You wonder what it could have been that made you jump. You look around the apartment; maybe your dog knocked something over. The dog is on the couch, looking confused. The crash must have woken him up. You check the kitchen in case one of the precariously balanced dirty dishes has slipped and fallen to its death on the linoleum below the sink. All are intact (and, sadly, still dirty).

"leicester; let the whiteness numb you" (photo by Flickr user h i k a r i . a k i r a)

You look out the windows for a broken car window or kids messing around or a guilty-looking raccoon skittering away from the dumpsters in the parking lot. You see cars, some broken glass, some chunks of wood and a piece of wrecked, twisted metal. Same as usual, in this dump. Your car looks fine, so you go back to your book.

When you start cooking dinner, you see the red lights flashing, making patterns on the kitchen walls. The steam from the pots on the stove has fogged up the windows. You wipe a patch clear, and through
the streaky, wet glass you can see the top of an ambulance. You hope it isn’t anyone you know. Then you realize that you don’t know anyone in the building.

It’s quiet all night.

You forget about it for about a week, until you notice that the mail is piling up in apartment 206′s box. Or maybe they have a parcel. You shouldn’t be looking in other’s mailboxes anyhow. Maybe someone’s grandma died. You think about your grandmother. You were so sad when she died. You were ten.

You come home from work late one night and see a young man in the corridor, carrying his trash down to the basement. He pulls his door shut behind him and you’d have paid him no notice, except the number on his door is 206. You’re in 201, but he’s next to you, somehow. The apartment numbers must be circular, you think as you unlock your door and start letting your jacket fall from your shoulders.

Was that young man someone’s grandson, cleaning up after the funeral? A new tennant? You try to recall the expression on his face, trying to remember if he looked sad or bereaved somehow. It’s none of your business, you tell yourself. Feed the dog. Make dinner. Finish reading that book. Take out your trash.

Every now and then, you see the guy in apartment 206. You try to figure out if he looks sad or indifferent or ill. Every time you scold yourself because, really, that crash and the ambulance may not have had anything to do with apartment 206. But you’re suspicious. Why do you need to know so much? It’s some sort of bad luck for someone you don’t even know. These things happen every day, you see ambulances everywhere, why should it matter any more than usual just because it was at your building?

You vow to stop obsessing over it.

You come home from work, feed the dog and start dinner. You’re bored. The most exciting thing to have happened in the last week was that ambulance, and you vowed not to think about it. It’s not something
exciting that happened directly to you anyhow. You decide to go to the café across the street to read your book. The evening waitress is nice and sometimes takes her cigarette break at your table.

She isn’t there that evening. You consider asking about her, but she’s younger than you, and pretty, and you don’t want to look like some lecherous pig, stalking waitresses. Maybe she changed shifts. You’re feeling guilty because you realize that you are that lecherous pig; you’d sneaked a peek at her cleavage once, when she came by to refill your cup. You’d many times admired the shape of her ass and hips in the tight jeans she wore to work. You actually know the colour of her eyes (or at least you think you do – green or grey?), but you’d never realized you’d had a crush on her before.

When you get home from work the next day, you go straight to the café after hastily leaving dinner out for the dog. Your life is boring. If you have a crush on that girl, so be it. Why not pursue it?

Again she’s not there. So you ask about her. The girl replacing her sort of shrugs and says that she doesn’t know her, that must be the girl who quit or something.

You can’t even be bothered to be disappointed. You know you have nothing to be down about, but you feel heavy. You know it’s just boredom. You get back to your book.

You hate this town. Ok, that’s a lie. You moved here because you’d visited once, and when the offer from the company came you snapped it up. You were bored where you were before. You were bored in school, and you were bored as a child. This is nothing new. But the heaviness is. You’re sick of boredom, of tedium. You don’t really know anyone here, and you know that’s your own fault. You could make friends at the office. You have a few acquaintances that you have lunch with sometimes, but no-one close. You know that eventually you will have to deal with the repressed grief from your mother and your sisters’ deaths. But that’s not what this is.

You tell yourself you’re not lonely.

Your dog yawns. He’s bored too. He’s old, he has arthritis and you know it’s a matter of time before you won’t have him either.

