Milk Candy Review

The same year a school board member threatened to shoot up our middle-of-a-cow-pasture, K-12 school—all seven hundred of us hunkering down, subsisting on the meager snacks in our bookbags as the hours rolled by, our eager eyes too ready to mistake cattle for attackers—that same year, Katy Perry released I Kissed A Girl and things were never quite the same, for grown women and young women and everyone else, but especially for us, the cow-pasture bisexuals who in our burr-filled patch of central Kansas didn’t yet know that that word existed, bisexual, that identity/threat/promise tingling behind our lips all summer; for so long we had been lied to, told that if you liked boys or men, if you welcomed their hot-breath, quick-fingered advances with the smallest pleasure, or at the very least, indifference, then you could not like women, too—our entire world up until that moment all sharp edges and black-and-white and godly restraint; Katy Perry changed things for us more than that school-board-sitting, could-be school shooter ever would, and after that school day passed and he never showed, didn’t even have the decency to apologize or step down from the school board, we prayed for the day we would get the chance to show him—that sorry excuse for a farmer/a Kansan/a husband—exactly where he factored into our world; but then we grew up and moved on, claimed acre after acre in the name of late-blooming bisexuals everywhere, and eventually we divorced ourselves from Katy Perry because of the geisha thing and the corn-rows thing, and we found better anthems, holier idols, but we never forgot where we started, in that middle-of-a-cow-pasture school where our could-be school shooter’s poor, sweet wife, an elementary-school teacher, eventually left out of shame, that whole incident originating from her husband’s controlling fuckery, his threat to shoot up the school just another desperate attempt to expand his domain over her, over us, and in a way he succeeded, because she would be the one to take the brunt of the blame, and we would live with that specter of violence until we graduated and left for greener, less-shit-spotted pastures; we thought often of that elementary-school teacher, and even sometimes imagined that, when she was finally free of her could-be school shooter husband, when he would be arrested (which never happened) or removed from the school board (nope) or banned from the school grounds (yeah right), or when he finally just let his sweet wife go, maybe she would get out there and find love again, remove herself from that burr-buried hell, too, and maybe, just maybe, she would kiss a girl and found that she liked it; after all these years, maybe she would join our ranks, sing our anthem, spread our influence, say fuck you to this country and conceive of something better; maybe she would prove our most accomplished leader yet, declaring this land our own—of the bi’s, by the bi’s, for the bi’s—and maybe, finally, after all these years and more-than-daily mass shootings, thousands of deaths and millions of assault rifles hiding in plain sight, their reign of terror and our burning world would end; then maybe, just maybe, we would finally have a nation worth celebrating, a home worth sticking to.

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Chloe Chun Seim is the author of the illustrated novel-in-stories, CHURN, which won the 2022 George Garrett Fiction Prize from Texas Review Press. Her fiction has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, McNeese Review, Potomac Review, LitMag, and more. She received her MFA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Men of the mohalla—carpenters, electricians, factory workers—squatting around a bonfire, knees pulled close together, winter fog hovering over their shoulders. Men burning paper, wood, tires, anything they can lay their hands on. Men burping the paya curry cooked by their wives, cozying up in wool sweaters knitted by their mothers. Men smoking bidis, mixing tobacco and slaked lime in their palms, chewing paans that paint their mouths red. Men seeking companionship, men seeking recreation, men seeking validation. Men denouncing the rising price of tomatoes, the corrupt candidates for the MLA election, the increasing death toll in Ukraine. Men shooing away mangy dogs that move closer to the fire, hurling mud or rocks at them, calling them sister-fuckers, mother-fuckers, aunt-fuckers. Men interrupting the sleep of their mothers with their loud guffaws, throat clearings, and phlegm hackings. Men expecting their wives to answer the door at the first knuckle knock, whatever the hour, heat milk or prepare chai, whatever the desire.

