IN CASE OF EMERGENCY — LINDA NIEHOFF

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1. I finally stopped at the smallest motel I could find and fed quarters into the Coke machine. Now I’m watching the electric blue light rippling from the pool. There aren’t any trees out here so you can see to the end of things. Lightning flashes, still far off. It’s pink and jagged, the kind you see in photographs on bank calendars - that nighttime shot with a distant farm along the edge and that one lone jag of lightning reaching all the way down. I’ve always wondered where that farm is. It’s here out along I-70 just stepping out of room 217 that costs $55 a night and the carpet is sticky.

2. I didn’t recognize the names on the weather map inside on TV. I don’t know if those warnings are for me. I hold the sweating Coke can and watch the sky. Shadows of sunflowers cut themselves out of the horizon. I can’t tell if I should take shelter immediately. The signs in the lobby showed a symbol of a narrowing coil - a twister. I didn’t stop to read the numbered directions below that would’ve told me what to do. Now I just stand and stare, count the seconds in between.

3. And I notice how the reflections bouncing off the pool are like its own lightning. How they ripple. How they move. How it looks like I'm under the water and not over it. Under the water you could be anywhere. Under the water looks the same in any state off any highway. Under the water you’re not the guy who’s lost everything.

4. It’s closer now, the lightning. If I recognized those counties on TV, I’m sure I’d be taking cover in the lobby with the boxed up cereal and empty coffee pot and red vacancy sign that’s curled up humming.

5. But I don’t want shelter.

6. I want to get kissed by lightning. I want it to jolt my bones, electrify my heart.

7. Maybe I’ll jump in the pool fully clothed, wave my arms, yell, “Here I am!” I don’t know what stops me.

8. The woman in 212.

9. Her curtain keeps moving, and she glances out like I’m a madman, not some guy holding a Coke can watching the storm move in.

10. Maybe tonight I am.

Linda Niehoff's short fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly, Necessary Fiction, New South, and elsewhere. She's a part time photographer and a full time homeschooling mom. She tweets @lindaniehoff and blogs occasionally: www.thewrittenpicture.typepad.com.

CASTAWAY — RACHEL ATTIAS

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That summer I took you to the wrong island. You were a good sport about it, holding the packed glass pipe above your head while we swam. The right island was only a couple hundred meters up the river, but I’d gotten mixed up. I shrieked for the duration of the three-minute-long swim to the wrong island, flailing my way through the murky, clingy, old-great-uncle’s-hand-on-your-thigh seaweed.
             When we got there I realized it was the wrong island, and it was worse in every way than the one I remembered swimming at years ago, the one I’d wanted to take you to. This island was moist and spongy where it wasn’t sharp and rocky. The trees hadn’t grown leaves for whatever reason, and the ground was covered in bird shit and dead fish. We went for a dip anyway, just to show ourselves that it wasn’t all in vain.
             After, we sat on the rocks in the sun and talked about kissing each other, deciding not to in the end. We passed the pipe back and forth, after which all talking ceased for a while. The only sound the dark water lapping against the streaked rocks. The occasional buzz of an insect. The sun made your eyes ten different colors at once, and I thought about picking up a dried fish carcass from within arm’s reach and teasing you with it just to break the mood, but I thought better of it.
             I was learning how not to do things when I wasn’t sure they would be good for anyone.

Rachel Attias has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from Skidmore College. Her work can be found elsewhere at Nailed Magazine and in Skidmore's Folio and Bare.

EGGS — LEN KUNTZ

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Galveston was supposed to save them but she knew before they arrived that she’d hate the place.
             He’d grown up there, a high school football star with shiny good looks.  He had hair then and was somebody.
             His aunt met them at the front door, frail, stooped like a praying mantis.  She smiled wide and hugged freely.  It felt strange, all this eager touching, like being in a commune where everyone had sex with everyone else.
             At dinner the aunt eyed the wife with an upturned fork.             
             “I know you’re not from here,” she said, “but in Galveston we close our eyes during mealtime prayer.”
             That night he desperately wanted to have sex.
             “I grew up in this house,” he said.  “I slept in this mattress for thirteen years.”
             His parents had been killed when a train hit their car while crossing railroad tracks.  He was seven then.
             She said, “But your aunt might hear.”
             “She’s nearly deaf.”
             “She’s not.  She’s sharp.”
             He laughed at that, tugging her breast.
             “We can make a baby here if we try,” he said.
             She wanted a divorce not a child, still she let him do what he wanted, surprised by her reaction, her body alive for once, a scream rising in her throat that her husband squelched by putting a  palm over her mouth.
             In the morning at breakfast she dutifully closed her eyes during prayers.
             The eggs were runny, like plasma trying to grow or escape.  She ate them anyway, in a hurry. 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of the story collection The Dark Sunshine.  His latest story collection, I'm Not Supposed to Be Here and Neither Are You is forthcoming from Unknown Press in March of 2016.  You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

MIDNIGHT, OAXACA DE JUÁREZ, MEXICO — A. SCOTT BRITTON

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1.
Mexican grapefruit is sweet, as if the bitter has been bred from it. Farmers, in search of a honeyed relief from the southern sun, must have spit the good seeds to the ground they plowed. The peel is so thick that you can chew it, like a dull lemon gum. Fingernails dig through an inch of pith before nicks in the undersurface begin to yield juice beads.

