwed over an infectious lover

shedding her winter coat

tightened appliances

and she was on top of that untamed               street demigod

ghostwriting handcuffs

coordination    and cognition  disintegration

her panicked verbal commands

became fractal screams

taking comfort in the

shared sense of objective time  

it’s a hollow comfort

/ in dead time

what    time     do        the       dead    keep

Tweaking

            terse limited paper

                    obstinate cigarettes paper smoke

                 limited air suck

                bar bathrooms limit stalls

          closing limited space for the fullest exposure

                tacky sentiments paper banners

             there’s limited Michelob on tap

               a shorthand America is listening

                 thrive on closing limited space

                    colloquial nothingness

               everything putting to sleep

              a dissenting opinion

               an invasion speech

an invasion of speech privacy

     unlimited lackadaisical nods equal a 1/10th consensus

                  attentively disinterested

                the abrasive sympathy

              a non-stop roaring voice

  overloaded in the lit face the behemoth

           an unrested jukebox two feet away

I'm unlimited here behemoth 

  so long as free plays are unlimited

I have to sleep

         but won’t      

Recently, T.W.’s writing has appeared in Selffuck, Surfaces, Nauseated Drive, Misery Tourism, Harsh and Expat Lit. T.W. tweets sporadically @docu_dement, and is the proud curator of a haphazardly curated blog, www.documentdement.com

Everyone is Replaceable by Sarah Greenleaf

The music is prickly, an off-brand version of something you know. You focus on getting your foot higher, to lift it just right, but the Dance Teacher will not stop yelling. “Don’t sickle your foot!” she screams. You bend harder, lengthen longer, isn’t a sickle a type of blade, you think? You cross the floor straining to get higher in your grand jete. Around you, the other dancers gallop and fly, a herd of slender ponies creating a breeze in your face. You want to feel the wind and clouds beneath your thighs, but all you feel is dust. The Dance Teacher can tell. “Everyone is replaceable!” she screams into your face as you touch the ground. You look down at yourself and think, but how?

Your feet are the problem, you decide later in your soft pink room. She’s always screaming about your feet. They need to point harder, to do nothing but point. You go to the garage and rummage around in one of the many boxes used to store your parents’ past. In one box you find a pair of icepicks from their mountaineering days. Quietly, you take off your feet and replace them with the icepicks, pointing hard, standing tall.

You’re in dance class again. You’re in dance class every day. Your icepicks dig into the floor, marking up the wood. Your Dance Teacher glares at you. “Is this the only way for you to get your point correct? Why can’t you do it right without ruining my floors?” she hisses, “Remember that everyone is replaceable.” She turns away from you and smiles at the Star Student. The Star Student leaps and twirls, as she has always leaped and twirled. You look on, wondering how to get what she has. “See how smoothly her feet glide?” the Dance Teacher yells at the rest of the team. “Like butter,” she spits, “like actual butter.” You try to turn in your new icepicks and get stuck. The Dance Teacher scowls.

That night you take off your icepicks and hobble around the house on your ankles until you fall asleep. You stagger home the next day after a whole day of mocking because your feet are no longer where people expect. You open the fridge and stare at all the things Dance Teacher told you not to eat. Pulling out a carrot you shave it with your teeth, trying to make it last. You know you can’t eat the butter, but you remember how Star Student floated across the dance floor and secure sticks of butter to your ankles. The butter is so much softer than the icepicks, and you feel happy. Your mom drives you to dance class and sits in a room above you, watching. All the moms watch. They turn their heads like owls and screech gossip at one another.

Your turns have improved, and the Dance Teacher doesn’t frown at you for most of the class. You glide along the floors and land each jump so softly. The dance studio gets hot while you wait your turn, watching the Star Student practice her solo. The Dance Teacher thinks you all need to watch her, so you can be like her. You look down at your butter and notice it’s melting. Of course, you think. Of course. When your turn comes you’re a mess, sloppy and slipping all over the place. But today the Dance Teacher is yelling at you about your arms. They do not float. They do not flow. They are not wispy or pointed enough. Nothing you have is right. She points at the Star Student and screams, “Be like her!” As if you hadn’t been trying your entire life. Above you, the moms hiss and growl.

That night you take off your hands. They weren’t expressive enough. You replace them with long grass, you delight in how they wave in the breeze. You still need to do something about your feet though. You hunt around the house, looking for something that isn’t too sharp, that won’t melt. You open your closet and look at your beloved stuffed animals. You’re too old to play with them, and isn’t the Dance Teacher always telling you to grow up? You replace what’s left of the butter sticks, nothing more than foil wrappers really, with Bear and Mr. Snuggles. They’re the same size, Bear is pink and Mr. Snuggles is blue. You try out a leap in the living room and smile. You have more height and land softly. You go on point, and their heads grind into the ground.

The Dance Teacher is in an even worse mood than usual. When the team walks in she screams at each of you, “Why aren’t you the Star Student?” She falls to her knees wailing. “Why can’t they all be Star Student?” As you watch her silently, your face becomes sheer. She glowers at you. “Why can I see through you?” she yells. “Why can’t you be solid and shiny like Star Student?” You have no answer. You don’t know why. “Go,” she says to you, “show me your solo.” Your music comes on, and you take a deep breath. You begin, arms and legs reaching out. Your grass undulates and sways. The other girls can’t stop watching. Your landings are perfect, they are silent, you spin. The Dance Teacher will not stop glaring at you.

You run through the group dance. Everyone is a little off, the timing isn’t working out. The Dance Teacher’s face goes purple, and she stands in front of the group and roars out a primal scream in the team’s faces. Your face disappears entirely. The other girls lose a leg or a shoulder. The team circles around you, and you resume your dance. You all breathe together and become more and more opaque. The dancer next to you runs her fingers through your grass and smiles at you. You smile back. Your face has returned. It always does eventually, with enough deep breathing, with enough repeating to yourself, “You love to dance. She doesn’t matter. What Dance Teacher thinks doesn’t matter. You matter. You matter. You matter.” The other girls have learned to do the same. If they hadn’t, the team would have blinked out long ago, leaving the Star Student to dance alone. You watch her twirl around you, bright, and glowing, and always whole. She’s always so solid, and so pretty. “Costumes, now!” Dance Teacher bellows at the team. “Nationals are three days away!”

The team practices in the dressing room at Nationals, while their Mothers follow them around. fluttering and fixing makeup and costumes. “Why do they always look like tiny prostitutes?” the Smart Mother grumbles. “They look like courtesans, not prostitutes,” the Blonde Mother corrects her. The Smart Mother stares at her in disbelief. “What do you think a courtesan is?” she asks the Blonde Mother. The Blonde Mother smiles with only the inner part of her mouth and blinks. Shaking her head the Smart Mother finishes sewing in her daughter’s headpiece.

The team gets second place. Everyone sinks into the floor when your names are called. The MC has to leave the trophy next to the group. None of you will stand. You all flatten yourselves onto the ground, against the hardwood floor, hoping it will splinter and bleed you to death. You will it to open and tumble you into the Orchestra Pit. The Star Student turns to you, tears streaming down her face, mascara pooling on the floor beneath her. “What do we do?” she whispers. “What do we doooooo?” You look at her. “What we always do. Listen to Dance Teacher.” She looks at you, terrified. You shrug. “We’ve all done it,” you tell her. “We’re all still here.” The Star Student stares at you. “But sometimes,” she says so quietly you have to put your head in her puddle of mascara to hear, “but sometimes you disappear a little.” You nod. “Yes,” you tell her. “Sometimes.”

The Mothers have peeled the team off the floor and taken you back to the dressing room. You all hang limply, still flat from the loss. The Dance Teacher thunders into the room screaming, “Second place is the first loser! Are you losers?” She turns to the Star Student and screams in her face, “ARE YOU A LOSER??” The Star Student disappears entirely. She blinks out so fast that you all look at one another in shock. She’s never been yelled at before. The rest of you miss only a hand or foot. One girl’s fingernail vanishes. You’re stronger now. The team breathes deeply in unison, and together you will your body parts back. The Star Student doesn’t come back. The Dance Teacher looks at the group and at the empty space where the Star Student should be. She weeps and falls to her knees. You look at her as she writhes on her back, crying and shaking her legs. You’ve never seen anything like it. The Moms hoot in confusion and despair. “What about the next competition?” they moan dissonantly.

The Dance Teacher remains on the floor, wailing into the slick wooden floorboards. You dance around her, then on her back, on her shoulders, on her head. You press her into the ground. She doesn't even seem to notice. She continues to screech and cry, cracking the floor below her with her voice. The music swells. You all dance faster, crushing Dance Teacher into the ground with each plié, with each hard landing, with every spin. You all scream back at her. Together you are so loud, the fury of your spinning so strong, that Dance Teacher is shocked into silence. She lays on the ground, missing a shin, many ribs, a hand. Your dance is the most beautiful dance you’ve ever performed. Each girl is in perfect time with every other girl. You are one body. One feeling. The Star Student isn’t coming back. All the dancers know it. She will just have to be replaced.

