At first, you think it’s going to be that old cliché:  men and their brown liquors sitting in leather chairs in front of fireplaces, fiddling with models of ships and speaking their “big important

The first time my neighbor's place burned to the ground, I wasn't his neighbor, but he told me about it.  

Tritina: Die

Our lives, the lyrics of ‘Die! Die! Die!’
Less the scenes in Die Hard or Die! Die!
My Darling! or Juliet Montague’s “when he shall die,”

The way we feel when the

"For three years I lived on a 28' 1975 Carver Mariner."

My Spanish was always too slow to impress my father. I tried not to learn it to spite him. But  that was like not swallowing water in your mouth when there’s no place to spit it out. 

Desireé Panda and the Lee Van Cleefs

A murder dinner for beckoning.  Let’s have a grave way with phonics.  Let’s tangle bright inside one another.  Holding forks, holding knives.

Come out

I’ve gotten in the habit of writing these long email invitations and party reminders for parties I host at my place. Here’s from my 2nd Annual Holiday Festival party. I’ve got a Cherry Tomato

Megan Martin is the author of Sparrow & Other Eulogies (Gold Wake 2011). Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Caketrain, >kill author, The Collagist, and la petite zine.  She lives and teaches in Cincinnati.

As a writer, what draws me to wrestlers, superheroes, etc is probably what you pointed out, that when we first encounter them, they are overtly flat characters, cardboard. So I have a chance, even an obligation, to dig in and root around and find the human, expose him or her. Once we see someone else not as a caricature but a person, we can reflect off them, compare ourselves to them, feel empathy or disdain or any of the myriad of human reactions that matter. But we can’t just shrug and go, “Ah, janitor.”

Good evening. I just ate eggs. Breakfast for dinner, is what Robin called it. Is there such a thing as dinner for breakfast? I’m sure some jabony has fired-up a cheeseburger and fries at 8 a.m.,

Let’s follow Holger home, they said, and burn his house down.

We were under the bridge. We were trolls; we were engineers. We were MacGyvering a raft for the rat we’d rescued last night. Clumps

After a couple of Martinis, // one may regard oneself pleasantly pixelated. / I cure nerves with a ten-hour Netflix binge, // then curve my vertebrae to you / while our phones update.

The value of a cash gift is on its face, and that, in some circles, is the value of the giver.  But excuse me, the value of a $130 vegetable peeler is $5.99.

Have you traveled abroad?  I’m sure

comic by Oliver Bendorf

Washer and dryer as hapless duo, / each crashing and beating the other // to shit, idiot tandem: all this / while standing in place.

Carnie lives among piles of porcelain and Tupperware in a storage locker near Conneaut. She lost her job at the prison and then her house was foreclosed upon. Most of the practical things she owned

EVERY DAY IS SUNDAY

I go to call her for the ribs recipe but then I think how she doesn't respond to my jokes so I go to text her instead. And what I say goes like this: you used to make

Stanley K owns a small radio shop on Forest Avenue in Lakewood. 

I walk in, having not seen him in 30 years. 

“Stanley!” I exclaim, “how are you?!” 

“For virtue of your smile, here!” he

18. You will understand and properly use the term “brown out” in every day conversation.

You know him. You love him. He's Gabe Durham. His new book is FUN CAMP and it's a ball.

It's a collection of short monologues, letters, and lists, all from the minds, voices, and pens of

"We’re sorry. We’re not sorry. It was that kind of year, our year in the dumpster, our year in the occult, our year of the amateur séance."

I don’t know why, but until I went to her door our neighbor Marie hadn’t spoken to me in more than a year.  I usually only see her in passing, but when I do she keeps her head low and doesn’t look

For weeks I thought only of this We are a body We will come undone A table of snow and a table of sorrow A tea that smells of a house burned down

They must have been in Georgia already.  Mile-high pine trees loomed just above titanium light poles.  Rain was coming down at the car in a funny, sideways sheet.  Misting over the windshield.  

Accompanied a young couple for the euthanization of their young terrier earlier today. People can be so odd at times.

I’ve set aside some money in the past few months, with no plans for

The following are direct quotes from the lost episode of Breaking Bad.

Summary: This episode, "The Room," depicts the depths of friendships and relationships in one life and raises life's most