January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Marlene glared down the alley at the two pins in their corners, her eyes narrowed over the ball like a snake’s before it strikes. She stood tall and still and substantial, in her black pants and the white shirt with pinstripes and Marlene stitched in red over the left breast.
Then she moved, power under grace, just the barest hitch to her step, and this being only the sixth day out of the hospital. Today there would be no fat-ass comment to upset her four-step sequence. Today was about the clarity of the pins.
Between steps two and three she began to lean and lower, torso approaching horizontal, right arm back with the ball, left forward for balance, and if she felt the bruised ribs you couldn’t tell to look at her.
On step four her right arm swung forward and she didn’t so much roll the ball as release it—opening her hand as you’d free a bird. Marlene slid to a stop just short of the line and hung there, balanced on her left leg, her right raised behind her and folded in a delicate ‘L.’ The ball rolled straight until the english she’d applied took hold and curved it left, a pin-seeking missile. She liked to call it that: english. Most just said spin.
The ball kissed the inside of the seven pin and sent it caroming into the left wall and bouncing back and across in an arc, where it took out the ten and both pins dropped from sight into the back-alley abyss.
The sound it made was sharp and satisfying: de-ba-cle.
“Nice shot, hon,” Candace said.
Marlene blew cool air on her fingertips, then turned back toward where Harold used to score her and said, “Take that, motherfucker.”
by Richard Bader
Richard Bader’s work has been published by National Public Radio and by the rkvry Quarterly literary journal.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Requiem for an Empire
“Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.”
—”Clenched Soul,” Pablo Neruda
I remember you with my soul clenched,
realizing the ground has given way.
This façade crumbles, a life envisioned
becomes a ruin before its construction—
our vast empire founded on untruth and decay.
I remember you with my mind blockaded,
every exit patrolled by the ghost of us.
Trapped within this hostile land
I hide in the shadows of monuments
dedicated to a god that no longer exists.
I remember you with my body broken,
blood that would have spilled for you
wasted on barren earth, boiling in the heat
of the sun that once polished your face,
but now blisters my eyes as I remember.
As I gaze upon our remnants,
sand claiming what was once ours,
I recall those earth-ending words—
they caught like bones in your throat,
until they lurched out, laying waste.
I stand here, in remembrance of our empire,
devastation ruling my heart, your name
treading the edge of my tongue
as I force myself to stone, yet crack.
I am all that has survived—
A crumbling statue at the center of nothing.
by James Thomas
Reconciliation
They wake despite themselves,
backs still turned, each spine an abatis against intruders.
First-sleep is broken by the witching
time of night; Circadian servants rebel against their ruler.
Neither remembers why they’d fought,
or is certain that they ever had, confounded by dreams.
Wheel and pinion turn in unison:
mechanical precision, oneiric delirium.
Wordless mouths blindly advance,
mashing together with sacramental stress.
Hands pass over skin like braille
their serpentine bodies in blissful anguish.
Order’s simulacrum born
of bedlam: zealots under goose-down.
They offer sacrifices
to each other, prayers, seeds.
Unburdened and disarmed,
they end, captivated, entangled,
And drift
to sleep—their spirits cleansed, their flesh unclean.
by James Thomas
Post-Mortem
I dream of a corpse lying before me—
rigid and staring, eyes fogged over,
mouth tightened to a grin—
a warm gesture from my dead-ringer.
I smile back at this cold me, my knife
sliding down his chest like a lover’s
hand, lustful precision arousing flesh
to reveal its taunting secrets.
He opens up to me—a host of maladies
malign my inquiries—each adamant
about their role in my friend’s demise.
So I ask my corpse, “what killed us?”
His grin is less welcoming now, ribcage
glistening in fluorescent light, I dig
for answers. My knife nicks his liver,
like an eagle’s beak, over and over.
In the silent room I hear my own heart
beating back the stillness of death.
For an instant, it seems his heart beats
in time with mine, but no. I continue.
