I spun my red convertible sports caron your dead-end streetto return to my house to get my red lipstick,because without it, I feel naked, but am I? While rummaging through my vanity drawer,my face caught the mirror:a different me—wrinkled face and lineswhere my rosy lips used to be. This pattern continuesfor the rest of my life—the imagining of me as someone else—sometimes my mirrorshows my duplicate: … Continue reading Lipstick by Diana Raab
“Can’t you write something your grandmother could read?” Mother West Coast, a home—a stately Cape Cod house. BABY—what, exactly am I missing? Eros.Face it.Love. Confess IT. The spouse!His flaws? Corporate climbing.Yours? Kissingrubescent lips…(Psilocybin soaked sex?) East Coast met That Boho—yes?No love lost. Think of BABY, first. And the Windex?Yes.Just confess. The Tarzan Lover. The cost. Baby sleeps. Tarzan melts your sheets? What if! The Jones. Relapse. Fix. Nothing finer—he’s firm, Golden, a warrior?A gift. … Continue reading The Visit, Summer Sonnet—‘95 by Vicki Whicker
Day 56 in quarantine, no touch or hugsor handshakes with the friends whobring me produce and take away trash. Brief conversations through the screeningon the porch as they stand at their car.Is ten feet sufficient distance in a breeze? We’re all in this together separately,reading, relying on the internet for newsand entertainment, facsimile of connection. Some of us are more alone. No humansto share a … Continue reading Diary Entry, May 10, 2020 by Joan Mazza
East Coastians would likely balk at the term “California literature” as being an oxymoron. And yet, that’s precisely what Joan Didion carved out for herself as a genre. Yes, there were others who had written about California before her—John Steinbeck and Nathanael West come to mind (even Raymond Chandler, for the less hoity-toity)—and all just as negatively through the guise of “poetic darkness.” But none … Continue reading Is It the End or the Beginning of California Literature Now?
There aren’t many authors left whose long-awaited work you can continue to yearn for while they promise that “maybe” “one day” it will come. All of these types of writers hailed from the twentieth century (including J. D. Salinger, half-taunting his readers with the prospect of releasing his next Glass family saga every so often before finally kicking the bucket). Whereas a writer trying to … Continue reading “Is That the Blue You’re Using?”: Eve Babitz and the Undermining of the “Didion Approach” to California
O to live on the wild isle of CreteIn a house by the Aegean seaFind sleep to the waves in their sighingString verses to the beauty of thee. From Chania to Sitia is a long roadPast the sun-dappled sea all the wayPast the snow-kissed Mount PsiloritisWhere the gods plot their intrigues and play. To walk the long gorge of SamariaIs to find a lost faith … Continue reading In Crete by Alexander Lowell
I want to stop thinking about $plagues me like it’s a deathan endshrouds any sense I could have had Bills gotta get paidI try to conjure up a geniefrom this lanternrub away at thesmooth brass carvingsthey meant somethingin another life perhapsnot this onenot this dayas I weepimpoverished Rub my fingers togetherfeel a grainy scrapeno dollars appearlook to the cloudsbloated and grayif I had a nickel … Continue reading Dollars by Donna Dallas
While there are so many unexpected aspects of The Bitch Who Stole Christmas–namely, that it exists at all–maybe the most unexpected is what a quiet (if not eviscerating) champion it is for print magazines. All, of course, while mocking the shit out of how antiquated it is to even try to run one. As a writer for Gorge Magazine (ah yes, always the innuendo with … Continue reading The Bitch Who Stole Christmas Shades Print Magazines, While Also Showing Reverence for Them as They Exist in the Hallmark Version of the Present
