Poetry Drawer: communion: risky business: improving the drainage: props: soft landing by Livio Farallo

communion

blanket
and sombrero
dropped
in a pile,
she runs
through a vacant
city of gold,
echoes thudding
against eardrums,
sweat pouring
in a hum.

the priest
rings a bell
to the stirring
dust,
wipes his forehead
with the back of his hand,
spits,
walks back to the bottle
and eats the worm.

she calls him father.
he waves her in.
their arms
slow in the heat.

risky business

paintings
locked in
colour

and boulders
in falling rock zones,
never really falling.

you’ve never seen
a pebble bounce
or heard a hard crack
and you know
if you drive through
this same threatening
stretch of road
every year
and locate the same
boulder on a
precipitous ledge
it will always be
el cid dead on his horse
which gives you something
to talk about.

pigments are never
diluted with water
but seasons
change your taste
in fruits and vegetables
and leave you nothing
to choose at the market
except endive and spinach.
and the heavy green of one colour
is a still life’s
red tablecloth
hung over the edge
in perfect folds
of
shadowed smiles with teeth unseen

improving the drainage

walking along the street
near my home
where machines
are putting in new sewers;

no humans to be seen here.

just yellow backhoes and orange cranes
red dump trucks
with windows layered in foggy brown
and not a human within them,
not a movement.

slabs of concrete
and asphalt piled
for a campfire,
it seems;

smells captured under bulldozers
and released as steam.
a whole neighbourhood
glued in chaos
and coated in the sewage
of wet dust.

walking past the detour signs
and plastic blinking lights,
generators thumping failing thumping.

home finally
but not really there,
crouched unsteadily
on the sidedoor steps
fingering spider webs,
teasing apart the smells of bean soup
and a flooded basement.

props

the old men
who play chess
in parks

rarely speaking,
smoking tobacco
spitting juice
as young boys
watch and
run
for sandwiches
and coffee.
as sun
sprinkles through
the trees
just enough
and the breeze
folds a newspaper
just enough.

i have never seen this.

the old men
who wheeze
and take pills,
cough and
lock in dentures
before the sandwiches;
piss themselves
from the coffee.
who wear safari hats
and measure immortality
with captured pawns.

i have never seen this.

except in movies
                 grainy and frightening
whose titles i forget.

soft landing

chocolate evening
drips a candle
of slow light.
coffee,
gurgling breath
of steam aroma is
harboured in dreams
of unthinking
skin.
closed eyes
and the exquisite deadness
falls through murmurs
of crossed and barricading arms.
my hair is uncombed
my breath is unwashed
my heart is a trampoline
(and not a pump) so warmth
splashes randomly and
grease flies from bacon
but doesn’t burn;

a rare moment.

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared or, is forthcoming, in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, Roi Faineant, North Dakota Quarterly, J Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere.

Poetry Drawer: I Believe in My Tummy by Caleb Delos-Santos

(Inspired by “What I Believe” by Jacqueline Woodson)

I believe teriyaki chicken with rice tastes better than anything.
I believe my grandma agreed.
I believe God whispered to her our family teriyaki sauce recipe.
I believe my father taught the secret to me
to continue her legacy.

I believe I will continue her legacy
by clothing every meat I eat
with sweet teriyaki.

I believe my wife dislikes sweet meat.
I believe that does not matter to me.
I believe that does not matter to her either.

I believe our future children might not like it either.
I believe my wife and I will dress their meat
with teriyaki sauce anyway.
I believe my children will eat
teriyaki chicken with rice anyway.

I believe, if they like it,
they might even learn the recipe
and then forget it
after eating too much McDonald’s or Wendy’s.

I believe, despite this possibility,
they will still carry my grandma and father’s legacy.
I believe they will even honour my wife and me

because

I believe they will see, just like anybody,
that family is fitted
with so much more meaning
than chicken and rice
in sweet teriyaki.

Caleb Delos-Santos (he/him) is an English graduate student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Throughout his four years of writing, Caleb has published poetry with nearly twenty literary magazines, including North Dakota Quarterly and the Madison Journal of Literary Criticism, and most recently released his first two poetry collections, A Poet’s Perspective (2022) and Once One Discovers Love (2023). Caleb also won the 2022 Esselstrom Writing Prize and the West Wind Literary Magazine’s 2023 Best in Genre Award for his nonfiction. Today, Caleb teaches English 101 as a teaching assistant and dreams of a successful writing and teaching career.

