Item 8 (Coelaboration), 1997–98, read aloud entire: all 212 surviving responses, each in a voice cast for its writer, and the 29 numbers that do not survive, marked in the editor’s voice. A collaborative hypernarrative written in the artist conference on The Meta Network, September 2, 1997 to August 31, 1998. https://item8.org/ 1998-08-31T12:00:00Z the nineteen writers of item 8cabraham@gmail.com © 1997–98 the writers of item 8 https://item8.org/8/0.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

Coelaboration The small apartment smells a little from the windows being closed against the humidity. I don't have any place to put the butts from the ashtray and I really don't want to waste my time doing domestic things anyway. Time seems too valuable for that. But the job of…

https://item8.org/8/1.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

Seattle then. A place called never never land. A place so unlike Washington. Washington looks so deeply into the mirror. Washington is like a teenage girl. She notices every flaw and every ounce gained; she worried about everybody's opinion and fears rejection, always believing…

https://item8.org/8/2.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

Seattle just is. Whether the mecca for new technology or sustainability; or, as it is better know, for the romper room of the Generation X (and also the Generation Why as well as for Old Hippies and middle-aged Punkers). Seattle just is. The people explore their own trendiness…

https://item8.org/8/3.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

But here, Washington looks at herself in the mirror and doesn't want to be one-hair out of place; she doesn't want to stick out; she doesn't want to be snickered at by her friends. She doesn't know what she is missing, the freedom of showing off the downy gleaming blond hairs of…

https://item8.org/8/4.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

And the ashes are constricting my chest. The smoke is no good for the chest. Seattle is cast under cloud by day, but at night the mist is nicotine and clove. Seattle is a Camel town. New York is Marlboro. Washington is a Marlboro Light town, by default to New

https://item8.org/8/5.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

The pale flanks of Seattle, tight from starvation. Striations of muscle, the glint of the rings, the glitter of the disco makeup, the high camp. The bell bottoms taken for a steal at a flea market, from the folk's attic. The nosebleed platforms and ubiquitous coffee

https://item8.org/8/6.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

Dimpled erotica painted on flesh with needle, wrapped like tentacles along the arm and down the back. Once, my head way held tight during a freedive. By a giant octopus, I shit you not. It took hold and its eight tentacles, each as big as my wrist. The suckers reeled down my…

https://item8.org/8/7.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

I had been hunting for him so it was a fair loss, but when I arrived on shore, there were terrible welts where the genius had taken hold. They were red and indelible for quite some time, having broken the blood vessels, creating bruises. The Mark of the octopus from that day…

https://item8.org/8/8.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

Where can you get a good cup of coffee at 4am on Capitol

https://item8.org/8/9.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

She wonders at the different worlds. She has been this weekend in the world of a family, 66 names of children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren painted on a wooden box made from an old hutch cabinet, a box of 94-year old ashes buried by a family with stories and songs. They'd…

https://item8.org/8/10.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

"Chocolate City" t-shirts. "3 for $10," Hope reminds me. Thin transparent cotton dishrags with "Washington Blues." Sadly, Bart Simpson is suffering a decline. His "Don't have a Cow, Man," used to be a classic, used to make young children smile when your returned home from…

https://item8.org/8/11.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

The gravestone had waited for thirty years: McLaughlin John F. 1893- 1967 Gladys E. 1903 - At the end she'd said she wanted to be buried with her parents instead. And then with both her parents and her husband. "You can't do both," they told her, "unless you're cremated." "Oh,…

https://item8.org/8/12.html 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z 1997-09-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

The dive boat we had used since he and I took our course through PADI in 1985. I was almost 15. Tom Yoho was always our captain. They were always different boats, but if Tom was there, it didn't matter. It was a consistancy, one of our few traditions -- to great me whenever I…

https://item8.org/8/13.html 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z Justin Sacks (Pell)

I sit at my desk, on the top floor of Vine Alternative, Called KAMSC by some. The teacher standing in the front smiles enthusiastically as she animatedly explains a concept that I had mastered five years ago. My gaze slowly unfocuses, and my head droops downwards towards the…

https://item8.org/8/14.html 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

That yellow bus, the transportation between worlds. For the five year old, a magical chariot to unknown, exciting universes. For the fifteen year old, the too-slow escape from the drudgery of those same universes, grown cold and small with repetition and

https://item8.org/8/15.html 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z 1997-09-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

TheBUS. The city bus in Honolulu. From 6-11, I lived across the street from my Elementary School, Aliamanu Elementary. At 12, we moved downtown, miles away. I was a crossing guard for JPO (Junior Police Officers) in my school. We never told the school district we had moved. I…

https://item8.org/8/16.html 1997-09-08T12:00:00Z 1997-09-08T12:00:00Z Susan Galleymore

Ah, the memories of the yellow school bus . . . My brothers and I commuted 20 miles each way to high school -- from our rural home in eastern South Africa to the big city. The bus was generally full of kids and during the afternoon ride home -- it took almost two hours to…

https://item8.org/8/17.html 1997-09-28T12:00:00Z 1997-09-28T12:00:00Z Justin Sacks (Pell)

I've wandered off from camp and am sitting around the ashes of a long-dead fire with my friends. It is late at night and we all look down at the ground or the starry sky, absolutely gorgeous when viewed so far away from the harsh lights of the city. Its fascinating, beautiful,…

https://item8.org/8/18.html 1997-09-28T12:00:00Z 1997-09-28T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

In the morning, I wake just before sunrise, wriggling quietly past my gently snoring friend. The canoes are lined up along the riverbank, a few yards down from the gentle ripples that on the quiet Shenandoah count as rapids. I flip over the nearest one, wade it into the…

https://item8.org/8/19.html 1997-09-29T12:00:00Z 1997-09-29T12:00:00Z chris abraham

The blue plastic kayaks are perfect percussion instruments. The nudging of a log, the tap of the oars, the lapping of the cool morning waters. I usually sleep late. I usually wait until the morning is long past and the day has bugun and has moved closer to evening than the crack…

https://item8.org/8/20.html 1997-10-07T12:00:00Z 1997-10-07T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

On the high cliffs beside the falls, watching the kayakers swept downstream, rolled over, battered against rocks, muscling again and again through the swirling white. The park ranger explains to the gawkers that the idea is to catch a standing wave, balance on it long enough to…

https://item8.org/8/21.html 1997-10-07T12:00:00Z 1997-10-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

There is magic. I have never doubted it. When I saw my first exorcisim, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It really didn't appear possible to be taken by a deomon. Demons are not for real. The other night, running through the close boughs of the forest, the fingers picking…

https://item8.org/8/22.html 1997-12-05T12:00:00Z 1997-12-05T12:00:00Z Lavinia Weissman

HOw do I describe where I create. Hmmmmm.....at present I have a room that is a bit stark and it houses all my books and treasures. On my wall is a drawing of my dream corner in Mill Valley where I hope to dance over the hills into the headlands and view the bay and San…

https://item8.org/8/23.html 1997-12-06T12:00:00Z 1997-12-06T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Dancing over the hills into the headlands...watching the bay and the city spread below... too distracting? I wander back over the hills and climb the narrow stairs to my own room, oddly shaped, perhaps with slanted ceilings too low for a normal person. Shaped, undoubtedly, by a…

https://item8.org/8/24.html 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

fellation brass axe shitake falling away into and running with the entire concept of the boy finally reaching sweet sixteen blowing oh so sweet woo woo cat melodies into the center of my head thick pressed paws thump beat honk of geese in the small floating room below the exit…

https://item8.org/8/25.html 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/26.html 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z 1997-12-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/27.html 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

The summertime wintertime in densest el nino washington here on the potomac cleaning cleaning the homely scum of the sink shitty shit in the bowl and getting down on the scabby knees from being aggressive n the rub the brown rug before the fireplace. i don't really need the…

https://item8.org/8/28.html 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

This small apartment. Can't see through the bay windows. The rental company never has them come to clean. Things break. I read about schitzophrenia. Symptoms look to me like enlightenment in a small apartment in a small townhous on a small park in a small neighborhood in a…

https://item8.org/8/29.html 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z 1998-01-03T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

i am hearing the voices, but maddeningly enough, they're mumbling and I can't quite make out what they're saying. In the background, Han Solo looks for Luke Skywalker on the planet Hoth. We look out the window, past the Christmas lights, for the pizza

https://item8.org/8/30.html 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z chris abraham

pizza enogh to fill the belly? well, if I were to start a pizza company it would also give direct in-the-face advice for the little homes. Instead of the readout telling only of the telephone number, there would also be a background check and the dire straits of the houshold…

https://item8.org/8/31.html 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

The shade of Stephen Dedalus sings to me from the screen. Sometimes I wish I smoked. It's a lot easier to be tired, world-weary and cynical with a cigarette spiralling blue in the corner of your vision. Truth is, I'm deep in the heart of deadline deadlock. Can't quite remember…

https://item8.org/8/32.html 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

but i am transfixed by my muses, writing in my head, but when pen meets paper, hand meets keyboard, it becomes invisible ink, eluding like a cleverly coy mistress. there is a ringing in my ears and i wonder if this is my body telling me to slow, deafened by chaos and deadline…

https://item8.org/8/33.html 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z chris abraham

ulysses. square eye similar to the one-eyes snake. mine eyes be square for they are always looking towards and through squareness. no wonder i am becomming decidedly L7. Slides, theur 35mm image smooth and shiny and then dull and emulated otherwise. ulysses. young stephen lost…

https://item8.org/8/34.html 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z 1998-01-04T12:00:00Z chris abraham

my skin crawls. the hair is greasy and falls well without a comb. wearing black is the answer. scrubbing out the white stains from rubbing a morning mouth. seeing the hours pass. immoving. orangina and viena sausage. i'm on a rool; i'm on a roll this time. i feel my luck could…

https://item8.org/8/35.html 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z chris abraham

I walked along the yawning streets. Wearing a tweed sportscoat, kakhi trousers, and a yellow tie, I moved towards the train without needing an overcoat. They say its to be 70 degrees today in Washington. In my life, dead soldiers refer to the paper cups which are beginning to…

https://item8.org/8/36.html 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

Back at school after a long coma of talking to the voices in my head in the confines of my house. The temperatures of the classrooms vary here in my school, because the teachers fix the thermostat according to how they're feeling. 1st hour, lazily warm and comfy, like too many…

https://item8.org/8/37.html 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/38.html 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z 1998-01-05T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

Ah, back at home, oh safe haven from staring eyes that give you a quick once over and go on to the next victim. I have grown almost oblivious to them in three and a half years time, but I still get the urge to look away like a convicted criminal before the jury. At the turn of…

https://item8.org/8/39.html 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

being me is so elusive like trying to catch a rainbow in a photograph, vivid colors, but transparently changing even as i watch and grasp at illusions. the color is drained from the landscape now, in winter. outside my window bare trees beckon, a stripping, a solitary unmoving…

https://item8.org/8/40.html 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

home, safe haven. work, accidents always happen mostly within ten miles of home. home is elusive. used to think that hope is where your hat hung. well hung hate. fedora. baseball. ten gallon. skull capped with a browning 9mm. drinking at mickey's last night, finishing off with…

https://item8.org/8/41.html 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

no downer, just a cycle, a circling round, a pause for breath, a look at shadows in the light, offering contrast, offering calm resolve, as people die on skis on slopes i have traversed, so i pause, and i wonder a bit, and i don't say much-the silence comforts and words capture…

https://item8.org/8/42.html 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z 1998-01-06T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

Late at night, on break from the pile of homework that still eludes me...had a glimpse of the "adult world" today in the registering of college. Funny how when I reach the end of a stage, I always look to the next steps as being wonderful and transforming. Funny, isn't it...…

https://item8.org/8/43.html 1998-01-07T12:00:00Z 1998-01-07T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i think about somedays. someday i

https://item8.org/8/44.html 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z Kathy Madden

Dance, dance, dance....those who feel the desire should never repress it. ON Ooopw---on 5the other hand, only dance with those who understand you and then, the dance should be in some format that *demands* more!

https://item8.org/8/45.html 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

dance on ice, dance naked in my living room, dance in time with the symphony of the wind... and

https://item8.org/8/46.html 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z 1998-01-08T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Somedays turn so swift to yesterdays if you don't watch carefully, carefully. Hand in hand we watch brave deeds unfold before us, turning, turning in the gyre of quickstep 2/4 time. A step out of time and your place is lost, whirled away by another, swifter in the dance. Wait…

https://item8.org/8/47.html 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

Wait, so much time waiting that I've forgatten the steps. The musice cascades across time's dome and I have lost the rhythm. The dance is nearly over, I'll to wait until the

https://item8.org/8/48.html 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z chris abraham

again i am in my shirtsleeves. thank god for IT. i believe its the geeks who made casual friday the success that it is today. its grand for ladies looking for their mate because on casual friday its less of a no-brainer than the suit is. the suit can be a copycat thing. You can…

https://item8.org/8/49.html 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the small of my back. its where everything sits. sometimes the shoulders, but not this year. the weakpoint of me. i have not received a massage from anyone in well over a year. to think that touch is such a distant concept in my life at the moment. i remember the nights in uni…

https://item8.org/8/50.html 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z chris abraham

i sit here alone. the cd whirs, the other cube has a person in it. i only hear my own voice yabbering on, with the echo effect presseded past the reverb feedback and its me at the bottom on a hole 555 feet deep. the martha washington memorial. alone. thinking maybe i am ocd.…

https://item8.org/8/51.html 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z 1998-01-09T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i am too tired to think of sex. i curl up to a warm body and am glad to hear his breathing sleep. don't stay too close too long. too hot. butt to butt. dream and wake and ponder, and dream and wake to turn on the news to see how thick the ice is and if schools are closed, or if…

https://item8.org/8/52.html 1998-01-10T12:00:00Z 1998-01-10T12:00:00Z Red

And then there are people like my mother, who never grew up in that respect....(groan) not that I criticize the woman, and I applaude my step-father for keeping up with her...but there are things I did NOT need to see and/or hear... then again, when I hit fifty...I'd like to be…

https://item8.org/8/53.html 1998-01-10T12:00:00Z 1998-01-10T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

quiet now, after the return of what i call my "learning experience"...last night, fatique drenched over me, i could hear the rain on my ceiling, thin as it is. in the dark, layers of covers, just the shadows and me, listening to the rain on my roof. if only it wasn't cold, i'd…

https://item8.org/8/54.html 1998-01-12T12:00:00Z 1998-01-12T12:00:00Z chris abraham

today i find it hard to breathe. i huff. the galoise blonde, a gift from marlise. today i find breathing difficult. tonight i see an old teacher, a man from hs; tonight marlise is making us food. i think we have enough wine; i think we have enough to drink. today i drove to work…

https://item8.org/8/55.html 1998-01-12T12:00:00Z 1998-01-12T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

So hard to sit back and watch the Galoise Blond, the Marlboro Red and not attack with a water pistol. I remember writing about it, watching myself almost slipping into the haze of Camel filters and the wrong man: camel haiku Smoke curls, like kisses, gather dangerously... Then,…

https://item8.org/8/56.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

Sex is such an odd thing, sort of like saying "can I put this part of me into that part of you, and then we'll be happy, right?" I don't know maybe I'll have sex someday, but for now I prefer cuddling, kisses, reading by each other. I enjoy long talks, short strolls, and the…

https://item8.org/8/57.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/58.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

sex; touch; the weaving of love. Each to its place and time, and yet I would not dismiss any of them: numinous mornings intertwined dreams, and dreamers

https://item8.org/8/59.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z Red

But sex is easier. And it feels good, and it satisfies all the hormones raging through your body. Sex is something of an illusion really, at least, for me at this point in life. You feel like you're getting attention and affection, without actually having to talk to that person…

https://item8.org/8/60.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/61.html 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z 1998-01-13T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/62.html 1998-01-16T12:00:00Z 1998-01-16T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Sex and lovemaking; I suppose they can be divided, but nog fr me. And who would wish to do so

https://item8.org/8/63.html 1998-01-16T12:00:00Z 1998-01-16T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the evening passed on my dry elbows, before a dead fire, next to a monitor playing reruns of the x-files. before the lcd playing the words of a former mistress, a milky little doll with a blunt bob, rosebud breasts, and a penchant for wearing dkny under the hawaiian sun. or…

https://item8.org/8/64.html 1998-01-17T12:00:00Z 1998-01-17T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

Arising from under the waves of deep sleep, I rose in the morning to an empty and cold house, dirty dishes and food in the kitchen and the living room in just as poor condition. Another night my sister had a friend over, I could see. Then I think for the hundredth time: I gotta…

https://item8.org/8/65.html 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z spaceboy

i grab a jelly donut (cherry) and sit in the tub, the bubble bath surface tension fingers pruning to rubbery stubs. mmmm,

https://item8.org/8/66.html 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z spaceboy

report card, hey tcpip... january rain swimmingpool cherry jelly donut. x-nutsack: x-bozo: x-girlfriend return tcpip dkny. communication; communication. i wonder as i masticate in the tub how your eyes at this moment look -- irises lashes lids heavy lidded soft dusk. how…

https://item8.org/8/67.html 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z 1998-01-18T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

my bones feel only the lingering of illness now. all the toxins have gone, or almost. still a taste of insipid infection in my throat and a dry cough. fret about smoking and wonder if i can ever stop. get up and take my dog with me into the shower. an hour later she's still…

https://item8.org/8/68.html 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Chicken boiling for soup on the stove; sourdough rising in the oven. The baby is sleeping; he's good for another hour or so. I look around at the little-kid clutter of four days in a stir-crazy row at home, nursing the boys through viral bronchitis. (Listening in the night for…

https://item8.org/8/69.html 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i go to see the film titanic and i vicariously live a time of ostentatiously glorious chapeaus and dresses adorned with detail that flow and accent feminity...the impact of the event and the lives lost becomes a momentary reality that then lingers in the back of my mind, some…

https://item8.org/8/70.html 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/71.html 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

It's those moments that things go into overdrive that I hate. The article has to be done yesterday. Nobody will develop slide film in time. The photographer can't make it. We'll change the location, and make it the California Cafe instead of the Breakfast Creek Hotel; the…

https://item8.org/8/72.html 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z 1998-01-19T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

A stranger dies, known and cared for only through these wires; his friend writes that ""All good things come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy" -- Norman Maclean." At my goddaughter's birthday party, an announcement: in August, she will be a sister. I…

https://item8.org/8/73.html 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Art is truth of spirit, not the literal truth of the common herd. Sometimes, the 'whoppers' are all we've really got going for

https://item8.org/8/74.html 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

do your taxes, wait online for the overcrowded server to respond and try not to scream before throwing your computer through the window, just for fun. dissertation lays on the floor in piles of manilla folders and i wonder how to translate what i do, who these brilliant students…

https://item8.org/8/75.html 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z Red

I was told I was too bitchy today. So I'm sitting here, trying to figure out just exactly what I said or did that made me "a big bad bitch"....I spoke to loudly, I guess...and I answered when he asked "What's wrong?"..didn't realize that he didn't REALLY want an answer....but…

https://item8.org/8/76.html 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

tears i have been trying to hold back all day flow freely down my cheeks now, hopelessly devouring my calm appearance. nothing goes right, no matter th hope, the planning, the desire to do something right for a change and then i stop for a moment. why am i so afraid? day of new…

https://item8.org/8/77.html 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z 1998-01-20T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

Every tear I've shed has watered my dreams, and they've soaked it up and grown. Soon they will flower and bear the fruit of reality. They have drank of my pains and fed on my struggles, and now they will give me a good

https://item8.org/8/78.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

i am not bitchy enough to be a man. i have so much rope here that hanging is certainly a possibility, wordwise that is. i have not cried since 1994. and that was uncontrolable catharsis. and my lover called her mum, a nurse, in a panic. her mum told me to stop. if a man starts…

https://item8.org/8/79.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Long, long ago, wrapping my arms around a friend, sitting outside on a dark night, as he cried and cried. He shook and wailed and clutched me tight enough to bruise, and I never even knew what it was about, that night, just that I was desperately needed. And I spent twenty years…

https://item8.org/8/80.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i can taste the salty remnants of sadness in my throat. i feel like crying sometimes and don't, other times blubber without always knowing why, it just comes, too easily, too swiftly, without warning...maybe just in response to a toilet paper commercial, for chrissakes, what's…

https://item8.org/8/81.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

hysteria, the madness of the womb. dora. dr. freud. a case of hysteria. for me to cry, must i have a womb. i have a belly for sure. bitch. slap my bitch up. a song. bitch, witch, witchy woman. an article. "Now it's safe for me to cry, and I no longer need to." ". . .a toilet…

https://item8.org/8/82.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Red

I refuse to cry. I hold it in as long as I can...I broke down a few days ago, after a call from my dad saying that they were going to put my dog down sometime that week...I wouldn't talk to my father about it and changed the subject...but as soon as I hung the phone up, I…

https://item8.org/8/83.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

Lazy days make me wish for more hours in the day...maybe a 30-hour day to think all my thoughts, cry all my tears, laugh until my stomach bursts into a thousand pieces inside of me and to try and understand philosophy. Watching, thinking, listening makes me realize my own…

https://item8.org/8/84.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Red - better a moment of weakness that passes as the tears dry than days of the pain and effort it takes to conceal the sadness. Once you've wept, the tears are gone, but the struggle not to weep binds you for long,

https://item8.org/8/85.html 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z 1998-01-21T12:00:00Z Red

When I get on the bus, he's in my seat...AGAIN...the seat I ALWAYS sit in, he's decided he likes. Part of me says "he's flirting, flirt back"....the other says..."he's flirting, kick his ass." I toss myself into the seat across the way, grumbling to him that he's taken my seat…

https://item8.org/8/86.html 1998-01-22T12:00:00Z 1998-01-22T12:00:00Z chris abraham

synergy moves across the fields like wind. this most basic of needs, the building blocks of community, caresses the husks old grain stalks. dirk consoles red; red flirts with pretty boy; never enough hours in the day, says kat. i raise my hands, unable to delete any more,…

https://item8.org/8/87.html 1998-01-25T12:00:00Z 1998-01-25T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

