3 4 t h P a r a l l e l

DOMESTIC APPARITION

2012-01-11T02:12:00.000-08:00

Meg Tuite's book, a novel-in-stories, Domestic Apparition, San Francisco Bay Press, includes the story Warrior Sister published in 34thParallel 13. The book's two websites are: www.megtuite.com
www.sanfranciscobaypress.com

Trisha Bhattacharya's newest published work

2011-02-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

Trisha Bhattacharya who wrote Kaya Evanescent in our 11th Issue has had a microfiction story published in twenty20 Journal.

Trisha says: " It all began with 34thParallel -- my lucky charm. :)"

(And just by the way, we notice that Fabio Sassi has contributed the art work on twenty20. Fabio featured in our Premiere Issue.)

Ashley Cowger's Prizewinning Book

2011-01-12T07:13:00.000-08:00

Congrats Ashley on your first published book!!

We published Ashley Cowger’s story, Of Quicksand Mats and Peaceful Meditation, way back in the third issue of 34thParallel.

Her short story collection, Peter Never Came, was awarded Autumn House Press’s Fiction Prize for 2010, and is coming out this January 15.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Never-Came-Ashley-Cowger/dp/1932870466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1294597792&sr=1-1

Ocean's Edge in Issue 12

2010-12-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

Read Ocean's Edge by Christina Oi Ying Nip in 34thParallel Issue 12

“What happened?” Rachel said, looking out at the darkness, listening to the sound of the surf washing in. “Hm? What do you mean?” Milly looked at Rachel. In the darkness, all she could see was a grey silhouette of Rachel. “I mean, what happened?” Rachel repeated.

Haywire, a new book by Thaddeus Rutkowski

2010-12-04T02:29:00.000-08:00

Thaddeus Rutkowski who wrote the story Home Furnishings in the seventh issue of 34thParallel has had his new book Haywire reviewed in the Publishers Weekly.

Imperfect Solitude, a new novel by Tim Mahony

2010-12-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

Tom Mahony who wrote Angry Loner in Issue 6 has just published a novel, Imperfect Solitude, with independent publisher Casperian Books.

Sometimes a wave offers no room to maneuver...

When Evan Nellis, a neophyte biologist still reeling from the mysterious death of his father, is hired by PDT Biological Consulting in San Francisco, he finds himself under the brutal tutelage of Gordon Shaw, a brilliant biologist sorely lacking in people skills. With his neurotic, hypochondriac mother pressuring him to move back home to rural California and his entry-level wage forcing him to stay on the couch of an eccentric friend, Evan's only relief is surfing.

That changes when Richard Headley, a wealthy developer, takes an interest in Evan's career and requests him personally for the biological assessments of his properties. Yet what seems like a blessing at first soon finds Evan in conflict with his principles, and he must confront everyone, including himself, before all he values is destroyed.

Here's a link to the book
http://casperianbooks.com/catalog/1-934081-28-0.html
and Tom's website
http://www.tommahony.net/

gospel

2009-01-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

by Peter Schwartz

at times I have spoken in subtitles

protecting what might

have saved me

I've cut the tightrope between

the zoo of shadows and

the elaborate horizon as

if there was any other chance

at happiness

I saw one last flash of near adrenaline;

a supernova,

then went under.

Peter Schwartz has more styles than a Natal Midlands Dwarf Chameleon. He's been published in Arsenic Lobster, Epicenters, Media Cake, 5 Trope, Verdad and VOX. He's currently working on his fourth chapbook, 'Postcards to the Sun'. See the extent of his shenanigans at: www.sitrahahra.com.

daedalus, not icarus

2009-01-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

by Luke Boyd

when you pulled at my

sleeve and asked me

to lay back down,

just to talk for a

while, I sat on the

corner of your bed

tap,

tap,

tapping out

the seconds on your sheets.

I told you to be

daedalus, not icarus,

then I drove home,

sliced a plump orange into

sections and sucked

the juicy flesh, while you

nervously googled mythology,

and while you scrolled

downscreen I threw out

the orange peels in the

trash atop a half-eaten

sandwich and some coffee grounds

and by the time you

printed it out,

smiling viciously, scripting

your venom and

my heartfelt apology—

I was already asleep.

Luke Boyd worked at a sawmill and a trucking company to put himself through college and now is an inner-city high school teacher in Allentown, Pennsylvania. According to his students Boyd has invented the Internet, the number 7, and sarcasm. Some of his work has appeared in: The Misfit Literati, Bewildering Stories, Dark Sky Magazine, and Wanderings. He is rumored to believe in unicorns. He likes blades, hot wings, and Nicholas Cage...in that order.

Strip Mining

2009-01-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

by Niccole Segura

These are the boys who are carrying

the young girl's body down the road at night,

who are walking to the quarry

stripped long ago

to the useless rock.

She is even less beautiful than she was

at the beginning of the night. She is

crook-toothed and fat. Her mother drank;

her father was half the town.

These are the boys who are carrying

her to lie among the broken pieces

of shale.

Her body will stink in the shallow water

until we come to run in the quarries,

to train on these scraped hills.

We will see her with arms outstretched

and knees torn by the gravel.

We have strong legs and lungs

and untroubled smiles.

We knew her;

she was a slut.

These are the boys who are missing

practice today

and we tell each other that they must be glad

they missed this; we saw

that she had a fly in the wound on her cheek.

There are not enough miles to run

away from this place, her torn dress,

the heat against our sweaty backs.

There is not enough water in our bottles

to slake our need

to forget the stillness of her eyes.

These are the boys who are carrying

the young girl,

carrying the young girl,

over and over in the middle of the night

down to the quarries where they once

ran up and down crumbling hills,

their feet quick and their eyes clear,

when they did not feel her blood under their fingernails

and under their skin.

They stare at the haze that rises

in the morning, the fog

which fills the quarries;

they want to run. Their legs

are useless where they were once fleet,

ripped by the shale,

the nettles, the shattered remains

of the phone she always carried in her pocket.

A resident of western Pennsylvania, Niccole Segura has been writing for a very long time, though she has only become any good at it in the past few years. Poetry, which she disdained for some time due to a poor education, has become her way to relax. With a mind that is equal parts science and myth, she writes as often as possible and could read forever. She has been previously published in the Scream collection, with a poem called "The Life that Kisses Death," but she likes to think she's improved since then. Niccole recently graduated from college with a degree in biology, will be attending graduate school in anatomy next year, and learned far too much about cell phones this summer. Her favorite poets are Wallaces Stevens, Lewis Caroll, and e.e. cummings.

Four Poems by Tony Press

2009-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

reckoning

rattlesnakes live here
it is something we forget
like the dry cleaning
or the name of that movie
or that we will die

* * * *

vision

there is no limit
to what a hawk can tell you
about horizons

* * * *

on retreat

on the garden bench
a hummingbird comes to call
hovers close to me
dances in the morning sun
just after you leave

* * * *

natura muerta

with the exception
of the viper on the floor
the morning looked good
birdsong filled the Spanish sky
and I was alive

Tony Press (aka Acarasiddhi) lives near San Francisco. His stories and poems have appeared in Words-Myth (England); Contemporary Verse 2; Lichen; (both Canada) Spitball; Turning Wheel; (both USA) and the UK anthology The Heart as Origami. He attempts to act with awareness and compassion.

Some Extraordinary Way

2008-10-06T22:54:00.000-07:00

by Randall Brown

Everything in his father's closet became imbued with magic simply by Jack's father placing an object within. These are my father's Hush Puppy loafers. These are the striped ties he wears to work. These, cufflinks for weddings or funerals. These, the flannel red hunting shirts smelling of cherry pipe tobacco and the insides of pheasants. When Jack was eleven, he found the book An Open Marriage, and a contract signed therein, with leaky red ink that made him think of devils and blood.

He brought the contract to the breakfast table. A Sunday. His mother wasn't home yet. Jack read the contract as if it were the funnies, in front of a bowl of King Vitamin. He waited for his father to awaken: his father had fallen asleep in front of the television, as he did every Friday or Saturday, depending upon whether she came home that night. Jack thought his mother very cruel, but the contract made him think otherwise. Now, he imagined his father to be like Beetle Bailey.

His father surprised him, came in after only a few minutes, blinded by the morning, breaking a coffee mug—saying "sugar"—picking up shards, boiling water for his Sanka, spreading Pepperidge Farm cinnamon-raisin bread with butter and red jam. And finally, after these rituals, he sat at the table and saw the open book and the contract and knew that Jack knew what his father had signed away.

"You and that closet." His father sipped the coffee with Cremora floating still, like foul dust. "I'd forgotten the book was there."

"Mom is with someone else." Jack's King Vitamin, soaked with milk, melted in his mouth with only the smallest hint of crunch left.

"Yes," his father answered. His eyes, red-streaked. Had he been crying?

"And you don't care?"

His father said nothing, bit the toast and the jam squirted out as if from a wound. The door opened, and in came Jack's mother, so bright and fresh. Jack wondered about love, what it meant when you didn't have to make a choice, as if he could mix all the cereals in the cabinet together—Lucky Charms, Life, King Vitamin, Quisp. If he could have the entire Burger King menu. What would it mean?

She stood in the door frame. She saw the contract, Jack's father reading the newspaper sports page—and she saw Jack who would sit beside his mother on her lounge chair, covered in baby oil just like her, as if he could somehow get into her skin. How many other sons would she choose if she could?

"Oh, Jack. What you must think of us."

"Us?" his father said. His father winked at Jack. But he wasn't in on it with his father. The wink asked Jack to take sides. What was the opposite of open marriages? Closed ones. From closed to open to out the door and gone. Jack would have to choose. He couldn't have both father and mother. He had to pretend that it did not matter—that they could have their open marriage.

"I understand," Jack said.

"You do?" She sat down, at the head of the table, between Jack and his father.

"Well," Jack's father said. "maybe you should explain it. Just to be sure."

He knew his mother's desperate love, how she let no one hold him and how Jack's father could not punish Jack without her permission. He understood the rules his mother put upon love, how he had to study vocabulary and pass her tests for kisses. His father's love had no such conditions. It was desperate in a different way, made Jack create his own boundaries and definitions. Jack believed he continually failed his father.

Jack closed his eyes. He waited for the future of mother and father together to appear. Jack watched how dead and sad and sick his father would become waiting for Jack's mother to give his father the love he so wanted in this world. And Jack felt the pervasive sickness of his mother, that searched the world for what she already had. Jack would be forced to choose—and he would pick his father over her because she will have ruined Jack's father with her rejection of the open, unconditional love she couldn't live up to.

The King Vitamin had partially dissolved. A sugary soup. Jack stirred it. He thought about ripping up the contract, but he wanted to keep it. Evidence. He would gather things after this morning. Love notes. A vibrator. Beer cans.

"You can't love anyone," Jack told her.

His father surprised him. "That's not true. You don't understand it at all."

"Leave him alone," she said. "You just sat there, letting him hold that contract, stupid silent—" She reached for Jack's hand and held it. "I want you to leave,” she told his father.

