CRAZY HOT

by Bella Belsova

Crossing the street, I hear "Ching, chow, ding-ching chan," and my head swivels, shocked. I couldn't believe someone was so loudly and cartoonishly mocking spoken Chinese. But then I see that it was actually a couple of Asian businessmen arguing. Or maybe they weren't arguing but they themselves were mocking some other Asian ethnicity; like making fun of the Japanese. Or maybe they were talking about some white person that mocked them and were imitating his cartoonish and belittling Chinese accent as part of the story. They caught me staring and I just nodded and pretended I understood what they were saying.

Nod nod "white people suck, don't they?" nod smile nod.

My cell phone rings. It's my sister.

"What's this about Karl Rove," she says.

"What?"

"Mom says you told Karl Rove to go fuck himself?"

"Oh yeah. I told her that I saw Karl Rove talking to Mario Cuomo on the street the other day and I just walked up to them and I said 'Excuse me Governor, fuck you Karl Rove!' Mom loved it. She laughed and laughed."

"Wow, so what did he say?"

"I just walked away."

"He didn't say anything?"

"Well, it didn't really happen, OK? I just told Mom that because it made her happy. Dad's cancer's got her down...and she fucking hates Karl Rove"

"What?"

"I'll call you later OK? Don't tell Mom," and I hang up.

Then on 48th street there was this FedEx guy talking on the phone. And one of the packages is just lying in the gutter, right near this dirty puddle, and he's just talking and talking. And then he starts giving the person he's talking to his phone number but in a TOTALLY weird way.

"It's five forty-one, fifty, twenty-seven."

Who does this guy think he is anyway? What is that some James Bond shit? All 'niner' instead of 'nine?' I didn't like it. I'm calling him later and I'm just gonna start yelling "FUCK YOU KARL ROVE, FUCK YOU KARL ROVE!!!!" until he hangs up.

Goin' Out West

Well I know karate, voodoo too

I'm gonna make myself available to you

I don't need no make up

I got real scars

I got hair on my chest

I look good without a shirt

Well I don't lose my composure

In a high speed chase

Well my friends think I'm ugly

I got a masculine face

I got some dragstrip courage

I can really drive a bed

I'm gonna change my name

To Hannibal or maybe just Rex

Change my name to Hannibal or maybe just Rex

I'm gonna drive all night

Take some speed

I'm gonna wait for the sun

To shine down on me

I cut a hole in my roof

In the shape of a heart

And I'm goin' out west

Where they'll appreciate me

Goin' out west

Goin' out west

—Tom Waits

Untitled.

Untitled.

Fathme

All the shoals and deep within

I relate to you, always; you move me and define

Fathomless fathering I am born of your deposition

why so shallow?

My outstretched arms trace the contour of your floor, because I can

As long as you work me with your waves

Untitled

by the Genius

THE DEEP END

by Cormac Foster Morrison

"We're suburban too; we're just swimming at the deep end of the pool."

"Well shit, honey, I know that."

And so she looks at me then like the peeling paint shouldn't matter so much; or the fucking dandelions popping up like Charlie in 'Nam. Why do I even KNOW what a dandelion looks like? I'm the city kid. Who is this person staring back at me from the mirror--with speckles of white in his hair from painting the kitchen ceiling after yet another tub debacle upstairs (for future reference, you wanna go with ROTO-Rooter, not MR. Rooter--Roto-Rooter cleans your pipes, Mr. Rooter is...what, the high school shop teacher who's missing a couple of fingers from the band saw, and with an unhealthy interest in the Captain of the Cheerleading Team's birdhouse, and the type of guy that twists the ancient pipes in this old house a little too much and then bolts out the backdoor when the brown tub water bursts through the kitchen ceiling on Memorial Day weekend. Note to self...)

Now she's taking my head in her hands, not minding the two-day stubble, and looking up at me with those eyes, squinting and pursing her lips, knowing what I'm thinking, knowing about how guilty I feel that it was all my idea, this house, knowing I know how much she loved New York, and in ways that I, the city kid, could never appreciate for having grown up too close to it, and how I made her come here, to this milquetoast paradise; this chlorinated wilderness of preconceived notions, extra-value meals and simmering unfulfilled lusts for life lying decomposing in the sunshine.

"If you kiss me enough maybe we won't have to worry about the turds in the pool--especially in the deep end."

And so she did, and down we went. This water is warm, but it sure is deep.

THEN WE ARE REGARDED

by Anony

"Give my regards to Broadway." I knew the song before I knew what it meant. Jimmy Cagney singing it in Yankee Doodle Dandy; something sad about it. Was he a sad clown? I don't think that's what the movie was going for but it might be what the song means, I think. But I'm not sure how the word morphed into what it means in the song: "tell 'em I said hello" or something like that.

"Regarder" is "to see" in French. "Peekaboo, I see you." It's a primal childhood activity. "Daddy, look, look at me." Look at what I'm doing. See me. Express interest, concern; tear yourself away for a moment, shift your focus to ME.

"I see you" is the way the Na'vi say basically "I love you" in Avatar. Then there's Dennis Hopper: "Don't you fucking LOOK at me! Baby wants blue velvet." Love and all its subversions. See me, don't see me. Watch me, don't fucking look at me. Stop, stop...don't stop.

I hate being regarded. I like being seen, I wanna be noticed. But I don't like being watched; or observed, assessed, or evaluated. That's a tough one I know. Pay attention but not too closely.

"Oh, you're eating salad today!" It's not even a question but it requires a response. What are you supposed to say? "Yup, that's a salad." Makes me want to buy a bonesaw.

"Yup, that's a human ear alright."

Disavowed

The bar sign in phosphorescence exposed her and shrouded her conversely in bittersweet light and dark ocular reverberations; Open. Shut. Open. Closed.

She had been misled. Feeling the fool now, anger wiped her out and left her tossed and discarded like a dishrag. Sliding from the barstool, she used her sleeve to wipe the blood from her lip. Pains were taken to appear straight, walk right. Her mouth is too wet. She feels several crows shy of a murder.

