BELLA
by Ed Galing

the first
time i heard
her sing on
that stage in
miami

the first
thing i
remembered
about her

was the way
she looked;

short,
squat,
brown hair
disheveled
like after a
midnight
drunk,

looking down
at the small
two a.m.
crowd in the
small room

most of us
half drunk or
asleep

she said,
out loud,
in an irate
voice,

wake up,
you fuckers,

and it was
the first time
i had ever heard
a woman
use
that
word
out
loud. with drops as big as buttons,
splatter bombing the shallow pools;
creating concentric ripples
with nowhere to expand.
With the first summer rain

In the early hours of the day,
Antonio leans forward
to sip from his coffee mug,
where it sits on the table;
too full to move without spilling.
Antonio leans forward,

JOANNE
by B.Z. Niditch

Joanne collects the tickets at your town multiplex movie house but is so lazy she discourages you from seeing the movie. One night no one entered any of the seven theatres and the managers were concerned. They spied on her that night. "Oh, that's an awful movie, rated G, and the seats have bad backs, and there is gum on the floor and the students do dirty things and we find condoms the next day." They decided to fire her on the spot until they realized she was right in her criticism and promoted her to manager, but she declined. She said selling tickets was quite enough for her.

NEAR THE BOTTOM
by Robert Roden

My wife comes home with several boxes of food
From a local charity. We're apparently entitled
To aid, at this point, with four children and our modest
Beginnings at work. The opportunities
To feel poor have been plentiful, lately, though I try
To tell my daughters that our station is only temporary.

My youngest is embarrassed, until she finds
A box of Trix cereal in each of the large cartons,
Along with several fruit bars we would normally buy
In the store. I cannot get over the different cans of tuna:
One looks like something left over from fifties fallout shelters;
The other, Sunny Select, suspiciously resembles cat food.

The label on the green can of (possibly radioactive) tuna reads,
Donated by the people of the United States of America
For domestic Food Assistance Programs, and offers such
Basic instructions as: Refrigerate after opening. Use within
24 hours. The other can advertises that it's dolphin safe,
A product of Thailand. It does not state how long it will last.

Though I feel somewhat diminished, digging through these cans
Of unheard-of brands with pictures reminiscent of seventies
Technicolor, I feel a slight chill when I discover, near the bottom,
A six pack of soda bearing the name OpenCola. The cans
Are somewhat modern, and read, CHECK OUT
THE SOURCE AT OPENCOLA.COM. Beneath that

I see, V1.0, and, open CAN, "excitedly"; join
($can, $mouth); while ($colaRemaining>0)
{If ($reallyThirsty) {$chug}else {$sip}}.
The cola is another product of the United States,
And I cannot help but think that so is everything else
About the way that I am looking at this.

It is difficult to know how to feel
About the packaging ploy going on here: with all the dollar signs,
Parentheses, and so forth scattered in the text on the can,
It becomes clear to me that I must solve this strange equation.
I listen intently as I pull back the tab,
And hear the bubbles whispering as they pop.