Oh, Jack thought, oh how terrible things could get so quickly. And his dad listened and cleaned out his closet and left Jack in the house with that kind of love that wanted things no one could ever give, a mother who would search for love in the worse kind of men and pills. Jack would find his mother in her underwear with three men sometimes, and he would sleep buried in pillows in the emptiness of his father's closet. Jack would feel so sad and helpless. He would want to be the hero who saved his mother with a kind of supernatural love, but it would be impossible, anyone could see that, couldn't they, how impossible it would be to save her, and whenever he would tell his father, "Help," his father told Jack that she would die if he took her son away from her—and he couldn't do that to her. Not ever.

Randall Brown teaches at Saint Joseph's University. He holds an MFA from Vermont College. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, Saint Ann's Review, Evansville Review, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, upstreet, and others. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live (Flume Press, 2008) and will have an essay on (very) short fiction in the forthcoming anthology The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field (Rose Metal Press, 2009).

The Last Stall on the Left

2008-10-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

by Valerie Z Lewis

In the last stall on the left, in the bathroom of the all-ages club, Jenny takes a sandwich bag of white powder out of the center of her bra, right between her breasts, and sets it down on the top of the toiler-paper holder. She takes a broken compact out of her purse, looks up at me, and says, "Do you have a dollar?" She smells like lavender.

Earlier that evening, Jenny shoplifted the compact from Duane Reed. We'd stopped for cigarettes on our way to the club, and even though we didn't smoke that much, Rachel and I had once decided that standing around with an unlit cigarette was a good way to meet guys. Rachel had the most convincing fake ID, so I left her to buy the cigarettes while I followed Jenny down the aisles. She pocketed the compact and then looked at the tester bottles of perfume. "A romantic garden of lavender mists," she read off one label. "Lame." But she sprayed herself with it anyway, and I wondered if using the free testers before you went out counted as stealing. In the parking lot she snapped the compact in half, keeping only the mirror, and Rachel rolled her eyes and said, "Can we go already?"

In the bathroom, Jenny takes a pink Bic disposable razor out of her shoe, and I recognize it as one from my house. She cracks the plastic easily and extracts the blade. She spreads a bit of the powder on the mirror and arranges it into a line. "Do me a favor?" she asks. "When I snort this, cough so no one can hear, okay?" She ducks her head down without waiting for a response, and I cough.

Exactly fourteen days ago, I had sex with the singer from Death Dream. Rachel and I had been friends with him since the summer, when we'd started going to the club every Saturday, and he'd talked to me a lot, but I didn't think he really liked me. Then there was the night fourteen days ago when his brother bought us dinner and drove us back to their place, and in the Burger King drive through, sitting half on his lap because the car was crowded, he pressed his face against mine, his nose against my cheek, his lips on my neck, smelling like beer, lulling me half to sleep, and no one had ever touched me like that before in my life.

The next morning he sat at his kitchen table laughing about something with Mindy's boyfriend, and when he saw me he said, "Hey, buddy. Mindy says she can drive you home whenever." And for fourteen days he didn't answer the phone when I called.

Jenny arranges another line with the razor blade. "You can only have one line. No, half a line." She looks up at me and smiles. "I don't want you getting too fucked up. Your friends hate me enough."

"My friends are bitches." Ever since I started talking to Jenny last week, Rachel, Karen, and Mindy had been making comments about how they didn't like her. Jenny had gotten kicked out of her old high school. Jenny dressed like a slut. Jenny hung out with skater guys. As we were getting ready to leave for the club, Jenny came out of my bedroom wearing tight black spandex shorts, a black bra, and a thigh-long, see-through black shirt, and Rachel didn't even wait until Jenny had gone into the other room before saying, "She's wearing that?"

Jenny snorts half the line and then holds out the mirror and the rolled-up dollar bill. "It's cool if you don't want to," she says, but I've already lowered my head and sucked the powder into my nose as hard as I can. It tastes sticky in the back of my throat, but otherwise I can barely tell I've done anything.

Jenny coughs.

"Did you see him?" I ask her. She's never met the singer from Death Dream, but she says she saw them play once at Jesse's Bar before it shut down, which is weird because I was at that show. It's like we were meant to meet each other. When we'd come in, he was standing by the bar with his brother. He'd seen me, called out, "Hey buddy!", but I'd ignored him, because really. Fucking really.

"You could do so much better," Jenny says. "He doesn't even sing, he just screams, and he thinks he's hardcore, but he's so not." She pours another tiny mound of powder onto the mirror. "If you want me to, I could introduce you to some nice guys who are actually hardcore."

I shrug. "I don't care. I don't really want to date anyone for a while." I lean back against the cold metal of the stall door. "It just sucks, because now he's the only guy I've ever slept with, and I have to walk around for like months with him being the last person I kissed." I could always hook up with Greg, who's had a crush on me forever, but it felt mean to make out with someone while I still wasn't over someone else.

"You're way too pretty for him," Jenny says as she leans over the mirror. "He's ugly, and he's lame, and he has a fat ass."

"Thanks," I say, and I cough.

It was only last Monday when I'd seen Jenny eating lunch by herself in the courtyard. She was sitting at one of the plastic picnic tables, listening to her headphones, ignoring the turkey sandwich in front of her, drawing something on the palm of her hand with a ballpoint pen. Rachel was skipping lunch to make up a Math test, so I had no one to talk to, so I walked up to Jenny's table.

"What're you listening to?" I asked.

Jenny took the headphones off. "Thompson Plaza," she said. She held up her hand to reveal a logo composed of the letters TP. "My favorite band, but I'm totally fickle. Do you like punk?"

I nodded and sat down across from her. "Do you like Bad Chicks Don't?"

She grinned. "Oh my god. The girl who plays bass for them is my cousin. Were you at Battle of the Bands this summer?"

"Yeah, but I left early, after Death Dream played."

She chuckled. "You shoulda left before Death Dream played. They suck."

"They do," I said, staring down at her hands, spotted with ink all over, her fingertips looking burned, or maybe just calloused; maybe she played guitar. "They really, really do."

In the last stall on the left, I'm trying not to cry, and I look down at the mirror between us, the white powder melting into little piles of wet snow as my eyes tear up. Jenny won't let me do any more, but there's plenty left, and I wonder how much I'd need before I could stop feeling like the ugliest, stupidest loser in the world, before I could stop being just another little girl at a club who tried too hard to have a boyfriend and fell for some guy's lame line of shit, before I could just pass out forever and wake up watching some other band, in some other town, as some other person.

Jenny touches my face, at the bottom of my cheek, and when I look up, she kisses me. It's gentle, but she leans into every motion, as if she's prodding me with her lips, as if she's waking me up. She tastes like diet soda and cooking flour, and for a second all I want is to fall through her spider-web thin shirt, crawl inside her body and die.

She pulls back after just a few seconds and smiles. Her pupils are huge. "There," she whispers. "Now he's not the last person who kissed you."

She puts her head down to the mirror, her nose right against the glass, and I cough to cover the sound.

Valerie Z. Lewis is a Writing Professor at SUNY Orange. Her fiction has been published by Fresh Boiled Peanuts, Oysters & Chocolate, Zygote in my Coffee, The Pitkin Review, Torquere Press, SNReview, and Dark Sky Magazine. She lives in New York. http://www.valerielewis.net

Blue Note

2008-07-31T00:53:00.000-07:00

by Mel Fawcett

Leroy winks at me as yet more expensive coats brush past him into the club. He loves the rich and trendy customers; he thinks their presence reflects on him. Me, I'm just glad punters are coming to hear Murphy play.

It's a filthy night and the cloakroom stinks like a pack of wet dogs. The shabbiest coats are the wettest; they belong to musicians. I put the expensive ones at the back to avoid contamination.

The cloakroom is between the pay-desk and the main area of the club. First there's Leroy with his gold tooth and snappy suit at the entrance, then Margo with her pneumatic breasts at the pay desk, then me with the wet dogs. There's no door or counter to the cloakroom, just a doorway to the narrow room with two hundred and forty-nine hooks on the walls and a bit of an alcove right at the back.

I've only been here a week. I got the job because I was on hand when my predecessor was fired. Customers' coats went missing on two separate occasions while he was in charge. The management overlooked it the first time. That's why I had to steal twice.

The moment I heard of Murphy's engagement at the club I knew I had to have the job. I couldn't afford to come every night as a punter and yet I couldn't bear the thought of missing a single set. Why? Are you kidding! His phrasing alone makes him the greatest saxophonist alive. He has commanded the respect of jazzmen since the forties. This man played with Charlie Parker, for Christ's sake!

For over a month now, I've been like a kid waiting for Christmas. The only downer has been that I've hardly played my own saxophone in all that time. You can't practice when you're shaking.

I'm trembling now. I can't take my eyes off the entrance. He's due to play his first set at ten. Danny Ross, the manager, has been prowling the lobby, looking for him. It won't be long now.

Murphy enters the club soon after nine-thirty. I'm surprised there's no retinue of admirers or hangers-on. The punters in the lobby take no notice of him. Leroy nods and lets him through and Margo says good evening, and that's all the recognition he gets. Until he reaches me.

'Hi, Eric,' I say with a smile.

He glances at me, rocks slightly, and starts to go into the club. Then he turns back and approaches me. This has to be one of the greatest moments of my life.

'Hey kid, you seen Ross?' The sickly-sweet smell of dark rum nearly floors me.

'He was looking for you,' I say.

He stands there for a long time, swaying. Then he says he needs to do something in the cloakroom. I tell him the cloakroom is only a place to hang coats. He looks at me and frowns and says he knows that. He mumbles something about needing privacy.

It's awkward. If Ross sees me letting anyone in with the coats I'll be sacked; I won't be given a second chance. But this is the great Eric Murphy asking a favour. What am I supposed to do? I step out into the lobby and Murphy pushes his way through the row of damp coats.

My heart is beating treble time. There are so many things I want to talk about with this man, so many possibilities that could develop.

I know better than to rush him. I give him his privacy and deal with a surge of punters and their coats. He's doing something in the alcove back there. I don't look. Even when it sounds as though he's gagging, I don't look. If a man of his stature needs a little something extra before a set, who am I to say otherwise? Besides, I'm so busy for a while I don't have time to worry about him. Everyone is babbling excitedly at the prospect of hearing the great man play. One of the customers says something to his companion about the old black guy coughing his guts up at the back of the cloakroom and they laugh as they go into the club. I'm tempted to drop their coats on the wet floor of the cloakroom.

While I'm still hanging up coats and umbrellas, Murphy pushes past me.

'This place stinks,' he says, shoving me aside.

I don't know what to say. What does he expect of a cloakroom on a wet night?

Murphy has gone off into the club. I stand there amidst the wet coats, completely deflated. It hardly seems fair to blame me for the smell. But I'm not only hurt by what he said; I'm also disappointed that my first opportunity at making friends with him has been lost. What if he thought it was me who stank?

A few minutes later, Danny Ross announces Murphy's first set. By stepping out into the lobby I can see part of the stage. Murphy is standing there, holding his sax. Some of the earlier excitement is gradually rekindled and I join in the applause.

Two smartly-dressed late-comers want to leave their coats. I don't attempt to conceal my irritation. I thrust their tickets at them and hurriedly take the coats to the back of the cloakroom. It is then I see what Murphy was doing back there. Four or five of the coats are smeared and streaked with coagulating vomit. The sight makes me feel like throwing up myself, but I don't because I know I have to do something and do it quick.

