the familiar song starts and he immediately feels his heart ache. it’s almost like a chemical reaction, uncontained even as he runs his palm over his chest. the sky outside is a bright azure, but all he sees in them are those same grey eyes. ice. he shifts slightly, biting his lip enough to draw blood. something he’d never forget.
The system by which we measure is the system by which we understand; that is to say, the rules by which we define the universe shape that universe, as the observation of molecules fundamentally alters their very being. The utterance of the inch divides our world into inches; but what is the inch without the utterance, except the notion of a pattern in a world of arbitrary measurement and cut-off?
“Just, waddle like a penguin,” I say to new faces before me by circumstance, their hands never having touched the coldness of the sky, or their feet finding the blackness of ice. They don’t yet know how the cold cracks and splits your skin, freezing your fists shut as your knuckles bleed. The days for them to discover that that feeling of falling out of a dream is reality, the world will decide to slip out from under their frozen, unprepared toes, and cracked open like an egg, their mystical snow turns an even more beautiful, rare color. And the cars go by, if they saw they pretend they didn’t, if they didn’t they make sure they will never see anything, the trouble isn’t theirs to bear, so they turn up the radio that reiterates “it will be another rough winter this year,” and click their tongue at the inconvenience. But the world is heating up, the ice is melting, pushing the cold onto the world and soon the winter will never end, sidewalk-foreign-object-foreigner, snow freezing into little mountains on open eyes. How many days until someone calls their family?
“Just waddle like a penguin,” I say, up looking at the sky not to admire the snow, but to give the ice a chance to take me by surprise,
a winter wonderland.
Let me deal the cards, but first, I’ll shuffle the deck. I let the kings and queens and jacks leap into the air in an arc, in a black and red rainbow between my fingers. I cast each noble and peasant out so that they’re tucked between your fingers, and in the end, you’ll no longer be able to tell which will grant you victory and which will be your downfall.
Belinda Roddie
Making my way North, slowly, with a seven card hand and no playables in sight. Mulligan? I stroll further up familiar streets I don’t recognize in the dark – 5 lands, 1 playable. Mulligan #2.
Slip into a little farming aqueduct, catch myself, take a breath. 5 instants, no lands. Meaningless tricks, mull #3.
I stop at a bridge, dropping my light in the river. A scream swells but doesn’t leave me – like this new hand, 3 creatures and a land, nope. Mull again.
Uphill – tired legs, quiet mind – mull # 5!
2 cards left as I walk through the door of am old joint, I don’t turn them over until I leave with an “Ookini!”
1 instant, 1 land. Enough to survive for a turn. For a night.
Marie shuffled along the hall to her room. She curled her upper lip to shut out the smells – urine, boiled meat and perfume. She couldn’t remember how she got here, in this mausoleum of old people. It seemed to be her future.
Her hands are twitching. Her lashes flutter, sending out shock waves through the air; her rapid breaths disrupt the currents’ flow and send them careening out of the way, madly dodging the hot, yellow wind.
Shuffle the feet
don’t falter at the altar.
Go onto the gym floor
and dance into the key
Three points for a little ankle flip
Twist to the lithe look of the lady
you always had eyes for
and then you go up and down
and slide away into the punchbowl
end of the scene and the
first mh
Daniel Ari
It was an old iPod. It contained a mixture of 60’s rock and roll and new age from the 80’s. I don’t know who was left it on the window ledge in the gym. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching when I pocketed it. I can’t explain my fascination with it but I listen to it every time I work out.
She kicked her feet along the ground, pushing the snow around into a pile. “I don’t know.”
“Do you really not know or are you just saying that to avoid talking about it?”
shuffle the truffle, ian
ok, go, back to requiem
for a running back
i am, you are, we are not
a prison cell
i am, you are, we are
our own single cells
we are free
to shuffle back to reality
anytime we want
Randomized and jumbled, his mind struggled to pierce its own veil, to gather from the rubble of what had shaken the very memory that had triggered the collapse. Perhaps better, then, to be ignorant by way of psychic burial; yet he could find no other memory any more clearly, could not navigate the waves of confusion, and despair pulled him only ever deeper through the currents.
the familiar song starts and he immediately feels his heart ache. it’s almost like a chemical reaction, uncontained even as he runs his palm over his chest. the sky outside is a bright azure, but all he sees in them are those same grey eyes. ice. he shifts slightly, biting his lip enough to draw blood. something he’d never forget.
he hits shuffle.
