THWAP. “Catsup,” Hershel yells. “Is that really too much to ask?” The plate smacks the wallpaper, the meatloaf sticking, the plate crashing to the floor. “Meshuggina,” Judith says. ‘Two year olds, I know two year olds more flexible.” Her chair shrieks like a leaf rake on a blackboard as she shoves backward and thumps out of the kitchen. “What? After all I do and do and do for you, catsup I don’t get,” he calls after the wife. “Had too much onion anyway. You call that meatloaf? Heartburn loaf.” He stares at the slab of meatloaf slithering down the foil paper. Foil paper, Judith put up foil paper. “What, you think this is Florida?’ She walked out on him when he asked; she’s getting expert at it, this walking out. Silver foil. Shlock. Got no…

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“We also spent entire nights in bed and I told her my dreams. I told her about the big snake of the world that was coiled in the earth like a worm in an apple and would someday nudge up a hill to be thereafter known as Snake Hill and fold out upon the plain, a hundred miles long and devouring as it went along. I told her this snake was Satan. “What’s going to happen?” she squealed; meanwhile she held me tight.” – Jack Kerouac * * * “Rattlesnakes can swim.” Valerie grabbed the nun’s wrist, desperate to get her attention. Thirty demonstrators walked down the highway median with children and dogs in tow. Despite the chilly January wind, the ragged line of walkers was determined to show support for a proposed rattle snake…

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“Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.” ― Jack Kerouac     The Quickening Because I believe in perfection I believe in abortion Babies are asymmetrical They/she/he/it squander The silken grammar of routine But, a fetus can be edited Its absence assures a lacy indefectibility In the vacuum, I can breathe It’s not right It’s not the right time I don’t want to hunker down in Staten Island Or be on bed rest Or buy big clothes Or rush to alter with a gown and a groom and a promise With rice raining on me like fallout. I don’t want to be folk like my mother was folk. Children growing out of her hairdo. Dull eyes and unpainted nails. Waking on the hour to feed.  Feeding. Always feeding the hungry….

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Editor’s Note: I met Holly Guran at a poetry reading one chilly night in December. She told me that she had heard of The Fictional Café because her friend Maria Termini told her about the site. Now, for a literary magazine as small as ours, meeting someone who’s heard of your publication is a pretty big deal. Needless to say, I was flattered and encouraged upon hearing this news. Well it turns out that Holly is a darn good poet herself! After reading some of her work online, I was struck by one of her poems about yesteryear. It was part historical fiction, part lyrical voyage. I was enticed by the visuals her poetry created – of a life so much different than mine in an area I have visited a dozen times (mostly for…

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Editor’s Note: This story is a lead-in for A. J.’s latest novel, Forgiving Mariela Camacho,  which is the follow-up to his first novel, Forgiving Maximo Rothman. If you enjoy “A Glint of Metal,” you can follow the characters in his newest thriller. This is part 2 of 2.   * * *   Captain McCloskey yawned then looked at his watch. “Kurchenko, let’s get this over with.” “I thought you should be here for this,” Tolya said. “You were right to think so, but don’t you think this could have waited till later this morning instead of the middle of the night? IA will have to be here for an official inquest.” “I know but under the circumstances I thought we should have a kind of off-the-record conversation with Billy before this thing hits the…

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