There's a damp towel on the floor with which I've been wiping up the puddles created by the dripping coats. I shake the towel out and try wiping a black suede coat, but to my dismay the suede immediately turns slimy. In a panic, I find my own coat and rip out part of the lining and use that to wipe the suede coat, but the improvement is negligible. I start on another coat, a dark blue one, less soiled than the suede, and have better luck with that; after ten or fifteen minutes of careful work the stain almost disappears. That encourages me to try the suede again. But although I manage to get rid of the sliminess, the soiled patch is obvious and whatever I do doesn't make it any better. I look at the others. One of the most soiled coats is a full-length fur. There is no way I'm going to be able to clean that. I remember the owner, a woman of fifty-something straight from a Cruella De Vil audition. How do I explain to her that someone has thrown-up over her coat? They'll say it's my fault for allowing Murphy into the cloakroom. Not that I could drag him into it-even though he has let me down. That's what bothers me more than anything, the feeling that Murphy has let me down.

I wonder if it's worth bagging the coats up and getting them out of the cloakroom-that's how I spirited the stolen coats away when I got my predecessor the sack; I bagged them up and pretended they were rubbish. But how would it help me now? I don't know what to do.

This isn't how it was supposed to happen. We should have had time to talk. Who knows what might have happened. We could have finished up jamming after hours. That's how I'd fantasized it.

After I'd given up trying to clean the coats, I must have stood there in the back of the cloakroom for a long time, day-dreaming about what might have happened, dazed by what did happen and wondering what to do about it. How could Murphy do that to me? He was one of the gods! He's not supposed to go around throwing up! I feel queezy at the thought of what was going to happen, what had happened.

The next thing I'm aware of is a punter wanting his coat.

'Fantastic, eh?' he says when I hand it to him.

'What's that?'

'Eric Murphy, of course. Where've you been?'

I become aware of the applause. Murphy has played a whole set and I haven't heard a single note.

With the first set over, the fashionable crowd will be leaving. It won't be long before one of the soiled coats is asked for. And then the arguments will start.

I tell Leroy I'm stepping out for some air.

'Bad timing, man,' he says.

I shrug and step out into the night. I climb up to street level. It's still raining.

Mel Fawcett, biker, carpenter, father, and writer, lives and works in London. His stories have been published in apt, LitBits, Espresso Fiction, and Twisted Tongue. "I'm encouraged by the thought that the journey is more important than the destination," Mel says, "for it is taking considerably longer to get wherever it is that I'm going than I anticipated when I first set out."

Email him at: melfawcett@blueyonder.co.uk

Walking Sophie

2008-07-31T00:14:00.000-07:00

by Dave Essinger

Especially on warm days like today, Bill walks Bernard Constantinople and Sophie past the Polish grandmother's house. If she is out in her garden, the woman's eyes light up with glee when she sees them coming. She stands up, totters over, then holds out her hands and wiggles all her fingers like a toddler who wants something. She bends down and puts her arms around Sophie's neck, grinning as the dog licks at her face. Then she stands up and backs away, patting Sophie's wide flat head. "What is this one's name?" she always asks, and Bill politely tells her. "When a little girl," she informs him, "I had a dog just like this. Just like this one."

Sophie is a bull mastiff, a hundred pounds and not yet two years old, and sometimes she forgets she's not a puppy. Bill has to hold tightly to her leash to keep her from knocking the old woman down in her enthusiasm, all while hopefully keeping Bernard Constantinople-the double-dapple dachshund who is really in charge at Sophie's house-from hobbling him with his leash. Often, the grandmother adds, "My dog, I name her Buzhi. Do you know what that means? It means kisses. I was never afraid when I had Buzhi. I walk her in Warsaw," she says proudly, "Any time of the night. Never afraid of anybody." Bill does not mind this daily repetition, this new revelation every time.

All summer he will be doing this, walking other people's dogs around the same city blocks. In the fall he will be starting a degree in social work, but for now he looks forward to three more months of quiet routine.

Today, the grandmother is not looking as they approach, and Bill has to rein Sophie in, her tail furiously fanning. The grandmother hunches with her back to them in her garden, like some huge paisley-print toadstool puffed up by the morning's rain. When she looks up her face is drawn and sour. She is holding a broken-necked Gerbera daisy, and Bill can see half a dozen others similarly uprooted, as well as slashes of black soil showing through the red and white ground cover plantings arranged in a Polish flag.

"What happened to your garden?" he asks.

She peers at him suspiciously for a moment, as if he might have had something to do with the destruction, then spits out, "Kids. Those kids did this."

Bill, feeling compelled to mediate, suggests it might have been an accident.

"Oh!" she says, "Oh-hoh!" as if she has caught him in a lie. "All those no-good kids, it was." She nods wisely. "All the schwarzes," she pronounces, holding out one finger, "and all those Porto-rye-cans," she says, lifting a second finger. She stabs this V at him like warding off the evil eye. "The children don't go to school, this is what happens."

Holding his tongue, he forces a stiff smile and looks upward for a second, then shuts his eyes. He's aware of the sky's opaque light pressing down against his closed eyelids, but he can also see an afterimage of the grandmother's damaged Polish flag, its colors reversed.

Then he hears her gasp in joy, and opens his eyes. "This beautiful dog!" she cries, amazed. "What is the name of this beautiful dog?"

To amuse himself, Bill sometimes leaves notes for his more literate clients in couplets, or stupid haiku. He ponders one now as he walks, counting syllables:

Dandelion's teeth
Sprout through cracks in the sidewalk:
Sophie peed on it.

Sophie's owners are a gay couple-one in graphic design and the other a political organizer-and he guesses they might get it.

A white girl in running shorts passes, power-walking with a walkman, blond ponytail bobbing. She smiles amiably and extends a hand to Sophie.

A few red-eyed pigeons shamble out of their path, heads down, just quick enough so they won't have to actually fly. The slowest bird half-lifts its wings and gives a token hop off the sidewalk, and then when Bill and the dogs pass, they reconvene, cooing gutturally.

Two youths standing before a boarded-up stoop cast sullen glares across the sidewalk at about ankle height, like their gazes form physical obstacles and they don't care if anybody trips over them or not. Their over-sized pants are belted at the absolute minimum tightness to keep them on. One smokes a skinny cigarette, and two bottles in brown paper bags rest at their feet.

Neither boy is of immediately determinate race, and Bill supposes they could be posing prep-schoolers from the posher side of Western Avenue as easily as actual block natives. He's prepared to pass without making eye contact until one, suddenly registering Sophie's snuffling at his knee, makes a great show of nearly jumping over the low rail into an untended garden.

Of course, this excites the dog, who tugs at her leash, woofing and pawing at the air. The kid says, "Control your fucking dog, man."

Bill has a hard time fighting Sophie's leash while still keeping yapping Bernard Constantinople clear and untangled. He says, "You know, that's a good way to get yourself bit, jumping around like that. Not by this dog, but sometime." Walking a big dog means never having to be polite. He gives Sophie a final tug away and says, "Come on."

"Hey," one of the kids yells behind him. "Hey." Bill walks on, ignoring him, past a partially burned building. "I'm talkin' to you, bitch," the kid yells. "I'm serious, you don't talk to no Latin Kings like that."

Bill doesn't look back, but then he hears the sound of glass smashing, and Sophie lunges toward it, jerking him back around. The fur down her back bristles, and she emits a low warning growl.

One of the teens has smashed his bottle on the sidewalk. Now both of them stand above the small circle of beer and broken glass, swaying both from intoxication and uncertainty over what to do now.

Bernard Constantinople scuttles back and forth, frantic, his toenails clicking on the cement.

After glancing at his partner for encouragement, the taller boy says, "Big dog, think you're tough. I'll do what I want. I didn't ask no advice from you." Bill is just thinking that these wanna-be gangsters might be macho-dumb enough to be dangerous, when the first kid, from somewhere in his immense pants, produces a small silver pistol.

"Shit," Bill says quietly, "C'mon," and pulls at Sophie's leash.

She's just about to come when the kid suddenly flails both arms above his head and screams, "Do what EVER the fuck I want," and makes a jumping motion towards them.

Sophie tears the leash from his hand and charges. "Oh, shit," Bill says again, as she covers the distance in three huge bounds. Miraculously, the gun stays high: the kid's terrified, has forgotten he has it, but for an odd second Bill thinks of war movies, the riflemen holding their firearms above their heads while fording a river.

Then Sophie flattens him. If she were an all-star safety, it's a tackle Sports Center would recap for a week. Bill loops Bernard Constantinople's leash over the nearest fence pole and runs after her. Sophie is on the kid's chest, barking hysterically in his face, teeth gnashing and saliva flying. "Sophie!" he yells. "Sophie!"

He's just reaching for her leash when he perceives the second boy standing over him. For a moment the teen looks terribly conflicted, then, almost tentatively, he raises his arm. Bill sees an astonishing white arc of sun on glass as the bottle, brown bag off, swings down.

The sound in his head is like biting down hard on a mouthful of ice cubes, and it feels like it too. Although he's not aware of falling, the next thing he knows, both of his shoulders are on the ground, and all he sees is sky. His first instinct is defensive, and he brings his knees up and rolls to one side, toward a pile of blackened bricks and debris.

He hears Sophie, her bark shrill now with fear, and a low whimpering murmur: "Get it off me, get it off me."

Sophie still has the one boy pinned, and the one who hit Bill brandishes the neck of his now-broken bottle at her from a few feet away, circling, reluctant to go closer. He takes a nervous step forward, leading with the bottle and shrinking back with every other part of his body.

Bill has no idea how he will get out of this. He stands, struggling with his equilibrium, and has to steady himself against the outcropping of a shattered cinder block wall. Sophie's barking rings in his head like a ball-peen hammer striking thick metal, and one side of his forehead is wet and cold. He'd run, except for the dogs, these dogs that aren't even his. "Hey," Bill says, and "Hey," again.

The kid holding the bottle spins on him. "Stay back!" he says, his voice rising. "I'll kill your fucking dog, man! I swear I will!"

"Let me get her," Bill says, "Just let me-" He takes a step but loses his footing and falls to his hands and knees, striking his forearm hard across a loose length of rebar. The pain gathers like a big wave, breaks over him so for a second he can't breathe, and then drains back away.

The kid turns back toward him, his eyes rolling crazily. "Goddamnit!" he gasps. He draws back the bottle and takes two steps toward Sophie. Bill sees two fast movements, one as the boy makes a short slash at the dog, and the other as she swings her head after his arm, teeth first, her muzzle contorted and grotesque.

With no more thought, Bill stands and stumbles forward, pulling the rebar after him. By its heft it feels three or four feet long, clotted with concrete; he leads with his good arm and swings for the cheap seats. The kid looks around just before Bill connects, taking the blow full across his cheek. Bill's sure he feels teeth rearranging like a pocketful of marbles.

Sophie stops barking. He goes to her and bends down to retrieve the gun, shining on the sidewalk just beyond the boy's trembling reach. Smell rises off the panicked kid in waves: pot smoke, heavy cologne, and urine, from the dark patch spreading crotch to knee down his pants. Bill takes the gun in one hand and Sophie's collar in the other and heaves the dog off. She chokes and sputters and glares back at the two youths, but doesn't fight him.

