Dec
18
abominable snowman
the candle hat
spanish painter francisco de goya painted long into the night by placing candles in his hat band. we, too, fashion our makeshift candle hats to keep painting, writing, creating, loving -- even at the risk of roasted brains.
Oct
9
el greco, laocoon
“Of course he was soused, but the look in his eyes, the rapt expression on his ugly face, weren’t due only to drink. There was more to it than that. The first time he talked in that way he said something that I’ve never forgotten, because it horrified me; he said that the world isn’t a creation, for out of nothing nothing comes; but a manifestation of the eternal nature; well, that was all right, but then he added that evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good. They were strange words to hear in that sordid, noisy cafe, to the accompaniment of dance tunes on the mechanical piano.”
—spoken by larry in w. somerset maugham’s novel, the razor’s edge
Oct
2
forthcoming in The Iowa Review
He was very well-spoken for a Cyclops.
I told this to Kent later that day. Kent grunted and rolled his eyes.
“More proof of Brian’s incompetence,” Kent said. His gelled hair sat stiffly on his head like the shining blade of a guillotine. “He’s obviously a monster. Did you smell him?”
“Like cooked garbage,” an intern agreed.
“I thought he was nice,” I said. We were standing around the fax machine, five or six of us, waiting for our faxes to crawl out of the machine’s unsmiling mouth.
“’Nice’ is the adjective people use when they don’t have something better to say,” Kent intoned. Then he sang loudly, “Carol’s found a new boyfriend.”
My coworkers laughed. “Yeah, right,” I said with feigned playfulness. “I mean, come on, he’s totally gross. Really, he’s disgusting.”
But truthfully I didn’t find The Cyclops gross or disgusting. Aside from the large club he always carried (“For wolves or worse,” he told me), and despite the smell of livestock that trailed him everywhere, he was far more refined and thoughtful than the other men in the office. His pants – while faintly stained – were always neatly pressed. He could quote entire poems of Yeats and Sappho. Even more impressive was that he always asked everyone, no matter how busy he was, how his or her day was going. Clients perceived his incongruity as a sign of superiority and began requesting his services. To my delight, we were teamed up on a new project together, and after a few engaging weeks I complimented him on his impressive vocabulary and grammar.
“I read a lot of books in the field,” The Cyclops explained. He meant field literally, as in the field where he shepherded goats. I pictured him lolling on a vast green hillside, his feet and chest bare, holding a hardcover book above his face at just the right angle to block the hot Mediterranean sun.
—sharma shields, excerpt from the mcgugle account
to be published in the iowa review DEC 2009
Sep
24
from sam's novel
Walking to the ICE COLD BEVERAGES cooler I see Ernie’s mob watching me, sucking on the ends of their fingers. When I have the King Kobra, they all take the fingers out of their mouths and slap each other’s hands.
“That’s a boy,” the robot says. “Boy genius. I’m working. I can’t leave the counter because I’m working.” It unscrews the bottle, then takes a good drink. A couple seconds later, somewhere deep inside its casing, I hear a small fire getting extinguished. “Man,” it says. “Okay, so you know where I’m coming from, right? I’m your father.”
“Yes.”
“What’s this girl-genius’s name?”
“Michelline.”
“Huh,” says the robot. “She might be alright. Michelline? It’s hard to know. Taller or shorter than you?”
“Taller.”
“I knew it. You’re finished.”
“She might be shorter.”
“Doesn’t matter. Finished.” The robot’s casing is suddenly bouncing with laugher, laugher at me, until I notice something in its eye, a gleam that wasn’t there a second ago, and I start laughing too. Then it’s obvious that we’re both laughing together. “I got you, Jesse! Oh, I got you!”
“Yeah, you got me, Dad.”
“Now we’re having fun.” The robot takes a drink. “Now we’re having fun! Why don’t we do this more?”
Deep down I think the robot’s okay. But there’s definitely such a thing as too much time with the robot, where the robot starts to look at you and notices things that a human being wouldn’t notice. Things that you’re thinking. But we seem a long way from that point, so I decide to go for broke: “Actually, Dad, Michelline’s in the parking lot right now.”
The robot licks its mustache. “My parking lot?”
“Out there.”
“With all those kids? The ones who just sit there and scare away the regular business?”
“She’s not friends with those kids, Dad. You should see how those kids treat her at school. You should—”
But the wires are busting apart in the robot’s neck, waving and glowing under the fake skin. “You’re afraid to introduce your girlfriend to your gas station father.”
“Dad,” I say, and I’ve never felt so bad calling it that, because the robot has no idea how unlike Dad it looks right now. And the worst part is the robot’s right: I’d never introduce my girlfriend to this robot. And the look in its fake eyes right now, I can tell the robot knows this.—simeon mills, excerpt from I Chopped Down This House For You
Sep
23
kk has an interview at auntie’s bookstore today (pictured above). dedos cruzados
Sep
22
Sep
20
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