Yaddo, and was a master artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Haspiel has written and drawn many superhero and semi-autobiographical comix, including collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, Inverna Lockpez, and Jonathan Lethem. He also curates and creates for TripCity.net.
M AGGIE E STEP is the author of seven books. Her work has been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and frequently stolen from libraries. She lives in Hudson, New York.
zombie hookers of hudson
by maggie estep
O ne morning, his head looked too small and I asked him to move out.
Why? He stared at me.
“It’s just not working,” I said. I didn’t mention that his head suddenly appeared small. You can’t say that to someone. It’s not right. “I’m not happy,” I said.
Martin’s eyes drooped and then he shrugged.
He’d only been living with me three weeks.
He packed up his stuff and, just like that, he was gone.
We’d started as strangers, we were ending that way.
Then it was just me and Alexander Vinokourov, my one-eared pit bull, Vino to his friends.
I sat on the floor with Alexander Vinokourov in my lap, his head wedged under my arm. His head is too large for his body, but I like that. Imperfections in dogs are beautiful; in humans they’re a fault line that you want to put a jackhammer in.
I sat like that, numb and quiet, for about thirty minutes. I was like a cow needing to be squeezed for reassurance before going into one of the humane slaughter chutes designed by the admirable Temple Grandin. Vino was my sixty-eight-pound squeezing machine. Except I wasn’t heading to slaughter. At least not that I was aware of.
I stared at the empty drawers where Martin’s stuff had been. I thought about his last words to me.
“I really liked you, Zoey.”
“I liked you too, Martin,” I had said. This was perfectly true. I did like him. I just didn’t like his head.
Eventually, I made Alexander Vinokourov get off my lap so I could stand up. I opened the drawer where I keep my socks and underwear. I pulled out the powder-blue plastic wallet with Wyoming emblazoned on its side.
There’d been a time when I thought Alexander Vinokourov and I might move to Wyoming. I’ve had ideas about moving to many places and have in fact moved to most of them. Lately, though, I just keep drifting around a hundred-mile radius of upstate New York. It’s pretty here and the people aren’t all morons. My rent is cheap and I can get by doing odd jobs.
I put the blue plastic wallet in the back pocket of my jeans, attached Vino’s leash to his collar, and out we went.
It was hot outside and, even though it was close to dusk, the sun was a burning gold coin.
Vino and I walked up to the top of State Street where crumbling buildings rested their crooked frames against newly renovated ones.
The guy with hooks for arms was sitting on his porch and called out: “Beautiful dog!”
I said, “Thank you,” like I had made Alexander Vinokourov myself.
We reached the periphery of the cemetery, where the sign reads, Cemetery closed during hours of darkness .
We walked in through the oldest section, where half the tombstones have toppled and time has rubbed off the dead people’s names. We crossed to the far side, past the war veteran’s area where there’d been a big kerfuffle when vandals had started stealing all the flags off the graves. Video surveillance had been set up to catch the perpetrators in the act and had caught … woodchucks. They were stealing the flags and taking them to their woodchuck holes. They liked the taste of the cured wood the flags were attached to.
Vino and I walked to our favorite spot, a wooded, quiet area lying between the cemetery and the new artificial sweetener factory, the building which had caused nearly as big a kerfuffle as the flag-stealing woodchucks.
But something was wrong. An excavator had been here and dug up a huge swath of earth, maybe half an acre, and there was now a gaping
M AGGIE E STEP is the author of seven books. Her work has been translated into four languages, optioned for film, and frequently stolen from libraries. She lives in Hudson, New York.
zombie hookers of hudson
by maggie estep
O ne morning, his head looked too small and I asked him to move out.
Why? He stared at me.
“It’s just not working,” I said. I didn’t mention that his head suddenly appeared small. You can’t say that to someone. It’s not right. “I’m not happy,” I said.
Martin’s eyes drooped and then he shrugged.
He’d only been living with me three weeks.
He packed up his stuff and, just like that, he was gone.
We’d started as strangers, we were ending that way.
Then it was just me and Alexander Vinokourov, my one-eared pit bull, Vino to his friends.
I sat on the floor with Alexander Vinokourov in my lap, his head wedged under my arm. His head is too large for his body, but I like that. Imperfections in dogs are beautiful; in humans they’re a fault line that you want to put a jackhammer in.
I sat like that, numb and quiet, for about thirty minutes. I was like a cow needing to be squeezed for reassurance before going into one of the humane slaughter chutes designed by the admirable Temple Grandin. Vino was my sixty-eight-pound squeezing machine. Except I wasn’t heading to slaughter. At least not that I was aware of.
I stared at the empty drawers where Martin’s stuff had been. I thought about his last words to me.
“I really liked you, Zoey.”
“I liked you too, Martin,” I had said. This was perfectly true. I did like him. I just didn’t like his head.
Eventually, I made Alexander Vinokourov get off my lap so I could stand up. I opened the drawer where I keep my socks and underwear. I pulled out the powder-blue plastic wallet with Wyoming emblazoned on its side.
There’d been a time when I thought Alexander Vinokourov and I might move to Wyoming. I’ve had ideas about moving to many places and have in fact moved to most of them. Lately, though, I just keep drifting around a hundred-mile radius of upstate New York. It’s pretty here and the people aren’t all morons. My rent is cheap and I can get by doing odd jobs.
I put the blue plastic wallet in the back pocket of my jeans, attached Vino’s leash to his collar, and out we went.
It was hot outside and, even though it was close to dusk, the sun was a burning gold coin.
Vino and I walked up to the top of State Street where crumbling buildings rested their crooked frames against newly renovated ones.
The guy with hooks for arms was sitting on his porch and called out: “Beautiful dog!”
I said, “Thank you,” like I had made Alexander Vinokourov myself.
We reached the periphery of the cemetery, where the sign reads, Cemetery closed during hours of darkness .
We walked in through the oldest section, where half the tombstones have toppled and time has rubbed off the dead people’s names. We crossed to the far side, past the war veteran’s area where there’d been a big kerfuffle when vandals had started stealing all the flags off the graves. Video surveillance had been set up to catch the perpetrators in the act and had caught … woodchucks. They were stealing the flags and taking them to their woodchuck holes. They liked the taste of the cured wood the flags were attached to.
Vino and I walked to our favorite spot, a wooded, quiet area lying between the cemetery and the new artificial sweetener factory, the building which had caused nearly as big a kerfuffle as the flag-stealing woodchucks.
But something was wrong. An excavator had been here and dug up a huge swath of earth, maybe half an acre, and there was now a gaping
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