Franken Franc

Atkas
Holy fucking shit, man. Have you tasted this fucking wine? Brighter than like a furnace going at maximum out of control speed, like practicing knife throwing on your one true love because she's the only one who trusts you enough to hold still for you. Never mind if you cut her a couple times; they're just nicks; little nicks; little slices of adoration.
And sharp, shattered but like ok to touch because it's like only shattered on the inside or something, like between two really thin panes. Light reflects. It refracts. It gets transmuted. It gets all fucked up. It's going in so many different directions it fades out at the edges of all of them into nothing, but the nothing isn't really dark. It's more like room temperature.
They say you can identify tepid if it feels like basically nothing. 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is tepid. One or two degrees more is ok but hotter than that and you'll kill the yeast. Do not kill the yeast. Very important the yeast. The yeast is alive and it makes everything it touches alive and it makes bread and the bread keeps you alive but only once you fucking break it. You have to fucking break it with the people you want to keep close to you or they won't remember your name and they won't have any compunction about killing you to protect the people they have broken bread with if, for whatever reason, they have to.
Would you kill a stranger to save your wife? Would you kill a stranger to save your child? If you were an alcoholic and you suffered a trauma or engaged in a truly terrible act, one you'd have thought far outside your capabilities, will you immediately pour yourself a glass of Franken Franc? They say that's what happens, or else their other chosen intoxicants.

Pasille
Fury crusts over like a sugary sweet. A mad dog that chews its tail to bits, its leg to a raw useless stump, that whines pathetically, that can not understand what is happening, that would never be accepted to this grad program. What fading anger feels like the setting of the sun is actually repression sharpening and strengthening the will to cause to harm.
You, who would not hurt a fly would do more than hurt more than a fly.

Totchka
The grease is flying and the stove is hot and the convection oven is hot and the edge of its door is right at the level of your arm so one of seven times it burns you in the cleanest, thinnest trauma you've guessed at and the oven is hot and we are all at our best and we are all at our least human and we are monomaniacal in our thinking and we cling to each other and we hate each other and we are alive and we are at our must human and we are adults and we don't trust anyone over 30 without a liver problem or a problem with the inside of their septum or a collapsed vein or a pack a day habit or a gold-plated one-hitter or a flask or a mirror and razor or a sword and shield or winged sandals or a trident or who sews corn instead of grain or who showers or who can sustain a relationship or who makes it to the dentist regularly or who washes his hands before he eats or who says excuse me after he burps or who considers your feelings more than or as much as your own.
Burns last only a moment and whatsoever they put you in touch with: That thing is holy.

Won Word Wines: Merlot

Fine.