Bread

By Daye Phillippo

 

There is a day that comes when you realize

you can’t bake enough bread

to make things turn out right, no matter

how many times you read Little House on the Prairie

to your children. There aren’t enough

quart jars to fill with tomatoes

or translucent slices of pear to keep you

from feeling unproductive. There is no bonfire

that burns orange enough in the chill October night

to keep your mind from following the lonesome

howls and yips of the coyotes concealed

by darkness in the harvested cornfield

just beyond the circle of your fire. And when you

step away from your family and fire,

into the dark pasture and tip your head back,

feel the whole black bowl of sky

with its icy prickles of stars, its swath of Milky Way,

settle over you, you know that no one

and everyone is just this alone on the Earth

though most keep themselves distracted enough

not to notice. In your hollowness

you open your arms to God because no one else

is enough to fill them. Eternity

passes between and no one knows this but you.

The hum of their conversation, the whole world, talking.

When it is time, you turn, grasp the woodcart’s handle,

pull it, bumping behind you across the frosty grass,

up the hill to the house, where you

step inside cubes of light, and begin to do ordinary things,

hang up coats, open and close drawers,

rinse hot chocolate from mugs. And you are still

separate, but no longer grieving bread.

 

This poem first appeared in The Exponent. Vol. 124 – No 75 (May 3, 2010): 3. Print.

Daye Phillippo, a non-traditional student, earned a BA in Creative Writing from Purdue University in 2011 and an MFA from Warren Wilson in 2014. She is the recipient of a Mortarboard Fellowship and an Elizabeth George Grant for poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Shenandoah, Cider Press Review, Great Lakes Review, Literary Mama and others. She teaches English at Purdue University, and lives in a creaky, old farmhouse on twenty rural acres in Indiana with her husband and one son, the youngest of their eight children. 

Dinner

By Garrett Neff

I asked her out in March last year, after what felt like an eternity of chasing after her. I’d been nervous, and never knew if she liked me back, until I got her reaction that night I’d built up enough courage to ask her. I could tell her excitement was genuine.

Fast-forward twelve months, and now I’m scanning the table I’d set up for our anniversary date night. It’s been the greatest year I could’ve asked for. There haven’t been hiccups in the relationship; if anything we’ve grown closer. I’m already excited as I look at the table, the room lit only by the flickering light of several candles.

She’s going to love it.

I force down a smile as I pull out my phone. The name Em fills up my recents. She hates the name Emily. All she ever told me about it was that it was her grandmother’s name. She only told me a couple months ago that she loves her grandmother, but she wanted to have her own name. So she chose Em, and that’s what she is in m contacts.

I click on the top call, the most recent, and hold the phone to my ear. Phone calls have always made me anxious, but they’re getting easier as I call Em every day. She answers on the fourth ring.

“Hi, Tyler!” She says, and it sounds more rushed than excited; I can hear a lot of busy noise on her end.

“Hey, Em. I wanted to know if you’re still coming down here tonight-,”

“Yeah, I am – sorry, I’m going to be a little late. Procrastinated too much.” I hear a nervous laugh, and I laugh too, because I don’t believe her. She’s always early.

“Yeah, no, don’t worry about it. Come when you can. When do you think you’ll be here?”

“Um, twenty minutes?” Somehow I can tell the phone’s squeezed between her head and shoulder.

“Alright, that sounds great. I’ll have everything ready for you.”

I hear a smile on the other end when she says, “Awesome! Thanks for doing all this for me, Tyler. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I hang up and sigh, looking down at the phone for another moment. She knows exactly what’s coming; I’ve done this for her on several occasions. Most of them were me wanting to do something for her on a whim. But not this time. I worked especially hard to make it great for her on our anniversary.

I go back into the kitchen and walk around, blowing out the candles. I’d lit them early, expecting her to be here sooner, but I don’t mind blowing them out. I understand where she’s coming from.

I sit down on the couch, setting a timer on my phone for ten minutes, and power on the television. There’s nothing good on, so I open my Netflix account and start playing Friends. I only turn it on for background noise; I’ve seen it enough times to have it memorized. While it’s playing, I find myself checking the bathroom mirror to see if I look okay. I straighten the furniture. I try to spray some air freshener around the house, and finally I convince myself that it’s okay. She doesn’t care, her house is the same way. She has a messy home.

When my alarm goes off, I’m in the kitchen grabbing a mint, and my phone’s sitting in the living room. I rush over to it and shut it off; I hate the noise, I don’t know why, but I’ve always hated the sound of my alarm. It reminds me of early mornings and stressful days. I need to change it.

I go into the kitchen and relight the candles. The room looks as good as I’d left it. I straighten my shoulders, tell myself I know she’ll love it, and go to porch to sit and wait.

And I’m right. I’m only sitting there for a couple minutes when her red car pulls into my driveway. I check my watch. She’s almost five minutes early.

I go down to let her out of her car, but she handles it herself, and meets me halfway up the walk. I laugh and take her hand in mine. We kiss in greeting, and I say, “You’re five minutes early, Em.”

“Yeah, well, that means I didn’t get to finish my makeup.” She says, and if I hadn’t been able to see her, I would’ve thought she was actually irritated. There’s a hint of a smile on her face, though.

I hold the door open for her, and let her step in. She pauses for a moment, and says, “Wow, it smells nice in here.” And though it sounds real, a voice in the back of my head says, It actually smells terrible in here. This is her way of acknowledging it. Way to go, you did spray too much air freshener. I push the thought away and say, “Thanks.”

She takes her shoes off and leaves them by the door; she’s done this enough times to be confident with the rules of my house. Well, my parents’ house. They’re on vacation right now. It hits me that they may have planned it this way – them out of the house on the day of me and Em’s anniversary.

Even though she knows what’s going on, Emily lets me lead the way to the dining room, and gasps as she sees it. “Oh my god, Tyler!” She starts, but I stop her by wrapping my arm around her shoulders and saying, “Em, you knew what was coming. You don’t have to act surprised anymore.” She smiles up at me and says, “Oh, I know, but it’s beautiful. I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

I pull out a chair for her and let her sit down. She takes her phone out of her pocket and says, “Sorry, I have to text my mom – tell her I got here okay and everything. You know how she is.”

