from A REALLY BAD IDEA by Robert Simonson

Characters: Max and Jimmy

Setting: A restaurant [Two men, Max and Jimmy sit at a table at a moderate to fancy restaurant. There is no food at the table, but several empty glasses of different shapes and sizes, each containing the dregs of a different alcoholic beverage. Jimmy is well-dressed, collected, and slightly irritated. Max is also well-dressed, but nonetheless in disarray, and oblivious to the fact; he is frenzied.]

GREAT GUY by Till Müller-Klug
translated by Rohan Corby

This evening at eleven o'clock you start your new life. Your new life is called Vera, your old life is called Gabi. You stand in front of the mirror and look forward to your new life. You turn off all the lights in your flat. Like a janitor you go through the rooms, turning off lamps and appliances: amplifier, CD player, desk lamp, the gas stove is off, Gabi's room is off, on the way to the hall you feel your pockets, left, right, the jacket pockets, left, right, you stand still, put your right hand to your heart, on the inside pocket, nothing, you forgot the keys to your flat.

Like a stressed janitor you repeat your rounds, you turn the lights on again and search: bathroom, desktop, hall table, kitchen table, window sills, nothing, next round, bed, wardrobe, your clothes from yesterday, bookshelf, Gabi's couch, the pile of old newspapers, washing bag, your clothes from the day before yesterday, the stereo, the desktop again, nothing, pause, concentrate, grab the diary, you reconstruct the last twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours, you haven't left your flat for three days, your keys could be anywhere and nowhere, you bang your diary on the table, stay calm, your flat is sixty-eight square meters in size, if you search every single square meter, you'll find the keys. Fourth round, you rummage through every place in the entire flat, empty the drawers out, poke the end of your shoe through pens, clothes, bits of paper, photos, letters, nothing, in the last square meter of the kitchen you collapse into a chair, look at the microwave clock, half past ten. Your new life is probably just hailing itself a taxi. Your new life will sit in the bar and wait. Your new life will be wondering. Your new life will be getting older from minute to minute. Anger is growing inside you, anger at your forgetfulness, anger at your flat, anger at the flood of bits and pieces, anger at the constantly growing pile of scrap, because your flat doesn't have a cellar, anger at this blue-white kitchen, showplace for the last three nights of fights, Gabi-talks, talks like looping cassettes, swamp debates, vicious circles, fear of this blue-white kitchen, fear of another night of fighting, it's a quarter to eleven and your flat won't give up the keys. Your flat wants to lock you in. Your flat is a jealous cunt.

Eleven o'clock. You grab a bedsheet and begin to plunder. You trample through your flat, stuff the necessities into the bedsheet: favorite CDs, laptop, books, clothes, wash bag, from the stereo you rip the hottest components: DAT-recorder and minimixer, the bedsheet groans, you compare its size to the size of a locker at a railway station, if you take a big locker you still have room, letters, a poster, you get your alarm clock from Gabi's room, look around you, mementoes weighing tons, too heavy for your bundle, you take a Gabi passport photo and sling the loot over your shoulder. Like a Santa Claus you march through the hall and reach for the door handle. Your flat gives up. Your flat whines. Like a mongrel your flat shows you its throat. Jangling the bunch of keys, which are sticking in the door. You pull the keys out, weigh them up in your hand and throw them backwards over your shoulder into the dark flat. Something tinkles. Mirror, picture frame or glass cupboard, you don't look. The door shuts behind you.

You really are a great guy.

MATIN by Gary Counsil
after the painting Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning by Camille Pissaro

Imagine a cold room with damp
air that awakens the artist, who sees
his breath rising against the
dim light leaking in where the
curtains don't quite come together. He

rises, has a piss, and then
steps into his paint flecked
Harris Tweed trousers puddled
on the floor. His scuffed boots,
with holes in the soles,

are caked in titanium white,
paynes gray, blue, mars.
She does not stir, her sleep profound, her nude
body buried underneath the duvet.
Then, imagine that he

steps into the hall, down
on the boulevard, there is
bustle rather than somnolence.
Coachs slog through the mud.
Horses snort and blow snot—

rear and champ. Ladies pickup their hems
to cross the great street. A
windless morning, smoke stagnates
on the skyline. Notice the
shades of gray—how even subtle

variations in tone work to create mood.
Understand perspective. Understand, too,
that is a lie. Buildings give the sky a jagged
edge. The arthritic trees are blackened by winter,
anemic from city living.

Now seated in a cafe, he takes
out his sketch pad, and begins
to draw a couple picking sleepily
at their food, her hands so small,
his profile so estranged from his frontal view.

Back at the Hôtel de Russie, where he
is staying, she has gone, hurt at having
found him gone. The artist begins to mix
the anvil colored sky, working the pigment
carefully with his pallet knife. Then he sketches

the cityscape, entranced by the
shape of things: atuned to shadow, light, color.

THE NEXT FUNERAL RAY WILL ATTEND by Dave King




Will be his father's, and Ray will address
his father's quiet humility and devotion to family.

Smiling out at the sprucely dressed congregation,
Ray will feign surprise at their number; he'll say

he never knew his father touched so many lives.
Really; we always imagined Dad was our secret.

He will describe his father's quiet modesty,
using all the clichés he can muster, and if he can keep a straight face,

he will say his father's romantic life effectively ended
with the death of his beloved wife, Ray's mother.

I often think some keep and private part of Dad
passed with Mom that day—if he can keep a straight face.

