SOUVENIR — MARY LYNN REED

I'm standing in a shop, looking at T-shirts and knick-knacks and things I don't need to buy, and beside me is a kid half my age, looking at the same T-shirts and knick-knacks and things she doesn't need to buy, and I know this kid because we have the same DNA and twenty-five years ago she was me, and at the same moment we pick up the same T-shirt and I think what the hell and she thinks, I don't have the twenty bucks to spend, but one of us is going home with that T-shirt and maybe it's me and maybe it's not me and I can't get my mind all the way around the facts of this situation and then my fingers find the corner of the table and I see someone else, a tall woman with short blond hair and a sway to her hips that she works and works all the way around that table, and this woman is definitely not me but she looks at me, a long time she looks me right in the eye, and then she winks, as if she's done it a million times and this is just one more, one like all the others we've shared through all the lifetimes we've lived and then she picks the T-shirt up and spreads it across the back of the kid half my age and says, This is You, Baby. This is So You. And I reach for my wallet and I buy that goddamned T-shirt and I try my best not to cry all the way home, looking over at the empty seat beside me, trying to remember exactly the way the tall woman's blue eyes met mine, how it felt before the wink, after the wink, right at the exact moment that wink which was just one in a sea of so many winks, split me right in two and left me in that store, holding a T-shirt across my body, whispering someone's name who wasn't even there.

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Mary Lynn Reed's fiction has appeared in Mississippi Review, Colorado Review, The MacGuffin, Smokelong Quarterly, The Nottingham Review, and Whistling Shade, among other places. One of her stories was recently nominated for Best Small Fictions 2017. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Maryland. 

HOME FROM BOARDING SCHOOL — ABHILASH MUDALIAR

Navin and Kamal sit squashed together in the train’s doorway, feet dangling outside, and — as the backwaters meander past; as the last rays of sun strike through swaying fronds; as a barefoot man, machete in hand, climbs a coconut tree; as, from the homes by the tracks, flicker kerosene lamps and waft frying pomfret; as the vestibule creaks behind them whenever a bearer makes his way between carriages — finally talk about the girl they had both kissed, and about the “gentlemanly” way forward. They hold hands as they do; for a moment, the older brother rests his head on the younger’s shoulder.

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Abhilash Mudaliar grew up in Australia and India, and currently lives in Seattle. He is finally taking writing seriously, and never wants to stop.

UNTRAINING — ANNA HINGE

A long time ago she was a person, a specialist in limbo, dipping under railings and pitter-pattering up stairs with the softest of footfalls. Now she’s let her feet turn heavy and her claws go long. Now she’s let her hair grow thick, the kind of underbrush a herd of deer might sleep inside. She’s forgotten all about the fences. 

Now her sweaters are full of holes and when they open up, she won’t care. She’ll welcome the world against her skin, let the beetles scatter anywhere they please. The girl is different now, not so much a girl as a thing that hinges on the scent of fried onions at eight o’clock in the morning, a thing who knows rotting flesh smells a little bit like marzipan. 

The girl growls at strangers. She howls when she feels the sound gush through her windpipe, remembering how her throat was once the worn riverbed of words, twisting into something pretty. Now it’s a tunnel, the longest one you’ve ever seen, and full of silverfish. She thinks if she follows it all the way down, she might find a bit of light. The girl doesn’t smell so great.

Back then she used to think winter was war. Now she knows it is. She sniffs at newspapers in the garbage and acts out all the horoscopes, doesn’t matter whose star she picks. She thinks everything smells like instant coffee. At night the rats mistake her bare ass for the moon.

Once in a while the girl will crawl out of the holes in her sweater and into a dress, let the velvet hang like a lampshade around her thighs, and paint her nails the color of fox blood. She does this to prove she hasn’t yet forgotten the word for mirror. To prove she could still find her way back inside, if she wanted to.

But what’s the point? It would be like trying to make a necklace from two ends of a live wire, like trying to swim deep without first letting go of any air. It would be like trying to fold water. 

No. The girl’s not going home. She’s a bloodhound on the trail, and next, she thinks she’ll be a galaxy. 

A NOTE ON OUR 2017 STORY/SUBMISSIONS SCHEDULE

A hearty thanks to everyone who submitted to us during this last submissions cycle! Now that we've gone through all submissions, we wanted to share a quick note about our upcoming story schedule, and when you can expect submissions to open up again!

STORY SCHEDULE

We will be running stories next week (Tues, April 4) through the first week of August. We won't be posting new stories again until early 2018.

2017 SUBMISSIONS (PART 2)

Submissions will open back up in October 2017 and run, roughly, for about two months. Submissions chose to be published by CHEAP POP during this period will be published in early 2018.

