SLEEP. SNORT. FUCK.

NEWS

2011-05-11T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hi SSF-ers.

We know we have been terrible. And the really pathetic part is that we haven't even been snorting or fucking. Sleeping, yeah. But mainly writing.

However! SSF is kaput. SSF is rejuvenating until it knows what it really wants. We will start submissions back up at some point. You will all be the first to know. For everyone that shared their honest work with us---we really appreciate it. From the bottom of our dark hearts.

To everyone that has a submission pending--they will be answered.

Love & Squalor:

Sleep.Snort.Fuck.

The Abortion

2010-11-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

by Skyelis Tyler

In the dream, I woke up from unconsciousness in a hospital. My mother told me I had had a baby, like those girls in news stories who don’t know any better.

The baby was black. Though I’ve never seen her, I called her Felicia.

The most likely patron was my butch dyke boss, though hardly any explanation at all.

They took her to someplace on the southern tip of Mexico called Cranberry Paradise and when they returned, they picked me up in a mini-van. They handed me a cupcake with the ashes of my baby in it.

I walked home through highways and cried. Inside the cupcake I found a small mouse, dead. We had a horde of kittens who ate away the mouse and then I knew. Felicia didn’t die in Mexico at all; however it happened, it had gone down in a housing project in Pennsylvania.

My baby: I wanted proof. I never wanted her, but I searched for her everywhere.

That morning I woke up bleeding.

Skyelis Tyler lives in Brooklyn, New York. She would like to have sex to "New York City Cops" by The Strokes.

Composure

2010-10-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

by R.S. Bohn

Somewhere, she’s eating soggy cookies scooped from the bottom of a tea mug. With a spoon. She’s got her knees folded under her, like she’s praying, or meditating. She does both. And her hair is cut short now, falling around her chin and making her look like a little girl.

I am not sitting here, knees aching, a crumpled old man. I do not have a mug of tea, or whisky, or anything that would take me out of my life for an instant of searing heat. My hair is not gone, shaved off by a barber I’d never met before for eight bucks.

But I am praying. This I will admit. I didn’t pray, wasn’t brought up to pray, and my hands feel as if they’ve been asked to fix a carburetor or whittle a bear. Things they have never done before. I can’t remember when I last danced, but I’m sure it was this awkward.

I pray that she will find out and come back to New York. My prayer sidles off from sincere plea to operatic day dream. The hospital doors whisk open, I am bravely walking down the hall with an i.v. attached, and she sees this and runs to me, purse flying off. She grabs me and hugs me, and the tears drip like morphine. But not from me. I am brave. I am only wearing a hospital gown.

My praying hands press into my crotch, and my prayer fully disintegrates: a private hospital room, the requisite “I’m sorry, so sorry,” as she kisses me back onto the bed.

Probably, if I had been brought up in a church, I wouldn’t let prayers morph into masturbatory fantasies. Probably. I am not sure how much of a role Jesus plays in the hormone-driven body of a healthy male, but it’s clear he hasn’t got the wheel. I do, and I’m driving straight off the cliff.

I started my run-up months ago. Started it in the theater lobby, spotting her dialing her cell again and again, getting no one. The movie had ended twenty minutes previous. I was waiting for a manager to get me a free pass for next time, since the movie had been terrible and they wouldn’t give me my money back. I got the pass and said hello to her and she got in my car and I thought about how easy it would be to kill teenage girls these days. Thank God I’d offered her a ride.

She said she was too deep for her friends. No one understood her. I had books by Deepak Chopra on the piano. I had a piano. I had a harp. She drew her fingers over the chords, and I pretended she was an angel. I didn’t tell her the piano and harp and the books belonged to Bebe, my wife. Bebe in Italy, seeing an artisan about a new harp, calling me on the phone that night – I didn’t tell her that her old harp had been touched by Maggie, who’d also touched my cock. I told her about how horrible the movie had been, but that I had a free pass for when she got back.

I think I should pray again. Or meditate. Once, Maggie told me to envision a lotus flower opening in slow motion. I try that now, but all I see is her spreading legs, her fingers opening herself for me to look. Bebe would never even think of doing such a thing. Bebe has estrogen cream and all of her underwear is black or tan.

Straight off the cliff. I won’t be taking my wife with me, even though she announced that she would stick with me through “this thing.” She meant the bladder cancer, not the girl. When there is no cancer or there is no me, she will move on. I try to picture what she is doing right now, but I can’t. I try to picture what she did twenty-nine years ago, but all I see is her red-haired friend, Jennifer, laughing at our dinner table. I think Bebe played piano that night while Jennifer sang, and I drank martinis and grew in love with Jennifer’s voice.

Maybe right now, Bebe is praying too. She’s atheist, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe she’s standing at the picture window and looking out over the Japanese garden and praying that I die as swiftly and painlessly as possible. A humane prayer. For all of us.

I try again to see Maggie with her hair cut short, but it’s gone now. I can’t even see her pretty little breasts. I just see me, bald and white, in a shared room. The other bed holds someone I can’t see; they are new and their curtains have been closed all day. No voices except for the nurses and doctors. I hope that it may be Maggie in that bed, that fate has brought us together again. And that now, I will truly understand her.

When I turn off the light and close my eyes, I hear harp music, somewhere close.

R.S. Bohn had the best sex of her life to GnR’s “My Michelle.” She still thinks Axl’s a douche, but they were a great fucking band.

I've Been Told

2010-10-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

by CJ Hallman

I've been told that I couldn't give a decent blow job to save my life. That my hand jobs are like vice grips, like instruments of torture. I've been told that I could get a guy off just by turning and looking at him the right way—head over left shoulder, chin down, dark hair falling perfectly in my liner-smudged eyes. I've been laughed at and told that I just don't radiate sexuality at all, that I simply couldn't be imagined rolling around in the sack, or even kissing. I've been told that I'm fat, fat, fat. I've been told that I need to wax, and that I need to grow it all out. That I would never get married because I can't cuddle or spoon properly, because I sleep curled up in the fetal position like I'm a lost Gretel-esque child in some Freudian nightmare. I've been told that I need to eat more, put some meat on my bones, indulge. That I don't deserve a boyfriend because I'm immature and a born cheater and because I clearly don't comprehend the complexities of commitment. That I need to be married soon/yesterday/now. That I need to hurry up and pop out some kids because my eggs are running out and because that's what people do and because that's just the way things are done. That I'd make a terrible mother.

I've been told that I look like a woman who loves pleasure and I took that to mean: I look like a glutton, a lardass. I've been told that I look like a total bitch and I took that to mean: I need to wear less makeup, invest in some clear chapstick, curl my waxy lips into phony smiles at regular intervals throughout the day.

I've been told to give up on striving toward “success” and to just marry/date up. To say yes even when I mean no, to cook meat even though I'm a vegetarian, to wear skirts even though I cannot stand the fleshy feel of my thighs rubbing together. I've been told that my hands are magical instruments, and that my mouth is a first-class, tropical destination comparable to San Tropez. That my hips curve like a wine glass, and that my tits are too small. I've been told that I dress too conservatively in cardigans and long pants. That the thong I wear underneath these clothes is such a fucking turn-on. That I only sleep with you/men for the power you/they possess. That I have no power myself, but maybe a little bit of talent and someday that talent might evolve into power and that when/if I acquire this power, I should know that no man will want me—it's called the Oprah Syndrome. I've been told that I need to cover up, that I'm too inhibited, that I'm a total slut. This I've been told.

And there's a man with me now, a man in my bed, another messenger who is here to tell me, tell me, tell me, and I hear all of these deep voices in my head, all of these words, and I grab onto his ears with my fingers (which he'd told me were “just so feminine and cute” as I fiddled with my chopsticks over dinner at this Pan-Asian chain downtown) and I steer him where I want him—right where I want him. I tell him, “To the left, to the left, up, up.” This I tell him. This, I told him. And I barely hear my own voice, muffled in the sheets, but I know that he cannot speak at all in the position that he's in, and there is silence, and my guilt, oh my guilt, it quickly gives way to pleasure.

CJ Hallman still naively believes sex is its own song. She lives in Austin, TX, and her fiction has appeared in Identity Theory, Everyday Weirdness, amphibi.us, Sphere, (Short) Fiction Collective, and The 322 Review, among others.

Writing Prompt: Non-Fiction

2010-10-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

by Laura Roberts

I don’t know what happened between us. I guess you were tired of me and ready to move on, but I just wish you had told me that. I can’t seem to move anymore. I don’t know why I am I writing you a letter, when I know how you’ll respond. Every letter you sent was just obscure lyrics for some song that I wasn’t a part of. And I had to try so hard just to say the right thing. I was so fucking worried about saying the right thing. There were no right things. Words don’t make a relationship. Interests don’t even make a fucking relationship. There are no relationships. Just reaching out for the burners. And when they aren’t too hot, you can hold on. What the fuck is wrong with me. I hate words. Fucking words just written to mean nothing. Nigger. Nigger. NIGGER. You like that. It means something for you to say it because its offensive. It has meaning. Because nothing has meaning. Even NIGGER doesn’t have meaning. You know that right? The meaning is death. The final art. The last heaving breath is your last fucking song, and it sounds the same for everyone. I don’t care for your body. It wasn’t attractive. Frankly. Neither was mine, but at least it was thin. No, your attraction is the mystique you create. Carrying a flask of whiskey, collecting obscure records, your slouched walk that kept out the rest of the world, your accent. You talked about things I didn’t care about, but I listened. I listened so fucking hard, because I loved your voice. And I loved when you said you wanted me. Even though you really didn’t want me. I don’t think I believe that sex hurts you. Some fucking sick ploy for virgins. I don’t think you know pain. People like you are pain. Bring pain. Sometimes I wish you had died, so I wouldn’t have to google you. I’d know you had stopped. Forever. Suspended in January underneath me and huffing and puffing, while I feel nothing. I want to crush you. Grind the heel of my palm into your wheezing head and watch your stomach swell and pop. But really I hope you’re doing fine, you know. The little cunt inside me has to say things like that, because I’m polite and good. I’m so fucking GOOOOOOOOOD that I wish you well. What a cunt.

Laura Roberts lives like a hermit in foothills of the Appalachian mountains. The last thing she purchased were boots that looked like Dr. Martens, but weren't.

I Know I Love Her

2010-10-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

by Kit Andrews

I'm in love with this girl. How do I know that I am in love with her? Well I could list off a bunch of mushy reasons that would make me sound like a Shakespeare plagiarizer or I could tell you the truth.

I know I love her when I'm done pissing and I decide not to flush the toilet when she's in the shower.

I know I lover her when she messes with the paper and I don't roll it up and smack her on the side of the head with it.

I know I love her when we go out to eat and I don't give her a price limit that ultimately leads to me ordering her food for her.

I know I love her when she says something so absurdly stupid it makes me want to call her retarded and I don't.

I know I love her when I look at another women, think about cheating, but don't and the reasons have nothing to do with possible baseball wielding brothers or fathers.

I know I love her when I actually take the time to tap her on the forehead before I cum in her mouth.

Kit Andrews is a living failure at the age of twenty-five who has just been able to admit that he's actually a pretty crappy World of Warcraft player. Not really his favorite song to have sex to, but a recurring trend none the less is Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People.

A Perfect Red Line

2010-10-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

by yt sumner

We lean into the mirror. Our hips pressed against the basin. Our lips pursed open. My lip liner is red, the colour it always is and my cupids bow is crooked.

Fuck.

She flicks a long lash with mascara.

What’s the worst thing you ever said?

I shrug and wipe my lips, leaving them raw, they way they look when they’ve been kissed hard.

I say lots of things I wish I could take back. Lots of things I never meant. In fact I wish I could cut out my tongue for all the things I ever said.

She blinks rapidly and leaves black flecks on her face.

You’re getting morose, I mean in bed.

I don’t know. The worst thing I ever heard was sorry.

She laughs with a snort.

C’mon, give.

Well, to tell the truth, I’ll say anything.

Like?

Like anything he wants me to.

And do you?

Of course I do.

I think about how much I like my lips looking like this. I place the pencil on the sink. I think of all the things I said.

While I begged, laughed, moaned, inhaled, bit, teased, opened, sliced, sucked, bled, tore. While I made the words hurt and rode every single vowel that travelled down, made him growl back, made him tell me more. Such conversation.

But now it seems foggy and all I remember is the last thing I said.

I said, I love you, once.

She looks at me with black freckles and lashes and smirking.

And were you telling the truth?

I shrug and pick up the pencil. I hold it to my lips.

I thought I meant every word. Until he asked me to say it again.

And I lean closer to the mirror and draw a perfect line.

yt sumner writes stories for people that send her postcards at http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/. She's not stopping until she's written 100 of them. She was cleaning the house to Beethoven's 5th the other day and would have much rather had been having sex to it.

Blue Ribbon

2010-10-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

by J. Bradley

Gary and his wife occasionally enjoyed tag teaming other men orally, so he explained on my cellphone from an unlisted number. “My wife's not coming with me. She's not into meeting strangers at their houses.” Gary's wife looked tan, had a lovely pair of tits, but her face and voice were vacant from the background while he asked for my address.

Gary stood in my door way, the black shirt hugging his tapped out pony keg of a stomach.. “Oh yeah, that feels nice. Let me see it”; his dissection of my pants would have received a C- in seventh grade biology. We sat on the couch as he played county fair judge with the prize sow of my scrotum.

“Can we take this into the bedroom?” Gary sounded like he got his come-hither tone from Jared Leto on My So-Called Life. We walked through the Cormac McCarthy novella of my hallway toward the bedroom. “My wife would have said something about your house if she was here”; my mother said to always remain polite during interviews and tryouts.

I wanted the two minutes Gary spent sucking my cock back. I wanted to ask Gary's wife if Gary also tapped her on the back of the head while his cock was in her mouth, how long did it take to exorcise the ghost of his frenulum from her tonsils, how much kindling and matches it would take to burn the awkward celluloid of this moment.

J. Bradley is the author of The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You Is A Robot (Safety Third Enterprises, 2010) and the Interview Editor at PANK Magazine. He lives at iheartfailure.net. One of his favorite songs to have sex to is "Search and Destroy", The Stooges

Sorta Free Gas

2010-09-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

by Kit Andrews

The car had been parked outside for about a half an hour already. I saw the couple who owned it approach and talk to people as they pumped their gas. I knew the type; they were passing through, out of money, and probably selling crap out their car.

We get about two of these a month, people relying on the kindness of strangers. I was only interested because the girl was decent looking and I hadn’t had any in a while. I was really hoping they would come into the store instead of making me go out there.

Eventually, towards the end of the night when the store was getting empty the girl walked into the store and sheepishly approached the counter. She asked if I was interested in candles. Candles? Yeah, they were selling candles out of the trunk of their car; in a failing attempt to fund their trip away from their judging families.

I offered twenty bucks in gas for a blow job in the bathroom. She feigned shock. She didn’t blush though and we both knew why. She went back to her boyfriend and they argued a little bit. She came back in and told me it would cost at least fifty.

We negotiated it to thirty-five and they could have the food out of the deli that I would be throwing away at the end of the night. She went out and talked to the boyfriend and came back in. She wanted some of the food now, while it was hot. I gave her two chimichangas, a chicken breast, and half a dozen corn dogs. I even threw in a couple fountain drinks.

Later that night when my relief showed up and took over the register I went out to let her know I was ready. Neither of them would look me in the eye. We went back into the store and the girl followed me into the bathroom while her boyfriend hovered around the beer aisle.

I went to sit on the toilet but decided to stand. She got down on her knees and sucked me off. She was hurried and lacked all technique. I eventually came in her mouth. She spit into the sink and used some water to wash out her mouth. I don’t remember saying much but I did mock her for murdering my unborn children.

We walked back out where the boyfriend was waiting. I gave them a larger paper bag that reeked of fried chicken and had grease seeping through the bottom; we double bagged it into a plastic bag. I had my coworker put thirty-five dollars on pump four and I signed the form to have it put on my tab.

Kit Andrews is a living failure at the age of twenty five who's biggest accomplishment is that he's a mediocre World of Warcraft player. Not really his favorite song to have to sex, but a recurring trend none the less is Marylin Manson's The Beautiful People.

New World Love Poem

2010-09-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

by Peter Schwartz

i want your super perfect pink cheeks

your daily fruitful

your nightly fruitful

your sweet and undying fruitful

i want so much of you

that you must grow to give it to me

yellow flowers would be

precious but even more

i want your germs and bacteria

your sludge and misanthropy

(of which there is perhaps

a single atom)

i want to feed you an entire

thanksgiving dinner by teaspoon

to pet your rice paper armor

as gently as sleep itself

i want to give you thousands

and thousands of dollars then turn

and walk away from you only to

show you what i mean

i want to be your migrant worker

your sweaty lovething, return to your

fruitfuls even after a whole day

in the fields because i want to

i want to make a peppermint gun

and pull the trigger every ten minutes

till i win your breath, to carry it

in my own lungs too

i want to scissor with you and

laugh and laugh because that’s

not what men do to women and

then call you the silly goose

seriously though, there is a part

on my body where my upper thigh

meets my ass that feels so spongy

and loose and dead i despise it

like a stranger’s, for you, i’d be

just that, nothing else, and fight

my way back to regrow myself

right back into the man i am now

for you, really.

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Collagist, The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. His latest collection Old Men, Girls, and Monsters was released as part of the Achilles Chapbook Series. He's an interviewer for the PRATE Interview Series, a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and the art editor for DOGZPLOT. He'd love to make love to 'Mean Girls Give Pleasure' by Daniel Johnston.

Bad Night At The Bar

2010-09-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

by James Mannix

Even though I was in a tequila coma.
I could still.
Notice your face.
That condescending look I always receive.
When I'm that fucked.
Wish I didn't.
Run into you.
While in my coma last night.
My shirt might as well have said.
Disappointment.
But I told you what clothing store.
I shopped at.
The Disappointment Store.
Located on the corner of.
Piss Drunk and Fuck My Life.
So that was your warning.
From the start.
Yet that face still stabbed me in the stomach.
Even while in my coma.
Tequila coma.

Its raining and.
My disappointment poncho.
May be dirty and reeking of booze.
But yours.
It's clear.
Transparent.

I am jealous.
Of your sobriety.

Not jealous.
Of your see-through poncho.

James Mannix lives in New York. He thinks any Sade song is great to have sex to. Either that, or Pantera's 'Cowboys From Hell.'

Alias

2010-09-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

by Lavinia Ludlow

I can tell you all about rock bottom. I’ve choked on the gravel of
rock bottom. Hell, cop it up to fucking rock bottom. And I liked it. I
liked it so much that I let it fuck my brains out for years, and here
I am: its gang-bang on a leash and all its glory. Or maybe faking a
fetish for rock bottom is a shitload easier than taking ownership and
clawing away from it.

I thought rock bottom struck about a little over a year ago, when I
had a substance-addicted ex-con with a court-recognized anger
management problem slapping me around in an insufferable relationship,
when I was fleeing to another state, scraping the bottom of a CD made
up of twenty-five years’ worth of birthday cards because no one would
hire me, not even Starbucks—yeah, I was that desperate for work. But I
know now how that was just a type of rock bottom, because rock bottoms
change with the scenery, they come and go, then they’ll hunt you down,
and never let up, just like the perfect mind-fucking manipulative
boyfriend.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer from the West Coast. Her novel
alt.punk is forthcoming from Casperian Books in 2011. One of her favorite words is pharmocopeia.

Love Is Not A Home

2010-09-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

by CJ Hallman

The worst part about being a girl is getting fucked, Jen thinks. She is sitting on a bench that advertises some real estate agency (surely intended to persuade the income-earning individuals passing in their cars, and not those, like her, condemned to hourly wages and public transportation), and she stares across the street into the strip mall that stands behind a massive sign full of Spanish words. A homeless man with scraggly hair and work boots stomps up to her and asks her for change, but she says, no. She is not being an asshole or anything; she needs the change for the bus because Derick wouldn't drive her home, and not because he was being an asshole or anything, but because his car wouldn't start again and where the hell was he even going to get the money to fix it? Look, I'm not being an asshole, she tells the homeless man, it's just circumstance.

