31 Stories in 30 Words or Less
30 Words: The grasshopper sat serenely. Its multifaceted eyes, though expressionless, were wise. The wind blew gently, and did not move the furrowed dirt. In the flicker of an instant, it hopped. 29 Words: “We are the faithful,” he said, “Faith waits for something that may never happen.” I stand silent before the tomb. There […]
Again My Hyperactive Intelligence
I’ve been here for forty days. Each day is the same, by which I mean they are all different. The walls of my room are supposed to be beige, but they’re not. They’re grey. I tried to draw the solar system on my wall with my fingernails, but they caught me and made me stop. […]
Lines Removed From a Eulogy
And what’s more there’d be too much to tell, with his folded-up face and our proximity, the fact that we’d lived so close to each other growing up, that in high school we’d mostly talk to the same girls and dress the same and find the same tired things funny; and in any case there’s […]
The Anniversary
We need a number to plot our love, to propose a first THC, whiskey fake lust romp as love or it would be to us, also, the night a boy walked through a glass door like magic, with sound. When we eat and only talk to the waiter I roll through recorded dates, the first […]
Smoke that Thunders
A hump of grass bulges into the spray of Victoria Falls is one of the world’s seven Wonders are easier to count than to Think of the woman on the bulge Gardens usually accept water like hands into a Hand shakes when her umbrella leans under Water is halted in a bottleneck Here tourists snap […]
Bush
In His bone-white palace, abuzz all night, Sits George Bush, hedged in by Left and Right. And He thinks of freedom, justice and His Ranch. His dreams, now becoming overwhelming, Send Him down to a secret cubicle delving. A single notebook hides His artistic Branch. Standing against an age of modernisms He writes the purest […]
Belh m’es quan vey camjar lo senhoratge
I am happy when lordships change again, when the old let their homes go to the young― men can leave behind so many children one must earn a name that may be sung; then I am happy, the world now made new beyond all that flower or birdsong can do. Whoever can change his lady […]
Allegory
A beautiful woman of equestrian breadth, Lets the ends of her hair dandle in her wine, And the talons of love and the poisons of nightclubs, Give her marble skin lifelessness and gloss, And she teases Death and ridicules Debauchery, Those monsters that her hand, always scraping and poor, In her destructive games had ever […]
Sunken Town
The blaze that engulfed my hometown began before I was born. It began with the first dry leaf from the first almond tree they planted on the side of the town hall road. My mom planted it as a child, around carnival time, the year when her dad the Mayor decided that the town would grow.
Shadow-boxers
Here’s how I saw De Quincey High then: stained bathroom walls; pregnant girls; boys with knives and guns and bandanas; teachers with fear so engrained that it folded into their faces in wrinkles; a gym that could have been a prison; a cafeteria that was one; cheap lipstick and cheaper condoms; a dirt track; fences.
ADEQUITE by LINDSEY MORGAN LOHAN
He Died and I CRIED – no I swear that I did Many tears down my face like a litle tiny kid Warm and Wet they were like a facial from Wilmer And I wished Robert was there so he’d say ROLL ‘EM! FILM HER! But then I remembered that he was dead and that’s […]
The Adventuring
The dragon now is yawning With the sun’s new dawning And greedily is fawning O’er the gold of fallen fighters of yore. Meanwhile D & D dice are rolling To represent fearsome fighting While from a cloud with silver lining Comes a bolt of prongêd lightning To strike down the final guardian of the door. […]
Four Shiny Haikus, like Four Shiny Small Roses
My friend got a job Hey, it’s fine, I got head from your sister I deserve an A But I won’t do you. You are a Guest Lecturer Listen, babe, I swear She looked like you except for The wandering eye That herbal tooth paste It’s too minty for my balls No, really, stop it.
From Peggy, With Love
Just when I thought the next show to open at an American museum could only be a survey of Tommy Hilfiger’s toenail clippers, this happens. Lucio Fontana has come back to Manhattan.
Sheng Sheng Man
That night I’d gotten immensely drunk. I stumbled to the hole of a convenience store behind the kabob stand and, under the baleful eyes of a young woman who sat with her son in her lap on a plastic stool, dialed Second Auntie’s number. Ende was asleep in a puddle of beer on the greasy […]