Wednesday, March 31, 2010

SANDY

by Jeff Chon

The man you’re with has
a type and you’re not it,
and everyone clucks
their tongues wondering
how he could choose those
others over you, as if
their hideousness was the true
crime and your refined
symmetry the only victim.

His painted ladies vicious
and sensual, grotesque and lurid,
revolting and seductive, distorted
like Egon Schiele heroines gnarled
and wrenched for all the boys to see—

None of them understand
love the way we do.
We are the last romantics.
We are the ones they ridicule,
we are the ones they pity.
We are the ones
who understand there is
no power white
enough no pussy
wet enough to make him want you.

So you and I will soar
above them waiting
for the chance to fall, hurtle
toward them as flaming dust, covering them
while they scream and burn
and curl up like spent matches.

Jeff Chon
lives and writes from the the beautiful South Bay area, approximately five minutes away from Charles Bukowski's grave. He was most recently published in Word Riot and edits the litblog vis a tergo, which publishes super awesome writers every first and third Wednesday. The last inanimate object he spoke to was the Bruce Lee postcard on his desk, which he has been speaking to on and off for as long as he can remember. The one thing he did this week that makes him proud is keeping this bio from slipping too far into self-parody.

OBSCURE BLOW JOB STORY #1

by Anon

I was sitting at work in my cubicle when a guy who worked near me, but was off that night, decided to IM me on facebook. After a few awkward minutes of trying to figure out what he wanted, this transpired.

Him: so.. what are you doing
Me: I'm at work dude.
Him: oh.. listen um
Me: Yeah?
Him: never mind i should go
Me: what
Him: i get really forward when im drunk
Me: oh
Me: i'm straight dude, sorry
Him: have you ever tried
Me: yes. and i'm flattered but no thanks
Him: what if i come down there and give you a blow job
Me: it won't work, I won't get hard. no hard feelings tho right?
Him: what if you tried to blow me
Me: i'm straight, why would i want to blow you
Him: i'll give you 200 bucks

Half an hour later, he was asking if he could kiss me, and I shrugged. I felt a little like I was the main character in Basketball Diaries, but I had no real drug problem, I just wanted the 200 bucks. He came quickly and left awkwardly. We have not spoken of it since, except once when he asked for another one and I told him "200 bucks" and he got mad.

Anon
is the third person representation of a writer who can't quite admit they gave a blowjob for 200 bucks yet. The one thing inanimate object he would choose to talk to is Margaret & Nancy's underwear, just to ask: "Thong, panties, or boyshorts?"

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Bob and Steve Coming Together

by David Backer

"Are we doing it today?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Absolutely."

"I mean really really?"

"Didn't I tell you we would?"

Bob had promised Steve that they would try it. Everyone was doing it. It was the hip thing for the gay living dead.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

Bob took his bleeding, leprous hand and wrenched it from his wrist. His veins dangled down like pieces of twine. Then Steve tore his own hand from his arm. Facing each other, Bob took Steve's wrist and gently screwed his own hand into the place where his lover's once was. Steve did the same. The couple stood together in a pool of their mixed blood, gazing into each others eyes.

"This is incredible," Steve said.

They proceeded to take each other apart, piece by piece, until they were a pile of pussing limbs on the floor of their studio loft. Then they put themselves together, mixing and matching their limbs and torsos.

"Yes," Steve moaned.

Bob took his arm and attached to one of Steve's arm sockets.

"Yes, c'mon."

Then Steve put one of his feet on one of Bob's ankles, fastening it.

"Oh God, yes..."

Bob took his right thigh and inserted it into Steve's hips.

"Yes, fuck, oh..."

Then Bob and Steve rose to their knees, holding each others arms. They shared a final embrace, putting themselves together until they were made of each other.

"Oh do it, oh, do it, yes."

Standing up, they were pieces of each other. They screamed.

"I'm coming!"

David Backer is the editor of fictiondaily.org, which is an aggregator site for online fiction.
SSF: What's one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
David: I watched a documentary about Chile and the founding of Pinochet's regime all in Chilean Spanish. That's a tough accent for me. All the words flow together. It's so smooth. Very different from the Quito accent, which is more like Kichwa. I'm going to see the second part of the documentary tonight.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Butt Sex

by Mike Meraz

dressed up like a tart
but the facade can only go so far
one day you will have to give up the goods,
the brains, the intelligent conversation,
unless you just wanna fuck
then we can work something out.

we sit by the rail
where the ocean lay,
talk about stupid things,
where you were born and that,
all I can think of is my truck
and you in it.
when I met you it is all
I had on my mind.

we walk over to the pizza shop,
didn’t you know pizza is the ultimate
aphrodisiac?
it is pre fucking food,
piled with ingredients
and toppings.

we don’t talk much,
you are very quiet,
I know this will not lead ANYWHERE
substantial
a way to a man's heart is through
his cock,
and we kiss in the truck
and you back up
against the passenger window
playing the victim,
I don’t care,
have your wayward fantasies.
it is not what I was thinking of
when I met you.

I just saw that body
and those eyes
and the way you looked at me
in the parking lot.

we left, held hands at the corner market,
exchanged phone numbers
and now here we are
a weekend later.

fuck, good times,
here in Los Angeles.
you and me
and nothing between us
but sex.

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.
SSF:
What's one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
Mike: I stayed in bed, all day, literally.

Unleash The Kraken

by J. Bradley

May 1, 1986

In the Dover Beach Community Pool bathroom, Nick Sawyer and Bill Blakersby made soup in one of the urinals using my Speedo. Our first grade class watched the bathroom door spit us out. At the twenty year reunion, most of them can't remember what happened from 11:30 am to 11:32 am that day.

February 5, 1993

Dare unzipped my fly to show the sleepover the truth. I sacrificed my deck of Magic: the Gathering cards to cleanse their memory. I didn't want to be known in high school as that guy who unleashed a sickly hydra in the halls at will.

March 16, 2000

Her tongue played my teeth like a flute as we kissed like leaking oxygen tanks in the rock garden. When the bicycle cops showed up, she threw her blanket on my lap like an attic.

January 1, 2009

After seven bottles of champagne, the four of us sweated like an SAT question. The other couple stopped ruining the green chair in our living room for a moment to stare at my fiancée and I through the warped glass of personal space.

