Milk Candy Review

They told us that we needed to learn responsibility. They told us this in a room where the ceiling tiles had blooming brown stains. We felt like saying, you need to learn responsibility, but we said nothing, because what is there left to say, anyway? Instead, we kicked our feet against the undersides of our desks and ran the worn-out soles of our tennis shoes against the cracked linoleum. The rumbling and swishing sounded like distant traffic.

The eggs were in enormous shrink-wrapped cartons. These were not organic, free-range, feel-good-about-yourself brown eggs from happy chickens. These were industrial, 120-per- carton eggs with paper thin white shells. We knew that they had been taken from the cafeteria, probably left over from last Thursday’s “breakfast for lunch” menu. These eggs had already lived unhappy lives, and we knew we could only disappoint them further.

It is your responsibility to take these eggs with you everywhere you go for the next week.

The covers of the fluorescent lights were filled with dead insects, and their bodies cast speckled shadows on our desks. If your egg cracks, you will fail the assignment. We nodded. After you crack the egg, there is no going back.

We went up one by one and collected our identical eggs. They felt fragile in our hands, but we could not stop running our fingers across their smooth surface, pressing in slightly, searching for weaknesses. We left the room, left the building, went home, and set our collective eggs down on our collective desks. We had normal evenings. Spaghetti or chicken or tacos or toast for dinner. Not eggs. Homework. Chores. Television. We lay in our beds, and the eggs sat nearby. We tried to sleep. Maybe we succeeded. The eggs said, kill me.

We couldn’t be sure. It could have been anything. The rustling of the sheets, a garbled voice from the street, noise from the TV still playing downstairs. It could be a dream. We listened harder. Kill me , the eggs said. Kill me. We stayed still, staring at the ceiling. There was still tape residue up there from the glow in the dark stars we’d taken down last summer. We’d decided teenagers don’t like glow in the dark stars. We’d decided teenagers don’t like a lot of things.

The next day, none of us said anything. We do that a lot. None of us said anything, and therefore all of us were quiet. We had our eggs in our pockets. Some of us had wrapped them up in bubble wrap, blankets, tissues, mittens. There was a rumor of a boy with a miniature cooler filled with packing peanuts, his egg buried in the middle. We understood: his egg would be safe, but that was no way to live.

It finally happened after fifth period, right before lunch. We were all in the hallway, and we all heard it. A snapping, but wetter. A squelching, but crisper. The sound of an egg breaking. We all froze, unwilling to look, to see if it was our own egg that had broken, and in the silence, it sounded as though all of our eggs let out a sigh. When the egg was found, the buzzing lights reflected in the whites, casting a halo around the unbroken yolk. We bowed our heads.

That night, in the darkness of our bedrooms, we held our eggs in our hands, turning them over and over again, waiting to hear them speak. We thought about the first fallen egg. Its fluorescent halo. Saint Egg. Canonized. Sunnyside up. That night, our eggs were silent. We fell asleep and dreamed they were in bed with us. We rolled over them, smothered them, pressed fractured shell and sticky yolk into our bedsheets. In the morning, the eggs were whole, untouched, sitting on our nightstands.

By the week’s end, only seven eggs had broken. They told us that this was a record. “You should be proud,” they said. “You are very responsible,” they said. We nodded. They were right. We are all responsible.

We held out our eggs. The eggs said, kill me. And together, we squeezed. The shells gave way, and the shards pierced the palms of our hands. We did not speak. The yolk ran down our bare wrists and dripped onto the desks. It ran onto the floor and stuck to our shoes. The room was silent. They did not say a word.

***

Alex Evans is an English teacher and writer living in the American Midwest. His small fictions have appeared in X-R-A-Y, Soft Cartel, and Ellipsis Zine.

Cousin got whipped with the watering hose in the backyard so the neighbors couldn’t see. Uncle when catch her kissing one girl in town. He looped the hose and beat her over and over, slower than the sun beating her ehu hair into a matted mess on her scalp. I no get one lesbian for one daughter. You neva goin see that girl again. You goin to church. You goin for pray. Each sentence a looped mark on her naked skin as he pulled her pants down and she tried to cover herself, crying and pleading. No please. I not one lesbian. I neva like kiss her. The heavy smack of that green snake shimmering in the sun, empty of water and engorged with hate, filled the yard as we cousins and sisters watched Uncle, his red browned skin and salty peppery hair, his fisherman’s arms, teach us that it’s better to lie and to not be beaten and to suffer the drowning beneath the waves of beer and cigarette breathed fathers and uncles and cousins and brothers, our flesh torn by coral lined rocks as we tumble and toss, submitting to their little deaths, than to ever love one girl.

