His guilt was such a constant companion that a serious argument could be made for the carpool lane, the last few days rushing him like oncoming cars.
(fiction)
Author: Another Chicago Magazine
content warning: rape and other violent assault
At the toll, I ask, Is the tunnel very long? I’m claustrophobic in tunnels, enclosed spaces. Can’t even drive a car into a car wash.
(nonfiction)
My peoples came in on the Salvation Army ticket, right? Two rooms and a toaster, that’s about it.
(drama)
“Ghost poems of a haunted landscape, told in almost hypnotic lyricism, somehow bleed seamlessly into haunted writers and artists suffering in landscapes far from the West,” writes Sadie Hoagland.
(poetry reviews)
“I overcome the tension of trying to write by cooking. Next to smell, taste is the strongest sense in terms of conveying emotions,” Maggie Kast tells Jan English Leary.
[A year after COVID’s US arrival, ACM looks back.]
It’s not as if we don’t all know what we’re there for.
(nonfiction)
Wandering around some post-nuke safari park / With cauliflower growing out of my arm / Like a freak at night
(poetry)
little teeth of pinion, / gears of language / spinning in your mouth
(poetry)
we gently break their beacons from our ankles / caress the skin where now the signals stop.
(poetry)
Sunbeams drop and scatter / like shrapnel across bald pavingstones asizzle / in the dust of your passing.
(poetry)
“I did not live any of my life in a literary community. Holding an array of different jobs for almost thirty years, I used to think I could publish my resume as a novel,” Sari Rosenblatt tells Avani Kalra.
On our / walk the hound and I / noted something fecund.
(poetry)
What are the whereabouts of this babble of tongues, / this suicide flight of words, / this hermit-crab that is my story? (poetry)
Only the life of a human being has meaning, but we cannot decide what that meaning is.
(nonfiction)
several layers of antagonism stare at us / amidst a squabbling paradox or cannibalism.
(poetry)
I could pretend I didn’t watch at least a thousand hours of television since March, but I’m sure I did. I mean, how many walks can a person take? (nonfiction)
“The great achievement of Cracked Piano is that its poems present psychological pictures of a person in loneliness,” writes reviewer John Zheng. (poetry reviews)
She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village . . . Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.
(fiction)
It was deemed very unfeminine to play the bridegroom . . . Girls would tease you and provoke you like a real bridegroom and laugh at your expense.
(fiction)
Out west, we get our sunlight second hand, / when the East has settled the business of the day.
(poetry)
“Mental illness is not trivial, not something that should be easy to write or read or talk about, and it’s important that she included elements . . . that might come off as excessive or overwhelming,” writes reviewer Hannah Page.
(poetry review)
The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.
(poetry)
My brother, sister, and I climbed the steps of the fire escape at the local hospital, and our dad opened the door from the inside as we snuck into our mother’s room one by one, all too young to officially visit our mother.
(nonfiction)
You did not talk politics, except / to tell me we were being watched.
(poetry)
Weird fantastic beings of a / Super-intelligence. Ruling a race of synthetic humans / and pitting them against mankind’s dream.
(poetry)
“Faris’s book warns Republicans of their party’s coming apocalypse, but I think the Democratic Party should take note too,” writes Nick Rueth.
(reviews)
While the rest of the department read books, wrote papers, and graded student work, Tim and Rick printed out pictures of clowns.
(nonfiction)
content warning: sexual assault
My mouth is full of blood, like a poppy growing in my mouth, it tastes like the pennies I used to throw in wishing wells.
(fiction)
in soft squares, you try to neglect / your worries and shut down / the war-voices.
(poetry)
Another Chicago Magazine 