October 17, 2057

My wife ordered the mortician to weld the fly shut, staple the pants to my waist until it was time for my last private dance in the oven.

J. Bradley is the author of Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books, 2009) and the Interview Editor at PANK Magazine. He lives at iheartfailure.net.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Alone

by Glen Binger

Your face is on fire. You’re sitting in your crowded living room and you’ve never felt so alone in such pain. The house party is finally starting to pick up but you’re too drunk to function. You had your own bottle of whiskey and consumed it in its entirety before everyone showed up, causing your face to swell and change color. It made you feel strong, inhuman. You decide the only problem is your increased level of intoxication. You can’t see. You can’t feel. You can’t talk. So when people come to thank you for inviting them, you give a nod and smile but they immediately see you’re drunk so they laugh and pat you on the shoulder. You drift in and out of consciousness for the next hour. Someone passes you a joint. Time passes by, you sober up a little bit and the first keg of beer has been kicked. You somehow manage to successfully rig up the second without vomiting Jameson everywhere. People cheer. For thirty seconds, you feel loved. You stumble back to your couch in the living room only to find that an attractive girl has taken your spot. You sit next to her and tell her you know Jude Law. She doesn’t believe you. You bluntly ask if she wants to see your genitals. She laughs. You don’t know why she isn’t walking away yet, but you aren’t going to question it. She asks you if you need a beer. Smiling, you say yes. She takes your hand and leads you into the bedroom. There is no beer in there. She takes off your pants and sees your genitals. Still no beer. She places her mouth around you. You forget about the beer. The earth stops spinning. You finish and say thank you four times. She smiles and tells you her name. Within seconds, you forget it and tell her you will Facebook her. You know she knows you’re lying. She knows you know she knows. She leaves and you take an Ambien, still without pants. You hear glass breaking downstairs, but you can’t find the strength to move your eyelids, let alone your limbs. You pass out, face down on the shag carpet beneath your roommate’s mattress with no pants on. You dream about The Great Scarecrow Revolution of 3015. When you wake up, you’ve somehow made it into your room. Three different girls are in bed with you, all naked. You’re wearing a t-shirt but still missing the bottom half of your wardrobe. You ask, “Is my face all red?” They don’t answer; they’re still asleep. You sigh. Somewhere, someone is in the exact same situation loving every second of it. Not you. They don’t feel this alone. You rub both hands up against the flesh of your face and it feels like fire. Eight thirty in the morning. You need a beer and more drugs.

Glen Binger likes to yell at clouds and wishes they had the guts to yell back. He edits the flash fiction magazine 50 to 1 and is a member of The Broad Set Writing Collective. Sometimes, he says naughty things at his Only Human blog.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

It’s Sex, Baby

by Jackson Warfield

I finished up

gave her one last ram

flexing every muscle in my body

making sure

every last drop went out

“ahhh!” I sighed.

“that felt pretty fuckin’ good.”

she collapsed onto the bed

and looked up at me

a coy smile across her face

“you like it?”

“it’s sex, baby. we all like it.”

her smile grew and she whispered,

“I like it too.”

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.

Friday, March 26, 2010

The Take Down


by W.L. Farrant


Detective Emily Taylor-Smith and her partner Detective Roger Anderson arrived at 2456 Livermore Crescent. Detective Emily Taylor-Smith was driving. She parked the car and turned off the lights. They watched the residence in focused silence. Inside Edgar Wayne Campbell walked around his living room, occasionally peering out; he pressed his forehead to the window and graced it with the side of his hand. The Detectives regarded this as his Nervous Salute. Edgar Wayne Campbell had stolen a Chevy Impala.

Taylor-Smith and Anderson loaded their guns efficiently and with purpose. They double checked the warrant, gave a couple of thumbs up, and walked towards Edgar Wayne Campbell’s house. They walked with very large important steps. The neighborhood was quiet except for the rhythmic flicker of a broken street lamp.

They knocked on the door. Edgar Wayne Campbell opened it. Detective Roger Anderson asked him his name and Edgar Wayne Campbell told him. Detective Emily Taylor-Smith took him down, cuffed him, and read him his rights. Anderson stepped on his back forcefully.

The Detectives roughed him up a bit, producing blunt force trauma to his face and upper arms. Detective Emily Taylor-Smith had cuffed his hands to his feet and then to the frame of an old couch. The Detectives recklessly placed the couch cushions around the room. Then they drew the curtains.

Detective Roger Anderson and Detective Emily Taylor-Smith sat on the black velvet love seat across from the hog-tied Edgar Wayne Campbell.

There was a long silence. Edgar Wayne Campbell was sweating.

The Detectives locked lips, French kissing; it was loud and wet. Both Detectives had one eye on Edgar Wayne Campbell.

Detective Emily Taylor-Smith stood up and wandered around the room. She found Edgar Wayne Campbell’s record collection and flipped through it. There were about thirty vinyl records in their cardboard sleeves. She took her time. She picked a record she liked and turned on the stereo. It was the Best of the Mills Brothers; four male voices filled the room with their jazzy, sensual swing.

Detective Roger Anderson removed his pants. He was wearing tight white underwear, Haines. His thick, muscular legs were exposed. Detective Emily Taylor-Smith took off her police jacket. This revealed her bulletproof vest. She approached Anderson, and while facing Edgar Wayne Campbell, leaned forward and touched the floor with her fingers. She spread her legs. She looked like she was doing early morning calisthenics.

Anderson intently groped Taylor-Smith’s buttocks. Then she slid down so that she was seated and her back faced him. Her legs pointed out straight forming an isosceles. Detective Roger Anderson massaged her shoulders while smirking towards Edgar Wayne Campbell and bopping his head lazily to the beat of Daddy’s Little Girl.

Detective Roger Anderson un-strapped Detective Emily Taylor-Smith’s bulletproof vest; she made a small whimper of affection. When the vest was removed she pulled off her blue police shirt with little struggle. The bra came off quickly from behind. Anderson removed it as if he’d just flipped a light switch. Edgar Wayne Campbell attempted to scream behind his duct-tapped mouth.

