7.07 / July 2012

Badgerdog, a literary arts non-profit in Austin, believes in creating long-term, creatively-engaged communities through the transformative powers of reading and writing. Under this big tent, we publish American Short Fiction, and we hire writers as teaching-artists to run creative writing workshops for kids and senior citizens.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Rwanda.

The Mecosta Burnout [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Witbeck1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The sixty-seven Falcon, black as a court date suit, shudders on the blacktop as mohawked kids pluck grubbies from the puddled run-off that washed away the curled skins of tire-treads. The driver cracks her suicide-door like a Tall Boy.

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY CHILDREN for Oliver [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Fulton1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] I could smell the sea salt, when they brought me to the ship, and my mother’s perfume, and underneath that, more salt.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Landry.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Presented as a PDF in order to preserve the author’s intended formatting.

Amber [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Amber.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] She’d been looking everywhere, then Lisa, an apparition in the hallway, and him two seconds later, the smell.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Maria.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Chica had no visitors, but once received a Bible in a brown box. Color coded text, red was where Jesus came in. She spoke His lines aloud as we ate our nails. Jesus liked the lame girls. The dark girls, field hands and whores.

Men are ripping off shingles across the street, layer after blue, scratchy layer, wrenching nails and flinging everything down. The woman who lived there smashed her hip, and as she was wheeled away-she rolled her eyes when they told her she’d be home in a week. She died alone miles from here.

My biological father’s name is Nyles Rudean Vinzant. This according the 1986 adoption papers I laid my hands on the summer after my freshman year of college. I was in my family’s filing cabinet on the hunt for my social security card, a prerequisite for summer employment.

If I Leave You Then Maybe I Won’t Have to Miss You So Much [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_7/Shapiro1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Lately I keep things just to throw them away: practice, practice. What I mean is, I’ve had enough longing, enough of nothing ever being enough.

The doorbell rang while Ron was masturbating. He closed his eyes tight. Tried to hold the image of Lori bent over the arm of the couch. No use. It was gone. Ron sighed, then levered the recliner down. Tied on the terry-cloth robe Lori had given him.

“A woman’s beauty can be her damnation,” her mother said. One guy told her he’d never seen an orifice he didn’t like. Sure thing. But you’ve got to know something about tenderness. He just poked. She likes eyes on her, though, so she finds herself in the occasional awkward pose. Her boyfriend, the photographer.

I can make a god inside me Look how I make him pit, walnut shell, brain I can make him in my stomach the usual way or better in my lungs My body is a god factory where I produce what is never given to me I carve out the man I need for worship

April started stealing ashes during her brother’s first week at the crematorium, where she had to pick him up every day and drive him home. His car had been impounded and his license revoked. The urns were just there, waiting to be picked up: a whole person, in a decorative piece of crockery.

Eddie The way an afternoon feels desperate. The way they we are all desperate-and high trying to fill a hole or follow the black tangled roots into the Midwestern mud. When Eddie Ray’s backyard dog-off its chain tried to bite another dog.

When Mindy watches Carter’s house through binoculars at night, his curtains are always closed.  He doesn’t linger in front of backlit windows, and she suspects he suspects someone outside is spying.  Tonight, Mindy parks two houses down on the opposite side of the road.  The Driscolls’ porch light is out.