The first, and only, ongoing, neverending missalette. We'll always be adding to this missalette. Check back for new entries. If you have a submission you'd like to send us, contact Brian at cubbycreatureb@hotmail.com
From the Print Version Editor's Intro All the Dogs (A Jump Rope Rhyme for Kids) by Ada Limon Nuthin' Sirius (a collection of conspiracy theories from the people of California) by Phil Ramirez Oasis (by Elton Cunniffe) American Reform (a memoir by Karl Soehnlein) Chemi Ali (a poem by Alec Way) Five Political Facts and Associations (by Alex Robertson Textor)	Oasis by Elton Cunniffe Pointing to a rusting belt wrapped around a large stump, teeth peppered with gold, the rasping, whistling voice, intoned a hymn meant to describe what he had felt the day his trusted companion had refused to bite the bark and instead turned butcher, garroting him from inner arm, down his body's side, slicing ribs, finally hitting belt and pelvis and there choked, spitting his flayed carcass to the forest floor. Shocked and bleeding but feeling no pain, he wondered why, why today? Any day, but why today. Nothing special about this Tuesday morning, nothing special about this cut. Most of the surrounding hillsides had been clear cut, only this stand remained. He hadn't worked in a month. He needed this contract. He wondered if the saw teeth needed to be repaired. His cousin worked furiously, tying, wrapping, stanching, and calling. There was a company helicopter working a grove one canyon over. The whir of blades reminded him of a different kind of blade, and he shuddered as the sound was accompanied by the instant replay of the blade, the blood, and finally blue sky and puffy clouds peaking through the swaying green tops. In a way serene and warm, soaked in blood, lying on his back just looking at the intense green and blue, thinking of nothing but tool catalogs and broken saw blades. His reverie was interrupted when some company men tried to lift him on to the airlift gurney. Shooting pain ripped through torn nerve endings and last dribbles of red oozed into his cousin's checkered flannel. A glimpse not before afforded of canopy and mist, comforting, for one born and raised in the forest. The cradle climbed higher and like a tether ball he swung. The winds were freezing, and as the helicopter pulled away he would glance sideways during each sway and could see his tiny green oasis disappearing into a newly formed desert of sun-scorched red scrub and brown sludge clays melting over hillsides in dirty chevrons of silt and top soils joining with the river in a marriage of mud and carrying what was left of a forest to sea. He awoke two days later in a haze of morphine and a straitjacket of bandages. He couldn't feel the fingers in his right hand. He tried moving his left-hand thumb and a gush of warmth flowed throughout his body. Four hours later he asked what had happened. The six-and-half-inch, black and red railroad spike had been found twenty feet away from the tree he was working. Notched and nearly cut in two. Both spike and saw had been ejected from the spongy bark when the saw blade made contact. Left over from one summer's protest, an ill-conceived time bomb, a make-shift landmine, its shrapnel of saw teeth and whirring high-speed metal would blind, maim and kill just like its manufactured counterpart. He had been spiked. Next to the stump lay a dozen rusted spikes. The twisted, toothless blade was fitted like a crown atop the former king of the forest. The lumberjack wasn't angry. He had come back the next year and finished the job. He beckoned me with his left hand to follow him. His right arm was paralyzed. There were steps cut in the fallen tree. We climbed the tree and walked its length. We neared the end of his grove. A circle radiating in all directions from the stump. I laid down on my back and watched the blue sky and puffy clouds peeking through the swaying green tops. It was exactly as he described it. Alone.	Online Only  Old Wine, New Bottles (by Doug Welch) Roused in thee Armchair (by Ben Tinker) Smartest Girl in San Francisco Black Habiru Musings (by Alec Way)
missalette home page cubby home page