LOOK AT MY BRANCHES

By: Dottie PR

He was Drawn to her

Years of knowing each other, nothing special- now

a sudden Draw

He became obsessed with this unearthed thing, this new/old relationship

So exciting to be Drawn in like this

He didn't realize she was gravity

Grounding him

Pulling him back down to earth

She watched him fly for too long

Now she needed to grab his string

But it was too late for her to soar

So she tied him to the tree of her inaction

And artfully admired her branches

So you say you are Drawn to each other?

Quick, run, fly

Refuse

to be

Drawn in.

MIGHT AS WELL... (PART 2)

by: Dottie Pond Rothchild

That morning , around 1 a.m. Joey was parking his cousin Frank's '82 Charger on the shoulder of 287, NY side, about a quarter of a mile shy of the bridge. It was a warm breezy night and Joey didn't mind the walk because, frequently these days, the conversations he had with himself were among the best. He was witty, charming, understanding and when arguing, ultimately always right. So far, he hadn't run into anyone. Traffic was pretty light, it was only wednesday, glancing to his right he saw the lights of Tarrytown, the boats in their slips, the puny lighthouse he went to with his first grade class. Mrs. Marcy told them some guy actually lived there, you know running things. He happened to be out getting groceries when the class came, even back then, Joey figured this was by choice.

He was getting pretty high up now, he was feeling like the king of Tarrytown, master of the Hudson, Henry Hudson himself come back from the dead- it was exhilarating, liberating, all this vast twinkling and black expanse, maybe he should feel small and humbled, but instead he felt empowered, ready to deliver his address to the masses when he finally reached the center.

Walking with determination, really hitting his stride, Joey flew right past the first phone, well fuck, it was obscured in a grey metal box. I t seemed like choosing to be cryptic in moments of desperation isn't the best plan, but there it is. Yet, what really made him take a second look was the girl, squatting down in the puddle of her sundress, with her head folded to her lap , her arms gathering cloth at her sides to keep the wind from peeking under her skirt, her black leather shoes displayed in the swirl, brushed worn at the toes.

" Hey, what are you doing down there? are you hurt or something?" Joey circled back and then spotted the phone.

"There it is! just one though, I bet you came to see this too." Joey headed toward the metal box, then abruptly stopped and asked "are you okay? need a hand? "

Jenna raised her head, she was plain but smart looking, no make-up to speak of, no style either, not in a complete sense, but she wasn't typical, the clothes she picked were quirky, old, but chosen with care. But her shoes spoke her secrets, the heels worn away on one side, probably a hole in the sole at the big toe, exposing the layers of deteriorating cardboard in concentric circles like the cross-section of an old tree, she would wear these shoes into the ground.

Joey saw the moment in her eyes, felt it freeze like a snapshot, a breezy night on the bridge, her head tilted up, her skirt battling with the wind around her, he knew why she was here.

Propel

Certain rounds have their own reputations

Do not blame me, I did not choose you. I am impulsive.

The physics are absolute behind my transference

I am ejection, I have been impelled

Tumbling inside of you is devastating. I can only react.

— Perpetua de Plume

TEMPUS FUGIT

by Anonymous

What of the heart set adrift on the open sea on a course charted as penance for errors of omission? What heading now that destiny is left to the ordinary and measurable whims of the tide's probability? Though when not even the world-wide ocean understands its own currents--its ancient maritime rhyme?

The whale fires back, propels from the deep, the arbiter of mediocrity, the subsumer of destiny, the decider, acting on a commitment forged in the barnacle scars there on his hide, and by the rusted shaft of the spike hurled by a more innocent intention, a purer one at least, hanging there, like a nail hammered into a tree will eventually be absorbed into the concentric expansion of time.

The heart is sent airborne, screaming skyward in a battle with gravity, making a play for a place among the stars.

Lasting and abiding

by Perpetua de Plume

The words are strung together, circular and precious—she will wear them around her neck when she needs to feel pretty. Placed in a box and nestled under cotton, they will keep.

Sentiments are written in chalk on an old slate. She wants nothing more than to keep them indefinitely, to archive and own, but her fingers smudge, unmake.

She longs to make sense of that which has been unstrung—of all that is unfolding. Refolding, inserting and aligning, she organizes her thoughts like putting away the laundry. Stacking, centering, ordering from small to large.

Provenance and permanence, knowing that there is none to be had, not truly. We mark lasting and abiding permanence through touch, handling.

Her hand goes to her neck intuitively, fingertips in search of pretty words. It is all so touching.

COCKSUCKER

by Al Swearengen

"Announcing your plans...that's a good way to hear God laugh."

ELEGIES, EULOGIES AND ODES

by Rory Friedersdorf

There's this line from a movie:

"He was my north, my south, my east and west;
my working week and my Sunday rest.
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong."

It was from a funeral--the movie line that is. I think the person in the movie was quoting a poet. The only other bit that I remember is that "O Captain, my Captain" stuff from Dead Poet's Society. I found out that it was from a poem by Walt Whitman about Abraham Lincoln. I looked it up. I read once that when you give a eulogy that the thing to remember is concentric circles. You speak first and foremost to the people closest to the person that died. Be careful not to wave out too far because then what you say becomes less and less relevant and less meaningful overall.

My mother always said that when Tip O'Neill (who lived down the street from us) said that "all politics is local" that he was really talking about life. Her point was that the only real differences you can make are ones that make the world immediately around you better. I suppose the same applies in reverse. Just ask my Dad. Ask my Aunt Donna. Whatever you do, though, don't ask my sister Mickey. The only advice you'll get from her is something about bygones. That was some eulogy she gave--her circles went all the way to the back of the church, pressing against the stained glass, tickling the noses of the saints. Her version of Mom forced her in there among Peter and Paul, crowding out robes and beards in favor of a pant suit and a martini.

CRISIS OF PERSPECTIVE

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

I was staring, out the window of the train, at the river. I'm not sure how to say this in a way that doesn't sound stupid but my eyes were following the shore line as the train slid north. I was just sort of absentmindedly daydreaming--is that a redundancy? Suddenly there were a couple of men on a rock fishing about 200 feet away from me. Now that there was someone there to provide a sense of scale I realized that the rocks that formed the river's bank were actually much larger than I had thought, or larger at least than either my eyes had seen them or my brain had processed that vision.

