'EXILE' - TRAY DURHANNTHE MAN FROM AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALAND - xtx
THE MAN FROM AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALAND
xtx
The man from Australia or New Zealand talked to me for forever while my feet grew sore inside my pretty shoes. I couldn’t care less about his divorce or where his kids were living, but I tried to nod and smile. He played a soldier in blah blah blah and a pirate in blah blah blah did and did a premier with Johnny Depp blah blah blah while preparing for his role in blah blah blah; football player, stuntman, now actor. He did his best to show me his muscles through his shirt; flexing it tight and then loose again like it was breathing.
He touched my arm continuously like he didn’t want me to get away.
I sipped my wine and kept myself engaged as best I could, trying to focus on his voice and not the words. His accent melted warm heat into the lining of my panties. I just couldn’t take his talking, talking, talking… I bided my time until he got to the part I had been waiting for, and when he finally did, I took off my fucking shoes and quieted his ramblings with my mouth.
xtx
www.notimetosayit.com
Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk
xtx
The man from Australia or New Zealand talked to me for forever while my feet grew sore inside my pretty shoes. I couldn’t care less about his divorce or where his kids were living, but I tried to nod and smile. He played a soldier in blah blah blah and a pirate in blah blah blah did and did a premier with Johnny Depp blah blah blah while preparing for his role in blah blah blah; football player, stuntman, now actor. He did his best to show me his muscles through his shirt; flexing it tight and then loose again like it was breathing.
He touched my arm continuously like he didn’t want me to get away.
I sipped my wine and kept myself engaged as best I could, trying to focus on his voice and not the words. His accent melted warm heat into the lining of my panties. I just couldn’t take his talking, talking, talking… I bided my time until he got to the part I had been waiting for, and when he finally did, I took off my fucking shoes and quieted his ramblings with my mouth.
xtx
www.notimetosayit.com
Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk
GUN PLAY - howie good
GUNPLAY
howie good
1
My mother was twelve when she went to work. She cut lace in a dress factory after school. Her boss was an Italian named Mike, and at the end of every week, my grandfather would pocket her pay. How I often heard it growing up, a puzzling warning in which children playing with guns figured vaguely and the moon was missing its lower jaw.
2
You can phone the police, but they won’t come, even as evening trembles on the edge of the roof, and after a while, you yourself may begin to doubt what you saw. Don’t. Near where the hunters park their pickups, and shadows bloom in the normal course of things, the leaves are like birthdays and thank you’s, only they’re bleeding.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
THE GOOD THIEF
Hannah Tinti
howie good
1
My mother was twelve when she went to work. She cut lace in a dress factory after school. Her boss was an Italian named Mike, and at the end of every week, my grandfather would pocket her pay. How I often heard it growing up, a puzzling warning in which children playing with guns figured vaguely and the moon was missing its lower jaw.
2
You can phone the police, but they won’t come, even as evening trembles on the edge of the roof, and after a while, you yourself may begin to doubt what you saw. Don’t. Near where the hunters park their pickups, and shadows bloom in the normal course of things, the leaves are like birthdays and thank you’s, only they’re bleeding.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
THE GOOD THIEF
Hannah Tinti
CATACOMB EFRETT - nate east
CATACOMB EFREET
nate east
I thought I left you in the witch’s tunnel when the black throat closed over our heads but you must have felt your way up to the surface somehow. I told another woodcutter about our home in the desert today. He couldn’t understand many of the words because he only speaks the language of the sea. When I held your little hand it was brittle and cold, and the knuckles clicked like marbles between my fingers. I should have washed you off my face and hair with cyclone dust but I didn’t, so now when I smoke my morning cigarette on the walk to fire hole in the forest valley I feel your serpent lips in the chill draft and freezing dew on my ankles. I think the artifact you slept is a bottle of blue glass it was the keepsake of a shaman’s child who one night wandered into the desert and caught you like a lightning bug then stopped the bottle with granite so you rattled around inside for a thousand years like ball bearings made of saturn.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Dead Boys
Richard Lange
nate east
I thought I left you in the witch’s tunnel when the black throat closed over our heads but you must have felt your way up to the surface somehow. I told another woodcutter about our home in the desert today. He couldn’t understand many of the words because he only speaks the language of the sea. When I held your little hand it was brittle and cold, and the knuckles clicked like marbles between my fingers. I should have washed you off my face and hair with cyclone dust but I didn’t, so now when I smoke my morning cigarette on the walk to fire hole in the forest valley I feel your serpent lips in the chill draft and freezing dew on my ankles. I think the artifact you slept is a bottle of blue glass it was the keepsake of a shaman’s child who one night wandered into the desert and caught you like a lightning bug then stopped the bottle with granite so you rattled around inside for a thousand years like ball bearings made of saturn.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Dead Boys
Richard Lange
EYE SOCKET - matt debenedictis
EYE SOCKET
matt debenedictis
I have a cousin.
He dropped out of school to follow the dead. The band. The hippies. The parking lots.
I heard he popped pills and did things that made his mother deny he slid out of her.
His pictures gathered dust in her house. The one of the whole family, hung on the staircase, disappeared.
When Jerry Garcia died he came home and got a job.
He pounded nails and held large pieces of wood every day. He tried to make cocaine a working man’s drug. Some things the Midwest will never understand.
One day a close friend said some words to my cousin, not sure what they were as I wasn’t there, but the words must have been greasy and flung with might because he got punched in the face.
In the eye.
The bone that aids in the captures of tears collapsed.
He still hasn't answered my question, "Could you see out of it as it hung over your cheek?"
Matt DeBenedictis
http://www.wordsforguns.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
matt debenedictis
I have a cousin.
He dropped out of school to follow the dead. The band. The hippies. The parking lots.
I heard he popped pills and did things that made his mother deny he slid out of her.
His pictures gathered dust in her house. The one of the whole family, hung on the staircase, disappeared.
When Jerry Garcia died he came home and got a job.
He pounded nails and held large pieces of wood every day. He tried to make cocaine a working man’s drug. Some things the Midwest will never understand.
One day a close friend said some words to my cousin, not sure what they were as I wasn’t there, but the words must have been greasy and flung with might because he got punched in the face.
In the eye.
The bone that aids in the captures of tears collapsed.
He still hasn't answered my question, "Could you see out of it as it hung over your cheek?"
Matt DeBenedictis
http://www.wordsforguns.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
THE EXAMINED LIFE - tim horvath
THE EXAMINED LIFE
tim horvath
The way we sized up truncheons was through use. We hastened into the breach—a town undermoon. Doors we splintered and, finding drapery within, shredded it to streamers, setting afire the limes and mojave sunrises and primaries that yearned to catch. We generated new ash while liberating old from urnature, smashing the urns to shards. Fanning outward, we slagged trinities in the wheat undertow. We feted out misbegotten dyadic dwellers; choosy husbands we punted, and in the presence of the newly-widowed then found ourselves stammering—impotent, rundown shutterbugs. In the aftermotes we stood, virginally contemplative, now stamened introverts. One of the survivors traced viaducts through her hair, irrigating her scalp with found fluids. Her coconut bangs had snagged on the underside of a scalloped roof that had teetered before capitulating. She was beautiful, as was her name, as was our dream, long harangued and now made hash, of coming into architecture, making habitation happen. “This,” we thought, “is where we have risen to wilt.”
Tim Horvath
www.timhorvath.com
Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
Harold Brodkey
tim horvath
The way we sized up truncheons was through use. We hastened into the breach—a town undermoon. Doors we splintered and, finding drapery within, shredded it to streamers, setting afire the limes and mojave sunrises and primaries that yearned to catch. We generated new ash while liberating old from urnature, smashing the urns to shards. Fanning outward, we slagged trinities in the wheat undertow. We feted out misbegotten dyadic dwellers; choosy husbands we punted, and in the presence of the newly-widowed then found ourselves stammering—impotent, rundown shutterbugs. In the aftermotes we stood, virginally contemplative, now stamened introverts. One of the survivors traced viaducts through her hair, irrigating her scalp with found fluids. Her coconut bangs had snagged on the underside of a scalloped roof that had teetered before capitulating. She was beautiful, as was her name, as was our dream, long harangued and now made hash, of coming into architecture, making habitation happen. “This,” we thought, “is where we have risen to wilt.”
Tim Horvath
www.timhorvath.com
Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
Harold Brodkey
OCEAN - ben spivey
OCEAN
ben spivey
The friction of my tongue slipping was damp. There was a beckoning noise behind the only door into the room. My wife sat in a swing that hung from two tight bolts in the ceiling, swinging her feet in motion, laughing. The noise was a small static like a radio, or television left on a dead channel. From the thinnest covering of my skin I read the directions of how to colour the walls with shapes and stones. Stacking the stones, encasing bones in walls. Applying the correct colours from my wife's hands, her jaw, her thinning muscles. Bugs carpeted the single flickering light on the ceiling, curling the silence between thinking a word and speaking it. We looked at the door we've never opened. When the stones were stacked, and the colours were correct she pushed my left hand through the spectrum of colours, and the standing stones. My fingers, palm, and wrist made it between the friction of the stones. I felt the stinging salt air filling the new cuts. I felt the sun's warmth. The static noise behind the door grew louder. My wife thrust my shoulder, and shoved my waist into the stone's cracks as water slithered under the door, and rose quickly. My blood tickled her toes, mixing with the colours running down the walls. You're almost there, she said. My bones cracked and crushed in the flux. Lastly she pulled my tongue from my mouth, she kept it balled in a fist. With all of my body reaching, reaching, reaching, becoming compressed in our creation. She swam to the ceiling of that room holding what was left of me as I was filtered through the wall. Under the water she breathed small fast breathes with wide eyes. My body, like pieces of ribbon, twisted in the new breeze; falling onto the piles of people resting on the beach. Bodies trenched in the infinite sand. My wife expanded, and flattened against the room's only light. The water shorted the static sound. She too filtered through the stones, falling over, and into the ocean followed by the colour, the bugs, and my tongue.
