Illusory

A cabinet of mugs all painted with the logos of brands and cartoon characters spawned before the decade. Coffee like oil for biological machines that chug it down in swigs that make their teeth a darker color matching splintered boards. Staying awake is the only concern. While dreams break through reality in the form of […]

Last Day of Autumn

Blue tablets oval shaped to go down as easy as possible. Their job was to make it so Lina and Jim didn’t get too excited around each other. The corporate printed books in their graffiti covered lockers were so much more important than any feelings. Still there was a glow around the rim of their […]

Industrial Suburb

Squirrels on wires dangle and when they’re done they don’t. Some kids are cracking rocks over a backyard fence with broom handles, not for lack of proper equipment, but for a challenge. One of their older sisters has her boyfriend in the basement, and they are whispering about parts of themselves always hidden behind clothes […]

Clean

A bad weld leads to metal in the eye, and swaths of highway between industrial parks. The youngest nod their heads to maxed out music in their cars, in preparation for the noise throughout their shifts. The remaining forests serve only as barriers between one group of houses and the next. Buried under the oldest […]

Portrait of a Traveler

Empty towns mark the miles between wheat fields, and golden nothing, accented by the sun. She is there, the only one, tying her shoes on the roadside. She lets the screaming semi’s pass, and the vans, and flashy convertibles, just wanting to be alone. She drags her feet and kicks the stones that collect in […]

Smear

Seasonal colds make everyone think that they’re dying, but they feel more alive when it happens to somebody else. After the violent phlegm clearing struggles that trickle out in random intervals, we all remember that we live within the mud. A smear of it on some wall we can’t conceive, but still we believe that […]

Mountain

I never taken time to see a mountain and I’ve had the chance a few times in the past. Ignorant of great heights, I picture what it looks like past the edges. Purple is the color I most associate with mountains, even though that isn’t what they are. All of my instincts on this subject […]