Rictus Erectus concept art

Steve Lambert

There, in an orange grove, an old telephone directory flaps in the humid midnight air. You’ve seen it. Here, in hard daylight, a newspaper has dissolved into a cross between snow and ash, or maybe dried-up toothpaste. Somewhere just south of here a quiet backroad leads to an imaginary subdivision, next to a deep, grassy lake cracking quietly under heavy lily pads that aren’t always there. In late…

Something’s not quite right. Luminosity speaks only to itself and in its own shape. I’ll take two of everything, it says. God resides in the details, right next to the devil. One loves everything and the other loves the one who loves everything. Guess which is which. Terrible is the sound of someone hungry for memories of a past he did not earn. That’s how roses work, they say, as a kind of low…

All areas have their representative architectures. In Florida, for instance, and much of the Deep South, you’ll find the Cracker House, the clapboard, the shotgun. Plainsong as architecture. Protestant primitivism. Holy Ghost power. Not so many balustrades, buttresses, vestibules, cornices or Corinthian columns. But here’s something I learned in the resplendent rotunda of the Capital building in…

Like a plus-one to a Halloween party, early fall brings with it crisp air that strangles late summer’s smothering humidity. No oranges just yet, and there’s still an invest off the coast of Africa that, properly motivated, could twist itself into a hurricane. My favorite flannel I wore last year won’t button, so I wear it loose on our trek to the bus stop, my coffee steaming, your too-big…