Children playing in the sand built castles, and buried mothers.
As a fragment I watched the colours spread until they diluted into the rest of the ocean's blue.
Ben Spivey
www.yourbrainsblackbox.blogspot.com
Log of the S.S the Mrs. Unguentine
Stanley Crawford
ben spivey
The friction of my tongue slipping was damp. There was a beckoning noise behind the only door into the room. My wife sat in a swing that hung from two tight bolts in the ceiling, swinging her feet in motion, laughing. The noise was a small static like a radio, or television left on a dead channel. From the thinnest covering of my skin I read the directions of how to colour the walls with shapes and stones. Stacking the stones, encasing bones in walls. Applying the correct colours from my wife's hands, her jaw, her thinning muscles. Bugs carpeted the single flickering light on the ceiling, curling the silence between thinking a word and speaking it. We looked at the door we've never opened. When the stones were stacked, and the colours were correct she pushed my left hand through the spectrum of colours, and the standing stones. My fingers, palm, and wrist made it between the friction of the stones. I felt the stinging salt air filling the new cuts. I felt the sun's warmth. The static noise behind the door grew louder. My wife thrust my shoulder, and shoved my waist into the stone's cracks as water slithered under the door, and rose quickly. My blood tickled her toes, mixing with the colours running down the walls. You're almost there, she said. My bones cracked and crushed in the flux. Lastly she pulled my tongue from my mouth, she kept it balled in a fist. With all of my body reaching, reaching, reaching, becoming compressed in our creation. She swam to the ceiling of that room holding what was left of me as I was filtered through the wall. Under the water she breathed small fast breathes with wide eyes. My body, like pieces of ribbon, twisted in the new breeze; falling onto the piles of people resting on the beach. Bodies trenched in the infinite sand. My wife expanded, and flattened against the room's only light. The water shorted the static sound. She too filtered through the stones, falling over, and into the ocean followed by the colour, the bugs, and my tongue.
Children playing in the sand built castles, and buried mothers.
As a fragment I watched the colours spread until they diluted into the rest of the ocean's blue.
Ben Spivey
www.yourbrainsblackbox.blogspot.com
Log of the S.S the Mrs. Unguentine
Stanley Crawford
THAT YOU GOT NOT A LOT - ani smith
THAT YOU GOT NOT A LOT
ani smith
Sometimes I say things just to make you happy. But it never really works. Or maybe it does but not really. Can’t proffer what you don’t have. Like lunch time at school when you promised little Billy or Sally or Janey or little Terry that you’d trade your Lunchables cheese for his Lunchables meat only to open your lunchbox and discover you couldn’t because mom made you peanut butter and jelly and not Lunchables that day because Lunchables didn’t exist until much later when your sister was born. Shit was existential like that from the plum beginning. Like little Terry was the black kid, remember? But unlike that stupid bitch Sally you weren’t afraid to touch him because you already knew we were all dying even if we hadn’t seen Diff’rent Strokes. Mr. President with all due respect sir, I’d say toss Gary Coleman’s salad or make him prime minister or whatever he wanted. Kowtow. You owe that motherfucker, generationally speaking. How can you all just pretend shit never happened, generationally speaking. Generationally speaking, I am appalled at your behavior. Honestly. Now give me that Now and Later ‘fore I tell.
Ani Smith
Maximum Gaga
Lara Glenum
ani smith
Sometimes I say things just to make you happy. But it never really works. Or maybe it does but not really. Can’t proffer what you don’t have. Like lunch time at school when you promised little Billy or Sally or Janey or little Terry that you’d trade your Lunchables cheese for his Lunchables meat only to open your lunchbox and discover you couldn’t because mom made you peanut butter and jelly and not Lunchables that day because Lunchables didn’t exist until much later when your sister was born. Shit was existential like that from the plum beginning. Like little Terry was the black kid, remember? But unlike that stupid bitch Sally you weren’t afraid to touch him because you already knew we were all dying even if we hadn’t seen Diff’rent Strokes. Mr. President with all due respect sir, I’d say toss Gary Coleman’s salad or make him prime minister or whatever he wanted. Kowtow. You owe that motherfucker, generationally speaking. How can you all just pretend shit never happened, generationally speaking. Generationally speaking, I am appalled at your behavior. Honestly. Now give me that Now and Later ‘fore I tell.
Ani Smith
Maximum Gaga
Lara Glenum
PEEK HERE, PROGENY - gabe durham
PEEK HERE, PROGENY
gabe durham
You got slacks to tell me I can’t strafe into my own square yardage with a rage-gage sport-slick auto-rotation twelve-forty and pluck me up something for the spit? I respect you’re unalert to the factuants. Fair as fare, sure—you’re up in your tusk spire, not knowing how my days roll out, thinking up muck to hock. It get cold up there, Senator? There’s an honor in my twelve you don’t cohere. A subset of somesuch would be lucky to go out with permanence by means of my craft. If I’m a monkey—and there’s exhibits to the situals—then at some point the critters of this greenscape globe ought to learn themselves some avoidance procession. What we cannot abide is weakness by and by. Critters. Heh. “Ooh, look at me. So mystic in my fur. Think I’ll prostate myself in this smoothie-black road and see what shakes.” Well what you won’t do is pass on no dumbslick spunk, Thumper. And so the cyclone ongoes.
Gabe Durham
http://gatherroundchildren.com/
My Happy Life
Lydia Millet
gabe durham
You got slacks to tell me I can’t strafe into my own square yardage with a rage-gage sport-slick auto-rotation twelve-forty and pluck me up something for the spit? I respect you’re unalert to the factuants. Fair as fare, sure—you’re up in your tusk spire, not knowing how my days roll out, thinking up muck to hock. It get cold up there, Senator? There’s an honor in my twelve you don’t cohere. A subset of somesuch would be lucky to go out with permanence by means of my craft. If I’m a monkey—and there’s exhibits to the situals—then at some point the critters of this greenscape globe ought to learn themselves some avoidance procession. What we cannot abide is weakness by and by. Critters. Heh. “Ooh, look at me. So mystic in my fur. Think I’ll prostate myself in this smoothie-black road and see what shakes.” Well what you won’t do is pass on no dumbslick spunk, Thumper. And so the cyclone ongoes.
Gabe Durham
http://gatherroundchildren.com/
My Happy Life
Lydia Millet
CHARLOTTE, THE APPARITION - savannah schroll guz
CHARLOTTE, THE APPARITION
savannah schroll guz
Over succeeding weeks, Charlotte felt her power and her perceptions grow steadily. She realized that she could move more quickly through time and space, that at night, she could disperse her atoms and displace those that made up his wife’s body when she and the doctor lay together. Charlotte did nothing to Irene (as Charlotte had heard the doctor call her), could do nothing except inhabit her form, feel, at the cellular level, the intricate workings of her body. Irene’s own soul never protested, never fought Charlotte ’s incursions: it merely contracted and diminished in size, curling on itself inside the woman’s unconscious mind, where Charlotte could sense its flaccid banality. Afterwards, when Charlotte reconstituted herself as pure ionized energy outside the woman’s body, Irene was always ill. It gave the doctor the impression that his wife was pregnant again, and for a week, the couple rejoiced.
Savannah Schroll Guz
www.savannahschrollguz.com
Put Your Head in my Lap
Claudia Smith
savannah schroll guz
Over succeeding weeks, Charlotte felt her power and her perceptions grow steadily. She realized that she could move more quickly through time and space, that at night, she could disperse her atoms and displace those that made up his wife’s body when she and the doctor lay together. Charlotte did nothing to Irene (as Charlotte had heard the doctor call her), could do nothing except inhabit her form, feel, at the cellular level, the intricate workings of her body. Irene’s own soul never protested, never fought Charlotte ’s incursions: it merely contracted and diminished in size, curling on itself inside the woman’s unconscious mind, where Charlotte could sense its flaccid banality. Afterwards, when Charlotte reconstituted herself as pure ionized energy outside the woman’s body, Irene was always ill. It gave the doctor the impression that his wife was pregnant again, and for a week, the couple rejoiced.
Savannah Schroll Guz
www.savannahschrollguz.com
Put Your Head in my Lap
Claudia Smith
LIKE GALLON MILK GULPERS - anelise chen
LIKE GALLON MILK GULPERS
anelise chen
Remember when you told me that stealing is just stickin’ it to the man and academia is for the effete and drinking just a way of life and poetry no undertaking for girls. I shouldn't believe anything you say anymore. Restructuring is for people who give up, like inveterate dieters, like people who throw television sets into rivers, like gallon milk gulpers. I think when you said this year was going to be tough you meant I was losing my mind. Ow-ow-ow cat. She had a paw with five fingers and a functional thumb. Wonder if she misses me, four months, five months without a surrogate. Five thousand miles away now but I am still here and I never visit.
Anelise Chen
http://thedirtypond.wordpress.com/
Break it Down
Lydia Davis
anelise chen
Remember when you told me that stealing is just stickin’ it to the man and academia is for the effete and drinking just a way of life and poetry no undertaking for girls. I shouldn't believe anything you say anymore. Restructuring is for people who give up, like inveterate dieters, like people who throw television sets into rivers, like gallon milk gulpers. I think when you said this year was going to be tough you meant I was losing my mind. Ow-ow-ow cat. She had a paw with five fingers and a functional thumb. Wonder if she misses me, four months, five months without a surrogate. Five thousand miles away now but I am still here and I never visit.
