The Rescue, by Joseph Cooper

After years of living alone I finally decided to visit the shelter. The woman at the desk greeted me, and after filling out some paperwork she brought me to meet their rescues. “I’m sorry,” she said looking around. “It seems that all we have left is this purple blob.” I looked inside the cage and watched the purple blob tremble and shimmer. “Apparently, it comes from a long line of purebred blobs, but nobody seems to want it.” “Not even you?” I asked. “I have two cats,” she said, “and besides, purple blobs are very territorial.” I stuck my finger into the cage and the purple blob gently absorbed it up to the knuckle. “I think it likes you,” she said. I took the purple blob home, fed it, played with it, and that night as we were lying in bed I thought I saw a slight glimmer of light coming from inside the purple blob. I pressed my face against it, allowing the purple blob to absorb me. The light in the distance was fuzzy and seemed to be interrupted by passing shadows. When I withdrew my face it was covered in a clear, thin, and odorless fluid. Then the light seemed to expand and quiver, so I pressed my face deeper into it and once my head had been completely submerged the muscular force of the purple blob compelled me forward. I heard the muffled sounds of a young woman screaming and I was pulled even deeper into the purple blob, into the ever-expanding light. Suddenly, there were hands all over me, lodging my shoulders free of the trembling blob, the light now so bright I couldn’t even open my eyes. In a moment I was pulled completely through the purple blob and I too began screaming and crying. The hands placed me on the young woman’s breast and as she kissed my forehead I could feel the memories of my life slipping away…my apartment…my job…my first love…even the purple blob itself.

Joseph Cooper

Two Poems by Andrew K. Peterson

Year In Streaming

 

summering down

the child and siren align   

hands incomplete

as dancers waxing

in a rainbow moonstone

 

“can you stop suffering

for, like, a minute?”  

do you mean could 

burn through

wave by wave

 

at what difference?

in a spiral, crocodile

& roses aaaaallll day

teach myself (again) 

to rest is not to squander

 

lighten as the sun hits

off the cymbal nn-tsk

back in the day 

when we were planets 

to a plum, swan-swank

 

gonging in between

 

 

 

napkinful of sour patch kids

 

Seven gather in the conference room to discuss the market readiness report, so the office is mostly empty. Liv researches bathing suits that may look good on her. George is standing at his desk looking at his phone with the flat tone of a COO gone soft on matrices. Peterson returns to his desk with a third cup of coffee and a napkinful of sour patch kids, resumes listening to Dick Gallup reading poems from the evening of June 21, 1978. The crowd claps earnest and appreciative after most of them, while Dick turns a page, takes a breath - sometimes through his nose, sometimes through his mouth, some both - and then he begins again. Before “Virtue”: I seem to be missing something he says and lights another cigarette. In “Philosophy Take a Walk” Dick reads, stress is mostly bullshit. What will become of Dowling Hall, the market and its readiness? What virtue hath a man who hath not the command of his own intention? The year is 2025, and, to be sure, there is still much work to be done…

Andrew K. Peterson

Little Men, by Gordon Haber

I was in my office trying to get a few things done when I heard the sweet little voice of my two-year-old saying, Papa? I stepped into the hall and there was my little man! He wore overalls and held his favorite toy, a cement mixer truck. I scooped him up and kissed his face and I said, Where’s Mama?

Papa, I heard again. And down the hall was my little boy. What I mean is that my son was in my arms and my son was also down the hall. There were two of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up the second one, and now I had my son in either arm.   

I heard it a third time: Papa. Further down the corridor, by the men’s room, my son was stumbling towards me doing his toddler robot walk even though I already had one of him in each arm. It’s very difficult to carry three squirming toddlers, but I figured that I could make it to my office. And there he was again, by the elevator. 

Now I’m pouring sweat, almost hyperventilating, when I see the mail cart. So I dump out the mail and I put the four of them into the cart. I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering who to call—my wife? 911?—when I see him in the lobby. He sees me too and breaks out a gorgeous smile and throws his arms out wide: Papa!

I put him in the cart. 

Through the lobby window there’s my son again in the parking lot, which makes six of them. The poor kids are cramped and whining and two of them are fighting over the toy. But I couldn’t worry about that, because there was one more by the security gate, and another, Jesus Christ, by the highway off-ramp.

Now I have one in each arm and six in the cart, which I’m trying to guide back to my office with a hip, until I see one more on the grass divider of the highway. This was when I thought I might start screaming. But I kept it together, and I waited for the traffic to ease so I could safely maneuver all of us across the lanes and collect my son. 

That’s right, I held it together, and you can bet your ass that I would keep holding it together. Even if there were a hundred of them. Even if there were a thousand. Because what else could I do?

            Don’t worry, I called to my little man as the cars whipped by. Daddy’s coming.

Gordon Haber