The Last Released

 

1.) The Would and Wouldn't Guy

He had a habit,

the grandpa down the road without

a grandchild anymore, and while

he’d share enough about, say,

time in Vietnam or how to brush a carburetor

clean, he wouldn’t

indicate a thing about his family. We

gathered they were left two states away,

by the license plates of pickups that would stay

a night or two in early May,

when walleye, pike and bass were chomping

at the bit to start the summer right.

He had a habit,

those who shared a dock would know,

to throw the first and last of minnows to

their freedom from the pail:

one to lure the luck, 

the other to affect the opposite, somewhat like 

the evil eye.

Don’t get greedy, now, he’d tell the lake,

as if the place he’d cast his bait

was just as interested in netting him, 

or, presumedly, the grandchild on his mind.

He’d do the same in winter months, 

when holes into the ice

would close at night and beg 

the morning question whether it was worth 

the opening again. 

If so, 

he’d need more minnows, and that

would mean he’d stay until the last one

would compel the letting go. And that is why 

we whispered him the Would and Wouldn’t Guy.

 

2.) Guesswork

Also down that road, a little further in

the woods, and not as public as 

the Would and Wouldn’t Guy, lived a widow on 

the brink of blending in

to Mother Earth.

Difference was, like Hester Prynne

a half a dozen decades old, she had her Pearl

to dance them through the solstices of

social workers’ questioning.

An Istanbul of cats they also had to 

ward away the rats that wanted nothing more

than rinds from melons, chicken bones,

stuff to throw behind the shed

for reasonable control; no need to cover up

a compost heap

and breathe in deep the herbs

that smile upon this scene.

Fruits and poultry not enough,

the matron and her granddaughter had knit 

a casting net for catching fish, heading for 

the closest dock.

They had no license, naturally, and felt it best to

operate at night, when no one 

would object, or so the story went.  

3.) Shadows Overlapping

For her part, Pearl seemed happy as

a glacial basin clam, if sad to know 

the Would and Wouldn’t Guy no longer had a

grandchild in tow. 

Not that they were chums—more like

shadows overlapping shadows in the dark. 

The spotlights never were in synch,

and maybe shouldn’t influence the things

worth looking for. Minnow number 1 may find 

the last released,

assuming neither are deceased.

And now the lake has turned, as naturally

as algae reproduce a certain way;

the bottom gurgles up like lava busting free or

earthworms after rain.

The fish may scarce survive such soup, if

some have seen this scene before;

humans know to stay at home a week or more.

‘It will be fine,’ the widow reassures,

glossing over what the pronoun wouldn’t say.

‘Okay’, Pearl nods, then runs to tell her shadow.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2026)

In the Overlap

Despite thumbs down from the likes of Elon Musk, efforts were underway to repair the broken dreams of the International Space Station. The tin can was up there, anyway, and launchpads from French Guiana to Kazakhstan needed business, let alone reasons for relevance. NASA had to sign off on whatever research would take place, but was far more invested in private-sector contracts to profit from satellites and James Webb data. China and India had set their sights on the moon, ostensibly to operate on its dark side. The ISS had lost its sex appeal, if still attractive to a faithful few.

Like now: half the crew of astronauts was checking on the captive tardigrades—water bears who’d get their daily drop in complications of their airless atmosphere. In an ISS module adjusted for this experiment, Michal (technically a cosmonaut) sent prayers into the windowed diorama of moss and measured light. He looked through lenses that magnified the creatures’ prosperity or plight, if only guessing what the long-term data would determine, well beyond the scope of human observation.

Masha (fellow Slav, if from a land politically at odds) was asleep—they’d need to trade their conscious hoursupon the ship and share their findings in the overlap. There’d be other jobs between them, and some that wouldn’t need as much attention, yet tardigrades were the closest thing to having pets upon the station. Water cubs, to keep them cute. 

Any debrief had to wait until both were wide awake. “Your breathing is a lullaby to me,” the man whispered in the English both agreed to speak, wanting equally to drift into her dreams. “Our oxygen exchanged is of some divine design to guard against a life enclosed from other life.” His breath expired, he needed to absorb the very thing he mused about. “Our lungs must trust the space beyond ourselves, and these poor tardigrades are trying to prove the science wrong—or right.”

