At first I will not work correctly,
so operate with some care.
Being out of love for so long is like
opening the booklet up and not finding
your language, and all the French you learned
won’t tell you the difference between a vis and a clou.
Tag: creative writing
The poem tells you what it means
if for instance you drove all the way to buy
a lottery ticket on the California border
because hey you never know about these things,
but there’s a line because nobody’s won yet,
and now the payout is over a billion dollars—
imagine what you could buy with that.
You have to remember you’re at the age
when you’ve started to feel as though
you might’ve missed out on something.
Whatever it is, a billion dollars should cover it
For Part I, click here
For Part II, click here
For Part III, click here
For Part IV, click here
V
Outside the holding cells of the local precinct the two gentlemen from the Pangu Foundation, Hoffit and Maldacena, are halfway through their golden cigarettes. They are wearing identical tang suits, black with white trim. Hoffit is leaning forward on the edge of a plastic chair attached to the wall, elbows on knees. Maldacena is standing beside him, balancing on his heels, his back against the white brick wall. Both men appear lost in deep thought.
For Part I, click here
For Part II, click here
For Part III, click here
IV
As part of his fellowship Talus stays in a townhouse just across the street from the student union. The small complex is owned by the university and straddles a dead forest extending over the cliffside. A single street connects the townhouses and curves down into the forest, following the edge of the cliff that overlooks the deep maw of the coastline, where the ocean falls off abruptly underneath the earth.
To read Part I, click here
To read Part II, click here
III
Later that week Talus meets with two gentlemen from the Pangu Foundation, Hoffit and Maldacena. They’re both in their late forties, both white, European. They wear matching tang suits. Hoffit is balding and wears a white moustache and pair of heavy jowls. Maldacena wears a flat top, closely cropped and dyed black to hide his age, though he shows plenty of silver in his stubble. His eyes are black and his brow is heavy and level. They both smoke golden cigarettes, Maldacena very quickly and Hoffit slower, more absent-mindedly. By the time Talus finds them in one of the classrooms of the science building a yellow pall has settled over the desks. He shakes their hands and takes a seat at one of the chairs in the front row. Hoffit sits behind a long rectangular table across from Talus, while Maldacena rests his hip on top of the table.
“We read your email,” Maldacena says in a growling, baritone voice. “The one you sent to the Center’s director.”
“You read my email to Jen?” Talus asks, smiling at first. “Are you guys allowed to do that?”