“Of course, yeah, I understand.” I tell her, and then I say, “Well, I’m going to get the food out. It’s still warm – if you’re ready to eat,” I add.

“Yeah, I am.” She says, already typing away at her phone. I watch her for another moment, enjoying her presence. And then I step back behind the kitchen counter and start loading food onto a tray.

The tray’s plenty heavy by the time I bring it out to her, and she acts surprised once again. This time I don’t mention it. I tell myself she means what she says. It’s nice to have somebody appreciating my efforts, so I accept her compliments.

I’m about to sit down, and we’re ready to get into the dinner when I hear my phone start to ring from my pocket. I say, “Oh, sorry about that. I forgot to turn off my phone. I’m gonna take this, I’ll be right back.” She nods and says okay, and I step into the back room, closing the door halfway for privacy.

When I pull out my phone, I see that the call’s coming from Betty. Em’s mom. She only calls me if Em forgot to text. That’s… odd.

I take a step into the dining room and look at her. “Hey, Em.” I say. She turns and looks at me, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?”

“You did text your mom, right? Tell her you got here okay?” I look into her eyes, and I’m sure I see something flit through them when I ask her. It’s gone in an instant, though, and she says, “Yeah, of course I did. Why?”

I look down at my phone; it’s still ringing. I’m going to tell her, but when I open my mouth, all that comes out is, “No reason.” I don’t know why I chose not to tell her.

I step back into the back room, close the door again, and hit “Accept,” on what must have been the call’s last ring.

“Tyler?” Betty says, and I hear worry in her voice; she’s sniffling, like she’s been crying.

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?”

She pauses, and in the pause I can hear hurried voices speaking in the background, a man and a woman that I don’t recognize.

I know something’s wrong before she says anything.

“Tyler, I don’t know what happened, but you have to… you have to come to the hospital, now, please. She – she was on the way to your house and then I got a call from the hospital and they said there was an accident. She’s on her way to the emergency room now, but I don’t… I don’t know if she’s going to make it.” She sniffs again; it might just be me, but I think I can hear a rhythmic beeping in the background.

I don’t know what’s going on, and anxiety starts rising in my throat. “Hey, whoa, Betty, slow down. What happened? Who’s hurt?”

“It’s Emily, Tyler!” I’ve never heard Betty call her daughter Emily before; she usually respects Em’s dislike of her name. “She was in a car crash and she’s hurt and she’s on her way to the emergency room but she’s… she’s dying, Tyler! Emily is dying!” She finishes in a wave of sobs, and my heart drops.

“What?” I say, but I’m speaking so quietly there’s no way even Betty could hear me. “No, there’s something wrong – that’s impossible – Em’s right…” I lower the phone and raise my head as I hear the door start to creak open.

There she is, my Em, standing in the doorway, a knife in her hand.

 

Garrett Neff loves writing more than anything, but this is his first time being published – though it will hopefully spark many more publishings to come. He is fourteen years old and lives in rural Jamestown with his mother, father, brother, and four awesome dogs and cats. Here he goes to Western Boone Jr.-Sr. High School, where he’s one of a two-man team on his middle school track team, thanks to his passion for running. He hopes to someday become a book editor and successful freelance writer.

Saturday Morning

Mid-morning temperatures rise with the sun

as I sip coffee by the fireplace.

Leah’s vacuuming roars, drowns the yowls

of my mini-schnauzer’s summons,

“You will come and get me.” But, I don’t.

Now working by the dining room window,

I look up, spot two field sparrows pick and peck

at the tube feeder. A blood-colored intruder

flaps furious wings,

clears a space and lights.

Moments later, Karma

from the neighbor’s power drill,

clears the perch.

I hear Leah grunt, then chuckle,

unused mop set aside,

as soapy circles swab hardwood—

tenacious knees move backward

for  “stretches better than Pilates.”

Out the window, an orange fox squirrel

jumps on the other feeder, spread-eagles across

the roof, shakes it like a paint color mixer

breaking its handle.

Furry friends scatter

like popcorn

in an un-lidded popper.

Indoors, the ticking clock reminds me it’s time.

I save my work, deposit yowler

in grass, thank Leah with smile and cash

as she takes a last swipe across counters.

On the way to the car, Leah strokes

Canine Verbose’s nose

through chain links.

“You’re a little stinker!” she scolds.

 

Denise C. Buschmann is owned by two miniature schnauzers, Cupcake and Coco, and is a freelance copyeditor in Carmel, Indiana. She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies in the US, the UK, Australia, and India, including Branches Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Lamar University’s Wise Ass Anthology, and others. In 2016, she was a finalist both in the Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize contest and in the Pride in Poetry Prize contest.

 

Revolution

By Kimberly Madura

 

SHE lived at 1414 Rust Street in 1994,

in a gray, industrial, American Midwest town.

Her Czech father was a worker at the steel mill.

He was a hard worker.

Their house had a green door.

 

SHE looked like that woman in that

Czechoslovakian painter Alphonse Mucha’s painting

called “Spring” – that fluid beauty.  Mucha painted it in 1896

in pastels and gem tones: blues, greens, pinks, and

yellows like the color of her eyes, her hair, her clothes.

The woman he painted, SHE represented an

antidote to an overly industrialized world,

they said.

 

In Czechoslovakia, in 1989, during the Velvet Revolution – in a country

of blue mountains and green meadows and white castles, the people

marching in the streets jingled their keys – gray, steel and metal keys.

They were sending a message to the Communists to go home and

to symbolize the new possibilities that were being unlocked for them.

I wonder if one of those keys unlocked the green door

to her father’s house?  (The man who worked at that steel mill

and never heard of Alphonse Mucha or the Velvet Revolution.)

 

Kimberly Madura has been a social worker for the past 20 years.  She has been

published in several poetry anthologies.  Her first chapbook, Neon Glow, was just

released.  She currently divides her time between Vermont and Northwest Indiana,

where she was born and raised.

The Lion, the Unicorn, and the Dragon

The Lion, the Unicorn, and the Dragon

By Jeff Fleischer

“They’re at it again,” one of the messengers yelled, and Alice couldn’t help but feel curious. As she had earlier, she followed the king to the edge of the gathered crowd. Alice could see only a cloud of dust in which the Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown.