Walking backward with her, he repeats more than once, "I didn't mean this to happen. I'm sorry."

He turns the corner and runs a block the best he can with both dogs, Sophie loping along, Bernard Constantinople galloping to keep up. Then, he drops the gun down a sewer.

Both dogs stop at the same place to do their business, in front of another boarded-up building. This is good, Bill thinks, because his hands are shaking so badly he couldn't possibly pick up after them.

They know the way home and he lets them lead; a sudden slack on the leashes alerts him before he trips over Sophie's broad back, crosswise blocking the sidewalk. The Polish grandmother is leaning down, whispering to the dog. "Buzhi Buzhi," she says. "What's your name, pretty dog?" When she looks up, she gives a small gasp and touches her temple. Her concern quickly reforms into a poisonous glare. Nodding gravely, her head tilted far back, she pronounces, "The schwarzes did that to you."

"That's not what happened!" he chokes.

When she says, "I know what happens; I see them, standing around on schooldays," Bill can't help himself: he bends down and snatches a handful of daisies, breaking them off at the neck. A fresh swath of bare stalks is left trembling in the air.

The woman works her mouth until her lips pucker into a shrewish tight scowl, as low on her face as it could possibly be. The cords in her neck stand out and she glares as if marking him in her mind, and believing this will work.

He tastes salt, his eyes and nose all running at once. He rips at the multicolored flower heads, shredding the petals to confetti. When he makes himself stop, the pieces fall from his hands in a nasty mockery of a parade.

Dave Essinger says he no longer walks other people's dogs professionally, and this picture shows him walking his own dog Lucy. He has just finished writing a novel all about dogwalking, too. He has had stories published in Quarter After Eight, Pindeldyboz, The Pinch, and elsewhere.

Email him at: dbessinger@gmail.com

The Nuva-Ring

2008-07-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

by Deanna Roy

She simply could not get it out. She slipped her finger between her legs again, panting slightly to distract herself as she tried to grasp the clear circlet of her NuvaRing. Her gynecologist had said it was easy to remove, but since Henry was with her at the exam, she had let him play with sliding it in and out of her while her doctor stepped out of the room. Now the day to remove it had arrived, she was stuck at her mother's home-hiding out in the bathroom with her legs spread-and Henry was...well, hell. Henry had ditched her. Gone back to his wife.

Her middle finger bumped something firm. Holding her breath, she pushed under the edge of the ring and tried to slide it out. The flexible plastic bent under the pressure, squishing down into the pulp of her cervix. She withdrew her finger, stomach wrenching, and dropped to her knees on the rug, gripping white fuzz in her fists. She had to take it out sometime today. No one could help her.

She couldn't have predicted the afternoon when they first inserted the ring that she would get stuck with it a mere 21 days later. She and Henry had laughed in the doctor's office, his hand sliding up into her body laid out in stirrups, then he triumphantly flashed the ring he had fished out of her. She had pushed it back in-that part was easy-and they had immediately tested whether he could feel it while they had sex. She bent over the examining table and he entered her, both laughing at the spontaneous act as the doctor waited just outside the door. Well, that was over. She had fallen for the age-old ploy-the leaving the wife bit. And he hadn't. Now she was stuck with a stubborn little circle of hormones in her vagina, debris from the wreckage of her sex life.

For most of the last year of their relationship, she had been on the patch. But he loved sliding his hands along her skin, and the Band-Aid-like square distracted him. Plus, their fervency and friction often caused the darn thing to peel off, and the last thing she needed was a pregnancy by a married man. She could scarcely believe they had managed a twice-a-day habit for so long, especially living apart. But they were hot for each other.

When the doctor visit came along, he took off work and joined her. They chose a new method of birth control together, which seemed to mean they had a future. He promised her once again that they would be together full time. She sat on the rug. Some promises.

"Ha!" she said aloud. "Ha! Ha!"

"Are you all right in there?" her mother called.

Oh yes, her mother. Mom would have a fit if she knew what she was doing. The whole situation made her laugh for a moment. Here she was, 34 years old, hiding in the bathroom, about to weep over a man her mother didn't even know about. How would she explain to her mother about her Mexican lover, the married amante who made her feel buoyant and alive? Mom's sex life began and ended with her one and only husband. All she would see in her daughter was a woman who was not setting a proper example for her two children.

Wild nights! Wild nights! Were I with thee, Wild nights should be Our luxury! Her favorite poem popped into her head now, gleeful words bouncing over the gulping sounds of her swallowed sorrow. She'd named her girls Emily and Elizabeth after Dickinson. Be an example, her mother would say. Whose example? She was a poet not a puritan.

"I'm fine, Mom!" She should get up, really, and check on her. Her mother had just endured surgery to remove a cancer-laden tumor. She should be waiting on her, not pondering poetry and betrayal half naked in the bathroom. One more try, she thought. She knelt this time, bracing on one hand. The finger went up again, surrounded by warm yielding tissue. She tried to romance the words this time, think of sex, not of herself. Ode to my vagina. She felt the nausea flood her again as she bumped against the ring, and again it sank into the spongy walls. She pushed herself, reaching again and again with her finger, until finally she began retching, her breakfast orange juice discoloring the water in the toilet bowl.

"Well, hell," she muttered. She'd have to give up for now. She laid her head against the cold white porcelain. The ring had not been a panacea. After two weeks Henry noticed he was a little sore from the ring rubbing against him. A few days ago, they'd had to stop having sex all together while he recovered. She despaired over this, knowing she had to leave town to care for her mother. His wife was due back from a lengthy visit overseas, and he had suggested he planned to ask for a separation. She didn't want anything to go wrong during these critical few days. She sat up from the toilet, her stomach quickly recovering now that her fingers were outside her body. He hadn't left his wife, of course, feeling some surge of something he wouldn't explain when he saw her come through security at the airport.

She stood and retrieved her underwear and pants. At least she was away from her apartment and her bed, back at her childhood home, caring for her mother. She had purpose rather than
mere despair.

She left the bathroom. Her mom had fallen asleep. She picked up a stack of cups and plates on the table beside the recliner and straightened the afghan. She still had half a day to get the darn thing out. She'd find a way to remove it somehow, exorcise her flesh of the used up empty ring.

Deanna Roy has had stories published in the Writers' League of Texas Scribe, Farfelu, and The First Line.

The Kiss

2008-07-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

When they are alone—
frantic, breath
labored,
trying to find
one another’s mouths—
clothing cast aside
rather than
be ripped to shreds...
they kiss.

They kiss and
become still,

they kiss and
there is no need
to rush,
no need
to be desperate,

they are one.

Trace Sheridan’s prose, poetry, and photography have been published in the US and UK and can be found in journals 55 Words, BluePrintReview, Nerve House, apt: a literary journal, Mud Luscious, Cautionary Tale, Static Movement and Libbon, to name a few. She is the co-founding editor of 34thParallel.

Crossing Borders

2008-07-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

by Mitra

Exchanging hurts
Borne and made by each other
Walking through a weak moment
When facades unmask
We live in some kind of infamy
Yours in unmarked graves
Mine in public displays
So we sit here as
Possible foes
Impossible friends
You will not give up
Those random attempts
To make things look all right
And I insist
On detested truths
Uneasy facts
But they are there
Those blurred lines
We cannot accept
Where our realities meet.

Mitra is a Malaysian born poet who tells us she looks for beauty in the mundane. She takes pride in being lost and then finding her way through insecurities to hopefully one day having her own book of poems published and enjoying a final sunset by the beach. Her first published work was "Orderly Women" in Nerve House, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin quarterly.

Despite the Weight of Water

2008-07-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight, disturbingly,
Your face came back to me,
Like some log shot up from a black lake’s bed,
After all this time,
And despite the weight of water.

CP Stewart lives with his family in North Yorkshire.
He was a singer/songwriter with the cult band Laughing Gravy and his poetry has been published in England and the US. His work is also featured in 34thParallel Issue 3.

Yesterday

2008-07-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

A paper bag smothers Josephine's
moonshine. Her delicate hand chokes the
neck of the bottle, pulling it from its
paper sheath. Down the street she sways
from side to side. Beneath her trench
coat she is naked. Black heels callus the
balls of her feet. Beneath the saxophone
street lamp, she dances for spare change.

Ashliegh Gehl, born into a family of Ford Motor Company workers, defied the family’s tradition and moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario. From 2002 to 2004 she was Junior News Editor for Lakehead Universities student newspaper. She fell in love and stopped writing until January 2007 when she realized that writing was, instead, the love of her life.

One-Year Anniversary

2008-07-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

She leaves broken messages
in my fogged mirrors
like rabbit tracks
in sleet

Lets me know
she still loves me
even in death

Wants me to know
she is like
the moon

Stalking in cycles
Pulling me to her tide

Telling me there is more to life
than what we had
but never freeing me
to taste its sweetness

Jason Huskey is a graduate of Longwood University
and lives in central Virginia. He has been published in
Perigee: Publication for the Arts, Red River Review,
Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Word Riot.
jasonhuskey.blogspot.com

Time with Frieda

2008-07-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I try mid-afternoon.
The phone moves into place by itself
in my hand. I realize
I hardly know her daily schedule.
When she comes through,
it's not even her voice
on the answering machine.
Sam, from next door, says
it's so strangers can't tell
there's a woman
in the house living
alone. Had she called me instead,
I wouldn't have known
what to say. In the end,
someone from the hospital called.
Sometimes when I recall
her face in the morgue,
I tense with the awareness
that she's about to speak up.
And sometimes
I stop myself in mid-call.
I listen to the dial tone,
hypnotized into missing
a number I hardly ever used.

Arlene Ang lives in Spinea, Italy. She is a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. Her chapbook, Secret Love Poems, is available from Rubicon Press.
www.leafscape.org

Comic by Rosemary Mosco (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

2008-03-25T17:12:00.001-07:00

55x2, Rosemary Mosco

2008-03-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

1.
One day the color red disappeared. Confused gray cardinal-birds took wing over a city rapidly emptying of most everyone's favorite color.

Mayor Blakely called a special press meeting. Reporters battered him with questions; soon the mayor looked overwhelmed, and then somewhat annoyed. Examining his wristwatch idly, he said "I was always partial to blue myself."

2.
"We're always joking around," I said. "For once I'd like to be serious. I'd like to share things. I'd like to tell you about a barn I saw on the way to the cottage: aged, collapsing, a sprawled
creature drunk on nostalgia."

"I see," he said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Like your mom."

Rosemary Mosco is a Toronto resident who has been running birdandmoon.com for three years in her spare time. She likes birdwatching, electronic music, the anime Kino no Tabi, and cashews.

In San Francisco with My Father, Zayra Yves

2008-03-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

By the time I was born my father already felt the need to dull his pain. He was only 17. He figured "drowsy" was a better view of life, so he took to heroin and needles in 1969. Mom said it had something to do with his military parents and how they would not let him play the guitar. But she was no better off than dad. She had her favorite belt good for stopping the vein from behind the bathroom door.

We said few words to each other between the shoot-ups and blood drops left on toilet seats and linoleum. I ate cereal with forks to avoid the blackened spoons that filled the drawer.

