you need a bldg permit for those pyramids, friend
by J.D. Nelson

Boots, the holographic yegg
busts thru the wall of butcher paper
& starts yelping for entropy:

             McNuggets* & MILK!

(frothy uvula)

into the yowling howlnight
as the Xerox Creeps read zines

* Mick "Nuggets"

J*U*S*K
by J.D. Nelson

in the garden of insects

no moonlight
no spiders

order all over
uncool police features

scanning the desert floor
for consumables

no one remembers
how to make nachos!

nebular impact zaxx
by J.D. Nelson

             no one knows the way
this is the big trick

see the Mercury People
gleefully redeeming
hempen coupons at the co-op

these are real klone spores
from the temple

set the multipliers to 9

             pollen attack!

kerf, kerf –
KAF!

koff.

koff, koff.

Ka-HA-ha.

Ka-HA-ha.

KAA-AAA-ACK!

NERF:

            The Mathematician showed up
            wearing reptile skin.

            "This is the skin I'm in," he said
            as he reached for the carrot sticks.

            He loved healthy snacks!

The kissing robot had the biggest lips in the room. They should be
thinner and easier to handle. Those enormous lips make a person feel
like a tiny child. You can't lock lips because it just isn't a good
fit. People should know better than to make lips like those.

I told Jeffrey, "Look at that kissing robot. Look at those huge
fucking lips. It's like they were afraid you might miss."

"Not everyone has your kind of aim." Jeffrey looked sharp in his
blazer. We were standing near the cheeses looking at those lips.

The reason they had the kissing robot was for the kissing booth. $5.00
a kiss. It was for charity, which actually meant it was for a new
gymnasium.

Robby Goldfarb came and stood with Jeffrey and me. He did not look
sharp. He looked like he was wearing his father's suit. "Would you get
a load of that kissing robot. What I wouldn't give for a few minutes
alone with her."

"What would you give? And also, what exactly would you do? It's a
kissing robot." Jeffrey wore distain more naturally than anyone I
knew.

Robby made an obscene gesture that lacked definite content. He seemed
to think that male bonding was the result of exaggerated eyebrow
movement.

"It isn't even a she," I said. "It's a robot."

Robby felt pressed and started talking about how the kissing robot
would give great blowjobs. I had come into the night really hoping I
could avoid hearing Robby Goldfarb talk about blowjobs. I speared a
cube of gouda with a toothpick and placed it on my tiny paper plate.
"You don't have to be a woman to give good blowjobs," I said.

Robby thought this was hilarious. "How would you know?" He was almost
laughing too hard to pull it off, but he managed to poke his tongue
several times into the side of his cheek.

"You do know that kissing robots are only anthropomorphic from the
shoulders up? It's not like they have genitalia," said Jeffrey.

Robby insisted that they were fully anatomically correct. The kissing
robot was wearing a loose-fitting evening gown. It was impossible to
tell.

We kept watching the robot. There was quite a line. One of the deans
didn't seem to realize that in a french kiss, the tongue does not go
around but rather into the other's mouth. In any case, the robot was a
hit. The new gymnasium seemed more likely by the minute.

An attendant disinfected the robot's mouth between kisses and then
sprayed mint-flavor to cover the disinfectant. She was cute and a few
years younger than us. It made her even cuter that she was terribly
bored and seemed like she might fall asleep on her feet. She kept
spraying and wiping and taking money, once a minute, all night long.

Jeffrey and I tired of critiquing the kissing technique of our former
classmates. We scanned the room for ex-girlfriends. They weren't hard
to find. Most of them weighed double now what they did in our
memories. Then again, so did we. It was more fun to watch the kissing.

Not soon enough, the evening came to an end. They played a last dance
over the loudspeaker. Most of our ex-girlfriends were married. We
wouldn't have asked them to dance anyways. The song wasn't even
contemporary to when we went to school.

Someone dimmed the lights for the last song and the kissing booth was
finally shut down. The attendant switched off her robot and
disinfected it one final time. Jeffrey stood next to her while she
wiped off the robot's lips. He asked her if she would like to dance
and then maybe get a drink after. He told her she could decide on the
drink based on how well he danced.

"I'm an excellent dancer," he said.

She took his arm and began to waltz. He took the lead gracefully. "You
are an excellent dancer," said the kissing robot's attendant.

"I wouldn't have lied."

"You never know."

They danced perfectly for the remainder of the song and she agreed to
accompany Jeffrey to the hotel bar.

"I just need to finish putting away Melinda."

Jeffrey looked puzzled.

"That's her name. The robot," said the robot's attendant.

"I didn't realize the robot was a she."

"I mean, look at her."

"Out of curiosity, do you mind if I peek under Melinda's dress?"

"I think I'll take a rain check on that drink."

"No, it's not...I just wanted to see if--"

"Yeah, I know. A lot of people want to fuck her. It must be those lips."

Jeff was walking through the park. It was a great expanse of grass, flanked by trees just beginning to turn odd colors. They turned in the wind as he watched them.  The sun seemed to beat down upon him, though the day was dim and blue. He could no longer take the heat on his skin so he made for the trees.  

