Plugs

Susannah Mandel’s short story “The Monkey and the Butterfly” is in Shimmer #11. She also has poems in the current issues of Sybil’s Garage, Goblin Fruit, and Peter Parasol.

Edd Vick’s latest story, “The Corsair and the Lady” may be found in Talebones #37.

David Kopaska-Merkel’s book of humorous noir fiction based on nursery rhymes, Nursery Rhyme Noir 978-09821068-3-9, is sold at the Genre Mall. Other new books include The zSimian Transcript (Cyberwizard Productions) and Brushfires (Sams Dot Publishing).

Trent Walters, poetry editor at A&A, has a chapbook, Learning the Ropes, from Morpo Press.

I Live on Despair

by Edd

I live on despair. It is my meat and depression my air.

You look past me, a simple trunk sitting in the corner of the dayroom, dust-shrouded and ancient. A faded chintz throw covers my top, a battered secondhand lamp with a too-weak bulb weighing it down. Reading glasses might be left here one night, dentures the next.

You don’t open me, you don’t think to. You’re just here to visit relatives, to jolly them along. Wearing happiness like a shroud over misery, over impatience, over gloom, you breathe leaden air and play checkers or talk in low tones with those left to die.

And if some of them die before they should? And if some of them take ill more often? And if some of them have unfortunate accidents? That draws you here to fill me with your raw emotion.

So despair. Cry and wail and stare. Give me your darkness that I might thrive.

Your children come with you, but do not understand. Some day they will–some day when you are here to stay.

I love you all. Make me smile.

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