Jonathan Cardew – February Day 1

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there were towns with edges, towns in places like Wasilla, or Bessemer. People in those towns were afraid to go to big places, like Anchorage or Stevens Point, though sometimes they would go in and out quickly to buy...

To Bring or Not Bring My Phone Off to the woods, I go to die (again). Do I bring my phone this time? Service is reliable, a strong connection will exist until I: A) drain battery, B) turn phone off, C) lose phone, D) bury phone. I consider creating a list:...

The bird has the nerve to make a castle or an econobox. It takes serious amber to reconcile that density. In a responsible freeze, the court owes the landowner. The tenet cuts onions without emotion; there is a gene for that. After a chilly engagement, this union is...

Friends with cars white tights and shoes the double life I was leading. Older kids laughed at my jokes. We bitched about our rotten lives. She opened the packet to dole out the lines. I looked at my watch and blew it right there.

Orange Today is National Eat Your Jell-O Day. Jell-O is a gelatin dessert and gelatin a protein produced from collagen and extracted by boiling animal bones. People eat gelatin desserts at potlucks, picnics, and barbeques because people enjoy sweet, jiggly treats when...

“What’s their story?” It was a game the three of us played when we went out. Our subject could be someone on the tube, or standing in line, or the occupants at a nearby table. We’d gone to the new upscale Tex-Mex place, and our choices were as plentiful as the items...

Mrs Rae received a letter on smokey paper written in the light of flame and buried inside a can in a shallow hole adjacent to the stream where were found huddled together in the trickle that could not protect them, a woman, and she and her children burned together in...

You can laugh, but scientists have taught spinach to send emails. I think of this when my mind drifts to a dark place, which happens more and more since Nicole left. I think about Nicole, then I think about spinach sending emails and living becomes a little less...

"The stone my brother saw give birth." [a quote from Barton Smock] The moment was dry. Cracked. Pebbled collapse. He cheered when it was over and the stones stopped stoning, owning to the silence we humans deserve.

A night electric. Night plugged into the mains. She tapped her steering wheel. Talking Heads on the radio. Something about a psycho. Something about a killer. Hum along. Parking lot lights. Coliseum lights. Stars and headlights from cars on the distant freeway. The...

[after the painting "Preparation for the Funeral" by Cezanne (1869)] The dying man was open and awake. He watched - his eyes as wide as God - as the doctor dug deeper inside. Not thinking, daydreaming, seeking something none of us could mutter or admit. "It...

Breakfast the next morning has an awkward tinge. All the could-be-coupled around a table of eggs. Each arrived in staggered line the night before at the thin-walled lodgings. Only now to match the muffled sounds of earlier to singe-blushed faces. The silence, too, has...

It’s dark when I pull into my ex’s driveway, his multi-coloured christmas lights blinding my eyes even though it’s May. He’s the last man to have touched my breasts and I’m concerned about a lump-type-thing I felt in my armpit when I was showering after my second job,...

gewgaw on the attic floor the broken toy lies limbless and starving dust motes scrolling past his thunderstruck eyes his throat dry as kindling a crack of shine through a bowlegged seam in a weary wall wakes him for the first time in days weeks moths years and so he...

Her glass was filled with Sangria; hips were filled with disco. She tells me her name is Sheila, but wishes it were Flannery. I assume she’s a writer. “No, I sell shit on eBay for people,” she says. A few drinks later, she tells me that back at her place, she has a...

I come home from school with a cage of seven rats my fourth grade teacher won gambling. My mother is on a call, sipping a G&T, making sad hmmmmms and ohhhhhs into our rotary dial phone. Her body hunched over the voice on the other end. She’s still on the phone,...

I’m sweeping Georgian steps for minimal wage. Every time I look at accumulation there's less, like dreams as soon as you stop trying to remember they return. Changing routes mid-tack is a recipe for failure which I'd hate to claim. Yet measuring salt, tossing handfuls...

Big Me “Honey, I’m taking a bath,” Craig said as I was leaving. “Can you get that stuff on the list?” “Of course,” I said, grabbing the list from the table. The list read: Bathroom towels Duct tape Galoshes Garden Trowel Hornet killer Bicycle tire pump I thought I...

If distance had four wheels and the rear left popped at 65 miles per hour outside a gated community, would the generosity vector collide with the greed scalar before our grill crumpled into that into that 450 year old Maple blooming in fall? Would the app for adding...

Shark Week Your nephew will consider these mysterious ways, and if they involve shark attacks, he’ll grow up an atheist. This was all before he knew about the ways and means committee. Before the church people came and recruited his entire family to build glass houses...

I’m the idiot sitting in my hot tub at night looking at the skies thinking about how when I was a kid, I used to stare at the moon finding it awesome to watch something that the first humans looked at, that Jesus Christ looked at, that even Charles Manson looked at...

A woman has been dating a clown for some time now. But now, she no longer laughs. She is sitting next to him at a sad café, the kind painters put into paintings, all cobblestone and empty glasses. The woman can’t even look at the clown. All she sees is a hobo with a...

Hello Everyone! I look forward to reading your work! I'm sitting here in Milwaukee, Wis and it's bloody freezing and I'm hoping to be warmed by the fire of your words. What if I can't write anything? - Yeah, you can. I believe in you. But you can choose your own...

Hello and welcome to Day 1!