issue 2.03 :: winter 2013

Cover art: Vitaly S Alexius

Contents

About the e-book version

Nicola Belte

Smoke Surfaces in Slumber

Aimee Bender

Faces

Carol Berg

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Sticks ________ Down The Wife's Throat

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Leads the Wife to the Sea

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Forgets To Tell The Wife

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Feeds The Wife

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Lays Down With The Wife In An Otherwise Empty Bed

Sarah B. Boyle

The Pig of the Secret

Flower Conroy

Angel of Meat, Eye of the Past

Conjurer

Unheeded Advice the Half-Blind Fortune Teller Gave at Consequence Fair

Hyperventilation

You've Been Bit by a Dangerous Snake

Mind Eraser

Roland Goity

The Secret of Sparkling Valley

Amelia Gray

The Picture Window

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

You'll Feel Better if You Make a List

Francine Makes Honey for a Man Named Frederick

Francine Believes Nightmares are One Way to Feel In-Her-Body

One Day We Will Want to Be Here

The Moment I Realized I Wanted it More

Kyle Hemmings

It Stays with You

Deep Rich Wish

Healthy Diets

.Lefty

Stephen Graham Jones

Easy Money

Erin Entrada Kelly

124 Was Spiteful

B. A. Krishna

Getting Smarter

Kassandra Montag

Hansel and Gretel Get Married

Fairy Tale for my Unborn Child

Asylum

Shannon Norland

A Winter Tale

Brandon Rushton

My Neighbor Loves Eagles but is Self-Conscious in the Study of Bald Things

Besides the Rest, the Forest Shows Signs of Tuberculosis

My Sixteen Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Five Nights with Jerry Sandusky

Melody Sage

Bebe

Ingrid Steblea

Figure A: Intraoral Shotgun Wound

The Honey Eater

The Cheshire Cat Speaks to Alice

Robert Alan Wendeborn

Eating Is, And Should Be, A Joyous Occasion

30,000,000 Miles From Anywhere

SWEDEN: IT'S MORE THAN JUST MEATBALLS

Someone To Stand In The Background

About the e-book version

In which we talk about our lofty vision of you reading our fine journal in the absence of an internet connection. On a plane to Paris, say. Or a beach on a secluded South Pacific island. Or maybe the power just went out. Or whatever.

In which we also talk about how we're starting to receive quality short stories on the longer side, which we worry about you having to read on that computer monitor you spend way too much time in front of as it is, but which we're sure you would adore on your Kindle or Nook.

In which we apologize for the lack of artwork and the omission of the Scary Bush section. Today's e-ink technology does no justice to images. The canonical version, complete with visual contributions, Scary Bush entries, recordings of author readings, contributor biographies, and bonus materials, remains online at menacinghedge.com.

In which we thank you again for reading.

Editors

Nicola Belte

Smoke Surfaces in Slumber

"Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is not quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr." Heinrich Suso

It seems to have been night for days, but now, I see sparks; infinity exploding across the blackness. I don't know if it's without, or within.

• • •

They took The Dragon's hands, his livelihood, like they did with the thieves, for taking what wasn't theirs. But I was his.

"Don't cry," I told him, silently, with the tilt of my chin and the clenching of my jaw, and the stone dust on his cheeks stayed dry.

You should have listened, they told him, as they took the axe to his wrists, as they made him watch, as they walled me up, alive.

• • •

The night that I was born, two workers on the cathedral fell from the spire to their death; their falling screams meeting my mother's shrieks like crows clashing in a folding sky; blood seeping into the sweat-soaked mattress as rain chased it through the cobbles.

I was a bad omen, they said, I should have been drowned, held in the freezing river until I was as bloated as their righteousness, as blue as the bruises on a sinner's whipped spine.

My mother heard, and she called me Hope. They hated that.

I grew like a pale flower on the moon, taller than the daffodils, but always orbiting on the outskirts; their eyes eclipsed by coldness, cataracts that concealed their fear; their superstitions stones that pulled down their smiles.

"Don't you have anything better to talk about?" My mother would ask them, pulling her arm around me, pulling me near.

• • •

They made me an anchorite in alabaster; made me a spectacle, sat me in the market square amidst the damp hay and the captured horses, and let my husband slap on the first layer of mortar.

"Gargoyle," he growled, starting at my feet, as the men jeered and the women hissed, growing louder and louder, all trying to drown out the din of their own whispering sins that would wake them up at night.

I was to be the thing that I was inside, distorted, twisted by animalistic desires, evil; all lascivious tongue and bulging eyes, my mouth a moue, spewing out the satanic lusts within me.

"Whore,' my husband said, spitting on the ground as he sat back to watch as the mortar hardened and set; as the sun silently blazed, the eye of a sultan's mute wife upon the concubine.

• • •

"He's a good lad" my mother said, the sheen of fever on her forehead; her words gambolling over each other like spring lambs, sensing the soft pad of winter through the fading forest. "I don't want you to be alone, Hope, when I'm gone."

I squeezed her hand, using the other to wring out water from the cloth that I pressed against her cracked lips.

"I don't love him," I said, simply, thinking of the clumsy butcher boy who'd follow me around with his lumbering gait and his ruddy cheeks; thinking of the way that he'd slide a blade through the belly of a sow, and never think twice about it.

"Marriage isn't about love," she said, and I nodded, pretending to understand what my heart never would.

She thought that nobody else would want me. I thought so too. Then.

• • •

"I don't know how to be a wife," I told him, staring out over the fields as his saliva dried on my neck, as his grunts echoing in my ears startled my dreams from the eaves.

"You'll learn" he said, gruffly, still annoyed that I'd pushed him away; him, after all that he'd done for me. Then he forced himself to soften, stroked my hair, kissed me on the cheek, smiled.

He isn't a bad man, I'd tell myself, as I cooked, and cleaned, trying to accept his lust that lolloped across our lives with the slow, steady gait of toads; its tongues around my ankles; its sticky fingers under my nightdress, clammy as death; always on the sweep-skirts of my soul, staining the spotless walls, smearing the floors.

"There's something wrong with you," he told me, buttoning up his trousers "you'd think I was trying to kill you". And I nodded, cried, apologised, he was right. I thought of those other men, those who took their fists to their wives, who wiped affection from their lips like it was froth from barley beer, and I'd convince myself that I had it good; convince myself that I just wasn't that way inclined.

Then The Dragon came to town.

• • •

"Are you sorry, Hope?" they asked me, as they reached my shoulders.

"No." I replied. I was tired of lying.

• • •

He was a stone-mason, William, and he was as unloved as I. They called him The Dragon because his skin was covered in scales; rough, perfect diamonds that glowed red and orange in the light.

He'd eat his lunch by the river, away from the other workers, and I'd feel his heat on the back of my neck as I squeezed the freezing water from my washing, feeling each droplet prickle against my skin; hearing every bubble gasp to surface; every arched twig snapping in the forest.

He waved at me as I carried the load back, and my face burned red, already knowing what I pretended I did not.

I met him the next day, as dawn broke.

• • •

Slowly, I turned to stone. They wanted me to beg, cry out; to wrest myself from the concrete constricting me, but I stayed still, kept my screams inside of me, cradled them, for if they'd taken everything else, my silence would be mine.

They left holes for my eyes; holes so that I could breathe, so I could see and feel the life that I'd been denied. I was to reflect in my shroud of stone, to suffer for my sins, to pray to the god that I'd wronged, to plead with him for mercy.

They twisted loops of rope beneath my arms; the arms that they'd tied behind me, and began pulling, winching me up towards the spire, raising the demon to cast others out, me, a symbol of sin; a reminder.

• • •

"Don't you know what they say about me?" I asked the Dragon, as his forked tongue flicked across my stomach, down to my thighs.

"You're beautiful" he replied, entwining his fingers in mine.

The Dragon saw the angel in me; he set it free. His touch carved me out of myself, and in his amber eyes I'd walk around what he'd found, staring in, amazed at what he saw: me, clean and strong and pure.

I unveiled myself in public, careless of their jealous eyes; too proud, too glorious to drape the shame that would have saved me across my shoulders. As he pushed into me, my cries would drown out the peal of bells, would chime against the angry hearts of those who stood outside my door, salty-lipped and still; listening, needing, wanting, hating.

• • •

I see sparks, infinity exploding across the blackness. It's within, and without.

I feel The Dragon begin to rise; feel him lifting himself up from the pool of blood as wings, glorious red wings, split through his skin, tearing apart the shoulder blades that I'd rest against; the prow of a ship that had led me back to myself.

I feel the fire that he put inside me; feel the stone crumble around my chest, the cold night air on my fingertips, unable to douse the kindling wicks.

I hear screams, the tremendous whoosh of wings; each beat an exhalation, a surfacing; and I swoop through the flames, dropping, turning, burning; knowing that with him, or without him, that I am The Dragon, and that I will not fall.

Aimee Bender

Faces

On an unusual day during my childhood, my mother showed up at school and asked me questions about myself. I was twelve or so then, and generally I found my own way home: bus, walk, hitchhike, bike, get pushed forward by the shoe soles of others. I hardly recognized her car, waiting there by the flagpole with all the other mothercars until she honked and beckoned me inside.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," I said at the window.

"Get in, William," she said, pushing open the door. "How was school?"

"Why are you picking me up?"

"Get in," she said, pushing the door open more.

I had, right then, a fast stab of fear in my stomach, like maybe she would kidnap me. Except for the fact that she had birthed me. It was confusing.

I settled into the passenger seat.

"So," she said, as she pulled out of the school lot. "How was your day?"

"Fine," I said.

"How are your friends?"

"Fine," I said.

"That's good. What did you do today?"

"We played war. How are you?"

-

-

"You played war on the playground?"

"Yes."

"War is not a game, William. Your uncle—"

"I mean we played tag. I forgot. Sorry."

"Oh. And was that fun?"

"Sure."

"I've always enjoyed tag myself."

"Tag is a classic."

We turned onto the main street, by the shopping area. My mother used to work nearby as an administrative assistant, but she had lost her job the month before. "We have nothing left to administer," they told her.

"And who do you like the best of your friends?" she said.

"Mom," I asked, picking at the seatbelt, "why are you here? It smells like french fries."

"Is there a friend you like more than the others?"

"Not really," I said. "I like them all the same."

She eyed the driver behind us in her rearview mirror, waving as she changed lanes.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Nowhere special. Do you have someplace to be?"

"Me?"

"Yes."

"Do I have someplace to be?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Good then. Now why don't you tell me one of your friend's names."

"Why are you so interested all of a sudden?"

"I just want to know one of your friend's names," she said, slowing down at a light.

"Gath," I said.

"Last name?"

"Gath."

"First name?"

"Gath."

"Gath Gath?"

"Sure."

She smiled straight ahead, but her eyes were wavering.

"What do you mean, sure?"

"That sounds about right," I said. "Can we stop for fries?"

"But is it his real name?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I don't know their names," I said.

"Gath Gath?"

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"You don't know your friends' names?"

I opened the glove box to discover many neat stacks of paper about cars and their insides.

"So what do you call them if their back is to you?"

I thought about it for a second. The car in front of us had a kid facing out in the backseat, waving and waving.

"I call them Hey or You," I said, waving back.

She almost laughed, but it turned into a grunt. The kid turned left. Bye. We drove into the mall and I sat in the parking lot while she went shoe shopping. Half an hour later, she returned, smelling suspiciously of chocolate cake. "The shoes in there," she said, "are so expensive!" She handed over a bread roll. She didn't want to bring me in with her because last time mall security found me quietly moving items in the department store into the wrong departments.

She brought it all up again at the dinner table that night, over spaghetti and red sauce.

"My friends have many names," said my little sister Ginny, promptly. "Angie, Kevette, Marjorie, Orrel—"

"Shut up," I said. "Eat your dinner."

Dad tilted his head down to his plate. He was rarely home before nine, so this was a rare encounter, to be all eating at the same time. It felt like some kind of grand coincidence.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

My mother shook her head. "You don't get it," she said. "He honestly doesn't know his friends'names and these are kids he sees at school every single day."

"I know who they are," I said. "They're my group of friends."

"Do they look different to you?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean can you tell them apart from each other?"

I took a sip of juice to stall.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—do you know one from the other?"

"Three of them are kind of the same," I said, wiping my mouth. "Then there's the really tall one! He's different."

My mother stared at my father. "Are you hearing this?"

"I'm exhausted," he said, drawing his hand down his face. "I think I single-handledly saved the company today."

"Which company?" asked Ginny.

"The one that sells bottles," he said. "The plastic bottle one."

"Oh!" she said. "My favorite!" She jumped down from her chair and sped into the bathroom, returning with a yellow plastic bottle of shampoo, just to show she could identify his work in the world at large. He mussed her hair. My mother poured herself a little glass of cheap sherry and forwent her spaghetti altogether and who can blame her since it was pretty much just noodles stirred with ketchup.

"So, said my mother. "You can't tell your friends from each other. Can you tell me from your father?"

"Sure, Dad," I said. "Easy."

She coughed mid-sip. Dad was explaining plastic bottle structure to Ginny and didn't hear which is too bad because he, for one, might've laughed.

"Am I Mom?" asked Ginny, pretending to listen to Dad.

"Your uncles," asked Mom.

"I've never met," I said.

"Your grandparents?"

"Which ones?"

"Any."

"I can mostly tell them apart," I said. "For example, there's the demented one."

"William!" said my mother, clearing her dish. She scraped spaghetti into the trash can.

"There is a lipid in the cellular structure," said Dad.

"We need to take you to the doctor," Mom said. "There's something very wrong with you."

"He is so messed up," murmured Ginny.

"Why'd you pick me up today in the first place?" I asked.

My mother sipped her sherry in the kitchen and sniffed. My father had evaporated from the table by now; I found him reconstituted on the sofa, asleep, with a book on his lap about the history of plastics and the bottle of shampoo nestled against his stomach like a baby.

The next day, my relentless mother:

"Enough kidding around, William," she said. "You're very funny. Now, who, specifically, did you eat lunch with today?"

"All five Gath brothers," I said. "They were at school two days in a row!"

"And which one is the nicest?" she asked.

"None of them is the least bit nice."

She stopped dusting a birdbath made of wire, complete with wire birds and little wire-looped water drops falling from a wire tree.

"Or which Gath brother talks the most?"

"All of them the same."

"No one talks more than the others?"

"No," I said. "All of them at once."

"How can you possibly understand anything if they're all talking at once?"

"Easy," I said, swaying. "You just go with the flow of it."

She shook her rag in the air and a muggy cloud of dust sank to the carpet. "This is rapidly becoming like a bad Abbott and Hardy routine," she said. "Except it isn't funny."

"Why are you so interested all of a sudden?" I said. "Who are your friends? How come I don't know any of their names?"

She closed the shelf and locked it, half-dusted. She always locked it, like I was going to steal a wire birdbath and keep it for my very own. Then she brought out a series of knick-knacks and put them on the coffee table. A stone lizard, an ashtray of rock, a glass princess.

