Tag: across the wire

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

Single Speed Summer

By Jon Berger

I moved to a new town last summer where I didn’t know anyone. Drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of weed edibles and didn’t shave or get a haircut. I looked homeless and I loved it and I was losing weight because I couldn’t afford food and I’d been riding my mountain bike over 100 miles a week on endless gravel roads and single-track trails and doing pushups and ab-wheel and kettlebell workouts in my 600 square-foot studio-apartment while staying hydrated on tap water.

I accidently ripped off 4 door handles in my hipster apartment. Frank Lloyd Wright did not design my apartment. I could’ve designed my apartment, dude.

This one guy rode his bike around town and honked his horn. He rode up and down Center Street late into the night. I watched him from my big window. He rode an electric bike. He’d stop at the four-way and try to direct traffic and everyone ignored him. He had a cognitive impairment or something.

One morning I was in the parking lot of my apartment building with my mountain bike turned upside down, oiling the new chain. I broke my old chain a week ago while riding single track. 8:30 at night, one last lap, and my chain snapped on a sharp rocky incline. I had to walk my bike home and didn’t get back to my apartment until 10 pm. I had the bike shop do a tune up and give me a new chain. 

I loved my bike as much as I hated my car. My bike is a single speed 4130 Chromoly frame from a small frame builder in Arizona. The bike was assembled in Colorado. I started riding when I lived in the Western UP.

I have a high engagement hub that makes a loud clicking sound. I was running the chain lube across the chain as I cranked my pedals with my other hand, letting the hub purr wide open, feeling the deep clicks of the hub echo off the walls of the surrounding buildings.

Electric Bike Guy could hear my hub clicking from across the street and rode his bike over to me. I was finally going to talk to this local legend. He sped up to me then sat there on his bike and watched me, slack jawed. He was skinny and looked to be about 50 years old. He was wearing a winter hat even though it was 85 degrees outside.

He started pointing at my bike and making a funny noise. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to imitate the noise of my hub or what. He started waving his hands around. 

“Hey, bud. How ya doing?” I said with a wave over my shoulder.

He started telling me something I couldn’t understand. I think it was about a crash he was in because he kept making big explosion sound effects with his mouth and waving his arms around and then flying into another wave of explosions like the rhythm of the ocean.

Everyone who lived in my apartment building knew each other but they didn’t know me and they didn’t talk to me but this guy did and I was fine with that. 

I stood up. “You wanna ride around the block with me?” 

He went into another fit of sound effects and hand gestures. 

“Alright, let’s go.” I threw a leg over my bike and off we went. He was following close behind honking his bike horn and squawking and making sound effects as we rode through the quiet neighborhood and people in their front yards stared at us. 

My bike felt good but the pedal tension didn’t feel the same. It somehow felt weaker. I rode across the street to get a tallboy from the gas station. I sat my bike up against the side of the building. He did the same. 

We entered the gas station like two barbarians on an impromptu quest to destroy the town. The gas station was nice and cool. As we walked in, the cashier yelled, “Hey, Bobby, you can’t be here!” She was talking to my new friend. His name was Bobby. In response to being yelled at, Bobby took his winter hat and pulled it over his eyes and mumbled something inaudible and extended his hands out in front of him like he was blind and then started walking around the gas station like Frankenstein.

“No, Bobby! Get out!”

Bobby ignored her and started walking down the candy aisle like Frankenstein. There were a few small children in the candy aisle and they feared Bobby. They cautiously shuffled away from him.

I walked back to the fridge to get my beer. I decided to let the situation with my new friend Bobby and the cashier and the children play out on its own. I grabbed an All-Day IPA six-pack and walked back up to the clerk. “You!” she said pointing at me. “You and Bobby can’t be in here. You bother all the customers. I’ll be reporting you two to the foster home.”

I stopped and stared at her and my brain flexed and pumped green toxic sludge through the gears of my mind and I realized she thought I lived in the adult foster care home with Bobby.

I gave her a blank look and said, “Okay.” I sat my beer on the counter. She looked at me like I was a hologram. 

“I shouldn’t let you buy that.”

“Okay,” I said absently and showed her my ID and gave her cash. 

She exhaled sharply, sucked her teeth and shook her head and gave me my change. I left the gas station. As I left, she yelled, “Hey, take Bobby with you. You have to stick together.”

I kept walking. I waved back at her. “Okay!” I said it like I just won a stuffed animal at the county fair. 

I left Bobby in the gas station to scare the children. This is what he decided to do at this certain point in time on earth and who am I to say otherwise.

I rode my bike back home and loaded it on the bike rack hitched to my Ford Fiesta. 

I was going to ride the trail by my apartment called the Jail House Trail but figured it would be a better idea to get out of town for a bit. I pictured a grumpy fat guy with a big net and a tranquilizer gun in a dog-snatcher-styled box-truck driving around town looking for me and Bobby so he could catch us and bring us back to the Adult Foster Care Home.

It was a beautiful day. I went back into my apartment and changed into my mountain bike clothes and grabbed my helmet, a cooler for the beers and ate a weed gummy.

I decided to ride a trail in the town over. A smaller, easier trail. The trailhead was somewhat busy. A river nearby with people fishing. I offloaded my bike and put on my helmet and pedaled hard down the trail. The trail is a 4-ish mile loop. 

I tell myself it’s a 5-lap minimum for this trail. I tell myself I will drink one beer after each lap. 

The trail has a sign at the trailhead and it says which direction to ride for each corresponding day throughout the week. I ride whatever direction I feel like.

I do the things I tell myself I am going to do. 

The trail is sandy and has a lot of tight turns. My bike is long with a steeper headtube angle, so I have trouble on tight turns. It rained the night before so the soil is sticky and I can fly down the trail at top speed before slamming on my brakes at the turns. I listened to my hub click through the silent woods, my mind and body free.

A few miles in, my bike was riding different. Maybe the handlebars were at a different angle. I needed to break the bike in. That was my goal for the day. To make all the parts settle back into each other like layers of the earth beneath my feet.

I saw a guy through the woods, also riding a bike. He was not wearing a helmet. He was going slow and struggling. He was going the wrong way on the trail, or I was going the wrong way on the trail. I’m not sure.

He didn’t seem to notice me. I’m breathing hard, pedaling rotations through a 19-tooth cog. 

I pedaled around a corner and he finally saw me and I veered off the trail and into brush and rode through the brush like a deer in rut. The guy stopped completely in the trail and stared at me. I kept riding.

A few more miles down the trail, on a small log section, I came around a corner and hit a patch of sand. I tumbled over the handlebars and landed on my forearm and elbow. I thudded to the ground and my bike clanged into a tree. I was super fucking pissed I crashed. My bike never had a tune up before and now my muscle memory of how to ride was gawky and misplaced.

I got up and picked my bike up out of the bushes near the tree it hit and I got back on and finished my lap.

I’m leaning against my car, drinking a beer and watching people walk around the cemetery. My shins were covered in dirt and my right side had streaks of dirt and my forearm had light little lines of scratches that bled. I drank some fucking IPA. You drink IPAs when you mountain bike because you can drink them warm. IPAs were invented by the British because they didn’t go bad when the British Empire shipped them out of India. 

I got back on my bike and rode two more laps. I drank a beer after each lap. The air is getting cooler. A family of 4 was walking on the trail and I waved at them and they stared at me like zombies.

I was 3 beers deep and on my 4th lap. I built up speed. The time of dusk was floating through the forest and I breathed its thick coldness.

I was maybe a mile into the 4th lap, trying to build up speed for this one section I really enjoy riding that has some little dips in it and you go through a little stream that splashes mud. 

The bike was still riding wonky but creaked less.

I crashed again. I sailed over the handlebars and felt my shin hit the top tube of my bike. I heard a vibration tear through the dusk air like a gong. I sat up. Blood trickled down my shin and flowed over the specks of dirt and hair. I picked my bike back up and kept riding. 

A sharp pain, like a nail pounded into my shin bone sideways, weaved and pulsated. The start of a hematoma. I’ve had so many I know the familiar pain of them forming. A hematoma is like a little trickster goblin fucker growing out of your body who mocks you every time you bump it or move just right or breath too hard and they stick around just long enough to where you get used to it and then one day it is gone and you miss it.

