Lolita on the road

The flakes are light and harmless. Like confetti they dance as they fall. They twirl. And swirl. The road, the ground, the trees are all fixed in place but the sky’s axis may be flipped at will by a maniacal child playing snow globe, somewhere. Before the dots even have a chance to settle, to accumulate, he upsets it. Does it again. Lo, paws tucked neatly into her breast, lies on the dash, her punch drunk head bobbing, her dopey eyes trying hopelessly to follow the erratic yet delicate movements of these flat-white bugs on the other side of a thick pane of glass. She’s ten months old…

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Vegas Baby

As we dip below cloud level I’m surprised by the lack of grid, the absence of grey veins laid to pump smoking dots back and forth from city center, taken aback by the general void of things. My ears pop. Gone are the rows of matchbox suburbia and blocks of stacked glass typical in this final stage of flight. Absent are the shag carpets and lime lollipops. And my god, what of the blind ants scurrying about? They are none. All gone. An entire city suffocated under one giant sand-stuffed pillow. Not since Atlantis has such an epic empire gone down. I expect the pilot will pull up any moment now. Surely we’ll turn back soon, but an announcement would be nice. Breathless, I scan the plane for signs of panic on the poor, twisted faces of my fellow comrades damned. The drooling elders, the slack-jawed veggies, the women of waxen brow, the bloodshot eyes of modern day Moses men beholden their aluminum tabs, not even those sniveling, mouth-chomping youth seem to give the slightest hint of fuck. Why should I? It’s just as well. When is the last time something meaningful, something noble, something of merit, escaped the blessed walls of this tourist fly trap anyhow? Apparently there is truth in the tired cliche they so proudly tout— What happens in Vegas…

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Lesser Known Witches of Denmark

A plane flies over at 30,000 feet. Not the first time. We’ve seen it all before. Some of us first hand— and to one passenger in first class sipping his bottomless Mimosa, having another, reclining at a Virgin Airlines exclusive forty-five degree angle, staring with bull eyes through cotton windows as those precious stock symbols of his tick by, watching someone else’s dollar fly into a hungry engine wing as if being shredded, as if being pureed solely for his amusement, juiced, from cash to kale, taking it in with but a grin, and from where he’s sittin’ it looks, well, from there it probably doesn’t look like much down here at all. Or does it, Captain? Au mais contraire, from here, ground zero, my hammock clinging with dear life to the limb of a ripe banana tree, every fruit whispering pick me, pick me, all eyes peeled on the infinite ripples forming over a Pacific-fed, saltwater stream who’s current stimulation is supplied thoughtlessly by the trope of water nymphs hanging out on lily pads a gently blowing— yes, from here, from where I’m laying it all looks pretty good indeed—looks to me like all I could ever want or need. Sure is peaceful, I think, but it’s peace having taken the most provocative of form I’ve ever seen. No love lost here—

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Left my cave

Was a scared, stubborn baby, was a boy— stayed in Womb nine months and twenty seven years. Nine pounds going on one fifty! This womb of mine was a dark cave that rendered me senseless, but hey, ‘least it was warm— was food in tube. And it was safe— knew I would always be safe so long as I was tucked in there. I had my activities. One of my favorite things to do was pull my knees to my chest, tuck my head, and for no reason past reflex, close my eyes. Yep, that was how I slept, in a ball—could sleep that way for days, could sleep that way all winter, could sleep that way for good and I wouldn’t miss a thing. Although occasionally, I’d hear noises, would feel vibrations, some good & sweet— called those lickings cause they smoothed, like wet whispers or wind-stung chimes they were the humming of birds and the buzzing of bees, and they soothed, while the others, the loud & sudden ones, oh god, they were called thuddings because they made the tummy rock, they made the stomach fluids swell, carrying my breadbasket deeper into the ocean’s oven— took hand-clapped thunder to rock my cradle. When I couldn’t take all the so-called ‘stimulation,’ I would thrust my legs and jab never-cut nails into those padded walls of hers—take flesh of my flesh, a bone to pick unformed. ‘Let me out!’ I would scream; ‘no, no, no—not yet,’ I would moan, premature in my ways. Then I would curl up, rocking to and fro like a dead horse shoed to bowed ski boards and beat. We did the downhill rock. The ‘fetal position,’ I found out later it was called, also helped with the nightmares—

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