I look like an ant—red as fireor one of those grease ants you might crush with your finger as it marchesacross the kitchen counter insignificant in catastrophes of my own choosing(dear god—not yours) as sentient as all wildlife the way I head for my burrow at the first orange glow of the lowering sun imagine how … Continue reading From a distance, I know* by Dale Champlin
No No thank you No thank you No thank you! Just no Just not feeling it Just not not not notno No! NO!! What part of no DON’T you understand? N O Please remove your hand Please remove your hand No None of that None Nada Nada thing Nothing Silence The Unspoken The Refusal Not the UN-Lived Not the i couldn’t care lessNot the silence of indifference or recusal nor the conspiracy of consent Not the absence of yes But no Just no No to submissionNo is … Continue reading The Other Option by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
Ten years agoin ParisYou were rapedby the tongues of peacocksand told it was Paradise Todayyou standa little left of the Mirrorfanning yourselfwith liesannouncing your own arrivalwith nothing left to say Whereis the smileyou stretched across canvasbefore you learned to paint You say nothingwith so many featherswhile I sip passionlikean elephantthrough a straw Continue reading Viens! by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko
Sing a song of sixpence spent on killingA popular hobby but never quite fulfilling I wish for day, I wish for mightTo survive the drones each night Round and round in circles, dizzy in despairStumble on a landmine and disappear Little Mohamet sat on a bucket eating a crust of stale breadAlong came a sniper with a .50 cal rifle and shot off Mohamet’s head … Continue reading A Child’s Hellscape of Verses by Gary Keenan
It’s not any kind of “shocking revelation” that what’s left of the “book business” is mostly in shambles. And that what it takes to “monetize” literature in the present is a decidedly “bread and circuses” approach. Never was that made more apparent than the advent of “BookTok.” However, with Emerald Fennell’s latest film, a “version” of Wuthering Heights (that she opted to put in quotation … Continue reading Why Emerald Fennell’s Adaptation of Wuthering Heights Is Such a Hot-Button Issue for the Stodgier Side of the Literary World Right Now (And Why It Shouldn’t Be)
When Deidre crossed Broadway against the traffic and stepped onto the curb, phone in hand, it was a transformative—albeit confusing—moment. A moment when the choice, for Henry, was to stare with stunned amazement or suddenly perform surrealist-influenced performance art. She was a good kid until she chose to manipulate and triangulate, until she was trapped in a corner, like a cheap 1950s wind-up doll, arms … Continue reading Turning the Corner by Mike Lee
Hedge fund managers hiring,Former heads of state that is, No debating on who made who great,Capital escaped the state,Gulfstream-numbers high altitudes,Worldwide Proletariat down bad, left with the weight, The infinite conservatorship,The sheep yap ‘bout concealed carry permits somewhere over there,DEI centurions caught up in they “massas’” skirmishes,The Dutch, The Hague, the truth, the way,The #1 EU_funder of a world’s sunken place,I mean placeholders, Demons backpacking from f.k.a. Middle East … Continue reading Their Hunt by August Truly
“You know we could kill all these people, and they wouldn’t even see it coming,” Aaron said, as we were walking around Nick’s neighborhood in Pelham, after getting shot at by farmers on four-wheelers in a cow field in Chelsea for trespassing to harvest mushrooms. Psilocybe cubensis, if you wanna get specific. We all just looked at Aaron, pretending to be in shock. We weren’t … Continue reading Cathedral for Bad Decisions by Dee P. R. Kay
I know I am going to regret this but I want to say something about death. Not death in general, but my own death. That event of utmost uncertainty. The luck that got me here presumably peters out, drops the ball, as it were, folds, takes one for the team and determines, by way of virtually indisputable statistical evidence, to give up the ghost. Yeah. … Continue reading Metaphysics by Robert Witmer
I keep trying to explain it to Ringo. My dog, a golden retriever. I didn’t mean to leave it behind. Not at first anyway. Ringo’s willing to fetch whatever it is, but I keep trying to explain. We just can’t go there. Private property. The law. The right to bear arms. What’s left be damned. The River Styx in your craw, my pet peeve. The … Continue reading Il Ritorno di Ringo by Robert Witmer
