February 2012
57 posts
Please Note
From Thursday to March 4th, this blog will be plastered with personal sketches and possibly pictures from a trip I am taking to Russia. There will, hopefully, still be fiction, but do not be shocked if the frequency of names like Dmitri, Anatoly, Avdotya, and Sonya spike; if I start using personal pronouns to actually describe myself; if pictures of a goofy-looking chap frolicking in the snow pops...
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There is an Area between Penalty Boxes Where the...
Frost clouded the red cinderblock wall that separated his scorekeeping box from the parking lot. Milo smelled the tropics. White flakes from the orange rind were wedged under his nails. Half of the slices remained. On top of the paperback he had brought with him. The scoresheet showed a slow Sunday night game. Beer League. over-40 to boot. It was only 7:20.
The refs - Milo’s father and a...
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Anon Challenge Results
grouchomac:
People. Behold. I bestow unto you ten pieces of fine writing. These writers were given a prompt - clue - and did what they wished with it, did what they could, and then some. Bask and bathe in these words and their implications.
This was a challenge, and they are ranked. My judging process was unbiased, scientific, and thorough. Based purely on my whims, which are fickle, and on my...
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Anon Challenge Results
People. Behold. I bestow unto you ten pieces of fine writing. These writers were given a prompt - clue - and did what they wished with it, did what they could, and then some. Bask and bathe in these words and their implications.
This was a challenge, and they are ranked. My judging process was unbiased, scientific, and thorough. Based purely on my whims, which are fickle, and on my preferences,...
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His Life.
One author would have been better. He imagined a Gutenbergian volume on a table with a divine pen held by an authoritative hand that knew where to guide the story. Things would make sense and have clear endings and resolutions.
He began to realize that the world had probably been designed by committee. By a roundtable of sitcom hacks. People more concerned with today’s take-out than...
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A Smeared Napkin in a Cafeteria
She looks like a Becky, and he looks like a Cody, which means they most likely did it because Beckies do Codies. That’s how types work. No choice of their own. Comply. Act accordingly. The roles are not difficult: have simple lines, plenty of cues, more or less vacuous backstories. Operate on urges. Types are bean bags chairs – seem cool and inviting and fun, but sink too deep into them and...
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The Note the Internet Left on Its Coffee Table...
You fucking fuckers are fucked up. I am tired of being one big game of soggy biscuit. Of all the inventions, I had to be picked to be the receptacle of everyone’s trash and unedited thoughts and lame mashups and half-hearted attempts to be social and total disregard for being civil? I wanted to be a city. One with a lot of glass and triangles that you see on the covers of ’60s...
You follow me, and there’s a good chance that I follow you, so we should become vaguely, tangentially, politely acquainted. What I post doesn’t do my personality justice. I’m actually terse, sardonic, and fascinated with most things east of Germany. Shocking.
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ordinarywonder replied to your post: Baklava
Why does your fiction seem to be getting shorter and shorter? Sorry… just teasing. ;)
Good God. You’re right. By April, it’ll just be, “Him. Her. Sex. Chair.” I’ll start tagging it poetry by then, though.
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Baklava
She lay on the table. Tasted of the Balkans. Of places he could not pronounce. On his lips, she was honey and sugar and almonds. So much more than just sweet. Than just a treat. He wondered why her parents would name her after a pastry.
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I respect privacy’s marble door, but I savor the hints of the suggestive, and I will never apologize for being intrigued.
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The Girl in 5B
She had two lovers because she could – a soldier and a gypsy. The soldier marched in the day and returned to her at night. She kept her curtains closed during the day, when the gypsy visited. The soldier was stiff and stern, and he treated her like a prize he had to earn and a wild hoard he had to tame through overwhelming force. She kept the gypsy close to her in those rooms with the sideways...
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A voice like a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. His sentences were all undeniably related in their graveness, in their booming. His words were bombastic, and they made everyone’s pulse quicken, their expectations rise. When he talked, he brought out the best in people because he brought people closer to him.
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Anon Challenge →
grouchomac:
An Anon Challenge. Should you partake? Absolutely.
Click for further details.
Prompt: clue
Deadline: midnight February 20th
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Nothing in this land is ancient except for our desires, and those are simply manifested with fresh wood.
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The Wondrous, Illusory Option
You have $7,829.13 in the bank and about forty bucks in your wallet. A one-way ticket to Australia is little over fourteen hundred. You take your duffle bag out of the closet. You could fit three decent changes of clothes and a few handfuls of essentials-to-be-determined. How long could you last there? A long time, you tell yourself.
You could live among the koalas, climb the trees with them...
