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Showing posts from March, 2024

Without Baggage - Sloan James

      There is something to be said for peace. Harmony; always such an evasive little bastard. Too big for one person. It sticks in the throat or backs up your bowels. In some manner you are constipated by the efficiency of worldly connectivity. Things are cheap or things are old and stale. The airport felt like they usually do. The feeling of getting away, of going away, seeps into the skin and the blood and the mind goes wild. Before you know it, you’ve downed a full and non-repressed Xanax brick and a three quarter tab of buprenorphine before reaching security. The paranoia of sniffer dogs at your bags and pockets. The ques. The time. Always the time. The gate number. The flight number. The baggage, to check or not check? Oh, the bag’s too big? check it in at $70 like a fool. Legs sway you through security swipings and beepings. Adult sized x-rays like idiotic toys and stupid serious morons in funny uniforms who are this country’s last line of defence against TERR...

Keep on Falling - Tim Frank

I fall. I fall down Parisian steps flowing with bleach in a straight jacket of my own design. I need a thousand dollars worth of dirt to heal my sprained ankle and rule the slaves in my back pocket. I fall. I fall onto the head of a girl holding aloft a zippo lighter at dawn. She cracks a tooth on a zebra crossing and waves goodbye to party nights. Stop, she laughs, then jumps rope and fire. I fall. I fall with a dream of techno clubs lost without a name. This time I shrug and pinch my shoulder like Spock. I need an anaesthetic, fetch me a rollercoaster and send in the dancing girls—let’s roll. I fall. I fall into a bowl of tepid soup and swim to shore with orthodontic braces wrapped around my head. It’s a rainy day and bystanders are brought back to life from the ghetto. The next world is for loners only, riding skateboards, gobbling jambalaya. I fall. I fall from a great height into the cusp of a wave and a jaded snow storm. What’s worse is my shoes are untied and I have to reconstru...

Rewards - Joshua Vigil

I was sucking down a cup of red jello when Art slammed his knuckles to my door. He wore a suit, his shirt all dank and tacked to his chest. He told me he had bad news. The street isn’t owned by the city, he said, but by the gated community. A tie with palm trees flanking a sunny beach dangled from his thick neck. Can’t we still sue? I said.  From the hospital hall, wheelchairs rolled past with squeaks and whines while the intercom blasted sound. Code white, skyway . Code white, skyway . I had fallen into a sinkhole, that was why I was here.  It’s not like the city. They may not settle as quickly. And who knows how much money they have anyway, Art said. He had read about the whole thing in the newspaper. He was the one who tracked me down at the hospital. He dealt in these kinds of suits. Sinkhole suits. But it’s a gated community, I said. It doesn’t seem worth the hassle.  You mean you don’t want to put in the hours. Art took a pull from my glass, left my straw all chew...