The End

The return of The was short-lived. This project is now closed. Thank you for all of your wonderful words and support.

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Tassos by Andrew McCallum Crawford

Είναι ένα παιδί που συχνάζει στο μαγαζί μου. Κάθε αρχές του μήνα έρχεται. Τον κουρεύω. Φαίνεται πολύ μικρός. Φαίνεται άρρωστος. Τόσο λεπτός, τόσο χλωμός. Μου λέει οτι είναι Σκωτσέζος. Ουίσκυ, ουίσκυ! μου λέει. Καταλαβαίνω. Είναι καθηγητής. Διδάσκει αγγλικά σ'ενα μέρος στην παραλία. Είναι ενα μεγάλο, παλαιό σχολείο που υπήρχε πριν από το μαγαζί μου - 1940, 50. Τελευταία φορά που ήρθε τον ξύρισα. Σε κερνάω, του λέω, δεν θα σε χρεώσω τίποτα. Κοιτάζει το ξυράφι στο τραπέζι, τα μάτια του μεγάλα σαν πιάτα. Γελάω. Μην ανησυχείς, λέω, και του δείχνω την κάρτα. President Johnson. Κάνω καλό ξύρισμα. Δεν θα σε κόψω. Γέρνει πίσω στην καρέκλα και απλώνω το σαπούνι στο προσωπό του. Προσπαθεί να μη τρέμει. Οι τρίχες είναι μαλακές. Κόβονται εύκολα. Δεν τον κόβω. Τον κοιτάζω στον καθρέφτη. Το δέρμα του τόσο απαλό, τόσο μαλακό. Τόσο άσπρο.


This boy, he come in my shop. The start of every month, he come in. I cut his hair. He look too young. He look ill. So thin, so pale. He tell me he is Scottish. Whisky, Whisky! he say. I understand. He is teacher. He teach English in a place on the seafront. It is a big school, an old school. It was here before my shop - 1940s, 50s. Last time he come in I shave him. I treat you, I say - no charge. He look at the razor on the table, his eyes big like plates. I laugh. No worry, I say, and show him the card. President Johnson. I do good shave, I tell him. I don't cut you. He lean back in the chair and I put the soap on his face. He try not to shake. The hairs are soft - they come off easy. I don't cut him. See, I say. I look him in the mirror. His skin so smooth, so soft. So white.

MIA by Brian Rosenberger

Larry has not been to work for days.
Someone has bothered to turn his computer off.
His manila folders of important documents sit unopened.
The company phone blinks angrily, messages still waiting.
People arrive at his cubicle only to discover a ghost town.
I can see the anxiety on his manager’s face
when I see her between meetings.
Calls to his home and his cell phone have gone unanswered.
Rumor is the Police have been called to investigate.
Still no Larry.
I smile, a rare occurrence in Hell.

Three by John Sweet

ambient prayer with head wreathed in flames

tells her it’s like cutting yrself to
let the poison run out of yr veins

tells her it’s like grey ice
in november sunlight

nothing that actually means anything
and so here we are again among
the weeds and the ruined kingdoms down by
the water’s edge and so here we are
again up on burnt hill road

blue sky and emptiness and
never enough gods to fill it

never enough hands to start a war and
so the soldier shoots the child instead

says orders are orders

smiles in surrenders like a
priest or a coward

smiles like flowers choked by weeds at
the edge of the desert and
it’s here with the furnace broke and
the windows boarded over,
it’s here in the neverending now,
fucking a stranger in
someone else’s room, in
someone else’s city, that one of you
calls the other by the wrong
name and no one cares

it’s later,
with the baby crying, with the
constellations inverted or
obscured, with clouds like
bruised silver, like dreams stained
with hopeless blood, and how
far away were you hoping to be
when all light finally faded?

how long did you think it would take
to reach a point in your life
where nothing mattered anymore?

the numbing weight of failure
always arrives
sooner than you’d expect

#

without hope, without desire

and then at 30
lost and falling and
then at 40

some pointless story
with an unhappy ending

some fucking poem
scribbled out quickly on the
back of a gas receipt

roomful of children just
waiting to be broken like
so many tiny gifts

nothing revealed, nothing
given away and it
seems like i had a wife
when this thought began

remember white space between us
and windows with shattered glass
and there is nothing so pure it
cannot be poisoned

there is nothing left to do in
the end but accept

#

with heartfuls of sand and of mud, with the river run dry

sick of myself at 4 in the afternoon

ice on the shadowed sides of
sleeping factories

weeds

no news from god since before
i was born
and then the death of his only son
played out for cheap entertainment

this is the world you inherit and
then it becomes
the one you pass on

these are the dreams you dream after
your lover is done with them

daughter was only 3 years old,
was filled with cancer
and the sunlight was a lie

the moment approached and
then it passed
and the fear is what remains

call whatever it is you feel
faith
and then see how far it takes you

Vague by Paul Harrison

is not the word
but close enough
and vaguely disturbed
i am
vaguely lost
in the hum of the air-con
class war on tv
there in the corner
vaguely dehydrated too
but correcting that
and vague
could be the word
but it's not enough
vaguely uneasy
vague tremors in hand
leaning and swinging
into the past
or maybe tomorrow
like the vaguest
of feelings
you can't describe

Two by William Doreski

Uncle Chet's Boiled Coffee

My Uncle Chet boiled coffee
for a week. The tar in the pot
tasted like a miracle--

not the one of loaves and fishes
but the one no gospel recounts
for fear of a libel suit.

