100x50

fin

lwarnerrose — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 05:01:37 +0000

Summer is upon us and our lives have taken on new endeavors. Therefore, 50 x100 will cease to exist. Call it an indefinite hiatus. If it starts again you can be sure to get emails and posts informing you. However, as of now, there are no definite plans for this.

You may be happy to hear that there has been talk of compiling these entries into a physical form to fit nicely on bookshelves or atop coffee tables. This would take vigorous hours of editing and chain smoking. If such does take form, we will inform you promptly.

Hearts. (sb & ms)

fifty

lwarnerrose — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:08:39 +0000

He remembers little of all those other years. He takes vitamins after meals, runs a finger along receding gum lines. His mind flashes memories – a girl he used to study with who intermittently placed her pen between her breasts, a pair of socks he no longer owns. At some point he must’ve been able to piece together a timeline of events, but what’s he left with? The memory of drunkenly grappling with a belt in a restroom.

After his stroke he tells the seven-year-old granddaughter, “Maybe it’d been better if I went.”

The words sparkle in her molasses brown eyes. (ms)

fifty

lwarnerrose — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:01:22 +0000

I stood out front of her second story apartment building staring at the parking lot and the overcast sky. I wanted to go to the desert, towards Arizona or Las Vegas, quit everything and just go. Why not, you know? So I drove my car onto the freeway with the intention of going somewhere but traffic was heavy and forty minutes later I exited to a red light swaying with the wind. Next to me a couple in a car sat without speaking. Jeopardy would be on in 30 minutes and tomorrow was a Friday. I decided to go home. (sb)

forty-nine

lwarnerrose — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:31:42 +0000

Cigarette smoke was seeping through an open window. He threw his belt across the room in a moment of rage. The buckle detached from it, cut through a fleshy-pink candlestick and chipped the wooden box containing her photos from Europe. They didn’t notice where it landed, being distracted by a surplus of spilled beer. He attempted to storm out but the lost buckle transformed itself into a necessary object in his mind. By the time he located it they had largely resolved the issue.

“It chipped the box,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“But it was only a very small chip.” (ms)

forty-nine

lwarnerrose — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:00:53 +0000

After three days of unanswered phone calls he arrived to inspected sheets, the desk, and the refrigerator for signs of life to no avail. In the late afternoon he collapses in her bedroom amidst a pile of clothes that occupy the floor more than racks or drawers. Around midnight he puts away enough depression to re-open some vodka and a jug of orange juice. Rummaging through her videocassettes, he sees one titled “Olga -1972.”
A girl appeared in a communist colored leotard.
“This is history in the making!” the announcer says.
Morgan agrees then takes a swing of both bottles. (sb)

forty-eight

lwarnerrose — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:00:50 +0000

Wool socks were of little comfort in the end. Loraine put them on a pair of cold feet and did the dishes with hot water in hopes of warming herself without having to turn up the radiator.

But it was no use. She still ended up sinking into a speckled kitchen chair by the window and scrawling “To Véra To Véra To Véra To Véra To Véra To Véra” at least nineteen times up and down a corner of newsprint while working her face into a lather, bubbling over with tears and snot.

She was cold. And he was gone. (ms)

forty-eight

lwarnerrose — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 04:13:01 +0000

An email from an old friend said something about finding old photos before slyly included a “did you happen to hear…”
She hadn’t. Searching across computer screens and small print, he finally appeared with bleached teeth and forehead wrinkles. It was still the young man she had watched feverishly stuff cigarettes in his mouth as words spilled out for two years of her life though.
The next day at the bookstore she chose charge over cash. While in her parked car, she discovered the dedication to a woman’s name she didn’t know on page three, surrounded by a white void. (sb)

forty-seven

lwarnerrose — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:54:57 +0000

The man at the bar on Broadway, sitting at the table outside, seems to be trying to counteract the effects of his beer with coffee. He is drinking glass after glass, cup after cup, and smoking cigarettes without pause. Allison, age fifteen, who has sat down across from him without invitation, silently supposes that this is an attempt at covering up his early evening activities from a wife.

He keeps telling Allison that he should go but makes no move to leave, so she simply continues to sit and look at him and listen to him ramble on about poetry. (ms)

forty-seven

lwarnerrose — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:00:56 +0000

The first time he heard “fuck” was a Saturday, outside an empty office. Two men were throwing buckets of mud at the windows of the building. Their faces looked stuck in the rain or of someone discovering their milk had turned sour on them overnight.
His nose was runny from the overcast day. The pacific coast highway prevented the word from forming full sentences. He clutched cotton inside the pockets of his red hoodie, uncomfortably stared at the ocean across the street and waited for father’s guiding hand to lead him away and into familiar seat covers and a heater. (sb)

forty-six

lwarnerrose — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:32:35 +0000

He moved into the basement on 54th to escape a set of well-meaning parents and a pet bird with a squawk markedly similar to the sound of a woman in pain.

The roommates hung sheets around the large, cement-floored, wood-paneled room to section it off. Every morning he woke up with a headache from the previous evening’s one too many. Every morning the dry basement air caused him to cough up a surprising amount of phlegm. Every morning he woke up feeling dead and found that he could walk through the walls around him. (ms)

forty-six

lwarnerrose — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:13:33 +0000

The man handed him his I.D. as protocol for a withdrawal.
“This doesn’t look like you…”
“Moustache.” The man responded calmly.
Morgan scrutinized the photo then noticed the peculiar name.
“L? What kind of name is L? It sounds like a character or something.”
L. slowly placed both hands on the counter then said,
“If I wanted people to know, why would I of changed it?”
Giving him the money, the letter of the man’s name reappeared written in a blue ink across the lines of notebook he secretly flipped through two mornings ago in her bed while she showered. (sb)

forty-five

lwarnerrose — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:38:54 +0000

Years later, at a family gathering, the European wife, would state a little too loudly, “That was the best time in my life, when I lived here with you, before we got the house. If I…I would move back here in a moment. I would not hesitate.”

Mara, the youngest daughter, upon hearing this statement grapples for any kind of memory of that time, eventually bringing to mind the sound of a friend’s boots scraping the molding on their way out the window. Thinking that her older brother would rat her out. Writing this in a tie-dye covered journal. (ms)

forty-five

lwarnerrose — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:43:00 +0000

“How is that kid of yours,Warren?” asks the morning waitress with a forgettable name.
Amongst Keno screens and antique décor he stares at a painting called, “Brussels et Aux Sportifs”, and thinks about two identical others he painted while smoking hash with this European girl for a week straight in 1959 and the day his career ended because some Italian discovered his recently bought painting also hanging in a Paris gallery.
“Fine.” he says as she pours his black coffee still regarding the third that was delivered without his name on it in 1960 after downing a bottle of gin. (sb)

forty-four

lwarnerrose — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:07:01 +0000

The oldest son was away six months, leaving everything behind expect what fit in a medium-sized suitcase. Six months, yet no one moved his boxes from the living room to the garage. All of them, the parents and two sisters, simply learned to walk in a zigzag fashion.

The son has now come home with a European wife, but the boxes go nowhere. The newlyweds sleep on the foldout couch because Grandpa is in the guest bedroom, recovering after a bladder operation. Everyone tries to ignore the sound of the old man straining to piss at all hours of the night. (ms)