CIRCLE YES OR NO — LIZ BREEN

/

Be my boyfriend?

Circle Yes** or No.

**There’s a few things you should know. For starters, I’m an irregular person. I have an irregular heartbeat—which isn’t really a problem most of the time—and an irregular menstrual cycle—which also isn’t a problem unless you consider thinking you’re pregnant all the time a problem. I buy a lot of pregnancy tests. The Walgreens lady knows me, probably thinks I’m a giant slut, but joke’s on her because I’ve never had sex. I was just raised Catholic so I know all about Immaculate Conception. I also have a job working at my uncle’s bait shop, which is how I pay for all the pregnancy tests. It’s pretty much selling worms to old, toothless guys, but it defies gender stereotypes, and that’s important. It’s not like I don’t shave my pits or anything; I just hate when people tell me what to do. Besides, Victoria’s Secret bras don’t fit me right because I have a broad back, so there’s no point in working there anyway. If you like fishing, I can get you a discount on bait is basically what I’m saying. Something I will never say, though, is the word ‘moist.’ And I don’t want you to say it either. Ever. Other words you can’t say around me include: kumquat, fiddle-faddle, phlegm and Halloween. I won’t tell you why you can’t say that last one until I know you a little better, but let’s just say I pretty much have PTSD when it comes to Halloween. I looked up the symptoms for PTSD online, and I have at least six-and a-half out of ten. I like the Internet, which isn’t too strange, I guess. Lots of people like the Internet. My favorite thing to do is look up different kinds of dating websites—UglyBugBall.com, STDmatch.net, AmputeeDate.com. Those are all real, by the way. I’m not a liar. I’m really honest, super duper honest. Probably because of my Catholic upbringing, which I think I already mentioned. But back to the dating sites, I like looking at them because I like knowing that there’s someone out there for everyone, even if you’re an absolute freakazoid.  Which I’m not. I’m just a little irregular. I think I already mentioned that, too. Long story short, I like that you don’t pretend to hate Shakespeare when all the other boys in Mr. Hoffacker’s class do, and I remember we had cupcakes for your birthday on May 3rd, which makes you a Taurus. I’m a Cancer. If you don’t know anything about zodiac signs, that means we’re compatible. I’m not sure I’ve listed every reason why we should date, but I think I’ve hit all the important ones. I hope you say yes, but if you say no, I’ll still give you a one-time discount at the bait shop for liking Shakespeare. It’s the one on Laurel Ave. Even if you don’t fish, it’s kind of fun to have a cup full of worms.

Liz Breen is a writer living in Boston whose work has appeared on such shows as Sesame Street, WordGirl and Phantom Gourmet and in magazines including Columbia's Catch & Release and Cleaver Magazine. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can find her online at lizbreen.com. 

ON A PARK BENCH IN BROOKLYN — TIMOTHY SCHIRMER

/

Michael said, “Do you know that when you read your mouth moves.” And I said, “Yes, I know.  Other people have mentioned that I do that.”  He had just handed me his cell phone and he had asked me to read a text his boss had sent him.  He wanted to know if I thought he was going to get fired.  Michael put his hand on my shoulder and I thought he was going to say or ask something about his boss or his job, but instead he said, “You can’t read like that, it’s a sign of low intelligence.” He looked scared or embarrassed for me.  It was just us sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn.  “Says who?  Who says it’s a sign of low intelligence?” I asked.  “Trust me,” he said, “it is.”  And I said, “I think you’re going to get fired.”
             I had always read that way.  I could not not read that way.  My sister had pointed it out years ago.  She would laugh and say, “You look stupid!” and I always thought she meant silly, but now I wondered if she meant dumb.  When I tried to read without moving my mouth, it was like nothing got in, the words were like birds flying into closed windows.  Or the sentences were like sinks that didn’t have drainpipes and the water just poured through the basin and splashed onto the floor.  I told Michael I hadn’t learned how to read until the third grade.  I had had a string of bad teachers and the result was that I read slowly and I had to mouth the words, but I didn’t mind it, and it didn’t mean I was stupid.  I told him it wasn’t something that would end, and he said it was something I should work on, and I said I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Timothy Schirmer currently lives in New York City, where he sleeps through all the sunrises. His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Hobart, Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Word Riot, JMWW, FRiGG, The Monarch Review, The Adirondack Review, Rust + Moth, Bluestem, and in other fine places. He lives online at: timothyschirmer.com

