BENEATH THE ROSES — TREVOR DODGE

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Drove between the trees until they narrowed between my headlights. Shifted into park, left the headlight knob pulled all way out. Opened the door, interior domelight, the tan leather seats, the soft bingbingbingbing, the trees in front and all around not swaying.
            Realized why Chrysler called this car the New Yorker.
            Popped the trunk and parted the fence of trees, turned sideways, scooched, even as thin as I was. Set the suitcases down and slid through the fence before them. Dragged each suitcase through, one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one. Pushed the shovel through the ferns, one headlight throwing shadows at me, the other parting the fence line where I passed through, dulling the edges. 
            Scraped until the ferns were gone.
            Plunged the shovel blade down and down, suitcases standing vigil. Dulled shadows, dimmed light. Sweat and dirt and faded bingbingbingbing into nothing, into all quiet and dark and the hole big enough to hold the suitcases, plus the gasoline, plus the battery, plus all of New York.
            The shovel, the heap of drying dirt and dying fern. The ache of my shoulders, the burning numb of my arms and hands, the heavy weight of my back. Big throb in the soles of my feet, heart pushing all my blood with all its might down there, to hold all of it, just enough room.
            But not me with it. 
            Stopped. Piled the suitcases on top of one another. Blanketed them with heap. Patted it all solid, the chemical pleasure of reversing every muscle, the new ache upon ache, burn upon burn, weight upon weight. Lay down on top. New throb upon old. 

Trevor Dodge’s most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Little Fiction, Green Mountains Review, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Gargoyle, Metazen and Juked. His latest book is The Laws of Average, a collection of 60 flash fictions recently published by Chiasmus Press. He is managing editor of Clackamas Literary Review, lives in Portland, Oregon, and can be found online at www.trevordodge.com.

IN RESPONSE — KIRBY JOHNSON

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in response to Preface from Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads

Every time I do it it’s a learning, a tempering. A few degrees more than what I could take: a brisk cold up the side of my skirt, dry knuckles, or slight burns across my face. You leave your home without a jacket and your body learns. The internet says this is how you get used to it: this is how you change. It’s about adapting or, at least, working through a process, or maybe even just: exposing your-self, you would say: being in nature. But I mostly don’t like any of it. I don’t like it at all. This skin thickening: it’s too much feeling, too much thrashing against. It’s better to be somewhere regular, somewhere warm: like the narrow path toward your abbey. The one you walked through with half-closed eyes. Several of my friends are anxious and this is pretty normal. And I guess, if you think about it, I’m a little anxious too. You see, I read two of your Victorian predecessors last week and these men were also concerned with feeling–and I’m a little worried about what you call: that spontaneous flow of emotion. If I am a conduit of sentiment then what about everything else? How do we take that in too? Let me share something: sometimes our understanding of nature is unbearable. Sometimes we need to expose ourselves to only what is practical. The rest should be ignored. You see: I’m worried about over exposure. I try on most days to not to keep what should be kept: square.  To keep what should be mounted: tame. If my job is to feel everything, then how long can you do that before feeling nothing? So many simple things have made me cry. I do not want to see a fawn in the early morning, or witness a child play in the grass. Those things are tantalizing. I don’t want to watch a film or look at that tree in a certain light. As a child, I would sit in the dark coolness of my closet so that my toys couldn’t see me, so that they couldn’t know I was trying to ignore them. It didn’t make any sense, but I was trying to tamper with feeling. I was trying to turn some of it off.  Can you see how common life can be sad? What if everything we experience is a nocturne, or so vibrant that we cannot properly see? So you say that I should filter and form but how long is it until an open sore becomes infected? How long until this overflow is more like a drowning or worse: a layering, a method toward jadedness, or that process of adapting? Oh Wordsworth, tell me you don’t believe in your own sensitivity. Tell me this preface was an exercise of your own common pleasure: a release of beautiful words. Tell me that you lied about all of it: that path toward the abbey, the one void of smoke stacks we all know were there; your sister; and this advertisement. Tell me you were just kidding and I would believe you because I know what you claim to know of feeling could never be true.

Kirby Johnson is a writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is the editor of Black Warrior Review and the founding editor of NANO Fiction. She has two cats and a lot of time on her hands.

WINTER BREAK 2014

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Folks, we'll be honest: It's been a tremendous first year at CHEAP POP, and we thank you all—readers and contributors and everyone in-between—for helping to make this all so wonderful. You've embraced us (thanks, Internet!), and we're so proud of the quality pieces we've been able to bring you in 2014.

That being said, we do hope you'll pardon us as CHEAP POP takes an oh-so-quick break from December 15 - January 18 so we can retool, refresh...all that jazz. And not to tell you what to do, but this is a perfect time to gather/write/edit your submissions to us!

