Cur(rent) Is(sue)

Welcome to Is(sue) 11, Kinfolk! Thank you for loyally contributing, reading, and sharing! It is you who make this ezine and you who keep it breathing. The twelfth regular is(sue) will go live on December 15, 2022. See Sub(missions) in the menu (for more information).

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As Ed(itor)s, Sabne Raznik and David Sykes would like to remind those who wish to contribute work that this e-zine is about experimental writing and art. So, please, send us your weirdest, most exciting, and avant-garde pieces! (Please, read the guide(lines) under Sub(missions) in the menu thoroughly.) We are artists - the rules need not apply. We also welcome submissions from around the world as one of our stated goals is to bring the world to Appalachia and Appalachia to the world.

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Avant(Poetry)

"a part of earth"

Sandi Keaton-Wilson, Kentucky

i have spent
much of my life
looking out windows
feeling walls imprison
and God has to hear
me better when I'm outdoors
eyes to sky sequined
i have always been drawn to jewels
sometimes in the night
i leave my bed and room
leave home if I have to
to smell rain wet earth
and commune with
a coffer of trees
their wooden arms
invite, respite,
do not imprison
but release me
to be as much
a part of time and earth
as they

"Imperial Assassin"

Robert Beveridge, Ohio

it’s not like Alan
just sits in that
grave (oh wait
yes it is)

yet we all know
the terror
of regaining
consciousness
in a Comfort Inn
hotel room
at 2:30PM
surrounded
by bottles of Nyquil

your back covered
in disposable
electrode pads
and Creflo Dollar
on the TV
in the middle
of a pitch
for your final
five simoleons
to bail your
uncle out
of the drunk tank

you stumble out
into the dawn fog
gotta be a place
that serves machaca
around here somewhere

"Oozing in the Doorway"

Fabrice B. Poussin, Georgia

The unthinkable upon the wedding altar
a white gown shattered with purple streams
outside, thunder rolls in angry roars
firing icy rockets onto the ancient walls.

The pale bride stands proud in the eerie carapace
a veil hides secrets forgotten for eons
as candles flicker under the frigid breeze
an unsuspecting groom considers passionate vows.

It had not been so long since she was on the attack
pouncing on the innocent returning to the abode
what once had been his safe home
now seems to crumble as if a haunted citadel.

The creature dressed in false guilt drowned in apologies
claws crossed beneath the thick golden fleece
as again he forgave the eyes fattened with tears
he did not see the reddening depth of her thoughts.

Spectators pondered the theater they wrote
glad to be rid of the rambling nightmare
while the wretch dove into the impossible torrents
rivers of darkness flow with horror into Hades.

She ogles the golden trap soon to close
building a prison on every hope he still had
for soon again she will deploy her greenish hatred
and tear his heart to pieces relishing in his desperate cries.

"To the Park"

Fabrice B. Poussin, Georgia

Joy in the grass near a bruised knee
when the cries of joy mimic groans of pain
it must be a kind new day in the land.

The babes slept well eager to awaken early
jump onto the mysteries to discover
and undertake another brief adventure.

It has been a frenzy of excited cries
chaotic declarations of pride and puzzlement
beneath a tree bewildered with shiny ornaments.

Now all experiments must be fulfilled
by playground driveway garage and attic
for all must ascertain the worthiness of the prize.

A two-hour journey into a blissful future
to be renewed on the same saintly date
and forgotten upon that very dusk.

Scrapes, bruises, and broken implements
none will survive beyond the year
but the memories will endure for infinite generations.

"Forest Sketch"

Algo, Ireland

The forest has no answers.
The forest has memory
But has learned how to die and live again.
The forest has memory.
Some of them are also mine.
I envy what is newly born
That knows no songs of life well worn.
Water.
For the first time in months.
There are three men in a boat,
Who don’t know what they are looking for.
Neither do I.
There are small, sherbet side of yellow coloured, newly flowered flowers
And I have no idea how they have been named.
The thin tall barked trees stand at slight attention,
Stiltedly leaning in, unceremoniously dressed in phthalo green ivy scarves,
Forming a guard of honour for their returning guest.
This is the first time he has not cried here while walking alone.

