A Bible in My Back Pocket

Pop!

The firecracker flickers high above our heads and Dave reaches in his pocket for another, waving at me dismissively with his free hand.

"Oh hush, they don't have souls like us," he says.

He lights another, squatting to propel himself upward with greater force and hurls it into the night sky where it explodes. In the flashpan dazzle we watch the bats go crazy, plummeting through the air, blind.

Dave laughs, and there was something I forgot to say.

Check Your Smile 2

She has a job at that stuck-up tattoo parlor on 19th street and her name tag says "Bryn" like we all don't know what that's short for. She thinks she's hot shit right now, thinks that "y" is gonna save her, but give her a few years and you'll be able to call her up and she'll bring her own Swiffer Wet Jet. Her sister Sage works in a little shop that sells shit like hemp iPod covers or knit drawstring bags the color of the Jamaican flag or lucky rabbits feet covered in authentic Navajo period blood. Their parents tried really hard.

Check Your Smile

Oh, why yes of course, we're all unique. We're all people with complicated universes of thought and perception and each and every one of us has something to offer. Like, take Brenda for instance. Everyone named Brenda is a cleaning lady.

Aweigh

I feel shipwrecked. Not like I experienced a shipwreck as a passenger, like I am the ship that has wrecked. Water rushes in through my splintered hull, filling me up with God knows what I'm going down I can feel it. The only island, that gas station down the street, that minimum wage raft and a life jacket with my name on it.

This Was What I Meant When I Said Some People Are Pointless

Blood on the carpet, on the couch, amongst the broken glass from the back door strewn like spilled sugar. Blood of a father, of a son, of a driver's ed teacher with a dog and a keychain garnished with gas station rewards cards. A quiet afterthought, raspberry drizzle on a small slice of store-bought cheesecake. The blood of a surprised man.

Every Step is for the Last

I find it very sad that the ones who know the most about the world are dead. You and I, we wake up in the afternoon and find all of our things right where we left them, we assume that we're headed out into the same Earth as yesterday. The ones who are dead now went out to meet yesterday's world and found something completely different. Tires sliding on wet cement, a bird in the plane's engine, the Jehova's Witnesses on bicycles circling the blood bank with Molotov Cocktails.

Hibiscus Blooms

Lucifer sniggers heartily, crunching an apple on the floor of God's studio apartment, declaring, "I got the woman to eat from the tree, so what now?"

He doesn't have to say "i told you so," he just waits for God to damn them too.

A pencil slips from God's fingers, slapping against a filled up pad of paper, and in a shaking whisper he replies, "I'm going to let them create each other. They will make as I make, and you can twist them all you want, but they will unfurl so swiftly and with such force that your head will spin even as they are wrenched from the burning earth."