No News Today - Guest Post - Kristen Millares Young

About The Fall

You have to go, he said, finally. 

Go where? I asked. 

Inside. 

I have to stay with him, and watch. 

Watch what?

Watch for Owen.

Is this him?

The chill flesh of the dead man’s palm began to register in my hand. 

No.  I don’t know this man.  Owen is out there.

It had become dark while I knelt, shivering and staring at the ground.  It was raining.

How long has it been? I asked.

Three hours.  A long time now. 

He snapped on a new pair of gloves.  My name is Paul.

Crouching to take my hand, he examined my fingertips.  Your nail beds.  They’re purple.

I swayed, fetal, and shook my head.  He stooped and cradled me into his arms, moving faster now that I was secured. 

I thought of my wedding day, and doorways, and the rumble of Owen’s chest.  His slanted smile.

I had seen my husband breathing hard and pulling at his knee, wedged between seats smacked together by the impact.  Saw gray water foam with purses and peanut bags and tug his curls toward the sky.  Saw silver bubbles cling to the corners of his mouth as he punched the seat in front of him.  Saw others struggle and go slack. 

I know he pulled himself free, felt him jerk his leg loose.  Shared his surge to the fast retreating surface.  Heard the air escape his mouth like a flock of doves.

I hear them flutter and coo.  Their gentle murmurs echo through my bathtub, where I am releasing my breath, burble by burble.  My legs squeak against the porcelain.

Did fish stop to smell his chest when they parted the waves of hair to nibble his freckles, as I did.  Did eels slip their tongues between his front teeth, as I did.

By now, a pair of steeltoed boots has attuned to his absence like a lover, emptied by a thousand mouths, the strange clicking and whirring of the sea his final song. 

I turn on my side and nestle next to him.

Kristen Millares Young is a writer and journalist whose work has been featured by the Guardian, the New York Times, KUOW 94.9-FM, City Arts Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Miami Herald ,TIME Magazine and the Buenos Aires Herald. Kristen was the researcher for the NYT 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning story “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which also won a Peabody. Kristen graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts from the History and Literature Department, and from the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Washington. www.kristenmyoung.com

No News Today - Guest Post - Edward Falco

Possum Dreams

                                                 

(JAN brings dishes out from the kitchen and sets the dining room table neatly for two.  WALTER enters when she’s finished setting the table and is in the process of bringing out the makings for martinis and placing them on the counter.  He’s carrying a full book bag.)

                                                            WALTER

These kids, Jan, they are totally––  These are English majors!  I’m: What universe is this?  You never heard of John Dos Passos?  Okay, you haven’t read him, fine.  Who reads Dos Passos anymore.  But you never heard of him?  (beat)  Where are the twins?

                                                            JAN

                        (carrying glasses and bottles for making drinks)

You were warned, Sweetheart.  You can’t say you weren’t warned.

                                                            WALTER

(emptying several books and a laptop computer out of book bag.  He powers up the laptop and appears to be looking through files.)

I was warned . . .  What did you do today?

                                                            JAN

                        (making a martini, for Walter)

I went in to see Mrs. Weestock.

                                                            WALTER

You went in to see Mrs. Weestock?

                                                            JAN

I went in to see Mrs. Weestock.

                                                            WALTER

                        (agitated)

I thought we talked about this.  You can’t keep running interference for the kids.  You’ve been doing this since they were babies.  It’s got to stop, Jan.  They’re 18.  Vivian got a bad grade?  That’s it.  It’s got nothing to do with you.

(JAN brings WALTER his drink and kisses him on the cheek.  He returns the kiss dutifully.)

                                                            JAN

                        (making a drink for herself.)

I just had a little talk.  It was nothing.  I didn’t make a big deal

                                                            WALTER

You didn’t make a big deal.  We talked about this.

                                                            JAN

Can we drop it, please, Walter, can we?  What about you?  How was your class?

                                    WALTER

Kid called me Wall today.

                                                            JAN

Wall?

                                                            WALTER

That’s what I said.  I said, Wall?

Playwright Ed Falco, the widely published author of literary fiction and poetry, is best known recently for his novel The Family Corleone, the New York Times bestselling prequel to The Godfather. The New York Times has favorably compared his short stories to the work of Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus, and The Notre Dame Review has called him "one of the most powerful short fiction writers of his generation." The recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize from The Southern Review, a NEA Fellowship, and two playwriting fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Falco teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech. 

No News Today - Guest Post - Kassie Rubico

Day 7: Trapped at the Museum

We gathered
as four 
for the panda 
exhibit
but ended 
up watching 
Tamarins run 
through trees
Over 
then under 
limbs
scratching through 
coarse 
black and white fur 
scent marking 
their way 
through 
two hundred square feet 
of tropical forest 
behind glass,
caged in a see- 
through 
city.

Kassie Rubico is an essayist currently working on a memoir. Her work has appeared in Insight Academic Journal, Parnassus Literary Journal, the anthology, River Muse, Tales of Lowell and the Merrimack Valley, and Toska Literary Magazine. She has been a guest columnist for the Lowell Sun and a freelance writer for Coolrunning.com. She received a Master of Arts in Creative Writing and Literature at Rivier College and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Pine Manor College. She teaches writing at Northern Essex Community College.

No News Today - Guest Post - Dawn Pichon Barron

Living Things

When I was eight we moved to another farm. Big red house but no barn. In the field behind the house I found a baby rabbit. I cocooned it in the bottom of my t-shirt and took it home. Mom and I made a bed from an old shoe box, and I wrote Hopper's House on the side with a felt tip marker.. I fed Hopper from a eye-dropper and set the box by the wood stove to stay warm. In the morning I ran to feed Hopper, wondering when I could bring him to show and tell, but the box was gone. I looked all over the house. Mom didn't know where it went. I got ready for school and stared at my soggy cereal until it was time to leave. On the front steps was the box—empty. Then I saw Dad walking up to the house from feeding the horse and chickens.

Necessary Bifurcation

Loosen up—you amazonian boa: supple, shiny smother monster. I'm screaming through crushed lungs, although itt doesn't matter for I've lost my voice. Synapses misfiring, connectors coiled around the ifs and could haves; finally, at mid-life, I'm fearful, dead awake afraid because I'm losing it in this fray. I'm manhandling a self twenty years past. Like when I heard that song from twenty years ago on the radio yesterday and sang everyword, the flood of nostalgia squeezing my heart muscle. My husband said, “this is classic rock now.”

