Inbox/Easter Rabbit Release Party

My incredibly talented friends Kathy Fahey and Katie Feild designed this cellphone-sized book for me, Inbox. For a while, I was texting microfiction to friends. Kathy and Katie collected that small series of stories into Inbox.

Kathy Fahey also designed these beautiful posters for my upcoming book release party. Man, am I lucky in friends or what?


Baltimore author Joseph Young is celebrating the release of his book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit, by bringing together a diverse team of musicians, performers, and visual artists to add their vision to the book’s stories. The party is scheduled for December 12 at The Hexagon, 1825 N Charles Street, starting at 7 pm.

Easter Rabbit, published by local small press Publishing Genius, comprises 86 extremely short stories, with some stories as short as 17 words. At the release party, a team of actors will dramatize a dozen of the stories, while a group of painters and other artists will show work inspired by the book. Local band Sweatpants will be on hand to play music composed especially for the event.

Artists included in the show are Lauren Boilini, Graham Coreil-Allen, Kathy Fahey, Luca DiPierro, Paul Jeanes, Magnolia Laurie, and Easter Rabbit cover artist Christine Sajecki. Actors are Linda Franklin and Caleb Stine, directed by Nancy Murray. Sweatpants is Adam Robinson, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, and David NeSmith.

Interview on The Signal

Aaron Henkin of WYPR, our local NPR station, interviewed me about Easter Rabbit and the workings of microfiction on the radio show The Signal. I also read some selections from the book. The podcast is here. All the segments from the show are well worth listening to, but for your info, I'm at approximately minute 25 in the show.

More From Stories Around People

It was that day Kansas lost a tooth chewing corn. It smiled at the sun, gold and gold and gold.


Mercy Seat didn’t know who its friends were, whether to eat red pills and fill its eyes with velvet night, or sit home to pray. It had a child it didn’t know; blessed that fruit with silver hands.


Bullion came in the shape of an egg. It waited for the water, that spectral cousin of steam.


It was the one that came at the end, when the crowd went home. It filled the place of black-note dot.

Stories Around People

An Event

Facebook lived in midtown, for there the people and windows shone like water. Though it would board the bus—1 day—and ride to the sea, where people said words like sea and where the city shone in the waves and the fish were sidewalks and windows.


Bolt

In the night, the house where Octopus lived burned to the ground, all the letters and poems a curled ash. The other books patted its shoulder and gave it roses and tea. It stood admiring the sky and thankful.


A Labor

You do not understand, vacuum said, it's never been like that between us. In its jar, it knew this, seized it.

Chroma

The Geostroph/The Interstites

The Geostroph

The wind was on the face of the rock, a pink stream invisible. I have that distance to cross it said, the face of a dog, the river in the sand.


The Interstites

The kidney in its dungeon longed to laugh. It had the vision of grass on the hill and a traveling boy.

Jeff

If This Were Baltimore

East

A spray of change in the lilies and loose rubber, she pulled close to the wall. She smiled at the trucks, her handful of loot. Hallelujah, he said, converting.


West

Like 4 miles of cakes, they counted the headstones. 200 he said, but she wrinkled her nose. 200 maybe of old men alone.


River

No soil, just rock, flakes of plaster on the shore. She peeled one leaf and gave him continuance of that.

Taxonomy, microfiction video

Easter Rabbit Collage

Easter Rabbit Trailer and Offers

I wanted to let everyone see my new video trailer for my forthcoming book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit, and tell you of a couple special offers being presented by my publisher, Publishing Genius.

First, the next 5 people who preorder Easter Rabbit will receive in the mail, right away, a free copy of A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons, now in its second printing from Publishing Genius. As Jim Ruland observes in his review of A Jello Horse in Believer Magazine, the book is a strange one but very beautiful:

“This writing feels real; ergo, it must be honest. How then do you explain the giant desert tortoise, 'large as a minor-league baseball stadium'?"

Second, there is an ongoing offer from my publisher regarding Easter Rabbit: if you can read the entire 3000 word book in a single sitting, front to back, you are eligible for your money back. Simply write 50 words telling us what you thought of the book, which we will reproduce on the Publishing Genius website, let us know you did indeed read the entire book in one sitting, and we will refund the purchase price of the book, no questions asked. As Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius challenges,

“You won't be able to do it.

It's too long, even though it's so short.”

Thanks for your time and interest.

Experiments with Young Fish

Writer Kathy Fish and I collaborated to create hybrid microfictions at the blog VIPs of vsf. Check it out.

Also, I have new microfiction at Smokelong Quarterly.

