#98: "I Tell You Something" by Jessica McCaughey

~This essay was previously published in Adanna (2011).

            I misunderstand when Ming says, “This is difficult for me.” When I arrive each Monday at seven, she has been studying all weekend with only the help of her pocket-sized, electronic Chinese-English translator. By then, everything is difficult.
            I pull her Child Psychology and Development textbook toward me, noting the chapter heading: Abuse.
            “Yeah, this is sad stuff,” I say, tired from teaching all day, hoping our tutoring will end early as it sometimes does.
            “No. It’s more.” She sucks her lips into her mouth. “I tell you something. I had three children.”
            As I try to sort out the sentence in my head—I’ve met her kids, both of them, right?—she begins, so purposefully that it feels like a monologue. Practiced, although it couldn’t be. 

#97: from Bombyonder by Reb Livingston

~This piece previously appeared in Eleven Eleven (2012)

from Bombyonder

Naked, upset, nobody came for me, ever, myself naked, wept in a bathroom, naked commercial, characters like me are almost always naked, topless and mostly naked, didn’t seem to be much about a wolf, she must have been the wolf, completely naked, distracted and driving wrong, she didn’t look naked when driving, partially naked, naked with wet hair, naked with regret, naked with a hulu hoop balanced on a staircase, naked sunbath, hanging out, naked exchange, deleted pictures from my camera,

parts of this party I wouldn’t attend,

somebody dressed in dragon, the wolf sniffed the dragon, dragon confronted wolf, slapped my father because I want to slap her, intended to slap her, the trouble will start when her werewolf boyfriend shows up,

still hooked up to the machine,

playing a machine, machine spitting bills, searching for the ticket machine, a machine with more features, machine figuring enemies, machine of the impenetrable prison, downstairs with more machines, there was machine under the bed washing things, noisy, like a slot machine, we could have been trapped there, like pinball, like building a machine to wake the devil, the statue of the satanic attic, Mother murdered Rauan, he drank fruity, girly drinks and that was a good enough reason, the devil-baby was a powerful baby, wishing we killed that devil while he manifested in the fire hose, there was a dog in this house who worked for the devil and plotted against this meeting of faiths, one sneaky dog, married to the devil’s advocate, temptation, passion, frisson, we were served broiled Rauanelk and Rauan didn’t know he ate himself, the phone rang, it was the devil, the fate of rescue, the rest of the film proceeded as normal,

now you possess the information that our hero was once naked, slapping paternal figures,

*****

#96: "Holland Breaks the Law" by Emily Jeanne Miller

~This story originally appeared in The Portland Review (2005).

John Holland isn’t sleeping well. Alone in the big white Victorian on Brooks Street, he lies awake in his wide bed, listening to the late crickets, the heat kicking on and off, the old house settling. Often, he’ll get up before sunrise and walk his dog, Zeus, up and down the tree-lined streets of the University neighborhood. In dawn’s quiet blue chill, he’ll pause as kitchen lights pop on, and catch glimpses of neighbors going about their morning routines, cooking eggs in skillets or drinking coffee by the TV.

He’s been asked to stay home from work. There’s a situation with a student at Our Lady of Victory, the girls’ school where he’s taught for over a decade. The student, a sixteen-year-old, is claiming Holland behaved inappropriately during a tutoring session in his office. And while everyone—Lyle McKnight, the principal, Howard Frackas, the Superintendent—says they’re behind Holland, one-hundred percent, they have told him he should keep his distance from the school. McKnight suggested a mile. 

It’s Friday, early. Holland is in the kitchen washing his hands and listening to the ch-ch-ch of the McNulty’s sprinklers next door, when the phone rings. He cuts off the water and reaches for a towel. It’ll be McKnight, he’s almost sure—probably wanting to go over the “facts” for what must be the fiftieth time. McKnight or maybe Holland’s wife, Carol. He pauses by the French doors: another gray day outside with storm clouds looming low in the East, over the Rattlesnake. He has nothing new to tell McKnight, and no idea where to even begin with Carol, so he lets the phone ring.

On an eggplant-colored rag rug by the stove, Zeus lies curled in a loose C. Holland squats and runs his palm over the dog’s warm belly, avoiding looking at his head. Zeus is sick—there’s a tumor the size of a gumball over his eye, and though you can’t see them, “trouble spots” on his skull and spine. This is according to Dr. Woo, the vet, who Holland knows through his weekend softball league. After games, some of the players stick around drinking beer, and one Sunday, Woo noticed Zeus’s eye didn’t look right and asked Holland to bring him in for a visit. That was two months ago. Now the tumor protrudes noticeably from the dog’s head, and his whole face, which used to cheer Holland beyond reason, has become misshapen, and frankly, scary.

Redux Open to Submissions September 10 -- October 15

Redux is accepting submissions of fiction/poetry/essays during its annual open reading period: September 10 to October 15.  We’re looking for literary work of high quality that has been previously published in a print journal but that is not available elsewhere on the internet.  Our mission is to bring deserving work to a new, online audience.  Preference will be given to older pieces (i.e. published before 2010).

