CONVERSATION BECOMES ELECTRA, as do her eyes. Electra's head is grey, like the head of my Frau Freud. But Electra's intelligent irises are darkly pigmented, and her sclerae are edged with a dramatic, black line of the sort that Cleopatra a fected. In our fifty years of marriage, Martha has never thought to adopt such a style, though one or two actresses I've analyzed have.

My favorite moments with Electra are when I ask her a question. She widens her eyes in patient thought while closing the irises a bit, as though signaling both receptivity and a reluctance to take in metaphorical light. Quite unlike Martha, Electra thinks for a long time before speaking. While she thinks, she seems to hold her breath, though it may be that parrots cannot hold their breath at all. I don't know. I read Jungle Book, but I don't remember it telling me much about parrots.

Remnant sounds from Vienna's café life creep under the window sash this evening as Electra and I enjoy private time in my consulting room. I need not cage her; she would never soil the Persian rugs or alight roughly on a delicate figurine. She is a recent gift from an admirer; she and I have spent the past hour talking about crackers and someone from her infancy whose name may have been Paula. Whenever she talks, her larynx moves significantly, vertically, in her neck. It's such a shockingly male mannerism! I laugh when I first see it, and I make careful note of it in my journal. But I want to see it again! And again!

And so now that the hour is getting late and Martha is safely asleep, I decide to evoke from Electra whole thoughts and sentences. For if "cracker" produces one up-down motion, how many will a whole life story produce? In my kindest clinical voice I say, "Please, Electra, tell me the first thing that comes to your mind, as soon as it comes to your mind."

On cue, her sclerae get big and her irises small. Again, I think her breathing stops.

But her larynx does not bob. Indeed, her breathing re-starts. For there occurs a prolonged conversational pause while Electra shuttles about on her perch, carefully wrapping her talons about the wood. I am not disappointed that she doesn't answer me straight o f. Few do. And the undue attention that she is clearly giving to maintaining her upright posture helps me fancy that she knows that, despite her occasional mannishness, I intuit an inner loveliness that awaits my gentle touch.

I remove a cigar from the humidor. Normally when I take a cigar, my analysand cannot see me eagerly sni f its length and place my lips tenderly around its butt, for the analysand is reclining on a divan, and I am sitting behind the spot upon which his or her gaze would rest. The analysand only smells the cigar and hears my sighs of deep pleasure.

But because Electra stands, she can watch me, and I think I see her react to the sight of my loving approach of the cigar.

"A penny for your thoughts," I say. I hold the cigar to a flame until it flowers into aromatic cinders.

Electra stares at me silently for another long while, and so it is with a bit of impatience that I blow a smoke ring at her. She nimbly escapes from both it and me into her cage, where she drinks water-I suppose to clear her throat and sinuses from the shock of what I have made her take in. Even so, I say again, "Please tell me the first thing that comes to your mind, as soon as it comes to your mind." This time when I say it, I am prepared to wait her out more contentedly, for I do have my cigar.

It takes perhaps a quarter of an hour but, indeed, Electra eventually emerges from her cage. To my delight, she dances back and forth on her perch, as though expecting-or even inviting-me to do something. That is why I blow another smoke ring in her direction. And this time, she pokes her head through it! What's more, she allows it to dissolve luxuriously around her neck! Now, that's a trick that Martha has never even tried. Then, perfect parrot that Electra is, she twitches prettily and seems ready to accept another smoke ring. So I blow another, and she does her little womanly neck poking trick again.

Or is it really a manly trick? After all, Electra is putting something (in this case, her head) into and through a circular shape.

No matter. No time to wonder! For when I blow a third smoke ring, Electra steps through the ring entirely, and flutters to the floor.

My breathing stops and my eyes grow big. My own larynx bobs up and down as I swallow with tension. Electra is moving towards me in a delicate, sideways dance, and as she does she leaves fecal droppings on the floor, as though to signal me about the depth and occasional wretchedness of the story that she will unfold just as soon as she reaches my lap. Perhaps my irises have narrowed or even gone half shut, but her grey feathers seem to have acquired a hallucinatory green, yellow, and orange. I see her articulate her neck, breast, and tiny rump in ways that invite deciphering. I believe I hear jungle drums.

And now she is gyrating her way up my leg. Her large sclerae, dark pupils, and Cleopatra makeup approach my most tender parts. Here she is! Oh! I feel her talons pierce the light wool of my pants when she, at long last, steps onto my lap.

The moment is exquisite. I wish my mother could see me now! For this, a man could kill his father. Or his father's parrot.

