Issue 3

FICTION

• Panic, by Liz Dubelman

• Boggle on the Train, by Lynn Lipinski

• Bus Stop, by Katelyn Thomas

NON-FICTION

• The Brotherhood of Delivery Boys, by Philip Kobylarz 

• Crossing the Street in Saigon, by Michelle Robin LaNON-FICTION 

  
  

POETRY

• Tapping, by Cori Bratby-Rudd

• Mouthful, by Brynne Crawley

• My Mother Repaints the Room Where Her Mother Died, by Anthony DiPietro

• Somewhere New, by Su-Yee Lin

• Urban Echoes, by Dennis Mombauer

• Comments Section, by Daniel Romo

• Saturday, 10 a.m., by Matthew W. Schmeer

• Desire, by J.M. Schmidt

• The Bath, by Jacqueline Young

EDITORIAL TEAM: Marina Crouse, Tonya Kelley, Tiffany Argueta, Allison Blackley, Jacqlyn Cope, Claudia Pocasangre, Kegan Swyers, Sharon Cleveland Blount

ADVISOR: Joanna Novak

FICTION

_____________________________________________________________________

Panic

by Liz Dubelman

Lucy always set her iPhone alarm tone to harps because it reminded her of angels. She thought that gave the day a spiritual start, but she always woke up a few minutes before the angels and grabbed the phone to check her texts, email and news. Sometime during this process the harps would play, but not today.

On her phone the blue email icon had no numbers. Was it possible that Lucy had gotten nothing overnight? No spam, no newsletters, no notes from her boss? There were no emails at all, not even old ones. Was she having a nightmare? Was she dead? Why hadn’t the angels played the alarm harps?

She swiped to Facebook. It had none of the notices she expected, needed. When she opened the app it was a white screen, and in the upper left corner where her profile picture should have been - her profile picture of that perfect hair day – there was a shadow with a question mark. She sat straight up in bed, grabbed her laptop and took it to the bathroom.

Simultaneously, she felt the release of her bladder and utter dread at finding that she had no Internet service at all. The signal symbol that looked like a black and white rainbow was at full strength, but she couldn't get to any sites. No email, no music, no pictures. Did she even exist?

Feeling sick, she went back to bed. Clutching the phone to her chest, she tried a hard restart. She was going to text her friend, Missy. She would know what was going on and how to fix it. But her phone was a white nothingness. None of her old texts were there. Not the one from the new guy she’d just met on Bumble. Not the one confirming her dental appointment. Not even the many from her sister complaining that Lucy wasn't sisterly enough. There was no cellular service either. In full panic mode, she tried dialing 911.

The spinning gear appeared, indicating something like hope. Lucy took a deep breath, in through her nose filling her belly and out through her mouth, just like she had learned to do through the Kalm app. Finally a message appeared: "UNKNOWN ERROR. DISMISS." She checked her phone again. It was like the tundra.

Still in her flannels and Nasty Woman t-shirt, she slipped into the Uggs she kept under the bed in case of an earthquake. An earthquake would have been a relief. She had an earthquake preparedness kit that she'd bought on Amazon. What if there was no more Amazon? She couldn’t image having to go into a mall to buy all her stuff. Would transactions require sales clerks? She left the relative safety of her apartment.

Judging from the sun it was not yet seven o'clock. She walked two blocks south to the next biggest street. The traffic lights were flashing on all sides. The digital clock on the Wells Fargo Bank building was an ominous black rectangle like a coffin. She wasn’t used to looking up when she walked. She didn’t like the feeling so she started counting like she did when she was a child before her parents divorced. When she got to 37 she checked her phone. Nothing, so she started counting again. She saw an older woman half a block ahead walking two Shih Tzus. Lucy wasn’t used to talking to women over the age of forty whom she wasn’t related to.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Lucy asked, startling the woman and setting off the dogs. Lucy pointed to the stoplights flashing, as if it was a code that everyone but she could decipher. The woman murmured something about a possible power outage, then bent down to let the dogs lick her face. Lucy noticed that this kind of contact calmed down the dogs.

Lucy struggled to keep her heart from escaping her chest. She checked her lifeless phone again. She pressed the home button in rhythm like giving it CPR. She tried to steady herself by focusing on the ground supporting her and the breeze on her skin. That Kalm app was worth $2.99 a month. What if she had to remember everything it taught her?