It felt altogether disorienting to realize that I was much smaller than I had thought; that much more insignificant. It had happened to me again (but in reverse?) before that when I was crossing the bridge at a perpendicular to the rail line and seeing the train coming north at the same time. Something about being able to see the train all at once, this anemic little worm which from above looked to be silently flowing along side the river, a narrow trail behind a raindrop gliding down a pane of glass. The feeling of superiority is unavoidable looking down at the tiny cars with their sad commuter cargo being trundled home to a period of rest before being plugged back in going the other direction. Of course I'm more important--I'm coming home from the mall.

Sorrow (excerpt)

by The National

Sorrow found me when I was young,

Sorrow waited, sorrow won.

Sorrow that put me on the pills,

It's in my honey it's in my milk.

It's only about half a heart alone

On the water,

Cover me in rag and bones, sympathy.

Cause I don't wanna get over you.

I don't wanna get over you

Take Note

brought to you by Perpetua de Plume

Sometimes, in the middle of all of the cacophony that is life, something happens unexpectedly. You are given a gift. The gift could come in many forms. Perhaps it is a person, or a brief note scrawled on a torn piece of paper. If you are fortunate enough to be aware of it's presence and allow yourself the liberty of just slowing down enough to observe it, to make note of it and to genuinely be effected by it without questioning—you can claim that gift and be forever different. The trick is to know it when it happens.

You know what? It happened to me...

PORTRAIT

Mr. and Mrs Andrew Lyman Polish tobacco farmers near Windsor Locks, Conn.- 1940. Photographer: Jack Delano

What did he say to make her laugh so?

as he tugs up his pants and pretends he doesn't know

There she is,

Lumpy and uneven

Sausage fingers, Dirty apron

Head thrown back, eyes closed to the dangling work above her head

In that moment, laughing and beautiful

- Dottie P. R.-

PICKLES

by Luca Pierre

I found out today how much she likes pickles. Me too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so hung up on that. I know that don't really make a difference. Not really. It's just nice to know we might like some of the same things. That seems like it's right, that's all. Four days ago I saw her outside and said I liked her boots. She said what boots and I told her the ones she wore to the comics store and she said oh. It's not like we don't know each other. We were in like every class together at school, we just never talked then, not like now. But then she asked how my Mama was and I didn't even know she knew anything about her. She told me her boyfriends mother was sick and then we were talking about him a little. And I was feeling a little funny about it all. Not then so much--I mean I didn't feel anything like that then. But after, riding home on the bus I was feeling a little sad or like stupid even because I felt a little like I was talking too much. You ever have that feeling where you listen back to yourself and you hear yourself and I just hate that because sometimes I don't know why I say the stuff that I do and...or maybe I'm like one of those people that people just like enough to let them be around even when being around them makes you not want to be around them anymore but you forget that for all the time you're not around them and only remember when you make the mistake of letting them be around you again. I can hear my stupid voice now like asking asking asking her too much stuff--too many questions and I feel like if she's not happy about her boyfriend that maybe I should just let her be that and not make her talk about it all the time. Why make her talk about what's making her not happy? Maybe talk about comics or other stuff she likes. I didn't even care they gave me shit in the parking lot or that the cars busted and I have to take the bus. That was four days ago and I saw her again and she didn't say anything. I said hi and I think she just said hi because I did.

LEFT

Rail spikes left out by the railroad. Just left there to rust.

RED

by Anonymous

I pass by the same clock everyday, hanging on a wall in an office I can see from the street through a window. I check to see how close to nine it is. Not that it matters. It's just a habit. This morning the clock was gone.

The stranger on the street sneezes off in the distance, when I pass him five seconds later I say "bless you." He says "thanks." We've been waiting our whole lives to have this one short conversation and we'll never speak to each other again.

The extrospective voice from the backseat is speculating about probability and says "The world is so big that right now somewhere else on the planet there's two parents driving in a Jeep on their anniversary with two daughters and one is texting and one is talking."

"Wanna take the elevator?" Larry asks me and starts laughing at our little inside joke. I look over at him enjoying his face laughing, his white hair, his lovable eccentricity. Riding the escalator he starts telling me about a kid who once got a shoelace stuck. "There's an emergency button," he says just as the escalator responds by stopping cold. The commuters starting climbing instead of riding.

Ejecta

by Perpetua de Plume

You are drawn from memory; to keep you at arms length I must labor

with your weight, my grasp; how it measures gravity’s strong pull; you matter.

I want to be your object, driven forward; pellere

Do not prevent me, this speed that has no lift, only propulsion.

We are efficient; we require nothing

Like a ballistic pendulum I take measures to buffer

you in my small arms.

PAN, PETER PAN - PART DEUX

by Cormac Foster Morrison

They sat on his couch, quiet and unmoving, while they waited for him to return from the bedroom with a different outfit. He sat on the creaky wooden chair opposite them.

The one that had first spoken to him through the crack in the door identified 'itself' as 'Sisterbertrille' (just like that, spoken as one word, with an emphasis on the 'ter' in 'sister'.) Its voice was neither feminine nor masculine so he took the name as an alias. This suspicion was confirmed when 'her' partner introduced himself as 'Thatpoppinswoman' in a deep basso-profundo. He, on the other hand, was decidedly male, large and meaty, and quite hairy, having a rich mustache and beard, and curlicued neck whiskers, front and back. He wore a light suit jacket with a soft collar and wide tie and looked a little like an older, fatter version of Lord Byron without any of the dashing romanticism. 'Sisterbertrille' was altogether indescribable in the full-flower of her person. Having come out from behind the door, she looked like a wingless bug dressed in something out of the Martha Graham collection with various scarves and leotard stretched here and there over antennae and protrusions of exoskeleton. One 'leg' looked partially damaged and lay propped at an odd angle on Gunter's old brown-leather ottoman. They stared across at one another in silence until a voice again issued seemingly from nowhere.

"We try to appear to you in a manner consistent with the architecture of your understanding of space and time," 'Sisterbertrille' popped and clicked.

Gunter stared at them, disbelieving. "Um...nice job." He felt the sweat breaking out under his arms and on his forehead.

'Thatpoppinswoman' cut in. "I-if you only knew how hard it was to even maintain these forms you might appreciate the effort more."

Gunter noticed that he had a strange way of gesturing grandly, like he was on the stage of some magnificent playhouse of a different era; as if the assumption of this alternate form sitting across from him governed not only his appearance but also limited his behavior to a specific persona.

