You know how you almost always have someone who’s got your back?

That person, since I was three years old, was my grandmother, granny; Mama Bear is what I called her. Because I didn’t have a mama  until I was ten, and then unfortunately, due to my own immaturity and selfishness, I didn’t want the woman my father remarried as my mama. I was jealous of her.

And the competition lasted years, another story.

Last summer my granny suffered a stroke then another and then a minor heart attack. She now lives in a convalescent home paralyzed on the left side of her body, half blind, and practically deaf. When I saw her two weeks ago I had to scream in her face for her to hear me. She’s unable to do any of the things she formerly loved: drawing, painting, knitting, reading, cooking, not to mention flower arrangements and crossword puzzles. She can’t really see the TV that’s in her room at the convalescent home although she stares at it because that’s all there is to do. This month she turns ninety-three. More than once she said, “I hate being like this.”

What do you say to someone you love when it’s come to this?

I said, “I love you.” I stroked her hair, held her hand, kissed her forehead. I cried every time she wasn’t looking.

The last thing my granny said to me was, “I didn’t leave you anything.” Meaning an inheritance. Except I’m not going to dwell on that. For one thing, my granny has done more than enough for me financially. More than enough. But for another, the first thing my grandmother said to me two weeks ago was, “I have faith in you.”  

Seven days ago, five days after my son and I returned from visiting my granny in the convalescent home, at which time I was also put in charge of caring for my depressed and decrepit grandfather, my boss laid me off. She called me into her office after my work-sisters had gone home. A man I didn’t know was at the table with us. She explained why he was there, but I forgot. He sat across the table and stared at me while my former boss laid it all out.

I felt as if I’d suddenly fallen through my seat into one of those dunking booths. Surreal sensation. All I did was nod. And try to breathe carefully because I knew if I took even a single deep breath I’d exhale it as a scream, and yesterday I realized I reminded myself at the time of some of the women in xTx’s collection, Normally Special, because they want to scream, should scream, need to scream, but really shouldn’t scream, are trying with everything they’ve got to keep it inside them. 

Because sometimes a scream signals defeat.

But sometimes a scream is cleansing too. Didn’t John Lennon suggest that? Scream therapy? I’ll walk to a place a mile away on the river bank and let it rip not from the bottom of my lungs or even the base of my gut, but from this point in my uterus where my son grew once. Where life began inside me, where I have power. A scream from this point forward like projectile vomiting a plague of locusts, a banshee’s scream, blood scream, cunt. After all, the vagina is the most resilient organ in existence. So it makes no sense when people call each other “pussies” to imply weakness. Cocks are much more fragile. And I reminded myself of that this morning after having spent two days wishing I was a man, wishing I was Robert Downey Jr., all cock-and-ball-surliness in my current precarious state.

Unemployed. 

What stages of emotional fallout do you move through after losing a job? Not sure yet because I’m not done. Shock, hysteria, panic.

In my former position, I used to speak with people everyday who’d lost their jobs. They’d call to explain why they couldn’t pay their bills. Everyday, someone new, same story. Some days, they cried. And I’d tear up at thier frustration and helplessness. Where I live now, a desert hugged by mountains, the unemployment rate is astronomical. Bad. Like not a place you want to lose a job. But it’s terrible all over, and plenty of my friends, teachers mainly, have been down sized, discarded, laid off.

Two years ago, shortly after I began my former job, my boss let one of my colleagues go. Day after that, the remainder of us gathered around a table, and I started crying. My former boss looked at me and said, “Why are you crying? You hardly knew her.”

I knew her a little. Anyway, a person I’d worked with was no longer there: someone had lost her job.

But here’s the other thing. I knew it would be me someday. Matter of time. Not everything is about money. 

What stages do we move through after losing a job?

Acceptance, action, relief, joy?

I’m not there yet, but I hope so. Right now this experience remains fresh as a twelve-by-six wound on my upper thigh after a bike wreck I had when I was thirteen. Hurt, bleeding, raw. Last night my son said something to me, and because I’m still raw, it killed me. But before I tell you what he said, I want you to know my son is a sweet, sensitive kid. He’s scared right now. I know because he did an Internet search yesterday: how long does it take a person to starve? He doesn’t know I know that. He’s fourteen. He’s scared. His mom just lost her job. Who to blame? Well. Me. Of course.

Last night he said, “Hey mom, do you wish right now you’d never made this mistake and made us leave Oregon?”

