White noise.
A womb hum.

Wraps ‘round
my ears like a warm,
down sedative.

Eve’s flashlight
glows buttery
in a burnt toast sky.

Picture it
like a science experiment.
Dark chocolate milk
peppered with dyes
and I’m dropped in
like some clear soap.
Red, yellow, blue
dissipate
tessellate into the shape
of liquid comfort
until I can almost taste my trip
into that dark racing train cab.

A flash forward fall
and pre-sleep kick in the back
and I gasp
and the sounds of slumber are blowing around my body,
and they’re cool
and they’re steady.

A marble cake of sensation
slides down my throat once more –

Until I’m catatonic
melodic
comatose auto-erotic.
Until I’m not.
Until my nightshades are full
of pancake batter
that pour from their presses
and my fingers push
phosphene suns into
my gasping retinas.

Until Adam has pushed Her
into the baby’s
room for her
7am feeding.

[Inspired by: Earl Reiback  Lumia Aurora - American (1948-2006) Circa 1970]

A Tasty Review by Colin Pepper

I took the advice Tom Kalnoky gave at the last Starland show they played and illegally downloaded the album. It’s the first installment of nine cover albums they intend to release. That in mind, here is a play by play.

The album opens with a cover of Mason Jenning’s , “Birds Flying Away.” It starts the album off on a sort of folkishly whimsical tone with a western twist that soon blends into Streetlights own mix of heavy guitars, quick strumming, with horn solos and such. All in all it’s a good Streetlight take on a Jennings staple.

From the fad out of “Birds Flying Away” you are greeted with their take on the Squirrel Nut Zipper’s 90’s swing revival hit, “Hell.” They speed it up, mix in more energy, and ska it up, what’s not to love.

Then they go bold. They take on Radiohead’s “Just” from my favorite Radiohead album, the Bends. This is one of the most interesting tracks on the album because they manage to take a Radiohead song, inject some ski, yet keep it Radiohead. They turn the guitar solos into horn solos. YOU READ ME, they make the horns sound like guitars. Blows my fuckin mind.

They follow up with Bad Religion’s, “Skyscraper.” I am not, nor have ever been very interested in Bad Religion. However, this cover made me enjoy the original better. Not to say that it wasn’t a good cover, but in comparison to the other songs on the album, this cover doesn’t have the Streetlight element I enjoy so much from them. They slowed it down, took out the heaviness, and transformed it from an aggressive song you put a brick through a Starbucks window to, into a dancing feet anthem you drink a Pina Colada to. It doesn’t knock my socks off, but doesn’t make me want to vomit. Good, not great. On the upside, this cover definitely prompted me to download Recipe for Hate, which is a good thing.

Track 5 I praise for cover choice. The covered the Dead Milkmen’s, “Punk Rock Girl,” and I love them for it. It maintains the funness that both Streetlight and the Milkmen encompass so well. This songs is the fine wine or aged Cognac of the album because it compliments both coverer and coveree.

The best track on this album is their cover of NoFX’s immortal punk anthem, “Linoleum.” I took it as a sign of solidarity from Streetlight to all of the other kids who grew up in Jersey suburbs listening to PunkoRama’s and going to shows at Birch Hill (RIP) and club Krome (RIP). It’s an ode to the days when Warped Tour used to be in Asbury Park, and summers were spent on skateboards. I would talk about how they play the song but I’m holding out for the two or three people who read this zine to look it up and be dazzled for themselves.

After being faceblasted with “Linoleum,” you are beamed to the playfully thoughtful cover of Paul Simon’s, “Me and Julio Down my the Schoolyard.” They keep the speed of the original, and tone up the weight. The increase in heaviness definitely rubs off aspects of Streetlight into the song without being overwhelming. This is a song you wanna eat ice cream to.

The next song is a cover of Kalnoky’s side project, Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution (BOTAR). If you haven’t heard them, download them now. The song is called, “They Provide the Paint for the Picture-Perfect Masterpiece That You Will Paint on the Insides of Your Eyelids.” The cover is less of a cover and more of an excuse for Kalnoky to convert the song from its original acoustic version. But that’s not a bad thing, because the song more than holds its own.

“Red Rubber Ball,” originally recorded in 1966 by Cyrkle, co-written by Paul Simon. Actually if you YouTube the song name you can find a really good live version of the song by Simon and Garfunkel played at Lincoln Center in 1967. Streetlights version is much more theatrical than its counterparts. There is a lot going on in this song, compared to its counterparts. I think this cover is more of an interesting choice than as a cover.

The second to last track on the album is an ode to Jazz. It is Louis Jordan’s, “the Troubadour.” You can tell by listening to this song that the band had a lot of fun in the studio recording it. It trails on as if they were playing a live show, and for the second to last song you couldn’t ask for more. It is such a fun track that you cant help but smile while listening to it.

The last song is probably the most creative choice on the record. They cover the Postal Service’s, “Such Great Heights.” It opens with the horns section mimicking the “synthtro” of the original version and like what they did to the guitar solos on their cover of “Just,” they do to synth, and magnificently. The up tempo speed and peppy singing by Kalnoky are sure to turn rude-boys and girls all over Jersey into Postal Service fans.

This record is an instant hit in my book. In summation, if I could eat this record, it would taste like a cheesecake. D-Lish baby.

"About Saul" by Kevin Dixon

*Click the image and enlarge!

photography by Alexis Canary

Thoughts About Stuff: Keeping your ears peeled in public.

I’m nosey. Lately I’ve been struggling when it comes to taking part in conversation in public places because I’m too busy listening to the chatter of those around me. I’m always listening. Even if I don’t know you. ESPECIALLY if I don’t know you. I’m a collector. I’m a real life Harriet the Spy. I love catching people in their least self-conscious forms and taking notes. ..So I stare strangers. Call it creepy, call it weird, but I love to collect words and phrases, and when you read the gems I’ve compiled, you’ll be glad I have.

Something delicious I’ve picked up as of late… Summer weather turns (intelligent) people into cliché geysers. But these aren’t just clichés. These are clichés that have either been adapted for some personal effect or made completely void by lack of knowledge of what the cliché actually was in the first place (which is my favorite type of cliché delivery).

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the crap you probably said and didn’t know I was writing down.

“When life gives you lemons man…you know.”
“It’s seriously way hotter than a crotch out here.”
“I’m caught between a hard and a rock place.”
“It’s like… he wants his cake… and he wants to eat it too. And he can’t”
“You just have to choose and pick your battles.”
“Don’t look at a gift horse.”

