Please do not be kind to me, I think that’d be best; I’m alone and unaccustomed To any easiness. I might cease to struggle forth; I might just lose heart; For I’m tense, and your tenderness Might take me apart. I’m inflated with long patience; I fear your kind relief Might strike the balloon Of my striving grief. I’ve been propelled, light and rigid, And … Continue reading Breathed in helium… by Zeke Greenwald
Everyone owns a piece, a furrowed canopy casting dimness and light, a measureless magnitude of rapture and defeat. We are Prince Andrew at the battle of Austerlitz, on our backs surveying boundless lofty firmament. surrendering to tranquil silent drifts of stratocumuli, finding our meagerness within the scale. In temperamental squalls, tormenting dark wrinkles restless with despair, fling violent raindrops, hurtling us into prolonged deluge. But … Continue reading Sky by Thomas Wells
At one point, in the genesis of smartphone culture, the cost of an iPhone was astronomical, a luxury good intended, as always, to appeal to the rich as the initial demographic to get a taste of the future (think that prime example scene of 80s yuppie Glenn Gulia [Matthew Glave] in the The Wedding Singer coming in the house with a CD player and bragging, … Continue reading Fahrenheit 451 Vindicated Anew: On the Poor (and Daft) Being More Prone to Using Screens
…Of naive complacency—your hands— Wherein possibilities for poignant pleas and Bathetic poetry are rehearsed romantically— Hysterically—through looping piano motifs, And everyday despair. I am haunted—by hollow, harrowing Spaces devoid of dramatic redemption. Filling each frame of memory With, yet again, empty, barely defined— Rugged horizons—plummeting musical Phrases to the intersection of what once was Seen as bucolic but now a landscape found Only in—eternal ruin—hiding … Continue reading Interrupted Empathy by Syed Zaman
Somewhere she is fat & pregnant & chained to her ironing board jelly-fat swishes around her buttocks / stretch marks spanning the map of New Jersey creep along her belly & boulder breasts her hair is filled with split ends & clumped together like snakes on Medusa’s head She’s waiting for husband #2 to come home with a six-pack of Budweiser & maybe some money … Continue reading Sister by Donna Dallas
I took brandy from the sitter I placed it to my lips my tongue shrank I kept to it I took the cigarette from your mouth I took the needle pricked the vein I salved the sores that festered between my toes and inside my thighs I fought in the alleys and smoked the pipe I shared it with whoever made it back I slept … Continue reading Pureland by Donna Dallas
I feel like a broke ass po bitch from a trailer park in the Everglades I feel like I did when I was ten and Lisa Sacristan picked through my hair with a pen searching for lice but it was just dirt and dandruff Lisa for the record……… I’m on a roll save me – save me from myself I ask this sometimes when blood … Continue reading Welcome to My Barren Womb Theater by Donna Dallas
The sin has been committed. God and woman will no longer have me. Upon waking, I face the bathroom mirror nude taking stock of what remains: my eyes still colored like my eyes, my nose still straight and smooth. A glint of halogen light reflects off my left biceps as I run my fingers over my shaved head. It’s a dog and pony show. The … Continue reading Self-Portrait as Samson by Adam Hanover
All the chores you put off — clipping your nails, especially the toenails now that there’s no other man in your bed to gripe when they scrape. Like getting tested. At least you don’t have to do that anymore — sure the bed’s maximum occupancy won’t change. The parts of you, physical and ethereal, that might urge you back to the hunt have all been … Continue reading Clipping by Timothy Robbins