Easter Rabbit Available for Preorder

My book is now available as preorder from Publishing Genius. Preorders will ship October 15, with wide release in December 2009. Also, visit the press site for Easter Rabbit, to be updated as needed. Thank you!

I'm Doomed: Hegel [and Me]

The ingenious (and genius) Randall Brown writes "Using Doom, Tragedy, and Hegel to Write (Short) Short Fiction," borrowing my story, "Troubadour," for explication.

Easter Rabbit

Bridge/mural/microfiction/Boilini/Young/in progress

Hey Look, He Listens to Christian Rock

Paddle boats swamped in seal-haired girls, red-water pavilions of pizza and fudge, the blue blubber of dad’s white neck—swum in a sea of stupidity. He fingered the comb in his pocket, knew it’d never make a difference. All he could trust in was Jesus, stupid savior, beautiful boy.

Deep Falls (2007-08)

Baltimore & Allegan Thruway

My dad's from Allegan, MI and now lives here in Baltimore. Made this for Father's Day.

Wall Collage

[Birthday: All his objects passed across the water, joining the longest stretch of lawn anyone had ever seen.]

Collage 05

Collage 04

Blogger, or perhaps the WWW Conspiracy, refuses to let the text portion of Collage 04 register unblurred. Excuse this please.



[SPANISH: SO REDLY NEAR SHE FOUND.]

Collage 02 and 03

[Cutbank -- With no water, he asked water.]

One Reading of Huck Finn

The boat lounged empty on the lake top, silver on green glass. She watched, worried her hair. Something monstrous in it, she said. Flies bounced corpulent against their cheeks. He waved.

Some Good Things To Be Said For The Iron Age

From the next yard, the lonely, excited twittering of the puppy. She excused herself, left the long table. Oh, she said, cellphone. Oh.

Exeunt

Her belly was a forest of beauty, as the deep end of the pool. Do you think, she said, her line, the sun breaking the world.

FIGHT!

Randall Brown don't know the first thing.

Word Periodic

A road spur crackled in black trees, black slashes of goose. The three angled, toward a ditch, a wire fence, away and toward and afterward.

Snow Shovel

After review, buyers of microfiction can now take the snow shovel option. Purchase 1 or more microfictions and have a snow shovel shipped to your house from Amazon.com. Indicate address and Option 1 (no shovel) or Option 2 (yes shovel) in your PayPal order.

The Damned Pythagoras

In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the opposing sides.

My microfiction is now on sale

Check the sidebar of this blog. This is no joke. In today's economy, no one is joking. Yes they are.

Standard Solution

The stone she'd collected out of loose cliffs printed itself on the desktop. He set words of slack lakes onscreen, nose filled faintly of acid.

Pike

The bridge was broken, just a causeway for squirrels, though underneath girls made promises to boys. She pointed them out, named them by their best feature--hair or eyes or breasts. A year ago, this time on open water, he'd named her too.

Interruption

Afterward, her eyes started sharding the light, the view from the front door a modern cathedral. That dog is 47 types of brown, she told her husband. His forehead broke into 21 worries, though perhaps he only studied the faultless ceiling.

$1/4

Here, he said, setting a quarter on the back of her hand. The coin was aglow, having spent winter under the ice out front. She touched the ribbon of its hair, the tropic motto.

A Cat's Walk

Constant Math

Things he decided: ice was always bitter, time will append like cooking oil, he'd only been wrong once. That was as a boy. There was a girl, her small ear, purple in the mulberry tree.

Exegesis

She sat flipping among his book, fingers glasslike on the pages. Funny then when she was cut, spattering blood on the girls' varsity squad. Have a great summer! it said, arrow inked up the center's skirt.

Valentine

There seemed to be impossible things, crossing the sidewalk, adjusting the birds, the smoke from a concrete pipe. He had a valve that was wrong, perched whitely among the viscera. He tried small and smaller tries.

Father Time

It should start in summer, she says. In the deep hot heat of July. In winter her hands chapped and bled, though she'd never complained before. A blastocyst twirled between her hips, or at least that's what he'd taken to imagine.

Marie Celeste

The cup moons beneath her eyes were in decline. You know the tsunami? she said. Except that all of it was ping-pong balls. It was evening again already, pushed fingernails against the palm.

Biography

There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.

Log

There was a machine in him that ate unwellness, although he was, one year later, as yet unwell. He sat nearby the pond and the waiting perch. Their mouths were wax for the worm.

Cardinal

I've never been south, she said. They lived in Bloomington, the road the black row in soyfields of birds. Only north. Or east or west. Noon fixed dust like snow.

D E L E T E D

Adam Robinson owns exclusive rights to "40 hinges."

Eleven

As she read essays, she plaited one side of her hair. You'd last forever, he said, up from his puzzle. The green light of some vehicle tracked across the ceiling.

