The Ecstasy of Three Cherries 

 
I want my coffin to be buried under a pastel casino…

The shuffling, the coughing, the liminal dismal noise of many things making sounds all at once…

I want to constantly hear the ecstasy of three cherries being struck…

Someone, whoever is listening out there, please bring me my Golden Egg…

If I crack it open, will a better version of me push out, ready to be driven to paradise in a limo full of peaches?

 

ξ


Jewels 

 

The day Jesus died, a stray dog snuck into Herod’s palace and ate three of his jewels…

The dog then crossed the deserts, not once stopping to partake from the mirages of water that beckoned here and there…

It arrived in the city of Cairo during a plague of locusts…

The dog drank from a bowl of priest’s blood and didn’t die…

A woman who wore bells around her ankles knelt down and petted the dog... 

I think you know where I am going with this story…

Suffice it to say, that dog…he was my father’s father’s father’s father...

 

ξ

Shane Kowalski lives outside of Philadelphia. He has an MFA in fiction from Cornell University. His short fiction collection, Small Moods, is forthcoming from Future Tense Books. He currently works for the United States Postal Service.