A compacter crunches doves in a clouded bog.

The preacher screams, Wildwood Church crumbles

—– into soft summer earth

Welcome the new believer, herald the sermon’s prelude

—– With a flame-backed mandolin

Welcome the congregation, yellow waders, swamp water

—– And third-edition hymnals

The deacons grin from the warm shore as they sing.

My Mother takes a piece of soggy corndog grass and tastes it.

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Tyler Zencka graduated from St. Olaf College in the spring with a B.A. in Religion and Family Studies.  He now lives on a quarter horse ranch in Arizona and works part-time at a movie theater.

On a night in 1952 he walked her home in the freezing rain, past the nativity in front of St. Mark’s, sharing his flask of schnapps. Look, my fingers are prunes, she said. He kissed her hands and said, Let’s name our firstborn Adlai. She laughed and said, No. Dwight. They were democrats with an acute sense of irony. They ducked under an awning and he pulled her close, describing their future on her neck, the magnificent new world their children would inhabit.

_________________________________________

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.

Overserved

Once upon a time there was a bear named Theodore. He forced all the other bears in his forest to eat too much honey. The next morning all the bears felt sick. The bears thought long and hard about how to feel better. To put their minds at ease, they wanted something good to read. “But where will we get our reading material?” they asked. On DSM, of course. So, for all you belly-aching bears out there, here’s your medicine: environmental poet James Sherry is interviewed in Jacket Magazine, Eleanor Ross Taylor’s 30 Books in 30 Days gets its treatment from Critical Mass, and Anne Finch contemplates the return of the sonnet. Still not feeling better? Then go soothe yourself with Lady Jane Grey, or better yet, revisit Orson Welles through the eyes of his daughter. See? You are feeling better. Soon enough you’ll be ready to put your paws back in the honey pot. – Andrew Geer

(more…)

A tall blonde chick chats me up at the bar. I love tall girls. Not tonight. I’m not interested. I’ve got my eyes on this pregnant slut sloshing vodka three bar stools over. She’s like seven months, eight months, just drinking away.

All they have on tap here is Bud and Bud Light and this watery brew makes me piss like a racehorse. I have no other cliché. It works though. It gives me an excuse to leave Blondie. I take the opportunity. The men’s’ room is no grosser than most, puddles of piss on the floor. I can never figure why guys can’t get it in the bowl. But I’m in a hurry. I’m not sure why. My big-belly girl has been alone all night.

Back from the bathroom, I move four seats down. I still have space. I’m less sure about time.

Serendipity strikes the right chord. Chick-with-child is almost out of booze.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says. “Double vodka and soda.”

I flag the bartender.

The barkeep does not hesitate. She pours the drink long and hard, maybe a triple if I had to guess.

Preggers rubs her big belly and thanks me.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Shit-faced,” she says.

“Can I touch it?” I ask.

“All you want.”

I rub her stomach and then I suck her fingers.

Her nails are long and her hair is shiny just like they say in all the books.

She puts one hand on my crotch and kneads my balls like she’s in cooking class.

“When are you due?”

“Any time now.”

I want to ask her a lot more questions but I don’t.

Her long nails are quite dirty and I suck the fingers of the hand that is not stroking me. Within a minute or two, her nails are pink and white and clean. She smiles at me.

She changes hands.

Her drink is gone and I order her another and I get myself a scotch on top of my fourth Bud Light. I consider sipping the scotch but instead I gulp it down and order another.

My girl spasms some and I guess I look alarmed.

She moves her face closer to mine.

“Braxton-Hicks,” she says.

“What?”

“False alarm.”

I remember the books I read and the classes I took.

We drink our drinks.

The jukebox walks the line, just right, a perfect and automatic DJ in the dark. The beer signs glow. The light is blue and black. The six-foot blonde is playing pool.

All at once the moment works.

Pregnant girl finishes her vodka.

“Take me home,” she says.

She stumbles a bit getting off her chair. I steady her, my arm under hers. I pick up her purse from the floor and I hand it to her. I grab my jacket and slip it around her suddenly shivering shoulders.

My heart is beating fast and my face is flushed and I am very hard.

I hold both her hands and lead her to my car.

I am taking her home with me.

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Larry Fondation is the author of four books of fiction, all set in inner city Los Angeles. His most recent, a collaboration with artist Kate Ruth, is called Unintended Consequences, a collection of short stories.

She says I need to wear diapers because I might wet the bed.

Her cigarette is burned up and the cherry has fallen out, but she pulls it to her lips and inhales.

I tell her I don’t remember wetting the bed.

She folds towels, rolling them into little logs, which is the only way towels can be folded in this house.

“You did when you were really little,” she says, unrolling a towel and then re-rolling it tighter. “Diapers are in the hall closet. Next to the toilet paper.”

The package has pictures of toddlers crawling across puffy pink clouds. They’re all smiling.

Not smiling, I tell her I won’t wear diapers.

But she holds me down, strong for an old woman. Her hands look weak, but they’re weathered from work, from years of weeding the two-acre front yard. I remember she said weeds have no place in her lawn and that spraying chemicals would only hurt the grass or the insects that lived there. She pulls my pants down and I hear the material rip. Her nails dig into my sides as she pins the diaper on. I wonder if little pieces of my skin are stuck underneath her nails.

The material bulges under my pants and I crackle when I walk.

For breakfast there are mashed pears from a Gerber jar. There’s an oversized highchair. Where do you even get a highchair to fit a twenty-eight year old? But it fits, or rather, I fit. She straps me in with old seat belts she’s hot-glued to the sides.

I tell her we need to talk.

She makes vroom-vroom airplane noises, grabs my hair, yanks me back and shoves the mashed pears in my mouth. They’re good. They’re really good. Like something I never tasted before. Sweet and clean and smooth, rolling down my throat.

I sit up. She comes at me with the vroom-vroom airplane noises again and this time I open my mouth.

“There now,” she says. “Wasn’t that good?”

I nod my head.

She feeds me so fast I can’t swallow. Pear mush runs down my chin and clumps in my hair. She wipes my mouth and scrubs my hands and between my fingers. She says I’m a good girl.

“We really need to talk.”

“Shhh,” she says, unstrapping me from the highchair.

While I’m in the bathroom she stands outside the door and asks if I need anything. I put my hands on the mirror and lean forward. No make-up, no hairspray, no bra. Pear is matted in my hair. My face and neck and arms are sticky.

“I’m fine,” I say.

She follows me back to the kitchen, petting my hair as we walk.

My pajamas have pictures of bears on them. I don’t know what happened to my other clothes. My duffel bag is empty, except for some lint and a couple pennies.

“Where are my clothes?”

“What clothes?” she asks.

“The clothes I brought with me.”

She nods at the laundry room. “I’m washing them,” she says.

I pull open the dryer door, but my clothes aren’t inside. Instead, there are miniature pink pants, maybe big enough for my arm, tiny shirts with lambs on the front and little yellow and pink socks.

“What am I supposed to do with these?”

My keys aren’t on the counter. My cell phone is gone too.

“This isn’t funny.”

She pulls a jar from the cabinet.

“Do you want some plums?”

“I want my keys. And my phone.”

She drags me back to the highchair and pulls the straps across me, pinching my skin.

“They’re better than the pears,” she says.

“We need to talk.”

She twists open the jar and says, “be a good girl.”

“This isn’t…”

“Shhh,” she says, stuffing plums in my mouth.

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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/