BEEF JERKY — ALLISON LEE

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The last time wasn't the first time I drove through a flash flood to send a package to my father in Florida. That time it was mixed nuts and beef jerky and on the way to the post office, I knew that if I was swept into a ravine, I could survive for days on that feast. The hurricane was battering the coast, and a retreat inland was inevitable. If only he could wait out the storm until my supplies landed.
            When I called him on his birthday to ask if he had gotten the drop, he said he had not.  The men were getting weak. When would I be sending it?  
            A few hours later my mother called. She said the package had arrived Saturday, two days before his birthday. He had developed fevered nightmares and a leg rash that night.  
            But it was the way he looked at her when she laid the package on the kitchen table that was most disturbing—his blue eyes clouded black and then he raised a hand to salute. She hadn’t known whether this was out of respect or hatred or both.
            He sat in a reverie eating his jerky. My mother had no idea so many kinds of beef jerky were made these days. Blueberry beef jerky. Habañero beef jerky. Teriyaki. None of these appealed to her.  She opened the vacuum sealed packages for him and he never complained. 

Allison Lee lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with two Siberian huskies. She was the Copy Editor of the 2013 poetry anthology, Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry, and a recipient of a 2013 Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Award in Poetry at Western Michigan University.   Her poetry is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, and others.

THAT'S WHAT YOU TELL YOUR FRIENDS — CHRISTOPHER DAVID DiCICCO

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You'd been watching me work on the car all day. I couldn't get out from underneath. You laughed—and I saw. My brother came over and we drank and later you fell down the steps and broke it. Your wrist hurt so bad, you told me, “Never touch it again.” That's what happened. That's what you tell your friends.
            When you witnessed my searching Amazon, unable to spell the word ELECTRIC, you looked away, coughed into your hand—and you dropped my glass on your foot. It smashed and the shards got you. That's what happened. That's what you tell your friends.
            You wanted to call your sister Susan. She had the baby. I wanted to call John. He’d called me earlier. Your phone died. You pulled at mine. I let go. It was your fault. It was your hand that hit. It’s not even bad though, looks like a beauty queen's lip, almost pretty—that's what you tell your friends.
            You shoveled the entire driveway out. I threw snow in your face. It wasn't funny when I slipped. It wasn't funny to laugh at me on the ice, pawing at the ground, trying to get up when I was down. I smashed it hard into your shirt, let the snow crush between your breasts.
I locked the door, rummaged through the cabinet, forgot you were out there in the cold—because the fall hurt my back, because the way you laughed—tell them or the police or the neighbor or your mom or no one at all. Tell them on the hotline I said hello.
            And in the summer, your best friend Jane stayed over all day while you worked. My clothes on the floor. I told you she'd been here a few minutes, standing in our bedroom, waiting for you to come home. I dressed in the bathroom. That's what happened.     
You stayed out late, forgot to bring cigarettes. Your grandmother's German figurines, the little spoons from fifty states, they fell, bent, broke, whatever you want to hear.     
You went through my phone, into my wallet, you moved my keys, you forgot to lock the door, you smirked, you turned the channel, you finished my sentence—you got in a car accident. Nothing that won't heal. It could be worse. You could’ve died. Maybe, you should stay inside, rest. I'm taking care of you.
            Tell everyone.
            I'd been drinking all evening, holding your wrist damn tight. I held you to keep my balance, told you, “You’re not worth what I’m paying.” It was a joke. 
Leave that part out.  
            I fell forward, burning myself on the grill, letting you go in the process. The heat hurt. I shot away from the pain, threw myself onto the steak fork you held. The two long steel prongs pierced me, in my kidney, out my spleen. 
            You were only standing there. 
            That’s what happened.
            That's what you’ll tell your friends. 

Christopher David DiCicco writes weird minimalist stories. Work in or forthcoming in Superstition Review, Bartleby Snopes, Litro, WhiskeyPaper, Sundog Lit, Literary Orphans, Psychopomp, Five Quarterly, Fiction Southeast, Pea River Journal and other fine publications. Visit www.cddicicco.com for more published work.

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.