The Fire Master

Fireflies - 357
Ben Azevedo

The fire flew around and around, on the ends of two strings held by a man trapped in the center. He wasn’t really trapped though, because he was the one creating the cage of flame. He stepped, skipped, leapt, and danced over the sand in front of the crowd while weaving a never-ending pattern of fiery light around himself.

I had been living in Hawaii for two years now, and I never tired of the fire poi performers. I had even been bold enough to buy a practice pair from a local store. I was a terrible poi dancer though; I gave up after my first attempts led to bruises all over my body. I was just glad I hadn’t tried with actual fire…

The man performing now was a true master. I came out to watch him every week when he practiced on the beach near my house. His “practice” was so good it would draw a crowd of onlookers, usually dozens of people before he finished. Fundamentally, each week was the same, yet he always seemed to change his routine just enough to surprise the audience.

The crowd gasped as he pulled off one of his signature moves, spinning the poi so fast that they burned an afterimage of a butterfly onto the spectators’ retinas. By now, I was used to this trick, so I was mostly amused by the crowds response. But then he did something new, something I had never seen any performer do in my lengthy observation.

The poi seemed to cross and tangle, but somehow stayed in motion. For a split second it seemed he would lose control of the glowing fireballs at the end. Then, in one swift motion, he leaned forward and whirled the poi around his neck. Just as quickly he tilted backwards. The poi leapt up, down, up again, and whirled back into their arcs around his body, completely untangled. The crowd stood in silence for a moment, and then erupted with a cheer. In answer, the poi master sent his fireflies into an even faster dance over his back as he took a deep bow.

Fire Away - Sullivan

Young Aladdin's Wish #2

Bubbles - 73 Words

Lindsey Thompson

I wish girls came with thought bubbles. they always say these simple sentences laced with hidden meaning. We guys, we say what we mean and don't bother to filter. Hey, life's short, and we're already in the 9th grade! But girls, they have these background emphases, codes that they alone understand.

If I could see what they mean, what they want, in a tiny white could above their heads...

Man, I'd totally get laid.


Mood Rings - Relient K

the sun!

Industry - 17 words

Kevin Foster

There is no effort;
no toil, no steam,
can outdo the sun,
the might of a beam.

The Plight of Yvonne and Mercury

Dolls – 95

Sarah Van Name

My seven-year-old sister is obsessed with natural disasters. One three-hour Discovery special on hurricanes, tsunamis, forest fires, earthquakes, and tornados on a muggy August afternoon, and it was done.

Her dolls, Yvonne and Mercury, are her favorite victims. While other girls play doctor or schoolteacher, my little sister pretends she is tectonic plates and shifts her weight in the bath. In the fall, piles of leaves become mountains, and she throws herself upon them until they collapse into rockslides. And her dolls are always there, drowning, falling, exalting in the neverending thrill of small-scale terror.

This Tornado Loves You - Neko Case

Two Years Time.

Blocks- 189
Stephen N. Dethrage

Just two years ago, our living room was occupied only by a couch and a television. Back then, your side of the bed was occupied by nothing but empty space and pillows. Most notably, your womb was occupied by nothing but distant dreams. You were a smoker, and I was drinking too much. We were cold, cynical people who hated nearly everyone, and we thought that suited us just fine.

As I stand in that same living room and watch my son build a tower of blocks, then smash it to pieces, letting its segments join his other toys on the carpet, those ideas are almost impossible to wrap my head around. How did I ever sleep in that bed without you there? How did I really enjoy a day without tripping over one of Simon's toys? Why did we need bitter thoughts and bitter chemicals to keep us from going mad? I smell you cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and watch our baby crawl on to bigger and better things, and it's beyond me how life before the two of you were mine made any sense at all.

You Are My Joy - The Reindeer Section

Meeting on Monday (Because of The Things You Told Me, I Felt Free)

Trap - 83 Words
Aaron Dethrage

From: Mr. Donald Hays, Regional Manager <Donald.Hayes@mail.grm.com>
To: Mr. Jackson Gardner <Jackson.Gardner@mail.grm.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 12:45 AM
Subject: Meeting on Monday

Jack,

Sometime around 8:45 tomorrow morning you’ll be told that your boss wants to see you. When you walk in, myself and a bunch of other men with expensive suits and polished smiles will all be waiting to greet you and tell you about your wonderful, new promotion. Now, you know we are friends, so I need you to believe what I’m about to say. Run. Don’t waste your life here like I have. There is no joy to be found.

