Short, Fast, and Deadly

Short, Fast, and Deadly

i99

ISSN: 2163-0712

Edited by Joseph A. W. Quintela

Cover Photo by John Collector

30 October 2011

 

Featuring:

John Collector

C. E. Frederick

Howie Good

Jamie Grefe

Nicolas James Hampton

Crystal Koo

Taylor Saldarriaga

Cathy Silk

 

Copyright © 2011 by Individual Authors

All Rights Reserved

In the Morning

The dog barked like an engine
trying desperately to start, outside
the ground broke open in whispers
for each flake of snow.

by C. E. Frederick of York

Closing Time

A pipe has burst at the herbarium. Jude pries the dead plants off their wet mounts and lays them on new sheets. He spreads the frills, bundles the roots, and sends them to the presses. Before closing time, he and Gemma have lazy sex in a storeroom in front of a jar of preserved bananas.

The technician stops here. A good climax makes for the best endings. He pulls the USB cable off and wheels Jude’s body out.

by Crystal Koo of Hong Kong

Word Problem

If 1,800 of our soldiers
went into battle,
and only 400 survived,
how many clawed the grass
before they died?
(Please show all your work.)

by Howie Good of Hyannis

3 Google Poems

by John Collector of Bronxville

Margraten War Cemetery, Belgium

No
blood
spurting
gunfire
screaming
but 8,302 white crosses
no 8,302 sons, fathers
but
silence
and
8,302
white
crosses

by Cathy Silk of Tilburg

Alphabet as Acronym

A brazen Christian defector eventually found God. His ideas justified killings, loathsome morality, nervous opposition. Preachers quietly responded, sounding the unholy verses with xenophobic young zealots.

by Taylor Saldarriaga of New York

Dog Teeth from Raw Gums

Squishy fish. Hair clumps. A sudden eruption of bone extensions. Word droplets fizzle two lips, blistered tongue. New bone horizons burst the skin of thighs and waist. Possessed bits of glass litter the tiles, broken glitter in the sink. Slow fur from the distorted vortex is a cracked mirror. Dog teeth from raw gums. The tonal click of a grinding drill. Thick blackness, a sea of bile, the sullen void, identity. 

by Jamie Grefe of Beijing

An Unorderly Occurrence Of Cheap Illuminations; 140 Characters Of Famous Last Words

Brevity ― the ampersand, and period. Caesura
; fascist punctuation surrounds;
¿will syntax ever run free as good dick & barflies in the dark?

by Nicolas James Hampton of Kalamazoo