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Con Artist

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The name he was using this time was Paul Sterling.

An excerpt from "Goodbye, Baseball"

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The boys were his biggest nuisance. The unwashed guttersnipes poured into the park early, all shoeless and half shirtless. He only imagined how thick the fleas must be in their thick tangle of hair, of which only two didn’t have covered with a cap with an

Interlude: Beauty

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Musing on female beauty I came up with this: it makes my dick hard. And if that's a bit crude, well, hell, I'm dead. Want to sue me? Back when the clans were at one with the earth, circa goo-gobs of long years B.C., female beauty meant…

Stalk

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A spot in space observes all this, with its eyes arching over on their stalks. The observation point dangles one eye above the other, turning the roundness of them suddenly.

Band Names Too

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Gun Notches Working Stiffs Garlic Torch Dog Crouch Menbrain Membrane Ein Zwei Drei Fake German Soldier Wet Tissue Tissue Paper Pants Tough Stain Adam and Evil Closed Loophole Wait For It Fiscal Cliff and the Cliffhangers Repu

Nostril

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The damaged lining of this awkward appellation is just bewitching, begging of the light test prod — OW! and then stern mastery: Introducing the cruelly hooked thumb with ragged nail, plunging up, ripping into and down…

Simpler Disasters

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In the afternoon, there was a certain time when the sunlight spilled through the windows in the common room and made everything look all bright and fresh and optimistic. If you ignored the patients and doctors milling about and…

Falling from Grace

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Royce fell from Grace and landed in the fountain surrounding her pedestal. It wasn't the first time Royce had climbed the statue. It was the first time he'd been sober.

Thoughts After Arriving Home from the Cafe Havana

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If someone told me like people do / that I am a good person / I will never believe them / mostly because I own a mirror / but also because I have lived with myself / for the rest of my life

black crescent curved under

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I hope my blonde down still beats in your heart, and the black crescent curved under, you will remember, and I would move toward your window where my own heart lay in a dish, with the thick valley lifting. Remember, I crossed and uncrossed my legs f

Corporal punishment

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We huddle behind the bedroom door and hear the swish of dad's belt as he yanks it from the pant loops, our backsides clenched.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 24

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As Zoë says, “You and your musician friends drink in industrial quantities.”

Would You Name YOUR Dog Voldemort?

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So you don't want to give your dog an ordinary name like Fido or Spot. And you love books. So, naturally, you turn to your favorite literary classics when it's time to name the new puppy. The result? This list of actual canine names inspired by literature (from…

Cow & Fly

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If I can eat a cow...

Ode to Larry Darrell

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With Nothing Here But Me I Begin

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to unwind looking for the answer.I confess I wasn't so discreetas life demanded, laughing like anowhere poet. Nothing relieved thegod awful boredom. Many times Iconfess I hadn't really takenthe vitamins, crying like a courtjester thrown into a dungeon onmarket day, and felt…

Superheroes

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I change things without notice for himto make sure he's ready for the corporate world. It's no longer our goal to watch cartoonswe must now focus on breakfastthenaction figures. "But Daddy," he says. "I likecartoons." "I know it hurts," I say."But…

Deciding to Leave

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...Yet today, I fear / ordinary names for fantastic objects: Sex, Love, Mind.

The Sun, the Trees, the Clouds, the Grass

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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

For Linebacker-Poets, Annual Award Ceremony a Jarring Hit

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Dutton felt thwarted in his literary career, producing only the classic "Here I sit all broken-hearted, paid a nickel to crap and only farted" in a locker room stall at halftime of the 1963 Weedwacker Bowl.

On news of your demise

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The news just now that you are dead

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 50

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Oriana, much as she wanted to, did not sleep with Francesco, propriety ruled.

In This Neo-Liberal Society, We Are All Julia Roberts

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When he was 24 he ran away with a girl, forgot about his little office job in the city, went with her to the mountains, just the two of them, to live out a life of romance that a chalk box like the metropolis can’t give you—

The Wait

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Transhumanism has always had its malcontents usually derived from some philosophic contestation, but for all their thought experiments, somehow my present situation eluded them.

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

fabulous birds

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Fabulous birds perched nearby, where we were. In their memory there goes the little god, original, in the midst of it all, happiness like anything near the river-mouth. Letting yourself dabble in the femaleness of it. In the lower world or on the playin

Drifting

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it's all a bit like the quiet steam drifting to nowhere off my microwaved hot coffee in the sunflower mug

gravelortian part 16

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Understanding those who don't understand us

The Linguist

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I let the little fingers slip thinking they couldn't stand to hold on anymore. When they were done they said addled and I was left behind in the room with only my hand. I hurt myself trying to picture the pretty girls and they took out a piece above my eye. …

The Better I Knew Her, the Less I Liked Her

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As I looked in her eyes She told me— she liked to pull wings off flies.