The hospital towered on the horizon. If she was losing her mind, a hospital would be a good place to land. As she got closer there were more people on the street. Maybe there always were but she was so used to focusing on her phone she never noticed. A man in scrubs with ear-buds was talking on the phone. Lucy tried to stop him, but he was in the middle of giving very complicated medical instructions and, despite her frantic waving in front of his face, he paid her no attention. Maybe he was a first-responder.

The doors to the emergency room opened. A woman behind an L-shaped desk was talking to a man holding a bloodied handkerchief to his ear. On the television mounted high on the wall there were two newscasters, a gray-haired man and a woman who looked young enough to be his granddaughter.

"Hacktivist group Panic has claimed responsibility for the early morning attack on a four-block area of Santa Monica. We’re told that all power, Internet and phone service have been restored. Several tech giants are said to be working on a patch to restore data that may have been lost through malware that allowed the breach. This patch will help secure the future."

"Secure the future," the woman anchor repeated. Lucy felt the weight of her phone in her pocket. She took it out and, with cautious optimism, pressed the "home" button.

There was her background picture of the beach at sunset, along with the time and date. She pressed it again. Everything was there: 194 unread emails, a text that said, "what sup" and all her apps, including Kalm.

_____________________________

Boggle on the Train

by Lynn Lipinski

My nephew Ryder was the kind of plump pink-skinned know-it-all I would have thrown in a garbage can had this been middle school. He had something to say on every topic. In the rare moments he refrained from speaking, his mouth hung half open, perpetually poised to start yapping again the minute you took a breath. He’d only gotten worse since landing his first software job out of college. My brother Powell told me how much money that firm offered him, and I knew right away that I was in the wrong business. Writing never paid that good and I’ve been doing it for two decades.

“This is a huge opportunity for me to learn product development at one of Chicago’s top tech companies. Now maybe doing scrum and pre-production code deployment isn’t exactly saving the world right now, but with a few years under my belt, I’ll be able to create my own destiny. Write my own ticket, you know, Uncle Drew?”

The kid spouted cliches so earnestly he must have thought they were his original ideas. My brother hung on every word like they were undiscovered Lennon/McCartney lyrics. Christ. And was I supposed to know what scrum meant? I wasn’t about to ask wannabe Steve Jobs.

I hadn’t believed Powell when he told me the kid wanted to come on our annual train trip across the Rockies. The trip was one of the few things in this world that my brother and I agreed on. We disagreed on the merits of a Catholic school education, whether the stock market was going bearish or on the significance of the television show Breaking Bad. But we both loved being on the move and the way traveling by train allowed us to savor the experience.

Growing up, Ryder had never shown desire to leave his Chicago suburb with his video games and his online friends and coding conferences.  But somehow, here he sat on the Amtrak, shaking my vintage 1980s Boggle box much harder than he needed to mix up the letter cubes, and talking about the importance of “stretch assignments” at work. I hoped that meant they were making him do yoga because he certainly needed the exercise.

Playing Boggle was as much a ritual as the train trip itself. Powell and I were well-matched, though I did win slightly more than he did. Ryder, I assumed, didn’t know how to play anything without a joystick, just like the fresh-faced college grads they kept hiring for less and less money at the magazine where I worked. And who were nipping at my heels every day to take the best assignments.

Powell kept his eyes focused on the box, competitive and ready to win. The difference, I knew, was that Powell would throw the game like Jake LaMotta if he thought Ryder might get upset. After all, this boy was raised in the generation that got trophies for putting their soccer cleats on the right feet. Powell watched that high-strung boy’s moods with the intensity of an abused woman waiting for her boyfriend’s next violent outburst. Yes, I chose that metaphor on purpose. Ryder held his dad hostage to his every fleeting happiness. It was abusive, at least to watch.

I had no such inhibition about beating Ryder. He blew off my offer to explain the rules and set the box down with a bang. Powell flipped the tiny plastic hourglass and I ripped the plastic top off the box. Go time.

I focused in on the jumble of letters in the five-by-five grid. The thin lead of the mechanical pencil broke the first three times I tried to write, and I punched the eraser to extend more. The splintered pieces of lead rolled around the table like tiny logs with each lurch and push of the train.