The cloud was as hard to see through as ever, with the one fighter’s horn and the other’s tufted tail the only signifiers Alice could make out for much of the battle.

“I suppose they’ll just go at this forever,” she remarked to no one in particular.

“Forever sounds right,” a voice to her right replied. “They’re content to fight for the crown forever, just so long as only the two of them get to fight.”

Alice turned to see the speaker moving to sit beside her, which was a Dragon with bright red skin, horns, and a pair of enormous wings on his back. He had a corkscrew tail with a nub like an arrowhead at the end, and his tongue ended in a similar tip.

Not wanting to be rude, Alice introduced herself.

“Nice to meet you Alice,” the Dragon replied. “Surely you’ve heard of me in your schooling at some point.”

Alice thought for a moment, as the Lion threw the Unicorn to the ground. “I think so,” she said, clearing her throat to recite. “And behold a great red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth…”

The Dragon laughed, dribbling small flames from his mouth as he did so. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else. I have but one head and two horns.”

Alice laughed. “Then I’m afraid I’m not familiar with you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Dragon said rather sadly.

The two of them sat in silence for some time, watching the combatants fight a few more rounds. The Unicorn ran the Lion through with his horn, and the Lion swatted him away with his paw, but neither seemed to gain the upper hand. Alice soon grew bored watching the endless battle.

“I doubt either deserves the crown,” she said. “They don’t seem very smart.”

The Dragon asked why, and Alice continued. “When I met them, the Unicorn believed me to be a fabulous monster. The Lion could not even classify me as animal, vegetable, or mineral.”

“You’re quite right; neither deserves the crown,” the Dragon replied. “And yet they fight for it all the same. Often the Lion wins, sometimes the Unicorn. They batter and wound each other. For us, little changes but the herald they carry.”

After several more rounds of the fray, the king called for refreshments, and the messengers emerged from the crowd with the familiar loaves of bread.

“The white bread and the brown,” the Dragon said indignantly. He spat on the ground, which briefly caught fire before he stamped it out with his foot. “They would never deign try soda bread, though it bests both.”

“I quite like soda bread,” Alice said. “At least on the day that it’s made. It doesn’t last.”

“The best things rarely do,” the Dragon said, though it seemed as if his mind was elsewhere. “For we are the little folk we. Too little to love or to hate.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that one,” Alice said.

“Unsurprising,” the Dragon said. “None where you come from know it yet. Or have they long forgotten it?”

“Tell me more of it,” Alice said. “I’d quite like to remember it.”

“I don’t see much point,” the Dragon said. “The Unicorn fears the Lion, and the Lion holds a grudging respect for the Unicorn, but neither gives the red Dragon a second thought. When you retell your adventure today, I imagine those you tell will forget our conversation entirely.”

As they had before, the drums began before Alice could answer him. She dropped to her knees and covered her ears to muffle the noise. “How I wish this commotion would finally drum them out of town,” Alice said, her hands still over her ears.

The Dragon just grinned at her affectionately, and bowed his head. “Me too,” he replied.

 

 

Editor’s note: This reprint originally appeared in 2016 in Zoetic Press Non-Binary Review.

Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, journalist and editor. His fiction has appeared in more than three dozen publications including the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, the Saturday Evening Post and So It Goes by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. He is also the author of non-fiction books including “Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections” (Zest Books, 2016), “Rockin’ the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries” (Zest Books, 2015), and “The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias” (Fall River Press, 2011). He is a veteran journalist published in Mother Jones, the New Republic, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Mental_Floss, National Geographic Traveler and dozens of other local, national and international publications.

Fundamental Brethren

William Penn towered over us—

his shadow swallowing

our vanquished voyager—

his brooding eyes

cautiously admiring us,

seeing our gaunt reservations

but out hungry fortitude

his piquant smile

enthusiastically enveloping us,

turning haunting nightmares

into memorialized dreams

his downturned hands

effortlessly uplifting us,

reassuring us about brotherly love

not yet conceived

but eventually attested.

We knelt to freedom—

our new god on this new continent—

forming a prayer circle:

to share stories once again

about injustice and reverence

to decry our persecution

and trials we survived

to weep about triumphs

over avarice and doctrine—

all tribulations familiar with infinity—

until hoarseness punctured our throats.

Disheveled and distraught—

but determined!—

we interlaced our arms,

firmly disembarking,

to let liberty cradle us.

 

Christopher Stolle’s poetry has appeared most recently or is forthcoming in the “Tipton Poetry Journal,” “Flying Island,” “Branches,” “Indiana Voice Journal,” “Black Elephant,” “Ibis Head Review,” “Edify Fiction,” “The Poetry Circus,” “Smeuse,” “The Gambler,” “1932 Quarterly,” “Brickplight,” “Medusa’s Laugh Press,” and “Sheepshead Review.” He works as an acquisitions and development editor for Penguin Random House, and he lives in Richmond, Indiana.

The Big Snow

The Big Snow

by Rich Elliott

The first thing you should know about my mom was that she loved to bake. I have this image of her bustling around the kitchen mixing things, the eggs and butter and whatnot, a smudge of flour on her forehead. She made these amazing sugar cookies with frosting on them that looked like beach balls. Boy, people went crazy for them at the annual church bazaar.

The second thing about my mom is that she taught me everything I know about wrestling, and I know a lot.

From a young age, I grappled with her on the living room carpet. She’d take the top position and show me the basic moves for turning and pinning your adversary. The half-nelson, the trap, the chop, the double-arm bar, the cradle—Mom went through all these moves, and she’d have me try them, and she’d make corrections. Then she moved to the bottom position, teaching me the various strategies for escaping and switching, all the while pointing out with great insight the elements of leverage and geometry and weight and balance crucial to gaining an advantage over your opponent.

How she learned this stuff I don’t know. Maybe it came from having five brothers, which she described as a continuous battle royal.

We had great fun wrestling. We’d sweat up a storm, and it wasn’t weird at all holding my mom around the waist and feeling the sweat on her arms and smelling her hair, it was kind of pleasant actually, until she’d get me in a terrific half-nelson and drive my head into the carpet.