"Self-Care / Health Care"

Algo, Ireland

I am about as comfortable today in my head and in my house,
As a diabetic geriatric in a paper gown on a railed off trolley in a
Dehydrated, overcrowded public hospital corridor on a busy Friday night
Without a phone charger.
Self-care is everywhere these days, even there.
From Buddhism to bubble baths.
A transactional exchange for a mildly transitory state of mind.
Self-care is everywhere.
Apart from in the power of those with a mental illness
To perform.
Like a salivating, tail wagging dog.

"An accident waiting to happen"

Algo, Ireland

I remember you lying in sand dunes
On warm afternoons
And before everything else happened.
I remember lying to myself.
I remember liking that you lied to me.
I forget that sometimes,
Before all the real lies.
I walked onto that same beach today
Hoping that the tide had daily devoured memory
And crushed it into small smooth coloured stones,
To take with you
Or to leave there.
I walked into the surf.
I said hello to the dry robes
And waved goodbye to the small stones.

"The Italian Story"

Susan H. Evans, Maryland

“Zucchero!” the white-haired donna flutes, learning on a cane,
while upstairs,
my travel deodorant crumbles
like old feta cheese.
Scout shrugs, smashes her blond hair under red cap.
Starred, she is, and former Knight Templar and World Bank orator,
although her left nostril flakes awful;
while Jackie-O Kim drones nasally, hair clipped back, and black eyes snap.
Says I’m so rude.
Visits her avatar in Wales, and somewhere in Michigan,
her Greek family froze America’s first apple pies.
But upstairs, bay leaves brown in a baggie
And an umber-striped altar stone balances on my dresser.
Downstairs, though,
the ominous rumble of a mini- washer tucked
beside a toilet ruminates on my clothes,
clasped in its cheese grater cage,
while -- mean as a pit bull chained in a thunderstorm --
Kay, the Atlanta grandDesdemama --
wrings her gnarly hands in the cold
marble kitchen, assuming the lead in Summer and Smoke,
almost killing (with a rental) a man on a motorcycle, and snarls at me, “Don’t
touch any dials.”
Outside, Scout hangs her travel pants on a retractable clothesline in the shrubbery, as the cedars
shudder and the olive trees drip.
And upstairs
the short, wistful, silver-haired, insomniac Liz
with the invisible, but obvious, lip tremble
sleeps in, sheets torn in imaginary strips.
Points out, “This is not a democracy,”
while next door, the aging Brazilian movie star,
wide-bottomed, tattooed brow,
rises long after the
turtle doves coo themselves hoarse,
flowing in a palm-frond kimono and sponge rollers.
Suffers mussel poisoning, alternating diarrhea and sciatica,
while me, sluggish and reluctant to let go, constipates and scratches a spreading rash.
But downstairs,
I wave at the useless plumber out the back window, as
he makes a universal “blow up” gesture,
then stir boiling oats, and slice big
strawberries, selecting the darkest out of charity.
They think the same about me in their red- beaded insolence.
Insulted, I drag on turquoise footsies
and pad to the gray stone villa
steps while prickles of pain stab up the old legs,
but when upstairs
I avoid the handwriting on the wall and wonder
if the vintage chandelier’s twisty fluted arms, wiry leaves, and glassy-eyed
flowers hanging from a gold chain
might fell on my head.
Jumping in the car, the Twins (Kim and the grimly-smiling Toronto
Sharron, who says, “Trip of a lifetime!”)
and Liz, Scout, and Kay hurry to catch the Empoli train to Rome.
It seems a far stretch
and my amber bead consultant advises, “Don’t do it.
The connection isn’t private.”
But,
nevertheless,
we all
smile
bravely,
toast one another and gulp
down gallons of red wine,
though
in the lingering hours of night,
in hard, lumpy, twin beds
we feel barely connected, and curiously discomforted in faded floral duvets.

