Alice didn’t know how to stop it but she had to do something. Her student in the after school program in Beijing called herself Pocahontas. Her mother told Alice that she had watched the Disney film fifteen times and that was why she picked the name. On the first day of class Pocahontas had worn a feather in a leather headband and moccasins.  She was five years old but she could pass for a three year old back in Iowa, the land of hefty farm folks. Pocahontas was the director’s child and she did not want to be in a private class on Tuesday from 5:30-7:30.

Alice worked extra hard trying to teach her some English but it was difficult. One day they were learning the song “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” Alice pointed to a cow, pig, sheep, chicken and cat in the book. Alice was seated at the end of a low table and Pocahontas was to her right. When she was singing, “With an oink oink here and an oink oink there,” Pocahontas  reached out and touched Alice’s breast. Alice was a 36 C but  most Chinese women were 28 A.

Alice kept singing and pretended this girl wasn’t touching her breast. She gently took Pocohontas’s hand and pointed to the pig in the book. But Pocahontas wasn’t interested in the pig. Her hand went back to Alice’s breast and she squeezed. At that Alice stood up. She went to the white board and took a marker and wrote the word P-I-G.

Pocahontas repeated the word pig and then made the oink, oink sound.

For another ten minutes Alice kept on with the lesson. She saw Pocahontas’s mother open the door and enter. Lilly nodded and waited. Alice said, “Good class. Pocahontas learned some new words.”

Alice studied Lilly who didn’t have any breasts to speak of. She had a black wool jacket and skirt with heeled boots. She had a cream colored shell and a string of pearls.

Alice wondered if Pocahontas had been breast fed when a baby.  Before leaving for China in June she had watched the movie of The Last Emperor and Pu Yi  had a wet nurse who let him suckle her until he was eight or nine.

The next week Alice wore a quilted vest over her sweater. She decided to stand most of the time at the white board and then Pocahontas couldn’t get near her. When she excused her for a bathroom break, Alice sat down at the table. When she returned, Pocahontas walked right over to her and reached out and touched the quilted vest and pressed where her left breast was. Then Pocahontas sat down and Alice stood up. All without a word.

For the next class Alice wore a navy blue blazer over a white knit top with a v neck and wrapped a navy and gold scarf around her neck. When she got hot, she took off her blazer and loosened her scarf.  The tops of her breasts spilled out her top. Pocahontas looked at her cleavage and Alice stood up quickly.

“Big,” Pocahontas said. “Why?”

Alice didn’t know what to say. “Because I’m big.”

Pocahontas got up and walked over to Alice at the white board. When her hands came up to touch her breasts, Alice crossed her arms and said, “Do not touch. Do not touch teacher.”

Then Pocahontas began to cry and Alice felt panicky.  Pocahontas was the director’s daughter and Alice was supposed to feel honored that the director trusted her to teach her only child. But they were all only children. Every student  had doting parents and grandparents who thought their child and grandchild was a genius. Alice was from a family of five siblings and had oodles of cousins since her mom had eleven brothers and sisters.

Alice knew she had to do something. The class would be over in 10 minutes and Lilly came early to sit in on the class. She grabbed Pocahontas’s hands and said, “Let’s play ring around the rosy, pocket full of posey.”

She tried to get Pocahontas to move in a circle but she wouldn’t move. She knelt down next to her and said, “Come on. Quit crying.”

But Pocahontas kept crying and it was getting louder. She wished now she had taken those education classes but she had gone into psychology and social work and those classes told her this kid knew how to manipulate.

Alice looked out the window. It was dark outside and she didn’t see anyone there. She grabbed Pocahontas’ hand and plunked it on her right breast.

“There,” she said.

Pocahontas stopped crying, squeezed and smiled.

Alice pulled away, slipped on her blazer and went to the board.

“Draw a cow,” said Alice and she put the marker in Pocahontas’s hand.

Pocahontas said, “Cow.” She began drawing a cow and Alice watched as she drew huge udders that touched the ground.

Tricia Currans-Sheehan has published The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, winner of the Headwaters Literary Competition, and The River Road: A Novel in Linked Stories. She teaches at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, IA.

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Bob is my neighbor. Bob’s wife, Janie, is having an affair with my son Bob. The name duplication will help if she’s a sleep talker.

Bob suspects Janie is having and affair and confides in me. He threatens to kill the guy that’s screwing his wife. That doesn’t make me feel good about my son Bob.

I go to my son’s apartment to confront him and Janie is there and he doesn’t want to let me in. Finally, he relents and the three of us sit around his small living room alternating between looking at the floor and each other.

The door opens and it’s my neighbor, Bob, husband of Janie.

“I knew it was you all along,” he says to me.

“What are you talking about? Janie asks him.

“You’re screwing our neighbor and now that I see you here with his son too I wonder if you’re fucking them both.”

Janie stands and walks over to Bob, her husband. She says, “Not only them but everyone else on the street. Today’s Tuesday so it’s only the even numbers. Thursday it’ll be the odd ones. You’re an odd one maybe I can fit you in late Thursday.”

Bob, the husband is stuck for a response. “What about him?” He asks pointing to Bob, my son.

“Him? Well he can screw me anytime because that’s how I pay him. I came here today to make a payment but I’m no longer in the mood and I’m quite sure that young Bob here isn’t either.”

“Payment for what?” My neighbor Bob asks his wife Janie.

“He’s teaching me how to work with stained glass,” Janie said.

“What the hell do you want to do stained glass for? Bob asks.

“Because I decided I wanted to make you a stained glass sign for your office as a birthday present.”

“Oh,” said my neighbor.

Janie walks over to the table and uncovers a stained glass, almost finished sign. Showman like, she points at it and neighbor Bob walks over and looks down at it.

“It’s very beautiful and classy. Are you really screwing young Bob in lieu of paying him?” He turns to my son, Bob. “Are you exchanging lessons for sex?”

My son Bob stares up at him while Janie walks between the two of them. “You moron,” she says to her Bob. “How dare you even suggest such a thing?”

“I didn’t suggest it, you did,” Husband Bob says.

“You’ve got two choices,” Janie says to her husband. “You can get your ass out of here and let me finish you birthday gift or you can stick around and watch me smash it to smithereens.”

“Let’s go, Bob,” he says to me. “Janie, I’m sorry.”

“That’s a good woman you’ve got there, Bob,” I tell him. “You ought to cut her some slack.”

