CONNECT WITH MARS
CURRENT COLLECTED EDITIONS
NEW & UNCOLLECTED ISSUES
BOOKS BY JULIAN DARIUS
OTHER FICTION AND POETRY
Magazine
Lamarckism
Jim grappled with his cock, imagining himself transforming into pixels as he thrust it into the image of a woman’s vagina. A mind beyond his penis insisted this could happen. It was the same mind that assured him… [more]
We’ll Take a Lover in the Afterlife
Dreamed on 15 Jan 2013. I was at my parents’ house, helping them move electronics around the living room. Everything we moved had other things behind it, flattened cardboard boxes propped up against the wall,… [more]
The Challenger
After Dad died and we moved in with Leon, everything went to shit. I remember the first night he did it to me. I was fourteen. Mom was–most likely passed out–downstairs on the sofa with… [more]
Ken’s Doll
There’s really nothing wrong with the Valley. People accustomed to Sunset look down on it but paradise has its limits; thinking all of Los Angeles can be a palm-lined mirage of awesomeness is lunacy. The… [more]
She Didn’t Even Know Who He Was
I am wearing a facsimile of glasses worn by a young man when he was shot six times outside his apartment. It was a tragedy and it was infamous so I do not have to… [more]
Dinner and Charades
It is evening, and the sun is low. I ring the doorbell to my sister’s house. She answers the door, her brown eyes alight with excitement. “Why hello, Mike!” Nicole gushes. “How’s my favorite brother… [more]
Epithalamion: An Undetected Life
The Martians have decided to get married. Bridal magazines unfold on the end tables and curl in the humidity of the bathroom. Every weekend they take the city bus to the mall, to David’s, and… [more]
MARFA: AN ALIEN INVITE (TEXAS ET)
John M. Edwards, an alien spotter, drives out with some friends through the lonesome Texas tumbleweeds to party down with extraterrestrials. —————————————————————— Have you ever gotten an RSVP from Heaven? So here I was smack effing dab… [more]
Turtle Power
In the Black Hills we went to a replica of the Flintstone’s town where I sat in Fred’s car. My brother climbed Dino while my sister stuck her face atop Wilma’s neck. I was too… [more]
Leopard People
Lermontov got on the plane back to Russia and put the jacket over his face, trying to picture an airport without people for his return. He tried not to think of the people he’d let… [more]
Retroactively Potent
Wanting to use ‘I am your boomerang’ in a poem, I Googled to make sure no one else had used the metaphor. But of course someone else had thought of it before. He also wrote… [more]
Black and Blue in ’32
I’m the favorite to win. It’s not my foreign policy and it’s not my handling of domestic issues. Nobody gives a shit about the unemployment numbers, job growth, the illusory downward trend of the trade… [more]
Probationary Period
Upon being hired by the Company, all new employees must serve a ninety (90) calendar day trial period. Your performance will be carefully monitored during this period. They say there’s cameras but they won’t tell… [more]
Pray to Lord I Hope at Least One of My Ears Doesn’t Pop
i. Sarah had seen him many times shedding tears exclusively for film characters. And so when Fred cried at the departure gate, she thought they might be in a documentary. ii. Paul asked Jeannie, over… [more]
Bull
After his tour of duty in Afghanistan, Billy believed he had seen everything. Arm yourself, learn to kill efficiently, develop a nose for IEDs impatient under the sand, pick up severed limbs, embrace a fallen… [more]
Unidentified Photo on the Internet
The seaweed men patrol the icy town with sticks wrapped in bumbergrass their hooked beaks hissing steam, eyes painted open against the twilight. They trudge the streets like shaggy marionettes, boots cracking glazed tarmac, past… [more]
AMYGDALA
Deep in the Eureka, Kansas bunker, there still exists one Memory Replacement protocol, invented by the late Hemispheres scientist Hans Geisser. It is a cryogenic dreaming sequencing process known officially as “Foreground Switching.” The main… [more]
Last Night
I looked in on you last night. That point-five-second draft of penguin’s breath you thought was just a gust outside the window and the birdcall you’d have sworn was from a horse were clues I… [more]
from COUNTRY
Speaking of my Goya: I had it handy when Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” came out: I had read Woody’s fictionalized autobiography, Bound for Glory (E.P. Dutton: 1943): somehow Arlo’s twenty-minute song-story-recitation moves right along with the… [more]
In Amber Gehenna
Behind the bar dangles a ribbon of yellow flypaper covered in glass bees, some of them still wriggling. Wings vibrating, antennae twitching. All to no avail. They’re not the only ones stuck, of course. Here… [more]
Five in the Morning
As I lie sleepless in the semidarkness, the birds warm up their voices, & it occurs to me that only birds know what birds are saying, just as only you know how to make me… [more]
forever tender
my friend really likes to say boom shakalaka she’s french or maybe spanish i like it when she gets excited because she wraps her whole lean powerful body around boom shakalaka it spills out all… [more]
One or the Other
My best good friend Quiddit got the bike off a fifth grader, nice orange and silver Mongoose from the Wal-Mart down in Bowling Green, with pegs and a handlebar rotor for tricks and all that… [more]
Saturday
Today is a Saturday and people either work half day in an unfamiliar branch or they resent their jobs. They put your bowl of chicken noodle on your table without a smile or spoon. You… [more]
What a Difference a Day Makes
Warren Samuels III was cordially invited by the Imaginautical Turbine to attend A Meeting of Fantastic Importance on the 30th of February. The words were lavishly written in thick cursive ink. The invitation was a singular… [more]
