I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.

Read about it at Queer List.

Bob Thurber's first novel coming Spring 2011

This is one I'm finding it difficult to wait for.

HoWs of the Rising Sun

Open publication

Static

I first heard it when I woke at six, a hollow moaning rising from the dry patch beyond the yard. Figured I’d make a move to investigate when Annie rose at half-past, but then was deeply involved in cooking eggs for her.

“It’s been a long time since you made breakfast for me,” she said. She seemed reluctant to throw off the comforter. “Did you leave the kettle whistling on the stove?”

I said I hadn’t but I’d check to make sure, and went back out to the kitchen. I sat and rolled myself a cigarette.

I had only smoked half when she hollered, “What’s that?”

“Nothing, love.”

A couple minutes later she came out, tying the cloth belt of her terry robe. “It’s coming from outside,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Won’t you see about it?”

For a moment or two I thought I might, but when Annie turned on the radio and all it produced was sputtering static, my resolve faltered.

“Why don’t you get dressed?” I said instead. And where’s your breakfast plate?”

“Coward,” she said. She turned off the useless radio and headed back toward the bedroom.

“It doesn’t sound like a human in pain,” I said to the closed door.

“All the same,” she said, “I thought you were my protection.”

“What if it’s carrying something?”

“Well, if it dies, it could be just as dangerous later as now.”

We had already desexed whoever or whatever was making that awful noise.

I sat at the table thinking, but concentrating was difficult. When we’d first bought the farm, I sat that way for hours on end, marveling at the quiet. We were so glad to leave the city behind us. Annie would play solitaire in the parlor, and I’d sit and smoke and think.

Around noon she came out with the dish. It still had most of the eggs on it and she hadn’t touched the toast, either.

When evening fell and we discovered there was no light by which to read, we decided to go to sleep early.

Annie lay far off on her side of the bed and there was more than the usual space between us.

I awoke around 11:30 to see a beam of light coming through the closed window, then I realized it had grown silent. I rose and walked quietly to the window and pulled down the top pane to let in a little air. There was no sound at all. Not even the owl, nor the crickets. The beam flickered and faded. I couldn’t see the stars. The only thing visible then was the hard white moon against an empty black sky.

Welcome to the Information Age - Eric Bosse

HoW 01-1340

reason, redolent, incumbent, and detergent

Her room, and it was her room, was redolent of hyacinth. George assumed it was because Martha was a part-time gardener.
“No,” she said, “it’s the detergent.”
“My mistake,” he said.
“And with good reason,” she countered.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s incumbent upon you to read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I swear by it.”
“Will I become a better person after having skimmed through it?” He was a speed reader.
“Well,” she said, “let’s talk about it over dinner. By the way, where are you taking me?”

weeds, sculpture, bottle, and breath

The Miller sculpture stood kissing air, weeds growing at her base. Nobody sat in the garden anymore. That was why Graham did, nursing the last bit of absinthe in the big blue bottle. He marveled over Miller’s idea of a woman or that much he had been willing to commit to stone—fine white Carrera marble. In life, Ramona had taken his breath away. Sometimes, and he wouldn’t admit this to everybody, the stone woman, arched to plant a kiss on an invisible lover, still affected him as she had first done. But it was Ramona who had taken his breath, and Miller who had taken Ramona from him, leaving only as much behind, in stone, as he was willing to share. It was not enough. Thus, the need for the absinthe.

dreadlocks, spice, and leather

What was it she had said about her cousin Edina, that she’d had her hair done up in dreadlocks? I couldn’t imagine Eddy in dreadlocks with her thin blond hair. She was not Bo Derek. But that was corncribs, wasn’t it? Eddy was not a 10 by any stretch. She’d be lucky to score 7 on any man’s radar. It was her mouth more than anything that cost her points, and her defeatist attitude. Not a bad looker, and intelligent. Conversation came easily at first, but bring up health, and she’d likely come over grey and complaining. But the dreadlocks—I would not have seen that coming.

HoW 01

New Orleans - Labor Day Weekend 2010

This door was salvaged from the lower 9th ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Every house in the flood has the “X” painted on it. This indicates who checked the house, if any bodies were found and the date it was checked.

