Hobie Anthony received his MFA in fiction from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. He can be found or is forthcoming in such journals as The Los Angeles Review, Crate, Prime Mincer, Birkensnake, R.kv.r.y., Ampersand, Pank, Prime Number, and Palimpsest, among others. When he's not teaching or writing he can be found on one of Portland's disc golf courses. 

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 Ode to a House Named Yello

The house named Yello was a blue two-story which sat on a busy, broad avenue named Friendly. There, naked men in body paint and purple goggles ran through the rooms screaming, "Fuck George Bush," before we knew about W. Naked women sat in a halved oil drum filled with water. Fire heated the tub from below, farts the only bubbles. Residents painted murals on the walls and garden hose replaced burst pipes. It all crumbled the year our tree fell, the large black oak, the tree of wisdom, knowledge, and truth. Before the bulldozer destroyed the home, there was a gala bash. Everyone got drunk and naked. Painted women sat in the in the oil drum, waiting to boil.

Tower to Heaven

There we were, that fated morning, building a monument to ambition with big-time New York money. It was a perfect day, a day made for early-Fall baseball: cerulean, cloudless, a crisp September-blue extended for miles over the Chicago grid. There was business to attend to, numbers to crunch and plans to evaluate. The new associate, a Yalie with blonde hair, shook, trembled. A chill, she said, and the meeting began. The architects had schema, plans, prints for a building which would stop hearts, would induce labor. A secretary burst in to the meeting. Impetuous, rude. News from New York City. A plane. A building. It is serious, it's on the radio. Calls to home, voice messages for loved ones – assurances, relieved sighs. Then the vote. No one wants to be left out of democracy. Unanimous. The meeting continued, progress marched. We scrutinized every detail of the architect's scroll, from the mezzanine to the antenna-spire in the sky.

Chicago Statistics, 1995

It was still 98º at midnight. The El roared its song of joy, southbound to the Loop. There was no air, no breeze. There was no relief on the roof above the corner where bullets whizzed from automatic weapons, where blood spilled, and where staggering drunks argued in mumbles. The air stagnated, it sat on our chests like pot-bellied stoves. A handgun discharged at the same moment that the transformers blew. The neighborhood crashed to darkness and everyone shut the hell up. The bullet shattered an apartment window. A woman shrieked, her lone voice echoed from building to building and darkness masked the gunman's escape. All we could do was watch the lights blink from far off, downtown.