Her husband only loves her when she is sad and depressed, which she is enough of the times for many others to think that she is a sad and depressed woman. When she is not sad and depressed she does not notice her husband, herself looking to everything or everyone other than he for her … Continue reading How to Map the World with the Life of a Woman

Loomings What should you call me? How should you refer to me? There are masks to wear everywhere in a text. The text is an ocean. The text is fluid. The text has boundaries. The universe is bound yet infinitely expanding. Eternity in an hour? If possible, then eternity in a text is also possible. … Continue reading The Statues in the Museum All Lying Dead [ Fiction]

I Anonymity, she said, He says (something he wishes he understood better than he can, better than he suspects he cannot, would ever want to, perhaps sometimes). He says, I wish I understood you better.  She says, No you don't. You say you do, but you don't, not really, not ever, only words you know I … Continue reading Anonymity, She Said [A Short Story]

Power knows without doubt that it can always get half of the poor to beat the shit out of the rest of the poor. I Now that street thugs have cell phones, they are not going to destroy the new terminals for charging cell phones. What!? They did not have quarters when the cost of … Continue reading Finding a Pay Phone that Works [A Short Story]

I Hark the herald angels sing--did they not blow their trumpets signaling the re-creation of the universe at the Incarnation of the Son of God who is begotten not made before time and creation; all that nativity stuff that I took more seriously than Macy's could or would, but I did not go to church, … Continue reading 7 Death, Angels and the Moon [A Short Story]

I There have been many paintings I could not take my eyes off of, but this one, not simply large, no, it was . . . what was it? It was tremendous, the height, the width . . .  I recall having said nothing as I walked into the gallery where it was hanging, Caravaggio's … Continue reading Caravaggio and I [A Short Story]

  I I am a sick man, I feel sick, I even think I smell sick, you do smell differently when you are sick than when you are not, I am even thinking sick,my thoughts are sick, not that they are twisted, as we have said, used to say, who are we, those I grew … Continue reading [e] Nausea [A Short Story]

Algerian Flowers [A Short Story] For Marguerite Duras PART ONE "Monochrome" I "Black and White Low Light" I see scenes in monochrome. There are many scenes in the world that are not to be recorded in monochrome; there just isn't the contrast for them. There are sets that should only be shot in black and … Continue reading ALGERIAN FLOWERS

She and I. Subject compounded, not the objective. He and she. Myself removed as I am sometimes with a pen. The mirror is another subject; you and I, plurality and singularity, in the mirror is on the glass. Who am I, who are you? Questions I ask in the mirror. Similar is not the same, you understand this … Continue reading Truth is Beauty

Today is the day Christ died; eternal return, cosmos and history, archetypes and their repetition; time is a circle, this way, not a river. I remember the mouse; I recollect the essay; I see the stove in the kitchen. I imagine seeing her seeing the mouse; I think I can recall her having said that … Continue reading [f] Good Friday Recollection [A Short Story]

Good Kosher Pastrami is not in the Palate of the Be-taster Alone. --Jay V. R. American politics has been played as a match of policy ping-pong between entrenched liberal and conservative elites for too long. Both sides have been serving up as an ideal, one or another version of Publius as Populus, the Public in … Continue reading Democracy, Myself and I [Flash Fiction]

Authenticity and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves A short story in the form of a journal entry that would have been made on  July 13th, 20xx, in Madrid, on Gran Via, a few blocks from Plaza D'Esapna, while having espresso; later that day over a bottle of Albarino; and even later than that at the … Continue reading When You See an Opportunity to Get More Pie

I used to judge the intelligence of people by whether or not they liked or understood or got it in some way or accepted its validity, the play, Waiting for Godot. How Well We Know Kosher Pastrami Might Tell Us Something about How Well We Understand the Nature of Politics and an Individual's Relationship to … Continue reading Waiting for Beckett [Flash Fiction

I say what he says sometimes, and here I will say what he says, yet what and how he says what he does has often left many people dis-understanding what he mean,s or what he intends, by what he is saying. He has talked often before of "Honor," as he says, inflecting the word mockingly, … Continue reading Contemporary Honor [prose poem]

A fragment found next to my seat on the bench in the back of the bistro at my table waiting for my glass of Gigondas to come from the waitress from Lyon; a piece of paper that had obviously been torn from another sheet, perhaps in collection with several sheets that would have then been … Continue reading Heart of Darkness [prose poem]

short fiction A fragment of a letter concerning multicultural understanding; or, should it be an enquiry into multicultural understanding, a fragment? Where the rest of this letter is, is not important. How we, the editors, know that it is or was a letter is not something we are going to get into here except to … Continue reading How a Letter Concerning Multicultural Understanding Can Help You Face Banality

