Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
fill the void by repeating phrases. repeating phrases to make it so. repeating phrases to get it right. tonight would be a perfect night to be the boston strangler. tonight would be a perfect night to cauterize the moon. when the stars are mist. when the epilogue is mine. when scaffolding fits like letters. when letters silt on the river’s clavicle. how bone bends in…
Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby is a collection of stories about women: the women relegated to single lines in our history books and the women who are never written about at all; women on the verge of breaking down, who broke down long ago, and who have only just begun. There are the occasional men who orbit their lives, with whom they fight,…
Gene passed better than most of the other woodsers here did. He’d learned tricks in Seattle, when he pretended to be a university student in order to spend his days inside the clean, dry, academic buildings instead of outside. He was good at sink washes, knew how to take them and not get caught. The smell was usually the first thing that gave someone away…
I am a perennial vegetabledrinking myself purpleLoosely, we chained devilsspot a mushroom on the backyardOn the backyard sonnetOn the blessed easter of my chosenmother who sits like a strawberryin a cozy chair, I love her on my kneesshorn braids and the fish kindness do you rememberthe attunement of your youthin flowers, one foot on waterA child by the death veil surrounds, she learned from the…
In the ever-evolving pantheon of young adult literature, it’s rare to find a story so relevant, so intellectual, that the book will appeal to even adults. However, Val Neiman’s In the Lonely Backwater isn’t just another young adult novel. Much like its main character, Maggie, In the Lonely Backwater is uniquely intellectual, and more importantly, it’s the story of a young woman on the brink…