My father moved in a whore and her son when I was at work. My clothes were folded behind the couch. I saw their suitcases. They were in the kitchen talking. I walked into my room, sat on the bed and looked around at his things. My father walked by and looked at me. I asked him what had happened. He threw me disgust. I walked into the kitchen where they stood. She was a fat brunette, high hair and a glittering dress, her fat feet crammed into pumps. Her face was whiskey and batter and trade. Her son was skinny, long hair in the back and wired on speed. My father walked in.

“Jeff. This is your new family. Billie and Brett.”

She gave me a slimy nod. Her son tilted his head back and stared me down. I looked at my hands, walked into the bathroom and ran the water. My palms were bloodied from a spill on my bike riding home from work, working double shifts to save for a car. My father rushed in and slammed the door. In the mirror he asked me why I was being so rude. I kept washing my hands. He asked me again. Through the mirror I could see that he had been up for days. I could see that he had just met her at the bar, and I could see him moving their suitcases up the staircase into our apartment. To my left on the counter I saw a clear vanity bag containing make-up, hair brushes and a small glass pipe. I looked back to the sink. He caught the side of my head with a solid right. It echoed in my skull and left my ear ringing. The hit knocked me into the wall. I resumed washing my hands. He told me that this is the way life was, that if I didn’t like it, to pack my shit and get out. He closed the door quietly. I collapsed to the floor and held my ear with both hands, coming up with blood on my palm. The pain was incredible. I washed the ear, walked back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. It occurred to me that this would be the way it was. I walked into the bathroom and grabbed up my things. In the living room I saw her chopping lines of cocaine on the coffee table. They watched the blade and nothing else. I sat back on the bed and began putting the things my father had missed into one of my pillowcases.

I heard the whore whisper to her son to come talk to me. He walked in and stood over me while I sat on the bed. He nodded down to me and curled his lip back.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

He was sweaty junk. His lower jaw orbited his skull, and his eyes were disgusting. My father and the whore appeared in the doorway, and my father smiled. In his smile I saw terrible things. The whore yelled at her kid.

“Brett! That is no way to treat your new brother!”

He ignored her and twitched.

“I asked you a question, faggot.”

I looked at my father. He told me I had to fight my own battles. Her son nudged my shin with the toe of his sneaker.

“Get out of my room.”

My father laughed. He said that if he were me he’d get out of the room before Brett taught me a lesson. I asked him if he’d lost his mind. He was unresponsive. Her son flipped his fingertips against my sore ear and told me to get out again. I stood up and punched him in the teeth. A few slipped back. He fell into the closet doors, and they fell off their tracks. It was loud. My father came for me. I ducked him and her son was up, hand over bloody mouth. He had tears in his eyes. My father had fallen behind the side of the bed. He was grumbling threats, and trying to stand.

I caught her son with a left this time, in the throat. He fell back into the closet and screamed like a girl. His mother came at me in a blind rage. I kicked her hard in the crotch. She stumbled back and dropped in the hallway. I felt a hand on my shoulder spin me around, a flash of meaty knuckles and my lights were turned out.

I woke up hours later. My head was pounding. It was dark in my room. I was under the covers with my shoes off. It occurred to me in the dark that I had turned seventeen the day before. I sat up and walked into the bathroom. The place was pitch black. I flipped the light on.

The whole area above my eyebrows and down to the center of my nose was dark blue and kidney shaped, like a dark birthmark. My neck was stiff. I touched the bruise. Shock waves of pain rolled around my head. There was the clear vanity bag to my left. In a cup in the medicine cabinet sat a plastic cup with dentures at the bottom. I walked into my room and put my shoes on.

Through the bathroom light I could hear them passed out in the living room, down from days of speed. I watched the room from the doorway. My belongings were no longer packed behind the couch. In the bathroom I lifted the dentures from the cup and crushed them under my heel, returning the crumbs back into the cup. They floated there. I closed the medicine cabinet.

Out in the living room I stepped over my father on the floor. The other two were sharing the couch. She was sleeping on top of her son. I was heading across the street to the store for aspirin. Outside sat my belongings in a duffel bag next to my bike. I wondered why they hadn’t been stolen. We didn’t exactly live in the hills. I closed the door. My father jumped up and locked the deadbolt.

