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Two Questions for Anna Mantzaris

We recently published Anna Mantzaris’s delicious “Application to Eat the Sweetest Peach in the World.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) Of course, this story brings to mind that famous line from Eliot: “Do I dare to eat a peach?” In
this case … well … does the character dare? It feels, at times, almost like the peach is too good to
be eaten!
The backstory of the peach and I why I chose one that just may be “too good to be eaten” is that it
seemed like the complete opposite of anything that could be obtained through an application. We
apply for jobs, housing and funds—our basic needs and wants—but not something like the
sweetest fruit in the world. I’ve always had a lot of anxiety about filling out forms! On paper,
there’s limited room and electronic forms often have a set number of characters. There’s no place
for storytelling, which is why I dislike them so much. I decided to write a series of applications
for things that use the structure of a form to place stories. I handwrote this story (which I almost
never do because I have trouble reading my handwriting) and read it at an in-person series
(which I also rarely do) and the analog origins and in-person reading seemed fitting for
something that’s impermeant, like a peach. I hoped to capture a feeling of nostalgia for
something—even before it’s gone—that seems “too good,” fated not to last.

2) That said, this peach isn’t a peach — is it. Or not merely a peach. It is a gift, laden with
meaning. There seems to be the implication that the former lover is doing the gifting — what do
you think they expect from the “you” of the story when (if!) this peach is eaten?
The former lover mysteriously appeared for me at the end. Aside from the speaker there aren’t
any characters here, and it’s probably debatable if the speaker is even a character! We just have
them and this ghost-like ex at the end. I really like stories where a character is gossamer, off the
page in a way, like in Rivka Galchen’s “The Lost Order.” There’s a woman in her apartment and
a caller misdials and wants to place an order for Chinese food. The caller is the closest thing to
another character and even though we don’t see them—they’re just a voice on the line—they propel the story forward. I love that you ask about the ex-lover and give them expectations. It
would be nice to think that nostalgia is a two-way street here, with the ex-lover’s memory of
“you” being the “sweetest in the world,” even if it’s filtered as a memory through the other
person.

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Application To Eat The Sweetest Peach In the World ~ by Anna Mantzaris

How will you eat the peach? Will you cut it in even halves? Or slippery, thin moon slices? How will you feel when you take a sharp knife and pierce the supple, almost rose-color skin?

Or will you hold it heavy in your preferred hand, bringing it to your greedy mouth for a large bite and let the juice trickle down your chin? Or will you tentatively balance it in two hands like a hungry squirrel and nibble into the flesh?

But first, will you take the peach out of the small gold box I will send it to you in, and gently rub the fuzzy skin against your lips as you inhale its scent?

Will you eat it at your kitchen table? In your bed? Or take it outside?

What time of day will you consume the peach? Will you wake to eat before the sun rises? Will you have it as the midday shines in? Or will you keep until midnight, and bite as the moon glows on a quiet night?

Are you considering sharing the peach? Who in your life is worthy?

Do you have a good palette? Do apples sometimes taste like potatoes and potatoes taste like rice? Can you tell a hint of rosemary from a smidge of mint on a thick slice of roasted lamb? Does the taste of black licorice affect your whole body?

Will you give the peach your undivided attention? Or will the music of Miles Davis float around you as you eat and take you back to a hot summer night with someone no longer in your life? Or might you attempt to have the peach in place of a madeleine while reading Proust? Dare I ask if you would consider hastily consuming the fruit while watching an adrenaline-inducing crime drama?

Will you savor and appreciate the peach?

Will you always remember it?

Will you regret it when it’s gone?

How often will you think of the peach? Will it consume your daily thoughts? Will it give you a feeling of unbearable longing as you look up at the ceiling begging for the tranquility of sleep?

What makes you worthy of the peach? Will others think you are the correct recipient? Will they applaud the decision?

What will you wear to eat the peach? A reckless crisp white shirt that may be stained by the juice? A black sweater that can dampen your mood for consumption? Your respectful Sunday Best?

Will you try and preserve the peach as a whole on a windowsill? Watching it surpass its natural lifespan, as it shrinks and molds and disintegrates and fills you with a hoarder’s regret? Or might you divide it into thick wedges and immerse in a cloudy, viscous syrup housed in a jar like a science experiment?

