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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Fiction •
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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Amber June •
Fiction •
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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Fiction •
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 •
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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Fiction •
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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Fiction •
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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Amber June •
Fiction •
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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Chad Eschman •
Fiction •
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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Fiction •
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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Jenn Zipp •
Fiction •
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