I fold the duvet the way my mother ironed my father’s shirts.You could tell she wanted him to love her for it. Bed is my nirvana—softand feathery as a push-up bra I fluff up the pillows—recall last night’s catastrophe. That’s why I don’t want to remember dreams. They can be disturbing.Wakefulness is the planet I count on,my mother blood. Now that my father is deadmy mother no longer irons … Continue reading Making the Bed by Dale Champlin
I have had two telephone callstodayso far the first person told methat he doesn’t want to liveanymore the second told methat she cannot find a single wayto be happy it is not yet eleven in the morning Continue reading Telephone Calls by Steve Denehan
this generation longs so to be famousnot knowingcelebrity loses a certain something under the flash of your own cameranot seeingI only steal because I cannot appreciate anything until it is my own Do you twig? you can have the best legs in the whole Baptist churchyou can watch them try not to sigh and lurchin your direction it’s God’s will they should look awaysomething more … Continue reading Best Legs in the Baptist Church by Dana Miller
I could smell fame and greatness coming since I was the smallest child.I was never built for your tiny version of events.I smelled the potions in the dew, The spell-telling roses twining round the terebinth, teashur and tamarisk trees… All the verve the Vivacaine had lent—couldn’t half match me.And yet here I am, holding all your hours…And here I am, Ophelia fresh out of flowers… Be … Continue reading Marmaduchess by Dana Miller
they started following you a couple weeks agoyou were eating chia seeds for breakfast and they liked itfrom then on, you took them everywhere you went in your pocketand you felt a little less alone your followers came with you to the supermarketwatched you pick out a zero plastic toothbrushthey lay beside you on your pillow as you whispered in the darkgrowing closer with every story you shared you … Continue reading Follower by Emma Jo Black
I reach for him.My hand extends,touches a blank wall.Shadows streak across it like puppets striking each otherwith kitchen implements.I glimpse a spinal columnin the shallow end of the pond.I reach again, not to save, but to touch.We are two opposing waters,waves in between.I remember him as a troubadour,but I no longer hear his music. I have reached the day’s midsection,a day once swollen with possibilities,now an … Continue reading One Swollen Day by Suzanne O’Connell
Is there a chance that California’s capital is crying out in some way for its dead daughter? The only so-called “high-value star” of its show? Is that why the town—usually referenced solely as a footnote to where Didion is from—is now only being mentioned on an international scale for serving as the site of a second mass shooting in the span of a month? It’s … Continue reading This Ain’t Joan Didion’s Sacramento (And It Never Was)
Your agony is flowingin my veins,the accumulating residueof thousands of decades,of women entrappedwithin allotted spheres. In the name of protection,you were banished awayfrom the stimulus of Londonwhich had allayedthat innermost lonelinessof the emancipated. A new type of atticengulfed your fragile frame,so every woman is made to believethat madness is the outcomeof intellectual freedom. Continue reading Virginia Woolf by Susie Gharib
Long before Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady) from The White Lotus were flaunting their book covers, we had Katarina Stratford (Julia Stiles), the “tempestuous” lead character in 10 Things I Hate About You. And, being that the movie was an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, it’s only fitting that there should be plenty of literary nods throughout. Including the fact that Kat herself is … Continue reading The Literary Nods of 10 Things I Hate About You