Women scrubbing stubborn animal fat from pots and pans, kneading dough for breakfast parathas, soaking urad daal for lunch. Women warming up turpentine oil, massaging the pains of their mothers-in-law, placing pillows under arthritic knees. Women covering the cages of puffed-up parrots and mynahs with empty rice sacks, cooing kind reassurances to calm them down. Women hanging still-damp socks and underwear on indoor hooks and nails, ironing the beds to make them warm and sleep-able, adjusting cotton wool razais over sleeping children. Women cracking the window a slit, checking if the alley huddle will disperse soon, catching the slap of cold on their cheeks, the sting of smoke under sleep-heavy eyelids. Women watching the flame dance into shapes of a bitten apple, a tailless mouse, hands cupped in prayer. Women wrapping pilled shawls around their shoulders, crossing arms around their chests, bracing for the sandpaper incursion of the softest parts of their bodies.

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Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She is the author of Morsels of Purple and Skin Over Milk, and is currently working on her first novel. Her stories and essays have won several awards and have been published in numerous anthologies and journals. She is a fiction editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. More at https://saraspunyfingers.com, Twitter:@PunyFingers

There once was an island off the coast of Florida’s big toe that was created by Hurricane Roberta in 1950 and called Cat Spit by the fishermen who discovered it through their binoculars. For so long its only inhabitants were crabs and seabirds until Tyra and the crew brought the girls auditioning for cycle 42 there and said, “Only 13 of you will continue on in the hopes of becoming America’s Next Top Model. The rest will be left here to figure out what went wrong.”

Seven is a fine number for a family, a little small for a colony, and though no one remembers their original names, we do know they came to be collectively called Melissa. First, they built lean-tos from hurricane driftwood. Melissa’s long limbs were perfectly suited to the climbing of the palmettos long ago planted there by seabird excretion, and they used those fronds to thatch their slanted roofs. At night there they slept, curled around one another like cats. Melissa cracked crabs with their wedges and heels, and eventually their feet hardened to the shells that littered their small sandbar. Their hands were wide but gentle and they deftly stole seabird eggs. They were fond of crab meat omelets. Sometimes they added algae for B12. They collected rainwater in emptied Caboodles, angled their compact mirrors to harvest the sun for campfires.

The Women’s Group of the Coral City Baptist Church visited them first, came with blueberry muffins and pocket bibles and a 24 pack of bottled water. They found Melissa seated crisscross in a row, bronzed shoulders and newly freckled cheekbones, braiding each other’s hair, singing “Doll Parts” like a hymn.

After that, whenever the fishermen and concerned Floridians came too close to their shore, Melissa greeted them calmly but would accept no aid. Still, the fishermen left them bouquets of jasmine, gardenias, lilacs. Chocolates that melted in the heat, peeled oranges. Lacy valentines that faded in the sun until the water reached out and pulled them back. It was said of them that they forgot they were women, that their smiles meant something different. One fisherman swore he saw Melissa jump from the top of a palmetto and catch the breeze before floating back to the sand. Another said that scales were forming on their sharp collarbones, that their fingernails had started to grow curved over, hard and opaque. Stories persisted on the mainland that Melissa swam laterally, serpentine, as if they had no legs or arms, only supple, strong spines.

Just as the rumors really got going and somebody decided someone should do something about Melissa, Hurricane Indigo spun off of Africa, moving westward, feeding on warm air and saltwater. The stubbornest of mainlanders boarded up windows and doors and filled up empty milk jugs with tap water. Most others fled upward, inland. In the aftermath of it all, in the leaving and coming back, amidst the rebuilding and grieving, it was weeks before the fisherman and concerned Floridians remembered Melissa. They loaded up their boats, headed east, and found nothing. As quickly as Cat Spit was created, it perished, as if a god had simply flipped the island back over on itself like a pancake. There was no Melissa, no debris, not even a crab shell or a Caboodle floating in the water—only the vague feeling of having brushed up against a life you could’ve had.

