Mall Mentality

People wander just like eyes across the shopping mall, around the giant tree with glass and lights you could see yourself in. It makes a good case for the idea that decorations shape the world. What kind of place could we make if we rearranged the things hung on the walls? She spills her thoughts […]

The Bulldogs

Sometime in the forties a girl drew a bulldog in her notebook. It had a cartoon sort of style in the line work and most clearly in its eyes. This sketch changed hands over the decades eventually found by a company contracted to design mascots for public schools being constructed in the city. The bulldog […]

Hemisphere

She was an arcade cabinet that only answered emails, with a decal painted on that looked like space. I followed all the subtle signs she gave me, and the long walk home’s the first thing I remember. We move faster in the cold because the air is light. Empty of the energy, but with an […]

Trace

Last summer seems so far away, and even with the shifting hallways of the present, where I am is not the place I need to be. A person in a mask with chains attached to a loop on the back of their jacket drags the metal through the street and the links make yellow sparks […]

Memorial

You know where to find me, out here playing harmonica in the echo of the stone pavilion. Your multi-colored eyes shifting with the notes you taught me while we waited by the train tracks. I remember when I cut my hand trying to pry that lock off the rail car. You ripped some fabric from […]

Politics

The shadows at the bottom of the lake move just like we do. The cattle in the fields all nod their heads in time with distant strummed guitars. Tornadoes rip the woods apart and drop deer from several stories high. Their entrails get all tangled in the branches. Drinking beer from plastic cups in an […]

Chance

Empty is the only word, the streets and everything they hold together. Rainy weather like a silver breath that freezes in the air. I see her standing there in her red skirt camera in hand taking pictures of the puddles in the grass. No umbrella and without the fear of being caught in any downpour. […]