When looking at the sculpted ash rose petals clutching the cherry of my cigarette last night I realized that Holly was dead. I mean, I feel it, right now, am feeling it, her deadness—hurricane static on the widescreen. That’s when…
Category: Oregon On A Dime
Cocoa
There was always something with her. If nothing made her pace back and forth I’m not sure she’d know what else to do. But I guess this is something worth worrying about. “It’s gonna be fine,” I told her. She…
Interview
Most positive attribute: Good listener Least positive attribute: perfectionist Accomplishment you’re most proud of: Most negative life event: The time at school when there was no toilet paper How you handled this event: With my hands Most positive life event:…
Don’t Look Back
To the press-drop coffee machine on the top floor, to the garbage man alone at home, to the faux leather couch on the side of the road, to the neo-theory student banded waist-high on a map that can’t lead her…
Shakespeare
the earliest memory I have of god is of a pastor who was saying how his friend told him “the bible, thank you, is a great piece of literature” and so the pastor thwarted him in his prayers because literature…
Shells
This place is simply used. Like a shell, our cosmic bastion has run dry of the things we need to survive. The future we feared is present and simultaneously future as well. It seems a disgrace that we could call…
Witch of Newdath
First week in Newdath and standing in line at the Mini-Discount. I can afford two bowls of instant noodles, I have change for three, but tax here is unnatural. This guy, something particularly broken in his bobble-eyed stare, keeps cutting…
Closure
“The lamb gaped its lower jaw slackly over the unsuspecting children to vomit on them its bad luck.” –M. John Harrison, The Luck in the Head. The knapsack is swollen, sopping. Its cornucopia? The heads of secrets that could…
Pablo’s Prayer
My father was a thesaurus and my mother a dictionary. I spilled from their pages with all their words and the words of my ancestors in an inky black soup of memory and meaning, most of which I still don’t…
The Time to Die
It is found in the dim light of five a.m. that men make shields out of starving oak. That boxes marked “fragile” remain unpacked. That clouds move seamlessly through hilltops and groves of orange trees and don’t ever, ever stop.…