Gunter's evening had already taken a turn for the strange when the adult-sized Peter Pan costume that he bought in the Halloween costume store on 6th that afternoon apparently gave him the ability to fly as soon as he finished putting it on. Mind you, he had had no intention of wearing it to any Halloween party. He had been day-dreaming about it since the day he had seen it in the same itinerant Halloween costume shop the year before. He couldn't pin-point the exact source of his desire to be Peter Pan though he assumed it to be a fantasy based in some psycho-sexual childhood trauma. But he had desperately wanted to avoid any suspicion of irregularity on his part that might overtake the bullying and gossipy postman, say, as a result from even buying the costume from the internet out of season. His 'perfect' plan was to wait until Halloween and buy the costume while volunteering a certain squeamishness about 'dress-up' parties to the salesgirl and, in order to avoid any skepticism about his choice of costume, buy another costume (he had chosen what he thought was the most manly one - a pirate!) to throw her off the scent. She hadn't seemed to care one way or another.

The trip to the ceiling where he had knocked his head and the subsequent fall to the floor which had knocked the wind out of him brought about either some extended hallucination or a certain open-mindedness to what could only be thought of as the incredible circumstances that had brought these two creatures before him to his couch. He decided to go with it one way or another. What's the worst that could happen?

"Can I offer you some tea or something?"

'Thatpoppinswoman' gasped indignantly and after a beat 'Sisterbertrille' unceremoniously and without warning ejaculated several pints of yellow paste from 'her' mouth-hole onto the floor in front of Gunter splashing his bare feet and collecting almost immediately as a warm stickiness between his toes.

"YOU WOULD DO WELL NOT TO PATRONIZE US, WE HAVE BEEN SENT! SENT ON A MISSION TO TEST YOU. AND THIS TEST HAS ALREADY BEGUN."

"Where was that damned voice COMING from?"

Nested

by Mrs. Eaves

You wake me; unapologetic

facing forced; light, I get burned in the process

I fight to stay still, burrowed and blanketed

in the familiar; skin, hair

snarled, entangled and

nestlike; wrapped, rapt

my teeth are small and sharp. I bare them; curl tighter

in my nest of bones and dead leaves.

AN ISOLATED INCIDENT OF CULTURE SHOCK

by Anonymous

Yes, yes, I have worked with Korean filmmaker Young Man Kang but this was still early in his career. We ran into each other on the 4 train one afternoon and he asked me to look at a short script he was writing about language and multi-cultural relationships in NYC. He was much more serious about his subject matter back then. Anyway, I guess my notes were helpful enough and he asked me to DP another short he was actually shooting at the time--what would end up being his film "The Flame of Karma".

So after a long day of filming we were hanging out in the coffee shop with all our equipment and exhausted and he asks me if I have a picture of my daughter. She was just a baby at the time and I must've been talking about her all day. I remember that at the time it felt nice that he was reaching out, trying to get to know me. I felt we were connecting; we worked together really well and now our personal relationship was blossoming too. So I took out my wallet and found the picture and showed him.

"Very beautiful," he said. Next to that picture in my wallet was one of my childhood dog, Dusty. I felt a pang of embarrassment that I would still have a picture of my dog in my wallet though he had died at least 20 years earlier. And so I thought--"what the hell; show him that picture too. Let him get to know the real you." So I did.

"Ummmm," he said, "delicious."

MIGHT AS WELL.... (PART 1)

By: Dottie Pond Rothschild

He read it in the local paper, but Joey had to check it out for himself. Could be his manic leanings or simply his innate tendency toward inquiry, the really getting inside of a thing to see how it works, regardless whether it be a person or a machine.

The thing was, they installed four phones, not just one, on the sprawling span of the Tappen Zee Bridge and Joey had questions. The papers were always so fucking vague - who came up with these anemic questions? Yet they were the professionals, barely brushing up against the real material. He saw the importance of rolling up his sleeves and delving his hands into the guts of a story, sloshing around in the substance of the thing.

Joey's head was a piaya of perplexity, a stew of unanswered questions. For instance, did the phones only call the suicide hotline? Or say could you like stop your car on the way to Jersey and order a pizza? How bout this - did you need a quarter or a credit card number or did you merely pick up the phone and your personal savior was waiting on the other end?

And what about location? Was there a bank of four phones in the center, the highest, and lets face it, the choicest spot on the bridge OR were they equally dispersed across the entire span, so if one had second thoughts on the way to the prime spots, they could just give a ring. Maybe studies were done and it was determined that more people jumped from the Jersey side, so they put two on the Jersey side, and only one in the center and one on the New York side. And, being a New Yorker, was this a bone of contention or a point of pride?

How about if you were just kinda depressed but had no real intention of ending it- could you use the phone, you know, just to talk? A little low end, free therapy? Maybe say you were thinking about it- just to keep them on the line...

Indeed there were countless unaddressed questions. He would bet there would be others out there too, just like him, trying to find some real answers.

ALIVE IN THE WORLD

by Jackson Browne

I want to live in the world, not inside my head
I want to live in the world, I want to stand and be counted
With the hopeful and the willing
With the open and the strong
With the voices in the darkness
Fashioning daylight out of song
And the millions of lovers
Alive in the world

I want to live in the world, not behind some wall
I want to live in the world, where I will hear if another voice should call
To the prisoner inside me
To the captive of my doubt
Who among his fantasies harbors the dream of breaking out
And taking his chances
Alive in the world

To open my eyes and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes and fully arrive in the world

With its beauty and its cruelty
With its heartbreak and its joy
With it constantly giving birth to life and to forces that destroy
And the infinite power of change
Alive in the world

To open my eyes and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes and fully arrive in the world
To open my eyes and wake up alive in the world
To open my eyes and fully arrive in the world

SACK OF KITTENS

by: Dottie Pond Rothschild

Paige had been at it for two hours. Honestly, Olivia wasn't merely numbingly restless,

annoyed at the colossal waste of her time, but friggin hungry as well. What could possibly take

so long?She must curl each strand of her long, luxurious hair separately and then apply layer after layer of make-up to accumulated perfection, then clothes and shoes. Olivia marveled at the intricate decision process this took depending on who was most likely to be in the room they were about to walk into. At some point Olivia attempted to be indoctrinated into this female ritualistic process- but could only stretch out hair and make-up to twenty minutes, maybe a half hour with much effort. Eventually she just brought along her book, it seemed like a better use of her time. Approaching the three hour mark, they would finally make their way to breakfast, just under the wire of the 2p.m. cutoff on Sundays for hash browns on the grill.

