Writing the Weather

I reach for my canteen fastened near my hip. Finished my two-liter camelback about two-clicks back. The sweat runs from inside my Kevlar helmet and follows the path of least resistance – from brow, as it folds and channels down the center underneath the polarized...

(Apologies. This runs longer than 500 words. Once the story got started, it needed 300 additional words to finish it! No pressure to read. Just want to be accountable;-) Birdfall Some years later, when we’re speaking again—all except Jackson, that is—we’ll say it was...

A week of summer rain, and the air so nice, I left the windows open in the kitchen and bathrooms but were getting behind on certain chores like trash day. The wet air so soft and so cool, better than air conditioning, especially because the electric bill was now...

i. Shit, I said. I smacked the black box with the back of my hand. Work, you fucker. It didn’t respond. None of the whippy whoppy lights were whipping or whopping. It was caput. ii. You were in the garden. Some garden, though! Scorched black earth. A smattering of...

The rhythm guitarist is sweating in an impressive way. I've known that kid since he was a babe. He always had the attitude of a champ, loved his spirit from the get go. His mom is in the crowd, and it reminds me of her first date with the boy's dad, my best friend...

Coated with dust and grime and sweat, we line up in the sticky heat. But the atmosphere is festive; not even the armed security guards deter our joy. Pat and Tomason do magic tricks. Santiago juggles. Jada leads the children in a concert with shakers, rain sticks and...

No One Knew No one knew why his neighborhood got hit so many times. It might’ve been the lay of the surrounding farmland, now splattered with monster homes since old man Bix died and his kids sold off most of the land. The Reiki woman told him the indigenous spirits...

Insurance won’t cover it. Insurance is a scam. Our family had been paying in for five years, the best policy, full comp, and when the roof began to fall apart after a windy hailstorm (the dreaded “gold ball” size) the insurance adjustors said the damage wouldn’t be...

Having one of those wordless days, so I did this. If I recover, will post again. Thank you Wendy for the great workshop. https://koss-works.com/tornado/

Blasted by winds of silent rage, this would be nothing less than a tsunami. No trees left standing. A Northeastern whitecapped behind his glasses. Constricted eyes pillaged villages with hands clasped delicately in his lap. Long as I could remember, this violent...

One day you say “no thank you” to Thanksgiving. I root them on and suggest others do the same. Stuffing is often overrated. My identity has been accosted by infant hormones. Also, dominions from outer planets. The clouds are not in my coffee, they are on Ebay for 15...

we smashed charlie in the co-op car park, forgot about our woes and stds, even jimmy’s crabs were crawling less now, he was a happy chappy with very little clappy in the trappy, god it was hot, like the lick the sweat off your balls hot, 51c in the north, melting...

Are You Okay? The next day, when they pull the plywood that was your house’s siding off the bathtub where you’d taken cover, you see your husband’s lips move but can’t make out his words. It’s high noon the sun a spotlight on Garth’s shoulder. Where was he last night?...

I try to imagine you in your kitchen while I stood freezing outside your door with the car running idle, double-parked, wanting to spare you the cold from the stoop to the curb. Just before: the butcher’s block -- a flash of copper —- you dash past the pedestrian...

When the sun disappeared, he glanced up. The sky had been clear and blue as a freezer pop for weeks. Now a dark uneasiness moved overhead from the south. He flipped his beaten-up skateboard up against the side of their trailer and leaned next to it. The trailer was at...

I don’t notice the hoarfrost on my morning half-mile walk to work. The crystalline willows that line my street notice me and they don’t care if it is 7:00 or 10:00am but I do know that the sun hasn’t risen and spared me at least three hours of subarctic sunlight...

Stillness. Only the sudden blaze of a cigarette, smoke twisting like blue desire to the sky. How to name that blue? To get closer to it? The blue of lost memory, of the suffering eyes of Christ. A boy downstairs speaks in his ancient French vowels, vowels inherited...

"So just do this one thing and then sure, you can play catch with us," Henry says. He bumps sideways into Tommy, but on purpose. They stare at each other, then laugh. "Buddy, you sure have some crazy ideas." Tommy's laughing, but he sounds like he's being strangled. I...

Jules spent adolescence entering garments with flexible flourish. Leotard the III tightened the skin of his royal last name. Rooms stepped around him, encompassed his acrobatic torso. If ever a toe haltered the stiletto point, it was his. His performances scattered...

The turbulent night sky drenches you but still you look up. You love this vein cracked, fractured, purpleblack sky. Lightning spidering downward. Clusters of plumb clouds, illuminated. Luminescent blinks within clouds, squiggle lights between clouds, the bottom of...

I was so with you then as not to notice the lofty city above nor the undertow just beneath our feet as I parked the car in a loading zone we would have to pay for later. It was one of those days in the city when the wind rips through you and doesn’t relent. I held...

Something about hearing Love and Rockets May night in the Haight an empty noose in skimmed moonlight he whispers doesn’t hurt as much just keep breathing but it did, pain waves from the door ajar like a sequined scar seeping sensimilla ball of confusion: hey ~ hey

Astronomical Dusk We asked the weather to cooperate, so the sun creaked into the sky and the breeze brushed our eyelashes with fingertips. How long have we been here? I said. You rearranged a strange smile. Hardly any time. Then we were in water, swimming circles...

Storm: she 1. the steady thrum of rain, I might count on—if, indeed, I could trust a thing 2. the thunder rolls closer as a lover might in half sleep | just as dangerous 3. the flashing light through the pillowed holes | a way hope might blast, then fold into the dash...

She sat on the concrete bench just down the street from the store, nibbling on the egg salad sandwich she’d bought yesterday from the vendor. A drop of sweat slowly made its way down between her breasts, where it veered off to roll down the side of her bump. Still air...

On the bank of the Neva we drank red wine and vodka and champagne and ate salted cucumbers and garlic and thick slabs of Ukrainian pork fat. We were very drunk and laughing hard and decided to strip and swim in the river where we floated naked and silent. On our backs...

From the back of his pickup, Henry holds three full five-gallon buckets steady, taking his eye off runaway splashes long enough to stare at Pearl through the back window, at the wheel of his pickup. Just long enough to see what that looks like. The hot sun is laughing...

Just a note to everyone to let you know that it says "Day Two--Read and Comment on Posts," but that's supposed to say Day One! So don't be shy about clicking on it! Thank you so much!

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