Diana

It was the year we landed on the moon and the two brothers were sizing up the soon to be victim -- a paunchy middle-aged man in a business suit deep in a drunken stupor sprawled across a bench and the park had long ago thinned out. Without a word between them the younger brother hung back to serve as look-out while the older one, with skillful ease, fished out the man's wallet from his coat and slipped off the wristwatch. "I
See You!" The man was now upright and was regarding the older brother with such clear-eyed ferocity that he froze where he stood while the younger
retreated and prepared to bolt. "I See You!" The younger called pleadingly to the older but still he didn't move, and for the life of him he could not figure out why.

Kathleen

You look like a hillbilly, what happened to your hair? Motherly love, remembered so well. Schools should use it. Formulas drilled in our heads might be better remembered. Energy equals m c squared. If you got off the couch your back-end might not look like the side of a barn in this light. By having relatives teach Einstein’s theories we would get a better understanding of the forces of nature.

Catriona

Fractals. Quartz glittering in sunlight. Ferns uncurling, heralding the spring. Galaxies spinning, ponderous as eternity. Lightning, geodes, peacock tails. God is both a mathematician and an artist.

Through ice-frosted glass, a woman gazes at the snow-packed yard. Tiny stars, so quick to melt. She will not see the ferns uncurl next year.

Is cancer a fractal, too?

Stephen

What a great idea, Ive always wanted to try
Go to hell, talk talk talk you never will and you know it
But isn’t that how I start by ‘wanting’?
No, you start with the remote and HBO
But I think I might at least be passable, you never know until you try, right?
You will never know because the game is on
Its only 420, anyone can do 420 right?
You are not anyone, give me the remote asshole
Fine, you’re a dick
I can live with that

Janice

In a pink frock, she looked out of place standing on Aunt Ruby's front porch. She gulped fresh air and turned the rusty knob. Her mouth open, she tried not to breathe the cat piss odor. Stepping in, she saw Ruby, naked except for a baseball cap, sorting through one of the boxes of junk surrounding her. She knew the old woman was too deaf to have heard her. She turned and fled. No inheritance was worth this.

Christopher

Like the time that I baby sat my obstinate six year old niece, my girlfriend refused. "I don't like the way that it tastes," she said. I told her, "There is nothing else in the house." We hadn't been shopping in two weeks. Pouting, as if I had just taken away her favorite toy, she reluctantly gulped. This is ultimately how I knew I had to get out of that relationship. How can a grown woman not like to drink water?

Jane

He asked me if I could spend the
afternoon at his street fair and sell hot dogs from a silver cart. It was a sunny day in New York and New Yorkers all love hot dogs. I sold dozens of the Kosher dogs, some with mustard, some with relish, and some with “the works.” Customers came in all shapes and sizes, but when they walked away from me there wasn’t one who didn’t wear a big smile.
At day's end, I was smiling, too.

Elizabeth

Getting away and starting over is a big risk. Ask the airport security screeners who pat down the young girl who is leaving town with a one-way ticket. One-way tickets are huge red flags. After all, terrorists use them. They search her bag filled with underwear, bras and other sundry items. There’s nary a trace of explosives, anthrax or any dangerous substance, except that overwhelming desire and need to leave.

Bob

A wormhole enabled me to drive a hybrid car with Madame Curie riding shotgun, whispering along under stored energy. She asked, “What element would you be be on the periodic table?” I thought of transition metals but replied “Mercury”. She shared my melancholy over the march of time. She'd have chosen Uranium, but I failed to ask. Infinite wormholes all but guarantee I'll never again have the pleasure of her company.

Myra

When the infant was born fully,the women wrapped it in warm cloths though there was no point to it.They washed the wrinkled blue skin of its cheesy vernix.Soon enough the frail living twin made his appearance.His delicate head still affixed with the fluids of its mother’s body,his startled cry breaking across the barrier of air.It is what Yiorgos remembered,the sound of his own first cry on this earth

Beth

Lola slowly ate the ripe, red tomato. She had found it at the farmer’s market this morning. She didn’t wait to prepare the rest of the salad she had planned. The flesh was dense, firm and mind-blowing delicious. Sweet tart juices dribbled down her chin. As she cleaned up afterwards, she thought, “She would have heartburn to deal with later.”

