Brace, Jackson Burgess
“Their silky, sleek feathers and innocent little eyes . . . intoxicating. I wasn’t doing it to the ducks; it was more at them. Though I suppose that sounds just as strange. But that’s how I survived the year of her absence. Fapping at the ducks.”
Death Valley, Cheryl Diane Kidder
“He drops the second shoe on the floor, displacing the heat noticeably. I’m sure it’s all gravitating upward to my position on the bed and I can’t move and I have to. I’m dead certain that if he doesn’t shut up, if he keeps going with this bullshit I will materialize a gun and shoot him square in the face.”
Correspondence, Amber Rambharose
“His words are so deeply sick, each syllable a pixelated cancer. The two of us are trapped, in too small apartments, in a sinking, stinking city, in a myriad of tiny hells with doors to other hells. There are no exit signs. This sulky demon, banished from a balmy hell into meat locker lower Manhattan writes to me once or twice a week and I feel for him, I really do.”
How to be a Celebrity, Peter DeMarco
“After work Henry buys a pack of cigarettes. If he was going to be part of the movies, he figured he should take up smoking. Cigarettes made for a great shot in a scene. He decides on Marlboro. What the hell, he figured, all those damn ads had to mean something.”
Us: A Retrospective, Dan Purdue
“Somehow she forces the other glass into my hand. I take a hesitant sip; a riot spills into my mouth. I look at her, her lips pursed around the straw, her cobalt-blue eyes sparkling, and I remember how she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met.”
The Fall, Leanne Gregg
“I wrote to Angelo again, this time in earnest. I sent my letter to him via Kathy. She advised that I did not send it to him via carrier pigeon as I had earlier intended. She also advised that I did not put my family seal on it. I did, however. A lady must keep up appearances after all.”
Blanket of Ash, Stephen Koster
“They made love in the rain in a field without fences after their house burned down to its foundations. The remains looked more like black termite mounds than anything else. All it was as ash.”
Godzilla Reading Haiku, Christopher DeWan
“‘You wanna come up?’ I ask my girlfriend on the stoop. She nibbles gently at my ear. ‘Dunno. Is your roommate home?’ My roommate, Godzilla, is home. I play with the button on my girlfriend’s shirt but don’t answer.”
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