Baked Alaska and If the Shoe Fits

by Brad Rose | Aug 6, 2019 | Issue Ten, Poetry

Febrile as baked Alaska, I’ve grown over-heated from tilling the magnetic fields. Of course, I don’t expect the dead to remember me. I don’t tan, I grey. Look, you can listen to all the confetti music you want, but to the illicit organ trade, it’s all just blood under the bridge. What would be the perfect temperature in Hell, anyway? I told Roxie, But I like knives, and she said, Nobody can be certain whether life is a comedy or a sluggish suicide. A mid-sized sedan pulled up. No one appeared to be driving its shiny black hull. All my cells began swimming in little circles, orbiting an empire of fear, and I thought, They’ll never prove we killed her husband. Just then, limp as a rubber dagger, a newspaper blew by in the hilarious breeze. The trees were kind enough not to laugh.

If the Shoe Fits

I work hard all day, like a snake. My bankruptcy attorney says it’s futile to reinvent the hula hoop, but I tell him it’s all part of my journey. I mean, why do we get only one life wedged between two eternities? I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation, although I haven’t been asked to sign the guest register, yet. Thankfully, they found that all those anonymous deaths at the census bureau were unrelated to terrorism. I didn’t take it personally. I’m sure it’s a lot harder than it looks. Last night, I barely got an ounce of sleep. Those damn rabbits snored louder than a fleet of crop dusters dangling over a buckwheat farm, but what can you expect if you grow nothing but carrots? After the government’s scheduled welfare executions, I’m planning to rename myself, just to be on the safe side. You know what they say: In a violent breeze, the sky is always filthy quiet. Besides, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing my stilts in a Big and Tall store, certainly not before I’d spellchecked my cookie tattoos. Those 3-D food printers are a lot prettier than they taste. Say, you don’t think these slippers make me look fat, do you? Ever since the amputations, I can barely get them on.

Brad Rose

Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of a collection of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015, http://pinkx-ray.com and Amazon.com.) Brad has three forthcoming books of poems, Momentary Turbulence and WordinEdgeWise, from Cervena Barva Press, and de/tonations from Nixes Mate Press. He is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and once nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, his poetry and micro fiction have appeared in, The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, Sequestrum, Hunger Mountain, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore Review, and other publications. His story, “Desert Motel,” appears in the anthology Best Microfiction, 2019. Brad’s website is: www.bradrosepoetry.com Selected readings can be heard at https://soundcloud.com/bradrose1 A list of publications is available at: http://bradrosepoetry.com/2019/03/a-list-of-publications/

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Baked Alaska and If the Shoe Fits

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