Weightlifting

When he first started pushing barbells, he did it to get his anger out, throwing the weights from his body, stressing his tendons as he exhaled sprays of spit with every red-faced repetition, every sweaty pump. He realized his joints wouldn’t last long hurling metal, so he calmed his approach, traded manic intervals – of fighting gravity with fury – for calculated precision, and he’d demonstrate, lying down on a chair with an invisible bar connecting his fists, showing us the proper form of a barbell press, his big forearms and biceps flexing and twisting slowly as his muscles contracted, then extended.

From Guest Contributor Parker Wilson

Parker is a writer and editor living in Highland Park. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running along the Detroit River. He’s published in Bristol Noir and is a founding editor at DUMBO Press.

Instagram:@parkerreviewsbooks

On Loving

What happens when you keep uttering the same word? One moment, it has a meaning. The next moment, it stops being a word.

Familiarity is the flourishing ground for intimacy. You repeat a word over and over so that you can describe its curves and contours, its light and luster. Rolling it inside your mouth smooths its jutting edges. Running your tongue playfully over it changes its tone. Mixing it up with other words makes it sway to strange rhythms. Wrapped in the warmth of your spit, it tries to germinate.

And, snap!

Familiarity is the flourishing ground for morbidity.

From Guest Contributor Aparna Rajan

Aparna is a research scholar and an aspiring writer, currently living in Mumbai, India.

Reflex Action

The front page of the morning newspaper is carrying a photo of the xenophobic, misogynistic new President.

Suddenly I spit. Expectorant deluges the photo and page. It is an uncontrollable reflex action. I couldn’t suppress it. It’s not like I knew it was going to happen or had planned it.

The commuters in the subway car look at me in silence. I am embarrassed. I am also sorry for damaging a complete stranger’s newspaper.

It was when he raised his open newspaper to read it, the front page photo loomed in front of my face triggering this; a reflex action.

The Babysitting Job

Lisa had been babysitting for almost two years, ever since she was 14. Never in her long career had she seen anything so disgusting as this.

Little kids will puke and poop and spit and generally make a mess of everything they touch. Lisa was used to all these awful behaviors. She was a pro.

But she'd never seen a baby molt before, yet that was exactly what this toddler was doing. Shedding its skin and revealing a hard layer of scales underneath. Lisa shrieked and jumped on top of the coffee table.

Perhaps the Iguana family wasn't hispanic after all.

The Curse

To this day, I don't know what I did to anger her. I was waiting at the stoplight at Pinehurst and Rock Creek. An old woman was crossing, decrepit really, and if I was guilty of anything, it was allowing my gaze to linger a fraction too long, perhaps just a tincture of disgust in my expression. When she looked in my direction, I immediately turned away.

That's when she began screaming, condemning me and all my future progeny. She even spit on my windshield.

From that day, I've never approached an intersection without being stopped at a red light.

The Stakes

They sat across from each other at their favorite restaurant and it seemed everything was at stake.

She fussed with her rings and he rubbed at his tattoo and they said everything except the truth of their despair. It was easy to pretend their worlds were crumbling into ruins when what they really needed to say was that life had become a burden. It would be easier on their own but each wanted the other to blame and so they spun their lies into spit and tears until they realized nothing was at stake any longer except their favorite restaurant.