We will still have stories the first two weeks of December, and then we'll be back on Tuesday, January 20, 2015, for the rest of the year.

Deal? Deal. And really looking forward to another year of wonderful micro-fiction. Thanks, again, to you all for supporting this endeavor.

Best,
Elizabeth + Rob

CAN'T YOU FEEL THE HEAT BETWEEN US — SAMANTHA MEMI

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I drove fast. The tires burned. I felt sorry for the tires. Not for the engine, only the tires. The tires came from a tree, a tree that had been bled, my tires were made from the blood of a tree. What could my engine have to compare with that? The full moon glimmered on the wet black road. Red eyes glittered from the forest. Were they the eyes of trees angry at my burning tree blood because of my impatience and love of speed. Did my tires scream to the trees Help! We’re burning our way to Hell. And the trees rustle, and the foxes and owls plan their revenge on the girl in the red sports car who drove so fast it hurt her tires, made them screech and smoke. Were the owls and foxes, weasels and rats planning an attack? Would I turn a bend at 100 miles an hour and find across the road a tree with red eyes glaring and no time to brake. 
            I turned into a bend, tires screeching. In the road a body, tyre marks clear and matte, streaked in the wet; tires which had found their way to Hell. I swerved to avoid the body lying there, unmoving, dead. My tires slid along the road. I twisted the steering wheel hard, and harder, and scratched up the bank and hit a tree. The tree screamed. The car twisted up into the air and spun round, engine roaring, wheels spinning, tires cooling, and came down to earth and I was flung out through the windscreen and landed in the road, splayed, unmoving, dead.
            I lay there.
            Any time soon I would come round the corner and see me in the road and swerve and crash.

Samantha Memi lives in London where she bakes cakes and eats them. Her stories have been published in magazines and can be read at http://samanthamemi.weebly.com.

THE SABBATH BRIDE — CHARLES BANE, JR.

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"Let us turn", the rabbi said by rote, "and welcome the Sabbath Bride." Arnold  put the full weight of his right leg on his cane, and turned; his wife did not appear. It was no one's business if she was detained.
            He walked her, her elbow in his palm, to the corner diner. Better to know each other a little before going in to Radio City.  A boy came by and muttered, " dirty Jews," and Arnold wheeled and punched hard. The Slav fell, his mouth bloody. Arnold leaned over him. "Do you know me?" he asked. The boy nodded. "You know I live there, at 369 Walnut Street?"  Again a nod,  hand on swollen lips. "And you are Krzysztof, the baker's son," said Arnold, "and if you tell your father or brothers about this, I'll do it again. Do you understand?"
            Arnold turned and walked Miriam to their first date. They walked into the diner and found a table. He felt ashamed then. Quietly, Miriam said, "There's blood on your shirt."  He looked down and she disappeared.
            Alone, he cursed, and then cursed again. "Why did you have to behave like that?  Scare off that pretty girl?"
            Miriam slid into the chair opposite him, napkins wetted in the restroom. "Lean forward," she said.
            Arnold painfully turned again in the sanctuary, and faced the front.

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them."  Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida. Find him online at http://www.charlesbanejr.com.

AVOIDANCES — J. ALAN MONTROSE

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After our battalion redeployed from Iraq we got thirty days of leave before we had to go back to work. I went home to my parent’s house where my mom and dad threw a big party for me. They invited all my relatives and some neighbors. One of the neighbors was the old guy that lived a few houses down the street. I used to mow his yard when I was in high school. He asked me if I killed anyone in Iraq. I wasn’t really sure what to say so I told him that he wasn’t supposed to ask me that question. The old man took a drink from his beer can and asked me why not. I guess mostly because it didn’t feel right to answer it, so I just said that it was some sort of unwritten rule that you don’t ask soldiers if they’ve killed anyone in combat. He laughed and said it was a rhetorical question anyway. Sort of like asking if it was hot in Iraq. He took another drink from his beer and said people weren’t supposed to ask him rhetorical questions when he came home in 1968 either.

J. Alan Montrose is an Iraq War Veteran who lives in Wahlheimat, Germany. He holds a Bachelor degree from the University of Georgia, Athens, and a Masters from the Universität Hamburg Germany. His work has appeared in War, Literature & the Arts, The Subterranean Quarterly, Knee Jerk, The Chattahoochee Review, as well as the German literature review Titel-Magazin. He currently lectures at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.

