Joseph Robert

DEATHCYCLE

A fetus perceives hot, warm dark.
A child perceives reality,
under the glare of a congenital optimism.
An adolescent perceives what should be.
A young adult perceives what could be.
A mature person perceives reality,
under the shadow of a congenital pessimism.
A robust elder perceives what should have been,
and what will likely be again.
A fading elder perceives what was, intercut with reality.
A dying mind perceives warm, darkening past.
A corpse is The Dead, is one yet are none,
and perceive nothing or everything,
Which of these?
Don’t hurry the day, friend, for we’ll both know soon.

I'M HAPPY

For the swirl of my senses
Gels the simulacrums of my mind
Into a serving, that at present,
Makes me seek not endless sleep
Even though, I was . . .
Bought on supermarket clearance, half-price reduction
I’ve surpassed my Use By Expiry Danger of Death Date
With the refrigeration of philosophy
And the nitrates of romantic love
I’m happy
Because I’m not part of the next generation
Of botulism infection vectors

THE GOOD

The Good is no gilded treasure best hoarded away
The Good is a gentle spark dependent on sheltering hands
And the sequential stewardship of those who search
But do not root in mud while planning on wallowing in slops

Giddy about charging seminar fees up the wazooo?
Back to the trough!
Pigs that gobble every snout-scented truffle
Are fit for bacon and tombstones of gelatinous goo.

Eager to share understanding?
Good on you.
But clean up that whole (fire = truffles??) noise;
It doesn’t pay to manufacture sense freelance on spec.

BLOW HARD

You cannot own the wind
But you can sell it
If your politico cronies
Give you a slice of tasty monopoly
And delegate the hiring of a sub-contracting consultant
To secure the day-to-day management of your own subsided
Wind Farm

IRRITABLE BASTARD SYNDROME

Nervous Anxiety:
That Scab Of Years-In-The-Healing Fear
Squirts My Higher Brains Across The Toilet Bowl
Wipe Away and Flush It Round And Round, Never Down
So Hard To Move On When Hate Nests In The Breast Of Id
Wide-Awake, Weary, Wobbling and Weak
Out of spite, Convincing None I’m Out Of Their Sights
With Teeth Gritted, I Shamble To And fro,
Then Plunge Forward
Blood Up And Bent On Having A Really Nice Day
(Rx: Placate With Placebos, Dosing Sugar Pills And Smiles,
We’ll Write This Off As A Case Of A Qualified Cure, Dispensed.
When Life Gives You Bitter Oranges, Concentrate.)

ALTAR IN A CORNFIELD

They built a brick altar in the midst of the rows
Bringing the polyunsaturated fat of the mind
To the polyunsaturated fat of the land
Kernels of wisdom or silage wastage?
Cook it for ethanol, drink it, pop it, burn it or pour it
And that’s what they do, make-believing it’s not corny,
They present the place as the laboratory of a workshop,
But it’s The Church of The Proud Selves Declaiming (Reformed),
And so they monk on, and nun on, and on and on,
Skimming specialist puff pieces,
For their cloister’s cohorts’ bylines, meanwhile
Scattering about the altar their own-sanctified writings:
Humanist orisons after rules-gelded diaries,
Altered to taste.

These scrips are so rarely read for their own merits,
But so often written about,
In Curriculum Vitae
Feel free to knock it,
It’s a career.

© Joseph Robert 2013

Joseph Robert was born and raised in the Midwest. However, he has always been partial to Hawaiian beaches. Nevertheless: Go Badgers! After living and working for several years in rural Japan, he now resides in London with his wife, writer and poet Leilanie Stewart. In his spare time, you can find him at the British Museum trying to teach himself how to read cuneiform. Don’t worry, yes, he has seen Evil Dead, so doesn’t read any of it out loud.

