I stand in a basilica at the foot of a towering, breathing pyschopomp, donning an owl’s head, black as oil. Outside, the moving clouds that cascade the sun produce a moving iridescence that limns an ornate stained-glass window, giving the Nativity Scene its fixed, palpitant movement.
Alex, the cyborg, woke up one morning feeling like himself again. In fact, he felt vaguely … aware.
But there was a price. With germinal sentience came that rushing tsunami of pain, misery, melancholy. That is, matters of the psyche those of us carrying the weight of flesh and blood spent decades easing into. Alex, on the other hand, wasn’t granted such a luxury. Knowledge came first — and that was the burden he carried.
My heart is a strange country. One minute she speaks one language and the next, another. It’s like a flesh version of Switzerland. It’s also like an Independent Republic that the ex-dictators filled with landmines you should watch out for. I’ve been trying to dismantle them but I can’t remember exactly where they were placed. Continue reading
When my brother brought home a tiny pigeon and said that he was going to be our new pet; that we’d give him flight lessons; turn him into the most powerful bird on earth; and then, when he became a giant and benign flying monster, he’d take us away into the Sun, I believed him. Continue reading
