Testifying at the Shores of Online Dating
Online dater murder mystery.
Antony and Cleopatra
“How’re you coming along with your contest entry?” asked AB at our weekly tête à tête in Barnum’s, a coffee shop with nice brown paneling, artwork on the walls by local school kids, altogether a friendly place. “I’ve been writing here at this table,” I said, but what she didn’t know was that I’d racked up a […]
July Fourth Meditation on Love
It was July Fourth and early enough that most people were still sleeping in their beds unless they’d decided to get up to stake out a spot at a local picnic ground for their family’s festivities, spreading out the blanket or assembling the portable barbecue. It was quiet. Even the cats that usually jump into […]
UltraMicrotome Chekhov
I was arguing in the car with my husband about his best friend. His wife had cried to me over the phone. “Can you believe it? He said that making love to me is like caviar, but sometimes he wants herring.” What a stupid fuck. Taking the side of a friend who’s been sleeping around […]
Transcendentalists
Being that it was sandal weather and time for her feet to reveal themselves to prospective dating partners, Bernice wondered what color to paint her toenails. There were so many choices: reds and pinks were her favorites. Forget those navy blues and blacks those young girls liked; those dark colors were too dense to ride […]
Transcendentalist
She thought a person should reserve black for funerals, unsuitable for making appearances on a young girl’s hands, just like Vaneeta’s in her Sophomore English class, and certainly unsuitable for a white woman in her forties.
Golem Says Goodbye
Not sure what else to say except it was too much, couldn’t be the tough everyone wanted, no blood coursing through my veins like humans tinkered together by He Who Shall Not Be Named, the same ones who called me into being with magic up the yin-yang. On the other hand, don’t I have arms, legs, two eyes that see vultures gliding above? I bury […]
Creation of the Golem
He floats in my dreams like debris from a Shreveport wreck, and in a last ditch effort to ban his jetsam from washing up on my shore and decomposing on freshly clean sheets, I create a profile, list six things I could never do without, six things I don’t know what to do with, tap […]
The Golem
We’ve had this talk before when I didn’t know who else would listen to me standing at the last bench of Leona Canyon—you know the one—dedicated to the Jalquin people circled by dried thistles like petrified tongues? How you drifted from the house before ashtrays were emptied, butts crushed and sealed with a blossom of lipstick, the kind of Revlon your friends could afford, neighbors […]
What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Never meant to return, which is not to say I didn’t have dreams about the redwoods with their fragrant pine needles or the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes you can appreciate a good thing and still have too much of it— Never considered that the whole affair would be a round trip ticket. Unblemished blue skies, a temperate Mediterranean climate […]