Remembered

The dream was sexual. There was a death. A Nigerian looking man. The last thing before waking, trying to  fold a stained towel.

Expectations, of linens

three-ring circus
Peg Duthie

because i’m drawn to your tightropes,
their solid, stolid tension

as they anchor my wrists
and slash across my shoulders

and because the doorknobs and the latches
throw strange glints into the ordinary shapes

of shadows playing across the bedroom walls
become merry and magnified with the silent brightness

of unvoiced expectations, of linens lovingly bleached
by fresh sunshine and sanded by brisk winds

to bedeck the not unpleasant, not unsatisfying everyness
of the days and the nights already bountiful

with ringmasters, liontamers, clowns and dancers,
a well-tried safety net, the softness of lavish sawdust

yet this would not be the stuff of parade and dream
were it not for your flaming hoops, the happiness of your knives.

Heat lightning

I started writing from the point of view of a small, fragile child but then at some point I found myself describing her neighbors, this grotesquely healthy and fortunate family who lived across the street. I found the true voice for the story in this family’s youngest daughter who was attracted to Wren even as her family, particularly the father, feared her. Both attitudes, the attraction and the fear, are very strange and so, I think, very real. —Kathy Fish

Kazimir Malevich

excerpt from Wren
Kathy Fish

One evening our mother joined in the games instead of making supper. Father grabbed her and held her tight around her waist and she struggled to free herself. My brothers and I yanked on Father’s arms and legs, screeching and laughing, as the fireflies lifted out of the grass around our ankles.

Mother stopped struggling and Father loosened his grip and we all turned to see Wren and her parents on their nightly walk. Mother gathered us all around her, hushing us. We were panting and sweaty and unable to keep still.

Father picked up the forgotten football and smacked it against his palm. Mr. Chu nodded and Father nodded back. Wren’s mother glanced at our mother. Some maternal understanding, like heat lightning, flashed in the space between them. I couldn’t see Wren’s eyes, but it seemed she was looking at me. I wanted to cross the street and touch her white cheek. I wanted to tell her my name.

How to write love songs

I just see things around me and try to rationalize them as we all do. I’m more influenced by the current state of culture and its complexities than I am other writers. —Mike Aho

Topical

Telling my troubles to strangers

Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.  —Tom Waits

One-eighth

David Burdeny

The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. —Ernest Hemingway

Just to eat

Rice
Mary Oliver

It grew in the black mud.
It grew under the tiger’s orange paws.
Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.
Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.
The grains cresting, wanting to burst.
Oh, blood of the tiger.

I don’t want you just to sit down at the table.
I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a
     blessing.

Try not to blink

We don’t walk so badly

Excursion into the Mountains
Franz Kafka

“I don’t know,” I cried without a sound, “I just don’t know. If nobody comes, then nobody comes. I have not done anyone any harm, nobody has done me any harm, but nobody wants to help me. Absolutely nobody. But really it is not this way. Just that nobody helps me — otherwise absolutely nobody would be fine. I would really like — and why not? — to make an excursion in the company of absolutely nobody. Into the mountains of course, where else? How these nobodies press against each other, all these arms, crossed and entangled, all these feet, separated by tiny steps! It is understood that everyone is in tails. We don’t walk so badly, and the wind moves through the gaps that we and our limbs leave open. In the mountains throats become free! It’s a wonder we don’t sing.”

trans. by Kevin Blahut
published by Twisted Spoon Press