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED, STORIES COMING SOON

While submissions are now closed, we are thrilled at the sheer number we received! Us editors are currently reading through everything, and our plans are, tentatively, this: start posting stories in April (through mid-summer at some point), and then open up submissions again, rinse and repeat.

For now, know we're hard at work reading your beautiful words, and we'll be back in touch soon with more definitive plans/announcements! 

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN (2017 EDITION!)

Friends, it's that time! From today (January 15) to February 28, 2017, CHEAP POP submissions are open!

Read about what we're looking for, how to submit, and what not to do, right here: http://www.cheappoplit.com/submit/

And really: We've spent a lot of time listing out what we're looking for, and, especially, what not to do, so please give our Submissions Page a good read-through. It won't take long, promise. 

Please note: We will not begin posting (newly acquired) submissions until March 2017. In addition, we will try to get back to folks regarding submissions ASAP, but please know there may be a lag, depending on how many submissions we get.

For now, a quick few things to remember:

- 500 words or less
- Submit via email
- Submit only one piece at a time
- We are not looking for poetry

We're stoked to read your work—happy submitting!

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STRONG TONGUE — KATHY FISH

The dentist is attempting to install two crowns on my teeth, but he has to call in reinforcements. Can you just try to keep your tongue out of the way, he asks. A man and a young woman come into the room. The woman is normal-sized, but the man's the size of a bull. He doesn't look like a member of the dental profession. Maybe he's just brought in when someone has a very strong tongue. The woman pries my mouth open with some contraption and the bull-sized man clenches my tongue in his gloved hand. It's like a bucking bronco, he says. Some of his spit lands on my eyelid.
             The snow pile in the middle of the cul-de-sac, once shaped like the Matterhorn, has shrunk and gone sooty. There's a half-eaten sandwich at its base. I kick some snow over it. Supreme the neighbor dog paws it out and eats it.
             I call my mother and tell her about about the new wrinkle on my forehead, deeper than the others. I tell her about the dentist. All these things are happening to my body.  I hear her chewing.
             Why do you care, she says. You were never that pretty.
             My tongue is strong because I have figured out a trick and it's this: If you press your tongue hard to the roof of your mouth and make a half-smile, it makes your neck look younger and firmer. After my dentist appointment, I had driven to King Soopers and sat sobbing in my car. An old guy tapped on the window. He gave me his monogrammed hanky and a lecture on ninety degree parking. 
             Supreme the dog belongs to the man across the street. He’d once had a wife, but she died in her sleep soon after they were married. He said for six weeks all he did was drive around eating Taco Bell with the radio blasting. He rescued Supreme from a puppy mill. She’d had so many litters her nipples were raw and hard as pebbles.
             My mother says I shouldn’t take the new job in the new city. She reminds me how often I get lost. Even with GPS and that takes some doing, she says. Have you forgotten those three months in St. Louis? 
             My tongue is strong because I hold it so much. 
             When I meditate, I listen to Solfeggio tones through my headphones. I have some things to get over and my doctor said it will release my anxiety and open my Third Eye. My doctor isn't a real doctor but she makes me feel better. I lie back and imagine I'm in the dentist chair and they are all telling me how good I am. How I am no trouble at all. Behind my eyelids I see snow and tongues and teeth. I see my own neck, long and smooth as the stem of a daisy.

 

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Kathy Fish teaches flash fiction for the Mile High MFA program at Regis University in Denver. She has published four collections of short fiction: a chapbook in the Rose Metal Press collective, A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women (2008); Wild Life (Matter Press, 2011); Together We Can Bury It (The Lit Pub, 2012); and Rift, co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2015). Her story, “A Room with Many Small Beds” was chosen by Stuart Dybek for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press). She blogs at http://www.kathy-fish.com/.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! (AND A NOTE ABOUT SUBMISSIONS!)

From all of us here at CHEAP POP, happy holidays!

It's been a banner year for us—we've published some incredible work, added to our staff, and although 2016 has been rough for many of us, we're still hopefully optimistic that the power of art and literature can help guide us through these turbulent times.

Regarding submissions: We're still going through some growth spurts at the moment (a good thing!). In order to give us time to knock our collective heads together, and enjoy some much-needed time off, we're aiming for submissions to open at some point during winter 2017. When that happens, when we're ready to open them back up, we'll make announcements on our website here, as well as on Facebook and Twitter. So, stay tuned!

Again, thank you all for a fantastic 2016, and happy holidays, wherever you are!

—Rob, Elizabeth, Hannah, Letisia

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