Taylor-Smith turned around to Anderson. She slipped off his pair of Hanes and serviced him. He placed his arms on the top of the couch gripping the corners with his hands. He was chewing gum.

Detective Emily Taylor-Smith stood up. Her pants fell to the floor heavily from the weight of her holster; she had undone her belt while she fellated Anderson. She slid her cotton Calvin Klein’s down smooth, tight legs and danced a little on the tips of her toes; she released her hair. She noticed Edgar Wayne Campbell had an erection.

Taylor-Smith sat on Anderson like he was a chair. They rode each other quietly to the whirl of If I Had My Way. Anderson placed his head on Taylor-Smith’s left shoulder, his hands firmly around her waist. The Detectives stared at Edgar Wayne Campbell.

When they finished Detective Emily Taylor-Smith and Detective Roger Anderson put on their clothes and embraced quickly.

The Detectives pointed their pistols towards his crotch; Edgar Wayne Campbell had wet himself. They laughed. And then they shot him.

The Detectives left Edgar Wayne Campbell bleeding and cuffed to the couch. They walked out through the still open front door, the refrain of Till Then escaping like smoke towards the evening sky.

William Farrant is a writer from Victoria, BC, Canada. This week he kissed a girl. And that made him proud.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Pussy Fiend

by wiredwriter

Sure, I come home drunk every night. Well, most nights. Like when I go bowling and get a bunch of beers and still make a fuckload of strikes. My girlfriend goes sometimes, but she don’t like bowling, just watches. She tells me I should join a league but fuck that, all that is is a crowd of fucking assholes who don’t know when to stop looking in mirrors.
So me and my girlfriend we go home and usually she wants me to go down on her. She wants me to eat her, lap at her like she’s a bowl of milk. She lets me spread her legs as wide as I can get them and she raises her arms over her head and watches me while I eat.
But I ain’t here to talk about that. What I really wanted to say is that I don’t understand too much about anything, and when someone tries to explain something it takes me a long time to comprende. No, I ain’t stupid. My IQ is higher than most, but listen, you and me both know the world’s a complicated place and there ain’t no one alive who can fully explain everything about it. I mean, look, I know this is a, what, a clichĂ©, but why IS grass green? And what the fuck is green? What the fuck is color itself?
I like to bowl and come home drunk and eat my girlfriend’s pussy. I guess this is all I need to know.

wiredwriter hails from Atlanta. His collection of short
fiction, Fighting Off The Sun: Stories, Tales, and Other Matters of Opinion, is available on Amazon. His work has appeared in several print and online literary journals, including FRiGG, Johnny America,Origami Condom, Calliope Nerve, The Legendary, Opium Poetry 2.0,Target Audience Magazine, Spoken War, Pulp Metal Magazine, Weirdyear and Fashion for Collapse and is the editor of his very own ezine, Negative Suck. If he could talk to an inanimate object, it would without doubt be his personal computer. One thing he is proud of doing this week is writing two pretty good poems.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Prof. Guildenstern

by Nathan Tyree

With his broken wrecking ball teeth
and the sliver of night that razes and rends
and shaving in darkness at the sight
of deaths that wait and wait and weep
for the long, slow instant that cannot
no, that could not, that isn't that wasn't
until the iron bends and the carbon breaks
and the locomotive, off the tracks at last
steams out of the distance and falls
like Icarus into the yellow orange sky
and his tenure is denied

Nathan Tyree is the editor of Trick With A Knife. His fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in places like No Colony, Gustaf, The Broken Plate, Slingshot, Edifice Wrecked, Corpse Fuck and many others. He has knives. The inverted wheelbarrow is his least favorite sexual position.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Touching The Last Unicorn

by Aaron DiMunno

With a click of the mouse I have secured my room at the motel and drive straight from work. An hour of dark wind-blasted radio and a barely containable contentment.

Roll my car slow into the tall grass along the edge of the little road that cuts behind your mother's house. Kill the headlights and check the rear view to see if I might illuminate the light loping of your exquisite elven shape in red brake light. Let the pedal out and it all goes dark. The convertible top is down and I just stare up at all those stars.

There's a stream somewhere. I can hear the white noise of moving water. My heart is pounding like someone just put a gun to my head. The cell phone is quiet and dark in the cup holder. I called you just before I parked but you didn't answer so I hope you know I'm here.

The frogs are peeping and the crickets keep rubbing their wings together everywhere in the dark. I bet you're delivering a delicately crafted excuse to your mom. A reason to leave out the back door for the night. I'm prickly and itchy in my seat. The sky is too big and heavy over me. I want to scream out or jump from the car, abandon it and sprint down the crunchy grit of that country back road.

Until you're in the car kissing me anything could go wrong. I shouldn't be here anyway. Your brother is my best friend. We sucked each others dicks just to see what it was like when we were not much older than you are now. Seventeen.

I am ten irreconcilable years older than you. Your mother could catch a whiff of something amiss and decide to keep her beautiful daughter in from the world. Or come out and find me. Your uncle is chief of police where the motel room is reserved.

I flash the brakes again and the mirror is clear behind me. I let my foot off the pedal about to give up. Peel out on the gravel and be gone.

But just before red goes back to black your long silhouette slips into sight. A nymph emerging from the forest to be with me. A forbidden mythical creature for a mere mortal man. It's like being allowed to touch the last living unicorn.

Then you're in the car and your lips are a softness to suffocate me. I can't catch a breath. Your caress is light like a blade of grass traced up my arm. I want to cry. I want to pour everything I am into you and fall to the ground in a mush of my own shit. There is nothing else that I want. The stars are gone and the sky is blank. Crickets have no wings and frogs no peep.

I push the little sports car through its gears. Your hand is on my thigh making it tingle. The the wind is rough and hot and thick. Your long hair is a maelstrom. It whips your face and makes you squint but your smiling. I'm already frightened. How will I ever feel so alive again?

Minutes from the hotel a police car lights up behind me. It's your uncle and I'm going to jail now. You and I smile at each other anyway and you slink down in your seat.Your hair falls to shield your face.

I don't know what your uncle looks like so I'm fit to piss until the officer kindly reminds me to turn on my headlights. He tells me that those little orange ones are called parking lights for a reason. I've got to be sweating like a bank robber but he leaves it at that and returns to his cruiser.