Flash in the Pantry: Maestro by Cheryl Snell

The conductor’s wife carried his balls in her purse, so he said. She was a bully, convinced that she was smarter than, more successful than, more desirable than he. Plus, her purse was bigger. In rehearsals, he had become so nervous that his baton kept slipping out of his hands. “What’s bugging you?” I wondered. “My wife,” he might have said─ but now I can’t be sure. At the podium, he watched my bowing arm for cues. My staccato, sautillé and spiccato all helped him feel the vibrations through his feet, he said. I wondered if he knew he was deaf. “I love you,” I whispered, to test him. He didn’t answer but launched into the latest story about his wife: how she’d taken to fishing out a can of Mace from the purse where she kept the balls, and setting it like a centrepiece on the table. He recited these details to me in the Green Room with his eyes squeezed shut from the effects of the spray. I held his hand, the one without the ring. I liked him to look less married, if possible, for the sake of my fantasies, which throughout my life have always been the best revenge against reality.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Sleet Magazine, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

Poetry Drawer: When I walked into the room, they poured lava on my head and told me I was fired: I’d chop off my eyes for a kiss: The magician who lives below me comes home: I went to Niagara Falls by Ron Riekki

When I walked into the room, they poured lava on my head and told me I was fired

but I couldn’t hear because of all the ash
in my ears and the room was packed full

of people I didn’t know—a librarian who
said I stole a book back in 1968, a penguin

who said I made half its family extinct,
and my boss who looked like a hole in

an animal—and they were lined up, all
with notebooks, all ready to slice me in

half, but I thanked them, because now
is the time where all can collapse, so

you have to be gracious and smile and
accept them shoving a mountain deep

into your guts, and I walked away after,
heading nowhere, ending up in a grave-

yard where someone mowed the lawn
like they had rivers of madness in their

lungs, just circling and spinning and
weaving that machine into sand and

puddle and fence and I just stood there,
jobless, watching this guy with a job,

tearing up the earth as if he wanted
to erase every single thing in sight.

I’d chop off my eyes for a kiss

that’s how lonely my eyes are,
my memories like rope, so god-

damn garden-level beautiful; I
should have died for her, but

instead I just wrote poems. My
God, I should have died and come

back to life. I should have done
everything. Everything.

The magician who lives below me comes home

and looks wrecked, destroyed by magic, this slow trudge, and
I’m a peeping tom, slits in the blinds, but so curious to see this

body, bedecked in motley, and so old and so young at the same
time, a man-boy who’s never smoked, never drank, but greyed,

youth-aged, starving for money, gambling for fame, but coming
home to this metal neighbourhood where crickets don’t even come,

just the soft sound of traffic in the distance, blending in with his
footsteps, so tender, like rabbits that have been forgotten in hats.

I went to Niagara Falls

I didn’t get it.
All that mist.
I got back in
my car and
drove one
thousand
miles, to
Kansas,
where my
ex- lives,
happily,
without
me. I
told her
about
Niagara.
She drank
coffee in
her kitchen
that was
the colour
of the Civil
War. I said
I didn’t get
how people
could go
down that
thing in
a barrel.
She told
me her
ex- would
be home
soon. They
still lived
together.
Nothing
in this
world
makes
sense.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki’s listening to Nanci Griffith’s “I Wish It Would Rain.”

Poetry Drawer: A Woman’s Tears: Tales of a River by Avantika Vijay Singh

A Woman’s Tears

A woman’s love is an extraordinary treasure!
She will give you love,
She will give you loyalty,
She will give you, her dreams.
She will give you, her future!
She will give you eternity!

But many a man never knows
the value of that treasure.
He will possess her,
He will desire her,
He will rest his heaving passions in her.
Like a plundering warlord he will only take again and again,
And lay the remains to waste.

He will grow large from that tree of love,
Not watering the tree with any affection.
He will grow vines of neglect
Subsuming her identity with weeds,
That sap her of her strength and love!
He kills the woman of her spirit,
And dines off her carcass like a bird of prey.

