Month: February 2014

Dream Three

By M. E. McMullen

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They’re always throwing goodness at you,
But with a little bit of luck, a man can duck.
—Lerner and Lowe

If you’re six four and weigh two hundred eighty pounds, maybe you should give up your dream of becoming a jockey.’ Those are the immortal words of the mythic Prussian martial philosopher, Hans Aough, and I’ve tried to make them my words to live by, in governing my own dreams. The thing about dreams for the future is that they have to be elastic because they usually have a whole lot of ass to cover with just a small patch of chintz.

         I never dreamed Times Square could be ruined, but it was.

         Used to be, you could go down there, score porn, find a hooker, black or white, boy or girl, didn’t matter.

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Dead Man

By Mark Burgh

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St. Mark’s Place at dawn, trash blown, summer light’s perfect clarity so good for artists, wasted here. Lower Manhattan, brick walls remain, black-painted window sills. Somehow I thought the old world hanging on here had some right to peace, even if then or now, there was no peace. From Alphabet City I walk, young enough to be thrilled about it.  He lay: rags, or a bag of trash.  But a gray-brown face. But black pants, legs bent, shoes gone, one foot bare. I crossed the street. He looked asleep, but something lay too still.  The street rose up around him, a pavement’s song, linear harmony, dun and straight. I saw death,  & dancing toward the Village, I wondered what this conversation meant: am an urn to filled with flecks of ash, broken centuries later on the floor of sea amid rotten keels, home of colored fish, or, a funnel for all senses, piling cryptic lines like off-kilter bricks in a sagging building?

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Cassius, Goodbye!

By Elliot Andreopoulos

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            Cassius O’Haloran was a loyal customer of Matlock Savings Bank.  He opened his first account as a youngster to deposit the pennies he found in the street, the same account seventy years later holding over one million dollars.  In the interim he opened numerous checking and savings accounts, personal lines of credit, credit cards, investments, a safe deposit box and a home equity loan that nearly caused him to lose the house his father built.  Safe to say, Matlock Savings Bank made a great deal of money off him.  He didn’t have a family and he enjoyed going to the bank and talking with the tellers, whom he treated like the grandchildren he never had. 
 
            Cassius took a trip to the bank to order checks and sat with the new banker whose upside down nametag read Alana. 

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Expectations

By Sarah Clayville

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You predict that running into the other woman will be traumatic, catastrophic, a ripping of the sandy earth beneath your feet.  You’ve studied enough Jerry Springer reruns to know that a millisecond of the meeting might prove exciting, the pulled hair and a nervous energy that drags you into actions you’ve never felt capable of before.  Your body will instinctually discern how to throw a punch, fingers curled into a fleshy puppet bent on exacting revenge.  Time will slow to a crawl while you savor every word you say, every inch of respect you reclaim.

Except when the moment happens, nothing you expected plays out.  It is sickeningly comical how mundane the incident is.  The apartment, his apartment, smells like dust and mildewed soap.  The other woman hangs back behind a spare bedroom door, because there is no bravery or excitement present. 

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