Masha stirred as if to nudge the needle to the side she’d so decide would indicate her truth. She might have whispered word for word the stuff her partner hoped would never enter loveless ears, not that those were hers—yet how is anyone to know how any language lives within a vacuum….

You’ll realize, came the tacit thought, from one M or the other, in the overlap. Meanwhile, don’t forget those drops—we can’t deprive the sample set to that extent.

Days passed into nights, if sunsets aren’t as obvious from outer space. The engineers of ISS are more concerned the nights turn into days and time is not so warped to feel like nothing much is worth the rising for. Masha liked to work the hours that weren’t so light, lending homage to the fact the cosmos had enticed her childhood, gazing at the gaps between the stars. Early on she learned the Kelvin scale and the paradox of how those blazing suns could not create a livable temperature between them.

“Unless a capsule could be made to insulate the molecules,” she whispered to her other half, asleep, “at least in terms of water, and then eukaryotes, and then…” She thought of air and shuttered at the lack of such for the tardigrades next door. “We’re burying them alive,” she spoke at fuller force, “like Edgar Allen Poe.”

The consul raised its voice from earth, waking Michal as a consequence: “is everything alright up there?”

The Ms looked at each other, equally unsure of what to say to Ground Control. “Roger. We’re just in the overlap of being asleep and being awake.” Their eyes acknowledged also passion for their tardigrades, bearing all the weight of human curiosity (if not to overstate).

“Roger back. We’re here for you, you know.”

“Indeed, we know.”

“And a shuttle’s coming soon.”

Not so happy news, if truth be told. We’ve gotten rather used to the atmosphere and wouldn’t want to leave things out of hand. Instead, they spoke as colleagues to the business of the day—or night, depending on the point of view.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2026)

 

 

 

 

Togehter Agen

 

            “Don’t cry, Honey—she’ll be just as happy as she’s always been with you….”

            That was Mommy’s logic to her daughter, seven going on forty-two. Well, Mom was forty-two, at least, and wanted everything to go as planned—each increment of seven years a battle between feeling blessed and feeling damned. The daughter’s name was Tabitha, and boys at school would tease her for that name, naïve to witchlike prejudice; they rather thought it sounded babyish—Tabby, Tabby, Tabby as the babble they’d exchange.

            The fact she brought this doll to second grade—second grade!—instead of something sleek like neon-flashing sneakers or an iPhone 17—made the kid seem ancient, out of touch. At recess, then, these boys would trade their game of peacocking a football for the chance to kidnap baby Tabby’s baby doll, run it to the bushes and negotiate her ransom. 

            Twice this happened before a teacher’s notice; threats were levelled at the boys, but their apologies appeared ingenuous—even smileworthy from the teacher’s point of view, as school attempts holistic learning, and what more perfect tool than the playground and decision-making there.

            The fourth time came and went without such witness, and instead of bushes, the heftiest of boys stuffed Dolly down his baggy pants. Tabitha had seen this act, and for all her years of reticence, determined she had been abused enough.

            She kicked him in the nuts, well aware she might be maiming Dolly, too. The teacher now took notice and did not think it ticked a box of something ‘teachable’. She hollered everyone away and grabbed poor Tabitha by the biceps to march her to the principal, where Tabitha would have to stay until her mother came to pick her up.

            The rhetoric was limited—the principal would not call the burly kid to ascertain his point of view, as that might victimize him twice. And Tabby’s claim about the doll did not make sense: upon inspection of her cubbyhole, there it was—more or less intact. Sure, an arm was missing, but how would school keep track of private property? Anything that came or left the campus was at the bearer’s risk. That’s the way the real world works, now, isn’t it?

            A girl name Agnes wrote a note and folded it into the passing hand of Tabitha, suspended for the coming days . Do not wory [she misspelled the double ‘r’], I will find the arm and we can stich [one ‘t’] her back togehter agen [quite a feat for second grade].

