VALENTINE’S DAY

Praise for VALENTINE’S DAY by Don De Grazia:

“Hold onto your hearts, folks, this eminently readable tale about the redemptive power of pre-genital love is sweeter than an ice cream soda served with two straws.”

– Don De Grazia

By Don De Grazia

“Valentine” was my stripper name.  One day, after my lunchtime shift at the Hun-ee-Suckle Gentleman’s Club, I put my tassels and g-string back in my locker, got dressed, and walked to catch the bus to that shooting gallery in the abandoned building, so I could trade in the crumpled dollar bills that all those gross men had thrown at me.  You know–for a fix. As I walked to the bus stop, I saw a piece of notebook paper floating in the gutter.  It was all folded up into a triangle, like how kids do when they play that football game where you flick the paper “football” back and forth on the desk.  It reminded me of the time I played that game in 3rd grade with a boy named Tuck.  Tuck liked the crusts cut off of his peanut butter and jellies.  He wouldn’t eat a PB&J if there was any trace of crust on the Wonderbread.  Tuck was the only boy in class who didn’t call me “Tubs” because I was so chubby back then.  It was like he was blind to all that baby fat.  It was like he saw something beautiful inside me. (more…)

SPIRALING

By Noelle Aleksandra Hufnagel

When Veronica tells me she’s leaving, as she’s saying the words, I begin to imagine all the ways she might die before I get up the nerve to tell her I love her.

At first, they’re your average, run-of-the-mill death-scenarios. Appendicitis. Meningitis. Brain Aneurism. But then they become more specific, more uncommon. Black Widow Spider. Anthrax Exposure. Freak Nuclear Explosion. There are so many possibilities. I know them all by heart, every last one of them. These facts and statistics used to give me a certain sense of control, but now they’re turning against me. They’re making me feel helpless again. (more…)

WHEN SPARKS FLY; WHEN DOVES CRY

By Julia Borcherts

WEEK ONE

It’s my first night of welding school. I’m standing in a simulated shop with twenty-three men. We’re all in our twenties, all go-getters who’ve taken the initiative to learn some skills to get better jobs.

But they’re all standing in a huddle as far away from me as they can get; unified in a wordless pact to freeze me out. It’s clear that they resent my intrusion—playing with fire is a macho way to spend your Thursday night but the badass factor drops down to zero if there’s a pussy in the posse who’s trying to pretend she’s one of the guys. (more…)

ROMEO AND JULIET

By Jessie Morrison

Every year at about this time I teach Romeo and Juliet to a new crop of freshman English students, and every year, I fall in love with the play all over again.  As a general rule, I’ve found that my female students are much more forgiving of Romeo’s streak for the melodramatic (this is especially true after I show them clips from Baz Luhrmann’s version of the movie, where Romeo is played by a very young, very sexy Leonardo Di Caprio).  The boys, on the other (more…)

CONFESSIONS OF A FOURTH GRADE LOVE SLUT

By Darwyn Jones

I, Danny Boyer, was a fourth grade love slut.

I loved Julie Sadowski because she sat next to me. I loved Ilana Shabanov because she shared a sandwich with me once. I loved Eileen Dougharty because I saw her at the dime store and she might have waved at me. In my community of Arcadia Valley, Missouri, there were 42 girls in the fourth grade class and that year I fell in love at least 50 times.   (more…)

AND THEN THERE’S ME

By Cyn Vargas

Of all the days, it was on my birthday when I realized that Steve had a crush on the pretty girl that worked at Dunkin Donuts.

“Come up to the counter. I don’t bite unless you’re into that sort of thing,” she said.

