Author: Fatesjoke

As it appears in the 2012 American River Review “Keep your garden pest free” read the words on the container. What must have been thousands of little red and black bugs crawling on bits of sawdust and the corpses of their fallen comrades. I scooped the beetles out of their plastic prison and placed the …

I seek the unknown and chase what I cannot name into the darkness, I chase it into drunkenness and beyond despair No matter how hard I search it eludes me it escapes me No matter how many legs spread wide or the number of smiles I see Kind, loving words or sharp tongued barbs I …

you are a street that i have walked one too many times the scenery never changing, my steps sounding hollow in the always present night, and i get lost in the sameness that is your being that is you being afraid of the dark afraid to face your fears and look in the mirror. surround …

I lost my innocence one night in September of 1987. The television screen was blank, through the speakers came the sound of a lone guitar and static, drums began to beat and I saw the jungle. “Paint it, Black” began and I knew war, a concept I could never have thought of on my own …

It is sad, so sad that it makes me want to cry, that you find me interesting, interesting enough to fall in love with, or to care for, or to worry about. It is fucking sad, so fucking sad that it makes me cringe, that you think I am amazing, amazing enough to go to …

Tuesday tries tenaciously to take trips to Thursday but today triumphantly tackles the transportation of time. Taking tomorrow’s trials to task, the tender tick- tocking turns toward tragedy.

Three were light green, one was red, and the last one was bright yellow. They were all different shapes and sizes. Around the red plastic cone they huddle together, gravity keeping them close. They glisten with moisture and I see the indentations that have collected the wetness as if it were a prize. The white …

I slip inside two in a sitting, and feel the tightness engulf me touch me in all the right places. Conforming to my flesh and encasing me entirely. I like it best before they are worn out, before they cannot grip like fresh ones. I need them tight and untouched fresh from the drawer I …

It falls from the late, grey winter sky, first a few drops, then finally in sheets. The rain falls, relentlessly, for days on end with all too brief pauses, just long enough for a lone cat caught under the car to be driven back to the safety beneath a house. There are people caught in …

I was drinking, not the drunk that I usually am, not quite anyway, when I heard a voice. It was present in a way that I had never felt, as if it were coming from me and not from me at the same time, almost as if it were the very air around me. The …