The fishermen had no place to put their yearning, their saliva dried up in their mouths. They all got used to having less. The hardened among them figured Melissa would wash ashore eventually, their bodies bloated and fish-chewed. Some hoped Melissa may have heard the storm was coming, built a raft out of their lean-to and made their way to the Keys or Cuba, even. They could’ve settled down around the Gulf of Mexico somewhere, had long-limbed babies with killer cheekbones, sold leggings to other moms.

If only the fishermen and the concerned Floridians had looked into the red sky the morning of the storm, after the night of the full Strawberry Moon. Maybe they would have seen, impossibly, Melissa rising like the tide, into the air, swimming through the dark clouds. The tails of their braids flying, flirting with the quick wind. If they were listening, maybe they would’ve heard Melissa sing ecstatic, a taloned bird call mimicry of laughter like soda bubbles, like summer vacation, like women who have finally figured it all out.

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Janice Leadingham is a Portland, OR based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere-near-Dollywood, Tennessee. You can find her work in HAD, The Bureau Dispatch, The Northwest Review, Bullshit Lit, Wrongdoing Magazine, JAKE, Maudlin House, and Reckon Review, among others. She is a Brave New Weird and Best Small Fictions nominee. She is @TheHagSoup everywhere and also hagsoup.com.

Because he’d be upset if I didn’t save the right suits, but I couldn’t remember if his Kiton or Kired suits were the luxury ones. Because the twins’ favorite toys— legos and a train set—were scattered about and there was no time to gather them. Because although the sky was orange and the air smoky, I couldn’t see flames yet. Because the baby needed feeding and my nipples were cracked and bleeding and there was never enough time for warm compresses and lanolin. Because my mother-in-law’s dark oil landscapes my husband’s first edition Hemingways his collection of antique surgical instruments. Because singed pages of books hadn’t yet drifted from the sky into the children’s sandbox. Because Sunny, the standing human skeleton from medical school was too bulky to pack and when my husband and I argued he thought it was funny to bring her out and make her talk shit to me. Because embers and hand-sized ash flakes hadn’t yet fallen from the sky. Because once I got the twins and the baby and our bunny Sacha and our two cats in the car, maybe. Maybe I wanted everything else to burn.

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Claudia Monpere was just awarded the Smokelong Workshop Prize and her flash appears or is forthcoming in many literary magazines, including Craft, The Forge, Trampset, Fictive Dream, and Atticus Review. 

When you fell, your night was over. Stumbling was ok, you’d blame your shoes that were a little bit high and a touch too new, or a wayward pebble on the footpath. You’d smile at the bouncer and flick the flame red hair that made the boys go weak.

He’d scrunch his eyebrows and pretend to be unsure, tipping his head in imitation of thought, then he’d step backwards, allowing you to enter. We’d follow inside, relieved, loud music pulsing inside us, blooms of club steam clouding our faces.

But you fell.

And the bouncer knows falling means drunk, means tears, means vomit on chairs, in toilets and queues snaking from doors angry girls bang for admittance.

No, you’re not getting in tonight, darling.

 In an ideal world we’d leave with you, share the unmarked taxi with broken headlight, ask the driver what caused the black eye. We’d notice his gaze creep over your bottle-tanned thighs, slither up to your face of smudged make up, gears grinding in his skull, noting your melting wax features drifting to sleep.

 Our skin would prickle as a lizard tongue stroked his chapped lips, tasting possibility, making a decision.

 And we’d shout as he took the wrong turn down the unlit road of lonely houses, their window-eyes blind with nailed plywood. We’d threaten police and our fists as he switched off the ignition, and with our new salon nails, rip him to shreds as he lurched towards you.

But we’d spent too long preparing for the night out. We’d shaved our legs and applied pearly layers of slow drying lotion. We’d curled our hair with heated tongs, added extra strands from the plastic packet.

And Thursdays were hopping. Everyone we knew would be there.

So we went inside.

We didn’t want to go home with you. We didn’t fall.

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Marie-Louise McGuinness comes from a wonderfully neurodiverse household in rural Northern Ireland. She has work published or forthcoming in numerous literary magazines including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, BULL and The Metaworker Literary Magazine. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and enjoys writing from a sensory perspective.