Uber Crone - Flash Fiction Story By Marie C. Lecrivain

 

Uber Crone

Flash Fiction Story

By Marie C. Lecrivain

When my Uber driver picks me up, I see she’s holding a nail buffer in her right hand. She’s both blond and gray, dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, Starbucks latte in the cup holder and a half eaten protein bar on the dash. She smiles, greets me, asks about the weather, and then mentions her brother is coming from Riverside today for a beach bike ride. I nod in assent, since she needs a captive audience. Her voice is soft, in contrast to her Madonna muscled arms. At each red light, she buffs the nails on her left hand, and laments how expensive manicures are. She keeps up a litany of one way conversation, through her confusion of being simultaneously available for Lyft and Uber rides, school runs for her grandkids, and how she enjoys all kinds of curries, including ones from China  and Japan. I watch her blond hairs shed while the gray ones remain. She’s traveling, slowly and steadily, through time and space, and it’s fascinating to watch and listen to her. This is what old women do: let go, and continue to let go, until there’s nothing left but a silver spark left to wink out of existence. When I arrive at my destination, I wish her a good day and a pleasant bike ride. Her brow wrinkles, and she checks the time, mutters she’s running late to meet her brother, and drives away.

Marie C Lecrivain is a poet, co-publisher of Sybaritic Press, and an ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. Her work has appeared in California Quarterly, Gargoyle, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene's Fountain, and other journals. She's authored several books of poetry and fiction, including Ashes to Stardust: A David Bowie Tribute Anthology (c 2023 Sybaritic Press).

Letters from Iowa - Eight Poems by Rustin Larson

 

Letters from Iowa - Eight Poems by Rustin Larson

Bananas

 

My cat Finnegan is sleeping with his belly up

to the sunshine. I'm playing a CD of Beethoven

Piano pieces. I think I am most like a bunch of bananas,

too green at first, and then too soft to be of any use

to anyone. My brother loved driving through thunderstorms.

He has been dead four years now. I like thunderstorms

if someone else is driving. There are four bananas left.

The cat is still asleep. I hear thunder, but it's sunny

and the sky is blue. I think maybe my life is a segment

of a film by Kurosawa. Beethoven crashes like a storm.

The doors of Vienna will not close.

Coffee

 

Coffee used to be magic. Seriously, it was like a happy

brain transplant for at least two hours. Now? I dunno.

Boom, boom, goes the thunderstorm, glancing us,

scraping the edge of town, grumble of the gods.

The only thing coffee makes me want to do now is sleep.

I have a couple bags of Puerto Rican espresso

in the cupboard. I spent part of the morning trying to remember

the word “autism.” It was a black hole around which

these words circled: atrophy, atmosphere, audible, acronym,

astonishment, adherence, acclaim, attribution, attempt,

autonomy, and so on. Now the coffee makes my legs want to dance.

Parade

 

It was the day of the big campus parade.

The frat members had finished riding around

on a large chicken wire and papier mache float

built around the chassis of a 1939 Ford pickup truck.

The float resembled an antique train engine,

and one costumed frat brother marched in the street

in front of it swinging an oversized sledgehammer

in one hand, waving with his other hand,

and occasionally dipping into a Jonnie Appleseed

bag sashed across his chest and throwing

Starlite mints out to the children jumping

at the edges of the parade route. That frat brother

was Joe Palooka. The children screamed,

Joe swung his sledgehammer, flung wrapped candy.

KWKY

 

The cabinets are brown and hang from the ceiling

above the electric range built into a brown cabinet

island. A radio, spray painted white, pulls in the local

Country and Western station, KWKY. The announcer

sounds like he is wearing cowboy boots. It is May

and the kittens play in the yard near the junipers.

The sky thunders, but it is clear blue. My mother drinks

a glass of water and cries a little at the sink.

I have not been born. I haven't even been conceived.

There is only sunlight. There is no name to it with the sound

of aircraft landing nearby, big planes, propeller driven,

that have been to Fresno and back again. Why?

Who are these Fresno people and why do they come here?

The sunlight does not know. The sunlight sends out

the warbling of a robin. Cars drive back and forth,

honking, driving to heaven.

Fishbowl

 

It's Thursday, about a quarter ‘til two. I am covered

with kitty hair. But that's neither here nor there.