Equation: A Collection of Six-Sixes

Open publication

HoW 2010: New Orleans

House of Writers meets in New Orleans, Labor Day Weekend 2010

l. to r.: Dwight, Julia, Jared, Mike, Sandra, Gita, Teresa

not pictured: Shauna, Michael

Souvenir Booklets and Records produced by Mike Handley.

Bill Lapham has a new Issuu

Open publication

Grey Johnson's Your Pajamas on Issuu

Open publication.
Read this beautiful publication and make her famous. It's delicious. Be sure to click "Open publication" just above and read it on Issuu so Grey gets the view count. If you like her work, and I know you will, please leave a comment for her there on the site rather than here. That will encourage her to produce more of these gorgeous little numbers. --MDJB

Performance

He drove up in a rented car, half the size of the one he had back home, and his wife got in. Then he headed toward the bank. He’d had several tacos with a very picante salsa and a couple of beers for lunch while she had insisted on eating steak and potatoes in the hotel dining room. They were on vacation, for chrissakes! Now, she was wearing too much make-up and an orange blouse with sunflowers on it. Obviously, she’d wanted to stay behind so she could change her outfit yet again. Visiting places with her got up that way made him feel so much like some stupid tourist. Thank god she had no itinerary planned for today. At the corner he had to stop for a light.

“Can I have a cigarette?” George asked.

Brenda pulled out two, lit them and handed him one. “You know, we really should cut down,” she said.

In the intersection, a bare-chested young man in dirty pants laid down a cloth-wrapped bundle and opened it. He quickly arranged his props.

“Oh no,” she said, “Please don’t.”

“He’s going to do it.”

“I just ate my lunch.”

The young man spread several pieces of broken glass on the cloth and, for just a few seconds, lay face-downward, his ribs on top of the shards. Then he stood up again. The shiny brown skin of his chest was unmarked in any way.

Next, he picked up two rods each about half a meter in length. At first, George thought he was going to light them and perform the fire-breathing stunt. Brenda had translated an article from the local newspaper about the Mexican government trying to get the fire-breathers off the street and into rehabilitation centers. The kerosene they held in their mouths to do the trick burned the insides of the mouth and throat, affected their brains, and their career-expectancies were nine months to a year at most. But this kid surprised him.

As he inserted one rod for what seemed half its length up into his right nostril, Brenda looked up the street in another direction. She tossed her cigarette out the window.

“God, that’s gross,” George said, “He looks like some kind of surreal walrus.”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” she said, “I don’t want to know.”

“Have you got a peso?” George asked.

“You want to pay him for doing that?” As she turned around to see if she had any coins in her pocket, she must have caught sight of the youth removing the second rod because she flinched. She asked how it was possible to put something that far up one’s nose. He thought she was about to upchuck that expensive steak. Looking away again, she handed him some money and said, “People should pay him not to do it.”

“I think that’s the point,” George said. He handed a coin to the performer. The light changed and he drove on.

“Why couldn’t he just dress up like one of the clowns and juggle or do somersaults?” Brenda asked.

“Maybe he’d find that too demeaning,” George said, “At least he’s doing something for the money. Not like most of the homeless people back home in New York, who just sit in the street and beg.”

“What about the window-wipers on the Bowery?”

“I always give them something. They do me a service.”

“Yes, they smear your windshield with a dirty rag. And you know they’re only going to buy wine with the money,” Brenda said. “These boys are more likely doing this for food for their families.” She patted her permed hair in that way he found irritating.

“Hey, what a man does with the money he earns makes no never mind to me,” George said, “So long as he does something to earn it. Here’s the bank. Stay in the car and I’ll run in and make a withdrawal.”

“Take out enough so I can stop at the artisan’s place later. I promised my brother and Alison I’d bring them some souvenirs.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” George said, closing the rental-car door with extra force. Did she even listen to him anymore when he spoke, he wondered.

“Oh, I understand you, George. You have your priorities and I have mine,” she said, “Besides, I need something to keep me occupied while you spend all afternoon and evening on the toilet.”