a delicious kabob

"Between wild fits of laughter, Johnson shouted orders. Samuel Doe's heart was removed. One of the officers ate some human flesh to make himself look more cruel, more brutal, more barbarous and inhuman — real, genuine human flesh. Samuel Doe's heart was put to one side for the officer so he could make a delicious kabob out of it."

 ~~ from Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

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attending to my paces

"I did not have so much, but I was intact. I had a ceiling fan and an unremarkable kitchen. I paid rent on time and was aware of the possibility that I’d earned what I had. I had helped a child through college and a year of graduate training, a newer normal, and I didn’t like sharing my walking space with undesirables who had never supported the arts with a paid museum membership. Inhaling the foul odors of the unhoused—or even those climate zealots using God-knows-what to seal themselves to the Monet, Klimt, or Klee—would never be for me. No, sir.

"And so, I came to recognize that I would no longer be striding through the museum on searing hot days. Climbing the great marble stairs would be for someone else, not for me. I would have to find another way of avoiding skin cancer while attending to my paces."

Poverty House

"When you get older, nobody tells you things get real uncomfortable real quick. I ain’t just talking about body aches and shit like that. I mean everything. It all seems to pile up like the junk at old Fred and Lamont’s. Dishes stay piled up in the sink. There are crumbs and stains on the countertop. Dirty clothes left lying around like the rapture jerked out the folks wearing them and left the clothes to fall where they may. You just get tired. Too tired to care."

~~ from "Doctor's Orders" by Dan Russell

an original novel

"Back at my studio and seeking punishment, I set to pricking my arms with a paperclip. But that wasn’t enough, so I picked up the next thing I could find; it happened to be my first novel. I began slamming it against the side of my head—again and again—but that was no good either. Years ago, I had been an aspiring man of the people, and I’d talked the publisher out of hardcover, so that we’d put into print a book that the masses could afford—but now this beneficence was interfering with my progress. Against my skull, I slammed an original novel unable to leave any lasting damage."

"Going to Hell"

Thank you, Soyos Books, for publishing new short fiction.

fry guy makes mad bank

In The New Yorker's "Will the U.A.W. Strike Turn the Rust Belt Green?" I learned that a Rust Belt employee manufacturing French fries can earn more than an assembly line worker building cars.

Allah Is Not Obliged

"When people say there's tribal wars in a country, it means that big important warlords have divided the country up. They've divided up all the money, all the land, all the people. They divide up everything and the whole world lets them, everyone in the whole world lets them kill innocent men and children and women. And that's not all! The funniest thing is that the warlords are all using desperate measures to hang on to the things they've got, but the same warlords are doing everything they can to get their hands on more stuff (according to the Larousse, 'desperate measures' means 'all-out physical force').

~~ from Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

potatoes

"Recently the camp received potatoes for the winter. Eighty percent rotten. Nevertheless, the camp came to life. In the camp, mountains of potatoes are heaped up, and everyone can pick them. But the potatoes stink of rot, are reshuffled by hundreds of hands. The selected potatoes are hidden in bunkers and people cannot use them freely anymore. The resignation of the Advisory Committee and the prevention of the free use of potatoes again aggravate the situation of supplies in the camp. Nevertheless, recently there has been no starvation in the camp."

~~ from The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939—1944 by Herman Kruk

the Journey

"What's all the fuss about . . . It's the Journey that got me into all this . . . My most relentless persecutors date from the Journey . . . Nobody's forgiven me for the Journey . . .  It was the Journey that cooked my goose . . ."

~~ from Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Celine