Sarah Greenleaf’s work has appeared in places like Yellow Chair Review, The DMQ Review, Crawl Space, and Thirteen Myna Birds. She is currently working on a series of short queer romances and a project about early female filmmakers called Cinematriarchy.

Poems by Matthew Brailas

In My Dreams I Am Always Doing Bad Things to You

I only yank the needle out of your thigh

Because I need something to hold

But it’s love that gathers your skull in my lap

And cups the bruise where it bounced on the linoleum

A noise like marbles pinging

Off a cutting board

After eleven years my brother finally finishes stringing the harp

And starts to tune it

It’s a nice sound to listen to

While we wait for the ambulance

If I’d known our boat was full of holes

I never would have let you lash me to the mast

Alas as silence yields to the radiator

I yield to you

Through the slats the sun makes for the 513th time

Its grand entrance

Yawning I snap on my long black gloves

And get to work

NASA Says There Is a 40% Chance We’re Alone in the Universe

In truth it was full of many soft and remarkable things:

onions frying in iron pans,

elegant blood disorders,

birds right before they hit windshields,

a butcher squeezing a sponge clean.

When it fell, the rain would make

a clean smell for the vagrants camped

behind the radio station

where the big grey dishes loomed

like coffins full of fruit.

Around four thirty was when the ants

liked to climb out of cracks in the mud

and run around in circles,

and when the sixteen year olds fired B.B. guns into the lake,

they left behind bloody towelettes.

The boys were saving

for leather gloves,

and the other boys were saving

for leather masks.

On windy nights,

we could put our ears to our lovers’ backs

and hear the humpback whales

disappearing into the deepest

holes in the galaxy.

We should have said it was enough

to touch the bottom of the lake,

to hear the lovemaking

of the bullfrogs all around us,

to hold each other's faces

in shame,

but it wasn't.

We filled the empty swimming pools with gravel,

we used spit as lubricant,

we forgot our parents’ middle names.

And after a long day of hurling

garbage at passing trains

everyone would sit on the flattest,

whitest rock they could find,

peel off their socks,

and massage their cramping feet.

memories of an apocalypse by Miles Coombe

Part of me was tempted to walk down to his house and bang on his old door until he got over his shit and forgave me. But then I remembered where I was, walking around a wasteland at the edge of civilisation - long lengths of barren streets, abandoned houses, collapsed ivy strewn buildings - and with that knowledge, mounting panic crushed my chest like a funeral shroud, like plumes of smoke filling my lungs and ash suffocating my tongue, just as it had swallowed the sun.

It was always so quiet. When the world was alive and noisy and rammed with people, I just wanted it all to stop, for everything to be silent. But now this is what I cannot stand the most. It is quiet inside, in the broken warehouse I now call home. It is quiet outside, in the rampant disrepair of the mutilated city. The sky is cushioned with a thick, almost tangible dirt. No sound travels far; it is quickly stifled in the solid air or just swallowed whole. The entire miserable world is coated in this silence, sticky and cloying. Sometimes the fog seems like a sentient entity.

the daylight was slowly fading out, and so was our connection to the countryside around us. it feels like we are safe - no one ever stepped through the wardrobe anymore – so we can both rest for the moment, the taste of weed still strong in our mouths as we slowly dug into each other.

For a little while I live in a sort of in-between state, just me, my memories, these unmarked pills I found in a ruined pharmacy, and the endless fucking rolling velvet sky. At least the cheerfully coloured capsules help me deal with the eternal loneliness, the fear of withdrawal, the fear of never withdrawing at all, coupled with the leering spectre of vacant nihilism that surrounds each new day. Out here at the edge of the city the sky was a patchwork of all the loneliest places on earth, and at night, I often imagined what it would be like to just fall off the earth like a cliff, plunging down into the infinite darkness of space, forever alone. The star dust would fill up my lungs, making me lose my breath and choke until I was nothing but feathers and moonlight.

Delirium, unmoored and drifting. Grey, wide open reaches. The cracked jam jars of roadside shrines. The breathless adrenaline of always looking over your shoulder. The ever present hunger. The ghosts of kids on bikes haunting the ruined streets.

i wasn’t as high as i would have liked to be but the buzz was good enough to halo everything in soft light and to give my immediate emotions a distant, unreal feeling. 

You know those moments; gentle and devastating, where you realise that for the rest of your life you will have to try to find a way to live with the burden of all your unspoken words. Everything sticks to a thread and everything depends on it. You can break it with a pair of scissors or wrap it around the end of your finger and press it against your chest, where your heart should be. The intimacy of being understood. Stillness breathing through the silent pause.

he was made of anger, sunlight and someone else’s laughter, distorted frames crossing in front of my eyes. would i ever not crave him? it was like the heroin he used to take in small, careful doses. i would miss him on my deathbed. i would die missing him.

Every so often my typical dreams start to give way to stranger, more concerning ones, flavoured like lukewarm vodka and flashing neon. I’m burning up, full of some foreign emotion and scared of this new person that I think maybe I’ve been all along. The end of the world just made him real.

I know after the first line that I should’ve spent more time chopping it up, because it scratches my nose and burns right through my sinuses - but then nothing else matters as the white hot drip hits the back of my throat and relief floods my body as I sink down against the cold cement. I’m thinking about the endless circles, the way everything turns in on itself, turns back on itself, history repeating, the taste of chemicals in my mouth not enough to dispel the shivering cold that burns through my whole body. My heart is not rational. My thoughts are not normal thoughts. It’s almost like a confession. In the darkness and quiet it feels too easy to allow myself to say these things out loud, even if I’m only talking to myself.

he peered up at me through sweaty strands of hair, “are you ok?” he says. i realise i had been staring again. he was leaning against the doorframe, lazily rubbing his eyes, jeans unbuttoned and hanging low on his hips, his pale torso exposed. “i think so.” i say. “i can’t really remember.”

But that’s the thing about the world though, right? It’s full of un-kept promises, broken resolutions and wasted hours. I knew the circle would come round again, but this time I would be ready for it.

The sky had grown a kind of stormy pink with dark purple streaming out from the edges of the clouds. Blood keeps filling my mouth, so without my glasses on, I stumble over to the edge of the building and spit into the dark. Sometimes I think the very worst thing is that I’m never going to see him again. But really now, that is actually the least of my worries.

Outside the window, the stars begin falling again.

Poems by Hestia Sol

Formless and Beautiful in the Digital

Face glued to my screen as pixels flux and flow

Opening tabs, closing tabs

Digital nomadism from the comfort of my chair

The bloops and bleeps send serotonin pulsing through my brain

Happy happy happy!!!!

Other bleeps and bloops cause me to spiral out

Sad Sad Sad!!!!

My life in this screen, in the cords and cables

Data mining my personality within a complex network of people who don’t exist

The Digital World

Schrodinger’s universe

My body may as well be a corpse, for my mind runs free in this playground

Endless landscapes of the binary

Vast mind-plains fed through digital algorithmic logic loops

Life on repeat

Far better than the false world of physical

I take whatever form I wish

Be whoever I wish

Love and interact with whoever I wish

Trapped in meat no longer

Free in the cyber

Long live the new flesh

Her Body's Gone Cold

Strung out, faded, disassociated

Half past dead

Heartbeat slowed nearly null

Spittle frothin in my mouth, 

Internal white river rapids strangle me

Comatose aside from my brain

Hyper aware I’m falling into the abyss

Surely dyin, no chance to resurface

From these vast depths of inky water

My soul suffocated under a pillow in the night

Psychically flailing

Chest constricting 

Choking up my final death rattle 

No one hears 

The Xanax gently blows out my final, struggling candle’s flame

And my vision turns ruinous as my lights blink out

Nothing left but a empty rotting tomb-corpse

Hatchet-Head by Max Talley

Colin Burdett awoke sprawled in the alley behind the Commodore Lounge with his head throbbing. The grind of pent-up traffic sounded on SW Burnside and the refracted sunlight placed it around nine a.m. He pressed himself into a sitting position against a filthy wall. Colin often got into bar brawls after the third or fourth drink, but never delivered that traditional, implausible knockout punch from movies. Eventually, he and the other combatant gave up to stagger away, wounded and tired. Forgetful of their dispute. Other times, Colin passed out after a beating and opened his eyes near dawn.

This autumn morning in 2019 felt different. His head vibrated, not so much with pain but from a pressure he'd never endured before. Reaching up, Colin found a cold metal implement jutting from the crown of his skull. Unable to see it, he touched every inch until he determined that it was a small axe-handle. He pulled, thinking it must be tangled in his hair, but then a wave of pain shot through him. Impossible, Colin thought. An axe is lodged in my head. Yet no blood on his scalp, or hand, or in the alleyway. Trash bins had been upended and beer bottles lay shattered. All the markings of a struggle.

