Fiction
3| 2012-2013: Esels-Ohr | DOG-EAR | A-Minor | Microscenes | Olentangy Review | Metazen (ebook, mag) | Connotation Press | In Those Days We | Flash Frontier | Hobo Camp Review | Blue Fifth Review | Bluestem | Santa Fe Literary Review | Thrice | Press 1 | Truck | THIS | Zouch Magazine | Tulpendiebe | Sadcore Dadwave | Mad Hatters Review | Tuck Magazine | Yareah Magazine One / Two | The Rusty Nail | 7 x 20 | the view from here | Blue Fifth Review | fwriction : review | ILK Journal | Baker’s Dozen | Letras Caseras | Dogzplot | PANK | Mad Hatters Review Blog | Reprint Poetry | A-Minor | decomP magazine | TrainWrite | Fatboy Review || 2011 | 2009—2010 |
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Never been published in German before—except once in >kill author a while back, and now it happened again in the German off-shoot of Dog Ear Magazine, Esels-Ohr, with “Mein Erscheinen in Providence“. The English version of this story was published last year in Airplane Reading. Excerpt:[#146]
Plötzlich erinnere ich mich an die USA-Reise 1980: keine Mobiltelefone; die abgeschlossene Drehscheibe des Bakelit-Fernsprechers neben dem Motel-Bett. Die Farben der 70er Jahre überall, Vorvergangenheit war gerade mal Gestern.
I like new shiny things: DOG-EAR is new. They kindly published my flash “MOONING“, a thinly (i.e. not at all) veiled story from my youth including the (no more) secret why I love tales. Excerpt:[#145]
It’s fun to reminisce. It doesn’t hurt anyone to go back in time, perambulate the past, cull clover leaves.
I’d like you to be happy like I am. “ONE WEEK ON THE HAPPY ISLES” is at A-Minor Magazine — with a bow to editors Kenny Mooney & Nicolette Wong. Excerpt: [#142]
Water and wine flow freely here. Nymphs coil themselves around the muscular arms and legs of men; fauns meander, their faces friendly grimacing masks. They put their hairy hands that move swiftly like small serpents on the buttocks and boobs of women.
“The Great Purging“, a fantasy of decay, appeared in Microscenes. For issue 2, the theme was “The Family Home”. Reviewed by Beach Sloth. Excerpt:[#141]
One day the sewers in all the cities will cease to work. Then the people will pour into the streets and they will look at each other with wide open eyes, which reflect two questions: «Who is responsible for this cock-up?» And: «What shall we do now?»
“Tinpot Love” is published in the new/old Olentangy Review. The story itself comes with a drawing by my daughter Taffimai Metallumai. Excerpt:[#140]
Under the tree of the one apple, the Tin Man waited for his Tin Woman. He wanted to ask her to become his Tin Wife. But there were a few things that he didn’t know and they worried him and put him in a metallic mood: what was love?
My story “Mr Thumb”/”Herr Häwelmann” (transl. Carlye Birkenkrahe) is in the Metazen Christmas Ebook (with audio in German & English). Excerpt:[#140]
«Tom Thumb is a real man now, but he’s still small. He has that in common with all the other literary characters. Not that he’s small, but that he grew up. Ishmael for example: now he has a stomach so big and round that there’s room for a small whale in there.»
“The Blue Rider” appeared at Metazen. This flash story doesn’t pack a lot of Christmas spirit, but on December 21, 2012 perhaps this is just what we all need…Excerpt:[#139]
«I hacked into this man’s head. He was white as a church candlestick. I shoved my purple power source into his eardrums and played solo with his band of graybeard sorry-ass views, which went all in the same direction: all he cared about was attention….»
Three sombre micros from Germany’s crafty gnomes: SEAGULL, AMOUR FOU and BOGEY — in the new issue of Connotation Press, an Online Artefact. Says editor Meg Tuite:[#136-138]
Marcus Speh submerges us in the empty promises and lies in a failed relationship and yet still the hope for a new one to arise in his three micro-flash, “Seagull,” “Amour Fou,” and “Bogey.”
“In Those Days We” ed. by Jennifer Tomaloff (2012) contains my Sci-Fi stories “Friends” and “Rokovoko”. The online book is available at Issuu. Paperback version at Amazon. Excerpt:
«Tara, I look at us in that photo, taken so many years ago, I look at you sandwiched between Tom and me, with our left arms in casts, so ridiculous, it makes me think of music that is ridiculous also, music by Charles Ives with two bands playing against one another, or two melodies backpacking a third, or an instrument entering a dialog of two other instruments like a dangerous stranger. »
«October: FLIGHT», the 1st international edition of New Zealand’s online mag “Flash Frontier” includes my flash “The Butterfly Collector“, one of the dreamier pieces from my mosaic novel “Gizella” forthcoming from Folded Word. Excerpt: [#133]
«We lived on a dahlia once. Then, a fresh breath of creation still lay upon the land. We were happy people, flower folk, and we didn’t mind that success came in all sizes, small and large, because failure did, too.»