Things got pretty heated when we were grappling. We’d fly around the room crashing into chairs, banging into tables, and knocking over lamps. My kid brother Clark would run in, and he’d jump up and down cheering for Mom, then cheering for me. Eventually, our sessions deteriorated into tickling contests, Mom and I laughing and screaming on the carpet, reduced to silly putty.

During one of these wrestling matches was when I first thought something might be wrong. I had the top position with my arm around her, my right leg straddling hers, and my head driving into her armpit. I slid my right arm across her chest, trying to get a good grip on the back of her neck, when she let out a yelp.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Something’s a little sore. Keep going.”

____________

Our family was such a well-oiled machine that when Mom got sick, everything stayed pretty normal. I remained focused on getting straight A’s—I got a dollar for every A—although algebra was giving me fits. I was also on my way to becoming the junior high wrestling champ in the 113-pound weight class. Clark did whatever fourth-grade boys do, stealing cookies from our cookie jar, roving around the neighborhood on his Sting-Ray, and generally being annoying.

Dad was the only one behaving differently. I should mention that Dad had kind of a light presence in our family, not in a bad way, I just mean he was a quiet guy, and when Mom got sick, he got quieter. He retreated into his books. He was a big reader.

Seems like Dad read everything there was on the Kennedy assassination. He was pretty much an expert. He’d go on and on about the Warren Report, believing it was deeply flawed, because how could an average marksman like Oswald, using an old bolt-action rifle, get off three shots in eight seconds at a moving target nearly ninety yards away, and hit his target with two of the shots? And what about the reports of gun smoke seen at the grassy knoll? And how about Oswald’s connection to Russia and to the CIA?

To my dad, these were endlessly worrying and intoxicating mysteries. He tried to get me interested, but I’d always beg off, suddenly remembering some important game that required my immediate attention.

____________

A storm hit on the night Dad got a call from the hospital. We should come right away, Mom was fading. Throwing on winter jackets, we plunged outside into swirling, freezing air. We already had several storms that January, and now over a foot of new snow lay on the ground. While Dad and Clark scraped off the Chevy, I shoveled two strips down the driveway, hurrying and slipping as I went. Dad got the car going, and we made a run to the street. Spinning and fishtailing through a white ocean, we crept down our block while the storm went to full blast.

Traffic stalled on the Eisenhower, turning it into a parking lot. Thick sheets of snow thwacked our windshield, we could see maybe ten feet. The city plows vanished. Clark and I sat unspeaking. Dad hunched over, twisting his fists on the steering wheel, peering into the black night. The guy on the radio said Stay home, whatever you do, don’t go out.

Once we stopped, that was it—when we tried to move again, the tires spun and spun, and we were dug in.

“Get out, boys.” Dad untwisted his fists from the wheel. “We gotta walk it.”

You know in a horror film when a guy gets possessed, that weird look he gets in his eyes? Dad had that look.

We abandoned our car. Plunging through waist-high drifts, we picked our way slowly down the highway. We passed car after car half-buried in the snow like in some ancient volcanic tragedy. We peered into the dimly-lit cars at the stranded occupants inside, and they stared back at us, kind of defeated, like right before drowning.

Maybe two miles to St. Jude’s Hospital. Dad made no attempt to slow down, high stepping through the mire, not even turning around. I yanked on Clark, trying to keep up.

“I’m cold,” Clark whined. “My feet are wet. Let’s go back.”

I jerked him hard. “Shut the hell up and keep moving.”

Dad put him on his shoulders and kept his pace. We scrambled up an embankment, left the highway. We plowed through drifts for a long time. We thought we could see the silhouette of big St. Jude’s in the distance, but it never got closer.

The wind off the lake stabbed my face, the snow so thick it was hard to breathe. My stocking cap iced up. It kept slipping over my eyes. I heard a far-off rumbling, either thunder or buildings falling. The earth, once so benign, cared not at all.

We took a wrong turn. Dad stopped, looked around in every direction. He walked a few steps, then halted again. He growled with frustration. The snow whipped around us. Finally, Dad staggered forward in a different direction, Clark squirming on this shoulders.

When I think of my dad that night, him lashing through the storm, he seems pretty heroic.

I’d given up caring if we ever made it when we found ourselves outside the hospital entrance in the pre-dawn light. The three of us fell blinking into the lobby, crusted in snow like a scene from Doctor Zhivago. We drifted down antiseptic-smelling hallways, pulled by unseen currents through enveloping gloom and finally halting at the silent island of her room.

A single light shone harshly on her empty bed. The three of us sat together on the crackling, plastic sheet. I swept my hand over the cold surface where she had lain.

A nurse saw us arrive, and she came into the room to report the obvious.

“She passed in her sleep, Mr. Stewart.” The nurse sighed and looked down at Clark and me. “We waited all night, but then we had to move her to the morgue.”

We three orphans stared blankly around the room.

____________

Mom was a big fan of pro wrestling, she got me into it too, and we hardly ever missed the matches on TV. In fact, she’d make popcorn, and we’d sit and yell at the TV—we made an occasion of it.

Mom was exceptional at critiquing the wrestlers, and during the matches she kept up a running commentary.

“Oh, now that was a pretty mean dropkick!”

“Come on, you can break that hammerlock! Just drop your shoulder!”

“Geez, now you’re going to whine to the ref? You’re not hurt!”

Mom had a code about how competitors should behave, even though she knew pro wrestling was mostly a sham. She really detested Gorgeous George for example. It wasn’t just his ridiculous ruffled gowns, his perfume, and his bleached blond hair, though that was bad enough. It was his flagrant cheating that she hated most, the hair-pulling, the kidney punches, and the eye-gouging. The wrestlers she loved were the ones who dispensed with the show and tried to fight clean, guys like Lou Thesz and Whipper Billy Watson.

“Those guys play the right way,” she’d say.

As I think about it now, I guess Mom’s code for wrestling applied to just about everything. “Roy, lose the drama,” she’d tell me when I started to whine about something or when I got too big for my britches. “Play it straight up.”

____________

We stepped from the hospital into the blizzard. We waited for Dad to decide what to do as thick, powdery clouds of billowed around us. Finally, Dad pushed us into a tavern across the street. The sign said ________’s Place, the name covered up by a giant lip of ice. The bar was crammed with stranded souls like us.

