Soup Bean Annie -- Up at PURE SLUSH

My story SOUP BEAN ANNIE, celebrating hoboes and the women who love them, up at the fine litzine PURE SLUSH. Much thanks to Matt Potter, editor extraordinaire, for featuring my work.


And please, drop a comment HERE so I'll donate another dollar to help our friends across the biggest pond.

Peace, Linda

IDES OF MARCH

Today Ben, my favorite character, turns 31. So young, though I feel I have known him for a long, long time. A bit of sadness with this birthday -- I sense him leaving me, I sense myself leaving him, thinking of new characters, like Kay, who will leave all that's good for a pipe-dream, and Jesse and Luke, two high school kids trying to fool the neighbors and the social workers into thinking their parents are still alive. Below, an excerpt from Ben's 20th birthday, definitely in the vein of the March of Ides after a humiliating morning in front of his love interest...

***

Passing headlights make the gnarled branches look like hungry fingers reaching down for me. It’s late, past seven, I’ve been running up and down Mem Drive, over the Longfellow and back for two hours, trying to lose this morning’s demons, but Phoebe’s hurt eyes keep chasing me down the streets. Jesus, one lousy card and it’s over.

My feet make soft, slapping sounds on the brick pathways. At the campus perimeter, I veer left through the Quadrangle, past the chemistry building, and hit black ice. My knee wrenches, it hurts like hell, and I almost cry, this day is such a goddamn disaster and, for a nanosecond, I toy with the idea of heading to Dunster, to score some Vicodin. For the pain, of course. But I banish the idea, I’ve been good, so good these last three years.

I sprint up the landing and into the foyer, dig in my back pocket and find the forgotten mood charts folded in a wad of ones. Three bucks buys me dinner: Hostess Ho-Hos, nacho Doritos, and a can of full-octane Coke.

In the animal facility, it’s warm, humid; the sweetish scent of rodent piss and cedar shavings calms me. My six subjects swarm my hand when I reach into the glass cage. I pick up number 43, a black, brown-eyed male identical to his thousands of siblings populating this lab.

“Hey you.” My thumb strokes his neck. “Hope you had a better day than me.” He snuffs my wrist, wriggles up my sleeve. I pull him back by the tail and drop him into the cage.

I pull down the plastic feed container from the upper cabinet, refill the water, then lean against the wall to observe my subjects eat their dinner. My ‘practice’ mice, the animals I feed, inject with placebo, watch for reactions, then inject with three different anticonvulsants. One day, soon I hope, I’ll remove them, unsuspecting, from their glass house, guillotine them, and make carpaccio-thin brain slices to view under the ‘scope. Then I’ll puree the rest of the grey matter, chromatograph the mess, and write up the experiment. If my technique satisfies Tien and Doctor L, they’ll give me the expensive guys - six identical rodents genetically-modified to lack the glutamate-inhibiting protein – and I’ll repeat the laborious process again, this time for real.

My stomach rumbles, reminding me I haven’t eaten since this morning’s cupcakes. I leave the animal room and ascend the stairs. The burnt-match smell of propane and acid fills the lab. A couple of pre-docs stand humped over their benches, extracting compounds in huge Pyrex beakers. They nod as I pass through and down the hall to the closet of an office I share with four other undergrads.

No one’s here. The single computer whirs and the bald fluorescent tube strobes an irritating ice-blue on the ceiling. The flickering intensifies my lithium headache. God, I hate these headaches, they last all day and nothing touches them. I crumple in the wood chair, tilt back with my feet on the desk, and down the now-warm Coke in three swallows. A thought pricks at me - I’m forgetting something - but it flits away, so I open my neuro text and start to read about antipsychotics. The cake dissolves in my mouth, too sweet, the disgusting faux chocolate waxes my tongue, and as I chew I sing ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ in my head, over and over again.

I hate my goddamn birthday.

I return to the chapter. Thioridazine, prochlorperazine, perphenazine, all these fucking ‘zines. Nasty names. Nasty drugs, numb the fuck out of you. Thank God I’m not schizo. The chemical structures blur, so I try to remember them by pharmacologic class – phenothiazines, thioxanthenes, butyrophenones – but my eyes start twitching from the headache. Jesus, I’ll never get these blasted drugs straight. Wish I could ask Phoebe, she’s a whiz at the drugs.

When I rip the bag of chips, tiny brown balls bounce along the desktop. Mice turds. Disgusted, I sweep them off with the back of my hand and remember seeing similar pellets yesterday on my kitchen counter, near the half-eaten loaf of stale bread. I gotta clean up my place, it’s been a shambles since finals. Like me.