He caught up to the clutch of foliage and immediately felt compressed. The trees squeezed in around him imperceptibly, making it hard to breath. He opened his mouth for better ventilation. It felt like there was something in the trees watching him. He sat down to calm his nerves.

There was a movement in the trees. There was a flash of black and white, it was very fast. From tree to tree it leapt. He stood up to get a better look. It was still for a moment. It was a monkey with a long tail. It was all black with a bright white face and white fringes hanging from its arms. He knew this creature was out of place. It wouldn’t survive out here for long. He needed to catch it and bring it someplace where it could be properly cared for. Jeff tried to formulate a plan to catch it, but before he could finish it jumped at him with great ferocity. He caught the spastic thing like a football and clutched it to his chest.  It made a horrible howling sound and clawed at him, scratching him and ripping his shirt. As he walked from the trees homeward only his great feeling of purpose kept him from throwing it to the ground.

The entire trip to his mother’s house was full of pain. He had successfully pinned the monkeys claws to its side, but it still howled mercilessly and poked him in the side repeatedly with its surprisingly sharp tail. The scratches began to itch painfully and he feared infection.  The few people he passed in the streets looked at him distastefully and gave him wide berth to pass. The last block was nearly intolerable. His pain reached a crescendo just as he reached the door, he kicked it until his mother answered.
“Oh, I see you have a monkey too?” she said.
With the door closed behind him he released the monkey. It leapt from his shoulder with a squeal and perched atop a tall floor lamp.

“You have a monkey, mother?”

“I suppose he is an ape, he is very nice.”

He looked down next to her, there was a bright orange Orangutan smiling up at him. It waved and grunted something that sounded very much like ‘Hello’.
“I have been teaching him a new word every day; he is a very good student.”

“Thaank ooo.” said the orangutan.

“Such a polite young man, Jeffrey.” She said to the ape.

“But that’s my name, mother.”
“Don’t be so selfish, Jeff.”

The orangutan skillfully split a banana in two and offered half to Jeff. He awkwardly accepted it.

“So caring, Jeffrey!” She bent down and kissed the ape on the lips.

“Where are you keeping it?” he asked.

“He is living in your room. I put your things in the garage; you hardly spend any time in there anyway.”

“But where will I stay?”

“I’m sure Jeffrey won’t mind if you sleep on his floor, will you?”

The orangutan nodded his head in agreement, smiling ear to ear.

The monkey on the lamp howled loudly and jumped to the top of a curio cabinet, knocking the lamp over.

“We will need to find a box to keep your horrid little
friend in, though.”

The monkey screamed.

Jeff slept on the floor of the ape’s room. Since his mother did not have any bedding to spare, he slept under a towel that left his feet exposed. He had trouble sleeping as the orangutan did not seem to sleep himself. It sat on the bed all night, staring at him and mumbling the occasional word.

He ignored it and eventually fell asleep. The monkey he had brought home was in an old dog kennel in the basement covered with a drop cloth. He could hear its cries through the floor boards throughout the night. He wanted to let it loose, but he knew his mother would be upset.

The next morning Jeff began to make calls about the monkey. He started with zoos and worked his way down to animal shelters. Time after time he was rejected. Nobody was interested in the monkey.
“From your description it sounds like you have a Colobus monkey on your hands. Pretty common actually, they lack opposable thumbs and can’t be taught any useful skills.  All your new friend is good for is making a mess. We would gladly take care of him for you if you where to make a weekly contribution of five hundred dollars…”

“I don’t have that kind of money, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. Good luck to you then, he eats fruit and large insects.”

“Can I stop him from howling?”

“Can you keep yourself from breathing?”

“I see.”

“You haven’t come across an orangutan, have you? We could use another one of those.”

“Sorry.”

“Just a question, have a good day.”

Jeff grabbed an apple from the kitchen and walked to the basement. His mother’s voice followed him down the hall.

“Was that an apple you just took?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the last one, apples are Jeffrey’s favorite, couldn’t you have taken something else?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“There’s plenty of other fruit to choose from, I doubt your friend can tell the difference anyhow.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”

He replaced the apple in the fruit drawer and found the rest of the fruit to be overripe and bruised. He took the least rotten orange and brought it down to the basement. The howling grew louder as he descended into the black. He turned on the light and found the cage on its side; the monkey’s movements made it shudder to and fro.

Jeff’s presence seemed to infuriate the creature. The resonance of its voice rose two octaves and hurt Jeff’s ears. He righted the cage and weighted it with a box of magazines to keep it from tipping over again. Jeff carefully opened the door to the cage and tossed the rotten orange in.

The monkey tore it to shreds, cramming the off colored pulp into its chattering maw. Bits of fruit flew about the room. Jeff placed the blanket back over the cage and ran up the stairs; the monkey’s renewed howls chased him until he had closed the door behind him. They where muted now, but he could still hear them.

He was sitting in the kitchen drinking a glass of water.  His mother entered followed by Jeffrey. 

