My Cardboard Balcony

Barney's Dead the petroleum smell so familiar in Old Barney's Coffee Shop by the Chevron station Barney pours my coffee then goes into the kitchen and promptly has a stroke while baking muffins no one notices, of course until a regular (fifty-eight years old and bustier than a cheerleader) wonders why Cristóbal is getting her tea instead of the big white guy

Anywhere is a word that tends to bother certain people because saying you could go anywhere you wanted isn't exactly accurate, being that we are stuck on this tiny pearl of a planet and do not fly out to Mars for fear of our heads bursting like candy-filled balloons, spraying confetti all across the solar system - or travel back in time, for that matter, to Victorian England, where you'd be more likely to get the black lung than have a lovely dance with the aristocracy, but at least your lungs wouldn't compress into ribbons upon your intrepid voyage to Jupiter...without a helmet.

Masquerade by Belinda Roddie licked up lettuce leaves diluted medicine drink it it'll make you stronger pour nuptials into a glass and swirl it until it is dry as a martini at a sad costume party when you lift the mask it will not be George or Charlie or Fred with the big mustache it'll be me frozen in your glass like a hermit crab on ice

The skyline sat behind our heads and the clouds clustered around the tailcoats of the sun as we sat on the beach. It was very Bergman-esque, sitting here and playing chess in the sand. My opponent had even worn the cloak as an homage. We held our breath. Waves licked the shores. I moved my knight. "Checkmate." "Oh, you bitch," Ely snapped in his lisp-aided lilt.

Orange Stand by Belinda Roddie cold brown feet on a wagon heading to new kentucky I saw you selling oranges at a market stand you smelled sweet as you babbled rabble-rousing lousy syntax into both of my ears I spent two bucks on a dozen citrus orgasms that exploded on my tongue and filled my lungs with perfume.

The lights dimmed, the pancakes eaten, we settled down for an early morning movie. We had stayed up for hours, cuddling, too alert to sleep, too stubborn to dream. The dream was here, and now, with one o'clock breakfast and a horrid 1950s sci-fi film. I buried my head in her shoulder. I breathed happiness.

In a marble archway, I shared a kiss with an older man, whose stubble was as white as the blizzard swallowing us up. He had smoked a pipe earlier and tasted like cheap tobacco, and he held me close to his chest that heaved with a tuberculosis rhythm. I didn’t want him to let me go, not even when my hands turned to ice and I couldn’t taste anything in my mouth anymore.