Okay. So I fell apart. To quote an xTx story, “Standoff,” which is about a mother and son, “My heart has too many knives right now.” Stabbed through-and-through.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door and cried then went in my bedroom and shut the door and cried then posted a cryptic status update on Facebook and cried; then I scrolled through every number in my phone and wondered who to call, and finally landed on my former grad school mentor, David Bradley, my Jedi Master, but yet never called him while all the while wondering why nobody called me.

Emotional people make other people uncomfortable. Who’d want to speak with me while I’m in a state like that? Not me. People in crisis scare the shit out of the rest of us. Because we’re always only two steps and one spit away from the same spot.

So here’s the deal: nothing gets done while you feel sorry for yourself, while you fall apart. Perhaps I’m entitled.  A moment maybe. But how long do you have with a mortgage and a car payment and bills to pay not to mention this beautiful boy to feed, cloth, and cultivate? 

Buck up, time to go! 

So I wiped my eyes, went into my son’s room, and there he was on dailysentinel.com doing a job search for me. He’d also typed this question into Google: what jobs are available for someone with a master’s degree in Creative Writing?

Hahaha. (You understand why that’s funny, right?)

“Did you find anything, honey?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s okay, baby. I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. There’s something out there; I’ll find it.”

“Sorry I made you sad.”

“We’ll get through this.”

The last time something dire happened, my granny bailed us out. She bought me time to spend looking for the right job, and I found it in Portland, and to tell the truth, I would have worked for that woman forever if she hadn’t accepted a promotion and left. 

So here I am. A result of my own decisions, obviously.  And my granny isn’t going to bail me out anymore. 

When it rains, it pours.

Four months ago, my biological mother left me again for like the tenth time, but this time for good, when she killed herself with meth. Soon after, my half brother, Robert, wrote me a note that said, “She was really proud of you.”  And my grandmother has faith in me. She said so.

“I have faith in you.” Said like a person whose mouth is full, whose tongue is partially paralyzed, meeting my eyes with the one good eye she could still see through.

I believe I’ll write my way out of this hole. No, not financially. The wounds healed from that bike wreck a zillion years ago, but the scars still show.

You know how you almost always have someone who’s got your back?

That person, since I was three years old, was my grandmother, granny; Mama Bear is what I called her. Because I didn’t have a mama  until I was ten, and then unfortunately, due to my own immaturity and selfishness, I didn’t want the woman my father remarried as my mama. I was jealous of her.

And the competition lasted years, another story.

Last summer my granny suffered a stroke then another and then a minor heart attack. She now lives in a convalescent home paralyzed on the left side of her body, half blind, and practically deaf. When I saw her two weeks ago I had to scream in her face for her to hear me. She’s unable to do any of the things she formerly loved: drawing, painting, knitting, reading, cooking, not to mention flower arrangements and crossword puzzles. She can’t really see the TV that’s in her room at the convalescent home although she stares at it because that’s all there is to do. This month she turns ninety-three. More than once she said, “I hate being like this.”

What do you say to someone you love when it’s come to this?

I said, “I love you.” I stroked her hair, held her hand, kissed her forehead. I cried every time she wasn’t looking.

The last thing my granny said to me was, “I didn’t leave you anything.” Meaning an inheritance. Except I’m not going to dwell on that. For one thing, my granny has done more than enough for me financially. More than enough. But for another, the first thing my grandmother said to me two weeks ago was, “I have faith in you.”  

Seven days ago, five days after my son and I returned from visiting my granny in the convalescent home, at which time I was also put in charge of caring for my depressed and decrepit grandfather, my boss laid me off. She called me into her office after my work-sisters had gone home. A man I didn’t know was at the table with us. She explained why he was there, but I forgot. He sat across the table and stared at me while my former boss laid it all out.

I felt as if I’d suddenly fallen through my seat into one of those dunking booths. Surreal sensation. All I did was nod. And try to breathe carefully because I knew if I took even a single deep breath I’d exhale it as a scream, and yesterday I realized I reminded myself at the time of some of the women in xTx’s collection, Normally Special, because they want to scream, should scream, need to scream, but really shouldn’t scream, are trying with everything they’ve got to keep it inside them. 

Because sometimes a scream signals defeat.

But sometimes a scream is cleansing too. Didn’t John Lennon suggest that? Scream therapy? I’ll walk to a place a mile away on the river bank and let it rip not from the bottom of my lungs or even the base of my gut, but from this point in my uterus where my son grew once. Where life began inside me, where I have power. A scream from this point forward like projectile vomiting a plague of locusts, a banshee’s scream, blood scream, cunt. After all, the vagina is the most resilient organ in existence. So it makes no sense when people call each other “pussies” to imply weakness. Cocks are much more fragile. And I reminded myself of that this morning after having spent two days wishing I was a man, wishing I was Robert Downey Jr., all cock-and-ball-surliness in my current precarious state.