"Nevermind me," she said. "Now which one is glass?"

I pointed to the princess. "I'm not stupid," I said.

"Which one is a lizard?"

I pointed to the ashtray.

"The lizard, William," she said.

I pointed at the ashtray again, with no expression.

She blinked up at me, alarmed, and I held it for a second and then just laughed and laughed until I fell on the floor, laughing. I had to eat dinner that night in my room. Leftover ketchup spaghetti, cold. I have no problem at all identifying objects.

Later that night, when I took out the trash, I found a magazine on top of the pile called Mother Magazine, and to make my sleuthing even easier, it fell right open to a quiz called "How Well do your Know Your Children?" I could see her fresh pencil scrawls all over the page. Questions like: Do you know where your child is after school? She had G: yes, W: no. Do you know the names of your child's friends? G: yes, W: no. Do you know your child's favorite color? G: yellow, W: blue. (Which is wrong. I don't believe in picking a favorite color, it seems like a pretty dumb thing to rank if you ask me.) Do you know any of your child's fears? G: Death, and nuclear war, W: ? Friends? And: Do you know what your child might like to be when he/she grows up? G: vet or singer, W: ? Army?

The magazine had a rating scale too—if you got 85-100 percent of the questions, which she did with Ginny, you were "A Mother to be Reckoned with!" and it said how great you were, how tuned in, how involved. The middle category was something like "Hang in there Mom, you're Trying!" and the final one, which she got for me, was "Mother, May I Suggest some Mothering?"

"This was all for a quiz?" I said to her when I went inside, washing trash juice off my hands, and she finished folding up the newspaper into neat rectangles and said she was sure she had no idea what I was talking about.

The following day, after school, we drove half an hour away to the doctor who was both a specialist in perception and also miraculously covered under our scant insurance. In the waiting room, we sat on different sofas and my mother read the magazine on brides and I read the one with the weekly news report that has a section in the back about how to raise your kid which I find hilarious.

"Robertson!" called out the receptionist. I grabbed a handful of hard candies on my way in.

The doctor's chambers were white-walled and blue trash-canned and orange-chaired. I ate a cinnamon and a peppermint at once. The doctor strode in with coat and clipboard and my mother launched into it right away: "Hello there doctor, thank you so much for seeing us, my son has this funny thing where he has trouble telling the difference between a group and a person."

"Well," chortled the doctor, "isn't that interesting."

Her neck was so long it seemed strange that she was a doctor specializing in perception.

"Let's see what we can discover here," she said. "Hi, William."

"Hi."

She stuck instruments into my eyes. She made me read various letters across the room. She had me close one eye and then the other.

"His vision is fine," she said, after ten minutes.

"Ah," said my mother.

I chomped down on a butterscotch and a little shard of gold sugar flew up and stuck on the doctor's white coat collar.

"Sorry," I said.

She brushed off her coat and put a few slides up on the wall and had me explain them: does the line appear to be wavy? It's really straight. Does the circle above appear to be smaller? It's really the same size as the one below. "But doesn't everyone have these perception problems?" I asked, after identifying both the witch and the young girl in the same drawing of a face. "True," she said. "Sure. But they're fun to look at, aren't they?"

She turned the slide projector off and rummaged in a drawer, returning with a photograph of a group of people.

"Let's try this," she said. "William, who are these people?"

"They're a group of people," I said.

She bobbed her head. "Mmm-hmmm. Okay. And what do these people do?"

"They're all nurses," I said.

"That's right!"

I pointed to the bottom of the photo, where it said Nurse Convention on a black plaque in big white letters.

She nodded; her neck was so long that a nod for her took about four seconds to complete.

"And what can you tell me about any of the people in the picture?"

"They're all nurses," I said again.

"And how are they different?"

"They're different heights," I said.

"Okay." She looked in my ear while I was talking.

"My ears feel fine," I said.

"She's checking your balance," whispered my mother, sitting perfectly still in a stiff orange chair in the corner.

The doctor straightened the photo in front of me.

"Now, William," she said. "Can you tell me if any of the nurses are older than the others?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are there elderly nurses in the photo?"

I peered at it. They all looked pretty old to me. I found one with white hair.

"This one seems old," I said. "He has white hair."

She looked over my shoulder at the photo. "Okay," she said. "Good. And you can tell that it's a man there."

"Yes," I said. "It's an old man nurse, right there."

"And what else can you tell me about them?"

"Nothing much," I said. "A bunch of nurses in a photo. For a convention."

She returned to the drawer and brought out another picture. The second photo was of a bunch of young men in the army.

"Soldiers," I said, pleased with myself. I could tell from the camouflage clothing.

"Okay," she said. "And?"

"And what?"

"And, how are they different?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. "From each other? They're all soldiers."

"For example," she said. "Are some happy?"

I looked at it again. They were moving around, some of them. "Sure," I said. "I suppose some are."

"Can you tell?"

"Not really," I said. "You can't ever tell for sure if someone's happy or not."

She pointed to the corner with her fingertip. "What about this one here?"

"What about him?"

"How is he doing?"

I peered closely at his face. "I don't think he looks too good," I said, "his expression is weird."

The doctor blew her nose into a tissue. "He's getting shot," she said.

"Oh," I said. "Huh. I didn't see that part yet."

"You didn't see his torso?"

"No," I said. "I was looking at his face, like you asked. Now that I look at his body, I can see that he is getting shot."

"And so is he happy?"

"Well, I certainly doubt it," I said. "I'm not a moron."

"And are any of them dead?"

I looked again at the photo. It took me a long time. Several of the soldiers were lying down. One of the ones lying down had his face in the dirt.

"This one could be dead," I said, after about five minutes. "But maybe he's sleeping."

She unscrewed the ear piece from her instrument and took the photo out of my hands. "Thank you, William," she said. "Fine. Let's take a break and try something else for a minute. Of your friends at school, whom do you like the best?"

I could actually hear my mother's jaw stiffen behind me.

"I like them the same," I said.

"Really?" she asked.

"Really."

"And do you have friends at school?"

"I just said so, didn't I? I have a couple of groups I float between; I'm not really in one main group."

"And can you tell the two groups from each other?"

"Of course," I said, ripping up the corner of the papery doctor visit shirt.

"How?"

"They sit in different parts of school," I said.

"I see," said the doctor. "And is there a leader in these groups?"

"They change around," I said.

I turned around and glared at my mother. She had her head down, her eyes on the wall, the ceiling, the floor.

"Can we move on, Doc?" I asked. "Any more photos?"

The doctor wrote something on her clipboard and returned to the drawer to take out another picture, this one of a family. I wasn't sure why she had all these group pictures in her drawer, but maybe she saw people like me all the time.

"How about them?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"What can you tell me about them?"

"They're all black," I said. "I can see that."

"Can you pick out the grandfather?"

I looked for awhile. No one had white hair. "No."

"Can you pick out the baby?"

I looked for awhile again and finally I found a baby stroller, off in the corner.

"There," I said. "A baby."

"Can you find the young man?"

I stared at it for awhile but I couldn't find the young man any more than I could tell who was the grandfather. And just because someone was old didn't mean he was a grandfather anyway.

"No," I said. "And it's not because I'm racist."

She brought out a similar photo of a family of white people. All I got was the shape of the group made by their heights and the positions of arms and feet.

"This one is sitting," I said, pointing.

The doctor looked at my mother now. They exchanged a meaningful look.

"What?" I said. "Do I have brain damage? What? Who cares who's who? I enjoy the general. What's so wrong with that? Why is this important? If I meet the person and talk to them, I'll know who they are then."

My mother was silent.

The doctor was silent.

"Why did you say that?" asked the doctor, after a minute.

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you just say all that?"

"Because I hate snap judgements," I said.

The doctor folded her arms.

"But how do you know?" she asked.

"How do I know what?"

"How do you know we're making snap judgements?"

I unwrapped another candy. Green peppermint. "No reason," I said. "My mother gave you a look."

Now the doctor leaned against the wall.

"So you could see her look?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Didn't she give you a look?"

"Yes," Mom said. "I gave her a look."

"But you could see your mother's look," said the doctor. "Why?"

"Why?"

"You can't see an old man. You can't see a soldier getting shot."

"I know my mother's face."

"Can you see it now?"

I looked over. Truth was, I couldn't really see her face. I could see big red lips because she was wearing lipstick because she likes to look nice for doctors.

"Make a face, Mrs. Robertson," the doctor said.

She did something. What, I couldn't tell.

"Can't tell," I said, sucking on the candy.

"But you could tell the earlier look," said the doctor.

"Just sometimes," I said. "Are we done?"

"Do you see me as a group?" asked the doctor then, in an all-too-friendly voice.

"I am not retarded," I said, pulling my shirt back over my head. "I can see that you are one person, and that you have a ridiculously long neck."

"William!" barked my mother.

"William, may I speak to your mother alone for a moment?" the doctor asked.

I stormed out. I emptied the entire lobby candy jar into my pockets and left the building. There was a candle shop next door so I went in there and smelled wax for awhile; the one that said it smelled like chocolate was wildly misleading. I have an excellent sense of smell. On the street I tried to look at all the people walking by but they just looked like walking people to me. I didn't see why I needed to read their faces. Wasn't there enough complication in the world already besides having to take in the overload of details and universes in every single person's fucking face?

The drive home was mostly silent. My mother didn't wave at the drivers when she changed lanes, which is unlike her. In general, she's at her best in the world with strangers, and gets great reassurance from a wave or a nod between cars. But on this drive home she changed lanes on her own without acknowledgement of anyone and was quiet until we pulled into the driveway.

"I just don't understand," is all she said then.

My dad walked in from work late that night, as usual, and found some frozen pizza thawing in the refrigerator by accident. It had never been cooked but he didn't bother to heat it up and just ate it cold. "Cold pizza," he said, smiling at me, as little flecks of cheese fell to the floor. "It's not the same," I told him. When he was done, my mother asked if she could speak to him in the other room. Ginny was playing hospital with her torn stuffed animals, and I skulked around their door as they settled in the bedroom and I heard her whisper to my dad that we went today to the doctor who did lots of tests and was very kind and professional and William has a real problem and the doctor diagnosed him with facial illiteracy.

"Wait, what?" I said from the hallway. I leaned in the doorframe. "She said what?"

My mother's eyes were enormous. Okay, I could see them. My mom only, sometimes. My father's hair was a mess from exhaustive mussing and he said: "Facial illiteracy? What the hell is that?"

"He cannot read a face," said my mother, wincing. "He cannot recognize facial, or for that matter, bodily signals. He can't read people at all. And Stan," she said, "it's true."

"Oh whatever," I said, kicking the door. "I bet the doctor made that name up right on the spot."

"Go to bed, William."

"It's nine o'clock."

"You're a growing boy. Go to bed."

"So what does it mean," asked my father.

"I don't know," she said. "He may have to take special classes. On recognition. Of faces and people. Go to bed, William!"

I stayed by the door until she came and closed it on me.

Shoving my ear against the wood, I heard my father's tones of mild protest and my mother's rising pierce. "Soldiers!" she was saying. "All dead! He thought they were happy!"

At the TV, I found Ginny surrounded by her now mended stuffed toys, watching the sitcom about the people who work at the pet store and act like animals. She likes the boss who talks like a monkey. I tried to look at each actor's individual face but all I saw were eyebrows and teeth. No one emerged from the parental bedroom for over an hour, and I fell asleep on the couch. That's where I woke up with the first light of morning, covered with stuffed bears just barely held together by clusters of staples and tape.

(There was a moment, once. I was eating dinner with Mom, and Dad was at work late, and Ginny was at a friend's house learning fractions. I barely remember this; it's sort of made-up if you want to know the truth. But we were eating spaghetti and cottage cheese, and Mom looked at me, and then all of sudden it was like her face melted; the lines around her eyes all pointed down, arrows down her face to the lines around her mouth which pointed down, and then her chin caught it all like a net, trapping all the down arrows and feeding them back into her jaw and lower lip which drooped and sank from the weight.
She took a sip of her water.
"Mom, you okay?" I asked.
"Sure," she said. "Why?")

For about a month, I went to classes across town taught by the long-necked doctor. They involved me and her in a dark viewing room, looking at huge slides of babies' faces crying and laughing, and I had to tell her which was which. The doctor was stupid because she kept using the same set of slides, and each time she'd tell me which was which, not realizing that every slide had a small gold number embossed in the corner. I just made notes on my leg: 14 is laughing, 13 is sneezing, 12 is crying, 11 is sleeping, etc. Within two weeks, I got eight out of ten on the test (I missed two on purpose) and she seemed very pleased with both of us. "Let's see how you do for now," she said, and she let me have my Saturday mornings back, which I used to climb roofs and mess with people's TV antennae.

(I was walking to school with Ginny. She was telling me about her verb project, where she is gathering underappreciated verbs, and putting them to use. "Look, I'm sauntering to school," she said, doing a little trick with her feet. She tilted her head to the side for a second, and she's a few years younger than me and when she squinted, putting her lips to one side, for a second I thought she looked hot. I'm making this up. She's nine. She crossed the street, and yelled, "Behold you later!" over her shoulder.)

My mother did not pick me up from school again. She was back pounding the streets, looking for a job. She did interrogate me several times at the kitchen table when we were home at the same time, but by now I'd learned my lesson. "His name's John Gath," I said to her, as I ate my fifth piece of toast. "He talks the most of anyone, and he is the leader of the group. I like him the best, except on the days when he's in a bad mood."

"John?" she said.

"John," I said, chewing the crust. "And his brothers are George and Paul, and his cousins are Rocky and Jo-Jo."

"And who talks the least?" she asked, brushing ants into the trashcan. I watched them climb out.

"Jo-Jo," I said. "Is a quiet sort. By the way, my favorite color is blue."

"Blue," she sighed, leaning back on the counter. "That's a good one. Have you done your homework?"

"All done," I said. "Did you get a job?"

"Soon," she said.

(We were smoking at the wall at recess, and one of the Gaths handed me a bag of barbecue chips and when I took it, he had this look in his eye. Glinty. Looking right at me. "What?" I said. "What?" he said.)

You know what I like to look at? The birdbaths, locked up. The stuffed bear stuck together with staples and tape. The TV. The refrigerator. I like the car. The changing weather. The taste of wrong-color peppermints. The doctor's neck.

(There's a photo of the Robertson family in a blue wooden frame that sits on top of the TV that we got done at the department store's photo department. I try to focus my attention on the TV, but sometimes I glance up by accident. Mostly I just see hair and all of us in our nice shirts and I remember the dick photographer who made us say "buttercream pie," but once in awhile, I look up and it's a flash like the photograph is screaming and everything is imprinted there, everything. Like the shape of my mother's jaw might as well bleed out the word disappointment and my dad's eyes are way far back and blank in his head and Ginny smiles too big like she's pouring grout on the world and somebody's flattened me.

One night, Mom held it up during commercials and said, "I think this is my favorite picture of us yet," because she likes how the angle doesn't show her double chin and she likes to see Ginny smiling with her pretty teeth and Dad with his hair just cut, and how for once I wasn't scowling at the camera.

