Month: August 2024
Hold ‘Em
by John Arthur
We rigged the deck while Jay was taking a piss, so he would be dealt the eight and nine of hearts, but I’d have the king and the ace. The three others we needed would also show their faces, one on the flop, one on the turn, one on the river, and we knew he’d think he finally had a winner. He was always on an epic run of bad beats. We all watched to see his excitement. His tell was licking his lips before he bet. He licked them like he was about to eat the first real meal he’d had in days, which for him was often the case. His parent’s pantry was bare and the only thing his mom and dad cooked bubbled up on a spoon. Their favorite meal would soon be his too. But that day we were just playing hold ‘em in my basement, six old blood brothers getting older, forgetting all the pacts we made, five of us getting ready to leave him by leaving home. Before we dealt we counted his chips. The goal wasn’t to rob him, just to play a joke. When he showed the straight flush his face was flushed with hope. For a moment, to preserve the only joy I’d seen in his eyes in years, I thought about saying, “nice hand,” and tossing my cards into the muck, but I didn’t. I slow rolled them with a grin, letting him know that he never had a fucking chance.
John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a cashier/deli worker, a pizza delivery driver, a kati roll delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a UPS overnight box loader, a caddy for a weekend, a landscaper for a week or two until the guy didn’t pay us and me and a friend had to show up at his house and demand payment, a librarian and library director, a municipal manager, a waiter, a journalist, an editor, and the world’s worst jewelry salesperson. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, failbetter, trampset, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. His band is The Deafening Colors.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Hold ‘Em”? “Hold ‘em” started off as a response to Rattle’s prompt poem challenge. In its original form it included a haiku at the end and was titled Hold ‘em Haibun. While it wasn’t selected that month for Rattle’s prompt poem of the month, I received some positive and encouraging feedback from their prompt poems editor. I then began to revise the piece and ultimately felt I wasn’t getting the haiku at the end right, so I cut the haiku and the piece became flash fiction instead. I think the piece works better this way. The original prompt was to pick a card out of a deck of cards and write a poem about it. I was a teenager during the poker boom following Chris Moneymaker’s win at the World Series of Poker in 2003. I also grew up near Atlantic City, New Jersey. Gambling was all around us, and we used to gather after school and on weekends to play hold ‘em for hours. Unfortunately, this also coincided with the opioid epidemic, which was devastating throughout the country, and the town I grew up in was hit hard. A few classmates died from overdoses while we were in high school. Others struggled with, or are struggling with, addiction long after. Many of the friends I grew up with spent some of their formative years as young adults in and out of prisons, rehabs, or both. This piece straddles the line between creative non-fiction and flash fiction, but it is fictionalized enough that I felt it should fall under the fiction category. Either way, as with all writing, I hope it offers something true. by Baylee Less My Dad started making his own juice at home twice weekly in the fall of 2022 when he received the news that prostate cancer was living inside him. As the self-diagnosed vegan in the family, my Dad called upon me to embark on this expedition with him, but juicing is a verb that my Dad and I never expected to share. My Dad read Chris Beat Cancer, a memoir about a 26 year-old with Stage 3 colon cancer who beat the odds by adhering to a plant-based diet. And while my Dad underwent all the traditional treatments as well, he felt that changing his diet was one additional step he could take to combat his curdling cells. One day, while holding the book between his palms, my Dad told me Chris is from Memphis, too. When I would come visit, the book would move throughout the house. It jumped from place to place, around the home, mimicking my Dad’s fluttering household movements. Time was an asset between us now, so I attempted to make the most of it. I would suggest reading, walking the dog, micromanaging a crossword puzzle, but my Dad steadied himself through his routine. He wobbled without unloading the dishwasher – so, I grabbed the utensil rack, and we shared this too. A few months after his diagnosis, we started juicing together. The process began with him grabbing his reusable shopping bags and frenetically-written list. Whole Foods was our destination, another place we never expected to go together but we went anyway. My Dad was avoiding additives and MSG, sugars and high-fructose corn syrup. All of these things would feed the cancer, and no one wanted that. These dietary restrictions would eventually relax as my Dad’s body mass dropped during radiation treatment. Then, we would feed him anything because we never expected my Dad to not have an appetite. At Whole Foods, my Dad pushed the cart while I grabbed the parsley, microgreens, cucumbers, and ginger – the two 16-pound bags of carrots, turmeric, bell peppers, and beets. Occasionally, when I would turn around from the hissing produce cooler, my Dad would be picking through the apples, turning them over, looking for brown spots. Together, we reviewed the cornucopia-looking metal cart, and he crossed each item off the list. We checked out, and my Dad would take the receipt, a foot and a half long, and shake his head. My Dad never expected to buy organic produce in bulk for the sheer purpose of grinding it to pulp. But before we could press the fruits and vegetables down, watching their fibers split like string cheese, the most tedious task of juicing began. We peeled and chopped, soaked and scrubbed, sorted and weighed. I started with the greens, rinsing the romaine and taking a scrub brush to the dirt trapped in between leaves. My Dad soaked the dirt-stained produce in the plugged-up sink, and his elbows dyed themselves pink from peeling the beets. After two hours of list-making, shopping, peeling, and chopping, the juicing took no time at all. The whir of the rotating blades hummed us into quiet communion as my Dad cleaned the kitchen and I stuffed chunks of our plunder into the neck of the juicer. We bottled the liquids in glass, and they found their home on the top shelf of my parents’ fridge. My Dad would thank me – as he always did – for helping him with this task. “I know it’s not the way you would choose to spend your Saturday.” He would kiss my cheek and hand me a juice to take home. Baylee Less is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Memphis and is a reader for the literary journal, The Pinch. She is working on her first novel, and while not writing, she works full-time at a nursing home in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Juicing”? I wrote “Juicing” about a year after my Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has a rare and aggressive form of cancer, which has handed us a timeline of life shorter than either of us ever prepared for. When this happens, one tends to feel that they must stuff as much quality time in as possible, and that each time together must be meaningful, memorable. This was a struggle for my Dad and I, and we often found ourselves sitting in silence or doing household chores together. Juicing became this new activity that we shared, that was still considered a chore, but the newness of it, the difference of it from our everyday, made it become meaningful between us – and memorable. I don’t think my Dad ever realized how special this time became for me, so I wanted to create a piece that showed it. In short, “Juicing” is my love letter to the surprising tasks that bring us closer.CNF: Juicing
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2023. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/09 • Rae Gourmand
09/16 • Chiwenite Onyekwelu
09/23 • TBD
09/30 • TBD