Nursemaid

Crutching up the front steps, entering the living room, cussing under my breath, I see two plastic lawn chairs, the hand-me-down sleeper sofa pushed to the back of the room. Mom smiling, “see your nice little place I made you.” I see my striped purple and white pillow, my faded flower bedspread. I point, “that one mine?” Mom nods. “That for you?” I point at the other chair. The toilet flushes, and in limps a man with yellow hair, yellow teeth and yellow beard. He holds his back with both hands. “This is Rod. He had back surgery. We are getting married.” I'd never seen this man in my life. I'd been gone one day having knee surgery. I cuss some more, loudly. Mom hands me a glass of water and pain pills. I close my eyes and hope to sleep for the rest of my life.

Dawn Pichon Barron teaches English, Native & Chicano Literature & writing to students at The Northwest Indian College~Nisqually Rez and Saint Martin's University. Her work can be read at Oregon Quarterly, Greenbeard Magazine, The Olympian, Of a Monstrous Child:  An Anthology of Creative Writing Relationships (Lost Horse Press), wordspace/The Black Front Gallery & at booksbeautybullshit.wordpress.com. She is founder and curator of the Gray Skies Reading Series in Oly, WA. She can be reached at pigeongirlsgot@gmail.com.

No News Today - Guest Post - Melissa Swantkowski

Something Useful

The pain in our teeth started gradually, and I was more focused on hers. “Soup doesn’t require chewing,” I told her. “Heated, just slightly, it won’t disturb the mouth at all.” We stocked up on Progresso, stacking cans two deep in the cabinets. We had in common a fear of the dentist, leftover from childhoods blighted by fillings in baby teeth, aggressive headgear and root canals by age nine. A few weeks in our relationship, we discovered we’d shared the same orthodontist.

Now, she had holes in her teeth, places where the composite fillings fell out, little white nuggets that she spit into her palm.

“Ow,” she said.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really, but don't you think it should?”

“Is it tooth?”

“I don’t think so. Look for me.” She directed and I complied, bracing myself above her and lowering my face, the closest to sex we’d come in weeks.

“I see a hole. Where it came from.”

She rolled a chunk between two fingers. “Ugh, it’s disintegrating.”

“You should go to our dentist.”

She said she’d go tomorrow. She stopped asking me to look into her mouth, but I could tell when something was wrong. From the look on her face and the slowed pace of her chewing, I could tell.

Perhaps our first bonding agent wasn’t something unique. It was, after all, a small town. The man had yellowed teeth and halitosis, hairy wrists that poked out of the space between his white coat and too-tight latex gloves, and a booming business. He shoved wads of dry cotton into our gums and made a buzzing sound in his throat as he adjusted. He buzzed along to Top 40 hits and left glue on our canines.

My molars started to ache, really ache. It’s my sinuses, I reasoned. Something seasonal. I could tough it out. Just opening my mouth was a chore. I eased the toothbrush out to find the bristles bent and sticky, as if my jaws had attacked, given up, gifted me with a stranger’s effluvia.

But I went, and once in the waiting room, it seemed silly how hard it had been to get there. Then, in the chair, reclined half back, it seemed like a bad idea again. Had I moved on? I hadn't. The dentist cleaned and polished. He mentioned a referral to an oral surgeon. He flossed my teeth starting in the front. “You should start in the back though,” he said. “People have a tendency to get lazy by the time they get back there, and oh.” He pulled the floss from my mouth and wiped something yellow and gummy on my bib. He took a metal tapper from his tray. That’s all I can think to call it, a tapper. He tapped a molar, gently, then a little harder. “How does that feel?” 

“Mmm, okay,” I said, though I wasn't sure. He tapped another. He pointed a stream of air into my mouth, then suctioned. His third tap pulled at the contents of my stomach.

This couldn't exist as something that I, alone, experienced.

“Not good,” he said. “It seems, with the cleaning, I’ve uncovered a network of cavities. They start here,” he tapped, “and go all the way back here,” he tapped his way into a far corner of my mouth. I imagined mole tunnels. My teeth like an unkempt lawn. I think I saw a glint of drill-giddiness in his eyes. My stomach protested. “Do you need a moment?” he asked, sitting back, crossing ankle over knee and glancing at the Novocain. I closed my mouth cautiously, afraid of what I might find when my teeth met.

The dentist pursed his lips and pushed his hands back inside my mouth, prodding my gums and tapping. “It’s generally true that your front teeth, the adult ones, are in proportion to your face. There is a ratio that works out mathematically.” I wondered what he was trying to tell me and couldn’t ask him with my mouth wide open and his hands inside. I tried to recall, looking at my teeth, if they seemed somehow proportionally relational to my face, 1/50ththe size, or perhaps, at a distance, the same shape. I tried to recall looking at her teeth, the time that I’d held my face over her, as close as the dentist was now. I had only looked in the back, but surely I’d noticed her smile, could remember it, or at least bring it back up as an image. But what I saw instead was the soup, cans lined up in my pantry like a grin.

The dentist nodded as if he’d told me something useful. He turned away to ready his instruments. I wondered there was something off about my teeth that made them wrong, something different from teeth, in general.

Melissa Swantkowski is the fiction editor at Bodega Magazine and one-half of The Disagreement, an edited reading series based in NYC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Joyland, The Mississippi Review, Monkeybicycle and elsewhere. You can read all of this again, and more, at melissaswantkowski.com

No News Today - Guest Post - Philip Shaw

Slept Like. Woke Like.

Then before our first reason to be alone together he was just my favorite teacher. And I found him. Then he said he needed my help because he was sick. And an internet search is all it took to find him. Then he took me into a storage room where he showed me how to jab the insulin needle into his ass. And I just went to see how he could be living with himself. Then the second time there was no needle. And the place is all his but he’s the only one working, just pushing drinks. Then I wanted him how only a thirteen-year old can want. And it’s built out of a few double-wides cobbled together and set down in a gravel lot off what is barely a highway. And there’s a decent jukebox. Then when I trusted him like I trust you now he said, ‘you’ll be better at everything she isn’t.’ And I am going to keep going, maybe again tomorrow. Then he said, ‘some day it can be just us because you’ll be old enough.’ And I will always just buy a couple drinks. Then his wife. And I just play a few songs on the jukebox. Then I slept like a dead girl. And I was ‘Just on my way to Sacramento.’ Then his kids. And the worse places always have the best jukeboxes because they deliver them stocked. Then I woke up like a dead girl. And the owners are too lazy to mess with the rotation. Then my parents. And I was ‘Just coming back from Sacramento.’ Then the church themselves. And every time I was the only one there. Then they were all taught to forget. And he lives in even worse of a shack out behind the place. Then none of them would bother with what I would remember. And he’s more than alone. Then there are no more promises. And all around is dark desert where you can’t see nothing. Then most of what I give you now still comes from him. And you know how sometimes something has to stop so things can be our own. Then you’ll want to make sure there’s none of me in all of this. And they’ll blame it on his pancreas. Then you walked out to where I waited for you in the dark. And what it’ll be like is just reading some news.

