OH MY DARLING — MATT SAILOR

It had been winter for so long, it seemed like, and I was ready for the clementines. In Georgia that year there had been no autumn. It was 89 degrees one day, 40 the next, and snowing inside of a week. Since the beginning of November it had been scarf and hat weather, soup and space heater weather, whiskey in the coffee weather. 
            "Let's get some now before they are gone," I said to him, and he smiled at me and said, "There's no rush," and I said, "Yes, there is," because he didn't understand. Soon the season would be over, and there had been early icing in Spain that year, so they'd already had to destroy half of the crop.
            So we went to the store, even though he reminded me how packed it would be two days before Christmas. We went to the Whole Foods around the corner. I'd read on a blog they'd be getting a shipment of organic clementines from Valencia. The Spanish are the only real clementines, as anyone who knows will tell you. I imagine they must have fallen in love, the conquistadors, on their first journey to the Americas. 
            "Just imagine, pushing your way through the equatorial heat. Splitting mangrove saplings with your machete, pulling palm fronds apart with your hands, swatting at the mosquitoes, and coming upon this perfect orange globe, glowing there in the sun."
            He was adjusting the baby bjorn, trying to tighten it around his waist while holding Parker's head gingerly in his hand. 
            "Are you listening?"
            He looked up, frowning so tightly that you couldn't make out his mouth beneath his beard. "Hmmm?"
            "Do you ever listen?"
            "I was," he said. "But you know, citrus originated in Asia."
            "What?"
            "Yeah. You know, Persian limes? Mandarin oranges? They were cultivated in China thousands of years ago. The Spanish would have already known about them...and I don't even think they grew wild in Florida. Most likely they were brought over and cultivated later." He hitched the baby up on his chest and made for the cart rack. For some reason, it was a crushing blow.
            We ate the clementines that night, an old Christmas special on the TV that I'd seen a million times, with commercials I'd seen a million more. My hands were sticky, but I didn't want to get up to wash them. They were hard to peel. One of them, unaccountably, was full of seeds.

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Matt Sailor is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. He holds an MFA from Georgia State University, and is a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellow. He works as an associate editor of NANO Fiction. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Five Chapters, and Hobart, among others. He is currently at work on his first novel, 1985.

CERULEAN — KENNETH NICHOLS

The bartender fell in love with the blonde in the black cocktail dress because of her cerulean eyes, the blue the ocean takes after a hard winter snow, the hue that takes its name from the Latin word for Heaven.  She gulped one Hemingway daiquiri and softly asked for another, explaining that she was nervous to meet her fiance's parents for the first time.  He comped the second drink, luxuriating in her gratitude.
            The bartender's heart broke when his better arrived in a thousand-dollar suit, parents in tow, braying, "She's smart and loving, but wait'll you see those green eyes..."

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Kenneth Nichols received his MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State.  He teaches writing at two colleges in Central New York and maintains the writing craft web site Great Writers Steal, accessible at www.greatwriterssteal.com.  His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Main Street Rag, Skeptical Inquirer and Lunch Ticket. 

ELECTIVES AND REQUISITES — MARC J. SHEEHAN

In accordance with a typed sheet of rules we had taped to the kitchen wall, we took turns pushing an old vacuum cleaner across the worn carpeting of our undergraduate duplex.  We did this for weeks, maybe months, before realizing the machine’s drive belt was broken. It was a great old building with birds-eye maple trim, and elegant light fixtures turned on and off by yellowed Bakelite buttons already retro in that year of the bicentennial. The rules applied to everyone—even a roommate’s friend who slept in our walk-in closet instead of going back home and writing ad copy for his father’s firm. He left in the morning, came back at night and said he’d share rent when he got his first paycheck. In reality he spent days on a park bench in downtown Kalamazoo, or lingered over a cup of coffee at the Parthenon, or knocked off a mystery in the reading room of the library. He confessed, finally, and moved back to one of Chicago’s western suburbs. There were all these bicentennial minutes on television celebrating important people and events, but I really don’t remember them. We were too busy discovering innovative mistakes to make with women and drugs and money. I loved the purposeful, furious sound of the Hoover, and the little check marks we put next to the items on the list. 

