Zac and Brien Zac and Brien learned to love from a million miles away; now standing hip to hip, they bounce a little less with each step in the usual direction. Somewhere behind them a piano nods its way through the same handful of notes; trying to find rebirth in repetition. But six notes, despite tempo or talent, are only six notes. If they aren’t your favorite six, what can you do?“Remember the ocean?” Brien says, staring out the window at a sky many, many miles from any ocean. She has been holding the same cup of coffee for an hour now. It hasn’t quite gone cold; there’s still something warm inside, indistinct, but there.&#
she looked so sad Kylse looked so sad sitting on those stones steps wondering with eyes cloaked, “Well, what’s out there now?” Alliteration aside, she seemed too beautiful to be so forlorn, but the gods do have a tremendous sense of irony. “Pale with dark hair and freckles; those are the heartbreakers,” my father told me once, grinning. Then his face fell a little with some memory. “And the heartbroken.” He walked away without another word.In passing, I tried not to interrupt her loneliness with my attention. Such looks on such faces are best left on steps, across streets, and in the memories of old men long lost to the fac
mom Beginning at the age of seven, my Mom told me that if I ever placed her in the care of a nursing home, she would give up the grace of God, deny heaven and become a poltergeist, and proceed to haunt me for the rest of my life. The venom contained in this statement came from the fact that she worked at one such establishment for too long. Summer vacations before my sister and I were old enough to watch ourselves meant daily visits to the “Sunny Farm Retirement Home”. The irony of the place’s name did not escape either the staff or the visitors. To attempt to make the ochre and echoes of its halls more sunny and farm-like, the wal
on the merry go round on the merry-go-round;I sit outside the Section 8 squalor my little sister calls home;where chipped paint is made glossy by the sanding of ten thousand tiny hands.Inside, the boyfriend sits; pale, pitted face blued by the ever-present glow of television,fists still swollen from taking out the rage of 20 years unloved on my baby sister’s body.Knock answered; smug, mean lips are shocked unsmiling by 295 pounds of cold, calculated older brother. His reaction, angry surprise, is always the same.He keeps expecting the merry-go-round to stop, I think,and with it, me. But men are not made smooth by so few bea
orion and artemis, kiss “My toes are cold,” she says.Those are her words, but not her meaning. Her meaning is lost somewhere in the space between Orion and his dogs as they creep slowly, predictably across the sky. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s participating in a ritual; something I do every year at some point during Orion’s ride through the cold. I don’t always do it on the same day, but I always wait until it’s cold. Cold and high in the air, that’s the best way to see him; a large, mostly treeless hill four miles from the epicenter of my redneck upbringing. I assume that it’s still okay for me to come here. I st
daddy Daddy has wire in his fingers,sharp bits dug into sixty years of ruined skin.Daddy shakes in the summer,kindly eyes darting, dreading,that anyone should see.And when he stumbles, to the side, on the curb, he always smiles.And by seeing his smile, (his best, as yet unbroken feature)he takes our eyes from the handsand feetand skintrembling to be free.
view to a kiss One more time, kiss her one more time, buddy. I dare ya. You kiss her one more time, I’ll rock your Boho ragamuffin mug into that rail so hard it’ll sound like a slow-pitch home run. One more time…and I won’t be able to stop; won’t be able to quit until you’re slippin like pumpkin guts through my fingers, til I figure out it’s just my hand bashin into the rail over and over because your skull split and fell down on the floor with the filth, fell down with the rest of the trash and spit and shit and broken glass; the low glimmer that everyone that doesn’t know us, doesn’t live us…calls the magi
character sketch: Kira Kira danced like Death himself was watching, waiting for her to slip down off the stage and wrap her legs around him, whirring round and round under the flashing lights. She danced only to darkness; hard, heavy throbs of songs made by angry men with angry fingers. Hungry faces lined the stage; waiting their turn to offer up bills for her touch, not much for a dollar, but most men only need a little.I watched from twenty paces, across a table, but still found her to be above and beyond the usual blonde contraband. Kira didn’t shake her ass, didn’t jiggle or bounce; she didn’t run her finger obscenely between her lycra lips. No
the noose: no secrets Sarah experienced a long moment of confusion. She felt suspended, overwhelmed by a clear spectrum of light, disturbed by the simultaneous sense of hot and cool. And then she found her composure again, and with a moment’s focus, she was again one nonphysical point in this nonphysical place, confined to the perspective of her regular senses. She had receded momentarily into the pure memory itself, without filtering it into a form she could understand. The brain records far more than the body understands.She knew this place, of course. It was grass and soft light filtered by leaves gone pale gold in early autumn, the last stage of their s
the noose: the unkind teacher Sarah blinked with both eyes, inward and outward, and found herself in flesh. She was sitting on a stool, like a doll, unable to move. The room was dark except a single lamp burning somewhere at the edge of her vision. Her body was her again. The feeling was incredible. There was no rhythm to the world. No steady thump thump-thump by which to meter out the world. Her life did not flow or heave or tremble. The stillness of it all was shocking.“Yes, it’s all very wonderful, the stillness, the silence, yes yes yes, I’m sure.”That voice. Not that voice. She tried to turn and look behind her, but her body would not answer.
