Out the Middle of a Donut
(Originally published by Monkeybicycle)

You think: I want a flathead screwdriver. You imagine a large hardware store by your house. You are dragging this man by his ankles, through sliding glass doors down wide empty aisles, his pinkish, chewed down nails clacking against gray tile and his mouth still flapping though not saying too much of anything useful. In a word, blathering. Yammering. Prattling, etc. An unending tape loop of your yadda-yadda-yaddas.

I tell them, yadda. And I’ve been trying to yadda. From the yadda I’ve been saying, yadda yadda yadda.

Right.

But nobody yaddas.

No.

No. See. You Yadda. But Yadda.

Remember, he’s a thin and featureless thing, made of empty bones like a bird. Only rarely will he grab at passing objects, knock over a snow shovel or unspool a length of rope. This is to be expected and, anyway, the blinking red security cameras installed along the ceiling aren’t actually recording anything.

Yadda yadda. From the beginning I’ve been yadda.

I see.

The hard part is putting up with the noise. This store is enormous. Silent. Vast. Echoes will emerge. The kahhuffff of his body being dragged across tile, that rattling nonsense streaming out from his mouth, all bouncing off distant cinderblock walls and returning in waves of unintelligible static. This can quickly lead to distraction, or, what’s worse, disorientation. Without focus, you may find yourself lost in a corner, quite far away from where you intend to go.

So. Continue down an aisle full of front doors. Pass by a pyramid of opaque plastic containers labeled: blah blah blah. A white cardboard arrow is hanging down from the ceiling. Follow where it’s pointing, past rows of unlit floor lamps to a sweaty, fat-backed clerk hunched over a bin of old light bulbs. He’s shaking the half-eaten donut in his hand toward the end of the aisle, at a brightly lit wall.

Screwdrivers. Hundreds of them, hundreds of hundreds, arranged from ceiling to floor in a symmetrical pattern appearing as wallpaper. His legs fall away as you approach the display, a hollow thump at your feet. Straight ahead, a shiny and silver long-necked instrument dangles at eye level. Take it by the handle and turn to see him lying there, arms stretched out, swimming in place.

I yadda yadda to yadda. I yadda, yadda me, is what I yaddad.

Get down on your knees and straddle his chest, smooth the pale skin of his forehead and gently remove the glasses from his face. His eyes become tiny and seem focused on nothing. He says, through squinting lids:

No. This whole time yadda yadda you. I say, yadda. You yadda and that means you see what I mean.

Nod as you stretch out your shoulders. Arrange the instrument against the empty space between his tiny eyes. Say: Yes. I do. I see what you mean. And, for a moment, he stops. So you breathe in. And then you press down.

.

Not too bad. In a word, satisfactory, acceptable, etc. And most days are acceptable, etc. Only rarely are there days when he squirms and struggles and you’re forced to be severe, more mean and disgusted. He, on the floor, begging to be listened to and you having to hit him and yell at him: No. I don’t see what you’re saying. I see yadda. I see screwdrivers. I hear all of your words and not a single idea. Still, each day ends as the day before. This man with his arms swimming slowly to nowhere, a steady stream dwindling down to a sigh as the tip of your screwdriver finally taps against the tile. He keeps talking while you work. There’s very little resistance. As if his head was a pastry, a lump of white dough, soft, slightly clammy. Like punching out the hole from the middle of a donut.

A Mnemonic
(Originally published by decomP)

A mnemonic.

My grandfather says, A nah-mah-nik is a trick that aids in remembering. If you’re thinking about something and it’s coming up hazy, so then think about whether there’s a mnemonic to help you.

He says, I’ll give you a for instance. When you’re trying to remember the different days inside a month, sing, Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. When spelling out together, think, we’ll go to-get-her together and when you see a bright color say, Well, hello Roy G. Biv.

Here are the ways to help you remember, here is a trick that you’ll never forget. These are the lessons I learned from my grandfather. These are the things I heard from a puppet, whose white tufts of hair matched white open eyes, whose flapping red mouth split a blue sponge ball head. He shook as he spoke from between the drawn curtain; felt arms through the air on thin strips of wire. If my grandfather were a puppet, I believe he’d be a blue wolfhound and here are things he’d say about mnemonics:

All of this I keep remembering and not once have I met a person whose last name was Biv. If I hum out the months, it could just as easily be December, April, May, and October. In the meantime, there are moments where I forget my own phone number, draw a blank on the word apple.

Meanwhile, there are mornings where I try to think of your grandmother, and can’t even recall what color her eyes were.