“Hello.” Said Jeffrey, grinning. His fur was shining, his teeth gleamed white.

“Jeffrey has learned how to bathe himself! Isn’t he such a smart boy? He can use the toilet too!” She stroked Jeffrey’s hair.

“When was the last time you bathed Jeff?”

“I don’t know, it’s been a busy couple of days.”

“You really should, you stink like the zoo.”

“Okay.”

He went upstairs and bathed. He didn’t have any clean clothing so he put on what he had been wearing. He didn’t feel comfortable in the house. Wherever he stood he felt like he was in someone’s way. He even seemed to stifle the furniture’s movement.

He was at an all night diner. He waited in front to be seated. The hostess arrived. “Smoking or non?”

“Smoking, please.”
“This is a smoke free establishment now.”

“Why did you ask?”
She gave him a dirty look.

“Do you want a table or not?”

“Sure.”

She sat him at a table in the former smoking section. He saw the same people there he always did. There where still arranged in a similar situation, despite the new prohibition. They held their pens and silverware between twitching fingers. He ordered coffee.

“Anything to eat with that?”

“No thanks.”

She walked away, muttering under her breath.
It began to rain outside.

Across the room there where two occupied tables. The first had two men talking loudly about their respective jobs. The second table bore an aged man with his face in his hands.  The music drizzling out of the overhead speakers did little to stifle the workers conversation but drowned out whatever the old man was muttering. Jeff felt sick. He pushed his mug to edge of the table and stood up.

He was in the bathroom. Jeff pulled himself together and rinsed the sweat off of his face at the sink.  The water felt oily and viscous, he dried his face off quickly and walked back to the table.

An older man with oval spectacles eyed him disdainfully as he walked through what used to be the non-smoking area. He could feel the eyes of the entire section on his back until he arrived back at the former smoking room on the other side of the restaurant.

The door stuck as he tried to enter the glassed in area. With a strong pull it grudgingly gave way. There was a nice looking young couple sitting at his table. He hovered in indecision, but the music began to collect heavily on his shoulders, he needed to sit down. He approached his former table and took his mug from the edge. They looked up at this disruption but did not look at Jeff. They looked past him at the speaker in the ceiling.
“This music is terrible.” said the well manicured male.

Jeff brought his cup to the one empty table left and sat down.  The wood grain underneath the countless layers of varnish on the table seemed to shake under his fingers. He sat staring at the wavering pattern for a couple minutes until he was interrupted by the waitress.

“You’re going to have to move, that table is reserved.”

“They took mine.” He said, pointing to the couple at his table.

“No, you left. There’s room over there.” She pointed at the table with the old man.

“Okay, can I get some coffee?”

“I’ll be by again.”

She left after she saw Jeff standing up.  She stopped to top off the couples’ coffee before exiting. Jeff walked cautiously to the other side of the room to the table with the lone occupant. The old man was still sitting with his face in his hands; he was silent for the moment. Jeff noticed that the mans’ coffee cup was empty.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

The old timer didn’t respond. Jeff waited a moment and tried again. 

“Sir, can I sit here?”

The man slowly withdrew his hands and looked up at
Jeff.  He had the most drawn, sullen, face Jeff had ever seen.

“You too, huh? Go ahead, take a seat, I don’t need it.”

His voice was thin and wispy, like his lungs where doing all the talking. The man turned and looked out the window, his hands shaking slightly on the table. Jeff glanced across the café, looking for the waitress, but he caught no sight of her.

“How long have you been waiting for coffee?” asked Jeff.
The old man looked over with his eyes.

“Twenty years, I think.”
They both looked down at their respective cups.

“That’s an awful long time,” Jeff said half jokingly. “Why haven’t you left?”

“The door sticks.”

The man looked out the window again, not seeming to focus on anything.

“Besides, there’s nothing left out there. It’s all gone.”

“I know what you mean.” Jeff nodded his head to appease the old man.

“You will.” The man paused and gazed at Jeff.

“You still have something left, for now.” He looked down at his twitching hands.

“Could I have a smoke? It’s been so long since I’ve had one.”

Jeff reached into his pocket and pulled a cigarette out of his pack and handed it to the old man with a lighter. He placed the cigarette between his lips and spun the striker of the lighter a few times unsuccessfully. He chuckled to himself.

“I should have known, could I have a little help?”

Jeff took the lighter and sparked it to life, igniting the cigarette. The man inhaled deeply and sat back with something resembling relief. He spoke as he exhaled. “After a while, even things start to ignore you.” The man took another long drag and snuffed the cigarette out in his cup.

“Thanks for that, I needed it.”

“I told you there is no smoking here anymore.  You’re going to have to go.” The waitress had appeared at his side.

“I’m sorry.” Said Jeff. “It seemed like he really needed one.”

He gestured at the old man who had put his face back in his hands.  She looked at that side of the table and back to Jeff.

“Get out.”

Jeff got up to leave and waved goodbye to the old man, receiving no response. The waitress followed close behind him to the door. He pushed his hand against the door but it wouldn’t budge until he put his shoulder to it and pressed hard.  The waitress stood behind him, waiting impatiently for him to leave.

