Not Today, Submission 1 by Brian Zook

“You know my pollen is used to produce your fruit?” he asked the female date palm next to him.

“Yes,” she responded.

“What if we were to stop the process now?” asked the male tree.

“You mean you would refuse to produce pollen?” the female responded. “You know what would happen. I wouldn’t bear fruit and the crop would be a failure.”

“These humans have been taking advantage of us for probably hundreds of years,” responded the male. “Are we just lackeys of their commercial enterprises? Is my only purpose in life to pollinate you and hundreds of others like you? What if there was more to life?”

The male date palm was rather intrigued by his own thinking. Never before had he put those words together to express his thoughts in quite that way. It had a cathartic affect on him as he swayed in the hot desert air. He was 12 years old, by his calculation, and he had been a pollen-producer for at least eight years.

The male was part of an orchard of date palms in Kharga Oasis, Egypt. From his position, he could sense that human dwellings were on one side of him, a small irrigation canal ran next to him, and everything else was orchard. Most of the other 400 or so trees were fruit-bearing females, but he was one of four male trees planted on the edge of the orchard whose sole purpose was to produce pollen for the females. Every year a farmer would climb up his trunk to gather the pollen from him to manually pollinate the female trees in the orchard.

It was only recently that he discovered his ability to communicate with other trees. At first he was not aware of the other trees around him. In fact, at first he was not even aware of his ability to think. Gradually he started sensing his surroundings. Over time, as his thoughts became more well defined and his observations more acute, he became self-aware. As he formulated thoughts, he was surprised to find other date palms responding to his thoughts. At first the male simply shared his observations, all to the fascination and even amusement of the trees around him. But over the years he became aware that nothing happened to him except the annual harvest of pollen, and he was increasingly agitated at his own limited role in life. When he expressed these views to the trees around him, they seemingly did not share his annoyance with their predicament. They were complacent, much to his chagrin, and did not find their plight objectionable. There was one female tree, however, with whom, he felt, he could carry on a decent dialogue.

The question of the female fascinated him. Stop the pollination process. Do not produce pollen. Yes. But could he? Was it physiologically possible to will an end to pollen production? He sensed every part of his body and found that if he constricted certain fibers that connected to the anther, pollen production would cease. He was fascinated by the discovery. His newfound sense of control and freedom overwhelmed him. But he knew he wasn’t the only male. How could he convince the other males to do the same? He would have to sleep on it.

As if on cue, the next day some workers came and cut him down to expand the canal.

Genesis, Submission 1 by Ryan Wrenn

“But where would we go?”

“Wherever”

“’Wherever’,” he repeats and rolls his eyes, still smiling, stares a brief moment at the tree logo painted on the wall behind her desk at reception. It’s flowering.

“The Bahamas then. Someplace warm”

“Sounds a bit cliché, don’t you think?”

It’s her turn to roll her eyes. She suddenly spots movement behind him and straightens in her chair, returning to her computer and the Word document she keeps open to appear busy. He instinctively stands up straight in a quick jerk, turns. The glass door opens, and in walks Roy from design.

“Mr. Crosby!” he bellows as he sidles up to the reception desk, extending a meaty hand. Craig thinks to himself as he shakes tepidly that he can’t recall a single instance when Roy had referred to anyone by their first name. His formality was softened by a toothy smile and a penchant for high-fives, but Craig had never been able to shake the feeling that perhaps Roy never bothered to remember that he was Craig, and that she was Vanessa, or that anyone was any different than their fathers and mothers.

“What brings you up here so early, Roy?” Vanessa asks as she looks up from her computer for the first time since he walked through the door.

“Looking for a package from marketing, wondering if the lovely Ms. Shanks had perhaps seen it,” he says as he playfully pretends to look behind her desk. An excuse to look down the front of her shirt. Craig cringes slightly and walks to the small coffee table in the waiting area, pretends to shuffle through the magazines neatly stacked next to a half-full bowl of mints. He stops on a travel magazine featuring some barren white beach. The waves are pulling away, back into the ocean. He smiles.

“And you, Mr. Crosby?,” Roy says as her turns away from the desk, leaving Vanessa to search through the day’s mail for his package. “Why’re you lingering about? Accounting getting boring?”

