PAUL BUNYAN'S DIET — NOLAN LIEBERT

/

The blood of the last deer in Minnesota dripped from Paul’s lips onto his ragged, red tartan shirt. He was so hungry.
            One hundred years ago, when he was a younger man, living was easy. Game was plentiful. People waved as they passed him in the woods. Everyone who knew him loved him and his constant companion, Babe.
            But time diminished the giant lumberjack and and his faithful companion. Their legend became a bedtime story, and the bedtime story got old. Like all old things, time finally forgot them altogether. Cold and uncaring hunger set in. Weak and fading, he craved more and more each day, and more and more he ate.
            It wasn’t easy. Animals were fast. He could never catch the birds, but their nests made delicious breakfasts, especially when they were filled with tiny, fragile, blue eggs. The rabbits were easy pickings once they fell asleep. He could punch his mighty fist straight through the ground, crushing them in their warrens, where he’d pull them out like so many potatoes and pop them in his mouth.
            And he had his axe. A quick swing could sever the heads of a herd of deer, allowing him to drink their still pulsing blood from their long, furry necks. Then he would set the heads in a clearing and wait for the wolves. A cairn of slick, steaming skulls lured them in. He flattened the pack with the broad head of his axe, and wolfed down the stringy pancakes.
            Little good it did him. Their plodding no longer formed lakes. Their tales weren’t tall enough these days, and Paul was no longer the burly lumberjack he’d been. He was an unkempt brute. When he’d stumbled blood-drunk into a clearing twenty years ago, the Lake of the Woods campers had been so scared at the sight of him they turned and ran screaming to their shiny machines.
            This was the last deer, but Paul couldn’t leave the protection the wilds afforded him. He’d wandered for days to find it, hungrier all the time. All the while, Babe followed lovingly. Her knees creaked with age and her ribs rippled beneath her thinning frame. It had been a week since he’d encountered a group of backpackers. Despite telling himself he’d never eat a human, he’d sunk his jagged teeth into them.
            Beneath the lonely moon, Paul looked at Babe with his dark, sunken eyes. A blood-tinged tear slid slowly down his face. One more meal and maybe he’d have the strength to make it to the fresh hunting grounds of Canada. He looked at his glistening axe and wondered just how immortal the blue ox was.

Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota where he lives with his wife and children in a house that is not a covered wagon. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Gone Lawn, ExFic, theNewerYork, Map Literary, and An Alphabet of Embers. He can be found on Twitter @nliebert.

THE NEW BUMS — MAUREEN KINGSTON

/

Midnight. Eric limped through the frozen swamp south of Killington. Undrained pus swelled his left knee, hobbling him. The injury had pushed him far afield of the resort’s slalom slopes, prevented his full membership in this year’s crop of seasonaires. The chalet boys were sympathetic but busy, wished him better luck in New Zealand. They were all hardcore addicts: hemisphere-hoppers determined to tip the snow globe to their will, to chase snow highs year-round.
            At thirty-five Eric gracefully accepted his demotion to grunt, agreeing to do any job on an emergency basis so long as it kept his hand in the game. In the last week he’d subbed for a food-poisoned comic, bar-backed at the base lodge, and acted as snow gun whisperer, rigging fan wires on three machines to make fresh powder a sure thing for the weekend crowd.
            When he emerged from the brush he saw his fellow lame bums in the moonlight—a snowboarder, a ski-patroller, two gondoliers and a groomer. They were crouching shoulder to shoulder around an impromptu oil-drum stove. The local bum, Jasper, had secured the location. With increased development, spots for such outlawed après-skis were harder and harder to find. The group rewarded the local bum with the first draw of the bottle and their hearty thanks.
            Jasper was, in fact, the only authentic bum among them. The older men knew it and felt guilty, slipped him extra tip shares when they could. Jasper was born and raised in a ski town. They were the newcomers, the interlopers—burnouts turned bums. Eric was an engineer, the others had worked in finance, medicine, IT—basically city guys escaping the grind, trying to reconnect to life again through play. Unfortunately their play jacked up the price of everything for local bums like Jasper.
            A cloudbank crept across the full moon. The bums looked up. The wind was shifting south. A clipper system was expected to bring snow overnight but would depart by dawn. On pub decks all over the mountain tourists drained their glasses and headed for their rooms, disappointed with the sudden, obstructed view. The bums, by contrast, stopped dunking their aching bones in coal yolks and began to stretch, as though decrepitude had been a mere studio pose and their muscles were now released to be their true weightless selves. It was the prospect of a bluebird day that freed them from imprisoning pain. Clear skies, off-piste slopes, virgin powder—even the sorest among them twitched with feral desire.

