Eric Suhem

THE BALLOON FIEND

Willow drank a glass of water, and started to see purple kumquats dancing the Watusi on the linoleum floor. “There’s something strange in this water,” she said, looking at the dripping tap over the kitchen sink.

“I’ll write to the state’s water commissioner about this!” she suddenly declared, sitting down at her desk. As she feverishly scribbled a letter, a large group of green balloons wafted into the room. The balloons slowly moved forward onto Willow and began pressing her against a painting of sunflowers on the living room wall. One green balloon circled around the room, and then wrapped its string around her letter, lifting it off the desk and carrying it back out the window, high into the sky. At once, the other balloons released Willow, and followed the first balloon out the open window.

The balloon with Willow’s note floated across the city to the desk of Hiram, the state’s water commissioner. Everything in Hiram’s office was green, including Hiram, due to years of overexposure to fluorescent light. His current project involved tainting the water supply to create more pliable citizens. “Well done!” said Hiram to the green balloon, rewarding it with a blast of helium, and quickly reading Willow’s note. “This citizen is becoming suspicious about the water supply,” he announced to the other attentive balloons in front of his desk. “I want you to step up the surveillance.” The balloons immediately flew out the window, back toward Willow’s house.

However, Willow had already left, speeding out of the city with her neighbor Julia towards the ocean. The balloons found and followed her car, which had a large sunflower painted on the roof. Trees, leaves, and sunlight flickered by as Willow and Julia accelerated through the canyons. They arrived at a forest near the ocean and began exploring, as the balloons hovered nearby. Willow and Julia wandered through a green forest, grooving on the moss-covered trees, emerging into a meadow filled with brightly colored flowers and butterflies, while the green balloons continued their surveillance from above. The women played in the ocean waves, and invited the balloons to join them. The balloons were hesitant at first, but soon were frolicking with Willow and Julia in the sea spray, drifting exuberantly through the foam, memories of Hiram collapsing into a misty collage of neon bubbles, melting together in the clear bright sunshine. The balloons became swirling lemonade lollipops bouncing through the saltwater waves amidst rising pink steam, as joy and exhilaration inflated them towards the blue sky.

Four hours later, the balloons drifted peacefully back to the city. Each balloon was radiating a warm glow as it wafted into Hiram’s office. He was sitting in a big pile of red balloons, enjoying the stinging sensation when they would occasionally pop. “Balloons, what’s your report?!” demanded Hiram.

The balloons sat quietly, and then consulted amongst themselves, ready for freedom from Hiram’s repressive control. “How about slowly pressing him deep into the ground?” suggested one particularly aggressive balloon.

“No, it may ironically taint the city’s water supply,” replied another. Ultimately, the balloons decided to wrap their strings around Hiram’s arms, and slowly lift him into the sky.

Willow and Julia looked up from the ocean waves to see the balloons and Hiram soaring into view. The balloons gently dropped Hiram into the surf, where Willow and Julia commenced wrapping him in strands of seaweed and kelp. The balloons returned to the city, and assumed new positions of responsibility.

© Eric Suhem 2012

Eric Suhem dwells in office cubicles and ocean waves. His book "Dark Vegetables" can be found in the orange hallway (www.orangehallway.com)

Donal Mahoney

BEHIND THE BARN WITH CAROL ANN

Back in 1957, kissing Carol Ann behind the barn in the middle of a windswept field of Goldenrod with a sudden deer watching was something special, let me tell you. Back then, bobby sox and big barrettes and ponytails were everywhere.

Like many farmers, Carol Ann’s father had a console radio in the living room, and every Saturday night the family would gather ‘round with bowls of ice cream and listen to The Grand Ole Opry. It was beamed “all the way” from Nashville I was told more than once since I was from Chicago and sometimes wore a tie so how could I know.

On my first visit, I asked Carol Ann if the Grand Ole Opry was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of country music and she said not to say that to her father. She suggested I just tap my foot to the music and let him watch me. Otherwise, I’d best be quiet and say “Yup,” “Nope” or “Maybe” if asked any questions which she didn’t think would happen. No need to say much more, she said, and after a few visits, I understood why.

