Milk Candy Review

AS A BABY, his mother is the only one in history not to ponder the punishing freedom of the possibility of their child’s death. At thirteen, Jesus oscillates between becoming a great whittler and being the son of God. As a side hustle, his stepfather hawks animal sculptures at bazaars; the pufferfish—his prized commodity. At nineteen, Christ carves John the Baptiste a pufferfish, the latter holding it aloft with such amorous wonderment and gusto; even with all the miracles, this is the best it got. Years later, he makes the other John a pufferfish; John responds by asking if it is a prefigurement, an allegory. Make me understand, he implores. At twenty-seven, he makes Mary—not his mother, nor Magdalene—of Bethany a pufferfish, a rhinoceros, a honey badger, a perfume bottle with her initials, and a wallaby. Bathing in the sea with Mary, he resolves to give up whittling, God—to marry her, but he thinks too long of his father, how God made her, her little mouth, her nipplefruit breasts, how he’s seen her this way, too, and that is enough. During the crucifixion, Christ marvels at the monstrous ingenuity it must’ve taken to first design this thing. It is someone’s masterpiece. Since Christ was already perfect in the Militant realm, he is the same in the Triumphant. Jesus watches his Mary for a long time, then she dies, and he does not find her again. After his mother’s Assumption, he does not like seeing her—just the two of them body/soul with God nowhere/everywhere—a once absent father now gone. As saints become a thing, his mother finds a vocation. There are rocks and wood in Heaven if you want them. Jesus whittles pufferfish and little Mary of Bethanys, thinking This is what life could’ve been.

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Nicholas Finch is a writer and teacher in Florida. Most recently, Finch’s translations of the Croatian poet Josip Pupapcic were published by Faultlines.

He was the one who performed the grandest tricks, climbed the tallest trees, vaulted the steepest rooftops, annoyed the most dogs at night bouncing like a firefly with the light of his GoPro always filming, always posting, garnering the most likes from subscribers, garnering the most frustration from neighbors who called him crazy, called him a hooligan, the one who wished he’d hadn’t been filming, hadn’t been posting for likes when his girlfriend lost her balance, lost her footing, the one who wished knew how to swim, how to act, how to do anything but stare dumbfounded like the other onlookers at the clifftop, pointing, shouting, insisting someone do something as he begged the helicopter to hurry, the one who later took swimming lessons at the Y, the one who climbed to the tallest tree the day of the hurricane, the one who vaulted across his neighbors’ rooftops in the downpour, the one who spotted his neighbor George in the rising water, the one who pulled George to higher ground, the one who insisted the helicopter leave, insisted there were more survivors, the one who the mayor called a hero, the one with the news segment that went viral, the news segment he would never see, the news segment that garnered the most likes from his subscribers.

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Jennifer Lai has fiction in New Flash Fiction Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Scribes MICRO, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington state.

1. Any water can be living water. Be it in a strip mall church, or a river, or a lake, or the ocean, according to my father. Even if it was brackish and slimy and smelled of soggy dead leaves. My father never baptized me or my brother in any of the churches where he was a pastor; in the summer he would launch me off his thighs and shoulders into overbleached pools, I came up churning water, eyes red, lips blue and body numb, shouting again! again! until the end of the day.

2. A strong swimmer can still be pulled under by currents. The river was rushing and swollen after ten days of rain, and there were too many beginners in our group, including me. I didn’t drown, but when we tipped over, I was trapped under the canoe, which was wedged under a branch, and when I came up, my lungs were burning, and I was afraid of water in a new way.

3. The brain and heart are over 70% water. I fell in love with a girl in high school who loved to swim as much as me. We went so far out in Lake Michigan that nothing on the shoreline made sense, it dissolved into distant shouting. There we could cling to each other, treading water and making out where no one could see us. And that was the thing: we were both raised to be fearful of queerness, of this kind of baptism by women.

4. The surface tension of amniotic fluid can be measured. My mother, who was raised Catholic, and who I swam in so violently she vomited every way, taught me to wash dishes using water so hot it begs the skin to blister. I wonder if washing dishes this way ever makes her think of being scoured clean by holy water, which, forbidden to me, I once sipped from a font, the edge surely filthy from the touch of so many hands. I learned to plunge my hands in plate after plate after bowl after pan after cup after knife, fork, spoon, removing all traces of food or spit; she taught me to scrub things so clean my knuckles come out red and raw, so my skin dries out and cracks like a wilderness.

