Sleet Seasonal Supplement — Winter 2010-2011
At home my wife and I eat lentils, read The Economist, and drink decaffeinated tea. But some nights she goes out to meet the long-haired, pale, skinny guy who works at the all-night donut shop. He's the guy who inserts the jelly into the jelly donuts. I've seen him walking on 14th Street, where the sidewalk is drenched in pigeonshit, smiling savagely to himself.
But it's okay. I have a friend who is just as good. She sleeps on the floor of a hotel lobby under her slick rain poncho. I meet her there, and she takes me down a stairway to the hotel boiler room. There, in the close heat, she raises her arms like Dracula and comes at me. She is naked beneath the poncho, with an outline of her skeleton drawn on her skin in bright blue, breath-freshening toothpaste.
Martin Cozza's fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, Columbia, Colorado Review, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best American Fantasy. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three kids.