Ryder bit his fat bottom lip in concentration; I could hear him breathe with the wheeze of an out-of-shape middle-aged man.

Words piled in my head, and I rushed to get them on to paper. ATTENDS snaked through grid, ALOUD was nearby, DENSE ran diagonally across the board.  I listened for pauses in their writing, enjoying a sweet feeling of triumph when Ryder’s pen faltered for ten seconds or more, then resumed but only for a few letters before stopping. Meanwhile, I found a new run of words with ENDUES. No way Ryder would even know that word; he would probably burn precious seconds trying to make ENDURES not realizing he had a word staring right at him without that pesky letter R.

Powell called time. Ryder, impatient and bouncing like child on the upholstered seat, demanded to be first to read his list.

ENDUES, he said. I scratched it off my list, then another, and another and another. Damn. My mind immediately concluded he was cheating.

“Do you even know what endues means, Ryder?” I asked.

He grinned at me. “Hey, this isn’t the SATs. I don’t have to know what the words mean.”

“Ryder’s good at seeing patterns,” Powell said, almost apologetically. “It’s what makes him good at computer code.”

“And Boggle,” the kid said.

“Rematch,” I said.

Words were my thing. I paid the rent by stringing them together for America’s last greatest sports print publication. I finished the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in 13 minutes last week. And I’ve played Boggle for 30 years. Experience had to count for something, I thought. I got this.

I snatched the box out of Ryder’s hands and shook it with a deafening rattle that made the several of the other passengers turn to look at us. I didn’t care; all I wanted to do was to take the stupid childish pleasure of shaking the box out of his baby hands. Mine, I wanted to say.

“Play nice, now,” Powell muttered under his breath at me, his eyes sliding between my face and Ryder’s, like we were two toddlers gearing up for a tantrum showdown.

I put the box down on the table, popped the top off and turned the timer all in one fluid movement. See, I thought, I don’t need any of you. It was a ridiculous gesture, but I was coiled tight now, nerves jangling and eyes scanning the board.

“Just a game, Uncle Drew,” the kid said and I grunted at him.

He reminded me of every smart-ass kid who’d come into the magazine the past five years, talking about social media and click-through rates and info-graphics. They made shitty little videos on their phones to go with their ubiquitous blogs. They were like vacuum cleaners of information, sucking it in and churning it back out in this endless vortex of new, new, new. They laughed behind their backs about old-timers like me who refused to tweet and who took three days sometimes to turn in a thoughtful, well-written article. These kids didn’t value quality, only quantity.

And it all came so easy to them. Just like my nephew, as smug as a middle-aged man, counting on his gift for pattern recognition and his ability to write robot language.

RAW. RAM. LOSIL? CHOMA? FAOS? The letters turned into nonsense. My mind went blank, worse than writer’s block. Like I lost my language abilities. Nothing registered. My mind panicked.

“Time,” Powell said, his eyes on my list of two words. He licked his lips like he did before delivering bad news. “Why don’t I go first,” he said.

“ARF. ALSO. FAR. JAMS.” He continued reading while I watched Ryder looking through his list, marking some words out, still smiling, still expecting to win.

“RAW,” Powell said. I marked it out.

Ryder read his list next. “LOAM. MAW. MISO. OVALS.” I saw him pause, his lips just starting to form the word RAM. I raised my pencil to mark it off my list when he did the inexplicable. “RAMS,” he said, “SIM, SOLAR.”

“Give me that sheet of paper,” I said, fury stacking in my gut like stones and forcing hot bursts of anger out of my mouth. I tried to snatch it from him but he pulled it in tight to his man breasts.

“If you wrote down RAM you should say it,” I spat at him. “You can’t tell me you came up with RAMS and not RAM. That’s Boggle 101, pattern recognition boy. And isn’t RAM even a computer term?”

“I missed it, Uncle Drew. I didn’t write down RAM.” His eyes were on his father’s, not mine, and they were pleading. The kid didn’t know what to do. He wanted his dad to bail him out, just like always.

“You look at me when I’m talking to you, Ryder,” I shouted. Powell stood up and clamped his hand on my shoulder to keep me in my seat. Ryder stared at the table as though the veins of fake marble were the most fascinating pattern he’d ever seen.