Then, it hits me, a miracle, all these disparate threads on antipsychotics and cleaning and winning back Phoebe converge. Time to purge my house. My self. Time to clean up.

Heartened, I jump up and brush the rodent shit and phosphorescent orange shards from my lap. My cell buzzes. I’m so excited about my new course of action I ignore it, but then I think maybe it’s Mother telling me she deposited the money today, that she paid the tuition. And happy birthday, son. So I grab the phone, glance at caller ID but it’s not New York, it’s local. Althea. And then I remember what I’m forgetting - my birthday party.

***

And please take a moment to comment HERE. Your words will send a buck of relief to help those suffering in Japan. Peace...

after the shock

water tumbles stones,

shells, metal, glass -- sand glistens

a roar of silence

my heart and prayers to those in Japan -- and to those who love them.

through friday, for every comment i will contribute one dollar to relief efforts; another dollar for every tweet or blog or fb link. peace...

c(u)ore

c(u)ore

transfixed i watch your hands

strong quiet efficient

shape this humble offering

of mud into something pure

lyrical a form so flawless

it seems a miracle

later when the body yields

before the glassy burn

i cradle the leathered urn

and peer into eternity

ossified hollow of earth

primordial essence of you

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year theme: to the core.

Cuore is Italian for heart. What is more central, more core, than the heart, our strongest and yet most tender vessel?

Btw, I did not write this poem. No, no, no, I do not write such sappy stuff. Ben wrote it, one of several he collated into a book of handmade papers to celebrate Phoebe's birthday. Who is Ben? Phoebe?

Ah, you'll have to read my novel to find out more. Peace, Linda

Diese Blog ist Sehr Mude

And so am I. Tired, that is. Very. It's the day job. The winter cruds. Sick kiddos. Daily busy-ness.

So I'm sorry this blog's been so lame lately. It's a reflection of moi. I have a bunch of books I want to review, a few interviews, maybe a contest. I just realized I hit my 400th post two posts ago.

Oh well.

But I am reading some fabulous novels. Right now I am in the thick of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan. Wow. Great characters, great prose (and powerpoint), and a structure that knocks my socks off. Definitely one of the best reads in the last year. A peek into the music business, and locales ranging from jungles to New York to San Fran to Naples.

What are you reading? Does it excite you? Why? or why not?

I'm tired, think I'll read and hit the hay. Peace...

17 Days

Sometimes, under the gauze and yellow salves, under the allografts patching your body like so many potato and corn fields planting God’s earth, I glimpse you, the real you, my twinned soul from before, the brother who rode me on handle-bars, who beat up the bully on the bus, who read me to sleep when we were kids, the way I read to you now, and that’s when I grip your hand, the good one, glad the explosion incinerated the poison inside even if it burned off your smile, because now you are yourself, pure, saved, clean these 17 days.





Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: under wraps. Plus, I was wondering what happened to MARTY.

And, I'm honored to have garnered an honorable mention for SHUT-EYE in FLASH FICTION CHRONICLE's STRING-OF-TEN CONTEST, run by the superlative Gay Degani and guest-judged by Michelle Reale. Yay!


Peace...

The Blues are Running - Up at Blue Fifth Review

I am honored to have my story The Blues are Running up at Blue Fifth Review. Dedicated to my father, who was happiest at the Outerbanks with his rod, his dog, and his family.

Thank you to Sam Rasnake and Michelle Elvy, the wonderful writerly souls who guide BFR. Please enjoy the issue, themed BLUE, and the gorgeous word and paint strokes of Leslie Marcus, JP Reese, CE Chaffin, Sheldon Lee Compton, and Pamela Johnson Parker.

Peace, Linda

Cheap and Convenient

Coincidence? More like serendipity. I mean, this pink paper flapping under my windshield wiper, the only car on the street? Day care services, the flyer said. Infants welcome. Manna from heaven! Do you know how hard it is to find someone to watch babies? I had to return to work -- you know how it goes when you’re single. Besides, she was cheap and convenient.

She seemed okay. Quiet. Sad brown eyes. She looked kind of familiar. But she rocked Sophie, face out, the same way I do. “Beautiful baby,” she sang. “Beautiful baby.” Later, when she said she’d had miscarriages, I should have put it all together. Because she was there in the hospital, you know. In the same room. I only remembered after.