Leilanie Stewart

A FARADAY CAGE WILL KEEP YOU SAFE

I do not wish to be
yet another rivet
painted into the cast iron girders
sealed for eternity
in a rusty, decrepit
railway fence

The train goes nowhere
but it is better to be on it
than a sleeper under it,
than a fence beside it

Look out the windows
along the way
The journey
is all that matters

THOU DOST PROTEST TOO MUCH

Scoot over
for the corrugated iron roof
will ultimately fall

See those pigeons?
One-two-three-four
eating their fill-
it will not crash onto them
they will eat, oblivious

Nobody is immune
this is a disaster
that is imminent,
a concrete tsunami
that we may or may not
be able to surf

Prepare yourself
for when the tide turns
people will scatter,
flee in all directions
and what will you do?

Freeze?
Stand and stare?
Self preservation
is of utmost importance

LIFE IS A-CHANGING

The schoolboys
don’t stink of alcohol
they are not the ones
to be feared
they are decoys
detracting
from the bum
on the street
who staggers
and stinks
of carly specials

This is not
the kind of place
where you’d want
to fall, knowing
that passersby
would pass you by

You are alone
in a scary world,
little child,
so keep your wits
intact

LONG HAUL

And now
I have a dead left leg
and my belly hurts
and my eyes sting
at the sight
of the see-through knickers
on the line

they’re made of net,
what a catch!

Isn’t this prison existence wonderful?

SHOW, NOT TELL

This
grey matter
this ball
of squishy,
squashy,
saturated fat
is oversaturated
with puss and shit

This
sat-upon
oversaturated
shit
holds so much
squishy, squashy
purity,
but the masses
wouldn’t comprehend

Misanthropy
it ain’t
for if there weren’t sheep
the beauty of the shepherd
and the devilry of the wolves
couldn’t be appreciated

There hangs
the golden sheep
taunting us so readily
but they are unequipped
with a long enough rod
to reach it

Wield your shepherd’s staff!
All you abysmal sheep.
Reach the damn fleece
that you can’t see hanging
before your eyes
because of all the glinting gold

What you didn’t know
is that the fleece already fell,
cloaking your head
with a suffocating blanket

The blanket
ain’t made of wool-
it’s polyester,
ha ha!

I warned you
it was filled with puss and shit,
let me remind you-
the grey matter

The grey matter
has been skull-fucked
into a thousand fragments
of anterior cortex,
right hemisphere,
left hemisphere,
leaving only the reptilian brain

A reptilian brain
ain’t no good
in the skull of a ram
oozing rotting flesh

RIPE FRUIT

Will I ever grow up?
The vine says no
Which vine?
Not the grape vine-
the vine with spreading lianas
the vine delving into
the depths of a slumbering
consciousness

Why bother growing up?
When the acrid clouds are waiting…

It is better to stay
young and unplucked
free of herbicide,
free of pesticide,

hanging on the vine.

© Leilanie Stewart 2013

Leilanie Stewart is one half of a writing couple - the other half is Joseph Robert. By day she runs a creative writing workshop for teenagers and by night she publishes her writing in print and online magazines in the US and UK, as well as reading her work at spoken word events. Her writing blog is at www.leilaniestewart.wordpress.com

Steve Klepetar

THE OTHER FACE

I keep it in a box under my bed,
the other face, scarred and broken

along cheekbones and nose, as if
a hundred bee stings worried the skin

or thorns tore at exposed flesh.
The one I wear, the mirror tells me,

smiles, and sometimes speaks too softly
to be heard. In photographs it almost

disappears behind a graying beard
and brown eyes revealing nothing:

no emptiness or cliffs or jagged edges
where crows might have pecked or cats

scratched or winter wind chaffed
the forehead raw. It’s an elastic face,

made for wondering or listening
to the droning drumbeat of another voice.

The other face will not keep still.
Awake it scuffles and rolls and bumps,

squeezing semi-human sounds through
lips and teeth and tongue, a little hurricane

of need beyond control – nest of hair,
puffy eyes, web of veins – wrestling

to break free, claim at last its lost body,
howling red syllables to the terrifying moon.