I made it back to my car and got off my bike and leaned it alongside my car. I checked my leg and there it was, a pulsing hematoma forming on my shin, covered in dirt and blood. My shin throbbed as the hematoma grew and drenched my sock in blood.

I opened a beer. The sky was the brightness of a night light and I still had another lap to ride.

The other guy I saw riding his bike, going the opposite direction of me, came out of the trail, slow and crouched over, not pedaling. He coasted down the slight hill to his very own junky vehicle parked near mine.

I nodded at him as he approached.

He avoided eye contact with me.

I took a sip of my beer and watched him get off his bike with a groan. He was doughy and not used to riding a bike.

That is okay. 

I took another sip from my beer.

His bike was silhouetted against the lamp shining above doors to the bathrooms behind us. I could tell there was something wrong with it.

He bent over his bike, looked down at it and didn’t seem to know what was wrong. 

I approached him slowly and asked if he needed a hand. 

He looked up at me with round startled eyes. His mouth moved up and down like a bad translation in a foreign film. “I just bought this bike.” He had a speech impediment and he sounded insecure.

I walked over to his bike and looked at it. I didn’t recognize the brand and the bike was falling apart. The brake caliper had come off, the seat was bent down, the handlebars were bent down. It made a grinding sound when he cranked the pedals.

“Where did you buy it from?”

“Oh… Walmart.”

“Alright.” I walked over to my car and opened the back seat and got out my set of bike tools.

I walked back over to his bike and took out a few Allen wrenches. I tested the sizes until one fit the fastener on his seat. I propped his seat up and tightened the screw. 

“Um… you’re not going to break it are you?”

“No, man. Just tightening it up for you. A lot of the workers at Walmart who assemble these bikes don’t do it right,” I said, leaning over the seat and finishing up the tension so his seat would stay still.

I started working on the handlebars next. I reefed them up and adjusted them until they were snug. 

I stood back and looked at his brake caliper. The world was dark now. Fully dark with the cemetery next to us, the dark woods on the other side, and I heard ghosts whispering to each other as they shambled out of the ground and the deer whispered to themselves about us as they stood motionless in the thick brush. 

I was still sweating. Sweating all the beer out, I could smell the hoppy IPA beer seeping out of my pores and whispering back to the deer as it evaporated from my skin into the night sky above me.

“I’m not sure about the brakes, dude,” I said, taking out my phone. 

“Oh.” He said this like he had no idea what I was talking about.

I handed him my phone with the flashlight on. I told him to shine it on the brakes. He didn’t really shine them on the brakes but I didn’t say anything. 

I fumbled with his brake calipers. They were sidewall brakes. I clipped them back on so they would work but it wasn’t a permanent fix.

I picked up the rear of his bike and cranked the pedals and heard the drivetrain grind and hobble. 

“I can’t fix that. Take it to the bike shop in town. Have them fix it.”

“Oh… maybe I’ll just take the bike back.”

“You can try, friendo.”

I helped him load the bike into his shitty minivan.

I picked my beer up off the cement and finished it and tossed it into a garbage can by the bathrooms.

He was climbing into his minivan as I was throwing a leg over my mountain bike. 

“Where are you going?” He asked me with that blank look in his eyes. He had the same look as Bobby.

“I’ve got one more lap to do,” I said as I started to slowly pedal away.

“Oh… it’s dark out and you’re bleeding.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you doing another lap?”

“Because I hate the world.”

“Oh… well… be careful.”

“You too.” I gave him a salute as I rode away.

I pedaled up the hill, past the cemetery and into the dark cold woods. I could hear the deer leap away from me in the dark to make room as I pedaled forward.

Jon Berger is a teacher in Rural Mid Michigan. His short story collection Goon Dog and his poetry collection Saint Lizard are available at Gob Pile Press. He has work forthcoming at Southwest Review. He tweets @bergerbomb44.

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

These Days

By D.T. Robbins



Jackson Browne said these days he's doing more walking than talking, but I want to take it one step further—I want to pour concrete over my mouth, walk into flame, eyes wide and head high and chest out and… goddammit, that’s a lie. I’m sorry.

Let me start over…

When was the last time I cried? Face painted wet under blue skies, pleading with angels.

When was the last time the earth carried me? Caked in dirt and play and promise.

When did I quit trying? That drive from madness, beautiful, into a golden horizon.

When was my mind last quiet? A chorus hopeful even in dream.
When was the last time I woke up proud? Don't answer that. 
When was the last time you could look me in the eyes? Don't answer that.

When was the last time I cried? Heavy-laden, eyes bloodshot and guttural and godly.

I could use a good fucking cry. A cry to drain every drop of sorrow and shame and guilt and horror and echo and void and yesterday and always and nowhere and nothing and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all and the weight of it all.

These days, it's hard.

D.T. Robbins is the author of several books and founding editor of Rejection Letters. 

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

Before the Sunrise

By Wilson Koewing

The morning his daughter turned seven months old, a vision of suicide overcame Price. While lying in bed he imagined entering the kitchen of their hilltop home, gazing out at the shaved hills of Marin County and pulling the trigger of a pistol raised to his head. He saw his body jerk back against the pantry then fall to the hardwood floor. He watched blood trickle across the floorboards and pool in the kitchen’s northeast corner, as the house tilted slightly in that direction. He observed Delancey rush in, stare at his body without emotion, and dial 911. 

Despite how real the vision felt, Price did not own a pistol and had only fired a gun on a few occasions in his youth. He was also too cowardly to kill himself and knew this as deeply as he knew anything. 

He rolled out of bed and entered the kitchen. He brewed coffee, cracked a window and smoked a joint. The sun had not yet risen, but its light crested the eastern hills. A thick fog crept just below the trees. Stoned, he turned the shower on and waited for the steam. In the shower, he masturbated. Fully enveloped in steam, he came. 

In the kitchen he poured coffee. Cream and local honey. He cut a slit in the top of a blueberry muffin and slipped butter inside. He glanced up as Delancey entered the kitchen and tried to stare at her in a way that he believed to be seductive. 

When she noticed him, she could not stop laughing until she disappeared into the bathroom.  

Price sat in his armchair and listened to Delancey’s laughter drown into the sound of the shower. The morning was cold, so he walked over to the fireplace and started a fire. He sat back down and sipped his coffee and tried to resist the urge to unlock his phone. His daughter would be awake soon, screaming for his attention. Sitting with her so many hours a day, he found the phone beckoned to him like the pipe or a needle does an addict. It wasn’t just the socials, but the ads, and the news on socials, and the clipped videos—politics and war zones and hurricanes and floods and extreme heat events and fires and plane crashes burnt into minds in fifteen second intervals—that he could not stand to see but could not stop watching. 

Delancey hurled open the bathroom door saying she’d been summoned to Tokyo for work at once. She would be gone a week, but there was nothing to worry about, Price would be fine. 

Don’t you think you’ll be fine, Price realized she was asking. 

Yes, of course, dear, he croaked out.

Delancey disappeared back into the bathroom, and Price, feeling the ghost notifications from his phone, let his gaze drift to the mortar between the bricks of the fireplace. He stared at the mortar and tried to breathe calmly. He’d never thought about how simple the term fireplace was. Fireplace, he said out loud and forced a laugh. How effortlessly simple. Fireplace. Something about it calmed him. Fireplace, he kept saying out loud. Fireplace. Fireplace. Fireplace.

Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His books JADED and QUASI are available from Main Street Rag/Mint Hill Books and Anxiety Press, respectively. His newest short story collection ROLLING ON THE BOTTOM is available from Cowboy Jamboree Press. His fiction and essays have appeared in Wigleaf, Pembroke Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gargoyle and New World Writing. He lives and writes in Marin County, California.

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

Colossal pt 1

By Josh Boardman

colossal pt 1 by josh boardman

How to describe that human face the broken neck stolen from its original placesetting and fitted onto a new pair of shoulders. The lowered ears and the narrow mouth and the Aquiline nose of Roman Empire. Crowsfeet around the eyes and a receding hairline and the defined slash above the chin so like a man who is accustomed to barking orders. The sculpture in all can be divided into three parts, the first of which constitutes the form of the face its boundaries and the space it inhabits, another the features, and those which in his own language were called the sentinels of the highest place of the body, in ours the eyes, the third. Of the first the massive borders reach from our shins to a few windowslats short of the ceiling and from ear to ear the width of a human wingspan. The ponderous skull is supported by a pick of a neck which bears a winding slice that looks like a river dividing provinces or a scar that has birthed from the throat of one man an idea—one lopped off then reattached to bodies of new marble as generation after generation lopes on like lemmings into the present. The complexion has tarnished over time from porcelain white to a tawny brown that blotches the chin and cheeks where millions have fingered the blessing of Caesar. The second part the features are encountered in threequarters view and from the peon’s position beneath the head they resolve themselves somewhere to the left and behind. Who hasn’t in their childhood looked up to their father as he placed a hand on the sink gazing out the window or turned away to the faraway distance of Judgment and Consequences as he focuses his attention on the negative space of thought. But the third part the eyes betray the inhumanity of this thing which appears a man but is actually an idea calcified into stone—pupilless cut from slab and undiscerning grey. They understand nothing. They occupy a solid skull focused someplace in the negative space of thoughtlessness (as is ascertained now in our humanity) and at any moment it might snap its supports and roll down on the frail bodies that love it, crushing us. Objective and possessing a thirst for violence that can be slaked no better than a rock that says I’m thirsty.

Josh Boardman is from Michigan. He is the author of the Colossal chapbook series (2024-5), Plantain (West Vine Press, 2018), and the Latin translation project We, Romans (2015). His work was shortlisted in the 2025 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration, selected as a finalist in the 2024 Fugue Prose Prize, and his stories have appeared in journals such as New York Tyrant, Juked, and Dandruff Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is working on his second novel and a collection of stories about his hometown.

He is the founder, owner, and operator of Hewes House, an organization with the aim of elevating aspiring writers.

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

Sunday Morning Driving 

By David Luntz

Route 1’s a twisting labyrinth of fast-food franchises, tattoo parlors, strip clubs, and fortune teller booths. It’s got no exit or entrance, beginning or end. I tossed my bread crumbs away. Deadweight. I pray I’ll run into the Minotaur. 

Traffic lights bristle all around, a canopy of thorns. Sharkskin sky looms overhead, sharp enough to cut. Below the traffic light, a homeless man’s drowning in an invisible sea, clutching a sign that says, ‘He Has Risen.’ Out front, a rainbow blossoms in an oil slick. Weeds poke through the cracks in the asphalt. Faded like an old dog’s coat, they tremble in the breeze. I admire their resilience.

Across from the man, on an abandoned lot, several teenagers shoot hoops. They waver on the abyss of adulthood. I can tell from the way they move their dreams are still intact. Their hands don’t know what it’s like to struggle in open water. It would be easy enough to walk over and join them. But the gulf of compromises makes this impossible. Besides, their innocence would bore me.

David Luntz – Work is forthcoming in or has appeared in Post Road, Hobart Pulp, Farewell Transmission, Bruiser, ergot., X-R-A-Y Lit, Maudlin House, HAD and other print and online journals. More at davidluntz.com Twitter: @luntz_david

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

A NOTE FROM STEVE, AUTHOR OF THE BOOK OF STEVE

Ask yourself if it really was Adam and Steve.

And naked.

And a big snake.

And 86 the apple, sub a long ripe banana.

Low-hanging fruit.

And God gettin’ all judgy and shit just because Steve got hungry after all that big snake wranglin’.

And where all them kids come from?

Much more interesting story.

Plumbing v. storage.

If God’s a dude like people always say, then he’s wondered at least once in his life about butts and penises, innies and outies, and how not to make a baby.

If God’s a dude then he’s watched porn at least once in his life and wondered if it’s the p or v that’s more important in baby making.

Steve’s a dude.

Steve’s had plenty of thoughts only God knows.

If God’s a dude and Eve was a chick and we’re all God’s children then it’s pretty gross that he wanted to watch his adult daughter running around naked with his adult son in the first place. 

Just Steve’s two cents.

Signed 

–Steve

Drevlow is EIC & poet laureate of all things BULL/bull. You can check out more of his bull shit at thedrevlow-olsonshow.com or on twitter, insta, face, bsky, & threads @thedrevlow.

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

2 Poems

By Ben Pease

The Steeple Bell

My father said it was nice, nice, 
that we had a chance to ask 

my mother what she wanted
a week before she died: 

service at the church, no funeral 
home, ask Gail about the song 

about the eagles (we never did), 
a simple meal, “Bury me next 

to my first husband—but not until 
you’re dead too, Rod—to mix

our ashes,” and then she pointed at me 
from the bed in the living room, 

(ghost bed I’d see long after 
it was removed) from that quiet mouth 

of hell, she said to me
“You’re in charge.” 

I tried to stop him 
but my father 

insisted on asking, 
“What do you want to be cremated in
  
the dress from Ben’s wedding, 
or the one from our renewal of vows?” 

The closet full of seasonal clothes
and the duck print sleeping bag 

where we placed my mother’s ashes
on the high shelf.

What Comes First

There’s no space for warmth here
between the double-paned hospital

window and the drive to the gold coast
where I lay out a sheet of plastic

and cut out rotted windowsills
as the snow hastens and stops

once I’ve made it halfway home
from work early. More hawks

than there used to be however
harried on their watch, the camel 

keeping the sheep, the draft horse 
eating its grass among the mules.

My wife lets out extended notes
of labor and a handful of my shirt

and after twelve hours of it
the hospital becomes familiar:

a loved one immobilized  
in an adjustable bed. Unsure

of the question, I watch
my wife riddle a physical

sphinx and come out of it
with not just her own life. 

Once I get to hold my child, 
her eyes grey blue, I observe 

my mother rising out 
of the unconscious, bewildered 

by her son become a father.

Ben Pease is the author of the full-length poetry collection Chateau Wichman: A Blockbuster in Verse (Big Lucks Books), a poetry-infused Dungeons & Dragons adventure module called The Light of Mount Horrid (Ghost in the Forest Games), the hybrid illustrated edition Furniture in Space (factory hollow press), and a few chapbooks. He is a co-founder of the Ruth Stone House and Sistrum Books. 

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Across The Wire Vol. 6

Locating

By Tyler Dempsey

I remember almost nothing of the 2007 Werner Herzog documentary, Encounters at the End of the World. But I remember this. 

“Is there such a thing as insanity amongst penguins?” 

Whether Herzog’s hyperbolic nature made him ask, or he was simply bored to tears talking to a penguin scientist, the scene that follows haunted me. The scientist, after a long pause, where he deftly skirts revealing he thinks Herzog is a whacko, answers, “Well, they do get disoriented.”

With morose Catholic hymns as soundtrack, the camera focuses on a penguin turning away from everything it’s ever known, becoming horrifyingly small as it moves farther and farther into the vast inland of Antarctica.

 Disoriented, I thought. Better not contract that.

Herzog’s voiceover continues, “Dr. Ainley explained that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head right back for the mountains…But, why?”

As a kid—now, too—when I was in a car I played a game. As scenery whirred past, I slung an imaginary ball out into it. My mind was magnetically wed to the ball. And the whole game was having it sail, avoiding objects speeding past, then return like a boomerang, again avoiding what I was unable to see or predict when I “threw it.” 

Equally spaced objects, like electric poles, or fence posts, made the game impulsive. And deeply rewarding. I played for hours. On road trips. Going back and forth to the store. It’s what I did. 

But why?

Growing up, I often heard about a camping trip when I was two. How, in the shortest time possible, with the adults’ attention elsewhere, I wandered off and fell in a river. 

My grandmother dove in the three-foot water and saved me. She’d bring it up sometimes at family events. Turning the room silent. Everyone focused inward as they replayed that terrible memory. But the thing is, I didn’t remember it. Aside from what felt like an irrational fear of water I eventually got over, it wasn’t a part of my identity the way it was for my family.

Instead, my trauma blossomed at Walmart. 

I must have been about five. After getting distracted while deciding which VHS to convince my mom to buy, I finally held out a movie in front of me and ran where I thought she was. But she wasn’t there. So, I cried. And eventually a worker called her name on the speaker while I choked on air and salty boogers. 

