The Sheriff of Faraday

The ninth day of the bicentennial eclipse had been unlike any other days on that distant sector of Faraday. For starters, Faraday’s eclipses only ever lasted the course of a workday, with the exception of the eclipse of August 3rd, 5933, in which the solar alignment lasted for exactly 24 hours. Interestingly enough, the only arrest that was successfully carried out that day was when George Harlon was detained for his late grandfather’s charge of public urination.

The “Harlon Case” aside, the eclipses, which had become famous for the way that they refracted the atmosphere at certain times of day like a kaleidoscope, had not ever fluctuated in their schedule before. They would always begin on the third day of the eighth month of the year, once every fifty years. At exactly 3:52 AM, to be exact.

The alignment of all fifty-seven baby suns over the sky at this time, through some strange thermodynamic phenomenon that no one in all of Faraday had ever bothered to figure out, would bring the temperature down to “a bit cooler than usual” degrees Fahrenheit (as opposed to “thermometers don’t work because they explode out here” degrees Celsius). This system of using descriptive adjectives as opposed to numbers was first pioneered by Dr. Carmichael Faraday
himself, who, among other worthless accomplishments, such as being the first man to earn more than one PhD from another planet, founded the town of Faraday and constructed its unique defense system before he himself was caught in the act of sexual congress with a bag of cocaine
and was promptly decapitated by forty-six rapid fire high caliber gunshots. 

Although early in the morning, the first stray rays from the infant stars would slither out from between the nebulas of the night and threaten to scorch the little village into nothingness
(which would have been the case, had the houses — like all the foreign matter on the planet,
 including the townsfolk — not been altered and mutated by these same rays to thrive on the infernal world [These mutations had no ill effects on the inanimate building materials, but cursed the humans with a chicken pox-like skin disease which burned like hell after a hard workout.]).

In the age when Dr. Faraday and his plucky crew arrived on the scalded rock, The good doctor had the first town built to emulate the romanticized locales of Earth’s wild west, complete with a saloon, barbershop, schoolhouse, hotel, windmill, and stable, all of which were loving recreations of the buildings of the time of showdowns and desperadoes. 

Yes, as anyone could see, Faraday had a theme — a theme broken only by the jailhouse, which had been constructed
from scraps of the original starcruiser which the ancestors who built Faraday arrived in. The haphazard dome had no paint or decorations, save for a tall pole just right of the jailhouse, bearing an aged megaphone, which, since the dawn broke, had been blaring nonstop.

On a usual day, most of the folks would be wide awake, sweating, panicking, and preparing futile attempts to hide or fight what was to come. Sometimes Johnny Bosch would be
 prancing about, yodeling from his window in his room above the saloon, attempting to convince his newest lover to allow him to procreate with her before he was hauled off. 

Downstairs, Abner Fitch, the bartender, would be shoving his barrels of moonshine deep beneath the floorboards of
the bar, all while Howard and Franklin Jennard, the twin boys, ran about hooting and hollering in the main street, rousing their neighbors from their homes. Then, as the thirtieth, fourth, and sixteenth baby suns would turn the dawn sky into a mirror of frolicking silver, the wake-up call would come.

There had not been the need for a wake-up call in eight days.
Back when things were normal, the call would come as a roaring, foghorn voice, signifying one thing for the poor people of Faraday. The Sheriff’s Boys were out and about.

“MOUNT UP!”

They would hurdle out of the jailhouse at the call from their leader Hoss. These six humanoid robots, each with a single treaded wheel in the place of legs, looked and acted identically, but it had long become tradition for the people of Faraday to dress up and decorate the robots the day before the eclipse. As a result, each robot was given an outfit and nickname to denote each other. Hoss was adorned in a ten-gallon hat perched atop his smooth, visored cranium, which would be fastened in place with a dollop of cambull glue.