Dwell

It was that where the room was a lake, sandy miles out. The walls might have contained it, but only inasmuch as they make the story, the frame, the treeline god could have drawn. He left the water, she sitting there, through the back door. Outside was a wild—he imagined her saying, See you later, and, This sun on my arms just might be everything.

Medial Moraine

He was hungry enough to check the box of year-old cereal. Sorry, it said, a note taped to the back. He heard the sound of the cat sleeping.

Argot

The mice fought in the ceiling, squealing in rage. Sure it's not rats? he said. She plodded through her novel. Rats would sound like cats. Cats like elephants. The rain in its waves seemed white and holy.

Nov./Requite

How do we not have time to savor it? she said. There were gunshots outside; the sky seemed in a shade of brown. Whatever the fever he'd been suffering burned in the top of his head. He would have rolled in the street, hunger and hope.

Rose

The outdoors was floss, gray. In the outer field a sheep stood by a tree, feet in wet leaves. They were in their room, spread on the bed. Things rose and fell--he rose. She had two thoughts: bloom, time. She rose.

Diamond, Hope

The day was short enough that he met her in the floodlights of the monument. You hear? she said, glove against his forearm. Yeah. The bluest stars shed their rinds.

Incorporated

His hands were covered in correction fluid, blotched white to the wrists. The man at the next desk watched over his computer screen, speaking slowly into the phone. With each jab of the brush, the photograph withdrew. Business proceeded.

Rest

There was a graphic of it bouncing off a log and hitting a man in the forehead. No blood though, she said. Says to wear gloves. He walked across the lawn, set it on the fallen tree, watched the butterflies warm in the mud.

A Brace Is Not A Couple

At the back of the store, beneath shelves of porcelain cats, were bags of confetti. Some look like guts, she said, and red spaghetti. He wouldn't make the obvious rhyme, though he saw through her eyes the rising birds.

Thomas Spande, Abstract, 2008






10 Thousand Things

The man moved over the city like a small dog, heedful in scent and strikingly gray. With each step his palms signified old men and children, their stoops, held at the center level of circulation.

Christine Buckton Tillman, sculpture






Dr.

If he could, the world would be ordered of unbroken spines, neat teeth, and illustrated hearts. He would wear on his forehead a reflector, and her eyes would be stories of sandy rivers.

Kathy Fahey, Timber Valley, 2007






A few weeks ago, Linda Franklin and I collaborated on a live reading at Minas Gallery called Maps and Birds: Getting Home. Visit Linda's blog, BarkingLips, to see the fruits of that collaboration.

Peter Schmader, Darwin Gets His Props, digital photograph, 2008






Scopes

Charles walked with the green light of the parking lot, Slurpee-fisted, great discovery in the nut of his head. But Emma, he said, my hands, they're so chapped and broke. It was true, the things he'd hold, chipped, stained in laboratory blue. She only shrugged, fading across her shoulder, all the boys on her guitar.

Luca Dipierro, from I Just Put My Name In My Books








Occupation

She said, You look thin.

To what question she addressed, he--his red sweater on the bright day--couldn't guess.

Robert Sparrow Jones, The Boat House Folly, oil on panel








The Buddha

On your arm, a rubber band. Reminds you: don't look; accelerate; remember. She carries nothing in her purse, the tender, pretty emptiness of her mother.

Dana Reifler Amato, In Potentia 1, 2, 3 (triptych), 2006, oil and ink on paper, collage



Geist

Her house wasn't made for living but as a district of worship. Stones, cups, branches of coral, they were made to point to her. He swallowed three times, air of brick and shifflera, an occupation, staging, organization of his lungs.

Megan Hildebrandt, If you were modest, there was a certain art to hanging out your laundry, 2008, gouache on bristol








Invoice

I haven't said. At night it's like a silver cloud. It spins fast and you rush away, leaving my quiet hands. In the morning, color--magenta and iodine--find a way back in. You know, all your cuffs know, the loosely threaded hems.

Denise Tassin, Doodle Top Green, work on paper









Green

He didn't know about the moon, its cheese. I'm so damn dumb, he said. He knew about this: her dress.

Micah Cash, Treeline, 2007, Sumi ink, beeswax, and oil on paper







Cradle

It was rock bared by rain. Here, she said, indicating a slot of the thinnest soil. Do we sleep here? The red valley, like the draft of her hip, startled him from below.

5 Lines Baltimore

A warehouse slid into the street, shuffle of yellow brick beneath the stoplight, no cars, but in the stone a man's cane, a gull's blood.

