Reading Room
Birth of the fool
Megan’s friend read the tabloids, the titans, National Inquirer, News of the World, you know, the glossies that stand sentry at every food checkout belt in the Food Checkout Belt of America. “They’re just as true as the stories in the Harvard Fair or whatever crusty upper crust editor-in-chief camoed out in pipe and tweed … Read more
Don’t Adjust Your Set
—Do you feel pain? Suddenly walls stood in four sided rooms that opened into each other with wide, door-less frames. The only light burst from the television and baked the walls and the towel around my waist. I stood in the dampness of the moment, just out of the bath and anxious to see any … Read more
Strange Race
The last intact panel of glass had blistered and so stood upright magnifying the scene outside of the phone booth in which Russell Scales was standing. His veins burned all up and down his arms, clinging like vines to tree trunks. His temples were fixed in flex because his teeth were clenched to stop himself … Read more
Bleeding Kansas
Amputation. Laceration. Scissors to safety nets. Hedge funds hedge bets. Your turn for the tourniquet. Foot the bill. Cost of doing business. Country justice. Country medicine. This little piggy went to market. All’s Lasseiz-faire when you’re taxing the polls. Safety in preventing numbers From interfering with the numbers game. Tangerine sunset or rather blood orange. … Read more
The Confluence (Chapter 1)
Godwin Merritt held a deeply oiled, brown leather satchel filled with cash and silver totaling five thousand dollars at the doorstep of his neighbor’s little house waiting for the old man to answer the door that evening. Echo Cliff, the granite wall with its craggy face, loomed above the tree line high up the pass … Read more
The Other Side of the Tracks
This is the terminal where ghosts are born. He sees his proposal to her on the platform over and over because he is forced to jump in front of the train eternally. Imprisoned by his suicide. Trapped on the 3rd street platform. He watches the memory play like syndicated reruns. Eventually, in one moment, he … Read more
Cherry Blossom
The lines on her patient’s face and the purple, obsidian bruises under paper bag skin were behind a fog and Cherry couldn’t tell if she were at work or home. A million footprints brought this meeting to room 155, hers and his. It was her job to see him through and send him on his … Read more