After the War

He was born in the trenches of war under the ragged eyes of soldiers who pulled him from the corpse of his mother and held him to her slowly stiffening breast. The rattle of gunfire and the dull bass of grenade explosions were the lullaby that sang him to sleep in his canvas hammock. At [...]

A Beat to Think By

I have come to the almost shocking conclusion that in more charged days I would have been called a Beatnik.

From Something Comes Whispers of Nothing

There was a wide crush of people, a tributary of skulls and shoulders eddying past each other, jostling and splashing over steps into a horizon receded river of soul. The scene seemed to freeze in relief, a great whitewash descending, dripping and rushing from balustrades and columns to etch away from the world color and [...]

Insurance

She looks proudly at the lobster commercial.
“That’s my finger squirting the lemon on the shrimp!” she declares through a smile like a lemon wedge.
“Indeed it is!” Her guests clamor politely.
“They paid really well,” she says, holding up her thumb and index finger for admiration. “I’m thinking of insuring my hand.”

We’ve Got It Backwards

The people in green surround her stirruped form. A man holds her hand and pride brims in his eyes to spill down his cheeks. It was a girl! the doctor cries, and the man shlupps the umbilical. The doctor bends down with the quieting child. With a quick push, and a gasp from the woman, [...]

A Probability Game

The Time Traveller looked at his chronoscope, sighed, and twisted a dial. His self foamed across space-time, sudsing into a million-million worlds, as determined to be viable by his nifty gadget.
Fifty percent of these instances he stood in still sunlight that made his face glow with heat as he squinted into the epitome of commerce: [...]

Songs I Don’t Hear

Chickadees have invaded the steps outside my apartment. They crowd the warped railing, chitter among the cheap wood. They gambol and gyre. Their presence is good. Maybe the wasps that like to loiter at the front door will go away.

The Prodigal Son

The wayfarer stood at the crossroads, holding a small leather satchel with gloved hands. He wore a long coat, with an upturned collar. His eyes, green like beetle sap, watched the crooked streetsign rattle in the wind, its mischief also fondly fondling his rich brown mantle of hair. His breath steamed from aristocratic nostrils [...]

Perspectives

The Wall: From wherever you sit or stand, face a wall. That wall is now down, indicating bottom. You have changed your orientation by ninety degrees.
Say we are on a bustling street in some major city, perhaps New York, and the street continues for a couple of blocks to the facade of a great hotel. [...]

The Naked Angel

As she sleeps I trace the blue veins on her face with my eyes. She has skin like softly burnished oak. Pools of green moss in late afternoon sunlight are hidden behind those lidded long lashes. She kisses the air. Am I in her dream?

The Blank Slate

Darkness, the blank slate. Pop pop pop: White-boned skulls flash, of cattle, fish, frog, dog, human, a multitude of calcified blooms on the slowly greening tree that is greeting the light. A neon skeleton of ash flashes solid and boils with leaves and keys that keen in a high wind. Picture this. The disembodied skulls [...]

In and Out

He made a memo and slipped into the empty common lounge, tacked it to the bulletin board. BTB (Bring Television Back) Revolutionaries in flimsy bond emblazoned the legend above the corkwood. Especially inane in a world against electricity. A french press steamed hot coffee on a counter next to a darkened candy bar dispenser. He [...]

The White Red Chiaroscuro

A stranger approaches you one night. Perhaps you are alone under the only lighted lamp in a shadowy streetcorner, or it is an empty bus you ride, sullen in your seat and feeling the late hour. The stranger approaches you with bead black eyes and a voice like yellowed parchment paper rasping against dead skin, [...]

A Dog’s Day

Valentine Stagbour saunters out of the hotel lobby, ballooning bosoms and swaying hips, wrapped with a tight pink number that makes her seem all legs. Her platinum blond bob bobs along with her boob job, framing a sexy oval face pasted with the sour expression only the rich have. Four inch heels elevate her to [...]