“Sometimes,” he said to her. (more…)

RUDY, MY LOVE

By Meredith Counts

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THE TRAINS IN TOKYO

By Amanda E. Snyder

You should know that if you ever go to Japan, you will never, ever pour your own drink. A carafe of crystal clear sake will be sitting on the table in front of you, and should your hand even flinch in its direction, should you even glance at your glass – your Japanese friend Emi, sitting next to you in the booth, or her kind-of-sort-of boyfriend Haru-san, sitting across from her, or perhaps your date, a ladies’ man with a glittering smile named Katsu-san, will immediately take the carafe (more…)

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

  By Wyl Villacres

BIG GIRL PROBLEMS

SLEEP FREEDOM

By Matt Martin

I WAS ALMOST A NAVY WIFE

By Virginia Baker

I was almost a Navy wife. And by almost I mean that I was dating a Navy guy for a while, say two and a half years, and the two of us would talk about our inevitable marriage over and over again, never tiring of the topic.  By the time I turned nineteen, we had planned our small, backyard wedding that would take place in my quaint suburban town in New Jersey.  Our friends and family would be dressed in their nicest clothing and they’d all smile and give nice speeches, toasting the two of us, the love we’d sustained, throughout (more…)

FIRSTS

By René Cousineau

May 28^th 2007

Mason comes over to my mom’s house and we watch M in the basement. His hair is short, and he’s wearing a pink button-down shirt. I keep thinking that he’s way too attractive to be hanging out with me. When he walked through the door, my mom silently mouthed, “He’s cute.” (more…)

REDBIRD

By Daniel Nathan Terry

May-Nell Wilson opened the bag of Wonder Bread, bypassed the heel, took out the first slice, and then gently fed it into the side of the chrome Toast-O-Lator. She tucked a loose strand of her graying hair behind her left ear, leaned over the kitchen counter, and watched, as intently as a child, as the machine swallowed the white bread like a silver snake’s head devouring an egg. She listened to the low hum as the internal coils heated. They sounded so satisfied. (more…)

SHATTERED

By Gary Beck

When love has departed

and only bitter dreams remain,

I think of midnight meetings

as we groped like two deaflings,

eager to touch each other,

until there was no more past. (more…)

PERSONAL PRINCE CHARMING

By Gibson Culbreth

Let’s talk about love.  It’s what all the cool kids are doing, right?  It is February; time for love stories and big plastic heart-shaped things swinging from store rafters.  But let’s really talk about it for a second.  Let’s talk about what love means to you.  To me love is a fucking huge concept.  It’s this stretchy, luminous thing we strive for every day.  Whether or not we’re apt to admit it, love or the desire to find loves tends to be one of the biggest driving forces in everything we do.  My first attempt at love was with a guy named Ethan and we were together for three whole years.  That’s great right? (more…)

LOVE IS A BRICK HOUSE

IN IT TO WIN IT

PLAN B

By Mikaela Shea

“Are you coming in with me?” Nicki asks.

“Nah, I’ll wait in the car. I’ll look like an idiot in there.” Jace avoids Nicki’s gaze as he says it, tinkering with the radio.

“Whatever,” she says, slamming the door, walking across the parking lot. Between the doors, she wipes the tears that have streaked lines of mascara down her cheeks. (more…)

THAT LOVELY DARK-HAIRED GIRL

By Andrew Reilly

It usually happens in crowds, usually when I’m not even thinking about it, maybe a young woman outside of Water Tower Place shakes her head just so, just enough to make her long black hair shuffle over her shoulders, tips becoming tiny brushes painting the world around her so full of promise and possibility, head turning to reveal a soft smile curling in such a way that it’s her, I tell myself. It has to be her.

Except it’s not her. Because it’s never her. So I keep heading south on Michigan. (more…)

NERVOUS DAD

By Ryan Buell & Artist Abby Easley

KURT KENNEDY AND THE PROCESS OF ‘LAYING LINCOLN DOWN’

Steven Spielberg isn’t the only guy interested in exploring the multiplicity of Abraham Lincoln’s life and death.  In 2004, after President Reagan’s death, writer Kurt Kennedy became curious about one of the United States’ most despised and beloved presidents – Abraham Lincoln.  He started by devouring research on Civil War embalming techniques and Lincoln’s funeral train.  Laying Lincoln Down tells the story of Lincoln’s funeral train from the unexpected perspective of Lincoln’s embalmer, Henry P. Cattell, who was one of more than 300 people to accompany “The Lincoln Special” on the entire 1,654 mile funeral procession route which retraced Mr. Lincoln’s cross-country journey as president-elect in 1861. And since there is always more than one way to tell a  great story, Kennedy has also created a graphic novel version of Laying Lincoln Down with artist Dan Bauer. Kennedy sat down with HYPERTEXT’s Emily Roth to discuss the research, writing and art of this incredible and complicated project.

