Issue 19 Cover

 (click to enlarge)

While decorating for Christmas this year, I found a toucan ornament that I've never seen before. I thought I'd share and take a pretty cover photo in one fell swoop.

Issue 19 Table of Contents

Issue 19 Cover

Editrice Note: Nothing but Cheer!
Depression on the Hunt, Lisa Mrock
A Better Man, Mark Plummer
Stockholm Syndrome, Stephanie Lane Sutton
Watchdog, Denney E. Marshall
Speechless, Alexander Kenney
Aisle Seat, Miriam Sagan
Teacher Man, Mitch Grabois
The Subtlety of Patterns, Mike Cluff
Trying to Hold on to Wrath, Rose Mary Boehm
Transmutation, Rose Mary Boehm 
Tonight, Tonight, Won't be Just Any Night; Rick Hartwell

Eight Haiku, Denny E. Marshall 

Ink of Loss, Denny E. Marshall 

Just Pink, Danny Earl Simmons 

Muse, Danny Earl Simmons 

Issue 19 Contributor Bios

Nothing but Cheer!

Hi all!
    We've hit issue 19 and man it was like pulling teeth! Nothing wanted to go right, but at least it's up now and is hopefully problem-free. 2012 was a rough year for The Toucan between the neglect due to graduation, losing an editrice, low number of submissions, the passing of a dear friend and contributor, and the infamous egg drop soup incident. But we're still here bringing you the best writing we can find, and I'll be damned if that's not why we're all here.
    There is a lot of sadness is this issue. I didn't mean for it to be a bummer, but that's how it fell together. The holiday season is supposed to be a happy occasion, but a number of people do have a certain melancholy about the season. That's not to say it's all doom and gloom. Even the sad stories have very happy writers. This issue deals with death, loss, depression, wolf attacks, and annoying people. That's not to say there won't be any laughs. You know us, we can't be serious for too long!
    So, please enjoy the issue. There will be another one out in mid February and it will be issue 20, so I want to try to do something  special. We'll see, though. Thanks to everyone who has been reading The Toucan since issue 1, those who have just found us today, and everyone in between. Thanks to our submitters, because I couldn't keep going without you. I hope everyone has a big ol' party some time this month and has a drink for me and one for the bird as well (though it would rather smoke cigars!)
Warmly,
Editrice Laura

Depression on the Hunt, Lisa Mrock

(A continuation of A Guide to Depression)

     I wasn’t as depressed as I was before. I wasn’t constantly thinking of solutions to making myself feel better and I stopped fucking crying all the damn time. But whether it was loneliness, family issues, or sexual frustration, I still felt like shit.
    What I needed was a big change.
    I quit my job at Starbucks and told my roommate I wanted to move out and find a new roommate to live with. She cried and told me she’d stop eating all of my yogurt. I laughed at the thought of her thinking that was the reason I was leaving. I’d let her think that though. It was easier than explaining that I needed big changes to shake myself out of my depression. So I said, “You always ate my food. I need to live with someone new. Someone with more respect for other people’s property.” She cried again. I told her to sit in front of my “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” poster. I told her it’d make her feel better. 
    What I had to do was find someone to be my new roommate. I called my friend Ron to see if he’d be interested. He said he wanted to fuck me a few months ago, but he never did anything, and the one time he was supposedly free for the day I decided to sit on a street divider in the frost-bitten dead ass of winter. But I haven’t been attracted to him ever since I saw him take his shirt off at the beach. And he has a girlfriend now, so things are strictly platonic. When I told him my situation of how grating my roommate’s personality normally was, he said he would room in with me.
    Next thing I needed was a job. Since I hate almost everyone around me who can breathe, I wanted the least amount of human interaction as possible, though I shortly found this wasn’t feasible.
    I applied to job after job online - supermarkets, retail chains, fast food joints, spas, tanning salons, movie theaters, and museums. I received no responses, not even from the museums. They clearly all thought a barista can’t be good at anything else, though I don’t see how much experience I need to be an illustration model at the Art Institute or a janitor - I mean “floor care worker” - at a McDonald’s.
    Applying to jobs online through their respective websites turned out worse than I expected, so I took to the streets, hoping people were as shallow as I thought they were and would hire me based on looks.
    I went up and down Belmont, Clark, Lincoln, and Halsted. Here was my process of applying to jobs in person.

1. Check the windows for “Help Wanted” signs.
2. Go up to the doorway whether or not I see one.
3. Pull out my resume that’s more naked than a porn star during working hours.
4. Take one step forward while the rest of my body wants to back away even though my head is telling me to go in.
5. Run away hoping no one saw me standing in front of a doorway going back and forth like someone in mid-seizure and hope they think I have a nervous tick or cerebral palsy.

