Welcome to quiet hours reruns, a curated collection of poetry I’ve written in the past month. If you’ve missed my recent work, this is a great place to see what I’ve been writing; if you’ve been tuned in, expect occasional revisions and new poems I only post here. Read some of it, all of it, or none of it—my words are now yours to enjoy.

written after mowing the lawn

GLIMPSE INTO THE CAFFEINATED MIND

Dog with a Blog

written while playing fetch with my dog

Roadkill in the Ballroom

The past month brought heat, birdsong, and confusion. Through writing, I’ve been able to get a glimpse of the path forward—foggy as that path may be. If you are still finding your way through the mist, know that there are clear skies ahead.

See you in the static,

Cooper

Note: I hope you’ve enjoyed reading last month’s poems as much as I enjoyed writing them. In the future, I’ll be posting these reruns on the first of every month, and my more polished poems will be getting full, standalone posts whenever inspiration strikes. Fiction posts will continue as usual every other Thursday. I’d also like to give a special thanks to for inspiring me to post my poetry in this “roundup” style—if you haven’t checked out his work, go give it a read!

Foolish

who's the fool, fueled by a desire for 
the fool is fractured, on a quest for a MacGuffin
absurd, right, yes, just, so, absurd, but
the fool is stretchy, Mr. Fantastic,
not as smart
who's the fool, surrounded by pylons, there're're're um,
houses, yes, houses, McMansions, origami unfolding
into swans, not the exotic ones, just a flaunting goose
could've said ugly duckling, who's the fool, someone
who wishes
because i said so, temperance, tantrums
crying during mini golf
but always loves the sky worlds, one more
chariot derailing, one more (please)
empress proud, one more
hanging pear, one more(?)
go to sleep, darling

Grown-Up Stuff

give me the sound of real life

i shot nerf bullets, running through caution
tape and gashing my head in the corner of
a glass table inside a glass house that i loved
to watch outside the windows from at night,
i would wake up, my paranoid mind and see
a black sedan crawling about the cul de sac,
our neighbors kept bees, i’ve been stung thrice
and i’m only now growing unafraid,
there are many things i’ve stepped on to get 
here, i’ve stepped on nails and glass and 
lego bricks and wasps and yes bees,
many things rest forever on the ground as i
keep walking, i watched a baby robin twitch
on the ground, swarmed by flies, but only 
after i watched it and held it and 
fed it and needed it and loved it,
but i was only a kid, and last night we saw
a crane flying in the green sky so i guess
life does go on, only in other ways,
you don’t see fireflies anymore, right,
but the other night i saw them off the highway
in a field so i know they still exist, they seemed 
happy but different, still beautiful, i am
relearning a lot of things, my cousin 
took an edible at my tenth birthday party
and i understand why, nobody wants to see
a kid unwrapping the lego set you can’t have,
so just chew and be a good example, i am
the youngest and most confused,
i am living a life i’ve seen already, swallowing
baby blues and hoping the rest
of the day goes down with them

SOMETHING LIKE CHAMPAGNE FIZZLED OUT
THE BOTTLE; IT SHATTERED, A MILLION GREEN
PIECES OF MY LIFE SHINING BACK, FRACTALS
KILLING LUXURY, NECTAR SPILLING OUT OF ME

A RUINED CELEBRATION SPLIT MY SKIN
OPEN, I WAS JUICED LIKE A KIWI
AND THE SHARDS, THE SHARDS
ARE MIRRORS, SLICING THE NERVE: 

bang bang bang bang

that’s the wasp hitting the window
bang– green glass–

one 
of us should leave
one 
of us is the wasp. 

where “clear” means through 
& “through” means gone 
& “gone” meaning 
out, out, “out” out– 
repeat: 

round & round 
the wasp goes
goldmad. 
“out” is everywhere 
it looks, like 

bang–
oh god, just grab the zapper
and splat my body,
if there’s no such thing as elsewhere,
if there’s no such thing as elsewhere
 
the almost-out becomes the bait: 
you can have it all, 
all– 
if only you unwing yourself 
& unbecome 
the body wanting through.

your hand is violin-in-motion, the wasp in flight, the wasp still humming 
inside the dim kitchen
chord by chord, 
like slow breathing, i  
hear the ventral nerve cord 
vibrating through wing-vein, 
chitin;
ganglion by ganglion–
voltage. i, 
in the silence, feel for 
the wasp.

oh god, i’m self-stinging
under spotlights, a sad concerto
tip-toeing on verdant shards.
the blade 
is my instrument and
the stinger
is my tune 

BACK INTO A MEMORY OF THE PAST OR THE PRESENT
OR THE FUTURE WHERE I CHOOSE NOT TO ACT; DID
THE LADY OF SHALOTT REVEL IN HER DEATH? DID
RAPPACCINI’S DAUGHTER KNOW SHE WAS POISON?

AS VENOM LEAKS OUT OF MY STINGER,
I REALIZE THIS IS ALL A DREAM, A SHITTY
CLICHE ENDING THAT I HAVEN’T EVEN EARNED–
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, INTO THE GLASS AGAIN!

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Tandy was never one for appearances. Standing at the front door of the talent agency, however, she primped incessantly, running a frantic hand through her orange hair and messing with the sleeves of her blouse. A spot of rain had drizzled across the city a few minutes prior; she was still wet. Her shoulders sagged. Her hair looked flat.

Before she could walk inside, a thud stopped her. Looking toward the sky, something new came pouring from the clouds. It enveloped her vision and landed right next to her: a sparrow, flopping dead on the pavement after flying into the skyscraper windows above. It twitched. Tandy was glad she was having a better day than the bird, at least.

The waiting room was plush and green. Olive walls surrounded her while she sat on a fluffy beige sofa, and tall green plants stood in every corner. In waiting, Tandy grew restless, and to her surprise, angry. She resented waiting, needing to sit for so long. She imagined the room as a pistachio that had been split, spitting up all its colors, gurgling green. A minute passed. Then, a young receptionist peeked out the door.

“Tandy Irvine?”

Tandy followed the receptionist, futzing with her hair as they strode down a lime-painted hallway. She should have put it in a bun, a ponytail—something. “Ruth’s office is right through here,” said the receptionist before walking back to the waiting room.