WHEN IS THE WORLD NOT ENTIRELY THERE?

When windows melt and all light
becomes trapped and darkness
oozes, thick syrup on evening’s
rosebud lips. Then you might
wonder where solid walls have
gone, or stone floor and comforting
roof. Your eyes may tell you one
thing, a kind of cunning tale,
but skin will open to a bruised
and wilder truth
formed from scratches your fingers
can almost taste, musical notes
flaming into sound, new instruments
weaving a universe bound by strange
gravity, singing songs frozen in a different key.

THE LAST COWBOY

The last cowboy waits by the side of the road.
He waits for dust storms and elk.
He waits in the heat for smoke and dead clichés.
Sometimes he carries an armful of leaves, sometimes
his lips seem to curl, and then the moment passes.
He has sold his guns to a museum
that would rather have had his bowed legs
and hatchet chin.
His horse is a system of clean, white bones.
He can whistle like a lark or cry out in the language
of prairie hens. He has watched his angry friends
melt into hemlock and ash.
He has swung through the doors of the last saloon.
He is ready to swim to shore, to feast on salmon,
like some old bear deserting his winter cave.
His boots are nearly whitened by dust,
his pearl button shirt ridiculous and out of style.
His face, if you can call it that, is blurry with sweat.
He has no eyes. His nose has been burnt off
in the flame of the sun, his mouth, that organ
of broken teeth and lies, has passed into memory,
forgetful of whiskey and the delicate art of being cruel.

© Steve Klepetar 2013

Steve Klepetar's work has appeared widely and has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His book, Speaking to the Field Mice, was recently published by Sweatshoppe Publications.

Donal Mahoney

PATSY FOLEY WAS ROLY-POLY IN 1947

It may have been the devil himself who prompted the kids in my schoolyard back in 1947 to chant "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli."

At first, no one could remember who started the chant. Patsy, a sweet and ample child, was in the third grade. As happenstance would have it, I was in that same third grade, infamous already as the only boy wearing spectacles in our class. After I got the glasses, I had three schoolyard fights in three days to prove to Larry Moore, Billy Gallagher and Fred Ham that I hadn't changed a bit. You would think I would have forgotten their names by now. Not a chance. I didn't like being messed with in third grade.

Since the chant would often begin and gather volume during recess, the nuns who ran the school eventually heard it and did their best to put a stop to it. This was a time when nuns, God bless them, were empowered by parents to swat the butts of little miscreants if any of them interrupted the educational process. Despite their voluminous habits, the nuns were adept at administering discipline, let me tell you, as my butt, on more than one occasion, could attest.

Now, 65 years later, when the chant pops into my mind, I begin to wonder what prompted me to say it. Early on, I certainly loved to hear the sound of words bouncing off each other--as if words were pool balls scattered by a cue. Later on I would use words to earn a living. They were the only tools I was any good with.

As I remember it now, the chant started one day after a school practice in church involving Gregorian chant. Some of the other kids later alleged that they had heard me, of all people, on the way back to class, chanting "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli."

I probably had some idea of the problem my chant might cause. But I loved the sound of it too much to stop.

If Dick Clark had been on American Bandstand back in 1947, he might have said the chant had "a nice beat" to it, but kids weren't dancing much in 1947. World War II had just ended and school was a serious matter. Even kids who didn't like books usually tried their best.

Since I was only in third grade, one might think that I might have had some emotional or mental problem that caused me to chant that phrase over and over. That could be. If a child did something like that today, he or she might be examined for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Maybe I had something like that. But in my mind the reason I chanted about Patsy Foley is that I liked the sound. It didn't hurt that my father was always saying things at home that had a bit of a turn to them. I remember how I used to enjoy the cadence of what he said and repeating it when he wasn't around. He used words differently than other fathers in the neighborhood and he delivered them in a melodic Irish brogue.

