Yearly Archives: 2014

Mar 11 2014
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Fiction

The Beginning of an Imaginary Autobiography

by J. J. Steinfeld

This is my autobiography, begun today at the crack of dawn, even before I’ve had my first coffee of the morning or felt my first pang of regret, yet it isn’t chronological or especially personal and has an awkward coherency. But it’s not dishonest, even if it may be short on the factual. Basically, fragments bouncing off fragments like an angry chain reaction in a far-off lab. I cannot tell you my name because God may be watching and I do not want to alienate God any more than I already have in my chaotic, jumbled life. I’m also not going to say whether I’m married or not, if I have any political affiliation, my favourite breakfast cereal, even my age, and I’m not going to divulge my religion, or whether I fear dying or not. Before I get too far into my autobiography I should mention that I’m imaginary, and don’t want you getting me mixed up with the author. What an uneasy relationship I have with the author, to say the least. We don’t talk, even over drinks. I like to keep my distance from authors, even the one who has created me. But all this said, or not said, most or all my autobiography is a love song, contradictory as that may sound. Off-key maybe, somewhat strident, but a love song all the same. Yes, a heartfelt love song of existing.

In my autobiography, dreams are important, both waking and sleeping. You know, the dream within a dream within a dream, and then there’s a gargantuan thunderstorm and Zeus thunderbolts wake you but you’re already awake, and you realize by the process of elimination that it’s not a reality-TV show, or a low-budget feature film, or a controversial stage play, or even a dreadfully tedious home movie. It’s one of those disjointed days. Along with the dreams, prominent in this autobiography will be musings and introspection and existential angst and— Whew, let me pause and take a deep metaphysical breath. A life lived, that’s what this fragmentary exploration is all about. How many thoughts does a person have in a lifetime? How many words and regrets and desires and fantasies and apologies? What is the proper measurement for a life? Where is the consciousness odometer? However, I’ll leave the statistical appraisal to the census takers and score keepers and those who have perfected systems of keeping track of the days while incarcerated. Let me continue before I run out of time. That’s one of the dangers about life or writing an imaginary autobiography: running out of damn time…

– J. J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books), and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in North America.

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Mar 04 2014
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Fiction

Anybody, Antarctica

by Nicole Matos

I brought you, for one thing, a penpal in Antarctica. The covers of those splashy books, ‘101 Things to Do – For Kids – for Free!’ We were certainly interested in anything that could be done for free. But the agencies, the oversight, send your letters in-care-of? It was an idea best taken under independent consideration. It was wise for us to always use a payphone, it was wise to have first called the Post Office for the numbers of more distant Post Offices: we knew so much about succession, the layering of small steps.

‘We-are-calling-for-a-school-project-how-you-send-a-letter-to-the Queen-of-England? The-guy-in-Hawaii-who-sits-at-the-top-of-the-volcano?’ – though our list actually said, ‘Volcanologist,’ always better to play dumb. The Head of Endangered Species, on behalf of underappreciated lichens. The publisher of our social studies textbook, to let them know when they wrote ‘Abraham Lincoln’ we added ‘Towncar’; when they asked, ‘Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?’ we wrote ‘At the bottom’ – that we mocked, in short, their childish récite. Could you address a letter to an astronaut on a satellite? Could you address a letter to not a particular person, but the sort of person you wanted? Could you put, Khoi Tribesman, Kalahari Desert, could you put, A Nice Grandmother, Somewhere in Croatia – would the Post Office sort of help you out like that? We smoothed them out, question by question. We brought them back to postage, and we hung up and called someone else, and put the pieces together.

Of the letters, there is nothing. We sent them all. No return address – they’d have to be opened to ever be returned. What does it count as, that we scribed them out – during school, after school, we had nothing but time – and mailed them, keeping nothing for ourselves. ‘It counts as normal,’ I can hear you snort, say. The writer’s cramp, muscle memory of my numb hand. We were wrong to write them separately, in the same rooms, mostly, but lost in our own heads. Not enough just to mail them together, in piles, that creaking of the mailbox drop a sort of final salute. But anyway, anyway – ‘Anybody, Antarctica,’ was the crown jewel, Best in Show, and that one was mine – my throw was the farthest, and the only ball returned, both, and so that gift, at least, I brought to you.

We figured on the slow procession of time, not on the startling gap between the letter written – crystallised in just that moment forever – and the late, late, miscast, far behind the unimagined future, reply. ‘Anybody, Antarctica’ dramatically increased this factor. So when my sister placed our reply in my lap, in all its red and blue army and airmail packaging, we’d long ceased checking the mail. The return address was ‘Matt, Anybody, Antarctica,’ and then a drawn-in smiley face, but the effect was oddly chilling. Too little, too late. We were already that changed. That letter, whatever he returned, I need to tell you, I never thought to keep, or to share.