Philip Shaw is a creative director in the communication industry in Seattle, Washington. His poetry and prose has found homes at Kahini.org, the magazine Everywhere, and he was selected for the 2013 Wild Light Award, with the work forthcoming in the The Los Angeles Review. He visually explores his writing process at: www.aRoughDraft.com.

No News Today - Guest Post - Grace Campell

so much like in the story, if it was one, which it is, would be so bad it's funny.

in the story, the man who i met years ago surfaces from time to time.
in the story, he comes to my house, drunk, idling in the car he can’t afford, alongside the curb. in the story i tell him go away and in the story he goes away, then a few days later, he comes back.

but instead the story comes right up to my porch, 6'2" of inebriation and because I'm cast-iron i go out there, outside, go up to him, right up to that motherfucker and tell him go away.

i never fucked with this story but he thinks we're star-crossed lovers and i don't know why i forget this.

i'm telling you, it's some kind of biting sibilance, that moment the voice in your head tells you this is the story and shit is going down and it's not in your favor.

Grace Campbell was born, raised and educated in New York. She currently lives and works in Olympia, Washington.

No News Today - Guest Post - Erika Anderson

Slow in Your Slow World

One day your hand might reach
The heel that has fallen off your foot,
The plastic nude pump in the doorway
Looking as if it might walk in without you.

But for now your arm is suspended, a
Jeff Koons basketball in distilled water.
Your eyes are closed, but your cropped
Blond hair is gelled, you were ready
For the day, off to meet someone in your
Leopard print camisole and jean shorts.

We know you are a woman
Because in your ongoing forward bend—
The yoga pose of your afternoon—
Your thong rainbows out of your jeans,
Arcing over your ass, giving us symmetry,
If not beauty.

I wonder about these mean streets,
Why they haven’t taken you.
I wonder if someone will pick you
Up like a doll, and dust you off,
Take you somewhere near or far.

I wonder why I keep walking,
Why I don’t know what to say or do,
But who would I call and what would
They want? “There’s a woman nodding
on Broome,” I could say, but that’s not
news. Nothing’s ever news.   

Erika Anderson is a contributing editor for Guernica Magazine and teaches for the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Buzzfeed Books, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, where she co-hosts the Renegade Reading Series for emerging writers. 

No News Today - Guest Post - Joe Sacksteder

Is it in you?

From what our sources tell us, it isn’t. Perhaps it once was, but it no longer is. Like most everyone who grew up in this country, we’re sure it has been in you at some point. We want to put it back into you.Try to revive the bluffs that loomed above the outfield fence at Talcott-Page, the baseball-swallowing darkness that pocked the sumac and crevasses, the sirens – even a gunshot once in a while – that reminded you that this was the bad part of Rockford. As if you could have forgotten. It was summer and it was baseball and you were young, but dusk and storm clouds and the earthy smell of lightless conduits was an encounter with the end of something, there at the beginning.

Take a sip of Riptide Rush. Put Fierce Grape into you. Try to trick your body into believing – just for a moment – that you are still an athlete. That you still have and still need it in you.

Joe Sacksteder is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. Later this year, Punctum Records will release his album, as The Young Vish, of Werner Herzog sound poems.

No News Today - Guest Post - Scott Cheshire

"Water of Life”

Kingsley Amis once said “the really amazing achievement of the Western hero” had nothing to do with sharp shooting, or horse wrangling, but was “the way he could stride into a saloon, call for whiskey, knock it back neat and warm in one and not so much as blink.” I get the romantic impulse. For as long as I can remember being a drinker, or wanting to be a drinker, whiskey was the goal. It was tough, dark, and graduated to, a drink earned, not for everyone, and somehow both worldly and provincial, handed down to sons from fathers all over the globe. Never mind that my father never touched the stuff. Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” did in the Dollars Trilogy. And so did Gene Hackman’s “Popeye Doyle” in The French Connection II. “Scotch, right there, El Scotcho,” he says to a French barkeeper, while barely keeping his cool. Only just last year I tried to convince my wife that Popeye is a good strong name for a boy if we ever have children.

One Friday night, back when I was in my early twenties and working as a meat cutter in Duluth, Georgia, I had closed up shop, and shut the lights, when I heard a knock at the door. I looked up and saw one of our regulars, a man of about forty, which was just short of elderly to me at the time. I unlocked the door and told him we were closed. He asked if he could just get a few things. Please. I was newly moved out from my parents’ house (again), girlfriendless, and, frankly, I had little to do most evenings. I was about to say “sure,” when he said, “tell you what, I just bought some good Scotch, you ever have really good Scotch?” I was intrigued. I had not yet gotten past plastic bottle bourbon. He brought in a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Talisker. I grabbed two glasses from the sink. We upturned two empty five-gallon buckets, sat, and we sipped. It was like tasting the side of a hill: soil, grass, mineral. I’d never had anything like it in my life. He did not explain it to me. He did not condescend. He guessed the experience would speak for itself, and he was right. That was twenty years ago give or take.
- - -
A few random personal memories of whiskey:

1 – My first truly soul-bruising hangover during which I realize too much Jim Beam has the power to remove every last hope from your heart.

2 – Proudly bearing into my mother’s kitchen my first purchase of Maker’s Mark, telling her why it’s “special,” and her telling me that sort of spirit isn’t allowed in her home.

3 – Hearing burly punk rock journeyman Mike Watt boom out “drink that bourbon right straight down” on his second solo record, Contemplating the Engine Room, even further instilling in me the silly conflation of bourbon and manhood. (Not Mr. Watt’s fault. All mine.)

4 – Stumbling onto John le Carré’s novel The Night Manager (not too long after my Talisker epiphany), in which former soldier-turned-hotel manager Jonathan Pine and various players involved in a clandestine sale of black market weapons all “sip” on Scotch, and “take pulls” of Scotch, and “need large” Scotches in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the day, which forever changes my perception of booze, mixing my dreams of being a writer with the drinking of Scotch. This is followed by about ten years of foolish and ill-informed booze snobbery.

