Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
I’m people. One day, I’ll be a meme or put a QR code to my Cashapp on communion wafers. You scan, pay, then let it dissolve— through you, with you, in you, etc. Cut your teeth at a 45 degree angle this valerian root smells like feet we smell like feet we’re healing, pulling coconut oil from our toes, swishing it in our mouths bleeding…
Please be advised that this poem includes descriptions of self-harm. —The Editors —A golden shovel poem on a line by Kaveh Akbar Oncemy mother played the violin until Ibegged her to stop. Melancholy cutlike catgut through my wrists and I bled in the openlike a butchered rabbit. I looked down, saw myfingertips had fallen off, my thighcrusted with their bits like panko ona fine Chilean…
The boys were waiting when Hollis unlocked the door to the barber shop, milling in a cluster by the planter box. Two of the shortest ones sat on the concrete lip, their legs kicking at the brick. As soon as he clicked the lock open, they hopped down and all six came marching in, looking like they’d been pulled from a boarding school, dressed in…
I wanted to become a burning myth in my hot youth,pined for truth, but owned the largest voice to speak the smallest lies;from the centerof the wheel I ran nowhere fast, said littleof substance to drill through the noisy substrata— darkling days,twilight & dusk,talking shit,the rich, thick gloamof my young dumb life —shouting downfrom the tower overlooking Somerville’sblinking guts, to the Boston skyclose by. I…
As a child I still recall the legends of famed writers and their golden pens, seemingly handed down to them from Midas himself. Writers who inked themselves into the eaves of history while enjoying lives full of fame and riches. For instance, Charles Dickens’ alleged payment-by-the-word or Herman Melville’s hatred of writing (despite his lifelong commitment to it). While Dickens’s word-count-paycheck could explain his lengthy…