Hey! My short story, “Devil’s Food” was published in issue 39 of Crack the Spine magazine. If you’re in the mood for a dark comedy, check it out!
http://www.crackthespine.com/2012/09/issue-thirty-nine.html
Also, I got a raise! HOLLA!
Category Archives: prose
Don Draper is Teh Sh1t
Stuffing Shoe Boxes Full of Photographs
J.C.D. Kerwin
Because some of us wish we were still wearing mod suits and mini skirts, click-clacking and whistling our way down the too-crowded streets full of green cars blinking leaves telling us we’re doing a good job, kinda (but not really) saving the earth. Because sometimes yesterdays are nostalgic because they make people hurt for things they had, but sometimes they make people hurt for things they never had and always wanted.
Sometimes we wish we really did have office bars in the high-rises we saunter off to every morning, and in the evenings some small part of us wishes we were smoking cigarettes while cooking a pot roast as Johnny, Mary and Rover play in the yard. Maybe the prepackaged Betty Crocker world would still look brand new and exciting on our black and white TVs, and no one would doubt the footprints when they show us the pictures from the Moon.
Maybe no one would care to worry about how much MSG goes into chicken nuggets; instead maybe it’d be okay to just let everyone grow up and we all wouldn’t give a damn about anything except the newest shit that Kerouac was saying at that dingy bar around the corner. Maybe Davis could sprinkle jazz into our coffee and cover the world with blues and greens so we wouldn’t have to listen to synthesizers and static.
But the vinyl records can’t compare to the 100 free downloads you get every time you buy so-and-so from Apple. Some of us have our noses stuck too close to the glowing screens that we don’t know the light-emitting diodes that came before were the things that lit the way for today’s over-the-counter instant-gratification. Such a shame.
Someday I’d like to wear a smile and skip like I never knew the pages of a history book. Sometimes I’d like to grin and play a record, then pour myself a glass of rum and pretend there’s no such thing as cancer and suck a cigarette if I damn well please. Then I’d laugh because I don’t even like cigarettes at all.
But everyone likes cigarettes because that’s what they show in Time magazine.
Aug., 2012
Making Pompous Grammarians Mad with the Singular “They”
The impressive collection of nick-knacks and alcohol behind this bar I happened to find myself at one evening.
Make-Be-Dreaming
By J.C.D. Kerwin
The Kid gets in moods, sometimes. Sometimes The Kid gets in moods in which they talk of politics or society, or they think of Yesterday and all the things they never did or shouldn’t have done. Sometimes they pretend they smoke cigarettes and make-believe they can see the smog dance around their face. Sometimes The Kid drinks Manhattans or Jack-and-Cokes and wonders if they’ll be drunk enough to become the kind of writer who can make monsters out of lampshades in the corner, instead of letting monsters become them when they’re not paying attention. Sometimes The Kid pretends they are invisible; sometimes The Kid pretends they are not pretending.
Aug., 2012
Stars
Sometimes I think of Jupiter and rocket ships, and I wonder how long it would take to build a spaceship and fly away…
Blue Heaven
J.C.D. Kerwin
It’s smog I wrap around me when I sleep.
In this city I suck down the vapor when I dream and pretend it’s sugar water. I see blue, glowing fireflies when I close my eyes. It’s the pollution; doctors say I might go blind. I think maybe those fireflies just float away into the atmosphere when I sleep.
And when I wake, it’s always raining; it’s always raining in this futurescape. (My oblivion of technology and memories.) Today isn’t any different. I face the half-open window and twist my jaw around. The outside explodes my inside world with color. When it rains this neon city glows, and we all melt together like we’re part of some deep, coral, underwater symphony.
I pretend not to notice the cars whizzing past my unit, or the buzzing of whatever new device the holographic ads are trying to sell. Instead, I strain to listen to the rain and something far away: a sax in the rainfall. Don’t know where it’s coming from but I can’t hear anything else while it’s crying. It makes me whisper her name, then I scoff before I light up a cigarette and wave away another hologram pop-up from my wall.
I open wide the windows and think I hear her voice in the song. The cigarette hangs limp from my lips and I watch the smoke make love to the smog. I stare at the infinity below, the neon, and the never-ending traffic zooming past my window.
She and I—we transcended time. We held supernovas in our hands and carried planets until they got so heavy that we dropped them off at the edges of the universe…Maybe in our dreams, I guess. Maybe that’s what it felt like on hot nights, after bottles of cheap wine and lipstick stains on my lips.
I inhale deep and think it’s her I’m breathing. The way she smelled like space. The air up there is magic. It makes you feel like dying, but in the way that you don’t think, you know that there’s a Heaven and it’s beautiful. People say Heaven is in the stars. I stay awake at night and wonder if she’s there, tasting the Milky Way and collecting my blue fireflies.
Someday I’ll save enough to buy a spaceship and become a cowboy. Then I’ll fly away and see if there really is a Heaven in the stars.
May 2012
J.C.D. KERWIN 