Camroc Press Review

Rachel Marsom-Richmond

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Delaware

Come December, I will mail you a Christmas package with a jar of snow. I'll seal it tight to capture the noises of this thin air breeze—the blasting and chugging of trains. I've never been more comforted by the sounds of technology, you'll sleep better when you hear the music again. I'll wrap the jar in bubble wrap, gently place it in a cooler of dry ice. I'll write a warning on the outside of the box with a Sharpie: Do not touch the dry ice with bare hands, wear a pair of gloves to protect yourself. Almost 5 years ago you let me wear the gloves that smelled like your car when I drove up North and saw my first snow. Traveled through Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, but somehow missing Delaware—the state you ran away to. My friend Neesha says there's no such place as Delaware. It doesn't exist, you've been lying to me for all these years, making up a place and cities that you've never been to. I wondered why you couldn't take a photograph of your house or send me brochures from the museums. I never questioned your authority, but what kind of state has killed their music? My package may never make it across the country, heading off to an imaginary land, a mirage like Oz, but I've bought the box and packing materials just in case. The post office will be busy that time of year, but you're worth the wait in line.

CP

Rachel Marsom-Richmond has a recent M.F.A. Her writing has appeared in Camel Saloon, Three Line Poetry and others. She was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize. She teaches composition, makes sock monkeys, and dreams of moving back to the mountains of North Carolina. For more information visit her at www.rachelm.com

Michael Seidel

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Dialysis

Two years into my dialysis treatments, the woman who tends me began draining my blood into a small, kidney-shaped pan, walking it carefully down several flights of stairs to the hospital’s cafeteria, and placing it in the microwave. She’d turn the knob for 4 minutes and 30 seconds, the same time it takes to cook four potatoes. The light would go on, and she’d watch it begin to boil through the perforated screen.

She’d return, pour the blood back into the dialysis machine, set it to do what it does, and feed it back into me. The first time, the sting was discomforting.

“Why are you doing this to me,” I asked her.

“We know each other so well. I care for you so much,” she replied.

Each time I went back after that, twice a week in those days, she’d repeat this. Sometimes she’d spill a bit on her walk down and have to call an orderly to come with a mop and bleach.

My veins got tunneled in callus, and eventually the feeling of the blood going back in was a kind of euphoria. Not hot; warming, good. Like a drug that hitches itself to your mind and gives you clarity by taking away all thought.

On the days I wasn’t there, my insides felt like paper-mâché.

So I’ve begun filling in. I line all the tools up, extract the blue until it goes red and fills the World’s Best Sister coffee cup I use to collect it. The lights of my house flicker at night from the power it takes to get it to the temperature I like—you can see it from the streets.

I stand outside sometimes while I wait, just watching that stutter of light, seeing it as others do.

Michael Seidel lives in a Milwaukee neighborhood called Tippecanoe. Honestly. His writing has appeared in Dogzplot and he blogs at http://oldstandby.tumblr.com/

William Cullen, Jr.

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Fish

you say love’s a fish

that gets away too often

so we need good lures

to keep on bringing it back

or kind hearts to let it go

A Toast

you raise a wine glass

and propose a toast to me

as the startled guests

listen to you say divorce

is birth by cell division

William Cullen, Jr., works at a non-profit in Brooklyn, NY. He's married and has two college-age sons. His writing has appeared in Asahi/International Herald Tribune, Boston Literary Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Grey Sparrow Journal, among others. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2010.

Jack Swenson

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Sisters

Mimi and Nancy are sisters. They are immigrants from Vietnam. They do manicures and massage. They make a living; indeed, they do very well. They have a nice little shop on the Main Street of a suburb south of the Big City. Most but not all of their customers are women. It's the other ones–the men–who give them trouble. The men want their toenails clipped. They pay for the "special massage." The massage is just that–a back rub. Inevitably the men are disappointed; they want more. Sometimes they get angry when they don't get what they want.

Nancy and Mini keep a loaded .357 magnum in a drawer in the back room. If a customer gives them a lot of trouble, they open the drawer and take out the gun. The gun is heavy. The tiny women hold it in both hands. Generally, having a weapon the size of a cannon pointed at him is enough to discourage a troublesome customer. His eyes get big, and he vacates the premises. So far, the girls have never had to fire a round.

They would, though, if push came to shove. They are friendly and peaceful ladies. They pay their taxes; they are kind to small animals. But when they were little more than tots, they crossed the South China Sea in a tiny boat. They helped fend off pirates. They were armed then, too. Mimi shot a man between the eyes when he boarded their boat. Her father killed the others with an automatic weapon.

