Category Archives: ShortsOnSurvival

“Cosmos” by John A. Ward

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My back yard was a river fed by a spring in the sky. My boots filled with water. I opened
the big wooden gate to let it out, but it was flowing too fast and hard. I grabbed a spade
from the garage and ditched alongside the house to keep the water from the door. Digging
was easy because the soggy earth spooned up like pudding. Standing in the torrent was
hard. The side door was boarded up with half-inch plywood to stop burglars, but it was helpless against the prying fingers of water. Most of the boxes were stacked on boards over two-by-fours to keep them off the floor, but not all. Some got wet. I salvaged what I could, but I lost a lot of books that day.

The flood was a surprise because my house was on top of a hill. I bought one on high ground, because I had seen the Souris River crest in North Dakota, filled sandbags at the dikes, watched carp swim down Oak Street, and witnessed manhole covers blown into the air by back pressure. I knew that water flowed downhill. I had never expected it to run calf-deep along the ridge.All along the hillside, the storm massed its forces and funneled into the concrete culvert inside the Interstate loop. It rushed across the road, burst through the front windows of the brick apartments and crashed out the back walls. It shattered the plate glass of the corner Stop-and-Go and carried shelves of bread and magazines into treetops a mile downstream. It gripped the house of Ji-won Lee, my laboratory assistant, in a four foot fist of muddy bilge so fast, that had he been there, he would have had to swim out. Fortunately, he and Miju were visiting his sister in San Francisco.

He returned a week later to a neighborhood of water-lined houses cordoned off by the
police, with Red Cross volunteers lined up in trucks handing out cleaning supplies. I loaned
him my tools and showed him how to chalk-line, cut, hang, tape and float sheet rock. I
went over with Ken and we cut the lawn and cleaned the yard. He had no flood insurance
because the seller had insisted it wasn’t necessary, in spite of a notice in the finance papers that said if he didn’t buy it the lien holder would do it at his expense. He gave up for a while, trying to get the city to buy his house like others in the neighborhood, but they never did. He took a month of leave and worked on drying and repairing it to the point that his family could move back in.

I came in to work one morning and he had been there. Alongside the fax machine was a Cosmo, one of those long stem daisy flowers with purple petals and a sun yellow center, the colors of Easter and resurrection. He left a note, “When god made flowers, she first made cosmos, so simple and so beautiful. This flower bloomed under the flood.”  I made a copy to keep, to remind me that if we are enlightened and our deity is a nurturing being, we can find beauty even among destruction.

When he returned the tools, he gave me two cardboard canisters of Korean tea. One was
unpolished rice and green tea. The other was Solomon’s seal, brewed from a root. It has
the taste of the earth. It is quiet and unassuming. I am drinking it as I write. On that visit,
I asked him if he wrote much poetry.

“No,” he said, “none at all. Why?”

I said, “That poem you wrote about cosmos.”

“Was that a poem?” he asked.

We talked about poetry. Miju told me about Kim Sowol and Azaleas. After they left, I found
that and some others on a web site.

He once told me that the West and the East are very different in the way they deal with
adversity. If an American is not happy with his life, he is driven to acquire more. An Asian
learns to be satisfied with less.

 

John A. Ward was born on Staten Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60’s, sold his first poem to Leatherneck magazine for $10, and became a biomedical scientist.  He is now in San Antonio running, writing, and living with his dance partner.

 

The Front Line

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You lead me down the stairs gently, like a shy dancer. “This is it,” you whisper. I
nod back and shuck off my coat and drape it over the handlebars of the old exercise
bike. The air is cold and still. Boxes are stacked across an air hockey table and
shelves burst with books and movies. Things are shoved underneath surfaces. I try
to observe without appearing to look for anything.

“Everything’s ready to go. I’d need a week tops and I could clear right out of here,”
you say.

“I like it,” I say.

You shrug and smile a little. Here are pieces of your life packed in cardboard, sorted
like silverware. Part of me wants to sink to my knees on your basement carpet and
sift through those boxes for tiny precious things you might have forgotten are
yours.

“Can I see your room?” I ask.

“You can see whatever you want,” you whisper.

I put my hand on your cheek. “Why are you whispering?”

“Habit.” You kiss my open palm.

“But no one’s home.”

“Doesn’t matter,” you tell me. “I’ve learned to make as little noise as possible.”

The first thing I notice about your bedroom is the burnt sienna carpeting. I know
that plush color in my gut. Jedis stare wisely down from shelves and storm troopers
look uncomfortable about their pants. Caped superheroes stand proudly with
determinedly pointed elbows. Comic characters and dusty action figures I don’t
recognize fill in like anonymous soldiers. “It’s a shrine to my childhood,” you say.
These are the faces of your life. Scanning them, I feel like a spy, as though I’ve
crept in the window to watch you sleep.