The homeless man shrugs and says, ok, and sits down on the bench beside her.

(But maybe Derick was being an asshole. Maybe he had always been an asshole and she was just too dumb to see it. At that bar downtown the night they met, he told her that his band had opened once for Black Flag. Three weeks later in his pot-paraphernalia-strewn apartment on the east side, Derick confessed that this was a lie, and as it turned out, he wasn't even in a band anymore. But whatever. By this point, they already had a thing going, and Jen thought Derick spoke earnestly and had a very gentle way of kissing and maybe a gentle soul too, and all this despite his scruffy appearance and penchant for illegal substances and the pleasure he seemed to derive from riding out long stretches of unemployment, and so she didn't say anything about his lies then, though she wishes now that she would have.)

Jen opens her purse and reaches inside and does not look down, but feels the foil wrapper, many wrappers, none of which she can see, but all of which she knows are blue, Trojan. It will be a nice surprise, she thinks, next time Derick has Theothergirl in his room and is all hard and ready to fuck her, if he opens his nightstand drawer and finds it devoid of condoms. Yep, what a spectacular surprise! And didn't he know, Jen thought, what a terrible idea it was to start a “relationship” with someone who lives not just in your apartment complex, but your very building? It has its conveniences, yes, but. Nothing works out, not here, not in this town. And hadn't he ever watched a sitcom?

(Theothergirl, the girl who lived below Derick was named Myra or Mia or something equally pretentious sounding, and she worked part-time at Target and attended some private Catholic university and majored in art or design or something else pretentious. Jen was introduced once to Theothergirl at a party at an apartment complex a few blocks away, and she remembered noting that Theothergirl was both devoid of personality and of body fat on her arms and legs, because it was all collected in her stomach region (but Jen noticed too that she managed to hide it pretty cleverly with a loose fitting ethnic-y top), and that she had pretty big boobs, considering her short frame. Jen, by comparison, was just kind of medium-sized all over, and was concerned that her boobs were already beginning to sag, and had to drop out of community college after a semester because there was no more money left to pay for anything, and so she got a job working as a waitress at this place downtown that served immensely over-sized and overpriced portions of pasta to large families. [Take drink orders. Check up. Take orders. Bring plates. Check up. Bring bill. Fuck my life. Etc.] Jen's life had become routine, and this routine spread like a cancer, and even her dating life caught the routine. Every few weeks, it seemed, Jen met some other new guy and began a “relationship.” [Flirt. Text message. Watch a movie. Eat fast food. Kiss. Eat more fast food. Drive around. Fuck. Eat more fast food. Call it off. Etc.] But then she met Derick while out one night with Kim, a fellow waitress and community college dropout, at a hipster bar downtown, and Jen thought maybe Derick would be the end of the routine and the beginning of something new, spontaneous, stable. He had this smile that stabbed her, killed her, resurrected her, and while the sex was not overly exciting, it happened with undertones of emotion, which was a first for Jen, and he just seemed like a good guy, a guy she could maybe learn to love.)

Jen removes her hand from her purse, from the condoms, and the homeless man turns to her and says that if she has something as important as a funeral to get to, maybe she shouldn't be relying on the bus because the bus is never on fucking time. Jen tells the homeless man, no, again, though she realizes after she says it that it doesn't really make any sense, but what, she thinks, can you do? Jen considers the man's odd remark and attributes it to the clothes she is wearing—all black, the same clothes she wore the night before to a rock show up north, these clothes, now goth in broad daylight, ridiculous. She thinks, well, at least he didn't tell me to cheer up, to smile. She thinks, at least this man has a goddamn sense of humor about things. She looks over at him. She notes that his clothes, jeans and an Alice in Chains t-shirt, are actually fairly clean, cleaner than Derick's usually were, and he isn't that old, thirty-ish, and he isn't terribly disgusting, and his face has decent bone structure, a classic Greek look about it. This homeless man, Jen thinks, maybe he is alright. Yes, she thought, I believe he is, why not?

(Because last night, on a twin mattress on his bedroom floor, Derick held Jen and told her that he loved her. She believed him. She believed him despite the stale stench of Lone Star on his breath. She believed in the power of the fingers that stroked her hair, stained fingers that reeked of cigarettes. She believed Derick weeks before when he said that someday he'd maybe like to possibly start a family or whatever together at some point in the distant future. She believed him when he said that he thought Mila or Mitra, Theothergirl, was a little on the bimbo side, and that her nose was too big for her face and that he thought Jen was much more intelligent anyway. And when Derick said that he was going to enroll in some business courses alongside his film ones at the community college so that someday he would be able to provide, and that maybe when that someday arrived, Jen could quit her job and focus on whatever it was that she wanted to achieve in life, well, yeah, she believed him. She believed him like a religion, she believed him all night long, and then the sun came up, up, up, and she read his fucking emails, and why was he even sending emails about longing to a girl who lived one floor below him?)

Jen reaches again into her purse, fingers the foil. She glances over at the homeless man again and smiles slightly. Beyond him, in the distant, she can see the number twenty bus approaching. It is, indeed, late. She tells the man that there is no funeral, and asks him if he has any place to be. She thinks, when you use a condom, everyone is clean; a convenient feature of the modern age. And ten minutes later, with sticks and dirt and circumstance pressing into her bare back, with change unspent and rattling in her pockets, now down around her ankles, Jen smiles into this stranger's shoulder and thinks, but oh well, maybe this is the best part about being a girl.

CJ Hallman spends the majority of her free time hatin' on illogical words. Irregardless, she lives in Austin, TX, and her fiction has appeared in Identity Theory, Everyday Weirdness, amphibi.us, Sphere, (Short) Fiction Collective, and The 322 Review, among others.

Los Angeles

2010-09-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

by Aaron DiMunno

On a recent return to Los Angeles, I was walking the hills off of Mullholland drive. I stood at the peak of some raised area or another. Not sure what you would call it. A cliff? A mountain? One of the jagged arms reaching from whatever the hills that make up Runyon Canyon are called. The shining kingdom of urban suburbia sprawled like an oil spill from the smog choked Pacific in the distance. I looked around at the captivating geography, the rugged canyons so alien to my east coast glacier scraped mountain eyes, the lush vegetation, the palm trees fake as hell. And it struck me how sad it all seemed, crushed under the weight of human development. Beauty battered and oppressed but still there if you looked hard enough. Like the most delicate and beautiful specimen of a woman, sporting a black eye and trying to carry a sofa down the street on her back. That is Los Angeles. If you help her carry the couch up to her apartment, she'll fuck you. She may even let you stay the night. But she'll dodge your kisses and in the morning there will be nothing but a note on the night stand asking you to lock the door behind you. You will never see her again. And every now and then, when you're real low, you will to masturbate to her memory. That is Los Angeles.

Aaron DiMunno enjoys camping every once in a while but he thinks each time that he should do it more often. He had a cat named Moochie LaRue but she died. He is forthcoming in Jersey Devil Press.

Traveler's Vows

2010-09-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

by Kit Scanlan

I want to travel with you.

I want you to gently bite my nipple as the sweat from the tropical sun drips down between my breasts and slides onto the thin hotel sheets. I want the cries from our love to echo through the thin walls and startle the monkeys. I want to laugh with you inside me.

I want to fall asleep with my head on your shoulder as the crowded bus takes us through little desert towns, amidst the crowing of chickens and loud, unintelligible chatter. We will get disapproving stares from wrinkled old women and smile softly to ourselves in a silent apology for a breach of local culture. We won’t feel that bad.

Our schedule stays the same: arrive at a new place, the next stop, another hotel. Naked, we would caress and cuddle, staring out the window at the ocean, the sky, the stars, the uncrowded beach; our clothes reeking from one too many days without laundry, the hotel room nothing but a bed and a dresser and maybe a mirror. I want to have you in a tent by ourselves, separated from the universe by a thin layer of high-tech plastic. An echo from a wild predator and a cool breeze make me shiver, and I snuggle closer, deeper into you.

I long to feel your touch, light, between my shoulder-blades as we stare at some relic in a museum. Through it I would feel your need for me, ever-present, ever-burning, even though we would spend every hour together, sleeping and snoring and eating and shitting and arguing through the stress of travel until we fall into bed to work out our restless hormones. Even then I would pull your hair just a little harder than usual, but I would write it off as the heat of passion. You, being you, would pretend to believe me.

I want to fall asleep still angry with you about the missed train or an improper tip, and I want to wake up to you gazing down at me in an unfamiliar light, in an unfamiliar bed.

That bed would still be ours, though, since you would be there.

Kit Scanlan works day jobs to make money, but has a professional career in hopeless romanticism. One of her least favorite words is "babe" if it is used to refer to her by someone she doesn't know, and one of her favorites if used to refer to her by her lover.

Revenge

2010-09-13T18:42:00.000-07:00

by Isabella Ling

I wear my heart on my sleeve and you stabbed it again and again. So I will cut your chest open, I will cut your heart out. I will hold it in my hand, I will throw it on the floor. I will watch it wither and die, but it will be too easy for you. I will let it rest there, I will watch it beat and pump. I will pick it up, I will look for the stains life has left on you. I will not miss the areas where you have hurt people. Your heart is ugly, an angry mess and tangle of red and tendons. I will see the stains, not of what life has left on you, the stains of your own hands.

You are a troubled soul, looking for trouble where there isn't any. You hurt me, so now I will make you hurt. I will put it on the floor again, I will put a knife through it. I will take my hand off the handle. I will watch the blood flow, the blood will gurgle over the open wound. The blood will come towards where I am standing. I will cry, the salty tears will mix with the blood. I will keep some of the blood in a vial. The smell of iron will be pungent, I will smell blood everywhere I go for the next week.

I will take the knife out. I will wear my heels, I will dig the heels into your heart. I will step and stomp on your heart. I will take my heels off and grind it against the bottom of my feet. It will feel softer and softer as it turns to mush, until it is hardly recognizable from the blood on the floor. I will try to scoop up whatever I can, till the floor is clean and shiny again. I will drink it, I will keep you inside of me. I will stitch up your hole. You will have no heart now. You will be empty now, just like how you have always been.

Isabella Ling thinks feelings will fade over time, though she won't say she is a fan of time. It just doesn't work fast enough sometimes. She is trying to put need and want in her list of least favourite words.

"Check-In"

2010-09-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

by Adam Kinsey

Hi everybody. My Name is R. I'm an addict. It's good to be here. I just need to check-in.

Six ay em this morning, I'm up. I wish I could say I was on my hands and knees by my bed, thanking God for the new day, or calling one of you guys to tell you what I was committing to or something, but in the interest of rigorous honesty I got to say all I wanted was to get the fucking cat to leave me alone so I could go back to sleep. Humble Pie kept jumping up on the bed with all of her sixteen pounds of weight, then walking back and forth across stomach and purring. I knew she was not gonna let me sleep until I got up and fed her. So I finally dragged myself out, but the box was totally empty. I tried just getting back in bed, but she wasn't going to let me do it. She's heavy, like a big possum, you know? So finally I'm totally cursing her, but I get up, pull on my jeans, throw on a t-shirt, and my shoes without socks.

I live just a block down from that Safeway on Market Street, that fucking mongo one, and it's open twenty-four hours a day. Did you know it's the hugest one on the West Coast? Just an extraordinary factoid for you guys there. Wouldn't want you to quit learning just because you're a bunch of fucking addicts. Anyway, I head out, stagger down there half-asleep. The weather is like, spitting, it's so foggy, and I'm cursing fucking Humble. I'm sure I looked very sober (laughs).

Anyway, I get there, I think the security guard is totally going to give me the hairy eyeball, but he doesn't even look up, doesn't stop talking on his cell to his girlfriend or whatever. And I look around. It's six-fifteen now, right? I look around and everybody who doesn't work in there, they all look like they're half-dressed and heading for the cat food aisle too. And I feel great suddenly, because, I think, I have found my people.

So I get the cat food and just think I'm gonna go home, gag the cat and go back to sleep, but for some reason I start walking the aisles, kind of going into the Safeway Trance. Do you guys know what this? Some of you are nodding your heads and some aren't, and I don't care if Tim S. is grinning his ass off over there like I'm some kind of tweaker, I'm going to explain what the Safeway Trance is. It's no big, it's just how the colors are all bright on the packages and the music is always the same. There's just something very comforting about walking those aisles, particularly as a recovering junkie, because in my life I haven't been able to be sure of much so I take my consistency where I can get it.

Anyway, I'm in the trance. I'm walking along with a box of cat food and kind of thinking about going down to the methadone clinic early and how much it would surprise the nurse, but then I decided that as long as I was up I'd fix myself breakfast. I used to love making big breakfasts. I wasn't going to do just Captain Crunch and milk either, but eggs and sausage. And hash browns, none of these homo-fries! Sorry. Present company excepted. What I'm saying is, I hadn't fixed a breakfast with sausage like that in I don't know how long, and I wasn't even sure how to make hash browns. But there I was in this Safeway trance of colored labels and Muzak versions of Nirvana songs and I feel so good that I decide I'm not only gonna feed Humble Pie and make breakfast for myself, but I'll make it for my no-good housemates too. Evelyn and Peter usually don't even get up until two, and Theodore is a night clerk at a convenience store and he always says that the fluorescent lights suck all the chi out of his bone marrow, so he needs ten hours sleep. But I knew if I made a big, big breakfast--with potatoes and eggs, sausage, coffee, I'd juice some oranges and have fresh squeezed orange juice too--If I made a great big breakfast, they'd all sure as fuck get up. It's, like, since we made the no drug-rule at the house and then Peter and Evelyn broke it, none of us really hang out like we used to, and I figured this could kind of be like old times. But in a healthy way, you know?

So, by this point I've gone up to the front and put my little box of Friskies into a cart and I'm filling it with all this stuff: flat of eggs, five-pound bag of potatoes, pound of coffee, coffee filters and one of those plastic cones for making it, a bouquet of purple iris's and a roll of paper towels for napkins. We're going to do this fucker up right, right? So I've got all these things, and I go over to the meat section to get sausage.

Now, have you been in the meat section lately? Have you experienced trying to buy sausages? There's the old Farmer John kind in links and patties like I had when I was a kid, but then Farmer John's got something called turkey sausages, and they're in links and patties too. Then there's Italian sausages--mild, medium, and hot--and some kind made of chickens and apples. There's sausages made out of soy and beef, and there's detached sausages and uncut. And everything--even the chicken sausages!--they come in both turkey and regular!

Anyway, so I'm trying to figure this all out, and my breakfast exuberance level is starting to significantly wane. I look at my watch, see it's only six-forty-five and I start thinking about just ditching the basket in the kosher food section, taking the cat food and going back to bed. But just as I'm thinking that, I see this guy and this woman, and their both either strung-out, or they just got off a real little boat on a real rough ocean, you know what I mean? So anyway, the guy looks like he's about as confused over in the lamb section as I've been in the sausages. He's shaking his head and the woman's laughing, and when he leans his head back a little, his long hair falls away from his face and I see that this guy is Monroe!

Monroe was the son of my pastor back in Iowa City, and while I was always nice enough to him, not everybody was, because Monroe--unlike the usual stories about the wild children of clergy--was a geekazoid and a half. I remember back in elementary school, Monroe used to carry all his fucking books in a briefcase, and one time he sat down to lunch, opened that briefcase and took out a plate, some silverware and a cloth napkin. The entire fucking elementary school--kay through six--is sitting at those foldable tables and this little guy with glasses is having a fucking dinner party. Monroe was still carrying the same briefcase in high school, and sat around reading Kierkegaard or something like that.

Anyway, here he is with long greasy died black hair, wearing a leather jacket and jeans that I swear look like they've been soaked in blood, and he's got a red-haired babe-o-rama hanging on his arm. They both look like they'd really like a nap, and I don't think it was just because it was early in the ay em, you know what I mean? Now, I've been Clean-and-Sober for a year-and-a-half except for the methadone, and I don't really count that no matter what anybody says. The methadone doesn't stop me from being clean. That and God are what keeps me clean. But after fifteen years on The Street I sure as hell can still spot a stone junkie when I see one, even if he was the pastor's geek-o-rama son, and he's sixteen-hundred miles from where I saw him last.

So anyway, I'm watching these two while they're le-eaning over the rib-eye and the chuck as if they're thinking about climbing in and laying down for a little while, and I think "What the fuck?" Make amends. Or at least be friendly, right? I leave my cart where it is--'cause no matter how good of friends you are, when you're walking up to someone that loaded you want both hands free, as you have no idea what's gonna happen--anyway, I leave the cart and I walk up to these two jokers who are now French kissing and nodding out at the same time.

Standing behind Monroe, I've got a moment to think that the dude has gotten big over the years, I mean, he used to be a beanpole, but somehow he's gotten…wide. Standing behind his back it's like I'm standing next to a…a…SUV or something. I consider walking away, then think What the fuck again and tap him on the shoulder. I say "Hey Monroe, dude, how long you lived in Frisco, man?"

The red haired chick looks at me first, kind of peeks around his bicep, but she doesn't say anything. Monroe doesn't even turn around. There's just this really low fucking voice--but I'm sure it's Monroe's under all the menace, you know?--this low voice and it says: "Who. The fuck. Are you?"

Well, fuck him, I'm thinking but I figure what the hell, I haven't seen anybody from I.C. in ten years and I been feeling like now that I'm clean maybe it's time to start being in touch with my roots like the rest of the straight world does, right? Not run away from the past but face it, right? So I say "It's me, Jerry Tyler, man, from Iowa. How the fuck you doing, Monroe? Long time no-fucking-see, dude."

Monroe turns around and looks at me. Down at me is more like it, 'cause this guys has about a foot on me, I swear, and I'm no Napoleon, you know what I mean? He's obviously gone through hell--his face is all brown and wrinkly, his teeth are fucked-up and he's got a big scab by his eye like he's been doing crank and picking, picking, picking.

But you know what's funny? He has the exact same glasses as he did in High school. I'd be willing to put money on it that they're not just the same style but the same fucking ones. Black plastic frames, square not round, and I have this sudden flash of peeking into the band room at lunch time once and seeing little Monroe Quaily sitting in there all by himself, practicing scales on a clarinet with his square plastic glasses on. I remember knocking on the window and when he didn't quit playing or look up I kept on knocking and yelling at him for about another ten minutes, until the lunch bell rang. Same damn glasses, can you believe it?

Anyway, Monroe. He doesn't say anything. The red head's staring at me like from behind a tree. Finally, he smiles at me with, like, both teeth, then he reaches into the meat display and picks up this big package of lean ground beef. I gotta say, what happens next is weird. He just takes that package of meat and holds it right in front of my face. The price was five-oh-four at a dollar-ninety a pound, I remember. Then Monroe, with his other hand, he--really slow and, like, methodical--he pushes his fingers through the plastic the meat's wrapped in, and starts squishing it around, really close in front of my face. He does that for about ten seconds. I can see how red the meat is, and I hear the song that's being played is a Muzak version of "Penny Lane." Then he tosses the mangled package back into the cooler, looks at me and says real calm, "I don't know you."

But then they just keep standing and staring at me, so I finally book and go back to my cart. I wheel on up to the front, pay for my stuff with my ATM card and trudge on home. When I set the sacks down to unlock my door, I look at my watch and see it's seven-thirty. I go up stairs, feed Humble, and put the classic rock station on real quiet in the kitchen. Then I make breakfast for Evelyn and Peter and Theodore and me. When it's ready, I go and wake 'em all up by tapping on their doors. They bitch at first but when they realize it's free food and coffee's ready, they got up pretty fast. We all ate with the radio on, and talked. The fog had burned off early, and it was, like, a pretty sunny day and it was pouring in through the window and we were all wired on coffee and happy. When we finished, Evelyn and Peter did the dishes and the nurse at the clinic was blown away because we weren't just skating in as the doors were locking. Theodore even thought to bring her half the irises.