I wheeled the bag on my bike across the street. The Sun was coming up behind the supermarket. I placed my bike and my bag next to a register and found a bottle of aspirin and a jug of water, a candy bar, some medicated cream and a box of gauze. When I went to pay my wallet was empty. I had three weeks’ pay in there. Both of my pockets were empty. The lady at the counter asked me what happened to my face. I told her I had just been mugged. She pointed out that my tooth was chipped in half. I felt it. My upper lip was swollen and my front tooth was chipped. Since she’d mentioned it, it hurt to breathe in. I left the store empty. My sister lived six miles west, in a worse part of town. It was still hot in Phoenix. October meant nothing. The bag was without straps, and I had to stop every few blocks to balance it on the frame. I walked my things to her house.

She was at work and the kids were in school. She had three kids from three separate marriages, living in a two bedroom duplex in Glendale. I didn’t want to walk into her work looking like I did. I hopped her fence and fell asleep under the trampoline.

I woke up sweating from the heat of the black rubber. I found a corner of the yard and threw up. Under a palm’s short shade I went through my bag and found my Walkman far at the bottom. I played my music until my batteries went dead. I thought of ways to get my four hundred and sixty-two dollars back from my father, though I knew it was spent already. I laid my head on a pillow of shirts and closed my eyes. Since the sudden death of my mother, he was bound for what he did. The pain of his chemical life was easier for him than dealing with his guilt for treating her like dirt, for ignoring her. Now he was called back to his youth, to the barrooms and whores, the powders cut and cooked, the embalmed cigarettes and the grip of rushing into dawn. Only thing was he still had a son. I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. I thought about my mother reading her bible from her chair under the big lamp. She was with the faith but never once pushed it on us. I thought about the old man now, a husk of waste on the floor, while I taste my vomit and blood. He was once a decent man, now just another drunk a payday closer to the streets and filth, to gutters littered with syringes, laughing with broken glass and shards of bone. My throat grew thick with bile and I leaned to my side and let it go on the grass. The Sun reached through gaps in the palms and gripped my swollen eye. It burned with tears but my eyelid wouldn’t open for anything. I covered my brow with a shirt and remembered back to my old life, to my mother reading the word, and my head burned beneath the sky that was once full with stars, which was now bright with sickness while I try to breathe. All of nature’s passions spent, all of her god’s forgotten grace descended and rotting, the failure of his plan and the bloody tears of war-torn angels. All the mysteries of children lacerated.

it's okay to be a bookworm but know that you'll understand the words better once you've lived them

writing is a type of magic made of words and writers, but writers must have something to write about

hold your tongue around fools the way you hold your breath around smokers

but don't cover your mouth or your nose, hands are unsteady and independent

you don't have to be sad to be important

the people who only care when you're falling apart aren't the sort to associate with at all

Write

He tells me

Write

Something for me

Write

A beautiful story

Write

Anything

Write?

he is staring at me

Write

A blank screen

I flipped the lever on the side. It started like an engine.

I typed my first sentence ever, in capitals:

HERE WE GO.

I liked the feel of it. The bricks around me gave the words heavy acoustics. I didn’t want to start out by copying the journals. I had never written them for others to read. I wasn’t some fucking hungry young writer on the road. Instead I just wrote things that came into my head right there. I made many mistakes. For awhile I practiced the keys, finding the quickest ways to correctly write a sentence. Then I began my first short story. It was about a loser waking up in a stripper’s hotel room, his tongue in the ashtray. It went on for about four pages. It was magic. It wasn’t like handwriting. I was actually there in that hotel room. I saw the whole scene through the black keys. I had escaped my life and lived in a better world of better tragedy without the senselessness. I created the sky and the clocks, the curves of her body and the universe, molecule by molecule. I realized I could live forever through doing this. It was purely beautiful. I finished the story. She dropped him off at a bus stop and drove to the night club. He had nine hours to sit there.

I sat and typed poems, poems for the years long since wasted. I remember those poems, the life they gave. Some of them were dark ones about Helena, about the nature of women. Mostly they dealt with the people and the jobs and the nights without escape, the days which promised nothing. The words made me see things differently, more clearly. I wrote poems about places and people and jobs and parks and dogs and sunlight and children and handguns and everything.

I needed nothing else from that point onward. I needed a room, some caffeine and a typewriter. I typed furiously, sweating. I couldn’t roll the next sheet through fast enough. I’d never felt so useful. It was happening, thundering away, bending the walls downward. I sat there all night and typed to my music. Angels circled above and around my room, protecting me, allowing me to move and move. I was in love. It was all action. It was all mine.

I sat back and rested. I had a thick pile of pages piled next to the machine. I stretched out and looked at the clock: 6:23 p.m. I jumped out of the chair and ran to the phone. I’d missed nearly two and a half hours of work. I was hoping that I didn’t get Rob. I hated Rob. A different manager answered. I played it dumb, asked him if I was supposed to work today. He didn’t really know for sure. He’d just go check the schedule.

