DR. DAD — BENJAMIN NIESPODZIANY

The boy's father was a harvest jar overflowing with ground beef and sock lint. The boy called him Dr. Dad. He sticky-tacked marathon medals to his office ceiling. The open-door policy windchimed his victories.

Dr. Dad was a desert locust. Spent his boy's childhood outside. While the boy drew snakes in dirt, Dr. Dad battled cows for high grass, up in the carob trees, shirtless, shouting about chocolate. He read sports.

Dr. Dad lasered warts, warned diabetics. Told golf jokes. Asked about updates on the wedding, on Kathy's First Communion. A heart throb is not always a good thing, he joked, wrote down the best cardiologist in town.

Dr. Dad told his son about an angry patient who had a hole in his foot. The man noticed the doom back in spring, spent four months with a marker making his wound a mouth. Fed it cigarettes, Mountain Dew, gin, gave it teeth, watched it grow.

Dr. Dad was Indiana's chief meteorologist small-talking tornadoes over Lidocaine and Coumadin prescriptions, his handwriting so bad the pharmacists needed a second opinion, half convinced the script read “amputate.”

The boy's father removed his own toes every night. With each pluck, he promised himself a better tomorrow. A jump-higher, fly-longer tomorrow. A listen and climb and tighten tomorrow. To proudly display every Froot Loops necklace his son made without eating it first.

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Benjamin Niespodziany is a night librarian at the University of Chicago. He runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas] and has had work published in Ghost City Press, Pithead Chapel (forthcoming), HOOT Review (forthcoming), Occulum, and formercactus.

PAROXYSM — GEORGIANA NELSEN

When we were eight, your dad loved baseball and wanted to coach. Boys and girls could play on the same team then, so we sat in the outfield and made chains of clover, tying tiny knots in the stem of one around the blossom of the next. Afternoon stretched to evening without anyone ever hitting a ball our way. We swatted our gloves instead at honey bees swarming the clover on our necklaces and crowns. The flies we caught at dusk blinked to light our fingers: fleeting, precious jewels.
             When we were ten, I waited while you cut the grass wearing shorts and no shirt. The mower echoed between oak and maple; the songbirds quieted. I heard your yelp over the machine’s growl, and you slapped at the air as you ran to the house. A splatter of bees smeared against the glass door into ooze. Your pale skin swelled into crimson pillows across your bare chest where the stingers pierced. Neither you nor the bees noticed me watching. You put on your blue flannel shirt, jeans and shoes, and poured gasoline into the nest in the ground. You dropped a match and the bees, some flaming, rose into the smoke. The birds sang.
             When we were twelve, we sold flags for the Fourth, a fundraiser for Little League. Rubina lived in the house between us, and signed our order form in her garden. Musk of red geraniums blended with citrus of white daisies into an exotic perfume, mellowed by the sweetness of blue forget-me-nots. Rubina smiled and shaded her eyes. “I’m happy here,” she told us, smoothing her headscarf. “No one tells me what to do, where to pray, how to dress. I’m proud to be American now.”
             We found her there when we returned with the flag, her face swollen, clasping a bouquet of dead-headed geraniums, the barbed stinger of a yellow jacket deep in her palm.
             When we turned eighteen, my birthday only a day behind yours, we registered to vote. We’d be old enough next election. Your parents drove you to the base and let me ride along. You wore crisp fatigues and scratched at the stubble where your hair had been, like an insect bite you couldn’t ignore. Heading down our street, mounds of red, white, and blue flowers bloomed. We passed the Little League flags in the lawns, and you sat taller. “It’s worth fighting for,” you said. Your mother’s eyes glassed with tears.
             Then you kissed me goodbye.
             You write of the beige sand and buildings. The only color you see bleeds from your injured friends. The only scent you breathe a perfume with the acrid tinge of sulfur. Bombs burst in the air and you are afraid.
             I hope you take care and come back whole, unstung. I hope you remember crowns of sweet clover and catching fireflies. I hope you remember me.

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Georgiana Nelsen is a business lawyer in Houston, Texas. Her short fiction has appeared in print and online in several publications, most recently in Tiferet Journal and Bending Genres. She spends her writing time mostly wrangling with the characters of her novel. Find her at @rosespringvale on Twitter, gsnelsen on Instagram, Georgiana Steele Nelsen on Facebook and occasional updates and book reviews at sunrisesandsuch.blogspot.com.

NOMINATIONS — BEST OF THE NET 2018

We are pleased to announce our nominations for Best of the Net 2018:

"Half-Life" by Dina L. Relles
“How to Exploit Your Ancestors” by Aram Mrjoian

We owe everything to all of our wonderful contributors, and it was a challenge to select just two, but we felt these pieces really highlighted our focus and drive here at CHEAP POP.

We wish Dina and Aram the best of luck, and if you haven't already, now's a great time to read these pieces. 