My mother, who was bereft of verbal rhythm, would sometimes ask my father a serious question when he was fresh home from a hard day's work, climbing alley poles as an electrician. Usually her question would pertain to some family matter that she had been fretting about all day. And my father, sitting on a chair in our little kitchen while stripping off his gear, might say in response, "And what would Mary Supple say to that?"

It's a shame that over the years my mother, sister and I never found out who Mary Supple was because her name was frequently invoked. Nor did we ever find out who John Godley was, either, even though my father would sometimes substitute John Godley for Mary Supple in that same response. He never said these things in anger, although he did have a terrific temper. He could erupt at any time and you didn't want to get in the way of the lava.

At other times, when my father was asked a question by my mother at an inconvenient time, he might look her in the eye and say, "Ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds chased by one Norwegian," a line that did not originate with him but was one that he repeated with a special flair. The words certainly sounded good to me, whatever they meant. We didn't know any Swedes or Norwegians and had no idea if there might be some conflict going on between them. True, World War II had just ended but we didn't think the Swedes and Norwegians had been actively involved.

Sometimes my mother on a Sunday morning would ask my father if he was going to get dressed for church. He might have been taking a sip of his fifth cup of tea at the time. He wouldn't get angry but he sometimes would lean back and sonorously intone one of the many Burma Shave billboard slogans that dotted highways in that era: "Whiskers tough old Adam had 'em. Does your husband have whiskers like Adam, Madam?" I liked the sound of that slogan as well. Today, it still pops into my mind during arid moments. And as my wife will attest, she has heard it frequently over the years.

I think it's pretty easy to see, then, why I, as a third-grader, instead of concentrating on multiplication and division, preferred to chant "Patsy Foley's roly-poly from eating too much ravioli." I am glad, however, that the nuns took it upon themselves to discipline me and did not call my parents instead. After all, my father was paying tuition to send me to that fine school to get a good education. He did not send me there to engage in tom-foolery, a pursuit that he, of course, would have known nothing about even if his legacy among relatives said otherwise.

Besides, in my mind, no nun, no matter how mountainous she may have been, was a match for my father. He had been a boxer after he had emigrated to America from Ireland, a relocation occasioned by the British army after they had imprisoned him as a young man for activities in the Irish Republican Army. My mother said he loved boxing and had won eight straight matches before "some big black guy" broke his nose. After that, he never boxed again, she said, because he "didn't want to lose his good looks." He was a handsome man indeed, despite a nose that looked as though at any moment it might call geese to fly lower.

Years later, some neighbor ladies at a block party made some nice comments to my mother about my father's appearance. When she came home, she told my sister what they had said and forewarned her that "handsome is as handsome does." In many ways, that's quite true, even though that line didn't originate with my mother. Come to think of it, though, I like the sound of that line as well and might have chanted it more than once had I heard it in third grade.

© Donal Mahoney 2013

Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at Eye on Life Magazine.

Harris Tobias

GOLDILOCKS: THE EPILOGUE

After the three bears caught Goldilocks trespassing, they reverted to type and tore her apart. They ate what they could and scattered what was left of her into the woods. They then went on about their bearish business.

Several hours later, a family of buzzards, sensing carrion, landed on her decomposing corpse. Father vulture dipped his bald head deep into Goldilocks’s chest cavity and pulled out her lungs. After eating a few bites he announced, “These lungs are too fresh.” He then flew into the nearest tree and waited.

Mother vulture tore out an eyeball and swallowed it down. She hesitated for a moment before tearing out the other one. She licked her beak and declared, “These eyeballs are too old.” She then flew into the same tree and waited.

Baby vulture ripped into the rotting remains and tore off a sizeable strip of flesh. He gulped it down and ripped off another. “Mmmm mmm,” he said at last, “I think this carrion is just right.”

Mother and father vulture, unwilling to leave the entire feast to their offspring, reconsidered their hasty opinions and joined him in the meal. After a while the vulture family flew off leaving behind nothing but a young girl’s bones.