And the woman’s heart is crushed,
Like a river run dry
No longer fed by the rain of affection.
Violated day after day like the earth,
Into whose wombs wells are bored relentlessly,
Deeper and deeper,
In search of the elixir!

The saddest sound in the Universe,
Is the sound of a woman’s heart break!
In the silence of the night
She quivers and thrashes unseen!
Gnashes her teeth at the impotence of her fate!
Weeps soundlessly for herself,
Longing to escape the coils of a loveless union,
That trap her soul.

Tales of a River

She is a river of gold,
Flowing swiftly in the golden dawn.
The sun rippling beauteous in her joyous being
She whooshes exuberantly over the rapids,
As one by one she clears them,
In her flow.

Worshipped by man
Desired by man
Who always sought to control her
To contain her
Fight over her
For exclusive rights!

She is the river of discontent
In whom waste has been dumped,
by toxic relationships.
She cries for release.
The waves of agony crash
Against the high rocks of indifference!

She is the turquoise river,
Below the cerulean skies,
The woods behind her,
The shores distant.
With a sky full of stars,
She flows!

She is a ribbon of silver
Sparkling in the moonwake,
With the wisdom of the ages
Running in her veins!
Nurturing life,
Healing the wounds!

She is a river emptying soundlessly into the sea
Between existence and non-existence!
In her existence, exists her identity
In her non-existence, she loses not
Just different ways in which she emerges,
Her essence ever fragrant in her tributaries!

Avantika Vijay Singh is a writer, blogger, editor, script writer, poet, researcher, and amateur photographer. Poetry is her song from the heart to express her thoughts and emotions. Dancing Motes of Starlight, self-published during the pandemicin 2020, is her debut ebook on poetry.

She enjoys a good laugh, especially over herself, and her blog “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives”. She loves taking long walks in nature, which germinate the idea of many of her poems.  

She is a lifelong learner and holds an M.Sc. (Zoology), an M.S. (Biomedicine) from BITS, Pilani, post-graduate Certificates in Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden and Digital Marketing from MICA.

Poetry Drawer: Slowly Crept: Sonnet CDLXXXXIV: Sonnet CDLXXXXIII: Sonnet CDLXXXXI by Terry Brinkman

Slowly Crept

Charity to the neighbour absurd
Wolf in Sheep’s clothing
Monks and Friars slowly crept
Bearing Palms and Harps of the Blackbird
Patrons of holy youth sleeping Bluebird
Women blessed symbols slept
Dragon Lilies robes we kept
Ink horns eyes of Lady-dove

Sonnet CDLXXXXIV

Dumpy sort of a gait bone due trench
Two flashes of presumable ships rum from Maine
Gurgling noise shrewd suspicion pain
Day of reckoning Mono Publishing conservation bench
Best jumpers and racers wrench
Skin the goat an Ax to grind throbbing forehead vein
Loudly lamenting Galway Bay rain
Slightly disturbed in her sentry-box stench
Facial blemishes treasure
Effusion the redoubtable gravel
Dropping off into a restful measure
Silence all around we try to unravel
Manicure counterattraction female pleasure
Rum explodes piers and girders travel

Sonnet CDLXXXXIII

White tipped New Guinea’s chip
Wispy quiver and dance trouble
Poniards Gibraltar bubble
Muensters Boston weather drip and dip
Ill-fated Irish Times petrified drip
Weathered a monsoon Daunte’s rock doubled
Rumpled stockings showing her stubble
Impetuosity isosceles triangle flip
Temperaments at the door in trio
Passionate about the Ten Shillings viol
Visit coincidences Kilaru Museum in Rio
Washed in the blood of the sun denial
Spaniards old Leo
Exception here and there trial

Sonnet CDLXXXXI

Enlightened men morbid mined shrug
Buys dear and sells cheap her money amplify
A slow puzzled skin-Berean Butterfly
Old Meldish squeamishness drug
Super human effort as she dug
Shrugged his shoulders to deny
Dizzy-Billy all-be-plastered high
Coffee in a cheap-eating-house mug
Sticker for solid copper Tumour
Tee total skipping rocks rube
Fa-r-reaching circumstantial rumour
Piano playing cell-mate in a cube
Not listening at a yarn humour
Blunt horn-handle tube

Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.