CHILDHOOD — XENIA TAIGA

/

Me:
five, six; frozen stiff in my chair. My heart is a beating, the eyes are big and then I'm blinded. The images burned, branded in my head. The fist. The angry face. Blood spraying from cracked lips. The torn skin, the ripped-eye socket. The skin shredding. The skin still shredding.

Me:
sitting in math class. My head empty, my stomach full of tatter tots and pink-slime chicken strips. The eyes drowsy. The classmates’ heads turning into little dots that I use to dot my papers and then those fists, that mouth, the angry face, the scream. I clasp my lips together. My muscles clench, my toes curl. Everything inside is pinching and strangling, till at the sound of the bell I release it all.

Me:
in the back yard looking at the dog. The white fluffy dog, the black and brown markings up and down his back. The silence of the hot afternoon. The dog whimpering. The adults laughing. The beating and beating till there is nothing left, but skin and some fur with mushy-red, pink stuff oozing like there is no tomorrow.

Me:
at the bank. Five ahead of us. The clock ticking. The time slipping. The anger growing and then the fists, the beatings, the ripped-eye socket, the bloody chains, the saws, the clanking and slashing. The hands tightening. The ideas. My mother looks at me, frowning. No, I wouldn’t do anything, mama. I’d just watch. I’d say it’s for fun and later ask her for a manicure, then I’ll ask dad to play paintball so we can go BAM! BOOM! You’re dead! Then I’ll tell YOU to wait because you’re next.

Xenia Taiga lives in southern China with a cockatiel and an Englishman. http://xeniataiga.com/

VACATIONS OF THE COUNTRY — JOE LUCIDO

/

The neighbors have all gone.
             I can’t help but think they vacationed early because of what happened last week in the neighboring Historic District, when on that Sunday night the blood moon shone, and we were watching it rise and plump as if pumping with blood and readying Earth for a kiss. Wet branches yellowed everywhere, and we were out here, me alone but not isolated, in proximity of these neighbors, who leave their homes of the country every year to be more of the country themselves. We were barking at the blood moon, and the blood moon shone through the clouds, even, and the power lines and radio waves of the country were brimming with howls, our communicative arterial walls plaqued with our hoarding. We were making dinner and standing in our lawns, and on the other side of the streetlight, the Historic District was doing the same, except for one empty historic house, the one that flies the rebel flag, the house which was painted white and tinted red under the moon. Autumn had come, and we were full of something like awe, and then came the shattering of the windowpanes of the empty historic house.
             A girl not of this neighborhood was covered in blood. She said, This is my house.
             We said, Are you all right? Blood ran from her shoulders to her fingertips. She did not sound like anything, like the brokenhearted neighbor or his kenneled dogs. We met her eyes in which the blood moon shone as she walked around the corner of the house to try another window. Her eyes conveyed nothing. We said, Do you need help?
             She said, No. Her voice was not of any country. She turned back to the window and went through it like it was a gaseous, trans-dimensional gate, but it was not that. It was a sheet of glass in a historic house of the country, and then, dragging her blood soaked body to the couch, she clutched a yellow throw pillow and squeezed shut her eyes. She lay in the dark, her blood dappling the historic wood floor, and we stood stone still in the quiet of the country.
             The blood moon shone everywhere, even through the clouds. We called the police. The girl was taken away in an ambulance. The windows of the empty historic house were boarded up until the owners came back from their own vacation of the country, and then the girls who live across the street boarded one window of their own from the inside, then another, and maybe realized it wasn’t enough, couldn’t possibly be, and left, being there is only so much one can take and so much to take everywhere.
             The empty historic house was not the girl who bled there’s home. We do not know her name. We do not know where she is now, where she was before. We are not always where we think we are.

Joe Lucido is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Some recent stories appear or are forthcoming in Passages North, Wigleaf, Booth, WhiskeyPaper, Hobart, and others. He grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis.

HAILSTONES — HANNAH HARLOW

/

The hailstones, when they finally fell, looked more like the remains of an exploded ice planet, once large, decimated even more by flight and atmosphere, and now here were the comparatively tiny remains. Why did everyone always say golf balls? The hailstones came exactly when I needed to leave the house; you knew they would. You told me once you'd never seen hailstones and I reminded you of that summer when you were a baby and the hail came and destroyed our roof and the insurance company wouldn't pay for a new one because they said that's not the kind of insurance we had. We don't normally see weather like that here; how was I supposed to know what to get? I was so young and there was so little money, it’s lucky we had any insurance at all really. I moved your crib into the living room where it was too bright and you slept poorly, which meant I slept poorly, and I taught myself how to fix the roof in the nursery. It took more months than I care to say, more than nine.
             You reminded me you were just a baby, so how would you remember a thing like that? I still thought having once carried you in my womb meant we would always be able to read each other's minds.

Hannah Harlow has an MFA in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She promotes books for a living and lives near Boston.You can find her online at hannahharlow.com. 

FINGERLESS GLOVES — IAN DENNING

/

We both graduated from high school that June and took jobs at the Sizzler by the mall. A year off for each of us. Your skinny arms stuck out of your Sizzler polo. When you talked, your blonde ponytail bounced and vibrated. So much energy bound up there behind the soup bar. We didn't know each other in May, but by July we were best friends.

I was seeing Chris who ran the grill. Evenings after work we turned on the box fans and banged in his little basement apartment, and afterward he fried fish in his cast-iron, naked, hot grease spitting and pinking his stomach. You and me and Torno who worked the counter all piled into Chris's tricked-out Honda, hotboxed it, and rolled up Southcenter Parkway, blasting Biggie, a glittering fireball. You rapped along, little white blonde thing. I looked at you, bouncing in the back seat, and felt all the bones in my face.

We showed up for brunch service hung over, smiling in complicity, knowing that beneath this morning—the slow families and black coffee and Gilbert sliding across the floor like oil in a skillet, glad-handing the customers—beneath this morning was a night we shared. Neon lights slick on the hood. Brown bottles in one apartment party or another. The smell of futons. Laughing your voice away.

I went to college the next fall and your year off turned into two, then three, then you were a bartender, then you were a manager at a different restaurant. When I was twenty-five, I figured out that I liked women just as much as I liked men and suddenly it made sense, like a Magic Eye emerging from colorful noise, how I would sit in Chris's Honda, my hand on his thigh, smelling of him but smiling at you. How we were high at work once, slicing open boxes in the freezer, and you said, “You know what I love about fingerless gloves?” and I said, “What?” and you said, “They keep your finger webbing warm, but they don't give a shit about your fingertips.” And I laughed and you reached out your hand, fingertips poking from the fraying yarn, and I kissed them. How they were blue and soft.

Ian Denning's work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Washington Square Review, Tin House's Open Bar, the Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. He edits prose for the Lettered Streets Press and fiction for Pacifica Literary Review. Ian lives in Seattle, tweets at @iandenning85, and can be found online at ian-denning.com.

