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Overloading the Machine

Last Thursday

Resistance. Channel clicks.
On our walk we turned up stories
Reaching the sky, to climb later.
What fruit rolling in the bowl
You felt me. We explained,
Young, late and invigorated
In the flecked mirror. All patient, insistent.
Past the punctured seams the gown drifts
One early-on press. Coax,
We turned a dry topic or two,
Somber dances of holding out,
You were irrevocable, marching as minutes
The sun couldn't tick, recoiling at some failed mission.
And serene. Arcs to electric,
The path vanishing in twist.
A test
Wrinkles the eyes on either side
These years one visit. It boiled
Rust water of news. It sought
Too much essence in all encounters. From each time bargained
An etched trinket. But observe, incessant plan:
We fly confident. To red box the calendar
On the lover's wall. No doubting hours, the fingertips.

Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo.

  -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again.

  -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.

  -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.