The hotel is quiet and the man at the front desk keeps shifting his eyes from me to you. I don't know why you didn't stay in the car. I wonder what he's thinking. Either trying to guess how old you are or how your nipples might taste. But then it doesn't really matter because he hands over a white plastic card with a magnetic strip that opens a door to a room with two beds and now I will have you all to myself.

We fall into the room kissing. On the bed with your shirt off and your hair everywhere you ask me if my middle name is Gipetto even though you know it's Giuseppe. Stupid shit like that makes me love you. But you won't have sex with me.

You make hand jobs exciting again. You rub that spot under my nuts with perfection. Moan and grind on my erection. When my fingers are inside you, you wonder aloud how they can possibly be so smooth. Computer hands. Then we come. One after another. Bang. Boom. Breathe.

Two pairs of sunglasses from my bag for us and you pack your bowl. Then we stand on the slanted hotel toilet exhaling into the dusty ceiling vent. We can hear phantom toilets flushing in the darkness.

Then it's out into the hall with our hidden eyes. A weekday night in a place that's slow on the weekends. No one is anywhere. The fluorescent tube in the vending machine is blown. What scattered snacks are available look left over from the '70s.

We take my car down the strip for snacks at the Sunoco. I watch you walking the aisles in your sunglasses and school girl skirt and pretend that I'm there paying for gas. I study your shapes and try to memorize them as if you're yet another painfully beautiful girl I'll never see again.

On our way to the car a group of men in a grimy truck loaded with landscaping machines crane their necks to watch you go by. I feel sorry for them because they're just getting gas completely mortal while I'm invincible.
The room reeks of weed when we return. We smoke more and undress. Eat our cookies. Split the shitty white headphones that came with my iPod and sing along naked in bed together. I feel like I do in dreams where I can fly.

When you go down on me it is like no other. Hot melted electric butter on my dick. I remember your legs at the Sunoco, the round of your breasts against your shirt. When I go down on you you ask politely with a please for me to fuck you. I try but you keep changing your mind.

I think about the age difference. I love you like a sister and I want to fuck you like a fantasy. But we're in different places you say, too far apart. It makes me want to throw up but I have to agree.

So you left for college and found another guy my age and we don't talk much anymore.

Aaron DiMunno lives in New York City and pays too much for rent because it feels like home. He had a cat named Moochie LaRue but she died. Aaron enjoys camping every once in a while but he thinks each time that he should do it more often.
SSF: What is one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
Aaron: I finished this story.

xoCupcakeox

by Sean H. Doyle

The girl on the screen goes by the name of xoCupcakeox.

I know this because her name is displayed beneath the feed for her webcam.

She is sitting there in a bikini top and drinking a Mountain Dew, smoking.

There is a chat window to the right on my screen, and someone named Guest132127 has just typed “do u fist bb?” into the box. The girl looks at her screen, wrinkles up her face, and shakes her head “no.”

There are 11 people watching xoCupcakeox right now. Six of them are guests, and five of them have random nicknames like “jammer2012,” “hard-n-heavy36,” or “ucallmedaddy.” You get to create a nickname for yourself when you buy tokens and become what they call a “Premium Member.”

My nickname will remain secret. Let’s just say that it is far more inventive than the ones I just rattled off.

The girl on the screen, xoCupcakeox, is listening to some weird Arabian-sounding pop music. I click on her profile, and the information is a little bit jarring at first.

She lists her age as twenty-one, but looking at her, I would guess her age to be around twenty-seven or thirty. Much like an old-school Playboy Centerfold Bio, there are fields of information about xoCupcakeox. She lists her favorite animal as a lemur. She says she likes all music other than country. She lists her hometown as Orlando. She says she has never experimented with drugs, even though in watching her on her camera feed, there is a large black light poster of a marijuana leaf in her room. She has a cat named Osiris.

Everything seems manufactured to not upset the men-folk who come cruising around to look at naked women.

Back on her camera feed, xoCupcakeox is glaring at the screen. Guest132569 has started flooding the chat box with random queries like - “show pussy bb,” “smile we r hear to c ur tits,” and “dun b such a bitch bb show us ur pussy.”

The rub, is that “guests” have no tokens, which means xoCupcakeox cannot receive any money for doing any of the lurid things that Guest132569 is begging her to do. His pleas are meaningless, yet relentless. xoCupcakeox shifts uneasily in her chair, twirls a finger into her hair, pulls one breast out of the bikini top for ten seconds, and then blows an awkward kiss at the screen.

In the header of the chatbox, she has typed the following:

“TITS - 50 TOKENS. 200 TOKENS - I GET NAKED. 500 TOKENS - I MAIL YOU MY DIRTY PANTIES.”

She moves slightly in front of the camera now, and behind her is a small bookshelf. I expand the screen to make the image larger, to see what she has on her shelves.

As soon as I see Jonathan Safron Foer’s name appear on a binding, I quickly close my browser.

Sean H. Doyle lives in Brooklyn, NY. He writes all day but never submits anything. He likes to walk his dog at odd hours, and he smokes too much. His least favorite sexual position is one that involves eye contact. His cliche sexual fantasy consists of the following: two dwarves, a giantess, a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, lubricant, a Polaroid camera, and a case of silly string. What? How is that not cliched?

Monday, March 22, 2010

Internet Porn

by Steven M. Grant

Power on

(thump thump)

boot up

(thump thump)

0-ICU-812

*enter*

click/click

(thump thump)

http://www.chickswithdicks.com

*enter*

Streaming

video connections

and tumescent

blue screen love

Grip and click

unzip and grip

mouse pad palm sweat

rhythm and beat

repeat

repeat

Steven Marty Grant is a hospitality sales professional living and working in New York City. A former journalist, musician and slacking underachiever, his poems have appeared in The Writer, Spring Harvest, The Ampersand (&) Review, The Melancholy Dane, The Flask & Pen, VVC Drama & English Literary Journal, Vivid Online Journal, Drink This Cola, Urbanality and any web site with low enough standards to accept his work. His first volume of poetry, Another Hotel Room, is currently languishing, unsold, at Amazon.com. Steven graduated from a school you’ve never heard of and had so many majors that even he is confused as to what his degree is in. He is married to a wonderful, patient woman and has the most perfect daughter any man could ask for. His least favorite sexual position is receiving.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

What She Tells Herself

by xTx

When he waits until the kids go to bed before making you learn your lesson; that is love. When you don’t press charges because you started it even though you had to get four stitches in your scalp; that is love. When you do everything he asks without opening your bitch mouth; that is love. When you buy the beer that is on sale instead of his Miller High Life and he only throws the empties at you; that is love. When he swears this is the last time and he is sorry and he picks you up and puts you back in the car; that is love. When he cleans up the blood after the punches; that is love.

xTx writes more effed up shit than this so she apologies for not coming through. Her least favorite sexual position is rape which, coincidentally, is also her cliche sexual fantasy. You can masturbate to the title track of her free e-book Nobody Trusts a Black Magician if you want, or visit her blog at www.notimetosayit.com.

