9.2 / February 2014

[wpaudio url=”/audio/9_2/Fogarty.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] You ride shotgun for Wells Fargo and you’re feeling pretty important. They named a seat for you up on the stage with your long leather duster and your sawed-off side-by-side. This is serious business.

They were in this sad little motel on the edge of Vidalia, and it stank of crack and weed and fried food, everything smothered in the smell. Maggie knelt like a girl praying, her stomach pressed up against the sharp edge of the tub, water sloshing everywhere. Bouie’s fat fingers were rough against her skull.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/9_2/Smolens.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] When your wife dies you find music tastes different and food sounds the same. You don’t walk, you creep. Some days you crawl. Others, best just to lie still. The closets are full of ghosts. Blouses she wore when she was twenty-six. A denim skirt. Killer dresses.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/9_2/Novak.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] They ran along the lake and, spent, heaving, beating, breathless, fucked. A mirror on the wall: grace wasn’t in her. She wasn’t on a ceiling, a fireplace, a rug. To stay present, she tried not to overstare her face.

We met in a chat room, then followed up with a date in the city. I wore a black dress to ward off expectations. He wore a grey undertaker’s suit. We had a nice seafood dinner in a waterfront restaurant. He was an accountant, but I didn’t hold that against him.

Stained, mute monks eased prone tenantless, masses – unsophisticated, purple-black reserve, slices of silver, oakum cobs, infection, and exhibition – constables involuntarily indulge disconcerted, ceased decency, instinct, and misrule of spirit – Anna.

: I am two. I want to be open. (How easy to say!) I trespassed on military land in Argentina near where the Andes began : not began geologically, but began photographically. I pocketed a severed knuckle : pretended it was a fossil.

This last one I ate slowly, in small bites, chewing him well before swallowing. In between eating him, we talked. He wasn’t in pain – I’d guess he hardly even noticed when he lost another limb, another sliver of skin, a quivering chunk of back or thigh.

We were in a recession. Soon the very rich would bounce back enough that the rest of us would no longer be able to call what remained a “recession,” but on September 22, 2011, we were all in a recession together.

Through cutouts of lakeside cottages, un-insulated, gingerbread trimmed. Through long-shadowed halls over pine-boards creaking, cracked attic stairs, I will gather you back.

I pushed out a baby bird with a broken ribcage and wings that were another pair of legs, complete with claws. It didn’t breathe at all this turkey vulture, though I loved it for all its deformities.

The boy who is a reliable narrator pours milk into his root beer. He scratches a sestina into the roof of his car and calls it a grocery list. He throws birdseed into sewer drains. Finches kiss cigarette butts, blue pennies, stained blouses.