Anelise Chen
http://thedirtypond.wordpress.com/
Break it Down
Lydia Davis
AUGUST - kelly schirmann
AUGUST
kelly schirmann
paul lined the concrete floor with trashbags of it and we set about trimming while he ate pills and drove his truck into town for a couple more cases of gatorade.
the two new romanian girls sat at their own table drinking water and when we offered them a hit they made faces in foreign languages that still meant no.
at ten we realized he’d probably found someone to stay the night with so we said fuck it and took the tanqueray down to the river and got shitfaced and skipped rocks across the sandbar.
we weren't allowed to make cobbler in the kitchen anymore so we filled our beaters with blackberries and put them in each others' mouths and rubbed them on each others' bodies and our brown skin got torn by vines and we mixed the blood with blackberry juice and couldn't tell.
when we got back paul's truck was in the driveway and the garage radio was up the loudest it could go. we found him there, wildly high, figure-eighting around the trashbags with the new girls in the fluorescent lights, yelling through the distortion about elk on the freeway, the fucking wounds in our chests.
Kelly Schirmann
http://richardmanuelismyspiritanimal.blogspot.com
Kenyon College Commencement Speech for the Class of 2005
David Foster Wallace
kelly schirmann
paul lined the concrete floor with trashbags of it and we set about trimming while he ate pills and drove his truck into town for a couple more cases of gatorade.
the two new romanian girls sat at their own table drinking water and when we offered them a hit they made faces in foreign languages that still meant no.
at ten we realized he’d probably found someone to stay the night with so we said fuck it and took the tanqueray down to the river and got shitfaced and skipped rocks across the sandbar.
we weren't allowed to make cobbler in the kitchen anymore so we filled our beaters with blackberries and put them in each others' mouths and rubbed them on each others' bodies and our brown skin got torn by vines and we mixed the blood with blackberry juice and couldn't tell.
when we got back paul's truck was in the driveway and the garage radio was up the loudest it could go. we found him there, wildly high, figure-eighting around the trashbags with the new girls in the fluorescent lights, yelling through the distortion about elk on the freeway, the fucking wounds in our chests.
Kelly Schirmann
http://richardmanuelismyspiritanimal.blogspot.com
Kenyon College Commencement Speech for the Class of 2005
David Foster Wallace
I TOOK A SECRET PICTURE OF YOUR BACK - e. soderback
I TOOK A SECRET PICTURE OF YOUR BACK
e. soderback
I want to talk about how the point 12 size of the font in Microsoft Word scares me, and about how you had me read out loud essays by Chuck Klosterman on the floor of your bedroom in a pile of clean laundry. I want to talk about how you didn’t let me stop, and how we were drunk and sloppy and how I was playing with the material of one of your t-shirt sleeves while I read. Let’s talk about when I would pause, when you would tell me to keep going, that I was doing great, how I would stumble over words, and use the creepy voice you showed me when asking the questions. I want to talk about how excited we were, tripping over the bicycles that lined the hallway, to go and sit cross-legged between boxes of VHS tapes, ashing our rolled cigarettes everywhere just for me to read these essays outloud, just because I said I haven’t read to someone in years. I want to talk about how I can’t hold your hands, how I don’t know what your wrists feel like.
E. Soderback
http://www.heycoolparty.blogspot.com/
Henry and June
Anais Nin
e. soderback
I want to talk about how the point 12 size of the font in Microsoft Word scares me, and about how you had me read out loud essays by Chuck Klosterman on the floor of your bedroom in a pile of clean laundry. I want to talk about how you didn’t let me stop, and how we were drunk and sloppy and how I was playing with the material of one of your t-shirt sleeves while I read. Let’s talk about when I would pause, when you would tell me to keep going, that I was doing great, how I would stumble over words, and use the creepy voice you showed me when asking the questions. I want to talk about how excited we were, tripping over the bicycles that lined the hallway, to go and sit cross-legged between boxes of VHS tapes, ashing our rolled cigarettes everywhere just for me to read these essays outloud, just because I said I haven’t read to someone in years. I want to talk about how I can’t hold your hands, how I don’t know what your wrists feel like.
E. Soderback
http://www.heycoolparty.blogspot.com/
Henry and June
Anais Nin
SOMEBODY IS EXCITED - adam marston
SOMEBODY IS EXCITED
adam marston
Somebody is excited to meet you. You can hear their breathing because you talked with them on the phone once. It reminds you of everything, so you slip and hit your head. No one is excited to meet you. When you open your mouth to tell them it becomes a worldwide cave. Everyone is spelunking on your teeth and down your gullet. They investigate what you talk about because they are near your voice box. They can hear what you really mean. Someone excited tells you to shut up. When you close your mouth, it is a bomb shelter.
Adam Marston
http://hyperdigitalism.blogspot.com/
A Three Dog Life
Abigail Thomas
adam marston
Somebody is excited to meet you. You can hear their breathing because you talked with them on the phone once. It reminds you of everything, so you slip and hit your head. No one is excited to meet you. When you open your mouth to tell them it becomes a worldwide cave. Everyone is spelunking on your teeth and down your gullet. They investigate what you talk about because they are near your voice box. They can hear what you really mean. Someone excited tells you to shut up. When you close your mouth, it is a bomb shelter.
Adam Marston
http://hyperdigitalism.blogspot.com/
A Three Dog Life
Abigail Thomas
TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES - thomas mundt
TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES
thomas mundt
Tim opened the Ziploc bag and dumped his dead goldfish, Tigris and Euphrates, into the toilet. He watched as they sank to the bottom of the bowl and bobbed back up to the surface. Then he panicked. Did he just make a grave mistake? Did he just see gills billowing, dorsal fins flopping? He rolled up the right sleeve of his Bears hoodie and grabbed the copper corpses from off the water. His hand trembled, now blue-green from the Tidy Bowl. He held Tigris and Euphrates under the bright lights of the vanity. Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead. He felt semi-relieved as he dropped his friends back into the bowl and flushed. He watched as the vortex sucked them under. Then he pictured them traveling through miles and miles of plumbing before being shat out into the Pacific, just off the coast of Oahu. Then he saw God’s huge hands poke through the clouds, holding those paddles he saw on ER. Then he watched God shrink the paddles down to the size of thimbles and hold them against their tiny chests. Then he heard God yell Clear! Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead.
Thomas Mundt
rustykluth@gmail.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
thomas mundt
Tim opened the Ziploc bag and dumped his dead goldfish, Tigris and Euphrates, into the toilet. He watched as they sank to the bottom of the bowl and bobbed back up to the surface. Then he panicked. Did he just make a grave mistake? Did he just see gills billowing, dorsal fins flopping? He rolled up the right sleeve of his Bears hoodie and grabbed the copper corpses from off the water. His hand trembled, now blue-green from the Tidy Bowl. He held Tigris and Euphrates under the bright lights of the vanity. Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead. He felt semi-relieved as he dropped his friends back into the bowl and flushed. He watched as the vortex sucked them under. Then he pictured them traveling through miles and miles of plumbing before being shat out into the Pacific, just off the coast of Oahu. Then he saw God’s huge hands poke through the clouds, holding those paddles he saw on ER. Then he watched God shrink the paddles down to the size of thimbles and hold them against their tiny chests. Then he heard God yell Clear! Nothing. Dead. Definitely dead.
Thomas Mundt
rustykluth@gmail.com
Everything Matters!
Ron Currie, Jr.
THIN ME - dave erlewine
THIN ME
dave erlewine
At the airport, Jen glances at my face. During her Europe trip, I’ve gained weight from worry. Over dinner, she stares.
“You look like Uncle Mark.” She stabs a scallop and swallows. “He’d be Jabba and I’d be Leia. Messed up my buns with his dick. Cracked himself up.”
Something is happening between us, it’s weird. “Thin me,” I say.
**
I’m placed on a cottage cheese diet. Caught eating cookies, a ball gag is inserted. “You Vichy fuck,” she says, grinding my face.
In bed, I inquire about the Vichy reference. She talks about the man whose Vichy grandfather collaborated with Nazis. She fucked his ass and yelled Arbeit macht frei.
She shrugs at my expression. “Guys like that paid for college.”
**
Within a month, I’m down to 175. We agree things are good, no need to change up
**
She says yes. Before I get off my knee, she pushes me to the floor, fucks me around the room.
I slink away from her snores, dig around the pantry. I move balled Nutty Bars around my mouth, spitting most into the trash.
Dave Erlewine
http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/
tunneling to the center of the earth
kevin wilson
dave erlewine
At the airport, Jen glances at my face. During her Europe trip, I’ve gained weight from worry. Over dinner, she stares.
“You look like Uncle Mark.” She stabs a scallop and swallows. “He’d be Jabba and I’d be Leia. Messed up my buns with his dick. Cracked himself up.”
Something is happening between us, it’s weird. “Thin me,” I say.
**
I’m placed on a cottage cheese diet. Caught eating cookies, a ball gag is inserted. “You Vichy fuck,” she says, grinding my face.
In bed, I inquire about the Vichy reference. She talks about the man whose Vichy grandfather collaborated with Nazis. She fucked his ass and yelled Arbeit macht frei.
She shrugs at my expression. “Guys like that paid for college.”
**
Within a month, I’m down to 175. We agree things are good, no need to change up
**
She says yes. Before I get off my knee, she pushes me to the floor, fucks me around the room.
I slink away from her snores, dig around the pantry. I move balled Nutty Bars around my mouth, spitting most into the trash.
Dave Erlewine
http://www.whizbyfiction.blogspot.com/
tunneling to the center of the earth
kevin wilson
THE MEANING OF YES - eric bennett
THE MEANING OF YES
eric bennett
He held her hand too tightly.
And everything felt serious like church or right before a spanking. The sky was pool blue and the trees were whispering windy secrets, or were they warnings?
They crossed the street to the lot with the goliath tree that had a hundred hairy arms, but all she could remember was lying in the grass and how it tickled her earlobes. She also remembered his curious hands rubbing shame between her legs. Confused, she didn’t know how to think so she smiled which, looking back, he took as approval.
