From the Snag

By Christine Stoddard

I am the owl and I saw it all on that red and black night. The stars shattered the heavens with their brightness and cast an eerie light upon the scene below, like a stage light perhaps. They wanted to illuminate the drama taking place beneath them. If I remember correctly—and I do—it was quite a theatrical sight, what with the star beams and the melancholy man. The moon, if she could speak, would attest to that.

In the ghostly forest full of birch trees, I holed myself inside of a rickety snag to shield myself from the wind. It was a blistery summer evening and my feathers alone could not protect me from the mix of hot and cold. Too irritated to hunt, I decided to rest. I could afford to starve for one day if it meant feeling comfortable. The mice and voles, as I recall, were quite grateful. Continue reading »

Free Depilatories!

by Miss Binky

Nowadays, with millions of Americans hoarding all their cash for trivial things like food and rent, it is essential to ferret out creative ways to keep up on personal grooming.

I don’t care how poor you are, nobody wants to see facial hair on women, ear hair that could be knit into sweaters for third world children, or violently menacing eyebrows that threaten a duel to the death with Martin Scorseses’ eyebrows. Continue reading »

Rabbit

By Swoop
Based on True Events

1985

It’s a beautiful California summer evening. A few miles east of Venice beach I drive slowly along a winding street patrolling the Mar Vista Gardens Housing Projects.

“Hey Sanchez, got any baseball cards?” Children plead loudly from across the street. I hand a couple to the little boys that run up to my window.

A chorus of “Thanks Sanchez” from the kids as they run back to their play area.

I like working this beat with its unique mix of people. Not too many other places in this area where I find Mexicans, Blacks and a few Whites hanging out together every day. Many have lived here a long time and have grown fairly close if for no other reason than being forced to live together in poverty. Yet, because of the gangs in the area, this living situation is precarious at best.

The projects consist of identical units painted with cheap governmental surplus pale green paint. Between each of the buildings are rusted poles for clotheslines, some without the wires to hang the clothes on. The area in front and along side the units consist more of dirt patches and litter than grass.

Mar Vista Gardens is always abuzz this time of day, this time of year. In front of the units kids are playing. Adults are sitting on worn out patio furniture and plastic buckets turned upside down, talking, drinking cool drinks and smoking cigarettes. Music is blaring from various units throughout. At the end of the block, a group of teenaged Latin boys have congregated.

They are gang members, Culver City Boyz; they spend most of their days here slinging rock cocaine. Each of them is wearing the gang uniform. Neatly pressed Dickies, sagging off of their waist, wife beater shirts and bandanas, pressed and folded, hanging from their pants pocket.

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You Have to Have Friends

By Bear Jones

All six of us sat on a big couch. I was told which direction the cameras were. The reporter asked each of us a few questions, and then he came to me.

“So, Miss Reed, how does it feel to win a Grammy?”

“Pretty good, I have to tell you.” I traced the trophy with my fingers, reassuring myself it was real.

“I’ve heard of rags to riches, but I’ve never met someone who was actually homeless once. Did you really live on the street?”

“Yes. I slept under a bridge when it rained, curled around a trash can with a fire inside when it froze, and slept out on top of a high rise parking garage in the heat because it was breezier there.”

“This was before you lost your vision? You could see then?”

“No, it was after I went blind.”

“You were blind and homeless? How did you survive?”

“You have to have friends.”

*****
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Your Daddy Can’t Dance, and Your Mamma Can’t Rock and Roll

by Ileana Dragutsa

You play the piano and your dog wags his tail like a metronome; in rhythm to, is it Chopin’s Polanaise? or simply, Chopstix? Perhaps a little “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?”
I am sadly envious.

Would that I could, but I won’t because I can’t. I was not allowed to learn a musical instrument, in spite of pleading and crying. Sobbing uncontrollably for want of music fell upon deaf ears. I was gifted with a musical ear, a voice to carry notes and words; the gift to put notes and words together and entertain my mother at her request.….

And rhythm to learn all the latest dance steps….. There was none better… I was the best, yet deprived of one simple love…. “Please, please, please, dad, let me take piano lessons… it is free. My music teacher is giving free lessons to anyone in the class who would like to learn an instrument…. FREE….FREE….FREE…”

My mother begged him, on my behalf.

The response was “No, I did not learn any damn music, and there is nothing wrong with me.”

