Awake.
We wait. On crimson mornings, layers of leaf loam lie So deep they are an ocean of land. A heart is imprisoned in the heart of a tree And only fire can free it. So, […]
told me you’ll thank me some day – language borrowed from 1-star yelp reviews of cosmetic surgeons
“a hung out hexology” by Laura Heckel 1 reality is that i have only seen the doctor once after my surgery and that is because i haunt him. 2 i had drains in my legs and […]
Dressed in White
Growing up, my parents never really took us anywhere. Everything normal families made a fuss about, like graduations and birthdays, we spent at home. Their excuse was always how tired they were. I hated that […]
Stay Awake and See Moonlight
Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes play the protagonist at three different stages of his life. It’s 1:43 a.m., and I can’t sleep. I just saw Moonlight and so should you. […]
Somewhere in America, 2016
Without the excuse of profiling, never in fear of mandatory minimums or shots in the back, The Absent Father, full of pride, and suffering, the kind of illness we see too often, in our siblings […]
Interview with Maggie Nelson
In the opening pages of The Red Parts Maggie Nelson describes her previously published Jane: A Murder, a sister book to this, as being “about how one might live—or, rather, how my family lived, […]
Que Viva El Movimiento!
Matt Sedillo is an openly Communist poet and a Damn Slam Los Angeles champion. His last book of poetry, ”For What I Might Do Tomorrow” drew praise from the likes of Jack Hirschman. He agreed […]
Soldier and Knight
Smoke billowed and the city burned. The fire bit into the grey. Child-like embers danced in the darkened sky because the glutton named War had eaten all day. Bombs flashed, revealing Death in the […]
Land Of Songs
“May God help you, young girl, to wash the linen sheet.” The village of Puvovocia, Lithuania is in the region called the Land Of Songs. Its voice, both solemn and playful, reaches from the […]
Yes, I Write, But Not for an Audience
Several million tracks of experience find their ways into my subconscious every nanosecond. Curiosity invites my consciousness to bear witness to life, objects, nature, etc., materials that are coded into my DNA and later come […]
Is It You I’m Writing For
The sage burns, the high wears out; and back again I see I’m not alone… It wasn’t you that I was writing for. You’ve already heard each word cycle back again. I wrote instead […]
Necrophilia, as in Sex in a Long Dead Relationship
With her head on my shoulder, I die. I become a corpse, cheery plank ice sculpture around which she joyfully dances, spinning on the balls of her feet, pointe shoe prop the purple fabric of […]
In the Issue
“He picked up The New Yorker, saw his work being praised, and tossed it. He tossed the rest of them. They made his ideas mean something, and he hated those filthy animals for it. Before, […]
Sneak Peek at Author Interviews
“Language feels very physical, we try to pretend like we trap it on the page with text, so we try to pretend it’s only text. It’s not like there’s the word of text that’s in […]
Mechanism of Choice
1 I’m not nearly articulate enough to explain the long, winding, bloody road that led to Chase and me falling out of merely fucking and into actual love. It’s been several years, and only the […]
Quiet
After this I don’t want to sing anymore love songs I don’t want to be victim to this memory it always tastes sweeter in the mind than it did at the time.
“make america great again”
part i. I guess this is where it has been going for a while— back in my first apartment in Gotham, remembering ultraviolence as a kid, I can hear the thumping of the sea, […]
No Taste to Freedom
The boiled soup Decays—since when have we behaved? This sinkhole hits home— hear me out loud: “There is no taste to freedom, like CO2, we burn up atmospheres because, yo, we hold all the […]
as if
as if to peel the skin away to get to the tender fruit inside only to find that some of the fruit is hard as well as soft some sour along with the sweet […]
The Flight Home
Sweet Lucienne, I hope everything with you is well. I can’t believe it has been so long. I still remember driving out of Phoenix at night with Will in the backseat. He was just […]