From the rich wood of the coffined attic the bats decanted, circled the turrets, a mugger with one eye rolled on the sky.

He walked beside the red pole, deep cut, black line.

A box of toys blew over, rain whipped the porch rail, a boy skinny and wet fed his cat through the window screen.

The steps were white cakes, green roses of beer bottles and dead flowers, a woman feigning sleep on the sidewalk.

* * * * *

Download a formatted Word version of 5 Lines Baltimore.

Fri*nd / B**k / Alp*ab*t

His eyes caught the passing of a bus, orange and broken white, and in a passing moment he left the stage. His hands described a guitar, eyes a bus.

She holds to herself a weed, pulled from the grass. Will you? she says. The weed asks her skin a question he couldn't have fixed.

In certain houses the lights were doubled, late city. She wouldn't have been there—the paling sidewalk—except for the voice: daughter? daughter? She folded her hands, nearly folded.

His glasses are televisions of her, even as he watches his hand. Go home? he asks, but she's already there.

Wait, she said. She was surprised how easily the knife passed through the apple, dull knife, red apple. Wait, she said. The sun pierced the door, family in the drive.

An ant began from the linoleum, crawled past her elbow, shoulder, to the clouded ceiling. She stirred her pot, focused on a dark fog. The ant reached the bulb, vaporous and warm.

When he parks the car, he will not get out. The motor will fall away, snow on the windshield. He'll sleep, then and inside, all the hearts on the block neatly typing.

He is clear, it'll be that metal, no other. It is like a dog: blue, heavy, patient. He pays, and the man at the register—what is it?, his eyes silver filling.

She turns away, one black heal, curled ends of her hair. Her smile is fixed—screwed, small. But then the sun declining, orange and cool, her palms find his eyes.

* * * *

Download a formatted Word version of Fri*nd / B**k / Alp*ab*t. Fits on half a page of typing paper. Print twice on same sheet, cut in two, and give one to a friend!

Menlo Park

He gave her the light bulb, the glass gone pink over the years. I can drop it? she said. He nodded, and she held her hand from the window, the traffic moving stories below.

Oglala

If I were to die…. she said. She left it at that, measuring the table with her arm, ribs to fingertip. He considered that future: like tall grass never stopping waving.

Lease

The wall had 4 switches in some arrangement of off and on, a single light. Click! she said. From the dark, she laughed. Click! she said again, but there was just black, in some arrangement of silver.

Before His Old Dad Had a Chance to Shoot the Entire Pack

He made a choice, the red dog. He lifted it into the cab of the truck and drove home, nose in his lap. When he opened the screen door, it trotted inside, past the wife, kids, out the back door. It didn't bark, it hardly ate, it never slept. It lay curled in the sun, a ripening tomato.

Trip to Yalta, IN

The bus broke hiss, nose like an eraser. She climbed the stairs in those slacks in which she once painted a room. A square of white on her cuff gave him over to the parking lot, the last drive home.

Manifest

She crowded it, hawking its colors, lengths. It's awful. How bad it is is tragic. It was a tower of cups and strings, motherboard, throat of a large bird. He stood in the ozone of her disgust. He took her mouth, kissed it, held it.

On Not To See A Bird

The noodles boil to paste, blacken, catch fire. She comes home and throws the pot into the snow, a hissing startled crow. Upstairs, she finds him asleep, eyes clenched to the plumes of acrid smoke. She slides beside him, has dreams—acres of corn-stalk, winter rag—pinioned by the wing of his arm.

Where The Woods Is Darkest

The film maker forgets his camera. He goes to the river instead, ice sliding by in blue sheets. On one is a man cooking over a pale fire. Hey, says the man, sliding by. By the time this melts, I'll be in warmer parts. The film maker sells his camera. He makes out for the desert, writing poems like sun under static.

Cartogram

The green cuts to tan--textures of a grocery bag--the rivers bluer, counties wider. They opened out, out there, thoughts losing the yellow gridwork of cities, marked with the spare periods of desert towns. You are here? she wrote, across the legend, waiting 5, 10, 100 miles for an answer.

Whippoorwill

She stood in the wind at the edge of the lot, pigweed blooming and rattling cups. She angled her arms in semaphore, to spell out hello or love or cannot see. He let the afternoon close his face, red breath, wet tongue.

Ecliptic

The fog cleared out and the brushing trees stopped, the night park black and green. There you were, in the white t-shirt, passing into the shadow of a maintenance shed, the smell of dirt from the door. On your neck was a chain, cheap silver, bought down by the hole in the seawall, the man in the African shirt. For a moment you'd gone, until you passed back out from the shadow of the shed. Yes, you smiled, but a thing had changed, the line of your jaw, the white and brittle. You'd swallowed something in the passage, dark and of the earth.