“Drew, come on, man,” Powell said. “Doesn’t matter.”

I made one last grab for the piece of paper and tore a small piece. Ryder shoved the rest of it into his mouth and started to chew.

My fist balled around the scrap of paper and shot across the table to hit him in the ear. The cartilage turned bright red on contact and Ryder stared at him with glassy eyes, stunned.

The carriage went silent. Powell pressed down on my shoulder, his fingers digging in painfully between tendons and muscles. I heard our collective breathing, rising and falling in adrenaline-fueled concert.

After a few moments, Ryder started chewing again, then swallowed the paper with a loud gulp.

Powell must have figured I was no longer a threat to his boy and slumped into his seat.

“You all right, Ryder?”

The kid nodded. “Uncle Drew, I was only trying to...”

“I don’t need your pity, kid,” I said. I glanced at Powell who watched his son with shining approval. I could practically hear the pride bursting out of his heart. He couldn’t wait to call his wife and tell her what a nice boy they’d raised. Ryder unsheathed his tablet and poked it to life. I stared out the window at the green and brown slopes of the Rockies, until the train entered a tunnel. In the blackness, I  saw only my face looking back at me. I looked like an old man.

________________________________

Bus Stop

by Katelyn Thomas

They are three islands, spaced a few yards apart. They have perfected the art of being alone in a public place, as most bus riders do.

The man on the bench has positioned himself carefully on the left, but his right arm embraces the back of the empty half of the bench and the other two men are not willing to enter his embrace. He had tried several different ways of sitting on benches while waiting over the last few months, but this is the most effective. Sitting in the center of a bench makes you seem greedy. People are willing to ask a greedy man to move over. Sitting to one side without claiming the other with a casually outstretched arm makes it appear that he welcomes people who don't understand the joy of being alone to sit beside him. He stares at the big pin oak across the street. Watching the scarlet leaves drop from the branches and swirl to the ground is a pure meditation moment that gives hope in a day when the morning news has been especially bleak.

The man who sits on the ground several feet behind the bench thought about asking the sitter to move his arm so that he, too, could sit on the bench instead of settling onto the still damp cement, but he ultimately decided the effort was too difficult and a little foolish. Why should he care about comfort now? There is only another hour at the most before he is back in his dank apartment. The text message to the girl he used to love is ready to send and the gun is a comforting weight in his shabby backpack. Now that he's made his decision, he is anxious to get it done. He hopes no one talks to him before he gets to his stop. He is afraid they will sense his plans. If they do, they may try to talk him around or even try to get him committed again.

The man leaning against the bus stop pole is texting frantically before his shoulder completely settles against the cold metal. He is juggling two girlfriends at once. The game, while exciting in its danger of discovery, requires constant vigilance. He is beginning to think that the newest girlfriend knows about his wife. She was not supposed to be part of the game. Her addition adds a whole new dimension and the adrenaline that pumps through him as he thinks about what could happen if she finds out about the girlfriends gives him a high better than any he's ever had.

When the bus finally arrives at the bus stop, the men forget their desire for personal space in their eagerness to be first on the bus. They brush against each other as they scramble toward the still opening door.

NON-FICTION

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The Brotherhood of Delivery Boys

by Philip Kobylarz   

Maybe the past is the one form of entertainment we posses at all times. Stopped, as I am now, on the 405 freeway, a line of traffic forms thick lanes going both ways of endless bright shiny cars, a crappy am/fm radio the kind that has pre-set vending machine buttons you press in playing whatever it can barely pick-up. Oldies stations, classic rock, and because there is a spirit of goodness in this life: NPR.

Inside this large white eighties era van, a thin haze of ultra-light menthol smoke seeps then rolls out the window. Afterwards, fingers full of breath mints and gum. We’re caught in traffic again. At least we’re getting paid for it. Ten whole bucks an hour.

In ill repair, carpet faded orange, dashboard cracked, rarely cleaned or maintained, registration run out, the van is who we are. The van is our link to greater society. The van is an accident waiting to happen. We are delivery boys.

