Robert Perchan’s poetry chapbooks are Mythic Instinct Afternoon (2005 Poetry West Prize) and Overdressed to Kill (Backwaters Press, 2005 Weldon Kees Award). His poetry collection Fluid in Darkness, Frozen in Light won the 1999 Pearl Poetry Prize and was published by Pearl Editions in 2000. His avant-la-lettre flash novel Perchan’s Chorea: Eros and Exile (Watermark Press, Wichita, 1991) was translated into French and published by Quidam Editeurs (Meudon) in 2002. In 2007 his short short story “The Neoplastic Surgeon” won the on-line Entelechy: Mind and Culture Bio-fiction Prize. He currently resides in Pusan, South Korea. You can see some of his stuff on robertperchan.com.

Atheogony

Why do trees have bark? So our archaic ascendants wouldn’t think of furniture when they climbed them. Trees, quite understandably, want to stay trees. But this worked for only an eon or two – until those hominid ancestors of ours stumbled upon tiny tchotchke shelves sprouting from the bole of a great oak like fungus. Now we have a world of sofas squatting on curbs waiting to be toted off by couch junkies in pickups. Treehouses may provide a compromise — what with Hybridity all the rage these days. Children lift themselves up into them and jabber down at us like chimps. If we bring them food and empty their waste buckets they might stay up there forever. As we learn to fill this niche and grow step by step more servile and imbecilic, we may one day come to revere these lovable Hanuman pranksters inhabiting the eaves of our forests as Gods.

The Horse’s Mouth

The Last Straw Man was the last because we had run out of straw.  Sure, you could use plastic drinking straws, and we tried that.  We even experimented with glass pipettes.  But the results were so  .  .   inauthentic.  Straw is straw, there’s no getting around it.  So for kickers we sat the Last Straw Man on the swayback of a Stalking Horse and gave the horse’s behind a slap.  Giddyap!  The Stalking Horse only looked back over its shoulder with longing at the Last Straw Man and whinnied petulantly.  Xenophon, I think it was, wrote of the flesh-eating horses of Diomedes, tyrant of Thrace, slain by Hercules in his Eighth Labor and fed to those selfsame horses.  Other sources contend the beasts ate only Red Herring Platters.  That, and steaming bowls of Mare’s Nest Soup.

Hack Sonnet

Dead Colonel! Where now you lie
staring me straight back in the eye
after the long struggle last night
when in its midst my wits took flight
and scattered on the field of battle
and abandoned you – O empty bottle
of Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight
Bourbon Whiskey – to your Fate:
trash basket casket in a corner,
my hangover your sole mourner.
I scour the closet for your label
to set a full bird back on the table.

Josh Anthony is an M.F.A. candidate (please vote for me) in the Pacific Northwest. Josh has appeared in a fingerfull of magazines including Crab Fat Magazine, Gone Lawn, and Slipstream. Contact them here: joshdanthony405@gmail.com.

To Begin
from Vulture Tree

among the varied crush and chaff
Vulture Tree stands bare and fractaling
branches trace darkness in the path
where sky meets sight

to the north the spread of wings
sun so new and crisp shadows
you thought hawk until
until the multiples and eyes

blackened Vulture Tree from fire
a hill became pyre and we walk
close to get an idea of ruin
among the varied crush and chaff

woods and shrubs regain except
the Vulture Tree singing
through wind and creak

Dimple Shah arrived in Hong Kong 10 years ago and promptly decided to forego a lucrative career in Banking and Finance for the unquantifiable joys of writing. An avid consumer of words all her life, she has only recently officially assumed the mantle of producer of words and spinner of yarns. Read more about her and her work at www.dimpleshahchronicles.com,

Confiscated

The bright lights shine, like beacons of hope. They are, instead, the harbingers of doom. Our black clothes, meant to evade detection, etch our shapes in sharp relief against the low-lying shrub.

The guards are in black too, not dusty and dirty black like us but an official looking Black, with important looking letters on their chests and backs.

My heart thrums with dread. I pull Julio’s trembling little form closer to me. Cold tendrils eviscerate my gut as the harsh reality sinks in. We’ve gambled and lost. We wanted to trade in a decrepit future in the warm sunshine of our homeland for the American Dream. What we will get instead is a nightmare of bars and cages. I’m glad Julio is wearing a diaper; my bladder feels as if it could give way any moment too.

One of the men in Black approaches me; I must hand over everything I have. I see his hands run over Julio. The man is gentle, smiling even, but it seems wrong, this man patting my son who is whimpering loudly at this stranger’s touch. Whose hands will comfort him when they take me away?