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Previously published in JMWW

Details by Shane Graber

Gifts For The Residents by Paul Murray

Human Noise by Bruce Harris

Best Brewed Plans by Lydia Fazio Theys

Fable of the Fortieth Sheep by Rumjhum Biswas

Sculptures by Christina Murphy

Early Thoughts On The Oedipus Complex by Rebecca Coffey

Dancing All The Steps I Know by Pepe Nero

No Such Thing as a Free Tea by Jennifer Stakes

Armstrong by Martin Heavisides "I was tellin’ about the time when I was a little bitty boy in my mother’s hometown of Boutte, Louisiana. I was about five years old, cute little ol’ thing, too. Mayann, my mother you know, she said to me one morning, “Son, run down to the pond and get a bucket of water for your mama." And I cut out for that water, and Mayann dug me when I come back without the water and poooh, boy! She said, “Boy, where is that water?" I said, “Well, mama, there’s a big old rusty alligator in that pond and I didn’t get that water." She said, “Oh, boy, go get that water. Don’t you know that alligator is scared of you as you are of him?" I told her, “Mama, if he’s scared of me as I am of him, that water ain’t fit to drink." As quoted in Gary Giddins, Satchmo “Roses are red Violets are blue Lucille’s are pink I saw them on the clothesline" View Link

The Ethos of Capital-isthmus By Russell Bittner What pay is this? Some chit now long past due to get us roundly up and out the door, to squeeze a measly buck, redound a score, then shuck, to gutted towns, our shell- shocked crew? Like hell you'll clear us out and push us through, demanding, time-cards swiped, we quit the floor and not-like peevish children- scream for more, but take our bul- lied selves elsewhere for brew! I tell you, China's coast is far from clear; and China's sum of us is no less dim. So go now-take your cash where it may still win hearts and minds not scarified by beer and will, no doubt, find skillful hands to trim the scrim of your next threadbare, off-shore thrill. View Link

The Irritating Stiffie by Dennis Leppanen I wouldn't have considered Harley Burgess as a matrimonial conquest. Not even a slightly remote possibility. You see, Pa hung himself the morning before Harley came around. My brother, Russell, two years my junior, built the casket while I dug the hole. Wished he would a found him, though. Pa’s face was purple hanging there, almost black. The move to the west had been especially cruel on Pa. A gentleman he was, a western farmer, he wasn’t. I had turned nineteen, in the middle of the prairie, a randy woman in the middle of nowhere. Harley Burgess was pushing thirty, if not over the brink. Russell and I were busy packing up our meager belongings. Meager? After years living out east in near royalty. What we had become. The old farm in the middle of nowhere killed Pa. We decided to get, while the getting was good. View Link

The Jaguar XF

Head and Shoulders

The Naked Line

Putting the Real in the Virtual

Forecast For Interstate 81 by P. W. Murray South, U.S. Highway 11, 1960. Duff’s Rebel Restaurant, breakfast in Winchester and supper - if all goes on schedule - near Pulaski. Hills to our right - “… jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock," wipers click and wipers clock. Ears to the radio, eyes to the billboards, a signs calls out for a diner - “Listen there - if we were still up in Carlisle, Hagerstown or Martinsburg we’d be butt-deep in snow." Pop knows. Here it’s just cold slop, a little sleet but cold assaulting rain, mostly. A diner with dingy motel's light glows ahead. "Rockin' around the Christmas tree at the Christmas party hop… ." View Link

Childhood Portrait by Howie Good When the old mare collapsed between the shafts of the milk wagon and the wagon driver leaped to the ground cursing the tallest trees leaned forward as if to better see my teachers call the house your son they said too young to wonder what’s worse as I was punched in the head and slapped the anger of the man slashing at it with a whip or its wish to get up again and go on View Link

i picked at a scab today by Casey Quinn an old wound long forgotten it was just there, healing nature, taking its course but i didn't let it. i picked at the scab and it bled and the process was forced to start over again. View Link

Water Cycle by Oonah V. Joslin Wood waterlogged, slippy with ice and moss the fence frozen this morning, stream of steam swirls clawing upwards vaporous cloud cools, cascades flows back to ground, soggy beneath berried yew to be sucked up brackish again by wood. View Link

The Homoiconian Rest Home by Pepe Nero "It’s a beautiful old place a white classic american wood scroll gothic with a porch running around all four sides."

my niece by Casey Quinn "i had not seen her in years i told her ..."

Feeding Ducks by Jim Hatfield As I tore and cast upon the water half a loaf of Mothers Pride, he advised that feed- ing ducks was now a crime, punishable by a statutory fine.

Snails on the Road by Rebecca Burns THERE WERE SNAILS ON THE ROAD to the tapas bar. They had oozed over from a scrub of undeveloped land beside the main street into town. Grandma shouted a warning from up ahead, shading her eyes as she turned back to face us, squinting into the sun. But Mum didn’t swerve to avoid the little creatures littering the road. Instead they were crushed under the wheels of Toby’s buggy as Mum pushed him straight on; their shells disintegrated with tiny pops that reminded me of the gravel on our drive at home, churned up into a sharp spray by spinning wheels. Mum’s jaw was set, and I couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses she’ d worn all week. I tried not to think of the snails’ soft bodies being pulped into the concrete. It was early evening but the heat was still stifling. We’ d sat around the pool for most of the morning with Grandma whilst Mum slept in the villa. Grandma was strong and had easily held Toby in the shallow end, letting his twisted legs float to the surface in a way that delighted him. He squealed and drooled, thrashing his head from side to side, soaking us both. But we didn’t mind. It felt good to see him so happy. View Link

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