We start with still-lives [this is expected]. Bowls of fruit arranged on tables, requisite apples, pears, grapes. A curious pineapple has snuck its way in. A thin vase with a lonely flower, child-sized chairs stacked just so.

I’m suspicious of stillness. I focus on stop-motion squirrels in the window, trees revered then forgotten, their limbs jutting into the horizon. My fingers bruised with purple ink—lefties never quite fit—I mix my colors into mud.

I am a valley among peaks, compressed before raised. Chronically razed. A blank page soaked, body curled, unqualified. A landline phone affixed, wire enjambed.

You see quirks where I know cracks, flip full magazine pages while I hold jumbled pieces. Newspaper clippings in halves, longing, flexed and ready.

I am voracious in my wanting to know, but knowing isn’t a crux. A diagnosis is just a notation, a string of digits for billing. A confirmation growing hazy, quickly [but also slowly] moving away. Unimportant in its arrival: a shrug, a nod.

I am quiet while you speak, watching. Not quite listening, while you explain to me what I have lived. I think of the Xanax bottle on the shelf, the set of new paints, unopened. To be enjoyed at the summit. Balls of clay in a box, lazily waiting. A bowl of apples, a single stem.

Taryn Ocko Beato is a writer, mixed media artist, and audiobook producer. She studied creative writing and film at the University of Rochester, and received a Master of Arts from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Taryn lives in New York with her husband, son, and sweet rescue dog, Darby.

What sense is there in words?
They won’t feed you,
They won’t bathe you,
They won’t cloth you, or keep you warm

They won’t hold you and love you,
They can’t kiss you
Or pay you (believe me),
They certainly won’t provide a comfortable life —

For you children and your wife
(husband, dog, whatever).
They won’t cheat you
They won’t wrong you

They won’t lie, steal, or plot against you,
They won’t even put up a fight —
So what sense is there
In these words?

I don’t know,
but I can’t stop.

Don Clark is a Iraq/Afghanistan veteran and recent graduate from Geneva College. He writes everything in small notebooks he finds at the bookstore down the road, and only writes in pencil. He once saw a space shuttle launch from the top of a submarine . . . that was pretty cool. He hails from Pittsburgh, PA, where he is NOT a steel mill worker.

There lurks a dark man in my dreams. Do you know the type?
Gangly, ghastly, like shadows cast before day breaks into a sweat.
We try to rock ourselves back into silence and complicity. Meanwhile
I avoid his limbs from day to day, as they stretch out from underneath
School desks, book shelves, lockers and their innards, ceilings.
I keep a key in the heart of my throat. I keep a funeral drape
Over my peripheries. I am always mourning, thinking
Daddy was half-right; Life is short, maybe, but days like these
Are very, very long.

         Regret could only dream of looking back half as far
As I can.

Pelumi Sholagbade is a high school senior from Washington DC. When not writing, Pelumi can be found reading, playing the cello, or failing to fall asleep at night.

He wondered if his date Mary had squatted down when pouring the food into the dog bowls.   He envisioned what her rear haunches would have looked like while doing that.  There is something very loving about that scene.  Seeing such utilitarian poses would always remind Adam of his beautiful mother, and how she would get on her haunches to help the younger him with his shoelaces, or to teach him how to button his coat.  There is something extremely reassuring  and loving indeed when listening to a mother’s knees crack as she squats to kiss him Good Bye in school on his first day of kindergarten.  He would remember seeing his mom approve of the young new kindergarten teacher.  He would nervously trust his mother’s judgement on this memorable day and would now begin to own the courage to say goodbye to her.  He would see his mother look back to him one final time as she exits his vacuous classroom, that memorable classroom with its high, grey, and presently sparse walls.  She would, with some slight apparent worry, but reassurance too, wave to him.  With wide open eyes and a tight smile beginning to soften she would then walk away, and then be out of sight.  Adam would return his gaze to his new teacher.  Holding Adam, she was on her haunches too.  Adam would approve of his genuinely smiling new teacher.  She possessed a young and honest face too.   He would see that huge green-colored artificial gem pinned to the front of her green dress, and he would become temporarily preoccupied with it.  The young Adam returns his glance to that soon-to-be-decorated grey classroom wall, closeby to where his mother had been standing, and he notices attached up high that very old wooden-encased clock.  With its white face and bold black Roman Numerals, the thin and sharply pointed clicking clockhands would tell him to begin his day.  All would be o.k.  All would be o.k. afterall.

