Lights Out

Through a puff of smoke and the discordant

notes of an amateur piano man, I watch her

sitting alone in a back corner booth,

a candle paints her face, eggshell

eyes like two dead light bulbs.

Paper or Plastic? (Part II—Double D’s)

    I used to work with a red head girl everyone called Double D’s. She inherited the nickname after she banged Robert the produce guy on a stack of lettuce boxes in the produce cooler. Double D’s stood for Dirty Dana, she was the store slut.

Beyond Palace Walls

    Drunk, I staggered down a Tijuana alleyway. A moon bent like a finger nail clipping lit my way. I watched a mangy brown puppy eating old tacos from a tipped garbage can as I dragged my tired feet back towards the U.S. border. I had just been drinking, laughing and dancing with friends at one of our favorite bars when that familiar anxiety came over me. I had to leave. I told everyone I was taking a taxi back to the border, but I had something else in mind.

Twolips

Remember how our tongues swam

like two eels playing Twister?

Sixteen

    I was sixteen, a virgin, working at Vons as a bagger. One day an Italian woman named Monique was hired as a checker. Two honeydews sat on her chest; her ass was flat as a flour tortilla. She said she was twenty-six, but Tony the Butcher told me, “Don’t let her make-up fool ya kid, she’s over 30.”

Another Vodka Night

    I knocked and was greeted by a pair of leather boots, dangerous hips, tits that screamed like howler monkeys, and two Latina brown eyes. My guts churned, it was our first date.

"Another Vodka Night" – Pat Johnson

Dead Letters

Bad Rayview