Bill closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and inhaled deeply. Ah! Being around Carol was almost like smoking. Her thick hair carried an aura of cigarette smoke.
“Do you believe this shit?” Carol shook the newspaper in disgust.
“What’s that?” Keep her talking. Keep her here. God, for a cigarette.
“This guy won some lottery back east. In Jersey. No, in whatever. He gave it away. Most of it. Just gave it away!”
“It happens.” She’d let him have one. Smokers love moochers. Mooching means it’s futile to quit.
“Not in my lifetime.” She stood and began wadding the paper into a stack.
“I know a fellow,” Bill said as he reached around to the tiny refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water.…
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A tarmac arrowhead released from between the trees –
shot forward with each step. Feet that echo,
scream in hollow bursts of three, are close behind.
The asphalt river is banked with hands that claw from their soil beds,
gnarled fingers twist in agony at their shed skin
lying in the road, red fish like a million paper cuts.
Tonight a car comes around the bend up ahead.
The lights slash at the darkness, flaxen wounds like two gateways to heaven.
I choose neither and it growls deep in its engine,
illuminating blood and fur before it buries itself in the burrow of black behind me.
I’m wading through waist-deep water now, anchor limbs screaming
‘you can’t run, not towards blood that’s already dried’.
A dead deer.…
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Wake up. Turn on your cell. Get pelted with the handful of phone calls you missed. Return one. The person who answers doesn’t want to deliver the news. You know what the person will say. The number of calls and who made them tipped you off. Still need to hear it. Your mother died of a heart attack. No surprise. She’d been throwing her health away with both hands, physical, emotional, mental, most of your life. Hang up. Microburst of tears. You’re not sure why you’re crying. Stop. Not all mothers deserve to be mourned. Yours is one of these. Call your husband. Ask him to tell your son later.
Hit the shower. You’ve got a job to get to. Your mother dying isn’t a tragedy.…
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Henry was stopped in traffic, headed to an early-morning doctor’s appointment, when the red MG popped out of a side street and passed him, city-bound.
The car was lipstick red, husky-voiced. The driver wore dark bubbles of Hollywood sunglasses, a blue blazer, and a bold red macho-striped shirt open at the throat. A thick shock of white hair crowned him in a sun-drenched halo.
Early in his college years, Henry had yearned for a red MG. Craved. Coveted. A Ferrari or Porsche might have been even better, but he had no hope of affording more than an MG, and not much hope of even that. In fact, he drove a third-hand Jeep of World War II vintage. Courted Mabel in that ancient vehicle, until she gave him an ultimatum: find a conventional sedan that offered some protection against upstate New York winters, or find a new girlfriend.…
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Walter Whitstable catches a flight on short notice the day before the opening of the city’s music awards ceremony. After a half-hour, the plane starts coming in to land at an awkward descent. Walter pulls his sleeping mask over his face and begins humming along to Fern Kinney’s sole hit from her youth; lyrics that speak to him of what once was – to a calming effect. As a subject of an article titled One-hit Wonder Whitstable, Walter feels he’s been poorly represented. Slanderous little shits he thought…yes, he often felt like this about the press. For Walter, the invitation to present at the awards ceremony meant opportunity, exposure, and a return to centre stage; Jimmy Osmond had pulled out last minute for unknown reasons and Walter was asked to step in.…
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We meet at the same time one evening every month.
The date is tough to nail down.
We often reschedule multiple times.
But tonight, we are here.
We are sloped shoulders turning toward.
We are crossed arms jutting out at the elbows.
We are deliberate heads nodding in clear directions.
We are sharply creased jackets and structured coats.
We are designer heels stuck in the carpet like daggers.
We are what we wear to the extent that our bodies can be robed, suited and adorned in order to
reflect the interior, to embody the self.
And because we believe this, once the room has warmed, once our collective presence has filled
it, we peel off these exteriors, removing jackets and coats, and bend them over backwards on one
designated corner of the host’s living room couch, piling them up like layers of puff pastry.…
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All spring the tulips
trapezed along a string
of isolate storms
to arrive at the bright edge
of the season
weathered threadbare.
Even now
the wind rears
like a hurrah of horses
trouncing their flame silks
into banners of light.
Behold the lungta,
watch them billow —
each petal a prayer flag
tethering
the earth to the sky.
– Megan Muthupandiyan…
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