Hoss was famous for the twin megaphones molded to the sides of his head, which would project his computerized voice to the people of Faraday. Not that he had much to say. As Hoss was not a living thing, he had not learned any words or phrases other than “mount up,” “freeze, you crook,” and a recital of the Miranda warning, and therefore found it pointless to attempt to commune through these statements. As Hoss and company thundered out of the jailhouse doors and onto the main street, he mimed clearing his throat, before roaring his words for all to hear.

“FREEZE, YOU CROOK!”

“Cheese it!” young Howard Jennard would yell. “The Sheriff's Boys’re here! Everyone scatter!” The people of Faraday sprinted as they could, out of their homes and heading for the
hills, while a few chanced peeks out of their curtains, saw the chaos, and ducked back down.

Hoss and the others wasted no time in rapidly approaching them and scanning them. There was no need to be picky. The Sheriff’s Boys could easily outspeed the people if they wanted to, but as it stood, it was far easier for them to separate the criminals from the innocents by herding them down the streets.

Hoss’s sensors locked onto a young woman in the crowd, and he sped up to approach her.

Maria Fetters, he registered. Great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Felicia Fetters. Crimes:
Petty theft, cambull tipping, and public nuisance. Sentence: eight months. 

Hoss’s engine roared as he ripped through the wave of fearful humans. He raised one hand to hold his ten-gallon hat
 on his head. Hoss’s magnetized joints in his other arm began to shift and reconnect his arm into a spool of steel wire, fashioned like a lasso. The arm shot ahead, snaking around Ms. Fetters’
ankles and yanking her to the ground. Hoss began to broadcast the Miranda warning, drowning out the crowd’s panicked screams and yells as he pulled Ms. Fetters toward himself, his expressionless face unperturbed by her tears and frantic cries for help. She kicked and struggled
until Hoss’ Surround Sound audio sensors detected a wet, quiet snap, and she quieted her screeching to a light moaning. Hoss’ grip had shattered her shin.

The Fetters had lived on Faraday for sixteen generations, and they had developed a bit of an initiation sequence for the eldest daughter on the day of her first eclipse. This had become a strictly female ceremony ever since Terrence Fetters divorced his wife Lucriecia, before leaving her to care of their three sons and her daughter Felicia (no relation to the criminal). These boys would grow up to lead dull, uninteresting lives, with the pleasant exception being the middle brother, who would gain a significant amount of notoriety as the ringmaster of a flea circus.

Nonetheless, the tradition remained. The advice was quite simple. Don’t let them see your guilt.

Maria’s mother was a firm believer in the intelligence of the robots, which was complete unfounded and, as far as Maria was concerned, absurd. Just because the robots looked kind of like people didn’t mean they were people. If they felt emotions, she argued, why did they capture people with so much as a ‘hello?’ Maria had always thought a response to the eclipse was stupid, anyway, and so absolutely nothing about the advice she learned when she was seventeen was
keeping her safe at sixty-seven.

It had been a few hours since Maria was taken back to the jailhouse. She had given up on pleading and had fallen silent in thirty-six minutes of being taken away. Had her mutations not relocated her tear and sweat glands to the base of her spine, she mostly likely would have been bawling. The best she could manage was a dry heave which sounded oddly similar to the gurgled cries of an alley cat she had drowned in a ditch when she was nine. This had never been listed as
a crime because, quite frankly, when she had told her parents, they refused to believe that a cat was capable of surviving in a place like Faraday. They brushed it off as a spoiled little girl wasting time for attention and forgot all about the incident.

The jailhouse wasn’t intended to make its residents or prisoners feel uncomfortable, but ages of little to no attention had left the interior without much in the way of “fancy decor.” Not that there was any need for ornamentation. The single room was about the size of a ballroom and was completely dark. Or maybe it was really bright. Maria’s head was swimming down her gut and it seemed to be trying to get home, but it got stuck near her lungs and couldn’t get out. It was like this light. Not there when you needed it, but only when you didn’t.

During eclipses, Maria recalled from her school textbook, the conventional rules of light and space do not always apply.

“Hoss?”
Maria couldn’t understand why she thought of her jailer at that moment, but she was struggling against what she thought were chains in what reminded her of medieval torture
chambers and the color pink and suddenly she really just wanted to tell Hoss something.