She did not approve.
Hers was a quiet insurgence. She made up horrible names to call him, names like snake man, dog butt, and poop licker. These names pleased her which, looking back, he took for encouragement.
eb
Now, she understands how much miscommunication played a role in those ironically sunny days when his shady face smothered her. Did her eyes give him permission? Did her hips lie by moving in rhythm with his hands? Did she make tiny yes noises? These are things she can’t remember yet determine whether she goes to heaven or hell.
“I have to remember,” she whispers to herself.
Eric Bennett
ebennett@tkc.edu
Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
eric bennett
He held her hand too tightly.
And everything felt serious like church or right before a spanking. The sky was pool blue and the trees were whispering windy secrets, or were they warnings?
They crossed the street to the lot with the goliath tree that had a hundred hairy arms, but all she could remember was lying in the grass and how it tickled her earlobes. She also remembered his curious hands rubbing shame between her legs. Confused, she didn’t know how to think so she smiled which, looking back, he took as approval.
She did not approve.
Hers was a quiet insurgence. She made up horrible names to call him, names like snake man, dog butt, and poop licker. These names pleased her which, looking back, he took for encouragement.
eb
Now, she understands how much miscommunication played a role in those ironically sunny days when his shady face smothered her. Did her eyes give him permission? Did her hips lie by moving in rhythm with his hands? Did she make tiny yes noises? These are things she can’t remember yet determine whether she goes to heaven or hell.
“I have to remember,” she whispers to herself.
Eric Bennett
ebennett@tkc.edu
Fugitive Pieces
Anne Michaels
FORT - catherine lasota
FORT
catherine lasota
We made a fort. We stretched green and pink blankets between our beds and dressers. We created a secret doorway near the leg on the back corner of the table. We divided the fort into rooms using string and Star Wars sheets. We kept our jars of pennies in the smallest room, inside a wooden box, covered with a pillow. We invited the friends we liked to come play inside with us, but only if they knew the code word. We changed the code word twice a day. We kept leftover Halloween candy inside the last room, near the secret exit door. We kept another pillow on top of the candy. We refused to come out for dinner. We talked to each other in flashlight code so the grown ups could not hear our conversations. We discovered that some candy was missing and held a trial of the main suspects, with teddy bear and rabbit serving as key witnesses. We never found the perpetrator. As a precaution, we prohibited friends from entering the fort for two days. We changed the code word five times in one day. On the third day, we were attacked and the fort was destroyed.
Catherine LaSota
http://www.notesfromcatherine.blogspot.com/
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
catherine lasota
We made a fort. We stretched green and pink blankets between our beds and dressers. We created a secret doorway near the leg on the back corner of the table. We divided the fort into rooms using string and Star Wars sheets. We kept our jars of pennies in the smallest room, inside a wooden box, covered with a pillow. We invited the friends we liked to come play inside with us, but only if they knew the code word. We changed the code word twice a day. We kept leftover Halloween candy inside the last room, near the secret exit door. We kept another pillow on top of the candy. We refused to come out for dinner. We talked to each other in flashlight code so the grown ups could not hear our conversations. We discovered that some candy was missing and held a trial of the main suspects, with teddy bear and rabbit serving as key witnesses. We never found the perpetrator. As a precaution, we prohibited friends from entering the fort for two days. We changed the code word five times in one day. On the third day, we were attacked and the fort was destroyed.
Catherine LaSota
http://www.notesfromcatherine.blogspot.com/
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
ROLE MODELS - sheldon lee compton
ROLE MODELS
sheldon lee compton
Halloween, 1982. An aunt applied the makeup, various tubes and fliptop mirrors taken from the bottom of her purse, the dredges, the pearls. Cloaked his face in hero smear, war paint, the face of his first father. Rock and roll all night with cheekbones flaming black.
While no one paid attention, Ben bit the tip of his finger and coppered the spill across his tongue.
You look just like him, Aunt said. Dad was gone so Mom was away.
Later, say 1989, it was Jerry Lee Lewis.
Bubble gum and milk, the same way Jerry Lee did it. Pop, gulp. Ben destroyed four dozens eggs Easter morning by throwing them at his grandmother, his aunt, a pack of smiling cousins.
While they ruptured against the porch railings, the side of the house, Ben thought of how wild his hair must have looked during the whole thing. Completely out of control.
Sheldon Lee Compton
www.wrongtreereview.com
I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down
William Gay
sheldon lee compton
Halloween, 1982. An aunt applied the makeup, various tubes and fliptop mirrors taken from the bottom of her purse, the dredges, the pearls. Cloaked his face in hero smear, war paint, the face of his first father. Rock and roll all night with cheekbones flaming black.
While no one paid attention, Ben bit the tip of his finger and coppered the spill across his tongue.
You look just like him, Aunt said. Dad was gone so Mom was away.
Later, say 1989, it was Jerry Lee Lewis.
Bubble gum and milk, the same way Jerry Lee did it. Pop, gulp. Ben destroyed four dozens eggs Easter morning by throwing them at his grandmother, his aunt, a pack of smiling cousins.
While they ruptured against the porch railings, the side of the house, Ben thought of how wild his hair must have looked during the whole thing. Completely out of control.
Sheldon Lee Compton
www.wrongtreereview.com
I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down
William Gay
THE ESCAPE - dawn corrigan
THE ESCAPE
dawn corrigan
She wears a sparkly dress and you wear jeans and you go out to eat, prime rib and martinis, and afterward you return home and nurse each other, for now you're both ill, having eaten nothing for days before the big date. And this is how faith is retained, in one endless absorbing errand after another, no escape from lessons that must be stammered out except an occasional weekend in the country where, in a field packed down by decades of boredom, you do donuts in a blue pickup truck. You think something of her because she has thought something of you. On the drive home she says a kiss is still a kiss, it is what it is. She says nothing.
Dawn Corrigan
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/dcorrigan/
Love Is a Four-Letter Word
Michael Taeckens (editor)
dawn corrigan
She wears a sparkly dress and you wear jeans and you go out to eat, prime rib and martinis, and afterward you return home and nurse each other, for now you're both ill, having eaten nothing for days before the big date. And this is how faith is retained, in one endless absorbing errand after another, no escape from lessons that must be stammered out except an occasional weekend in the country where, in a field packed down by decades of boredom, you do donuts in a blue pickup truck. You think something of her because she has thought something of you. On the drive home she says a kiss is still a kiss, it is what it is. She says nothing.
Dawn Corrigan
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/dcorrigan/
Love Is a Four-Letter Word
Michael Taeckens (editor)
BLUE - jan windle
BLUE
jan windle
Blue was his colour, he always said, went with his Michael Caine eyes.
Midnight blue velvet suit, in the seventies, their twenties. (She stroking nightly its nap as they sat on her hard Ercol sofa, until he revealed the smooth contrast of the skin beneath.)
His wedding suit a sky-blue linen creation (Her mother, late to the ceremony, breathing,”Isn’t he beautiful”, as he led her, tearstained, up to the flower-decked registry office table).
Pure cotton, cerulean and cobalt shirts in the eighties (hell to iron, but hell, they were still in love.)
Prussian blue golf shoes and an ultramarine Armani fleece in the nineties, as far as she could recall.
He bought her a cloud-blue Honda just before their blue skies ended. In it, she took off alone, struck out on a polychrome adventure, towards the blue horizon, the lurid sunset calling her away to look for the gold at the end of her rainbow.
When they met again, she saw that at some point his eyes had faded to grey, along with their hair. Blue was still his colour.
Jan Windle
http://www.artwork4u.com
Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
jan windle
Blue was his colour, he always said, went with his Michael Caine eyes.
Midnight blue velvet suit, in the seventies, their twenties. (She stroking nightly its nap as they sat on her hard Ercol sofa, until he revealed the smooth contrast of the skin beneath.)
His wedding suit a sky-blue linen creation (Her mother, late to the ceremony, breathing,”Isn’t he beautiful”, as he led her, tearstained, up to the flower-decked registry office table).
Pure cotton, cerulean and cobalt shirts in the eighties (hell to iron, but hell, they were still in love.)
Prussian blue golf shoes and an ultramarine Armani fleece in the nineties, as far as she could recall.
He bought her a cloud-blue Honda just before their blue skies ended. In it, she took off alone, struck out on a polychrome adventure, towards the blue horizon, the lurid sunset calling her away to look for the gold at the end of her rainbow.
When they met again, she saw that at some point his eyes had faded to grey, along with their hair. Blue was still his colour.
Jan Windle
http://www.artwork4u.com
Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
LOVE LETTERS - lily hoang
LOVE LETTERS
lily hoang
Eat me so I can falter in your mouth. My creases fray along the sharpness of your tongue, conspiring between your bleached teeth. There, I will storm an infection until your mouth inks out my words.
*
Here is my sentence hitting on your sentence--using a bad pick up line, winking at the wrong time, stuttering--but all my sentences are ultimately for you.
Lily Hoang
http://lilysvirtualpad.blogspot.com/
lily.hoang.326@gmail.com
Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler
Blue Octavio Notebooks
Kafka
lily hoang
Eat me so I can falter in your mouth. My creases fray along the sharpness of your tongue, conspiring between your bleached teeth. There, I will storm an infection until your mouth inks out my words.
*
Here is my sentence hitting on your sentence--using a bad pick up line, winking at the wrong time, stuttering--but all my sentences are ultimately for you.
Lily Hoang
http://lilysvirtualpad.blogspot.com/
lily.hoang.326@gmail.com
Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler
Blue Octavio Notebooks
Kafka
OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SORROW - rebecca king
OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SORROW
rebecca king
I light a candle to the lady in 3A, whose husband disappeared two months ago. She waits patiently, peering from behind her door each time the buzzer rings; hoping.