2.
Some neighborhoods employ a kind of communal sound system, bullhorn-style speakers arranged atop a telephone pole, a strange flower blooming with tinny trumpet music. Night comes on at full volume; the controller eventually tapers it down, or the ear becomes accustomed to the noise. Maybe there’s comfort in knowing that everyone in the immediate vicinity is falling asleep to the same tones.

3.
PHOTOGRAPH: A quorum of village elders—farmers first—convenes in a thatched roof building. Light leaks in like a sieve; thin strips of sun and shadow alternate across their faces. The council table is lined with glass soda bottles instead of nameplates, all in various stages of consumption. Everyone has a favorite flavor, determined by the atoms of their thought and flesh. With three drinkers, orange seems to be the most popular, two men favor pineapple, and two more drink lemon lime. One man likes apple.

4. 
At midnight warm breezes carry hints of wood fire, hyacinth, and the last of the day’s cooking. Then, six, maybe seven or eight streets over, a series of sickening yelps.

 

A. Scott Britton is a writer, translator, and linguist. His writing has appeared in numerous international literary journals. Britton is the translator of The Experimental Poetry of José Juan Tablada: Un día, Li-Po y otros poemas, and El jarro de flores, recently published by McFarland Books. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and can be found on Twitter at @AScottBritton and his website www.ascottbritton.com

MIREILLE ENOS OWNS GRACIAS MADRE — FORTUNATO SALAZAR

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Her PA wore a red hoodie that was stained with red: blood. Blood was her PA’s favorite candy. At times she breathed flames that only looked like flames to anyone ignorant of her cuisine. Her PA lived in a sphere filled with nectar that only looked like nectar.

Yuck. Her PA arm-wrestled with her crevice hand. Her grip flaunted the recent proximity to its crevice—clueless insolence. Luckily Mireille Enos was a killing machine from the elbows down. Her grip, a shovel that had already buried its opponent when it greeted its opponent.

A shovel, still evolving—a sexy shovel with a brutal dislike of any colors in the neighborhood of cherry—growing in strength without training—ate colors in the neighborhood of cherry for lunch—a healthy regimen that made it strong and fueled its appetite for duels—attached to an amazing arm, the arm attached in turn to…headquarters.

The defeated opponent would slink off in humiliation to its crevice, groveling and slinking, demolished, in need of consolation. Yes! Another in a litany of ridiculous excuses. Mireille Enos cherished her PA’s excuses, transparent schemes to be alone so she could offer solace to herself. Mireille Enos looked forward to her PA excusing herself after her hand had been…swept.

Heinous to the marrow, that was her PA. She had drowned and been revived and now she honored the lifeguard by never laundering the red hoodie. The server brought her another irrelevant utensil and stood by with a stained napkin to await the foregone conclusion.

*

Best of seven? Her PA didn’t lack pluck. If only she weren’t so…parasitic.

Mireille Enos had humored her and all of a sudden they were knuckle buddies. She would need to be taught forcibly about boundaries, who was calling the shots and who was supposed to be launching an onslaught against the evil toil that she was buried under. So much for humoring swimmers who had been…this close…to death.

While feigning a stoic tolerance for her PA, Mireille Enos would need to teach her PA to use her other hand. She would make an example of her PA, no wait, she would make a timid broken person of her PA, broken and at the same time in possession of improved dexterity in the hand that, until the intervention of Mireille Enos, the compassionate intervention, just barely did a reasonable facsimile of weakly clinging.

Her PA would slink off and cocoon inside the sphere—one hand basically a hoof—the other newly alert, an inspired descendant of its own lesser self—no longer the subordinate/outsider—once merely a receptacle for soap—just imagine soaping up—and other new horizons/contours.

Mireille Enos beamed with happiness as she envisioned how the shimmering extremity given a new lease on life would be tasked with penning her an effusive note of gratitude on soft and absorbent stationery—soft and absorbent, a win-win—and would begin the next chapter in its new life by delegating the signature to the other puppet…whoops, hoof.

Fortunato Salazar lives in Los Angeles and is an occasional visitor to Gracias Madre.