Dad ordered three 7-Ups. The bar was loud with laughter, the people seemed to think the storm was the funniest thing of all time.

We had a lot of 7-Ups, and then Clark began to cry, quiet at first, then louder.

“Hey, what’s wrong with the kid?” a guy in a hardhat asked.

“Nothing,” said Dad.

“Clark, lose the drama!” I told him. “You’re annoying people.”

He blubbered on. He was saying something we couldn’t understand, something about cookies.

“Beach Ball!” he sobbed. “Who’s gonna make us Beach Ball Cookies?”

____________

Our house was entombed. We had to dig our way in.

We’d left the bar when the crowd turned angry after the booze ran out. Dad flagged down a bus whose driver proved to have great determination and resourcefulness. The driver rigged a snowplow on the front of his bus. Three hours later we got close enough to our house to hoof it the rest of the way.

Inside was real quiet. Each of us went to our bedrooms, and Dad didn’t come out for days.

During the storm, I watched a lot of TV until the Indian Chief test pattern came on all four channels, and the shows didn’t come back. So I switched to the radio, which played the Top 40 over and over, the only breaks being the dire news bulletins.

I heard reports of eighty mile-an-hour winds and drifts fifty feet high, reports of children, playing in drifts, being run over and killed by snowplows.

Abandoned vehicles, thousands of them, clogged the roads.

The storm—the news was already calling it The Big Snow—was in its sixth day.

Dozens of people died of heart attacks while shoveling. A husband and his pregnant wife were found frozen in a sled outside a hospital. Gangs of looters tunneled into stores and hawked merchandise from sleighs.

The roof of Milford Junior High collapsed, the school shut down indefinitely.

A mountain range of white formed along our block. As the snow piled up, our house got darker and darker, and now the only natural light filtered in from our second-floor windows.

____________

Dad wouldn’t come out of his bedroom. When I cracked open his door to ask him if he wanted anything to eat, he said, “No, son, I’m fine.” He sat in his pajamas in his La-Z-Boy reading by the light of a lava lamp. He flipped the pages of a book titled Rush to Judgment: What the Warren Report Conceals about the Assassination of JFK. I closed the door as he was saying something about the single-bullet theory.

Earlier I’d taken something from his room, a framed photograph of my mom. I’d seen it before, but I wanted to look at it again. In the picture, Mom is in her early twenties, and she’s standing looking directly at the camera, her chin up in a kind of defiant pose, her arms dangling at her side. She’s in the middle of a laugh, her eyes squinty, hinting at mischief. She’s wearing long silky pants that remind me of a picture of Katherine Hepburn from a magazine.

Mom is thin and attractive, and I wish I’d been around when she was young like that instead of later when her hair was done up and she was thicker like all the moms and more serious because she was the wife of a businessman. I wish we could know our parents when they were young. That would be cool.

____________

One time earlier that winter I sat by Mom’s bedside, half dozing, while Dad and Clark were off in the bowels of the hospital trying to locate some pizza. Mom said something I couldn’t understand, so I came closer, leaned over her, and she grabbed me behind my head in a wrestler’s hold, pulling my cheek tight against hers.

“This thing.” She paused to get her strength. “It’s like Gorgeous George. It keeps cheating.”

“You got some more moves, Mom.”

She gripped my neck harder. “Clark and Dad are going to need your help.”

Right before she fell back to sleep, she shook her head slightly and got this expression on her face that spooked me. The only word I can think of to describe it is bitterness. Bitterness that she was pinned by such a thing.

____________

Dad still wasn’t eating. Clark and I had cereal for every meal, and that got boring, so one night I made a hot dog casserole, which was one of Mom’s specialties. Except that I obviously did something wrong because the thing never set up properly. Slices of hot dog floated in the cheesy water. I have to admit, it looked pretty awful. I poured it into bowls, thinking we’d have it as a soup.

I tried to sell it to Clark, putting the bowl in front of him with a flourish, Ta-da! Clark poked at the bobbing hot dog slices. He set his chin the way he does, then he stood up and flung the bowl and its contents into the sink.

I was on him in a second, executing a hard, single-leg takedown to the kitchen floor.

“You little shit! I made that dinner for you, and you’re going to eat it!” I had his face shoved into the linoleum.

“Can’t make me!”

I forced my left arm across his face hard, grabbing his opposite arm above the elbow to put him in a cradle. I guess that’s what caused his nose to start bleeding.

“Say ‘Give’!” I hissed. “Say it!”

Clark squirmed with all his might. I squeezed harder. His eyes filled with tears.

“Say it, swear to God, I’ll break your neck!”

“Roy, stop.”

Dad stood over us in his pajamas. He had a patchy beard. He looked like the oldest man on earth just then.

____________

The next morning I got up early. I thumbed through Mom’s recipe book, trying to be careful with the brittle, ramshackle pages. I found the recipe I was looking for. Then I rummaged through her cupboard, which was like a bakery supply depot.

I carefully measured and stirred in the flour, the baking soda, and the baking powder, like I’d seen Mom do a hundred times. In another bowl, I mixed the butter and sugar until smooth. Then I beat in the egg and vanilla. I poured the dry mixture in with the moist stuff and blended it all together. I rolled out the mix on a sheet, trying to remember how she got it to not stick to the rolling pin. I used the cookie cutter to make circles. Then into the oven.

I gathered the confectioner’s sugar and milk and corn syrup and almond extract. I mixed them real smooth, it looked about right. I divided the frosting into three bowls. In one bowl, I put in the red food coloring; in the others, yellow and blue.

When the cookies came out of the oven, I waited until they cooled, then I brushed each one with the frosting in a three-color pattern.

I didn’t have to get Dad and Clark. The smell made them show up. They shuffled into the kitchen, slowly sat down at the table, their faces a little like Christmas.

Dizzy with memory, we leaned over the plate of warm Beach Ball Cookies. We inhaled the smell with a long sigh.

Dad, eyes closed, was halfway through his second cookie. “Maybe a little crisp, Roy,” he said.

Clark had frosting on his lips. He smiled. “Pretty good though.”

