The short fiction of j hardy carroll
That you said once over eggs the same bird neither blind nor striking disappointed us all Yet again here I mourn debt’s sorrow: an occupant pressed into proper silence whey veins curled in sheets await the occasion yearned to be pinned by anything at all The Daily Post:…
The tiger is a leopard with painted stripes applied while he sleeps he never wonders about these new markings so like the shadows of the bars of his cage where keepers feed him more than he can ever eat, the stench of the rotting carrion assumed to come from him When told the tricks a tiger…
It starts when you ascend the stairs, drop your keys square on your foot kick out and send them rattle-clang smack down the three flights your arms full of groceries, you lose it as the bottom of the sack packed by that lazy pit-faced troglodyte at the Shop-n-Sav gives way when the freezer spinach plastic…
Soft words about how she’s waiting only made it worse. As though her going never counted for shit as though it was only a step in a direction. Why’d they say that I want to know the part about her waiting was just to get me to stop crying, but I think about it now…
She swore the trench knife she carried in her purse saved her life hitchhiking home. She weighed maybe eighty pounds dirty tight clothes that dared anyone to say shit took the dirty spoon from my dried-up cereal bowl wiped it on her leg tapped out a pile of yellow powder from a film can water…
Whitey give the pieces of the Ford wrong names but he knew them by sight by feel, hefting every damned one in a greasy hand folks said he was crazy when he’d slither under her amongst the dirt and spiders spending hours and didn’t say much mostly just whistled through his teeth. It took forever…
my horrible face leers to suit my stagger seems to know all the particulars seen from the side my horrible face looks noble and heroic, especially while lying so approach my horrible face with caution The Daily Post
a shell and a shell and a shell all you can do is guess guess right, once it’s all over but you don’t ever guess right do you and all you do is guess who’s waiting who’s coming who’s left The Daily Post: Peek
Fishermen, they said they were leaning against the bar fat, with rum drinks eyes on every girl who walked in. Later after we all became friends and everything but their money was forgotten we slapped each other on the back as we helped them stagger onto the deck. Round the bay’s bend everything turned ugly…
the window is the window: the glass, the same the wall, the same the same house the same sea, never the same, not for a moment not the air, nor the water. when I close my eyes to the window’s glow the sea takes everything: my lungs, my hair, my hands on the table the…