© Harris Tobias 2013

His books
His podcasts
His blog

A. J. Kirby

COFFIN CUT

Every morning, Mark Nipple was up before the alarm. A quick shower and then a hurried breakfast. A tall glass of juice. A couple slices of dry toast. He no longer took an egg, fried or otherwise. Cholesterol.
Before he left, he’d shout up to his son, Aubrey, and he wouldn’t step out the door until Aube responded. Aube was nineteen: pretty much a vampire. Mark had an irresistible urge to force the kid to encounter daylight. Which was some kind of ironic because it was exactly what Mark’s dad had wanted for him, when Mark was the nineteen year old with dreams of making it as a musician, burning the candle low at one end in the low-rent bars and back-street clubs of Maine. Only, his dad hadn’t made do with a simple shout. No, he’d thundered up to Mark’s room and physically dragged him out his pit.
Why he cut loose from Maine in the end.
These days Mark was always on the road in time to hear the headlines at six. And he always reached the city before any of the rush hour traffic snarled-up the roads. He always called for a Starbucks on Rowlands, and he always eyed the cakes hungrily, but settled for a cap and a copy of the Tribune-Review from the news-stand. Then back to the Chevy.
It was now Mark’s course deviated. The way the seasons were in Pittsburgh pretty much dictated what he did next. A few weeks back, he’d have driven to PNC Park. Slugged down his cap and then taken a constitutional. Maybe picked a bench, a book, and whiled away the morning reading. Now the city was entering its usual downhill spiral into winter. He’d have the ice scraper out for the windshield in a few days. He’d whack on the winter tyres in a couple weeks. He just hoped it would never get as bad as ’93, and the Blizzard of. Because if they got weather like that, he’d literally have nowhere to go.
Today, he headed in the general direction of the Monongahela river. Yesterday, he’d found a nice, quiet spot he could sit and contemplate the way his hair was rapidly being deforested – an area the size of Allegany State Park receding away on a daily basis – in the rear-view mirror. There was a picnic area – at the car park, not on his head – and public conveniences. A little trail he could take if he could brave the cold.
Mark’s hair was, he’d decided, symbolic. At n-n-n-nineteen, he’d been complacent with his thick, luscious locks. Never bothered washing it; head-banged it into submission on a nightly basis. Then, when he’d given up on his rock star dreams, he’d shorn those locks, like some latterday Samson, in order to prove he was up to the job – what job? Any job. And in his forties, when, amazingly, the job Anita had for so long sneered at, had become serious, when graphic artistry had finally threatened to do more than just pay the bills, but actually provide them with a little nest egg, he’d allowed it to grow over his collar once more, just a tad, because artists were a law unto themselves. They weren’t just white-collar drones. Now he used three different bottles hair potion during his quick morning shower; some forlorn ritual, he knew.
Book he was reading last week seemed to contain a lot of stuff about hair, and it had posited the theory that people reach a certain stage in their lives when they settle on their coffin-cut. They just go in the barbers and slam their cards, their youth, on the counter, and say, I don’t care what I look like any more. In women, this phenomenon is more pronounced. Men go bald, after all. But still, yesterday, Mark had realised, with that same horror he’d had when he was nineteen and he’d crammed his fingers into his nostrils, and cocked his head in the mirror until he could see his own skull, that his own mortality stalked him. He would look like this when he died.
Yesterday, he’d been thinking of that old Rod Stewart number went I wish that I knew what I knew now, when I was younger. And hell, Mark did wish that. He wished he’d have got out his goddamn pit and seized the day. And hell, the fact he was even prepared to reference Rod Stewart now showed how different he was. Back in the day, he’d sworn by the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks.
Another book he’d read told him pretty much every cell in his body would have died and been replaced since he was nineteen so maybe he was a different person. Maybe the nineteen year old Mark Nipple who made a brand – at least on the low-grade punk scene in Maine – out of his name had already died.
The Nipple runneth dry.