5 – Meeting my lovely wife—girlfriend, then—and spending our first summer afternoons romantically lazing on her porch in Atlanta, amidst occasional gunfire and the maddening singsong bells of a neighborhood ice cream truck that secretly sold drugs, until one day the driver was arrested and the truck was left for pillaging, but nevertheless we were lazing and drinking mint juleps. This returns me to bourbon.

6 – At some point I start writing a novel, although I don’t think it’s a novel at the time, just a really long story, a story about what is to grow up in America, so deeply steeped in its complicated Christian religious legacy, and what it means to divorce yourself from that (even while that’s pretty much impossible to do), except after six years of hard work I do not know how to end the book. And then one day I happen to read about the early American use of Bellarmine jars (also called witch jars, or beardman jars) on the 18th century American frontier, occult black pottery filled aged urine (!), animal hair, pages of biblical scripture, and crosses, all used as a charm against bad luck—and used by Christians. And, lo, that urine was aged in barrels, just like my favorite Kentucky bourbon, and I knew somewhere in that strangely mixed image and idea lay the ending of my novel.
- - -
Last year, I went to the doctor for my year forty physical, which thanks to recent studies no longer involves the probing one might fear (all that now happens at fifty). Liver: good. Heart: like a horse. Lungs: of a much younger man (I run and do not smoke). But my blood was in very bad shape, it turns out, my triglycerides through the roof, near the level of pancreatic shutdown. The doctor said it might be genetic, but he gave me a list: increase your exercise (no problem, there, recovering from a broken ankle, and so I’m anxious to get back to running); decrease your animal fat intake, and thus decrease your own fat (hopefully the running will help); drink red wine only; and no more whiskey. Please.

For the first time in my life I really did listen to my doctor because, well, I’m no longer feeling invincible (even as I write this, my ankle aches; the back does, too), and because I don’t romanticize, not anymore. All things must pass. Even me.

I should also say I’ve not given up whiskey for good. I have it once a week, usually on a Saturday night, at home, on the sofa, wife beside me, pug in lap, but this week I’ll likely have more. Because my book is now out in the world. And because there is something lovely and uplifting about having your brother, or a friend, or a peer pass you an unbidden celebratory tumbler. But next week I’ll return to my long daily walks, and whiskey-less nights with the wife. Although, maybe I’ll mix it up with a delicate whiskey cocktail, post-book birth week, in the new “now” of my “newish” life, and sit quietly with her, satisfied with a single and perfect pretty sazerac, at The Penrose Bar, my favorite local for an afternoon sip. Rye, neat, and a mere mist of absinthe, garnished with a bent lemon peel, as the barkeeper says in a shameless brogue that whiskey is Gaelic for “water of life,” and Kate and I talk yet again about having kids, or maybe not having kids, and do we stay in New York, or do we leave, and what to do with our next forty years.      

Scott Cheshire earned his MFA from Hunter College. He teaches writing at the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, and his work has been published in Slice, AGNI, Guernica, and the Picador anthology The Book of Men. He is the author of High as the Horses' Bridles (Henry Holt), and lives in New York City.

No News Today - Guest Post - Lauren Becker

Life People

Some of us were sitting around playing this game where you make up definitions of obscure words and the others vote on which definition is right, and this guy kept winning because his definitions always sounded like they might be true. He hated the game anyways. He wouldn’t say why.

I asked what game he wanted to play. He said Life. Did I remember Life? I did. I remembered those little cars with holes to plug in people as you moved around the board. I always had too many people in my car and ended up putting new ones in sideways or sitting up in uncomfortable positions.

I was there for trying to kill myself. He wouldn’t say, but his disappointment seemed familiar. We played; I abandoned my people in the car and his ran off the side of the long table where we ate. He left his people scattered on the floor. A nurse came in and asked who caused the mess. We told her this girl, Paula, who was way crazier than we were, did it while we were trying to play. We were doing origami by then. He presented the nurse with a tiny box. She traded him for a little plastic cup of pills and a paper one filled with water.

We turned to the page in the origami book that showed how to make cups. His was purple and mine was going to be yellow, but mine was purple, too. We put water in our cups, willing them to hold. For a few seconds, it looked like we were drinking grape juice from beautiful china. They crumpled under the weight of water. He collected mine and put both in the trash.

He asked me if I wanted to play another game. I picked up the deck of cards – the one with none missing – and dealt us hands of blackjack, kings showing for both. It was almost time for dinner. We would set aside the cards to eat overcooked meatloaf with french fries and wilted green salads with low-fat Ranch. The others started coming in with trays. I shuffled our cards back into the deck and knelt to pick up his Life people, putting them in the car, upright or sideways, facing in a direction we had forgotten.

Lauren Becker is editor of Corium Magazine. Her book of short fiction, If I Would Leave Myself Behind, was released by Curbside Splendor last week. This story is included in the book.She is a brand new resident of Austin, Texas and has the boots to prove it.

No news today

There is no news today.

No News Today - Guest Post - Kate Wyer

The pattern of erosion on the dog’s face marks his temperament. A strong temperament of solid joy. It’s a rare face because of the joy driven into it. Or rather, the joy that remained in the bones after age took the fat and buoyancy.

People took a chisel to some bedrock to show their love. Initials inside a heartcontainer. No undoing that gesture.

How selfish to have her daughter stand at the top of the waterfall, when the view is really from the bottom. The water just slips over the bedrock and is gone. At the bottom, where water hits water, foams white, sprays green, digs out rock and makes a cave—that’s where the mother stands.

That’s where the dog stands too, in the constant spray. Many things go wrong in the brain and maybe that’s one of them. The joy I mean.

The mother: wet and cruel. The daughter: dry and bored. The dog: joyful and wet.

The daughter kicks the carved initials. She digs her heel into the heart.

The firmament windows blue. Catches birds, releases them. Unlovely in its expansive arch. Unlovely because that’s where the mother looks half the day, looks up through the prism of water. Half the day at the dog.