“You’re right and I will but there’s still one thing bothering me.”

“What’s that, Bob?”

“Where is she getting the money to pay your son for lessons?”

Paul Beckman writes everywhere and sells real estate in Connecticut. He’s been published in The Raleigh Review, Boston Literary Review, The Brooklyner, Web Del So, Pure Slush, Playboy, Soundzine, 5 Trope, Word Riot and other wonderful venues in print, on line & via audio and photography.

Stories upcoming in Ascent Aspirations, Yellow Mama, Pure Slush, Full of Crow Quarterly, Metazen & The Story Shack.

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He feared clowns and resented their phony attempts to be funny when they are mean. He wanted a family and had been alone for decades. The old man with warts scared the village children. They preferred clowns, jesters and acrobats. He lived in the hills outside the village. He gathered berries, picked dandelion greens and set snares to catch animals he roasted over an open fire. The old man spent most of his time reading.

Down in the valley, two seven-year-old children threw rocks in the stream. Their father was too busy to teach them how to skip rocks, fish or swim. The children ripped up flowers. Mother Dear wouldn’t show them to how to weave daisy chains, sew or twist string figures. Mother Dear wasn’t their real mother. Mommy had died when they were babies. They remembered the warmth of her body nursing them and the songs she sang.  Because their father and stepmother were working, the twins, Hank and Gracie kept each other company, wandering about finding things to do.

Their stepmother convinced Father to give them house keys, “They’re old enough to be alone after school and on holidays. I’m busy seeing clients. It’s not fair you have a career and leave your kids with me. You married me to take care of them so you could keep working. Keep feeling important.”

They argued while the twins drifted back to sleep. Two days later, Father tied a pink ribbon with a house key around Gracie’s neck and a leather thong with a key around Hank’s neck. Father gave them cell phones to use in an emergency. Gracie’s phone had Barbie’s face and Hank’s phone had a Monster Truck. Their stepmother filled the freezer. She explained how to use the microwave.

“It’s easy, read the instructions and nuke the food. You’re old enough to read.”

The twins remembered Mommy reading to them and telling them stories without a book. At bedtime, their real parents had traded back and forth, reading and telling. Father would start a story and Mommy would finish it. She read a book. He made up an ending. After Mommy’s death, their father discontinued their bedtime ritual.

“Go to bed. I miss Mommy too. You’re old enough to fall asleep alone.”

They knew he wanted to be alone to drink. Drink enough to pass out. The kids woke up to spy on him with bottle and glass. They knew to return to bed without bothering him. Some nights Hank and Gracie whispered in the dark.

After Father married their new Mother Dear, they moved to a bigger house.  Gracie had a pink room with Barbie dolls, videos about Barbie to watch on a pink TV and computer games about Barbie to play on a pink computer. Hank had his own blue room with monster trucks, videos about monster trucks to watch on his blue TV and computer games about monster trucks for his blue computer. When Hank woke at 3:00 a.m., there was no Gracie to talk with. He had to stay quiet until the sun appeared.

The twins left on Remembrance Day, a holiday to honor the memory of those killed by terrorists. Mothers went shopping at sales and left children to play computer, watch videos and eat microwaved food. Hank and Gracie assumed Father was working. Fathers worked on Remembrance Day unless they had jobs with the village or canton. The twins didn’t know if Mother Dear was working or shopping. After they woke, they microwaved waffles for breakfast. Bored with computer and TV, they went to throw rocks and rip flowers.

Hank and Gracie decided to walk up the hillside. Hank filled his pocket with rocks to leave a trail to find their way home. He’d heard about that in a story. He wanted to bring more rocks but his monster truck phone filled most of his pocket. Gracie didn’t have pockets in her skort so she stuffed damp flowers in her fanny pack on top of her Barbie phone. The children dropped stones and flowers until they found a cave. They smelled food: meat roasting over a fire, a bowl of tossed wild greens and a Dutch oven with berry cobbler. Hank and Gracie ate before exploring. They grabbed at the many books, reading out loud to each other. Hank read to Gracie and Gracie read to Hank. They re-told stories they remembered (when Mommy had been alive and Father had been their real father) before cuddling to sleep.

After they woke, the twins walked down the hillside trying to follow the trail of rocks and flowers. There were too many pebbles and blossoms and the twins got lost. They remembered their phones for emergencies. Hank dug in his pocket but the phone was broken, crushed by the sharp rocks he’d crammed over it. The rocks had crushed the phone like a monster truck crushes cars, like a drunk crushes dreams. Gracie unzipped her fanny pack. Her Barbie-faced phone looked intact, but they could not call Father, Mother Dear or 911. The wet flowers had ruined the circuits. Knowing where they could find food, shelter and books, they returned to the cave.

Gracie sliced the warm bread from the solar oven and spread it with home-canned berry preserves. Hank found meat jerky in a cabinet. After they ate, they drank cold water from a spring. The twins read books until the ogre returned. It was the clown-hating ogre.

What did the ogre do to the children? Did the ogre feed them or feed on them? Did the children fall asleep listening to stories or sleep forever, listlessly, stored in the ogre’s stomach. Did Hank and Gracie live happily ever after or happen to leave after the story? You know the end.

Laura Beasley has been married to her high school sweetheart for 35 years. Her stories have been published in Enchanted Conversation, Rose Red Review, Every Day Fiction, eFantasy, Yesteryear Fiction and Fastforward Festival.

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“It’s not Bells,” said the old punter.

The early evening of the day’s first drink still welcomed natural light in the pub windows to glow the liquid gold in the glass. But it was not exactly the right colour. A well seasoned nose tried the finer points of the vapours. Whisky was even jingled up to a weather-beaten ear that could hear no bells.

“I always drink Bells,” said the old punter, nodding knowingly to his drinking pal and being sure to be loud enough to catch the full attention of the new young barman.

“Sorry Sir – but how would I know? You just asked for two whiskies, not what special kind,” said the barman.

The old punter clearly looked like he hoped it might be changed to Bells.

“Sorry Sir – I can’t change it – you’ve already drunk some of it.”

At that point the old punter want off for a pee.

This young barman moved the glass a bit along the bar top. The drinking partner understood, grinned  and readily nodded his approval.

A gleam of hope soon lifted the old punter when he came back to see the glass was changed.

“Changed it for you Sir,” said the barman.

The old punter could now enjoy it so much better.

“I know the difference,” he said, perhaps more loudly than he might have wished.

Colin escaped from the day job in Scotland and now writes very short fiction and poetry in Sarawak on the lovely green island of Borneo and faraway in Yunnan in southwest China. Published credits: about 50 stories and 80 poems and still writing away. www.colincampbell.org and www.shortstory.mobi.

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My orders were to dive to the ocean floor to plunder a recently discovered wreck in which the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was thought to have drowned.  My pirate overlords had waited a long time to send me, however.  By the time I plunged overboard, my air tanks were depleted.  I knew I couldn’t linger below without having to resurface rapidly and risk the bends.

Hastily I explored the ship’s cabin.  I hoped to discover the ship’s log, but instead found only a card addressed to Shelley and various items in a cabinet:  a compass, a map, sticking pins, etc.  Shortly afterwards, I had to return to the surface and to the ghoulish pirates who enslaved me.

When I finally broke free of the water, the crew seemed surprised, as though they had expected to sacrifice a slave or two for the sake of the salvage operation.

Removing my equipment, I temporarily slipped away into the hold of the ship, secretly wishing I might stow away until we reached a safe port and I could somehow manage an escape.  But in the deep vault was a deadly cargo—poisonous vipers curled in cages, and many unearthly creatures.

And nearby, on a cot, I was shocked to see the ghostly body of Shelley himself, horribly burned and decayed.  Somehow, my ghoulish captors had summoned him from the ashes in order to lead them to the wreck.

The poor spirit let out a moan and what might have passed for the word water, had his lips been moist enough to form it.

I heard an overseer barking an order to a fellow slave.  I glanced at the slave and he returned my gaze, sympathetically, knowing that my punishment for being below-deck without authorization would be severe.

For a moment, we were joined silently in the knowledge of the infernal and inescapable nature of our torment.

The dead poet was soon brought water and seemed to revive slightly, managing to look at me, painfully raise a spectral finger, and point it toward his chest.

My heart, O, they have taken my heart!

Then the overseer slashed at me with a sword, and that is all I remember of life.

M.V. Montgomery is a professor at Life University in Atlanta.  He is the author, most recently, of the short story collection Beyond the Pale (Winter Goose Publishing, 2013).   

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I thought I’d just kill her and dump her in the woods like the rest of them. She fit the profile: young, blonde, cleavage and thighs showing, a necklace I could take as a keepsake. She got in my taxi drunk and told me where to go. Everything was going to plan. But when I told her, after we’d missed her turning, that it didn’t matter, I wasn’t taking her home, I was going to slit her throat, she just looked at me, face all scrunched up and perplexed and said:

Oh, do you have to? I mean, apart from the fact that my mum’ll get worried – don’t worry about that, she worries if I put two sugars in my coffee instead of one – it is a bit of cliché, don’t you think, a taxi driver dumping someone in the woods? Couldn’t you be a little more imaginative?

And, really, do you want the police to put all that effort into investigating a cliché? Surely they’re bored of it by now. And the expense. The forensics, the detectives, the paperwork. And then there’s the money the press will put into reporting it. If they bother. Girl dumped in the woods. There may be a point where they can’t even be bothered to report on it anymore. And I might be that point. I’ll be a sideline, an in-other-news.

Don’t you want to be famous? Don’t you want to be known like the Zodiac killer or Son of Sam? Aren’t you supposed to want that? Or is that where you break with the cliché? You’re the middle-management of murderers. Unambitious, neglected, forgotten, forgettable, replaceable.

Although, now I think about it, this middle management vibe is just another cliché, isn’t it? When they eventually arrest you, everyone’ll say, oh, it’s always the quiet ones. He was a lovely chap, always working in his garden. I didn’t think he could hurt a fly. And I’ll – look at the way I’m dressed. They’ll say I was asking for it and then someone else’ll say, you can’t say that. A woman has a right to dress any way she likes – can’t you be black? Or a woman?

And I had to admit she had a point. But, like the man says, you can’t argue someone out of something they didn’t argue themselves into. It might be a cliché, but people still love looking at sunsets.

They found her three days later, throat slit, necklace gone, her tongue cut out. She deserved that. She talked too much. And you’ve got to give the cops something new, haven’t you? A sign that I’m maturing. Just like she said. A cliché.

Stephen Mander is originally from Liverpool in the UK, but has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Syria. He currently lives in Vietnam. 

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The door’s bell echoes sharply through the quiet store, startling Veronica from the newspaper in front of her.

The pungent odor of an unwashed body assaults her nostrils. Without glancing up, Veronica knows who it is. Again. Moments earlier, she’d been breathing in the crisp smell of paper and ink, but not anymore. She glances toward the back office, wondering when Mr. Stringer will return from the bank across the street.

She watches Lenny shuffle along the aisle of travel guides, dragging his blackened fingertips along the spines of the books and edges of the shelves. She curses silently to herself, knowing she’ll have to scrub the grimy residue left in his wake.

He wears the same long brown coat with the ripped hem. From its torn bottom, unraveled shards of reddish lining drag toward the floor, like a trail of blood following behind him. His bulky appearance belies the emaciated body beneath. Layers upon layers of dirty clothing, a magic trick of necessity and desperation. His mismatched shoes—one brown, scuffed and old, and the other one black, shiny and new—have heels of two different heights.

Veronica stares as he makes his way to the biography and memoirs section, with the variety of out-turned covers showing athletes and authors, singers and presidents. Mr. Stringer believes that Lenny likes to see all the faces staring back at him; they keep him company. Veronica thinks he simply likes the section’s proximity to the bathroom. She’d have to clean that too.

The first time she’d seen Lenny come into the store, Veronica had approached him with her standard greeting, “Can I help you?” but his vacant, darting eyes couldn’t seem to focus on her. No matter how loudly or slowly she spoke, he refused to acknowledge her directly.

He continually muttered, “They’re just words. They’re just words. They’re just words,” confusing and shaming her at the same time.

But Mr. Stringer had assured her that Lenny was talking about the books.