No novel excerpts, poems that appear in chapbooks, or pieces published in anthologies…even if these books are presently out-of-print.

Please read our guidelines for important submission information.  If your work is accepted, you will also be asked to write a short “story behind the piece” essay a la the Best American series.

Authors we’ve published in our first two years include Margot Livesey, Sandra Beasley, Robin Black, R.T. Smith, Michelle Boisseau, Kelle Groom, Erica Dawson, Walter Cummins, and C.M. Mayo.

We look forward to seeing your work!

Redux:  http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/

Submission guidelines: http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/p/submission-guidelines-for-redux.html

Questions: reduxlj AT gmail DOT com

#95: "The Three Weisses" by Michael Salcman

                                                                 

~ This poem was originally published in Aries  (2012).

THE THREE WEISSES

Shades and graces come in threes: my cousins in Queens

were aunt and uncle to me,

the first I knew as elderly

rich with sandpapered faces

and thin-rimmed glasses they wore like monocles.

My first lesson in the upper classes—

a tinted portrait above the mantle,

Hettie and Syd and Uncle Carl posed as kids

in white smocks and puffy sleeves

as big as their heads, and a favorite spaniel for color.

Upstairs their sentient mother lived in solitary splendor,

my father’s Aunt Rose, a hundred

when I was five, whose backside routinely greeted me

freshly bathed and powdered

with a faint smell of garlic and uric acid in Queens.

Syd’s husband I never knew

or can’t remember, and soon after he died

she moved back in with the other two

and seemed as much a spinster as they ever did,

eternally wed to brother and sister.

Of the past not a word was spoken—

one could never know how Hettie’s young heart

had been broken or why Carl with a smile like Coolidge

never pursued a bride

or wore sweaters in summer until the day he died.

*****

#94: "In the Empire of Cetaceans" by Pedro Ponce

~This story was originally published in Arroyo Literary Review (Spring 2011).

            The annual Pheasant Lake Psychic Fair draws upwards of 300 attendees. Most are curious if not entirely content with their fates divined via crystals, numbers, and totem animals. A great deal invest in products claiming to cure everything from insomnia and stomach upset to the human condition itself. A smaller number, believing that anxiety, aggression, and disappointment are terminal, peruse book bins containing startling revelations about the true meaning of Mayan ruins and presidential assassinations, or accounts of alien abductions by celebrities from decades past.

            Those in attendance during the first weekend of August, 2008, might have missed one of the fair’s most unusual offerings. On Saturday morning, a single placard, printed modestly in black letters on a white background, advertised

WHALES: THE SILENT THREAT

followed by a time that afternoon and a room number. The placard’s starkness caused a mild buzz over that morning’s continental breakfast, but it also led to some uncomfortable moments as the dozen in attendance crammed the listed venue, a hotel suite four floors above the designated meeting rooms. Roughly half the audience read the whales as threatened, humans the likeliest culprits after centuries of environmental neglect. The rest read equivalence in the intervening colon, relishing the prospect of a fair and balanced rejoinder to animal lovers. As the sides recognized each other over the murmur of respective platitudes, a young auburn-haired woman checked her watch and straightened several piles of literature for sale on a round table next to the minibar. Five minutes past the scheduled start time, she stood and knocked hesitantly at the door to the bedroom. Hearing no answer, she cracked the door and spoke through the narrow opening. Her smile as she walked away stiffened with resignation.

#93: "The Art of Killing the Birds" by Martin Cloutier

 

 ~This story was previously published in Natural Bridge (2011).

Jared needed to be fucked, fueled and reconfigured, but mostly, he needed to be inspired, which was why he invited Richard to his studio. While Richard wandered around his windowless loft, Jared stood by the radiator and listened to the floorboards creak. His canvases were propped against the wall, facing out, as if he was onstage and his paintings were watching him. What would they see? – these women, these figures culled together from paper and plastic, bodies jagged with industrial shapes, their natural curves forced into the right angles of credit cards and subway passes?

Collage was the best description of Jared’s work. He made large painted canvases onto which he glued scraps of paper. Any kind of paper so long as it was discarded: newspaper, paper cups, sugar packets, movie tickets. If someone threw it away, it could very well end up on one of Jared’s portraits. Women emerging from garbage: a feminist manifesto or a misogynist’s vindication. He let the viewer decide.  

            Right now his work was stalled. He hadn’t made a new piece in months. Every day he would comb the streets, picking up cigarette packs and sales receipts, examining fast food containers and wet magazines. He would bring these findings back to his studio, spread them on his work table and wait for inspiration.  

He tried to give Richard space, but eventually found himself walking a few steps behind, pretending to scrutinize. Richard put one hand on his face and scratched his stomach with the other. His belly separated the fabric of his button-down shirt; black hairs peaked out like fungus.

Richard put an arm around him. “Good stuff. Good stuff.” His wet armpit stuck to Jared’s shoulder.

Richard was a lawyer with an art history degree, not a full time dealer. He had sold a few things of Jared’s before, and even bought some of his earlier work. One of Richard’s clients was Catherine French of The French Gallery. He told himself if Richard sold a piece to French, it might jump start his creativity.