Last week we noted that like any other opiate the Andalusian brasero can occasionally put a relationship to the test. We should also note that it is in fact possible for a couple to share the brasero, in the way that a pair of opium enthusiasts might share a hookah. The problem is that on those nights when partners find themselves enjoying the pleasures of the brasero together, slow-baking in harmony, the impending journey from the brasero to the conjugal bed, a.k.a. the “Bed Run,” will eventually weigh heavily. Because the bed is as frigid as the air, and will remain so until one partner dives in and, at the expense of his or her own warmth, warms it up, the question as to who will make the first run can be a serious one.

(more…)

Andrea Cohen’s book of poetry, Long Division is one of the first books we’re recommending to friends and family this year — no matter if they’re readers of poetry or not. Her “lyrical compression” and fresh syntax demonstrate a poem’s ability to surprise, take risks, and leave in the reader an aching-for-more aftertaste. Cohen’s clean, cogent poems carry you up a tight suspension bridge and leave you satisfied and changed at the end. This experience makes Long Division a humorous, breathtaking, and clever collection, deserving of what one might call a five star review. – Lori Huskey

(more…)

The Quiet Before The Storm

We’ll tell you all of our secrets but lie about our past.  Today it’s Venison leftovers on tap for lunch and a sloggy day ahead. Other than that, all is quiet on the Dark Sky front. At least for now. There’s always action up ahead.  But this is a perfect time to peruse the Web for quality reading. We start with Michael Kranish’s lively new take on Thomas Jefferson, and then belly crawl to Rebeccas Skloot’s important review of the life and times of Henrietta Lacks. Does that make you hungry? It makes us hungry — segue — Spiked has the history of food in, well, all of human history. We know you all want to go on The Daily Show, so prepare with Ethan Watters. Finally, we spend a relaxing moment with Bauhaus. All’s quiet now, people. But what’s that, on the horizon? – Andrew Geer

(more…)

She told me he passed out drunk afterwards. He woke to bright lights and the smell of ammonia. A doctor informed him he had been stabbed fourteen times in the abdomen.

They divorced and she was awarded custody.

A decade has passed and I look out my bedroom window every night to see if he is asleep in our yard. I take a flashlight to be sure he isn’t in the ditch or underneath her car. While she’s at work I try to dig a trench around the house, but the grass is too well-rooted. I stab at it with a hoe, but I hack my foot and have to quit. She finds me sitting in the foyer, still wearing my sneakers, bleeding through them. I scream when she takes the shoe off. I scream at the way the shoe rips away more of my flesh.

I watch for him everywhere. At home, yes, I stare out the windows, running from room to room trying to catch him in the side yard or front yard. I check the closets and underneath the bed. I watch for him at school. I’m afraid to go to the bathroom by myself, because maybe he will be in a stall choking my mother. On a field trip my school takes to the sewage treatment plant, I’m sure I’ll find him drowning her in a vat of chemicals.

And then I realize I haven’t seen him because he can change his size and shape. He can be in a kitchen drawer or underneath the towels in the hall closet. He could be anyone. Anything. He might be in the breadbox or maybe inside my toy chest. If he is in the other room choking my mother, I will never know.

The easiest thing to do is sprint from room to room and around the house, on constant vigil, awaiting his appearance. When I tire of sprinting, I jog. Then I walk. I do this until I fall asleep.

It doesn’t work at school. Teachers get antsy. They demand my attention. They want me to answer questions and sit still in my seat. They want me to learn multiplication tables so my rocket ship can fly across the bulletin board, across the times-fours and times-fives and eventually the times-twelves. They try to send me to the principal’s office, but of course someone finds me power-walking through the halls, looking around and up and behind me. My mother is called. They want me to take Ritalin. They want me to talk to someone.

I’m scared that when we walk through the therapist’s door, it will be him. He will be there, ready. But it isn’t him. I try to talk to the therapist. I do. But he wants the same things the teachers want. He wants me to sit still and answer questions and pay attention. I can’t do it.

I think of leaving. I think of hitching out at night, but it won’t solve anything. My mother will still be there, waiting to be strangled by my father, who is hiding in every possible location.

There’s no solution. I’m writing this between patrols of the clinic, in order to explain myself. To explain why I can’t be kept here, to explain why my presence is so vital to my mother’s well being.

But the worst? The truth of it all? I’ve never seen my father. I have no idea what he looks like. He could be my therapist. He might be one of the guards. Maybe the neighbor. It isn’t safe for my mother to be near any of these men.