Pith

When he checked the door that last time, it was open, malice leaking free like dry heat. Yes? he called and rattled the ring of keys at his hip. No, came the answer, the voice not unlike his lover, his mother, a wounded horse.

Basho

She wrote him a haiku—flowers and horses. He printed it out and threw it in the air. It landed in a puddle, he said, Between two wooden buildings. He sounded disappointed, needing so much more.

Birddog Lake

They jumped. The water traveled their bodies, tightening muscle, equivocating viscera. As their feet hit mud, they held to the other—the slimmest moment of suffocation—before kicking for the sweetened air.

Supermarkets

A. By accident the butcher met the cabbages, two heads on the pale linoleum floor.

B. The checker stopped her tired hand, straightened shoulders, smiled to the girl and her approaching milk.

C. A mouse! said a boy. They watched as it pitched toward the broken coffee.

D. Though nearly 60, the man weighed the soup like a very good stone.

Moses

A baby lay asleep in its carrier, among weeds, the mother shaping letters and faces on the wall. He watched the sprayback drift, speckle the ailanthus red. She has the legs of a soldier, she said.

Radio Show

You're bleeding, she said. I know, he answered. It was that broken block of cement. The road closed sign made noise with the wind, a thrush in the pothole. Need this? she said. She held out her hand, a napkin, a small sketch of his ear.

Synecdoche

She went back through the trees, calling her dog, the dump of tables and chairs. On the far bank, the train. Here, it called. He sat among a ring of blue mushrooms, face to the sun.

If It Fits In The Hand

Why don't you give me that? he said. She threw it in the water, the hole in the duckweed a perfect punch of its shape. He carried that picture with him, the green weed, the reddened pond, from then on out.

A Wish

A pebble sank for 3 days through 3 miles of water. It passed between the skeleton of a whale, in which a school of orange fish lived. When it reached the bottom, it wouldn't move again, missing terribly the sailor's hand.

Headless

At twilight the city is most beautiful, the blue of the streets, the cabs, the girls. He thought of her once, home, naked on the couch, with someone and not, and then he stepped off the curb, the splash of people, brushing of arms.

Set

Ever have one of these? she says. She's holding a green candy, hard and exquisitely square. No, he says, falling over and over and over.

The Devil

She had a stone in her shoe, beneath the arch, and when she stepped it sent rushes of hot water to her head. By the time they got to the car, her face was white with nausea. For god's sake, why didn't you stop? he said. She thought of the three miles, the trees like towers of salt in her vision, the wrecked hinge of her lung. How could she answer, him most of all?

Absorbance

On the eraseboard she wrote blood, crossed it out, wrote tears, pushed her hand through it, wrote lachrymal ducks. She turned to her students. They were already bored by her, her dry hysterics, except for a tiny Nepalese girl. Ma'am, said the girl, rising from her seat, about to cry out or laugh, her labshirt breast stained Coomassie blue.

St. Avia's Epistle

Wet pills of dirt at the grass's white radicle, the half-worm breathing consonance, eat me, find me, want me.

Nothing

That's nothing, I can unhinge my lower spine. She sat on the couch, once, and then again, next to herself. The bays of the sea lions fell through the window, he hiding in the farthest room.

No Garden

They stood on opposite sides, the automatic closing of the iron gate at 5. You'll have to spend the night in there, she said. Bed down with the red and white tulips. He looked at his hands and arms, arms and hands, lost of color.

The Idealist

The lake drained to mud, the oars and barrels and cracked dinnerware drunken among the new weeds. If there's quicksand, she said, would you pull me out? He shook his head. I'd go down too. And then which of us would bear our future children? She laughed, already up to her knees.

Plot

There was a skull in the garden, something small--squirrel or rat--biting up at the day. He brought the shovel down and the bone fell neatly into shards. He felt sick to destroy such beautiful death, but free. A small man drank from a sack in the alley.

October

On the end of the pier was a fish, lungs piping the quiet air. They watched from five feet, he holding to her shoulder. A boat slowly crawled over the horizon.

Ascent

She stood weeping on the cement, behind her the million pounds of the city, the ten thousand legs and lungs, before her a dirt field, broken blocks, a blue thistle nosed by a beautiful dog.

Hardly, Not at All

For a couple months he saved the dollar that came from the bottom of her purse. It did not smell of pencils and coins, it had not known her naked.

As Light Becomes St. Paul

In 23 directions of gray, the girl puts her hand to the sharp building's edge, gathering together some long-standing anger. He watches her, the spirograph pigeons, waiting for the flush of blood to her throat that'll somehow be the signal for morning.

