AMZN Town’s in cyberspace, Near famous Bezos City, Oh interwebs, so deep and vile, Exporting junk like the River Nile, That hungry town, lacking a smile, is where begins this ditty. Almost thirty years or so ago, when commerce began to slow, an idea brewed
HAVE YOU EVER FALLEN ASLEEP to the sound of something dying? I find myself here in a tent beside a river ten miles north of Yellowstone and my breath blooms overweight smoke, clouding my vision as I write. There is a herd of elk perhaps
HE FELT LIKE HE HADN’T SLEPT in weeks, but even while acknowledging the thought, he scoffed at his own lazy adoption of the cliché. He had slept, certainly, because he was still able to carry on low-intensity conversations, complete an embarrassing modicum of work, and
THE SECOND TIME a black bag was pulled over my head, I knew they were going to kill me. However, the first time it happened, six months earlier, the abduction held the uncertain charm of a new experience. This all began shortly after the release
It was a sullen gray evening in early October and I was smoking outside the airport, mentally preparing for a journey that would soon land me on the other side of the ocean and the wrong side of sleep. As I rolled a second cigarette,
“Any good collection is full of ghosts.” ~ Anonymous The sun was out when the brunette woman and the child arrived at his bedside. Her head seemed to glow in front of the window, like the old glass pictures in the church he had gone
IGNORANCE ISN’T SOMETHING that changes overnight. Neither is intelligence. Both take time to develop, and if so much energy is being poured into believing something, wouldn’t it be more rewarding to eventually arrive at the truth? Granted, it is a truth that may change form
LONDON, ENGLAND As the man’s eyes opened, it felt like a regular Tuesday, another anonymous morning, of equal estrangement from his life across the ocean as the night before had been. However, the bustle of activity outside the door betrayed normality. The flat of typically
THE CHICAGO CUBS EARNED their place in the NLCS by knocking out San Francisco fifteen minutes ago, and as the Giant’s last hope swung through empty air, tens of millions around the world temporarily lost their minds. Beers dropped, bars erupted, screams deafened, high-fives slammed,
1. THE HUNGRY SENSE for travel, Universal in its draw, Stirs souls of every color, age, Faith, appetite and call. O’er middling plains, towards Eastern shores, Or westward mountain steep, The itch to move is scratched anew By those who seek the sea.
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
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
JAMISON COATES REELED from the stab of pain as it raced up his shin. The sharp teeth of his bike pedal had savagely bit into the front pleat of his dress pants as it swung wildly in a cyclical design quirk that Jamison would never
“WHAT ABOUT BRINGING BACK the narcoleptic clown?” Anderson proposed, spinning his pen in that annoyingly practiced way that makes it look unconscious. “We haven’t used him in months. We can squeeze four more minutes of mindless laughs out of him.” The other heads at the
SARA PICKED UP THE REMOTE control and dusted it for the second time that morning. She softly hummed a tune to herself, a discordant cross between the Final Jeopardy theme song and the original Mario Brothers background music. Years of listening to Tom’s frustrated trivia
THE FIRST HOWL THAT SLICED through the painted night shook me from my thoughts, but it was quickly followed by a second, and then a dozen more. It was a haunting moan of collective ecstasy, soaring boundless across the dying sky. The middle-aged woman clad