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Marc J. Sheehan is the author of two poetry collections—Greatest Hits from New Issues Press and Vengeful Hymns from Ashland Poetry Press.  His short story “Objet du Desir” won the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Contest sponsored by the public radio program Selected Shorts and was read on stage in New York by David Rakoff. His story “The Dauphin” was broadcast on Weekend All Things Considered as part of its Three-Minute Fiction series. Publications in literary magazines include Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Michigan Quarterly Review and many others. 

INSIDE AISLES — TOM DeMARCHI

I want Henry to mean it when he says we’ll stay in touch. “We’re friends no matter what,” he says before pulling away in the U-Haul. What does “We’ll stay in touch” mean? Birthday cards? Facebook pokes? And what does “You gotta give the next guy a chance” mean? What next guy? A chance to what? Fuck my mother till he’s bored? When the U-Haul turns onto Hollywood Blvd., I go in the back yard and cry behind the shed until Mr. Gira leans over the fence, points his garden hose at me and asks what the hell I’m doing blubbering like a baby. “You’re, what, thirteen? Be a man.”            
            I go into the house and say, “What a tool,” meaning Mr. Gira but knowing Mom’ll think I mean Henry.
            She’s still staring into the open fridge. It’s been over an hour and I wonder if I should call Grandma for help. She says, “We’re never eating another soy burger.”
            “Or kale,” I say.
            “Bitter weed,” she says. She opens the crisper, pulls out two heads of broccoli, hip-checks the door shut. She opens the freezer and grabs the package of soy burgers. She stomps on the trashcan pedal and tosses everything in. “Who feels like tacos?”
            Henry would say that most people subsist on poison and don’t even know it. He cautioned against putting the wrong things in your body, said there’s only so much abuse your system can take. He’d say, “I bet you can’t pronounce half the ingredients in a Twinkie. Don’t put anything in your body you can’t say.” He’d say, “Healthy food spoils quicker than shitty food ‘cause nothing good for you stays fresh for very long.” He’d say, “The inside aisles at the supermarket are slow suicide.”
            At Publix we load the cart with ground chuck, refried beans, a can of Cheez-Whiz, sour cream, taco spices, salsa, and guacamole. Mom grabs a case of Bud and Coke for me. She barrels down the aisle and says, “We need tortilla chips. It’s an emergency.”
            We cook up everything, light vanilla-scented candles, crank Lady Gaga, and I dig into the tacos while Mom swills can after can of Bud and dabs her eyes. Her plate congeals into taco sculpture. “Henry was right.” She hurls an empty can over her shoulder. It bounces off the wall and lands in the overflowing laundry basket. “Put the wrong thing in your body and it poisons you.” She picks up a fresh can, shakes it.
            “It’s gonna explode,” I say.
            She passes me the can. “You,” she says.
            I pop the tab and take a sip. My mouth tinges. I want to spit it out, but I swallow and say, “I like it.”
            She shrugs and holds up an empty hand holding an invisible can. “To the future.”
            I tap the can against her knuckles. I take another sip. Bubbles pop on my tongue and I wonder if the bitterness I taste means it’s already skunked.

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Photo credit: Augusten Burroughs

Tom DeMarchi teaches in the Department of Language & Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University.  His work has appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, The Miami Herald, Quick Fiction, The Pinch, Gulfstreaming, The Southeast Review, and other publications.  When not teaching or writing, Tom's busy directing the Sanibel Island Writers Conference. 

