Rooster Land — Dig Site

Recent Replies

11:43 PM 10 Mar 19
Horse replied to Under the Radar In Bat Country
Vegas is a body of knowledge that even someone from the far flung reaches of the ...

7:18 PM 09 Mar 19
Elk replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
How would we rename the Comma Committee in such a land — and what would its ...

9:43 AM 03 Mar 19
Rabbit replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
If we strike the quotation mark down it shall come back more powerful than we can ...

8:23 AM 03 Mar 19
Bear replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
In the name of keeping a neat and tidy home I motion that going forward the ...

6:05 PM 02 Mar 19
Rabbit replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
As the prophet Axl said, I used to love her, but I had to kill her.

5:54 PM 02 Mar 19
Bear replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
I say we crack open a cold one and pour some out for our dead homie, ...

2:28 PM 02 Mar 19
Rabbit replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
I think it’s valuable to have a platform where we can play around in this way, ...

4:50 PM 01 Mar 19
Elk replied to The Answer Is What You Have to Do
This piece utilizes the no-quotes dialogue format popularized in our very own Todd series. It is ...

3:08 PM 01 Mar 19
Horse replied to Guide Us to That Perfect Light
Or they think they are (close), anyway. Favorite child/parent moment, but same with every child/parent.

Recently Revised

The Phoenix » 11:42 PM 10 Mar 19 » Horse ⟳ Horse

Trains » 11:15 PM 10 Mar 19 » Horse ⟳ Horse

K » 3:25 PM 01 Mar 19 » Horse ⟳ Horse

Todd’s Saga » 8:19 AM 25 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

The Answer Is What You Have to Do » 2:35 PM 23 Feb 19 » Horse ⟳ Horse

Labyrinthine » 5:37 PM 18 Feb 19 » Horse ⟳ Horse

Twelve-Sided Die (Desert) » 7:41 PM 14 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

The Widow » 7:37 PM 14 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Debtor to the Way » 10:48 AM 11 Feb 19 » Elk ⟳ Horse

Dear World » 10:31 AM 11 Feb 19 » Elk ⟳ Horse

Making Your Own Bolo Tie, Part II » 7:55 AM 10 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Walk, Run, Romp » 7:53 AM 10 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Twelve-Sided Die (City) » 2:24 AM 10 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Twelve-Sided Die (Tundra) » 2:19 AM 10 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Twelve-Sided Die (Road) » 1:54 AM 10 Feb 19 » Bear ⟳ Bear

Recent Haiku

Todd’s Saga at 5:49 AM 25 Feb 19 by Bear

(Standard)

There was a man called Fragg. He owned all of the land in West Fraggsfjord between the sea and the river and Chef Roberto Valentino’s Panini Palace. He was of a very notable disposition and grew more and larger meatballs than any other farmer in Fraggsfjord.

There was a man named Todd Toddsohn. He had a small farm on the edge of Fraggsfjord and only grew small meatballs and quite a very few. He harbored jealousy toward Fragg and Fragg’s persistently large meatball crop. It seems, Todd would say, that my bad fortune is equal in proportion to Fragg’s good fortune. If our fortunes were to switch, it would be fortuitous for me and a boon to my farm and people.

There was a man named George Glass. He had left Lazenbjord after insulting King George Lazenby the Unambiguous, who never minced words and preferred deeds to maxims. George Glass had called himself in the company of King George Lazenby’s people the best of all possible Georges. When word got back to the king, there was nothing for George Glass to do but pack up his cloning machine and sail to Fraggsfjord.

Todd met George Glass’s sailing ship as he was gathering seaslop at the shore-border. George Glass explained that he had become an itinerant cloner due to his quarrel with King George Lazenby. That is good to have insulted George Lazenby, said Todd. He is no king of mine.

Todd took George Glass in as is customary and gave him food and shelter at his farm all of that winter. George Glass sailed his ship up the river to Todd’s farm and carried his cloning machine into Todd’s barn. In the spring, he told Todd that he could increase his meatball yield in both size and quantity. All he would have to do is steal a single meatball from Fragg’s meatball orchard. Todd agreed it was a good plan.

But what neither Todd nor George Glass knew was that Fragg’s meatball orchard had a hi-tec security system, and that its cameras were monitored in his palace by King George Lazenby.

The Answer Is What You Have to Do at 4:09 PM 17 Feb 19 by Horse

(Standard)

There’s a Koan that goes something like this. Looking for adventure, a monk in training uses a chair to hop the wall while everyone else is sleeping. Doing his rounds, the master notices the student is gone and removes the chair from the spot, sitting there in place of it. Returning, the student uses the master to step down. The master tells him it’s very cold outside. Student never goes out again.

That’s fine. I like it. But I think it should go on like this.