I'll make noodles for lunch. I want to thank me a heck

of a bunch. I'm awake and I'm asleep. Life is a fishbowl,

but the water is deep. What I spend I can also keep.

The name of water is sunlight steep. I'd tell you more,

but I'm a creep. I am eating reconstituted bok choy

in lo mein with a sprinkle of dry roasted peanuts.

It's like having lunch on Moon Base Two with a robot

Yoko Ono who is wearing a clear plastic raincoat

and screaming like hundreds of small rain forest animals

being consumed by out-of-control wildfires that burn for months.

Randallooney

 

My guardian angel is watching over me and frowning.

I write about death and corpses who woke up and then set themselves on fire. Randallooney just sighs and shakes his head. He is personal friends with Samuel Clemens. They laugh and laugh and laugh together. It's the celestial autobiography of Mark Twain. I want to read it, but it is not available here.

I am listening to Chopin piano waltzes in random order. Finnegan, my tuxedo cat, is sleeping, happy to have me nearby. I am sitting in Mrs. Abercrombie's favorite chair, a lime-gold high back lounger from the 1970s. Chopin wanders out into a meadow of blue and yellow flowers. The notes have a narrative I can follow and believe is true although I was never invited to read at the President's inauguration.

Finnegan jumps from his little soft pillow bed and stretches out on the hard floor. He does this often as he sleeps. Back and forth. Back and forth. I am full from the noodles and bok choy, a little sleepy. I stare at my tall glass of ice tea. I can see the leaves moving outside the window, but I can't hear the wind blowing. The music has stopped. Chopin goes back to rest in his grave for a while.

Swing

 

I sip my tea. I should take a walk, but you know how it is. The music is a gorilla pretending to sing like a cat. There is chicory and Queen Anne's lace growing next to each other all over, lavender and white. It's a poem to the sky performed by flowers. I should take a walk. 

I mailed off two books and Sherry at the post office said she saw two of my daughters one of whom said I never swung her enough at the park when she was a kid. So I call her up for lunch and we meet at the park for sandwiches, and after, even though she is 31, I push her on the swing set and she squeals, “Wheeeeee!” People gather around to watch us. Some older moms who knew us back in the day wipe tears from their eyes. It is the day of the Art Walk, and she, my daughter, will be selling prints at her studio. The radio plays Elgar. The mowers trim our grasses. I push my 31 year old daughter one more time on the swing set, just in case.

Careful Not to Step in the Wolf

 

I'll go park my car at the reservoir

and write three lines on the 11^th

of each month for one year.

I got July, and now it is August.

Cicadas sing as the sun goes down.

We need a carousel, with horses,

lions, rabbits, and camels all carved

with ferocious expressions and painted

vibrantly and lacquered slick.

I want the calliope to play "In-A-Gadda-

Da-Vida" and then “Born to be Wild.”

Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Poetry East, and The American Entomologist Poet’s Guide to the Orders of Insects. He is the author of The Wine-Dark House (Blue Light Press, 2009), Crazy Star (selected for the Loess Hills Book’s Poetry Series in 2005), Bum Cantos, Winter Jazz, & The Collected Discography of Morning, winner of the 2013 Blue Light Book Award (Blue Light Press, San Francisco), and The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press, 2015).

 

 

 

Five Poems by Anya Yasenovets

 

Everything You Are

If you were a cockroach in my kitchen, I would never step on you –

I would let you live –

And leave breadcrumbs on the floor,

And never shut my bedroom door,

Just in case you need a hug when you feel lonely;

 

But you are not a cockroach, not a mole and not a frog;

You are the haze, the mist, the fog,

The snowy mountain –

I am the skier.

 

You are the salty water that would never let me drown;

You are the sharks, the seagulls and the waves,

You are the current,

Carrying my raft to the happy shore of Bulgaria.

You are somebody’s grave.

 

You are the raindrops on my face,

You are my brother’s freckles

I hear your voice from every flower, every squiggling rat and every cockroach’

You are the ground I collapse on;

You are the wind pushing me forward.

 

Ps: This poem is written for my lovely best friend Arina. She is the most beautiful girl I know and I love her with my whole heart.

Sun Romance

When I slept on the floor,

When the water was brown,

When I couldn’t afford

Chunky tears falling down,

 

I would show off my cuts,

And my scars, and my bruises,

Force myself to make art:

Giving up was for losers.

