She had heard of a projectionist in the south, a man capable of rendering dream images on silk stretched taut as her own hymen. She had heard of her own hymen. When it broke, would the pain be bearable? The gown was over her head, her head popping through the neck cut...
Issue Four
We’re Toast
I love you like the crunchy toast from that vintage metal box which stood like a sleepy guard in your kitchen when we first met, before your roommate absconded with the blender, can opener, cherry pitter, duct tape, and her own fear of dying alone. A marginal friend...
Things You Think About When You’re A Girl
The thing about being a girl in a ballad is you can’t die, because you’re already dead. Alive, alive-o: imagine being stuck singing that shite for the rest of your days. The thing about the ghosts of dead fish is they still smell like dead fish. I was a fishmonger....
A Scary Time
In the middle of the day on a Friday afternoon in the first week of August in the Summer of 1981, when I only thirteen years old, my mother accidentally put me in the washing machine with some dirty clothes and put me through two full wash cycles. At four foot eleven...
Esbos Boo
Esbos didn’t know there was anything odd about him until he started school. He asked his mother why his classmates laughed when the teacher introduced him. His mother asked him what he remembered. He remembered a forest full of trees. Wind blowing through leaves that...
Garage Pockets
At my yard sale, I promoted a pencil sharpener for 50 cents. Everything in my lawn sold out. Old records, glow in the dark bouncy balls, cigar boxes of rubber stamps, lamps shaped like missiles. I even sold a tin can full of dead earwigs, told a kid they...
Ella Grace
Ariel sat at her father’s desk and turned on his laptop. The twelve-year-old had normally used the tablet her parents had bought her at the beginning of the school year, but it needed to be recharged. She wanted to join her friends for an online game and figured her...
Beef and Cheddar with Extra Arby’s Sauce
It is one of those nights, you know the kind in which you’re far too drunk to drive the light blue Ford Focus your mom bought you as a graduation present, but everyone at the party is tunnel-visioned by the booze and the laxative-cut cocaine and the promise of sex and...
What Remains
Another female body found. Provisionally identified as: a) a forty-something prostitute last seen on a busy city street, b) a twenty-something model last seen in the elevator of her apartment building, c) a high school student last seen hitchhiking on a rural highway....
Ouch! (A Love Story)
For the hell of it he searches the web for “quirky” porn and sees his wife in bed with two clowns (actually it is on a haystack). It is her alright, 30-ish years younger. He has seen photos of her at that age. It is my Abby, he thinks, in some sleezeball film about...
The Fire
Once, she asked him, Did you hear about the hotel on fire? They were in bed late on a Tuesday. By then, he supposed, it was Wednesday. You’re dreaming, he said. No, she insisted. It was that one in Dubai that had caught fire the year before. It was blazing again, she...
Rust
Outside the café where they’d eaten lunch, he decisively turned to her and asked what color were her daughter’s eyes—her daughter was so observant, it was important to know what her eyes looked like. Her stomach tightened inside her dress, thin fabric wafting in the...
Bicycle
But did she return? Gail Scott, The Obituary 1. He paints a bicycle on her shoulder blade. Etches. The needle cadence, carves. Her red utility design, a bicycle like hers. He stretches canvas skin. She is topless, lying on her stomach, and paying for the privilege of...
Another Way
I still wonder where they went, where they are now. My father dropped me off at school that morning thirty minutes early so he could drive across the state for a new construction job, his hands squeezing the steering wheel of his old truck and a wad of dip bulging in...
the black spot is healed…
the black spot is healed… —Leviticus 13 I figure the last nursing home suspected me, which is why I was fired. But the residents’ souls spoke, and I listened. I’m proud of the people I helped in the United States of America. It was hard work. I offered transition,...
Sibling Rivalry, etc.
Sibling rivalry: a game for all the family (no it’s not) (yes it is) (that’s not fair, you always take her side) A game for 2-6 players (if you have more than 5 siblings, we suggest our Deluxe Sumo edition) Object of the game The object of the game is to covet and...
Calle de los Hijos, and Basement
Calle de los Hijos When I asked where the jarred monkey head came from, Dan said, ohhh, just from a magician friend of mine. There’s a nice garden out back, brass bed and a black cat, but there’s also a vulture claw, some petrified lizards, and a perfect alligator...
Reincarnation Has No Sense Of Time
he dies with his hands on the throat of some whore, no chance to register ‘”What…?’ before a baby girl cries, lifted from her mother’s thighs. Karma on her trail. Another time for girls, back then, she’s boiled alive, again and again, insults, drudgery, beatings,...
Scratch-Offs
Look it up in French. I’ve always wanted to put my feet up. How do you say that in French? Negligee? Negligee like the tweaker with the puka shell necklace. Tailgatin’ every car on the road with his daddy’s old Ford truck. Real old. Only gets to drive it cause daddy...