"Cloud and Linen"

Ramey Channell, Alabama

We were hydrangeas
living blue for water.
We were angels; our faces
shattered sunlight into halos.
We were suns too bright
and moons too pale
to fill the tragic universe of time.
And left lonely by day
and lonely by night,
we danced not joyfully
but like drifting flowers
on a shoreless sea.

We were cloud and linen.
We were flightless birds whose dreams
were mists of half remembered flight.
Drowning. How did we even breathe?
Or did we ever breathe?
I can’t remember breathing.
We were resplendent microscopic fruit,
as seasons turned
and traveled on without us.
We were too frail to follow seasons
as they flew away
and left us, abandoned under trees.

We were melancholy strains of music.
Our hands were always empty,
and we always thought
somehow we’d find a way
to fill our empty hands, with dreams,
with sky, with all that we had lost.
Hydrangeas in summer
dancing under water,
we yearned for air.
I remember now:
we were flightless birds
with half remembered dreams of flight.

I don’t know what we were.

We were cloud and linen.
We were sand and clay and grass in summer;
we were ice and broken trees in winter.
There was one frozen winter
but there were many, many summers
of hydrangeas
fragile
living blue for water.

"A Rome Apple"

Danny P. Barbare, South Carolina

Soft and juicy
from the Blue Ridge
autumn reminds
me of a Rome apple
cored and filled
with butter and
brown sugar and
baked, sweet and
delicious as an orchard
ate with a spoon.

"Grandparents’ Lake House"

Danny P. Barbare, South Carolina

Stepping onto the muddy wooden dock
rusty hinges
squeaking and
squawking
bolts and nuts
two cables tied to trees
under the slats
white Styrofoam
transparent gold water
almost yellow
walking pass the boat
tied to ringlets
jump into the jade water
so refreshing and cool
I swim up
to the light
I am happy as if heaven is all around me.

"Brown"

John Grey, Rhode Island

It's the color of your hands and checks.
Only six years old, pale and cute,
when the Nazis invaded Prague.
You scampered about
your third-floor apartment, unable to escape
the noise the enemy made drinking and singing.

A combination of red, yellow and blue in the RGB color model,
That's you.
You slowly stroll the beach by day.
But in your condo,
remember how dark the night seemed
and how Shirley-Temple-like you looked in the mirror.
Such a silly little girl, you think back now.
Always posing. Comforted by your rooms.
And the people you thought would always be there.

Your unwrinkled arms stretch out.
The sun has done well by them,
cooked the paleness into tan.
And your room is large.
And there are roses in the vases.
Seriously though, you still don't look happy.

There's even a little brown in the gray of your hair.
But you're having trouble looking
like the retired woman in her last years.
You've been dreaming the knock at the door
that set the bones, the furniture, trembling.
It's enough to make a woman go mad,
waking up with a damp face from tears,
but thinking it's blood.

So smooth, your throat.
You're still in your nightgown.
Convalescing, you call it.
From life and the pain of age.
A life so different from the others in your building.
So much you wish you could erase.
The woman may look like she's under control.
But if you didn't know better
you'd mistake yourself for someone else.

You look in the mirror.
It's a tradition in your world.
Your skin is a Florida special
but the expression seems half-silly still.
Maybe it's the lack of winters.
The physical kind at least.

But the Nazis still invade Prague.
The knock on the door is always hard and deadly.
An image has a way of saying
there is another face behind me.
Give it some slack.
It's trying to stay sane.

"Hunger Games"

Jeanette Willert, Alabama

Poetry bit
into me
like an éclair.

My self and my soul
bit back.

Chewing
and knowing looks
commenced
with a kind
of determined swallowing.

