Questions? You Should Send In Questions, I Have Five Hours Of Being Alone In A House, I Can’t Do Homework

exit music for a sister driving out of state

the wind is crowned in lemongrass as it stumbles from the field, some king that left her throne cold and throbbing — a purpled cheek under a frozen section of steak, the marbled fat of citizens needs veining through a red-velvet muscle.

I breathe in once and hold it, the day and its run-away king at the top of the air, her slipping royalty, the field bright as honey in lamplight or lamplight in honey.

I build a little headache and keep it like an ant under a glass, its sharp frantic body agonizing blackly in the circle of my skull, as if it had a home of sand to crawl back to but my bones kept it from the colony.

this is enough, I’m sure, the king and my thrum of forehead, enough to fill the day to its brim, nothing else could possibly be happening to us. I bow once and the ache follows me down, I think to kneel as a gust trips by, to become knighted and feel the ant itch up to a scarab beetle— scratching the hieroglyph for migraine onto the edges of the over-turned trap of glass and brain.

                  - c. essington

- c. essington

The Paper Just Said a Boy Left, The Obit Did Not Specify Homicide or Suicide.

the blue house catches on fire and passes it on like a secret, making lips out of wind, whispering its neighbor to charcoal.

in the basement of the house that heard and caught, a boy is already lighting something of his own and signing it off in kerosene as if that clear,  chemical wash of to-be light is exactly what letters are made of.

he goes up to his bedroom on the third floor to wait for the rise. the ceiling caves in as the carpet starts to fester with heat. the room is biting down, rafters and floorboards chew in towards heartbeats. the boy forgets his name, tries to say it to himself, but without air to inhale, the sounds he keeps his brain in feels too see-through to say.

he stands up, waiting, his biology screams. he manages to squeeze out a sentence, one sentence to himself once he figures that two fires are at work. it’s a little question, and it happens over and over running over tongue it until it smokes, like a match that goes too black to light. he asks: “which one, which one, which one?”

                                - C. Essington 

For the writing thingy! Lighter, lipstick, Lucky penny, marker, camera. :D

Certainly, thank you.

Inventory:1. Lighter2. Lipstick3. Lucky penny4. Marker5. Camera

Clive roved the blue lipstick over his mouth before leaving, two splinters of periwinkle smirking above his teeth. He’d been letting his hair roar down until it dangled near the same piece of body where his ribs ended. The frays of blonde started getting caught on barbs of his life, one of which was a flick of orange in his sister’s hands that she’d held up too high. His trailing strands got smeared with burning before he smothered the flame and confiscated the lighter. After that, his ribs were abandoned by the black-licked blonde and his hair flew up to perch above his shoulders. 

So he went out, lips blue, hair burnt up to his neck, and his pockets lined with change. The metal discs clinked together, pressing up clouds of lint that gathered like cholesterol under his nails. He’d run his fingertips over the currencies, wearing his thumb down to redness on the edge of a penny and calling the soreness good fortune. When he didn’t have pennies to get his hands blushed on, he’d take out a red crayola marker and draw his own sort of luck across his knuckles. 

Clive kept his lips blue and his hands red and his body out of burning the best he could manage. He’d take a photo of it all in a restaurant bathroom, his eyes lowered into the grain the mirror’s reflection, trying to find the place where his colors met his breath. 

                - C. Essington.

Thank you, this was an interesting list. 

If you want to play this writing game, send me a theoretical inventory of five items in an ask and I’ll try to write a person for it. 

I work here as an associate for the Kenyon Review and it’s beautiful and I can’t wait to get back to Gambier Ohio. 

Our office in the snow this morning.

Not super important but my abroad application is finished! Hopefully I’ll get to study at Exeter in England next year. Anyone go there/ know info about it or want to share their experience? 

“Ham and Starch” a short story by Claire Oleson

Slowly, with her voice pointed down towards the snow, she starts. “That we aren’t for the morning/ that we aren’t for house-fires./ That if you lit a match in your basement/ and it caught on/ and g…

I’ve had a short story published on the literary blog, The Whale.

werkloos spring 2016

werkloos mag's second issue, "in limbo"

I've got a piece published in the second issue of werkloos, an online journal. It's a flash fiction piece starting on page 17 called “Red Velvets”. Give it a look if you have a moment and a speck of interest, thanks! 

PS I adore hearing what people think, so feedback is uber welcome. 

(https://issuu.com/werkloosmag/docs/werkloos_spring_2016?e=22031949/36085278)

the first anatomically realistic drawing of a human heart meant that someone had to stop  living  and then, before they were set in the ground or burnt to ash for a sort of kept loss, someone else had to raise a hand, softly, and say

                                                                                          “wait.”

- c. essington 

What's your favorite place in the world? Where would you most like to travel to?

I don’t think I have a particularly favorite place just yet. I’d really love to go to Ireland or Scotland. I went to London once to visit my uncle, and I have to say that was very beautiful.