Springtime, and the cops are in heat again. Alexis tries to stay indoors. They’re always out there clinging to telephone poles, multifaceted aviators glinting, parting their mustaches to jam probosces into the trash bins she’s had to bungee shut. She steps around the ones she finds headless, still locked in coitus.
They bought a zapper for the yard, and it makes a show after sundown, but it doesn’t seem to reduce their numbers. Another blue-white flash, another mating siren-squawk cut short. Alexis collects fragile husks of the badges they’ve long since shed, and wrinkles her nose at the smell.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Atesh climbs to his feet, shaking. Most of the shielding still glows, and he can hear little ticking sounds as it cools, scattered wide across a dark plain. His arms and legs sting, sleeves torn, exposed skin scraped and powdered by the air bags that saved him from impact. Nothing seems to be broken, though. Not that he can feel.
He looks up, automatically, though he knows there’s nothing to see. He takes a few wobbly steps toward the remains of his cockpit: crushed supplies, cracked and empty water tank, busted radio that hadn’t worked in weeks anyway.
“Welp,” he says.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
“You beat me home!” says Kelly, dropping her bag to wrap her arms around Dominic from the back and kiss his neck.
“Evan needed help with dinner,” says Dominic, and Evan in turn comes up behind her, burying his face in her hair. Kelly feels a damp patting on her arm and grins.
“You three just wanted extra snuggle time,” she accuses, and they barely even look ashamed. The baby on Evan’s hip emits a high-pitched and happy message. Kelly winks at her. She either has her father’s eyes or her daddy’s nose, but most days they can’t decide which.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Two beers tipsy and two months ago, Adam bit her thumb hard and Loni sucked air to keep from yelping. His teeth left purple marks and an oval patch of numb skin over her upper knuckle. The bruise faded, but the feeling’s never come back. Damage lingers, pain subsides.
She’s tried to get him to do it again but ironically, he’s lost the nerve: worried, for once, about the consequences of his actions. Biting herself never works. Loni needs his bitter jaw, needs bite marks from toes to eartips. Needs the ache subtracted, finally, from every raw angle of her bones.
“The Union forever defending our rights!” strum the Sirens. “Down with the blackleg, all workers unite!”
“Gee, this song is real good,” says Odysseus. “Better untie me, guys! Gotta hear this song!”
“Collective bargaining!” says Aglaope. “Strike for a safe workplace and fewer deaths by cyclops!”
“C’mon, this guy takes a decade to find his own house!” yells Thelxiepeia.
“Aww dang!” says Odysseus, glaring. His crew nods wisely, ears plugged. The ship moves on.
Thelxiepeia sighs. “Maybe we should get rid of the corpses?”
“It’s performance art about capitalism,” snarls Aglaope, and dusts one of the sailors rotting on the rocks.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
When you pray you burn a sacrifice. It’s the oldest human tradition that isn’t a matter of pure survival, except of course it is a matter of survival, and of keeping something pure. Amy crouches in her cold jacket on the porch she has to leave soon and turns it in her fingers: white paper, black ash, red ember, trace of smoke twisting up to disappear. The buzz has her head a little spinny. She doesn’t pray often, but some days you have to give something up to the sky. There it goes. Watch it rise. A minute of your life.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
You make a website with a sign-up form. You stress that it is voluntary. Voluntary! Just until we figure things out.
You make a category for the people who go there, who list their mosque, their birthplace. The category is “compliant.” Just so we have that figured out.
You bring people in for little reasons, things that could be overlooked. You search their name on your website.
You say, did you sign up? Huh. Well.
You explain that only noncompliant people are being held. They had a choice. They chose.
And now you can figure them right the fuck out.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Meredith is haunted by the past, specifically in the form of a poltergeist. It likes to knock things off countertops and shelves when she has company. She’s learned to be quick with her hands and a grin, but even if you catch the falling glass of wine you’re going to get splashed.
“Are you supposed to be some kind of message?” she seethes at the past, scrubbing the carpet again. “Or lesson? I’ve learned enough goddamn NOT THE URN”
Somebody once told Meredith that poltergeists are manifest repression, buried thoughts, the psychic bleeding into the physical. She just won’t remember who.
You don’t get to choose the supply chain you’re born into but you sure can feel bad about it. It’s simple enough to do, feeling. Like the supply chain, it suffers little interruption.
Even the smallest container ship will displace two hundred thousand tons. One could spend a whole life in penance and never shift that weight. So Norman pays today’s feeling with appreciation, honoring what the chain has brought him, from an aching foothill somwehere in Argentina. It leaves trace oils and memories on his fingers as they pick this treasure apart: tiny jewel, royal bauble, a tangerine in winter.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022