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The Remarkably Unremarkable Tiffanie DiDonato: A Review of “Dwarf”

By Emen William Garcia

Prior to Dwarf: A Memoir, the only book I ever bothered to read (and finish) about “little people” was The Hobbit. Unlike The Hobbit, Dwarf is not epic medieval fantasy, nor is it about hobbits or “actual” dwarves, neither of which exist I think. For the sake of political correctness, it’s rather a biography of a “little person”: one in whom we observe the sort of dwarfism—more or less obvious signs of slowed, stunted, or otherwise abnormal growth—that can result from any one of 200 to 300 or more distinct medical conditions.

To put politically incorrectly, I’ve read a book about a “midget.”

Co-written by People.com editor and author Rennie Dyball, Dwarf is the autobiography of Tiffanie DiDonato, who at birth was diagnosed with diastrophic dysplasia. For readers unsure of what that is exactly, DiDonato goes through the trouble to “save you the trip to Wikipedia”, explaining it as “a very rare type of dwarfism that results in short stature, joint deformities, and very short arms and legs.”

“From birth to the age of twelve,” she writes, “my arms were so short that I couldn’t reach my own ears, or other parts of my body for that matter.”

Starting at the age of 12, Tiffanie underwent a series of then-controversial bone-lengthening procedures, which essentially involved breaking/sawing the bones in her arms and legs into segments, using external metal pins and braces to align them, and regularly separating the bones a millimeter at a time (by turning a screw)so that the bones regenerate in the negative space between them and fill in the gaps—effectively lengthening the limbs. (more…)

The Genesis

By Tony A. Bowers

Tommy lay in the darkness of his bedroom, tossing softly with his panda bear pillow, struggling to find just the right comfy spot to fall into a deep sleep. Outside his door his mother and father’s voices melted into the crooning of Rick James. It felt like warm honey on Tommy’s ears. The sounds and movements in the living room nudged against the edges of his dark cocoon.

With a twist to the right, Tommy found that spot. He felt himself slipping into the void…

Crash

Sleep fell away from Tommy. The sounds of the front room jaggedly ripped into the bedroom. There were screams and wails, grunts and the sound of crunching glass.

Tommy pushed himself out of bed. Panda pillow cast aside. He opened the door and ran into the hall.

No, No,

Why you make me do that huh, why you make me…

Ugh, Ugh uhh!

Tommy stopped short at the rim of the room. There stood his father crying and muttering to himself, ‘why you make me,’ each word like taffy in his mouth. His shoulders hunched, a jagged gin bottle remnant in his right hand. His left hand was paralyzed into a claw.

His mother was sitting straight like six o’clock in a ripped vinyl kitchen chair. Her face pressed into a fright mask. Lips pulled low, eyes alive with fire. She was drenched to her torso in gin and blood. Her breathing was quick and shallow. It reminded Tommy of a dying bird that had crashed against his window last summer. He watched that bird, each second pulled out into an hour, until that bird’s breathing ceased. He felt cold, wondering if history would repeat. But his mother didn’t stop breathing. The middle of her scalp laid open as if it had been unzipped. The pieces of glass sparkled in her hair like diamonds in the sun.

Tommy couldn’t put into words what he felt at that moment. But he did get a picture in his mind. It was of the time he was left alone on the school playground.

Dusk hung heavy in the air, his mother and father weren’t there to fetch him. All the other kids and adults were gone. He stared at the empty play-lot and shivered. The jungle gym looked like the skeleton of some long dead beast.

Brittle, crunchy leaves blew across the ground, sounding like a cracked baby’s rattle. The metal chain of the swing knocked against the swing set pole,

Cling… chink… cling

That vision sat in his mind as he watched his mom and dad now. He didn’t know it, but the oily residue of these desolate memories would come bubbling up inside of him until the very end of his days.