Standing up into dizziness, Colin waited until the flickering stars faded before squeaking through the iron back door into the lounge.

“Randy?” He squinted at the bartender in the perpetual inner twilight.

“Randy closes. I'm Ed.” He cleaned a glass with a gray dishrag. “Jesus, you're a mess. You really want a drink? A shower and rest might do you better.”

“I got in a punch-up last night—”

“Your nose looks like it's seen plenty of fights.” Ed stared at him. “Troublemakers bring the cops around. So how about moving along?”

“Not here to fight, or drink,” Colin said. “Can you help remove this thing from my head?”

“What thing? I'm not touching that dirty mess up there.” Ed poured himself a bourbon shot. “You need a doctor.”

“Maybe so.” Colin hovered, unsure where to go, while a grizzled elder and a wild-haired guy at the bar observed him with suspicion.

“What's your name?” Ed asked.

“Colin...”

“Like that football player who takes a knee?”

“Well, more like the actor.”

“Colin Firth?” one of the bar flies said. “My ex loves that British fop.” 

“No, the Irish actor,” Colin replied. “You know, what's-his-name.”

“Don't know,” Ed said, “but buddy, take a walk. Brawlers aren't welcome here no more.”

Colin shuffled out onto Burnside Street and startled a group of Australian tourists circled around a lecturing guide. “This once grimy neighborhood has been rehabilitated by our new high-rises and Providence Park's renovation. Go Portland Timbers!” 

A dude with a man-bun sputtered by on the sidewalk riding a green electric scooter, and nearly ran over Colin's foot. Fuck, he hated what Portland was becoming. Colin formed a fist but restrained himself. Fights were ruining his life, threatening his romantic relationship, and allowing him only low-end jobs. He gazed west at a curtain of trees rising on the hump of Washington Park, then moved east toward the Urgent Care Clinic.

“Is this an emergency?” the receptionist asked.

“Don't you see?” Colin pointed.

“You're not bleeding or in visible pain.” She flexed a bleached-white smile. “Please complete these ten pages of your medical history.” The woman slid him a clipboard. 

Twenty minutes later, Colin sat waiting on a papered examination table until a fiftyish bearded man knocked while walking inside.

“Doctor Wiser?”

“Yes, the acting doctor.” He showed satisfaction.

“Acting? What's that mean?”

“I'm a medical professional.” Wiser took a chair. “So what are we here for today?”

“I wrote it on the clipboard.”

Wiser nodded. “That's just to give patients something to do out there.”

Colin took a deep breath. “Got into a fight last night at a bar. Woke up with this axe in my head. Can you remove it?”

“That's a helluva thing.” Wiser pressed Colin's neck down and forward. He moved the handle gently to the left, then right. Afterwards, he tugged at it.

“Ow, that really hurts.”

“Well, you'd know better than me.” Wiser faced Colin, the strapped-on circular mirror centered on his forehead giving him a cyclopean intensity. “Good news,” Wiser said. “First, that's just a wee little hatchet.” He chuckled. “It's set perfectly in place. Wedged-in so tight that no blood loss occurred.” He sighed. “Removing it could cause cranial seepage, possible coma, even death.” Wiser perched next to Colin and using a rubber reflex mallet, tapped his own knee.

“But Doctor, my head is pounding. The pressure. Got any painkillers?”

Wiser's face sagged. “I'll assume drinks were consumed last night, right? You're suffering a hangover, as well as residual soreness from the physical altercation.”

“But I—”

“Ah, ah.” Wiser waved his hand dismissively. “People think I'm an easy touch for opiod prescriptions. No siree. However, I have extra-strength Advil.” Wiser removed sample packs from a drawer.

“But the hatchet...”

“Mister Burnett.”

“Burdett.”

“Whatever. This is a psychological problem. The implement is barely visible and easily disguisable with a hat, or even a fall.”

“A fall?”

“A hair extension for the back. Brides use them at weddings. Cover right over that thing. Might look as if you're sporting a mullet, but the nineties are popular again.”

“That's absurd.” Colin felt anger burning inside, which caused his head to ache. “You call yourself a doctor?”

“Just an acting doctor. Though this clinic is not affiliated with the medical community, we are hopeful.” Wiser produced a card from his pocket. “My best advice is to see Dr. Osiris immediately. A brilliant therapist.” 

“I am not paying for this bullshit opinion.” Colin grabbed the Advil samples and bolted for the door.

Outside, pedestrians rushed this way and that, into nearby restaurants or towards Powell's Books two blocks away. Buses choked, sneezed, and trundled east and west on Burnside. Nobody stared at or noticed Colin, except as an inconvenient stationary object to steer around amid the stream of movement.

Time to visit his girlfriend. Jade worked as a copyeditor and proofreader out of her home in SE Portland. No, he didn't expect sympathy, just honest advice.

Colin tucked inside his 1997 Honda Civic with the broken windshield wiper and a parking ticket wrapped under it. He drove across the Burnside Bridge toward Jade's apartment. Traffic halted at the mid-point. A man with buzz cut hair lay on the bridge's walkway, naked save for a cut-off pair of sweatpants. He writhed and seemed to communicate with the sky. His head jerked toward the stopped cars and suddenly he made intense eye contact with Colin. Trying to speak. Colin glanced away and continued driving, praying he wouldn't end up in a similar reality.

Jade lived on SE Hawthorne, two miles beyond the clatter of development and new skyscrapers transforming the neighborhoods adjacent to the Willamette River. No house rose more than three floors, and distant mountains and blue sky were visible. Colin parked in a residential area to avoid further tickets. When he strolled past Hawthorne Tattoos, a thirtyish woman in punk attire rushed outside. “Hey, what's that?” She gestured at his head.

Colin grimaced. “A hatchet.”

“Wow, awesome,” she said. “I've got ink and lots of piercings,” she pointed at studs on her nose, then toward her breasts, “but I've never done any embedding. That's radical. How much did it cost?”

“I need to go.”

She placed her card in his hand. “Call me sometime. I like a man who can handle pain.”

Colin hurried across the street, climbed the stoop, and knocked on Jade's door.  Silence. The frozen silence of someone holding their breath. Working from home on Hawthorne, Jade undoubtedly dealt with salespeople, environmentalists seeking donations, and religious zealots hoping to convert counter culture types in this bohemian neighborhood. 

“Jade, it's me, Colin.” Nothing. “Jade, it's an emergency. Please open up.”

Shuffling sounded, someone moving in socks across a wooden hallway, the pace slow, reluctant. “Jesus, Collie. What the hell? I'm working. You forgot to call yesterday.” Jade flung the door open wearing a Keep Portland Weird T-shirt. “Dude, you're a mess.”

He pressed inside. “Sorry, I—”

“I told you, no more bar fights or we're through. It doesn't make you seem strong. Black eyes, fat lips, and bruises aren't sexy. I'm not your fucking nurse.” She padded back to the yawning laptop on the desk. “Do not ask me for money.”   

“No, no.” He kept calm and avoided knocking over her large houseplants. “That's my last fight ever. I swear. Only bothered you because of this axe in my head. Baby, I'm scared. Maybe I'm dying and don't even know it.”

Jade pushed her long dark bangs from her eyes. “Everything is always all about you.”

“The freaking blade is lodged deep.”

“Don't raise your voice.” She sighed. “This is a distraction, Collie.”

“Please don't call me Collie. It sounds like a goofy dog.”

“You're not facing your real problems,” she continued. “Our relationship for one, and you finding a steady job with a decent income. We planned to live together someday.”

“You know I'm willing to move in with you...”

Jade's two cats came to a hunched attention, as if clearly understanding Colin's words after a year of ignoring him.

“Not here.” Annoyance rasped into Jade's tone. “My place barely fits an office and my art projects.” She worked and slept in the living area, while her rusted metal sculptures packed the entire bedroom space.

“But my head. It's pounding,” he tried.

“I'll get Ibuprofen.” She wandered into the bathroom. “Maybe ignore the directions and take four.”

“Can I hang awhile?”

“Collie, I've tried to keep our relationship going, but you have your own shit to work through. You're forty-three. Binge drinking and this Fight Club crap? You really need to see a therapist.”

“I heard about a Dr. Osiris today.” He proffered the card.

“Osiris is supposed to be amazing.” Jade showed enthusiasm, her eyes widening until her face froze. “Oh, I get it. How much do you need?”

He read the card. “First consultation is $100 in cash, upfront.” Colin nodded. “But I expect a paycheck from Everyday Music, babe.”

Jade fished some twenties from her purse. “You owe me.” She pushed him toward then out the door. “Go see Osiris, today. Go.”  

Colin walked back to his car but didn't see Hawthorne Tattoos. Did I take a different route? Have to stop drinking, he thought. See the damn doctor.