Lisa

by Michael Webb

I never slept with her.

Never.

She haunts my dreams. She inhabits the long, dirty corners of a boring afternoon, sneaking up on me when I don't expect it. She's there, reminding me of what I carelessly threw away. Young? We were both young. I used to think I could have it all.

Oh, did I want her. She let me see her body once, incredibly shyly and reluctantly. I consumed it visually-her teacup breasts, narrow waist, tiny hips, those legs with hypertrophic calf muscles. Her long, straight brown hair, and eyes that would rarely focus on me. I remember being together, my hand under her dress in the backseat. She was right-if she had let me get into bed with her, I couldn't have controlled myself. She said she would lose control, but that wasn't it. It was me. She was too much-it was too much-her beauty, and her vulnerable nature, stirred deep feelings. I wanted to take her, and I wanted to protect her from being taken.

She danced. She taught dance, and performed it, in a little studio near where I worked at the time. I would walk over there and sit in the tiny office, watching her in the tight dance clothes, watching her flex impossibly, staring at her near nakedness. Her muscles bulged, and tendons stood out like cords in her neck from the unforgiving perfection of performance. The office smelled like women, hot and stuffy and hormonal and achingly real in the back of my throat. It was all for her, waiting for the bonus of driving her home, 30 minutes through the darkness, listening to music, talking softly, smelling her sweat. I loved her smell.

I never slept with her. I touched her, I kissed her, I yearned for her physically and mentally. I worshipped her. Her body was a talisman, a precious object of my desires and affections. I threw her away, cowardly and cavalierly, for someone who eventually took my virginity. She has become, the one who got away, the one who never shared the ultimate prize, the great unanswered question that shadows me. Would a sweaty, fumbling awkward encounter on my bed have bonded us forever? Would it have ruined us?

I don't know. Out of all the women I have ever shared a moment with, she stays with me.

Michael Webb works with chemicals, and some would say they have affected his brain. Evidence pro and con available at www.innocentsaccidentshints.blogspot.com His cliche sexual fantasy is doing it with sisters.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Ars Poetica

by J. Bradley

I wrote this poem
after my lover choked me
and I forgot "snarf"
was my safe word.

J.Bradley's
least favorite sexual position involves anything that goes in his butt. He is the author of Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books, 2009) and the Interview Editor at PANK Magazine. He lives at iheartfailure.net.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

He'd Be Nine Now

by yt sumner

I’m the eldest of five.

We all have different fathers, and none of them stuck around past any of our first birthdays, which made me quite good at balancing siblings on my hips. There’s an art to it you know, making sure their little coccyx isn’t rammed into your hipbone but resting on the natural ledge just above it.

That’s what adults said when they saw me out getting groceries pushing a pram with a sister on my hip.

She’s a natural.

You get so natural you can even balance two at a time.

It made adults laugh when I tossed my head and announced

I’m never having kids.

They said

You’ll change your mind when you grow up.

I changed another nappy and muttered

Not bloody likely.

I was precocious.

I was at that age where I’d just learned to sway my hips in that subtle way and not teeter but stride in heels. He looked ten years younger than he was. He told me about his fiance a week before I told him I was pregnant.

That’s when I changed my mind.

The counselor at the hospital said

You’re mature beyond your years and have a very realistic view of single parenting.

That’s when I changed my mind back.

My mother said.

It’s not fucking cancer, just make up your mind.

When I woke up from the anesthetic a woman was sitting beside my bed holding my hand. She said

You’re a good person.

I didn’t know I was crying until she wiped the tears away and I don’t know if I imagined her.

For a year he haunted me. I didn’t believe in ghosts but there he was, everywhere. A woman came into my work one day and looked at me.

It’s time to let him go. He won’t leave you until you do.

I laughed like I had no idea what she was talking about, like we didn’t cry each other to sleep every night. But still I went home, and that night, just like she said to, I lit a candle and said

how sorry I was

I said

goodbye

and he left.


yt sumner lives in Melbourne, Australia and can’t let go of the fantasy that one day she’ll be chosen from the crowd ‘Dancing in the Dark’ style and be whisked off to some rock god’s love den. Yes, a den. She writes some – have a snoop at her blog and check out her latest postcard project ‘you and me’ http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com/.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Empty Canvas


by Steve Calamars


Miles Black stood in front of a large rectangular mirror hanging from the wall. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and nothing more.

In the reflection of the mirror he could see Jessica LeMone sitting on the bed with her legs crossed. She had light brown skin and long brown hair. She was in a pair of tight pink panties, a pink bra and pink high-heels.

“I love your back, Miles,” Jessica said.

“It’s just a back,” Miles shrugged, staring at her in the mirror, “I love your thighs.”

“You do, don’t you baby?” Jessica blushed, crossing her legs a little higher, displaying her thick brown thighs and soft almond-shaped calves.

Miles nodded.

“And your back is not just a back,” she said, “The way it comes out of your tiny waist and gets so wide and thick, it’s like a canvas back there.”

“A canvas?” Miles smirked.

“Yes, a big empty canvas,” she said, staring, “A wide muscular back looks so much more beautiful covered in scratches than a thin bony ordinary one.”

Miles smiled.

“I want to work a masterpiece on your back,” Jessica giggled and blushed. She fanned her fingers and flashed her long red fingernails like latex strawberries.

Miles turned from the mirror and faced Jessica.

“I’m something of an artist,” she said, sliding her finger in her mouth, winking and sucking deep.