So it was an okay day, but weird. But I'm thinking about this: making reparations and having history are good things and all, especially for people who aren't addicts, but maybe sometimes they're overrated, and we should just, like, be happy with what's happening right now if something worth being happy about has snuck up on you.

Adam Kinsey was born in Santa Clara County, California, before the phrase “Silicon Valley” was coined, or before even people used answering machines. He received an M.F.A from Eastern Washington University, and has published in Yomimono, Happy, and Hubcap. He lives with his wife and daughter in Petaluma, California. You can check out his ongoing experiments in fiction at http://10minutesandcounting.blogspot.com, and/or stalk him on twitter @10ScndsNcntng. He likes the word "logy" an awful lot. He is also known for for overusing "antechamber."

Rats, Roaches, and Death Ants

2010-09-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

by Thom Young

There are three things in my place. Rats, Roaches, and Death Ants. They come out at night. They take shits in my shower. They laugh when I'm not home. They live in old pizza boxes. They lick cum off my sheets. They get in my girl's hair. The rats try and eat my Honeycomb. The rats are big and not small. The roaches are bigger than the rats. They live in the cracks of walls and lives. They shit on my toothbrush. They wait until I take a shit, then eat the turds. The ants sting like motherfuckers. They love sugar. They hide in old pairs of underwear. They love sweat. The roaches, rats, and ants like fucking up my world. It brings them happiness. I can't reason with them because they hate it. I locked the rats in the attic. The roaches hit the caps lock when I write. I hate them all. I fucked this bitch last night. The rats ate her pussy. I went to piss. The roaches took over. They licked her clit. The ants gave her a finger bang. They are all disgusting like me.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has been in 3am magazine, Word Riot, Thieves Jargon, The Legendary, and many other sundry places.
His favorite word in the English language is penchant, for example "He had a real penchant for lady-boys."

Saturday Morning

2010-09-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

by Dorla Moorehouse

I struggle into consciousness with the feeling of words forming on my clit.

W-A-K-E

“It's too early,” I mumble, and try to roll over, but Lily has my hips pinned down. And anyway, I'm not sure I really want to move.

W-A-K-E

Her tongue is firmer this time; my knees twitch from the added pressure.

“Why should I? It's Saturday; I want to sleep late.”

S-O

W-E

Lily slows down as she writes, emphasizing "fuck" in huge, wet strokes.

"You were well on your way to fucking me before I was even conscious."

D-O-N-T

"I'm not sassing you. I'm stating the obvious. Maybe you need to be more observant."

B-E

G-O-O-D

"I'll be whatever I want."

D-O-N-T

My body starts to liquefy as her strokes become more intense, but I'm not about to let her lick me into submission.

"I'm awake - but I'm not going to fuck you if you're going to be so demanding."

U-P

U-P

C-A-N

S-A-S-S

P-U-SH

I struggle up, but as I try to swing my legs off the bed, I find my range of motion is limited - Lily already tied my legs up while I was sleeping. With no way to move and no other options, I settle back down.

W-I-L-L

She even draws out the punctuation mark, jamming her tongue against my clit with the final dot.

"No," I gasp, unable to contain my pleasure, but still not ready to give in.

Lily sits up, crawls over me, her cunt positioned right over my face as she grabs the ropes over the headboard and ties my wrists to the bed. Then she settles herself a little lower, until her cunt is pressed directly against my mouth. She doesn't need to give any orders; I know what to do. Arching my neck for a better angle, I stroke my tongue up and down her lips, then plunge it between those soft folds to get to her clit. I don't spell words out the way she does, but instead make abstract shapes: deep swirls, jagged lines, polka dots. I draw on her, turn her cunt into a work of art visible only to me.

Ever stoic, Lily tries to be silent for as long as possible. She knows I love to hear moans and screams, that vocals turn me on. When she wants to control me, she doesn't say a word, commands with her body and the words she spells with her tongue, and only makes a sound when she comes. I feel her thighs start to quiver and I know she's close; I've learned how to read her body. When her hips quake, she she lets loose a man and almost collapses. But she maintains her composure and slides back down to my clit.

G-O-O-D

"You know I am."

I look down my nose to see her lift her head, raise her eyebrows.

S-T-A-Y

"Or else?"

O-R

E-L-S-E

The threat makes me even hornier, and I know she's right. I'm tied up, and if I protest, she'll leave me bound in bed for as long as an hour to teach me a lesson. She'll sit right

Y-O-U

B-E

G-I-R-L

G-O-O-D

Y-O-U

next to me, reading a book, acting like I'm not even there. Or sometimes, if I'm really naughty, she'll untie me on the spot, let me go and act as though this game never even started. That's worse than the torment of waiting. But I've been horny since I opened my eyes; I need release; this is not the time to tempt fate.

"I'll be good," I whisper. "I promise."

That's all Lily needs to hear. She quits the spelling and plunges full force into my cunt, letting her tongue run wild. Then I feel two fingers ease up inside me, press against my G-spot. The buildup overwhelms my body and I explode, thrashing my limbs as best I can despite the ropes. When the orgasm subsides, Lily breaks away, undoes my bonds, goes downstairs to make coffee. I can go back to sleep now, and join her when I'm ready.

Dorla Moorehouse is a writer and dancer living in Austin, Texas. Her favorite word is "corroborate," and thinks it sounds more beautiful than "cellar door." Her least-favorite word is "underwear," largely because she hates wearing the stuff. Dorla's writing appears around the internet, most recently at The Erotic Woman and Tinglemedia.com. You can read more about her work at http://dorlamoorehouse.blogspot.com

Rachel And Leah: The Hate That Links Us Together

2010-09-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

by A.S.

You used to be married to my man and no punishment goes deep enough for that. There are slide pictures of you in his collection and sometimes I watch them; your smiling, confident young face staring at me from some other time, the happiness in your eyes evident. He held the camera and you owned his love. I destroy the pictures of you giving birth to his child, the intimacy between the two of you being too much to bear.

I lose weight and I dress in my new leather boots, the restrained feeling they provide is liberating. I happen to meet you at the Library and it´s a moment of glee and spite. I´m beautiful and you´re old. The power could have shifted, but it doesn't. Your position is cemented in the reality of you being the first of everything; wife, mother, grown-up relationship - how can I ever fight that?

You were young together with him and your advantages cannot be underestimated. You know all of his friends, they´re your friends too. You bought a house together, all of you, in the seventies. I´ve heard the stories. People are only too willing to share them, waiting, watching for my reaction. I hurt visibly, you know, and I imagine my pain is exhilarating, sensational even.

That house, those memories; a spontaneous evening bonfire, someone playing the guitar, cheap red wine and his arm around your shoulders. No question about where you went from there - was that the night his seed found your egg and linked you together forever? The passion you shared manifesting itself in the creation of life. Sometimes I think I hate you more than I love him.

The condescending looks that say I´m too young are always present. The pity and the frowning faces that say his behaviour is despicable and embarrassing, taking a girl half his age to his bed, into the life of his child. And I never get to fit in, I never feel like a proper adult. It´s always like I´m borrowing the character of someone else, someone more worthy and knowledgeable. Someone real.

I have to meet you, obviously. There are events, gatherings, celebrations around that cursed child that cannot be ignored. And I play my part, someone´s part, any part that I think is appropriate. Over the years I become quite adept at it. I think you must hate me too, on some level, but you behave admirably and I have to applaud, there´s certainly nothing wrong with your confidence.

In the end I´m diminished. I can´t find it in my heart to forgive you and it occurs to me that I´m the one being punished. I know this, but it doesn´t change anything. I still wish you´d get cancer.

I´m A.S. I write fiction based on stuff I´ve experienced or imagined. Often I can´t remember what´s true and what´s fantasy, and sometimes I accidentally steal my friends´ memories. I prefer my characters somewhat broken. The idea of referring to myself in third person creeps me out. I live with Hello Kitty and Super Mario. I miss Manny Calavera.
Words I like: ´distinguished´, ´sprawled´ - mmm… use a British accent and taste them…
Words I don´t like: ´juxtaposition´ and ´womb´ - don´t try those.

I'll Feel This For Days

2010-09-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

by Catherine Leary

It’s gray. The sky, the water, the sullen drizzle. The air, cold and biting. We’re sitting on a rail overlooking the sea. The moody water. The roar of the wind. Water has beaded up on the glass, tiny droplets like sweat. They run down the windshield.

You’re holding my hands. Not because you love me, but because they are numb with cold. We are both wrapped up in thick coats. The wind ripples at their soaked skins, pours inside all the vulnerable places. Despite my love of winter, I’m always cold. My fingertips have taken permanent leave. It’s like they’re angry at me.

“I could breathe on them,” you say.

This makes me smile. So you do it. You look in my eyes, a slight smile. The hot velvet of your breath wraps around my fingers. It is ephemeral. As soon as you inhale, the heat leaches away. You exhale again. I admire your knuckles, how big and raw they are. Like knots in a tree.

“Why are we out here?” My teeth are chattering.

“You were tired of being inside. It’s been a long winter.”

“I thought that was you.”

“You wanted to see the ocean,” you remind me.

It’s true. Warm memories of sitting in front of the space heater, fingers and toes offered to its steady flow of heat. Reminiscing about the water. It’s close enough to smell sometimes, sitting on my front steps. The salt gets blown through by weather fronts. Just last week we stood in the driveway, spellbound in the dark, sniffing the air like hounds. Yet by car it’s almost fifty miles. I wish for the space heater, or rather my hands wish for it. My toes, too. They’re getting chilly despite my Siberian boots.

“I know,” I say.

“So here you are.”

“So here we are.”

You try breathing on my fingers again. A strong gust blows my hood into the back of my head. I’m blocking the wind. My back is to the restless ocean. The smell of salt is strong, pungent in my nose. Like it’s been fermenting. Growing old since summer. Dying. You rub my fingers between your palms, trying for friction. I want you inside me. You’re busy. You’re focused. The warmth of my hands is all that stands between my life and your death. I look at your face, trying to catch your eyes. I tell you.

“All right,” you say.

“But I want your hand.”

We walk back to the car. The gravel is soft beneath our feet. We climb into the back seat and slam the doors. It’s good to be out of the wind. It’s cold inside the car, too. You offer to wiggle between the seats, reach with one long arm, jam the key into the ignition. Turn on the heater. I shake my head.

“No, it’s okay.”

We kiss for awhile. You unzip my parka. Your fingers navigate through layers of clothes. My nipples poke through my bra. You play with them. I do a little exploring of my own. You gasp a little at my cold hands. Long moments glide by, punctuated by breathing. A fine scrim of fog encircles the windows. A bank of it envelops the rear windshield.

“Are you ready?”

I nod. I take off my pants, and immediately my skin prickles with gooseflesh. My teeth renew their chattering. It’s okay, though, because your fingers are hooking into the only part of me that’s warm. Hot. Melting into the cigarette-scarred upholstery. You use the heel of your hand on my clit. I suck in a deep breath. It’s cold, but I can take it.

You work me. I smell like the water, but sweeter. Like the sun glimmering on a green wave. Like summer. This is the smell of life. You lean over me, concentrating on my cunt. I shudder a little. I love this feeling, this focus of yours, narrowed into such a tight beam. Chafing at such a sensitive place. My thighs are pushed apart. Your breath warms my face. You start to twist, thick knotted knuckles pushing in. You’re the only one who can do this to me without lube. I gush and gush. I’m soaking the seat. I’m making way for you. It hurts. It’s magnificent.

“You’re amazing,” you whisper. “So strong.”

I’m entering the wordless place. You brace a hand on the door and start to push. Slow and steady. I’m concentrating. Willing myself to let you pass. A grunt, and then bared-teeth cry. I start to pant. All the windows are glazed with moisture, all the views to the outside are blurred. You are breathing with me. I’m straining toward you. In my mind everything is red. There are entrails. Time lies somewhere, broken and bleeding. The birds are falling from the sky. A victorious scream, the cry of a warrior. Your hand. Your wrist. Your fist. You are inside me.

You are filling me.

I come like a natural disaster. Like the wind is ripping me apart. Like you have ripped my heart out through my cunt. I jerk like a fish. I gasp.

You kiss my cheek.

Long after you’ve withdrawn, I’m still laying there. The condensation has fattened, grown into snail-trails. The steely sky winks through them.

Later we’re both back in the front seats. You’re buckling your seat belt. The car is running, the heat cranked up to full blast.

“Thank you,” I say.

I’m tired of the sea. Gray sky, gray water. I’ll feel this for days.

Catherine Leary lives in New England with her cats, aging parents, and a whole mess of books. Much to her mother's chagrin, she is exceedingly fond of the word cunt. She is an editor and co-founder of Freaky Fountain Press.

Addiction: Fiction

2010-09-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

by Lavinia Ludlow

Dear Scarlet

It’s me walking in on you shooting up in the diner’s cesspool of a
shitter, and you trying to conceal the evidence while you’re telling
me it’s straight up your first time. It’s the way I’m ready to blow
chunks because I’m forced to understand what I’ve put Mom and Dad
through all these years. It’s my twenty-three-year-old sister now old
enough to glare out at the world with the “fuck you, I’m righteous and
deserving of this shit. You owe me World so I’m gorging on
self-indulgence and destruction. Why? Fuck you, that’s why.” And I’m
twenty-seven with “I’m not mad; just unbelievably disappointed and the
respect I have left for you is questionable” radiating off my face the
way the artificial light reflects off your spider vein-ridden factory
girl legs.

What really gets me is the way you say, “I’m sorry.” The way you
follow it with, “you’re such a hypocrite.” Don’t turn this shit around
on me. I was different from you, and I had things under complete
control so fuck you too.

Tonight, I’ll go home tonight and shower off the industrial concealer
sheathing the track scars on my arms and the superfluous tattoos on my
shoulders. I’ll chase four Twinkies and a fistful of narcotics with
four Guinness, and as the buzz settles in, I’ll fuck my living-in-sin
boyfriend skin-to-skin till his dick deflates back into the nest of
his crotch and I’m slung over the edge of our mattress like a withered
water balloon leaking out the last bits of his cum. I’ll have his
abortion and never once regret or think back about it.

Because afflictions like those have nothing on the waltz between
needles, veins, and blood. They’ve conventional, they’re common.

Or maybe I’ve just been clean for too long.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer from the West Coast. Her novel
alt.punk is forthcoming from Casperian Books in 2011. Pharmacopoeia is one of her favorite words.

Strange Ways We Love To Suffer

2010-09-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

by Isabella Ling

The ink is black and dark, just like how I imagined it to be, just like how I imagined I would feel right now. The hum of the machine resonates in my ear as the needle pierced the skin of skin on my shoulder, colouring my skin permanently. I try to imagine how the needle would spIn and twist but I don't really care. The needle drags itself across my now tender skin, as tender as my heart but not as painful. I revel in the little pain it brought, I had thought it would hurt more.

I think of him as my skin is being pulled taut. Of yesterday, how I had finally seen him again after so long, how we had left each other only this morning, but it seems so far away now. I laugh and smile as a video of me was being taken, I don't let them see how I really feel.

"I think people who get tattoos are sadistic," I said.

"You will be thinking about getting a new one in one or two months, trust me."

"I know, that's why I said people are sadistic, to put ourselves through this pain."

'Well, people are sadistic," The needle continues dotting my skin with ink.

All I can concentrate on is the dull throb between my legs. He had spun me around and taken me hard and rough from behind. I remembered how he had filled me up. I like to think he had been that way because he really wanted and needed me. I am greedy, I want it to be both. I wished he had fucked me till I bled, so he can see the pain he is causing me. He was so gentle when he held me before that, but he has never been with my heart.

Come with me tonight cause I am drunk, I need you near me, I will cuddle you my little baby, the texts had read. I will regret this come tomorrow, I thought. Still I went, along with the wretched feelings that will surface the following day. He said he can never make anyone happy. As the needle continues its journey across my skin, I want to scream and take the needle and put my name on his heart forever.

I lie on my side as the needle moves across the side of my breasts and down my ribs. The pain this time is more intense, more real, more like how it should be. The pain distracts me, at least for a while. I curse and swear through the pain but the pain doesn't hurt.

There were so many things I wanted to say, have to say, they formed in my mind and died at the tip of my tongue. I kept silent while in the cab with him to his place. If only time could stop with his arms around me and lips on my hair. He is so good at being silent. I searched for hidden meanings in the words he did say, wishing he would say the words I wished to hear.

Later, I bit his lips when we kissed. How I loathe that he only needs me when he is drunk. But I loathe the idea of him not needing or wanting me at all even more. Need, he had said. Such a powerful word, I cradle it and repeat it like a broken record in my head.

He has revealed so much yet nothing. I feel like I know him but I know nothing about him. Was there a quiet desperation that I sensed in him yesterday? I want to devour him and keep him inside. I should have been drunk, so I could have said the things he had whispered to me in bed. The needle jolts me back to reality, I held my breath as I wait for the next sting. I know he will not call tonight. I need more distractions, maybe more tattoos. Strange ways we love to suffer.

Isabella Ling wrote half of this while listening to The National. "Strange ways we love to suffer" is a line off their cover of "Sleep All Summer". She thinks Hello Kitty is disgusting. Her current favourite word is need, but it would be better if it comes with want.

three lines

2010-09-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

by Gretchen Cello

I am addicted.

I wish… I should have…

I thought. You knew.

He has a girlfriend. They’re in love. A few.

I drank an eighth of gin. Popped two pills.

Non prescription.

Addictions. Construct me.

Confident.

We fucked on her side of the bed.

Cocaine swore to me.

And I ran out of money.

Like I always do.

And I started drinking.

Too much.

Like I always do.

One night.

I. Exposed. Improper. Overuse.

Like I wasn’t worth.

Telling.

His addiction is named Emily.

His addiction speaks four languages.

His addiction has all of his time.

Chopped. Three lines.

On a broken coffee table.

I compose.

You.

Loyalty.

Addicts are like that.

Gretchen Cello believes that she’s an alien hailing from the Lyra

constellation. She’s presently homeless, jobless, and sleeping on a couch

in Queens. She has a webpage that she dislikes referring to as blog, it’s

updated every day: www.FollowMeToNYC.com. You heard… every single day.

Gretchen Cello has eyes that change colours.

THIS ISN’T ME; IT’S ALL FUNCTIONAL

2010-08-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

By Barry Graham

"You can spend the night beside her, and you know that she's half crazy, but that's why you wanna be there" – Leonard Cohen

All months are secretly October. She has that kind of power. She’s all food and drink. Eggplant parmesan and vegetarian nachos and iced tea and diet coke. Gallons of it. The shit can’t fall down her throat fast enough. It’s the pills she pops that causes that kind of appetite. Unquenchable she says while she sweats maple syrup and yanks on my bottom lip when she kisses me and I’m not sure if I like it until I feel my dick get hard against her leg and then I’m certain I do like it, but she feels it too and stops kissing me and pushes my face away like it’s my fault she’s there and the bed bugs are biting through her socks but she can’t leave because her car’s three towns away and I’m holding out on giving her cab fare until she tells me why her skin smells so much like pancakes even though it tastes like aspirin when I lick it. It’s the seizures she says, the goddam seizures and the pills, thirteen pills. She told me all their names but I forgot them. That wasn’t part of her charm. Her charm was consuming things that never belonged to her and reminding you you’re not good enough to be as close to her as you are and all of this is my fault. She promised me it will always be October and I believed her. This story is not about bed bugs.

I want to keep kissing you all night, but I’m so sleepy. Lay here and don’t do anything to encourage me she says then she pulled her shirt up and flatbacked and her tits were small even when I tried squeezing them together and she smoked three joints and bitched between every hit because only niggers and hippies still roll joints, she says even though she kept rolling them but didn’t consider herself either and her intention was to make me feel like shit because I’m the one who bought the Zig Zags even though I don’t smoke unless I’m peer pressured then I smoke until I’m really high and just pretend to hit it the rest of the time instead of simply saying no. This isn’t me she says, it’s all functional and I pinch her left nipple until she winces, then, I know baby. I know. Even though I have no fucking idea what she just said and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to or if she’s crazy or if its all part of her magic but that isn’t likely because her magic never includes making me feel good.

