My friend takes caffeine pills between classes and shakes in the bathroom, on the floor under the sinks.
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time playing Candy Crush Saga on the old iPhone Jan gave me while watching TV.
Nell did not consider herself a thief. All sixteen lovely pups were better off in her care. She kept them in a large house with a sprawling yard, surrounded by a sturdy fence.
The items on the list had come to her at random as she washed a dish or plucked a hair from her chin or put gas in the car.
Even his sacred biosphere (of anime, video games, Oedipal and teen porn, poststructuralist psychobabble, and grad school fellowships) can’t save him from the critical intervention of the collapsing world.
He removed a wad of fabric from under the bed, pulling on boxers and an Anthrax t-shirt. I winced at the Anthrax logo—I knew better than to fuck guys into thrash metal—too late now.
I wondered what my mother would say about the gun, and then I wondered it out loud. M gave me a look I was too worn out to interpret.
I had never considered practicing polyamory, so when my girlfriend suggested it to me, I didn’t know what to say.
Her parents, Mary and Don, were overcome first by grief and then by caution: they purchased fire extinguishers and flame retardant blankets, put the fire department on speed dial and plugged the holes in the nursery wall with corks, so that the angry neighbors could not look in and make a spectacle of their only child. Julia was their everything
Some hours pass, and nobody has impressed her
Before we entered the most raved about amusement park in the world, we went into the woods nearby . . .
John’s hands are on the wheel, very still, and he’s looking straight ahead at the dark yellow lines of Route 66.
This story is a fresh take on the proverbial phrase: go the extra mile for someone else.
It starts like this, the saddest story I know does. It starts with me and it starts with my son.
Jack Beauregard divides his time into zeroes and ones. He divides his time between mundane tasks and the question of whether he is worth loving.
We go to a bar for lunch that serves free candy.
Jared punches like dang. Gouges, arm-bars. Breaks windows at theme parties.
For the past month Wrat, a man removed from the dogtooth of language, had been hearing a scratching, needling noise clip the outmost walls.
On the job site one morning they found a dead squirrel. There was no indication of what had killed it.
When you lost the third finger, things got out of hand. I didn't know what to say to make it better, and so I made it worse
When my team scores a touchdown, I have a few seconds in the spotlight to do my dance, to captivate the crowd. I pretend in front of my flock that I don’t enjoy it but I do. I am more vain than I let on
And I would blush and kind of lightly touch his shoulder, saying oh, Robert. Just Robert, because why shouldn’t we be on a first name basis? I’ve read all his poems—I know the man
A 400-page collection of poems in fours sections: Nicki Minaj Songs, Bob Dylan Songs, Elliott Smith Songs, and 90s Riot Grrrls Songs.
FOUR NEW ESSAYS BY CHLOE CALDWELL! Plus the original essays that made you fall in love with Chloe!
Jason Phoebe Rusch is a queer writer from the Chicago suburbs. His full-length debut Dualities explores gender and patriarchy from the perspective of a man who was socialized and is currently still read as a woman. He is interested in complication and nuance and messy human failing, his own and that of others.
