“Take it easy Smith, you’re going to wear the point off your pencil.” The Half Guinea, his large, brown, weather-beaten hand extended from the spacious sleeve of a three-quarter-length black…

“And then what happened?” “He wrapped his chains around my neck and started choking the life out of me.” “And did you die?” “Well, no… that is, I can’t say.…

The thick metal door swings open and bangs against the bricks of the building on Red Army Street. A lone, thin figure flies out of the entrance, bare head first, a…

The air high above is all dark. But blinding light takes hold over the boxing ring below. Wooden chairs crowd in around the roped-off square. White faces rise up in…

‘“Here’s the money. Don’t wander off. And be sure you aren’t short-changed… for the love of Job.” ‘The Ferret, still a boy of less than 12, and dressed as one…

The eyelids withdraw to disclose two sea-blue pools, each with a tiny pupil adrift, struggling in the morning light to enlarge, focus in on and transmit to John Smith’s mechanical…

The lamp burns yellow. And a patch of soft light warms the shadows below it, as these would otherwise devour the kitchen tabletop on which the lamp stands, holding to…

Exactly 27 years ago to this day, in a ninth-grade English composition class at the Brooklyn School of Scientists, the following essay was submitted in completion of a routine writing…

The curtains are drawn to reveal a tangle of soiled and sodden bedding that is Dirk Dickerson’s funeral pyre. The Half Guinea stands at the opening of a sterile white…

Note: The following 10 pieces were salvaged from a garbage can in the offices of Kyiv Unedited during the operation to collect, retrieve, and permanently preserve “The Kyiv Commix” before…