Over time, I learned to tap my foot pretty good to the music because when I’d come to visit, her father would insist I have a bowl of ice cream with the family. I liked the ice cream but not so much the Grand Ole Opry. I’d been weaned on Sinatra in the city. Big difference, let me tell you.

But back in 1957 kissing Carol Ann behind the barn was something special since we couldn’t do much more until I found employment. Only then, her father said, could we get married. I found no jobs in town, however, for a bespectacled man with degrees in English.

Still, I always found the weekend drives from Chicago worth the gas my Rambler drank because kissing Carol Ann brought a bit of heaven down behind that barn, especially on summer nights when fireflies were the only stars we saw when our eyes popped open. It was like the Fourth of July with tiny sparklers twinkling everywhere.

Now, 55 years later, Carol Ann sometimes mentions fireflies at dusk as we dance behind the cows to coax them into the barn for the night. I’m still not too good with cows despite my John Deere cap, plaid shirt and overalls which proves, she says, that all that kissing behind the barn in 1957 took the boy out of the city but not the city out of the boy.

“Hee Haw” is all I ever say in response because I know why I’m there. It’s to keep tapping the cows on the rump till we get them back in the barn so we can go back in the house and start with a kiss and later on come back downstairs for two big bowls of ice cream.

© Donal Mahoney 2012

Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poetry and fiction have appeared in print and online publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his earliest work can be found here: http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/

Robert Morschel

SHE

The black London cab pulled up next to the night club and Fiona watched her husband get out, greet the bouncer with comfortable familiarity, and enter. She wiped a tear from her cheek, paid her cab driver and followed him in.
It all began when she found a smudge of red on the collar of his shirt - she had almost laughed at the sight. Lipstick on the collar? You have got to be kidding, she thought. She'd read about this many times in her lurid Mills & Boons novellas, but for this to be happening to her was surreal. Perhaps she should say something, confront him? But she was fearful of wrecking twenty years of marriage with an unfounded accusation. He'd been working very late nights these past months but she trusted him. She knew he loved her and the girls, and was a devoted family man. But now a shadow of doubt crept over her. It might be nothing, and talking to him would probably be the easiest. However, deep down her insecurities leapt to the fore - she felt like a dowdy housewife, a mother of two with no prospects, wrinkles spreading like wild fire from her once perky features. Perhaps this was his mid-life crisis, his middle-aged fling with some twenty something year old bimbo from work. She'd read all about it, and now it was happening to her. Did she need to be understanding?
The nightclub was dark inside, scattered shadowy figures sitting around dimly lit tables. Fiona cursed silently because she could not see her husband, but was partly thankful because the gloom hid her floral summer dress. She sat at the nearest table and ordered a gin and tonic from the waiter who appeared as if by magic. Across the room she thought she could make out Nigel talking intimately to a woman. She considered moving nearer but it was too late, the show was about to start. Music started, a burlesque, followed by garish, roving spotlights. She could now just make out the woman at the table - not as young as she had expected, but certainly very pretty and well dressed – and Fiona felt a wave of jealous rage overcome her. Nigel never bought her anything pretty. He was such a practical, frugal man, never expansive or effusive in his love for her. She had never doubted his love, just wished that sometimes he would whisk her off her feet and do something spontaneous, daring and romantic.
A chorus line of stunning young women appeared on the stage, singing and gyrating hips suggestively. Fiona felt sick. She was so far out of her normal world of families, children, school yard gossip and baking. She wanted to run for her life.
Then SHE appeared and Fiona knew immediately that she'd been mistaken about the couple at the table. This was her “enemy”. This was the source of that lipstick smudge. This was the reason she'd found that beautifully boxed dress in Nigel's cupboard. A tall sultry woman, with beautiful, long, sensual, familiar, male legs.