Easter Rabbit

Can you save me? Yes. Put your head down. I'm afraid it'll hurt. It will. No one wants it.

Matriculation

How many haircuts do you think have killed people? I don’t understand the question. Haircuts have killed people? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. How many people do you think have been killed by getting their hair cut? What a silly question. Nobody's been killed. Not one person. And if you say somebody has, anybody, you're wrong. Nope. Thirty-four. Thirty-four recorded in the hospital records. Who knows how many else? It's so stupid. People don't die from haircuts. Or from love, or heartbreak. Yep, thirty-four. Strength is in the hair. People waste away, old ladies, young children. Be careful, dear. The world is so odd.

Pendent Bird

He watched the hot dog vendor sing, the sun shining through his ears. Want one? the man said. For nothing? He left the edge of the fountain and took what was offered. It's good, he said, the pink of the light in his eyes, the hot dog still waiting.

Seventeen Years

The tornado was pulling up corn, wobbling at the far end of the field. Can it lift the car? she asked. He looked at the traffic jam, the day suddenly, brutally dark. Can it? he said. Or may it? The funnel shifted, filling with red dirt.

Trespass

He took a glass of ice water into the women's bathroom. She squatted next to the dirty bowl, sweat on her nose. Please, she said, this stranger, this sick girl.

7 Reports From The Road (old one, first seen at Pindeldyboz)

Making Good Time

We needed gas money in a bad way. We pulled off at a truck stop, and she went with her boyfriend into the mercury glow. Through the windshield, I watched as he stood behind her and lifted her purple kitty T-shirt for the truckers. He was right, she did have tits like teacups

Mission de la Luz

Dinner was elbow macaroni and ground beef in a thin brown sauce. As we ate, they gave us a sermon on the Santa Cruz, saint of the cross. Later, I climbed into my bunk and pulled the sheet over the paper pajamas we were made to wear. In minutes, I was the only one with open eyes in the sawing room of men.

Wednesday

The bus driver came from the office and told us the mountains were closed because of the snow. An Indian flung his coffee against the wall, his eyes all wet. I went outside to see Cheyenne. The wind tore a paper turkey from the door of a bar and threw it down the street.

Hitchhike California

Very late in the night, the hippies let us off by the side of the road. We climbed over the guardrail and stumbled through the dunes, bags over our shoulders. I kicked away some pieces of drift and collapsed in the sand. She found a place near the waves, watched the wide eyes of the seals watch her.

The Devil’s Boots

He came off the road when he saw our campfire. Hair gathered in knots, his eyes had seen and sowed a country of misery. He claimed to collect welfare in 10 different states, wives in 4. I nudged the burning end of a log with my toe and contemplated the providence of hell.

Flat in Alberta

Along both sides of the empty road, the tow-headed wheat flayed in the wind. A white slab of marble stuck in the earth listed the victims of cholera. With her fingertips, she traced Ezekial's name. If any, she reasoned, his was the spirit to summon a man with a jack.

Last 900 Miles

Crossing the Cuyahoga, a semi folded in half. In jeans and a cap, the driver somersaulted through the windshield, over the guardrail, and made for the valley below. As the travelers gathered in the cubes of broken glass, I looked over the empty air and the flowering tops of the trees. Nowhere to be found, he must have become starling and flown.

Diction

It was easy to hear the word that turned through the table. It could sound like death, or listen! or ridicule, but it caught at the throat and stuck. The other words, those at the spiked green corners of her eye or the bittersweet planes of his mouth, were pregnant with it, its sons and daughters. They'd labor on, these people, without fruit it seemed, though in fact the table was sweet in the blossoms of it.

Maude Gonne is a Bomb

She swam to the first sandbar and stood with the lake-waves at her knees. A boat with three boys idled by. He heard the word fish and skin and she laughed. She waved to him before turning out, arms angled for colder water.

Some Things Stand for Things

The wind clung to him, his arms trailing strings of it as it blew. Across the narrow meadow was a man, one eye blackened out, the other rolling. The man gestured to him to come, that there was an opening in the hill. I can't, he shouted. It's too far. The man shook himself and spat. He'd known the type, these boys who would smother in the sun before taking a hand.

St. Sebastian's

His foot had ached for months, a slow stab, heartbroken pain. There's nothing wrong with it, said the doctor. The remorse of a red handkerchief stuck from his lab coat pocket. Of course, that doesn't make it unreal. He thanked the doctor and went to the park, the low bubble of children, the pale, beatific mothers.

Loss

She burned the shirt in the backyard, the green smoke an ugly whiplash, the buttons popping.

I still don't get it, he said.

What? That I have one less shirt?

The fire was pale, shining on her arms.