“Don’t come back.”

The door closed behind him with such force that the vacuum it created pulled him off his feet.  He lay on his back stunned for a moment. The moon began to flicker on and off like a defective fluorescent tube. A group of four laughing teenagers walked over him and entered the café. Rain was spitting down on him and he felt the cold concrete leeching through his clothes. It felt like the drops where passing through him. He shivered as he sat up, just as the moon flickered out for good.  

He was at his mothers’ front door. He was knocking for the third time. All the lights where on and he could hear music playing inside. After his fourth knock a man in a tuxedo answered the door.

“I’m sorry, can I help you?”

“This is my mothers’ house.”
“Is it? Let me see if she is available.” The tuxedo man spoke down his nose.

Before the door closed he could hear the sound of gentle restrained merrymaking. He tried to open the door, but the stranger had locked it behind him. He stood outside for a few more minutes, his wet clothing made his skin feel slimy and alien. It began to rain harder and the overhead lamps down the street flashed and faded from view. Around the back of the house there was a small window with a broken latch that led to the basement.

 When he was younger this was his only means of egress from the house when his mother was asleep. He had to kneel in a puddle of water that had collected in a depression in the
concrete in order to get enough leverage to open the window. It took all of his strength to force it open. After it gave way the upper half of his body burst through the opening, his ribs slammed into the unfinished brick edge of the window surround. He slid the rest of the way through, the window falling closed behind him. He lay on the concrete floor for a moment hugging his aching torso, whimpering lightly.

The commotion he had created seemed to go unnoticed by the party goers upstairs, but the monkey stirred in its cage. Jeff walked carefully past the cage and up the stairs.  He slowly opened the basement door and peered out into the house through the small aperture. The light that flooded the house hit his corneas and blinded him, giving all the well dressed party guests luminous halos. The man in the tuxedo was speaking with Jeff’s mother and, standing near them, was the ape. Jeffrey was dressed impeccably and his shiny hair was parted down the middle, he held a champagne flute in his left paw.  The whole room was focused on Jeffrey; it appeared he was telling a charming story that had everyone captivated.

Jeff quietly closed the door. He couldn’t stand to feel the light on his skin anymore. He descended the stairs wearily.  With each step the air around him grew colder, his wet clothes clung to his frame. The monkey lay silently in his cage, so silent that Jeff wondered if it was still alive. He did not want to find out. He needed sleep.

He gathered a pile of dirty laundry and spread it near the furnace where it was slightly warm. All of the buttons and zippers and seams in the clothes pressed against him uncomfortably and squeezed skin against bone. Although he felt the heat of the furnace it did not warm him. The small dancing blue pilot flame dimmed. Jeff’s eyes grew heavy and he began to drift, though the cold surrounded him like he was sinking into the cement. Then the monkey was awake.

        “Ghaad. Ghaad.”

It started quietly, creeping into Jeff’s disordered unconscious and incorporating itself in a very distressing way. Jeff continued to sleep.

        “Ghaaad. Ghaaad.”

It was louder now; Jeff awoke with a start, panic gripping his chest. He looked over at the sound and saw nothing in the black but the monkeys white bearded face. Its tiny black eyes absorbed all the light around them. It began to rhythmically bob its head up and down. It called even louder this time.

“Ghraaad! Ghraaad!”

The sound left its mouth as an oily croak. The room grew darker and the monkeys white beard disappeared from view, all that was now visible where it’s shining eyes shaking up and down, faster now. Jeff was so terrified of the thing he could not move. He was even more afraid of what his mother would do if the monkey ruined her party.  The baritone of its scream sounded like the tone of a much larger animal. Shortly the guests upstairs would hear the commotion.
Jeff gathered himself and stood up. He shivered inside and out. The eyes of the thing locked on him and its head stopped bobbing. It let out a long guttural groan as Jeff drew closer. He felt his way along the wall to the dusty dry bar that had come with the house. He found one of the bottles of whisky that his father had left behind when he disappeared years ago. He uncorked the bottle and cautiously approached the cage. The monkeys croaking rose in alarm.  Jeff could hear the cage begin to shake. He took two swift steps and poured the whiskey into the cage, he could hear some of it splashing into the water bowl, some of it bathing the monkey in the brown spirit. Once the bottle was empty Jeff stood frozen, waiting for the beast’s reaction. After moments of voided silence Jeff could hear it lapping up the liquor. This seemed to calm it. The darkness of the basement pulled back and Jeff was able to find his way back to his pile of laundry. He was once again pulled into the poured concrete; the cold blue flame of the furnace lulled him into sleep.