"Look, William, how handsome you are when you're not being difficult," she said.

I shrugged at her. "Can't see it," I said. "Sorry.")

"Faces" first appeared in #191 of The Paris Review, and was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist. Republished with permission.

Carol Berg

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Sticks ________ Down The Wife's Throat

Her restless finger. The boulder between us.
His lips and her limbs lined up perfectly together.

I stick her relentless fan down her throat. Her clock
with its rocking possibilities. I stick her

refusals down her throat. Her trickery, like a forgotten
basement. I squeeze her pillow down her throat. Her gripping

sheets. I stick her consternation her lack of concentration her
combat and her grammar nation down her throat. I stick

her bed full of dreams. I stick her stare
down her throat. His empty chair. I stick a rogue

island down her throat. A pastor. Skinny jeans
and the blue waiting down her throat. I stick the routine

of ache. Her practiced smile. I stick a green leash down.
I stick a bartender and I stick the only exit out down her throat.

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Leads the Wife to the Sea

We play let's drive the United States of America
with some of the states missing.

We play the boy-next-door peeking through
our bedroom window.

We play chemo treatment. We play scared.

We play push the blue button. We play former
landlord. We play let's remove Maine.

We play the pawn shop with his bicycle, his wallet, his dream.
We play fire station alarm. We play questions in the dark.

We play what's that called. We play the Swedish
version. We play alone. We play what does that consume.

We play our mouth is a diamond cutting our skin.
We play hide the persimmons. Hide the neighbor's dog.

We play the waves run fast. Now faster.

We play who doesn't exist here.

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Forgets To Tell The Wife

About Michigan about Chicago about the town named
Hardscrabble. Forgets to tell her about the tattoo

of Ophelia on her inside thigh about the kill shelter
in Alabama. Forgets to tell her about Friday's

thin symbolism. Forgets to tell her about the arch
of his crowded silence. Forgets to tell her her dreams of white-

throated nuthatches spiraling down her throat. Forgets
to tell her what was gurgling in the heartbreaking stream.

Forgets to tell her what she expected after all. Forgets to
tell her what to watch, his hands his feet or his eyes.

Forgets to tell her the brine of oysters like metal in the mouth.
Forgets to tell her which Tuesday will be for flower stands,

for sorrow, for vacancy. Forgets to tell her to put wine and
mahi mahi in her lie and forgets to tell her about the airport.

Forgets to tell her emotional breakdown. Forgets to tell her always
a pleasant scene.

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Feeds The Wife

I feed her garlic scapes scotch bonnet peppers thorns I feed
her durian wild nutmeg ilium feed her gambier

I feed her abundance and wonder I feed her with mine
own two hands unleavened pain brimfuls of abominations

I force saguaros in her mouth spill brown-spotted bananas
stuff barred owl feathers in her mouth I feed her

rosemary mint catnip spoonfuls of withdrawing arms sipfuls
of water beetles I feed her judgment slivers of timber

I feed her stubble I feed her bribes I feed her cordite basalt
pumice quartz feed her stone stone stone feed her beak

feed her bone feed her lintel doorknob shingle
exasperating reasons needling toothpicks I feed her desire

I feed her with a white plate with a silver fork with a wide bleached
white napkin I feed her standing over her and over her whimpering lap

The Wife's Mid-Life Crisis Lays Down With The Wife In An Otherwise Empty Bed

in this bed we lay fixed we lay folded we lay forgotten
we lay snarl we lay unsaid

in this bed we lay floating bloating we lay rigor mortis
we lay punishments we lay gargoyle we lay curdle and hand fed

in this bed we lay encroaching we lay fog we lay lament
we lay cantilever we lay entrapment we lay cantaloupe's rind

in this bed we lay search we lay compass we lay beset we lay bend
in this bed we lay reign we lay rain O Lord we lay night's name

in this bed we lay wood we lay tongue we lay buttermilk we lay rice
we lay grip we lay fork we lay grid we lay low tide

in this bed we lay fuss we lay disassemble we lay soldier
in this bed we lay leather we lay troop we lay refrain we lay reframe

in this bed we lay weak we lay family we lay home we lay jiggle
in this bed we lay all that is possible between us

Sarah B. Boyle

The Pig of the Secret
1.

Suffice the saying

these things are
not Dedre's
to tell

[   the   cloven womb
gangly, goose-necked and bone-hard & white]

[ the strobe quickening in the gut ]

[                              the suckling knit from combed wool & sinew    ]

No, not her stories,
still they led her to the bar by her neitherways,
ouvert and all.

2.

Dedre Speaks

I'll wear the gold comb in my hair, O.

My hair is         is                 is
red.
Rubine red, stop-sign red.

My hair is red-red, O.

He said your hair is
slut red
but he was sweet about it
so I licked the beer from his beard, O.
In the ladies', the ladies', O.

O, his grizzly muzzle
O, his cinnamon paws
O his fish breath & O his belly roar
O his roric snout O his pink tongue O the pink tongue secret.
O!

I took the comb,
a token of my appreciation, he said, O!

3.

The man will not tell Dedre what secret he's stowed between her ears
She isn't to know
Maybe if she'd asked, when he'd put it there
that night in the ladies'

So she asks and asks
a chick opening its mouth to the sky
waiting for a rain of worms

When she asks what he has stowed between her ears
he tells her
it's a pig
imagine a pig: bristled and moist on the snout
pink

He tells her
not to worry
and
the pig probably will be fine

in the end

So long as wears her hair wrapped around her ears
and the comb in her hair

and keeps her mouth shut

He sends her to a building with snakes on the sign
His friends will keep the secret safe for her

His snake-friends gave her medicine and told her

it must be administered buccally

What?
So she looked it up
she puts the medicine
between her cheek and gums:

should
it
fizzzzzzz    like that      ?

Her teeth hum

Hmmmmmm she pictures the pig

—she's so obedient—

snouting its way through the fizzles

She opens her mouth for the worms

then remembers to keep it shut

4.

The morning smelled like metal     It was
a fork tine on a filling in a molar

Her hair kept her brains
between her ears
in the cold
The comb pressed its teeth against her scalp

*

When she first got the pig
She thought it would be her mouth
tongued it away
but the medicine she cheeked
made her mouth a featherbed
And she knew it would keep the pig safe

The secret was hers now
Fully a pig in her mind
but was it safe there?

*
Dedre feared for the secret
She in her mind watched it trotter
oinker
its way out of whichever
orifice felt most vulnerable   that minute

Last night she put away the ouvert for good
Crossed combs in her hair to bind it over her ears
Considered plugging her nose
a clothes pin?

Thank goodness her eyeballs filled their sockets so roundly

*

The metal air mixed with exhaust and Dedre got on the bus
She sat directly between the driver
a woman with breasts of ironwood

and a halitosied man who sloshed over the three seats of the back bench

They never listen to
he said

She hadn't heard the rest
Pins and needles through her chest, her face

He knows and she knows
worry is worry for a reason

She plugged her index finger against the nostril not currently in service
The bus reeled

5.

Dedre Speaks

They like me, O.
Or what they fill me with, O.
They fill me with beer, O.
With pills
O, I fill me—O—with Schnapps.

Not poison pills, O no!
But pills that keep what's in
in
in
in, O.

The pills can't keep what's out
out
out
out, O.

But, the snake men say, the snake men say: O,
the pills don't always
keep what's in
in
in
in, O.

We can help you get another secret
Another pig, the other snake-man says, O.
Inside, if you like

I'd like a small Schnapps on the rocks.
Cinnamon, cinnamon, O.

O, where did the man with the cinnamon paws
go?

Sometimes the snake men call me O, Cinnamon

my hair
my hair, you see,  O.

6.

Report on the Secret

A. Skull–Contents of

is fresh
submitted in 7 cassettes
received fresh
fresh pinkish greyish tissue

is coded
a book cipher of a more recent edition
trisomy and monosomy of [                         ]
data lost    digested    recombined

is  a possible partial pig
is growing smaller, blacker eyes filled with rheum
cloven   dirty

is a partial, a hypoplastic mole
growing claws and gone blind in the
chills
in the aftermath
nose searching worms for the teeth to bite
eating the worms it finds with its nose

is vestigial

is female

is missed

7.

Dedre hid the golden comb
and the report
beneath her pillow

They didn't tell her the report would be—
well, they didn't tell her anything

The snake men in their penny loafers
cut the pig from her
while she was sleeping
freed her hair from her ears
drew the pig, the secret through the ear drum with alligator forceps
and gave her the report

She already knew the pig would grow to be a girl

She dreamed she gave the girl the golden comb
to put beneath her pillow

and together they waited for the man with cinnamon paws to come

With her mother one spring they sat on the bed
together
her father dead for nearly a day
a silver comb beneath his pillow

—that was how the folk got him—

the keening of her mother
the screaming barn owls
how their chicks sounded like pigs waiting for the slop

How soon her mother threw the comb in the river
though Dedre wanted it for herself

Now her ear was a pillowy silence
She wanted to read the report again
or spread the flames of her hair across her barrel-chested bear man
or hold the comb to the throat of

it didn't matter

She waited for the keening
the singing to start

Flower Conroy

Angel of Meat, Eye of the Past

In the lobby of the Ray Caesar, a girl eats an orange.
Shovels orange in her calamity mouth,
orange bit
after orange bit, cheeks swollen
with pulp. Rind fragments
litter her lap. Her flat-line stare infinities
through window,
through me. Double edged sword night.
This nocturnal dress. These gouged stockings.
Skin peeks through silk.
These new scuffed heels.
Punched wall night.
Girl eating an orange in the lobby
of the Ray Caesar night while I stagger
on uneasy legs
through autumnal rain
night, night of neither silence
or salvation; night, violet night.

Conjurer

When I spritzed the cologne discovered
from under the bathroom sink,
your Drakkar
Noir ghost materialized midair,
myth, or a foreign wish. And blood
flushed my cheeks
as if I stood too close to a guillotine.

I could not contain
myself in those few unleashed
moments, as if I were Aladdin, struggling
to cram a thunderhead
of a genie
into a thimble
of a lamp—
to undo that awful magic that brought

you back sensually (that is, of the senses)
to me. You, conjugated
into dark & organic
scent, Djinn, supernatural entity
occupying a parallel world,
scorching fire,
smokeless flame. To hide,
or to be hidden with notes

in mad, madness, wafting
into the embryotic—
until you were the essence
of ambiguation
and (granted briefly) in that breadth,
my head reeled.

Unheeded Advice the Half-Blind Fortune Teller Gave at Consequence Fair

Do not get eaten by a bird.
Nevertheless I'd spike

my drinks

with mint. Paper-cuts hatched
my fingertips. Always beginning
& in the bottom of a well.
Daily I offered my earlobe to the night-
jar's scissoring beak. My wrist
to the ostrich's claw. Now, even in the mirror
house, over the roil of my manic
heart, I hear feathers pinking.

Beware being illuminated by the fool's
gold of the Pisces' eyes. Scales.
Gills. Needle

bones. How could I not look?

In the knife blade's reflection:
my tongue. Absolute
dark is neither absolute, nor dark. On the ocean surface
in the past, the omen moon drowns
in a silence-filled, private language.
Here is where the seer's grimoire-
eyes closed. I pocketed
some sprawled stones—quartz
& chrysoberyl—dropped
some sterling in the donation box fixed
on the séance table like a coffin
for a turtle.

Devil in the lock. Cross on the hearth.

A lion crossed my path, a host
of sparrows arrowed the sky
While the rusted Ferris wheel,
cog on the horizon,
skeletal as an iris, churned in reverse.

Hyperventilation

Diagnosis: asthmatic desert, stifling light,
spells of dyspnea. I am a child
again. Across the ceiling, Aeolus' savage

shadow-horses awaken into stampede.
Rampant, they trample temples
inside out. They smash

pharynx & century plants. Their cyclonic eyes.
The spidery roots
behind those eyes.

Those beauties, those beasts, snort clouds
of barbed wire & dine upon apples
of fire. How did I cope, its hot polish

manifesting in my chest? In the dizziness,
shine sets stones ablaze
& I worry Wind, that great sculptor

will wield his invisible chisel & gut
the very air. Brick
patio incoherent white, stripped

morning shakes about its cage
of brightness & dissolves that feral
nocturnal breed into starcrumbs

& spinal trees. It's a neuroillogical dream:
asphyxia by night mares,
those blaring breath-taking steeds.

You've Been Bit by a Dangerous Snake

Switchblade cleavage, Cajun evening:
the charged Orleans' Saturday night streets—
all florescence, spice & grime. My brain on fire, is
your brain on fire, too?

Bangs stuck to my forehead like blades
of grass. Even the asphalt slithers.
Ubiquitous music. Feet
numb in heels not yet broken-in.
Dress clinging to my stomach with sweat, we

swagger-stagger back to the hotel, lured by cool
pillows & cut fruit. Would you like to taste alternate
reality, the counterpoison to now? With
a scarf, you cover my eyes. Reaching,
I hold onto the drapes.
Now; let me siphon that bite for you

says forked tongue, meaning, little
Medusa, let me draw daggers from your heart.

Mind Eraser

I beheld, in the hand-
held mirror, the doctor's gloved
hands unlock the backdoor I didn't know existed
on the back of my skull. I remove the bone flap.
& I half expected winged beings (butterflies trapped
in the beaks of birds pinched in the mouths of sturgeons
staked upon the bright whittled teeth of grimacing angels)
to swarm the not cold, but not warm room. Insert endoscope.
Instead, snowflake floaters sprinkled my eyesight, mini-
aturized tornadoes. Sensation, not unlike a pulley system,
tingled within,
& up & down
my
spine.
This is a procedure
to treat problems in the brain & the surrounding structures.
More culling, more mining, until buckets overflowed
with scalp from scalpel shrubbery, undevelopable rolls of
exposed film, organ music—phenomena I could no longer con-
tain or explain or entertain. Here is the tainted. Cloud
cover, plastic sky, some bloodletting. Then
the surgeon affixed metal plates, sutures,
wires, stitches. Patted the wound clean.
As a precaution, my sternum opened,
Plucked is the tomato of your heart.
Plopped on its silver tray, it fluttered,
then fluttered a little more before
taking with it, every memory
blight with you.

Roland Goity

The Secret of Sparkling Valley

We consider ourselves lucky. There's no other place in the world like Sparkling Valley. It's truly unique. Most think the groundwater has something to do with it. Others claim it's something in the air, miniscule debris floating around from the boarded-up quicksilver mines. These may be contributing factors, but there's one particular distinction that makes Sparkling Valley undeniably special.

You see, a half-century ago a wild animal park opened here and lured tourists from the highway. For many years it pumped the lion's share of dollars into our local economy. Then something strange happened. Something really strange. The animals slowly—and seemingly without notice—migrated beyond the gates of their confines and quickly adapted to their new surroundings.

