Delivery by Pravasan Pillay

It's an autumn evening and I'm crossing the small park in front of Helgalunden church. You could also walk along the pavement that lines the church grounds but almost everyone cuts through the park to save time. Most days, after supper, I walk a loop around my neighbourhood here in Skanstull. I go through the park, down Blekingegatan until it joins Ringvägen and along Ringvägen until I get to Götgatan – where I walk the short distance to the stairs straddling the sides of Skanstull's tunnelbana exit. The stairs lead back up to my street.

My evening walk takes about 30 minutes, if I go slowly. It's been raining today, and it's dark though it's only five-thirty. Winter will soon be here, and it will start getting darker even earlier in the day. The desire path across the park is covered with autumn leaves from the trees that border the church grounds. The leaves looked beautiful a few days ago, soft piles of brown, red and yellow that crunched underfoot, but now, after the rain, they are sludge – wet, slippery and dangerous to walk on.

I walk carefully, following a muddy zig-zag trail that has been established by other walkers throughout the day. I am dressed in a hooded parka which has a reflection band snapped around a sleeve so that I'm more visible. I am also wearing jeans, boots, headphones and a woolen hat that, along with the rest of my clothing, is damp from the constant drizzle.

When I reach the end of the pathway across the park, I stop and wait to cross the street. It's then that I see the food delivery driver. He's on a moped and is driving the wrong way down the street – a mistake many make. The delivery driver narrowly misses getting knocked by a car coming towards him. He swerves to the side of the car, wobbles as if he is going to fall, but quickly recovers his balance. When he is past the car he pulls off to the side of the road, underneath a street lamp.

The driver is dressed in a green jacket and has one of those big square bags that all the delivery drivers carry attached to the back of his moped. His face is framed by his helmet and, as I approach him, I can see his shock at the near miss. He is breathing heavily, checking his phone and punching in something. He has a neatly-trimmed moustache, round cheeks and looks to be in his mid-thirties. Before I reach him, he has already started his moped and is gone.

I make my way down Blekingegatan. About fifteen minutes later I'm walking on Götgatan and past the big McDonald's. Outside the restaurant is a line of about ten food delivery drivers standing by their mopeds, bikes, and electric scooters waiting to pick up orders from inside. They are chatting to each other. I look to see if the driver from Helgalunden is among them but it's hard to make anyone out in the dark and the rain. In a moment I am past them.

Four Poems by Mark Young

Medusa

 

Telekinesis raises an ugly eye-

brow & hits me between my

shoulder blades, not with a

 

fist but with a cudgel plucked

from the pages of a 19th century

novel. A selective choice. The

 

original paragraph was bal-

anced phrase by phrase; but

here only the most threatening

 

have been used. The season of

darkness . . . the winter of despair.

What the dickens is going on?

 

 

In excess of the posted speed limit

 

Everyone going 80,

& I got bagged.

 

What does ; mean?

Either Spring is here :

or : calling out a function

using dot notation.

 

Decompose the outline

of complex parts. Vehe-

mence, pure undiluted

aggro, trollism, & per-

sonal axe-grinding.

 

What does that mean?

A bag of poo formed

by grinding down a pro-

fessional achievement.

 

It's official: Rizz is the

word of the year. A lot of

our language is gendered.

 

What Does Peace Mean?

 

from 100 Titles From Tom Beckett

 

#33: Parts and Holes are Desire’s Templates

Drag hence her husband to some secret hole,

And make his dead trunk pillow to our lust.

Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus

 

Bring your unique vision to life.

 

I shall be pleased to detail the procedure.

 

Mark the places you desire holes.

 

Take a pin, push it through the template to leave small holes.

 

You may never use them all. Enlarge those you need.

 

Befriending all the different parts of yourself will give you more choice.

 

Become more aware of the parts that respond to challenges in unskillful ways.

 

Parts are ever-changing, but don't let that burn a hole in your pocket.

 

Bending your metal & plastic parts adds just $19.00 to your cart total.

 

 

#88: Some of America’s Finest Malapropisms Stagger into a Bar

 

Gourds were everywhere around

Capital Hell.  Unformed, in an

chemo outfit of carkeys, that helped

them bland into the surrendering

centenary. Come shaft’s end, & the

disjunctive eunuch forms were di-

shed in flavor of moiety; & the girds

would celery force to sneak out the

menagerie of dunking bards insin-

uated in the outboards nearby. Ours

later, & the thinnest could steel be

fined, about to snigger into the only

bear that they hadn’t yet interred.

Two Poems by Sean Meggeson

Garbage Rats

 

They blend in at the dump but I can see 

my life goes with them in every way.

They shit in my old Amazon boxes, 

and bathe (they do!) in my shampoo bottles.

Ah! They boink on my smeared McD wrappers.

I sense their steady oneiric output 

as they then nap a-top heaps of cellphones

from the 2000s, screens still blinking strong. 

Finding half- forgotten bottles of rum,

they plan a party night like elephants—

could be celebrating, could be grieving.    

