Bryan Coffelt

PERSON/PEOPLE

PERSON
Every time he thinks about his holes, he goes a little blind. He feels like he is not a free enough man and there just aren’t enough hazy girls on these corners to completely reduce him. He thinks hard for an answer. He thinks about the give of a slot machine’s handle. He thinks of a well-tied knot. He thinks, “What a sidewinder, that west coast.” He thinks of the marbled women, the ones from his shinier days. He thinks how thumbtacks cannot support a fraction of the soul’s theft.

PERSON
When she bent her neck she looked like a just-bled pig hanging from a new moon. She rolled and quivered and noted the passing lane. She reached for her throat like, “Revenge!” She kept thinking of moving a cursor across a blank document one space at a time. But she tried her best to will herself to clot.

PERSON
She goes to school, she fingerpaints the universe, she responds to stimuli, she fits her responses in her lunch box, she talks like “I am embarrassed of this lunch box,” she twinkles and thinks of what a gaping asshole the future is. She does karate on a classmate, she goes home, she does karate on the darkness.

PERSON
Dear diary, sometimes I feel like there is a rapist camping inside me. Sometimes, during the day, my toes clench and I see the desert. And then I get extremely hungry. Last week I ate ten Big Macs, puked, then jerked off like four times. What the fuck? Maybe it just means I’m more optimistic that I thought. Dad is damn near fired, I guess. He just sits around and drinks Coor’s. He kind of gestures at the TV once in a while, but not really. It’s the World Series, diary, and I’m horny as fuck.

PEOPLE
We could all jump together or something. On the count of whatever. It doesn’t matter.
“Right now my Ts look like running gingerbread men.”
“Shut up and let’s think about this a little bit.”
“I’m just saying. They do.”
“I never learned this way. My folks were very against this sort of thing.”
“It’s easy as fuck. See those rocks? They just kind of turn you to slush.”
“But what about the sun? People? Love? Sex? Scratching a dog’s head? Hamburgers? Silence? Quality time? Sanctions against Iran? Triumph? The itchiness of wool?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Bryan Coffelt lives in Portland, Oregon where he is pursuing an MA in Writing & Book Publishing. He blogs at http://lunchtimeforbears.blogspot.com.