Soon it wasn't just deer that made their way onto the fairways and putting greens of neighboring golf courses; there came sightings of noshing zebras and pandas. Initially they were explained away as tricks of shadows and light or a wee too many drinks before tee time, but now we know better. On our courses today you'll find primates of every kind—chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans—not just hanging from the pines and eucalyptus, but screeching and grunting their own calls of "fore!" as they swing clubs with abandon and drive carts like participants in a demolition derby.

At first people here were terrified to find Bengal tigers and grizzly bears lurking around our homes when we took out the garbage at night, but now we're happy to have their skills put to use at the butcher shops where they work for leftover scraps, or at the town's bank and nightclubs where they provide a security detail you can't get elsewhere.

We've grown accustomed to carrying new forms of currency. If you need ferrying across the river just grab some reeds or ferns in exchange for a hippo ride or some store-bought chicken if you'd prefer having an alligator do the job. They're as reliable as any boat that's cruised these waters. Property owners are hiring giraffes to do their tree trimming; businesses are using snakes to licks envelopes in their mail rooms. And the cockatoos are proving to be the best outbound telemarketers anyone can remember, although they're not always able to handle the inevitable pushback.

Live and let live is the motto in Sparkling Valley. The animals aren't going back to the wildlife park and people here welcome that fact. Hal and Emily Johnson, the eclectic couple who opened the place, left these parts years ago, vanished in the night once the animals began embracing their freedom. The highway billboard is long gone so we rarely get unwanted guests. Nevertheless lost souls do find their way here and need convincing from time to time to keep things hushed. We tell them how the media, law enforcement, and even zookeepers, biologists, and animal rights activists have agreed the best thing for all concerned is to maintain our not-so-little secret. If someone still doesn't seem trustworthy after a special "consultation," we give them a lie-detector test. If they fail that they become snacks for our butcher shop workers and security teams. Such is our way.

We live and work alongside the animals, we celebrate and commiserate together. There's only one important fact of life yet to be breached, but one senses it's only a matter of time. Whether we call it making love or mating, crossbreeding among species is well underway. The inclusion of humans in that mix is bound to happen, and most think it'll occur sooner rather than later. So consider that a warning—or possibly, an enticement. Come to Sparkling Valley a generation from now and who knows what you might find.

Just promise to keep our secret.

Amelia Gray

The Picture Window

There once was a woman who lived on the far edge of town, where the houses had courtyards and vegetable gardens. The woman grew a small amount of flowers and vegetables in her garden, a small plot behind her house. The picture window in her bedroom faced the garden, and she spent many happy weekend hours watching the scene.

One day, she turned away from the window and noticed that the rest of her room looked darker than usual. She assumed that her eyes had gotten too used to the brightness of the window but the room grew darker and darker by the hour and finally vanished into blackness. The window, however, was bright with sunshine and color. She looked out at the beautiful garden for a long while, frightened to look away, and when she finally did look away again she was confronted with total darkness, and she cried and touched the walls and found her telephone and called her doctor.

The woman's doctor and his colleagues were entirely baffled. They traveled to the woman's house, tested her sight, and found it to be entirely disintegrated. At the window, she seemed to recognize the plants and flowers by general color and shape, but when one of the doctors stood in the garden, waving to her through the open space, she continued describing geraniums and the leafy tops of the carrots as if they were all she saw.

Baffled, the doctors stood in the kitchen and discussed the ethics of their situation. It was only right to tell her the truth: the tests on her corneas and pupils had revealed no reaction, and it was total blindness. They were drinking coffee, which they had made for themselves. Certainly, the doctors reasoned, they would tell her to be prepared for the worst while they did some final tests.

When they told the woman that her selective blindness was focused on her window, and perhaps the condition was permanent, the woman looked out the memory of her window and nodded, though she didn't entirely understand. Sunlight filtered in through the tall trees and lit the grass and the garden in shades of green and brown. Soft breezes rustled the leaves and gave her a comforting sense of the wide, changing world. The doctors quietly washed their coffee cups and left them to dry next to the sink.

The woman passed many satisfactory days at her picture window. When she opened her eyes in the morning, she was always briefly afraid of the darkness, but out of the corner of her eye she was comforted by the sight of the glowing window. She stumbled and touched the walls and found her shower, and then dressed herself for the day and dug in her pantry for breakfast. In those first days, she was ashamed to call her friends, so instead she worked through the canned foods in the pantry for basic sustenance. She spooned up pieces of tuna while watching the wind work through the leaves of her summer squash. She tried to go outside, was disturbed by the blindness that remained, and headed back inside.

The woman was suspicious of the idea of selective blindness. The doctors asked how her garden looked when they called. She stopped asking about the test results and they did not offer them. She sat in front of the window and held her hand in front of her face. All she saw was the garden. She was a smart woman but the blindness made her desperate, and she convinced herself that the selectivity of her condition actually blocked out anything but pure beauty, and that was why she couldn't see her shower curtain or her stove or even her own body, but still saw so vividly the outside world from inside.

And then, because it eventually had to happen, word got around town. It was only a matter of time before the woman's home became somewhat of a local attraction. A steady stream of students and church groups and retired folks and scientists and psychics and skeptics passed through her doors. Her friends joked that she should take admission, and eventually set up a donation box by the door. They requested any amount for the upkeep of the house as well as care for the poor woman, which they had all partially assumed. The woman woke in the morning to gentle knocking at her bedroom door and sometimes fell asleep at the window and had to be moved into bed by her devoted friends and visitors.

As one grows used to anything, the woman grew used to her visitors. They were friendly, after all, and brought gifts, and told her news from the town and the world beyond, and listened with great interest to events of the garden only she could see. Skeptics sometimes tried to convince her that her vision was false, that there were clouds where she saw solid blue sky, that many of the plants she was describing had in fact died long before and had been replaced with flowers or trees planted by other visitors. The skeptics were hauled out and denied reentry, and the woman was reassured by those who remained that everything she saw was real. A theory had begun to circulate among the believers that the woman's vision of the garden was the true vision, and what they all suffered to see approached the ideal but would never reach it.

The woman's vision never faded. On the day she died, she described caterpillars ascending the vines on the far wall and sunning themselves on wide leaves. After her death, the townspeople made plaques and intricate pieces of art in the woman's honor and created a holiday within the town wherein everyone was required to look very closely at something and to discover something new about it. In this way, they turned the woman's vision and eventually the woman herself into an idea, and their own ideas became much easier to believe.

"The Picture Window" first appeared in the short story collection, Museum of the Weird, published by FC2, an imprint of the University of Alabama Press. Republished with permission.

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

You'll Feel Better if You Make a List

There's a pair of red high-heels beside
my bedroom door. A lamp. Dresser. Mirror.
A can of mixed nuts. A prayer book
by my pillow. My journal. A box
I haven't unpacked since moving
to Texas with every test I ever took.
A voice on speakerphone please don't
talk like that. It scares me. I feel a dramatic
wave outside my window. Maybe I won't
eat for a few days. Baby you had me cryin'
hard. Two curtains. A robe descending.

Francine Makes Honey for a Man Named Frederick

Francine buys mirrors of different shapes on days she wants to be a man. She wakes and her body is a foreigner on a bicycle in a dress by a river. I like these days, she writes, mornings when even my voice is honey. Francine hangs mirrors in back of a red barn by a field. That way, I can be a man and not know it. Francine believes in tearing through things. To find how to desire, she writes, I imagine a bicycle tire, a dress that 's not mine, honey and a day to be what's in my head. Francine buys mirrors, wakes again beside a man by the sea, holding her own hand.

Francine Believes Nightmares are One Way to Feel In-Her-Body

The body, she writes, wants me
to talk. I'd rather be in two places
at once. There are scavengers
in the garbage. They dig as I do the garden
until Frenzy opens her chest and lets
me in. A ghost made of daffodils.
I dreamed we fucked upside down,

let the world listen, let her in.
A spinning ball—nerve bundles,
the base of our spines—ignited, train
of daffodil-bodies. We are
two places: the living,
the dead. Open my chest. Hurry.
There are scavengers. Let me in.

One Day We Will Want to Be Here

We were born clutching this thing, a feather in the river

and now we wander looking for the other, a wing

under a rock, maybe, in someone's hair or belly.

In the middle of the country stands a man, alone

for thirteen years, keeping to himself a secret

well. The livestock know his mind. Each morning

it breaks over wheat like the sun with its eyes closed,

carrying wood from the river, bits of moss without

an anchor. It says, Can't stay here. In the middle,

everything spills out twisted heart, joy, at once. We are

born with him in his rib as fish, swimming upstream,

toward him, a mind. The simplest middle-county stone

knows, There-is-Nowhere-to-Go-For-Safety.

The Moment I Realized I Wanted it More

than I want the absence of it.

It rained two days after. I passed out

from pain walking from the parking lot

to my front door. I noticed a spider, frantic—

how something as small as a drop can damage

her web. She works on rebuilding it as if

her life depends on it. It does.

Kyle Hemmings

It Stays with You

You could put it behind you, leaving scar tissue under eye folds, cobwebs in spear closets, photos of your missing sister in a bow-front chest without knobs. Leaving this small town of Sunday misfits, of women with broken arrow pasts, you feel as powerful as the vampire-sleek girl who ruined so many potholed lives at the drive-in, stood up boastful freckled-armed boys behind the Wal-Mart. The one who kept the ashes of her favorite Munchkin cat in a tin. An hourglass-shaped girl in zebra-print shirts, she hurt you with the spaces between her words. You compared her to some bird of China--a bee-eater, a quetzal, a barbet. Who could afford the distance? You still wear her bite marks on your skin. Before strangers, before job interviewers, you contain your constant thirst. In the failed heart of this city, water leaks from pipes. You'll die in the dry heat of an afternoon. The dogs too skinny to dream. The birds with wet feet.

Deep Rich Wish

We are the unlucky 15% of all species that are not beetles & other insects. As a duo, we are not versatile. We prey on each other or switch pillows & dream of sucking the other's favorite plant. I dream of snout or a thrip that crawls along a mirror, ruining your ingrained grooming habits. You probably lament the bed that can no longer hold honey. It leaks the puddle of us. We are mostly water & memory of whirligig & hard crumbs. In conversations with researchers I describe your eyes as small, dark, & simple. I never talk about bite-marks, the plight of not having wings, or larviform angst. In another life, our legs will be widened & spined for digging into rich soil. At the tilt of the sun, at the dropping of the word "love," our smiles will turn glow-worm.

Healthy Diets

The mother once told Alicia that love starts out as a happy puppy but ends up as lice and some serious ticks. She died from so many bruises under the skin, three clots that ruined her night vision. What she did leave Alicia were the small but resilient lives of elderberries, Nodding onions, Japanese Knotweed. In the garden, on Alicia's ceiling--always the same footprint. She had dreams of her mother raiding the nests of wild honey bees. Throughout the years, a gaggle of lovers ruined her stews, left her skin itching. Her ears rang with their tasteless jokes. When love came, it was in the form of a man mysterious as a medieval monk. She made him Pumpkin Kugel and she blanched sweet corn. He gave her a fistful of Stinging Nettle to quell the inflammation left by previous suitors. If only love could be as healthy as ghee, he told her. He cleaned her house of feathers. She asked him to stay forever, but he revealed that he was dying of a twisted heart. She buried him out back in a domed straw skep, the very one he built. She left him with a sealed jar of honey and her invisible fingerprints.

.Lefty

I told her to close the door. She was letting all the horseflies in. I was sitting there missing my right arm. I knew she had taken it. Yes, she admitted, she took my right arm when I wasn't looking, when I was making love to another woman. The one with sealed lips, a mute way of screaming that she never belonged. The woman who took my arm said she always loved it for its musculature, the well-developed triple head, the knotty forearm, the thick fingers that never let go. She slept with it between her legs at night. She'd never use it, she promised, for such mundane activities, such as back scratching or clearing tables. Trying to get off track, she compared love to a dim light and a child who can never go to sleep. I asked her to leave and to shut the door tightly. With my left hand covering my eyes, I never wanted to see her again. I didn't want at all. A promise.

Stephen Graham Jones

Easy Money

All we had to do was record the sound of a wooden bat on a human skull. The second assistant director was paying us two hundred cash. Our first real job since getting here.

So we went out, splatted a storebought cantaloupe all over my grandmother's driveway. Then we did it again, with the recorder on. The second assistant director cupped his hand over the earbud we passed him, held it close to his head, and kind of squinted in pre-apology, like trying to get this bad news just right for us. But he said he'd give us another shot. We were good kids. And, for four hundred this time; they really needed that sound. So we tried a coconut—it took out my grandmother's windshield, was pretty spectacular—but the recording sounded hollow. Like a coconut, not a head. We tried a decorative gourd we borrowed from a planter down the street, and a plastic mailbox, and a half-full pony keg, and a lamp that just ended up sounding like glass. Aluminum bats and rebar instead of a Louisville slugger. The single-car garage instead of the driveway, for reverb. Nothing worked.

We slunk back to the set, offered the second assistant director his four hundred back, minus one windshield, but he stepped back like the money was infected. What about a dog? he said. Whispered, really, his eyes doing a different squint thing now. We were way out range of the boom mic's furry tails, of course, and left with a crisp six hundred and fifty dollars, walked up and down the sloped concrete halls of the pound, then had to go immediately to the bar to recuperate.

Three beers past the four we'd agreed on, then, we had our big eureka moment: the recorder didn't care if the dog was alive or dead, did it? So we trolled the interstate for the rest of the afternoon, came back with a deer, because the skull was closer to the right size. And because the dogs had all been too splatty. And this time—in the garage now, because of neighbors—we made sure the red light of the recorder was on, and the bat was back to 'wood,' and we flipped a coin, closed our eyes, and took the first swing.

The thunk was so perfect that we did it again, and again, until we had to lock the garage, take showers.

The second assistant director listened twice, the same way people in a restaurant will swish wine in their mouths, then he cued it up an incredible third time, a more appreciative listen—we were really going to make it, all our dreams coming true—and he considered, considered, his teeth working at his lip the whole time, and then he offered us a cool thousand. Each.

For what? we asked, mostly with our eyes.

He looked around at the crew still straggling in, kind of shrugged, and said that, for the scene he'd been tasked with, he needed a very, very particular sound. If we knew what he meant. When we didn't, he palmed a snapshot our way, with an address written on back, with a hand-drawn map of how to get to that address, and a stack of times that had to be a schedule.

We each swallowed, did a mental kind of gulp, I guess, and we asked what kind of movie was this? This made the second assistant director smile, shrug, say in his quiet way that if we could, say, see our way to misplacing the recording of this bat-on-skull sound, he could maybe go twenty-five, total. Twenty-five hundred, with the implied promise of more soundwork down the road.