Silently we ate until the plate was bare, while outside the snow stopped falling.

“I guess we should go find the shovels,” Dad finally said. “Start digging out.”

“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “That’s what I was thinking.”

 

Rich Elliott has been a gravedigger, English teacher, dishwasher, textbook writer, construction gofer, video producer, and track coach. He is the author of The Competitive Edge: Mental Preparation for Distance Running and the editor of an award-winning nonfiction anthology on running. He lives with his wife in Valparaiso, Indiana.

The Winter Stars

Sparkling on high, unreachable,

Strewn far across the endless void,

Cold, dark, lifeless heavens devoid

Of human scale and human feel;

 

Casting a sterile, bone-white light

That deepens the already biting chill

Of frozen windblasts, reaching in to kill

The very peace of soul with fright.

 

What solace can I find in you,

Your faintness, distance, or your glare –

Aloof, disdainful, icy stare

That pierces deep and freezes through?

 

O soulless, unforgiving stars,

Eternally unmoved and unperturbed!

I rail in vain, for never have you heard

A prayer, appeal, or even curse of ours.

 

Adam J. Sedia is a Lake County native who returned home. He practices law with the firm of Hoeppner, Wagner & Evans as a civil and appellate litigator, and serves as president of the Lake County Bar Association for 2017. His poems and stories have appeared in a number of literary journals, and he has published two volumes of poetry: The Spring’s Autumn (2013) and Inquietude (2016). He also composes music, which may be heard on his YouTube channel. He lives in Griffith with his wife and family.

Shaky Grounds

Shaky Grounds

By Chrysa Keenon

 

Grace could count the number of drips it took the old coffee machine to brew. Seventeen. She used to try to synchronize each drip with her breath, but then Cole would walk out behind the counter and force her to stop because she’d be hyperventilating. The uneven number used to make her hands itch because it couldn’t be split perfectly in half in her head, but she had long since graduated from worrying about the brewer. She had come to this coffee shop so many times the noise morphed seamlessly into the background buzzing in her thoughts.

Grace and her brother had been coming to Ground Central every other morning for three months. It started when she and Cole took the train into the city from their home in suburbs. They often didn’t go out together, simply because Cole was always hanging out with his friends and Grace was always locked in her room. It was the threat of facing their mother’s wrath that actually forced them to “forge a sibling bond,” or whatever she wanted to call it.

Getting on the train had been a fiasco. There was a layer of dirt on the floor, something sticky on her seat, and a stench of pot that hung in the air. Cole had been chatting her ear off about having to piss, which didn’t help Grace’s rapid thought process about germs and how fast they could grow in warm environments.

“Cole,” Grace snapped, “I’m going to punch you in the bladder unless you shut the fuck up about peeing.” She clenched her fists as tight as she could and shifted her weight again, trying to find the position where the least amount of her body was touching the surface of the worn leather seat.

Promptly, Cole shut the fuck up, but he noticed the bloody cracks in Grace’s hands had reopened. Making an executive decision, Cole had ushered Grace off the train at the next stop and hurried her into the closest clean looking establishment he could find.

Ground Central.

Both Grace and Cole hurried into their own respective bathrooms. Grace instantly landed in front of the sink and turned the faucet on with her sleeve. She frantically scrubbed at her hands and the water tinged pink from the blood. It swirled down the drain with all the other dirt and grime she felt crawling on her skin.

Grace took a generous handful of soap, lathered under her fingernails, and rinsed. Lathered palms, rinsed. Lathered backs of hands, rinsed. Lathered wrists, rinsed. She scrubbed and scrubbed and felt more triumphant with each new stab of burning pain from her cuts, feeling as if the germs inside of her finally met their sudzy demise.

She had been halfway lathering up to her elbows when a girl walked out of one of the stalls, shirtless.

Grace stopped dead. The girl’s painted lips smacked together as she chomped on a piece of gum. Strolling out of the stall holding a shirt, she came up next to Grace at the sink, locking eyes with her in the mirror.

“Hey,” the girl said gruffly, glancing Grace’s hands. “You okay?”

It took Grace a minute to realize this girl with boob overflowing out of the black lace bra had asked her a question. Blinking and swallowing against rising bile—because not wearing a shirt left you so exposed to the world, what was she thinking—Grace replied.

“Eczema.” She didn’t have to look at her own hands to know they were still raw and bloody and ugly. She could see it in the girl’s face.

“That sucks,” the girl said apologetically, putting one of her hands on Grace’s shoulder. Grace stiffened. The girl must have realized then that she was shirtless and hadn’t washed her hands since coming out of the stall.

“Oh, right.” She removed her hand from Grace’s shoulder and made work of putting her shirt on. “I spilled coffee on myself. Had to wash it off.”

Grace only swallowed and nodded, wanting to ask had she washed it off in the toilet? Because that defeated the purpose of washing at all and the toilet seat was just as contaminated as the water within and nothing was clean here, she needed to wash her hands again—

“Hey,” the girl spoke again, now wearing the maroon uniform shirt of the shop. There was a little nametag on the right of her chest—her chest, her huge tits, Christ—and it read Miranda.

She turned off the faucet, not bothering to roll up her sleeve before doing so.

“C’mon,” Miranda urged, tugging at the back of Grace’s cardigan. “You’ve got to put some kind of Band-Aid on those. If you keep washing them, you’ll get hurt.”

While Grace allowed herself to be lead out the bathroom, she thought to herself how she would have to wash the cardigan later because not only had it touched the sticky seat of the train, it was touched by a girl who was beautiful but dirty.

And not even in the sexy way.

(Maybe a little in the sexy way.)

Unsurprisingly, Cole had ordered a coffee at the counter and didn’t look twice to check to see if his twin had made it out of the bathroom in once piece. Miranda stepped past him to reach for a first aid kit below the counter, not even blinking when Grace asked if she would wear latex before applying any bandages.

“Hey sis,” Cole said, approaching them, then looked Miranda up and down. “Hey.”

“Keep walking, blondie,” Miranda tossed out, not remotely phased. “Not batting on your team.”

Grace felt her heart skip a beat. Shit, she was hot and gay. And Grace had already seen Miranda without her shirt on. Did that count for one half of second base? Short stop?

