'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. 

---

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.   

LITTLE SAIGON — NANCY LYNÉE WOO

We were walking down the street, fresh kumquats in hand, one day in her neighborhood of Little Saigon. Biggest Vietnamese ghetto outside of Vietnam, quietly situated across boba shops and Pho 99s, smack dab in the middle of 1999. My best friend and me, walking past dirt yards and Buddha bellies, swinging our little arms and sucking the juice out of the tiny, tart things that weren't quite oranges. We had grabbed them from the red envelope cement of her front yard, where strange smells from the kitchen and karaoke with English subtitles belted out from the peeling paint windows. Circling and circling around the block, bored as an Orange County summer, I opened my 9-year old trap to say, “You’re weird.” And I giggled. We joked like that, all of us, the half Mexican and the fat Japanese one especially. All us Orange County different-colored girls, poking fun at each other before the boys did, before the ads did, criticizing ourselves like our moms did, every flaw pointed out. I said to her this time, “You’re funny weird. You joke weird.” This was a compliment. “Yeah!” she said. So I kept going, “In fact, everything about you is weird. You look weird. You talk weird. You dance weird. You smell weird!” She was laughing with me until. Quiet. I stopped. We walked. Throwing away the skins now. Passing the house where the dog cried all day long, and then, one day, didn’t. “You think I look weird?” Stammer. “No,” I said. She cringed at me with long Viet face, big lidless eyes, framed by muddy cream skin and flat tracks of black hair, fallen. “I always thought I looked weird,” she said. I stared back, chubby China cheeks and big teeth, fat stupid fists wanting to ball up and kill the guy who killed his dog. We drifted back to her house, then drifted apart after 5th grade. What she didn’t realize was, what I didn’t say was, what I couldn’t say was, I didn’t mean it. A mirror can’t be offended. We’re in this together. Your face is mine.

---

Nancy Lynée Woo is fortunate to have found a lovely poetry home in Long Beach, CA with the fine folks of the Poetry Lab. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Subterranean Quarterly, Melancholy Hyperbole, Cadence Collective and Cease, Cows. This particular piece is taken from a larger work of prose poems that hopes to be published in the near future.

4-F — AMORAK HUEY

You volunteer but there’s a murmur in your heart, a stammer that might have saved your life. For a while, at least. You break another boy’s arm in the state wrestling meet. You dream of the jungle. Classmates go, and their names appear on the gym wall. You practice magic tricks, slipping cards into other people’s pockets and pretending to be surprised when they appear at critical moments. Everyone is losing faith; it’s nice to keep some mystery in things. You start telling people that you faked the murmur, that you can control the ebb and pulse of your own body. It’s remarkable how many doors remain unlocked, how easy it is to walk in and take what you want. This will not last, the flesh can hold only so many secrets. For years, the sounds will be all you remember—all that music like no one had ever heard before, and then the snapping of bone.

---

Amorak Huey, a former newspaper editor and reporter, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His writing has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Southern Review, Menacing Hedge, Hobble Creek Review, and many other print and online journals. Follow him on Twitter: @amorak.

THE UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN — MIKE SALISBURY

In the picture, an unidentified woman is led from the scene of the Hindenburg disaster at the U.S. Naval Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937.
            The woman is walking away unscathed. Her English is serviceable, but she barely understands what the man is saying when he takes her by the arm. She goes with him, craning her neck around to see the ground swallowing the mighty zeppelin. 
            Another man, this time a German survivor, takes her other arm, and the two men rush her away from the burning wreckage. Her face is pale, numbed by the horror of the night. The German tells her not to look back, first in English, and then in their language. 
            When they reach the hanger and the flames of the Hindenburg are in the safe distance, its devilish glow lighting up the night, she laughs. The eyes of the men are on her. She covers her mouth to hide the embarrassment. She has just survived this, but she has also survived so much more. 
           On the other side of the Atlantic, the man she left hasn’t learned about her escape and won’t until Tuesday when he returns from a business trip to Köln. The closet empty, her belongings gone.   
            The unidentified woman watches from inside the hanger as the last of the Hindenburg’s frame crumples, the sounds of men shouting are all around her, their voices trying to call back the dead and return the zeppelin to the sky. Beside her she notices the zeppelin service man crying. He weeps into his hands while sitting on the edge of a metal folding chair; his cap crumpled beside him on the ground. Behind him the hanger is becoming a way station for the dead. They’ve begun to line up the sheet-covered bodies in rows. 