"Grandfather built a dam on the Kanawha"
-1909

Jeanette Willert, Alabama

As his team worked the poured concrete
he did not know

how fifty years hence that emerging dam
would keep our visitors awake with its constant song,

how its hum would lull me to sleep
after lovemaking with Paul in his old Chevrolet,,

how its drum would frighten river rats into trees
as the river lunged over it come spring,

how it connected me to him as I watched
the river slow streaming in mid-summer,

wondering what he had in his lunchbox
on those hot days on the rocks
warmed by an arching sun to baking degrees
amid the bric-a-brac of braces and forms
meant to quell the spill.

"The Magic Field"

Diana Mae Potts, Pennsylvania

Oh, to consumate a song
By the sacred river.
How to do that
In the sanctity of creation?
A lullaby sung in the act of love
To bring on the power of song
Of how to sing the song
And make it real
Within the work to come.
Oh! How we consumate the songs.

He strikes the chord!
He strikes the strings!
He strikes the sacred!
Oh! The power of creation!

Across the magic field,
Besides the river
Where they dream
And talk of new creation
She sleeps not knowing;
Not knowing the wishes
Across the magic field
By the river's edge,
By the forest edge.
On how to consumate the song.

He strikes the chord!
He strikes the strings!
He strikes the sacred!
Oh! The power of creation!

She sang a song
Suzanne of the river.
Oh how nice
To hear the song sung sweetly.
Not forgotten,
Totally remembered,
Across the magic field
By the river's edge
By the river's edge
Of how to consumate
A sacred memory.

He strikes the chord!
He strikes the strings!
He strikes the sacred!
Oh the power of creation.

"Senseless Connection"

Maid Corbic, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Love is black. People don't see the light of day,
all due to the fact that feelings
They passed away because of our very existence

And time passes, it doesn't go back anymore. Only hope remains.
that one day everything will be as it used to be
where each of us is happy.

But we always look through the window. So is it still
We died of grief and pain.
for a love that was once happy?

Life is not a fairy tale, remember that. Life is a miracle.
then when you hope for something
and that something is never welcomed.

Traces in the snow; I see the world falling apart.
Because love has become false
and for a handful of dollars it was sold forever.
to some new slave

The slaves became hardened
Because the meaning of life was no longer love. Just sadness
and shame in the eyes of lovers because love
Today it is bought with money the most

I think about how my relationship used to be. I haven't learned
that love is all the feeling of the world
which fits on one small shoulder and on the palm of the display
The truth is far away.

Because love has become meaningless indeed,
Romance costly because of traces
hidden in the snow
Black is my destiny, since there is no love in life.
"She was waiting for me, but I'm gone forever!"

"Art Speaks: So Much That Might Be"

Charles A. Swanson, Virginia

--Are you a god who would make a leaf tremble
or who would prosecute a dry straw? Job 13:25
International Standard Version

You use both ends of your tool,
one to make, the other
to destroy. First, you pencil feet
and then you cancel

before I even pretend to run.
A mouth should move
and perhaps that’s why lips
look undecided, more

smudge than certainty, like
lipstick misapplied.
In your attempt to make me
jump, you keep doodling

way too many limbs. A shadow
of a left hind leg hangs on
beneath a dust of eraser crumbs.
You rubble the paper with ifs.

Every time you pare a part of me
you scrub to clarify
what you think you see. But I
keep missing what’s lost.

"Art Speaks: Stop Here"

Charles A. Swanson, Virginia

When I become as bare as Job,
bent double, in ashes,
scraping with a shard the boils,
the corroded flesh,

if you stop, see my torn robe,
not tattered but torn
by my own hands, if you stop
you see it all, the pain

in the merest lines, all there.
Don’t flip pages
like wind whipping falling leaves,
as if not one speaks.

