SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fifteen
JEFF FRIEDMAN & MEG POKRASS
After Glow
After the eclipse, her pupils grew so black I couldn't see her irises, but there was something burning behind them that stung my eyes. It made me want to shade them with my old Foster Grants, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings; instead, I walked the dog. When I returned, she hadn't moved, and there was a burning corona over her head. She reached up and lit a cigarette with it. The dog crawled under the coffee table. Are you angry about something? I asked. She wouldn't speak; she just stood there staring holes into the upholstery, holes into the rugs, holes into the shadows on the wall. The holes looked like floaters, and for a second, I wondered if my vitreous was pulling away from my retina. When the holes disappeared, she was squinting her eyes. "Walk in front of me now, but slowly," she said. I did, and our light disappeared.
Gorilla Missed
"There's a gorilla loose," my lover shouted. She was in her nightshirt, and it was the first time she'd been out of bed in a week. She was seeing it in all the mirrors in our room, but it didn't seem to scare her. I didn't see it anywhere. She looked really good in her nightshirt, though it was a little too tight, and I'd never noticed before how expansive her hips were. I tried to lure the ape out of its hiding place with a banana bread loaf I had baked the night before, but it was gone, not a crumb left. She claimed it was the gorilla who ate the bread. "She's in heat," my lover said. I didn't understand how a gorilla could hide in such a small apartment, how I wouldn't see it. Did you ever see it before you met me? I asked. She looked at me with her tropical green eyes. "No," she said, smiling a toothy grin. Her unusually long arms reached around my neck—I thought to kiss me—but instead she grabbed a spider between her pincer nails and squished it—then licked it off her furry fingertips. "I love you," I said. Her body emitted a repulsive, but beguiling odor. "Do you love me too?" I asked. With a grunt that reminded me of something you'd hear on the nature channel, she tossed me over her shoulder and carried me into bed, which was now covered in vines and yellow leaves.
Selfies with a Bald Man and a Monkey
She was feeling sad again so one day she invited the lonely bald man into her house for tea. "I won't come in," he said, "unless my monkey can come too." She stood at the front door of her cottage, staring at the two of them. The monkey was definitely more energetic. He had a wise yet mirthful face, and wore a cute little military cap. On the other hand, the man had a large head, a morose sleepy face and a red, lumpy nose. "Of course, you both can have tea with me," she said, glad that the lonely bald man had a companion. They both looked so nice next to each other on her flowered sofa that she wanted to photograph them. She aimed her cellphone and said, "Cheese," thinking they might smile or laugh, but the two of them broke into tears. She squeezed between them and put her arms around them, and they snuggled in tight. Then she took a group selfie. First, she kissed the man on the cheek, who blinked several times, and next she kissed the monkey, who brightened up with a big human smile. Then, she took another selfie, hoping to get it right, but in this one, the man and his monkey looked so happy together that she began to cry.
Jeff Friedman is from Chicago. His latest (tenth) book of poetry and prose poetry, Ashes in Paradise (Madhat Press, 2023). His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, New England Review, Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, SurVision, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship.
Meg Pokrass lives in Scotland. She is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies of flash including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; as well as in Electric Literature, McSweeney's, Washington Square Review, Split Lip, storySouth, and Passages North. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in late 2024.
