by Rebecca van Laer

This is how it begins–wind

whisking hats, what’s left of the roofs

of grayed barns and hurling them into hayfields.

Stalks bent, roads scored like games of tic-tac-toe.

My husband and the dog perched

on the seam between the two husks

of our double wide, the velvet

sofa stained with ashes and stale piss.

I–applying band-aids, strip-searching

pubescent riff-raff for Robitussin capsules, but then

we all had to hunker, keep our mouths between our knees.

The walls hissed.  In the movies

cows rise up, sigh, float down safe and I think

this city has that same dumb-eyed grace.

Motoring back across the tracks I didn’t fear I’d find bodies—

worse, all my housework scattered on some field.

When I was young and white-skirted I wanted

more, more than plains rolling out like pie crust.

Cities with cranes in the sky, steel

boned buildings rising.

I wanted my  lips

to stand out like the brick courthouse

too strong to suffer from the kiss of any gust.

To come out in full-color, red

shoes, blue dress, none of that cropped

hair glamour—Lulu Brooks all ash

and black, her tap-dance silenced

by the whine of the film reel. And I came

home today to the whole house tipping to the still

ground, sofa slammed into the vanity.

by Rebecca van Laer

*”Dorothy Comes Home From Work” was the 1st runner up in the 2010 Flatmancrooked Poetry Prize. It appears in Flatmancrooked’s Slim Volume of Contemporary Poetics, available for pre-order soon. Cover design by Michael Fusco.

by Aaron Burch

Frank stood on my porch, beer in one hand and clapping the front door with the open palm of his other. Behind him, his truck jerked and hiccupped but he never looked back; I’d heard that old junkyard of a truck growling through the neighborhood so knew he was coming, had watched from the garage window as he pulled up, jumped out of the truck and barreled to where he stood now. I waited with slight amusement as he pounded and got frustrated at my absence until, finally, I pressed the remote and let the wall rise in front of me.

“Shit, man. I was starting to think you weren’t home.”

I’d just finished dinner, sitting alone in my car while Karen watched a movie in hers. Frank looked ready to go and I followed, was ready to leave before I even saw him turn into the driveway. I didn’t look back at my wife but could picture her curled up in her reclined passenger seat, her laptop balanced in her lap.

“The range, man. Let’s go hit the fucking range.”

I went back, grabbed my old clubs from the back corner and could hear Karen turning up the volume on her movie, trying to drown us out. I slowed down, waited for her to look up at me. Kept waiting all the way out the garage.

I threw my clubs in the back and Frank yelled to be careful, to be sure I didn’t scratch his clubs or anything. Mine weren’t anything special, an old mismatched set I found at a garage sale, but Frank thought the world of his. He treated them like his babies. I liked that I could throw mine around without worry, didn’t understand why Frank spent so much money.

I clicked the garage shut, snapped the remote to my side like to a utility belt.

“You in there working or something?” Frank asked, but didn’t look at me or wait for an answer. I hadn’t told him, hadn’t yet told anyone, that we’d all but moved into the garage, that this was how we were trying to work shit out. “There’s beer in the back. Grab one before they’re gone.”

I watched the garage close as we backed out and wondered if, while we were gone, Karen would go into the house or stay put. She hadn’t brought anything from inside the house to the garage, least nothing I’d noticed. I wondered if it was because she spent her time in the house whenever I was gone, or if she just didn’t need any of it. If she was making an effort to rough it just to be stubborn or what. (more…)

Cover designed by Michael Fusco. Presale begins August 27th.

by Emily Pulfer-Terino

Scent of rotting vegetation back behind the gas station
swelled to a heavy twang. Hick spies, my brother and I

brought binoculars and canteens and broke into
cattail, bramble, back to the tracks where our family

roar grew fainter, married to the groans of distant trains.
We’d perch along those flanks of steel for hours, days,

not talking, straining to see something going on
behind the neighbors’ blinded windows. Whole seasons

seemed to go that way— our having left the house a stealth escape;
our watch a hunch that others’ homes were wracked.

Houses sagged along the rail; wet wash hung down one long line.
What could happen there, where kids swung sticks and watched the sky,

where men bought nails and women widened in the glow of afternoon tv?
We stared down tracks ‘til they shrunk to a point beyond our understanding.

Back by the pump, the dumpster teemed with beer cans, bags and shoes.
This was our best game then, what staked our separate selves together.

Trying other views, my brother traipsed off down the tracks;
his voice over the walkie-talkie, dense with urgency and static,

grew vague the farther on he got, the more he saw of other peoples’ lives.

by Emily Pulfer-Terino

*“Tracks” was the winner of the 2010 Flatmancrooked Poetry Prize

By Sam Decker

It didn’t die right away, the duck. It waddled in circles for a while and then fell over on its head, pumping its little webbed feet like it was trying to swim away in an upside-down river. When they were convinced that it no longer had any life in it, the two of them sat against a pine tree and passed the warm body back and forth until they had removed all the feathers. By then it was dark and they followed the river back to camp. When they came into the light of the fire Conrad was holding the animal by the neck, its small pink body swinging just above the ground.

Conrad and Ben were assigned to the same tent and they always paddled together, but it wasn’t until the seventh day of the canoe trip that the two of them chased down the duck and beat it over the head with a canoe paddle that they thought of themselves as friends.