More than a half-dozen times in the past month, Veronica has helped Mr. Stringer carry Lenny out of the tiny, tiled room. Each time, Veronica had watched in silence as Mr. Stringer carefully straightened Lenny’s clothes where he lay on the floor. Lenny’s eyes were rolled back, his skin pale, his fingers clenched, and every time, she felt a conflicted wish that maybe he’d be dead. She’d link arms with Mr. Stringer under Lenny, half carrying, half dragging him out. Last week, she had caught a glimpse in the bathroom mirror of her six-foot-two, lanky frame towering over tiny Mr. Stringer and emaciated Lenny. She had laughed out loud at the sight of them heaving the drooling man from the floor. As Mr. Stringer’s eyes had widened, she’d pursed her lips, feeling her face redden.

She’d taken a job at a book store because she liked books. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for, but still.

Mr. Stringer would have coffee and a sandwich waiting for Lenny in the back alley of the store. They’d prop him up against the bricks, and Mr. Stringer would attempt to rouse him and shoo Veronica away.

She’d shrugged as she turned around. It wasn’t as if there would be customers waiting.

When Veronica hears the back door open, she knows that Mr. Stringer has returned. She folds the classified section over and stuffs it under the counter.

“Lenny’s here.”

“Oh. Where?”

“Bios, again.”

“Hmm. Let’s just let him go about his business today. The store’s not busy.”

Veronica sighs and nods. No, the store’s not busy at all.

Denise Long writes from her home in Nebraska. She works as a freelance copy editor and an adjunct English instructor. In her spare time, she is also a wife, and a mother to two young boys. You can find her occupying a small bit of space on the Internet at www.denisehlong.com.

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Susan escaped to the bathroom, the only room where she could be alone.

This is supposed to be the happiest day of my life, she thought.  But if I have to listen to Aunt Bess tell me one more time how the minister called Uncle Herman, Harmon, during their vows, so she’s living in sin with Uncle Herman, I just may choke the life out of the old biddy.

Mom wants me to wear eye shadow.  Dad worries that James won’t find a job in Colorado.  Sally is afraid she’ll never see me again if I move so far away.  Aunt Jane wants to know why I still want to go to graduate school now that I found a husband.

And they wonder why the tick in my left eye is acting up again.

Susan sat on the commode and reached into her purse for her cell phone.

“It’s a zoo here. Can’t we escape?” she whispered, without even saying hello.

“Too late.” Just haring James voice calmed her.  “They’ve already planned the wedding.  Isn’t it nice of them to have invited us?”

Susan smiled for what seemed like the first time in weeks.  “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

After a long silence, she said,  “I want to rewrite our vows for you to promise that you’ll never leave me alone with my Aunt Bess.”

“You got it.  Now go back out there.  It’s still visiting time at the zoo.  I have to listen to my Uncle Jack tell me about his wedding during World War II one more time.”

“How do you stand it?  I’m ready to scream.”

“I think of you.  We’ll be in Colorado soon.”

Susan took a deep breath.  “You want to hear something dumb?  I’ll probably miss the zoo when we get there.”

“I know.  We’ll have to hunt for ourselves.”  James paused.  “At least we’ll be free.”

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net.  He’s published stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories.   Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

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It happened again over dinner: two glasses of Slovenian wine made me bilingual.

“You know?” I say to my second cousin, Marta, “there are at least a hundred čevlje on the tree outside?”

Marta looks up abruptly, and the wine flows straight to my fingertips as I paint tree-branches in the air. Halting sentences with English influences are transformed. I am the Slavic Proust, never mind that I am only working through intermediate Slovene.

“The čevlje, they were red, lovely…” I smile. “I ate them all.”

Marta’s eyes get smaller as her head jerks sideways. Her friend shrugs his shoulders: “Americans.”

“Čevlje?” she asks.

“Da, da,” I say. “Yes.”

Then, flipping through my mini-dictionary: “Ah! No, no. Češnje! Sorry!”

The difference between a “v-l” and a “š-n” is the difference between eating shoes and ripe sour cherries.

“Damn it,” says her friend, who does not join the laughter. “The first version was a better story to tell.”

Kristina Zdravič Reardon is a Slovenian-American writer and translator. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of New Hampshire and translated short stories for a year in Ljubljana on a Fulbright grant. Her work has been published in World Literature Today and other journals.

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On day three of his repeat performance of the Ninth Grade, Jimmy headed down the hall from his brand-new homeroom full of strangers on route to his old Algebra class where once again he was being taught by the same so-called teacher he had last year. Jimmy had yet to run into any of his former classmates, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He bristled as he turned the corner and found himself face to face with Ryan. The lanky sophomore was gathered in a huddle with Betty, Rick, Tyler and Matt; all five of them lucky enough and smart enough to have moved up to the Tenth Grade.

Rick said “hello” and Tyler and Matt followed suit. Betty offered up a friendly wiggley-fingers wave, then gave Ryan a gentle nudge.

“Hey Jimmy,“ Ryan said begrudgingly, a phony smile stretching across his ruddy face. Ryan took a half step in a somewhat casual way, but enough of a step so that if Jimmy wanted to continue down the hall he would have to walk around him. Jimmy never liked Ryan very much and he knew the feeling was mutual. Ryan was on the swim team and spent all of last year making sure everyone knew it. He was always bragging about how fast he was and constantly talking about the team’s next meet or the one they just had.

“C’mon Ryan, we’ll be late for Spanish,” Betty said softly.

“We got a few minutes,” Ryan said matter-of-factly. Ryan had no intention of moving out of Jimmy’s way. “So you’ve got a new homeroom now, with the ninth-graders,” Ryan said, as if he was just making causal conversation.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Jimmy said coldly, glaring at Ryan. The two of them stood there, eyes locked, no one saying a word.

Tyler reached into his locker to grab a notebook, then slammed the door shut, making Betty jump. They all laughed, except for Betty and Jimmy. Betty shrugged her shoulders, then made an awkward attempt at small talk. “It’s kind of chilly today,” she said, smiling at Jimmy.

“Yeah, it’s cold enough,” Jimmy said, trying to sound relaxed.

“Got that right,” Rick chimed in, ”and it’s suppose to get even colder tomorrow.”

Matt laughed in a condescending manner, clutched at himself and said “burrrrr.”

Ryan maintained his stance with his chin up, his nose in the air, confidence all over his smug face. Jimmy figured Ryan had a right to feel superior; they all did. They were sophomores now. Just Jimmy got left behind, forced to give the Ninth Grade a second shot. Maybe this time, he’d get it right. Second time’s a charm, that’s what Jimmy had been telling himself all summer long.

