THE WOOD AND THE BLADE — ANNA PRUSHINSKAYA

He said that the wood came from a cuckoo clock. She nodded. What she knew about cuckoos: her elementary teacher had explained that the birds counted life with their calls. She sat at recess instead of playing games. The playground was next to a forest. The bird was arboreal, her teacher had said. They rarely occurred in pairs. They laid eggs in other nests. She asked the bird to predict her age at her death. She went back to the bird plenty because she wanted to live longer. The clocks made sense with the birds. They counted lives in living rooms, hour to hour, day to day. She thought the bird was propelled by springs, but he said weights. Oh, she said. They all come from one place. The weights? The clocks. In Germany. He wrapped the knife in an old t-shirt. She asked, and what about the blade?

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Anna Prushinskaya's writing has appeared in Redivider and Sonora Review, and on Two Serious Ladies and The Millions, among other places. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and she is also the Midwest editor of Joyland Magazine. Find out even more about her here: http://annavpru.tumblr.com/.

PROJECTION — LISA MECHAM

Tonight, driving away with our girls, leaving you at the restaurant curb after a stilted dinner (our broken family at the table like compass points), I remembered another time. Driving to you with a bag of crossword puzzle books, The New York Times, sundry items allowed on the hospital floor (nothing to cut, puncture or maim, please). The girls were little and I had no one to watch them (alone as we were in that dreadful, Connecticut town) so they came too. I parked near the entrance, said stay here, and went inside (through two locked doors) to give you the bag. You'd been there (involuntarily) for two weeks. Facing each other in the common room of tattered couches and tables (no edges, all round) I leaned in to kiss you but you turned away. It wasn't me you wanted (you hadn't wanted me in a long time) so I said do you want to see them? Your eyes pooled, you whispered hoarsely please, and pointed to a window at the end of a yolk yellow corridor of shut doors, trees outside flapping green (with their smug sense of serenity). So I drove around to that side of the hospital. Late afternoon, the downing sun cast its pallor over the glass but you were there. Palms pressed against it. Unshaven jaw, eyes hollowed, scrubs low on your hips (no strings, no ties). I stopped the car to point. Girls. There. There he is. Do you see him? I know they did, because one gasped and the other wept. 

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Lisa Mecham's work has been appeared in Juked, Carve and Barrelhouse Online, among other publications. Her non-fiction work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and she's a regular contributor to The Rumpus. A midwesterner at heart, Lisa currently lives in Los Angeles. More at lisamecham.com. 

TEMPT YOUR RETRIBUTION TONIGHT — JUSTIN LAWRENCE DAUGHERTY

Jeremiah been struck three times and wasn't asking for no more. He stood at the doorway, all whiskey-drenched and stumbling, watching his girl just go. The thunder and lightning just tearing up that sky. There she go, I say. You best go on and chase after her, you want her to stay. Emma Mae knew the lightning was just the time to leave, but Jeremiah putting his lips to another woman's was the thing that made her stuff a suitcase full to brimming in the middle of that party and walk on out. 
            He asked where she'd go after she rabbit-punched him, made Jeremiah curl up. Maybe on past the county line and maybe on past that, Emma Mae said. 
            We all stood there behind him at the door, hootin' and hollerin' about this or that, egging the boy on, and he just stand there, stuck in his fearful way. That sky lit up again and again. And, Jeremiah, he says, dear God if I ain't trying to tempt your retribution tonight. 
            First time Jeremiah was struck by the lightning was the first time he met Emma Mae. She was the paramedic that picked him up. He always said he hadn't believed in angels until that moment, and that's a thing heartsick men say, but there it was. 
            Second time, he was working on the roof of the house and the lightning hit and he flew off and landed on the hood of his 1990 Geo Prizm. Emma Mae, who was living there at the time, came running out, crying and asking if Jeremiah's okay, and he just holds her face, looks at her sweetly, says, honey, you look haunted. Come close, closer, never let go.
Third time, Jeremiah's drunk and hitting golf balls in the rain, the deluge flooding the valley, and I'm out there, too, and I tell my brother we shouldn't be out there, but this was the first time Emma Mae'd left him and he'd lost about all he could lose, so a man like that ain't afraid of what's coming. 
            And, so, Jeremiah standing there like a forlorn hound, and he's just calling into the night, and all these partygoers telling him to go. And, I feel him. I see him heart-hurt and fearful. I want for him to find his way. I place my hand on his shoulder. I says, brother, what's good ain't going to last forever unless you willing to sacrifice yourself for it. And, he looks at the sky and all that flash and we hear that earth-shaking din. We all start calling to the night like wretched ghouls and stomping our feet and Jeremiah looks back, shakes his head. He looks out and takes a step. And, there he goes, tempting the fire and brimstone. Out he goes, lightning flashing, and we all hollerin' after him. He goes and goes. Emma Mae got that head start. He'd keep going 'til the lightning ran out.  

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Justin Lawrence Daugherty misses lightning in Atlanta. He wrote a little chapbook called Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise, from Passenger Side Books. He runs Sundog Lit. 

HEAT WAVE — AKI SCHILZ

When he turned up, I thought it was a joke. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see a row of crooked teeth smiling at me from a wide face rough with dirt and stubble, and before I could say, Excuse me, sir, but aren't you a bit close for comfort? he said, 'Marley?' and held out a bunch of daisies with the dirt still on them. This was summer. My dress was stuck to my legs and he sidled onto the bench next to me before I'd said a word and dropped the flowers right onto my lap, then peeled my summer dress from my knees, raised his eyebrows, winked at me with blue-sparkle eyes, and lit up a cigarette. Just like that. 'You Earl?' I scowled in the way that guys usually find sexy but he didn't bat an eyelid, just looked at me coolly and blew out a line of smoke, real slow. Then he nodded. Already I was thinking, who the hell meets a girl for a blind date at a gas station with a bunch of ripped-up daisies anyway? He wasn't tall and handsome like Jen said he would be, but medium height and kinda funny-looking, like the world had squashed him on one side. He didn't go to college to major in Philosophy (Jen told you that? Well she's a liar then, a damn pretty one but a liar all the same.) but he did like Catcher in the Rye which was kinda like philosophy really, he reasoned as he rolled his second cigarette. Which is when I accepted one and puffed away on it furiously. The daisy dirt had stained my dress and I was piping mad at Jen. He bought me a beer, even though I asked for a lemonade, if you please. He mocked me, If you please, he said, and snarled in a way that made me think of a wolf, slick and dangerous and curled tight as a spring. That's when he kissed me. Maybe that's when I should have stopped him except by then we'd been sitting on that goddamn bench with tension crackling like smoke-fire between us, and maybe it was the beer or the heat, I don't know, but I kissed him back something fierce, fiercer than I've ever kissed a boy, and he tasted sweet and he said my name again, but softer, like a question, and I leaned in like I was falling into him and then I did. And we both fell then, tumbled and tumbled through the hottest summer and we kissed and drank beer and jumped into the river with all our clothes on and lay panting on the banks and peeled them off each other with our teeth. And for a moment I thought I might have loved him. Jen and I didn't talk for the whole summer. Which is a long time. Summer lasts longer than daisies. But not as long as all that. Not really. 

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Aki Schilz is a writer and performance poet based in London, England. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the HG Wells Prize, longlisted for the Fish Prize, and has appeared in various online publications. She is the winner of the inaugural Visual Verse Prize, supported by Andrew Motion, and is currently working on her first poetry pamphlet, and her second novel. She is also Editorial Services Manager at The Literary Consultancy, an editorial assessment service working with writers internationally. Aki tweets micropoetry here: @AkiSchilz.

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.