Picking up the Pieces

Dear all, I feel so honored to have had this opportunity to read your amazing, inspiring, fresh work. I come away from these days full of astonishment at what language can do, and how it can make someone feel and see anew. And to find you, writers who are committed to...

Sacchariferous Smile. Make eye contact. Remember that too much is unnerving. A medium amount of smiling and eye contact will do. Cut a circuitous path across the party toward her. Walk cool. Should you trip, pretend like you were briefly dancing. At the end of the...

*Apologies for another long one. I decided to try my hand at CNF. In 1960, a sixteen year-old boy receives a bullet to the brain on a residential street in a small town in New York. He is shot by a police officer. The boy dies eight days later. These are the facts....

The sorrow song of the world pauses. All these small dark rooms with their secrets, treasures in the walls. A secret within a secret within a secret, something you can never know. There are many Petersburgs. Each of them black and tasting of stone. She was allowing...

Dolores, wedged between the fetid hosiery of skin and marriage, sinks into beige, unravels and plucks from an invigorating circulation. Damn if she isn’t vertical as a dead marriage. Lunacy of intrusion. Too much noise. Fragments scatter her. Diffuse outside terror....

You’d think that in places where rain is more norm than exception, everyone would choose to always be prepared. But nobody carries an umbrella in Eugene and nobody keeps pace with time as it rushes by and stands still at the same time. How could we as it is we, not...

I’ll meet you in a deciduous forest on the outskirts of Estonia. I want to know your sisters, brothers, half-sisters, perverted Uncle. Show me your dirt. Am I tightening my upper laterals through eight-hour headstands, feeding from coconut chicken, sexing the UPS...

This post is a test to make sure the new flow is working correctly.

Some thoughts so far. What I'm seeing and experiencing is freedom in the writing, not only form but language; combining things that usually aren't combined, putting events, images, and objects together that aren't usually found together. It's startling and so very...

Houses, like people, aren’t always constrained to what they were designed to be. Some resist growth. Others expand beyond their original façade: add room, break walls, deepen foundations, and reach towards the heavens and open their doors in welcome. Owls are silent...

Let’s Play Red Flags with Lipstick Shades Siren On the day of our first date, it’s gross outmuggy and rainyso you say, “If we’d gone to the other location, we would’ve had to sit outside.” His face is enraptured by yours. “I wouldn’t have minded.” “I would’ve.” “I...

Before the invasion they planted their most beloved objects in their gardens. When the city was blasted, new roots fed on the past. The heartwood of trees was filled with pocket watches, dolls’ heads, love letters inked in cursive. Flowers bloomed with baby teeth. Her...

He hands me a glass filtered with the color of tea and weathered tourniquets. The teeming counterpoint of operatic highs and lows fill the room with pilfered yesterdays. I understand mangled life. Mom complained of the heat wave as she tugged off her heels. She headed...

The car ride home has all the festive cheer of a hostage situation, though it's unclear which of is holding the gun. At some point in the evening, every word had become a tense negotiation. All I know for certain is that this will be the last New Year's Eve we spend...

One day you say no thank you to Thanksgiving. I root them on and tell others to do the same. My identity has been accosted by infant hormones. So I start to chew away at myself. Status update: Hanging out in my big pants, waiting for the next Modern Age.

Dear all, I'm here, anticipating fragmentation, shards, pieces... The day is beautiful in California, I can see it out my window. Deleuze didn't want a systematic theory and neither do I, not today. When you're ready to post, I'm ready to read! Nina