But here he was, only three days into it and he already hated it. He was the “new kid” in the same old school where all his friends from last year were learning new things, tucked away in their sophomore classrooms behind unpenetrable doors where Jimmy was denied entry. It was embarrassing. Jimmy was condemned to rehash his entire freshman year, nothing “fresh” about it the second go-round. All he had to look forward to, was a whole year’s worth of the same dull classes and the same annoying teachers. Another year of struggling through tests that were too hard. Another year of worrying that the teacher would call on him in class for an answer he probably wouldn’t know.

Ryan was still casually standing in Jimmy’s way and the mood was getting even more uncomfortable. Ryan scratched at his chin. Jimmy could almost visualize those mean wheels spinning around in Ryan’s sophomoric mind; he knew the jerk was about to say something jerky.

Jimmy was wearing slip-on loafers, so he should have known better than to look down when Ryan said: “Hey dufus, your shoe’s untied.”   It’s not like Jimmy didn’t know what he was wearing on his own two feet. But he looked down anyway. And when he did, he eyed Ryan making a “loony tunes” gesture, twirling his finger in a circle near his temple. Betty stifled a nervous giggle. Tyler and Matt laughed right out loud. Only Rick had the sense of decency to signal toward Ryan to lay off. Ryan just shrugged his shoulders, smug smile all over his arrogant face.

Without warning, Jimmy took a wild but calculated swing and scored a direct hit to Ryan’s nose, knocking the smirk right off of his smug sophomore face.

Betty let out a shriek. “Oh my God!” she shouted. “Oh my God!”

Jimmy’s brother was right. “Always go for the nose,” Rob had advised his younger brother on a lazy summer day in the midst of a friendly game of H-O-R-S-E in the family driveway. Rob was adamant about it. “Listen kid, if you find yourself in a fight; don’t waste time bouncing around and sparring; go right for the nose. Hit a dude in the jaw or stomach and he’ll punch you back as hard as he can. But hit him in the nose and it knocks him off-balance. He sees stars; his eyes blur; he gets a little dizzy; puts him in a real panic. Think about it. He’s off-balance and he’s got this sharp pain in the center of his face. Nine times out of ten, a dude will reach for his nose and if he sees blood, he’ll really freak out!”

No question about it, big brother Rob was right.

Jimmy stood there, glaring at Ryan. “My nose, my nose,” Ryan kept saying, his voice becoming muffled as he cupped his hand around his nose while blood trickled down his fingers. “You damn idiot, you sucker-punched me!” Ryan shouted through his cupped hand. “Dammit! My nose, my nose.”

Jimmy kept his eyes fixed on Ryan. “Who’s stupid now?” Jimmy asked, fully knowing the correct answer.

PAUL GERMANO lives, writes and plays in Syracuse, NY. His fiction (micro, flash and otherwise) has been published in roughly 25 print and online magazines including Fiction 365, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette and the Vestal Review. Two of his stories, “Can of Worms” and “Separation of Church and State,” were published in the Journal of Microliterature in 2012.

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Fall. Peppercorns. Butternut Squash. Leaves. Of course, dry crumbling leaves on fire. Don’t forget pumpkins or little white ghosts. Don’t forget apples, cinnamon and miniature treats. Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget.

I’ll never forget you said. You said you would never forget. I guess I believed you. I believed you in the naive not really believing way that young girls have. I guess I never really believed you, not really.

But I didn’t forget, I knew that much. I always told the truth. Still do. I never ever forget even if sometimes I do forget who I had for fourth period English or what I dressed up as for Kate’s party. I never forget the things in-between the real things in life.

It started with your hand tearing up my leg like a claw. That hand, your hand ( I wanted to grab it and hold it and stuff it inside my mouth to taste it) was under a yellow blanket. We were on a plaid couch. See how I remember. The movie, that I still remember but I’m not going to say which–too crass, too commercial, ruins the feeling of the moment, dates me–was playing and the others (do you remember? do you remember anything? anyone at all?) were watching. I watched but I didn’t really watch. I don’t think you were. Quick, the plot. Can you state the plot in twenty words or less?

There were more days with more things I don’t remember. I think, or I like to think, I could remember if I really tried but I don’t really try. I don’t remember that certain hallway smell. That certain room with the certain carvings on the desk shaped like a penis. I don’t remember how I felt so uncomfortable most days. Like nothing fit or looked right or was right. I don’t remember how everyone else looked so knowledgeable about how to be in the world. I don’t remember how I studied the insides of a frog by taking it apart and putting it back together and the teacher laughing at my incompetence.

See, see how much we forget!

There was another movie. There was another couch–this one was upper-class, brown leather. There was another hand, your hand again–did you use your right or your left? Left, I believe. It didn’t claw this time. We were watching a comedy. This time it stroked its way up. I remember that you put that hand, your left, on my face and touched my nose, eyelids, cheeks and lips. I liked the feel of your fingers on my chin the best but you rarely touched me there.

Come on. You remember. It was fall. Peppercorns. Pumpkins. The whole leaves on the ground bit. Don’t you remember? How can you not remember? You said you would remember, always. You said that when we were in your car. A silver truck. You said that when you finished and my top was unbuttoned. You said that when I let you do whatever you wanted. I believed you even though I didn’t. Don’t you keep promises?

Well, let me remind you: It was fall. Smoke smell, leaves crackling, hot cider and little white ghosts. The silver truck was parked on the hill with the view of the city. You whispered nice things to me. I said nice things to you. Your breath was warm on my cheek. It was getting cold outside. I put your hand places and you put my hand places. You did what you wanted and I let you. We did what we wanted. I had never done what I wanted, exactly like that, before. Remember? Don’t you at least remember someone looking like me? Don’t you at least remember someone looking like me in the fall? Peppercorns? Doing what you wanted. Don’t you remember when you do things that you wanted to do?

Don’t just look at me in line with a can of soup in your hands. Don’t just look like that, so blank, and then turn away. Don’t you know that’s rude? That’s uncalled for and can really hurt a person’s feelings. I was smiling at you. I had a full basket of good foods. It’s nearly Thanksgiving. I would think the smell in the air would jog your memory. It’s horrible to remember and to be forgotten.

Rachel Joseph has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in Drama from Stanford University. Her poetry has been published in the Chiron Review. Her current book project, Screened Stages: Representations of Theatre Within Cinema, is under advance contract with Northwestern University Press. Her chapter “Chaplin’s Presence” is forthcoming in Refocusing Chaplin. Her essays have been published in Octopus and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. Most recently she directed the world premiere of her play, The Screen Dreams of Buster Keaton.