TWO THOUSAND MILES RUNNING — ANTHONY MARTIN

Bombs don’t drop here, to answer your question. Only on television. You know those white heat signatures on green computer screens they show sometimes? That way. I doubt anyone will be after you like that. Not like home.
            People die in this country, sure. In the projects and in cars and in plane crashes. It just doesn’t happen in houses set aflame by bombs that drop in from the clouds or from rockets or anything like that. And when that does happen it’s somewhere else and people don’t seem to care very long, you know? Not when it’s all so far away. They have a word for it here. Collateral, I think it is.
            It seems unsure now but you’ll adjust. This country gives you space for that, usually, as long as you don’t get mixed up. It’s one of its good colors that you’ll come to appreciate. Believe me. I know. 
            There was some guided missile that made collateral of my family and a few neighbors once. It’s why you found me here in this grimy bar. The blast sent me running for two thousand miles in the opposite direction at a dead sprint and I came straight here, I swear. And it happened when I wasn’t looking, can you believe it? What are the chances of that? I bet papa was looking though, in that final instant before the flash and the boom and the separation of particles.
            Ever wonder about that? About what they see? I always pictured clenched teeth painted cartoonish like. Or a slender white girl posing pretty, like in the old movies. It happens too quickly for any of that, I hope. It’s got to. For my sister’s sake.
            I was at the market looking at plums, squeezing them in my hand to check for ripeness. My friend from the apartment block was with me and we were talking football. God she could play. She’d put it in the back of the net easy from eighteen yards and all the kids feared it when she turned up for games. We locked eyes for a good twenty seconds after the heat of the explosion reached us, two kids frozen in that warp-speed tunnel where changes happen or they don’t happen but you’re locked up inside just the same. Never saw her again after that. She took off running like me and I’m not sure where she ended up after she stopped. It’s better that way, I think.
            Anyway I’m glad you made it out of there and over and that we met. Really. It’s still good to talk about it once in a while, just not too frequently and not with anyone who doesn’t know about it. Remember that. But first remember that it’s impolite to turn down a drink. You should already know that. It’s just like home in that way. So bottoms up, as they say here, and try to smile because the bombs only fall on television.

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Anthony Martin (@pen_tight) is a mutt whose favorite word is subtext. His work appears, or is forthcoming, in WhiskeyPaper, Mojave River Review, pacificREVIEW and Lunch Ticket.

WORKING GIRL — KYLE HEMMINGS

Yamazaki told a regular with eyes dead as checklists that she dreamed of zebras at night. He said the truth was more like Tokyo was made of glass. To put herself through art school, she tied men up until they could no longer wiggle out of their rope-burn repressed rage and shame. Her stilettos were imported from some island of exiled writers, too dangerous for the mainland. An old boyfriend once told her that her face was too askew, too lopsided, to invoke pure love from men in starched shirts. She sent money to a needy sister in Okinawa, living at the tip of a small mountain, body-gliding on the surface of hard snow. Her body was a moon too full of itself, leaking light. Yamazaki fell in love with a small-time gangster who asked her to cut him a little each day. She said blood was too precious, but the truth was that she hated scrubbing the floor with ammonia after he left. Over time, he grew as skinny as she and she began to mix bleach with ammonia. In this way, they became extinct. Or a colorless truth. Her sister, buried under the loss, took up painting abstracts in a dim light.

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Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Blaze Vox, Matchbook, and elsewhere. He loves 50s Sci-Fi movies,  manga comics, and pre-punk garage bands of the 60s.

BUNKER — ANTHONY COTE

Daniel and Peter held on to the skinny saplings on their way down the hill, their sneakers covered in mud and leaves. A silence had surrounded them since they agreed to skip school and explore the bunkers. Neither had been there without a group. Neither had been there without older kids around. The bunkers were theirs. 
            “Here’s a good one.” Peter said nodding towards a concrete opening in the ground. 
            The steps down were covered in wet leaves and a rancid odor crept up out of the dark. Peter pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and went down the steps. The beam of light swung around then disappeared. Daniel crouched with his hands on his knees, squinting into the mouth of the bunker. The beam hit the staircase after a few minutes and Peter walked back up.
            "Look.” Peter said and held out a wet hand grenade. “It’s rusted shut. The pin don’t move.” 
            Daniel felt his insides shrink into his stomach, his throat closed but his hand extended when Peter held out the grenade. Daniel felt the weight of the steel and how cold it was, he saw the rust smear his fingers. Daniel felt the ridges of the grenade and couldn’t let it go. “We’ll chuck it in the ocean” Daniel said.  
            “Fuck the ocean” Peter said. “We get the pin out and drop it down one of these bunker vents.” Peters iron brown hands grabbed the grenade back from Daniel. They started back into the saplings behind the bunker opening.
            “What if it don’t go off? It’s probably dead.” Daniel said to Peter. They were about thirty feet apart behind the bunker and scanning the undergrowth for one of the steel vent shafts.
            “Well, if it don’t go off we’ll ha—“ Peter was cut off.
            Daniel felt a low thud and turned to see a brown cloud of leaves and atomized mud where Peter had been forming his answer. His right arm and the half of torso it was attached to was gone, as was his head. Two legs attached to the blackened right side of Peter’s body moved as if they were descending a staircase then dropped. Daniel walked over and into a cloud of pink and brown condensation that stuck to his skin. The parts looked like a mannequin painted black and still wet.  
            “—ve to go down the bunker and find it,” Peter said. The words were hissed from inside of Daniel’s head, right behind each ear.   
            The woods were silent. Things were sliding through the wet leaves, Daniel could see them. Little brown and black shapes converging in one spot and clicking together, scratching as they each found their place. Some were burrowing up from the mud; others came quickly out of the surrounding trees. Other pieces were breaking through Peters legs a few feet away, all converging and reassembling. Powder swirled into the top of the steel ball and the bent collar of the grenade wrapped around the top again.