God Bless You, America.
Janine

by Patrick Danner

Darkness then light.  That’s how it works.  The wrenching back of Harold’s eyes each morning, the intake of light and the instant sensation of feeling again, his body heavy on the couch, remembering that feeling from nights past when she, propped up on her elbow, crow’s feet forming in the corner of her eyes, more prevalent when she washed the make-up out, leaning over him engulfing him in her gaze and…

He sighed, swung his legs clockwise off the couch, fully cognizant of the force it created on his body, rubbed his eyes and straightened up, his boxers coiltangling around his genitals, pulled the heavy yellow afghan off his lap, the weight of it comforting and warm on his thighs and slid his feet into his elk-hid slippers, the lining providing no warmth, but comfort, leathery and softly welcoming so that, if he could say it, Harold would try to compare it to the softness of her voice, allowing the New England accent, terse and calming–

His watch alarm sounded minutes after he woke, the subtle tweeting that accompanied the tings of the hot water heater reminding Harold that it was already 10 a.m., and now Tuesday, and that Lester was due soon with the groceries, inevitably stumbling apishly up the stairs, carrying bags upon bags in his greasy arms, the sweat of his pocked pubescent brow seeping into the brown paper bags causing the edge to wilt–

A door slammed.  Clack-boom.  Around the corner.  Studio. The coldness that permeated from Harold’s frozen fingertips inward now reversed itself, starting from the core of him and crawling step by step outward.

He shuffled, thin arms pulled to bony chest, cool breeze up the legs of his boxers, around the corner to the door, his feet settling again toward the back of their respective slippers, soles moist against elk-hide, now, and a cool breeze caressing the gnarled hairs atop each… but from where?  From underneath.  A fine grain of elk-hide nestled between his toes and he eyed the space between the floor and the bottom of the door, the faux-brass lining where tile meets carpet, the two-inch gap, now bright, already a few hours past sunrise, and a gap in which at that moment Harold saw it: the motion of light.  Shadows cast by swaying curtains.  Swore he heard for a brief second the slight wind falling through a gaping window…  His face went warm and he took the knob in his hand and startled himself at the sound of the mechanism moving in his grip, the crunch, echoed in the hollowness of the door, a light crunch and rattle of screws and bolts against the thinnest steel and his lungs froze as he turned the knob ever so slowly, listening for a rustling of feet scampering across the filthy blue carpet inside toward the ledge of the bay window, the clap of shoes dropping from the second story to the sidewalk below, but only ever the pained torque of the knob, the faint flatulent squeal as his moist grip slipped on the knob just briefly.  The push of the wind against the door as he released it and allowed it to blow backward.

The window agape.  The studio empty.  An emptiness struck before he turned and saw a vacancy left by a single portrait.  One of forty-seven.  All original.  Disparate.  All one woman.

His stomach deflated, immediately knowing precisely which one it was, the emerald green dress, the way her hair, straight and red and clasped back away from her face, the straightness of her lips and their complimented furrows around them, forming into inactive dimples, the impeccably consistent yellow-green eyes, the right one having the yellow cut across the middle and shown best in water color– the arrow, he imagined it, into the bridge of her nose– the one where, as he remembered, he caught the light perfectly… a day when no one would believe the rain for the lack of clouds… where the light seemed to push itself through the window frame voraciously, yes, voraciously, and cling around her neck, cupping her face as he tried to capture it… pale freckled long neck underneath a heart-shaped…

And now vacancy.  A blank space from where she had been stolen.  Not blank so much as darkened by the lack of light hitting it.  He shuffled halfway, to the center of the room, the spot on the wall ingraining itself in his memory and searching for a partner, the darkened blue behind it, the original color of the room, closer to a coral blue instead of what was now the hue of the walls, a grayed Egyptian blue, his throat oscillated opened and closed, unconcerned with the rhythm of his breath, and, as if a sudden ear infection set in and his balance jerked to the right, he staggered left and shuffled toward the vacancy, knocking into his easel, the centerpiece of the near empty room, kicking a leg out from under it and having it collapse like a stunned animal onto the carpet, and the palate, once resting lazily in the canvasless easel, over-turning with near dried reds and oranges, untouched since last week; and the clack-click and collapse of the easel jarred his nervous system, his jaw tightened, and he heard himself gasp the yelp of a mouse, and his lungs held taut in resistance but nearly immediately the threshold broke and he fell into a rhythmic sobbing… and he failed to hear the thrust of soft flesh atop hard bone, shouldering barbarously the front door, the awkward battle-march of oversized feet up the old, creaking steps, or his nephew’s voice, cracking and strained, gruntbreathing a hello.

“I’m here Chickenlegs!  Sorry I’m late.  I mean, only five minutes.”

Harold left the door open to the studio and a grayed winter sunrise cast his shadow–now elongated, popping forward and back with each wrenching, emotional jerk–to the doorway, to his view and he heard Lester stomping about the tiles, the weight of each step exacerbated by the boy’s posture, hunched and miserable like a soldier shamed and blind and in retreat.

Lester had to pee.  Looked for Chickenlegs.  Walked away toward the meats.  Stared down the dual brown bags.  Slackjawed.  Stared.  The pressure of his bladder pushed outward.  Wondered if this is what a hernia felt like.  Swooned momentarily over the meats.  Bratwurst and ground beef.  Two huge sirloin steaks and six pork chops.  In his mind saw himself with the plate in front of him.  Still steaming.  The smoky aroma, faintly still of blood, stroking his nose with the soft hands of a woman.  The grease of the bratwurst running into his nascent neck-beard and solidifying.  Sitting there until Thursday when mom would make him shower.  Warmth of the water as he jumped in dry.  Glasses still on.  Avoiding soap or shampoo but letting it rush the grease from his body.  Through pimple-pocked shoulders and down his back.  Heat from water to flesh.  Chills then smooth.  The cold dissipating from outward in.  Naked flesh.  Like a woman.  He reached toward the bags and squeezed against the doughy bread.  Cracklerack of brown bag crumbled in his ears.  The resistance like a breast.  Blushed alone in the kitchen.  Heard Chickenlegs shuffleuffle ‘cross the carpet.  Stop.  Uncle H.?

Harold, inside, felt himself sigh the name Sally, Sally, between seizing breaths, grayed bangs falling into his eyes, being defined more clearly to him as the sun climbed further, further toward winter zenith, realizing now how they obfuscated the view of them, the portraits, going from most recent to oldest, bay window to door, some crooked and collecting dust– he never dusted them–; he heard it in the floorboards when the ape Lester stamped heavy on his heels erratically to and fro and he felt him stare at the back of his head, judging his pantlessness, his legs pale and gaunt like the faces of nauseous funeral attendees, his thin frame and unkempt hair.

“Hah hah!  Glad to see you still have Chickenlegs!”

Harold stayed silent.

“Are you ok Unc–”

“Gone,” he whispered.

Lester arched an arm to the back of his head.  Dug nails beneath greasy hair.  Scratched.  “What’s gone?”