You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: Autumn in the Wings: If Only I Moved by Instinct: Leaf Fall: For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors: Slackening Observed: A Moment Depends Not Just on its Moment: After the Gale by D. R. James

Autumn in the Wings

Twigs’ lush medium is converting to
calligraphy, the dismissal of leaves
to launch its winter forewarning. Laden
with late acorns, squirrels chuck-chuck meaningless
memos, counter-balance full bellies, tails
unfurled. I am embracing—keepsaking—
the unscrolling calendar, harvesting
days tossed my way, the prodigious burden
of nows. Hunters will bruise this calm soon, but
until then it’s choirs of jays, cranes, and crows.

If Only I Moved by Instinct

Life has been a grand migration
to where you are today!
            —well known wisdom

I didn’t know!

Otherwise,
when those raggedy squadrons
clamoured overhead last evening—

three V’s disarrayed
like frayed arrow feathers,

their leaders insistent as clowns
with braying horns, honking
for plane geometry—

I would have taxied, sprinted,
lifted arthriticly
from water’s edge (granted

more dodo than goose,
my splayed toes just scuffing
the webbed crests of waves),

and elbowed my way
into a rhythmic wedge

to claim my slot
in that mindless rotation
toward the life-saving draft.

Leaf Fall

Asymmetric chandeliers instigate
their rhapsodic drop, the ruddling scumble-
trove of falling leaves and epiphanies
whose sillage shellacs paw, pelt, and breezes.
Trapezes sling these acrobatic hues
into bold arcs, risky spins, pronounced turns
before alights the wind-borne troupe of the
trees. Stippled bark akin to camo backs
the show, and cursive limbs announce the new
season: caesura ending summer’s song.

For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors

From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine,
tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyred
fibre curls back and away like a wire, then
flares, a flame racing the length of a fuse.
Imagine this my innermost strand, a barely-dirt
two-track off Frost’s road less traveled, a thin,
trembling thread of desire, the uncharted blue vein
of a tundral highway. Or in some dread cloister
it dreams, and a sillier spirit suddenly moves—
like four fresh fingers over flamenco frets,
like dumb elegance uttering Old Florentine,
never meaning one of its crooning words.
It might dance—Tejano, Zydeco, any twenty
Liebeslieder Waltzes, any juking jumble
of a barrel-house blues—wherever arose
an arousing tune, the thrum of a Kenyan’s
drumming, the merest notion of Motown soul.
I do know: there must be this lost but lively cord,
an original nerve, perhaps abandoned, or jammed
as if into an airless cavity of my old house.
It waits, to spark, to catch, its insulated nest
punctured by the stray tip of a driven nail.
It craves some risky remodelling, that annoying
era of air compressor, plaster grit, dumpster,
and the exuberant exhalation of ancient dust.

Slackening Observed

A cardinal, its heaven’s sound, the winter’s
effervescent rag with salutating
gait. Notes etch, sun foils, and cathedralic
miles enlarge the whispering. To centre
oneself, to murmur, to intercept the
synchronizing run that’s rioting, is
as longingly still as the slope outside
the city’s heaves, the barn-red-confetti’d
woods, the uniform crisp of autumn days,
shallows iced to the shoreline, valley’s dream.

A Moment Depends Not Just on its Moment

You’d like to move on beyond mean memory,
skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack up
your numerous mind encampments
whose smoky cook fires now flicker, now
flare on this or that nostalgic hillside—
sometimes like coded reminders, sometimes
like brash blazes arousing anything
but simpering gratitude for a brainscape
stippled with so-called love. But then
a random moment’s rush of fragrant pine
rises also from vague beds of heady needles
in your rural past. And today’s savouring
of your young son’s self-liberation emerges
from its oblivious storage of almost forty years.
And the resuscitating pulse in a flagrant poem
owes a measure of its happy current to your
decades of emotional prohibition, your
suspension in the numb ice of wordlessness.
A generous peace depends on your history’s
stingy drudgery, and a restful season
of seeing who you might really be
depends on the eons of not letting being, on
the contrast with not knowing you didn’t see.