Author is: married, father of two. U.S. Army Honorable Discharge, 1968-72. Bachelor of Professional Studies SUNY College of Technology, Utica, New York Summa Cum Laude 1979. M.S. Ed. The College of Saint Rose, Albany, New York 1983.

Ed enjoys writing in the early morning. He loves running (40 marathons completed) and playing sports with his boys. Also, he likes to garden with his wife; Ed’s not having too much of a green thumb, she allows him to cut the grass and rake the leaves only. Ed is thankful too for a good cup of morning coffee along with a slice of evening apple pie. The family loves their guinea pig and insomniac cat too.

Until August 1st, that is.

Yes, we need a vacation, too.

See you August 1 with lots of great stories and poems and great authors.

James Kowalczyk was born and raised in Brooklyn but now lives in Northern California with his wife, two daughters, and four cats. He teaches English at both the high school and college levels. His work has been published in print as well as online

Hungry

The truck’s crusher-mouth rotated its blades chomping, debris before swallowing the bone and cartilage it had already picked up from the neighborhood butcher shops.The driver rolled the last drum of the day off the curb and hoisted it into the churning debris when suddenly his apron began to tug at his neck. He tried to free himself.

He didn’t even get a chance to scream.

Scott Hogan is a Math and Physics teacher in a public high school.

As Real as It Gets

It was the start of a new school year.  I sat next to the new chemistry teacher, Dr. Sayid.  He was in his early 60’s, with gray hair, about 5 and a half ft. tall.  I had been at the school for 4 years and this was the 4^th chemistry teacher in that time—a new one each year.

The first one was enormously overweight and died in the middle of the year.  His name was Mr. Vickers.  He was in a wheelchair most of the time.  The 2^nd one was named Mr. Bond.  He had long hair and a braided ponytail and lived by himself.  He was from South Carolina and had a southern accent.  He was an odd bird, showing off pictures of his pet monkey to students.  The third one was Mr. Flowmax, an African American man in his late 30’s.  He had worked in boarding schools and considered himself a superior human being.  His method of communication was sarcasm, as he acted above everyone else.  He sat in his room at lunch and played chess by himself.  He once asked me if I had any heroes, and I did not know what he meant.  “Didn’t you watch Hogan’s Heroes on TV?” he asked me.  Then he gave me a sarcastic laugh and said “that was before my time.”  I never spoke more than 2 sentences to him the entire year.  Students hated him.

Dr. Sayid was different.  He was from Egypt, soft-spoken, with a distinct hard-to-understand accent.  He had worked for the Department of Water Quality in Arizona and also worked in an inner city high school teaching chemistry for several years.  He had a doctorate in environmental studies from University of Arizona.  Kind and deeply knowledgeable about chemistry, he was a bit of a loner, eating lunch by himself in his room each day.

The first 2 weeks of school I visited his classroom each day, in the morning and after school.  He was teaching juniors and seniors in AP and Honors Chemistry classes.  He had a list of math problems I borrowed for bell work.  My favorite was this one—“If 20 mits equal 1 erb, 1 satz equals 2 levs, and 10 erbs equal 1 satz, how many mits are equivalent to 5 levs?”  He complained each day that his lab lacked the proper equipment; it had only 8 glass beakers, some old triple beam balances and a handful of sensors.  In his quiet way, he was discouraged about the paltry chemistry supplies.  I noticed he was using handouts from modeling chemistry, a fancy pedagogy, and I told him it might be too hard for the students, but he didn’t listen.

The teacher who ran the STEM Club last year had left and I volunteered to run this year’s STEM Club along with Dr. Sayid.  We had a banner made and posted it in my classroom.  Announcements were made over the intercom for our Tuesday lunch time meetings.  We got 5 students to attend.  We met for three Tuesdays.  He told the students “there is a difference between struggling and not trying!” as we tried to motivate them to design experiments.  We discussed events students would like to do at our district STEM CON festival in February.

The next day, Wednesday, the 3^rd week of school, I was sitting next to Dr. Sayid in our PLC meeting.  He looked worried and agitated but said nothing.  He was called to the principal’s office and walked out of the room.

That was the last I saw of him.  By the middle of the day, he had quit.  I learned this when a few new students were transferred into my 4^th period class.  His classes had been disbanded and all his students were sent to other teacher’s classrooms.  No longer would there by AP Chemistry or Honors Chemistry.

No one knew what happened.  His name is still posted on the door, but the room itself is locked and he will not be replaced.  I went in to see the principal on Friday of that same week to inquire about what happened to Dr. Sayid and she told me “For privacy reasons I can’t talk about it, but Dr. Sayid is no longer here.”  Administration never said a word to any of us about what had happened.