Sin

There was a spot of mud at the end of her nose he took to be a blemish. She'd wear it, to the restaurant, home, to the end of the day. Why didn't you tell me? she'd ask. There was no way he'd say how beautiful she was.

Epistemology

He took her by the throat and squeezed. Motels, he said, they make me murder. She pushed him away and stepped onto the lawn. Lightning bugs lifted and fell, trucks on the highway busting the night. Shall we marry? she said, twirling her skirts. It was impossible to understand, the humid cloud of words.

The Love of the Lazabout's Wife

He watched the glaze of August from the steps, the dirty basketball boys and garbage trucks. Well? she said. What have you done? He could point to the dandelions he'd seen or the lakes he'd imagined, the hot cold water of want, but she would laugh and turn away. Didn't think so, she said. Still, there was more summer in her mouth than he would have known in a wild of work.

How I Ended Up in Therapy Recounting Repressed Memories of Childhood

"You!"

Lily

The snake tasted the air. Among the cold shale, high desert night, were spots of heat, a rat, a small bird. The snake smelled them, alone, not alone, the bandaged feet of birth.

Should They Offend

When she gave up speed and the sky turned back to blue, she realized most of all she needed things in her hands, stones she found in the street, a dog's tail, the legs of men. Forever she'd been tied to the eyes: Feed me or cut me off, said her hands, I am starved. Whatever she touched became clean.

Net

The boy hardly knew what it was, the house he was in, the crib with the green slats, the octopus playing Brahms, but he knew light, and the window opposite was full, through white gauze and the leaves of an ash tree. He was fixed with it—the backs of his eyes and thick nerve to his brain—he was new fish.

A Millionaire's Time

He conceived of trucking a pillar into his backyard, but he wasn't sure what he'd do up there. He thought he might build something, a motorcycle, from bolts and rubber and carbon steel, or he thought he might burn, hot red through the day, cooling orange as the night decayed. He would pray, of course, the hair in his heart still there, the horrifying itch that kept him wringing his hands as a child, but he desired a human payment too, the sex of motorcycle, the pain of skin, the worship of tv. Poor mendicant, he told himself, imagining grand torture, the lust of a crippled messiah.

The Willful Child

Her doctor told her it was the bite of a brown recluse, the dime-sized wound on her palm. She believed this, knowing that if there were a god, he'd come to her as a spider. Of course, she knew there wasn't, and as the wound deepened and went purple, her heart refused to give it blood. She lay gaping on the bathroom floor, her hand the look of dead roses, her body an excitement of shudders. Help me, she told her father through the telephone, I'm sorry for everything I've done.

65

He had a mild stroke while sitting at the table. He got up, dizzy, and wandered into the swim of dancers. They parted around him, or gently bumped his shoulder, his hip, until he reached the still middle. The band played something that wasn't music but hooves on hard grass. His wife was at the bar smoking with the men she knew and she saw him and he waved. The air was very much like hot silk as he breathed. His wife came towards him, perplexed and intense, and he knew he only had a couple seconds left. The smoke, the lights, the heat, they weren't what he wanted, but he'd never been right.

Parallax

She holds up a triangle she's made of polished wood. Like it? she says. He has to keep his hands from pulling apart its delicate joints, built in the far corner of her room, brought to bear in this crowd. No, he says, and they look at him, these people he has.

Thrift

Her face fresh from the barber was small and fragile, a bulb of milk ready to be broken. It's irresponsible, he said. You can't throw money after love. But the room was in her eyes and all the street outside.

Light of No Understanding

He asked of her, Take this. She held it, turned it over, set it on her table.

Bone

There was a bone on the bottom of the harbor. It had no sense of the eels sliding through the mud or the fish with the cancerous eyes, but it did have a memory of a leg standing in a field. It remembered the sounds of animals and slick, pink babies. It lay against a cinder block, the marks of a knife on one end, the creature it had been murdered years ago. The bone was angry, senseless in the water, and wanted light.

Santa Maria

After 3 days of heat, no sleep, the sound of salt waves in his head, he fell into bed. He dreamt of a heart attack like the bursting of wine in his chest, sugared burgundy dripping from the ducts of his eyes and flooding the mouth. He woke, hoping to see red stains on his pillow, but all there was was dark, the streetlights gone, his clock blank. Out in the road someone had written DieHope in green house paint, the tracks of one car smearing away to the south. He went to the tablet of paper on the counter. He wrote, Dreamt of heart, power out, mobs in the street. There was a feeling of invincibility in his hands, the muscles ripe. The dark edges of the countertop were worlds to be broken, like eggs or bread.