"And this one?" she asks, and idly traces the faint white mark on his forehead, with the gentlest of fingertips. "I ran into a wall when I was a baby. Really freaked my mom and my big brother out, but I don't even remember it. Now, where were we?" I hold him down in the…

https://item8.org/8/88.html 1998-01-25T12:00:00Z 1998-01-25T12:00:00Z Red

When I walked into the house, he wasn;t there to greet me. I didn't hear the familiar clacking of his nails on the lenolium flooring of the kitchen. So he really was gone. They had put him down last weekend. My dad had called to tell me Saturday morning that they had given him a…

https://item8.org/8/89.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Sometimes I can't remember who I'm supposed to be. Sometimes there's nobody around to remember for me. Forgetting is like letting go. It's like the comfort of the carousel, as the ever-familiar unfolds infinitely in front of you, becoming strange and new again with each turn of…

https://item8.org/8/90.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

you will be a little girl lost spirout the comfort of her dog, a mother who cannot explain the fear and pain of a hosptial room and why she's a part of it as she restrains her child, a poet with muses who taunt and tease elusively, an energetic woman whose body has decided to…

https://item8.org/8/91.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Aaron Webb

Or a lazy teenage boy, watching sadly as the work and shit and drudgery and messages pile up. He watches his planner fill with ink, and overflow onto the already messy bedroom floor. He hides in sleep, somehow. The guilt of going to bed with applications undone on the desk next…

https://item8.org/8/92.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

I began keeping fish when a friend was arrested. Four years of dealing substantial amounts of cocaine, and I never connected the dots. I couldn't take any of his dogs, or the new puppies, or the cats, and it was rather too late to try to take care of my friend, so I took his…

https://item8.org/8/93.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

and my plants droop from neglect until i hear them screaming quietly, water, water, light. and it echoes my own cries in the stronghold of winter. and then it starts snowing big flakes in sheets of white, outlining the black of the trees, the crevaces and i wonder if the…

https://item8.org/8/94.html 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z 1998-01-26T12:00:00Z Red

Listening to the lament of the Irish people on a television program in the other room, I nearly begin crying, though I won't let myself. I don't need anymore headaches. Not today. The stories of starving, fighting, drinking, singing Irish families..my families. I hear the names…

https://item8.org/8/95.html 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

I have been Irish. I know the sound of the uillean pipes and the hum and thump of the big Kerry bodhran. I know the warmth of stone walls and fires of stolen peat, the wag of tongues and the fireflash of the heart, quick to wrath and quicker to laugh. They say all my fights are…

https://item8.org/8/96.html 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

From Angela's Ashes, the definition of Irish Alzheimers: you forget everything except the grudge. As my grandmother lay dying, my mother asked the nurse why she could no longer speak. The nurse looked startled. "She talks all the time! Mrs. McLaughlin, how are you?" And my…

https://item8.org/8/97.html 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z chris abraham

phlegm. yellow sometimes, clear. usually the color of what i just drank. morning's oj, the cafe au lait. this is an irish story, it doesn't have a happy ending. my great grandma read tea leaves. she was blind. described to me as a jigging oracle, reading leaves before the dark…

https://item8.org/8/98.html 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z 1998-01-27T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i too watch the historical documentary on pbs of the irish, remember the children on the west coast, dark-haired, blue-eyed, freckled-like siblings,so many brothers and sisters and knowing from whence i came, and my love for potatoes and story. The poets were the historians and…

https://item8.org/8/99.html 1998-01-28T12:00:00Z 1998-01-28T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

When the hero Cuchulainn learned he would die in that final battle, he did not turn aside, but dressed himself in his finest wargear, and bade his charioteer Laeg to do likewise, and over the weeping of his women, went to war. Amongst the men of Maeve, who came as foes to the…

https://item8.org/8/100.html 1998-01-29T12:00:00Z 1998-01-29T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

I know where I'm going I know who'll go with me But the Devil only knows The one that I will marry Some say that he's black And some say that he's bonny But the fairest of them all Is my handsome, winsome

https://item8.org/8/101.html 1998-01-29T12:00:00Z 1998-01-29T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

oh johnny boy....i still dream of you and you are a ghost come to visit in the

https://item8.org/8/102.html 1998-01-30T12:00:00Z 1998-01-30T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the opportunities crash like waves, yet theu catch my ankles and bring me with them. The brine cleanses wounds, softening scabs, making skin prune. the hair dances on the scalp fish bite the end, cutting off split ends. the twilight sky ghouls the underworld. i see a pacific…

https://item8.org/8/103.html 1998-01-31T12:00:00Z 1998-01-31T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

and the blue guitar sings from the rhythm of his lousiana and down home chicago roots. he leaves the stage and suddenly appears in the balcony where i always sit, since jr. highschool when we hunkered down in seats to kiss in the darkness, to stare at the pinpoint lights and…

https://item8.org/8/104.html 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

turtle carries her home on her back. Turtle Island is the home in the UP of Michigan where my native ancestors lived I hear Tokeina Nasudai WaWa recount as i sit cross-legged on the floor. she wears a turtleshell totem pouch and tells me the story of each sacred item within as…

https://item8.org/8/105.html 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z chris abraham

true romance and told stories insult the living. what is the romance i suffer and i have had many many and yet where have they gone? the moment in the corridor under a skirt skin red with blood, the blush of lovers the fingers working, the waves rushing against the hull, the…

https://item8.org/8/106.html 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z 1998-02-01T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

And it's a long, slow, Sunday afternoon on the verandah of the pub. Underfoot, the wooden floor worn to a gloss of ages by countless scuffing boots. Slow, drawling speech and flies under the brim of the broad, battered hats while I and mine take a table to see the sea, faraway…

https://item8.org/8/107.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

The sun went for a walk? That would explain why it's so dark. Oh well I suspect she'll come back soon enough. So I'll wait a bit and play my little

https://item8.org/8/108.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

come they told me pa rump pa pum pum the boat rocked like elvis. even in washington, the state means nothing to me. when i am stirred up, when i am frenzied i cannot easily consort with the boring, with the concerned. the miniblinds striate light thinking of the yellow morning…

https://item8.org/8/109.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

i was 21, and with no degree yet, and with no money, and with no certain great expectation, in my heart of hearts i believed i was protecting her when i said we couldn't. i was protecting myself, i was frightened. i was spineless. i was jealous of my future. there was nothing to…

https://item8.org/8/110.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

he is the craftsman, building a home from so many boards of wood, each carried on his back, until suddenly a form takes shape with stained glass windows from an old church in Paw Paw and a bath that runs the entire length of the house, and a new painting for the bedroom, half…

https://item8.org/8/111.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z Red

I'm almost sorry...sorry for what I did. It was wrong to bring the fight into public...he tells me he dispises me now. Hates me because I embarassed him. Because no one likes him now, because I told. Cause I said why I was unhappy. Why it hadn't worked...I didn't use his name. I…

https://item8.org/8/112.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the word hate. it is a nice word to say. its the strong tee at the end, its an ending word. its a word with commitment. its both a child's word and a word that no amount of maturity or wisdom can erase. a blade of grass is stronger than the oak, for the oak breaks under the…

https://item8.org/8/113.html 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z 1998-02-02T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Queens and Kings and strange idols, forgotten loves and lovers lost. What endless courage it takes to be reborn upon each new death. And who guards the paths? Who holds the roads for all the countless pilgrims? There are those that watch. There are those that care. And yet -…

https://item8.org/8/114.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

I watch I care And look for something to do But I can't do anything Because the best thing The only thing to do Is nothing at all At least for

https://item8.org/8/115.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

The only thing to do is to pull up the duvet curl into your back and bury my head into the pillow for just another five minutes

https://item8.org/8/116.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

sleep comes to me, under the feather duvet, in waves. the athletics of my early evenings make my body tired, allows me showers in the evening. the tight slender forms around me, running on the tread mill, pedaling on the stationary bikes. cnn on the monitors around the room,…

https://item8.org/8/117.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

FLOOD the waters rise The levies fail The sea has overstepped its bounds I've often thought I'd never fail But for the flood (by Shane

https://item8.org/8/118.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the wolf men. the hair gene. faces covered with hair, a small tribe in mexico. looks like a poodle. freak shows in the carnival. people who work for carnivals are called "carnies." when i look at your belly, pressing the abdomen with my palm, softly, wondering at the womb,…

https://item8.org/8/119.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/120.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