Harold felt the sob leave through his chest and his head sank.  He felt Lester shift along the carpet, felt him see the barrenness on the wall and hoped the ape would understand, doubtful though he would comprehend the magnitude of the loss, the wrenching out of Harold’s memory and soul that the lost painting signified, and he stood, posed in the light from the bay window, mourning motionless.

“Did you call the police? … I mean, we could look for clues, right?”  He saw the open window.  Wavy blue curtain.  Hello.  “Hey do you have a bathroom?”

Harold closed his eyes, ignoring Lester’s voice as if adapted sensorily, like the steady grunt of a sledgehammer against his brainstem, but worse, and saw her green dress, sitting in the bay window, the sun wrapped around her, the pale freckled long neck–

– Just hold your lips for one more second… ah– ok…

– Can I–?

– Don’t move yet!

His eyes drop from her to the canvas, twitching back and forth and from the living room a TV still blares… his eyes, his camera to the world…

– It looks nothing like you.

“How many do you have?”

He spoke evenly at Lester, though didn’t look, “It’s not a question of numb–”

“Hey!  Real quick– I need to pee.  Like bad.”  Pressure on his upper stomach.  Popped air outward and burped from the back of this throat.  Slightly acidic.  Faint tinge of icing.  “I’ll be back.”

Harold had always thought that the sight of the boy was the antithesis of beauty, nothing at all what the ancient artists sought in the male form, unclean and doughy, soft even, bent in hiding his chest, nursing the gut of a child, becoming conscious of it, clumsy, skulking the apartment with the posture of displaced youth, hair greasy and matted to his forehead, half-masking pimples on the left side of his brow as he, himself, then, messed it between his sausage fingers, fingernails blackened with dirt, amused by his own burp, droplets of water clinging to a few hairs sprouting from an acne-ridden cheek, pores suffocated, jumping to the surface, angering Harold as he stood and watched the inanity of the boy shuffling away, simultaneously unappreciative of the lost artistry and ignorant of the magnitude of its loss, suggesting insignificance, his presence, what of it lingered even after his exit, like woodscrews on the nape of his neck, slowly drilling inward, deep into his brainstem and the image forced him to shiver, standing cross-armed in the doorway, misty-eyed still, and a slight stinging, the pain of vision…

Lester shook while walking.  The pressure of the urine nearly tingling.  The act of holding resulting in bodily heat.  Jammed his shoulder into the frame.  Off-balance again.  A ratcheting crunch between the trim and the wall.  Unused to the inches his legs had grown.  A soreness in his hamstring.  Growing pains.  He grabbed at is as he walked.  Over-dramatized a limp.  A clump-clump of his worn shoes.  Why bathrooms always so bright?  Squint.  Rubbed his right eye and caught his feet together and slipped.  Tumbled and grabbed the towel ring.  Crunch crack and ting of metal on tiles.

No one asked.  He ok?  No Chickenlegs.  Hayeehackouff! outside.  Did he?  Hear?

“Don’t worry I’m fine…!”  Heat from groin billowed out to cold air.  Aaaaaeeah tssssss.  Augh.  “Hey!  Chickenlegs!  We should look for Aunt Sally at th– bazaar… half the stuff they sell is… stole– anyway.”  Zzp.

Relieved Lester opened the door and there’s Uncle Harry.  His eyes.  He held the towel ring and towel and what he assumed were bits of drywall.  A number of screws and the brace-bracket in the other.  The bits snuggled into his now warm hands.  Said he could fix it easy.  They could go to the hardware store today and get the materials.  Promise.

Harold’s immediate reaction was in the possessive, Sally’s towel ring she picked out especially to break up the white of the bathroom, allow the light to pour and bounce of every wall and then land on the casted orange lily, once a symbol of motherhood, degenerating later to a symbol of fertility, hope, promise and renewal or to the Greeks a symbol of eroticism, its pistil his phallus, and Freud would have a field-day with this, orange embroidering of the hand towel the phrase “Don’t forget to wash!” in looping calligraphy script, he loathed Marie at that moment, for that reaction, the disregard for the possessive, the past possessive, the solemnity of this particular past possessive– not that that is hers but that it was hers; and for this his lips parted again slack in utter disbelief, wanting to scoff and tirade, to smack her about her roundish head and him about his grease-laden brow, shout– the boy spoke.

“No.  Uncle H… I can do it–… jus–”

Harold’s empty stare cut the conversation.  The boy went quiet, huffed a bestial huff.–

“Why don’t–! Come on.  Let me just go to the store… after the bazaar… I can do it… God!”

Harold spoke with equal emphasis on each syllable.  “Lester.”

“No.  Let me fix it.  I want to.  You don’t think I?– I can do it.”

Harold snapped out of his despondent trance, watching the greasy boy apishly waving Sally’s towel ring about his head, like Mussolini riling the Italian, like he was flaunting to Harold what he had broken, or like King Kong waving a lifeless damsel above him, the dull light from the bathroom a backdrop illuminating the particles of dry-wall that fell from his unwashed palms into the carpet– irate as if the now questioning look of each of Harold’s eyes, the right one opened slightly wider, constituted a multi-front attack– and growling and grunting and whining for penance, for freedom, for the simple ability to cross the day-lit crowded streets of the brightened town toward the bazaar and then to the store and then to attempt to fix the towel ring– Harold was near a smile imagining and a miniscule twitch in the left corner of his mouth would’ve given it away had the animal Lester calmed the traffic in his pea-brain to look for a moment– Harold hoped that the boy would eventually relinquish the bits of towel ring, that he would oblige his original request to leave it be, to go home, to forget about the gaping hold in the wall, a hole where a memento of Sally once lung, and not return for a week, when Harold would inevitably toss seventy-five per cent of the tasteless groceries, rotting in the sub-par refrigerator, the temperature always a few degrees to warm, leaving his home smelling of a supermarket warehouse, slightly plastic and mild, and await the boy’s awkward yet pubescently sexualized bombardment again; yet the look in his eyes, bloodshot still, moisturestung; the psuedomanteau signaling more of a pouting, helplessly yearning for his concession.

“C’mon Uncle H! We can look for Aunt Sally on the way… …Please Uncle H.  Let me try to make it up to you.  Aunt Sally would’ve let me try…”

What’d he know about what Sally wanted?  She wanted to be immortalized– she didn’t want her memory, her towel ring, tainted, wrecked by her Neanderthal nephew, the tyrant Lester.  All women wanted to be immortalized, their imprint on live being primarily their beauty– these things Harold knew.  He wanted to refuse to go.  He wanted to be left alone.  He could do it on his own, as he wanted it done– and he would never ask that he bring him groceries again, or he could force the boy to go, to keep him from the fair, to bask in his disappointment as he led him through town on for in the cold, tripping him over each chiasmic crack in the battered sidewalks, his flat-footedness and apish strut entertainment, and then have him try and re-try setting the dry-wall screws and brackets, the doughy arms toughening under the bulk of the drill–

“Please Uncle H.?  It’s just across town…”

“Ok. Fine. Hardware store first.”