I bend down to remove the shoelaces from his little feet. They join my belt and my stash of eighty-three dollars in a plastic bag marked ‘Homeland Security’. Gone for good.

A phone rings. The man in Black fishes out his mobile. “Hi kiddo,” he replies, smiling. “Daddy’s coming home soon.”

Sarah Holly Bryant lives in New Jersey with her two ill behaved dogs and her nice husband. She majored in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sarah loves to fly fish and see the world, preferably at the same time.

The Water Closet

“I’m here for the drug test.” I feel like a junky. “The employment one.” I add.

“Fill this out.” The mean lady, who might not actually be mean, says meanly.

“Sure.” Done.

Bringing the forms back to the mean lady I smile and make eye contact. Hopefully I look bright and engaged, not manic and pie eyed. “Here.”

“What’s this?” Meany points at a box I’ve marked under other medical conditions.

“It says MS. I have MS. My handwriting is bad. But not because I have MS.”

“Where do you have it?” What a mean question.

“Everywhere.” It’s the truth.

“The restroom is there.” She points to a door with a sign on it that says, WC. I can’t remember what WC stands for. It’s something with wash I think. Wash Center. Wash Corner. Wash Closet. That’s it. Maybe not. I leave my sample for the sample checker on a shelf above the toilet labeled specemins. I haven’t done any illegal drugs in almost a decade, still I’m rattled.

“Hey, look who it is.” Crap. It’s my neighbor. He’s definitely done drugs in the last decade.

“I’m just finishing up.” I offer and close the Wash Closet door.

“That’s funny right?” He points at the WC. “So formal.”

“Right.” I reply.

“You’re nervous.” If he were standing closer I’m sure he would nudge me with his elbow. Eh, eh, eh neighbor. If I were holding the sample I’d drop it on his foot and the mean lady would have to clean it up.

“Can I leave?” Permission to leave Mrs. Meany?

“What does MS stand for?” She asks and I notice she has a rip on her eyebrow. It’s a scar that looks like a tare. Maybe an eyebrow ring that was grabbed out from her face in a fight. Mean.

“It stands for multiple sclerosis.” I say.

“Think I’ve heard of it.” She scowls.

“What does WC stand for?” I ask.

“Water Closet.” She replies.

She’s right. And mean. My neighbor is right too. I’m nervous.  I’m nervous because I’m starting a new job. I’m nervous because I have MS and it makes me nervous. I’m nervous fatigue will make working impossible. I’m nervous I will be forgetful. Get overwhelmed. I’m nervous I will have a relapse and feel like my brain is on fire and my feet are asleep.

“What’s the matter? Think you’ll fail?” My neighbor asks.

LindaAnn LoSchiavo, who recently won Wax Poetry & Art’s poetry contest, has been published in Ink & Letters, Measure, Mused, Switched-On Gutenberg, Windhover, as well as in other literary journals and numerous anthologies. Her chapbook “Conflicted Excitement” was just released by Red Wolf Editions.

The Milliner’s Late Night

Her millinery shop had windows bright
With fascinators for madame whose face
Needs artificial lace to help erase
Ten years and homburgs for suburbanites
Disguised as understated socialites.
She scanned the sawdust-trampled street in case
Her customer was late or had misplaced
The payment for this bretonne veiled in white.

Winds cold as fingers of an old cashier
Blew scraps through the boutique as beggars took
Their place.  The organ grinder’s monkey held
His fez when coins appeared as sunset neared.
A lady, cloaked, knocked with a frantic look
As, in the distance, wedding steeples belled.

La Rue des Reves

All day I’m puppet-ized, hands sawing air,
Their talking plain as pain and used to strike
Till violet tedium of sunset’s sky
When gusts of melancholy lid my eyes.

My mind runs tapes of where I’d rather be,
Deletes a vast unusable past.  Bed:
Your clean sheets generate sweet luxury,
Spread an eternity of wonders there
On home soil, dimming fierce red real-life blooms.

Love’s shuttered silence shifts; its centers can’t
Hold where dream’s silence is its lexicon.

They disappear, these imperfections, leave
No record how they felt, dragged day by day.

Embracing sleep — — my necessary angel — —
Connecting what’s affirmed from under, I’m
Out, walking lines between my heaven’s earth
As bedsprings bear the bother, this great weight.

Boccaccio and The Decameron

In air arranged by bees, the honied sting
Stuck to Boccaccio, made him scratch his life
And bleed it on a page, gold-leafed labor
Producing volumes: prose, winged verse, critiques.

With The Decameron, mortality
Realized it had to leave this B alone.

