Kafka can sit for hours on the corner of the balcony, the elbow, looking down on the busy intersection. On one corner, across from us is the Escher House, a three-story mansion now converted into cheap rooms.
(nonfiction)
Tag: art
Now all I want is to / hear what Paul Thomas Anderson whispered into Fiona / Apple’s ear to make her cry in public.
I held my magazines in my lap and looked longingly out the window, believing myself to be a melancholic character in the movie of my life.
(fiction)
I compliment / the man on his black leather jacket and he hangs it on my / shoulders and says, I think you’ll like it better than me, bunny.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I spoke the least of my fears for him then. Although his excesses scared me, I usually said nothing against his inordinate feasts.”
(fiction)
i go to school to see mary but learn louis xvi was beheaded in front of an empty / pedestal
The cicada ebbed and flowed / until those raised in cities / complained. How can we sleep?
(poetry)
The only language you know / the form you know as love / as one, / complete / complete.
(translations)
I don’t trap my dreams in books / you might as well store fire in paper
(translation)
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
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He moved close enough to whiff my aftershave. Our eyes met before he grimaced.
(fiction)
The children / dance on open flame, scrawl shapes across the sky / you feel the ground vibrate as they raise hell / on all your futures.
(poetry)
He slices an opening in the side / of my breast and puts a needle inside / which flails around like a water hose he can’t control / in the yard
(poetry)
She loved her Oxy, Hydrocodone, and Xanax, the pretty colors and shapes. She sometimes poured them all into her hand. Did she think about it? Of course, some days. It would be so easy—a glass of water, her favorite videos.
(fiction)
He’s standing around and a girl in a red coat makes him think of me. Or a French bulldog, that I would run to pat. Or a scent makes him turn back.
(fiction)
…the promise of fulfillment rather than just a hole here or there or in several places at once…
(nonfiction)
I was certain all was lost, that the curtain had been lifted to expose Double Take Creative for what it truly was: a two-bit operation run by a misty-eyed has-been and his oblivious minion.
(fiction)
in silence, those dark minutes of recess when they stomp on my shadow with their hyena / laughter
(poetry)
Does literary fame play a role in your quest as a writer and if so, does it play a positive role, or a negative one?
(nonfiction)
Do you need to be a good person in order to be a great poet?
(nonfiction)
The flight attendant checked the row number printed on the overhead compartments, consulted her paper, then looked directly at Mia. “You are a doctor?”
(fiction)
The work is not going well. Why is the work not going well? I think. Wait. I ran out of medication.
(nonfiction)
This is when I realize that sunglasses weren’t invented to keep the sun out of your eyes.
(fiction)
She returned home when her village was liberated after six months of occupation. Her house greeted her with a collapsed wall.
(translations)
It was late in the evening and dark, the dark river with its lights passing by, reflections from the Seine travelling across the ceiling, sliding along the walls.
I have not / strayed far from the dead. I see their hip favored / executives and can pick them out from big / crowds
That day has never ended. / The fence he built is still new.
The latest piece in our DEBUT section, which showcases the first literary work published by a writer, beyond a campus-only magazine
“Sometimes I feel like a beetle. / Hanging on to a blade of grass / for dear life while what others describe / as a gentle breeze knocks the wind out of me.”
(poetry)
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