Begin
Begin with a thing. Make it a sparrow. A sparrow clinging to the stem of an Easter Lily. Make the sparrow silent. We don’t want too many voices this early on. Let the lily speak for itself.
Enter
Now, enter. This is how things get going. You need a dog. This dog is red but the top of its head is blonde, bleached by the sun. The dog swims every day. Get that dog moving! Don’t forget about –more
COWBOY BOOTS
Sometimes an urge takes hold of us and pulls us onto the dance floor
even though we only want to sip our drink and observe.
I don’t mean one of those sudden, fleeting urges
like peeing off the back of the boat
or kissing the girl you’ve been stammering before
under a porch light that is being pecked by moths,
but an urge that leads to a life no one saw coming;
like leaving your comfortable –more
On the day we flee town, we will want the neighborhood to know what happened. We will tell stories about our stepfather to the kind and not-so-kind men on our street, to the cops who size us up to see if we are underage, turning tricks, will turn a trick with them. We will run door-to-door and confess to the rumors circulating in town. We will bypass the churches, the mosque and synagogue, and the –more
The paratroopers fall and as they fall
They mow the lawn. –Wallace Stevens
Everyone was talking about a philosophy of life. It seemed important and the kind of thing that could stand one in good stead for years to come. Things were falling apart. The ex: money again. No news there. My best friend Flipper was freaking out on me again. Two kids in need of school clothes and new footwear. And I had –more
We all live poorly here. Use mail-in rebates at the hardwood store, get drunk at Sammy’s on Friday nights, and let our children run around in their underwear in our front yards. They wave flags, swords, and guns, practicing for the coming days when soldier is the only job that comes with benefits.
We –more
Late but not quite midnight. Marina Melba stands on the communal balcony of the flats. She pulls a cigarette with elegance from a packet. Lights it without looking, eyes fixed on the balustrade and foggy sky. 31st December is the date.
Tess on her way to meet friends stops by the elevator. Pops out to the balcony for a second, –more
The hotel key was ours. A rectangular piece of hard plastic with the words PLAY SLEEP REPEAT on the front. New York City. That humid summer day when it rained frogs and people shielded themselves with their umbrellas, only to be pelted anyway. Four concussions. One death. And us? We were snug in our suite. Plush pillows, silk sheets, turndown service. A mini bar we emptied. We filled that hotel –more
We’re together again, three old buds standing in a dark closet at our thirtieth high school reunion. We can hear the eighties music from the auditorium one floor below us. What are we doing? I’d let Larry tell you, but he’s worried he’s having a heart attack. And Justin, he thinks the police will barge in any second. He’s already preparing a legal defense.
We’re still best friends, –more
Her hair sometimes sailed on her. She was a point in the distance, as if the entire universe had poured from a convergence. She thought, It’s just as well.
Hardwick understood her, if he were also sometimes spartan in the extreme, bare pots stored in bare unpapered cabinets. Once again, he watched as she was absorbed, turned to vapor in some other sphere. Her hair, taken –more
Parades always made her tired, so it wasn’t surprising that the assassin fell asleep on the roof.
As she napped, the roof became quite crowded.
A family of six had a picnic, fried chicken and potato salad. Their baby gummed lime gelato.
The super pretended to repair the cooling duct. His toolbox was full of ale.
An octogenarian who had learned to swim in the Baltic Sea leaped into the wooden water tower for her daily laps.
A boy wearing an aviator’s hat fed his pigeons. One of the birds, Charles, was worried about Amelia, his mate. She hadn’t returned from their afternoon flight. The boy understood, so he stroked Charles’ head and whistled, “Volière.”
The octogenarian climbed out of the tower only to discover that she had forgotten her towel. The family cleared their picnic and after apologizing for the crumbs and green stains, wrapped her in their plaid blanket. She invited the family, the boy, and Charles to her apartment for chocolate covered prunes.
