night falls quite suddenlyover war in other countries,while the morning is finehere and biteable, cleanas new coins. a young man,with control for his shiftof a remote operationsecurity gate,fiddles the buttonsat a private estateentrance just onthe outside ofblackrock. another mandriving a truckwith Panda Waste Disposal Costamped on the cargogrows impatient and waitsfor a load of recycling.sunrise … Continue reading Sunrise and Building-Cast Shadows
GOLETA, CALIFORNIA, is known as the Goodland — avocado and citrus groves, lush farms, Pacific beaches — but I only know it as the Postal Badlands. It’s 1981, I’m thirty-one, and I hate my job. My head pounds as I walk in. The mail processing plant overwhelms me. It’s larger than a baseball field, noisier … Continue reading Random Distribution
image of christ appears on anempty billboard just north of townbut this is not hope dead men are not the future let the dogs run wild let the children live in fear taste of gasoline should beenough to keep them going the promise of pain andabandoned shopping malls everything broken andseen from a distance bulldozers … Continue reading A Brief History of the Kingdom of Nil
GABBY MCCURTRY PULLED INTO the narrow garage under her townhouse. The day she’d moved in, she tied plastic spoons to bright yellow yarn, suspended them from the ceiling as parking parameters. She eased her car forward, nudged the dangling spoons, and peered into all corners. Once certain she was alone, she pushed the gearshift into … Continue reading Risk Management
EVERYTHING ABOUT ANSON VAYE was underground. His life, his career – if you could call it that – even his personality had the feel of something that had spent most of its days covered in earth. A jack of all trades and a practitioner of none. One late barroom night, some professorial sloshed egghead announced … Continue reading The Man Comes To Town
Out past the last town lies the land of nothing. Thirty-million years ago this tectonic plate failed to stretch itself thin enough to build any new ocean. Only scars remain: normal faults and rock piles. Valleys, filled to their throats with sediments, enough space to contain all the ghosts and wild burros. This sagebrush sky … Continue reading Basin And Range
After the stroke you could not lift your left hand to meet your right in prayer, so a daughter pressed her young flesh full palm against your wrinkled one so your hands could speak for your lips were cracked in a mouthy desert of dried saliva. This daughter, by your sidetried to abide the ordersto … Continue reading Tic Tac
OLD SAMSON COULDN'T FEEL his hands because of the coldness of the gun. Or maybe it was the snow that gathered on his jacket, looking like the ash in the dead fire pit back at camp. But the numbness steadied his aim. He was chilled beyond shivering. No longer did his body fight off the … Continue reading The Morph Deer
Don’t you want to believe it — with just the pluck of an eyebrow or the clip of a rogue cuticle you too could be new again? Beauty is the self’s sneakiest assassin, slipping in through the unlocked door of desire, slashing tomorrow’s throat with its shiny switchblade.I make the hair appointment, get the fillers, … Continue reading She Of Theseus
The year Logic came out with his suicide hotline song,we had to report students singing I just wanna diein the hallways during passing period. As teachers,it’s our job to report outcries like this to the crisiscounselor, even though we know it’s a song.You’re finished if you don’t, says the principal.Your life ended in ninth grade; … Continue reading My Students Say Things That Kill Me