The fine veining in each leaf,
the pockets of decay
like shattershot, like BB holes,
the little circles of brown,

that take you through to light,
to winter’s harsh sun,
this is Job, in every dying leaf.
Stay here with Job and grieve.

"Ratiocination"

Ramey Channell, Alabama

So if I, feeling humorsome and brash,
thrash around
in my hypogeous hide-away,
and cause you to surmise that something
in my cranium is about to crack,
and through that resultant crack
momentary light may dawn,
lament not.

For freedom, like intellect,
is not transmissible by infection.
So speaks Thalamus.

"Promenade á la Mussorgsky"

Jeanette Willert, Alabama

June, 1874
Modest Mussorgsky settles onto the hard piano bench,
running one hand in a glissando up the keys.
An idea is growing - a promenade connecting
his recently deceased friend Viktor Hartmann’s drawings and watercolors; ten piano pieces in a suite held together by the novel notion of viewers walking through the exhibition.

He begins:
   Allegro giusto!
       B flat major –
           a grand Promenade.

A progression:
The Gnome (Vivo! as the little gnome clumsily runs with crooked legs)
   to The Old Castle (a duet of bassoon and alto saxophone in minor G sharp)

He moves us (allegretto) to view the Children’s Quarrel after Games
   at the Tuileries in sight of the Louvre in Paris.

Movement 4 takes us past The Cattle (a Polish oxen drawn cart)
    moving from loud to soft as the cart passes and recedes.

At this point in the composing, Mussorgsky writes
“[the work] is boiling – sounds and ideas hung in the air…
I can barely manage to scribble them on paper.”

He creates Movement 5, the unusual Ballet of Unhatched Chicks (from the ballet Trilby),
   moves us on to the two Jews, rich and poor in B flat minor; he uses E flat minor to view
   The Market in Limoges, so reminiscent of folk songs .

An ominous echoing of chords takes us into The Catacombs where the composer writes “the    skulls begin to glow softly.”
Allegro con brio announces the nightmarish witch’s flight of Baba Yaga, the Hut on Hen’s    Legs…
Our promenade ends with allegro and a grand E flat major for the virtuosic heroes’ finale-
The Great Gate of Kiev!

Charles A. Perrone, California

1.
within the covers as dark as they may be in the fluttering future
stark lines to record the whiteness of the hospital bed sheets
to engrave the stone-grey spirit of the baptismal fount as well
to capture the roundness of initial chips from gold-sheen chalice
lest you fail to remember to remember all shades of saints' days
with or without smoke-filled hazes of observation or avoidance
a reason to keep the blackness of a marital tuxedo intact for in fact
it may be back when slacks of extremities have reached their limits

2.
                azure dog-eared pamphlets
                smooth cat-eyed marbles
                shiny duck-tailed headgear
                four funny fox-tailed ferns
                dozens of den-friendly clocks
                following fields of sheared fur
                private pictures of pleasure
                all planning to return for more
3.
the profile of the guitar
   is shapely and sexy
and truths are played out
   in chromatic changes
letters lilting wilting rising surprising
   rounding the globe
and lifting to the skies
   ready to descend
re-made into entries and lobes

4.
the drab cardboard is only an easel for the finger paints
of the enthusiastic children at the table who love all the colors
and how they feel as free figures emerge from their imaginations
even before the first one is all envisioned and turned to be born

5.
flash sun and flush moon are one        celestial bodies be flesh
tips digits palms hands            waving from the shore to the lore
hairs and stairs on end            the moistening lips
the glistening eyes              the Xs on the calendar
the wood-grain shelves nearly complete for a one-day stain at least

"Spring Back"

Olchar E. Lindsann, Virginia

hark angelic covid pallid choir,
       merrily stalking
yr springtime raindrop backbeat, flipping icicle
       basking its creep
up eaves, and spoke of bicycle fatty acid smiles
       broadly pounce
on charming lamb skin softly downy tickle fluff of giggle throat-rip stomach bile onesie;
       am I wrong?
for lo, demonic baby death rattle, mask of nineteen vivisection toys
       jaggedly crawls
through gentle fangs of lullaby radiation,
       tree-scalp counts
elephantine cold front coughing breeze and daisies’
       marrow reaps
shreds of groundhog ribbons, pacifier razor candy
       swallows, walking
baby steps tool land mine, kiddo, pollen, snowshod hunter
       fed on flesh scrap veiny.