Don.

I Felt Free - Circa Survive

Bad Luck

Bongos - 480 words
Mary Ann Loo

“Are we playing these?” our new singer asked as she rhythmically tapped on the animal skin of the bongos standing alone in the corner, blatantly ignoring the hand-written sign pasted above it: DO NOT TOUCH.

“Julie, did you not see the sign?” I asked, looking up from tuning my Fender.

She withdrew hastily. “Oh. I just thought it’d be cool to have some bongo sounds in the recording.”

“Yeah, Dan told us not to touch those. Supposedly it’s bad luck or something,” John the bassist said.

Julie’s eyes widened. “Bad luck?” She glanced at the lonely instrument, and turned to me. “Why?”

“It’s like cursed. Like Dan’s owned this place for maybe ten years now, and it’s always been there,” I replied. “Like it’s been moved a couple times before, but the next day it’s always back in that same spot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and something like the previous dude tried to get rid of it – gave it to goodwill or something – and the next day it was back,” John said, slapping his strings to check his headphone sound levels.

“It’s said that everyone who’s played on it before, like something bad happened to them after that,” I added, standing up with the Fender slung over my shoulder. “Not like Dan personally knows anyone who died from playing it. But he’s really superstitious, so we kinda just went along with it.”

Julie swallowed, her voice quivered as she asked, “So none of you have ever touched it?”

John and I exchanged looks with each other, and with the drummer, Jack. Jack sighed and nodded, and continued fiddling with the drum set.

“What is it?” Julie asked, now moving to where I was, as far from the mysterious bongos as possible.
John said, “Jack kinda touched it once.”

“And?”

“It was probably just coincidence,” I said quickly. “I mean, we were playing a show, and both his sticks broke at the same time. Like, what are the odds, you know?”

“Yeah, and for some reason he couldn’t find his entire bag of sticks, it disappeared into thin air or something,” John added. “But we just assumed someone stole them.”

A tense silence ensued, as Julie looked from John to me to Jack to me again. She laughed nervously. “You’re just messing with me. Right?”

“You guys ready?” Dan’s voice resounded in my headphone; he was back from his smoke break.

****

“I keep getting her voice mail,” I said, flipping my cell shut.

John shrugged. “We can just track ourselves or something first.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t like her. Like, she’s not a copout.”

Just as I said those words, my cell buzzed urgently, Julie’s number displayed on its screen.

“Julie, where are you?”

“Hello.” An unfamiliar guy’s voice. “Are you Grant?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed. “I’m really sorry, but the girl who owned this cell… she was just run over by a bus.”

Only Superstition - Coldplay

Pirates of the City Streets

Mineral – 179 words
Ben Azevedo

The rain swept all the minerals, dirt, and sediment into the overflowing street drain. It picked up bags and paper as the torrent increased. The drain could not handle the volume of aquatic refuse the storm offered, so it simply proceeded to siphon as much water out of the mixture as it could.

I observed all of this through my open window. I could have closed the window, as I was now certifiably damp from the wind blown moisture, but I preferred the more personal connection with the storm that could not be gleaned through the double pane of glass. I considered all the various types of minerals contained in rainwater, and pictured myself sifting for gold in the gutter of a Tennessee street. Then I saw the boat.

It was small, possibly a schooner, certainly not a steamboat. The tiny vessel seemed to be caught in the maelstrom the drain had created. Its crew, a small and drenched child in possession of the string that kept the boat from imminent demise, was thoroughly engaged in saving the ship.

Tiny Vessels - Death Cab for Cutie

The Porch

Wicker - 175 words

Lindsey Thompson

She always rocked back and forth in the summertime, glass of tea in hand and book in her lap, unless one of her many dogs jealously nuzzled it out of the way of their love. The squeaking would resound down the hall through the screen door and into my study, traced around the edges by a scent of heat and the sound of wind chimes. Dog nails would tap on the wooden porch as she tiptoed barefoot into the house to put away the glass without waking me. I would wait in bed until I heard the screen door shut again, the dogs settling at her feet, safely out of range of the pinching rails that roll forward and back.

