THE LAST WORD

or, THE ETERNAL PRESENT TENSE

by Bryan Parys

Here and there, I am swirling.

The space below where I sit in church and the worn scoop of grass under the swing set is shrinking. I am inside listening to a man at the microphone say, “Christ is the One! He is it!” then I am on the playground feeling the swipe of someone’s small finger slide across my windbreaker, “You’re it! You’re it!” someone yells. I am playing, then I am praying. If I am praying, I could also be playing. I am aging, and I believe. But I am also always doubting. I come to believe that doubting creates belief. I do not know how old I am. In the first sentence I am seven, later, I am closer to now.

Now I am then.

I am a bus boy working a summer job. “Fold these napkins,” Allan tells me.

“All of them?”

“Every last one.”

I want to fold the last one first so that I will be done. Jesus said, “In the kingdom of God, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” I take the green cloths and turn them into a series of triangles until they look like the flag next to a picture of my grandfather. Then I stack them, rotating each one, creating order, making sense of this widespread mess. The stacks get higher and more uneven. I look for where I went wrong. The first one, now the last, is crooked. Soon, this napkin will be shaken out and placed on someone’s lap, getting closer to genitals than is decent for almost everyone in the world. It will be closer to life than to death. Then a stuffed mushroom, or a ketchup-dipped French fry like an unlit matchstick will fall into the napkin. The order I made can begin its death.

I am tired of saying I am. Does that mean I am tired of being?

When Moses asked God’s name, He said, “I Am.” Many interpretations exist as to what this means. Most of them include trying to find a word to finish God’s fragment. They want, “I am something.” They are sated only when God is one thing or another. God thinks, therefore God is. If Descartes asked God’s name, the answer would’ve echoed: existence. I think God is there, and therefore I think God is here.

The space where I am typing and the sloped scenes I am remembering are folding. The man playing Texas Hold ’em on the TV that my father is watching has just folded. “Too risky,” he tells me over the phone. Both of my grandfathers’ funerals ended with a starched man folding a flag. One had taken risks daily, smoking his lungs into a speechless haze of emphysema. He earned his ending. The other—no, I don’t recall him taking the kind of risks that should fold a life into death.

I want my words to end here. That is, I want to be the first to never end.

TUCSON

by Tabaré Alvarez

There was a car up ahead with a flat tire. A woman was standing next to it. This was the end of Thanksgiving weekend, in a small town in New Mexico called Las Vegas.

He meant to drive on, he had a ten-hour drive to Dallas, but she flagged him down, and he realized he knew her: it was Molly Stevens. They’d been childhood friends here in Las Vegas.

He pulled over.

She said his name, Nelson López, like a question. As she moved toward him, in a billowy yellow dress, he realized she was pregnant. Her hair, always a bright red and curly, was now darker and straightened out.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

He had come to check on his parents’ headstones, to make sure they were being maintained. “Checking on some real estate,” he said.

She had been visiting her parents for Thanksgiving, she said. She had driven in from Tucson, where she now lived with her husband. Her lovely belly, the husband, the distance from Dallas to Tucson—all these things placed her away from him. He had his own ties, of course: a career, a good buddy, a girlfriend, an apartment. They’d all come to him in the last five years and together constituted a sort of second life that seemed to have little to do with everything that came before it. He didn’t seem to need a past at all.

She leaned against the back bumper of his car while he changed the flat. She thanked him, but he told her he should be thanking her: all his life he had been fantasizing about actually doing something chivalrous.

She chuckled and gave him permission to cross the item off his list.

“Two items.” With the cross wrench, he gave the lug nuts a final tightening. “Never changed a tire either.” He smiled, to say: I’m kidding; the car is safe to drive.

It was odd, talking to her. As adults, they were strangers. But as children together they had known everything about each other. It was the furthest he had ever gotten in overcoming the impenetrable opaqueness that separates one person from the other. When he had stowed everything in the trunk, he had to force himself to close it.

She rose and stood in front of him, smiling a sad little smile, awkward, shy, resolutely optimistic. I will be back next year . . .

A knot formed in his throat, warm and wet. And your husband? He was sure someone on earth had managed it—Husband, this is the first boy I kissed; we loved each other; he is staying for Thanksgiving dinner—but to him, to her, no doubt, it felt close enough to impossible to constitute a fantasy.

In her spotless yellow dress, she leaned into him, pressing herself against his oil-stained shirt. I am your witness. I know you exist. You are my witness. You know I exist. She touched her lips to his.

She drove off, toward Tucson.