Happy, simple Lester smiled from the corner of his mouth.  Warm in the apartment again.  Wiped his face on his sleeve.  Thumbs in pockets, hunched over.  Cool.  He remembered last year’s fair.  Hotdogs and baseball tickets.  Raffled.  First baseline, too.  Aunt Sally smiling and the man behind the table.

Lester… this is Father Pat.

Hey there kiddo howdayado?

Fine.

Hoping to win some of these tickets?

Yeah.

Well let me tell you a secret– he had looked at Aunt Sally– I run this raffle so I can pull some strings kid… let me see your number…

Uncle H. stood staring.  Moisture under armpits now.  Deodorant?  Forgot.  B.O.  Clenched his elbows into the space below and to the side of his chest.   Pushed inward.  Slight pull on back muscles.  Placed towel ring, screws, brackets and drywall on dining room table.  Uncle Harry’s legs looked like chickenlegs.  Uncle Chickenlegs.  Nearly hairless.  Short boxers unbuttoned.  So silent in the apartment.  Ringing in left ear.  Hands deep in pockets.  Scratch itchy thigh.  Oh.  What time is–?

“Let me get slacks… Don’t touch anything.”

Harold stopped at the thermostat on the way to the room and dropped the heat to 74 degrees, lulling himself with the clip-clap and stroke of his rubber-soled slippers on the tiles of the kitchenette, heard the faint hiss and subside of the heat as he shuffled into his bedroom, closing the thin door behind him– click– and once inside made the conscious decision to leave his bed unmade, pulled a pair of khaki pants from the bottom drawer of the dresser and slid into them– baggier than he had remembered– tucked in t-shirt and slipped into a sweater, cotton/wool blend, the fabrics on his unwashed arms unwelcomed, yet he had no time to shower, he thought, only time to drag the boy to the hardware store and to find that towel ring, only that towel ring, only the orange lily, and the orange must match the looping calligraphy, the don’t forget to wash… he stood from the edge of his bed, looked at himself in the mirror above the dresser while searching blindly for socks in the top drawer, unshaven, sad-eyed, no point calling the police by now, too late, she’s gone– and for the boy to think he’d pull me to that moronic fair, glutton’s fair, with promises of finding her–

Uncle H turned off his bedroom light and shut the door behind him.

“Just want you to know Lester I now have no time to shower or make my bed… so what do you say we make this quick so I can get back to my life?”

“Want to take the bus, then?”

“No.  We’ll walk.”

The moist boy stopped picking dry-wall from the carpet and looked, dazed, for a trash can, saw none and pocketed the bits before letting his eyes fall on Harold, standing cross-armed, next to the countertop.

“You ready then Uncle Chickenlegs?”

“What?”

“That’s my nickname for you– Uncle Chickenlegs– after seeing– I’m just joking around… –Anyway you ready?”

“Go ahead I’ll lock-up.”

Once outside cold again.  But the sun warm on Lester’s face.  He looked up toward it.  Cold clear day.  White light like snow.  Perfect day for the Bazaar.  They’d walk by it if they were walking.  Chickenlegs came out behind him.  Saw the old man in a cap and a scarf and a heavy brown coat.  All brown.  Like Uncle Burnt Chickenlegs.  And Lester was hungry again.  Rotisserie chicken from the Amish.  Warm thick spicy smell.  The Amish were always there.  There last year, at least.  He felt a burp coming up again.  Watery this time.  Warm burp water behind molars.  Still smelling of icing.  Sweet and wet.

“Ready Uncle Chickenlegs?  Sure you want to walk it’s cold out?”

“Don’t call me that.  I’m not your friend.  You do not give me inane nicknames.  And whatever you ate this morning that smells awful.”

The boy finally shut up, fell silent, looked nervously at the ground while he formulated a response– maybe this was it– maybe this was the end and they could have a quiet walk there, a quiet walk– zzzzzzp.

“Well this will keep me warm on the walk, Chickenlegs!”

Harold turned and saw Lester with both hands on his protruding gut, clearly defined under the thinning t-shirt, jacket unzipped and opened, pinned underneath each elbow, grabbing a handful of fat in each fist and shaking it up and down repeatedly, tongue hanging out of his mouth and off to the side, as if, if this had been a cartoon and not reality for Harold Graves, hail-sized droplets of drool would sputter from the tip of Lester’s tongue.

Chill on stomach beneath.  Zip coat up again.  Uncle Chickenlegs’s glare.  Laugh.

“Come on Uncle H.”

Scraptap scraptap on sidewalk past Uncle H.  Crackpop stumble.  Palm between shoulder blades.  Coat on shirt pressed into pimpled back.  Quick pinch.  Shutter.  Tight fist on back of coat.

“Slow down Lester.”

“I’m fine.”

The boy stood in front of Harold turning away, walking again away and down the sidewalk lined by trimmed and edged grass tamed and cropped back, kept in line, toward the streetlights and audible bustle of downtown, toward the heated tents of town square, of the Bazaar, propped up, Harold assumed, cursorily, and the pungent, noisome odor of meats cooked and meats raw wafting toward the pair, riding the fortuitous currents of cold front winds, appeasing the cannibalistic, and the cutting sniffle of idiotic Lester, canine similitude, ignoble nose up into the–

“That.  Smells.  Awesome.”

“We aren’t stopping, Lester, if we have time on…”

He smelled roasting kielbasa.  Jalapeño laden chili.  Saw himself mouth full.  Exhaling with each wide-mouthed bite.  The burn.  Back of his tongue.  Open-mouthed-hhhha.  So warm on cold hands.  Nose running.  Last time he had chili was then he was staying at his friend’s house after school.  Molly.  She had her hair pulled back.  Asked him to touch it.

–My mom got me this shampoo– come on– it’s so soft.

Her voice was soft and taunting.  Her eyes watched his saucer wide pupils dance between her and the door.  She curved her neck to the side.  Tendon visible taut.  Stretched.  Basin of flesh between collarbone and neck.  Smell of apples.  Her head looked weighted down.  Her arm taut in the carpet.  The small foamy hiss as she pressed her hand into the carpet fibers, their exhalation beneath her pressure, between his legs.

Nervous Lester watched the hair dangle in front of him.

–Come on, it’s soft! … No don’t grab it… like that…

Small clean hand around wrist.  Pulsate against her thumb.

A cold wind snuck up the sleeves of smitten Lester.  All the way to the crevice of his elbow.  Where Uncle Chicken–?

