Sex. I’m inclined to say yes when it is done well. However, I am looking for a poem that leaves me wanting more. I want a poem that teases me, a poem that shows me the train wreck inside, the poem I can’t turn away from, the poem that calls me out and shows me some inner truth that I usually keep under covers.

-Trish Falin,
Poetry Editor, The Citron Review

A daring voice and subject matter that sticks to my ribs. I favor downward spirals: abuse, addiction, suffering and triumph. I like desperate and sorrowful stories like Rob Roberge’s “Swiss Engineering” and “Border Radio” in Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life. I love Lorrie Moore’s short stories in Birds of America (bar none). I like clever, salacious and surprising stories, daring the reader to keep turning the page, like Gina Frangello’s short story “Saving Crystal” in her collection Slut Lullabies. I dislike cliché’s:  things we have heard before: stories about cheating husbands or abortions.

-Antonia Crane,
Fiction and CNF Editor, The Citron Review

When I began thinking about this question I immediately thought of James Engelhardt, the former managing editor of Prairie Schooner.  I did a brief internship with them a few years ago, and I asked him pretty much the same question after he dropped a stack of manuscripts in my lap to read.  While I honestly can’t remember his exact response, it was something along the lines of “You’ll know it when you see it.” 

Now I know this is vague and no help to potential submitters.  I felt just as lost that day, certain without more direction I was going to embarrass myself by recommending the wrong piece of writing to him.  My anxiety grew when I realized that most of the submissions I read for Prairie Schooner were quite good.  I remember having a pile of “yes” manuscripts next to me and it towered over the “no” pile.  The manuscripts were clean, competently written, the writers followed all the rules of grammar and style and it was clear many of them were quite talented.  I felt a little overwhelmed wondering how I would ever choose just a few to recommend and pass along – and then my entire perspective was altered.  I read a story that changed everything.  It wasn’t until I was finished with the piece that I realized that I was on the edge of my seat, that I had been holding my breath and I had completely forgotten where I was and what I was doing.  I’m lucky I even remembered my name.  Suddenly, everything else in my “yes” pile became a “no.” 

 I discovered that well-written is no match for fiction that pierces you so deeply that you are going to carry the mark of it with you for weeks, months, maybe even the rest of your life.   I would ask any potential submitter to really think about the emotional resonance of their piece before they send it to me.  I want work that burdens my soul.  I want work that compels me to run from my seat to the nearest person and insist they read the story in my hands.  The topic is irrelevant, and I’m even willing to overlook a typo or two, all a story really needs is to kick me in the gut.  And if you still don’t understand what I’m talking about, consider this quote:

“Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald

Heather Luby,
Fiction Editor, the Citron Review
 

The evening routine is interrupted by a storm.  Thunder knocks politely.  Strikes of lightning disturb the black sky and are reflected in the black sea below.  The storm is such an unusual event that the patients who are able are wheeled from their rooms to the atrium windows to enjoy the spectacle.  There are six of them tonight, and they’re placed in a neat row and watch like an eager theater audience.  Nearly all the nighttime staff of two-dozen join them. The staff hang back and respond to each rumble and strike with oohs and ahhs and the occasional chirp of nervous laughter.  

It’s a welcome diversion.  Keith sits between Raven and Nick.  The day’s physical therapy was no better nor worse than the any of the others, but he’s been feeling sullen since his girlfriend’s departure that afternoon.  He’s not sure why this is.   Maybe it was a mistake letting her visit.  He was fine with it until she stood up to leave, standing up with such effortless ease.  Instead of making him feel better, her visit only reminded him of how far away the outside world is.  His daily exam with Dr. Sother only made matters worse.  Having a quadriplegic for a physician takes away the one freedom he has, the license to complain.

“Saw your visitor.”  Nick speaks with his eyes on the sky.  His voice low as if he’s about to pass a secret.  “That your woman?”

“Yeah.”

“She drove here in the rain.  That’s devotion.  Is she driving back?”

“She has a room at the hotel.”

“Plenty of rooms here.  You happy she’s here, or is she just one more person you have to entertain?”

Keith thinks a minute.  “Both.  See, someone does love me.”

“Keith’s girlfriend was here?”  Raven seems to rise up in her chair, but it’s just her voice.  “Why didn’t you bring her ‘round?”

Keith shakes his head.  “I’m sure you’ll meet soon enough.”

