MY LANDLORD TAUGHT ME something the other day, “It’s all about the blues, Chris. America is about the blues.” He was telling me this old truth and he was kicking his right foot back and forth, left and right toe taps on my driveway, with
YEARS OF SELF-PUNITIVE RESTRAINT have rendered her devoid of fat. The Orange County type rolls up her Botox-branded yoga mat and tucks it into her armpit, awkwardly shifting her rather ample breast implants right into my line of sight. Which is fine. It keeps me
9:32 AM IT WAS A GRAY-GREEN THURSDAY and I awoke to the sound of banging, like the crackle of a wrench on sewer pipe. Knowing every common sound of the house, from breaking glass and bottle cap pops to short-lived lovemaking and slamming doors, the
SONGS OF THE JOURNEY I I never want to work again. I do not want to hold a job. I want to be immersed in breathing to the point where explosion and implosion are possibilities as real as a firefly flying
PRELUDE TO A THEORY OF REVOLUTION The stones crown through soil. We swallow the broken rocks back down into soil like a world child stolen back to womb, Too soon, we say. Change is inches, we say. We say, change is incremental, we say.
“YOUTH IS ABOVE ALL a collection of possibilities.” -Albert Camus She walked back into the bedroom after her morning, post-coital piss. Maybe it’s because this is her apartment, or perhaps it’s just who she is, but in the late-morning sun with all flesh exposed, she
SHASA SLAPPED AT HER CHEEK, the tickling flutter of a blowfly on her eyelid wrenching her from troubled dreams. Her skin was already sticky with dried sweat from the early morning heat. She lay for a few selfish moments with her eyes squeezed tight, her
THERE WAS THIS ONE TIME I was sitting shotgun in a white Range Rover and we were off-roading in a desert in the United Arab Emirates. We were swerving around camels and I was wearing this red and white turban on my head like some
IT WAS DARK AND SMELLED like his roommate’s old socks when he woke. His typically furtive thoughts were slower than usual, just like he felt under the blanket after it had been warmed in the morning sun – his favorite place to disappear. But he
AFTER THE CEREMONY, it didn’t take long for us to light up a spliff. Cole had five rolled, so in true blue Vermont fashion we round-housed two of the bones on the ride down to the reception. Riding the gondola from the top of the
SHE LOOKED A LITTLE like Patti Smith. I met her on the street around 11pm on a Wednesday night in Williamsburg. She was the connectivity cap to my day alone in this dazzling new world. I walked past her, but boldly called her back a
IT WAS UP IN THE BAVARIAN MOUNTAINS that Beatrix found the place she’d been looking for over the last three years. She had expected a sinister castle that she’d have to infiltrate in the dead of night, guns blazing, baddies falling to the ground instantly,
AT FIRST GLANCE, THIS TITLE may appear pretentious to the point of vanity. Do people know Icarus, son of Daedalus, who flew to heights unimaginable, and was consequently cast down to depths beyond compare? What is it to the reader that Icarus dances? What does
Whenever something bad happens and I get that awful feeling like I’m a paranoid schizophrenic and the world outside is choking my neck, I try and think about baseball and Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs, and for a split second, no one’s out to
Lily was a front desk agent at La Maison, a boutique hotel in Chicago. Most days at La Maison revolved around placating the large number of wealthy (and entitled) clientele who frequented such places, and today was no different. On average, she mollified two dozen harried guests