Twelve Micros
Joseph Young
Occupation
(18 words)
She said, You look thin.
To what question she addressed, he—his red sweater on the bright day—couldn’t guess.
* * *
Interruption
(41 words)
Afterward, her eyes started sharding the light, the view from the front door a modern cathedral. That dog is 47 types of brown, she told her husband. His forehead broke into 21 worries, though perhaps he only studied the faultless ceiling.
* * *
Exegesis
(36 words)
She sat flipping among his book, fingers glasslike on the pages. Funny then when she was cut, spattering blood on the girls’ varsity squad. Have a great summer! it said, arrow inked up the center’s skirt.
* * *
Pike
(42 words)
The bridge was broken, just a causeway for squirrels, though underneath girls made promises to boys. She pointed them out, named them by their best feature—hair or eyes or breasts. A year ago, this time on open water, he’d named her too.
* * *
&1/4
(34 words)
Here, he said, setting a quarter on the back of her hand. The coin was aglow, having spent winter under the ice out front. She touched the ribbon of its hair, the tropic motto.
* * *
Valentine
(36 words )
There seemed to be impossible things, crossing the sidewalk, adjusting the birds, the smoke from a concrete pipe. He had a valve that was wrong, perched whitely among the viscera. He tried small and smaller tries.
* * *
Biography
(20 words)
There is a price. It’s on the back. If you turn it around you’ll see. It isn’t expensive. Everything’s okay.
* * *
Cradle
(33 words)
It was rock bared by rain. Here, she said, indicating a slot of the thinnest soil. Do we sleep here? The red valley, like the draft of her hip, startled him from below.
* * *
Menlo Park
(34 words)
He gave her the light bulb, the glass gone pink over the years. I can drop it? she said. He nodded, and she held her hand from the window, the traffic moving stories below.
* * *
Oglala
(31 words)
If I were to die …, she said. She left it at that, measuring the table with her arm, ribs to fingertip. He considered that future: like tall grass never stopping waving.
* * *
Lease
(37 words)
The wall had 4 switches in some arrangement of off and on, a single light. Click! she said. From the dark, she laughed. Click! she said again, but there was just black, in some arrangement of silver.
* * *
Manifest
(47 words)
She crowded it, hawking its colors, lengths. It’s awful, she said. How bad it is is tragic. It was a tower of cups and strings, motherboard, throat of a large bird. He stood in the ozone of her disgust. He took her mouth, kissed it, held it.
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