The man wrote to the woman down by the river Yo. He had finished in the fields and his brother was calling from the high hill.
"Young!" he screamed "the soldiers are here!"
The man dropped his pen. The notepaper, pink and full of tiny perforations the man had made in the shape of a lotus flower, flew in the direction of a crane's nest. A young bird who was wading blinked at it. Soon, it began to rain.
The soldiers carried out the brother and left behind the others. A girl ran to the river for the pen as...
I could hear it whipping in the wind outside my bedroom; his coat that was left on the laundry line to hang dry. You can't leave clothes out on a line when it's winter in New York; 'specially the mountains. The cuffs and the buttons froze when I finally had the courage to get it. A crow sat on the line right by it and cawed when I went to release the jacket from the clothespins.
I brought it into my mama, who told me he aint' never comin' back to Saranac. It's sad, you know, that he left her....
He could remember the first time he saw that statue. It was one of those things you simply never forgot, like a first kiss. He remembered the first time he saw that statue, smiling majestically down at him from its pedestal, Lady Liberty welcoming him to the country, letting his heart swell up with a strange, newfound pride. He supposed it was the moment he'd become American, even before the papers had been stamped and Ellis Island had given him and his father the okay. It was certainly the first moment he'd felt American.
He'd gripped the banister of the...
It was dark inside. I toggled the switch, and nothing happened. Shit. Thunder rolled and I sighed. Power outage.
I stumbled through the apartment, tripping on things. I haven't lived here long enough to know the layout well. I never live anywhere that long. More than a few months, he finds me, and I have to go again. But this place, hell, there were still boxes.
I found the door to the utility room where the washer and dryer were, and where I knew the flash light was. I opened the door and began to feel around for it. Where...
As he felt the air spin around him, he stood up. He could no longer see anything except the pocket watch that he had been swinging above his head. It helped him relax, but he had not wound the old clock in several days, and it was getting slow. As he looked at it now, he realized the arms of the clock had melded into a number. Four numbers. 1264. He didn't know what they meant, nor what was happening, but he knew one thing. He was going to find out. He took a step foreword, and felt a million...
He sighed as he read: "This image or video is currently unavailable."
"Thank you, Flickr," the man said to himself. He'd been trying to upload the photos he'd taken at the reenactment all afternoon and was constantly frustrated by the site's refusal to work with him. James had been adding pictures to Flickr almost since its inception and had never had problems like today. He didn't know what to do, only that he felt like pulling his hair out.
"Forget it," he said in disgust. I'll try it again tomorrow. Standing up, he turned and walked away from the computer...only...
The fleet of limousines came down Pennsylvania Avenue slowly, flanked front and back by motorcycle cops and a Secret Service detail. Nothing too unusual for this part of the District.
Rounding a final turn before heading to the White House, the procession was suddenly halted when a mixed-breed mutt dashed out from nowhere into the path of the lead vehicle. Brakes slammed on in a succession of shiny, imposing black cars. The dog darted left and right trying to avoid being hit, but didn't seem to know which way to turn.
A door opened from the vehicle in the very...
"I got a garbage brain," he sang as he swam.
"What?" she asked, spitting water.
"I got ninety six ears and ninety six eyes," he continued.
She knew she wasn't going to get a straight answer out of him and plunged down under the surface. She let the air escape her lungs as she sank deeper into the turquoise water.
A brightly coloured fish swam passed her. She wondered what kind of fish it was. She wondered why she hadn't ever been curious about fish before. Her lungs started to hurt.
She kicked and stroked and soon broke the surface....
I didn't see my first Lighthouse until I was 28 years old. When I did though it had the same sense of mystery and power that you always imagined Lighthouses to have from reading stories and poems in which The Lighthouse was the start attraction of the piece, seeming to not only guide ships in the night but hold the mysteries of the sea. I wasn't the only one to be so impressed with my first Lighthouse having to fight for a space against its tall walls to have my picture taken, alongside various other tourists, who'd made the trek...
We met as usual on the roof under a blanket of stars and a full moon which gave more light than we were accustomed to at midnight.His face was pale and gaunt, his body so thin I thought if I were to grab his arm it would snap in two like a twig. I handed him the bag I held in my right hand- he cautiously took the bag with his left hand. I noticed his finger nails were long and dirty. He sat crosslegged before me,and opened the bag before quickly taking out the contents. He picked up the...