They are grown women now, but they are little and men are big. Most are bigger and stronger than they are, but not nearly as tough. When a man exits the back room and goes hurriedly out the door, Mimi follows and washes her hands at one of the sinks. She exchanges a glance with her sister. The women smile.

CP

Jack Swenson is an old cowboy who now wrangles words, not herds. He misses the wide open spaces. He does his keyboard punching in a suburban community south of San Francisco. He is married to a lovely woman who is mother to their seven cats.

Bill Yarrow

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:01:00 +0000

HITTING THE WALL

I hadn’t seen her since Carter was
President. Everything about her had
turned white, even her beauty marks.
I faced her strangeness and fumbled
for the past. The time we went crabbing
on the Chesapeake. Her imitation of
Nelson Mandela. Playing lawn darts
at my Mom’s. I tried to talk, but only
whispers slithered out. She pretended
to understand what I was saying,
then said, “Wasn’t it fungible to have
run across each other?” Fungible? I
questioned. She slapped me—hard.
Then her perfume returned—with a vengeance.

JOAN OF DARK

What happens in heaven stays in heaven.
“That’s not true,” she said to me. “You know
it’s not true.” Yes, the acts of paradise,
slippery like syrup, slide down the clouds
and drip onto the tops of the trees where
birds and squirrels reveal them to man.
“What color are the birds?” she asked. Pink.
The pink birds and checkerboard squirrels
reveal the sly doings of the chubby cherubs.
“What’s sly doings?” I meant “sky” doings.
Reveal the sky doings of half-pint angels.
“I love heaven, don’t you?” I’m not allowed to
tell. They will burn me at the stake if I tell.
“Like Joan of Dark?” Just like Joan of Dark.

EYES OFF THE ROAD

One by one I lost my desires.
Dirty ambition left first.
Knowledge raged but then it cooled.
Riches never had the hook very deep.
Achievement uncoupled from success seemed pointless.
Friendship became recursive.
Appetite lost its urgency.
Form declined into artifice.
Love stopped feeding me so I stopped feeding it.
Insight evaporated when memory left.
Lust lingered longest.
My desires, gaily arrayed, bolted to a
lapis slab, await me in Heaven.
With any luck I’ll go to Hell.

—These three poems appeared in FOURTEEN, 2011

CP

Bill Yarrow is the author of WRENCH (erbacce-press, 2009), Wound Jewelry (new aesthetic, 2010), and FOURTEEN (Naked Mannekin, 2011). His poems have appeared in Poetry International, Confrontation, Istanbul Literary Review, BLIP, DIAGRAM, PANK, and many others. He is one of the poetry editors of THIS Literary Magazine and lives in Illinois.

Andrew Stancek

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:01:00 +0000

All I Needed Now

The apartment Mami, Oci, and I moved into was on the third floor of a decrepit building in the center of Bratislava. The streets were narrow and winding, most of the streetlights broken by gangs. Tattered Soviet and Czechoslovak flags fluttered from flagpoles; the ever-present banners proclaiming “With the Soviet Union Forever” were covered with graffiti. Scraps of ripped newspapers were blown around, along with greasy cardboard cones, and pieces of chestnut shells. The dark passageways reeked of urine. Wet sand and cement dust crunched underfoot. Grim soldiers marched in formation throughout the squares. People spoke in whispers of robberies, rapes and beatings of pedestrians. Policemen were seen in the daylight, directing traffic, but never at night. After dark no one ventured out. I was frightened, not only at night, but in the daytime as well, unless I was walking with protective adults. Yet I was also happier than I had ever been. I had a Mami and an Oci. I had made friends among the hundreds of kids crammed into the other apartments, in buildings just like ours. All I needed now was a dog.

CP

Andrew Stancek was born in Bratislava and now dreams in southwestern Ontario. His work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Pure Slush, Negative Suck, Left Hand Waving, THIS Literary Review, among others.

Rebecca Gaffron

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:01:00 +0000

Gravity

It’s midnight. What’s stopping me from jumping in the car and driving three and a half hours to pick up a book of short stories written by some guy I’ve never met?

Nothing.

No one to miss me, no job to be late for, no pets requiring attention. Even the house plants are long dead. And he’s fun online.

I exchange hot-pink tights for my best ass-hugging jeans and grab the car keys.

I’m almost on the highway before it occurs to me that Chris might stop by. See, someone would notice. I ease my foot off the gas. Then reality checks in. Chris won’t show. The Chris thing is over.

The road’s empty. I use my phone to post on his FB page. Tell him I’m on my way and leave my number. A few miles later I feel vibrating in my pocket.

