Cabin. Lake. Action.

Afterward, her first instinct was to make her way to the cabin upstate. When she saw his text—"On my way soon"—her heart hop-skipped in her chest for a second. Like a new comet, hope crossed the night sky of her awareness. 

She cranked the generator and wondered how much he had changed. Almost a decade had lurched awkwardly by since they'd spent a blurry month of kayaking and dancing and one-upping each other with their culinary skills. And lovemaking. Don't forget that. She couldn't forget that. It had been a perfect time. No hint of impending darkness; pure lakeside rapture in gauzy dreamlight.

Again. She wondered how much he had changed.

How cruel the passage of time. How needlessly complex. A relentless, heedless, slick-knot blastocyst. 

On the uncovered deck, unfolding chairs, sitting, standing by the railing, she paced, fidgeted. She could never get comfortable anymore. She tried to breathe, yoga breathe—prana, her instructor had called it; deep and long—and take in the skim of mist that hung like netting over the lake and the dark encirclement of conifers. But her mind stutter-stepped and her hot, coiled body wouldn't settle. 

She had the strangest sense of unraveling. Like yarn unspooling. Was it time or was it memory? The loons were long gone from this place, replaced by more distant complaints. The songs of the cicadas seemed muted. More sorrowful, more dissonant.

In the small kitchen, sensing his proximity, she uncorked an expensive Bordeaux, with some difficulty. Ready to celebrate this reunion. Mark this occasion. Poured herself a large glass. Began to fix tortillas with salsa and guacamole. Crushed some ice for margaritas, made do with lime juice instead of limes. Sweet-rimmed two plastic glasses. Overkill, she knew. 

But still she wondered. If he had changed, had she also changed? Well, yes. Much had changed, although this lake and its vigilant garrison of cedar and spruce seemed somehow eternal. The choral dawns and evening serenades. The songbirds and the fireflies. 

The earthy tang of woodsmoke in her nostrils. The face of the water ashen, like someone given grave news in a hospital. 

She tried to tune the radio, found nothing. Smacked its wooden frame. Paced. Waited.

The moment she found a channel—something preachy, gawping, and demented; scratchy as brain spiders—she looked up and with her remaining eye watched him approach from the overgrown driveway. He was worse off than her, an arm long gone and the skin on the other flapping in slick pink parade flags as he lurched her way. A good third of his head was a ruined moon, yet he grinned peculiarly, one pinning eye fixed on her while she struggled to stand and greet him.

The timing of their embrace, already heated in its way, coincided neatly with the next howling firestorm.

Shore

In a growing fog, I traveled 

in a rowboat to an unknown shore. Unsure 

I'd even reach any shore.

When my arms grew weary, I 

lay back and let the boat 

drift, directionless,

a mote on a vast

unblinking cataract.

Sky perhaps a mere

grey shade lighter

than this great water.

At times so enraged I'd row

so hard my heart

felt the bloodlust of a stoat

eating through the hide

of a stricken deer.

At others, only

mourning, only

sorrow.

Land glimpsed through cloud

but fleeting, maddening,

while silence hushed the skies

and night wouldn't fall.

Days of this. Weeks. Birdless

and silent, except for the oar blades

cutting and dripping like

a killer's dark enterprise.

Enticements, dreams of

welcome and a beach

warm under endless blue. 

Imagination a whore.

A disordered mind will trap you

if you yearn for but never reach

a solitary shore.

And They Need No Candle

Like everything was prechoreographed, the barroom exploded.

Notice the anomalies. The flickering eyes and tapping feet. The man in the Donnie Darko hoodie on a steaming afternoon. A bitter taste lurking right behind the sweet. The quiet dry sand after the tide draws too far out. The flights of silent birds darkening an August sky. The nod toward the man near the exit. A cough that goes too long. The movement of animals.

***

Who am I? That's a simple question with an answer that might take a year to relate. No doubt there's a short version but I ain't ever found it. Okay, here, how 'bout this? I am an auteur. A black hole. A universe swirls inside me, and can't ever escape.

Last time I seen you I just got done telling your dumb ass about how it might behoove you to dial down the attitude in the workplace. Instead of listenin', it was easier for you to rant and call me a bitch and then ghost me like Caspar. He a scared little white boy too, and prolly sweeter. If your only weapon's social media, you already lost, bro-heem. Guess you never saw me sharpening my teeth on your wheel rims. Nah. Your days are numbered like scripture; one day you gonna get to Revelation (22:1–5). But save your prayers and your hymns; I ain't itching for ya. Planning me some primetime mayhem.

Like that barroom. A few strategic words whispered in a few disparate ears, conjugate humanity's secret verbs, program the drone to hack someone's iPhone, mix up sounds like iOS and IRS, watch while the tall skinny taxman brains the Venetian duchess. Ciao bella, indeed. Watch the dominoes fall. Dodge the blood and glass. Mind the step and keep off the grass.

Wannabe soldier? You a full metal jackass.

Other day I sunk five Bellinis while my homegirl tripped balls 'bout nothin. I tuned her out and soared to peach heaven on sparkling clouds of white wine. That shit has pedigree. Named from an Eye-talian painter. When I came back to earth she was gone. Took me a week to find her sorry, self-pitying behind and another week to decide to help her outta her misery. Old school hands around the throat, feeling that hyoid give way, the collapse of her trachea, and the tiny spreading capillaries in the whites of her full-moon eyes. The tattoo of her heels. For the sake of her dignity, I even tried to pretend I didn't enjoy it. 