Low

Twelve times they'd been here, this particular desert. On the pan, a coyote trotted by with something furry in its jaws. Eleven times they'd seen something similar, the half-dead snake in the prickly pear, the gunshot owl, the lemon-yellow scorpions with claws waving. He stroked her hair, she said something too low for him to hear. What? he said. She shook her head, no, no. She spoke rarely, less so here, the sun turning toward the mountains and falling.

4 old stories (about working)

Cape Cod

He painted houses for a living, blue, white, yellow, whatever the customer wanted. He was able to afford to send both kids to college. In state.

Bliss

He drove a city bus for 10 years. One day he pulled to the curb in front of the art museum and got out. He called it, Oh Well.

Glass Ceilings

His boss wanted the 1300 page report, tomorrow. Here you go, he said. You're fucking kidding me, she answered.

Semi-retired

He created the world, people, some such thousand years ago. The upkeep was minimal. As long as they brought their own drama.

Sine

A white line, across the cement, under the park, through the door, faint and hardly there, to its red center.

Vasculature

He had a vision that the sewers moved like spaghetti under the streets, or like the long grass beneath a hose. He wanted to capture this vasculature somehow—these brick organs of whales—but paint and words and celluloid seemed cheap and embarrassing. He thought he might tell the little boys who lived downstairs, about this sly life of the city, and watch as their dark eyes bloomed. Mostly though the boys were afraid of him, edging out of his weak shadow unless he had something for them to eat. Lastly, he decided he would go to the park and with a piece of white chalk outline the skeleton of his dream on the public bathroom wall. This way, the bums and trysting men could look up from what they were doing, see the stained blue reality that coiled beneath them. He could watch as they stumbled out, drunk and disgorged, swaying in line with the lonely ideas of ignorant old men.

Cutting

The hair sticks in spiders to her shoulders. More? I say, and she closes her eyes and grits her teeth. Yes. I won't say it again. Later, in bed, she looks like a lesbian, tongue wild in rage. Am I still pretty? she says. Well. Not as much. We have sex, the sound of drunk girls in the window. When she falls asleep I grab the scissors again, cut down to her lovely skull.

Spyglass

I wanted a new way. So I asked my friends, Who do I most resemble?

Shakespeare, said one, because of the earring.

FDR, said another, because of the wheelchair.

Hitler, said a third, because of the way he touches his hair.

I took these with me and went to the ocean. The fish flipped on the silver waves. All around was the sand, ten thousand miles of the never changing sand.

Oil

Deep into marriage, they walked by the lake, the yellow piles of drift lying link-armed in the dark. It's late, she said. Too late. She pointed at a turtle climbing from the weeds. It's barely four, he answered. She took his hand, held it, and then threw it from her chest. Ouch, he said. She laughed and kissed him, pointed toward the terrible water.

Free Cutaway Night

After the dirt wakes up and you slip your open shoes, try to cut the black sky in your side with silver, to make an absence of sun a pagan crucifixion, a new lightning bug, the hole in the tin lid pierced with a nail too wide; let him climb, open the carapace, hold the wings, palm up, to the tops of the tree and the crossbars of the telephone pole, bleeding creosote; lift to the rust and black of the light, the monster green of the glow smeared across the white heart of your t-shirt, the long heat, the red coin, the free cutaway night.

The Gossipers

The red sweater of her sat with cups empty. Do you want him? said her friend. No, she answered. Just his voice. He, not so far away, spoke. In this way, they invented a machine, her gilt wheels, his explosions. It ran into the night, across several years. Friends regarded it with amusement and teeth. He sat with the red sweater of her. The sun beside you, he said. I know, she answered. Who would invent stories against them?

We Need Supper

They tried force, one then another. I work, said one. Sex, joked a second. A certain movie, the third. The women at the other tables were like starlight, blue and keen, out of reach. The space among them, over the hot sauce and napkin pile, was the only true thing. Lonely, it said and, Why do we want? The men had no choice but to confront their silverware, the jabbing at and eating of small, masked admission. The evening wore on. Perhaps there was time. They needed some way out, through the jaws of their coffee cups or the last lowering of hands.

23

The eight people stand in a box. One opens her mouth, then closes it. Another opens her mouth, then closes it. When the last is done singing, they smile to each other. The box is plain and white, a room, really; these are a singing group. They smile to each other and then open the door. The sun is hot and yellow and the grass thick, the dandelions butter-colored. The eight of them leave the room into the day. Each has a secret—hot and bright—that is the secret of the singing.

The Wedding is Only the Story

She takes her vows, head held back and ready to bite.

--Yes, yes, teeth impatient on the oily words.

She realizes that around her are these trees: the caterpillars at work, the green spit and the blaring sky.