Author: Qu Literary Magazine

  • Catch Me If You Can 

    Everything seems peaceful and under control. We sit on the floor of our apartment, wooden blocks and toy trucks passing between us as we create projects guided by Aaron’s imagination. A fanciful, even abstract, version of the George Washington Bridge rises from the wooden floor in tribute to the most recognizable landmark of our neighborhood.…

  • Seven Ways to Slake Your Thirst 

    Maybe you’re ten years old and manning a lemonade stand with your best friend. You’re wearing a rectangle-shaped lavender sundress you love that will not fit by next summer, because you’re at that age when growth is suddenly relentless and in all the wrong directions. Did you lug your boom box—one of your prized grown-up possessions—to the corner to liven up the scene, turn…

  • The First Time I Kissed a Girl

    I thought Jesus had blown out my tire like taking aim with a rubber band across the median a line between homosexual thoughts SNAP homosexual actions one last warning shot before damnation I felt the thunk before I saw it shaking the entire Subaru thick black rubber spiraling off behind me in the rearview mirror…

  • A Seahorse’s Short Manifesto on Romance

    I choose the vernacular of dance—a small silent s, and sway with you in oceanic nothingness like an aquatic spirit, ethereal, letting form define me. I do not have to speak. In the curve of your body, there is no such thing as secret. I know you without knowing. A mystery— each morning, you appear,…

  • A Seahorse’s Short Manifesto on Romance

    I choose the vernacular of dance—a small silent s, and sway with you in oceanic nothingness like an aquatic spirit, ethereal, letting form define me. I do not have to speak. In the curve of your body, there is no such thing as secret. I know you without knowing. A mystery— each morning, you appear,…

  • Pyrophytic

    The woods are ablaze. We sweat in our greens and yellows, digging a line amidst clouds of fire-chaser beetles. Our arms become our Pulaski’s as we hew to the black. At first, we took selfies of the flames shooting from our drip torches, the pines combusting. But when the burned deer and bear cubs limped…

  • Starring Reality

    In the beginning, there was lite beer & fried chicken, a potato salad with   too much mayonnaise, a couch-bound man chained to college pigskins. There was a myth   … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

  • Metaphors for a waxing crescent

    A mammoth grub. A glazed croissant. Everything you wish had come full circle. A boat of ghosts rerouted by Charon. The concluding parentheses you always forget to add. Hope’s rib. A winter runner’s frosty eyelash. Your first sledding hill. One of God’s alleles. The toggle of a … [Click here to purchase a copy of…

  • Tender perennial

    Red Canna, Georgia O’Keefe, 1924 You, stranger, beside me on the hard, wood bench, lift your eyes to the canvas mirror on the dead white wall—my garden plot, my solitary blossom bed. Petal portal flames feral red. It is always summer here, and every color layers fire, even chalk-white curves and fecund violet. Fix your…