I recalled this often, feeling the emotions as if they were fresh, until college, where, in an Intro to Psych course, I learned tons of people experienced the same thing. Except, it never happened. The professor said researchers convinced gaggles of people into believing a false memory. Google “Lost in the Mall Technique.” It’s fucked up. 

I called mom. Did she remember? The movie? The crying? Her name announced throughout the store? The embarrassment? The fear?

No, she didn’t. But we kept talking, and just as the researchers would have predicted, she started to doubt herself. The handrails of her memory turned soft and gooey.

“It could’ve happened,” she said.

I felt unmoored, the bedrock of my identity drifted. If anyone had recorded my face at that moment, I would’ve looked exactly like that penguin the moment before it set off. 

One of my favorite pastimes is wishing I’d become something I’m currently not while I was still young. 

I should’ve been a mechanic, I think. A police officer. Lawyer.  

Now that I’m almost forty, it’s easy to know my tics and proclivities. I can feel the happiness these jobs would have brought seeping through the sheen of disappointment I wear like skin. 

“Whatcha doing?” My wife asks, finding me eyes closed and cross legged on the couch.

“Shh, shh,” I raise a palm, imagining myself covered in grease, wrenching under a hood that isn’t mine, dollar signs floating in and out of frame.

I was fundamentally broken as a kid. What made other kids see someone doing a job and think, I could do that, wasn’t installed in me. Skills were what other people had, while I looked at them, mouth open, like an idiot.  

  I’d love to think it was for the same reason we tell certain people not to rush to college. That I was figuring it out. Playing the long game. 

But it wasn’t. 

I was scared. Of what every man is scared of. 

Do you know what it is? 

Lean closer, I’ll tell you:

I was scared I wouldn’t be any good.

I’m in Search & Rescue. I spend inordinate amounts of time looking at maps. The word for this affliction is “cartophile.” 

By age three, humans can correctly identify a map. There’s an argument that using images to locate oneself in space is innate to our species. When someone can’t, we say they’re lost. And, there are downright bizarre behaviors and symptoms associated. 

First, they panic, experiencing an overwhelming urgency to find something familiar, but failing to utilize available resources, such as maps and compasses, to do so. Instead, they wander in circles. If it’s cold, they don’t build a fire, even if equipped with the tools and know-how. Memory loss is next, events that just occurred being the first to go. And when a rescuer calls out, they rarely answer. 

Finding them is a disturbing experience. Based on looks, you’d think they’ve been lost for months, when, in reality, it’s been less than twenty-four hours.

A man I helped rescue once looked me in the eyes and asked, “Who am I?” And when I asked, what, he said, “Where am I?”  

There’s a term for these symptoms.

The term is, “disoriented.”

I lied. There was one occupation I saw as a kid and thought, I could do that. 

Three Indiana Jones movies dropped in the ‘80’s. In every one, there was an object—an amulet, a skull, an ark—and some idiot who couldn’t wait to touch it and unleash its curses.

I could be that guy, I thought.

“Indiana Jones Idiot” wasn’t in the help wanted ads, though.

So, I continued. With no identity. No future to strive for. 

It was a geographical problem, I think. 

There’s a line from Kurt Vonnegut about growing up in Indiana. How, having nothing but horizon in all directions was enough to make a person religious. No wonder all my neighbors in Oklahoma eventually run to God. Try living an entire life with no goal post to orient yourself to.  

Firmly grasping where you are, where you’re going, it’s the most important, but least recognized need of the human spirit. It’s what is meant whenever we say, “rooted.”

By age twenty-three, I had only ever lived in Oklahoma. I was Godless. Broke. And the only person to make me feel grounded was my older brother. Who’d just been arrested. Facing trial for something he didn’t do.

He’d be convicted of this thing he didn’t do. 

And all would go to shit.

I’d leave the State two days afterward. And when I reached another State, I’d leave that one, too.

I was blind. Running without a fear of death. But, despite my efforts, something was imprinted in my soul. Telling me, if I moved in this specific, calculated way, even though odds were low, maybe I could make it. 

I would have looked hopeless had you queued Catholic hymns and zoomed in from above. A twenty-three-year-old baby. In a junker car. Hood held down by a leather belt. $240 in the bank. Heading for Alaska.

But even if you caught me and brought me back to everything I’d ever known, I would have immediately headed right back for the mountains.

“The rules for the humans are: do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still, and let him go on his way. And here, he’s heading off into the interior…with five thousand kilometers ahead of him, he’s headed toward certain death.”

This week I read an article about the frillfin goby. It’s not a J.R.R. Tolkien character, if that’s what you were thinking. It’s a fish.

It lives in the intertidal zone. A zone that sometimes looks like ocean. Other times, like land. When it looks like land, the goby lives in one of many saltwater pools that end up in a cup in the rocks when the tide moves out. 

Sometimes, a predator comes along. Or, pool levels suggest time might be running out. So, the goby launches itself like a fighter pilot from an ejector seat. It flies through the air. Lands in another pool. And, when it gets to the next pool, it jumps again.

It can make up to six consecutive jumps before landing in open water. All from a mental map it made of the area when it looked like an ocean, before the tide went out. 

“Stimming” is a word used to describe certain autistic behaviors. Things like rocking back and forth, repeating words or phrases, or spinning objects. They help stimulate a person. Or control their emotions whenever the world is shitting on them.

I have a word for my ball game. 

I’m “locating.”

I don’t believe that penguin was doomed. I also don’t think when I left for Alaska I was gunning toward certain death.

I was breaking a circle. The opposite of what most people do when they’re lost.  

Habits bring us closer to who we are. Or shove us further away from ourselves. 

Before we turn off the lights at night, my wife always asks, “Besito?”

It means, “little kiss.”

And, every time, I think, here I am.

Tyler Dempsey is the author of four books and the host of Another Fucking Writing Podcast. He lives in Utah with his wife and dogs.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 6

3 Poems

By Julián Martinez

Jesus

The Vatican’s senior accountant started locking her office door, ignoring emails. Calls. Knocks. From out in the hall, her colleagues of the Holy See heard sobs. Invoices needed to be processed. No one had any idea how much they’d gone over budget, if they’d gone over or if not, how close they’d gotten. When greeted on the stairs, she’d walk faster, graying head down. She’d jet out at odd times, once immediately after coming in and shutting her door behind her. “Boss Macabre,” The Pope dubbed her over coffee with a cardinal, according to a rumor. Dozens of theories proliferated. The HR director prayed for her before every meal. What no one guessed was that the sixty-five year old was months pregnant and suffering a nightly nightmare: Jesus enraged in Herod’s Temple, flipping the tables of the money lenders. Her child was obvious— his Second Coming had been prophesied. She’d never taken those stories seriously, but for the first time in her life, she surrendered to His power. She confided all this over the phone one night with her ex-husband, the con artist, the last person she’d been intimate with over a decade ago. He told her she should be institutionalized. That’s exactly it, she thought. I’ve become institutionalized. Her stomach sank. Then a kick.

Pussy

Wire taped to my chest, I stared at my crotch to avoid looking at the open shirt in the dresser
mirror’s reflection. Green boxer briefs with tropical flowers and flamingos on the waistband. The phrase ‘big pussy’ flashed in my mind. Imagining Big Pussy from Sopranos in the mirror instead of myself made it bearable to button my shirt— it wouldn’t be me kissing the neck of my crime boss wife, asking questions about slush funds pumped with funny money over slow jams at
Easter Sunday brunch. It’d be some other rat in my place. It’d be Big Pussy. I saw Big Pussy,
sauced on a boat, riddled with bullets that never paused for a reload by my towering wife. My dick stood up at the thought. “Wait, what the fuck? Why?” I asked my crotch. My FBI handler,
coming in from the bathroom, cleared his throat and tapped his watch.