    I came home to my roommate coming out of my room drying her cheeks, rubbing her eyelids raw. “Crying in front of that poster really does help.” She smiled, opened the fridge, and opened one of my yogurts.
    Later than night, my phone rang.
    “Hannah?”
    “Ron?”
    “Change of plans. I’m really sorry, but, I can’t be your roommate.”
    I should’ve expected this. He’s a bit of a scatterbrain. “Why?”
    “Ehhh... okay. So, I have a girlfriend.”
    “I know this.”
    “And we’ve been together for a while.”
    “It’s only been two months but okay.”
    “Thing is you’re... you’re really pretty.”
    I was more confused than flattered. “So?”
    “I can’t be your roommate.”
    “So what you’re saying is I’m too attractive to be your roommate?”
    “Well, no. But...” He said it in the same tone people use when they say, “I’m not a racist, but...” He went on to say, “But, you see, I have a girlfriend...”
    “I know. You said it two minutes ago.”
    “...and it’ll be hard... because you’re pretty and... I’m... I might be...”
    This made me angry. “What? Tempted? You might be tempted to fuck me? Or tempted to want to fuck me? Tempted even though you had the chance to fuck me many times? Tempted even though you have a girlfriend who you made your girlfriend after one date where you guys decided not to relate to each other through the use of genitalia? Tempted even though you do nothing but spend every day with her while you put your arm around her shoulders and she puts her hand on your knee or your thigh or wherever else women put their hands on men to show both affection and ownership? You might be tempted even though we’re just friends and have been just friends for longer than you’ve even been dating her?”
    There was a pause. “Well, no. But...”
    I hung up on him. I called my friend Jen to see if she’d be my roommate. She agreed.
    Applying online and not-applying in person wasn’t working. I was still jobless and I was behind in my rent. After my roommate came out of my room, she said she’d pay my rent to make up for the eaten yogurts. She added, sniffling, “I like crying at the ceiling better than the poster.” She scooped a spoonful of my yogurt and poked it in her mouth. “I think we should invite friends and have a sleepover! We could watch ‘Pride and Prejudice’! What do you think?” I slowly retreated to my room and found a video online where James    Deen fucks the shit out of everyone.
    From the classifieds, I went to Craigslist. There was an offer for surrogates. You could make thirty-five grand if you were between the ages of 21 to 36 and were in good physical health. I damned myself for being only twenty. Just six more months.
    From there, I applied to be a server, sales clerk, cashier, movie extra, and a nanny. I hate kids and I haven’t babysat for one since this four-year-old bit my ankles, but for fourteen an hour, I’d treat a kid like royalty.
    I needed to be 21 to be a server, I was overqualified to be a sales clerk, underqualified to be a cashier, the movie extra thing was for a porno, and the parents of the kid who needed to be babysat for three weeks decided not to leave their kid behind on their third honeymoon.
    An ad for a strip club popped up, one I’d heard of. I hoped it was different from what I’d heard, that it was now a nice strip club where the strippers are sober, but when I got there, it was run by a racist Bosnian who kept asking me if I was “mulatto.” I don’t think he understood I was there for a job because after a large confusing conversation I half understood, he somehow swindled fifteen bucks from me and led me to an auditorium which was dark, the stage being an exception. I sat next to a guy while watching women stumble around onstage plucking their clothes off like picking dirty laundry up off the floor. Since there wasn’t much to do, I made conversation with the man next to me. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a conversation with a man who was masturbating.
    “You come here often?”
    He gave a breathy, “Yeah.”
    “Do you have a favorite girl or something or do you come here for the hell of it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “My father used to work here in the 80s. My parents told me all about it. The coked up strippers would stumble onto the stage and he would control the lights and make them different colors. I bet it confused the women. They were drugged out of their minds.” I watched a girl roll her ankle and slip. She lied there half-naked while a stagehand came out and poked her with his shoe. “Things haven’t changed much.”
    “Yeah,” he said, a glopping noise providing a background to his response. He wasn’t much of a talker.
    I checked my cell and saw I’d missed a call from Jen. When I got home, I called her back.
    “Hello?”
    “Hannah?”
    “Jen?”
    “Change of plans. I’m really sorry, but I can’t let you move in.”