The doorframe was mahogany, a brooding interruption to the bright green walls that surrounded it. It had a window of frosted glass, lettered in a delicate font: Ruth Salisbury. She was the most famed talent agent in the entire city—perhaps the country. Every pop star Tandy idolized, every actress she adored, every writer she read, all of them were managed by Ruth Salisbury. Tandy opened the door.

“I don’t know why you’re coming to me for this. You of all people should know I have better things to worry about than some bedroom-pop singer’s whiny voice. If you want to make Deb-B famous—actually famous—get her some vocal training and a lozenge. Good day.”

Ruth Salisbury sat behind a sturdy desk, scribbling something in a planner. She pushed up her rectangular glasses, only adjacently aware that Tandy was standing in the doorway.

“H–hi,” Tandy said, too quietly to be heard. She tried again.

“Hello, Mrs. Salisbury.”

Ruth looked up from her planner with a gasp. “Oh! Mandy, right? Just leave my lunch at reception.”

“Um—it’s actually Tandy. And I’m actually here for an interview. I spoke with your assistant on the phone?”

“Right! you’re the one Francis told me about. Please have a seat.”

Tandy obliged. The name slip-up was odd for a woman who seemed so organized. Who did Ruth think she was, Meryl Streep? She grew angry again and combed a strand of hair behind her ear. The two women sat across from each other, silent. The solid desk stood in between them like a hedge. The conversation had lulled before it had even started, fuck! Tandy forced herself to speak.

“So, I came in here today to speak about the possibility of being a client of yours!” A bit too enthusiastic, but at least it got the ball rolling.

“Got it. I understand you’re an actress?”

“Yeah—well, trying to be. I’ve been an extra in a few big-ish movies. My most notable credits are Clara Goes to France, Phase, and Mistress Mummy, I’d say.”

“And you were an extra in all three of these?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Was ma’am too diminutive? Too granny-sounding? Tandy blinked.

“Understood,” Ruth said, peering at something on her laptop. “I just pulled up the resume you sent my assistant. It says you’re a ‘freelance creative.’ What does that mean?”

Tandy laughed, a maybe-mistake. “It’s basically just saying I’m open to work. Any artistic work—acting, writing, painting…”

“So you’re unemployed.” Ruth clicked her pen and started writing something.

“Yeah. That’s another way to put it.”

Ruth wrote for a long time—too long, Tandy thought. When she finally set down her pen, she stared Tandy directly in the eyes. Her irises were bright and piercing like a wolf’s.

“Alright,” she said. “Now for the actual interview part of this interview. I’m gonna ask you some questions. Some are personal, others are more abstract. Just give me your most honest answer for each, and we’ll see if there’s somewhere to go from there. Oh—and don’t mind Jessica, she’s just here to take notes.” Ruth gestured toward an empty chair behind her.

Tandy stared at the empty chair. There was no ‘Jessica’ taking notes, no person in the room aside from her and Ruth Salisbury. Was this some trick? A test for up-and-coming actors? Tandy wondered if Ruth carried out this scheme to all of her potential clients. She wouldn’t dare ask questions—the conversation had already been awkward enough.

“Ok. I’m ready.”

The first several questions were simple enough: hometown, interests, ambitions, general knowledge type stuff. Yet, as the interview progressed, Ruth’s questions grew more strange.

“What’s your relationship with your mother like?”

“Um…” Tandy paused at the question. If there was an intern in the room, an invisible Jessica, she hoped this was off the record. “Why do you need to know that?”

Ruth clicked her pen. “Everyone needs a story, a brand. So far, I don’t have much to work with. If you have a problem with your mother, or, say, a problem with yourself, we could reach an audience facing similar hardships and really capitalize off that market.”

“Well, my mom and I are decently close, maybe not as close as we once were…But I don’t have many problems with myself either. Is there a different direction we could go with my brand? I can talk to you about my trip to the Caribbean, how I used to play the violin—seriously, there’s a whole bunch of ways we could take this.”

Ruth might as well have not heard Tandy at all. “Let’s say you’re in a room with a floor and a ceiling, but no walls. A white abyss stretches as far as the eye can see. What do you do? Where do you go? What do you look for first?”

“Is that a riddle?” Tandy adjusted the sleeves of her blouse.

“It’s a question I like to pose to some.”

“Well, I guess I’d walk until I reach something.”
“Really…That’s interesting. What do you think might be in this room, considering you can’t see anything other than a white abyss?”

“Food? Water? Civilization? I don’t know—what am I supposed to be looking for here?”

“You wouldn’t try to break through the ceiling?”
“Sure, I’d try to break through the ceiling.”

“It’s too high for you to reach.”

“What are you on about? What kind of interview is this?” A vein in Tandy’s neck bulged. She fought away hot tears.

“Listen, Mandy—”

“TANDY.”

“Right.” Ruth took a deep breath. “I am a talent agent—what that means is, I scope out the next generation of superstars, showstoppers, whatever you want to call them. You can’t move forward in this world if you don’t know who you are or what you’re looking for. And you certainly won’t accomplish your dream of being a world-renowned actress if you can’t offer the world something innovative. You’ve got the look: fiery orange hair, long legs, straight teeth. But your posture is all wrong—you carry yourself in a way that tells me you think you deserve to be defeated. I asked you for a story and you gave me bullet points. Good day.”

Tandy blinked hard. Fucking agents, always on their high horse, always trying to beat down people with real, genuine dedication. If Ruth Salisbury couldn’t see her potential, someone else surely had to. She—

“I wish you well, Tandy, I really do, but you have to leave.” Ruth turned around and looked at the empty chair behind her desk. “Jessica, can you please show Tandy the door?”

The air in the room shifted. Tandy stood up to see the empty chair push itself back slightly, its rubber feet moaning against the vinyl floor. She heard pumps against the tile, click-click-clicking to the door. The golden knob turned sideways and the door swung open.

Tandy hurried out of the building, raking shaky hands through her hair the entire way.

