Somewhere a pigeon is pounding over a McDonald’s. White paper bags with soggy bottoms are shoved through a rectangular window. Somewhere a man is receiving too much change at a convenience store. He won’t say anything but his ears will turn red. The clerk won’t notice, distracted by summer skin in the candy aisle. She thinks maybe a Snickers no maybe a Twix. Caramel. Somewhere a baby is kicking the back of a driver’s seat. If it could think it would think I like applesauce better than peas. Somewhere a girl is smearing vanilla ice cream across her cheek. She’s thinking about her freckles and whether boys like to kiss them. Somewhere a cowboy is shitting behind a cactus. He’s trying to keep the shit off his boots. Don’t hold the cactus. Soon, a scorpion will sting his asshole. He’ll cry out, then look around to make sure no one saw. Somewhere a homeless man in a Perry Ellis jacket is burping Doritos. Nacho Cheese. Somewhere a hand is moving toward a greasy lever. Somewhere a hand is holding a greasy face. Somewhere a husky is snoring in the sunshine, chin resting on paws. Somewhere a clean window stops short another pigeon’s flight. No one will see its wind-ripped fall, only its wet landing.
Mel Bosworth is the author of Freight (Folded Word Press, 2011) and Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Brown Paper Publishing, 2010). Visit him at melbosworth.com
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - Amber Sparks
The news today is dreadful, is dreadful every day, is a time loop of humanity tumbling down the sewer hole again, again, again. We are news impresarios; we are sleight-of-hand and slight of substance.
Perhaps the news before was not so dreadful, or at least not such a sledgehammer kind of bad. Wikipedia tells me that on this day in 1882, a German physician announced that he'd discovered the cause of tuberculosis. A bacterium. That must have been awfully good news for everyone, except for all the consumptives with holes already punched all over their lungs. They were screwed, obviously. But finally! A cause! A cause could lead to a cure!
They were always curing things before, but now it seems like new diseases are replicating faster than we can name them and there is never any cure. The virus, it might be in my computer or in my blood or in my head and can I use a cream or an ointment or a pistol to get rid of it? Can I set the dogs on it? Can I listen to it, can I ask forgiveness for it, can I dream about it and when I wake there it will be, shiny and sweet and cloying under my pillow, marinating in its own juices and ready slither into my ear and push my cells/self out the other side? Will there be an massive explosion, a vomiting out of the world's insides? Will the whole universe finally burn with fever? And if it does, who will report the fact of it? Who will Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, chart it, graph it, analyze it play by play and type it up in cold black ink for the internet to drink up and splat back out?
I suppose there will be no news that day.
Amber Sparks's work has appeared in all kinds of spaces, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, the Collagist, Wigleaf, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review, and a contributor at the literary blogs Big Other and Vouched. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, and most days you can find her on the intertubes at www.ambernoellesparks.com.
Perhaps the news before was not so dreadful, or at least not such a sledgehammer kind of bad. Wikipedia tells me that on this day in 1882, a German physician announced that he'd discovered the cause of tuberculosis. A bacterium. That must have been awfully good news for everyone, except for all the consumptives with holes already punched all over their lungs. They were screwed, obviously. But finally! A cause! A cause could lead to a cure!
They were always curing things before, but now it seems like new diseases are replicating faster than we can name them and there is never any cure. The virus, it might be in my computer or in my blood or in my head and can I use a cream or an ointment or a pistol to get rid of it? Can I set the dogs on it? Can I listen to it, can I ask forgiveness for it, can I dream about it and when I wake there it will be, shiny and sweet and cloying under my pillow, marinating in its own juices and ready slither into my ear and push my cells/self out the other side? Will there be an massive explosion, a vomiting out of the world's insides? Will the whole universe finally burn with fever? And if it does, who will report the fact of it? Who will Tweet it, Facebook it, blog it, chart it, graph it, analyze it play by play and type it up in cold black ink for the internet to drink up and splat back out?
I suppose there will be no news that day.
Amber Sparks's work has appeared in all kinds of spaces, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, the Collagist, Wigleaf, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review, and a contributor at the literary blogs Big Other and Vouched. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, and most days you can find her on the intertubes at www.ambernoellesparks.com.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
No news today - Guest Post - William Walsh
Flowers of Idleness
From Lotus Eaters, Episode 5 of Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Flowers of idleness.
Henry Flower Esq,
c/o P. O. Westland Row,
City.
A flower. A yellow flower with flattened petals. He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume.
Henry Flower.
The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
O, no, she's not here: the flower: no, no.
Flowers, incense, candles melting.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower water…
That orangeflower water is so fresh. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
William Walsh edited the new anthology RE:Telling (Ampersand Books). He is the author of Pathologies, Questionstruck (both from Keyhole Press), and Without Wax (Casperian Books). His stories and texts have appeared in Caketrain, Quick Fiction, Annalemma, LIT, New York Tyrant, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
From Lotus Eaters, Episode 5 of Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Flowers of idleness.
Henry Flower Esq,
c/o P. O. Westland Row,
City.
A flower. A yellow flower with flattened petals. He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume.
Henry Flower.
The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.
O, no, she's not here: the flower: no, no.
Flowers, incense, candles melting.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower water…
That orangeflower water is so fresh. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.
William Walsh edited the new anthology RE:Telling (Ampersand Books). He is the author of Pathologies, Questionstruck (both from Keyhole Press), and Without Wax (Casperian Books). His stories and texts have appeared in Caketrain, Quick Fiction, Annalemma, LIT, New York Tyrant, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