3 tags
There's a Crack in the Sidewalk on Mason Street
The car was coming at an expected speed down the street. Milo had plenty of time to cross. He had a determined stride. So, he took his sweet ass time. The car realized and slowed. Well, so did Milo. A horn blared down the street. Milo stopped. The car screeched. The horn blared again. Milo turned and pulled the bird out of his pocket, where it had been nesting. The driver was close enough to be...
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There was a city behind him. A river in front of him. A train station bench beneath him. He did not know how to whistle, but whistling seemed appropriate, so he clacked his tongue like a horse and blew air and was satisfied for a while until he began to hum and stopped because humming was tedious and dull. A rat scurried in front of him. The ticket window was dark through the boards nailed over...
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The Healing Power of Vernors
The moral of this story is to not wait a week to eat cheesecake.
Miles did, and around quarter to eleven, he was driving the porcelain bus to a long night. 2 am. 4 am. 6:30. He could stand up straight again. Showered and felt great. Put on his shirt and was ready. His morning commute consisted of three pedals and then picking up momentum down the hills until he reached downtown. They were still...
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Face the North
There were three. There are always three. Hood with fur like a ratty sunrise. Coat black, coat brown, down to the knees. Like polyester centipedes. A type. A trio of snowmen made in the yard for a Pennsylvania coal plant. That is all.
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Anon Challenge
When I first started poking around tumblr, anon challenges were awesome because they were compact directories of writers. There’s incentivized writing and all that, too. I would like to do an anon challenge. Not because I want to rank you and feel myself high enough to do that. How about we just write?
Topic: clue
The noun. The game. + in and use it as a verb. It’s a prompt, not a...
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Not Every Blackmailer Wants Used Greenbacks in...
You’ve fucked worse when you hated yourself. Now, you love yourself. Now, the world is ready to love you. Now, you have glass-based privacy. I can be your Windex. Leave your door unlocked. Your legs – open.
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For their last month, every sentence began with $
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He was told he could excel here or explore there. So, he expired on the spot.
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One Day
you’ll say, “Jump, doggie. Jump,” and I will piss on your shoes.
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Летом
I’d go to the city, but while I’m still a hyper, energetic, mobile kid, why shouldn’t I go run around the woods? I have plenty of time to drone away amid the blocks and avenues. It’s summer. No one stays in the cities in the summer. You should go to the middle of No Where and get lost in the woods and befriend constellations. The money won’t be astounding, but any...
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Dust and Credibility
There is beauty in the world, and that is fine and dandy and cool and shit, but what really appeals to him are crumbling brownstones, rusting gates, chipped paint on advertisements from the 30s, unbuttoned dress shirts, loose strands of hair, water stains in stairwells, sun-faded east walls. Clean is arresting, but the disheveled is charming. He frequents the parts of the world that are fresh and...
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Sketch № 36
They arrive at the townhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Vadalia – of the Vadalias of Greenwich, Palm Beach, and Milan. The façade is Greco-Roman. Art Deco commandments reign over the interior. All this suggests that the Vadalias have enough money to go back in time to decorate. With all the gilded and marbled surfaces, Alec wonders if, instead of dust, finely ground gold accumulates on the tops of bookcases...
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It was Gone.
Had taken a breast with it, but it was gone. Out of her system. Flushed away. Snipped off. Eradicated. Exorcised. Expelled. Yet – and let’s have that hang in the air for a moment … she did not partake in the celebrations of her liberation. Those around he hugged her and told her she looked great. She did. Her hair had come back, short and gray, but it was her hair, and she had missed it. Yet...
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You think of everything in terms of cataclysms and body counts, of shotgun shells and incinerated cities. Everything is apocalypse soon. Nothing is good enough to keep and create. You’re just playing games and fucking around. You’re just killing time until the tsunami or the zombies or whatever other fantasy you indulge yourself over three-drink-deep-hypotheticals. You want to be...
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Not all Hell is fire.
There is a quite comfortable bedroom. I was assigned it. The double doors are always left open, and I can see the world pass by once a day. Like a reel of film. Silent film, though. Always on mute. I can make out faces and mentally pencil in dialogue, but I can never know if I’m off or even close. I’m starting to forget what someone says when they smile. What we used to say when our...
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Dear Mr. Writer,
Having lived out all your scribbles and sketches and doodles and snippets and scenes and chapters and extended short stories and derailed novels and adapted screenplays and character development questionnaires, we, the undersigned, have gathered and present to you a list of grievances.
We, the few whom you have named with your recycled favorites, suggest you settle for those you do not like -...