Raven smirks.  “Is she a golden girl?” 

Nick smirks back.  “Platinum titanium.”

Keith snorts.  “What does that mean?”

Nick sighs.  “She’s one of those people who go through life without a scratch––unlike you.”  Nick hums and seems to be appraising something.  “She’s got a good stride, no hesitation in that walk, a good musical step.  Extra points for her boots.”  

Keith has to agree.  He’d never noticed the erotic in a stride or a step before.  He has a new appreciation for his girlfriend’s walk.  Maybe that’s what’s bothering him.     

Lightning taps the water near the horizon.  Rain dances on the windows.  Thunder harrumphs from above.   

Raven speaks over the noise.  “So how was it with the girlfriend?  What’s miss platinum titanium’s name?”

“Her name’s Katy.”

Raven asks for her chair to be tilted back.  “She came all the way up here to see you.  Standing by her man.  That’s nice.”  Raven’s seat alarm lights up telling her it’s time for her body weight to be shifted.  Two attendants tend to this and it takes several minutes.   

There’s a sudden, violent strike and a hammer of thunder.  Someone behind them yelps, then laughs.  Nick cranes his neck to search the sky.  “What do you think?  One well-place strike oughta do it.  One good zap and I’ll regenerate just like Frankenstein’s beast.”  Nick signals Jerome with a tip of his head.  The man comes up behind them.  “Take me outside.”

Jerome thinks Nick’s kidding so he doesn’t respond.

“I’m serious.  Take me out there.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s just a little rain.  I don’t think anything worse could happen to me.”

“You can see it all from right here,” answers Jerome. 

“I don’t want to see it.  I want to be in it.  Take me outside.”

“Nick, that’s not a good idea.”

“Of course it’s not a good idea.  So what?  If I get fried, I promise I won’t implicate you.”  Nick must realize he’s not getting anywhere with this approach.  His eyes widen.  He breathes in urgent jets through his mouth.  “Jerome.  Listen to me.  You gotta get me out there.  If I could do it myself you wouldn’t have the right to stop me.”

“If you could do it yourself, you wouldn’t be here,” Jerome leans closer to Nick.  “It’s not safe.  You’re just gonna get wet and cold.”

Nick turns his head away and stares at the glass with contempt.  “Push me closer.”  Jerome doesn’t seem to understand.  “Closer to the window.  Please.” 

Jerome takes hold of the handles of Nick’s chair and moves him an inch closer to the window. 

 ”Come on, Jerome.  Closer.  Push me all the way to the glass.”

Jerome moves Nick a little closer.  A shot of lightning burns the air and a jolt of thunder takes the breath out of the room.  Jerome instinctively steps back.  The audience moans in awe. 

“Closer, Jerome.  Closer.” 

Jerome puts Nick a foot from the window and retreats.  “You’re on your own now, buddy,” the caretaker says with a laugh.  Jerome moves all the way to the opposite wall practically hiding behind a pillar.     

Nick’s eyes widen.  He bares his teeth to the storm.  If his hands could grip the chair’s armrests, his fingers would be knots of white.  He growls at the sky.  “Is that all you got?  I’m talking to you!  Come on!  Right here!  I’m right here!  Come on!”  He looks back to the others and jerks his head to get them to join him.  “Bring one right here!  Bring it here!  Here!  Here!”

Raven joins in the chant.  “Here!  Here!  Here!”  She asks to be moved closer to the window, but none of the staff come forward. 

More thunder.  Keith joins the chant, but unlike the other two, he has no desire to get any closer.  He imagines their will is strong enough to make it happen, and he braces for the next bolt to leap through the glass.  All the patients join in, a chorus of the paralyzed taunting fate.  The chant becomes a shout that competes with even the noise above. 

A flash comes, but it’s behind the building.  The patients boo.  The next strike is farther away, then another out at sea––all over the place but none near them. 

Nick yells to the sky.  “Look at me!  I’m right here.  I’m a sitting duck!  Are you afraid of me?” 

A grumble of departing thunder is his answer.  The heart of the storm rumbles inland and slinks away.  The patients are left with a persistent rain that matches the numbing hum of the forced air system, which is a perfect accompaniment to their mood.  Nick hovers in his chair like a man who is suddenly feeling the effects of anesthesia. 

