Our father told my brother, Justin, Everyone forgets regular people. So Justin declared his birthdays to be festivals for unregularity and then irregularity after being corrected, then back to unregularity for the sake of being unregular. He celebrated his 8th birthday by standing on his head, only to come down when our mom scolded him for not participating in duck-duck-goose.… Continue Reading
Dad has to pee right now. He can’t pee directly into the toilet, he needs to pee into the can and then pour it. How dare you touch his can? Well, it’s hard to tell which of the things in the bathroom are “trash.” He also objected to us removing the orange juice containers that were filled with yellow pee, the 2-liter generic Mountain Dew bottle that was filled with black pee, and the floss collection that spun out from the towel rack like God’s pubes.… Continue Reading
The rumor has it there’s a vending machine on the corner of Kennedy and Main that lends an ear. Leona tells me it’s for real. Its buttons are the color of rust, she says, once possibly a brighter red. A tear sizzles down her cheeks as she squirms closer in bed. I once fed it a coin after my mother’s death and it gave me a quarter of her heart back.… Continue Reading
Arturo loves his motorbike. It’s good on gas. He’s always about town, popping in here and there, zip, zip, in and out of traffic, cutting corners, up on the sidewalk, he zigs and he zags, he zags and he zigs, he’s a bumblebee, big fat Arturo on his little motorbike, beep beep!… Continue Reading
You were unable to defend yourself against the accusations of your family members because the only defense you could think of was also a confession, and you were terrified.… Continue Reading
When you’re stoned, you realize: separate bodies, separate consciousnesses—that’s an illusion. There is only One. We were one with the bus stumbling up the mountainside. My nausea was one with Manisha’s. I wasn’t yet nauseous: not need-a-lime nauseous: but I felt Manisha’s nausea exactly as, soon, I’d feel my own. Soon? Already I was feeling it.… Continue Reading
I didn’t sit down with the intention of writing a dark book. My goal with this book was pretty simple, stark realism. These are the people that I know and that I meet, and these are the problems that I see or that I hear about or that I’ve had or that I’ve witnessed. And while yeah, it’s fucking dark, I feel like life is pretty dark.… Continue Reading
“Early for shift,” it said. “One minute, thirty-two seconds. Twenty-seven hours, fifty-two minutes, and twenty seconds of voluntary overtime have been logged to your account this period. Would you like to volunteer to give up a shift?”… Continue Reading
She leaned over and kissed his purplish hand, the fragile skin bruised by blood tests and IVs. “If I wanted to get rid of you, I‘ve had a few opportunities lately that I didn’t take.”… Continue Reading
The truck testicles swung slightly; not for the first time that day Cody regarded them.… Continue Reading