The Adventures of Aloises Felinor La Quintanilla
By Francis Camaquin
Chapter 1: Derivative Drivel
There once was boy with very large pockets. He kept many things in those pockets. Everything he had acquired from his travels, he kept there. Pockets littered his pants and coat, hidden in the linings, sewn into the sides. He had added a new pocket every time he had filled up all of the existing ones.
This boy traveled nearly everywhere. He had seen and experienced many things, and he always tried to save something from each of his adventures so that he could remember the events. After one particularly arduous journey, the tired boy stopped to rest at a huge city. On his way to his friend’s house, he stopped at a shop with a window display that had caught his attention. Through the glass, behind the display, he saw the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He stood there in awe for a few minutes and he couldn’t move. She was buying a book from the shopkeeper and right after she paid, she walked out the door, past the boy to the cafe across the street.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 10/20 at 09:27 PM
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::plight of palaver::
By Amber June
running into randoms, a mission street
calling everyone in passing my dad
upchuck ires through digital writing pads;
emotionally now feels incomplete
we meet and greet to excrete the sweet beat.
a cathartic attempt to lose the had
an answer to seduction’s’ personal add
subject to object, a fine fancy treat
aching adieu to this phonetic affray
the newly relinquished not to be missed
becoming a pretense ne plus the prey
my mental measure ceased you to exist
plights’ palaver reducts our connection
by me to you is lost the affection
Posted by The Better Blog on 09/28 at 09:41 PM
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Obsession Police
By Chad Eschman
There was Gary at the office. He taped a new picture of his daughter up on the walls of his cubicle every day until his entire corner was a patchwork of green-eyed six-year-olds lost in a custody battle. That last week before he disappeared, all he did was sit in his $1200 ergonomically-engineered chair and slowly spin in circles. Then there was that barista at the coffee shop, the one who made you your cup of coffee every morning before work. You noticed she was chewing the nicotine gum. The morning they took her away she was on the floor behind the counter, trying to re-light a used cigarette that someone had left in an empty coffee cup. They even came for Jasper, your neighbor’s dog. He kept breaking out of the yard to chase motorcycles.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 09/09 at 09:41 PM
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Untitled
By Camille Ikalina Robles
Dawn has a way of casting a shadow
over any night magic,
for when I awaken
and leave your side
doubt and paranoia override my momentary bliss,
the bliss where I trust your electric hands
and absorb words of sensuality and
delight.
Sometimes you are unreachable,
unaware of longing hands and curious eyes,
but when your attention finds me again
I feel like clay,
happy in a good potter’s hands.
I am a blur,
blending and receding,
somehow different under your light,
captured,
and deceptively free.
Posted by The Better Blog on 07/30 at 09:00 AM
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Camille Ikalina-Robles •
Fiction •
The Man with the Hat with no Name
By Francis A. Camaquin
There once was a man who had a hat. He loved his hat very much. He took it everywhere and only took it off when to a shower or go to sleep. To understand how much he loved this hat, you would have to imagine yourself without a soul. If you believe in a god or have ever believed in a god, then you most certainly believe or have believed in a soul. And without your soul, you are nothing. A void in the universe. A hole without an end. A world without a future. So was this man without his hat.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 07/16 at 08:32 PM
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Georgia
By Jenn Zipp
On my way to work, I thought about the way she looked. Her floppy mess of hair like a cape in the wind, the caked toothpaste at the corner of her mouth, her return to the commune that she lived in, her 18 year old logic and the patches of wood flooring are all etched in my memory.
I thought about the way she opened the envelope the day before and nonchalantly tossed it aside on her bed, not bothering with the contents, not even so much looking at the address to make sure that it belonged to her or that it was from me.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 07/12 at 02:34 PM
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Aquatic Artillery
By Amber June
They danced through the night as she turned her ipod on. Their movements mimicked those of a highschool prom and the 60’s soul music replicated that of another moment in time yet the 20 somethings could never really understand the former generations’ pull of importance on shaping their interpretations of life.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 07/06 at 07:01 PM
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Ashley
By Chad Eschman
Ashley drinks Riesling, gracefully
sprawled in a sterile memory bank full
of what she forgot.
When sunlight awakens her, she yawns and stretches
like a monk, a perfectly disciplined anomaly.
Outside, an azure blast of morning screams
at her, but lightly she dances, thinking
of him: his clumsy shotgun, his spiny voice,
his plastic machines which, languidly,
he teaches to speak. Elephant is her
favorite, it can pirouette over bundles
of grief and buttery orchid gardens,
a clean, white, mechanical miracle.
He sits, drinks juniper, and laughs
at the transparent emotion,
at my slow, sad, piercing
caress which she avoids under pretense
of fatigue. She wants fuzzy nights, sharp
sunlight through windows,
and him.
Posted by The Better Blog on 07/05 at 03:31 PM
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Whiter than white or the colour of…..
