Jimmy James

My grandmother was a great lover of music, though her taste had calcified in the mid-sixties. She liked the early Beatles. She liked James Brown. She liked Little Stevie Wonder. But her favorite band was the Vagabonds.

According to family legend, which she was happy to share over jam and croissants, she met Jimmy James when she was seventeen and worked at the department store as a sewing assistant. She helped the tailor fit the suits for the customers. She always smiled when she said Jimmy James was a good tipper.

I wondered if she meant that as a euphemism.

Until Death

When I rode my bicycle past the Nazis they laughed and threw rocks at me. They hated our kind, and it was time to leave. I had no family, and lived in a small apartment alone, so it wouldn’t take long to pack. I neatly folded my suits and placed them into the luggage. I took the money I saved, stuffed it inside my jacket pocket, took one last look around and walked out the door to the train station.

A few months later, the Jewish families were rounded up and taken to camps.

My heart would ache until death.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Left Eye Is Enough

Because you can see. It is other people who have the problem--flies cannot understand singular vision; pros and cons blink in unison. Suits and snoots on the train and even the grubs on the street shoot sideways sneers and whispers, feary scowls and snickers. The nothingness bothers them, the absence of the right, smooth as burned-off fingerprints. They are not convinced by your best prosthetic and toss you pity, a reward for your emulation of their normalcy. Dark glasses and patches insult the blind and pirates. Your final answer is the biggest lie by the bluntest knife: a wound.From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. She teaches college writing and is the co-owner and chief editor of BluePlanetJournal.com. Her nonfiction, poetry, and flash fiction have appeared in Creations Magazine, Little India, Outpost, Nowhere Poetry, and The Syzygy Poetry Journal.

We Are Not Responsible For Lost Or Damaged Baggage

Let him hold and spoon your every nook and cranny of pre-decaying skin. Cut yourself slightly to scrutinize the way you bleed. Is it different?

During his flight later on, he will serve the peanuts and diet cokes to suits and pantsuits that view themselves as better, and this time they will be right. He knows, you know, and the ten untainted cells between you both know, too.

Tell your all-knowing daughter that you, Daddy, are too good at making friends.

Give tickets out with fervor.

Let yourself believe for a mere moment that you can run away for good.

From Guest Contributor Jacqueline McGarry