Hey everyone! It’s one of my three favorite times of the year: the times I sit in front of my computer with a newly edited and formatted copy of Defenestration awaiting its release, my only job at that point being to write an editorial. And I never know what to write! I could claim that my perpetual writer’s block is due to the sheer number of these things I’ve been expected to create; 2018 marks the 15th year we’ve been doing this, and I’d much rather you read the short stories and poems instead of whatever I’m cobbling together here.

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Conventional wisdom would dictate that potato chips were unlikely to lead a woman to her soulmate. But Sarah didn’t subscribe to conventional wisdom, nor did she eat conventional chips. Much like beer snobs only drank craft brews, she only ate artisanal chips. They were a thing. It was 2018, America was going to hell in handbasket, and people were finding solace in all sorts of small batch comforts.

If you were a hurricane hanging out with other hurricanes in hurricane heaven, you might get caught up in some interesting conversation. Hurricane So-And-So might say: “I made eight, EIGHT, different landfalls. I was fierce, boy. I was a baaaaaad storm.”

Republican Jesus rode into town on a beautiful Sunday on his brand-new luxury Mule-cedes. He had worked hard and deserved what got. Not everyone possessed his skills, like the totally earned water-walking ability. It was good to reap the benefits of his life.

I am pretty sure that I am invisible. As far back as I can remember this has been a goal of mine. Just think of the freedom, if you could be invisible for just one day just think of the wonder and freedom and all the things you could do.

The novelist sighed. Romance is the hardest genre, she thought as she stared at the white screen in front of her. It made her furious when people and so-called critics told her that romance was a genre reliant upon tired tropes and clichés. They were wrong. It was an art-form, a science. Scaring people? Easy! Making them laugh? Child’s play. Making them swoon with love and have horny dreams about being stolen away by pirates or marrying a billionaire? The most challenging task of all.

“I wanna be a billionaire, so freaking bad…” Yaritza hummed the catchy tune to herself while scrolling through the WikiHow page “How to Embezzle Money” on her middle-class 11.6″ MacBook Air while sitting in her middle-class 448 square-feet studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across the Central Park and a few subway stops to the Wall Street in the Financial District. She hated the small laptop, her tiny apartment, and her middle-class life. She had always wanted to be rich. All things considered, she just knew in her heart that embezzling money was the only sure way for her to afford a lavish life. A sumptuous surrealism kind of life.

When they asked me to say a few words at Gary’s retirement party, I was nervous. I’m not much of a public speaker. But when I started to think of what I’d say, I got nostalgic. Gary and I go way back. We started together at the County in the Payroll Division 26 years ago. We were young men then, in our early thirties. Both of us had left the private sector to take our first government jobs. This was back when government work was still considered honorable, ha, ha. We were itching to show everyone what we knew. We had full heads of hair back then, too, believe it or not. We learned the ropes together

It nestled in the crevices
Of my glabella
Embedded like a ruby
In my face of ore
Where my crimson jewel
Sets ablaze your valleys
And melts your tundra,
The flame to your flint,
I am queen of Mars