But the circles beneath her eyes betray her. The quiver of her chin. You can count the worries in her nail polish, smell the desperation of the peroxide in her curls. Listen as she whispers of the shapes he left in the sheets.
I’ve watched her wobble to the mailbox for weeks now, her pink slippers already worn thin, and her heels scraping the concrete. Each day, opening the door to disappointment.
Rebecca King
raking12@gmail.com
Arlington Park
Rachel Cusk
rebecca king
I light a candle to the lady in 3A, whose husband disappeared two months ago. She waits patiently, peering from behind her door each time the buzzer rings; hoping.
But the circles beneath her eyes betray her. The quiver of her chin. You can count the worries in her nail polish, smell the desperation of the peroxide in her curls. Listen as she whispers of the shapes he left in the sheets.
I’ve watched her wobble to the mailbox for weeks now, her pink slippers already worn thin, and her heels scraping the concrete. Each day, opening the door to disappointment.
Rebecca King
raking12@gmail.com
Arlington Park
Rachel Cusk
BACKGROUND NOISE - peter demarco
BACKGROUND NOISE
peter demarco
The diet Coke she orders seems like the kiss of death for our relationship since I’m drinking bourbon. She always had red wine, or something with vodka in it. And she says she has plans for later on with friends. I didn’t have plans forever.
The way we fumble for conversation and have trouble with eye contact makes me feel like I don’t know her anymore, probably never did. I thought I knew her when she cried one night in my arms because she said the moment, a post-thunderstorm silence on a warm summer night, was perfect. And I perversely liked her anxiety attack and subsequent throwing up in my bathroom after an incredible orgasm, because that meant I was having an effect on her.
But now this whole thing reminds me of the time I was an extra in a movie, standing around Times Square for hours on a cold winter night waiting for the scene to be lit, and then the star showed up and they were ready and the assistant director said cue background noise through his bullhorn, which was the signal to begin our fake talking.
Peter DeMarco
http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/3818-MOVIE-ART-AS-LIFE.html#extended
Zeroville
Steve Erickson
peter demarco
The diet Coke she orders seems like the kiss of death for our relationship since I’m drinking bourbon. She always had red wine, or something with vodka in it. And she says she has plans for later on with friends. I didn’t have plans forever.
The way we fumble for conversation and have trouble with eye contact makes me feel like I don’t know her anymore, probably never did. I thought I knew her when she cried one night in my arms because she said the moment, a post-thunderstorm silence on a warm summer night, was perfect. And I perversely liked her anxiety attack and subsequent throwing up in my bathroom after an incredible orgasm, because that meant I was having an effect on her.
But now this whole thing reminds me of the time I was an extra in a movie, standing around Times Square for hours on a cold winter night waiting for the scene to be lit, and then the star showed up and they were ready and the assistant director said cue background noise through his bullhorn, which was the signal to begin our fake talking.
Peter DeMarco
http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/3818-MOVIE-ART-AS-LIFE.html#extended
Zeroville
Steve Erickson
THE CANCER MUSEUM - brian le lay
THE CANCER MUSEUM
brian le lay
Tin foil over the summer birth canals and windows. Dead anaconda on the vestibule choking up Marcia Brady's ponytail. How many times is it appropriate to brush the dead woman's hair before alternating sides? Your heart pounding its way up the garbage compactor looking for its dead shell while I'm in the attic lactating all over mother's photo albums. I was the man in a tuxedo-suit with a face full of birthday candles. You were the woman who existed in grayscale and looked miserable in every stillshot. And now you're soiled. You always said it was your dream to drown in the Hudson River at dusk while staring at New York City. The ferry is here. This is your last chance to make something of that diploma, and pimp contracts take at least four business days to notarize.
Brian Le Lay
http://www.babyslastwords.blogspot.com/
The Soft Machine
William S. Burroughs
brian le lay
Tin foil over the summer birth canals and windows. Dead anaconda on the vestibule choking up Marcia Brady's ponytail. How many times is it appropriate to brush the dead woman's hair before alternating sides? Your heart pounding its way up the garbage compactor looking for its dead shell while I'm in the attic lactating all over mother's photo albums. I was the man in a tuxedo-suit with a face full of birthday candles. You were the woman who existed in grayscale and looked miserable in every stillshot. And now you're soiled. You always said it was your dream to drown in the Hudson River at dusk while staring at New York City. The ferry is here. This is your last chance to make something of that diploma, and pimp contracts take at least four business days to notarize.
Brian Le Lay
http://www.babyslastwords.blogspot.com/
The Soft Machine
William S. Burroughs
NOTHING NEW - amanda montei
NOTHING NEW
amanda montei
Mostly I was languishing. He was pickle-eyed. Pickle juice breath came with the only kiss I got that morning. He often ate pickles for breakfast but he seemed to be taking on the characteristics of one now. He seemed green, not with envy, with another kind of sadness.
Like a stick in the mud he was. Always a stick in the mud.
And I was laying on his bed, splayed out like I was supposed to be, like I’d been told to be. By glossy page-turners, by articles on “Blow Jobs for the New Century” or “Sex Tricks for the New Relationship” or “25 Ways to Keep Him, For the New Woman.” Always it was new new new! You know why women flip through those things so fast? Because there just isn’t room for that much newness in someone’s brain.
So I was splayed out like that with my hand on my ass just so. Just so I looked like I had the right curve going, the roman-carved-marble-statue-perfect-voluptuous look, but I was thinking about how I cried the night before after too much booze, not enough commitment, and I was trying not to let the embarrassment show in my face.
I was languishing there, knowing he’d make me leave soon. I had places to be, but I didn’t want to go to them.
And he was really green, like he felt sick from it all. I did. He took a drag off last night’s beer in such a way-- oh, god in such a way that he must have thought he looked really cool. And when he didn’t seem impressed with my layout, I said, “I feel stupid.” Waiting for him to come to me. And he said, “You look stupid.”
Amanda Montei
AMontei@aol.com
Oblivion
David Foster Wallace
amanda montei
Mostly I was languishing. He was pickle-eyed. Pickle juice breath came with the only kiss I got that morning. He often ate pickles for breakfast but he seemed to be taking on the characteristics of one now. He seemed green, not with envy, with another kind of sadness.
Like a stick in the mud he was. Always a stick in the mud.
And I was laying on his bed, splayed out like I was supposed to be, like I’d been told to be. By glossy page-turners, by articles on “Blow Jobs for the New Century” or “Sex Tricks for the New Relationship” or “25 Ways to Keep Him, For the New Woman.” Always it was new new new! You know why women flip through those things so fast? Because there just isn’t room for that much newness in someone’s brain.
So I was splayed out like that with my hand on my ass just so. Just so I looked like I had the right curve going, the roman-carved-marble-statue-perfect-voluptuous look, but I was thinking about how I cried the night before after too much booze, not enough commitment, and I was trying not to let the embarrassment show in my face.
I was languishing there, knowing he’d make me leave soon. I had places to be, but I didn’t want to go to them.
And he was really green, like he felt sick from it all. I did. He took a drag off last night’s beer in such a way-- oh, god in such a way that he must have thought he looked really cool. And when he didn’t seem impressed with my layout, I said, “I feel stupid.” Waiting for him to come to me. And he said, “You look stupid.”
Amanda Montei
AMontei@aol.com
Oblivion
David Foster Wallace
DOWNTOWN - nate east
DOWNTOWN
nate east
But to be honest, the only thing that ever influenced me was hundreds of hours spent in the Springfield Public Library where everything was brown. Brown carpeting, light brown walls, and a strange brown fountain in the foyer with metal reeds that were hollow and rainbow-reflecting like oil in a parking lot. My mom told me not to touch the trickling water because it was hooked up to something electric and I didn’t want to get shocked. The computers for looking up books in the catalog had green letters on black screens, and if you pressed the right numbers you could access the internet where I would study websites about Pokemon video games.
One day I was at one of these terminals and an older boy sat down next to me and started typing a mile a minute. I couldn’t yet type fast and I secretly watched his screen in awe and envy. He typed “little red riding hood” into the search bar and pressed the key for title search. His keys clicked so fast that the sound was like the drum roll of rain drops or the rolling click of skateboard wheels on squared-off cobblestones.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Drown
Junot Diaz
nate east
But to be honest, the only thing that ever influenced me was hundreds of hours spent in the Springfield Public Library where everything was brown. Brown carpeting, light brown walls, and a strange brown fountain in the foyer with metal reeds that were hollow and rainbow-reflecting like oil in a parking lot. My mom told me not to touch the trickling water because it was hooked up to something electric and I didn’t want to get shocked. The computers for looking up books in the catalog had green letters on black screens, and if you pressed the right numbers you could access the internet where I would study websites about Pokemon video games.
One day I was at one of these terminals and an older boy sat down next to me and started typing a mile a minute. I couldn’t yet type fast and I secretly watched his screen in awe and envy. He typed “little red riding hood” into the search bar and pressed the key for title search. His keys clicked so fast that the sound was like the drum roll of rain drops or the rolling click of skateboard wheels on squared-off cobblestones.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Drown
Junot Diaz
CHRONO-SOMETHING - bob jacobs
CHRONO-SOMETHING
bob jacobs
Gloria's building a time-machine. She started a month ago.
She began by collecting empty egg boxes and the tubes from inside toilet rolls, and got some old cardboard boxes and silver foil. She's assembling it in the spare bedroom, held together with Sellotape, Blu-tack and paper clips. She spends most of her day sitting on a fold-away plastic chair in the middle of this contraption, with her eyes shut and her hands resting on her lap.
She told me that she only needs one more part, a chrono-something, but it hasn't been invented yet. So she waits.
Every now and then she'll wander into the lounge and pick up our wedding photo. She'll stare at it for a few minutes, then she'll climb back inside the time machine and wait. And maybe cry a little.
