NO PREDICTABLE MALFUNCTION by Colin Dodds The bar smelled like an ex-girlfriend’s breath. And I was like Belgium in the 20th century— just waiting for someone to violate my neutrality. I had little room to maneuver; the market of the heart had been rebuilt for efficiency, its work outsourced and its meager glory distributed to chromosomes, … [Read more…]
High Heaven by William Greenway for Rosalee He who loves give a hostage to fortune. —Nietzsche Another stinking diaper to thank God for, why we traveled all the way to Bethlehem, Alabama, to get this, slept in a crummy motel for a month waiting for her to be born, mud-wrestled every bureaucrat in the state, pressing … [Read more…]
IN HEAVEN IT IS ALWAYS AUTUMN by William Greenway after John Donne It all seemed to happen that same year we lived in England, every hill golden with the turning beeches, crimson apples in the orchard by our cottage muted pink by the mist rising off the river reflecting the upside down palette of it … [Read more…]
BEGINNER’S ENGLISH FOR REFUGEES by Sebastian H. Paramo I walk around the makeshift classroom where the heat has us sweating for words. The adults repeat phrases like a chorus, Each word is said as if it could change their lives. They get out their notebooks & sharpened pencils while the fan overhead twirls a phrase … [Read more…]
BIRTHDAY by Katharine Johnsen Boca Raton, March 1995 Clasping my hand around my grandfather’s, I pulled him from a doze to rehearse; he was my Daddy Warbucks and I was turning seven, obsessed with Annie. When he wanted to know how we should celebrate, I said, a party with my … [Read more…]