[x]

BirdsBirds. Everyone envies them for their flight, the freedom of an aerial infinity, but flying has been done. What about something new?

Bailey watched a flock of geese flying south from the window, past his computer screen, past the game he probably should have been paying attention to. His friend Paris peered over his shoulder.
“Bailey. Hey. Dude, you died.”
“No I didn’t, I’m just zoning out.”
“In the game. The Horde destroyed you.”
Bailey avoided looking away from the birds for another minute, brushing a hand through thick hair. “Did you know it’s easier to get an erection in space?”

This Was ConventionThis is a test. No, not so much a test like, “check check, one, two, three,” but an experiment of sorts. Like the first potato clock or when teachers decided to demonstrate the use of condoms on bananas instead of the fully erect penises of hired male models. I am not explaining this properly. Worry is a troubled girl. The entirety of the Universe breathed a sigh of felicity when she was extracted from her mother’s womb, entering existence in a burst of blinding light and a gurgled scream, rice paper skin and dental floss hair. Not literally. That would be terrifying.

Her birth name wasn’t really Worry. She acquired it in

On Love, In DistanceDear Eve,

I wish I could blame this on alcohol. I wish I could blame this on drugs. I wish I could blame this on the media and violent videogames and ignorant music like what your little brother listens to.

And I don’t know how seriously you take my words,

But the truth is I can only blame you and me (“us” I guess it could be called) for what we say and do and dance to and steal. Thick as thieves. In the thick of it. Thick skulled.

I think there would be no question about feelings if I spent even a minute more at your side on the couch, maybe just watching the news, the dog on his bed snoring tragic, paper-thin dreams of ca

it is not enoughit is not enough just to
miss you. i have to learn
how to walk again; how to
live without meat and
kissing, how to sleep
shaped like a balled up
fist. it is not enough
just to miss you. i have
to adopt twins in
Africa, name them Lost
and Weird, forget to
feed them. i have to
go to every pet store
in America and rescue
all the seahorses. i have
to tattoo D A R K B I R D
inside my lip and stand
in children's playgrounds
like a broken arm, creaking. it
is not enough just to miss
you. it has to hurt. i
have to write poems
that last forever, interpret
dreams about buildings
burning down, flies who
leave their partners fo

Spirit Willing?I saw you on the news last night
You were in your house, burning alive
The look in your eye said you’d rather be somewhere else

We all cheered when they pulled you from a window
And whisked you away in sirens and lights
We were so happy we almost got off the couch

Every one of us wanted to own the hands that pulled you free
We knew we could fix you
We knew we could make you whole again

But when we went for a walk
And saw your face at the window, wreathed in flames
We excused ourselves and carried on

Because saving people was for Jesus and firemen
And armchair heroes with yellow ribbons on their cars
And you suddenly weren&

kitestrings.you confessed that when you were little you would pull apart monarch butterflies because they were much too beautiful--
so beautiful that they made you feel uneasy.

(you always did call me the most beautiful thing you'd ever known.)

it's almost december now, and the only reason i wish you were here is so you could make snow angels and i could rip off their wings.

---

you wanted a kite for your birthday, so i got you one that was shaped like a bat and we took it to the beach, watched it crash into the surf over and over until it was bent and broken. i rescued it from the tide and surfaced dripping saltwater -- you told me i looked like t

Champagne Girlslisten:
the higher you fly, the harder it is to breathe. the harder it is to see all that’s below you; to see the ones that helped get your glorious kite off the ground in the first place. you owe them just that much, don’t you? for them to at least catch the occasional glimpse of your lofty form between those clouds and the sun's rays pressing down on their heavy eyelids?