I grasp his heart, press it in unison
with my own—a last-ditch effort
of a man wishing to become
Lazarus, but my prayer falls unheard.
I set my tools aside.
I glance back at my pale face—the eternal
grin mocking my fear,
happier dead than I will ever be.
by James Thomas
James Thomas is a Senior at the University of North Texas studying Creative Writing.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
She mumbles into tubes
and silver scissor.
They cut
her hair:
on the floor old dull needles.
I think of my mother
braiding my hair
half-asleep, her fingers weaving
in the dark.
Above the floor are
a mother’s fingers moving in and
out of the silver hair. The nurse sweeps
it into a bucket, the hand’s ghost,
the girl’s hair, their endless
inexorable braid.
by Brittany N. Jaekel
Brittany is currently studying communication disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and hopes to pursue a PhD in the field. She graduated with a dual degree in creative writing and psychology from Northwestern University in 2011, and writes poetry when she has a moment to spare.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
If there was a new way to dance, I hope
the first step is to give your last dollar
to a stranger. That you firmly hold
your partner’s hands and hips
while talking softly in the shower.
Instead of tapping your feet,
you’d pray for someone who isn’t eating enough.
You wouldn’t learn to breakdance, pop-and-lock, twerk:
but you’d savor a fresh cup of green tea and honey,
get sand beneath your toes while practicing
handstands on the beach, and take time for naps.
A new kind of dance, where there are no missteps
because there is no wrong way
to laugh heartily at a good joke,
kiss lovingly in a downpour after missing a train,
or watch a child learn to read.
In this dance, the music never stops
because cats don’t stop purring,
the wind will always blow over the grass,
while mothers coo at their babes, brothers argue
over who gets to be which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
as sisters joyfully sigh.
And in this new dance, no one is sitting. Everyone dances.
Every young man too shy to move
is greeted by a pretty smile.
Every elderly couple who thinks that
their dancing days are long behind them
find themselves singing while making
cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving with perfect rhythm.
And every girl who is timid
because they’ve danced with boys who have stepped on their toes
will find someone to write poetry with on planes.
by Max Henderson
Max Henderson is a doctoral student in physics at Drexel University. Originally from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, he researches neural networks and quantum computation when he’s not too busy watching Adventure Time. His poems are about making mistakes while drinking a good, dark beer. He has been published online in Black Heart Magazine, Crack The Spine, the Ampersand Review, and Citizen Brooklyn, and has work in Crack The Spine’s Spring 2013 Anthology.
October 2013 | back-issues, fiction
They started seeping in slowly. None of us noticed. One or two, here or there. Easily explained.
The doorbell buzzed and opened to a dreadlocked orange vest at the bottom of the stairs.
“I need to read your meter”
He starts forward. He wants to cut through the house.
“I got a big dog in here.”
He doesn’t argue, just gives me a blank stare.
“Drive around through the alley.” I say, as he climbs in his truck.
He comes in the back gate. It took only a minute for the reading, nothing unusual. Except it was then that I saw them. The buzzing swarm. He shoos them away as he slips back out the gate. I follow them. Droning and crawling inside the porch beams. Squeezing in between the slats. Dark vibrations shuddering under the eaves. Hundreds or more. At dusk I creep and hit them hard with creamy white oil from a lethal black spray bottle. I sleep content till dawn. Then through the window over the coffeemaker they come. Bigger. Mad. Sickly. I spend more hours with the spray. Up on a ladder and down on crooked knees. I seal the holes with insulating tape and foam. But the carpenters are boring holes like cheese. I hear the tapping of their bodies against the tape. Louder. Harder. Inside desperate to get out, outside hell bent to get in. I hear them zipping, darting, honing. Sharpening. Meter man locked the back gate. Everything is moving. The house is alive and coated. A massive hive. The first sting starts the flood. I am puffy, soft and porous by the time I go down.
— Elizabeth McGuire