I saw the monkey people on television too. discovery or learning channel, and i think yes, this is how we evolved, but have we really? or have we regressed? are we so different than animals, attracted by smell, by subtle nuance of movment, by physical prowess? be my lion. be…

https://item8.org/8/121.html 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z 1998-02-03T12:00:00Z Aaron Webb

I met my great great great great ... great grandfather. He sat on the ground under the tree, softly munching on the leaves. With a concerned look for one of his lairmates, I know he loves. With a cry of pain brought about by a stinging ant, I know the savage feels. A bow of the…

https://item8.org/8/122.html 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Once I saw a gorilla who had been taught to speak in words of the hand. Her sad, gentle face gave no hint of her heart, but she spoke of love, and lies, and her long strong fingers were swift as any human. Now they are bringing her a mate, and she will bear young. Will she teach…

https://item8.org/8/123.html 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z chris abraham

We feel nothing in our hearts. We do keep people in cages, we spend billions of dollars keeping black men in jail. leaving black women behind. who's fault is this, this high percentage of men of one "race" who have been, are, or shall be incarcerated in the penal system. the…

https://item8.org/8/124.html 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z 1998-02-04T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

In days of once-upon-a-time you were most terrible of all. Greyest of rogues, more evil than sorcerors; Mere devils dissolved to nothing at your touch. There were none so strong they might resist your grey-tongued onslaught. More fell than steel, the deadly drone of your…

https://item8.org/8/125.html 1998-02-05T12:00:00Z 1998-02-05T12:00:00Z Phillip J. Rhoades

The clock it bothers me the impatiant prodding beast tick-tock-tick-toc-tock Pushing me to move Forcing me though life I'd like to smash its cogs But its ticking is my

https://item8.org/8/126.html 1998-02-05T12:00:00Z 1998-02-05T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i run into an old student who has made it out of jail and now is 30 and has 3 kids of his own, separated from his wife on saturday, and i think, where have the last 14 years gone since i last saw this boy turned man? he tells me about another boy, now dead from drinking, and i…

https://item8.org/8/127.html 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

et, while on the stationary bike, speiled its victoria's secret fleshpots and then a story on leonardo dicaprio. his first major film project. a young fellow. an independant film. the volume was down in the gym, the captions were on. the film, according to the captions, was…

https://item8.org/8/128.html 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

time well spent, time travel, time waits for no man, timely response, time and time again, father time, stitch in time saves nine, time after time, internal clocks tick. the tick tock treadmill of

https://item8.org/8/129.html 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z 1998-02-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

boris, the young frenchman, a new face at the world bank, tells me -- after laughing with me at the rambo/rimbaud fiasco, mentions that at 25 rimbaud took up the fine metier of 'arms dealer.' he died at 27. rambo he was. boris mentioned that rimbaud was a better poet than he was…

https://item8.org/8/130.html 1998-02-09T12:00:00Z 1998-02-09T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the weekend. i am a working man. sleeping. feeling the exhaustion. the sheets, my alibi. valentine. st. vitus. dance. hallmark. chocolate. les roses. long stem. 12? 24? 6? doing the dozens, the waxy faux rose, dowsed with a spray of mist to make the velvet lips stand out, to…

https://item8.org/8/131.html 1998-02-09T12:00:00Z 1998-02-09T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

lst year valentine's day, i met you in DC. remember? oh, and yes, it prompted impetuous kissing, to show the young ones how. laughter and dancing, and new friends and one turned 18 and what a party because it was all a coming together over food, story, and virtual becoming real.…

https://item8.org/8/132.html 1998-02-10T12:00:00Z 1998-02-10T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

the rain came today...little tears, little aches and little wishes from the sky that no one ever used...they make me think...they make me feel...i don't feel. deep down in the caverns of me, whoever she is, this nameless being i inhabit, i feel a hole. i feel a road underneath…

https://item8.org/8/133.html 1998-02-11T12:00:00Z 1998-02-11T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

There is an endless quality to life. Nothing and Something defining the universe over and over again like strings of 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010 1100 1101 1110 1111. Endless cycles of joy and sadness, of living and realy living. Of woman and man complimenting…

https://item8.org/8/134.html 1998-02-11T12:00:00Z 1998-02-11T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

there is no arrival. it's all in the traveling, here to there and back again, circling, sometimes spiraling out of control and i am just happy to be looking out my window with fingers that move on the keys and feel the tap, tap, tap. it's life itself knocking. the rain makes…

https://item8.org/8/135.html 1998-02-12T12:00:00Z 1998-02-12T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

and then, as i work at home, knowing that comfort, only possible through the way technology transforms, and understanding the irony of remembering not so long ago when i pledged my faith to my typewriter, not believing a computer to be anything more, only less, another machine,…

https://item8.org/8/136.html 1998-02-12T12:00:00Z 1998-02-12T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

answers...the one thing always searched, strived, desired for and never really achieved. seeming so simple, but we make it so complicated. warm crystals falling from the sky, almost like the earth needed a bath, according to the sky, or maybe the heavens are crying for us. rain…

https://item8.org/8/137.html 1998-02-14T12:00:00Z 1998-02-14T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

Sometimes I find my words where i didn't put them. Thoughts written by someone I don't know anymore. Eulogies for someone I hadn't realized was past. Someone I admire for their

https://item8.org/8/138.html 1998-02-14T12:00:00Z 1998-02-14T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

As i see people pass me by in the shopping mall. I stop As i stare into the eyes of an old woman, resembling a rotten prune, the wrinkles on her pale face so deep, each one has a story to tell. Her eyes, so magical. I look into those crystals, i can see the images of her…

https://item8.org/8/139.html 1998-02-17T12:00:00Z 1998-02-17T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

It is one of those chance encounters in the mall. A young woman glances at me; I catch her eye. She is so, so young, and her pity washes over me. Can't she see my life's richness? The giggles I shared with my kid sister in a long ago attic, moonlight and stars twinkling with us…

https://item8.org/8/140.html 1998-02-17T12:00:00Z 1998-02-17T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

I lay on my bed arms akimbo and wish I was someone

https://item8.org/8/141.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

my bed is empty, I can't sleep today, i couldn't sleep yesterday. So, here i am, Could i be somewhere else? I always wanted to see the world through someone else's eyes, to see what things would look like.. I've spent time trying to be like someone else, i discovered i should be…

https://item8.org/8/142.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

my bed would be empty if it weren't for the two sleeping children, come to snuggle in because they coudn't sleep either. My head spins with work undone, life maintenance tasks undone, promises unfulfilled. My eyes itch; even my hair is tickling me. I finally shrug into a robe,…

https://item8.org/8/143.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

those voices, a phone ringing in the middle of the night, an old boyfriend, and my most passionate love. he's drunk and bitter. his words crush me and my stomach knots and i wonder how i still love him so. it echoes into the morning. "you taught me to

https://item8.org/8/144.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

we sometimes begin to hate the ones we loved so much. With some,love only lasts for a few weeks, a year, or a lifetime. Some find out that it was too dificult. Tired of compromising, and listening to whose fault it was, gettin sick of each other, and deciding who caused all the…

https://item8.org/8/145.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/146.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/147.html 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z 1998-03-02T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/148.html 1998-03-09T12:00:00Z 1998-03-09T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

