One Two Three
One Two Three
She kicks her leg up, showing the world her shapely thigh. Her skirt’s a rainbow of pastels that frame the swell of her plump buttocks and the sheaf of white panty that bisects her inner leg and whispers of the dark cleft underneath.
One Two Three
One Two Three
She turns in a whirl, her soft doll curls spinning like the dishes balanced precariously on smooth ivory poles. Her lips are red; the perfect cupids bow, and dark eyelashes flutter above ice blue eyes, so incredibly blue they’re ghost-like.
One Two Three
One Two Three
The curtains close. They open again. She’s seen undressed; her porcelain skin grasped at every angle by the calloused hands of men. The cupid’s bow is now split apart, a thick shaft poised between it, ready to shoot its quarry. …
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Believe me,
nobody wants to be loved.
What good lies
in the isolated knowledge of one
who loves,
one who finds himself in love?
What good is it to me that you
love me?
The truth is irrelevant when it
comes to individuals.
What a useless thing—to be loved.
But to feel it, ah!
All souls, all spheres
of energy and matter
were created to seek it.
We bathe ourselves in the
hope to find it:
The feeling,
not the truth behind it.
For what is a color
other than the thing we see?
No reality can go beyond a belief,
becoming inconsequential.
Maybe they don’t know it,
maybe they can’t understand,
yet nobody really wants to be loved,
what they want is to feel as if they were.…
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Waves leave me stranded
My body recalls the pull
of salty siren
I echo remorse
My shell an amplifier
of solitude
The sun rises
My body warms to resolve
accepts stasis
Hours tick like time bombs
Metronomic visions
of feet and feathers
Owning neither
I sink further into sand
pretend I am coffin
Waiting for death
I discover a new concept
Regeneration
The world moved forward
into perceived reversal
I am recycled
Arms of tomorrow
embrace me like yesterday
I breath as if I am home.
– A.J. Huffman…
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Steve looks rested, has all his teeth and his shirt is immaculate; you would never in a million years think this guy was on welfare. He’s my brother and we meet once a year for my birthday treat at the restaurant of his choice. This year, he’s chosen Olive Garden.
Aside from this splurge, I supplement his upkeep with a monthly check which he demands with the punctuality of a landlord. I’ve paid him thousands in what might be called blood money.
What else can I do? Certainly, no person in his right mind wants to end up like him. According to his caseworker, he’s anti-social. His life has been one long con job though he was shrewd enough to avoid jail by making all his victims those who loved him; people who’d never go to the police. …
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The three older boys hanging out behind our school said that they’d killed a rabid dog at the abandoned air force base. “We slashed at him until I got him in the stomach,” one of them said.
“Did he bleed out?” I asked, trying to sound cool.
“No. He didn’t fucking bleed out,” the tallest boy said, tossing a pocketknife between his hands. “I threw my knife and hit him between the eyes.”
I stared at his knife in awe.
“There are tons of rabid dogs there. Twenty bucks to watch us kill one.” He looked at me and then at my friends, Kyle and Thomas. “Or are you a bunch of pussies?”
“I’m no pussy,” Kyle said.
Thomas and I nodded in agreement.
The tallest boy slid the knife into his pocket and then unrolled a pack of cigarettes from his shirtsleeve.…
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“What a shame,” Nonna said when I arrived at her place after working at the family restaurant. “Mary Muldoon just called. Drunk as a skunk, asking if I knew where her husband Jim was and quite annoyed at the Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant. Said they were sending her pork fried rice and egg rolls at least three times a week. Claims she never ordered a thing.”
“Where’s her husband?”
“Molly, he’s dead. Has been for years. She found him in the living room around dinner time. Massive heart attack.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“She must be having blackouts and forgetting things. Or she’s imagining that they are delivering the food. Mary has squash rot. Poor thing. Her mind’s all messed up.”
“What’s ‘squash rot’ ?”
“It means your brain is rotted from too much alcohol.…
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If he had been sitting on a lazy cloud, looking down at the world, it might almost have looked nice. The patchwork of rice paddies could have been a green quilt thrown over the earth. Henry’s rifle hung heavily from his shoulder, and silently he wept—knowing that I could not weep aloud.
Guns and smoke were tattooed over his mind, blurring the image of five young faces. Even through the haze of regret, he remembered the way the eyes had looked as were jolted out of this world by soldiers’ bullets. Death should be peaceful, a gentle settling, the end to a long journey. Not accompanied by groans and shouts. Not full of agony like flares erupting in their skin. Not pain. That wasn’t the way to die—certainly not at eighteen years old.…
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