Brian Kenneth Swain

“What is it?” Adam said. “What do you mean ‘What is it?’ What’s it look like?” Eve replied. “I don’t mean the tree. I know what a tree looks like. What is it you want?” “What I want is for you to explain to me,” Eve replied, “why all this awesome fruit should be off limits.” “Why? How about because God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, said so.” “For heaven’s sake, Adam,” she said. “Are you sure God didn’t make me from a piece of your brain instead of your rib? It’s just a tree.” “Excuse me,” Adam said. “This is not just a tree. This is THE tree. Knowledge … good and evil … ring any bells?” “And your point is?” “My point is that when the creator of the universe … ...

The corpuscles … that rise from the Minerals, entering the rod, determine it to bow down, in order to render it parallel to the vertical lines which the effluvia describe in their rise. William Pryce Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 1778 “Fred Johansson, what in the hell are you up to this time?” The voice was distant, but I recognized without hesitation the mostly jovial but always slightly cynical tone of my neighbor from two farms over, Rogers Manning. He was easy to spot as he made his way across the field, being of far-greater-than-average girth and being, as well, clad in a nearly glowing red shirt. The combination of these attributes created the appearance, if one squinted, of a large crimson beach ball rolling toward me ...

#237 sat at the cafeteria table across from #414. By an odd coincidence, they had ordered identical sandwiches—Virginia ham with Havarti cheese, lettuce, tomato, and Dijon mustard. 237’s sandwich lay untouched on his tray, while 414 worked at his with vigor. A small bit of lettuce clung to left side of 414’s lower lip. 237 could see it clearly but said nothing. It was the peak of the lunch hour, yet the cafeteria, which had a capacity of hundreds, was surprisingly empty. Aside from 237 and 414, there were perhaps two dozen other diners scattered throughout the room. It was nearing the end of the quarter and the pressure to make quotas was immense. People were skipping lunch these days, working at their desks, drumming up leads. ...

Ten minutes in the post office line, and all the while there persisted a distant cheeping, like a fine machine crying out for oil. Facing the clerk at last, the sound was louder now and from behind the counter. So naturally I asked. Chicks was the reply. At my benighted gaze he reached below and set a small cardboard box on the counter, air holes and an up arrow pointing up. Sure enough, one dozen baby chicks, tiny beaks poking out through the holes, their fate entrusted to the loving care of the U. S. Postal Service. It was humorous and sad, and I left unsure how to feel. A risky but no doubt adventurous journey for such a frail family, and one unlikely to end well even if everything goes fine en ...

Endless obsidian scar stretches out before me as the gauge creeps higher and the whine of the tires goes from cry to scream. Drowsy with the late hour, focused only on home and hearth, the bastard slips in behind, following for a mile or more before pulsing blue light adrenalin as high beams sear the rear view and I drift to the right and slow. After that just a blur of heartbeats and quiet curses, and all I see as I sit and wait and fume is the far side of the road where black tree skeletons vibrate faint blue against the night sky. ...

Rhyme is the poet’s parachute, arresting too soon the vital rush, the vertiginous cyclone, of thought and language. Rhythm is a backstop at the world series, protection from the hard-thrown wildly spinning turn of phrase whose meaning, dealt only a glancing blow by the reader, might otherwise carom into the crowd. And form…form is the straitjacket from which no writer escapes. Protected from the insanity of his own words, the poet struggles to break free, but his cries only echo up and down the empty ...

She is her mother’s first born and blessed as such. In these first few fragile moments, her very breath yet tenuous, she looks up at me with what seems like recognition, and her lips, all tiny and pale, struggle to say something, though that, of course, is impossible. Still, it feels to me like words or at least the precursors of words. and I wonder if perhaps she has been waiting all these months to deliver to me alone her mysterious message, Only minutes old but determined as only the innocent can be to succeed, she clutches my fingertip and makes me ...

They are older than you or I can ever be. Older than age itself. And because they have defied time rooted in this place, gripping the earth with pithy and tenacious talons, gazed from on high at the scurrying malcontents that pass for life in this place, they are afforded a unique perspective on the passing days, objective, yet timeless as a stone. They are not given to opinion. Nor are they compelled to be right. They fight no wars save for the occasional struggle against the blade. They watch us every day and they never ever ...

Oh, Lord, allow me to begin this potentially awkward conversation by directly and succinctly addressing the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. No, I do not believe in you. I do not believe you exist in any real corporeal sense (though I am prepared to concede acceptance of the concept of you). What I believe is that you are the fabrication (many different ones actually) of people desperately searching for answers that will enable them to make sense of a world they do not fully understand. Which is not to say I feel that I fully understand the world either, only that I choose not to resort to believing in supernatural entities in order to get my head around it. That said, if belief in you was simply a means of trying to get a grasp on ...

I inherited the restaurant from my father and, like him, I expect that someday I will die with a paper hat on my head and a spatula in my hand. He was Big Al, I am Albert Junior, and the shop is Albert’s World Hamburger Emporium. Lofty-sounding? Absolutely. Over the top for what is, in truth, a pretty ordinary burger and fries stand? Perhaps. But we are well known around the area, and the only decent hamburger place for five blocks in all directions that isn’t a national chain. Our section of town is what my realtor friends refer to as being in transition, which is a salesman’s way of saying that a great deal of money would need to be invested in order for it to be elevated to a position of mediocrity. I have worked at the restaurant ...