Back Patio Press

The Deputy wasn’t invited but there she is. She detects our whereabouts. She always does.

The Real Estate Agent calls it “the club,” but this place is really more of an excuse to eat cheeseburgers and stare into the ravine.

We meet weekly at the agreed-upon time. Our itinerary is unimportant. Let’s say that a whirlpool of pacts have developed between us.

The Laundromat Owner is struggling to become a painter. He tells us that someone burgled one of his paintings that was hanging on his laundromat office door. His confidence appears to be bolstered by the incident.

The Fortune Teller hands a glass to the Conductor and says, “This isn’t Pepsi.”

The Deputy reminds us she is the descendent of a Swedish king. Everybody pretends not to hear her.

She laughs and says, “Companionship.”

Mysterious signals and maneuverings punctuate the atmosphere between the Real Estate Agent and the Unemployed Moon Worshiper. They have an understanding.

The Conductor unbudges an object from his bag and asks us to admire it.

“Is that a bone? A human bone? Are you putting one over on us? In front of a narc, no less,” says the Laundromat Owner.

The Conductor manipulates it around in a semicircle so we can get a good look.

I see all my past dealings in that marrow.

“The best questions are the ones we don’t have answers to. I keep it on my front stoop so the neighbors will leave me alone,” the Conductor replies.

I see my turn and I take it. The situation calls for it.

“Speaking of being left alone, did you read the papers?”

The Fortune Teller nods too early.

I continue, “This man, he apparently gets sick of his life, his family, his whole deal. Then his wife wakes up next to a stranger, and not in a metaphorical sense. This other man is mostly similar to the one she married. He is passable in certain circles. But his nose is straighter, his legs a half inch longer. And he has a cheek mole. She never saw it coming.”

The Deputy almost interjects, but her pendular confidence wanes in our presence.

“And he doesn’t stop there. The surrogate man finds hidden notes along the baseboards, in the woodshed, and even miraculously sealed inside a frozen bag of Bird’s Eye peas. These notes are further instructions on how to live out the life the other had abandoned. Which probably meant he planned never to return. The absconded man was probably taking his resentment for a walk. Or a series of excursions, more like.”

“Was the surrogate held against his will?” the Laundromat Owner asks.

“Ah, that’s what everybody asks. The surrogate seems to have made himself quite at home. He even fixed some mangled wiring in their dining room.”

The secret society crowd is dare-I-say captivated.

“Still, if I was that wife I would’ve carried him to the police station by now.”

The Real Estate Agent gesticulates to reinforce her comment, knocking over my backpack. My binoculars clatter on our hangout’s hardwood.

Now the Fortune Teller hands me a drink.

“Here you go, Leroy. Good for the nerves,” she says.

“But this is not…tell me this is not…” I say.

And if it isn’t clear by now, they are onto me. I’d told my own account too boastfully perhaps.

But we could not yet hear the accusations of the townspeople––or whatever they like to be called––resounding in the night outside our front door.

Claire Hopple is the author of five books. Her fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Peach Mag, Forever Mag, and others. She is the fiction editor at XRAY. More at clairehopple.com.

Neon lights make him antsy: / My boyfriend’s
getting impatient / And each time I throw
another person / Into the pits, / Two square, /
Two round, It takes time for them to fall. This
makes things worse.

There is water, and horses, and other nice
things / At the bottom of each pit, except for
one. / That one’s just concrete. / I’m not sure
which / It is.

“The lights are loud.” His hands are in his
pockets / He adjusts his glasses. There’s a
clutch / Laying at the rim of one pit, / A square one,
and I can hear the lady who owned it
petting a horse / Below. / I feel strong: I want
to grind a cigarette / Under my heel, / But
we’re indoors and / He’s an asthmatic / And
he’s been dealing with my shit all day. I’ll give it a rest,
/ No more tourists. We were always
here to see Negative Megalith #5 anyhow.

Noam Hessler is a poet from New England. Hessler’s work has been published in Apocalypse Confidential, BRUISER, and DON’T SUBMIT. They are currently a student at Vassar College, and can be found on twitter at @poetryaccnt1518.

I remember what goats look like. This is not a goat. I can’t even describe it to you, but I can tell you it is, without a doubt, under the scrutiny of fact, not a goat. I have the understanding it is a goat. It has the presence and personality of a goat. It’s just not what I remember goats looking like. 

2-Ply, a beach bandit living as a traumatized gun-toting roll of toilet paper, cocks his shotgun and blasts the goat that does not look like a goat but is a goat into many apertures of disappearance. 