Not Like a Map
She had heard of a projectionist in the south, a man capable of rendering dream images on silk stretched taut as her own hymen. She had heard of her own hymen. When it broke, would the pain be bearable? The gown was over her head, her head popping through the neck cut...
We’re Toast
I love you like the crunchy toast from that vintage metal box which stood like a sleepy guard in your kitchen when we first met, before your roommate absconded with the blender, can opener, cherry pitter, duct tape, and her own fear of dying alone. A marginal friend...
Things You Think About When You’re A Girl
The thing about being a girl in a ballad is you can’t die, because you’re already dead. Alive, alive-o: imagine being stuck singing that shite for the rest of your days. The thing about the ghosts of dead fish is they still smell like dead fish. I was a fishmonger....
A Scary Time
In the middle of the day on a Friday afternoon in the first week of August in the Summer of 1981, when I only thirteen years old, my mother accidentally put me in the washing machine with some dirty clothes and put me through two full wash cycles. At four foot eleven...
Esbos Boo
Esbos didn’t know there was anything odd about him until he started school. He asked his mother why his classmates laughed when the teacher introduced him. His mother asked him what he remembered. He remembered a forest full of trees. Wind blowing through leaves that...
Garage Pockets
At my yard sale, I promoted a pencil sharpener for 50 cents. Everything in my lawn sold out. Old records, glow in the dark bouncy balls, cigar boxes of rubber stamps, lamps shaped like missiles. I even sold a tin can full of dead earwigs, told a kid they...
Ella Grace
Ariel sat at her father’s desk and turned on his laptop. The twelve-year-old had normally used the tablet her parents had bought her at the beginning of the school year, but it needed to be recharged. She wanted to join her friends for an online game and figured her...
Beef and Cheddar with Extra Arby’s Sauce
It is one of those nights, you know the kind in which you’re far too drunk to drive the light blue Ford Focus your mom bought you as a graduation present, but everyone at the party is tunnel-visioned by the booze and the laxative-cut cocaine and the promise of sex and...
What Remains
Another female body found. Provisionally identified as: a) a forty-something prostitute last seen on a busy city street, b) a twenty-something model last seen in the elevator of her apartment building, c) a high school student last seen hitchhiking on a rural highway....
Ouch! (A Love Story)
For the hell of it he searches the web for “quirky” porn and sees his wife in bed with two clowns (actually it is on a haystack). It is her alright, 30-ish years younger. He has seen photos of her at that age. It is my Abby, he thinks, in some sleezeball film about...
The Fire
Once, she asked him, Did you hear about the hotel on fire? They were in bed late on a Tuesday. By then, he supposed, it was Wednesday. You’re dreaming, he said. No, she insisted. It was that one in Dubai that had caught fire the year before. It was blazing again, she...
Rust
Outside the café where they’d eaten lunch, he decisively turned to her and asked what color were her daughter’s eyes—her daughter was so observant, it was important to know what her eyes looked like. Her stomach tightened inside her dress, thin fabric wafting in the...
Bicycle
But did she return? Gail Scott, The Obituary 1. He paints a bicycle on her shoulder blade. Etches. The needle cadence, carves. Her red utility design, a bicycle like hers. He stretches canvas skin. She is topless, lying on her stomach, and paying for the privilege of...
Another Way
I still wonder where they went, where they are now. My father dropped me off at school that morning thirty minutes early so he could drive across the state for a new construction job, his hands squeezing the steering wheel of his old truck and a wad of dip bulging in...
the black spot is healed…
the black spot is healed… —Leviticus 13 I figure the last nursing home suspected me, which is why I was fired. But the residents’ souls spoke, and I listened. I’m proud of the people I helped in the United States of America. It was hard work. I offered transition,...
Sibling Rivalry, etc.
Sibling rivalry: a game for all the family (no it’s not) (yes it is) (that’s not fair, you always take her side) A game for 2-6 players (if you have more than 5 siblings, we suggest our Deluxe Sumo edition) Object of the game The object of the game is to covet and...
Calle de los Hijos, and Basement
Calle de los Hijos When I asked where the jarred monkey head came from, Dan said, ohhh, just from a magician friend of mine. There’s a nice garden out back, brass bed and a black cat, but there’s also a vulture claw, some petrified lizards, and a perfect alligator...
Reincarnation Has No Sense Of Time
he dies with his hands on the throat of some whore, no chance to register ‘”What…?’ before a baby girl cries, lifted from her mother’s thighs. Karma on her trail. Another time for girls, back then, she’s boiled alive, again and again, insults, drudgery, beatings,...
Scratch-Offs
Look it up in French. I’ve always wanted to put my feet up. How do you say that in French? Negligee? Negligee like the tweaker with the puka shell necklace. Tailgatin’ every car on the road with his daddy’s old Ford truck. Real old. Only gets to drive it cause daddy...