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Departures

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Fingers scrabble idly at pocket seams, forage between teeth, grasp for tepid cups, patter a drumbeat on knees.

Sarah Nell

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There are two, though, that stayed for more than just a little while: Marvin and Oscar. Marvin was married and that's all I have to say about that. Oscar wasn't and it seemed as though he wasn't planning on getting married either. What a petty man he was.

Smack

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They shoot up through the soles of their feet once the veins in their arms are all used up. They shoot up in their necks like the cows on the African Savannah

Professor University

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Is this a tenure track position?

Lilies

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Every spring, outside on the back deck, my mother and I have the same talk about how time flies, and she always waves her hand in the air as if swatting at a fly, but there's never anything there. She thinks the lilies will live all summer spread like a rainbow,…

The Passenger

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I will not leave the boat. The sea has left you.

Dreamless

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We call it the alley of the shadows, the low sunless concavity of earth between the stalks, the acrid scent of the ripened arrow-points.

My Stigmata

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“Don’t you think you should tie a tourniquet or something?” she asked as I bled profusely from the points where Jesus was wounded during his crucifixion.

Nothing to Worry About

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The boss has a serious problem--he's too nice for his own good.

Hype and Melancholy

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Sonia banks on hidden things in the minds of other people, whereas I bank on what I know.

The Heart Jar

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The diner on the corner is one of those Disneyfied modern cut-outs trying to mimic the actual thing but failing utterly. The street, a vein of hipness running through an Ivy League campus that is still trying to cling to a time when it all meant something

Feb 5

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He peels the garlic while I stir the lentils; he chops the cilantro while I peel kale leaf from stem. Also, the rings. Also, no one is going anywhere.

Thanksgiving Carnage

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The game is set, thirty pound gobbler at the center; brined, browned, and buttered to perfection. The players take their places around the table: Reagan’s_Disciple and BraBurner38 sit at the head seats, eyeballing each other over a fizzing bottle of dom

Bean Bag Chair

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Up to the loft we went, shedding clothes all the way. No one is home, but the place smells like the fresh cookies my mom had made before she left. It's dark and my lips hit his…

War Story: Veteran of a foreign war

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"Did you see any action?" I ask, hoping for a story. He points to a scar ripping through the chevron on his left arm but says nothing.

black

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my soul is black and it's deep like heartbreak and heavy as stone and as thick as ink and it is pressing on top of me like last nights one night stand like dead weight so that I can't lift my arms or spread my legs it feels like I am walking through mud but it's…

MEGACROCODOG

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The Church of Chimera, which has tentacles in most cities, would like you to accept the existence of MEGACROCODOG, invisible possessor of the largest penis imaginable. You are promised an afterlife of bliss, as long as you pray to MEGACROCODOG and say his penis is the…

Beggars Banquet

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When I was a boy and just out of seminary school, I went to a Doors concert and heard Jim Morrison sing his song ‘Soft Parade’ – it changed my life.

The instruments

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TromboneA trombone blusters his waythrough the bright restaurant,demanding to see the chef.He's furious;the prawns have given himsplitnotes.ViolinsFour violins wait for a bus in the rain.The pervading atmosphere of melancholymakes their plaintive scrapings redundant.AxeThe…

Picked Up

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Tucker walked the long and lonely stretch of highway in front of him. The loneliness didn't matter; he had his own way of handling that feeling. The walking, however, was wearing away at his mind. How…

The Lonely White Elephant in Rome

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the gambling priest stands in the morning fog/red moon hangs in the sky/the army of seven houses marches over the hill

Almost Regrettably Useless Advice

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This world is always at least as strange as it seems, but usually far more strange, so many non-repeatable phenomena . . . .

remembering

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I remembered because the man took us to see the horses. I didn't see something that set off a series of memories. I only saw the stables and the moon sitting pensively below the firmament. I looked at these and there was spaciousness between the moon and the stables and…

Shedding the Skin of Past Lives

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I bow my head and shed the antlers of past lives I no longer butt heads with the universe but I miss my curse and can’t do worse I throw myself in reverse and rehearse the early scenes of science and my full meat diet that sent

AUTUMN LEAVES UNDERFOOT

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Goodbye comes in stages. At first you recognize that you will “miss” someone when they are gone. Then you have to accept the fact that they are leaving. And finally accept the fact that they are gone; and not particularly in that order. If only it

The Chair

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His thoughts drifted to when he was a kid, to the monthly trip to the barber.

What Matters Is Round

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How do you do my name is Luigi and I am the Duke of Abruzzi. I love bubbles, strawberries, and sheets drying in the wind and sunlight. Hobbies include bank robbery, kidnapping, and extortion. As you can see, the streets…

Millard Fillmore, Dolphin Flayer

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Last week I heard that there is a new horror movie out about Abe Lincoln, with the plot of the film involving the tallest of presidents hunting down vampire bats with his axe while suspending habeas corpus, writing lame speeches about the freedom of man, restoring the…

The Search for Pastina Continues

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To assist you in recalling some of Episode One of - "A Poem by Jasmine Coriander-Semolina": My head lifted up slowly as I looked up through a gaussian blur of fragrant incense smoke and saw she was crying. She whispered that her daughter, Pastina, was last…

The Last Days of Summer

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Their laughter is of a tiny world that knows nothing of taxes or lost loves, or news reports of flag-draped coffins filled with limbs.