 

I would yell at the Sun,

Spilling beers on the ground

The Sun screamed at me some.

We both screamed “I love you”

 

I was screaming “I love you”,

And the sun loved me back.

That’s how I got these bruises all over my neck

Seaside

Peace is where I don’t crave,

Where shattered glass has no sharp angles,

Where the southern wind braids my curly hair,

Where the salty waves lick my ankles.

 

Peace consumes me and lifts up high,

I breathe out new constellations –

Body boarders become undefined,

So we merge with the ocean’s patience

My Favorite Compliment

“We look so alike!”

You exclaimed, and you smiled,

Exposing your gums. I did too.

 

“The kids in my school are sometimes very mean,

But I know I am pretty

like you”

Adults

I used to hide in my room,

Or pretend to fall asleep,

While mommy stumbled, and mommy mumbled –

I would bite my cheeks.

They would sometimes bleed.

 

Mommy rarely said anything rude;

It’s the way mommy made me feel,

Like a sweaty handshake with a poisonous snake,

Like forgetting my favorite book on the train,

Like a fire drill

            (either fake or real)

 

I remember chopping the salads,

Mommy’s friends bringing gifts for New Year.

I would put my pillow over my head, try to hide in my bed,

But they laughed and they yelled,

Like the kids in daycare. I was scared.

 

I asked people why she was like that.

Now I do understand

Glass of milk in her hand,

My face sweaty and red,

Mommy’s pounding head in the morning,

the dread.

I do now understand.

Anya Yasenovets is a young New York-based writer, poet and artist. She draws inspiration from her chaotic and crazy life. Her work explores the complexity of being human: love and pain, highs and lows, sobriety and addiction. Anya’s writing is not perfect, but it’s raw, honest and vulnerable. Also Anya really enjoys eating chocolate and she is a great runner!

Inst: @vodka444breakfast

  

One Poem by Merritt Waldon

 

Spirit Wound

Soft exterior of Star

Mad gleaming eyes

Consider the ruse of

Paradise 

Father & daughter  skirting through 

Wormholes in fast car

Lost song radio born gaping hole 

Beautifully destroyed & Un-bloomed 

For Charley Leigh Ann Young

Merritt Waldon born 1974. Lives in Southern Indiana USA.

He has been in many print and online anthologies and journals. He has five books published. Oracles From A Strange Fire by Merritt Waldon & Ron Whitehead published by Cajun Mutt Press. Pistol City Blues published by Dead man's Press Ink. Madison Street Screams & Smoke Break Poems published by Dead man's Press Ink. Recovering Roar: Haiku and other small poems published by Dumpster Fire Press.Poems by Sourav Sarkar and Merritt Waldon published by Cooch Behar. He is a regular in American and others anthologies. A permanent member of Whisky City Press..he is also a regular of Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts.

 

One Poem by Fizza Abbas

 

The world is a word salad where I am an orange cabbage

I feel like congealed blood of a moth spilling spindly legs laughing at my ass calling me a 

laughing maniac it doesn’t know different blood carapace skeletons in corners entrails in petri 

dishes bones flying smoking with the blow of windows wanting to escape graveyards statues 

long gone a world making sense for some spilling secrets for the rest a laughing woman lipstick

smeared yes the plastic smile yes the bones yes the world burns at spirit seconds yes it’s all 

going to ruins you dug out civilizations once sunken cities archaeologists now we are all 

archaeologists digging our own graves from within we don’t want to bury our hands in the sand 

but there’s no choice it’s never us vs them it’s us with our old versions ye verily ole nincompoop 

your old French who tortured Algeria and left half a million corpses your old Germans who 

bathed Europe in blood your Japanese burnt alive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki two hundred 

thousand dead glowing under mushroom clouds your Koreans three million split by the forty 

eighth parallel bones scattered in rice paddies your Vietnamese two to three million swallowed 

in napalm and Agent Orange your Iraqis one to two million crushed under shock and awe your 

