by Mike Whitney
March 2009 "Six of the Month" Winner
The kiss is long, excitement builds, her surrender incremental, the seduction approaches a shattering peak... and you awake to find yourself tonguing a wet spot on your pillow. Back to sleep, and you are flying without wings, sharing face time with old heroes and role models both alive and deceased. Your father is totally approving and affectionate, your mother encouraging of your boyish dreams, your first love affairs forgiving. You are free as a bird, roving from town to town, spreading love and joy to all whose paths you cross. Your old dog is at your side, your skill with multiple instruments amazing, your writing effortless and rewarding; ageless and fit, you awake to real life, refreshed and alert, ready for the new day, because in your dreams, you are forever young, untouched and immortal. Such fantasies will carry you through the day until you live again in the middle of the night.
20090408
All at Sea
by Vaughan Simons
"You no longer float my boat. You just sink my battleship," she tells me, wearing her most solemn, iron-clad face. I ask her which battleship she imagines herself to be, but am unable to stop sailing forth in a futile final mission to impress her with my detailed knowledge of military seafaring. "The Sir Galahad was an explosive sight, but maybe you're the General Belgrano, and you think I fired on you in anger even though you were turning to make your escape? Or are you the Admiral Graf Spee, sending out a last distress flare before scuttling yourself to save all on board?" She doesn't answer - merely looks at me like my eyes are approaching torpedoes, before sinking beneath the briny without leaving a trace.
"You no longer float my boat. You just sink my battleship," she tells me, wearing her most solemn, iron-clad face. I ask her which battleship she imagines herself to be, but am unable to stop sailing forth in a futile final mission to impress her with my detailed knowledge of military seafaring. "The Sir Galahad was an explosive sight, but maybe you're the General Belgrano, and you think I fired on you in anger even though you were turning to make your escape? Or are you the Admiral Graf Spee, sending out a last distress flare before scuttling yourself to save all on board?" She doesn't answer - merely looks at me like my eyes are approaching torpedoes, before sinking beneath the briny without leaving a trace.
Anna Karenina Joins a Book Club
by Joan Pedzich
It didn't used to matter what we picked to read. Most weeks we drank box wine and gossiped and hardly talked about the book. Then this woman Ellen joined, and when it was her turn, she chose hard stuff, most recently Anna Karenina. We'd all blown that one off in high school and didn't feel like reading it now either, because book club isn't supposed to feel like one more thing we have to do. We overruled her, and voted to read the new Maeve Binchy instead. On the way home, Ellen pulled her car across the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train, and we still can't figure out why.
It didn't used to matter what we picked to read. Most weeks we drank box wine and gossiped and hardly talked about the book. Then this woman Ellen joined, and when it was her turn, she chose hard stuff, most recently Anna Karenina. We'd all blown that one off in high school and didn't feel like reading it now either, because book club isn't supposed to feel like one more thing we have to do. We overruled her, and voted to read the new Maeve Binchy instead. On the way home, Ellen pulled her car across the railroad tracks in front of an oncoming train, and we still can't figure out why.
Lullabye
by Quin Browne
It is in those hours before early morning, before light starts, when the room is still dark. I am never sure which of us awakens first, of whose body is aware... if it is you or me that changes from the soft movements of sleep to the focused movements that occur when you are conscious of that person next to you. The sweep of a hand down a stomach, the arch of a back allowing a slumberous murmur to become a welcoming moan. Adjusting to each other with still stretching limb, bodies warm, damp, sliding one into the other; a gasp. Touching your body to map you in my mind, my hands become my eyes... there are deep rumbles of laughter in your chest, my face in your neck, those final sounds you make causing me to close my eyes in deep release. Finally, I struggle to stay in that semi somnolent state... these dreams are far preferable to the naked truth of my solitary existence.
It is in those hours before early morning, before light starts, when the room is still dark. I am never sure which of us awakens first, of whose body is aware... if it is you or me that changes from the soft movements of sleep to the focused movements that occur when you are conscious of that person next to you. The sweep of a hand down a stomach, the arch of a back allowing a slumberous murmur to become a welcoming moan. Adjusting to each other with still stretching limb, bodies warm, damp, sliding one into the other; a gasp. Touching your body to map you in my mind, my hands become my eyes... there are deep rumbles of laughter in your chest, my face in your neck, those final sounds you make causing me to close my eyes in deep release. Finally, I struggle to stay in that semi somnolent state... these dreams are far preferable to the naked truth of my solitary existence.
