“Well, that’s it, boys. Every pipe in the city. Hand me that rag, will you?” said Joey.

“How can you tell?” asked Garland.

“See that gauge right under there? The one with the needle poking all the way on the right? And see how there’s that black bar, with the...

She threw the dart like a hunter threw a javelin. It hit the mark right in the shoulder, brought it down clean, 50 points.

He drank his beer like he'd found the true oasis, memories of those other lying wisps banished from thought. He'd been sent to stock up for his...

We write for our vacuums. That they might pull in a thread or two of interest and spin something together. Strong writing need not be loud but dense, and as black holes pull larger, but less massive, bodies toward it to dance, so does an honest tale.

My pen's been...

There wasn't anything left, the last I checked. The jar lay opened, empty, save for an empty offer, a dusting of its previous contents. It sat there cloyingly, as if it was all still within reach, but upon trial the remnants just barely scoot by your fingers at each pass...

"If not now, then when?" said the poster in the apartment hallway.
We walked by it, all the same, as we did every day. Up three flights of too-brightly-lit stairs and into our single-unit flats that each housed three. We washed our bargain-bought vegetables and cooked our expired grains...

Ten then a one, resembles patterns that flatter ‘em
The tatter broken casket offered Saturn a son 
But open patter sought recategory and run

Four and forty more, staked their sortie on swords Present the fort a flowered speech and court the cowards to sleep
Thirty for three, among the shoes on their feet The bells were notched for every hour the sots were basking in power
It's twenty to two, the...

Seventy-seven, to mark the end of the heavens the part they said that would never be, is heading for me.
Sixty in six, they card the cheatsters and tricks and with a bow of the hand, they let the fraudsters their land
It's fifty to five, they ask...

"I don't know, I don't know who that is," she said, handing me back the paper.
She wouldn't have, I suppose, she was much too young. Two years made a hell of a difference in the 90's. Like dog years, those. Everyone acted like dogs, anyway.
I gave up trying to convince...

A heavy pen bears lamentable words. It etches into the carbon plane an inescapable experience, an emotion branded from now until the end of time, be that dissolved into a mush of pulp or borne unto the sky as withered ash. Does the emotion clash with the underlying being? Does...