One day a king was visited by a beggar, seeking enough money to have food to eat. Now, ordinarily the king would have him beaten and thrown in jail or worse. But it so happened that the king had as a guest the king of a neighboring kingdom, and wished to appear generous before him. “Give this man five silver…
I like you like mischief, an ‘i before e’ moment, the movement of my heart butterflying, battered, flayed and wired up to monitors and X-rays. When you asked me what’s at stake here, I only heard cake, or was it betrayal, the way daylight holds failure in stasis between aphasia and sainthood? The weather is taking a break, is breaking…
but my Sunday School teacher says nix, He’s eternal in Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God, or was that on, so I say Yes ma’am, but He’s still dead —that’s when she told me to leave the classroom so I did but after class I came back to her all alone behind her desk, her face buried…
My fingers are filthy. Blackened at the tips with grime underneath my fingernails. I should wash my hands, but I have more to do. I look up at the fluorescent glowing numbers on my dusty cable box. The figures are blurry at first, forming an indecipherable shape. I squeeze my eyes shut and reopen them. I imagine my corneas, dry…
Matthew Moore is a playwright originally from New England currently living in D.C. His work has appeared at the Boston Theater Marathon, the Toronto Fringe Festival, Durango Arts, Two Oceans Theater, and the Chain Theater.
Jessup used to think thieves were the scum of the earth. Scab-picking sleazeballs just a mote better than serial killers, pedophiles, and rapists. But what had happened lately at the Quick Fill? It made him reckon that so-called artists were the true creeping brutes, ranking only a quarter-step above the Devil. Hell, maybe even tied with Big Red himself. The…
At the end of a book tour, rosy thoughts don’t come naturally. You’re alternating between an audience of ten or one hundred, a sense of giddiness and futility. You’ve searched for your novel in airport bookstores, handled reader questions about your use of the wrong car model, introduced yourself to people you’ve met before. You’d ideally be placed in suspended…
my wife hangs winter clothing in the closet I ask myself if I am ever going to put them on again or should I say goodbye to the seasons of the year, to the parka, to the woolen sweater forever? those clothes remember the war, they’ve absorbed its horror like hair absorbs the smell of cigarettes. they’ll never forget. the…
He’s special, this one. I never would’ve taken him home if he weren’t. And it’s not like it’s our first date. I’ve done this before. I’ll do it again. Unless he’s the one. Whether he is or not, he’s the one right now. What’s that he says? My belt? I picked it up at a thrift store. I tell him…
i jabbed the straw down deeper and down into the mint and ice shavings the only ice i want to see none on the page and so hats off to that pants too sarong salutes and i did so carefully i thought who are these ice writers these canadians and their hard luck stories hard rock and but the lakes…