They walked down Broadway, heads turned, conversation bubbled, Paige rivaled the sun in her brightness and Olivia got to stand in the castoff splendor. With no place to go and no time to be there, those wasted Sunday mornings were worth the wait.

Only now did Olivia realize that there was a wisdom of beauty that Paige tried to impart on her, and she, with the freshness of youth, had intellectually squandered. Paige had faded like a timeless watercolor, while Olivia tumbled into middle age like a sack of kittens falling out the back of a pickup. Why hadn't she lifted her nose out of the book to learn how to perfectly tweeze her eyebrows or choose the most flattering hairstyle for her face shape?

As it turns out, a concentration on beauty trumps intellect- and as Olivia looks in the mirror, glimpses her retiring youth, looks in the mirror, watches her husband leave her, looks in the mirror, and finds that after they ran out of things too say, she should have spent more time looking at herself, looks in the mirror, then shatters it with her fist.

Looking at it intellectually, Olivia has analyzed and concluded that she has lost, if you can lose at life. Paige looks in the mirror, almost three hours have passed, and she is still looking in the mirror.

HIVE (or why god doesn't care)

by Cormac Foster Morrison

"Accept, for the sake of argument," John thinks to himself, "that in any conversation about the true nature of God, human language is hopelessly inadequate for any job of definition--that even the most nuanced, layered intellect gets lost, inside of a few seconds, in the hive of God's being--though human language is all we have and therefore the only tool we can employ."

"And by human language we of course mean the sum total of human existence--language, culture, gesture, thought..."

"Culture includes music, painting...?"

"Well of course, yes. Everything."

"So we're talking about everything. Anything a man can come up with to express himself, even a conscious act of NOT expressing himself..."

"...for a purpose, say..."

"Right, NOT expressing himself for a reason..."

"...And thus, in effect, expressing himself anyway..."

"ANYTHING. It's all inadequate and yet it doesn't stop us from thinking about it all, albeit in terms deficient to the task; dismally and wretchedly deficient."

"Got it."

"OK, so I'm there in God's presence. Again, for the sake of argument. How I got there and even where 'there' might actually be is..."

"Delusive?"

"What does that mean again?"

"Tending to delude, mislead..."

"I don't think it's delusive, no."

"Demeaning? Demented? Dematerializing?"

"OK, we're getting off the point here. You get what I mean. So I'm with God, right? And he knows why I'm there and that I want to say something. So God says, employing some name for me that he has that just, you know, speaks to me, the name that is. The NAME is the word that only God knows is the very essence of me, TO me. He knows that this name, whatever it is, let's call it X for the sake of argument, is the one name that, when used, will leave no ambiguity to ME about whom and to whom God is speaking in that moment, provided that I'm present. And, of course, if God is using that name, why wouldn't I then, almost by definition, be present."

"What does God say?"

"Right, God says: 'X, you may speak'"

"So you have his permission."

"Right. And in that very moment, I think 'Why does God even care to hear what I have to say?' Doesn't he already know what I'm going to say? Hasn't he heard it all already? So what's the point of saying it? And that's just it. There is no point. Not to God. He's not even interested in just hearing it for the amusement of watching me experience the saying of it on the plane of my own universe. You know, like you might be AMUSED by hearing a song you've heard a million times before, so many times that you can sing the lyrics in your sleep. You. You might find the experience of that song again to be an amusement. But God? Why would he?"

"It's an interesting question. A paradox, you might say."

"And, thus and so, as such, you have to unwind it."

"Unwind."

"God wouldn't say 'X, you may speak,' because God doesn't want to hear it. Because God's not even there. For the sake of argument, and human existence, GOD doesn't exist. Not as a practical matter. It's just us."

"You and me."

"Mental masturbation."

"Mental what?"

"Masturbation."

"Like, jerking off all crazy and shit?"

"No, your brain."

"You lost me."

"Forget it."

HERE'S THE STATE OF THINGS...

by Cormac Foster Morrison

It began when his cell phone died on the way to work just as he received a text message from his wife; she was going into labor.

"I thnk water broke. Where are u?" read the text.

I'm in the tunnel he thought. There were 4 missed calls before she must have gotten exasperated. Then, mid-dial, his cell died.

At the pay phone, he crouched to review the credit card call procedure and then punched "0" in frustration.

"Operator how can I help you?"

"I need to make a credit card call, um, a call on my credit card." He tried to get himself together. The operator took his information and put the call through.

He had missed the birth. It had lasted all of a half-hour. She was on the subway at 86th street when she felt the sudden dampening. One stop to Lennox Hill, one elevator to the 5th floor, gurney, stirrups, push, daughter.

Now, every time he passed that pay phone he got into the habit of placing whatever change he had in his pocket on top of it; an offering. Sometimes the change would be there the next day, but this was rare, and sometimes not. One day he noticed there was a dollar that he hadn't left and so he placed his change on top of it. Quickly after that it started to take on a life of its own. People started leaving notes like at the wailing wall, left on top with the money or jammed into corners. Then there were flowers, and a crucifix with a photo of a small girl attached to it with a ribbon. People left key chains and small packages of candy. Sometimes there would be other people there when he passed and depending on how they looked and his mood he would leave his change or not. It went on like that for several months.

Then, one Monday morning, the phone was gone. All the phones on that wall, all seven of them, were gone. And no sign of any of the totems or tributes that had accumulated there. All of it gone.

He called his wife. She wasn't there either.

The Weight of Future Departures

I’m missing her already but she has not left yet. The anticipation of feeling her absence casts a distinct shadow upon my outlook and I’m beginning to understand better what the true definition of dread is. It is unfocused sadness—something is almost missing so I mourn it—transitionally. I have one boot here and the other? Missing? I cannot describe it other than to observe, as I walk alone, the packed dirt and gravel pathway. And to the right of my boot is a divot—a hole where there was once a stone. Someone has obviously chosen to remove it from the dirt and pocket it—it was somehow special to them. Now all that is left is a perfectly shaped hole, one that echoes the shape of the stone it once cradled. Does that socket not miss that stone?