“Family“, the story of my vampire brother, is my contribution to the Halloween frenzy unfolding at present at the stylish Hobo Camp Review (issue 15). Excerpt: [#132]
«November is a lazy month. It’s also the month when I recover from my brother’s visit which invariably takes place on Halloween. I might just as well get it out of the way now: my brother isn’t any man. He’s a vampire and (if he can be trusted) he is an important vampire wherever it is that vampires can be important, since obviously they don’t live among us. Except on Halloween.»
“the blue collection 2: music” from blue fifth review contains my flash “Symphony”, the story of Tara and her music teacher. This is a beautiful issue with many writers, artists and poets. Excerpt: [#131]
«If the new music teacher Mr. Eisenberg would have had one hair less on his head he would have looked like a termite king…»
“Demons“, now published at Bluestem Magazine (with audio), describes the (fictitious) visit of the former German tycoon Fritz Thyssen in the cell of Hermann Göring (shown on the right in a characteristic pose) in Nuremberg, one day before Göring was going to be hanged. Excerpt: [#130]
«Göring drops his heavy hands into his lap. He bows his head and from above Thyssen can see how deep the bags are under his eye. Göring’s cheeks, once so filled with borrowed joy, are now folded against his skull bones like the leathery skin of a tired old bat.»
My “The Serious Writer” series keeps reappearing: perhaps you can’t keep a serious writer down? One of my favorite stories of the series is “The Serious Writer Occupies Wall Street”. Originally written for OccupyWriters, this flash has now found its way into the beautiful 2012 issue of the Santa Fe Literary Review, available both in print, as PDF and in digital magazine format. Excerpt: [#129]
«When thinking of the commotion surrounding Wall Street, the serious writer gets very upset. But he is distracted by his personal life: a letter reminds him to pay his taxes, which makes him want to go back to sleep every time.»
Thrice Fiction Magazine is one of the finest literary productions out there: art, fiction, poetry and experimental vision all come together. My piece “Android Clippings” is a collection of newspaper clippings for machine-men. Excerpt:[#128]
«Who needs your writing? I tell you who does: you. That’s the beginning and the end of it all. If you don’t need your own work more than anybody, there’ll be no voice coming up from the void, no angel descending from up high, who asks you nicely. No demons will fly around your head pestering you to please believe in the value of your words.»
«Electric Eyes», «Morphic» and «Escape» were published in Press 1 alongside artwork by Anthony Amato Jr., which lends an archaic, fierce feel to the July 2012 issue. This seems strangely well matched with my flash pieces, which are all located at the absurd spectrum of my work. Excerpt (from Electric Eyes): [#125-127]
“Missed the bus today. Hung out at the stop for a bit, then drifted into thoughts of alien spaceships fighting over the last women on the planet. I wondered if all things were what they seemed to be.“
Photo: Jürgen Fauth
Truck, the poetry e-zine that professes to be self-propelled by dark poetic oil, has now published my poem “Secret Brush Strokes”, which was inspired largely by medieval imagery. Excerpt: [#124]
Jungle beans. Arctic badgers. Green steaks. Following clouds. Tarnished vagabonds. Ludicrous fingers. Fantastic booleans.
“Mother’s Day” was written as a story of hope that I always felt motherhood (and fatherhood) need and deserve. THIS literary magazine published it in their May/June issue. Excerpt: [#123]
«After twenty years of marriage K. had given H. everything except children. It was too late for that. Everybody said so, especially the doctors, who were the experts on childbearing. H. had been 67 when he met K., who was 37 then. Biology had spoken.»
My short story, “Speaking of Women“, is at Zouch Magazine. The quote by Proust at the start of the piece prompted this story about the relationship of men and women, Excerpt: [#122]
«Just to take time out to create another woman seems difficult these days. The demands on a designer of females are horrendous: suddenly everyone wants them made to special order – no more “I am so happy that I have one at all!” The standard C cup sized brunette with enough cleavage to put your stubbly, worry-rutted face between soft hills and still feel contained enough but not smothered…how much thought and design went into that simple notion!»
“The Berlin Party Is Over, 1961“, posted at Jürgen Fauth’s Tumblr mash-up site “Tulpendiebe” is also the title of a photo by Herbert Tobias, and comes with a German translation: [#121]
«This morning, I walked across the square that had once been in the No Man’s land separating the sectors of Berlin when I noticed an old man by the side of the road who pointed upward and said, “This is where they show the best movies.” I followed his finger and saw that he was pointing at the blue, empty sky: nothing was happening there; everything was happening there.»
