Posted on by lokifire

The Serial Killer Confesses to His Daughter ~ by Paul Dickey

He sits before her like before the judge. He is an orange jumpsuit. He thinks maybe she thinks: he’s just a man, not the father I knew.  She knew what evil was before she knew it was him. Like a real dad, he wants to tell her all –  a day in 1952,  as if it began there, he still a boy helping her granddad carry the new television into the house to broadcast all things, both good and evil. He admits there were victims (pretty like her) who played pianos, owned dogs, and wrote in diaries. He can’t explain this, except to say: as a boy,  he too once did all that.  Each case presented a puzzle like a crossword at breakfast. She sees that in him. He wants her to know he is sorry his way. For a minute, she wants to wrap up a pretty daddy she knew with scotch tape and bright paper in her arms like Christmas, but this man reminds her of all the human in evil.

***

Paul Dickey won the Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Paul Dickey’s first full length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in over 200  online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published by Pinyon Publishing in October, 2013.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Linda Niehoff

We recently published Linda Niehoff’s striking “Underneath Cathedral Bells.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) The sensory details! These stunning sensory details! Such a perfect balance of the told and untold here, in such a tiny story. Were you ever tempted to let this piece run longer or was it always this beautiful, bite-sized micro?

What a timely question, and thanks for the nice words! This piece started and ended as a micro. It was one of those rare, lucky moments where it seemed to come out whole. And once I had the two parts and the ending, I knew it was complete as is. However, I’ve always been curious about it, and recently I’ve started wondering about those men standing around in the yellow courtyard. So I guess up until this point, I’ve loved it as a micro. But very recently I’ve been jotting down some words on my phone – just fooling around. No idea if it will go anywhere, but exploring is my favorite part of writing.

2) I adore the turn in this story, the contrast between the first section and the second, the (again) told and untold. Do you think these narrators will tell what they have learned? Or will they keep it secret, too, like it was kept from them?

I’ll admit that I’ve had to think and think on this (and probably still will be a year from now) – which makes it the very best kind of question. I almost love the asking of it more than I love any answer I could give. It makes me want to turn it back on the reader and say, “Well? Do we keep it secret or do we tell?” But if it’s up to me alone then I think that this is the very beginning of the telling. I think for now, what they’ve learned will only come out in tiny pieces. But it’s begun.

Posted on by lokifire

Underneath Cathedral Bells ~ by Linda Niehoff

They tell us about the veils. About the flowers plucked from ditches before they drown in rainwater. How they’ll tremble in our hands. About the sugar on our lips and the wine that feels like swallowed starlight.

They don’t tell us about the men standing in the yellow courtyard smoking. Leaning against archways, doorways, watching. How the ghost of smoke trails through parted lips. Or when the door is closed, the shutters locked against a violet sky. How rough an unshaven cheek feels. How it burns.

***

Linda Niehoff’s short fiction has appeared in TriQuarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Melissa Llanes Brownlee

We recently published Melissa Llanes Brownlee’s stellar “Kona Boy Made Good.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) What I love about this story is you take this event that so many people remember and remind us of how much was lost for so many people. Do you think the narrator understood that loss at the time or is this an insight that came with age, as they look back at this moment?

I am sure the narrator was impacted by the event as a child as I am sure most people who witnessed the Challenger’s explosion were but this particular narrative lens is definitely from an adult making connections a child wouldn’t necessarily make, understanding that Onizuka General Store was actually owned by Elison’s family and how they had lost their son, so publicly and so brutally, knowing that the man talking about NASA to classes full of children from his hometown would be gone in an instant and those same children would bear witness, realizing that dreams of escape and reaching for the stars could dissipate in a matter of moments.

2) I like the contrast between the hard work of picking the coffee beans and the kindness of the astronaut’s parents, giving the narrator ice cream and kettle chips. What do you think those moments of kindness meant for this child?

