Entries By RS Bohn
Displaying 1 To 30 Of 120 Entries
rocker
On the way to the house, we stopped at Ma’s. She sat in her rocker in the living room, reading magazines about Lucille Ball that she’d shoplifted from Meijer’s. We told her we were going to Aunt D’s, but Ma shook her head. Her sister was plain nuts, she said. Best to leave her be. How could we tell her that we loved Aunt D more? We kissed her forehead and agreed that Desi had been no good for Lucy, but hadn’t they made a sexy couple, and we were off, backing out the driveway in our Pinto, waving at the empty windows as if she had, for once, got out of her rocker and come to them to say goodbye.
Posted By RS Bohn On 05.16.2013 @ 6:23 am
shoulder
Upon the premises of her shoulder, he wrote in ancient tongues. The territory of her stomach, a treatise to songbirds and men o’war. On the plains below, far and wide and swaying like summer grasslands, a singular promise, a vow like thunder.
Posted By RS Bohn On 05.15.2013 @ 6:44 am
stories
Out across the frozen bay lie Little Pine, heavy with trees, smoking houses, sixty-five stories heading towards their own conflagration. Packs were loaded, flecks of snow biting into beards and cheeks. It would take hours to reach the island. And underneath, something peered up through two feet of ice. Something waited in the dark water.
Posted By RS Bohn On 05.07.2013 @ 5:13 am
ensue
After dragons gorge on our guts, our armored legs strewn around like chicken bones, there comes the ensuing torchwork–a dozen rallied dragons making elaborate burnt labyrinths of our castle, our homes, our farms. My sword far behind me, along with my arm, I marvel into bloodied mud that no one has managed to decipher the pattern. Til now. It makes so much sense to my drooping eyes… Of course, a story, a moral… The ending right before us…
Posted By RS Bohn On 05.01.2013 @ 6:04 am
checkmate
The chewing of bones in a hidden pit: checkmate, my father would say. The last move had been mine, a cautious dash through blackened forests not ancient, just forgotten. Behind me, a border world of fallen logs, burned past decay.
I hoisted my quiver, last arrow ready, and crept to the pit’s edge.
Posted By RS Bohn On 04.24.2013 @ 6:48 am
bagel
In the Calico Bagel, a hundred swordsmen sat sans weapons. Their wives stood at the fore, holding every bit of metal in the place. The swordsmen looked glum. No weapons, no beer, only pastries and speeches. How they wished they had remembered their collective anniversaries.
Posted By RS Bohn On 04.04.2013 @ 6:51 am
calamity
No news of the calamity had reached Rogersburg. They still climbed and crawled and shopped, unaware of the cloud reaching for them.
When at last the disaster touched its borders, they, like Millville, and like New Amsterdam before it, stared wide-eyed at the fog of particles, glittering like a billion broken knives, as it settled over their little hamlet.
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.26.2013 @ 6:47 am
tales
On carnival days, we told tales before leaving. Uncle Henry had the best, about what it was like when he was a boy. When his brother was still alive.
We dressed well, we dressed warmly, and set off across the foothills, straining to hear the carnival music in the trees. We were so close.
It wasn’t until we arrived that we found out all the tales were true, even the one about Uncle Henry’s brother. Most especially that one.
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.12.2013 @ 5:23 am
withered
While the churches of the world withered, his temples grew. Each one empty, but for the star hanging inside. Empty, with no one to see it. Empty, like the desert where he found the child and the seed.
The plane is coming down now, and all around, the pirates are landing, each one a blazing star that commemorates the day he first had the idea.
(FF of Magnason’s LoveStar? Sure!)
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.10.2013 @ 5:37 pm
signals
Jesse signals for her to watch, but she’s already turned her head. He stands on the edge of the wall, poised to crash down, poised to ride this one out. But she’s moved on, moved out, and he’s still there, forever on the precipice, forever poised to move, between a heartbeat and oblivion.
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.07.2013 @ 5:44 am
flames
We swore blood brothers.
The knife above the match flame, across our hands.
Far away, his mother called us home. We got on our bikes and rode, out of the woods. The knife in my back pocket was a hard, tiny lump.
He only knew my nickname, not my real name: Robinetta. For my great-grandfather.
Beneath my cap, my hair was cut short because it tangled and I refused to comb it out properly. I looked over my shoulder and waved goodbye for the night.
Blood brothers.
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.06.2013 @ 6:43 am
weakling
At the end of the world, the weakling known as Robert stood apart from the others. He was ready. He was willing.
He watched them fall, and the sky turn red, and in his house, he was ready.
When everything else was gone, and only he remained, he walked out there, out among the ruins, the last survivor of a mighty race: Robert, the coward. The puny. The gamer with the sense of humor no one understood. The biology major.
And now, Robert. The only.
Posted By RS Bohn On 03.04.2013 @ 4:33 am
weathered
But wait! I’m not ready.
His weathered boots said otherwise. Already out the door. Onto the pavement. The street.
To her door.
To ask.
To ask.
She said: She said: He nearly fell over, listening to what she said. And it was,
Yes.