“Hey Uncle Harry?”

“What?”

“How long have you been painting?”

“Why?”

“Just asking… I mean I like–… I just figured–”

“I don’t give lessons.”

Smell of jalapeños again.  What a jerk.  Moist under armpits but why?  Cold with sun.  Have to– yeaaaahcchu!–

“Just thought I’d try and talk, sorry. God…”

Blocks away still the cars were parked bumper to bumper, an overloading need for transportation, a restless prosperity, animalistic need to consume, families parking significant fractions of miles away, getting out and trekking with tired-legged children across town, crowding his streets, gridded and cold, like the synapses of Harold’s worn mind, filled with memory and thoughts still in the possessive and past possessive: her portrait, his filth, her towel ring, her nephew, his fault, his fault– Sally, oh Sally his failure!– eyes cold stung squinting, why?  Why?… squint away the boy, the stench of meats and grease and the bodies of men and women and–

– What color is your dress?

– What?

– What color is your dress closest to, do you think?

– I don’t know Harold does it matter?

The active art of painting, to Harold, is like a push-pull between him and the canvas, inside a TV blared the morning news while he fights with cutting the Prussian blue against the palate, it bleeding all-over the ten-inch canvas, and her breast oscillating, dancing through the light breaking the window at sunrise, the light itself cupping her neck, wrapping itself about her face, pale freckled long neck under heart-shaped countenance, faintly dimpled chin and impeccable posture, his eyes, his camera on the world, today taking the daguerreotype, stopping and looking up over his canv– she shuffles straightening up–

– No don’–!

Her cough cuts through the cold air of the room, hanging onto each curtain, each of the frames undusted and crooked on the wall, filling the room entirely with the staleness of the sound…

“Oh this is just mean!”

Lester drew the city map in his head.  Hardware store meant straight through center.  Straight through bazaar.  Definitely past the Amish tents and the kielbasa and hotdogs.  Uncle H. smiling.  He knew what he was doing all along.  Shuffleshuffle rubber heels on ground.  Hands in pockets and chest concave.  Dry thighs scraping against each other softly and smoothly shhha shhha shhhha.  Jacket revealing lower back.  Cold still.  Breath in still morning air.

“What?”

“Come on Uncle Harry do we have to walk right through?  This is tor–”

“It’s quickest.”

“So!  Come on if I’m not allowed to stop don’t throw it in my face!”

Lester’s cracking, whining voice was accompanied by the hustling crowd of nuclear families as they approached the threshold of the center of town, of the Bazaar, a man in pleated brown slacks and tucked in crimson dress shirt, business casual, deep brown belt, dragging the limp body of his daughter down the sidewalk, her deep green and yellow eyes staring up at him, sneakers scraping against the sidewalk intermittent the leaping short-steps, rhythmic cha–cha–cha, and the father, then, the father, an all-encompassing form of paternal domesticity, hustling, bustling, cold blustering winds at his jacketless back blowing against the creases of his shirt, perfectly tucked, flattening them against his body, diminishing the military diligence and precision as his shirt billowed out in front, each crease now a straight line slightly off-vertical angles, equal and opposite, up to his shoulder blades; and Harold imaged him standing at attention, buzz-cut and forward-eyed, dead, emotionless, contrasting then perfectly the big eyes that seemed to grow and devour him in his mind at that moment, as if she was propped up above him, laying heavy in his bed, and her, even her, in that posture, Harold figured any woman could do the same in t– cars honked laying on the horns now a chorus off of time or tone and the din cut through his thoughts while white tents popped up peaking out slowly from behind corners of buildings, this novelty the acne of the town, nine square blocks, at every turn, waving like sails of a thousand ships against the crisp winds, flapping and popping like flags, raised off boats in the harbor, wave to your wives, gents, land-ho! and the sunlight reflecting off them accentuating the brightness, the cleanness, the purity of the white directly from factory dry-cleaners, a fabric unknown to Harold until he would– Lester shouting again into it, the wind off of the water muffling his pleas, and Harold attempted to turn give him a stern look of discipline, a look of insistence that he would have to overcome the seemingly insurmountable gluttony, the unwarranted hunger clear now on his face, the desire to sink his fat, pimple-pocked face into the breast of a chicken, suckling the meat from each bone, greedily even chewing the tendons crunching on them and popping, ultimately swallowing them whole, deep-woods cannibal Caliban, coughing and choking on the way down but savoring and spices the rubs forming around his lips like a mould and migrating toward the thin hairs on his cheeks, and Lester, now, taking stride in a separate direction, shouting something about time, and Harold, now, deciding whether– a bald man jostled Harold in a sprint, jarring him off balance and momenta– he had lost sight of dirty Lester, peered around faces, considering, then, leaving the boy behind, plicking him like a tick from his consciousness bu–

“Lester where are you–?”

“I can’t he–!”

“I said g–”

Lester only turned halfway.  Cupped his ear exaggerating inaudibility.  Decided to blame the wind.  Say he couldn’t hear.  Shoved his hands in his pocket and scratched at his groin.  No one looking.  Well maybe Chickenlegs.  Smelled chicken.  The Amish.  That way!  Stuck his nose in the air and heard Uncle H.  Cold nose.  Uncle H. shouted again.  Something about time.  Stomach burped up something acidic.

“–on’t have time!”

Lester entered underneath the flap of the tent.  White canvas against cold moist cheek.  Heat on cold flesh.  Relaxation.  Breath in deep odors of meats.  Bearded Amish man shouting about his new barbecue sauce.  Hahahaha accent.  Little Amish girl next to him.  Straight brown hair in button-up dress.

“– come on, it’s so soft.”

Marbly voice of Uncle Chickenlegs into the tent.

“Lester come on we don’t have time!”

Food stands and fruit stands, the voices of hockers and merchants about the warmed air of the tent, mixing and dominating the sound of an army of generators running industrial space heaters, an omnipresent whir and grind of motors and fans, the smells of cooked meats and ladies perfumes, the tent like that of a circus, the canvas and the generators not allowing for echo but the space going upward seeming endless, tables end to end aligned in a maze and Harold’s darting eyes searching for the greasy cold boy, peering around the faces of men and women running into him, jostling him and diverting his gaze, the fatty tinge of a butcher’s shop and then the faint scent of citrus as a tall woman’s hair brushes strand for strand against his face, light and dark as faces, shoulders, hair and bodies meet his, the entire crowd going opposite his direction, he shouted:

“Lester!  Lester where are you?”

And right then, folks, a man’s voice, squeaking, reeking of onions breaks from behind the counter like a bull in a china shop!:

“We have paintings, right here, discount, all original and all unwanted– original, local artwork right here!”