Her hands were tied because of the unfortunate circumstances in our family… but that is another story. And so I continued to serenade my friends and my mother…. She was so sad for me, but as I said, her hands were tied. She could only stand by and weep along with her eleven year old daughter…..

I wish my father was a loving and giving man, such as you enjoyed. There is nothing I would enjoy more than to play “Duelling Pianos” …

But yes, Ladies and Gents, as far as I was concerned, there was plenty wrong with him…. He was the most mean spirited human on the face of the earth…. He did not do it, therefore he deprived his children of their desires and interests. He could not respond unless it was negative.

So I sang as best I could, and even that was taken from me… I was in the school choir, because I could sing soprano, or alto…. until it was time to appear at the local Arena to sing competitively….It was time to leave the house to appear at the arena….. “NO, I never sang in any school choir, there is no reason why you should.” My heart was broken. I ran away from home and stayed under the porch overnight, and all the next day. What was I going to tell my music teacher? What was a good reason for staying out all night? I knew my mother was worried sick. From under the porch I watched the father drive away to his work. That was when I decided to become the family rebel….. until hunger overcame me. When finally I could stand it no longer, I emerged from under the porch, face tear stained and dirty, eyes swollen, and clothes filthy with sand and cobwebs, and quietly moved into the back kitchen where my mother was cooking the day’s meals.

Mothers must have eyes in the back of their heads; she continued stirring her tasty creation. Without turning her head she asked. “Are you hungry?” “Yes Mamma.” “Go have a bath, and then come back for your breakfast. I suppose I had better cook enough food for you to make up for the three meals you missed yesterday. Do you think you can eat three meals this morning?” Her question made me laugh; She hugged me and then I cried again. Through her own tears she whispered… “I am sorry it has to be like this for you; just remember you will always be my daughter and I love your music I wish it could be different.”

I had a long bath, and then enjoyed a lovingly prepared meal, with home made bread….. no not three…..

The Vanity Crisis

by Matthew Dexter

Mrs. Milner took one last look at her naked body before it collided with the floor. She was hoping she would never have to see those wrinkles in the mirror, but could only watch the lines grow clearer as they shook. The image of an elderly lady was one she had seldom admired, especially her own. The bony contours exposing the top of a torso so ghostly. Those purple veins that defined the bottom of her legs in the shape of an octopus. She had never hated gravity so much in her life. A bag of bones, Mrs. Milner watched it all fall, as if she were an athlete in slow motion, knowing all the while she had never looked better.

She was a skeleton. So skinny and delicious to all the lonely old men with the dead wives who attempted to seduce her every time they saw her in the hall. All the good that had done her now. The bathmat was in the drying machine. Her hip was broken, probably along with a few ribs, and her head was bleeding. “Well Jesus almightily I’ll be damned,” she said, “at least the glass didn’t shatter when I crashed into the shower door.” Continue reading »

Say Cheese

By Tom Leventhal

Morty sat in the window booth closest to the door. The light was better here, he thought, easier to read the fine print of the classifieds. Carefully, he took his fork and poked the egg yolk, letting a little bit drip out. Taking a piece of toast, he sopped it up and nibbled on it as he scanned the paper.

He would start his day in Silverlake, at an estate sale high up in the hills overlooking the reservoir. From there he would work his way across Los Feliz to the Griffith Park area and then head down to Hollywood. Last week he’d been through Long Beach, Lakewood and Bell Gardens.

Morty picked through the hash browns, separating the dark crunchy pieces and ignoring the rest. These he consumed one at a time, savoring them. Refolding his paper napkin, he wiped his face, dabbing around his mouth in small circular motions.

Reaching over, he noticed his coffee cup felt cold. The non-dairy creamer floated in oily swirls on top of the tepid brown liquid. The service was slow here, even if you were a long time regular. He looked around for the waitress and couldn’t see her. Must be on break, he thought. He picked up the check and saw that it was the same as always. He left the same tip as always, gathered up his papers and left.

The first stop on his list was a wash. There was nothing there that interested him. A folding table on the front lawn was covered with souvenir coffee cups, old mismatched dishes, a single book end, paperback books, and a couple of beat up pots and pans. All had prices written on masking tape stuck to them. There were no personal items, nothing that told anything about the person who had owned them. Morty gave the table a quick glance and then looked over at the house.