Miles stared at her thick brown thighs and long red nails. He liked everything about Jessica and walked over to the bed.

Jessica ran her fingernails down his chest, along his abs and trailed off on his obliques. She unbuttoned his blue jeans and swallowed Miles whole.

He gripped her long hair. She dug her nails into his thighs and slightly choked herself.

Miles pulled her head back and kissed her.

“Stand up,” he said.

He turned her around and bent her over the bed. Miles squeezed her phat ass and pulled her pink panties to the side.

He slid inside of her. Miles gripped the waistband of her panties and began to pound against her pussy. He smiled as her ass and thighs jiggled. He leaned in next to her ear.

“You know I am going to come on your thighs . . .” Miles said. Jessica turned and kissed him. She reached up and softly squeezed his throat with her fingernails.

He slid out of her and spun her around. Miles pulled her panties down forcefully and allowed her to remove only one leg.

He pulled her panties back up around her thick left thigh.

Miles pushed her down on the bed and spread her legs. He slid back inside and gripped her curvy hips.

“My canvas,” Jessica giggled, biting his neck and running her fingernails down his back deep and slow.

The slight sting caused Miles to fuck her harder. She kissed him and dug her nails in deeper.

Miles squeezed her thighs.

Jessica dug her long red fingernails from the base of his neck down to the top of his waist.

Miles kissed her and pulled out. He came on her thick naked thigh. He stood and looked at Jessica.

She lied there on the bed. Her legs still spread. Her left thigh constricted in her tight pink panties and her right thigh soaked in a sticky white puddle.

Miles turned around and put his blue jeans back on.

“A wide muscular back looks so much more beautiful covered in scratches than a thin bony ordinary one,” Jessica giggled, wiping her right thigh with the panties from her left.

She smiled and stared at Miles’ back.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“Turn around and look in the mirror,” she said, “It’s beautiful.”

Miles adjusted himself and examined his back in the mirror. It looked like a relief-map of pink strips, red channels and tanned muscular lumps.

“I look like I have been flagellating myself or something,” Miles said, “Like a Catholic Saint doing penance.”

“You’re no saint,” Jessica smiled.

“Well, you’re no artist,” Miles said, walking over and kissing her.

He ran his rough hands along her soft thighs.

“I really love your thighs,” he said.

“I know you do, baby,” she said, “Now turn around, let me get a better look at my canvas.”

Miles smiled and turned.

She began to softly kiss each scratch mark and blow on each inflicted wound tenderly. Jessica ran her fingernails delicately back over her strokes and smiled at the sight of the wet reds almost popping off of the canvas and sticking to her fingertips.

Steve Calamars
lives in San Antonio, TX. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and works in a grocery store. His first poetry chapbook, American Violence, will be released April 2010 from New Polish Beat. His first collection of short stories, Six Years of Relative Happiness, is forthcoming from Calliope Nerve Media. He blogs @ dirtywordsoncleanliving.blogspot.com


Monday, March 15, 2010

Domestic Violence: In Your Mouth

by Anna Gray

"I'm not gonna hit you," he had me face down on the bed, his hand wrapped around the back of my neck, pinning me there, "I'm leaving."

I wasn't worried. I knew he wouldn't hit me, or else I probably wouldn't have started punching him.

After an 8 mile traffic pursuit (this I'd noted since I was pissed that I was wasting precious gas in my SUV) in our respective vehicles, we met up back in the driveway and apologized. He probably had realized that there was no escape from me since I was right behind him and apparently not afraid to run red lights. He also probably wanted me to quit (lightly!) bumping into the back of his Jetta at every stop. Anyway, done deal. Fight resolved. Not.

Back upstairs in the bedroom he sits down with my laptop. No problem, I'll watch some TV.

"Uh, I was watching that."

This is where I fucking lose it. No dude. You can not be on the computer AND the TV. Small argument ensues.

I'm sitting at my vanity with my back to him and all my makeup, perfumes and hair products are lined up at my disposal. And I'm getting violent again. I take my deodorant and without looking chuck it over my shoulder at him.

"What the fuck, bitch?"

This elicits a response from my can of hairspray. It hits the wall behind him.

"You're a fucking psycho!"

Keep talking and I'll keep throwing shit. A glass bottle of perfume sails over my shoulder.

"Owww!! My fucking ankle!"

The one with the metal plate in it? I really hope so.

Before I can fire another missile I've been pulled backward out of my chair and am facedown on the bed again. FUCK.

I don't know how, but we are able to calm down and start talking. What are we doing here? and blah blah, etc.

Eventually, I ask, "Do you really think we should be together?"

He thinks for a minute. Then, "I'm starting to think maybe I could just as easily be single and try to fuck some 18 year olds."

I have the exact opposite reaction to this than anyone would likely anticipate. It makes me HOT. I mean turned ON. Hornier than a drunk 15 year old virgin. Before I know it I'm overcome with images of some hot, slutty, young BITCH going down on him, bending over for him and riding him.

I'm firing off questions about who, what, where, how. He knows I get off on it so he indulges me and even throws in a true story about a 25 year old that wanted to sleep with him when he was 17.

Yeah, this really gets me going. While he's talking I'm rummaging through my clothes, the closest ones to me. He watches me slip on a hot pink silk thong, 4 inch black heels, and a mini-dress, which I hike up high. I strut around for a minute, bend over a few times. We start making out. I'm psyched that we're playing dress up, but this is lacking. I want a serious game of pretend here.

"Go in the kitchen," I tell him, "and when I come out, you do NOT know me."

I change my outfit. Same thong, same heels but this time with tight, short black shorts and a too-tight, low cut tank top. My thong is hanging out above my waist band and my nipples are slipping out with the slightest movement. My hair is in pigtails because I know he likes handlebars. Seriously.

Clearly only good things happen with me on my knees on the kitchen tiles in this get-up, but I'll cut to the chase.

The climax comes (again) when I'm on the bed laying on my back. I'm on the edge of the bed and he's fucking me standing up. My knees are up by my head and my pink thong has been thrown on the pillow next to me. This sex is great. Fabulous. Glorious. Man, am I enjoying myself.

"Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth, slut." He knows I like when he talks to me like this.

