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Untitled
-Charles Clayton

Cortez married the

daughter of Montezuma.

Their descendents manage

Dairy Queens and

rebuild transmissions

alongside the King’s Highway.

Iberia. Tenochtitlan.

Civilizations collide.

Cosmologies clash.

Utterly different

except for the need

to drink the blood

of non-believers.

She appears to the faithful.

Up on the mountain.

Down in the valley,

Behind the church,

In the hardware aisle at Walmart.

Jewels glimmering gold lust.

Eagle crying glory lost.

Bare brown Goddess flesh

tempting us with rites of passage,

whispering in a strange tongue...

Tear your own heart out.

Feed it to the Jaguar.

Mojito Madness

-Eric Mack

There must be the soul of a chronically lonely, and (by extension) perpetually horny old dude trapped in the rum. Maybe an old hand on a pirate ship all those centuries ago who got mixed up in some East Indies voodoo curse just as cannon balls started raining down on he and those big barrels of sweet relief below deck. One part each of a little pirate blood, voodoo curse and Caribbean Rum, all mixed together in a cosmic shaker - that's the only explanation I can come up with for why a few shots of Bacardi has a biological impact parallel to ingesting a couple little blue Viagra pills and a line of cocaine.

The graphic details will eventually be illustrated in a Jon Waters film, but suffice it to say that the men and women who profess the longevity benefits of "whiskey dick" have yet to experience that condition's Caribbean cousin.

Yet the soul of that unfulfilled old pirate is insatiable. When chafing gives way to climax, and only seconds later to deep sleep, that ol' boy is just getting started... with post-coital rapid eye movements generating fleeting visions that tease even further; there is the woman in a sparkling sequined evening gown in the jungle, tropical heat coating her breasts with sweat that reflects the light of a fire in the background somewhere, not an actual bonfire or anything, just generic sexy flames for the purpose of pointing out the boobs a little better - the kind of lighting design a 17th-century horny pirate would use for the looping porno in his head; then there are the jungle animals, the jaguars, the gorillas, the eagles and several other species that have wandered out of their native climatic zones to make the scene a little more primal; and of course there is the snake, that metaphorical Charlie Sheen on the scene reminding the dreamer of the primacy of the phallus in all things.

And then it's done. Eyes open, sun up. And it's morning so that's not the only thing that's up. Add a headache and a full bladder and now we're shaking hands with the spirit in the spirits. The only antidote for the cursed? A little hair of the dog... or a new life as a beer drinker.

Gabriele

-Gary Feuerman

I wonder how it feels to be an angry raptor, a snake about to bite. When I was six, a leopard lived in my closet. He was old and I never saw him run. Shaneek was his name and his yellow eyes shone in the dark like mini Van Gogh glass paintings. We sat in the dark and talked about the Wild Things who didn’t show up. In the morning light I’d turn on the Sony transistor radio and listen to the casualty count in Vietnam on WINS news. It was always more them than us. It was always the coldest winter in memory. It was always the funeral of a great uncle who died of an embolism. There was always the chance to see a cardinal in my backyard, a blue jay, a robin. After Shaneek disappeared, I threw rocks at squirrels and did experiments on ants. Later, I saw Gabrielle in a one-piece black bathing suit in Lenny’s backyard swimming pool, and my heart raced. On the diving board a bumble bee stung me in the upper back and I fell into the pool as if shot. Gabrielle laughed, but it was before she saw me crying. It didn’t matter. Any reaction would have done. Her skin was the color of Ceylon tea and she walked on her toes. I was sad before I talked to her, seeing the end before the beginning. It took 4 more years, but we had a beginning, and when I graduated high school we had an end. It wasn’t as sad as it was when I was 12 thinking about the future. Maybe being with someone makes the ending less poetic; but maybe not because it’s poetic again now many years later. I heard she was killed by a tiger in India. She was a zoologist and I’m not sure I can find any irony in that. But I can say that as a kid I watched Daktari and always thought the lady in the show was pretty and alluring. I wanted to be around animals, too, if I could be around her. I’d say that the day I saw the budding Gabrielle in the black one-piece in Lenny’s backyard she looked like a gazelle or had the legs of antelope or had the eyes of a tiger, but I’d be projecting backward. She looked like someone I wanted to touch and smell and caress and say I love you to. The bee woke me up. When I climbed out of the pool, she came over and squeezed the stinger out as if she’d done it a thousand times. That’s what I remember more than anything else.

The Showdown

- Johanna DeBiase

Gretchen stamped her cigarette out in the souvenir ashtray, staining the picture of the cowboy with resin and rubbing ashes into the lasso letters. She rubbed her eyes hard and wiped the black residue of eyeliner from her palms to her pants. Carving her initials into his wood table, she waited to catch Jerry evacuating his room with whichever stellar tramp he took home that weekend. She spit into his mug with the picture of skinny Elvis swinging a microphone. (What's so great about Elvis anyway?) Jerry was late with his rent and she needed his share so she could go see the Raggs play at Benders tonight.

Three months ago, it seemed like a good idea to let an old guy who sold vintage collectibles at flea markets board with her. But that was summer and flea markets were over and he was broke. Apparently being old, (Was he nearly forty?), did not mean he was responsible, stable or abject to one-night-stands with atrociously trashy women. (Where did he find them?) The sound of banging against the wall was too much for her to handle. She tore the velor blanket of a sexy Native-American woman wearing a come-hither smile (Why did she think that was ironic?) from the wall and shoved it into the microwave oven that he insisted they keep in the apartment, along with a television set. Pulling a bobby pin out of her hair and placing it on top of the blanket, she set the timer for three-minutes, pressed start and laughed with sadistic joy as he climaxed in the next room.