One by one, the attendants return to take the patients back to their rooms.  Nick leaves with his head down muttering to himself.  Raven leaves humming Stormy Weather. 

Keith waits for the attendants to return for him.  The rain now falls in a near silent but continuous sheet.  From where he sits, he is able to see through the rain to the terrace below.  Chairs have been left out.  The tied-down umbrellas flutter in the wind.  In the midst of it is a seated figure.  It’s clearly a woman in a wheelchair, immobile as granite.  She’s facing the sea, placed where she is most vulnerable to the sky.  The rain falls, the wind blows, but none of it seems to bother Dr. Sother.  He watches as the woman absorbs all that falls without a care.  Jerome arrives to take him to bed.  Keith turns his head for one final glance of the doctor.  Her head is tipped to the sky, her mouth wide, her face contorted.  The rain falls.

 Jonathan Berzer has never appeared in TCR, but he’s an Antioch graduate, Citron whose fiction has appeared in Hopeful  Monster and the Madison Review. This excerpt is from his novel-in-progress, Antidote has restrained wit, haunted with strange characters that are trapped in a demimonde.

by Alexandria Montgomery

I severed myself from Alex the previous Spring when he threatened to kill my dogs back home in the Virgin Islands. “If you don’t find them a place to live I will be forced to have them killed. I simply can’t take care of them AND get treatments. I have throat cancer which you seem to have conveniently forgotten!” I was up in New York City earning my cosmetology license at the Learning Institute of Beauty Sciences among a sea of Lil’ Kim’s and instructors straight out of “Pink Flamingos.” I was broke and transient at the time, pet sitting in exchange for places to stay. I never tried to reason with him, never said goodbye.

The call came at 7:30a.m I was preparing a bowl of highlights for a powerful Fifth Ave blonde. It was my friend Jen in St Thomas.

“I’m sorry, Janey, Alex died.”

“Not funny Jen.”

“He died last night in Staten Island Hospital.”

“What are you talking about? That’s not possible.” 

“I’m sorry. He’s dead.”

“Alex is dead.” It was as if the marbled, mirrored salon I stood in suddenly grew twice its size and everything in it fell away.

It sunk in: Alex. Gone. Drowned in his blood. Alone in a hospital. As my trembling hand hung up the receiver, I felt the ground slip out from under me, and my insides crumbled. A thin veil formed itself around me, transporting me to the edge of a world that bordered on nothingness. I moved robotically through foils and bleach. My boss called out, “You were a double processed platinum blonde for 17 years. You can get through anything,” as I left.

I walked along Avenue A where we first met at the Park Inn Tavern in the fall of 1982. I was fourteen. I lived in Tompkins Square Park among the feverous energy of the Lower East Side. I layed claim to this bar as my living room; it was conveniently located across the street. It had the best jukebox in the neighborhood,  where a bouncer named “Ike the Dyke” affectionately referred to me as “Candy Hips.” Alex was a bartender and head bouncer. With so many characters bumping into each other every night there were plenty of fights to break up. He was infamous throughout the neighborhood as protector of the defenseless and enemy to the offending. He was also a poet who attended Exeter on a scholarship and earned a Masters from the School of Hard Knocks on the Lower East Side. He always looked out for me as a friend and eventually, as lovers.  Now 20 years later, I literally walked into his sister in front of that very spot. We hugged and cried harder. The funeral was at St Mark’s Church, a fitting tribute to a larger than life warrior poet. Standing room only, the love for Alex within that church that day was as big as him.

The next three years were a blur. I functioned against my will: Pull clothes on, cry, brush teeth, cry, wash face, cry, groom my hair, cry, catch the subway, don’t cry, go to work, cry in the bathroom, go home, cry, run and cry, sleep and cry, go to the coffee shop in the middle of the night to stop crying.

Do it all over again.

August 31^st, 2005, a friend called me, “Can you believe the government is saying it isn’t SAFE enough to go in and rescue those people?” I’d just gotten home from the “Save CBGB’s” rally in Washington Sq Park and had no idea what she was talking about. I went over to my neighbors to watch the news.  My mouth dropped as I witnessed live on TV human beings, American citizens-our neighbors! Waving from rooftops, wading through water, crying in sweltering masses, for help. How could this happen? Then I noticed all the animals in the frame. I knew that if help hadn’t come for these people then the animals didn’t stand a chance. Within a few days I was at the animal holding facility in Gonzalez, Louisiana where there were over 3,000 of them in pens for “livestock” auctions. There were only about fifty volunteers to walk, feed, and clean them. Every cage was deep in shit and piss. All animal eyes were big, hungry, scared and tired. 

