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Weekly Contest #236
In an untitled folderRight on the desktopI found my mother’s poetryThere was a hesitationIn choosingTo read itMy mother spent her lifeArranging photographsOn a mantleThat was never dustedShe held sentimentFor torn t-shirtsBroken VCR’sDented cans of crinkle-cut carrotsIngredients for a peach cobblerShe’d never makeEverything meant somethingExcept for those closest to herWe were unableTo carry meaningBecause we wouldn’tStop movingDespite our best effortsWe could not empty ourselves outSufficientlyAnd so placing thingsWithin usWas too complex a...
Weekly Contest #235
I am sitting in my favorite chair. The fire is dying down, but it will not die down entirely. It has been created to stay aflame, and as it begins to extinguish, it will loop back. There are two dishes in the sink, and those two dishes will never be washed. The garbage should be taken out, but it won’t be. These imperfections are important. They help you forget that you have no reason to feel safe. Outside, a vampire hunter is patrolling my yard. I created her because, in my youth, I was a fan of a television show about a vampire hunter....
Weekly Contest #234
For a few moments in the lobby of the Viking Hotel, Anton Perfume forgot that it was winter. While he was not a busy man in the colder months, he made it a point to vibrate a few times a week. It consisted of drinking a nice scotch at the bar of a hotel like the Viking. Something with character that remains mostly empty until the summer tourists return. As he sips his scotch, he sends a pulse throughout his body. Nobody would be able to see what he was doing, but he could feel it. Across the globe, an old woman grabs her heart. She feels as ...
Weekly Contest #233
If I give you another one, I get grief from Barry tomorrow. Don’t ask me how Barry knows when we go one glass over. I don’t know if he has cameras in here, but I choose to believe that when you’re that miserable and that greedy, you have a sixth sense for anything that could cost you money or get you cited. I don’t feel like walking in tomorrow and getting called into that rank back office just so he can tell me that he knows I poured an extra song for somebody who was already over their limit. The problem is, you started with Tom Waits....
Weekly Contest #232
The girl who holds the candle never showed up. Scarlet was supposed to be done at five. The manager promised her that by five o’clock, she’d be all set, because the girl who works the night shift never bails. That was three hours ago, and Scarlet’s arm is beginning to grow tired. She’s allowed to put the candle down, but only for a minute. Then, she has to pick it back up again, and somehow, after resting for a moment, it always feels heavier when she retrieves it. Short, sputtering breaths dribble out from the woman lying in bed. Scarle...
Weekly Contest #231
I’ve decided that I’m a little too competitive.In the new year, I’d like to be less competitive. I’d also like to win more races. Not because I’m going to be competitive, because I won’t be, or, at the very least, I’ll be less competitive, but ideally, I won’t be competitive at all, and so competitiveness will have nothing to do with the fact that I will absolutely dominate every race I enter.Less cutthroat enthusiasm, more trophies.More winning.And so I am resolved.I’d like to befriend more tortoises. I currently have no tortoise friends, a...
Weekly Contest #230
What I Need from the Supermarket A pineapple so beautiful it’ll make a man mad. Drive him bonkers. Send him right over the edge. The kind of pineapple that shows up in your life one day when you least expect it. Places itself right on your counter and dares you to carve it up for all that delectable nectar that’ll have you at church the next day asking for forgiveness. A pineapple you can make a smoothie with or an upside down cake. Your choice. But be careful. Choices have consequences. You know that all too well. Two onions. One’s for ...
Weekly Contest #229
Christmas is ruined. Ruined, once again. Last year it was the debacle with the nutmeg wine, and this year it’s the ghosts from the future showing up to terrorize everyone with some grumpy looking gentleman in old pajamas. Didn’t I tell you as soon as we saw that specter in the window that you needed to go outside and scare her off? Now, I don’t know how one goes about scaring a ghost, that is true, but we’re trying to have a party, and who feels like making merry when there’s demons floating about? I don’t care if she was a very pretty...
Weekly Contest #228
I swallowed a statue of Saint Jerome. My mother said I could be forgiven, because I’m only nine, but she followed that forgiveness up with the clarification that I am a very bright nine-year-old, which is why I go to a gifted school that is secular rather than parochial. She told me that even if I weren’t very bright, a nine-year-old should still know better than to go around swallowing things that don’t belong being swallowed. She asked me if there was some kind of extenuating circumstance that led to me ingesting Saint Jerome, and I told...
Weekly Contest #227
Anne had requested a room on a lower floor. When she entered her suite to find a floor-to-ceiling window confronting her with a view of lower Manhattan, she nearly fainted on the spot. Her acrophobia had begun later in life, somewhere in her 40’s, and thirty years later she still couldn’t shake it. Carefully--and with half-closed eyes--she found the switch for the automated curtains and watched as the city disappeared behind a wall of beige. Her trips to New York were something of a reverse exit from hibernation. Whereas her friends on the...
Weekly Contest #226
This never would have happened had there been pizza in the fridge.I could have sworn there was one slice remaining from two nights ago when I placed an order (along with pesto bread), but when I got home, the box was still in the fridge, but there was nothing in it. At some point in the last forty-eight hours, I must have eaten the last piece and not even remembered it. Maybe it was wishful thinking that kept me believing I had something to look forward to when I got home since pizza would be the only thing that qualifies.I pulled the empty ...
Weekly Contest #225
Now before I say anything else, I just need to establish that I am not mad. I have every reason to be mad, but I’m not. I’m not mad. I’ve never been less mad than I am right now even though I have every reason to be madder than I’ve ever been in my life. To the best of my recollection, you were not working here when I came in on Sunday. I’m sure I would remember somebody with as many piercings as you, especially with you being such a young lady and all. I’m sure I would have made some sort of comment about how you don’t have a wedding ri...
Weekly Contest #224
The shark has promised that when George leaves the church, it will swallow him up. George sits in one of the pews and tries to remember a prayer from childhood. He believes he knows the standard ones, but he’d like something more specific to his current situation. While he knows there is definitely not a prayer about being trapped in a church while a Great White Shark waits outside, he seems to recall a prayer about an enemy at the door. A long night of the soul. Suffering and sleeplessness. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and George ...
Weekly Contest #223
Ms. Montgomery, I’d like to write something about your grade. First, I should give you some background. I am not, as you know, a teacher who attempts to endear herself to students by blurring the line between the personal and the professional. You will have noticed, I suppose, that at no point this year have I ever disclosed anything about where I live, whether or not I’m married, whether or not I have children, what I like, what I don’t like, or even how I feel. I speak. You listen (hopefully). I distribute education. You absorb inf...
Weekly Contest #222
Ramirez shows up three minutes early everyday. I am to be here ten minutes earlier. Somehow she knows if I’m not. The wall is blank. It was painted over in the night. A lost white. As if a blizzard had swept in to confiscate the previous day’s mural. I am allowed one brush and two colors. I may choose the colors the night before, but I must do so having no idea what Ramirez will ask me to paint. According to her, she doesn’t even know what she’s looking for until she walks into the studio. The wall is three times as high as either of us. T...
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