Orion headless

Orion headless is two years old! To celebrate, some of our friends have contributed wonderful poetry, fiction and visual art to a special anniversary theme edition, “Dualities.” I think you will enjoy how each of these talented people uniquely approached this fertile theme:

Cindy Jane, Simon Perchik, AE Reiff, Howie Good, Diana Paul, Len Kuntz, Stephen Ramey, Fabio Sassi, Robert Wexelblatt, and Robert Vaughan.

Thank you to all our contributors and faithful readers for giving us 2 wonderful years. Cheers to many more!

by James Claffey

In the space under the sink where the Old Man stows his whiskey the rats squeal with delight whenever they pop the cork off the bottle. Their little claws make this scrabbling sound on the stones as they surge toward the mold-covered Wensleydale with its furred cranberries and stickiness.

The mattress is the safest place to be when the pack of rats skitter across the floor and fold the soft cheese into fragile jaws. Mam howls trumpet-like at the invasion of the rodents and takes refuge in the linen closet while the Old Man searches for his sledgehammer.

As Mam’s cries leak under the closet door the Old Man brings the hammer down on the floor, splintering the stones and sending the rats pell-mell. From the banisters I point my Kodak camera at the kitchen door, waiting for the right moment to capture the flattening of a rat. The rats are faster than the Old Man’s swings, except for one fat, slow rat with a crooked tail. The hammer lands on it with a sickening crunch and its guts splay across the floor in a spray of red, yellow entrails. Ours is no country for slow rats, Mam says when she creeps from the linen closet and inspects the mess on the floor.

2 poems by Simon Perchik

You sense it knows, the road
narrows, picking up speed
and off in the distance its curve

can’t escape, plays music from the 40s
- you are somewhere in England
listening to rain on a runway

- had it guessed then how its years
would end, here in Nevada, four lanes
not caring where the winds come from

or the radio half airborne
half static, half already too far
though the station is still on the look-out

and clouds are overdue
even in the desert
- it must know, it has to, the hill

constantly turning its head
and you slow, begin to sing along
have one day less to worry.

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by Diana Paul

No more nightmares. The New York Times magazine section laid on Mary’s nightstand. Just a few minutes to unwind. She had just finished reading about an army medic in Iraq who remained uninjured during “enemy fire,” but was tormented nonetheless by searing pain from the wounds of his dying colleagues. It gave new meaning to “I feel your pain.”

She dove into the territory of her dreams, keeping a journal on the nightstand – of dreams beyond memory’s reach. Every morning she woke with thoughts of her parents’ deaths. After her mother had died, Mary was relieved. She did not miss her mother, only the concept of her. No more hurtful words from them. Her father had been a shadow dad. She didn’t miss him either. Their rancid controlling. Some of us heal better than others. Swallowing one’s own vomit can be venomous.

Her family was like her sister’s black Labrador, but in reverse. Instead of being vicious towards everyone outside the family, they were vicious only to those within. Mary turned off the light. She hoped the very last words she uttered would not be those of her dying mother to her dad: “You are a hateful, hateful man.”

Hua-yen Buddhists believe we reflect off each other’s minds, a net of a thousand mirror-minds strung together in a huge cosmic web. Mary wasn’t fated to be the mirrored self her mother flashed before them. At least she hoped not.
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by Raud Kennedy

It was a good day to fleece treats off the customers coming out of the 7-11. The hot weather brought them in for beer and chips, and I sat outside pretending to be someone’s pet dog by sitting calmly and looking like I was waiting for my master to return from inside the store with a six-pack for him and a bone for me. Pet dogs were safe to feed. Moms didn’t have to worry about their kids trying to talk them into bringing home the stray. Don’t feed the stray, they’d say, he’ll follow us home. I’d heard that one a lot. So I put on my act of belonging to someone and it worked for me.

This section of Burnside was on the east side strip where gentrification hadn’t been able to take hold. The soup kitchen and the strip club kept it firmly anchored in reality. It wasn’t a usual stop for the west side whites, unless they got lost or the husbands got horny. You’d be surprised at the number of hookers who bought Ho Hos, but they were the best at sharing those Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. They saw me there often enough that they were on to my scam and knew I was nothing but a stray working my thing.
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by Michael Dwayne Smith

Big Adventure

Good morning. We are everything. So glad you could join us for it all—the hawk like a stone dropping on a mouse, the lover like a leaf looking for a sun, the city like a skeleton clacking through a doorway, the newspaper soaking like a corpse in a sprinkler. The glossolalia of impossible colors. Good morning. You slept through it all. In your sleep, we built a ship from the sand in your eyes. We went sailing behind collapsing stars. Good night. It was a very big adventure. Wish you could have been a part of it all.