A few days later at lunch, I asked Mitch, an anatomy teacher, if he knew anything about Mohamed’s leaving the school. He had heard rumors that Dr. Mohamed did not feel respected or supported at the school.  He had heard that Dr. Sayid had gotten into an argument with one of his students who was making fun of his last name and calling him a “crazy Muslim” and a “terrorist.”  Students had apparently made fun of his accent with his soft-spoken, hard to understand manner of speech.  They had complained to their parents and parents called for a meeting with the principal.  The final straw was a parent that had yelled at Dr. Sayid in a meeting with the principal “You can’t teach and my daughter can’t understand you”.  That meeting was on Wednesday, his last day, the very day he left the PLC.

Either way, Dr. Sayid is gone.  The students had won.  Once they started complaining and making fun of him, once the disrespect took its course, it only took the first 3 weeks of school to get to him and he was gone.  How quickly we can be flushed down the toilet as teachers—and no one standing up for us.  Despite all his qualifications, the kids had gotten to him with their disrespect.  There were a few ways he could fight back—join the teacher’s union or hire a lawyer–but Dr. Mohammed did not fight back at all—he just quit and walked away.

I found his home address on the web at “people finder” and sent him a card with a note, telling him we were concerned about him and what happened and gave him an email address to get in touch.

It is a week later now and I have not heard anything from him.  As of now, no one is talking about him and it’s as if he was never here.

As a follow up to this story, today the tech came into my room looking for Dr. Mohamed and wanted to get his laptop.  I told him I had not seen him since last Wednesday.  The tech had been told by the principal’s secretary that Dr. Sayid had given his 2 week notice and was around campus.  This was completely false information.  My sense is that is what administration was telling parents or anyone who asked, to protect themselves.

By chance I went into the chemistry room yesterday and found this note on the desk dated August 29, 2018:

Fulton High Chemistry Parents:

Due to unforeseen circumstances Dr. Mohammed will no longer be teaching at Fulton High School.  Today, August 29, we met with all students and moved them to other chemistry classes or other upper level science classes of their choosing.

We are sorry for any inconvenience, please call us if you have any questions.

Administration

Scott Hogan 9/7/18

Clare Chu was raised in Malta and England, and has adopted Los Angeles as her home. She is an art curator, dealer, lecturer and writer who has authored and published twelve books and numerous academic articles on Asian art. This year she was a participant in San Miguel Poetry Week. Her poetry is featured in a continuing collaboration with Hong Kong-based calligraphic and landscape painter Hugh Moss, in which poet and artist expand traditional media boundaries. Her poetry is published or is forthcoming in The Comstock Review, The Esthetic Apostle, The Raw Art Review, Cathexis Northwest Press and 2River View.

How to Fry Okra

Last weekend, Sabiqah couldn’t gather her words,
reluctant to admit she was homeless again,
their ‘Welcome’ mat covered by a blanket of ash,

that after his third stroke, her husband Frank
came home from the hospital
with a hankering for fried okra,
just like his MeeMaw made,

that she refused him,
because she was angry he’d been back to hospital,
because in Bangladesh she’d always made Dharosh Bhaji,
because this was the South — his home,

that Frank was petulant with her,
went downstairs to the empty apartment
where her mother, lately converted, newly passed,
had lain for a week in the scorching heat,

that he fried a skillet of okra,
dipped in buttermilk, dredged in cornmeal,
managed to set the pan alight,
poured water on flaming peanut oil,

and with enthusiasm — or so it seemed to Sabiqah —
burnt their house down in its entirety.

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA. 

Huge Stone

I passed a huge kidney stone and brought it in for my doctor to have analyzed. When I took it out of the envelope in which I had placed it, his eyes widened. He said: That came out of you? He brought in all the other doctors in his practice, all the nurses and receptionists, even the insurance lady, to show them. No one had ever seen a kidney stone that big.

You are an American Hero, my doctor said. He had previously been a medic in the Army. Any other man would have been brought to his knees in pain, but not you. For you, it was only discomfort.

I said: No, sir. You may not remember, but both my parents were mentally ill. I became used to bearing pain. Then, in the war, I became a prisoner and their torturers had their way with me. You think a lousy kidney stone can perturb me?

He saluted, and all the employees went back to their duties. The sexiest of the nurses stopped on her way out and secretly handed me a card with her name and phone number on it.