Short, Fast, and Deadly
i78
Edited by Joseph A. W. Quintela
5 June 2011
Featuring:
Danielle Blasko
Ali Coad
A. P. Cohen
Kaolin Imago Fire
Mike Meraz
Frank Miller
AJ Pearson-VanderBroek
Joe Whalen
Dale Wisely
Copyright © 2011 by Individual Authors
All Rights Reserved
Opening Night
Death and arguments in the spaces of side curtains wash away under the flood of stage lights.
I dress the frame of human life one degree off reality. Stage Center, the candelabrum. A new book of matches on the table. I hope the broken love seat doesn’t cave in, that the door stays closed.
I pull the prop trunk onto set and wait for the cue.
Dirt and oil sparkles on my skin long after the lights go out.
by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City
A Walk at Seaboard Commons, Broken
Carolina cypress seeps its scent into the unusually thin air today. Some southern shitmouth is shouting, "Say sorry for being rude to me," at an infant.
"You’re sorry for what? For what? Say you’re sorry for being rude to me," she says, over and over again.
by Danielle Blasko of Detroit
Carbon
A young woman stares
hard at her boyfriend.
Her lips part slightly:
she is aroused.
Even rendered to carbon,
the world cannot be lost.
by Dale Wisely of Birmingham
Marriage
young,
twenty-something
couple
with shopping list
looks like a
home run
in the first inning
of a game
you finally lose.
by Mike Meraz of New Orleans
Flowers in Her Eyes
Dayglo zinnias, blossoming orange and red outwards from their mottled brown pupils: dad let me design them myself, an of-age present. That's how I know she loves me, even after all we've been through. My sister never changes the flowers in her eyes.
by Kaolin Imago Fire of Acton
Junkie In Jail
Man beyond love
running sixty years
too scared to stop
by Frank Miller of Bloomington
In a State
Through the doors that expose
both Dakotas she became
a vision of what she said
she'd never be.
by Ali Coad of Alpharetta
ABC's of Addiction
Counting days again. Lost track though. Never been good with numbers. Words? They work. So I play with them:
Alcohol Begins Cycles. Dope Eliminates Flaws. Getting High Inspires Jokes. Killer Lines Make Nightly Outrage Palatable. Quitting Requires Stamina. Taxman Unexpectedly Visits When X-rays Yield Zigzags Around Brain Cells.
The ABC's of addiction are pretty straightforward. It's the aftermath that's fuzzy.
by Joe Whalen of Lambertville
Another Departure
Pressed between ferry and pylon, I wish to be unstuck. With one goodbye push I wrench myself free and watch the ferry wearing my boot pull away. I don’t think I’ll see her again, this is what I am thinking. I sit for days within my mind watching myself hop the next boat across the strait. I don’t think I’ll ever see her again. I’m usually wrong, though. Like now, I wish. I wish to be stuck, again.
by A. P. Cohen of Istanbul
