You waltz in here, a first-time patient, and act like we owe you something.
(drama)
Out west, we get our sunlight second hand, / when the East has settled the business of the day.
(poetry)
So now what are we going to do?
(nonfiction)
“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 invisible turns home into battlegrounds and destroys the romance between man and woman. These details never make it to history books.
(nonfiction)
With boys comes a lot of stress. You worry about how you can buy him his own place, or you worry about who he’ll bring into your house.
(fiction)
A cacophony of voices inquiring, wanting to disentangle the mysteries of the tattoos like hieroglyphs, pictograms.
(fiction)
The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.
(poetry)
“The poet’s love-hate relationship with her laptop becomes fully realized in ‘Off the Web,’ as too much time on the internet leads to feeling ‘my dress / gather headwinds and swirl, then lift
like / Marilyn’s over a grate,'” writes Richard Holinger.
(review)
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)
Weird fantastic beings of a / Super-intelligence. Ruling a race of synthetic humans / and pitting them against mankind’s dream.
(poetry)
You did not talk politics, except / to tell me we were being watched.
(poetry)
What’s wrong with circles? What shape is your wedding ring?
(drama)
“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)
I’ve chosen to work with concrete to speak about the impulse to create permanent structures, but also to speak about impermanence, change, and loss, Ledelle Moe tells Helena Feder.
“Geter’s lines don’t so much hum as slice, visually cutting into the page like claws digging for answers in a ground that will not give,” writes reviewer Phillip B. Williams.
(review)
Her mother continued to hand her things: that lost dollar, a Chinese cookie fortune, one missing pearl earring.
(fiction)
in soft squares, you try to neglect / your worries and shut down / the war-voices.
(poetry)
There is no such thing as old water, but when I answered, “I’m as old as water,” my son’s eyes grew wide. He says that because water cycles, it’s all super old. (fiction)
O, America, a horse like us would have been glue by now.
(nonfiction)
How I loved sitting on a barstool listening to James choose his words to perfection and pronounce them in a way that was subtle and glowing, as if they were wrapped in beautiful paper.
(nonfiction)
“People are not who they once were but actors in the great drama of life, informed by what they have seen on the screen,” writes Peter Valente.
(review)
it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.
(fiction)
California has weathered him with sun and heat. Michigan has begun to change me, too. We’re two birds . . . both singing variations of the same song.
(fiction)
they are the ones not allowed the roles except / maids and gardeners and gangsters and prisoners.
(poetry)
Each day the quick kick of the dream / empties another body / and the ghosts move through unkempt streets / named Lincoln and Delaware.
(poetry)
from their beacon hands / glow worldwide welcomes and a thousand smiles.
(poetry)
at recess the innocent school / children play and gambol in / pure non-denominational play
(poetry)
Another Chicago Magazine 