A NOISE THE HOUSE MAKES ON ITS OWN
Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed
and sings a lament; everything seems too large,
the steadings and the fields.
Beowulf
loneliness
And There Was That by Adam Kluger
She pulled out the Nuclear option and tossed it on the table like the Ace of Spades.
Nothing to do but bluff.
He then called her back and said “Let’s not ruin three lives here. Stick to the current agreement. ”
“Ok, but you better make your payments every month. Get a job at Starbucks.”
“Yes. I will,” he replied not knowing exactly how he was going to do that.
And that was it.
Wait by Julia Retkova
Amanda would lie awake at 3am, swept under blankets, watching the darkest bedroom corners twist and snap spines and smile. And then she’d get up, and start the day like nothing happened. Like she didn’t know what it was like to be beckoned, to be wanted.
The Cleaner by R.L.M. Cooper
October
Frank always hated rainy days. He hated them when he was working and he hated them when he was ill. Like today. Today was gray and wet. The leaves, falling steadily from the big oak out front, randomly blew against the rain-splattered window beside his bed and stuck there momentarily before gradually sliding down onto the sill where they gathered into a brownish, wet pile and ultimately fell to the ground beneath the rhododendron bush.
Some Animals by Alexander Franks – Adult content
Underneath a billboard beside the highway, an imperious impression of a gorilla spun a banana-shaped sign which read “Free cable & HBO & air conditioning.” It was early spring and the air cool and crisp, but the gorilla had been at it for several hours—throwing the sign up in the air, swirling it around his limbs, passing it around his back—the man underneath undoubtedly hot from the body heat trapped in his fake polyester furs. Cars filled with people on their way to work would occasionally honk hello, and the gorilla man would wave and point at the sign. The cars would then slowly pass, the occupants smiling and nodding but not looking directly at him.
Hugo and Me on the Moon by Pete Able
I was on the moon all alone. Looking out the window the weather was always the same—moony. The terrain, too, was all moony. It could have been lovely but for the utter mooniness of it all.
Nor Help For Pain by Leila Allison
Some see the aging face as an ongoing story; others see it as a palimpsest from which the original pretty story has been scraped and is continuously replaced by increasingly derivative tales culled from the same source. Here, I find myself thinking Hamlet compared to Hamlet Versus Predator: To Bleed or Not to Bleed. Sadly, as you may plainly see, no metaphor holds up after you have looked at it long enough.
