Fonly

April 2021 | nonfiction

—which shouldn’t need translation—this button (faded, pale green with white lettering) dates back to the ‘80s, when I was a student at San Diego State University, and Aesop’s Tables, in the corner of a strip mall just off campus, was where an assortment of left-wing literati and hangers-on gathered over glasses of Retsina and plates of hummus, pita, and olives until the restaurant got booted to make way for new construction, and the owners had these buttons made up so we could commiserate and rail at social injustice.
—the seminar leader passed out small gray buttons with white lettering, all caps, no apostrophe, to stress the futility of wishful thinking in lieu of action or acceptance—“fonly I’d married Bert instead of Bart, fonly I’d started saving when I was 20—her topic was fundraising (fonly someone would donate a million dollars) and she also handed out toe tags to remind people to look alive, and though I don’t remember anything she said, the button is a talisman.

—I don’t recall the origin of this one with the universal no (non/nyet/nein) symbol, a circle with a diagonal red line through it, and though I’m not inclined toward whining and wailing, this is one of just three buttons I’ve kept out of hundreds—a collection from decades of progressive activism: Bread Not Roses, Draft beer not boys, This is what a feminist looks like, Voice for Choice, U.S. Out of Nicaragua, Jane Wyman was Right—and now I find a timeless thread running through these residual relics: shit happens, we can’t wish it away, and there’s no use grumbling.

Alice Lowe

Alice Lowe is proud to have her third published piece in Burningword. Her flash prose has also appeared this past year in Hobart, JMWW, Door Is a Jar, Sleet, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Headlight Review. She’s had citations in Best American Essays and nominations for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Alice writes about life and literature, food and family in San Diego, California and at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

Circus Act

April 2021 | fiction

You have just appeared beneath my office door arch, crunching the remnants of a cherry Jolly Rancher with your even, professionally whitened teeth and bearing your usual dissonance: senior partner swagger and practiced “aw shucks” expression.  I have greeted you with a cheerful (but not overly familiar) “Hi Brad.  What can I do for you?”

Here’s what will happen next.  You will say, “Hey, did you see that e-mail about the trivia game?”  I will look at you blankly, pretending that I hadn’t opened it an hour ago and envisioned this entire conversation going down immediately thereafter.  I will say, “No, I must have missed it; I’ve been working on a brief that’s due tomorrow.”  You will say, “No worries.  I’ll give you the rundown.  We’re asking folks to participate in a trivia game night next Thursday.  We’re going to film it and put it up on Facebook and the firm website.  It’ll be catnip for potential summer associates.  We’ll look like the ‘cool’ firm.  Hell, we are the ‘cool’ firm.”

I will say, “I’m terrible at trivia,” which will be a true statement.  You will say, “Oh, that doesn’t matter.  It’s all in good fun.”  I will demur further and say, “Oh, I really don’t think I look great on camera; besides, I’m shy about stuff like that.”  You, not wanting to risk a harassment suit, will not comment on whether I look great on camera, and will only say, “The best way to overcome shyness is to get yourself out there!”  I will say, “Have you asked Adam?  He lives for this sort of thing.  He even looks like Ken Jennings.”  You will say, “Not to take anything away from Adam, but we need you, Lakeisha Simpson,” and give me a winning smile.

Upon hearing my name, my expression will morph from neutral to beaming.  I will say, “Well, in that case, sign me up!”  You will say, “I knew I could count on you, Lakeisha.”  You will turn around, whistling, and head directly to the office of Tom Cheng, the only Asian associate.  Dionne, my secretary, will have heard the entire conversation and shake her head in sympathy.  I will consider sending Tom a “heads up” e-mail.  I will not follow through.  I will crave a Jolly Rancher.

I will tell myself that I should join a circus as a sideshow attraction because I’m a magician; didn’t I just read your mind?  Not to mention contortionist; didn’t I squeeze myself into that tiny box you built for me?  And don’t forget fire-breather; if all my rage escapes my incandescent lungs and rushes past my large, lush lips in a molten exhale, my laptop will be incinerated.  (Ever the pragmatist, I will keep my mouth closed–after all, I still have a brief due tomorrow.)

As for you, there are other positions available.  I know you fancy yourself as ringmaster, although you are far better suited as clown.  Whatever works.  Let’s join the circus together.

Colette Parris

Colette Parris is a Caribbean-American graduate of Harvard College (where she received a bachelor’s degree in English) and Harvard Law School. An attorney by day, she recently returned to her literary roots after a long hiatus. Her flash fiction can be found in Lunch Ticket. She lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband and daughter.

On Reading That Some Physicists Posit We Are Living in a Computer Simulation

April 2021 | poetry

An analysis shows there is a 50% chance that we are living in a synthetic reality – Scientific American

 

If life is a lucid dream or some near-perfect

computer simulation, do I risk waking up

 

to a world in which I can’t embrace you?

