flash memoir
Gamey
by Liz Dosta
I wasn’t a violent child. I didn’t hit my older brother unless provoked. I didn’t pull the wings from flies just to watch them turn in circles. I didn’t freeze bees to see if I could wake them from their sub-zero comas, didn’t set ants on fire using a magnifying glass to direct the sun’s heat to a microscopic spot in the grass, where they dug their tunnels. I didn’t even burn grass just to see a blade go up in smoke. But, the first time I shot a gun, I liked it. I liked the cold weight of it heavy in my small hands as I took aim. I was ten. It was summer. I was wearing a yellow t-shirt with an image of a smiling duck on it. My mother had fashioned my hair into two pigtails that curled at the ends. My jeans rose high above my belly button. My shoes were purple. My eyes were virtually closed when I took my first shot.
I missed. I aimed, and missed, again. I missed each of the seven soda cans that sat perched before me. After, my hands vibrated like little engines cooling. The soles of my feet, flat against the dirt, seemed to float up. I could smell honeysuckle in the air.
“Well,” my father said, raising his bushy eyebrows, “better luck next time,” and clicked his tongue. My father had a red face. He was a mangled man.
Back home, after target practice, it was raining ashes across our lawn, and on our driveway. A fire was raging in the valley. Homes were going up in smoke. My mother tried to sweep the ashes up, but when the bristles pressed against the ash, a streak of black would appear. My brother and I got down on our hands and knees and tried to blow the ashes away, but that just sent them into a dizzying whirl. My mother took out the hose and watered the pavement. My brother and I stomped around excitedly, until we were called in. It was dark. It was dinner-time. My cheeks were hot from playing games. That first drink of milk was heaven.
By fall, my father had killed his first deer. I watched him drag the knife across its throat as he chuckled to himself. The deer’s large black eyes glistened as if still alive. I watched them turn a little, in their sockets, as the blade tore through its rough skin. The intestines, once so close and coiled together, were spread out and limp on the floor. I felt my wrists throbbing. I began to dance around the deer. I itched and scratched at my wrists as I danced around and around the dead body, which was hog-tied to the rafters. When I pressed my thumb into the flesh around my wrist, I could feel my heart beating steadily, kicking like a small hoof against my thumb.
Read more by Liz Dosta in her upcoming book of poetry,
_Trigger and the Infinite Pull_
http://pankmagazine.com/piece/five-poems-21/
DOUBLE-DECKER
by Chad Greene
The way I remember it, we held hands for the first time on the double-decker.
My hand had held a deep-fried hotdish on a stick right before riding the double-decker Ferris wheel. After all, we were at the Minnesota State Fair, and what could have been more Minnesotan than that – three Swedish meatballs on a stick, with tater tots between them, all breaded and deep-fried?
“The hamburger-and-cream-of-mushroom-soup dipping sauce?” Annie suggested as we strolled toward the midway.
“Or that the banner above the window where we ordered had ‘Uff Da!’ printed on it?” I asked.
“Twice!” she laughed. “Or that the stand was called ‘Ole and Lena’s’?”
“‘Ole and Lena’!” I exclaimed. “Like all those old jokes my Norwegian nana used to tell! Did you ever hear the one about when Ole and Lena got married? On their honeymoon, they had driven almost all the way to Minneapolis when Ole put his hand on Lena’s knee. Giggling, Lena said—”
“‘Ya can go a little farder now if ya want to, Ole,’” Annie interjected in her best Yooper accent.
“So Ole drove to Duluth,” I finished.
Theway I remember it, that was the first time we laughed together – a very new couple sharing a very old joke about a husband and a wife who almost always misunderstood one another.
The way I remember it, we compromised for the first time on the double-decker.
My hand still held half a deep-fried hotdish on a stick. As I started my standard tirade against roller coasters, I punctuated my most important points with thrusts of it.
“Artificial thrills,” I sneered, “for folks who are—”
“Not afraid of heights?” Annie interrupted.
“—bored by their lives,” I insisted. “Admittedly, I’m—”
“Afraid of heights?”
“Of course not,” I scoffed.
“So, you refuse to ride a roller coaster because—”
“—I have no need for artificial thrills because I’m not bored by my life.”
“But, because you’re – of course – not afraid of heights, you’d have no problem riding, say…,” Annie’s eyes scanned the rides that towered over the rest of the amusements on the midway, “…the double-decker Ferris wheel?”
“Of course not,” I bluffed.
“Well, let’s get in line!” She trotted toward what looked like a rickety Erector Set. Two wheels with eight passenger gondolas each were connected by thin – too thin! – metal beams with holes in them. An axle threaded through the holes in the middles of the beams, meaning that it was not only the eight gondolas on each of the wheels that would rotate from bottom to top, but also the two wheels themselves.
As I stared at the legs dangling out of the gondolas on the higher of the two wheels, I gulped. Then I threw the remaining half of my deep-fried hotdish on a stick into the trashcan next to the head of the line.
“Not feeling a little … queasy, are you?” Annie asked. “Our feet are still on the ground.”
The way I remember it, I managed to scrape up an appropriate pun. “It’s just that…,” I stammered as I stepped past the carny holding the gondola door open for us and scooted onto the bench beside her. “It’s just that, I want to concentrate my attentions on only one ‘hot dish’ at the moment.”
