I made a call
and I lived.
It was the longest
life of my life.
In the past two years, three noteworthy and talented authors have each gained national acclaim for their groundbreaking releases in 2020 and 2021: Emily K. Michael’s Neoteny: Poems (Finishing Line
2 is the grade I was in when I thought I loved Lucy. 2 is the number of times Lucy was arrested for meth in a single day. 2 is the number of Xanies she must have taken the night she showed up to my welcome home party, because she was fucking sloppy.
In December 1969, the fate of thousands was discovered through televised lottery. All three-hundred and sixty-six days of the year, including the 29th of February, had been typed on one-by-four-inch
I think Westerners, and Americans especially, struggle with “autofiction” since their conceptions of self are so fixed.
“Now look what you did,” I said with a cliched kind of obvious indignity.
Do you remember the names of everyone you swallow
A man walking in the dark, out of the light of the lampposts, for instance, seemed to be approaching us. I imagined he was going to ask us for a light, or the time, or directions, something bland and traditional. He might also have wished us physical harm, or at least wished to make our valuables his own.
One of your axolotls has eaten the other
and every week you clean its twenty-litre tank
of cannibal excrement.
When snow reaches a certain height it begins to feel as though it will soon absorb you, take you and make you a part of its frozen essence.
Here’s the plan: we’ll become high-class prostitutes. “Courtesans,” I say, “like ancient Greece.”
I hadn’t attempted to drive away. I remained there. I was prepared to take my punishment. I thought that should count for something.
i look like eurotrash
in your red sweatshirt
and blue sweat shorts but
Jay arrived once a week, every week, for sex. He was a dental student, worked Wednesdays at a clinic near my house so it was easy for him to call to see if I was free. I made sure that I was. He
During the pandemic, I became — and as someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, I don’t use this word lightly — obsessed with a TV show called Prodigal Son. The most important character to me, Lou
tree tree tree tree calvin calv hobbes
with an introduction from Matt Bell
I know that I should be sad, or at least look sad, or somber, as I go through the things in Johnny’s room.
A man was arrested for creating a labyrinth in an IKEA.
DeMisty Bellinger is the rarest of writers: the poet-novelist. She edits poetry at Malarkey Books and Porcupine Literary, but she’s also known for her incredible prose. (Despite what you read later in
Maybe they know the malignancy of a living plant, like the soldier’s potted cyclamen or Sylvia Plath’s tulips, devouring the air, their red mouths filling the room with noise.
doesn’t know how to give a PROPER blowjob
The spittle
of the sea
otherwise known as Jamaica Pond
dries hard on her eros:erring:elbow still deeper
resonating
in her
At three months shy of 36—one year past my baby deadline—I was nowhere near finding someone lasting
I don’t respond and two hours later he sends a photo of the dog.
Wary, ever vigilant, we peered into the berries for the blind white cursor blinking in an ecstasy of juice, carving invisible holes from the inside out.
Alice sighs in the way only British people can sigh. Maybe it’s all the rain they have inhaled.
the split ends of your hair catch fire
and race each other to your scalp.
We went back and forth, hyping each other up, talking about the best summer of our lives and how we would never be this young again and if we pet an alpaca everyone would be jealous.
Wind, always strongest by water, whistles and whooshes, knocks a girl off her feet.
