Truly, an inconceivable caliphate: everything would seem off, wouldn’t it? At least, reversed. And yet, all along, a left-handed cabal had waited their turn at the reins of state, perennially incipient, rock to right-handed power’s paper, smothered (and anyhow, allergic to scissors) and scorned as underhanded by their opposite. The Golden City’s orientationally-segregated and long…

“Our language can be seen as an ancient city.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein When First Woman told her daughter the story of her life, the world split open. They say, clouds bloomed black and pumice rained. Rivers roared red. This was the Awakening. The People singed singing, they say. Just like that, they say. Everywhere the…

  In the time without time, there was only gold, what the sun touched became gold, solidly, if only momentarily. The sun with her nimble limbs found holes and she crept, she bent, made herself impossible, just to get to us, inside, o she was a cruel one!, but we were already solid, immobile, statues…

The westerly, black-bellied clouds had yet to wet the gaping, sun-smeared mouth of the coliseum to the east, but the snorting mules dragged the clouds closer as they dragged the box carts filled with mottled pelts and polished, white bone. The men, hunters by birth, staggered down the slope beside them, ripe with last night’s…

This was after the invention of houses. We stacked stones for days to create a wall. This was after the invention of walls, after we decided the hearth should be the center of the house. This was recently after the invention of housekeeping. We began our days with separation, and you returned at night. I…

(A legend found in the fragmented chronicles of the Ancient City.  Attributed to Veritus, Second Scribe of the Classical Period.  Translation from the original dialect by Joe Kapitan.)  I, a humble writer of words, witnessed these events as a child: During that disastrous springtime, on the morning of the fourth day of rain, I awoke…

A stranger visits Richard Nixon on his death bed. The man wears a black cloak and domino mask. He sits beside Nixon, so fragile, so close to the death, and takes the Disgraced President’s left hand into his own. His skin is paper thin. ​“Did you know, Mr. Nixon, that every American president is granted…

When explorers returned to the city they were bound at the gates and led to the library, where they recounted their journey to a monk or scribe. Once their tale was told, they were encased in leather and metal and thrown into dungeons to die. Explorers subjected themselves to this willingly; their faith and knowledge…

Beyond us, beyond the walled fortress of our city, a woods so thick and deep, we learned as children even our voices would never follow us back. The canopy stretched, farther than vision, an endless plain of greened tufts like a tinted mirror, reflecting the clouds, dense, back on themselves. Above the trees, hawks. Their…

Ah, the hiss and seethe of man, of man no longer man, of man enclosed in brass and gold and steel. This man who will not rot, nor sag nor droop nor gray. How we cut him open and found the life within. How his gas fled into our vessels at the last incision. How…

At the site of the Ancient City – now a barren valley – soil and rock and bits of grass grow over and under the past. The natural world segments and flattens and finally buries the City’s stories like layers of sediment. Of course, the City itself is one vast story. It is in fact…

Some mornings when I wake and look at you, I realize you haven’t been having an easy time of it. Hair twists around your ears, your eyes fill with sticky sleep, and your face wrinkles in thick, plastic folds. I only see you after I’ve swatted the brass alarm clock, as I iron my shirt…