“I was ten years old,” she said,
her head resting on
my shoulder. “And the flames
covered the damn sky. Though our
neighbor was actually
lucky. Lucky I
didn’t burn his house. I mean,
motherfucker had it
coming. You don’t run over a girl’s
puppy and expect to
get out scratch free, you know?”
“I too had a neighbor
who ran over
my puppy with his tractor,” I said.
“I think I was also around
ten.”
“And what did you do
about it?” she asked
“Nothing,” I said
“What? But how?”
“Like I said, I was just some
insignificant kid from
the countryside. All I could
do was cry.”
“My God,” she said, “that’s so
fucking lame. Where’s
that neighbor of
yours today?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead.
He was pretty old
when it all happened.”
“If that’s the case then
you have the duty to
go piss on his grave. At least.”
“Um… I wouldn’t know where
that is. And besides,
I learned to forgive.”
“That’s what the weak say. What
kind of man are you?”
“One who doesn’t hold grudges?”
She sighed. “We gotta spend
more time together.”
“And learn from one another?” I asked
She didn’t reply
the dreams of drunks are the strangest
and often most beautiful
It’s what he
came to think this morning
after he woke up with
the empty glass under the blanket
Surely it was that glass
and the liquor in his guts
that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear
as glass
She smiled at him
with diamond teeth and stooped like only
a professional stripper could
next to his limp body
She rolled him onto his belly
and his limpid, numb eyes
watched her grow an icicle from between
her legs
but they closed by the time
she carved a hole into his liver and
began to fuck him until the
ice melted
That was a nice dream,
he concluded
And tonight he’d go to sleep
with two glasses
and a bottle under
the blanket
By Bogdan Dragos This morning too it jumped on his bed and cried and pounced on his face and licked his forehead Now he had a reason to wake up To feed the cat And he had a reason to take showers Because the cat didn’t like to lick a greasy face He had a […]
Written by Bogdan Dragos A lone ant crawled into his hair and went across his forehead to his eyelid He woke up Sand all around him and wood above But this was so far from hell Hell was a thing of the past now Now he had her by his […]
The soul must know something
that the mind
can’t comprehend
That’s what they said when
they watched him
from afar
He slept under the bridge
at night
During the day
the poor fool sat
by the river banks
and threw stones into the water
All day long
With obsession
And when he’d see no other stones
he’d start crying
Few things are more disturbing
to the ear than
the cries of an adult
He had a family some years ago,
they said
Had a wife and kids
And a job in the mine yonder
Then a boulder fell on his
head one day and
along with his mind
it took everything away from him
at least the clouds are
smiling back
they have faces and
souls
and they stare back from their
blue canvas,
down on his dirty, snot-smeared face
It’s a warm
sunny day
but the
bottom of the shallow, dry well
is cold and full
of critters
Well, no problem. The sky is so
pretty with all its smiling
faces that he
won’t even cry. He’ll stay there
and look up. Still waiting
for mother to return and
pick him up
Still waiting
Smiling back at the clouds
Still waiting
the room was cold
and there were
gray flowers
of dampness blooming
all over the walls
He took off
his shoes and
the shoes were the
warmest things in
the room so the kitten
climbed into one of them
He sat on the
mattress in the corner
and petted the cat
in the shoe
He smiled and said
to the kitten, "At least
I have no debts."
Even God agreed
with him. He winked through
the hole in the
ceiling
he takes his old wrinkled
notebook
and the black pen
and finds a
spot from which he can observe
the people
and write down what he
imagines to be their inner
conversations
It passes the time
and it takes away
attention from his own
inner conversations
It’s like a prescription drug
he has to take for the
rest of his life
and the twenty-nine bookshelves
filled with notebooks
he has at home stand as proof of that
But this will be
the last one,
he promises himself
as he closes the notebook and
walks up to the bridge
She came from work pretty early and I knew when I saw her that she quit yet again She changed four jobs in the last five months and got a tattoo that said APATHY on her lower back Her father died five months ago. He died of what's called almost-drunk-driving He was sipping on a beer bottle while driving fairly slow on a country road But the front wheels hit some log or something and the impact triggered the airbag It bloomed in his face and stabbed the beer bottle into his eye causing him a major trauma to the brain R.I.P old man. Maybe not your wife but your daughter sure will miss you She's coming from work dirty and ragged Approaches me and demands a cigarette I give her a small lighter and she tells me to go fuck myself "Well you're done with work early today," I…
You can still be good
at what you do
without liking
what you do
It’s more common than
you’d imagine
The words reflected his face
in the steamy bathroom mirror
He watched
until he felt cold in his
nakedness
and shivered
reached for the towel
wiped
got out of the bathroom
put on clothes
and returned to his writing
desk
The blank page was ugly
unlike the somewhat encouraging
words on the steamy mirror
He reached into the drawer
pulled out the pen
stuck it into his mouth
clicked it
Reached again into the drawer
pulled out the gun
pointed it at the blank page
fired
He wrote for the remainder of
the day and the next
night around the smokey hole
It was finally
beautiful
Daydreaming as a profession 