We drink coffee on the glassed porch, cup after cup in the quiet of the dripping rain. No words; we are mesmerized by the river through the fog, the birds diving and skimming just above the grey water, the occasional gentle caress to the back of the neck. He is such a gift, this…

https://item8.org/8/149.html 1998-03-09T12:00:00Z 1998-03-09T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

Ice ripping into my skin through a feeble spring coat that offers little protection. Almost didn't make it out of the driveway this morning, cars tires spinning faster than my eyes can keep track, burning the snow into ice. A short ten minute drive turns into 25 minutes. Five…

https://item8.org/8/150.html 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

I look around myself, and i'm trapped in a tiny room where there are no walls but there are people all around me instead, making a wall. Some holding me back some pushing me too far. When i've felt like I can't take anymore i'm so frustrated, i can't even cry, and no one…

https://item8.org/8/151.html 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z chris abraham

there was anger on the wall. there was a word there, placed by a weak hand, a thick marker, the kind they don't sell to kids any longer. the wicked fat one that smells like sniffing

https://item8.org/8/152.html 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z 1998-03-17T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Sometimes I have found myself wondering at the colours and the skills and the images upon our greybrick walls by the steel river klickitiklick. Considering Pompeii. And if the hammer falls tomorrow drowns our world in fire and ash and if they come and dig us up again with…

https://item8.org/8/153.html 1998-03-18T12:00:00Z 1998-03-18T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

A home of my own. Walls to wrap around myself and my family; a porch swing to glide on and call to the neighbors ambling by; a fireplace to bask before, in the long winter nights, with my love. Huge old trees for swings and houses, sunny spots for daffodils and tomatoes, the…

https://item8.org/8/154.html 1998-03-18T12:00:00Z 1998-03-18T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

first time a house has felt a home for me. a year and one month and counting in the creation. inspectors and high paid workers who don't take pride in workmanship. stairwells and drywall and paint and saw and hammer. i touch it with my own art, perwinkle blues and butter yellow,…

https://item8.org/8/155.html 1998-03-30T12:00:00Z 1998-03-30T12:00:00Z chris abraham

mark suggested i kiss her mouth. i asked him. "when i go to meet someone at the airport i always feel shy. I stand there and grab the bag. i fear rejection." "kiss her right away, hold her right away, break the ice, she feels as fearful." she was the last person off the plane,…

https://item8.org/8/156.html 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z Justin Sacks (Pell)

Off the plane... thank god. Seven and a half hours of mind numbing torture end with a few steps. Sighing as I heft my bags bouncing them into more comfortable positions. With a great sigh, I move forward down the ramp and back into michigan. Memories and dreams of italy follow…

https://item8.org/8/157.html 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

My Aaron's been gone for five days, off to Disney World with his grandparents. They fly in at midnight, insist that I not meet the plane because I'd have to bring his baby brother, insist that he stay overnight with them because I'd have bring him back first thing in the…

https://item8.org/8/158.html 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

onto the bike. stiff-framed. steel. slick tires. bar ends. bar cut two inches. running the asphalt. back and forth to work. right pant leg rolled up, bag over my shoulder. this time, shorts, t, movement of my body through traffic. of course, never a helmet. brain bucket. never…

https://item8.org/8/159.html 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z 1998-04-07T12:00:00Z chris abraham

leigh words, not chris words: i had a massage sunday evening. church. shadowed light planking in low through a cracked half-shaded window, north dupont circle. wafting incense, softer wafting classical compositions. i was a beautifully threaded bead necklace. all my parts…

https://item8.org/8/160.html 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

cool rain drizzles on my bare head, old shoes slap cement while i walk back to school for a softball game. in the locker room, that forever scent of sweat, old, molding uniforms, dirt from the field stuck in my cleats from practice yesterday. i dress quickly, hotshort to keep my…

https://item8.org/8/161.html 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z chris abraham

sport. sporty sport. sport-ready. a girl in jog bra and short shorts walks a black dog with white marking, white sock. sniff sniff sniffing down along the bark of trees, under the afternoon shadow of the diamond head. the field. the drummers and the shell, where the kodak hula…

https://item8.org/8/162.html 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the subtle innuendo ending all innuendos. she is the only friend of yours, red, who thinks you're good enough for her. she is terribly beautiful and where were you all day. down by the river, with me. on the shiny miniscus skittering like a waterbug, the oar legs the hull the…

https://item8.org/8/163.html 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z 1998-04-10T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i paint eggs with color sponges, bright spring blue, yellow and lime mixed in purple. each one different. pile in some jelly beans, a strawberry candle like my brother always got for my mom on easter, a CD of old jazz tunes, a mystery book, chocolate bunnies. For my mom. fresh…

https://item8.org/8/164.html 1998-04-13T12:00:00Z 1998-04-13T12:00:00Z chris abraham

easter. on the phone with mdn, and it was not great for her: tiles, barracks, linoleum, beer, bbq, schofield, military, comingling, easter is made for the east coast, even the mid-atlantic. i look at the picture of me in Paris when I was mid-twenty, 1990. even then i knew that…

https://item8.org/8/165.html 1998-04-13T12:00:00Z 1998-04-13T12:00:00Z Red

He says "the eyes are the windows into the soul" That he gets lost in mine they're so deep and for a moment he's someone else Not the slow witted, forgetful jock I fell into amusement with It's times like these that make me forgive him when he forgets to call I "I forgot." he'll…

https://item8.org/8/166.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

The eyes are windows into the soul. Into them float tiny grains of pollen -- tree pollen, grass pollen, flower pollen. Oak, cherry, maple, hickory, apple, zoysia, fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, crocus, daffodil, tulip, windflower. My soul is

https://item8.org/8/167.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/168.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z chris abraham

"the eyes are windows into the soul." no truer thing has been said. i can read minds through the eyes. i can read your mind. some attribute it to the shape of the eyes, the emotions found in the curve of the brow, the wetness of the eyeball, the lust in the half mast, the fright…

https://item8.org/8/169.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z chris abraham

she sat next to me and gazed into my eyes. 'i see myself in your eyes,' she said. the source of light behind me was stark. her face bright. my face in the shadow. my eyes, wet & brown, too dark to see into. reflections of self. reflections of she in me. her face with its large…

https://item8.org/8/170.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i squint my eyes and look sideways at the knower thinking he knows what's known. do we

https://item8.org/8/171.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z chris abraham