After the Gale

Ivory spines disguise the oaks’ south sides,
slivers of sunshine lightening their rough
trunks. What furrowed pallor, what dignity:
spires anchored to all others underneath,
delight clad in the plucked bones of winter.
What diligence, what staid bystanding: a
throng of distinct ascetics, enmeshed horde
of collective loners. It’s as if they’re
avowing how steadfastness, soon resumed,
enroots in you your essential locale.

D. R. James, a year+ into retirement from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives, writes, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.

You can find more of D.R.’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: steve zmijewski asks me a question: on asking melissa: wanna walk?: on receiving a job promotion: on telling Joseph Fulkerso by Tohm Bakelas 

steve zmijewski asks me a question

“quick question hot shot
when you’re a feature, how many
poems do you read”

on asking melissa: wanna walk?

she says: “i’m knee deep
in organizing my desk,
do you ever work?”

on receiving a job promotion

boss asks, “do you own
anything other than jeans?”
I laugh, then say “no”

on telling Joseph Fulkerson about receiving scathing rejections because I title my haikus

he says, “of course people
are upset, tohm… you’re
challenging tradition.”

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He is the author of twenty-four chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  He is the editor of Between Shadows Press

You can find more of Tohm’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Pantry Prose: The Visitation by Gary Beck

I was definitely feeling pleased with myself. I made it to the private clinic without the usual escorts, for a check-up that would tell me how to deal with my upcoming departmental physical. It was a rare treat to be alone for a few minutes without any responsibility. There was a knock on the door. I called: “Come in,” and a pretty, young girl entered.

“Good morning, sir. I’m Eva, from transport. These men are here to take you to x-ray.”

Two identical looking men, wearing blue jumpsuits, pushing a stretcher, came in. The only problem was that I wasn’t scheduled for x-ray. I lifted the sheet, grabbed my weapon, shot both of them, and they slumped to the floor. Eva froze, waiting for the lunatic to shoot her. Since she couldn’t run or hide, she tried to make herself invisible. Smart girl.

“Eva,” I said gently.

“Yes, sir,” she quavered.

I pointed and said:

“Give me that tray, please.”

She cautiously brought the tray. I put my weapon on it and told her to put it on the counter. She quickly rejected trying to use it on me, since she had absolutely no idea what it was, or how to use it. Smart girl.

“Give me your cell phone, please.”

She did. I called headquarters, apprised them of the situation, then waited for the police. A minute later a cop came in, weapon drawn. ready for anything. He quickly eyed the two bodies, the girl, then me. I read his nameplate.

“Sergeant Jefferson. Please search me, so you’ll know I’m unarmed.”

He approached carefully, as I slowly pulled down the sheet. He was thorough, even checking under the pillow and bed.

“What happened here?” he demanded.

“You’ll get a phone call in 30 seconds that will start a process. In the meantime, don’t let anyone else in, and if you can’t stop them, make sure they don’t see my weapon.”

He started to ask me something, but his phone rang.

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” He disconnected and looked at me. “Homicide is going to be pissed when they can’t get in.”

“Sergeant Jefferson.”

“Yes, sir?”

“This is not an ordinary homicide.”

We waited quietly. Two minutes later the door opened and Parker and Lindner, my executive assistants/bodyguards, rushed in. Parker took in the scene at a glance.

“We have 10 agents deployed, air cover and a team is searching the building. A support team will arrive in eight minutes… Did you really have to go off on your own, sir?”

I ignored her and said:

“This is Sergeant Jefferson and Eva. They have been exemplary. They will be offered opportunities.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Can we move to a secure location, so the containment team can get to work?”

“Sergeant Jefferson.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is there anyone you have to contact until tomorrow?”

“Only my watch commander.”

“He, your Lieutenant and precinct Captain have been notified that you are temporarily assigned to a federal agency. Eva. Do you have to notify anyone?”

“I live with my sick father. I have to make dinner for him.”

“What if we send some good, Spanish speaking people to take care of him tonight?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Then call him and say you’re spending the night with a girl friend. Take care of it, Lindy.”:

Lindner made a few quick calls, then said:

“Ready to go, sir.”

As we headed for the door, Jefferson asked:

“They aren’t human, are they?”

