Dense cloud smothered the town, drizzling on the predawn pavements and blurring the streetlight. In damp hands cupped against biting wind I lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud that whipped away before it could form. Over the eastern hills a cold line of sun filtered...
Issue Three
The Snout Pointing Toward Sunset
Just a name. “It’s really amazing, Cousin Adam told me as we filled our plates with potato salad and fried chicken at the family reunion. “Two babies, born to one woman, five months apart.” “That’s not possible, unless…” I said, thinking preemies happen, but five...
Organs of Labor and Love
Tendon There’s never been any doubt in my mind of that. I’ve always felt that I could reach out to you at any time, reaching for and then reaching you, that thing which remains within and out of reach. Some things don’t warrant an explanation. The muscle...
Night Swimming By A Burning House
No man, ever, had torn the wrapper free from a candy bar with more ferocity than Corey Gordon on the night he went swimming. He wasn't in the water while accomplishing said feat. He was on the road, fresh off another evening spent forcefully reminding drunk...
Heroes
When I was a child, I had a great-uncle, who I barely remember. The same is true of one of our dogs. I can say that the uncle’s name was Paul, and that the dog’s name was Rinty. The uncle was an alcoholic who no one liked to kiss. The dog was a German Shepherd who I...
Me, Once
To my surprise, I saw you at the gym yesterday for the first time in ten years in a cut-off white tee and grey sweat shorts to your oak knot knees talking to a trainer, writhing your pale earthworm mouth in that recognizable, inarticulate way. You are less tall than I...
LAND OF THE LION
My wife, daughter and I arrive in Singapore after midnight. Heat hits us as we walk out of the airport. We wait on a sidewalk and in a short time are met by a car and driver. We ride into the city in the dark. Before the sun rises, I go out to look for a convenience...
Oddity
Clement weather ahead, I bound out of my bedroom and lunge across the continent. In poor, broken Greek I ask for directions to the nearest beach and all arms point south. I drop in to a restaurant named after a cat known as Marguerite and nibble cured meats as the sun...
Life Is a Dandy
New Halloween idea: buy health insurance for the undead, they’re paper animals, a side of Eli Whitney and Lou Reed's solo work, this is what I really need: some burgundy and Celine, oh hold me, you pseudo sexual anarchists, maybe I'll become a really big knave ...
Building a bouquet out of baby’s breath alone
Every woman I've passed today has been wearing perfume that's a scent from a hopscotch block memory of my life. Recollections that are organized in lopsided chalk outlines, out-of-focus in their bygone lives. The commute from 11th street station to 69th street station...
Greetings From La Dolce Pantomime
Two canaries fly into a trapeze manufacturing plant. One hops on a forklift and begins the arduous task of moving a mountain of crates. The other searches for a place to gather her thoughts. The forklifting canary takes his time hauling the boxes, which have been...
Pretty Things
The last thing my mother does before supper is put on the string of pearls she stole from a pawnshop when she was fourteen. She wears them when she’s expecting company — when she’s in the mood to entertain. She runs her fingers over the beads while I eat, sits up...
Resistance
Summer nights, neo-Nazi cockroaches — one pure-white swastika per brown wing — roamed her bedsheet and body. The girl shuddered in her sleep, strove to shutter herself against these onslaughts. It was not a question of “if” or even “when,” but how many could invade....
Thank You For Helping Us Serve You Better
Not for us the glory or strength of a dragon. Our paper placemats tell us: we’re rats and roosters, monkeys, sheep. Even once oil and soy sauce render the page translucent, we keep on reading our destinies. Day six of a family vacation. From the backseat Janie and I...
Without Clouds
While other people living on the same street seemed to follow, within the expected standard deviation, the local and proper weather patterns, at my family home it never rained. Around us were lots rich with the flora one would expect: Elms and cottonwoods and lilacs...
Evidence Retrieved from a High School Hallway: America 2018
In the hallway, gun shots suck all the sound out of the world, reverberating like a skipped record, rebounding against my heartbeat, before crashing back into the world with a pop. I'm in the bathroom stall, feet tucked underneath me, breath sucked in so hard my ribs...
SOMEONE RUNNING INTO A SUNSET
Palm roughs for the flick of a coin, you are an open-hand rattler hollowing out the air’s stiff grains. Moving autumn with your wake, you walk roads of names you long to remember, curving at the places to go back, ghosting lambent beneath smoky hills. Big sky knocks...
The Hair Child
When you shave your cat, you make a new cat, a better cat. And when you shave your son, you make a new son who emerges screaming into this world—a hair child made from your son’s hair a more compliant, more loving, less complaining version of your son. During that...
Modern Living
“Wombats have cube-shaped poop,” the waitress says as she refills the sugar bowl. “I’ll stick with the Splenda,” I say and raise the coffee mug to my lips. From the individual-sized cereal boxes, I pick the anti-Christ of the grain group. “Blessed be the Fruit Loops,”...
[[attitude]]
I. I call my mother to ask again why she didn’t sign me up to learn sign language when I was born and the doctor said I had a fifty percent hearing loss in my right ear, or when I was seven and the doctor said, Did we say just the right ear? We meant both. Yes,...
Holes
On the one-hundredth day after the election, the country was still without a new Prime Minister and more holes had appeared in the streets of the capital. Behind the parliament building, the pavement yawned open, its tarry, muddy mouth tipping back as if in a...
The Germ Suspended
The Germ Suspended After René Magritte’s Elective Affinities Last night when we wed, we dived in tandem through the O of a great oak headboard, our nightclothes tattered and flying behind us. Tonight I walked in on you sawing apart the bed, several spent...
