sideburns had to go.
want you either.
And so they did. Maybe that’s what pissed
off Bailey so much.
Thus my life as a jock was strangled in the
I would say these were the roads taken and not
womb. Apparently I really pissed him off. He gave taken, if I were now making a living as an actor, but me dirty looks for the rest of the year, muttering
I’m not. However I did become a runner again, at 53,
stuff about hippies and trolls. Luckily we never had midlife crisis or something. It came back easily enough.
him as a sub as he probably would have had me
“They shall run and not grow weary,” (Isaiah 40).
running discipline laps. Coaches were always telling As for Bailey, one Saturday when he was 43, you, Go run one. Sometimes more than one.
he went for his daily six miler. Halfway into it he
I did not mention to him that my motive
had a heart attack and dropped dead, literally. He
in going out for track was really that I wanted to
was on a popular jogging trail, and an ambulance
be part of a team, to be cool in some way. I’d have
was quickly called. Thing is, nobody knew who
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he was as he had no identification on him. Some
runners had seen him before, but no one from his
teams, none of his men. Four hours later the police
got a call from his concerned wife: I’m a little wor-
ried about my husband, this isn’t like him...
Poor woman, especially having to find out
Born in San Francisco, Peter McKenna has lived there most
the way she did. Still, Bob Bailey died doing what
of his life. He taught English composition until everybody
he lived for, and if no one recognized him at the
realized he was better at composing than teaching.
hour of his death, practically everyone remembered
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t do, teach.
him afterward. Obituaries were profound and the
Those who can’t teach, teach P.E.”
bleachers were packed in the service held at the
track and field. Testimonies were many. Mr. Bailey
coached about life as much as running. Hard work,
team work, discipline, discipline…but he didn’t just
bark orders at you. You could talk to him about
anything, you felt like you had a friend, you felt
family, you were part of something.
Just west of the bleachers, overlooking
the track, stands an obelisk with a bronze plaque
bearing his profile. It’s not a bad likeness though
his hair’s longer than it was in 1968; more like ‘78.
One likes to think of it blowing in the breeze.
After his name and his dates are three simple
words: Go run one.
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Whispers in the Night
Fiction
By Monica Mendelson
Beep, beep, beep. Message delivered.
moved, but they were alive and waiting. The bedroom
Somewhere in the gray mass, sparks were flying. A
door was closed. Would I be able to open it in time,
warning screamed along its circuitry, but there were saved by the light, or would darkness claim me once no clues as to where or when the danger would
more? Beep, beep, beep. Why did I have to be cho-
begin. And as the darkness closed in, I remained,
sen?
lying broken across the bed.
The Chosen were often ignored, cast away,
The night was quiet, foreboding. Even
or locked up. Nobody wanted anyone to see past
the storms fell under hush. The stars were lying
their perfect world, but we saw through their façade.
beneath darkness, and no moon shined tonight. A
We saw the mistakes planted that would lead to
gentle buzzing crept across the sky and slipped into their destruction, the lies that would blister and my room, chirping in my ear, but I didn’t want to
peel, and the hands to tear them down. We saw
listen. I couldn’t listen.
the waves crashing, the lives lost, and the buildings
Click. Something scratched against the
falling, but those that tried to save the world were
window screen. Click. Red eyes shined in
either killed or labeled enemies. The rest of us just
anticipation, but fear held me still. It wanted me to hid away, trying to escape fate, but fate found me know that it was there. It wanted me to know that
here tonight.
death was coming, and if anybody laid eyes on the
And fate was waiting. The bruised X on my
monster outside my bedroom, they would surely
arm screamed with every single beep. People were
die. And I did not want to die.
going to die. Tragedy was coming. No clues would
The buzzing in my ear continued. Despite the be given, but when the hour came, I would know overwhelming sense of fear, the knot tightening in
everything. But would I save them, or would I let
my belly, I sat up and faced the darkness. No shadows them die?