---

A Michigan native, Mike Salisbury's fiction has appeared in Avery Anthology, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bombay Gin, and The Emerson Review. Mike is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Pacific University. He lives and works along the Front Range of the Rockies. 

STRANGERS — AMANDA MISKA

We meet at a sticky-floored bar where the jukebox plays Conway Twitty's "Hello Darlin'", and you’re sitting alone, mouthing the words between sips of beer.  I just finished slow dancing with an old high school boyfriend who I wanted to make jealous—he’s engaged now. This town is too damn small. I sit down beside you like we aren't strangers. I am drunk. You are not. I ask you to dance. You say you don’t dance. 
            “Ah, but you sing.”
            You blush.  “I can’t help it. Old country songs remind me of my dad.”
            And just like that, you’re telling me your life when all I wanted was to sway against you for a few minutes and leave with someone else.
 
But I leave with you. And you’re so nice, like, the personification of the word nice.  For weeks, every time you ask me out, I wrack my brain for an excuse, but can’t think of a good one.  When we fuck (what I call it; you insist on saying making love), you tell me I’m the most beautiful girl you've ever been with, the most beautiful girl you've ever seen. You whisper it in my ear, like throwing bread to a starving mouth. In hindsight, the right word is overeager. For both of us.
 
And then the test shows two blue lines.  I am afraid of how calm I am as I dial your number. I invite you over to talk in person, even though you've never been to my place—we’d always stayed at your trailer because I have room mates, even though you have cats, and I hate cats. Especially your cats, two black females who liked to snake between my calves every time I walked in.

You are strangely elated when I tell you I want to keep it.  When your phone rings mid-conversation, you leave the room to take it. Through the thin door, I can hear you excitedly tell whoever is on the line that I’m pregnant; That Girl I Was Telling You About is what you call me.  I wonder what else you've said about me, how you've painted me to strangers.
 
You had gone through two pregnancy terminations with previous girlfriends. I don’t know why, but you told me that on our first date, bringing me into your confidence too soon, always saying too much, like:
            “You could move in. We could get married. I’d get rid of the cats for you.”
             “I don’t want any of that.”
            Sitting on my bed, you take my face in your hands and try to kiss me, and I pull away and slap you clean on the cheek.
            “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
            So you disappear. And I’m alone again except I’m not.  
 
I try to love the boy, but he looks so much like you. It was easier before his eyes turned gray, before his milk-pudge melted, before his downy blond hair all rubbed away and grew back copper.

---

Amanda Miska lives and writes in Northern Virginia. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from American University. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from NIB Magazine, WhiskeyPaper, Black Heart Magazine and Buffalo Almanack.

