No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
In just his boxers, he sat straddle over the plexiglass wall. Paul carefully steadied himself to bring his leg round and face the water. As he edged off he counted down numbers twice and then made the drop.
Underneath, it was deadly quiet except a faint hum, likely the pool’s heater. Paul wanted to go right down and feel the bottom. It was unpleasant when he didn’t.
Isabel sautéed the onions, garlic, and ginger she’d chopped before adding the curry spices to the pan. When the aroma was right, she stirred in coconut milk and added the chicken. It would be highly seasoned, the way Alex liked it. How much peanut butter would it take, she wondered, to ensure that he’d suffer a fatal allergic reaction? Not just swelling and discomfort, but cardiac arrest.
I was twenty-four when this all happened. In my late forties, I’d have friends who’d watch their parents die, put kids in ICU, euthanise their cat; you get the last gift of adulthood then, when it, or something like it, happens. You start thinking about people differently.
L.A. waiters and cops and clerks still have screenplays in their back pockets and auditions at 9am which make them call in sick at their day jobs.
If you think poetry is in the service of something I feel sorry for you.
The boiler was an oven, three stories high, tiled inside with innumerable iron plates. It incinerated bark and limbs and waste wood to power the generators that ran the paper mill, burning twenty-four-seven, except when, like that afternoon twenty years ago, it needed to be overhauled. That’s when they fed people like Mo and me into the boiler.