In New Orleans there was an eerie silence. Occasionally the silence was pierced by the sound of a helicopter or a National Guard tank. No electricity sound, no bugs, no birds no rats, no life. It sounded how I felt. Must have been a beautiful city, too bad it’s just a memory now, I thought. Everything was in gradations of grey. I plodded through this black and white photograph of a dead city frantically looking for signs of life. I pushed doors through sludge and heavy debris, listening for sounds. I kept the corner of my eyes peeled for life.

The yards were full of their sunken decaying bodies on chains or simply dehydrated to death. Inside houses they drowned in carriers or their swollen dead bodies were lying on the floor next to their masters beds after trying to chew their way through their front door. Water killed them either too much or none. Nobody came to rescue them. Not soon enough anyway.

Late October, I was driving through St. Bernard Parish, just outside New Orleans. In St Bernard the water had risen up to 13 feet in less than 15 minutes drowning 180 people. Cows were found in trees, crypts from above ground cemeteries were scattered out onto the road and the oil refinery had bled its toxic sludge into the mire.  I passed abandoned malls of flooded crap that gave way to cul-de-sacs and trees all grey and dead. I parked just beyond them. Cars rested up in branches; boats balanced on rooftops. Desolate, I felt the isolation of my existence: the distant howls of feral dogs. Once domesticated, they now gathered in packs to stay alive in a dead zone. There was no human garbage because there were no humans. I set my dog traps at sunset. Putting my truck into drive, my insides unclenched for the first time since Alex’s death. I felt a strange kinship like I was home and no longer alone there on the edge of the world.

In Winter, people slowly trickled home. By spring, color breathed itself back into the city. Mardi Gras was celebrated to the bone. I was smitten by the myriad of residents fiercely rallying their sacred city back to life. New York City, though teeming with bodies and money and traffic, had been drained of life worth living for me. Rent had risen so high that entire communities were split apart. Whole neighborhoods were replaced by franchises and frat kids.

One spring evening, shortly after I’d moved down, I was on the phone with Alex’s mother. I’d taken a job right down the street from Baptist Hospital off Napoleon Ave. Joelle had lived in New Orleans in her early years and told me she had given birth to Alex in that very hospital. He had grown up to be a legend on the Lower East Side. He had bravely lived imperfectly and with his entire being and he had died a warrior poet. Alex, born in New Orleans. No wonder this place reeked of him. I felt him in the live oak trees, the beckoning brass bands, the proud multi-colored shotgun houses and the big red Louisiana sun.  I had come home to him; to his spirit, and I was going to stay a while.  

Alexandria Montgomery is a multi media artist with a focus on performance, video and installation. After participating in a national rescue effort during the aftermath of Katrina, Montgomery was inspired to move to New Orleans (in 2005) because she “felt an undercurrent of creativity within New Orleans and its people that was unshakeable.” Her current sound installation, “I know you’re disintegrating but I can’t see you” is on view at Prospect.Us Gallery and is a Satellite Project of the Prospect 2 New Orleans biennial. For more information go to: www.lexiemontgomery.com

It’s Awfully Late For Patti Michelle:  a non-fiction excerpt originally published in Fourteen Hills, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2011)

by Patrick O’Neil

I wake up in a bedroom. Not just any bedroom. It’s a little girl’s bedroom, with Echo & The Bunnymen and Duran Duran posters on the walls. There’s cute stuffed animals, a Hello Kitty bedspread, and a framed picture of a baby monkey dangling from a tree limb with “hang in there” written across the bottom. There’s also a studded leather jacket and Doc Martins on the floor mixed with my clothes.

I’m under the covers, naked, wondering how I got here, and what the fuck happened last night. I’m on tour with the Subhumans. I don’t know where the band is. They’re young guys. They’re from England. I don’t like to let them out of my sight. We’re crashing at an apartment in Kansas City some art student is letting us use while she’s moving out, or she’s moving in. I wasn’t listening when she told me. But the apartment is practically empty and there’s plenty of floor space for us to sleep on. Last night we had a night off. We went to a club to see The Dicks play. I remember saying hi to Gary Floyd, and talking with Debbie their manager while drinking PBR’s back stage. But that’s where my memories end.