Yefterday’s Fish
(Originally published in Robert Lopez's No News Today series)

In the final months before his death, the editor, long after his publishing career had reached its disgraceful, well-publicized end and who, afterward, worked briefly as a solicitor of advertisements for the city phone book before relocating nine hundred and ninety one miles west to become a night manager at a twenty-four hour bookshop outside Hammond, Indiana that sold, exclusively, used technical manuals on circuitry and electronic device repair before that business, too, became insolvent, and he, after seven lost years in which no discernible trace of his activities has been discovered – during which time his first wife, Edie, legally changed her name back to Dalrymple and the last of his remaining relatives passed away in their sleep – reemerged quietly as a part-time assembly line worker in Paw Paw, Wyoming, fabricating inspirational refrigerator magnets from the busted apart, gray-yellowed keys of obsolete keyboards, where, on his lunch breaks and after work, at home, at the table, in his Caligari-ceilinged apartment above Jane’s Luck-O Laundromat, began composing, in notebooks and across scraps of loose-leaf paper bound together with wire, an uninterrupted, unpaginated, unindented “We Regret These Errors” -style article in which, it appears, the editor, whose influence had once loomed so largely over the publishing world and who, during what many now refer to as the Golden Age of Ink, famously declared, “When print dies, so does this, so do we, so do I,” produced approximately six thousand and fifty six separate entries worth of corrections.

Addendums are still being discovered. At the time of this pressing, pages have been found taped behind drawers, beneath the belly of a radiator, stuffed inside mugs like packing material and folded neatly into V shapes, upturned and arranged as rows of paper teeth across the smudged glass shelves of a locked medicine cabinet.

Unsurprisingly, the corrective article refers to the editor’s own periodical, Zum. The issue in question, called the “August Issue,” would have been his one-hundredth publication had he and his publishing imprint not collapsed so completely in the months leading up to its release.
Each entry follows an identical format, the number to each line changing, seemingly at random, though, so far, never repeating:

“In line 18 of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”

“In line 83 of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”

“In line 809 of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”

“In line 6,003 of our August Issue, the Editor failed to adjust the following error”

And, so far, each entry apologizes for the same misspelling:

“Yefterday’s fish.”

Interview with a Prepared Answer
(Originally published by Spork. Interview here)

[3:36] Now let me stop you right there, Gerald. Because I can see where you’re going and what you’re doing is asking the exact kind of question that I’m not going to answer. A question I couldn’t answer in the first place, Gerald, and even then, even if I had an answer right here in my hand I still wouldn’t give it to you since, to begin with, you’re asking me something that shouldn’t be asked. Here’s what I’m talking about. I’ve said it before and I want you to listen. I know that I’m here to answer your questions. I think people already see me as an open individual, as someone who believes in open discussions and foundationally also in a free exchange of ideas. But there’s a line that you’ve crossed that you don’t seem to see, and a saying about old dogs and letting them lie. I understand that I’m here to answer your questions, but there’s a decency here that I think you need to remember and so, out of respect for those people, I will leave it at that.

No.

Look.

[4:43] There’s a time and a place for everything. In my line of work, I meet people. Lots of folks from everywhere: substitute teachers fromDetroit, Michigan, third-shift machinists from northern Wyoming, paper mill workers and rest home assistants, window washers and x-ray technicians. Can I tell you something? I shook hands with Steve Achen from Kadoka, South Dakota; a 43-year-old fry cook who plays a clown who does magic on the weekends for kids’ parties. I sat down to breakfast with Mark Simmons from Wyola, no, Missoula, a third generation butcher with a mother named Misty who has terminal cancer of the kidneys.

[5:35] All of these people, Gerald. Each night they come home and they pull into their driveways. At night they’re tired and it’s a struggle to get by. There they are in their doorways, waiting. And so say perhaps some couple has a young boy to take care of. The young boy goes to school; he has his homework spread out on the table in the kitchen. It’s about dinnertime and the television’s playing on top of the refrigerator. Mom is pouring water and pulling out plates. Dad is by the boy flipping channels from a ball game, to a game show, to a news show then look: there’s this interview and your hand is already raised. You take your pencil from your mouth and everyone is listening when bang.

[6:21] So. The mother looks up. The father looks up, he holds the remote. There’s a decency here that I want you to remember. A silence between them when the young boy puts down his pencil. He turns to his parents, looks up at his father. This boy says, “Dad,” and the father says, “Yes.” And then this boy goes on to repeat that question you sought fit to ask me just then. Gerald. Your question. How easy for you to ask such a question.

[7:21] Now, Gerald, listen. Now I have a question. I have a question and I want you to answer it: how is this man supposed to answer his boy? How could he even begin?

[7:41] Tomorrow morning that question will go on to school. Tomorrow evening there’ll be new questions for parents dead tired from work, more dinners and silence.

[8:00] I wonder. How would Steve Achen answer your question. What would Mark Simmons do to your question. I like to think of myself as an open individual. Ask me anything, usually, and I will do my best to answer. But here is the difference and I want you to listen. Some people, decent people, understand that there’s a time and a place to ask certain questions. Sleeping dogs, Gerald. You’re asking me something that shouldn’t be asked and out of respect for those dogs, I will let them keep lying.