© Robert Morschel 2012

Robert Morschel lives in London, sometimes writing software, sometimes writing words at mulledvine.com. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RobertMorschel

Kenneth P. Gurney

First November Tuesday

sold
its offspring for a handful of silver coins

and a substance that blotted out the moon
so dreamers would have to face
their auctioned reality

and a cube of the masses’ hunger
that fit easily in a box for next day shipping

and the rejection of an amazing woman
who chose not to have her face
added to Mount Rushmore

and a small breach in the universe
that let the finches fly
to a happier place
before the back room seamstress
sewed it up.

We Took a Slow Walk to Paris

Your statement
The ocean is a field of Daffodils.
allowed us to cross the Atlantic.

We entered the train station
moments after the Orient Express
departed for Istanbul.

I always wanted to interrupt
Hemingway
at Thirty-nine rue Descartes

or tip a cauldron of hot wax
for Robert the Strong
during the Viking siege.

You simply wanted to sip coffee
at several unnamed bistros
located on a leisurely tour

of cobble streets
while in search of a colored pastel
active in the hand of Degas

or settle for the magic
of a steady rain shower
in a movie by Woody Allen.

Usually

Sometimes, I find myself wondering
about cantaloupe moods
and how their moods change
from green to ripe to rotten.

And whether they like
being set on the counter
adjacent to oranges or apples
or honeydew or a buttered piece of toast.

And if in any way they say farewell
or shalom or aloha or ciao
with the first incision of a knife
that penetrates to their hollow core

or if they simply fear for their seeds
going out into the world
and how birds and ants
might end their vine.

Usually, I grab the vanilla ice cream
and fill the natural bowl
of the half cantaloupe
with two or three scoops.

© Kenneth P. Gurney 2012

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. His latest book is This is not Black & White. To learn more visit http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

Bill Floyd

ANTI-MADONNA (or Even Rough Beasts Have Mothers)

Jade lived east of Eden, but the walls of Bethlehem were ever visible on the horizon. The gyre widened, the center loosed, and Jade’s own mother downloaded lots of trendy books onto her Kindle, but never finished reading any of them. Hell, if they were any good someone would make a movie anyway, right? The ladies in her book club agreed, and after all there was always Jade’s brother’s soccer league to think about and school and the doctors and the dentists (even rough beasts’ mothers have cavities) and the bills, you simply wouldn’t believe the bills. Her husband kept saying there was no way they could afford an Ivy League slot without a scholarship of some kind, so Jade spent most of her junior year studying or running around the track outside the Academy or staring at screens or shopping, but she knew something was missing, something dimly remembered that would no longer reappear when she tried to summon it, like a falcon that had flown.

Some would later wonder aloud, as they staggered irradiated and dying across the scorched landscape, how the nominal Father gained entry into their gated community, but of course the security guards manning the gates were subcontractors, you couldn’t trust them not to be dozing or getting high on the job most of the time. Jade was over-worked and under-appreciated and just kind of fed up; hell, she was practically wearing a target on her skinny jeans. It wasn’t that the horn-mantled slickster really took advantage of her, so to speak—he just promised her something it wasn’t technically in his power to give, hardly an original crime where aroused males are concerned. In this case the seduction was sealed when the interloping Omega promised young Jade a slot on a televised talent competition, and it’s every young American’s responsibility to try and become famous for something, right? If anyone had ever bothered to teach the girl how to sing, or dance, or tell a story, the future might’ve been different for all of us.

© Bill Floyd 2012

Bill lives in central North Carolina. His first published novel was called The Killer's Wife and came out in 2008. He's been doing more experimental work since then, but is currently trying for a commercial follow-up so he won't have to go back to a day job.

Callan

ATTACK OF THE FUR

One Monday morning when James woke up, water dripped from an unseen faucet. The low howl of the wind traveled along the plumbing of his building. Outside, down in the street a dog barked and a car door slammed.
Stiffly he rose from his bed. As he crossed the room, he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
His chifforobe had grown soft white bunny fur in the night. It pulsed gently in the corner of the room cooing and moving within itself. It beckoned to him, seemingly yearning to feel his competent fingers assessing its tactile merits. Who was James to refuse? He knelt and began to caress the chifforobe. It shuttered all over with delight.