By Bobby Milne
Michael White who was also known as Michael Shite lived around the corner from me. We lived in a Navy estate not through our choosing but from our father’s choice of calling. We were fatherless for up to six months of the year.
We were 8 and he was the boy I loved to beat up because he was such a white. He could more than handle himself but he never beat me. If I still had my now retro shoes you would see his ketchup on them. But sadly those days are gone now.
This is just one of the things I miss from my youth. Not Mr Shite, but the pointless fights that happened for no particular reason.
Now that I have been a daddy for four years, I sometimes wonder what the fuck my mother was thinking of when she let me run out the door at dawn. I did not arrive back home till my stomach started to rumble for more sustenance other than sweets. I do seem to be putting my generation on a higher pedestal but were we not so much lovelier back in the day?
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/30 at 10:21 PM
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The Garage Sale
By Jenn Zipp
There is a rhyme and a reason to all this chaos.
That’s what I try to explain to people when they see the room. It sucks that it’s the first room that you get a glimpse of when you first step into our house. The stoop that I sit on to smoke cigarettes with friends is a great stoop. It’s cozy and inviting. There’s a potted plant there. The soil is blanketed with Marlboro butts, but it’s still a house plant and gives you that sense of domesticity. And then you walk in, catch a whiff of that faint smell of dirty laundry and see the room out of the corner of your eye.
Out of sheer embarrassment, you think that I would clean it. But my laziness conquers all obligations of attempting to be organized. Instead, I let the mold grow, I let the dust collect and I don’t care if there are hairballs on the floor… enough hairballs to create a new genus of critter-creature. Like small pets that only the Japanese would know about (because after all, they were the geniuses behind gigapets).
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/22 at 04:16 PM
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The Bedroom Door
By Chad Eschman
Gina was beautiful. She was commanding, both in the bedroom and in her career in corporate marketing. She never took no for an answer, and she made the best damn Manhattan on the whole planet. She also enjoyed getting high and playing croquet on the lawn. I don’t think we ever played it right, though. Basically, we just set the wickets out and started knocking the balls until one of us fell over.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/21 at 10:25 AM
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Followspot
By Chad Eschman
From: sweetysparkle23@zilkmail.com
Subject: I love my FollowSpot™ Bot!
Date: 2008 February 13 9:37:54 PM PST
To: agomson@digifeed.com
dear mr. gomson,
wow. i’ve had my followspot bot for 2 weeks now (my parents got me one for my 14th, i was so pumped!) and i just want to say i totally luv it! :) everyone at school is way jealous, except my bestie, matsie, cuz she has 1 too cuz her dad ran over her cat elvis and she was super sad so he bought her one, but hers is ufo silver, and mine is the new purple crush, so yah.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/11 at 01:11 AM
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September
By Christopher Longoria
between homes. at home and left home. rode into a rushing world after throwing badges down in the dirt and dusting off old ones. watched the people’s faces at home. the years slowly chiseled into their timeless expressions. it is peaceful there, though pain does not elude us. my feet dug into sand as the water drew out to the gulf, as if the land itself wrapped around my ankles commanding me to stay. i dissolved in the stark orange sunset and remember my home is love. an endless gush of warmth. old friends remain friends, old roads lead to the same places, old memories recalled in stories told with a sepia voice. brown is red and much of the food is yellow and light orange. and i am full in every way that makes me a human being.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/07 at 12:15 AM
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Facing the Dark Decade
By Jouko van der Kruijssen
Wednesday night was Eighties Night at Paradiso. Until that night I had managed to avoid Amsterdam’s most popular students’ night out on Wednesdays, but this time my presence was required. Not just for any reason, not just for any girl. She could very well be the love of my life if I could keep her from being the love of Lars’s life that night. I knew it was a bad idea, but I joined her, Lars, and the rest of the gang for a night of dancing to tunes that hadn’t been gone for long enough yet.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/07 at 12:09 AM
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Ernie and the Oil
By Chad Eschman
Ernie. Ernie Finklebat. Er. Nie. Fink. Le. Bat. Even his name makes me want to induce a vomit. He was JoJo’s friend, and from the first moment I met this tool I hated him. His brown leather jacket. His indie-emo-sweep hair. His prickly, dirty, pathetic attempt at a beard. But JoJo liked him. “He’s got good points, you know, he has moments.” Moments? I don’t drive a car that works at “moments.” I don’t drink beer that gets me drunk at “moments.” I don’t use soap that cleans me at “moments.” And I don’t like pricks like Ernie Finklebat. Besides. I never saw any moments.
Now, guests are always welcome in my home. I have an open door on both my porch and my fridge, I’m accommodating, I like company. But you don’t park in my driveway. You don’t. Ever. Not JoJo, not Ellie, not Tomson, not Gus, not Patsky, and certainly not Ernie.
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Posted by The Better Blog on 06/07 at 12:07 AM
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