Tin Man

when the wishing well runs dry
you can find me clawing at the bottom
fingernails scraping ridges of stone
praying for water to rise

you drop the bucket, drop the rope
i’ll throw it back, tie it up
give me a chance to self-destruct
i'm not good at giving up

and as i claw, you call my name
my cuticles bleeding from strings
you tied to me, i swear you did
quit pulling up, you’re coming down

when the wishing well ran dry
you found me at the bottom
i shrank myself and steeled my heart
hid my face, guarded my love

but you want me
to see the sun
find the heart within the rust
find the patience in the trust
you want me
to live again
i think i found it, think i see it
think i'm climbing, please 
don't let me fall

The Heart

i tried to learn the logic
of predator and prey
but the vultures got in the way

i swatted at the scavengers
my other hand on iron
freeing my ankle from a trap i set

i took an axe to the outhouse
my last hiding spot
wood splintering into my legs

and i apologize
for fleeing to the woods
can't tell what rain washes and what it rusts

i tried to learn the logic
of predator and prey
but real love doesn’t work that way

Marie closed the bathroom door. Surrounding her were four walls consisting of the same seafoam wallpaper on the top half and white tile backsplash on the bottom half. The room was pristine; not even a scuff could be seen on the hexagonal floor tiles or the porcelain toilet. There was no soap scum in the tub, and the stainless steel shower head was spotless. If not for the smell of sewage and the chattering of construction from next door, Marie’s bathroom could have been a furniture store display.

But it was every day Marie walked into that bathroom, so used to the bright walls, the swirling of the toilet water. She found nothing special about it at all and there was nothing to suggest its specialty could ever be compromised—save for the occasional plumbing hiccup. She pulled down her sweatpants and sat on the toilet, back arched and absorbed in her phone. With each swipe of her finger, her periphery seemed to vanish. The hexagon tiles on the floor became a blurry mess of lines, the bright white backsplash dimmed, and the wood varnish on the door blended with the walls.

Marie flushed the toilet and her view widened again. As she stood up to open the door, she realized there was no door to open. It hadn’t blended in with the walls, no—it had become them. So there she stood: a place so familiar, so mundane, but now with four walls and no door to escape them. She felt the room was shrinking, too, a box of solitary confinement that offered nothing but noise from the outside world to remind her that, if she listened close enough, there was a world outside of this bathroom. Marie fumbled for her phone but was so panicked in doing so that she dropped it in the toilet; the screen flickered and went black. She put her hands to her head and muttered some expletive.

Then, the room itself began to transform. The sounds of construction from outside were muffled by the shriek of shattering plaster, backsplash tiles falling off the walls. From behind some of the tiles, arms and legs sprouted, seizing sideways from the walls. Marie screamed and backed away from the wall-limbs, but each pace drew her closer to the nameless skin of another hand, another foot. She cowered, curling into a ball on the tiled floor until each hexagon erupted, too. From the floor grew clumps of large teeth, like worker bees emerging from a decayed honeycomb. Tiles continued bursting on the floor. Marie cried as a canine pierced her ankle and a molar bruised her temple.

She rose on the now-jagged floor and banged her fists on the doorless wall. A foot kicked at her ribs while a flapping hand caught her hair. Turning to escape the arms and legs, she yelped—another tooth dug in her bare foot. The wallpaper had now peeled from each wall, revealing hundreds of human eyes staring directly at her. The toilet overflowed with murky water. Marie made a futile attempt at keeping her balance amidst the chaos. She fell to the floor once again, imagining the other rooms in her house: rooms with no limbs, rooms with no secrets, rooms that couldn’t reach and grab and stab and watch. She looked to the white ceiling—the only perfect thing left in the room—as dirty water pooled around her body. Her eyes narrowed in on the empty space, no blemishes to ruin the image. It was a pure thought, fixating on something so simple. But Marie believed that, if she squinted her eyes so much that all she could see was the vacant ceiling, maybe everything else would go away.

A man and a woman sat next to each other in a bar. The man was writing something down in a notebook and taking sips from his whiskey glass while the woman, no younger than forty, drank a cocktail in a curvy glass while flirting with the bartender. A man in cowboy attire took his seat next to them.

“Greyhound, please,” said the cowboy, and with a slight lift of his finger the barkeep began to make the drink. The woman curled her red lips at the cowboy from across the counter.

“Never seen a man in cowboy clothes order a greyhound. Not a whiskey guy, I take it?”

“Depends on the occasion, I s’pose.”

The cowboy studied the woman. She wore powdery makeup that made her look incredibly pale apart from her waxy red lips. She had wide eyes framed by thick purple lashes and a head full of thinning, brassy hair. She adjusted her teal sequined dress before responding:

“I feel like I recognize you from somewhere. Wait—were you at Lombardo’s two nights ago? I swear there was a cowboy there.“ Her mouth hung open like she was mid-yawn.

“I wasn’t there, sorry.”

“Oh thank god!” she said a bit too loudly, startling the man in between them, who was still trying to write. “I’m glad you weren’t there, because you didn’t have to witness some loony fall off her chair!” Then she muttered, “spoiler alert, it was me!” She laughed and took a big sip of her cocktail.

“That’s nice,” said the cowboy, puzzled at the honey-colored liquid bubbling inside the woman’s glass.

Then the man in the middle chimed in: “I know where you know him from. He’s that gunslinger Finn Rosedale. Cowboy, bounty hunter, whatever you want to call him—he’s known for being dangerous with a revolver.” He resumed scrawling numbers in his notebook.

The woman took a hearty sip of her drink. “That’s right! And now you’re, what? Just a man out on the town? The big city seems an awful place for a cowboy like you.”

“It’s not too bad,” Finn said. “I write in the park occasionally. I watch birds. Nights like tonight I settle down at bars like this one—just to take the edge off.”

“What’s got you on edge, Rosedale?”

“Nothin’.”

The woman studied him back. Finn Rosedale was nothing like the formal, gray-suited man in between them. He was much less put-together, wearing a tattered brown jacket and discolored jeans. His hair was messy and his stubble formed a rugged vignette around his otherwise soft face.

Finn was sick of talking about himself, even though he hadn’t spoken much at all. “What do you two do for work?” he asked. The writing man looked up to answer but the woman was quicker.

“I’m an actress,” she said. “You might’ve seen me on the silver screen in—”

“You haven’t seen her in anything,” interrupted the suited man, “she’s a washed-up starlet.”

“Hey! We prefer the term ‘starving artist.’ It has more mystique. And what do you know about my career? You’re scribbling numbers into a notebook at a bar—live a little!” Now Finn sensed the two of them getting into an argument. He sipped his greyhound, swishing the bitter potion in his mouth.