    I should’ve expected this. She’s always been a flake. “Why?”
    “Well... okay. So, I’ve got a boyfriend.”
    I went in my room and sat at the foot of my bed. Not again. Not a-fucking-gain.
    “I know this.”
    “And... I’ve been with him for a while.”
    “It’s only been five weeks but okay.”
    “And the thing is... you’re really pretty.”
    Yep. It was happening. A-fucking-gain.
    “And I trust him and all that, but it’s like, put me next to you, and who do you think guys’ll rather look at?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “They were always staring. And it wasn’t at me.”
    This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t happening.
    “So I’m too pretty to be your roommate?” I didn’t wait for her to say, “Well, no, but...” I went straight for her throat. “So what? You think your boyfriend will be tempted? And tempted to what? Tempted to fuck me? Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe you don’t trust him like you say you do. Maybe you’re insecure in your relationship, so insecure you determine who your roommate will be by physical features rather than whether or not they can read, write, string a sentence together, or have an intelligence greater than an atomic quark. Maybe you’re so insecure because of the rumors you’ve heard about your boyfriend, rumors everyone’s known about for months about how it takes only a bottle of cognac to get him drunk enough to sleep with anyone regardless of gender or hygiene. Is that it? Or are you just threatened by any other female with a pair of tits?” 
    There was a pause. “Well...”
    I hung up on her. It seemed like a lot of my friends were like that lately.
    I tossed my phone in the pile of clothes by my dresser and lied back on my bed next to my roommate, crying at the ceiling again.
    “I’m not moving out,” I said. “Might go back to Starbucks. I don’t know. But I’m staying.”
    She was still fucking crying, harder now. Thank God I kept that shit to myself back then because if I were my roommate I’d’ve killed me.
    “Why’re you crying? I thought you’d be happy.”
    She sniffled and wiped her upper lip. “I am. I’m glad you’re staying. It’s... I need to do this.”
    “Do what?”
    She cleared her throat. “Cry.” She swallowed forcefully and gasped. “It’s nice to get it all out.” She scrubbed her eyes with her thumbs. “People think I’m happy all the time. They think because I smile and say a friendly ‘hello’ to them and hop around like a cheerleader that I’m always happy. But... I seem so happy because I think if I act happy, I’ll finally be happy.”
    Fake it ‘til you make it. I’ve tried that.
    “I just wanna be happy, so I act it, but it’s not working. This works though.” She wiped her cheeks. “For now.”
    I liked her like this. She always acted so cheery and this made her seem almost human.
    It was nice, but it couldn’t kick out the thoughts about me, my friends, the shitstain called our lives. I stayed in bed next to her, thinking. I couldn’t get a job, I still hated my brother (except I no longer have a problem with it), still sexually frustrated, and still lonely. Really fucking lonely. Then there were my fucked up friends, the ones in relationships, the ones who whore relationships through every social media platform available.
    People who take their relationships at face value write comments with words of wisdom like, “Aw, you guys are adorable!” and, “You guys go so well together!” Me and everybody else think, “Aw, you guys are trying so hard!” and “You guys overcompensate so well together!” those of us who know their secrets - who’s cheated on who, who’s had a fight about what, who’s about to end their relationship - those of us who know what’s going to happen.
    When a friend enters a new relationship I think, “They’re going to break up.” It’s hard not to when you’ve been right every single time. My friends are like me. They’re in their early twenties. They’re all fucked in the head. And, like me, they’re unstable. They will break up with their boyfriends and girlfriends, whether in a month, a year, or a few, because they’re young, they’re insecure, they make mistakes, they don’t learn from them, and they won’t until it’s too late. The worst part is I can’t warn any of them because they’ll just say I’m bitter. I’m going to end up that way with the rest of them, but at least I’m prepared for it.
    I lied on my sides and drew my knees up to my chin. The pit in my chest, the one that hits me and rattles my ribs, that appears after weeks of suppressing the urge to scream so harsh and loud my voice goes hoarse, hasn’t been around lately, but it’s been replaced by a sick twisting, like my lungs are folding in on themselves. I just had to focus on the present. Go with whatever happens. Take things as they come and don’t ask questions. Yeah, that sounds nice.
    Besides, I had something to look forward to.
    Just six more months...

