Sourdough #12
You called me. You called me and maybe
you ran out of bread, perhaps you need
another loaf left at your doorstep.
You called me and said you found more
of my belongings, said I should come and
get them. You called so I’m driving
over, loaf of bread resting in the backseat
like the child we never had.
Author: The Beatnik Cowboy
Randall K. Rogers
Evil, Old and Ugly
I first saw her in the elevator. It was just her and I. It was hard to believe my eyes. She might have been a good person, I don’t know. But it didn’t look like it. She had a glazed-over look. Her eyes were cloudy. She wore an unfocused blank stare.
What’s more, she was horribly old. Furthermore, sorry to say, she was hideously ugly. She looked like she’d die any moment or was already dead. I nodded hello but there was no recognition. She had an angry cast to her leathery, much wrinkled face. She stood there, hovering over her walker. I didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, yet.
There was no question: she was beyond evil.
The next time I saw her it was again in the elevator. This time there were other people. When people got on, the expressions on their faces, shock. There she stood, blank milky stare, looking like the wickedest, darndest, most vile, harridan, dead-looking witch ever.
We were all scared. Some shuddered. Right out of a horror movie, she was. Frizzled long unruly hair. Some, I thought I did well, for one, tried not to have a conniption. A moment of shock, but standing there, as the elevator moved, some could not recover, could not stop their staring. Others came into the elevator, gasped in shock. Some threw their arms out, jumped a bit, maybe juggled whatever they held, eventually calmed down.
The lady stood there, hunched over her walker. She appeared blind but she wasn’t. She stared straight ahead and was silent. When it was her floor, she got off, walked with her walker like a perfectly ordinary old person. She liked our terror, we surmised. Just evil, she was. Probably a too real apparition. Somebody ought to do something. Out of the elevator she walked, smug-like, down the hall toward her room.
She wore old clothes. A nineteen twenties or thirties dress, lacey in design. I didn’t get a whiff of the old girl, but after she exited the elevator, one woman said, “Does she have any family?” The rest of us geezers didn’t know. “Never seen her before yesterday,” I said.
It was uncanny. If she tried to, she couldn’t have frightened us more. She was a vision of terror. Was she trying to appear like that? Dead, a cadaver? Nobody knew. Nobody knew where she came from. She was frightening. We all were old, dying was something that regularly happened at the home, weekly if not daily. Looking at her, it was hard.
She looked dead. Unkempt. Washed or not we didn’t care. She didn’t respond to anyone’s entreaties. She scared us, she reminded us of the dead we’d soon be. I mean, she was scary. One woman, “Is she gonna die?” she asked. Nobody knew what to say. She reminded us of our own short future. And, oh Lord, dead, we’ll look like that!
Yet she was alive. She should have been hidden. Or hidden herself. Her appearance was horrible, ugly, and deathly. She had to know her effect on people. “That’s why her family abandoned her here,” the people said.
Nobody liked her. We feared for our lives. She was too ugly, too hideous, to live. Was she the living dead? She looked it. She didn’t respond like a human. I thought about the crones of old. How often their surliness, bolstered by their old ugliness, nose warts, for example, their supposedly lascivious bewitching of young men, often sealed an old woman’s fate.
I thought, wow, that might happen here. History repeating. Naw….
Nobody saw her. After those few days on the elevator, she seemed to vanish. Nobody appeared to know where she had gone. We breathed a sigh of relief. No one could find her. That night, however, a spontaneous bonfire appeared in the landscaped back area behind the home. Flames leaped among the stacked wood. Woodsmoke smell, screaming, crackling and cackling, was heard all night long.
“Don’t rub it in,” scoffed a longtime resident, watching the old woman burn.
Previously published by Mad Swirl
Howie Good
Down by the Bay
A gray-haired man I immediately recognized as a tourist by his gaudy new outfit took a last puff on his cigar and tossed the butt into the bay. Against all good sense, I went up to him. “Why would you do that?” I asked, my voice shaking with anger. “Fishermen fish in this water, kids swim in it.” He seemed surprised by my vehemence. “But it’s organic,” he said, meaning his cigar. The man was evidently a chemist in addition to being an asshole. I turned away from him to look for my boys. They were off in the distance, searching the shoreline for sand crabs that know to bury themselves deep.
Donna Dallas
South Queens, 5am
I sat with Satan
as he stroked his beard
I was on a four-day binge
foamed at the mouth
for any substance that I could snort
smoke
inject
terrified the sun would come up
before I had the chance to get more high
then I already was
and ditch him
Satan that is
like Satan couldn’t tell
I was one cigarette short of cancer
and one bourbon shy of prostitution
Satan had a missing tooth
I stared right into that wormhole of reckless abandonment
while he pulled the queen of spades
from his deck of cards
and placed her on the nicked and shredded bar
the queen
was withered and broken
with torn corners
her spades faded to a gray blur
Satan had a long
curled and yellowed pinky nail
he dipped it into his pouch of yeyo
I gasped like a child in Candyland
as he scooped out a heap
of the sparkly white powder
which was right up my sleazy alley
Satan pulled another card
the joker
he laughed so guttural my glass shattered
I searched his face for a sign
that I was still up for grabs - still in the running
Before he skipped out on me
Satan segued down the bar
pulling and handing cards left and right
hungry for that diamond in a foul as fuck rough
I held on for dear life
as if I waited for my name to be called
in some epic beauty pageant
but Satan slithered away
and the sun oozed in
as I crawled out and skulked
back to my hovel
Johnnie Stanizzi
MAKE ROOM, PLEASE
Though everything is constantly disrupted
and I look inward like a fool
at the brooding sadness
which has taken on a form…
…of what?
