Communication in this day and age I looked her up on Facebook. Her name was Charlemagne. I asked her if she was the Holy Roman Emperor and she said it’s good to have a goal.

WIDOW, WIDOW, WOLF, WOLF She receives a letter in the post she tears the letter with her teeth to twos then fives then tens and twain again she eviscerates she disembowels and the hardwood floor is poor relief when she sinks onto it like salmon returning to a place she did not know neither did [...]

A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE The dog thinks she smells like hedgerows and a hint of salt. The man says she smells like ashes from his cigarette. And which of us can say whether the other is or is not correct?

SOME JUSTICE We were lying on opposite sides of the bed and whether it was continental drift or the exertion of the full moon’s gravity that pulled us against our fingertips instead of our palms, I cannot say, I will not say. And instead of sleeping I counted a thousand ants marching in needlepoint along [...]

SCALES AND SCALES she said I am Jesse James and I will press the barrel of my gun perpendicular to the nape of your neck and with my gun I will count the ridges along the curvature of your spine and I will deliver a proper accounting I will draw a ledger of your bones [...]

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION There was gravity in her eyes or was it merely gravel, the flying of dust and pebbles to cross every word she wrote, and I could ford every river she laid across my path until the last. In a window you could see the reflection of my hand and the stars [...]

SERMON Do you believe in God in cell phone bills in the currents of electricity that will lift us up in the stead of better men. Do you believe in vodka gimlets do you tender faith in valet parking did you know that fair trade coffee tastes worse than exploitation. The latter has the sweetest [...]

DENOUEMENT Here begins an epic story over a breakfast of pancakes and French toast. Here begins she begins with Odysseus with Athenian chagrin over the most tragic display of maple syrup and butter and powdered sugar and a master’s degree and she will she will she will never amount to anything but a cup of [...]

THE EPILOGUE TO A SHORT FILM OF VARYING PRETENSE I tried to light a cigarette inside the shower and to my surprise it took and then I dropped the match reclined in circles like legs en pointe until it drained itself away. She returned, she beggared the reach of the table-lamp which was the only [...]