"Bullet Points," "23 Grams," and "Joseph K."

Bullet Points

Soldiers in gray green uniforms that blended with the early morning fog prodded the naked women down off the truck with machine guns and rifles. “Who are we fighting?” asked a farmer who stopped his wagon to watch the firing squad form up. Everything that wasn’t predator was prey. I pressed myself further into the background. The women kept their arms crossed over their breasts, modest to the very end.

23 Grams

Yahweh beckons me forward. Don’t make eye contact, I remind myself. I live in fear of losing my crap job and never finding another one so good. A choir of angels arranged in rows by rank are humming hymns in the background. I grew up attended by key figures from the Bible. Now, as I approach along a dark country road, my soul weighs a pitiable 23 grams. I was stupid to ever think it wouldn’t.

Joseph K.

One evening he stood in front of a lighted shop window studying the inventive position the Kama Sutra calls the Milk and Water Embrace. If he had only had the nerve to invest, there was a fortune to be made in ladies undergarments. But some people are born to juggle spinning plates on sticks and others to fill sandbags. He went off to an address that didn’t exist. Beneath his black derby, nothing was ever the way it is.