“Hoss?”

In the dark that smelled like machine oil and glue, Maria baked in silence like it was a warm, fuzzy feeling. After nine minutes exactly, she was aware of the cold, inanimate surface
that hovered in front of Maria’s face. She wasn’t sure which one of The Sheriff’s Boy’s it had been, but Had she been a little girl again, she might have been star-struck at the chance to be so close to this legend, let alone being able to talk to him.

She spoke slowly, with the grin intonations of someone on their deathbed choosing their last words. Unfortunately, as emotional intent is lost on someone like Hoss, that only made Maria said next all the more ridiculous and confusing. She spoke between parched sobs, heaving for oxygen with each pause.

“‘In…5276, Doc..Doctor Carmichael Faraday…found a solution to the livestock issue of the..then-code named Planet Goldilocks-5, via…splicing the genes of dromedary camels and cows. These experiments are known today as ‘cambulls,’ and serve a variety of purposes in our daily lives. Yet, when these multipur……purpose beasts of burden were first unveiled,…Dr. Faraday was vilified and ridiculed. They accused of playing gif and had threatened to kill him, and they succeeded in killing many of the first cambulls until it was revealed that the camels and bulls that had been brought to the planet had procreated of their own will, and that Faraday
merely helped these burgeoning animals become an entirely new species. And yet, those first cambulls are neither mourned nor remembered for their sacrifice.’”

Maria coughed.
“That’s…that’s a quote from my old school textbook…before the paper had been
 heat-treated, they soaked those books in liquid nitrogen to keep them cool. Buy you get it, right?

You see, Hoss? I think you do. Everyone in this town fears what they can’t understand. You must think we hate you. We don’t. We shouldn’t. Our ancestors made you because they knew we couldn’t make it this far on our own.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Hoss. Never forget that.”

She coughed once more, and then she could no longer feel that cold slate in front of her.

In fact, she could no longer feel anything.

She had smelled of clover, Hoss would have thought if he could think days later. Not that he was sure it was that long after. Days later, there was nothing. Something had happened. That odd eclipse didn’t go away. It was still cool enough for The Sheriff’s Boys to continue their work. 

Faraday’s criminals were gone. Faraday’s innocents were gone. The other Sheriff’s Boys, due to the destruction of the windmill, were unable to charge their batteries, so they, too, were gone.

There was only Hoss. Well, Hoss and the cambulls. But mostly just Hoss.

Hoss’ final moments, if he was alive, could have had him pointlessly wander about the ruined wastes of the town, shattered from gunfight after gunfight after gunfight. Hoss’ final moments could have had him ponder on certain things he still didn’t know, like what is justice? What is peace? Are they different? Does it matter?

Did it ever matter?

Hoss’ final moments could have had him go through a range of emotional realizations, like the irony of his creation at the hands of those he was built to punish, or how with no one left
to arrest, the most logical thing to do was to throw himself off a cliff with some poetic epitaph for a grave that would never be.

Hoss did none of this.
He merely sat among the wistful cambulls. The cambulls had, by some miracle, found a patch of shrubbery around the back of the saloon’s remains, and were more than content to
guzzle a clear liquid from the barrels that certainly wasn’t water, but didn’t spike anything on Hoss’ built-in breathalyzer. So, Hoss sat down among these innocent, grazing animals, thinking on what he would think if he could think, and counted down his battery’s percentage until he remembered he couldn’t count.

The Funeral of Grief

i want to disown my body. reshuffle my teeth & name myself not a man that neighbours the hellfire(s). or that lives under the canopy of the silent grief. stranger, i don't want to hear anything home, again. this is not an irony. now,  a home is a hyperbole used for pain. i went on searching for. for a place where plants are green. for a place where the anatomy of pain’s never seen. for a place where none ever holds a gun. for a place, of fear, none ever, runs. for a place i could call my home. but, now, i am tired. of listening to my men singing in pain. sisters fetching dirty water &....raped. here, i want to burn, rebirth this home, again. these walls, that always break. these walls, that always fall. on our boys. on our girls. on any head they see. you see, we built them. with our fingers. with our eyes. and, it's time. we can scrape their paints. burry their sands. off memories. it's time. the line between our accents. between the colours of our bodies. between our hearts. is buried. grief does not know who is black. who is blue. or which is brown. it's a disaster. it eats all. it's time we thought. we buried their cruelty. off memories. it's time.