“I’m ‘scribbling’ because I’m a banker. I work with real money, not fake pictures on television.”

“What’s more real than a story on the silver screen?”

“Listen.” Now he turned toward the woman, Finn only a bystander, a third wheel. “Movies, TV, entertainment, it’s all fake—sloppy recreations of a world bound by logic, numbers, and codes. I know you’re probably passionate about what you do, lord knows you’re not in it for the money. But you’re working with something invented. I’m working with something real.”

The woman laughed. “Money is an invention, you goat. And so are the movies, I’m not denying that. But who cares if anything is fake, right? Let’s have fun, let’s enjoy the pleasures this world has to offer. Let’s drink. Another one of these, barkeep.” The bartender exchanged her glass with a fresh one; Finn still couldn’t figure out what she was drinking.

The banker gestured his whiskey glass toward Finn. “Let’s take this outlaw here, for example,” he said. “I’m sure the legends say one thing or another about Finn Rosedale: how he always keeps his six shooter close, how he never backs down in a shootout, how he drinks cheap whiskey at the local saloon after bedding a woman. But the real Finn Rosedale—the one we see here and now—is nothing like the legends. If he has a gun I’m not sure, but he’s no charmer, and he doesn’t drink whiskey—not even the cheap stuff. Your movies do the same thing as Old West myths. They gloss over the real details for the sake of a story.”

Finn fixed his gaze on the countertop. He liked the bitter taste of grapefruit in his drink—so what? It wasn’t something he was ashamed of, only vexed by the expectations of others. But was he playing a role? He didn’t want to think so—he was his own person. He cracked his knuckles and carried on drinking.

“What I’m trying to say,” continued the banker, “is that, in my profession, the numbers don’t lie. People, and the stories they construct, can bend the truth in ways that no mere accountant could calculate. If reality is the truth, then movies just…fudge the numbers.”

“God, you’re one boring, sour grape,” said the woman. “Y’know there’s such a thing as a beautiful lie? Who cares if movies are just stories we make up? There’s a reason people watch them, and there’s a reason I want to act in them. It’s escapism—it’s the hope that, one day, you can wake up and be a different person. The hope that things can change. And let the goddamn cowboy finish his greyhound in peace next time.”

The banker turned around and saw that Finn Rosedale had paid for his drink and left without making a sound.

Finn walked the city streets with an occasional stumble from the maybe-too-strong greyhound. He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and wondered why he even showed up at the bar in the first place when it was a largely unpleasant experience. Lies, truth, movies, money: it was all just so pointless, the whole discussion. He much preferred the country, where he could play by his own rules and be spoken to rather than through. He thought that, with so many people living in the city, there must be someone with whom he could get along. But still, there was nobody. There were numbers people and there were actors. All he wanted was another cowboy.

Styrofoam Boy

light as a feather, stiff as a board
still
rising from the bed
filled with not quite anything
but white eyes and creaky joints;
a breathless kaiju
inhaling manually.
something was summoned
while the house was asleep
stuck like styrofoam
gnashing rigid teeth

The Morning During

lifeless
listening to birds
Merlin says American Robin,
but i also heard
a cardinal, he sang
good morning to me
before i fell asleep.
my eyes sink but
i don’t want to miss out on the
shy morning sun, the
waking of the world and the
chorus that beckons it
a bouquet
of dandelions
ever-growing

A strange heat lingered above the island. The air was wispy but thick, offering occasional salty breezes that interrupted the humidity; but still, there was heat. The sun shone down on a crowd of trees, their broad leaves accepting the warmth. The sand, while somewhat shaded by the leaves, was hot. If there’s anything that should be said, it was hot.

“I just don’t see why she’s so standoffish to me,” a young man said, sitting at one end of the beach with a camera crew surrounding him. “If she knew this game, she’d know I made the right decision.”

A guy next to the camera operator chimed in. “Bradley, can you do that one more time, but say ‘if she knows this game’? We have to make it look like everything is happening in the present. For the viewer.”

Bradley stretched his neck before nodding. “Sure. Ahem—If she knows this game, she’d know I made the right decision.”

The questioner gave a bro-ey thumbs up. “Got it.”

For all of his life, Bradley Newman was a self-proclaimed superfan of Stranded, a show where a group of complete strangers were tasked with surviving on a deserted island, voting one another out one-by-one until the last remaining contestant won a million-dollar grand prize. He loved the game because of its strategy: the social dynamics and complex power moves beguiled him like no other show on television. As a kid, Bradley would sit down on the couch and watch Stranded with his dad every Thursday at 8 p.m. His dad would get upset whenever his favorite player got voted out, a habit often coinciding with utterances like “that was so stupid” or “why’d they vote Nathan out? He was the strongest!”

To put it simply, his dad would take personal offense whenever the contestant he was rooting for got eliminated. But not Bradley. He, on the other hand, enjoyed watching the juicy blindsides. When a conniving player outfoxed someone stronger than themselves, he would silently celebrate as his dad protested. When Dad was going through the five stages of grief over Nathan’s exile, Bradley would be smiling, endlessly proud of Sam or Ellie or whoever blindsided Nathan in season 31.

When Bradley applied for season 46, he never expected to get a call back. Sure, his mom died when he was young and he had a rare skin disease, but it’s not like there was anything at all interesting about him. Still, the call came and Bradley was overjoyed. He could hardly wait to meet the host of Stranded, Brett Pabst, and he so desperately wanted to skip the plane ride to Tonga and play the strategic game he had always dreamed of playing.

The fairy tale, so to speak, was nothing like Bradley fantasized. Tonga was beautiful and the weather was nice, but Brett Pabst wasn’t all that charming in real life and his fellow players loathed him; he thought it was because he betrayed his number-one ally, Jess, earlier in the game by voting out her friend. But even though he was a social outcast, the other contestants never bothered to vote him out—he just couldn’t understand why. So, by the time only five players remained in the game, Bradley had grown accustomed to operating alone and existing on his own island.

As the camera crew retreated to film the other players back at camp, Bradley took the opportunity to go for a solitary swim. The incessant heat had made it hard to even think, and he needed to relax anyway.

Sitting in the shelter with lenses and a boom mic encircling them were Jess and Abigail. Pam was sleeping on the hammock.