A Better Man, Mark Plummer

    He's fully awake now. Graham's feet steadily push the path away behind him and the crunching of the loose gravel is satisfying. His legs bend, rise and straighten, bend, rise and straighten.
    An ambulance's siren comes from the Wimbledon end of Martin Way and speeds further into Morton. Its child-like screaming passes over the common and through the fur trees which line the little gardens. Perhaps he'll take her to the countryside, to his parents' holiday cottage in Cornwall. The city never lets you forget you're in it. That you're little more than a red blood cell moving through it; that you're just using and carrying the things it needs to survive.
    He had excelled at biology in high school and very nearly became a doctor. If he had read medicine instead of accounting he would probably be in better shape now. Perhaps he would have grown equally as bored of medicine after twenty-five years, but he doubts it. But, then again, if he'd become a doctor he'd never have met her.
    There's a twinge in his side. He expects it's a stitch but he's ignoring it. He comes up towards the finish of his second lap. He guesses the path around the garden is about two hundred metres long, but it's actually a hundred. As he comes towards the gates, his starting line, an old man in a flat cap with a Labrador enters the garden.
    The old man shouts a good morning as he lets the dog off its lead.
    Graham's usually skeptical about this kind of thing, but he grits his teeth and smiles.
    'Hello.'
    'Off for a run?'
    'Yes.' He feigns a laugh for no reason. 'Yeah.'
    'Lovely morning for it. Bit cold.'
    'Yes, lovely. Bit cold.'
    He continues on past the old man who pokes at a dead rose bush with his walking stick. Graham's suddenly aware of his Lycra top and his little shorts. He pulls his shoulders back and puffs his chest out. He thinks he can feel his lungs against his ribs. It makes him think of the white cotton membrane Nicola wears in the office. In his mind he watches a camera panning down through her curves with the shirt pulling tight against her body. As it reaches her waist he rewinds back up to the shoulder and plays it again. His imagination runs like a VCR. Nicola's would work like a DVD: newer, brighter, faster, better. He had used his first paycheck with the company to buy his first video player, his first; the first of anyone he knew. He can remember the first colour television on his street. She would have grown up with one in her room.
    He begins to think he has no hope with her at all. He's too old. He's outmoded.
    Graham tries to push the thought from his mind. He pushes his feet down harder. His shoes aren't made for running. The soles are too thin. He can feel every gravel on the path pushing into his feet. He ignores it. He tries to think of how the exercise will help him be the better man he needs to be to woe Nicola. Better man, the phrase had been rolled out so many times in his youth. He used it in the break-up with Marie at university, and with Emma, and Cathy. He had been something of a heartthrob back then. It all stopped when he met Jackie.
    How terrible she had looked this morning. He had been repulsed when he saw her flapping her great arm at the alarm clock like a lame albatross. He had walked to her side of the bed and switched it off. She had snorted and fallen straight back to sleep. His running kit had been left on the chair next to the door. Jackie had excitedly bought it yesterday after he told her his intention (if only she knew).
    He smiles at the thought and has to swallow a laugh. He passes the gate again and is closing in on the old man, who's bending and pulling weeds from the circular flowerbeds. The old man must hear his feet approaching on the gravel and stands up and lifts his cap.
    'Ha, ha. Hello, again.'
    'Hello.'
    'Going well.'
    'Yeah. Not bad.'
    'Good, good. See you again. Ha, ha.'
    Graham smiles, nods and continues past him.
    The soles of his feet really ache now. He has to concentrate. He needs to keep his mind on the finished product. Bet-ter-man. Bet-ter-man. Bet-ter-man. He marks each syllable by slamming his foot into the path. He may even use 'better man' to start things with Nicola. He'll walk across the office to her desk. She'll look up at his newly svelte body and nervously twitch her nose. She'll blink her big eyes. You've made me a better man. And then he'll kiss her. Simple. Brilliant. Flawless.
    A pain hits his right side. He stops. It's like a knife that digs in then slashes his side open. It may be the karma of his fisherman grandfather coming round to haunt him. He laughs then yelps in agony. He grits his teeth. The pain intensifies. His appendix has burst. He bends and puts his hands on his knees. It starts to disappear. There's something damp dancing on his hamstring. He jumps around and the Labrador's nuzzling him.
    'Ha, ha. He likes you,' the old man shout across to him.
    'Yeah,' he says and tries to step back from the dog.
    'Tough going is it?'
    'No. Well, I'm just getting back from an injury.'
    'Oh, that's a shame. Still, nice and quiet in here for you to rehabilitate yourself.'
    'Yeah, look, I'd better get on.'
    'Of course, sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you. Just thought you looked like you needed a break. Here, Roger. Come on, boy.'
    The dog bounds back to the old man and Graham sets off again. The pain creeps back within a few steps. He considers stopping. He pushes on and tries to convince himself that he'll get a second-wind at any moment. He curses his mental weakness and his lack of stamina. He imagines making love with Nicola, she'd just call it 'sex'. She's half his age but probably twice as experienced. Would he keep up with her? Maybe he'd get a stitch half-way through.
    His side is throbbing unbearably. His breath is heavy. His soles ache. He's approaching the old man. He needs to hide the pain. He grits his teeth.
    'That's it keep at it,' the old man says and wills him on with his stick.
    Graham nods. A bead of sweat rolls off his forehead into his eye. His eyelashes flinch. The old man winks back.
    Graham's mouth fills with saliva. He needs to spit. He tries to but it doesn't separate from his mouth and it just dribbles onto his Lycra top. The stitch annexes his stomach. He's got to keep going. But he's barely moving. He can hardly lift his legs. He tries to think of anything, anything but running. He looks at the plants in the flowerbed. There's a rose bush, a heather, some kind of miniature fir. They're all brown and dead and not giving out any oxygen.
     He stops. He puts his hands on his knees and tries to catch his breath but the air's too thick to swallow. The back of his throat is icy. The saliva's freezing his throat and lungs shut. He's going to die. He's going to die, dressed as a fool with sore feet and an aching side in a grotty little London park. He thinks of all the beautiful places he's seen in his life and the places he'd rather be the last he ever sees. He sees Jackie at home with a bacon sandwich and an ashtray ready for him. He sees Nicola with a sesame seed biscuit and an eternity of early morning runs.
    'It's not worth it,' he says aloud. 'She's not worth it.'
    His breath gets a little easier and the stitch begins to subside. He turns to walk back home.
    'Caught you again. Ha, ha. Giving up? Never mind, better luck tomorrow.'
    'Fuck off.'