The other half of the existential furniture delivery team, the most rational job a writer can take in So Cal, is Guy. An apt name for a hyperactive ever so mildly retarded you can’t really tell but assume he’s a lunatic kind of guy. Born and raised in Westminster, which he pronounces “west-minister”, Guy is every blind date’s nightmare.

Stocky. Six feet tall. Crew cut. Tongue piercing that went askew. Doc Martens worn at all times, even with shorts. A sex drive that all co-workers at one time or another will obtain some insight into. A family background one could only assume included abuse either from one or both of his parents, so many which were step- that his fragmented narrative is hard to follow.

Guy, the chief furniture deliverer slash furniture mover slash pillow stocker slash talkative nutcase slash loser with never enough to do to keep him busy. This was to be a mere part-time gig because he was attending plumber school. He found that their high rate of pay and the use of a company vehicle, not to mention the dreamy possibility of entering peoples’ kitchens and talking with ladies of clogged pipes, to be the most economically romantic pursuit this life had to offer.

Driving around Southern California highways with Guy pounding as hard as he could the dashboard to make the radio play louder and clearer, then being stuck in traffic was for him a temptation to discuss among nothing else, because when he spoke his sentences half-finished and never fully amounted in thoughts, yet details, details, details he spurted about his momentous sex life.

And that wasn’t good enough entertainment, oh no. He’d have to find out just a little bit about your own, too. He’d tell you more things than you would ever want or need to know about his girlfriend. Even in a salacious mood, you’d be bored or utterly grossed out. Sometimes what he said, and even sometimes sketched out on a torn piece of paper bag, was so believably unbelievable, it would ruin your lunch.  So just to get his prying mind off your back, in return, you’d make up stories about your own prowess and invent scenarios first encountered in now vintage pornographic movies.

The more you made up, the more lurid details, the faster Guy drove. He’d slam the dash in jubilation, he’d spit out the window and miss, he’d grab his hair and move it forward/backward on his tingly scalp, he’d make proto-gratification noises, he’d stomp his booted feet on the van’s rusting through floor, he’d make crazy faces to himself in the rear-view mirror. He'd grab you– your arm or neck– and lay on you a big old boy bonding hug.

The day we were out on a delivery and just for a while stopped by his apartment so that he could make a couple of sandwiches (white bread + sliced meat from little packages), he offered a beer if you’d listen to the message on his answering machine. It was of his girlfriend crying, then bitching him out, then crying again, then screaming. Two more of her selfsame messages, then later, his mother being vocal about the quality of his girlfriend, then herself crying too. Guy needed advice. He didn’t know what to do. Seems as though his grandfather died leaving him a large chunk of inheritance money. Seems that, at about the same time, his girlfriend began talking marriage. Seems that a feud had started fueled by greed.

The way they solved, or extenuated, the problem was to appear together on a nationally syndicated talk show and discuss the bad feelings girlfriend had for mom and mom had for son and girlfriend. The only one who never got to say much was Guy himself. Being very near illiterate, he couldn’t muster up the courage to speak on national t.v. He just sat there, looking as if it all were really real, thinking to himself “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to pee my shorts.” Oh, and, “Look at all the chicks in the crowd.”

It was his fifteen minutes and a few seconds of it were mine just for knowing him because t.v. and the inheritance changed him. He made good with his life, fished the very expensive plumbing school hours he was behind, became a real live plumber, and quit the piddley delivery boy gig. He shaved the sides of his head for a new look and we haven’t heard the personal tick of a disclaimer he used for every weird or perverse thing he said, spoken so fast that it sounded like a cricket going mad: “jess kee-ing (just kidding). It was the slogan of his life.

How many coastal mansions did we visit with views of the ocean and of the muddy brown hills of Laguna rumpling behind. The gigantic family rooms and dens that smelled of graham crackers and cat pee. The home theaters that took up entire walls. Its décor of roccoco accumulation. And never not once did we get a tip.

Not never, not once did the rich, plastic-titted, bleached out hair, diet supplemented, Gucci-wearing women offer us a dime for hauling in their couches and love seats in the burning hot sun while we made sure and extra careful that we didn’t nick a wall or take out all together a faux Ming dynasty vase.

And let it be said that we did deliver the finest classically-styled, heavy as hell, furniture there is on the market. We’re not talking futons here. There is little gratitude extended to the lonely, down and out service class.