As Ray continues describing his father in these terms,
the ceremony will be interruped by his sister,

herself no stranger to the spotlight. She will have been
noticeably struggling to contain herself,

and will dash off down the center aisle,
her face a mask of ill-concealed

hilarity, and her child, remaining behind
in the pew, won't know whether

to appear solemn or similarly overcome,
and will be unable to explain the gag.

How many times, Ray will say, did the old man tell me
his golden hours were spent with us?

Afterwards, Ray will stand in the chancel, shaking hands
and pretending he's done nothing odd;

and if he's lucky enough to be remembered at all,
this anecdote wil be an element of his legend:

a testament to his gift for the well-timed fuck-you gesture. But if,
as seems more likely, he's not remembered,

then judgement will rest with his father's well-dressed colleagues,
who, waiting confidently for a decent memorial

to the cunning businessman they remember from Sao Paolo
or Tokyo or Munich, will probably put the whole thing down

to the case of another reasonable fellow
screwed by his own kids.

IN THE TIME AFTER by Dave King



Ray will wake with no knowledge
of how long it's been. He will find himself
caught in an infinite net
of thick, aubergine-colored fibers;
he will be surrounded by mannequins
composed of the same stuff.

Pale-green air, yellowest mist:
Where is the gravity in this place? Where the horizon?

Gradually, Ray will realize he's been granted
all the physical attributes he longed for in life:
a hairier chest; smooth toenails;
the sweet-smelling skin of a baby
and a championship skier's big, strong legs.
And as he comes to this understanding.

Ray will recognize the mannequins around him—
his fellow dead.
Like him, each cherishes
a private vision of the self, but appears
only as one of the ropy, plum-tinged
silhouettes Ray sees.

The sky is a washed-out yellow-green.
Was it green a moment ago? How yellow could it have been?

Ray and his beloved wish to spend eternity
together, but how will they know each other
under these husk concealments? Delving
into his own perfection, Ray painlessly—
easily—loses the image of his beloved;
soon he will forget which of them predeceased the other.

from GRAVITY by Rachel Knecht



     Salvador was asking her a question. The words would have to penetrate her nausea to reach her ears. She was in the back seat of Salvador's car, trapped inside something more than car sickness, more like a cumulative hangover after a week of Mexican food, Mexican drinks, Mexican hours. Seeking something to hang onto, her eyes grabbed at every detail of the unfamiliar landscape, people, architecture that slid past the car window. Those things were Mexican, because Salvador was driving this car and its passengers, Margaret and Andrew, through Guadalajara, through Guadalajara in the rain. In order to unscramble each piece of the passing scenes—and this was her nausea's imperative—she had to measure its difference from the things she knew. So read every sign you can, Spanish into English, then note the style of that particular commercial sign, the graphics, the colors, the fact that it, and hundreds like it, are painted ON the walls of stores and the walls that join these stores into long facades, and on walls that extend past these stores, fronting parks, or lining parking lots, the walls themselves painted white, endless. Street lights, groups of people walking, walking, walking, carrying, riding mules, each vendor's face and wares, the houses and how they attach themselves to hills, to one another, potholes, every bit of gravel, back to every letter of every mysterious word in every thousand signs, the way the rain unified it all into one big smear. Her ears rang. She swallowed and closed her eyes.
     Andrew's hand reached back from the passenger seat in front of her and squeezed her knee. "Margaret?"
     She opened her eyes.
     Salvador's mouth was still moving in the rearview mirror. His head shifted, and now his eyebrows raised past the mirror to punctuate the question. His eyes were lively and warm, Andrew had met him at the hotel bar a few days before, and here they were, on the road out of Guadalajara, headed for "the Forest," he called it. He was some sort of park ranger—more important, Andrew said, more of a manager, a minister. He had certainly proved himself very charming since joining them for breakfast. He was in his mid-thirties, and his childish face and prematurely gray hair conflicted pleasantly. A winning smile seemed to sum him all up. His English was excellent. He was repeating the question now, while Andrew twisted himself around to look at her with a wrinkled brow.
     Do you ride horses? finally got through her head—written out like a question in a silent film. Because immediately following, in the next frame, October Shenandoah suddenly slid across the car windows, obliterating October Guadalajara. A hillside, a meadow, a riding helmet arcing to the ground in slow motion, bouncing, rolling, dropping out of sight down a ravine.
     Another squeeze from Andrew brought her back. "Ride? No. Or not anymore—I mean, not in a few years. I used to, as a teenager. Not recently. Is that what we're going to do today? I thought we were going for a hike. Hike—a walk in the mountains?"
     Salvador's face cleared. "Oh, that depends on Andrew now: do you know how to ride, Andrew?"
     Margaret relaxed: Andrew had never been on a horse; he had told her so when she told him about the last time she had gotten on one. A hike—
     "Sure," Andrew said. "I ride. I'll ride. That sounds great, are we going to a ranch? Marg, you ride English, don't you? This'll be Western, right Salvador?"
     The car hit an especially giant pothole and the wheel twisted away from Salvador. He swerved the car back on course.
     Margaret sank back into the seat again. Setting Off. The Setting Off for a hike in the hills of Guadalajara with her novio and a charming Mexican stranger had been plenty big. The car ride out of town to these first fields of farmland had been plenty colorful. Her nausea had been plenty alert, the kind that might give way to energy once the Setting Off was over, and the Underway had begun. But here was a Setting Off into doom. She knew this dread, and if disaster didn't follow immediately, it would, sure enough, somewhere down the road, past skipped exits, missteps, slipped connections, past minor trips and falls—doom waited. Just like the Shenandoah Setting Off, October 18th, her mother's 50th birthday. Or the one at Caterskill Falls with Andrew last summer...