the noose: steps taken, back Dead; the thought resonated. Yes, this might be death, but how had it come? Her memories were in pieces, and she did not know how to reach them. They wafted past of their own accord, in no order. Here a stiff-collared, flowered dress and a seam of sweat down her back, pooling in the waist of her undergarments. There the study of a dead cat just beginning to fester in the sun, its hide stirring with the movement of the parasites within. Faces. Words. Touches. Small suggestions of a lost identity.Identity; yes, there was a name. She knew its shape, she thought, but without a throat, a mouth, a voice, it seemed lost forever.She did not feel
the noose: steps to eternity In a place of whispering shadows, Sarah stood rigid upon a stool, waiting. She had often thought, especially lately, about what dying might be. She had imagined without expecting any accuracy from herself, aware that it was probably not an experience one could describe without knowing. And she had known better than to ask any of the abeo, they having already experienced what she would face. Apprehension was a weakness that would not be tolerated, a kind of cousin to fear. And abeo did not fear.But…death? Breathing killed the fear. Slowly, as she had been taught.She held herself erect with all the strength she yet possessed. The beati
the black umbrella: revisited At Second and Bright, on the west side of the street, a blackish green Alfa Romero sits purring; its occupants can be seen slightly through the greenish tint of the glass. The driver seems to be gesturing towards a small gap between the building adjacent to the car and its neighbor. The passenger is barely visible; the crown of a head above the bottom edge of the window. While one cannot clearly see or hear them, there is an unmistakable air of disagreement in their shaded movements.The apparent cause of their tension is a simple, black iron gate spanning the gap between the larger brick building and its slightly more diminutive fellow. The
they never quite do Mara made pictures without a thousand words, without sounds or touches; Mara made pictures with a whisper, when she least wanted to, much to her chagrin. They hung thick on her walls; faces frozen, eyes wide at Mara’s word. --- Mara was thinner than she seemed, taking steps towards the bright light a
Mr magnus Mr magnus awoke from his coma apparently untraumatized.he asked only for his tea, lapsang laden,and stared out the window.Behind, the ladies whispered;wife's anotherstwo dead brothersgrown child, glass eyed, was heard only to say ‘click’...no home...no job......no life.Mr magnus heard but didn’t.laughed but lips, never parted.he watched the seagulls drift low over the Biscany-looking only for somewhere safe to land.
so you wanna go? Jacob cried mercy, making shapes with his hands that said, “That is enough. We’ve gone far enough.” Jasper had just kicked him full in the gut, making hot air and havoc rush between his teeth. Jasper had performed this gruesome task, despite the wrenching at his shoulder; most likely a dislocated collar bone. Each move he made tore ligaments. Each time his fists found Jacob’s mouth, hands, or chest, the gap widened between the bones in his neck, crying out neuron fire as they did.Such a simple dance they made in the dust and din of July, quiet faces ringed round them watching with apt interest. Jacob had begun the fray b
say goodbye to a tangerine sky Say goodbye to a tangerine sky.Say goodbye indeed say goodbye to the things that everyone expects and values and decides they want because honestly what does anyone really know, why do you think trends are called trends, because they are temporary things that come and go as people realize that they aren’t what they really want to bedoingor seeingor wearinganything in our society, anything that ends up sticking around for more than ten minutes at a time, because the human attention span is about 35 seconds these days, and I absolutely believe that, we cant be bothered long enough to pay attention to anything that isn’t im
Sta.sh