Cole raised his eyebrows at Grace and made that face he always made when he found out a lesbian was in the same vicinity of his sister. In another life, Cole would have made a good wingman. But it wasn’t Grace’s fault most of the girls he flirted with ended up being gay, even though he constantly whined about her getting the better picks.

“There, all done,” Miranda announced, finishing wrapping the bandages. She flashed Grace a brilliant smile. “I hope you feel better…” She trailed off, raising her eyebrows expectantly.  

“Grace,” Cole supplied when Grace felt her tongue swell four times its size.

“Grace,” Miranda repeated, then smiled again. “Don’t hesitate to stop by again!” Then, her painted lips morphed into an amused smirk. “Although you should be a bit less bloody next time.”

Indeed, Grace did not hesitate. She dragged Cole out to the coffee shop for two weeks until he got fed up and applied for a job there.

“I might as well be making money while you make goo-goo eyes,” he complained. He applied more as a joke than anything, but was surprised when the manager called him back for an interview.

Now, Grace had the perfect excuse. Their mother was always wanting her to venture out into the world more. Apparently staying cooped up in her sanitized room wasn’t good for her health. And though Grace couldn’t get up in the morning without making sure her bed was made with perfect precision, she could get on the same train and to go to the same coffee shop to sit in the same booth and stare at the same beautiful girl battling the same ancient coffee machine.

That’s how Grace inadvertently became a regular at Ground Central. Though she pushed the excuse of keeping Cole in line whenever she came, her visits meant so much more.

Watching the way Miranda effortlessly jumped from brewing coffee to running the cash register to delivering patrons orders flabbergasted her. She didn’t understand how anyone could do that many jobs without washing their hands at least twice first.

Plus, it was just unfair. Miranda had such long eyelashes, did her hair in elaborate messy buns, and constantly chomped on gum, mindless of the germs she spread when she talked and little spittle rained out. She was everything Grace was not. She was everything Grace wished she could be.

She was flawed perfection.

“Sis, I am giving you an ultimatum,” Cole announced one day, sauntering to her table and delivering her order of straight black coffee. He was wearing gloves and only touched the bottom of her mug.

“Ultimatum?” repeated Grace, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. You have to tell Miranda about your obsession with her or else I’ll take five shots and croon about your love for her during the next open mic hour.”

Grace scowled. “Don’t even pretend like you can sing. You can’t even hit a C flat on the piano, much less sing it.” At this, Cole rolled his eyes. They were each scarred from the onset of piano lessons their mother had subjected to them as children. “And I do not have an obsession. I just like visiting this little shop. It’s cute.”

It technically wasn’t a lie, because the shop was aesthetically pleasing. But people were always spilling coffee on the couches and fluffy chairs, and Grace was much more comfortable in her corner table with the hard metal seat. Each day, she wiped down the chair and table with the Purell wipes she kept a stash of in her purse. The smell of the cleanser made her feel secure.

Cole was obviously not buying it. They were siblings. They shared the same train of thought. And though Cole didn’t have her sickness, didn’t share in the itch to make everything clean or have the buzzing in his head whenever something didn’t go right, he always tried to understand, which was more than Grace could ask for.

“You could just ask for her number,” Cole said. “I asked for it.”

Grace glared at him. “If you have it, why don’t you just give it to me?”

“Because.” Cole rolled the gloves off of his hands and stuffed them into his black apron. “I want you to take a risk.”

“I don’t like risks,” Grace said hollowly.

Cole gave her a pointed look and used the Bond-villain voice he had been using since he was seven. “You have one week.”

Grace reached for the coffee and downed a large gulp without cooling it. The liquid was like fire coursing down her throat. It pooled in her stomach, and Grace hoped it would burn away the fear in her.

Because fear dominated her existence. Fear of touching something sticky, fear of having germs in her bloodstream, fear of being rejected by her family for liking girls. It all intertwined in her head, and her thoughts getting caught in a giant spider web of insecurity.

It sounded a whole lot more poetic than it actually was.

Grace carried on for a few more visits without actually talking to Miranda, avoiding eye contact but smiling gently every time her loud voice announced an order over the counter. It wasn’t until Cole picked up an extra shift on a Wednesday and dragged Grace along did the discussion of the ultimatum come back. This was mainly because the next open mic night was that Friday.

Her time had run out. Cole debriefed her about what to say on the train ride over.

“Use a pickup line that’s classy, but not too much,” he said. “Like, ‘If you were a book, you’d be fine print.’”

Grace wrinkled her nose at the poor wording and eyed the greasy haired man who was sitting in the seat in front of them. She wanted to give him a bath in disinfectant and wash his clothes in bleach.

“Grace,” Cole said, his tone softer this time. “Don’t worry too much about it. Miranda likes you.”

She started when he placed his hand on top of hers. Grace looked down at her white knuckled hands and cursed. Her wounds had opened up again.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, staring at the bloom of red against her pale skin. “But no way am I using a pickup line.”

Cole smiled at her and gently removed his hand from hers. He probably had a smear of her blood on his palms. He would have to wash his hands before his shift, but he didn’t seem to care.

Once in Ground Central, Grace counted time on the drips of the rustic coffee machine. It groaned like an old man forced out of bed before daylight, but it brewed. It was a constant. It didn’t change no matter how many people ordered a specialty coffee or got too overloaded. The coffee machine was able to keep going and adapt to every situation. Like Miranda. Unlike Grace.

Toward the end of Cole’s shift, he started making eyes at her and not-so-subtly jerking his head toward Miranda. Grace glared back at him. It wasn’t long before Miranda caught on, and frowned in her direction.

“Yo, Grace,” said Miranda, walking over to her corner table. There was a pucker between her eyebrows and Grace wanted to reach and smooth it away. “Is everything alright over here?”

Grace opened her mouth, but her tongue was suddenly as dry as a desert. She could almost taste the sand in her mouth. Like cat litter.

“You and Cole have been doing that twin thing more than normal,” Miranda continued. Of course Miranda would know about the twin thing. “Are you guys fighting or—”

Suddenly, guy with a hipster haircut bumped into Miranda as he walked past, causing her to jostle the mug of coffee in her hands. The coffee fell away from Miranda’s grip and tumbled into Grace’s lap.

