BOMBlog’s Word Choice features original works of poetry, fiction, and art. This edition of Word Choice, selected by Peter Moysaenko, features fiction by Peter Markus and art by Daniel Shea.

Peter Markus knows how to hypnotize. His writing pulses story into myth, makes fiction forge primeval proofs. Here, in this selection from a book-in-progress, the hero strikes out for home.

from In a House in a Woods

When he saw that house, what he said, so that just his own head could hear it, was that this house used to be his.
       But this house, it was not his house now.
       This house, it was now just a house with a mom and a dad in it.
       There were no boys here in this house.
       When this boy knocked with his hand on the door to this house, no voice told him to come in.
       But in he went to go see what he’d left in this house on that day when he left from this house to go live in the house with the girl in it who did not have a mom or a dad or a dad of her dad to make that house be a home.
       In this house where this boy used to live with a mom and a dad of his own, when he walked in through the door, there was a mom who stood by the stove who looked a lot like his mom who liked to stand by the stove where she liked to cook up meat for the dad and her two boys to eat.
       There was a dad, too, here in this house, out back in the back yard of this house, who was a man who liked to make things out of wood, and this man looked a lot like his own dad.
       Hi, Mom, the boy said to the mom who stood like and cooked like and looked like his own mom.
       Hi, Dad, the boy said to the man out back in the back yard of this house who liked to make things made out of wood.
       Boy, I am not your mom, was what the mom said who stood like and cooked like and looked too much like this boy’s mom not to be his mom.
       Boy, I am not your dad, was what the dad said too.
       We don’t know you, both the mom and the dad then said, though they did not say this at the same time.
       Who are you?

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