Fiction

I heard some girls say that God was absent from our town. All the girls at the all-girls Catholic school had experienced something that fell under the nuance of rape. If a girl at the all-girls Catholic school experienced rape, they were to fill out paperwork in the counseling office and file it in the main office. When Abigail had sexual violence done to her by Jude Thomas from the all-boys Catholic school, she filled out paperwork in the counseling office and filed it in the main office.

April 27, 1994

Dear S,

Sam Knowles, political exile adrift in Paris, has bought his plane ticket home. But the day before he leaves, after saying goodbye to a few characters in the building where he lives, he meets with Alexandre Bakelunde, an Australian actor on a weird mission. There seem to be people out to kill the movie star. The two hide out in the hotel room of a fellow Aussie, a writer intent upon inventing a new school of literature.

Chapter 23

Patrol, jungle, ambush, monsoon. Done, thought Stevie, who now ate only cooked meals, showered daily, wore fresh fatigues, polished boots. Except for the tropic heat and menial work, life on the base was considered pleasant.

Editing

Two Americans in their early twenties, members of a Baroque orchestra, lived in Basel. They hated Switzerland, but their particular talents earned them a living there. He played cor anglais. She played viola da gamba, a choice she’d made, she crowed, because she liked something big between her legs. A dinner guest, a happy spectator of her outrageousness, prodded her, “Cello’s bigger, no?” 

“She’s gone to the U.P,” they would say, or, “She gone up North.”

Despite the fact that, technically, up North and the U.P. were two distinct regions. When it came to where Marilyn had disappeared to everyone knew it was the U.P. even if some referred to it, not really correctly, as up North.

 What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified desire
What is it women in men do require?
The lineaments of gratified desire

– William Blake

On “Funhouse”

Amidst the pedestrian layout of Prague, perpendicular to the winding cobblestone footpaths, busts are inlayed into the streetscapes of the city. Out of the building walls, metallic heads of figures from prominent poets and illustrators to scientists and activists protrude onto the sidewalks, introducing frozen avatars of contributors who stand memorialized amongst the fluid mosaic of passersby.