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Bound and Gagged by David Henson

Evelyn sprays the dining room table. As she starts to polish the oak, she hears a footfall behind her and whirls around. “Oh…Jack, please don’t sneak up on me.”

“Sorry, Evie. A beautiful Saturday is calling. Go for a walk?”

Walk. The word jars Evelyn back to that night, waiting in front of her building.

Jack, if U can’t pick me up will walk to station, take train

Hold tight, Evie, won’t be much longer

Evelyn squeezes the cloth. “This morning? Outside? You should’ve given me a little more notice, Jack.”

Her husband’s shoulders slump. “Okay, I just thought…maybe break the ice, and you could see Dr. Philips in person this week. I think it’s time.” He puts his arms around his wife. “Pwease?”

Evelyn freezes. “Not yet.” She twists away. “Need to get this done.” She turns back to the table.

“I’ll scramble some eggs.”

As Evelyn continues polishing, she notices what appears to be a smudge and gives the area an extra spritz.

“Can you come make toast?”

A few minutes later, Evelyn is in the breakfast nook. “Bon appétit,” Jack says, setting down two plates of scrambled eggs and toast.

Evelyn forces a smile and stares at her food.

“Please, you have to eat.” He taps her plate with his fork. “It’s over, Evie. He’s behind bars.”

She begins picking at her food.

“Have you heard from Ms. Walsh lately?” Jack says.

“She called yesterday. Said they all miss me and not to worry about my job. The other accountants are covering and…” The image of the man forcing Evelyn into his van flashes through her mind. “Let’s not talk about it, okay?”

Jack presses his napkin to his lips. “You’ll feel better when you get back to work.”

where R U, Jack?

important meeting almost over

forget it walking to train

Evelyn squeezes her fork until her knuckles whiten.

#

The next morning, after Jack leaves for work, Evelyn notices an area she missed when cleaning the dining room table. She polishes the area until she can see her reflection. Again her mouth seems blurred. When she leans closer, an image comes into view. It’s her seated at a dining room table, bound and gagged. Evelyn jumps back, inches forward, and sees the image again. She gasps and charges out the front door. When she notices the cool concrete under her bare feet, she begins to hyperventilate, hurries back inside, and up to the bedroom.

Lying in bed, she tells herself to get a grip. After a few minutes, she wedges the bedroom door with the chair from her makeup stand. She thinks about calling Jack, but decides against it.

Evelyn spends the day in the bedroom, pacing, staring out the window, reading…When it’s about time for Jack to get home, she listens for the garage door. Upon hearing it, she opens the bedroom door, and lies back down with an open book on her stomach.

“There you are.”

“What…oh, Jack. Is it that time already? Guess I fell asleep. More important meetings today?”

Jack frowns. “Let me change clothes. Then I’ll make spaghetti.”

“No, you’ve done enough.” Evelyn starts for the bedroom door, then stops. “I’ll wait for you.”

#

The next morning before the alarm sounds, Evelyn creeps downstairs and approaches the dining room table as if it were a monster she’s trying to not awaken. She holds her breath, leans close, sees the horrifying image of herself, and screams.

Evelyn and Jack nearly collide on the stairs. He leads her back upstairs and retrieves a baseball bat from under the bed. When Evelyn calms herself enough to tell him what she saw, he puts the bat away and insists that the two of them go check the table.

“See?” she says, standing behind her husband.

“I see you’ve done a good job polishing.”

Evelyn describes to Jack what to look for.

“Sorry, Honey. I just don’t see it.” His eyes well with tears. “Oh, Evie. If you’d only waited for me.”

Evelyn hurries back upstairs.

#

Evelyn lies prone on the bed. Jack stops massaging her shoulders. “Let’s do a little experiment. Go into the living room,” he says. “I’ll be right there.”

A moment later, Jack joins his wife in the living room; he has the furniture spray and a cloth. He goes to the coffee table, removes a porcelain goose and a Canals of Amsterdam picture book then polishes the tabletop. “If I’m right, you won’t see that image.”

Evelyn looks into the shiny surface, sees herself bound and gagged, and screams.