Will you compare the peach to ones in your past? Will you accurately remember their flavor or inflate the sweetness that never was?

Will you try and document with a photograph, or a recording of your slow and quiet bite? Or will you eat it with no evidence that it once existed?

Will the peach evoke feelings of jubilation? Will it be a cure for your loneliness?

What will you do with the pit? Will you place it in your mouth and let it dangerously roll around, gasping in a brief yet exhilarating fear each time it gets too close to the back of your throat? Or will you plant it in your garden, hoping it will come to fruition even in a snowy landscape? Or will you simply dispose of it with no regret like a former lover who loved you more and thought you were the sweetest in the world?

***

Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in BlazeVOX, The Cortland Review, Five on the Fifth, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Occupations (Galileo Press). She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.

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Two Questions for Lauren Kardos

We recently published Lauren Kardos’s biting “What we talk about when we want to talk about Fight Club.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the voice(s) here. I love their rage, their pain, their sensitivity. And yes! They ask: “What did nineties-era white men have to be so mad about?” What did they have, indeed? What do they have to be so mad about now?
I admit I am a Palahniuk fangirl. Fight Club was the first Palahniuk novel I read. It rocked my 16-year-old brain in the early aughts. It’s a rare case where the movie does great justice to the book, in my opinion, and I’ve returned to both often over the years. I wanted to imagine the girls encountering this story the same age I did, but with the layer of contemporary events in the United States: the Me Too movement, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Epstein Files. etc. The girls’ question is both reductionist and not, just like Fight Club. The 90s era men, in the novel, hated their jobs, hated feeling stuck in the cycle of overconsumption and overdrawn bank accounts, hated the systems which killed their health, hopes, and perceived freedom. Hated their mothers (Chapter 6) for teaching them non-violence, so in grasping for adulthood control, they latch onto Fight Club and Project Mayhem as a way to enact change. I hated how Marla was the only female character in Fight Club, a character we’re set up to dislike. Many of the men’s anger was valid! The systems did suck in the 90s. But to ignore or disdain a giant chunk of the population, girls and women, experiencing the brunt of violence from these systems already? Tyler Durden’s ideology is ignorant of reality (to say the least of a dissociative personality). The systems are shit on a massive, global scale now. Go check the headlines to see what white men in power say they are so angry about today, the ideology that trickles down into voters of a certain persuasion. They’re enacting violence to expand control in ways different than in Fight Club, not just against women, but also communities of color, immigrants and asylum-seekers, trans and queer communities, and more. It’s way scarier. We can’t let these men horde all the anger, something the girls in my story react to, try to remedy.  

2) The reasons for what the girls do here — oh, damn, the reasons. Every broken little bit of their worlds sneak their ways into this. But unlike the men of Fight Club with their white-men madness, these girls are practicing for their future. For a world that will try to knock them down, that won’t “pull her punches.” Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about it, but … do you think this will make them stronger? Safer?
This question reminds me of podcast host banter at the start of an early My Favorite Murder episode. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark were attempting to explain why they learn about and recount grisly true crime stories, many of which feature the violent death of women. Both said something along the lines of: if I can learn about and imagine every worst case scenario that could happen, then when something similar happens to me, I have a higher chance of survival. It was the when not if of their reasoning that shook me, stayed with me for its truth. My heart breaks for American young women coming of age now, for girls born with fewer rights than Gen X and Millennials and our Boomer mothers had. I don’t know if the girls’ cemetery Fight Club will make them stronger or safer. What they have to respond to is so outside of their immediate control. But I hope it makes them angry, makes them persistent, makes them ready for the fight.  

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What we talk about when we want to talk about Fight Club ~ by Lauren Kardos

How you shouldn’t sneak out flashlight-less, since it’s easy to get lost near the mausoleum and that one girl twisted an ankle tripping down the riverbank. How the gravestones of town settlers bite chunks from our black crayons though we lay our alibi tracing paper flat. How the popular girls didn’t invite us to their pool party, and how we’ll get them back when they inevitably tiptoe into our weekly gatherings. How the groundskeeper’s forgotten this oldest quadrant of the cemetery where we circle up, so the new girl whines about deer ticks, invents rabid skunks skittering around the knee-high grasses, imagines shadows in our smuggled camping lantern. How we roll the dice to see who pairs first.