The post Remembering by Rachel Joseph appeared first on Microliterature.

I stood naked on a conveyor belt, like a plucked chicken in the maw of a great machine. I was surrounded by whirling fans, monitors wheeling with data, plexiglass walls behind which twisted dendritic bundles and the viscera of circuit boards. In front of me, my cohorts hunched over, impassive, appearing slightly troglodytic, their long arms a-dangle, unevenly distended buttcheeks wobbling. Everything about them seemed drowsy and drugged-out. I felt terrified, but looking down at my own slumped figure, I realized my hairs did not stand on end; my limbs hung relaxed and swayed as if almost rubbery, too. My mind raced, but my body had been transformed into a paralyzed jelly.

We all moved along in a humdrum process of bureaucratic fatalism, toward an entrance to what could be a nightmare or perhaps a car-wash. But I knew even then, by a premonition—a clairvoyant certainty—the procedure that would occur inside: microscopic electrodes would be implanted into my brain through robotic assembly; my nervous system would be connected to the wireless refraction of signals that cascaded around us already, passing in the very air each of us breathed. This moment, my last outside the tunnel, would be the final time in which I would know my thoughts were safely buried within my own skull.

The floor crawled along with its slow, inevitable progress, echoing dull thuds like an airport walkway. I felt as if I were underwater, in a more compressed element, a more deliberate temporality, as I was moved into the operating tunnel. I watched my fellow primates get swallowed into the darkness one by one until I passed into the hole: the last sliver of light disappeared, a razoring sheen in my periphery.

Even now, reflecting on that moment, I don’t know if this vision has been implanted by the surrounding bombardment of wavelengths. Was this last memory of mine (the last before I became something other, a cyborg knitted into a universal computer) prompted by the digital telepathy of the greater mind-system to which I am now joined, as a phantom remembrance of days in which solitude had been possible? And who are you—I sense a disturbance of my frequencies, a ghostly presence at the margins—you who are listening to these thoughts?

William Cordeiro is completing his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His work appears widely, including in Copper Nickel, Crab Orchard Review, Drunken Boat, Fourteen Hills, Punchnel’s, and Sentence. He is grateful for residencies from Ora Lerman Trust, ART 342, Blue Mountain Center, and Petrified Forest National Park. He lives in Tucson, Arizona where he teaches at Pima Community College.

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Harry was hairy. Hair bubbled out of his shirt onto his neck. So when the strange woman walked up to him on the sidewalk, ran her fingers along his collar, and said, “I like a hairy man,” he was excited. He asked her to dinner right there.

Not bad looking, not good. Bit flat, bit fat. Blonde hair to her shoulders was O.K. He’d see.

He waited at the table 15 minutes past the appointed time, and when she didn’t appear, he ordered dinner. He should have known. Nothing sadder than a lone man at a table waiting for a woman who doesn’t show up.   Maybe there was a web site: Hairyman.com.

The 40-year-Old Virgin was on TV that night with that wax scene. He rushed past the channel.   Though he had considered having the hair removed, he was afraid of the pain.

Swimming pool, beach. Both were out of the question for him.

His doctor examined him, shirt off. Annual physical. “Any werewolves in your family?” And he thought it was funny. At 34, Harry was in perfect health. Hair had even started to grow in his ears, however.

Every time he saw a TV show about beaches, the men were smooth. Not a hair on their chests or their six-pack of abs. He had man boobs and was hairy. No beach for him.

The women were skinny like little girls, and burnt to a crisp. In the middle of winter that Crystal receptionist at work was bark brown. Repulsive, he thought.

It began to occur to Harry that he was not in the flow of his time. Not even for the 30 types. The waitress at the office building café still wore the big hair of his decade, the 80s. Meanwhile, his daughter, living with his ex-wife, was covered with tattoos and around her mouth was an arsenal of metal piercings. He was against it; his wife just told him the times had changed. How can you go through the metal detector at the airport? he had asked the girl. She got mad and told him she wanted to go home. And one of the tattoos said, “Dad”. Right beside was one that said “Mom”. He felt bad about that.

He saw a woman in Wal-Mart with hairy arm pits. She was looking at watches in the case.   He almost walked over and said hello, but a man walked up with a water hose in his hands, and stood by her. Husband maybe or boyfriend.

What was he going to do, starting middle age, a one-bedroom cheap apartment, a little Toyoto five-years-old, and a dead-end job that didn’t pay enough with a supervisor who just dumped more and more files in his in-box. And hairy, pasty, out of shape.

He tried www.hairyman.com on his old computer, but only got some dumb box with Hairy Man at the top and a black page. A search on “date hairy men”, however, brought up several sites. He put a profile on one, taking a picture of himself with his shirt off with his phone.

And waited.

David Flynn was born in 1948 in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist currently on the roster. His literary publications total more than one hundred and twenty. Among the eight writing residencies he has been awarded are five at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM, and stays in Ireland and Israel. He spent a year in Japan as a member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program, and recently won the Kintetsu Essay Award. For three years he was president of the Music City Blues Society.   He is married and has one daughter.

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Like swarming insects we descend upon the park – teeming pre-pubescents settling upon the playground, denying toddlers and astonished mothers the ritual solitude of their daily excursion.

Still more flutter out across the lawns, boys stripping the branches bare; throwing acorns and poking each other with sticks, as girls skip down the hills in spontaneous choreography causing all to scatter in their wake, while we, the teachers, try to cautiously channel this wild, force of nature, blustering and ordering, but never in control; Till at last, the weather turns and the rain intervenes, and we thank God for his assistance.

Darren Stein was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1973, but immigrated to Australia in 1996. He teaches History and Comparative Religion at a college on Sydney’s North Shore. He has published a number of artistic and written works including his own anthology of poetry, Storage Space: A collection of Contemporary Poetry (2009).