These are not productive thoughts; you stick your face in your book to avoid pondering sad topics any longer.

You decide to turn in early after walking the dog. You have a vivid dream in which you are having coffee with the cute waitress. She tells you it’s a slump you’re in and you have to get out of it before your life has rushed past you. She kisses your cheek and you wake up with a hard-on. Jerking off is definitely the high point of the day that follows.

A month later, your dog dies in his sleep. You start listening to a lot of jazz around the house because you can’t stand the emptiness – though you’d never admit that to yourself – and because you feel you ought to in your position. A single guy in his thirties, no relations, no real friends, with no social life; it sounds like the life of someone a bit more glamorous, like a poet or a musician or an artist.

Eventually it happens. You come home from work, make some dinner, put on a Coltrane record, sit on the couch and that’s when it happens: you burst into tears. You cry for more than an hour straight. You cry until your eyes burn and swell up and you’ve gone hoarse from sobbing. You’ve cried a large wet spot into the cushioned arm of your couch. You’ve sniffled so hard that your nose hurts. There is a pile of soggy tissues next to you. Your breath is ragged and you know that if you tried to speak, you’d be hoarse.

You feel good, better, happier. You needed that.

You feel alive.

Six years later, you bump into your landlady from the apartment building. You find out that the pretty girl in the coffee shop had lived in apartment 206, the apartment next to yours. Why you hadn’t known that at the time seems a little strange. You just compulsively asked the landlady about that night with the ambulance, that night you hadn’t thought about once since the day you vowed to stop obsessing over it. You also find out that the pretty girl had hanged herself from the window frame, and the loud crash you’d heard that night was the glass breaking as the weight of her corpse brought the whole thing down with her into the parking lot.

Your ex-landlady tells you about the girl’s brother, how sweet he was about cleaning up the apartment and how devastated he was about the whole thing.

You sympathize for a moment before asking about other things like weather and life before getting on your way home. You kiss your wife hello and feed the dog.

You spend the rest of the evening listening to that John Coltrane record, hoping desperately to dream about the girl one more time, but you don’t, not ever again.

–

Kathleen Savoy was once a Black Heart staffer. She is a secretive individual, thus we can say no more about her personal activities or current whereabouts. In other words, we’ve lost her bio and had to make this one up on the spot.

I couldn’t see a thing, but I could make out his
Billy-club of a cock beneath the purplish-white street lights.
Reached into his boxers like a grab bag of Cracker Jacks
and pulled out the prize I won.

Could feel its penile thump in my heavy-duty hands.
Stooping down, his cock was this close to my face.
I devoured him like I was at an All You Can Eat Hot Bar
at Western Sizzlin’.

Last night this boy who was lizard-thin, whose name
I never got,
had a dick like a gun that he shoved in my mouth.
Held him back with the hand I write poems with.

His pubes smelled like Langston’s Seafood, but I didn’t care.
He had a butt like a balloon that scraped
against the brick wall of the Lord’s house.

His orange shirt kept dropping like a curtain in my face.
“Hold your shirt up,” I told him.
Beneath the peat moss of oak trees, I gave the boy head.
“Suck that dick,” he said.
He played with my tits like they were Slinkies.
“I’m gonna cum.” His spunk tasted like colored tissue.

I never swallowed because this is not a perfect world.
But in a poem, I can drink cum like Kool-Aid.

Late last night a boy I gave head to went home a
satisfied customer
And I have dried cum on my thigh to prove it.

–

Shane Allison has been called a nigger, a faggot, and a genius. His poems have appeared in Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, Oyster Boy Review, Plum Ruby Review, Coal City Review, Chiron Review, Absinthe Literary Review, and others. His chapbooks Black Fag and Cock and Balls continue to wreak havoc. He is friends with poet, Jarret Keene.

Heath looks unimpressed.

“CUT!” I yell.

“What’d I do?” Joseph asks.

“Joseph, baby, it’s not you – it’s me. In fact, it’s all about me. You’re history, kid.” I shove him aside and insert myself into the scene. “And… ACTION!”

“Kat likes pretty boys,” I begin, taking Joe’s place. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi. I’m Kat’s female friend, talking to one of her prospective suitors. I can play up her good side, whatever that is.