Bob Jacobs
http://blog.bobjacobs.co.uk/
Rape: A Love Story
Joyce Carol Oates
bob jacobs
Gloria's building a time-machine. She started a month ago.
She began by collecting empty egg boxes and the tubes from inside toilet rolls, and got some old cardboard boxes and silver foil. She's assembling it in the spare bedroom, held together with Sellotape, Blu-tack and paper clips. She spends most of her day sitting on a fold-away plastic chair in the middle of this contraption, with her eyes shut and her hands resting on her lap.
She told me that she only needs one more part, a chrono-something, but it hasn't been invented yet. So she waits.
Every now and then she'll wander into the lounge and pick up our wedding photo. She'll stare at it for a few minutes, then she'll climb back inside the time machine and wait. And maybe cry a little.
Bob Jacobs
http://blog.bobjacobs.co.uk/
Rape: A Love Story
Joyce Carol Oates
INARI SHRINE - brett fogarty
INARI SHRINE
brett fogarty
The monks let me sleep outside on the grounds after I swept their floors of dust. The stone statues of foxes guarding the entrance looked dead; serious. I coughed into the night and looked up at the statues looking out. They wore bright red bibs. I wondered if they were supposed to be gods or guardians (or both). I woke up sweating to the sound of tourists taking pictures in the morning sun.
All Around
The statues followed me throughout the country. Small packs of them carved from granite with little bowls of water set in front. I thought of you, then home and finally what makes a person good, honest and brave.
Home
Good luck runs out with money. I sat in my first real bed in months, wishing for a real pack of limber foxes, loud brass keys. In my dreams, they all stand sentinel in a line and say don’t worry, don’t worry and all I ever say back is, but how?
Brett Fogarty
brettfogarty@gmail.com
The Book of Chameleons
Jose Eduardo Agualusa
brett fogarty
The monks let me sleep outside on the grounds after I swept their floors of dust. The stone statues of foxes guarding the entrance looked dead; serious. I coughed into the night and looked up at the statues looking out. They wore bright red bibs. I wondered if they were supposed to be gods or guardians (or both). I woke up sweating to the sound of tourists taking pictures in the morning sun.
All Around
The statues followed me throughout the country. Small packs of them carved from granite with little bowls of water set in front. I thought of you, then home and finally what makes a person good, honest and brave.
Home
Good luck runs out with money. I sat in my first real bed in months, wishing for a real pack of limber foxes, loud brass keys. In my dreams, they all stand sentinel in a line and say don’t worry, don’t worry and all I ever say back is, but how?
Brett Fogarty
brettfogarty@gmail.com
The Book of Chameleons
Jose Eduardo Agualusa
BEST PURCHASES OF THE YEAR - mel bosworth
BEST PURCHASES OF THE YEAR
mel bosworth
Dickies double-knee pants, crashing blue and soil, siesta; dream hat, made of felt and children, I plunged hallways and laughed dream hat dream hat dream hat; summer; the autumnal equinox, for its overlap, lapping dog goodbye August and sweaty July ruckus; a used kazoo and a new hammer (the kazoo I used to mesmerize secretaries, the hammer to build a skiff); the Atlantic Ocean, brine and saline, witnessed ship wrecks on international waters (we all won); the color pink; wild boar and damaged hands; house wrap for use as a water slide, bikinis and soap, garden hose, nose and chewed grass, fun, sun, slippery wetness; semi-automatic weaponry; my neighbors’ fantasies; four new tires, rotors and brake pads (for obvious stopping purposes).
Mel Bosworth
http://eddiesocko.blogspot.com/
Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler
mel bosworth
Dickies double-knee pants, crashing blue and soil, siesta; dream hat, made of felt and children, I plunged hallways and laughed dream hat dream hat dream hat; summer; the autumnal equinox, for its overlap, lapping dog goodbye August and sweaty July ruckus; a used kazoo and a new hammer (the kazoo I used to mesmerize secretaries, the hammer to build a skiff); the Atlantic Ocean, brine and saline, witnessed ship wrecks on international waters (we all won); the color pink; wild boar and damaged hands; house wrap for use as a water slide, bikinis and soap, garden hose, nose and chewed grass, fun, sun, slippery wetness; semi-automatic weaponry; my neighbors’ fantasies; four new tires, rotors and brake pads (for obvious stopping purposes).
Mel Bosworth
http://eddiesocko.blogspot.com/
Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler
COMBOVER - brendan o' brien
COMBOVER
brendan o’ brien
Dad will be back any minute, sweating like a fourth quarter quarterback and complaining about knees knocking on arthritis’s door. He will come in through the kitchen, drink from the Brita and balance against the counter to stretch hairy hamstrings.
“How’s this?” Ally asks. Ally is my girlfriend. She’s thinks we’ve invented 13 new sex positions.
I hold my chin between thumb and forefinger. Her blond hair is pigtailed, her soccer-thick thighs brown and shiny.
“Push your tits out more,” mom says without looking up from her Sudoku. “Let those puppies see some light.”
Ally gives me a look. “The way your sister would,” I say, shrugging.
“Not funny,” Ally says.
From the corner of my eye I see dad walk past the window. His few remaining hairs dance resiliently in the summer breeze, flickering like birthday cake candles that won’t go out.
“He’s coming!” I say.
“Is this absolutely necessary?”
“Hide!” my mother screams.
“Oh goddammit,” Ally says, wiggling her ass, hiking her skirt. She checks her reflection in the toaster, runs a finger across her teeth.
The back door opens with a familiar moan as my girlfriend gets into position.
Brendan O’ Brien
http://huntnpeckhero.blogspot.com/
Emporium
Adam Johnson
brendan o’ brien
Dad will be back any minute, sweating like a fourth quarter quarterback and complaining about knees knocking on arthritis’s door. He will come in through the kitchen, drink from the Brita and balance against the counter to stretch hairy hamstrings.
“How’s this?” Ally asks. Ally is my girlfriend. She’s thinks we’ve invented 13 new sex positions.
I hold my chin between thumb and forefinger. Her blond hair is pigtailed, her soccer-thick thighs brown and shiny.
“Push your tits out more,” mom says without looking up from her Sudoku. “Let those puppies see some light.”
Ally gives me a look. “The way your sister would,” I say, shrugging.
“Not funny,” Ally says.
From the corner of my eye I see dad walk past the window. His few remaining hairs dance resiliently in the summer breeze, flickering like birthday cake candles that won’t go out.
“He’s coming!” I say.
“Is this absolutely necessary?”
“Hide!” my mother screams.
“Oh goddammit,” Ally says, wiggling her ass, hiking her skirt. She checks her reflection in the toaster, runs a finger across her teeth.
The back door opens with a familiar moan as my girlfriend gets into position.
Brendan O’ Brien
http://huntnpeckhero.blogspot.com/
Emporium
Adam Johnson
DO I REALLY LOVE YOU - ethel rohan
DO I REALLY LOVE YOU
ethel rohan
You are determined to decapitate the gopher tearing-up our garden. You stand over the latest dirt-pile with your shovel aimed and the back of your shirt out.
You purchase a shotgun, camouflage gear, and dozen doughnuts. You stake-out our garden at night, your face smeared in dirt and insanity. You fire shots, making babies and trees scream. Lights flood our block. Neighbors’ windows, doors, and judgment thud open. Police sirens sound.
You collapse into bed, your teeth and eyes too slick inside your blackened face. You smell of grass and rage. The shotgun lies between us like a gorge, your finger glued to its trigger. You insist you’ll get him yet, and rush from the bed and reason.
Under the yellow moonlight, you aim a white can over each garden hole, pouring-in some concoction I imagine is a mix of acid, bleach, weed killer, and whatever other revenge you could overpower. You have no idea, but you’re also pouring poison down my dream.
Ethel Rohan
http://www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com/
Signs of Life
Norman Waksler
ethel rohan
You are determined to decapitate the gopher tearing-up our garden. You stand over the latest dirt-pile with your shovel aimed and the back of your shirt out.
You purchase a shotgun, camouflage gear, and dozen doughnuts. You stake-out our garden at night, your face smeared in dirt and insanity. You fire shots, making babies and trees scream. Lights flood our block. Neighbors’ windows, doors, and judgment thud open. Police sirens sound.
You collapse into bed, your teeth and eyes too slick inside your blackened face. You smell of grass and rage. The shotgun lies between us like a gorge, your finger glued to its trigger. You insist you’ll get him yet, and rush from the bed and reason.
Under the yellow moonlight, you aim a white can over each garden hole, pouring-in some concoction I imagine is a mix of acid, bleach, weed killer, and whatever other revenge you could overpower. You have no idea, but you’re also pouring poison down my dream.
Ethel Rohan
http://www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com/
Signs of Life
Norman Waksler
ANGRY - andrea kneeland
ANGRY
andrea kneeland
“I want to cum in your eyes,” he says. I think he’s kidding but then I look at his face.
“That would hurt,” I say. He stares at me but doesn’t respond. “That would really sting.”
I’m not sure if the conversation is finished. He keeps staring. I wonder if he’s still mad at me because I won’t watch porn with him.
First of all, his computer screen is too small and the sound coming out of the speakers is ridiculously disproportionate to the tiny writhing bodies.
Second, all the porn he watches is exactly the same: angry men having sex with sad little girls. Everyone is choking, crawling around on their hands and knees, water falling out of their eyes. Girls get covered in all different kinds of bodily fluids. Men grimace and stand next to each other wearing nothing but white tube socks. Once in a while, a penis gets slapped against a forehead like it’s serious business.
Nobody looks like they’re having fun.
I know that I’m sad most of the time, but I don’t know if I’m that sad, to let somebody cum in my eyes.
I stop to consider.
Andrea Kneeland
hortenseinexile@yahoo.com
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger
andrea kneeland
“I want to cum in your eyes,” he says. I think he’s kidding but then I look at his face.