I lie immobile staring at the ceiling. I hear noises. People talking. A distant clanking of pots and pans like someone’s in the kitchen. There’s a shower running somewhere. I think I hear a radio. I’m getting nervous. I don’t want to get up. I’m afraid to go out of the room. My head is splitting. I need drugs. I need a cigarette. I’ve got to take a piss.

There’s a window next to the bed. I reach over and push back the curtain. Outside there’s a lawn and trees and bushes and no other buildings. I’m in the fucking country. I hate the fucking country. I’m really nervous now.

I grab my pants and search the pockets until I find three Valiums in a small Ziploc baggie. Thank god I didn’t do them all last night. I look around but there’s nothing to drink. I try to conjure up some spit. But I’ve got cottonmouth so bad there is none and I dry swallow the pills. Stuck in my throat they start to dissolve and taste like shit. But they’re in me. They can melt on my tongue for all I care. I just want them to work. Take the edge off.

I’m searching my leather jacket for cigarettes when the door opens. A cute girl comes in drying her hair with a towel. She looks to be about 16. I’m hoping she’s at least 18.

“You’re finally up,” she says.

“Hey,” I say, checking her out trying to remember who she is. And then, after failing, to avoid feeling any more awkward, I ask, “What time is it?”

“It’s ten in the morning,” she says. “It’s awfully late for Patti Michelle to be getting up.”

“Who the fuck is Patti Michelle?”

“I’m Patti Michelle,” she says and slumps on the end of the bed. Her eyes moist like she’s about to cry.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m no good with names and sorta slow in the morning.”

Patti Michelle perks up and smiles. “That’s okay. You hungry?” 

“I could use a cigarette,” I say and reach for my pants and stand to put them on. I can feel her watching while I grab my t-shirt. The fucking shirt smells like sweat and beer. But what choice do I have – so I slip it over my head.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“My house,” says Patti.

“Your house,” I repeat and then feel better. Like possibly this is her house and maybe she has roommates who are out there doing things that roommates do.

“Where’s your house?” I ask.

“Shawnee Heights. Shawnee Heights, Kansas,” she says.

I have no idea where Shawnee Heights, Kansas is. I was in Kansas City, Missouri last night. I’m wondering if I drove here. I’m wondering if I’ve driven an underage girl across state lines. I’m wondering if we had sex. I’m thinking we did. I’m afraid to ask. I’m thinking of the Mann Act and Chuck Berry getting nailed for transporting a fourteen-year-old girl across state lines for the purpose of immoral acts, and going to jail for two years at the height of his career.

“Did I drive here?” I say to Patti.

“Yeah,” she says. “You were so wasted I was amazed you could.”

Now I’m feeling better. Screw the Mann Act. I have the van. I can escape.

“Come on. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat,” says Patti.

“There a restaurant near by?” I ask, hoping we can get out of here and head back to find the band.

“Don’t need a restaurant,” she says. “Mom’s cooking.”

I’m suddenly very nervous. And then the Valiums kick in. 

The hallway is dark, there’s deep pile green shag carpet and wallpaper with big pink flowers. I see the bathroom and tell Pattie I gotta take a piss. But don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave me alone.

The bathroom is blue. I mean every-fucking-thing is blue: tiles, walls, towels, even the goddamn hand soap. There’s some blue doily-ass curtains, and one of those annoying carpeted toilet seat covers that you have to hold up or else it’ll fall down.

I check myself in the mirror. I’m a fucking mess. My hair is all over the place, sticking out in different directions. There’s darkness under my eyes. I look gaunt, but I like that. Last night was the first real sleep I’ve had in weeks.

I lift the blue carpeted toilet seat and take a piss. The stench of my unwashed body envelops the room, killing the air freshener. I could use a shower. Instead I run some water in the sink, splash my face, and spike my hair with some blue liquid hand soap.

The hallway’s empty, Patti is gone. I hear noises at the end of the hall, there’s people talking. I think I hear Patti’s voice. I walk into the kitchen. A woman stands at the stove frying sausages. She’s wearing skintight leopard print capris, a frilly apron, and high heels. Her hair’s big, ratted out, and bleached blonde. A tough looking older guy sits at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. A cigarette dangles from his lips and he doesn’t even look up or acknowledge I’m there. Next to him is a kid in a football jersey. He’s clocking me heavy. I nod. He sneers. Patti is nowhere to be seen.

