In Mongolia, sheets of milky ice stretch over flat plains, go on and on and on, a monotony so strong, very little breaks it.
Nooses
Ex Teacher
Mr. Morgan considered his situation. He couldn’t keep paying this much to Eleanor, not without finding another job, not while he struggled to feed himself with cheap cereal and canned garbage; he’d lost wi-fi and every day he went to the local library to browse job opportunities. Online tutoring wasn’t an option without an internet connection at home. And face to face teaching… he’d lost all taste for that. But he delayed applying for the bottom-dweller jobs. He perused zero qualification entry positions that made his soul quiver with fear. It seemed there remained a part of himself to lose.
Eleanor smirked and swung her legs around to leave their table.
5 Excerpts from “Fragments for Ken Smith”
…the men who survived the failure of media
Self-Checkout
I wonder when was the first time I knew I existed. Watching over the self-checkout in Price Mart, I’m wondering if this even counts as existence. What does one have to do in order to count as a life-form?
The Immovable I
Walking down my street in Seattle, I’m thinking of Baltimore again. I liked my street there, the way all the brick glowed when the sun set in the summer. Kunal and I had everything we needed there: the Brewer’s Art two blocks away for a weekly cocktail date, Viccino’s around the corner for a two-dollar slice, the patch of park around the Monument for taking in fall foliage. At Dooby’s, you could watch the students and remember how it felt to end classes at noon on a Friday.
Wide Angle Perspective
The urn is shaped like a wide-angle lens. Leona can’t help but chuckle when the undertaker’s assistant places the alabaster thing on the spotless counter top. It’s exactly one week after the funeral ceremony. She already knew about her dad’s choice of urn, having seen the picture in the catalogue. Yet it looks more ridiculous than she had anticipated. A prop instead of the real thing.