LIMB — RON MacLEAN

I wear my father so he shows.
            I wear him like a crime scene, a Christmas sweater. A dead skin, scored and perforated. I wear him (only) at high tide, wary of mucking in the shallows. I wear him like a felled tree: a used sports section: a tired mug. Like the striped thrift store shirt (too big) I wore too long (believer).
            I am the carpetbagger in the basement; an unschooled kid with a rug-burned eye, a soiled face. I stayed until I could read the score in the ink on my fingers. (The dog crawled into my lap and died. I've never been clearer on what a being wanted.)

My phantom sister treats me to tea she pours from her handless arm. Her skin smooth where it burned. We have dinner on Tuesdays: she roasts meat and root vegetables. We sit close at her too-small table and disagree about the past. Rutabaga. Parsnips.
            My phantom sister fixes flat tires free of charge. She smells of rubber, glue, and ash. Lives with a set of identical twins who don't get along. This doesn't trouble her. "They've never gotten along," she says.
            My phantom sister carries a canned ham in a cloth bag. She says the only scene worth believing in is one that's impossible to understand. She says: sometimes the waves knock you over. (What then? Get back up: walk wet.)

My father sits in a recliner in the corner. Wallpapered-over. Mummified. His presence delicate: if bumped, it could crumble uncontained. I hover with a flashlight, tired of this teasing husk. My shirt, shorts, shoes drip water. The flashlight too big. Its beam bounces—off musty flocking, rug remnants, exposed pipe. For half a second, I steady it:
            Hello?
            The cellar abounds with beets (luminous, magnificent) that no one—not even my sister—will claim. We walk, hand in handless. The ham in the bag bangs against her leg. Slosh. Accept the weight of wet. The way you feel—adjust for—a limb no longer there.

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Ron MacLean is author of Headlong and Blue Winnetka Skies (novels), and Why the Long Face? (stories). His fiction has appeared in GQ, Narrative, Fiction International, Best Online Fiction 2010, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds a Doctor of Arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and teaches at Grub Street in Boston.

HE'S ALL HUMANITY — AMANDA MALONE

The homeless man living outside my building occupied himself with rearranging his fantastic collection of junk into fantastic shapes and sometimes even spelling out things like THAT’S JUST NO GOD. I thought it was kind of beautiful. Had plenty to say, too. Some nights, I left my window open just so I could hear him screaming about the reprobates in Congress and consumerism for hours on end. 
            The first time I walked outside and heard him yelling, I’ll admit it scared the daylights out of me. WE’RE BUILT FOR DEATH, he’d said to me. RUNNING ON SUFFERING, WE BLISTER OUR HANDS IN THE FIELDS FOR NAUGHT. There was just something inexplicably charming about him, but I still kept walking. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk. I just didn’t know what to say. So I kept my head down and he hollered at me like any other passerby. It wasn’t enough, though. I knew I needed to be different. He’d had a new sculpture up one day and all I did was say HELLO and I LIKE WHAT YOU’VE GOT THERE. You know what he did? Scurried right back into his box, didn’t say another word to me. 
            He quit hollering at me altogether after that. 
            I started getting worried, thought it was my fault. I tried again the next day and he just hid in the box again. Every morning, I would try again and he would always hide. It turned into a routine we kept for the longest time, ‘til one day I couldn’t take it anymore. I came right out and said, PLEASE TALK TO ME I LOVE YOU. Of course, he got startled and hid in one of his boxes with his head poking out.
            I’M NOT LEAVING THAT EASILY, I said and sat down in front of him. 
            He stared at me for a few moments, then spoke. SORRY I REALLY DO THINK YOU’RE PRETTY, he said, BUT I’M NO GOOD AT THIS. 
            My heart was all a-flutter at that. WE CAN MAKE IT WORK, I said. 
            He turned away from me and I was sure I’d lost him again. But he just started digging around the junk nearby and pulled out a a tin can, threw it at me. There was a thin string connecting it to another tin can he was holding. THEY HAVEN’T TAPPED MY PHONES YET, he said, CAN I CALL YOU SOMETIME? Then he turned away and said, RING RING. He looked back at me and jerked his head towards the other tin can.  His voice grew a bit louder. RING RING, he said, RING RING. 
            I picked up the can and held it to my ear. For a moment, I was afraid the string might break, but it held fast. I smiled and said, I MISSED YOU.

