My Cardboard Balcony

Worm Blue by Belinda Roddie The wristwatch coil around your waistline measures out a deep fried regret that's smeared across your average face, dripping calamari battered belligerence down the front of your way too expensive vest, worm blue, like a serpent drowning in a deep puddle of sewer medication, dissolved tablets and booze-mixed vomit spewed from a CEO's wife's sobbing teeth. There is no happy margarita glass. There is no salt satisfying enough to tingle a twisted tongue. Just the essence of natural financial hemorrhage as you pay the bill for overcooked steak melting in garlic soup, the coins squeaking against the little black tray holding a handful of your fortune for the boy in an apron spooning oatmeal into his gluten-intolerant mother's mouth. Fart Alligator, Part Deux by Belinda Roddie Sweet fart alligator, you and I were not acquainted for many years. I am a master of pen and paper. You are a reptilian wonder of fragran

Nothing could sate Alex's hunger. Not all the Christmas cookies in the kitchen. Not every drop of egg nog from the stale carton. Not even the bottles upon bottles of peppermint schnapps poured into hot cocoa with candy canes being used as stirrers. When Alex's mother came home, her mouth fell open in terror at the decimation of the holiday sweets. And to make matters worse, there was her son, gnawing on the frozen Christmas ham.