At the bar next door to our hotel room, dad's smelly friends in wrinkled clothes or lumps of gray loitered for hours. In the hallways they passed out in low vowels with dirty hands. Sometimes they tried to touch me.

Later in the 70s on Bismarck Avenue I had a banana seat bicycle, a few dead hamsters, Bible lessons with cartoons, and a Devil's Black-eye. Sunday school was an escape from crushed cigarettes, withered roaches, broken syringes and rotting booze in the sink breeding gnats. I wanted to run from the withdrawals as they slid like Dali's clocks down patched walls, out of drawers, and into porcelain with nothing on TV in the background.

I was crossing 34th when I asked myself if it would hurt to jump out of the second story window or if anyone would care if an eight-year-old girl were found dead.

But that isn't the story I want to tell and it is too long anyway. So, I stand in front of dad's grave, see his face younger than mine. I remember him on sober days when he was going to get a job, really quit shooting God into worn-out veins, bloody ankles, and get saved between speed balls, coke and morphine with tears in his eyes listening to the Rolling Stones.

Zayra Yves is the author of Empty as Nirvana and is published in Alehouse Press, The Zimbabwe Situation, Panhandler Quarterly, Eyes of the Poet, IITM, Astropoetica, Poetry Life & Times. Her work was featured in 34thParallel Issue 2.

Nothing of Value in This Car, James Gormley

2008-03-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

“Nothing At All of Value in This Car”

The sign proudly proclaimed in inch-high type

As I passed down a street in The City.

But what of the dreams you packed in your bags?

And of the hopes you folded so neatly

In the trunk in ordered Midwestern squares.

Yes, what of the dreams you packed in your bags?

James Gormley's Nothing of Value in this Car is Poem No. 2 in his unpublished poetry book, The City, which is developing into a collection of snapshots of life in New York City (NYC). His poem appeared in the first issue of 34thParallel.

The Party, CP Stewart

2008-03-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

We can smell them thinking

is there something between us?

There is nothing between us.

No, not even nothing.

There is no between us—

since she parted her pink lips and let me in.

CP Stewart lives with his family in North Yorkshire. He was a singer/songwriter with the cult band Laughing Gravy and his poetry has been published in England and the US. His work is also featured in 34thParallel Issue 3.

MySpAce Jesus, Shana Kraynak

2008-03-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

Jesus tried to friend me today

on myspace.

"Heroes: myself"

I said no.

Not no to Jesus,

but no to whoever

wAs tYpInG LikE ThiS

pretending to be our Lord

and savior, who, I doubt

very much

would come back

to earth on a jailbait,

cam-whore, bad-band

website

and type

like a fourteen year old girl.

Out of curiosity,

I did a search for "Jesus"

and found several!

Just like Elvis,

Jesus reincarnates in many forms.

One is Catholic and friends with the Pope.

One is snappy about his water-

into-wine skillz.

Another is a Jewish

Republican who posts blogs.

Sorry, Jesus's,

but I prefer you

in vague toast slices

and in the occasional thank you's

I remember to send,

while awaiting my good karma.

Shana Kraynak is a Terrible Towel twirlin’ Yinzer with a passion for rivers, french fries on sandwiches, and tattoo machines. Having graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, she is currently a Masters candidate in the Professional Writing program at USC. While she has grown to love frantic freeway driving in Los Angeles, she misses Pittsburgh bridges and port authority. Her first book of poems, Shotgun Wedding, will be finished in May. Her previous publications can be found in Book by Authors, Three Rivers Review, and Collision. MySpace Jesus will appear in 34thParallel Issue 3.

One Block Off the Strip, Lori Kozlowski

2008-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

the prostitute dressed in black and pink

walks down a road, pitted as her face

she is a bottle blonde with two-inch roots

and scuffed high heels

stumbling down the block

of boarded up houses

and Mexican girls that sell Penthouse

on the street for $4.25 an hour

no casino lights

she looks at her fuchsia fake nails

and talking to herself, she says,

I ain’t goin’ to hell

I smile at her

watching her stomach swell

busting out

of her faded jeans

she wheezes out a laugh, and tells me

love is greater than all sin, sister

Lori Kozlowski is an author and a journalist. Fascinated with the underground and the off-beat, she writes about subcultures, history, art, and music. She completed an MFA at the University of Southern California in 2005. She has lived in several different cities: Las Vegas, London, and Seattle. She currently resides in Los Angeles. Her short story “Going to California” was published in the anthology Book By Authors by the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. Currently, Lori is working on a short story to be included in Las Vegas Noir, part of a Noir series published by Akashic Books. She can be reached through her website: www.lorikozlowski.com or at admin@lorikozlowski.com. Lori's poetry was first featured in 34thParallel Issue 1.

The Inner Man, Owen Carmichael

2008-03-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

I was practicing my backstroke kick when I noticed the young Asian man watching me. And watching. And watching again the next lap. He could have been any of the dozens of Asian students who frequent the swim center. He was wearing the same uniform—T-shirt, humongous gym boots, underwater watch—except for one thing. Instead of the regulation jeans he wore light brown corduroys, designer label.

The moment I got out he was there, beside me.

"Excuse me, sir," he started.

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “This is a very recent import.”

"Your kick is no good." All the words were there, but in a monotone, like a computer speaking.

I was annoyed. "Could be better, I suppose," I growled, and reached for my towel.

"I am a swim coach. My name is Yoshi." His handshake belied his slim build. "I shall teach you."

In a flash the cords were off and he was sitting on the side of the pool, his legs in the water. "You kick now with your foot stiff, like a ballet dancer." He demonstrated. "Too tight. Should be like slipping off a shoe, before going indoors." Again a demo with a display of honed thigh muscles, then off came the T-shirt and he was in the water. His chest was small, but perfectly defined. "Watch please!" he yelled, and was off down the pool like a hydrofoil. I had to jog to keep up.

At the shallow end he leaped out. "You try!" It wasn't as easy as he made it look. In a moment he was in the water again. He grabbed my foot with iron hands. I like a man who takes charge. Yoshi pushed the toes brutally up, then down. It felt as if my ankle joint had been ripped out of its socket.

"Like that," he ordered. "Please do!" Five laps later, with Yoshi swimming beside me, I was approaching his exacting standards. My legs were also shaking at being pushed pell-mell into a new technique. Yoshi pushed back his hair. "Better one tiny bit," he announced. "You must practice this every day. Twenty laps." He jumped out effortlessly, dried himself, took a laptop out of his bag and keyed something into it in Japanese.

"I feel hungry," he announced, still as toneless as a robot. "I buy sandwich."

I'd seen enough of the canteen food to know it was expensive and sometimes unhealthy. "You like sandwiches?"

"No. But, what can I do? I cannot cook. I live in hotel." Somehow the lack of intonation made him sound like a lost little boy.

"I've brought a snack with me. Would you like to share that?"

"What you have?"

"Um fish, salad..."

"Yes please."

We sat at a table by the toddlers' pool and looked out into the courtyard. Beside us a fake waterfall splashed gently over stage rocks. I spread my lunch on the table and Yoshi ate like a starving man. I was glad I'd had a good breakfast.

"What you call this fish?"

"Trout. You like it?"

"I like it. Where you buy it?"

"At the market."

"Where is market?"

Yoshi told me he had only arrived in Adelaide two days before. He was staying at a noisy hotel between a pinball parlor and a strip joint because the taxi driver had told him it was cheap. The hotel charged more than Yoshi had budgeted for, so all he could afford were the canteen sandwiches. All the time we were eating and chatting I was conscious of inquisitive looks from the spas, which were only separated from us by a row of pot plants. One by one the sauna queens got out of the spa and with studied casualness took a shower while gazing fixedly in our direction. Sam, Carl, and Robin, they all went through this routine. Fortunately, well Yoshi was turned away from them, so he didn't catch the inspection.

He was worth looking at. His floppy hair, even when damp, shaded his eyes, making him look shy and absurdly young. His skin had the satiny bloom which the very healthy achieve in their early twenties. Meanwhile, Yoshi and I had come to a deal. I would bring him lunch every day and in return he would coach me. When he was quite sure there was no more food in my bag Yoshi leaned back and burped appreciatively.

"Now I take spa to relax my muscles," he said.

“I'd better come with you," I said, eying the three heads leering at us from above the pot plants.

Yoshi had hardly sat down before, whoosh! Sam zoomed in next to him. First time I've seen Sam move so fast. He politely shifted away a little, to allow Sam the usual body space, but although no-one else was sitting at that end of the spa, Sam pressed up close to Yoshi again. Once again, Yoshi moved. Sam pursued. I had to shift further and further away. I was on the other side of Yoshi, partly to shield him from Carl. Meanwhile, Carl had moved as close to me as possible without actually sitting on my lap, Yoshi and I were stuck in the middle, like the ham and cheese in a sandwich.

"You two seem very close, all of a sudden," insinuated Carl.

"I'd actually prefer not to be quite so close," I retorted, jabbing him in his skinny ribs with my elbow. He winced and recoiled. "Sorry," I said. "Yoshi is giving me swimming lessons."

"That's what you tell us," he sneered.

"It's a deal," I insisted. "I'm giving him lunch in exchange."

"I'm sure you are."

"No, I mean really. Food." Carl rolled his eyes. "Pull the other leg."

Clearly he didn't believe I could have any interest in Yoshi apart from sex. My instinct had warned me from the moment Yoshi had grabbed my foot and now every vibe from Yoshi was shouting, “Straight! Straighter than Kevin Rudd!” On the other side Sam reached forward and touched the amulet around Yoshi's neck, flashing his own chunky gold bracelet as he did so. "Korean?" he asked. Sam had had a fling with an unemployed Korean waiter the previous month.

Yoshi flinched. For him this was an insult. "Japanese!" he replied in his monotone, and smartly dislodged Sam’s pudgy hand.

"I could buy you a gold one," coaxed Sam. "I've got a spare gold Rolex," he announced to the spa at large.

"I already have one at home, sir."

Sam was not easily discouraged. "Who gave it to you?"

"My girlfriend, sir," replied Yoshi in robot tones.

"Is she here with you in Australia?"

"Unfortunately no." Yoshi's words expressed regret, but his intonation, as usual, was devoid of emotion. This made it hard for his meaning to sink in. "She still in Kyoto. She must train hard every day."

"What does she do?" Sam had all day to chat him up.

"She is swimmer. I swim coach." Yoshi tried to edge further away but was caught in the log jam created by Carl. To make matters worse Robin had now lumbered up to a position dead opposite the Japanese swim coach. All three sauna queens were feasting their eyes on him.

"Love your hair," said Carl with a tinge of envy. Yoshi's floppy hair was slightly bleached at the edges. "Tint it yourself?"

"Chlorine in pool does that." His answer was as flat as a computer announcement.

Carl changed tack. "Why did you come here?" he enquired.

"To collect some training tips from your swimming squads.”

"Ah, training," Carl babbled, excitedly. "You should come down to the gym with me. I could show you a thing or two." Carl frequented the gym every day, but got nowhere because he was always too busy dishing out advice to other people.

"Not weight training," Yoshi said. "Swim training. Your swim team did very well in Olympic Games."