Salim Yakubu Akko is a World Voices Magazine’s Nigerian correspondent, Guest Contributor at Applied Worldwide, a poet and short story writer from the great city of Gombe state. He has been published/forthcoming in reputable newspapers, national and international journals and literary magazines, including the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, ILA Magazine, Ice Lolly Review, Brittle Paper, Amulet Poetry Magazine, Arts Lounge, Imspired Magazine, Fevers of the Mind Magazine, African Fingers, Nnoko Stories,  World Voices Magazine, Spill Words Press, Upwrite Magazine, Applied Worldwide, Lumiere Review, The Pine Cone Review, The Piker Press, Afreecan Read, Teen Lit Journal, My Woven Poetry, OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review, Giallo Literary Magazine, Scratch Poetry Magazine, Literary Yard, Parrot Box, Calabar Poetry Magazine, Daily Trust Newspaper, The Nation News Nigeria, Blueprint Newspaper, The Guardian Newspaper, Independent Nigeria, Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, Opinion Nigeria, My Nigeria, African Fingers, The Campus Watch, Today Post Nigeria, People’s Daily Newspaper and elsewhere. He has been published in national and international literary anthologies like Love Nniwanti, Flow of Love published by Dr. Durga Patva, and the 2020 Lekki Massacre and so forth. He has also been shortlisted for the 2021 Bill Ward Prize for Emerging Writers; 2021 GSSS Gombe delegate for the annual Hadiza Ibrahim Aliyu Secondary Schools Festival (2021 HIASFEST); participated in the 2020 Jewel Writing Workshop and the 2021 Jewel Peace Project.  Akko is a member of Gombe Jewel Writers’ Association, Creative Club Gombe state University and Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation.

Pearls in heaven

I see several micro flashlights blinking into deep space and it seems lots of smoothing sands sparkling on waves of frequencies, mysterious rounded sounds, surveillance eyes granted human hyper sight over postponed realities in many layers, caves, boost grooves, upper rings around planets with their own moons, walkers space, ravish cannon of lights, swimmers on whirlpool galaxy. A full high brain resolution of ourselves drifted away on a big translucid mirror pointed to the past sending images to right now by a minimalistic painter over the sea of darkness, and I wonder: is the universe outside an unlimited dream where I have always slept; my unconscious existence? 
But, I have found music, the divine language. This ocean of coincidences converges in a single singularity where immaterial energy emerges in chains of luminosities, spiral shades pointed everywhere, in the compass of unheard voices; there are glimmered rocks in a chord field that are crossing through spectral layers, flaming spaces. At end of billions of worlds, it will be revealed one more unknown path that is moving to its core, another drawing, a piece of a child’s imagination. The stars could collide into rivers which flow to be blossoms, our inner streaming, parallel beats, curling grooves; maybe a new blackhole swallowing matter and creating outer lands for living with carbon, oxygen-hydrogen, any system breathe based, new sounds and drums;  another nano-telescope moved by gravity, seeking for meaning, destiny machine stimulation engraved into a simulated human journey. What is hidden in a covered nebulosity? Words must feed worlds, Which strongest beauty silence before everything. We named this frontier skyline, cause the sunset has a moment of shyness where the sun brights at the edge of Earth. In this milk way lay down the Supreme Graced Womb's mother of inked souls traveling in the surreal night dream where a dark blue veil covers the nature of everything. I see this curved space ahead of me fulfilled with plenty of tears in rain. Each step in throw the darkness bends our cosmovision like a spectacular blade runner who embraces us in an illogical transition where many seeds of life are graved over otter space fields.
Hold your impulsiveness of changing everything, ruling the world is an old human wish for power. 

