Fiction & Poetry

5 min read

I’m just too glad that Delia and the kids weren’t at the house when that girl came by last night. She was just too much trouble and it was a flat-out pain-in-th…

11 min read

Diary of Anne Schwarzkopf, Walmart Customer Service Associate June 17 — I’ve been working here a week and someone has eaten my lunch again. Gloria says that it’…

8 min read

Marta Stephanopoulos gave a heaving sigh as she pressed the red-phone button on her cell. Unable to speak at the moment, her fingers flew to her temples where…

40 min read

Mary Mercator could remember the very exact moment at which she first fell in love. She was in senior English class, it was about 1:13 pm, unseasonably hot in t…

15 min read

It’s early on a Tuesday afternoon and two friends are fighting over a soccer ball on an oversized pool table which uses other soccer balls as billiards. The for…

17 min read

Okay. So I can see how my recent downfall might be seen as just another junky’s story, but here’s the thing: I’ve got it under control. I only use it to manage…

26 min read

After work Clara would sometimes take the stairs down to the dock where the aged longshoremen would drink beers after loading or unloading whatever cargo they h…

9 min read

It was a tearful afternoon when Ma died and I promised to straighten myself out. It was a whole lot to promise and if I hadn’t been high I might not have promis…

14 min read

One crisp and cool fall day, Gregory took the day off from work and decided to take a walk in the park catty-corner from his apartment building. The park was be…

1 min read

...And what was so goddamn great about being twenty-three? Rage wracked and sad, left alone in a great big home Endlessly reading useless novels, smoking ch…

1 min read

When a camera aperture opens through dust And gyroscope top's got no patience When wax apples are juicy and snap And a broken heart feels like pending litigatio…

1 min read

The mind of a poet is essentially suspect For it is full of the lies of its teachers. The fresh mind of a scientist must reject The naïve pontifications of…

2 min read

Hey there, Jimmy! You've got it all figured out! You got a job down at the corner store, Enough money to rent out the casita In your parents' backyard. Plenty t…

1 min read

He wants to write his own happy ending And I hate to break it to him, but he can’t. Lord knows I’ve fallen into that trap before. The story’s awful when y…

1 min read

I wish that some Hollywood producers had the balls To make superhero movies with some chutzpah. Coming this summer, Clark Kent is gunning for a raise, But w…

1 min read

It doesn't matter whether You're a communist Or a capitalist Or a unilateral naturalist. It doesn't matter if you're a monarchist, democrat, anarchist, republi…

1 min read

To Paul Z. Stoddard Red Foo and Sky Blu died a long time ago; Replaced by your enduring love of Foucault. Embrace the pain, the drudgery of work, And forg…

1 min read

What’s it like to be a cable news camera operator? To go to work everyday to catch accidental spittle On your lens and face from some human impersonator?…

1 min read

Gated reverb finger snaps and sizzling high-hat sixteenth-notes Choral bass drum thump on the downbeat Punctuates the sawing organ swells Then recedes ov…

1 min read

Toothy grin where have you gone? To the bottom of some anonymous hole Under splintering damp wood Below white flowery wreaths standing Among the early w…

2 min read

...And other work-related short poetry Hours {#hours} Cold Coffee, gritty And oily with time, just like Myself as hours pass. Nobody Knows What They Want on…

2 min read

Oh how clever. How clever you are. Bedecked in your ersatz splendor, You know you've really gotten far, Soaked in simple syphilitic ardor. Americans love to pla…

2 min read

Two ravens alight in Sunset Park, No shoulder to set upon, they talk: “Used to be so good,” said one. “But was it though?” said the other. “It is so easy…

1 min read

Jesus, scoop my eyes out with melon-ballers. I can't stand this godawful world no more. Phone lines are full of collections callers And my inconstant girl…

1 min read

To Tifani Tamayo Eerie. Does this mean that it's that time In life when there are more endings Than beginnings? That the rime Of age begins to weigh on th…

1 min read

Big baller, shot caller, Oh\! That’s me, my dear friend. I’ve roped the dope Won’t drop the soap Yeah, I’m true to the end. And at the end of the day…