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The soft glow of the iron as it heated and that endless whisper, the rush of the flame when the metal began to ripple at the seams. This was something that she liked. She could see, right through her mask, the alteration of structure, at the molecular level, the tearing of atomic bonds. This was power beyond guns. Beyond men. They fought but she built their fighting machines. They tore flesh while she tore the very flesh of the earth. It was a hot job and it was dangerous, like theirs, but in a different way. She hung suspended in a boson’s chair fifty feet above the factory floor in her coveralls and mask. Where before she slung hash at a lunch counter, now she built ships. A whole factory of girls at earnest in their welding. Fire, iron, steel. Tongues of flame in the dark. Indigo daggers and ochre sparks. Women. The wombs of the world at war while the fathers of the now and the grandfathers of some blurred future slogged through the hedgerows and the jungles spraying their own flames. More metal. And this did not escape her. The world of metals. The metals of war. Flame melts metal and metal melts skin and he who has the most metal wins. Or she. For who was it now that made the metals that the men now flung at each other so far away? She knew this wasn’t the natural order of things. It was, to her mind, a corruption of nature and a blasphemy, a distortion of God’s intent.

She slid down to the factory floor with the smooth precision of a commando descending a cliff. Lunch break. All the ladies were chattering. A long line of girls carrying lunch pails and handbags and the seeds of wars yet to come. Heads cocked and turning, the swagger of the birthing hips. They talked about lipstick. They talked about Lent. Who gave up what sacred pleasure. Who deprived themselves of this thing or that. Edith Brown gave up chocolate. Tish Leery gave up bread. They went down the whole line there in the lunchroom. And then all the girls turned their heads. Aida, they said. Aida? Are you listening? She was never quite present, was she? Always in a world of her own. Aida, what are you giving up for Lent? Aida heard them. That’s something they never understood, never caught onto. She always heard them. She looked down at her lap, as if the answer was there. And of course it was. He had only come home for a moment. A lousy two day pass. But of course that’s plenty of time for everything we were ever meant to get done. What did she give up for Lent? It was already gone. What is forty days anyway, compared to the life of a boy?

Vincent Louis Carrella is a writer, photographer, poet and author of the novel Serpent Box (Harper/Perennial)

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I. Open Book/ Open to Interpretation

At an academic conference, the task at hand for the featured speaker was to explicate an ancient scroll decorated with runes. The scroll was projected onto a screen above and behind him, text splayed wide. But in his presentation the man extrapolated freely from the text, choosing instead to discuss the path to follow to a Godly life. I shook my head and started asking questions incorporating as many of the magic symbols as possible, trying to get him to focus.

II. Getaway Car/ Getting Carried Away

My friends and I had rebuilt an old car. The auspices of the action were vaguely criminal—we planned to use it to escape our parents.   The car was a big boat of a luxury vehicle from the 1940s—steel frame, wooden side panels. One friend and I put on the finishing touches on while the others waited at a nearby waterfront. When we arrived, they hopped in appreciatively. Apparently, the consensus was to actually motor out across the water. We began puttering down a channel that would lead to an open harbor, but immediately, the old vehicle began to leak.   Kneeling on the bench seats to avoid getting any wetter, we began bailing.   Knowing I was tempting fate, I suggested the only thing missing was a fire to help us dry out. My friend became irresistibly seized by this idea. Ignoring all danger of asphyxiation or explosion, he crouched and lit the floorboards on fire.

III. Surmounting Obstacles/Life Journey

Our African guide spoke rapid-fire French. I had to try to adapt quickly to it along with the other Peace Corps volunteers, utilizing just the limited grammar and few phrases I had. We had just made it over a high mountain pass and had half-climbed, half-slid down to the remote village where I soon would be leading a class of children as a new language teacher. And I was already wondering how I would address the class, what to talk about. Fresh from my arduous journey, I thought I might reflect on the path that brought me here, the wide world beyond, and the fact that in their lives to come, the children might wish to retrace this road to make their own discoveries. I began practicing the speech in my head using the few words I knew: mountain, climb, difficult, journey, life, and begin.

M.V. Montgomery is a professor at Life University in Atlanta. He is the author, most recently, of the short story collection Beyond the Pale (Winter Goose Publishing, 2013).

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It happened suddenly. A simple walk to the mail box caused his chest to tighten. He gasped for breath as if he had run a marathon. It went away as soon as he rested, so he told himself it was nothing to worry about, nothing to worry Linda about. Later that same day he tried working out at the gym, but nearly collapsed after a few minutes on the treadmill. Again, a short break and he felt fine. But he curtailed his swim, imagining himself dead in the pool, belly up, like a bloated insect.

He tried convincing himself he suffered some kind of autumn allergy. Linda would worry, so he kept it to himself.

But Linda happened to be looking out the living room window the next day as he raked leaves. He’d stop after a couple of sweeps to lean on the rake. At first, she thought he was lost in thought. She knew him since he was twenty, nearly fifty years. A good man, but easily distracted when it came to working hard.

Something seemed different. Although he had kept himself in good shape, no more than ten pounds heavier than the boy she had known in college, he looked old today. It wasn’t just his hair that had turned white decades earlier. No, something was different.

She watched him bend to rake a pile of leaves into the wheelbarrow when he collapsed to one knee. She ran to him. He waved her away, saying he had just slipped. He rose slowly, trying to catch his breath.

“Bullshit, you slipped.   What’s wrong?”

“Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”

And he was. But she called his doctor who said to take him to the hospital immediately.

He didn’t put up a fight. He let her drive.

After tests, and more tests, they scheduled surgery to replace a heart valve.

“It’s fixable,” she said calmly, the evening before surgery. She pulled a smile over her face so the worry wouldn’t show.

He knew that look and made a joke.

“Just a valve job is all. I’ll be good for another 100,000 miles once they get through with me.”

They hugged, unsure which one supported the other.

Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He’s published hundred of stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories, available at http://issuu.com/pearnoir/docs/revealing_moments. Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

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Pete turned the “nut” over and over with his paws, sniffing it wildly as he did so. After hours of gnawing, he had almost cracked its strange, outer shell. It was surely a tough nut to crack, he thought.

Actually, Pete didn’t have that thought. Pete didn’t really “think.” I suppose that it was more akin to a feeling of excitement. Pete experienced only simple feelings and emotions, like terror, hunger, horniness, and satisfaction, for he was a common-variety North American gray squirrel and his brain was not much bigger than the nut he was trying to crack.

I should also point out that his name wasn’t really Pete. Who knows what this squirrel called himself—I certainly don’t. But let’s pretend that this squirrel’s name was “Pete.” And I’ll take other liberties, too. Like attributing certain thoughts and actions to Pete, much in the same manner that pet owners assign human traits to their animals. Otherwise, this would be an exceedingly difficult tale to tell.

Back to the story.