Their disdain for our lowly yet necessary presences was reflected in our feelings of “wouldn’t-it-be-easy-to-murder-these-people-and-get-off-with-a-large-chunk-of-their-richesse?”. And I don’t think they put it past us for a second.

Daniel, our boss was a late forties something man who started the business of selling furniture and fabrics off his daddy’s money. Of Jewish and homosexual persuasions, Daniel played his stereotypes well. At all times, he was flustered and effeminate and a penny-pincher. He’d do anything to save a buck, including acting as a delivery partner to save money on hiring another dreg of society. He’d do things like have inventory-taking parties during which he himself would chow on a huge tine of caramel corn. For his employees, he’d order the butt-cheapest pizza from a crappy strip mall establishment and he’d personally make sure that we all got at least two slices.

When matters went awry, money problems or a leaky roof, he’d bitch and wine like a woman perfecting PMS into the art of getting what he wanted done because it was too painful for anyone else to listen to his voice and look at his big fat baby face contort and grumble. But his defining feature was that on rough days, day chock full of tension and stress (pretty much everyday for him), he smelled deeply of infant diaper rash ointment.

The only manner in which Daniel was overt about his inclination, apart from his voice and demeanor and way he moved his hands when he spoke (as if they were seal’s flippers), was the not even soft porn male body building magazines he kept on the floor of his gigantic SUV.

Because business was doing well and rich people, of which there is an abnormal amount in So Cal, desired to accumulate an indefinite amount of hideous furniture for which they had picked out the colors and patterns (you see it was like a craft or hobby– it was the art of purchase). It became necessary to hire another delivery boy serf.

Daniel tried to give a break to an injured Mexican kid who couldn’t speak a word of English. He needed some aggressive convincing that any partner of mine had to be a body I could communicate with, as a way of staying sane while being locked in a demeaning job, I couldn’t simply fill those lonely driving hours with the static of the crappily working a.m. radio. No matter how down and out the job was, the delivery guys could bitch about it and laugh at themselves and how stupid is this thing called life. This was essential for our psychology and for the health of our customers.

Daniel needed to be backed into a corner. His was done by shouting at him while introducing a touch, a dash, a tad of aggression to which he’d completely collapse after a hissy fit in which he promised not to ever collapse or give in. Batting his eyes and clinching his tomato red face like some icky male recreation of Betty Boop, he’d say. “Okay. This is what I can do.”

It was an event-less Wednesday morning that Ryan knocked on the warehouse door of the fabric and furniture building. He was tall, baseball capped, and black. Why Daniel hired him, no one knows. Probably it was because he Ryan was a nice guy. He had a wife and four kids in Long Beach. He’d been laid off from an airplane part producer, hence his desperate state. It never was his dream to work an anonymous building that was a gigantic shoe box strewn two blacks from the 405 freeway, in an unknown sub city of Los Angeles inaptly named Fountain Valley.

There was no valley, no fountain. Nope, it wasn’t his life’s goal to stand in a garage entrance to a lifeless, cream-colored airplane hanger and stare out into asphalt and a slim row of trees, some of them pine, and wait for furniture neither of us could afford arrive in crates we had to undo while listening to whatever barely palatable music we could find on the dial of Guy’s unclaimed portable stereo (only one speaker working).

We kept each other sane. Somehow. Lunches we’d take in the parked van, with its side door open, it’s crappy radio playing, us sprawled out on its dirty carpeted floor. Ryan would always have a cup of microwaved Chinese noodles, maybe an apple, never anything to drink. He never wanted a share of my better lunch that included maybe potatoes and green beans, or ravioli in a thick tomato sauce with onions and shreds of carrot, just because we was that way. “Sure smells good,” he’d say.

And the times I made him, absolutely made him eat a portion of what I was eating, by exiting the van, getting him a chinette plate, and divvying up my lunch into two, those moments or that one time, I can’t really be sure, I did become my mother.

Once, out on a delivery he was driving, he decided we’d veer out of the way a bit and kill some time by visiting his house. It was a nice little place tucked into an anonymous neighborhood of homes. Its interior sported glorious paneling, a gigantic t.v., some furniture that would have given Daniel a heart attack, his lovely wife and a bunch of kids. On the coffee table in front of the large screen t.v. there was a big old jar full of candy. Lots of red jellybeans.

