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Martyr

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The everlasting shone through when skirting the tenuous threshold of the two worlds.

Hat Shop Girls

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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

The Dead in Paris, Complete

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Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

It Takes Three Heartbeats For Me To Fall In Love

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...and 55 words to tell you about it.

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

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"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

Mama's Boys

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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

Poetry: Bizarro

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I think theorems and hypotheses but all that comes out is punching and smashing frustrated hate flows where I'd prefer to know love.

this time it really may, quite possibly, be the end of all of this ambivilence

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her heart just nodded knowingly ....yes, dear

Cupcake Footprint

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once wedding cake under pillows. now fluffy frosting on squashed defeat

Paris

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the boredom inherent in living in the suburbs

Momo and Me

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Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'

How to Make an Atom Bomb While Your Wife's Away

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I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle. The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?

To Live It Again

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She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.

The Clock Man's Trouble

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A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.

Cast Off Thy Suffering

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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

Those (Beckoning) Lights

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The understanding we made was neatly wrapped up in its own blue tissue cocoon like a neatly rolled joint and dumped unceremoniously into the forgotten past like a plate of leftover digitized lies. The lid was slammed shut. Time passes too tightly. And you …

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

Something Strange There Is

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Maybe God couldn’t find His bifocals, and that’s why my check for ten million hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe a stray dog in heaven ate my check. Maybe God went bankrupt like everyone else. Okay, so maybe at the end of life I’ll balance my checkbook. I do

Tattooed Hands

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A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.

Turtle Summer

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He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.

Half a Lotus

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An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

The Field Guide: Olivetti

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When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

(From an Awakened Sleep)

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pluck me from the charred grate

When a Bowl Hits a Tree

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You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

Bitterness: Poem

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Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…

Why'd You Come Back?

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But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

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unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.4

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Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers

The Way Back Home

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500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck