Many years ago, my mother took me to a museum to see dinosaurs for the first time. It was a last-minute thing. She called it a mother and son day. We’d never had one before. I was nine years old. That morning her blue eyes were puffy and red. Her face pale, drawn, preoccupied.
I was glad to get out of our house, away from my father. He was a snoring heap on the living room sofa when we left. Still wearing the same faded black t-shirt and grungy jeans as the day before. Cradling an empty Skol bottle in his tattooed forearms. He’d had one of those kinds of nights again. Only worse.
My mother and I stood before the colossal bones of Tyrannosaurus rex.…
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I need to find a sex worker bad. It’s not for me, I promise you; it’s for a friend. My partner, Rupert. Mr. Fluffernutter, if you’re nasty, which in this case wouldn’t be a bad thing.
He’s been a little off lately, and I believe I know why. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He just needs a little female… gaze? Perspective? Wait, I got it—audience—to get him out of his funk. We tend to perform for the rougher sex, and there’s little joy in Broville.
I’m finding that there’s a huge chasm between needing a sex worker and finding one. I miss the time when you could stroll Hollywood Boulevard and run into a Julia Roberts, Melanie Griffith, or Laura San Giacomo. Them were the good ole days when affordable, attractive prostitutes were on every corner.…
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I stumbled on the broadcast by chance, a series of disjointed words on an army frequency nearly sixty years old. I was in the Library of Congress’ lab researching radio transmissions for my Master’s. Dusty records, military logs, and the faint smell of old paper surrounded me. I’d grown accustomed to the monotony of it all when the voice broke through the buzz and hiss: “This is Private Lars Holmgren, bravo 2 , 6 alpha . . . Charlie closing . . . need indirect . . . map grid—”
My breath caught. Private Lars Holmgren. That name was familiar—too familiar. My grandfather’s older brother. My mother’s uncle. She told me about him when I was a child. He was a dreamer, she said, the poet of the family.…
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Many of my concerns are municipal in nature.
The cars on Savin Hill
assume weird angles. The trees bend,
one by one, to the November wind
ripping through right on time. Trees
aren’t always prepared but I’ve learned
November is a hazard. Limbs detach
from trunks and the broken cores
leak Styrofoam on the road. Floods
of teenaged Cristo Rey students
flow from the subway station and
cross the street without looking,
exactly like I do. I jacket myself
just like everyone does these days–
one puffy sleeve at a time. Buttons
separate traffic signals and walk signs.
I ignore their pebbly symbols
just like everyone else. It’s too cold.
I’m tired of standing still.
– Abbie McCabe…
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the last beam
of evening glow
…………dancing
over blades of grass
windows rolling down
wind whooshing
through my hair
…………his hand
grasping my thigh
i tug my sweater
pretending i’m shy
then lightly
…………slap him away
we count deer
…………grazing
along the parkway
one
two
three
wondering
if they too
…………play
little games
– Rebecca Dietrich…
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Tailing an unsuspecting fugitive on Route 93, just north of Kingman, Arizona, Maddy passed a wrecked car. The vehicle, an older model, four door, dark green sedan, had settled on its roof, resembling an upside-down turtle. Black smoke billowed, rising into the late afternoon sky. The low, looming sun resembled an overripe blood orange.
“Looks like I’ll have to catch up to Lester another time,” Maddy said.
She pulled her Yamaha motorbike to the side of the road and surveyed the wreckage. “Oh, man…”
A teenage girl crawled through the space where the driver’s side window had been. The two adults looked like mangled ragdolls.
Maddy knelt next to the lone survivor. She had long black hair and multicolored bangles on a badly bruised right arm.…
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“Last night? I dreamt of something called Competitive Nut. You go into a store with an exotic nut, bring a few in a little box,” I explained. “They clean them off for you… to your specifications of course… and you eat it.”
“What do you mean by exotic?” She gave me a smile. “Maybe because I was there?”
“No,” I said. “You weren’t there.”
I remembered another dream from since I had last seen her. It was at work, in her office, but she wasn’t in that one either. Instead, a kid I’d grown up with and who I hadn’t thought about in a long time was in the dream, working where she worked, her office, at her white board.
“OK, my turn,” she said. “We’re at a country club, playing golf. …
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