The woman turns with the frying pan in her hand. “Oh, you must be Patti’s friend,” she says and everyone looks at me. “You hungry?” she asks, the spatula poised in midair. 

“I could use a cigarette,” I say.

“Hank,” the woman yells. “Give Patti’s friend a cigarette.”

Hank lowers his paper and looks at me. He looks like a cop, or a DEA agent. He’s a fucking bad ass, or at least he used to be. “Here,” he says and tosses me a pack of Marlboros. I fucking hate Marlboros. But what the hell.

“Got a light?” I say as I pull one free of the pack. He slides a brass Zippo my way and I spark up. When I push the lighter back I notice Semper Fi etched in its side.

“Sit, ” says the woman, indicating a chair at the table. I reluctantly take a seat by sneering boy. I’m wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. Is this some sort of demented Leave It To Beaver sitcom? And where the hell is Patti?

“You in a band?” asks sneering boy.

“Work for a band,” I say, and notice dad as he raises an eyebrow.

“What do ya mean work for a band?” says dad.

“I’m a road manager. I manage bands while they’re on tour.”

“You make money doing that?” he asks.

“I make a living,” I say flicking the cigarette ash in the ashtray. 

“How much is making a living?” he says, and looks at me all intense.

I have to think about this. Like how much do I really make? Somewhere around three hundred a week. Which barely pays for a maintenance Heroin habit. Although I also buy a lot of pills. Then there’s the occasional Speed for the all night drives, and bad food at truck stops. But I don’t live anywhere. I don’t have to pay rent. I drink free at the clubs. My overhead is sort of low.

“Thirty thousand a year,” I lie.

The dad’s expression changes. He looks more relaxed, like he’s seeing me from a new perspective. Like I’m no longer just a scumbag punk rocker at his breakfast table. A scumbag punk rocker that banged his teenage daughter, and is now smoking his cigarettes. Nope. Now I’m a scumbag punk rocker that makes bank.

“Got a beer?” I ask.

I’ve chosen Patrick O’Neil’s excerpt “It’s awfully late for Patti Michelle” because it not only contains the elements I look for in a non-fiction submission but the writing is edgy, effortless and rolls along like an X song you can’t help but sing. Patrick is an Antioch graduate whose work has appeared on TCR. 

Patrick O’Neil writes nonfiction and makes short films. His first book, a memoir titled, “Dopesick” is being published by 13E Note Editions, Paris France. His essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, most notably: Fourteen Hills, New Plains Review, Weave Magazine, The Whistling Fire, Word Riot, and The Coachella Review. His short punk themed documentaries have been rejected from every low budget film festival in America. He assistant teaches English comp at a community college to students who stare at him as if he is speaking in tongues. He currently lives in Hollywood California and holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. You can find more of his writing online at: http://patrickseanoneil.blogspot.com
 

On March 15^th 1979, Juan Cortazar disappeared from Jorge Rafeal Videla High School in Buenos Aires. He was my history teacher that year, and the last thing any of us ever heard from him was when he said, in the middle of fifth period, that he was finished with Argentina and its god-damn Guerra Sucia.  He told us to close our books and, instead of a lecture on Gran Colombia, he lectured about battlefields and empires and the landscape of collapsed empires, which resembled ruins and labyrinths inhabited only by zombies. He sat on his desk and calmly told us that we were zombies, who wandered like zombies, who could only remember with terrible electric shock the horrors of how an empire was wasted away, who could only dream of the year 3021, which is to say, he told us we were zombies who could only dream of time when the world would be covered entirely by a Prussian-blue sea. He said he was finished with Argentina and he was going to Mexico City and if we had any sense, if we had any god-damn sense at all, we would do the same. That was the last thing Juan Cortazar said to us, and all I know is that I should’ve listened to him.

The strongest aspect of this submission is the clear control of voice. I can hear this teacher speaking, can picture (though the physicality of the teacher is never mentioned) and old professor of mine, can hear his voice reading Zapata’s words. And though it’s a first person story, it doesn’t give in to the temptation to live solely within the narrator’s head. Instead, he allows the narrator to tell us about someone else. The only time we truly see inside the narrator’s head is in the final line: “I should’ve listened to him.” This is another example of a writer who understands how to let tension and unease last beyond the final punctuation. Regret is powerful, a universally understood emotion that sits, in some aspect, within each of us. And it is that regret that we hold to here, that we bond with, that we latch on to. But we only do so because we trust Zapata as an author. The line “any sense at all” is a perfect title in that it rings the truest. It is the line that best encompasses the entirety of the work, and suggests an eternity beyond it.

