April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
She got a freaking tattoo! The nose piercing last year wasn’t enough. She had to get a Celtic arm band tattoo. She’s not even Irish.
I blame Janice for this—introducing liberal ideas into our home like some greenie on a mission. Still, when I told her, I expected her to be upset. I should have known better. “Everyone should be able to do whatever they want to their bodies,” she said. “It’s her body and her choice.”
Back in the old days we didn’t have choices. You either did what you were supposed to do, or you were put out of the house.
A freaking tattoo! My father would have used his belt. And I would have understood. Normal woman don’t get tattoos. They’re for biker chicks or women with weird hair.
“It’s my body, she said. “You don’t own me. I own me. It’s an expression of my rights.”
She’s got rights. She can vote, can’t she? Why does she need a freaking tattoo?
I blame Janice for this, introducing tofu and yoga into our home—the two goddamn things that have ruined this country. Now, mother and daughter go off yoga-ing together.
I wish I had a son. He would’ve introduced football, wrestling and NASCAR into the family. Good ol’ American-family sports. We could’ve gone bowling together. Not yoga-ing. We could’ve joined a league and worn those cool shirts with our names embroidered above the front pocket. We could’ve had a few beers together. We could’ve been a real family.
Instead we have greenies, tofu and freaking tattoos.
I blamed Janice for this. I stuck my finger in her face and shook it up and down. “Janice,” I said. “I’m not happy! Your mother has gotten herself a freaking tattoo and it’s your goddamn fault!”
—Gerard Bianco
Gerard Bianco is a playwright, author, jewelry designer, artist and filmmaker. he holds an MFA in Writing from Albertus Magnus College.
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Look at it this way. They forced you to wear a hair net. Because your locks were too long for the rusted chicken-fried-steak trailer, that grease-pit concession-stand prison uglifying the edge of the racetrack. As if the orangutan with rotted-out teeth on the other side of the counter, the dude standing there with chewing-tobacco drool, slobbering all over himself, drenched in day-old sweat, the dude on his fifth can of Stroh’s, hell bent for the grandstand with his skeletal meth-head girlfriend to watch modified cars drive around in a circle for two hours–that dude–like he would give a shit if one single hair from your head wound up in his chicken-fried steak sandwich. Look at it that way. They forced you to wear a hair net. They got what they deserved. They all got what they fucking deserved.
—Gary Singh
Gary Singh is an award-winning journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he has published hundreds of works including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. He is a sucker for anything that fogs the opposites of native and exotic, luxury and the gutter, academe and the street.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
They scare me. Give me blizzards but not a blue day with a ground of ice and a T-Rex bite to the air. She enters the kitchen in a white tank and short shorts. The slink of corn flakes into her bowl stings. The stillness gets me most of all: inescapable frost that digs the face when shoveling out a pickup bed or packing tools to fix some old fart’s frozen pipes. She has her mother’s skin, clear with dapples around the crest of her nose and tops of her shoulders, and my yellow teeth. We talk to each other (I don’t want to make it sound like we live in silence) but we don’t say much. Except for the storms. Like the prom night. At 2 when I woke to a broken bathroom mirror and her with fists bloody and an eye black: fists from the mirror, I never found out about the eye. But she cried on me that night. Mascara staining shoulders of my shirt a deep violet black. Her tears were torrents and I was there. She told me she hated me and she hated that mother was gone and I was there. She told me she loved me anyway and I was there. At 4 I made Denver omelets and some strong coffee. She skipped volleyball practice and told me jokes.
—Jenna giving you a ride?
—No.
—Bus?
—Yeah.
—It’s cold out.
—I know it.
—Susie, I could take you. Lemme get the truck warming.
—No.
She stands at the bottom of the driveway, balling fists inside her gloves because the fingers are too thin.
by Aaron Bauer
Aaron Bauer lives in Colorado and received his MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His work has recently appeared in Prism Review, Spillway, Superstition Review, and many other journals. Also, he has served as Editor for Permafrost and is a Contributing-Editor for PoemoftheWeek.org.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
You brought our freedom as a mirage in their parallax vision. In that one brick wall shirt that you wore every day. That spring noontime, in gym class, that we stood at the far end of the parking lot ballfield—you with your middle finger masking-taped to two popsicle sticks, splinted—and you urged me, with each change of batter, to retreat ten feet more from the game.