The daughter arches her eyes up. Catches the bodies that fall in the firmamen

Unsaid awarded Kate Wyer the "Joan Scott Memorial Award" and nominated her for a Pushcart. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Moonshot,

No News Today - Guest Post - Tim Horvath

NO NEWS TODAY

Today you learn you don’t have to have your cross-country skis exact in the grooves in order to pick up the slick momentum they deliver. You learn that crossing a dog’s piss line can be precarious, a World War I trench-breach. You are trespassing not only on urine but on his vow to return, his yowls and teeth-baring atavistic laments for the rending of memory. You wish you could make the snow recount your own life, so that then you could simply walk away from it, returning only when the snow has vanished and the earth reverted to mud and loam. You are reminded that the consolations offered by the companionship of a guinea pig are limited. You learn that you do not necessarily know things you were sure you’d known, such as the location of your stuff you’d put in storage, that you were sure was being kept cozy and dry, the elements at bay. You will learn that no one cares about your stuff as much as you do. You will learn again that “you” can be both singular and plural, though “I” is always one. You will learn that you can increase your memory a thousandfold simply by following seven simple steps. You will learn that you are incapable, at this point in time, of traversing seven steps, even to get to the kitchen, the shower. You will read, staying in bed, something about building your memory palace, but you will forget what or where that palace is. Have the serfs that built your palace risen up in a surge of rebellion, leaving it ruinous, chasmed and chunked? Chunking, you will learn, is how you are supposed to hold things together. You will discover that your chunks are unwholesome, unwieldy sandwich-fare of lusting and longing, lost things, greasy fry-foil, and the struts of bridges out. You will come to realize that memory need not dwell in palatial conditions—that it can subsist in a shack an ice fisherman wouldn’t abjure, thrown-together particle board recovered from a sagging barn along with rusty trikes and Howdy Doody dolls with rust lodged in their eye sockets and sprinkled in their clothes and dusting over their freckles like an orange snow that won’t go away because no accomplice of cold. You will learn that memory can shop around for a new place, something well short of a mansion, Mc- or otherwise, can be open to looking at efficiency apartments, rehearse prying open the fridge and consulting the relish for mold without scorching ass on the burner’s gas pressed right up against the back like some force that, however galvanizing, is unwanted. You will learn that in the end memory can go homeless like anyone or anything, lodging itself wherever it can, in alleyways, under fire-escape awnings, in shelters, soon enough never again too proud to ask for soup, to gesture for seconds. Eventually memory, you, will find your way back to your own couch. Things will keep surfacing: bones of unreckonable species, enough cereal to bead a necklace twice around, the remaindered ones set aside for a bracelet. You’ll keep moving the age of your relationship backwards with each new excavation, every find. You’ll wonder whether someone else was living with you all along, some third party that was discrete and hairless, or just discrete.

I miss you and your almost-raw diet. I miss its exceptions, your stockpiling of tuna. I miss the vowels you invented, and those you inverted. I miss the way you’d talk about the Feng Shui of time and rearrange events that I’d thought were pretty much nailed and soldered into the floor, the wall. I even miss what I recognize only now: how you saw every wall as a climbing wall, were always scanning for footholds, places you could land your hand, calculating which carabiner you’d need, which rope, which of your yoga retreat goddesses you’d channel for, among many things, her plenitude of hands, blurring as they grasped and clung, whirling in the face of such a range of choices, options, ways to get up and over and away.

Tim Horvath is the author of Understories (Bellevue Literary Press) and Circulation (sunnyoutside press). He teaches creative writing at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and Grub Street, and can be found at timhorvath.pubspring.us/

No News Today - Guest Post - Amanda Stern

The First Thing About Raising Babies

Laura found a baby on the street and her mom’s letting her keep it. It’s not fair because Laura gets everything she wants and I’ve wanted a baby for a lot longer than she has. That’s why I told her she should let me keep it, but she said no, finder’s keepers, or some such. I told her fine, she could keep the baby, but I got to name her. Laura said I could name my own baby, but I don’t have my own baby, which is the exact problem I’m discussing right now.

Laura’s mom said, here’s how it works. She said babies have mothers and fathers. That’s why her mother made the condition. The condition was that Laura could keep the baby, but only if she chose a boy to be the father. A father Laura’s mother approved. Laura doesn’t even like boys and that’s why I said to pick me, but her mom said, no. Her mom said I’m not a boy and fathers are boys. Laura told her, she said, but I don’t like boys, I want Sarah. Her mom said no; her mom said Laura wasn’t old enough to know whether she liked boys or if she liked girls and if, when she grew up and decided she liked girls, then that would be a conversation they could have then, but for now, Laura’s mom told her, she liked boys and she needed to pick one and that was the end of the discussion. Because she’s the mom, that’s why.

And that’s when Laura went and picked Pete Derry, which was the exact wrong choice. Pete Derry doesn’t even like babies or girls. He likes Little League and video games and he isn’t even good about sharing because he never gives me a turn at anything. Pete Derry doesn’t even like his own baby brother! Laura said that was different because that baby was a brother and this baby was a daughter, and those are not the same things. Pete didn’t want to be the baby’s dad, but his father said he had to. He said, it’s the right thing to do.

Laura told me all this a week after she found the baby. We had a play date, which had to be at her house now. She was a mother and Pete Derry was a father and they got to name their baby and I got nothing. Not even the middle name. Not even an initial. Pete Derry’s dad said he had to marry Laura now that they had a baby, but Pete didn’t want to. His mom said he didn’t have a choice; he had to be responsible. Pete’s mom gave him her mother’s antique ring and said he had to engage it to Laura, and even though she didn’t like it because it was too big and looked like Barbie’s beauty pageant crown, she had to wear it. She had to wear that old lady ring until they got married. Then I don’t know what.

Maybe she has to give it back.

Laura’s mother went overboard with the wedding – that’s what my own mother said. She said, no one throws theme weddings anymore. Theme weddings are tacky. That’s what my mom said, which insulted my stepfather because he said, we had a theme wedding, and my mom said, that’s different. Ed asked, how so, how’s it different? Which was when my mom looked at him like he was thick and dense. Because we’re us and they’re them, that’s how so, is what my mom told Ed. That seemed about right to Ed and so it seemed about right to me. My mom leaned over the kitchen counter and took the cigarette from Ed’s mouth and made it her own. On the couch she unbuttoned the top of her jeans. She can never breathe when she sits because her clothes are too small. She wears them this way on purpose. That’s the way Ed likes it, she told me once, laughing. I laughed too because I knew I was supposed to, but I still don’t know why it’s funny. My mom can’t breathe in the clothes she wears, but she won’t buy bigger ones. Otherwise, Ed will probably divorce.

I looked everywhere for my own baby. I looked in bathroom stalls and in empty classrooms. I climbed on the cinder blocks behind school to look in the dumpster. I opened the lockers in the girls’ locker room and looked in the sports closet. I even looked under the seats on the school bus. I looked on the street too, of course, but that’s where Laura found hers.

Pete had to miss Little League and he was mad about that, but it wasn’t a choice, his father said, he had to be at his own wedding. He has a baby now; his whole life is different. Everything is going to change. Pete said he didn’t want his whole life to change and his dad said, well, you should have thought about that before.