The man’s voice cut through in a treble and Lester and Harold heard him both.  And folks I swear every pair of ears heard his knuckles rapatapatapping on the table in front of him, hollow-sounding and sharp.  That’s right!  And behind him there were dozens, I swear, dozens of paintings from artists known and unknown, practiced and unpracticed, sane and insane– see the abstract artists of our….

His voice faded out to Harold and he didn’t see Simple Lester bustling past the people, his warm body meshing around the arms of men and women, his unzipped jacket pulled back in the bustling crowd, being swept toward the opposite entrance, shouting something that Harold didn’t hear, mouthing something through a slack smile that Harold didn’t see, when out of his periphery Harold began eying the paintings, the thin man standing tall, arms wide under a wool coat, sleeves too big for his wrists, sagging down like slack jaws at the end of each appendage, proclaiming the value of the rare pieces there, his shouts and chants mixing, then, with the sound of the generators, the roar seeming, then, to lift his staccato voice high into the upper beams of the massive tent and send it swirling, then, down, right toward Harold’s ears and then there… there she was: sandwiched between two terrible attempts at abstract art, chaos and no meaning, all style and no substance, splashes of oranges and reds and yellows that intensified with each rapping of the art-hocker’s red knuckles, bearing spindly hairs like legs of spiders, on the table, her trapped and nearly obfuscated in between the two, her story, heart-shaped countenance atop soft pale neck, and now he could rescue her, to bring her back home safe, where she belonged, oh Sally, the straight red hair pulled back and lying thick along the back and side of her neck, creased forehead and huge emerald eyes cut by yellows, the right one cut in half, again, with the arrow into the bridge of her nose, the straight lips looking almost pale in this light, set inside cheek creases like parentheses and looking sickly, and her ears which she never liked, the right not visible but the left with the hair brushed back around it, the lilting curves of cartilage, the way he caught the coldness but mixing just a dot of crimson in the skin tone and laying it underneath another pure coat, mimicking the blood that ran through her, the sun that wrapped around her neck, cupping her face, and now this, being advertised by the moustachioed man to be beautiful, stern, the beautiful stern old woman, the chanting pulling Harold’s gaze to the table, bodies brushing up against him, elbows in his biceps and chest, knocking his weight backward, muttering breaths sharp in his ears, walk that way, wrong way buddy, pulling himself through them toward the table, his ears full of the inaudibility and incoherence of the crowd, and the man’s gaze fell on him.  Then looked away and jerked earward at a man behind the paintings.  A large cloth thrown overtop Sally.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“That’s my wife.”

“Excuse me?”

“The one under the cloth, that’s–”

“There must be some sort of mistake, that painting’s been sold, that’s what the cloth means.”

“But that’s mi–”

“Sir that painting belongs to a little old lady that bought it.  Now I suggest you step aside.”

The man leaned over into Harold, filling his nose, then, with the cutting tinge of onions and cigarette smoke but Harold’s eyes never left the heavy canvas overtop his wife, laying lopsided to the left, the canvas being jostled and then favoring that way, and a red orthography on it that Harold couldn’t make out, feeling his nose contract and his brow tighten while he stared up that the thin man, when at that moment he felt the warmth of sweating Lester coming up behind him, literally behind him, and peeking out around Harold’s elbow at the man, greasy haired too, but his hair slicked back, a dip in his lip where a cigarette belonged and those long, loose arms….

The man frightened Lester.  Probably his height.  But he had seen Aunt Sally.  He knew he saw Aunt Sally.  As sure as he felt the drip of sweat on the inside of his knee.  That was old Aunt Sally.  This must be what he feels like before a fight.  Look at his eyes.  Droopy left one.  He put his hands in his jacket pockets.  Cold hands and warm body.  Soft pockets.  Fiddled a gum wrapper cracklcracklrakkle in between thumb and finger.  Whispered to Chickenlegs.  Looking at Droopyeyes.

“That’s Aunt Sally.”

“I– Sir let me see the painting or I’ll have to call the poli–”

“The police?  Go ahead then,” he leaned further into Harold and reached out four wretched fingers and pulled at the collar of the old man’s coat and put his nose up against his, the sharp bristles of his mustache bouncing with the gusts of onion-laden breath from the man’s mouth, and Harold felt a surge of anger come up from his gut into his throat and it felt good, the warmth that came with it, the simultaneous nervousness, and he shook upon the realization that he was now holding back urine, staring cold into the salesman’s face, looking down at his death fingers, shrouded in the shade of his own face and then back up into his shrewd eyes and listening to him say, “call the police.”

Silent Lester stood behind thin Uncle H.  The thin man pushed Uncle H. away and his mustache tightened across his lip.  Lester saw it.  Then the thin man looked at Lester.  Down at Lester.  Droopyeye and a loud laugh.  The smell of onions and cigarette smoke.  The whir of generators.  Lester felt a thousand pin pricks across his arms and wanted to leave.  Ducked back behind Chickenlegs’s arm as– as Chickenlegs was bending back to reach for a cell phone.  Had to lean back and still nipped the elbow with his nose when–

The salesman, folks, leapt up on that table like an acrobat.  Simultaneously pulling out one revolver and firing six, yes, count ‘em, six shots straight at the wide-eyed old man.  The insane artist himself.  His neck like turkey gibblets shaking aghast at the impact of each one-two-three-four-five-six to the chest.  Having him falling ass-over-head onto the frightened, greasy-haired, gut-jiggling, nascent-neck-beard-bearing boy!  Inciting screams from the crowd as he bolted through, bleeding from his arm, nipped from a stray, knocking over old ladies, young babies, mad dogs with rabies, running all the way to the far, far, far away ends of the earth.  And the old man laying there bleeding like the stuck pig that he is.  Eyes blinking awake then asleep and folks not uttering a peep—and don’t you miss it! The screams of the crowd forming a circle around the old man and the art-salesman, the lanky armed, thick-necked, nervous-gutted, murderer, leaping down in a pirouette and tossing the paintings, one by one with his twin-brother, into the back of a pick-up truck.  And the two of them driving through the side of the tent, rip-roaring making their dramatic escape into the sunset, all the time whooping like injuns at the holy-moley-rolly-polly wiggly-jiggly boy!  And there he still laid, folks, the main attraction, breathing heavy and watching the crimson magically form around him, the waxy coating of the grass brushing up against his finger-tips and paling lips– watch him cough it away,  watch him, folks, watch his eyes, his pupils, folks, I swear now as big as coffee-saucers, twitch literally laterally as his memories flicker in and out

and in and out

and in and out

and light then dark–

– It looks nothing like you…

She finishes coughing and looks up.  The crimson in her cheeks from the cold hyperbolic now.