“That would hurt,” I say. He stares at me but doesn’t respond. “That would really sting.”
I’m not sure if the conversation is finished. He keeps staring. I wonder if he’s still mad at me because I won’t watch porn with him.
First of all, his computer screen is too small and the sound coming out of the speakers is ridiculously disproportionate to the tiny writhing bodies.
Second, all the porn he watches is exactly the same: angry men having sex with sad little girls. Everyone is choking, crawling around on their hands and knees, water falling out of their eyes. Girls get covered in all different kinds of bodily fluids. Men grimace and stand next to each other wearing nothing but white tube socks. Once in a while, a penis gets slapped against a forehead like it’s serious business.
Nobody looks like they’re having fun.
I know that I’m sad most of the time, but I don’t know if I’m that sad, to let somebody cum in my eyes.
I stop to consider.
Andrea Kneeland
hortenseinexile@yahoo.com
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger
THE UNCLE - curtis smith
THE UNCLE
curtis smith
The tires of his uncle’s convertible hummed over the cantilever bridge. With the top down, the boy could almost forget about the heat. Girders whistled past. The river flowed black beneath them, the stars smeared by haze and soot. The boy smelled the marshes, the refineries. On the radio, news of the riots in the black part of town. Fires burned, gunshots in broad daylight. The boy’s father was a cop.
“Do you think it will end soon?” the boy asked.
“Sure.” The uncle flicked his cigarette. He shook another smoke loose from the pack and pinched the filter between his lips. His wind-ruffled collar rose like a single wing. “It will end, and then it will begin again somewhere else.”
“Hmm.” The boy didn’t know what to say.
“Best we can do is hope it doesn’t happen here again anytime soon.” Another news story on the radio—Cassius Clay had changed his name. The uncle pushed in the dash’s lighter. “Is it any wonder the world’s so screwed up?”
Curtis Smith
www.curtisjsmith.com
Gallatin Canyon
Thomas McGuane
curtis smith
The tires of his uncle’s convertible hummed over the cantilever bridge. With the top down, the boy could almost forget about the heat. Girders whistled past. The river flowed black beneath them, the stars smeared by haze and soot. The boy smelled the marshes, the refineries. On the radio, news of the riots in the black part of town. Fires burned, gunshots in broad daylight. The boy’s father was a cop.
“Do you think it will end soon?” the boy asked.
“Sure.” The uncle flicked his cigarette. He shook another smoke loose from the pack and pinched the filter between his lips. His wind-ruffled collar rose like a single wing. “It will end, and then it will begin again somewhere else.”
“Hmm.” The boy didn’t know what to say.
“Best we can do is hope it doesn’t happen here again anytime soon.” Another news story on the radio—Cassius Clay had changed his name. The uncle pushed in the dash’s lighter. “Is it any wonder the world’s so screwed up?”
Curtis Smith
www.curtisjsmith.com
Gallatin Canyon
Thomas McGuane
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY - niall boyce
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY
niall boyce
Nobody remembers.
There are no newspapers documenting the day’s events. There are no television recordings, no photographs, no blogs, no emails, no phone calls dialled or received.
In the records leading up to that day, there are pieces missing: a few minutes of a news report blacked out here, a couple of column inches of a paper replaced by blank spaces there. Photographs of crowds with a barely perceptible blur at the center, as if something has been burned away. I open my diary and find dates scrubbed out. I search my memories and find gaps.
Someone has disappeared. It was perfectly engineered, perfectly orchestrated. They vanished overnight and removed every trace they ever existed.
There is another explanation, but I do not care for it.
Perhaps the entire world has collaborated with the disappearance, and I am the only one who does not remember.
Niall Boyce
http://strange-powers.blogspot.com
The Separation
Christopher Priest
niall boyce
Nobody remembers.
There are no newspapers documenting the day’s events. There are no television recordings, no photographs, no blogs, no emails, no phone calls dialled or received.
In the records leading up to that day, there are pieces missing: a few minutes of a news report blacked out here, a couple of column inches of a paper replaced by blank spaces there. Photographs of crowds with a barely perceptible blur at the center, as if something has been burned away. I open my diary and find dates scrubbed out. I search my memories and find gaps.
Someone has disappeared. It was perfectly engineered, perfectly orchestrated. They vanished overnight and removed every trace they ever existed.
There is another explanation, but I do not care for it.
Perhaps the entire world has collaborated with the disappearance, and I am the only one who does not remember.
Niall Boyce
http://strange-powers.blogspot.com
The Separation
Christopher Priest
LATERAL SURFACES - richard radford
LATERAL SURFACES
richard radford
The worst part about it, Tanya thought, is they would never be able to fuck again.
As Tom adjusted himself in the passenger seat, she watched an old lady with an oxygen tank totter to an empty Cadillac. Tom was unaccustomed to riding shotgun, and made a big production of clicking the seatbelt securely into place.
No, the worst part wasn’t that they would never be able to fuck again, she decided. The worst part was that it would always be her fault.
Tom’s wheelchair rattled loudly in the trunk the entire twenty-miles to their apartment.
Richard Radford
raradford@gmail.com
Molloy
Samuel Beckett
richard radford
The worst part about it, Tanya thought, is they would never be able to fuck again.
As Tom adjusted himself in the passenger seat, she watched an old lady with an oxygen tank totter to an empty Cadillac. Tom was unaccustomed to riding shotgun, and made a big production of clicking the seatbelt securely into place.
No, the worst part wasn’t that they would never be able to fuck again, she decided. The worst part was that it would always be her fault.
Tom’s wheelchair rattled loudly in the trunk the entire twenty-miles to their apartment.
Richard Radford
raradford@gmail.com
Molloy
Samuel Beckett
PICKUP LINE AT THE RITZ CARLTON - len joy
PICKUP LINE AT THE RITZ CARLTON
len joy
Thirty-one years is a long time. You must be a good husband.
Not really. Do you want another daiquiri?
Absolutely. So what’s kept you together?
My wife saves college class notes, twenty-year old cancelled checks, empty margarine tubs…
So?
She doesn’t throw anything away.
Len Joy
http://lenjoy.blogspot.com/
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
len joy
Thirty-one years is a long time. You must be a good husband.
Not really. Do you want another daiquiri?
Absolutely. So what’s kept you together?
My wife saves college class notes, twenty-year old cancelled checks, empty margarine tubs…
So?
She doesn’t throw anything away.
Len Joy
http://lenjoy.blogspot.com/
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
THE BROOKLYN BOTANICALS - alexandra isacson
THE BROOKLYN BOTANICALS
alexandra isacson
silk crepes of sun singed poppy petals lie summer spent on the soft ground. stems and pods waver in the wind. we snap seedpods, tuck them in our pockets. such wickedness, inside the glass hothouse- coy, petite venus fly traps relax sticky tongued in sun sauna. locked away in conservatory basement, forbidden belladonna poise wide-eyed with saucy mouths, intoxicated with themselves inside glassy pedestals. we leave the deadman’s bells and witch’s gloves alone in shakespeare’s garden and walk to the brooklyn museum. four floors up, we join judy chicago’s dinner party. in sanctuary of dark mirrored womb room, triangulated table glazes with women, succulent and dished up. centering the meditation, the fertile goddess regales in amulet relics- orange starfish and bone needle weaving place setting textures. chalices spin, communing with silver and gold light. we linger liquid, naming women still blooming, spelled out in threaded canonical mantras.
Alexandra Isacson
http://www.alexandraisacson.com/
We Needed a Night Out
Timothy Gager
alexandra isacson
silk crepes of sun singed poppy petals lie summer spent on the soft ground. stems and pods waver in the wind. we snap seedpods, tuck them in our pockets. such wickedness, inside the glass hothouse- coy, petite venus fly traps relax sticky tongued in sun sauna. locked away in conservatory basement, forbidden belladonna poise wide-eyed with saucy mouths, intoxicated with themselves inside glassy pedestals. we leave the deadman’s bells and witch’s gloves alone in shakespeare’s garden and walk to the brooklyn museum. four floors up, we join judy chicago’s dinner party. in sanctuary of dark mirrored womb room, triangulated table glazes with women, succulent and dished up. centering the meditation, the fertile goddess regales in amulet relics- orange starfish and bone needle weaving place setting textures. chalices spin, communing with silver and gold light. we linger liquid, naming women still blooming, spelled out in threaded canonical mantras.
Alexandra Isacson
http://www.alexandraisacson.com/
We Needed a Night Out
Timothy Gager
DESPITE OUR BEST EFFORTS - sarah anne lloyd
DESPITE OUR BEST EFFORTS
sarah anne lloyd
My mother came with me to get my diaphragm, and my grandmother, who told me not to use it while menstruating. She warned me that she did the first time and it was horrible. “Horrible” was italicized and I remembered that she was on her period on her wedding night.
Her first son was born during the Seafair hydro races. It was painless except for everyone watching the hospital TV the whole time. I don’t know any details from my mother’s birth, like if 1959 was a good year for television.
My mother texted me the night before my birthday, at 9 pm. “The evening of October 11th,” she said, “just went into heavy labor. No epidural.” Later, “You had no soft spot, like a bowling ball.” I said, “sorry, mom.”
When I was eleven I learned that my mother left her diaphragm in her dresser drawer. I never used mine much, only hers, its story, when she would tell me how fertile I am. She would say, “you were a diaphragm baby,” and I would say “a diaphragm in the dresser drawer baby?” and she would say, “oh, you got me.”
Sarah Anne Lloyd
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hysterical_paroxysm/
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Chuck Klosterman
sarah anne lloyd
My mother came with me to get my diaphragm, and my grandmother, who told me not to use it while menstruating. She warned me that she did the first time and it was horrible. “Horrible” was italicized and I remembered that she was on her period on her wedding night.