“Do you think Hugo’s out looking for a safety talisman?” Abigail asked.

“Not sure,” Jess said. “But with the way the game’s going, he better start.” She fiddled with a loose bamboo slat while she talked.

“Yeah, I figured Hugo would be gone next, then we take either Pam or Bradley to the end.”

“Do you have a preference?”
“Maybe Bradley. He doesn’t do shit around camp…and he doesn’t have four kids at home like Pam does.”

Jess laughed. “Well, yeah. I guess the decision is pretty easy. It just sucks we’re gonna have to put up with him not doing anything for that long. And I know he’s like, probably a nice guy, but I don’t know a single thing about his life outside this game.”

“Really? That’s shocking considering you guys were allies before.”

“Allies doesn’t mean friends. He’s got a great strategic game going but nobody fucking likes the dude, myself included. It’s not just the camp stuff—he’s insufferably condescending all the time.”

“Especially to the girls!”

“Especially to the girls.”

Jess and Abigail stared out toward the beach, the white sand glistening with oppressive heat. Further out, Bradley was swimming alone, a tiny speck in the view from camp.

The ocean was vast and empty: Bradley preferred this. As he aimlessly swam, his messy brown hair unfurled into clean, wet locks. He let the current take him wherever it wanted to, imagining it was a player of its own—perhaps his only real ally in all of Tonga. The tide pulled him further out than he had ever swam before, but he didn’t mind. Take me, tide, he thought. Take me away from all of these stupid people.

Then he was pulled underwater. Out there, deep in the ocean, swirls of indigo made Bradley’s attempt at swimming back up again futile. Like submarine vines, wisps of midnight blue ensnared him all while twinkling in the crystal clear water. Yet, he persisted, tearing and clawing at water that couldn’t be torn nor scratched. Deeper he went. The sunlight from above was fading, leaving behind the bright turquoise hues and giving way to a darker murk. He was holding his breath for so long that it seemed a burdensome force was crushing his skeleton from every angle. The navy tendrils gripped tighter, and he crumpled.

Bradley emerged from the sea completely different.

Everyone was back at camp making idle chit-chat while the camera crew filmed them only half-focusedly. When Bradley arrived back at camp, gleaming with salty moisture, the cameras turned to him to capture his shine.

“Hey guys!” he said. “I just had the best swim, if you’re hot you should go and float in there—seriously so relaxing.” His words were jubilant and infectious: the rest of the players hadn’t seen Bradley this chipper during the game before at all. Jess and Abigail exchanged glances, stunned.

Then, Pam chimed in: “That sounds nice. I might take a swim myself.”

“And I might come back out with you!” Bradley replied. They both chuckled.

“Didya see any fish?” Hugo asked.

“No, but now that you mention it…” Bradley, as if on cue, revealed a glossy orange crab he was hiding behind his back. Hugo immediately sprang up to inspect it.

“Holy shit, dude, I didn’t know you brought the net out.” He was quietly amazed.

“I didn’t bring the net out.”

Even Abigail marveled at the crab—it was the first real food she’d seen for days. Jess wasn’t convinced.

“Is that all you got from out there?” she said.

“Yeah, but, I don’t know if anyone noticed—I split some firewood for all of us. Noticed we were getting a bit low.” Everyone’s head turned to the corner of camp: a massive pile of neatly chopped firewood had appeared. No words were spoken until Bradley broke the silence.

“I’m gonna go get some water from the well, anyone wanna come?”

“Sure, I’ll come with,” said Jess.

At the well, it was quieter, more peaceful. A myna sang in a shrill tone somewhere in the jungle canopy.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Bradley, but it’s really throwing me off,” Jess said.

Bradley poured water into a ceramic pitcher. “What do you mean, ‘gotten into me’?”

“You know…like, contributing around camp. The crab. Like holy fuck Bradley, that’s a lot of firewood. I haven’t seen you touch the hatchet this entire game.”

“Well, maybe I wanted to change things.”

“Any specific reason for that, or…”

“Some people just change.”

With that, he walked away.

A cameraman in sunglasses turned to Jess. He asked, “What’s on your mind right now?”

Jess ran a tattooed hand through her wiry hair. “I don’t know. Bradley’s being so weird and I have no idea why he’s acting like this all of a sudden. Maybe it’s a late-game move, trying to win back our respect or something. But I don’t care what it is, it’s just weird to me. Abigail and I might bring Pam to the end after all.”

She gazed off into the distance, and through the trees, she saw Bradley and the others laughing back at camp, a club whose camaraderie she wasn’t privy to. She clenched her jaw.

That night, Jess laid awake and pondered everything. She stared at the stars, thinking of Bradley’s stupid antics. She thought of the bruise on her ankle and the sea salt in her hair; she thought of her mother and her advice to “try her best” out on the island. But the words that kept coming back to Jess belonged to Marina, her best friend in the game that Bradley eliminated. Marina’s advice—spoken to Jess before her exile—became a jewel of wisdom that stuck with her even in the homestretch of the game. No matter how cliché the aphorism was, it had kept her safe.

“Trust no one.”

Jess fell asleep.

The morning was cooler than usual; a thick haze lingered over the camp, tinting everything a dull orange. When Jess awoke, she rubbed her eyes and realized the tarp above the shelter was gone. Then, she shot up. The fire was out. The rice, which usually remained in a burlap sack, had been spilled all over the dirty ground and mingled with sand. Every log of firewood Bradley chopped was scattered across camp in smoldering ashes. The crab, too, was splintered on a rock with no meat inside and only pieces of its shell hanging on. The pitcher of water had shattered. And the worst part: no camera crew. No other people at all.

“What the fuck…”

Jess stared out at the ocean, and she saw four silhouettes in the distance—further out than she had seen anyone swim before. Of the figures, three floated like buoys, mindlessly drifting atop the water. The fourth figure, however, was swimming with such vigor that it seemed inhuman. The swimming outline, she understood, belonged to Bradley. He swam and swam and swam in a neverending loop around the lifeless buoys, his body shimmering and radiant beneath the sun. And then there was heat.

