Wastoid

On the morning of his wedding the groom watched his betrothed walk their dog past their house & he considered his feelings for him. He sat at his desk to write his vows. He tapped his pencil to his teeth. Then chewed on the pencil’s end. Then opened the big drawer to find a blue pen. Finally he made his face determined-looking as if preparing to knock down a wasps’ nest & set the pen to the paper. He wrote the letter L & then crossed it out. He began a series of loops but this formed no recognizable letters. He wrote the word Swarm in his best handwriting. He stopped. He had never truly looked at Swarm before. Never understood it. He held the paper to his face & kissed the word until his spit smeared the ink & his lips were blue. He wrote the word again, beneath the soaked part of the paper, & again kissed it with his competence.

Wastoid

A gameshow’s cheering was in love with a three-load capacity washing machine that spun clothes into an incorruptible blur. The washing machine had had many lovely fuckbuddies & this gave the gameshow’s cheering hope—despairing hope, but hope. Then the washing machine fell in love with a dryer, an older model with a bit of gum stuck inside. One night over drinks the washing machine told the gameshow’s cheering what he really loved was the ease: It’s so easy. I wash the clothes & he dries them. It’s so easy. It’s like holding an ax. Despite this the gameshow’s cheering’s hope would not go away. It hung around the house like a holiness. It ordered pizza topped with pineapple, knowing full well the gameshow’s cheering hated nothing so much as pineapple pizza. And through all of this the gameshow’s cheering could express his sadness only through cheering.  

Mathias Svalina is the author of three books, most recently The Explosions from Subito Press. He is an editor of Octopus Books. Big Lucks will release his book Wastoid in 2014.