“Are you fucking serious?” His voice is strange. Not odd, but unknown. It makes me think the whole idea is crazy. Then I notice his enthusiasm.

“You’re really driving here? Tonight?”

“Yeah.” I sound breathless.

“Fuck.”

“You offered.” I turn breathless to confident.

“I know but….” The pause is long. “I never thought you would.”

“I don’t have a clue where I’m headed.” He misses the broader implications and gives me directions.

We meet at a diner around 3:45am. Conversation in person isn’t as playful. But he insists on buying me breakfast. We finish as the sun peeks over the eastern horizon.

“You could come back to my place…”

It’s what I’ve been waiting for. Going home with a stranger, in a strange city. Gravity pulls. The force makes me shiver.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is fascinated by sea-green spaces, words, and men who behave like cats. She is a sometimes writer and can be found at her virtual home, rebeccawriting.wordpress.com.

Cath Barton

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Dollies

There was, even now, a strong smell of chicken shit in the shed. It caught me in the throat. But the creatures in the shed now were not chickens. And I could not see them. All the wooden pegs had been scattered on the dusty floor. Looking now, with my eyes of all the years, I finally understood why my sisters had called them dolly pegs: faces blanked, bodies naked and defiled. Now the half-made dress on the old iron dressmaker’s dummy was torn, the stuffing was bursting out and something was moving in there. I held the chains on the door tight and the cold metal froze my fingers. I heard shards of laughter beyond the chains, between the slats, and I knew I would fall, just like the little disemboweled pottery owl lying there by the pegs. I would be on the floor, naked and squirming like the rest of them. Until I fell still. Unless. Unless you arrived, and you wouldn’t. You had gone with the chickens and the harvest, which had been late that year. I had the flavour of you in my mind, just that. A frill of something underwater, receding.

CP

Cath Barton lives in Abergavenny, South Wales, where she sings, writes, takes photographs and grows unusual and delicious vegetables.

Suzy Devere

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Tulips and Tourniquets

And you are before me with a twitching eye and something else that tells me you aren't comfortable...haven't been comfortable for a hundred years. Since the dogs stopped fucking next door and bit the ear off the little girl who was picking the tulip in the yard while your mother was boiling water for tea. Since the stars were constellations you wanted to know the names of, you haven't been comfortable with me. Because you know I ache. It starts when I open my eyes and realize we are still together, and that the day will bring minutes that we'll spend together. Our lives will be about taking my medicine on time and getting the insurance forms filled out right so the adjustments don't come back to us over and over again, like Australian boomerangs. You want me to feel loved. I want you to go away because my body aches from ills too numerous to list and my heart aches from falling out of love with you. Our long night—another in a string of many that will last until you become too tired to care for me, or I die—will start after Charlie's Angels re-runs and Dairy Queen, because a shake is all I can get down. We will never again be lovers, and I want to be small so you cannot see me in this bed of white bleached sheets and spit towels. I ache. And I don't want you to watch it.

CP

Suzy Devere appears and disappears seemingly at will. She could be camping in the underground right now, or back in Pattaya, sitting in a rattan chair at a bar overlooking the harbor, having drinks with some old ghosts of Vietnam.

Robert Vaughan

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Fling

“Poor little me,” she mused. She is dripping with sweat while the rain spits bullets. She feels like flinging coffee at the Pope. What could be worse than an abortion in a Boston alley, the doctor a stranger. The father stranger still.

The Wedding March

The congregation whispers, fidgets, and breathes like bellows. The wedding party are running way behind schedule. Tensions mount as the ceremonial time passes. The bald pastor rearranges his papers. Checks his watch, the lines deepening on his face.

Her wedding party fixes, adjusts, makes last minute preparations. She can't seem to get her ringlets to behave, to twist in the manner they did at her run-through. “Do something,” she pleads with her maid of honor. Her panic mounts. She grabs the curling iron, snaps, “You're just making it worse!”

To calm her, dad leads her aside, into the narrow hallway. He wants to savor these last moments with his sole daughter. His pride and joy. He takes her hand, opens it face up in both of his. Says, “When I was your age, we could fit everything we owned right here.” Traces a circle in her hand with his finger. “We had nothing.” He sighs, thinks of his own failed marriage. He asks her, “You're sure you wanna do this?”

It takes her by complete surprise. The one question she wishes he might have avoided. She glances outside to steel herself, into the churchyard. The sun gleams on the gravestones. It feels like she's wearing ankle weights as the organ barks the wedding march.