Maureen Kingston’s poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in B O D Y, The Frank Martin Review, Gargoyle, Gravel, IthacaLit, Stoneboat, Terrain.org, and Verse Wisconsin. A few of her prose pieces have also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.

THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2015 — WINNERS AND FINALISTS

/

We are so pleased that three CHEAP POP pieces were selected as either winners or finalists for The Best Small Fictions 2015 anthology to be put out by Queen's Ferry Press:

WINNER: "All That Smoke Howling Blue" by Leesa Cross-Smith 
FINALIST: "Nettle Creek Cemetery" by Eric Shonkwiler
FINALIST: "Heat Wave" by Aki Schilz

Congrats to our CHEAP POP authors! You can check out all the winners and finalists here. 

 

DILA — CHARLES BANE, JR.

/

She had no one. All her family had been gassed by Saddam Hussein and she had run like many children in a desperate sprint from her village to fresh air. Like the others, she had gone blind and they had all roped them selves together and tortuously reached aid.  Her sight returned. The Kurdish army had never allowed women a combat role, but ISIS was terrified at the thought of being killed by women and tumbling to hell. The Kurds assembled four brigades of women.
            Sand-colored fatigues only highlighted her youth. When General Fatih came for an inspection, he paused before her, intuitively. He put his hand on her shoulder. "Study well", he said very quietly. "Are you putting your rifle away carefully, after drill?" He had four children, two of them daughters. 
            Kurdistan's independence stood poised on the edge of a blade of grass. If the Turks did not close the Kurdish oil pipeline, if the eager American oil companies brought the pressure the Kurds needed to get the weapons the Americans refused to give, as they pressed the Kurdish government to remain part of Iraq. If ISIS did not obliterate them as Saddam had tried.
            Two weeks after the inspection, the brigade was wakened at 4 A.M.  Dila's lieutenant, a stout woman of forty, told them ISIS was probing not twenty miles away.  They dressed quickly, retrieved their AK-47's from their racks.
            A grassy hill overlooked the town. ISIS would be lured away from its civilians by the gunfire of the women's peshmerga, and forced to climb in assault.  The women heard the cars and trucks approaching. Three women fired grenade launchers. The lead trucks exploded, and the black clad troops leaped out behind the smoke and fire, and rushed forward, enraged.
            Dila stood.  She took off her cap, untied her hair.  Her lieutenant, furious, barked.  Dila shook her hair, long and rich. The men rushing upward saw her and were horrified. She lay down flat and opened fire.

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.

POSSUM KINGDOM — MARISA MOHI

/

Cory could tell you the name of a song right before the radio played it, like she had some moment of clairvoyance brought on by those words from our sponsors.
            Those nights summer air congealed in humid clouds taking up most of the bench seat in the front of that '78 Caprice Classic. But there was still enough room for us and I'd drop it into neutral and we'd coast down Bryant Avenue, just trying to see how fast that hill could make us go. We’d stick our hands out the windows like wings and Cory would close her eyes as we picked up speed. We’d share a Big Gulp—the syrup sticking to the back of my throat and keeping down the words I regretted never telling her during that summer before she grew up way too fast and me not quite fast enough.
            I’d watch her brown hair blow across her face. Cory would say “Possum Kingdom” and like magic the Toadies would play through the three speakers that weren’t busted.

Marisa Mohi lives and writes in Oklahoma. When she isn't working on fiction, she writes for a blog that riles up local politicians and media personalities. You can find more out about the author at marisamohi.com.