***

Melissa Llanes Brownlee is a Native Hawaiian writer. She received her MFA in Fiction from UNLV. Her work has appeared in Booth: A Journal, The Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, The Citron Review and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize and the 2019 Brighthorse Prize.

It is the kind of morning where I pour the day’s coffee into the remainder of yesterday’s coffee and then hold the cup for a long time before I begin to drink.

The youngest boy asks, “When’s swim team practice?” Nobody told him the group disbanded because only one kid at a time could fit in the pool. “Don’t worry,” I say, “It’s more of a solo sport anyway.”

The cat has been sunbathing in the flowerbed, getting yellow pollen stuck on the end of his whiskers. He’s got yellow around his mouth, as if he were a cartoon cat that just ate a yellow bird. The youngest boy has been eating flowers too. He says it’s not because he wants to be like the cat, but because he likes the taste.

The cat smells like litter and sweaty paws and dirt from the tomato garden that didn’t produce any tomatoes this year. The youngest boy still has that sweet little kid smell. I sometimes wonder if the flowers make him smell sweeter.

Last night, the youngest boy grabbed a slingshot and told me he was heading to the park to take down some baddies. I suspected there were no baddies, only a field of dandelions with heads to pop off with rocks. When he got back he was covered in pollen so we threw him in the kiddie pool. We threw the cat in too. We scrubbed both their pollen mouths until all our limbs were covered in criss-crossed red lines.

My coffee is cold. The youngest boy must be cold too. He’s been sitting in the pool all night, picking at the scratches that have not yet formed into scabs, the lower lip of his clean mouth sticking out. He tells me he doesn’t care what I say. He’s going to wait for the rest of the team to show up.

***

Madeline Hanley lives and writes in Raleigh North Carolina. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel and Cease, Cows.

Eric the Astronomer lives alone, in a tower made of memories. Old notebooks, scribbled front and back. The musings of a day, rendered indecipherable by time. Yellowing sheet music of songs reticently tinkled for loved ones who appreciated the effort. Copper-bottomed frying pans which made French toast on Sunday mornings.

The things that are left behind after a life has happened.

He sleeps most of the day in his bric-a-brac minaret, until night falls and the stars and the planets come out, answering his call to prayer.

With mighty Jupiter he shares a glass of Scotch, and talks of his father – of whom he remembers very little – apart from the way he used to wink with just the corner of an eye. How that one tiny gesture would make him feel bigger than himself.

He dances with gentle Venus and tells her his favourite memories of Juliet and the life they shared together. Tonight it’s the time it was too rainy to take a boat out on Rydal Water, and a goose chased them along the lakefront. Neptune laughs.

Venus twirls across the firmament, and as she spins, she unravels spacetime like a spool of silk. The fabric of the universe detaches itself, rending apart the threads of this great celestial tapestry, and it’s as if Eric could reach out in to the nothingness and touch Juliet’s fingers one last time.

The solar system rearranges itself around him, and a single object falls slowly from the sky, dragging a comet’s tail in its wake. It’s an umbrella, and it lands softly at the top of the tower.

And so it goes on for Eric, night after night – this dance, this worship. And every night, Eric’s tower grows a little taller, heaven gets a little nearer.

Walking in Prospect Park, in the sun’s first warmth, magnolia trees seem to be involved in their own contagion, ignoring the rash of people, who hurry to get out of their heads full of worry. No one notices that the trees are congested with heavy pink buds, ready to unfurl.  The people rush past, with caps pulled down, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone who might tell them to go home. Where is home? The magnolia branches point in all directions. She stops and takes a picture of this profusion, in

spite of feeling nervous about being seen outside.

***

M.J. Iuppa  is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College; and since 2000 to present, is a part time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport. Since 1986, she has been a teaching artist, working with students, K-12, in Rochester, NY, and surrounding area. Most recently, she was awarded the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching, 2017. She has four full length poetry collections, This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017), Small Worlds Floating (2016) as well as Within Reach (2010) both from Cherry Grove Collections; Night Traveler (Foothills Publishing, 2003); and 5 chapbooks. She lives on a small farm in Hamlin, NY.