Grace Evelyn

Annie, down the street Annie, just had the most beautiful pair of twins – equally caked in fat, equally full of bubbling giggles, equally innocent in this world of promises always broken and wishes never granted. 

It’s a shame Annie is such a terrible mother. 

Anyone could see it, even if they hadn’t spent the last three years and seven months reading every parenting book, going to every fertility doctor, and spending every possible free second fucking and praying that with every rhythmic thrust that this might be the time. 

But it never was. And, meanwhile, of course, sixteen-year-old, down the street Annie, drunkenly, casually fucked a boy whose name she can no longer remember, and ended up with not one, but two baby angels. 

When Annie gets home from school, she pushes them around the cul-de-sac and I watch her from behind my curtains. It’s cold outside because it’s always cold here and Annie never wrapped her angels in a blanket to keep them warm. She pushes the stroller with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth like it’s a quiet plea for the poisonous smoke to kill her babies. Even from a distance, I can see the cold wave of regret in her eyes as she trudges down the street, youth robbed from her teenage breasts, a certain glow absent from her wrinkleless face. 

How easy it would be for me to just take one off her hands. Perhaps then, some joy might return to her cheeks. The fraternal twins would never know they shared blood – Annie and I could keep such a quaint, little secret to ourselves. And maybe when the children were two and still too young to remember, Annie would see how great mine was turning out because I was raising a child as one should: with deep, profound love instead of spite. That child would mark the beginning of my life, not the end. Maybe once I had proven myself, Annie would simply give me the other one. 

I wouldn’t protest. This brief little moment of her pushing two perfect babies down a cracked sidewalk would be blip, a faded memory, and Annie could go back to fucking strangers (who would wear condoms from now on) and I could finally, finally, stop fucking according to a color-coded schedule. Maybe then we’d both be happy. 

But Annie keeps pushing the stroller and Harry closes the curtain. 

Cameron Katz

monday: I told you I couldn’t do this anymore and I thought you’d

understand this time. You didn’t.

tuesday: I watch you unfold and spill on to your desktop,

I can see my eyes looking down on all of it,

glaring at me from across the room. Nothing could be seen

if it weren’t through tears.

wednesday: I think you’re finally starting to catch on.

It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I can live without you. I need you

to learn to live without me.

thursday: You called me crying and pleading after I specifically asked

you not to. It’s not my responsibility to take your broken

pieces and put you back together.

friday: was harder than I expected. I kept seeing you

in the cashier at the grocery store. I tasted you in

my mouth, and savored. I carried you with me

kicking and screaming in my pocket. In the doorman’s

forest hungry eyes. I’d always mistaken your eyes for the dull green

of a dirty pond.

saturday: I kissed you under a red light. The red

seeped into our skin and it never turned. I thought

this was a sign.

sunday: You finally kissed me first. I hope you kiss me

last, too.

Hannah McLendon

What we hide from, is not always there

But what is there, tends to be hidden.

Our lives are always enclosed

In the land of forbidden

 

Our curtain of truth

Always stays closed

While our memories and dreams

Are always exposed

 

With a fragile heart that is always shaping

We realize

We never hide

We are always escaping.

Nick Attai

According to Bartow County Police, a sanitation worker called 911 after finding a woman’s dismembered body in a compactor container at the landfill.

He picks me up in the night and we head South.  Me and Tony in Tony’s rundown, used-to-be-red, rusty old pickup.  Bare shoulders making love to plastic leather.  Buttcheeks sinking into foam.  We put down the windows, turn the radio up, we bouncing.  We flying.  Watching all the headlights heading the wrong direction.

At 2:00am we stop for gas.  We catch a bite to eat and sit on the curb dragging on filterless tips.  Bugs dancing above our heads.  Cockroaches scuttling under our feet.

He looks at me and he says, “Pretty soon we’ll be outa here.”

I smile.

I says, “Baby, how bout I drive for a while. You been drivin all night.”

“No, Baby,” he says, “I’ll drive.”

Tony real sweet like that.  He know how to treat a girl.

I says, “I like that.”  I lean my body into his.  He’s warm and strong.  Thick biceps.  Heavy pecs.  When we touch, his tattooed skin folds into mine.

Real smooth.  Just like that.  Real smooth.

He brushes back my hair kisses my forehead.  We twist our cigarettes into the pavement and get back in his truck.

“Close your eyes,” Angel Baby, he says.  “Get some sleep.”  He smiles real kind.

“Mmmm,” I says, not tryna be pretty.

I cuddle up against the seatbelt and close my eyes.

 

“911, what’s the location of your emergency?”

“Oh Lord.  God, I don’t know!  Please help me!  My Angel.  My baby girl.  Someone’s took my baby girl!”

 

I can’t sleep.  Keep thinking about things.  Funny things.  Shitty things.  Things you’re not supposed to think about when you almost out.  When I shut my eyes all I can see is Mama.  Her stubborn face, staring me down.  Hands on her hips and that scowl sayin,

“Girl, what I say?  What I say?  No girl a mine’s goin out lookin like a city tramp.”

“Oh, you in for it now.”

