Short, Fast, and Deadly

Public Auction

Memories converted to scrap iron. The strain of familiarity caught in glimpses of crowd-moments on a stranger’s face. Whispers of first-time conversations. Can we raise that by a dollar? I got one, can I get one seventy five? Rotted karma dusts the cycle of human use. Going low, going high. The best frames contain shattered glass, the rustiest nails in the grandfather clock. Take it away. Take it away.

by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City

No Data

On the edge of the river.

After the flooding.

Night time.

Red digital letters flash ‘no data’ from the scales that can’t find the water level after being overwhelmed with extremes.

 

Midnight blue and black tree line, shadow trace of concrete pillars in the dark. The water could be feet away, or yards. Maybe years.

It’s there. I just don’t know where.

No data.

No data.

No data.

by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City

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

The Portrait

He takes the perfect wood square and shatters the glass. He peels away laminate, tears away wrapping tissue then digs into another level of paint-speckled construction paper. Ripping into the next surface of incomplete images; pages, leaves, shredded, dissected. Smudged oil, faded ink. He reveals the last layer -- it’s not the one he remembers. In a broken frame rests the scratches and stains of a new memory.
 
by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City

Isn’t She Lovely?

Sulking and whiny. She awaited her overdue guests.  The sting tasting of pepperjack. Stella rearranged her cheese platter. Spelling LONELY in mild cheddar, mozzarella, and sharp Colby. Doorbell rang. Carrying Chicken in a Biscuit crackers, the single male arrival quickly snatched up Wisconsin Colby. So changing the N to a V. Altering Stella’s perspective and life with a mere slice of cheese.
 
by Bolton Carley of Bellevue

Apology to John Keats

A crack line severs the driveway, littered with cigarette ends. Night time black, the tincture of a cricket’s back, I possess no ode for. I only have one injection of biophilia to give. I’m trying here. I guess what I’m saying is, ‘one whose name was writ in water’ doesn’t seem so urgent when you’re trying to move oceans.

 
By AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City

The Arrival

A dark cloud sighs heavy over the local salvage yard. It had been there since yesterday, the new arrival on lot B.

"It wasn’t her," they tell him. "You haven’t even seen her for five years."

But he knows. The silver Celtic cross and chain that hangs from a mangled rearview mirror tells him so. He wants to melt it into a smooth tonic that will cure fever chills and low self-confidence. But it only tastes like closure.

by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City

The Eleven of Hearts

It begins a hum, with intent. The journey of orgasm, direct, even in a body so confused, snakes through scrambled nerves, ventures up spine, hugging titanium and dead body bone chips, traverses numb fingertips that clutch sheets, the same that pound keys to characters, each pang begging: why are you here? My soul resides in a house of cards on the shoulders of Atlas. Pull one from the bottom tier - it is a miracle.

by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek of Nebraska City