Robin smirked from across the spa. "Too right we did, mate," he agreed. "It's those little extras that give us the advantage," his eyes traveled down and hungrily exploring Yoshi's crotch. "Like wearing the right bathers." Robin's own bathers were stretched and baggy, like his body. "Now those bathers you've got on are unusual, mate. Do you mind if I touch them?"

"No way," said Yoshi in his usual flat delivery. Robin took no notice. His hand approached Yoshi's crotch. If we were to avoid a brawl this called for desperate measures.

"I think Yoshi needs a translator," I said straight at Robin. "What he really means is..." I raised my volume thirty decibels and yelled it full in his face, "NO BLOODY WAY!" The message at last sank home.

"Oh, mate," said Robin, crestfallen. He withdrew his hand, but I could see his bunioned foot advancing under the bubbles.

"What is this 'bloody'?" asked Yoshi.

"It means 'definitely'," I explained.

"Thank you. Most interesting," said Yoshi and turned back to face Robin. "If you continue playing with my toes, sir," announced Yoshi in his monotone, "I shall be obliged to bloody kick you in the testicles."

Yoshi hasn't been bothered by the sauna queens since. They still undress him with their eyes, but from a distance. Meantime I'm allowed to take him his lunch every day. Smoked tuna and rice yesterday, chicken and noodles today, mushroom rice and beef tomorrow. That's as close as I'm ever going to get to Yoshi. Anyway, my swimming is improving markedly.

Looks like I won't have him for long. He's such a good coach that one of the local squads has already taken him on as assistant trainer. But for the moment, it's a deal.

Owen Carmichael’s work has been published in Quadrant, Idiom 23, The Canberra Times, Australian Multicultural Book Review, New Writer, Family Circle, and Good Housekeeping (UK), read on Radio 5UV, and printed in the anthology Bringing the Water (Wakefield Press).

The Ride, Teddy Titomeh

2008-03-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

When the man stepped into the car I knew there was something wrong. It was not the way he was dressed, he looked decent, but there was something wrong… I just could not put my finger on what it was. I looked out the window as the colourful scenery whizzed by, seeing what everyone in a speeding Accra car sees.

A market-woman here, oranges there…delectable salmonella-riddled sugarcane chunks all neatly wrapped up and packaged…a roadside industry. The “manufacturers” stood guard by their products, fabricating new packages right before my eyes. I leaned back into my seat, wondering how and when I was going to tell daddy the bad news.

The driver took a sharp turn, and my stomach did a little fillip as he leveled out nonchalantly—oblivious to whatever discomfort his driving exploits were causing to his poor passengers.

Then the man sitting next to me spoke—just a phrase—and filled the car. The pungency was fierce; I could touch stench. The entire cabin became suffused with one gallon of akpeteshie, the Ghanaian name for a strong drink.

“Drivers of today…”

I realized my stomach muscles had knotted seriously. Suddenly, I found myself hoping frantically that at least for the rest of the journey he would keep his mouth shut.

“Em…could you roll the window down for me?”

Oh oh oh…I held my breath and rolled down the windows dutifully…only after suffocating minutes of finding out what connection the metal rod lying on the floor had with the glass window.

After laboring to get some air into the car, I released my breath and gulped in what I thought was supposed to be fresh air. It was not. Now I really understood what mosquitoes go through when Raid comes into the picture. The air alcohol mixture was not reducing in potency.

“But you how you drink booze like that?”

That was from the back. I turned, and looked full indignation in the face. The poor man’s eyes were watering and popping as he stared furiously at Mr Akpeteshie.

“Who told you I was drunk?” he asked.

Oh dear me, and he spoke good English too…

“You think I am like those drunkards who drink in the chop bars and cannot walk home?”

By now everybody was reaching for a handkerchief. I guess my nose had started running. I breathed through my handkerchief and realized it was useless. Nobody dared question him on why he had had gotten so drunk. Nobody could risk an increase in the potency of the gaseous alcohol. It was all I could do to keep my head in the air and not to thrust my nose out for some sweet air.

“Driver next stop eh…”

Oh thank God, oh…I felt like clapping for joy. He reached into his pocket and took some money out.

“We are two…” he said. The driver gave him his change. Who could be the one walking with this distillery? I had to stop myself from looking behind me. I knew there were three passengers behind me. Who could it be? I knew it was definitely not the short man in the middle with red eyes.

The car stopped, the driver having stomped on his brakes in his usual uncaring way. And I had to get down so he could come out. He tottered unsteadily.

I have seen quite a few beautiful women, but the one who got out with him…well I do not know how to say this, but once in a while you see a beauty that makes you blind and yet not blind at the same time. She held the man’s left arm, putting her right arm around his waist and they stood there, a strange pair, waiting for our car to move.

As the car left them I looked back. They were walking slowly. The woman was almost carrying the man. A sigh seemed to thread its way right from the back of the seven-seater Peugeot Estate to the front.

I got down at the next stop. My father was on the verandah. His face lit up when he saw me walk up.

“Hey I have been waiting for you…” he said.

I gave him a halfhearted smile.

"How did the results go?"

I looked up at him and shook my head, “Daddy, I failed the exam.”

He was shocked for an instant. Then he hugged me, let go, held me in his arms and looked in my eyes with love. “But son, you should not have gone drinking akpeteshie because you failed this exam! I am surprised at you!”

I hugged him back.

I did not know how to tell the story.

Teddy Totimeh is a 33-year old medical worker in Ghana. He lives with his wife in a small hospital precinct in Accra, the capital of this West African nation. This is his first short story in a magazine, but he has previously published poetry. He likes reading, scrabble, and music. His story was featured in 34thParallel Issue 2.

Warming House, Jeff Esterholm

2008-03-25T16:20:00.001-07:00

Showering was useless. He couldn’t dry off. He stood at the open hotel window and the heat and tropical decay, the street sounds—the traffic rumble and horns, the vendors at their colorful kiosks on the square, birds and dogs—all slid in on the damp air. A ceiling fan stirred the soup.

She was asleep, wound up in the white sheets. He didn’t know how she could do it. He sat in the chair by the window and poured a glass of bourbon from the bottle they had packed. It was like drinking the air. They were halfway into a two-week Central American road trip—her idea, its source a 1960s Albert Finney-Audrey Hepburn movie about a couple driving through Europe, recalling their past to stop the collapse of their present—and at this midpoint when they would begin working their way north in a few hours, he had been trying to remember her. One bare shoulder had slipped the sheets and it glowed in the waves of her copper wire hair.

The telephone, a black rotary model of the sort he hadn’t seen since he was a boy, rang on the table at his side of the bed. It would be the wake-up call, but he didn’t bother to get up to answer it. After three rings, she reached behind blindly for the handset and rolled back to her left, the black coil of cord stretched across his vacant pillow.

The plumping flesh at either side of her bent elbow glistened and the sheen, particular to her coloring—winter white or summertime pink—no matter what her age was at the time, fourteen, twenty-five, forty-nine, took him back to a winter in the Midwest, thirty-five years before.

There were hockey and figure skating rinks behind Pattison Elementary, tucked back between the school’s playing fields and the scrubby terrain of a hobo’s jungle where those riders of the Great Northern were said to rest up before continuing on their way. Between the two rinks, which were maintained by the city, the parks department flooding both spaces at the first sign of a freeze and keeping the resulting surfaces clear of snow all winter long and in summer touching up the boards of the hockey rink with white paint, was the warming house.

He didn’t skate, he didn’t know how to skate, and he had no interest in learning how to skate—Conway, a real hard nose, had suggested he play hockey because he wouldn’t need to know how, skating was not a skill required in their roughneck, under-the-winter-night-sky version of the game—but at fourteen, along with many others from the North 21st Street neighborhood who streamed in and out, singly and in groups, the rare twosome, the warming house was the winter locus of teenage efflorescence. Three or four nights a week he could be found there, observant, sitting on the bench that ran along three walls, interrupted by only the door and the stoked woodstove, open black galoshes on his feet, the floor nicked and chewed by years of hockey and figure skating blades.

That mid-February night, Conway shuffled in with a girl and neither wore the black skates or the white. He had a record album under his arm, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends, his fourteen-year-old tough kid daffiness jettisoned for some other perceived attitude of cool, his huge green parka hanging open and showing the orange interior. The girl with him in the pea coat and matching cap, scarf and mittens, the pin of the moment on her lapel, white letters on red: “I Am Loved.”

It was astonishing, their difference from everyone else and the assurance—Conway and the girl sat together, shoulder to shoulder on the bench, smiles on their faces—that they knew something more than these other kids in the warming house.

He had thought it was her, the girl from algebra, third period, where he was fuddled enough and then she had been added into the mix of formulae and equations, but he wasn’t sure until she pulled off the white knit cap and her copper wire hair tumbled down. She looked at him, her cheeks rosy, glistening in the warming house, and he went lightheaded. “I Am Loved.” Conway didn’t know it, but at that moment he was already a part of her past.

“Sí,” she said, “gracias,” then she rolled back to hang up the phone. Seeing him, she smiled and said, “Good morning,” and with the edge of her curved index finger wiped the sweat from her upper lip, as if, after all the preceding years, the hard work had been done and now they could enjoy themselves, finally.

Jeff Esterholm’s writing has previously appeared in Acorn Whistle, Nerve Cowboy, Thema, and Planet Detroit. He was placed in short story competitions sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy Review and Madison Magazine, and in 2006 he was selected as a finalist in Hunger Mountain’s Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize. He was featured in Issue 2.

Good Girls, Alice Shin

2008-03-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

He wanted a nice girl. A girl with a sweet heart. A girl he could call Sweetheart. Someone to call his own. He searched high and low for them, those Southern Belles and Midwestern Good Girls he had read about in those thrift store 99-cent paperbacks. Each one was so pretty on the page, another honey-dipped heart filled with goodness creaming over and crying out for a good man to love her right. But when he stopped through a few cities in Kansas, he couldn't find any of those Good Girls and instead only found Girls Looking for a Good Time.

A friendly hand slithered into his pants. "Get off me, you harlot!" he shouted. The girl didn't take too kindly to that and threw some peanuts in his face. She would have thrown her drink, too, if it hadn't been so deliciously full of rum and artificially flavored syrups. "Fuck you, Freak!" she said, careful not to spill her drink. And she left, leaving behind a man dressed in little bits of peanut shell and peanut skin; love's pauper.

His luck wasn't much better in Georgia, since most of the girls he found were dressed like they were from New York City. He tried looking around public parks to find a lonely girl idly reading a novel, stretched out in the sun, or one of them drinking a paper cup of tea while staring out a window of dreams.

Most of the girls were actually in the company of another person or cell phone, their mouths so busy forming words that their eyes had no chance of recognizing him as the man of their dreams. That tall, dark-haired and handsome type who didn't say much because there wasn't much left to be said, because everything and anything that needed to be said would be spoken solely in his gaze. In fact, when he did find that Good Girl, that Southern Belle, that Sweetheart, neither of their lips would even pucker and purse and form the words "I do" at their wedding because they would be so incredibly in love that their very eyes would need only blink to telegraph their consent.

Blink, blink: I love you. Blinkity-blink: I am your Sweetheart.

But no such girl resided in Kansas or Georgia. So he bought his third and last plane ticket and headed out for California. He had heard that the girls of Hollywood liked to party all the time. Surely he could find one that was tired of the noise, the lights—and was looking for that Good Man.