 After completing one page of information, the mute receptionist led Colin directly into the doctor's office. He took a chair, not the couch. Osiris had dark eyes and an almost British accent. A diploma on the wall certified Osiris attending University of Phoenix's online psychology class and meeting the forty-hour course requirements.

Osiris scanned Colin's information. “Dr. Wiser referred you?”

“Yes, at Urgent Care.”

“They closed last month. The board revoked their license.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Osiris circled Colin, then sat to scribble notes. “You're having relationship problems. A vague dissatisfaction that grows as you drink, resulting in angry brawls.” He gazed up. “You're average height, not a superman, so you get pummeled. Humiliating. A psychic disfiguration occurs.”

“Are you saying I'm hallucinating this axe?” Colin felt it. The hatchet-head had sunk deeper, the blunt end flush to his scalp.

“I'm not here to argue, Colon. We all have our belief systems to get us through the day.”

“It's Colin Burdett, like the—”

“Like the author, Colleen?”

“No, she spells Burdet with one t.” 

“A-ha.” Osiris propped his fingertips beneath his nostrils. “Instead of focusing on serious issues, you obsess over a bump on your head. I myself have one leg that is shorter than the other. Corrective insoles remedied the situation. You're distorting this out of context. Try wearing a hat. President Lincoln was thought to be homely. With a top hat, people considered him elegant, noble.”

“Doc, I have a reoccurring dream, of a bald, naked man. It's not erotic, but frightening.”

“Sure. We men are born and die hairless and naked. It's a common fear of death, or rebirth.”

“Rebirth?”

“Yes, reincarnation.” Osiris stood up. “Fighting is the central issue, Colin. If you continue, you'll be dead, or a broken husk—unemployable.” He tapped at the keys of his laptop. “I've Googled the woman you listed to contact in an emergency.”

“What?”

Osiris swatted the air. “Jade's quite attractive. Would you sacrifice your relationship just to lose in another brawl?”

“I don't always lose,” Colin insisted. “Sometimes it's a draw.”

Osiris produced a pill canister. “These are samples, experimental drugs. When rage builds up inside, the medicine dampens emotional receptors and will repurpose the chain reactions that lead to aggression.”

“Don't know what the hell you're talking about, but if they're free, I'll try them. Have to keep my job, and especially Jade.”

“Take them for a week then return.” Osiris reclined. “And bring me a signed copy of your sister Colleen's new book. I can't make her Powell's event this Friday.”

“She's not...” He gave up. Colin swallowed a pill there, made another appointment, and departed.

Beyond SW 21st Avenue, Colin sidled into Kingston Sports Bar wearing a hoodie. A football game blasted on the big screen but he ignored it.

“Hey,” the hulking bartender said. “We eighty-sixed you last month and nothing's changed. Hit the road, Bukowski.”

“Just finding a friend.” Colin dashed over to a corner table by the dark tinted window. A man in a tweed jacket read The Oregonian while sipping a drink.

“Roger, come talk outside,” Colin pleaded, noticing the bartender rolling up his sleeves and opening the wooden flap in the bar to enforce his request.

“Colin? Christ, really?” The man seemed to sense the imminent danger. “Okay, okay, but just two minutes.” They faced the blur and whoosh of traffic out where daytime drinkers smoked cigarettes.

His agent Roger Benton had sold Colin's first crime novel, Cry Death! He Cried, three years ago. The book disappeared into the ether soon after publication.

“Sorry, I haven't returned your calls. Nothing to report. Quisling Press wasn't interested in a follow-up and...” Benton's voice trailed off.

“My new book is amazing. A guy's life is fraught with complications. Considers it a living hell until he wakes up to an even worse existence, then tries to return to his previous dream life.”

“That sounds, uh, interesting.” Benton puffed on a cigarette before tamping it out. “I forgot I quit.” He looked at the cloudy Portland sky that promised afternoon rain, and exhaled. “I don't see a market for your novel, but I'll submit it, on one condition.”

“Sure, sure. Name it.”

“I have a successful client. Colleen Burdet.”

Colin's stomach groaned. “I heard she's doing a signing at Powell's.”

Benton scratched his chin. “She just canceled via e-mail. No one's ever seen her. A total recluse. Really don't know if Colleen's a woman, man, or what. The shadowy sepia tone photos on her books could be anyone.” He stared at Colin with more interest than he'd ever shown in their three-year relationship.

“And so?”

“I'd like you to appear in her place.”

“That's nuts. Impersonate her. Lie?”

“No, you'll say who you are.” Benton smiled. “You'll read from her latest novel. Sure, some people will be shocked, but they'll still want their books signed. Be such great publicity.”

“I can't do it, man.”

“Well, I'd rather not represent your book either. The premise sounds, frankly, idiotic.”

Colin wanted to punch Benton. But that desire caused sneezing, dizziness, and even  nausea, so he closed his eyes and breathed until the condition passed. Then he remembered. The pills from Dr. Osiris.

“Colin? You alright?”

“Okay, okay, I'll do it.” 

Benton nodded. “Lose the hoodie though.”

They shook hands and Colin humped it over to his shift at Everyday Music.

Inside, three people browsed through racks of discount and used CDs, but the empty store appeared daunting. The thumping Tool songs played mainly for the clerks. Colin remembered being a customer twenty years ago when the place was packed. Music in tangible form a necessity of life. What the fuck had gone wrong in Portland, in America?

Colin took his position by the cash register, waiting for something he couldn't articulate. That vague expectation which haunts humans, for the phone call, e-mail or text, the random encounter that will transform them, change their life, make them believe again, fuel an enthusiasm that has sapped away over the years. 

Store manager Jon Hawk, who wore black every day of his life, approached Colin. “Customers are scared of you, scared for you.” His face resembled a pallbearer at a funeral. “You arrive late for your shift looking like hell, like shit.” He gazed downward. “We all had our wild youth here in Portland, Colin, but now that you're nearly fifty like me—”

“I'm forty-three.”

“Jesus, really? I mean, of course you are.” He scanned the empty room. “I'm going to have to let you go...”

“Is it the axe?”

“The metaphorical axe?” Hawk showed confusion. “No, it's business. I can't afford you anymore.”

“What about Mike?”

Hawk sighed. “Mike doesn't show up bleeding with his face swollen. Do I need to explain?” Hawk gripped his shoulder. “I'll give you good references. You're able to stand motionless behind a counter staring into space for hours.” He formed a thoughtful expression. “Maybe a security job in an office building at night, Collie.”

“Don't call me Collie.” Colin moved through the store, everything a blur. He wanted to slug Hawk, but just the desire made him sneeze repeatedly.

Colin walked west across the overpass above the 405's thundering traffic, exhaust gusting up from below. He lived two blocks further, in a room at the Fallen Saints Hotel, propped just above a lingerie shop. Some tenants were artists; others prostitutes. From his second floor window, Colin faced Fred Myers, the store, the sign, the customers. No escaping Myers in Oregon. Colin wished the bum would join Duane Reade and CVS in the bowels of chain store hell. Jade wouldn't answer her phone or reply to texts, and eventually he didn't care.

The next morning Colin found a temp job doing construction work on a twenty-story building going up on SW 21st  Avenue. He joined a crew on scaffolding ringing the top floor. Though the view was stunning from their outer perch, it sickened Colin. Mount Hood, the Columbia River Gorge and green valleys lay in the distance, but nearby, a half-dozen new skyscrapers jutted up like War of the World aliens. They towered over the carpet of four-story brownstones that embodied the Portland he had known and loved for so long. Here he stood, helping greedy scumbag developers transform the last strange, disheveled city in America into another San Francisco. Colin swallowed the anger and worked; he needed rent money bad.

When Friday evening arrived, he angled a fedora atop his head and hustled to Powell's Books. A crowd awaited on folding chairs in the upstairs Pearl Room. The moderator showed surprise, even vague disgust when Colin mounted the small stage to approach the lectern.

“Reading tonight from, uh, their new book, Hear Me Roar, let's welcome, uh, Colleen Burdet...” The moderator stepped away quickly.

A smattering of applause sounded, mixed-in with gasps and groans. Four women stamped off toward the exit.

“Good evening,” Colin began. He noticed Roger Benton midway back. Another agent, Binky Upmarket sat beaming by his side. “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...” No laughter came, just a strained silence. “I'm honored to be here, so let's get right down to the reading.” Benton had bookmarked sections to help Colin. He opened to the first. “My vagina is a harsh and thorny place, waiting to entrap you, adulterer.” Colin skipped frantically ahead.

“This is an outrage!” a gray-haired woman shouted. “You are clearly a man.”

He continued reading. “Every month I bleed for the rejected, the abandoned, the disenfranchised.” Something went whizzing by Colin's head. A shoe? The audience groused, bodies restless.

“This is genital appropriation,” yelled a tall man. Half the crowd filtered out, while the remaining looked surly, ready for battle.

“We all struggle with identity,” Colin tried.

A loud chorus of boos sounded.