He was awakened by a shortness of breath. His eyes adjusted to the slightly lighter gloom of the cellar. The first thing he could make out was the teeth; bright, white, shining teeth. They where encircled by wormy black lips curled into an unnatural grin. Then he saw the eyes, bobbing up and down to the rhythm of a grunting laugh that brought Jeff’s esophagus up into his mouth. The next thing his crazed eyes captured was the glint of light from a single bulb falling onto a straight razor. Jeff felt insects crawl across his paralyzed limbs as he struggled for control of anything. The eyes dipped up and then down with a grunt, the shine of the razor passed below his field of vision as it drew closer to his neck. He could see nothing in those eyes; nothing but a deep abyss that had haunted the worst of his dreams and only his most recent waking memories. The eyes stole, they absorbed.

Jeff could feel the bugs that clustered all over his body dance dangerously close to his jugular, he let out a little whimper that was drowned out by the disturbed grunting of the thing on his chest. His senses began to return to him. At first all he felt was the sharp, fingerlike toes on the things feet, stabbing into his chest.  Then, he could move his fingers.  Finally he could feel his arm emerging from the frigid concrete. The insects angrily bit Jeff as they retreated.  He twisted what he could of his body and swung his still numb arm in a wide arc over his body, striking the hairy orange thing across the muzzle and onto the floor. Jeffrey let out a cloying laugh and brought the razor down on the closest thing within his reach, Jeff’s leg. Jeff felt it press down on his pants, and in an instant it had passed through his clothing and sliced the cloth and passed through the small amount of skin and muscle surrounding his femur. Jeff felt every microscopic serration of the blade grind against his bone; this sent a nauseating vibration across his whole skeleton.

Jeff regained feeling. He slung his arm over once more and struck Jeffrey’s paw, knocking the razor from his grasp. Jeff now held the advantage, he pinned the ape under his thin frame and punched the squirming thing in its grotesque, recessed nostrils. Though blood did flow, and pain must have been felt, but the idiotic beast did not stop grinning and chuckling. This infuriated Jeff more than anything, he wanted to see some sign of pain, of regret.  He grabbed its’ short neck and bounced its’ head off of the hard floor.  Its’ crimson stained maw was still ringed by grinning lips; it coughed up blood that landed on its’ face, matting its fur, smelling of copper and sweat.

“You are doing this to yourself, you know.” It coughed up between gobs of stained phlegm.  

Jeff, maddened by this, slammed its’ head into the
concrete, over and over, the muffled thumps enunciating the word he silently mouthed.  

Jeff’s chest shuddered and he was overtaken by dry sobs. The pace of his beating had lost its zeal as Jeffrey’s furry body had grown slack and unresponsive.  He dropped the heap and crawled backwards. The one hanging light bulb swayed to and fro, casting shadows that made the whole room dance. Still quietly mewling, Jeff washed his hands and face in the laundry sink. From the murmur that leaked through the ceiling he could tell the party continued uninterrupted. His leg throbbed with pain but did not bleed at all.

He looked over to the cage; the monkey lay passed out on its side, breathing loudly. He went to the cage and opened the door. He gently wrapped his hands around its neck. He could feel its rapid pulse wiggle under his thumbs. It had vomited all over itself, the vinegar scent of regurgitated liquor drifted up. He slightly tightened his grip. His own throat began to tighten up and tears stung his eyes. Its’ eyes opened up wide and unfocused. The stinking breath it emitted came in sputters and gasps. Jeff could feel the throb under his thumbs begin to slow.

He loosened his grip. He was blinded by the tears that filled his eyes. The monkey didn’t move, but Jeff could feel its chest expanding and contracting. He gingerly held the stinking thing to his chest and held it there for a time, swaying back and forth. The door at the top of the stairs opened. A slice of light hit the back wall casting his mother’s silhouette.
“Jeffrey? What is taking you so long?” She called down.

Jeff flinched at the sound. He padded to his makeshift bed and grabbed an old knapsack that made up part of the mess. He carefully slid the monkey into the opening and pulled the drawstrings tightly closed.  He tried to open the window but it wouldn’t budge. He tried to squeeze his fingers between the window and the frame for better leverage, but all he got was splinters of old, chipping pain under his fingernails.

“You must get back to the party and finish your story.”
 She took two steps down the stairs and paused.  

“Did that horrible little thing scare you?”

Jeff pushed though he felt ice pump though his veins. Every cell scratched as he fingered at the edges of the window. He began to gain purchase as his mother called,

“Jeffrey?”

He pressed his fingertips so tightly on the side of the window he feared the points of his finger bones would press through the skin. With one final tug the window swung open. He heard his mother take a couple more steps down as he tossed the knapsack through the window and scrambled through himself.

        His mother began to scream just as the window slammed shut. The window did not seem to deaden the volume of the shriek. Jeff hastily scooped up the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder as he ran for the street. The scream was growing louder drowning out the wet slaps his shoes made when they hit the pavement.

It was dark outside. It was not a regular night time dark. The sky had gone out. Though it rained oppressively there was neither sign of clouds above nor lightning bolts to accompany the crack of nearby thunder. There was a circle of light nearly ten yards around him. This was more an absence of dark than a source of light. As he ran he could see the reflections of unseen lamp posts gleam on the wet pavement. He could see his own feet hitting the ground.  The only thing he could see outside of the circle was his mother’s house when he frequently twisted his head around to see if he was being pursued. The house slowly shrank away and disappeared in the distance, the only thing that followed him was the horrible howl of his mother.