He's already tried to shut my up with his dick in my mouth. Or in the back of my throat is more like it. Now he's trying to cover my mouth with his hands but its not working, I can slither away. He even tries plugging my nose... I don't know why but I like it.

"He's gonna fucking hear you!" he hisses. I like how he was added an imaginary person that might hear us into our game of pretend.

I don't care, I'm loud and proud. He starts fucking me harder, harder, harder. His hand comes down on my mouth. My pink silk thong is balled up in his fist. When he shoves it into my mouth I can smell and taste myself on it.

His hand over my mouth keeps it in there while I come, my cries stiffled.

Anna Gray works at a grocery store by day and fucks froggy style by night. She lives in Amity, Oregon. This is her first published piece.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Bruised Ego

by Mel Bosworth

“What else can we put in there?” asked Freddie. He was forty years old and balding, but he hopped from foot to foot like an overexcited teenager. Jamie, on her back, swiveled her hips and the kielbasa popped from her hairless snatch. She moaned and cupped her breasts.

“Go wookie wook in the fwidgie fwidge, Fweddie,” she cooed.

Freddie licked his lips and ran to the kitchen. Jamie sat up on her elbows so she could admire the 16” kielbasa Freddie had worked inside of her. Her legs still trembled from the orgasm. Freddie returned with an armful of vegetables.

“Did you wash them?” asked Jamie, breaking character. The baby chatter was for play, but her real voice was for business. She didn’t want dirty vegetables going up her vagina, even if they were wrapped in extra-large condoms. Freddie nodded stupidly.

“Can we try the cucumber first?” he asked.

Jamie stretched out on her back and closed her eyes.

“Wokay, Fweddie. Put that big bad cucumber in my wittle bitty coochie.”

It had been Freddie’s idea to try food play, and although Jamie was hesitant initially—Freddie seldom had very good ideas—she loved it now. She spread her legs wide and felt the rounded tip of the cucumber push inside.

“Go swow, Fweddie,” she instructed, feeling her walls expand. Freddie giggled uncontrollably.

“This is making me so hot, Jamie.”

When she was close to orgasm, Freddie slipped out the cucumber. Jamie pouted.

“Finish me with that big cucumber, Daddy,” she pleaded. Then she felt something hard and pointed working its way past her labia. Freddie panted.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.

Jamie, eyes still closed, switched her tone again.

“No carrots, Freddie!”

Jamie felt the carrot abruptly retreat. Freddie slammed the door on his way out.

Mel Bosworth writes the clean, but he's not scared to write the dirty. It's all words, it's all fun. Visit him at http://eddiesocko.blogspot.com/

Friday, March 12, 2010

with friends like me

by A.g. Synclair

my drinking buddy

got piss drunk

lost

his erection

his desire to fuck

and his dinner

before

passing out

and hitting the floor

with a dull

sickening thud.

So we drank his Jack

his convulsions

made me queasy

but she

smelled like sex

and he

wasn't dead

so I grabbed the bottle

put my hand

between her legs

and led her to my room.

© 2009 A.g. Synclair

Thursday, March 11, 2010

February, 1987

by A.g. Synclair

She had too many tattoos. Enormous, ugly Rorschach blots on her outer thighs, covering her back, her ass, her paunchy stomach. Sometimes it turned me off, all that ink covering her thick skin, but I fucked her anyway. She called the radio station one night. She told me she was twenty-four and home alone fingering herself to the sound of my voice. I ran the board, reading live commercials and weather forecasts during breaks from six incessant hours of syndicated right wing talk radio. We talked for a while on the studio hot line while I stacked carts for the morning guy. When my shift ended at six I drove crazy mad, high on pussy talk, to her dirty apartment near the skin district. We fucked until ten-thirty. Afterward she made chunky black coffee and smoked brown cigarettes that she'd stolen from the bodega downstairs. Her roommate ignored me, the way she did every Sunday morning after that. Sometimes, when Anna and I were in her tiny bedroom having sex, and those shitty tattoos threatened my erection, I closed my eyes and imagined her roommate walking in and watching us, watching Anna's mouth as she sucked me off, watching me cum on Anna's thick belly while she smiled at me from the doorway with both hands held tight between her legs. When I drove Anna to the hospital with stomach pains one morning, her roommate finally stopped ignoring me long enough to pull me away from the nurse's station and eviscerate me with her fierce, hollow eyes, before informing me that Anna had contracted chlamydia, and that it might be wise to have myself checked out as well, as chlamydia is one of those “gift's that keeps on giving”, and can lead to sterility in men. I never did have myself checked out. Later I found out Anna was only 17. I quit the overnight shift.

Ag Synclair's
work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, poetry publications, anthologies, and chapbooks, both online and in print. He drinks way too much coffee, suffers from long bouts of writers block, and greatly admires the work of Billy Collins and Charles Bukowski. He lives and writes in Western Massachusetts.
© 2009 A.g. Synclair

Monday, March 8, 2010

Red Blinks

by Shannon Peil

I jerked off to you again today. I had been trying and trying and trying to cum for quite a while and you just kept popping into my head despite how hard I was trying to focus on something else. I just couldn't shake this undeniable want for you and ended up climaxing to that first video I ever recorded of you. The one you didn't know about until a few days later, catching a blinking red light from a webcam. I remember the vodka and the percocet, the ecstacy and the surprise at your reaction. Your anger flared up for no more than ten seconds before you were watching it with me, rubbing me through my slacks. It wasn't long before we were snorting rails and fucking while watching ourselves fucking from the day before, and so on until a week later we were fucking while watching ourselves fucking watching ourselves fucking and I swear to god that percocet made me Superman. Superman with a four hour hard on and a bloody nose.

Shannon Peil gets published some times and rejected others. He edits for people who actually know what they are doing at http://amphibi.us.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

How's a girl gonna jizz in a dishwasher?

