Tag: Issue 13

  • Antartica

    CHARACTERS: PATTY – Female, a faded beauty. JOHN   – Male, her husband. POSTMAN  – Male.  Early 20’s, careworn yet idealistic. SETTING: A Desert.  Nothing but sand.     JOHN and PATTY sit on lawn chairs, fanning themselves.   PATTY It’s hot. JOHN Mm. PATTY Do you remember when we first came here? JOHN Mm. PATTY…

  • The Bee That Declared a War

    CHARACTERS Tiffany Yamón Upchurch                 23 Years Old. Black. Joshua Aaron Rosenberg                 27 Years Old. White. Time December 2015, Around Midnight Setting and Context “The Rochester” is based on a real apartment complex in St. Louis, Missouri. Between late 2015 and early 2016, ownership of “The Rochester” changed hands.…

  • Brooklyn

    Give me your weary-to-the-bone American Dream myth and I’ll give you the cab driver in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn who says that he’s a secular Muslim, Ottoman Turkish, and not the sort of man who spray-paints Allah Akbar as imprimatur on the brick street beside the Paris dead. But, instead, the sort blathering on about the…

  • survival float

    With my arms clasped across my chest, wrist atop wrist bitten fingers emboss bloodied half-moons onto crisscrossed palms. I try to achieve buoyancy, name this practice absolution, the conquering over the waves. A man passes by, smile reaching all the way to his gentle eyes and asks me if I know that I’m signing the…

  • Touch Starvation

    It is safe to go outside so I brush my cats on the rusting balcony to avoid their winter coats matting into the fibers of the carpet. I pull away handfuls of white watch the morning breeze blow it away like a cottonwood snow imagine a bird’s nest made only of fur delicately woven together.…

  • Last Seen Leaving Campus with Unnamed Male

    Outside the search area, a wheat field whisks away sound. A cross on a collarbone shines in sunlight like an unseen beacon. When the wind blows over her at night does the wind know she is already gone? Does she know? Of course not. Death only troubles the living left behind to feel it. Beetles…

  • A Marriage of Lies and One Truth

    The night we first met, I wasn’t living in a ‘78 station wagon lurking in the playground shadows of the parking lot. You weren’t drunk that night when you told me what love meant and that it most resembled me. Wind on my face doesn’t remind me of the summer nights I’ve surrender to wild…

  • The Only Girl I Ever Loved

    You had the heart of a hummingbird, the tongue of a hornet. Sweet sting. I tried to be a flower for you, or a nectar. Sickening. I can’t help but be attracted to disaster. You had the hands of a sculptor; I placed myself between them, wet clay. I wanted you in me ……………maneuvering my…

  • Yard Sale

    I select a dented copper kettle, a silver fork …………..scrolled with acanthus leaves to add ……………………….to the anarchy in my cupboards. This cream pitcher etched with trailing vines, …………..inscribed Mark and  Janine, 1991, could ……………………….hold miniature roses. On a rack I sift through a jumble of silk dresses, …………..threads secreted by caterpillars who ……………………….gnawed mulberry leaves,…