Mark parked up by the sludgy brown drag of the river, between two skeletal trees, and felt like he was already dead. When he was younger he’d thought the government made people get jobs to keep them off the streets so they couldn’t kick up fuss and rail against how the world was. Now he saw people were complicit in this too. Because without a job how did one while away the hours which yawned ahead of him; the crashing boredom of weekday mornings; the monotony of the afternoons. His dad had died soon as the ink was dry on his retirement papers. Old, stubborn bastard had probably made his own heart go bang because he couldn’t stand the thought of the alternative.
But Mark’s dad had been sixty-five. Had worked a hard, menial job. Mark was still, just, right side of fifty, and yet all his days had in store for him was the reality of trying to hold back on eating the sandwiches Anita had made for him until reasonable lunch time, and then, maybe, reclining the seat and having a snooze in the afternoon. Those few moments of brain-taxing enjoyment when he attempted the Tribune crossword. Those few moments after he’d scrawled two, maybe three answers into the white squares, and he understood his brain was numb, constricted by his coffin cut and by these days of tedium, so that he’d forgotten everything he once held true.
Mark sat, watching the clock on the dash and rationing switching on the heaters. Ducking down when the occasional passerby passed by. Pretending like he was on an important call when a couple joggers wearing lumpen Duquesne University hoodies rolled past, as though he feared they’d rap on the window and ask him what he was doing there. Wondering whether he had it in him – and already deciding he didn’t – to tell them he was a private dick on a secret spying mission. When you already had your coffin cut, the creativity to lie convincingly deserted you.
But still, his one true lie, the one he told to Anita and Aube every morning when he left for work, held firm. He hadn’t worked now for six long months, ever since the cutbacks. And though he’d applied for hundreds of jobs, he’d not even scored a single interview. Despite the fact he’d now cut the photo of himself, as well as his DOB, out his CV.
Still, he wasn’t sure how long he could keep it up. The mortgage payments were okay for now, as were the repayments on the Chevy. His daughter Samantha though. She seemed to think she deserved a monthly living allowance which would practically allow her to streak past the Kardashians, never mind keep up with them. She was a student at UCLA, majoring in living the West Coast high life. Only rarely letting her Pittsburgh roots show through, with minor slips of the tongue like, in her most recent text message: “Send money pls. The car needs washed.”
And then there was Aube. Nineteen and a wannabe musician now. What happened when he realised nineteen was already too old and that he needed college, qualifications just to buy his way into a life like everybody else. Mark’d be expected to pay his son’s way too.
Ten fifteen and Mark was already removing his sandwiches from the bag Anita had packed them in. Ten twenty and Mark had tossed the only-nibbled sandwiches out the window. He’d eaten bread, in some form, every day of his life, he realised, and he was sick of it.
What would it be like to simply drive off? Simply head on down to ol’ Mehico, like he’d once dreamed of doing after the band bit dust. Leave all this behind: cut loose, make a new life like he’d done when he left Maine.
He caught his own eye in the rear-view and saw he could not even fool himself he was the same person now. Too many cells had died. Too much hair lost.
In the car, it was cold as a coffin.

© Andrew J. Kirby 2013

The only time AJ Kirby speaks in the third person is in biographies. He's the award-winning author of five published novels (Sharkways, 2012; Paint this Town Red, 2012; Perfect World, 2011; Bully, 2009; The Magpie Trap, 2008), two collections of short stories (The Art of Ventriloquism, a collection of crime shorts, which was released August 2012, and Mix Tape 2010), three novellas (The Haunting of Annie Nicol, 2012; The Black Book, 2011; Call of the Sea, 2010), and over fifty published short stories, which can be found widely in print anthologies, magazines and journals and across the web in zines, writing sites and more.

Links
Twitter - @ajkirbyauthor
Wordpress - http://paintthistownred.wordpress.com/
Website - www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com

Best Short Story on the Web

The winner of the 2013 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web is...

????

Congratulations winner! You deserve it more than anyone I know.