"In AcCurate Stance"

Olchar E. Lindsann, Virginia

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~?~
     "his anachronism observable is purposely mad"
                            – Paschal Beverly Randolph
                     ~?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                                   he shrieks for sooth
              stomps for hansom cabbie drone is thine
serves his heat pump lucifer matches gramophone to hauberk
                            verily VR scythe she
telegraphs hieroglyphic hybrid vaudeville memes
                     entire foxtrot autotune
maps feudal brigands' walkie-talkie galleon rocket dongle
              howbeit GPS her corset crashes
                     stem in the cathedral cell
       nay tis messerschmidt as any roman milkmen
              lo upon his cotton pleather gin
              her harpooned soviet hauls up hill again
              the aerosol of utter burlap venmo
digital her quilting freeze dry circle round and round
                     the cryogenic vellum, Hope.

"Rain Crow"

Ramey Channell, Alabama

At times she wondered how it all would end
even after she must have known it was ended.
Sometimes when the wind blew, bringing rain again,
she cast her dreams aside and flew herself away.
Some say she lived alone against the dark side of the mountain;
some say her madness came from what she knew of flying.
But she always cried before the rain began,
from the darkness and the broken heart and the fever of dying.

I heard the rain crow just before a cold rain swept
down from shadows and across the cold gray morning.
A chill was in the air and the rain crow’s song sailed,
lost and lonely and full of old dreams, like a bird’s wings
touched by mist and magic and dark dreams folding.
Some say she kept her secrets, alone across the forest unforgiving.
Some say she calls the rain, she calls the rain,
from her own soul to cool the madness and the fever of living.

Avant(Art)

Digital painting that looks like orange swirling weather radar around a dark eye

digital painting of neon fish over a background of triangles

Orange background, orange abstract mountain, silver sun

Pink background, red abstract mountains, red sun

Gray background, black abstract mountains with blue highlights, blue sun

Avant(Stories)

Please make sure to address story submissions to Dave Sykes. Thanks!

"Proud Paleo Perfect People"

Mark Blickley, New York
Photo: Amy Bassin, New York

Red and gold post-apocolyptic type photo of a temple scene with stone gods and stairs

A sudden sound of blasting wind makes the tiki torches flicker. In struts Basil, the outlaw tribal shaman, wearing a large furry buffalo hat with protruding horns, a fancy fringed vest that reveals his chiseled chest, and a colorful speedo that houses an abnormally large scrotum. He flexes his amazing triceps and biceps in an exaggerated pose of greeting as he raises his arms above his head, strutting up to the outdoor stage.

“Tribal Members! Proud Paleo Perfect People! You sacred PPPPs! Praise be to the Lard, and all other natural byproducts,” shouts Basil.

His audience cheers.

“A blessing on all your heads, from your family of physically and morally undefiled Paleolithic ancestors.”

“Homeostasis in the highest!” chants the crowd.

“Sagging and shapeless mainstream mankind doesn’t want me to venerate and expose the powerful purity of our superior genes. Using work swallowing machines and flabby factory farming they want to strip us of our true Paleo heritage! The attempted molestation of we Proud Paleo Perfect People began on this very night at the very first D.O.A., Dawn of Agriculture’s sneak attack on humanity!”

“Outrageous abomination! Homeostasis in the Highest! Praise be to the Lard and all other natural byproducts!” screams the crowd.

Basil does repetitive, exaggerated sweeping bows to his followers, but in doing so, two huge peaches are dislodged from his speedo and fall to the ground. The crowd gasps in surprise and disillusionment.