CP

Robert Vaughan’s plays have been produced in N.Y.C., L.A., S.F., and Milwaukee, where he resides. He leads two writing roundtables for Redbird- Redoak Studio. His prose and poetry have been published in over 150 literary journals such as Elimae, Metazen and BlazeVOX. He is a fiction editor at JMWW and Thunderclap! Press. He co-hosts Flash Fiction Fridays for WUWM’s Lake Effect. His blog: http://rgv7735.wordpress.com.

Randall Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:01:00 +0000

Chorus

They flooded the valley and made the lake, left the houses intact, not knowing, hidden in the cellar, tied to the supporting pole as if to the mast was my grandfather. They didn't know what he said until it bubbled to the surface amid the motorboats, lake houses, water-skiers, jet skis, until it died under that endless roar.

Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.

In the walls of my father's apartment, they discovered nothing but millions of pellet holes. Him, they found wandering in the back parking lot. No one was there, they told him. But he didn't believe. He saw disembodiment, limbs afloat. The shotgun, tapping like a cane, sounding like a song. He raised it. There was nothing else they could do.

Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.

Every night, starting at seven, my son cried. He said he could not live with knowing he'd awake one day to death, with not knowing what happens during sleep. I told him he wasn't missing much. One night, we stayed up all night, waiting. The night could barely be heard, like a faraway past. Near dawn, they turned on all the sprinklers. Now I know,
he said.

Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.
Sha la la la la la la la.

Each day, after the stroke, fewer words become available. Finally, only "stroke" remains. An image of a boat, its wake like time, its prow pointed toward the end of the world. As the boat makes its soundless way forward, a tiny, damp hand strokes a father's cheek. A son hums a tiny song through that endless roar, beyond that nothing else they could do. Now I know, he says. The world gets washed.

CP

Randall Brown is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection Mad to Live. He teaches at and directs Rosemont College's MFA in Creative Writing Program. His short and very short fiction has been published widely, and his essay "Making Flash Count" appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field. He founded and currently manages Matter Press and its Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

Jessie Carty

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 06:02:00 +0000

Habit Forming

Becky was a scab picker,
her skin: white divots.

On the bus no one sat with her,
saying "lice ridden" "rat bitten"

"so poor she shares a bed
with her brother" which was

somehow such a bad thing.
I'd sit in the back of the bus

where the older kids played
Truth or Dare; where, behind

raised jackets, I touched
a boy's pale penis; where

whispers started about what
you would do for a quarter—

voices that began to say
chew your hair, your nails,

the inside skin of your lip.

CP

Jessie Carty is the author of three poetry collections but she also chisels away at prose in between teaching at RCCC in Concord, NC. You can find her taking photos and editing Referential Magazine or blogging at http://jessiecarty.com.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 06:01:00 +0000

POEM BETWEEN SOBS

Some things do go wrong, just not in a way I can explain.
Shirts go missing. Red balloons escape
the fat hands of toddlers. Things like that. On any given Friday,

there is a fourth-grade sleepover somewhere, gradually
going awry. Jonae Smilax and her mother are fighting again.
The screen door has a hole in it so the bugs come in.

Pale women everywhere hastily apply sunscreen.
An important post-it note falls into the heat register.
Things go wrong so regularly, and no one stops

to bemoan the mishappenings. My big wolf tears,
I assume that is what they are doing.
I have no other explanation.

HOW TO DIE

First, you must rise very early in the morning for thirty-five years.
Consider how much your body would weigh without a heart inside

to keep it down. You must feel okay with this figure. Get rid of your
books. Stop thinking your marginal notes will be found useful by others;

waterlog them. However many will fit in your bathtub. Forget
the quadratic formula. Forget all those phone numbers you still remember

from when you were a kid. Gradually erase other, more important things:
your mother's middle name, family recipes, your social security number.

Lose your favorite coat, your Bible, your car keys. Don't look for them.
Get your gallbladder removed. Schedule an amputation.

Think away your top layer of skin cells. Then the next layer. Your skin
will begin to redden (it's just the blood cells showing, no need to worry).

Remove the rest of the skin at a comfortable pace. These layers
no one has touched, no unwashed kisses here, those were gone

long before this. Hit bone. The rest of you will fit in bags and boxes.
Take apart your feet first and work your way up like you're putting

away a puzzle. Pack the bones tightly together; the smaller ones will fall
to the bottom, there. Before you know it, you've finished.

Someone will be along shortly to pack up your hands.

CP

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, elimae, PANK, Neon, and elsewhere.

Manisha Anand

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:01:00 +0000

SKINWRITING

I have words on my skin. Years worth of language, loved and jealously guarded.