​“Yesiree. Supposed to be here at four.”

​“Shit. I’m on my way.”

​“Take your time. Not like you haven’t already.”

I had to be graceful. He could have been an asshole about it.

I walked to work every day because it was only eight blocks. Only this time I was armed. I had the pages I had written in my backpack and they were heavy with substance. I read my things on my break. I had typed out all of it. I was proud. I watched the people outside walking with each other, with their spouses to see a movie, with their kids and their tucked in shirts and pressed pants and perfect hair. I finally felt like I had one over on them. I had finally discovered an edge.

By the time I closed I was dead tired. I wanted to write but I was tired. I felt young again. I hadn’t pulled an all-nighter since Manhattan. I fell back across the mattress and read from the pages until my eyes blurred and I fell asleep, long and blue and without dream.

I think I have a problem -

I am addicted to Prose

I find myself waking earlier every morning just to read what everyone wrote while I was dreaming. But I am afraid, I didn't wake up early enough to read everything that was posted last night. So with a sad heart I shall go to work. Thinking of all the wonderful stories that I haven't read. Watching every minute until I can be free to read. So be patient with me. I will get through it all eventually. I suppose I will have to start waking up even earlier as our community grows. Because there is no cure for the addiction of Prose.

Stipulation

Regulation

Restriction

They make the

Rules

Abide by them

Obedient citizen.

Don't question

Authority

Answer 'always!'

Subordinately

Inferiority

Makes them see

Superiority

Within their

Actions

Through mindless

Taxation

Of free will

And inspiring creativity

No more.

the best part of my day

is when I pull up the covers;

turn out the lights.

whisper: 'goodnight,'

to no on in particular.

and I think back to times

when I imagined myself happy;

Disney movie teenager.

but id been over-eager.

I'll be navigating these years extravehicular.

with pensive charm

and perhaps deep stare

you...

a soft

stone...

you walk life in solitude

yet still glimpse sun

in stormy imaginations.

Delicate white flowers stretch through the chain-link fence like prisoners.

The cold, shimmering pool water sent a shock through my ankles at first, but as I stepped in up to my thighs, it was a cooling wash to strip me of the sweat of the day. I listened to the hum of the heater inside the locked maintenance room and the dock birds complaining of the orange-yellow tinted heat of the air outside. The water distorted and silver bubbles rose quickly to the surface and popped as I swirled my leg through the silky water. The wind turned white and gray and swooped up my hair into a gentle float, spinning in circles around me as I adjusted to the coolness. A frog sounded close-by, then silenced, satisfied. I stared over the beautifully rusted porcelain rails to the docks, hinges straining passively, and wondered how hot it really was.

I missed you,

I feel my mind say

Untwisting the cables

That run from the past,

To the future.

It seems you've

Done well for yourself.

Your polygons are

Sharp as ever.

Just like

I remember.

When I was gone,

Did you miss me?

My controls,

My wins?

Did you call for me

Out loud?

I'm sorry.

I wasn't listening.

I am now.

It feels so good,

To have the silver plastic rumble

in my hands again.

The green A and

The blue B are

Disproportionate.

But I don't mind.

The space on

The triggers

Are melded to

My fingers.

The curves

Of the handles are

The shape of my palms

My body grew around

Your happy corners,

And pleasant angles.

Your seams are

All intact.

I was careful

With you,

Always.

How my eyes light up

When I experience

Again, the winner's

Victory screen.

The tacky colored,

Shine-shaded confetti

Congratulates me,

And a shake of

The controller

Reminds me of

It's warmth.

Are you really

Proud of me?

I missed

The paradise

Air ride gave me.

The tiny town

I flew above

The pastel colors

That surrounded

My star.

Back then,

I chose the bat star.

It looked scary.

Now, I choose

The angel star.

It hurts,

To change.

I wonder if

There's another

Meaning.

These buildings

Are empty,

These people

Not right.

But I resolve

To leave worry

To others.

I have a race

To win.

My mind empties,

My speed increases.

The taglines

Of the different

Hoverstars

Remind me

Of myself.

"Turn, stop,

Turn, stop,

Turn, stop".

I look at myself

A little harder.

"Low speed, but,

Has good defense".

I tear down

My concrete

And am clearer

And happy.

I'm surprised

You lasted so long,

without a

crack in your metal

Or a dent

In your shine.

Thank you.

I'll last

My whole life,

Just for you.

Because of you.

I missed you,

I feel my mind say,

Untwisting

The cables

That run from

My future,

To my past.

I love you,

I feel my mind say.

And the pixels

Answer back.