                                                                 What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? ---Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Pt II A … Continue reading In Moloch [prose poem]

Most of matter is empty space. --another fun fact from physics   Why he did not name this piece, Human Lives Matter; Black Lives are Human Lives, I cannot say; no, I will not investigate why I did not say as I could have about what he has said, what is herein presented by me for … Continue reading Matter Times the Velocity of Passion [Fiction]

change all to first person   I could entitle this He Wrote a lot of Essays in University; or The Misanthrope Me Speaks of the College Student Himself, but I will not. To title is a form of entitlement, something the author gives to the text? What am I entitled to here or elsewhere in any text … Continue reading Explicit/Implicit [prose poem]

I in the mirror, you in the mirror, who is in the mirror?  I am in the mirror. You are in the mirror. You and I in the mirror, do I ever say we, do you? Who am I in the mirror? Who are you in the mirror? What am I? What are you? Who … Continue reading I Remember Having Recollected that I Had Once Recalled [prose poem]

Editor's Preface i What is narrative that we should be subjected to a narrow proscription of what gets to be called story and what does not get to be called story? Yes, what then is fiction because a story that I tell you is true before I tell it, even if all of it is … Continue reading Abortion is a Woman’s Parachute [A Short Story]

Past Perfect; or, The Reconciliation of Inaccuracies [A Short Story]   I remember you every day. I am remembering you now. I remember you always; I have remembered you since the day we met. Memory engaged in the act of itself for you, I remembered you this morning. I had remembered you in my dreams. … Continue reading Past Perfect; or, The Reconciliation of Inaccuracies [A Short Story]

  Next to is what it says it is, in French, it is a cote de, circumflex over the 'o' indicating an absent 's' after the vowel, which makes the word cognomen with the English 'coast,' which means then "at the coast of,' which is then another way to say "at the side of," every coast … Continue reading Visibility through the Storms [A Short Story]

He said, "I do not know what I think until I write. No truer words have ever been said. Can true be a scaling adjective? Is there truer, the truest? I know there isn't anything like more circular, that's absurd. It does not matter, really, at the moment, if I determine what adjectives are scaling … Continue reading More Circular [A Short Story]

[To read means to read closely, to pay close attention to the text, to follow the text, to be inside the text and outside the text in simultaneity, if that is at all possible to conceive let alone do . . . the text here is a multiple text, and each text is multidimensional, or … Continue reading When You Look Through the Glass Darkly

I needed to come to her. I needed to come to her to talk to her. I needed to come to her to talk to her about why she had called me to talk with me about what she said she had decided without me. It was mostly her saying what she said she needed … Continue reading Rhone Red with Ribs [A Short-short Story]

for Monsieur Camus [The 'G' in Gena's name is a hard 'g' as in 'gate.'] One of the great products of Soviet Civilization--and it was a civilization, be sure of that--and I mean that in all the ways a civilization has good intentions and bad results, as well as good results--yes, one of the great … Continue reading Crocodile Gena [Flash Fiction]

Monologues and Vision I I see you, I dream you, I've dreamed you before, alone, I smell you, forrest of rain at dawn. I could not imagine, imagination was not yet dead . . . where did I hear that before? Yes, I question too much and not enough. What I intend has nothing exactly … Continue reading 6 I Smell You Forest of Rain; or, Six Ways of Looking at Myself (which does not infer that I do see myself or selves) [A Short-short Story]

The position of a traditional humanist in light of his culture's push for society to be more natural, as so many like to say about the things they do, the things they make, the ways they feel . . . which no one, as far as he can see, has any idea about, not really; … Continue reading Human Humane; That is All [prose poem]

How Similar is this to a Street Light Blaring through a Window like a Stampede of Elephants? by Lydia MacGregor Strident is as strident does. ---Anonymous He says, A woman with a nose as big as mine--and it is not that my nose is huge, but trust me, no woman wants my nose, unless she … Continue reading A Story by Lydia MacGregor [prose poem]

A story like any story and unlike every story, only like itself as are human-beings like every other human-being and yet unique in the whole of human history, itself the story of humanity, whether it is told or untold because stories are---they do exist; and they do exist independent of the telling. They remain there … Continue reading Plugs and Sockets [prose poem]