Alex Tretbar
excerpts from Dogsmind
Nevermindthat, Ripjohn smiled at the lather on his penknife. In descending he ascended a mountain. He began to search his backbreastpockets hastily.
Lend us a loan of your facemask to wipe my pen.
I hadn't eatenslept in fortysix winelight hours, and like colossi tumbling into the years I was malfunctioning and my head was very big. I removed my mask and handed it to john. Faced, I checked my mirror in the mirror. I a once again. Half or hall of me. Or.
Your facemask. So orangewhite you can almost smell it, can't you? Like a fever, fast molecules, caution! Zone of construction. After vanishing the lather and pen Ripjohn put my mask back on for me, given that I was preoccupied by malltracers and the far dullfires of lowtech grottoes, and he all twitching foolishly alongtheway. Briefly I could not see, while he adjusted. Briefly a shootingstar, address, two rubber knife. Controls, mhm, finally set for bubbleheaven.
Godgored again, now sated, he smeared his young face against the window then turned my way and gazed out over the fractaled watershed still hurling itself at us like a suicide enamored of mortality apologiae. Devils, he said seriously. Orangewhite pixels in the black. They, our great bitter mother . . . Look.
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Patches had been shot in the head during the armory years. They were bald in a place and blonde allaround it, otherwise whitehaired. Ripjohn had done time with them, and during that done time had heard from a mouthhorse that Patches had buried their future in canopy. Upon their release we were all jazzed up about it. Rode tank over orchard, ultraplastic shovel torso-fixed. No one found a thing. Some of us still behind the walls for it. Coup they called it. Blowpop, sheetrock, take. How many licks does it. Fourth time under an alphabet. See.
I was creeping 195 in a 200. I was driving slow. Cops lowfollowing me for childhoods. Patches stabbed forward between Ripjohn and I, confirming the volume knob had been cranked northdown so far that decidui had disembodied, laundry of all of it rucked, suckerspunch of state devolumed. And so when I saw my skeleton before us, brooking for keep in the steppeland, I lay down in airfield. O! streaked dolomite, this domelight of a cabin. Hour, hymn, the waking-up of hinterland. Outcome.
Or wait where am I, is this a bank I've cased, and have I been commended. Am I reremembering, or are we already totaled in the hammerlot, clawside, cannonball . . . Wakeup!
O Ripjohn my bluelove, slap me for once. I'm trying to be alive.
Like when something impossible starts to happy, said History.
You mean happen, said Patches.
I am what happens to happy, said History.
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And otherwords whisperstuff too. How the hyperlocal bookies were thrown into a state of some bewilderment when the Dodgers score was read out loud in the square. Even our louses were scared of us, airborne ivy hung from us. This hammershaped megacondo scraper was a motel twelve before they embiggened it. A little bit closer to the hammer I saw walled smallplots of devil's trumpet in full apologetic neckbreak, given the evening's hurricane. Sickly freshets, come from some weird hydraponic, confused themselves for themselves among the stemleaves. Ripjohn, yes, was digging holes again. I checked my inventory, entirely underful. I (why?) disdisfigured my word words.
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We'd been expulsed by unphysical violence too many times to approach the hammer civilly. Between two tumbleweed sculptures in the backlot stood a stormdoor to the stormcellar. We opened the stormdoor to the stormcellar, ascending uppercasely the lowercase staircase. The banister was toughsteel and overwhelmed by cylindersheafs and rainbowed braids of wire. Cables abounded in the stillborn internet of things. My agential intelligence has been suborned by these trusty handholds and bowlingalleybumpers! Ripjohn said, slapping me hard again. I can take some gotdash autumn damage! I set controls for regeneration in the halflight of an earlier gunshot wound, tested some of the wickerwork haptically. Needlesharp in places. Supercrawlspace and many a mailpile. Threats fewer detected the closer we drew to headclaw. As per expected increase, manydozen plush garrets and yet vile stairs between us. Demarcation extremis, here we are. Doorsmell of greatgreat paperfire, orangewhite and littlehot to touch, over-ornate doorbellknocker of dirtybird making a point of washing oneself once a month, I had seen this before . . . Knock there's who a knock. Who. Hallwaystructure little vibrate. Oh and I was already re-expecting you again, said the Requestor from within gleamleather. Is that history becrying?
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We walked into the door, maybe and/or upon upthrough it. Ripjohn doffed backwardly his backward bluewhite conductor cap, little ashflakes falling all around him. Could not hear for oldmusic what the Requestor was saying. I nodded and hung my ultralight from a half-lodged hollowpoint in the closet. How do you do, gesticulate, I have money and a phone. Who’s working. Where am I and how do I get there. Further in befield now, doorwall of prayerflags in the way, Ripjohn banged it down but it sprang back up. S'faith! he said and the Requestor slashed him across the cheek. Where had the knife come from, where do knives ever come from, livingroom anyway entered. Embarrassed, Ripjohn sat down and looked up at the Requestor puppydoggily. I emptied my bread onto the frozen table, an antigravity technology. My facemask and penknife and car key tremble-tumbled. Heavenprotocol. The music was loud and the ashes on the floor took notice.
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Alex Tretbar is author of the chapbooks toofarwandered (Tilted House, forthcoming 2026), According to the Plat Thereof (Ethel, 2025), and Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep, 2025). Alongside UMKC students, alumni, and faculty, he teaches creative writing at Chillicothe Correctional Center, a women’s prison in Missouri. His recent work has appeared in 128 Lit, Annulet, Cleveland Review of Books, Denver Quarterly, Full Stop, La Lancha, Works & Days, and elsewhere.