Jack steps back. “I don’t understand. Was there a coffee table where he…kept you?”

Evelyn shudders. “I’d rather not…I don’t…I just remember that big table…and…his breath. He was always chewing lemon rinds, and his breath reeked of them and…” She sinks to the floor.

Jack helps his wife to her feet. “I think I’ve got it. That table where you were—did it smell like this?” His hands trembling, Jack puts the bottle of furniture polish to Evelyn’s nose.

“What? I don’t know. I—”

“Think, Evie. I’m on to something here.” He spritzes polish on his wife’s wrist and pushes it toward her face. “Smell that and—”

“Get away from me.” Evelyn pushes Jack away, runs outside, closes her eyes, and breathes in the scent of fresh cut grass. and breathes in fresh cut grass until the lemon polish thins out, until her lungs feel like they belong to her again.

David Henson

That Girl, Sadie by Bill Tope

i

“Well, what do you want me to do with her?” asked Mike, growing exasperated with his friend and housemate.

“Just take her off my hands for the evening,” implored Ed earnestly.

“I don’t know,” replied Mike, staring uncertainly into the living room, where teenage Sadie was lingering near the table containing all the bottles of alcohol for the Christmas party later that night. She was clad in faded jeans and a blood-red sweater.

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from Icicles…by A.J. Huffman

(Ed note–We are pleased to present the site debut of A.J. Huffman, with five looks at the mysteries of icicles–The Eds.)

from Icicles this Anticipation

The point is: creation takes

more than seven days. A lifetime

of would-be Sundays disappear

one drip at a time. Liquid tears race

down suicidal slide. Will they beat

the wind, land on chilled cushion

of accumulated drift? Never

count out Southeasterlies,

their decimating gusts hold the most

aggressive drops in stasis till nearly invisible

dagger welcomes them to blade.

from Icicles this Ephemerality

Solid is circumstantial,

hanging in the four corners of any home.

External forces alternate retention,

dissolution. Air and sun

are keys, constant pressures

to be endured. Foundations

are fragile. Cracks

quickly turn into shattering falls.

from Icicles this Fragility

Metal may be monumental,

but its grip is tenuous

turmoil of balance. Temperatures

rise. Reactions hold

no depth. Eyes can see

through every attempted defiance.

Angry breath releases frigid finger.

All that is left is silence,

absence, the answer

to gravity’s call.

from Icicles this Reflection

Nature holds certain

affinities for symmetry, inherent

need for balance. Clouds

contain liquid, precipitate solids

that accumulate, generate heat, melt

back to liquid, fall

into the wind, freeze solid, form

a point. Everything disappears

inside itself. Eventually.

from Icicles this Refraction

Solid is sometimes temporary,

lacking visual

purpose, transparent.

Such reflective moments echo with potential.

The seemingly invisible see

the world with unshadowed eyes.

A.J. Huffman

(Image is of the poet)

The Wild Turkey Family by Christopher J Ananias

(Editors’ note. We are collectively gobsmacked by this collection of photos snapped by Christopher J Ananias, and we are equally pleased with the text. Enjoy–the Eds.)

They came running. Maybe this will never happen again? Giant, once they were upon us. Their size was intimidating, but something made me want to pet them on top of the head. I feared for their tameness.

The Light Bringer was amazed. I asked the Light Bringer what she thought, and she said, “They’re huge… Kinda scary.”

“Yeah, I wish we had some food, Light Bringer.” A sadness gripped me. I so wanted to make the magnificent birds happy.

The Light Bringer looked around inside the car, but the cupboard was bare. They surrounded our vehicle. The Light Bringer said, “Move now, c’mon now, Honey. Please move.”

