January 2012
1 post
17 tags
{ airport }
“At this time we are only pre-boarding our first class passengers, business class passengers, small business class passengers, business school grads, platinum club members, diamond deluxe members, gold medallion members, Captain’s Club members, Mile High Club members, and all premium class passengers and club members, members of the armed forces — excluding the Coast Guard but...
November 2011
1 post
19 tags
{ subway surfboard }
Black and white photos of hot naked chicks drinking milk poorly. Tit tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it and a blank ribbon across the front waiting to be filled in with a name. Exposed toes and blue gators and zebra heels. Her face, a bruised peach with a long scar, and she begs for change and a man hands her coins and she sees his girlfriend’s bouquet of roses. “Can I have a...
October 2011
2 posts
12 tags
{ for sale : my book }
I have some great news. My first book, Steal Me for Your Stories, is available for pre-order. This collection of short stories took me several years to write - many of which first appeared on this blog - and being only a few months away from holding it in my hands is pretty thrilling.
Also, I’m donating everything I make from this book to a trust for my late cousin’s family, so...
5 tags
( duck confit burger, avocado milkshake }
German and Thai and Italian all at once on the train and I wonder where the Spanish has gone. There is always Spanish in this constellation. We live in a society whether we like it or not. Look it up.
This conductor cares about his job and the people he serves: “Have a beautiful evening and a warm and cozy weekend.” After midnight there are fewer people out who do not understand how a ...
September 2011
1 post
3 tags
{ I have tried caring about a number of things }
Ring bells on chained bikes. Move.
Please.
Please?
Please!
I have already outlived better men but my perception of your perception of me is not good but it does not matter if anybody else thinks you matter.
Night sounds: clanging radiator, snow shovel scraping sidewalk.
We might be even worse for each other than we are for ourselves. She belches in French and the whole world is in a...
July 2011
2 posts
3 tags
{ jalapeno-tequila hard candy }
Flames on his arm and a star on his neck. In her sandal: six lady toes. Counted them six times to be sure. Bless you to an old man after he sneezed and he smiled and said thanks and that is a weird things humans do: bless you. Her toes were on her hands. * Approximately 10 jalapeno peppers, with seeds * 1/4 cup water * 369 gallons tequila * 1-1/3 cup white sugar * 3/4 cup...
3 tags
{ bars over business windows }
Always a good selection of crutches at the Salvation Army thrift store. Wood and aluminum. Christian music promotes personal responsibily and postive thinking. Wildfire prayer request.
Every day down here is the longest day of the year. Rhyme.
I order a mysterious lunch from someone who doesnt speak English by pointing at a handwritten menu not in English and trading nods and she serves it...
June 2011
2 posts
1 tag
{ the destroyer }
Basically, every time the Internet is slow or a phone call drops I feel that I am the victim of a conspiracy.
{ leather and shoelace }
An old woman and a pregnant woman stood in front of me and I offered the pregnant woman my seat and she said no thanks so I kept sitting.
At the next stop a guy got on and stared at me like, “Why aren’t you giving that pregnant lady your seat?” I got off at the next stop and so did the pregnant lady and the guy nudged the old woman out of the way to grab my place.
The subway steps led to...
May 2011
1 post
2 tags
{ what to wear to an orgy }
A woman pushed a stroller to the edge of the curb and when she saw a small opening in the rushing traffic, she ran for it. Her and her infant made it across alive and it excited me for all the possibilities that remained.
A pigeon posed for me on a ledge and I bought a bottle of ranch dressing from a farmer’s stand by a busy subway entrance. I had just been fantasizing about ranch ...
April 2011
2 posts
1 tag
{ my book should be out in early 2012 }
I do not like to run for trains but it was right there, I could see it, so I scampered. I swiped my card and the turnstile told me to “please swipe again,” and if turnstiles could laugh they would laugh like MWAHAHAHA. I watched the train doors close and I saw the empty seat where I could have been sitting speed past. A woman with a guitar was singing, really going for it on the high notes....
{ everything I think about when I am trying not to...
I never know what to say to a human being when someone it cares about dies. I could be a better it. I am vulnerable to other people’s all-caps and emoticons. Someone said something on the train this morning that made me reevaluate my existence: “A techno version of The Time of My Life … that’s all I’ve ever wanted.” My priorities must be screwed up but dentists are gotdam liars. Look up...
March 2011
2 posts
1 tag
{ jab jab cross hook }
There were a lot of women in the boxing gym and a couple of them could probably knock me out. Maybe all of them. No, there was one I would beat the shit out of for sure. I want to fight her. I jumped rope on one foot and switched to the other foot. I did this a few times without tangling the rope around my ankles. Other times I tangled the rope around my ankles. Why do kids think jumping...
3 tags
{ how to survive strong pesticides }
See, the neighbors upstairs have a pet kleidsdale, er, chleidsdale, er, (Internet search: chlydesdale) clydesdale. I think their horse wears high heels and wakes up to an alarm about a half hour before mine and it clomps around my ceiling for quite a while and I really do not even need to set my alarm any more, see? A woman was singing and playing the guitar on my subway platform. She is...
