He entered the cave and whipped out the papyrus. He didn’t have much time. He noted down the date and time and roughly where he believed he was located. He made some quick observations. He wrote about how the blond girl’s heaving bosom had affected his respiration. He tried to tell what it had meant to see his crown again. He wrote his name. Then he stashed the papyrus and went back out into the rain to recommence his running.
Portal
5 JulThere’s a portal, from Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada to Atlanta, Georgia, USA, that only Fedex knows about. They use it to move packages quickly from one part of the continent to another. They keep it a secret. A carefully guarded secret! Some kids in Richmond Hill have found out about the portal. They want to try to use it for the good of humanity. But Fedex is determined to stop them from revealing the secret of the portal.
Curtain of Wind
4 JulShe felt like she was walking through a curtain of wind. Yellow air breathed down her neck and made her shiver. She heard a sound, like something hopping happily through the canals deep inside her ears. She touched the fork that was sitting on the table beside the plate of eggs she’d made three hours earlier.
His fingers, from a certain angle
4 JulHis fingers, from a certain angle, seemed massive, even frightening.
We tried not to look at each other. We were so close together.
The boy looked at me, then, but quickly looked away.
The noise of his regard was not quite deafening, but it was very loud.
beautiful is nothing
2 JulThe text that has been scrolling forever down the mangled forearm of your reaching desire is gone suddenly one morning. You are shocked. You want it back.
My job
2 JulMy job, as I see it, is to take you to the shore of your life and, depending on the weather today and how much sleep you got last night, just go from there.
You wake up in bed with your shoes on, but you ain’t give a fuck
2 JulHello. I am Cathy and I am everything of a vision of love that you could ever want. My pendulous earrings hang low over your world and rotate you like a planet in the thrall of its sun. I’ll fuck with your head till you ain’t give a single solitary care for this mussed up world, including, but not limited to, your corporeal self that hankers fit to bust.
Deathbed Miranda
24 Mar“I hate you, Birdman,” the big man said. He was standing at the end of the path, looking up at Birdman, who was hovering over the lake. The boys stood further up the path, behind the big man. Birdman thought the boys were doomed, but he said nothing. He stayed a little longer, to try to hear more. But the boys were steaming away, their naked torsos dusky with sand.
The only time Birdman came low to the earth was over the water. Here there was other music. In the waves. Birdman could hear it. Birdman could hover. The wind dies from his ears. One day, he flew too close to the beach and heard what all the little boys were saying. “Let’s get out of here,” one of the boys shouted back to the others. There’s no way out, Birdman thought.
The new law of Jan. 31: an internal failure of cohesion
23 Mar“I like to sew,” the girl says.
The boy has a spoon in his hand.
“Do you want ribs tonight,” the girl asks, “or burgers?”
The girl has a piece of fabric in her lap. She sticks a needle into it. The needle goes into the fabric and comes out the other side.
Listen to this
9 JanNo one was listening, so the boy closed his eyes and said what he’d always needed to say. What he had to say splayed out before him like a meal he couldn’t keep down. It accompanied him wherever he had to go in the world, day and night, whether the boy was asleep or awake. It rode closest to the backs of his teeth at night when he slept, so that his teeth flapped out like swinging doors in a western saloon, his thoughts swimming forth like a pack of sad cowboys migrating into the street, fixing to initiate a gunfight.