One of the little kids came up to me and asked me if I wanted some. “Only the reds” I said.

His daughter in that mad house of boys was about thirteen or so and was making herself busy by cleaning up I the kitchen, wiping down the table with a white cloth, and trying her best not to stare at me, inobviously. Ryan sat on the eighties-era fabric flannel sofa and lit up that t.v. screen with thousands of different pictures all in stereo, really loud. He channel surfed a big wave of boredom that his life must have been, the same portion all our lives provide us with attempts, however futile they are, to defeat.

The walls were covered with paneling. His wife asked if I needed anything. All I could think of, having a mouthful of cherry Sourballs, was water. She was slim, well-dressed, and she smelled good. It was like everyone as chez Ryan’s had their place in society and when a visitor visited they would assume their hosting positions. We, working but not working, sat there and kicked back. He watched t.v., I watched the household dynamic. I wondered, with four kids, how could they have any private time. I finished my water and at the last sip, Ryan clipped off the set. We said our goodbyes and were out the door. At least we hadn’t had to touch any furniture at this stop. Ryan drove the van in satisfied silence. Proud.

_____________________________

Crossing the Street in Saigon

by Michelle Robin La

The first step takes courage. Mopeds and motorcycles swarm in front of us, a blur of petroleum fumes, honks and beeps. The light turns red, but no one stops. The streets pour together in a snarl. Ahead, my husband holds onto our son and older daughter—motorcyclists gush around them like rocks in a river. Trucks and cars surge past. There’s a short gap near me. I step off the curb holding my younger daughter’s hand. 

Instinct says, "Run." But I've been told to walk slowly, let the vehicles flow around me.  My husband and other children disappear behind a truck. If you move slowly, drivers will avoid you. Run and they won’t be able predict your path. We take another step. The traffic parts around us. 

Sometimes drivers miscalculate. On our trip, we've seen accidents. A streak of red on the pavement. A man under a truck, head crushed. A victim’s body wrapped in a straw mat on the side of the road, incense and candles besides it. 

We're halfway across now—it’s just as much work to go back. My husband and other children are safely on the other side. I plod slowly, numbly with my daughter's hand in mine.  Motorists rumble by. One quick step onto the curb. I look back at the moving mass. Later, we'll have to cross back. 

POETRY

_____________________________________________________________________

_______________________________

Mouthful

by Brynne Crawley

Someone once casually stated

Oh, you’re shaped like a pear

and continued to describe

the features that coincided

with the societal coined term

while I stared-

mouth agape, looking ready to bite

into an apple

(which apparently is another acceptable human body shape)

The terms flew while I listened

string bean, pudding-house, lollipop and goblet,

melons as breasts

and a plum-p ass at the base

and suddenly I had the desire

to clear my palette from all the nonsense,

but the questions kept arising

like maybe men feel entitled to a women’s body

because society describes it with clichés

that relate back to a basic human necessity

from shapes to quantifiers

juicy, delicious, tasty

malicious terminology

attempting to classify

objectify and oversimplify

the female body.

______________________________

My Mother Repaints the Room Where Her Mother Died

by Anthony DiPietro

as it dries, we try

to name the color. my mother’s

husband says hypnotism,

same purple hue of the halo

he sees in narcoleptic seizures.

my mother says tranquility, the color of virgin mary’s

coat, and of a soap she used when

she bathed us as babies.

my father’s view is that grapes go blue like that

if they’re not plucked when plump.

the september his grandmother

died, her back deck in eagle park reeked

of rotten ones. my fashion photographer

brother disagrees, insists this

is the shade of shredded denim threads.

displeased at the friction, to say the least,

my other brother drives to a nearby bridge

and parks underneath. see the steel beams?

it’s the color of these. oh but this is not the bridge

you mean at all, his wife says. you mean the sound

of chris isaak hitting his

wolf-howl note on the bridge of “baby did a bad, bad thing.”

their son says, no, think of the statue

of liberty, or her shadow if she leaned

and fell in the harbor at dusk. no one has asked

what I see, but I say

blue like the mustang I never bought, speeding

through a green light in december.

blue like the belly of dad’s boat, like dad’s

first truck that none of us remember.

my mother’s mother

has no voice now, of course, but she might

say: some of you wear blindfolds willingly. some

afternoons were dark when I climbed the long stairs to my room.

sometimes there’s so little light

and we can’t tell just where it comes from.