Kids weren’t invited to the wedding, which was exactly unfair. That’s how I thought it. We’re their friends, I told my mother. Doesn’t matter, she said. Kids are a nuisance at weddings, and everyone knows it. Let the adults have some fun for once. Can’t you kids ever just give us one night off? They had never asked for one night off. If they had gone and asked it, I would’ve given it, but they never did and now they went and complained about it.

Laura showed me her wedding dress, which was her mother’s and even though it was too long, her mother wouldn’t let her shorten it. I wasn’t at the wedding, but I have imagination enough to know it looked funny. My mother will let me shorten hers, I know it. They put the baby in a bassinette between them and the priest said all the things and they repeated them and gave each other more rings and said I do, but they wouldn’t kiss. That’s where they drew the line. I would have drawn the line at Pete Derry.

Laura’s mom bought them an apartment and Pete’s mom furnished it, but Laura’s mom said leather couches and candelabras weren’t appropriate for children and made her send it all back and she had to absorb the cost of something or whatever and some such. Pete’s mom told everyone that Laura’s mom had no class. My mom laughed when she told Ed. They agreed about the leather couch and said Pete’s mom didn’t know the first thing about children. Also, it’s true that Laura’s mom has no class. My mom told me that one night while I was brushing my teeth.

Pete wanted the baby to be a boy, but Laura said, it’s a girl and you can’t change that. Pete asked, can we call her Doug? Laura said, no. How about Clyde? Laura said, no - Candelabra. That was her name. Pete didn’t like that name but Laura said it sounded beautiful to her and she found the baby and he didn’t have any choice. Pete called her Doug when Laura wasn’t around. I even heard it myself. Pete said it would be funny to teach the baby all the wrong things. Pete said, what if we told her a baseball was a piano and a hat was a fish? Laura told Pete he didn’t know the first thing about raising babies.
Laura’s mom told her that good mothers took care of their babies and didn’t go back to school to finish third grade and Laura said, well what about fathers? Laura’s mother said, Pete has to get a job. Pete didn’t want to get a job but that was his tough luck because he was married now, with a child, and someone had to support the family. It was the right thing to do, Pete’s mother told him and then she typed up a resume. She said lying wasn’t proper but if it’s for a good cause it’s okay. This is what she said when she made up all those resume jobs.

At dinner, I told my mom it wasn’t fair. Laura got everything and I got nothing and my stepfather Ed said, what about food poisoning? You got that once. Which was supposed to be funny, although it was not. He laughed out loud anyway. Ed always laughs out loud at his own jokes. Trust me, you don’t want a baby. They’re nothing but trouble, my mother said. I told her, you had me. I was a baby! My point exactly, is what she had to say about that. I looked at Ed and he shrugged. He never knows what to do with my mom. Neither do I.

Pete had trouble getting a job. It’s a bad economy, Pete’s dad told him, but Pete didn’t know what that meant. Neither did Laura. Neither did I. People are getting laid off left and right, Pete’s dad told him, but Pete didn’t know what that meant. Should have thought of that before you had a baby, Pete’s dad told him. Maybe this will teach you a little something about responsibility. Pete’s father sat in his green armchair reading the paper and circling jobs. His mother made more coffee because it was going to be a long day. His dad told him, that’s what happens when you grow up too fast. Pete said he didn’t grow up and his dad said he was acting like a child, and Pete said, I am a child! Then Pete’s dad lowered his newspaper, shook his head and said, looks like someone’s having trouble growing up.
That’s when Pete stormed out of the house and went back to his own apartment where Laura was drawing a wall mural with crayons and the baby was sleeping or pretending to sleep. He looked at the baby in the crib and said to Laura, let’s sell the baby. You can’t sell a baby, Laura told him.

You can sell anything, he said.
Not air.
Probably.
Try it then, you’ll see.
Pete sat on the end of the bed. Laura went back to drawing on the wall.
So are we selling the baby, or not?
Not, Laura said. I like her.
I want a divorce.
You can’t have one.
Why not?
Because I don’t want one. Besides, I don’t know how to do that.
Our parents will do it for us, Pete told her.
No. We’re not getting a divorce. I like being married.
I don’t, Pete said.

Well that’s too bad for you, Laura told him.

I went over to Laura’s after school when Pete wasn’t home and she gave me a snack because she was a mom. The snack was a grape soda which is my least favorite flavor of soda. I drank it anyway to be polite. Laura complained that having a baby made it hard to get anything done. This made me really mad and I wanted to put my two fingers in my mouth and suck on them, but I am trying to quit. She said that babies are a lot of work and by 3 o’ clock, she still hasn’t gotten to the breakfast dishes! She didn’t even appreciate the good things she had right in front of her face. If I had a baby I wouldn’t complain at all, not even once. She said she liked having a husband, though Pete wasn’t good at telling her she was pretty or saying he was sorry.

I asked my mom, where do people meet husbands anyway and she told me, bars. Bars or gas stations. Why, she asked laughing right at my face, you in the market? I didn’t know what that meant so I didn’t answer. My mom met Ed at Ralph’s Fillin’, a gas station, right past Grinder’s. I didn’t know how to get to any bars, but I knew how to get to Ralph’s. I didn’t tell Laura or Ed or anyone. I wanted it to be a surprise. I’d go to Ralph’s Fillin’ and get a husband. I was going to pick a better one than Pete Derry, and Laura would be jealous. Mine would tell me I was pretty. He’d say it all the time. Plus, he’d never forget something as important as putting the seat down. When I brought him home, my parents would tell me that since I was married, we needed to get a baby. Then they’d help us find one.
My mom has a lot of makeup and even a table where she sits and puts it on. I watch her sometimes before she gets ready for a date with Ed, so I know where to find everything. I even know all the spots on your face you’re supposed to color in, which is the exact thing I did. I love the bright colors and I put a lot of red on my lips and pink on my cheeks but I left out the eyes because that part is complicated. I sprayed her perfume on me, too, but the smell was too sweet so I washed it off. Even then, I could still smell it a little.

I wanted a husband like Ed, so I thought I would wear clothes that didn’t fit, just like my mom did. Pete Derry didn’t care what Laura wore which meant he was a bad husband. I dragged a bag of last year’s clothes from my closet into my parents’ room to get dressed. My mom and Ed had a lot of full-length mirrors in their bedroom. They even had a couple on their ceiling. I could see every part of myself in them. My shorts from last year were very tight and I couldn’t breathe so I unbuttoned the top button, but that didn’t help. I took the shorts off and tried on a skirt, which was better for breathing. The skirt was very short and you could see my underwear if I bent over even a tiny little bit. That meant it didn’t fit, so I kept it on. I put on my, “Treat Me Like a Princess” tee shirt which was too tight and when I pulled it down, it stopped right above my belly button so that my stomach showed. Everything was too small, except my shoes, which fit, but I didn’t think that would make a difference. Then I put my mom’s purse over my shoulder, the one with the gold chain, and put on a little more lipstick and felt ready to go.

