The Chronicles of Jackie Flapjacks
by Erik Moyer
I. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Gym
Jackie Flapjacks stacks eight plates on each side of the barbell and drizzles them with custom syrup-colored spring collars. Some new gym-goers peek out of the corners of their eyeballs. Jackie has long stopped noticing. Jackie stretches wide, breathes deep. The bar floats like a balloon from his shins to up over his undercut. Jackie releases. The weight thunders, shuddering the earth. Again. Again. At the end of each set, a smattering of applause. Half shocked, half shook. When Jackie exits the locker room, there is a pulchritudinous starlet cradling tulips. Jackie politely declines and roars off on an amber two-stroke.
II. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Zoo
At home grilling chicken breasts, Jackie Flapjacks is haunted by his mother’s ghost. Cough up the grandchildren. What’s wrong with this one? Do you even like girls? At the zoo last weekend, Jackie spotted a heavenly muscle mommy kneading the doughy arm of a child. Jackie had the unthinkable urge to confess, but not before his friend cut in with an elbow and a grin. Gross. Jackie flexed his wince into a grin. So gross. As if she were another exhibit. As if she belonged under lock, and not museum glass.
III. Jackie Flapjacks Goes to the Hospital
Jackie Flapjacks forgives his friend, who knows not the mother’s daily sacrifice. What it takes to be big. What it costs. At the age of ten, Jackie contracted meningitis. His body shriveled to a leaf, fluttering from hospital bed to hospital bed. It was in the semi-Fowler’s position on New Year’s Eve when Jackie promised God that if He let him live, Jackie would grow to be the strongest man there ever was. Jackie kept his end of the bargain. Now Jackie wonders if God is more an evil genie, His every gift a curse. It is still the leaf boy who surrounds Jackie in the weight room’s many mirrors.
IV. Jackie Flapjacks Goes on Instagram
After another self-patented Bigger-Bigger Chicken Dinner, Jackie Flapjacks thumbs through his wheyfu burner account on Instagram, his loneliness the one weight he cannot lift. For the strongest man, the strongest woman. Jackie has only ever been with two of his kind. The first a dirty bulker, the second a lean lamb. Were his life so enchanted, the third should be just right. But the third has yet to come. Or Jackie has yet to find her. Jackie is crippled by what others might think. Even when an iron-blue moon does shine upon him, his tongue is crippled by the might of his dark attraction, and his body flattens back to a leaf.
V. Jackie Flapjacks Hates His Father
His phone purrs across the maple coffee table. It’s his father, inquiring about Thanksgiving. Whether to set one plate or two. The way I’ve been ballooning lately, you better make it eight. Jackie Flapjacks wishes to curl his father like the dumbbell he is, until he understands—that stacking eight plates is more satisfying than setting two; that more is more, and less is death; that if you hide a secret long enough, it just might disappear.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Erik Moyer is a creative writing PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the University of North Texas. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a BS from the University of Virginia. His work appears in Arts & Letters, Epiphany, The New York Times, Oxford Poetry, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Outside of school, he works as a data engineer. In his free time, he enjoys writing songs and playing chess.
Website: erikjosephmoyer.com
Greetings, friends! We’re thrilled to bring you issue 51—an open-themed collection of thirty exceptional works spanning fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, photography, translation, and comics.
Creative non-fiction by Elisa Carlsen
Righty, from Surf Pines, was one of six free chickens my neighbor Rudi called to tell me about. He knew a guy who knew a guy and offered to give my partner and me a ride to get them.
Creative non-fiction by Marion Cline
The purpose of the complete breath is to acknowledge mortality. Just as it easily enters, it easily dissipates. The purpose is to hold the breath, let it swim for a little while in the lower pit, and to let it go.
Creative non-fiction by Alana Friend Lettner
I was eighteen and living in a small flat in Argenteuil, a forlorn-looking suburb of Paris that had, in a past life, been a favourite place of Monet and Renoir.
