I move in the long shadows of marble columns. A dry wind from across the valley tosses the dangling ties of my veil, bringing more knowledge to me.
Read MoreThe Second Card of the Major ArcanaIn Springtime, her garden yielded a hundred wisteria blossoms. White English roses climbed the pergola. Digitalis purpurea, lavender from the South of France, mint and thyme, rosemary and tarragon, basil and sweet marjoram—they all grew in Alternate Girl’s one-hundred-percent super-qualified housewife garden.
Read MoreAlternate Girl’s Expatriate LifeThe Fool of God, on a mission from Heaven, moved up the Timestream passing through portals from one world to the next. In the second century of the Caliphate of Mercy, a period others call the eighth century AD, he emerged from a portal in Alexandria, smiled the slack off-center smile that looked a bit half-witted and batted the breeze with the crew as he sailed across the Mediterranean on a fast markab to a portal in Marseille that would carry him hundreds of years further Upstream.
Read MoreA Member of the Wedding of Heaven and HellIn the village of Sandel they tell a tale of how a raven once flew into the village to give a woman seven fine children. Of how these children grew tall and strong if perhaps a bit unwise and untrustworthy, and of how the woman brought a knife to their throats in the hopes of bringing the raven back.
Read MoreCopper, Iron, Blood and LoveCaptain Lehr’s face had been ravaged by decades under the coruscating emanations of this forgotten world’s overbright sun. The angry star, a rare purple giant, dominated the daysky with visible prominences that sleeted hard radiation through every human bone and cell that walked beneath its glare.
Read MoreLehr, RexI didn’t recognize Eddie at first. He got on the train at Division, sat down opposite me, and every time I glanced up from my book he was staring at me. He wore a trench coat over a bluish gray polo shirt and khakis. Sweat stood out on his brow.
Read MoreBear in Contradicting LandscapeThe needle buzzes, setting up a whine in my back teeth. Under her careful hand, a spatter of stars—midnight blue—arc from the curve of my hip-bone to the soft flesh of my inner thigh. Sarah moves my penis aside, dispassionate, getting exactly the right angle to complete the sweep of her constellation.
Read MoreMy Body, Her Canvas“Señora?” The man standing at my screen door is travel stained. Migrant, up from Mexico. The dogs haven’t heard him come up, but now they erupt in a frenzy of barking to make up for their oversight. I am sitting at the kitchen table, painting a doll, waiting for the timer to tell me to get doll parts curing in the oven in the work shed.
Read MoreUseless ThingsJB: I’m submitting my resignation, effective immediately.
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I can hear the distant hum of the building’s heart, the slow steps of a janitor cleaning its chambers with wafts of pine and ammonia, strong and harsh. I’ll track him down and kill him when I finish.
Read MoreSo Glad We Had This Time Together