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 Short Stories  published by Retort Magazine, on May 21st, 2012 The clock said 5:32 p.m. It was Thursday, and I sat in a chair with my legs up in another chair, and my book was open in my lap, and I was writing. The doors to the gallery were propped open, and the sky was turning from blue/white to pink/yellow/red as the sun got closer to sleeping. The sky was a color that only Miami knows. Electronic music bounced off the walls in the background even though I was supposed to play jazz always, no matter what.
When she walked in I barely looked up, I barked out a hello and went back to my business. She moved around the gallery like a wound-up toy, spinning in no real direction, her teal top burning against her dark brown skin. I put my eyes back down to the paper. My body language said don’t bother me, and I concentrated my eyes while imagining laser beams. From the peripheral I could see her coming, shining, on fire—
VERONICA
(Comes up to Maggie, stands directly in front of her. Bends down and touches Maggie’s leg.)
Excuse me, I want someone to paint me. I want to be painted and I want it to be sexy, you know. I want women to see it and feel good about their own bodies.
Continue reading Breasts Like Death-Sacks by Jessica Bates →
Short Stories published by Retort Magazine, on May 3rd, 2012
I waited to put my shoes on until after I jumped out of the window, by which time my socks were soaking. I sprinted down the unlit driveway to the bottom of the hill where Randy and Hector were waiting. Even at eighteen, as a legal adult, I was sneaking out of my dad’s house every night. My bedroom window frame was concave where I rested my knees as I lowered myself to the ground outside. Randy honked the horn a couple of times as I ran up to the car. He knew it pissed me off.
It was mid-January, a Tuesday night. A Petaluma night, so moist and dewy you could smell the cow shit for miles around. There were no parties, no girls out–at least none that I’d been informed of–so we had to be creative to entertain ourselves. “What are the plans, gentlemen?”
“Oh, dude, we’ve got something in mind,” Randy said.
“What the fuck, you gonna make me guess?”
“You know the Christmas tree dump in the parking lot on Washington Street?” Randy asked me.
“The one by the Library? Yeah, so?”
“We’re gonna light those fuckers on fire.”
I could imagine the workings of Randy’s imagination each time he drove passed that ton or so of dry kindling. It was the mechanistic processing of an angry kid, a kid who, despite his best efforts and intentions, would always look, feel, and act differently, a kid who wanted to set the world aflame. He’d been waiting for this night to come. Possibly, he’d waited for the pile of trees to grow immense enough to justify the risk. Or, possibly, we just hadn’t been quite bored enough in the past.
Continue reading Pyromaniacs, Bored and Young By Ben Leib →
Short Stories published by Retort Magazine, on April 22nd, 2012 Jesús was driving a beat up ‘69 VW Bug across town as if threading his way through angry parted Hispanic seas. Mexico City was dying. Dying, in the sense that in the blank spaces between all the henna-dyed cloth hanging from adobe doorways, and laced throughout the haphazard tourist hagglers with their laid out blankets and dried clay knick knacks, their dirty sense of thrift, light brown eyes – through these eyes, the eyes of Sick Mexico – you could see death struggling to crawl out from lands beyond, enslaving the body in great carnival November 1st. First the eyes are gone, hollow. Then the body loses white blood cells as brain synapses cease to fire, causing the muscle to eventually rot from the inside. Slow death due to ignorance and color TV.
What has happened to MEXICO, Land of the Proud Mayans, land of Coca and Tobacco and Life living out its slow natural erosion?
The Bug pulls out in front of a crumbling stucco job that has cafe painted on it in decaying white. Jesús steps inside and ordered a Yerba Mate.
Birds twittered from the rooftops of slum ciudad de la enfermidad, a monstrous growth that rose up around the coffee shop and made him tremble in anticipation of an apocalypse. Where is the cat? he wondered, sipping his tea.
What had happened to his erudite Arabian skin? – replaced now by a somber Chiapas imprint with unkempt hair that grew unevenly in places, and sour breath of raw meat. Jesús stroked his new goatee; it felt rough. How could the mescaline be all out, his little plastic bag empty?
“Excúseme compinche,” reproached the barista. “Pay or get out.”
Continue reading Tsun-Kyanske’s Cat by Evan Retzer →
Short Stories published by Retort Magazine, on March 30th, 2012 ST. THOMAS
‘Magic is afoot/God is alive’ (Leonard Cohen)
Very strange things were happening in 1967, in my life anyway. People I knew were experimenting with substances, psychedelic art and magical thinking. A new spiritual dimension was manifesting, and it wasn’t based on established religion. What came out of this was the New Age philosophy, but this movement didn’t exist yet. Also, concern for the environment, the spread of the feminist movement and the rise of black power marked the age.
Like many teenagers – I was 18 that year – I wasn’t all that aware of what I was getting into, and I can’t say I was really politicized. I knew there was an evil war going on in Vietnam, but I was naive about it, as well as about everything else.
For instance, one night a bunch of us ended up at Dennis’s house, in Westhaven Village, in NDG, and we had been smoking a lot of pot. I was lying on the floor, in a bag, next to a lady called Joan, who I thought was Dave W.’s girl. Then suddenly, out of the blue, she and I started necking furiously, madly, in total oblivion of circumstances or convention. This went on for an eternity or two, and then I fell asleep. I crashed.
Continue reading ST. THOMAS by Robert Markland Smith →
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