Posted By RS Bohn On 02.21.2013 @ 6:34 am
now
Twelve seconds from now, we’ll be in the car. The door is already shutting on you. And I’m climbing in beside you, watching the driveway recede, the maples, the flag. Where we’re going no longer matters. It’s only this, right now, the crumbling asphalt at the side of the road. Your hand careful not to touch mine. Your eyes straight ahead. Your eyes on the future.
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.27.2012 @ 5:40 am
fire
Cookies for Santa beneath the tree. He had to bend to get them. The fire roasted his chestnuts, and he grinned, chewing the nutty cookie.
Another Christmas nearly over. The next one about to begin. He took out the last present in his bag and put it under the tree, beside the empty plate: a gray stallion, rearing up, mane flying. Only she would know.
One last Christmas to believe. He had to make it good. There would not be another, “See you next year,” for next year, all belief would be gone.
It was always this way.
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.26.2012 @ 5:53 am
knows
The ghost knows and I must kill him but how to kill a ghost–
If there were seven of me and one of him (it? her?), I would be as lost. All my tangential trains of thought lead me to weapons not suited to apparitions.
The ghost knows. My secret is not safe. My secret is –
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.23.2012 @ 5:41 am
simple
She’d gone back to her cell, so simple, so quiet. Outside, the shouting, the torn leaves, the bric-a-brac of society in a broken teacup. And here, folded upon herself on a cot, the smell of self, of life, of books with pages like years and years.
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.06.2012 @ 6:19 am
higher
The itch traveled higher. Higher. Carleen could no longer control herself. She must scratch. Calf, buttocks, between the shoulder blades — agony! And then it revealed itself. This itch. This pain. This –
Lie.
She gasped, out of air, as truth settled sharply atop her head, in the form of a wee worm… with teeth.
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.05.2012 @ 6:35 am
object
The son of an Irish king, wearing a dead man’s armor and assorted objets d’ violence, crouched in the turret cell. Lacking sufficient charm and good looks, he’d never seduce a chambermaid. And his father never, ever paid ransom. That left brawn or skill.
The armor was about to belong to a dead man twice over.
Posted By RS Bohn On 12.03.2012 @ 6:01 am
past
In the past, I might’ve told you to your face. Instead, today, I hold my tongue. You like me more. I like myself somewhat less. And when the train comes to a stop, we both get off at the same station, take hands, take heart, and emerge into the world with new eyes. It’s worth it. I think.
Posted By RS Bohn On 11.29.2012 @ 6:32 am
solution
The very solution you were looking for has been right before your eyes — or rather, behind them. For in the imploding splashes of light and sharp jabs of steel thoughts, there is freedom from bars, freedom from that which shackles you here. The astronauts are within; the hunters of tigers, and the tigers, too.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.24.2012 @ 5:27 am
forth
We went forth and copulated, but on the battlefields we left more than intended. At home, there was nothing but hollow space. Everything that mattered existed in guns and sex and the sharp shoulder of an unnamed girl. They haven’t decided what to call our battle yet. Privately, we think of it everyday…
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.23.2012 @ 5:22 am
teeth
Questions of the teeth: what, where, when to bite. When to stamp down, leaving an impression unlike any other. Filed sharp, rows of stakes like fences beyond the encampment, and here is a single white tooth on the ground, for you to find. Roll it in your mouth and tell me what it tastes like.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.22.2012 @ 4:54 am
charge
The charge into Hutchinson was led by Brooke, who without a decent gun, managed to nevertheless bash the skulls of forty-two undead. We still talk about it. He listens, perhaps, but both ears chewed off makes it difficult. In chains, nearly rotted through them, he sits. The eventual pile of bones, still and silent, will go into the memorial. He’d like that, we think.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.21.2012 @ 4:35 am
bury
We had to bury all of them, all old associates, barely qualified as friends. But in the ground, they became more — turning in dirt and worms, tunneling into our brains, until we were forced to recognize them as kin. And so marinated, they rose again, our brethren, our wives and lovers. Our very future.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.16.2012 @ 6:13 am
mass
A mass, a horde, spinal cords adjusting themselves along my hairline. A brain, or two, if this one won’t work as suggested. In the end, the will to live is connected to tissue and gangrenous nerves traveling into infinity without carriage, without wheels, and no one is at the helm.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.09.2012 @ 4:55 am
combine
We decided to combine households but nothing in the contract said souls. So I left mine neatly wrapped in snow outside the kitchen door, and he hid his in the basement, how cliche. But when summer came and mine stood exposed, how I wished I had chosen dank and dark and spidery instead.
Posted By RS Bohn On 10.03.2012 @ 6:12 am
half
There’s an absolute hunger in me, given to half-rations of love and even lust. Spent like bent gold coins, and picked up in gutters around the world. Where is the full plate? Where is the table overflowing with kindness? In these halls, carved on my own from rib bones and sweet kindling, there is only shadow and want.
Posted By RS Bohn On 08.22.2012 @ 6:52 am
jelly
Dirty paws turn me to jelly. I watch his bulldog digging up the rosemary while he talks of mortgages. “Hey,” I say, “want to go inside?” But he’s still talking about interest rates and terms when we go in, and the dog is still swinging away in the sun, too far away, beyond the sliding glass patio doors.
Posted By RS Bohn On 06.07.2012 @ 5:02 am