HOW TO SPEND YOUR TIME BEFORE THE RENEGADE PLANET MAKES IT ALL GO DARK — JUSTIN LAWRENCE DAUGHERTY

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Cover your tulips for the freeze. Tell your lover, this is not the end. Ask for a raise at your mid-level job. Count the stars, as many as you can, for the first time. Sip, slowly, good bourbon. Your lover will not want to go home, but there is too little time to love. Take your lover’s hand and say, let’s not forget to neglect each other. Face the inevitable, but not the bulb in the sky. Your lover will stand outside your door, window, apartment. Erase all unspoken messages. Take a walk as far as you can, turn around. Don’t answer the phone; your lover will want to tell you futures. Forget what miracles or heroes movies tell you will emerge from ruin. Go away from home and enter strangers’ front doors. Miss a flight and forget it. In the sky, the planet will seem an augury. Lose your keys. Set your home on fire with everything inside but you. Pay no attention to the media’s panic. Leave your lover with a motive to find you. Ask if life in space can see yours ending. Get lost. Commit a minor crime. Ask your lover to send you a postcard. It doesn’t matter that it will never arrive. What matters is: what is written is meant only for you. What matters is: you’ll never know what endings you missed.

Justin Lawrence Daugherty lives in Atlanta, where is the Co-Publisher of Jellyfish Highway Press. He manages and founded Sundog Lit, co-pilots Cartridge Lit, and is the Fiction Editor at New South. 

ON TUESDAY THEY BOWL — ANGELA PALM

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Marna tucks the back of Steve’s shirt in before they leave. He’s missed a belt loop in the back, but she doesn’t say. His hair smells dirty, but she doesn’t say. Her daughter threatens to take her keys, but Marna shrugs and drives anyway. “It’s light out,” she snaps back. Her daughter thinks she’s as slow inside as she is outside, but Marna is quick.
             Steve’s left hearing aid needs a new battery so Marna doesn’t bother speaking to him. They bring their own shoes. They use the same bowling balls from their couples’ league in the 80s. Steve polishes them on Sundays. They’re older than their hips. Their hips are brand new.
             Marna watches Steve shuffle toward the foul line. The momentum unsteadies his body, and he nearly falls but doesn’t.
             He curses himself when he misses the spare.
            “You’ll break your new hip,” Marna barks, but he doesn’t hear.
            They play on two lanes, non-competitively. The machines keep score for them. They’ll play until Steve’s legs give and her arthritic fingers start to ache. She’ll argue with the attendant to prorate the day’s last game.
            Everyone says she’s lucky. Lucky she’s in good health. Lucky she still has her husband.
            Statistically, she should have had two decades to herself by now. Steve never exercised a lick. Smoker all his life. The nerve of that man.
            Next lane over, a woman holds her baby on her knee as her boy lobs a ball in the air like a baseball. The ball smacks the lane hard and the baby cries out. Marna smiles at the chubby little girl, but only to keep her from crying. Babies don’t belong in bowling alleys.
            “Son of a bitch!” Marna yells.
            The mother in the next lane gives her a look.
            See? she thinks.

Angela Palm is the author of Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here and winner of the 2014 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. She edited the anthology, Please Do Not Remove, a collection of prose and poetry that celebrates libraries and Vermont writers. Palm’s writing has appeared in Ecotone, Brevity, DIAGRAM, Essay Daily, Paper Darts, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. She lives in Vermont. 

FISHING IN VAIN HEMOPHILIACS — MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK

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Today, I searched for the giant squid in Petticoat Lake with a badminton net and a badminton racket, and a yellow wrist band, and a pink knee sock, and a dead green zebra tomato stalk I freshly weeded from my garden, and a sun-blistered cassette tape of spring birdsong, and a triangular scrap of barely pink and thereby sexualized underskirt, and not a single bird. The frogs belched their wet manifestos and the ants whispered their secrets to each other in voices that, to them, were deafening. This morning, as I was packing my thermos of yerba mate infused with four peach pits (I waste nothing), the cat said something blasphemous about the American flag. On the banks of the Petticoat, I repeated this, but in my mouth, it sounded like any old meow. The end of a fantasy. I cast my net and a one-eyed blue gill named Doña María de la Luz Padilla y Gómez de Cervantes leapt toward the sun, her scales shining like a lehenga.  I thought about the things we use to protect our bodies from other things—whether cloth or spray; about whether the blood is the silk slip to the skin. I wanted to catch the giant squid quickly, because I had pancakes waiting for me at home—yet another fluffy thing named for the vessel that cooks it. Yet another thing wet with butter. I swear it: the lake sighed into the net as if some hemophiliac making love to her handkerchief, and no squid came. For some reason, my body can float on no water. For another reason, I considered windowsills and wires, the skinniest solid things that, if push came to shove, would support me.  

Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of the nonfiction books, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America’s Food, Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer, Pot Farm, and Barolo; the poetry books, The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop, and 2 chapbooks. He teaches at Northern Michigan University, where he is the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of Passages North. He persevered through this past winter via the occasional one-handed cartwheel in his mind.