Fiction
Earth Water
I. We named him Sean. Mom and dad had picked us up at an abandoned fire station north of town. That night, I simply couldn’t resist the clamoring and violences sparking our home: the mug mom flung...
Plenty More Rods in the Sea
Bass vibrates through the toilet door. My stomach roils. I put a hand on the clammy mirror, fighting the urge to vomit onto the floor. Deep breaths. Jesus, it’s hot. Where am I, anyway? “Excuse me,...
Poleridge
He eats for breakfast broken concrete, whale-gray, in the dregs of mineral water. His tooth snaps off. I mash my own cereal, frosted wheat, in the blue ceramic bowl that came with the house. The...
Fennel & Fescue, & Fennel
Odd brittles of black. Smeared on back of hand. A bug -- gnat, mosquito, fly? – what shortly ago working a wonder to avoid capture. Now sat where. Fescue Rodham sat alone the first of a long morning...
Maybe So
My father was long gone and I was an only child, so it was left to me to clean out my mother’s house after she passed away. I got rid of the majority of her things in an estate sale, donated...
The Materials of Us
At first, it was timid like tissue paper. Our connection. Unsure, slight. Vulnerable. It became more. Strengthened into cardboard. Sturdy. But bendable. Prone to rips. A few months...
Overexposed
A box fan droned as it held the window ajar, welcoming the stifling air that permeated my cluttered bedroom. I wrestled the temptation of sleep, sinking further into the embrace of musky pillows....
Conditioning
Today while driving the tractor, I saw a helicopter go by overhead. It had a rope ladder dangling from it. Does every helicopter come with one of them? The way it hung made it seem arbitrary. Like a...
Life Along the Mobius Strip
Cal and Bal were sitting on the ground, backs pressed together, their legs extended straight out. Their shoulders were sore, as if they were cinched together with a broad belt, the type used to...
Aftermath
There wasn’t much movement in the snow without boots, so I wore the battered, stained pair I kept beside the bed. Sliding them on and double lacing, I recalled I bought them the winter before I...
Sumac
Down the sumac path, I chase you, then step on your heel, not understanding my speed. It’s too much of this body. Your tennie slides off. You grab my arm, irritated. Stand still! I will myself to be...
Tell Me I’m Being Punk’d
It’s been an hour since you went in for surgery that could save your life, and they’re telling me it’s too early to worry. It’s been two hours since your went in for surgery that could save you, and...
Working On It
I wanted a snake, so my roommate reluctantly agreed to drive to the snake store. They have all the snakes there, from tiny little garter snakes up to giant pythons, plus the rats and mice and...
Save the Squonk
“I understand ma’am, but…if I’m honest, I don’t care. It seems like it’s survival of the fittest anyways. Weak little thing deserves to go.” Nona reached into her fanny pack. “Fine, fine. If you...
Star Crossed
The sky was ink and the stars were pinholes: white light bursting through in a magnificent sparkle. Below, in a field, fireflies mingled with the light of a film projector and the triumphant energy...
When We Were Giants
Before I knew about the rose world, I believed in things right in front of me, things I could touch and hold to my chest, manipulate with my hands and mind, and certainly not fairytales or fantasy...
Never Removed from Box
A mass-produced hunk of plastic, shaped vaguely like a human woman, but the proportions all wrong, the painted-on smile too wide, the dead eyes too big. It shouldn’t have a soul, and yet she does....
Save The Date
Miss Saskia-Chantelle Carriage and Mr Vince Process expectantly invite you to join them on their wedding day. The ceremony and celebration will begin on Friday 18th June, 2:30pm, in the Tenebrous...
Non-Fiction
Summer of Soft Deaths
I used to eat Jenny’s fresh ground almond butter straight from the tub when she wasn’t home. Jenny was my boss. Last week on my front lawn, B. told me that last Halloween they were a Wright brother....
Epiphany VIII: To Journalists & Other Good People
Why do you use the euphemisms insurrection and riot and avoid the more informative (while equally accurate) term lynch mob? Can't you drop the mask and say what's what? There was not only a noose...
The Multiverse is Made of Construction Paper
Red pieces pepper from my son’s scissors, staining the white linoleum kitchen floor. Somewhere in the multiverse, the red isn’t paper. I imagine them as fish scales in this universe, autumn leaves...
Portrait: November 4, 2024
Just like old times, I’m pitter-pattering at the Johnson Learning Center at Middlesex College on a Monday afternoon. I’m heading for a small box of free pencils, so I can work on this print-out...
Shortly after I learned about God, I turned him into Cheerios
Shortly after I learned about God, I turned him into Cheerios and blasted him to death with piss. I must have been four or five. There was a box of Cheerios in the bathroom, and my parents had...
Poetry
resistance
I fill water. I chop wood. The routine of struggle. Today, as I worked, sweat poured down my body. Tiny splinters slid into my hands — quiet, unnoticed. Later that night, I felt the sting. Not just...
A List of Poems I Intended To Write (With Notes on Appropriate Performance Considerations)
1. Collect headlines about bomb threats to libraries, because we’re choosing a timeline where libraries receive bomb threats because one time a queer wrote a book and didn’t die at the end. And also...
God Underground
God is underground. The other kids, ones surer than him and more authoritative, said so as they played in the sandbox of the kindergarten. If you dig deep enough, you will see the face of God...
What if we kissed at the Yankee Candle flagship store
and at the Holiday Inn tennis courts, and the law office that used to be a Pizza Hut? What if we convened in the parking lot of our town’s dead mall at midnight? Pretended to be...
Visit
Tuesday, June 25th The boys will run naked when they get here like Lord of the Flies. Concrete streets are all they know. Clean air will flow up their noses here. Wildflowers & roses are growing...
Nocturne for a Lottery Ticket Man
So what if the night shakes out its loneliness like a woman airing blankets and you crouch in a pool of desklamp light with your pencil and your glass of wine, the day shooting through you in a...
From a Medieval Central Asian Priest’s Son to An Imam’s Daughter
In the beginning was the word and every word was you As love turned flesh among us and reality came true. Eternity burst open like a sinner’s door to heaven. Our hands became the blasphemy of...
How Often You’ve Been Captured in the Background of Someone Else’s Photo, Selfie or Group, & Have Never Known
There’s a 42 year old monument in Georgia that gives instructions in 8 languages for how to rebuild society after an undefined apocalyptic event, because who can guess the ways...