Wit, creepiness and awkward intimacy.  I love memoir that contains emotional risk like Lidia Yunkavitch’s memoir Chronology of Water and James Brown’s The Los Angeles Diaries.

-Antonia Crane,
Fiction and CNF Editor, The Citron Review

Patience

To have
just the time
and the good luck
to sit and watch
all one day
some thing
that never
moves.

That’s how
I remember
Morocco
and the hands
of the old Turk
drooling saliva
and a little
life yet.

Hunger

She grips the headboard and
braces against his thrusting,
abandoning her mind the way
she surrendered her soul

not an hour ago to the guy
who bought her a hamburger
with an extra large order of fries,
encouraging her to eat, eat, eat

cause you never know when
you’re gonna be hungry again.

Curt Ericksen’s poems penetrated the inner world with well crafted and compacted language. I still remember reading Curt’s poetry on my phone as I walked down to the beach on a sunny afternoon. His work immediately inspired me to write. His poetry was like a match lighting the stove on a cold morning … I needed his poetry. His work reminded me why I spent thousands on a MFA when there’s not a slight chance it will pay off. Curt’s poem “Patience” is just two sentences, but in those two lines I feel what the narrator feels as if I were in Morocco watching the “old Turk.” I immediately was lost in “the good luck / to sit and watch / all one day / some thing / that never / moves.” Artist Paul Cezanne once said, “Here, on the river’s verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.” Curt’s line connected to Cezanne’s words and the way an artist takes in the world, studies it, and shapes it into a new work of art. Curt’s poem “Patience” hooked me as a reader and as an editor with the way he couched the observation made in the second line with the lens of having the “good luck” to be an observer with the time to see another person so completely. The second line: “That’s how / I remember / Morocco / and the hands / of the old Turk / drooling saliva / and a little / life yet” gives me a sharp picture of suffering in Morocco, but leaves me with a thread of hope in the last few words. Curt manages to pack in the intrigue of mentioning Morocco with a vision of suffering and a glimmer of hope. This type of tension in such a short space made it easy to say “yes” to his work.

Even a year after accepting Curt’s work for our Fall 2010 issue, I find that it still resonates with me. In Curt’s poem “Hunger” I was struck by the last two lines and how starkly it captures the essence of hunger in its most basic and instinctual form. While hunger starts out like a typical poem about sex, it reaches much deeper, easing down in with simple language. It doesn’t try to be grand, doesn’t try to entertain me with choice words that sound poetic, but the language resonates with meaning and plants itself in my memory because it is so familiar. I am inclined to say “yes” to sex, but I’m searching for something much deeper.

Harold wiggles into position at the top of the slide. He scoots his skinny butt forward, grabs the rails. He’s only three, but he holds on with such force his knuckles go white. That’s how he gets momentum. The push-off, so he can rocket into our backs.

“Mommy’s turn,” he says.

My wife shakes her head, looks around the yard. We have a plastic basketball hoop set up by the shed, a pitching screen by the hollyhock. But Harold is hell-bent on this new game he’s discovered. He’s itching for a little physical hurt tonight, and we play along.

“Don’t chicken out now,” I tell my wife, rubbing my back in pancake-circles to sooth the last blow.

Dark, wildebeest-shaped clouds crowd the horizon. The sun has just gone down, and in its place a Harvest moon, pale as old hay, hangs above the hills to the west. My wife’s just come home from work. She’s still wearing the black pleated skirt; silk stockings shroud her calves. Her hair is out of the corporate bun and rakes past her shoulders in a way that breaks my heart. Since her confession, I don’t want to find her attractive. But that’s nearly impossible tonight.

She bends down, slips into her seat at the base of the slide. Her hips brush metal. She braces for impact.

Harold pushes off and the slide shakes. He lays flat, his feet pointed straight for his target, and bullets into my wife’s back. She leans forward, drops her head between her knees. “Christ,” she moans.

For a moment, I feel pity.