Stockholm Syndrome, Stephanie Lane Sutton

    The kitchen of a 4 A.M. crab shack across the street from a country western bar is not unlike Hell, diarrhea, and the myth of Syphysus. In Florida, the men in the kitchen are sweating, their arms so full of taut muscle, their bodies working like machines. Exhaustion becomes like a drug so hard they forget about death.
    It’s the Fourth of July. The floor of the kitchen is two inches deep of potato skins, crab legs, and half-melted blood-soaked ice from the flanks of steak melting in the open freezer. Some men are two hundred pounds of hairnet beard and Mom tattoos. Some men look like boys, perpetual high school drop-outs, only getting more skinny and adding more notches in their belts.
    At the crab shack, most cooks can't cut it after only a few hours. Some last a few days only to disappear. If you make it a month then you're pretty much family, after Joe says so. He's been holding his post for two years. They called him the Rabbit. 6’2’’ behind the grill in his Pantera t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, dark blue jeans, stark and stiff, not a one sweat stain even as the others are squirting corn syrup down their pants to soothe their nutsacks.
    Torta had been working the line for three weeks that night. Real name, Louisa. Fifth day on the job, Rabbit christened her after the sandwiches from the Texmex place on the corner she came in eating every day.
    “Hey, what’s that, torta?”
    “Yup.”
    “That’s what they call your ass?”
    Round in the middle, and when she sweats, she smells like ham. Her arms, legs, and head all look like they'd just been stuck on after someone threw that big football-shaped belly together, all fat and a too-tight sweater no one had any business wearing in this weather. Louisa was not about to give a single fuck about any of that. Every day her hair looked wet and pulled back, beads of sweat trapped on her moustache as she slowly and steadily turned out the orders.
    The first couple nights they told her she didn’t have what it takes to make it in this swampcrotch deadfishtoiletbowl kitchen, that she couldn’t keep up with the pace, forty hours a week behind a grill in ninety degree weather, all night from seven P.M. til you get the hell out. Sometimes the sun was rising. Sometimes you missed the entire span of darkness only to find the piss-stream of morning’s light waiting for you, with the promise of relentless heat. But every night in the parking lot, Louisa would just put on her walkman and walk home. While all the men sat in circles, passing the bowl and tearing their filthy, sweat-soaked clothes off their bodies, Louisa kept her cool.
    At 2 A.M., Fifth of July, 1996, the drunks are piling into the diner like bacon and eggs. The runners were going down fast. They kept buckets of ice water next to the stove. It’s what you use when the hallucinations begin. Dunk your head in the bucket, or pray that you’re lucky enough to step back from the stove before you fall.
    Rabbit, with so many oven scars on his forearms, he acts like he doesn’t even care. In this state, on a night where the humidity is so thick you can cut it with a knife, persistence can be deadly. Even with the freezer doors swung all the way open, the heat just walks right in, right off the stove and out of the oven, and gets held there by subterranean tropic death grip and doesn’t ever stop.
    Rabbit started talking shit. One by one, the fat dudes went down first. Backs slapping into the mess on the floor, some so hard it sent a splash of bloody water and potato skins onto the legs of those running to catch him. “The old die proud,” he’d holler over the screams of waitresses, the sound of the ticket wheel constantly spinning, papers flying in all directions to settle and scatter.
    In one hand, Louisa was frying flanks of fish, four different ones at once, a fresh plate out just about every minute; the other, undauntingly, salt and peppering a stack of de-thawing steaks as they seemed to glide effortlessly into the pans, a satisfying sizzle sending sparks of grease out into the wet air to kiss her naked arms. Effortlessly, the meat floated, transitioning from ice to flame, and she never looked up at anything.
    Rabbit, on the other hand, was, as always, a blur. Moving from one end of the kitchen to the other, still turning out more orders than anyone else, Rabbit had begun to think himself a war hero, taking over the stations of his fallen men. At 3 A.M., the rush hadn’t let up, drunks were throwing dishes and falling in love in the dining room, but the two of them had only kept on stronger. An unspoken competition had become so fierce that several men came to only to stand and watch, the slow, rhythmic and careful hands of Louisa, as her unacknowledged adversary practically moonwalked from one side of the kitchen to the next, still mouthing off—“I know you gotta eat, but save some for the fishes, aye, Torta?” Louisa was undettered. “Hey, you fat bitch, I’m talking to you!”
    She finished one order and hit the bell. Then, not stopping her hands, she looked up at Rabbit. “You talking to me?” Before he could even get in another word, “I know I ain’t seen your fiancé thawing off in the freezer.” No one said anything for a moment. Louisa turned another one out. The bell rang again.
    Someone piped in to make a distraction and everyone got back to work. The last hour, things began to slow down, until everyone was scooping up slop and mop water, laughing again like comrades. Everyone ducked out the door and Louisa took the Discman out of her pocket and put her headphones on. Rabbit pushed past her into the parking lot, tearing his threaded Pantera t-shirt right off his bare white back. He grunted, the emission of hours or lifetimes of pent-up rage glistening in the beads of sweat hanging copiously off his body. He took a lap around the lot. Louisa made her way off onto the road. The others watched with a mixture of relief and distress. Luckily, within moments Rabbit shouted out, almost as if to no one, “Let’s see that fat bitch try to fuck this!”
     Everyone laughed, their discretion, acknowledged. For a moment it seemed that Torta would walk proudly and silently off in the sunrise. Maybe her music was too loud to even hear what he had just said. For the best. But she turned, from the other side of the lot, and spoke back: “Joe,” she cried out. He met her gaze, panting, his expression fading. Coyly, one side of her mouth began to curl up. Her face took on a light unimaginable, her dark eyes shining with pure entice. No words came from behind her slouching smile. As the light began to form behind the trees behind her head, her gesture became visible: she winked, once, and then turned away, heading down the road into morning.  

