My Cardboard Balcony

Special Menu by Belinda Roddie chicken quesadilla tapatío on the side this meal's my pride and joy dig in savor all the kick you in the cabeza flavors disenchanted by the blandness of a three course meal with ketchup sprinkle chili pepper on the sizzling beef, stuff a sentimental heart with rice and curry so caliente , and mix a little mustard with the olive oil squeeze a lime drop a dime for salt at the store save the ranch and use that for your dressing, mi chica bella. because I made you a feast so we can clatter spoons and match the rhythm of our laughter, chew out the noise with our tongues on fire it's more than just words that season the evening and it goes great with a five-alarm call for cool, cool vino .

We would like to ask that you turn off all cellphones, pagers, smartphones, video cameras, regular cameras, extraterrestrial cameras, microphones, babies, small children, angry grandparents, stereos, cars, screams, leg thumping, radios, televisions, iPods, laptops, desktops, blacktops, or any other form of loud thinking during the duration of this performance.

Quota by Belinda Roddie We often begin speeches with, "As so and so once said," but we do not tend to start with something they did not say. For we know that William Shakespeare wrote "All the world's a stage," but he did not say, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood." In the not-so-distant future, the frothy intake of quotable quotations will be so unpurely saturated that we would rather belch out alphabets for commencement addresses than a notable frog's croaking. The word notable will cease to exist, for in an age where art has no quota - canvases can shine from every TV monitor and every small compact miniature screen on a pad tablet stone wax slab you scratch your name and password into every day. Poets will no longer be poets because poets have always shared blood with the obscure. We bleed not for the ink to glow, but for it to spread outward in thick, shiny puddles that radiate the light of the mo...

Dozens of petitions were signed with red ink by masqueraders wearing sequins. The petitions called for an end to x-y-z preventative services for some form of personal refusal to cater to any greater human service. Meanwhile, a gay man was told he couldn't buy condoms because he didn't need them and his hellspawn wouldn't spring from any deeper bowel sources. The store owner was promptly socked in the jaw by a liberal messiah.

Dusk Walk by Belinda Roddie As the coronal mass ejections color crayon pastel hues into the pink and yellow blues of a crystal diamond evening you stop to pluck a wilting ember from a suckling vine and drip the honeysuckle onto the corners of your weeping lips. The dryness of the air is haunting some membrane of your past life, a life where you drank cider under birch trees in a summer sauna, stunned by the parched grass while your son played cricket on the scorched dirt near the playground that rusted from your ample memory lane. And the only cold air comes from your wife's mouth before she coughs into a kerchief speckled with tiny particles of aurora dust that hangs in the night sky and shuts down each street light on your walk home.

"Therefore, it is my belief that God-given rights of this country." "Ahem." Father Jacques arched an eyebrow threateningly at the young girl in the pew. "Is there a problem, Miss Jenny?" "You made an error," Jenny replied. "You said God-given rights." "Yes?" "That's clearly inaccurate. They're Bob-given rights." "Miss Jenny..." "I want Bob to receive credit where credit is due!"

"You always say that." "No, I don't." "You recycle that line so much. Over and over and over again. I always hear it." "No, you don't." "When we were having that picnic? When you forgot to go to my concert? When you were too tired to go out dancing? Or were you actually tired?" "Look, I..." "Don't say it again. Just throw it out. I don't want to hear it, not one more time. Barkeep, 'nother Blue Moon."