The new alt/litmag SADCORE DADWAVE unites daddies and mommies. My prose poem “A Young Writer’s Prayer For His Daddy” is in there, accompanied by this drawing of her grandfather as a young man, by my daughter. Excerpt: [#120]
«when I’m ill I feel your hand on my forehead, a blue veined cool palm leaf spreading calm; wordlessly I hunt in your wake with the holy harpoon that I sharpened for so many years under your tutelage»
MHR 13 is a wonderful tribute issue worthy of Carol Novack’s quirky genius. She’d have been over the moon about it. Perhaps that’s where she is right now looking down at us, who knows. (She’d not have appreciated that sentimental notion of an afterlife, but she’s not here to tell me off, alas.) I have three excerpts from my upcoming collection with audio versions in there, “Ginger”, “Listen” and “The Passage”—wildly different pieces from my upcoming collection. [#116-118]
How serious can you get? I wrote “The Serious Writer in Texas” during a Corpus Christi vacation. It seems still fresh to me, especially when I think of Texas heat and Texas roads. Published now in the May issue of Tuck Magazine. Excerpt: [#115]
«He wonders if the billboard yelling “drink – drive – go to jail” is an incitement for a young Kerouac. The roads are broken bones of baked Earth and oil. Every time the writer’s car heads for a hole he tenses up but he forgets that this isn’t just a vehicle, it’s a way of life on wagon wheels.»
As a virtually Spanish venue, Yareah Magazine mixes art, literature and opinion in a strong, quixotic cocktail. My story “Meeting Marie Calloway Without Adrien Brody“, dedicated to a young writer of recent Internet-fame, is a genre-bending piece that may send your mind into a spin. So be it! Comes with two paintings by me. Excerpt: [#113]
«The first alien came as a rose out of the rocky ground. It grew on a mountain slope, shadowed by a lonely olive tree. It grew in three days from a seed that had drifted there on a high, forgiving wind after the crash and burn of the starship.»
Yareah Magazine is a lushly imagined, fantabolistic webzine with Spanish blood that has published my enthusiastic rant “Spring Things To Do” surrounded by Botticelli (issue 24). What could be more beautiful? Excerpt: [#112]
«This spring I will forsake all donations in the form of soft compliments. Those that I have received already I will convert into hard currency. I will be my own arrow and my own target. I will practice putting my inner princess to work. There will be frogs available for lower prices than ever in the history of fairy tales.»
Photo credit: Oleuanna (prompted and titled “Le Sucre Brun”, one of the five nightmares) “Five Nightmares” are just that: bad things happening in a world beyond this world. Now published at The Rusty Nail, issue #4. Excerpt: [#111]
«When they took her hair, she smiled and looked down. When they took her clothes, she smiled, looked away. When they took her necklace, a simple chain with a heart-shaped ruby, round like a kind thought, she smiled a strained smile, held onto it with long fingers used to pen and paper, said: Do you really need this? It’s my mother’s. They took it anyway.»
“7 x 20″ is an online magazine that only publishes via Twitter. My contribution is part of “Secret Brush Strokes“, a poem written by me in 2011. [#110] 
The View From Here promises “the weird, unusual, thought provoking and occasionally bizarre”, and I believe I could deliver just that with my new story “THANK YOUR FOR YOUR SPERM“. Excerpt: [#109]
«After eons of running the world more or less responsibly, the olympic gods have tired of their fates. They seek change. Mars, god of war, has dropped his shield and sword. He’s fully surrendered to his libido and embarks on a 1000 day fornic-a-thon.»
I’m back at Blue Fifth Review in their Winter Quarterly “Ekphrastic / Literature” with “Book Breath“, another shard from my mosaic novel “Gizella” (forthcoming from Folded Word) based on the life of Gisela of Hungary around 1000 A.D. Excerpt: [#108]
«If you let me take three things to heaven, this is what I will choose: my eyes, for they have seen beauty; my left hand, which can bring a drawing to life; and the pillow in which I’ve cried my dreams of so many years.»
Return of the fallen…I’m the first author to come back to that sweet fountain of fiction called fwriction:review, tastefully & superbly edited by Danny Goodman, with the flash “CANDY“—excerpt: [#107]
«The fire-man cometh, the children cried and began to dance as their parents had danced and the parents of their parents before them. He’s coming, he’s coming, hizzah huzzah, they sang cheerfully.»
Wrote on found objects only during our Texas vacation.
Two stories in the fabulous 2nd issue of ILK Journal: “SELECTED WORKS OF A HERMIT CRAB WRITTEN ON SHELLS, STONES AND SCALES” came from the bottom of the sea. I found it on a Texan beach. “ANSWER ME”, on the other hand, is part of the novel “Gizella” (forthcoming from Folded Word). Excerpt: [#105-106]
«I’m like the sun: there’s only one of me. I’m like the last beat of your heart: no sound escapes my hollow. Do not publish what you don’t understand: copies do not cement truth, they bury it. If you believe in stony men they’ll skewer your smile. Stick to soft surfaces: your skin is never the same surprise.»