we would all love to have a kite that will carry us to heaven's blinding gates, the ideal circumstance, but it seems kites like those are going extinct with infinity between. i'd be happy just to have a balloon to tie to my pinky, one that won’t float off a

you inspire mei’ve never met the optical illusionist that started me with
writing poems on my mirror
and my hand
and my jeans

but i think that if i did, we could be best friends.
except maybe we wouldn’t
because if she’s anything like her poetry
she would be so full of vivid-disturbing-wonderful images
so full of heart and thought and elegance
that i would be frightened of drowning
in the depths of her eyes

and i also might hate her just a tiny bit because i admire her so much.
because she can take thoughts
(even the difficult-to-see ones with the fuzzy outlines).
she can take them and spin them into
tapestries of woven words

dahlia girl.i used to let you backhand me across
the face because crying turned you on.

your palm stung and burned my cheeks
bright red, but it was strangely beautiful.
you called me your little dahlia, your little
candleflame, and kissed my jaw where
your fingers left treadmarks.

you said:
"love means making sacrifices."

i said nothing, just wiped away a few
premature tears and traced the fireworks
blooming on my face.

you used to fall asleep in the grass with
me, and we'd wake up with petals stuck
in our eyebrows and grass stains on our
lips. our lazy kisses tasted like rain.

i say:
"love means throwing handfuls of grass at
each ot

Saint PaulWe are female, we are flammable.
Feathered cologne reeks of skies and miles
It makes us retch;
Us skeleton girls with smoking bones.

I do not care for birds-
the jackdaw and wren.
They locked us underground, grave girls.
We were interred, soil filling our ears;
our cotton, our stuffing.
Earth worms whispered-
"These skeleton trees do not belong,
they will soar past things that are built
they will grow spiny, dry and yellow
sick, sick to the sky.
They will only care for the height."

We were buried amongst scholars and kings,
Us poets, we Queens, below the birds.
I do not care for their creations;
They are the reason we have n

warmi am made of fairy-tales and sunshine and lightning and
sometimes the sticky residue that stains your fingertips
after eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

i am the sky and the rain and the grass growing green
between your toes in summertime, dewy with the dawn
of a new day and a new moon every month.

i am a smile and a laugh and a look and if you're lucky
i am also eye contact and finger contact and lip contact,
static electricity and magnetic compulsion but

you
cannot
&#

Get Beat Up I fucking love waking up with a broken nose, swollen eyes, hungover, cold, gutter-stench sallow in last night’s damp rags. The lace on my left shoe is missing for some reason. I’m covered head to toe in caked mud, or shit… it’s all over the floor, footprints stitching a path from the doorway to the bathroom to in front of the couch where I apparently fell and blacked out, leaving a sort of lurid black snow angel in my wake. Jake is still in the bathroom, face-down in the toilet where he passed out. He’s pissed his pants. Hope he’s not dead. Smells like it. Maybe it’s better if he is.

No, probably not.

T

SwayingDearest of diaries,
I found a body in my attic early this morning, filthy and somewhat decomposed, naked among old photographs and clothing I’d have never worn again anyway. The body is sewn up in the front like a weathered gym bag, faded and smelling of sweat, mold, failure. It’s a woman and she’s beautiful. Or, she was. It wasn’t hard to see.
There is something cathartic about dragging the body down to my bike. I’d been having problems with my self image in the last few weeks; seeing a woman I might have fallen in love with in life, surely at a distance, in this physical condition made me feel better about the l

not this one.i want to write you in all my poems,
forever. but in this one i can't.

this one is about my dad
getting angry at my mom
and me (but never my sister)
(thank god) for reasons we don't understand.
about the amount of alcohol
flowing through his bloodstream,
stopping at his liver,
and it's also about him forgetting my name.

or the time he was home on my birthday
but refused to come downstairs, so i didn't
see him. or how his job is watching people die.

or when he calls me and tells me to come home
and my mind comes up a blank. i don't know
where that is.

(this one isn't about you,
though i wish it was. because
you're the only be

A Weekday AfternoonI don’t remember being asked politely if this was something I actually wanted to do, or being given an offer of one or more choices on what to do with the rest of my day; a wet trash bag filled with water balloons was simply shoved against my chest and I was instructed to “come on.”