So we stationed ourself where the x's on the map said to, and, because we'd been practicing all week, we knew just how hard to make our first swing, and the second, the third and fourth and fifth, and though our second assistant director had been absolutely right about the peculiarity of that wood-bat-on-human-head sound, he hadn't told us anything about her eyes. How they were just like a deer's at the end, looking up to you, understanding not just that you needed the money, but that the sound, that moist, perfect thunk, you had accidentally recorded it anyway, were going to be hearing it for days, for years, forever, until, looking back, this would all feel like a movie, and you'd watch it in your head and kind of narrow your eyes in appreciation, because that really was what it sounded like when you caught somebody just at the base of the skull like that. The sound guys were really on that day, you might say.

Or you might not.

Erin Entrada Kelly

124 Was Spiteful

My husband's name is Richard, but he thinks his name is Ishmael. He walks around the apartment muttering "Call me Ishmael. Call me Ishmael." I do not call him Ishmael because I know his name is Richard Rhinewald. Dr. Rhinewald, as he preferred to introduce himself, because my husband wasn't the sort of guy who said, "Oh, just call me Richard." He had no nicknames, like Rich or Ricky or Dr. R. He was Dr. Rhinewald, PhD, English professor of American Romanticism. A knower of Coleridge, Emerson and Poe—the authors of all things that came back to haunt him when his mind, once a busy and efficient wheel outfitted with sturdy and polished bolts, became unhinged in a steady decline that started a year ago. That's when he woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me that a murder of ravens was perched outside. They want to carry you away in their talons, he whispered. We have to go. Go, go, go.

"I thought a group of ravens was called a flock," I said, bleary eyed. "A group of crows are called a murder. Are they crows or are they ravens?" Then I realized what he'd said and I was wide awake, saying, "Wait – what?"

He repeated himself.

I rolled over and yawned. "You're talking in your sleep, Richard. Go back to bed."

He didn't. Instead, he opened the window and yelled "Go! Leave us! LEAVE US!" so loudly that it took me a moment to realize it was him. Dr. Rhinewald never yelled. He preferred to degrade people through smug logic and wry sarcasm. When I sat upright and asked what he was doing, he looked at me as if my question was ridiculous. It was a familiar look. One I'd seen as early as our first date, when I offered my own political philosophy and he'd said, 'You don't really think that, do you?'

"I'm scaring away the murder," he said, and went back to screaming.

• • •

His vocabulary dwindled to virtually nothing over the succeeding months and now it mostly consists of three words: Call me Ishmael. Call me Ishmael. I wonder what is happening in his brain, what the wheel looks like now. He'd read Moby Dick, obviously, but it wasn't one of his favorites. It wasn't one that he'd droned about over dinner or drinks. Yet he'd sacrificed every other word in his Columbia-educated vocabulary and left himself with Call me Ishmael.

It makes me wonder what famous first sentence I would leave myself with, if given the chance. Would it be Orwell? It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen. Something more stately, perhaps. Dickens. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether this station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. Perhaps I would go by way of Vonnegut: All this happened, more or less.

But my husband – this man, who liked to make steeples with his fingers when he thought he was sounding intelligent; who squinted his eyes condescendingly at most people he met; who wore blazers with elbow patches – had reduced himself to a disheveled hollow of an intelligent man, blazers hanging in the closet, loafers un-loafed, muttering Call me Ishmael and daring me to do it.

"Call me Ishmael," he would say, looking directly at me, with saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth.

"The nurse will be back tomorrow," I would reply. "Tell her to do it."

Then I'd light a cigarette, because he always hated them, and blow the smoke into his face until he walked away.

• • •

Pretty soon, he started limping.

I told this to the doctor.

"Why is he limping?" Dr. Sullivan asked. "Has he hurt himself?"

"No. It's more Moby Dick nonsense. The captain loses his leg in the book."

Dr. Sullivan sighed. "You know what you need to do. This has gone beyond an at-home nurse. Actually, it passed that point several months ago."

"I know." I looked up from the phone to find Richard sitting in the recliner, glaring at me. This was an unfamiliar look. My heart thumped. I cleared my throat and said into the phone: "I will, Dr. Sully," because unlike my husband, Dr. Sully was the type of guy who said things like, 'Oh, don't call me Dr. Sullivan. It's far too formal. Everyone calls me Sully.'

"It's possible that he could get dangerous. I've told you that, time and again," Dr. Sully said. "He might start thinking of you as a whale. You never know."

"Thanks a lot."

"You know what I mean. All this Moby Dick stuff."

"It's Ahab who hunts the whale, not Ishmael."

"What's Ishmael do?"

"He's the storyteller."

"Telling the story about how he lost his leg?"

"Not exactly. Ahab is the one who lost his leg, not Ishmael."

"Then why is Richard limping?"

"Hell, I don't know," I said. My heart thumped again. The weight of Richard's glare dug into my skin. "I haven't read it since freshman year of college." When I was a student in Dr. Rhinewald's class. When I thought he was sophisticated and sharp and clever. Before the days when he'd tap my forehead with his index finger and say, "Duh, Duh," when I said something that he considered naïve and foolish.

Richard glared. Then he lifted that same index finger toward me and said, "You."

I thought of another first line. Toni Morrison.

124 was spiteful.

I brought the phone closer to my mouth and said, "Send the van tomorrow."

• • •

I left Richard in the living room and locked myself in the bedroom so I could sleep. Something about that glare was unsettling. Something about that word, 'You,' and the way he'd said it. Leaving him in a living room was a stupid move, though, because all it took was a hairpin and the doorknob clicked open. I heard the click at ten minutes after three. It's funny how he remembers some of the little things, like how to make toast or how to unlock the bedroom door.

Click.

I sat up in bed and saw exactly what I expected to see. I knew him well, even in his madness, and there he was with a makeshift spear, except it wasn't a spear at all. It was a yard stick from the garage. He was also completely naked. I'd been with Richard for years and with others before him and the sight of a naked man still made me want to giggle like I did when I was sixteen.

"Call me Ishmael," he said, pointing the yard stick at me. "You whale. You, Moby Dick."

I slipped out of bed. Slowly. Deliberately.

"Ironic," I said. "People have always thought of you as the dick."

His face didn't change. The wheel wasn't working properly enough to understand jokes. Not that he ever got mine anyway.

"You're Ahab, then? Not Ishmael?" I said, standing. "Ahab dies, you know. He goes down with the ship. The whale lives."

Richard made a quick movement and I crouched down with my hands out, like a sumo wrestler. This was quite a match. One-hundred-twenty pounds of sanity versus one-hundred-sixty pounds of madness with a yard stick. I imagined him whacking me with that yard stick. I glanced quickly around the room for a weapon, but there wasn't one. Our home was sparsely furnished. There were books, of course, but none of the slim volumes closest to me would serve any purpose. The Stranger. Catcher in the Rye. Great Gatsby. I needed Ulysses or Atlas Shrugged, but those were in the fancy bookcase in the study.

"Ishmael, is it?" I said, still crouched. "No more Dr. Rhinewald?"

Richard's eyebrows went up.

"Ishmael," I said again.

He lowered the yard stick.

"Call me Ishmael," he muttered.

I thought I heard the wheel of his brain creak.

"Ishmael," I complied.

He dropped the yard stick. Nodded slowly. Bent down to the carpet and sat there.

He sighed deeply, hung his head and said, "'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'"

Tolstoy.

I had written my thesis on Tolstoy, even though Richard said American romanticism was where the true grand works of literature existed.

I picked up my phone. Looked for Dr. Sully's number.

Maybe he could send the van now.

Or an ambulance.

Did they send ambulances for this sort of thing?

Richard buried his face in his hands and cried.

I remembered the time that he'd called me an 'ignorant waif' until I cried. When I did, he plucked the side of my head and said, 'This is the reason women haven't advanced beyond men in the past ten-thousand years – they blubber.'

I dialed Sully's number. As his phone buzzed, I watched my husband whimper.

When Sully answered, I said: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."

B. A. Krishna

Getting Smarter

"But I refuse to let my identity be defined by my phone!!" whined an exasperated Rajat.

"What identity?!" scoffed his wife, who was reaching breaking point in her attempts to convince her skinflint husband to buy her a smartphone. "I'm the only mom in the playgroup that doesn't have one, and it's nearly impossible to coordinate activities with other moms.

"As tempting as it might be for you to wallow in the medieval ages of cell-phone technology, I refuse to be a fellow-wallower any longer! Now, while I'm on your case, please don't recycle your lame joke about how only stupid people need smartphones!" she added.

"You should try communicating through messenger pigeon! Or how about using smoke-signals?" grumbled Rajat, "Be grateful for what you have, woman! Besides, what do you really want a smartphone for, anyway? To log on to Facebook? Don't you know that ubiquitous Facebook access is the Biblical Harbinger of Doom?

"Never before in the history of civilization has a single killer app made so many people miserable, so quickly and kept them that way for so long!!" said Rajat, still grumbling under his breath. He wisely decided not to voice his sentiments.

Not quite done, Rajat took a deep breath, hoping his rant was nearing its end. Much like runaway roller-coasters, Rajat's rants tended to be rather unpredictable and he was forced to let this one run its tortuous course.

You see, Rajat, despite being an engineer, expressed a profound reluctance in adopting new forms of technology, especially if it entailed him forking out more cash or expending a moderate amount of energy, both of which were usually required when one's spouse resolves to improve one's quality of life. Early warning signs of this syndrome's manifestation start with the phrase, "Why can't we be like the others and...?". On the treadmill of continual life improvement, spouses are the eager proverbial hamsters.

Rajat hardly fancied himself a luddite but he did like his electronic toys neatly compartmentalized just so: PCs/DVD players meant either for work or for entertainment. A smartphone refused to fit conveniently into this form of taxonomy. You can't quite meaningfully work on it nor can you do justice to pay-per-view porn on a four-inch screen, which, I am assured by reliable sources, requires a minimal screen size of twelve inches. To him, smartphones inhabited a netherworld, one that barely straddled work/pleasure but was woefully inadequate for either.

To be fair, owning a smartphone had its merits. There were moments when Rajat, tasked with time to kill at public places, had faked a blackberry pose with his highly unsmart-jurassic era phone, hoping that he wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. He imagined an overzealous FBI guy, on the lookout, commenting, "There's a suspicious, bearded guy here, standing around, not staring into his smartphone!"

Rajat's fake-gesture wasn't very convincing, even to himself, which was understandable considering that his phone was a four-inch thick brick that looked like it was out of some 80's movie. His buddy Ashok had once said, "You know you need a new cell phone when your current one is thicker than a phone book!".

On more than one occasion, a bewildered bystander had poked him on the shoulder only to say, "Dude, how old is your phone?! Does it actually work?!" Rajat knew better than to admit that to his wife. The last thing he needed to do was to bolster the prosecution's case.

Turning to his wife, Rajat pleaded, "But don't we suffer from attention deficit already?! Do we need yet another screen to stare at? And wouldn't the kids destroy them in no time?".

"Give them some credit," said his wife. "They have other screens around to distract them. And don't you bother getting yourself one. Feel free to continue using your circa 1930 pulse-mode rotary dial phone"

"Have you ever visited any crowded public place recently and not bumped into other idiots? Idiots walking around glued to their smartphones?! I'll buy a smartphone when they have top-facing cameras that display what's ahead of us!" said Rajat. That concept amused him a little at first, and more than a little, upon further thought.

He mentally improvised on the idea - one of life's small pleasures that still remained intact - inventing hypothetical apps that were endowed with face-recognition powers so that they could warn you about people whom you actually knew, that are worth avoiding. Heck, a smart enough app could even alert you to hotties in the vicinity.

"Do they make any models that are drool resistant?" asked Rajat, returning his attention to the matter at hand. His wife's last phone had stopped functioning after one-dot-oh had drooled all over it and bitten off a few keys. It had both given him a headache and one-dot-oh a flatulence problem. After that episode, Rajat had felt compelled to keep a close eye during subsequent diaper changes, so as to account for all the missing keys. He was very thorough like that.

"I'll buy myself a smartphone when smartphones are smart enough to reply to all my emails, intelligently, on their own. Perhaps they can sign off with: 'Sent by my iphone and I had nothing to do with it!'".

"You're like your grandfather when it comes to relinquishing old technology!" complained his wife, "Has his old junkheap of a car been put out to pasture yet? And how does he manage to get spare parts to keep the blasted thing running?! Also, more importantly why does he bother?!"

Momentarily rattled by his wife's abrupt ancestral reference, Rajat grudgingly admitted to himself that she had a point. You see, he did resemble his grandfather in more ways than one. Distracted, Rajat used this excuse to immerse himself in memories of his early childhood in India.

Rajat was reminded of his Thatha's[1] car, the origins of which harked back to a pivotal moment in India's history. In fact, most Thatha stories harked back to historical times - he was a real harker! An early adopter of technology, Thatha seldom believed in its obsolescence. Most people didn't own cars in his time, which was understandable considering the choices they had. A lucky few possessed one of the two models available.

In 1947, as India sat perched on the brink of newfound independence, Prime Minister Nehru said, "Not so fast!" and proceeded to deliver his über flowery Tryst with Destiny speech. It is reported that midway through this landmark address, Nehru ran out of flowery words and resorted to physically pelting the sleepy audience with fists full of flowers.

One spectator, hit by a large lotus on the side of the head, later claimed that such a feat has been unsurpassed in either oratory or botanical history! While the spectator recovered quickly and sold the historically significant lotus on eBay, it took decades before India fully recovering from Nehru's verbal and floral onslaught.

After his speech, and presumably a long nap, the winded Prime Minister turned his mind to practical matters such as transportation. He cornered an unemployed cartoonist who was rumored to have sketched a few cars in his short career, gave him a bag of right angles and decreed, "You shall go forth and design, for this great nation, two Indian automobiles!" (Yes, Nehru tended to talk like that! Ask any Indian schoolboy)

Unfortunately, Nehru forgot to add, "Don't use all your right angles in one place!". The clueless but enthusiastic designer came up with the sleek Premier-Padmini, which was exclusively made of right angles, and the rotunda-like Ambassador, which, devoid of right angles, resembled a mobile Taj Mahal float more than it did an automobile. Firmly resistant to Darwinian principles, these designs have embarrassingly remained in production for more than five decades and are still going strong.

Rajat's dad, however, drove neither an Ambassador nor a Premier-Padmini since he had inherited Thatha's Morris-8. In the year that India had proudly secured independence, Thatha wisely chose to express his newfound freedom by purchasing himself a British "motor-car," one that was still in the family, handed over from sibling to sibling like an unwanted inheritance. Sadly, it was still in working condition.

Despite protests from Rajat's side, his dad had insisted on dropping his son off at school in his Morris-8. The car was a reliable source of amusement and ridicule for all his classmates each morning. "Hey look, the guy in the foreign car has arrived! Tell me, where do you feed in coal?!". Rajat had often protested, "Appa[2], can't you at least upgrade to an Ambassador like most other self-respecting car owners?! Or can't I just walk to school like rest?! By the way, you don't need to call it a motor-car, you know?! These days it's safe to call it just a car!"