You spread the Star Wars blanket over the carpet and we sink slowly onto it, taking
our clothes off on the way, racing our own gravity. Your hair becomes the burnt
sienna carpet. Your hands unfold across my stomach. On this blanket on the floor
of your underground room you have the authority of a boy who knows the way to
something secret. In the dark your face rises like an apparition and my hold tightens
across your back. As we move against the orange field of your carpet, Spiderman
and Yoda and all the rest backlit in red look down upon us, neither in judgment nor
joy. When we begin to move faster I close my eyes and can still feel them watching.

Afterwards we lie on our backs, sweating on the Star Wars blanket. I tuck my head
in near your shoulder. You contemplate a shelf of action figures. “The unhappier I
felt, the more I bought,” you say. “You were building an army,” I say. I tighten my
arm and leg around you and start counting your heroes. I reach seventy before my
eyes get tired. The Justice League stands guard over you. Batman and Superman
cross their arms over their chests, biceps bulging with confidence. They’ve kept you
safe, and now they have reinforcements.

 

 

Joelle Renstrom is currently in the MFA program for creative writing at the University of
British Columbia, with a focus in short fiction, poetry and a combination of the two. Her
work has been published in the Allegheny Review, Sycamore Review, Adirondack
Review and Friction Magazine. A chapbook of her poetry was published by the
University of Arkansas press. Her interests include the color orange, cheese, chapstick,
electronica, beer, dysfunction, patterns and freaks.

Deep Breathing

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The lady is the last to board the plane, and you see her heading your way.

There are several empty seats, but you see her looking at the window seat next to you. Damn. She looks way too perky. “Excuse me,” she says looking at her ticket, then stretching her head over your lap to look at the seat number. “That’s me.”  

You realize she’s expecting you to stand up and help her.

“Here, will you put these up there for me?” she asks, handing you her heavy briefcase. You shove it in the overhead and return to your seat.

“I shouldn’t drink this coffee. I’m trying to give it up,” she says pointing to the super grande sized cup of coffee.

You just nod your head. You don’t have time to say anything.

“I try to drink half decaf in the afternoon, but I need to make my own then. Starbucks only sells it all decaf or all caffeine. You’d think there’d be plenty of people out there like me wanting half and half.”

“Can’t you just fill your cup halfway with each coffee?”

“I need a latte or mocha, not just coffee.  At home, I drink just coffee, but not when I buy it.”

“Hmmmm.”

“I used to drink about eight cups a day, but some of the people at work complained I was getting too edgy, too nervous, and suggested I cut back.”

“Ah.”

“I don’t eat meat.  Read a book once.  Changed my life.  You probably don’t want to hear about that.”

You’re probably right, you think, but she carries on about the book in great detail.  You’re on a small puddle jumper plane and the more she talks, the more claustrophobic you feel.  Talk talk talk.  “My ex-husband liked meat.  Part of the reason we divorced.  He’d fry bacon.  Bacon of all things.  He’d do this when I was waitressing. Never when I was home.  But I could smell it.  Bacon!”

“I like the smell of bacon.”

“You should read..”

For once, you cut her off.  “I like the smell more than the taste.  I get hungry whenever I smell my neighbors grilling meat.  I love the smell of barbecued meat sizzling on the grill.  I rarely light the grill.  Rarely cook,” you admit.

“I love to bake.  I love sweets.  Guess it’s true about vegetarians replacing meat with sugar.”

You sigh heavily.

“I know. I talk too much. I need to stop.  Guess I’ve had too much coffee. I made a pot before I left home.  Then I stopped by this coffee shop for another cup on the road. It’s a long drive to the airport.

And I knew I shouldn’t buy this cup at the airport.”

You think of yourself as a pacifist, as mellow, but this woman is pushing you to the edge.  You fantasize throwing her out the airplane window, imagining her floating through the clouds, rambling incessantly about her coffee, oblivious to the fact that no is listening.

“I’m really addicted to caffeine.  And sugar. Really.  I need to quit.

I can’t sleep at night.”

The stewardess frees you from listening to the woman’s chatter when she offers her coffee.  You wonder if the stewardess has it out for you.  Can’t she see this woman is flying high on caffeine?  They wouldn’t offer a drunk a drink.

You breathe heavily again, trying to will away these thoughts.  This woman is really getting to you. You wonder if you’ve ever been like her.  No, no, no wine for me. Then started ranting about how you love wine.  How you can’t stop at one glass. Rant, rant, rant, though you were only offered a drink.

Then it hits you. You know you’ve been like her.  It’s the most troubling realization.  You wonder how often you’ve been like her, why no one stopped you, pulled you aside and said just saying no was enough.  You wonder if this is why you’re getting so few dinner invitations.