– Who cares, it’s beautiful anyway, dear…

From the living room a TV blares the morning news, Sally shakes and complains about the cold, stands, and strides across the living room toward the door, only stopping to bring her thin, cold lips down against the creases of his forehead, kissing him like a mother.  Harold is left grinning like an idiot, still at his canvas, the crimson blood puddling up now around his feet.  And she leaves.

No.  The salesman did not do that.

“Chickenlegs why’d you pay for it?”

The boy looked up at Harold, his neck like a fat spring titled and coiled too tightly, his presence like grating metal now as Harold fumbled with the portrait, just large enough to be uncomfortable to hold, but his once more, his Sally, his attempts at immortalizing her in reality, to have her presence, or something like it, forty-seven times over, as his; what right did Lester, incompetent, barely articulate, have, then, to question his actions?

“Because I wanted it back.”

“You should’ve fought him.”

“And why would I’ve done that?”

Why would he have done that?  Stupid question Chickenlegs.  ‘Cause it’s yours.  Not worth it.  Scraptap shuffle shoesoles across concrete.  Chilly again.  The man with the onion breath.  Would’ve made a cool story.  No one would’ve thought it was real though.

“I liked the other painting near Aunt Sally, though.”

“That was barely painting…”

Why’s Uncle H. so mad?  “Well they looked neat.”

“Hurry up if you’re fixing that towel ring tonight.”

Shuffleshuffleuffle.  Bored Lester didn’t speed up.  Nearly at the end of the bazaar.  Good-bye fun!  The chicken wing stand and the Amish.  The old Korean lady selling novelty t-shirts.  Old baseball cards.  The old lady who can’t pronounce her t’s with the soaps.  Fruit soaps.  Smelling like apricots… apples…

– Come on it’s so soft… No like this…

Her fingertips feel grainy against his throbbing wrist; he runs the smell of citrus between his fingers.  Her hands are cold and his are warm.  Throb throb pulse against her.  The fleshy ravine between neck and shoulder.  A chasm of cream white rushing down the side of a thin neck.

– Don’t be nervous… I’m only a girl.

– Yeah but my mom–

– Shh….!

As a clack resonates from the thick front door she turns and braces herself.  Lester knows she hears it.  Just ignore it.  Her right arm taut outside his left thigh.  Lester sees a thin strand of blue coming up from pale forearm.  What kind of blue?  He knows it’s her blood.  A depression of flesh on each side of her neck connecting to slight collarbone.

–Ck.

–Wai–!

Her left hand grabs tense denim.  It squeakrubs against her flesh.

– Ckclick–

"Maze" by Matt Goold

Asleep

by Erica Feliciano

Falling… falling… falling then Simon’s voice in my ear, telling me not to say anything, telling me to wake up. To follow him.

It was dark, my eyes tried to focus but Simon grabbed me to my feet and we started running through the dark, I followed his lead and the sound of his feet.

Through the bathroom that connected our rooms, into Simon’s room where he grabbed something. We stopped in front of the back door, he was trying to open it. He couldn’t. I heard muffled voices.

He started to sob, it startled me. I knew that it was absolutely important that we get out of the house so I crouched down next to him and felt for the door our dad had just put in for the dog we were going to get.

We crawled and I felt the warm breeze through the flap in the door. We crawled out into the backyard. I could see the porch lamp was still on… they were still out, what time was it?

I saw Simon dash towards the other side of the backyard. The tree house. I ran after him, we climbed up the ladder and locked the door under us. We both stood there catching our breath and I wondered how long those people would be in our house, what we would do in the meantime and prayed they’d leave before our parents got home.

"Attempt" by Kevin Dixon

One Girl, One Time, One Night

by Myke Melcone

Blee-bloooootftftftft, the train stutters open and I step onto the platform. Tompkinsville is such a shitty neighborhood that I’m almost excited to be here.

I stop my chest from jumping at the sight of the glowering crowd gathered at the top of the stairs.  I take steps two at a time so I’m out of breath already.

They’re waiting for the next one.

I pace my step.

Lucky I’m still laughing about this guy I saw. They look or don’t but I feel their gaze.

He was a comically muscular guy in a suit tailored for his stocky body.  Doubtless no standard issue could fit this particular, but cocky people entertain me.  He swaggered grandly into, um – “Unlucky Cat.” – that’s this cheap Chinese buffet that’s open all night. He figured he was hot so he started hitting on his waitress, a cute little number, after realizing his elegant entrance was enough to take everyone from their meal. People reacted. Some scoffed, a few ignored him or tried to.  The waitress spoke with him uncomfortably about the menu, torn between her job and her instinct.  He projected, loudly, ran his mouth about his business and what he called his ‘seasons as a father.’ People thought he was crazy, but for all we knew he slept good at night. I realized that I had to start making entrances.

Anyway, the crowd with caps and hoods hiding their faces watch but don’t speak. I know how they mark. They yell you over and wait for you to ignore them. Then they follow. I know they won’t fuck with me. I looked too comfortable. I walk down the hill and don’t even exist anymore.

It gets quiet. The station disappears behind a brick corner.

The cold shows my breath when I’m under the orange streetlights, so I breathe hard each time I come out of the dark. Condensation’s always charmed me.

As I begin a tredge uphill, I see road signs and traffic cones wrought out of shape. You could count the stuff not hit by cars in this neighborhood.

A tired man is closing a takeout place with a title sign so dirty you can’t read the phone number on it.

I look above the store at the rows of windows and wonder which one my friend lives in. I think it’s further.

I wiggle my chin into my collar and then tuck it to my chest. Then I hear a voice and look up.

“Paaaaul!”  I turn around.  Then the corrugated metal cover tumbles down and hides what was the storefront. The tired man hooks around thick padlock and slams it shut.  I barely hear the buzzing at the door before its over.

“Paul?” The intercom shrieks.  That was Timur.

“Yeah?” I announce.  Then the door buzzes again and I bound up the first flight of stairs.

Through an open door, a figure calls for my attention, but I ground my feet like an elephant so as not to hear. Another fiend is dodged.

High from dipping on that basehead, I trip and crash into the apartment and all the new faces look over to watch the train wreck. A clumsy laugh bursts out of me and soon everyone is having a fit.

Happy faces lit by ugly colors are in a cold apartment. This place is too big for the furniture, but its not bad compared to the hood around it. Feels like a sanctuary really.

I search the faces and everyone’s eccentric, some are over the top. The girls catch my eyes a little longer. Naturally. You can’t be scared to look. But you could find grace in them if you took the time and they let you.  There’s a beauty in everyone, I really mean that.

“Alright, everyone, this is Paul.  Paul, this is everyone.”

“Hey.”  I get a whole mix of eyes, but I breathe it in and out fast enough not to stumble.

The only person here I know, Timur, shuffles over to me with a stained glass bowl. Soon I’m surrounded by a coughing chorus and the foggy cloud that follows the crowd around the pipe.