Afghans two hundred thousand bombed droned starved your Kenyans herded into camps 

twenty thousand whipped and executed your Indians starved three million in Bengal while 

empire feasted your Congolese ten million hacked and worked to death under Leopold’s rubber 

thirst your Guatemalans two hundred thousand disappeared into mass graves your Chileans 

tortured electrocuted vanished in the night your Libyans thirty thousand blown apart under 

intervention your Yemenis three hundred seventy seven thousand erased by blockade airstrikes 

famine your Gazans tens of thousands crushed under rubble whole families smeared into dust 

how ignorant you me all of us we are idiots we the journalists what the fuck can we change on 

ground or through correspondents whose press badges lie buried under debris of salvaged 

selves songs of resistance what change will they bring will they make the killing mongers the 

giant motherfucking bastards wear necklaces of gold instead of rage will they stop this rampage 

not for God not for prophecies but for themselves oh you believe so huh if you want to enjoy 

making those pink barbie doll castles and living in them with your children selves oh look at this 

plastic doll I made her wear clothes oh so pretty aww she looks like a doll oh wasn’t she before 

oh I combed her golden tresses ah that trolley oh that pram crammed with stiff plastic babies 

their eyelids painted shut their bodies cold hollow rattles inside them oh that food basket stuffed 

with yellow marbles pretending to be corn kernels rolling out like diseased teeth a crooked red 

shard standing in for a carrot sharp enough to slit your palm and oh those green chewed up 

bubblegums pressed into cabbage leaves cauliflower heads foaming like skulls sprayed with 

spit comic relief pauses for a story that you want to make believe in your make believe where 

there are fine dandy people lying naked on beaches in Tel Aviv sipping cold beers the foam 

spilling onto their suntanned chests sunglasses tilted at the edges of their noses sand sticking 

like sugar to oiled legs oh those fuckers ruined our good prime time show oh please change the 

channel everything is perfect the waves slap politely against the piers yachts gleam like teeth 

under the sun barbecues crackle with skewers dripping fat and someone laughs with a mouth 

full of shrimp cocktail and red wine stains their gums oh let me drink gulps and gulps of water 

from our imported bottles the plastic crinkling like brittle bones in my fists and ah why hamburger 

why not stack it higher with bacon grease dripping down wrists oh you silly bibi paint your mouth 

red again fix your hair again work more on your PR honey for prophecy’s sake darling smile

wider for the cameras and hey you the guardian reporter tilt your lens just so catch the sparkle 

not the smoke keep the angles clean no rubble creeping in oh no no no no candid shots of egg 

shells scattered with ash no splintered toys half buried in dust no bombs please they splatter my 

mascara they ruin my eyes

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 100 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021.

Five Poems by Steven Pelcman

Grandfathers January 1945 

 

Village life surrounded by farms and cows

Cobblestoned streets where Romans had once

Walked marching to battles across the hills

Into valleys ringed in snow and forest,

 

Unwilling grandfathers, victims, one German,

The other Polish caught in the vacuum of war

Walking the Russian tundra feeling their bones freeze,

One mangled by gun bursts leaving his arms dangling

 

The other lost, wandering, his hollow eyes keep safe the dying

Breaths of family engulfed in flames, walking out of the

Emptiness of Russia and over the bodies and burning tanks

Littering the countryside as pools of melting snow bleeding out

 

And gobbling up the memories of every living thing

For thousands of miles. Neither believed in war but what

Does that matter when killing and dying is what you live for.

One Jewish, the other German, one a peddler, the other drafted

 

And a soldier, both leaving young children to remember chimney stacks

And warm knees, Friday night Seders and Church Sundays, both righteous

And afraid, both sharing the hatred, both living out the bone and blood

Of nations turned to rubble.

 

How different and alike they were, walking into the vast emptiness

Their skin thinned, veins bulging, their narrow frames more glass

Than human, shadows made of willows and air as if non-existent

Purged of whatever being human is.

 

Did their brains tighten and freeze. Could they stay alive by eating

The rotten food left in pockets or did they tear away flesh from a body

Forever looking down to smoke and chew to the sounds of hovering vultures.

You wonder if they talked of love or if they could remember what it is. 

 

Large Lizard in Florida 

 

We saw it on the side

Of the road raising its

Ancient head filling the

Grass and turning it brown.