Her first son was born during the Seafair hydro races. It was painless except for everyone watching the hospital TV the whole time. I don’t know any details from my mother’s birth, like if 1959 was a good year for television.
My mother texted me the night before my birthday, at 9 pm. “The evening of October 11th,” she said, “just went into heavy labor. No epidural.” Later, “You had no soft spot, like a bowling ball.” I said, “sorry, mom.”
When I was eleven I learned that my mother left her diaphragm in her dresser drawer. I never used mine much, only hers, its story, when she would tell me how fertile I am. She would say, “you were a diaphragm baby,” and I would say “a diaphragm in the dresser drawer baby?” and she would say, “oh, you got me.”
Sarah Anne Lloyd
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hysterical_paroxysm/
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Chuck Klosterman
THE WOMAN AND THE WOLF - len kuntz
THE WOMAN AND THE WOLF
len kuntz
She pulled apart while I watched from a safe, short distance.
In the kitchen I did home work as a clock radio played Elton John and “Bennie and the Jets” got her swaying, her cigarette smoke an anorexic genie escaping through the spackled ceiling. She was just drunk then, but later the swaying would return, more a wobble, her unsteady sea-bound legs plodding unfamiliarly on this flat and dusty earth.
I was warned: the disease had a pattern, a cadence, an inevitable predictability. Nevertheless it unnerved and strangled me.
In time she shed every trace of loveliness, resorted to growling and staccato bursts of paranoia. Her eyes were stripped and raw, like a starved wolf’s.
In that same kitchen where she once fed me she bit down on my arm and would not release even as I screamed and punched and slammed her head against the refrigerator. Had Dad not been there she might have eaten me.
Yesterday when I visited she looked past me, warbling an undecipherable chant, summoning old friends and ghosts, addressing the coven, casting spells and cursing me to hell.
“But Mother,” I said, “isn’t it too late for that?”
Len Kuntz
lenk98290@hotmail.com
The Delivery Man
Joe McGinniss Jr.
len kuntz
She pulled apart while I watched from a safe, short distance.
In the kitchen I did home work as a clock radio played Elton John and “Bennie and the Jets” got her swaying, her cigarette smoke an anorexic genie escaping through the spackled ceiling. She was just drunk then, but later the swaying would return, more a wobble, her unsteady sea-bound legs plodding unfamiliarly on this flat and dusty earth.
I was warned: the disease had a pattern, a cadence, an inevitable predictability. Nevertheless it unnerved and strangled me.
In time she shed every trace of loveliness, resorted to growling and staccato bursts of paranoia. Her eyes were stripped and raw, like a starved wolf’s.
In that same kitchen where she once fed me she bit down on my arm and would not release even as I screamed and punched and slammed her head against the refrigerator. Had Dad not been there she might have eaten me.
Yesterday when I visited she looked past me, warbling an undecipherable chant, summoning old friends and ghosts, addressing the coven, casting spells and cursing me to hell.
“But Mother,” I said, “isn’t it too late for that?”
Len Kuntz
lenk98290@hotmail.com
The Delivery Man
Joe McGinniss Jr.
LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT - howie good
LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT
howie good
There was a time I might’ve enjoyed the tang of truck exhaust following me home, or the boarded-up windows of a discount liquor store. Then tick-borne diseases in fitted choir robes climbed down from the scaffold and disappeared into the crowd. I sat on the curb heartbroken. In theory every sequence of moves ought to be reversible. But somewhere it’s always the summer after mom died, and raining, and the rain is passing notes to us through a slit in the ground.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford
howie good
There was a time I might’ve enjoyed the tang of truck exhaust following me home, or the boarded-up windows of a discount liquor store. Then tick-borne diseases in fitted choir robes climbed down from the scaffold and disappeared into the crowd. I sat on the curb heartbroken. In theory every sequence of moves ought to be reversible. But somewhere it’s always the summer after mom died, and raining, and the rain is passing notes to us through a slit in the ground.
Howie Good
http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/
Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford
THEY DID NOT WANT TO KNOW - timothy gager
THEY DID NOT WANT TO KNOW
timothy gager
From your old life, those friends at your funeral were clueless, failed to note it was drugs that killed you. They laughed; their hair and clothes fresh, their zamboni lip gloss chucked wet ice and their smiles blinded us like splashy soda commercials. They bloomed, sprung out of the ground like flowers; the world was such a wonderful place.
Timothy Gager
www.timothygager.com
Leaving Las Vegas
John O'Brien
timothy gager
From your old life, those friends at your funeral were clueless, failed to note it was drugs that killed you. They laughed; their hair and clothes fresh, their zamboni lip gloss chucked wet ice and their smiles blinded us like splashy soda commercials. They bloomed, sprung out of the ground like flowers; the world was such a wonderful place.
Timothy Gager
www.timothygager.com
Leaving Las Vegas
John O'Brien
JOHNNY CAME BY - barry basden
JOHNNY CAME BY
barry basden
He rode in on a little red Honda yesterday evening. Came all the way from Sacramento. Took him four days. Said he stopped in Phoenix and my dad gave him twenty bucks for gas. Last of the big spenders that guy. He still owes me the twelve hundred he stole when I was in the army.
Johnny said he was pissing blood from the road vibrations. He sat on the bike in the driveway while we talked. Mary Lou wouldn't let him in the house after last time. That was long ago, but she's like that. Well, he's still my son no matter what.
Then a grackle flew over and splattered him and it ran down behind his ear and into his collar. I hosed it off as best I could and gave him everything I had in my wallet before he rode off.
I stood there awhile listening to those fucking birds settle into the top of the tall cedar by the garage. I thought about taking the shotgun to them but decided against it. Sure as I did out there in the dark, one of those paranoid dopeheads across the street would start shooting back.
Barry Basden
www.camrocpressreview.com
FORMS OF INTERCESSION
Jayne Pupek
barry basden
He rode in on a little red Honda yesterday evening. Came all the way from Sacramento. Took him four days. Said he stopped in Phoenix and my dad gave him twenty bucks for gas. Last of the big spenders that guy. He still owes me the twelve hundred he stole when I was in the army.
Johnny said he was pissing blood from the road vibrations. He sat on the bike in the driveway while we talked. Mary Lou wouldn't let him in the house after last time. That was long ago, but she's like that. Well, he's still my son no matter what.
Then a grackle flew over and splattered him and it ran down behind his ear and into his collar. I hosed it off as best I could and gave him everything I had in my wallet before he rode off.
I stood there awhile listening to those fucking birds settle into the top of the tall cedar by the garage. I thought about taking the shotgun to them but decided against it. Sure as I did out there in the dark, one of those paranoid dopeheads across the street would start shooting back.
Barry Basden
www.camrocpressreview.com
FORMS OF INTERCESSION
Jayne Pupek
A MILLION WORLDS - maddie gorman
A MILLION WORLDS
maddie gorman
She thinks of needles and honeycomb, big balloon sized rain drops, heavy footed nouns falling clumsy on her head and that’s why it throbs at night while she tries to fall asleep, chasing birds of thought in every direction, grasping at their blurry feathers, squeezing her eyes so tight that little droplets of color appear, birthed out of a blank screen, mutating as if to music. She tugs at her pubic hair softly, individually and methodically, compulsively out of a habit so strong she wakes in the morning with her hand inside her underwear, cupping her mound gently as if to protect it from the damage of post-apocalyptic earth, alien invasions, and mass kidnappings, often including a chase scene. Even in her sleep she knows her heart circles in little catapults, propelling her weightless mind-body through vast, maze-like escapes with danger at every turn.
Maddie Gorman
http://members.shaw.ca/kingofcats/
Lighthousekeeping
Jeanette Winterson
maddie gorman
She thinks of needles and honeycomb, big balloon sized rain drops, heavy footed nouns falling clumsy on her head and that’s why it throbs at night while she tries to fall asleep, chasing birds of thought in every direction, grasping at their blurry feathers, squeezing her eyes so tight that little droplets of color appear, birthed out of a blank screen, mutating as if to music. She tugs at her pubic hair softly, individually and methodically, compulsively out of a habit so strong she wakes in the morning with her hand inside her underwear, cupping her mound gently as if to protect it from the damage of post-apocalyptic earth, alien invasions, and mass kidnappings, often including a chase scene. Even in her sleep she knows her heart circles in little catapults, propelling her weightless mind-body through vast, maze-like escapes with danger at every turn.
Maddie Gorman
http://members.shaw.ca/kingofcats/
Lighthousekeeping
Jeanette Winterson
SUMMER OF '74 - richard osgood
SUMMER OF ‘74
richard osgood
It lay between them like a toppled geranium, dirt and stem and shattered terracotta, the crash of guilt and remorse on mirage pavement from Manchester to White River Junction, where campers and canoe-topped station wagons exit at places like Sutton and Sunapee and Georges Mills, miles behind her the humorless doctor with cold hands and rubber words—dilation and curettage—instruments of finality scrape remnants of first love and fluttered loins into a stainless steel pan, the shape of which reminds her of a banana split, and there beside her the boy who doesn't hold her hand or wipe away her tears but rambles on and on about senior year and ski team and how they should just be friends.
Richard Osgood
r.osgood@fuse.net
Underworld
Don DeLillo
richard osgood
It lay between them like a toppled geranium, dirt and stem and shattered terracotta, the crash of guilt and remorse on mirage pavement from Manchester to White River Junction, where campers and canoe-topped station wagons exit at places like Sutton and Sunapee and Georges Mills, miles behind her the humorless doctor with cold hands and rubber words—dilation and curettage—instruments of finality scrape remnants of first love and fluttered loins into a stainless steel pan, the shape of which reminds her of a banana split, and there beside her the boy who doesn't hold her hand or wipe away her tears but rambles on and on about senior year and ski team and how they should just be friends.
Richard Osgood
r.osgood@fuse.net
Underworld
Don DeLillo
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)