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There was no Superman. He was buried
but my past mistakes were alive and well. I hurried
under rubble, and the people that he saved quickly
by closed doors, trying not to disturb the innocent,
forgot about him. They were lost in gratitude of
and now I stood beside the front door. My hand
being alive, but humanity was sand in the hour-
shook badly as I reached to open it. I didn’t want
glass, slipping away. There were no heroes. Nobody this. Nobody wanted this. Nobody wanted to know, wanted to risk their lives because nobody saved
so why did we, the tortured Chosen? I stepped
them. Why should I be any different?
outside, but the monster was gone. Relief swept
All I had to do was go to sleep. The
through me like a cold breeze, and I knew that I
beeping would stop. Fate would pass me by and look would not be the hero nor villain in the coming for another, someone willing to listen. This world
events. I would just be its keeper, locking the dark
had already gone to hell. Her heart was ripped out
secrets away until fate returned for me.
and torn apart. We were living the dog-eat-dog style,
but somewhere in the darkness, someone still cared.
Someone would risk all to save them. They would
die for them, but for those saved, would they even
know? Would they even care?
I tossed and turned for awhile. The beeping
finally went away. Fate no longer held her breath, and
like a ghost, she was gone. The monster hovered
Melissa was a newspaper reporter for the Smithtown
outside, disappointed, but it would not have me
Messenger Newspaper and its sub-issues, The
tonight. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to save
Brookhaven Review, The Ronkonkoma Review,
anyone because nobody saved me, and that thought
and Medford News . She later freelanced for The Photo
was a dagger to my heart. There would be no sleep
News and wrote movie and television show reviews for the
tonight. There would be no peace to find because
film-making website, Wild Sound. She currently works for
tragedy was coming, and people were going to die.
the State of New York and writes for Associated Content,
I sat up and ran from my bed. I threw open
now known as Yahoo Voices, and has finished her first
the bedroom door. The hallway was dark, shadowed, novel, a collection of three novellas tied together.
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Passing Lane
Fiction
By Brandon Meyer
I stare out the window at another
vegetable enfilade, a general inspecting his troops.
Endless rows of verdant corn stand at attention,
awaiting orders that will never come. In the
distance, wisps of cloud skirt the mountain tops,
looking like the furrowed brow of some ancient
and displeased demigod. My breath fogs on the
glass and I draw a heart, smiling at the girl in the
car next to ours. She smiles back, holding up her
Brandon Meyer was born in Redlands, California in 1985.
hand to show me her ring with an apologetic shrug. After high school, he attended UC Santa Barbara, where he But her eyes linger on mine, and before we pass her earned a BA in English. While there, he worked as a copy she breathes on the window to draw her own heart reader for the Daily Nexus campus newspaper. He earned for me. As her car grows smaller in the rear-view
a teacher credential from the University of Redlands after
mirror, I file this moment away along with a
graduating from Santa Barbara, and currently teaches
hundred other warm memories to keep me
high-school level English in San Bernardino, California.
company in the cold and dark hours of life.
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In the South of France We Split Hairs
Fiction
By Brittany Newell
In the south of France we split hairs.
set sweetly aside from the streets courting grief.
The hotel managers never believed we
Edelweiss, slimmer than I and for the
were brothers, identically browned by the sun as
moment empowered by the forgettable charm of light
we were and bound by our cheap Grecian sandals;
freckles, would rest gently against the Steinway’s black
still, they looked us over with monocular wrath and body ‘til some jokester, all-eyes, suggested he tip.
plunked the ring of keys with suggestive slowness
Smiling quickly, he’d inherit the bench, and I, cross-
into my hand, seeing as my hair was shorter and
legged with coffee number good-god-knows-what
sparser than his (damn the Navy Man fad) and I
pressed against the skin of my throat, would hunker
was therefore assumed to be older. Behind polished down in the indifferent din and succumb, just like doors, we sat knee-to-knee on the bed with the
a tourist, to the lavender crystals of sound he set
windows flung open, tossing Canadian coins to the loose—bombs wagging through the air and smashing gawkers below. We were especially fond of the girls lewd jokes in the Louvre, earnest pleas for the stray with scarves on their heads; we counted the flower- calico, borrowed clothes returned late in unimaginable like specks from our balcony, and pondered their
states, and the tenth vertebrae of gruff morning voices
shadowy faces at night.