I think that the child would have basked in the glow of that kindness as they shovelled ice cream on kettle chip spoons into their mouth, the salt and the vanilla mingling on their tongue, teaching them that with the bitterness of having to pick coffee for their family, there can be this kind of sweetness, too.

Posted on by lokifire

Kona Boy Made Good ~ by Melissa Llanes Brownlee

There’s a picture of me somewhere, wearing a space suit. My little brown bob, grown out from the last time I got ukus, dusting the metal ring around the neck hole. I couldn’t believe how heavy it was, my arms and legs swimming in puffy whiteness. My hand shot up so fast when you asked who in the class wanted to try it on, my dreams of rocket ships and space, sparkling around me. I didn’t know who you were then even though I had visited your parents’ general store in Kealakekua after every coffee picking day, my back sore from carrying a basket of coffee beans around my waist all day. No matter how fast I picked or how many baskets I filled, I was never fast enough or skillful enough, each hundred-pound bag filled by my parents, extra money for school shopping and Christmas presents. Maybe you picked coffee too? Maybe you were never chastised because your best was good enough to get you out of Kona and into space. On the day you died, I cried. In that moment, when the Challenger exploded, I saw the end of all of our dreams, Kona boy made good. And I remembered the kindness of your parents giving me a free cup of vanilla ice cream and a bag of freshly fried kettle chips, my face sweaty, my hands sticky with sap.

***

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, living in Japan, has work published or forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Reckon Review, The Hennepin Review, Cheap Pop, The Razor, Cotton Xenomorph, Lost Balloon, and Atlas + Alice. She is in Best Small Fictions 2021, Best Microfiction 2022, and Wigleaf Top 50 2022. Read Hard Skin, her short story collection, from Juventud Press. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at www.melissallanesbrownlee.com.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Rina Palumbo

We recently published Rina Palumbo’s brilliant “Cigarette Tag.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) When I was a kid, I remember there were all kinds of tag variations — freeze tag, TV tag, shadow tag. I don’t remember this particular brand of tag, though. Is this an invention of your own or is this a kind of tag from your childhood?

Like freeze or shadow or TV, cigarette tag is a variation.  I don’t know the provenance,  but our neighborhood group of multi-aged children would just start playing the ‘cigarette’ version every once in a while.  It came to mind when I noticed a program had a warning that included “smoking” (along with nudity, violence, and language). I thought back to seeing ads for cigarettes and remembering the jingles that went with them and, more importantly, how common (almost ubiquitous) it was in my working-class neighborhood to have fathers who were heavy smokers.  The contrast between the fantasy in the ads and the reality of smoking is something I wanted to bring forward. 

2) I love this ending, how everyone wants to be the last one in cigarette tag, how everyone wants to be the last to go home. How everyone knows the lines to all the commercials. Do you think there is something of a talisman in chanting these slogans for the kids? Something that protects them?

In the closed universe of this childhood game, there is a sense of protection and maybe even safety. There is a sort of magical thinking involved. I thought of it as almost a carve-out from reality made more poignant by the fact that the buttress of this imaginary sphere is the absolute lies spun by the advertising companies in service of a toxic industry. Of course, you only see this reality as an adult, which made me, as a writer, want to elevate the delicate nature of childhood play into an art form, like a dance or a symphony.