Tony A. Bowers is a Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department MFA graduate.  He has published short stories in Hair Trigger 30, Hair Trigger 31, The Story Week Reader and several online magazines.

HYPERTEXT Interview with Randy Richardson

By Emily Roth

While writing his second novel, Cheeseland, Randy Richardson used fiction as a vehicle to mold ghosts from his own past, transform them into art and examine how a single event can reverberate over time. Cheeseland tells the story of two boys who, after a mutual friend’s suicide, skip their high school graduation, take a road trip to Wisconsin and attempt to rebuild their devastated friendship. Richardson sat down with HYPERTEXT to discuss the journey of writing and publishing this novel — as well as how art can become activism.

Cheeseland is available for purchase in e-book form, and paperbacks are available for purchase through Eckhartz Press.  And check this out:  one dollar from every soft-cover book sale will go to the non-profit suicide prevention initiative Elyssa’s Mission.

HT: How did you find Echartz Press?

Randy Richardson: I’m not so sure that it wasn’t a case of Eckhartz finding me more than me finding them. Eckhartz is a small independent publisher that Rick Kaempfer and David Stern launched in Chicago about a year ago. I’d known Rick beforehand. We’d both contributed to the Cubbie Blues anthology and we shared many common friends, interests and experiences, not the least of which was that we were both long-suffering, die-hard Cubs fans. Rick is also a member of the Chicago Writers Association, a group to which I serve as president. He attended one of our events and tapped me on the shoulder. He had heard through the grapevine that I was shopping a manuscript, and asked me how that was going. Well, I told him it wasn’t going all that well, and he then asked me if he could take a look at it. I of course said yes, and a couple months later he asked me if he could publish it. From the day Rick asked to see my manuscript until the day Cheeseland was released was about six months.  It all happened very fast, which is not the norm in the publishing world. (more…)

HYPERTEXT Interviews Laurie Lawlor & Stephanie Kuehnert

By Diamond Dees

While censors and book-banners continue to suffer from arrested development, young adult fiction keeps evolving.  After all, young adult fiction tackles the same themes as so-called ‘adult’ fiction — questions of sexuality, depression, love, peer pressure, illness, divorce, violence, drug/alcohol abuse, bullying — while keeping a young audience in mind.  A number of beloved books, including Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume, The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephan Chbosky, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein are just a few of the most frequently banned young adult books.

So, is there such a thing as a young adult book that is too dark or too mature? HYPERTEXT talks to writers Laurie Lawlor and Stephanie Kuehnert about the intricacies of writing young adult fiction.

DD: Is censorship still hard to deal with when writing young adult fiction?  Judy Blume broke some barriers.  Does censorship still exist? (more…)

HYPERTEXT Interviews Julia Borcherts

By Emily Roth

Combining the twin passions of most writers – drinking and listening to great writing – seemed like a no-brainer.  So in spring 2005, Julia Borchers (and a few buddies) founded Reading Under the Influence.  Since then RUI, as it is better known, has been serving up great stories and drinks the first Wednesday of every month at the classic north side pub Sheffield’s.  Julia, who is also a Chicago writer and teacher, sat down with HYPERTEXT to talk about the technicalities of the series as well as its implications for Chicago and literature as a whole. (more…)

HYPERTEXT Interview With Christine Sneed

By Christine Rice

Christine Sneed has put in her 10,000 hours and then some, Mr. Gladwell.  I first heard Christine read last winter on a frigid, snowy night at a Come Home Chicago event at the Underground Wonder Bar.  Tell you the truth, I went to hear one of my favorite writers, Stuart Dybek, but walked out of there with a new favorite.

Her first collection of short stories, Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, won the 2009 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction.  It was also nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, won the Ploughshares Zacharis Award and won the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award.

Her new novel, Little Known Facts (Bloomsbury Press) will be published in 2013.  Pre-order Little Known Facts here. (more…)

The Hole

By Meredith Grahl

I want to preface this story by saying that I love my mother.