He glanced over his shoulder, then bolted for the fire stairs. By the time Colin reached Burnside Street the fedora had flown off, so he ducked into the Zeus Cafe for a beer and burger. His novel was doomed, but at least he'd survived. 

Colin called Jade. “Eating dinner. Come over, let's talk.”

“Sorry, Collie. I stay on the Southeast, the old Portland. The Southwest is under construction. It's changing fast. You need to get out of there.”

“But I saw Dr. Osiris.”

“Good. Busy tonight. I'll text you soon.” She disconnected.

Back at the building site on Monday, Colin worked hard amid the hammering and drilling. At lunch break, he sat by James from Navajo Nation in Arizona. On the edge of the scaffold, their legs dangled in space.

“Hey, hatchet-head,” James said and scowled.

“Oh, good. You can see it.” Colin felt relief as no one noticed it anymore.

“Tomahawks are sacred. So that is an insult.”

“I didn't choose this, believe me. I got attacked.”

“Then may I remove it?”

“I guess. A doctor tried and failed.”

“It was not his right. Turn please.”

Colin obeyed and James yanked the handle. A searing pain coursed through his head and body, then the axe pulled free. It felt like molten lava poured through the opening. His vision exploded into a rainbow of colors: images of babies in wombs, raging oceans, and flaming sunset skies.

“I'm free,” Colin yelled and somersaulted forward off the scaffold into a slow motion fall. He opened his eyes and saw the alley behind the Commodore Lounge, then plunged further.

Colin landed sprawled on concrete, dazed but very much alive. He remained motionless, just listening. Boats on the Willamette River sounded far below; angry car horns and traffic noise came from nearby. He peered about. Colin lay on the walkway of the Burnside Bridge, pedestrians stepping around him as if discarded trash. His only clothes were the torn remains of gray sweatpants. He rolled over toward the idling cars on the bridge and caught sight of a familiar driver with a metal appendage sprouting from his head. Colin pointed a finger up to warn him, but the man flinched and went pale before accelerating toward Southeast Portland.

Max Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in Fiction Southeast, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, Litro, Entropy, and Santa Fe Literary Review. Talley's novel was published in 2014, and his essay collection, Snowblind In the Void, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He is associate editor for Santa Barbara Literary Journal.

http://maxdevoetalley.com/

notes from a former sex worker by Aimee Herman

I can never eat flank steak again.

Here is what can occur between floors zero through twenty-eight in an elevator: measure the reservoir of cleavage where one mole winks on left side and the planets that live on either side are murky and mercury but someone is willing to pay out of pocket for this body, so I pretend away the alien invasion of this skin and ring buzzer. 

I still do not know how to apply red lipstick or any other shade between pink chard flamingo and gothic peep hole. I always used my real name.

I knew. 

I went for a hike each time it was happening. Forgave my fear of heights and climbed gneissic distractions. I foraged for mushrooms, practiced Yiddish, planted succulents in every pothole’d organ misunderstood inside me just to forget.

I can never forget.

There was no: street corner, tiny tight dress, loose dress, any dress, high heels, make-up, smooth smooth smooth, washed hair, brushed hair, air-brushed anything.

Kind of like what happens when you are stuck between floors. You were on your way somewhere. You knew where you were going. And then, all the hinges disrobe. Unravel. A plummet. A paradox of paycheck and disembowel. You swallow so much black mold that your teeth become two crooked rows of staph infections. 

There were high tops and hunger pains, chewed fingernails with dirt dug deep, so many so many scars.

I was absent that day 

in fifth grade 

when they showed the film strip 

teaching me how 

to take care 

of all this. 

Is that why?

Really, is that why?

I knew.

I cannot remember who our twenty-first president was, what an eggplant really is, why we went to war in the first place, the distance between the moon and my secrets, why there are so many products on shelves for dissolving one’s self, how to properly cook a memory without scorching it, how to solve for x, how to be held without feeling like a stained mattress, how to kiss without tasting tar and male, how to say my name without hearing the echoes of customers mispronouncing it,           how to touch myself without wanting to machete         it all away.

Aimee Herman (they/them) is the author of the novel, "Everything Grows" (Three Rooms Press) and two full length books of poems, "meant to wake up feeling" (great weather for MEDIA) and "to go without blinking" (BlazeVOX books), in addition to being widely published in journals and anthologies including BOMB, cream city review, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books).  Aimee is a queer writer and educator and a founding member in the poetry band, Hydrogen Junkbox. 

Crazy Ants by Shanna Alden

We were already resigned to the end. The end of us. 

We expected fire from the sky, delivered to us by the sun, or metal eggs capable of hatching smaller stars. 

We expected ice, born under impact or industrial black skies. 

We expected tinier things to crawl so lightly into us we never knew their trespass until their footprints made us cough, and bleed. 

We expected magic. We expected demons. We expected the wrath of a thousand gods, killed by the forgetfulness of the tiny beings they watched under burning celestial magnifying glasses, and so, with great irony, we never expected this.

If the end was coming by way of animals we were sure it was only to be ourselves. Or, if something smaller, then passively by our genocide of nuisance things, tiny and inferior, we would cause only our own eventual starvation. We did not expect the capability for resentment, so we did not expect revolution.

We, through thousands of years of trial and error with tooth and claw and war, expected poison. Our ancestral voices whispered to us that we were all doomed to be eaten, and so we prepared to be eaten.

They watched us prepare. Roughly one million of them to every one of us, watched us fail to consider them. Their plan laid before them, painfully obvious now to we who are lucky enough to enjoy hindsight's blade in our backs.

First, our communication. Our information. From the pipes and outlets that let words and heat and cold flow into us and out of us on command flowed only endless rivers of ants. The heat from their squirming masses burning and melting the wires that might have allowed us strategy.

Then they turned to easier things. Tree branch and roof groaned under their weight. Walls pulsed with the wet grind of them. They masqueraded as soil and as floor so anything placed with intentions of rooting only withered.

Their mouths never had to touch our flesh. Only their circling, skittering feet. Our skin mottled with dancing freckles and desperate, weeping scratches. Our eyes watered and swelled shut to keep them out. We would pull up the covers to hide like children only to find our bedclothes stuffed with them. In smothering heaps they covered our noses and filled our mouths with crunching, twitching, itch. We were deaf with the scraping of carapaces on our eardrums.

We ran screaming into frozen dark, driven by the maddening rhythms in our walls. We drank the poison we made for them, to keep them from our insides. We set ourselves alight so we would have nothing left to scratch. We let ourselves breathe in and swallow in surrender. We shooed them from our hair with bullets.

We were so unprepared.

Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary poet in the Pacific Northwest. Their work has been featured on Tell It Slant Radio, Wordlights Hour on Shady Pines Radio, Voicemail Poems, and the upcoming anthology In the Shadow of the Mic from Bridge and Tunnel books. Their first book of poetry, A Duet of Dying with Erin Schick from Swimming with Elephants Publications, will be released in August of 2020. Before the plague, they were a bartender, a barista, and a photographer who focused on human subjects and events. They can be found on Twitter at @aurorachrisma

Poems by Sarah Galvin

Hindsight 2020

That spring, I felt all my feelings

through a sad piece of meat

it was you

There Once Was A Man From Nantucket

Two roads diverged in a wood

he took the road less travelled

and it was so long he could suck it.

The Haunted Bridge

People insist gender is a binary when it’s really more of a haunted bridge

in a Japanese garden where someone was murdered in the 80’s

because you don’t think of it when you’re drunk,

you think about tipping over a statue.

Commercials Have Too Many Xylophones In Them

I’m angry because strippers are never fat enough and commercials are ruining xylophones. When I’m the mayor, every citizen will receive a free xylophone lesson while getting a lap dance from somebody with an ass that could suffocate them. Commercials for my campaign will just be silent footage of an empty chair, the discarded recliner where I got fucked on a street corner, because people are advertised to relentlessly, but hardly ever have an opportunity to wonder where all that blood came from.

The Land Before Party Time

My favorite thing about my body right now is that my knees look like two bald men resting their heads against each other. They seem so infatuated that they can’t see they share the same body. Physical affection between men is shown so rarely in this culture, especially this affection, which is the most erotic love possible. It’s what you feel when you’re 23, on your way to a party as the summer light turns from violet to indigo, the kind of lust for imagined people and experiences one only has in the last moment they’re imaginary.

Have A Time

There should be a funeral home that takes all the corpses out in a van to show them a good time. Sad people would follow the van in hopes of learning what a good time is, finally confirming that all anyone really enjoys is the Old Spaghetti Factory.

Love Language

If you lie completely still in one place, you might fall asleep, but if you do the same thing while someone is filming you, you might find yourself in a commercial. This is the warning I give everyone. I want to give tall, tall trees and all the waters in the seas, but what I have is warnings. Occasionally someone in a mattress commercial remembers I warned them, and thinks they would have sex with me if I had a lower body.

