by DS Maolalai drunk and frustrated in the kitchen at the kitchen table, explaining the rules of the card-game to my best friend’s quite lovely new girlfriend. making eye contact with chrysty and frowning, as if common sense knew how to play. perhaps a judgement with an element of unfairness – no, certainly that’s what
by Ben Nardolilli Travel brings out strange combinations for the sake of space, all improvised, my oxblood loafers sit on top of t-shirts, rolled up socks sit inside my boxer briefs, and toiletries are nestled in breast pockets. I have worn each of these items down until they became personal talismans for me, mass manufactured
by Lauren Scharhag i. We were nine, and it was the age of MASH and paper fortune tellers. Choose a color. Choose a number. Close your eyes. I will draw a spiral until you say stop. We unpopular girls sat together in the lunchroom, huddled like birds on an electrical wire, all part of the
by Millicent Accardi We amuse ourselves through the absurd March forest, comical and childish, dupes in this quarantine of looking for breadcrumbs, a pathway out. Set aside on a fool’s errand, seven times funny and infantile, the dance of the woods creating stockpiles of leaves, like court hesitators we wash tree bark And dance together,
by Peggy Landsman Now, well past the Orwellian year, I remember how slowly I walked that final week of ’83, Mulling things over, counting days down… Worrying where my long brown hair had grown to, Remembering when it tickled my ears and everything I heard was new. When it hit my shoulders, Vietnam and Johnson
By Christopher Clauss There is a lifelong benefit to action hero fantasies and the crash of toy cars, the larger than life scenarios, the sound effects uttered thoughtlessly by young boys at play lost in the fantasy of adventure, sounding almost nothing like the real thing. We are grown now, aware of the listening ears
by Nicholas Johnson The red of repeated questions and their red answers. The stacked red of chips on green cloth. Fat chance. The red shift of stars, love retreating, color of debt, red-eye express. The sick red of light through closed lids, the red sweep of the second-hand blurred lines of where you have been
by Geer Austin You moved to another state and I roamed from man to man to woman from Mulberry Street to West Street to alphabet streets, past sex workers on Delancey, where cars rattled and bumped toward Williamsburg, shaking my bones while viruses and parasites and bacteria flirted with my cells. And what I heard
by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain Within one week, three nose rings flew out of my nose, hit the floor and quickly dispersed. A month later one of them submerged from the carpeting and sky rocketed up to the ceiling like a tiny UFO. It wanted my nose to join it. Next thing I knew
by Ian Macks The Power Ranking looked good on paper because we believed too much in our teams The losses from this parlay served as my guiding light to stop living a panic attack life fueled by tempting decisions The memories linger in me like Kyle Rittenhouse on the stand Sam Darnold of a man