Unemployed. 

What stages of emotional fallout do you move through after losing a job? Not sure yet because I’m not done. Shock, hysteria, panic.

In my former position, I used to speak with people everyday who’d lost their jobs. They’d call to explain why they couldn’t pay their bills. Everyday, someone new, same story. Some days, they cried. And I’d tear up at thier frustration and helplessness. Where I live now, a desert hugged by mountains, the unemployment rate is astronomical. Bad. Like not a place you want to lose a job. But it’s terrible all over, and plenty of my friends, teachers mainly, have been down sized, discarded, laid off.

Two years ago, shortly after I began my former job, my boss let one of my colleagues go. Day after that, the remainder of us gathered around a table, and I started crying. My former boss looked at me and said, “Why are you crying? You hardly knew her.”

I knew her a little. Anyway, a person I’d worked with was no longer there: someone had lost her job.

But here’s the other thing. I knew it would be me someday. Matter of time. Not everything is about money. 

What stages do we move through after losing a job?

Acceptance, action, relief, joy?

I’m not there yet, but I hope so. Right now this experience remains fresh as a twelve-by-six wound on my upper thigh after a bike wreck I had when I was thirteen. Hurt, bleeding, raw. Last night my son said something to me, and because I’m still raw, it killed me. But before I tell you what he said, I want you to know my son is a sweet, sensitive kid. He’s scared right now. I know because he did an Internet search yesterday: how long does it take a person to starve? He doesn’t know I know that. He’s fourteen. He’s scared. His mom just lost her job. Who to blame? Well. Me. Of course.

Last night he said, “Hey mom, do you wish right now you’d never made this mistake and made us leave Oregon?”

Okay. So I fell apart. To quote an xTx story, “Standoff,” which is about a mother and son, “My heart has too many knives right now.” Stabbed through-and-through.

I went into the bathroom and shut the door and cried then went in my bedroom and shut the door and cried then posted a cryptic status update on Facebook and cried; then I scrolled through every number in my phone and wondered who to call, and finally landed on my former grad school mentor, David Bradley, my Jedi Master, but yet never called him while all the while wondering why nobody called me.

Emotional people make other people uncomfortable. Who’d want to speak with me while I’m in a state like that? Not me. People in crisis scare the shit out of the rest of us. Because we’re always only two steps and one spit away from the same spot.

So here’s the deal: nothing gets done while you feel sorry for yourself, while you fall apart. Perhaps I’m entitled.  A moment maybe. But how long do you have with a mortgage and a car payment and bills to pay not to mention this beautiful boy to feed, cloth, and cultivate? 

Buck up, time to go! 

So I wiped my eyes, went into my son’s room, and there he was on dailysentinel.com doing a job search for me. He’d also typed this question into Google: what jobs are available for someone with a master’s degree in Creative Writing?

Hahaha. (You understand why that’s funny, right?)

“Did you find anything, honey?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s okay, baby. I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. There’s something out there; I’ll find it.”

“Sorry I made you sad.”

“We’ll get through this.”

The last time something dire happened, my granny bailed us out. She bought me time to spend looking for the right job, and I found it in Portland, and to tell the truth, I would have worked for that woman forever if she hadn’t accepted a promotion and left. 

So here I am. A result of my own decisions, obviously.  And my granny isn’t going to bail me out anymore. 

When it rains, it pours.

Four months ago, my biological mother left me again for like the tenth time, but this time for good, when she killed herself with meth. Soon after, my half brother, Robert, wrote me a note that said, “She was really proud of you.”  And my grandmother has faith in me. She said so.

“I have faith in you.” Said like a person whose mouth is full, whose tongue is partially paralyzed, meeting my eyes with the one good eye she could still see through.

I believe I’ll write my way out of this hole. No, not financially. The wounds healed from that bike wreck a zillion years ago, but the scars still show.

The trouble in reviewing a book like Brandon Shimoda’s The Girl Without Arms is that no matter what the reviewer says, no matter what excerpts are culled, the text will remain very difficult to define without simply saying: go read this book for yourself and see what you find in it.

from ‘IN AN ACT OF TERRIBLE VENGEANCE, I LOVE YOU’:

In a long driveway, and also drinking

Drinking, And also watching three deer

At the far end of a long driveway

Drinking from the arch of circumstance

Spirit bulbs, Bones glowing in pools of noses

Soft shanks, Earflaps dressed as news

Stand about the fields and listen

When I began reading The Girl Without Arms, I didn’t like it. It felt disjointed, like a message written and then torn to pieces and scattered in the wind – there was meaning within these poems, but that meaning seemed either buried beyond my skills or else purposefully withheld from view. But now that it has been a few weeks since I finished reading the book, I see that the poems have remained in my system in a kind of glacial-movement, a slow digesting.

