I’ve never been in a tornado. But the landscapes of my childhood dreams were ravaged by them. Brought on by the trauma in my waking hours, my tornado dreams were prolific, and proved to be, prophetic. The first, an EF-1, to spin its massive cone into my dreams, did so...
Issue Twelve
The Truth or Something Like It
I met Joe Nuxhall a few weeks after my fifteenth birthday. His hands were gnarled, and he spoke as though his mouth was half full of marbles, but he was sharp and funny as hell. I was only a few months younger than he was when he made his Major League debut....
Lithosphere
My phone screen reads: Magnitude 3.7. The shaking lasts only a few seconds. I’m an amateur seismologist as well as real estate expert, like any good Californian. Californians both old and new are preoccupied with the security of the ground and the space on that...
Blood Histories
At one point in history, there was a girl who saved herself from history. How pretty she was is not important. Which of her parents sent her out into the world—inconsequential. What does matter is that she did the opposite of what she had always wanted because what...
risperidone; Mantis religiosa; A Constant Reminder of Pain, His Likeness on Cloth
risperidone body flawed vessel groin heart tussle my mother dies blue eyes sunken yet gaze unbroken my mother dies hand a closed fist mind exposed wish my mother dies disembodied voices stand in for bad choices my mother dies dozen missed calls padded rooms white...
**Some Good Features (Amazon Review)
Came decently wrapped and on time. Impressed at first with some good features i.e. saucepan eyes, curls, bubbly burps. Teasable/coaxable/soft. Still looks fine though curls long gone. Disappoints over time. Used intensively without much success - unable to get across...
Monologue of a Boy Asking Suicide to Stop Playing Its Songs of Sorrow
don’t categorize it as aloneness solitude is me not wanting to enter me A deserted house I stop by, I linger, but never enter This It’s rather a room I’m inside already A cell Life-sentence Borders that open to hidden ways out the country Lonely is the world Without...
How Melba Got Her Groove Back
Melba had thought she was too old to be possessed by a demon, that this sort of thing only happened to young people living in cobblestoned colonial neighborhoods, or new housing developments built over Native American burial grounds, not to retired persons living in...
Misguided Prophets
The Sibyl Was Too Old To Go To A Beauty Counter There was a home for the prophets that couldn't remember their names anymore. This could only push the mimics into cages to see if they could swirl the leaves with their tongues and make God-given mistakes. There...
A Cacaphony of Lovers
My first was a lover of balloons – fast up, deflating slowly, achingly. Next, a magician, always kept something up his sleeve to tantalise and tease. Until, one day, the rabbit he pulled out was dead. I indulged other tastes with Clarice, a fire-breather and spinner –...