—Darjeeling

BOOTS

by Luca Pierre

My 'friends' have all been gone for the last few days. I'm not sure why but I'm trying to stay on my toes. You never know when they'll be back. Mrs. Rice stopped me in the hall to ask about Mama. She says she hasn't seen her in a while and she was worried. I got a weird feeling like she was saying something about me--like maybe just checking up in case I did something to her which I don't understand because I've never been anything but perfect to my mother. Everybody knows that. My cousin says I should get my own place and get away from her. That Aunt Sue drained him dry with her hairdresser appointments and cheesecakes. Aunt Sue's diabetes took care of any problem he ever had. Other than the extra-large coffin that cost an extra 750 more than the regular ones. Mama's too healthy for anything like that, except her knees. Maybe Mrs. Rice will call the cops on me.

I saw R. at the comics place. She was wearing red boots--rain boots. She didn't see me when I walked in but I thought she was looking at me when I was talking to Frank about the Star Wars sneakers from Adidas. I saw some I wanted at that mall in Atlanta but Mama said they were stupid. And now I can't find them on the website. Those boots were really great. All shiny from the rain.

Mona Lisa of the Third Grade

By: Dottie Pond Rothschild

Even as far back as third grade, Becky had a stick up her already burgeoning ass. I guess I noticed, but didn't really care, but it drove Angie apeshit. "Why does she sit there and watch us like that? disapproving, but never turning us in?"

I remember the time on the carpet, Ms. Clodwell droning some story, our faces flush against Josh Reisman's Medusal spring of unkempt curls, what child could resist the lure of the snip? Angie had confiscated the purple handled, blunt tipped scissors from art class earlier in the day and shoved them up the right sleeve of her sweatshirt jacket, the one where she usually wiped her nose, no one would want to look there, even if they suspected. This was no manslaughter sort of prank, it was first degree murder, we had planned and plotted it for weeks, after all, Josh had sat in front of us on the rug since September and in all fairness, Ms. Clodwell was an unwitting accomplice of sorts because who the hell assigns seats on a rug? Back then we still believed in fairness, relied on it in fact.

Anyway, I was to distract Josh with a poem I'd scribbled on a scrap paper or a creation I'd fashioned out of paperclips and maybe an eraser I'd found on the floor or in the garbage when no one was looking, and Angie would lean in and snip. Instantly months of staring into that abysmal tatty mass would be worth while!

When we finally pulled it off, that sticky June day, let me tell you , it was revelatory, except for one small thing, or one big thing if you spoke to Angie. Not two feet away sat Becky, smart enough to devise our whole mastermind plan in a matter of seconds. With her smarmy perfection and her closed lip coy smile, glancing at us with her furtive eyes from her invisibly boundaried patch on the rug she hangs in my memory as the fucking overrated third grade Mona Lisa.

Angie would rant, "why couldn't she be a rat? a whiny tattle? Pick a side, inform the authorities or actually participate?" But she never did, she lounged in her superiority, lakeside, never dipping a toe and watched while Angie and I dived in, knee deep in the muck half the time, hands treading to keep our heads above the water. So went our scholastic career, Becky gliding, Angie and I ducking and dodging. Becky was omnipresent with her sage advice and uncanny perception. In high school, during our Jane Austen period, if you can believe that, Angie loved likening Becky to Lady Catherine de Bourgh: "If I played the piano, I would be a true proficient..." "Get It !" Angie would excitedly philosophize "she can't make a mistake because she never actually plays, she just tells everyone she would be great, but she never fuckin plays!"

It comes as no big surprise that Angie married the wrong guy, did her dance with drugs and alcohol, and now is putting herself through night school while working at Walmart and attending AA and occasional Saturday night mass at Our Lady if she knows Father Ed is doing the sermon. I heard Becky got a great job out of school, making her parents proud. She found a very respectable group of new friends to advise, and dated all the right guys who weren't quite good enough for her, and expertly discarded the wrong guys before they led her to compromise. She lives not even five blocks from where she grew up, she is a beacon to her family, all those wet hands clawing at her, someone had to stay dry. She assumed the role of spreading her umbrella of superiority over them, protecting them from the shit storm of their mistakes and they in turn felt lesser, but grateful. Leave it to Becky to find a way to turn never taking a chance on anything into a desired trait. But it is attractive, I know this for a fact.

I always thought I would pity the guy who would end up with Becky. The poor slob would have to toil with Becky's yoke of perfection and decorum around his neck. That it should turn out to be my husband, well fuck me. As I struggle my way through the murky waters of crushing loss and deceit to some sort of vague light on the surface, you would think my send off would be: "Good riddance, fuck off, hope you get what you deserve"... but as I break the surface and confront the smirk of destiny, I only feel pity. For once, I'm sitting on that patch of rug with the perspective of the fucking Mona Lisa of the third grade.

The Balcony

‘I too saw that it was good to separate light from darkness. The bible said that somewhere, I think it was the part where God created everything, right? Even as a child I could see that—hey, could you pass me one of them smokes?’ Lily stopped talking at us long enough to reach across the grubby card table to snatch the pack of cigarettes. ‘Augh, menthols? You gotta be kidding me. No one smokes these anymore, except truck drivers!’ She held the lighter up to her face and inhaled deeply as she nonetheless lit the offending cigarette and exhaled a large cumulus cloud of smoke. It hung over her head like a big, poufy, cancerous hat. It seemed to provide her with relief instantly, just ignore the fact that the rest of us poor sots had to suck it up and deal.

‘Where was I? Oh—so, kids like order, right? During the day you go out and you play and run around like crazy. Everything is separated based on night and day, like in categories. You’ve got your daytime clothes and your nighttime clothes. You’ve got breakfast versus dinner. Black, white, good and evil? Right?’

Lilly stopped for a second to nibble nervously on her thumb. I swear, if chatter wasn’t streaming out of her mouth in torrents like a busted dam then she was maniacally inserting things into her mouth. Cigarettes, fingers, Diet Cokes, and gum chewing reminiscent of a cow, anything her nervous little fingers could find. ‘Some animals are up during the day and others are asleep, like the owl. Although this guy I met, on the train? He said that some owls are up during the day too, its not just nocturnal. What was the word he used? Something like diurnal. So that kinda blows my whole point but you get what I’m saying, right?’

