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before Creation

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Before Genesis, digesting the primordial soup.

His Name is Chaos

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Should probably be faster at the cash register

Assiduity Seven

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Uzma dashes up the stairs ahead of me . . .

Deus Ex Machina

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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields / Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/ Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/ Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/ scheduled breathing poses

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

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It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

55 words #5

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"...,beautiful, yet neutral, an oversimplistic reading of the people we meet."

Sleeping Apes and Washing Dishes: What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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Eat blueberries every day and you'll live to be a 92 year old mogul. Really.

Provided

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A man bows his head and crosses his chest before crossing the street and the rain keeps falling on his bare blue shirt and on top of his head The taxis will not stop The light’s still red as the man waits for the sign of the hands

Books

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'Like poems,’ I said she paused and nodded her black mop.

Falling

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Sometimes when I fall I see a ...

Tiger Milk ( Part 3)

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"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare, Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."

Tissue

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A tissue, she was saying - hand me a tissue. Her seat belt was locked and she was rocking back and forth in it cinching wrinkles into her favorite blue silk blouse. I can't remember her wearing anything else. Her hands were gesturing - on and on- an endless loop…

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

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Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

Strawberry Swirl

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Keisha selected a strawberry swirl cupcake from the waiter's tray, so pretty, from the hottest, coolest, newest patisserie. Moist strawberrylishious cake, swirly pink frosting, sprinkles. Keisha was one lucky lady, scoring a bizdev gig at recession-proof…

Easy Lessons

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A hinge in my heart is broken.

Knott Travel

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The next post card was of gondolas in Venice. “Have never not enjoyed ourselves less,” wrote Sylvia. “Sylvia can be hard to please,” said Angelynn. “Those boats could use a coat of paint,” I said.

Fragment from a Paper Story

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While Leif was still very young, his emotions were very easy to read, for they appeared on his parchment coloured skin, named in his mother's writing. When he was seventeen, Leif fell in love. She was a pretty maid, one of the college servants who kept his…

Pain

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My pain is a black pearl hidden in a clean shell.

How to Cheer Up a Sad Song

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It's one of the most difficult problems of aesthetic philosophy: What do we mean when we say that a song is sad? None of the big names--Aristotle, Kant, Croce–Benedetto, not Jim–come close to answering it.

Cold/Warm

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I wear boots over bare legs feigning ignorance To the coming storms, the snow the ice the cold

Marks in the Sand (Poetry-Rhythm)

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I am only ever What you seem to be Without the leverage Of sweet reality

Is This Seat Taken?

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A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

The Tourists

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He thought of his field trip from the previous year, of Prague’s museums, statues, squares, architecture, restaurants, and various modes of transport. The town offered none of these and surely no cinema, no crowds of people, not even an old church.

Mobiles

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My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

The Rodeo of Doom (Excerpt)

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Today is the last day of the semester. It also marks the end of my tenth year as what is referred to as an adjunct, an appendage, a necessary but unidentifiable tentacle in the College of Architecture at Andreas Tangen University in Los Angeles.

End of an Arabesque. Degas

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Holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a tissue in one hand, a round shape that balances the round yellow burst of light that is her dress. While the flesh of her chest bulges forward and she balances as though in a holding pattern in flight.

Frenchie at the Fair

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Frenchie hustled waffle irons.

The Body in the Other Room

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I couldn’t parse the grammar of her body nor decode the secret softness of her neck.

Never Said

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We're at the Park Diner. My dad Tommie is sitting across from me. He looks haggard, tired. His skin is pasty and washed-out. He's not talking, so I'm not talking either, but it doesn't matter because it's hanging there between us.Cancer.Motherfucker.“Don't look so…