PADDLE/ PEDDLE/ PIDDLE by Robert Vaughan

Tuck Your Head

     It took a really tall one to see it. The balls are always coming. It’s a benefit the neck is as flexible as a goose debating take-off. Down it goes, chin on chest. Woosh. Balls fly by, just inches above, they graze the premature bald from your head.

Duck at It

     They’re “at it” all right. They never stop. You say rabbits, I say nah. You say moisture. I say gay puffy cotton clouds. You say boxer briefs, I say pillbox hats, before Dad dated Joan Collins in that dream where Joan duked it out with Mom.

Gut it Out

     They would hang upside-down in our garage. Suspended from rafters. He tried to clean all the blood and gore away. But it seeped into the cracks like sewage. On carnival July days it stank. We had to skate outdoors or we’d gag.

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Robert Vaughan leads writing roundtables at Redoak Writing. His writing has appeared in hundreds of print and online journals. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His fiction “10,000 Dollar Pyramid” was a finalist in the Micro-Fiction Awards 2012. Also, “Ten Notes to the Guy Studying Jujitsu” was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award 2013. He is senior flash fiction editor at JMWW and Lost in Thought magazines. His first chapbook is Microtones (Cervena Barva Press), and just out his Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits (Deadly Chaps). His first full- length book, Addicts and Basements, is coming in February 2014 (Civil Coping Mechanisms).

WHAT IT MEANS TO EXODUS, OR "BRRRRAAAAWWW" by Shawn Misener

"I have consulted the Internet," the man remarks, squatting low, sorting through a mountain of tablets. He snags two and stands slowly, confidently, and I realize suddenly that he is Moses. Two iPads, cradled surely in each wrist, glow with lists.

"I have not read the Bible, but I know what it means to exodus," he pontificates.

"Exodus can't be a verb, right?" says the man next to me. He looks impossibly old, a fleshy statue made of thin wood. A totem pole.

Moses ignores him and continues. "The almighty Google, that which knows the answer before you finish the question, which knows millions of answers in fact. That which provides us with every possible answer to every possible question... which is billions upon billions of answers!"

My head is dissolving, filling with space.

Moses increases his volume. "And you know what an infinite, uncountable number of answers equals?"

"Not a fucking thing," whispers the old wooden man, conspiratorially.

"Not a fucking thing!" Moses whoops, pretending that he said it first.

I can feel the space in my brain, fueled by subtle electricity. Lots of different electricities, mingling at every potential level. The dream is suddenly more real than real.

Moses fixes his eyes upon me, and prods his finger into my chest, except he's standing ten feet away, separated by a few motionless people. "You," he says. "You know what it means to exodus, don't you? You're already gone, eh? More absent than present?"

I try to speak, but my lips seem to be encased in a thick dough. "Brrrraaaawww," I say.

"BRRRRAAAAWWW!" Moses mimics, laughing and slapping his knee, and he starts swearing incredulously. Yet the air is suddenly bbbbrrrraaawwwing of its own accord. I join, but I'm not laughing. No, I think I'm gonna drown.

The senses make their exodus. The words on the tablet are nonsense, commanding nothing. All religion is silly.

Brrrraaaawww.

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Shawn Misener lives in Michigan and writes a lot.

SHAME (AN EMAIL SENT BY A FRIEND) by Michael Hemmingson

each hour is a room of shame and I am

swimming, swimming, holding my head up…

- Sharon Olds, “Known to Be Left”

I saved a woman from drowning at the hotel pool in Portland. It was a curious event. A lot of people were swimming, playing, hanging out and no one else seemed to notice the woman except her young daughter who was wading nearby, looking terrified. No splashing, vertical, unable to keep her mouth above the waterline. I jumped in and managed to eventually get us both to the pool’s edge like we were Cambodians fleeing the Khmer Rouge killing fields. She looked at my eyes and made a small noise like a hamster in a door jam. The woman spoke no English. She nodded thanks and held to the wall a few more minutes while I watched her with chlorine concern. Nobody there took any notice. The woman swam very slowly and with considerable difficulty back to the shallow end. I drifted along behind her like a tugboat to make sure she arrived safely (considering she could barely swim). Once able to stand in the water, she rejoined her husband at the shallow end and avoided looking in my direction until she left with her family an hour later. A simple glance of embarrassed grace.

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Michael Hemmingson's blog is http://mhemmingson.wordpress.com.