Cleo

Her jeweled hands passed over the crystal ball like ocean waves. She told me exactly how I’m supposed to die— an infection in my skull after a fall from a stranger’s window. At one point, I asked her how she could be Miss Cleo when the Miss Cleo from TV had passed away. She froze, index finger tickling my palm’s heart line, candlelight painting the maroon of her nails a deep shade, and took a breath of the Nag Champa basement air. She exhaled with a chuckle and, dropping her Caribbean accent, she said, “it’s a persona owned by the company I work for, my dear.” I thought then that I’d fallen for a scam, but she proceeded to lay my life open like the tarot cards she had me shuffle. She knew me better than anyone ever had— every embarrassing habit, every good thing about me. She said I would soon go through tough financial times— this was a couple weeks ago— then yesterday my boss called me into the conference room and told me I was being laid off. Miss Cleo said I’d be falling in love sooner rather than later, which I found hard to believe, until the memory of her dark brown eyes and silky fingertips kept me up all last night. I came back for another reading this morning but the neon sign in the house’s window is gone. I called her company’s 24-hour hotline a dozen times but it was never her, the ladies’ Caribbean accents sounding forced and offensive coming out of them. They all said they were Miss Cleo, but the real Miss Cleo is out there. Not the real real Miss Cleo, but my Miss Cleo. I love her. I need her. I don’t care how I die anymore. I need her to tell me how I’m supposed to live.

Julián Martinez loves Chicago so much, he’s marrying her. Find him @martinezfjulian or martinezfjulian.com.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 6

Berries Poem

By Alex Rost

I put a quart of blackberries in the work fridge to snack on over the next couple days,
go back an hour later and toss one in my mouth.
Don't even have to bite
the fruit is so tender,
just squeeze it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth,
feel it pop, sweet juice squirting out in every direction, 
coating the inside of my cheek. 
Flip it to my teeth to finish the job,
chomp once, twice,
then get that perfect berry down my throat and grab for another 
except the second berry is sour,
a slightly too firm dud,
the third even worse.
Fourth, fifth, sixth - 
sour, sour, sour.
The seventh tastes a little metallic but isn't so bad,
the texture is right
and I have hope when I eat the eighth—
sour.
Sour, sour, 
fucking sour.
Firm, gritty.
By the thirteenth my palette has no memory 
of that first, perfect berry
but I can't stop,
the tingle in my tongue demands retribution,
solace from bitterness, 
yearns for satisfaction.
The container is low, 
the plastic of the bottom showing.
One sweet berry and I'm done.
It doesn't even have to be as good as the first,
only needs to provide a glimmer 
that I can take into the future,
a belief that what I'm left with is better
than this.
Sour.
Sour.
Sour.
I'm not hungry.
Wasn’t hungry to begin with.
Two left.
Please, I think.
Sour.
FUCK.
One left.
I pick it up, hold it between thumb and forefinger,
bring it to my eye.
Solid, deep coloration.
A little squeeze— 
just enough give.
I allow my hopes to rise.
I have confidence.
I run my tongue through my mouth,
searching for the taste of that first berry under layers and layers of sour.
I place the final berry on my tongue,
shift it between my teeth,
and bite.

Alex Rost runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo, NY

Categories
Saturday Cartoons

That Pony, That Boat

By Thad DeVassie

I didn’t know what it meant to stick it to the man back in 1987. I didn’t know who the man was. Statements like that can be ambiguous. But I remember Lyle Lovett, his tall hair, the height of a new capitalism. My hair was as long as his was tall as he sang about things he wished he had and what he’d do with them. It sounded as strange as his tall hair looked by 1988. But now, many years later, and understanding who the man is, now that my hair is long gone, I yearned or the simplicity of a riding pony, perhaps on a boat, my boat, which would have to be a really small boat because I am not that kind of man, making my pony even smaller. I bought that pony, because that was what I could afford. I looked up Lyle and messaged him. I figured he might have a boat by now. He texted back, plainly, kiss my ass. I knew what he meant. I knew it was a kinship, of not sticking it to this man.

Thad DeVassie

Thad DeVassie is a writer and artist/painter from Ohio. You can see where he’s been and what he’s up to next at www.thaddevassie.com 

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 6

2 Poems

By Damon Hubbs

Brink


Gossiping with Alyson and Alys. 
Fika, visiting cake. 
Nobody is Swedish although Nadia is the type of blonde 
you’d kill a prime minister for. 
I read the papers and gamble on papal elections. 
To think of all the beauty and bloodshed, 
fuck it. I’m lying to myself and others. 
Artifice in loud terms. 

Nadia gives me a jagged hump
and I’m on the oozy brink 
when she starts talking about Irish writers 
and some esthetician 
in Palm Springs 
nicknamed Jack the Ripper. 
It’s strange how people cling together. 
Darling, don’t shoot until the subject hits you.

I’m barely awake when you call me Finnegan
stately, plump (picnic, lightning). 
I mock the myths I help create
make faces in the surveillance camera. 
Where we’re headed, where we are 
halfway down the coast I lost the comic timing,
pick up the phone like a cold kiss— 
yes, Nadia, the fire escape is burning

and I’m watching the deaf republic 
under a wild pack of stars. 
I’m thinking about the poet 
who dropped an electric toothbrush into her cunt
and fried my cock.  
Love after love after love 
I’m pissing like the Colosseum in full view
listening to the pretty tyranny of the wind.

Patagonia Picnic Table Effect

Somewhere between night and the morning after
queer shades of future dusk 
Berluti knot, orange wine, lips like an extra maraschino

we talk about art and Genet and the birdshit on the bench. 
“You should write a poem about birds,” 
she says, not knowing I’d sworn off bird poetry 

preferring to write poems about petite mort and 21st century malaise
clubby androgynous youth, gobs of spit, vape girls, egirls
empty theaters and red latrines, Aslan’s pin-ups, lui magazine

desire that isn’t explained, desire with a mouth like a dirty rest stop, 
Vogue Italia, dressing for the rapture, what it means to be exiled, 
what it means to be stripped of happiness, what it means to be stripped 

like a saint, murder holes, arrow loops, Divine’s funeral, my complete 
fear of list poems, biographies, throat cancer, my complete fear of Kathy 
Acker, Trazodone, nightstands, spotlights, Piss Flowers, the exquisiteness 

of tiramisu, the slippage between desire and disgust, the foil to her 
flamboyance, Stabat Mater, my complete fear of Connecticut, the 
insurance man, the cricket-impresario, tennis elbow, preferring to 

write poems about coupling, decoupling, parallelism, lines of influence 
and what it means to find a rare species, and another, and another —
Yellow Grosbeak, Thick-billed Kingbird, a nesting pair of Rose-throated 
Becards.

Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He’s the author of three chapbooks and a full-length collection, Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Recent publications include Apocalypse Confidential, The Crank, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Spectra, the engine(idling, Horror Sleaze Trash, & others. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net. 

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 6

the cure

By dizzy turek

Are you, he coughs, are you, he coughs, are you coming, he coughs & then he coughs again, excuse me–are you coming, he coughs 3 times, oy ya yoy, he coughs a little, excuse me, clears throat, are you, clears throat again, what is up with me, he coughs, 

am I gonna see you for Christmas this year?

dizzy turek writes in Chicago but is originally from Ohio. find all writing on: instagram: dizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzyy & twitter: @dddddizzzzyzzz . he also does theater.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

You only Smile when I’m Down 

By Tim Frank

My revenge will be to live well.
I’ll sink my teeth into slabs 
Of steak,
Let the garlic butter ooze
From my lips
As Weiss beer bursts 
Upon my eager tongue.
I’ll dream of ice-cold water
Pooling around my feet
And watch the evening game 
While chaining cigarettes—
Blowing rings of smoke 
At the waning moon,
Creating new plateaus
Of beauty 
From my idle thoughts.
And yet, what good does living well 
Really do?
We cruise 
Through worlds aligned 
But are judged by different gods—
Indifferent gods,
Not worthy of our prayers.
You’re a phantom figure 
Beyond my vengeful reach.
So do your worst, my simple friend—
Set fire to your block 
Make your children cry

Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Metaworker and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. His debut chapbook is, An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) and his second chapbook of poetry is, Delusions To Live By (Alien Buddha Press, ’25)

Twitter: @TimFrankquill

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

You’re Okay Champ

By Michael Pershan

Michael Pershan is a math teacher and writer living in New York City. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in BULL, hex, Outlook Springs, and The American Bystander. 

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

The world is disappearing into words & I am afraid.

