My Friend

Drives home in September after a day spent working a job that makes her feel like an asshole.

She parks her car in a space that costs two quarters an hour and sits on a bench that faces out toward Lake Harriet.

A couple she recognizes jogs by, with their golden retriever racing out in front of them, but she does not say hello.

Instead she watches a Swedish flag, which should be blowing in the wind, but instead hangs limply from the mast of a docked sailboat named Delusions of Grandeur. 

A small fish, which she can’t identify because she doesn’t know anything about fish, swims past the bow of the sailboat, without disturbing the milfoil that creeps up to the surface of the water.

It’s coming for me, my friend imagines. She pretends for a moment to talk to the fish.

She puckers her cheeks and says, but not aloud for that would be queer, Keep away fish, this is my bench, no one can sit here but me. 

- Alexander J. Theoharides

Fast-Forward

There is a jar holding
the bare brains
of singing fools
each jarring night
standing moon
wears the mask of
nothingness common
of clearing the sky
sinning with stars

The godless wonders
wander like drunken
dragon warriors
through Payless Shoes
strangers to boots
undergarments
and far far away
water runs like wine
whispers through
southbound winds

Underestimated where
and how far and caring
and wearing like wet
leather stretching to
breaking and tears
born out of sounding
ripping material
like boiling water
in fast-forward.

-Daniel Olmschenk

Come Away With Me

Come Away With Me

She whispers, her thin lips barely touching my own.
Above us the sun radiates the way my father’s father always said it would—
around the corners and over the bends of too few clouds.
My eyes can only take so much.

I close them and try to answer all the questions ever asked.Ten angels can pass through the eye of a needle.
We are the descendents of promiscuous dust mites.
There is life on other planets—but none worth looking for.
I open my eyes; she is there again.

Come away with me,
she says once more, her eyes meeting mine,
mumbling words her lips can’t form.
What’s the over/under? I ask.
She shakes her head and I look away.

Across the street from where I lie,
mosquitoes swarm, but they are men
in search of nectar and wish me no harm.
A boy sits, his back resting against an ash.
Is this heaven? he asks in a voice like a thousand muted drums.

I’m not sure, I tell him.
He stares at me, his left hand cupped to his left ear,
watching my serpentine words try to cross the street
and pass through the blanket of mosquitoes that surrounds him.
I’m not sure, I say again.

A solitary mosquito separates from the pack
and floats toward me reaching her six arms out to still my lips.
Come, she whispers, as she thrusts her proboscis deep into my skin 

and flaps her angelic wings.
Come away with me.


-Alexander J. Theoharides