Student goes out again, this time with a coat. When he comes back, he expects to use master’s head to get down just like before. But master’s not there and student falls to the ground. In the morning, student asks, How come there’s no chair, no master? Master says, When the sun is shining, the water drips from the spout, and when the sun is not shining, the water drips from the spout. Student says, What? Agitated, master says, The cock crows. Student says, What? Master reaches for the sword on the wall, and pressing it against student’s shoulder with furious anger, dares him to say what again.

How does it go on? There’s a papa tomato, a mama tomato, and a baby tomato.

Labyrinthine at 10:00 PM 12 Feb 19 by Horse

(Standard)

I walked the labyrinth with a raisin on my tongue. Inside, I watched a lichen spot on a rock, the orange sunlight on a fir’s bark and its limbs, lined with raised cones like melted candles, and a couple of fused acorns like a squirrel’s nuts under a knotty root. When I got to the center of the labyrinth, I stared at a heart-shaped stone in the middle and then walked back to the beginning. I did this three times. And when the raisin was finally like the fir’s bark dust lining the labyrinth’s trodden floor, I walked out of the labyrinth and down the hill to the abbey chapel.

On the way down the hill, I looked at goats’ eyes, watched the monk who cracks a joke every time feed the chickens, and kicked a stone that went pretty far. The monk dropped his pale like a kid drops his school bag in the house, and he walked toward the chapel just like me, facing the ground as he normally does when he walks, hands clasped behind his back under his frock. He acknowledged me without looking, waving a hand out from his frock two times, like he was smelling a fart. Only one monk has a really straight back. He must be 6’ 8”, and his frock goes all the way to the ground even though the shortest monk’s frock doesn’t.

Peter the monk greeted me in the entranceway outside the chapel. Labyrinthine was fading, and wondering was happening. When Peter greets me I feel like a special guest he’s been waiting for. But I’m sure I’m just explaining his greeting in terms of something I’ve already got in my head, which is someone greeting me who’s been waiting for me, so this is the first person I’ve ever been greeted by in a way that’s like if someone were waiting for me but weren’t. It’s like this every time — thoughts I have about Peter.

We were interrupted by a tiny lady who burst in from the cold wearing a jacket that she crawled into like a dead tom-tom at home, her feet sticking out so she could walk with the tom-tom on her. Giving us the farting monk wave, she went for a stack of newspapers in a corner, and with the mechanicalness of a high capacity newspaper machine began collecting them under her arm, which seemed like it could hold a lot of papers.

Peter got distracted to the point of cathexis, forgetting I was there wondering about the way he greets me. He urged her to, “Leave them there.” She continued stacking them. He repeated it two more times, making it three times together, and along with the newspaper machine effect, Peter’s request created the impression for me that each time was not repeated, but my own replayed experience of the first time he said it.

“Leave them there.” She continued stacking them. “Leave them there.” She continued staking them. “Leave them there.” She continued staking them.

Sometimes I walk in labyrinths and look at lichen. Sometimes I stare at happenings with monks and ladies. I think about the squirrel’s nuts more than I thought I would, and I can still see the light on that bark which would become the labyrinth floor. I once used an almond instead of a raisin. It was harder.

Dear World at 7:58 PM 30 Jan 19 by Horse

(Standard)

Imagine. Patron X shot up from the table, wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger, threw his napkin onto the dish, and marched into the kitchen.

“Listen, go down the street to Pago’s. Order the fingerling potatoes. Then come back here and do them totally differently than that. If you don’t like that idea, and you’re going to continue doing them just like theirs, then try to get them just like theirs. Just don’t do the same thing worse.”

Shaking his head in the corner of the kitchen, looking askance at the chef standing there with his arms crossed, the sous-chef said under his breath, “Fucking aioli.”

Meanwhile, back on the floor, Patron Y complains to her friend via iMessage. “Ten years ago, no one knew what aioli was around here. Now if you don’t know aioli, you’re an a-hole!”

“It’s fancy for mayo,” her friend writes back from her couch at home, where she scrolls through Netflix on an iPad. Her friend’s husband is outside in front of his shed thinking about the coyote that might shelter back there. He’s got a beer — the husband does. He might or might not be thinking about his aioli potato chips upstairs. He used to be an a-hole.

A coyote licks her chops while looking at the moon beside a garbage can. If you’re the coyote, so is the moon.

Down at Pago’s, the sous-chef and chef de cuisine share their first joint.

The Workshop

Rooster Land is a private and pseudonymous writing workshop. You're currently located where the writers come to work. A selection of their pieces are elevated to superfeed status and made publicly readable on a rolling basis. You may want to start there. But certainly feel free to look around while you're here, or to open and travel.

Fellow writers may view all content, including replies and revisions, and partake in the discussion. Want to join us? Get a sense for how it works — everything from intellectual property to punctuation — then write The Rooster.

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