We did it for the full 48 minutes, gliding backwards in our ballgame-facing position—behind the chain that marked the schoolyard boundary, onto and beyond the sidewalk, across the street, down the block—slack witnesses reverse-looming further and further away.
To have watched receding the whole civilization, that credence! Only the bell of the period startled us from it—and you laughed at the top of your lungs, yowled, as I scrambled—we’d never get back in time. You turned rightway around, that sly loping walk of yours, made of your hands a listing scale of comically foregone decision. To have watched it all receding, in those Lion’s Club glasses, without blinking. You were right: we were well out of that now.
by Nicole Matos
Nicole Matos is a Chicago-based writer, professor, and roller derby girl. Her credits include Salon, The Classical, The Rumpus, THE2NDHAND, Vine Leaves, Chicago Literati, berfrois, Oblong, neutrons protons, and others. You can catch her blogging for Medium, publishing tappable stories on Tapestry, and competing as Nicomatose #D0A with the Chicago Outfit Roller Derby, too.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
“Have another?”
“Can’t, I have to go.”
“You always say that.”
“Only when I need to leave.”
I can still hear the corny music on the jukebox, the clinking of the glasses. The barkeep heard our chiming, collected his money, a too generous tip. We left, bade each other platonic adieus, walked separately to our separate families. How I miss my travelling days!
At home, always the same or nearly the same scene: I open the door, panting after my three story climb, my wife at the range frying or boiling something. “About time you got back.”
“I was delayed.”
“I bet,” smelling my breath, it’s cheap vodka, not kissing me. “Did you pick up the bread?”
“I forgot. I can go get some.”
“Don’t bother, it’s late, you may get delayed again, besides bread makes me fat. Do I look fat in this?” She twirls away from the steaming stove.
I say nothing or say something mollifying. My expression does or does not give me away, I can never tell with her, besides she isn’t fat. We eat in silence, our son long gone, the damn TV still on, a carafe of mineral water our only splurge. I pick at my meal, not wanting to mix drink and food, that’s why I’m too thin.
“If you drank less, we’d both eat better.”
I rise, clean off my plate, return, put my arms on her shoulders, nuzzle her ineptly, we don’t kiss. “But we wouldn’t be so happy.”
by Clyde Liffey
Clyde Liffey lives near the water.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
The fish is staring at me from the plate, its blackened skin and brittle tail spread between rice pilaf and sautéed mushrooms. A foot of omega-3 fatty acids, which my mother, who set the plate before me, said helps with depression.
I wasn’t depressed last winter when I hugged the possibility I might be pregnant, wrapping my heart around the secret, envisioning my baby tadpole-size clinging to the side of my uterus, our blood intermingling. Brian’s baby. There was a bridal shop down the street from my apartment; I already knew the dress I wanted. But then I wasn’t pregnant after all and Brian told me he’d met someone else.
At night I drank and wept, working up a Camille-like tragic image. During the day, I sniffled at my desk until co-workers rolled their eyes when I reached for another tissue. Then, in early April, a bunch of us got let go.
When I couldn’t find a job, my mother said she’d moved her sewing stuff out of my old room and I was welcome to it. So, I’m back home with this damn fish, my mother eyeing me across the table, and my father hunched over his food like a wolf with a fresh kill. Who wouldn’t be depressed?
The fish doesn’t want to be here. Once it shimmered in fast moving water. It might have been pregnant with hundreds of luminous eggs. How can I eat it when, like me, all it wanted was to have babies? I try to explain this to my mother, but she can’t get past the sex part.
by Anna Peerbolt
Anna Peerbolt’s flash and short stories have appeared in Drunken Boat, Prick of the Spindle, Apollo’s Lyre, The Legendary, Long Story Short, DOGZPLOT, and elsewhere online.
