The first time Liz Chaffin saw Mickey dancing was at the funeral of the dead Mexican boy. She had long since forgotten the Mexican boy’s name, but she remembered that they kept the pine coffin closed because the boy had died from a shark attack. Her father offered no more details, but the closed coffin, topped with exotic flowers from the Yucatan, was sufficient for her imagination. They kept Mickey’s coffin closed too, not because of an irate shark, but because of what he had done to himself.
The obituary explained that Mickey had died of heart failure, which was technically true, Liz supposed. They buried him next to their grandfather, Titus Chaffin. There wasn’t much of a ceremony. Mickey’s best friend, Terrance Figgins, showed up looking stoned, but it was the first time she’d ever seen Terrance in a tie.… ...continue reading
Thursday started with a gauzy sand bar sky
The LED sun yawning widely over the horizon
Today, like every work day, the ideas blackboard
Streaked with years of smudgy lessons, the surviving
Word “catch” or was it “batch” down in the corner,
Avoiding erasure. No products appeal,
Or really matter, maybe you can market
But you can’t pawn the sunrise
Which easily eclipses the mind when it’s wrapped in a
Tortilla, so chewy, like yesterday‘s disappeared stanzas.
Aspiring light has no goals, just a paper route,
Delivering holograms of unconfined content,
Another daily batch, today’s fresh catch.
Checked blue surface of a gauzy sand bar sky.
– Michel Krug
… ...continue reading
Most Illinois residents probably don’t know that the extreme southern tip of their state includes the beautiful and rugged landscape of the Shawnee Hills. Most of the people in Illinois live in Chicagoland, which is about as far away as you can get from the Shawnee Hills and still be in the same state. The hugely popular residential area near Lake Michigan is famously flat while southern Illinois features picturesque canyons and knobs. Bordered by the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, two mighty ancients of North America, this lesser-known rugged terrain is part of the South. Think Kentucky, which dozes just across the Ohio.
It’s a long drive down there from Chicago, and Marty and I always left the office too late in the day, trying to do one thing too many after arriving late to work after striving to finish up one more chore at home. … ...continue reading
Luke weaved between honking, fume-belching metal to catch the bus coming up the other side of the road. The bus stopped just after taking off from a bus stop to let Luke on.
The quizzical faces inside the bus facing Luke espoused: “Why did he get on here?! Him?!”
No tourist sights existed where Luke had boarded, where English was limited, traffic chaotic, crossing streets perilous, traders screaming out prices, pedestrians mixing with horn-blowing vehicles, everything just missing each other as if controlled by satellites.
The bus’s aisle separated foreigners from locals in an Apartheid-like divide, the air inside the bus fresh after frying-meat smell and fumes mixed with dust. Luke’s sweaty face and the sweat patches on his shirt contrasted with that clothes-pressed-to-perfection enclosure. One of Luke’s shirt collars was up, the other down.… ...continue reading
Therefore, I am
Prostrate before the moon and the sun
And the rain that followed, once again
The moon, the sun, and the rain that followed,
Once again
And forever more, I fear
For the flame that burnt my hands and eyes,
Charred the snow-hearted and scalded their brothers
Lay covered in earth, in ash, in suffocating pitch
Starved of fuel more potent than a prone body, prostrate before the moon
And the sun
And the rain that followed, once again
As I watch it fall, from clouds of nothing
– Izzy Fishbach
Author’s Note: Philosophers of all persuasions have spilled much ink debating whether it is possible to know that one exists, and if so, how to prove it. This poem is the opposite of that: it suggests that we don’t exist at all.… ...continue reading
Christi had a birthday party scheduled over at The Glass; a gritty, cozy, and unwilling place to be. It was a bar and that was enough for me, I guess. Wednesdays are a good night to drink just like any other day of the week and it was one hell of a day. It was Christi’s twenty-third birthday and although the day was shit, I tried to have a good time. She phoned me.
“Are you coming tonight?” she asked. “It’ll just be a few of us. We’re meeting at The Glass at 7:30.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
After work, I avoided the traffic on the highway and hit Dry Mill Road instead. It is a popular road for locals to bypass the highways, but too many people have caught on and now the traffic is just as bad as the main roads.… ...continue reading
Fishermen are good at sea.
Strong arms, pull steady sails
In shifting wind,
In storm.
Rudders for left hips guid straight to streams pregnant with catch, so they may cast their nets in place of incantations.
Heave!
And here’s the day—easy. The water like a looking glass, they sit upon white decks watching the world. Fishermen are very good at sea.
When beached, the ground moves under them. Confident steps slide, awkward and uneven. The air too warm, the wind too dry. The sea just there, and not.
They’re caught
Right on the precipice of life—free to stare, but not enter.
There, they mend their nets. Knit fingers bloody, set gaze upon the sand. Bottle up complaints—though that part’s harder. They wake and walk and sleep, all on flat land and adrift, with only God for anchor.… ...continue reading