____________________________

Somewhere New

by Su-Yee Lin

In the S

            Hotel, the gray

of bricks greet you

and sometimes pebbles

                   rain

onto white desk and wood

                              paneled floor

I put flowers

in water

glasses, brighten

my sink

                      but

they knock against

the mirror

birds

of paradise      leaning in the corner

like boxers on break

The drain clears

its throat of water

Pounding overhead

and the train below

Pretend you are

                                                                                          able

pretend to

         be

                   long

for a space

less sanitized

like those outside

                       loogies underfoot

streaks of mysterious

liquid

        the glow from across the river

shimmers; dream city

only a mirage

the metro moves us and the

next day we are

somewhere

new.

____________________________

Urban Echoes

by Dennis Mombauer

The streets are glass

The skies like

Unstacked shelves

Blindenlicht

Trembling over the city

Mazes of graffiti

Formationally flawed

Through a concrete cavern

A tram snakes

Even the memory

Seemingly small

Schmetterlingsweich

Pendulum hours

The gorges swell

With carafe-eyes

And manicured claws

Motoren atmend

Tiniest of triggers

Zungenlos enraged

They stare

Out their windows

Hours in each direction

Blickgeduld waning

Thoughts in padded cells

Dust crystals float

Inside a mirror

Käfigraunen

The strangest thing

I heard all morning

A squall of needles

Sprayed catalyst

Their way home

Born in the dusk

A selfishness

The city sleeps

Ungeruht

__________________________

Comments Section

by Daniel Romo

Anonymity behind an avatar is the first and last step in stating your name. Two cents in a virtual world is worth encouragement or the price of admission to a shit show. Seeing is believing what you want, and any mirage worth drowning in is a friend of mine. If the sky wants to rain on your parade, you have the option to curse the clouds, especially if you're the baton twirler leading the band down a hometown boulevard. Light drizzle that leaves your car dirtier than it was before is nature trolling. Fresh bird shit on your new jeans is all caps. Your name misspelled on your Starbucks cup equals talking about your mother.

____________________________

Saturday, 10 a.m.

by Matthew W. Schmeer

Lily pops a disco

flip & Jamar groans

out an easy ollie

& the Peterson's cat

gnaws a chipmunk

in the shrubbery

& inside

the boy's violin

shrieks & drowns

out his parents

fighting again

about roof repair &

dirty underwear

& somewhere his sister

watches Mean Girls

on Netflix one more

goddamn time,

popping out to yell

cut out that fucking screeching—

you're flat goddamn it flat!

& the boy keeps playing

because why not?

Whatever he's lost

has already gone

& Saturday stretches

before him, a longpipe

beckoning the grind.

_______________________________

Desire

by J.M. Schmidt

If I can't have a 12'x12' blue tiled hot tub on my deck beneath the redwoods

I at least deserve a jacuzzi tub in my bathroom with a skylight.

If I can't have a jacuzzi tub with a skylight

I need at least a deep bathtub

If not a deep bath tub

I want at least a shower

If not a shower,

at least a sink

If not a sink,

at least a spigot and a hose

If not a spigot and hose

then a nearby source,

like a river or a well

If no nearby source

then I’d desire a sanitized fifty gallon drum

and some kind of water-catch system

and promised rain

If no drum and system, if no rain,

then I guess I could get by with a few gallons

If no gallons,

I suppose I could adjust

to a water bottle.

If no water bottle,

then I'd ask for a sip

of someone else's water.

If no sip, then I would like to be able

to bite the sides of my tongue

to release what saliva is left.

And if no saliva, then

I want to have the presence of mind

to remember the time I floated

in the 12' x 12' tiled hot tub.

_______________________________

The Bath

by Jacqueline Young

I float

roll from side to

side, favor

my right

sometimes my nipples

poke holes

in the surface

come up for air

below: a sea

anemone—its

many thin tentacles wave

back

and forth

when I shave my legs

short hairs

float up

eventually

sink

excrement

of small fish

I slip—