You look at the woman and hear yourself speaking.  It’s like these words are coming out of her mouth, but it’s you doing the talking.   I can’t drink wine.  The people at work said I was getting too edgy. Said I had to cut back.  Said I wasn’t being  nice.  Said I wasn’t being productive.

The woman keeps talking about when she gave up meat, and how she can’t understand why she can’t give up caffeine when she can give up flesh.

She makes your head spin.

You wave to the stewardess and ask for a Bloody Mary.

“That looks good,” the woman says.  “I get too weird when I drink. I’d need celery,” she says when you just get the can of juice and tiny bottle of vodka.

You pour the vodka into the cup and can’t believe you’re doing this.

You haven’t had a drink in two years.  You look at the woman, the drink, your hands, the window, imagine her body floating, then remember that prayer, that AA give-me-the-strength-prayer, those meetings, the people who talked all the time, the stories they told, how they made you feel more like drinking than before you arrived for the meeting.

You look at the woman, the drink in your hand, and wish there was some way you could speed ahead in time so you could figure out what will happen next, and then, what will happen after that.

You smell your drink.  Really smell your drink.  You put your nose above the plastic glass and inhale deeply.  The woman looks at you with disgust.  She, of all people, the woman who has gone on and on about loving coffee can’t stand to see you inhaling the vapors from your drink.  You inhale again.  And again.

The woman calls the stewardess over to take her coffee.  Like you, she knows. She looks sickened.

You hand the stewardess your drink.

You take a deep breath. The woman takes a deep breath. Finally, there’s silence.

 

 

Diane Payne, her daughter, and several critters live in the humid, hot Delta region where everyone must be singing the blues.  She recently published her first the novel Burning Tulips and has completed a short story collection still looking for a home.

“Heart Murmurs” by Suzanne Nielsen

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I am a scary monster; I knew it when my mama first told me to grow my bangs out to hide my face. The scar from where I fell and rammed the Pyrex dish in my forehead glitters in the sunlight. Mrs. Rouston, mama’s friend down the alley wanted me to bring mama home some home baked scalloped potatoes. I was running past Rowan Mastro’s house cuz he always throws dirt at my head and I didn’t want to get in mixed with the potatoes when I tripped and fell, breaking the glass and watching the potatoes scatter like dead chicks after Easter Sunday.

I am scary in other ways too. I have a hole in my heart that will kill me someday. No one knows it’s there except Mama and Grandpa. I was born with it. Grandpa said if Mama wouldn’t have smoked when she was pregnant with me I’d have a solid heart with no blemishes at all but Mama has an addiction to tobacco. She gave up drinking though so I’m real proud of her for that.

My heart beats funny too; it’s got a murmur. When I was littler, I used to think it was called a heart murderer. Mama told me I wasn’t a heart murderer, that was my daddy. He took off before I was born and she’s never heard from him since. I’m thankful I don’t have no heart murdering instincts inside me. She said if it wasn’t for my hole, I’d be as solid as Grace Mitchell who lives down the street. Grace is my age and has a beautiful face and bangs that she curls the ends of so they flip under. Mama don’t like Grace’s mama too much. I guess Grace’s mama talks bad about us cause we are poor. I have underpants that say the seven days of the week on them that my grandpa bought me at Shopper’s City. I don’t think we’re poor. We live with my grandpa and he has a real nice house where I share a room with my mama. Mama works nights so it’s like having my very own room.

Tonight Grandpa told me I could have Grace sleep over and we could drink chocolate milk and eat Lorna Doone Vanilla Wafers in bed. He said he’d let me bring the TV in my room so we could watch it until late in the night. It’s Saturday night and Mama goes out after her job at the dry cleaners with her friend Toby so Grace can sleep in Mama’s bed. I am excited but when Grandpa calls Grace’s mama I find out that Grace has other plans. Grandpa instead takes me down to the lake and we fish for sunnies from shore. It’s a nice evening in July. I’d rather be with Grandpa anyway, come to think of it. It’s Saturday and I’m wearing my Wednesday underwear cause my mama forgot to wash. I don’t have to explain to Grandpa about this. I don’t have to explain to him why I get sometimes tired, like now, because he knows my heart needs more rest than other people’s. I’d have to make up stories to tell Grace, and with a name like Grace, I’d feel ashamed. I am a scary monster. But I am not a murderer.

 

 

Suzanne Nielsen’s work has been published in various literary journals nationally and internationally; most recently her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Mid-America Poetry Review, The Pedestal, and 580 Split.  Upcoming work will appear in Banyan Review and Gin Bender Poetry Review.  So’ham Books will publish her collection of poetry titled “East of the River,” in October 2005. Nielsen received a BA in Writing from Metropolitan State University, and a MALS degree with an emphasis in writing from Hamline University where she is currently completing her doctorate work in Education.