The Super emptied his last bottle, closed his toolbox, walked toward the railing to take in the view and almost stepped on the assassin. He noticed her rifle. Italian. A Marinetti. He picked it up and looked through the scope. There was an old hen circling the building. The sky was melting like a Creamsicle. He clicked off the gun’s safety and tucked it under the assassin’s arm.
The assassin dreamed that she was a girl in her bedroom having a pillow fight with her sister.
Feathers fell through the air, ticking their cheeks.
–
Insomnia
My doctor recommended that I rent one of those birds trained to whistle lullabies.
I was dubious, but desperate.
On the drive from the rental place, Polly performed a beautiful rendition of “Scenes from Childhood” followed by Satie.
I was hopeful.
Once home, I broke her neck, plucked, cut, brined, basted and a few hours later: Perroquet au Vin! Lovely.
And you know what—it worked! I slept like the dead.
Of course, the rental place charged me a late fee.
Que sera, sera.
–
An Eel Soup Digression
Because the navigator didn’t understand that the crease in the map depicted a crease in the sea, the ship had to weigh anchor. The captain forced the navigator to row a dinghy through the line, to reckon its effects.
Meanwhile, in the galley, the cook was creating a bouillabaisse—conger eel, sea robins, fennel, cod bones, bouquet garni, saffron, mussels, olive oil, garlic, white wine, smoke of the afterlife, French bread, cayenne pepper, little neck clams, tomato paste, and Thibault, the very lobster that was conducted through the streets of Paris by Gérard de Nerval.
Concurrently, the navigator was remembering a poem about a boy who thought the crescent moon was a broken moon and the stars were its pieces. He could smell the soup. At least, he thought, as the water began to churn, I’ll have something good to eat tonight.
~
Peter Jay Shippy is the author of Thieves’ Latin, Alphaville, How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic, and A Spell of Songs. His 5th book, Kaputniks, will be published by Saturnalia Books in 2021. About A Spell of Songs, John Yau wrote: “One day, not long ago, Meret Oppenheim walked past Edward Hopper in Paris, and an electric current passed between, and from that current was born Peter Jay Shippy.…” Shippy has received fellowships in drama and poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2002 he won the Iowa Poetry Prize and in 2005 he received a Gertrude Stein award for innovative poetry. In 2009 Shippy received the Governor’s Citation for Outstanding Artistic Achievement. He has published widely, including The American Poetry Review, The Boston Globe, Iowa Review and Ploughshares. Shippy teaches literature and writing at Emerson College in Boston.
I’ve been reading Berrigan’s autobiography, as some of you know, the derring do of the radical Catholic priest who loved America enough to speak the terrible truth about America’s addiction to violence, racism, and war. And again and again, Berrigan tells of his mother, who steadfastly stood by him. “With her, a thousand difficulties did not create a single doubt.”
After his brother Philip was arrested for throwing human blood on draft files in Baltimore, while he himself was arrested in Washington during a protest against the war, Daniel called home. His mother’s calm on the phone touched him. He explained things, as best he could. “You mean,” his mother responded, “that you are out of jail and your brother is in?”
~
Glen Pourciau’s second collection of stories, View, was published by Four Way Books. His first story collection, Invite, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. He’s had stories published by AGNI Online, The Collagist, Epoch, New England Review, New World Writing, The Paris Review, Post Road,and others.
Maud Ellen materialized from the front yard and dropped into Uncle Walter’s chair made of plumbing pipes, the same chair my father hanged himself on. She had a Don Q and her Lark 100s.
“Let’s talk about bats, Mama,” I said, using the intimate to snag her attention. I was happy she’d come. I had to talk quick. Everybody in my family, except the dogs, liked flight.
“Bats?”
“I like bats.”
“I know nothing about bats.”
“Why not?”
“Bats are not something I am interested in.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think about them.”
“I do. Bats eat bugs. I don’t like bugs.”
“Yes, I suppose they do,” she said, puffing on her Lark.