Dimensions/Medium:
Approximately 18×24 cm
Colored Pencil

Sofija Popovska just doesn’t know anymore.
IG: _aughtmilk

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

Japanese Steak Knives, The Breville, A Distressed Velvet Ottoman

By Frank Carellini

they undressed methodologically.  unprovocative.  like they were about to examine each other for lumps.  folding his clothes neatly into rectangles.  those worn brown chinos.  the chambray button down shirt with underarms that smelled with years of his bitter sweat.  sweat that at one time, attracted her.  she used to liken it to “my salty Mediterranean man that smells like the rind of a lime.” where that man went, neither of them knew.  the fauvist views of succulent fruits clinging to branches above a sparkling sea are a lifetime removed.  she, folding her jumper into a square that ballooned at the edges.  never had a penchant for perfection.  their bodies were cold and clammy as they came into mutual embrace.  they tried to make love. tried pressing the atoms of their bodies into some form of miracle.  paused at each others lips, not moving, but waiting for some sort of momentum to build.  nothing. barely air passed between them.  they tried in the kitchen.  in the bathroom.  on the couch.  looking around at the set of japanese steak knives, the Breville, a distressed velvet ottoman.  as if to put the blame on them for lack of ambiance.  

checking into The Schofield.  Corner suite (always wondered what it looked like).  Lots of mirrored surfaces.  their bodies moved like lava in a lavalamp from one distorting surface to another.  two beds.  weird, he forgot to request one king.  lots of vague objects.  a miniature Calder mimic.  she put pressure on one pendant.  let it ricochet.  watched it ease back into balance.  then into stillness.  the lack of its optionality into a chaotic form was upsetting.  couldn’t be broken.  he went into the mini-fridge.  two bottles of tonic.  little bottle of bombay.  grabbed glasses from the desk.  they had a nice weight.  a weight that felt official.  called for ice.  and a lime.  two thank yous and a $10 tip later, he mixed them a drink.  thumb stung from the lime juice.  she was sitting on the edge of her bed.  patting her skirt.  she wore that perfume.  he sat at the desk chair.  swiveled around to cheers her. 

“i used to wear a beret.” 

“and smoke cigarettes.” 

“i once knew Yves Klein.  he asked me to be one of his brushes.”

this went on.  the days in montmartre.  maybe it was true.  he was no Yves Klein.  he could see it.  her body draped in that ultramarine.  being spread across a canvas.  the gushing figures materializing on canvas. 

this aroused, then irked him.  didn’t dr. muchlenbach teach her not to bring french painters to romantic getaways. 

he downed his drink.  she hadn’t touched hers.  the ice had melted and it looked diluted.  he went and sat on the bed opposite hers.  turned the tv on.  Joe Rogan’s Fear Factor, Couples Editions.  the programming at this place was meant to keep things spicy.  she sighed and got up off the bed, placing the drink down on the desk.  walked by him without any acknowledgement.  he heard the bath turn on.  ran for a while.  this episode, contestants had to stand on top of a moving vehicle and grab flags as they sped by a set of markers.  she, in a bathing suit (why were they always in bathing suits) and he, a muscle shirt, cutoff jean shorts.  after they win first place, they’d go back to their trailer and have mind-blowing sex.  maybe the exercise the entire kama sutra.  this irked, then aroused him.  annoyed at the thought of an erection through jean shorts.  felt like an insult.  the faucets turned off with that creak that the old guard turnstile knobs made.  he could hear her swishing around.  sitting up.  falling into the water.  now she was rolling onto her stomach and back.  now she was— 

the second task was a water one.  one of the team would be submerged underwater.  the other would have to crawl through a tunnel of roaches to find a key.  the key opened the tank and let the water out.  jean shorts muscled through the tunnel.  even ate a roach for style points.  bathing suit floated glamorously in the tank.  did a twirl to the right, then to the left, then winked at joe.  then to the camera.  

drive home was eventless.  across the bridge.  down the parkway.  Nicholas greeted them at the door.  Said something about the dogs behaving well.  they sat on the couch.  he turned on the tv.  maria appeared from the linen closet with a “miss, the blue does not come out of your underwear.”  she blushed.  

“I used to wear berets.”  she uttered. “and smoke cigarettes.”  she was speaking to a void.  he went to the refrigerator.  took two bottles of tonic.  he put ice into his.  lime into hers. 

Frank Carellini was born in Connecticut in 1993.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