With the light from the house gone Jeff was left swimming in a void as black as the trenches between stars.  His chest ached from the extended dash and he stopped, collapsing on the ground. His limbs burned from the exertion, his body was cold to the quick as the icy raindrops stabbed through his body. The rest was short lived. The circle of un-dark was shrinking around him.  Lightning struck nearby Jeff and, although he could not see it, the boom of the strike knocked him on his side.

His eyes hurt from keeping them open so wide, unblinking. They had taken on a life of their own. In a constant search for light they twisted around crazily.  This disorientation made him dizzy, so much as to make him stumble as he rose to his feet, not sure if he was really standing up.  His vertigo reached a peak. He found himself spinning in place, craning his neck painfully trying to catch a glimpse of anything. While his mother still echoed in his head another sound broke through the madness. The monkey in the bag began a low growl that drowned out all other noise. Jeff’s panic reached a head and he started to run as fast as he could. The terrain under his feet changed from concrete to asphalt and back again. He was forced to a sudden stop when he slammed into what felt like a rough brick wall. Luminous circles and jagged patterns shot through his skull and he felt the warm trickle of blood wash over his face.  He clutched at the wound on his head and screamed. The monkey matched him decibel for decibel.  He moved at a shuddering pace forwards, using one hand to grope along the wall.

He could not tell how long he followed the sandpaper texture of that wall with his raw bleeding fingers, but eventually he made it to a corner. He had kept his eyes closed forcefully to prevent further disorientation, but he allowed them to snap open for just a moment when he turned the corner. He finally saw light.

Off in the distance he could make it out, three squares of light. He wondered if he had gotten turned around and was returning to his mother’s house, but even the horrors that awaited there did not compare with the black hell he had just run through. He gathered the last of his strength and ran towards the light. He could feel the monkey thrash about in the knapsack trying to get loose.  Its paws had torn holes in the bag, they were working their way through his shirt. Jeff could feel his body giving in, but the light was very close now. The monkey tore through his shirt and began poking holes in his back. The door of light between two windows loomed only feet away. At full speed Jeff jumped and threw his shoulder into the door.

It gave away and swung open, dumping Jeff and the now free monkey onto the dusty floor.  He lay there curled for a time, gasping.  His eyes where so dilated from the darkness that even the murky lighting in the place caused him pain. When his eyes adjusted Jeff could see that he had landed in a bar.

He stood up and wiped the cold sweat and blood from his face.  Six patrons and the bartender turned uninterested gazes in his direction.  The door slammed shut behind him, making him jump.  The monkey was sitting on the bar staring at him quietly.  The patrons turned their attention back to their drinks.  A low murmur filled the room, swimming on the slow nameless song playing on the jukebox. 

The monkey was growing more restless, though nobody paid it any attention. Jeff hobbled to the bar and sat down on an empty stool near the monkey.  The bartender wandered to where he was sitting.
“You too, huh?” said the bartender.
“I guess.” Replied Jeff.
“What are you drinking?”
“Water, please.” The monkey was clawing at his sleeve.
“Sorry, no water, not any left.”
The monkey howled into Jeff’s ear.
“A whiskey then.”
The bartender nodded, poured a shot of cheap whisky and set it on the bar. Jeff reached for his wallet but the bartender stopped him.

“Drinks are on the house tonight.”

“Thanks, when do you close?”

“We don’t close.”
The monkey grabbed the glass and emptied it.

“Would you like another?”

“Better make it two.”

After a few more drinks both Jeff and the monkey had calmed down. He spoke to the bartender as he was pouring another drink.

“How long have you been here?”

“At least thirty years, I think.”

“You must love your job.”

“No, I hate doing this.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“The door sticks.”

The monkey sat back on his haunches, lapping at his latest drink. The other patrons had been here for a long time too, dust seemed to have settled in the creases of their clothing and they continually drank from bottomless glasses. Jeff felt his legs twist around the base of the stool like he was putting down roots. He finished his drink and tried to light a cigarette. His lighter would not spark. He looked down to see that his drink had been swiftly refilled while he was distracted. The room grew a bit colder.

Jeff knew the door would stick for him too. There wasn’t anything left out there anyways. Not anymore.

a beauty she strolled
into the office
demanding the state pay
for her sex change operation
since her elementary nature
her cellular being is trapped like
a caged nightingale
without a way out of
a 100% homosexual male
who's already got
the world's best boyfriend
who is to be her husband
the day after
she gets that dick
sowed on.

i listened: as the fan
pushed stale warm around
the room
i quoted Lao Tzu to her:
"are you capable of understanding
that you know nothing?"
she rushed out of the office
like a scalded animal,
shouting:
"i'll file a complaint! how dare you!
you've got some crazy assholes working here!"

Reassure and comfort your goat.
God aims.
God loves an alibi
Reclining the fluffy mutations.