I hated leaving Sophie with her. I wanted to stay home with my baby. That first week Sophie screamed herself purple when I dropped her off. Me? I bawled at my desk. Called every hour. “Is she all right?” I’d ask, and she’d say, “She’s just fine, Miss Dorothee.”

It got better. We found our routine. That day I was actually relaxed – it was my birthday, you know – so I treated myself to an ice cream cone on the walk home. But no lights were on. She didn’t answer the door, so I kicked in the window, black raspberry spattered all over the front steps, but she wasn’t there, no one was there… oh God, officer, please find my baby.

***

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: coincidence. And a tad of guilt -- two kids, and I never was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom.

Peace...

The Milk for Free?

Not too long ago, a writer friend asked me why I posted my stories on my blog 'for free'. I sort of laughed, because the short stories I write might make a grand five bucks. Which is, in fact, the most I have ever made off my short stories; it's sort of the going rate for flash fiction these days.

But his observation gave me pause. For while my stories may not cover my retirement expenses, they could be placed in literary journals. While not pay markets, litmags at least carry cred on vitaes and might attract the attention of an agent or editor. Which led me to ask: should I keep my writings 'secret', revealing only when properly published?

I run on the periphery of literary circles. I'm undegreed and unaffiliated, just a middle-aged woman who comes late to the writing show. There are inner circles, and getting published in many of the premier litzines (print and on-line) often requires membership. I'm the kid who doesn't belong to the country club. Not a pity party, just a fact, ma'am. Besides...

...I consider what I post here my throw-aways. Which is not to say I don't care for my stories -- I do, I love them, I have spent a lot of time caring for and crafting them. But they are my guilty indulgence, the late-night Drambuie, the chili-infused dark chocolate bar squirreled in my pencil drawer. I get to play with new words once a week after hacking and sawing away at my novels (which I will NEVER give away for free). Plus...

...I do submit these stories. And boy, do I get frustrated. Not with the rejections -- I WOULD LOVE A REJECTION! I would love a response! Any response -- EDITORS, are you listening??? Holy Guacamole, I have one story out for 213 days at a reputable paying flash fiction market. No response, even to polite queries. I have 4 other stories out there approaching 100 days (plus 6 others I recently withdrew. I typically withdraw after 100 days if no response). I'm keeping this particular story in for fun -- let's party when it hits 365 days. Hey, I'm an editor, too, things get busy, but with submishmash THERE IS NO EXCUSE for not responding. Besides, it's just plain rude...

...but sometimes my stories DO get published. In the last year, more than a dozen stories and poems which first showed up in some shape or form on my blog have been published in other venues. About half of these are solicited by editors. Which thrills me, because it means someone coveted my words enough to reprint them. And I thank you kind folks and am grateful for championing words, especially my words. But...

...(there is always a but...) once published, I rarely get feedback from readers. Not like here, on my blog, or at fictionaut, or at 52/250. Which saddens me, because jeesh, all I REALLY want (other than a book contract) is for readers to tell me my words moved them or made them think or inspired them to treat a fellow human differently. It's kind of isolating to 'publish', it's like my words get sucked into this great big blackhole. So...

...this leaves me with another question: do I write for readers, or for other writers? And...

...how do we best share our stories and poems with the world?

And that's sort of the crux of it all. For me, at least. And you?

Peace, Linda

GONE

You pause at the subway entrance. By the blind woman. Every evening she shows up for the commuter rush, rattling her cup, hustling for coins. Tonight you press your bagged lunch, uneaten, into her hands, then pull out the crumpled twenty you found wedged in your pencil drawer. She mumbles thanks, so you stuff your hat and leather gloves and the Ray-Ban’s your ex gave you last Christmas into her waiting lap. So many riches, all at once, and for the smallest instant you wish you were her, you wish you were anyone but yourself. She leans closer, she smells of grease and raw onion and the street, and peers into the Xerox box hugged tight against the curve of your hip. When you question the veracity of her condition, she laughs, a smoke-smoothed cackle, and you think, what does it matter?

The escalator whisks you silent into the dim bowels of the station. At the bottom, the box thuds at your feet: mug, wedding photo, the 25-year pen. You think you should feel lighter, somehow unencumbered, but you don’t. The platform trembles. The cold rush of air precedes the oncoming train.


**

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: the money's gone. But also inspired by a very small story of mine published last year at nanoism. Can you find the story within the story?

Don't know about you, but there's a lot of folks rattling boxes at the subway station these days. Makes me grateful for the job I do have, even those days when it drives me barmy. Peace...