That was a poet, 2-Ply says. There’s no question in my mind. Pulling that goat shit on us. The tissue community doesn’t take kindly to bullshit, goatshit, or any kind of shit. 

Ladders, propped by nothing, extend hundreds of stories into the black sky where suspended lakes have taken the place of clouds. People are swimming inside of them. I notice people walking on the black waters, the sea-level ones, nobody swimming; some people resting on the rolling waves. 

The Felician sands hide which scurries. I want to join them. 

You promise you’re not a poet? 2-Ply says. I don’t want to have to waste a sheet on you. 

The barrel of his shotgun prod the back of my ankle, swollen like a tennis ball from the fall. 

No, I’m not a poet. 

What do you think of the moon? 

Hate it. 

Crocuses? 

Crocodiles? 

Don’t push your luck. 

I ask 2-Ply what this place is. He tells me it is a graveyard of relics from blown apart universes. Every phenomenon you see comes from some place else. Everything has a story not necessarily a bonafide reason or explanation. 

I ask 2-Ply why poets aren’t allowed. It’s what they bring with them, he tells me. There was a poet from another realm, Noah Fang Quicksilver, who killed all the other poets to absorb their talents and skills. When he came here, he did the same. He even got to kill one poet twice. If you’re witnessed writing verse or reciting Keats, you’re likely to meet Hercules’ Destiny, Noah’s murder beetle. He will stop at nothing to collect you. 

Good to know, I say. 

Now what about the sky lakes and the people walking on water? 

Another fucking instigator, 2-Ply snarls. 

I begin to feel queasy again. End of the World fatigue. I want to run from this tattered roll of toilet paper but my ankle won’t have it. Sweat forms on my scalp and forearms. Lightheadedness swirled me inside myself until my jaw unhinged the length of my body and I vomit my bedroom. I vomit my futon on the floor. I puke clothes and books. I puke home.

Barracuda Guarisco is a queer, polyonymous, neurodivergent cartoon goblin and author of several books including “It’s Not A Lie If You Believe It” (Voice Lux Press). He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Really Serious Literature and Chat Rooms. You can find him if you want to.

i rode a train that left the station at seven in the morning. there was a little greek man at the station waiting for the same train. he smoked cigarettes in front of a no smoking sign and played mr. worldwide at full blast out of a bluetooth speaker. the station agent told him to stop smoking and turn down the music. the little greek man said don’t ruin my day.

the train arrived and i repeated that to myself: don’t ruin my day.

i had bought a ticket the day before: departing from glendale with san luis obispo as the final destination. end of the line. a friend of mine who works as a bouncer at jumbo’s clown room gave me four grams of shrooms and said, “it’ll do you some good.” 

he also thought having me meet him at his job would do me some good, but it only deepened the low-grade sadness i’d felt ever since my fiance left me. together six years and here i was, three weeks into a loneliness i’d never felt in my life. and the beautiful women dancing on stage at jumbo’s only intensified that loneliness.

so here i was, on a near-empty train heading north, the only other passenger in my car the little greek man who had blown through pitbull and was now jamming alone to wang chung.

i ate the four grams as we pulled away from grover beach, chewed them up with a complimentary apricot croissant and washed it all down with complimentary coffee that tasted like peanut skin.

they kicked in right as we pulled into the station. an anxious leg bouncing. a sensation that someone was pulling on my chest, a brief bodily reminder that the psilocybin is almost to your brain. it typically passes as the visuals start to wash over your reality. the sudden need to get off the train, to be out in the open. the train stopped with a jerk and i jumped out onto the pavement.

but as i walked from the train towards town, the anxiety lingered, deepened, became hands gripping my shoulder. pushing me down. i told myself it’ll pass. told myself i can handle this. said to the four grams in my body don’t ruin my day.

as soon as i entered the quaint, shop-lined streets of downtown san luis obispo, a sledgehammer made of grief and remorse and regret slammed into my skull, shattered through bone and squished my brain into a traumatic pulp. tears bunched up around my eyes and leaked out onto my cheeks. my face twisted as i tried to hold it all in, drawing the attention of all the couples around me.

because that’s all there was in this town: couples. happy. loved. walking shop to shop to buy things they’d look at together in twenty years and think remember when we bought this? couples eating meals together in french-like cafes. it was as if the whole dna of this town was made of two people in love. 

trees above warped like wacky inflatable men in front of car dealerships. the ground crawled like ants escaping a disturbed hill.

