Dorm Preview— a poem by JD DeHart

A youth in smoking jacket

Lighting up: 

You should read Henry Miller

I do, and it blows my mind

I listen to a college class on Thoreau

I decide I want to be this man

Disillusionment sets in when I realize

            Only one night in prison

I consider row upon row of lit mags

Climb the campus up and down.

___

JD DeHart  has recently appeared in Coffee Shop Poems and Steel Toe Review.

Girlfriend in a Coma—fiction by David Hutt

I first met him outside the Royal Sussex County Hospital when I went for some air. He was stood on the steps smoking a cigarette and looking down. 

“What you here for?” he asked me, wanting to make a conversation when I wanted silence. 

“My girlfriend's in a coma,” I said. 

“Mine too,” the words fell out like the smoke that poured from his mouth. “Is yours going to make it?” 

“The doctors think so.” 

“Mine ain't.” 

I looked at him and then away. It wasn't quite sunset and the streets were cold, a wind was blowing up from the beach. On the hospital roof you could hear the dirge of seagulls and their imperfections at life. 

“Sometimes I feel like strangling her,” he opened his mouth. “Sometimes I want to whisper goodbye.” 

“Oh,” I said and hoped he would be leaving as he put his boot to the cigarette-butt and squeezed it into the pavement. He hadn't smoked it down to the filter and it exploded like a firework. 

“But I should be getting back.” He shook my hand and left me alone outside. 

A year later I was smoking outside the Eastbourne District General Hospital, when I saw the same man again. He came out of the doors and asked if I had a light. He lit a smoke and stood for a second beside me. 

“What you here for?” he asked. He hadn't recognised me, perhaps because I no longer had the paleness that inflicts the man who thinks his love might die. She didn't die and colour returned to my face. 

“Em, my mother, she's unwell,” I said. 

“My girlfriend's in a coma,” he said and waited for me to pity him. 

“Do you want to strangle her?” I asked. 

He looked at me with the same shocked eyes that any man would respond to this question with. “You don't remember me, do you?” 

“No.” 

“Last year, you told me the same thing, in Brighton.” 

I remembered the seagulls and their dirges. 

“Oh, well you...” he started. 

“You must have bad luck.” 

“You see...” 

“Will she pull through this time?” 

Suddenly he was on the ground, his knees bent and his face on the pavement. I could hear him crying. Had I been too harsh? Maybe he did have a girlfriend who fell into another coma. 

“Sorry, mate,” I said. 

“She's not my girlfriend,” I heard him say through the sobbing. He gargled his words like metal mouthwash. “Will you come to see her?” 

“I don't understand” 

“Come and see her” 

“Who?” 

“The woman in the coma.” 

         I went up the stairs with him and into a small room that was ill-lit. It was a plain room, a few possessions lay on the bedside cabinet, but there was nothing to suggest she had visitors. Perhaps she has been in a coma so long that she no longer knew how to die and her family had grown impatient. Maybe they had already mentally buried her and stopped returning to the cemetery to mourn. Maybe they had a photo of her all beautiful and alive on the mantelpiece next to the framed-poem her father read out at the mental funeral. 

The man pulled a chair next to the bed, close so that he was pretty much under the sheets, and he took her arm and rubbed I like how you rub your hands on a cold morning. 

“I don't understand,” I said again, also not understanding why I had followed him into the room. 

“She is nobody's girlfriend,” he said. 

I stayed silent to let him explain. 

“Nobody has come to visit her for two months, only me.” 

I walked closer and saw her face, she looked like the kind of the girl who was constantly happy in life, who never knew how to frown, but now she was frowning and she looked sad. 

“So I have shown her love for the past month. I have loved her like someone should have.” 

“And the last girl?” I asked. 

“I strangled her,” he said with a reminiscent smile. 

“You killed her?” 

“Don't think it's a bad thing to do.” He rubbed her arm like a cat rubs up against its owner. “Imagine being in a coma and nobody wants to strangle you. Imagine knowing you're never going to wake up and nobody wants to end it. Imagine nobody wanting to remember you the way you were conscious.” 

“But you didn't know her when she was conscious.” 

“I know her name, I know where she was from. I know she was riding home from work one day when she knocked down by a car.” 

He picked up a photo-frame from the table and handed it to me. “She's beautiful there, isn't she?” 

I agreed she was. 

“So that's how she has to remain.” He stood and motioned his hand towards the door. “If you don't mind. I'm going to whisper my last goodbye.” 

As I left the room I turned and saw him leaning over her bed, talking in her ear, with affection and carefulness. 

I went back downstairs in an elevator and stepped outside to smoke another cigarette. The seagulls were still on the roof, but their din was different, they weren't dirging for themselves any longer. They were watching out over the beach and the sea and the great black night that had plunked itself down. I lit the cigarette and started to breath out great balls of white smoke into the night air.

___

David Hutt is a London-born writer and journalist. Last year he lived in Nicaragua and Cuba for one year, working as a journalist and contributing short-stories and poems to several literary magazines. He is currently living in Brighton. He writes about people on the move; hitchhikers, expats, tramps and travelers. He is currently working on a novel about the interconnected lives of expats in one Nicaraguan city, called 'Reminisces of a Chele'.   

humiliation—by John Grochalski

i turn back awkwardly

arched back

to grab a stone white door

when this ten year-old girl says

shouldn’t you be protecting those things?

i don’t know what she means at first

but then the other ten year-old girls start to giggle

and i have my suspicions

i mean, like, you know, like girls protect those things?

and there it is

ripped to shreds by some pre-teen wench

some little brat who doesn’t even have breasts

picking apart my man boobs

to another chorus of laughter

and it would so easy

so very fucking easy to crush this kid

to point out her natty. yellow teeth

tell her no boy will ever love her

with those natty, yellow teeth

that no dentist from brooklyn to l.a.

