Issue 2.4

Henny's Story Henny would have fit right in unnoticed except for the patent leather shoes and that smell of French cologne and the BMW of course, the one that caused such a ruckus when he parked it on an inner city street. What was the point of making it big, he figured, if you blended. You couldn't just depend on the whispers of people that you know. Without the bling for example, you were just one of the gang. Henny’s mother grew old and tired worrying about him. A roll of bills tossed on the table and a directive to "go buy yourself something" didn't ease the pain any. She knew any denomination over twenty was blood money. Nobody talks much about Henny now. All the nickel bags, the numbers he ran, the loan-sharking, the intimidation, and his reputation barely registered beyond that last arrest. Men in suits came for him. A crowd gathered but his mother didn't leave her doorstep. She watched that black car swallow him up and it may as well have been a coffin. Henny had an older brother but he died in infancy. In Danny’s case, the worst that could happen only occurred the once.

Pasticceria Italiana I walked into the pasticceria and told the waitress that she had made rather a poor show and caused me no lack of embarrassment. She asked what I meant by this and I told her that I had recommended this location to my wife, but the doughnut they had sold her had been undercooked on the inside. She replied that it had probably been, “short, rotund and ill-formed.” Only in Italian, the subject pronoun is omitted, so I presumed she was describing my wife. I responded that I was not aware that she had met my wife. She said, “No, no, no, I meant the doughnut.”

Birdsong at Ten Thousand Feet Risen up into a minor satellite— far above the city’s glow, in blinking wingtip lights that shuffle us in among stars and bear us along the midnight flight’s arcing path— you hear, as we all hear, the chitter of sparrows that must line our metal wing and the painted fuselage, fanning feathers idly and turning tiny heads to sing of early-Spring distraction—unhurried, serene, a smaller breed of celestial—un-unsettled and unruffled when we thought we’d gained such speed. But hear their chirping and the scritch of their small hops; see the land below, littered with light, float by like dandelion seeds in the lower, slower breeze that moves with the little sparrow plumes, and blows to match their ease. The chorus that sudden swells! The notes that hold your veins! close like demure wings across shy, chuckling beaks —as in their eyes the stars wink out and we are left with moon beams that streak our sleek but bare and barren wings, and no sound at all but groaning engines and the rush of foolish speed.