He hefted a long cedar spear uncovered in the still-steaming foundation of the arsoned synagogue his gaunt, heaving body and the strangely unseared shaft tracing a delta against the pitiless churning horizon. His steps on the ruined flagstones though weak, were deliberate the execution of his course seemed far more crucial than his imminent and wildly foreseeable martyrdom more tangible than air which held stormclouds together. The altar, a hideous gnarled pedestal of hawthorn, gristle, and t...

Rolls of thunder made the foundation tremble that night - the pantheon's judgement announced by its tympani and some vast Orwellian array of rumbling tank treads, an army dispatched to proselytize, over my crushed bones, the shameful error of my ways and the unequivocal weight of my indiscretion.

To say that Reynard's carpentry was unpopular with the locals would be the frailest and most laughably pale understatement the newspaper had ever issued in its sad, obscure history. Of course, in the journalistic service of a sad, obscure hamlet, the editors ever preferred to err on the side of safety when it came to such delicate matters as sodomy. The article of the 24ème de mars shows that the carpenter's name was Reynard, as his rural shop's sun-cracked sign said simply “REYNARD / LES MEU...

Imagine if rent were paid by hour of occupancy, not by month. We'd abandon our homes for days we'd thrive on excuses to explore. We would be the most triumphant transients. We would swing from the masts and worship the horizon.

Once, my nighttime headlights drew halos around the heads of two happily lost pedestrians. Once, there was a cure for philosophical disorientation. Then, I steered around the broken, fly-writhing body of a hare. Then, there were concrete, achievable goals for those whose various uncontemplated means were implicitly justified. I'm forming a citizen of clay, rhythmically lashing tendon to bone, braiding neurons. I'm not what my sculptors intended. To subject the overcast future to undue scrutin...

It dawned (grudgingly) on him that he was the blank-faced, forty-year-old hyperbolically pedestrian farmhand, not wholly content but not quite contesting his lot in life; his needs were few, his wants were none, his imagination and hunger and dissatisfaction muffled under so many bales of hay and years of interminable winters and layers of dead skin. This new day, the sun rose blinding red, the pigments in a newborn calf's blood, and in increasingly foul-mouthed schizophrenic zeal he swore a ...

Trudging on the high-noon-baked concrete stomping on sidewalk cracks, he savoured the few hours before his shadow would creep out from under his feet to show him its daily disdain. He was moving but not going anywhere, walking an urban treadmill - stoplights and oilstains and litter and bone trees circling up, up behind his heels, ferris-wheeling back down to meet his step. Afternoon arrived with the smog mounting partial venetian blinds to the sun. His shadow stared at him, his face, but wit...

You and me, baby, we can carve this new home in the snow of the mountain where we'll lie and our faces will be close and no one will hear us sigh as lovers and when the thunder comes our bodies will be held in the soft, cold hands of the mountain but our spirits, free, will drift through the pines and our laughter will faintly echo forever.

I will shred your doubt scatter its black ivy coils that, free, you may dance. I will subsume your subconscious mind, that you may hear me in your sleep. I will cut anchors from your bound appendages that your wings may spread. I will place you on the river; surface tension will lift you softly. You will build a fire in my eyes, that I may see your burning halo.

A scraping scream echoed at night the shrill sound neither glad nor light propelled as if a shaft in flight surpassing barriers hid from sight. It drained the breath out of the chest, it took its form, it coalesced, it strained the body, split the head, engendering a gripping dread. It hollered, yelled in solitude, it searched for hearts to calm its mood - a scraping scream, alone and wretched slows for no one, cruel or sacred. We'll keep our dearest secrets close, lie to ourselves and take t...