It’s round two of the ABC Showcase, and we’ve got some great writing for you to check out. First off, Antonios Maltezos gives John Colvin’s “The Candy Tree,” published by FRiGG, its second mention in the showcase. How cool is that? Two nominations! So if you still haven’t read it, head on over now and discover for yourself what has so many writers thrilled with this story. Next up, Beth Thomas introduces us to a cool journal out of Australia called Going Down Swinging, and a fun story with yet more drinking. Roger Morris’ and Ellen Parker’s selections are full of madness, absurdity, genius, or whatever you want to call it. And as for me, I appear to be the only one on the tame end, coming in with a sweet story about a nerdy, but apparently, beautiful, science boy. Enjoy!

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Antonios Maltezos




“The Candy Tree” by John Colvin
published by FRiGG

Glad I couldn’t stay away from FRiGG. That’s where I found John Colvin’s “The Candy Tree,” though I could have easily looked through the Showcase archives. Doh!

This is how Tom, the story’s character, excuses his stealing of a tin of chew tobacco:

“The lady in front of me caused the whole thing. Maybe I never would have picked up the Copenhagen or gotten the notion to steal it if I hadn’t been waiting so long for her to finish up her business. She was one of those people who take forever. They pay for their gas with a credit card, then decide they want to buy a lottery ticket, and some scratch-offs too. Then they decide to chat up the store clerk, talk about what they’ll do with the lottery money if they win, etc. It just goes on and on. She was an old lady, probably lonely and depressed, seeking some human contact, but at the time I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I was just annoyed. I don’t know why: it’s not like I had to get someplace in a hurry.”

From what I know of drunks, they lie to themselves first, thinking they’re getting by just fine because they didn’t fall over, or piss themselves on the bus ride home. They grip the backs of chairs as they cross a room, as they schmooze. They’re the touchy-feely ones at the social gatherings. They’ve always got a hand on someone’s shoulder, or they’re grabbing a forearm, or clapping a back, forever steadying their movements, though they hardly know they’re doing it. And they’re fooling no one but themselves. It’s how the disease survives — the host loses touch with reality. We get this sense with Tom through the unassuming language John Colvin gives this story. Tom tells it as if he isn’t the guy who’s gotten behind the wheel of a car “toasted” drunk, many times. Tom tells it like he’s describing the Big Mart loot scattered about his apartment, things he’s only remotely connected to, each item yet another sunrise, one more day in the bag.

“I took whatever small things I happened to have the opportunity to steal, whether I had any use for them or not. I stole DVD’s, computer games, small toys, pacifiers, safety pins, paper clips, scotch tape, envelopes, beef jerky, moisturizing lotion, aftershave, toothpaste, salt shakers, Vienna sausages, egg timers, candles, needles, thread, jeans, long underwear, wallets, ketchup, soup, ramen noodles, matches, incense sticks.”

Damn if that junk doesn’t betray him in the end. I know I should dislike Tom, see him as a menace to society and the people who may love him. But I can’t? I’m sad for him, especially as he pops in on John’s blurb at the end of the piece. For me, it’s like seeing a ghost, one who doesn’t know he’s already dead. I’ll be haunted by “The Candy Tree” for some time.

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Beth Thomas

Beth Thomas is originally from the high plains of eastern New Mexico. She currently makes her living as a technical writer in California, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Beth’s work has appeared in Juked, Word Riot, UR Paranormal, Insolent Rudder, Cezanne’s Carrot, and other journals. She is currently the writer in residence at SmokeLong Quarterly, after winning the Kathy Fish Fellowship Award for 2007.

“Futon World” by Tim Richards
published by Going Down Swinging

Out of the many “G” journals and magazines that publish flash, I chose Going Down Swinging because 1) I wasn’t familiar with it, and 2) it seems way cool. This magazine is out of Australia, and they have been publishing their book/CD packages since 1980. They publish fiction, poetry, comics, and spoken word (hence the CD). They don’t post all of their content on their website, but they do have selected stories, poems, etc. available to download (free) from each issue. (FYI, the submission deadline for issue #26 is July 31, 2007.)

The stuff you do, you’ll always do, says the narrator of Tim Richards’s story “Futon World.” (Personally, I bite my nails and procrastinate. Always have, always will.) What does the narrator do that he’ll always do? He drinks a lot, tells stories, and walks at night. “Futon World” is about this guy and his memories of drunken night walking with different people in different places and times, and some of the things he learned then.

Like the girl whose name he can’t recall, and the time they spent with their faces pressed to the glass at Futon World.

A planet where the lifeforms were futons, and all the happier for it…. I should have kissed her. I should have remembered her name, if only to add her name to the list of Girls I Should Have Kissed.

It’s a lot like having someone drunk tell you a story, but without the “I love you, man!” at the end. There are moments of simple truth, and then moments of something else… that rambling, grasping, edge-of-reason manner so popular with the drunken and properly stoned.

And it gets so you can’t always tell truth from fantasy, and that’s the very best part of walking drunk through the night.

