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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission Guidelines
Website

Stories & Essays
Balance
_ By Alison Baumy
Contemporary Cultural Differences...
_ By Ninni Siurua
Eclipsed Yesterdays
_ By Clyde Windjammer
Healthy Guy
_ By David J. LeMaster
Immortalis Letum
_ By Sophie Davis
Last Call For Salvation
_ By Angela P. Markham
My Fault
_ By Ro Thorton
Pacific Northwest
_ By Aaron Hellem
Q-Q Ca Choo
_ By Billy Pilgrim
The Best Laid Plans
_ By John A. Ward
The Ecstasy of Cooking
_ By Sam Nolting
The Girl With the Green Umbrella
_ By J.R. Earlebeck
The Gods of Houston
_ By Rebekah Frumkin

Poetry
Athena's Owl
_ By Amberly Mason
But I Have Never Known This
_ By Kaleen Love
Clouds On Your Floor
_ By Savannah Bobo
Crowded Lobby
_ By M. Blair Spiva
Ever After
_ By Bennie Johnson
Important Questions
_ By P.T. Bell
Migration
_ By Sarah Wassberg
Moon Goddess
_ By Kristina Diane Smith
Oldest Profession
_ By Ashley Polker
On Visiting Hay-on-Wye
_ By M. Blair Spiva
Sodom and Gomorrah
_ By Jessica Fannin
Wal-Mart
_ By P.T. Bell

Art & Photography
Jeremy Harker
_ Paintings
Douglas C. Knight
_ Photography
Jed Knox
_ Paintings and Drawings
May Ann Licudine
_ Paintings
Danny Malboeuf
_ Paintings
Alex Stanbury
_ Photography

(Continued)

"Conrad, if you don't want the drink, you don't have to take the drink," Mick says. He sounds a little annoyed. "I only poured it 'cause you asked. Either way, you're still takin' a cab home."

I stub my cigarette out in the astray and light another one. There's only two left in the pack. Damn. I got this pack out of my car and I think I remember being pissed off because it was the last pack in the car. I don't think I have any at home, either. I guess that means I'm hitting a gas station for another carton before I go home. I'm not going all night without a cigarette.

I slide my keys across the bar. Mick pockets them before he lets go of my drink. He watches me. I think he's waiting on me to dive for the shot as though it's oxygen. I don't. I keep smoking. Maybe I'm trying to prove a point. I don't need the drink. My body doesn't crave the alcohol to continue functioning. I would simply like to have one last round before I leave for the night. No, I don't think I'm proving a point; I've never been that ambitious. I'm just enjoying my cigarette too much. I don't want to ruin the moment by clanging down a shot of whiskey.

"You want me to empty that?" Mick asks, pointing to the ashtray. I don't want him to empty the ashtray. I want him to get out of my face. I'm not the only guy in the bar and there are a few other people wanting drinks. Speaking of drinks, if you think my drinking's a problem, you ain't heard nothing yet. Let me tell you about my smoking. I've noticed that smoking has become worse than drinking in the public eye. Anyone can be a closet alcoholic, which I consider myself to be. But smoking is a public habit, no matter how well you try to hide it. And as soon as someone sees you light up, you're an open target. Whether you know the person chewing you out or not is completely irrelevant. They're always ready to assault you with their statistics. I hate statistics. There are too many of them, and when you get too many statistics, they amount to absolutely nothing. Sure, they're impressive the first time you hear them, but after the next three hundred, you lose interest. They're always the same stupid statistics, too:

Cigarettes cause cancer. Really. Doesn't it say that right on the pack?

Every cigarette takes seven minutes off your life. Good. I don't want to live to be eighty, impotent, incontinent, unable to remember my own name and unable to eat anything but creamed corn and applesauce.

Do you know how much money you could save every year just by giving up cigarettes? Great. With that much spare money, I can finally take up that crack habit.

Your lungs are collapsing. Your heart is going to explode. Well, at least you'll have one more statistic to harp about.

