Milk Candy Review

Children in the schoolyard throw rocks at the scarlet letter sewn upon my chest. Brick by brick a thousand sins build a wall. Blackbirds swoop and dive, pulling ribbons and strands of golden hair to line their nests. There is no escape.

*

The therapist tells me to call her Mary as though it somehow makes us friends, comrades, partners-in-crime. She places a protective hand over the growing mound that is her child, while she tries to convince me to give up my own. Snowflakes fall like molting feathers.

*

From the belly of the old cypress, a blackbird calls out to his flock, warning them about the dangers that lie ahead. He mimics the cat’s meow, the scrape of bone against bone, the cries that can’t be soothed.

*

Lying in bed I watch your knees knead my womb like soft dough. The vibrato of your tiny heart beats in tandem with mine. You are the pupa and I, the chrysalis waiting for you to break free.

*

The moonlight shines upon the blackbird perched on the concrete sill. I reach out to touch a glossy wing, but the rapier pecks and tears deep into my skin, ripping layer after layer until I am transformed into a Madonna dressed in a flowing blue gown, my head crowned with stars and daisies.

*

Squeals erupt from this little girl in pigtails who is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I press my hand into the warm hollow nestled between her shoulder blades. Her legs pump hard against gravity as I launch her into the stratosphere. She smiles down at me standing amongst the thinning mulch where feet have dragged their path. Look Mama, I can fly! I can fly!

***

Kristin Tenor enjoys writing short fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Midwest Review, Spry Literary Journal, and The Peninsula Pulse. She lives in Northeastern Wisconsin with her husband. Learn more @ www.kristintenor.com or find her on Twitter @KristinTenor.

What on Earth does my son’s name matter? There are three of him—four at most—and they all look like their worthless father, who comes and goes. Why take pills when I can make my grandmother’s apple crisp by heart? I don’t need to remember—I know. Grainy clumps of brown sugar stick to my fingers, I lick off the excess. Ripe red fruit beneath knife crunches in my ears. I’m with her now, mixing bowl on the seat of a chair. The kitchen counter’s still too tall for me. She bakes apple crisp, always. I come and go. I may not remember, but I know.

***

Becky Robison is a Chicago native and a graduate of UNLV’s Creative Writing MFA program. Her fiction has appeared in PANK, Paper Darts, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. She also serves as Social Media and Marketing Coordinator for Split Lip Magazine. She’s currently working on a novel.

Midnight on the Moon

is a lonely place, black as the end of hope, like a rocket that ran out of fuel and places to go.  Like a man who, down on Earth, just swore undying love to his wife and sees his lover’s face on the wall behind her.

The wife is a trusting thing, a planet hanging in the sky of his life, faithful and constant.  She will always be there for me, he thinks.  The man is happy, and the wife is happy, and, miles away, even the lover is happy.

Only the moon is lonely.  Only the moon sees the truth.  Even with the sun shining all day on its squinty eyes.

The man swears his love again.  The wife believes him.  And then, later, much , much later, in the white gauzy near-morning, he will enter her, like doubt.

***

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two flash fiction chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Café Crazy, was published by (Kelsay Books.)  Her play, Love is a Bad Neighborhood, was produced in NYC this past December. She is a former English teacher. She lives in NYC.

A fur trapper is deep in the woods with his grandfather’s gun. He sees a moose and fires his finest shot. The moose is quick. The bullet only takes the tail.

The fur trapper hangs the tail in his cave.

The fur trapper stares at the tail as he cleans his gun, certain to find the moose again.

The next day, with the tail stapled to his pants, the fur trapper finds the moose and again shoots his gun and again the moose is too fast. The bullet only removes an antler. The fur trapper calls his welder friend, turns the antler into a crown.

The next day, wearing the crown and the tail, the fur trapper hunts again. Stalks the moose. Assembles traps, follows tracks.

Day in and day out, the fur trapper takes a leg, takes a tongue. An ear, a tooth. He adds each item to his body. The fur trapper gazes at his reflection in the lake. He sees his enemy, the moose, looking back at him.

But the fur trapper isn’t satisfied, doesn’t like the way the moose stares. Like it has a secret, like it’s still winning. So the fur trapper returns again to the woods, hunting for the moose’s breath, the moose’s nightmares, the moose’s spirit. The ghost of the moose. Always a bit too quick.

The fur trapper refuses defeat. Has the phrase, “What makes a moose?” tattooed on his cheek.

No one talks to the fur trapper when he drinks at the tavern. When he weeps in the back of the church. When he cleans his gun by candlelight on his porch. No one ever asks him about the moose or why he’s covered in fur and blood. The rest of the town is terrified of guns.

***

Ben Niespodziany is a librarian at the University of Chicago. He runs the multimedia art blog [neonpajamas] and has had work published in Paper Darts, Fairy Tale Review (forthcoming), Cheap Pop, and various others. He has never fired a gun.

He needs a place to be other than the underbellies of ships swollen beneath the water. He spends all day sliding along anchor chains, twisting around mossy links, and comes home glowing green; I pick the kelp from his hair but still he smells of barnacles and rust.

Please give him a job where things are seen and touched, not yawning huge, hidden in depths.

He does not need smoke breaks, sunshine, or lunch; let him sort mail under harsh fluorescent bulbs in rooms where paper peels back from the wall.

My ghost boyfriend is loyal and steadfast; he cannot bear to leave this world and for you he will work silently, carefully, and eternally.

If you are nervous about hiring a ghost, please let me lay your mind at rest. He is not transparent but translucent, gathered more thinly than you or I. When he stands against sunlight his edges burn; close your eyes before a bright light and you will see where he starts to dissolve. He cannot disappear, or walk through walls—no disembodied sounds accompany him.

In fact, he makes no sounds at all, but you will quickly learn to interpret his eager, mournful smile.

My ghost boyfriend would be an asset to your company in any role involving repetitive tasks and few words; if he would stay at home when I left, I would leave him list after list of things to do.

But when I shut the door behind me he is suddenly restless, and must ride the trains for hours, silent straphanger, until he can no longer ignore the slow-sounding dance of the chains in the harbor.

Please give him a place to be when I am not around; ghosts, you see, cannot define themselves without another. When their presence is not confirmed, and confirmed again, they must slip into the water, tangle themselves in the unseen tethers that bind the ships to shore.

Respectfully Yours,

***

Rebecca Orchard is a recovering classical musician and professional baker. She has an MFA from Bowling Green State University and is in the PhD program at Florida State University. Her fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from Passages North, Tammy, Exposition Review, the Baltimore Review, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Her work on the Voyager Golden Record has been profiled in the Guardian, BBC World Service Newshour, and Atlas Obscura.