The woolen but rainless sky
disappoints. The garden soil
cracks like Egyptian pottery.

Red squirrels squeak in the hemlocks,
taunting each other in language
ornate as the plaster ceilings

of mansions. I can't contain
this runaway afternoon--
visions of children on bicycles

run down by reckless drivers
scar the soft parts of my brain.
This hurts like an old-fashioned band

concert, the kind I once suffered
at Weirs Beach, where my parents
had dragged me in the full blush

of adolescence. The year before,
Count Basie's orchestra had won
my attention and respect,

and two years before, Duke Ellington
had battered his piano silly
right under my bluff little nose.

The lack of rain has saddened me
in shades of tepid gray and taupe,
but there's still a month of summer,

in theory, and the nights still ring
with coyote howls and barks.
Uncle Chet's been dead for many years,

but I can still taste his coffee—
which he learned to make on beachheads
in the Solomon islands, the guns

coughing and banging everywhere
and the tropical rain so sticky
he sometimes mistook it for blood.

#

Redwoods

Thirteen years since the murders.
The house slouches in the brush,
the windows punctured by rocks.
No one’s gone in, though. Thick dust

carpets the pine board floors.
Faint chalk outlines remember
the slump of bodies. Furniture
lies askew, just as struggle left it.

Spiders, black and pink bulges,
have webbed the corners of the rooms
and booby-trapped the doorways.
I enter swinging a stick

to dissipate both spiders and gloom.
The three people who died here
meant nothing to me alive,
but have troubled my dreams since death.

So I’ve flown to San Francisco,
rented a sporty white Saab,
and cruised up Highway One north
to discover how remote from me

and the world this fatal canyon is.
Redwoods loom over the crime scene
and filter the sunlight, allowing
only the bleak of the spectrum

to shine on this fragile house.
No one has looted, no one
has even browsed the spilled books—
beat classics, mostly, Burroughs

and Genet. Blood spatter has sunk
so deeply into the wallboard
not even fire can erase it.
But willing to try, I pour

the five gallons of gasoline
I think sufficient for the job,
step outside, ignite a newspaper
and toss it in. The eruption

howls more loudly in the mind
than in the world. A fine gray ash
fills me. Rain blows off the sea
to keep the fire from spreading.

I walk a mile back to my car,
confident that that any ghosts
that survive are only ghosts of me,
bored silly by staying alive.

Leave by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

I want to leave my fear.
I want to leave in peace.
I want to leave my heartache.
I want to leave my dreams.
I want to be innocent like children.
I want to leave my shadow
walking aimlessly on the road.

Cloak the Question for Another Day by Donal Mahoney

Riding home on the train he’s aware
that after supper,
cigarettes, TV and beer,
a romp on the wife will cloak
the question another day.
He’ll fear nothing, then,
till noon the next day when

it starts all over again.
If his luck holds, he’ll survive
the ride home on the train, aware
that after supper,
cigarettes, TV and beer,
a romp on the wife may cloak
the question another day.

Black Lace & Diamonds by Craig Sernotti

Clouds are on fire
but so what.
I'll watch the world end
from my couch.
With the cat pawing
at the aquarium
& the dog asleep
at my feet.
You in the kitchen
in black lace & diamonds.
Do you hear that?
It's the sound of California
falling into the ocean,
me pulling off my pants

- originally appeared in Dogzplot; also published in my book Forked Tongue

Correcto Mundo by Catfish McDaris

Creepy Uncle Willy was the last resort,
but my parents had to go to a funeral,
getting into my pajamas, I noticed girlie
books in the bathroom, I was soon
walking the monkey, Uncle Willy yelled

You naughty boy, now I'm going to spank
you, it will hurt me more than you, he
lowered my p.j.s & underwear & bent me
over his lap with trembling hands

I could feel him getting hard & I thought
he wants to stick that up my asshole, I
jumped down & grabbed the toilet lid back
& smacked him upside his head

Blood exploded from his nose & his eyeballs
rolled white like hard boiled eggs, the cops
came & called my folks, at Uncle Willly's
funeral everyone looked at me strange

Ma said, don't pay any attention, Pa said,
fuck them, the preacher asked if anyone
wanted to say a few words, I stood & said
he was right, it did hurt him more than me.