How one girl’s stepmom won’t quit pinching her “muffin top” or serving her half portions. How the creep outside the Gas-N-Go followed a girl to her car, and the auto-lock on her shitty hand-me-down Honda wouldn’t work. How another’s father uses his belt. How another’s parents are checking her college dropout brother into a “retreat,” and how stupid do her parents think she is when she knows mosquito bites from the marks that dot her brother’s arms.

How us original four found the scratched DVD in the thrift store dollar bin. How lucky it was that the rehab-destined brother hadn’t sold his Xbox for drugs yet because no one has a DVD player. How bang-able Brad Pitt once was. How smoking Helena Bonham Carter used to be. How maybe it’s a generational thing, but cult classic our asses. What did nineties-era white men have to be so mad about? How good it felt that first time when the credits were rolling, our pillows exploding sweat-smelling feathers all over the basement, and we continued with fists. We were Jacqueline’s scream-shredded throats. We were Jacqueline’s bilious rage.

How acrylic nails disqualify until filed down to stubs. How everything below the neck is fair game, but faces are for open-handed slaps only. How if you have braces, you’re allowed to wear a mouth guard stolen from the football storage shed. How all combat must occur in the ring of leaning headstones, cleared of twigs and rocks. How we stash cell phones under the mausoleum’s withered topiary. How the originals can invite a fresh face, but newbies can’t bring another until the dice turns up their number.

How the cemetery became a refuge one month after our classmate’s death. How the police called it accidental. How her quarterback ex came to school with scratches on his cheeks the day after her drowning. How his father is the sheriff. How we kneel at her headstone at the end of each gathering. How her name was Casey McCutcheon. Her name was Casey McCutcheon. Her name was Casey McCutcheon.

How the late summer raindrops perfectly numb the bruises. How we’ll ward off the Gas-n-Go stalker with bear spray hooked on our keychains. How we’ll horde getaway cash in a place our fathers will never look. How we’ll go for the eyes, the balls, the throat, the knees. How any parting gifts from gatherings in the coming cold weather can more easily hide under sweaters. How we’ll tell teachers we tripped, we fell, we were looking at TikTok.

How it’ll be impossible to find a mutual night when school picks up, between homework and band camp and cheer meets and musical rehearsals and basketball practice. How we’ll add more meet-ups, more nights, so every girl gets a turn. How we’ll stay even if the groundskeeper squeals. How we’re practicing now for when we’ll be on our own in just a few years. How this bitch of a world won’t pull her punches.  

***

Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. The Molotov Cocktail, hex, Cold Signal, Bending Genres, Lost Balloon, Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poems. You can find more of her work at www.laurenkardos.co.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Shira Musicant

We recently published Shira Musicant’s devastating “Boy Cries Out.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love how “Boy” and “Mother,” “She” and “He” become such perfect descriptions of the characters as the story progresses. Lacking any agency outside of what the writer gives them, they are defined by their roles! Do you think the impression would be the same if you (or their writer) had given them names?
If the writer would have given them names, say James and Sally, they might have begun to have personalities and required some development. Without names, Boy and Mother are stand-ins for the roles they might play in a story: a mother, whether good or bad or indifferent; a child, mischievous or playful or deprived. Their specificity might have made their demise tragic for the characters.
But not naming the characters, and later erasing the roles these characters might have inhabited, the writer narrows his story and clarifies his theme. So, I also read into this that the loss of those roles in a story, as in life, has tragic elements.
Sitting with your question, I think of characters I have had to delete from stories for various reasons, often because they do not contribute or move the story forward. I am always a little sad about deleting them and I love the idea of writing a piece featuring some of those discarded characters. Imagine the dialogue! Thank you for sparking that idea with your question.

2) Though your story is about Boy, the writer’s story is about Mother, then Woman. Except, of course, it’s not — it’s about martinis and climbing into cars and “toppling” heels. Do you think the writer has any understanding of the characters he has created? Or is he simply propelling them through a plot/desire of his own?
I think propelling the plot forward is a good way to describe the reason for this writer’s decisions. He takes a minute to find the narrative he wants to write, and, in the process, he creates Boy and Mother. When he does find his story, the writer decides it is inconvenient for the woman to have a child, to be a mother, so he must delete both Mother and Boy.
The deletion itself could have been a story, and there are many about these kinds of erasures: divorce stories, abandonments, murders even. But this writer has a different vision and wants to tell a more prurient story. 
So my story is about Boy, as you note in this question, and about the children who are erased for whatever reason.