* View Nicole’s story on Tapestry *

– Nicole Matos (http://about.me/nicole_matos) is a Chicago-based writer, professor, and roller derby girl. Her recent writing credits include Salon, The Classical, THE2NDHAND txt, Vine Leaves, Chicago Literati, and others. You can catch her blogging for Medium, publishing tappable stories on Tapestry, and competing on the skater track as Nicomatose #D0A with the Chicago Outfit Roller Derby, too. 

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Feb 25 2014
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Fiction

His Maoist Tenured Ass Or Ode to a Cliché

by Margaret Eaton

He told her he worked with Cesar Chavez. She said he was living a life of consequence. I told her the only grapes that pretentious prick ever picked was choosing a wine to seduce idealist babes like her. She said she wasn’t being seduced. He told her she should read serious writers. She said she knew she really should. He told her to come to his place so he could lend her some books. She said she would.

I said: This guy is so obvious why can’t you see it? She said professors are supposed to open our minds. I said: you know you’re not the first fair maiden he’s laid his messianic bullshit on. She said that I’m jealous because I don’t believe in anything. I said: I don’t believe in using my beliefs to lure people more attractive than me into my lair. She said the professor was the more attractive one because he had a deep soul and a fine mind. Upon hearing this I said: I’m going to vomit. She said she was not being seduced, that she was not that predictable or that stupid. I said: I don’t think you’re stupid. She said, but you think I’m predictable. I said: I think this situation is so pathetically predictable that vomiting is not a persuasive enough display of how sickened I am by it. She said she bought him a Che Guevara beret from an ad she saw in The New Yorker. I was dumbfounded. She said she put the beret on his head and hasn’t seen him since. Disgusted and relieved I said: Because you realized how totally full of shit he was when he rubbed his sagging 1970s Maoist tenured ass up against you. No, she said. Then why? Scalp odor.

 

– Margaret Eaton’s stories have been published in Opium, Matchbook, The Collagist, The Quotable, Pif Magazine and Barrelhouse. Another is forthcoming in Grey Sparrow Journal. She was an early contributing editor to Dowser, an online news source for social entrepreneurs. She lives in St. Louis.

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Feb 18 2014
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Fiction

Erraticism

by Ric Carter

We caught fish and sent them by post to the record shop. They would exchange a seven-inch single for a decent-sized mackerel, whereas a bass would land us a twelve-inch.  We had no front door. When the postman came to deliver our packages he just walked into the house and handed us the post while we were still in bed. The record player was at the foot of the bed, actually it was on top of our feet, which meant we could change the record without getting out from under the covers. We spent whole weeks like that, and these were weeks that went on and on – we invented new days so as to make a week stretch until it became ten, twenty, thirty days long.  

Our plan had been to spend a year there, but the year kept on expanding. It also happened to be the best year for new music since records began.  

We gave the postman some mackerel for his trouble and he brought us news of the outside world, from which we made connections to some of the lyrics we heard. There were fantastical lyrics, lovestruck lyrics, satirical lyrics, obtuse lyrics that didn’t seem to mean anything until you had listened to the record over and over. 

Our elongated weeks passed slowly. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw fighter jets screaming across the sky. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw mushroom clouds far across the sea. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw the military doing manoeuvres on the beach, smartly dressed in banks of three, guns over their shoulders, a marching band out front. We got back under the covers where it was warm and where we had been thinking about the possibility of going out to catch more fish so we could send away for more records. 

We heard the postman coming in through the space where our front door might have been, but when he entered the room, it turned out to be a soldier instead. He pointed his gun at us and ordered us to sit up and turn off the music. We put our hands to our heads and kept them there. We told him that all we were doing was catching fish and listening to music. He picked up our records and began to look through them, throwing selected titles to the floor. He put the depleted collection back on the bed and then snapped the discarded records under his boot. 

After he had gone we decided that a new week should begin with immediate effect. What the hell, we may as well make it a new year. We slept for longer than usual, then we went out and caught fifteen mackerel and three bass, which were sent straight to the record shop. Back in bed, we listened to the records we had left, but the best ones – the most thrilling, the most vital, the most monumental – had all been broken. 

The postman delivered our new batch, but no matter how hard we listened we couldn’t hear anything that told us what was going on.    

  

– Originally from Bury in North West England, Ric Carter lives in the Channel Island of Guernsey.  He publishes on his own website, Digestive Press, has produced several handmade chapbooks and has had work featured in various places online.

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Jan 30 2014
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Fiction

The Raven’s Unction

by Art Bupkis

Naarah and her mother started the journey south with the others after they ate their last goats, but it wasn’t long before they fell behind. The two stragglers took water from a muddy well, and the mother died of dysentery. Naarah escaped that illness, but was now traveling alone, and near death from starvation. 

