
PORCELAIN by Nicholas Claro
The couch is more of a loveseat. It hardly seats the two of us. On it is the pillow and blanket I’ve been using. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in over a week.
The couch is more of a loveseat. It hardly seats the two of us. On it is the pillow and blanket I’ve been using. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in over a week.
Now that your precious jackfruit is out in the world, latch the angel onto your body and let nature take its course. She held her jackfruit to her breast, to her arms, her neck, rubbed it against herself until she was raw.
She’d say that it’s not enough for a man to create a life; he must sustain it. Protect it. Sufficiency means safety. It means contingencies. It means insurance.
He fondles a piece of charcoal and looks at me before touching the paper. The line makes a limp imitation of a spine. A nose appears.
The lord’s light is a fathomless null. Sometimes you’re afforded a glimpse and it’s a tunnel on the other side of which you crawl on the accordioned car’s ceiling.
At first everyone blamed the smoke on the war, then the steel plant, and, finally, the water. But Ong Hai says it’s not water but grief at the bottom of the sea.
The masks were thin, pliable. They attached to her skin, seamless. They emoted for her, always appropriate, guaranteed to fetch the reaction she wanted.
Those twins out of St. Paul are doing some live podcast tour about living without lungs but that’s easy, the no lungs thing.
The Weatherman describes the snow as dumping. Feathery bundles fall against all things and accumulate against all things, and besides that: the grey, and the cawing of invisible birds.
It was exciting and sad and over too fast and underwhelming and amazing, all at the same. It was all of it. It was beautiful.