Get It Out

A group of surgeons slide blades into tissue to separate the skin, and they root around with hooks and forceps to find that thing you say makes you act the way you act. It’s elusive and bends back into the the blind spots when they get it on the ropes, which takes a toll on […]

Number 36

There were three people left on bus 36 as it was making its last stops for the night. The lights above the seats buzzed like summer insects, and one of them was burnt out leaving the back few rows in a dark void. One of the passenger’s names was Helen and she worked at a […]

A Fist Fight In The Gallery

An admirer stood in a trance at the foot of his most favorite Nora Talbot painting. It was a self portrait she did when she was still young, ten years before her head would explode from all of the cocaine, heartbreak, and aneurysms. He let his eyes soak in every inch of her cloud white […]

Prescription

Ned didn’t remember what it was like to wake up every morning and not want to bash his head into every sharp corner in his small unimpressive house. He had been feeling this urge much more powerfully recently ever since his boss called him into his office and told him he was on thin ice. […]

Trash In The Street

There’s a metal plate of unknown origin spinning like a coin in the street. Its faces never meet the ground because a transcriptionist sees it from her patio and rushes out to keep the roads clear of anything that could get in somebody’s way. She holds it loosely, by the rim, between her palms to avoid touching […]

Bad Friend

When my friend died they lined up and down the street to say goodbye. Girls in tight sequence dresses and old teachers in fuzzy cardigans, were all crying softly to themselves waiting for their turn to touch his cold face. I don’t know why human beings need to touch things but if I had to […]

Norman Door

The first pseudo intellectual I ever knew was a clarinet player with tentacles? I can’t remember the second one, but when I try to, I can only picture chalk boards with drawings of stars and sporadic squiggles that connect in the middle to form black holes among the chaos. Every day I make tally marks […]

Looking Out Across The Ice

An old man skated figure eights on the surface of a frozen lake. He thought about all the times before When he would come to this place with his friends, and they would all feel a burning in their lungs from the cold air. For some reason his old body did not falter under the […]

Amnion Of The Depths

There were fences everywhere in the weird spaces between backyards. They ran parallel to each other and created little hallways where grass grew and was difficult to mow. Sometimes the high school kids would gather in these corridors to smoke weed or drink beer, in the summertime, or after class. The tall wooden planks sheltered […]

The Prestigious Professors Of Plato’s Academy

Spring had finally arrived in Athens, and this marked the busy time of year for the Academy. The semester was winding down and there were stacks of scrolls in Rafa’s office for him to go over and grade before the end of the term. He paced around his chamber and his sandals slapped against his […]