Everyone was going to be so surprised, especially Laura. I couldn’t wait to see her face when she saw my husband. I couldn’t wait to hear her say, Pete doesn’t do any of those things for me. Or even, I wish I had a husband like yours. Then she’d know what it feels like to not have what she wanted.
My mom and Ed were in the living room playing video games on TV. It was 4 o’ clock and in two hours it would be dinner time. I wanted to tell them to make enough for four people, but then they would ask who number four was and I wanted it to be a secret, so I didn’t say anything. They didn’t see me leave the house, which gave me a real relief. I knew the gas station was to the left so I spread my hands out in front of me and when I saw the hand that made an L for left, that is the direction I turned. I must have looked really pretty because people in cars whistled and shouted at me on the highway as they passed. It was a long walk there. Usually we drove, so it was fast. I didn’t realize there would be such a big difference between driving and walking until I noticed how long it was taking. My legs were getting very tired and I wondered if Laura had ever come this far by herself. Probably not. She didn’t even have to go far to find that baby. It made me mad that she got everything she wanted. I couldn’t even get to Grinder’s without having to stop and rest, which is the exact thing I did.

I climbed up to the flat part of a big spray painted rock and sat, holding my mom’s purse on my lap, letting the gold chain dangle and bump against the side of my thigh. This kind of thing bothers my mom, but it didn’t bother me. A black car came fast and I lifted my chin to feel the wind splash against my ears and across my face as it passed. Ed told me that the world sounds closer when your eyes are closed. I closed my eyes and held them that way. The car sounded like it was running over my head and shivers sparkled up my skin. Behind me the sun was climbing down from the sky.
When I climbed down from the rock my stomach growled and a dizziness grew on the inside of my head. I knelt in the soil and piled rocks so that when I came back tomorrow I’d see how far I got. When I finished, I put the chain of my mom’s purse back over my shoulder and stood, holding my arms out in front of me and followed the L for left. I daydreamed while I walked which kept me company. I imagined my husband letting me name all our babies. We’d do grown-up things like make coffee and smoke cigarettes. He’d have a good job and for my birthday, he’d surprise me by re-decorating my bedroom. I reminded myself to start earlier than 4 o’clock tomorrow because I don’t like walking in the nighttime. Even though it was too dark to see very far, I worried killers could see me. I worried that the murderers who live behind trees in the woods saw through the night like daytime. I wished the sky’s lights would come on, just a little until I got home. On the other side of the road cars passed and cars passed, but on my side, one drove slow and I imagined he was making sure I didn’t get murdered. I saw a light in the distance which made a baby kick from inside my heart. Tiny ankle jabs that told me something was wrong. There was Grinder’s and beyond it, Ralph’s Fillin’. I felt numb like a dentist poured his tooth potion all over me. I kept walking because Ralph’s was getting closer. A car behind me was driving real slow. I figured he was running out of gas.

Then that car pulled up beside me. I stopped because the car stopped and the man driving leaned his body over the passenger seat, toward me. He asked me where I was going. I’m trying to get home, I told him, but you’re going the wrong way. He said not to worry about which was he was going. He said he’d take good care of me and he said to get my pretty self into his car because he wanted to make sure I got where I needed to go. He unlocked the passenger side door and opened it for me from the inside, which seemed like a real husbandly thing to do.

No News Today - Guest Post - William Hastings

Isla Holbox, 2009

Against the coast of Isla Holbox,
During whale shark season,
In the light of late afternoon,
The sea lay flat and turquoise.
Fishermen
Hand cast their nets in wide scimitar arcs
across the shallow pools,
torn flags refusing surrender.

I sat in the shade of our balcony
With a red beer can and a shot of tequila
the color of raw gold.
You slept inside.
A machete rung against the trunk
of a coconut tree.

After midnight, we'd lay against the sheets
And listen to the lizards run into the glass door.
It had been dark for a long time,
My next step did not involve you.

"This isn't real," you said.
"No. It's not."
My cigarette smoke crashed
and spread across the ceiling.
"It could be home," you said.
"Did you hear the guitarrista tonight?"
You bunched your eyes.

In those long moments before forgetting,
Belief was something I shared
With the whore at Isla del Colibri
But for different reasons.
I learned about long days dying
like the last fires of earth,
While my heart played dirty pool
against the tides.

William Hastings lives in Pennsylvania and works for Farley's Bookshop. He has an MFA from Pine Manor College and his work can be found in Hanging Loose, Boulevard, Akashic Books' "Cape Cod Noir" and Fray Quarterly.

No News Today - Guest Post - Sophie Peters

Behind Kitchen Doors

They’ve got him working in his sleep. It’s 12-hour shifts everyday of the week. Server by day and shucker by night. He wakes up and sometimes cries. He often buys flowers at night to cheer himself up.

Behind closed kitchen doors, there’re never too many pots and pans to pile up. There is never a lack of uneaten desserts or broken plates. There is a waitress that would be considered unattractive if freckles were a flaw.

He goes to the back to masturbate to her, but this type of thing never gets him fired. He wants to be the boss and write poetry on her paycheck. He wants to watch her choose between chocolate cheesecake and cracked crème brulee. He wants to describe the curves of her hair and tell her his favorite books.

His eyes often tear from all the onions he’s peeled.

Sophie Peters is a recent graduate from Pratt Institute, where she got a BFA in painting. Visit her website, www.sophiapeters.com to view more work and to contact her! She also loves to do yoga and her favorite color is blue.

No News Today - Guest Post - Robert Kloss

From The Alligators of Abraham

And when the war was at its lowest, Abraham was visited by the face of the Lord in the night. Remember now this man Abraham, alongside his wife, and how she snored while he lay awake watching the shadows fold and unfold upon the ceiling. Remember how the Lord, great and nameless in all, called to him in the voice of shadows upon the ceiling: “This war of yours,” the Lord spoke, “calls for the blood of a son. Let the red stream flow.” And how sorrowful became this man Abraham, how his every gaze followed the figure of his boy, Willie, this boy he loved more than his very soul, this boy Willie and the war noises he made unto his lead soldiers, and there Abraham stood in his top hat, and there Abraham said unto the boy, “This union shall not perish from the earth.”