I just looked at him and didn’t reply, as our team guided us to waiting SUVs.

We raced, with helicopter cover, to a campus just outside Washington, D.C., and entered a special building through a series of well-protected tunnels. Parker arranged comfortable quarters for Sergeant Jefferson and Eva, told them to use the house phone if they needed anything, then informed them they would be interviewed at 7:30 a.m. Then Parker and Lindner joined me in my office.

“We have two questions to consider,” I said. “How did they find me and why didn’t they send a hit squad?”

Logical Lindy stated.

“You didn’t tell anyone you were going, so x number of people may have seen you leave the campus. I’ll check anyone who might have seen you go. We may be under observation. You may have been noticed in transit, or entering the clinic.” He looked at me and Parker “Have I omitted any possibilities?”

I couldn’t think of any, so I shook my head no, then nodded to Parker.

“The only thing that makes sense,” she said thoughtfully, “is that they didn’t have time to muster a strike force and took a chance on a simple snatch.”

I couldn’t think of a better explanation, looked at Lindner, who nodded agreement with Parker.

“Alright,” I mused. “We obviously have some work to do.”

“May I make a request, sir?” Parker asked. I knew what was coming, but nodded ‘yes’.

“Please don’t go anywhere again without us,” she urged. “We’ll close our eyes no matter what you do, we’ll look the other way, or oblige you any way we can. Let us do our job.”

We all knew it was more than a job, so I agreed.

“Shall we debrief you now, sir?” Lindner asked.

“Let’s do it after we debrief Eva and Jefferson.”

“Who first?” Parker asked.

“Eva. She was the eyewitness. Jefferson arrived after it was over. Be aware, I’d like to recruit both of them.”

“Eva’s a kid,” Parker protested.

“You’ll change your mind once you hear her account of the incident. Now. How about some dinner. I’m starved.”

When Eva entered the conference room the next morning, if she was intimidated by the people at the table, the video cameras and other recording devices, she didn’t show it.

Parker said crisply. “Are you ready?” Eva nodded. “Then please tell us everything that happened yesterday afternoon.”

She took a deep breath. “My supervisor at transport told me to take the two transporters to room 502 and bring the patient to x-ray. The two men were wearing some kind of blue worksuits, like plumbers or something. They looked a little weird…”

“In what way?” An Admiral asked.

“They looked alike, but odd.”

“Go on,” Parker said.

“I led them to the elevator, we went to the room, I knocked and a man said: ‘Come in’. I said: ‘I’m Eva, from transport and we were here to take you to x-ray’. The two men came in. The man on the bed looked at them, pulled out some kind of gun and shot them. I had no place to run or hide, so I made myself invisible and hoped the madman wouldn’t shoot me. Then he told me gently to bring him a tray and he put the gun on it and told me to put it on the counter. I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me, so I relaxed. Then he asked for my cell phone, which I gave him. He made a call, then the cop came in.”

“Good, Eva,” Parker said. “We’ll stop here for now, but we’ll talk to you again in an hour.” Parker signaled an agent. “Take Eva to breakfast, please.”

When she left, the group discussed her statement and agreed she handled an extremely challenging situation with exceptional poise.

“What do you think, sir?” Parker asked me.

“We’ll discuss that after you debrief me. Now let’s have Sergeant Jefferson.”

An aide brought Jefferson in and I saw him quickly scan the room, noting the high-ranking military officers and the cameras.

“Good morning, Sergeant Jefferson,” Parker said. “Will you please tell us aobut your response yesterday.”

“I was passing the clinic in my patrol car when I got a report of some kind of disturbance on the 5th floor. After a brief search I found the room, drew my pistol and entered cautiously. There were two bodies on the floor, a girl was standing in the corner and a man in bed said: ‘Come search me. Sergeant Jefferson, so you’ll know I’m unarmed’. I approached carefully, made sure there were no weapons, and he said: ‘You’ll get a phone call in 30 seconds that will tell you what to do.’ I saw a strange weapon on the counter, but before I could look closer, he said: ‘Don’t let anyone else in the room. If they do come in, do not let them see the weapon’. Just then my phone rang, my Captain instructed me to cooperate with the agency taking charge and disconnected. I told the man: ‘Homicide is going to be pissed’. He said: ‘This is not an ordinary homicide, Sergeant Jefferson’. Then two agents came in and took charge.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Jefferson,” Parker said. “We’ll talk to you again in an hour.” She signaled an aide to lead him out and he turned to me.