Everyone at camp was at the very least impressed. Some—the girls—were horrified, though most appreciated the touch of savage ambiance it lent to the evening. The campers removed their sticks holding hotdogs and marshmallows so that Conrad could ceremoniously place the duck over the fire. The two boys cooked the duck until it was charred as black as the river and then they took turns gnawing at it, spitting the crispy skin on to the ground. They didn’t share any of their kill, but admittedly, no one had asked.

(more…)

Myfanwy Collins

In December the snow was so deep that deer knocked over the birdfeeder and denuded the shrubs at the front of Eve’s house, eating even the rhododendron leaves, all other forms of nourishment lost to them, covered over with white.

Hesitant sun poked through the evergreens and spiked the snowy yard that morning. It was mild. In the 30s. Earlier she heard footsteps squeaking up the snow covered drive—a man come to invade her house and kill her. But when she got up to check she found the dog in the hallway, his nails scratching against the tile from his dreaming movement.

Outside there was no man, but trees. Beyond the trees there were roofs, which throughout the region had fallen prey to ice dams. The eaves, heavy with ice and snow from rapid thaws and freezes and snows, were dammed so that behind them icy water backed up onto the roof and threatened to seep through into the house proper.

Ceilings caved in. Walls leaked. Nasty business.

Eve noticed the first drips in the window casings in the upstairs bedrooms. Soon the walls beaded and splotched. Her house was sweating on the inside.

She pawed through the tiny local phone book and settled on Fixit General Contractors. A man answered. “Talbot,” he said. She understood this was his name. (more…)

by Kirsty Logan

Renfield lives down a narrow alley above the bar where he works. The bar is called Stereo. Renfield has a theory that every city in the world has a bar called Stereo. He doesn’t travel much, but he has Googled it. Montreal, Alicante, Frankfurt, and Saint-Petersburg all have bars called Stereo. Renfield still eats bugs.

On his morning off, Renfield walks through Glasgow. He orders fish and chips with a mug of sugary tea. He picks at the food, moving it around so it looks like he has eaten some. He suspects that hunters are watching and the appearance of normality means survival. He goes to Argos and flips through the catalogue. He browses the classics section in Waterstones. He watches the pigeons fight over shreds of battered sausage and the tourists photographing them. His destination is the Necropolis, but it is important for this to seem accidental because of the hunters. Renfield knows that the dead must have their hearts burned. He is not sure whether this counts as a crime. He knows that hearts sing through the flames.

In the bar, Renfield is a fixed point. The customers in the bar swarm and buzz, but Renfield keeps his place behind the counter. He pulls pints quickly and cleanly. After closing, Renfield locks the bar and climbs the stairs to his flat. It has three rooms including the bathroom. This is where he eats the birds. His kitchen window is small but has no blinds, and his neighbours can see in. The bathroom window is dimpled glass and shows only blurs of dark and light. He is no longer sure whether the birds are helping his life force to grow. He thought they might heal his broken neck, but their small bones catching in his throat just made it feel worse. To hide his neck Renfield wears high-collared shirts and sometimes even a neck brace. He says this is because he fell off his motorcycle. None of Renfield’s customers or fellow bartenders can imagine Renfield on a motorcycle. He does not look like he could be trusted with an object traveling at 100mph.

(more…)

by Randall Munroe

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more at http://xkcd.com/

by Edan Lepucki

When I was young I lived next door to a horse. The man who owned the animal came every day to ride and feed him, and to clean out his stall at the edge of the property. My mother said the horse had been living there forever, long before there were laws to forbid that kind of thing, back when vacant plots of land could go undeveloped for years. I knew from school that the horse had once been a colt, uneasy on his legs, and before that, in his mother’s belly, folded up like a somersault. Like people, horses were mammals. The horse next door wasn’t human, but he had big, sad eyes like one.

Rachel and I had an argument and I took a bath. I shaved my legs and left the little black hairs to pepper the tub. The argument had been about the lock on the front door; she was upset because I’d forgotten, again, to deadbolt it before coming to bed. “We’re two women living alone,” she said. “This is the big city.” She threw up her hands in that way she does when she’s mad, like she’s an actress onstage, playing angry. “Who knows what could happen?”

Like most of our fights, it was silly. Later on, after we’d made up, Rachel played me some opera and told me she just wanted us to be safe, and happy. I said I’d work on it.

(more…)

by Randall Munroe

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more at http://xkcd.com/

by David Thorne

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From: Shannon Walkley
Date: Monday 21 June 2010 9.15am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Poster

Hi 
I opened the screen door yesterday and my cat got out and has been missing since then so I was wondering if you are not to busy you could make a poster for me. It has to be A4 and I will photocopy it and put it around my suburb this afternoon.

This is the only photo of her I have she answers to the name Missy and is black and white and about 8 months old. missing on Harper street and my phone number.
Thanks Shan.

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From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 21 June 2010 9.26am
To: Shannon Walkley
Subject: Re: Poster

Dear Shannon,
That is shocking news. Luckily I was sitting down when I read your email and not half way up a ladder or tree. How are you holding up? I am surprised you managed to attend work at all what with thinking about Missy out there cold, frightened and alone… possibly lying on the side of the road, her back legs squashed by a vehicle, calling out “Shannon, where are you?”Although I have two clients expecting completed work this afternoon, I will, of course, drop everything and do whatever it takes to facilitate the speedy return of Missy.
Regards, David.

———-

From: Shannon Walkley
Date: Monday 21 June 2010 9.37am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Poster

yeah ok thanks. I know you dont like cats but I am really worried about mine. I have to leave at 1pm today.

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