“There is a hole in the yard,” my mother says. We are unpacking the U-Haul at our new place. John’s parents and mine are spending their Sunday helping us bring in boxes and our moms take turns watching the baby.

“Watch out for that hole,” she tells us, pointing. “Be careful.” (more…)

HYPERTEXT Interview With Sheree L. Greer

By Diamond Dees

A few of Sheree L. Greer‘s latest obsessions include coconut water, talking to strangers, waiting for Dexter and holding her collection of short fiction, Once and Future Lovers, in her hands.   In addition to being a dedicated and passionate teacher and writer, she’s also an amazing live-performance reader.  Sheree recently sat down with HYPERTEXT and waxed elegant about a few aspects of her writing process. (more…)

Escaping

By Aimee Stahlberg

Time sped by after I broke up with Tommy, zipping before my eyes in little more than a blur. Before I knew it, February had turned into summer, and Jackie had turned 18 and graduated from high school. I found it hard to believe that I would be 21 in a few short months, that Jackie would be going to college, and that truly nothing would ever go back to how it used to be. Mostly, I could barely fathom that it seemed as though we were finally starting to seem normal again. (more…)

Meow

By Jon Natzke

Daniel is sitting on the couch in his sister’s apartment, phone blaring dial tone in one hand and the other twisting and untwisting the cap of a skinny bottle of Polish vodka, the only bit of alcohol his sister kept in the condominium because Daniel told her to.

“Sarah, I’m not some addict. I’ll be out of your hair by next Tuesday.” (more…)

Poems by John Grey

HER PLAGUE

 On my sister’s outback sheep station, locusts are unnecessary.

Drought comes with more buzz and carapace and feeler

than any Biblical plague.

Nothing’s devoured as thoroughly as grass that never grew.

Her kids envy those who can rush out into the fields

and, without even trying, trap an insect in ajar. (more…)

BREAKFAST AT WORK by Marco Djermaghian

Hypertext Hearts Birch Hills @ World’s End

The Hypertext Interview With Geoff Hyatt

HT: What’s your idea of a good Valentine’s Day?

GH: I don’t think you can print that.

HT: Are you a romantic?  Not in the 18th century European sense.  More like a modern-day romantic? (more…)

Photo Essay by Sarah Faust

Mother’s Lap

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Marco Djermaghian

Maranjab, Salt Lake Desert, Near Kashan, Iran, May 2012

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“Spit on Qaddafi Day” Shows Not All Local Teens Are Bad

Brian Costello

  [Originally printed on the back page “Local Voices” op-ed column of the Lake Lavender Coupon Clipper Monthly, May 1986. Reprinted with kind permission of the author of the piece, Peggy Saunderson.]

It seems that every time you open up the newspaper or turn on the news, teenagers are getting into some kind of trouble. Well, instead of focusing on the negative like everybody else, I’d like to tell you about three local teenagers who are making a positive difference. While others (myself included!) complain about Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, these three decided to do something about it. (more…)

What Happened To Daisy

 Michelle Pretorius

When she thought about it (and she thought about it often), Daisy was amazed that Martin was interested in her. Sure, she was a great cook; she grew her own vegetables on the farm, and insisted on the best cuts of meat at the local butcher shop, shunned store bought pie-crusts and preserved her own fruit.  She had made quite a success of the small village eatery where the local farmers had lunch with their families on Sundays after church and occasionally celebrated this or that and where teenagers took their first serious dates on Saturday nights, hoping for some necking and maybe more later; but when it came down to it, one had to admit, Daisy was rather homely looking. (more…)

After

Cyn Vargas

The tree house burnt down in 1983. From the day it was built by Henry Cornwell’s dad back when we were seven to the day it went up in flames almost five years later, Henry and I spent many afternoons there.
After school, sometimes we’d trade moon pies for trail mix – Henry loved trail mix – and then we’d draw on the wooden boards inside with chalk. Tic-tac-toe, hangman, or just some silly sketches – mine were all stick men or stick women or stick dogs – but that Henry did have talent.  His drawings looked like drawings. (more…)