We crowd around the flame, we extend our naked hands, we feel the joints in our fingers warm and crack. The smoke stains our jackets and hats with its smell.

Gabriel Blackwell’s been busy. In the past two years he’s released three books, two from Civil Coping Mechanisms, and one from Noemi Press: a book of essays and stories called Critique of Pure

1. Prayer, according to the Encyclopedia of Occult and Parapsychology, is a “means for humans to make contact with the divine.”

2. The verb “pray” is a variant on the classical Latin word

I have been trying very hard / to consider the window’s pane, / but life keeps occurring beyond it. / Two gangs who were firing .45s / at each other across our busy street / inadvertently shot a lady in the forehead.

“Hello ma’am. I presume you are the lady of the house. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Basal and I believe that I have something you’ve lost – something you’d like to get back,” he

A lady doesn’t need makeup unless it’s the war paint she’s putting on to end me. 

Juicy

            “This album is dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothin'”

                        - The Notorious B.I.G.

This is the song that

White light from the television brought me here.

Everything in this store is very far away from everything else in this store.

I pass razors and products containing ephedrine or

Yesterday, Barry Graham favored us with his Top 10 Cities to Get Drunk In, numbers 5-1, and last week he gave us 10-6 and a series of guest-additions. Below are a second set of guest entries from

Last week, Barry Graham favored us with his Top 10 Cities to Get Drunk In, numbers 10-6, as well as a series of guest-additions. Below are are his top 5, and we will follow-up tomorrow for a second

Day one, just a few hours in, and the first scratches from his insides, just a little suggestion: only a nibble.  He tries to kill the animal stuck there by gulping down water, by dousing it with

Many young novelists have been gravitating toward a movement known as the “Real Newism.” Adherents of the Real Newism assert that effective fiction requires “experiencing events.” And today, you

Yesterday, Barry Graham favored us with his Top 10 Cities to Get Drunk In, numbers 10-6. He also included a few guest entries from some of his favorite drinker/writer/travelers, and those are

We all know what getting drunk means and we all know what cities are and the title is pretty self explanatory, so I'm gonna use my obligatory top ten introductory statement to break down my

you want back to ‘93: to soft skin / & nights driving down dirt road / & the desire to still be— / breathing, you want to say / but instead you think of all the things you wish / she was not

I sat and bawled for half an hour after finishing Hill William in one swift read through this morning, beginning to end in an hour. 

Buckhorn Golf Course

36 FM 473, Comfort, TX 78013

4 out of 5 stars

This place is a real gem. Just imagine the scene: The Buckhorn Golf Course opens up before you, revealing layer

When Rob sent out pictures of Sophia, innocuous prints of her at a bar or a party, he found himself getting pictures in return. These pictures he got were never family portraits or pictures with

Walter Matthau, we assume, has had a bad day. Or a bad night. Or both. Hell, back it up as far as you want to go:  Week. Year. Fucking life. Drinking a beer in a Pizza Hut a few minutes into the

You’re beating him, he needs to protect / the plate and his at-bat, throw something / outside the zone! something he can’t / possibly hit, think how afraid he must be / of you.

I drove to the STD Clinic. I walked in and told a woman in an office through a window slightly larger than a fast food drive-thru window my name and appointment time. She handed me a clipboard with

Did you know mites are accruing primo destinies beneath my fur? Their spit glues each lover I’ve loved deeper into the next. I am a different, lesser value cajoled of that saliva. The trophies I

You will forget by your fourth birthday these your shifting first memories—your father’s goats at their graze, their black tongues slathered across your face, the chickens prancing and clucking upon the dirt of the yard, the spare trembling grasses and the crazed droning song of the grasshoppers, their brown juices streaking the lines of your palm.

I’ve been facing Sundays the same for a while now. The whole day feels like one of my quixotic childhood summers slamming shut. And, like that younger me full of dread, I’ve thrown off my sleep

Re: Re: Personal Ad #5 (A Kiss Worth Three Lives)

My father was in the war and told me never to ask
if a soldier ever killed a man.
It doesn’t matter.
On our third date I’ll order