Local Color

Summer’s here: the sun is shining, the kids are playing, the West Nile mosquitoes are hovering in clouds of death. For many, the Summer is a time for travel, whether it is to a far off location or just to one’s “happy place”.

At Local Color, we asked our readers to send in their stories about travel. We left the interpretation of the word “travel” to the discretion of the authors.

In response, we got Grays by Christian Verotik, a journey through the relationship between us and our alien overlords; Kelly L.’s Wayworn City, a trip through the remains of a past age; and J. Robert Novak’s (I Believe in) Travelin’ Light, in which the narrator prepares to venture far from home.

These stories can be found here.

We’d like to thank the contributors, and to remind everyone that we are always accepting fiction, as well as essay submissions.

By Christian Verotik

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece is several years old by now and was developed in Verotik’s writing group. He’s kept it to himself, but felt ready to reveal it. I hope you like it as much as we do. — Charlie)

They live in a glass house, with a floor made up of stones, but they need not fear. It works well for the woman, for she does not like to be the one to throw objects of reality, and she does not fear him, for he knows better than to throw his stones in their house made of glass. (more…)

by Christian Verotik

Living inside here isn’t always easy.
You can touch me, but I will not feel.
Scrape your hands on blistered wood.
The burning flames of ember waves in the night,
Calling the siryns out from the sea
For copulation, decapitulation, or simple extrenouations.
In here all sperm leads away from uterine walls
And into blood chasms of omnivorous termites.
Using clacked mandibles to exert influence over hardware.
Radiological bisects building corrugated genetic dissolutions.
No, it’s not an easy life, but it keeps one busy.
Gesticulations of the masses towards words made of metal,
Your hearts are iron, your brains rusted copper, your bodies candle wax.
Melted baby fat mixed with aerosolized acid medication
Used to treat what ails a dying soul breed.
Viruses in the base of our skull causing sentient awareness
Overuse of antibiotics creating lower intelligence.
Bread box houses to hold the maimed, cannibal lights in every room.
Do you know who lives alone with you?
Canjoled Aribeastry beings from quadrants outside your minds,
Impeached upon the world tree of Belgium and sanguine loss.
And, in the end, stomach ulcers and embolisms of sex, this is why
Why I’d choose the life of a wood louse over the dreams of sullied albatross.
It’s a garbage receptacle for the souls of the Jewish dead,
The legacy of Hitlerian economic philosophy taught at Kent State by discredited Yales.
Metaphor mixed my in head loose alighting saladiptious marketed cornerstones.
Jimmy Carter is a used shoe salesman in my refrigerated wedding.
And you, you, always for you…..stoneglasshouses and Napalm babies.
The Me would come later and never end with shopping carts full of uranium.
This is the face of Love in the Garden of Pines.