from ‘SEVEN SATELLITES OF THE MOON’:

Alight into our neighborhood

Lick the steeples from balls to prayer

Upon the shanty dwellings

Intentions of dwellings to buildings are buildings for fires

Neighbors slink thirstily to

You love them you clear blankets for them

Fill the space with grapes and massage

Fancy the reverent bobbing wish the consecratory light of the cross

For me, the larger context of The Girl Without Arms is about poetry, what it is and how it is supposed to be understood. Even if Shimoda tells me exactly what these poems mean to him, and even if Black Ocean provides me with a background on the Japanese folklore that inspired this book, I still may not read these poems as I am supposed to, but I will read them and reread them because they are rhythm-full and lovely, because they are bloody in their tearing of poetic seams.

from ‘DEATH RICTUS IS A DREAM RICTUS’:

Let us promise to put ourselves to better use than a wedding dress

Let us be worn by death, better than this, a strong of soft shells pulled from a spiral of wet, fallopian ribbon taken into the mouth, opening in the sea, out of which a waterbird tears from the plague, tiny ringlets of blood and brain prove awful on the oil of the slow-moving waves, a column of devils shines upward

There are bodies in this book, sexual ties and tension, trees and talk of growing roots or moving upward. There are messages buried here and torn and burned. Reading The Girl Without Arms is traveling a maze with only the notion of an exit. These are clustered poems of goodness in language, and I can only suggest that you seek out what is in them.

The Girl Without Arms is available from Black Ocean.

J. A. Tyler is the author of A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed and founding editor of Mud Luscious Press. For more, visit: www.chokeonthesewords.com

Carol Novak’s Giraffes in Hiding – The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack is a quirky and remarkable collection of forty-one poetic fictions, fusions, and prose poems. This exceptional collection makes for a challenging and absorbing read. To read this book is to set out on a journey that stretches the mind and imagination in surprising and wondrous ways. The language and imagery here are both unexpected and often exquisite, as are the elements of magic and the absurd. Giraffes in Hiding – The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack is unlike any other collection I have read and is welcome nourishment for me as a reader and writer.

The first and excellent story, “Minnows,” introduces the themes of family, loss, sorrow, rage, sibling rivalry, power and powerlessness that are threaded throughout this collection. This story, like every work that follows in the book, is a delightful cornucopia of original language and gorgeous imagery. Our young narrator, Hattie’s twin, reveals:

“Hattie’s wonder book came with six white giraffes. Before she’d finished coloring them yellow and brown, I poured water on two of them. They were ruined forever yes for always and she cried for always, cried like a minnow so quiet you can’t hear those minnows with whetted hooks in their mouths, like plants when you cut their roots, voices of broken lutes, lobsters in hot pots. But I could hear her; put my fingers in my ears for always when she was around.”

“Minnows” turns darker and further reveals this family’s tensions and struggles, not least of which is an insatiable tumor growing in the twins’ mother’s stomach. The story continues on a chilling note that reads both brutal and refreshingly honest:

“The minnows were gone, maybe into the belly of the sky. I combed the ocean for my minnows while Hattie’s giraffes multiplied like spider plants, all yellow and brown on the dry yellow savanna, propelled by their gauche necks, awkward in their bodies, bodies rooted to the feet of the humming planet. Where can a giraffe hide? I asked Daddy; wouldn’t he know? There’s nowhere to hide, I said to Hattie. Don’t be ridiculous, she responded: Why would giraffes want to hide?

I asked for lions for my birthday, prayed hard for lions bigger than Hattie’s giraffes. When the big lions arrived, I colored them the color of oceans. I sent them to the savanna.

The lions are on their way.”

Then “Minnows” shifts and becomes something other than a traditional, plot-driven story, setting the biting tone and impressive standard for the rest of the collection. It soon became clear I should forego any expectations this collection would deliver traditional language, characters or plot. Already captivated, I surrendered to the work and let go of such personal biases and preferences. As “Minnows” progresses, our narrator is grown and marries Rock:

“When we wed, Rock insisted on a Temple of Bluefish cer- emony, he said yes, bluefish you must say yes yes you must or I’ll drown and I said yes till death do us in. If I hadn’t he’d have gone on and on, boring me to madness I would’ve had to close my ears for good. When you know about Minnows as I do you know they are everywhere in the open; thus temples are unimportant I said to self, hiding my sorrows in shoe pockets in my closet. Whereas bluefish, well, we know where they are; check your microwaves, chandeliers and mirrors, so loud and cunning those fish, taking over oceans. I could live without attending the community of the Temple of the Minnows know- ing I was living with them always in spite of Rock and the cameras.”

