I. / A yawning / Pitbull puppy / dipped in gold.

Writers in M.F.A. programs assume, and are often told, that teaching means time away from writing—that after responding to their students’ work, professors rarely have energy left for their own

The boy has horrible teeth and a bicycle. They’re yellow, his teeth, and after school the children take a tree branch to his mouth.

–

His bicycle painted in bird shit: he rides for hours

My Little Ponies™ and the Search for the Blue Crystal
or
Breaking Brony
A cross-genre work of fan fiction

The sun rises on the great and beautiful land of Equestria. Applejack trots

*
i'm gandhi on the beaches
of northern california
i take comfort
in the fact that
the government watches me
on public transportation
i can relax
i want to stop a subway
between

Hobart: We’ve seen each other at the last couple Mission Creek festivals in Iowa City, and it was there that we got to talking this last year a little about your new book, surfing,

In sandtiger bellies, the young eat the young. You could fit a new-hatched sandtiger pup in your hand, but you shouldn't; they are pink, squishy cartilage, knife-tip teeth, and only the first one survives, chasing siblings down uterine hallways: hide and seek to death. After eating all his brothers, the last one standing sucks yolk like CapriSun from his sharkmom's eggs. By the time the sharkmom gives birth, the pup is the size of a six year old child. 

It’s pity sex for both of us, me and Karen and her glass eye, in a motel room off the interstate.  

The American stillborn sense of justice has worn its grave so truthfully all things pious count no more and didn’t then. We want poignant documentaries, exposes of humanitarian needlework to rally

burrow

you traced along the freckles on my back
with black ink,
like a crumpled constellation

i looked at the picture and smiled,
like a lonesome girl reading her diary aloud to an

As I write this, on a Friday afternoon in early August, the Phillies are losing 7-2 in Washington, and Scott Hairston is walking up to the plate to pinch-hit for the Nationals. My phone is

you can call me the Boom Doctor

I have your emptied-out torso on the operating table

It is not easy to remove a heart with a spoon from the chest of a man, nor is it clean. The spoon was purchased 48 hours earlier from the Bed, Bath & Beyond on 9th Street. The Nicole Miller Moments 5 pc Flatware Set was $24.99. The salad fork, dinner knife, dinner fork, and soup spoon were disposed of. Only the teaspoon remained.

“Go back to sleep,” I hissed at Perry. It was 2:00 in the morning and we were in our newly purchased condo in Mammoth, sleeping in twin beds in the only room that was habitable. The other two

Tops Like Arrows

Dan’s Trans Am smashed into the guardrail,
him doing 75, all hopped up
on Dexatrim and Coors Lite.
I remember him, my younger brother,
 grabbing his fleshy waist when

I’m wet and wearing white pants
I’m wet and wearing
White pants.
I’m wet and
Wearing white
Pants. I’m wet

Pants.  I’m wet
I’m wet and wearing white pants.
Wearing white
I’m wet

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

I dreamt about walking around Ikea by myself and buying a lime green ice cube tray. I drive to the post office and pick out a large flat rate shipping box. I put the ice cube tray inside and I

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."

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

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. 

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.”