The Incongruous Man
by Joseph Grant
Come in and shut the door the Operations Director said as I apologized for my late arrival to an obviously important meeting, I reasoned as I looked around the room. Should a terrorist group have known about the hush-hush meeting, they could easily have taken out most of the upper tier of not only the United States Government but many of its wealthiest citizens, as well. I sat at the only chair left in the room, a smaller less important table with bean counters, the government’s version of the kiddies’ table during the holiday meal and listened to a very well-known military spokesman sullenly brief everyone about a video loop and other film recently discovered, not sent care of the Taliban or Al Qaeda but from our old newsreels. Initially the point of this meeting being a mystery to us all, the General’s speech began to make sense as he pointed out what was apparently the same exact person, always in a crowd scene, mouthing some unknown words until it had been deciphered by an Agency lip-reader, the film cleaned up in Ultra HD and then it all became startlingly clear. Some eagle-eye at the Agency first spotted the incongruity and aided by canisters of disintegrating film, old newsreels, kinescope, The Library of Congress, the military, video from the Edison Foundation, several well-known news outlets and film from private collections, we were all able to spot the identical face again and again. Although surrounded by the brightest minds of intelligence, no one in that astute room could explain why a man in 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair would be trying to warn the viewer of that time about Pearl Harbor, appear in the Lumiere Brother’s 1895 film at La Ciotat and pass by the camera to nod and mutter about the Lusitania, then in 1960 Paris trying to warn about September 11th, the atomic bomb in a crowd scene at the 1927 World Series or how this man had foreknowledge or why he had not aged in any of the endless reels shown but the General assured us as we buzzed uncomfortably in our seats that the media was now being monitored very assiduously.
Come in and shut the door the Operations Director said as I apologized for my late arrival to an obviously important meeting, I reasoned as I looked around the room. Should a terrorist group have known about the hush-hush meeting, they could easily have taken out most of the upper tier of not only the United States Government but many of its wealthiest citizens, as well. I sat at the only chair left in the room, a smaller less important table with bean counters, the government’s version of the kiddies’ table during the holiday meal and listened to a very well-known military spokesman sullenly brief everyone about a video loop and other film recently discovered, not sent care of the Taliban or Al Qaeda but from our old newsreels. Initially the point of this meeting being a mystery to us all, the General’s speech began to make sense as he pointed out what was apparently the same exact person, always in a crowd scene, mouthing some unknown words until it had been deciphered by an Agency lip-reader, the film cleaned up in Ultra HD and then it all became startlingly clear. Some eagle-eye at the Agency first spotted the incongruity and aided by canisters of disintegrating film, old newsreels, kinescope, The Library of Congress, the military, video from the Edison Foundation, several well-known news outlets and film from private collections, we were all able to spot the identical face again and again. Although surrounded by the brightest minds of intelligence, no one in that astute room could explain why a man in 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair would be trying to warn the viewer of that time about Pearl Harbor, appear in the Lumiere Brother’s 1895 film at La Ciotat and pass by the camera to nod and mutter about the Lusitania, then in 1960 Paris trying to warn about September 11th, the atomic bomb in a crowd scene at the 1927 World Series or how this man had foreknowledge or why he had not aged in any of the endless reels shown but the General assured us as we buzzed uncomfortably in our seats that the media was now being monitored very assiduously.
The Rape Trees
by Kim Beck
Along the southern border in Naco, Arizona, my partner and I scout for signs of desert invasion; cuts or stretches in the metal fence, foot trails, water bottles, debris. It is bleak and hot, almost one hundred degrees, but we fight everyday to defeat the human traffic. After noticing a yawn in the fence and a beaten path leading through the cacti, we stop to listen for jabbering illegals, snakes, or cougars. 250 yards in amongst Saguara and Chuparosa, we notice a Joshua Tree littered with women's underwear and bras. Female victims, imprinted with rape, garments displayed on trees as trophies, pay high costs to male guides for a snatch at a better life. There are too many rape trees here.
Along the southern border in Naco, Arizona, my partner and I scout for signs of desert invasion; cuts or stretches in the metal fence, foot trails, water bottles, debris. It is bleak and hot, almost one hundred degrees, but we fight everyday to defeat the human traffic. After noticing a yawn in the fence and a beaten path leading through the cacti, we stop to listen for jabbering illegals, snakes, or cougars. 250 yards in amongst Saguara and Chuparosa, we notice a Joshua Tree littered with women's underwear and bras. Female victims, imprinted with rape, garments displayed on trees as trophies, pay high costs to male guides for a snatch at a better life. There are too many rape trees here.
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