Man Like That

Summer 2011 Prosetry Contest Winner

I have stories to tell, he says, his diamond eye sparkling in the bright sun. I can hardly believe I would get in a car with a man like that man. Blasting along, wind whipping hair, he’s saying words as fast as he can spit them out, I’m looking with some wonder at the flower growing out of his ear and the blue fire dancing on his tongue and thinking, you’re just crazy as a shit house rat aren’t you baby?  He takes both hands off the wheel and presses ten fingertips into his skull, screaming, My brain! My brain! That’s right baby, that’s right. It’s about 102 degrees and looking for more, dry lighting snaps in the air, a lizard atomizes on the hood, twang factor everywhere. He’s easing down on the brake now, gliding to a silky stop. He turns his dove eye to me and says very sweetly, have you eaten anything yet I haven’t eaten yet what shall I get what would you like what sounds good? I say, yes.

 

Sally Reno is a writer, producer and newscaster for Pacifica-KGNU Radio in Denver-Boulder and the CFO of Shining Mountains Press. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in print and online journals, including Fast Forward, Indigo, Lady Jane’s Miscellany, Used Furniture Review and flashparty.

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p style=”text-align: justify;”>Guest-edited by Molly Gaudry, author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart and founder of The Lit Pub. Read an excerpt of her novella, We Take Me Apart, in Moon Milk Review.

Issue No. 14 | Summer 2011


MMR ANTHOLOGY 2011 — Fiction, Poetry, Art

SUBSCRIBE for free online issues of MMR


GALLERY | B. J. Lloyd

COMEDY SPOTLIGHT | Funny or Die: Dear Woman Will Ferrell & Friends

SUMMER 2011 ECLECTIC GROOVE MIX | Featured Indie Rock | Red Directors

Sublime, Sheryl Crow, Sugar Ray

BOOK GALLERY | Cynthia Atkins, Kristina Marie Darling, Meg Tuite, Mel Bosworth, Michael Kimball, Paul Dickey, J. A. Tyler, John Minichillo

FICTION |

Lotería Lisa Marie Basile

Buy Nothing Day Mickey Hess

Emails from the Staybridge Suites Anaheim Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

Permanent Marjorie Maddox

Or Do You Love It? Meg Pokrass

Honey Melissa Ross

The Soul Shoppe Nathaniel Tower

POETRY |

Pork Salt Kay Cosgrove

Echolalia Leslee Rene Wright

PROSETRY |

Spring 2011 Winner | Prophecy as a Reducing Mathematical Certainty Carl James Grindley (Guest-Edited by Laura Ellen Scott)

Summer 2011 Contest | For Your Eyes Only (Guest-edited by Molly Gaudry)

Prophecy as a Reducing Mathematical Certainty

Spring 2011 Prosetry Winner

These are the tiny wanderings that core the heart in spectacular revelations and inspirations and allusions, and all of it getting up, standing up, leaping up and wanting more than anything to staunch the disjuncts and disparities between the things that our hands can hold and the things that want more than anything to tear our fingers out, strip the meat from our little bones and fashion the lot of it into stinking jewelry we cannot pawn no matter how hard we try — try telling that to Cassandra when she is lounging around the palace on her day off, amusing herself with cigarettes and game shows, crappy local soda and whole collections of underground comics that absolutely no one has ever read or will ever read. Cassandra can see forever in any direction, in every direction, in everyone, and to her, the whole sweep of it is so clear that even the rim of the past is no barrier, she can see the baroque twistings and all sorts of ridiculous blasphemies that keep on happening before time starts and keep on happening even though time started long ago. If it was any less bleak, she says, she would leave, get up off the couch, make some sort of excuse, and get on the nearest bus. The whole mess is a conversion high, a phone call that ends in someone getting arrested, that burns until the whole world is doomed. Cassandra can see it all, but the detail is so fine that it all becomes a blur.

Carl James Grindley is a transplanted Canadian who lives in New Haven, Connecticut. His last novel, Icon, was published by No Record Press in 2008.

Guest Editor for Spring 2011 Issue | Laura Ellen Scott | Laura Ellen Scott’s collection of 21 creepy stories is called Curio and is available free online and as an ebook from Uncanny Valley Press. Her novel, Death Wishing, a comic fantasy set in New Orleans, will be released in October 2011 by Ig Publishing.