“I bet they eat those catfish-sized cockroaches like the one flying around the chandelier in the front hall last night. Mamoo was so funny, shrieking and flapping her arms like she might fly, too, and you batting at the roach like a slugger. Would Uncle John really throw us out for breaking Mummy’s antiques?
Maybe we could trap a bat, bring it inside. Get it a bat house and a swing. Whenever those roaches come along, we’ll let it loose and watch as it sucks their necks. Or maybe it swallows them whole, feet first—the way the French do when they eat those little birds.”
Maud Ellen stirred the air, and almost blew me off the step. She stamped out her cigarette. “I’m going inside to eat a banana.”
“Don’t you think a bat would eat those bugs?”
“I have no earthly idea,” she said.
She practically flew up the steps. I jumped up to let her pass. The screen door slapped its frame. I wanted to tell her we wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore about bugs and Mamoo popping Phenobarb to calm down. As usual, I’d said too much.
In her hurry, Maud Ellen left her Larks. I sat back down, tucked my arms around my knees and practiced waiting again. This time I’d wait for a sign. The sky was fast disappearing around the arm of the oak. That’s when I saw it, a queer dark bird with a plaster-white face and eyes-as-blue-as-my-blond-headed dolls, flying in the yard. The closer it came the bigger it got until it got right up in my face. I opened my mouth. It glided inside. As high as a kite on white tabs, I unfurled.
~
An M.F.A graduate of Stony Brook University, Lucinda Kempe’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Midway Journal, Bending Genres, The Southampton Review, Elm Leaves Journal, and the Summerset Review. Wigleaf longlisted her micro fiction (2018 and 2019). Her fiction “I Became a Girl” was nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize.
Which makes me smile— maddening as my mother is, the way she’ll let fly some phrase like “loosey-goosey,” as if she’s a fifties housewife in a flowered apron, kills me.
So I press her. I want to know what other words she takes umbrage with.
She gives me a look to confirm that I’m not messing with her (my mother and I have minimal trust in each other), and says, “All right, what about gender? In my day, gender was a concrete thing that you just were. You all act as if it’s a costume you can just throw on. ‘Today I’m feeling like a girl.’ Gender is not something you feel!”
“Says the woman who tells me I ought to make an effort to look more feminine,” I say. “And what about your birthday twin?”
My mother hates it when I call David Bowie her birthday twin, though it is true they share the same birthday—same year as well as the same date. I realized this only after he died, and weirdly, this fact prompted me to call her when I heard the news. I took Bowie’s death hard. What my mother said: “You didn’t even know the man. It makes no sense to be so sad.”
Impossible to explain to her that as a kid, I felt more seen by David Bowie than I did by my own mother. Those long, dark hours in the garage, Bowie was who kept me company. I sang “Life on Mars?” to myself and the crickets.
On the phone that evening, I repeated “saddening bore” over and over again until my mother said, “Finis!”
Now she says, “His songs are nonsense.”
“And what do you mean by nonsense?”
My mother looks at me, again to verify that I’m not fucking with her, and apparently decides instead I’m a moron. She twirls one hand in the air, conveying dismissal. “Poppycock. Balderdash,” she says, and again my irritation at her dissolves in the face of her words. The fifties housewife with the apron morphs into some Victorian lord with a hooked, disdainful nose and a burgundy velvet smoking jacket.
Sometimes I think my mother and I would finally get along if, instead of trying to communicate, to explain ourselves to each other, we just sat across a table and occasionally emitted single words: “starship,” “pernicious,” “grasshopper.”
~
Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the Department of Literatures and Languages at Mills College. Her short story collection Undoing (2018) won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Her novel The Light Source is forthcoming from 7.13 Books this July. Her fiction has been published widely. She is the Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. www.kimmagowan.com
Michelle Ross is the author of There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You (2017), which won the 2016 Moon City Press Short Fiction Award. Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and other venues. She is Fiction Editor of Atticus Review. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. www.michellenross.com