January 2011
27 posts
1 tag
3 tags
A Portrait of a Young Man, or Perhaps, Nothing At...
See young Samuel Ringleader the Third as he wakes from his womb of stone in the Lower East to a choir of tubercular coughing, shouting, arguing, fighting, living and hoping.
Creeping forth to his business, a lad of twelve steals down the streets of Wall, the Tenderloin, fingers for a watch, pockets for other people’s money. But that was until the moment he saw her. Some gay girls...
2 tags
Techniwockle Confoogelty
If anybody gets that reference, I’ll buy you a whiskey when next we meet.
In either case, the problems with the last post should have been corrected, so please, please, check back in with “From the Bend to Rio,” and hopefully it’ll be better this time around.
Apologies
So,
I fucked up, as you’ve probably noticed. Screwed the pooch, as it were, and can’t fix those photos from this barstool.
Sorry all, I’ll correct it first thing tomorrow.
Epic fail.
3 tags
From the Bend to Rio
Winter was rattling her saber on New York’s corners and avenues. Walking alone on the West Side promenade, comforted by the water and the solitude, he kept one hand on his hat because the wind seemed to want to play fetch.
As he passed an old dock, he saw an even older ship moored to it. On a whim he stepped onto the dock and…
…he raced about the streets in the bright sunshine,...
3 tags
Dust on the Tracks
Once, my heart was a stone lion. Now it is a valise holding empty vials and a syringe with a dull needle. My time outside the city, hiding among the cracks, boulders and friendly dust as if I actually belonged here, has worn me close to the bone.
Heaven and Earth rolled like dice with blank faces, and now I sit, cramps through the center of me like ugly, random chance. They passed, but I could...
2 tags
The Storyteller
“Careful or you’re going to spill.” Debs watched his friend Sweep tip the big jar.
“Shut up, this thing’s heavy.” Sweep grunted.
“Don’t take too much or we’re gonna get caught.” Deb held the gas can under the spout and bit of liquid tippled into it.
“How’re we doing?” Sweep asked, setting down the jar. Debs hefted the...
2 tags
Bone Us Post
After getting locked up, Januariard Post thought for sure it would go down in the showers. But when two parentheticals cornered him in a blind spot during yard time, he knew what it was. They shanked him with a cliché and left him to bleed out, passing the cliché from hand to hand to hand until finally, it was tossed down a drain in the metal shop.
Januariad Post lay bleeding. The walls were a...
And now for something completely different...
So, tell me my fine feathered friend, what vintage goes best with field mouse? A Spanish red? What about vole? Ah, Irish whiskey of course.
Courtesy of the lovely folks at Nerve.com:
http://www.nerve.com/news/current-events/drunk-owl-busted-by-cops
“Before there can be hungover owls, there must be drunk owls. That’s what police in Germany, a country not unfamiliar with excessive...
3 tags
Ajedrez
One and Two, sat in the dark at a table with a chess board. A bare bulb hung overhead on a thin wire.
“Move already, you know you have to.” One said.
An old board, it’s chipped and cracked, the bishops are .50 bullets. The rooks are pepper-shakers from a diner of 12th that the health department shut down years ago. Somewhere, sixteen Russian dolls are without their innermost...
3 tags
The Heart of the City
Jonas met the heart of the city one night in the Upper East Side. He’d gone there to pick up his girlfriend from her job, but she’d come to the door with concerned eyes, dark and tired.
“Can you wait a bit? Come back in an hour? I’m sorry.”
Hidden by the line of her panties, she had a tattoo of a kitten. Jonas, at seventeen, would wait all night. Winter rode the wind...
5 tags
The Diner
Ramon was on his smoke break when he smelled brimstone. Taking the cigarette from his lips, he looked at it wondering if the pack had gone stale. But then he saw him.
“Sorry about that, dreadful diet back home.” The man waved at the air behind him.
“Who are you?” Ramon asked and put his cigarette in his mouth to leave his hands free.
“I’m the devil,...