I would get out of bed, feeling the cold of the fan and conditioned air meeting my face and my feet. I would close the distance that separated us, hear the wicker creak as she turned to greet me. I’d gently kiss her forehead. She smelled of cut, wet clover and tasted like the sun.

Burns Like Summer Sun - James Morrison

Foam

Foam - 326 words

Kevin Foster

His father had been ill since before their long engagement began and he had been hospitalized in the interim between the ceremony and the day they left down the coast. She had wanted to stay, to be with her husband's father, a man she had only met a handful of times, to show her husband how devoted she would be, but he insisted that they leave. The call had come on the second day; his mother's voice was broken, but he did not react except to pull over onto a gravel rest area, stand for a moment, and walk toward the water. She followed him.

Seated on the stone ridge about seventy feet from him and ten feet further from edge of the sea, she gazed at his back; his body cut a strong, black shape into the fading light of the day, and he stood motionless. She could not see but his face was stolid and his eyes were dry. She began to cry. She had hoped that any space between them would disappear as they peeled away but kept their fingers grazing together and it would never return, immediately and magically erased, the spaces that she did not have an equivalent of and therefore did not understand, that all of the unknowns and the blackness would be illuminated and he would be bare before her, emotional privacy abolished and infinite intimacy established, but this is not what happened. The sun burned around him and the sea left its disappearing foam rhythmically at his feet, its tiny bubbles popping as the swelling masses seeped invisibly into the sand. She was aware she knew very little. There would always be pieces of him that no time or trust would not allow her. It was not time and it was not trust. It would be an hour before he returned to her and they would drive further down the coast and they would not speak of it.

Love is All - The Tallest Man on Earth

Revisitation

Joyful

182 words

Sarah Van Name

i felt your joy in the songs i taught you to sing and in your condemnation-turned-acceptance of thong underwear, i saw it in pictures (first appearance of snow), you rushed through all of us in two weeks like a strong August storm, you had a life outside of this, you shrank away in the distance until i no longer recognized your voice on the phone, i still have the voicemails and there i hear the joy skimming over the sorrow, a pale stone jumping over the surface of the deep water

i can no longer hold you in the arms of summer: your smirk from my wall, the Hawaii glass, you are psychoanalytically something more to me than a skinny little girl drenched in light – psychologically, you represent the mosquito nights and the crushes – your breath, i didn’t know you at all when you were almost seventeen and decided, i only knew you at thirteen, a skinny little girl –

“I still write about her,” my friend said to me as we walked in the dusk. “Still.”

“I know,” I said. “Me too.”

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

The one that got away.

Castaway- 478
Stephen N. Dethrage

The arthritic fingers, sightless eyes, and wrinkled skin of the man on the edge of the pier tell passersby that he is not the young man he once was, but this does not bother him. He is here for the fishing, not the passerbys. He revels in each cast, each careful selection of his most precious lures. Although vision left him more than a decade ago, the smells and sounds of the lake are more than enough to keep him smiling soft and humming low, casting out and reeling in.

Every time he comes back to this place, he can't resist letting the memories of youth caress him like some sadistic angel or devil who teases and tempts, but dances away from his grasp each time he gives in and reaches out, hoping to take hold and be young again.

Today, he remembers love-- young love, and true love, and the sort of utopian love that Shakespeare and Lennon wrote about. He recalls his well rehearsed lines and practiced charms, not too much unlike the lures in his tacklebox and on his line, and how, always a fisherman, he tossed them to any girl who would bite. The hardest part of it all was dealing with the girls that were fun to court and woo and flirt with, but simply weren't the trophies that he could be satisfied making a life with. It wasn't anything personal, he merely thought like a fisherman, and tossed back the girls who didn't quite make the cut.

And then there was Rebecca. On the pier, his smile fades, and his humming ceases, and he remembers her more clearly than any other part of his long and storied past.