Like Calandrino — —third tale, the eighth day — —
“Mouth hunter” never would just disappear.
One hundred stories: Florentine dessert
Preserved by honey’s words uncombed to soothe
Plague-driven years.  His other work expired,
Stung by unmanaged death, reputation
No richer for the weight of its sweet breadth.

Jeremy Springsteed is a barista living in Seattle. He was one of the founders of the Breadline Performance Series and is one of the organizers of the Chain Letter Performance Series. His work has been published in Raven Chronicles, Mantis, Make It True- Poetry From Cascadia, The Paragon Press, and forthcoming work in Pidgeonholes and Pageboy.

Our Spreading

We left home across ocean.
Virginia hills and bootleg routes,
hand cart Mormon pilgrims.
We move west and when there is no more west
we fall to the shore drinking ocean to expose more land.
We leave our old gods to the east in search of Zion.
When Zion is found we leave the valley in search of Shang-rah-la.

We are sparse like southern Idaho.
We are towering like the Wasatch front.
We are dead fly ridden Great Salt Lake.
There is no upward movement in this clan, only expansion.

Drink drug depraved dreamers.
Silent saints of salt and sky.
Poor chicken coop dwellers,
couch surfers, park campers.
Wanderlust in the veins,
dissatisfaction in the DNA.

We want to be there in our own annihilation.
We open our bodies to offer
nerve and bile
to the unfeeling and the overfilled.
Some drank or drink
or would still drink but they’ve gone to the ground.
Outcast aunt
drank until she had titanium pins put into her ankle
eventually lost that foot because she keep
passing out in the backyard
in the tomatoes,
the hose running everywhere.

Sometimes we wake up in Vegas
with hangover and regret and nothing
but the shirt on the back, even the car gambled away.
Successfully being demoted back to private thirteen times
for drinking, bet fixing, insubordination and still put up for promotion again.
Sight big enough to take in the whole of Pocatello to Walla Wall
and never raise a potato from the earth
We marry and marry and marry again
and eventually just live with our exes
because it’s cheaper rent.

How to Leave Things

Morning marches on my mattress.
I sleep in sheets made of safety pins.
Thrashing through the night
the sheets open. Dreaming pin cushion.
This is the way we keep house.

Then there are fever dreams.
Clouds of mucus tissue fill my ears.
Scrapping myself from bed
to vapor rub.
No one will do this for me now.

I plastic wrap the whole thing.
Sleep six inches above the blankets.
Constantly curious about DNA
and ownership and who looks through my trash.
I sleep up here and dust bust every chance I get.

The mattress knows every inch of me,
has a me shaped depression.
This is why it must go.
No more night-sweat-mares.
No longer a drunken moan.

No other sleepers
for I am a jealousy sleeper.
Set on fire
in metro tunnel.
The travelers can taste
the smoke of my sleep.

Kilmeny MacMichael lives in the Okanagan Valley, Canada.

Last Sunset at the Lake

Three weeks after we fled the city, taking refuge at the lake house up here in the mountains, a man walks out of the lake with a knife in his eye.

Tom and I always try to make time to enjoy the sunset together. This evening we’re both out on the balcony when Tom grunts something, and I look up from my book to see the Diseased. We watch him walk right out of that sunset over the lake, up the beach, dripping blood and water. He doesn’t see us, turns, and walks into the woods.

After a few moments, Tom gets up from his chair, saying, “Well, I think I’ll need a second cup of coffee.”

“While you’re in the kitchen,” I say, “Maybe you should call the police. Perhaps an ambulance.” Sometimes they still respond.

We hadn’t wanted to abandon the city. It was unfair to those who stayed behind, leaving them to deal with the worst of the mess. I still believe most of the Diseased can be helped, at least early on, with enough care and understanding. I volunteered for a time, taking food to the sick in our neighbourhood. But after one of the Diseased set fire to the elevator in our building, we packed up and came here. The airport is closed and the railways are refusing to run trains west of the continental divide, so we’re lucky to have the Prius.

One of Tom’s co-workers wanted a ride with us. He’s a great guy, but we had to say no. We didn’t know if he might be sick or not, and we have children to think of. He tried to stop us leaving without him, kneeling in front of our car, crying and begging. It was embarrassing.

The Disease has been simmering on the edges of society for a few years. It started by killing a hundred people one year, five hundred the next, a thousand. It only attacked the weakest and most vulnerable. Then the plague made the jump, to its current aggressive form, which can eat up most anyone.

The infection takes hold of different people in different ways. Many can go on with their lives with little trouble for a time. Some don’t even realize that they’re infected. Others seem to be gripped quick and hard. They degenerate to half-consciousness and unnatural hungers within hours.

A certain panic set in over the metropolis when the mayor succumbed live on TV.

