Basement Heart by Nova Fowl

Ruth wanted three-hundred pounds of flesh piled on top of her pelvis. She wanted suffocation of the genitals. Suffocation of the face. She was sick, so sick of all the talking. There was nothing wrong with Chad in the bedroom, nothing at all. Every fuck was the same pattern of contraction and relaxation, veins tightening and tendons flexing until everything collapsed and sex was over.
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Down by the arse of Donegal, at the very tip of Sligo, there’s a village called Cliffony. Some of ye might have passed through it. It’s a few miles past Benbulben’s furrowed head, the kind of place where people would talk if you seemed in a hurry. The Atlantic takes out its frustration on the nearby cliffs of Mullaghmore, and tourists can sometimes be seen looking lost, asking for directions to the grave of W. B. Yeats.

Inside art exhibitions
I see a death-defying state
my public spectators
have brought along smartphones
and Vuvuzela’s
to mock the aesthetic sight
of my arty-crafty veil

The Paris of the Midwest.

An angel descended into the center of the city via a divinely sanctioned system of ropes and pulleys. “Who would you rescue if you could rescue only one – wife or child?” the angel asked the men he met. He beat more than a few to encourage them to answer. “I’d much prefer to be drinking coffee,” he assured them. The less resilient chose suicide, the darkness so thick they couldn’t tell what was grabbing at them with big, meaty fingers.