She was, in a word, flawless, and by some means or another, he charmed her, and they married, and for a while, they had the enviable sort of life and love that happens in the movies and in the books, but almost never translates into reality.

And then, one day, his vision was gone. The doctors called it a rare case of Amaurosis fugax, and explained that an artery had clogged just enough to decrease blood supply to his eyes, and the result was a total blindness that occured without warning, and could not be reversed. And suddenly, to Rebecca, he was a burden. She left him, like he left so many girls in his youth, because, for once, he was the one that warranted being tossed back.

He feels a hit at his lure, and knows he needs to jerk the rod and set his hooks in deep, and bring the fish onto the pier and snap out of his reverie, but he does not move, and a tear streaks down his cheeks, and in the murky waters of the lake in front of him, the fish darts away.

Singing Softly To Me - Kings of Convenience

Letters. (Keep Your Eyes Ahead)

Propel - 359 Words
by Aaron Dethrage

“At times, our strengths propel us so far forward,
that we can no longer endure our weaknesses
and perish from them.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

****************

April 18, 2010

Dear Mom,

My doctor has recommended that I start writing you letters daily. He says it’s therapeutic and is certain that it will help me come to grips with reality, with the fact that you’re gone. But since you won’t receive them and he doesn’t even want to read them, this just seems like psycho-babble bullshit to me.

I mean, I am perfectly aware that you are dead. I sustained the weight of your coffin atop my right shoulder on the long walk from the front of the church to the idling, black hearse in the parking lot and then again from the car to the grave. My shoulder was sore for the next two days, but I refused to take any pain relievers because those tense muscles were all that I had left of you.

Why am I telling you this...

Your Son.

****************

April 26, 2010

Dear Mom,

The shrink interpreted my writing assignment negligence this past week as further proof that this is what I need to be doing.

I just don’t get it. Everyone seems to think that this is affecting me so much more than I believe it to be. It has already been a few months, and I’ve had constant, strict deadlines with my publishers. The world doesn’t stop for grieving, and you wouldn’t have wanted me to allow that anyway. “Keep your eyes ahead,” you always said.

I trust that you’re fine and that you’d want my life to keep propelling forward. These thoughts give me strength.

Your Son.

****************

May 26, 2010

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry if you’ve missed these. After two uncooperative weeks, my doctor just dropped the idea. I stopped going shortly after I last wrote to you. This week has been... hard, but I just keep repeating, “keep your eyes ahead,” and believe that everything will eventually sort out...

I love you.

Your Son.

****************

June 29, 2010

Mom,

I’m coming.

Please leave a light on; I’ve imagined the journey to be dark.

Aaron.

****************

Keep Your Eyes Ahead - The Helio Sequence

You just can't be me.

Mary Ann Loo
Reflection - 32 words

Hello vacant eyes;
So familiar, yet you’re not
What you used to be.

Hello joyless face,
Once filled with eager wonder.
You just can’t be me.

What did you expect to see?


Silence - Jars of Clay

PotatOetry

Potato - 20 words
Ben Azevedo

If a ROUND brown Potato,
a SPUD! you might say,
was, in fact, a TOMATO,
I'd cry out, "FOUL PLAY!"

Potato's in the Paddy Wagon - The New Main Street Singers

The Collector

Coaster - 144 words

Lindsey Thompson

My mother is a collector, which is her fancy word for “hoarder.” The world would halt on its axis, violently hurdling us into space, if she ever began to throw away things that she “might need in the future and shouldn’t have to buy.” Recently, this collection has crept into the world of coasters. Strewn about the house, she has approximately 17 different coasters, no 2 of which are identical, or even from the same store. With some bearing Biblical knowledge and others exalting in the British palace, the coasters continue to be fruitful and multiply as my mother commemorates exotic vacations with a piece of plastic. We all heave a collective sigh at her exuberant "collecting."

My father passed his coaster tastes down to me. Simple, elegant, glass cradles for a brandy or scotch glass, and always in tidy even numbers.