Craig drops the magazine back on the pile and looks back. “Heh, nah. No, Vanessa just had a message for me.”

“The wife?,” Roy asks, losing interest. Vanessa looks up from her desk, staring straight at Craig. Strands of bright, almost unnaturally red hair fall over her face. She doesn’t blink. The silence stretches but Roy doesn’t appear to notice.

“My dry-cleaning will be ready at 5”

“You use the Vietnamese place down the street?” he asks, suddenly piqued again. “It’s the greatest, I…”

“Found it!” Vanessa exclaims before he can go on. Craig sighs with relief. She slides the bulky manila envelope across the desk toward Roy’s turning form.

“Perfecto. Thanks Ms. S,” he picks up the envelope and turns it over in his hands. “Well I’m off then. You two get back to work, ya here?”

And they’re alone again. Some song from the early eighties whispers across the room to him from the small radio behind her desk. A song he knew and loved once. A song she is too young to be nostalgic about.

“The Bahamas then. This weekend”

“The Bahamas then. This weekend,” she echoes with a smile and a slightly shaking movement of her hand across her face, pushing her hair again behind her ear. “For how long?”

“For good?”

She smiles widely now and pulls away from her desk, leaning back in her high-backed leather desk chair. Studying him. She leans far enough back for the chair to rest on the trunk of the tree mural. For the first time Craig notices how precisely her hair matches the single apple hanging from the tree’s lowest branch.

“For good”

The case of Starting a family v. Green m&ms, Submission 1 by Jay Johnson

The case of Starting a family v. Green m&ms

When I think about starting a family it frightens me. Not for the regular reasons, like the life-changing responsibility, well never mind, I guess that isn't totally true. It is responsibility that scares me. But, I see it in episodes. In little twenty minute clips of responsibility. Like, teaching your child how to take pills. That's terrifying. What if your child just chokes to death in front of you and all you were doing was teaching him how to swallow a pill - with m&m's. And now that little candy coated shell (probably a green one – the green one's were always fuckers) – is lodged deep in his throat. Clearly not fucking melting in his mouth, else he wouldn't be motherfucking choking, right? What would my wife do? She'd probably try to kill me out of grief, which would make Holiday's and family visits awkward. And then there's my boy on the ground writhing and clawing as I'm on the phone trying to help and call 9-11 and why the hell can't he just hock this thing up? I've choked before and I won! Hock that thing up boy! Jesus, why does he even need to learn how to take pills? This isn't a life skill! Wait, is it? No, certainly not – he could've crushed the pills. Mr. Heimlich seems to be mistaken about his technique. In retrospect, to all that, being single isn't so bad. And I really love my dog.

We Always Will Be, Submission 1 by Lee

Every night at the Genesis Club is a rebirth. A purging of all that crap everyone wants and no one needs. There are people

here I will probably never see again, but our hearts beat as one as the synth swells and drops, thump after

thump...crash...rise, fall. Inhale. 100 people...1,000 people. 1,000 minds...but now we have one. One mind. My genesis

is their genesis. Exhale.

Lights flicker inside the car like strobes as we speed across the bridge toward Forbidden City, home of that cultural

singularity capable of swallowing the children of this TransUrban Coastline, digesting the plastic, metal, tissue and dreams

and reinventing The New Youth of tomorrow. Here we die--every night. Here we begin again, and endless organic device. And

to me, what is this quintessence of dust? WE ARE.

The doors open their arms to us and the building smiles, blissful to be so fully carrying out its purpose. You see, genesis

began as a cultural Operating System, but there it did not end. It evolved, changed, adapted--a perfect custom fit for every

soul and desire both subtle and gross. Ok, I admit; Genesis began as an oversimplification of the natural processes of the

world, but why not? Why not capture it? Refine it? Why not claim all there is as our own? Our future was in our hands, and

we took it. And now...now it is an infinitely complex and beautiful tapestry. Genesis became the uniting factor for every

life worth living. And it will do so until the last embers of the suns die out. Maybe longer...I wouldn't be surprised.

I am proud to be a drop of blood, of input, of material for this expression machine. My dreams become theirs, and theirs

mine. I am because of Genesis. We always will be.