            And though she didn’t read this to her Mommy, both had learned today that tears were not exclusive to one’s pain.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2025)

Catastrophe Training for the Disinclined

 

                  I had booked an excursion to Pompeii several months before Etna blew its top, and while I could cancel to enjoy more time in downtown Naples, I figured, ‘what are the chances Italy would suffer so much bad luck in the prime of tourist season?’ Besides, the new pope had put hope in the air and I was a fellow White Sox fan—divine intervention would surely prevent my stumbles down a burping-to-explode mountain, if it came to that.

            Another thought haunted me, however: what if I witnessed the opposite? What if in the peace and majesty of the successful climb I encountered a suicide like Beck alludes to in the final song of his album Modern Guilt: “and I heard about that Japanese girl who jumped in… to a volcano…. Was she tryin’… to get back… back into the womb of the world…?”

            Would I intervene with such a stranger’s goal? I am far from divine and would probably act (or not act) according to how I felt, for heaven’s sake.

            Another detail about this trip: I had already been to the top of Vesuvius with my then young children. They loved it—especially having visited the walk-about museum of the victims of Pompeii. “This is like living history,” my ten-year-old quipped—perhaps a phrase he had learned through his 4^th grade curriculum. I felt extra responsible as a dad: giving them a unique experience, helping them connect the dots of ‘acts of nature’ and ‘acts of humankind’ (I never like the designation ‘acts of God’).

            Now my children were in their 20s and ‘doing their own thing’. My wife was harried with work and said, reasonably, “we already went there. Why do so again?” But this time I was extending a business trip in Rome, and as much as I had wanted her to fly down after my conference for some R&R, I could see her point-of-view. It’s a ghoulish place, Pompeii, and Vesuvius is a hell of a hike toward an infernal sun.

            On the way up, then, this second time in all thoughts spanning from Etna to Japan, I tried to concoct a theory—something about ‘catastrophe training for the disinclined’. Let’s say you’ve lost your wallet—credit cards, driver’s license, small keepsakes, the works. It’s a shitter, to be sure, but a catastrophe? You’d need to cancel key accounts, make appointments for reissues, take a lot of time to redress the situation. But you’d be no worse off for the wear. Even if you we’re mugged: you’d give up that wallet to ensure you were physically unscathed. Mentally? Emotionally? Here’s where ‘catastrophe’ may apply its heat-seekers. And a balanced life should be prepared for that.

            Call me impetuous, but I decided to test where I was at. I got to the top, tried to find an inconspicuous spot so as not to make a scene—didn’t want witnesses, perhaps like that Japanese girl—and held my somewhat fat wallet over my head like a grenade. I counted down from three-two-one as if I were back on the high diving platform eons ago in my Chicago neighborhood swimming pool. And with no second thoughts, I chucked the stoic thing as far as my midlife arm could manage—probably just 2% the diameter of the monster mountain, yet irretrievably sinking into the steep drop of ancient ash below the volcanic rim.

            Naturally, some tourists saw what had happened, and one yelled something like ‘vandal!’ I hadn’t exactly imagined my capacity to pollute such a protected area, so I blushed in that guilt (wondering again what Beck had in mind). But as for my feelings for this contrived catastrophe… I wasn’t sure what they were. I knew I had my passport back at the hotel, and I still retained my smartphone—wasn’t going to toss that away for this stupid experiment.

            I looked at the imperceptible trace of disturbance where the wallet had landed and wished it a good eternity. I sucked in the air of these heights deeply, smiled at some tourists, and made my way back down to earth. Satisfied, I guess.

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2025)

At the local Applebee's

 

Granny’s birthday was big, if limited to five guests and herself,

a hundred years and counting. There was Uncle Jack, her son of eighty years, 

and me, age sixty; my cousin’s kid Mathilde who joked last month, “now at forty,

where’s that hill you say I’m over?” Then my kid named Xandy, half her age,

and a baby sort of everybody claimed, now being raised by Uncle Jack (the story

being too intricate to rabbit-hole right now). Granny raised a toast:

 

“To all my DNA, and even you—” she tipped her cup to Xandy, who

had been adopted by my wife and me for struggles with fertility. Granny smiled

with wizened eyes: “you are reasons not to die.”

