January 2021 | poetry
Seventeen, quit school, lied my way
into nineteen and a night-shift job.
When the world settled into dusk,
I’d ride the Bathurst streetcar to the stockyards,
walk past the cattle pens, gusts off the lake
braiding their calls with the growl
of shunting box-cars.
I worked alone, hauled skids of meat
through a maze of rooms and freight elevators,
buzz-saw of neon slicing the silence.
Within an hour I’d be talking to myself
pushing the skid–loader, singing
songs to keep from being haunted,
the endless body parts and boxed meat.
After midnight, I’d go out the sixth-floor fire escape,
look for the north star, an imposter
lying without knowing why.
The world still as a dead sparrow,
I mined dreams from the dark hallways,
thought that when I’d made enough,
I’d take the train across the prairies
before the snow came, find a way to start over.
Day men brought the rumors of light,
prodded the steers up to an elevated pen.
Shot, the floor split open and the body
slid down a chute to the kill floor,
cut apart in twelve minutes.
How fast life vanished,
how little time there was
if you were ever caught lying.
I’d walk to the time-clock room, surprised
to see my name-card with all the others,
bellowed two-note laments riding the air
before the slam of the floor-gate.
Out in the land of schemes, calls
sticking to me like the smell of wood-smoke,
I’d drift to sleep at the back
of the morning’s first street-car,
rail-joints click-clack heartbeat.
Mark Burke
Mark Burke’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Nimrod International Journal and others. His work has recently been nominated for a Pushcart prize. See: markanthonyburkesongsandpoems.com
January 2021 | poetry
I was taking my five o’clock walk and was about to turn down the street I had lived on all my life when I suddenly realized it wasn’t that street at all. It was a street I had never seen before. This is what happens when you do things automatically. You stop seeing what’s around you. Like the fact that, at this moment, a crack in the sidewalk was rapidly widening into a deep gorge. I stopped just in time, peering down at a blue river far below. The whole gorge was bathed in the kind of pink glow you sometimes see at dawn that makes you want to jump out of bed and set off on an adventure. Long I stood there, oblivious to the honking traffic and sirens. I eyed a narrow ledge winding down along the walls, and a parade of people merrily laughing and singing as they descended into the depths. I thought I heard the faint strain of a drinking song I once knew in college. I waved and one of them waved back, inviting me to join them. I was just about to do so when I observed farther down that both the ledge and the parade came to an abrupt end as, one by one, people jumped into the gorge, all flapping their arms for a time as they plummeted to their certain deaths. Why did they flap their arms, I wondered? And why on earth didn’t they stop? Were they all insane? In vain, I yelled at them, but the mad procession continued in a grim wave of falling, flapping specks of humanity. Helplessly, I stared down at the river, oh so blue it broke my heart. And in that moment, I suddenly understood all the mysteries of life and death and the pull of a river that could make someone follow it wherever it leads. I felt an irresistible urge to join them. It was then that I realized that the gorge was slowly closing as the hidden world zipped shut beneath me, leaving nothing but a crack in the sidewalk. I stood there, befuddled. Then I realized my mistake. I had taken a left instead of a right. Resuming my walk, I resolved to pay better attention to where I am going.
Gene Twaronite
Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet, essayist, and children’s fiction writer. He is the author of ten books, including two juvenile fantasy novels as well as collections of essays, short stories, and poems. His poetry book Trash Picker on Mars (Kelsay Books) was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. His latest poetry collection is The Museum of Unwearable Shoes. Follow more of Gene’s writing at his website: thetwaronitezone.com.
January 2021 | fiction
When I pressed the button it stopped beeping, clicked and spun and a tired sound came into the room. “Hello, this is Frank,” it said. “I wanted you to know that my son, Johnny, died from an overdose of heroin last night. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.” There was a long uneasy pause, the dial tone burred, and went silent.
He hadn’t left a phone number and I felt a sudden sense of panic. I didn’t know any Frank. I pressed the button again and tried to recognize the intruder. “Hello, this is Frank. I wanted you to know that my son, Johnny, died from an overdose of heroin last night,” it said, but somehow the voice had changed. There was a vacant tone of relief in it as it repeated, “I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”
The cold burr of the dial tone returned and the whirr and click of flashing plastic was ready to do it all over again. I pressed the button a third time and the flashing clicked and beeped, sending out its horror from a voice I would never forget.
J.S. Kierland
J.S. Kierland is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and the Yale Drama School. He has been writer-in-residence at New York’s Lincoln Center and Lab Theatre, Brandeis University, and Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre. He’s written two Hollywood films and rewritten several others but refuses to talk about them. Over 100 publications of his short stories have been published around the country in Collections, Reviews, and Magazines like Playboy, Fiction International, Oracle, International Short Story, Trajectory, Colere and many others. He has also edited two one-act play books, and has “15” of the best of his short stories published as a collection from Underground Voices, along with a novella ebook titled HARD TO LEARN.
January 2021 | Best of Net nominee, fiction
On the day of the final exam, students walked into the classroom to find a long table lined with body parts inside jars. Confused, and not seeing their professor anywhere, they walked along the table and read the labels on the jars:
– #1: Albert Einstein’s Frontal Lobe
– #2: Frida Kahlo’s Hands
– #3: Chris Hemsworth’s Biceps
– #4: Joan Sutherland’s Lungs
– #5: Usain Bolt’s Feet
– #6: Jane Austen’s Temporal Lobe
– #7: Freddie Mercury’s Vocal Cords
– #8: Oprah Winfrey’s Mouth
– #9: Anthony Bourdain’s Tongue
– #10: Beyoncé’s Legs
– #11: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Heart
– #12: Mother Teresa’s Heart
One of the students noticed an envelope at the end of the table marked, “Please read aloud.” He picked it up and said:
“Hi, class. This is your final exam. You get to choose one jar to eat from. A few minutes after you’ve eaten, you will receive skills and talents related to the person’s body part you’ve selected. As there are only 12 of you, you must choose quickly. You will receive your grade after the test is complete. Once these instructions have been read aloud, you have precisely one minute to select and eat. I am watching. Go.”
The students were the best and brightest at the university, maybe the country. They scurried around the table, some diving for their desired jar, snatching off the lids, shoving the various body parts into their mouths.
After the minute passed, the students stood around the table alternating between looking at each other and looking down at themselves, blood smeared across their hands and faces, meat wedged between their teeth. Only one person stood apart from her classmates.
She clung to the wall, face ashen, body shaking, but as each of her classmates began to clutch at their throats, lines of red crossing across their eyes, gasping, reaching out for help, toppling to the floor, convulsing and then settling into grotesque stillness, she noticed the lone jar left on the table, the one that would have been hers, shining like a beacon, and she understood.
The door opened, and the professor walked in, beaming.
“Congratulations,” he said, shaking her hand. “You passed.”
Elison Alcovendaz
Elison’s work has appeared or will be appearing in The Rumpus, The Santa Monica Review, The Portland Review, Lost Balloon, and other places. Elison has an MA in Creative Writing from Sacramento State and was selected as a Best Small Fictions 2020 winner. To learn more, please visit www.elisonalcovendaz.com.
January 2021 | poetry
After sleeping
for hours, I am still waiting
to exhale
morning breath,
so I can spit
into my bathroom sink
with a healthy squeeze
of toothpaste.
I breathe in again
and hold it again,
like noxious-fumes avoidance
or a morning bong hit.
I waste scant time
gargling mouthwash
like pickle shots,
popping placebos like Xanax,
sucking fresh air,
changing my paradigm,
changing the font
on my nameplate,
changing my password
to something less accessible
but honest,
changing reality itself.
I am frantic to exhale
and spit.
Because, in the morning,
I gasp for breath.
Eric Blanchard
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Eric Blanchard dreamed of dropping out of high school, but when the haze of adolescence cleared, he found himself in law school instead. After being a trial lawyer for a decade and a half, he ran away to Ohio, where he taught school and lived a mindful life for about a minute. Eventually, he returned home to help care for his parents. Eric’s poetry has been included in numerous collections, both online and in hard copy. In 2013, his prose poem “The Meeting Ran Long” was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net anthology. His chapbook, The Good Parts, was published in January 2020 by Finishing Line Press.