After an eleven year hiatus, Anthony Cote (@A_Cote1)  made his triumphant return to the classroom in 2011 and is now studying anthropology and writing at Rhode Island College. His resume is filled with several factory jobs, each of which he has excelled at. Anthony also collects music and enjoys economical whiskies.

'54 — A. L. ERWIN

Cold.  Cold like when God ain’t round.  People go confusing it, thinking it should be hot.  Absence don’t generate no heat.  It’s cold for my Momma and me.  
            “Wanted rid of his ass soon as I laid up on him.”
            First time I heard ‘em words slip out her lips were in that winter of ’53.  Ground done took to freezing in the mere mentioning of a wind’s swell.  No room for hold in that sheet of ice.  Meant ‘em crops died, went by the wayside along with ‘em cows, taken sick by a rogue that’d got loose in the field.  Left us hungry and thin.  Daddy went that year too.  Weather didn’t have nothing to do with that’n. 
            Second time were after she’d spotted him.  Spewed it out over a pot of boiling taters.  ‘Bout the only thing ever touched our lips anymore, ever since that winter of ’53.  ‘Em bruises, one’s used to call on her arms, one’s Daddy used to give her, they’s long forgot.  Like purple and black weren’t never seen.  Met this new fella near Trudy’s.  Right where the bend gives way to that old hickory.  Right where that sign reads in seared black, “GOD WATCHES ALL.”  Daddy’d hung that after a man in a tent sprayed visions of fire.  Slightest things labeled aversions to God afterwards.    
            Called hisself Lynn, this new one.  Momma muttered it with plops of wet on her cheek while that water popped and bubbled below.  Called me “SUGA,” first time I met him.  Said, “C’mon over here SUGA, let me lay my eyes on ya.”  
            Smelled of stink he did, but Momma hollered out, “Connie, honey, ya be nice now.” Shared in that same cut he did.  Same tan on his skin from working in the sun.  Same glow of yellow combed on his head.  Same look as Daddy.
            Mud smeared over my Momma’s clean walls from his flinging dirty boots in the corner.  Didn’t say a word that woman did.   Not even a full year since Daddy’s accident ‘fore that “SUGA” man’s living with us.  Not three months after ‘til  ‘em purples and blues came back on ‘em skinny arms of hers.  Weeds jumping out from long sleeves as she wiped stains off her table and emptied smokes from our only nice bowl.  
            When it assured, it’d have to be done again. 
            I done knowed how to kill, skin, cook, and cure since ’50.  Weren’t no other way for it to go on a farm.   In ’53, as my feet grazed over that crunch of white, whispers of, “flesh is flesh,” cut back against my tongue.  Held it there between my teeth as I opened that shed out back, that place where metal’s kept.  My Momma’d showed me how to gut a pig not two weeks ‘fore Daddy’s accident.  My hand still shook, though.  But it needed to be done.  Couldn’t take the listening of ‘em beatings anymore.  In ’54, my hands were still. 

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A. L. Erwin writes Southern Pulp.  Sometimes, she does it well.  Mostly, she bides her time slinging drinks until the day comes that she doesn't.  Her debut novel, A Ballad Concerning Black Betty or the Retelling of a Man Killer and Her Machete, is out soon.