The top of the bridge was cold. It was probably getting close to October but that didn’t keep me from wearing shorts, exposing the thin, hairless, goose-bumped legs on my almost-eight-and-a-half year old self. Matt and Jeffy were stretching their heads over the guardrail, half-crouched in a juvenile attempt at covertness. There was a bend half

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When, When

by ~InShiningArmor, Dec 11, 2008, 1:20:08 PM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

It’s like when you ran over my cat last December and I said it was okay but it really wasn’t and you tighten your grip on my arm and I don’t care anymore because, fuck, it was just a cat right?
Or when we went bowling and I pulled sevens and nines all night and you bowled strike after strike after golden strike and I swear you were immaculate and floating when you jumped victorious and I sat by the score sheet and all the powers of man and nature and beast and god were barely able to keep my head up and my eyes focused on the ocular feast, the glory of you.
And when we were walking home after the movies and the wind blew acerbic and jealous and stricken blind, groping to finger flesh within our coats and scarves and boots like the denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah and we are as Lot’s daughters left like the lamb for the spiritual slaughter but the angels come in the form of your father in the family minivan offering us a ride and I desperately want to say yes but you say we’re fine so he drives away and I watch him leave and turn to salt but you just grab at my gray granulated hands and drag me along behind you.
Or when we got our finals back from that author seminar you know I tried so hard in and you got an A- and I got a D and my head hit the desk like a hollow bone stamp and you leveled your eyes with mine and told me it just stands for “Damn, you’re cute” and we laced our fingers like corsets or thigh-high boots or nineteenth century shirt sleeves and everything was comfortable and clean until you hit my fucking cat and this is all out of order but I think I just wanted to say I would be nothing if not for you so thanks I guess.

When, Whenby ~InShiningArmor

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

whatever.

love 1 1

joy 2 2

~~wow 0 0~~

~~mad 0 0~~

~~sad 0 0~~

~~fear 0 0~~

~~neutral 0 0~~

~Reanimated4now Dec 13, 2009 Professional General Artist

acerbic

hollow bone stamp

and
the lacings

this was so real I think it's almost perfect.

~Ammeel Mar 11, 2009

I've had this saved in my bookmarks for a while as something to come back to and reflect on. And no matter how many times I open it up thinking "hmm what was this again?" and read it aloud to myself, I exit the tab thinking to myself, "what else is there to say".
Except that, I guess. I wish I could say that I'm speechless, but apparently I am not.
Pretty awesome.

~InShiningArmor Mar 11, 2009

best comment ever. thank you so much :]

~Ammeel Mar 12, 2009

~AliSTAD Mar 2, 2009

stream of consciousness is the best ^^ i really like this piece, can't say why but i just do.

~mxskai Jan 4, 2009

Your run-on sentences are absolutely beautiful. XO And I like how you linked the first and last ideas together. The running-over-your-cat thing.

~wakingxdawn Dec 28, 2008

its pretty enough to be considered poetry
but raw enough to give it impact.
i imagine a teenage boy venting to a poor soul
who was considerate enough to ask what was wrong haha

I loveee this.

!elephant-ears Dec 21, 2008

This reminded me of Junior, by Macaulay Culkin, except that it was better-written and I didn't giggle. My favourite part was how I didn't relate to it at all, because I hate when writers try and drag you into their shit and you feel like, if this hadn't happened to me would I really give a fuck?

~InShiningArmor Dec 21, 2008

i think that last part was a... compliment? i hope so.

and i was never a big fan of macaulay culkin, so i very much approve of you thinking i write better than him. silly actors should stay silly actors! not silly writers!

!elephant-ears Dec 21, 2008

It was a compliment, in the most bizarre of ways of course.

I think Macaulay Culkin's writing a book was flaunting the laws that separate the attractive (actors) and unattractive (writers), but I read it anyway. Several times. So did all of my friends. We destroyed it writing notes to one another between the lines. It's what he deserved I'm sure.

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