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Boy Cries Out ~ by Shira Musicant

Boy wakes up in paragraph five, no backstory, no introduction. He would like to know who He is, some action that reveals character and age. It would be helpful to have a name, to know whether He likes football, or has learned to ride a bike. He taps the writer on the shoulder, but the writer shrugs Him off and continues roving his fingers over the keyboard.

Boy searches through sentences for Mother and finds Her back on page one. There She is dressing and climbing into a car. Page two, She is undressing and climbing into a bed. He sees climbing on every page and learns Her stockings are diamond-patterned, sheer and black. Her heels are tall, shiny, and toppling. Her hair is long and wavy. He wades through paragraphs and
pages. Sentences unspool about Men, Martinis, and Sex with no mention of Childcare. It occurs to Boy that He is not the protagonist of the story.

Boy tries again to catch the writer’s attention, whispering in his ear that He would like a puppy. He’d even take a little sister. But the writer is ignoring all calls from the story. An empty glass sits next to him on the desk.

By page twenty, Boy should be back in the storyline. Mother should be making Him breakfast, at least a bowl of cereal. But there are no mentions of Him. He wanders through the pages, searching the sentences. Mother puts her hair up and takes it down. Mother undresses and climbs. Boy wonders where the story is going.

The writer appears to have nodded off. On page twenty-five, Martinis grab hold of the narrative. Mother mixes and climbs and mixes again.

The writer lifts his head and returns his fingers to the keyboard. He backspaces over Mother and types in Woman. Then he scrolls back through the pages, cutting all references to Boy. Boy cries out, tries to hold on, but He is too undeveloped. The writer deletes Him altogether in paragraph five. Boy, like so many children, remains forever unwritten.

***

Shira Musicant writes short fiction and creative nonfiction. Her current stories can be found in journals such as Fourth Genre, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Bending Genres, among others. Recently retired from her practice as a somatic psychotherapist, Shira lives in Southern California with her husband, a black cat, and five chickens. She writes early in the morning, chickens still roosting, cat on lap. shiramusicant.com

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Two Questions for Mamie Pound

We recently published Mamie Pound’s glorious “After School Special.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the way you use imagery to create this story and these characters. It gives such vibrancy to them and their situation. Any change in what you show us could change the story completely! Was it hard to find the right images for this piece? Or did everything fall into place as you went?
I like to think of a story as a series of images. To write in images feels like the most efficient way to imprint an idea or feeling and the most emotionally resonant way to connect with a reader. Some stories lend themselves to this process more than others. This one felt like a stack of polaroids dropping one after another. As writers, we’re taught to show not tell, to lose the adverbs, to omit the explanation. And while there are always exceptions, this encourages the visual. Images invite the reader to participate because they must use their own experiences to make sense of them. When they use their own memories and feelings to fill in the gaps they may enjoy a deeper satisfaction because they subconsciously help the story to unfold. 

2) That last line. That last line! Omigod, that last line! How did you strike such a perfect note?
The last line is just one more polaroid. The fact that it’s seemingly unrelated creates a certain tension. At least that’s what I hoped for. The image of his mother in her kitchen juxtaposed to the rest of the story feels almost wrong. Maybe counterintuitive. But for me it’s a contrapuntal note. Something independent that weirdly energizes or lends complexity to the other story line. It came out of nowhere. It was completely intuitive.

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After School Special ~ by Mamie Pound

Stale beer and cigarettes. Chick-fil-a grease on my brown polyester uniform. Parking
deck lights and shadows. His blue pinto with the yellow hood. His eyes the same blue as his
Gyro Wrap uniform. The steering wheel against my back. His soft thighs, warm. The squeak of
his white leather jacket. His long, sun-bleached hair with black roots. The way he quotes
Outlando de Amour. The blue metal bench in the mall where he explains that I’m too skinny, too
young. The prick of sedative and the cold metal instrument followed by the overwhelming need
to faint. Followed by the overwhelming need to cry. The way his mother moves in their kitchen
that same afternoon. Like any old thing had happened.

