The keypad on his door chimed that familiar tune, which he had memorized by now. The door popped open and Doctor Chin entered his cell.
“Hello Gary. How are you today?” The doctor asked.
Chin wore jeans and a button up shirt under his white doctor’s coat, and carried a tablet.
“I’m fine, Doc.” Gary said.
He hopped off his bunk and walked across the tile floor to where two chairs sat facing each other. They were soft chairs, gray in color and matched the Spartan décor of Gary’s room.
“Let’s have a seat.” The Doctor said.
Gary, wearing a one-piece baby blue jumper complied. The blue stood out against the beige color of the rest of the room. It was a very calm institutional color.…
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Marla folded the last of the towels and slipped them inside a large plastic shopping bag she kept for her trips to the laundromat. She was happy to be leaving. The building, squat, gray cinderblock, was poorly lit, with constant noise from the machines and the smell of accumulated lint and fabric softener. Inside her car, Marla sat with her eyes closed for a moment, relishing the quiet. She really did hate the place. She looked up at the sign with half its neon winking on and off. The Suds-a-teria. What kind of stupid name was that, anyway?
On her way home, Marla stopped at the Dollar Bonanza for a couple of frozen beef pot pies and a two-liter bottle of pop. She bought the store brand. …
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1. Acquire a flower – most preferably one with sentimental value, otherwise why are you even bothering. You need emotion to motivate writing.
2. Spread out each petal so that it lays flat on the tissue paper. Make sure the stem is gone because why on earth would you press a stem. Unless you are composing an Ode to Thorns, paired with the poetic balance of beauty and pain. Be still my heart.
3. Cover both sides of the flower with the tissue paper in order to soak up the fluid. Whilst doing so, formulate a simile about the tissue soaking up the lifeblood of the flower like the pillow soaks up your tears every night. Find other love-sick examples on the world-wide-web.
4. Place the flower in a tight vice, or for regular people, under a stack of heavy books.…
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I couldn’t remember what I was dreaming, or if I was dreaming at all. But I knew I had been sound asleep. And I was rudely awakened by a random thought: Did I make James’s lunch for school? Damn it, Sharon, did you? I twisted under the blankets and turned onto my back. I stared into the darkness of my bedroom. Did I make James’s lunch for school? The question nagged. Was I going to have to get out of bed and check? Think, Sharon!
My mind revved like a reliable engine but churned out thoughts irrelevant for the late hour. I remembered tasks for later in the week, phone calls from two days ago, and which bills got paid for the month. My memory was blank each time I was able to circle back to James’s lunch.…
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– Inspired by “The Night of the Gun” by David Carr
A recovering crack addict spoke, and I listened in close.
For the record, I’m not comfortable listening to the philosophies of any schmuck off the street. I wouldn’t grab coffee with a former sex offender to discuss the trials and tribulations of my anxious attachment style, as one can be a former sex offender as much as one can be a former bike rider.
However, I am comfortable hearing out a recovering junkie. They stayed on the ride until they were so sick they infected everyone in their sphere, but then somehow found the strength to confront the reflection in the mirror, see the wreckage staring back at them, and hop off to place their feet upon steady ground.…
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I was sitting on the loading dock with Charlie, eating a rabbit sandwich. This was mid-November, now. Charlie shot the rabbit the day before, on a Sunday, in the woods behind his dad’s farm. I thought Charlie didn’t like me, you know. So I was surprised when he offered me a rabbit sandwich. We didn’t talk much. I was an out-of-towner. I was lucky to get a job anyplace.
Charlie usually sat in his truck, by himself, during the lunch break, staring out into the woods and smoking. Now I was sitting next to Charlie on the loading dock between two empty trucks, eating a rabbit sandwich. I didn’t want to eat it. I never ate rabbit before. But I took the sandwich, said ‘thanks,’ and I ate the sandwich.…
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– after Rita Dove
Morning. I look at my fuzzy chest
in the bathroom mirror. What are these
hard disks, like quarters, under my nipples?
I’m a boy; am I growing breasts?
I can hear the girls in my class giggling.
Last evening during homework,
my father called me to the living room,
and back at my desk, I couldn’t remember
what he’d said, but I realized
he had not yelled at me like the day before
and the day before that and . . . The letters
in the book swam like fish avoiding
a bigger fish until the current
in my eyes calmed.…
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