The first time I read the word ephemeral, I couldn't bring myself to look away from the page. I traced every letter slowly with my finger, trying to burn it on to my brain. Trying to, somehow, indelibly associate it with myself. It was so beautiful that I simply wanted it. I wrote it on my arm for a few days, over and over with a black felt-tipped pen, but somehow it was never quite enough. I wanted that word with as much desire and longing that an eight year old could muster. So, one evening after dinner, I unscrewed the blade from my Mickey Mouse sharpener and cut it into my thigh. E-P-H-E-M-E-R-A-L. After that, there was no turning back.

For my tenth birthday, I had a star shaped cake with white icing and chocolate sprinkles, and a party for all my friends. There were silver balloons that bounced slightly against the ceiling, and a sign that spelled out 'Happy Birthday' in red, green and yellow. I didn't wear the new dress my mother bought for me because it had a v-neck, and if you looked closely enough you could see the first two letters of reverie slowly healing under my collarbone. Propinquity and lugubrious followed in quick succession, and by August I couldn't go anywhere without a cardigan on.

My dad lost his job when I was in high school, and we had to move. My mum lost her big kitchen and her quick, cheery laugh. My grandmother lost her free healthcare privileges and the pastor who dropped by every Tuesday just to listen to her. My little sister lost her front tooth and the tooth fairy. Me, I never lost anything. I was a skinwriter and no one could take what I loved away from me.

My teenage years were fairly predictable, with a flurry of likes, hates and loves. Esurient on my hip and vapid on my chest. A heart that broke far too often. Friends who came and went. Looking back now, I wonder why my mother never noticed anything. All the tiny pinpricks of blood my clothes had. Those quick tugs at my sleeve to hide the clumsily etched translucent on my arm. My stubborn insistence on always being fully clothed. She should have known.

I moved away from home after school, and joined a university in the neighbouring town. For a while, there were no words. Then a bent safety pin and I sat together in the dark and scratched lachrymose onto my wrist after my father's funeral. Erudite after I passed second year Maths, and luminous for that wonderful, wonderful boy who thought my words and I were beautiful.

Exacerbate. Profane. Stanza. Quagmire. So many years, so many memories.

Growing up isn't that sudden, dramatic change you think it will be when you are a child. It slowly creeps in. Seeps in. You eventually become the person you are now, and everything else starts to feel like someone else's life. Scars fade, you forget. But every now and then, the silvery outline of a favourite word on my skin takes me back.

CP

Manisha Anand lives in London and excels at being a starving writer, trying (rather hopelessly) to find enough part-time jobs to pay the rent. Having an MA in Creative Writing doesn't seem to help matters at all, drat. Anand's writing has appeared in the anthology LiveJournal: The First Decade, Assembly Journal, and various post-its here and there.

Jimmy Chen

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:01:00 +0000

The Deer, the Dad, Etc...

The deer was not an impossible idea; in fact, it was more than probable. The deer, dead, tied to the hood of the car, its neck limp and swaying with each curve of the road back home. The son would look at his dad. "Why did you kill him?" The dad wouldn't answer with words.

The dad wanted his son to understand death early on. He made the son touch the deer's neck, to feel its last warm pulses under his palm. The deer's eyes, still moist with shock, reflecting a pale cloudless sky, frost gathering around its nostrils. The son would compare the deer's pulse with his own.

Dear was not used in the dad's letters to his son, nor did the son use that word either. The strained letters between them during the war began simply with their names. "Dear Son," the son would think, and laugh a laugh that is only funny after years. What an impossible idea.

The dead is what's inside, some forlorn tumor that never quite killed you. Each morning you wake up and survey all those lost years and neversaid words in the mirror. Your face got older until it finally froze, every denied expression still tingling on your skull. You are the dad and I am the ghost, your son who died before he died in war. I am the deer, Dear Dad.

—First appeared in 2009 in Bull

CP

Jimmy Chen writes short fiction and essays. He lives in San Francisco, where he is an administrator at a research institution. He can be found online at jimmychenchen.com.

Tres Crow

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Baby's Gonna Be A Rock Star

When I played the music loud, in the car, in the living room, my son bobbed his head. He was a year old. I was so proud; my boy, gonna be a musician like his poppa. When we danced, his momma and me, danced around him laughing and shouting and carrying on, he'd dance too, bob his head, stomp his feet, shake it.

Two years went by. We danced and I'd play the music loud, and I was so proud. Then he kept doing it, bobbing his head, twitching. I'd turn on the music to give it some context, pretend, shake my own head, pretend.

The doctors say there's no way we could've known, but that's bullshit. I was so proud. Baby's gonna be a rock star. Look at 'im go.

