The starchy white pillowcase left faint red imprints on Lana’s cheek. She blinked, considered—for a beat too long—just where an insinuating shaft of sunlight was coming from. Her bedroom windows faced east, their azure-colored curtains vibrantly awash with the morning sun. This light was from the west and these curtains were taupe, tawdry. Tubes itched at their points of insertion. Not her condominium then, but St. Barnabas’s Hospital. It took longer, lately, to distinguish. To lay claim to a sense of place.
Cobalt Blues
“My levees are washing away like New Orleans,” Terry tells me on the phone. “There goes a chunk now. I have sung Broadway tunes for days, but my signal hasn’t penetrated their dead zone. Did I close the windows? Pay my taxes? One is always unprepared for death.”
Beside Myself by Ann Morgan
This is a novel about identical twins. Not a heartwarming twin story, except for maybe one chapter near the end, but by then your heart is so cold and frozen you wonder if it will ever thaw. A bit of hope enters in the last chapter but you have seen hope dashed many times in this gruesome tale. In fact, a reader who comes through with a warm heart is likely more screwed up than these twins ever were.
The Circle by Dave Eggers
Ever wonder what it might be like to live in a world where one tech company was attempting, for lack of a better phrase, to take over the world? I know, I know… seems ridiculous to even read that last sentence. Imagine how I felt writing it. It’s not like there’s tech companies out there right now attempting to do the very same thing by infiltrating every waking second of your life, tracking your every moment and purchase, and slowly but surely making privacy a thing of the past.
The Room of Wonders
After Jay told Miguel and their stepfather Hank about his firefighter training—climbing three-story ladders, rushing upstairs as controlled fires raged, running sprints at the college track—Miguel made his first mistake. He rocked back in his barstool at the kitchen counter and looked at his younger brother. “Yeah, well, I’ve still got it. That squat Mexican speed thing. Waste you on the pavement.”
Three Poems
Linguistic Exogamy
In this dream the house is silent. My mother closes
the piano. She opens her mouth and I add in
her words, like fear, and adoration, the terrible
translation of a hygienic room. Even then
it is different from what I want to hear,
nor have I felt it. I used to call her fascist because
she would not understand. I would let sunlight
expand quiet between us. The limitations of
specialized language have given us much grief.