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The Earplug

Lauri Langton

My left ear is sore because I have had an earplug stuck in it for far too long. I like the isolation I feel when I listen to music through earplugs pushed way into my ear canals. But after too many hours of self indulgence with the MP3 player, my tender internal ear skin just screams.

Right this moment I am listening to Ray Charles sing “America the Beautiful” which was recorded in 1963 in Hollywood, California It is a grand piece. With my high quality earplug it is as if he is sitting somewhere behind my left ear and singing right into my head, the tone is so intimate. I can see him on stage, let’s say at the Hollywood Bowl, dress in a tux, with a few back up singers standing just to the left of him. Never a bad performance – wouldn’t you be happy if your epitaph stated, “Never a bad performance.”

Transported back to 1963 Hollywood in my little music cocoon. Gasoline is $.30 a gallon and the weather is good. Just far enough inland you can’t smell the beach but you know its there so you drive, drive, drive. Smart cotton summer dress, pointed shoes, a boyfriend who likes to make out, and plenty of room in the front seat of the car for all sorts of shenanigans. Quiet, subdued parents don’t see the tsunami rising in the youth. Ray is singing and life can be called good. I push the earplug deeper and I smell the beach again.

Counting Crows

By Kat Rosa

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for girls
Four for boys
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret
Never to be told

“What does it mean?”

“What? The beginning? Oh, I don’t know. It’s prophecy, right?”

“What?”

“You know, like fortune telling. What we can expect from life. All these fucking crows are landing on a fence and how many there are means something significant about the future. Shit, I don’t know.”

“Seriously, Emily, you’re full of it. And don’t you think you’re a little too old to be talking like that?”

“It’s some folk belief, I think, from the south maybe,” Emily says, complacently sidestepping her older sister’s usual reprimand. “It’s the oldest story, man trying to read prophetic signs into the world around him. Trying to read meaning into the meaningless. They’re not just pulling it out of their ass, Jane. You’re only pretending to misunderstand.”

“Be serious, Emily.” She says this as if these three words completely refute her younger sister, and as Emily concedes her point, perhaps they do. The dominance of being born a full two years before, the wisdom one gains between twenty-nine and thirty-one, has been exerted, and the expected acceptance made, just as the sisters have been exerting and accepting for decades past. Jane, the older, sits down with a full cup of black coffee, picking up the white napkin and rolling it slowly between her finger and thumb – rolling, twisting, slowly destroying. “Anyway it’s a great song, a great band,” she says, shelving the subject.

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Careless Mistake

By Lauren Kelly

Another deep night surrendering to dawn’s burning glow, another job swiftly completed. A slight sardonic grin caresses my lips as I focus the tiny photo lens in my cell to the scene in the narrow alley lying before me. The softly rising sun giving the prostrate male a haloed angelic quality, if you could ignore the growing scarlet pool of mortality he was bathing in. The morbid serenity was broken by the harsh snap of the shutter as the image was captured. Nothing personal honey, you were just a job. As I waited for the delay to display the photo my attention was sharply caught by a discordant sound of air trying to fill a torn lung. I snapped the cell shut and tucked it into a small hidden pocket on the side of my black body suit. Careful to not be touched by the glistening crimson stain I crouched down to get a closer look at his chest. With my head slightly cocked to the right, I waited to see if it was just a last reflex of a dying body. After a few moments stretched in a seemingly endless allotment, there it was again; a desperately wet and rasping attempt to breathe. With my eyes so close to him, I could actually see the minute red bubbling rising through the small hole in-between his ribs.

Damn it! I dropped my head to my chest as the extremity of what my almost mistake could of cost me. It wouldn’t be the lack of payment that would hurt but the repercussions of failing is not something a girl could just walk away from. Not in this business. I closed my eyes and drew in a slow cleansing breath. I must have had the blade tilted slightly to the side; his lung taking the most damage instead of slicing through the aorta as planned. But, I had to have grazed some part of the heart; there is just too much blood loss to be solely from a lung. That’s what I deserve for getting cocky, but it’s easily fixed. I slid the stiletto from the concealed sheath in my boot, cursing myself silently for the sloppiness that requires a second thrust. As I lifted my head my crystalline blue gaze was suddenly locked with a deep green one. All that was reflected in those sage depths was confusion and agony.
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