Author: Fatesjoke

The muse pants, heavily, pregnant with her maudlin charms words bound together like a double helix of inspired DNA, chromosomes of divinity in the shapes of line stanza and verse The muse grunts, forcefully, labored breaths caress my ears the tools of my craft lay before me, between wide spread thighs, and there is silence …

As it appears in the 2012 American River Review I don’t know the cost of a ream of paper in China or how much sunlight reaches the north pole of the moon. I don’t know why people in Louisiana eat living crawfish or what the long term effects of using my cell phone will be. …

Time moves as I move and as you move and as the cold moves to the warm as form moves to fill the void of order over chaos but fails because the law of order falls outside of me and I cannot be less than unless another me is greater than I am I am …

I watched out of the corner of my eye, I watched a spider c     r     a     w     l      across the acoustic ceiling above my bed. It was there,           just to the                side of my vision. It moved in brief flashes, always frozen when my head moved. I looked up as it looked down. It, reflected twice.           Me, eight times. …

She smelled of vanilla and lilac and though she was near death’s door her smile lit up the room and her voice whispered of past pleasures. And even though I sat across the room, I could feel her presence fill the space, time stood still for all to look at her as she stood there …

Drifting- seeking- lost, forever. Her breath held still, shallow paradox, tears fall hot staining white satin and lace. He departs, the distance measured in light years. Ersatz affection given a bloom, a title, donned like armor, she sees only target. Once bruised and battered, she, never idle, clutching blade, white frosting knuckles. Extant wrath floods, …

Claudia, the mail lady, with the crooked smile that suggests I am calling her by the wrong name. Hair in a ponytail, blue shirt, blue pants, black shoes. I see her almost every damn day. She walks a lot and it shows when she wears her short blue shorts. She walks fast and it shows …

I am done with perfection, so try and be cool, we’ll never feel bad anymore. No, there is no other one, it’s in the photograph. I’m tired, so tired, and I will be studying the lesson in my dreams. It’s going to kill when you desert me, the truth is I don’t stand a chance. …

She moves like I imagine angels in heaven move, like water, seeming to ignore the laws of nature. China doll face, soulless mess, a body you can almost taste with a simple touch, lost in the darkness of her own twisted mind. She moves through life the way she moves across the room, drawing eyes …

So hollow and alone, a shell washed up on a deserted beach. The waves pushing it farther from the embrace of the ocean, further from all this carapace has ever known. Once home to a life, now extinguished, never again the same. Time will wear it away, the sun bleaching colors until only fragments remain, …