By Christopher J Ananias and The Light Bringer

Report from a Battlefield by The Drifter

…Then the Drifter said:

The Drifter is phoning it in this weekend, or at least shooting from the hip, because the kids (the twins) have pneumonia. And he himself feels like he might be coming down with pneumonia. Or it might be the effects of a lifelong insomnia problem. I remember wandering around exploring our little house in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights alone in the middle of the night before my brother was born. I was four when he was born. I remember, like it was yesterday, the day they brought him home from the hospital. Like it was yesterday with a large gray veil thrown over it, that is. Sometimes I wonder what are all the things I don’t remember. I know what I remember. What I don’t know is what I forgot. Meanwhile, what I forgot doesn’t mean it hasn’t affected me. It might have been a traumatic thing that has affected my whole life more deeply than anything else that I do remember. I also know that memory has a way of casting a beautiful sheen over some things they could not possibly have had to that full of an extent while they were happening. This hectic week has also reminded me that you need a zen-like control of the mind in order to do any good writing at all, except maybe fragments you can save for later.

Regarding the pneumonia, the effort of providing (or trying to provide) constant emotional support while also talking everyone down and also talking them up all the time (“it will be okay, you can get through this,” etcetera), while simultaneously dealing with crowded doctors’ waiting rooms, harried medical staff, looming insurance debacles, half-assed pharmacy escapades, endless traffic jams, social anxiety disorder caused by bipolar disorder, and near-migraine headaches can be a thing that will lead to nervous breakdowns, just like it has done in the past. My well-medicated brain that has a dead patch in it from having a stroke can handle a lot but it too has its breaking point. The first sign is usually emotional, followed by physical, collapse. Lest it sound like I’m complaining I admit that all of the above is a journey too and these are also some of the most meaningful events in life. Watching your children suffer and panic and cough up blood up close teaches you something, even if you don’t know what it is at the time, and even when they are otherwise healthy kids who you know are probably gonna be okay.

The kids’ mother, my ex-wife, teaches sixth grade math fulltime at a public elementary school. Nearly half of her seventy or so students either have no father at all (that they know of or know) or have a father who’s in prison. It doesn’t make for the most controlled eleven- and twelve-year-old male behavior imaginable. The job has too many students and too many hoops to jump through almost constantly but teaching jobs around here aren’t easy to come by even under the horrible conditions. She takes over with the twins after work when they’re sick and I get to fly away like a bird, but until she’s available, the job of double caregiver is all mine. What I get out of it is a great relationship with great kids. The danger is a bunch of small nervous breakdowns that can lead to a big one. But I get to look myself straight in the eye in the mirror and say, honestly, that I’ve never abandoned them. The sense of freedom this causes through a lack of guilty feelings from doing otherwise is one more freedom in a world where we all want freedom. Freedom comes from what isn’t there as much as from what is. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else when the bombs and the bullets are flying in your direction.

I had started on a column this week before the pneumonia thing began and I here append a 287-word fragment of the rough draft as evidence. I believe it is worthy of perusing or I wouldn’t append it:

This is for all unsung spiritual warriors everywhere who know whereof I speak.

Those who do not know whereof I speak are of course free to read this anyway but it’s unlikely you’d get the same kick out of it as those in the know.

Whether this happened to you yesterday or forty years ago matters not one tiny jot.

What does matter is that the reader of this understand the concept of life as a war and certain individual chapters of it as battles and battlefields.

Understanding this concept does not mean that the symbol and metaphor indicated is real, if it were real it wouldn’t be symbol and metaphor, even though symbols and metaphors are real.

Real war is a horrendous ordeal for all involved, except the ones who get off on it, and there are many who get off on it, probably far more than is generally acknowledged.

The concept of life as a spiritual war means that the strains and stresses of living it on a daily basis can take the same kind of toll that a real war can take in the long run.

On any given day living my normal life in Chicagoland all these things might happen, sometimes within the same hour.

I might be almost run over or slammed into by an errant, enraged driver who then yells at and curses me for almost getting in his or her way even though I’m following the rules of the road and she or he is not.

I might be accosted on the street by a beggar in such a horrific, bedraggled and tragic condition of decomposition and desperation that my eyes, and my heart, can barely stand it.

I might

UNFINISHED.

ALF by John Grey

Today, you’re looking at your hands.

You’re thinking time has made a mistake

and those palms are far too rough and course

for someone your age.

Yet you remember the uncle

who fell and never got back up.

