I was on my way to the butcher’s when I stepped in quicksand. I hadn’t really thought about quicksand in years. Maybe Indiana Jones or one of those Humphrey Bogart movies where he’s a boatsman, and he wears a hat. I imagined the sand’s texture to resemble grape jelly. It’s actually more like the inside…
Category: Magazine Content
The Big One
On the fourth floor of the humanities buildingin the redwood and eucalyptus forestof my university, the ground rolls uplike a steadily building Pacific wave –one of those pounding Ocean Beach in earshot of this classroom. Levelor blinds slash like daggers across the windows.Those of us raised here dive for deskstoo small for book bags.Twelve on…
Failure Day
The One Percent’s more gung-ho bitchesbitch that their taxes go towardsthis holiday. None do. It’s private,mid-spring when the crops burn. Pink slips tend to appear around that date;roaches swarm, and jellyfish. Spouses leave, and the one left waits for talk-show hosts’ routines about the day.At their desks, despite stern memos,the employed for a moment contemplatewithout…
The Death of the Motherless Kitten
I saw it from across the road, while waiting for the green man. It was mewling for its mother. Lost, I thought. Everybody, in their suits and ties and pencil skirts, turned to look, but they never slowed their strides. A mother and child might have stopped for a few seconds, passingly interested. I probably…
Déflorer
If you touch me once more,I will scream, mister.You know it’s not right. Hush. Your hand travels crisp sheets of my camp bed,finds my girly heart.Then down, pulls asidethe elastic and finds another heartbeneath a barely grown garden. Your hand rests there,as if exhausted by the journey. I open my legs to fitall of your…
The Time the Light Went Out
How did the Dark Age come? The power wound down. There’d been some temporary rationings but this time they’d been warned it was for good. Cookers lay barren, central heating stalled and kettles lacked the will to mash the tea; no candles left to burn, light chased the sun. Lids flipped, big-time; weird portents, false…
Poem in Which You Unfriend the Dead Girl
because what else were you supposed to dowait for her to check-in at the pearly gates just because she was your one cigarette per day that summer because she grinned like a slinkycould unbutton your jeans without breaking eye contact you’re supposed to wait – some sailor’sghost in your desk chair – the distant creeping…
Playing With Guns
I could never remember what had riled us uplike a nest of snakesshaking our rattles andsinking venom into tissue.Just the intensesensation of my ownblood, jackhammeringthrough my pulse points.We were born and bred for malice, tossed to the familial oubliette,taught to eagerly eradicatesoftness or axiom. Unexpectedly, you boltedabandoning our altercationin favour of the dark chambers offering…
Red Limbs
I see them coming from behind the layer of mesh glass being lead by a white coat to the table of pastels and crayons where us fuck ups scribble serenity onto a blank page. They’re not not my friends or family, it’s the emaciated late teen’s next to me, the one who’s too lost to…
Assessment Day
Sometimes I look from the classroomto the low grey building by the car park and remember I have photocopying to do so run down then run back before the class starts. Last week I got locked in the copier room. I rang security but no one answered.I could see the students gathering for the last…