THE MOMENT BEFORE THE EARTH WAS DESTROYED — JARED YATES SEXTON

Before humanity was destroyed the aliens paused time and took Tex Halders aside. He was standing in a parking lot in Houston. The sky paused. The traffic paused. The neon light at the Hard Rock Café across the street paused. The aliens approached Tex and told him the score. All human life has been paused and will be destroyed in short order, they said in their hive-voice. We’d like a tour and we’ve chosen you to be our guide.
            Why me? Tex said.
            Why not? they said.
            You’ve got a point, Tex said.
            Everything everywhere was paused. Monster truck races. Twinkie factories. High-fructose corn syrup distilleries. Marketing firms.
            What do you want to know? Tex asked the aliens.
            Well, the aliens said, take us through the whole of human achievement. Before we destroy we like to know. For ages and ages we’ve observed. It’s been quite informative, but we’d like to have our questions answered.
            All right, Tex said, ask away.
            Why war? the aliens said. Why genocide?
            Hell, Tex said, I don’t know. At some point you got to start killing.
            The aliens looked at each other. The answer didn’t seem satisfactory to them. But, they said, why war?
            Listen, Tex said, if you’re gonna ask questions I’m gonna give you answers. If you don’t like ‘em, then go screw off.
            All right, the aliens said. That’s fair. Tell us then, they said, what about art?
            You’ve got the wrong guy, Tex said. I don’t know fuck-all about art.
            What about Van Gogh? they said. Picasso? Pollock?
            Here’s what I know about art, Tex said. I know sometimes there are pictures of flowers in my hotel rooms. You want to know about pictures of flowers in hotel rooms, I’m your man.
            What of the great books? they said. Explain them to us. Explain literature. Explain philosophy.
            Tex was tired. The sun, frozen like everything else in existence and suspended overhead, was beating down. Hey, he said, I get that you’re curious, but hell, it’s hotter than a fat boy’s crotch out here.
            Fine, the aliens said. What about this?
            They took Tex to another quadrant of the parking lot where a steel gray minivan was parked. One of the aliens motioned his hand under the rear bumper and the hatch opened on its own.
            Oh, Tex said, that’s an easy one. Let’s say you just got done shopping at the Target. Say you got an armload of groceries. He pantomimed like he was carrying an armful of sacks. All right, he said, you can’t reach out and open the hatch, right? He moved his foot under the bumper and the hatch opened again. Open sesame, he said.
            Interesting, the aliens said in their hive mind. Utility. Common sense.
            That’s right, Tex said.
            The pinnacle of human achievement, they said.
            You bet your ass, Tex said.
            Fine, they said. Thank you, they said and blinked the Earth out of existence.

---

Jared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University and serves as Managing Editor of the literary magazine BULL. His work has been nominated for a handful of Pushcart's, The Million Writer's Award, and was a finalist for The New American Fiction Prize. His first book, An End To All Things, is available from Atticus Books. Find him online at jysexton.com.

NETTLE CREEK CEMETERY — ERIC SHONKWILER

The children were found by a farmer two months after they were declared missing. The sheriff and his deputies and the federal agents descended on the cemetery. Tents of yellowed canvas were set up to break the heat. It waved off the gravel road, carrying grasshoppers as they fled from the cruisers. Cicadas yet to die landed on sleeves, on hats. In one of the tents an old detective sat facing the back with his gun in his lap. A deputy entered the tent carrying water in a paper cup. The air inside was musty from the canvas.
            What are you going to do with that?
            I don’t know yet, the detective said.
            Give it to me.
            The detective handed the gun to him. He turned to look at the deputy. His eyes were dark, hard and pinched from years of work in the open. What do you do when anyone could wake up one morning and kill you? Kill your family?
            I don’t know.
            There’s about an inch between you and hell at any time, do you know that? He looked past the deputy. He said nothing more and the deputy left to get someone for him. He didn't know who.

---

Eric Shonkwiler's writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Fiddleblack, [PANK] Magazine, and Midwestern Gothic. He was born and raised in Ohio, and has lived and worked in every contiguous United States time zone. His first novel, Above All Men is due out in March 2014 from MG Press.

HOW THE MOUNTAIN — C.J. OPPERTHAUSER

Winters and winters ago the moon paled and sang something unhearable, understood only by dogs. A silent howling, some said, or a whistle tucked between wind and rain and thunder, a celestial whisper low and quaking. So this song was sung and the snow began to shift, the bones on dogs and men alike with it. Mother moon sang, angry with wolves and their dogbrothers for loving man, the too-tall beast who would not howl on the equinox, who would not love its mother light the same way, whose smoke clouded night air breathless. This song, this moonsong, it rang wild along valleys, burning grass and cricket, to the tents of man and dog, pulling spines toward moon and song, pulling up with nightfingers cloudy and without gravity, without mercy, without the sun its brother present or passing, without consent of river valleys. Man-spines and dog-spines pulled and pulled and as they strained they grabbed root and rock to slow this song’s wronglifting, pathetic fingernail anchors stripping, and the earth stretched with them until mounds and hills welded coolly the foot of mountain, man and dog and earth becoming one thing.  High up finally, up enough beyond clouds to see the night sky smokeless black. Necks hardened to stones with winter, spines a ridge of rock and snow, the dog’s breath a howling heard only from the tops of mountains, where the moon is biggest.

---

C.J. Opperthauser currently lives and teaces in Cincinnati. His poems have recently appeared/are forthcoming in Ghost Ocean Magazine, dislocate, and Neon. He blogs at http://thicketsandthings.tumblr.com.