7.11 / Pulp Issue

There’s that moment, you know, when I’m reading a story and a section smacks me crossways and I know I’ve come across something special. I’m an animal of the worst sort– old, trapped, but still needing to go on. (That’s Norman Savage there, who’s been chronicling hard times and hard living since the 60’s.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_11/Keaton.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″]  “Every day, it’s a-getting closer, going faster than a roller coaster… Every day, it’s a-getting faster, everyone says go ahead and ask her” -Buddy Holly “Everyday” A man, a woman, and her child, all walking too fast through a carnival.

When Ollie found the body in the dumpster what he thought was: That’s George Hill. Somebody killed George Hill and put him in the dumpster, he said out loud. Ollie had driven the garbage truck for twelve years and he knew every dumpster in town.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_11/Romanda.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] 2 perfect strangers leave the bar & walk the sea wall arm in arm. he’s known only as william & he stinks pleasantly of pickles & gin. i’ll wait until he enters my wife. i’ll wait until he’s done. then.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_11/Renfroe.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Michael was almost to the gas station that didn’t sell gas.  They sold out-of-date groceries and cold beer. After that he’d best go see Greenie Blake. Better he explain things than let someone else do it.

She sneaks up on me when I’m out at night.  I’ll bump into her at the grocery store, or on the subway.  When I’m sitting at a café, supposed to be studying but really staring off into space, she’ll take the seat opposite mine. Then we’ll lock eyes.

Mikey Smalls finds me at recess. I’m by the back fence, the new one they built after that kid slipped through and got himself drowned in the retention pond. I tend to stick by fences. Keeps things from sneaking up on you. “You still got a bad uncle?” Mikey asks. I shake my head.

My Choppers [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_11/Savage1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] are negotiating with what remains of my mouth: chew this slowly, you fool; too sticky, idiot; asshole, that side no longer exists…and so on. Sugar has eaten parts of whole. The ride of word passion bloodied sanity.

Some time ago in the Wazirate, an Arab city-state similar to the others along the Persian Gulf, a tribeless nomad named Ali al-Mutawakkil began tying brass cooking pots to his feet and went out into the spectral sand swirling under the moon and vandalized the bulldozers and the rollers and the trucks belonging to a

I push the massive wooden door of the church. It’s easier to open than I expect. It looks like it’s been there for a hundred years, but it doesn’t squeak. I walk in unnoticed. My steps are as light as my combat boots will allow.

This was back when we still hadn’t figured out the key to living forever, back when all the dumb schmucks about to check out down on Earth would pay to have their minds warehoused in the chitinous skin of those giant low-grav shrimp and lobsters they’d let loose on the moon, in all the new

“Aunt Marge. That you up there on the porch?” Quickly raising the car window against the spew of cold air, Jerzy Fields looked around warily,  then parked on the street. Her aunt’s driveway was more mud and potholes than asphalt, and she’d wrecked at least one pair of shoes and a tire parking there.