CP

Tres Crow is the world's foremost authority on zombie mating rituals and as such spends most of his time in the field learning human brain recipes. His notes from the field can be found in Emprise Review, decomP, and The Foundling Review. He can be found online at his blog Dog Eat Crow World.

Ray Scanlon

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Wiffle Ball

A warm early May sun dips, shading the back yard; gnats and mosquitos rule the air; pine warblers command the treetops. Jeff, his cigar aromatic, plays wiffle ball with his children. Runner, fielder, pitcher, and batter constantly change places as near-chaos unfolds from iterating the simple, if cryptic, rules. Jord and his dad pitch to strike each other out. The girls take their base-running leads in cartwheels.

CP

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. On the web: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.

Rachel Mangini

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000

NO SLEEP

You are gone and still I have to sleep in our bed. Share it with the raw pink throbbing heart of what was us. It's whimpering, this thing. Smells like the inside of an ear. Its ooze is ruining the sheets.

CP

Rachel Mangini lives in Pittsburgh where she writes during evenings and weekends. She is the fiction editor of Hot Metal Bridge Magazine. Online she lives at everyonesanocean.wordpress.com.

Katherine Gleason

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Last Week

Christmas Day, light snow falls on the rhododendron forest outside of Knoxville. Matthew has gone to the airport to pick up his father. In the kitchen, Lucy bakes cookies. Butter and cinnamon crowd the house.

Mark asks me, "You're coming back for New Year's, right?"

I sit on his bed, one hand on his ankle, and say, "I don't know."

He shifts his legs away from me, kneecaps shining through the skin like doorknobs. "Well," he says, "we don't always get what we want."

The next day, Matthew drives me to the airport. At home, I make a cup of tea, sleep a little, get the call.

"This is it," his sister Lucy says.

The airlines won't grant me a bereavement fare. "Ma'am, you're not really family," the reservation agent says.

"And besides," I think, "he's not dead yet."

On the bus from New York City, small children grumble, chant the childhood car-trip refrain. My right leg tingles with sleep. I imagine arriving too late. The grey-eyed house stands silent, locked tight. My back to the rhododendrons, I rest my face against a pane. My breath clouds the glass; there is nothing to see inside.

When I do step through the back door, Lucy is still in the kitchen. The radio is still on. Now, though, the house smells of bleach. She shakes her head. He hasn't eaten, has hardly opened his eyes since I left.

His bed, a rented hospital contraption, dominates the living room. I perch on the side, watch him breathe, his head tilted back, mouth open.

He stirs, mumbles. Lucy and Matthew return to the room.

"I have to get my hair done," he says, "and then I am going to meet Mom." The long dead mother, whom I'm said to resemble.

Lucy, her head still wagging, clicks her tongue.

Matthew pulls back. "I'm glad Dad didn't have to hear that," he says and steps out to join his father who is smoking on the porch.

"Shut up," Lucy calls after him.

Even I, fag hag, homo fellow traveler, psychic twin, am taken aback. Egged on by my own misgivings, I glare in Matthew's wake, then rummage in my bag, pull out a hairbrush. Working from the ends inward, I smooth, straighten, and untangle, then arrange Mark's bangs in an arc across the forehead. When I am done, he is fluffy, the newly hatched chick of a predatory bird.

A day or two later, he opens the hollow furnace of his eyes, looks at me, and sees his mother.

"Are we there yet?" he asks.

CP

Katherine Gleason’s stories have appeared in Best American Erotica, Alimentum, Cream City Review, Ducts.org, La Petite Zine, Mississippi Review Online, Monkeybicycle, River Styx, Southeast Review, and Windy City Times. She won first prize in the 2007 River Styx Micro-Fiction Contest, was a finalist in the 2008 Southeast Review’s World’s Best Short Short Story Contest, and earned an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s August 2008 Very Short Story Contest.

Joshua Michael Stewart

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000

FARMERS’ MARKET

Fog wafts up from the cool grass behind rows of tents
in the church parking lot. A lanky teen in basketball
shorts helps a man with a handlebar mustache unload

blueberries and strawberries from the back of a pickup.
A woman wearing pearls and a periwinkle shrug lifts
zucchinis out of pine baskets, rolls their rubbery bodies

in her fingers as if she’s about to tell them their futures.
I love the wetness of greens, the warm bread wrapped
in red cloth, the crunch of biting into an apple, the smell

of dirt on hands. I love how the words food and community
spool off my tongue, and how they belong here. But what
will this place mean to the little boy I saw earlier squealing

with delight as he crawled under a table to pet the black
lab with the graying muzzle, the boy who’s now near
the maple syrup stand where two police officers handcuff

his mother, a woman with bruised arms and sunken cheeks?
What does the boy mean to us? A man in a red ball cap
carries him off as his mother’s lowered into the back

of a squad car. His arms shoot out from his sides, trembling
with war like spears. The whole time spitting knives
from his throat: “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

WHAT’S ONE MORE DAY

Storefronts line the streets like convicts
condemned to a firing squad. A man
sputtering on about the end of days
wraps a scarf around his charred voice.