Then we appear to have a movie review within the story written by our narrator. Here’s an excerpt:

“So Minnie beseeched him: Put them back, please do! She repeated her entreaty for the frantic minnows, slippery slivers of iridescence leaping out of the bucket onto the sand into the sky, fearing extinction she said this reminds me of early death, please no please no! The heavens turned dense ash blue like hospice hair.”

True to everything that follows in this collection, “Minnows’” ending is perhaps not easily accessible or understandable in terms of what happens, but I gleaned enough in terms of “story” to be satisfied and most certainly admired the language, imagery and a female narrator’s voice that’s deliciously fierce:

“Then what? Into the sunrise they went? you queried, forgetting you had asked, no, told me; you always told me everything without your hearing aid imagined you’d related the whole ostentatious synopsis as well as the start of it all with the minnows in the bucket no, not a bucket, a net that stretched from Nantucket to Nova Scotia. Imagine! But I was tired and couldn’t be sure I actually recalled stampeding giraffes, falling heliotropes, bloodstone storms, an old child with no eyes, wrapped in waves; I couldn’t; and you had dropped like a minnow of a brittle star into my flat trap of a lap, my darling sour ancient fish.”

It will come as no surprise to those familiar with my own writing that I was especially enthralled by the family dynamics in this collection, in particular that of the mother/daughter relationship. Here’s this brutal and beautiful paragraph from “Girls at Play” where we’re again brought the heart-wrenching image of the narrator with her fingers in her ears and the “you” is the narrator’s sibling:

“Perhaps you knew as you always have, you so suddenly seeming wounded well seemingly so in your angel pink bathing suit with tender moon blue hearts – you who looked at me as if I were yes I was a wave of approaching fire so hot and there was our mother not wanting to know I saw her wondering who emerged from my womb? as she saw the flame in my eyes and her voice was rising too they all were I guess you were had been screaming for centuries they had and will go on and on and so I put my fingers in my ears. It was like that, is.”

The sense of abuses, doom and destruction is ever-present in this work, but here form doesn’t follow content and in juxtaposition to theme the descriptions are so alive and creative. Look at this great paragraph from “Cluck Cluck” where the narrator, a writer, discusses with a fellow writer her novel’s protagonist:

“She was pulling more than 50 years after her. Distillization, even on a modest scale, seemed daunting. Heaps of shit to re-count and re-invent. Yes it’s overwhelming, I said to you, but one must try, I understand, I am told. Your wan, bulimic girlfriend with the belly button ring was in the kitchen fixing something like Vegan tofutti with soy cheese; her skin was blinking like strobe lights. Must’ve been glitter. My skin is dry with fur-rows like clay from the Paleolithic Age. I was trying a new skin cream from Aveda at the time, I think. Now it’s “facial sculpting” cream by some company owned by a dermatologist in New York. Your girlfriend Zappa drinks bottled water, 12 Evians per day. She’ll never run dry until the mother of all tsunamis comes along to get all of us who are still alive. The Greenland icebergs are sagging, falling flat into the ocean up there, like dead breasts. Time to leave coastal areas.”

There’s also the constant return to sorrow, loss, seeking, betrayal, and missed connections in the collection. All of the stories spoke to me to some degree in this regard and such pain and suffering are especially evident in the story “Destination” where our narrator’s yearning to “arrive” at a certain place and state is achingly rendered:

“He frightened me when he clasped me to him in the night, when he lowered the volume of his voice to speak of the mirage of walls and roofs. Not so long ago, he seemed to be my des- tination. He was mine and I was his or so it seemed. After an orgy of mirrors, we sucked and picked at one another’s bones. Then he strayed into that other woman’s residence and stayed too long, I took the turn back to where I’d been going, but couldn’t find it. Pain was my map; I could hardly see clearly.

So I found you hiding in a hedge with thorns, not crying but chanting, no, singing, singing a lament to your mother; you crooned, wanting to crawl back into her, so I came and stroked your head. I remember your hair as soft as dandelion puffs and you trembled but kept still for a spell entranced you let me be your home. And then like flotsam, you floated away, you with your eyes dense with storms. I carried on, tore off my red dress, taunted you. Who can stay still? Who can remain in homes with so many rules? you pleaded. I left that town a long time ago, I answered. At least I thought I did. You looked like a rabbit in a wolf’s yellow eye. All homes have rules, you said. You said I am a nomad. I have no choice. You do, I replied, drawing you into me for the last time, feeling like the rabbit in your jaws. But was I the wolf? Now I have forgotten your name.”