Night approached. A small mud-brick church appeared in the distance. A church offered special promise of protection for Naarah. The girl’s family had converted to Christianity when she was four. Naarah had nearly died of measles then, but lived after the family called on Christ at the suggestion of a friend. She pushed to make the building before dark.

When she arrived at the church, Naarah saw that fire had gutted it. All that was left of the roof were rows of blackened beams. With the last of her strength she pushed the heavy twin doors open. There was little inside but ashes, and certainly no food. Still, she decided to sleep there with the doors shut against the creatures of the night. 

Naarah collapsed on the hard dirt floor next to the white stone altar. Gazing up through the dying light of eve she could barely make out the silhouettes of a raven being pursued by a mob of crows. She tried to sleep as the night cold of the desert plain settled upon her.

‘Are you in need child?’ a voice asked.

Naarah shook her head, but still the image of a large raven persisted on top of the altar.

‘Yes, Father,’ she whispered. ‘I am without family or friend, and am about to die of starvation.’

The raven looked the girl over carefully.

‘I can lead all my flock from this place of death to lands of ample water and rich harvests, but first you, child, must pray for salvation.’

With the raven’s words Naarah felt desperate pains of guilt, for she had cursed God at the time of the villagers’ flight. But she also felt hope, for she was ready to repent and be saved.

‘As penance you have but to pray through the night,’ reassured the raven. ‘Just as Jesus prayed in the garden before his time of glorious sacrifice and triumph, so too can you ensure life through this simple act of reverence.’

Naarah knelt by the white stone altar. Eyes fixed on the raven, she chanted her prayer in the moonlight.

 

‘Savior in darkness, Father of Light,

Whose Son before torture did pray like me,

Keep safe my spirit, by Your great might.

The new land of plenty, grant we may see…’

 

The raven listened approvingly, cocking his head first left, then right.

Hours later, when the first light of the rising sun poured over the white stone altar, it glistened off the feathers of an ancient raven and a small congregation of black carrion crows noisily celebrating the feast of Naarah’s corpse. They gorged themselves for days before heading south, as their provisions were secure within the church.

 

 – Philosopher, poet, and small-time humorist, The Rt. Rev., Professor, Dr. Art Bupkis, is a literary ward of L. R. Baxter, a professor at the University of Florida.

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Jan 16 2014
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Fiction

CLASSIFIED SECRET SERVICE REPORT ON MORAL/IMMORAL

by Thomas McColl

MORAL and IMMORAL are both vast organisations, operating in each country networks of spies and agents concerned solely with each other’s overthrow and destruction. Agents are everywhere – everyone’s involved – working undercover in every occupation, in every pub, in every household, on every street, watching, collating, reporting their information …

All that is known for sure about the two groups is that the one side will oppose whatever the other side supports. On both sides, secrecy is essential. Agents often do not even know which side they’re working for. Orders are given in the press through coded messages, and people only have to read and take them in to be recruited, often not knowing why it is they have become involved, or where it was they got their orders      from …

Double agents are numerous. It’s thought most members of IMMORAL still retain MORAL membership, and it’s not known how many members each organisation has. Once, it was believed that IMMORAL membership was almost universal within MORAL, but now it’s thought that MORAL has managed to infiltrate IMMORAL so effectively, if its own members were taken away there would be nothing left. It’s even been rumoured that the two organisations are simply one and the same …

Double agents are sometimes dealt with by a third organisation called AMORAL, that owes its allegiance to neither side, but works for both, and is currently supplying drugs into IMMORAL at their request in order to flush out the double agents and pretenders within its organisation. These noxious, mind-bending drugs, if taken by double agents, twist their minds so much, they render their reports incomprehensible, and now that drug use is compulsory within the ranks of IMMORAL, MORAL has found that its members who’ve infiltrated are not being driven out and back into its own camp as expected, but instead are taking drugs as often as possible to benefit from their pleasurable side effects, ignoring the warnings of possible brain damage, and giving IMMORAL more control than ever before, enabling it to infiltrate MORAL from within its own organisation, and at the same time, stem the flow of information that could be used to put a stop to it …

There is concern within IMMORAL that this latest success will make its membership almost redundant in its fight against MORAL, which instead is being won by AMORAL drugs, and making it seem more likely than ever before that the end of MORAL could mean the end of IMMORAL too. AMORAL though concedes that its agents also work for MORAL, using methods MORAL would not use, to combat the spread of drugs, and has agents too who work for neither side, sabotaging the efforts of both. It’s also thought that AMORAL is heavily infiltrated by both IMMORAL and MORAL, and would collapse if the two organisations they claim to use and work against suddenly ceased to exist …

– Thomas McColl lives in East London and has had short stories published in Notes from the Underground, Ranfurly Review and Smoke. He recently came second in 4’33” Magazine’s 60 second story contest, and has completed a novel. His favourite bookshop is Quinto, on Charing Cross Road.

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