_____________________________________

Brandi Wells has fiction in McSweeney’s, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Smokelong Quarterly and Hobart. She has a chapbook forthcoming as part the chapbook collective Fox Force 5, which is being released by Paper Hero Press. She blogs at http://brandiwells.blogspot.com/

Lara told Sam she needed out of there, now, could they go someplace? She wanted to be outdoors. So they wrapped scarves around other’s necks and snapped the leash on the old retriever, Buck, leaving the mess of the apartment behind. They walked the four blocks to The Retreat park, where there might be music and children playing.

Sam threw the ball for Buck to fetch. But Buck started limping, so after awhile the game ended and the three of them sat together on the blanket and oak leaves dropped over them and flitted across the ground and Lara’s hair kept blowing into her face, so she tied it back.

“You look pretty that way,” Sam said. “This was a good idea,” he said.

Buck lay on his side, snoring.

“I brought raisins, do you want some?” she asked and Sam held out his hand. She’d done something wrong with the eggs that morning.

They watched a man pushing a stroller with two toddlers in it. They might be one and a half and three years old. The man walked quickly, bumping the stroller off the sidewalk onto the grass and bumping it along over the grass and the toddlers jostled fatly, one behind the other, holding onto sippy cups.

Sam asked Lara if she felt calmer now and she said she was never not calm and then she said again that she was sorry and Sam said again that it was okay.

The man was hoisting his toddlers out of the stroller, one in each arm. Their legs kicked at the air until he plunked them onto solid ground. They stood on wobbly legs for a moment then proceeded to gallop, in opposite directions and the man ran around like a border collie until he simply grabbed the younger one and ran over to the older one who wanted up on the smiling yellow duck.

Sam scratched under Buck’s chin. The dog closed his eyes. Lara stroked his head, tugged on his ear and the dog sighed in the shuddering way he’d been doing lately.

“Maybe this was too much for him,” Sam said. And Lara reminded Sam that Buck loved that park and they both got quiet.

Lara didn’t want to look at Buck so she looked at the sky. “Sam,” she said, “isn’t there something curious about the light this morning? It’s not golden like it ought to be, it’s soft, but–revealing. Like those light bulbs.”

“It’s because the trees are almost bare now. There’s no filter. And it’s a little overcast, so that’s why the light is soft.”

Lara lay back and crossed her ankles and took another long breath. Sam lay back, too, so they were side by side, both propped on their elbows. Buck leaned heavily against Sam’s leg. There was no music today at the park, but they could hear a radio in the distance and a dog barking. Buck’s eyes opened briefly, but he didn’t lift his head.

“What do you suppose is the deal with that man?” Lara asked.

“The one with the kids? Oh I don’t know…” Sam said.

“I think he’s had a very bad morning.”

“He does seem…”

“Yes. Let’s suppose he and his wife had a terrible argument. Let’s suppose they said mean and hurtful things to each other.” Lara swallowed and started again.

“And the wife was not his beautiful wife this morning, but something he didn’t recognize. And she banished him and the children, told them to get out, they were driving her crazy and the man, well, he didn’t dress them properly and that’s why I can’t tell if those tots are boys or girls or one of each.”

“Sounds bad,” Sam said.

Lara closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “And the tots, they’re a handful and he’s a little Un-careful with them, but they don’t know, so they aren’t fussed even when they’re bumping against each other like billiard balls. He gets here and pulls them out and holy shit, look at those kids. They are the cutest things he’s ever seen. He’s in love with them, Sam.”

“People are mental about their kids.”

“My point! And they’re building this fucking leaf pile that’s not getting any bigger because the tots aren’t focussed! They’re taking away as many leaves as they add. And now that man is so fucking happy. And so, see, his muscles start to relax. And the muscles are connected to his brain…”

Sam stopped her. “Now that’s not exactly true…”

“Okay,” Lara said. “So his muscles aren’t attached to his brain, but he’s—awash–with some kind of hormones that make him happy and that makes him remember his wife and it’s all good stuff because these two, man, they have a lot of good memories of each other, so that’s what he’s doing right now, he’s building that doomed leaf pile and not noticing the littler one is stuffing leaves in its mouth and he’s feeling good. I mean, look, is he not smiling right now?”

Some spit caught in the back of her throat and she hiccuped and squeezed her hands together and watched her husband’s face.

“Oh, Lara,” Sam said. “Let’s not.”

The tots jumped into the leaf pile and banged their heads together and started screaming. The man put his hand to his forehead, then scooped them both up and plunked them into the stroller. Lara and Sam stood and brushed the leaves from their clothes. Buck didn’t seem to want to leave, but Sam tugged a little on the leash and he rose in a measured way to his feet.

__________________________________________

Kathy Fish’s stories can be found at Indiana Review, Mississippi Review online, Denver Quarterly, Keyhole Magazine, Everyday Genius, Quick Fiction and elsewhere. A collection of her work is available from Rose Metal Press in a book entitled A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women.