Watchdog, Denny E. Marshall

    Pete and his best friend Michael are camping. The tent is set up by the river. Both of them and most of their friends loved the outdoors. They found this secluded spot a few years back. Whenever they had free time, they would camp out there for four or five days. They spend the time hiking and fishing or just enjoying the view, bringing lots of food and a few cases of beer with them.
    Pete always took his dog Spark with him when he went on camping trips. They had arrived early that morning. It is late and Pete grabs the sleeping bags out of the tent and sets them up by the campfire. Both he and Michael are tired; they unroll the sleeping bags and hit the sack.
    Spark starts barking “Woof, woof, woof, woof.” “Shut up you stupid dog.” Pete yells. Spark is silent for about twenty seconds and starts barking again “Woof, woof, woof, woof.” Spark continues this a couple more times, until Pete finally gets up and walks over to the dog. Pete yells at the top of his lungs telling Spark to shut up. The dog grows silent and Pete walks back over to his sleeping bag. While walking back to his sleeping bag he says under his breath “Stupid dog and enough with the woof, woof.”
    Less then a minute later a pack of wolves, four to be exact, attack Pete and Michael. Spark distracts the wolves long enough for all of them to make a run for the car. Both Pete and Michael have bit marks and are pretty well beat up though okay.
    Spark thinking to himself “I am not a stupid dog and did not say woof, woof. I said wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf; because there are four of them.”
    Just then, their girlfriends show up late and drive them to the hospital.

Speechless, Alexander Kenney

The steps were getting hard to take. Tears welled up, blurring my vision. I wanted to stay strong for him. I promised myself I would, but now that I was almost there I didn’t know if I could do it. I sniffled and wiped a tear away with my sleeve.

The fall wind tore at me, trying to freeze me, but I wouldn’t let it. It’s what he would have wanted. He would have told me to be strong, to man up. That’s how he was; that’s who he was. He was sympathetic sometimes, but he was mostly a hard-ass. He told me several times that there are just some things in life that you can’t control and you can’t dwell on them. You have to take it with a grain of salt and just keep moving forward, because life goes on. I kept trying to focus on that, but thinking you can do something and actually doing it are two different things. One moment I was ready to take these challenges head on, and the next I wanted to hide from the world.

I heard my mother behind me crying. It was my first time visiting here since we had received the letter and the folded flag. My mom had been to the funeral, but I was out of town at the time and she didn’t want to ruin my trip by giving me the bad news. My visit wasn’t going well and not just this trip to the tomb, but the whole expedition of emotions I was going through. Everyone was treating me differently. I just wanted it all to get back to normal. It’s like wishing for rain while stranded in the desert; the odds are against you. Odds were that my life wouldn’t be completely normal again and if it did it wouldn’t be any time soon. The problem is I don’t know how to deal with something like this. No 16-year-old kid thinks that this could ever happen in a million years. I pray to God that no one else will have to go through this ordeal.

I looked down at the letter we had received. It said he was in column 87, row 12. I noticed a sign to my right that read Column 87 and began to feel another tear break away from the water that filled my eyes. I didn’t bother to wipe this one away; I just let it sit. I slowly began to make my way down the column, counting the rows as I went. I could feel my heartbeat getting faster, hoping, praying that there had been some kind of mistake.

I closed my eyes and looked away, trying to gather the courage I needed. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to see a white marble cross planted in the ground.