Jean Genet

Garden gnomes used to be real people, allowed to live on aristocrats' estates to provide ambiance. Mrs. Butterworth was a translucent woman who squirted maple syrup out of a hole in her head onto aristocrats' breakfasts. Those whose job it is to serve are made into miniature versions of themselves of plastic and ceramic. As a kid I wanted to be a werewolf. I read this book about a nerdy boy with asthma who found a magic wolf skin. When he wore it he had sex with adult women and ate raw meat until he barfed. It turned out that it wasn't magic and the police had heard of him. When a person’s narrative excludes service, they do not become a knick-knack. Their bodies turn into words, which are the biggest thing there is. The pull you feel as the moon rises is the invitation to expand.

Where Worms Come From

The most magical part of my childhood was when my dad took me out at night to catch worms in the yard. I knew that Santa brought presents because kids at school told me so, but since no one talked about worms, their powers seemed potentially limitless. Santa didn't come out of a hole in the ground every night to mate with other Santas, which also made him inferior to worms. Now I always tell kids that he does, because they will find out their parents bring the presents on Christmas long before they confirm that I'm the one who digs all those holes.

Wooden Ice Cream

I get so panicked about gender that sometimes I eat wooden ice cream. I’m not afraid that people won’t know whether I’m male or female, I’m afraid people won’t know that if I don’t eat a realistic wood carving of food at least once a week, my butthole disappears. I panic because my butthole is the only orifice I have. I’m so jealous of men, who have hundreds of them.

How Do I Tell If A Bird Is Important

People use bumper stickers to indicate that they’re important, but most birds get tangled in bumper stickers to the extent that they can no longer fly. I saw a pigeon entangled in a Stanford bumper sticker, but when I got close enough to tell it that I was impressed, it appeared to have been dead a long time. I saw a cassowary wearing a bumper sticker that said “honk if you’re horny,” but cassowaries, like ostriches, golden eagles and all other birds that can wear bumper stickers without getting tangled in them, have been known to seriously maim and even kill humans.

It's So Hard To Get Anything Done Knowing That History Happened

History, when everyone was playing pianos with their elbows and dancing naked with Buddy Holly and giving the neighbors shoe boxes of their own poop as presents. I’ll admit that everything I know about history is from Little Richard’s biography, but that admission does nothing to solve the problems of the present, like my inability to find the neighbors. I’ve been walking around with this shoe box for so long I don’t remember where I live, but sometimes I hear piano from an open window and I stand inside the music like a liquid, outside of time, just happy my shoe box isn’t empty.

Sarah Galvin is a the author of Ugly Time, The Three Einsteins and The Best Party of our Lives; contributor to The Guardian, Vice Magazine, The Stranger, and City Arts; and also a human bottle rocket. They have an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington.

The Mattress by Max Kruger-Dull

I slid my aged mattress off the bus, the mattress I had pulled out of the subway a half hour earlier, the mattress I had dragged down the stairs of my apartment building a half hour before that. I lifted it towards the buyer’s building. My fingers barely held onto its thick edges and stained fabric. Leaning the mattress against my elbow and shoulder and chin, I pressed the man’s buzzer, then waited. A complex smell reached my nostrils; it seemed to be the odor of something rotting, maybe decaying. I eyed the spotted fabric. Its yellowish discoloration. Its fuzz that pulled from the material. Its piss stains and sweat marks and dirt and staleness. I hadn’t looked at it this closely in years. For a moment, I worried that the man would deem the mattress too disgusting to buy. Although when I replied to his ad posting, he seemed to celebrate its foulness.

            The front door buzzed. I reached for the handle. As I did, the mattress tipped off my body and slapped against the sidewalk. Holding open the front door with my foot, I tried to lift the mattress, though I struggled. My lower back began to ache, almost spasm.

After pulling the mattress upright, I hauled its weight into the building and onto the elevator. Briefly, I found myself thanking the elevator, praising it almost for its work and its robustness; my apartment in Queens didn’t have one, only six flights of stairs. Though I then noticed the thinness of my arms and felt a familiar embarrassment. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, I’d try to strengthen them again.

            The elevator stopped. I hoisted the mattress into the hallway and propped it against the wall. After locating the man’s apartment, 7M, I dragged the mattress to his door. As I waited for it to open, my chest heaved—from exhaustion, from nervousness, from wistfulness.

            When I turned nine, my parents bought me the mattress—full-sized. You’re so big now, Aaron, my mother had said to me, smiling widely. I think you’re ready for a new one. At the store, they begged me to pick out sheets and a comforter, although I refused. They seemed like pointless additives. I had gotten too used to sleeping on the bare fabric of my previous mattress, to its friction and its coldness.

            The night after it arrived, my mom and dad positioned my new mattress onto its base in the corner of my room. I crawled on top of it, pressing my forehead into its surface. It had a similar grip to my last mattress, which the delivery men already had taken away. It had a similar bounce.

            My mom switched off my lamp. My dad closed my window. “Glass of water?” I asked. In school, my teacher Mrs. McCaw frequently urged us to drink more. Hydrate, she had said. Eight cups daily. Intelligent children always are hydrated. Since then, I drank as many glasses as I could, usually nine or ten a day, to keep my body healthy and fresh and alive.

            “You’ve had too many glasses already, sweetheart,” my father said. “Not right before bed.”

            “Please,” I said.

            My mother brought me a half-full glass from the bathroom, which I gulped. She then fetched me another.

            At two in the morning, I peed myself. I woke up as the urine spread across the mattress to my stomach and thighs. For ten or so minutes, I lay still, panicked. I imagined my mother, how she would attempt to mask her disgust at the smell. Then I worried what my father would say if I told him: No more water at bedtime. After seven o’clock. After five.

            I separated myself from the mattress. The urine dried on my skin, irritating it. I opened the window. In front of my door, I slid a chair and a bookshelf to keep my parents out in the morning. Then I crept back onto the mattress, constraining myself to its edge; only the side of my thigh touched the pee. Before I fell back asleep, I sipped the rest of the water from the cup. When I woke up, the urine still was not dry.

            The buyer opened the door to his apartment and introduced himself, smiling, pushing his teeth towards me. “I’m Gary,” he said. When we emailed, I had imagined that the man was fifty, maybe sixty. The ordinary baldness that spanned the center of his scalp made it difficult to distinguish his age though. “Let’s get that in here.”

            He latched onto the corner of the mattress and dragged it into his apartment. As the door shut, he let go. The mattress slapped against the floor. I glanced at it, uncomfortably. I should’ve thrown the mattress out years ago. A lengthy depression dipped across the fabric, from years of my body’s pressure; I doubted that a thinner person would have left such a noticeable imprint.

            “Is it…is it good?” I asked.

Gary stepped to the edge of the mattress, bending over it. As he examined the surface, his feet inched him around the perimeter. He paused over the largest stain, made of multiple components (vomit or sweat or urine or spit); it was shaped haphazardly, and a shade of umber lined its edges. Gary’s lips parted, pleased. It seemed as if he might bend down and lick at the spot.

            “This is very good,” he said, twisting his finger into a rip in the fabric. “Impressive.” He knelt down onto the hardwood. His eyes narrowed, sinisterly almost. I grew anxious. Until now, I hadn’t considered any potential danger or his possible intentions for purchasing my mattress, only the money I would receive, only my embarrassment at showing off its dirtiness.

            “So,” I said. “You…like it? You think it’s okay to sleep on? You’re gonna sleep on it?” He didn’t answer. Sweat built under my armpits, then behind my knees and around my chest. I stepped backwards towards the front door. Calming words clashed with my fearful thoughts—relax, breathe, you’re okay—although they did not soothe me or lessen my worries. “Are we almost done?”

            Gary stretched his arm across the short edge of the mattress, as if he were measuring it. I looked around the apartment—discretely—for a weapon, for a pan, a sculpture, a power cord, a book. I noticed a gigantic painting that hung from the wall; if I were stronger, I could’ve thrown it at him. If I were taller, I could’ve pulled the chandelier down onto his head.

            Gary poked his finger into the mattress. His other palm pressed into one of the few clean sections. He smelled the fabric. He slipped his hands underneath the edge. He looked to me. I opened the door and rushed out of the apartment.

            When I was fourteen, I locked myself in my bedroom after school. I had been doing so semi-frequently for a month, turning the space into a gym of sorts. To clear the floor, my feet kicked towels and musky clothing against the wall. I picked up books and papers, plates and utensils, failed sketches, empty water bottles, crumpled paper towels. Then I grabbed my set of ten-pound weights, which my parents had bought me from the dollar store when I started to exercise.

            On the mattress, I opened my laptop and searched for one of my two cardio workout videos. I preferred the controlled one, the slower one. Although in order to lose fat and skin, I knew I needed to force my body to move quickly.

            The video started. I stripped off my school shirt, my pants, my underwear, then discarded them onto a random pile in the corner of the room.

