If I told them everything, I think the birdswould tut, sympathy coating every titter, claiming that the world would be betteroff had I succeeded the first, the second, the eleventh time I triedTo rid this monster of its next second — its reflectionin a noose, its remembrance painted in a yellow CAUTION tape begging “Active Scene of Crime …
the red earth path brings searing heat,homes among mangoesand palm trees bursting with orange coconuts;a gravel road, plastic scraps,an old sack, an empty stall stinkingof palm oil in the sun.tuk-tuk men call to collect me,my white skin attracting them like a neon signin the night,but I walk on, past the railway station dog,his sweet tawny …
The table was the size of a majestic west-coast hardwood trunk, and for £110,000 it was all the more intriguing, what powerful consequential people must have dined at such a massive table historically, or now if some wealthy person bought it as a trophy for a near-vacant mansion. It was my first and only time …
Continue reading “the tarnish beneath the gold” By Sam Kaspar
The brain tissue had just enough blood around it that it looked alive, but all that blood was where it wasn’t supposed to be, and she was missing that part of the head, which should shield it from our view. There were so many tubes and lines in her that it was hard to believe …
Continue reading “The Cleansing in Marissa’s Tub” By Sam Kaspar
They’re regulars at Gray’s Sporting Goods, and not the regulars you’d expect—–fishermen, marksmen, student athletes—no, they’re an ancient man in a wheelchair and his equally old, but able-bodied wife. New-hires soon learn that they’ll never buy anything and let them be. A department head or manager will approach and say, “How are my favorite customers …
The neighborhood started going to hell about two years ago. Bryon was the first. His wife found him on his front lawn in the middle of the night on his hands and knees. Wearing nothing but his underwear. He was looking for a quarter that fell out of his pocket he said. It took an …
River mud smells like movement. Losing constrictions. It’s rich and mythic, fresh and rotting. The smell is the surrender that can occur when I stop resisting the intuitive swells tucked in the folds above my pelvic bone. I first met that smell when I was lying in my parents’ backyard at 3 a.m., naked, my …
Snowflakes in the street lights look like Nothing Depicted on warm socks Before bed, and after showers; A flurry of ideas—often doomed— Hope to become part of something bigger, After all man was made from the earth. The ball of dirt we walk on is Nothing but a piece of celestial confetti In a party God threw …
I was husked tonight, hollowed out, and ground to powder. The dry leaves of a barely ripened fruit ravished lies in agony beneath a blazing galaxy. I can feel the stars and their enormity, the light of a billion eons glaring down on my chest where patches of broken blood vessels advertise my shame. Cotton …
We stop at the abandoned tire factory because you said it has five stories of good energy. I volunteer to try the ladder up to the roof because that’s the kind of thing my best self would do. My best self is never shy, timid, and rarely questions what I do but gives the rungs …
Burnt Pine 