I began to cough as I keeled over. I tried to take deep breaths, but it wasn’t helping. I thought I might throw up. I fell to my knees and felt the grass right in front of the cross.  Was it really a bad thing though? Was his death really the worst thing that could have happened? He had hit my mom several times before and he had come close to hitting me. Now that he was gone my mom and I could both feel safe. Maybe this whole thing was a blessing in disguise?

I looked at the cross again. “Lieutenant C.  James, Born July 16, 1970, Died October 19, 2012.” I crawled up to it on my hands and knees and embraced it. Burying my head in my bicep, I sat there. My eyes burned and my nose began to run. I felt a warm hand land on my shoulder and looked up to see my mom standing with tears running down her face. She got down and hugged the cross with me.

We knelt there for a while just holding onto that piece of marble. After a while my mom and I stood up.  I sniffled and looked at the cross that was placed six feet above my dad’s cold body. I knew it was going to be hard going on without him in my life, but I would make it. I had done it for almost all my life anyway. He was almost never home and when he was it was for a short period of time. It wouldn’t really be any different, would it? We would find a way to make the money work, I wasn’t sure how, but I’m sure my mom would figure that one out. God had a reason that he had taken my dad and I had no right to question it. Was I sad he was dead? Did I wish he was back? Maybe it isn’t as tragic as I had originally found it to be.

The thought of it made me wonder; on one hand he was now something that I didn’t have to deal with, but on the other hand he was my father. I would miss all the times we had together, but there weren’t too many of those now that I thought about it. He had never been to any of my games, never helped me with school problems, and never gave me any useful advice that didn’t have to do with sucking it up. Hell, I had already grown up without a father. I sure wouldn’t miss him beating my mom when he was drunk, his attitude that I was never good enough, or the fact that he spent most of his time when he was home down at the bar. After giving it some thought I decided that, yes, I was sad he was gone. As far as wanting him back, hell no. I liked him better underneath six feet in the ground.

Aisle Seat, Miriam Sagan

on the plane home
after a week
in an abandoned air base
watching the sun rise
symphonic
over the Enola Gay hanger
I sit next to a man
who has been blowing things up
on a testing range

he won't say what
of course
an engineer, former Marine
working for the labs, I figure
not a bad person
although he goes on about Ayn Rand
as if this were high school

not a bad person
just not the one
I'd put in charge
of any world--
our children's children.

Teacher Man, Mitch Grabois

They shiver through my classes
icicles forming at the end of their noses
stuffed uncomfortably in student desks circa 1894

The classroom has a wood stove half the size
of a 1967 VW van
and piles of wood four feet high
making it appear that I am lecturing in a region of foothills
but I do not light a match

I inform them that coolness aids concentration
In fact, I’ve written it at the top of the blackboard
in capital letters four inches high
It looks like this:
COOLNESS AIDS CONCENTRATION
The fuckers, they misbehave just to get swats from my
wooden paddle, drilled with holes to be aerodynamic,
because that’s the only way they can warm up even slightly

Preparing to deliver the punishment 
I swing my paddle like a cricket stick
then let fly

I knew, from quite young, that I wanted a career in education
The life of the mind!

The Subtlety of Patterns, Mike Cluff

I will wear
my grey thin pinstripe suit,
long-sleeved white dress shirt,
blue with white pinpoint dotted tie,
and trademark,

only when dressed up,

brown wingtip shoes,
at my important
interview,

and the job
will be mine
as I knew,
in myself,
that it would
be.

I always trap
me
inside these prisons,
these fabrics
that  fit my physique
too well
too nicely


too limiting


as my mind
soul,
screamingly
sadistically
cruelly
truthfully
says
later
and during.

Trying to Hold on to Wrath, Rose Mary Boehm

From the first money I earned
I bought my mother a fashionable
tea service. She never used
it. Said, Too good for me.

From the first money I earned after
the kids were in school
I bought myself a hand-made
ceramic set of vase and bowl
in outrageous autumn colors
inspired by art nouveau. You smiled,
looked into my eyes, picked up
the bowl and let if drop.

You never bothered to fix
the hole in the roof. In that summer
of rain the ceiling
came crushing down to
bruise me.

Today the tea service slipped
from my hands.
I remembered those bruises,
how nothing was ever fixed.

Transmutation, Rose Mary Boehm

As long as I look at it
I can keep it at bay.

As long as I don’t give
in to my urgent desire
to leap out of bed
it won’t get me.

As long as my blanket
is pulled high, covering
my mouth, I’ll be safe.

Behind the headboard
something whispers. While
I listen it can’t move.

Darth Vader’s in the bathroom.
I can hear his breathing. I wish I was
angry enough to harness the force.

But yesterday I did some inhaling
behind the old factory and now
dark is more than the absence
of light. It’s the place where
guilt transforms
into dread.