Baker’s Dozen’s first issue explodes with art, poetry and prose—13 extraordinary contributions. I’m glad that “Winter Garden” is part of their first cake-miracle. With issue one, eds. Michelle Elvy and John Wentworth Chapin follow up on their amazing project “52|250—A Year Of Flash”. Excerpt: [#104]
«Headlines for the death of a garden in fall. The subterranean voices of spiders. The tragic musical of the year’s last butterfly dance. Married toads who pretend to be pretty frogs, because frogs have the fancier love life.»
“Happy Feet” came out of my deeply felt love for penguins. Another one one at Roberto C Garcia’s new venue “Letras Caseras”, packed with political poetry and prose. Excerpt: [#103]
«The other day, a penguin showed up at St Paul’s tent settlement wearing a sign around his neck that said: “Occupy Antarctica”. We gathered round him: he was the first of his kind to join them. When passers-by congratulated him on his commitment to the cause, the penguin asked for some fish first.»
Photo: State Library of New South Wales.
Little red riding hood is strong symbolic stuff. I’m using her in “Sniper“, published at Dogzplot, a piece originally written for this photo by Catherine Davis. Excerpt: [#102]
«I sat on top of a Sycamore tree, comfy, and looked around, aimed here and there without any real passion for aiming until a girl appeared. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood without the hood.»
It’s not often that my own writing gives me the chills: “The Sodomized Dictator” still does. I wrote it after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi in the 2011 uprising in Libya. Now published in PANK magazine with an interview. Excerpt: [#101]
«In the night after the killing, Ali washes himself in a bowl. His wife comes close and takes his hands, slowly stroking them with hers.»
There is a virtual funeral service for my dear friend Carol Novack (1948-2011) at MHR blog, organized by Marc Vincenz. My flash “For Carol Novack” is up there together with a string of other tributes that are testimony to Carol’s singularity. Please pay your respects to this wonderful writer. Excerpt: [#100]
«In the cities, the people don’t age, they become stones instead. They don’t turn into any old stones, but into stones that sit on top of other stones transcending everything that man is capable of building.»
Photo: Carol Novack 1974, by T. Bennett (via John Jenkins’ tribute).
It’s night in Paris & people have unwholesome encounters — the poetic resurrectionists of Reprint Poetry liked and published “A Classy Whore” (and they also came up with the new title). This is the right story for a classy mag with shades of Victorian times or late afternoons on the cemetery of Pere Lachaise looking at the graves of dead poets. Enjoy. Excerpt: [#99]
«A classy whore who heaved herself onto the street despite a cold that made her feel shaky, suddenly saw that she didn’t care about being classy after all anymore.»
“Eternitude“, published at the fabulous, stylish A-Minor magazine (ed. Nicolette Wong) is my daughter’s favorite tale of all my tales. It comes with a drawing that I made for the story. Excerpt: [#98]
«We travel through spring, slaying mythical beasts. We keep a dwarf, who chews a precious stone for us.»
“From Russia With Love” at decomP magazine is based on a true story related to me by one of my mysterious Russian friends. This piece comes with a carefully accentuated audio recording. Excerpt: [#97]
«Two heads and founders of two companies jumped out of windows to their deaths in the presence of their families. The autopsy showed that they both had a synthetic amphetamine in their blood which is known to induce instant suicidal feelings.»
TrainWrite published “Lefthand View“, my small glimpse at another world that you only see shortly because you ride by on a fast train…—excerpt: [#96]
«The city grew around the small brick house like an oyster around a dark pearl of uncertain nature. Inside the house, the two old people moved little as if saving themselves for a long journey.»
My short story “Berlin Pastoral”, first performed publicly at This Berlin Life in Berlin and later at the 4’33” event in London, was published in 12 installments as part of the annual “12 Days” issue in Fatboy Review. It begins like this: [#93]
«Susi, Uschi and Tom live on a balcony above busy Helmholtzplatz in Berlin. They’re not strictly speaking homeless: the balcony has got a roof. They live there throughout the year, in winter and in summer. You know people like this exist. You’ve probably waved at them from the street. It’s tight up there, but they never complain.»
The complete audio recording of this story during the first 4’33” live event is here.
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Speh you’ve found a very good work ethic that I envy, but I was never like you any way. I’m more scattershot, but I do love your work almost to a point of embarrassment, so I look for every opportunity to read it. If the world were in any way smarter you would be hailed in every literary nook from here to forever, but, alas, I am but one voice. For that small miracle I am thankful to get to say to them that you are a wonderful,generous and singular talent that makes it great to be alive.