I was laid-off weeks ago, haven’t told
anyone. Every morning I put on a suit,
walk to the park, and feed the pigeons
breadcrumbs out of my briefcase. Tonight,

on my way home, it begins to snow.
By the time I see our porch light I’m ready
to fess up. I’m in the foyer, blowing
warmth back into my hands. My new bride

descends the staircase wearing nothing
but house slippers and a false beard.

SPRING MORNING

—for Kate Hill Cantrill

To the cat, my thigh’s no more than a fleshy
stepladder, a tool for squinting out the window
that’s next to the bed. From my position,
I can see sky and clouds, tops of trees,

the occasional flash of bird and the filthy
underside of drawn-up blinds. The cat
reports on ground activity. His chatters
indicate the return of robins, his yowls

announcing that the calico from the brown
house is reclined like a roman emperor,
sunning itself on a slab of concrete.
There’s the rumble and squeal of the garbage

truck, the urgency of an ambulance siren.
Today there’re no big questions to ask
or answer, only small rituals: the whine
and teething of a bandsaw, the rhythmic

thwacking of a hammer. My neighbor,
always out in his yard with a pencil
behind his ear, driving something
beautiful and strong into his life.

CP

Joshua Michael Stewart has had poems published in Massachusetts Review, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Georgetown Review, William and Mary Review, Flint Hills Review, Pedestal Magazine, Evansville Review and Worcester Review. Pudding House Publications published his Chapbook Vintage Gray in 2007. Visit him at www.joshuamichaelstewart.yolasite.com

Tyler Bigney

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 05:05:00 +0000

Soft & warm

I dreamt about it again last night.
This time the terrorists dropped bombs
filled with Cyanogen chloride.
Everyone was wearing gas masks,
but it didn’t matter.
I was five years old when
I first realized I was going to die.
Now I’m older. But I still watch cartoons
on Saturday mornings and look at the comics
before I read the news.
My mother on the floor, spitting blood,
a bubble bursting, a terrible sound.
I yelled for my father, but I heard
only my voice calling back. It was then
that I leaned in and rested my cheek
on death’s cheek and found it to be soft
and warm. I felt tall and brave.
I gave myself to the bees and to the secrets
I never gave the chance to consume me.

My aunt returned home

My aunt returned home from church to find my uncle in the bedroom closet, his feet swaying a good two feet off the floor. She didn’t dare look at his face. She bent down and lay still beneath his feet, biting her bottom lip until she tasted rusted pennies. The world outside was mostly hushed, a little wind rattling the window. A car passed on the dirt road, stirring up dust, and was gone.

CP

Tyler Bigney was born in 1984 and now lives in Nova Scotia. His work has appeared in Poetry New Zealand, The Meadow, Iodine, Neon, and Third Wednesday among others.

Andrea Kneeland

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:05:00 +0000


poster by Alphonse Mucha, public domain, WikiPaintings

Imagination

I’m looking for something to wear when I find the t-shirt in my best friend’s closet. I’m so shocked for a minute that I forget what I’m doing or where I am at all and then I get a whiff of gin and remember that we’re on a schedule, sort of. She is waiting for me. She is impatient. She is maybe a little angry that I had spilled so much gin on myself because that gin had cost her money and she is in between jobs and two months behind in her rent.

I rip a glittery looking wifebeater from a hanger, stuff the t-shirt in my purse and drop my alcohol-soaked top on the ground. I am ready to dance.

Except not really, anymore. I’m not ready for anything.

The problem is not that I’m wondering where she got the t-shirt or why it says CUMBUCKET.COM across the front in big black letters. The problem is that I know.

The problem was that last year, when I had meant to type craigslist into the address bar on my ex’s computer, I had been distracted by a bird slamming straight into the sliding glass window, concussing itself with a smear of blood and feathers and beakbone before dropping to the concrete. The problem was I had only gotten so far as “c” when I’d heard the bang and jumped from my seat to run to the window. The problem was that after about 15 seconds the bird’s corpse had become uninteresting and I’d walked back to his computer and the address bar had auto-filled itself and directed me to a website that exclusively featured women kneeling down in front of galvanized aluminum buckets filled with horse semen.