The Facts

By Kyle Kouri

Yves is dating Alfonse who’s in love with Paulo who’s fucking Stefan who’s focused on his career but married to Sydney who knows he’s gay but feels safe because they’re best friends, which makes Cristof jealous because he’s pining for both of them; and Cristof’s brother Rosco is dating Nifath, mysterious Nifath, and they’ve been in an open relationship since July when Nifath got distant and Rosco suggested they experiment; but Nifath’s been fucking Conroy since May of last year and Conroy hasn’t been tested for decades (no self-reflection); he’s been drinking with Jason who can’t get his dick hard but has been thinking it’s because he has feelings for Seana, the trans girl, who dated Sarah all throughout undergrad; and Sarah, stubborn Sarah, feels cheated because Seana’s not Sean anymore, in fact she’s never been, just appeared that way, and Sarah’s straight and sure of it, but did have a few experiences with Massie, the Bohemian, who swears relationships are soul-suckers, monogamy equals weakness; though in high school Massie dated Scottie, who is a cheater with a big ol’ penis, and has never once been loyal, but is charming, and still supported by his mother, who’s having an affair with Aldo, her personal trainer who does this frequently; and Aldo’s brother Santo is in prison and having a hard time while doing hard time because his girlfriend Mary is pregnant and works at the ShopRite which Peter has managed for sixteen years; and Peter, peculiar Peter, has had physical contact with another human only once during his entire adult life, instead he looks at little kids on the dark web; and sometimes, around lunchtime, he’ll make a detour carrying his canned tuna and pass by the elementary school’s playground where Fanny, Ms. Fanny Appleton, is the teacher and always gazes warily around the perimeter, because she’s worried about just this kind of thing; she purses her lips, eyes vigilant, and waves at Peter but doesn’t suspect him, because at the ShopRite he’s always been a nice man, a little sweaty, true, but even makes Ms. Appleton’s nephew laugh; this kid’s name is Stephen, and when Fanny’s babysitting, they stop by the store for ice cream sandwiches, but she has never noticed Peter touch him inappropriately, which, on one occasion, Peter has; anyway Ms. Appleton is single, has not had a boyfriend since college, where she was manipulated by Michael into doing things that didn’t feel right; and then one night Michael snuck into her dorm room, wasted, and raped her; now Fanny trusts no one and lives a quiet life but has a crush on Lucien Carr (no relation to the murderer), who teaches English and seems in Fanny’s opinion sweet but sad too, and everyday she swears she’s going to ask him out for coffee, but just hasn’t committed yet; and Lucien doesn’t realize she’s even interested, because the truth is he has a drug problem, and every day after his class he goes home alone, draws the blinds, snorts cocaine and drinks alcohol until he’s completely deranged, then sleeps for two hours, wakes up the next day, and repeats the same thing; sometimes he picks up his phone to call Courtney, then changes his mind, because Courtney was his wife and his best friend but then got sober, they both went through the Program, and she changed, he couldn’t beat it, so she left him, and now he’s back on a bender; and Courtney, somber Courtney, sweet, sad Courtney goes to meetings every evening and spends her days working at T-Mobile, just trying to get by; on occasion she flirts with Teshawn, her co-worker, he makes her laugh, they take break at Chipotle; Teshawn’s twenty-one and goes to the community college with Rasheeda, who he’s in love with, and she likes him, but he’s so nice, she finds that off-putting; plus she likes to go out on the weekends, in the city, where she meets Sky Pepper; and Sky Pepper, so Sky Pepper, is a model and comes from money and once her and Rasheeda went home with Sven Odenfield, the photographer, and they had a threesome, which was fun but a little intense for Rasheeda, though Sky doesn’t remember it; Sven remembers it, in fact he catalogued each moment of the evening in his Moleskine, because that’s his thing, along with photography, he’s in love with pleasure, has fucked half the city, and meticulously records each conquest; but Sven, complex Odenfield, still Facebook stalks Nadia, his step-sister, who lives in Berlin and will not return his phone calls, plus things were never the same after what happened that one night, when they shared a hotel room next to their parents and both got drunk off the liquor in the mini-bar; and their parents are swingers, they go to the private parties that Thor hosts; and Thor is from the midwest but got outta there the day he turned eighteen, and lives glamorously, hosting orgies, with celebrities, but has a soft spot for his sister Irene, who moved to New York, but couldn’t make it and so moved back home and married Alan, her high school sweetheart, who’s perfectly content in Wisconsin, he’s an engineer, would never leave there, couldn’t imagine life outside of Waukesha; and now Irene’s pregnant, she’s only twenty-five, and Alan is overjoyed (also in debt) and Irene is happy, she has always wanted to be a mother, but she wanted a career too, that’s why she moved to New York, but now it seems that ship has sailed; so once a week Irene FaceTimes her best friend Meredith, who moved to LA, and isn’t sure exactly if she’s the only one but is pretty sure she’s now dating Smash Lowe, yes, that one, the movie star, and is having so much fun and, “No, no, Irene, I do not have a coke problem, I don’t do it during the week, okay? Anyway I’m young! And Oh Irene, oh my god, you’re so freakin’ preggers!!!” and Meredith is having a great time, really living life, posts often on Instagram, but she’s secretly jealous, because throughout childhood she was in love with Alan too; her, Irene and him were inseparable, sometimes they all slept in the same bed, and Meredith once even, just once, after they’d been drinking, tried to kiss Alan but he was honest, he was loyal, he said, “Gee, Mer…I….I’m with Irene!” and was truly baffled, simple Alan, he was embarrassed, felt his honor compromised, but Meredith sobered up, she said, “Of course, no, you’re right, I’m sorry, can we just forg”—and Alan interrupted her, stood up very straight and said, “Enough,” then went into another room of the party and spoke to Johnny who developed his alcoholism at a young age and now is dead after taking too many Lorazepam on a March night, after a long bout of drinking, a few years ago; and at Johnny’s funeral his mother Aubrey cried, and his father Alec held her, stoic, but his mouth twitched and he thought that later that night, he’d sit by the fire with Skaal, his brother, who just flew in from Norway; and Skaal used to be easygoing, believed in the essential good of things, was always smiling, didn’t watch indie movies, liked buddy comedies, but that was before the Norway massacre, which killed 77 people, one of which was Anita’s little brother (that’s Skaal’s girlfriend); I shall not say her brother’s name, respect for the family, understand, but after the murder Anita became focused, she became political; Skaal, in contrast, became quieter, more sensitive, had less conviction, the world made less sense to him, and so when Alec called about his son’s death, Skaal’s nephew, Skaal blinked twice, held the phone and felt utter numbness; that trance persisted the entire flight to Chicago and still at the airport; and walking through the long terminal, dazed, startled by ascending airplanes, Skaal accidently bumped right into Olivia; and Olivia, who was about to board her own flight, took this as a sign; she turned around, left the airport, and caught a taxi back into the city, and ran to Henry, he was just stepping out of his apartment, she embraced him, and Henry was shocked, he thought he would never see her again, and he held her, but was anxious, frankly part of him had been excited for his new life, and thus was not expecting this return; and one night a month later, Henry got a little drunk and struck up a conversation with a woman at the bar near his office, she was wearing a black slip, her name was Terry; and Terry knew his type, she did this often, she got him wasted and then she fucked him, then kicked him out of her apartment and smoked cigarettes, thinking men are idiots, they are malleable, they are so easy; and Terry was the hostess at a very upscale restaurant on the Northside; and one night the famous musician and notorious womanizer Augie Rainwell came to the restaurant and ignored Terry, he did not seem interested, she was astonished; the fact was, however, that for Augie it was nothing personal, he was secretly dealing with an eruption of genital herpes, and that was affecting his confidence, he looked around the restaurant warily, helplessly, thinking everybody knew his deformity, everybody was doubting his masculinity, his sexual viability; he had no idea who had given him herpes, there were about seven women and two men that it could have been; and what was worse, the worst part of it, was that Augie was married to Jaclyn, and he had slept with her twice, without protection, since fucking strangers, without protection, and so now it was possible, perhaps likely (who knows how it really works), that Jaclyn also had genital herpes and would, once and for all, know that Augie was cheating on her; and Jaclyn, fed-up Jaclyn, would finally move out and go stay with her mother; and her mother, Avi, in the living room, would say, “I knew that boy was no good for you,” and Jaclyn would say, “Oh mother, please!” and turn away, look at their wall of photographs, where her grandmother Maya is featured prominently; and Maya was a Holocaust survivor whose husband Ira didn’t make it, but whose best friend David made it; and after the Holocaust, David wrote a book about the horror, but it was never published, and so he became a businessman, was quite successful, he married and lived a long life, ending up in a lovely home where he had a nice relationship with the nurse Genevieve, who is a redhead; and Genevieve loves to fuck, but has this feeling, this deep-rooted conviction, that abstinence is the only true path to happiness, but if that is the case she prefers unhappiness, and so has many lovers, and many secrets; and each one of these lovers say the same thing: “Genevieve was, by far, the best I ever had, but honestly, to this day, I know nothing about her;” and one of these lovers was Elliot, and Elliot has had a strange life; not only did both his parents die on 9/11 (one of those freak things, they were just visiting), he also happened to be in one square mile of two mass shootings in real life (one Isis-related, the other a white kid, with a micro-penis and a manifesto); but Elliot is committed to mathematics, he refuses to become superstitious, and right now is in grad school, getting his PHD; and Elliot, ponderous Elliot, the orphan prodigy, has never been in a relationship that lasted more than six months, they’re not practical, plus he cherishes his alone time, takes long walks, and thinks about probability, possibility, the infinite number of things that could happen to you, the infinite ways in which they could happen too, and the ways that lives intersect and influence each other, or maybe never cross paths at all, he thinks about all of this; and one day Elliot passed a family on one of his long walks; it was a mother, father, and their young boy; and that little boy was me, many years ago, my family lived around the corner, in that neighborhood, this was our park, it was small, now I see that, but back then it was the world to me; I held my mother’s hand and looked up at my dad’s body, obscured by sunlight, a vague shape, this awesome bulkiness, I tried to grab his leg, but he was too far ahead, didn’t even notice I wanted him; not at all; my father was focused on a sculpture, in the garden; this sculpture was a rabbit with big and ugly, rotting buck teeth, it wore a top hat and a sports coat, it held a watch in one paw and between two fingers on its other hand it balanced a scale, but unevenly; this rabbit smirked, taunting, mischievous, he knew everything, she was not impressed with it; they were sexless, gushing with sex though; I stared at my father and squeezed my mother, tighter, tighter, but then some smell, a floral fragrance, with the slightest rot in it, made me look away; I saw a man with long hair, very thin, very feminine, his shirt was see-through, rib showing, he was almost glowing; getting closer to us; he was not my parents, this excited me, my eyes opened, I tore from the woman who gave birth to me and ran, past the man who fucked her, I ran, and almost tumbled, but stayed on my feet, I ran forward and reached for 


Kyle Kouri is an award winning actor, writer, filmmaker, and producer. He received his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where he served as the online arts editor for the Columbia Journal. He is the co-founder of Slashtag Cinema, a film production company. Slashtag’s first film, the multi-award winning KEEP COMING BACK, which Kouri directed, co-wrote, and stars in, premiered at Screamfest in October 2024. His writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, the Columbia Journal, Ghostwatch Zine, The Los Angeles Press, and Maudlin House. His first book, THE PROBLEM DRINKER, is forthcoming from CLASH Books in 2026. He lives in and around LA with his four rescue dogs and his girlfriend, the writer CJ Leede.

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

ALL THE FELLAS WANNA COME, SHOW OFF WITH THEIR KITTIES

By Alex Rost

We weren’t getting along too well just then, so we went bowling.

       We walked in at the far end of the alley.

      “I love how it smells in here,” I said.

       You wrinkled your nose. “It smells like dirty socks and stale beer.”

“I know, right?”

It was a long way to where we had to pay and rent shoes – past rows of alleys, past bunches of people milling about, talking or not talking or whatever.

“No one is bowling,” I said.

“Yeah, what’s up with that?”

“Why isn’t anyone bowling?” I asked the employee after we covered the ten fucking miles to the register.

“League play,” he said.  “Hasn’t started yet.”

“Oh,” I said.  “That makes sense.”

Now I could feel it – anticipation.  That was what really smelled.

The employee must have said something, because he was staring right at me.

“What?”

