Cityscape by Judd Hampton When he speaks, birds fly out of his mouth. Sandpipers and swifts, warblers and goldfinches. Songbirds, mostly, with shaggy crests and flamboyant throats and tails as forked as his mother’s tongue. He keeps his mouth closed so the birds cannot escape because freedom is a treacherous gift. He leans against the windowpane at the top of the stairs, staring out at the serrated cityscape. Behind him, carpet pathways lead to his daughters’ empty bedrooms. Downstairs, the sounds of clinking dishes and his mother’s humming scour the silence. He does not speak the language of adolescent girls. He plays widower, son and father in a house filled with girls and developmental stages. The house blushes with the babble of modern fashion and all the latest music, every voice too dazzling and mature to be believed. And everything keeps changing, pages turning, disengaging, and he falters, tragically, amid the culture of earrings and beaded necklaces and cosmetic experiments gone awry. But his mother helps. She cooks and cleans and hums the house into shape. “Are your little songbirds going to explain menstruation?” she once asked. “Well, no, not exactly.” And with his admission, a goldfinch appeared from the nest of his open mouth and took flight. His mother swatted the bird with a broom. “Everyone else is growing up,” she said. “Maybe it’s time you stopped that silly parlor trick. Besides, they make such a mess.” Before his girls cared about accessories and brand-name jeans, when the house claimed a functioning wife/mother, he spoke all the time, and when he spoke, birds flew from his mouth. His girls giggled and sang and chased the darting sandpipers, the swifts and warblers, capturing and cupping them in their hands. “Such fun,” they said. “Don’t ever stop talking,” they said. But now when he speaks, he harvests a different response. “We’ve all seen it, dad.” “We’re not five anymore, you know.” “Why do you have to be so embarrassing?” And so he learned not to speak. He stands at the windowpane at the top of the stairs, staring. He waits and watches, shifting his weight from leg to leg, wanting, willing his daughters to come home. The cityscape looms on the horizon, promising a roller-coaster ride of pain. The birds push at his cheek and nip his tongue, but he keeps his mouth closed. The birds are growing and they cannot stay inside him forever. He feels pressure, a quickening within his gut. The thickness of his blood is changing. Like the gush of birth, maturity and independence are inevitable. He throws open the window and curses the advance of time. “Fly, then,” he says. Birds burst from his mouth—sandpipers and swifts, warblers and goldfinches—one after another in a gush of wet feathers, beak and wing. And they escape out the window, flying tentatively toward distant roofs and steeples, which look jagged as teeth. All content in SmokeLong Quarterly copyright 2003-2008 by its authors.
	Judd Hampton lives in rural northern Alberta Canada with his wife, two children, two dogs, two cats and two trucks. He works in the oilfield pushing natural gas toward your furnace. His work has appeared in Night Train, Ink Pot, NFG Magazine, Danforth Review, Vestal Review, Paumanok Review, Eyeshot, Spiked Magazine, Circle Magazine, Flashquake and FRiGG among others, as well as forthcoming in Lorraine and James Literary Journal. His stories have been nominated for the Journey Prize, a National Magazine Award, Best American Short Stories and twice for the Pushcart Prize. Read the interview.
	Issue Eleven (December 15, 2005): Forks in the Road by Eve Abrams «» Retirement Home by Greg Ames «» A Drop of Dew by Edgar Omar Avilés, translated by Toshiya Kamei «» No One Left to Care About the Fat Man by Rusty Barnes «» The Mother's Guide to Flight Patterns by Theresa Boyar «» It's All True by Nadine Darling «» What She Gave to the Sea by Katrina Denza «» It by Patry Francis «» Cemetery Day by Laurie Frankel «» Cityscape by Judd Hampton «» The Black Squirrels of Ottawa by Niranjana Iyer «» Diagnosis by Beverly A. Jackson «» Green Monster by Erica Plouffe Lazure «» Sophie, Now by Mary McCluskey «» A Blind Dog Named Killer and a Colony of Bees by Mary Miller «» The Sky Is a Well by Claudia Smith «» You Only Get One Chance to Be El Latigo by Elizabeth Smith «» Flights by Jim Tomlinson «» Song of Giants by Girija Tropp «» Ice by Joseph Young «» Interviews: Eve Abrams «» Greg Ames «» Rusty Barnes «» Theresa Boyar «» Myfanwy Collins «» Nadine Darling «» Katrina Denza «» Patry Francis «» Laurie Frankel «» Judd Hampton «» Marty D. Ison «» Niranjana Iyer «» Beverly A. Jackson «» Toshiya Kamei «» Erica Plouffe Lazure «» Mary McCluskey «» Mary Miller «» Claudia Smith «» Elizabeth Smith «» Jim Tomlinson «» Girija Tropp «» Joseph Young «» Cover Art "Detail of The Death of Susan" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor