Words, words, words.
Hamlet
After Illium
ARTWIFE || Spring 2024
The year her father died, Emily went to the beach. She had never been in the habit of going, not here, not in the miniature summer squeezed between winters, long days hiding the short gasp of light huddled in the middle of the year, sweat running down sunscreen leaving thin dull tan lines. It was too much. She had liked to go in California, where she was from and where she was supposed to still be, when it felt real, the beach, felt like something you could hold onto, believe in, something you could trust would be there for you, when you needed it. Like a lover graduated to a friend. But here, in the Midwest, it was like an affair, something done quickly and with too much thought, our o’er hasty love, it was like kids behind a strip mall in a borrowed car, it was like a midafternoon rendez vous, getting it over with because you could, because it was there, taking what was offered before someone came home. It felt dirty and cheap and thin, going to the beach in the shallow midwestern summer. But it was there. And so, one day, she went.
Irregardless
Lotus-Eater || Fall 2024
And anyway the other way you could tell they were a couple was how they were sitting. A little too easily. Like they were new at it. Like they were new at it and just beginning to sense it. Beginning to lose the thread, the shape, the control of the story they had been telling, and not telling, all this time. Maybe now, in the last few weeks, days even, were they beginning to think, about each other and to themselves, that it was the awareness of the Being A Couple, rather than the Being A Couple itself, that was, in fact, what it meant to be a couple. So it was an ontological question, a phenomenological question, an issue of becoming rather than being. In other words, Emily thought, moving her scuffed and sagging bag just enough to make it look like she was being accommodating, to all these sullen interlopers trudging through the burnedout door, while in fact making no room at all for anyone to sit anything like next to her, it was a knowledge that would do them in, a knowledge expressed indelibly in language, a knowledge that they could never again in fact actually Be A Couple again.
Proscenium
Hominum || May 2024
Well it finally happened—I bought a plant. I’m not sure when exactly, maybe last week, perhaps last month. All I know is for a while it was an idea, and then it was a thing. I knew it was a matter of time, I suppose, somewhere deep in my brain. But there are so many things in there that never happen and never will. So you can never be sure. But this one, this one was real.
V says it’s because of the weather, but V doesn’t know what she’s talking about. V thinks I’m depressed, because of the weather. Or, that the weather is an operative factor, an accomplice, a sidekick, an obsequious Polonius to my general Claudian state of being. Or, to mix dramatic metaphor, V-as-Trinculo, hearing songs of storms in the wind of her mind. But V is wrong, possibly about the consequence and certainly about the cause. I do not feel that I am depressed, although I’ve been told that’s one of the signs. Then of course that’s the thing about signs, they can mean many different things at once.
Perihelion
Tangled Locks Journal || July 2023
At a thousand million miles the girl was eight and prone to singing. The air when they went out at night was the crisp, clean air of clear skies and stiff fingers, miles and miles of nothing but open cold. There were howling things hidden away behind the rolling ground, ground that went on in every way from the house, on towards the mountains hidden in the dark. She would sing to the howling things, sing their language that she didn’t understand, sing at them while they set up and they got ready. She had for her birthday her big hat, very soft and very new for she’d only just been given it. She would put the hat way down over her ears and sing sing sing. Sing like the stars do, across the sky in the dark night.
Things That Might Happen On The Way There
Mirrors Reflecting Shadows: A Trevor Project Charity Anthology (Anxiety Press, Outcast Press, and Roi Fainéant Press) || June 2023
It was a shortcut, alright, but the risk of it was the drifts, and they were the wrong places to end up. They were bad there, what with the way the bridge to the overpass held up one side and the side of the building the other, and it would save a good fifteen minutes but you had to watch what you were doing. The snow came up to his ankles, sometimes his knees, and if you let it really get away from you, the paying attention and the looking for the drifts hidden by more snow and places where the ground was out of sight, had been for months, would be for months, and sloped away or kind of just dropped off, if you weren’t paying attention you might go right in to the hip, like you had a goddamn cast on, a cast that split up into a million tiny cold pieces that all found their way through the bullshit coat with its bullshit sub-zero rating and jeans and socks and right to the skin, like they were made to do it, made to find wherever it was you hated getting cold the most and burn you good.
Santa Anita
Progenitor || May 2023
His real name was Son Of The 101 but Mike called him Rent-And-A-Half cause that’s what he’d be when he won. Just about ten minutes now. Called him that in his head—mentally—and spoken out loud to no one—verbally—and in faded pencil, hard to make out on the folded edge of the scorecard, bright and dusty in the hot slipping sun. His was the five-seventeen, ten names in straight ink rows. Sometimes you had to write something down to make it so.
Sanguis Jovis
Excerpt of novel project The Nunnery
The Collidescope || March 2023
Sanguis Jovis! Blooede on th’ floore from cut in th’ skine was th’ firste farthest thing shaed saw th’ tastæ a’d th’ tastæ in th’ mouth waſ rich a’d deep like th’ blooede th’ blooede of Jupiter Sangiovese ma mere bois th’ bois du roi rah rah rah thrice chears for th’ pennaeman penne in th’ pot o’ th’ pot o’ golde a’d th’ goldean hoarde goldean light from goldean sun don goldean hair o’ Racheale faire.
La Neige
Excerpt of novel project The Nunnery
JAKE || December 2022
It was just about that time, now. Emily with great self-control scrolled through but did not continue the conversation with Rachel, messages from another life, another time. It was real, and would still exist in the morning. She backed out and found again her father, whose name was almost her name, whom she’d seen years before as a hero and hours before as a phantom. She tapped a heart on a message and sent from a saved album a photo with a tree, father and daughter in the warm light of winter. It was late in California and even later in Chicago, but he’d see it when he woke. Emily with her hat and her pride and her memories stood up and made for the pitch black door to hell.
Madeleine, Entre-Deux-Mondes
Excerpt of novel project The Winemakers || Pushcart Prize Nominee
The Militant Grammarian || July 2022
Madeleine stood out in the still night air, the tree ruffling its leaves around for something to do. It used to be so much bigger, when they were small. In the sixth arrondissement she’d sat with wine and bread and book, hearing Oasis and listening to the evening come in. There was a ping pong ball on the ground marred by dirt and dent. The window was small but in the free European fashion opened wide and in full. She could lean her head out, her whole body out, folded at the waist like a tailored suit and feeling the courtyard below. Between her fingers the solid creases of the ball, frozen crepitance in molded plastic, were rough and alien. There was energy from the windows in the other flats, from the courtyard with flowers and lights strung out like he was. Three hours before he was two hours late in getting back.
The Trouble With Books
Santa Ana River Review || Spring 2022
It was the books that were the problem. They’d grown in number and they’d grown in weight, and it’d been maybe not totally sensible to just keep buying them but you never think you’re going to leave, not really, because why would you? Because who would, because what would be the point, because what could go wrong. It’d always been a problem for some future Allison, some poor creature uprooted from home and burdened with literature. Well, the creature had arrived, arrived and transmuted, like a wafer in a church, into this Allison, sweating in the living room with the time running out.
Bibamus, Moriendum Est
Excerpt of novel project The Winemakers
Misery Tourism || February 2022
“Rage.”
“What?”
“Love them. Fucking Tom Morello man.”
“Right.”
Sing, Danton, of the endless contest, that fell many a cup to errant shot, and many a player to errant drink. Sing, Danton the Earthshaker, Surveyor of Man, sing of the great games upon the tattered lawn, under the spiteful moon, waging eternal chaos upon the near-flung waves, riding in forever as if on the breath of Poseidon, the way a chorus will build and build, on a feted bed of strings and winds, rising and rising at the urging of man and instrument, until finally crashing, with a mighty explosion, only to begin it all once more. So the waves come on, under the watch and pull of the moon, and so the games are played, so the battle is drawn, so the sides are well-chosen, and the champions well-fitted, plied amply with drink, wine like the wine-dark sea, ale of light and dark like the passing of days and nights, libations from strange lands filled with strange effects—sing, Danton, in your husky growl, your triumphant call, your indifferent bark and mighty bulk, sing of the folly and the glory of man.
Just Like The Night
Rhodora Magazine || February 2022
And in the morning it was still raining. Enough only to hear the water meet the concrete, chipped and cracked in forming crumbling steps to the rusting door, with a rhythm that was probably soothing to other types of people. There wasn’t sun but there was light, greyed and hazy through the barred windows, revealing slowly, minute by minute and song by song, the weathered living room, the cheap wine still plentiful but the vodka basically gone, gradually making the bare bulb pointless in the overhead dome, casting out of shadows their paling faces and drying hair, cutting up lines and turning up speakers and pointedly disbelieving the clock that said all those promises of the smaller, darker hours were becoming stale and half-formed memories in the conscious light of day. And the eyes bleed and the mind runs after so many hours, here on top of the world. But there’s nothing to stop you, save for the night not yet dead and the day not yet broke but even then it’s all perception, perception reflection connection rejection, because age they all say is just a number. And ain’t that just like the night, to play tricks when you’re trying to be so goddamn quiet, here in the rising morning and the fading light and all those promises it whispers about the future.
Tritogeneia
Excerpt of novel project The Seachamber
Twelve Winters Journal || December 2021
Elizabeth stood in the shower and wished for a drink. It really was too bad, that one couldn’t bring the glass along with, but even mediocre Merlot could be washed out by bathwater. Of course there would be wine at dinner, but it would have to be managed with care—Mrs. Wallace’s motherly voice rang out from the future, a second glass already, Lizzie, oh my—to avoid early catastrophe. Although one could hardly expect otherwise, really, than that the sharp, disembodied voice of one’s mother, hanging like a Shakespearean skull amongst intemperate Casa del Mar water and identical Casa del Mar tiling, would accost her even now, as a phantom, in the shower, about wine.
But the wine would be there, at dinner, and that was the important thing, something to facilitate the evening, to dim the light of prying eyes.
To The Dressing Room
Excerpt of novel project The Seachamber
Fatal Flaw || November 2021
Because he simply had to have some coffee first, Elizabeth stood outside the lush Calypso Coffee House waiting for Michael to search, and to find, and to park the car, and to walk, walk, walk, people and cars up and down the street, up and down, indefatigably, and she listened to the music pouring out from the terrace, and rolled her hair-tie on off her timeless wrist, bare wrist, she’d lost her watch, and her sister Leslie was to be married, today, it was happening, and Michael had lost his shirt for the wedding (because of course), and they’d run into some ex of his some Melissa last night (because of course), and Elizabeth had gotten into grad school (certainly not of course) and how did that happen the younger sister married first, what a travesty, Mom said, did say would continue to say until Elizabeth was waiting for Michael not to park but at the end of an aisle of her own, and her wrist, her body, was raw, exposed, bare, barren, infertile, unfertile, as-of-yet-not-suitably-proven-to-be-fertile, time left to fall about her with no regulation minutes and hours running this way and that in total chaos, carved from the marble of antiquity, Michael said one night, about her wrists, in vino veritas, quite funny almost charming at the time, anyway, now just strange now he says nothing don’t tell Elizabeth, don’t ever mention lost shirts, or lost exes, or lost plans in life, Leslie was to be married, and the wrist had no watch, and Michael was taking his time (what an odd phrase, who else’s would it be?), most assuredly not allowing himself to think that his parallel parking skills needed any work, even as he forwarded and reversed, forwarded and reversed.
The Usurpation
Or: How the Honor of Store Location 1293 of the Ragin’ Raccoon Pizza House Franchise was Avenged and Restored to Its Once and Future Champion
The Trouvaille Review || May 2020
“I could’ve been a contender,” Tommy mutters, washing dishes and staring bullets towards the make line. He hears the common gossip around him, swirling in time with the increasingly brackish water, but pays it little mind. He’s focused on Dino—real name Devon Middlebrooks—who’s flipping dough to preposterous heights while managing simultaneously to smile at Carrie—probably on break from Clark’s, or is it Smith & Brown’s?—and making her laugh that sautéed little laugh of hers that used to make Tommy’s stomach flip, long ago when such trivial concerns as love held weight. ‘Dino’, as everyone goes along with, inexplicably, has thus managed the second great feat of his life, elbowing Tommy back to dishes so that he, that curly-haired and greasy-grinned imposter, can prepare for the pizza Olympics: district-wide, next month, all-encompassing, and where Tommy should rightfully be, if there were any justice left in the world. (The imposter and usurper known widely as Dino’s first great feat, of course, being convincing everyone of some ambiguous Italian heritage, which both lead to the ubiquitous nickname and played no small part, certainly, in securing for ‘Dino’ Tommy’s rightful place as champion, despite the fact that, as Tommy certainly knows, the dish that the Ragin’ Raccoon Pizza House takes its name from is, in fact, American. Steve, the indefatigably incompetent Assistant Manager, has at best a tenuous grasp of world geography). Tommy catches the lip of the pot he’s washing on his thumb, right at the intersection of flesh and nail, and only notices when a hint of red drifts in the brown. But! No matter—no time anymore for such trivialities. His destiny has been wrenched from him, stolen by a dull-witted playboy with greasy hair and limited vocabulary. This great offense to righteousness cannot stand.
Before September
The Tulane Review || Spring 2019
The rain had stopped, earlier—well stopped perhaps too generous, it had never actually rained to begin with. Rather the streaked-grey skies had hinted with a whisper, promising something about moisture, but it was only a bluff, really, and you could tell by the pause in the wind’s breath that there was no substance behind the threat. And now the breeze ambled in through the doorway at an even more gradual rate than the pace of conversation, pretending to refresh the octogenarian bar without putting any actual work towards it. It was early afternoon, probably, although this was only a guess; the establishment had been around longer enough to know the danger that clocks presented, and never kept them visible. The woman was wearing a white shirt, not an ordinary, simple-to-make-sense-of kind of shirt, but one of those shirts that hangs in only partially definable ways somewhere around the shoulders, with minuscule hemlines running around the neck and short, abbreviated sleeves. He thought it looked nice on her, especially seeing as it was, after all, only a white shirt. In any event, the garment did what it could, and that was more than most did, really.
dwhitethewriter 