 

We laughed at that (Jack and me, at least) and toasted back the road

rise up to meet you kinda shite. Mathilde, though, was shifting in her seat:

“reasons yet to live, how ’bout? We’re in the thick of courting World War III,

with litmus tests and loyalties to no one but the corporate king.

Granny, you survived those dicks; tell us how to cock-block ours the same.”

 

“Whoa, whoa,” interjected Jack. “The baby shouldn’t hear profanity like that!”

 

Xandy, who had grown up awfully fast through memes and snaps and chat,

weighed in: “depends on definitions not for you to set. We don’t know

their point of view on any signals yet.”

 

“Their?” asked Granny, “aren’t we referencing young Salvadore?”

[as the baby’s mom spelled out in shaky script upon her doorstep note].

 

“Or Sally,” said their aunt, “or a question mark, like the artist labelled ‘Prince’—”

 

“—Rogers Nelson, to be exact, then whittled down to ‘Prince’;

then, for seven years, a symbol that defied an alphabet. Pretty rad,”

I thought to add, “coming from a Boomer, after all.”

 

“And how do you identify?” provoked Mathilde, “as Generation X to answer

for this mess?” She smirked at me, of course, but threw a glance at Uncle Jack.

 

“I am literally a bridge between the Cold War and its consequence. 

The use of landline phones against the ethos of the internet. 

The paperboy going house-to-house in deference to echoes of a cubicle. 

The need to know beyond a Google search—”

 

“And mansplain everything,” said Jack, surprisingly, as if I’d taken him aback.

Xandy nodded; Granny laughed; Mathilde stood up to check on Baby S.

And I reflected on that bridge—not literal at all, it seemed, at least for now.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2025)

 

Flagging

 

            Business had been booming at Waving Colors, Ltd. The millennial ma & pa shop started customizing flags in the year 2000, just a year after the founders graduated from Apollo High School in St Cloud, Minnesota. They employed a couple friends and, by autumn of the following year, mortgaged a warehouse to account for a spike in orders for Old Glory, black M.I.A. flags, ‘never surrender’ messages that sometimes bordered on the anti-Islamic vibes of those who generalized Osama Bin Laben’s effect on at least a quarter of the world’s population. Jenny and Jim (not yet a ma & pa) would receive donations of fabric and machinery from local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, VFW, Rotary—all with a blanket assumption that the company would add to the unifying message of George W and Mayor Giuliani: you’re either with us or with the enemy, and clearly that enemy was no one Minnesotan.

            The website, when Jenny convinced Jim of the merits of the internet, would manifest their stock and reassure that every flag was sewn with careful interest in the seams—the swathes discreet and any stenciled items rolled by hand. Machines would guide the intricate weave of stars and eagles clutching arrows, olive leaves. These were standard fare, but the fun would come in customizing.

            “Like the nation of your motorboat,” Jim quipped, pointing to the fluttering of ‘Loony Bin’ on the stern of a pontoon, the floating image of the state bird stitched below the words.

            High School teams—their alma mater not doing justice to their sun god, or the crosstown rival Tech H.S. trying to put more ‘bite’ into their tiger—compelled a bunch of crowdsourcing, and parents paid good money for original designs at Waving Colors, Ltd. In ways, the company would rather make a few of any type than whole-hog mass produce. The goal was not to compete with Costco and their Made in China crap, rather to excite the chance to co-create in the upper Midwest of America.

 

            Jenny faced it first, cornered in a bar she didn’t frequent: “why you making Somali flags, when them that’re here have no love lost for that failed state.”

            “You mean the blue field with a central white star? That’s been around since I was a little girl—lots of my friends are second-, even third-generation immigrants.”

            “Don’t doubt that, but... they’re here now. I wouldn’t enter their territory to plant the stars & stripes.”

            “Well,” she measured how many drinks had been had, “the Horn of Africa has suffered too many punctures of flag poles not their own. Jim an’ I—”

            “The Russians, y’mean. I saw Blackhawk Down and, shi-it, the mess was never ours to wrangle with. The Russians handed out Kalashnikovs like they were—”

            Jenny stopped him there: “like they are not the meaning in the flag. And maybe that’s why our good neighbors here are waving a reminder to the world, that anarchy is not what they promote—”

            “What in hell d’you know more than anyone?”