WAR MUSE — JEN KNOX

/

Then the day came that his feet became shovels. It happened on his sixtieth. There was screaming near midnight. The First Lady ran to grab ice as a black car waited and the hospital room was prepared. 
             The flesh of his toes turned an angry red. The skin peeled away, and when the cold metal revealed itself, POTUS felt no more pain. His legs were heavier after the shift. 
             Other world leaders sent bundles of flowers and sympathy cards that POTUS pitched across the room, one by one.
             Doctors were puzzled. The best surgeons advised against intervention. The worst of them offered to remove the feet above the ankle where a rod had formed, then rebuild in hopes it wouldn’t happen again. Prosthetics designers were called in from around the world.
             Meanwhile, the president’s condition inspired a barrage of sketches that, ultimately, led to models for next-generation drones, underground deals that could shave away earth and find terrorism from below.
             POTUS dragged along, then learned to power ahead like a machine. His grandchildren loved that he could move sand at the beach in such an efficient way. He scooped water and tossed it their way, and a lucky photographer got the shot. The photo inspired a nation.
             The news got a lot wrong, and the more immediate the reportage, the more eager the reporters. POTUS used his shovel feet to distract as he commanded his new underground army via a smartphone application.
             Two years to the day it appeared, the metal began to retract. Slowly, POTUS’ iron levels increased and his body broke down the waste. The flesh regenerated like a lizard tail. He wiggled his smooth toes. His wife pinched his big toe, leaving a white mark that quickly faded. 
             The lightness in his legs caused POTUS to feel peace and, therefore, want peace for the world.
             World leaders did not send cards when they heard news of the miracle. The sneak attacks had gone too far, tunneling into the ground and surfacing only to aggravate areas of unrest.
             POTUS worried that the shovels had affected his judgment. He shared the worry with his wife, and she admitted he hadn’t been himself.
             Neither of them screamed when his fingers split at the creases, when the blades began to form. The pain was ephemeral, but the impact would be felt for decades.  

Jen Knox is the author of After the Gazebo (Rain Mountain Press, 2015). She directs Gemini Ink's Writers in Communities Program and works as a freelance writer and writing coach in San Antonio. Jen recently completed her first novel. Connect with Jen at www.jenknox.com

THE STRONGEST MAN ON EARTH — MICHAEL MUNGIELLO

/

A dancing bear for East Orange was what I was. Fridays I’d score goals on the fucked-up soccer field. Saturdays I’d recite cantos from The Divine Comedy in my great-aunt’s garden to an audience of drunks. I masturbated crouched under the bathroom sink, wads like chewed-up bubble gum on its curved marble underside. I shared the bed with two newborn brothers and recited my name to lull them to sleep. Once I found a worm in our laundry. I tried to stick it up my older sister’s nose and my mother caught me and threw the worm into the toilet. This happened twice.
             The first time I met a prostitute I was sixteen. She shook my hand, then wiped her fingers on her mini-skirt. I imagined reading the first time I had sex. Then I actually read from a book the second time I had sex, the first time I was able to come. William Carlos Williams’ Paterson.
             Harvard was the only college my parents had ever heard of, so it was the only college I ever wanted to go to. I applied to Harvard and then a few weeks later I opened the letter, having known since I got out of bed that morning it’d be a rejection. I began smoking more, doing steroids, spent whole days down the shore. My dad got sick. There were problems with his liver. His whole face turned yellow. Some days it looked green. I stopped smoking but did more steroids and had more sex.
             I got engaged to a girl I met at a roller-rink. She worked at a hair salon, until her doctor put her on bedrest. Pregnant. My mom and sister helped a little bit but not enough. Anyway, what they really had to offer I didn’t want. I started sending stories out for publication and sold popcorn at the movie theater underneath our apartment. Every Sunday night they would show a Fellini. I could hear them all from my concession stand, but my Italian was slipping away from me and I couldn’t understand what most of it meant. I’d forgotten Dante. Most of the people I’d performed for were dead.
             I didn’t want to go anywhere else if Harvard wouldn’t have me. By the time I would’ve been driving to I don’t know Rutgers in my dead dad’s tiny Chevy, my fiancé was in labor.
             Bike horns and beach balls. My son slid out like a seal.

Michael Mungiello is from New Jersey. His work is published or forthcoming in Nanoism, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Short Fiction Break, and Construction Literary Magazine.