'you should know. i shouldn't have to ask. you should know if you love me.' maybe i didn't love you. maybe that is why i didn't know what you wanted, i didn't care what you needed. maybe the unspoken words where being sent to me in meaningful torrents of telepathy and i wasn't…

https://item8.org/8/172.html 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z 1998-04-14T12:00:00Z Aaron Webb

met a girl in Italy. Acually re-met one. Casual aqaintance from Grand Rapids who is a Michigan Junior Classical Leauge colleauge... We re-meet during a tour of the ampitheatre where Spartacus once battled as a slave, literaly bumping into each other. We talk briefly. I don't…

https://item8.org/8/173.html 1998-04-15T12:00:00Z 1998-04-15T12:00:00Z chris abraham

two people sharing europe. only to return home seeing the sparse rankor of home. even if one lives in hawaii, a grand cityscape make the impression of a life time. nobody at home, in this, a pharmecutical town of delusional grandeur, will understand she, nobody will comprehend…

https://item8.org/8/174.html 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

a warm call under a warm feather duvet worn like a lover a full half hour before the alarm sounds its ghastly racket. a portable phone flexing its 900MHz across the thousands of kilometers spanning the skin of my duvet, the space of air to the base, and the grand land of the New…

https://item8.org/8/175.html 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Grounded, I wriggle my toes deep into the rich brown earth, spreading them through its warm clumps. Tentatively at first, I thread roots through the topsoil and then the subsoil, twine around rocks, explore the dark crevices. Invisibly, I send out a network of capillaries,…

https://item8.org/8/176.html 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/177.html 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

must nectar be sweet? must it be sticky and viscous? is it not the sweet waters of the small towns far away neither invaded by toothpaste nor the pomade of rich black hair. the flushed rubber. must nectar be sweet? must it pulp and leave residue? must nectar be squeezed or…

https://item8.org/8/178.html 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z 1998-04-21T12:00:00Z Red

I saw the scars on her arm. Red splotches concealed under layer upon layer of clothing usually but today she wore a tee shirt. I saw them, sprawling across her skin for an instant before looking away She wore the usual long sleeved shirt today But I could still see them I had…

https://item8.org/8/179.html 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Bath my sister's razor clogged with armpit hair how beautifully the blood obscures the

https://item8.org/8/180.html 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the hand was far off. the ember freshly glowing from a drag. the sweet of burning flesh and a little smoke. the hand, far off, resting on the cocktail table, formica in wood grain. stigmatum on a vein received as a blessing of the

https://item8.org/8/181.html 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

i ride in a lift to the top of the roof to sign my name on paper, soon a copper sunburst will cover? who will ever see it, and why does it matter? whoever takes this down a hundred years from now. i wonder if they will wonder about who i was, way back when.

https://item8.org/8/182.html 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z 1998-04-22T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Stripping down the wallpaper in my grandmother's house, we would find the scrawled, dated signatures of aunts and uncles on the cracked yellow wall. Lois loves Wally, Millie loves Jim. I make pilgrimages to 41 Addington Road when I'm in Boston, reach through the back fence to…

https://item8.org/8/183.html 1998-04-23T12:00:00Z 1998-04-23T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

One by one, I wrestle them to the curb: six upholstered armchairs, a daybed, two mattresses, a boxspring, two campbed frames, some curtains and rods. These are the ones that the local furniture bank, the one that provides furniture to newly-unhomeless families, didn't want. They…

https://item8.org/8/184.html 1998-04-24T12:00:00Z 1998-04-24T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

I look outside past my computer monitor and see my grandmother's bird feeder, now turned squirrel feeder in my front garden. Mike is out weeding round the flowers. I think of days in Grandma's back yard in lawn chairs drinking pink lemonade from a glass straw. She wondered about…

https://item8.org/8/185.html 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

On Saturday, there is a yard sale next door to my sister's house. John McLaughlin is moving into a nursing home, and his life is on the sidewalk. I buy a bedroom set -- two dressers and a bed -- and an extra bureau, and split a dining room set with my sister. I take the table…

https://item8.org/8/186.html 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z chris abraham

My father's entire estate, his entire life, was sold in quarter bins in a garage in Manoa Valley. Expensive flashes and JOBO developers were let go for a song. The bins were full. Filled with black bellows and boxes and film canisters, large mylar sheets and silk parachute…

https://item8.org/8/187.html 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z 1998-04-28T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/188.html 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z Aaron Webb

A light flicks on over my bed at 1:30 on a sunday afternoon. The light is enough to send me up through the hazy layers of sleep back into reality, back into the now. I groaned, regretting the loss of some very pleasant dreams. My mother's voice chimes pleasantly as she opens the…

https://item8.org/8/189.html 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z Red

"Happy Birthday!" sweet sixteen and never been kissed... hee hee hee...what a crock. It all started at 7:40 this morning. "Happy Birthday!!"..."thanks..".. back to sleep. "Where's the birthday girl?" my mother says, coming through the door concealed behind a vase of 16 blood…

https://item8.org/8/190.html 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/191.html 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z 1998-05-03T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/192.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

Whipflash lightning snail pace of educational technology takes it nowhere but into circular arguements. How is it that so much gets accomplished but nothing gets done? I yawn as I am running down the stairs. Need more hot chocolate. More Rootbeer. Everything seems so far behind;…

https://item8.org/8/193.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/194.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/195.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/196.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/197.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/198.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/199.html 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z 1998-05-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/200.html 1998-05-23T12:00:00Z 1998-05-23T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

I find it strange that I feel the most confident, the most energetic and beautiful at home by myself. I lay around the house in whatever was on the floor when I woke up and do what I need to do around the house all day in the same clothes. Listening to my recent fave CD, going…

https://item8.org/8/201.html 1998-05-23T12:00:00Z 1998-05-23T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/202.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

Worrying, worrying, worrying. That's all I've been doing. High school exams, life, friends...and more. The pressure of my parents expecting me to be as good as my brother in school. My brother The Doctor, that is. Can't I be myself, Why must I always be compared to him? I'm…

https://item8.org/8/203.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Always the comparisons. Why can't you be as popular as Ruth, as entertaining as Tom, as outgoing as Ed? And for them, why can't you be as smart as Hope? Parents, grandparents, teachers going through the litany of names before they got to the right one. (The hardest for Tom, I…

https://item8.org/8/204.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Netiva Caftori

As a parent I do fail many times and compare even if not in words. Carolyn my youngest is as smart as her 2 sisters but doesn't care about grades and assignments are the last on her list. We, her parents, don't understand that. We tried everything: sitting w/ her to do homework,…

https://item8.org/8/205.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

I have been forever boxed in by my classmates as the girl they met 3, 5, 8, 12 years ago, depending on who you talk to. Thinking about graduation and how my life is going to change and be my own has changed me just by thinking about it. I've become bolder, shedding my…

https://item8.org/8/206.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Red

I think the most endearing trait he has is that he never wants to let go. He's the one who holds on to ME in public and kisses me and wants everyone to know "THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND!!". He tells me how good looking I am all the time, how he misses me. He acts like a three year…

https://item8.org/8/207.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Uh-oh...

https://item8.org/8/208.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

There's a connection there I never thought I'd have with anyone else. He's two in one body and still nowhere near perfection. But, somehow, I love him. When I tickle him playfully, his face turns a rosy pink around the cheeks and he grins this broad stroke of a grin across his…

https://item8.org/8/209.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/210.html 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z 1998-05-27T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/211.html 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

We do not talk much. I revel in the long silences. Words are too easy, analysis too facile. I will not put this great gift of a man into a box of words. "Talk to me," he says. "Tell me what you are feeling." "I am feeling," I say, "beyond all

https://item8.org/8/212.html 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z Michelle Nolan

feeling...all I have been doing lately is feeling. Feeling love, feeling in love, feeling excited, feeling scared, feeling anxious, feeling sad, feeling the thoughts. Thinking that I am leaving Hawaii. Thinking that I will miss my office, with a door I can shut, missing the…

https://item8.org/8/213.html 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z 1998-05-28T12:00:00Z Red

he said, today, that he thought he was falling in love with me. I laughed. From the hurt tone in his voice, I must have laughed too long and too loud. It hurt him a little, that I didn't take him seriously. He always lavishes compliments on me, even when I try to laugh them off.…

https://item8.org/8/214.html 1998-05-29T12:00:00Z 1998-05-29T12:00:00Z Elizabeth Lower-Basch