One girl faces me and oh, now finally I’ve faltered a glance.  Her short hair shows a freckle on the back of her neck.  She turns to me so straightly so forward and so beside the crowd. Did she catch me looking?

I notice her mouth move and then it curls into a thin smile.

“What?” I hear myself ask.

“Just wanted to come over and say hi,” she says, below the apartment noise.

Wait.  What?

Her posture is so demure but so bold and open. Only to me.

I got caught up. She doesn’t turn away.

“Paul? Did you get a decent hit?”

“No, it hasn’t come around,” I manage.

“Make sure you do.” I’m facing him but she’s there, waiting for me.

“So.. hi,” she says.

The piece arrives in her hand and she inhales.  Then our eyes meet and I see into chalcedony, the touch of which is murderous to me.

The pipe is in my hand when I can look away and my ritual is slow and biding. My vision goes blurry in a deep inhale.

The smoke drops out like cold breath but thicker.

“He’s made works that are almost perfect in his style, but he doesn’t need to use a style.  He sought to perfect perfection.”

“I understand the theory of his concepts, but not their iteration,” I hear them speaking.  Somehow I know who they’re talking about – Dali. Oh, I know why now.  I read that in a book.

“God damn, what the fuck is this?  I always get so high off your weed, Timur.”

The girl takes my hand and leads me out.

“That’s because he…”, I pick up someone speaking where I left off and stopping themselves, happy to forget. I direct my moving on.

“Where are we going?”

“Do you like it outside?” She can ask to convince.

“How’d you know?”

We’re in the cold together.

“I always watch my breath in the cold.”

“Let’s mix them,” she suggests, and we churn up breath clouds big and deep as we can. We run out of breath and feign exasperation. She bumps into me and stays close when she curls up inside herself laughing.  My heart’s leaping I push us forward.

“Hey!” I point at a shopping cart.

We rush over and she loads into it.

“Wait!”

She puts flame to a cigarette she rolled before and the tip of it’s brilliant as she drags.

“Ready?”

I whisk her down the street as fast as I can. The wheels grind into the ground, vibrating so hard the feeling shoots up my arms and shakes my whole body.

I hear her beckon.

I run faster, faster, my legs burn but I want it to be fast.

“Faster!”

My coat gets left behind and we’re convulsing down a hill until the cart’s pulling me, and everything blurs by.

“Faster! Keep up! Hold me!”

I hold on and close my eyes.  The wind howls over the tinny flimsy shopping cart wheel sound like whirl grind coming everything’s being torn apart coming up but I can’t tell. My eyes shoot open.  I come up cracking.

That shit was laced.  That fucking weed was laced.

“Hold on!”

Its been laced.  He laces his weed.  Is he trying to get me cracked out?

“Hold me!”

Hold me? The cart fumbles somehow I don’t know then I see again the spill to me is evident. She was in and slid out rolling.

I look at the girl.  She looks back at me with chalcedony glassy eyes crying from the wind, hair feather-blown and wild but framing an angelic expression of contentment and then it comes on because it came on like a rush and then it left and I want more.

She’s up before I am.

I can’t smoke that shit anymore, I have to go home.  Should I go home?  I left last time. I remember I got scared of them. Why’d I think they were trying to fill my shit with shit?

Fuck, wait, what? They laced it before.

This is the second time now. The urge is stronger now, annunciated irresistibly like eyes to hunger or sex.  What power.

I take my head from my hands, both throb.

I can’t have any more. Willpower if they pass the bowl around, I can’t take anymore.  They’ll probably pass the bowl around again.  If they do, I can’t strength take it again. I’m not sure if they’ll lace the next one.  They don’t have that much money, why would they try to smoke all their crack on strangers?  That’s not what crackheads do.  The next bowl might be okay.

The girl is climbing to her sense.

No, I just want to say its okay and stumble upon another orgasm. That shit felt good.  It scared me but it felt good.  I know now that’s a bigger darker beast and it’s grander more grand than me. It lurks beneath the surface river but I saw its eyes looking out right in and it saw.

It just convinced me to convince myself.

Does he sell it?  I remember he showed me the crack rock he found.  He said he found it and he showed it to me and looked at my expression.  Was he marking me?

Am I paranoid?  Better paranoid at this point. Remember the street’s scriptures – they cool but they crazy.

“What’s wrong?”

I align my eyes.

“I have to go.”

“Where?  Why do you have to leave?” Her cigarette was not smoked to ash yet but she throws it to the ground.

“I’m gonna go.”

I watch the red flicker tumbling. Desire tugs. Yes, for certain.

“Well, come back tomorrow, okay?” She grabs me with her eyes as if about the wrist.

“I don’t know,” then it infuriates me.

But the red flicker dims. I want to pick it up.

“Because I like to hang out with you.”

I knew I wanted to pick it up.

“I have to go.”

I march back to the train with my chin to my chest, coatless and cold. I march past the gnarled and chewed up cast-iron junk on the street, the New York fire hydrants and New York road signs that have all been hit by cars. Skulking street debris reaches out to me.  No, no, at me, rather. I slip through the orange light and the dark.  I walk past the crowd of forlorn faces I saw before. I bound down the steps and pace until the train thunders down the rails and noisily stops itself, sliding on old dry leaves that litter the rails.

The train doors lumber open.

I sit down near the window and watch everything pass by in a blur.

I think I’ll leave from around them.

My phone beeps about her having my coat.

I think I’ll leave from around them.

Travis and I have just given birth to a new baby. At 20 pounds 4 ounces, we are both relieved that Comb is out in the world and breathing on its own.  But seriously, it has been a long time coming and we’ve decided to set this thing free.

We’ll be posting your submissions primarily on the site, leaving it as an open forum for discussion. We’re going to pair up as much material as artistically possible to promote this idea of free-form collaboration, as there is no better inspiration than peers with passion.

The plan is to compile the posted submissions every six months to print a physical copy of the magazine through MagCloud.com, with a fully fabulous layout, and hopefully some kind of delicious narrative thread.

Please send everything to us; from comedic one liners to comics to short stories to mix tapes to videos (no pornography preferred, please). We want to unearth your artsy gems that would otherwise collect digital dust.

To kick things off, here are links to two of our contributing artists. They are incredible, and will give you a taste of what we want to showcase and embrace!

Matt Goold’s Blog

Kevin Dixon’s Blog

A big THANK YOU!  to Alexis Canary for sharing her photography with us. She has the uncanny ability to combine industry, nature, and whimsy to create dream-like images that will twist your brain. Stay tuned for more from Alexis!

Comb on and send us something… GET IT! (<–There’s a lot more of this to comb.) – combmag@gmail.com

Forever Your Wordsmith,
Janine