The daring were punished. They were punished with exactly what they wanted, and found out the paucity of their imagination and desires.
It was near midsummer when the djinn arrived in Baghdad. He promised to each person, exactly what they wanted, the one thing. There were no rules, no catches. This was no monkey paw to wish upon, but a djinn in all his smoking glory, blue fire leaping from his eyes and his ears, red lightning visible from his mouth when he spoke, and a long rumbling thunder when he laughed at those that came to make their wishes....
The fiction being poured through letters that collied into words, which sit next to other words, that extend to as far as the punctuation that keeps a careful watch to make sure no one is getting too crazy, breaking the law.
And somehow, none of that becomes trivial when we start to see punctuation being used to keep the pace of my pronunciation so my eyes can scan the code and I can zone out into that little story I'm reading in my head.
So much becomes poetic if I just start to look at it a little differently. Cubes...
From the edge of a hole in the ground, lying on his side in a pool of his own blood, Jim looked around for his arm.
Eventually his glazed eyes drifted down the side of the pit, down to the bottom, where a mess of body parts mixed together like a good gumbo.
"Is that my arm?" Jim thought about thinking.
His ears rang, buzzed, sounded like being tumbled in a wave, with the adrenaline rush of wondering if you'll break the surface or if this is it.
He looked to the tree nearby, to wear a squirrel was peeking...
"The river's on fire," said my son. The river did seem to be on fire, if you were only looking at the river.
"No, the sky is," I told him. A reflection from above. He shrugged his shoulders.
He didn't ask why the sky was on fire, just bowed his over over the rowboat's side and continued looking for fish. Small, darting, the color of the river bed, the fish beneath the fire, the river beneath the fire.
My eyes toward the sky, waiting for the fire to come down.
Our city used to have one psychic, an old blonde woman who read palms and tarot out of her ground floor apartment. Her name was Liza and she spoke with a rolling California speech, peppering every other sentence with "fer sures" and "gnarlies".
Since the housing crisis, the population of palmists has grown. There is a stretch of road on Congress Street where seven women ply their trade, each operating from their own storefront. They are the only profession that seems to be growing, buying up empty retail locations.
It's worth noting that the women are just mere footsteps from...
You had me at 'ox bow lake'. But the time machine accidentally switched itself on and didn't stop until I was back in 2012 where I started. I spent months in regret afterwards, looking online at the black and white photos of you with the rest of your Native American tribe, uncomfortably posed for the camera. I could not mend the glitch in the machine, could never return to a life with you. Sometimes I spend time with your ancestors, I have made friends with little Jimmy, your great great great grandson. I can imagine that he could have been...
"No. He didn't." I hid the bruise on my face with veiled hair. I didn't want to admit the truth. It was harsh.
"Then what happened?" The sternness of his voice almost made me flinch.
"No one hit me, Joe. It was my own stupidity."
"Stupidity smacked you in the face?"
My laugh was curt. "Yeah, I wish. That would've helped."
"Lena..." With disapproval heavy in his tone, Joe stepped forward. His hands were warm on my arms. "Tell me."
"An accident. I fell."
"You're lying."
He was right. I was. He always knew when I lied. I almost hated...
"Hey! You! Jackass!"
Geoff was trying to make eye contact -- or, failing that, ear contact -- with the ferris wheel operator below. Geoff and Jo had been stuck at the top of the ride for more than five minutes now. And the effort might not have been so much in vain were they not surrounded by a cage.
No response. Of course.
"Will you knock it off?" asked Jo. "He'll get to it when he gets to it."
"It's just. Gah!" Geoff started rocking the ride. Back and forth, back and forth, the range of motion increasing each time....
The lights fled all over the world; it seemed as if the whole was stars. Everything blended into the night. All people could was stare admire beauty beyond imagination. The night didn't seem like the night; it looked something else. Something different. Blues were covering uo the black. Black was covering up the blue. But everyone didn't notice, because beauty is all they could see. A lady stood in the balcony, which would be one of her only moments alone looking at the beauty. All she could do was, and admire she did. Her eyes seemded glow in astonishment, but...
I think that I shall never see
A sight so fine as irony
For all my life I lay in wait
To see a sight profound and great
This rosy glow that lights the sky
Answers every truth and lie
Every hope and all despair
Is wiped from mind and earth and air
Would that the sun had caused this glow
Sinking down in sunset low
Would that tomorrow it would rise
In sunrise warm and soft and wise
No shockwave yet, though it will come
The world will end and all fall dumb
Yon mass of rock that hurtles...