The Trader’s Bell
Maharaj and Co, General Suppliers, Established 1888. stand still a second in here, and the place shows you its ghosts. the floor, beat-to-shit planks of Canadian pine, scarred and grey as a coin worn smooth by too many hands, have been there since the clippers came in heavy with tea from the east. sailors with
The Tiger
the train stops—some mechanical fault. through the glass of the passenger car, I see her, heavy muscle shifting under orange and black, thick paws dragging through the grass; a tiger moving slow beyond the window. and I close my eyes. It could have been the swelter of a harsh Indian summer, Calcutta due north on
The Girl and the Great Dane
across the road and onto the pavement, feet hitting wet concrete in that old, flat wanderer rhythm. and then I see her, walking dead ahead, just out of reach, a stranger I’ve already named Kate in the silent room of my mind. beside her strides a Great Dane, a massive, ridiculous beast I’ve christened Claude
The Evening Dress
untouched, a beautiful size 12 gleaming in the lamplight, pressed up hard against the cold steel teeth of a vice that grips her like some old jazzman’s fist around a bottle at midnight, unyielding, eternal. naked in her isolation she waits, this slender shank of possibility, for the first tender strand of cotton to come