This is not a story anyone wants to hear, so I’ll give it to you slow. You let me know when you’ve heard enough. My cousin Johnny wasn’t really my cousin. He was the stepson of my aunt, my mother’s older sister who had had a bad first marriage and rather than marry again, decided … Read more
Everyone is leaning forwards as though the wind is dragging them backwards through the day, but the cars are inching ahead, barely moving, but in a hurry to reach another ending that you wouldn’t find in a fairy tale. People going the same direction have never before gotten … Read more
I fear being like her and I am like her the critical part that wants to hurt the other render them helpless and needy no one measuring up, everything falling short like the woman on the news who bit the nose of the pitbull that attacked her retriever (really happened) I like to break skin, … Read more
All I wanted that night was to get out of Kelly’s quick. Kelly’s Market kept late hours, same as me, so once a week, hard on midnight, that’s where I’d find myself. This was in Arrowhead, in the San Bernardinos. Up there, even now, nothing good ever happens ’round midnight. Especially in February. * I’d … Read more
Instead of thinking about Sonny, his traveling companion wishes she were in Spain. How far of a drive is it from Granada to Barcelona? Twenty miles south of Fresno a sign says Visalia 24 miles. Sonny pilots the car with dirty hands, a torn shirt, an unintentional beard, last … Read more
This is the sound of losing myself: the drips of continuous rain as it disperses itself along the wet ground, *** Where Costa Rican vines, like syringes, suck the water (tender roots like a child *** sucking upon a nipple, absorbing the minerals, the liquid of … Read more
The End of the Affair *** Community In Shock at Vicious Murder; Vigil Tonight There will be a vigil tonight beginning at 7PM at the site of the slaying of Sally Green, 111 Great Heights Place, in Echo Park. Friends and neighbors are gathering to remember Green, 35, who had only recently moved into the … Read more
Headaches Sour milk down the throat, seagulls screeching in your ear, tearing your mind in half like sour dough. You’re trapped in an elevator. Someone is peeling off your pinky nails. Your neighbor drills holes into your clock. You’ve got needles in your gums. Your eyeballs have no sockets, smell of rotting tooth, singed … Read more
My Love Is an Atlas Whose eyes are two gray-blue wells you could fall into, cobalt Venetian glass, a map that leads to Parisian nights, chocolate crepes with brandy, cocktails in cafes where hats must be taken off, gondola rides, red heart shaped seats under a star painted black Venetian sky, dipping toes in … Read more
Seven Things I Know About Hearts The heart is the size of a fist and weighs somewhere near twelve ounces or one pound. * You sent a card that read A light heart lives long for my eighteenth Birthday and now I ask how heavy is the heart that leaves his child? * At … Read more
Labyrinthitis A woman wanted to become a boat. She couldn’t become a boat so she decided the next best thing would be to have Labyrinthitis. The woman wanted fluid to form, like a pond, inside her middle ear. The woman’s neighbor’s often heard her repeating Labyrinthitis, Labyrinthitis as she walked around her apartment. They … Read more
Distance Dante only saw Beatrice in passing a few times. I imagine it was like trying to catch a feather floating down from the sky. You always want more my mother would say. For birthdays she would buy me a dress, though that wasn’t enough – I wanted tights. I can’t lie, it’s still … Read more
As a Boy As a Boy, Five or Six Years Old I would chase grasshoppers through the dry, wild Colorado grasses, tall and swaying together in silent, writhing waves. I always carried an orange Sanka can with holes punched into the plastic lid, and filled it to the brim with the twitching, snot-colored bodies, fighting … Read more
Dark Parlors Remind Me Of The Spanish Civil War Sometimes when late afternoon shadows puddle in the corners of my living room, my face whitens and black crosses appear on my eyes, and my white, gloved hands lightly finger invisible arpeggios. Dark rooms remind me of Lannie and Beauty Budd, the Spanish Civil War, and … Read more
Guelaguetza I At the stoplight of the Overland entrance To the Santa Monica Freeway going west, A woman is standing on the four-foot wide median That separates traffic, selling bags of oranges And peanuts from a shopping cart, Single stemmed crimson roses. She walks up and down, peering Over the flowers into the drivers’ windows. … Read more
History’s Middens “Fiction is history… or it is nothing. But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer ground… whereas history is based …on second hand impression.” ———Joseph Conrad * Deep in the catacombs, under the Vatican, beneath the pomp and velvet circumstance, the hearts of saints are preserved. Sybils suspended in … Read more
More Real Than Real I watched a woman give birth last night, I watched the finger-thin arms flail like Beethoven conducting himself as he sang a John Cage oratorio to the accompaniment of medical apparatus and the woman’s screams. I watched two white-gloved hands lift him out of a flowing spring of blood, … Read more
The Road Behind There’s an old expression that says there are always stars in the sky, it’s just that sometimes they aren’t visible. I want to believe this but tonight it’s especially difficult, since the sky is a murky shade of charcoal and the only things I can see when I turn my gaze towards … Read more
A FAMILY DICTIONARY* Selected Definitions, with Annotations * Every family, though it may appear to speak the language common to the culture in which it resides, develops an idiosyncratic vernacular of its own. Stuffy (adj) Definition 1. describing an atmosphere that lacks the free flow of air; stagnant. May be marked by an odor, usually … Read more
“Adelaide” is an entry from The End of The World Book by Alistair McCartney, an encyclopedia of stories and memories and obsessions, forthcoming from The University of Wisconsin Press, March 08. A ADELAIDE For a long time now, Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, has been known as the city of churches. The ratio … Read more
Cartwheel Soccer After he dumped me, driving away from Los Angeles was like yanking my hand away from a hot skillet. I climbed up the I-5 through the grapevine and past the sign for Andersen’s Pea Soup. I’d always wanted to try that soup, but there was no more time for lollygagging through the countryside. … Read more
Letter to My Mother February 14, 2005 Los Angeles Dear Mom, Writing you a letter across America, the Atlantic, and the Aegean Sea feels very awkward. I should have been back home about a year ago. Under the deep shadow of Mt. Gume’s snowy peaks, we’d be laughing at old family photographs over grilled chestnuts … Read more
Leave Off Doves Midway through the fall semester, an unnoticeable girl in Professor Woody’s Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words. She handed out the story to her classmates to be work shopped the following week, and … Read more
In Praise of Two Hawks Fucking I am running along the left shoulder of Runyon Canyon looking for rabbit and owl and hawk and hummingbird and coyote while dawn clears her throat over the sleepy, sleeping city, and the light is ready to fall in thick waves like a girl unpinning her hair and shaking … Read more
Wasteland The city of Los Angeles is burning. The air is hot, dry, and charged with static electricity and fear. The Santa Ana winds are blowing in from hell, punishing the palm trees and swaying tall buildings. The wind carries with it sand from the eastern deserts and the charred remains of dried brush, dead … Read more