upon my bent brow, until my coffee grew cold and his
The afternoons were spent hunting cafes with welcome was worn by the need of a carousing fiddle.
pianos; Edelweiss had tricky fingers. Ostentatiously
We would stand and exit single-file, the irrepressible
primped in our collegiate blue, we ambled down
sun stabbing bellies gone soft but still brown. I would
cobblestone streets ‘til our ears caught a stand of
tackle him then, golden freckles denoting a plan of
prematurely embezzled Beethoven sonatas, and like
attack. He’d spit in my eye and I’d bellow, “Celeb!” for
cats we would dash towards its low-ceilinged origin,
the army of Sabines and Brigittes in their kerchiefs to
notes held aloft by self-satisfied oceans of smoke and catch.
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Arms linked, we would board the metro and
Like a girl I drew the covers tight around
ride for twenty-five minutes to the nearest McDonald’s. me; fucking Edelweiss liked the room to be subzero.
By then, we were sleepy and high as wet posters. The
Every night he burrowed beneath lumpy patchwork
wind blew a kodachrome dream with no sound.
mountains, so it came as no surprise that the kaboom
On our sixth night in France and our third
couldn’t touch him now, already departed in his casket
night in Paris, there was an explosion.
of starched sheets. I watched for a moment or so as
The sound of it echoed throughout the city,
he slept, longing to wake him, or whatever remnants
dashing like a kitten with singed fur through the sleep-
of him existed in dream—just a tuft of blond, like a
slackened streets and finding ways to squeeze, with
pre-war memento found in the grass, poking out from
otherworldly craftiness, between cracks in the tene-
the mauve and unconscious mound.
ment walls. I shot up in bed; it was a boom, a gusty
I opened my mouth. It felt like a fleet of
cartoonish ka-boom! that roused me, and, as I sat with black balloons was fretting in the space between my knees pressed to my chest, continued to resound
my joints. “What was that?” I managed to ask. The
in me in the most curious places, like in the webbing
largeness of my voice shouldering through the
between fingers, like in the slits between my teeth.
darkness put the rest of me to shame.
I squinted out the window. These days
A stranger’s voice, testy and malformed,
Edelweiss couldn’t sleep without it open, having
replied. “It wasn’t nothin’ man.”
spewed about his circulation and “good air.” The
“Edelweiss,” I whined. I knitted my hands
static blue mass beneath us, speckled here and there together and muffled a scream when my knuckles with cinema signs and streetlamps, looked just as
began to glow, ever so tastefully peach, in the dark.
foreign to me now as it always had. Our French
It reminded me of a game me and my brother used
was terrible: we would not know that less than one
to play: I’d coat my hands in honey, stick them out
hundred miles away a nuclear reactor had exploded
the window as he hurtled down the road behind the
until a day after returning home, when our giggling
county dump, and pull them back inside the car when
mothers would shove us awake and tell us the news, we reached the empty 7-Eleven parking lot. “Hands oh my darling sit up, the unimaginable news.
up,” my brother would bark in his best imitation of a
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back-county cop. As I raised my hands, I’d see his face romantic, then one-of-a-kind, worthy of a snapshot or soften to inhabit some semblance of wonder, a gentle a scant line of coke. I didn’t yet know for certain but expansion of his facial bones second only to the
it wasn’t hard to prophesy what we could encounter
clement tiredness which follows sex and the wretched once dawn’s light disproved the density of darkened gloss of meth. In pulsing silence we would look down breasts: we would wander the vacated streets like ex-at my hands. They’d be crusted with fruit-flies, dead
cons, scarcely daring to believe our good luck.
and dying, the fine hairs of their legs waxed off and
We would marvel aloud at how hot the
their translucent wings tinged blond.
bricks of the buildings became when we touched
“Something’s wrong,” I croaked.
them.