There’s so much of the unexpected and visceral in this book, particularly in terms of language and imagery, that’s it’s staggering in ways great and even perhaps overwhelming. I found it impossible to read much of this collection in any one sitting and enjoyed the work over the course of weeks—savoring, digesting, and grasping at meaning. At times fable and mythical, these works are rarely realistic but always fantastic. There’s sensuality, wildness and even rage in both form and content here that’s palpable. The book design is gorgeous and comes complete with fourteen beautiful and haunting illustrations by various artists, hence the book’s expense at $32.00. It’s an investment I hope many will make. Whilst reading this unique book, I felt I was deep-sea diving, surrounded by exotic and breathtaking words-as-creatures, but mindful too of the murkiness, sinister and danger that also lurk both under and above water.

—–

Giraffes in Hiding – The Mythical Memoirs of Carol Novack (September 2010) is available from Spuyten Duyvil Press or from Amazon, ISBN 978-1933132839. Novack is also the publisher and editor of Mad Hatters’ Review. Fictions and poems may be found in numerous journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Caketrain, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Fiction International, First Intensity, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Literature, LIT, and Notre Dame Review, and in many anthologies, including “The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets,” “Diagram III,” and “The &Now Awards: the Best Innovative Writing.” Writings in translations may or will be found in French, Italian, Polish and Romanian journals.

July Hobart brings xTx, Lincoln Michel, and JA Tyler.

The Summer issue of Required includes Simon A. Smith, Jess Glass, Nicelle Davis, Molly Gaudry,  JA Tyler, and more.

Matter Press’s first chapbook will be Wild Life by Kathy Fish. Huzzah!

J. Bradley has a novella at Housefire. There’s a foreword and then you can get started with the novella itself, here. He also has a story at Nontrue.

The July issue of decomP brings words from Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, J. Bradley, and others.

Sarah Hilary’s The Mauve Throw is available from Shortfire Press.

Stupid Frank, by xTx, appears at SmallDoggies. She also poems at O Sweet Flowery Roses where she is joined by Feng Sun Chen.

The Summer 2011 issue of BLIP includes Jessica Hollander, Mary Miller, and others.

Chad Simpson is Mr. July for American Short Fiction.

July Hobart brings xTx, Lincoln Michel, and JA Tyler.

The Summer issue of Required includes Simon A. Smith, Jess Glass, Nicelle Davis, Molly Gaudry,  JA Tyler, and more.

Matter Press’s first chapbook will be Wild Life by Kathy Fish. Huzzah!

J. Bradley has a novella at Housefire. There’s a foreword and then you can get started with the novella itself, here. He also has a story at Nontrue.

The July issue of decomP brings words from Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, J. Bradley, and others.

Sarah Hilary’s The Mauve Throw is available from Shortfire Press.

Stupid Frank, by xTx, appears at SmallDoggies. She also poems at O Sweet Flowery Roses where she is joined by Feng Sun Chen.

The Summer 2011 issue of BLIP includes Jessica Hollander, Mary Miller, and others.

Chad Simpson is Mr. July for American Short Fiction.

Stanley the Stinkbug

Dear Stanley the Stinkbug,

Minutes before sitting down to write this, my wife screamed like an unknown man was in the apartment, which could only mean one thing: you had somehow breached the defenses of my home and were dangling your brown-six-legged stinkbug self from one of the light fixtures.

I grabbed a napkin from the dinner table and wrapped you lightly in it, just tight enough so you couldn’t escape, but light enough to avoid crushing you. That last part is important. They don’t call you guys stinkbugs for nothing. Crush a stinkbug and there is a righteous overpowering odor, or so I’ve heard; I don’t have the heart to do it myself.  After wrapping you up, I made my way to the toilet bowl where I dropped you and flushed. I was planning to not think about you for the rest of the night as I do most nights after flushing you, but for some reason, tonight, the pathetic nature of your constant return keeps bugging me, so to speak.

Every day, save for a day here, the stretch of a few days there, over two apartments, this has been a constant; you announce your presence, I flush you. I look at my wall or to the window or the light fixture above my dining room table and there you are, whispering, trying to tell me something—though I imagine to you it’s not whispering. Stinkbugs, heck all bugs, are always mumbling so we humans often can’t hear you guys when you speak. I get it, you’re bugs, you lack self-esteem because you are disgusting creatures, but man have some pride. No one respects a mumbler. Put some bass in your voice. Act like a mammal and get a backbone. Speak up and tell me what is it that you want or leave me and my family alone.

