My Cardboard Balcony

Before the Battle by Belinda Roddie "Sarge," he told me, "I'm baked. I'm cooked, I'm boiled, I'm fried. You can pop me in a coffin and sail me home. I ain't gonna shoot one more gun in this stupid fight." As he talked, he took a hit from his pipe. "Boy," I replied, "when I was your age, I was sitting on the front porch of my father's house. The dust kicked around my skirt, and the heat was killing me, absolutely killing me. And I was ready to drop dead. You want to sleep in a sarcophagus on a trip back to your homeland, I won't stop you. But I'm staying here and spitting bullets out from between my teeth." In trembling fingers, I held the locket where my wife's photograph sat comfortably, freed from its cushion beneath my uniform tunic. I took no tags from my enemies. I painted my face green to camouflage my sins. Back home, my father was probably drinking while my mother pulled a pie out...

Lina styled her hair all the time - in braids, in pigtails, in plaits and weaves and knots - until one day, she cut it all off. Well, not all of it - her brown locks now settled above her ears, light curls springing against the back of her head. She walked into work with her hands in her pockets, whistling some sort of merry, improvised tune, and ignored the alarmed look of our fashionista boss as she sat down on her desk and opened up one of her many folders.

Insults Gone Rhyme-y by Belinda Roddie You dumbfuck nunchuck upchuck out of luck total nut mangy mutt super slut bubble butt buttercup size me up nip and tuck Tom & Huck sly Puck hanging on a telephone wire!

When my revised draft of my essay was returned to me, I found that the professor had given me the same mediocre grade that he had given me for the first draft. This was alarming to me, especially since the revised draft was two pages longer, had a modified thesis, and offered almost a dozen more quotations and pieces of evidence. When I brought it to his attention, he laughed and shook his head. "I was probably drunk when I graded it," he confessed, which rendered me speechless.

Good Ol' Politics by Belinda Roddie the Blues are fighting with the Reds, and the Yellows are drinking piss-colored sorrow in glass jugs and longing for the good old days when the Browns were clashing with the Purples and the booze was so much better.

After the latest economic collapse, I found myself living in an admittedly rather spacious tent on the corner of one of the busiest, craziest streets in the city. Everyone was scrambling for something. For money, for food, for clothing, for survival. I kept myself huddled beneath my tarp canvas, eating cold and congealed soup from a can and doing my best to keep warm beneath a sleeping bag that was older than I was.

"According to these notes, four Creebacks are being held captive," Barkelee read to Arvey and Quinoni. After six days, he still was unable to walk without a cane. The journey so far had upset him greatly, leaving him not only physical injuries but also emotional ones. Arvey reached for Quinoni's hand. It was cold, yet the temperature was oddly comforting. "So what do we do?" she asked. "Simple," Quinoni replied, her one good eye narrowing. "We save 'em."