2:28 PM Michael: I am having another shitty day
me: what do you think would happen if you were to jizz in a dishwasher slot where the detergent goes and then hit start?
Michael: it would wash dishes with jizz water
2:29 PM me: but would they be sticky?
2:31 PM Michael: I assume it would depend on the amount of jizz
me: and would it leak out the bottom? because you know how it fucks up dishwashers when you put normal detergent in them?
that'd be a fun way to get revenge on someone.
2:33 PM Michael: hahaha, but how would you be alone long enough to masturbate into someones dishwasher?
me: no not me. a guy duh
2:34 PM Michael: that's what I mean. how is a girl gonna jizz in a dishwasher...naturally a guy
2:35 PM me: well the girl has to be willing
the guy jizzes into it, they wash the dishes, then eat off of them
2:36 PM me: or the girl has a guy jizz into it, washes the dishes and then has her ex or whatever over and feeds him a romantic meal on the dishes. i would like to see it done in a movie
Michael: that would be hilarious. I think the conversation about doing it before the actual act would be the funniest
2:37 PM me: i have been thinking about it for a while.
me: how much money would you eat your best friend's cum for?
Michael: I would not suck my best friends cock so why would I eat his cum
me: eating cum is easier. like on a cracker.
Michael: $100.
2:43 PM me: do you think anyone has ever came in a dishwasher before
Michael: I am sure someone must of right? but i have never heard of it before
2:44 PM Michael: do you want me to cum in your dishwasher?
2:45 PM me: apparently.
Michael: I can do that. I am semi hard thinking about it
2:46 PM me: thinking about what?
2:47 PM Michael: jizzing in your dishwasher
2:49 PM me: i just wanted to see you write it!
so how would we do it?
2:52 PM Michael: you blow me in your kitchen and I bust in your dishwasher
3:03 PM me: yeah but i think it would be funnier to watch you jerk off into it. the scene in my head is like an abusive thing where the guy does it and forces the chick to eat off the dishes.
3:04 PM Michael: I could do that too....although I like being abusive while you give me head too.well if you want me to jerk off into your dishwasher, just tell me when.
me: i'll wait till i'm out of detergent. so let's just do it and then see how the dishwasher reacts
Michael: cool
3:05 PM me: no i want to make you come with my mouth no, close to coming
and then you finish it off in the dishwasher
Michael: sounds great
me: you're going to have to kneel down
Michael: not a problem
3:06 PM me: so that's my master 2010 plan.
Michael: are you going to be home tonight?
me: maybe
3:07 PM Michael: I cannot stand up from my desk right now
me: why?
Michael: hard on

By Nancy Wheeler

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Sephora Man

Some Sundays I walk downtown to Sephora and think about stealing things. Sunday is a good day to go there and steal things because it is packed. Packed with girls with pert tits and small asses. Their mouths are many shades of reds and pinks and they are open-- just so-- making these round O’s while they put on lipstick in the circular mirrors. Their jaws drop even more when they put black or brown mascara on those innocent eyes.

I’ve been getting obsessed with watching the Hispanic security guard and wondering what he thinks about his job. If he gets so fucking turned on and hard by these girls; even though their batty mothers are there too, even though he is old enough to be their grandfather, even though he is at work, and even though he has been working there for seventeen years.

I am not kidding. I know this because I asked him. I was curious and I had drunk six cups of coffee. I hadn’t stolen anything so I wasn’t rushing or paranoid, and he gave me this warm smile on my way out into the rain, and I smiled back and asked him how long he had been working there and he said seventeen years and counting and I tried to mask my disbelief and disgust because I mean who am I to talk, I’m a fucking babysitter. Then he asked me why I wanted to know and I told him it was because he was good at his job. He said that it was better than his previous job of scraping gum off of the floor at the Costco warehouse and I said it sure looked that way and he winked at me.

He has been part of the pornography that is Sephora for seventeen years.

Once my friend in New York told me he looks at girl’s hands gripping the pole while they are standing on the subway. He imagines the pole his dick and imagines those hands gripping his dick. Thinks about what they would look like. The different fingers, nail colors, skin colors, bracelets and rings.

I think the Sephora Man looks at these fourteen and seventeen and twenty-two and thirty year old wet and eager round mouths and thinks about how those lips would feel on his late forty-year-old penis.

They’d feel really amazing, naturally.

I wonder if he chooses one lucky girl a day and singles her out—takes mental pictures of her, checks her receipt on her way out, notes the color of lipstick that she bought, later draws a circle with that lipstick around his dick and pretends she was there.

The thought of touching her lips, her boobs and hips sometimes gets him so wound up that he either has to quick run to the bathroom and wack it or if he’s just like, god damn it, I have worked here for seventeen years, I’ll do what I want, and just blows a load in his pants.

I wonder if any of these girls ever get under his skin. If he’s like, oh, low-slung Levi girl is here and the large breasted redhead with bright green eyes is back.

He probably lets the sexier girls steal, even when he sees them blatantly do it. He lets them because he wants them to like him. And, if he’s honest with himself, he actually likes seeing them shove eyeliner down their little jeans towards their wet vagina's.

He sort of hopes that maybe on their way out they will lean in close smelling like five different kinds of tester perfumes and lotions and rub up against him and give his cock one hard stroke and they’ll say, “Hey thanks man. I really needed that mocha colored eyeliner and that berry lip stain and times are tough right now. You’re the best.”

I wonder if he thinks that he has the greatest and shittiest job in the world, the way I guess most of us think about our jobs.

If he’s like: wow, I get to look at open mouths and cute asses stick out all day and I don’t really have to do shit but stand here---but Jesus Christ, I work at a fucking MAKE UP store.

by Nancy Wheeler

Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy,
I was thinking a lot about you and how much you influenced my choice of men. I love men. I love you, and the difference between you and all the men I have known is basically nothing, except sex. They kiss me passionately and roughly, while you kiss me on the forehead. They touch me sexually and forcefully while you give gentle hugs. And when they spank me it is erotic, instead of for punishment, unless we are role playing. For laughs, they pretend to lick my insides out while restlessly using the Internet. You make silly knock knock jokes. I have become accustomed to extreme love making and little foreplay, but most of all I do love foreplay. You used to play with me as a child, without the erotic element. I love the way that men wrap their tongues around my clit and open it so incredibly wide that it gushes with wetness, white and thick. I love their heated pumping dicks inside of me, and there is nothing close to this that I could compare to our relationship. Oh daddy, how men are so confusing. When you are raised by a man who truly loves you, how are you suppose to differentiate between that and a man who loves your sex organs.
Love, Your daughter.

by Margaret Simon