Somewhere I speak Chloe Sevigny and Isabella Adjani to Arcturus. But in order to tear us apart, Gallo and Neill would have to project themselves like holographic vapors of transcendence. Here is the Traumathurge where we meet and become dirt. 

A short piece composed in summer 2012 probably inspired by the works of David Ohle whose influence continues to bubble below the surface. I’m just hoping to capture one of those bubbles, maybe even let it shine for a bit off my teeth, cleanse this rot. Here is an excerpt:

“I’ve split buzzards to sing: bloated tissue, psychic cells quiver neon. Nothing solid to botch the epidemic. The current is blubbery. In the end, Feng doesn’t realize the pain or what electric wires do. They power the city, cake membrane repellent, a haze of clamorous buzz. A buzzard’s brain, frozen open, land-locked and ready to pummel, is the world’s tramp. They shot me. Ode to my struck neck: a beak squawks, volts and rubber splotches. I need a new hitch to sink this crumb: the android, the microbe, the pentagram halo. Feng’s pocket glows when I stroke mashed tongue, lick air. Weathervanes go funny. Not much to tell. I’ll give it a whirl.” 

D. Harlan Wilson’s DIEGESES destroyed my Saturday evening in the best possible way. I wrote a review about it, but how can one write a review of a book that baffles all of one’s mental models? I suffered. I clawed my teeth out to bring you some words to somehow measure up to Wilson’s brilliance, but I have been known to fall flat and my face is now officially a smear campaign for mothmen. With this in mind, from my small part of the world, I thank you for taking the time to read my review.

A new piece, Ugly Mouth, is up at HOUSEFIRE books. This piece was written using their homegrown constraints, which are always some of the best, most blissfully mind-warping constraints and the results—well, you’ll see—the results are this little tale about a heightened France and a woman we all know we will one day become. Maybe. 

Zack Wentz, thank you for teaching me much about good books and the craft of writing, about perseverance and possibilities. I came across NDF last spring and devoured every issue with enthusiasm. They are worth savoring. Issue Five has pieces from myself, Barry N. Malzberg, and Cameron Pierce among others whose work I am not yet familiar with, but soon will be. My contribution is quite bizarre and would not exist were it not for time spent in the current city where I find myself: Beijing. In that respect, it makes all of the frustration of living in this city of confusion worth the daily effort. Thank you for reading.   

Thank you, First Stop Fiction, for making this story available. My intentions with this piece was to tap into noir/science-fiction territory, but instead of focusing on the pulpier side of things, keep my nose to the ground and capture that father/son relationship, which doubles into those times when we do our best to help, but that help just keeps mucking up the situation. We seem to enter these things with the best of intentions, though. That said, maybe I should simply dub this one a tragedy. Thank you! 

365 Tomorrows, the science fiction site, is hosting this odd story of an alternate reality consisting of a messy room made of brains where horrific things happen or seemed to have happened. The “red curtain” scenes from Twin Peaks kept crossing my mind as I was writing this one and, perhaps, there is some David Lynch influence that leaked into it. Otherwise, again, this one came out of the Stephen Graham Jones workshop I did and want to thank him again for his teachings.

Short, Fast, and Deadly, indeed. This one is about mutation and identity, two of my favorite themes. Thank you to Joseph A. W. Quintela for his keen sense of taste.