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/