The
We would
heap rolled
pierce the
toward the
waist-level fog
Something’s wrong
window. It
with our calls.
slurred, “I’ll
We would
protect you.
hoard the pâté
Everything’s great, so shut up. OK? Thank you.
left on patio tables and drink ourselves sick on
Love you. Bye.”
every bottle of cognac we could find in the dank
I closed my eyes and squeezed my hands
unlocked pubs.
between my thighs. I knew that morning’s light, with
Drunker than we’d ever been, we’d dare
its subsequent nicks on the cheek and bare bodies
one another to jump off the bridge and backstroke
seeking caffeine, could not soothe me. I hoped with
through the slow-moving Seine. Its viscosity was
a childlike zeal to never have to get up again. We
inviting, its surface like a thick and shiny tarp against
were OK for now, due to the groggy and bottomless which we’d ricochet. We would jerk off at the subway explanation of nighttime, when logic took a backseat station and make our cum criss-cross the tracks, such a to shapelessness and dim dimensions made even the
contrast as we’d never seen except in silent black-and-
shoddiest of scenarios seem romantic, and if not
white movies. Edelweiss would vow to play at least one
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rural diddy on every piano found in Paris. We would
before I could even retaliate, before I could even
crawl into a pink chateau to which some part of his-
wet my finger to deliver unto him a cataclysmic
tory was inexorably fixed, and Edelweiss would threw
raspberry, it might all be over without so much
himself at the piano, the largest I had ever seen, and I
as a last cuss, the heart might cease to churn and
would plunk down on the Persian rug as thick as hotel the trees shyly fidget, it might all be lost, like dogs mattresses and spread my arms and weep. After
loved more than Father, in the impetuous blink of
weeping I would puke and after puking I would doze,
an eye.
as all the while he twinkled Ravel and our unsteady
But what did he care?
bodies dripped green river-water to warp the wood
For now, he was young and all the girls in
floors and have the hard-breasted portraitures begging gray headscarves would love him. He had only to for hell.
play them a tune and their accents would thicken,
But first, I listened to Edelweiss breathe.
their bra-straps would melt, and their eyes would
For the moment, there was nothing else to
zone outward like sagacious TV’s.
do. Sleep felt like the rejection of an out-of-your-
league kiss. What was possibly the pinnacle of
Edelweiss’s elbow, propped up on an elevated hip,
was at once the pushiness of God. I worried that
the beating of my heart might wake him, irritate
him, cause him to disfigure the conclusions that his
ignorant bones drew.
Here was a boy steeped in the sweetest of
solutions.
Brittany Newell is an underaged naval-gazer. She is also a
He didn’t give a shit, not yet. To him, the
classical singer and slam poet hailing from the San Francisco
world was endless. At dawn, he might awake and
Bay Area. You can read her work in Polyphony Maga-
beat me with a pillow, try to stick his toothbrush in zine, Talkin’ Blues Journal , and The Interlochen my asshole, flop down beside me on the bed and
Review , among others.
bawl, “Did someone have a nightmare, huh?”, and
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Shrinking Husband
Fiction
By Vincent Rendoni
I first noticed it during a shave. Faye is
one on each other’s forehead, a bit of a consolation
five-six and when we designed our house, I gave
prize if you will.
her free reign. This house fits her dimensions well,
But our ritual was always best. It wasn’t
and mine well enough. Except for our bathroom
really a ritual at all. Faye would come up to me in
mirror. It sits low, low enough to where Faye can sit her nightgown, just after we had brushed our teeth, down and put her face on. I’ve always been forced
and put both of her hands on my chest. She would
to bend over
give me a long
to get a good
look over, as
shave. I was
if she was see-
Your husband will become smaller and smaller, until
going to tell
ing me for the
his size is best described as subatomic
Faye that we
first time, and
should recon-
would give
sider the mirror, but I never got around to it.
a little jump and kiss my cheek. The day we knew
So anyway, I’m about to bend over to get
something was wrong was the night she put too
my chin and I realized I didn’t have to. My back
much into it and hit me in the head with hers, and
had been feeling stiff and I first assumed it was
down I went. I checked Faye’s head and there was
just bad posture. It didn’t come up again until a
a little bump, but nothing more. She looked at me,
few weeks later when Faye kissed me goodnight.
slowly rubbing the back of her hand against my
Faye worked long hours and I kept odd ones, so
cheek.
sometimes we missed our little ritual. But whenever
“I think something is wrong,” she said.
I snuck into bed, or when she was off to work in
“Really wrong.”
the morning, we’d always make an effort to plant
After a little bit of fight