ERNESTINE ANDERSON AT THE JAZZ BAKERY

by Gerald Locklin

She’s celebrating her 80th birthday. She has to be escorted on stage, walks stiffly, unsurely, takes a seat facing the microphone in front of her trio, who vary in respectfulness.

My Penguin Guide to Jazz has reminded me that her vogue was in R&B, first with The Johnny Otis Road Show, later with Torch songs in clubs, and that she can be found on Mercury recordings from 1958-60, and with classy Concord in the 1980s. No CD for sale, though, at the ticket counter. Hasn’t been recording much of late. But she was once a somebody, and so I force myself into my Focus just in time to make the first set, on a chilly November eve, and join a disappointingly small turnout.

She starts tentatively, a few phrases here and there, getting the rust off, warming the vocal cords, but she always initiates the beat herself, lets it be known she’s still in charge, and soon involves us in the clapping of the rhythm.

I always let myself get really into things, would love to be up on my feet and dancing, have to settle this time for an inner blues, a skeleton jive. She seems to nod back at me, but I’m not sure of my eyesight, or of hers, and maybe she makes all the old guys feel that way, maybe the young guys too, maybe not just the guys.

By the second set we’re down to two rows of the faithful, but she doesn’t let that faze her, isn’t going to waste what may be one of her final hours of this intimacy with an audience. Consummate professional, she will not cheat us or herself. She doesn’t spare a breath of a rousing, sing-along shout-out on the theme of “Party! Gonna Party! Tonight I’m gonna PARRRRRR-TEEEEEEEE . . .”

And together, as a congregation, we all rock on towards the Eternity/Infinity of the aesthetic ecstasy, daring Mister Death to take us on the spot, rudely crash our blazing, bluesy celebration, of the Carnivalesque Night Life we have led, at one time in the flesh, and now still in the bones.

POP LIFE

by Paul Kareem Tayyar

I’d found I could climb inside a song. Like a child on a jungle gym, dangling from the bars, going headfirst down the slides, taking two-steps to the rocket tower that overlooked the entire neighborhood, the school and the cemetery, the library and the church, the playground and the backyard swimming pools.

Every three and a half minutes and the weather would change, my clothes would adjust, I’d go from wearing the Eskimo hat and down-feathered jacket that helped me navigate the ice caps of a Björk dirge to donning blue-jeans-bandanna-work-boots-and-cowboy-belt for Willie Nelson’s west, shooting six-gun targets and removing all the money from the local bank.

It was always summer inside a Beatles’ song. 

It was always raining with the Cure.

There I was in eyeliner and purple robe, onstage with Prince, all of Minneapolis like a bejeweled transvestite posing for the lake, the December mists shifting into sax solo when Prince would hit his bridge.

I was a pop Odysseus in search of his Penelope, but finding only a series of Calypsos and Medusas, my leather jacket and aviator shades at the Rockaway Pier for the duration of a Ramones song drawing me towards the Jersey bunnies tanning by the water, only to find myself in a backyard Pasadena garden when the voice of Joey Ramone shape-shifted into the wail of David Lee Roth, the women on tap at the steel kegs with sunburned legs like blue-eyed Circes who you could not trust.

I finally found her in the first verse of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” I was standing by my ’68 Chevy with a full tank of gas and a map of the Midwest and a look that told her I’d fight any war she asked me to.

She was dancing off her porch and straight into the waiting witness of my arms when my father turned the dial—

I spent the rest of my teenaged afternoons spinning FM knobs alone, waiting for her to appear again, an encore dance that would give me the time I needed to take her from that song and on into the world that was waiting for us.

from SLATE

by Anna  Mavromati

She’s flicking the lighter on and off over her swollen abdomen, letting the flame get closer to her skin each time. My eyes dart to and from the rearview. Each glance reveals Lorelei splayed out across my back seat with one bare foot dangling out the window, her shirt riding up to expose that fruitful, pregnant belly.

Lorelei doesn’t look beautiful and maternal. She doesn’t look like Mom did in my old photo album, holding her beach ball-shaped waist, smiling and glowing. Lorelei doesn’t look motherly at all. She looks more like an ogre lying there with her bare lump of fat slopping around shamelessly.

Part of me gets anxious every time I catch that little flame bursting out from between her fingers, so dangerously close to her stomach, licking the air.

“Put away the god damned lighter.”

Lorelei bursts into laughter. “God damned lighter,” she repeats.

I glare, tell her I mean it, but I’m not sure how well she can see my expression in the mirror.

“Oh, I know you mean it. I mean it too.” She flashes her teeth again.

“You know, if this thing ends up being a girl—”

“I don’t really want to talk about your thing right now,” I reply.