Glospak
Dense cloud smothered the town, drizzling on the predawn pavements and blurring the streetlight. In damp hands cupped against biting wind I lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud that whipped away before it could form. Over the eastern hills a cold line of sun filtered...
The Snout Pointing Toward Sunset
Just a name. “It’s really amazing, Cousin Adam told me as we filled our plates with potato salad and fried chicken at the family reunion. “Two babies, born to one woman, five months apart.” “That’s not possible, unless…” I said, thinking preemies happen, but five...
Organs of Labor and Love
Tendon There’s never been any doubt in my mind of that. I’ve always felt that I could reach out to you at any time, reaching for and then reaching you, that thing which remains within and out of reach. Some things don’t warrant an explanation. The muscle...
Night Swimming By A Burning House
No man, ever, had torn the wrapper free from a candy bar with more ferocity than Corey Gordon on the night he went swimming. He wasn't in the water while accomplishing said feat. He was on the road, fresh off another evening spent forcefully reminding drunk...
Heroes
When I was a child, I had a great-uncle, who I barely remember. The same is true of one of our dogs. I can say that the uncle’s name was Paul, and that the dog’s name was Rinty. The uncle was an alcoholic who no one liked to kiss. The dog was a German Shepherd who I...
Me, Once
To my surprise, I saw you at the gym yesterday for the first time in ten years in a cut-off white tee and grey sweat shorts to your oak knot knees talking to a trainer, writhing your pale earthworm mouth in that recognizable, inarticulate way. You are less tall than I...
LAND OF THE LION
My wife, daughter and I arrive in Singapore after midnight. Heat hits us as we walk out of the airport. We wait on a sidewalk and in a short time are met by a car and driver. We ride into the city in the dark. Before the sun rises, I go out to look for a convenience...
Oddity
Clement weather ahead, I bound out of my bedroom and lunge across the continent. In poor, broken Greek I ask for directions to the nearest beach and all arms point south. I drop in to a restaurant named after a cat known as Marguerite and nibble cured meats as the sun...
Life Is a Dandy
New Halloween idea: buy health insurance for the undead, they’re paper animals, a side of Eli Whitney and Lou Reed's solo work, this is what I really need: some burgundy and Celine, oh hold me, you pseudo sexual anarchists, maybe I'll become a really big knave ...
Building a bouquet out of baby’s breath alone
Every woman I've passed today has been wearing perfume that's a scent from a hopscotch block memory of my life. Recollections that are organized in lopsided chalk outlines, out-of-focus in their bygone lives. The commute from 11th street station to 69th street station...
Greetings From La Dolce Pantomime
Two canaries fly into a trapeze manufacturing plant. One hops on a forklift and begins the arduous task of moving a mountain of crates. The other searches for a place to gather her thoughts. The forklifting canary takes his time hauling the boxes, which have been...
Pretty Things
The last thing my mother does before supper is put on the string of pearls she stole from a pawnshop when she was fourteen. She wears them when she’s expecting company — when she’s in the mood to entertain. She runs her fingers over the beads while I eat, sits up...
Resistance
Summer nights, neo-Nazi cockroaches — one pure-white swastika per brown wing — roamed her bedsheet and body. The girl shuddered in her sleep, strove to shutter herself against these onslaughts. It was not a question of “if” or even “when,” but how many could invade....
Thank You For Helping Us Serve You Better
Not for us the glory or strength of a dragon. Our paper placemats tell us: we’re rats and roosters, monkeys, sheep. Even once oil and soy sauce render the page translucent, we keep on reading our destinies. Day six of a family vacation. From the backseat Janie and I...
Without Clouds
While other people living on the same street seemed to follow, within the expected standard deviation, the local and proper weather patterns, at my family home it never rained. Around us were lots rich with the flora one would expect: Elms and cottonwoods and lilacs...
Evidence Retrieved from a High School Hallway: America 2018
In the hallway, gun shots suck all the sound out of the world, reverberating like a skipped record, rebounding against my heartbeat, before crashing back into the world with a pop. I'm in the bathroom stall, feet tucked underneath me, breath sucked in so hard my ribs...
SOMEONE RUNNING INTO A SUNSET
Palm roughs for the flick of a coin, you are an open-hand rattler hollowing out the air’s stiff grains. Moving autumn with your wake, you walk roads of names you long to remember, curving at the places to go back, ghosting lambent beneath smoky hills. Big sky knocks...
The Hair Child
When you shave your cat, you make a new cat, a better cat. And when you shave your son, you make a new son who emerges screaming into this world—a hair child made from your son’s hair a more compliant, more loving, less complaining version of your son. During that...
Modern Living
“Wombats have cube-shaped poop,” the waitress says as she refills the sugar bowl. “I’ll stick with the Splenda,” I say and raise the coffee mug to my lips. From the individual-sized cereal boxes, I pick the anti-Christ of the grain group. “Blessed be the Fruit Loops,”...
[[attitude]]
I. I call my mother to ask again why she didn’t sign me up to learn sign language when I was born and the doctor said I had a fifty percent hearing loss in my right ear, or when I was seven and the doctor said, Did we say just the right ear? We meant both. Yes,...
Holes
On the one-hundredth day after the election, the country was still without a new Prime Minister and more holes had appeared in the streets of the capital. Behind the parliament building, the pavement yawned open, its tarry, muddy mouth tipping back as if in a...
The Germ Suspended
The Germ Suspended After René Magritte’s Elective Affinities Last night when we wed, we dived in tandem through the O of a great oak headboard, our nightclothes tattered and flying behind us. Tonight I walked in on you sawing apart the bed, several spent...