I smoke because I like to smoke. I love to smoke. I smoke a lot. I've smoked two packs since I came in this bar and that was about four hours ago. I'd smoke a carton a day if I could afford it. Right now, I'm up to somewhere around three or four packs a day, depending on my mood. I have absolutely no desire to quit, not even an inkling of guilt that I'm killing myself seven minutes at a time. I am never going to stop smoking. Ever. I love opening a fresh pack of cigarettes. I love tapping one out of the pack and rolling it between my fingers as I contemplate the three-minute bliss I'm preparing to enter. I love lighting up, feeling the rush of that first nicotine jolt as I inhale. Nicotine, for me, is ambrosia. I love the way the tip of a cigarette glows as you inhale and the way the smoke rings form around your head as you exhale. I even love that little trail of smoke that continues to rise from the cigarette after you stub it out—very symbolic, that little stream of smoke, the final smoldering remains of something great. Whiskey is a past time. Smoking is my existence.

None of which actually comes close to providing Mick with an answer.

"No," I reply. "I'll just fill it back up anyway." I flick some more ashes into the overflowing ashtray. Most of them roll down the pile of butts and ashes and onto the bar. Mick doesn't mind; he's already placed a napkin under the tray to prevent the inevitable spillage. I drag on the cigarette. I still haven't touched the drink. Maybe I am proving a point.

Mick runs the worst bar in town. Hell, he probably runs the worst bar in the state. It's dark, it's dirty, there's enough smoke to kill someone—most of that is my fault. Every evening, I drive by seven classier joints to get to this run-down piece of crap excuse for a bar. But I've been coming here for a long time, ever since I started sneaking into bars when I was eighteen. You don't try to sneak into classy joints, they'll throw you out on your ass and then call your parents and probably the cops. You sneak into the run-down, dirty places where nobody cares as long as you're able to pay your tab. Mick didn't care as long as I paid my tab. He still doesn't.

This place is still as popular with the under-twenty crowd as it was back when I was a kid. The sad part is, a lot of the people I see in the bar on a regular basis are the same people I saw in the bar on a regular basis twenty years ago. I could frequent the classier establishments if I wanted to, but loyalty has to count for something. I don't have a family to be loyal to, I'd stab my boss in the back if you handed me a sharp enough knife, and I don't think I have any friends that I like enough to inspire loyalty. Everybody has to be loyal to somebody, so I'm loyal to my bartender.

"Hey Mick, gimme one more."

I look over at the punk kid sitting next to me at the bar. He ordered the drink, not me. I've still got my last drink left. The kid, he's got a punk kid voice, the kind that's all false bravado, or do those words cancel each other out? Anyway, he's cocky and it's an act. Of course, you need to be cocky when you've got eight holes in each ear, going all the way from the top to the bottom. He's got studs, spikes, and little dangly things in all those holes. There's a silver bone going though his nose, like he's some kind of African tribesman. He's got three rings in the corner of his upper lip and a steel stud the size of a pinball shot though the tip of his tongue. There's three more studs shot through each eyebrow. His hair, which is sticking out in sharp spikes like a medieval mace, is electric green and hot pink. It's organized too: one spike is green, one is pink, another is green, and another is pink. He's wearing leather, the shiny, reflective kind. There's a spiked dog collar around his neck and a few bicycle chains hanging from his pockets.

He looks about fifteen, but I guess he's around eighteen, nineteen, tops. I'm surprised the two rednecks by the door didn't beat the crap out of him the second he walked in. They've been thinking about it. I've been watching them watching him and they're not happy. What's that saying, we don't take kindly to your kind around here? Clichéd, but true. They don't even really like me—your typical lower-middle class quasi-yuppie working stiff type. But I'm a regular. I've been drinking here for twenty years, legally for seventeen. The rednecks leave me alone, not because I could take them—it'd take one of them three seconds to snap my spine—but because I can drink any one of them under the table. That's how the pecking order is established in seedy bars like this one. You could be Hercules, but if you can't hold your liquor in here, you're gonna get your ass kicked.

(Turn the page)