Remember this boy on the front page of the papers, his face cocked to the side and his half-smile, his coal black hair, his lace frills and velvet jackets, dead of what they officially called a “bilious fever.” Remember now this boy who raced goats along the capital lawn with his brother. Remember now this boy of your age and height and hair color, dead in the morning. Remember how the official release spoke of his emaciated body wrung dry. Remember this boy who sought to execute his play soldiers until his father pardoned them by official letter. Remember now this boy, dead in his bed-clothes, and how Abraham wept and murmured through the day, “You were too good for this earth, Willie my boy, it is a hard, hard thing to have you die for this cause.”

And how all the world seemed born into wailing and the tolling of church bells and twenty-one gun salutes, how Mary Todd in her black gowns and gauze pressed her nose to the windows overlooking the lawns and the roads, and how she said, “Where are they? Why aren’t they here to pay their respects?”

Remember those days were the days of caskets, and now Willie’s was but one of these.

Remember  how  Abraham’s figure  stooped over Willie’s, the slow melt of ice along the floor boards sopping into the Persian rug, Abraham’s face buried in his hands, how he attended not to his papers, his war. And  how Abraham paced, moaning, before the boy’s casket. How he slept before his son, his great figure curled, his legs drawn up and how his white stockings and whiter flesh shown beneath his black trousers, and when he sat awake all your valley knew the sound of his pitched weeping. And in the still midnight how Abraham said unto his wife, “I need a glass of water” and instead journeyed to the body of his son on display and laid kisses upon that once sweet brow, and how he sought to remove the silver dollars from the boy’s lids, whispering, “Please, please my boy, oh my boy, my heart—” Remember how servants found Abraham asleep and draped over Willie’s casket, the boy’s jacket sodden with Abraham’s tears, and Abraham wept for what he called “his guilt,” and so it was said Abraham cleansed and cleansed until the blood dripped from his rubbed-red hands.

And now Abraham and his youngest son Tad curled into bed with each other, and Abraham whispered stories until this tender lad dozed. And Abraham excused himself from cabinet meetings for his weeping, for his dazed expression, his strange wandering mind, and he called out “Quiet down now Willie” or “Play with your carriages elsewhere lad,” and when his sobs were heard by those he trusted most, these said unto each other, “We may need a new president.”

Remember how Abraham twice exhumed Willie, stood by while government workers shoveled free and mounded the soil. How he fell upon the casket raised above the soil. How he fell upon the figure of his boy once the crowbar pried free the lid, the dust and gases of the grave and all others fell to coughing and gagging while Abraham held tight the disassembling body of his son, the body grown to dust, to soil, the body burrowed through and rotten, the body of hair grown long and tangled, the body of fingernails, of gases. This body of the boy he kissed now, this body he wept upon, this body ever of his boy, this body ever of his body.

And it was said Mary Todd would not rise from bed for the death of Willie, and it was said Abraham crouched by her catatonic figure and fed her soup by prying her gray lips open with one hand and sliding the spoon in with his other, and he hummed the tunes he knew she had loved to hear Willie sing “Yankee Doodle” and “the Camptown Ladies” and Abraham said finally, “Mother, you must pull together or you see that white building across the way?” and he gestured to the hospital across the street. “Mother, we will have to send you there. And my heart will be too lonesome to bear.”



Robert Kloss is the author of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria and The Alligators of Abraham. He is found at robert-kloss.com.

No News Today - Guest Post - Sarah Dohrmann

Our needs rage on like a neglected fire. My needs, your needs, the cashier's needs, the teacher's needs, our parents' needs, the kids' needs. On and on, our hungry need. Today on the subway in the Bronx, folks called each other nasty names because somebody demanded a seat and somebody pushed somebody and somebody else looked at somebody funny and Hey! Somebody here needs to get his ass to work!

Needs. Oh to be the little dog that lives above me. As I sit here at my desk I can hear his mommy climbing the building stairs, calling, "Is that Boo Boo? Boo Boo? Is Boo Boo going to greet me?" She starts this game when she gets to the second floor; she lives on the third. All the way up the stairs she's calling Boo Boo's name and damned if I don't hear Boo Boo's claws make contact onto the hardwood floor above me. I imagine he's been having himself a skittish Boo Boo nap at the very moment he heard the distant call of "Boo Boo! Boo Boo!" The door is opened by a key. "Ah! It's Boo Boo! Oh my gosh, Boo Boo!" squeals Mommy. She lifts him, his tail scissors, he licks up a glorious gulp of need.

In Brooklyn there's no space on the train. Most of us want to sit, but we don't need to sit, not really. And the guy who won't move his belongings from the seat next to him knows the difference between our want and our need; he couldn't give a rat's ass about either. This makes want elevate to the rank of need, that fire. I mean, the motherfucker hasn't even bothered to look up from his book to see if I need.

Sarah Dohrmann has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Award in Nonfiction Literature, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship of the Arts for Creative Writing in Morocco. With photographer Tiana Markova-Gold, Sarah won the 2010 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Work from their photography/writing collaboration has been featured in The British Journal of Photography and excerpted in TIME Magazine's LightBox. Sarah has written feature work, travel writing, cultural commentary, short stories and essays for Glamour, Poets & Writers, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Bad Idea (England), and The Iowa Review, among others. She is a member of the text and jazz ensemble FlashPoint NYC. Her current and anticipated work is a book of literary journalism titled Lost Girls that concerns the lives of prostituted women in Morocco. You can read more of her work on her blog, Und You Vill Like It.

No News Today - Guest Post - Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Her long nails click on the keyboard.  He goes for a beer.  Rain or sleet in the streets, depending, and not one church bell ringing, not one.  And that for weeks.

Her story spins but she keeps the clicking going and six beers later darkness enters the room.  He does too, but the clicking keeps him from putting his hand on her neck, keeps him from speaking.  Her story begs for a response.

The tape-recorder in the steeple broke.  It can't play its ringing church bells, so the reel spins madly, up there, day and night: Slip-slip-slip. Slip-slip-slip.

People come out of their houses.  Did you expect that sleet they say.  It's rain, some answer.  What about the bells, they ask.  Let them be, some say.

She keeps on typing.  It's essential, you understand.  Her nails shorten. The clicking dims.  She hears him say I'm going for a beer.  Story of my life, she clicks.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, A New Hunger, published by Ausable Press. She has taught at several colleges and universities, including Sarah Lawrence College and the Solstice Low-Residency MFA program at Pine Manor College.