would be able to fix them unless they were a genius

then start in on her friends for their elf ears

their own buck-teeth and flat, sexless chests

but i’m the adult in this situation

and if one of these kids start to cry

if one of these kids storms off to tell her mom

it’ll be my ass on the firing line

so it doesn’t matter how humiliated i feel

how much i want to recoil

the last bits of me from this mortal state and die

i just shrug

i tell the girls i have no clue what they’re talking about

while they continue to laugh at me

while i walk away resolving to toss this shirt

this navy blue waffle shirt

that my wife got me two christmases ago

because i liked it

because i thought i looked good in it

finally looked good in something

burn it in a funeral pyre with those other bits of clothing

that made me a target in this place

the powder-blue shirt that larry said made me look fat

the green shirt that my supervisor said made me look homeless

let them all burn

shirts and pants and jackets

white and light colors

until my closet is exorcised

until it becomes a black void of fabric

that i’ll wear like some brooklyn hamlet

to hide the madness and self-loathing

the man boobs forevermore

protecting myself from the mean little girls

and everyone else

an entire planet of flesh and blood and bone

and little else that i’d hazard to call human

on my most

generous days.

___

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), and the forthcoming novel, The Librarian.  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he constantly worries about the high cost of everything.

The Masochism of City Dwellers— a poem by Gwendolyn McKenzie

Thrilled by green,
Finding spiritual release
In the outdoors.

Barricading themselves
Within humanity and
Concrete ambition

Mirroring earth’s desires
In measured nature
On their terms

When will the memories
Of loam and earth
Overwhelm the falsehood
Of this padded cage
Existence?

Some Assembly Required— a poem by Brad Rose

Read these instructions carefully, all the way through, at least once, before starting. 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Unpack and identify all the parts listed.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Using the flat headed rail bolt, start two rails from the shore anchor.  Do not force the bolt, as you may strip the threads. 

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Fit a suitable 60W ES GLS light bulb or 11W energy saver light bulb. Do not exceed the recommended wattage, as this may cause damage to the light fitting.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Line up the 2 pins at each end, so that they are in a vertical line straight up, push bulb up into the pin socket, but don't force it. Do both ends at the same time..

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

To set chronograph, pull the crown until you hear a click sound. Rotate it clockwise to set the correct date. Rotate it counter-clockwise to set the day of the week. Pull the crown out further until there is a click sound. Rotate it clockwise until you have the correct time.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Repeat this step on the opposite side.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

Install any other fittings as per manufacturer's directions.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Click Calendar Settings. Select the General tab. In the Country section, select your country

In your current time zone section, select your time zone. Click Save.

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

Release the water by pushing up on the release valve with your finger and a paper towel.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Place the grass catcher bag hanger hooks into the opening on the chute cover to allow the hanger hooks to attach to the rod,  which secures the chute cover.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

Cut the horizontal spacers for each so that they fit inside the vertical perimeter channels.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years

Place the cylindrical nuts in the holes near the lower bracket, with the Phillips slots facing up for each nut.

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

Paint all of the screw heads white to reduce their visibility.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Insert the compact fluorescent bulb into the socket, as shown.

And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

Remove the shade ring from the lampholder, place the shade over the lampholder and refit the shade ring.  Tighten to secure the shade in place.

And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

The order of these instructions is not particularly important. Take your time -- you can do this!

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Bring the bases together and slide the locks from one side, into the locks on the opposite side.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Put the safety “on”, remove the magazine, then pull and hold the bolt handle completely to the rear.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Check the chamber and action to be sure there is NO AMMUNITION! Do not lock the bolt to the rear, let it move forward and close. Do not pull the trigger, the hammer must remain cocked.

And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

With two-point control established, rod tip down and slack removed, the line hand animates the fly by stripping, in line, in a wide and varying array of combinations

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

There is a high incidence of poorly designed and out of date assembly instructions. The problem is that it is difficult and expensive to design assembly instructions that are easy to understand and follow.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Attach the wheel by snapping the wheel connector to the bars from the inside, then snapping the wheel on. The wheel should line up with the tunnel opening so the hamster can move from the wheel to the tunnel.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

T-bar posts are easy to install, and heavy duty T-bar posts have good durability. T-bar posts do pose a risk of injury to some animals (such as horses). There have been reports of large animals impaling themselves on these posts. There are caps that can be purchased to lessen the risk of such injuries.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Attach the hands to the mannequin arms in a natural position before trying to attach the arms to the body.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Lift the arms upward and remove them. Place a blouse or shirt on the mannequin by sliding it over the head or wrapping it around the back and buttoning it closed.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Make sure to completely roll the condom down to the base of the penis. Make sure the roll is on the outside.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
 

Place the seeds in the furrow at the spacing recommended on the seed packet, and use the back of a rake to cover the seeds with loose soil.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Place the individual pieces in a re-sealable freezer bag or an air-tight container. To avoid freezer burn as much as possible, place the food into freezer bags, then into a plastic, air-tight container.

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Your results may vary.

___

Brad Rose was born and raised in southern California, and lives in Boston. Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in: The Baltimore Review; Off the Coast; Third Wednesday; The Potomac; San Pedro River Review; Santa Fe Literary Review; Barely South Review; Right Hand Pointing; MadHat Lit; Sleetmagazine; Boston Literary Magazine; Monkeybicycle; Camroc Press Review; Short, Fast and Deadly; and other publications. Links to his poetry and fiction can be found at: http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/  His chapbook of miniature fiction, “Coyotes Circle the Party Store,” can be read at: https://sites.google.com/site/bradroserhpchapbook/   Audio recordings of a selection of Brad’s published poetry can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/bradrose1