“It’s gonna be like twenty minutes.  We only have the last ten lanes for open bowling tonight.”

“Only ten lanes?”

“Leagues,” he said, and pointed off behind me.

“Okay.”

“Or thirty.”

“Or thirty what?”

“Or thirty minutes.  Twenty to thirty minutes.”

I turned to you.  You shrugged and nodded at the same time.

“Okay,” I said to the employee.  “Let’s do it.”

“How many games do you want to play?”

“Three.  At least three, I think.”

I turned to you again.  You shrugged and nodded at the same time.

“Three games,” I said to the employee, with confidence.

He typed something into the computer on top of the register.

I noticed an index-sized laminated card propped on the counter.  It said, ‘Buy three games, get a $5 arcade play card.’  It said, ‘STATE OF THE ART ARCADE!!!!!’ with all those exclamation points.

“Hold up.” I flipped the card around and showed it to the employee.  “What’s this all about?”

“You get a free play card with a purchase of three games,” he said.

“Both of us?”

“Yes, both of you.”

“Were you going to say anything? Like if I didn’t notice this, would you have given us the arcade cards?”

The employee raised his eyebrows.

“Is it really state of the art?”

He pursed his lips, glanced at the line behind us.

“I mean, is it worth it?”

“Are you going to buy three games?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then I’d say it’s worth it.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Done deal.”

I turned to you, grinning, and said, “State of the art, baby.”

You shrugged and nodded at the same time.

“What size shoe?” the employee asked us.

You told him your size and I said, “Sometimes a twelve, but sometimes a thirteen.”

He slapped a size twelve and a half onto the counter.

“Whoa, man.  Twelve and a half?  Thank you.”

We paid and headed to the bar.  I held my shoes up, showing you the 12 ½ printed on the heel.

“I can’t believe they had a twelve and a half,” I said.

“I think it’s pretty standard.”

You didn’t understand.

“I feel like I should tip him.”  I looked back at the employee.  He was helping someone else now, looking sleepy and annoyed.

“He was kind of a dick.”

There was one bartender, busy filling a tall tube with a spout at the end full of beer.

“Check it out,” I said. “A hundred twenty ounces.  That’s like a full twelve pack.”

“That’s ten beers,” you said.

“Sure is.  Should we get one?”

“No way, that’s fucking gross.”

“Really? Why?”

“How do you think they clean those?  Rinse them out with a hose?  No way they’re sanitized.”

Maybe they had a sort of chimney sweep tool they jammed in the tube to scrub it, but I doubted it.

“You’re right,” I said.

“Plus, it’ll get all warm and flat before we drink it all.”

“You’re right,” I said again.  “Fuck.”

We ordered beers – boring ass regular size beers – and took them to the arcade.

It’d been a while since I’d been in an arcade, and this one being billed as state of the art had me all excited.

“What the fuck?” I said when I saw it.  I said it louder than I meant to.

“That guy said fuck,” said a little kid, walking past.

“I heard him,” said his little kid buddy.

The arcade had a bunch of claw machines in the middle, like an island, and your standard ticket winning games like basketball toss and whac-a-mole along the walls.  The featured attractions were two ten-foot screens – one showing a giant version of Pacman, the other Asteroid.

We stood under the ten-foot Asteroid screen.

“State of the art?” I said.  “You can’t take a forty-year-old game, put it on a big ass screen, and call it state of the art.”

“So you don’t want to play it?”

“God no.”

We picked the basketball toss.  You were a hotshot ball player in high school, supposedly.  You were also super competitive.

A couple kids came over holding basketballs from the game.

“You can pull them out from underneath,” one said.  “You don’t have to pay.”

“Yeah,” you said, “but then it doesn’t keep score, right?”

The kid stared off, passed his basketball from hand to hand.

“Which machine did you take that ball from?” you asked him.

He pointed at the one you stood in front of.

You held out your hand, made a beckoning motion for the ball.  The kid handed it over.  He looked defeated. I knew that look. It said, ‘I tried to help someone and got fucked over.’

“Good idea though, man,” I said.  I brought up my fist for a bump.  There was a second where he just looked at my fist. Like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to touch it.  Another second passed – enough time to wonder if the little shit was really gonna me hanging.

But he didn’t, thank God.  He balled up his fist and gave me a hesitant little bump.

Fuck yeah, brother.

At first I threw up bricks, one after another.  I could see you from the corner of my eye, in the zone, knocking down baskets.

Then I made one.

Swish.

And another.

Swish.

I caught a rhythm, didn’t look down to pick up fresh balls, just locked in on the front of the rim and let my hands work their automatic magic.

Swish.  Swish.  Swish.

“Three, two, one,” the kid behind us announced.

The buzzer buzzed.

I looked at my score, at yours.  I won, by one basket.  You looked pissed.

“Again,” you said.

We inserted our prepaid arcade cards and the balls released.

Swish, my net went.  Swish.  Swish.  Swish.

“Three, two, one,” the kid announced.

The buzzer buzzed.

I won, again.  By one point, again.  You looked pissed, again.

“One more,” you said.

I pointed at the card slot.  “It says two fifty a game.  We’re out of money.

“I’m getting more.”

Most of the balls were still free of the game’s lock, and I motioned to the kid, told him the balls were all his.

“Thanks,” he said, and started to toss them at the basket.

The balls went – Swish.  Swish.  Swish.

“Kid’s good,” I said and followed you to the kiosk, but right when you were about to slide your credit card, they announced our name.

Our lane was open.

It was time for the main event – bowling.

But I don’t want to talk about bowling.

What I want to talk about is the people dressed as animals in the next lane.  Furries, they’re called.

We were assigned to the first of the regular walk-in lanes, and both teams in the league game next to us were fully geared up furries – dogs, a bear, a cute little wolf in a tutu, and all sorts of animals in the greater cat family.  

Most of them seemed peaceful, but there was a faction wearing leather jackets and heavy chains and studded collars.  One of the rough bunch was dressed as a fox with a spiky mohawk, completely immersed in his sly routine.  I watched him sneak behind the bear furry, do the old tap-one-shoulder-but-stand-on-the-other-side.  The bear’s head blocked his peripheral vision and he kept falling for it.

“I can’t keep my eyes off them,” I said while lacing up my sweet size twelve and a half shoes.

“They want you to watch,” you said.

The fox was onto other mischief, like stealing people’s beer and running a few steps away and pretending to drink them.  All sly like.

“This guy is great,” I said.

And we bowled.

Everything was going pretty well, but a tiger from the furry crew kept crossing over onto our side.  It wasn’t intentional or anything, but there were a few times where we were winding up to roll the ball and the tiger’s ass backed damn near into us and we’d have to give each other lame, embarrassed-to-be-dominated looks.

“Next time he does it, I’m gonna grab his tail,” you said.

“No.  No way.  You never grab an animal’s tail.”

“Watch me.”

I didn’t doubt you.  I never doubted you.

Sure enough, the next time the tiger’s ass came pushing its way into our lane, you reached out and gave his tail a proper tug.

The tiger turned and said, “Hey! Did you just pull my tail?  That’s not cool.”

“Then quit wagging it all over our lane,” you said.

“You never pull an animal’s tail,” said the tiger.

The cute little wolf furry came up beside the tiger and bent over in front of you, lifted her tutu and exposed her tail, swayed back and forth seductively to make it wag.

You giggled and gave the tail a tug.

The wolf put her hand over her mouth all bashful and skipped away giggling.  You came and sat next to me, a grin across your face.  

We watched a bulldog furry follow around the cute wolf and act theatrically jealous until the wolf finally relented and bent over and lifted her tutu. The bulldog gave her tail a tug.

The wolf straightened and hugged the bulldog, her head against his chest.  She was tiny and looked safe in his arms.  They stood together like that, slightly swaying to the melody of clattering pins.

“I like bowling,” you said, and interlaced your fingers in mine.

I lifted your hand and kissed the back of it.

“Me too.”

We were getting along really well just then.

Alex Rost runs a commercial printing press outside of Buffalo, NY

Categories
Across The Wire Vol. 5

Handsome Mallard

Adam Soldofsky is the author of the poetry collection Memory Foam, recipient of an American Book Award and Telepaphone, a novella. His latest collection, Three Short Novellas, will be available this Summer.