Max Halper

Max Halper is the author of the books Lamella and The Meadow and the Misread, both forthcoming in 2022.

THE MASTIFF by Max Halper

August 23, 2021 · Fiction

“My life is over,” I said in the dark my first night inside. A full minute passed. “Shut the fuck up,” said my cellmate. A month later I hanged myself. I did it from the bunk with my undershirt. There was no pain. My cellmate slept through it. When he woke up I was so dead I seemed more a facet of the cell than an occupant. He looked at me and nodded, as if my body imparted some keen insight. He determined I had managed to escape, had bored a tunnel through the only wall in the prison they…

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WOODEN SKY by Max Halper

March 17, 2019 · Fiction

She has beautiful veins. Like stained glass, he thinks. But everything is stained glass when he’s this high. Everything is one big hallowed tableau. This is what church endeavors to be, he thinks, on his back. If church and heroin did a collaboration, he’d be the Pope of that shit. The Dope Pope. Pope-on-some-Dope. He watches her veins through lashy eyes. He watches the needle, erect, rapacious. The back of his brain whistles, like tea in another room. He has no memory of anyone ever making tea. He must’ve seen it in a movie. But it’s tea. Everybody knows what…

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