LOBSTER ICE CREAM A tragicomedy in two acts Act One, Scene One Upstage right, Jude Wintermilk sits hunched over a desk lit by a small lamp in an otherwise dark bedroom. While threading a blank sheet of paper into his thrift store typewriter—a barely functioning antique acquired for its twee appeal—he begins thinking out loud […]
You start out thinking everybody needs to be saved, and then you end up fighting to save yourself. En memoria de Pedro. Late Sunday afternoon and the dogs are barking. Winter is over, just like that, and Summer is suddenly a fireball. Spring is the sort of thing children will one day ask […]
Often people ask me, what do you do there? I’ve never been able to give a satisfactory answer, something understandable from a normal life. And that’s the rub about my life. It has not been normal. Certainly, at this point, I’m incapable of forming the correct words. I am too dirty and when I bathe, […]
You’re running late. Poor planning. Stuck in Brooklyn traffic, waiting for the Queens Midtown Tunnel to clear. Must be an accident, the driver says. You consider the importance of the appointment with the billionaire who owns Dr Pepper. Sure, there’s background and a good reason, but you choose not to think about any of that. […]
Her mental illness was hidden by the general insanity all around No one really noticed people who could partly function Half-assed efforts were getting pretty normal But if you took a magnifying glass from a box and held it up to her face you could find the dangerous behavior Yeah, she was capable of anything […]
I was talking with my gardener using my version of the Spanish language. He’s an old guy of sixty-four who looks like seventy-four and he says, you know I used to work in Houston. Oh yeah, says I. Doing what? Well, I was young then and I worked in a bar. I’d do whatever they […]
i was the blind man in the art museum and you were the stranger who sat down beside me and described in the most beautiful way that which i longed to see and i liked your sweet voice so i moved my hand toward yours and you let them touch and we sat there a […]
Most mornings about ten o’clock she’d leave her apartment and head for the art museum. The path was indirect since she wanted to avoid the addicts and drunks, the panhandlers, who’d yell at her. Bad teeth and globs of spit and when they got too close, she’d dodge into an alley. Unhappy people of the […]
Dear Jan and Aaron, So, I’m standing here feeling sorry for myself, what with the pain and all, and so I doubled my dose of Gaba pain killers, the kind that stalk your nerves searching for messages to squash before the brain gets ahold of them. Surprise, I’m getting very high. If you don’t know […]
(this is the last excerpt from Horrendum Pudendum before publishing, later this year) The above bit of dialogue was the last thing he remembered saying to Percy before his memory blacked out. He’d asked the question not long after getting back to her place from West Seventy6, which meant a large portion of the night […]
tin hats 