It was moments like these that I got impatient—but that’s not permissible. I’m here to listen. Everyone needed their time to get their stories out. If I showed the slightest bit of agitation with her she would retreat and this one was a tough one to coax back out. I felt for her, I really did. She was disarmingly pretty in a fragile kind of way, but I’m not supposed to be paying attention to those sorts of things. It is all about her finding her voice, telling her story—I should not acknowledge that her looks make me feel as though I want to take care of her.

‘So anyways, I was like any other kid…I followed the laws of nature and would know better than many the work that was done mightily by way of darkness, I tell you.’ Her eyes rolled as if she were gossiping about someone’s hemlines being too short—although I doubt she would find anything too short to wear. ‘So he woke me up in the dark and said that he had something special to show me. What was happening? It was so hot and I remember being sweaty and my hair sticking to my face as I tried to shake off the sleep. What was going on? Why is my father waking me up in the middle of the night?’

‘My bed was positioned alongside the far wall, against the window and balcony that faced out onto Broadway. I think the window was a little open cause it was really hot, summertime. My father reached over the bed and forced open the window sash all the way but it was kind of sticky so he had to struggle to force it open. I hobbled across the twin bed to him, caught and twisted up in my thin Holly Hobby cotton nightgown. Ha! Holly Hobby! Can you imagine?’ More eye-rolling. ‘I leaned into him and holding on to him, I leaned out the window with him.’

‘See, I wasn’t allowed out on the balcony, my mother’s words were echoing over and over in my brain. Why were we leaning out the window and perched on a balcony that mommy says not to go on, Hello? Mommy says it’s not safe. It’s not safe. But my father had a firm grasp on me with his arm around me and I felt safer as I crouched with him out on to the ledge.’

‘We were high up and I was exhilarated, it was so exciting! There was, like, no breeze to be had and I remember thinking my father smelled funny. Boozy, you know? I was familiar with the boozy smell. He said, Look around, Lilly. What do you see?’

‘I looked around, holding tighter. I scanned Broadway for its usual hubbub and activity but I couldn’t see anything, like, nothing. I couldn’t hear anything either. As far as I could see there was an absence of light, only darkness for as far as I could see. We inched out farther along the edge of the balcony that my mother said was ‘just ornamentation,’ its not meant to be walked on, but we went out anyway and looked all around, holding our breath. You know what? I think the city was holding it’s breath too.’

‘It was so hot and still and thrilling to be up when I knew I was not supposed to be and on the balcony!’ Lilly took the last drag from the cigarette, now burnt down to a little nub tucked between yellowish nicotine-stained fingers. There was a slight smile playing on her mouth but she never looked up at us, her chin was tucked firmly into her chest. ‘He told me about the blackout, how there was no electricity in the whole city and there wasn’t any lights on anywhere. He said that he had wanted to wake me up to see this because something like this was probably never going to happen again. I asked if the lights were ever going to come back on again, I was suddenly really scared. I didn’t want to be outside my window any longer in a place my mother felt was not safe, in my nightgown and my father smelling the way he did. Where was my mother? I guess I shoulda knew. I shoulda just jumped, right?’

—Darjeeling

PAN, PETER PAN - PART ONE

by Cormac Foster Morrison

Gunter Ringelhan had just managed to peel the green tights off his legs, despite being stuck weightlessly pressing against the ceiling of his studio apartment, bringing about a sudden return of gravity as abrupt as its departure 30 seconds earlier, when the doorbell rang at exactly the same time as his full-body slam against the floor.

The bell ring was surprising. He didn't know he had a doorbell since no one ever visited. The tinny dink-booooong distracted him momentarily from the remarkable turn of events: one minute indulging a Peter Pan fantasy, the next peeling ceiling paint chips off your forehead. He rolled over into a sitting position feeling the cold linoleum against his bare ass and the bottom of his recently shaven scrotum.

"Dink-booooong!!" His own anxiety added a note of impatience to the doorbell's ring. Gunter scrambled to his feet. His left knee gave slightly but responded to the instant weight-shift to his right leg. Both knees and one elbow were scraped and an indiscriminate swelling was beginning on his left thigh above the knee. He limped to the bathroom door and yanked his one towel off the hook and wrapped it around his waist. His belly stuck out above the towel and below the tight green tunic he wore matching the green feathered cap that sat askew on his bald head.

"DINK-BOOOOOONG!!!! KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK." Whoever it was they were getting impatient. He stumbled to the door and grabbed the knob while unlocking the bolt. He paused a second. He entertained a moment of dread at strangers and the coming social encounter since he knew he was hopelessly inept at dealing with both and left the chain in place. He cracked the door and gasped at the face he saw.

"Gunter Ringelhan?" Where had the voice come from? The "lips" if you could call them that had wiggled slightly and two-points of what looked like a tongue had flicked out and back in, but it hadn't seemed like anything like the syllables of his name had formed anywhere around that horrifying mouth. And the eyes?! There was a sound like the squeal of a pig coming from somewhere. Gunter realized that he had involuntarily farted the high-pitched noise.

Without waiting for an answer the toothless maw gaping at him through the crack in the door continued.

"We're from the JM Barrie Society of Greater NY, Queens chapter. We understand that you recently had an adventure with gravity and we'd like to have a short word with you. May we come in?"

The little child's voice inside Gunter's head squeaked: "WE?!?!?!"

Part One

I remember you when you were the man you mourn. Sitting large on your front porch like you ran the town—and you very well did by the way people talked. Everyone knew who you were. You were the ‘go to’ man. If a lawn needed mowing, you mowed it and then some. Took your neighbors trash out, hell, you took care of every kid in the neighborhood all year round. You’d think they were all from broken homes the way they set up camp at your house, and broke your house up too! And not one parent ever called to see where their children were, damn shame how some people are. You couldn’t walk down the street without getting hit by a ball or assaulted by noise. The racket at your place!