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Amanda Malone currently attends Georgia Southern University. She manages submissions at BULL and her own work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bartleby Snopes, Wyvern Lit, and Luna Luna Mag, among others.

WIDE OVALS — B.R. YEAGER

His wife was in the hospital, but I’d wager you’d find him at the track on any given night.  He’d walk his little shamble up to the bar and bleat “my wife is dyyyying”—always trailing—then chit-chat and an order of clam chowder and whiskey in water. “I love her so much and
she’s dyyying.”
            “So sorry to hear that, sir,” muttered, keying the order in the POS. “$5.75.”
            Wednesday.  Thursday.  Friday.  Saturday doubles.  Sunday matinees. I didn’t work Monday or Tuesday, but if I did I’m sure I would’ve caught him at the bar crying about his wife dying like any other day. “So sorry, sir. Getcha another refill?”  I wanted to ask why he chose
this—bar whiskey and clam chowder and skinny dogs on TV—over her in a hospitable room with buzzing electric beds and disposable sheets. But there it is, isn’t it?
            He was at the track the day she gave up ghost. Of course he was.  He did his walk of shame to the bar before collapsing on mold-riddled forest carpet.
            “Benji?” His lips quivering, kissing my hand as I pulled him to his feet. “Benji? You’re such a sweet boy, Benji.”
            It wasn’t half an hour before he was back in his chair, eyes cemented to a wall of TVs, bellowing “C’monyousonsabitches” at the scared, skinny dogs running in wide ovals.

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B.R. Yeager tended bar until he lost his mind. His work has appeared in FreezeRay Poetry. http://bryeager.wordpress.com

SIX YEARS AGO — SHANNON McLEOD

This jazz café in Detroit is only open on Fridays. It is tightly packed with acquaintances. Even those you’ve never met before look familiar. And after a few drinks, it is not inappropriate to invite yourself to their tables to investigate social connections. Our stories are similar in this circle, which is why we stick together. This college boy, who is presently talking to you, has you stuck at a table that is shoved beside the corner where the musicians play: an upright bass, a piano, a guitar, two singers, male and female, who trade off the microphone between songs when they aren’t sharing it in a duet. Mounted on the burgundy walls are tarnished brass instruments and old records. The place is lit with lamps of vinyl, lace, and some Tiffany knock-offs. It reminds you of an eccentric great-aunt’s house. The couches are even embroidered with flowers and topped with clear plastic slipcovers. And it smells like dust and smoke. The college boy is studying sculpture. He is exasperated with his life, he tells you, as though he is unaware of the strange and beautiful sanctuary he is sitting in. He complains that nobody gets it. Everyone is living a life that ignores beauty and shits on art. You simultaneously hate and pity him. He claims he is not enjoying a time he will soon idealize. You drink your gin and tonic. (You never know what else to order.) He pulls out a cigarette, and you imagine what his life will be like in six years. He does not know it yet, but he will resent his family, his job, because they will keep him from evenings like this. Feeling bored in a sea of friends while musicians, who play for fun, not money, are goofing through a piano cover of Sublime. Jesus Christ, this is tiring, entertaining his boredom, nodding at how the world has already disappointed him before the age of twenty-two. He will remember this night, and the slew of nights like it. He will think about it longingly. He will misremember, though, recalling dancing along to the music, when he really just hunched over his phone and forced strangers into his conversation. You will remember letting him discontent you.

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Shannon McLeod teaches in Adrian, Michigan, where she also coaches a youth slam poetry team. She has led creative writing workshops in venues as diverse as a children’s summer camp and a women’s correctional facility. Her writing has appeared in Gawker, Hobart and NEAT. 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.