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Martin Narrod Jun 2018
How were they introduced to themselves within a flash of light? Enormous shots of humanness flying across the universe- only still inside the shapes of two blue eyes staring back at this vessel. Just molecules of flesh colliding into one another in a heap of colors and sounds we’d sometimes prefer to force ourselves not to hear. How do you keep yourself from exploding? Into a masterpiece of delightfulness pushed forward into the mouth, and sometimes only to be a breath, or a story dressed as a pink pillowcase on a childhood bedroom.

Sometimes it’s just as if there was never ending cold and never ending warmth, and between each other there we were with our noses pressed up against the glass.

People are only sometimes not shaped like beasts, are sometimes only chiseled into neatly marble statuesque ephemeral deities, and then into the tombs the book keepers go, into the ruins the shapes and sounds and colors disappear. Shattered into the vast expanse of vitrifying light, bouncing against your head my head, landing on the bedside table, the corner of your knee, into the knapsack with the broken zipper, far off into the jungle, or into the pantry next to the agave syrup, adjacent the espresso maker.

There I am loving you more and more, quietly raking my hooves against the dirt, reigning midnight shining orders of dusty moonlight plashed on the time of winter lake, courtiers in your centrifuge of melancholy, balancing the toes just inches below the surface of the water, where the skin shuffled into the brief sentimentality of being thrusted into the infinite transdimensionality of the human escape-

hands feet legs being ****** and pressed upon the glass. Infinite planes of man hurdling with fastidious dreamscape prejudice into the quakes and trembling, the  indivisible and unquantifiable desires of yore crushed as the envelopes bars break against the seams, then come the staples and the body’s tries at reattaching itself to this the trying table of familiar names, this the tepid jocular playing field. While the undulates are thrown into the academies. While the infrastructures topple over, and the sunlight froths upon the celestial satellites nearing and nearing to us, folded over until we wake up from our necks and into our heads and inside of our brains, until we pull the thread from our gems and count back through the catalog pages trying to find letters of words in other languages piecing together the wanton madness of yearning for you and sharing the sounds of a voice that’s forgotten its own triumph of revealing or speaking its name.

There is the room with the panels and the drawers. These are the wildernesses humming with the poison and quaffing the spit and drugs at the heady realm of human-like lightness, pals or even matter gives pause to answering you with what no understanding beeps or carries on forward, but rather bleeds, tormented, reaches forcefully, it has been nearly a quarter-millennia. Here is the start, the finish, here are the minutes, the hours, here are the streets, the beach, the bench, and all of life is ours, from the dawn to the crepuscular night. Here in a stone room where in black and white photographs spin their *** drives like mercurial thermoses bouncing of each other, dancing into the next world, or just fishing for alphabet soup with a wooden spoon.

Here it is. The short-sheeted bedroom linen collection, folded comforter in the closet. The bath water is still and hot. The sky is clouding up soon, but not quite yet. In a ball of light rounding bloom, comes the silent fans that’ve carried you. While of a breath the trembles sway, and take us far away from here.
Sarah Apr 2016
In sheets and in
quiet,
5 a.m.
bird song and
linen-
standing in
front of a pan
on the stove-
you love me

in opening car doors
and peeking in
and filling up
thermoses with
steaming coffee-
chilly April
mornings,
you love me

In the touch of a hand,
cold, red fingers
itching from
the morning freeze
and turning up
the heater, touching
your hair and
hearing you
breathing-
you love me

you love me and I love you.
thank god for tea
thank god for whistles and steam and milk and honey and mugs
thank god for teabags
and warmth and sweet and bitter and soft and sleep and mornings
thank god for kettles
and quiet and windows and pillows and jars and an absence of tears
thank god for tea
because i get cold
and my hands shake without something to hold
and my brain quakes when it isn't told something
anything to do
outside of itself so
thank god for tea
and grandmas and books and kittens and libraries
thank god for teapots
and sunsets and toothpaste and thermoses and treetops
thank god for soft chairs to sit in and sip
crisscross applesauce with a mug at your lips
because i get frightened
and i get cold
and if the only thing that's bold
in this house is this strong cup of tea
and not me
i'll take what i can get
Perry Reis Feb 7
She stood on Stonington Point, looking seaward to Long Island Sound.

A shore breeze lifted her hair. Eddies swirled, and Stephanie remembered. The man had blond curls and strong hands. He'd dressed in brown khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.

A ferry from Fisher's Island brought him.

They'd talked while Stephanie showed him about her antique shop inside the Velvet Mill Mall.

She felt herself flush when he looked at her. He said his name and offered a handshake. "Manny."

They could rendezvous outside the mall and go for a drink.

She sold him an antique pinwheel and brushed a finger across the top of his hand.

But he hadn't returned as promised, and after a two-hour wait, she drove home to Darlene Street.

*

The following morning, Stephanie wrote a check—this was a down payment for a duplex—sealed it in an envelope, tramped wet leaves along Darlene Street, and posted the envelope in the maildrop.



Her mother, Madge,  had napped poorly that day.

"Who's there?" she asked as Stephanie slipped back inside. "Is that you, Steph?"

"It's me, Mama. I had a cigarette."

Stephanie hastened to the kitchen and snatched the cigarette pack to hide in her purse.

A moment later, Madge appeared in a stinky bathrobe, toe corns, and snoopy slippers. Her eyes shifted from the purse, lingering on her daughter's hands, then moved to Stephanie's face.

"Hmmph, there's no sleep for me since Walter passed. I thought I'd be provided for."

She limped across the kitchen and peered out a window, past a chain-link fence to the *****'s house. A flake of mucus whistled in her nose, then fell to the floor.

"I know, I know," said Stephanie.

*

In the evening, Stephanie drove Madge and Aunty Bunny to bingo night, a ten-minute trip from Darlene Street to the Christian Ladies Auxiliary in Westerly, Rhode Island.

Stephanie knew Madge and Aunty Bunny would take hours to cover their rounds, so she headed home. It was rather a long stretch of road to her new duplex in Mystic. She didn't mind; the farther from Darlene Street, the better.



Arriving home, she sat at a window, waiting for Madge and Aunty Bunny to finish their rounds.

Across the street, the textile mill's second shift lunch whistle blew.

She moved the curtain a little, watching the workers filing, mustering under a streetlamp with fluttering moths.

She leaned forward, but the man with blond curls and strong hands did not come, and he would not come again.

Other men were there, and women, too, sitting on the curb, cracking open Quonset hut lunch pails and steamy thermoses.

Stephanie went to the living room, reaching for the clothing she'd ordered online: brown khaki pants and a blue T-shirt.

She laid them out, then stuffed them with ticky-tack.

How wistful, she thought. She reached to adjust a button.

"I'd do anything for anybody if they'd only let me," she murmured.

The phone rang, and she slid the bar. Madge swearing profusely over Bunny's emphysemic wheezing.

— The End —