i turned a corner to get away from it all and ran into a bridal party fawning over a wedding gown a soon-to-be bride modeled with blissful joy. i turned and ran up a hill, towards the sounds of a trumpet playing mexican melodies. and was led right into a wedding in progress, the newlyweds standing at the top of a staircase while their guests worshipped this new commitment to love.

i couldn’t escape.

so i found a park bench and sat and let everything fall out of me. grief remorse regret. an emotional mantra that intensified each time it repeated in my mind. grief remorse regret. why could i bring myself to a place like this but not someone who actually loved me? grief remorse regret.

the sledgehammer pounded me down over and over for the next three hours. and then it kind of just slid away like cold jelly off a piece of toast. all that crying left my face bloated and my eyes raw. all i wanted to do was sleep, but i still had a five hour train ride ahead of me.

“you look like a man who’s been beat to hell.”

i looked up. a black guy stood over me. flat brim hat with a feather in it. shirtless with a burgundy leather vest. tight slacks and wingtip shoes so sharp they could cut someone. his face wiggled like a bad photoshop filter.

i said “just dealing with something.”

he said he could dig it. he introduced himself as joe and started building me up with things like you look like a bad motherfucker and takes a real man to feel shit. i don’t know what brought him over, but i was glad he was there.

and then he pulled out his phone and called someone he called one of his girls. and then proceeded to convince her to get on a bus so she could come suck my dick. 

she gave a stern i ain’t doing it and he yelled back bitch, don’t ruin my day. 

i walked away while he argued with her.

it was a slow slouched trudge back to the station and i made it back on the train right before they closed the door. i found a seat and fell into it as the car lurched and left the station.

i closed my eyes, ready to sleep the whole way back to glendale, when i heard him.

the little greek man was back on the train with me, both of us alone and riding back to our lives. his bluetooth speaking softly shouted “good year for the roses” by elvis costello. i leaned back and let the train take me home, the sun setting in the pacific to my right. and all i could think was:
i guess i needed that.

Tex Gresham is a screenwriter and author of Heck Texas, Sunflower, and Easy Rider II: Sleazy Driver(s). His new book, Violent Candy, is releasing this fall from House of Vlad Press. You can find his other stuff at squeakypig.com.

I’m sorry for the wait on your salad,

things are really crazy in the kitchen right now—

Sandi, one of my coworkers, turned into a horse. 

She was filling a monkey bowl with salsa, 

and to this point,

everything about her had been extremely normal. 

One time she walked out during her shift,

because there was just too much shit going on,

and one time she told me, in passing, 

that her mom wouldn’t be happy if she knew she worked Sundays,

and another time I saw her stab her finger with the lemon wedger.

Real blood. 

Sandi turned into a horse, and now we don’t know what to do

and neither does the horse, so please be patient with us. 

It was so sudden, there was no gradual turning of her arms to hooves—

She was filling salsa and then she was a horse, 

simple as that. 

There was a look of confusion in the horse’s eyes at first, 

as though it was realizing it was a horse. 

Then it started doing horse things, and that’s why you heard all the clashing

and the screaming and crying. 

And my manager is doing everything he can to lead the horse out of the kitchen,

but he really wasn’t qualified for this—

none of us are.

And somewhere, I imagine, Sandi’s mom is watching TV with a bible by her nightstand,

Dr. Phil maybe. 

She’s got a glass of water and she’s already halfway asleep. 

I suppose she won’t be very happy 

when she finds out Sandi turned into a horse.

Teddy Griffith is a restaurant worker who lives in the mountains of North Carolina. His writing has been in Words & Sports, Cowboy Jamboree, and some other places.

(I am standard size, I contain multiple tubes.)
I am a victim of my parents
and a conduit of ancient rituals
sifted from a bloody creek.
I lack more

Inner Resources than you
I have always wanted to say I this much.
And yay! though I surf through the alleys
of identity theft
I will follow no pagan
for the nation of dogs is within them.

Notice what I won’t edit.
I act how in God’s eye I am.

I loudly proclaim
the utter success of my vibes
to seem employable again
and means-tested and on-time.

My heart. I’m sorry.
You know you can hear it.
It hurts like this when I recall

why we don’t censor poets
who cannot rhyme.
I rhyme.
I lie.
A lady collapsed today
and still I lie.
I, too, dislike it.
But I need no prompt.
I like all humans adore
a femme top who adores a Fascist.
I write to young poets,
you must change your life
insurance policy and billable services.

Reid Kurkerewicz is a writer from the shores of Lake Michigan. He lives in Brooklyn and hosts a monthly poetry reading at Unnameable Books. He has a tattoo of a cube.