rumbleHUM

Ten of us conspired to murder Garrett Greenwell although only eight of us actually managed to endure the exhausting course it took to arrive at this moment. You’d have thought that standing over Garrett’s body, his immaculate blue suit, blood-soaked, would have invoked certain emotions in me, terror heightened by the rapid beating of an adrenaline fueled heart, anger rising from a manufactured offense, pleasure withdrawn from a well of psychopathy housed in the core of my soul. But none of that was the case. I felt nothing but pure serenity. “What are we going to do with the body?” Unlike me, Igor failed to appreciate the beauty in Garrett’s death, failed to perceive the canvas upon which we artists had sketched our work, failed to distinguish between the colors of the pallet we used to paint upon that canvas. We hovered over the body looking down upon it, eight murderers, shoulders hunched, heads hung, vultures over a carcass ready to feed. I exited my body for a moment so that I coul...

In time, things would be different, the emotional build-up which prevented us from understanding what was going on, it would all dissipate leaving us with a feeling of emptiness and glow of sadness and shock, kind of like a bathtub which had been drained. In the meantime, we were left standing in a pile of rubble where the missile had entered and had exploded. We had been lucky, if you could call it that, lucky that the building had been constructed the way it had, so that where we were, we were protected generally from the blast. Others had not been so lucky, victims of a despicable war, laying down while their souls waded through the dust formed in the air, choked, unable to leave this Earth as a result of the detritus cloud. I looked at her, her eyes so wide, so vague, so unreadable, her pupils that same deep purple, the same color of space dust that you see in photographs of space, bright against a background of black, except in reverse, bright against a background of white. I wan...

My great-grand parents arrived in America in the 1920's, just in time to witness a number changes in its fabric, to see the her frayed ends, the poor who lost every thing they invested in a country that promised so much, and those parts decorated lavishly, with extravagant and gaudy, the rich which hid behind the thick doors of huge mansions where alcohol, though illegal, flowed freely, and where the only occupation practiced was leisure and its practitioners perfected their craft in ennui. My great-grandparents had not only brought with them the very few possessions, mostly clothing, a few knickknacks holding special meaning, seasoned into the very fiber of the momento, a Bible floating down the generations carefully inscribed with name after name of each baby born, whether they survived the years or not, a doll made from spared rags, with buttoned eyes, one hanging on, literally, by a thread, but had brought with them the stories of the old-country, stuffed in vast compartment ...

I peruse the numerous discounted e-books that Barnes and Noble offers almost on a daily basis looking for the rare gem of a book, normally priced at $9.99, reduced to $7.99, or even to $2.99 or less.  I obtained a copy of The Flamethrowers this way, bought it despite the ragged cover art, and the fact that the website advertised that the protagonist in the book meandered her way through relationships, a story which might interest other audiences, but not me.  The fact that the book earned a spot on the National Book Award's finalist list for 2013 persuaded me to pay the measly amount for the book. Once bought, the cover became clearer under the light of ownership.  It features a young blond woman with an "x" taped over her mouth.  She looks at the camera, and ultimately, the purchaser of the book, a calm disdain in her eyes.  I immediately though of those modern works of art that I studied in college wherein the artist attempts to make you aware ...

a tall spire long, solid stone, jutting into the sky   between two clouds that form a pair of fleshy lips   at the spire’s base, words etched in black stone memorializing the sacrifice of sea men                   I walk                 among the stone walls                 some have reliefs,                 images of battle,                 soldiers                 carrying weapons   benches to sit on, to lay on, plain and simple, marble, I think, line the paths      ...