The bill for lunch was fifty-six dollars. Just order it, I’ll pay she said and her Visa was blue and pink and Hello Kitty but she couldn’t find it when the delivery guy showed up and she couldn’t turn the light on or take her panties off or get out of bed to shower. It’s the pills, she says, the goddam pills and I miss her now that she’s gone and she wasn’t gone then but I still missed her. I quit heroin cold turkey, she said, cold fucking turkey. I can do anything. I’m a fucking superhero. And she was and she ate two bites of her sandwich and a handful of french fries and drank three extra large diet cokes one after the other and made me throw away the rest in a small trash can with no bag sitting on the shitty blue carpet beside the TV that wouldn’t change for three days through Cartman and Colbert and Zach Galifianakis and we laughed and kissed and I sucked on her tongue when I caught up with it and clenched it between my teeth until she smacked my face then I did it again and she put my hand between her legs on the outside of her jeans and I wouldn’t rub it because she wouldn’t take them off and she pulled her shirt back down and her neck smelled so good, not just pancakes but buttery pancakes left saturated overnight in generic syrup and she’s not here and I miss her and she wiggled her hips. Lay down bitch, she says. Did you just call me a bitch I say and she ignores me and presses her palms against my shoulders and I look out the window through the mirror behind the TV and the leaves are falling and it’s still October and I get out of bed and chop carrots and zucchini and potatoes and broccoli and add them to the stew already stewing in the crock pot.

Come back over here and cuddle with me, she says and I do because the lights are off and she’s a superhero and her car’s still three towns away and I still haven’t given her cab fare. What were you thinking calling me a bitch, I say. Haven’t you ever wanted to do that, just grab someone and roll them over and call them a bitch, she says. I thought about it and wasn’t sure if I agreed or disagreed but her goddam skin makes me hungry and now I know what feeds her appetite. Better pancakes than heroin. At least for her sake and I felt her fill a needle with junk and stick it through her syrupy skin and shoot it into my brain and I saw the spot of blood trickle from my skull onto the pillowcase and felt her soft red hair come to rest against my chest with her ear against my heart. I’m a fucking superhero she said again because my thoughts were too loud and she told me about shooting up orange soda in a bathroom stall at an elementary school in North Jersey a half an hour before she chaperoned her niece’s field trip to the state house and I told her about my father beating a man to death with a tire iron at an intersection during a snowstorm in ’82. I used to write speeches she said and she pulled up her right sleeve and showed me 118 tattooed on her forearm which stood for the number of democratic seats in the state legislature and I pulled up my sleeve and showed her my Corinthian cross tattoo and praying hands and I told her Jesus saved my soul because it’s true and because she’s Jewish and I like saying that to Jewish women. Won’t that number change I said, the 118, doesn’t it change all the time and she hated me for saying it but she kissed me and pushed my face away harder than any of the times before and said yes, but they can never take that fucking minute from me, that one fucking minute and she grabbed my iced tea from the bedside table and drank it in one swallow and the leaves were still falling outside and through the window I watched through the mirror and I flipped her over and called her a bitch and she laughed at me and told me that’s not how it works but she wouldn’t tell me how it does work.

I worked for the goddam governor she said. Don’t you remember, that’s how we met? We never met until this morning but I wasn’t sure why she pretended not to know that or who she thought I was or wanted me to be. A friend of mine told me about her and she emailed me out of the blue and asked if she could come see me and I told her yes and we walked right passed each other on the sidewalk and stopped after five steps and turned around and looked at each other and she hugged me like she knew me forever and maybe she did and she kissed me and followed me to the bar even though she wouldn’t drink. It’s the pills, she says, the goddam pills then it made sense why she drove from Trenton to Camden to meet someone she might have just met. I’m having a fucking breakdown. Ice my head down, please baby, please ice my head down and I iced her head down and she told me she knew it was me as soon as we passed each other and that’s why she stopped and she knew that I knew it was her and that’s why I stopped and that’s when she told me it will be October for as long as I wanted it to be and I said I wanted it to be forever and she took a bite of her nachos and licked my top lip and I tasted the salt from her chips and I paid the bill with cash and called a yellow cab that never came so I called Al’s cab and they came fifteen minutes late and she held my hand and asked me for my jacket which I gave her. I kept the ice on her head the whole way home and after it melted I froze it again and put it back on but it came open while we slept and the water soaked our pillows and shirts and blankets and even then she wouldn’t take her clothes off but I didn’t mind because by then I didn’t want her to.

Quit your fucking snoring she said. It’s my bed I said. You’re bed? You want me to hit you in your mouth? Not really I said, can you make it my nose? I have to use my mouth for work. I’m sorry baby, I wouldn’t really hit you she said, but really, quit the fucking snoring already. I couldn’t stop and she flipped and flopped and grabbed my neck and put me in a headlock and forced my lips against her skin and I tasted heroin and she told me to kiss her all over and I did and she rubbed her hips against my dick then rolled as far over on the opposite side of the bed as she could without falling off. But really, quit the fucking snoring already. She told me her mother made her father sleep alone in the guest bedroom because he never stopped snoring and I told her my father came home from the bar after getting jumped by four bikers and woke my mother up to load his shotgun and when she ignored him and tried to sleep and wouldn’t stop snoring he beat her on the side of the head with the butt of the gun until her left ear stopped working. My mother filed for divorce when I was twelve she said. My father never fucking got it. My father’s in prison and my mother’s dead I said. My father never got it either. She stopped bothering me about the snoring and the bed bugs penetrated her socks and started up her ankles and calves and I kissed her on the top of her hand and she smiled and the leaves were still falling and the stew was still cooking in the croc pot.

I don’t want to leave but I have to baby, I’m starting a new job in the morning. I’m working for myself she said. I scooped two bowls of stew and handed one to her and I ran my plastic spoon down the center of her chest and around her nipples and stirred in her sweat before I took a bite and I kissed her when my mouth was full and she turned her head so I let the stew fall from my mouth down the side of her cheek and I licked it off and she put her head back down on the pillow and took off her shirt and unzipped her pants and dumped her stew on her stomach and the juice pooled in her belly button and I slurped it up and she pushed my face further down and she’s a superhero so she pushes me away. Oh, my head baby, please get more ice for my head she said and a drink please get me a drink. I gave her more iced tea and rubbed her head down with ice until it melted and I leaned in close and kept my lips pressed against her skin. I need a fucking shower. Why’d you dump this shit all over me she said. I handed her a small white towel and she asked how long we’ve known each other. Since October I said it will always be October. It’s the pills, she says, the goddam pills and the lights are off and I found her Hello Kitty Visa on the floor beside her purse and she kisses me and pushes me away and her head and her hands start to shake and I curl beside her and pet her hair which is slowly getting sweatier and I turned the TV off and there was only darkness.

My parents aren’t really divorced she said. My mother’s not really dead I said and we both laughed and her bangs are wet and I brushed them out of her eyes before I looked at her. My father doesn’t even snore she said. I know I said I’ve met him, remember and she closed her eyes and nodded her head and the bed bugs had her wrists and arms bitten and she scratched the bites until they bled. Come back over here and cuddle with me, she says and I tell her I’m still here. Why can’t I feel you she says and I kiss her on her bottom lip and bite and pull it but she can’t feel and none of us can feel and I’m not sure if we were ever meant to and neither does she and she says so before I do which is one of her charms. What can I do for you baby, what can I do I say. I could really use twenty dollars for a cab she says and I hand her a twenty. I feel like a prostitute she says. Prostitutes take their panties off I wanted to say but didn’t. I kissed her on the cheek and called a yellow cab that never came so I called Al’s cab and they came fifteen minutes late and she held my hand and I kissed it. All months are secretly October she whispered into my mouth and the leaves outside were falling as I watched her walk away.

Barry Graham teaches writing at rutgers university and he wrote the national virginity pledge. His favorite word is sandwich. Look for him online at www.barrygfunk.blogspot.com

Teacher

2010-08-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

by Isabelle Gray

I want you to sit in the first row, right where I can see you. Don’t be coy. You’re too smart for that. We both know it. Wear something low cut. I want to see as much of you as possible. Bare yourself for me in plain sight. Give me that. Give me everything. When I look your way, pull your shirt just a bit lower, let me remember the smell of the warm, slightly sweaty skin between your breasts that holds the scent of your perfume so well. I’m going to perform for you. I’m going to look so good doing it. I’m going to deliver the kind of lecture that will keep your classmates buzzing in their seats even after class has ended. That’s the kind of teacher I am. I command attention. Your classmates won’t want me to stop. You won’t want me to stop. I’m going to step out from behind my podium and I’m going to talk with my hands and I’m going to make charming jokes and I will make eye contact with the frat boy in the back row who is staring at me with bright eyes and the overachiever in the eighth row who is frantically typing my every word into her laptop while fidgeting in her seat because I won’t look at her the way I look at you.

Every so often, I’m going to look at you the way I look at you. You’re going to want to look away but you won’t. You will not look away. I won’t stop talking. I will pace toward you and then I will stop. I will stand so close our knees will touch and I’ll look out toward the rest of the class and I will make an important point. As I move away, I’m going to brush my fingers across your knuckles. My touch will be light but you will feel me.

When you come to my office I smell you. You always linger. I never allow anyone into my office for hours after you leave. I don’t want them to disturb your absence. We are very good at tormenting each other. We sit across from one another. We say one thing and mean another and pretend we aren’t having two conversations at once. Students stop in to ask questions and I provide them with answers. They are always oblivious to the electricity wrapping itself around and between us as we hide in plain sight because we’re both young and as such, we are sheltered from the cliché we could be under different circumstances.

Twice a week, we meet in a motel. You always arrive first. The keys are the old-fashioned kind with a large hard plastic diamond keychain bearing the room number. As I drive to you twice a week, I run my thumb over the firm imprint of the room number until it feels smooth. We stay in Room 33. It is our room. I pay to rent the room year round. The cost is outrageous but the room is a worthy investment. I don’t want anyone to disturb our absence. I often find you watching television, sitting against the headboard, naked, your knees pulled to your chest. When you look up at me, you spread your knees apart. You say, “Teach me something.”

I step out of my shoes and crawl onto the bed. I press the palms of my hands against your inner thighs and spread you wide open. I kiss the inside of your knee and draw my lips toward your cunt. I take my time to teach you patience. I touch you everywhere but where you want my touch most. I kiss your shoulders and your collarbones, which are sharp against my lips. I drag my tongue along the undersides of your breasts. As I lie on top of you, my body sinking into yours, your hands find mine. Our fingers lace together and I can feel your pulse throbbing into the palm of my hand. I am rough, to teach you humility. I take your hair in my hand and pull your head back, watch the muscles of your neck stretch and strain. I watch your shoulders drop as you resist then surrender. I slide my other hand beneath your body, push my fingers against your spine. I sink my teeth into your neck and pull at the skin and bite until I taste blood. I make a necklace of red and purple bruises and admire the beauty of your broken skin. When you moan, I teach you kindness. I hold your wrists over your head, and slide two fingers inside you, then three and four and feel how you hold me inside you, how you pulse, how you are hot and wet and whole.

When you are trembling, and your body is covered in a thin sheen of sweat. When your voice is frightening and low and I can see anger in your eyes. That’s when I teach you about desperation. I tell you to beg. I teach you how I want you to beg, shamelessly, extravagantly. I tell you what terrible names you should call yourself and as you say them, I explain what they mean. I explain you are mine. I still don’t give you what you want. I teach you about what you are able to endure. I tell you to get on your hands and knees. I push you down so your leaning on your elbows. I press a firm hand to the back of your neck to hold you down. I drag my fingers along the backs of your trembling thighs. I teach you about the ugliness of the sounds you can make. I raise my hand high in the air then bring it down on your ass. I teach you about punishment. I make you pay for all those times when you are not with me, for all the things we can never be. I don’t stop until my arm tires and your skin is so hot it burns me. I mark you to teach you possession. You never protest. I never ask about how you explain the memories of me I leave on your body. You never ask about how I explain the memories of you left on my body. When I finally fuck you, I take you from behind. I feel your body open to me. I close my eyes and try to make this last as long as I can. Just before I come, I tell you to get on your back. You lock your ankles against the small of my back and hold me deep inside you and finally I am gentle. We kiss and your mouth is sweet and warm and it breaks my heart. Sometimes, there are tears in your eyes and streaming down your face and taste them. When we come, I teach you about love. I hold you.

The weekends are the hardest—getting through two days without seeing you in the front row of my class or sitting on my office couch with one leg crossed over the other or smelling you or hearing you laugh in the distance—is nearly impossible. I go for long runs while listening to loud music that makes my ears ring. I push myself until my chest feels like it’s going to break open because my heart is pounding so hard. I stop and stare into the sun until the world explodes into a shower of white light and then I start running again. I try to sweat you out of my skin. You are a drug. When I am not with you, I have no desire to speak to anyone at all. I do not want to disturb your absence.

Isabelle Gray's favorite word in the English language is not a word but a name and she will not share it with you. Her second favorite word is fuck in both it's positive and negative connotations.

Starting Over

2010-08-28T11:03:00.000-07:00

by Robert Vaughan

What the hell is the matter with this town? Nobody ever knows their way. They’re

all clueless. Better yet, why can’t I leave? Because I have the money, and the

Mustang. It’s mine, not his. And I have the freedom since the caterer fired me last

Friday. So, is he the reason I stay?

I’m not willing to say it’s over. I see them together on the golf course, or at

Bewley’s Bar & Grill. She glares at me like I’m pathetic, like I’m a piece of shit.

Fuck her. What she doesn’t know is he still sneaks over here when he’s wasted.

Tells me he’s addicted to me, can’t quit.

Aw, screw this. Maybe I’ll leave today. Head south. Start over.

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry is published or forthcoming in over 50 literary journals. He was interviewed about Flash Fiction by WUWM’s Lake Effect. His work is included in 6S MIND GAMES anthology. He is a fiction editor at jmww magazine and his favorite word is peace. His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.

raw, unfiltered 100% totally pure punchline

2010-08-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

by Peter Schwartz

laugh with me and I become your silkworm.

laugh at me and I become your poison porpoise.

either way, I’d really like it if you laughed.

Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Collagist, The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. His latest collection Old Men, Girls, and Monsters was released as part of the Achilles Chapbook Series. He is an interviewer for the PRATE Interview Series, a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, and the art editor for DOGZPLOT. His favorite word is "YES"; his least favorite is "NO".

ADDICTION: NON FICTION

2010-08-25T10:07:00.001-07:00

by Siobhan Glass

   “Come back and get yr water bottle and lets play”. Text received at 10:19 am the morning after a night of shenanigans. Lets play. For some reason the child like deliverance of this sexual invite only makes me fantasize harder about the person who sent it. I think about the excellent music collection he has, and the dancing that could be done, and the laughing, and the sex. The incredibly playful and possibly violent sex all over his apartment because the roommates are at work. I am addicted to these thoughts. Once they begin, I can’t stop them.

    At a party one time I grabbed a pair of scissors and jabbed them to his neck and told him I wanted to play with knives. My friend and I were into knife play at the time. Or at least the idea of it. He grabbed the scissors from me and gently glided the blade down my face, sending a thrill through my soul. I thought about this the night before too, at the party. The party where we locked eyes on the staircase. The party where he pushed me against the wall on the stairs and kissed me over and over. The party that his girlfriend was at. The party I left my favorite water bottle at. I left it on the roof after letting some girl drink some water. She was very drunk and very thankful for the water.

    It's kind of funny to me that I even had a bottle of water on me. “Water is for FAGGOTS”, I had screamed at a drunk bitch in the past, as I swayed side to side with a giant bottle of Jim Beam clutched in my hands. I used to pass out in my winter coat and boots because I was too drunk and proud to take them off. I only would drink water as an afterthought, to heal the pain of the night before. But I’d still prefer to ease the pain with another beer, or a cocktail, or a few cups of strong coffee. But that was then. Now, I carry a water bottle, and I rarely get raging drunk. I miss it. That morning I thought to myself, “I miss my old life.” Then I fantasized more about him. I thought about 2 years ago when we made out at another party, but how it was ok then because there was no girlfriend. I had sought him out at work. It was his first week. I liked his eyes. They were kind of squinty. I asked him to keep a look out for a book about gypsy’s for me. Then I told him to come to the party in Williamsburg later, off the Graham L stop. At Liz’s friends house. I was so excited. I bought a personal bottle of clear Bacardi rum and kept it in my back pocket, thinking it looked cool. I pulled it out to swig out of it in the kitchen at this party. I dropped it and it smashed into a billion tiny shards of glass. The place was covered in glass and rum. I cleaned it up then marched over to him. Mike. We started dancing, which turned to making out all over the party. We made out all over the party until everyone else was gone.

    I went to his house one night after a heavy pre-gaming session with my best friend. My lust took me from Greenpoint to Gowanus. I got lost when I got off the subway. He came to meet me. It was cold. I think it was fall. We went to his room and drank a huge bottle of Svedka, played records, and made out. We got naked and rolled around on his air mattress on the floor. We didn’t have sex. We never ended up having sex. It was almost like a game of anticipation. The desire was so heavy, but it never got to the climax. I like to think after years of build up that it will be a tsunami that I’m incapable of understanding until it happens. The imagination can only go so far. Back to reality. Not.   I thought about him pushing me into the wall for a few hours as I rolled around in bed, trying to drink enough water to ease my blurred vision. I think about going to pick up my water bottle.

Siobhan Glass lives in New York. Her favorite word is Gowanus.

On The Rocks

2010-08-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

by Joseph A. W. Quintela

When Marty spoke the words froze instantly, transformed into tiny white spheres that rained like pebbles onto the hardwood floor with a pleasant atonal flourish.

It wasn’t cold. It was June, in fact. The mercury skyrocketing. Blood coursing at a boil through any given vein. Everywhere, reckless bouts of summer love blossomed. But not here. There was none of that here. Just two once-lovers and a stretch of thick, remorseless butcher’s block table wedged between.

The restaurant was otherwise empty.

Nothing to say here. As the night dragged on, he spoke with the utmost eloquence. Move along. Telling her the tale of the time he’d walked through the hills of Scotland and thought only of her. There’s nothing to say here.

Her face was a mirror. He just wouldn’t shut up.

Lara reached to the floor, taking a crystalline word between her thumb and index finger and holding it up to her eye like a jeweler. But for a moment. Then, she dropped it unceremoniously into her lowball of smoke scented 12 year-oldHighland single-malt. She took a long, slow sip, savoring the flavor of cold stones and fire water. The Scots had done it this way for centuries. A quiet little miracle.

She would fuck him tonight. But it would be the last time.

Joseph A. W. Quintela knows two things: 1.) The hard part is life. 2.) The easiest part is living. He is fascinated by the fact that his favorite word and his least are separated by nothing but semantics. (http://www.josephquintela.com/in-writing)

Always Read The Label

2010-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

by Vaughan Simons

You get methodical. Get yourself a methodology. Packet open. Always read the label. Strip pulled from packet. Read the label again, just to double check. Try and remember. How did you used to do this? You know? Before? The label will say, the label will tell you, the label will keep you coldly informed. So read.

Oh, a moment. A fleeting remembrance. It’s coming back. Will there be any side effects? Not that you recall, because this one was at least better than the other one. Suddenly you want to call a fellow sufferer, a fellow swallower, out of the blue, so that you can shoot the breeze about symptoms or sweats, surges or sickness, just to put off the dreadful deed for one unmedicated minute more.

Read the label, because those objective phrases of medicinal terminology will reassure you. Odd little whites, isolated against corruption and infection by a peeling metallic skin. Push against the plastic to release the foil and then, damn, a cut to the fingertip. How can such a harmless shiny material sting so deeply, drawing blood? Pull yourself together. It’s nothing more than a dot, a spot, a scratch. Shake your hand and clench your fist. Clench and unclench, bent fingers digging into palm. Not now, please. Don’t interrupt this process. Don’t disturb this ritualistic tea ceremony of toxins.

