Short, Fast, and Deadly
i64
Edited by Joseph A. W. Quintela
27 February 2011
Featuring:
Mason Alexander
Catherine Davis
Kaolin Imago Fire
Nilsa Gibson
Al Ortolani
John Wolfgang Roberts
Judy Samuels
Copyright © 2011 by Individual Authors
All Rights Reserved
What You Can Do with a Heart
Render, wrench--check your skills, tools in the palette. Wretched is an old standard and versatile, many roads lead to Rome. For a twist, if you have the stomach, go ahead: retch it. To wreck a heart is always solid. Heart rot, you like? Bit of protracted nastiness; hey, this is your kit we’re talking. But if you really want to do the heart: simply rend. Coup de grace. Clean. Decisive. Final.
by Catherine Davis of Columbia
How to Wax a Book
1. find book/s you truly love
2. say Fuck it
3. prepare wax by melting cheap candles in bread pan over gas burner
4. dip each side of book/s into wax & allow to dry--if pages 'fizz' turn down heat
5. use knife tip/other to drip wax across pages and along edges
6. dip each side once more in wax to seal
7. replace book/s & ignore
*wax clean-up is a bitch. when it gets all over floor, leave until morning. have a cigar.
by Mason Alexander of Portland
Sunday Service
We turn our heads and shudder as the crucified Christ’s beady painted eyes follow our movements. Dad’s church is better. Their Jesus isn’t scary. Mom says we need to learn our letters so we play Eye Spy during the service, seeing O’s in yawning mouths and ugly hats. Jamie stares at Christ’s cross and whispers that today’s crucifixion is brought to us by the letter t. The family behind us isn’t amused.
by Judy Samuels of Taneytown
Pant-less
Everyone tosses their clothes onto the the sand and jumps in at night. But as the moon rises, the tide carries Lou's pants out to sea.
He walks the sand, "Where's my pants? Where's my pants?" glistening in the moonlight.
He asks to borrow mine, because we are far away and he has work in the morning and, since, I won't go home tonight...and none of this is unreasonable to anyone.
by John Wolfgang Roberts of Tokyo
Henry’s Romance
You wish that the stars between branches would turn to berries so you could pack them home to the kitchen, bake cobbler for the people you love and give them a taste of your recipe, but each time you hike out beyond the bean rows, you sit on a jawbone of limestone. Your feet are stones in the cedars. You are committed like the railway at the edge of the pond. There is no way home from here.
by Al Ortolani of Lenexa
A Lifetime's Inspiration
She never forgave him for the music he wrote. She'd come for it--twenty years ago, today, she'd come for the music. Twenty years ago, today, it had taken her to heights she'd only imagined. Twenty years distant, those heights were ripples of grass on the plains; twenty years of nothing dreamed her the mountains in the distance. She dreamed, and all he had was the music he wrote, and her. The same insipid music.
by Kaolin Imago Fire of Acton
Life Imitating Art Imitating Life Imitating Me.
He stared up at the painting. The robot next to him flipped her hair. She smelled like flowers. She asked him if he understood the complexities of the colors. Whether he could truly appreciate the grief, the creativity, the beauty of the art. He sighed, and shook his head. People who painted themselves as art lovers annoyed him. Really, he just liked circles. It wasn’t his fault he had spilled coffee on it, too.
by Nilsa Gibson of Medford
