FLASH

On the Rue Saint Denis One Rainy Morning

Digital Art by J. Spahr-Summers
| Twig

by Jeffrey Zable

 

I went looking for a prostitute and probably because I was extremely nervous, I didn’t notice that the one I chose was at least fifty pounds overweight until I got to the room that contained nothing more than an old mattress on a bed frame with a light bulb hanging down from a wire.
And while handing her the money my only thought was getting out of there as quickly as possible because she made me sad, the room made me sad, and my life at the time made me the saddest, as I was living in Paris all by myself without any friends, testing my ability to be far away from home and find something that had always been missing.
And returning to my little apartment, I spent the afternoon looking out at the rain and watching people scurry by with different colored umbrellas, until finally the rain stopped and I went out to buy some food–
buying extra so I wouldn’t have to leave again for a while. . .

 

Digital Art by J. Spahr-Summers

 

©Copyright 2014, Jeffrey Zable
JEFFREY ZABLE - [Read Full Bio] is a teacher and conga drummer in San Francisco. He has published five chapbooks and has present or upcoming work in Clarion, Coe Review, Toad Suck Review, On the Rusk...

 
[Featured]Digital Art / Photography Image Credit: yesterday. by J. Spahr Summers, ©2014
 

 

Snapping Twig – Winter – 2014

Vol: Nov 2014 thru Jan 2015

Industry

winter anthology cover art
| Twig

by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

 

The textile industry in the Deep South withered and shrunk like a dirty an old cloth. When we wanted to come back from foreign lands, where the factories were crumbling and collapsing, our textile knowledge and our textile muscles had atrophied. Anyway, nobody wanted to do garments anymore. No one wanted to work their buttery fingers to the bone.

My ice cream cone broke, collapsed beneath my bite. I swore I would invent an unbreakable cone. I went into the cottage, where I keep butterflies and rabbits. The inside of the cottage smelled of Chap Stick and shredded business papers. I looked down the mountain at a bankrupt chicken ranch. Cowgirls in tight jeans and shirts with pearl buttons were loading chickens into trucks.

If a fire came, I would stay right where I was, let it roll over me, watch the rabbits sweat, watch the wings of the butterflies curl.

 

©Copyright 2014, Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
MITCHELL KROCKMALNIK GRABOIS - [Read Full Bio] has had over six hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013 and 2014. His novel, "Two-Headed Dog"...

 
[Featured]Photography / Digital Art Image Credit: humbled by the river by, J. Spahr-Summers, ©2014 / Collection: art therapy for people who are bewildered like me

 
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Snapping Twig – Winter – 2014

Vol: Nov 2014 thru Jan 2015

Cavities

Photography / Image Credit: Kyle Hennings, 2014
| Twig

by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

 

From behind the deli counter, Goldstein gave me a significant look that said:

you are nothing more than a roast beef.

Then he heaved a roast beef onto the slicer and flipped the switch that started the blade homicidally spinning.
Eppa, his daughter, my girlfriend was on her period. She should not have been in the deli—it wasn’t kosher, I thought. My father, a rabbi, abandoned me at age two, so I wasn’t sure. He never taught me how to fish or mow the lawn. He was elsewhere, pretending to be holy. I have the barest memory of him, smoking a cigar and reading a holy book. The book was a chunk of wood. It caught fire.

Eppa had been fucking me to death. An important holiday was quickly approaching, and I’d forgotten to buy her a present.

A bucktoothed little girl with tangled blonde hair approached the ice cream counter. I’d never seen her before. I wondered if she were new in town, if the other kids taunted her because of her teeth. They weren’t the worst buck teeth I’d ever seen. In fact, in fourth grade I’d “gone steady” with a girl whose teeth were far worse.

Eppa also had a history of dental problems. As a child, she’d had two sets of braces. The first ones hadn’t been enough to do the job. Now she had chronic headaches, caused by over-tightened teeth, that only rough sex could mollify.
We went to strange towns where she wasn’t known. There she threw rocks through the windows of dentists’ offices. These are not orthodontists, I said. They’re just regular dentists.

She threw a brick out the car window. She was strong as hell and had great aim. Some of her bricks must have flown at sixty miles an hour.

They just do cavities, I insisted.

 

©Copyright 2014, Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
MITCHELL KROCKMALNIK GRABOIS - [Read Full Bio] has had over six hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013 and 2014. His novel, "Two-Headed Dog"...

 
[Featured] Photography / Image Credit: Face by, Kyle Hemmings, ©2014

 

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Snapping Twig – Winter – 2014

Vol: Nov 2014 thru Jan 2015

Walter Whitemares

Digital Art by J. Spahr-Summers, 2014
| Twig

by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

 

Breaking Bad ended. I went to bed and had Walter Whitemares. I was back in the little Southern town in which I’d grown up. All the businesses were shuttered. All the residents were Jesse Pinkman, staggering, confused and anguished, through the night.

Wait—not all the businesses are closed. There’s a laundromat open, but they’re out of soap. Wait—there’s a bar. The bartender pours whiskey neat and says: I told you ethics would get you in trouble. I told you you’d never be ready for adult life. I told you love always came with strings attached. Now you’re condemned to loneliness and emptiness, as you always expected you would be.

So, psychotherapy. I’ve given it. I’ve taken it. I’ve been clumsy—I opened myself to malpractice, but was never sued.
I fell in love with my doctor. She had a bifurcated nose that matched the bifurcated universe. I couldn’t help myself.
I had an aquiline nose, like a Roman aristocrat among blocks of marble. She couldn’t help but fall in love with me.
She told me I should be an underwear model as she was peeling off my underwear.

I’d get back from my appointments and my wife –concern in her voice—would ask if I was making progress.
I’d say: a lot of progress.

My psychotherapist was eight years older than I was. I felt like a gigolo. I felt like a baby wrapped in wisdom and compassion.
 

©Copyright 2014, Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
MITCHELL KROCKMALNIK GRABOIS - [Read Full Bio] has had over six hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S and abroad. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for work published in 2012, 2013 and 2014. His novel, "Two-Headed Dog"...

 
[Featured]Digital Art Image Credit: i love the silence before dawn by J. Spahr-Summers, ©2014

 
 

Snapping Twig – Winter – 2014

Vol: Nov 2014 thru Jan 2015