Magnetism acts as a paradoxical creation that suddenly takes place. This invisible force used to be an untamed movement to sustain the wheel of life,  and  I only could say that I could resist until the last tear. Please, wait a little bit more, the pairs are gaining time to win this frozen battle fight. When they are prepared to launch the ultimate combat a huge purple wind will blow to the Kings of liberty. 

Vangelis (Acrostic) 

V-angel-is you in verse (Vangelis universe) 
Ethereal voices on the sea, now you run to be, cause your soul belongs to immaterial being, in a solstice place there are V-angel-is' singing, 
Your enchanted life is everywhere, we can hear the stars are pleasured with this marvelous presence.


Spiral rotations of the universe keep in touch (for Albedo 0.39) 

Inner strength calling 920,978; September raining day 785,321; soft dancing
of light 508,765; ultimate belief upon the seventh sky 042,759. Liquid spaces orbiting around everywhere 917,532; spiral connections and solid voices surrounding the sun: 101 2 three, who's the man; Mature consciousness presented by our time, it runs: Could anyone listening and answer it 730,283; Unknown code of love and mystery cre@tion of the universe:  Please find us!!!


For the la petite fille de la mer 

Rain, all these dispersed drops, form your transverse mantle that doesn't fit in my chest. Today, it is so sad to say that my thirst is absent from its brief rain. To the little daughter of the sea. (Vangelis) .

A DOG IS BETTER THAN A HUSBAND

1.
“A dog is better than a husband,” the rescue lady says to me. “Did you know that?” 

2.
What? Wait a minute. Wait. A. Minute. Where did that come from? Where? This isn’t some kind of weird therapy session. This is PetSmart, for God’s sake! And it’s Saturday. Adoption Day. I’ve driven from Fort Worth to Dallas to look at a little homeless Chihuahua. The one featured on Facebook last week. The one this woman tells me is no longer available. Bummer! I really wanted to see it. But that’s okay. I’m just a looker today. Just here to look. That’s all. Not to adopt. No. Just looking. Today. A looker. That’s me. Nothing more. 

3.
And yet, and yet. That didn’t stop this dog rescue lady from lifting another Chihuahua from his crate and handing him to me. Before I could protest. Before I could stop her. How could she do that to me? She knows I’m just a looker. She does. She knows. It’s true. I’m just looking. I am. A looker. That’s me. Today. Nothing more. And yet, and yet. Now there’s a dog in my arms. A dog! And not just any dog. This dog. The dog she tells me nobody wants because he’s not a puppy. Because he’s eight-years-old. Walter. That’s his name. Yes, it’s sad. So sad. To be unwanted. Abandoned. Yes. I know. How it feels. I do. So sad. But he’s the wrong dog for me. He is. All wrong. He’s brown and black (not the color I want). And six pounds (not the weight I want). And a boy (not the sex I want). No, he’s not my dog. Not this one. No. Not at all.    

4.
“Excuse me?” I say. Maybe I misunderstood what she said. About dogs and husbands. Surely. Surely I did. The rescue lady looks down at Walter and laughs. He’s snoring. In my arms. Fast asleep. What? When did that happen? “It’s true,” she says. “Dogs are more consistent with their affection. They’re not moody. Or manipulative. Or perfectionists. Or worriers. Or egomaniacs. Or judgmental. Dogs will never abandon you. They just love you. All the time. That’s what they do. And they’re excellent listeners.” She winks at me. “How many men can you say that about?” 

5.
Oh, geez. Sounds like the story of my life. How did she know? Moody, self-absorbed men. Too many of them. In my past. Nothing but trouble. Like my ex-husband, Earl. The hypochondriac. I divorced him six months ago. Best decision I’ve made in years. Good riddance, I say. Never had anxiety until I married Earl. Or panic attacks. Didn’t even know what they were. But I do now. Thanks to seven years of marriage. Should have divorced Earl years ago. Why didn’t I? Why, why, why? My girlfriends say it’s my heart. It’s too big. Too soft. They think it’s a curse. In Earl’s case, it was. But no more. I’m done with men like that. All of them. Selfish, manipulative, worriers. Done. With. Them. 