            Jenny walked away, and, later when she talked this through with Jim, they decided their more-than-ma & pa shop needed more security: she was five months pregnant, and he had also faced such run-ins with the less-than-satisfied.

 

            Spring of 2017, a clash of orders came their way: some in the community were heading west to Standing Rock, straddling the Dakotas, in support or disagreement with the tribe. “Hey there, Jim, you gotta know: God put dinosaurs on this planet to let us drill for oil.” And though Jim could’ve cited another customer’s point of view—that Indians had their Reservation rights precisely to prevent another ravishment from whites—he shrugged instead.

            “Not my issue. But we also don’t want hatred bannered on our products, so...”

            “Nothin’ hateful ’bout this phrase.”

            “‘MOVE, OR DIE LIKE DINOSAURS’? Like, that is how you want your grandchildren to remember you?”

            “Leave them out of it. Just make the fuckin’ order.”

            The bigot left, and since neither he nor Jim signed anything, the latter pretended to forget.

 

            Happier were the Covid years, when negotiations couldn’t occur face-to-face. “I’d like, Ms Jenny, to put a Pegasus outside my windowsill,” an email glowed, “to stand up to this chimera we all face.” Done, delivered with mask-and-distance protocol.

            “I don’t need a flag,” another wrote, “as much as fresher drapes to make me feel a part of normal life again—a Twins throwback, for when they won the World Series, or Granite City Days, struggling to keep events on Zoom.”

            George Floyd was murdered in May, and by June, banners and flags to rouse a nation were in huge demand. Jim and Jenny and their apprentice son Jason headlined their website accordingly: “we know and grieve and surely care that you will have in hand exactly what you need.” Orders for ‘Blue Lives Matter’ left them in a quandary, because refusal would land them in legal trouble—like the Indiana cake-maker who wouldn’t honor same-sex weddings. But through these threats, the family kept optimistic. January 6^th banged on their door, and the company could honestly say: “we’re overbooked.” 

            Jason grew despondent, though, as month by month the business was his to commandeer. Jenny was preoccupied with an unexpected baby, and Jim took his fears of fathering again to daily rounds of golf. Their forty-some employees were on autopilot, but someone still had to call the shots.

 

            Gambling their insurance policy, Jason planned one winter night to dress in layers, don a beard, pull a red cap visor to obscure his eyes and—pretending not to know where all the cameras were perched—he broke into the warehouse. No flamboyance, manifesto, flag to wave, Jason poured two canisters of gasoline on boxes here and contraptions there. He lit the puddles and seemed to pause in a sort of prayer, maybe for remorse he felt the world has rarely shown. The flames rose fast, if his exit was slow.

 

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2024)

 

The Handover

 

            Dr Rukeyser grew up a Michael Jackson fan and doubled down with each change to his legacy, from King of Pop to peculiar to pear-shaped to pedophile. She argued that Michael was none of those plosive associations and rather had a right to forge his own identity, including choices (if they were) for body alterations. From her teens to her twenties, Dr Rukeyser had no second thoughts about a career in plastic surgery. Now in her late forties, she was staring down that raison d’être.

            “I’m 100% on this,” her potential client asserted—we’ll call him Hank to protect his privacy, as he would be searchable on IMDb and other casting lists. “I’ve never wanted hands and have trained my whole life for this opportunity.”

            “Trained how,” Dr Rukeyser asked, clipboarding this consultation, “like in the Stanislavski method?”

            Hank bobbed his head. “Funny you say that—you might have seen some of my roles.”

            “Not really. Tell me about them.”

            Happy to do so, he didn’t raise his arms from the sides of the chair to itemize or gesticulate. “My first commercial was for Swagtron hoverboards and I was this kid who had this catchphrase, ‘Look, Ma—no hands!’ In thirty seconds I had to convince my actor mom that I could jump from the swingset, ride a bike with arms akimbo, dribble a soccer ball, turn her concern into a glimpse of pride. The Swagtron, then, was my earned surprise under the Christmas tree.”