Candy's Room - Bruce Springsteen

unheld things

Subway – 204 words

Kevin Foster

There were now three kids on the subway; a boy and girl had just climbed through the portal after the train sputtered to a stop at the 63rd station, shuffling lazily away with the somberness of a fading buzz as the train sped off again. The remaining three, a second couple and another boy, were alone in the car; they sat cooped in their usual corner anyway. They were worn out but kinetic, their appetites sated but growling still; lightning resting in a subway car. They wait for the second-to-last stop on their colored line. When the train stopped thirteen blocks further south, they would head two blocks east toward the lake and separate, the couple to the north and final boy to the south, returning to their respective homes. They were afraid as they traveled home, but not because they wouldn't make it, nor would they be hurt by what they found there. They feared the Wentworth Street split-up, inevitable and lonesome, but not because their being together provided safety. They feared the future, but not for the things that it held. They feared for the things that would disappear and the things that were never there at all, imagined in dumb glory.

Untitled 4 - Sigur Ros

Smoke

Deer - 450 words

Sarah Van Name

“I’m not going to hook up with anyone,” he told me as he pulled into the parking space and turned off the engine.

“I mean. I would hope not,” I replied, getting out. “It’s been like three weeks since she broke up with you. You’re supposed to still be a wreck.”

“I am skilled in the art of acting,” he said without looking at me as we walked towards the door. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t worry.”

The guy made the requisite x’s on our under-21 hands and we drifted in along the back wall. I bounced on my heels; I hadn’t been to this club in a while and I had missed it. But standing around waiting for a band when even the filler music is too loud…well, it isn’t that exciting in the end, even if the band is your favorite band and you have a good friend, a good heartbroken friend, beside you, because there’s still the forty-year-old on his second beer standing in the corner and there’s still the heat and the knowledge that you need to save your ears for later.

So I told my friend I had to get some air and I went out to the smoking patio. There was no one out there, but the smell of smoke still clung to the air like perfume. I kind of like that bitter aftertaste hanging in the atmosphere. I leaned against the wall, in the smoke and the cool of the summer night.

Behind the chain-link, there were some trees, and I saw a deer there suddenly, as if it had just coalesced from the darkness. It was small, as graceful and soft as ribbon, and alone. It lowered its head to sniff something on the ground; stepped delicately onto the concrete; hesitated by the side of the road; walked to the middle to nibble at a small piece of grass.

Of course I saw what was going to happen, what must happen. I heard the car coming, the too-loud rap music, saw the headlights rise like a rapid dawn and the baby poke up its head. Closer and closer, and –

– the truck swerved, I heard a curse, its tire hit the dirt on the other side but it continued on its way, the deer crossed over to the other side. I breathed. I heard drums, guitar, an appreciative roar, and a familiar verse.

When I went inside I saw him backed up against the wall like a scared animal while a hipster girl, small and cute with beautiful breasts, shouted something in his ear to make herself heard. He looked at the door, at not me but escape. I went to save him.

Party Pit - The Hold Steady

Reading the Story without the Words.

Curls: 89 words
Stephen N. Dethrage

The pages of my journal have turned up and curled at the edges. They are not ancient, but they grow older. Some are misshapen, wrinkled by falling tears, others nearly torn by the pen scribbling words of rage or jealousy. The sudden shift in shade from off-white to an nicotene yellow reveal that at some point, I picked up smoking. These sheets of paper, so much more than the words scribbled on them in dark black ink, tell my true story more masterfully than my own writing ever could.

Little Lion Man - Mumford and Sons

No Surprise

Wig - 144 Words
Aaron Dethrage

My grandmother wears a wig to hide her age from the world, and she is incredibly successful in her efforts. In fact, I can hardly remember noticing any significant shifts in her appearance throughout my entire twenty-one years of life. She may have sprouted a new wrinkle or two, and her voice may not sing quite as well as it once did; but every time I see her, there are never any real surprises. I like to pretend that her house is a safe haven from the otherwise inescapable wiles of Change. I’ve seen my sister become a woman, and I’ve seen good friends destroy their lives. I’ve seen old lovers go find husbands, and I’ve seen the cracks that span my mind. But joyous and radiant, adorned with her tightly-woven wig, my grandmother waits in that house–eternal, unchanging and wise.

Grandchildren - Mia Riddle