Dive into the archives.
- old dichotomies.
“I’ve shifted into analytical mode lately. My output for a while is likely to be only articles of nonfiction.”
Only likely.
“I’m becoming more verbose. That’s always a sure sign. It’s weird, and so is my syntax.”
A bat just hit the window.
“That’s weird. Anyway, a friend of mine said something about the number 27 always being the [...]
- Mere Mort
Mere hours.
Mere hours, they say, until my grandmother is dead. This is why I have been in Michigan for the past six weeks. I have been watching her die.
I sleep on a couch in the living room down the hall from her bedroom. I remember it being covered in plastic when I was a child. [...]
- a revolution in hand.
The ring finger of my left hand has been asleep for a week. No amount of flexing or biting or banging-on-counters has been able to rouse it from its prickling coma.
More curious, however, is the fact that its neighboring middle finger seems to be gaining in strength. It willfully springs to attention at the most [...]
- something that wants to be a song.
“in prison, you always dance”
i.
lunar eclipse last night.
i was flying down a detroit highway, smoking a bowl. we passed a semi called the sparhawk * and i remember thinking, “the universe must be high.” glanced at the moon’s red eye.
then the accelerator blew.
ii.
the hopi word for war is dance, you know. we call that
the motor [...]
- pipe dreams.
someday, when i have a rock band, i’ll name it kelly et les dangereuses. we’ll be the official band of the apocalypse and play the “falling ash and fire tour” where all our pyrotechnics, and some percussion, will be supplied by circumstance.
your attendance is inevitable.
- one last dispatch before the desert.
Last night I dreamt the Pacific was boiling.
I had walked barefoot down Highway 166, following great ghostly pillars of steam through Guadalupe, past migrant farms and moon-drenched murals depicting life en la frontera.
When I reached the coast, the ocean had mostly burned away, and on the barren seabed lay Detroit, all in flames.
At my side, [...]
- mid-american accent.
i drag my vowels like knuckles on the ground behind me.
- Tin Man’s Last Song before Oz.
Dear You,
My heart has been cold and airless lately. I’ve chased everyone out with kitchen cutlery and padlocked the door.
You should know though, my bleeding friend, that at night I think of you when I retreat down stairs to conjure every sooted demon privileged enough to haunt my trembling brain. I greet them each with [...]
- imagine this in the language of your choice.
immigrant man, upon filling the mouth
of his mother’s grave, says to cousins
and daughter:
“well, we’ve fed it six of our kin so far. think it’ll let us stay yet?”
the ground just burps
and rolls over.
- sometimes a big bang is just another creation myth.
This mop-haired sophomore once asked me, between slurps on his retainer, why I named Xenith as I did, “all exez instead of zeez.” And I didn’t want to tell him, this wide-eyed naif, until I remembered I had been younger at my own age of reckoning. So I turned my head low and away and [...]