 

Its agile but thick body,

A slithering Halloween mask,

Made me think of horror movies

Where a city is destroyed by some

 

Crawling mythical monster or

Worshiped by an old civilization

As a God, and as it sat there and poked

Its head out, Its ridged hard skin

 

And bulging eye evoked the end

Of the world, overrun by the usual

Suspects, rats and cockroaches,

Lizards that deflower the earth

 

And crawl over the ruins of mankind,

A wild thing that understands the earth

Better than I, that thrives in the Florida

Sun when I shrivel and lose energy.

 

It seemed larger than a kitten and its

Craggy appearance almost royal

And dignified was mysterious

And perhaps dangerous.

 

I felt that way once, as a child

When a stranger approached

And when goosebumps traveled

My body with fear.

 

I stared at that lizard for minutes admiring

It and wondering where it goes in the dark

Nights, if it takes shelter in the rain or if

At the end of the world who would eat whom. 

 

Blueberries For Breakfast 

 

I Eat blueberries for breakfast,

And taste their darkness in my mouth,

The forest rolls through me

Breathing in the early winter air

And lingering sweetness. 

 

As children, we picked blueberries

Carrying straw baskets in the woods

Surrounding South Fallsburg,

And in tree shadows they looked

Like pearls, little fists clutching

 

The night sky at dusk, shining

And withholding secrets

That it shared with the forest,

Just sitting there almost begging

Us to hold them, daring us to taste

 

Their blueness on our fingers and

Mouths, coating our tongues with

Words sweeter than the cool air,

But we dared not, knowing

It would spoil their perfection.

 

They sat still but the scent of pie

Swirled and you could almost taste

The crust and berry juice flowing

Out and see mother’s hands opening

The oven door and feeling the warmth.

 

Some darker than early October nights

Shaking on branches as I picked them,

They dangled in silence ready for plucking,

Some overripe, others bulging and hanging low

As if saying, they had the last laugh.  

 

Sea Journey 

 

Trust in the stars

Has brought him

To stand firm

Against the rolling

Waves that leap

Out of the dark sea

 

And sweep across the deck

With loving hands

Guided by eager dolphins

Leaving a trace of algae

Luminescence and sparkling light

Falling and dripping wet.

 

He steers into emptiness,

Into a black wall of air and wind,

And the muffled sounds of sea life,

And cannot escape fear and memories

Of childhood and a mother sinking,

Tumbling and pulled into the unknown.

 

As he drifts across

Steep cliffs and rocky shores

Of Lastovo where coves

Have buried the voices

Of sailors that have learned

To love the deep waters

 

Their bones have adorned and

Shipwrecks that lie beneath

The Adriatic for centuries,

Nesting among the brittle,

Aged wood and floating

Gems and silver coins.

 

The shoreline littered

With pine trees perfuming

The air mingles with the smells

Of Baklava and the distant voices

Of the Illyrians and Romans

Where the conquering never stopped. 

 

Ancient forests of Oak and Pine

Dotted with nests of hawks and

Falcons stare out at the shadows

Of lobsters and crabs crawling

Across the windy sands drenched

In glaring white light.

 

Sailing the seas is more than

Water and stars, more than

The darkness that holds him,

More than the water in his body

That floats dreams of sails

Flapping in the wind.

 

It is a journey of time

Forever revolving,

It is his soul

Seeking light,

And swallowing the darkness

Full of fear and joy. 

 

Birth

 

Her lips felt like land,

Dry and grisly, her eyes

Watered into tears,

Her body at the root

Longing for air

That held her

 

Firm, knowing

She could rise

On her own, hearing

Voices like blood

Stirring within her,

And that being human,

 

Was its own freedom.

Touch held warmth,

Color was as she

Had dreamed it,

And sound and movement

Were spatial and as she

 

Fell out, the earth

Was reborn.

Once again, miracles

Come to life

In the fleshy reality

Of eyes wandering

 

Fingers Curling and

Grasping for life,

A memory rehearsed

And practiced and

Religion was not prayer,

Or God, it was the light.

Steven Pelcman is a writer of poetry and short stories, a novelist and photographer who has been published in magazines including: The Windsor Review, The Baltimore Review Lit Mag, Fourth River Magazine, and many others. He has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. Steven spent twenty-seven years residing in Germany where he taught in academia and as a language communications trainer and consultant. “Capturing the voices of humor or pain, making the small moments epic and witnessing the trials and tribulations of the human experience which captures the heart and mind is what drives the work.”