The End of the World

The universe collapsed around us like a shattered snow globe, cosmic contents spilling out the edges no longer confined. We felt a rippling of things, a swirling, and within seconds everything we knew had been ripped from its home and placed infinitely elsewhere. We forgot our families and friends and hopes and futures because then we only knew pain. And the pain seemed endless, a heavy plate of steel on our soft skin that tore, tore, but would not break us. In the violent swirl we saw new faces passing by for mere flashes—people we hadn’t met before but still somehow understood because their pain was our pain was everyone’s pain. We witnessed the upheaval of the Earth itself: cracks in the crust letting magma pour from the mantle, charring trees and melting rabbits and singing the wings off dragonflies, but still we were grateful because the pain was mutually understood. Our worlds were white-hot, so it was easy to tell who was left; billions of burning silhouettes and outlines writhing in agony stood like stencils, floating mindlessly in the void of blinding, supernatural heat. We were told before that it would be incomprehensible—an impossible level of pain and momentum that neither numbers nor words would be able to describe. But here I am telling you about it now, in words. And can’t you feel the agony we felt?

Real Life

when you turn the television off
there’s a glint, and then
a reflection of yourself
staring back
only bent, warped
and discolored;
your mind is
twisted, too, from whatever it is that 
you watched.

you know
the reflection is you but 
not you,
it is bent, warped, changed.
but still you say, back to
real life.

Yve walked into the nail salon as she always did, strutting through the glass doorway at precisely two o’clock on Sunday. She hid her cracked fuschia acrylics in the depths of her coat sleeve, in fear of not only the February cold but also the slight chance that one of her girl-friends might see her in such an untidy state. Inside, a long, French tip fingernail greeted her at the counter.

“What can I do for you, mademoiselle?” asked the fine French tip.

“Clarice messed up my acrylics last week,” Yve said, trying to make a scene without making a scene. “They broke within a day.”

“Let me see these acrylics you speak of.” Ceremoniously, Yve displayed her hand, cracked fuschia bits dangling off where her fingernails were. After a moment, the French tip leaned back in her chair.

“So?” Yve said.

The French tip was smug. “Your nails are falling off because you’re not taking care of yourself, my dear!”

“Taking care of myself how?”

The French tip gestured toward a full-length mirror next to the counter. It was then that Yve turned toward the mirror and saw she had become a small, underdeveloped fingernail. Her acrylics dangled next to her, slowly peeling off the parts of her body that were once hands, but now too were made of nail. Yve was a fingernail, although an unpretty and wholly unpolished one.

“Nail!” Yve yelled, and her mangled fuschia acrylics fell to the floor. Back at the counter, Yve noticed the French tip had also transformed, but instead of a fingernail she was now a beautiful woman. In a French accent, the woman spoke:

“Nail nail nail nail, nail nail nail? Nail nail nail nail nail.”

Yve tried to think something to herself, but the only thoughts she could process were that of fingernail-related things. Everything surrounding her was completely usual and routine: the counter, the French woman at the front desk, her Audi outside the salon. Yet, in her current state, Yve was entirely absorbed with her appearance as a grotesquely unkempt nail. She kept trying to speak, kept trying to think, but the only thing that appeared to her was fingernails, nails, nail. Maddened, Yve slammed on the counter, startling the French woman.

“Nail nail nail nail nail nail. Nail nail NAILS,” Yve said.

Sensing her demand like she had always done for customers, the French woman decided not to respond and instead brought Yve immediately to an empty chair in the back of the salon. Customers gawked at Yve as she passed them, fully in nail form. Just as Yve sat back in the chair, the French woman scurried off to somewhere else in the salon.

“Fingernail,” Yve muttered with a tinge of sorrow.

Scarlet

in case you didn’t hear
the town gossip, the
crier, i’ve been
stuck in the prince’s cellar
he takes me in, paints
me red and hurts me
good, i try to see out
the window but he waves
his hand like i don’t know
better; he promises
a kingdom that never comes
a sword that never rusts
as long as i fall
on the blade for him

Ouija

good luck
finding my voice
when you scour the memories
that i dance through like
a fairy. you
try to speak, and YES
i’m here, but it’s natural to take
fun in your peril
after you
stepped in my circle
and disobeyed the right-of-way,
with your dried cement
still sticking to
my wings

Meredith was at work the first time she saw the falcon.

The rest of her coworkers had left by that point, but she remained, determined to finish a project she’d procrastinated for weeks. She sat at her desk in the dark, illuminated only by the faint white glow of her computer screen. Eventually she grew tired, and her perfect posture turned into a slump. She checked the time: 9:36 PM.

“Shit,” she said, and she promptly began packing up her things.

Meredith’s office was a maze of cubicle walls and fluorescent lights. With each turn, she found herself checking over her shoulder to make sure nobody was following her through the dimly-lit corridors. Her exit was an elevator: two stainless-steel doors at the opposite end of the hallway she was staring down.

Just before the elevator, however, there stood a peculiar silhouette obscuring her vision. From afar, it looked like a big-nosed man wearing a shadowy cloak. The figure was tall, slender, and angular—its head looked like a meaty fishhook with glimmering black eyes. At its base, jagged talons dug into the ground. Meredith immediately recognized the shape: the silhouette was that of a falcon, only humanoid in form and clothed in an oversized suit.

She doubled back and took the stairs out of the office.

Meredith wasn’t close with any of her coworkers. Sure, she made idle chit-chat with them at the water cooler and asked what they were having for lunch on occasion, but for the most part she took comfort in remaining invisible to her colleagues. So, Dale was understandably puzzled when she told him about the falcon after a team meeting.

“First of all, Meredith, I don’t think anyone here has worked overtime past 9 PM. Second, if there’s a falcon in the office, that seems like a problem you’d better mention to the building manager—not me.”

Meredith huffed. “It’s not just a falcon, Dale. It was like, human—it was wearing a suit.”

Dale sighed. “A falcon wearing a suit. Gotcha.”

“I know you don’t believe me. And yeah, it’s weird! I just thought you’d take it somewhat seriously if I confided in you.”

“I’m sorry Meredith, but I have a presentation due tomorrow—I just can’t entertain this right now. Don’t you have work to do too?” Before she could answer, Dale stood up and walked back to his desk.

