DorianHarper

It was when the papers spoke of a second victim that Lawrence Caldwell decided to get on the case. It had been only about a week since the last attack by the Whitechapel Murderer, and the district papers couldn't stop talking about it. Amongst the graphic details of how Miss Chapman was brutally murdered were more assumptions of who the mysterious killer could be. Perhaps an Irish immigrant? Jew? "Pervert"? All were simply more targets of minorities to feed the imagination of gossip around Whitechapel. At least, that's how Lawrence saw it. Adjusting the brim of his hat, Lawrence tucked the paper under his arm before heading down Wentworth St

i'm in the back of the car, sucking my chlorine hair and watching with sleepy eyes out the window. brown dirt is soon ochre and we are nowhere in particular yet. we are going to the atheton tablelands for easter. i fall into a broken sleep on my sister's warm shoulder and when i wake up we are there. it is nighttime and my cousin is only still a baby and she cries from inside the house (which is really only a very large shed). out of the car the air is like freezer air but fresh and crisp like cold water. my eyes become wide at the rolling of the hills around us, the living green they are, the horse paddocks, the shapely trees. there is a lo

The pond eye drunk with Oklahoma rain comatose in the yolk of a centrifuge is my third eye. Egrets perch high in sycamores like leaning lashes. Hummingbirds needle down from sickly black oaks and hold mass at feeder ducts. Turtles dart beneath the pupil as cows come blundering   into the inner blue of a vast rippling reality.

I heard there was a battle, between a pen and a sword. Between a few deathly strikes, and one simple word The sword could not defeat a few thousand men, A thousand worded lecture was written by the pen. The lecture drove them all, to temporary death. Its words dragged on like lullabies, and stole their very breath. The sword was not able to bring tears to ones eyes, Without striking love and telling many lies. The pen however knew how to make ones insides melt, when composing a sonnet so powerful and svelte. The sword ended up covered, with blood and salty tears. It's blade getting heavy, from battling all those years. And I hear that

This is the place where our memories began. A creek at the bottom of a canyon, red cliffs on either side and a giant pond dam to the north that wildflowers grow on. Paths that we created through the woods and up and down those copper canyon walls while we pretended to be wild Injuns or wanted outlaws being hunted by a posse. You were on your knees, in the middle of the creek, when I found you. A neighbor girl, trespassing. I had a mind to chase you off until I asked what you were doing. You looked at me, smiled, and said, "Catching crawdads. Come help!" After that day, we spent Springs and Summers building fort walls and chasing frogs, s

Gloss rested on curve of bottom lip like milky dew sleeping on withered stem of a faltered blossom. The light reflected in pools of amber eyes like bubbles of foam shining in the smile of a restless wave. And the warmth of her hand woke me like the sound of my conscious screaming for rain in the heat of July.

I'm the girl who inhaled the world. Lucid dreaming backwards, kicking rocks Skipping rocks, stacking boulders Building the earth's womb, I planted dreams. The pyramids; triangle hips, sleep apnea; her postmortem floods and quakes Nine months later, I placed pennies over her eyes, Inhaled. Exhaled- And heaved out mounds of soil, wet vines, Some dark, cavernous underground.   My ribs choked and packed Creation. My temper split Pangaea And by Sunday I had left Earth to live with the Cats.