Ian Ross Singleton

Writer – Teacher – Беллетрист – Kritzler – Sub Sub Sub Librarian – PS3619.I64

6 July 2018

The Word Violence

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First Time (New Madrid) “It was like looking into a mirror. She was surprised A.J. could still appear so innocent, when she saw the live-motion portrait of him on the television more than a year later. She had seen that primed glance, like the ting off the tip of a fang…”
Her Pictures of the South (Fiddleblack) “Lynn’s first photographs of him, taken in a diner unawares, reveal a sneering figure surrounded by a gang of boys hunkered in a booth, devouring sopping fries, wearing a stressed leather jacket and threadbare jeans, pouncing in his seat…”
Michigan Central (Digital Americana) “I was only nineteen, alone, out of money, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ was striking up. When he cracked the seal on a pint of Mohawk vodka and offered, I threw back…”
Sweetgum (Fiddleblack) “The sun’s just gone under, the livid pallor of all the surface, save the sweetgum, sucks at me. My neck snaps, I twitch. I shut my window and ride on. The empty fields course and whisper past, the earth rolling over on her shoulder from me…”
The Lost Soul Boys (Prick of the Spindle) “At school, we have to tuck our shirts in, remove any piercings. We have to buzzcut our hair. They confiscated my skull rings, my spike bracelet, and my handcuff belt. My head aches from the fluorescent light, my butt from the welded jailhouse desks…”

A Letter from Zürau by Marina Eskina (Asymptote) “Dreams about mice bode despair. The horde buries/ the cat, then envelops the horse from head to hoof,/ and the rider gallops astride mice…”
The Prose of Life by Marina Eskina (Cardinal Points) As for the prose of life, just let it be,/ whether and what for it’s got poetry,/ and what string, other than the one you pluck,/ resonates with the wail of ambulance or fire truck…