Reassure and comfort your detergent.
God pardons
Tweezers pinching buds of char
Sucked from mushrooms on sperm.

Two hemispheres
Crashing over atomic mountains.
God convulsing
On the lantern's glare.
Highlights printed around your seams and ears
Feeling horny during surgery.

Hush now
Congregations of the transitory gear binge.
God's honest convoy needs your earthly cuisine
To purchase parts for a spaceship.
Flat incisions of pigment
Flogging garments nursing the last scroll.

Unwilling fares the bleed blood bled
Over the building that is across from this.
There was a light there yesterday.
The light remains on today.
And they really can't see me off.
The cranes collapse in additions.
Ugh. Dak. Splurk.

Obama rama lama ding dong.
I can't brave myself in a future.
I am no idea of my life beginning and edit.
The hatcher of legs
Coyly balances her tennis dress gripping the smog.
She's fixed next to crooks.
A jeopardized bush devotion saturating the lipread.

Retorting cracks my grooves gay bong blitz.
Four vines later and I've sown our monument.
She wants me where she hides
The finger fucker of worlds randomly grape.
And we go far to raddle regrets,
Seeing ourselves a relaxed future.
Any curve worth snacking is as savage as its compromise.

The hot slit moves
Moon vegetables
Absorbing termination comfort.

Brave lifelines borrow
The pride of abstract cults
Swearing on nocturnal cures.

Across town
Solemn cave visions
Pour from steel nipples.

Poison dart wasps
Invade a pink wrist
To beguile whatever porno
Shapes the chapped thumb passenger.

Prairie bubbles
Stuck inside a mercury suicide
Cycle

Resurrect any soft fruit
And imagine train tracks
Gnawing on gunshot wounds.