I couldn’t say.
But I do labor to keep it concealed
until I determine whether
it’s safe to set it free or not.
The face of this malicious planet
with its definite and final heartbreaks,
about which there will be no discussions
despite what we were taught,
still does not cage us in.
Do you understand?
We are all free to go
without assistance.
If you feel the heavy desire to depart,
then go.
But please, don’t throw chairs
all over the fuckin' house.
*
Not everyone would agree that October
is the best month to proceed
what with the frigid weather leopard-crawling
up the valley hill,
like we don’t know it’s coming
And the leaves crashing into each other,
October’s crumpled cast-offs,
with their awkward descent.
The seasons will be born over and over
with me
and without me
Loss eventually fades to nothing.
It’s so devious.
It means
absolutely nothing,
I know.
But sometimes, if I remain perfectly still
I can hear the silent voices of the departed.
They’re always here.
They’re just shifting around
making room for
the next group’s arrival.
Alan Catlin
Insanity
They all end up in the bar eventually,
on foot, in wheelchairs, livery cabs,
stretch limos, riding mowers, wearing
torn-at-the-knees tuxedos, ties askew,
wine stained and bloodied or in track
suits after running a marathon chased
by demons, plain clothes cops, packs
of feral dogs only they can see, in bib
overalls so caked in manure they can
barely breathe or in hospital gowns
double knotted at the back, their life
savings in fanny packs around their
waists, blood type and date of admission
typewritten in plastic wrist bands they
hadn’t bothered to remove or in clown
suits, rugby shirts, laid-out-for- viewing
formal duds, punked out and glittered,
their eyes so glazed they can no longer
see, all of them laughing at jokes without
punch lines only they can hear, talking
to friends so far gone they are no longer
memories, ghost lights flickering from
their finger-tips where they touch glass.
R.T. Castleberry
Though The Earth Be Moved
We are surrounded by
deaths and departures this year.
We’ve gathered this season to
wonder at children’s hard tales,
at stories ten years told.
I am your son and I loved you.
I’ve seen you act as a player, as a man
who punishes with actions or with hands;
seen scuff knuckles of years at family work.
At your side, I heard the blood weariness
of weeks in hospital beds.
Full of questions myself,
I will not father children.
I won’t share that grief, those grievances
with ones unique and unprotected.
I loved you as a son, a suspicious man.
With your dying, your soft and final sigh
you’ve robbed me of your answers.
Zhu Xiao Di
Aging
With a thin ray of sunlight
On the book covered by dust
A shaking hand opens it
Flipping pages pointlessly
A word suddenly jumps out
Hitting the heart like thunder
And bringing back memories
Of a toy long forgotten
Pretty soon the
Old man will
Forget this moment
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
More Names
Names are what we go by.
Breath means we are still alive.
Hearts are what we break and love.
Lost are the words dementia takes.
Know this is just an experiment.
River is the water in my dreams.
Hydrogen is the lightest element.
It is something I read. Hope
clings for a miracle.
Remember, names are what we go by.
Are you going to change your name?
Grass is for the cows.
Leaves are the clothes of trees. Who
gathers all falling meteors. Water
transforms into a raging sea or a
wellspring that goes by fountainhead.
Electricity is the passion between us. I
own a first name and middle name. Our
lives could use more names.
Forgotten is a name I went by. We hate
ourselves when we are taken for granted.
Yard is a measure of distance.
Save money to spend it later.
Molecules are groups of two or more atoms.
Crack is a name used for many things.
Beds are where we sleep and die.
Craig Kirchner
eight cups a day
I’m reading this magazine article,
on the end-table in the doctor’s waiting room
that compares universal consciousness,
to drops of water that come together
to create a lake.
Once in the examination room
the doc explains that,
all 6.7 billion assholes should drink
eight cups a day,
to maintain true health.
I assume the most efficient way to
accomplish this, would be one every
two hours that I’m awake.
Set the cell phone alarm,
make it spring or bottled, not tap.
Or wait, better to ladle it,
from that lake of drops.
Let those cups come together
and forge a new me,
with a social conscience,
maybe even a desire to vote.
As the therapy grows
and becomes the rage,
we will all come to realize
that we’re more than dehydrated egos,
devouring and pushing things
inside these ugly bags of skin,
that we all drink from the same waters,
need to see Dr. Harding
and would benefit greatly from reading
the same magazines.
The Beatnik Cowboy 