SAD IF I LOST IT — RON BURCH

/

Your email says, "How're you doing?"  That's it.  It doesn't say where you are or how you are or why you are.  Or why you are sending me one.  You are sending me one that prompts an answer.  That puts upon me to answer.  To tell you, at my expense, how I am, whether it's true or not, whether you will even look at it or not.  So I delete it.  You are gone.  Bye bye.
            It's been three Christmases since I last heard from you.  I had given you up for dead.  Or at least living in Florida.  But you sent that email a few days after the holiday.  I'm surprised.  I'm surprised that you know what my email is and that, somehow, you have found my email address since I have changed it several times now.   Another one arrives that night:  "Thinking of you" on the subject line.  I consider it, tempted, but delete it.
            A day later you send me yet another one:  "Call me."  I know if I open it, a phone number will be there.  I close it and go into the yellow kitchen to do the dishes in the sink. I can smell the honey in the nearby cabinet while I place a dish on the white plastic rack but I think about the email.
            I look up the area code, which is in Chicago.  I ask myself why you would be in Chicago, but I don't have an answer and I don't know why I even care.  I can't place you there but there you are, at least for now.  I finally delete this one as well and sit with my little parrot on my lap, stroking his head until he falls asleep.
            An hour later another email arrives.  I hear it ding as it arrives on my laptop.  I am watching a British quiz show and try to keep focused on the trivia that they talk about in their pronounced accents.  I try not to think about this email either, but I know it's there and eventually I go to my laptop and find it there, waiting to be clicked.  I want to delete it, to make it go away, but there is this thing inside me that I cannot control, that I cannot quench in order to make it go away.
            I open the email:  "Give me your number," it also says "and I will call you." And at the bottom:  "I've been waiting."   And I know, in that fucking part of me that I could never control, that beats every second, that I have been waiting too.

Ron Burch's short stories have been published in Mississippi Review, Pear Noir!, Eleven Eleven, Pank and others.  His first novel, Bliss Inc., was published by BlazeVOX Books.   He lives in Los Angeles, where he is Co-Executive Producer on a TV show for DreamWorks Animation.  He is also a produced and published playwright.  Please visit:  www.ronburch.com.

70 SENTENCES THAT DUOLINGO.COM BELIEVES I WILL NEED TO KNOW IN SPANISH — CAITLIN HORROCKS

/

I am going to tell you everything: I have a house in every country. I have a dog in each one of my houses. The houses do not have roofs. What are they, exactly? It is a region without water. Naturally, it’s worse here. You see the blue areas? It’s different in the islands. I am from the west. My city is some kilometers from the coast. We don’t have food, but at least we have water. I cannot live without water.
            Do you know me? You are new in the neighborhood. Do I want to live here? I don’t know what to think. I hate my neighbors. My sister loves me. My parents do not love her. She always knew. My sister thinks that it’s her. She took a knife. Then, my sister insisted: It was the knife that did it, not me. My sister is famous. She is in the prison. It’s a bad road. I think of her. She does not remember who I am. She cannot feel this.
            Yesterday, I touched a bird. I am almost another person. You do not touch animals. You touch me a lot. You always pay. It is giving and receiving. You never loved me. I want you, but not much. I love you, but not a lot. We didn’t play well yesterday. We were not friends. Are we a couple? Are you a victim? What is a revolution? Can we resolve this or not?
            The cats drink anything, from milk to beer. They left this by the door. It's not simply a belt. It is not necessarily a person. It is mainly fish. I consider it an animal. Probably it’s a monkey. It’s impossible to know. You denied everything. The judge looks for clues.  I have an enemy. I have a witness. These weapons are legal.
            Are you going to be at your house tomorrow? Are you alone? I have to speak to you.  Currently, it’s like this: You and I go together. I stand in the street. I die alone. I cannot die. I am going to discover a country. We see ourselves. Anything can happen. 

Caitlin Horrocks is author of the story collection This Is Not Your City. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. She is fiction editor of The Kenyon Review and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

SHOPPING LIST — SHAUN TURNER

/

In the grocery store, the aisles are full of undergraduate students moving to town, some away from home for the first time. I see excitement in their hands, their flushed faces. They buy boxes and boxes of macaroni.
            In the soda aisle, two young men argue over three golden bags of Lays Original. One holds a jug of sweet and sour base, the other, six tubes of instant pina colada. In the cart, they stack red Solo cups with blue boxes of macaroni. They heft cases of Bud Light Lime and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
            "It tastes like piss," one says, "but we can use it for beer pong."
            A set of parents enjoys the excitement, for the most part. The stand together at the end of the aisle. Each has one hand gripped to the gray plastic cart. The mother looks at the other busy parents, neck craned, but the father looks down the aisle.
            He is waiting for their son to bound up to them with his arms full, waiting for their son to fill the empty cart.

Shaun Turner writes in West Virginia, where he is a 2nd year MFA student at West Virginia University, and fiction editor for Cheat River Review. His work been published or is forthcoming at Southwest Review, Night Train, Hobart, and Word Riot, among others.