Meanwhile, in a city overrun with freeways and reality stars, a girl looking for a good time was on the verge of exhaustion. After a dozen too many midnight drinks and impromptu sleepovers with beautiful men, she just wanted a Good Man. A man who would climb heaven and earth to rescue her from the clutches of debauchery. A man who wouldn't leave as soon as the sun woke up, telling her, in his own absent little way, that she wasn't, after all, the most gorgeous woman he had ever met.

The stories she had been taught by Barbies and grandmas warned that princes and Good Men only bothered rescuing nice, virtuous girls—in other words, girls with their hymens intact; she needed to save her virginity in order to be eligible for saving.

This she had pontificated on, once upon a time, when a poetry major had charmed her with pretty metaphors for fornication. He wanted to search for the pearls of her oyster, to envelop his love in her dew-filled petals, to have his canoe massaged in the honeyed walls of her watered cove.

"Just be careful, okay?" her roommate had warned. "Once you lose it, it doesn't grow back."

The Good Man had arrived to the land of the fallen stars in hopes of falling for soft-hearted beach bunnies with smiles warmed by the California sun. But even in the mellow Hollywood hills, the women were mechanized, whether in cars or on legs; they were always on the move with their oversized sunglasses acting as windshields to protect and bar them from interacting with anything that existed outside their UV filters. They spoke in loud tones to indicate that they were engaged in a cellular conversation or had their manicured thumbs punching in tiny abbreviated text messages that cost ten cents each: "Don't talk to me!" they said without words, "I'm very, very busy!"

Later that evening, he was in the Cradle of Despair—a new emo nightspot near Hollywood and Vine. He was molested—and then ignored when the women found out that he wasn't an inside member of the industry.

Who wanted to be soft and pretty like cupcakes? Not I, said the average Hollywood hipster. They all wanted a pimped-out Range Rover, not his faithful white steed. By the end of the night, he realized that nobody there wanted to be called Princess. In fact, most of the women found aspiring towards celebrity more appealing than aspiring towards royalty. He ached for that sweet, sugary scent, but only found the syrupy fragrance of Midori sours and French martinis.

He allowed half a swallow of chilled vodka to cool his warm mouth.

No Sweethearts here.

She was able to secure a seat at the bar, but it was crawling over with the usual variety of industry cockroaches and hangers-on—only most everybody opted for My Chemical Romance t-shirts and black nail polish in lieu of Louis Vuitton and Zac Posen. It was the same crowd dressed in different costumes.

Someone leaned over her with a credit card. She leaned away, and subsequently her back pressed into the arm of a stranger. A glass of vodka spilled, mid-drink, all over a bare shoulder. It was cold. His drink was all over his shirt. All thirty-five dollars worth.

The culprit had turned and glared at him as if expecting an apology.

The stranger had looked her up and down, his mouth set in an irritated line, and then departed—never mind the alcohol perfuming her hair, or the wet spots blooming on her new gray jersey dress. Where was the napkin held as a peace offering, the sincerest of apologies? Where was the chivalry?

She exhaled and continued to sit on her ass in wait of a Good Man looking to buy her a drink.

Alice Shin graduated from UCSB with degrees in Asian American studies and film studies. It is from film, rather than from literature, that she gets most of the structural aspects of her stories. Because of her degree in Asian American studies, she tends to discuss race, identity, and power in her work. This story was her first publication and in our Premiere Issue.

34thParallel: Around the World!

2007-12-05T13:44:00.001-08:00

34 Parallel ...Universal and World wide!
This picture as Issue 2 arrives in Germany
to BluePrintReview editor Dorothee Lang
http://blueprintreview.de/

The magazine (at least) is going places!

2007-05-07T00:23:00.000-07:00

“Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.”
Robert Morgan

Recently, discouraged by the inability to write on a regular schedule, I decided to start writing stories with word limits. But not with the standard short story limit say between 1500 and 3000 words, no—very short and strict limits—think 300 words, 150 words, 100 words, even 50. At first it was terrifying being brief—and I wondered how much could I convey with so few words.

If indeed a certain amount of space is needed in order to build a plot, move a story from beginning to end, would it be possible to actually 'tell' a meaningful story that was shorter than say the average author bio or blurb on the jacket of a book?

I was sitting in the room where I write, really a converted oversized closet, considering all these things and it occurred to me maybe, just maybe (I'm never certain—smile), I am asking the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking myself—what is fiction?—before I can accurately determine the number of words to use.

Robert Morgan said, "Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, and places." And isn't this what we want from a good book, a good story, a good read…to feel close, intimate, to have a glimpse inside, to experience some character's life, their hurts and pains, joys and excitement? We want to live for a moment through the character(s) created on the page, and live in that moment as they have experienced (albeit fictionally). We want to be a fly on the wall, see what's going on behind closed doors, but even more than this…we want to be inside the characters, inside their heads, hear with their ears, and see through their eyes. We want to be intimate.

I've noticed after writing a few of these experimental shorts readers have hinted that maybe what I'd written was autobiographical. And to this I ask, isn't everything we write autobiographical on some level because it comes from us?

And maybe this is what makes writing revealing—inevitably we enclose our own lives and experiences in between the lines, in between the words, even between the punctuation. Our characters may not have anything in common with us on the surface, but whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, we encode into our characters who we are—if not what we've experienced first hand, then what we have observed living and walking on this Earth.

So as I meander about this thought—I come back to the beginning—the question about length, whether a 'real' story could be 50 words.

Well, I suppose I have to ask this: How long does it take to be intimate with a person? If intimacy is an experience between people, couldn't it happen in a moment, in a second as a man exits the bus turns and glances at a woman as the doors close behind him? Then how many words does it take for a reader to be intimate with a character, an event, a place? What we write isn’t presented in a vacuum, the reader reads and brings everything they know and have personally experienced to their interpretation of what we’ve written...So, who's to say how many words are necessary for a reader to feel close to the character… I’d argue ‘intimacy’ with the character, the event, or place could happen with one paragraph or one sentence…and maybe even with one word.

So we write, wanting our readers to come close, closer, to feel what our characters feel, and experience life as they live it within the words we've written. If you agree with Robert Morgan's idea that "fiction is about being intimate with characters, events, and places"…maybe, just maybe, it is possible to do this with length and in any number of words, if done skillfully.

To be continued…smile.
(trace)

So What's 34th Ree-ally About?

2007-03-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

What Are We About?

Well, that's a good question.

What are we about? We're about writing, but not just writing--good writing--or better, writing that's written well (smile, and say that 5 times fast).

We think there are more good writers, who are undiscovered, than soccer moms at Starbucks. Where are all these 'good' writers? One guess: You got it! they're at their day jobs!

You've heard of a dual income family or a person who works one place and moonlights at another...A writer is someone who moonlights at the second job for free! (That is until they sell something).

And since tying to write while maintaining a day job requires the time and discipline required for two jobs without the benefit of a paycheck--it's incredible that many writers do this routine, working all day at a job that pays the bill, and writing all night. Raise your hand if you've been in or if you're currently in this situation. Don't worry you're not alone. The first step is to admit you are powerless in this situation.

No sense agonizing over whether you should just stop all this writing stuff and concentrate on your job. If you're up, don't waste your time on that, you might as well just write.

Remember after you stay up until 3:33 AM editing your short story submission, you still have to go to work the next day. Just tell your co-workers you had a late night karaoking (smile). They'll chastise you for partying on a weeknight, but this is much better than what you'd have to deal with if you told them the truth...

What ever you do, please don't tell them since you failed 8th grade Language Arts, you really don't know what a dangling participle is (LOL). So, fed by your anxiety, you spent the entire night (no morning) scouring the Internet to find out what it is to make sure you don't have any in your submission, which incidentally must be postmarked and mailed tomorrow.

It's all right...we feel your pain!

Now, the lucky writers already have agents working for them so they can concentrate on perfecting their writing and never think about the ghastly task of finding a place for their work. These privileged authors have agents working overnight also (well, their agent's assistants are) to get their work accepted, recognized, and read.

And isn't this what we writers all want--to be accepted, to be recognized, and yes, read?

At 34th, we understand that getting a book published (by mainstream publishers) these days is no small feat. We understand that getting your work published isn't magic--it's very hard work and hard work times 10,000 if you don't have an agent. It requires that you devote the same effort and discipline to marketing your piece that you used to write it.

We want to help this process along. That's what we're about.

We're about writing, four-letter-word + ing (see mom I don't have a potty-mouth) good writing. We're about writing that's written well and can come from anyone--the published or unpublished author.

Seeing an opportunity to carve out a much needed niche, we formed 34thParallel with the expressed goal of giving new and emerging writers (artists as well) a chance, a shot, (dare i say it?) an opportunity to be accepted, to be recognized and yes, to be read.

That's what we're about.

34thParallel was formed and founded by us--Martin Chipperfield and Trace Sheridan--a couple of writers who realized a way to help others, also struggling in a sea of obscurity, to be accepted, to be recognized and yes, to be read.

We both have stacks of rejection letters to our credit, so you know we'll write good ones if we can't use your work.

But not to worry, we're a monthly magazine, and unlike some magazines at this point, we don't have a limit on the number of times you submit in a submission period. We do ask that you wait until we've read what you've sent, before sending more (believe it or not, we still have day jobs too, sigh).

We want 34thParallel to be known as a place authors can be proud to have their work accepted, recognized and read. Ultimately, we hope to act as a spring board for new authors and artists on to bigger and better things.

And that's what we are about.

We invite you to submit your best work--something we'll want to read again and again--to submissions@34thParallel.net . See our website for more on our guidelines http://www.34thparallel.net/.

(trace)

A World With No Books...Shrieeek

2007-02-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

Scary thought, HUH???!!!

The German writer Heinrich Heine, referring to the Spanish Inquisition, wrote: "Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings."

Sadly, he was right. Throughout time, those who wish to suppress peoples, ideals, and thought contrary to their own have engaged in book burning. The practice of book burning is as old as the practice of creating/printing books.

What is it about the power of words that incite the powers-that-be to confiscate, but not only take away the books, but to destroy them?

There is something profane about burning a book--isn't there?

Over the ages all sorts of books have been burned by all sorts of people: but there have been some common elements to this process—the book burning is usually done in public and it is usually motivated by some political, philosophical, theological or moral objection to the ideas found in the books.

At a risk of sounding too philosophical, forgive me for saying: WORDS ARE POWERUL (if not POWER) and the printed word more so, since these words are no longer depended upon the hearer being present when the words are spoken.

The written word can go beyond the speaker, continue to speak even after the person's death and burial. The written word (or perhaps I mean here, the printed word) can cross the boundaries of culture and custom, race and religion, nationality and ethnicity. The printed word can even cross time, travel through time (William Shakespeare's work just one example of this) and connect readers across the ages.

Considering the power of books—the idea of a world without them is terrifying!

Recently, I was reading a story by Carter Burke called, "Heresy," where books were eliminated. This idea struck me since some time ago with Martin (Co-Editor of 34thParallel) I started writing a science fiction tale, "Phoenix Predestined," where books no longer exist. The 'world' in our story is dominated by a totalitarian government, but the reasons for the elimination of books isn't to suppress ideas, but to conserve the world's limited resources. Yes it's a stretch (HAHAHA).

