Tag: the opiate magazine

Poetry

This Thing Called Sex by Dale Champlin

I’m liking this thing called sex, the way my spineroots me to the bedclothes; my DNA tinglesinto my ecstatic shoulders, the branchesof my arms to my fingertips—thoughtdissolves—delicious oblivion. I float, a girl again,maybe a boy. Under my goosebump fleshall splayed ringlets—I elevate, scrumptious. Crucified between cloud-drift and gravity, I go the distance; a cry arcs full-bodied,unrhymed from the shivers at my foot, by wayof my hummingbird … Continue reading This Thing Called Sex by Dale Champlin

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Poetry

It Will All Pass in the End by Adrean Bellon

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Breathe in. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Breathe out. Another round. Another cycle. This feeling again. Don’t make any noise. Don’t bother anyone. It will all pass in the end.  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Breathe in. You’re taking control of your heart. Another image. Another memory. Don’t cry. Don’t complain. Your knees on your chest. Your … Continue reading It Will All Pass in the End by Adrean Bellon

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Prose

I’m Mexican by Andrea V. Garcia Robles Gil

I’m Mexican. That much I know. That much I can be sure of. Or can I?  Here, in a strange land, my nationality manifests as a shield. It comes as a reflex, to protect and justify my less than perfect tongue: the brokenness of my words and the silly mistakes. It is also an impenetrable wall (Berlin?): I cannot understand them, the French and the … Continue reading I’m Mexican by Andrea V. Garcia Robles Gil

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Fiction

Family Matters by Sarah Siham

You know what’s worse than a family dinner? I’ll tell you: a fucking wedding dinner. Every random relative that you’ve ever encountered once, three millenniums ago, and whose existences are perfectly inconsequential to you but apparently primordial to the familial circle, reunited in the same room. Annoyance grated me as I observed people, whose blood was the only thing we had in common, hypocritically saluting … Continue reading Family Matters by Sarah Siham

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Criticism

Says I: Against the Repetitive of Use of “Says” and “Said” in Prose

Something has happened in the writing world recently. A sudden sea change in favor of the repetitious use of a particular four-letter word…describing characters’ utterances. Said. Where once it would have been unthinkable to see such lazy writing (and it is lazy, not “simple,” as many writers are fond of using as a defense), it’s now deemed the norm for “straightforward, unpretentious” writing. Writing that … Continue reading Says I: Against the Repetitive of Use of “Says” and “Said” in Prose

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Fiction

A Sudden Change of Plans by Mike Lee

I felt powerless…and chickened out at what was supposed to be my defining moment. Instead, I was a coward who backed away five minutes into grasping destiny with a finger on the trigger. Methodically, I stripped the rifle with disgust, placing the parts neatly into the gym bag. I slung it over my shoulder and crossed the abandoned warehouse floor, taking the stairs in lieu … Continue reading A Sudden Change of Plans by Mike Lee

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Fiction

The Princess of Morticians by Mike Lee

At 10:30, the receptionist at the front desk gave off the look of a mortician, heightened by her jet-black hair with the white streak in the bangs that evoked a mid-90s memory of one of the band members in Luscious Jackson. As well as what I realized decades ago: punk is not a uniform. Instead, it was a way of thinking—an attitude. The latter came … Continue reading The Princess of Morticians by Mike Lee

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Poetry

Incarnation by Louis Faber

I had been sitting for an hourin the coffee shop areaof the now gone Borders bookstoretrying to piece together the shardsof a life shattered by the impendingend of a long marriage that wasgoing to last for a lifetime.And I was hoping, perhaps,to meet someone, ready or notto try and fill the smallest cornerof what was now a gaping void.She was dressed in something fromthe late … Continue reading Incarnation by Louis Faber

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Poetry

Hunger by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper

I know now that watching you eatwas what I once loved about my mother: the necessityof it, the intensity of it, the unacknowledged pleasure—everything that made reality human. So much in life, my tenderexperience, places things in doubt, and here was proof,above all sciences, that to be, to exist, was hunger, and could be satisfied.Beauty was to perceive, to see that whatever else truth might … Continue reading Hunger by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper

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Criticism, Essay

The Woman In Me: Britney Spears Reckons With Exploitation and the Double Standard She Was Subjected to Her Entire Career

“Hello. Oh my goodness, ew. Strong Britney!” These were the words an on-the-verge-of-tears, twenty-one-year-old Britney Spears uttered while forced into doing an episode of Primetime on November 13, 2003 with Diane Sawyer. And oh, how strong (stronger than yesterday) she had to make herself in the years spent under a microscope that followed. The word “forced” vis-à-vis Primetime feels applicable because, as Spears tells it, … Continue reading The Woman In Me: Britney Spears Reckons With Exploitation and the Double Standard She Was Subjected to Her Entire Career

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