That evening, Meredith waited until the last of her coworkers went home. Once all the lights were off, she rose from her cubicle and followed the same path she had the night before. She reached the final hallway before the elevator and, as she expected, the same anthropomorphic falcon stood guarding the metal doors, imposing and unmoving in an unchanged black suit. Meredith stifled her breath and approached the figure one step at a time. With each pace, the hallway felt longer, the fluorescent lights paler. Each step suddenly required conscious effort. One more step, she told herself, just one more step. From about five yards away, she saw the figure with new eyes.

Its talons were dark mahogany, curved delicately to grip the carpet beneath them. The legs and torso were hidden by a flowing black trench coat, its bold collar which she mistook for feathers. The head was not a falcon’s but a conspicuously-placed newsboy cap. The fishhook beak didn’t belong to an avian, either: it was merely the curved wooden arm of a coat rack.

Meredith looked around the otherwise empty room, expecting the real falcon-man to appear, but nothing came. Was her vision getting that bad? She didn’t think so, but maybe it could have declined after countless hours spent in front of her office computer. She waited at the end of the hallway for a few more moments, silently hoping for an answer, a revelation of some sort. Still nothing. She pressed the button to call up the elevator.

“So it was a coat rack…Got it,” Dale said, his eyes fixed on the water cooler.

“You’re not getting it,” Meredith continued. “Why would someone leave the same coat and hat on a coat rack two nights in a row—especially after everyone else had left by that point? And I’m telling you, it still looked like the same falcon. It’s uncanny.”

Dale backed away from the water cooler with his thermos in hand. “Listen, Meredith. I say this with respect for you as a person, but…you’re getting older…and at this age, sometimes the brain stops functioning the way it’s supposed t—”

“I don’t have dementia, Dale. I know what I saw. Yes, it’s weird. And you’re allowed to think it’s stupid. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.”

“Okay,” he relented, “I’m just trying to look out for you.” Then he walked away.

Meredith sat at her cubicle desk, feeling like a prisoner caught trying to escape their cell. Her computer search bar read, “anthropomorphic falcon wearing suit.” Of course, nothing of substance came up. Then, a tap on her shoulder.

“Meredith, can we chat in my office for a second?” It was her boss, Denise, standing tall above the cubicle walls in an authoritative burgundy pantsuit.

Meredith closed the tab on her computer and hesitated: “Uh—sure. Yeah.”

“Okay, follow me.”

Denise prowled through the cubicle maze like a lioness scouting its prey, Meredith a meerkat following in her wake. When they reached the private office, Denise shut the door, inviting nothing but silence.

“I assume you know why we’re having this chat,” Denise said. Meredith was unsure if she meant it as a question or a statement.

“The falcon?” Meredith said.

“The what?”

“Oh.” Meredith paused. “I thought Dale might’ve mentioned that I saw this man-falcon—this falcon-man—wearing a suit near the elevator. It might have just been a coat rack, but the coat and hat were placed so weirdly, and—”

“Let me stop you there, Meredith. I know you’re a good person. It would take a fool not to see that. But let’s back up for a minute.” Denise’s words were firm, like a scolding mother’s. “You had a big project due a couple weeks ago. I reminded you about the deadline a week before it came—something I never have to do with your other colleagues—and…the deadline came and went. We both know this isn’t the first time you’ve forgotten about a project like this. Remember the team-bonding exercise I put you in charge of?”

Meredith nodded.

“Right. So, I’ve already outsourced most of your work to Kathy and Peter. I would give you a second chance, but unfortunately my hands are tied after you’ve proven time and time again that you can’t handle simple work responsibilities.”

Meredith’s lip quivered. “What you’re saying is…you’re firing me?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Dreary lights flickered above Meredith as she walked down the familiar hallway with a box of her belongings. The coat rack was still there, its fake-falcon clothes placed in the same stupid spot. She pressed the elevator button to send her to the first floor, her box of things trembling in her arms as she reached for it. The doors started to close. Before they shut completely, however, Meredith spotted something—someone—at the other end of the corridor. A tall, feathered creature stood solemnly at the edge of her gaze; it had black marble eyes and wore a dignified black suit. A yellow-gray beak protruded from its sharp face. Like a marionette pulled by strings, the humanoid falcon raised its right wing and waved at Meredith, almost as if it was saying goodbye. She started sweating, nearly dropping her box of stuff. The elevator doors closed, and Meredith descended.

They stand tall. Imposing, like the legs of giants, like the fingers of God. In silence, we look up at the fractals the sky forms with a canopy of leaves. I feel so small underneath the stars, which I’ve never seen glow so brightly. A firefly flickers quickly above me, almost mimicking them. The hike has been relentless yet empowering. Even though we still have some ways to go, I stopped to catch my breath and admire the landscape. Jamie gently touches my shoulder.

“Are you ready to keep going now?” he asks, offering a bottle of water. I heave a deep breath before I can respond.

“Sure,” I say. I decline the water and move once again. If I was alone out here, my pace would be much slower. Jamie knows this, but he lets me push myself.

Fireflies continue to dot the trail as the area around us darkens. I wonder if anyone has ever been on the path this late. The air smells of nothing, like nobody has ever set foot near the forest. Still, I have Jamie by my side, his mere presence warm and comforting. When I look over at his face, however, I see nothing aside from his cheek briefly illuminated by a firefly. I stop and turn towards him.

I laugh nervously. “Did you pack flashlights? I literally can’t see you at all.”

He stops. “I have something to tell you.” It takes me too long to respond, so he thinks I’m still hung up on the flashlights: “Oh—here,” he says, holding out an antique-looking yellow flashlight. My breathing slightly more stunted now, I respond to his previous statement.

“What is it you have to tell me?” I ask.

His breath shakes. “I think it’s kinda o-obvious, don’t you? This, I—I don’t know any other way to say it…” The words slip clumsily out of his lips.

“I’ve never loved you.”

The glow of the fireflies is extinguished. A creak in the redwood trees above us shakes the leaves, the first sign of any movement since we stopped walking. I try to speak, to yell, to cry, nothing. Never loved you. Never loved you. Jamie tries to correct himself like he can read my thoughts:

“Okay, I did love you. In the beginning of our relationship—” Five years ago, I remind myself. “Things were great, but, I don’t know. I’ve felt this disconnect for a while now. I thought this trip would change things…but I guess it hasn’t. I know it’s sudden. I just think we should take some sort of a break.”