Creative non-fiction by Eve Krakow
Before leaving the house, she double-checks her bag: music binder, pencil, glasses, water bottle. There’s something comforting about the ritual of going to choir rehearsal, the same day and same time each week, year in and year out.
Comic by Kaya Davies
Kaya Davies (b. 2002) is an artist who seeks to understand what she does not through the process of creation.
Comic by Elias Doering
Elias Doering is a pen and ink artist from the East Coast of the United States. They primarily work in black and white to make comics about the sea.
Comic by Josie Levin
Josie Levin (she/him) is a visual artist and writer whose visual work has appeared in a variety publications
Comic by Jem Woolidge
Jem Woolidge is an emerging artist based in Tiohtià:ke (so-called Montreal).
Fiction by Rachel Mattingly
Misty is undoubtedly splattered somewhere outside the IHOP a few blocks down. Gives a whole new meaning to the house of pancakes.
Fiction by Erik Moyer
Jackie Flapjacks stacks eight plates on each side of the barbell and drizzles them with custom syrup-colored spring collars. Some new gym-goers peek out of the corners of their eyeballs.
Fiction by Amber Nuyens
The first time Jamie goes to a gay bar, she thinks of those viral videos of cows being released into fields for the first time in their lives.
Fiction by Jordan Thibault
The yo-yo they used was blue. It was not their favorite color—red like their frumpy hair—but of the remaining primary colors, blue would do.
Fiction by J.M. Young
I’m not supposed to be in the line of deep lifeguards. I’m a registered shallow guard who has miserably failed the deep guard test, not once but twice.
Photography by Phi Phi AN
These photos are part of a long-running visual archive series named “As far as half the way to the Gateway,” a flow created based on traditional analog photography techniques.
Photography by Austin Cullen
Our relationship to the natural world is inextricably tied to technology; and as technology changes, so does the way we represent the world around us.
Photography by Judy Thorn
This series was shot during an exquisite period before the pandemic. It came together only in retrospect. Each photo tells of a stalwart friend, lover, seer.
Poetry by D.M. Bradford
Slow and funny in the gut, our year of home ownership. Would love to tell itself it's going to be spent being written. Would love to tell itself its lack of poetry is already sidelined and collected.
Poetry by Katherine Chiemi
I like the fragile eggs, just the size to crack between molars.
I like the Rube Goldberg of it all, the little egg engines and the rattle of the dice tray: watch me
Poetry by Judith Lapadat
Its hulked form nosing into steel grey bay
the chop, its incessant slap, the cold salt
Poetry by Madi Haab
there: in the hollow
concrete medulla
of the city skeleton
Poetry by Alessandra Lynch
HERE IS—THE MESSAGE---TO THE RAIN---NOT A TELEGRAM---"I DON’T WANT TO--- STOP----TALKING TO YOU”---LIGHT
Poetry by Dawn Macdonald
without stiffening. a bump,
a rebound. a dampening
Poetry by Aaron Rabinowitz
She separates from the distance from the other moving forms across the canvas—you mean campus—like a sticker unpeeled from its backing
Poetry by Dominique Russell
Peut-être pas maintenant, mais bientôt et pour toujours
à tout jamais, éternellement
Poetry by Mazzy Sleep
The sun in the morning.
It was snowing so hard it seemed like
it had always been snowing, since Eden,
Poetry by Lily Thomson
After hearing about it for so long
I finally ate an orange
In the shower
Translated by Neil Smith from Jean-Christophe Réhel
i am
less and less
i say goodnight chair good night ventilator
Translated by Willow Loveday Little from Jean-Guy Forget
my girlfriend and our friends
blossom into a choir of laughter
Photography by Angeline Teoh Simon
My collage work is an examination into personal ancestry and immigrant history. As a second-generation Canadian, I have felt disconnected from my German and Malaysian-Chinese heritage, motivating me to focus on a collection of family photographs that were passed down to me.