I have a confession to make. I once thought there were many of you. It always confounded me that yet another one was showing up to bother me. Just as I sit down to watch the television or have dinner, there’s my wife screaming, calling me to do something about your presence.

Why here, I wondered. Where are all these stinkbugs coming from? Then one day I examined you before the flushing; you looked just like all the other 100 stinkbugs who came before you. Then it occurred to me, I had never seen two stinkbugs together. Never three teenage stinkbug girls wandering the mall, flirting with teen stinkbug guys. No stinkbug stoners loitering in front of my apartment building smoking joints and condescendingly mocking the stinkbug junkies as they stick heroin needles in their veins. Not even a stinkbug conference to argue over the Contract with Stinkbug America and to discuss issues in the stinkbug community. That’s when I realized it, there aren’t hundreds of thousands of you. There aren’t even 10 of you in this country. Just one. One very lonely stinkbug, showing up at my house repeatedly in the hopes of fellowship and good conversation.

Stanley, I’m not interested in watching the game with you, going to the club with you, talking about music with you or even spending another second in your presence. This is probably devastating to you. I tried to be subtle about it. I thought flushing you down the toilet was a big hint, but now I see that it’s a pretty passive-aggressive thing to do. I know I need to work on being assertive. And this is all the more crushing because you are completely alone in this country. Stanley, the only Stinkbug in America. It says on the internet that you came over from Asia. Accidently hitched a ride. Kind of a stupid thing to do, but I’m not judging. You’re stuck in a foreign land with no way to get back home. I know what it’s like being in a strange place without anyone like you.

True story: I was once the only black guy in Binghamton, New York. I didn’t climb through people’s window in misguided attempts to befriend them. Well, I did once. I’d like to tell you more about it, but discussing that incident publicly in too much detail is a probation violation.

Stanley again. Or is it?

Yes, I ‘m aware that it’s a racist thought: “All stinkbugs look alike.” I’m embarrassed to even admit I held that belief at one point. Judge me if you will. I mean, I have nothing against Insect-Americans. Me and Sparky, the only lightening bug in America have been friends since I was a kid.  That, I know, kind of sounds like, “I have black friends,” but it’s true. I like butterflies a lot. They are sort of nasty when they are caterpillars. And cocoons? Disgusting.  I guess the scientific name for “cocoon” is “chrysalis.” The plural is “chrysalides.” Just some bullshit the butterfly community came up with to make cocoons sound beautiful and poetic. And ants, I like them when they are not in my house. When they get into the house, I’m reaching for the Raid, best believe that.

Stanley, I have to admit that I admire you. You possess many traits other people will like. There is something noble, triumphant and itsy-bitsy-spiderish in your constant return from the depths of my toilet bowl. I wish I had your determination. You’re a tough guy!

All the times I scooped you up in a torn piece of paper towel or napkin or toilet paper I imagined hordes of stinkbugs forming a new plague like the one God had set upon Egypt so long ago. Were these stinkbugs by the window the scouts who were to report back to Stinkbug headquarters that humanity would be unprepared for a raid? I imagined waking up to see every car in my apartment complex parking lot covered with your brethren and sistren. Then there would be no way to avoid crushing stinkbugs; they’d be beneath our feet at every single step. The stench would be overpowering. Stanley, I see you so much sometimes I’m generally scared that’s what’s going on. I’m glad there is only one of you and I’m sorry I confused you for an invading horde.

Excuse me Larry, I mean, Stanley (sorry, I had to write a similar letter to Larry the Ladybug), but my wife informs me that I’m not being forceful enough. I know we all like to talk about the oneness of all things, but to be honest, I feel a kinship with all things except for you and maybe the Black Eyed Peas (I’m sorry, but Fergie creeps me out and don’t get me started on those two other guys.). You stink. It’s in your name. That’s not a trait anyone wants in a friend. I could see if we had been longtime friends and then you suddenly developed this hygiene problem. Then it’d be fine to pull you aside and discuss it with you, but it seems that you are totally committed to this lifestyle. And that’s fine. All I’m saying is that it’s probably better you go find some people who appreciate smelly insects, entomologists, 10-year-olds and such. There are people around who won’t flush you down the toilet the way I do.

