Late September 2016 Though Ren is sewn to James, through the fact James is usually a good sempai, helping Ren with homework and navigating the community college, and through a combination of shared ethnicity, the ability to speak Japanese, James’ English, which helps order at McDonald’s, and the fact that James is gorgeous — James can be a pain in the ass. He is — what is the word? —
September 2016 Emery thinks they are a couple. He’s tidying his work station, muttering about the increasing number of pens gone missing, when they enter. The tall one, bendy as overcooked spaghetti, leads the short one, broad chested, into the Learning Commons. The tall one shows the short one how to sign in at the front desk, and they share a joke, laughing. Cute. Sweet. Boyfriends. Emery is wiping down
Moose rose from his stool in Mother’s Saloon at last call and tossed four twenties on the bar, not knowing how much he owed and not caring. He strolled out the front door and onto Ocean Beach. He peeled off his t-shirt and tossed it in the sand, then lumbered toward the water in his shorts and sandals. Thirty feet from the shoreline, he laid down, inhaled the salty night
THREE metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength. What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to
Wes was nearly done writing a long letter he had been working on for two days. He put the pen to his lips and listened to the wind blow outside. Another cold and lonely Christmas had come and gone, but working on the letter gave him special purpose. He lived in a small storage shed in his friend Larry’s back yard. In the ‘60s, Wes thought he would be drafted
I held back my breath for a time, but you didn’t. You had been to the very edge of the world. You knew the sound of the wind, low and constant, thrumming against the land, the ice, the sea. You’d seen how the pale gray-green earth disappeared beneath ice and snow, and then how that white arc of land thrust into the slate colored sea. How that arc dwindled towards