Nature’s benediction is upon them. 

 

 

Shadow Self 

 

Go watch Billy Jack, or at least the opening.

Mustangs fall off a cliff in Arizona.

You can hear them shriek, you can see their eyes

ripped with fear at the cruelty of the film crew

who want an epic helicopter shot, 1971-styles.

In the film, Billy fights off “dirty Indian”

with hapkido, kills a rapist, and a white cop.

As Bill-J, Tom Laughlin is Native American

as he is Korean. A busy Mick trying

to make it big off a few crescent kicks,

power-to-the-people,

and second-wave feminism.

Remember forty years later?

Mel’s phone meltdowns at Oksana.

Tom publicly analyzes them

from a Jungian lens, kindly wags

a finger and explains the shadow self:

a universal, human circumstance.

Well, in 2010 I was only four years

sober and I wanted to excuse Mel,

smooth his ugliness, roam an apocalyptic

outback with him and his Blue Heeler.

I didn’t pick up again until 2018,

Midtown Manhattan at the Pod 51 hotel.

Just a few shots of Johnny Walker Black. 

It was okay—I watched Mickey Rourke’s

Homeboy. Something I missed in 1988.

Chris Walken explains stegosaurus shrinkage

to Mickey and how all the dinos grew wings

and one day flew away. “That’s a true story.” 

I like true stories.

They don’t have to sound good, but y’know, they might.

For instance, as shadows fall, they too grow wings.

These days, it’s only a little Crown on the weekends.

I’m okay—Rickie Lee Jones is on the radio.

 

Sean Meggeson

The Chip by Pravasan Pillay

As I sat down on the sofa in our living room, I noticed the potato chip under the coffee table. It was morning. A Tuesday. I had eaten a bowl of chips the previous night while watching television. The lone chip had likely fallen from the bowl. I placed the cup of tea I was carrying on a coaster on the coffee table, and reached down for the potato chip.

It was easy to spot the light brown arch against the grey of the living room carpet. The chip lay between two small piles of books under the table, so I had to turn my hand sideways and fish it out, using my index and middle finger in a scissor manoeuvre. I set down the still intact potato chip on another coaster and looked at it while I drank my tea.

It was a new flavour from the manufacturer, sour cream, onion and chilli, and last night was the first time I had eaten it. The chip on the coaster was speckled with red, white, and green flakes, each about the size of a period, though there was no uniformity in the shape of the flakes. The red was chilli, the white, likely, salt but I was unsure of what the green could be.

In the middle of the chip was a grey scar – a long strand of carpet fuzz. I reached over, pinched it off the chip and blew it from my fingers. The carpet fuzz descended slowly back down to the floor.

The chip was about the size and shape of the bowl of a tablespoon and was finely ridged – as opposed to wavy, broad crinkles – with an occasional blister, created during the frying process, disrupting the neat parallel lines. I counted sixteen peaks and seventeen valleys in all.

 
When I looked at it closer, in the dim, morning winter light coming through the window, I could see that it wasn’t the same pale brown colour throughout. There were slight burned areas around its middle and its edges. The chip also had a pronounced curve so that if you held it down on one end and let it go, it began rocking back and forth like a see-saw – for a few seconds at least.

 
I took a sip of my tea and picked up the chip. It felt furry from all the flavouring powder – an unpleasant sensation. It also felt taut, and fragile. I placed it back down on the coaster and positioned a finger on each of its raised curled ends. If I applied even the smallest downward pressure the chip would split in two or more pieces.

 
I kept my fingers on the edges and slid it around the coaster. It made a surprisingly loud scratching sound. When I finished drinking my tea, I took the chip to the kitchen, opened the garbage can, and threw it on top of a heap of old coffee grounds and a tangle of potato peels from yesterday's supper.

Two Poems by Tim Frank

Watching, Waiting

A woman haunts
the lamppost on my street
with a cap and surgical mask
exuding a unique air of mystery—
this can’t be a covid thing.
There isn’t a bird in the sky
that could extract nails from her eyes,
and the kids marching through puddles like millipedes are stung by her medical gaze.
One time, gazing at her molten skin
I realized
she lives at the apex of a volcano and
fiends to eat me whole.
Her shopping bags
overflow with alien crops,
her deathly frontal lobes, glimmer.
But who will watch the prisoners when she’s gone?
I guess these are the streets where it’s ok
to truly lose your mind.

 

Lost lenses

 

When my contacts

drop

into swerving

blue buildings

I fall to my knees

and wade through

a sea

of shipwrecked luggage.

I feel the menace of a steaming

exhaust pipe

by my head

and the crack of high heels

passing

without words.

I’m helpless

as dogs bark over traffic and

flowering lampposts drip with flames.

Then I recall

this morning my landlord

taped up my windows

dowsed my clothes

with kerosene

and towed my car.

So, I slip on my spectacles and

find a gloomy bar

to inspect

the day,

because there are oil fires

on the coast

nearing the city

and I can only feed off the ruins.