Read More: A brief interview with Joseph O’Malley
The writing was on the window and the sirens were blaring; Mike hightailed it around the corner, down the block, and around another corner before taking off his ski mask and stuffing it into his jacket pocket. He’d have to figure out how to muffle the rattle of the spray paint cans in the other pocket or chuck them and buy new ones for each job. He slowed to a saunter, took a deep breath, and looked around as he emerged onto Bowery; no police in sight. The sirens hadn’t been for him after all. He walked a few blocks in the midnight hum of the city, then circled back to the bank. On the bank’s floor to ceiling windows, in large blue letters, Ceci n’est pas was stenciled above the hand-sprayed words A TAQUERIA, in orange. At the bottom right, again in blue, he’d sprayed over the stencil of a little pipe and his cursive nom-de-can, pipedreamer. […]
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Joseph O’Malley’s fiction has appeared in a score of journals, most recently in Colorado Review, A Public Space, Glimmer Train, and Crazyhorse.
“Ceci N’est Pas About You” was a runner-up in the 2016 Editor’s Reprint Award and origionally appeared in Crazyhorse. Read More: A brief interview with Joseph O’Malley