23


The Success
by John Bruce

     The English Department was not, shall we say, a peer of those at Berkeley or Harvard, and the job prospects for all but a few of the graduate students there were dismal. You could easily spot the ones who’d go on to good careers. There was, for example, Ian Thwaite, who was from the UK, a dapper-looking guy with a non-threatening mien who’d mastered the particular sort of accent Americans like to hear from people who say they’re English.
     But the plummy enunciation wasn’t the sole thing that distinguished him: there was another English graduate assistant who talked the same way but didn’t last as long in the department. He was a dedicated Stalinist who’d spent time in the former USSR and had an astonishing collection of hammer-and-sickle lapel pins, which he rotated on the same threadbare tweed jacket. He also talked fondly of his days in the workers’ Bezirk in Vienna, for that matter. Nobody saw any incongruity in his studied upper-class pronunciation; in fact, given the snobbery in that or any other English department, the combination was part of his appeal.
     But by then, the received style in English departments was postmodern, and the socialist-realism posters the guy had in his office were over the top. Ian Thwaite, in contrast, kept his politics, safe though they must certainly have been, to himself. Ian was probably the ideal PhD candidate to work under Anol F. Benson. “Anol F. Benson?” the reader may ask. “Haven’t I heard that name somewhere?”
     Of course you have. If you took any American Lit survey, one of the key texts you had was likely the one edited by Hamilton Smiley and Anol F. Benson. Benson got his name on the thing when he was just a graduate student himself; Smiley gave him the credit when he had Benson do all the footnotes. It was the making of Benson’s professional reputation, such as it was. He’d later done a three-volume biography of William Ellery Channing (the poet, not the theologian), on which reviewers agreed that it was, while diligent in its accumulation of detail, unreadable
     Anol Benson was a bitter and disappointed man, subject to unpredictable fits of viciousness which were directed, naturally enough, against whatever graduate students he found closest at hand when the angry moods struck him. Ian Thwaite had the diplomacy and self-effacing manner to deflect the temper tantrums when they came his way, and Benson, perhaps from a sense of guilt, made several phone calls and got him a tenure-track job.
     Ed McLaughlin, who was a couple of years behind Ian in his course work, was happy enough to see him go, even considering the likelihood that he’d never get that sort of break. When Ian was around, he was simply a reminder to Ed of what he’d signed on to in going to graduate school. Nobody had really deceived him – nobody needed to. There’s an apparently inexhaustible supply of newly minted baccalaureates who think the academic life is somehow an alternative to the middle-class rat race. And just as many people seem to think that, as the classroom population grows progressively older and presumably more mature, there’s less scope for the various smooth operators and teachers’ pets that infested school life in the lower grades.
     Ian’s live-in also represented that sort of contradiction. She was a graduate assistant like everyone else, but her lack of interest in anything but Ian’s career was palpable. The outcome of her wager on his success in that regard, of course, had been fortuitous, but she had no apparent ambition to be anything but the wife of a professor. Where her female colleagues often espoused various strains of radical feminism, she herself had begun to decide that life was handing her just about exactly what she wanted. Her eyes were an attractive shade of blue, but they were also starting to acquire a cast of complacency, the same cast that Ed saw in the suburban wives where he grew up, who were satisfactorily married to prosperous doctors and lawyers.
     When Ian got his job, he promptly married her. His new employer was probably delighted with the extra dab of respectability, and a dapper assistant professor with the proper U accent might otherwise find altogether too many chances to behave other than respectably. The midwest, after all, where Ian's new institution was located, wasn't going to be a hard room to play -- but then, the room he'd just been playing hadn't been all that difficult. In fact, the whole reason for his emigration had probably been a quest for easier rooms to play.
     Although he understood this in a not fully conscious state, Ed recognized that his own live-in, Megan, was subject to whatever charms Ian had to offer. And Ed gnawed on the reasons for this, also not quite consciously. Ian had mastered a simulacrum of English upper-class speech, though with neither the money nor the pedigree that should have gone with it, and in consequence he’d traveled to a place far enough away for such discrepancies to be overlooked. His new wife was apparently happy to have a husband who gave only the impression of money and pedigree, though this carried its own value in provincial English departments. But this also meant that, if anyone else was seeking to become Ian’s significant other, that position was now taken.
     But, Ed suspected, there was still no shortage of ladies who’d be eager for a dalliance, however furtive and brief it might be. The reason, he decided, had nothing to do with any sort of practical considerations. What was on offer was pure romantic fantasy, the chance to live in the material of the middlebrow Sunday-night dramas, always imported from England, on public TV. Wasn't a taste for such dramas, and the almost touching willingness to write checks in their support, a major benefit of a liberal arts degree? Megan seldom spoke of Ian Thwaite, but she would brook no criticism of him from Ed. If this was what it meant to be successful in the academic world, Ed was slowly beginning to understand, he wasn't going to be much of a success. Megan was likely recognizing the same thing.
     It wasn’t long before spring break the year Ian left that Megan came home very late from campus. Her schedule was usually predictable. When she finally arrived, she knocked at the door. She was somewhat disheveled, and she didn’t have her purse, which meant she didn’t have her keys. “I was held up,” she said to Ed when he opened the door.
     Ed thought at first that she’d simply meant she’d been delayed, but he soon enough put two and two together. “Where?” he asked, out of some combination of sympathy and curiosity.
     ”You need to take me back there so we can look for my purse,” was her only answer.
     ”But where were you?” She simply shook her head. If he was going to drive her back there in his car, he’d have to know at some point, but she wasn’t helping. She didn’t have a car of her own, relying either on the bus or on people who’d drive her where she was going.
     She finally mumbled out the intersection nearest where it had happened. It was on the other side of campus, in a bad part of town. She’d been at the university several years, certainly long enough to know what parts of town to avoid if one were female, alone, and on foot. “Why the hell were you there?” he asked in exasperation.
     ”You have to take me back there so we can look for my purse,” was her only answer. Clearly the way this was expected to work was he’d have to be chivalrous with the damsel in distress, while the damsel was allowed to lawyer up and avoid giving him much information at all.
     Luckily, the phone rang, and someone had found the purse, which avoided the need to go looking for it. Everything was there but the cash. But, as Ed reflected on the circumstances, it was plain that after the robbery, Megan had been able to concoct a version of events that, through some apparent combination of judicious falsehoods and artfully withheld information, made it impossible for him to reconstruct for himself any convincing version of what had happened.
     Had she been with someone? Was she going to or coming back from someplace? Was someone involved for whom there might have been a more immediate responsibility for chivalrous conduct? Once the purse was retrieved, the whole affair quickly joined the long list of proscribed subjects: Ed could never raise it. All he knew was that Megan was capable of much more than he’d previously assumed, and he could take nothing for granted.
     A couple of weeks later, spring break arrived, and Megan went home to visit her parents. While she was gone, oddly enough, Ian Thwaite showed up, with his wife, at Ed’s and Megan’s apartment. Ed saw them coming up the patio as he was looking out the window. It was a big surprise: they’d used their spring break to travel back to their old school, apparently, and beyond that, they were coming to visit Ed and Megan.
     As far as he knew, all they had in common was occasional trips with groups of friends to the English-style pub near the university, where everyone drank overpriced beer, stared at reproductions of Underground signs and portraits of Winston Churchill, and waited for something interesting to happen, which it seldom did. When Ian and his wife left town, the trips to the pub quickly tapered off, and Ed found he didn’t miss them. Now, for whatever reason, Ian was back.
     He knocked on the door of their apartment. Ed opened it. “Hi,” he said. “Is Megan here?”
     ”She’s visiting her parents.” Ian and his wife came in anyhow and made small talk. Ian seemed oddly disappointed. He clearly would rather have found Megan home and Ed gone. His wife seemed to be playing the role of duenna, or might have if Megan had been there, for whatever that would be worth. She kept hovering behind him, shifty-eyed, looking everywhere but straight at Ed, as if she knew something and didn’t want to let him know.
     ”Well,” said Ian finally, resigning himself to Megan not being home, “I suppose – I suppose I’ll have to leave you to – whatever it is you’re doing.” He glanced around the apartment, which was in typical graduate student disarray, with some distaste. He and his wife made their way out the door. Ed sat down. As he’d been few times in his life, he was overtaken by a sinking feeling.