I was so young when I came to feel that

 

death is as simple to understand as the eons

before our birth: we are not, and then we are,

 

and then we are not again. I’m a mystic. I

love the weight of the cosmos, how it feels

 

in the palm of my hand. I reach for your

hand in order to hold on to all that I wish

 

were eternal but stand to lose. I can’t dwell

on loss, least of all when thinking of you;

 

and if none of this is real, if there are

truths stranger than our brief mortality,

all the more reason to lie down together and

demand that the earth reveal what it knows—

 

to discover who we are when stripped of fear,

our bodies trembling at the edge of reason.

 

Andy Posner

Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.

Clair du Lune

January 2021 | nonfiction

I regret that I am not going to be a student ever again. A real student I mean, with an assigned desk, a name tag, a government-issued pencil, composition books, wooden ruler.

Standing in line for my turn at the hand crank pencil sharpener mounted on the wall beside the globe we are not supposed to spin. Why not. Will we make the world too dizzy?

I regret that I am not going to be a real student again with hand-me-down, hard cover textbooks. All dog-eared and water-stained. Covers scuffed, ripped. Punctured by what, the dagger on the end of a silver compass? Names of the students before me listed inside the front cover where I add my name and erase it a hundred times because I can’t get my writing to look cool enough.

I regret that I won’t hear my name in attendance roles, that I can’t find my home room, my locker, the entrance to the gym, the cafeteria, the auditorium. Where is my bus, my lunch table, the idea that everything I did would lead me to some preordained and glorious destiny. To my unique place in this world, to my purpose in life. To what I will be when I grow up.

Here is what I regret the most. That day my best friend Lisa forgot how to make her fingers move inside the music room that reeked of motor oil. The only classroom in the basement. There were no windows. The door always closed to not disturb, whom exactly? Our voices walking to that classroom, past the boiler room and janitorial closets, like a cannon ball rolling around in huge metal tub, as if someone had melted the tuba to take a bath.

Lisa, her hands frozen in air over piano keys. A person in an oil painting, or rain clouds over a person in an oil painting. I, the page turner, seated beside her. We’d practiced, you see, at her house in her sunken living room with the white shag carpet and the baby blue velvet furniture.

I didn’t look at her. Her tears wetting the keys, the white ones, the black ones. I held my breathe.

The teacher folded herself at the waist like a playing card, brought drumsticks down hard and swift. Lisa’s fingers dipped and struck an awful music. She might have cried out.  I’m not sure. Two more hearty whacks, and we were back in our seats, Lisa’s hands red in her lap. Why wasn’t she rubbing them. She needed ice, but the door was closed.

Now someone was playing notes so easily, so clearly. I’ve heard them ever since. Why didn’t I get to my feet and shove that monster. Why didn’t I rise up, take my friend by the forearm and drag her out of that room.

Yes, yes, the obvious reasons. Blah. Blah. Blah. Teacher, Student. Adult, Child. Authority Figure.

I don’t buy it.

What are you going to be when you grow up.

A coward?

 

Virginia Watts

Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in Illuminations, The Florida Review, Burningword Literary Journal, The Moon City Review, Permafrost Magazine, Palooka Magazine, Streetlight Magazine, Sky Island Journal among others. Winner of the 2019 Florida Review Meek Award in nonfiction and nominee for Best of the Net Nonfiction 2019 and 2020, her poetry chapbooks “The Werewolves of Elk Creek” and “Shot Full of Holes” are upcoming for publication by The Moonstone Press. She has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize.

Cadge

January 2021 | poetry, Pushcart nominee

I bet the four flush—

worth next to nothing

but looking to all like the key

to the kingdom of heaven.

 

You told me once

that poker

was half luck

and half bluff.

 

They had just

cleaned you out again

at the Friday night game

above the body shop on Sutter Avenue.

 

You and your six

unemployable friends—

passing a cheap bottle of rye

and shots at each other’s parentage,

 

in a room

full of reefer

and the sweat

of day labor.

 

You told me once

you had no luck—

having given it

all to me.

 

And I pictured a medallion

bestowed upon the younger brother—

no small burden

you’d hung around my neck—

 

as if the family’s fortune

was riding on my narrow shoulders.

“What fortune?”

anyone who knew us might think to ask.

 

“But, you’ll never be a bluffer,

you told me,

for that you need a pair—

and in our family, I got them.”

 

Cold as cobra’s breath

I bet my four spades

and watched

as the better hand folded.

 

You never were a judge of character—

a lifetime

of confusing

friends and enemies.

 

 

Steven Deutsch

 Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in RavensPerch, MacQueen’s, 8 Poems, Louisiana Lit, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Biscuit Root Drive, Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, SanAntonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory was just published by Kelsay.