Category: Literature

Poetry

Choose Life

Choose life until your last breath.
Choose life until you hear the Other calling.
Choose life while the lights are on and your eyes still focus.
Choose life while your heart beats out your days.
Choose life while your mind still has questions.
Choose life until you must, for intensely personal reasons,
Choose death.

Fiction

Nobody Knew

Nobody knew the things about you that I knew. I knew where you were that time when you called and asked if I knew where you were. I said I didn’t, but I did. The connection was good enough that I didn’t even have to pretend it sounded like a local call and not like a call from London.

Poetry

Spine of a Dog

Spine of a dog curves away from me and against, as heat
of a tired dog warms my skin through my sweater, through his fur.
He lies, front paws matched, chin tucked alongside them, neat.
One still beast; one, antsy with pen at arm’s end, cramming
the months and years and lives with rehearsals, games, dinners—
human scrawl.

Fiction

Decrepit

I remember walking through a decrepit city. I am not alone. I do not remember who I am with, adult or child. Wife or child. Both, but only one. Both in one person, a conflation, an amalgamation, an imagination. My wife when she is younger than she is now, but older than a child, the child one of mine, no younger than now. Which child?

Fiction

Catching Fever

Robert Fever awoke on cold cement feeling like he had been run over by a car. He winced as he sat up. By the shifting light of the naked bulb that swayed above him, Robert saw that he was down in his own basement. Dusty, uninviting workout machines provided the room’s only furniture. Several campaign posters that read “CATCH THE FEVER!” in red white and blue were stacked in a corner.