An embarrassed Basil stutters, “They....they....those are naturally found and picked fruit. Not harvested from evil orchards!” He raises up his flexed arms to distract his followers as he quickly kicks the large peaches off to the side of the stage. He hides behind the lectern at the front of the stage in order to recover his dominance and dignity.

Basil lowers his arms and grips the sides of the lectern. “Quinoa, why is this evening, this night, different from all other evenings?”

“Because it is the joyful commiseration of D.O.A. Eve, the Dawn Of Agriculture, Basil.”

“And what is commiserated on this day, Herb?” asks Basil.

Herb screams, “We commemorate on this sacred D.O.A. Eve, the 15,714th annual remembrance of a terror avoided by our beloved Paleo ancestors, Basil.”

“Correct. And what constitutes this terror, Myrtle?”

Myrtle shouts, “It’s when humanity rejected their natural Paleolithic pureness of hunter/gatherer for the evil of the Dawn of Agriculture who raped the precious few inches of life-giving topsoil, Basil.”

“Norman, why is this D.O.A. evil?” asks Basil.

“It marks Man’s fall from our true nature as self-sufficient food providers and into the perversion of farming and mechanized processed foods!” replies Norman.

Basil glares at the crowd. “Myrtle, and what are the two greatest sins created at this Dawn of Agriculture?

“The sins of grain growing and animal husbandry, Basil. Modern humans castrate their ranched alpha beasts to more easily herd them into automated slaughterhouse pens.”

“You speak truth, Myrtle. Are we animals, Herb? Do we marry fellow beasts?”

“We are not animals, Basil. And we do not marry to destroy sensuality! We are PPPPs, Basil."

"Proud Paleo Perfect People! Untainted, loving human beings, not beasts who refuse to be slapped into a sexual shame of polygamy."

The crowd cheers and chants, “PPPP! PPPP! PPPP!”

Basil smiles and motions to them to lower their voices. “And the evils of cultivated grain? Tell me of this wickedness, Norman. This curse against human nature.”

Norman recites from memory, “Cultivated grain gave birth to the unnatural, wicked food of bread, Basil. The Dawn Of Agriculture began a...a....a degenerative.....and additive addictive invasion against humanity by seducing mankind with factory farmed processed foods. It attempts to contaminate and weaken our glorious Paleo primal genes with empty calories and enforced famines.”

Basil withdraws an extremely large red book from beneath the lectern and holds it above his head. “A reading from the sacred book of Holy Homeostasis!”

“Praise be to the Lard and other natural byproducts,” shouts the audience.

Basil lowers the book and opens it, flexing his muscles as he searches for the proper page. “As the revered Paleo Charles Atlas sayeth, “Evolution is a conscious process.”

The crowd cheers and when the noise dies down Basil resumes his reading. “And the man broke the bread, held it out to them, and sayeth, ‘Take, eat this bread. This is my body which is given to you.’ And what sayeth you, my precious Proud Perfect Paleo People?”

“Hell, no! We are not animals or cannibals!” screams the crowd.

Basil smiles and nods in approval. “Yes, we are not animals or cannibals my children. ‘Tis better dead than bread?”

“Tis better dead than bread!” the crowd echoes. “Better dead than bread! Better dead than bread!”

Basil drinks in the crowd hysterics before pausing and softly saying, “Yet there is one amongst you that shall betray us with a kibble and a nibble.”

“Not on our watch, dear Basil! Not on our watch!” screams the crowd.

Basil silences the crowd. “We shall wait and watch for evil. Ever vigilant. Wait and watch for evil."

“Wait and Watch! Wait and Watch. Wait Watch! Wait Watch! Wait Watch!” roars the audience.

Basil outstretches his arm in a symbolic communal hug. “Proud Paleo Perfect People, thou are indeed the beloved PPPP Wait Watchers!”

