A scurry of goats dip their heads behind the herder as their tin bells clang, hoofs clacking past the lichen-ribboned ruins of colonial hospitals and royal thumbs of ancient cathedrals now disused. Shacks have bloomed in the rubble because they are more necessary. Nicas barter over lumps of goods passed down from the 1st World,…
It’s hard to describe the sound the man was making. It’s as if he was yelling moans, I guess, the way I imagine a retarded demon would sound, but it was interspersed with a kind of infantile babbling. Whatever it sounded like, the man on line at the Burger King was convinced he was actually…
Michelle had a certain way of sitting on the high stools at Mando books. She arranged her lower legs on the stool, then sat on her calves while leaning forward so that her ass bloomed round over her inward-turned feet. ~ I was chillen in the deserted back parking lot of the bank next to…
The raging, dreaded hippie kids, swirled in by a technicolored tornado of glee, glitter and hallucinogens, sent by the hippie Goddess to anoint the unblessed with ointments and doses and liquor belted straight from the bottle… “…Chris…Christopher DOY-le…” Chris’ Subaru was slapped on the side of dusty street running along warehouses in the SOMA district…
I’m not saying that certain people don’t canvass for NYPIRG because of the greater good. I’m just saying that I was not one of those people. NYPIRG stands for New York Public Interest Research Group—it’s essentially a progressive lobbying organization. They’ve been heavily involved in fighting the natural gas interests that have been trying to…
Logic told me that Bart hadn’t poisoned the gum, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t. He had offered to it me, after all, and had never offered me gum before. I felt my heart twist and grow black, the paranoia sliding down the slip in my chest, down into my bowels, my intestines. I…
Government institutions are funded by the public, which forces them to throw their doors open to the public, ALL of them, the destitute, the homeless, the mentally-ill and -challenged, those that can’t keep their heads above water in the free market. Those that would be chomped down by the sharks. I experienced this first-hand in…
There must have been some sort of system-destroying intestinal bug going around the Alameda County Social Services building the day I arrived to pick up my food stamps, because every last employee looked like they’d rather be in a hospital than at work. I didn’t know how to get to the office from the 19th…