Peep, Issue #2 out now!

Hey everyone.  The much anticipated Issue #2 of Peep is out now.  I’ve been busy, but I’m going to work on getting it distributed to various places, mostly in Portland, probably this weekend if all goes well. 

 Issue #2 may not look as well-produced as Issue #1, due to design problems with this issue and my lack of experience with a copier, but rest assured that Issue #3 will be back on track.  

   For those of you with a copy, I know the story is kind of hard to read, so I’m posting it here:

Fields

by Alyssa Perkins

I walk down to the field. It’s become quite overgrown—the grass is very yellow, stringy and stiff. I sit on the lone picnic table, a slouching old thing with no apparent purpose, at the edge of the field. The wide open area of the field is framed by a perimeter of bushes. I’m eating an overripe peach, tearing at the skin to get to the fleshy interior.

I was lying on this picnic table last year, wearing a prickly yellow sweater. Kacy was asking me if I thought I’d get married. We had just disregarded the idea of getting back together. Too much had happened: too many calls from phone booths, secret meetings at strip malls, and then there was her parents’ Catholicism. It would be too much, to invite everything back. I stared at the branches of the mossy tree above me.

“I don’t know,” I finally said.

The field transformed at night. Two years ago, when Kacy and I were together, we thought it would be romantic. I brought a heavy Mexican-style blanket when we went, folded over my arms. But instead of beautiful, the empty space of the field felt weighty, appalling, and the bushes were more like armies closing in. It was possible to walk around without a flashlight, but the ground itself was completely black. The grass and rocks were unpredictable, and sometimes our feet would suddenly drop down into indentations in the ground. We stayed in the field because of the stars, scattered crazily across the vast black sky in ways cities never get to see. We laid the blanket down and tried kissing each other, but we pulled away, frightened by the inescapable darkness in the field and behind our eyes.

Moments later a man came catapulting toward us, tripping on himself and thrashing at any bushes in his way. When he saw us, he stopped running, just stared, beer bottle hanging from one hand. We hardly blinked, wanting only to become the blanket, or the rocks, or the grass. I cradled my head between her chin and her shoulder until he became bored of staring and stumbled off in the direction of the campsite.

This is the sky I remember. A ridiculous blue, so blue it cannot be real, more like a weightless sheet pinned in place. My peach is too ripe, melts in my mouth too easily. I throw it into the grass.