MONSTROUS, CHAOTIC THINGS — MAUREEN LANGLOSS

Sarah gave me an ornithology guide. I didn’t even know what ornithology was. We’d just decided to stop her chemo once and for all; the last thing I needed was some dumb bird book. I’d never shown interest in a bird our entire twenty-three years together. Not one fucking bird. So I asked her, is this the part of the story when you start to go crazy? Her skin was already gray, but she turned even grayer, like I’d made her sick to her stomach again. Sometimes I could still joke with her the same as before. We could tease each other and say true stuff. As a couple, we were big into teasing. But not that day. That day was a cancer day. You’ll understand in a month or two, she said, and wrapped her college sweatshirt tight around herself. It was dingy and frayed at the cuffs, but I remembered when it was new, how I wanted to tear it off her during late-night study sessions.
             The kids and I have seen purple sandpipers and grasshopper sparrows, tundra swans and common loons. Little Bess is the best at spotting them. She tells me to keep my breath quiet and listen for the bird noises. Yank-yanks. Trills. Burbling, bubbling blips. Don’t blink so much, she says. Care more. You have to care more. If I keep still, sometimes I can sense the slightest motion outside myself. Flutters of color, of sound. Miniscule shifts of weight. When we find a piping plover or a kingfisher, the big kids write the date and time and take notes in the blank lines of the ornithology book. Wears blue hat. Lonely-looking. Beak like Uncle Stu’s nose. Where the book says “paste photo here,” we paste a photo—if we catch one. We splurge on a long-range lens for Sarah’s old camera. Bess gazes at treetops through 8x power. She says she wants to be an osprey because they spread their wings wide and mate for life and build enormous nests way up high. Closer to heaven. She’s always drawing osprey strongholds—monstrous, chaotic things with sticks and bits of litter pointing out in all directions. Sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I study her sketches. I add a twig or two, then erase them, afraid of what I might damage.
             Before she gave me the guide, Sarah drew circles in red ink around the tufted titmouse, the bobolink, the vermilion flycatcher. We don’t know why. The kids think it’s because of their funny names, but I believe Sarah was on to something more. We still haven’t come across these species. But we’ve taken long trips from home, climbed switchbacks up hills covered with blueberry thicket and candy wrappers. We’ve passed binoculars back and forth, walked in slow, silent motion through valleys split by streams. According to Sarah’s book, we might find them there.

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Maureen Langloss is a lawyer-turned-writer living in New York City. She serves as the Flash Fiction Editor at Split Lip Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Jellyfish Review, New Delta Review, Pithead Chapel, Sonora Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. In 2017, her work was nominated for Best of the Net, and she was a finalist in the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest, as well as the Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction Contest. Find her online at maureenlangloss.com or on Twitter @maureenlangloss.

WELCOME, ASSISTANT EDITORS DUSTIN & NOA!

It was an intensive search, and we can't thank you all enough for your interest in the Assistant Editor position, but we're excited to introduce our new Assistant Editors, DUSTIN PETZOLD and NOA SIVAN!

These two bring with them a wealth of experience, and we are so excited to welcome them to the CHEAP POP family. 

Get to know about them below! 

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Dustin Petzold is a writer and editor based in Houston, Texas. He is a graduate of George Washington University's creative writing program and has assembled various combinations of words that are floating around somewhere on the internet. 

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Noa Sivan was born and raised in Israel and is currently living in Granada, Spain. She is a graphic designer and a writer. In 2016, she started writing in English. Her first story, "Plaza Trinidad," was published in Jellyfish Review and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She read for R.kv.r.y. Quarterly and was a guest editor for Formercactus on their 10th issue. Her little words appear in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, Wigleaf, FRiGG and more. She has a soft spot for well-chiseled micro-fiction and indifferent dogs. You can find her here and here.

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SAYING GOODBYE TO ASSISTANT EDITOR LETISIA CRUZ

Since 2016, we've had the honor of working with Letisia Cruz. Since coming on board, she's been such an integral part of CHEAP POP. Her talent, insight, and kindness have allowed us to grow stronger, both as a journal and as a team. 

We're sad to see her go, of course, but we're so excited to see what she accomplishes next.

For starters, you can purchase Letisia's book, The Lost Girls Book of Divination, here. 

Letisia—thank you so, so much for your hard work and dedication to CHEAP POP. You'll always be a part of our family. ❤❤