The phone rang. Reluctantly, James answered it.
On the other end of the line a mechanical voice warned him of a vicious fur outbreak. It cautioned him not to pet any predatory fur. In the event he was exposed to an outbreak he was instructed to saw his own hands off. James did not own a saw.
He ended the call.
No machine could understand how soft the fur was.
He had to protect the fur. If it was discovered there was a fur outbreak in his tenth floor apartment, they would tent the building. They would advance with chemicals and spray against the poor defenseless fur!
He rushed into his bedroom and fell on his knees before the chifforobe, plunging his rough calloused hand into the soft white fur.
Oh the sensation! The pulsing appreciation of the clean white fur!
It fed off his adoration.

In response to his solicitous petting, it spread. It leapt from the surface of one piece of furniture to another then to another, and then to another.
In a matter of hours it had begun to climb the walls.
In another few hours it covered the floors, the window, the ceiling.
That night a soft and cuddly death patiently began to steal over James, so soothing, he did not suspect that he had become the disease.
He only wanted to be caressed, to respond to the feel, the pressure of warm hands, to spread infinitely outward, always growing, always changing.
James was the virus and the virus was James.
Soft downy fur pushed its way through his follicles, evicting the coarse black human hair.
The white fur spread quickly and within a quarter of an hour he was covered from head to toe. His eyes were changing shape. His vision was both narrowing and expanding.
When he leaned against the wall, he disappeared completely. His pink eyes blinking were the only distinction between him and the soft, white, pulsing fur that covered the walls.
His fingers twisted in their sockets. They were changing shape, merging into one.
He could not keep his hands off himself.
His senses heightened, he could hear the tumblers in the lock of the neighbors’ apartment turning as the door swung open.
He crept out into the hall where a light had burned out providing a theatrical twilight.
He crept on his newly furry feet to stand directly behind Jose, a sweaty Latino he had never cared for.
He snaked his furry hands along his arms and biceps. He flinched and struggled. Then, inside the glory of acceptance, he gave in to the fur.
They cuddled for nearly fifteen minutes, and when James strolled away from Jose soft white fur was rapidly spreading along his skin.
James made his way down the stairs, trailing his rapidly mutating paws along the hand rail, cozy white fur sprouting where his fingers had been.
He burst through the lobby doors and hit the street. He was all impulse—one-hundred percent sensation. Only the sensory experience existed for him. There was only the current moment, nothing before this exact moment and nothing after. No consequences, only movement, only sound.

© Callan 2012

Callan, who left Orange County, Ca. in 2007 and moved to the country to focus full time on her writing, advises she is now living in Avalon on Santa Catalina Island in L.A. county. Her work is featured at Six Sentences and her blog: theworksofjanecallan, where a version of this story appeared in April.

Rusty Kjarvik

Another worldview

Law
at dawn's sacrificial wading

a groove sweetly prized
as the relative truth of our frantic, overgrown hallucination

in sickening respite
from the earliest lame vanity

before the show appears
as human death

powerless to the mold
resounding to an inner frequency

deranged sad laughter
groaned thick in a sumptuous tumult

under the prying talons
a delectable fire answers in blues-swing hoodlum homes

temporary as the submissive
upbringing of one purifying lash

rending the nerve-wracked fingers
of torturous warring
within the Nile’s tantrum phase

skinny, lingering smoke fix
and we eye the 99 names

to the moment's reaching up
to the negative female symbol

comrade against these forbidden culturati
timed to the arrival of the outdoor preacher

worshipping the lost dead
world of stone and writing.