I spent some time with her, you know? I know you guys had a falling out, I’m sorry to hear that. I really do hope that you find some way within you to make it work—you guys were all right. She told me all about it, what happened. She said she couldn’t talk to you about anything because you already think you know everything. Now, don’t look that way, don’t shoot the messenger, I just thought I could try and set things straight. You might not want to admit that you need her, but you do. I see it. You think about her and that light goes on again. The one that lights you up like a beacon. She wants to try to make something work—might not be what you were hoping for—but something still counts, right? Makes you a little less alone? Makes her feel like she can fix things, patch up some holes and make things a little more right and a little less wrong. She misses you too, in her way. You are wearing her down too from the sound of it, you’d think she was being haunted and you are the ghost before you even step one big booted foot in the grave. She says she walks around with echoes in her head and is sometimes surprised to look down and see that her shadow is in her own form and not a silhouette belonging to you.

She used to sit out back at her place, you know, pretending to garden and listen to all of the commotion going on at your house—did you know she did that? I bet you didn’t. Seems lonely to me, picturing her there like that. Consumed by what she considered the ‘deafening quiet’ at her place, she would seek out the noise and barely controlled chaos of yours and long to be a part of it. I don’t think she really could have survived it for a second, but she sure did think she wanted it. I guess she had all the order and the peace and the quiet she could take and it just didn’t sit right with her. Looking at all of you crowded in there together from the sidewalk through the cracked windows, she must have seen something that she felt she lacked. She said it made her sad, to be able to hear what she wasn’t a part of. And then that all fell apart for you and she tried to help and you would’ve thought that it would’ve worked, you know? You had both such high hopes but when it came time to settle down there was no place for you to land, to put down roots.

—Darjeeling

SUNDAY

by Luca Pierre

The windshield is only cracked. A little star crack. I'm sure it will grow eventually. They're all still asleep. I moved my car to the overhang in the back where the super usually parks but he goes to his mother's in Connecticut on Sunday's--usually. So I can park there and they haven't figured it out yet. They wouldn't have seen me move it either because they don't get up before noon on Sunday. I tried to take a picture of the crack but I couldn't find my camera. I'll get around to it. I wish MY mother lived in Conn. instead of right here with me. She would say that I live with her and not the other way around. I'm going to C+ now while I can get out. I hope she's there so I can show her my new shoes.

MORE I CANNOT WISH YOU...

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

FORSAKEN

By Dottie Pond Rothschild

Charles couldn't be bothered to stir the sugar in his tea. What? With the ass end of his fork? So what if it was annoyingly sweet at the end, a snails trail in pace and texture as he upended the cup and eyed the sky and let it crawl into his mouth. His grandmother, thank God she's dead the poor old girl, at every social gathering, used to stir four, five heaping spoons into her tea, all the while stirring, making trivial conversation, asking nonchalantly, "how many was that?"- and then brazenly eating the slushy paste with a spoon - let it be known, the woman knew how to make a meal out of a cup of tea. This used to mortify Charles- what would people think? What would his friends think? But they found her most amusing- they would laugh at her stories, rummage around her eclecticly filled candy dish, marvel at her sturdy catalog ordered shoes and say Charles wasn't being a good sport. So he stopped bringing them around, who were they to ridicule? judge? She needed, DESERVED, her peace and quiet- so they let her be. And then... well, we all know from our seats in the balcony how this all plays out. But what of Charles? Let's just say he's seen at many a social gatherings, eyes to the sky, waiting patiently.

TRAPPED

by Luca Pierre

They're coming over the lawn across the parking lot. I thought I would have enough time to take a shower and get to my car but they came back from wherever the HELL they go in the mornings and they're standing all around it. One of them has one of his HUGE, incredibly white, basketball sneakers on the bumper and is bouncing the car up in down like you see in those rap videos. And now he just threw the apple or peach he was eating right against the windshield and it exploded there. Probably cracked it. FUCKERS! What am I supposed to do now? I can't stand it staying inside all day another whole day.

GRECIAN YEARN

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

I finally heard again from my sister Rory.

I was surprised she didn't call sooner after her trip but I guess that's just her and I shouldn't have expected anything different. She said she was thinking about me the whole time she was in Greece and was wondering if I had made any decision about what I was going to do about the house in Florida. I found that really funny (funny's probably the wrong word but I'm just so tired) anyway, it's funny because I really had thought that we would be making at least THAT decision together, and but the fact that she was leaving it entirely up to me must have something to do either with the fact that she still hadn't fully come to terms with my mother's death...OUR mother's death, or that she still, even at 34, thinks enough of me as the 'big sister' (and of course, and probably more importantly, herself as the 'little sister') that the only thing she can do is go along with the decision the adult is making.

So I actually just hung up on her. There was this moment of silence and I realized that if I didn't say anything else we would just sit there silently NOT talking to one another the way we had many times before. So I just hung up; like you would hang up on a tele-marketer.

"We're just calling to ask Ms. Friedersdorf if you have smoke detectors in your home."

"Yes I do." Click

If that's all you wanted to know then there you go. There was a time that I would labor to think of something to say to Rory. This time I just ended the call. And exactly as I suspected she didn't call back. She just took it.

CAN'T ALL BE WEDDING CAKE

by Michaelene Friedersdorf

Just gonna get right into it--no introductions. This morning, I considered telling my new boyfriend how I felt about Ray Charles. I was wide awake at 5:25 and I'm staring at the clock because May 25th is my mother's birthday and for some reason, once I realize that, I can't go back to sleep anymore. And I'm looking, past his body laying there in the bed next to me, at the clock thinking about my mother's birthday and then about Ray Charles. His version of Let the Good Times Roll running through my head, some holdover from a dream I just had, and I'm feeling all restless and I wanted to wake him up because Ray Charles was making me crazy and ever since college Ray Charles and his voice, that way he sings when it's like his piano playing makes his singing almost reckless, would just make me want to fuck. Right at that moment though (because now looking back I have a completely different opinion), I felt that if I woke him up and if we had sex I would have to tell him about Ray Charles. I would owe it to him and the problem was that if I did tell him he would then have some power over me. Maybe that's too extreme but he would have something, knowing about Ray Charles, that he didn't have before and it would be something that I gave to him. And no matter how much I wanted to fuck, I wasn't ready to give him anything. So I lay there, looking at the clock, thinking about my mother.