Love,

Rob, Elizabeth, & Hannah

THE FOURTH KIND — EVAN NICHOLLS

Our cane’s thick, like almost Supernatural. The soil plays big into it. At least, that’s what my Old Man said. He said, ‘Part clay, part blood.’ Said our family’s in the cane field.
             Which, I don’t doubt we have more than a few bodies back there, graves unmarked. I’m old enough to understand that we’re all just feed– the sugar-stalks two, three persons high. Life’s just a game of Indian-giving. I’m old enough to understand that.
             But my Old Man, when he said what he said, he meant ‘blood’ like ‘lineage.’ I’d always thought ‘blood’ like ‘shed’.
             ‘Cause my Old Man and his Old Man and the Old Men that came before them, they were all heavy-handed. To say the least. More precisely, they were heinous kiddy-beaters. Mine had a horsewhip dedicated to acts of discipline. Didn't even ride. He was the most fattest, drunkest, fake-jockey terror-farmer I’d ever seen in my life.
             So that night. The last time I’d seen him.
             You’re asking, but you’re not gonna believe.
             It was Mom’s anniversary, the consequence being he got especially boozy. He started chasing me through the crop like a wild pig.
             We both had our parts. Me, animal-boy—wailing, squealing—and him, camp-butcher. Wanting to stick me. What a game. Maybe after, he’d roast me on the campfire, chew me down to my flame-cracked bones. Like out of one of those tired, horrific fairy tales. That’s how I’d always imagined it going down when I was a kid. How I imagine it now, too.
             So like a thousand times, I pounded my feet and heart through the sugar. Runaway. He screamed after me, drunk-howling—‘BEHAVE BOY, GIVE IT UP, I’M FAMISHED’—again and again. Like a beagle-hound after fox. Tearing through plants, hollering loud all hunt long, all scent long, direct, calamitous, bullet—
             And our farm was alone by miles. Backcountry. Silent. You know what could happen back there. I did. That cane was thick. You couldn’t see up at the stars, and even in the parts you could they just looked bare and false on you. Cold infernos. Like Supernatural.
             In all that dark, I crashed into a clearing in the middle of the sugarcane. A perfect circle, carved from nowhere, nothing. But I didn’t hesitate. My Old Man ripped in through the crop behind me.
             He grabbed me, started going to work. Put my ass onto the clay, hard. Laid into me with the horsewhip, the hessian boots, the gloved knuckles into my head. I saw nothing. Just hot blood on my face. Then my eyes got violent.
             He had his gun with him. Cold Ruger in my back.
             And that’s when. Supernatural.
             There was this sound—BANG. And the black sky stopped being so black. The horsewhip stopped coming so down. Then this beam.
             Visitation.
             Thank god, or whoever.
             ‘Cause when that light waned, my Old Man was gone. Away from the sugar. Away from the farm.
             Indian-giving. That’s the way it went. No other way.

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Evan Nicholls attends James Madison University (‘20) and is from Fauquier County, Virginia. He is involved in JMU’s literary magazine, Gardy Loo, and has work appearing in CHEAP POP, Penny, and formercactus, as well as forthcoming in The Jellyfish Review and Lost Balloon. Follow him on Twitter @nicholls_evan.

RAN OUT OF MONEY — DAN CRAWLEY

On the first trip down Lombard Street, the dad said, We’re gonna crash. We’re gonna crash. Over the cheering, the mom said dumbfoundedly, Would you look at all those colorful flowers in front of those beautiful houses? After the sixth trip winding down Lombard Street, the roller coaster effect waned and even the dad let out a yawn as he took a sharp curve, only his thumbs pressed at the bottom of the steering wheel. So it was off to Fisherman’s Wharf, grabbing handfuls of chocolate samples and barking back at the sea lions sunbathing on the tiny piers. The dad said, Too bad we don’t have our BB guns. Over the clapping, the mom said restlessly, Precariously perched on petite piers. From a brown paper bag came liter bottles of warm soda and sour dough bread and gobs of butter, all laid out across the wide hood of the station wagon like a holiday dinner. It was getting late. Out on the bay, the bridge’s soft lights were fuzzy fireflies. At the airport parking lot, the dad said, We’re having a secret rendezvous with someone. He wouldn’t say who, but maybe Aunt Jen and the cousins Heather, Henry, and Augustine. No, maybe it’s Bud and his seeing-eye dog, Buddy, Jr. No! It’s Marv and Shelly from Indiana. Over more guessing, the mom said tiredly, Maybe I’m being dropped off to fly to Bermuda. At one of the gates, the dad and mom stretched out on a row of chairs. An all night gift shop’s clerk peeked around the corners of magazine racks, her humongous red Afro giving advance warning every time. The drinking fountain water tasted mossy. The enormous bathrooms echoed back yelps and singing and bangs of stall doors like mortar rounds. When the dad was woken up to find out how soon Aunt Jen and Heather, Henry, Augustine, Bud and Buddy Jr., and Marv and Shelly would finally arrive on the plane, he whispered, Go sit in front of the gate so we don't miss them. Over the whining, the mom said longingly, I was having such a nice dream about laying in flowerbeds. By morning, no one arrived. The dad said, They flew over the Bermuda Triangle, and poof! Over all the screaming, the mom said irritably, I want to get back into that station wagon like I want to jump into the freezing bay.

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Dan Crawley's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, New World Writing, The Airgonaut, matchbook, and North American Review. He is a recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts creative writing fellowship and has taught fiction workshops at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and other colleges. He is a fiction reader for Little Patuxent Review. Find him at https://dancrawleywrites.wordpress.com/