Kurt McGill

DEAD BRIDES FOR SALE by Kurt McGill                                                                    Red Light District, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico Night must fall in the Tolerance Zone, the same way it does everywhere. Tonight it fell hard. I watched the shipping crate in the bed of the Escalade pickup parked behind the cantina: the crate filled with the ripe kumquats—three snuffed mail-order brides—that Yee Chung Toy tried to smuggle from Guangdong province to Veracruz, then across Mexico, through Ensenada, and into San Francisco. Tried and failed. Those kumquats would have brought a nice price from some stodgy middle-aged Chinese businessman: a limping fishmonger, a balding importer of black fungus. Real cozy. But this fruit was spoiled, tainted, gone way wrong on the way over. When I opened the crate on the cargo ship—the captain knew something was not right by the stench—they were in there: fifteen, sixteen years old, not wearing a hot stitch, dea

Useful and Accepted Definitions that will help you survive and proceed in the modern world... IMAGINATION : Always "lively." Be on guard against it. When lacking in oneself, attack it in others. To write a novel, all you need is imagination. FRICASSEE : Only good in the country. ABSINTHE : Extra-violent poison: one glass and you're dead. Newspapermen drink it when they write their copy. Has killed more soldiers than the Bedouin. Io non mori, e non rimasi vivo : I did not die, but nothing remained the same. In the evening it was the mosquitoes, and in the day tsetse flies with wings swept back like tiny jet fighters. I feel discomfort, therefore I am alive... EXILE LETTER Ezra Pound: after Li Po Red jade cups, food well set, on a blue jeweled table And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning You would walk out with me to the Western corner of the castle To the dynastic temple, the water around it as clear as blue jade With boats fl