Pete sat motionless on a tree branch for the better part of an hour observing the goings-on earlier that day. Although he did not know it, Pete was watching an historic occasion. It was undoubtedly the most historic occasion that had ever occurred on the planet. Of course, these facts were lost on Pete. Pete knew only the following simple squirrel equation,

“HUMAN = FOOD”

In fact, an important corollary to this squirrel equation was,

“MANY HUMANS = MUCH FOOD”

Pete saw bright flashes of light from things held by the humans. This didn’t particularly alarm Pete—in fact, he had had many humans in the past make bright lights flash at him from very close range. You see, Pete had added another important corollary to the basic squirrel equation, called “Petey’s corollary” and it went like this:

“BRIGHT FLASHES OF LIGHT = FOOD”

After a few moments, Pete spied the focus of everyone’s attention—a funny-looking human was addressing the crowd and gesturing at a nutty item sitting on the table. Other humans illuminated it with bright flashes of light. It looked like a nut. It possessed the right shape and approximate color for a nut. It must be a very tasty nut, Pete reasoned, given the huge numbers of people who were smiling and gesturing at it. The humans in the crowd were feeling very happy emotions. Pete could sense this strongly. Pete felt an intense emotion, too. He was experiencing “desire.” Pete desired that nut. Pete coveted that nut.

“IMPORTANT NUT = PETE’S NUT”

A few minutes later, Pete spotted his chance. The humans turned away from the nut for one moment, shaking hands and embracing one another—including the funny-looking human. Pete leapt from the tree limb and onto the table. Before anyone could stop him, Pete latched onto the nut with his small, but powerful teeth and sped away as quickly as his little squirrel feet would carry him. Behind him, Pete could hear considerable commotion, followed soon thereafter by many footsteps giving chase. “This must be a very important nut,” thought Petey, as he sped into the underbrush, gaining distance on the angry humans. Pete could sense anger strongly.

Once safely back in his little squirrel home, Pete examined the important, tasty nut. Pete was not indiscriminate. He frequently examined his food in this manner, for Petey was a very curious squirrel insofar as squirrels are concerned.

The nut was slightly larger in size than the average walnut. It was light brown in color, and it possessed texture. It was oval-shaped. The nut’s husk displayed no discernible ridge-line. Unlike some nuts, this one did not appear to be comprised of joined hemispheres. Pete noted the presence of curious patterns circling its circumference. Pete, being a squirrel, could not possibly know that the patterns were, in fact, a form of written language whose “words” described the contents of the nut. Pete only knew that it was a very important nut. And, it smelled good! It would be a hard nut to crack. But Pete was not upset. For he knew that,

“HARD NUT = GOOD FOOD”

After many, many hours of gnawing on the special nut, Pete finally penetrated the outer husk. He was rewarded with a steady trickle of sweet, clear nectar from the puncture wound. It tasted like sugar-water. Pete lapped up a few drops that had accumulated on the ground.

What Petey did not know, since he was a squirrel, was this: the “nut” was a gift from the Trexiallian ambassador to all the peoples of the earth. The Trexiallian arrived only the day before in his spaceship after traveling for 900 years. Inside this one and only container was a magic elixir that, when diluted, would have provided enough doses to cure all known diseases for all of humanity. In addition the medicine would have extended human life–making humans, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Again, Pete didn’t know this. He was driven simply by desire to have a nut.

Petey also didn’t know that he was about to become the longest-living squirrel in the history of squirrel-kind—or for that matter, any-kind. Pete had invented a new corollary to the squirrel equation:

“GOOD FOOD = IMMORTALITY”

Phil Temples grew up in Bloomington, Indiana USA. He’s lived in and around Boston, Massachusetts for the past thirty years and works as a computer systems administrator at Boston College. For over ten years, Phil has written flash and short sci-fi/fantasy primarily for his own enjoyment. His stories have appeared (or will soon appear) in several online journals, including: Boston Literary Magazine, Bewildering Stories, The Zodiac Review, The World of Myth, InfectiveINk, Daily Frights 2013, Bleeding Ink Anthology, and Stupefying Stories. Phil recently participated in National Novel Writing Month, producing a full length murder-mystery novel, “The Winship Affair” that will be published by Blue Mustang Press in 2013. In addition to his writing activities, Phil is a singer in a garage band and an avid ham radio operator.

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Father: the one who died too young.

Cancer ate his kidneys, but the bile ate his heart.

I hated my envy: the shadow below his collarbones, the pointed edge of his hips.

I hated him for giving up.

Victoria Elizabeth is a lifetime student of the arts, literature, and life as a whole. She recently completed her BFA in Creative Writing and is starting her MLS in Spring 2014 at Rollins College.

The post Father by Victoria Webster-Perez appeared first on Microliterature.

stuff:

n., common:

           (1) (mildly negative):a clutter of undifferentiated material objects. “We have too much stuff.”

           (2) (jocularly positive):a joyful, zany plenitude, as in the poster, “Subway Stuff,” a pastiche of iconic subway paraphernalia (fare card, turnstile, tracks, litter barrel, conductor’s cap, etc.) seen on the “F” train, New York City, March 1, 2014.

           (3) (more strongly negative, chiefly Br.): nonsense. “What a lot of stuff you’re talking!” Also compounded, in the redundant colloquialism “stuff and nonsense.”

vb: transitive:

           (1) with direct object: “I should stuff the turkey soon.”

           (2) with reflexive pronoun: “Stop stuffing yourself!”

           (3) with passive voice: (metaphorical): “The passengers were stuffed into the train like sardines.”

intransitive:

            (1) past participle (metaphorical): condition of having overeaten. “I’m stuffed!”

           (2) past participle (metaphorical, obscene?).“Get stuffed!”

adj:

            stuffed:

                      – culinary (literal): stuffed cabbage, shells, derma, pork chops, etc.

                      – pompous (metaphorical, with “shirt”): “What a stuffed shirt my dad is!”

           stuffy:

                      – condition of insufficient air: “Boy, is this room stuffy!”

                      – overly formal person, often old and male: “My dad is really stuffy!” (See “stuffed shirt,” supra.)

Satire by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has appeared in many publications (The Brooklyn Rail, diagram, Evergreen Review, Mad Hatter’s Review, Word Riot, etc), and he has published several books. In 2010-11, he made three trips to Africa for Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders(forthcoming). His work has twice been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.  

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