“Are you saying I’m not a pretty boy?” Heath asks, sticking with the script. He eyes me with suspicion. Or is that bemusement?

“No,” I say, continuing boldly, “I’m saying she likes vain boys who spend half their time pumping iron and the other half tending Corvettes. She likes guys with tight, cut arms that can lift her off the ground and twirl her in the air. She likes guys with legs that are hot from riding a bike or running a marathon. She likes guys with six-pack abs and very little body hair. In short, she likes gay men who hang out at the gym.” I am lying through my teeth. Sorry, Kat. Fight your own battles.

“That’s a damn shame. I’m not gay,” Heath ad-libs, with the slightest trace of an Australian accent.

“But you do have a really nice bod. Perhaps it’ll work in your favour anyway.” I pretend to be disinterested. Reel him in, push him away… that’s how this game works, right?

“Excellent.” He grins that half-smirk. It’s a killer. My legs wobble.

“She’s also a gigantic flirt. If you talk dirty, she’ll go along with it. But only if you meet her criteria.”

“What exactly are these criteria? I mean, what exactly makes someone a pretty boy, as opposed to a sexy boy?” He raises one of his perfect eyebrows.

“Well, let’s take you, for example. You’re extremely pretty.” I run my hand through his hair. “You’ve got this long, curly hair… these big brown eyes… and you’re skinny, but you look like you could still give a mean airplane. You’ve also got those freckles, which are adorable. And while most of those things could also qualify you as a contender for Sexiest Man Alive, it’s the freckles that ultimately put you into the ‘pretty’ category.”

“So the freckles really do it for you?”

“Oh, god. I’d sleep with you in a second,” I venture. Will he go for it?

“Yeah?” He raises his other eyebrow, then recovers his cool demeanour. “Good, because I’ve learnt everything I know from Mel Gibson.” Again, the smirking smile.

“Gross. Mel is definitely not sexy. He’s egotistical. You’d better unlearn that stuff. NOW.” I push a finger into his tight chest. So muscular. So defined. I quiver with anticipation, but maintain my cross expression.

“Yes, ma’am.” He wipes the smirk off his face and looks apologetic. Mmm, obedient. Even better!

“That’s my boy. Now you’re looking very pretty indeed,” I purr, sliding my hand underneath his shirt to feel the skin of his toned abs, his smooth pecs. He’s so warm, so close. His breath is soft on my
cheek.

“I thought this was about Kat?” His eyes betray him.

“The hell with her. She can find her own pretty boy.” I pull him by the lapels into a filthy French kiss and put one hand up to block the camera filming it all.

–

Laura Roberts is the Editor of Black Heart.

My pubes are the very threads that
make up the inseam that cuts between
your inner thigh. I can feel the joy
in being a favorite pair of your jeans.

Especially in public bathrooms where
I’m pulled down relentlessly to those
creamy ankles. The belt hangs loose
and limp on floors that look like
they haven’t been mopped for months.

I would fit perfectly at the butt,
and around your 32 inch waist
directly below stomach, chest
and a land of freckles.

And when you’re done
pulling me from each
lovely leg before a hot shower,
I shall hang pressed on a wire
hanger like I was never worn.

–

Shane Allison has been called a nigger, a faggot, and a genius. His poems have appeared in Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, Oyster Boy Review, Plum Ruby Review, Coal City Review, Chiron Review, Absinthe Literary Review, and others. His chapbooks Black Fag and Cock and Balls continue to wreak havoc. He is friends with poet, Jarret Keene.

Listening to Gato Barbieri,
while outside the night
is as still as Old Chaos.

There was a time, there was
a woman, a bed where
we coincided, once, once
upon that disordered time.

Now this music brings it back,
sets it on my lap, where
only yesterday, love in its
wild irresponsibility, visited.

–

Corey Mesler has been a book reviewer, fiction editor, university press sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son. With his wife he owns Burke’s Book Store, one of the US’s oldest independent bookstores. He has published prose and poetry in such diverse publications as Re)verb, Mitochondria, Monkeybicycle, Arkansas Review, Potomac Review, Slant, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Mid-American Poetry Review and Red Rock Review. His novel, We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon, is from Livingston Press.