My lover is walled into silence. I used to sit by the trash cans in my back alley smoking a joint while no one was looking. I called it desperation. My silence was all-consuming—too early pregnant—looking at gravel in the potholes back there and the neighbor’s dog wiggling and whining for a cuddle. Can you imagine? I wanted to swallow the back gate, the garage, … Continue reading Pregnant and Screaming by Dale Champlin
As Lindsay Lynch (easy to misread as Lindsay Lunch on the book cover) does tell it, her drive to write the novel that became Do Tell stemmed from the media headlines that were percolating circa 2016 to 2017. And especially at the end of 2017, with the #MeToo movement being resparked (Tarana Burke had already coined the phrase and its meaning in 2005) amid Ronan … Continue reading Do Tell Is All About Showing…How The Past Is Prologue
Sometimes. Sometimes at night,When dreams won’t come,And sleep feels far away,And visions of the past mistakes,Lay at my feet and keep me up,Playing games that only sleep can play.Think about the things I’ve done,And things I might wish back,But wishes cannot change the past,Power to affect the past,the wishes always seem to lack. Lakes are holes of consequences,Filled with tears shed in regret,While rivers run … Continue reading Sometimes by Rich McFarlin
A dream awake stale airSliding in and out of consciousnessBetween dream and awakeDizzy nauseous feelingsOf regret and satisfactionThe night is a blank slateBetween self and midnightDrinking too much before workPlight of being humanOf sunken eyes black dotsNot quite passed outNot quite awakeGarbage pile mattress Continue reading At Starbucks Working, Passed Out on a Pile of Garbage After a Night of Excessive Drinking by Issac Cordova
Bugs inside my head,In a near exploding moodMy body was a road withBugs driving all over my skinYou try many of times, the gum,The type of twelve-step addict stuffThe turkey is frozenColder than ice thenAnd I’m going coldAll the bugs come backBugs crawling through everySweat gland in my bodyThen you yell randomlyAt people on your side.My pops had a glass vialWith a cigarette and a … Continue reading Break Glass in Case of Emergency by Issac Cordova
As trouble in “paradise” inevitably keeps mounting for the Bradshaw/Shaw reunion, it was plain to see that things were already going to be majorly problematic when Aidan’s (John Corbett) ex-wife, Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt), called Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) to arrange a little sit-down. Although she tried to tell herself (and her friends) it wasn’t weird, Carrie is no stranger to the uncomfortable revelations that arise … Continue reading On That And Just Like That… Moment, Or: Asking A Writer Not To Write About Certain People Is A Particularly Egregious Form of Censorship
Groups are interesting organisms. The entire cell has to open its mouth to begin endocytosis. Those not ingested, who sought entrance, are apt to resent the group. People amidst the cell hold similar perspectives on people outside the cell and of other cells. However, this does not prevent them from having independent ideas about elements not related to the group. To get into the cell, … Continue reading Group Rules by Peter Crowley
In the wake of numerous regional and civil wars, disease, curfews and devastating earthquakes, which have all led to an impoverished state, I decide to fill each deprivation-bred day with a portion of something beautiful that defies the Furies, the godly elite and the scribes of destination that have proliferated and thrived in recent years. A diary, which keeps a record of the events or … Continue reading Something Beautiful by Susie Gharib
-after “I want to sleep with you elbow to elbow” by Joyce Mansour (translated by Emilie Moorhouse) I want to lie naked with my headtucked in the curve of your neckour hair braided like a riveryour hand on my assand my toes in the crook of your knee.I want to recline with your sexclutched between my thighssweating like a tall beerblissed-out as wild strawberries.I want … Continue reading I Want to Grab You by Your Short and Curlies by Dale Champlin
Ten minutes out to sea, the only knots on ropes,clove hitches and sheet bends, fishing knots, utilityboat knots, not knots of loss that melt as I stareat the bay, eyes searching for harbor seals, fixed on outcropscovered with cormorants and squabbling gulls, bird eyesfollowing pelicans swooping in squadrons; the sundazzling, broken only by wing shadows I long to paint,though I can’t paint, but I want … Continue reading Wing Shadows I Long to Paint by Angie Minkin