“Girl, get back here and let me teach you about respect.”

“You better wish yo Mama was someone else.”

“You aint goin out and fallin in love and gettin yo’self killed.  Not while I is yo Mama and Jesus is yo Lord. Now get on back upstairs.  (Little slut!)”

I see her holdin that goose of her’s, dangling by the neck.  Hell.  Hit the fucker coming home from Walmart.  Smack dead right there in the middle of the road.  Man, she proud of it, too.  Took it out back, dripping blood through the house.  Fuck.  I swear I could smell the tar of the road.

She don’t bother putting on rubber gloves or nothing.  She just right sinks her fingers into the flesh, ripping and tearing, pulling off the down and stripping off the feathers.  What she can’t yank out she shave off with a razor.  Then she chop off the head and wings, spilling blood onto the grass.  Bones crunching.  Mama ripping and tearing.

When she finish, she hang the carcass on the close line and comes back in the house, smiling and smelling like blood and shit and death.

She go back out with scissors and a box of plastic bags.  She pull the bird down and lays it out on a rusty lawn chair.  Then she call to me,

“Angel, hun, come out here and help yo Mama with this duck.”

I go out and can smell the goose before I get to the door.  Mama’s standing there covered in it all.  I wrinkle my nose and wanna puke.

Mama, she take one look at me and scowl.

“Get over here, child.  Stand right there.  Hold this.”

I take a bag.

“Open it wider.”

Mama clips off parts of the goose and slides it into the bag.  I’m holding that shit as far away from my face as possible.

The neck.

The body.

The legs.

The guts.

The heart.

She’s sliding the feet into a bag and I’m holding my breath from the smell.  The feet hit the bottom of the bag and a drop of something wet and slimy splashes up on my hand.  I drop the bag and scream.

“Girl, whatchu doing!?  Ruinin my good meat!”

Mama pull my hair and hollers some more.  I run inside and shut myself in my room.

A little while later, I heard Mama dropping the bags of goose into the freezer.

That night’s when I called up Tony to tell him I’s ready to run away.

 

“It’s been two weeks and my baby girl’s still missing.”

“Ma’am, believe me, we’re doing everything we can.  Just try to stay calm.”

 

“Baby, whatsa matter?” says Tony, looking over seeing the orange light shining off the tear streams down my cheeks.

“Nothing,” I says.

“Angel, you can tell me.”

“I’m fine.”

He don’t need to know nothing.  I’m drawing my hair through my fingers and turning toward the window.  4:00am.  Tryna get comfortable.

I slide my finger under my shirt and trace my tattoos with a finger.

Roses and lips and leaves and arrows and feathers.  Matthew 13:50.  A wolf head, two staring eyes, skulls.  Swirls and symbols that meant something once.  Meant something to someone else.  Stars and smoke and wings and dragons.  Sometimes I feel like I could get lost in his tattoos.  Wandering along the lines of ink exploring the history of this man.  My man.

Wondering if he’ll get a tattoo for me.

 

I’ve been doing this for thirty five years and I’ve never seen anything like it.

 

The sun’s rising above the horizon, breaking through the leaves.  Tony mindlessly watches the road.  We cruising fine.  Heading south to Georgia.

Tony has a place in Atlanta, right in the city.  Where the lights stay on all night and nobody care how late you stay up.  You free in the city, Tony told me.  No one’s sad in the city.

I smile as I watch him.  His strong, steady chin.  His glazed eyes fixed on the distant horizon.  He’s wearing a white tank top that squeezes close to his body.  Framing his figure.  His curly, unkempt hair.  The white scar above his left eyebrow.  My man.

After I move in we’ll get married.  Someday we’ll have children, and I’ll be better than Mama.  I’ll be my own woman and teach my kids to be their own selves.  We’ll be happy in the city.

Finally I drift to sleep.

 

The woman was between the ages of 18 and 25 who had brown or red hair, about 5 feet 2 to 5 feet 6 inches tall, about 150 pounds and had several distinctive tattoos.  If you have seen anything or can ID the victim, please call the local authorities.  Locals have been referring to the girl as ‘Angel’ until her full identity is released.

 

Christopher Labaza

Your ticket booth
has all my money. Performance:
Oscar-worthy. You’re the painting
that I study, a thousand brush strokes
and counting. Rapid-fire
on the shutter—photograph
before it’s over—catch the tune
before they cut it, but do your speakers
ever die? Your screen is preaching colors, setting fire
to my naked eye. I’ll try my life to draw you,
but I know you’re something too alive.

Jackson Newbern

W 18 seeking W with a good sense of humor, likes spy movies, clever, incisive, loves animals, comes to my house when her cat runs in front of a minivan and sobs into my shoulder for an hour and a half and doesn’t stop until we pour a plaster headstone in my garage, likes long walks on the beach, asks “do you love me too?” while we stand surrounded by that plaster-choked air and cries again when I say “I guess so”, loves food and family, leaves her cat’s gravestone still sitting in my garage between the lawn chairs and pool noodles and garden trowels and thick drifts of dust. Rest in peace.

Maggie Weber