***

On Route 66

Rearing blue & pink neon stallion flickers from a filling station to a motel window—
whiskey’d young woman leaning into shadow
of a man against a closed door, second story room.

At 12, one day he found the rotting carcass of a raven in an alfalfa field he was crossing,
& lit a cigarette he’d stolen from his father, & burned out the mottled eyes, one at a time.

At 14, she slipped the house at midnight with a silver bottle of her father’s best tequila,
& met a man stalking gravel streets, & stole a friend’s Impala, then ditched it roadside.

If they had names for who they are in the crowded black, who knows if they’d use them?
They’re dull sensation, dirty faces, notorious curves & pushes in lost haunch weekends,
kicking up to buck a junk-riddled past, their deadly kisses feeding a frantic animal …

& the violence of ecstasy throws back their heads & fills their mouths,
& the gritty blue light falling on her skin in the decomposing wing-fold of sheets & how

out an open window, the scent of gasoline & weed glides like Pegasus on the August air—

by Stephen Jarrell Williams

You Killed Me

Those many years ago
on Black’s Beach,
heat glistening on your skin,
others watching,
wounding them,
your Aphrodite body
posing in the sand,
waves rushing up
to tickle your toes…

I was too young,
you were too used,
I knew better,
you knew men
taking me to a motel,
silhouettes dancing in the dark
on walls, ceiling, bed sheets
tying me up drunk,
leaving a bad taste
on every girl I try to please.

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artwork by Fabio Sassi

by Zehra Khan

“Just how available are you making yourself?”

Mishal’s mother addressed her daughter while gesturing at the gray-eyed fabric merchant to pull a chocolate and turquoise paisley Swiss lawn from the shelf behind him. The sales clerk watched as Mishal’s mother draped the cloth around Mishal’s slender hips, then returned to haggling with the other customers in his shop. Mishal rubbed the cloth in her hands; she would have rubbed it against her face, but her cheek was aglow with sweat that wouldn’t dry because of the humidity in the air. Could a baby be this smooth, its flesh this cool? she wondered. Her mother wanted her to have it stitched with half sleeves and a low back this summer.

“Do we have to talk about this now? He’s out with his friends most nights. I can’t stop him.”

Mishal and her mother left the shop. They darted between loose concrete bricks and rusty metal bars, and tripped over the generators outside the tailors’ shops that kept their sewing machines running during the city’s rolling power outages. Cars honked and rickshaws puttered when the two women stepped onto the street to avoid obstacles that might twist an ankle, though they knew the path well. The aroma of spices wafted in the air from the Bombay-style chaat houses, and a signboard on the side of the street read in Urdu, “Please refrain from urinating here.”

Mishal lifted her shawl above her head, shielding her fair face from the sun in the smog-filled sky, and entered her mother’s air conditioned BMW. They drove past a grimy cradle for babies nobody wanted in front of a charity center, to a lace and ribbon shop. Fans blew stiff air into their faces. Mishal found a lace to line her shawl, made of buttons that would skitter together as she walked.

“Doesn’t Sami want a baby? He’s already bought a cat to fill the void. And what about your mother-in-law? How will you win her love without giving her a grandchild?”

“She stopped hinting at it years ago. Now you’re the only one who says anything.”
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By Steve Prusky

From the two-lane desert highway it at first appeared a child’s cast-off tattered doll, an abused stuffed animal poorly sheathed in a frayed rag shroud and carelessly tossed aside. Swarming flies convinced him otherwise. He gazed in disbelief at the pup’s blank stare, wished dead eyes could speak, mourned a life denied, grieved for loyalty refused, failed to comprehend its former master’s mental state. He placed a flat stone marker above the shallow roadside grave he scratched out in the barren earth. What epitaph could he scribe? What prayer was apropos? He checked his voicemail, returned missed calls, drove home late, lamented Nature’s cold certainty, brief life, cruel fate.