Came so fast; couldn’t come fast enough; gone before you know it.  Summer!  Traffic jams, last minute work […]

She locked the door and turned off the lights. Together, they moved bookcases in front of the door and piled books atop of them; book towers failed to cover the door’s slim glass window. Then they stacked chairs atop and in front of the bookcases, but they appeared flimsy.

They were up and away before they had time to think further. Mike held him by the armpits, but Patch’s breathing grew erratic and his cries were worse for being muffled. They staggered. Her boots dislodged rocks that cartwheeled and got faster as they fell toward the greens of the canopy which blurred the valley below. It looked as if she’d kidnapped and bludgeoned him. Patch was oblivious to all this, his eyes were shut so tight they might have been sewn. All that was left was to hustle him away from the scene of the crime and into a shallow grave. Who needed the Taliban when she took such care of him?

This was a unique set in the history of The Other Band. Rather than the usual wrangling to get “his” songs in the set (and the requisite usual wrangling of the others for their songs), this set felt like the straightforward dictum of a divorce settlement. It was about fifteen songs long. There were five band members.

This is our Serbia. This
Is our Syria. This is our neo-
Nazi superiority. This
Is our Selma, our Watts, our Boston.

You’ve been winning the chalking and charcoal wars
against acne—so you hope your face is inert and in the clear
when Miz Beanson names CeeCee Irons as your lab partner.

Burgundy, the colour of cherries
we got at the Farmer’s market in Germany-
We paid for strawberries; the cherries came free.
They tasted sweeter.

“It was my little secret that I was reaming out this stupid jerk. I liked that feeling.” He could see a solitary tear make its way down her cheek. “Maybe I liked it too much. Now I can’t stop doing it.”

Every flower that catches sight of you
Begins to bloom against the season

Mauna walked around the park thrice before going back home. She stood in her balcony and watched families and bachelors lingering in theirs, scarcely meeting each other’s eyes. Dark and dry, the evening hung itself out like a roll of film, inverting everything into deep blue negatives.