Tonight, Tonight, Won’t Be Just Any Night; Rick Hartwell

 All I could hear was the tick-tocking of the cooling engine.  The rain had stopped. The birds had retreated with twilight’s onset.  The hunters of the night had not yet shone.  The dust from my abrupt stop on the pullout was settling and my eyes were beginning to adjust to the falling darkness.  I knew I had come to the right decision, to the right place.

I was only a half-hour or so out of the city.  I didn’t know, as I had taken off my watch preparatory to the night’s activities.  The body in back was probably still warm.

Eight Haiku, Denney E. Marshall

Eruptions On Io
Material shoots out to space
With no audience

UFO landed
No one was there to greet them
In middle ocean

UFO landed
The craft larger than Jupiter
The Earth was crushed

Universe
Reality
Animals dream

In space, gas and clouds
Earth
Dust rains

Science fiction fans
Wishing to get off this rock
Then gravity dies

Sitting in the dark
Big storm the power went off
The sun is missing

Government project
Must be kept secret from all
Brainwashing cell phones

Ink of Loss, Denny E Marshall

(click to enlarge)

Just Pink, Danny Earl Simmons

There it is again; this time
it’s in the morning sky
over Three Sisters and it’s layered
with various shades of blue
and somber dawn.

The gray frost on the grass
is a metaphor, but I don’t get metaphors.
So, I stare at swirls in the sky
until I see smoke from a chimney
and colors begin to fade.

It’s gone now and I wonder
if it was ever there at all.
Maybe it was really
a more sophisticated hue of itself,
a near-relative with money
and a hundred-dollar name.

No, I decide it was just pink
as I stumble into the bedroom,
kiss her barely wetter than a peck,
whisper I’m sorry for last night
and head to the barber for a trim.
 

Muse, Danny Earl Simmons

You’re right.
I show way too much
skin and roll up the blinds
so high that the neighbors can see
too much of the inside and private of us.

You blush
at the almost half-way
of a page of prayers for you
and I can tell that you secretly wonder
what life would be like if shared with a carpenter

instead of a poet.
You might be sipping
iced-tea on a new shaded
deck watching him drive nails hard
with single blows of his tanned, muscled arm,

and your busyness
would be your business.
Instead, you married an indiscreet 
worshiping wordsmith with a vanity blog.
It is lucky for you that I don’t know how to draw.

Issue 19 Contributor Bios

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) have been published in the UK. Her latest poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Verse Wisconsin, AVATAR... 

Mike Cluff is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Norco (Community) College in southern California. He recently published his ninth book of poetry Elegant Worry in late 2011. His poetry has also been published recently in Medusa's Kitchen, The Inlandia Journal, San Gabriel Valley Quarterly Poetry Journal and Valley Noir. In the summer of 2012, he co-lead a writer workshop for The Inlandia Institute based in Riverside.

Mitch Grabois’ poetry and short fiction has appeared in over seventy literary magazines, most recently The Examined Life, Memoir Journal, and Haggard and Halloo. His novel, Two-Headed Dog was published in April by Dirt e-books, founded by NY agent Gary Heidt. It can be bought here and here. He was born in the Bronx and now lives in Denver. 

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember, the hormonially-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California, with his wife of thirty-six years (poor soul, her, not him), their disabled daughter, one of their sons and his ex-wife and their two children, and eleven cats.  Yes, eleven!  He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity.  Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing poetry, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.

Alexander Kenney - I'm a junior in High School taking some writing classes. I wrote a novel and have written several short stories. I love writing as well as other things the average teen likes.

Denny E. Marshall has no art education or training, has never won or been nominated for an award, and has never had art shown in a gallery, public or private. After all the years still enjoys drawing by hand or computer. Has had art & poetry recently rejected and some recently published such as poetry in Autumn 2012 issue of Shelter of Daylight, cover art on the Summer 2012 issue of The Other Herald and art in Star*line 34.4 Oct/Dec 2012. His first article "Rejection Is A Good Thing, Stop Whining." was recently published online on the Eclectic Eel website All About Art page.

Lisa Mrock didn’t want to say.

My name is Mark Plummer. I'm twenty-five and live in Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

Miriam Sagan is the author of twenty-five books, including the poetry collection MAP OF THE POST (University of New Mexico Press.) She founded and directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. Her blog is Miriam's Well. In 2010, she won the Santa Fe Mayor's award for Excellence in the Arts.

Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. A collection of his published poems can be found at dannyearlsimmons.blogspot.com.

Stephanie Lane Sutton is a poet, performer, and arts organizer. Originally from Detroit, she graduated from Columbia College Chicago in 2011 with degrees in Poetry and Television Writing. She is a writer-in-residence at the West Side School for the Desperate radical arts collective and has been mentoring slam poets in Chicago Public High Schools for several years. Her poems have appeared in Yes, Poetry Magazine, The Legendary, and The Albion Review, among others. She has performed her work all over the country and was a member of 2012 Mental Graffiti slam team.