Cherrypicked stories

6) Write haiku using the five-seven-five method. Who needs a season?

'Hair today, hair tomorrow.' Turning to face the sad old man, Rudolph put the brush down and buttoned his pleated, silk shirt. Bathing in shallow pools of light, his svelte, muscular figure failed to hide a hideous mask. Cleaved lips clung lustily to an oily, slick of features, anchored only by monstrous, varicose-stretched nostrils. Smeared into a smile, his lips moved, 'But you, my formerly fat friend. You will be gone. Unless you can pay what you owe by sun-break tomorrow, the factory is mine.'

The Gaylord's been closed for years, it turns out , but never mind ...

If I were an optimist I would be half-alive. If I were a pessimist I would be half-dead.

On the beach, with her palms spread like a prayer book she awaits her son's arrival. The beach is a wet towel; the sky gestates. The boy is not a meteor.

Ulyana was his first choice she reminded him of a table dancer he knew from the 80s

We, the settlers, trekking behind the covered wagons of time, rattle the hours in pockets of loose moments, that can hold only so much in a day. We want more for next week, next year, always in search

With the left I pull poems apart With the right I win decisions.

I will find chips of green glass worn round as coins, coves made porous by fingers of spume, husks of strange creatures.