It was a moment of silence, then the ringing began in Grace’s ears.

Shooting up out of her seat so fast the chair fell over. Hands shaking, afraid to touch the stain of liquid growing on her body. Voices raising, high pitched moaning because the germs were on her and they were spreading into her clothes and on her skin and it would take so much sanitizing to get them all off her.

Grace started tearing at her clothes. The heat was too much, the ingredients of the coffee that she didn’t order, the brown stain setting in to ruin her clothes and her skin and her hair.

The rest of the world blurred around her, she couldn’t focus. Dimly she felt hands on her shoulders and got barreled into the back of the shop toward into the restroom. With Miranda.

Her whole body was on fire. Distantly she could feel wetness on her cheeks and a burning in her throat as Miranda’s eyes focused solely on her, widening until the shimmering blue of her eyes started to look like oceans.

“You’re okay,” Miranda kept telling her. “Breathe Grace. You have to breathe.”

Grace thought she was breathing, but how could she when the scent of coffee beans was all over her, she would never be able to get it out now. It would be layered on her skin forever and no matter how many times she washed her body it would never come off. Grace whimpered and started to tear at the treacherous shirt again, but her hands were too clumsy and they fumbled.

Miranda must have figured out what she wanted because she pushed Grace’s hands away and started working her shirt off her. As she was pulling the shirt over Grace’s head, Cole pushed into the bathroom.

He seemed a bit surprised at the sight of his half-naked sister. “What happened?”

“Get an extra uniform out of the back,” Miranda barked. He nodded once, and his mop of hair disappeared out the door.

“Grace,” Miranda said, still using that same commanding tone of voice. “We’re going to wash you off, but I need you to breathe with me first, okay?”

Grace nodded dumbly and mirrored Miranda as she took a large breath through her nose, then slowly released it out though her mouth. Miranda got closer to her and together they calmed Grace’s breathing until it was a steady flow of inhaling and exhaling instead of a collection short, sharp gasps.

Cole nudged the door open again and slipped inside the bathroom, handing Miranda the large maroon uniform shirt. Miranda took it without taking her eyes off Grace and rolled the fabric over Grace’s head, effortlessly slipping her thin frame into the article of clothing.

“That guy apologized,” Cole said. “He said he’d be able to buy you a drink if you feel up for it.”

Grace’s breath rattled as she shook her head. Her thin hair stuck to her forehead with sweat.

“I’ll tell him no, then,” Cole replied. “I’ll be back in a minute. You got her?” He directed this last part to Miranda, who nodded once.

“I got her.”

A spike of heat went through Grace, one that had nothing to do with her anxiety. As Cole shuffled out, Miranda grabbed Grace’s forearms and gently hauled her over to the sink.

“Let’s wash,” she said, her voice softer now. “We’re gonna try not to irritate your skin, but if it hurts you need to tell me.”

“Yes,” Grace croaked, still breathless. She moved her heavy arms under the spray of the faucet, noting that the water wasn’t hot enough to burn. As the blood poured out from the cuts on her hands, Grace found herself unable to focus on rubbing her hands together. Miranda was so close to her. She smelled like chocolate. Maybe she was brewing some kind of macchiato before?

Before Grace ruined it all.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured weakly.

Miranda’s hands closed around hers under the flow of the water. Grace looked up and locked eyes with her. Miranda’s hair was falling perfectly around her face and she looked like a messy angel.

“Don’t you apologize. It’s not your fault, you need to understand that. You do, don’t you?” Miranda asked, taking her hand away. Then she raised her hand like she wanted to touch Grace’s face, but stopped and must have realized her hand was wet and covered with germs and blood.

It was like Miranda knew.

“You’re perfect,” Grace blurted out, startling herself. A smile spread across Miranda’s face and she lowered her hand.

“I…want to kiss you,” Miranda said, her voice strained as if she was trying not to laugh, “but I know that wouldn’t be a good idea right now.”

Grace flushed, and bit her lip. “No,” she agreed. “Not right now. But yes.”

Miranda’s sculpted eyebrows shot up. “I can take you out?”

Grace huffed a laugh, suddenly feeling light and woozy. “Yes!”

She nearly laughed again, for the ridiculousness of it all. It had taken an anxiety attack in order to finally get Miranda on a date, not using one of Cole’s stupid ultimatums. She looked down at her hands and looked back at Miranda, feeling flushed with happiness to know that Miranda wanted her, with all her flaws and wrongness. Miranda wanted her.

Miranda stayed close as she finished washing her hands. She let Grace dry them off and helped wrap them in the bandages found in the storage room.

“Why do you think we’ve been hanging around this coffee shop for so long?” Grace asked eventually. “Cole literally got a job here so I could ask you out.”

“Took you long enough,” Miranda teased.

Grace smiled, harder than she had in such a long time. If someone like Miranda would want to be around Grace, maybe her small ticks could be overcome.

Like getting over counting the number of drips in the coffee machine.

 

Chrysa Keenon loves to run–either away from her problems or to her laptop to slam out her next story. She is a student in the acclaimed Professional Writing program at Taylor University. Her work has appeared in The Dime Show Review, The Fictional Cafe, and The Flying Island. Sometimes, she moonlights as a reporter. 

Litany

It wasn’t what she thought it would be,

this quiet life.

A procession of cacophonous color

in the garden,

praises the dew of the morning,

turns toward the star of light.

The heady fragrance of rosemary

a reminder of incense.

Genuflecting to grasp an errant weed,

hands clasped around it,

she is enveloped in the passion of life.

Kneeling reverently,

a soft murmur of prayer

protects as the psalms

reveal the portions of life.

The incantation of birds after rain,

heads bowed,

seeking lifeblood from the chalice

within the blooms.

Morsels from the soil sustain

each creature,

in pilgrimage or travail.

Heads lift toward paradise,

the sun shimmers through leaves like

votives entreating for eternal life.

Rising, consumed and sated

She recedes in contemplation.

 

April Center, a retired attorney, is a poet and memoirist. Always a writer, Center believes the support she has from her writing community has been instrumental in creativity and confidence. She lives on the southern tip of Lake Michigan in a cottage with her pets.