“A break…” I mumble. He starts again.

“Do you remember Kendra from college?” Yes. “I’ve been talking to her…and we hung out once or twice. It’s nothing serious, but being with her the couple times made me realize—”

Jamie’s voice fades away into the darkness of the forest as I tune him out. Five years. Kendra. Disconnect. What a vague and cutting word. My head gets hot with rage. The darkness of the redwoods burns to white, and I feel something crawl on my right arm. I nearly pull a muscle in my neck, jolting violently to look at my arm: a firefly has landed on me. Jamie looks confused at my stillness in the bright haze. Fireflies gather around me, planting themselves along my skin—first as a luminous sleeve along my right arm, then a radiating necklace burning hot and tracing my veins. Jamie is blinded by the light, my barbaric truth. Above our heads, the trees rattle and shake.

Jamie starts to talk, a sentence fragment: “You don’t have to—”

The fireflies extend from my body to ensnare Jamie. The starry bugs crawl up his face. The trees sing. Fireflies pour into his eyes and ears as he screams.

The lights go out. The forest darkens again, and Jamie’s old yellow flashlight flickers to reveal pools of blood scattered beneath his body. I lean against a redwood tree and slide towards the ground, looking straight above me to avoid the sight of the corpse. The trees stand massive and still. A black sky shadows the leaves. I’m hollow here, captured by the dusk and the silent void.

I’m already awake; I’ve been awake, only realizing it now with an AI-generated image of Jesus in front of my face. The algorithms housed in the apps on my phone conspire against me, and today they have decided I need to find God. I place AI Jesus on my nightstand and rub my eyes, crack my neck, the whole routine. As I get up, an Airpod jumps from my unmade sheets and rolls under the bedframe. I’ll get it later. I look at my clothes—plaid boxer shorts, white t-shirt, holey socks—and consider staying in them before realizing they were also the undergarments of yesterday’s outfit. Instead, I change into athletic shorts and a wrinkled graphic tee.

The bathroom is humid even before I turn the shower on. I brush my teeth, go pee, and wash my hands before stripping and stepping in, the water a bit too cold for my taste. The showerhead screeches when I turn the heat up, scalding my skin in response, so I turn it down again. I clean every part of my body, desperately trying to scrub away the detritus of yesterday and reveal whatever lies beneath. Eventually, my skin turns red and I know it’s time to dry off.

The first thing I notice when I look in the mirror is my hair. I expect to see a matted mop of brown atop my head; this time, it’s a free-floating void that curls in every possible direction. It doesn’t look like my hair but rather wires of space dangling about wildly. My face, too, is different. While the general, trapezoidal shape is the same, my eyes have neither irises nor pupils: just glassy globes of pure white surrounded by thick eyelashes. My nose is a hologram, appearing and disappearing depending on the angle I observe it from. I move down and look at my mouth, a set of four fang-ish canines the only teeth inside. My bottom lip is plump and wet; my top lip is missing. At the neck, dozens of swiss-cheese-like holes act as windows to the inside of my throat—I can see the blood pumping through the walls of my trachea.

Observing my torso, I realize there are splotches of dead space on my skin, a similar material to the void of my hair. I put my hand to the biggest splotch on my chest and it feels sticky like tar. My shoulders and arms are mostly the same as they were, but my hands have no fingernails and my wrists are swollen and purple. My stomach looks the same as it did but feels much emptier. My crotch and backside are cartoonishly pixelated, and when I reach out my hand to touch them, it too becomes obscured. My legs look like inflated balloons, still marked with the void-space-tar-splotch pattern that covers other parts of my body. My shin bones are visibly broken, but I have no problem standing on the cool tile floor. My feet are cloaked in dress socks that feel brand new.

I cannot make sense of what I see in the mirror. I cannot make sense of how I feel myself. Still, somehow, I feel relieved. Although the sight of my new body would look horrific to any random onlooker, it gives me a strange sense of ease. There is a comfort in waking up different, feeling different, that not a single mind besides oneself can comprehend. I will try to explain to no avail. I will try to go about my day even though I know my body is acting against me. I will be the same person, only completely changed.

Block out all the noise. Listen to the droning of the set, the soft electric hum of wires. You’re waiting for a pot to boil in the kitchen, but you figure you can catch a scene or two before you have to add the pasta (Rotini? Fusili? Or maybe farfalle?) The screen is bright. Your eyes are glassy. Listen to the sharpness, and let it plug into your ears. Watch the news; watch a soap opera; watch a sitcom; you can’t decide. You fiddle with the remote, its silicone buttons squishing beneath your fingers going pt, pt, pt. You whip your head around: no steam yet. Pt, a documentary about sloths. Pt, a cooking competition where the secret ingredient is persimmon. Pt, a reality show where a woman with botox-y lips is crying. Block out all the noise. You remember to blink. Pt. You settle on the reality show. Farfalle, you decide when Botox slams the door on another housewife. The wires still hum, a cat purring behind the screen. Now the other housewife is crying. The water boils over; it sounds like static.

The farfalle splashes into the boiling pot: ptptptpt. You drop a spoon in and stir, eyes fixed on the screen. Pt (you are bored of the housewives). Pt (a sci-fi movie you watched when you were twelve; it looks worse now). Pt (the weather; it is about to rain). Stir. Pt, and you stick with a game show. Stir. A dad has to answer a trivia question to secure 50,000 dollars for his family. Stir. There is an orange fruit on the screen. Stir. The dad doesn’t know what it is. Stir (persimmon!). Lift the farfalle to your lips and chew. It is soft; it is ready. Drain the pasta in the sink. The dad hesitates, “tangerine?” and he loses 50,000 dollars. Ptptptpt, it has started to rain and ptptptpt, hot water speckles the sink. Return to the pot and add butter. Sit down with your bowl of farfalle, the little buttery bowties gliding across your tongue. The rain goes ptptptpt, rabbits bounding atop the roof. Block out all the noise. Pt, a president talking about missiles. Pt, a home decorating show. The house is over-budget. Pt, a shopping network. A lady in a cardigan dangles little jewels in front of your face. Your eyes are glassy again and you blink. Pt back to the news, pt back to the soap opera: you are right where you started. Pt, and the screen goes black. Listen to the rain.

(This piece was inspired by Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliche?”)