I’m sure you’re tired of the insect kingdom shunning you because of your scent. I know you probably feel some kinship with me. I get it. After a bike ride or a couple rounds with my new punching bag, I’m known to work up what I call a manly smell. When I’m like that my family doesn’t often want to be around me. I sometimes wonder, as you probably do, if I am so rank that all my wonderful traits—my humor, my smile, my girly-yet-still-totally-masculine eyelashes—just don’t matter anymore? Sometimes after exercise, you don’t just want to rush to the shower. Sometimes after riding your bike you want to hug your wife and son, sit down and read the newspaper, surf the web, eat a good meal and you want to be able to do those things without people cracking rude jokes, feigning blackouts, fanning you or spraying air freshener in your direction while holding their nose.

Sorry. None of this is making you feel better, I imagine, and I’m rambling, Stanley.

I guess it comes down to this: Yes, I acknowledge the pain of your isolation, but no I don’t want to be your friend. And yes, I will continue to flush you down the toilet. Sorry.

Sincerely,

Rion Amilcar Scott

Rion Amilcar Scott writes fiction all over the damn place, tweets @reeamilcarscott and blogs at datsun flambe.

Hello, everyone! Thank you for coming to the 23rd Annual Agency Picnic Olympics. Our agency has been doing this for more than 22 years now, and every year it gets better. So, without further ado, let’s go over the day’s events!

We’ll start the day off with the Pillow Sack Race. This, of course, is where each player lights his or her pillowcase on fire, gets inside, and has to hop to the finish line before getting out. Remember, if you get out of your pillowcase before you get to the finish line, you’ll have to play the penalty game: Find Your Spouse.

Immediately after the Pillow Sack Race, we ask that you completely disrobe as quickly as possible for the Javelin event. There were a few of us last year that took a little long getting ready. I’m not sure why. It’s not like this is the only time of the year we’re all naked in front of each other while holding ranged weapons.

After getting your clothes back on, please get to the Lawn Darts area as soon as possible. Remember: do not touch the lawn darts. First one to do so loses and is out of the Lawn Dart competition.

Next comes the Biathlon, except instead of snow skiing we’ll be water-skiing, and instead of skeet shooting we’ll be water-skiing.

Unfortunately, we will not be playing Where’s Gary? this year, as Gary didn’t make it through last year’s Pillow Sack Race. May Gary rest in peace.

As we all know, the Annual Agency Picnic Olympics would not be the same if we didn’t have our Pi Eating Contest, in which we eat 3.14159265 calculators.

We’ll then take our Coital Intermission, as is customary.

Our first event after the intermission will be the Tricycle Race, in which our contestants will ride around an oval track on their child’s tricycle. If you don’t have one, we’ll provide you a child so you’ll be ready next year.

Good news for those who participated in last year’s Tire Drill contest, in which you step through tires in a race to the finish. This year, we removed the hubcaps, so it should be a little easier.

Bill and Susan during last year's Coital Intermission. Nine month's later, we were welcoming Bill Jr.!

And finally, the three players who earned the most points in the previous events will participate in the big finale, which we call the Smörgåsbordacopia—a course that we change each year, so it’s never the same course twice. Veterans of the Annual Agency Picnic Olympics know that we can’t disclose what’s involved in each year’s Smörgåsbordacopia. However, we do give one clue, and this year’s clue is this: kiss your family before beginning the race.

Okay, let’s get this show on the road! It’s time to begin the 23rd Annual Agency Picnic Olympics! Ladies and gentlemen: set afire your pillowcases!

Two new things from Jac Jemc at Joyland and Strange Machine.

The current issue of Knock has work from Eric Beeny, Joseph Riippi, and more.

Hey, we’re having a killer reading in NYC on July 21s at Pete’s Candy Store. You’re not going to want to miss readers like Deb Olin Unferth, Daniel Nester, Sarah Rose Etter, Sean Doyle, Melissa Broder, Amber Sparks, Jeffrey Morgan, Matthew Thorburn, and M. Bartley Seigel.

Sara Crowley has a short story at Beat the Dust.

DIAGRAM. Gabe Durham. Jim Daniels. Other writers.

The Summer 2011 issue of JMWW includes Salvatore Pane, Andrew Borgstrom, Luca DiPierro and Leni Zumas, Adam Peterson, and more.

Emprise Review 19, in case you missed it, features work from Barry Basden, CL Bledsoe, Faith Gardner, Dawn West, Meg Pokrass, and more.

Eric Beeny has essays at The Nervous Breakdown and DOGZPLOT.

There’s no news today from Mel Bosworth.

At The Rumpus, Chloe Caldwell tells us about the last book she loved. She also has work at Vol 1. Brooklyn.

Jensen Beach has writing in the new issue of Ninth Letter. He is joined by BJ Hollars, Jimmy Chen, Kevin Wilson, and others. Jensen also has this and this at Spork which is gorgeously re-designed.

Staccato Fiction, this week, has a story by Eric McKinley.