The Morris-8 was from an era when automobile manufacturers had imprudently thought it wise to advertise the engine's horsepower in the model name. Didn't they consider the possibility that after a decade or two, you just might not want to draw attention to your engine's (lack of) power? Rajat often visualized his car being pulled by 8 cantankerous and poorly fed horses - the emission level would have improved, to say nothing about the increase in mileage.

One of the Morris-8's unique features was that its windshield literally opened up, to provide ventilation. The car also boasted arm-like turn indicators which were appendages that physically popped out of either side. The general idea was to mechanically alert others about about your intended change in direction. Periodically, these indicator appendages ended up stuck in an upright position, refusing to retract back in. Rajat's dad would yell at him to intervene manually, requiring him to retract the stubbornly upright arms, a case of a man taming his early machine into submission.

Rajat's US-educated Thatha was a colorful character in his own right. Destined for Purdue, Thatha had a reserved seat on the Santa Maria but in a cunning display of consumer savviness, he exchanged it for a business class upgrade on the Pinta. Unfortunately for him, if those ships were the Beatles, the Pinta was its Ringo Starr. As most of us know, the Santa Maria guys landed all the hot women.

After chirpily landing on Plymouth Rock, Thatha went through the usual preordained initiation that all Indian graduate students suffer through: order an espresso instead of a cappuccino, purchase parsley thinking it to be cilantro, waste countless hours talking to Amway recruiters, assume pepperoni grew on the pepperoni tree, confuse perfunctory greetings, from attractive women, for candid confessions of true love ("But she said 'hi' to me so brightly!! She must really like me!) etc.

Thatha then firmly proceeded to establish himself as a pioneer-desi[3] by signing himself up as a member of the "Columbia House[4] Phonograph club." Not having been admitted to any "club" prior to this, a free membership was too enticing a prospect to pass on. It smacked of exclusivity at zero cost, and besides, there wasn't a dress-code either!

Using such devious means, he acquired a vast collection of wax drum Edison-esque phonograph albums, none of which he had actually bothered to pay for, which made it all the more satisfying. This was in a time when albums assumed cylindrical form.

Much like the PAL vs NTSC video format duality, these cylinders were either wax or tin-foil based, which makes sense since we always have to be two uselessly competing standards, neither of which is significantly better than the other. History is replete with other stellar examples of unnecessarily competing standards: VHS vs Betamax, Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD, Honda vs Toyota, Republican vs Democrat, tomaytoh vs tomahtoe, ad nauseam.

Only desi grocery stores sold universal phonograph players that played both. Unlike Thatha's ancient player, which Rajat liked to describe as being crank-driven, these ingenious modern devices play all formats and run off of any energy source: 110v, 220v, Petromax, bicycle dynamos, cow-dung patties, fuel-cells, you name it. In fact, desi Scientists are currently working on prototypes powered by cold-fusion.

The jewel of Thatha's vintage music collection was his 1873 zero-th edition Dark Side of the Moon cylinder which he treated with an almost religious reverence. In fact, Thatha's album was so old that the cover artwork actually featured Sir Isaac Newton himself, proudly holding up his famous prism to light, producing a refractory rainbow just for Pink Floyd's benefit.

In his less lucid moments, of which there was no shortage, Thatha also claimed that he understood the lyrics to Hotel California and that he owned a copy of Led Zeppelin V. Both claims were recently dismissed by two eminent classic rock historians who convincingly sported tie-dye T-shirts and ponytails.

Rajat's ancestral reverie was rudely interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream emitted by one-dot-oh, which, as usual, was being overpowered by his two-dot-oh.

"Younger siblings learn to fight unfair far too early in life!," observed Rajat, as he absentmindedly released two-dot-oh's expertly rendered choke-hold. "Remember, kids! Absolutely no fighting on my watch! Save it for later."

His flashback terminated, Rajat resumed thinking about his current plight, one that unfortunately included his wife and her demand du jour. Resigned to his fate and running out of ideas, he decided to employ a last-resort delay tactic by saying, "Let me research all available smartphones thoroughly!". The appeal of this tactic lay in its open-endedness.

"Some lucky men might get to tryst with destiny," grumbled Rajat to himself, "But my destiny is to tryst with a bloody smartphone instead!". The conclusion was foregone and Rajat had no choice but to give in. After all, his dad had almost named him Surender![5]

1 Thatha = Tamil word for Grandfather.

2 Appa = Tamil word for Father.

3 Desi = Hindi word for "native" and "of Indian origin."

4 The Columbia House "club" program has always been popular with students since time immemorial. They ship products eagerly and indiscriminately, but demonstrate considerable reluctance in collecting payment.

5 Surender = Alternate name for Hindu God Indra, who holds the mantle, "Chief of the Gods," probably known for his heroic willingness to surrender. You see, Hindus like their Gods the way they like their doctors, highly specialized.

Kassandra Montag

Hansel and Gretel Get Married

Suppose Hansel and Gretel were not brother and sister,
but were married. This makes getting lost in the woods
and killing someone much more believable.

Red haired and newlywed—Gretel dressed in white
lace and Hansel in suspenders—they abandon themselves
among the trees, pale limbs flailing. The trees
become men in black suits, with roots for heads.
Fish swim up out of the soil like weeds,
their wet scales glittering in pockets of sunlight,
their fins flapping against air.
These encounters rise out of the bark
like afterthought or dream, after Hansel and Gretel
have made love in the dirt and are asleep.
Gretel's red hair billows behind her like breaths
of fire, but she is no dragon, more a bird with talons.

At the witch's cottage they ask for plums and hunger
bitterly when she offers them tea. She doesn't trick them,
or lock them in her cottage. She sings a lullaby for them
as they edge along the cottage walls, search
for a tapestry woven with gilt thread, the treasure
that enticed them into the forest.

Hansel drops Ambien into her Earl Grey
and Gretel pulls the witch's white hair until her body folds
into the wood burning oven. Gretel shuts its door,
throws in a match, and asks Hansel to pour
a bit of honey into a glass for a golden drink.
Hansel smiles, thinks his wife
never so lovely as when in front of flames,
her face framed by tumbling red curls,
ash and bone crumbling
in small piles behind her.

Fairy Tale for my Unborn Child

While walking in the river bed behind our house
I discover a village, half hidden in tall grass
that reaches the windows of cottages.
A sign reads: no one in this town is afraid to die.

I hear children's songs; see them lined
in one row wearing their Sunday best,
black trousers on the boys, and navy dresses
on the girls. Blackberries cluster

in backyards and green ferns grow in June.
This is a town with pastries on the baker's windowsill,
set in small boxes tied with yellow ribbon,
and a market where a man butchers chickens,

with the blood right there next to the flower shop,
the daffodils bright and open as children's faces.
The fabric store holds rolls of velvet, chiffon, and brocade, where
dark haired girls manipulate shears and stick pins

into fabric mannequins. Their gray wool dresses darken
their eyes in the November dusk, when closing shop
they bend and blow out the last candle on the windowsill.
Beside a thatch-roofed cottage a plaid tablecloth

is thrown at the roots of a tree, with acorns
piled in the middle and a bucket
of apples at one corner, tipped over,
the apples tumbling and glossy in the sun.

A ladder lies in the green grass and an axe
balances against the trunk with a pair of black
gloves next to the silver blade.
A red leaf has fallen beside my shoe;
it has a startling flame, like the pieces
of stain glass in the cathedral
where the children sing in the yard
among the tombstones and the wrought iron

fences. Each child's voice burns with the same moon,
an open mouth, a wide, untreated wound.

Asylum

The ache of the black lily is giving wooden dolls away.
With sequin eyes
I too have found a small house
to shelter in.
This asylum with white walls and a child cot is blank

enough for creation. Its chimney is a throat
with jewels spilling out the mouth into a swirling sky.
Outside my window all of the elms

have fallen on their backs. They do not shriek
like a pestle in the mortar
when there is not enough bone to grind,
but collide softly, like cherries dropped on the cement.

I peer past the bars over my windows
toward the herb garden and forest beyond. Once,
lost in the woods, I came to a witch's hut
and boiled snakes in a net

with her long thin fingers as my own.
Now they appease me with trinkets on my bed,
vomited between fangs:
kernels of corn, a diamond ring, an antique key.
The time is near

when the peasant will marry
more than grain, when I will sow rubies
large as goat heads
from between my thighs.

The palm on my breast belongs to a creature
both an infant and a man,
its yoke now buried
with the ravens and poisoned porridge.
So I haul the shore

up to my neck, and let the tidal wave sink me,
crash in sudden gasps
into my face

kiss me clean.

Shannon Norland

A Winter Tale

The winter was hard, bitterly cold and full of storms. We had to keep the animals in the near shed, just beside the house. Their musky odor filled our rooms. They paced the small building restlessly, for I could not take them out to graze during the day; the wolves had become too brazen.

My brother, Viktor, was never home anymore. He worked at the river docks. Then the rivers froze over, one by one, and his packages home grew lighter and lighter until the last was just a note: "No work until the thaw. Will stay here til then. My love to all." Mama cried over it, then, taking me by the shoulders, told me I must be the man of the house now. Grandpa was with us, but had been ill since summer. He stayed in his bed, joining us to sit around the fire on rare evenings. I asked him for stories and he would try until the coughs shook his frame, and Mama yelled at me for burdening an old man.

Mama was angry all the time. The feud between her and my sister, Anna, continued. Seven months before, Anna refused to tell her who the father was. Now Anna was swollen and flush and still silent. She burned even in our frigid house. Grandpa and I were pushed aside by the tempest of their battle.

I brought him hot tea and blankets warmed by the fireplace. The hands that accepted them were cold, so unlike the strong, warm hands that lifted me as a small boy onto my first pony and wiped my tears when I fell. More than anything, the cold hands frightened me: more than the coughing or the bloody handkerchief or the bones that jutted out from over-stretched skin. I knew the winter would strip away all warmth from the world. The rivers would never thaw, the wolves would not leave, and eventually, when the firewood had been spent, we would all sit in icy stillness forever.

One day Anna grew hotter than ever. She cried out in pain and Mama, forgetting her anger, rushed to her side, but nothing she did eased the pain. I helped Mama boil water and soak herbs, but as the dark day stretched into night, I retired to my room, leaving them by the fireplace. An icy wind circled around the house, blending its moans with Anna's and the lowing of the animals. An uneasy sleep overtook me then.

I awoke to flickering darkness; my candle burned to nothing, only the fireplace in the room beyond provided a dancing illumination. Grandpa stood before me. He filled the doorway of my small room, his long shadow falling across me. He seemed taller, sturdier, as he had when he was younger and worked as a fisherman down at the river, before Papa died.

"Tell me a story, Grandpa," I whispered. Alone in the dark room, I felt as a young child, not one soon to start his transition to manhood. He came over and sat down on my bed. The familiar smell of sweet grass and cloves enveloped me.

"I've no more time for stories, Jacob," he said. He patted my knee and leaned closer. "You must tell the stories now – mine and your own. Remember that, for it is important."

"I won't forget," I promised.

"I know you won't mean to, but life can get in the way of what we mean to do." He patted my leg again then moved back. "Go help your mother now."

"What do you…" A cry tore through the house. I rushed from the room to find Anna alone at the fireplace; Mama stood in the doorway of Viktor's old room, tears streaming down her face. I went to her and she embraced me.

"Oh, Jacob," she cried. "It's your grandfather. He's gone." She looked up at the dark rafters and wailed, "Oh, Papa! Why did you leave me now?"

"No, Mama. He's just in my room."

"No, Jacob," she smoothed my hair back from my face and kissed my forehead. "He's gone."

I struggled from her grasp and went into the room. A candle burned on the dresser, its weak light playing over the featureless room, over the already-cold body of the old man I had loved. "But how?" I asked though I did not want the answer. I ran back to my own room to find it empty. Tearing the blanket from the bed, I sat by the fire with Anna, leaving Mama to tend to Grandpa's body alone. Anna moaned in a troubled sleep. With her flushed, sweating skin, she was more welcome company than the rest of the dark, cold house. She burned hotter than any of us, a twin of the hearth, and as long as she did not burn out, I would cling to her warmth for as long as I could.

The next day dawned bleak and foreboding. The wind from the night had gained strength. It whipped our coats about our knees and stripped the cloth from Grandpa as we carried him to the outer shed, leaving his pale face uncovered. I could not stop to chase it; it tumbled away into the woods, snagging on a tree branch, just another blotch of white against the pines. Mama and I cleared the table in the shed and placed the body on it. She pulled out another cloth and covered his face again. I waited outside as she prayed. When we started back together, large dusty flakes drifted down on our heads.

We prepared for the vigil, gathering food and candles. Mama paused often to gaze with brow furrowed upon Anna. My sister had grown quiet and listless, pacing the small rooms of the house with a shuffling step. We returned from carrying supplies to the shed to find her on the floor, writhing in pain.

"Hitch up the ponies," Mama said, her voice low and firm.

Outside, waves of snow assaulted me. The animal shed was a relief, warm and pungent from the livestock; it stunk of life. I pulled the cart out and hooked up our two sturdy ponies; the snow clung to their shaggy fur. Mama appeared, carrying armfuls of blankets. I spread them across the rough bottom of the cart. The thin pile looked too meager to offer much protection against the biting cold. I knew Mama planned to go to town, to find the doctor. It was a long ride even in fair weather. Now with the cold and storm, it would be treacherously slow. It was not a trip I looked forward to. I helped Mama get Anna into the cart, then took the reins and started to climb into the cart myself.

"No, Jacob, you must stay here." She took the reins from my hands and hugged me close. "Watch your grandfather."

I struggled to back away, to argue, but snowflakes caught in my lashes; my vision was blurred with their sting and my tears. My mother clasped me tighter and whispered, reassuringly, "Just one night. You will be all right, Jacob. You are strong, strong like your papa." She kissed my forehead and climbed into the cart. The ponies shuffled in the snow, eager to get moving. Soon Mama had them going at a fair pace, their dark manes whipped by the growing storm. They seemed the wild messengers of dark tidings. When they disappeared in the snow, the realization that I was alone clamped down on me. I secured the animal shed and made my way to the outer shed. Already the wind and snow made it difficult to maneuver; I did not want to make the journey at night. The outer shed was a long walk from the house and the nights were dangerous. Even with the rifle, I did not feel safe being in the open alone. I latched the heavy door of the shed behind me and, not looking at the shape on the table, made my way to the corner. I curled up beside the small stove, the rifle nestled in the crook of my arm.

I awoke later to the sound of snowflakes sizzling against the hot metal of the stove. I glanced up to see a small window high up the wall. It had a large hole in the corner. The wind had kicked its curtain off and now pushed snow in. With cold-sore limbs, I climbed the stack of crates below the window and plugged the hole with a bundle of old wool. An icy chill still radiated from the glass, but now that the wind was stopped, the shed felt less frigid. I peered out at the scene beyond. Heavy snow had fallen while I slept and though it fell lighter now, it was still steady. A dense coat of it covered everything. The house was closed up and cold; snow clung tightly to its sharp roof. I moved to get down but something caught my eye: tracks in the snow between the house and the sheds. I focused my vision, straining to peer through the snow, and saw that the prints were heaviest around the near shed, circling it several times. I stared, wondering if I had neglected the latch and the animals had gotten out, when a great grey wolf rounded the corner of the shed and stared straight into my eyes. I stood frozen, only breathing again when it broke its gaze and bounded off into the woods.