5. The opposite of baptism is funeral. We used to play Pentecostal baptism with our Catholic cousins at the beach the summer I was nine. I insisted on being the minister, tipping everyone backwards one after the other, saying I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then slapping them on the forehead. When it was my turn, everyone held me under, together, until my soft palate, throat, and nose were burning, even my brother’s small hands were a part of the net, trapping me until I was thrashing around, fish-like with panic. After, I let them bury me up to the neck in damp sand.

6. A car can hydroplane on one-tenth of an inch of rainwater. My brother died in a car accident on a rainy afternoon at sixteen. He almost drowned in a pool when he was two, and a few more times after that in lakes and ponds as he got older. It never made him afraid of water. I can picture the silvered sliver of scar on his forehead from careening into table corners, water splashing as we played, him veering towards the edge of the pool as if magnetized by danger. My dad pulled him out and beat on his back until he threw up a mouthful of water and undigested cheerios. After that, I dragged my brother around the shallow end, his arms around my neck, letting him half-choke me so he could kick his feet and pretend he was swimming.

7. If a person is drowning, they should try to keep their head up and try to breathe
normally. I learned the basic safety rules for swimming late, long after my parents dropped me in the water, long after it could have become muscle memory. I am too used to being flung out this way, backwards, no time to take a breath. I am used to no warning, used to hitting the surface hard, and used to sinking to the bottom, which is why I force all the air out and drop as fast as I can, because I am also used to getting it over with, and I am also used to coming up shouting again! again!

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Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. Ani is the first place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 Finalist, and has had work featured in Split Lip Magazine. They can be found at aniking.net, or trying to find somewhere to quietly finish a book without any more interruptions.

Before,

back when Blockbuster was a thing, when Fridays were family movie night, when Father still knew your name and Mother could still read the fine print, back when Sister linked her arm so tightly into yours her pulse screamed and you ran to the New Releases section in sync, back when the biggest argument you got into was which movie to take home – you, romcom, she, comedy – so you rock-paper-scissored to decide, when you knew her tell was a crinkled forehead so you were guaranteed the win, back when Mother’s keychain held the coveted membership card that made the purchase, back when you waited in line begging her to sink your teeth in fun dips and baby bottle pops and pop rocks and gummy worms and air heads and twizzlers, when your stomach didn’t protest when you started inhaling them, back when you asked to turn up the radio on the ride home, when Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’ was a number one hit, when you thought you were a good singer and didn’t look around first to start belting, back when your legs didn’t know disability and were rooted the strength to sprint you to the couch, when you could shelter your entire self with a blanket Gram crocheted, back when you could fast forward through the previews but you couldn’t fast forward through the FBI notice that warned about copyright, back when you thought, why would anyone ever break the law?, when you thought the law was always right, when you didn’t have a reason not to question them, back when you watched a romcom where the guy was able to stop the love of his life right at the gate of the terminal, when you thought stopping someone from following their dream was a romance, back when the landline rang and you were all farthest from a phone, when you let the machine pick up the message, when you could hear your family’s voices say in one collective hymn this is the home of your last name, back when you all had the same last name, back when kindness seemed spilled and love was the laughter of your family in one room, back when you sprawled across Mother’s lap, head under the roof of her hand, feeling safe enough to dream and sprout and church yourself into the universe, you remember you couldn’t wait to grow up. You couldn’t wait to grow old. 

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Aysha Mahmood is a Pakistani and Dominican writer, artist, and disability advocate based in Connecticut. She is currently the editor of a nonprofit organization and her creative work has been published in Salamander, Leon Literary Review, and Troublemaker Firestarter amongst others. When not writing, Aysha can be found binge-watching Bob Ross videos, eating an unhealthy amount of chocolate, or growing her vegetable garden.