“Aww,” she said.
Just then, the carny slammed the door and pulled the lever. With a jolt, we creaked skyward.
“Ahh,” I said.
The way I remember it, I mostly stared down at my knuckles, which were white from my compulsive clutching of the safety bar. I felt like our ascent could only last a little longer; I was – yes – afraid we were about to start our descent.
“So….”
“So….”
“So…you’re Norwegian?” Annie asked. “I would’ve guessed German, with a name like—”
“Carl Braun? You would’ve guessed right – at least, mostly.” After a slow start, my answer began to pick up speed – as I was sure we were about to do. “My nana, my great-grandmother, was Norwegian. And her husband, my great-grandfather, was Italian. So, that makes me about one-eighth of each. But I’m about three-quarters German—”
At the moment, I felt something strange. Although, as I had dreaded, our gondola started its descent, our wheel simultaneously started its ascent. I was so disoriented that, despite my – yes – fear of heights, I was about to look up from my knuckles.
But then I saw Annie lift her left hand off the safety bar and place it on top of my right hand.
The way I remember it, I momentarily lamented that my hand had held a deep-fried hotdish on a stick right before riding the double-decker because it was slightly greasy. But then I let go of the safety bar, and I rotated my wrist, so I could hold her hand.
Now, I wonder if she had misunderstood me – if my inability to hide my fear of heights had seemed to her instead to be the height of emotional openness in an Upper Midwestern man?
But, then, I was sure I did not misunderstand her when she informed me, in her best Yooper accent, “Ya can go a little farder now if ya want to, Carl.”
Read more by Chad Greene in:
“Divine” litro.co.uk – “Oasis” inlandiajournal.org
The One Thing I Never Told Her
by Timothy Perez
The first time my wife gave birth I almost lost my cookies.
***
I looked down between the sheet, between legs splashed with orange Betadine and watched the doctor pull things out of her the way a magician pulls rows and rows of colored scarves out of a wide brimmed hat. I witnessed the doctor pull and pull and pull black sopping fleshy tissue from her; I witnessed her blood flowing into a blue pan, the kind mechanics use when changing a car’s oil; I watched as it filled to the brim.
I watched as the doctor dipped two fingers in a white tub of antiseptic lubricant and began stretching the blood-drenched womb of my wife; it was as if he were putting a rim on a tire. He pulled and stretched her like pizza dough. I was expecting the doctor at any moment to fling my wife into the air and my son come tumbling from her like a yo-yo, but then he did something unexpected and took out a pair of surgical scissors. They shined greedily in the bright light. I looked at the doctor and he winked at me. A five gallon white plastic bucket with a biohazard sign half filled with blood and bits of red meaty tissue. I turned to my wife said, You need to push. Now.
Too late. I heard the first meaty snip. Okay mom, push on three. One . . . two . . . three. My wife’s face puckered, and then a breath, and then another meaty snip. Sally, I whispered, he’s cutting you now, you need to push him out. Let’s go.
Okay mom, one more time. One . . . two . . . three. My wife’s face turned inward, the nurses oohhing and aahhing in unison like backup singers. Then, another meaty snip. That’s three. I tell my wife, a fourth one is the point of no return Sally.
And before she could be asked to push, my wife pulled herself up and grunted like a wildebeest And then the doctor’s final tug and in his hands he held a bundle of bloody phlegm screaming and wriggling and the placenta dropped and there was a slight splash and I imagined if it had been an Olympic diver it would’ve been considered perfect. And I choked back whatever was coming up and the doctor mistook my nausea for emotion said, birth is a beautiful thing.
My son: an otherworldly beached jellyfish, a fresh bruise, a chemical spill floating in a gutter, pale yellows, and dark purples, dashes of crimson, peppered with pink flesh, and then he began to unfurl like the petals of an Iris.
I don’t cry much, when I do it’s usually by myself in the dark or in a corner if others are around. And when my first born showed up I had a knob in my throat that dissolved like a cube of sugar when I saw the buffoon huddled in the nurse’s palms. I dried them up by staring at the halogen lamp, then at the doctor sewing up my wife commenting on the bucket of blood he had collected.
This is nothing, he said handing me the scissors the same one used to snip her wider with and it was then that I looked at my son for the first time and the doctor motioned to the umbilical cord the color of tripe. I took in a deep breath, bit my lip and cut. It had the texture of a garden hose, blood spurt from the kinky pale tube dousing the doctor’s blue gloved hand. My son yawned, sniffed the air, clambered between his mother’s breasts and began to feed.
And I stood there knowing I cut him from her staring into eyes that couldn’t yet see and the doctor looked up from the blue oil pan filled with my wife’s blood and the pan wobbled slightly and blood sloshed over and onto the floor in a pattern that would soon be swirled by a janitor’s mop only to be mixed in the detritus of other mothers wombs and the doctor winked at me one last time, said, good job, dad.
Read more by Timothy Perez in:
The Savagery of Bone (Moon Tide Press, 2013)
– acentosreview.com – kuikatl.com – localauthors.com – new york journal of books –
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