seattle bus #7 - irene

Riding the snakey bus
I sit on the edge of my seat
Last night
Lips parted
Sleep residue
I stained your sheets

Downtown
Darting eyes to dissuade detection
I grab for my missing erection

Bus stops	      	light red
Getting off
I drag your bed.

a romantic history - nadine kachur

Then: Newly met, I assessed him as clinical
but skipping on the meds. Nervously pouring

out words in hypersuccession about his poor mother
and dogs of the neighbs; well, it wasn't just the coffee

or the couple like he later claimed.
Plug out, girl, this guy is trouble.

He smells
like an onion, too.

susan's tongue - stanley roberson

    Susan Hurley's tongue floated to the surface of my coffee that afternoon.
    How I recognized the tongue as belonging to the often talkative Ms. Hurley wasn't all that difficult...
    A few months ago, during a particularly hot summer here (meteorologists were quoting it as being 
the hottest on record), Susan, out of sheer boredom, had her tongue pierced and fitted with a shaft. 
Always seeking the spotlight, she was the envy of everyone at work. However, the dude who had done 
the job, a Vietnam vet, lost to drink and nightmares, barely holding onto his job as cook in a Mexican 
restaurant, was improperly trained and had botched the piercing. Susan's tongue became infected, 
forcing her to get rid of the shaft soon after aquiring it. The hole closed up but left a bit of tissue 
hanging underneath her tongue.
    I'd run into Susan at a party that my girlfriend, Cayce, had talked me into attending. It was heavily 
Gothic (as was Cayce -- "You're a writer. This will be a great experience for you!").
    There, drunk out of her mind, chalk-white make-up, black eye-shadow and black lipstick, clad in 
nothing but a black silk t-shirt with RAPED BY DRACULA, MY BABY IS GOTH stenciled across the front, 
clinging to her third boyfriend of the year (a young man with an old woman's face), Susan slurred that 
she was going to curse the asshole vet for what he had done to her. She claimed to be heavily into black 
magic, Boyfriend #3 was student of A. Crowley. She raised her tongue to show me the damage. The 
underside looked oddly serrated and fish-belly white. In the middle was the evidence of the ruined job: a 
small, diamond-shaped mass of dangling wet flesh. I felt my skin crawl. Cayce chuckled with delight. She 
and Susan despised each other -- Susan and I had been... somewhat together(?) earlier that year. A 
"relationship" that had resulted in yours truly being reduced to a quivering mass of protoplasm vaguely 
resembling a human being until the delectable Ms. Cayce had appeared in my life and rescued me. Drink 
in hand, boyfriend in tow, Susan drifted away into a sea of blackness, ghostly faces, smoke and laughter.
    That had been a week ago.
    I hadn't seen Susan Hurley since... until that afternoon, at lunch, when her severed tongue had 
floated up to the surface, mysteriously swimming in my coffee cup, upside down. No wonder the coffee 
(with cream) had tasted funny.
    As I looked around the almost empty Mexican restaurant (near where Susan and I both worked -- 
her in CDs and I in video), in a section of the city that was becoming increasingly dangerous, I knew that 
Susan wouldn't be complaining about anything for some time to come...

between two people - copyright © 1992 eristikös

In nudity, there is intimacy...
and there we were
sitting in the dimness
our faces so close
that I could actually hear you for the first time in over four years,
so close
that I could study your expressions as I have never known them before.
I watch your lips,
your eyes,
your brows.
You look down,
look across,
then look back;
it seems to help your memory.
Here,
    in a space slightly bigger than nowhere
    but not large enough to be somewhere,
    I aspire to mean something to you.
Here,
    in a space larger than the world
    but smaller than a thimble,
    you whisper to me.
I listen to the way you pause
the way you intonate 
the way you breathe --
as I find myself breathless.
I hang on each word;
your sentences graze across my leg
and land somewhere between serenity and bliss.
Effortlessly, I imagine:
you and your brother, 
scrawny little children, 
on the seashore 
under the moonlight
in white sweaters 
panning for treasure in your plastic frisbees.
Why is this simple memory falling from your mouth this way?
Why is it slipping from your body like a secret 
    so private
    so sacred
    so potent 
    that its exposure in real-time 
    is stealing the oxygen out of the air
    and leaving me dizzy?
I have never seen a living sand dollar before,
but when I do
if I ever do
it will forever remind me of this brief uncharacteristic moment with you.