I think the best thing we ever did was make up new words to replace "love." We didn't mean the same thing by "love" and so we kept on hurting each other. I said "I love you" and I meant "I have given you a part of my soul and you will have it forever, an intangible connection…

https://item8.org/8/215.html 1998-05-29T12:00:00Z 1998-05-29T12:00:00Z Sarah Neyaz

He said he loved me, then he fell in love with someone else. He said he'd be with me forever, then he was with someone else. I've learned that Nothing lasts forever, we all know hearts can change. Everytime, i 'm always the one who loses in the end, I always end up getting hurt…

https://item8.org/8/216.html 1998-05-30T12:00:00Z 1998-05-30T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

I treasure my alone time, away from the fears and accusals of autocratic administrators, the smoke and mirrors, the sounds of hammers, real and in my head. We only pass each other in the hallway now and kiss as we're saying goodbye, instead of hello. He drinks in the other room…

https://item8.org/8/217.html 1998-05-31T12:00:00Z 1998-05-31T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Madriffing, sadriffing, badriffing dammitohell, I don't like being angry. It's the blood in the eyes, the tolling of a deep, deep bell behind my skull somewhere. Quiet tension. Bitter peace. The knowledge that unless I step carefully, unless I walk gently within this fragile…

https://item8.org/8/218.html 1998-05-31T12:00:00Z 1998-05-31T12:00:00Z Ginny Little

Even the trees blew angry last night, with tennis ball sized hail and the wind, oh, the wind ripping, blustering gusts up to 90 miles an hour. I lay in my bed listening, watching, wondering what karmic wrath tossed those trees like blades of grass. I opened my windows as wide as…

https://item8.org/8/219.html 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

Sometimes I think we have finally found eachother, but then she gets quiet and sullen. It worries me, but she says that there is nothing wrong. We watch movies together, take walks; but oddly, we don't talk like we used to "before". I miss knowing her, even though we are closer…

https://item8.org/8/220.html 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z Red

He talks too much. About the future...OUR future...together. I cringe each time and tell him to knock it off. He insists he loves me. Thinks about me all the time. That's how he gets to sleep at night. He thinks of me...and NOT in a sexual way he assured me today. He knows it's…

https://item8.org/8/221.html 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z 1998-06-01T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

He doesn't touch me as much anymore. It used to be, I see him, he sees me, "Hi" "Hey" and a hug. It used to be an easy smile and watching his eyes brighten when he saw me and we drink each other in, forgetting everyone else and just concentrating on the pull we have on each…

https://item8.org/8/222.html 1998-06-02T12:00:00Z 1998-06-02T12:00:00Z Elizabeth Lower-Basch

It's too hot. We lie in bed next to each other, but not touching, and fantasize about cool breezes. The sheets stick to my bare

https://item8.org/8/223.html 1998-06-03T12:00:00Z 1998-06-03T12:00:00Z Netiva Caftori

I'm lucky in love i think. I can love easily. I just look in his eyes, get in his arms, and shiver all over when he kisses my neck. Ya, my neck is the password to my

https://item8.org/8/224.html 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

I close my eyes and feel a breath, a brush of lips, the trace of a finger, the tickle of letting down my hair, at the gateway between body and

https://item8.org/8/225.html 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z Shawn Nicolen

I still remember that night well. I was crushing over a girl pretty bad.. life seemed like it was all misery and wanting what you can't have. I decided to go and find soemthing to distract me, so I went to visit an old friend of mine. Has was having some friends over that I…

https://item8.org/8/226.html 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z 1998-06-04T12:00:00Z Dirk Flinthart

Well I remember that still night. I was over, crushing a bad, pretty girl... misery seemed like a life of having what you can't want. Distracted, Something decided to go and find me, so an old friend of mind went to visit. Friends I didn't know were having him over, so I felt…

https://item8.org/8/227.html 1998-06-05T12:00:00Z 1998-06-05T12:00:00Z Netiva Caftori

Wicked, wicked, are we wicked? All we want is

https://item8.org/8/228.html 1998-06-06T12:00:00Z 1998-06-06T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

Under the floorboards upstairs, the construction crew has found a worn black notebook. Most of it is lists of accounts, the costs of bread and coal in the 1920s, monies owed from the boarders, all in picil. A woman's hand, I am sure. But on the flyleaf, in pencil, it says: Birds…

https://item8.org/8/229.html 1998-06-06T12:00:00Z 1998-06-06T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/230.html 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z Katherine Blanke (KAT)

She remains such a mystery to me, even though I've known her for so long. Why does she do the things she does, why did she do the things she did?

https://item8.org/8/231.html 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z Netiva Caftori

History facts should be reported...not just the price of bread that is documented but especially the names of birds that passed by in the 20's.... this is more than a legacy to Hope, but a legacy that should be shared w/

https://item8.org/8/232.html 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z 1998-06-07T12:00:00Z Red

The only one. I'm the only one for him. He says it so confidently. I put in his CD, to his favorite song and felt bad. I love you. He says it almost everyday. hints at it, sometimes comes out right and says it directly. I snapped at him and told him to knock it off. He sounded…

https://item8.org/8/233.html 1998-06-08T12:00:00Z 1998-06-08T12:00:00Z chris abraham

The rumor mill hit me upon arrival at work. "He must have a trust fund." "He must have a silver spoon in his mouth." "He must have another income, how else can he take 21 unpaid days off of work and miss nary a step?" The rumor mill as filtred through a colleague who knows me as…

https://item8.org/8/234.html 1998-06-09T12:00:00Z 1998-06-09T12:00:00Z Barry Bluestein

There was no doubt, the Boy had it bad, real

https://item8.org/8/235.html 1998-06-24T12:00:00Z 1998-06-24T12:00:00Z Aaron Webb

If there were ever the perfect place to test all your thoughts about humanity, it is the subway. Tribalism, cunning rivalry, racism, love, unexplained hate, all in abundance, and exposed by and eye which is bored for the wait for the next stop. I sit down across from a man…

https://item8.org/8/236.html 1998-08-21T12:00:00Z 1998-08-21T12:00:00Z chris abraham

living underground is not like death. it does not have me feeling maggoty or decomposing. better, the feeling is like hibernation. or burrowing like the way she burrows into my chest or the way I burrow under the duvet, into my sleep. in a world wherein i am all abuzz, where i…

https://item8.org/8/237.html 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z Hope O'Keeffe

He bleats a bit, and I switch him to heart-side. They swirl all around us in the underground food court: sunburnt tourists, field-tripping boy scouts, office workers skipping out for a Friday afternoon break. I dunk my thumb in the cup of icecream and he slurps it in with his…

https://item8.org/8/238.html 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/239.html 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z 1998-08-28T12:00:00Z chris abraham

No response survives under this number. The marker is read in the editor’s voice; the absence is part of the record.

https://item8.org/8/240.html 1998-08-31T12:00:00Z 1998-08-31T12:00:00Z chris abraham

the stories cannot be confirmed or denied. what is an history? what makes things act yoo al? versus fick shi nall? after three years of knowing, after three years of following and exploring the truth, here comes the vulgarity and yet there is no way to know for sure -- no boner…