GOLF BALLS — DANIEL W. THOMPSON

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In a cocaine haze I flush the motel room toilet and check my face. It’s good light so I see the blue cavities under my eyes and tender reds of my nostrils. I repeat squeezing my fists to inflate my forearms and look to the bathtub for a couple of inclined pushups. I want to feel flush and virile but it’s a narrow bathroom and I’d have to lie across part of the toilet compromising the pushup angle. I do a couple more fist squeezes and hold the last one until my face turns pink in the mirror.
            She’s sitting on the couch. The television is on, SportsCenter. I know she’s not watching it because I asked her what her favorite sport growing up was and she said bobbing for apples, then laughed for a minute straight. I shouldn’t be nervous or self-conscious since I’ve already paid, but I can’t help wanting to impress.
            Once on a date I talked so long about working at the driving range my date went to the bathroom and never returned. I have to ensure that each golf ball is struck at least 5,000 times before it can be thrown away. Of course this is an impossible task, unless you implanted a pedometer of sorts in the balls, and I’ve tried to figure it out but can’t. Instead I pick a golf ball up, let it roll around in my hand, squeeze the dimples, maybe bounce it on the pavement parking lot, and by doing all that I can tell whether it’s been hit more than 5,000 times. There needs to be a certain reflex in the ball. A tone.
            This is my first time paying for sex. Old Junior, this Vietnam vet who comes down to the driving range pro shop to drink coffee each morning made the suggestion. Said he’s been paying since the seventies and that some of the buzz disappeared when they made him start wearing condoms but now he wholeheartedly endorses the policy. He gave me a number. I think they call her a madam and she asked me if I was a cop. Did I have any diseases? How much did I weigh? I lied about the weight. I told her I was 165 but really I’m 130, maybe 135 when I’m flush.
            It was the girl’s cocaine. Said she was feeling shitty. Said if I was cool with it, she’d even give me a discount. I told I already paid over the phone.
            I walked over to the couch and she looked up at me. Her nostrils were red too and there were shadows around her brown eyes. I asked her if she had ever been to a driving range and she said no. It was the first time I realized she had an accent and smelled a little like garlic bread. I sat down, turned off the television and started explaining why I throw away golf balls sometimes.

Daniel W. Thompson’s fiction has appeared recently or is forthcoming at publications like Bartleby Snopes, Camroc Press Review, Literary Orphans, decomP, and Spartan. As a child, his grandfather paid him $5 an hour to clean up frozen cow patties and pull stones out of the vegetable garden. Now he lives in downtown Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and two daughters cleaning up diapers and dog fur—no compensation has been offered.

EPITHALAMION — CEZARIJA ABARTIS

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What she liked best about the Fourth of July fireworks was the cloud underneath the illumination as the breeze blew the smoke away and the next firework lit up the space where the previous fireworks used to be. In the churning smoke she saw, for an instant, Michelangelo’s masses and curves of Dawn and Night in the Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici. Who had the confidence, even arrogance, to plan his own tomb? In another instant she saw a whale sailing the sky. She would herself like to ride that bucking whale. The children ooh-ed and ah-ed when a particularly large firework exploded or a rapid sequence of small ones. The sound of the explosions thumped on her chest.            
            Alan was recording the event with his new digital camera. She saw three or four people around them doing the same.            
            “This is a great little camera,” Alan said. “Look at this–even in the dark, with no tripod.”
            She agreed that the colors were vivid. But it really was not the same thing. The screen was a four-inch rectangle. But the real sky was all around her, so that she had the sensation of floating.
            After nearly fifteen years of marriage, Alan could read her mind. “I know that you’re thinking I should just be watching the moment. Well I am. I’m pointing this and I’m watching too.”
            “I didn’t say anything.”            
            “And I’m trying this out for the wedding.”            
            They were going to their niece’s wedding the next week. A spectacular blue ring exploded, and the crowd cheered. A yellow peony followed and lit up the billowing smoke underneath. The presenters followed that with a smiley face. She laughed at the cheesiness and wit.            
            Let Katy and Gavin have a full, happy, layered life filled with fireworks and marble statues and whales in the sky. Let them have the sharpness of the smoke smell and the strong feeling of the sound against their bodies. Let them hold their breath in wonder and laugh at the release of the light. Let them sleep with a sweet slumber and wake to a happy dawn. Let them have the stars above and the stars below.

Cezarija Abartis' Nice Girls and Other Stories was published by New Rivers Press. Her stories have appeared in Per Contra, Pure Slush, and New York Tyrant, among others. She participates on ShowMeYourLits.com and Zoetrope.com. Her flash, “The Writer,” was selected by Dan Chaon for Wigleaf’s Top 50 online Fictions of 2012.  “History,” published by The Lascaux Review, was chosen as April Story of the Month by The Committee Room. Recently she completed a novel, a thriller. She teaches at St. Cloud State University. Her website is http://magicmasterminds.com/cezarija/.