We recently published Martha Keller’s nostalgic “Good Girls.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I remember those days — rushing out to the swings, hoping to beat the boys, being told to share, being pulled off, being knocked to the ground (we didn’t have a countdown like this). I love how the girls plan to fight for possession. How long do you think they can hold on?
 Yes! The swings were such a battleground. Weren’t they? I don’t know how long the girls will fight for the swings, but I think the girls’ relationship with the swings will unavoidably change. I love writing about liminal moments in time—the flash of a transition, the shift in the way the girls are viewed or the way the girls view themselves. The last line “holding hard and fast to everything they’ve come to take from us” has a defensive tone. Given everything that we’ve already read, there’s also a nagging question: What will they let them take? The swing itself hovers over a space in time. While on the swing, the girls stay in the same spot. Nothing has been decided yet. Nothing has been given or taken away. Throughout the story, I feel like the girls are fighting for power: power over the swings but also power to hold on to themselves. In that sense I hope the girls keep fighting to hold on forever.  

2) I love the way the countdown pulls the girls into the future awaiting them and then back to this moment on the swings. And in all these future moments, the boys are there. Do you think the boys will always follow the girls like this?
The boys’ role in their lives grows and swells until it nearly suffocates the girls and pushes them to find something new. But in the years that follow the girls have given the boys a greater role in their lives. They have followed the boys into a life they’re not sure they ever wanted. I like to think the girls reach a wiser and more hard-won sense of themselves and what they want and need. When they’re young, they’re too quick to accept what’s expected of them—to embrace (and enforce) restrictions on appearance, behavior, even their life goals. Their choices start to feel like they’re chasing someone else’s milestones.  I like to think the girls and the boys have the courage to stop following (or dragging) someone else down an unwanted path so that they can finally find something closer to a partnership and a life that truly belongs to them.    

We plan to kick their heads in with the toes of our jelly sandals. They’ve come with Filas and skinned knees and bad bowl cuts to count us off the swings. Sharing, the teachers say. Taking turns. We pump our legs, pull at long rusty chains suspended from hollow metal crossbeams. Turf. Head. Sky. Turf. Head. Sky. Ponytails and pigtails whip the air behind us. Legs fan out, a murmuration of swooping and diving, cotton skirts and skorts flapping like flags in the wind.

30

They shout the number like a curse. The year we made a baby, had a baby, lost the baby. The year we wanted to be mothers: Grab tiny fingers. Hold a soft head in the palm of our hand. Wait. Watch. Wake. Hands on our bodies. Hands in our bodies. We’d cry. We’d grow tired. We’d stop listening. We’d stop watching. We’d walk out the door in the snow, at the conference, at our in-laws for the last time.

25

Getting braver. Getting closer. The year of tousled hair and Sunday brunches. Did he? Not yet. Maybe this weekend. Open toe. Invitations. We’re chiffon dolls in descending order. Are you sure? It’s forever. I do. I do. I do.

20

Wanna see my loft? No parents. Hook-ups. Solo cups stuck to tiled floors. Bunk Beds. Bob Marley. Shredded bill baseball hat collection. Little Black Dress. We hide from the RA, the ex, the roommate passed out in the Papasan chair on Parents’ Weekend. Will they? What’s next?

15

Halfway there. All the other girls got it first, didn’t they? Didn’t they? Fat one. Last one. Too thick. Stick thin. Eyeshadow. Lipstick. No make-up ‘til you’re eighteen. We’re tube tops in the bathroom. Bodysuits. Boy shorts. Will I feel different afterwards? I heard—she let—they are—bitch and slut and prude rolling off our tongues like Rain-Blo bubble gum balls. 

10

We’re back of the bus, Emergency Exit. Hot pink macraméd bracelets, bralettes. Pierced ears. President. Astronaut. Super Star. Sticker collection. Trade you. I’m coming. I’m coming. Wait up.

5                                                                                                            

Playing house. Mom and dad. Dry kisses next to monkey bars, water fountains, cubbies on carpet squares. First comes love. This is love. This is love.

1

We’re muscled limbs kicking a 3-2-1 countdown, sweaty thighs, skin stuck to skin, bare feet, blistered fingers balled into fists: Holding hard and fast to everything they’ve come to take from us.

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Martha Keller’s work has appeared in Lost Balloon, Cagibi Literary Journal, Bridge Eight Literary Magazine, Brilliant Flash Fiction and elsewhere. She was a longtime reader for Flash Fiction Magazine. Her short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions anthologies. Over the years, she’s worked in strip malls, skyscrapers, and high school classrooms.