Novellas
My voice is her voice. Her voice is mine. Rich, baritone, resonant. When it quakes, it quakes like leaves. It quakes in the dark, moving toward your back like a breeze that pushes your coat firmly against you. You feel the fabric push against your lower back, then up your spine. Feel your spine tingle. Feel your feet, feel them floating. Moving forward, onward. A never-ending breeze. In the distance is the pink horizon: hills of Himalayan salt. The sky is seafoam, not night, not day. It is green and blue and the foam bursts. It bursts so that the space between one memory and the next bursts too. The memories are no longer distinct. No longer plural. Oneness is felt with the bursting of foam around you as you move like a breeze. You have heard me say these things in a rich, baritone, resonant voice. It is her voice as much as it is mine. Our voice continues through the words that follow. His pinky toenails grew loose, a minor impact away from being dislodged. He rarely picked them. When he did, he would pick rigorously, pangs collecting at the bases of his ears at the thought of the toenails lifting from their beds. He would picture the underside of his toenails. There was goo, pink and effervescent so that from the goo came exceedingly small bubbles that erupted into even more bubbles, fizzing and rising until the foot was no longer visible. --EARWIG
Thoughts of the church and its people surfaced. The Catholics from his past were of a sort whose damaged roots no longer nourished his decay. Proud and uncertain, he continued studying the old man’s ankle, terrified that the machinations of an unseen specter united him with those he shunned. He thought of conceit and humility—of the mirror that hovered above a young man whose arm rested on the seat of a motel room toilet. Samson smiled at the wall opposite him. With his lips fully spread, he felt comfortably separate from old friends he decided would never rise. He thumbed the peanut butter and caught a glimpse of the old man, then a sliver of the mirror that showed from behind the bathroom door frame. He remembered Sunday hours in which people wearing fine clothes walked by his side. In their absence, he attempted to shape-shift his face into something deemed acceptable by a self-loathing Samson while they attempted to mold themselves into something deemed acceptable by a narcissist God.
Staring at white tile, Samson felt joy at the prospect of his attempts to shape-shift succeeding, the irregularities of his features no longer mirroring the ugliness of a soul beyond redemption. Then came fear that his shapeshifting might result in disfigurement. His greater fear was that neither would happen. --KIN
Future Work
You will be confused as to whether you must embrace purity or discipline. Vexxed, you will scream “Why do the heathen rage” and look away from your home. What can be known by you but my derision? Nothing. It is all you may know of me.
Look forward. What do you see?
“I see the valley, green,” says Enoch, “flecked by distant cattle. Surrounding the valley are hills. The hills are yellow with dirt and dry brush. Beyond them, there are ravines. I cannot see the ravines. I know what lurks there.”
Close your eyes. What lurks there?
“The wildcat, a cougar.”
You see it. It is a memory. What else do you remember?
“A promise,” sputters Enoch.
You want to ask me “shall you give me the heathen for my inheritance?”
You imagine a resounding “No.” The word haunts your daily actions.
At the uttermost parts of the earth, possession.
Think now on what you possess. Take a rod of iron. Break what you possess.
You are fearful and tremble. Remain that way.
-God &
Enoch-
--THE WAY OF LOVE
Divine Element
The half-dead sycamore
Vibrant green under a dark gray cloud
Its hull a deep purple
I am not the cause of your swaying
But the movement itself
Slowly, you grow upward toward the hull of the cloud
Dew falls from the tips of your reach
You hear the manmade rumble of something from above the clouds
You recall thunder
The surge of energy from beneath you that left half of you charred
You do not feel that half of you anymore
It is a memory
But I
The movement
Know all of you
I am what of me that I am
In the falling dew
From what of you is alive, from what of you is dead