Posted on by lokifire

Cigarette Tag ~ by Rina Palumbo

Everyone had a father who smoked cigarettes. Everyone had a father who smoked one, two, three, four packs a day. Everyone had a father who drank. Everyone had a father who drank one, two, three, four bottles of beer, wine, and whiskey a day. They smoked and drank. They drank and smoked. Everyone knew that fathers did these things. Everyone. Everyone had a mother who yelled. Everyone had a mother who yelled about the things we did. Everyone had a mother who yelled about the things we didn’t do. Everyone had a mother who beat them. Everyone knew that mothers did these things. Everyone. Everyone knew what the rules were. Everyone had the marks. Everyone had bruises. Everyone knew you count them up, one, two, three new ones on top of one, two, three older ones. Everyone knew who to tell things to. Everyone knew how to keep their mouth shut. Everyone.  And, in the summer, everyone played cigarette tag. Everyone. Bigger kids. Younger ones. All the kids played cigarette tag. One person was IT. IT chased everyone around and tagged them so they would be IT. The big difference was that if you wanted to be safe, you had to go down on one knee and chant the commercial for a cigarette brand. They came across the television day and night. Men on horses. People on boats. Happy and smiling and clean and as bright as a million stars. And everyone knew all the commercials. Everyone. Cigarette tag went on for hours. Eventually, everyone was IT, but everyone wanted to show off how many cigarette brands they knew. Filtered. Unfiltered. Menthol. Lights. Everyone knew them all. Rothmans. Marlboro. Kent. Player’s. Taryton. I’d rather fight than switch. Virginia Slims. You’ve come a long way, baby. Merit. Doral. Raleigh. Newport. Kool. Winston’s tastes good like a cigarette should. Pall Mall. Camel. Carlton. Vantage. Lucky Strikes. Chesterfield. You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem. Everyone knew the magic to keep you safe from IT. Everyone knew. Everyone. As the game went on into the night, and everyone started getting called to come home, everyone wanted to be the last one. The final NOT IT in the cigarette tag game. Everyone wanted to be the last one to go home. To the mothers. To the fathers. Everyone.

***

Rina Palumbo came to writing after a career in college teaching and has published work in Survivor Lit, Beach Reads, and local magazines and journals. She is currently working on a novel and has two other long-form works in progress while continuing to write short-form fiction, creative non-fiction, and prose poetry.

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Lillian Tsay

We recently published Lillian Tsay’s evocative “When a Photographer Falls.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) One of the things I really like about this story is that the reader is never given a location — this could be anywhere. Were you thinking of any place in particular when you wrote this? Would it matter if you weren’t?

I thought it was a little bit obvious that this piece was inspired by the recent Russia-Ukraine War, although I wish that the war had never happened. However, it is correct that I deliberately want to leave out a specific location because unfortunately, those unfortunate events in modern warfare can happen anywhere. I was also inspired by a friend’s research on documentary photography, which reminds me again of how critical photography is in shaping our empathy towards those events we normally (thankfully) don’t experience with our own bodies. 

2) I think it’s such an interesting thing, that journalists/photographers are witness to devastation like this, yet they can’t help (no matter how hard they try to stay ambivalent) but to become part of it. You demonstrate this so powerfully with the ending of this story. Do you think there is any way to witness without becoming?

I remember that there was a time when war photographers faced a lot of pressure for “not doing enough” at the site. I want to show that while the camera is a powerful tool in the war, it’s not invincible. It cannot document the smell or the sounds, and the same goes for the photographer. He or she is also another helpless person on the battlefield. As for whether there is any way to witness without becoming, I think I am hesitant to give a positive answer here. By being on-site, the photographer is already part of the war. With all the international law specifying that soldiers should not harm journalists and photographers, many of them still violated the rules, or you can say that bullets just don’t have eyes. I think the photographers knew this well, too, and yet they still made their decisions to pursue this difficult path.

Posted on by lokifire

When the Photographer Falls ~ by Lillian Tsay

The bombs fall from the sky and shatter a hospital. Through his camera lens, the photographer witnesses bodies scattered with blood. On the corridor is the figure of a boy. When the photographer is close enough, he sees the face of the dead boy. The pale cheeks remind him of his young son back home. His camera cannot record the rot and stink in the corridor, but it can capture the shape of the body. Snap.

The refugees are holding one another and listening to a violinist playing in the basement. The photographer listens with his camera down. Another thing his talisman cannot do is to document the tone of Adagio in G minor. As the elegy goes on, a mother comforts her crying son. Not far away from the crowd, two soldiers are resting. In melancholy, they relax as sleep takes over them. Snap.