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claude followed the footprints from the main street to the street with the church to the street named after the forest up and down the streets bearing names of the trees that did not line them along the four-lane avenue and across to the drive that hugged the park all the way down to the street named after someone named something to the intersection of that person’s street to another’s...
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I am studying foreign policy
so that I can play laser tag in the UN.
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At midnight, she turned twenty, and there was a guy in her mouth, and he had his hand caught in her ponytail. Notice the use of the non-specific pronoun. The impersonal article. A pronoun she met. She loved pronouns. Wait. Scratch that. Amend that: she gravitated to pronouns, to pastless faces and shadowy hands. A guy said something to her, but she did not listen because his words were not...
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Elves on Rye
The witch was a fat one. Two chins and a spare.
Her father was a drunkard. Her mother – a mare.
Alone in a cabin did the old witch live,
and to the huntsman orders she did give.
The huntsman was forged from rock and sage.
The witch had breathed life into him and capped it with rage.
She gave him a crossbow and a long knife to match
with a demand for loyalty and a list of elves to catch.
...
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So, Like, What are You?
You’re looking for a simple answer. I’m guessing. Like Irish. Or German. You’re probably expecting Russian or Romanian. Maybe I’m a Pole with an ardent self-depricating/self-hating streak. Reduce me to a pie chart, though, and you’ll see that Sicilian carries. Granted – it’s a plurality of about twenty-five percent. Look back, and you’ll see that my...
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Things
Tartan. Olives. The Ledge by Lawrence Sargent Hall. John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances.” Reuben sandwiches with coleslaw. The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. Tommy. Black coffee. Dry cleaning. Khlebnikov’s “Proposals.” Venison sausage. Paragraph 13. Dekalog I. Goats and their rectangular pupils.
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The Lights in Suburbia Went Out
A line of severe thunderstorms had moved in from northeast sometime around the first commercial break of the comedy we watched on one of the single digit channels. The man in the light blue shirt and dark blue tie (the same man who often convinced my mother on which mornings my little sister ought to wear her mittens to the bus stop, the same man whose face loomed over the scroll of schools...
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North of Seventh
There was a homeless man selling newspapers outside the library. Conrad was displeased, but it kept him from sleeping in the aisles. Removed the temptation he had to bring his heel down on their most sensitive places. Conrad headed home. He detested people who waited on streetcorners, killing time until orange turned to white and the turn lane cleared. Conrad had one rule – just don’t get...
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Eat out less.
Lose more weight.
Eat out more.
Gain more friends.
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You want me to think you’re undiscovered. That the impressions my hands make on you are new. That these red trails my nails etch are the first of their kind. You want me to call you exotic. Maybe you are, but you have anticipation coiled into your limbs. Demands and desires swirl in your irises and make themselves known through that warm abyss between your lips. I’ll colonize and call...
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Brothers. They told their parents and wives and sister that they were separated by state lines and rivers and even mountains and hidden airline fees and slow trains and high gas prices. There was more. Every knew. That’s why they nodded their heads.
Brothers. They communicated through movie quotes. Having shared a bedroom with a TV and a cabinet of VHSs, they hitched their animosities and...
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Why Monogrammed Anythings are a Bad Idea
Mrs. Peacock turned her glass upside down and announced to the room that the wine was gone. Everyone knew where it had gone, but no one knew where the bottle was. “There are more in the cellar,” she explained. Professor Plum pointed out that Mr. Boddy was also in the cellar. ”It’s not like he’s all over the cellar. Chopped up and sprinkled.” She showed the...
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Город
The roads curve back on themselves and dead end and twist and slip down the hills and past their destinations. Spontaneous jazz drips through the broken glass of factory windows. The river brings and takes, and the islands keep. Staircases – broad and stone, wide and marble, treacherous and wood –invite and usher.
No man owns an umbrella. Slavic tongues and Romance lips. Whisperers come from the...
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The Curator
I meddled with your bones and recreated my favorite continent.
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I have written about dissatisfaction, appeasement, matricide, cancer, complacency, imperialism, miscommunication, suicide, how the Devil takes his coffee, self-imprisonment, neckties, and why typewriters beat the shit out of touchscreen keyboards.
I wrote about a guy getting a hard-on. Featured.
So, that’s what you like.
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Something within him awoke. Something primeval. An injection at an unexpected spot. Something churned and brewed until it combusted and ignited. A fire in his belly roared and rose. All right. A little lower than his belly. An instant, primitive response. Like to the sight of blood. Like to the taste of flesh. Like to the shock of water. Like memories that boiled over levees of indifference and...