Finally, Crazy Jeannie and Pleasant Terry got married again. Fair play to them. But, somewhere, somehow, along the way, in exchanging names twice, they confused each other’s nicknames, so that he, at last, found her, pleasant, and she, him, eventually, crazy. The actual details of how, or why, this confusion occurred are obscure. That’s … Continue reading An Unexpected Butterfly.
"You’re telling me, when you went to church as a kid, you never got an orange with a candle stuck in it?" "An orange?" "Christmas orange." "At Christmas?" "Uh huh. With a candle." "Don't think I ever went to church as a kid." "Hmm. Well, you got this orange, okay, with a candle stuck in … Continue reading No wig, no gig.
he lights a cigarette and begins to list the illnesses that have struck people down in the area. Cancer. Coronary. Liver and kidney failure. And he says, "they're just the killers. Migraine. Anxiety. Impotence. Thrombosis. The high rates of carcinogenic illness in the area are being looked into. It all relates." One by one, down to … Continue reading Leaning into the gas ring
"Aye, coffin nails," she says regarding the spread of used cigarettes collected on the table before her. Her dreadlocks are corralled on top of her small head with a knotted tie-dye rag. She wears a lot of tie-dye. She laughs and the tips of hair prance on her shoulders like waxen ponies. She drums her … Continue reading Blanket For A Bairn.
The Russian, recently bare, but now clad only in tiny vinyl shorts and flip-flops, was telling me all about how the dog days came to be called the dog days. Apparently it had to do with the stars, or the trade winds, or something. I tried to concentrate on the words, but he tended to … Continue reading Breadknife To An Iceberg.
She retreated an inch within and the piss porcelain and wet paper towels and the shit littered tiles and her size seven boot, printing damp jam to the door of the lavatory where she found herself, all seemed suddenly quite salubrious. But she wouldn't take a piss in there. Breathed out, rubbed her arms, rubbed … Continue reading And When I Sleep, Luella. [v]