Next question.

Well, yes. Obviously, I agree.

Okay.

No. That’s something that I’ve never said.

The thing about the meat thing.
(Originally published by elimae)

There is no
Terminal
D.

The thing.
The thing about the meat thing
is

When dad dies of cancer,
What I’ll say is
this:

Even the cleenest hands
Can
Cause
Damage.

Three Jokes
(Originally published by SmokeLong Quarterly. Interview here)

A group of middle managers stand in an elevator without speaking to each other. They blink languorous blinks at the dimly lit ceiling, the woman just there with the two men behind her, each nervously focused on the long strip of numbers that run above the door. Well dressed, in a way. Mannequin clothing. Three mannequin poses. White hands to their stomachs and blue veins in their faces involuntarily pulsing to the dull sound of cables contracting through the ceiling, the distant drone of an appliance, an electric knife or a blender, left whirring on the counter in the kitchen of an apartment. The numbers glow yellow with each passing floor. Nine and ten, eleven and twelve, on up through the building. They put their fingers to their ears and slowly close their eyes, lay face down on the linoleum and, one by one, try hard to yawn.

...

A middle-aged couple, overweight with the man in ill-fitting jean shorts and the woman in some kind of bright red capris that strangle her calves. Just after lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Spread out in the living room and both on their backs with ballooned, misshapen lower halves thrust into the air, pale round legs struggling to pedal a pair of imaginary bicycles. In the corner, a television plays an elegant older woman dressed in black spandex. She looks right into the camera; lays her hands across her stomach, with her shoulders to the ground lifts straight into the air. Two indistinguishable figures repeat the movement behind her. Elevator music drifts from the speakers. She says, “And lift yourself like so” and “take a long, deep breath,” her instructional coos intermingling with the grunts of the couple as they squirm across the carpet: “Ffffhhf.” “Ummph. At the smaahll of your back.” “End.” “Ahhf. And your spine.” “Here?” “Ahh.” “I."

...

An infant has been placed in the black vinyl cradle of a safety swing harness designed for bigger children. Its stubby round legs dangle out from oversized holes, they twitch and they curl. Two adults stand by but look off to the street, where a van has just backed into a cyclist. Someone is running and waving their arms. Distant sirens are whistling from the buildings downtown. And so the infant alone, eyes mesmerized by the ungrounded state of its own tiny feet, feeling the slow, continual push of the swing being swung by the afternoon breeze, the murmur of voices discussing the weather, believing as a dog might believe that everything occurring will continue to occur – this car ride is unending, my owners are gone. I am trapped where I am and will go on forever.

Illustration of a Stove
(Originally published by Ninth Letter)

The stove is off. I know the stove is off because burner one is off klik, burner two is off klik, burner three is off klik, burner four is off klik. And so the stove is off. So I can rest easy. Today, there’s no need to worry. When, just yesterday, I passed by an appliance store, I peeked into the window. On display were three large stoves made of glossy black and white metal, arranged in a row with oven doors opened. Dummy cookware sat uncovered along the top burners and accompanying each appliance were tall white mannequins, with curled-up wigs and long, narrow necks, white paper skin and the backs of their dresses crisscrossed by tightly drawn apron straps. Three plastic women multiplied by four stove burners divided by three oven doors minus one. They faced away from the window, each bent badly at the waist and peering into the black opening of their glossy metal counterparts. I saw this and thought, “Can I remember checking my stove this morning?” I had to answer, “No.” I wasn’t sure if, when I left, the stove was on or off and, in fact, the more I thought about it, the more I could imagine a thrown-open oven door, all knobs cranked to HI, the hollow clucking of gas pumping through pipes as someone popping their tongue off the roof of their mouth. Cluck-Cluck-Cluck-Cluck. What would I have been cooking? Potatoes? Was I boiling potatoes? I remember setting a timer. No. Not peeled potatoes. I was cooking a carton of eggs. It was a carton of golf balls. I had a half-dozen golf balls hard-boiling in a pot and when the water wouldn’t boil I moved them to the microwave, as I was so sick of waiting. At night, I know the microwave is off because I pull the plug before bedtime. That makes it true, and this is true, too: One night, after having a hard time believing that my stove was really off, I wrenched it away from the wall and dragged it across the floor of my one-room apartment. A black rubber cable trailed along behind us, a silver metal snake grew out of the wall. And that’s how I knew my stove was off. Because when we made it past the piles around my work table, into what I guess would be my bedroom, the black rubber cable ripped away from its socket and the silver metal snake also ruptured clear with a kind of sputtering ffssss as it recoiled into the kitchen, writhing loudly about on the linoleum, my stove placed safely at the foot of my bed, its oven door shut and all four knobs turned off. I slept easy that night. I remember falling asleep. Because burner one was off klik, burner two was off klik, burner three was off klik, and burner four was off klik.