Tip of the tongue. Here it is, at last, sat on the tip of the tongue. A brief gulp of almost indecision, a gulp downwards, a soothing gulp of cold water. Promise it will be more tranquil, if not entirely tranquilised? Promise it will numb, even if it can never completely deaden? Promise it will just make everything better?

Not everything, no. You know that’s unrealistic. Only some things. Even one thing. One thing will do. One thing will suffice for now. Could you and your odd little whites come to some kind of agreement, located midway between remarkable panacea and simple crutch?

You turn the packet over in your hand as your bloodstream pulses a long lost welcome. Read the label one more time, then sit and wait for the promise contained within its emotionless words to take effect.

Vaughan Simons lives in London with a prosthetic limb, which is fortunate as it means he doesn’t have to hop everywhere. He exercises and exorcises his unfortunate imagination at An Unreliable Witness (http://unreliablewitness.com), and he used to edit “writing about writing” site Writers’ Bloc (http://writers-bloc.net). He hates the word “chafe” with a passion, but can’t stop writing it or saying it so that he can screw up his face as he does.

plan a to plan b

2010-08-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

by James Mannix

to start
all these words are
stolen but what
isn't stolen at
this point in the circus?
if you aren't a thief
you are a
shmuck. that doesn't
go to say that i
am not a shmuck.
the point. sunday.
loitering in my mind is
a bug that should not
be here. not today.
the fact
that i am noting it in
poem makes me feel
as art fag as they come.
that doesn't go to say i am not
an artist
or a fag.
losing pace.
she is not worth a spot
in digital type.
so why the spot so big and cancerous
in my rotting melon?
the sex isn't good.
comparable to fucking
a dead cancerous
rotting melon.
i cum in her 2 times sober.
1 time drunk.
i tell her this after.
shes says:
are you trying to have a kid?
i say:
listen you stupid little cunt
they make skittles
you can eat
to evaporate this problem.
it cost me $40 at Rite Aid.
how many have i really
evaporated?
and how many
of those skittles
were eaten in vain?

James Mannix is a graduated art student. He is qualified to wash dishes. He loves whiskey. He loves whiskey so much that he will probably have to stop drinking it very soon. He is very new to writing and reading for that matter. He has had sex with more girls in his life than books he has read from start to finish. This doesn't go to say he has huge fuck numbers, more like he has low book numbers. He does love to fuck too, if he didn't already mention this. Is this also a dating site? Favorite words: Insinuate, Twat, Azucar.

A Little Bitch

2010-08-21T12:19:00.001-07:00

by Ryder Collins

These are the things Homegirl remembers from that night; these are not the only things that happened and some of them may not have even happened cos Homegirl’s been so drunk she’s hallucinated from the drink like Toulouse-motherfucking-Lautrec at least twice before that night, so it’s possible some of it’s all made up.

It’s possible but I know it’s not made up.

It was supposed to be a special night, so you know Homegirl shoulda known shit wasn’t gonna go down right or that the shit was really gonna go down. I mean, Homegirl’s cried consecutively on all her birthdays, her 1st through her 26th, except her 24th.

She got laid that night; she doesn’t usually get laid on her bday.

The anticipation, the build-up might have led to all this. Or the fact that Richboy is one sick fuck. But, Homegirl’s still kinda in denial on that one. At least until she sees the damage done.

She went to his apartment to pick him up. There was a chick there, in his kitchen, with a big glass of wine and pinot noired lips. Homegirl immediately bristled and immediately tried to hide her reaction; both Richboy and this new chick saw it, tho.

The chick was really thin with straight hips and big big titties; Homegirl was jealous. Homegirl’s tits were more than nice but she was curvy like a real woman and not anorexic or boylike, and Homegirl’d been picking up vibes from Richboy lately about her form. Plus, just who the hell was this chick and what was she doing in Richboy’s place?

Homegirl, Richboy said, meet Roomy.

They shook hands.

She’s my new roommate, Richboy said.

Homegirl wanted to say, Did your trust fund dry up?

Homegirl wanted to say, Where’s the bitch sleeping? But, she said nothing. She was always and always like that around the men she really liked. Anyone else she’d tell to fuck off or wouldn’t give the time of day to; she could ignore a motherfucker so hard it hurt like you got kicked in the nuts. But, if she really really liked someone she’d be all passive and sincere.

It could be a complete turn-off.

I had to give up my office, Richboy said.

These things are the things Homegirl really remembers cos she only had a swig of Jameson’s from the bottle before she went to pick Richboy up. She knew better but she’d gotten nervous picking out the right dress. Everything’d looked so gaudy and tight.

Richboy handed her a tallboy of Hamm’s. I’m trying to get the hipsters to drink this instead of Pabst, he said.

Homegirl should have taken that crap as a sign and left then. Instead, she popped the can open and chugged to show her skills. Roomy took a petite sip of pinot; Richboy opened himself another Hamm’s. It was already his fourth tallboy, but Homegirl didn’t know that.

How do you know Richboy? Homegirl asked Roomy.

Craig’s list.

Really?

Yeah, she said. There was an ad for a roommate who drinks and reads. That’s all it said and I was intrigued.

Really? Homegirl looked at Richboy.

Yeah. Richboy rubbed his hairy chest. He was wearing his shirt unbuttoned low like he wanted to be a 70s pornstar and/or Nick Cave.

This convo Homegirl remembers, this and dinner where she ate awkwardly around Richboy and he insinuated something about her curves she thinks and she ended up paying cos it was in celebration of his story getting published, a story in which a character not unlike her has a small part where she masturbates with a blue umbrella under a park bench and all Homegirl could think when she read it was oooh spiny or oooh expandable; he hadn’t described the umbrella so she imagined both an old-fashioned pointy one and a boxy collapsible one, whichever it was way too public and possibly too painful for her masturbatings.

Homegirl has always and forever wished there was a female equivalent to the term “whacking off.” She’s used whacked off in texts to Punkboy, cos she can tell him anything, but it always and always makes her feel kind of butch.

She likes to be the woman, even with other women.

But, like I said, these are the things she remembers.

& she remembers a lame writing workshop party where there was talk of tazing old ladies and there was talk of zombie literature. She and Richboy got the hell out of there quick.

But not before he stopped her in the art deco looking almost The Shining apartment hallway and said, I’m a lone wolf.

She imagined twins on trikes knocking into his shins again and again. Maybe she wanted to be one of them or maybe this memory is flavored by what’s to come.

They went to a bar and they talked and Richboy said he should call his new roommate cos she didn’t know anyone in Miltown and Homegirl said fine but really she didn’t want him to so when he didn’t she was happy that she had him all to herself among the drunks at the bar.

They went back to his place and Roomy was still up, still sipping wine.

Even tho she knew better, Homegirl said, Give me a glass of wine.

That’s when things went a little blurry.

Homegirl remembers Richboy opening a jug of cheap wine and she and Richboy drinking it and getting Roomy to drink it, too, even tho she’s a wine snob, supposedly. She remembers Roomy saying, I’m going to bed. She remembers hanging out with Richboy on his balcony. She remembers looking down and thinking about jumping or not jumping, but not thinking about either option very deeply and not caring either way. She remembers Richboy leading her into his bedroom or maybe she led him in. She remembers making out with Richboy and then she has no panties on and only her merry widow.

She remembers Richboy stopping and saying, The media has conditioned me.

She remembers stopping and almost sitting up and saying, The media has conditioned you what?

She remembers him saying something about how she’s too big for him. Too fleshy or something. She vaguely remembers hitting him and he has his hands all over her curvy thighs and they are scuffling but in a kind of not good way.

It could go bad.

It could go good.

Then he’s kissing her and saying something about joking or at least that’s what she thinks he said for her to let him tie her up after that.

She’s tied up and she lets him do whatever to her.

She’s tied up and he finally puts his big cock in her and they fuck and she cums and she thinks something about him and how she wants to protect him from him and how she wants to protect him and how can she protect him and how can she protect him when she’s got these rope restraints and how can she protect him.

He brings out a nurturing aspect in her that makes her want to punch him in the face.

She should have punched him in the face because that was the good part, the telling her she’s fat and the tying up.

After that it goes bad.

After that, he asks her, at one point, Are you a bitch like all the other little bitches?

That’s one of the few things she can remember. That and some woman, maybe Roomy, shoving something, some kind of plant – weed?, parsley? rosemary? thyme? – up her snatch.

Like she was Thanksgiving turkey.

Then she remembers weird dreams and/or weird chanting and shadows dancing and genuflecting and she’s tied up again and was she ever untied and she tried to give Richboy head and that’s when he said the bitch thing or maybe she tried to give him head later cos he was fisting Roomy and she was jealous but if she was tied up how could she even reach.

She remembers missing Punkboy. She remembers wanting him to protect her, somehow. And she remembers waking up in the morning and she was sick and bruised but free and Richboy and Roomy were nowhere and she knew they were gone; & she knew she was hurt and she knew she was hurting and bleeding and she knew the fetus, his fetus, their fetus, the one she’d told him about earlier this week, the one she was gonna stop drinking for, that fetus was gone.

Ryder Collins is working on a novel entitled Homegirl! Her fave word is still "hairshirt," and she thinks she may need to start wearing one soon to atone for all the people she's cared about that she's pushed or allowed to push her away. She can be found here: http://bignortherngirlgoes.blogspot.com/

Scraps (Writing Prompt: Fiction)

2010-08-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

by Kevin Myrick

I sometimes miss the feeling of running my hand across your bare skin as we laid naked together on the futon in my tiny apartment. You used to wiggle under my touch and complain that “it tickles” before holding me down and kissing me lightly on the lips. That was a moment I used to live for when we were together. There are other things I miss too: The smell of your hair from the coconut shampoo you used to use, the way the necklaces you always wore around your neck jingled around the apartment, reminding me of Christmas. The smell of your freshly baked cookies. I especially miss your cooking.

You left because I was a drunk and a fool, unable to see myself in the mirror for who I really am. But you were never an angel yourself, always allowing me to continue further down the rabbit hole until finally I hit rock bottom.

The fight between us was all my fault. I came home drunk from a night out with my friends from work and then vomited in your laundry basket. You woke me up disgusted the next morning and threw the soiled clothes on top of me. “You smell that? That’s what happens when you go out.”

“You have no self-restraint. I honestly don’t know why I still care about you.”

I was hurt and shot back that you were just as irresponsible when it came to liquor and life. It was fine for you to party and get drunk. It was fine that you always come back to me whenever you get yourself into a crisis. You want me to be a shoulder to cry on when things go bad. I am not that shoulder, and if you don’t like it you can go away.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” I said as I got up and put on my coat.

“Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here,” I said.

I stumbled down the stairs and hung over as I was I must have looked like an old man with a broken hip. I ended up in the diner down the street flirting with a waitress and coating my stomach with greasy sausage and eggs. On the way home I stopped by the package store to buy a pint bottle of Jack Daniels to even me out. I drank it on the way home from a crumbled brown paper bag. As I staggered down the block I let my drunken anger get the better of me with innocent pedestrians and blamed them for all my problems.

Once home, I found that you’d left nothing more of yourself than a scrap of paper with a note on it as I fell onto the kitchen table. All it said was “I started to feel like a liar, saying I love you.”

I guess you couldn’t think of any other way to say it was through. And now I’m all alone again, nothing more than the bugs to keep me company as the scurry across the living room floor. I got drunk for two days straight and by the end of it decided that you were never worth it. And now I’m 12 years sober.

Kevin Myrick is a writer and journalist living in Rome, Ga. His work has been featured on 52/250, The Auburn Plainsman, The Auburn Circle and his website. He plans to release an e-book short story collection in October. Myrick’s last purchase was a can of Dr. Pepper from a vending machine.

NON-FICTION: ADDICTION

2010-08-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

by Misti Rainwater-Lites

I do not feel comfortable telling you these things. If my mother finds out she will stop buying me tacos and pedicures. My friends will disown me. My son will Google my name someday and say,"Mommy is quite the whore." Still, I soldier on in my muddy bloody combat boots as this jungle of self-discovery and show & tell is the only terrain I know and trust.

I am addicted to masturbating to pictures of Faith. If you would like to see pictures of Faith simply Google "Faith Big Tits." She is British. She has big real tits and she wears an expression that makes me wish I had a dick.

I am addicted to the process of writing and revising and sharing and self-publishing and submitting to various online and print zines. I am addicted to taking pictures of toys, spiders, myself, garbage, food, murals, buildings, the wondrous world around me. I have asked my husband if I can take pictures of his cock and balls. He says NO.

I am addicted to driving and listening to "I Feel You" by Depeche Mode and fantasizing that the man I feel feels me, too. I know he doesn't feel me like I feel him but I enjoy deluding myself that he does. I am addicted to the words the mind the spirit of the man I feel. I am addicted to loving this man who does not love me back. I am addicted to sending him e-mail and gifts and snail mail. I was addicted to calling him but I deleted his phone number from my cell phone so that I will be less invasive in his life.

I am addicted to sniffing Pine-Sol and Kiwi shoe polish. Whenever I am shopping in Wal-Mart I make a beeline for the shoe section. I open up a tin of Kiwi black shoe polish and aaaahhhh...the angels sing. I do not open up a bottle of Pine-Sol, or haven't lately, as sniffing Pine-Sol gives me a nasty headache. I also enjoy spraying the glaze I used when I was making domino pendants into the air and sniffing the air. I also enjoy sniffing my funky arm pits.

I am addicted to Facebook. I am addicted to finding out which book of the Bible I am (Revelations), which famous dead writer I am (Oscar Wilde), which Peanuts character I am (Snoopy), chatting with Shane Allison, writing on Lara Konesky's wall and imagining that my male friends are in love with me based on my status updates and photo albums.

I am addicted to my blog. I am addicted to coffee. I am addicted to sodium. I am addicted to candy. I am addicted to YouTube. I am addicted to Ezra Pound and Federico Garcia Lorca. I am addicted to books. I am addicted to buying books and cds and dvds at eBay and amazon.com. I am addicted to my fantasy life. Someday I will live in a studio in the Mission district of San Francisco with long straight Cookie Monster blue hair and "How does my ass smell?" tattooed on my left arm in Sinhalese. I will be a burlesque dancer. I will be the darling of the poetry scene. Many people will wish to fuck me but I will not let them. Too, I will picnic in various parks. I will mostly eat Chinese food because I am also addicted to MSG and Chinese cookie fortunes.

Misti Rainwater-Lites encourages you to buy her books at lulu.com, especially Bullshit Rodeo, her most ambitious and fascinating novel to date. Her favorite word in the English language is chlamydia.

Writng Prompt: Fiction

2010-08-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

by Geoff Munsterman

I took her virginity on my birthday. She took mine too, but never knew it. When I met Diedra, I was nineteen and a virgin but who the fuck would ever admit that. Unlike some, I didn’t invent a random girl or an ex who’d never warrant mentioning again. I had Elisha. She was Jewish, freckled, more outgoing and extroverted than me. Her sensitive nipples shrank from Kennedy dollars to dimes with the slightest flicker of my tongue. We’d been dating for three years after I saved her from a mosh pit at a rock festival. Before that, just friends. She took my virginity on Lundi Gras in the women’s bathroom of The Spellcaster Lounge. For prom, she bought a black single-strap dress and I rented a high-breasted three-piece charcoal tuxedo with a dark mint vest but our poetry teacher called us to go night fishing so we did that instead. I proposed in November, just after being accepted to schools up north. She’d been accepted to those good schools too, but chose the University of New Orleans because her pot dealer went there and gave her good rates. That night, inside the walk-in of the restaurant where she worked, she told me she’d been sleeping with her drug dealer. And his friends. And anyone he told her to sleep with. And there was video. She never held my grandmother’s depression-era ring—the only jewelry my mother’s family kept from then—and I didn’t speak to her until my first week of school in Ohio.

I don’t know why I told this lie. Part of me didn’t want to chase skirts. Part of me knew I could get away with it. Elisha was a good friend, but someone I could easily avoid for four years. Or a lifetime. I don’t know if this story helped make me more attractive to Diedra; it certainly allowed me to relate to women. I’d been hurt by a girl I loved—girls eat that shit up, even on a pudgy kid.

My dad died on October 7th. My first college girlfriend broke up with me on October 4th. We bonded over my sick dad and hers, two years dead. I probably could have fucked her after flying back to school from the wake. I spread my father’s ashes in the beginning of January and started dating Diedra at the end of January. Never took her out. Never cooked for her. We talked a lot, and watched Joe Versus the Volcano. She did visual art and I wrote poetry, so we collaborated on a project. The night I turned twenty, she showed up at my door in heels, a candy necklace, and a dress that fell off her body with the pulling of a string. All the girls in the dorm had massive bushes of pubic hair because the water pressure in the bathrooms were shit. I took her virginity. She took mine. I played the role of the experienced partner.

We dated eight months. I never took her out. I never cooked for her. All we did was fuck, but in a college as small as ours that constitutes a couple. I was grieving my father’s death and not being home for my mother—something my old man swore would happen. I hated all of my friends, who sat around talking about how awful they’d feel if their dad died. Everything was a blur, and to some extent still is. I wrote two books of poetry in four months, had my first real relationship, made the dean’s list, and can’t tell you a single moment from it except that I lost my virginity to a virgin who didn’t know I was a virgin. At some point, I must have said “I love you.” It didn’t even feel like a lie because, who the fuck was I? A dead man’s son? An artful and committed lover? A liar?

The last night before we left for home (she was Minnesotan and I am from Louisiana...fuck did I hate her accent—each ‘o’ was like getting hit in the face with an oar) we pushed my and my roommate’s beds together. It was a sweaty greatest hits of all the fucking we’d done that semester: tit-fucking, fingering, blowjobs, doggy-style, nipple biting, ass-licking, ball-sucking, hair-pulling, fondling, caressing, kissing. And I didn’t cum. In fact, I never came when we had sex. I’d fake orgasm when I felt her pussy drying up and hid the condoms. This last night of fucking I didn’t give up. She had twelve orgasms; and I know she had twelve because her left foot did this involuntary convulsion and the walls of her vagina tightened and pulsated. Virgins don’t know enough to fake that. Orgasm nine lasted ten minutes, and I didn’t cum. At least if I had lost my erection, we could have slept longer than the four hours we got.

There was talk of visiting each other but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t care about her enough to show her the places in New Orleans I loved. I went home, which was like visiting a cemetery. I worked at a bookstore in the French Quarter. I edited my two books, which were both messes of raw grief and harsh barbs of verbs. Diedra sent me a letter about her mom and her job. I went to Airline highway and picked up a crackhead who, for sixty dollars and a six-piece chicken tenders with french fries from a gas station, sucked my cock. I came instantly, hard. The next day, I broke up with Diedra via text message. Two weeks later I evacuated to Ohio because Hurricane Katrina was heading up the Gulf. More blur. Another year lost. Diedra invited me to a party to show me how much she enjoyed sticking her tongue down another man’s throat, but instead of feeling jealousy or pity I wondered if the nappy crackwhore in too-tight demin was alive or dead. All the while remembering that she snickered when, with her mouth around my cock, I muttered, “I love you."

Geoff Munsterman is a bitter, lonely man. This story is dedicated to everyone who has accused him of having 'a martyr complex.' He has achieved less than he'd intended, and lives on the wrong side of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The last thing hepurchased was a super grande mocha with five shots of espresso.

My Older Sister’s Advice

2010-08-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

by Holly Jensen

An open relationship is like a game of chicken. There’s a winner and a loser, and losing involves wincing.

Never date your dealer. Hell, don’t even fuck your dealer.

If you return to a ransacked home, don’t think burglar, don’t think poltergeist. Think raccoon.

No, no. An open relationship is like playing tennis, cause love means zero. Cause it’s all about setting something just out of his reach.

Let’s see. Never try to snort anything through a bendy straw.