A howl tore through the air, striking my heart and sending me tumbling down the crates to the floor, searching for the rifle. The grey wolf was near. Three times he called out. I forced my numb legs into motion and rose to check the door. The latch was secure. I pulled down the heavy crossbar anyway. The sight of strong aged wood reassured me. I returned to the corner to hug the rifle. The fear left me drained. Drowsiness overcame me and I drifted in and out of sleep, moving only to feed more wood to the fire.

The wind returned with a fury as the weak winter sun faded. It howled out of the woods, blasting the shed with snow. I thought of Mama and Anna, hoping that they had reached the town safely. It was left to me to keep the vigil on this night, but despite the guilt of neglecting my duty, I could not force myself up to retrieve the candles, much less light them. I looked at the cold figure stretched out on the table, the table Papa had prepared fish on when he worked the river with Grandpa. Papa had been tall and lean, with cords of muscle like rope. He spent more time on the water than on land. And in the end, it was the river that took him.

It happened late in the season, after the harvests. Everyone gathered in the evening for the town festival. Under the influence of too much drink, the fishermen grew boastful; the fishing had been good that year. Friendly comparisons turned into heated arguments, until, finally, a challenge was made: they would go out that night and see who could pull in the most fish.

Grandpa laughed at the folly of young men. "The fish will hear them before they reach the water. No one will catch more than a minnow tonight." He slapped me on the back and pushed me into the column of men heading for the docks. But once at the docks, I could not take a step onto the boat. The narrow gap between the wood of the dock and wood of the boat seemed immense to me. It changed as the boat rocked beneath the weight of men leaping in. I knew it would surge open, like a black gullet, and swallow me when I tried to cross.

Viktor laughed at me as I stared, then leapt easily into the boat himself. Papa called for us to join him at the front; he was eager to set out and prove his claim.

"He is afraid to come," Viktor called up.

Papa looked back at me, then waved his hand dismissively. "Leave him then." He turned his keen eyes upstream as the boat pulled away, given over to the adventure, as Viktor took his place beside him. I was forgotten on the dock, left behind with the old men and worried wives. Grandpa came over to me but I pushed him away.

I pulled my pony from the stables and rode her along the dark river banks, silently following the boats. On and on, they went, farther and farther upstream, well beyond the usual fishing grounds. Still I followed. The murmur of the river was overshadowed by laughter and drunken shouts. But the quiet whisper soon grew into a loud rush as the river was split by tiny islands. Eddies and swift channels broke the smooth river surface as the water was contorted by the jagged rocks below. My anger and shame fell away into terror. They had come too far; unwittingly they brought their boats right to the river's teeth.

The laughter died. The light-hearted shouts became confused cries. There was the crash of wood against wood, as the boats collided in their attempts to turn back. But it was too late, already some of the boats were pulled away by the eddies, spun and turned as their hulls were ripped open by the rocks below. The sound of splintering wood resounded across the water. The cries were desperate now.

Helpless, I watched from the river's edge as the water licked over my boots, until I could not stand the cries anymore and rode back to the town for help. Dawn was breaking when the other boats arrived to pick up the survivors clinging to flotsam. Many had made it to shore, including Viktor. He sat trembling in Mama's arms as she dried him with a blanket, and asked about our father.

The nets of his boat had fallen out when dashed against the rocks; they trailed in the dark water like widow's hair. When they were finally pulled up, they revealed a grisly catch: men, pale and limp, tangled in their strands. And the palest fish, his once-keen eyes now dull and glazed: Papa.

Viktor and Grandpa secured a new boat and returned to the river, but I could never go onto the water again. I stalked along the banks, alone aside from my pony, returning again and again to that tragic place. If I closed my eyes, I could still see the oily sheen on his hands as he returned to the house from cutting fish.

In the dim stove light, the table shone from the oil of all the fish prepared upon it. But Grandpa was no fish; unlike Papa, he was a man of both water and land. He had taught me how to ride and how to tend the animals. Now as the storm reached a pitch and the wind howled even louder, I could hear them lowing and bleating. I longed to comfort them. Surely, Mama would forgive me for abandoning the vigil before the end of the night. I went to the door and began lifting the heavy crossbar, but stopped. Something other than the storm moved outside. I lowered the bar and pressed my ear to the door. Below the wailing wind I could hear pacing and sniffing. It was an animal. And in that moment, a howl pierced through my head, sending me running back to the corner to yank the rifle uselessly to my shoulder. The wolf just outside the door was silent but from all around, answering howls came, the same ones I had been hearing all along, not the wind after all. The howls grew stronger and closer as they leapt from the woods and surrounded the shed.

Then came the sharp, wrenching noise of wood splintering. I twirled around, looking for the damage, but in vain. The large door was unharmed; it did not even shake in place. I paced the room, listening. The sound came again, but now that some of my terror calmed, I could hear that it was farther away. They were not at this shed. I raced up the crates under the window and peered out. It was difficult to see through the darkness and snow, but I could make out the shapes of wolves around the near shed. Dozens of them, pacing and clawing at the wood. It was a newer building, the wood thin and tightly fitted for warmth, worn now after weeks of animal urine soaking into its lower edges. Several wolves gathered on one side. Already they had made a small hole. They clawed desperately to widen it. Teeth were bared as they fought with each other for position. The large grey wolf was always at the forefront, his great jaws snapping the weakened wood like the thin bones of a lamb. Inside, the animals cried out in terror.

I shouted from the window but if they heard my voice, they were undeterred, being so close to easing the starvation the winter had brought. I pulled the wool plug from the window and raised the rifle. It was a difficult angle to maintain but I managed to fit the barrel through the opening in the glass. I had but five shots, one in the chamber and four in my pocket. Aiming as best I could in the darkness, I shot at the wolf closest to the opening, a scrawny black beast. It yelped in pain and ran into the darkness, leaving a dark trail on the snow. Two of the others ran after it. Anything could become food in this winter. I reloaded and took aim again.

The hole in the shed was now wide enough for a wolf. One had already wedged himself in up to the haunches. I shot at him but struck only the side of the building. The kickback on the rifle shattered the rest of the window. Several of the wolves looked up at me, including the grey one. Without hurry, he padded to the other side of the shed. The wolf in the hole writhed one last time and was in. I could hear the animals stamping inside. A lone wolf would not have much chance against cornered cattle. But then another slipped in, and another. Screams as I had never heard animals make filled the night. More wolves fought to get in, frenzied by the animals' cries, but something blocked the hole. One of the first wolves reappeared, its jaws clamped over the throat of a young goat. The goat's knobby legs thrashed about the opening before being seized by the wolves outside. I fired again and again. One shot found its mark; a wolf went down, still and silent in the snow, but there were several more to take its place. They carried the bleating goat towards the woods before the fighting tore it apart like old fabric.

A louder sound rent the night, the sound of wood collapsing and animals stampeding in terror. The wolves still at the hole circled around to the other side of the shed. The door had given way and I knew who had broken it. In moments, the cattle and goats fled across the snow, the wolves right on their heels. Several geese managed to fly up to the roof of the shed, but the blood splattered on the snow there showed that even they were injured. I had seen enough. I slunk down on the crate and wept, for the animals and for us. How terrible it must be to be torn to pieces by wolves, and how terrible it would be for us to starve as the winter stretched on.

I cradled the rifle in my arms. I assumed the wolves would be busy with what was left of the livestock. But I was wrong, very wrong. In moments, I heard a scratching sound along the side of the shed, slowly moving around it as the wolf looked for a weak spot. This shed was old, much older than the near shed, made of solid timber fitted together decades ago. It had lived more winters than I had. But my heart still shook, for all the beasts needed was one point of weakness, one rotted knot, to gain a foothold. In a moment, it was found. The corner of the door had been dented and damaged by Viktor dragging the old plow from the shed many summers ago. The rain had worked its way in and mold had taken the inside of the wood. The door appeared whole from the outside, but now gave way beneath eager paws.

I stood frozen with fear, watching the paws come through, tearing chunks away with them. Then the jaws, some muzzles soaked in blood, splintered the rest. All the while I could hear him, howling just below the window, in eagerness and, soon to be, triumph, the great grey beast. On and on he howled and my fear-numbed brain could not think to raise the rifle or do anything to save myself. I could only think of the first time I saw a wolf.

It had been autumn and the first dusting of snow had already come. Grandpa and I had gone hunting. I saw it, a magnificent chestnut beast with a tawny belly. It stood on an outcrop, watching us. The late afternoon sun struck it from the side, lighting up the golden notes of its coat. A messenger of the sun, I thought.

"The world is happy when the wolves are fat," Grandpa joked. He raised his rifle in the air and fired a shot. The wolf darted away. "And when they are still fearful of a gun."

Something brushed my legs, pulling me from the memory. It was the cloth that had covered my grandfather's face. I dropped my rifle and ran to the table. So pale he looked in the faint light, almost luminous.

"Please, please," I begged, shaking him by the shoulders. The wrappings around him loosened and his arm fell out. I gripped his hand, still so cold yet familiar again. "Please, save me!" I cried as the wolves tore piece after piece of wood. Collapsing to the floor, I crawled beneath the table, whimpering. The hand that I had clutched so desperately dangled down over the side of the table.

I turned to face the wolves at the door. A dark head had pushed through, stuck at the shoulders. Teeth scratched against the floor as the creature snarled at me. I could already feel those teeth upon my throat. Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. The dangling hand slowly returned to the table. Sounds of movement came from above me. I clutched my knees in terror as a bundle of white sheets fell to the floor and two sturdy legs swung down from the table.

My grandfather knelt down before me, his face pale but friendly. He smiled at me and gripped my shoulder before walking over to the door. The wolf had retreated but it snarled outside with the rest. Grandpa lifted the crossbar and the latch.

"No, don't," I called out to him, but he simply smiled and shook his head.

He threw the door open. The snow was blinding, lit by the first slivers of dawn. I shielded my eyes. When I looked again, the door was closed and Grandpa gone. Rousing from my terror, I pushed a heavy crate before the gaping hole in the door and collapsed in the corner.

That was the story I told Mama and the men from town that arrived in the morning. I doubt they believed me, but out of pity or shame, no one mentioned the scraps of cloth or old shoe found among the slaughtered livestock.

Mama sold the farm after that and we moved into town to live with Viktor. When Anna had the baby two months later, that part of our lives seemed a distant nightmare. But for me, the images were still vivid. I became the storyteller my grandfather asked me to be. I learned the truth of storytelling – that for every tale, there is another beneath, and the storyteller must know both. I can see my grandfather lifting the latch on the shed door to disappear in a blaze of light. And, late at night when the rest of the family is asleep and memories press close around my small bed, I can also see my grandfather's glassy eyes staring up at me as I shoved his stiff body through that hole in the shed door.

Brandon Rushton

My Neighbor Loves Eagles but is Self-Conscious in the Study of Bald Things

A yellow light is a parking lot for inheritance.
Hear them: sirens rowing the river home

to some mother whose least favorite heritage is loss.

It is things like this that make me imagine
loneliness is a bookmark—the way a thumb breaks

a page of us into remembering where we left off.

Who says you're not in there, middle-aged monotony,
National Geographic spread across the coffee table—

a dishwasher is the echo of the way we lick our wounds.

Candle flame in the bathroom, pail of paint in the hallway.
Convince myself dark sky is a sheet we crawl under

to make love, that trash in the parking lot between us
is all the love letters we wrote to each other,

decided against, and then tore to pieces.

***

Between you and remembering myself
as a window—I have seen through

twenty years of candle painted wounds; we have aged

as couches do—both me and the monotony
of imagining a lover—whose hands are tied

around a concept of the head. Insecurity and inheritance

meet at an intersection, and I have dreams
of walking through a department store

and finding you a hat. Things look least favorite

from the road's view, I tell myself you are more
than a stoplight or a bathroom fan—

that a highway is just a hair I pull from my pillow case.

Besides the Rest, the Forest Shows Signs of Tuberculosis

Here's to leaving the window open in winter.

Let them have it. The window.

The winter.

This is the sort of thing you try to tell me

fits in a glove box—everything

is a cheaper version of something else.

A woodstove leans its long neck

(coughs) up the morning.

Horizon tries to start a car and fails.

This has to be the way

moss diagnoses the rain.

It is like somebody

has not been here. Rake leaves from the breakfast

bar, can be a place for planting pines.

None of this is a love story

is what two forests call out

over a body of water.

Bergenia has forgotten. Let it.

Shy, is what we would have liked

to name a Wednesday

last night, you and the snow deepening

into the darkness—

disappearing farther across the surface

of the frozen lake.

My Sixteen Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Five Nights with Jerry Sandusky

for Dottie Sandusky

This is the way a day ends—

mouth drinking from a showerhead,

ripe peaches in the garbage disposal.

There are beehives beneath my waistband.

What a waste

all afternoon was

full of sting and sweaty pollination.

A bird breathes heavy,
the ways of sleeping in the flower bed.

Beside the barn, an Oldsmobile
is on bricks, that bird builds a nest
inside the wheel well.

(This is what I saw

when I saw I thought

I was thinking about leaving.)

At night, I've begun to pretend
I wake, walk thorn-heeled
into the river—watch

a turtle snap at mayflies,

slick of a pike's back loosen

the knots I have tried to tie in water.

Another night— this time, I do not wake to the sound of drought—all this

dead grass dipped in sky.

I pull a robe, some slippers, passed midnight and I
repaint the walls the color of your flesh—
sometimes it feels like this—that I have lived
a lifetime inside you.

Summer has begun to taste like ceiling fan—
all the dust and no relief.

I've turned off the air conditioning, imagine
heat of the hallway as your breath.

It is fading, the voice you used
to tell me to open the window—

wren in the birdbath—splash

of nectarine on the carpet— dripping,

you love rain on the blinds, how it rolls from sill.

You have become these water stains
on the drywall.

Radio tells me I can save
on window treatments—it is the first time

I notice that I am dying

to tell you that I've never been very good at opening
up anything.

Clamp the window shut,

slip a note under the bedroom door to myself.

Just the itching of moonlight, how it tastes
like gravel in August.

But it is dark, even the river

has something worth running away from.

Melody Sage

Bebe

Picture a farm in the country, and that is exactly what this farm was like, appropriately picturesque. It had every detail one would expect, right where one would expect it, which was how the farmer and his wife intended it to be. The only thing not in its right place was a child.

The old man had wanted a boy to do chores and shoot deer in the corn field. The old woman had wanted a girl to do chores and dress up like a giant rubber doll. Somehow they had neither, and now, of course, they were old.

