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My Gall Bladder is Really Warm Today

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The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea. What Language Is, John McWhorter

Gentility

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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…

Chalky goes to night school and studies the Classics

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I don’t even want to think about Aethra shtupping Posiden and Aegeus

Pieces of the poet

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This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.

After Reading Signs in a Club with a Dress Code

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I like violence / because they refused to pay at attention to me / as a child.

Things That Are Sad

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Things that are sad.

Trot fast, my dapple gray!

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It was night. It was Massachusetts. It was an interview in a snowstorm that Detective Vivian Diaz wished would go away.

Dear Mei

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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th

Graven Images

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Mother hated a crucifix. Graven, she said. Evidence that Catholics weren't saved, just stuck in ceremony. Jesus had risen and anyone who had to pray in Latin, count beads or confess to robed men who took orders from a monarch didn't know…

Food, Marcia, Food!

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Marcia Get a load of This I got two pictures Of food Of food Marcia You're gonna Love it Look at this I got one Of just the salt and Pepper shaker God You're gonna Love this

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

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Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly

Sticking My Head Out of the Car Window

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Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…

Wireless

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It seems that back in 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm came to this town

Of Roses and Hyacinths

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The blooms are practical/ and cannot see themselves

things to know about the people parked along the road that runs though Humboldt Park: part 19

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And he was wearing a mask. Gorilla mask over his gorilla face.

FEAR OF LANDING

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“Omaha is filled with fine clothing stores for men,” he says, “all of them doing very well. Whereas Minneapolis is a different story altogether.” I am trying to sleep in seat 26C. 26B is occupied by Mildred who has already introduced herself,…

Unibrow: A Confessional

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I couldn't think of anything that rhymed with "unibrow" except Tsing Tao, which is a brand of Chinese beer....

For all we know, we'll never meet again...

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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her

My First Horror Show

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I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.

Mark Twain's Typewriter

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Did I refer to Mark Twain’s typewriter as an animal? Did I call it a hyena? I would not say that about Mark Twain’s typewriter.

Ohio Man Charged with Drunken Driving on Motorized Barstool

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A man in Watchupecka, OH, was charged Wednesday night with drunken driving in heavy traffic in downtown Watchupecka when he failed to stop for a red light.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 18

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I went back to the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River and felt the plaque of the Wall of Gropers, and that was where we hatched our plan, in front of my ancestors. I could just feel their presence there. They would be with me, the Gropers of Prague.

Jazz Torn

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Lungs bursting in the alleyways trying to keep with the beat.

13 cyborg poets

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1. Lost in the Vision Matrix, J0hn Clare transmitted a distress signal designed to be audible only to himself.2. T S El10t ran on a complex algorithm that produced seemingly fragmentary results. However, if you run Imagewise an underlying order appears.3. C0ler1dge suffered…

We Should All Have One Great Love

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My dumb body that does not speak still cried out your name last night. Did you hear it, maybe in your sleep?

The Full Car: A California Saga (1968)

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—They turned him into a time bomb. Listen close, and you can hear the tick-tick-tick. —All I hear is snoring. How do you know he was brainwashed? —Because he can’t remember a thing about the experiment. —I can say this: If he can’t remember anyth

Anonymous Gamblers

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1. They Don't Know When To Fold 'Em Gambling junkies are lit on losing their ass and almost can't wait to unload their money, and then reel on home and bounce off the walls or whatever. For these guys, losing's the jackpot, and deep in the hole for…

Happy Christmas to my quantum mechanic-

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this elegant silver wrench/ which from the opposite side/ becomes a golden Phillips-head

How did you get your second Silver Star

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No one told us that the LZ was already hot and the last Combat Mobile Team had already been shot down and killed. No, no one told us that. So when we came in below about 500 feet I began to hear that "pitit" sound of AK-47 rounds going right through the f

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

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I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.