And never tell a man that you thought he was gay, even— especially— if you mean it as a compliment.

Wait, wait. An open relationship is a good chance to experience sadomasochism for anyone who has no interest in sadomasochism.

The most stubborn stain is a bloodstain. You have to get at them quick with the coldest water.

And, for God’s sake, if you’re going to be an alcoholic, have the good sense not to be a drunk.

Okay. Here. An open relationship is like a game of Russian roulette. The first round, you might make out okay, but, sooner or later, it’ll kill you.

Oh, and hell isn’t other people. Hell is just you.

Holly Jensen’s favorite word is love, and her least favorite word is love. She’s been in Folio (issues 5 and 16) and will be in PANK October 2010.

How To Be Honest

2010-08-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

by Carolyn Nash

Sometimes I say things to myself: That's the truth. Stop it stop it stop it. Or: You're alright. Or: Let it go. Things like that -- things that people are supposed to want to hear. I say them even though I am the only person in the room, even though they aren't things that I particularly want to hear.

If there are words in my mouth, I can't hear the ones in my head. That's the truth. So I say these things over and over again, as though they are prayers, as though the rhythm will mean something when the words themselves fail. I have to move, I have to move, I have to move. I'll scream it out loud to an empty bedroom until my voice sounds like cardboard tearing.

Or if you're all tender warmth beside me in bed, I'll just say NO NO NO. It must be scary to hear that sudden scream, if you have been sleeping next to me, trying to love me. But you never try to decipher "no." It's one of those words you either believe or disbelieve. It's a word that ends itself, like a suicide.

The thing I say most, though, is I love you. When no one's around, when I'm laying in bed alone. When I'm not thinking of anyone at all. I love you! I'll say suddenly. And what it means is god please stop these thoughts, these terrible thoughts, please let these words that are supposed to change lives be enough to change mine.

There is a ghoul inside me, I told you once. I don't know if it will ever go away.

Now when I look at you in the half-dark and say I love you I don't know if I am saying it to you or saying it to strangle the ghoul, to stifle all those words in my head: the words that make me want to tear out my eyes just to set the voices free. I love you: maybe the sounds and shapes and depths are truly their own or maybe they are just a salve for the parts inside me that have ruptured. I don't know.

But when I told you about the ghoul, that was love.

That's the truth.

Carolyn Nash is fasting for Ramadan. Her belly feels seared and torn, like an exploded tire. Her last purchase was a box set of Roald Dahl's complete works, translated into Indonesian. She writes here and you can follow her on Twitter here @idontwashmyhair.

Sex Education

2010-08-16T02:20:00.000-07:00

by Eirik Gumeny

"Oh, God, Hope, baby, I love you."

"Oh, God, Danny, Danny, oh God, oh God."

"Oh, Jesus, baby, oh God."

"Oh, oh, ohhhhhhhh, Danny, oh God."

"Oh, baby, I'm coming, I'm coming."

"Danny, God, so am I, so am I!"

"God, Hope, Hope!"

"Sweet fucking Jesus, Danny! Danny!"

Samantha clenched the pillow tighter to her ears, her arms twitching from the strain. She was buried under two blankets, she was humming to herself, she was thinking about anything and everything else in the known universe. But still she could not drown out the sound of her parents in the next room.

"Oh, Danny, God, baby, that was amazing."

"Oh, Hope, baby, I love you."

"I love you, too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"How much do you love me?"

"Oh, I dunno, about this much."

There was giggling, Samantha could their bodies moving, rolling across the bed.

"Shit, wait, you don't think..."

A thump, floorboards creaking -- her father walking out of his room. Samantha could hear every step -- the thud of his heel, the smack of the ball of his foot, each toe that hit the floor amplified like hail on aluminum. Creak, creak, stop. A light knock at the door, knuckles barely brushing wood, the handle turning.

"Sammy? Honey?" her father whispered.

Samantha stayed hidden in her sheets, didn't move, didn't so much as breathe.

"Sammy?"

Creak, creak, stop.

"Goodnight, baby girl."

Samantha knew her father would have kissed her forehead had he been able to find it. Through her armor of blankets, she could feel his hand on her side, tender as it passed over her ribs and slipped away.

Creak, creak, creak.

Her father closed the bedroom door and crept back to his room as quietly as a thunderstorm.

"No worries," he said. "She's out for the night, babe."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, then, break out the Jolly Green Giant and see if you can't make me scream."

Samantha twitched and repeatedly prayed for death.

Samantha's parents didn't sleep at all that night. As a result, neither did Samantha.

She stumbled out of her room sometime around noon, not entirely convinced her parents weren't simply going at it on the kitchen table.

Samantha peered cautiously into the kitchen. She found her mom wearing her bathrobe and making waffles. Her father was asleep on the couch in the living room, the Weather Channel muted on the television.

"Morning, Sammy," said her mother. "You sleep well?"

"No," she replied, stepping into the kitchen. "You and Dad are disgusting."

"What?"

"I heard you, Mom. All. Fucking. Night."

"Watch your mouth, young lady."

"No God damned way, Mom," said Samantha, grabbing the orange juice from the refrigerator. "Do you have any idea what I had to put up with last night?"

"Sammy..." began her mother. "You'll understand when you're older, honey."

"I'm sixteen, Mom, I understand plenty. You guys are just sick."

"Sweetie, it's a beautiful act..."

"Maybe at some point it was. You two, though, you guys are just... just... kinky freaks. Kinky disturbing freaks."

"And what's wrong with being kinky?"

Samantha choked on her orange juice, covered the counter with it.

"What?!"

"Honey, I told you, you'll understand when you're older. Sex can be fun. It... well, it feels really good. Especially when your father--"

"Oh my God, shut up, please, Mom, please. I am so sorry I brought it up."

"No, no, I'm actually glad you did. It's better to hear about all the things you can do now, rather than some day in the future when your boyfriend or your husband just springs it on you. Take your father, for example. Don't get me wrong, I love urinating on him, but the first time he asked? I can't say I wasn't taken aback a little."

"Holy shit, Mom."

"But that's all part of it, the excitement of trying something new. The uncertainty itself is kind of a turn-on. And, over time, you'll learn that certain things feel better than other things, so, sometimes, you need to get creative, experiment, to see what you like best. Sometimes that means doing things that other people--"

"Stop, stop, please, Mom, please just stop. I am so, so sorry."

"No, don't be sorry. It's OK. What exactly did you hear last night, though? I thought we kept it pretty vanilla. Was it the 'put it in my ass' part, because I can explain that. When your father's--"

"Please, please just fucking stop."

"Stop swearing, Samantha," replied her mother. "And, well, no. Sooner or later these things are going to come up. Lots of girls your age are having sex. You may as well know what you're getting into."

"Oh my God, Mom, I am not getting into anything. And I mean, like, ever. You are so totally creeping me out. Every time you talk, I start picturing you and dad and--" Samantha shuddered. "I am not going to be having sex for a very, very long time."

"Good. Now finish your waffles, honey."

Eirik Gumeny is the editor of Jersey Devil Press. He once scaled the Empire State Building, only to be murdered by several bi-planes and a pretty girl. He was not happy about it. His favorite word is undoubtedly "motherfucker." "Fuck" may be more versatile, but "motherfucker" is a lot more fun to say.

2010-08-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

SSF Interrogation With..

Jesse Bradley

Florida

SSF: Tell us a little about your writing process. Do you work better in the morning or night? What music do you listen to while writing? Where do you write? What do you drink while you write?

J.B: I keep a writing schedule where I write Sunday-Tuesday. If I write on additional days, awesome, but I have to write on those days. When I write poetry, I don't listen to music at all. When I write fiction, I'll listen to The National or Bon Iver. When I write, it is in my living room unless I am not at home, then it is where I can open my net book and write. I write sober but I will drink Red Bull or other stimulants.

SSF: What was the last song you danced to?

J.B: Electric Six's "I'm The Bomb"

SSF: If you could only eat one type of candy for the rest of your life, what would it be?

J.B: Twix.

SSF: What is the last sentence you wrote that you are proud of?

J.B: "Never stop the wedding during the ceremony", Michael said, pointing to the sickle shaped scar beneath his right eye, "The canyon dug by the bride's engagement ring last forever."

SSF: Do you believe in reincarnation? Please explain.

J.B: No.

SSF: Fill in the blank: I wish my life had more _______ in it.

J.B: jet packs

SSF: Any tips for all of the writers out there?

J.B: Fail. Fail hard. Survive it.

SSF: Any last words?

J.B: It was all worth it.

Writing Prompt: I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I don't like.

2010-08-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

Adrift In A Sea Of Flesh

by D. Jordan

I’m looking for you again, and I’m not even sure if you’re real. I don’t think I ever met you, though you could be some friend or tertiary acquaintance. My one, true love. It has become almost cliché: True Love. We live in a world of flesh where sex and image are the number one sellers.

Fuck somebody, suck somebody, BE somebody. It makes me nostalgic. I miss the thrill of taking a lady out and wondering if I would get a kiss. I yearn to feel tension while reaching for a woman’s hand. Can you help me? I think I lost those feelings. I’m just looking for someone to give them back.

It’s my own fault, I think. I’m pretty sure I misplaced them sometime in college. Maybe I set it down to let another sorostitute into my room. I might have been too busy watching women flock to the men who treated them the worst. Perhaps I just got too busy learning the game and how easy it really was. I wish I knew; maybe I could go retrieve it. It’s somewhere in yesterday, though, and that is a damn hard place to get back to.

So I decided not to look for it. Instead I’m holding out on a one in a million chance that you’re out there. I don’t know you. I don’t know if your hair is black as onyx or as gold as a sunset. I don’t know if you will be tall or short, quiet or loud. I know you will have beautiful eyes. I know you will be beautiful in mine. I know you will make me stutter and tie my thoughts into knots. I know I will love you, if you exist.

D. Jordan is looking forward to hitting something on an athletic field. His favorite Sneakers are Dan Akroyd and Robert Redford. You get a coolness point non gratis if you get that without having to look it up.

A Good Joke

2010-08-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

by Tyler Bigney

You led me by the hand into your house, where you wanted to show me your grandmother, who was almost dead, or at least dying. In the kitchen she smiled, and handed me a warm glass of orange juice. I reached out and took the glass, holding it firmly in my hands, glancing down at the pulp floating around the top like dead things. I closed my eyes and drank quickly, without breathing. When I finished you took my hand and led me outside to the backyard where you stopped short in front of scattered beds of roses.

“Old pets,” you said flatly.

“She plants rosebushes for old pets,” I asked.

“No,” you said, shaking your head. “They’re all buried around here.” You walked over and nudged one of the rosebushes with your toe. “This is my old cat. I buried her like ten years ago. She had feline leukemia.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I stood, suffocating in my silence, as my eyes roamed around the backyard at all the heaps of dirt and rosebushes.

“She had a lot of cats,” I whispered.

You laughed. “Let’s go inside and have supper.”

I had a good joke come to me then, and I’m glad you looked away when you did, because if you had of seen me, you would have known what it was that I was going to say. But I looked down at the rosebushes and thought of sad things, like dead cats, and shut my mouth.

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His short stories, poetry and travelogues appear in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Maverick, Nerve Cowboy, and Iodine, among others. His favorite word in the English language is mountain. He doesn't know why.

Writing Prompt: I am that afraid I will die while spending time with someone I don't like

2010-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

by Julia Davies

Yes, I am talking to you. Look at you, you sprawl there on the sofa. Sprawl doesn't begin to cover it, you slump, you spill, you slouch. You are a sibilant sloven. Your feet up on the furniture, resting on the rubbish, remains of letters, magazines, chocolate wrappers.

You sag. You age.

It's not langour, it's way beyond that, it's a life draining laziness beyond comprehension. Why would anyone choose to live like that? Why do you choose to live like that? Oh, you don't choose it? You just can't be bothered to change it.

Billowing flesh, pale and pasty pink. Hide it under the throw, pretend it isn't there as you reach for the next packet of crisps, the next gulp of alcohol.

The German word for lazy is "faul" and you know you are.

Sluggish? That doesn't sound too bad, a slow pulse but basically everything under control. Slug-like is more like it. Fat, seeping, sliding through life at the pace of a snail without even the excuse of your house on your shoulders.

No wonder no-one comes around. No wonder there is no-one who wants to probe your fleshy crevices, touch your pallid swollen skin. And you know being so fat makes those folds fleshier and deeper, the journey into your cunt a longer route to pleasure, but no-one else wants to know that now. Hell, most of the time even you don't fucking bother.

Get up off the sofa and go look in the mirror. Not via the fridge again! Go see yourself. Really see yourself, not glance and see the memory of the girl you once were. She was 20 years ago and is lost to you now. Look at yourself, see what you really look like. Nice eyes, yeah, but how many chins? Your tiny mouth looks even smaller against the expanse of your cheeks, unhealthily flushed.

Will you do something about it this time? Will you? Or will you just wonder absently where the gym card is, or whether your swimming costume would still fit? And make a half hearted resolution to go into town and buy some newer bigger clothes?

My face in the mirror, I wonder vaguely what it would be like to finish it, to put an end to it, to kill this person that I don't like, even if it means I die with her. But I know I won't do it, too much effort.

jkdavies is a practised reader & practising writer living in Germany. She doesn't have sneakers, but trainers. They are not her favourite anything as she only wears them to go to the gym. That's once so far this year... so fucking what, it's only July...

Cracked

2010-08-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

by Mike Meraz

I remember waking up, filled with love, and going off to the beach in California to find a sea shell for a girl who lived many miles away. It was a cold morning. I put on my jacket, got into my car and made my way to Huntington Beach.

She was from Texas, a beautiful Latin girl, with pale skin and eyes to make you cry. I got out of my car. It was sprinkling and cold. The air was musty. I wondered if I had picked the wrong day for my excursion. Looking up at the sky, I thought, fuck it, I want to get a sea shell for this girl and don’t want to come back. I put my jacket over my head and made my way out to the shore. There were a few odd joggers. This is the odd thing about California: rain or shine, there is always someone exercising.

Ignoring the joggers, I saw a few sea shells on the floor and picked them up. I wanted the best ones, the prettiest ones, for this girl was the best and prettiest.

After about a half hour, I collected three.

I got back into my car, a little bit wet, a little bit soaked, but I had my sea shells and I was still filled with love. I brought them back to my place, a small place in Paramount where I lived with my empty walls and beer cans.

I placed the sea shells in a manila envelope. I was going to send them the next morning. I also put a little love letter inside as I was trying to win this girl’s heart. I never met her personally but she had told me how much she wanted a sea shell from the beach in California as she was from Texas. I guess they don’t have beaches there.

The next day I sent them off, the shells and my love.

A few weeks later I got a response. She said she received the package, but the shells were cracked. In the mailing process, somehow, the life of the road was too much for these precious shells. Such is love, such is life.

We continued to write, talk and be good friends. The shell experience was a special thing. She had brought out something in me that was missing for a lot of years: that special romantic feeling that you often lose just out of high school. That innocent optimism of love. Goes to show, sometimes the most beautiful girl can crack the most hardened criminal.

Mike Meraz is a poet from Los Angeles who currently lives in New Orleans. He is the author of two books of poetry Black-Listed Poems and All Beautiful Things Travel Alone. Both are available at Lulu.com and Amazon.com. He is also the editor of Black-Listed Magazine. One of his favorite words in the English language is caustic. Just say it. It sounds nice.

She Was A Strange Girl

2010-08-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

by Mike Meraz

she was a strange girl

who lived in my building

when I lived in Whittier.

she was mentally challenged

or something like that.

I think she had the hots for me

(I always attract the peculiar ones)

because one night

about eleven-thirty pm

she came to my door.

"yeah, who is it?" I asked.

"do you have a screw driver I can borrow?"

she said.

"who is this?" I asked.

"um, it's Martha, I live a couple doors down the hall."

"no, I don't have a screw driver you can borrow."

"can I come in anyway?"

"why?"

"I want to talk to you."

"no, I'm going to bed now."

then she walked away.

a couple of days later

I saw her in the hall.

I tried to avoid her

but she abruptly came up to me anyway.

"can you take me to Pomona?"

"no, I don't know where Pomona is."

"oh, it's right up the 605 then down the 60.

it's not that far. I'll give you directions."

"no, I'm sorry, I can't take you to Pomona.

maybe you could ask someone else."

"but I've already asked everyone else, no one will take me."

"I'm sorry, I can't."

then she put her head down

and walked away.

a couple of weeks past.

I didn't see her for a while.

she must have made it to Pomona.

then one night I was coming home late

about two-thirty am.

I opened the front door of my building

and there she was lying on the floor,

in the dark, next to the stairwell,

moaning and groaning-

"ooo, ahhh, ohhh, mmm."

I closed the door quietly

and walked slowly up the stairs.

"hey," she whispered, "hey."

I walked faster up the stairs to my room.

"hey!" she shouted, "come back here!"

I closed the door to my room.

a couple of minutes later I heard a knock.

"what?!" I exclaimed.

"um, it's Martha, I just wanted to know if I could talk to you."

"no, it's late, I have to go to bed."

"just for a sec?"

"why?"

"I have something I want to give you."

"what is it?" I asked.

"I want to give you my body."

"look, please leave me alone."

I heard a heavy sigh

and then I heard her walk away.

I never saw her again after that.

I think I pushed her off for good.

she must have been lonely,

but we all have our dark days

and I don't think we should bother others

with our loneliness.

the last thing I heard she was kicked out.

she bothered the other tenants too.

I was not the only one.

but I don't remember any of them.

I guess she got my attention after all.

Mike Meraz is a poet from Los Angeles who currently lives in New Orleans. He is the author of two books of poetry Black-Listed Poems and All Beautiful Things Travel Alone. Both are available at Lulu.com and Amazon.com. He is also the editor of Black-Listed Magazine. One of his favorite words is "fiasco" which, in his mind, is a comedic version of tragedy, which can be quite interesting.

Just Don't Look At Your Hands

2010-08-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

by Dina Mutar

long distance phone calls to foreign boys whilst sitting in a diseased japanese maple tree, listening to bob dylan's lady of the lowlands on repeat for hours, riding bikes in the darkness down steep hills screaming, "i can feel the wind blowing my leg hairs! weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" laughing so hard you cry, crying so hard you laugh. sleeping underneath a grand piano with eyes open- staring up at the stars, this is what friends are for. realizing that eating carrots or granola on shrooms is not a good idea, realizing that swimming on shrooms is scary and nauseating. opening throat chakras, opening the top of my head where worms are coming out, crows following me from block to block, telephone wire to telephone wire, they're after the worms! bike riders off into the sky, huge fat guys in miniature convertibles, watching family birthday celebrations through windows from the curb. talking to slugs, talking to flowers, talking to myself, "did i say that out loud?" embodying past lives, fleeting emotions of deep love and intense disgust. understanding everything, loving everything, hating everything.

coked-out peruvian hostel workers, even more coked-out ex-israeli soldiers travelling in large, obnoxious groups all wearing headbands, listening to techno music and smoking spliffs. one is clipping weed from a giant branch of marijuana. they make me hold a cigarette vertically between my knees then balance the another one horizontally on top of the other with my two index fingers, now they tell me to start moving my feet up and down, "fast, faster faster!" i feel like a chump. "haahaahaaa, you are an elephant on a bicycle... ha haaa! get it?" he pulls out a photo album and proudly shows off photos of at least 60 people around the world doing the same thing, "what the FUCK?" it's a conspiracy. i'm paranoid, i don't trust them. "you guys are sick." the shrooms are kicking in and mixing with the spliff, the coke is wearing off from earlier. good thing we didn't drink the "floripondio" tonight that would really fuck shit up. i see jesus, he is before me, christ lives! incan designs stamped on the wall and bedspread, then knocking, the fucking israelis- are knocking on all the doors, running up and down the halls singing and chanting in hebrew. they're packing their bags. "but i thought they weren't leaving until monday" i'm in my head again in a mist of paranoia... "they're going to kill us- we've got to get out of here" my heart is racing. we leave the hostel but we couldn't find the room key so we leave it open. we catch a taxi to a hotel across town. we stay for a while until i smell smoke, "something is burning, we are getting smoked out, the place is on fire!" we get in another taxi and go to the house of a gay prostitute who lives in a shanty town in southern lima, we sleep on a bed with lice. we return to the hostel in the morning when the shrooms have worn off, a picture of me is missing from my things at the hostel and i've misplaced my passport along the way. i've got to get out of this place.

grandmother tree will save us all, she is a pokey bitch. possessing superhuman powers, climbing to the highest branch. cows are holy, we should give thanks before eating them. an uprooted tree requires emergency 911 care, "quick! buckets of water, NOW" water is life, this one is saved. walking, walking, walking, walking, walking. a missing puppy from the litter, did the coyotes get him? "bella- take care of your fucking kids and be mother for once! oh, here he is." squishy sunsets and quicksand, a train goes by- it's the strangest thing. 70's record covers. needing to slow down, needing to just be, needing to be a plant. we are one, god is one, god is love, we are god. god i love shrooms! "please don't get lost in the mirror and whatever you do, just don't look at your hands."