February 2011
3 posts
2 tags
{ salmon jump into the open mouths of bears }
She asks me how life is and I say, “I’m very much in favor of—” scratch my chin “—life.” And I say, “Definitely not against it.” People underground sing with strangers and my hat was enough in the rain. She says, “Oh, no!” Something she cares about spills and it will have to be remade. A couple on the other side of the tracks kiss...
3 tags
{ Tijuana }
Husks of empty bars relics of tequila titties an old man a joke about beer fuck on the first date rooms for 99 pesos an hour we wake up sweating in the thick unspeaking inebriation of difference
~O~
2 tags
{ faster, pussycat }
An obituary for a B-movie actress could not verify her age, but she was somewhere in her seventies, and the obit said she had big tits and posed nude and stripped before getting into exploitation films.
Her father was Japanese-Filipino and her mother was Cheyenne-Scots-Irish. I searched the Internet for her and added the word “naked” and found many photos of her hefty bare breasts....
January 2011
2 posts
4 tags
{ my novel }
BLURBS: “Otto M. Attiq uses the same words we all use but he puts them in a different order. Give him money.” ~Someone Who Is a Friend of Mine and Has Not Read the Book Because It Is Not Yet Written “[ INSERT AMY HEMPEL BLURB HERE ].” ~Amy Hempel “What is ‘Baboso’ about? It is about everything and nothing. You don’t have to read it, but you will...
4 tags
{ there is no such thing as nothing }
The windows of a building across the park cast sunlight onto my wall over my bed in the early morning during the winter and the light from stars is some kind of crazy time travel and whenever I want to go insane I think about outer space. Infinity makes my brain melt. How does infinity even make sense? What is at the edge of outer space? Something has to be beyond the beyond and beyond that, too....
December 2010
3 posts
3 tags
{ come and blood and ink and come }
Her present was a coloring book filled with pussies and she said, “You know I needed a vagina morale boost. That was very thoughtful of you. … Write that down. I say the best things in the world.” I wrote that down with all the other great things she had said that day. We used glitter crayons to color some of the many varieties of pussies. She dug in her purse for birth...
2 tags
{ the key/s }
Forgiveness is love, so why is it that the ones we are supposed to love the most are the hardest to forgive? This is the six-toed cat of The Writer on a drunken street that echoes with music at the southernmost point on the bluest blue wet water at sunset, and you are in another person’s arms, and that person is in yours while a fingerless deckhand hoists sails with muscled thumbs. This...
2 tags
{ how was your weekend go fuck yourself }
The look on his face said, “No balloon is safe,” and he raced toward an arch of them tethered in front of a store, ripped them loose and ran down the street with them flying over his head and trailing behind him like a balloon dragon in a Chinese parade. He ran through traffic with the bubbled rainbow and our friend and I ran behind, stomping on strays as they fell off the long...
November 2010
3 posts
3 tags
{ free }
Lost time : vulgar obsession about human beings in love with a dog’s behind in love with emulating the idealized image determine : medicine or gold or wolf’s milk Freedom is unknown an unknown everywhere maximum freedom : invigorate your instinct the first soil : hard clay : lucky garden a million tiny hoes millions of tiny hoes
~O~
3 tags
{ Drunk Dynamite Fishing }
Gnawed to pulp and far away I might be able to see what I look like from a distance and I want to return battered enough not to remember so I have to do it again. “If you go, I might not be here when you get back.” “If. ‘If’ I get back.” The verb “to marry” also means “to hunt” in the language of the country I am...
2 tags
{ victual structure }
The protagonist has a problem and he will make choices that create a story that works toward a resolution and what will keep you at the edge of your seat the whole way is the gap in expectations that is created, like say when the protagonist asks the antagonist [ an old lady ] for something silly and you are surprised the protagonist, whom you empathize with greatly, would beg for that small...
October 2010
2 posts
3 tags
{ so much : accepting it }
You are Christmas lights : you are my wet ear finally popping : you are echoes from the park through my window : you are spoon-scrapes of the melty sides of a pint of ice cream : you are : you are the silhouette of branches across a cool sky.
2 tags
{ the best policy }
This guy I know dated another guy with one leg. They broke up a couple weeks ago. The guy I know got a package from his ex in the mail. It was his ex’s fake leg. True story. This chick I do not know is in the hospital. Well, I Internet-know her. I met her for the first time in a hospital that is like a beautiful hotel. She was in a backless smock and was comfy in an adjustable bed...
September 2010
2 posts
3 tags
{ war of }
The lady pretends she does not speak my language and I always say thank you instead of the word for that in her language because guess why
and I could hear change clanging in driers and I ate less meat today and a lot more cheese than normal and bubbles of grease popped around blistering pastry filled with squeaky cheese and I jerked off all over my girl’s pillow while she took a shower...
1 tag
{ the old digs }
Check it:
http://ottomattiq.blogspot.com/