The Dream Of A Laboratory – Mikl Paul
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 12:44 — 1 Comment
One of them was holding the moon gentle palmed finger curled. The other knew; had studied; had repeated love a time and a time again, just to check the list so fine. This was science, she said into his tongue. They walked quietly, the sound of rings, the sound of falling cautions traced the path out before them, through the apartment, into the recipe of their bed. “Remember when,†she asks, “we were driving through those middle places and I told you that your hand on my thigh was cocoon to me?†He nods, she takes him in […]
The Gardener – Cathy Farrell
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 13:16 — 1 Comment
He used that big heavy iron key to lock the front gate. The gate in front of their house. You could just hop over it to get beyond it, so the key was really just a symbol of security, a pretense of privacy. The gate led to his garden, that he took such pride in. The neighbor ladies would always stop on their way to the market or their way home from church to admire his roses, his dahlias, his tomatoes. My grandmother and I always marveled at how he could stand by the gate and carry on such long […]
An Example Of The Motif Of Harmful Sensation In Fiction – Christopher WunderLee
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 13:24 — 12 Comments
On a bright blue day, something happened. This something, as it were, was most likely nature finally discovering metaphor, or perhaps, finally comprehending metaphor, because it rained cats and dogs. Not frogs mind you, which can be explained scientifically (poor things are lifted up from their swamps by the high density of decomposition towards the low density of the sky and then, come tumbling down). It rained cats and dogs.Â
The Shaman’s Eyes – Frank Scozzari
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 13:17 — 3 Comments
The chest wound was deep and Ben Gordon knew he had to stop the bleeding and stop it soon, or he’d lose yet another patient. After all he had been through in the past week with all the wounded and displaced refugees pouring in from the region north, the delayed shipment of medical supplies, and their water source going foul, losing another patient now would be more than he could bear. The boy, barely sixteen, lay beneath a hanging fluorescent light. Beads of perspiration covered his dark black skin. The wound, caused by a single slash of a machete, split […]
The Sun Eaters – Alex M. Pruteanu
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 13:21 — 2 Comments
We ran together on the frozen land like a pack of insane hyenas. Children. All ages. Starving. Poor. Ill-dressed. Some dying from tuberculosis. Others living with pneumonia, coughing up liquefied guts and bile. We puffed on used, dry butts we found in the rubble of the war. Stained, finger-rolled, half-smoked cigarettes; some abandoned in a hurry, others interrupted by sudden death. All tainted by once-infected lips. Herpes. Blisters. Cankers. Remnants discarded by the dead. We made up games and stories, all the while subsisting in the shadows of destruction, orphan concrete, rebar, and petrified bones: “Enemy sniper dragged his last […]
The Photographer – Kemper Wray
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 13:03 — 1 Comment
He bends over her body like an awning over a warm sidewalk, shading her as he snaps the photograph. The woman is naked save for a sheer piece of yellow linen that will appear light gray in the picture. It was not chosen for its color, but for the way the soft dark mound of her pubis looks beneath it, like the mossy crook between two smooth stones. The photographer, gray-haired like the film he processes so carefully, loves few things more than the sight of a woman in front of his camera. The photographer’s daughter walks into the studio […]
Memories Of San Blas – James Brantingham
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 13:24 — 5 Comments
I first hitchhiked to San Blas, on the west coast of Mexico, in December of 1964. At that time it was a quiet village with no paved streets—though I remember some cobblestones. There were Mexican tourists getting away from the Americans, a few Americans trying to get away from America, and there were a few ex-pats, usually ex-military. I do remember an ex-air force sergeant who was most delighted to see an English speaking human, so beers were on him. That worked well for our poverty struck wallets. We stayed at a little hotel on the beach that had barely […]
Strays – William Falo
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 13:03 — 1 Comment
Blood trickled down my arm when I added another name with a jagged piece of glass. It was the fifth family that gave me back to the system since I entered it when my parents disappeared, but this time I wasn’t going back to foster care. Even going back wouldn’t help since I would be eighteen in a month and put on the streets. Night fell like a curtain dropping on a bad act and I reconsidered going back to my last home, but the foster mother said she was terminally ill and couldn’t care for me anymore. Lies. Nobody […]
My Famous Dead Person – Stefani Zellmer
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 12:20 — 4 Comments
Charles Bukowski reaches into his pocket, because the first thing you want to do when you wake from the dead is smoke. Instead of cigarettes, he finds my note and manages to uncrumple it with his calloused hands. He reads 2137 Whitley Avenue, Los Angeles, written in big loopy letters, then the summons—“Come to Dinner?â€â€”that I’d written underneath.
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