***

Mamie Pound has stories in Smokelong Quarterly, James Dickey Review, Image Journal, Gooseberry Pie, Ghost Parachute, and Bath Flash Fiction Anthology 2024, among others. Her work was long listed for the Craft Fiction Award. Her chapbook was a finalist in Fractured Lit’s Chapbook Prize 2024. One of her stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is awarded a residency at the Kerouac House artist-in-residence beginning November 2025.

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Two Questions for Corey Farrenkopf

We recently published Corey Farrenkopf’s wonderful “Maybe Someday I’ll Stop Writing About a House On the Border of a Swamp.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) So let’s just get the obvious out of the way here: Are you really always writing about a house sinking into a swamp?
Haha, honestly, quite frequently…but I guess it’s more accurate to say I’m always writing about some sort of architecture falling into a body of water. I just had to rewrite the end of a dark Sci-Fi story I was working on because I told myself I couldn’t have another building falling into the sea…like the previous story I wrote…like a number I’ve written before that. Living on Cape Cod, I’m always thinking about erosion and houses falling down dunes and houses flooding along estuaries (some houses just aren’t meant to have basements…). It’s something about impermanence and nature reclaiming our dumb mistakes…but also I love swamps, all the wildlife hanging out there. Not a fan of mold…or the occasional rotten egg smell, but the rest is pretty great.

2) The swamp, here, is not a swamp. (Or not just a swamp.) And the story is not just a story. I love how much you’re able to reveal in this piece, and how much you’re able to hide. Do you think the narrator will be able to emerge from the reeds? Will any of us?
God I hope the narrator can…If they’re not getting out, then I’m not getting out, and wow do I want to get out. I mean, I hope everyone gets out of their own personal swamp. Sometimes the swamp is deep, almost bottomless, but sometimes the swamp is shallow, or completely dry…we’ve got to weather all the varying stages our swamp goes through. There’s a Shrek joke in there somewhere. Get out of my swamp! That’s my wish for everyone. That they get out of (hopefully not) my (their?) swamp.

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Maybe Someday I’ll Stop Writing About A House On The Border Of A Swamp ~ by Corey Farrenkopf

I want to write a story about a house sinking into a swamp, but I’m always writing a story about a house sinking into a swamp. Sometimes I’m unclear about the metaphor. Am I the house, slowly being devoured by my anxieties? By the volatile environment? By my poor choices of real estate investments? Or am I the swamp, ever hungry, slowly swallowing the young couple that couldn’t afford a pricier first home, because, let’s be honest, most people would kill for the mold-thick two bedroom that sits on the swamp’s border. They don’t care about the water in the basement, the way low-tide-reek creeps in once a day, the beards of moss draping their window casements. They don’t even care about the thing living out there in the depths, the one that calls shrilly every night in a near human voice. It sounds a little like his grandmother. It sounds a little like her first boyfriend. It sounds a little like me when I can’t sleep and need someone to talk to about my own dread, not realizing it will slowly become their dread, that it will become the thing that frays their tether to reality, sanity slipping until they drown one another, or set the house on fire, or re-list the property on Zillow at a loss. I’ll push them away like any good swamp should. People aren’t meant to live so close to fetid water. The phosphorus should be a hint, that creature living at its center an even greater indicator. I’ve tried to write so many stories where the couple stays, where they overcome their fears, or kill the monster, or fix up the property and double their money like they do on the Home and Gardens Channel. But that voice that is almost their grandmother/ex-boyfriend/me is always there, always whispering, never letting anyone rest. I’m always anxious that the house will be subsumed, that the swamp obscures something worse than I originally thought, that I’m actually there, nestled amongst the reeds, screaming and screaming.

Maybe someday I’ll stop writing about a house on the border of a swamp.

Maybe someday I’ll understand and emerge from the reeds.

***

Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod and works as a librarian. His work has been published in Electric Literature, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, The Deadlands, SmokeLong Quarterly, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Living in Cemeteries, was released from JournalStone in April of 2024. His eco-horror collection, Haunted Ecologies, will be published by them in February of 2025. He is the Fiction Editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com