They did have their consolations. The farmer could drink whiskey instead of water and leave hacksaws and axes lying around unattended, and his wife had a piglet named Bebe. Bebe liked to follow the old woman around the yard, snuffling at her efficient thrashing skirts. Whenever the old woman went into the house, Bebe would wait for her on the porch for hours, grunting to herself and flicking ticklish black flies off her ears.

Bebe was a lovely pig. She had wide set brown eyes like watery bon bons. Her sparse hair was as white as poodle fur, or fresh cream. Her naked skin shone through, pink and scrubbed looking. She was inordinately fond of lettuce and had learned to dance on her hind legs like a chorus girl for scraps.

One day in June, when the air felt like being slapped by a boiled dishrag, the old woman was picking strawberries. Her church was hosting a potluck, and she had foolishly promised to bring a homemade pie. The toothy leaves wilted, heavy and sepia-toned with dust. Ant trails of sweat crawled inside her lace collared dress. Her own pulse beating in her skull distracted her. It was terribly still. She felt sick and dream-like, as if she were swimming in a mirage. Bebe sat beside her, stealing berries. She looked up and wrinkled her eloquent ski slope nose. The old woman often contemplated her buttocks and thought of crackling bacon—the best possible smell—but not now. Now, she stared into her dear dumb eyes and wished Bebe were her daughter. Then she would have someone to help her.

The old woman shook her head at herself. She did not have time for this nonsense. She grabbed the tin bucket and went inside. Bebe trotted behind her and squealed when the screen door swung shut. The old woman hulled the strawberries and hummed a song whose words she had forgotten. The work was monotonous, and not particularly fulfilling, like all her work. Her big knuckled hands were stained lipstick red, brighter than blood. As she rinsed them in the kitchen sink, she saw a face staring at her through the fluttering white curtains in the window.

The face was moony and pale, a child, a girl. It did not disappear, when she looked at it, but looked back blandly.

"Hello, how may I help you?" the old woman asked, startled, but still polite.

The girl did not answer.

Perhaps because she had never had any of her own, children made the old woman uncomfortable. She never knew when they might laugh, or cry, or scream, or smash a china tea cup. She stepped closer to the window. The child was naked. She could see her tiny flat pink nipples. She stepped back.

"Where are your parents?"

The girl blinked and did not answer. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were the same silvery blonde color as her skin and hair. It made her look oddly featureless and unfinished, like a child's drawing of a child. She appeared to be about eleven years old. The old woman stood there nonplussed, her hands dripping. She wondered if the child might be slow. What exactly was she expected to do in a situation like this?

She shooed the girl inside, not wanting anyone to see her standing like that on her porch. The girl hesitated at the threshold. She peed a little and bit her lip, as if about to cry, but followed when the old woman took hold of her small sticky hand.

The old woman buttoned the girl into one of her blouses. The girl did not lift her arms, so the old woman lifted them for her, sliding them through the sleeves. The ruffled cuffs hung down like paisley hooves, and the collar slipped off her shoulders. The old woman worried about the lack of underwear.

She laid newspaper down on the linoleum and set the girl in a chair at the kitchen table. She did not have any toys, so she gave her a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen to play with while she made some phone calls.

None of the neighbors had lost a child. No missing person reports had been filed at the police station in town. She hung up. The girl was chewing on the pen with vacant intensity. Black ink drooled down her weak chin. As the old woman roughly cleaned her off, she thought of the cardboard boxes of kittens that were sometimes left in the pasture ditches. Some of the kittens were always dead—half-eaten by their siblings by the time they were found. The others slinked through the barn, eyes glinting like distant headlights, killing baby rats, and refusing to be touched.

The girl gulped and cried, awful, guttural noises, straining to get away from the washcloth. She fell to the floor and ground her face against the old woman's shins. The old woman flushed with fury and embarrassment. Slug trails of snot smeared across the hem of her immaculate dove gray dress.

"Control yourself, girl," she snapped. She resisted the temptation to kick the child off. Her shirt rode up, and the old woman saw what she had failed to notice while she was dressing her—a tail, a curly tail, quivering and springing in time with her sobs. And the old woman knew.

The girl was hers, hers to keep. The poor thing could not help herself. She did not know any better. She would raise her up to be a fine young lady. After all, she had trained her to dance the can-can.

The old woman stroked her wispy hair and scratched her behind her ears, the way she knew Bebe liked. The girl went limp with pleasure and flopped on her back to show her belly. She craned her head towards the fingertips, tongue lolling.

"You like that girl, don't you? You like that."

During dinner that evening, the old man made no mention of the girl. He did, however, mention the strawberry chiffon pie.

"I thought this was for the church potluck," he said in between bites.

"It was, but this is a special occasion. Bebe is coming to live with us." His wife smiled tensely. He considered the name, the odd girl, the empty spot in the pig pen, and nodded methodically. He had seen many inexplicable things in his time and was not especially surprised by another.

Bebe was not a pretty child. Her eyes squinted, small and unfocused. Her clammy skin was misted with sweat. She reminded the farmer of a puffball mushroom appearing after a night of insistent rain. Soft, elderly down covered her cheeks. Her mouth hung open, and drooped at the corners, audibly breathing. She jerked her arms and legs like broken marionette and pushed her whole face into her plate to eat. Dollops of whipped cream and jam congealed in her colorless hair. He did not look forward to her coming to live with them in their hygienic, quiet house, but he was a stoic breed and did not mind. His wife would take care of it.

"Sounds good," he said, "someone to keep you company."

His wife smiled, a real smile, as rare as rubies. Surprised, he smiled back.

For a while, life was achingly sweet. It was still spring, a hopeful, opulent time on a farm. Starry potato flowers winked from the field. Bullfrogs and crickets filled the twilight with rushing music without melody. Nothing had to be slaughtered. And every night there was ice cold lemonade.

The old woman liked to cook for Bebe, and feed her by hand, watching her taste potato salad and tapioca pudding for the first time. She tied silk ribbons in her hair and sewed her a dozen dresses that looked like petit fours. The paper patterns she used were crisp and brittle with age. She had bought them, when she still thought she would have children of her own. They had to be scissor cut with care and delicately pinned into place like dead butterflies.

Bebe learned to use the powder room, dress herself, and clumsily wield a spoon and fork. The old woman was happy to see Bebe ate pork without a qualm. She took a certain dark satisfaction in serving her honey glazed ham cured from the sow that gave birth to her. She was her mother now. Even though Bebe never smiled or laughed like a normal girl, she continued to follow the old woman everywhere, gazing up at her, as if she wanted her autograph.

In the evenings, Bebe listened raptly to the radio, but her early attempts at speech were unsettling. She pitched too high or too low. She snorted distinctly inhuman sounds, unrecognizable as language. The old woman finally had to put a stop to it, whenever Bebe tried. Children were to be seen not heard.

Of course, there were other trials. The old woman had to lock the pantry. Bebe broke in and ate fistfuls of sugar from the bag, scattering it on floor, so the gritty crystals stuck to the bottoms of their feet. Bebe blew up like a zeppelin, bigger and bigger, until she seemed to float unsteadily on her dainty feet. She loved food, and the old woman had to bribe her with treats to behave. She smelled unpleasantly yeasty and spilled out of her clothes. It soon made the old woman queasy to look at her.

Bebe was not the help the old woman had wished for. Although she polished and mopped well enough, she could not be trusted to pick beans. None of them ended up in the basket. Weeding was also beyond her capabilities. She rooted in the mud, eating dandelion roots and worms, and had to be punished.

The old woman found that she frequently had to whip Bebe with a cracked leather belt. It was such a relief to feel her rage settle into calm gratification with each brisk stroke. For the first time, she experienced herself as powerful and in control, a complacent angel with a flaming sword, a mother who knows best. Her skin glowed. Her arms grew firm and strong. She had never felt better.

In the autumn when the birch trees lost their green, Bebe changed. She began to bleed, to develop secrecy and breasts. She disappeared into in her bedroom for days, and surreptitiously grinded up against fence posts, pillows, and doorframes, until her face went slack with bliss. Whenever she caught her, the old woman beat her until she could no longer cry, but she knew Bebe kept at it behind her back. Once, Bebe bit her on the hand. The jagged crescent wound wept pus and would not heal. The old woman became almost frightened of Bebe, which caused her to hit her, more and more often, without a reason.

After dessert one night, the old woman discovered Bebe and her husband on the sofa together. Her bulk was splayed across his skinny legs, and her arms were looped around his neck. She rubbed herself in his lap, grunting under her breath. His flaccid sun burnt face was the color of a cockscomb, even redder than usual. His expression was peculiarly fixed and strained. She grabbed Bebe by the hand.

"She needs to take a bath," she said. Her husband nodded and opened the newspaper, keeping his head down, not meeting her gaze. She dragged Bebe to the barn.

"If you are going to act like a pig, you are going to stay in the pig pen."

She shoved Bebe into the muck with the squealing pigs and latched the gate.

Weeks passed, and Bebe stayed in the pen. She did not seem to mind. She knelt in front of the trough with the other pigs and slept piled with them for warmth. Caked with shit, she no longer resembled a girl, although no one would mistake her for a pig either. The old woman waited with mounting irritation for her to show remorse, or despair in her circumstances. Bebe remained placid and unperturbed, content to lie in the sun for hours. She did not even swat the flies. The farmer and his wife said nothing regarding this turn of affairs, and soon it felt as if there had never been a child at their table.

One night, when the old woman was bringing the pigs their nighttime slop bucket, she heard a curious moan. She followed it into the barn and stumbled upon Bebe and the hired hand, a spotty boy with lank black hair. They gleamed in the swinging orange lantern light. His overalls were around his ankles. Bebe was on her hands and knees bucking back and forth with wild abandon. For the first time, the old woman saw her smile.

"What's for dinner?" the farmer asked the next night. The old woman laid a steaming platter of artfully overlapping cutlets of meat, garnished with sprigs of parsley and pearl onions, before him.

"Pork chops."

He considered the empty place in the pen, the fresh blood on the stump near the smoke shed, and nodded. The old woman raised a forkful to her lips, glistening with oil.

"Delicious," she said.

Ingrid Steblea

Figure A: Intraoral Shotgun Wound

--from An Illustrated Guide to Death Investigation

For the rest of her life
she transmogrifies it,
changing horror
into harmlessness,
a metaphor
metamorphosis.

Not a man with his head
blown off, obliterated.

That could have been anything.

Something so formless
begs a form; a ghost sheet
draping itself
over an abandoned chair.

She chose orchids.
Scarlets and golds,
splayed petal and sepal,
glisten and ganglion.

Stuttering she mutters,
bledred and flowerfellow.
She deconstructs,
constructing
an armor of imagery:
that fawn stalk
the stem
bearing aloft
the bloom's
heavy oddness.

Orchid, poor kid.
That slight shelf not
what's left of a chin,
but the silken lip
for a bee landing.

Those gleaming shards
pollen (not teeth, not bone).

She cups
what she cannot
now unknow
in her palm,
an evil seed:
the body's jape
and gimcrack,
how final the ending.

In the dark
she holds her breath
so as not to blow away.

The Honey Eater

"Neither honey nor bee for me." --Sappho

You will eat nothing now but honey, scooping it from the jar
on fingerpoint, licking dripping syrup from your wrist.
You're out till all hours telling the bees the gossip
so they won't abandon their hives. Don't you know the cost?

Such sweetness is death. This hunger won't be mollified.
Ask the treasure-seekers dipping their bread into the tomb's sealed cruse
and finding the coiled casing of the mummified child, her golden lips
set in immortal sulk. Crack the comb, a sticky wedge for each compass point,

each hexagonal well a sepulcher. They line up to be mellified, elderly
Arabians softening over a hundred years into honey candies,
confections for the sick to suck. Darling. No matter how you strive,
you cannot become the nodding head of clover, the moss-draped

tupelo bloom. You can't brother John the Baptist. Picture
Dracula's head lopped off, dropped in a cask of it, shipped off,
an offering to the Sultan. That's the world, love. No such thing
as sweetness now against a bitter hereafter. We're none of us pure.

None of us holy. Devouring me won't dissolve the darkness,
won't absolve the sins you've conceived. Lay in your gold, beloved;
sit cross-legged before your buzzing altar, the sun your heavy mantle,
star thistle bowing in the slight breeze, and your expectant tongue.

Pillar of Mercy. Pillar of Severity. You and I, we will eat the apple
together with the honey, lucifer-light, lucifer-dark; we two, renewed.

The Cheshire Cat Speaks to Alice

You little bit of British frippery. You blue morsel, you jot.
The way you waltz into our woods like you own the place
already, flag behind your back and your fingers crossed.

Always demanding answers, as if the drop that brought you here
could be undropped, babes but a pip in the womb again, ships
returned to their shores again, the new worlds unfound again.

Alice with your chalice, too tall, too small; there's madness
in you. I tried to warn you, hanging the crescent of my jaw's moon
from the branch. How do you like our queen now, pretty driblet,
her thunder and bleeding heart, swinging her damocles blade?

You descend with your scrolled maps and sextant, coveting
improbable baubles to prison under glass, cupping death
in your white hand. Play your march-and-conquer games,
trinket, stamp your foot; you cannot dismiss us
as but a pack of cards forever. We are sharpening
our spades. Swinging our clubs. Do not reach out
to stroke this native son. I will carve
your bones into matchsticks. This wonderland jungle
is lethal with eyes.

Robert Alan Wendeborn

Eating Is, And Should Be, A Joyous Occasion

I am eating this bowl of cereal as if each flake is a chicken in the yard and you are inside of one of the chickens in the yard and I am trying to get you out of the chicken in the yard. I chase them around with my spoon. I sneak up softly. I catch my breath along the edge of the yard, I mean bowl. I set my spoon down. I look around the yard, I mean kitchen. I am so confused about where I am, and also where you are. At this rate, I will never find you.

30,000,000 Miles From Anywhere

We are waiting for the Jeep to pick us up. I hope that they didn't pack paper plates and you hope that they packed the baby pigeons and banana sling speedos. It's so cold I can't feel my penis and I'm thinking of peeing in my pants just to warm up. We listen to music from a travel promotion. The music is made of accordions. It floats around us in waves. We have sex, because that's what people do when they're bored. But we're not bored, just cold and lonely.

SWEDEN: IT'S MORE THAN JUST MEATBALLS

Like some disco ball from designer hell, I descend into the pig's knuckles. I blow long, not hard, into the designer stem of the designer glassware at the designer bar. This designer bar was a mere three designer islands away from my designer hotel. I past fifty other designer bars on the way. You ride up to this designer bar on a reindeer. Your steed is glimmering in the pink light of Abba as it orders you a beer. The reindeer's name is Sven, and like most alcoholics, he speaks only in vowels.

Someone To Stand In The Background

I think you need a sidekick. Your sidekick should probably be a puppet or something. Or a child actor who has dropped out of showbiz because showbiz was ultimately hampering their creativity. Maybe your sidekick would be a very kinky animal spirit. Later, when your sidekick moves on to better things, you turn to me for support. I'm here, I say. Good, you say. Now put on this pig costume and masturbate in public while we take the bus across town.