From my childish perspective it seems perfectly safe: I think I see my reflection on the pool’s bottom. Plenty shallow says my malleable brain, brain not yet taught to swim. Then a magical vision emerges: I view myself happily hopping in the way kids do a wading pool. So I toss my flabby body unwittingly into the deep end, eight feet to the bottom bound. … Continue reading Drowning by Thomas Piekarski
Lady of Pain, pardon my lugubrious flippancy, my jaundiced naivety – but it’s this struggle against all that is pointless and how it wears me thin. It’s this emotional poverty I carry as if a sack of broken clocks and trinkets. I’m like a man with a stone in his shoe setting out on a long walk. Wherever I go I hope I never get … Continue reading Pardon Me by Bruce McRae
While we were nestled together, You would lie sound asleep, while shadows danced upon the eggshell walls. I was awake. Inching closer, I used to place my head next to yours, on the pillow – Inhaling your lightning bug hair. Kronos had already marked these days, though. But, there I was in this moment, so blissfully unaware. Years have gone by and you’ve moved farther … Continue reading Lightning Bug Hair by Haylee Massaro
It started with Eve in the Garden. A look, a taste of such delicious fruit — Before the curse, names like hamor and gamel rolled off Adam’s tongue. After, the taste for naming remained: melons — grapefruits, lemons— pear hips, orange peel thighs, peach, pomegranate, cherry. With this, man becomes master of the garden. Paradise regained. A lick of his lips, a whistle, a hiss. Continue reading A Taste For Naming by Marissa Glover
It’s difficult to talk about the work of David Leo Rice and not mention his natural predilection toward painting all of his protagonists as spectral (sometimes quite literally, as the dead narrator of “Joey in Vermont” in The Opiate, Vol. 2 showed us). His knack for the details–cutting to the core of what “minutiae” really means–only enhances the natural hyper-surreality of his style and preferred … Continue reading David Leo Rice’s A Room in Dodge City Offers A Place in Antiutopia
For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. —Psalm 84.10 Last night I dreamt a strange, clear dream as some dreams, Christine, are. Your old jazz beau, paler than smoke sat playing his guitar. And as he did, I watched one hand … Continue reading In Thy Courts by Mark Mansfield
The yellow baby loves the noise of his rattle I hate the noise Don’t worry, I won’t make my feelings known Life is an interruption followed by a nuisance followed by an annoying noise followed by the death rattle Continue reading Noisy by Wes Civilz
Grimes, presumable author name Claire Boucher, isn’t like other famous waifs (well, maybe not all of them were waifish) when it comes to the book publishing scene. Rather than churning out a memoir for financial gain, it seems that Grimes is actually planning to invest the twenty to twenty-five years necessary to create a true masterpiece. And with her scholarly background, citing such classic literature as … Continue reading Of All The “Precious” Celebrity Book Releases, Grimes’ Forthcoming Novel Will Probably be the Least Vexing
When Fledgling first came out in 2005, it once again put Octavia E. Butler on the map as an author. Capitalizing on the then current zeitgeist of the vampire story (the Twilight series was released on October 5 to Fledgling‘s September 8), Butler’s writing style throughout often smacks of the sentiment, “I need a paycheck.” Its rather on the nose motif of the old guard’s contempt … Continue reading While Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling is Mostly a “Sophisticated” Twilight, One Can At Least Glean That the Vampire/Human Relationship is an Allegory for Slavery
The grey slate windowed walls rose like cliffs on every side, a strip of sky traversed by flying spans, staircases to higher and lower levels, railcars weaving on steel beams. The man-boy was hungry and on every side were ground-level windowed gatherings where squat-faced men sat in rows at counters, staring out at him with full mouths. The man-boy was in a strangest land. He … Continue reading The Eater (Ormstrongt Xperimant #9) by David Z. Morris