That’s not you.

At least, not yet.

You’re always fending off an attack, you say.

Or are in need of hammer and nails.

There’s work to be done –

on a bookcase

and maybe even on your frontal lobes.

You do your share of pacing.

You’ve had it with people who are

always threatening to shoot.

You’re concerned by all the books you’re not reading.

And your job – what you call shoveling shit.

Yesterday, a friend took sick.

He’ll be in hospital for a month.

You don’t care much for your neighbors

but you respect their differences.

You miss your wife.

And your sanity is not fully engaged

with what’s happening in your head.

You prefer your dark room of sleep

to most company.

And you see the Earth as an ark,

floating through space,

constantly ditching the ones

who can no longer pay their way.

You stand in the doorway,

feel the draft of the world’s grief.

And yet there’s still

this small persistent heat.

John Grey

(Image by CJA)

Self-Educating by John Grey

The boy is learning

what to do

with his own tiny steps.

Beyond diapers

and breast-feeding,

he’s onto the good stuff,

knocking a glass

from the coffee table,

getting his fingers caught

in doors of cabinets,

toppling and

landing on his jelly bones.

He’s putting stuff

in his mouth.

He’s touching

what is there to feel.

He’s embracing a teddy.

He’s tossing it

out of the crib.

He’s trying out

his knees, his elbows,

his arms, his legs.

He even bleeds a little

now and then.

Or runs into a wall.

And he cries –

why not-

his voice must be there

for some reason –

hungry, thirsty,

hot, cold,

or simply bored –

they’re all an excuse

for sound.

And so it’s

push, pull, reach, fall, rise –

it’s choreography for little people.

John Grey

Being Me by John Grey

The fault, if there is one, lies in the way

my days keep shedding parts of speech.

Loose nouns roll under the furniture.

Verbs are still warm from use.

Adjectives get up my nostrils

whether they’re sweet perfumes

or rotting stench.

Even the adverbs cling like burrs.

Punctuation is all over the place.

I bump into quotation marks

and those oddball semi-colons.

I trip over commas on the floor.

Cut me. Please do.

You’ll see that what emerges

is not blood but a clause, a syntax.

Dig further and you’ll come up with a handful

of half‑formed paragraphs.

With any luck, they’ll still be breathing.

I didn’t know, back when I first

slipped into a book, that it was an IV line,

a drip-feed of people talking on buses,

or quarreling in kitchens,

or riding to the rescue

or wrapped up in the satin sheets of romance.

Every gesture they made left a bruise

in the shape of a sentence.

Call it a birthmark. My mother, carrying me,

startled by a sponge, or an encyclopedia,

or a poet declaiming to no one in particular

on a park bench. Something lodged early.

So who’s to blame when language

flutters around my skull

like moths drawn to a porch light.

My head can only hold so much.

If I don’t empty it onto a page,

there’s the real risk.

My brain could bust.

Imagine the mess.

You’d either have to

clean up the spill or read it.

John Grey

(Image by DWB)

Homeless in Winter by John Grey

(Today we welcome back poet John Grey. Get used to seeing him over the next four days!–The Eds.)

From a gray and restless sky,

the snow comes down like a verdict.

Guilty, it says.

And the cold is ten degrees below mercy.

A leaf is torn apart, as is my face.

The wind makes no distinction

between what belongs and what’s been cast out.

Swirling drifts erase birds from the sky’s memory.

Shards of ice collide.

They pull me into their quarrel.

Am I, like them, a fragment blown off course.

A stray cat wails from the pain of exposure.

A rabbit disappears into the earth before night can claim it.

A mouse finds entry in wall

sealed tight against the likes of us.

Somewhere, I tell myself, a fire still burns for me.

And a woman waits with an embrace warm enough to unmake winter.

But that is a country I can no longer reach.

For now I walk the frozen floorboards of this weather,

unable to think of anyone else’s suffering,

not with all this needling, this stabbing,

this piercing reminder of where I cannot ever be.

Tonight, it’s my turn.

I’m the one

who needs dragging in from the streets.

John Grey