We don’t choose to exist on this earth any more than we choose who our mother might be. Accordingly, Melissa Broder’s latest, Milk Fed, wields Mother as the crux of Rachel’s daily struggle. Just three years after the release of The Pisces, Broder is building on an oeuvre of highly specialized neuroticism. The kind, they say, is unique to the Semitic mindset. And oh how … Continue reading When Will You Accept Yourself?: Milk Fed
Was I ever anything but shadowcast on a prison wall? I’ve forgotten,how home can be anything but a cage full of silhouettes—people’s screen-lit formsflitting through my days like grief-stricken ghosts Each connection’s grown so cold absent of touch, will I remember warmth, too long removedfrom the sun, the world—all those people trapped inside? Will I know when I’m found chained to my laptop, watching life—afraid.I’ve lost … Continue reading Let me be more than a flicker, a distant face seen across zoom. by Joshua J. Hines
I tumble over stormbad seasSandwiched betweenThe clouds and the deep.It’s been a terrible tripLasting foreverAnd I long for the safetyOf your harbor. Sweetly asleep I soon shall beAfloat on currents of wind and rainUntil the final sea-change. Weaving through the hazeWary gulls avoid my gaze.I wish they’d tell meWhat finally happenedTo dear old dirty Sinbad. Continue reading Sinbad’s Lament by Ron Kolm
It’s 2019 and I’m so rich I don’t hurt anymore I have an unlimited metrocard and the new romper from everlane and some really nice ravioli I ate the ravioli last night each bite costs $5I sent a tweet about political correctness and tried not to act vain If anyone’s out there do I really have to keep doing this? I found myself in a different life a world where you never got up and went to work before mewhere you retired before you … Continue reading Poem by Emily Grace
Although released four years apart, there can be no denying that Halle Butler’s debut novel, Jillian, is now like a “sister book” to The New Me (you know, the way Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore are “sister albums”). Variations on a theme, if you will, and an extremely grim one. Even if there are actually freaks in this world who–in the wake of corona “forcing” … Continue reading Invented Work and Patheticness…Not Amplified, But Described As Office Life Truly Is: Halle Butler’s Jillian and The New Me
the keyto your heartsnappedin the lock Continue reading corrosion by David Romanda
Gas is cheaper on the Jersey side of the Palisades Parkway.By law you can’t fill your own tank.The station attendant recognizes me, asks how I am.He knows I am headed to the hospital.Magical thinking is a fifty/fifty proposition. Window rolled down, it’s all fumes.Have a good day, he says. As always.I saw him top off in the sideview.Costs more. Bad for the tank. Barely room for … Continue reading Regular by H.E. Fisher
She sat awhilelooking at a speck of dust on her pantyhose. Then she thought about headsrotting on spikes. Continue reading Donna by David Romanda
The excitement surrounding Joan Didion’s release of a “new” book called Let Me Tell You What I Mean needn’t be mitigated by the fact that it is a collection of older essays (previously unreleased, therefore everything old is new again), gathered from 1968 to 2000. For Didion is perhaps at her most signaturely eviscerating during this period, and one wonders if a release of truly … Continue reading Joan Didion Knows Where to Cut: Plucking Flowers With “Pretty Nancy”