A dead soldier lies on the pavement. And then there are more, five of them in total. Some of their faces are already beyond recognizable. The photographer takes another shot, and it is not until then that he realizes some are enemy soldiers. Blood and dirt have mixed the original colors on the uniform. Sometimes, nobody pays attention to the living until their bodies become part of a photograph. Snap.

The sniper from nowhere shoots a woman running on the street. It hits her leg, and she falls. The sniper and the photographer both hide in the dark and shoot their targets. They respectively play their parts on this stage call the battlefield: one’s shot triggers blood, and the other’s shot captures the aftermath. The photographer adjusts his camera to zoom in on the struggling woman. They used to say that if you can capture a cinematic shot of the abyss, it will be the apex of your career. But perhaps, the photographer says to himself, he can be more than a bystander. Before then, however, he needs to finish his task. Snap.

The camera is his eye. Ruins. Dead bodies. Soldiers’ backs afar. These are what the photographer sees on the battlefield. And when the photographer eventually falls, he becomes part of the scenes he took. His body becomes the new evidence to be shot by another photographer. “Tell the world this is what they have done to them. To us.” Another photographer will say. Snap.

***

Lillian Tsay was born in upstate New York and raised in Taiwan. After she graduated from college in Taipei, she moved to Tokyo and had lived there for four years. She is currently writing a dissertation on East Asian food history at Brown University. Besides her scholarly works, her creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Atticus Review, amongst others. 

Posted on by lokifire

Two Questions for Taylor Card

We recently published Taylor Card’s dreamy “Stochastic Prompt No. 9: (n) Sci-fi Worlds.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love all the different worlds you create here! One of my favorites is L8EE27, with “the hand of Jeremy” instead of the hand of God. Oh! And BB6781, with the cold people in refrigerators. And X4S2SQ, where animals are unaffected by dreams. And…! I’m sure there are more worlds out there — how did you select these worlds for this story?

A bit of background: As the title of the piece hints, this piece was created from a prompt – one created by a writing friend, Max, in one of Adam McOmber’s workshops. The prompts were based in concepts about stochastic writing from authors Matt Bell and Édouard Levé.
Answering your question: There are many, many more worlds of course – because each one is a story-that-could-be. I contain so many story beginnings, middles, ends – but few of them are connected, and even fewer complete. It was kind of a revolutionary concept to me – the idea of a stochastic prompt – because with stochastic prompts, I’m given permission to take fragments as a whole, as done. So all these little pieces, once collected, become something greater – their connective tissue is created by the absence, and imagination does some patching between what exists on the page and what’s implied, referenced.
Most of the artistic choices in terms of including and ordering the worlds were all meant to make that connective, imaginative tissue – what is not on the page – more compelling. I spent more time ordering than adding or removing worlds.

2) Even with all these fantastic worlds, there’s still a touch of our reality here (for instance, in the flooded world U00327, the narrator thinks humans probably caused the devastation). How do you walk that boundary between the fantastical and the mundane/true?

Well, it’s all “true” in the sense that these worlds are true in my head. The flooded world is from a dream I once had. Deep melancholy and soaring joy co-existed in the dream – melancholy because of the absence of land, the implied devastation, and joy because of the presence of the giant, majestic birds and their beautiful, symbiotic relationship with the humans. I think when it comes to emotion, complexity is truer than simplicity. Rarely do we ever feel just one thing – which is why, when I’m writing, my goal is also to evoke messy emotions. Juxtaposing the strange and familiar (the fantastical and reality) is part of how I tried to do that in this piece.Here’s something I won’t say: Every tragedy has beauty in it. Imagine telling that to someone who has lost a loved one. They don’t want to hear it. But I think deep down we want to counter, somehow, the knowledge that the opposite – a perfect utopia – is impossible. How can there be pure evil, if we’ve all become so cynical to the existence of pure good? I don’t have an answer. So when it comes to the boundary between the fantastical and the mundane, I just try to write what feels true.