Dina Mutar's favorite word in the english language is hemoglobin and her least favorite word is tether. She can be found navigating the earth's surface in many different capacities. In her free time she likes to vacuum, drink iced tea, grow etibles and eat etibles. She's thinking about getting another tattoo.

Twins

2010-08-08T18:55:00.000-07:00

by Michelle Elvy

When we turned 50, my twin sister and I inherited money from an uncle. It was a modest amount, enough for me to enroll in a night course at the local college and to buy a new pair of glasses, not the $20 frames at JC Penney but an obscenely expensive designer pair which my made me feel sexy and smart, and which my boyfriend told me to keep on when we made wild rodeo love that night.

Some weeks later, my sister called. “You gotta come visit, see what I purchased with the help of Uncle Robbie’s money!” She sounded excited, so I drove across the state line the following weekend. I rang the bell and adjusted my new glasses, sure she'd notice them right away. She threw open the door with her characteristic enthusiasm and greeted me with a new set of D's, maybe even Double-D’s. I hugged her, mindful not to squish her new acquisitions, and followed her in, my mind responding in overdrive: Good Lord, Patricia, what have you done? I am reading Foucault, have a copy of Discpline and Punish right here in my bag. Wanna read it? No, of course you don’t. I wonder if my $300 left over would get me a downpayment on a set of those. I couldn't afford D’s of course (and they are ridiculous), but C's might be quite sensible...

'You have new glasses!' Patricia interrupted.

'The better to see you with,' I replied.

Michelle Elvy likes the word discipline but not the word punish. She is sometimes a slacker but when she experiences moments of enlightened discipline, she thinks (fondly) of her mother -- and King Crimson. You can find Michelle at Glow Worm, Voices and 52|250.

Love And Shit

2010-08-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

by Michael Frissore

Tim had been walking around the city for an hour. He took his cell phone from his pocket to call Cedric. There was no answer, but Cedric never answered his phone. He put his cell back in his pocket and continued walking. When he arrived at Cedric and Wade’s place he didn’t knock. He went right in as usual. His friends were sitting on the couch.

“Hey, Timmy,” Cedric said. “Have a seat, little fella. Want a beer?”

“No, thanks,” Tim said.

“Awww,” Wade said, noticing Tim's depressed look. “Why so glum, chum?”

“It’s this girl at work,” Tim said. “I haven’t told you guys about it, but I’m completely in love with her.”

“Aw, sweetie,” Cedric said. “That’s wonderful. Does this young lady have a name?”

“Carrie.”

“What a lovely moniker,” Wade said. “Does she feel the same way about you, pumpkin?”

“Of course not,” Tim said.

“What do mean, of course not, you silly goose?” Wade said.

“She doesn’t know I exist.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to change that, won’t you, you gloomy Gus?” Cedric said. “Ask her out. And be witty about it. Invite her out for a coffee.”

“And then stick it in her keyster,” Wade said.

“What?” Tim asked.

“Indeed,” Cedric said, “You should start with the Gaylord Perry. Go at least two knuckles in.”

“Then go for the Roddy Piper,” Wade said. “Slap a sleeper hold on her and keep fucking her until she passes out.”

“Guys, please.”

“Tim, roofies and slow gas leaks are for pussies,” Wade said. “You have to be aggressive. And if you need some chloroform, we got some in the bathroom.”

“See, the great thing about the sleeper, Timmy,” Cedric said, “Is that you can segue into a cobra clutch if you want.”

“I don’t want to wrestler her,” Tim said.

“Or the camel clutch,” Wade said. “If you can slap that on her while you’re giving it to her, you will be my hero.”

“I also usually head butt ‘em,” Cedric said. “Maybe give ‘em a piledriver.”

“Guys,” Tim said. “Do you have any real advice for me?”

“Sure, angel,” Wade said. “Watch out for the Crimson Tide.”

“Ew,” Tim said

“I don’t know, Wade.” Cedric said. “Sometimes I can get into a little crime scene sex.”

“You’re a sick man,” Wade said. “Trust me, Timmy, you don’t want your bedroom looking like the LaBianca house.”

“You wake up in the morning and decide you’d better give Johnny Fontane the part in the movie,” Cedric said.

“Does this girl,” Wade said, “What’s her name?”

“Car-,” Tim started.

“We’ll call her ‘Some Twat’,” Wade continued. “Do you imagine she’s into fun stuff, like, let’s say a blumpkin or a Cleveland steamer?”

“All right,” Tim said. “You guys are not helping.”

“You have to maybe help her out first,” Cedric said. “Maybe toss her salad or something.”

“Good Lord,” Tim said.

“I recommend it with duck sauce or honey mustard,” Cedric said.

“Or A1 Steak Sauce,” Wade said. “I have a bottle of teriyaki barbeque sauce you can take.”

“Hey,” Tim said. “I haven’t even asked her out yet. I can hardly speak to her.”

“I see,” Wade said. “What are you, six?”

“Yeah, get over that,” Cedric said. “She’s just a person.”

“What do I say?” Tim asked.

“Whatever,” Wade said. “Just don’t call her a cunt.”

“Yes,” Cedric said. “Chicks hate that. Take it from me. If she’s a sophisticated girl she won’t appreciate it.”

“You two are ridiculous,” Tim said.

“Seriously, though,” Wade said. “What’s this girl’s name again?”

“It’s Carrie.”

“Lovely name,” Wade said. “Also a lovely song by 80s hair band Europe.”

“Wait,” Cedric said. “Carrie? Like Plug it up! Plug it up! They’re all gonna laugh at you, Carrie? At your job? The one that was at the softball game a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-oh,” Wade said.

“What?” Tim asked.

“Yeah,” Cedric said. “It’s just a…I sort of hit that.”

“You what?” Tim said.

“After the game a few of us went to a bar and she and I started talking and we came back here and…”

“Jesus, Cedric,” Tim said.

“I didn’t know your sorry ass was pining for that,” Cedric said.

“Will you stop calling her that?” Tim said.

“Look,” Cedric said, “It was a one-time thing. She said I was too big, that I need cock reduction surgery.”

“Nice, dude,” Wade said, high-fiving Cedric. “Hey, if she’s a goer maybe we could all bukkake her.”

“I don’t know why I come here,” Tim said. “I don’t know why I even hang out with you guys.”

With that, Tim went home and cried himself to sleep.

Michael Frissore's favorite word is "cunt." He could say it all day and address everyone he knows only by "Cunt." He has a book of poetry he wanted to call Cunt, but like a cunt he called it Poetry is Dead (Coatlism, 2009). See how he gave the publisher credit just like a cunt would? God, what a cunt.

Honeymoon Phase

2010-07-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

by Lauren Ottaviano

It was like our third date. Fourth maybe. And I was bent over pants around my ankles faced away from him in Dave’s bathroom, trying to look sexy as he poked a MDMA-covered fingertip into my ass. Didn’t work, the sexy thing. Pulling off the casually seductive look is hard as fuck when someone’s finger’s up your butt. It was also entirely unnecessary. Johnny was in full focus mode back there, like some kind of anal artisan. The “oh shit, my girlfriend’s gonna let me dose her in her ass!” jubilation of ten minutes previous evaporated the second he realized how difficult his task was.

The getting a finger-full of Molly part was no problem for him. But even though I refused to look back at him, I could tell he was having serious difficulties when it came to getting the powder from his finger to past my o-ring- it kept rubbing off too soon and falling to the floor like copacetic snow. After about 6 attempts he conceded that I probably had enough in me to trip the light fantastic, and I think we were both relieved to leave that bathroom. I felt like I’d just gotten a delinquent enema, I can’t imagine what was going through his head.

What Have You Been Doing With Your Life?

2010-07-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

by Ryder Collins

Of all her boyfriends or pseudo-boyfriends or even friends, Homegirl liked to hang at Punkboy’s house the most. For a dirty punk rock boy covered in tatts who didn’t like deodorant and who could smell either surprisingly sexy or really really bad when sweaty, Punkboy’s house was extremely well-maintained. Punkboy’s dirty little secret was that he was a domestic punk rocker; he didn’t let many people over. If he was stoned/drunk enough, though, he’d make Homegirl breakfast or even every now and then a late dinner. She’d watch him cook and wish she had a long flowy gauzy skirt on so she could re-enact that scene from Sid and Nancy.

I look like fucking Stevie Nicks!

Homegirl wanted someone to love her so much they could suicide together. She wanted love that was crazy and fucked up. Love that would travel all the way across the country hopping trains just to be with her. Love that would steal baby rabbits from pet stores and then brain them for attention, and love that would leave French bread and brie or Tofutti and tampons on her doorstep. Love that would hide books written just for her in her drawers for her to find later. Love that would actually hide in her drawers and spy on her or just fondle her panties because love couldn’t be far from her, but didn’t want to scare her too much.

She wanted to die fucking; it had to be the only way to go.

But, all Homegirl had at the moment was the laissez-faire Punkboy and the laissez-fairer Richboy, and neither of them left anything on her doorstep.

One night Punkboy and she’d come back to his house from the dive bar; Punkboy lived conveniently down the street and didn’t drive at all, didn’t even have a license and got around on fixies and skateboards and his own two feet, so it was also good for Homegirl cos then she didn’t have to drive drunk; although she’d drive drunk if there was even the hint of a hard cock at the end. She’d sat at his 50s resale formica kitchen table as he made some primavera with fresh veggies even. He served it with tallboys of PBR, of course, and they ate it all up, smacking drunkenly.

Usually, Homegirl tried very hard not to eat around people she was fucking or even people she was fucking attracted to. She felt like it took some of her mystery away. Made her more real and less desirable. It made her vulnerable, more vulnerable than giving head, which also made her feel vulnerable and self-conscious like mama was on stage, and she’d hide this by deep-throating any guy she wanted and some she didn’t. Homegirl also didn’t like to eat in public. She didn’t care around Punkboy; she felt like she could do pretty much anything around him. She even let him watch her shit every now and then. It turned him on. He liked to give rim jobs.

She’d never eaten let alone shat around Richboy.

After the primavera, Punkboy’d served cheesecake with cherry pie filling on top. Cos Homegirl was still so drunk, she tipped the plate onto herself as she tried to grab it from Punkboy’s tattoed hands. She was always always turned on by tattoed hands, but you’ve probably all guessed that already. She wiped the cake off with the paper towel she’d used as a napkin. Then she got up, clutching her stomach over the big red stain.

I’m dying; they got me, she kept saying and giggling. She thought it was pretty fucking hi-larious. She backed herself up against the wall and slid down it. Avenge me, she gasped and then convulsed, long legs splayed out in a vee.

Punkboy stared into her vee, snorted and then said, If you’re dead, I get the last PBR.

Homegirl got her ass up right quick and said, I’ll fight ya for it. Then they were wrestling and you know what drunken wrestling often leads to.

At least I hope you do.

& if you don’t, I feel sorry for you, that you’ve lived a life so far and you’re getting older older older and never engaged in drunken wrestling or, worse, the glimmer of drunken wrestling’s never even shone in your eye. That no punker’s let you into their home and made you drunken pasta or sexted you or rubbed you raw with tatted fingers. That you’ve never smelled food service sweat and got turned on or that you never wanted to wear gauze or be around someone wearing guaze ironically or that you’ve never grabbed and tousled and then licked that food service sex sweat away all night into morning and back into the darkness again.

Ryder Collins is a big Northern girl who goes down. Her fave word is hairshirt. Sometimes she thinks many thinking things about hairshirts; other times men in attics wearing hairshirts turn her on, especially if they whisper self-flagellation. Her writing stuffs can be found here: http://bignortherngirlgoes.blogspot.com/

Writing Prompt: The Last Words

2010-07-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

by Michael Webb

“I’m getting married,” she said, her voice sounding small in the dark,
as casually as she would announce a new pair of shoes or a poem she
had gotten into a magazine. I took a deep breath, then let it out,
because I read somewhere you should do that before reacting to
anything.

There was light coming from somewhere, probably reflected streetlight
coming through my one tiny window, and it made everything look
slightly unreal. Her skin glowed in the dark, the tiny shadows of her
vertebrae climbing away from me as she sat on the edge of my bed. She
was bent from the waist, feeling around on the floor among our
discarded clothes.

“Richard?” I said into the emptiness. She had found her underwear and
was pulling it up her long, trim legs, adjusting it around her hips in
that way women do. I knew the answer.

“Yes,” she said in a singsongy way. The uneven light revealed pieces
of her to me-a curve of breast, a flared hip, a bare shoulder-as she
rummaged across the floor. They had been on and off for 2 years-I was
usually her backup when they were "off". I knew she was his in the
end, but then I saw her, I made her laugh, she followed me home, and
we wound up here.

“But what about .....….this?,” I asked helplessly. She found her bra,
a tiny strip of black fabric and buckles, and began to assemble it,
first fastening it around her small waist, then pulling it up, making
tiny adjustments so it would fit properly. I knew she would grow old
and bitter with him-clinging to him out of obligation, not passion. I
had heard her spit it at him once, mid-fight: “I don’t even LIKE you!”

“A going away present,” she said. She pulled jeans up from the floor,
tugging them and wiggling to get them to conform to her shape. She
bent again, coming up with her loose sleeveless top. She pulled it on,
picking at it and tugging it until it hung the way she wanted. She
gathered her hair, then let it fall loose again. I wanted to stop her,
but my voice seemed to catch on something in my throat. She was gone,
shutting the door firmly behind her.

Fine, I thought. Let her explain why she was wearing my pants.

Michael Webb blogs at innocentsaccidentshints.blogspot.com, and thinks
that the best sneakers ever made were Pony's "City Wings", because who
says man was not born to fly?

It Is Okay For Me To Play With Your Penis

2010-07-26T08:17:00.001-07:00

by Ani Smith

It is okay for me to play with your penis because you probably won't be in love with me for very long. Not after I start being myself. That is okay because we are just playing. I am not going to adopt you as mine but I am having fun pretending that we could be in love. It's okay for me to do that because I won't be hurt for very long after you dump me. Because I am incapable of falling in love most likely anyway. And playing with your penis is fun for us both and seems relatively harmless in comparison to other games we could play.

Ani Smith's favorite word is all of the ones she knows, although she did stare at 'facsimile' for a long time and felt small flutters in her belly. She blogs at http://downinme.com.

All Of Them

2010-07-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

by Patrick Trotti

Liz was my first. Even at the time I think that I knew that this was going to be nothing more than a drunken one night stand. I was thirteen and at one of my first high school keg/house parties. The night was filled with beer pong, keg stands, and loud music. Sometime after midnight I found Liz outside smoking a cigarette. She gave me one. We were so drunk that both of us needed to lean on the side of the house to stay upright. She was wearing a low cut tank top and a short denim skirt. After finishing her smoke she turned to me and said, “Follow me.” I barely knew her but I knew of her. She was the town slut. In fact, all my friends called her the MTA because everyone got a ride. We went upstairs to a random bedroom. The lights remained off but it was still light enough for me to see what I was doing. I didn’t even wear a rubber and when it was done I came all over her tramp stramp; I think it was a tattoo of a rose. As we were getting clothed she gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “I needed that, thanks.” I didn’t talk to her again for another year.

Sarah was my first real girlfriend. She was a nice girl. I had to wait three months before she let me have sex with her. It was during lunch period at school. We went back to her house and clumsily fucked for twenty minutes. I was so proud of myself for lasting that long. We fucked, on and off, for the next three months before I found a reason to dump her.

Laurel was Sarah’s best friend. One night we met up to go see a movie. Sarah was supposed to meet us there but called and said she wasn’t feeling well. Even though we didn’t really have much in common, we decided that we might as well see the movie. The theater was completely empty and by the time the previews were over she was giving me head. The movie was horrible. We fucked quickly about halfway through in a theater bathroom stall. The next time I saw her I didn’t speak a word of what had happened. She moved away with her family soon after.

Mary lived down the street from me. We had been friends starting back in pre-school. I always viewed her as more of a tomboy because she was the only one that could hit a baseball further than me while growing up. She developed over the course of one summer and when we returned to school in September she had the biggest tits in school. We started fooling around after school. I would tell my mom that I was going over to her house to study. She thought Mariah was a good girl. She wasn’t. Her tits gave her a newfound confidence and she used them to get as much attention as possible. For weeks I was obsessed with her. She gave the best blowjobs and she let me tity fuck her until I came on her face. This lasted for at least a year. She was my first true love but I never told her so because I was afraid that if she didn’t feel the same way than I would have to go back to masturbating. We remained friends with benefits for years.

Amanda and I met at summer camp between ninth and tenth grade. She gave me a blowjob in the woods one day. She put a mint in her mouth first; it made my dick tingle. I think it was winter fresh flavored. We would go on nature walks and share joints and then fuck by the water. It was beautiful. We promised that we’d keep in touch after the summer but we never did.

Samantha was the first college girl I’d been with. I was fifteen at the time and didn’t have a girlfriend. All of the girls my age were more concerned with their petty little girl problems. I needed a real girl, a woman. She was almost five years older than me and liked cool music and smoked menthol cigarettes. She would buy me beer and cigarettes. I spent more time that year in her dorm room than I did anywhere else. The sex was amazing except for the fact that I was falling in love with the idea of her and what she represented. Eventually she left me for a graduate student who was into French films and vegan food.

Jackie was a real slut. She could drink me under the table and every time she got drunk she wanted to fuck. Our first time together was in her parent’s bedroom with them downstairs. One time we spent the entire winter break in her bedroom. Her parents had gone on a skiing trip to Switzerland and she kept me handcuffed to the bed and only let me out to go to the bathroom and eat a few meals a day. We fucked ourselves out of love. I heard that she’s a pornstar now.

Abby was the first girl that I made love to. I went out with her for eight months before I even asked for a blowjob. There was something so beautiful and innocent about her that I was scared to fuck her. I even began writing sappy love poems and left them in her locker at school. For a while I was convinced that she was the one that I’d marry. She ended going to the junior prom with one of my best friends and I refused to talk to her after that.

Spanish girl at the bar. I know that she told me her name and where she was from and all that but I was far too drunk to remember. The only thing I recall was the sex. Without saying a word she took my dick and put it in her ass. It felt so good. I stayed the night and snuck out her bedroom window in the morning so as not to wake up her roommates.

Julie worked at the local coffee shop. She was sixteen when I met her and I had just turned seventeen. She still had braces and reminded me of Abby. We would have sex and then stay up all night and just cuddle next to each other waiting for the sun to come up. My mother liked her; she thought she was a nice girl. She was until I caught her cheating.

Kim and I had sex because we had nothing better to do. It was a one-time thing and to this day I wish that I had asked her out.

Karen gave sloppy head but she let me fuck her in the ass and didn’t mind if I saw other people. I think she had father issues.

Caitlin and I met at a local bar that didn’t card me. She was from out of town; somewhere up north and was in town for the weekend. I spent two nights with her in her hotel room. She paid for room service and even let me watch dirty films on the television while we fucked. We would watch a scene and then try and act it out. It was a lot tougher than I had previously imagined. On Sunday morning she dropped me off at home and gave me her number. When I called it was disconnected.