I already did this one, jeez
metric:
The system by which we measure is the system by which we understand; that is to say, the rules by which we define the universe shape that universe, as the observation of molecules fundamentally alters their very being. The utterance of the inch divides our world into inches; but what is the inch without the utterance, except the notion of a pattern in a world of arbitrary measurement and cut-off?
“Just, waddle like a penguin,” I say to new faces before me by circumstance, their hands never having touched the coldness of the sky, or their feet finding the blackness of ice. They don’t yet know how the cold cracks and splits your skin, freezing your fists shut as your knuckles bleed. The days for them to discover that that feeling of falling out of a dream is reality, the world will decide to slip out from under their frozen, unprepared toes, and cracked open like an egg, their mystical snow turns an even more beautiful, rare color. And the cars go by, if they saw they pretend they didn’t, if they didn’t they make sure they will never see anything, the trouble isn’t theirs to bear, so they turn up the radio that reiterates “it will be another rough winter this year,” and click their tongue at the inconvenience. But the world is heating up, the ice is melting, pushing the cold onto the world and soon the winter will never end, sidewalk-foreign-object-foreigner, snow freezing into little mountains on open eyes. How many days until someone calls their family?
“Just waddle like a penguin,” I say, up looking at the sky not to admire the snow, but to give the ice a chance to take me by surprise,
a winter wonderland.
Let me deal the cards, but first, I’ll shuffle the deck. I let the kings and queens and jacks leap into the air in an arc, in a black and red rainbow between my fingers. I cast each noble and peasant out so that they’re tucked between your fingers, and in the end, you’ll no longer be able to tell which will grant you victory and which will be your downfall.
Making my way North, slowly, with a seven card hand and no playables in sight. Mulligan? I stroll further up familiar streets I don’t recognize in the dark – 5 lands, 1 playable. Mulligan #2.
Slip into a little farming aqueduct, catch myself, take a breath. 5 instants, no lands. Meaningless tricks, mull #3.
I stop at a bridge, dropping my light in the river. A scream swells but doesn’t leave me – like this new hand, 3 creatures and a land, nope. Mull again.
Uphill – tired legs, quiet mind – mull # 5!
2 cards left as I walk through the door of am old joint, I don’t turn them over until I leave with an “Ookini!”
1 instant, 1 land. Enough to survive for a turn. For a night.
Waiting to cut the deck.
Marie shuffled along the hall to her room. She curled her upper lip to shut out the smells – urine, boiled meat and perfume. She couldn’t remember how she got here, in this mausoleum of old people. It seemed to be her future.
Her hands are twitching. Her lashes flutter, sending out shock waves through the air; her rapid breaths disrupt the currents’ flow and send them careening out of the way, madly dodging the hot, yellow wind.
Shuffle the feet
don’t falter at the altar.
Go onto the gym floor
and dance into the key
Three points for a little ankle flip
Twist to the lithe look of the lady
you always had eyes for
and then you go up and down
and slide away into the punchbowl
end of the scene and the
first mh
It was an old iPod. It contained a mixture of 60’s rock and roll and new age from the 80’s. I don’t know who was left it on the window ledge in the gym. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching when I pocketed it. I can’t explain my fascination with it but I listen to it every time I work out.
She kicked her feet along the ground, pushing the snow around into a pile. “I don’t know.”
“Do you really not know or are you just saying that to avoid talking about it?”
shuffle the truffle, ian
ok, go, back to requiem
for a running back
i am, you are, we are not
a prison cell
i am, you are, we are
our own single cells
we are free
to shuffle back to reality
anytime we want
Randomized and jumbled, his mind struggled to pierce its own veil, to gather from the rubble of what had shaken the very memory that had triggered the collapse. Perhaps better, then, to be ignorant by way of psychic burial; yet he could find no other memory any more clearly, could not navigate the waves of confusion, and despair pulled him only ever deeper through the currents.