            “High knees,” the instructor shouted. “Faster. Faster.” His legs thrust upwards. His abdomen seemed contracted and fixed. I attempted to copy him. My knees reached the height they were supposed to—up to my waist, sometimes my naval. Though each time my leg sprung off the floor, my chest jerked backwards. And I needed to swing my arms in order to replicate the exercise.  

            The instructor switched to other moves. I followed him, sloppily. Sumo kicks. Weighted frog jumps. Mountain climbers. Burpees. As I performed them, I thought up exercises that would have been more fun to do, more grandiose, ones that involved water or rocks or ladders or resistance.  

            The workout ended. Sweat glazed my entire body; it felt as if the moisture originated from my scalp, then spilled continuously down to the rest of my skin. Some other video started: The Ultimate Abdomen Burner. I was too exhausted to shut it off.

            I crawled onto the mattress, shaking; my sweaty knees momentarily adhered to the fabric. I collapsed onto my back. The sharp coldness of the mattress soothed me. I stilled my body. The mattress sucked up my sweat. I slept until my father called me for dinner two hours later.

            My finger jammed into the elevator button, stiff with panic. I pressed it again, then again.

Gary tripped into the hallway. His feet settled into a wide, prepared stance. “Hey, hey, hey,” he called. “Are you okay? I didn’t pay you yet. I only need you here for a few more minutes.” The lines that carved his face seemed to sag from his bones under the extreme light of the hallway; it looked as if he had pulled at all his skin and used some sort of epoxy to cement the grooves in place. “Come back inside.”

I didn’t reply. An image came to me, one of myself in Gary’s apartment, face down. I looked dead and splayed and stabbed. I pressed my thumb into the elevator button again.

“Hey, man,” Gary said. “Hey, Aaron, relax. I can tell you’re scared. What’ll make you feel comfortable?” He waited for me to respond, though I didn’t. I looked around the hallway for the stairs. “Do you want a knife to hold on to?” he asked.

“What?”

His foot stepped towards me, cautiously. “You could hold it until we’re done. It might make you feel better, more comfortable.” A bell sounded. The elevator door opened. “Do you want me to go get one for you? A real knife, not a butter knife. I promise I’m not a pervert. We’ll be done soon.”

Gary smiled; I wondered if some men would read his grin as charisma. The elevator door slid shut. I looked away, at nothing, then decided a dangerous person would’ve made it more difficult to exit their apartment. 

“No, no, I’m okay,” I said. I followed him into the living room.

Gary positioned himself back over the mattress. I lowered myself onto the edge of his sofa. As I watched him, my ankles rolled around the tops of my shoes as if they were making sure my feet were prepared to run.  

“So, I’m actually impressed,” Gary said. “I didn’t think I’d be able to find such a…a heavily used mattress. May I ask why you’re selling it now? Finally time for a new one?”

My fingers dug into the edge of the couch before I answered. Like my mattress, the cushion felt firm. Gary turned to face me. I grabbed for more of the sofa; it was pathetic how much I needed to brace myself in order to discuss my dirtiness.

I explained the state of the mattress to him as vaguely as possible. I told him that I brought the mattress with me when I began to rent an apartment for college and that I was moving into the dorms next year to save money. I told him that I needed cash (like every college student) and that I wasn’t too attached to it. I told him that it was time for me to live on something clean. Although I left out the numerous occasions that my parents begged me to buy a new mattress. And I didn’t mention that, actually, I wanted a mattress without my body’s indentation ruining its flatness.

Gary nodded and smiled, then turned away from me. “What’s this mark here?” he asked. His finger touched a browned area at the bottom of the mattress.

Frail words dribbled from my lips—Probably dirt from my feet. I repeated myself louder after Gary looked to me, bewildered.

My toes tightened, then my thighs and my chest. Detailing my filth, my unexplainable dirtiness, spread an immobilizing shame to most of my body. Gary pointed to another spot on the mattress. Pee, I said. Then another. I think mustard. Then another. Maybe vomit. Then another. Dried spit.

            When I was sixteen, I brought my dinner to my room—cereal and milk. My parents had recently allowed me to eat alone most nights; I told them that I was studying for the SATs, learning the definitions of words like parvenu and mawkish and ignominious and prevaricate. Although I really preferred to be in my room, cozy, watching TV, sheathed in my blanket.

            I started an episode. My teeth mushed the sugary cereal as I watched the screen intently. The character decided to go swimming in the ocean at night, an effort at achieving some sort of catharsis. He pulled off his shirt and stepped out of his pants, although he left his underwear on. I wondered how many takes the actor had needed to strip down seamlessly.

            Balancing the cereal bowl on my chest, my hand reached down to my hip, rubbing my fingers over the synthetic shorts that covered my skin. For a moment, I forgot that I wore them. The last year or so, I had gotten used to sleeping in them after deciding that my bed smelled too musky. My thighs had adjusted to rubbing against the shorts. My back had learned to accept that the waistband would slide up my spine as I slept.

            A wave smacked the character on his torso. The next one soaked his head. I pictured myself on a beach, alone, naked, my toes digging into the sleek sand. The waves and the moon and the lifeguard station were simple for me to imagine; they easily filled my mind, then stayed put. Although when I tried to add in myself, my body began to drift throughout the beach, as if I were unplaceable. I looked like a malfunctioning character in a video game, switching impossibly between the shore and the water and the sky and the parking lot.

            I turned off the episode and placed the bowl on the edge of the mattress. Clumsily, I lifted my knees and slid off the shorts. I wanted to feel as little material against my skin as possible. The blanket twisted off my chest. My body calmed. I dozed off as quickly as I ever had.

            At three in the morning, I woke up. The bowl had spilled onto the mattress. The cereal piled in front of the glass rim, disintegrating. The spoon rested by my palm. Milk absorbed into the fabric, wetting my hair and my cheek and the edge of the blanket. After grabbing a handful of cereal and dropping it into my mouth, I fell back asleep.

            After Gary questioned me about both the pervasive and dulled odors of the mattress, he pushed himself off the ground. His body swayed to the left, unstable, then steadied over both his feet. He didn’t seem like a man who would hurt me. Or could hurt me—not substantially, not stealthily.

            His eyes scanned the fabric. “Can you come here?” he asked. I stepped to the opposite end of the mattress, away from his reach. “This part is too clean,” he said. His palm hovered over a whitish area.

            My finger pulled at one of the belt loops of my jeans, stretching it with apprehension. “Does…that mean…you don’t want to buy it?”

            “No, no, no, no,” he said. “I just think we can make it better.” He walked to the kitchen, then brought back a knife; it looked like the kind used to carve off bits of meat. “Here,” he said. I took it from him, cautiously gripping the handle.

Gary shuffled through the apartment, seemingly lost. After a minute, he stopped and lifted a potted plant off his coffee table. He stretched it towards me as if he had already told me his plan. “Grab some soil,” he said.

            “What?”

“Grab some soil.”

            The dirt looked desiccated. With my free hand, I wormed my fingers into the soil until they looked like partially harvested carrots; the dirt rolled into my palm as I pulled out a small handful.

            “Now, if you would, spit in your hand,” he said.

            “What? Why?” Both my wrists began to shake. The knife twitched through the air.

“So the soil will stick to the mattress,” he said calmly. “Go on, Aaron. It’ll look better if you stain this spot too. We’ll be done in a few minutes. Go on, I want it to come from you. Your spit will tie in the stain with the rest of the marks.”

I parted my lips. Thick spit gathered behind my teeth. A bubbly glob fell from my mouth to my hand. I swallowed the rest, almost choking from my tenseness or my shame. 

“Thank you,” Gary said. He motioned to the mattress. I bent down. A wad of soil dropped from my hand onto a different, already dirty section. “Go on.” I flipped over my palm. The soil and spit pushed into the clean fabric. Briefly, I wished that I hadn’t brought over the mattress, that I had kept its dirtiness a secret; I’d have stained the spot in time, with clay or glue or dust or ketchup or orange juice or chalk or syrup or blood.

“Now, just smear it around and make the spot messier,” Gary said. “And poke at it with the knife.”

I stuck the knife in twice and dragged out wisps of the mattress’s insides. I rubbed the soil over the fabric like sunscreen. I let more spit dribble from my lips. I dirtied the whole area.

            The summer after I graduated high school, I spent more time on my mattress than usual. I read on top of it, slept on it, ate on it, watched the news, watched movies, watched porn. I researched apartments (first in Manhattan, then in Brooklyn, then in Queens). I taught myself poker and set up three dating profiles. I memorized various bits of trivia (the height of mountains, the wingspan of birds, the average number of calories in different types of soup). I picked at the white strands that sprouted from the mattress.

            Two weeks before I moved to Queens, I found a man I liked on one of my dating sites—Hugo. He smiled in his pictures. His lips bloomed from his face, as if they were detachable. He had a dog. He had muscles. He had age. He had polish. His profile said, Looking for a life partner who likes the gym and phad thai.