“Question, sir?”

“Of course,” I replied.

“Will I be allowed to leave?”

“Certainly. You’re not a prisoner. If you wish, you can go after the next meeting. However. You might want to talk to me before you go.”

“Thank you, sir,” and the aide led him out.

Parker looked at me quizzically, and I said:

“We want to hear their opinion and perception of what happened. Then we’ll analyze the incident.”

We listened to Sergeant Jefferson’s and Eva’s account of what they thought happened. They were thorough and clear on what they did and didn’t know. I met with them, one at a time, Jefferson first, Parker and Lindner sitting in as I reviewed his record.

“You’ve been on the force for five years, two years of army service before that. You have several commendations, one for a shoot-out in a deli that saved civilian lives. You are respected by your superiors, especially your watch commander. You are going to night school for a law degree. I offer you the following choices: You can return to your precinct with commendations that will put you on a fast promotion track. You can join our agency and we will train you in counterterrorism and other skills, and fast track you for a law degree in the area of your specialty. You would be working for a clandestine government agency, with many responsibilities and benefits.”

“Do I have to decide now, sir?”

“No. We’ll give you a contact number if you opt to join us. However. There is one stipulation. You cannot discuss or tell anyone about the events of the last two days, or mention the agency, under any circumstances.”

“What if my watch commander asks what I’ve been doing?”

“Your chain of command has been informed you helped federal agents subdue two men who attempted to kidnap a government witness. Parker will give you an outline of the incident that will satisfy any inquiries. Lindner will arrange to have you driven home, or to your precinct. Good luck, Sergeant Jefferson.”

Thank you, sir. One more question?”

I nodded and he asked:

“What kind of weapon was that?”

I just grinned and Lindner summoned an aide, who led Jefferson out.

“What do you think, sir?” Parker asked. “Will he be back?”

“We’ll hear from him tomorrow. Let’s see Eva.”

An aide brought her in and seated her.

I nodded, then reviewed her background.

“Eva Rodriguez, age 19, graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, 4.0 grade average, ran track, scholarship offers, including one for track. Father became ill and you had to go to work at two low paying jobs. We can help you get a better job and arrange a medical policy to take care of your father. Or you can go to work for our agency, take special training, then attend college part-time in preparation for a medical career. We would provide assistance to your father while you were in training.” Before I could continue, she said:

“I would like to join your agency, sir.”

“Why?” Parker snapped.

“I know enough to realize something very important is going on and I would like to make a meaningful contribution. I also want the educational opportunity.”

“Lindy. Have someone drive Ms. Rodriguez home. Eva. You cannot discuss the events of the last two days with anyone, not even with your father. Unless you change your mind, a car will pick you up at 7:00 a.m, and take you to a training facility.”

“Thank you, sir,” and an aide led her out.

“She’s awfully young, sir,” Parker commented.

“She’s smart, tough, has good sense and good judgment. In her way, not unlike Jefferson. We’re facing a dangerous menace that we don’t understand and we seem to be learning everything the hard way. We need people who can rise to the challenge. As you both know, they don’t grow on trees. We have to find out what we’re confronting and need all the help we can get.”

Parker moved closer, recognizing a real opportunity to question me.

“Who do you think we’re facing, sir?”

“Looking at this logically,” I replied, which made Lindner grin, “there are two alternatives. Either a powerful cabal has made incredible scientific advances in producing some kind of android that can almost pass for human… Or there has been an alien incursion that for what purpose has not yet been determined.”

“Which theory do you favor, sir?” Lindner asked.

“There isn’t enough evidence to reach a conclusion, but I would prefer an earthly conspiracy, to an alien visitation… Do either of you have an alternative theory?”

They shook their heads and Lindner said:

“Better a human conspiracy. At least we’ll be able to figure out their motives.”

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theatre director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theatre. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 39 poetry collections, 14 novels, 4 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 8 books of plays. Gary lives in New York City.

You can find more of Gary’s work here on Ink Pantry.