Thursday, April 19, 2012

Week 4



Thursday, April 12, 2012


                Marie Antoinette was frequently watched by curious aristocrats who wanted to see firsthand how she went about producing an heir. How were her legs positioned? What did she whisper to her king between the grunts of bearing his weight?
                She is dead, but everything else is still on display.

Friday, April 13, 2012


                The theater is historical in the sense that it still carries around its past between the path of pennies lodged above the doors and windows. Eventually though, like the Ouija board marketed by Hasbro, the building will be renovated, and the spirits will be given free roam once again.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

                Philip Marlowe is too old now to begrudge the women who only caused him trouble. Life at his age teeters on the abyss daily – the cholesterol in his eggs, the blood-thinning painkillers, the bending wooden stairs. No, he thanks them in prayer for bestowing within him a sense of adventure in his passions.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

                Petrov was almost asleep when a martyr of Christ kicked down the door with two fists of recently converted water. “Get out of bed,” he howled. “I want to hear your rendition of Hallelujah!”
                Petrov could never tell when his saint was divine or drunk, or if the tears were sincere when he repeated in sobs, “This song is about me!” but he continued to play without hesitation.

Monday, April 16, 2012

                When I imagined the horror of his lightness, I jerked awake in bed and prayed it wasn’t the body of a boy I knew. I wouldn’t think about that sort of selfishness until later, when I felt a part of me was assured by the possibility of the incident being somebody else’s tragedy.
                When I we were given a name and an idea of the time of death, and how people stared out their windows without telling anybody else about the body mangled in plain sight, I wished again that it wasn’t somebody I knew.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

                The cigarette in his breath bore down on my nose with the heat and scent of a cherry smothered in burned charcoal, and the tar on his tongue made it slick as velvet against mine. I cringe to think of how I want him to smoke more, drink more – how I want these vices to hold him like they do for me.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012


                Jack was always in a good mood so long as the tree was pink. He fell asleep frequently below the cherry blossoms and awoke to the soft new diadem crowning his head and backpack. During the spring, when the wind would blow down the main road, he would fill his backpack several times over with the petals, preserving them in plastic bags through the warmer seasons.
                When winter came, he removed his stock from the freezer and thawed each one, peppering his apartment in the autumn and winter, in a good mood once again.

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