Januariad →
distorte:
Look, I’m not going to exaggerate here: Even leaving aside my own dizzyingly, curve-wreckingly good contributions to Januariad, I cannot believe how many quality stories are being produced by a half dozen people scribbling things down between their day jobs.
Jokes about assembling enough monkeys and typewriters are appropriate here.
5 tags
The Tiny Bird
1.
The two boys stood against the worn corner of Warren and Church, behind them the namesake spire, it’s based charred and burned, screamed into the sky to puncture a cloud.
The boys, Cap for the battered one atop his head, the other Red for no reason at all, were hatching big plans.
“So tell me, my fine chap, what’s it you’ve got?” Cap asked.
“Going ta steps my paces down to the skirt’s shelter...
2 tags
Imp of the Perverse
”The firm of Baum, Baum and Levinshitz has such a prestigious history, you’re so fortunate.”
It’s difficult to enthuse while going down a long dark hallway with flickering halogen bulbs but he was managing. I’d been hired by the firm yesterday, nearly fresh shot out of law school. He’s right, it’s quite the opportunity, but as we got in the elevator and...
3 tags
Tomorrow's Januariad
I think I’m going to go home tonight and invent a time machine so that I can travel back a few thousand years to the island of Flores and kidnap several of the carnivorous midgets that used to live there.
I’m going to ply them with box whine (Yes. You read correctly. They make it at this place in Howard Beach. It’s resealable) and Godiva wasabi chocolates, and if that...
2 tags
Apricots and Chopped Almonds
1.
There are, he thought while digging through wreckage, some things that I don’t mind being late for.
The walls still intact were soot-streaked, with holes in them of various sizes. Qasir looked at one, a near-perfect circle, wondering if one of his kettles had made that and if he’d ever find it again. Grunting triumph, he lifted a chunk of the fallen ceiling revealing a battered...
3 tags
Vanilla Ice Cream
It’s a little over a year and change ago. New York City in August, which means I’m standing at the door of a bar in Greenwich Village next to the NYU law Grad School and I’ve got a Camel light between my lips. It’s the first of the night, just a bit before nine and the Sun is being coy about giving up her stage.
Exhale smoke, watch the street and wait for trouble. The moon...
3 tags
Dust and a Question
I have walked for weeks. Thoughts short, small like the grains of dust that ride in the folds of my skin, my clothes. I breath it, taste it, swallow it while eating along the tracks. Weeks ago I was thrown here, I’ve been walking since. Clothes changed, traded for others. They match the dust and the words spoken at fires along the road.
Keep walking they said. Keep along these tracks, keep...
3 tags
Into the Dust
“So where are you headed?” He asks me over the banging of trestles and iron wheels on iron tracks. He’s wearing a burnous and between his feet are several leather satchels. His skin is dark, a fine chicory coffee with just a hint of cream.
“The end of the line.” I answer because I have no idea where I’m going. We pass lands of blasted red that rise at the edge...
3 tags
Stop Me if You've Heard This One
A man with coyote’s face sits at the bar, a flat-topped, broad-brimmed hat on his head. There are holes cut in the top to allow his small, furry ears to poke through.
The rest of him is ordinary. Denim on his legs, leather on his back and boots on his feet. Even his hands, which rest on the bar around an empty glass, are those of a man, a laborer with clean, thick fingers.
The bartender...
4 tags
Five Cans of Tecate
Stepping out of the cold, I stepped into a riot of New Years Eve. Jammed and shellacked together by sweat and optimism the crowd moved. I’d been swallowed and was waiting my turn at digestion next to a scrap of a Tyson’s television dinner and one of those chocolates filled with liquor, a couple chin-deep in each other and man having an argument with the voice inside him...
Jack: The Januariad →
jackrusher:
Every year a rotating cast of reckless writers undertake the challenge of crafting and making public one complete piece of prose — any form, any style, any length, so long as it’s complete — for each weekday in the month of January. The rules are simple: each piece must be written entirely on the…