"I'm sure in her you'll find the sanctuary."

The anomalies come faster now. We runnin' outta time, yo, I can feel it over my event horizon. Nebular menstrual cramps, dark attractors. Let me say now I loved you, boo, and still do. It ain't personal. It's nature. The animals know. They always know. This is how the world ends. Not with the mange but distemper.

Delta Stories

I am a reasonable man, and I will tell you about where I come from.

We all lived in River City and its environs, and we felt the river move through our bodies, especially when it got awful sluggish and crept like mud along our lower intestines. Some days we almost loved the river. But most times we hated it. As mining townsfolk learn to love and loathe those dark seams, wondering which particular day will step forward and take their loved ones from them. Or when the decades-long underground fire that warrants permanent evacuation will be sparked.

There was always a bruised haze in the air around River City. Like we all lived within the heroic yet submissive persona of a domestic violence survivor.

***

After Mom killed Dad and got locked up, Cody looked after me from the very first.

My big sister, my custodian. Murder growing in her eyes.

***

I was one of them that watched.

Not entirely sure I wanna go over this again, truth be told.

Don't you love the peace tonight? So quiet you can almost hear the world creaking on its tired ol' axis like some dusty classroom globe that ain't seen oil in its time not now and not ever.

Why you keep asking me this over and over? Sure I was there, but I never lifted a finger to hurt that girl, weren't hardly complicit in this thing… this atrocity.

***

My mommy and my daddy were playing with us. It was summertime and evening. The sky was blue and lovely, and we had Katy Perry singing. Spock was playing on his own, chasing a cat toy, even though he's not a cat. LOL. It all seemed like normal stuff, until we heard a sound we never heard before, and—

***

Hear the train. That low moan was the sound that accompanied your dawning in this world. Ain't no trains no more, course, but I remember the sorrowing of that sound in the cold night seemed some worrisome augury best put aside to be mulled over in a less antic time.

***

Right, okay. Before you cross the border, take that right turn. Yeah, the one by that old church with the peeling paint and across from the elementary school; turn and you'll see the storage facility on your right. Pull up to the office, knock, and enter. I'll be there, a grey haired lady with a weary smile. We'll provide a key and padlock and assign you a locker.

Girl, place your things inside, lock her up, and come talk to us at the front desk.

After which you will need a place to rest. Please allow us to suggest the Pacific Vista Motel, west off of I-5 and overlooking the ocean. Try to ignore the ants.

Girl crying voice. "John the Revelator." Ganesh. Seaside Heights. Sunsets.

***

Touch her and I'll slowly dismember you. I'll eat your face.

This Dumb Matador

The light's dwindling fast from a fresh spring day. 

"There's a shiny black Crown Victoria top of yonder rise."

"Heat?"

"That'd be my guess."

"Keep driving, then?"

Out there on the edge of town the moths arrive, gather, start to cluster around streetlights. Gianluigi blinks, sighs, gets all righteous pissed.

"Carlos, you pull a U-turn here, and assumin' that's a cop, might as well scream you a badass motherfucker, see if you can't catch me. Seriously. You some kind of dumb matador type?"

Ha, matador type! Makes me laugh. Ain't even Spanish. Though I can't help but remember things: the bright, late sun shining off of warehouse walls, broken cinderblocks, graffiti mockery, reeking garbage, a dead dog beside a blackened grate, was only a half hour ago, if that.

"Yeah, well. Whatever. Hey, been wondering, since when did everyplace end up with them automatic doors with the yellow-and-black stickers?"

"Huh? What?"

"You know, science fiction shit. That shit's everywhere."

"Uh. Enough. I ain't interested in one single goddamned freakish thing you say no more, not ever. Please. Shut the fuck up and drive, yo."

"Sure, not a problem. Sunset's a thing, huh?"

Ever hear a wolf pack start to howl? Think about crystal chandelier tsunamis? Bridal falls in a hellstorm? How ladybugs get the worst STDs? Those are truths, like it or not.

Gianluigi looks right at me, his dry raisin eyes hard as bessemer coals. Harder.

"You're a fat, oily caucasian with nothin' to redeem you, and I'd save a chickenshit nazi child molester before I pissed on you if you were fully ablaze."

"Ha. Well, that's the chalk calling the snowfield white."

"Nah, puttano. Sicilian. That ain't caucasian. Ain't nigger, either, before you say it."

Don't want to say it but think it: Sicilian? Nah, brother, you plain American. Like me. Like most all of us. You think these delicate green leaves give one sacred everliving fuck about those ancient buried roots ten brown lifetimes below? Yeah? Exactly. 

We both hold our breath but the cop never chases us, if he even is a cop, or ever was a cop, and before you know it we are far away from the big city when the bombs start fallin' like toxic black raindrops and I realize I'll never smell Sofia's neck again or ever again feel her sweet, warm breath on me, whatever, goddamnit. The horizon ignites and shears, over and over, while we drive.

You ever watch an iguana twitch on the end of a spit? Given the chance I'll roast all you fuckers alive, see if I don't. You see if I don't.