Lemon

Lemon carved caverns in the fleshy pink parts of my mouth…

Bubbles

“I hate you,” says Jules.
“I hate, you, too,” I say. My co-workers don’t even blink. They’ve heard this before.

Flicker

As he smoked, a red-shafted flicker hammered away at the top of a barren hemlock.

The Cougar

Johnny puts another whiskey in front of me. Except for him, me, and Petey, the bar’s empty. “You hear about that up in Wilmette?” he asks.

Stupid’s Rising Up

Stupid’s rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that’s not how the alphabet goes.

Nothing

Da saw dead babies in the soil, blood in the mud.

Box

Dig, dig, dig. That’s what I do. Dig the body as hard and as fast as I can, until it falls.

Stones

Henry and I had met at the hospital. He’d been forty years my senior, but we’d been in for precisely the same reason: kidney stones.

Smoked Secretly

Jerry smoked secretly. The habit had formed some thirty years before in humid jungles, and he’d never kicked the craving nor the need to hide it.