Lydia

“Merry Christmas!”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Why’s it merry?”
“You’re being stupid, we’re late you know…”
“Can you answer my question before we go?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“What?”
“Oh God. Why is Christmas merry?”
“Oh! Um, well…you know…there are present and food.”
“Right…”
“And…lots of snow, and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You.’”
“Is there anything more?”
“How should I know?”
“I feel like…there’s something else to it.”
“If there is, no ones knows. Now let’s GO!”
“Do you think there’s a God?”
“What?”
“A God…is there one?”
“If you want there to be one, happy?”
“No.”
“Not many of us are so I can live with that. Ready?”
“For?”
“The Christmas party.”
“What’re we celebrating?”
“You’re very obnoxious today.”
“And you are very shallow. Do you pray?”
“Occasionally.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes I want there to be someone looking out for me.”
“I look out for you.”
“I mean…someone bigger than us all. I don’t know. Sometimes I need help!”
“With?”
“My life.”
“Do you pray whenever you don’t need help?”
“Not really.”
“I think that if there was a God. I’d want him to love me.”
“Alright…”
“I’d want to be loved. I’d want to be filled up.”
“With?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I’m empty. And I keep on lying to myself saying that I’m not.”
“I don’t fill you up?”
“Not completely, not eternally.”
“Fantastic”
“No, it’s not personal. No one else can.”
“Except?”
“God.”
“I think I heard once that Christmas is about a baby being born, the Messiah or something.
“That makes sense.”
“What does?”
“I think I remember now. The baby, wasn’t his name Jesus?”
“Possibly.”
“Wasn’t he God…in flesh?”
“Woah, watch what you say. That’s pretty radical.”
“Yeah. I think he came to help us. He had to.”
“And?”
“And…that he lowered himself to be a baby, to live with us and give us a choice.”
“What choice?”
“To believe him or not…that he’s the one that saves...that he was God and that he was perfect.”
“So how do you know he was perfect? Is there proof that he was God in flesh?”
“No.”
“Okay then, now let’s go!”
“There is little proof…but it isn’t about having proof. I think it’s about faith.”
“Whatever you say. Is he the one you’ve been looking for? To…I don’t know…fill you up?”
“I don’t know. I think…he’s been looking for me.”
“Well…I’m glad he’s found you, I guess. Ready to go?”
“Yeah. But…”
“What?”
“Merry Christmas…it really is.”

Park

His lanky tan frame was so nimble as he loped into a run, his inky Speedo like a hyphen, leaping long in the air, almost completely horizontal like some flying stingray, pliant...extending, as he stretched his left arm long, so impossibly far, oh, oh, just an inch out of reach of the frisbee arcing, floating, ever so silently to the right...down...curving in slow motion...away...into the mouth of a poodle, giddy with her yellow prize.

Deb

O god, bloody panties. Her first menses; how could she not tell her mother? What else is she not telling. Her friend haunts me, gun to her temple, so young. Is it there in her too, that dark bloody place? Her diary is in my lap. Open it. Open it. No. But I breach. I draw in ragged breaths and read of dragons and fairies and “I wish I could meet a boy.” I close what can never be closed again.

Richard

Waves crashing; lights of more than a dozen ships line the horizon; a couple of "falling stars" streak across the sky; moonlight shimmering on the water, fading, fading, until only a sliver of bright light is visible on the lower left side of the moon.



I shiver as the sliver of light gets smaller and smaller. "Go, go, go," I whisper. It lingers and lingers and lingers. Then it is gone.

Mary

I pace my side of the lake we swam all summer. Winter’s first blizzard has blocked all roads; the half-mile swim between us is now a walk across thin ice. I say I’ll cross when the ice is thick. You propose we meet now—halfway. And then? If the ice cracks on your side, you’ll jump to mine, you say. Where have you studied ice? Think how a window swallows a baseball. You really want to take a swing at that?

Jeff

"I have already chosen the wind," she said.

He replied, "But you have chosen upon dusk, and the night currents of sleep have
washed the resolution from your mind. You must again cast your lot,
but I would impel you to quicken, for before the light of dawn the
wind will take its own direction."

norman

In the remote mining community, we have found ourselves. For the import of life, mining submerged in the pursuit of human life, and ultimately exported. Or, one with a soul, we are trying to ruin -- the earth cried.

Chris

On hands and knees, the team conducts a room to room search. The leader slides his right hand along the wall and sweeps the floor with his left. His left ankle is in the grip of his partner’s right hand. They move in unison. The sucking sound of their breathing, their own pounding heart, is all that they hear as they move in the smoke-filled darkness, anticipating the touch of a body with the next reach.

norman

In a remote mining community, we have found ourselves. For an imported living, digging for lives, submerged in pursuits, eventually exported. One soul at a time or all together, we tried and cried in earthly ruins.