January 2021 B (Day 2)

I used some of my If/Then non sequiturs     For weeks graffiti seeming to call for a magical change of government had appeared all over Santa Fe. “Rule Titania!” in gold chancery cursive calligraphy on the walls of the Palace of the Governors was the first....

In Carnadine, a shithole somewhere west of Phoenix, along a dry gulch of an old arroyo carved in some flash flood before he was born, Rapper emerges from the rusted trailer he inherited from a long-gone trucker. His molar’s shimmying; his face is hanging like a...

The Butterfly Children I’d never heard of the butterfly children before I had one. Sometimes the angels descend with trumpets and announce the fruit of your womb and such. Sometimes it’s far more subtle. The baby arrived too early, a tiny larva so delicate you could...

My father was a teacher, but he didn’t teach me, he only corrected. Uncapped his red felt-tip pen and scored me up until there was no clean skin left, and I was a throbbing red thing, hardly human. I wore long sleeves and long pants so no one would know how bad it...

    If bread and wine became the body and blood, then all the statues in the world would come to life, keening and shedding bloody tears. If the old gods returned, then Jesus would rip his sacred heart from his breast. If there are half fae humans, then ants...

  If a ghost who inhabits a theater gets pissed off over an autographed poster, dedicated to his presumed name being moved to an inconspicuous place and then retaliates - Then as an investigator of cult pop culture folklore, I will dial the number written in...

    He slips his fingers into the belly of the girl. Bloody juices squelch and splatter as he rummages, plunging deeper and forcibly, yawning layers of epidermis—stratum basale, stratum spinosum, stratum granulosum, stratum lucidum, and stratum corneum wide...

My freewrite from the if/then exercise: If humans can fly, then people are free. If there were no religions, then gods are rapists. If Earth became a wasteland, then time is a river. If civil war really broke out, then we got it wrong. If I married X, then animals...

She offered a challenge and I accepted. She needed a different perspective on the day. She stated a desire and I heard her need. It is my job to respond, my purpose. She belongs to me and I to her. It is the very thing I was created for, but sometimes she forgets....

I felt like my heart would crack my ribs and I was wheezing like a MF after scaling the walls to the Capital…omg! I need my inhaler! Where the fuck is it?…patting down the multiple pockets in my tactical gear. At last! I took two quick puffs and tried to clear my mind...