Most of the women vomit up the semen up about half way through. Right back into the bucket. And then they start from square one again. The women who finish the whole bucket get a t-shirt.

The problem is that when people tell you your worst enemy is your imagination, they’re wrong. When people tell you that whatever you’re imagining is probably worse than the real thing, they’re wrong.

Imagination is never as bad as the internet.

The problem is that I don’t know which way to be upset, so when I start sobbing in the cab and my best friend turns to me and tells me it’s okay, that I don’t smell like gin and that I look pretty and that my ex didn’t deserve me and that any one of the guys at the club will be lucky to go home with me, all I can do is let her hug me while I press my teary waterproof lashes against her shoulder.

We make the cab pull over so I can throw up and she rubs Preparation H into the crook of her arm to tighten up the needle holes, then she hands me a breath mint. I suck on it ferociously, clasp her face between my hands and look at her hard. “Everything will be okay,” I tell her and she laughs.

Flood

When the wetness crept out beneath the door, I watched for a while with mild interest before I remembered that I was not dreaming. The wetness tinged the carpet pink. I opened the door, I held my breath: I expected the water to touch the ceiling. I expected to see your body floating above me. Nothing floated. My ankles got cold. The water was uncomfortable. Not dream like. Nearer the site of the wounds the wetness was red instead of pink. I was afraid of turning the water off, of the finality of that: I kept everything running. I considered dissecting your body to create a library of you. I would label the jars: Ryan’s mole; Ryan’s left incisor; Ryan’s pineal gland; Ryan’s clavicle. But there would also be a finality in that, almost as much finality as there would be in turning the knob of the faucet. Your eyes were open and they looked like fists. The razor blade stayed lodged in one wrist, camped there like a stubborn tourist. I crawled into the bath.

CP

Andrea Kneeland's first book, the Birds & the Beasts, is from Cow Heavy Books. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Prick of the Spindle, Dark Sky Magazine, Knee-jerk Magazine, Juked, Everyday Genius, Corium Magazine, Dogzplot, and mud luscious press. She is a web editor for Hobart.

Peycho Kanev

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Barking

“The beauty will save the world,”
someone screamed in my ear, and
I looked toward the horizon
at some hint of rain.
The living goes with the living,
and the dead goes with the dead–
This is the philosophy of life
that we never fully understand.
My time will come,
and your time will come,
and we will see the truth at the end,
but until that happens let’s look at
the painter who’s drawing that dog,
which looks like it will open its
mouth.

CP

Peycho Kanev lives in Chicago. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his writing has appeared in more than 400 literary magazines. Walking Through Walls, a short story collection, and American Notebooks, a poetry collection, were published in Bulgaria. His latest collection of poems is Bone Silence, published in 2010 by Desperanto, NY.

Michael J. Solender

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:06:00 +0000

For Me and Him

I smelled him upon opening the chest. I’d forgotten the musky boozy scent that lingered in his chair years after he passed. The scent immediately returned me to Sunday whisker rubs he gave me right before he shaved. Two days growth nearly cut my oily cheeks but I loved it just the same.

His blue sport coat was right on top. It was folded just so, I knew ma was behind the care it found in the worn cedar chest. She wouldn't give that coat away. She couldn't. That was his Friday night coat. He wore it every Friday when they went out for supper. Thirty years he wore that same coat and now I held it close to my face and inhaled all I could of his grace and goodness.

Threadbare and worn, it was all that I hung onto, all that I had left of him and I cried. Folding it back up I felt a scrap of paper in the right breast pocket. In his precise and careful hand was written, “I am but dust and ash.”

I stopped crying immediately and recognized this as a Talmudic verse. I knew there would be a corresponding note found in the other pocket and there was.

It read, “The world was created for me alone.”

CP

Michael J. Solender is the author of the short story and poetry chapbook, Last Winter’s Leaves, published by Full of Crow Press. He is the editor of the online magazine, On The Wing. More of his work can be found at michaeljwrites.com.

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

noreply@blogger.com (Camroc Press Review) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 05:01:00 +0000

Sometimes

She wanted to keep believing in him but sometimes it was hard when she couldn’t sleep because she was afraid—it got so dark—and she kept checking the candle, her finger to her mouth, to the wick, and then checking again for the slightest flicker or the baby cried and cried with a fervor that wouldn’t be doused by water, little in the cabinets or in her or sometimes the landlord would corner her, press himself against her still swollen belly and say maybe it was time they talked about the rent.

—First appeared in the late, great Ghoti

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz lives somewhere in the United States. She blogs about her life at gwennotes.blogspot.com and about her writing life at wwwonewriter.blogspot.com.