For a little while. I have appointments at 2. Can we play parallax, the event horizon, asymptote? The ones where you never arrive? I like them.Won’t get you anywhere though.What else? You know the tide comes in faster as it licks at the heels?The tape spins round faster at the end of the reel?What can …
“Death Will You Play With Me?”, by Phil Madden Keep Reading »
Traveling with the Dead And I say I’m dead, and I move.—The Crow Laura and several others have asked me some variation of the same question: Do dead people ever move? I’ve talked about rigor mortis and cadaveric spasm before, and how some corpses like to toss things off the embalming table, but this question …
i. Who sees the black sakura in the courtyard, the fruit that weeps on the branch, a tender flesh staining the tips of your fingers – red as your lips? Who sees the fractal twists of suffering in glints of light on the flagstones? Or your arthritic hands held up to the sky? Or the …
The bone moon above Kōdaiji: A Quartet, by Ryu Ando Keep Reading »
Death drives a fast car. It’s cream and silver—like a pale horse. When it needs service, she comes here, because we’re the best shop in town. If I could’ve put “Services Death’s BMW” on my signboard and had anyone believe me, I’d’ve done it right off. Fact is, our shop’s looked out for her vehicle …
Through his telescope the professor searches, his withered hands clasped as in prayer. When young, his Lover was a girl from Neptune, so now he blushes at the nudity of celestial bodies, and wonders after the cores of apples and Earth. The gray hair of the back of his neck rises whenever his azure eyes …
2023 Ignotus Award as Best Foreign Short Story Ocean’s twelfth therapist isn’t fully licensed in the state of Maine. Her office is an RV parked behind the Hannaford, from which she also sells crystals, blueberry jam, and sex. Her advice is erratic and mystic, largely unhelpful, but Ocean doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want to be …
I have a favorite mummy. I realize this is a bit odd. Most people only know one or two mummies, certainly not an entire group and certainly not enough to pick a favorite. For those who know about multiple mummies, I doubt many of them have strong mummy opinions to have an outright favorite, but …
I did not hunger for spawn of my own. Had I not seen enough women with regrets, deep as the furrows they carved with their feet? Groaning beside the ox while their men held the whip, bellies bursting beneath sweat-stained tunics as they labored to feed children that wriggled like newly hatched eels in the …
Nothing says Puerto Rican funeral more than milky coffee, hot chocolate, bread, cheese, and stale pastries. Francisco Oller perfectly captured a snapshot of Puerto Rico in El Velorio, but Oller never painted the afterlife. He’d settled on the living and their celebration. Partying in La Placita captured the essence of life in my island, except …