4 min read

Paranoia. In the cracks and crevices of this Babel-like city. They’ve managed to fool everyone, But they haven’t fooled me. The tower’s falling A…

2 min read

We needed an awful big house to hide ourselves from each other And that’s what we got in November of two-thousand-and-three. Even my father struggled to say…

1 min read

There’s something fatal about Surf Wax America: That after the sun’s gone down for the Fall, Thus do our young lives come to their sad end. We suffer the…

1 min read

Gimme a segment of that sweet potato, Slice me up a polygon of that pumpkin, Don't trouble me with degrees of donuts, Because three-point-one-four is Pi D…

1 min read

Like the buffalo on the plain Startled into a run by rain Children on this particular day Are more ready to play. Their random movements Evocative of qu…

1 min read

Once, my heart would not give way. It was a decadent sadness, A sweet hell in which to decay. Indulgent and cloying, nonetheless. And it couldn't be lust…

1 min read

To W.C.W. God bless you Mr. Rosewater For all that you have done. While we pore through SQL, You’re absolved of your sins. Tabbing through endless Sprea…

1 min read

Mangooooooooos Mangomangomangomango Frutas\! Mangooosfruta\! Mangomangomangomango The cool wind blows off of the deafening surf Of Santa Monica — where…

2 min read

Standing in the rain, a cigarette freshly lit, My hand serving as an awning for its burning ember, Funnelling smoke up the sleeve of my windbreaker, I won…

1 min read

To D. She smiled and four years fell away from her face. Laughter and tears and memories of mine and hers Vanished in a fraction of a second, sublimated to…

1 min read

The river flows ten-thousand years, And yet its name never changes. Its course whips wildly on the landscape, Yet you can stand on its shore dry-footed. The str…

1 min read

Superlatives fail. When I look into the pattern of your eyes Or feel the soft touch of your lips on mine, Drown in the smell of your long hair, Gasp to calm my…

1 min read

At the Lemongrass Cafe you can get a bowl of pho For just a little bit more than eight dollars, but there’s A rule about charging at least ten bucks on a ca…

1 min read

In the wetlands of Las Vegas— To the East, below the mountains— Are innocent melodies And naïve fantasies. Among the tall grasses— Gently rustling, quie…

4 min read

There is a kind of decadence in savoring the sensations That I’ve been feeling of late about you A kind of emotional psychic series of perambulations That awake…

3 min read

It was a misty cloudy day in Victoria, Canada. My sister, Rory, and I had breakfast and then we walked to the Royal British Columbian Museum. It was a cool muse…

14 min read

The midwest isn't really a place where you find a lot of sailing enthusiasts. It's much more of a pontoon-boat slash power-boat kind of place. People want the r…

4 min read

When I was about 11 years old, my mother bought my sister and I a crappy old tandem bicycle one summer at a yard sale. I remember getting on it and saying to m…

285 min read

A Hollywood comedy set in a TV writers' room in Los Angeles. Nate Silas, a hungover but talented young writer, navigates the entertainment industry alongside his older, more serious business partner Gerald Goldstein. When a reluctant phone call pulls Nate away from set, he's drawn into a tangle of personal and professional complications that force a reckoning with the carefully crafted version of himself he's assembled since leaving home. Set against LA's relentless sunshine and culture of self-reinvention, The Soybean Social Club is a wry, sharp-edged look at the American Dream — the survival fantasies we build, and what it costs to live inside them.

373 min read

A speculative near-future novel set in Seattle, New Cascadia. Journalist Benjamin Pontchartrain travels to interview Amaryllis, a celebrated audio-visual-conceptual artist, and finds himself caught between the glossy surfaces of technological utopianism and what lies beneath. Structured through competing voices — interviews, citations, epigraphs drawn from Neal Stephenson and Carson McCullers — the novel asks what we miss when we look away at the wrong moment. Named for Stephenson's observation about the collapsed Alexandria lighthouse, it is a meditation on Silicon Valley ambition, the quiet erosion of institutions, and the stories we tell ourselves about the future we are building.