I’m sure we’ll go back to the city eventually. We love living in Vancouver. Most of the time.

Our neighbours here at the lake are Mormons. We haven’t seen them recently, but hope they’re okay. We replaced the lock we broke through on their door. We’ve been careful not to make a mess, and plan to leave them a cheque for the food we’ve taken. It’s not bad food, a bit bland. Tom misses avocados, and the children are not thrilled with oatmeal for breakfast. I’m running low on almond milk. Yesterday I used up the last of the lip balm. Things are getting tough. I know it’s getting to be time to move on.

Some of the Diseased appear curable. A few manage to take it upon themselves to seek help, although the vast majority are far too crazed. They don’t respect any limits in who they attack, family, children or lovers. You’re safe inside if you don’t let anyone in, but you can’t let anyone in. You can’t even open the door to your closest friends or relatives if you’re not one hundred percent sure they’re okay.

And now the Disease has made its way here to resort country.

If you’re out in the open and the hungriest see you, they will try to destroy you. We’ll become prisoners in our own homes, and even Mormon stockpiles can’t last forever.

On the east side of these mountains, a fence is going up. It’s got drones, guard dogs, and nervous armed people in ugly green uniforms. They’re trying to contain the plague. Of course some people and some of the sick got across the border early, and even now, the fence is long and incomplete. Wire cutters aren’t that expensive.

Tom comes back out onto the balcony.

“What did emergency services say?’ I ask. A Diseased woman appears down the beach, followed by two or three more. They are singing the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They are off-key.

“Got a recording that all operators are busy,” Tom says, taking a sip of his Nespresso Carmelito.

I say, “Maybe we can find a new place in Kimberley or Cranbrook to hole up in.”

Tom turns to me. “Honey, I think it’s time to move to Alberta. I’m sorry.”

It’s alright. I’m sure we’ll go on surviving. Somehow. We’ve managed so far. There are quarantine centers at official crossings. I fear there will be no almond milk or avocados for quite some time. The sun is setting.

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank. 

Between the Buttons

Ask the calypso singer.

Ask the boy with a booger
on his sleeve.

All shirts are equal parts
theory and praxis.

Doll Variations

The deep red sequin
on the doll’s plastic belly

works as either a ruby
or a scab.

Rust

Just hypnosis that metal undergoes.

Stephen Baily has published short fiction in some forty journals. He’s also the author of ten plays and three novels, including “Markus Klyner, MD, FBI,” which is available as a Kindle e-book. He lives in France.

Her Lucky Day

In a brand-new bright-green wheelbarrow with orange hubcaps, my mother was pushing me up the sidewalk on Cosmopolitan Avenue when we crossed paths with Mrs. Quinn, a gray-haired widow who lived in our building.

“Where on earth did you get that?”

My mother explained she’d just won it at the hardware store, as second prize in a drawing for a dishwasher.

“I only wish I knew what to do with it.”

At a loss for suggestions, Mrs. Quinn turned her attention to me. “My, he’s gotten so big. I suppose he’ll be starting school soon.”

“In the fall.”

“How time flies. Speaking of which, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m late for my sodality meeting.”

Before scurrying off to join her friends for a Coke at the drugstore—or so I thought—she made me cringe by stooping to tousle my hair.

“Be a good boy and study hard and you could grow up to be president.”

My mother waited till we were out of earshot to shake her head.

“Senator or governor, maybe, but not president.”

All at once, she lit up. “I know! It’ll make a perfect gift for the Rosenbaums when they move to their new house. We can keep it in the basement till then.”

Inside the back entrance of our building, half a dozen metal cans full of ashes were waiting to be dragged by the porter up to the curb for collection. Beyond them, a dim corridor led past the boiler room and the incinerator to the carriage room, so called because that was where tenants parked their baby buggies, bikes, and other items too ungainly to be tucked away in small apartments. Steam pipes as thick as thighs ran along the baseboards of this chamber, into which a small transom high up in the far wall admitted just enough daylight to see by. My mother was attaching the wheelbarrow to the chain securing my old carriage to a pipe when I tugged at her skirt.

“What?”

At the sight of the finger beckoning to me out of the shadows under  the transom, she snatched me off my feet and lugged me back outside so fast the sunlight dazzled me.

“That’s the last time I go in there.”

My father shrugged it off. “Kids.”

“You wouldn’t think so if you’d heard him laugh.”

To set her mind at rest, he asked the Rosenbaums next door for the loan of a baseball bat. Mr. Rosenbaum fetched two of them and insisted on accompanying him down to the basement.

The hubcaps were missing from the wheelbarrow, and its tire had been slashed. The tires and the canvas hood on my old carriage were slashed, too.