It’s always always, and we’re always walking around Circular Quay, and it’s always night, and we’re singing and farting around like drunk young fuckheads do, and she’s telling me about this dream she keeps having. It’s always the same dream. An alien’s strapped to a dentist chair, and the dentist is asking him over and over, When did the universe begin?

And then there’s Bob Dylan’s birthday, the deep dark forest, the rain, and being alive before you die.

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Roger Morris


Roger Morris is the author of the contemporary urban novel Taking Comfort (Macmillan, 2006.) As R.N. Morris, he wrote a historical crime novel called The Gentle Axe (The Penguin Press, 2007), featuring Porfiry Petrovich from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Roger lives in North London with his wife and children. Visit his plog.

“Helmet Shell” by Julia Lasalle
published by The Hiss Quarterly

Absurd, true, urgent, intense. That’s how it struck me, anyhow. There’s an unforced dreamlike quality to it. The central metaphor – women on trikes racing around an indoor stadium with live molluscs (or mollusks) in their mouths – just leaves me gaping. Genius.

“I’m riding a tricycle around an indoor track and I have a mollusk in my mouth. My husband is leaning over the rails about 15 yards away, yelling and gesturing and urging me on. His face looks mad. Inside my mouth the mollusk squirms.

“Whoever does the most laps while keeping the mollusk alive,” says the announcer, “wins.” When I pass my husband I don’t look to the side. I keep my head straight ahead, looking over the plastic handle bars.

“The mollusk must be alive to win.” That’s what the announcer says. He has said it again and again in a million different ways during the last few hours. As if we don’t all know the rules right now. We all know the rules. The mollusk has to be alive to win. No shit. I’ve been holding mine in my mouth for hours.

The whole event is reaching a frenzy. Women are dropping out of the contest left and right, crashing on their tricycles, swallowing their snails and it’s become clear to me, that I have a chance.”

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Me

Click Bio for more info

“Inertia” by Susan Woodring
published by isotope: a journal of literary nature and science writing

Continuing on in my quest to find journals and writers unknown to me, I stumbled across isotope: a journal of literary nature and science writing. I’ve never been big on this type of writing, but I wanted to give it a try, so I dove in, and I actually enjoyed myself. The editors launched a new issue on Wednesday (?), but “Inertia” by Susan Woodring is still my favorite piece from a more recent issue. It’s sweet and hopeful, and the kid, Duncan, is totally endearing. Who knew I’d fall for the geeky science type?

“Inertia,” he said. “It’s my favorite force of nature.”

I popped-popped-popped my beads and blew a bubble that stretched thin, broke, and stuck to my hair.

“Mine’s gravity,” I said and collapsed onto the floor. Duncan looked down at me and then away as I lay there, scraping gum off my cheeks. “I love gravity,” I told him, giggling to myself, but he wasn’t listening to me; instead he examined a framed photograph of Chestnut Mountain my mother had taken years before. My grandmother had just started living with us when the picture was taken. She and my mother took turns with the camera, taking shots of the mountains, the river, the doe that stepped out of the woods to drink from the stream, then disappeared back into the woods. Duncan looked deep into the picture and squinted at the far-off, tree-covered peaks.

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Ellen Parker

Ellen Parker edits FRiGG.

“And the Shoes on the Cables Are There for the Angels” by Mike Young
published in Juked

In Juked there’s this piece by Mike Young with a crazy title I don’t get, but I gave it a try. The story–it’s fiction, right?–is great, with many turns and hops and surprises, like…like, say…a fun park…(!) It’s a black-coffee’d guy talking to you fast and a lot of what he says is fascinating, but you don’t understand all of it. Perhaps most. I like the way he mixes up POVs, which you’re not supposed to do, but he does it, and it works. Sometimes he’s “you” and sometimes he’s “I.” Sometimes we’re “you.” Me, I’m just hanging on for the ride.

He mentions a “mystery shack.” What the heck is a mystery shack? I love the sound of it. I Googled it and I did learn about mystery shacks (also called “mystery spots”), but I still don’t really understand what they are. Also, “silver belly hats.” What? Whose belly? It has to do with the hats’ color, I learned, although they’re not really silver.

Some writers, in some stories, you’ll just lean in and listen to every little thing they say.

What I did get was Jerry Friedstat’s daughter was snatched. And Jerry got “weird as fuck” for the next year. I did get that. And then everyone was always checking the paper for her bones.

Is she Missy? And is she one of the angels the shoes are on the cables for?

I guess all of it breaks my heart a little.

Check this out:

And you leave and the light looks staged like somebody’s playing it. Like there’s somebody with a motherfucking cello or something. Like you could take off your shoes and take off your socks and scrape your toes on the porches and get a bunch of splinters, but you would hear the wood moan back a mess of juicy shit.

Marry me. I’ll be “you” for you, or I’ll be “I.” I just want to hear a mess of juicy shit.

They should look for Missy’s bones in the mystery shack. The bones are in plain sight there, but they’ll never see them.


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