Love

Love comes in many flavors. Today is a celebration of love, mostly embodied by the symbols of roses and chocolate and glittery things to drape around body appendages. And then there's sexual love, which I wrote about in LOTUS. But the purest love, the best love, endures. I offer this story today in honor of my parents, who stuck through everything together for 48 years. Peace, Linda


***


Another Thursday night.

She usually looked forward to sharing the next hour with her husband, but tonight she felt weary. Leaning on the table, she pushed away her half-eaten Stouffer’s lasagna and pulled herself up. Wavering over her walker, she adjusted the dial on the portable oxygen tank to highest flow.

The walk across the kitchen seemed interminable. She paused at the counter and gathered the supplies. The cans rattled against the metal basket. At the living room entrance, she rested again. The carpet slowed her down; it always did. She adjusted her nasal cannula. After a few breaths, she shambled the last steps to the Lazy Boy.

Her husband’s white hair always shocked her; once, it had been jet black. But she loved the feel of it now; spun silver soft as the Lamb’s Ear edging the front walk. He slumped in the chair, washrag pressed against the side of his face where the tumor had eaten into his jaw bone. A good man, an obliging patient, his tee shirt was already rolled up to his chest.

“Dinner time.” She tried to sound chipper.

He grunted, nodded his head, but didn’t look at her.

The tubing unwound in her hands, unreeling like a garden hose. She leaned over him, feeling precarious without her walker to steady her. Her hand trembled against the warm skin of his stomach, shrunken so that the skin folded in canyons. This time she managed to slip the tubing end into the port on the first try. It wasn’t always that easy. Tears of relief welled in her eyes.

She wheezed and gripped the side of the recliner to catch her breath. She shook one can, then the next, struggling with the pop-tops. Arthritis crippled the finger that had once quilted and knitted, that had wrung weeds from the earth and turned patients in their hospital beds. She despised her weakness.

He grunted again.

“Oh. What’s for dinner tonight?” A new part of the ritual she kept forgetting. “Tonight we have meatloaf with lots of catsup, mashed potatoes dripping with butter, and, of course, peas. The LeSuer ones you love. For dessert, Boston cream pie. Your favorite.”

He grunted again, but managed a weak smile.

She smiled back. She hung the bag from the IV pole and slowly poured in one can. Liquid the consistency and color of gravy slowly edged down the clear tube. She sighed as she sank to the couch and waited for gravity to pull sustenance into his frail body. He watched, too, his eyes anxious on the bag.

She wondered whether the artificial nutrition had any flavor, whether he could somehow taste it through his blood. Whether it satisfied. To her, the liquid smelled the way chalk tasted. She thought of the meals they had shared the past 49 years: the duck confit and profiteroles in Paris, the smorgasboard of salmon and cheeses enjoyed in Sweden on their second honeymoon, their daughters and grandchildren gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The glasses of wine, the morning coffee. Thursday night pizza and television. All those years.

“Honey, do you remember when we—“

He grunted. “Shush.”

She bit her lip, averting her gaze to the floor. Her mouth flooded with a metallic wetness.

He looked past her, to the wide-screen. Buff young bodies dove into crystalline water in an exotic country she would never visit. Jeff Probst’s voice filled the room. “Last week, on Survivor…”. She looked again at the mud-colored nourishment flowing into the hole in her husband’s stomach and wondered how many more Thursdays they still had left. She patted his knee.

“I love you.”

He grunted, eyes still glued to the tube. But he released the remote, circled her trembling fingers, and squeezed them tight.





(Originally published as Another Thursday Night in The SHINE JOURNAL, May 2010).

LOTUS

Drape me with silk

lustrous as the line of my thigh,

feed me oysters

champagne lapped, finger napped,

cream whipped

to fill my hollows.

Make cartography with your mouth,

move mountains with your fingers,

tongue highways down my belly

moan your prayers

hush in my ear you are done

with her,

hope these offerings will

unfurl my heart.

***

Inspired by the 52-250 Flash a Year Challenge theme: passwords.

Not really sure where this came from, other than I had two ideas in response to this theme and two writing deadlines fast-approaching (the other piece, a story about hobos, is still in flux). I guess I was pondering how no one can really ever own another, but how we go through life trying to unlock each other's secrets. The image of a lotus flower came to me, slowly opening. Funny, but I found this little factoid AFTER writing the poem: In Asian cultures the lotus flower signifies the values of sexual purity and non-attachment.

Peace, Linda