Josh Fernandez‘s full-length collection of poems Spare Parts and Dismemberment was published by R.L. Crow in 2011. He has written about the arts for Spin Magazine, The Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Magazine, The Hartford Advocate, Submerge and The Sacramento Bee. He is also a frequent contributor to the punk satire website The Hard Times. His poems, creative nonfiction and short stories have been widely published. Fernandez currently lives in Sacramento, Calif. where he teaches English at Folsom Lake College, and works on his first novel Stickup Kid.
Choked
I slid down the hallway in my pajamas, feet cooled
by the linoleum—half-shut windows breathing
wet air, like hungry mouths in the night.
I stopped quickly at the screams of my mother.
We need more fucking money than this, she yelled from the kitchen. I peeked
around the corner and watched her use her forearm to wipe a mountain
of pennies and nickels from the table.
My father tried to reach the scattered change
from beneath the refrigerator with the tip of his shoe, but he kept pushing
the coins further away.
Well, he said, putting his hands in his pockets, We’ll have to sell the boy.
His joke.
Instead of laughing, she shot up, reached back
and punched him in the jaw.
And they fought. I watched them with clenched
teeth—curse words and fists, curled lips and fingernails, saliva
drying on the corners their mouths
until they both turned to concrete, perfect in their design,
and like falling towers, wisps of heat curling
from their backs, blue flames spouting into the air, they burned
and collapsed, nearly crumbling as they leaned
into each other, falling to the floor in black piles of stone and ash.
I sat in the kitchen, amongst the rubble, picking up the coins from the crevices
of the house—under the carpet, behind the groaning refrigerator.
I put the pennies and nickels into my mouth, one by one, weeping
until they were gone. I ate every one until I wheezed and gagged. But still, I ate them all.
___________
Ian Kappos‘ short fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online periodicals. In 2012, his short story “In the Leper Colony” (originally published in Neon #32) was an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Volume 5. He lives in Sacramento, CA, where he plays in the hardcore punk band Cross Class (crossclass.bandcamp.com) and co-edits the avant-garde magazine Milkfist (www.milkfist.com). Find him online at www.iankappos.net.
“djanitors”
We carried each other’s water past the trees
I couldn’t name,
down toward the lake, can’t remember which, but
there was a spatula in my chest flinging oil thru my teeth
speckling your back and making daytime constellations
the pillars spooned green-gray onto our saddlebags, we
could’ve been
new, or as good as
She could’ve taken us
back
Into her pantry, I thought, into her ancient loam,
named us, tongue click-clack cloud applause—she
could’ve named us
caretakers of those
untenanted archives
But you well know, those were
ancient times when
my skin was dead to stirring winds, dry lips
While
Now you follow Ganesh
up a staircase to Babylon, wide eye smile cutting walls
crumping mirror-frames, joy untold on a veranda, a beach
awaiting everywhere
And I
angry-read, starlit on the carpet, colonizing
the stucco w/ ceramic eyes,
thinking about our unborn empire, the nirvana-life
of custodians