In our story, the world's atmosphere is irreparably damaged after a cataclysmic event—and the use of trees for paper products is outlawed. As a result people are forced to read digital books, computer facsimiles of the real thing. (The story is still a work in progress—entitled ARDIS: Phoenix Predestined—or something like that—still working on the title).

Now, before I continue to pub my story (LOL) let me stop. As I was searching for a book on one of those online booksellers websites, I had the option of downloading the book in PDF form…and then it occurred to me that we aren't very far from this scenario on more than one level…we are close to not needing books in hard form.

But there is something about reading a book, which appeals to the senses more than the digital form of reading.

There's the smell as you open the book, the feel of the cover and of the paper beneath your fingertips; there's the sound of the pages as you leaf through and turn them and there is the sight of the words on the page, the stark appearance of black ink on crisp white pages. The act of sitting in a chair, reading a book, the act of tuning out everything other than what is before you, the act of traveling in your mind to the place the book leads--where ever it leads--IS MAGICAL!

Is this lost on digital books?

Looking at a computer screen doesn't necessarily involve all the senses that handling a book and reading it does—it is a sort of flat experience, however convenient.

Now, before I get goo-gobs of emails about the benefits of digital books I am already a believer! This website allows my work and all of our work to find readers before what we've written has a chance to be put in printed form. By being members, we have in essence by-passed a step that has stalled many a writer (getting published, here I mean in print) to establish an audience for our work before it has been produced in mass.

In addition to this, one more plus on the side of digital books—I have read rare books to which I would never have had access except they were available via the Internet in scanned form. And not just rare books, I have read rare documents as well, scanned originals from 1900 US Census, birth and death certificates, I would never have found or probably been able to read if I had them in front of me.

Another tick for digital books—no need for bookshelves! And then there's the whole storage/transportation-relocation issue with real books, LOL out loud—(Monk fans know this). Anyone who has had the arduous task of moving with books knows boxes of books can make your moving buddies hate you for weeks and maybe months after you move.

So, for my part, I hope that we will never be forced to choose between books and digital forms of those books. And here's my close, hah ha ha, I said all that to say this: with this in mind, 34thParallel will be available in digital and print versions, BIG SMILE!

If you're interested in getting something you've written in either form (digital and print, acceptance puts your work in both versions, btw) take a look at our website for more information and the guidelines are below:

34thParallel guidelines in brief:
Genres: Fiction & Poetry, Artwork, Comics & Photography
Specifics: Fiction—2000 words (or there about); Poetry—4-6 at once; Artwork/Photography—300k max (in attachment)
Deadline: 15 May 2007
Simultaneous Submissions: OK
Submissions by email ONLY: submissions@34thparallel.net

Visit our website http://www.34thparallel.net/ for more details, like how we want you to do your attachment. And for more from the editors from time to time, take a look at our blog at: http://34thparallel.blogspot.com/

(trace)

What's Writing Worth to You?

2007-02-25T20:01:00.000-08:00

Is Your Writing Worth Its Weight in Salt?

The other day, I went to the supermarket to buy salt. Now, I don't remember the last time I had to buy salt. It takes a long time to go through a carton. But when you need it, you need it. There were other things on my grocery list, milk (something you must have when you live with a two year old), bread, diet coke, but the salt was on the top of the list. Salt is necessary, necessary when you cook, it is the sort of thing that you don't think about until you don't have any.

And the price for this invaluable spice? A mere sixty-nine cents, less than one US dollar, not much at all.I thought about the fact some 2000 years ago in Ancient Rome, salt was so valuable it was given to soldiers as payment for their service. The English word to describe the practice of paying an individual a set amount for their work, or salary, derived from the practice and the Latin word for salt. In other ancient cultures, salt was given as a dowry and as a wedding gift.

There are still expressions referring to this idea—equating wealth or worth to salt: "worth his salt" or "worth his weight in salt"—and these expressions have lingered even though the value of salt has diminished to the point that today this once invaluable spice is relatively cheap.

The irony of this struck me. Something that was once used as currency, is currently so cheap and abundant that anyone can buy it. But does its accessibility diminish its value?

Hummm, something to think on…does accessibility diminish value?This question led me to consider another set of questions: how do we qualify (or is that quantify, smile) the value of what we do, if we aren't paid for it? Is it less valuable if we do not do it for a salary or if we aren't compensated with money?

Now, the next thing that came to mind was this: in the 'real' world work is only work (by this I mean valid work) if you are paid for it.

Here in lies the conundrum for writers who have yet to receive enough payment to amount to more than a dinner and a few café lattes at the coffee place on the corner. Undiscovered writers write, something I believe to be extremely valuable, however their writing has yet to be valued (and by 'valued' I mean through monetary gain). But does this mean that your writing is any less valuable because you do not receive the standard exchange for it, you are not paid for it?

The reality is this, (and this you might want to take with a grain of salt) you could write beautifully and profound work all your life and never have it read beyond your circle of friends and family, never receive any payment other than the satisfaction of telling a story.

Virginia Woolf once said for a woman to write she needs "money and a room of her own." I would guess that men need this too, but rather than deconstruct this quote, let me say that money is always an issue when one pursues the creative arts.

And from time to time we find ourselves choosing between living to write or making a living. So, the real question is this—what is your writing worth to you? What does it mean for you to write? Would you continue to write if you never received any monetary gain for your efforts?

These are questions we must all ask and answer (probably daily and twice daily around the first and fifteenth, when the bills are due) to pursue our dream of writing, but never forgetting we live in a world where bills must be paid.

On the internet, there are probably hundreds of online publications and places that will publish your work. Most of these publications are free to the public and therefore offer no payment to authors (a sad reality). For those of us who decide that money (or the lack of it) can't qualify the value of what we do, the value of being able to do it is priceless.

The internet provides an outlet, a forum, a platform for writing and writers to not only achieve their goal of writing, but also of having people read what they write.34thParallel is accepting submissions for its premiere issue. We hope you will consider making our publication a place where folks can access, I mean read, your work! The guidelines are below.

(trace)

34thParallel guidelines in brief:
Genres: Fiction & Poetry, Artwork & Photography
Specifics: Fiction—2000 words max; Poetry—4-6 at once; Artwork/Photography—300k max (in attachment)
Deadline: 15 May 2007
Simultaneous Submissions: OK
Submissions by email ONLY: submissions@34thparallel.net

Visit our website www.34thParallel.net for more details, like how we want you to do your attachment. And for more from the editors from time to time, take a look at our blog at: http://34thparallel.blogspot.com/

is the beautiful a lie?

2007-02-15T16:56:00.000-08:00

in our welcome on the front page of 34thParallel
i quoted milan kundera, well i paraphrased something he said about fiction

now i can't say he's my favourite writer
and i'm not even sure if i have read anything of his yet, smile

but i came across a review of his work at the new criterion online
and slogged through it, it's heavy going, dug up this quote from it:

In a work there is much seeming and sham. . . . [N]ow the question is whether at the present stage of our consciousness, our knowledge, our sense of truth, this little game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, still to be taken seriously; whether the work as such, the construction, self-sufficing, harmonically complete in itself, still stands in any legitimate relation to the complete insecurity, problematic conditions, and lack of harmony of our social situation; whether all seeming, even the most beautiful, even precisely the beautiful, has not today become a lie.

oh sigh, makes you think doesnt it? hahahahahaha

anyway here's the link to the ambiguities of milan kundera

(martin)

solitary

2007-02-14T17:48:00.000-08:00

australian nobel prize-winning writer
patrick white once said
i had resumed a more or less
solitary existence
it should not have been a matter for self-pity
because i believe it to be
the normal condition
of most artists

(martin)

Writing, Dying, and Other Things We Do Alone

2007-02-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

(click on photo to read text)

34thParallel Accepting Submissions

So, you’re a writer.

You’ve heard this haven’t you? You’re at some party, at some thing that someone you love convinced you to attend and in the course of chit-chatting to yet another person (whose name you forgot 3 seconds after they told you) they ask this question: What do you do?

Now, you’re at this thing (probably lead there kicking and screaming the entire way) and just when you think you might make it through the evening without completely embarrassing yourself or the person you came with, you get this question.

Really, it isn’t the question that bothers you, since this is what people ask at these get-togethers. No, you expect the question.

What throws you is the reply you get after you answer the question, you get: So, you’re a writer.

If you’re like me, you try to discern every nuance in this phrase—Was that a smile or a smirk at the corner of this person’s mouth? Were they asking you a question or making a statement? Do they want you to elaborate or are they saying they’re finished and you should just cough and excuse yourself?

And if you’re like me, by this time you are completely confused and fresh out of catchy comebacks. So, you just nod and say a weak, Yeh, I’m a writer.

Now, sometimes there’s more, you get this next question: What do you write? (HAHAHAH, the hundred thousand dollar question, right?)

Thousands of things run across your mind. Then you think, what do you write? You ask yourself this question and you don’t know what to say. Is it fiction? Is it prose? It’s not poetry, since you don’t think of yourself as a poet…what the hell do you write?

You hold back from saying, I write shit or if you’re like me you hold yourself back from saying, What do I write? Absolutely nothing (smile).

Instead, you say to this person you’ve had some stuff published, but you don’t say stuff, no, no. You say, “I’ve had a few of my pieces published in (insert the names where your stuff was published HERE).” And you mention the book you’re halfway through writing, leaving out the fact that you don't have an agent or a teardrop's chance in hades of finishing it--let alone getting it published.

This seems to keep you a float for a moment…But, only for a moment.

Then the person says, “Oh yeah, like Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code, I loved that book. The only book I’ve read in years. It was great.”

You just nod.

Someone more interesting moves into the spotlight and moves you out of it. You drift aimlessly from one side of the room to the next. And suddenly you are alone in a room full of people.

Alone.

And isn’t this where you always find yourself? Or if you aren’t alone, you are seeking to be left alone, so that you can write.

Writing is lonely business, grueling, and monotonous. But of all the things to do alone (most millions of times more pleasurable) nothing compares to agonizing over one sentence all night long—all because you’re a writer. Grand isn’t it?

Still consider this, from the death of your social life can come great things: beautiful words that will exist and have a life of their own long after you are dead and buried.

I understand your pain. We understand your pain and want to share in it, because we are writers too. 34thParallel is accepting submissions of all sorts. You name it and we want it (YES WE NEED ART TOO—did you see that pitiful cartoon of mine? HELP).

(Smile, how was that for a segue?)

Take a look at our guidelines. Right now we have open submissions and no restrictions so you can submit multiple times. Do it as many times as you like...that is if you want someone else to see what you’ve been doing—alone.

BIG SMILE! Thanks for submitting and tell a friend!
(trace)

34thParallel guidelines in brief:
Genres: Fiction & Poetry, Artwork & Photography
Specifics: Fiction—2000 words (or there about); Poetry—4-6 at once; Artwork/Photography—300k max (in attachment)
Deadline: 15 May 2007
Simultaneous Submissions: OK & Rolling All Year Round
Submissions by email ONLY: submissions@34thparallel.net

Visit our website http://www.34thparallel.net/ for more details, like how we want you to do your attachment. And for more from the editors from time to time, take a look at our blog at: http://34thparallel.blogspot.com/