“Wait Watchers! Wait Watchers! We are determined Wait Watchers! Better dead than bread! Homeostasis in the Highest! Blessed be the Lard and all natural byproducts!!”

Appal(Trad)

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"Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection"

a novel by Jim Meirose, New Jersey

Chapter 4: Janie at Four Years

Tell me again where Mommy and Daddy went, Janie asked Grammie.

Janie. You know where they are. They’re on vacation. This must be the millionth time you’ve asked me that, she said, waving the TV remote—but wait, watch it—give me that big glass of water, before you spill it. Be careful!

I want to drink it.

Drink it then. If you don’t drink it it’s going to spill.

I—I want to drink it.

Okay, said Grammie, rising. Here let me have it. That glass is too big and heavy. You’re going to spill it. If you were thirsty you’d have drunk it already.

No, said Janie, turning away from Grammie’s grasping hands and raising the glass to her lips, tilting back, and quickly drinking a large volume of water down without spilling a drop.

That’s right Janie, said Grammie. That’s good. Yes, drink it more. Very neat, Janie. Very good. Drink it all before it spills—here. Your show is over. What would you like to watch now?

Janie faced the TV and stared at the colors scrolling up the screen, going pop pop pop pop from the TV to her eye. Fun like fun watching fireworks, up, up, bang now look! Up, up—bang, look—Janie, please answer. What would you like to watch now? How about a movie, want a movie? Or a show? How about the Patterson Bears? You remember the Patterson Bears? You liked that before, let me find it, wait—and the colors made a sound from over at Grammie that popped a mouth open she couldn’t see and the colors peeled off the TV and went all into a mouth that wasn’t there, all gone. Then from the mouth there was the bear face she saw somewhere else maybe here, yes here the bear face with spangle-patterns moving over and across atop it—Grannie saw and said fast, Want this Janie?

Janie watched the moving over and across atop it and--

Janie, it is rude not to answer. Tell me if this is all right or not or I will shut off the TV--

It’s good.

That’s great, said Grammie. She leaned against the couch back cushion, picked up her book lying beside, and held it before her face, signaling Janie to say over to her, Grammie, can we go downstairs again to look at the sleepy people?

The book went down in Grammie’s lap. She raised the remote toward the TV and pressed the mute button, and said, Janie, you know I told you I was only going to take you downstairs one time. And you said okay. Remember that Janie?

I want to smell it down there. I like the smell down there.

You do?

Janie nodded, rising as though expecting Grammie to say yes, yes, she would take her down one more time to smell the smell that smelled around the sleepy people with flowers around in shiny smooth boxes. Flowers, she had seen, and boxes, she knew, but she never saw sleepy people with flowers around in boxes. Mommy and Daddy never showed her the sleepy people with flowers around in boxes and she wanted to know more about why they were there. She never knew there more people living with them that Mommy and Daddy didn’t ever let come upstairs. This was big. She turned toward the stairway leading down, but Grammie said No. Janie stopped and turned and Grammie waved her back toward the TV and words came at Janie that worked with the wave and told her as she walked back, I don’t think Mommy and Daddy would want you to look at the people downstairs more than just this one time. I didn’t know they never took you down there. I’m not sure they want you down there ever, really. We need to wait for them to get back so we can ask them. Forget downstairs for now—look at the Silly Bears on television playing baseball! Hey, look—one bear hit the other one with a bat, hah! And now they’re all out on the field fighting! Isn’t it fun to watch bears fighting? Yes it is, it is, look—now one by one they are playing dead and lying down. What’s that silly red stuff coming out from under them—isn’t this show silly. Janie? It’s about the silliest show I’ve ever seen. How about you, Janie? Is this the silliest show you’ve ever seen, or what? Much more fun to see than the sleepy people with flowers all around in boxes way downstairs. Down there is very, very, boring. Quite silent quite bad. Let’s forget down there. We have so much up here now. Just think up here.