Nikki was a friend of a friend. She could get me free coke when I wanted in return for sex with her. She wasn’t pretty but she loved sex and was the first girl that I had given multiple orgasms to.

Beth was the last girl I fucked before going away to college. I was horny, desperate, and drunk. She wasn’t really my type but she was the first and only redhead I had sex with.

Danielle was in my freshman composition class with me. We studied together for the midterm and she gave me a hand job in the library. We went back to her dorm room and I talked her into having a threesome with her roommate Juliana.

Juliana saw each other a few times after the threesome. She would come to my dorm room because she didn’t want Danielle finding out about us. She did and Juliana gave me this long speech about friendship being more important than sex. I never saw either of them again.

Kelly was my freshman roommate’s girlfriend. He could see that we both liked each other and instead of losing her to me he offered to have a threesome. I did. It was weird. I couldn’t focus on Kelly and felt that I was competing with him. I still came on her tits.

Lauren was my sophomore year girlfriend. I was in a serious mood and felt that I needed to make some sort of commitment. I even brought her home to meet my family for Thanksgiving. We snuck off during dessert and fucked in the upstairs bathroom. My mother didn’t like her because she had too many tattoos. When we got back to school I stopped calling her.

Leslie was the one fat chick I fucked. I was getting over Lauren and met her at a party one night. She gave great head. She wanted to get on top during sex but I said no; I was scared she would crush me. I think she realized this and got upset. I came in her eye and she left crying.

Erica worked as a teaching assistant. My plan originally was to fuck her in order to get answers to the final. She was a real freak. She told me after a couple of dates that she couldn’t get off without being choked and slapped. She even liked biting and whipping. It wasn’t my thing but whenever I did it she seemed to be more into it.

Girl from the library. She let me slide on an overdue book. I took her out for coffee and on the way home she gave me head in the car. We fucked in the parking lot. I never saw her again.

Patrick Trotti is a 24 year old native New Yorker pursuing a degree in creative writing. Despite wanting to fall in love he's still incredibly scared of commitment. One of his favorite words is bloviate.

Two Poems And An Anecdote

2010-07-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

by Joseph Hargraves

First Orgasm

My first orgasm was spontaneous, intense. I was in first grade in a very strict Catholic school. The Nuns carried hand "clickers" to make the clicking sound to audibly warn us of their awareness. We were each given a box of small squares, each with a letter on them, and a board to spell out words with the squares. The Nun left the room. I accidentally knocked my box of letters on the floor. I was terrified, picking them up as quickly as I could. I was on the floor when the nuns clicker went off, she was right outside the door. I started cumming, and cumming and picking up the letters.

Then every day I would drop my box of letters when the Nun left the room. It worked for a long time- but due to practice I got too fast at picking up the letters. I had to know there was a chance I would get caught. Knowing I was not facing a beating I stopped with the letters.

Pretty Legs

She walked the Park,
eyes straight ahead-
dress: ripped burlap
and safety pins. She
wore black boots
coated with glitter.
On the back calf of each leg
she had a tattoo of one
word of jail-house inked
letters: Fuck You.

Writer's Block

I put my dick into her cunt hoping
to trigger a poem I go up and
down thinking of metrics biting nipples
my heart's beating faster she's looking at
her cigarettes I'm not into it she's
pretending to come I'm thinking about
onomatopoeia I fuck her hard
I'm doing this for art she's my 20
dollar muse I pull it out and tell her
to suck it she's a compliant Venus
I'm thinking about AIDS her pussy stinks
she has track marks on her legs I can't come
she looks bored I get up pay and decide
to go home jerk-off and write a sonnet

Joseph Hargraves has been reading French poetry and writing a small essay on Shakespeare's first 20 Sonnets. His favorite philosopher is Ludwig Wittgenstein, so he has been catching up on reading him. But one of his biggest joys this week was taking 250 milligrams of Oxy-Contin and re-reading Proust's "On Ruskin and Others" (now more frequently referred to as "On Reading." It is brilliant, and explains his relationship to reading, and lack of relationship to the living.

Rebound

2010-07-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

by Isabella Ling

One of his roommates is sleeping on his right, his other roommate is fucking my friend on my left. I lie on his bed on under the blanket with him. We kiss without passion, without feelings. I can't feel his tongue, I can't taste him. I want to stop, I don't. He smells good, but his breath is rancid.

I am now naked under the sheets, as I know my friend is too. He climbs on top her, he made me climb on top of him. There is no blanket on top of me anymore. I am exposed, my breasts left hanging. I feel disgusted, ashamed and maybe a little thrilled that this is happening. Fucking someone who doesn't have his own room, someone who can't be bothered to pull up the blanket over me to respect my privacy and modesty. Yet, what modesty do I have when I chose to do this, right? Choose to fuck someone beside my friend, to see my friend's legs bend at awkward angles as she moaned and groaned.

He pushes himself into me, I hardly felt a thing, not because he is small, because I am accustomed to a bigger size. There is no foreskin, which I like, it makes no difference on him. I start to rock my hips, half-heartedly. I tried not to think of him, him the with the foreskin and the bigger dick and the druggie eyes. He hardly moved, he wants me to do the work, I hate being on top and not having any help. Lazy motherfucker. He slips out and proceed to make me his dog. He starts to move faster, more furious. I make no sound, I thought to myself, please just let him come now. It went on for a long time, the sound of skin slapping against skin, the sounds of her repressed moans. I wonder if she is coming, I wonder if she peeped at me. I wonder, I wonder, is this torture worth it.

I hear them and I watch them from the corner of my eye. I think of him again, of how he forcefully kissed me when I was crying. I want to cry now, but his lips won't be here to meet mine. He told me he won't let me down, he told me see you soon, he told me take care when I left. I thought, take care and see you soon doesn't go together. I think of how he squeezed my throat when he was fucking me, I think of how I like it. Calls were left unanswered, what's the difference this time? Was if because I cried? Maybe he found another one to fuck. I think again and again, how he only looks for me when he is drunk, how open we are when we're drunk. I like the way we are when we're drunk, is it possible to be that way even when we're not drunk?

He takes himself out of me and lay down beside me, I finished him off because it was only polite to do so.

My friend walks to the toilet, they start to talk about us while I lie in between them. Useless bastards, I thought. Who is cheaper, you or me? This is supposed to make me feel better, what the fuck was I thinking? I am here to forget, to try and forget. She and I walk home under the gray morning sky two hours later, she with her first experience of fucking a white man and me thinking, won't you just call me, please? I smile bitterly as I remembered I have only known him for less than a month.

Isabella Ling thinks too much and does nothing. She hates herself for tearing when she wrote this. Her least favourite English word is take care. It basically means I won't be seeing you again or at least for the next ten years and which by then I won't remember you, so yeah, take care.

Writing Prompt: Every Day

2010-07-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

by Shannon Peil

Every few mornings I'll wake up from one of those dreams that are so vivid, so
true, that I can't stop the resulting panic attack for hours afterward. I
realized during one of these that I wasn't terrified of death, not really. The
heart palpitations and nervous sweats staining my bed weren't from the myriad of
gruesome endings I've seen; they weren't even from the thought that at some
point I just won't have any more time. The sweats were from the details before
that. The details depicting the wrong wife, the girlfriend I settled for, the
friends I wasn't sure why I was hanging around anyways. The bad choices, the
failed plans, the loss of hope. Yesterday morning I woke up just as I died of
old age, surrounded by my three snotty children, all looking a great deal like
my bitch of a wife. It was infuriating. It was terrifying. I had only a few
breaths left in this life and I spent them unhappy. I resented all of them, but
it wasn't their fault. It was my fault.

This morning, I drove to work and wondered if it was going to come true. I
wondered if maybe everything I was worried about was moot because you'd never
say yes anyways. I wondered if I wouldn't get the chance to have a bitch of a
wife because no one would ever call me their husband to begin with. I thought
about Wednesday. I wondered if instead I was going to die like I envisioned that
night, a car accident while driving my deadbeat best friend to his latest court
date; maybe I'd get t-boned in an intersection a little too late on a yellow
light. I wondered if the last thing I'd see was this fucking stoner leaned over
me with this dazed look in his eye like "What do I do? What do I do? I'm gonna
be late to court again."

But these aren't valid concerns, not really. It's very few who pick how they
die, and I'm certain not a single person in the history of humanity has been
completely content with how it went down for them. And every few mornings I'll
wake up to the stale scent of sweat and shivering, pick the blankets and pillows
off the floor, and think of you.

I think of you because no matter how fearful I am of the day I die and how it
happens and who I'm with and what I'm remembered for, my death won't be the
tragic one. I think of you because I can't stand the smell of hospitals. I think
of you because I can't even remember what your face looks like. I think of you
because every time someone says the word 'cancer' my jaw locks up and I become
fifteen again. I think of you because I'll die some day, too. I think of you
because I never said goodbye. I think of you because I'll never be able to.

Shannon Peil lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado. His work has appeared in a
few dozen online publications and a couple in print, but more notably he edits
for people who actually know what they are doing at http://amphibi.us. He gets
referred to as Ms. more often than not in e-mails.

SSF: What is one of your favorite words in the English language?

Shannon: Torrent. I like rain, and I like downloading things, and that word is pretty
looking. Torrent.

SSF: What is one of your least favorite words in the English language?

Shannon: Vagina. There is absolutely nothing attractive about the word 'vagina' or
'vaginal' that does justice to the description of a hot cunt. It is unfortunate
that my favorite body part is named something I shudder to say.

SSF: What are your favorite kind of sneakers and why?

Shannon: I'm a product of the '90s. I still wear Vans. It's harder and harder every year
to find a pair I like, but Vans is one of the only skate companies still making
shoes that I can stand. It seems like there is this huge shift towards
multi-colored panels, ugly low tops and canvas (sorry canvas fans, they suck)
and thick, puffy sidewalls.

TEARS OF A TRUCKER

2010-07-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

by Martha Williams

The film drones on in sympathetic harmony with our day and I would have listened in another circumstance, but you are here. Beside me.

I down a whisky and hope the film will take a hold.

Men running. Guns. A door creaks and you are bound, so I dare to look at you. Shadows of running men sprint across your profile, the guns jump under your skin, the door freezes you, and all the while your skin shines, begging for me. No, no, it's not; I'm the beggar. I am a greasy trucker to your swan; biscuits and gravy to your Chardonnay. I want to watch you thrash and fuck and laugh, whereas I am sure you prefer flowers.

You slide a piece of popcorn past your lips. I want to grab a handful and cram it into my mouth, perhaps I want to ram my face into the bowl, shake my head and watch the pieces fly. Would that shock you? Not as much as the trucker. Because that's not how you know me.

To you, I am a shadow by a school gate, a reflection in the local pool, a vessel that once held your children's friends. I am the mirror that speaks in shop dressing rooms. I am as slim as you. I use the same perfume. The same shampoo. My lipstick is darker than yours.

I pass you a drink and you say, Oooh, great, I love you.
Your arms rest easy on my shoulders. Your smile laughs free. If my head were bowed, you'd lean into me and jog me back.

You say, he doesn't understand me.

And I think, but I do.

But I know you wouldn't understand me. I don't understand me. A girl with a face full of food. A trucker full of lust in a girl's shirt. A trucker with breasts that want to press against your own so hard that our bellies meet all the way down. A mouth that licks better than it kisses. Kisses better than it speaks. Bites when it can't do anything better — pass the bloody popcorn.

You stretch and hot, holy damn you throw your feet over my leg; just how comfortable are you there? I want to rip off those darned stupid socks and pull your jeans down so hard your ass falls off the couch. I want to grab you under your knees and plunge...

Tea?

What?

Or wine?

Whisky. For fuck's sake.

What's up?

I look at you. I've had too much whisky already; God knows what another will do. My eyes are melting. You say my name. I shrug, sorry. You pause, so I tell you I'm drunk. I always get maudlin when I'm drunk. You give me another whisky anyway, and I love you for that.

You flop back onto the couch. You lean your head against the same cushion as me and I feel your warmth through our hair. You flick the channels, that film wasn't so hot after all. I wonder, slightly scared now, whether you noticed me staring at you — but no. Our fingers graze each other's in the popcorn, and neither of us apologizes... but only because you haven't noticed.

An embarrassed guy on TV. You laugh. I smile. Part of me relaxes. This is OK. Two friends. Everything in common. This is just fine. Deep inside, the tears of a trucker wet places that only I know.

The guy on TV has trashed his car.

Shit car anyway, you say.

I shrug. The trucker is strangling my smile.

I never understood flash cars, you say.

Mmm.

What the hell's a car, 'cept a truck that never grew big enough. And you turn to face me.

And we smile girls' smiles that turn into big trucker grins and you're so right about the cars, I think, as you strip off those stupid socks.

Martha Williams likes the word ‘so’ because it makes everything more so, explains everything just so, and then asks, ‘so?’ and moves on. So... here’s Martha: www.marthawilliams.org

French Kiss

2010-07-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

by Michelle Elvy

The date began badly. First, she turned up her nose at my suggestion of sushi: “Ew! I want real food!” So we found ourselves at a picnic table eating hamburgers and fries, hers dipped in a large pile of blubbery mayo.

Back in the car, she switched the radio from Waits to Madonna. I thought about kicking her out right then.

But I’m a gentleman, so I suggested wine at my place (she was French, after all), but she said, “No, that’s boring,” and next thing I know we’re down by the lake drinking Jaegermeister. Jaegermeister, for chrissakes! Haven’t drunk that stuff since college. I managed not to puke this time, even when she said, “I’m going to fuck you now, oui?” What could I say? I was powerless in her hands, her mouth, her cunt. She scared the hell out of me, from her rock-hard nipples to her abundant thighs to her curious tongue. I envisioned news flashes next day: Culture Clash: Carniverous Frenchie Fucks Shy Biology Teacher Dead. She was all energy, grinning and grinding, sound and sexual fury. I ached for days, especially where my knee wedged into the dashboard. How she fit all those ways I never did figure.

I kept her number for a long time. “Call me,” she said as she slipped the paper into my jeans pocket. Not a question, more a demand. I wanted to, I really did.

Michelle Elvy lives and writes on a 43′ sailboat and is presently located in Whangarei, New Zealand. She has published stories about children, food, faraway places, motorcycling, dreaming big, and the kindness of strangers. Her recent fiction can be read at Metazen, Words With JAM, Like Birds Lit and 6S. You can find Michelle writing at Glow Worm, flashing at 52|250 listening at VOICES, or sailing on Momo. She likes the word blubbery, but she does not generally like things blubbery.

There Are No Answers

2010-07-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

by Sean H. Doyle

There are no answers.

A lot of people will tell you that there are all sorts of answers out there, floating in the ether -- just waiting to be snatched up -- but they’re making that shit up. There are no answers. I know this because I have spent the majority of my adult life waiting for answers to fall into my lap, as opposed to just going out there and finding them for myself.

Yeah, I’d call me “lazy,” too.

When you’re in your twenties, you don’t really care about answers as much as you care about fine-tuning those feral parts of you. The fuckery. The imbibery. Those parts are very important. When you’re in your twenties the most important thing you can do is slide your tongue over as many different body parts on as many different people as you possibly can. Race and creed don’t matter much, nor does sexual/gender identity, really -- just go out and get your fuck on. You’re never really going to know yourself until you find yourself in as many awkward sexual situations as you can fathom. Nothing tells a person who they really are like waking up in a trailer in the woods with four or five hunters and their wives, mountains of empty Steel Reserve tallboys all around and the smell of burning latex hanging in the air.

Not that you’ll find any answers there, either.

You might think that you’d be able to find answers in speaking with your fellow humans, but that would also be a fallacy. Talking to other humans about anything usually results in them unlatching the top on their secret box where they keep their wounded ego, and then they release that Kraken on you. Kind of like this, but different. Most other humans are just shells holding broken pieces of light. Worker bees. Drones in veal fattening pens, answering phones and stuck in traffic. When they get the opportunity to wax on about the answers, you’ll get hit in the face with their dreams, their fears, and the sudden realization of “I feel afraid that I will die while spending time with someone I do not like.”

Not an answer.

I once thought that maybe the answers were found in our blood. I was wrong about that. I cannot talk to you about what I found in my blood, because I promised I wouldn’t.

Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, New York -- where he now pays $11.50 for a pack of cigarettes. His favorite pair of sneakers ever were the pair of first edition Air Jordans he received on Christmas morning, 1985. Sean believes in working hard to get better, and most of his writing can be found on his site. Sean would also dig it if you followed him on Twitter, because The Angry Owl God knows he could use more friends in far-away lands.

American Blackout

2010-07-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

by Jackson Warfield

I went out to meet you

for a single beer,

america

but going out to meet you

for a single beer

is always

a great fool’s mistake

one turns into two

two into three

three into shots

and so on and so forth

and now

in the hungover morning

I can’t even remember

coming home

but when I see

the vomit

on the toes of my shoes

while my shaking fingers struggle

with the laces

I am reminded of a dark alley

with brick walls

and then

of a lengthy

one-sided argument

with the sad ghost of myself

and then

I begin to wonder

if I should regret being born

so damn you

damn me

and damn the blackout

my beautiful

american blackout

Jackson Warfield lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. If he could talk to any inanimate object, it would be the beer in his hand, so he could say to it, "you're about to go down, motherfucker!" You can find more of his work at jacksonwarfield.com.

Magic Mushroom Haiku

2010-07-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

by Clayton Loyd

desert night sky dream
thoughts mushrooming from the sand--
dude, we're tripping balls

my take on this is the kigo is magic mushrooms based on their natural cycle (although I'm not sure which season that is) and the dash functions as the kireji.

Clayton Lloyd is a former prosecutor (you read that right), musician, and general wannabe bohemian. His travel has spanned the globe and his idiocy (and tendency to hang around idiots) amazes people who believe that Darwinism or MENSA membership mean anything. He's been published in a few small journals, and featured in a couple of venues, mostly by his friends. This week he didn't drink more than six beers one day. That was awesome, and proves AA would be a waste of time.

Dear Television

2010-07-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

by Patrick Howell O'Neill

Dear television, a friend from whom I’ve grown apart,

I’m bombarded by light even when my TV is on mute and my eyes are closed. I can’t sleep well because I spend my days either staring at a brilliant light bulb at midnight or at a television screen where all the characters are only there to scare me. I envy people who are afraid of the dark instead, dear television, even though that’s obviously your doing as well.

I really don’t care for your apocalyptic bullshit, dear television, thank you very much. This apocalypse-porn fetish with Jesus and Islam and Jews and UFO’s and 2012 has got to be the saddest little masquerade for ratings since Seinfeld went off the air. Yes, yes, we’re all vain and think that we are going to personally witness the most significant event in the universe since Seinfeld came on the air and so I guess we deserve to get played for fools for your profit, but man is it depressing. You're the one spouting bullshit so that people will look at you, tele, be careful not to look in the mirror. If you don’t watch out, I’m going to throw you out of a window.

I didn’t mean that, dear television.

Dear television, you gave me the impression that alcohol was an integral ingredient for happiness. Now, I can’t get it up because I drink too much. My pockets are empty, so is this the moment when I ransack a pharmacy? My pride is drained and I don’t know who to rob to get it back. My love is a dead end and I told you I don’t care for your apocalypse so things are probably going to stay this way for a while.

Dear television, I won’t even bring cocaine up. Not as advertised, suffice to say.

Dear television, whenever I black out and wake up with blood on my face, there you are. Always, your speakers are blasting and you’re screaming an infomercial into m year. I can’t help but think you might be trying to assault me and take my money. Television, you’ve already taken mylove and my sex and my light. I don’t have any money, is that why I’m bleeding?

Dear television, if you’re trying to take from me, you’re wasting your time.

Patrick Howell O'Neill is from Brooklyn, New York. He's a lazy drop out with a lot of unconvincing excuses. He just wrote a book.