            Dr Rukeyser took note. “Curious strategy. Like a vetting process for gifts.”

            “Maybe. And then one for a voice-activator like Alexa or Siri.”

            “Which one?”

            “Neither. The company went bankrupt, so I’d rather not say—but my performance was nominated for a Clio award in the way I didn’t have to hold my phone or open a laptop or...”

            “I think I get the gist. You’re dexterous without the need for hands. However,”

Dr Rukeyser set the clipboard on her lap and, consciously perhaps, pushed the bridge of her glasses closer to her eyes, “the amputation of both is a jarring request. Why not bind them for a stretch of time—or even just one to see if you’d actually need the other?”

            Hank shifted his weight and scanned the pictures on the walls to call her out: “you’ve done Botox jobs for all these fine people, liposuction, wart removals, cosmetic implants—”

            “—I’ve never amputated any—”

            “fingers? Like that polydactyl child I read about online—it led me here, in fact. And the article went on: ‘if the body is a temple,’ you were quoted, ‘not all parts are doing holy work.’ You did say that, right?”

            “Well, I wanted to emphasize the predominance of what the body does right.”

            Hank shrugged in some agreement. “Or your work with gender-affirming surgery. You can’t deny that what I’m asking is so different.”

            “There is strict licensing and oversight on all these procedures. Voluntary amputations of hands is... not what I’ve ever heard of, let alone can practice.”

            Leaning in, Hank reiterated what had already been proposed: “your lawyer and mine have already agreed in principle to your complete immunity from any malpractice—beyond your substantial pricetag.”

            “This is not about money,” Dr Rukeyser put up her palms, “and certainly not what lawyers determine.”

            

            The consultation went another twenty minutes and ended on the suggestion ‘let’s sleep on this’—separately, of course. Dr Rukeyser drove home and imagined Hank doing the same in a driverless car. She stopped at an Olive Garden drive-thru to give herself the night off from cooking. She mindlessly voice-activated a playlist to the 25^th anniversary release of Bad, jumping to a side B that, as a kid, she would lift off of a turntable and flip over, carefully replacing the stylus to hear ‘Another Part of Me’, followed by ‘Man in the Mirror’; she hadn’t handled vinyl that way since the digital revolution. Maybe life was less and less hands-on.

            Nevertheless, this would be a game-changer for her raison d’être (she could not shake the term). Even if the contract provided for nondisclosure of her role, inevitably her reputation would feed the talking points of countless echo chambers. She imagined someone like Howie Mandel—a preeminent germophobe who hasn’t been seen to shake anyone’s hand for decades—extolling the choice to reduce the manipulation of social norms. She wondered what Helen Keller might say, having only her hands as a means to communicate. She thought of a friend who was born with brachydactyly, enduring endless whispers and worse before receiving prosthetics and mastering their use. That friend was a fan of Black Sabbath, largely inspired by Tony Iommi who lost several fingers at a packaging plant, then practicing like hell to become the ‘Ironman’ of heavy metal guitarists.

            Olive Garden at rest in her gut and the garbage disposal, Dr Rukeyser scrolled through her options to round out the night. She was missing her cat, who died after Covid, perhaps out of loneliness once she had quit working from home. She wasn’t quite wed to her office, but she had long ago acquiesced to being ‘in demand’. With A.I. wearables evolving to transplants, her own touch with the times would only increase. Retirement would never breathe down her neck—probably the opposite: the Hanks of this world would hound her like a queen bee to keep up the hive.

            

            To summon up sleep, she played with her hands: crocheting the fringe of the bed throw, drumming a rhythm on lips, hinging and humming a ‘here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and.... The people would either wiggle like worms or disappear in expectation, depending on the inward or outward weave of her fingers. She tried other variants, as if making silhouette bunnies with no light at all. She cracked her knuckles unnaturally to compel a massage, undo any damage. About to lose consciousness, she noticed a glow on her phone: ‘Dr Rukeyser, I’m texting without’—

            

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2024)