“Yeah, but if it ends up being a girl,” Lorelei continues, “I’m thinking maybe I wanna name it after you.”

I roll my eyes and hope she can see me from back there.

“Thing is,” Lorelei says, “I probably won’t have a chance to name it myself.”

She holds the lighter several inches above her waist, observing it.

“And knowing you,” she says, “you’d probably name it after Mom. That or some know-it-all asshole from one of your books. And that’s really a shame, you know? Because your name is so graceful,” Lorelei says, cradling her fire. “You should have joined a nunnery with a name like yours. Plus it’d be ironic to name this spawn something as pretty as Evangeline.”

The highway seems endless. The same stretch of black road is spinning beneath my tires like the mat of a treadmill. It’s like I’m suspended here, unable to progress from this point, and I can’t keep from being drawn to the fire in Lorelei’s hands.

“But you’ll never name it after yourself, Ev,” Lorelei says. “You like to think you don’t want attention. Like a martyr, like Mom or whatever.”

She meets my gaze in the mirror again. Slowly, she lowers her burning lighter to her belly that’s poking out like a giant tumor at her center.

“Everyone wants attention,” Lorelei tells me.

“I don’t like my name much.”

“Hmm.” Lorelei flicks off the lighter. Her flesh is unmarred, and although I expected that, I feel a sickening sense of disappointment. “I wonder what Mom would say about that.”

I keep my mouth shut and keep driving through this static, unchanging setting that keeps the car wheels spinning in place. And I just keep marveling about how monstrous maternity can actually be.

FLOWER CHILD

by Sienna Zeilinger

She couldn’t ignore the tickle in precisely the center of her scalp, so she scratched. The next day the itch was a bump the size of a quarter. By the end of the week it was as big as a doorknob and becoming more and more conspicuous.

She began wearing hats, though winter was clearly over. Her parents grew concerned. Her classmates suspected a terrible haircut. Then one day in math she felt skin break and howled, clutching her head in both hands. The teacher removed her hat and gawked at the flower sprouting out of her skull.

At the hospital the doctor shaved her head around the stem and determined that it was a dandelion. He yanked: it didn’t budge, and she yelped in pain. Her father suggested hedge clippers, but when the doctor touched his scalpel to the stem, blood dribbled out. He looked at her quizzically, then spoke to her father in the hallway for a moment and returned with a shiny band-aid. The glitter caught her attention, and she wiped away her tears. The doctor affixed the band-aid to the stem, patted her arm tenderly, and sent her home with instructions to get plenty of water and sunlight.

She walked into school the next day hatless and proud, the brilliant yellow radiating off the monotonous gray walls. Silence. Then laughter, blooming from all around. She dashed to the bathroom, glad nobody was following.

She avoided her eyes in the mirror, instead focusing on the blossom protruding from her half-bald head. It was drooping. And the only thing worse than a flower growing out of one’s head is a wilting flower. She sighed. It was only March. Who knew what the average dandelion’s lifespan was? She would just have to face her classmates and make the best of it.

She burst into the crowded hallway, determination in her eyes and a new straightness in her stem. And slowly her flower grew. People glanced her way and couldn’t help but smile. One day the walls weren’t gray anymore, but a chalky blue with some silver sprinkled in. The children skipped and sang in the hallways, and by May she was singing along, her arm around a classmate and her dandelion swaying in the breeze of youthful ecstasy. They wore sunglasses inside so as not to be blinded by the joy that consumed the place.

In June she discovered white fuzz in her hair. Her dandelion was dying. She treaded cautiously, fearing wind and sudden movements, and yet she still exuded brightness like a second sun.

She was outside when the final bell sounded. Students surged past and her hair swirled in the breeze. A million tiny tugs: she smiled and then the air was filled with seeds. The children sneezed and placed their hands on her head and then on each other’s as the crowd grew. They remained there, a clump of hands on heads, until the seeds enveloped them and carried their wishes to the sun.

THEY'LL ONLY LET YOU DOWN

by Darran Anderson

My father told me once bout the time Superman went bad.

Said he could remember it like yesterday.

Burnt all the women’s clothes off with his x ray eyes.

Laughed as he flicked busloads of old folks off flyovers.

Spelt out obscene messages with the cities’ Christmas lights.

Pissed down on the streets from the Chrysler building.

Pops said he didn’t believe in nothing after that.

ARM READING

by Regina Bauch

I once met a man on the train who was blind. He was an inspiration. He made me feel bold and I asked him to interpret the bumps that spotted my upper arm. He gave me a look and I pretended not to see it. I am you for this second, I thought, looks don’t affect me. I rolled up my

sleeve.

Could you help me out and read my arm?

I don’t do that, he said blankly.

I don’t either.

I don’t think you’ll find anyone who can. He turned to the window. Brush and trees smeared with motion outside.

But don’t you read Braille?

Yes, but not arm Braille.

Leg?

What? He twitched his shoulders together.

Not now. Listen, I don’t normally do this.

What?

Ask blind people to read my arm.

So why start?

You’re an inspiration. Don’t you want to continue to inspire?

How many blind people do you meet and harass? He kept to the window.

I thought about my answer because I passed a blind man on the street a couple months ago, but he looked busy crossing the street and his busyness made me busy thinking about the types of canes I’d like to grip if I were blind or had to wear an eye patch or just old. I didn’t even think about my arm at the time.

Just you, I answered. I didn’t want to make things complicated. Am I harassing? I asked.

No, just annoying. He didn’t turn from the window.

Can you feel past this and just read my arm?

I’m not a circus performer.

I don’t insult, I just wonder.

I’m not a palm reader or psychic either.

I know that. This is my arm. No wrinkles. Just undiscovered words. My body is telling me something and only you can decode it.

This is getting kinky.

But don’t you see that it’s true?

I guess . . . but—no! No. I’m not going to touch your imperfections.

Heah now. You insult. Don’t you even wonder about what my arm is telling us?

It probably wants to tear itself away from you.

And be read by you because you are the only one who can understand it.

It’s just flaking skin, he said.

And bumps and tiny hairs and colors even.

He shifted in his seat. No, he said almost to himself, squinting to the glass.

Some are red like chapped lips, I said twisting my arm into my chest for a closer look. Then the pink spots, I kept talking, these make me think of those soft mints you get at restaurants. You know, the ones that dissolve so easy. They smell so good in the bowl together. Some are tan. Chocolate I think would be the normal association but I prefer something less romanticized, like potatoes. Then—ooo that’s a weird freckle, like a Beatle’s do . . . I trailed off, poking at my bicep.

He was silent while I sat picking the bumps off my arm, flicking skin to the floor.

Don’t do that, he said looking down to his hands folded on his cane.

What?

Pick the words off your body.

DREAM NARRATIVE

by Miki Howald

The dream narrative is interesting only to the dreamer, he told her, the story arcs of the subconscious compel no reader or listener besides the self. So she will never tell him how last night she drove down the Seward Highway in all its pulchritude, where along the side of the road the skeletal pines, simultaneously killed and preserved by salt water, rose out of marshes to lord over the road. Somewhere in those five miles between Turnagain Pass and the road to Hope, on that long, slow-grade down a mountain, she lost control. There are things she knows about stopping a car: shift into neutral, pump the brakes, if it fishtails, turn into the spin, all of it futile. She opened the door and flung her body into the road, rolled through the dirt until she stopped. Because this is a dream narrative—so self-referential and uninteresting—she will never tell him that he was there, too, waiting in a car parked beside the road. He lifted her from the ground and held her, told her she didn’t look that hurt. She let him kiss her neck and her clavicle. His lips left bruises, but this has nothing to do with him, so she will never tell him that. She shivered under his touch and his gaze, and he offered to kiss her entire body, if only so everyone could see where she hurt.

WATER CLOSET

by Deborah Diemont

The restaurant in the converted mansion does not have a bathroom but a Water Closet. On the door, WC, like the initials of an English lord. He's tall and chilly, one leg slightly longer than the other.  He's like a coffin into which the bog leaks. But then again, what grace and flourish! WC, wild and curvaceous, like a ten-acre garden with snaking paths and fountains. Like the blackberries that stain lips and fingers, the thin summer dresses you once wore, scoop-necked to show off your collarbones and breasts.

Turn the handle and step into the cold, tiled space. Fasten the heavy iron clasp. Aren't these also called privies? No. Privies are moldy outhouses; they were for poor peoples’ relief. The lonely throne has a varnished wooden seat. You can still see the birthmarks of the tree it once was.  A long bronze chain reaches up to a very high ceiling. What if the lock won't open again?

Hitch up your skirt and sit. The drain in the floor looks ashamed. If only it had been born an eyelid to close. The walls are a white forest closing in. Concentrate instead on the sepia portrait of a family. The baby looks translucent in her baptismal gown but her brother and parents frown. Why smile if no one makes you?

Now, consider the daunting chain. Reach out your sweatered arm and pull.  The vortex could suck you down, down, away. Back to your first house at the bottom. The bear in the crib, one glass eye missing. The tiny shoes yellowing like teeth. Flee into the mirrored ladies' lounge. Breath in the restorative lavender.