            I flipped onto my stomach and wrote him: Hey, would you like to get phad thai sometime? Though he didn’t seem like a man who’d ever respond to a message from me.

            For the next five or so minutes, I stared at his photo and waited for a response. Mostly, my eyes fixated on the extreme curves of his shoulders as they met the tops of his arms. My neck began to hurt from pressing down into the mattress. My fingers began to ache from clenching onto the sides of the phone. I put it down, then researched the ingredients in phad thai on my laptop—rice noodles, eggs, some sort of protein, fish sauce, etc. I had never eaten it before. It sounded bizarre.

            An hour later, I checked again for a response from Hugo. Then a half hour after that. Then a few more times between dinner and bed. Though he would never be interested in me, in my chubbiness, my youngness, my rawness; I knew that.

            To distract myself, I masturbated; most days I did so two or three or four or five times. I flipped through various porn videos. I watched ones with men who looked entirely different than Hugo. With short, stick-like men. With men lacking any real-world appeal.

            After I finished, I took my hand and rubbed it beside me until every bit of cum transferred to the mattress.

            I pulled the knife from the mattress. Gary patted my upper back, striking it three times as if he were surprised or exhilarated. “The mattress looks incredible now,” he said. “Perfect.”

            My palm, still covered in soil mixed with spit, lifted from the mattress; a brownish fluid meandered down my arm. Gary hurried into another room, then returned with a torn rag. “Here you are,” he said, as he draped the cloth over my dirty hand. I lay down the knife and wiped myself off.

As I pressed the rag into my fingernails, Gary emptied his wallet of twenties. “I’ve been looking for a mattress like this for years,” he said. He handed me the bills. As he spoke, I counted them—four hundred dollars—a hundred more than he had promised me. I folded the money into my pocket. “The people who’ve responded over the years have had barely any stains on their mattresses,” he continued. “They’ve even looked new sometimes. I never thought I would find one like yours. It’s perfect. Really, thank you for bringing it here to me.” His lips stretched into an overstated smile, turning his face into something sweeter and more youthful. I felt shocked; I didn’t know I could cause a man to shift his usual expression into one of authentic tenderness.   

“Well,” I said, “I hope the mattress is comfortable.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “I thought I mentioned it in the ad. I’m not sleeping on it.”  His brows narrowed, playfully. “Here. Help me carry it.”

Gary raised the mattress onto its side. He gripped onto its edge and dragged it backwards. A clump of the soil peeled off the fabric and plunged to the floor. I tried my best to help him, pushing the mattress with my hands and occasionally my knee.

We directed the mattress into a room—his bedroom. We paused in the doorway. “Let’s figure out how to get this inside,” he said. I looked around. The whole space was white. Luxurious items sat throughout the room—watches, bracelets, lamps, sculptures, vases. A gold light fixture branched down from the ceiling; it looked like a chandelier, although I wasn’t sure if it technically counted as one. Towering photographs hung from three of the walls, all of barn animals coated in purple spray paint. His bed was pushed against the fourth wall, dressed in six pillows, a thin sheet, and two blankets folded over each other to look intricate and beautiful.

“Hey, help me lift the mattress,” Gary said. “We’re putting it behind the bed.” We hoisted the mattress upright, flush with the wall. My arms quivered. Gary shoved his bed into the mattress, securing it in place. He turned to me. “You see?”  

I looked at it. My eyes shifted between the wall and the mattress, puzzled. It all seemed out of place against the cleanness of his bedroom—the sweat, the cum, the spilled milk, the urine stains, the soil, the knife marks, the mustard, the spit.

“It’s my new headboard,” Gary said, elated. “See? The dirtiness of it contrasts with the rest of the room beautifully.” He stared at it. “Wow. It looks incredibly amazing. Do you like it?”

I nodded.

We stood on either side of his bed, admiring it. I glanced at a greenish spot on the mattress that I had never seen before. Then I noticed a cluster of black ink marks. As my gaze spanned the mattress’s various sections, I felt a delicate proudness. I convinced myself of its beauty.

For a half hour, Gary questioned me further on the mattress’s creation: Did you ever try to wash it? How did you deal with all the smells? Your parents didn’t mind how dirty it was? Has anyone else ever slept on it? Did you always sleep naked? Will you put sheets on your next mattress? I answered them all.

Max Kruger-Dull is a queer fiction writer living in New York City and is currently pursuing his MFA in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has previously appeared in Chronotope Magazine.

Followed Home by Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich

I think I’m being followed. Leaving the bar passing a parking structure big sign screams $7.50 for the whole day but I take public transit and cabs exclusively so I don’t care. Drunk on too many vodka sodas stumbling over nothing. All the shops are shut and the lights are out and so I can see the same person in a American Apparel hoodie and jeans and ugly Nikes following me in the windows and I go right and head toward a lighted bus stop the 78 79 I don’t care. Lean against the wall. Pop a Xanax to calm down but it’s not helping. American apparel Nikes walks past and I figure I’m just being paranoid because drugs because Absolut and I go the opposite direction for the red line station. Waiting for the train a guy calls out that he likes my tits and I give him the finger because I’m almost totally sure he’s just being a dick because they’re barely there and I’m not wearing a push up bra. I’m not wearing a bra at all. On the train -- take up two seats call it three counting my feet even though I’m not very tall and I slouch against the window and a group of girls hipsters seriously Silverlake echo park where the fuck ever get on looking like they’ve just stepped out of an urban outfitters catalog even though none of them would ever shop at urban or at least they’d never admit it. Get off the train and upstairs and into my loft and start taking clothes off slowly it’s a process popping pills to stay awake because I have an email asking to switch shifts at work and I’ll need to be out in five hours. This is not the only email the others say things like 'but doesn’t it bother you that you live on a street named after a bond girl' and also 'all you do is stay locked up in your apartment what the hell are you hiding from? Are you punishing yourself?' I ignore the first one but I carry the laptop to bed and to the second I reply htis isnt punshmtn . Its salavation and autocorrect changes that to this isn't punishment. It's salvation and I hit send. Drank lots of vodka and mountain dew don’t let anyone tell you different: anything mixed with mountain dew is gonna taste great but the hangover is gonna be a bitch and what’s worse is you can’t even imagine sleeping. I’m lucky I thrive in chaos I was insane before all this. Everything is bright and loud and exhausting in the mostly darkness of my apartment and I turn off the Christmas lights I’ve hanging over my clothing rack but it doesn’t help even though the blinds are shut and my place doesn’t face the street anyway. At work I haven’t washed my hair in three days and people men women boys girls keep buying me drinks. The bar is always open which isn’t legal but I don’t care I’m paid under the table stocking feet heels kicked beneath the bar I am half asleep and a girl says to me 'I love your hair' and I pour her water every time she asks me for gin because I figure she’s had enough. I’ve had enough. Leaving work past the bouncers get stopped by a guy who says he wants to put me in his new movie drops names of a few actors attached to the script asks who reps me and when I say I’m not an actress when I say fuck off when I walk away and he grabs my arm and I snap I have pepper spray I can feel his eyes trying to pull apart my insides trying to figure out whats wrong with me and I laugh until a taxi stops alongside me and I have to tell the driver my address because if I don’t know whats wrong with me how is anyone else going to know. I go to see my sister for lunch at a shitty hole in the wall in the valley. I mention that I think probably I’m almost certain actually that this restaurant is a front for drugs. She sips a drink delicately candy pink lipstick staining her straw and and says 'sometimes' but stops so I say sometimes? And she says sometimes youre like someones uber cool sort of mostly trashy boyfriend and I say yeah well thats the dream. She gets frustrated a few minutes later because I’m not listening to her talk about fashion school and when she complains I shrug and say sorry bout it and she leaves and the waiter comes over and says on the house smiling at me and I smile back now completely sure it’s a front for drugs something strong heroin maybe that’s going around like the plague (note to self: buy Paris Hilton’s sliving facemasks) except it’d have to be like fucking black tar wouldn’t it and as I’m walking to the bus stop I am almost entirely sure someone’s following me but when I turn around I just see car after car after car and they all seem the same because I’m sort of drunk and I know I could be being followed by someone in a car but it doesn’t seem likely and who would follow me anyway and if I switch buses twice on the way to the station it’s no one’s business but mine. Train is late sun is going down the other train is boarding all around me and so its like an exodus of really bad fashion choices. When I’m on the train fucking finally on the train I pull out a beat up copy of Glamorama and read in starts and stops until I can’t and I just stop, put the book back in my bag. The man in the seat across from me, late thirties, maybe early forties, hair thinning, beer gut, is staring at me, so I tilt my head back, straighten up in my seat, take a deep breath, subtly rearrange my bra. Out of the corners of my eyes, I can see his going wide and I shoot him a lazy smirk that says fuck you and gotcha and you really don’t want to bother with me I am a goddamn menace and at the next stop he gets up and changes seats.