“Daddy’s turn,” Harold says. He giggles and runs back around to the ladder.

I sit down again on the slide. My legs—long and bony—are bent at the knee. The knobby curves of my knee caps poke at my pant legs. Never hungry now, I spend too much time on our front porch smoking, and then wake in the middle of the night, breathless. You’d think all of this wouldn’t take its toll on me as severely as it has. After all, it wasn’t that long ago I had my own sins to confess.

“Go easy on Daddy, Harry,” I say.

Harold looks like a little gray gnome up there in the twilight. He holds onto the sides of the slide, rocks back and forth with menacing fluidity. “No go easy,” he says.

My wife laughs, a little sardonically I think.

Harold shouts, “Here I come!” The base of the slide rumbles, and when his feet hit, I moan and try to hold in most of the pain. But he’s gotten me good. Hacksaw to the spine.

“Time to go in,” I snap. Still sitting, I manage to pull Harry out from behind me. I’m not sure if it’s anger, pain, or both, but I drop him onto the Saint Augustine a little too hard. He loses his balance and tumbles.

“You okay, Harry?” I ask.

He ignores me, gets up un-phased the way kids do, and starts running circles around the avocado tree we planted when we first got married and moved into the house four years ago. My turn is over but I still don’t want to get up. It isn’t just the pain in my back. It’s an overall feeling of weight.

“What say we go in and eat?” I say.

“Let him play,” my wife says.

“How was your day?” I ask.

“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t make eye contact.

Harold comes rushing back around to the slide. “Mommy’s turn,” he says again.

“Want to go in now?” I ask my wife. I stand and pull my arm around and rub at my tailbone.

“I want him to be outside. We’ve kept him cooped up too long.” She’s referring to the seemingly endless conversations we have lately, some beginning placidly, some not, but very few ending with resolution; Harold, through all of it, left to his own devices: cartoons, books, or playing in his room by himself.

“I suppose that’s my fault?”

“Partly,” she says. “And partly mine.”

“We’ve lost track of things.”

“Priorities,” she says.

“Love,” I say.

“I never lost track of that,” my wife says, taking her seat. “It just hasn’t had the right target lately.”

Harold climbs the ladder. At the top of the slide he stands up and spreads his arms out so far he begins to teeter.

“Be careful,” I say.

“You want Mommy and Daddy’s turn?” he asks, moving his outstretched arms up and down, tipping airplane wings.

“Just mommy,” I say. “Daddy needs a break.”

“Mommy and Daddy together,” Harold says.

He sits back down, pounds the sides of the slide with his fists.

It’s not easy, but I manage to straddle the slide and push in behind her. We haven’t been too big on proximity these days, and I wait for her to tense up, or blow air from her cheeks. But she seems to take Harold’s request in stride. Mostly, I guess, because I’ll take the brunt of the blow. I reach up and place my hand lightly on her shoulder. A smell lifts off of her, something new and yet familiar, a breezy, salty scent that lingers a moment, then turns musty, earthy. It’s pleasant, whatever it is, and I drop my hands down around her waist; before I know it, there’s a lifting in my pants. I try to shift, but it’s no use. Then I give into it, let it rise, almost hope she feels it. I wrap my arms tighter around her. Even as the slide begins to rumble and I get ready for what’s coming, I know that I will hold on a good deal longer, the three of us down at the bottom of the slide, entangled in the wreckage.

There is so much in these 965 words.  Regret, heartache, pain, responsibility, hope, longing, anger, remorse, little bits of forgiveness, a child’s happiness superimposed on adult sorrow.  Adultery may be a theme that is pretty over played, but Fulgoni approaches it from a different angle by giving us Harold and the image of him smashing into his parents.  This image was key for me, as it gave the piece physicality and motion and allowed me to be in the space with the character instead of trapped inside someone’s head.  The fact that the parents take the loving abuse of their child so willingly, as a self-inflicted penance for their joint crimes, is a testament to their shared guilt and hope for redemption.  I love that Fulgoni leaves so much ultimately unknown and that he forces the reader to dwell in just that moment with the family – so that everyone is held captive together waiting for Harold, the collision, and the possibility of a future that includes reconciliation.  But what makes this piece of flash-fiction resonant, what seperates from many other similarly themed works, is the punch to the gut last line.  The kind of line that pops up and recites itself over and over again in my head, then nestles back down, but won’t leave.