I mean, crazy, right? My kidney in America’s greatest president? The only one to care about the little guy? And the one who still might, if she comes out of her coma, lead us out of the Killer Vaccine Apocalypse.
Continue reading “The Recurring Donor: It Started with a Kidney by Jack Powers”
The rainbow-colored, balloon-patterned gift-wrapped box sat like an invitation atop the cement stoop. The ticking sound could be heard from the sidewalk. Barbie spied the thin wire paralleling the red ribbon, rising into the frothy, rosette bow on top. Barbie’s little plastic hand followed the wire to a fold in the paper, eased the wrapping open, sawed with care through the ribbon, and cut away the paper to reveal an edge-dinged box proclaiming the presence of a Spirograph Drawing Set. I really wanted one of those.
Barbie had spent enough time in the toy store to know the weight was all wrong. It was too heavy. She fearlessly sawed a hole into the side of the box, revealing wires, a wind-up alarm clock, and a small brick of tan, clay-like material. Enough to blow the whole city block sky high. With her steady fingers, she cut the green wires and, finally, the red wire to the detonator. She then flopped back into a sitting position and told me, “That was close.”
That was the first story I told Dolores, but you haven’t met her yet.
Continue reading “Bomb Defuser Barbie by Calla Gold”
“I’ll flip with you for who gets to do the spacewalk.” Jonar affected nonchalance as he and Mirth entered the lift labeled South Maintenance Bay #14. Mirth was planet-born. She didn’t even notice the oddity of such terrestrial words as ‘South’ stenciled on the passageways and lifts of a rotating space station. Jonar wondered if she had somehow converted her picture of the complex decks, lifts, and corridors of the giant, wheel-shaped stargate into Cartesian coordinates in her mind. To the station-born, like himself, such terms were complete nonsense. The designers of the Pleiades SuperTelpher should have used terms like out/in and spinward/anti-spinward. So obvious for something spinning in space.
“Huh?” Mirth looked up from her tablet where she was furiously directing her Avatar to beat Solo to the Emerald Cave where the spice minerals were found. She mentally gestured ‘Pause’ to the VR and asked, “What do you mean, flip with me? If you think that’s a new way to get what you want I’m not going for it. You might as well give up, Jonar.” She turned back to her tablet, wishing she had the implant version of the game so she wouldn’t have to hold something. But it was expensive, and she was still paying off her school loan.
Continue reading “Nickel by Steve Eckroad”
I never liked the women that my father chased around like a puppy who’d lost his mother. Fat, short, abrasive, somehow saying more about the way he thought about himself. To me, my father was always a rock, stoic, a giving tree whose branches had been nearly hacked away by the axe of my self-indulgent, capricious, drug riddled mother. But once she went away— and I mean really went away. Locked away for so long that she’d be old and grey the next time she saw the light of day and breathed the air of the free. I’d always assumed my father would find someone that shared the same familial values as he. Not that my father was a religious fanatic, but rather he had a keen understanding that when a man becomes a father it’s that man’s responsibility to put his family first. Whether it was taking me to my grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve to open presents and eat cookies in the comfort of her love or holding my hand whenever I was sick and never leaving my side no matter how deep into the twilight we drifted. Perhaps that’s where his image of women came from, his mother. My grandmother, a woman who would wake up at 2am to get ice cream from the freezer and of course, offer me a bowl. A woman who sounded like a grizzly as she rumbled down the hallway towards her favorite closet— the fridge. Who’s that famous guy who said that all men only want to marry their mothers? I don’t know, but I think he may’ve been on to something.
Continue reading “Bon Appétit by Nicholas Starr Kellogg”
Time was you could walk the whole length of the world going from island to island across the bridges raised high above oceans and mountains, deserts and forests, sometimes alone, or with a single companion, sometimes one among thronging multitudes, of merchants and hunters, explorers and sightseers, the clamour of whose voices drowned out even the howling of the winds and the screeching of the giant eagles.
Continue reading “Time Was by David Calcutt”
Or: To Know Buk Better You Need to Know Buk’s
Or: Start with This First
I’m tired and sick of people who slam Bukowski without knowing what he’s really all about.
If you don’t know, don’t say. An apothegm that should apply to all areas of life. And, think about whether you really do know it before you say it. And analyze what you said afterward, too. Not obsess over, not ruminate upon in a psychologically distressing fashion: ANALYZE. Harold Bloom said that Shakespeare invented the human by showing us how his characters listen to themselves, not to each other, which I never really understood until right now.
To Buk himself I say, these MISUNDERSTANDINGS I’m snarling at must be partly the wages of having become so well-known, sir, like you both did and did not say you wanted to. By the end of the century, you will have outgrown Hemmie (but he will still be there).
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever. A Readers Guide to Bukowski;”
Well here we are at Week 588.
I was going out on Tuesday to a swanky restaurant and I thought about wearing a tie. Not just a tie, I’ve been in trouble for doing that before. I realised that apart from weddings and funerals, I only think about wearing a tie but never do. I think a tie is smart. I have quite a few. I’ve lost three stunning black ones due to loaning them to people for funerals.
Continue reading “Week 588 – Has America Enough Tennents? You’ll Need More…Seriously, Import more!!!”
Today’s one of those team-building exercises, you know the sort. Sales are down, management wants to raise morale (and hence production (and hence profits)), so we’re all here to waste a day, listening to a team of consultants (hired at great expense, no doubt) impart some modern thinking upon us, “injecting cutting edge vitality”, I think they said.
Continue reading “Hell by Michael Smith”
I am slipping again. All of my thoughts are filthy and negative, and the dishes are stacking up. The TV is a blurb of sounds and flashing light in the cramped clutter of my living room. An occasional face draws me into the moment, reminding me of the past.
Continue reading “My Little Dump by Christopher Ananias (Adult Content)”
No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation than that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
She was foaming at the mouth. Her eyes dilated rolled.
Her mind was gone–possessed by Bacchus– she could not hear her son.
Euripides, The Bacchae
Marcus sat alone, cross-legged, in the quiet of his studio, having dimmed all lights. He sought to set his mind at rest by deeply inhaling and exhaling; as errant thoughts floated into his mind, he considered each one for a moment and dismissed it.
Continue reading “The Call of the Bacchante by Matias Travieso-Diaz”
literally stories 