Northern mind

lip sweet
and unfettered thought
swung music
intensified in the intimate romantic environment

ideal collection of the two-bodied
trailing waves in the ocean
of serene all-encompassed feeling

silently bringing the visions of the blessed to realized heights
in amnesic bliss
hearing only the fizzing of a tongue
sifting through the hydrated glory of a deep violet sight
darkly fixed inside the arborescent wilderness

to the foreign drum of an impenetrable toxicity
left unconsumed and needed by feet
lit under concrete sustained magic
of the urban disillusioned

northern mind
bringing in the steady rings of a consciousness
prepared as the instrument of a government culture
performing the theatrical stronghold

of minority no-release
a fish-burdened town of extracted marrow
through procedural temperaments
that go un-led and steam up
with chaotic strictures
that demean the meaning
of man and woman
or masculine-feminine time

Lonesome day of movement

grown thin with distance
as another hairy, greased band shines
reckless before the arrow spy
and his envisioned grave

who hails cabs
in the Siberian gruel of angry change
as we ransack the factories of uproarious disrepair
and the mechanistic bored train crashes
killing the meagre European glance
into the frantic rush of civilized absence

lonesome day of movement
through spider web sands
and drunken coasts
of blood red remorse
filing in by the pulp fiction pages
breeding scummy eyes that talk in kisses
and swoon on the porch of another early breakfast

groom who wails curiously at night for the pub dreary life
that awaits
after the cut string of golden dreams seethes and falls
to the ash of the smoky avalanche noon

in Canada’s hibernation mind
of the un-bloomed
and unborn

wenches who lament
the dry phantom queen and her uncaring cool sleeping high
with simple touches of the grave beyond
landing in sun croaked alien poverty

my first wishes grow callous
at the knock of a burnt vegetable gum
that sneaks into the cracks of layered skin
beaming with the color of a white night
turning in late with the last nest of wild being

unloved rhythms, fuming with uninspired dread
as we caress the lung wired cane
of bone sweat
carved merciless into the roaming wood
that answers in black hills
and a flat womb of earth

I’ve been taken, not today.

For so long now, I’ve been taken
But not today.

The spell of my urban hermitage has now broken
In a place where all prayers are spells
There is only one way out of this dream

I need helpers
A conscious community
To lead freely, without bickering for followers

My hermitage walls have given way to a translucent realization
Beholden with rage
I am disquiet and feed strength with tears

Tied in a knot
The way to get untangled is to create
Consumption has been a frequent spell in this broken palace of towers and rain

I hear the engines of folly
As they drain the black earth of all color and frighten the terrorized youth
White

Greed is suckling the thirsty mother’s teat
Her eyes are wet with separation
For your love has aged beyond the fruits of her chest

You are getting old now
Taste the milk from the divine
There is none sweeter

Cuddle close under the embrace of the absent one
She is inside
Your mind need not work to produce the fruits of her labor within you

Confront your pain
A ghost waits
At the top of the universe, hang on while it lowers you to grace

Death is not hate
Do not be short-changed by the living hell of the crackling incinerator
The hearse Earth vibrates to weak leisure and silly goals

Your tongue is the pith of all ground
Walk lightly upon its unchanging core
Spill your inborn need without ransomed poverty

Scale the cliffs beyond inhumane judgment
Your is one name
Unshared

Though you retain mystery
From the recoiling lore of intuition
Full as the harvest moon in your empty belly

Fast for the power torn from you
That it should bear more likely hands
To shape the instruments of friendship and respect with equal humanity

If I could speak...

If I had a voice...

What would I say to a stranger passing by?

To hold them fast in that moment
Against the confident pressure of my heart

What would I say to a new acquaintance?

To ensure they hear my voice
Balancing delicately over the thrifty ledge
Of a shy and battered mind

What would I say to a causal friend?

That they may lift their self to know me
To meet each other anew
At a higher and closer level than ever before
Recognizing our presence

What would I say to an old friend?

That I may say again at their funeral
With love in my heart

What would I say to each individual in my family?

To all, I will say:

“Speak!
And I will listen.”

© Rusty Kjarvik 2012

Rusty Kjarvik is an emerging writer, world music percussionist and artist. His poetry has been accepted in various online and print publications including 3:AM Magazine, The Body Electric Anthology (and/or), Steel Bananas, ditch, and Marco Polo Arts Magazine. He has also published short fiction in Haggard & Halloo and visual art in Maad Sheep. He performs music regularly with Vi An Diep and lives in Calgary, Alberta where he blogs at www.rkjarvik.blogspot.com.