6.
“Did you see this?” the rescue lady says, pointing to the information sheet attached to Walter’s crate. “All our older dogs like Walter are half price today. And he’s such a good dog. No trouble at all.”

7.
An hour later the Dallas skyline fades from my rearview mirror on the drive back to Fort Worth. I did it. Finally. I escaped. From PetSmart. And the rescue lady. Hallelujah! But my checking account is three hundred dollars lighter. And there’s a big shopping bag from PetSmart in my backseat. And a new pet carrier in the trunk. And there’s Walter. In the passenger seat. Wrapped in a blanket. Cozy in his new dog bed. Chewing on a bully stick. Happily. Peacefully. As if we’ve been together for years. 

8.
“Tell me this,” I say to Walter. “Is a dog really better than a husband?” I turn off the highway onto the exit ramp leading to Fort Worth. Walter drops his bully stick and climbs into my lap. Gently. Calmly. Like he’s been doing it for years. He rests his head on my arm and looks up at me. “Should I take that as a Yes?” I say. “Okay then. Good to know.”  

tomorrow landry

who’s knocking?

	scientific
        lac amora

the dream of the sky
the dream of the swan

       clanky toast is “t”
       ample terrapin outline

I’m in the gum tree




pac-man germs

the cape fear method
demanding a desert

        I am in the rain

green sleep
a new green

the space station is blinking
I am in the control tower

        with radishes

the toads protect me here
the templeton of the rabbit

        confused



the wonderful tree

each eagle is too low
raindrops slice

the coral within
whittling, too

my solar gum
my plen-t-pak

I bite a cotton ball
I shake a sugar roll




bio/graf

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). His poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. Visit http://MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado.

a little jack daniels with the coffee
 
tracing the outline
of a tattoo on soft
black skin with
your tongue
 
a snowy morning
in the middle
of somewhere
 
a little jack daniels
with the coffee
 
the love of your life
sleeping in just her
panties in your
centuries old bed
 
you can't help but
feel this was never
supposed to be for
someone like you
 
the infinite joy
to have defeated
time
 
there is no substitute
for it
---------------------------------------------------------------------
let the fun begin
 
the joy of a dirty mind
is absolutely anything
could be a reminder
or the spark for the
imagination to rev
the engines and let
the fun begin
 
a rainy day
 
a car dealership
bathroom
 
a certain way the
floor sounds with
the right shoes
 
an echo from
across the street
 
the subtle way the
chap stick tastes
 
a certain song on
the radio
 
absolutely anything
 
and i won't be able
to walk for a few
minutes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
too fast for me
 
i'm at the age
now that life
either moves
too fast for me
or too fucking
slow
 
finding the right
groove is not
possible anymore
for me
 
maybe i'm the
cranky old man
or just another
child that has
grown old
 
not that it
matters
 
we are born
to die
 
few get to
experience
something
other than
that
 
or so i have
been told
--------------------------------------------------------------
a few moments to forever
 
i have never learned
how to cope with
good news
 
happiness is some
rare thought that i
haven't embraced
in years
 
and here comes a
lost soul that wants
me to give myself
to her for any
amount of time
 
a few moments
to forever
 
my soul is old
enough now to
stop fighting this
silly notion that
i'm strong enough
to go it alone
 
i am broken
enough though
 
that i still have
doubts that anyone
truly wants to devote
the time to fixing me
the way it needs to
be done
--------------------------------------------------------------------
something is always in the way
 
and you want
to love her
 
but neither of
you can find
the fucking
time
 
and the days
become years
 
and eventually
something is
always in the
way
 
before you
know it
 
what could have
been is all that
is left
 
a fleeting moment
of sweet kisses
 
and enough desire
to keep you warm
on a winter's night

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is currently trapped in suburbia, wondering where the lonely housewives are hiding. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Mad Swirl, Horror Sleaze Trash, Misfit Magazine, Terror House Magazine and The Beatnik Cowboy. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)